Felt? The question echoed along the inside of his skull. This first coherent thought popped through, like the tiniest crack in a water dam. A stream of thoughts waited, poised to follow.
How do I feel? He felt the courage in his mind building as the thought dripped through.
He licked his dry lips...lips? They tasted coppery, like he was sucking on a dirty penny. He reached up slowly to touch them, reaffirming their presence. Yeah, they were there all right.
He turned and took in the scene. The truck remained on its side behind him, dried chunks of flesh and splashes of color marring the broken chrome grill. His mouth contorted into a letter ‘O’ with a dawning reality.
Did I drive this truck? He reached up and rubbed the top of his head. He felt the blood rushing to it now and it had started throbbing. He stifled a yawn and felt his jaw pop.
"Damn it,” he spat aloud.
The sound of his own voice surprised him. He had to be honest with himself. He had not heard a human voice, not even his own, for who knows how long.
But, how did I get here then, if I didn't drive?
He peered down at his clothes. The bottom hem of his pants appeared to have been trodden on for so long, that much of the fabric was missing. Long jagged tears ran upward, halfway past his leg. They almost could have passed for shorts if the ends were cut-off even just below his kneecaps.
What did I do? Get hit with gamma rays and become the Incredible Hulk?
He steadied himself against the side of the truck and pulled up his foot to get a better view of their bottoms. He found himself to be shoeless. At least an inch of hard dead calloused skin had built up on the outside of his heel and insole.
Suddenly the hunger pains attacked his stomach again with such a force that he began walking the desolate highway without a glance back. There was a faint smell in the breeze and it wafted towards him like a soft lover’s caress. It instantly made him forget the need for shoes or better clothing. Gesturing for him to come hither, and follow he did.
He tromped after that sweet taste in the air, not realizing his change in color. No longer quite the completely albino colored fellow, his cheeks and lips held only the palest shade of red. A tinge of heat now graced his thinly layered flesh.
(April 15, 2015)
The tattoo on the back of her neck spelled “Lady”, which clearly she was not. It was a blatant acting out against her parents who nicknamed her. Their logic lay geared toward inspiring her to be so. It epically failed. It was the first of many acting-outs she visited upon her parents. The ROTC plan meant to smooth out all of her rough edges, but only served to sharpen them. It made her stronger, true. Defiantly however, her attitude remained.
Charlie walked into the break-room. The tables lay turned over. The fronts of the drink machines were shattered and emptied. All that remained of organized civilization here were a sink and a full-length viewing mirror. She ran the water and gave herself what her mother once affectionately referred to it as a ‘whore’s bath’.
She pulled off her garments and then preceded the wipe herself clean with the paper towels she had found under the sink. She stopped and ran her fingers up the sides of her back. The texture of her tattoos felt smooth against her fingertips. She turned to view it in the mirror.
Black wings spread half-open to traverse the whole of her back. The only colors in her ink were the little red droplets trickling from the furthermost ends of her wing’s tips.
A low humming, gasping sound came from outside the break room. She ignored it. She raised her eyes back to their own reflection.
“Well, there is no one to say who I will be now, huh?”
A single tear bungeed down from her eye. She caught it in her hand and slammed it against the sink.
“NO. Not now. We’ve got work to do, Lady.” She dressed herself back into her black and pink sports bra and a green muscle tee.
Then, she looked down over to her equipment.
She checked her weapons; each of them carried a rouge lipstick mark around each handle, around each grip. Finding them not smeared or removed, she took stock. She removed the lipstick marks one at a time, and began strapping various throwing knives on her body. She did not like sleeping without her weapons. When she felt she had to, she marked the ones she did not keep on her person to show any tampering.
Two were placed in each boot and several around her belt.
A couple of tiny ones she quickly tucked into her bra. She nicknamed these ‘Dinky one and Dinky two.’
Two sharpened machetes sheathed at each hip.
Two holsters slapped against the fronts of both thighs, one for each of her Desert Eagles.
A samurai sword that was a display model and of course stolen. Sharpened and adopted for use into real physical service.
Lastly, a backpack for all her ammo and any spare food she could find.
The gasp swallowed into a choking cough and then settled back into a gasp. Charlie walked around the corner opening of the break room and looked to the floor. About six feet away laid the writhing body of a butcher. Probably from this location, she surmised. He was still wearing his uniform, soaked in blood, and without his apron. Charlie was convinced the blood was human. She could picture his final day before becoming one of the teeming undead. He probably began feeling sick that one morning. It was not something that even registered as a good enough reason to call out. People get sick and go to work anyway all the time. The pressure from bosses to call out is everywhere. Yes. This man did not dare to not show up for work.
Charlie imagined he was in the middle of prepping his equipment. The nauseating pains built up to a crescendo and off to the bathroom he went to deal with it. That is where he probably died, only to awake again with the hunger of flesh in his eyes. The patrons and employees that remained never stood a chance. This man was burly. It was obvious he had the girth to overpower, and perhaps even outrun anything still roaming the store. Well, everyone except Charlie.
