by Bible, Jake
“Hey!” Rafe shouts, but not at us. He shouts over his shoulder. “It’s Stanford and the old Marine!”
“Get them in here, you dumbass!” a very familiar voice shouts from inside. “Hurry up and shut that fuckin’ door! We’re gonna fuckin’ freeze to death!”
We don’t need any more invitation as Rafe lowers the shotgun and steps aside. Stuart and I hurry inside as fast as our numb legs will carry us. Rafe slams the door behind us and scoots an old couch up against it. He moves to the front window and peers out, then turns and looks at us.
“Hey, there,” he smiles. “We weren’t sure if anyone else made it.”
“I ain’t surprised it’s you two,” Critter grins from a recliner stuck in the corner of the small front room of the farmhouse. “Stuart’s got the brains to survive. And everyone knows Short Pork is just fuckin’ lucky as all hell.”
“Yeah, Crit, I am so fucking lucky,” I stutter as I pull my frozen lips apart. I look down at the sliver of metal sticking from my leg. “I’m a regular walking lottery.”
“You’re alive, ain’t ya?” he sneers.
“Yeah, but I have no idea where my family is,” I say. “So I’m still gonna have to argue against the lucky part.”
“They’re out there somewhere,” Critter says as he stands up. “And that wife of yours is way smarter than you, so I’m sure she’ll get your kids someplace safe. Have a seat before you fall down, Short Pork. I don’t want to have to be steppin’ over your body all night when I want to go take a leak.”
“You already sweep the place?” Stuart asks.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talkin’ to?” Critter frowns.
“Just asking,” Stuart replies.
“Yeah, I swept the place with the kid here,” Critter says. “Two corpses upstairs. I’m guessin’ it’s Mr. And Mrs. Farmer. They ate their shotguns a long while back from the looks of ‘em. You’re welcome to go get one, Short Pork.”
“One what?” I ask as I stumble and fall into the recliner. My leg is warming up and I can tell the pain is gonna hit me soon.
“One of them shotguns,” Critter replies. “It’ll be easy to snap their fingers and pluck them from their dead hands.”
“Charming,” I reply. “But I have a shotgun right there.”
I point at Rafe, and he looks down at the weapon in his hands.
“Is this yours?” he asks. “I found it in the snow, so I’m going with finders keepers.”
“The fuck you are,” I say. “Give me my fucking shotgun!”
“Or what?” Rafe grins. “You’ll get up and take it from me?”
“How about you give me the shotgun?” Stuart asks, making sure the canny kid pays attention to the pistol in his hand. “How does that sound?”
Rafe looks from the pistol to Stuart, the pistol to me, the pistol to Critter, and I can tell he realizes he’s not exactly amongst friends.
“Sure, sure, here,” Rafe says as he walks the shotgun over and hands it to me. “I was just fucking with you.”
“Whatever,” I say. I rest the shotgun across my lap then look out the front window at the never-ending snowstorm. “We’re gonna need heat.”
“You’re gonna need a lot more than heat,” Critter says as he nods at my leg then looks over at Stuart. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”
“Shoulder,” Stuart says.
“I can fix that,” Critter says.
“I figured you could,” Stuart sighs. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Then it’s your turn,” Critter says to me, and points at Rafe. “Go find whatever you can. Bandages or old sheets. Alcohol would be good.”
“Gotta keep things sterile,” I say.
“Fuck that,” Critter smiles as he grabs onto Stuart’s wrist. “I just need a fuckin’ drink.”
He pulls and twists, and Stuart cries out then falls to his knees.
“Thanks,” he mutters, and sort of crawls his way to the couch blocking the front door. “I’ll be right over here if anyone needs me.”
“Move ass,” Critter snaps at Rafe. “You want to hang with the big boys, then you better listen, and do what I say when I say it.”
“When the fuck did you become my boss?” Rafe asks.
“The second you handed your shotgun away, dumbass,” Critter grins. “Because that was a stupid as fuck thing to do, and the stupid ain’t in charge around here.”
