Adam pressed two fingers to the carotid artery in his neck and felt for the pulse.
He counted seventy-two. Which was a great resting heart rate for someone his age. But that's just what worried him. Considering the pace of the firefight had only just simmered down. The sting of cordite still lingered in the air, he could still feel the warmth from the barrel of his rifle.
Adam could hear the metallic slide of magazine clips being shoved up and locked into the assault rifles below him as the men took the opportunity to reload. All of which held their fire now. In an effort to conserve ammo, it was Adam's job to pick-off the distant stragglers. He stretched his neck and then leaned back into the telescopic lens of his rifle.
Cigarette smoke rose up from the decompressing shooters on the wall.
"Boy, what you waitin' for up there," a cornhusker's lazy drawl squawked from Adam's radio, although the voice was clearly audible without, "you playin' with the right piece of wood up there?"
Adam ignored the transmission, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger. The polished walnut stock of the hunting rifle bucked into his shoulder. A few hundred yards down the wide street, lined with one-level storefronts and littered with abandoned cars, his target slouched awkwardly to the sidewalk.
A few impressed whistles sang-out in reaction to the shot.
"Reckon that kid can handle your rifle better than I ever seen you there, Earl." someone jeered at the rifles actual owner.
Adam racked the bolt of the rifle, ejecting the brass shell casing. It landed on the hard plastic floor of the cherry-picker bucket that had become his shooting platform. Which was held high off the ground by the extended arm of a power company's repair truck.
Glad that no one could see the big grin on his face, Adam savored the roundabout compliment on his shot. He was aware that he had found the inner marksman in himself. Too bad it took until, what people had been referring to as, The Infection, to discover it.
Another steady exhale, another booming shot.
It was odd though, just how significant of an impact that this new found talent had on Adam's life. For the first time in a long time, people depended on him, and not the other way around. After a car accident had severed his spinal cord and confined him to a wheelchair, regaining his independence had been hard enough. Having someone depend on him, though, didn't seem to be in the cards for Adam.
Adam could hear the continuing exchange between Earl and another slack-jawed yokel, unseen to Adam, but chose to ignore it. There were still some of the infected he needed to drop before they got too close to the front gates of the cemetery.
By late afternoon, the street had fallen still.
Adam had realized you could count off each of the infected that straggled behind the horde much the same as counting the time between thunder strikes in a storm. After each one, you would start counting, one-one thousand, two-one thousand. As the time between each strike grew longer, they became more infrequent, and would eventually fade out.
A late autumn breeze bit at Adam's skin and did well by plucking off the last remaining leaves from the barren treetops around him. By now, the dead leaves had covered the rolling hill of their cemetery in brown and yellow, large grey stones laid among the fall carpeting. Only small patches of green grass could be seen.
"Adam," Earl called out, "you know Fiona is still my girl. I don't give a damn how well you can handle her."
Adam flicked off the breaks, and pivoted the wheels of his chair. He kept Fiona's stock in the crook of his elbow, her long barrel pointing skyward, and looked over the edge of the bucket. Earl was coming down the narrow road that meandered throughout the cemetery.
"Sure she is. Sometimes she just needs a man with a little class, every once in awhile," Adam replied, "and she seems perfectly content in my lap."
"In your lap? You sure you can even tell she's there," Earl chuckled, lifting a boot up onto the truck's bumper, "and you haven't just pissed yourself?"
"You fuck." Adam hissed as he pulled the bolt back, ejecting a live round that he caught and hurled down at the man.
Earl was startled by the projectile and barely jumped back far enough to avoid it, cackling from under his moustache of long, stray whiskers. Earl buried his hands, calloused and oil-laden from a lifelong career in a garage, into the grey painter's onesie which Adam was sure the man was born in. Since they had met, a year into The Infection, Adam had yet to see the man even unzip the garment.
"Do I need to separate you boys?" a girl's voice asked from behind the two men.
Earl grimaced an old man's face from the effort it took to crane his neck back behind him to see who it was. Adam turned, as well, but he already knew who that voice belonged to. He saw Ashley Greene walking toward the truck, coming down the road that led to her and her mother's RV. She was twenty-three and easily the most attractive girl in their community of survivors. To Adam, though, she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen.
"Ashley," Earl said eagerly, his voice wrought with an inevitable crudeness, "Adam here was just telling me what he's doing with my Fiona, the love and light of my life, up there in his lap."
