“Seems like that’s the place to go, Lady. It’s a big city. Maybe there could be survivors there.” She patted the dash again. It was good to have something to talk to other than her. “So, Wichita it is.” She pressed down on the accelerator and Lady pitched up in response. The muscle car accelerated through the turns smoothly and raced on at Charlie’s slightest nudge. Two left turns later, she pulled out onto Highway 77 and really opened her up. All eight cylinders roared like lions under the hood, swiftly bringing her up to eighty miles an hour. Charlie fell in love with the car straight away. Even though her birthday had passed by a couple days, she felt like this was a great present to herself. Her parents would have never let her set foot in such a beautiful beast. She smiled at that thought. They were probably shaking their fists right now at me, wherever they are . . .
There were no signs of walkers on any of these roads. She had a picture in her head of zombies haunting underpasses, huddled around fiery trashcans, waiting for some unassuming passerby to stop by and check on them. She shook the image out of her head and tested the radio. She managed to find the one rock station that she had listened to while she was still on base. It had been playing the same 30 or so songs over and over in rotation for weeks. She had tried calling the station once, shortly after the disease hit and everyone in the base was gone. It was a desperate shot at reaching out to someone, anyone who might be left alive. The phone line rang and rang; usually it was just the opposite. Anybody would have been hard pressed to call in and be their ninth caller for the contests they promoted. Charlie had won tickets once. It was to a Motley Crüe concert. It was just one more thing her parents would not allow her to attend. She was still fuming over it. Now there would be no more concert tickets to win here on planet Earth ever again.
The songs still played again in rotation. She had written all of their titles down just to be sure, in case someone mixed the songs up again, and she would know instantly if somebody was alive there. She also knew when to shut the radio off, and then on again when one of the songs she liked popped up. She was a huge Black Veil Brides fan, and there were two of their songs in the rotation. Other stations replayed the ominous warnings that only a scant few heard: the breaking-in tones of a catastrophic warning, the robotic informing voice that told everyone explicitly to stay put in their homes and lock everything down, to board up all low-lying large windows, or sliding glass doors. In addition, and most unpropitious, everyone was to arm themselves and to shoot all intruders on sight.
She turned the radio down low enough to provide a distraction, but not high enough for her to want to sing along. She reached into her pack she had placed in the passenger seat and pulled out a honey bun to feed to her sweet tooth.
The hours passed dolefully, and Charlie forced herself to shut off the radio. She had started humming a song not in rotation when she pulled into Wichita. The sight of the overpass caused her to pump the brakes on her Lady T-Bird to an abrupt halt.
It stood decimated. She jumped out of the car and pulled out her binoculars to eye the ruins. The overpass was still over a block away, but she could make out a few details. A 747 commercial airliner had smashed into it and completely reduced it. She could see bleached bones scattered all of over the impact area, picked clean. It was obvious that after it all went up in flames, the zombies served themselves up a hot meal.
Charlie imagined it was probably like this in many more places across the country. Her imagination got the best of her and she pictured this place on some crazy shuttle tour. The gore of course cleaned up but the irreparable damage to the overpass remained. She visualized it complete with one of those historical landmark signs demarcating the tragedy, summarizing the event’’s magnitude with a short blasé quote. However, it made her wonder and she had to ask herself.
How many planes made it up into the air on Z-Day when the virus struck?
How long did it take them to realize what was going on?
How many planes were downed before they figured it out?
They probably thought it was another terrorist attack. With all of the precautions that had been set in place in all of the airports, she doubted it was likely. Then again, what did she know? She hadn’t watched the news for weeks prior to the outbreak.
Charlie stopped to think about the moment. How simple it might of all started. Some “Patient-Zero” sick with swine flu drugging himself up to make himself feel better. The virus and the drugs combine to form some out of uncontainable Zombie Flu. Surely, it was plausible. More likely, it was a bit more complicated than that. In addition, why was she not sick? Are there others who are immune? Maybe she was not so immune after all. Perhaps a scratch or bite would do the trick. She would probably never know the truth, of course until it was too late. Still, her mind tried to wrap around it.
