About a Woman

Dora and Paige went around the side of the shed almost at the same time. They moved several paces away from it and the zombie who was almost to them, immediately started to come towards them. The one coming in from the gate started shambling their way too, the others had not yet noticed the living in the yard behind them and kept batting at the glass door or looking at the grill.

“Hey dead people! Over here! Can you hear me?”, shouted Dora.

“Frick, they can hear us! Look they are turning towards us!”

“Yeah brilliant idea, firing the guns in my backyard, huh?”

“Who knew?”, Paige asked, then she took a swing at the lead zombie, catching him behind the ear and stripping a patch of gray hair off of the old zombie's head.

“Shit you hit like a girl!” Dora said, then let out a small “Oops!” as her own blow did little more damaged to the other side of the things head.

“It ain't as easy as it looks huh?”, Paige's second blow crushed in the top of the things head and it went down and stopped moving.

The melee had lasted all of six seconds and yet both women, hopped up on adrenaline, were panting. The next zombie was still a good twenty slow paces away and they moved a bit further towards the side of the yard to draw them over, Dora also wanted to see the gate, when it came into line she was horrified to see that beyond it was a mass of zombies, all trying to get through the bottle neck at the same time.

“There must be twenty or thirty of them! We gotta get that gate shut!” Dora said.

“One thing at a time, okay, keep em coming towards us so Mike can run for the ammo.”

“What is going on?” Mike yelled over at them.

“There are a bunch more trying to get through the gate, we gotta hurry or we are going to be up to our ears here soon!”

“We aren't already? Maybe we should just get out of here, go around front, make a bunch of noise so they will follow us there instead?”

“Paige, I could barely get over the gate, and that was with Mike's help and the gate is only six feet high! These walls around the yard are eight feet, no way I can do that.”

Paige looked around, noticing how all of the trees were short, not more than four or five years old. There were no piles of junk in the yard either, other than the wood pile behind the changing room there was nothing they could use to climb over the back walls. She got a determined look in her eye as she turned to Dora, “We bash a few, get there attention, then climb up the wood pile and get on the roof of the changing room, they are too clumsy to climb up there.”

“Good idea, I knew I picked you for a reason!”, said Dora.

“You picked me? Hah! I only came along because I knew you would be dead without me.”, Paige swung at the second zombie in line. The other members of the living dead were lining up nicely and the door and patio were almost clear of them now, however a large number were still pouring in from the open gate.

The women clubbed the second zombie together, handling them two on one was easy, things were going to get harder in mere moments when they would have to handle two or three at once. Paige took a step back, Dora matched her, the next two zombies were upon them. Dora recognized one of the women, it was an older middle aged woman with stringy blond hair, she lunged at Dora at the last second, causing Dora's swing to hit her in the back instead of on the head. Dora used her off hand to push the woman's head back and of course the zombie tried to bite that hand. Screaming in fear Dora ran backwards three or four paces, which left Paige to deal with two zombies alone.

“Back off Paige! Run!”, however Paige held her ground, swinging a viscous upper cut into the jaw of the first zombie, an older man with no shirt and enough hair on his chest to be considered fur. The old man fell over backward from the blow and Paige swung her club down on Dora's zombie from there. It blocked with one arm, which bent sharply in the middle, white bone gaping out of the wound. The zombie didn't stop and another trod over the shirtless man to grab Paige's arm. Dora stepped up and bashed the blond haired woman over the head while she was going for Paige's shoulder. The next zombie was pulling Paige down, going to its knees and dragging the girl with it. Dora grabbed Paige's other arm and yanked the woman back. In doing so Paige lost her hunk of wood, it toppled end over end until it landed on the grass as a meager wall between the approaching zombies and the two women.

Helping Paige regain her balance the women watched as the lead zombie's foot stepped down on the piece of wood, twisted sideways and toppled into the shirtless, hairy zombie, which had just regained its feet. Both of them went down again and another zombie, one that looked about twelve years old, tried to walk over them and also ended up on the ground. Both women giggled at the pile up, then Dora said, “All we have to do is throw wood in their way!”

“Yeah, my wood! I already miss it.”

This set Dora off to giggling again as both women fell back further. Paige, with a perplexed look on her face asked, “What's so funny now?”

