by Mark Tufo
Well, fuck a duck! I should have targeted her first, I think, hearing distant gunshots.
I make sure the dead are exactly that. I don’t know what to call an already dead one that’s now twice dead, but I make sure they aren’t going to be tracking anyone on this world again. The smell is atrocious. The rotted flesh and liquid that was inside moments ago is almost too much to bear. I’ve smelled rotting corpses before, but this is worse. I’m damn near afraid to breathe, thinking that I’ll inhale something diseased.
Backing away from the area, I crouch in a covered position and scan the woods in the direction the woman fled. She turned at the last moment, so I’m not sure if that was to throw me off or if she’ll double back. I let her go, so my work here isn’t done, even though there is still the sound of firing from the hill across the tracks. The woman could even cross the tracks again and come upon Mike and Trip from a flanking position.
Pursue the woman or meet up with Mike?
Walking into the middle of a firefight without warning is a good way to get shot. Especially among shadows.
Pursuit it is.
I can’t imagine the woman would just run away. They may show cunning and tactics, but they’re zombies through and through. Their intelligence may hold the need to automatically attack in check, but surely it isn’t enough to pass up a meal. That seems ingrained to the core. With slow movements, I work deeper into the woods. Once I’m a fair ways in, I’ll start to turn and hope I’m farther in than the woman. The whispers of wind are still in my face, so I should be able to smell her if she’s in front.
A snap of a twig to one side sends my heartbeat racing. Freezing in place, I slowly rotate my head toward the sound. I’m in time to see a slight flurry of cloth vanish behind a trunk. I wait, not daring to breath. The woman can’t be more than thirty yards away. She apparently turned and moved quickly back in my direction, hoping to set up a flank as I chased her. I come to realize that may be their only tactic, to flank around any prey they encounter. A wider flank on our part may be our best strategy in the future.
The shadow of a body emerges from around a trunk, slow and quiet. If I could communicate with her, I’d tell her nicely done. I didn’t hear a sound, nor did I catch her scent. However, that one mistake cost her the game. Very slowly, as if each second were measured as a year, I crouch while shouldering my carbine. She’s close and sideways to me, so any sharp movement will be caught in her peripheral. I could just quickly aim and fire, but if she has good reflexes, she could be gone in a flash. If these were night runners, I probably would do, as they can be injured. Zombies such as these, though, probably wouldn’t even register a non-lethal shot. If I don’t kill her here and now, then I may not be so lucky next time.
She’s looking the same direction I was. My crosshair comes into view, then creeps upward until it rests just above her ear. Her head moves side to side, searching. She, like me, could have gone off to find her friends and gained support. But, we both elected to stay until this part of the game was over. Her stringy hair, covered with twigs and dirt, moves across her shoulders. I wait until I have a full view of the side of her head, and then apply pressure to the trigger.
The pop seems loud in the stillness, breaking through the quiet of the woods. The opposite side of her head opens up, brains, shards of bone, and dark liquid splashing against bark and over the ground. Soundlessly, she slumps to the ground.
Cautiously, scanning both the surrounding terrain and the fallen woman, I start forward, my carbine trained on her until drawing nearer. I fire again, her body jumping as another bullet strikes. But, the movement was only from the forceful impact. As I stand over her, her dark hair on one side is clotted with blood and dark tissue, part of her skull hanging from a flap of skin. The rest of her hair fans outward. I roll her over with my boot. The dark liquid streaming from her nostrils shows against a pale, bluish face. Although it’s hard to tell, I think she had to be in her early twenties, and must have had boys lining up at her door. Inside, I feel sorrow for how her life turned out.
Although it won’t mean a damn thing to her, I mutter, “You were a worthy opponent. Rest well wherever your afterlife happens to be.”
Before moving away, I happen to notice a stick caught in her dress, the end showing a clean break. Her position had been given away by the loose fabric snagging a wayward branch.
And, that’s how simply the tables can turn.
