by Mark Tufo
I didn’t want to crush that, but this wasn’t the Alamo and they weren’t the Mexicans allowing the women and children safe passage. “I think they’re making room for something to come in.”
“That’s what I thought, too. I was just—”
“Yeah, me too, kid.” I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. Darkness had completely settled over us before the zombies stopped moving. A large path was nicely illuminated by a half moon and, thankfully, cloudless sky. Perhaps God did have a soft spot for us after all. That was of course until I saw the first bulker. I swear, at first, I thought it was a trick of the light. I was convinced they had helmets on. Their heads were huge, almost looked like a Lego man’s, all rounded and out of proportion to the rest of its mass. It wasn’t safety gear though. It was bone, thick bullet-repellant bone. Meredith pulled her trigger first. The rest of us soon followed.
“Just the bulkers!” I shouted when I saw regular zombies falling. I heard the ricocheting whine as a bullet, I know, I absolutely know, hit one of the fat bastards square in the forehead.
“Travis, we have anything bigger downstairs?”
“Pop’s .308. And Justin has an AK.” Both were significantly heavier rounds than the 5.56s Travis and I were shooting. Meredith was basically using a slingshot in the form of a 9mm short-barreled rifle. Jesse was the only one using anything with enough force to crack heads. But a bolt action .30-06 wasn’t going to keep them at bay for long.
“Get them!”
He was on the move. The problem was, so were the bulkers and right for the weakest point.
“How are they doing this?” I had the questions, that was for sure; never the damned answers though, no none of those. Much like understanding a woman, some things were hidden completely from me. I turned to yell at Trav. “Tell your mom and the others they need to move into the shelter. Now!” I don’t know if the bony skulls of the bulkers made them blind, but the beast ran into the building as opposed to the door, and still, I felt the vibrations of the violent collision on the roof. I had gotten down into the prone position and leaned my head and shoulders over the edge so I could swing my gun down. I was basically shooting straight down into the top of his head. The first couple of shots dug deep grooves into the heavy bone. The third broke through, dropping the monster where he was.
It seemed the top of the head was slightly more vulnerable, but still no picnic and not the easiest shot to take, either. Two more bulkers hit the building. One nailed the door. I heard a loud crack, but they had not broken through yet. I moved slightly from the impacts. Travis almost finished the job when he grabbed my calf, making me jump. He handed me a heavier rifle. I thanked him when I was sure the frog lodged in my throat had finally moved.
“The women?” I asked as I flipped the safety off.
“Not yet.”
“Motherfucker. The tops of their heads. Shoot the tops of their heads!” I pushed back and went to the access door. “Tracy!”
“We’re doing all we can, Mike!” she yelled back. She had Wesley in her arms; Nancy and Lindsey had Nicole supported between them, half carrying, half dragging her toward the stairwell. I was watching their painstakingly slow progress when the radio came to life.
“Mike, you there?” It was BT.
Tracy headed for it. “Don’t you dare. Get your asses downstairs.” I got into position to go down and retrieve the communication device.
“Hey,” I said into the mic. When dust rained down on me from another hit, I waited until the women had shut the upstairs access door, grabbed the radio, and headed back for the ladder. I had a moment to reflect on the brilliance of the zombies, they’d split our forces in half between Searsport and here, and they were once again doing it as some of us were below and some were above. I had no doubt we were about to yield the main floor. BT was asking questions as I climbed. I could tell he was getting frustrated I wasn’t responding.
“Talbot, answer me!” I damn near felt the force of the airwaves being pushed by him.
“Sorry man, moving the radio. And stop yelling at me. You should be congratulating me. I’m a grandfather now.”
There was a pause. “That’s awesome, man! Is that why you took so long to get back to me?”
“Not so much, we’re in a bit of a bind here.”
“How bad?” He was all business.
“Five hundred or so zombies and a platoon of bulkers threatening to bring the building down. We’ve got people in the bomb shelter and I’m on the roof with Jesse, Meredith, and Travis.”
“You split up?”
