“I don’t want trouble!”
He didn’t hold up his arms, only shook his head, and looked off in the distance.
“What are you looking at?”
“Them,” he said.
I didn’t dare look away from him, so I listened as carefully as I could. Footsteps in the distance. The sound didn’t echo in an obvious way here, but it still traveled. The sky beyond his head and shoulders was darkening with thicker clouds. It could very well rain or snow today, the ground was icy against my back.
“Who’s coming? Zombies?”
“No. Worse,” he said. He stepped away from me casually as if unafraid I might shoot him, as if unaware I still had my gun pointed at his chest. Walking away like that meant all his fear was gone.
“Get up,” a voice from behind me said. Deeper, more vibrant, older than the man who had sent me to the ground.
Oh great, I thought. Just great.
I got up slowly.
“Drop the weapon and slide it over,” the voice said. All I could see were several pairs of legs, and I imagined each of them were holding guns out in my direction. I did as instructed, knowing I had more weapons I could draw on if I needed to.
How had I not seen these people?
The old man had sandy brown hair cropped close with streaks of gray along the sides of his head. He wore an old brown leather jacket, a pinstripe button-down white shirt, and dress slacks with shiny Louis Vitton shoes inappropriate for this weather. A cigarette hung on the corner of his lower lip, threatening to drop as he spoke. Over the bridge of his fat nose were 70’s metal frame glasses. Given this man’s age, his overweight stature, and his air of collected calm, I believe he was at the height of fashion around that same era.
A bald man on his right in a tight-fitting leather biker jacket, black jeans and work boots did indeed have a pistol with a silver barrel pointed at me. I didn’t have to be versed in the recognition of real guns. As of 48 hours ago, all guns had to be real. I was out-numbered and out-gunned.
He had dark hair and dark eyes. On his left, there was another man with dark wavy hair, too well dressed in a slate gray pinstripe suit, shiny black shoes, and a shotgun aimed in my direction.
“What do you want?”
“So you’re a brave nigger,” the prominent leader said. He squinted and pointed at my face, “What the fuck is that? You got blood all over your face?”
I touched my fingertips to my cheeks and forehead and felt dried blood there, then nodded solemnly. It could have been remnants of the last zombie I shot.
I was ready to rip his head off then and there, guns or no guns. Why couldn’t we be past the racial bullshit already? Claire and I thought of ourselves as people who had evolved. His one-word cut me deeper than any knife, shot me through cleaner than any bullet.
Speaking of bullets, he had more on his side. I was sure I could take him down, probably out, but any reckless move I made would ensure an early end. I knew my wife was still normal, like me, a person like me, and I didn’t need to let name-calling antics from a deluded old man thwart my quest.
Sighing, I looked down at him, "Why am I brave?" The venom was plainly apparent in my voice, yet he chose to ignore or overlook it.
“You speak when not spoken to. And you don’t sound like any of the brothers I’ve ever met either. You sound white. Why is that, I wonder? I chalk it up to your...generation. You’re an educated ni--”
“Yes, I’m educated. Let’s leave it at that.”
Anything not to hear him speak that detestable word again, and moreover, I was trying to gain my center now. The more we talked, the more I spoke, the more in control I felt. I didn’t need to explain to this asshole that my step-dad was a white guy. I loved him like my own father, but this racist prick in front of me would never get it.
“Fine, educated guy. Whatever your generation is, it’s younger than mine. By a lot.”
I heard a cross between Brando and Deniro in his voice that unnerved me. A new chill in his tone broadcasted the fact that while I may prefer talking, he preferred being cow-towed to.
"Fair," I said. "Well? You can have everything in my bag. Hell, take the bag," I said. I didn't mean it in my heart, I wanted all my stuff, needed it to live on, but materials could all be replaced. And what I really wanted to do more than say was reach out and extinguish the life in his bloodshot eyes, to watch the air leave his body for the last time. The problem was I knew myself well. The last time I killed a zombie, I cried. I wept for humanity, pretty or not, but scum like this tempted me into the illusory probability that my sense of humanity has its limits. Perhaps somewhere in me, after all, was a person not only capable of taking another human life but under the right circumstances and for the right perceived reasons, enjoying it.
Bringing myself back from the dark fantasy, I had to think quickly about what I'd just said. I just needed at least one gun, if he let me go with that much, I would stand a chance of living long enough to get to my wife. In the scenario we concocted about meeting at this Diner, there were still the usual forms of transportation. Now that I had none and it was a long, very long walk, I wondered if she would consider our plans moot, try and hoof it back home? What if I got to Flying D's (our pet-name for the diner) and she wasn't even there?
“Of course I’m taking the bag. but I have an offer. It’s simple. Join me, and we find others to start over, or don’t and go your own way.”
Unbelievable! This racist asshole thought I might want to join him? He even managed to sound somewhat magnanimous, which pissed me off. Why? So he could call me by names to demean my character, to lessen me in his ‘new world’? I could hardly believe what I was hearing, it was like some kind of strange psychological whiplash. I kept a poker face, I’m sure of it because he didn’t look at me any differently.
