The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory

by Rich Restucci

  The outcome of my second shot was much better on me, and I remained at a 100% kill rate. I had struck the douche high, between his neck and his shoulder on the left side. I was maybe a hundred and fifty feet away and much higher than he was. He flew to his right, undoubtedly dead. I fired again at another prick in black and missed my target. The guy figured out where I was, aimed his rifle at me, and I took him square in the chest. Several rounds pinged off of the steel of Austin’s office, and I ducked back behind the edge. One of the hostiles had seen me.

  Another explosion ripped through the night, and I could see flames. I didn’t know if the dick that had shot at me could see me, but I was hoping he had other things on his mind, so I rolled to the edge of the roof, scuttled over, and climbed down the ladder. It was tricky, as I didn’t have the rifle sling around me, but I made it down without being shot.

  My home was burning. There were fires all over, people running every which-way, and guns going off. Greg, one of my friends, stopped in front of me, aiming his hunting rifle right at me. He lowered it immediately, his eyes wide. “We’re leaving, come with us!” I shouted.

  He began to say something, but three holes stitched across his side and he collapsed. I threw myself down and Army-crawled to him. He was wheezing, and I could see he was done. He looked at the blood on his hand, then coughed, obviously in agony. He gurgled, spit out some blood, and looked at me.

  “Don’t… don’t let me t… t…”

  I held his hand. “I won’t, pal.”

  He closed his eyes, nodding. I stood, aimed at his head, and shot him. My eyes watering from grief and rage, I looked around for another target to kill.

  Atlantis was lost. Shambling figures roamed freely, and the smoke was so thick I couldn’t tell friend from foe. I could barely hear the throaty diesel engines from two of our boats that were heading out into the Gulf. Some folks had gotten away. That thought got me going, and I decided that it was time for me to get away too. I ran.

  I heard something behind me as I was racing over the mesh, turned to look, and smashed into someone in front of me. We went down in a heap, and I could see he was dressed in black camo. My rifle was pinned between us, and this guy was doing everything he could to get away from me. I grabbed him around the right arm and began punching. I was able to get an elbow into his nose and it exploded, showering both of us with blood. He brought both hands to his broken schnoz, so I dropped the same elbow in his nuts. Now he leaned forward, and I gave him a straight punch to the nose again. He was stunned, so I jammed my knife into his belly, and he made this hoooaahh sound. He looked at the knife through watery eyes and began to cry.

  The fucker had come to destroy my home and kill my friends, and he was crying.

  “Who are you assholes?”

  He managed something audible, but I couldn’t understand it. He tried again and I got it. “I’m not Triumvirate,” he squeaked. “They made me come. I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”

  “Well, you did,” I told him and yanked my blade.

  I could see some shuffling figures on the way, and the fires must have reached the oil, because there was a great flame funnel shooting skyward. Atlantis wasn’t just lost, she was doomed. This was no time to be generous and mercy-kill this asshole, so I left him to his fate and ran.

  I saw a few of the former Atlanteans, all dead and walking. A group of them had taken down one of the shitheads, and was dining on him. I hope he tasted good. Two dead bad guys were splayed out on the stairs to the lower dock, I hopped over them, ran to the next landing, and there was a gun in my face.

  “C’mon,” Remo said, “we’re waiting on you.”

  We both hustled down the last three flights of stairs, my whole crew covering our retreat, with the exception of Ship at the helm, and the kids safely below deck.

  I untied the bow line, Remo got the stern. Both spring lines were already cast. I hopped in and fell on my ass on the damp deck. A huge explosion from way up above rocked the whole rig, and flaming shit fell through the bottom of the superstructure about sixty feet away from us, making a huge splash. That rending metal sound was getting loud up there, and I wanted out from underneath untold tons of collapsing steel.

  “Punch it!” Remo bellowed, and the boat lurched forward.

  We all looked back at our home as we shot across the waves. What had once been beautiful sight at night from the water looked like a scenic photo from Hell. Fires raged, and even as I thought that, a gigantic, flaming mushroom cloud shot into the air, spewing burning oil all over the Gulf. The ocean was burning. The lights flickered and went out, leaving only the flames for illumination. I can’t see how any of the assholes that had attacked us made it out alive, but they had killed I don’t know how many good people.

