"...twenty-nine, thirty," I said as my breech stayed open, I quickly ejected the spent magazine and twirled to find the new one. I banged it against my leg to lose any dirty, and once I pulled and released the charging handle I was back in business. Good thing, too, because they were close enough to read the serial number on the barrel.

"Ron...gonna need some help!" I yelled as I started to back up. Getting onto the deck was not going to happen; we were going to be underneath it soon.

"Far side of the house! There's a barred window I can open up to get you in!" he shouted.

I quickly motioned for Tracy to come under the deck and towards the house. She looked longingly at the safety above her and ran to the house like it was a safe zone in a particularly rough game of Tag. Azile was next and a fighting retreating BT pulled up next to her. Tommy was still a one man Cuisinart but his setting was rapidly going from puree to chop.

"Around the house!" I shouted loudly, punctuating my words with rifle fire. I had lost count of my rounds, but I was at least halfway through my magazine and we now had no further support from above.

We were a moving bubble of death. Tommy was now to our side, holding the horde at bay. The swords looked like they were getting heavier by the second as his neck severing swipes were now becoming belly gutting strokes and soon would become soprano makers if you catch my meaning. BT was pushing ahead in front, hacking zombies as if they were wheat and he was a harvester. I was selectively shooting zombies as I brought up the rear. Occasionally, a glint of metal would fly by my face as Tracy felt the need to hack at a zombie.

"I like my nose where it is, woman," I told her.

Then my backpedaling feet walked into her. I stole a quick glance up ahead. We were stalled.

"BT?" I yelled.

"Stuck, man."

I heard splintering wood over my head. Travis and Justin were ripping up floorboards.

"Dad, you need ammo?" Justin asked.

"Like a fat kid needs a Twinkie. Tommy...need a little cover while I get this."

Tommy started to hack by my side along with the ever dangerous thrusts of Tracy. There was a good chance I was going to come out of this battle a eunuch.

Justin was reaching down to me while Travis kept ripping boards up with a crowbar. He got about three up when the barrel of his rifle came through.

f.u.c.k yeah! I thought as he started blasting zombies to our front.

With a renewed vigor, I heard BT's war cry, zombies fell as his adrenaline surged. I drained the remainder of my magazine, giving us a little breathing room, although breathing was not on the top of favorite list right now, not with the smell that accompanied it anyway. Tommy focused his energy back to our side, as I replaced my magazine and began to fire.

"I'll have another one ready soon dad." Justin said as he was shoving 5.56 rounds into a fresh magazine.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that we didn't have another minute. If we didn't get into the house soon, we were done for.

We were again moving but slowly, the zombies were paying in buckets of blood for the precious inches we were gaining. I was on my twelfth round when ma.s.sive rifle fire came from our front.

I couldn't see what was going on, but it was fast enough that I thought it was automatic gunfire. If Ron was holding out, I was going to be p.i.s.sed, that was provided we made it.

"BT?" I screamed over the din.

"Gatling gun I think!" he yelled.

"Are you s.h.i.tting me?" I asked softly. Now it was worth living just to see what the h.e.l.l he was talking about.

The zombies were human once and they could not sustain the damage we were inflicting, Travis turned his attention to our backs as we pa.s.sed his position above.

"You're uncle is going to be p.i.s.sed when he sees this damage," I said as I went underneath him.

"I'll deal with that later." He smiled with a strain.

The Gatling gunfire stopped ahead as I imagined Ron was heading back into the bas.e.m.e.nt. BT moved to the side as Azile and Tracy entered through the oversized window. Gary was holding the bars up.

"Go, man." I tapped BT.

"Go, Tommy!" I yelled.

I fired off the remainder of my rounds and ducked in. Gary let the bars clang down and locked them in place with first a pin and then a lock that I figure was first developed to hold an elephant in place.

Gary hugged me.

"Good to see you, man! Where's the Gatling gun?" I asked.

Ron was heading into the recesses of the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Whatcha got there, brother?" I called out.

"Nothing for you!" he said back.

I caught up to him, it was a thing of beauty-eight gun barrels shone brightly.

"It's a .22 caliber Gatling gun reproduction," he said defensively.

"You should have told me," I said, trying to place my hand on it.

"Mike, it cost me ten grand there's no f.u.c.king way I was going to tell you about it."

I was sort of hurt, but I wouldn't have told me about it either. "Is this what was in your trap door in your closet?" I asked, putting it all together. This was why he was so adamant about not letting me see it. I had wrongly figured it was p.o.r.n, although this thing had me drooling as if it were.

Then Ron's next words doubled me over. "Dad didn't make it, Mike."

I staggered a step or two back, Tracy was there for support. I'm not ashamed to say that I cried like a five-year-old. I cried for the loss of my dad, my mom, my brother, my niece, Jed, Jen, Alex, Paul, Erin, Brian and at least a dozen other good souls we had lost along the way.

I stayed for a long time in that darkened bas.e.m.e.nt, when Ron had told me how our father had died. I wanted to be as close to his final earthly spot as was possible. The battle raged on above me, but now it was more of a fish in the barrel scenario. We had position, ammo and security, I wasn't needed upstairs.

It would be another three days before the horde dwindled down to an unlucky few. I had joined in the fray if only to vent my misguided revenge. I wished desperately that they gave a s.h.i.t for what they did. I had switched out my MP-4 for a Mosin-Nagant Russian WWII sniper rifle, a bit of overkill when the 7.62 by 4.42 round struck home. I watched each individual I hit as the back of its head blew out in a spray of white, crushed bone and diseased gray matter.

