by Jack Stewart
I did notice that there was someone at the access control station. At least he had been a someone before he had taken the shotgun tightly clenched in his now dead hands and blown his own head off. I could see that he had multiple bites on his arms and figured he must have checked himself out before turning into one of the eternal dead. Smart move.
I walked inside the access control station and carefully crept towards the dead man. I wrapped my hands around the barrel of the shotgun and gave it a good pull. The dead guy managed to hold on to his last worldly possession and all I managed to do was point the business end of the shotgun directly at my face with the dead guy’s finger wrapped around the trigger. Yikes.
I moved the barrel away from my face and pulled the dead man’s finger off of the trigger. The gun came loose and the body slide gracelessly out of the chair spilling the last of his brains onto the floor. I successfully backed out of the room without puking and when I had reached an area with more light coming in, looked at my new toy.
I will be the first to tell you that I did not know shit about guns, shotguns, or any other type of things with the word “gun” in them including potato gun, pumpkin gun, rubber band gun, Gundam, Shogun, Götterdämmerung (which has all the letters of ‘gun’ in it smart ass), or Salmangundi. So there’s that.
I did know however that the red button on the side was the safety, which was off. I pushed it in so that I did not inadvertently end my young life as I inspected the evil looking machine. I knew what the pump did so I pumped that fucker like I knew what I was doing. A spent shell ejected out of the side like a Mexican Jumping Bean. I picked the shell up then carefully slid the ejection plate to one side and saw a nice shiny red, live shell parked in the chamber and ready for action. Yee haw!
I looked around the room I was in and saw that the floor was scattered with many, many shells, as though someone had knocked a box of the things over as, say the dead poured in from the front. I grabbed an abandoned shoulder bag from one of the chairs and quickly gathered up all the shells I could see while watching in every direction at once for the inevitable dead to try to jump me when I wasn’t looking. Satisfied that I had all the shells from the floor, I stood up, slung the bag of shells over my shoulder, and carefully, carefully, took off the shotgun’s safety. Ready for action!
I wandered around the station for a good bit until I found a sign that said Armory. Yes! They would have lots of goodies down there. Grenades, rocket launchers, lasers, fucking atomic bombs, you name it. I opened the door and looked at the steps that descended way down into the darkness below. At the base of the stairs just beyond the weak light of the emergency exit sign, I could see a vaguely human form move slowly back and forth. I felt my heart leap up into my throat and begin to trip hammer away.
No. Fucking. Way.
Not for all the toys in the world was I going to go down into the subterranean maze of darkness and death. Not today. Not tomorrow either and certainly not next week. I slowly closed the door and let my heart slow back down out of cardiac arrest territory and decided I had had enough of fun and games in the police station. I wanted to be out of there and out of there now.
I made my way back towards the lobby and deep into the fire system’s rain shower then froze. I assumed I would see some dead folks while I was in here and I was right! What I didn’t assume is that it would be a sprinter. And I hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet.
I could tell this one wasn’t just a shuffler by the way he weaved back and forth, his head twisting this way and that looking to lock on to me as he stood in the doorway between me and freedom. No sneaking around it then. The water spraying down between it and me must have confused it or shielded me from it because I’d never seen a sprinter just rock back and forth like a dog sniffing for a sausage.
And by sausage, I mean me. I’m the Sausage! I thought crazily as I tried hard not to laugh.
Sausage.
I was still a good ten feet away and didn’t think I could kill it with the shotgun from this distance, so I crept forward stopping each time the thing growled and looked in my direction. He knew I was there, he just didn’t know where exactly.
Just a few more feet and I’d let him have it. And that, my friend, is when a big, meaty dead hand fell on my shoulder. I twisted around so quickly I nearly dislocated my neck. The hand belonged to a good old dead guy who had snuck the fuck up on me. I stepped back away from him and gave him a solid kick to the chest.
He fell back and grunted, clearly offended by my boot and yelled, “Uuuuhhhh nummmmm!” which is zombie for “food here!”