  It might have taken a lot longer this time, but death found me yet again and unleashed his limitless anger on those that had sheltered my ass.

  Get Away

  When I was a boy, I had a dog named Harley. I had never had a dog before, so when my mom came home with him (without telling my dad), I fell in love immediately. If you’re a kid and there’s a puppy, you love it or you have mental issues. Harley had this issue with his leg where he couldn’t bend his knee. My dad paid a ridiculous amount of money to get the pooch’s leg fixed, but it didn’t take and Harley ended up getting mean. He never snapped at me, or anyone else in my immediate family, but he would outright attack certain other folks without provocation. We had a backyard party in the summertime, and one of the neighbor’s little girls wandered away from the group and found the dog. She came back screaming, and had the tiniest scratch on her face, but that was enough. Even I, a boy of nine, knew the dog had to go. My dad called the dog officer, and the cop took Harley to a shelter. That night, my dad had the bright idea of giving the dog to my grandparents, whom the mutt loved. Pops called up the shelter, and they told him they had put Harley down because they did some safety exercise with him and he failed. I cried like a baby, even though I knew the dog was dangerous.

  I was a kid, and kids don’t really understand death until it hits them in the face. I remember feeling both completely helpless and a profound sense of loss. I hadn’t felt a loss like that until now. I had lost friends to both living and dead assholes, but in each case, I knew someone was going to die. I was usually being shot at or chewed on myself, so my grief was tempered. It’s one thing to lose a place, it’s another to lose both your home, and the dozens of good people you shared it with, in one fell swoop.

  Sitting on the back deck of the Mary’s Joy, with the sun coming up behind us, I had to wonder if all of this death was because of me. It isn’t my fault I’m immune to this shit. To the best of my knowledge, I’m no different than anyone else. Of course, I know that isn’t true, I can’t catch this thing, and absolutely everyone else dies from it. Everyone has suffered so much loss from this fucking plague, but it seemed that everywhere I went, I survived when others didn’t. Was this a legitimate curse? Did God or the Devil or some other supreme being hate me? Did these powers think I was worth something, or worse, want to torture me, and so had cursed me with living in a dying world?

  I was contemplating all this crap when Dusty came over, jumped up on the bench seat, and put his head in my lap. I had just been thinking about both my twenty-year-dead pooch, and the loss of a lot that was dear to me, and this mutt decides to put his cute fucking dome across my legs and look up at me with those goddamned dog-eyes.

  Big, fat tears spilled out of me and onto the dog’s face and he didn’t budge. The dumbass just blinked when a tear would hit it in the eye. I sniffed and stopped the crying, and the little prick licked my face. Just once, then put his head back down.

  Clairvoyant bastard.

  Richy and Chloe, who seemed to fire on all the same cylinders at all times, both came out on deck stretching. Everybody else was asleep except Ship, who was piloting the boat, and Remo, who had no idea what sleep was, and was up next to Ship on the high deck, with a pair of binocula
rs affixed to his face.

  “Wassamatta?” Richy asked, blinking and digging grit from his eyes. The kids had the power to sleep no matter the conditions, for whatever time they were given, wake up, and be instant superheroes.

  “Something in my eye. I’m just sad we lost Atlantis.”

  They plopped down on either side of me, Chloe petting the dog. “We were leaving anyway,” she reminded me.

  “Yeah, but we were supposed to leave everybody alive. Those assholes killed them.” I was done talking to these kids like they were kids. All coddling would do was get them killed. They had figured that out, but none of the rest of us had until right now.

  “This might sound harsh,” Richy said, “but better them than us.”

  “Rich!” his sister chided.

  “No, he’s right,” I agreed. “There wasn’t one of them I would trade for any one of us. It’s a miracle we all got out alive.

  Chloe shook her head. “It wasn’t a miracle. It was you. If you hadn’t decided to leave, and take all of us with you, we’d be dead.”

  “Huh. I was just thinking that all this death was because of me.”

