I was pissed at myself for not thinking of it.
Cautiously stepping down into the grass with my arms raised, I dropped my hammer onto the grass. Pleading my case, I explained that we just needed to make a few phone calls, and that we’d get the hell out of there right away. Just a few phone calls, with one being to my pregnant wife.
The officers looked at each other, then back toward us once again. They let me squirm there on the grass for a moment, before one of them finally spoke up with a slight edge in his voice. “We’ll take you to a phone. Head back down the hill and stop just before the streetlight. We’ll be right behind you, so drive slowly and don’t veer from that destination.”
Before I could thank them, they stepped back into their cruiser. I reached down to retrieve my hammer and then jumped back up into the Hummer. Kyle and I closed our doors with sequential thuds, and waited as the cops backed up their car. They pulled forward and completed a three-point turn before motioning to us to drive out in front of them.
They escorted us down the winding road past all of the houses, and back towards the small town. I slowed the Hummer to a crawl at the stoplight until they drove up next to us, motioning for me to stop. The cop in the passenger side, signaled for to me to roll down my window.
Hitting the automatic down button on the interior of the door, the window slid down as I watched the cop casually stick a finger out in the direction of the pharmacy.
“Last I checked, pharmacies have telephones,” he said with a straight face, looking through his aviator sunglasses. He rolled up his window as the car pulled forward, blocking the Hummer from advancing.
Both cops stepped out of their car, weapons drawn once again, but at the ground. Kyle and I cautiously stepped out as well, and started to the pharmacy.
Just as we reached the entrance, we both stopped dead in our tracks as an ear piercing siren suddenly turned on from beyond the tree line. It was absolutely deafening, and coming from a large tower that we could see sticking up through the trees a couple of hundred yards away. Unable to move, like a deer caught in headlights, my first instinct was that we’d set it off somehow, and that moving would only make it worse.
The cops were momentarily frozen as well. Looks of horror and panic filled their faces, as they quickly started back to their car.
“They weren’t supposed to start for another hour!” one screamed.
“What the hell is going on?” Kyle’s voice could hardly be heard.
“You guys better get the hell out of here,” one bellowed as they slammed their car doors shut. We stood there speechless as they sped away, staring back and forth between the retreating police cruiser and the siren tower.
The noise ran for almost two full minutes and then stopped as suddenly as it had started.
“What the hell?” Michael said out loud as Kyle and I just stood there, expecting the worse.
Eyes wide open; my senses were at full alert. At first, it sounded like a distant squirrel rustling through the leaves on the forest ground. However, the single small movement began to multiply, getting louder as it headed in our direction. My hands were shaking with anticipation as we drew our weapons and started stepping back towards the Hummer. We all knew what was out there.
The first creatures came stumbling out from the darkness of the forest one or two at a time. They all seemed to be converging toward where the siren stood. Small packs and larger swarms followed from every direction, they were all over the place, being pulled in like moths to a light.
“Get in the Hummer!” Kyle screamed.
Slamming the doors shut, I gunned it backward and then headed in the same direction as the cop car. There was no going back down the road we came from.
At the top of the hill, I stopped the Hummer and swung open the door.
We heard a few screams and some gunshots coming back from behind the tree line.
“Do we check it out?” I asked.
“I’m thinking we go down to that house overlooking the trees, and see what we can see from there. Let’s just make sure nobody knows we’re still hanging around.”
I nodded in agreement and then we headed down to the house.
Smarter men would have taken off and not looked back. Our curiosity was what got the best of us.
We made sure that Michael was comfortable in the Hummer, which I had concealed around the side of the house. Kyle and I made our way around the rear of the home, passing through well trimmed bushes, a fountain that looked like it cost more than my car back home, and a swimming pool that still had the automatic cleaning unit attached to a large hose, which was buzzing around through the water.
We came to the overlook, and had a clear view all the way to the siren. To our amazement, there was a group of what looked like live people standing in a circle around the siren. They were all holding various farming tools, which included shovels, pitchforks, and axes. There was even one guy that was walking around wearing a black apron and a helmet with a clear plastic faceplate while wielding a chainsaw. The people had used the CAT backhoe parked nearby, to dig a deep ditch around the siren, giving them a sizable perimeter to which they were all standing in the middle of.
We watched in fascination as the dead slowly but surely dropped into the circular ditch, getting stuck. Those alive would simply walk over to each zombie as they fell, and swing their weapon of choice down, killing each trapped creature as it desperately tried to climb back out.
“That’s why this place is so devoid of creatures,” I spoke out loud. “This group is thinning them out. Pulling them in with the siren, and then killing them all.”
I caught Kyle’s attention, pointing beyond the group, as they were finishing off the last of the zombies. We saw the bonfire that I noticed the night before. It was clear now; these people were burning the bodies of the dead.
A brilliant plan, I thought to myself. Thin out the problem, keeping the area relatively safe.
In that moment, we watched as a car drove up to the outside perimeter of the circle. The creatures had all been taken care of in one massive onslaught. There was someone from inside the circle laying down a plank to create a bridge across the gap.
Two people got out of the car. They were holding their hands up in the air. The crowd in the circle seemed agitated, screaming and pointing at the people. I figured that they heard the siren too, and were drawn in like the creatures.
“Are those people like us? People trying to get help?” Kyle whispered, even though we were hundreds of yards away.
That’s when the guy holding the chainsaw swung a shotgun from around his back and opened fire.
The shots tore through the first person, puncturing his chest, dropping him to the ground on impact. The other person turned to run, and got the full barrel of buckshot blown right through his back. He flew into the car, creating a spider web of blood-covered cracks on the windshield.
I was standing at full alert with my hands stuck to the top of my head, watching in horror, when Kyle pulled me back down to a crouch. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. People were killing people…
“Don’t let them see you,” Kyle said sternly.
A few of the others from inside the circle crossed the bridge and one by one took the bodies over to the fire-pit, tossing them in with the same level of remorse they had for the zombies they had just slain.
The cop car pulled up minutes later to help with the clean up.
Chapter 13
I’m going to ask you a simple set of questions.
The sky was turning pink with white waves of clouds as the sun started to set over the tree line. Kyle and I were discussing what to do next when we heard a rattle of the door handle behind us.