Free Beyond the Barriers (Novella): Ghouls by Timothy W. Long Page A

bleeding. She’d been hit in the upper arm and cried out when they worked on her. She cursed but they ignored her. They kept us in single file and walked us farther into the woods. I tried to engage with the man we’d initially seen, the one with the younger guy I’d taken to be his son. He told me to shut the fuck up.
    The men and women were dressed much like him. They wore thick jackets with flannel shirts and jeans or overalls. They’d been doing this for a while because they worked well as a team. Something my new group didn’t have experience with yet. The way things were going, we might not get that chance.
    One thing that caught my eye was the little symbol each of them had affixed to their clothes. Whether painted or stitched on it made me shiver. When Scott noticed he gave a little gasp and moved closer to me.
    “You see that?” he whispered.
    “Hard to miss,” I said.
    “Ya’ll want to make it to our base you need to shut the fuck up,” the leader craned his head around and said.
    Scott looked like he was going to offer a retort but common sense must have gotten the better of him.
    They escorted us down a path until we came across an old road that led to a farm house. They cut into the woods and led us deeper and deeper. I was fairly certain this was some kind of a preserve or even a national park but we hadn’t come across any signs. Then we broke out of the foliage to stand in front of a series of streets that led up a hill. Homes, boarded up but mostly ransacked, lay before us. Corpses of long dead people lay in various positions of woe in yards and on the streets. Someone had strung up a man and woman from a sign post and left them to rot. Crows must have gone to work because there was very little left except for rot covered bones.
    “Why don’t you let us go,” Thomas implored the leader.
    He didn’t say anything. Just stepped in front of Thomas and planted the butt of my M4 into Thomas’s midsection.
    Thomas keeled over and nearly went to his knees but managed to stay upright.
    “Hey!” I yelled in protest and got a cuff across the face.
    Someone grabbed Scott before he could surge forward.
    That was how the next half hour went. We were hit, prodded, and guided past abandoned buildings, gutted neighborhoods, and a few strip malls that had been cleaned out. Doors busted in. Graffiti paint. And bodies. Always bodies. Then there was the mass of vehicles that had been left behind when people fled the undead.
    We came across five cars that had been pushed together in the middle of a cross street and set on fire. Bodies lay on the ground blackened from the flames.
    Then we were back into a wooded area again and heading into some kind of park. There was a small stream that was clogged with more bodies. Water had pooled around them and created a small dam. I gagged on the smell but pushed on because if I fell behind I would likely get a gun stock to the back of my head or back. Not enough to knock me down but enough to ring my bell and consider ways to hurt the person if I ever got loose.
    We pushed into another area that was heavily wooded.
    I was starting to lose hope and whatever energy reserves I’d had would soon be depleted. My legs were leaden and my head swam. Still, I struggled on step after step.
    We were knee deep in a copse of trees. Our captors pushed us onward while keeping large branches out of our faces. As we came out from around a group of sequoias, I noticed a pair of faces peeking from between a bunch of branches. They studied us and, just as I made eye contact with a white guy, they disappeared from sight. The other man was black and he had a hard face that was shadowed by a dark blue ball cap. As they faded from view, I caught sight of an assault rifle.
    If anyone else noticed the men they didn’t say anything.
    We were pushed onward until we came to a clearing in the trees. A large duplex was setup next to a well and there were several tool sheds placed around the home. A