“A slaughter…” Billy looked at me like I was an idiot.
“We started calling large groups ‘slaughters’. For obvious reasons.” Rick‘s voice behind me was quiet and a bit grim. I turned to look into his strangely predatory eyes, and saw only despair.
Rick’s young face was drawn and serious. He actually looked me in the eyes, instead of staring at my chest. It made me want to smack him. He obviously thought we were all going to die.
I was just opening my mouth to give him a good verbal smackdown when Sarge interrupted me.
“Boys! Get this reloading gear working! Molly, Jason…roof. Liz, feed the baby and start some coffee. Find that flatbread we brought over, and make sandwiches. And for fucks sake feed the damn baby!” Sarge stomped over to the odd bench-like affair I’d been sitting near earlier and started to wrestle it out into the center of the warehouse.
I fumed silently while I made coffee and food, it was stupid, but I wanted to be on the roof. I felt cheated somehow, as if being regulated to kitchen duty somehow cheapened my new-found determination to deal with our current circumstances.
But my bruised feelings didn’t keep me from realizing that the fighters needed to be fed, and kept alert. And I also knew that eventually someone would need a break and I would take over their spot on the roof.
By the time I’d built up the fires, brewed coffee, made questionable looking (and smelling) sandwiches with powdered egg and tofu, and fed the baby and the cat Sarge and boys were done setting up the bench thing.
When I got a good look at it, and was able to watch Sarge walking the 3 young soldiers through reloading their own brass I realized it wasn’t just a singular bench. And while it looked fairly complicated with several steps, after watching Sarge reload an entire magazine of .223 I realized it was actually fairly simple.
Our problem was lack of supplies, we had iron ingots (and where had we gotten those!?), but no molds. Or mold handles. Whatever those were. And there was apparently some sort of powder we were missing. Sarge quickly disabused me of the notion that gunpowder was some simple 1 ingredient thing.
I tried to absorb everything he was saying, but about 2 minutes after he started talking the sound of slow, steady gunfire overpowered his words. And I was more worried about what was happening outside.
Sarge gave up on his lecture and left Paul in charge of reloading. He was still muttering about idiots when he climbed the stairs and headed for the roof. I went upstairs after him, Annie over one shoulder.
While the others occupied themselves reloading spent shells and shooting undead from our roof, I settled in on the desk that was still in our converted bathroom/laundry room. There was a pretty view of the oncoming horde, or slaughter, or whatever you wanted to call the sea of grey rot rolling in toward us.
Annie slept though hours of slow, even paced gunfire. I kept the coffee and pancakes and those awful sandwiches flowing. Eventually Molly was worn out and starting to miss, I headed for the stairs to take her place.
I settled down onto the sleeping bag with my own AR 15 and a blanket up over my back, tucking it in under me. When I was comfortable and ready to start a long shift of constant gunfire I realized why Sarge hadn’t let the new boys up here.
Every single one of the zombies was wearing a military uniform, most with armor, a few in just BDU’s. Almost all of them were wearing helmets and cold weather gear as well. They hadn’t frozen like most of the other dead in the area. And there were no obvious wounds visible on any of them.
I double checked my scope and started carefully firing one shot every second and half or so. Slow and steady like a calm heartbeat. I’d learned early on panic fire did nothing but waste precious ammo. I knew the constant noise was drawing more and more in, but there was really nothing we could do about that. We didn’t have enough suppressors to go around, and so called “silencers” weren’t exactly silent anyway.
The steady methodical crack of gunfire went on for hours; it didn’t take long for my head to begin to throb. I tried not to think about how cold I was, or how their heads would explode into slushy chunks. I forced myself not to notice the snow on the ground changing colors. I refused to acknowledge the ache in my shoulder, or the feel of warm blood leaking from popped stitches causing a maddening tickling sensation on my ribs.
What I wasn’t able to ignore was the nagging thought that not recognizing faces was not exactly a good thing. It meant that none of those corpses were local. Something or someone had led them here.