I notice the firing upon the hillside has stopped, or perhaps moved further away. So, either Mike and Trip have taken care of those initial threats, or they were overcome. Moving cautiously back toward the ridge where we are to meet up, I cross the tracks and see two shapes sitting on the ground. There’s no mistaking the glow of a lit joint. I whistle low to let them know I’m coming in.
Trip stands quickly, the orange glow rising with him. He moves rapidly, damn near as fast as I’ve ever seen anyone move. I hear the snap of rubber and duck, the sound and its meaning registering instantaneously. There’s a solid whack just above and behind me, shreds of bark settling onto the top of my head.
“What the fuck?!” I call.
“Yack! I didn’t know it was you,” Trip says as I draw close.
“Bullshit! Old man, you make this trust-building shit difficult,” I exclaim.
I’m pissed. All of the stress, anxiety, and adrenaline is still pent up inside. After surviving this far only to be nearly being taken down by an old, stoned man with a slingshot is almost too much to bear.
“I trusted that you’d duck. And, you trusted that I’d trust you to duck. You ducked, trust built. See how easy that is?” Trip says, inhaling deeply after his oration.
“What’s this trust thing?” Mike asks, his expression still showing some stress from whatever they encountered. “This whole thing some elaborate teambuilding exercise? I could see the Japanese doing something like this.”
“Oh, nothing like that. Apparently Trip and I are on a mission to build trust,” I answer.
“Seems like it’s going well,” Mike replies.
“Fucker keeps shit like that up, it’s not going to happen at all,” I respond. “So, what happened to you two?”
I start the telling of my story as I looked at Jack. “Got to admit, I’m not thrilled with the idea of splitting up again. Didn’t they have horror movies where you’re from?” I asked him.
He gave me a look like maybe I’m riding the same crazy train as Trip. “Yeah.” He said tentatively. He gets it. “But, we have to. It’s the best tactic available to us.”
“Okay, then, you take Trip,” I told him, he looks as if I sucker punched him in the gut. “Not such a good tactic now, is it? Relax. Apparently because I’ve known him an hour longer than you, I’m stuck with him.”
“It’s not like that,” he responded. “I’m used to working alone.”
“We haven’t known each other for a long time, and I hope you don’t take this the wrong way.” I flipped him off.
He laughed. “Once we’re in the ravine ahead, head up the hill. Once we’re finished here, we’ll meet up on the ridge ahead. Make sure to announce your presence. I’d hate to shoot you, and might even have a qualm or two about hitting Trip. I’ll remain in plain view. Make sure to tell Trip in easy to understand terms that he’s not to hit me. I’ve seen what he can do with that fucking slingshot. If things go south and we have to evade, rendezvous back at the overlook.”
At the bottom of the hill, Trip took off running before I could even get all my gear stowed correctly.
“Spry mother, aren’t you?” I said.
By the time I had a chance to turn around, Jack had already melted into the surrounding fauna. It happened so fast I thought that there was more than a fair chance he had once again flipped out of this world.
“You leave me here with him, Jack, and I’ll hunt you down,” I muttered as I took off after Trip.
I had to haul ass to keep up with a man, who had no right to be so gazelle-like. The trees whipped past
as I labored up the hill. I caught glimpses of legs moving parallel to us. We were being hunted. I could only hope that they hadn’t been able to go faster and get above us.
“This is like a steeple chase,” Trip said gleefully as he hopped over a downed pine.
“Yeah, just like it.”
I constantly looked to our sides to see if the enemy was sick of staying in the wings and wanted to make a go at us. Trip had stopped suddenly to light up, of all things. I plowed into him at nearly a full sprint. We both went down in a tangle of arms and legs. I don’t know how I didn’t break any bones on either of us. I busted the shit out of my right hand as I did my best to brace the fall—of course it was on a rock. I was about to chew Trip a new one when two speeders came crashing out of the woods at an intersection point where we should have been.