“I'll be you miss your wood! You poor girl!”, she laughed again as they continued their retreat. Paige shook her head slowly from side to side, the smile didn't leave her face, but she said nothing in response to Dora's needling.

The women watched as Mike raced to the back patio table and grabbed several boxes of ammo, then ducked into the kitchen. Dora looked at Paige, “Uh, was that the plan?”

Paige grabbed the woman and started hustling her back in a large arc around the back yard, “He has to reload the guns, right? Lets get to the changing room.”

They raced around the side, but because of the rectangular shape of the yard they ended up closer to the zombies than either woman expected. Paige tossed a couple of pieces of wood on to the top of the shed, then scrambled up the stacked pile to get onto the roof. Dora, followed tossing her own club up first, she had almost made it to the top, when she felt a cold hand grasp her ankle and start to pull her down.

“Paige!”, Dora screamed. The younger woman turned and grabbed Dora's hand, pulling her hard, but the zombie would not let go. Dora kicked ineffectively, bouncing her bare feet off the thing's face and shoulder. This zombie was of a younger man, probably sixteen or seventeen, Mike's age. He was wearing only dark green boxer shorts and they were torn in a way that left nothing to the imagination.

“Hold on!”, Paige said and then let Dora's hand go, she then turned around and hefted a chunk of wood in her hand, she threw it at the man's head, where an end struck it right square on the nose, ruining an otherwise good face, the thing might not feel pain, but having a three pound piece of wood hitting it in the face must have jarred it in some manner, because it let go and fell backwards. Dora pulled herself up and turned around to look at the zombies milling about in her yard. They kept coming and were starting to build up at the back of the shed. The mob moved up and stomped on top of any who fell, which they all did when they reached the pile. Thus, the pile was getting higher as each pressed forward. Dora estimated there were now around forty zombies in her yard, with more streaming in from the open gate. Gunfire started in the street in front of her house. It was a rifle, Dora recognized the sound. Then a pistol started firing. Then everything stopped.

“You don't think...” She began, then a rifle started firing again. “What is he doing?”

“Getting to the gate from the front I bet. Get your club, we gotta knock heads.”

The women began smashing the heads of the zombies that came close, this stopped the zombies from getting to them, but added to the pile, making it easier for the others to reach them. Fortunately the zombies were only able to get up on back side, where so many of them had fallen. On the other sides the zombies just pressed close and jostled each other, not able to reach up or threaten the women. The gun fire continued, abating periodically, before resuming again. After what seemed like an hour of time, the firing started coming from the side of the house near the gate. The women smashed heads until Mike was able to get close enough to toss up a pistol, Paige recovered it and Mike retreated back into the house to reload, several zombie followed him. Paige took slow aim and fired one shot at a time, which drew the zombies back away from the house with the noise. After nine shots the pistol was empty, but by then Mike had reloaded and was using the grill as a place to steady the rifle he was firing. In minutes the slaughter was over. There was still some movement on the ground, zombies whose heads had not been fully destroyed, Mike tossed up a box of ammo for Paige and another pistol to Dora. The women climbed down on the pool side by hanging and dropping from the roof.

“Well that went well. Thanks Mike you did a great job.” Dora leaned over and hugged the man.

“Yeah, I think we need showers again. You two are splattered, like coated more like.” said Mike.

“You aren't much better yourself.” said Paige looking Mike over. “What do we do with these? Some of them are still moving.”

Dora pondered it over for a minute then said, “You know I think we better pull them out one by one towards the back, make sure each one is fully dead. I would rather not have them in the yard, but what else do we do with them?”

“They're gonna smell.” Mike said.

Dora shrugged. “Better out there then around the pool. Could we bring them out front?”

“Uh. There are more out there. They just kept coming. I cleared a path, but there were lots of them. Maybe we can wait until tomorrow, maybe they will go away?”

“Fine.”, Dora said with resignation in her voice, “We drag em back here and put a cap in any of them that are still alive. At least they are easy to kill, right?”

“I don't know Dora. Out in front. Well I missed one. Took two shots at him, he moved like...well, like us. Fast, he ran away when I started firing. None of the others ran away, they just came forward no matter what.”

Dora looked at Mike, trying to figure out if he was putting them on, she decided he wasn't and said, “That is...not good.”

“No.” he answered.

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This section was last updated on 6 Aug 2009

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