Her eyes met the butcher’s eyes. They were wide and ready, almost consuming in all directions. She was certain, that if they could, they would jump right out of their own sockets to get at her.
She knelt beside the creature and observed his predicament. An eight-inch KA-Bar protruded from his throat, pinning him straight to the wooden pallet on which he was lying.
Like a pushpin to a poster.
She slowly stretched out her grimace into a cold smile. She looked into his eyes one last time. “Your kind killed my parents. I may have hated them, but they were still mine. And no one touches what’s mine.”
She grabbed the KA-Bar and ripped it the rest of the way through the zombie's throat, spraying blood all over her knees and legs. She stood up, not content, and kicked the rest of the butcher’s head off. She stopped and looked down at herself.
“Great, now I’m gonna need more than just a whore’s bath,” she said and headed back to the bathroom.
***
She walked briskly out of the commissary, taking time to survey her surroundings in all directions, even up. If there had been any casual observers left, they would have thought her insane with phobias, stricken with some fear of invisible things floating in the air that only she could see. She was certain that she had cleared out the majority of the base. Ninety percent of the zombies have moved on as most of the personnel had been deployed to battle infestations elsewhere.
A small platoon that had returned from Afghanistan, were already beginning to feel the fevers and the body aches of the virus, even before setting up the flight that brought them back. Charlie vaguely remembered her father mentioning a group coming back sick, but didn’t give it much thought at the time. She remained entangled in her own personal schedule. She was oblivious to what was going on around her. She failed to read the papers when the outbreak started, ignored the news on the TV, and disbelieved the flow of information that was pouring out all over the internet.
She avoided her parents, frequently ducking out to attend Kenpo
Karate classes and romps at the shooting range. The younger marines thought she was hot, and to get in her good graces, offered up their weapons and ammo to her willingly. Easily. She never had to walk in with a gun or ammo box and they all knew her by name. She was not your typical girl.
She stopped in the middle of an empty parking lot and closed her eyes. This base used to be her small personal city, her sanctuary, and now that city was empty.
She vaguely pieced together the fragments of her parents’ last days. She had been ignoring them mostly. They had cancelled her trip to a mixed-martial arts tournament. She had first asked her father to buy the tickets. As he had done so many times before, he shut her down. What was left was the road that had always remained. She went behind her daddy’s back and had her mom sign off on it. Only this time he was ahead of her game and on to her. He ripped the tickets up right in front of her. Shut up in her room, she swore she would never speak to them again.
Him, for not letting her go.
Her, for not playing her part.
In her fury, she blacked out the whole room. She stole a piece of plywood from the garage. It was a leftover from an old science fair project. A triangle had been cut off the corner, but she did not care. She did not even bother trimming off the excess. This would be her last act of defiance she bestowed upon them. She threw the plywood up there haphazardly and hammered it down. She locked the door, slumped into the corner and listened to her mp3 player for hours.
Occasionally, she would pry out one of her ear buds and catch her parents going at it. They were like this all too often. She had programmed herself to tune out most of it. She hated the fact that they would argue back and forth over her. She hated the fact that she never had her say. Now, she hated herself that she did not even get the chance to say goodbye.
Hours ticked by. The strain of the darkness and the onslaught of boredom forced her to jerk both of her ear buds at once. Instantly she regretted it; her ears popped and began to ring painfully. She rubbed her ears and the ringing subsided. Leaning in, she could make out her father talking in a muted voice through the door. She guesstimated that they were in the kitchen and her father was on the phone. She daydreamed that he was calling in a favor and had finally decided to send her to some stuck-up private girl school.
Yeah, very likely, Charlie had thought to herself. I will barricade this room up so tight, they will have to send the S.W.A.T. to come get me out.
Their tones were different, she realized. Something did not sound right. The pacing was much dissimilar. She leaned in ever so closer to the door. Gone were the arguments and sharp insults. It almost sounded like the calm before a tornado strikes and rends whole communities apart. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck prick up, and a chill up and down her arms. She knew that was not possible. She had packed all the vents with T-shirts and her last wet towel under the door. She did not want them to have the satisfaction of hearing her bustling about in her own room.
She was dead to them.
“Fuck ‘em.”
She strained to listen, but there were no raised voices. She vaguely made out the concern in her father’s voice, if not any of his words. A sharp beep and the slamming of the phone into its cradle ended the call. She heard quick footfalls running throughout the house. The noises became indistinct. Charlie let out her air.
Who knows what they are up to, she thought.
She reached up to place her ear buds back in to her ear. That was all the attention they would be getting from her tonight. She settled back into her corner and reached down to push ‘play’.
Then she heard her mother’s blood curdling scream.
Charlie shook her head and blinked away her reverie. She had been walking for miles she realized, distracted by the nightmare replaying repeatedly in her head. She had chosen to walk since she was in no particular hurry to get anywhere. Moreover, most of the vehicles she had crossed paths with had been vandalized, or crashed in some way, rendering them useless. She took out a bottle of lukewarm water out of her insulated pack, and started munching on a pack of cheese crackers.