“Could have fooled me,” Rafe mumbles as he leaves the room. “All I fucking see is stupid.”
“That’s yer eyelids!” Critter calls after him.
He looks out the window at the snow, and I do the same.
Shelter is good, but we’ll need more than that really soon, or we’ll be dead in hours. The cold isn’t as bad in here as out in the storm, but it is still fucking bad. Really bad.
Chapter Four
So, what are three men and a teenage boy to do when there’s no heat, and you’re stuck in a snowstorm?
If your answer is “cuddle,” then I fucking hate you.
But, you’re right.
We have to cuddle.
Well, more like we restrain ourselves from killing each other while under a pile of moldy blankets. At least I’m on the outside so my leg wound doesn’t get bumped. This is both good and bad. Good for the non-bumping of the leg, bad for the Critter HOGGING ALL THE COVERS!
Fucking asshole.
Yet, it’s not like we have another choice. No power means no heat. We can’t use the small wood stove because we have zero idea if the chimney is clear or not. Last thing any of us want to happen is die during the zombie apocalypse because of motherfucking smoke inhalation. That’d just be the shittiest way to go out.
So ... we cuddle.
“Critter, I swear to god if you don’t stop rolling over and taking the blankets with, I’m going to gut you like a tauntaun and sleep in your split open carcass!” I shout.
“I ain’t got a goddamned clue what you just said to me, Short Pork,” Critter replies from across the cuddle pile. “But you are more than welcome to try and split me open. I’d love to see how that turns out for ya.”
“Will you two shut up,” Stuart says from next to me.
I draw the line at sleeping next to Rafe. Gotta have standards and shit.
“I’ll be quiet if Short Pork is quiet,” Critter says. “But I ain’t gonna let no one-armed jackass talk to me about no Star Wars horsey things without givin’ him a piece of my mind.”
“See! You do know what I’m talking about!” I snap. “You are such an asshole, Critter! Why the fuck do you have to constantly bust my balls? What the hell did I do to deserve that?”
“You blew up your subdivision,” Critter replies.
“My subdivision, Critter,” I growl. “Not yours.”
“It was mine too,” Stuart says.
“And are you always busting my balls?” I ask. “No.”
“Because if I busted your balls right now, they’d get all over me,” Stuart grumbles. “Stop spooning me.”
“I have to lay on my side or there’s too much pressure on my leg,” I respond. “Have a heart, dude.”
“You killed the President of the United States,” Critter continues.
“You hated that guy as much as I did!” I exclaim. “And I didn’t have a choice! He’d kidnapped Elsbeth and was going to kill Charlie!”
“You brought down the Consortium on us and ended up getting Asheville nuked,” Critter says.
“Dude! That is not on me! The Consortium was coming anyway!”
“So you say,” Critter says. “But you’re the only one that talked with that Thornberg lady. No way to know if you’re lying or not.”
“No way to know-?” I sputter. “Lying? Lying! Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Then the jerk begins to chuckle. It starts small and builds until Critter is laughing so hard that he pulls the blankets all the way over to his side.
“Dammit!” I shout, and painfully get to my feet.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Critter?”
“Lie down, Jace,” Stuart says. “He’s only fucking with you.”
“I know he’s fucking with me!”
“No, I mean he’s playing,” Stuart says. “Critter busts your balls because he thinks it’s fun. He laughs about it all the time when you’re not around.”
“He what?” I ask, stunned. “He’s just doing it for shits and giggles?”
“Ain’t much else to do in the apocalypse, Short Pork,” Critter says between chuckles.
“Stop calling me Short Pork!” I scream so loud my voice cracks. This, of course, makes Critter laugh even harder. “Fucking knock it off!”
“Will you old men be quiet?” Rafe mumbles. “You’re gonna bring the dead to the door.”
I shut up and turn to look at the couch-blocked front door. Yikes. I totally forgot about the Zs outside. Not that they can hear much with the snowstorm still raging, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry, and right now I’m being sorry.
“Fuck this,” I say. “I’m gonna go sleep upstairs with the corpses. You fuckers suck.”
“Ain’t no more blankets,” Critter says.
