How do we know how much gas is in a tank to add the paint thinner?
“I didn’t say it wasn’t a gamble,” I told him as I watched the pus bag stumble down the pier. “If we hear a big fuk’n boom, we’ll take the Mary’s Joy down to Cabo for Margaritas. Mary out.”
Ship was staring at me, incredulous.
“What? I know some shit.”
We did hear a boom about a half hour later. It was a series of booms actually, the backfiring of a vehicle. Either there was a Sanford and Son class jalopy about, or the boys had gotten one of the trucks started. It really is a pity that if you’ve survived this long in the plague you’re most likely young and strong, resulting in the fact that you have absolutely no idea who Fred Sanford was. I only know Mr. Sanford’s exploits because there was one television in prison and you watch what the big guys watch. They liked Sanford and Son, so I did too.
The first dipshit undead had walked right off the dock, splashed into the water, and sank like a ton of bricks. The other two, not particularly giving a rat’s ass about their buddy, milled about at the end of the wooden structure, occasionally reaching for us. When the backfires sounded, they looked a bit torn. Stay and reach for us or follow the noise. The noise won, and they began moving back down the dock toward the town.
The inevitable gunshots began to sound, and although I knew they were coming, it still put me in an even more heightened sense of awareness.
Mary, this is Trio, Tim’s voice came through the radio. We’ve engaged hostiles of the room-temperature variety. There are significant numbers, but we did get a truck running. Great idea with the paint thinner. We’ll meet you across the channel by the Get-A-Way Adventures Lodge. You reading me?”
“Copy that, Trio. Moving across the channel now. See you soon.” I can’t even begin to tell you how cool it is to say copy that like I just had. This was going to be a good day.
The Get-A-Way Adventures Lodge is a small, light-yellow, picturesque building with its own private dock. There’s a set of slips, covered by an aluminum carport-type structure off to the left. We pulled the Mary’s Joy up to the dock, but didn’t tie up. I needed to check the place out, but I was a bit apprehensive to go alone, so I decided that now would be the time for Kat to come with me. We all met in the living area of the boat. Of course, Donna had to chime in, “I’m coming too.”
I sighed. “Look, I realize who wears the penis in our relationship, but not this time.” She got that look, but I forestalled her with a hand. “I need you to watch the kids and take care of the boat. Ship will steer, but I need someone down here with them.”
She looked at the kids, who were standing next to each other, then back at me. The look went from I see your incredibly valid points and support them unconditionally, to this is how it’s going to go, and I will brook no insolence or questions of any kind from the likes of you.
“Richy,” she began, “you’re going to stay here and back Ship up. If anyone or anything tries to get on the boat, you shoot them. You need to stay near the radio too.” She opened the lid of the now unlocked box of goodies, and passed him an M9. He immediately ejected the mag and checked the load. Several of the sailors and soldiers had been training the civvies on the use of firearms for a while on Atlantis, so the kids were prepared.
She continued, distributing weapons as she spoke. “The four of us are going to check this place out. Ship, you take the boat back out a bit and honk if you need us.” She passed Chloe an M9, and doled out MP5s with three spare magazines each to herself and I. Kat would keep her .30-30.
“You,” she pointed at the dog, “Sit.” He complied.
I was smiling. Although I didn’t like the idea of Chloe with us as we went into the unknown, she had to get her proverbial feet wet sometime. She was a cool kid, and I knew she would be able to handle herself. Turns out, I was right on both counts.
We hopped off the boat and Ship backed her up into the middle of the channel. Now it was on. We had no escape route other than into the unfamiliar, or swimming, which was out of the fucking question as I didn’t know if the entire channel was crawling with submerged zombies.
The near end of the dock met a gorgeous yard which sloped to the back of the lodge, complete with palm trees and a pool hidden behind a wall of green shrubbery. The grass was lush, green, and overgrown. The rest of the foliage was quite pretty, with two huge, unpruned rose bushes as the focal points. The pool was nasty with thick and horrible standing water. I had seen undead in pools before, and told everyone to stay away for that reason. Anybody going for a dip in that shit-pond was never setting foot near me again on general principles anyway.