“I know, man; we broke the cardinal rule of survival. No choice. Nicole is in no shape for battle. She needs people around to take care of her, and if we’re going to have any chance here, we need to do whatever we can on the roof to disrupt their plans. Any chance of help from your quarter?”
“Not any time soon. The zombies seem to be massing, but they’re not moving, like they’re waiting for something.”
“Bulkers, I bet. Use heavier guns. They’re adapting. Their skulls are thicker. The 5.56s aren’t too effective.”
“What the fuck, Mike?”
I know what he was asking. How did this happen?
“Don’t know, man. I have to get back in the fight and I guess conserve the battery on this thing. Unless I contact you early, I will only power this thing first thing in the morning and at twilight.”
“Good luck, Mike.”
“You too, man.” And with that, I turned the dial to off. The clicking sound it made seemed like a finality. Obviously, I know that’s my own bias being superimposed onto a material thing, but that didn’t make it any less true.
We were at the point of firing at will. We’d put a serious dent in the bulker population, laying fifteen of them down for good. Must have been five or six tons of zombie flesh put to rest, but we had received damage as well. They’d just about caved-in the back door. A few more hits and they’d be in, and unless we could get a hold of a certified zombie pest control eradicator, we would not be able to get rid of them. I had a small window to make a call: We either made a hasty retreat and headed for the bomb shelter or we stayed here and fought it out. The pros of going downstairs: We were safe, they could not get in, end of story. The cons: I have claustrophobia and staying in that shelter would certainly bring on debilitating panic attacks. Once in, we could not get out. We’d run out of food and water eventually.
The pros of staying on the roof: We were free, free to starve, die of thirst or succumb to the elements. I was in the middle of a battle for our lives with basically three kids. This wasn’t my ideal scenario, but they all could fight; they’d proven it before. The basic question though was where were they safer? I was not going to the shelter, but where should they go?
“Who votes for going to the bomb shelter?” I shouted over the gun reports.
Travis stopped and looked at me with a strange expression. Soon, everyone did.
“What did you say?” Jesse asked.
“I want to know who wants to go downstairs and into the shelter,” I said again.
“You’re putting this up for a vote dad? Really? Weird.”
“Yeah okay, funny man. Right now, both choices aren’t the best, but at least we have them. Soon enough, we’ll be stuck on this roof. If anyone wants to go downstairs, now is the time to do so.”
“What are you doing?” my son asked.
“Staying here.”
“Me too, then.”
“How long could we be stuck up here?” Meredith asked, looking up to the sky. The nights were getting cooler, and rain was always a possibility.
I almost said indefinitely. “Hard to say,” I figured was the best compromise. We’d die of dehydration long before exposure.
“If we stay up here, shouldn’t we get some supplies?”
“Out of the mouth of babes,” I said. Meredith had said something that had resonated within me. She was thinking long game, where I was in the moment. “We gotta move. Trav, you and M
eredith keep the bulkers at bay. Jesse, come with me. We’re going to grab what we can.”
As soon as my feet touched the ground, I started scanning everything. I actually used my brain for once. I know, it was almost as big a surprise to me as it is to you. There were two five-gallon containers of water against the wall. We’d used new gas containers, so at least they had handles, but trying to get something that heavy up a vertical ladder is no joke. There was some ammo, not much. Most of it by now was either upstairs or down. I thought about knocking on the door and confiscating it, but at some point, they might have to fight their way out, with or without our help.
I was on my fourth foraging expedition, Jesse was heading up with an armload of blankets and food. The smashing of material echoed around the room as the building shook. I thought I was in luck and it had held, then I heard the sound of the metal doorframe clanging off the marble flooring. They’d gained entry.
Jesse looked down. “Uncle?”