I drilled five hundred and twenty-six zombies into the ground that day, but whose counting. My fingers ached from jamming that many rounds through the old gun, my anger increased at each one, that they didn't care, that they didn't give a s.h.i.t when the zombie next to them fell, that their sisters, brothers, fathers and friends were dying all around them. That was what stopped any war-when the killing just became too much, when neither side could stomach the mounting atrocities. The zombies would not stop, they would never stop, not until each and everyone one of them was dead.

AFTERWORD.

Three days after the death of Eliza, the war at Camp Talbot was over. I could not do much more than shiver as I sat in a rocker, on the part of Ron's deck that was not on the blood steeped lawn. I watched, as he pushed piles of dead zombies into giant pyres with his tractor. The boys were keeping vigilance over him. Gary rode on the tractor as an added layer of protection.

"Will this ever get better?" I asked, my teeth chattering even in the seventy-degree heat of the day and two blankets wrapped around my legs.

"Not anytime soon, Mr. T," Tommy said as he sat beside me suffering through the same symptoms. "With Eliza, gone we've lost a piece of us."

I felt like a hard core heroin junkie who had gone cold turkey, my bones dripped in pain, if that makes any sense. I'd already taken a loss I did not figure I could absorb when I had lost my soul, but with the absence of whatever Eliza had filled the void in with, I was adrift in a sea of black. My innards ached as they seemed to move around in the sh.e.l.l that once housed me.

"It would be better to die," I told him with vacant eyes, "than to live like this."

He may have nodded in reply or it could have been my shivering that gave the illusion of movement on his part.

"Can you do anything?" Tracy asked Azile as she looked through the window and out at her husband who was so obviously suffering.

Azile shook her head, she also was trapped in her own misery.

"There's more," Tommy said.

I stood, hoping that my bones were not as hollow as I felt. "Do tell. I could use a bit of s.h.i.tty news right about now."

"The order I put to halt the progress of BT's zombieism will unravel now that I no longer have as much power."

My legs weren't hollow, but they were having great difficulty supporting my weight at the moment. "How long?" I asked him.

With considerable effort, Tommy shrugged his shoulders.

"You once told me that you saw your sister get bitten, then she ultimately killed her sire. How did she survive? Did she walk all these years like this? Is that even possible? I feel hollow, Tommy. I can sense the pain I should be feeling, but I'm numb to it. With every beat of my heart I flip from my heart breaking at the death of my father to an absolute fathomless void, where nothing not even emotions can stem from. I know I should be concerned for my friend's health, sometimes I am and sometimes I'm not. I know I should be loving my family, and yet there are times when I can't even remember what the emotion entails. I felt more concern for a dead squirrel in the roadway when I was human than I do now."

Tracy shivered as she overheard words she wasn't supposed to.

"Eliza killed her sire. She was not diminished from his death, but rather enhanced by it. That was why she never let any of her charges live for very long, lest they try to take her power from her. The emptiness will go away, you'll fill it in with something, Mr. T. My sister filled hers in with hate and cruelty for everyone and everything. But that's not who you are, you have it, we," he stressed, "have it in us to fill it with something better."

"You're still a vampire right?" I asked him.

"I am." He let his head drop.

"Why now the change back to this 'Tommy' persona? How can I ever trust or believe you, if I ever even care again?"

"I took on a large part of my sister when she turned me. With her influence gone, I'm more the boy you remember."

"I wish I could believe that...I do...for my family."

I watched as zombies burned by the hundreds. With some effort, I was able to walk down towards one of the pyres. I should have been close enough for my skin to be melting, and still I quaked in the unoccupied recesses of my mind.

"You alright, Mike?" Ron asked a good fifteen feet behind me. I turned to see his hands shielding his face from the intense heat.

I waved him away, not because I was concerned for his safety, but rather, I wanted to be alone. I wondered if I would feel anything if I walked just a few more feet into the intense blaze.

Tommy stepped up beside me. "The shaman did it."

I didn't say anything. I realized that at one time I would have had an answer for him, something revolving around, 'Sure now all we need is some peyote, a shaman and sweat lodge and we'll be all set.'

"We have a witch," Tommy said, filling in the gaps in the conversation.

I turned and we walked back towards the house. Travis was watching me as I entered.

I went to BT's room. "Good news, buddy."

"They discovered a cure for sarcasm?" he answered.

"Better...road trip," I told him.

"You're kidding, right? You're not, are you? f.u.c.k...why? This is about the Jeep isn't it? You want to go back and get your f.u.c.king Jeep! No, Mike I'm not traveling across the d.a.m.n zombie infested country for a d.a.m.n Jeep I won't do it!"

I'll admit that thought had crossed my mind, but even I wasn't that nuts, although if our travels brought us anywhere near Colorado I was going to snag it.

"No, my friend, we need to find Doc Baker," I told him.

"Oh, man, you know he's probably dead," BT said.

"I asked Tommy, he said he wasn't."

"And you believe the Edward wannabe?"

"Who?" I asked.

"Nothing, it was a character in a book I read before all this s.h.i.t happened."

"We need the Doc, BT."

"Need? Why who's dying?"

I kept staring not saying anything.

"Oh s.h.i.t, it's me isn't it? Dammit, I finally get to rest my d.a.m.n body and now we got to go gallivanting all over the d.a.m.n place again." BT put his shoes on.

I walked out in to the hallway. "Boys!"

"Not a chance, Talbot, not unless I'm coming with you," Tracy said.

"Are you friggen clairvoyant?" I asked her.