Zombie Road: The Second Omnibus by Simpson, A. (e ink manga reader .txt) 📗

The boy handed his gun to an old woman with a rock clenched in her fist and ran for the ladder.

They could hear the war cries of the Raiders coming up the road, only a single hairpin turn away from coming onto view.

“We got your messages.” a middle-aged man with long black hair said as he slid in beside them, a cheap .308 rifle in his hands. “I’m George Lone Elk, Chairman of the tribal council. Glad you could make it.”

Gunny nodded a greeting and started laying out magazines on the ledge.

“I have volunteers sending tumbles of rocks down to block the roads.” Lone Elk said “but it doesn’t look like it’s slowed them down very much.”

Gunny glanced down the line and could easily count the rifles aimed at the curve. Most of the people only had piles of rocks and grim looks of determination.

“I didn’t realize you were so short of weapons.” Gunny said “We thought you raided a national guard outpost. How did you manage to hold the line for so long?”

“Spent a lot of brass.” the man said pragmatically. “We couldn’t let them know we were short on supply. We hoped they’d just give up and go away. And yeah, we raided the guard post. Lost some good men. Got a lot of training rounds and guns without ammo. We got a better haul from the Wal-Mart. It’s been pretty quiet out here and we never sent another group out, been busy getting our gardens growing and the water working.”

Gunny nodded.

“Your tactic probably would have worked on an ordinary raiding party.” he said “Not on these guys, though. Casey wants your home.”

“We realize that now.” their chief said. “We have escape routes down the back of the cliff. The rest of my people are standing by, waiting to leave if we get overrun. We chose to defend the wall to give them a chance to get away.”

“We’ll die so they can live.” the old woman with the shotgun said, steel in her voice.

It was a last stand. A suicide mission.

“I’d rather have them die.” Griz said and started grabbing the guns being handed up the ladder and passing them down the line. “Much healthier that way.”

The raiders battle cries got louder as they rounded the bend, saw their goal and picked up speed. Casey had stopped the Mustang at the bottom of the of the mesa and spoke to his people through the CB. Every vehicle had the volume cranked and his words echoed up the mountain. His urgings boomed through the loudspeakers of a Jeep as it followed the raging mob.

“Destroy them.” he intoned in his most awe-inspiring voice, lifted from a movie he’d seen long ago. “Bury them where they stand. What’s theirs is ours. I offered them a chance to surrender and they refused. I offered them a chance to join us and they spit in our face. Now we will crush them. We will feast on their young, kill their warriors and take the women. The world is ours…”

His mad rantings continued, blasting through the night and his raiders screamed their mind-altered, drug-addled screams and ran at the wall.

“Doesn’t he ever shut up?” Griz asked and flipped off the safety.

He and Gunny started snapping triggers and dropping bodies. The rest of the line joined in and it was easier than cutting down a horde of the undead. It didn’t take a headshot to stop them. They didn’t ignore a bullet through their chest or rip out their own spilled guts and keep running. They fell by the dozens, then by the scores, then by the hundreds. Black powder smoke hung heavily over the wall and explosions cast glaring, strobe light flashes. It was a slaughter and if they hadn’t been so amped up on the chemist’s special marinade and the bath salt baste, if Casey hadn’t been at the foot of the mountain urging them on, they would have had enough sense to stop their headlong rush into the bullets. The night was apocalyptic mayhem: the screams and explosions, the dancing red light from the parachute flares and the glow from the moon drove them mad. Casey’s demands of ever onward drove them forward. Bullets, arrows and shrapnel from grenades drove them to the ground.

It was the end of the world and it was time to die. They rushed headlong into certain death, amped up, spaced out, kill crazy savages and didn’t care. Most of them didn’t even fire their guns, they brandished them as they ran screaming into the bullets. They jumped over fallen comrades, waved their fists and fell when the chunks of lead finally stopped them. It was madness. Some screamed in shrill battle fever, emptying magazines into the backs of those running in front of them. Fragmentation grenades shook the ground and sent body parts spiraling over the edge as gouts of warm blood sprayed patterns across the sand

Willy Pete grenades sent white hot chunks of chemicals that burned all the way to the bone and covered the road with heavy smoke.

It was the charge of the light brigade into the valley of death.

It was the Bataan death march at sprinting speeds.

It was Napoleon’s last attack at Waterloo.

It was wholesale carnage.

They fell by the hundreds, the bullets cutting them to pieces and leaving them to bleed out on the ground, chemically addled brains sometimes not even realizing why they were here or why they were breathing their last.

If Casey could have seen the bloodbath and the unyielding wall of death his people were running towards, he may have tried to stop them. Called them back. Regrouped and reorganized and went after an easier target. But he wasn’t at the front, he was leading from the rear. He was down where it was safe giving his victory speech over the loudspeaker.

When he’d fired his last round from his last magazine, Gunny grabbed a buffalo rifle and sent the ball of lead into