I motioned for him to go up as I brought my rifle to bear. All was quiet. That same feeling you get in the middle of the night when, for no obvious reason, you’ve been awakened. Your subconscious, in a valiant attempt to keep you safe from danger, has warned you to a potential grievous harm that your consciousness cannot pick up on. You sit in your bed, doing your paramount to hear anything while simultaneously hoping for the best. Yeah, it was kind of like that, though I knew this threat was real and there really wasn’t a happy ending here. Remember how just a little while ago, I was thinking out my plans and ideas? Well apparently, I’d used up all my brain power because, for some reason, instead of heading straight for that ladder and relative safety, I did the exact opposite.
“Oh, so this is what they mean by death wish.” I hissed through clenched teeth. “Why do you do this shit, Talbot?” I was berating myself even as I inched forward. “Is it some sort of morbid fascination with death? Is that it? I mean, because I’d really like to know. You can tell me, man, I won’t say anything to anyone else.” And yes, I was really having this conversation with myself. It was my way of whistling away the monsters and just as effective. I think the only reason I wasn’t being trampled at this exact moment was that the bulker that had broken out the door was now wedged tight in the opening, like a cork in a wine bottle, and nothing short of the world’s largest corkscrew was going to move him.
He growled this low mewling sound. His fingers, which were pinned to his sides, flexed and curled. He shook with rage and impotence. I could have played a dangerous game of got your nose, as he was not going anywhere. Just because I dance all around the edges of insanity doesn’t mean I have any desire to join her ranks, though. Some might argue I’m already there. As I entered into the large foyer, I looked left and right to make sure nothing had snuck in before this beast had lodged himself. I moved closer. I was now less than ten feet from one of the most dangerous animals on the planet. His red rimmed, thick, broken-blood-vessel eyes watched my every move, never once blinking. A tongue nearly the size of a well-portioned steak flicked out of his mouth repeatedly, though the color was anything but that of a fine piece of meat—more the gray of the post office walls.
He was a marvel as far as zombies go, approaching seven feet tall, a rounded head capable of stopping most calibers of bullets, a bulk that put him in excess of six hundred pounds, making him basically a zombie battering ram. How was this possible? Who could possibly be engineering zombies for specific jobs? Was it something coded into the virus weaponry or was there still a human facility cranking out these things to ferret out the few remaining people, and for what purpose? If it was something like the New World Order, and they wanted to stroke their massive egos by lording over people, then they should be herding them all up, not finding ways to root them out and crush them. I had my rifle less than three inches from the zombie’s orbital socket.
“Survive this, motherfucker.” He hissed at my words. I was about to pull the trigger when his body started twitching. I thought he was going through some sort of transition, like maybe he was turning into a zombie werewolf or something equally as terrifying. I backed up, maybe the first smart thing I’d done in the last five minutes. Although in hindsight, if he was changing into something even more dangerous, perhaps I should have put a bullet in his eye.
“Uncle Mike?” It was Jesse calling from the roof, trying to figure out what the hell I was doing.
“Coming.” But I wasn’t, not yet. For better or, the more likely, worse, I was staying until the fat zombie sang. The zombie’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and his mouth opened even incredibly wider as if he could somehow unhinge his jaw like a snake. Something like a scream issued forth from his mouth, though it sounded more like giant rocks being ground against each other. It was deep, bassy, and definitely disturbing.
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah, mostly,” I called up, still backing away. I could now see Jesse’s head poking down through the hole while also keeping the vast majority of my attention on Billy Bulker. I don’t know why I give them these Dr. Seuss names. I think it just makes them less fucking creepy in my head, and any advantage I can get in that department is fine with me. I swear Billy’s eyes had done the impossible and gone completely around so that his irises were rolling back up. They were distant at first but then began to focus on me. Whatever was causing the incredible pain he was in, I think he was laying that blame completely at my feet.