  The girl stopped petting Dusty, furrowed her brow, and punched me in the arm. “Ship is right, you are a dummy. Did you kill everybody else on the planet too? None of this is your fault.”

  “Everywhere I go, death follows.”

  She punched me again. This shit would have to stop because it hurt. “Death is a jerk!” she shot. “Maybe he needs a vacation.”

  “Maybe he’s been on vacation,” Richy added, “and that’s why people won’t stay dead.”

  I rubbed my arm and had to agree. “As good an idea as any about all of this.” I heard someone coming down the stairs from the upper deck. It was Remo.

  “Ship asked me nicely to pass this to you.” He handed me a piece of notebook paper torn from Ship’s universal communicator. It read simply: Land ho.

  I looked up and there was indeed land. It was in front of us, and it was as far as the eye could see in both directions.

  I sighed. Then I sighed again. “And so departs our safety.”

  The four of them (dog too) looked at me. I shrugged.

  “You two,” Remo looked at the kids, “come with me. We have magazines to load.” Dusty’s head popped up on high alert and his tail started smacking the seat cushions at light speed, while he stared at Remo expectantly. “Fine, c’mon.” The pooch hopped (can a dog hop?) off of the bench, the kids stood, and they all left. I was alone again with my thoughts. My thoughts sucked right then.

  Everybody was up by 0830. We were drifting about a mile from shore when we began planning our departure from the boat. There wasn’t a soul, living or dead, on the beach. Turns out, when we looked more closely at an actual boat chart, what we were seeing was a barrier beach called Padre Island. Yeah, the chart says it’s the longest barrier island in the fuk’n world and there was a giant lagoon on the other side of it, between it and mainland Texas. Between us and mainland Texas.

  Remo had his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Shit. I didn’t see that. Shit.”

  “You said shit twice,” Richy told him.

  “This is worth two shits.” Remo drew his finger down the chart to the south, and Ship put his finger on something to the north.

  “Yeah,” nodded Remo, “yeah, that’s it, Ship.”

  “What’s what?” Tim demanded.

  “There’s a bridge there, which means there’s a canal or break in the land or whatever. We can get through it or under it and sail on to the mainland.”

  It took two hours to get to what was left of the bridge. We had seen evidence of destruction as Padre Island passed by on our port side. Several abandoned vehicles on the road, the burned hull of a boat, and our first infected. It was a man in shorts, and he had either been burned or his skin had turned black from rot. He staggered into the water, but stopped when knee deep. I hadn’t seen that before. Were these things afraid of water? I had fought the creatures under water, and other than buoyancy issues, they were just as deadly. Why wouldn’t the dead bastard just wade into the water until he disappeared to get to us? The dumb thing followed from the beach at a pathetic pace, and was soon out of sight.

  The bridge had been destroyed. Remo said explosive charges had been used, probably to slow the infected down or stop them from travelling in one direction. Twisted steel and bits of concrete stuck out of the water in front of us, and both Remo and Alvarez stood on the bow of the boat as we came up to the wreckage.

  Alvarez got on his belly and poked into the water with a long boat hook. “Take us in slow, Ship.”

  The Mary’s Joy moved at a snail’s pace, with Remo surveying and Alvarez poking into the waves, looking for debris. There was one small scrape against the starboard hull, and we were through. Ship opened up on the throttle a little, and we shot across the waves toward Texas proper. I have to say, plague thoughts aside, the scenery was absolutely beautiful. The water was a blue you just don’t see in New England, and the beach both behind and in front of us was pristine. Tim said we were due east of a town called Port Mansfield, but there were no statistics on the municipality. Looking at the town from the water, I doubted if it could support five hundred people, but I had thought that before, and half the state of Utah had shown up for dinner. I had lost two buddies that day, but we had gained the kids.

  We sailed down a wide channel, with buildings on both sides. Some really pretty houses greeted us, with a few businesses. It looked really cozy.

  “Should we check this place out?” Kat asked as we pulled up to a fishing dock. I could see the back of Harbor Bait and Tackle, and Y Knot Rentals off to the left in a sort of big hangar-type structure with a bunch of garage doors. It was eerily silent, no bird or bug sounds. I waited for the scream of a gull, but it seemed they had better places to be.