Let’s say he was a drug addict. A sick, contagious drug addict. The addict shakes hands with his dealer. The dealer pushes his wares into the hands of his fastest runner. His runner fists pumps the first of many seventh graders on several playgrounds or under the bleachers. The seventh grader high-fives all of his friends and then kisses and hugs his parents when he is off to dreamland. The parents give one last stroke of the cheek to their new baby girl breathing slow and easy in her childproof crib. And let’s just say that hand washing is completely ineffective. Yeah, that is probably how it started.
(May 12, 2015)
Callen slumped back into the passenger seat of the truck. He slapped back his dirty brown locks and flipped them back over his forehead in exhausted fashion. His hair felt greasy and gritty and especially so in the heat of the truck’s cockpit. He jimmied the broken latch on the glove compartment and let it drop easy, not wanting to damage the last piece of working technology he had at his disposal. He removed the IPad from its nest among a small pile of parking tickets and water bills and propped it up sideways on the open door. He ran his fingers from the charger already plugged in to the cigarette lighter jack to the other end and plugged his IPad in. It was not any good for any Wi-Fi, at least not in this town, but it made a killer word processor, especially when he had his trusty-dusty wireless keyboard across his lap.
He was the first one back to the truck, as always. He wanted to hurry and get the events of the past couple hours, at least the bones of it, into his ongoing word processing file he had been compiling since day three of the zombie plague. He would better organize the thoughts he had typed later on, when they had finally decided to pack it in for the day. He grimaced at the keyboard. It was past time to take the time to clean it. The A, S, and M keys tended to stick on him while he was typing. Okay, not so trusty. It was the unfortunate victim of more than one Mountain Dew attack. A floorboard of empty plastic bottles and crushed cans was the proof of that. He kicked his feet under them. It reminded him of being in a kiddie ball pit. Mental note to chuck his addiction out the window when we leave. He needed to rush to get the major details down before the others came back from scavenging the place.
He tapped the icon for his word processor app. It loaded and the blinking cursor stood by patiently at the end of the previous entry: Bricked Church Zombie Warfare – Inside and Outside Building. He scrolled back to a previous entry: Restaurants. He started to type.
‘In the event of single zombie combat, lobby chairs can be used to ram, force down, and trap your undead adversary, pinning it to the floor. Sit down on chair backwards to maintain your trap, securing the zombie. Lean over front and dispatch with weapon of choice. Again, remember the rules, live rounds to the head should only be used when you are absolutely sure that you will not attract the attention of other walkers. Otherwise, you should use an edged weapon to end it. Single brain injuries can still be survivable, no less than two strikes through the brain is advisable, time permitting.’
Callen let out all his air. Documenting the Junction City Boys’ exploits was wrong, practically psychopathic. He could not help feel a little twisted sense of satisfaction after they dispatched a walker. Yes, every time they dispatched a
walker. He popped out the SD card out of his digital camera, and inserted it into the IPad. In moments, he had the picture he had taken inside the fast food restaurant, and had an instant illustration placed right after this newest entry. Hitting save, he realized, he could be doing this forever. There could be countless ways to finish off their undead foes. With each stop, the boys were getting more creative, using their surroundings against their non-breathing enemy. They made their very environment into a weapon that they can wield against their dark foes. Each day they stole back made them more confident zombie slayers.
Of course, they had been very careful. This was a team sport, and the losing team loses, well, loses whatever the zombies can get their damned rotting teeth a hold on. Fortune had favored the foolish so far. And what crazy fools! Somehow, these jesters managed to find ways to make it work. Picking through the stragglers had been good practice, not meeting more than four or five to a group. Callen shuddered at the thought when their odds would be much more uneven. From time to time he worried how far the group’s creativity could be stretched before it snapped and failed them entirely.