No witty comeback occurred to Adam, at that moment. He had always been mediocre with women, but something happened to him when Ashley came around. It was like his self-consciousness took a pillow and smothered what humor and charm he did have.
"I don't know which is more pathetic," Ashley said, having not missed a beat in firing back at Earl, "the fact that the love of your life is a stupid gun, or Adam getting a lap dance from it."
Earl walked to meet Ashley as she came near, tossed a lose arm around her shoulders, and turned to stand by her side, facing Adam together. Ashley rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, giving Earl the ok, let's hear it look.
"Miss Greene, that there rifle is a divine instrument - a paintbrush, if you will -".
"A paintbrush, Earl?" Ashley pressed her palms together and brought both index fingers to the bridge of her nose, and leaned into her praying hands, "please tell me you're not for real right now."
"Now hang on a minute there, little lady, hang on," Earl smiled and adjusted his arm to recollect her, "our little Adam up there, and my Fiona, got somethin' goin' on. And I do mean somethin' wicked. We all still alive thanks to that boy and his fine-ass piece of weaponry."
Earl looked up to Adam and Fiona proudly, like he was watching his son pitch a no-hitter baseball game. He pinched the bill of his orange cap and bobbed it, leaving it to sit higher on his head.
"And, of course, I do mean my fine-ass rifle." Earl said, pressing just the fingertips of his free hand to his chest near the name tag for Ted's Auto body and Garage.
Try as he had, Earl hadn't managed to embarrass Adam, or make him feel awkward. Then it occurred to Adam that it was quite possible the old-timer was trying to help him impress Ashley. Which was appreciated, but, as far as Adam was concerned, a waste of breath.
"Um," Ashley started, glancing at Adam, who shrugged and smiled, "I'm very happy for the both of them." She peeled Earl's arm from her shoulders, then dipped under and away.
"But where does that leave you? Now that you two are seeing other people. Well, at least, Fiona is. What poor girl will you have now to make incredibly uncomfortable and grossed out?"
"Well," Earl laughed and a less than toothy grin slid across his face, "you, my rosebud."
"Hmm, I could have you taken out. By your ex -" Ashley put her hands in the air and shook them, saying the name mystically, "Fiona."
"What if I don't wanna shoot him," Adam finally chimed in, "what's in it for me?"
Ashley smiled. It was too good a set-up to pass on.
"Anything you want." She said, making it sound as sultry as possible.
"Wow now," Earl said, abruptly throwing his hands up as though surrendering, and then, backed away slowly, "I'll let you kids sort that one out, yourselves."
"Oh my, gosh, I thought he'd never leave!" Ashley groaned as she walked to the truck in an exasperated walk, like something was dragging her down with every step.
"Yeah, I know, right?" Adam agreed as he flipped a switch and pulled on a pen sized joystick. The bucket began to lower with a high-pitched whirring. Truth be told, he wasn't glad that Earl had left, because now it was just them, and he had no idea of what to say to her.
Ashley spotted a control panel along the side of the truck and Adam saw her face light up with a mischievous, yet sexy glow. She went for a joystick, similar to the one Adam was operating, and jammed it forward. Nothing. Immediate disappointment cursed her pretty face.
Call her by name – girls like that.
"Nice try, Ashley." Adam teased.
"I wanted to play." She said with a childish, pouting face.
"Fine, here," Adam pressed a button to activate the lower controls, "it's like a childs-lock. And hey, how fitting."
That was dumb.
Ashley was too busy with the controls to hear him.
You're lucky she didn't hear.
From a distance the cherry-picker arm would've looked like a time lapse shot of a busy construction crane, moving about. Once she had her fun, she brought him down with a rough landing. Adam pushed the swaying door open and rolled out with two jarring thuds as the front wheels, then the back wheels, bridged the gap to the asphalt.
Ashley had brought him a late lunch, though it was normally her mom's job to deliver lunches to the guards posted around the perimeter walls. But, the cold weather had gotten to her mother, so Ashley was covering the route for today. Much to the pleasure of all the guards.
This time of year, it was always apples. A small orchard of trees grew in a back corner of the cemetery, surrounded by a wrought iron fence – black and no higher than two feet – that backed up to an old church. Now that the last apples had been harvested, they'd need to be eaten before they went bad. This was also a great way to stretch food rations as winter drew near.