The sprinter snapped onto our little dance quick as a snake and screamed out in rage. I twisted back around just as the thing broke through the wall of water, raised up my shotgun, and let him have it square in the face.
Boom!
Did I tell you that I did not know a single thing about shotguns or any other gun? Well the butt of that shotgun jumped up and slapped me in the face like a pissed off pimp, so hard in fact that I stumbled back and tripped over the dead guy landing square in his lap. He let out a meaty burp as I planted my elbow in his gut. I tell you I froze right up with a sprinter racing towards me and my ass planted in some dead guy’s lap. My first, and now most likely last lap dance! I knew it was over, the sprinter knew it was over, and the dead guy beneath me knew it was over.
Then, expecting any second to feel the first bite…nothing. I opened my eyes and saw the sprinter fall in a heap minus his head, then I rolled off the dead guy to see that my axe had cleaved his skull in two when I fell on him. Yes, somewhere Darwin must be laughing. I jumped to my feet, grabbed my shotgun, and boogied back out onto the street.
I could see the way I had come from yesterday before the Hollisters ran me down. Lots of dead but not so many as there were after me before. I looked back towards the hotel. Again, more dead moving about aimlessly. Behind me the police station, in front of me even more dead. More, more, more! How do you like it? How do you like it? Andrea True Connection, anyone? Anyone?
Well, I didn’t like it.
I looked west and spotted a sign: Beach Access. Two Miles. The beach, of course! I could get there where no dead could sneak up on me, park my ass on the warm sand, and think a bit. I hitched up my pack, shouldered my shotgun, and headed west.
ɸ
Like almost all other public places, the beaches had been closed when the first outbreak hit the streets. The gates that closed off the access had all sorts of official signs on them telling people to go home, avoid public places, and that the beach was closed until further notice. Yay! So, much to my delight, the beach was nearly empty as I climbed over the fence and plopped down into the sand. Someone far off to the north was standing near the water. Maybe they were alive maybe they were dead. I couldn’t tell and they were too far away to matter either way. To the south, not a single soul alive or dead. I had this little stretch of land all to myself. I walked to the first picnic bench and sat down letting the cool breeze dry the sweat off of me and listening to the waves crash. I couldn’t stay here forever, but I could rest here for a bit before figuring out what to do next.
So after a long while of listening to the waves crash onto the sand and keeping my eyes open for any drifters, I decided that the next thing I had to do was find a home, a place where I could go to every night, lock it up tight, and get some sleep without worrying about who or what might come along as I lay dreaming.
Turns out that was much harder than I thought. Hotels and motels I quickly ruled out. Even though they had been closed in the early days of the Event, folks like the Hollisters had begun breaking into them when things really fell apart. And where the living went the dead were sure to follow. So my first few forays into home shopping brought me face to face with many a horde of zombies and I soon gave up on finding a permanent spot in any service sector building. This included hotels, motels, bars, supermarkets, malls, and dance clubs.
I scratched basements and small houses off the list soon after. Sing
le story homes were difficult to seal up and I really wanted to be off the ground. Plus every other house I investigated had dead folks roaming around in them. Basements? Well, they just seemed like very large open graves waiting for me to lie down in. No thank you.
Military bases? Nope: well-armed zombies.
Hospitals? Nope: doctor and nurse zombies.
Police stations? Nope: been there. Donut eating zombies (ha, ha cop and zombie humor).
Strip clubs? Nope: pole dancing zombies in G-strings. Yuck. Let’s not even talk about their sagging asses and partially eaten boobs. Gross.
So I bounced around the L.A. Basin scavenging food, ammunition, and water as I tried and failed to locate anything that might serve as a secure hiding spot while learning to live with the living, the dead, and those who were about to be dead.
So for a while I just gave up on planning. What was there to plan for? Get up in the morning. Run around the city looking for food. Eat. Find more ammunition. Eat some more. Drink. Find a place to sleep. Do it all over again the next day.
Oh, yeah, and avoid the living like they were the dead.