“What’s the catch? Why hold me at gunpoint when I’m not a threat to you?”
“Well...I guess you’d call it a tax. Everything you got, and we leave you alone.”
“To die…”
“We don’t want to hurt you. We just need to stockpile. It’s not personal, just business. It’s going to take a lot to start the world over again.”
“How many zombies have you killed?” I wanted to ask how many people because I suspected the more he spoke, the more he had been a criminal in his previous life, the life before the zombies.
He shrugged and looked from side to side at his bodyguards, each of whom gave a chilling smile, then he nodded and took the cigarette from the bottom of his lip and let it fall to the asphalt, grinding it under the heel of his shoe as if it had been lit , and then looked at me. It felt like more theater. He boldly walked up to me, not quite reaching my height, but close, and looked up at me and stared in my eyes.
“A few,” he said, nodding as if I might glean from subtext that ‘a few’ was code for many.
I nodded in return, then glanced at his compatriots.
“Let me keep one gun. Give me a head start. I’m sure whatever you make for the new world will be good, but I have my own business to attend to, and I mean to do it. If you leave me with a means of defense, I might survive. Is that acceptable?”
He leaned his head back and laughed heartily, his breath stank of cigarettes, garlic, and something worse, something more profound that might eventually kill him.
I tried not to grimace.
When he was done laughing, he looked at me again.
“Fine. A gun, and one round of bullets. We give you the head start, and the rest is ours.”
“May I ask for one additional thing?”
He looked around at his friends, his eyebrows high, his eyes wide. At this range, I could see his skin was flaking and old, wrinkling.
The three of them laughed, even the Latino who had stopped me initially was laughing now as if my question was the funniest thing ever.
“This guy is bold! Le meraviglie non cessano mai.”
I took a deep breath in, my head partially turned from his imposing
and disgusting atmosphere, and waited for his response. He patted the air around his shoulders towards the ground, giving the impression that laughter should die off now, which it did because the men’s laughter quieted considerably.
“What else do you want?”
“Two things, actually. A water bottle with water. And to not be followed.”
“So, you really think you’re in a position to make demands?”
“Come on, man. Don’t you see I’m outnumbered?”
“What is this business you have to attend to? Got a hot date across town?”
“Nah,” I said. I wanted to lie, but I could tell he was more shrewd than I was, “I just...I’m a private guy. That’s all. I just don’t like being followed. If I think it’s a zombie and I accidentally killed one of your men, I would feel bad.”
He laughed again, but shorter, starker, and more terrifying.
“Fine, fine, fine. You take your gun and your water bottle. Maybe not today...maybe we don’t follow you today. But sometime we’ll be checking in on you. So few of us left. We gotta stick together to rebuild the world, don’t we?”
I squinted my eyes and nodded my head. I didn’t trust this man at all, and the longer I spent in his presence, the more I got the feeling he was playing me. Being that I had no other choice, I simply nodded again and said yes, we had to all stick together.
The fact was simple: he intended to have eyes on me whether I liked it or not. I existed in what he considered to be his new realm, and some men just wanted to play king while watching the world burn.
I walked along the turnpike every now and then turning. I had a water bottle in one hand and my gun in the other. There were occasional thumps of zombies trapped in cars as I walked past them on the shoulder. Broken glass crunched underfoot as I continued, and I wondered how many hours it might take to get to my destination. I should have asked him to leave me some food, but was afraid that might be asking too much. I was lucky to still be alive, and how they ambushed me made me think it wouldn't be long before they found my wife and me and tried something I really couldn't bring myself to contemplate.
Two feelings battled for my attention as I continued walking. Irritability at having lost one of my guns and food, and aching relief at no longer having to carry that heavy backpack. I would probably need to make a detour into an unfamiliar town to see what supplies I could gather. I would need to prepare not only for the possibility of meeting with and helping my wife and I escape to safety from Mr. Thug and his cronies but also to survive what may prove to be a brutal winter filled with roaming zombies. The world was not ideal to begin with, and even with less fiscal responsibilities now, the work of living pressed on me, suffocating. Unbearable.
Just as I was thinking about all this, an opportunity presented itself to me.
Ahead of me was a Jeep Cherokee with a couple of bikes mounted on top of it. The Jeep had been crumpled at the front into the back of a Lexus sedan. In turn, it was smashed and crushed into the end of an eighteen-wheeler. Looking beyond this, I could see the domino effect of vehicular connections.
I picked up my pace and hurried to the bikes. If that racist asshat had orchestrated these men to somehow do his bidding, he might have also procured bikes for his posse. Maybe that's why I didn't hear them sneak up on me so fast, rubber tires don't make a lot of noise on concrete. In hindsight, I remember no such bikes. Where did they all mysteriously disappear to?
I got to the Jeep and climbed the front of the mangled hood. The colors of burgundy orange from the Jeep and cream white of the other bled into gray metal as the two cars interlocked in a frightful kiss of eternal destruction. I made it to the roof and saw the first problem.
