Change of Plans

We all had a hasty meeting at the farmhouse. Seems all the reports of people being snatched up and used for slaves and entertainment were true. The group who started in Richmond (The Richmond Regulars as they are calling themselves now) sent scouts into the city to check the Warlord’s base camp, which is EKU (Eastern Kentucky University), to see how it was defended. It was mostly deserted with few guards and a lot of people under lock and key. The problem was, there was also a lot of Zak between us and them. We made radio contact with the BGAD and told them our idea. They said the Warlord’s group had pretty much settled in for a siege affair, and they could hold out for a few days if they had to while we ran our plan.

Here was the idea, quick and dirty; Attack the Warlord’s compound, rescue the prisoners and hopefully stomp out his hold on Richmond. Things always seem easy on paper, huh? That’s what I thought too.

We moved ourselves out as quickly as we could and were within sight of Alumni  stadium within about a half hour. We had stopped on the last hill before going down into the valley, so we would be out of sight. Jake and crew ‘silenced’ the few guards we came across very efficiently. We even captured a few of their radios. Mostly small talk, no discipline what so ever, raised my hopes when I listened to one of them.  We all noticed how few zombies were around in the woods and the small subdivisions we came across on the road here.

 One look through some binoculars or a high powered scope told the tale. The field leading to the stadium literally teamed with the undead, maybe in the thousands, it was hard to see with all the milling around. Jake asked me to follow him up and John tagged along. We came into a wooded area about a mile from the stadium and stood in the shade of the trees.

‘Look at this.’ Jake handed me his rifle. I looked through his scope, the crosshairs were illuminated and it had distances crawling along the sides. But that was not what got my attention. The one side of the stadium had a hole knocked in the wall and barbed wire crisscrossed the hole. Behind the hole I saw people, some completely naked, all dirty, cowering away from the hole. The horde of undead stayed at the hole forever reaching for what was on the other side.

‘Shit.’ I said looking over at Jake. He shook his head, ‘Look over to the right about a hundred yards.’

I did as he said and the world blurred as I moved the rifle quickly to the right. What I saw chilled my blood but burned my brain.

They had ring made up of chain link and barbed wire about forty feet in diameter set up in one of the parking lots. Outside of this ring was another ring with more fencing that had a corridor that lead back to one of the stadium’s doors.  This outer ring at the moment had a few bandits watching the spectacle in the inner ring. A man in torn and dirty clothing was circling a zombie in the ring with him. I could see the guards laughing and pointing to each other and the ring. They were betting on the outcome. Several bodies were already inside the inner ring. I could not tell from here if they were human, zombie or both. The outer ring was surrounded by waves of Zak. The guards did not appear to be worried their backs were to zombie hordes.

‘Bastards.’ I muttered as I handed John the rifle and pointed across the field. Jake nodded  back to me, ‘Good thing is there may be, at best, a hundred bandits there. Seems this warlord idiot took most of his men and equipment with him I guess. I reported this to the Major and wanted you to see this.'

John was now muttering a stream of curses and looking through the scope. We needed to do this more than attack the Warlord to help the BGAD, if only so I could sleep with myself at nights. We packed it in and went back to the convoy.

‘We don’t have the ammo to kill them all and still get to the prisoners with any chance of getting ourselves out again.’ The Major told Kirk, the de-facto leader of the Richmond Regulars. He did not like the news we were laying on him.

‘We have to try. We can’t let those people all be killed, or, worse.’ Kirk gestured at the road behind us.

‘I just don’t know what else to do, short of setting fire to the place and driving Zak off.’ The Major shook his head in disgust. He was now getting a taste of field work and it was a bitter pill to swallow.  Fire. This got me thinking.

‘Does any place in Richmond still have power?’ I asked Kirk, who shook his head, ‘No why?’

‘I had a thought but it needed power, damn.’ I said in disgust. Everyone was staring at me and I kinda smiled sheepishly.

‘Out with it asshole, somehow I know I am not going to like it.’ John said next to me.

‘Well Zak likes shiny things and noisy things, right? I thought about setting fire alarm off at one of the fire stations and getting out before they get there. I figure it would drag a lot away from the dinner they cannot get to go after one they can…’

Kirk cut me off, ‘those alarms are battery operated and *should* still work.’ Emphasis on the Should.

‘Someone get me a map.’ The Major commanded. Men scrambled.

‘I hate you, you know.’ John said quietly to my right as we were hiding in an abandoned clothing store. A large group of Zak was about 200 feet away in the road ahead of us. Behind us Jake stifled a laugh and I could hear Albert actually giggling. There were maybe 60 Zak between us and the fire station. We had ducked into the building when Jake saw people on the roof tops about a block further on, fearing bandits, we hid. Now we were trapped. Kinda.

‘Oh you love me and you know it. No one else had the courage to tell you how ugly that grandchild is…’

‘I thought you said it looked like John?’ Albert asked very deadpan and Jake lost it then and did laugh.