Avoid the living you say? Fuck a duck yeah, I say. Let me tell you why.
First, there are the families. They might as well have a sign hung around their necks saying “We’ll be dead within a week.” Particularly the ones with small children whose neck signs should say “I’ll scream at the wrong time and then make a tasty, yet non-filling snack for the dead.”
I am not kidding.
If you want to survive the apocalypse avoid families like the plague. The first family I bumped into was huddled up in a gas station. Their minivan, a god forsaken, death trap on wheels, vagina loving minivan, had run out a gas and. As they tried to siphon fuel from the ground storage tanks, I happened upon them, trotting along, minding my own business with a small collection of dead behind me. The dad just looked at me as I ran by followed by the dead. The mom screamed, the kids screamed, then the baby (oh yes, a baby) screamed. The dead immediately forgot about me and zeroed in on the family.
I turned around and un-holstered a set of silenced pistols I had picked up along with a fully automated rifle (nice!) from a wrecked military convoy, popping the closest dead as I yelled at the family to get inside the gas station. They stood (or sat) there screaming as the dead closed in. I popped a few more rounds off into the second set of dead and screamed again for them to, and I quote here, “Get your fucking white assess moving!” Unquote.
This stream of foul language seemed to get their attention and I actually thought the dad was going to chastise me for use of said foul language. But the dead had closed in and the family finally got moving into the gas station. I shot in behind them and slammed the metal gate closed as the dead crashed into it behind me. I pushed the family to the back of the gas station and told them to keep quiet and try to get the baby to shut up. OK, what I actually said was, “Shut the fucking baby up or I will toss it out the front!”
Not a nice way to make introductions I know. The mom did get the baby to quiet down so win-win, right?
We stayed together for nearly twenty hours before the dead gave up and moved on. I helped them get gasoline into their vagina loving death trap then saw them on their way. Maybe they made it and maybe Moses likes Oscar Myer cheese dogs. I didn’t know and I didn’t care.
A mini-van for chrissakes!
The next group of people I bumped into were the Others. The partially immune, the ones the folks in Burbank called Ash Angels. Creepy, pale, almost normal looking kids. And they were always kids. Not once did I run into an adult. Must have been something about their immune system that adults didn’t have. Anyways, these creepy little fuckers would be hiding in some building or alley or basement, and I’d come smoking in from my daily run from the dead (and it was becoming more and more of a daily occurrence as the vast majority of the living joined the ranks of the dead. How do you like it?). I’d hear them crying and carrying on, spot the little monsters and say something reassuring like, “Kid, shut the fuck up or we are both going to be meat!” Then the little bastards would go into full sprinter mode screaming and snapping at me like there was no tomorrow! Mother fuckers!
The first few times I thought the kid had rabies and tried to knock him (or her) out. No dice. These things were like their dead cousins; strong and fast. A bullet to the chest killed them the first time but then they were up and about lickety-splickity and I’d have to give them another one to the head. The next time, it was a bullet to the head first. Problem was, these strange little beasts looked just like you and me so I had to wait for them to charge me before I knew if they were infected or not.
Then there were the Crazies. The rapists, the pedophiles, the freaks and jacks, the druggies, the insane, the insurance agents, the lawyers, and the serial killers. And then there was this one guy who, I swear directly to you my friend, rolled all of those things up into one big bag of nuts: James Frank.
Well, maybe not the insurance agent or lawyer part.
I bumped into James, a girl named Pix, and a boy my age named Thomas while they were on their way to D-Land.
D-land?
That’s what I said. Ok, what I actually said was, “Why the fuck do you want to go to Disneyland? Gonna ride some rides? Tilt a whirl? Buy a Mickey Mouse hat?”
James sat there looking at me like I was a freshly cut up piece of steak while his equally freaky girlfriend looked like she wanted to burn my eyes out with a blowtorch. Only Thomas seemed partially sane.
“You sure do swear a lot, little kitten.” James finally said.