The glass door to the restaurant skidded open and the boys piled out, shaking Callen out of his reverie. Tren, the dark haired one, pulled out a pack of Marlboro Menthols, and popped one to his lips, leaving his other hand to proffer a cigarette to each of his companions. Both the other boys pulled a cigarette out, one at a time delicately, as if drawing straws. These were stale, of course. Perhaps only a smoking connoisseur would know the difference between a fresh one and a stale one. Nevertheless, they leaned against the bricks and proceeded to light up.
So, I got five minutes.
Callen never brought it up with them, but he detested smoking. Well, he did not hate smoking per se, but the smoke itself. When he was a child, he had snuck his mother’s pack of cigarettes when she was sleeping, and hid in the closet trying to be like mommy and daddy. His mom awoke from the chirping noises coming from her closet. The scraping of the lighter wheel against flint. Slapped hands would not be the end all of his punishment. His father was told of this exploit and blew up in a rage. Screaming his hypocritical reply, he snatched his own pack of cigarettes and slid out five out into his palm. Cross still remembered his father’s words.
“So you wanna smoke, huh? Ya wanna be like Daddy? Well, here then!”
Callen imagined how he must have looked. Cigarettes sticking out of his mouth, sweeping in every direction like Japanese fan. His father lit them one by one. If one dropped out, or was spit out, he was quick to put it back and give his son a stern look.
“Well? Go ahead son . . . you wanted to smoke didn’t ya?”
He remembered the puking. He retched for nearly an hour. Everything tasted like a forest fire for the rest of that night. He even woke the next morning, still not able to rid that horrible flavor out of his mouth. In the years that followed, peer pressure couldn’t hold a burning candle to that memory.
He reread the new entry in a British accent, trying to entertain himself and bring it back to the present. The memory still poked hard at his gag reflex, and he fought the rising bile. He giggled a bit out loud, and then read it in a woman’s voice, although he was not sure if there was another woman left alive on the Earth able to read it. I must be going crazy, he thought. But that’s O.K. I can probably use a little crazy about now. How else can I possibly deal with this? He massaged his face down from his forehead to his eyes made circles with his fingers.
And here they come already. I guess crazy burns time away faster than sane. Eh?
Tren walked over to the truck and tapped on the glass. Callen grunted, and reached over into the back seat. A bulky sized cardboard box lay just out of reach and forced him to unbuckle again. He reached in and pulled out a neatly folded blue t-shirt, rolled the window down and passed it into his twin’s waiting hands. Tren nodded his thanks from behind his still lit cigarette. He pulled off his old t-shirt. Callen did not even have to look to know it was already covered in blood. He was used to this timetable of events now. Track. Destroy. Change bloody clothes. Document. It started as just venting vengeance for the death of all of their family. And their friends. In the end, it ultimately became much more.
As they went, they started attracting attention. The noisy firearms and the clumsy way they went about dispatching the walkers brought even more in like moths to a flame. It almost did not even have to be discussed. They knew they were only safest when they were taking them out. One zombie dead was one less they had to worry about. And in silent democratic fashion, they all vowed not to stop until the only walkers left on the planet were the ones whose hearts were beating.
The twins took their turns swapping out new clothes. It was a miracle they had not gotten any blood or zombie-flesh any on their face or arms this time. Their killing methods tended to be on the experimental side. Drowning in water, for any length of time did not appear to have any lasting effects. Drowning in 350 degree vegetable oil however did. Blunt force trauma only seems to daze and slow them down a bit. Rounds or sharp items through the skull unfortunately, predictably, offered the more permanent solution for curing the undead. The bloody method, almost invariably, always won out in the end. But that did not mean the boys did not like their experimentation.
And thus the Junction City Boys Guide to Killing Zombies was born. The name echoed through Callen’s head. Hmm. Kinda catchy.
“So, the chair thing is new.” Callen began and he scrolled back to the top of the manuscript, adding the new title in a crisp flamboyant font.
Tren smiled. “I remembered a bully did that once to Jason Hyman in the sixth grade. Man that was so classic.” He threw his head back to chuckle, but cut it short. Stifling it made his face hurt. Got to watch the noise level.
Callen smirked back and shook his head.
“Ok. Roll-call. Cross.”