“What the fuck is that?” she said aloud to herself. A humming noise snuck in from ahead of her. She could scarcely remember any sounds from anything on her walk here so far, so the noise genuinely caught her off guard.
Is that a…motorcycle?
She stood her ground and reached for her machete at her left hip and her Desert Eagle at her right. Her hands at the ready, she waited a few moments. The sound never rose in volume, like a car coming from a little ways ahead. It stayed steady, like a pulse. She waited, expecting a bike to come puttering along. Yet the noise never increased like the approach of an oncoming vehicle would make. Yet, its wash still rebounded off the trees into her ears.
Charlie shook her head.
What the hell was I thinking? Zombies don’t ride motorcycles.
Shaking her head at the silly thought, I’m sure it will present itself when I get close enough. Just need to stay on my guard. With that she stepped forward and resumed her stride into the next town.
(April 18, 2015)
Cross
Christian ‘Cross’ Davidson awoke from his drunken slumber to find himself strewn across a couch with a beautiful girl lying beside him. He yawned, licked his lips, and noticed a metallic taste lingering in the air. Even in his inebriated state, he knew something was seriously wrong. Trying to shake the drunkenness away, Cross stood up from the couch and leaned over the girl next to him to check to see if she was still breathing. He felt his heart seize as the girls eyes and mouth both shot open.
The color had gone from her once bronzed skin leaving it pasty and gray. Her lips were cracked badly. As she opened her mouth, new splits began to form, ruining the lips that just a few hours before were attached to him. Her eyes were no longer the bright blue he remembered but now resembled blood stained shattered glass with a black hole for a center. A gut wrenching scream escaped as her lips parted hard back over her teeth; her tiny hands sprang upward and latched onto his collar. She jerked down hard and brought them face to face. Those lips that had tasted his flesh seemed ravenous for it in a new way.
***
Rhyce
Jolting up right out of his sleep as the scream finally reached his ears, Rhyce Evans rubbed at his eyes. With his eyes focusing on his surroundings, he carefully maneuvered around the garbage that lay at his feet, only to trip on the decapitated head of one of his fellow teammates and come face to face with a pool of gelatinous blood.
“What the fuck!”
He jerked back onto his knees and attempted to wipe the blood away from his hands. Failing he switched to rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with the ball of his wrist. The scene woke him up faster than any energy drink had ever done. He pulled himself up onto his shaky legs and screamed out in frustration.
“CROSS!!! Where the hell are you? And what the fuck is going on man?”
Thump….Thump….Thump……
Running from the bedroom in search of the noise, he finally came across his friend standing in the living room. A bloody bat in his hand, staring down at the girl that was just last night trying to seduce them both.
“She wasn’t breathing and then….then Jesus…she fucking tried to bite me...” Cross screams out as he turns and faces the only other person that seemed to survive the night along with him.
A few seconds passed and the boys finally took a glance around the old condemned house. The house the citizens of Junction City believed to be haunted. It was the only place where the local cops didn’t want to look for under-age drinking. Beer cans and red plastic cups littered the floor by the once makeshift ‘bar table.’ It laid broken on its side smeared in blood and what was left of last night’s pizza.
Without another word spoken between the two of them, they quickly grabbed their things and headed towards the open door. Stepping outside, reality crashed back down and they realized two things. First was who would have been with them last night and the
second was that the same bloodbath they just left had spilled into the streets.
(Flashback 48 hours)
“Are you guys sure you don’t want to come Friday night?” asked Rhyce.
Being the twins that they are, they answered simultaneously “Yep.” Their eyes never wavering from the scenes playing out on a pair of plasma TV’s in the center of the room.
Looking around, Rhyce and Cross took note of what was going on in the ‘dungeon’ as Mr. and Mrs. Richards liked to call it. Full thirty-two ounce energy drink cans covered the entire surface of the coffee table in the center of the room. Empty pizza boxes and Pringles cans were for once not all over the floor but stacked in a corner in a make shift fort; which was most likely done by the resident trash artist of the group, Tren. Two boys around eighteen years of age were perched on the edge of their own chairs in the center of the room. Each boy was facing his own TV, which was back to back with the other. Both had on identical Turtle Beach gaming headsets that would drown out all possible sounds from their parents upstairs and the brand new state of the art wireless game controllers in their hands. Not once in the fifteen minutes since their friends had entered the basement did their eyes leave the screens. Their concentration never once broke.
“Halo Binge,” Cross and Rhyce recited together while shaking their heads. “My God, you two are slobs and are going to die virgins if you don’t ever clean up and get out once in a while.” Cross said quickly before the laughter began between the four of them.
“Whatever man, you know we ain’t virgins anymore,” Callen fired back at his friend.
“When we said you guys needed hobbies, we didn’t mean another video game. Anyways guys we’re outta here. We still on for Sunday right?” With a simple nod from the twins, the other two left but not before asking if they were to lock the door again behind them. Their famous yep response was present yet again, but with a popping of the ‘p’ at the end.
Zombies Don't Ride Motorcycles Page 2