“You wily bastard,” I told Trip as I scrambled to get into a proper kneeling position.
The zombies looked slightly confused that we weren’t there to greet them, which I didn’t like at all—the emotion part, the thinking, the planning. They were already dangerous predators, don’t need them adding to their arsenal. I lined up a shot and attempted to pull the trigger.
“Fuck,” I said as I flipped the lever from safe to fire.
Nothing worse than lining up a shot to save your ass and nothing happens. I rocked back slightly as I sent a round flush into the zombie’s nose. What happens to a face at that range with such a high velocity round is disgusting. Its face caved in around the entrance wound, giving him the look of someone born with grievous defects. Happily, he fell over dead quickly. The second one, realizing the jig was up, turned and ran away. I drilled him in the back for his effort. May have clipped his spine, as he left with a pronounced limp. I grabbed Trip’s shoulder and pulled him up; he was busy fixing a joint bent at a severe ninety-degree angle.
“We gotta go. And maybe next time, just tell me the zombies are ahead of us.”
“They are?” He looked truly perplexed.
“No wonder Jack wanted you to stay with me.”
Although now that I’m thinking about it, the two would have completely blindsided me and would be snacking on my liver right about now if not for Trip.
“They don’t even have a nice chianti,” Trip said, somehow knowing what I was thinking.
We got back on the trail, and I was not too psyched to see the guy in front of me actively smoking a bone, blowing smoke in my face and still able to stay ahead of me. Trip is a man of many talents. When we finally broke out onto the top of the small mount, we got some much needed sightlines, although those folks who say that ignorance is bliss sometimes know what they’re talking about. I don’t know what kind of forces Jack drew to him, but we had over twenty zombies converging on us. I steered Trip toward a small outcropping of rock where I planned on making our stand.
“Oh, king of the mountain!” he exclaimed as we climbed up.
Not exactly a castle fortress, but it afforded an added layer of protection; better than being out in the middle of a field. The formation was something in the neighborhood of ten by fifteen feet and relatively flat. The front part was inaccessible, at least to the zombies, jutting out over the downslope. Two of the sides were a healthy five feet up, and the weakest spot—where we came up—was only three feet and sloped to the ground at a relatively easy climbing angle. It’d slow them down, but by no means stop them. I wanted to stay standing, but headshots are difficult as it is. The prone position is the most stable, but the slowest to adapt from should we need to hurry the fuck along. Sitting is second, but again I would have to find the balance between being able to shoot well-aimed shots and being able to move around quickly. Kneeling it is.
Enemies running at full sprint, heart pounding in my throat, stomach churning, and I might have caught a contact high—all of those things were making lining up shots extremely difficult. My first was a flat-out miss.
“Breathe, Talbot.”
Another shot. This resulted in the explosion of a head and the swooning of one more undead among a seemingly endless supply of them. I paused to take a look over at Trip. He was at the part of the outcropping looking over the down side of the hill, our only avenue of escape should we need it: though running down the side of a mountain with zombies on our tail didn’t sound like too great of an idea.
“Is now the perfect time for yoga?” I asked.
Without opening his eyes, he answered, “Effective range of a slingshot is about thirty feet.”
“That’s going to be pretty soon.”
I fired off another round; this one crushed the breast plate of the next in line. The zombie stumbled, but did not falter. I was starting to make out details on their faces as they sprinted closer. I’d love to have gone into spray and pray mode with my rifle, but there were just too many of them. This one shot, one kill shit is great for snipers, not so much for those down in the trenches. It took two more shots before I clipped the side of his head, bone and blood spray away; I’d already turned to the next threat before I could watch the body thump to the ground. The zombies, which were coming more or less from one side, had fanned out and were now in a one hundred eighty-degree arc, and looking to go to two-seventy.
“Trip, gonna need some help soon.” The nearest of the zombies was within fifty yards.
He barely cracked an eyelid and he had the audacity to sigh at me like I was asking him to paint the house in ninety-eight-degree weather while it was raining.
