by Mark Tufo
“Uh Ben, after you get her cleaned up could you stay out here on guard duty?”
He nodded sternly. I think Ben was doing his best to not let the situation affect him. If so, he was doing better than I was. I hastily passed Jen who was too intent on the gore running down her face to pay me any attention. I wanted to catch up with Carl before something else happened.
The blown apart doors were only the beginning of the destruction to the armory. The inside looked as if an F5 tornado had swept through. Um, maybe that isn’t right, it was more like an F3. There was still SOME stuff lying around. Rows upon rows of empty racks that at one time contained M-16’s were now empty. As I walked to the left I discovered even more foreboding news, the heavy stuff was gone too. You could see where there had been a few 50 caliber machine guns, about 10 SAW’s (light machine guns) and two rocket launchers that were now missing. Just wonderful, there was a band of somebodies out there more heavily armed than an average battalion. Getting razor wire seemed like less of a priority; whoever had all this stuff wasn’t going to be stopped by any glorified chicken wire.
“Hey Talbot,” Carl beckoned. “Could you come over here and help me with these?”
I walked over to the armory repair station. Carl was rounding up about a dozen or so M-16’s in various states of disrepair. I looked at him questioningly.
“We should be able to get at least a couple of these working, with all these parts,” he answered me without even looking up.
Seemed like a worthwhile venture to me. I shouldered my weapon and grabbed a handful of rifles. There was loose ammo all over the place. Whoever had been here before us must have been in a hurry. Maybe they were leaving town. That would be awesome. They had spent enough time to clean out every working weapon and the vast majority of ammo, but it appeared as if some of the cartons had fallen and spilled out on the floor. They hadn’t warranted those bullets important enough to pick up. There had to have been at least a few thousand rounds on the ground alone. God, how many did they take with them?
As I walked out into the brightness it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Ben was just finishing getting most of the viscous material off Jen. They both looked more than a little green-tinged.
“Jen, when you’re done here, could you go into the armory and start grabbing all the ammunition that’s on the floor?” I asked. I’m not a psych major. I didn’t know if I should approach her in a caring tone or a conciliatory one or any other damn method. I needed a job done and that’s how I went about it.
“No,” came her monosyballic reply.
I stopped short, one of the rifles threatening to fall out of my arms.
She started back up again. “I’m not going in there and I’m not staying out here. I’m getting back in the truck and lying down.”
I wanted to throttle her. We were all a little thrown off by what had just happened but we had a mission to think about. That’s what you get when you take civilians on a military endeavor.
“Jen, we have more to think about here than what just happened to Tipper. He messed up by running ahead and trying to be a hero. We have to get the remainder of this ammo and wire for the people back home,” I almost pleaded. We were already one person short if Jen flaked out now, we’d be out here for hours longer than I had expected.
She turned to look at me, and fire flashed across her eyes. It was more likely sunlight reflecting off her sky blue irises, but the affect was staggering nonetheless. “See, that’s where you’re wrong Talbot! I don’t have anyone at home! There’s nothing for me there! I lost everything! I don’t care whether we all live or die, I just don’t care!”
“Then what the hell did you come out here for!” I yelled back. She flinched a little but nothing worth writing home about.
“Revenge! I thought I could exact some sort of pay back for what they did to Jo and to me! But I know that’s useless now. They just don’t care. No, it’s even worse than that, they just don’t know. They are mindless, one-track mind, killing and eating machines. They’re almost as bad as MEN!” she shouted.
Wow, I guess there isn’t going to be any hetero conversion there. Men and zombies were near enough equals in her mind. I didn’t want anything more to do with Jen. She was a pulse away from going into shock and I had enough problems. I didn’t bother answering her as I headed for the back of the truck.
A few seconds later, I heard the cab door shut as I exited the rear of the trailer. I hurried over to Ben.
“You have the keys?” I asked him apprehensively.
“Oh, you betcha,” he replied.
“Any chance you could pick up the stray ammo?” I pleaded.
“I’d love to Talbot, but I’ve got a bad back, I couldn’t bend over to save my life,” he replied.
“Wonderful,” I said scornfully. Ben looked a little taken aback. I had no desire to stroke his bruised feelings. “Keep guard then.”
Carl had made a stack of rifles that he wanted to take with us. I guess I was the muscle. Carl had at least understood the necessity to grab all the strewn ammo and was down on his hands and knees pushing a large ammunition container in front of him as he filled it. Damn that thing was going to be heavy when he was done. I had grabbed another stack of weaponry when I heard Ben’s shrill cry. I rushed out into the blinding light. Ben was pointing and trying to speak but I couldn’t make it out yet. He was about as useless as Tipper, and as we all know, Tipper was dead.
“Zombies!” Ben finally vocalized. My sight was finally catching up. I saw a small contingent angling our way. The noise or the smell of meat must have garnered their attention, didn’t matter which at this point. Jen sat up in the truck and locked the doors.
‘What have I got myself into?’ Ben was shaking so bad I thought his pants were going to fall off. Carl had followed me out when we heard Ben scream.
Thank God for Carl, of all the people here he was going to be my only true ally. He assessed the situation in a crack.