The bikes were padlocked to each other, and both had their front tires taken off. No help to me. I could probably figure out how to screw a front tire onto one of the bikes, but why was everyone so goddamn precious about padlocking every fucking thing they owned? This wasn't the time to be messing around. I consoled myself to the reality that there would likely be other bikes along the way if I kept going. I could only hope they weren't locked up or damaged and that they still had both tires attached.
Sighing, I jumped down and had the fright of my life.
It was two zombies this time spilling over the twelve-foot high wall of concrete that separated the Turnpike from the woods and housing developments beyond it. The walls were built as a sound barrier and to dissuade deer from jumping onto the highway while cars blazed by at incredible speeds.
Blank stares and sprinting full-tilt towards me is what gave them away. I never have found out what they would actually do when catching a ‘normal’ like myself. Would they bite me? Dig their fingernails into my skin? Open my mouth and scream a terrible noise into it, infecting my brain as theirs had been?
My body on autopilot brought the gun around, and I shot one in the chest, the other in the pelvis. I shot the first one again in the left shoulder, her body on that side pushed back like a Raggedy Anne doll. I aimed again at the second one who still stumbled, and the bullet this time cleaved most of his dark hair off his skull. I pointed again and pulled the trigger, but the gun was empty.
Fuck!
I made a break for it. At least the bullets would slow them down and give me a head start. I really needed more ammo and soon. Without the weight of the pack thudding against my back, I felt like Superman. In the past couple of days, I'd already gotten stronger. I estimated another 7 miles to my destination, and that was being generous. I'd already walked 7 since leaving the campsite with Pat, and at least four miles since my campsite from Wawa. I was making real progress. Barring further incidents, my fever-laden mind insisted I could be at my destination by noon if I kept up this running pace.
The problem with wearing glasses while running in cold weather and sweating is they don't know where on your face to stay, and the bouncing and jiggling of the world-view gets obnoxious. I am not an athletic type, certainly not a runner. Cold air pushed into my lungs and within forty seconds of my initial sprint, my body refused to continue the current pace.
Cursing, I came to an abrupt halt. I knelt forward, my knees bent, the metal of the pistol grip mashing my fingers into my quad, I saw stars in front of my eyes. My breath came in cold, and out blazing hot, the steam from it fogged my glasses, which threatened to fall off the bridge of my nose and skid on the concrete. Thud-thud, thud-thud-thud-thud, thud-thud beat an unhappy rhythm in my ears. Looking up, I thought I saw movement, something following me, but it was only a chimera of my own fear.
Finally, my heart slowed enough, and my lungs burned a little less, I straightened up and made a quick walk. It occurred to me that perhaps my other pursuers would run into a more significant block of zombies and be stopped, possibly losing sign of me in the process.
I put the gun in my hoodie pocket for comfort. The hard steel of it made me feel safer than I actually was. Right now, I was a man cast out into a massive ocean from a sunken cruise-ship and had no life vest. I could swim for a long time, but eventually, without any life-supports, I knew I would drown. Unless I was damn lucky. I needed anything to help me stay safe. I looked around for a bat, a metal bar, or a large tree branch I could whittle down with my knife into a sharp spear of some kind. It would keep me occupied as I walked and provide me a little protection as I kept up my pace.
Seeing nothing useful, I kept weaving in and around cars, intentionally keeping my eyes somewhat unfocused and pointed straight ahead. There were many dead people and more than a few zombies rattling around in the cars I passed by. It was just dumb luck they couldn't figure out the intricate act of opening a car door-handle.
After an hour of walking, the sky was beginning to darken a bit. The worst part about it being wintertime was that this hemisphere of the world had less light even if you got up early. I guessed it was around four in the afternoon, give or take thirty or forty minutes. My stomach began to growl, and I reached instinctively for my shoulder and realized there was no strap the
re. No strap meant no backpack, and no bag equaled no supplies. Food had been taken from me, and I now felt more deprived and lonely than I had since...come to think of it I couldn't remember feeling the depth of my feelings this achingly close without some form of retreat or distraction at the ready.
I stopped and looked up at the trees. Thick pillars of smoke rose in columns up to the identically gray sky. I didn't notice this before, but I now began to scan the trees in search of orange flames. Because of the dividing wall, however, I couldn't see where the flames were. When darkness fell, I would be able to see along the turnpike once my eyes adjusted. If I was lucky, I could score a burning branch to ward off zombies through the night and make it to what I hoped would be relative safety at the diner.
Acrid smoke and other aromas conveyed their presence all around me to the point my olfactory sense simply gave out, and I didn't notice much unless the scent in question was strikingly different than what was commonplace.
Part of me worried I might die of cancer if I lived long enough, and the other part of me thought the idea of living long enough for that to be a real threat was laughable. There's a dance that takes place between your mortality and your drive to live when confronted with extreme life-situations. If I live long will I die of some common disease? If I die, who gets my stuff? Or are you so freaked the fuck out that your mind is a blank slate? All the while, something terrible is about to happen any second. That is what you know for sure. You go on denying what's right before your eyes until after it’s too late. Sometimes you go on denying it even then, even when you're in a wheelchair, or laying up in a hospital bed with tubes feeding your body, also when you can't talk because cancer has your vocal cords.
One Way Out: A Zombie Apocalypse Novella Page 4