‘Ha. Freaking Ha. You should be a comedian.’ John eyed me over the lingerie rack.

‘Pick out something nice for yourself John, you deserve it.’ Jake whispered to me but John heard him anyway, glaring back at Jake.

‘Okay, okay, enough. Jake, can you see anything on the roof from here?’ I asked, Jake slid up next to me at the window and used his rifle scope.

‘Nope. Either I was seeing things or they are gone.’ He told me readjusting his rifle.

‘Or  they saw us and went into hiding too.’ John said moving through the clothes to stand on the other side of the door. I nodded to him, agreeing with that idea.

‘Albert, how’s the back look?’ I said over my shoulder. He trundled off into the darkness to the back door. He was back minute late, ‘Z’s all over the alley, going the same way we need to. Maybe we should back track and go a few blocks around?’

‘We’re running out of time, we got maybe,’ Jake looked at his watch, ‘another ten minutes before go time.’

‘Great, once we do it we have to travel FURTHER into the city to get away from the dead heads. Maybe running straight into the group from the stadium. I really, really, really hate this plan the more I think about it.’ John said as he watched the street. I had to agree, unfortunately, it sounded better back at the convoy than down here stuck in a woman’s clothing store.

‘Jake, can you and Albert cover us from the roof of this building?’

‘Maybe, if we can get up on the roof. We can cover the roof tops, but probably not the street real well.’

‘Hmm..Okay, since I don’t think I see any ’Sprinters’ (fast zombies) in the group me and John will sneak up the left side of the street doorway to doorway to the fire station. Hopefully we can get the alarm rigged and out of there before all hell breaks loose. You guys should be able to go back the way we came since Zak should all be moving away from you by then.’ Another plan on the fly, I was getting good at this. I hoped.

‘Cutting our force in half doesn’t sound like a good idea…’ Albert started. Jake smiled and thumped him on the back. ‘It’s a beautiful plan, I love it!’ He smiled and hauled Albert with him to the stairwell. John just looked at me, glaring, ‘I really hate you.’

We made it to the firehouse without us firing a shot. Jake or Albert or both, however did. They were knocking down Z’s that either saw us or were hiding ahead of us in the shade of broken store fronts. We got inside and locked the metal door behind us. We breathed easy for a second until we realized the door was standing open when we got there. Shaking our heads in unison we got out our pistols and looked around the engine bay. The sun was pouring in through the windows over the (thankfully) shut garage doors and we had enough light to look around. We found the back door open to a parking lot behind the station. Movement caught my eye, but I could not catch what it was. We shut this door and locked it. One of the Richmond Regulars drew us some crude drawings of what we were looking for and we found the box in an office near the back wall. We followed the wires and lost them in a hanging ceiling. We knocked panels down as we were running out of time, but I thought, if they don’t hear a siren they should wait, right? Unless they thought we were dead, came a voice in my head. Damn. We scrambled for few seconds looking for the correct white and blue wires and noticed they went back out into the main bay. Finally finding the box/panel hidden behind a bench, we overturned the bench to get at it.

Would have been much easier had the guy wanted to come with us, but nooo…

We opened the panel and sure enough was a large car battery looking thing, they said maybe five minutes it would work before dying, if it worked at all. I hunkered down and found the other wires and grabbed a loose screwdriver off the floor along with a roll of duct tape.

‘Ready?’ I looked up at John, who nodded.

I jammed the screwdriver across the two terminals I needed and duck taped the screwdriver in place as the wailing sound of the siren commenced.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here, man!’ John said as the bay doors started to buckle under the Zak weight.

Running for the back door, we opened it expecting to be trapped but a small pile of dead zombies greeted us in the parking lot. Not to mention the four people standing at the edge of the lot with crossbows in hands (yes you read that right, crossbows).  Two were men and two women, they waved at us and yelled ‘Come on!’ They turned and ran, we followed, why not?  I could not keep the pace, my leg burning and already a limper, I was falling behind quickly. The few undead we saw paid no attention to us drawn, almost memorized by the screaming siren. John stopped and waited for my tired ass to catch up, the other four had already disappeared around a corner.

‘Think it’s another trap?’ John asked as I drew near, out of breath (I know, I know, I really need to lose weight).

‘You think our luck is that bad?’ he just rolled his eyes. At that time one of the women (girls?) came back around the corner, ‘Hurry up you two.’  I waved at her and we started after her at a trot. (Hey its Kentucky I can use that word legally)

After what seemed like forever and more turns than I could count, we ended up under I-75.  Due west of our objective. With Zak streaming north and hopefully all the bad guys looking that way, we should have a fairly easy time getting back to the convoy. We didn’t talk at all during the trip, we used hand signals to stop, go, whatever. We neared the road we would have travelled down and we still heard the alarm sounding, but nothing else. Something didn’t seem right.