Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 16
"Don't shoot!" I said.
"They're all over, man. All over!" More dead crawled from around a humvee with no wheels. He hopped on top of the hood, shot one in the face, ratcheted the shotgun and dry fired at another. He began swinging the shotgun by the barrel and seemed to be holding off all eight of them. I slipped by, catching a fly in my mouth as I ran.
The farther I ran the louder the moans of the dead seemed. Some instinct told me to go back, to fight until the end with my fellow man, but I was just too afraid.
I was in Utica a few hours later. The streets seemed empty, but I saw how wrong I was.
They were coming.
It was explained to me later that it was never the hoi's intention to kill all the soldiers. There was too much knowledge there to let go to waste. They'd wanted to turn most of them and utilize that expertise to conquer other areas. But they couldn't have predicted that Sergeant Rye would have kept all those dead bodies right under his feet. When the signal was boosted the dead they had estimated would be in the area was supposed to rise and serve as a distraction before the primary invading force that would have hit at nightfall.
A wall of prols would have enclosed on them in a crescent formation. With an unknown and amount and type of artillery, heavy casualties were expected. The only thing the hoi were certain of was there was no nuclear capability. But they walked into Selfridge and cleaned up the relatively few remaining soldiers with no troubles.
I wound up walking into the only group of soldiers left. They had a tank and were doing border patrols and recovering any survivors. They were headed north on Van Dyke and I tried to dart across the street before they saw me. Running must have been an even bigger mistake because there were pops hitting the ground around me from the soldiers firing at me. There was a building that had once been the home of an advertising agency or something with the door open. I ran and up the stairs hoping they would forget about me. The prols weren't far away, either.
There were footsteps too slow to be a soldier's not long behind me. I hid behind a desk, listening for screams or gunfire outside. I heard the flies buzzing before a prol came in a minute later. I watched the feet shuffling back and forth and realized if it came over my way I was trapped. If I popped out now I could push past it and make it out if there weren't a dozen more waiting outside.
I stood, ready to ambush, but the prol looked familiar. It was Orlean, the security guard who'd taunted me back at the company. She must have degraded because she was definitely a prol now. Her eyes went wide when she saw me, shuffling my way just when the tank on the street fired at the window. It felt like a giant had picked up the building and dropped it upside down. We both lost our balance; Orlean falling into wall but keeping her feet. I fell on my butt, scuttling back into the metal desk. Orlean staggered after, her eyes spinning around and locking onto me again. I raised my hands to fend her off, but she grabbed my head, leaned down and sunk her teeth into my scalp and forehead. Blood poured down my face and I closed my eyes as she was no doubt about to begin tearing the skin off my forehead, but she pulled back.
I put my hands in front of my face, looking through my fingers as she stood to the side, still leaned over. It looked like she was spitting. After wiping her mouth several times Orlean's body heaved. She wretched again, but nothing came out. Finally, she looked at me again, growled and walked back to the stairs.