Little Kitten? Oh, fuck no. I was going to be getting away from the Manson Family as soon as the sun peaked over the mountains. In the meantime, I’d be sleeping with my arms wrapped around my shotgun.
“The park should be empty,” Thomas, the only normal one in this little side show said, “They closed it early. It has a fence all the way around it. Thought it’d be safe. Safer than the city streets anyway.”
“Don’t assume that, Sunny Jim” I said, “It will make and ass out of you and me.” I waited patiently for the laughter to follow. Instead all I got was three sets of blank stares, “An ass out of u? And me? Ass-u-me? Nothing? Never mind.”
I wanted to tell Thomas that he had more to fear from his companions than from the dead but held my tongue, “Might be. You might want to think about either getting out of the city or heading over to Burbank,” I said.
Boy oh boy! The look James and Pix gave me you’d thought I just shit on their wedding cake or maybe puked all over their lifetime dreams. “Or not. Whatever you want to do.” I fingered my shotgun and started thinking maybe I’d be leaving long before the sun came up.
Conversation wound down rapidly after that and I decided to take my bed roll up a floor away from these crazies. I didn’t even bother unrolling my sleeping bag, just sat there on top of it with my backpack on, shotgun in hand, and back to the wall while keeping a steady supply of No-doze and Five Hour Power rolling. I’d boogie as soon as I though the nut jobbers below were fast asleep and find a place to crash later after putting a mile or ten between me and the freak show down stairs. But it looked like James had other ideas.
I was jittering along watching the stairwell, when low and behold out of the shadows came the Head Crazy looking to score a little piece of ass before moving on with his nutty little band of travelers. I clicked on the flashlight and caught him in the bright beam. He froze in mid tip toe looking like some fucked up version of Wile E. Coyote sneaking up on the Roadrunner.
“Let me guess,” I said, “Have to pee? Looking for a glass of water?” James giggled like a little girl. Yeah, real creepy, so I just clicked off the safety of my shotgun and leveled it at his head.
“Uh, nope,” he said and turned towards me. The waves of insanity were coming off of him in…um…waves? “I was just looking for a little company,” he said as he poorly tried to conceal a bag that clinked as he moved it behind his back.
&nbs
p; “Let me guess,” I said pointing my shotgun at the dirty, stained bag, “Pliers, knives, a hammer, and uh…an axe?!”
James giggled again, “Right oh, little kitten. A video camera, too. And a dildo. Made of silver, Very hygienic. Can’t all be pain, you know.”
Little kitten? Dildo? Time to end the charade, “James, I will give you to the count of one, then I am going to spread your guts all along that wall behind you. Got it?”
James stopped laughing, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said looking like the worlds most pissed off bag of nuts.
“And why not?” I said standing up, taking the safety off the shotgun, and chambering a round.
“Well, the dead, you see…” he began as if to enlighten me about the noise and the dead it would bring down on them.
“I’m not as worried about the dead…” but before I could even finish he was up those stairs and on me in a flash. Mother fucker was fast and I was so shocked I didn’t have time to pull the trigger. Rule Number Six: Never underestimate the living.
James was rattlesnake quick and had my shotgun out of my hands quick as snap followed by a sharp roundhouse blow to my head. I staggered to the ground face first and he was on top of me in an instant with one hand yanking off my pack then pinning my shoulder down and another under my skirt and between my legs.
“You’ll like this, girly. I’ll fuck you for a while. Maybe you’ll come, maybe not. I could give a shit. Then I’ll knock you right the fuck out and take you to a place away from the kiddy’s down stairs, fuck you over and over again until I can’t get it up for you no more. At least while you’re alive,” he said and he grabbed a handful of my panties and gave them a vicious tug pulling them down around my thighs, “Then I’ll invite a few of the dead in and let them nibble on you. Not too much thought, just enough to turn you. Then I’ll fuck you for a few days, oh yes, while the hunger eats you up inside,” he continued on, “And for my grand finale, my coup de grace, my piece de résistance, I will chain you up and leave you there to rot and starve for all time.”