“I’ll figure out something,” I snap and stomp off.
Okay, I don’t exactly stomp so much as I limp with extreme prejudice. My point is made, either way.
I get upstairs and stumble around for a bit until I figure out that one of the bedroom closets will fit me just fine. It’s an interior closet, so all the walls are insulated by the rest of the house. I find some old, dusty towels and cover myself with those. It’s actually not too bad, really. I shut the door and the closet warms up pretty fast.
It takes me a long while to drift off to sleep because I’m so pissed at Critter, but after a while good ol’ sleepy time comes knocking and that sweet, merciful sleep takes me.
THE DREAMS COME IN fits.
Screaming, fire, vehicles crashing, bullets whizzing by, explosions. All of it. And Zs, plenty of Zs. They swarm about us, come at us like a tsunami, sweeping us away into their rotten world of the undead. Teeth gnash, claws rip, the smell overpowers.
So, my dreams are pretty much business as usual in the zombie apocalypse.
What isn’t business as usual is the shouting from downstairs.
Well, yeah, I guess people shouting is pretty normal in life nowadays, but the fact it’s Stuart and Critter shouting isn’t so normal. I listen closely, and can hear a few other men yelling, plus the very distinct sounds of pump-action shotguns being pumped and actioned. Critter keeps yelling, but Stuart quiets down. Then I hear the thud and Critter’s voice is cut off.
Motherfucker. Do I have to go save that old pain in the ass’s life now?
And where the fuck is that Rafe kid? I didn’t hear his voice in the chaos of shoutiness.
I slowly push open the closet door and there is the kid, his finger to his lips, his eyes wide with fear. He shakes his head slowly, and I get the idea that making noise is bad. Not that I intended to make any noise, but I nod at the kid, hoping he’ll chill out. He looks jumpier than shit.
We both huddle there next to a stripped single bed, and wait as the voices grow quieter and quieter. Then there’s the sound of a door slamming and boots stomping on the front porch. A lot of boots. My guess? Six, maybe seven guys. If they all have guns, then there’s not a fucking thing Rafe or I can do to stop them from taking Critter and Stuart.
Neither of us move. We wait. And wait. And wait. Then we hear the far off sounds of engines. But even as the engines slowly fade away, we still don’t move.
One of the things you learn in the apocalypse is that no one trusts a damn thing.
Which is why after waiting through a good ten minutes of silence, I am not surprised by the sound of boots on the stairs slowly making their way up to us. Whoever the guys with the shotguns are, they know how to play the game. They left one of their guys behind to see if maybe there are some stragglers. Which there are. We also happen to be unarmed stragglers, since all of the weapons were left below with Stuart and Critter.
Well, almost all of the weapons.
Rafe slips a seriously sharp looking knife from his boot while I pull out my collapsible baton. We look at each other and nod, and slowly get to our feet, each taking an opposite position by the bedroom door. He flattens himself against the wall and looks over at me, then down at the still collapsed baton. His eyes go wide, but I shake my head since the baton will make a very loud clunkety-click sound when I extend it, and it locks into place.
Grumbling a bit, Rafe holds his knife at the ready as the boot steps reach the second floor landing and start to make their way down the hall. They stop, and then there’s a loud crash as the man kicks in the door to the bedroom next to us. There’s even more crashing as—and I’m guessing here—he rushes into the room, and just goes hog wild on the furniture. He’s probably tossing the bed aside and shoving the dresser over.
Which is a good technique if you only have one room to search, but a shitty technique if you don’t want anyone in the other bedrooms to hear you. I should seriously write a fucking apocalypse manual on how not to be a dipshit. This guy could use the advice.
The rock star level room trashing stops, and the boot steps start up again as the guy moves out of that room and comes for ours. There’s a slight pause, and then our door comes flying open.
I pretty much miss everything that happens, because the door slams into my face and knocks me against the wall. I stagger a bit, but stay on my feet as I hear Rafe and the guy struggle with each other.
“Short Pork!” Rafe yells. “I could use some help!”