“Double boiler pot heavy across the head. Broken neck. ”
Callen typed it in. “New blunt weapon entry: 5 points to Cross. Rhyce?”
Rhyce took a deep breath. “I got two. Dunked one head first in a French fry vat and held him under.”
Callen interrupted. “You had help with that one. I held his left leg up while you held his right. So, no points for you.”
“Or you”, Rhyce shot back.
“Fine. Or me. And the second?”
“Maneuvered one into the cash safe in the office. Slammed its head in the safe door three times.”
“Overkill?”
“It still tried to bite me after the second time. So the third time was necessary.”
“You’re gonna need new shoes.”
Rhyce looked down at his Chuck Taylor s.
“Dammit,” he whispered.
Cross shook his head and giggled. “I guess we can inspect the next Foot Locker we come across.”
“Yeah. This is never gonna come out.” He lifted his foot and inspected it.
“Tren. You’re up.”
“Do we really have to keep doing this?”
Callen cocked his eyes back into Tren’s, hard and sharp. “Yes. We need to be ready for anything. And this is how we are gonna be able to make that happen. Someday, if we can get this info out there is might also save somebody’s life. You know, give ‘em hope. A way out of whatever nightmare they are in. The same one we are in now.”
“I know . . . I know. Even without a weapon, you are never defenseless,” he mocked. “Blah, blah, blah. You just make sure you don’t forget how to get your hands dirty. Stop worrying so much about this damn file you are writing, and pitch in a little more, okay?”
“I’ve got no problem doing that. I want to take as many of them out as I can, just like you. Trust me. I’ll pull my own weight.” Callen said. “Besides, what else better do I got to do.” He held his hand up to Tren. He did not want to make this into a full blown argument, especially when other walkers could be nearby.
Tren looked at the hand for a second, and then all the drama cleared away from his fa
ce. He slapped it and took it into his own and shook it fiercely.
“All right brother. Where to now?”
“Let’s take a small station break for lunch and refuel. I am starving.”
“Yeah, me too.” Callen slipped his IPad back into its cover.
The SUV dipped as they all clambered into their seats at the same time. All but one closed their doors with a quiet telltale snap. Thump!
“Rhyce!” The other three whispered sharply.
Rhyce grimaced and sunk down into his seat.
“I just wanna slap you in the back of the head now,” said Tren.
Before he could get his chance, the whole SUV was instantly rocked hard by a collision into Callen’s passenger door.
“What the he-,” he blurted. The whole window vibrated hard as something began throwing itself relentlessly at the door. This second time it struck, its face exploded into view, slapping it eye and cheek against the glass. It slid in drunken semi-circles, making caked bloody swirls of umber red across it. Callen quickly covered his mouth and bit into his own hand to stop himself from screaming. He started to hyperventilate and leaned over harder until he was almost in the same seat as Tren.
The monster’s cheek had deteriorated. Skin was shredded and looked like stretched out chewing gum, barely keeping the creatures jaw in place. Its face was hollow, inflamed and distended, and through the cavity they could see straight down the walker’s ravenous throat. It didn’t speak but its eyes voiced a language they could all understand.
I found you! I found you! And now I get to eat you!
The boys in the back seat recovered and punched Callen in his shoulder, twice in succession. “Two for flinching!” They chanted in chorus. The zombie fell sideways and righted itself in front of Callen’s door, leaving bits of face and fluid across both windows in a broad painter’s stroke.
Tren poised his eyebrow and twisted his lips up to fire his question. “Stutter door?” Callen let out a deep breath and nodded acquiescence. “Stutter door it is.” He leaned in with his foot braced against the door, simultaneously grabbing a hold of the door latch. The zombie’s hands had its fingertips worn away, showing bleached white bone, splintered into jagged edges. It dragged them across the glass, like nails across a chalkboard, or the toothed edges of a stripped windshield wiper. Metal against glass sounded much the same as raw bone against glass. Callen cringed his eye up, overly sensitive to it. He raced to slap his hands against his ears and buried his eyes into his forearms, screwing them all shut against the sound.
Zombies Don't Ride Motorcycles Page 8