Ashley had invited Adam to go with her as she finished with her deliveries. Once they had finished the rounds, she caught a ride on his lap on their way back to her mom's RV.
"So," Ashley blurted out after a lull in the conversation, "how have you managed to stay alive this whole time?"
She realized it sounded insensitive, alluding to the fact that it was surprising a guy in a wheelchair managed to survive as long as he had.
" I mean - you know I mean no offense, it's impressive really – but how would you get away if you couldn't get up stairs or something?"
"Well, I worked at a model home - "
"You were in realty?"
"No. Well, kinda. It was to demo a company's home accessibility stuff," Adam circled his hand at the wrist, "like lifts and modified kitchens and rails and stuff."
"Oooh, but how does that -"
"Because I could get anywhere in the house with automated lifts; had adapted power tools to board up the windows and that sorta thing."
"Ah, ok" she said, then paused in an uncharacteristic hesitation, "did you live with a girlfriend, or anything?"
"No, no, nothing like that or-"
The twang of stretching springs on a screen door sang out – assaulting the peaceful air of dusk. When it banged shut, Adam recognized it as the same sound that Earl's caravan door made when it shut behind him. The screeching noise always made him wince and shrug like it had just whipped him in the back.
"Earl!" Ashley shouted playfully when she saw him running across the road, just ahead.
He stopped short and looked around frantically, a radio squawking in one hand.
"I didn't even know you could run-" Adam began to taunt his friend, but then choked on his words when he saw Earl's face. Worry, fear, anger - Adam could read each of the emotions on his friends that he had become familiar with. Just how they tugged and lifted the skin on his face.
Adam could suddenly taste an urgency in the air.
"Who's in the bucket?" Earl's voice cracked as he shouted over the rows of granite headstones.
"No one. What's going on?"
A transmission crackling from the radio diverted Earl's attention. He held it to his ear.
"Earl!"
"No. No, he's not up there – no stay put, I'm coming." Earl spoke into the device, then ended the transmission and shot Adam an odd look.
"Christ, Adam," Earl said, his head wavering in an unintentional display of his disappointment, "get in the bucket, now!"
Adam all but pushed Ashley from his lap.
"Ashley, I gotta go. Get into your mom's place, and if-"
"I'll feel safer with you, Adam."
"No." Adam said trying to make stern eye-contact, though hers shifted about, judging the distance, plotting the best route, to get to the truck.
"Ashl-" Adam barely had time to say her name before she took off running.
"God damn it!" he shouted, bent half forward to get all the leverage and power it would take to beat her to the truck.
In no time, Adam was flying down the pathway, the spokes of his wheels blurred from the speed. He whipped around corners as women and children ran in the opposite direction, holding tight to one another. Men whirled into coats as they ran with rifles in hand, dispersing ammunition on the fly. They swarmed over the hill,toward the front wall. They laid heavy footfalls on hallowed ground.
Ashley ran and juked between grey headstones in a much more direct route than Adam could take. She was covering ground much faster.
Adam's shoulders burned as he pushed at a feverish pace. He could see her running, though bodies and stone interrupted his line of sight constantly, like watching a movie reel with missing frames.
When Adam came around the last bend, he saw dozens of men climbing the scaffolding up against the wall. Their rifle barrels pointed skyward, poking out above their heads and looking like spear tips of a Spartan Legion.
Adam's muscles burned in protest to the sudden demand of power. With arms churning, Adam was now only a dozen yards away from the bucket - he could see Fiona through the open door.
She's waiting.
Close enough now, he could see the glossy wood – the hollow brass bones littering the floor – the notches of his kill count whittled into the plastic siding.
Two-hundred, easy - and that's not counting the kills you quit bothering to keep track of a year ago.
Just before he'd pop the front tires up the two inch step, Ashley came around and jumped through the door just in front of him.
Whether she expected an argument or not, Adam said nothing as he pulled the door shut and hit the button for HEIGHT: MAX It wasn't about Ashley right now. It was about protecting the community now only feet below him. It was about how helpless – useless, even – he had been in saving any one of his family members. It was about he and Fiona, collecting their due tolls on this hideous, malignant tumor that had spread over the earth.
Loaded up and sighted in. Adam steadily inhaled the smell of leather and gun oil, held it, cherished it, and then exhaled. Now, he and Fiona were in-sync.
Don John – named as such because there were just too many Johns in the community – was panting heavily, wiping at the sweat that dribbled down his grimy forehead and stung his eyes.