“Yeah, well, maybe if your fat ass wasn’t trying to come in here and eat me you wouldn’t be in this predicament!” I yelled at him. He started shaking more, like I’d just rattled his cage or something. That was when the horror really started to kick in, the reason Billy looked like he was having grand mal seizures became clearly evident. It wasn’t him doing the twitching, it was the five or so zombies behind, ripping through him to get in. When Billy’s stomach began to expand outward, I was thinking of the Alien franchise and the little babies shooting through the chest and belly. It was kind of like that, but it was a full-grown zombie head instead, pretty much just as terrifying. It had literally eaten its way through one of its own. That was the first time I’d ever seen anything of the sort. I’d like to say it was because they were now looking at each other as food sources and would continue to kill each other, but I think this had more to do with frustration on the zombie’s part. I mean the one stuck behind at least. He was starving for human flesh, and Billy was in the way, plain and simple. And until Eddie Eater could wield a chainsaw, he was using the only means available to him to rectify the situation.
He tore through the abdominal muscles and thick layers of fat, trying to get his shoulders through. Yellow ropes of gelatinous mass hung in his way, giving him a very jaundiced look as he kept gnawing away. The pure visceral horror I was feeling was directly the cause of my inaction. I cycled between running for my life and sanity, unloading a few dozen magazines of bullets into the creatures in front of me, or the more passive, just staring in blazing confusion with my mouth hanging agape. The level of revulsion was far and beyond anything I have seen in all my years, except for maybe the inside of a port-a-potty after a weeklong music festival in the heat of summer down in southern Tennessee, that is.
I did shoot a few rounds into the stomach of Billy, doing my damnedest to kill Eddie. I didn’t stick around to see if I succeeded because Billy was beginning to bulge in another couple of places, and I’d taken all the mind-fuck I could for the remainder of my lifetime, no matter how long it may be. I nearly bowled Jesse over as I came rocketing out the sky hole.
“What’s going on?” My nephew asked.
“Nothing you want to know, or that I ever want to talk about.” I closed the lid, flipped the latch that was designed to hold a padlock, and frantically looked around for something to stick in the small hole to keep anything else from coming up. I ended up pulling out a drawstring from a hoodie and tying it around the locking device.
“Yeah, that should stop them.” I said sarcastically.
“Just being safe,” is what I told him, but I was thinking in another week they’d be flying jets. Wouldn’t that be fantastic to be hit by zombie strafing runs? Again, with some sort of silent cue, the zombies knew the building had been opened and were amassing around the ingress. They were beginning to flood in. In a perfect world, they all would have shoved themselves in there, and we could have sought help for our loved ones below. My heart panged knowing that zombies were directly above them and we could do little, if anything. I had everyone halt their shooting. At this point, there was no point to continue. They were inside, destroying everything, if the sounds of crashing furniture below were any indication. For a good long while, we watched those still outside, then when it became evident they were not going to give up their vigil, we retreated to the center of the roof where we could no longer see them nor them us. The smell was better, only marginally, but still better. Not much was said. We were all coming to grips with what was happening; then, just as the sun was going down, we got our first cosmic joke in the form of a far off thunder crash.
“Maybe it won’t hit us,” I said hopefully. That’s when I knew weather was of the female persuasion. The wind picked up, and the temperature rapidly began to cool.
“Probably not, Dad,” Travis said, good naturedly, just as the first drop nailed my forehead. It was a long, miserable night. Rain fell through its entirety. At first, we tried to use the knee wall that surrounded the building as cover from the elements, but that soon became an exercise in futility as swirling winds carried the water in every imaginable direction. There was not one part of me, or any of us, who was not completely soaked. I was sure that I’d gotten less wet while swimming. Shivering came in uncontrollable fits as muscles rubbed against each other doing their best to create heat from friction.
We amassed as one large ball of humanity in the west corner, doing our best to share what little body heat we had. Due to my enhancements, I was feeling the effects of the weather less than those around me, and still I was freezing. I must have told them a dozen times I was so sorry for getting them into this mess. Sometime during the night, we’d somehow fallen asleep still huddled together. I awoke to a small songbird sitting on the wall above me. He chirped happily, his head swiveling back and forth while he looked down on me. The sun shone on my back. I could see mist rising up off of the kids as the water began to evaporate. We’d made it through the night. Now, I had to hope none of them had developed pneumonia. I stood. The bird took off. It wasn’t the first time I’d wished I’d had wings so I could leave as easily.