End of the World

“Its the end of the world as we know it.”REM



Over and over that song was going through my head. I was tempted to hum it out loud, hell I was tempted to shout it out and dance a little jig, however, this was not the time or place. If I survived the next twenty minutes I would do it then.
Aw hell, I am getting ahead of myself, let me back track.

***

Fourteen months ago, there was an explosion at Los Alamos National laboratory, located north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. What toxins released after the explosion breached the lab's defenses, nobody will ever be able to say, however, people started to die. Rapidly die. Not all people were the lucky few who were immune completely, and then there were some that were only partially immune. In other words zombies. Or at least so damn close to what we have always believed zombies to be. It is them that I am now about to start a twenty minute, hell Mary, fight with.

***

I glanced behind me, and held up two fingers, pointed to the left side of the room we were about to walk into, and watched as two of my group peeled off from the rest to cover that side of the room. Their main focus was to rescue the two small children I could hear whimpering. Giving them a quick nod, I held up hand and slowly counted back by clenching each finger individually, when I closed my fist, we all moved with silent and deadly precision. It was relatively quick fight. There were only fourteen zombies, and there were six of us. Two bullets in the back of the heads of each zombie and it was over.
My team was at its peak in preformance, only the two who were in charge of the children remained unaware of their surroundings. They were both instructed to make sure the children were whole and hail before we take them back to the compound. The rest of my team were scanning the room, AK47s at the ready to kill anything that so much as twitched. Still in silent mode, there was absolutely no talking. Zombies tended to be a slight sneakier, then the old movies would lend you to believe, and they are also quite silent. The only sound they eminate is a wheezing sound that is almost to soft to hear. And so when the medics gave the children a dosage of something to relax them, and they passed out, you could hear a pin drop in the room. I made the motion for us to get the hell out of there, when a shadow passed by the open door. My heart pounded hard as I motioned for the others to stop progress. My second in command Zane and I went to check it out. I turned back to meet his eyes and we both knew, if it was my driver fucking with us again, an ass kicking was the best he could hope for.
Silently as possible, Zane and I moved forward, each slow step as cautious as the last. When I was almost to the door, Richie came screaming through the door at full tilt, with three zombies hot on his ass. Those three zombies were quickly taken care of, however, I could see the shadows of at least twenty more in the next room. We were essentially trapped in this stupid room.
“Close and bar the door, until I can figure out what I want to do,” I said to the guys.
“Silly, we can't know if they will just crongregate out there until they can figure out how to get in. Then we are all dead.”
“Ya, I know, what I want to know is why the hell those kids aren't dead. It isn;t like the zombies to leave fresh meat untainted.” I replied to Alec, one of the medics. When I looked at him, his eyes were round with fear. “And put your damn helmet back on.” I turned on my heel and paced to the back of the room. Maybe there was another way out, I just had to figure it out. Shining my flashlight around the back of the room and up the walls, I noticed cobwebs in the corners, swaying back and forth in the breeze. Walking up right next to the wall, I started to pound on certain areas of the wall to figure out if there was a false panel or something of that nature. These old houses had all kinds of weird shit in them. When up in the rich part of town, you would be amazed at some of the shit we had seen.
Zane my second started to help, even going so far as to move what little furniture there was here, to the center of the room.
BOOM.
A loud thud banged on the door. We weren't going to have much time, and by me having them bar the door, I couldn't even toss a grenade out into the room, as a 'Hell Mary' pass tactic. I started to hum, I am not sure what I needed to do, but humming that stupid R.E.M. Song seemed to help me think. “Its the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine...”
I shined my light once again to a top corned of the room, and saw a dark spot, I wondered if it was a crawl space or some such nonsense. Turning on my heel, and grabbing a chair that Zane had pushed to the side, I climbed up it, and inspected.
“Boys we are out of here.” Shouldering my rifle and pulling my colt 45 I attached my light to my wrist ala-velcro, the worlds second best invention, and hoisted myself up onto the ledge.
On knees and elbows I scanned the dark crawl space and wondered why the hell I insisted on coming after the children. This was the second time I had done this stupid move, and the last time I had lost the child. I didn't know what it was about me. My name may be Silly, short for Sicily, however, I was probably the biggest, meanest bitch in the compound.
I scooted forward enough room for Zane to crawl up behind me, I was concerned that if there did happen to be a dead end, or worse a zombie or two up here, we would not be able to escape The crawl space was big enough to have a little elbow room, however a full turn around would not be viable. I held up my hand in a fist to indicate that Zane should stay put, and inched my way forward.
It was a short trek, one wrong turn as the crawl space went throughout the entire house, but it was easy enough to rectify, scooting backwards, until I came to the split and taking the other way. 'Its the end of the world as we know. Its the end of the world as we know it. Its the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.' over and over that same stupid line ran through my head. Crawling forward on knees and elbows, ready to blow a hole through anything that moved was nerve wracking but when I saw the first hints of frost I knew we might make it out alive.
Picking up my pace, I rounded another corner, and saw a dead end, with a body sized hole to the outside. I slowed my pace slightly and inched over to peer out. The hummer was about thirty feet away and not a zombie in sight. I didn't want to knock the hole bigger and risk alerting the progresively smarter zombies and so inching backwards to the last interserction, I made my way around until I was crawling towards the room where I had left my team.
Zane saw me coming and backed down into the room. I can only imagine what had been going through his head for the time I was gone, however it didn't matter now. I landed with little noise, and jumped when I heard the pounding on the door. The furniture that Zane had moved away from the wall was now stacked up against the door as further protection from the beating the zombies were giving to it.
“Lets go, everybody will be up there, I am first, then Richie, Garret, Alec, the kids, Jules, Ronnie, Zane you bring up the rear.”
“Why do I have to go second?” Richie whined.
“Why the fuck did you leave the Hum-V? Did you at least grab the keys when you left?” I asked the man, when he held up the keys for me to see, I reminded him, “That is why you go second, you could hand them over to Zane and go last if you want,” I smirked at him as I hoisted myself back into the crawl space. Everybody knew last was just as dangerous as first. “Zane make sure the chair goes flying, I don't want those zombies to figure out where we went.” He gave me one nod of his head and we made our way through the crawl space. It was a rough first few minutes, trying to figure out how to get the kids along without dragging them, but by hooking their knees under the shoulder we got the first through, Jules however had to one hand crawl, with hoisting the other, smaller child under her arm. Nobody ever said rescuing children would be easy.
We had just reached the end of the crawl space, when we heard the distinct sound of the door giving back in the room. “We don't have much time but it is now or never.” I got nods from the entire team, I pushed hard at the wall, and it gave easily, I jumped down, Richie right behind me then Garret and Alec. Richie was already at the Hum-V by the time the first child was dropped down to Alec. He quickly set the child down and caught the second. Garret and I were keeping watch, while the rest of the team followed. We all reached the truck safely and were tearing down the road by the time the zombies even made an appearance outside.