John was was running for his life.
DJ's boots feel heavy, and lonely, on the desolate streets of Stillwater Falls; each slap of rubber sole on the asphalt echoed through the shadows and down the dark alleyways. Figures as black as oil poured out into the streets - curious - ravenous.
D.J. was now rounding Marcy's Corner Drug store. Which for all its blood and gore inside, wasn't so bad; most people raiding it at the start of everything got to the good drugs first, and they died laughing.
Through the turn now, DJ could see the heavy, arching doors to the cemetery at the end of the street. He had always hated the wide lane of quaint, Mom & Pop trinket stores. There was nothing wrong with the shops, but it was the context in which they saw those places nowadays. Some cheesy pictures of a happy family playing a game, felt almost spiteful amid the misery, chaos, and death they dealt with on a daily basis. And now, he was going to be eaten alive in plain sight of smiling Olaf and Elsa cutouts.
Claps of bare feet on pavement drew DJ's attention off to the left. An infected male, with eyes like dark, hollow craters, was bearing down on him with incredible intensity. Threads of a dress shirt, far gone from tatters, swayed across the man's grey and emaciated torso. Just then, DJ saw a distant blink of light from above the cemetery walls.
A split second later, there was a brief 'zip' sound and something stricking the asphalt. In the same moment, most of the infected man's head vaporized into a brownish red mist. Thats when the crack of a rifle report finally reached DJ.
Before any notion of relief, another infected charged him. This one got close enough to make DJ put his arms up defensively. There was a scuffle of tripping feet and DJ looked up in time to see his attacker drop like a shirt yanked off a moving dry cleaners carousel.
DJ realized it must be that kid in the wheelchair - the retard, or whatever his problem was - who shot Earl's rifle better than anyone he'd ever seen. He couldn't help but shout a, "HA!" as more of the creatures dropped like tin cans as they approached him.
For just such a situation as this, AAA dumpsters were set intermittently down the road. If someone could not make it to the gates before the things caught up to them, they'd be able to leap into one of these modified trash bins. Each of which, had its black plastic top replaced by sliding sheet metal doors. Red spray-painted numbers adorned each one.
DJ closed in on one, close enough now that the shooters at the wall could help clear the way. Gunfire crackled and flashed along a horizontal line. Fragments of the roadway kicked up as stray rounds peppered the ground and windows of nearby cars. DJ leapt head first into the dumpster, slid the door shut over his head, and locked it.
Voices echoed Earl's command on down the line of shooters.
"Hold fire!"
"Hold your fire, DJ is in the can four!"
"Hold your fire," and an occasional, more forceful, suggestion to the ones still popping off rounds, was needed, "stop fuckin' shootin'!"
Shouts came up from random points along the wall.
"Where's the rest of the scavenging party?"
"Was that it? Just DJ?"
Last communication with DJ's group had sounded grim. Between casualties and estimates on the number of approaching infected, they were now vastly undermanned and ill-preparrd to repel an assault of this magnitude.
"Listen up," Earl knew he had to keep the men on point, "DJ is canned and safe, for now. There're more comin'. Reload now if you need to. Pick your shots."
A well-practiced and synchronous reload at the firing line bore no sound, save for the sliding, clipping, and charging of weapons.
Adam looked to Ashley, who had sunk to a seated position on his right, knees to her chest, hands still to her ears. Her hair like stage curtains – most of it tucked up behind her ears, some strands slid loose to drape a thin veil over her face.
Adam could think of nothing to say to her. What was there to say? Ask her if she's okay? No. That would be like closing the door on her finger, and right away, asking her incessantly: Are you okay? What happened? What happened?
So, he said nothing.
Now, the sun was barely peeking above the horizon, like a child watching a scary movie; curious, but ready to cover its eyes when the monsters came. None of the colors still in the sky were brave enough to linger either, lighting the aging scars of mankind ravaged by disease, and by itself. They'd be sure to chase after the sun.
"Lights." Earl spoke flatly into his radio – not shouting, or demanding, just matter of fact. When he released the transmit button, the static hiss carried far in the quiet dark.
Banks of flood lamps kicked on, lighting the street by sections at a time, progressing further down the street in loud, chunk, chunk sounds. Bright rays of light,cast through the cloak of night, revealed its secrets and the dark passengers within it had, no one waited for Earl's command to fire.
ns 15.158.61.13da2
