Chapter Ten

While Ed was talking with our fat-assed idiot driver Norm, I watched the church carefully, scanning the windows and grounds for motion. I noted that none were open facing the road or the side we could see from here. The north side of the church was flanked by an empty parking lot with the remnants of a bonfire, probably barbequed zombies, in the corner farthest from the church.

That several large vehicles had recently churned the gravel there was apparent, but I noticed that at least one of them had been equipped with tank tracks by the deep gouges in the pavement where it entered the lot from the road. There was a faint dimple pattern there as well, coming from the north, which meant it was probably based at Fort Drum. My first thought was: 'We ought to find out if Fort Drum is still in business or has been overrun.'

Then I saw a curtain flutter in the third window from the left on the ground floor. The windows were about six feet above ground level, which made for an admirable defensive situation. From my vantage point in the truck's dumper, I could have seen into the room if the curtains had been drawn aside, but no one at ground level could have seen anything that wasn't next to and above the window.

I called it out to Ed, and he started moving back to me, and I heard muffled screaming just as something smashed out the window. From here, I could see a teen boy had thrown a chair through the window, and with the curtain partially gone, I could also see that a door behind him was barricaded, and three smaller children were with him.

Ed got back to the dumper and hopped in, as Norm's door opened, and Emily slid down into the road. I could see she had the shotgun Norm had offered me earlier, and she walked, well, strode, into the front yard of the church, and walked onto a picnic table under the smashed window. She ignored Ed and I, and raised the shotgun. The boy helped the other three kids out the window, and I saw the next eldest couldn't have been older than eight, and the other two were practically toddlers. As the last was being helped down, she fired into the room over the teenager at something I couldn't see from my angle, and jacked another shell into the chamber. A window on the wall facing the parking lot burst outward, and a body tangled in the curtains tore them out, giving us a view into the room. Another barricaded door was being forced open by zombies, and they were squeezing through the part they'd managed to force aside. Emily fired again, and another tumbled sideways.

The boy slid out the window and landed hard on the ground, crying out in pain. The other three children tried to help him up. He struggled to rise once, and lay back, motioning them to the truck. Emily dropped the shotgun and hopped off the table. As she bent to assist him, the barricade was pushed completely out of the way, and a horde of zombies tumbled into the room.

Ed was looking down at the cab, probably wondering what our driver was doing. I sighted on a zom, capped it, and yelled to him to help cover Emily. We sent one after another to the floor with headshots, but more took their places fighting each other for a place at the window to get at the children.

Emily put an arm under the boy, and got him to his feet. He managed one step, and his legs buckled pitching him to his hands and knees. Blood poured from his back, and shards of glass stuck out all over it.

Ed ran out of ammo next to me, and instead of reloading, reached for the special bag. I reloaded fast, and managed to get a shot off just in time as one zom managed to get half out the window. It dangled half in and half out, as others pressed in behind it.

Emily was tugging on the boy, as the other children ran for the truck.

"Ed! We need to save that for emergencies!"

He looked up at me as he slapped a red-tipped shell into the M-79 and unfolded it. "This qualifies." It clicked smartly as it locked in position. Without even pausing, he sighted in on the window over the table Em had been playing Rambo on.

The smaller children had reached the back of the truck. Cursing Norm for not helping, I ran back to help them up, ducking down as I did.

With a hollow FOOMP sound, and a lazy trickle of smoke from the barrel, the grenade launcher we'd picked up 'illegally' from a quartermaster at a certain not-to-be-named military base lobbed a 40mm high explosive shell into the window, knocking a zom off its feet. Seconds later, all the windows in the room blew out, accompanied by chunks of burning zombie and gouts of flame.

The explosion knocked Emily to her knees beside the boy, who went prone. She grabbed his arms and dragged him to the back of the truck on his belly. Blood continued to well from his back, soaking his shirt and leaving a bloody smear behind him. I turned and checked him over. Some of the glass had gone deep into his upper back, almost certainly puncturing his lungs. Blood frothed from his blue lips as he gasped, and I could hear sucking noises from the wounds on his back. They stopped, along with his breathing.

"He's gone, Emily." I said, as she struggled to get him up and then presumably into the truck somehow.

She turned on me eyes blazing. I hadn't seen her this alive since we found her, wandering in B-ville. "No! He's coming with us!" She hugged him to her, covering the jacket Norm had apparently surrendered to her in blood. I saw she'd managed to make it fit by rolling the cuffs up a few times. "He's coming with us. We'll get him to a doctor. It's not too late. It's not too late."

"It is. His lungs were punctured when he fell out the window. He landed on the glass. Look at it." I took him gently under the arms, held him up and out from her. She looked down. Looked at me. Tears filled her eyes.

"Please. We can't leave him, for them."

"We won't." I looked around. The church was going up fast. Smoke billowed out the windows of the room the children had holed up in. Flames were visible in several other windows, even on the second floor. The grenade had probably blown part of the floor and ceiling out, creating a chimney that fanned the flames. The attic vents were pouring out smoke. "We'll put him in one of the trucks. They won't see him or get at him there."

The first tear fell out of her right eye, and she nodded. Wordlessly, we took him by the arms and legs, and carried him to an old Ford pickup. It wasn't locked, so we simply laid him on the seat, and closed the door. Emily bowed her head and murmured something. I grabbed her hand and ran her back to the truck, and got her up to look after the youngsters. Ed wasn't much good with kids, part of why we'd never had any, I suppose. I still hadn't seen or heard from Norm. And we needed to get moving.

When I got to the cab, he was sprawled in the seat, head lolling on his shoulders. If his breathing wasn't so loud I might have thought he was dead. I hopped up onto the running board, and checked him over. There was a spreading bruise slightly forward of his right temple. The skin was slightly torn, but not bleeding, just oozing plasma like a burn. He didn't look very good.

"Ed?" I called up to the dumper. He poked his head over the side, looking almost relieved.

"Yeah? Are we gonna move soon?"

I lowered my voice: "Small problem. Norm's out cold. Looks like he got decked pretty hard, maybe by some flying debris..." I tapered off. Something was wrong about that. Right temple! He was still snugly buckled in. I looked at the bruise, which was darkening and spreading almost visibly. The main part of it bore a strong resemblance to a rifle butt. "Bring a canteen and a shirt down."

"Want the first-aid kit? I think it's got smelling salts in it."

"Nah, it's kinda buried." I staved off his disapproving look, "Sorry hon. Our plans for the collapse of civilization didn't include walking dead. I was expecting biker gangs or police state terrorism, not Night of the Living Dead."

He had ducked back while I said that, and reappeared seconds later, "Hey, if Little Stephen is right, we'll have the police state terrorism. Catch." A t-shirt came down, and I caught it easily, going for the leading portion with the canteen in it. As he clambered down, I wetted the shirt and folded it into a compress, and tried to bring our driver around. "Norm! Norm! Wake up, Norm!" He groaned and stirred slightly.