“Talbot, why don’t you shut the gate. I’m going to finish gathering the bullets,” he said and then turned and walked back into the armory.
“I love that guy,” I said out loud.
There were six zombies heading towards us. If I crawled backwards on my back to the gate I would still have had plenty of time to roll the gate closed. But zombies were zombies and they still scared the bejesus out of me. I jogged over to the gate and closed it. Then I wrapped the remnants of the remaining chain around the fence, just in case that by some grace of the devil they were able to figure out how to roll it back from where it came. We were effectively down three out of the five people we had started with, but I wasn’t going home empty-handed. I went back into the tractor-trailer and grabbed the small ladder that we had placed in there so I could start the job. I cautiously approached the fence. The zombies didn’t seem discernibly closer. I climbed the ladder and fished out the wire cutters that I had in my jacket. This was not going to be an easy task considering the thinness of the gloves I had put on for protection (or lack thereof). That and the fact that my goggles kept fogging up were making this a difficult venture. I had learned over the years that it is infinitely better to wear protection, no matter how cumbersome, rather than find ways to staunch the flow of blood from one’s body.
Over the years as a handyman, a do-it-yourselfer and a general klutz, I had racked up more emergency room time than Tim the Tool Man Taylor. Please tell me you know who he was? Let’s see, where do I start. I have broken a rib from installing an attic fan. I nearly cut off my index finger with a compound miter saw installing flooring. Put a drill bit through my thumb. Bruised my eyeball throwing a bunch of trash away at the dump when the errant cord from a toaster hit me. Cut a vein in my hand and sliced my head open while changing a light bulb. Sliced my leg open with a box cutter, you guessed it, while cutting a box. There are a least a dozen more instances over the years. I’m just listing the lowlights. So these days, most of the time I like to err on the side of caution. If there is
some sort of safety gear for the task at hand, I want it. I’ll take fogging up goggles over loss of sight any day. I was busy wiping said goggles for the third time and had already cut loose almost 50 feet of wire, when I felt the impact of the first zombie hitting the fence. My ladder shuddered, and my heart skipped a beat or two. I had almost forgotten about the persistent little buggers. Now Hector was looking up at me, arms outstretched, mouth agape. He was a heavyset Mexican man, small mustache, big belly. I’m not being racist. His name was Hector, it said as much on his name tag. That and he used to work at Tire Discount and he smelled as if he hadn’t showered after five shifts at the physically demanding job. Flies were buzzing around him, but notably not on him. The flies seemed to be attracted to the sweet smell of decaying meat that emanated from his mouth but they were not enticed enough to get any closer. The oddest fact that struck me was not that a zombie was less than five feet from me, it was that flies were still around in early December. I wanted to put a round in Hector’s bloated melon, if for nothing more than to get his putrid smelling ass away from me. But I had no inclination to see if the noise would attract more of his kind or anybody else’s kind for that matter. So I kept cutting with the wire clippers, stepping down from my ladder to shift it over every five feet and climbing back up. And always Hector followed like a lovelorn puppy. Hector’s friends had stayed at the gate to try their luck with Ben, who had only moved enough to get a better look at the zombies that wanted to eat him. For all intents and purposes it looked like a world-class staring competition.
On and on it went like this for another couple of hundred yards, Mr. Shuffles keeping consistent pace with my wire removal. My goggles had fogged for the umpteenth time, so this time I took my gloves off to get a better wipe down of the insistent miasma. After completing my job to a satisfactory level, I put my goggles back on and then began to pull my gloves on. The cold was having an adverse affect on me and I lost my grip on the second glove. As I reached over to try to grab the falling glove I compounded my troubles. The wire cutters that I had stowed in my jacket’s breast pocket also fell as I leaned away from the ladder at an angle, and both items hit the ground and bounced, tumbling under the fence, they ended up at Hector’s feet. I swear, if I didn’t have bad luck I’d have no luck at all.
“Any chance you could hand those back to me?” I asked Hector. He only replied with a soft moan. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
I climbed down the ladder. His eyes never broke contact with mine. The glove and the cutters were less than six inches away on the other side of the fence. I could easily reach under and grab them, but if I somehow got hung up Hector would get his midmorning snack after all. Noise be damned, I was going to shoot him. I’d learned enough painful lessons over the years to not tempt fate. I began to un-sling my rifle, when Hector did something I was not expecting. He bent and recovered the glove and the cutters. With some motor skill difficulty he brought the glove to his nose and sniffed. Maybe he still smelled meat on them. He took a bite, ripping right through the thumb. He chewed for a moment and swallowed, then realized to his disappointment that it wasn’t his desired nourishment, he dropped the glove. The wire cutters became Hector’s next fascination. He started turning them over and over in his hands. He handled them like a newborn wearing mittens might, but I couldn’t help thinking that this tool was somehow stirring some long forgotten memory in what used to pass as a human mind. His bluish-purple hands finally got the tool into a potentially usable fashion. He then began to thrust the cutters at the fence. I wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was real or not. Was he trying to cut the fence? My mind whirled as the implications started setting in.
