'Til Death Do Us Part

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Mike Journal Entry 19

We were advancing slowly. The zombies were beginning to thin out as we got further from the house where rifle shots were starting to ring out. Thoughts of Little Turtle shot across my brain plate. I shook them out, that hadn’t ended so well. Tracy kept looking back, worried about the kids. I was being cautious looking for guards. I knew that they must have sought safer ground for a moment as the zombies retreated, but that didn’t explain the complete lack of them now. They were nowhere in sight. Normally that would have made me happy, except for that damn nagging pit in my stomach that told me all was not right in Oz.

“You feel that?” BT asked.

And I had. It was a slight tremor, then it began to build. I could feel the vibrations as they moved up my legs. We all were looking around trying to figure out what it was.

“Maybe hide?” Tracy asked the best question of the day.

We moved forward to get in and around some raspberry bushes. It wouldn’t stop a bullet, but we were damn near invisible.

“Tanks?” BT asked.

“We have to go back!” Tracy said with alarm as she started to rise.

“It’s not tanks,” I told her, cocking my head to listen better.

“How do you know that? We have got to go back and protect them!” Tracy was on the verge of panic.

“Trace, hold on, it’s not tanks. I’m not saying it’s good, it’s just not tanks,” I told her, trying to get a bead on what was happening. The hanging raspberries in front of us were starting to dance on the vine.

“How do you know that, Mike?” BT asked looking around.

“Been in a few combat missions, tanks are noisy as fuck, so loud you can’t hear yourself think.” Now the bushes themselves were starting to sway. It’s fucking huge whatever it is, I thought, keeping that little nugget of discord to myself. “Here goes nothing,” I said as I slowly stood up so I could look over the hedge. At first I didn’t see anything…and then I’d wished I hadn’t seen anything. Amazing how quickly that change in thought set came about. I dropped down.

“Well?” BT asked.

“Tanks would have been better,” I told them.

Tracy hazarded a look. “Oh my God.”

BT popped up. Had anybody been watching, they would have thought they were catching an episode of Mere Cat Manor on NatGeo. “Are those helmets? Are those giant fucking zombies with helmets?” BT asked as he sat down hard in our makeshift hidey hole. Tracy had not yet come down. I pulled on her shirt.

“How can something that big be moving that fast?” she asked, looking off into a distance only in her field of vision.

“Now at least we know why all the guards are gone,” I said.

“Now what?” BT asked.

“Eliza pulled her men back because of those things, so apparently they’re as dangerous to her side as they are ours. We wait until they pass.

“The vials don’t work?” BT asked, holding tighter on to his.

“I’m not sure maybe you should go check it out,” I told him.

“Oh hell no. As the only black man surrounded by a bunch of whities, I’ve already bucked the trend by staying alive this long. I’m not going to do anything that would threaten that now.”

“Fair enough,” I told him. Wait it is.