I rush from around the door and extend the baton just as the guy turns and sees me coming. He tries to whip his shotgun around, but Rafe has it gripped by the barrel and the stock with both hands, his knife lying on the bedroom floor at their feet. I raise the baton and start to bring it down, but the guy elbows Rafe in the face, and then yanks the shotgun free. I barely have time to dodge out of the way before the shotgun blast rips a huge hole in the door.
Tumbling out of the room and into the hallway, I scramble up onto my feet and sprint-limp to the stairs as the guy flies out of the bedroom and fires again. Old plaster and wood explode by my head as I get to the stairs and basically fall all the way down.
“Hey! Get back here!” the guy yells.
Seriously?
I do not get back there, and head straight for the front door. I rip it open and then freeze.
Zs. A holy metric shitload of Zs. There have to be a couple hundred of them. They are all knee to thigh deep in the fresh snow, which should lock them in place, but damn if they aren’t looking motivated by the sight of my pink, tasty flesh.
The storm is over and the sun blares down on the snow, making it almost impossible to see a damn, fucking thing without an instant migraine. I squint into the bright light and try to look for a path through the herd of Zs. They may be moving, but they aren’t even close to moving as fast as if they weren’t all half buried in snow. If I can spot even the slightest of gaps, then I can get through them and away from shotgun guy.
But the glare from the snow is too much, and the Zs keep shifting, stumbling, falling over in the snow.
The shotgun blast ends my idea of going through the herd, and I jump over the porch railing and land around the side of the yard as buckshot tears into the boards where I was just standing. I land in about six feet of nice, soft snow, and instantly start digging out of the drift and crawl my ass across the yard towards the back of the house.
More Zs.
The farmhouse is surrounded by them, and now that my eyes have semi-adjusted to the glare, I can see that my first estimate of a couple hundred is way off. We’re talking a good six or seven hundred of the fuckers. Probably more since I can’t really see the back of the herd.
Awesome.
“Hey! Get your ass back here, boy!” Shotgun Guy shouts just before firing again and again.
I do s
ome more diving and get behind the house, but not before some of that buckshot finds its way into my leg. Yes, the same leg that I wounded in the crash. The leg that hasn’t been hurting so much because of the adrenaline pumping through me and the little bit of sleep I did get. Yeah, now it is hurting like a mother fuck all over again.
And news flash! A Jace with a wounded leg moves in deep snow about as well as the Zs do! So it’s a slow race.
“Hey!” Shotgun Guy shouts. “Where the fuck ya think you’re going?”
Really? Does he expect me to listen? This guy is ten kinds of stupid, believe me.
Or is it believe you me? What the fuck does that even mean, anyway? Believe you me? I have never gotten that saying. I just say believe me. Believe you me is what some Gatsbyesque doofus would say.
“Why that’s a fine sailboat you have there, sport,” Gatsbyesque Doofus says. “That is sure to impress the dolls, believe you me!”
Did they say dolls back then? Or was it dames?
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Shotgun Guy asks from behind me as I try to limp/hop through the snow and around the back of the house. “Who are you talking to?”
I stop in my tracks and throw up my hand, turning around slowly.
“Was that out loud?” I ask.
“Yeah, it was,” Shotgun Guy says.
“Sorry about that,” I say, then glance at the house. “Uh, where’s my friend?”
“I clocked him good,” Shotgun Guy replies. “Knocked him cold. He’ll be out for a long while.”
“Okay,” I nod. “Well ... uh, what now? Are you going to shoot me?”
“Depends on you,” Shotgun Guy says. “You make a break for it again, and I will shoot you. Do as I say, and forget the funny business, and you might live.”
“Hey! Up here!”
Shotgun Guy whirls around and fires behind him. A couple of Zs get torn apart, but that’s it.
“No, you stupid fuck, up here! Look up!”
I look up even though I don’t normally answer to the name of “stupid fuck,” and see Rafe leaning out of a second story window, knife in hand. Shotgun Guy whirls back at me, and I flatten myself into the snow as he fires again. What the fuck is wrong with this guy? Does he not understand what up means?