“Hey Carl, umm, could you come here for a minute?” I yelled over my shoulder. I was afraid that if I looked away for more than a fraction of a second, Hector would miraculously figure out how to use the cutters and make his way through the fence before I could turn back around.
“Talbot I’m a little busy,” Carl shouted back. Seems there were more rounds than I had expected, Carl had been busy picking them up and loading them into the trailer.
“Yeah, still you might want to see this,” I said determinedly, still not taking my eyes off Hector.
At one point the cutters made contact with the fence but Hector did not have the dexterity to close the pliers to do any damage. He moaned at that point, and I would have sworn it was because of frustration.
Carl was walking over, wiping the sweat from his brow with a bandanna. “Lost your pliers?” he said matter-of-factly.
“You know, you and my son, Captain Obvious, have a lot in common,” I said dryly.
“Just shoot the bastard and get them back,” he said as he began to turn around.
“Yeah I figured out that part all on my own, Dad,” I said dryly. “Look at what he’s doing.”
Carl got closer. “Well I’ll be damned, he’s trying to cut the fence. Well ain’t that a kick in the pants. Shoot him and get your pliers back.”
“Still right about that, but don’t you find that just a little freaken scary?” I asked him.
“What? Look at him, he can’t even make the damn things close. He’s not getting in here anytime soon,” Carl pointed out.
“It’s not whether he can operate the cutters, it’s that he is trying at all. It’s like he’s remembering a lost skill or trying to attain a new one,” I answered.
“So what?” Carl asked impatiently.
“So what?!” I retorted sharply. “If they have the ability to learn…”
The statement was left verbally unanswered but literally answered as we both turned to look when we heard the telltale twang of a chain link being cut. Hector appeared to be attempting to smile, but his rigor mortis locked lips would not upturn no matter how hard he tried. What was not difficult to see was the light of accomplishment in his dead flat black eyes.
“Well doesn’t that beat all!” Carl said as he approached Hector. For the third time today I thought I was going to go deaf as Carl’s Magnum went off.
Any excitement that Hector felt was short-lived as his head exploded. It happened so fast he never even dropped the cutters. Brain matter showered down hitting the hard ground. It sounded like the beginning of a sleet storm. An eye lazily rolled on the ground, finally coming to rest and perpetually looking to the heavens. Carl was halfway back to the truck when Hector’s body finally slumped and partially rested up against the fence. I was beginning to feel a lot like Ben, I was having a hard time moving. A couple of the gate zombies started heading my way. It would be a minute or two before they got here but still I rushed to pry my pliers out of the cold dead hands of Hector. It would be ironic if he had one of those old NRA bumper stickers, although I didn’t think it applied to hand tools. Was this the first sign of shock? How the hell would I know? I’m the one asking myself the questions. My lost glove was within retrieval distance. But it was covered in quickly freezing visceral. I was going to have to take my chances with frostbite and the Dannert wire, the germaphobe in me couldn’t stomach the thought of putting that glove on again. I shakily climbed back on the ladder and began anew.
Carl had forced Ben back into action. Ben was using zip ties to bundle up the wire on the ground. This would make it easier to put into the truck and then to install once we got back to Little Turtle. Jen had yet to come out of the truck, hell as far as I knew she hadn’t even peeked over the dashboard. Carl relieved me after he finished loading the rest of the ammo and any salvageable gun parts he could get his hands on. I was thankful for the opportunity to rest. My ungloved hand was frozen but what was worse were the multiple cuts on my hand. The pain was irksome, sure, but the frenzy it caused in the zombies, that was worse. Every time one of the fat globules of hemoglobin splashed to the frozen tundra the zombies would fall to the ground and tear up divots of sod to eat my offering. It was more than a little disturbing.
“Get your hand warmed up and then get rid of those things,” Carl said with no more compunction than if he h
ad asked me to take out the trash.
“What about the noise?” I asked with some dread. Killing zombies to save my ass was one thing, killing them like that made my blood run cold.
“What about it? Use your little pea shooter,” he said pointing to my M-16. “It’s a lot quieter than my Colts are, and we’ve been here for over an hour and we still only have five of the original six here.”
I saw his point. It’s just that I didn’t want to.
“Besides,” he continued, “we now have way more ammunition in your caliber than we do in mine.”
Again I understood his damn point. I grabbed the keys from Ben and headed for the truck. Jen looked pissed that I was invading her space as I climbed into the cab to turn on the heater. I couldn’t have cared less. Those that didn’t pull their own weight were chattel and didn’t deserve my consideration.
“Are we leaving now?” Jen asked hopefully.
I merely revved the engine a little more hoping the heat would kick on sooner rather than later.
“Are we leaving?” she asked again. This time she leaned over, grabbed the gearshift and shoved it into gear. The truck lurched forward and stalled. I was thrown forward and almost broke my damn nose on the steering column as I was already leaning forward trying to garner some heat. Both Carl and Ben were looking up at me, puzzlement on their features. I shrugged and over-exaggerated ‘sorry’ gesture.
I hissed at Jen, “You touch that shift box again and I’ll break your fucking wrist!”
She pulled back as if I had slapped her.