  Donna had come up wearing a T-shirt with a fish on it from below decks. I was staring at the fish (I swear!) and wondering where she had found the shirt.

  She managed a wry smile. “Focus. Eyes off the girls.”

  I whipped my gaze upward, but not before Kat shook her head in mock disgust.

  Remo looked thoughtful. “If we can find a vehicle and some fuel, it would save a lot of walking. There are nine of us though, so we’ll need a truck.”

  A dead guy came strolling out from between a couple of buildings, followed by a couple of his pals. They made their way to the dock and slogged toward us. Alvarez and Remo tied us up to a piling, and moved to challenge the infected. Alvarez had his boathook, and Remo had borrowed Ship’s machete.

  Alvarez jammed the end of the pole into the middle of the first guy, and Remo cleaved the thing’s head in half from dome to nose. He struggled briefly to yank out the blade, and had to put his foot on the truly dead thing’s chest to pull it out. The next two were closer together, so one got the boathook in the belly, while Remo decapitated the other, then took the top off the hooked one’s head.

  It went like clockwork… or boathook work, I guess.

  We piled off the boat and stood on the dock, stretching. The Mary’s Joy was beautiful, but we were happy to be off of it if only for a moment. Our safety just went out the window insofar as being outside the reach of the infected, but at this point, were we truly safe anywhere?

  Remo, Alvarez, and Tim would search the surrounding area for a viable vehicle while the rest of us watched the boat. Kat put up a stink because she wanted to go with Alvarez, but once again, she saw the logic in setting up as a sniper on the bow. She lay on the front of the boat with Chloe and Donna, talking and scouting. Kat wore a Texas Rangers baseball cap. No accounting for taste, but it kept the very bright sun out of her eyes. She would pay for this horrible transgression of attire later. When you’re from New England, you wear a damn Red Sox cap, apocalypse or not.

  The boys were already gone, so that left Ship, Richy, and I to sit up on the top deck and talk. Well, Ship can’t talk, but you know what I mean. Ship signe
d a few things to me, and I tried my best to sign back. He corrected me by showing me exactly how to position my hands and fingers. I had a couple of motions wrong too, and we fixed that up. Can’t be signing fuck off when I mean come here and shit.

  Richy was watching us, and when we had finished our sign-versation, he said, “That’s pretty cool.”

  I signed thank you to him, and then told him what it meant. We began to talk in a three-way, part-speaking, part-signing conversation, when Kat barked from the bow.

  “Incoming!”

  I didn’t know whether to look for undead or jump into my foxhole. I chose the former, and noticed we had a small crowd heading across the parking lot toward us.

  “Richy, let’s untie the boat. Ship, you think we might want to move off a hundred feet or so?” The big guy nodded, and started the boat. Richy was down the stairs fast, and we untied long before the things reached the dock. We pushed off as best we could, and Ship had us backing away in short order. We were back up with Sasquatch to see the infected make the pier.

  My radio spoke to me. Remo was on the other end. Mary, this is Trio. SITREP. We heard the boat start, over.

  “Trio, Mary. Everything’s okay. A small crowd of about eight pus bags showed up looking hungry, so we put a bit of distance between us. How’s shit on your end?”

  I didn’t hear any reply, realizing just a half second late that I hadn’t ended my radio chatter with over. Remo let me know about this lapse, and I felt small. I pointed at the radio and made like Remo was a dick. Richy smiled.

  This is Texas, Remo chided, if you don’t own a truck, they shoot you. We’ve tried four vehicles, got one started, but it wouldn’t stay running. Tim thinks it’s bad gas.

  Made sense. We were more than a year into this end of the world thing, and any gasoline not in an airtight container would be shit by now.

  “Check the bait and tackle store for some octane additive,” I told him. “That will help. If you can find a hardware store with some xylene-based paint thinner, you might be able to add a small bit of that to the gas in a tank and the truck will run. Don’t add more than a couple or three ounces to about ten gallons though, or it will explode when you start it.”