“Don’t let me put you out, man,” I told him.
By this time I’d fired off six more rounds, four making debilitating contact. They’d sufficiently spread out to be coming quite literally from every angle; even after taking down a little over a half dozen I still had a number in the high teens to take care of. What I wouldn’t have done for one small squad of my friends from the Marines. Instead, I’ve got a stoner with a slingshot—seems like a fair trade. By this point, standing up seemed a decent option, and with the zombies basically being close enough that I could press the barrel against their foreheads, I should have been able to hit with a high percentage, in theory.
Thirty-yard shots at a running target, headshots seem relatively easy, at least when I watched it in the movies. Not so much when your life hangs in the balance. I kept over-anticipating where I was going to place my next round, and was not fully concentrating on the one at hand. I missed three in a row.
“Steady.” I thought Trip was talking to me. He was actually talking to his left hand that was doing some sort of weird solo jazz hand waving.
“That normal?” I was concerned. I hoped he wasn’t stroking out from the run.
“Warm up ritual.”
To each their own, I thought.
Just figured he’d better hurry up or that hand would be shaking from the mouths attached to it in a desperate bid to pull as much meat away as they could. There was a loud cracking from behind me as a zombie badly misjudged its jump. Or it just didn’t have the muscle tone to pull off that kind of maneuver. The zombie was somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety when it had become what it was. How it had outpaced all the other runners was a mystery. Its left leg was hanging askew, the knee a twisted ball of bone fragments. I spun and this time quite literally placed the barrel against its head. The thing snarled and chomped its teeth repeatedly, which I had to add were natural. My thoughts as I blew the topmost part of its head off was that it must have kept up a very diligent dental regime over the years.
“Lot closer than thirty feet, Trip; I need you in the game.”
“You do? Thank you coach! You won’t be disappointed!” Trip started looking around by his feet, maybe for an imaginary helmet or baseball glove, I don’t know which.
If it wasn’t so scary it would be hilarious, like brain damaged, deranged, can’t stop laughing, multiple drug taking, insane asylum, hilarious. I went back to what needed doing: two shots, three kills as the bullet exited out from the back of a small woman’s head and must have caught enough of a bone s
pur to send it high and under the jaw of the man following her. Under different circumstances and with different targets, I may have stopped to celebrate my incredibly lucky shot. But even given their present state, shooting something that was human once just sucks.
“Trip?”
“Looking for my quaffles…”
My shoulder pushed back from the next round, the bullet tore through the lower part of the child’s jaw and gave him a lopsided grin. The bottom half of his face was gone and still he came, a bundle of snarls and moans. The next round went straight into his forehead, about as dead center as one can get without pulling out a tape measure. I lined up an older woman; I pulled the trigger and did not receive my reward. I ejected the magazine, not having taken count. I thought I was out, right up until I went to slam a new one home and saw the stove-piped round. The half-ejected expended brass was crammed in between the bolt, the ejection port, and the barrel. Usually a relatively quick and easy fix, except this particular round felt like it was welded into place.
“Trip!”
“Found it! Geez, they were in my pocket the whole time.”
He pulled out a big bag of marbles. How he was able to walk, much less run, with that thing in his front pocket I don’t know. The bag was the size of a decent coffee mug. He let loose a marble. At points, I’ve thought that I’ve seen and heard it all. That was me right up until his projectile whistled through the air and exploded the left eyeball of the woman I had targeted. In the relative silence of our battle, the squishy explosion was disturbing. Come to find out that wasn’t the worst thing that was going to happen. The zombies somehow realized that Trip’s weapon didn’t have the same capabilities as my rifle. They began to zig-zag, making Trip’s shots exponentially more difficult. Something happened that I hadn’t seen since he got his weapon of choice. He missed, and he missed badly, repeatedly; the zombies had adapted, he had not. Just when I thought I would not be able to get the casing free before it was too late, it popped free.