The back of the main structure had a propped open door with dried palm leaves just inside. It was too dark to see more than a few feet inside. Donna started toward the door and I stopped her, nodding in the negative.
“We circle the structure first, then bang on the door back here. Wait a couple minutes for pus bags, then we go in.” As an afterthought, I added, “Okay?” to reassure her she was in charge of all things non-tactical. She gave a curt nod, and I could see she was a bit nervous, with her eyes darting everywhere and bit of lip chewing going on. Kat and Chloe looked a bit nervous too, and I had to wonder how I looked to them. I certainly didn’t enjoy what we were about to do, but I had done it a lot more than they had.
“Should we split up and—?” Donna began before I cut her off.
“No. Not a fucking chance do we split up, possibly ever again. Four guns and eight eyes are better and there’s safety in numbers.” I got the nod again, and knew I would keep my nuts, if at least for a while.
We moved left, and saw our first infected. It was a dead five year old, and she was plodding toward us in pink pajamas. The feet on the feetsy-Barbie-jammies had long since worn away, and this kid looked pretty rough. I heard all three girls take a sharp intake of breath and knew this was one I would have to take care of. The thing was closing at a pathetic shuffle, growling like no child could.
“Turn away,” I told the girls. “Cover behind us.”
I didn’t wait to see if they had followed instructions. This kid would make me cry if I kept thinking about her. Then I got mad, both at the situation and myself. This poor child didn’t deserve this, but more importantly, this was no longer a child, but an abomination that had murdered her and stolen her body. I started to shake with anger, and realized it would not do. I drew my SOG and calmed myself.
When the thing reached for me, I side-stepped and she moved past me slightly. I drove the knife into the base of her skull, just where the spine and head meet. She collapsed instantly, but was still snapping even with a severed spinal column. One kick and her little melon cracked, killing her.
I was disgusted. So much so that I failed to see the dead old man with overalls that had come around the corner to the side of me. Apparently, the girls had indeed followed instructions, because nobody said shit until he had me and I squealed. This fucker hadn’t made a goddamned sound until he had his mitts on me, and by then, he was making that hissing hacking sound that they do. I tried to push him away, but this guy was big, and he really wanted a taste. He kept leaning in and I kept jerking him away, but the bastard simply would not let go. I used two different moves that Remo had shown me, and one broke the thing’s wrist, but it didn’t give a shit and continued its assault.
“Stop friggin’ moving! I can’t get a shot!” Kat whisper-yelled.
Yeah, so if I stopped moving, he was going to bite me. I heard No! Don’t! and I thought for sure I was going to have a lead headache in a moment. What I didn’t expect was to see a five-foot-four streak of black and red hit my attacker’s right knee. Both the dead thing and I looked to see what had hit him. It was Chloe in her Harley Quinn shirt. She kicked again with lightning speed in the same place and there was an audible snap as the infected’s leg broke under the knee. The knee pretty much tore lose as well, and as the guy was heavy, and was not letting go, we both went down. Chloe wasted no
time, and shot the dead guy in the face with a suppressed 9mm round as we hit the grass. I got his goo on me, and although it stunk, it didn’t get in my eyes or mouth. It couldn’t infect me, I know, but c’mon? Would you want that shit in your mouth?
I stood and looked at the living kid, my mouth so wide open in shock, an American Bald Eagle could have nested in there.
“Don’t get mad,” she said a little nervously. “You looked like you could use some help.”
I closed my mouth with a distinct and noticeable pop. The rest of my expression didn’t change.
Chloe looked back at the girls then at me. “What? I took American Kenpo for six years before everybody started to eat everybody. Remo has been training Richy and me for two months with his stuff too.”
I did a quick scan of the area as I managed a stunned “Thanks.” We were clear, for the moment, but my shirt had to go. I removed my tactical vest, then my shirt, balled it up and threw it into the grass. I put my vest back on, which did not feel good in the heat. Fucking things stick and chafe on bare skin.
Donna raised her eyebrow. “I knew you’d get your shirt off somehow.”
“Wonk-wonk,” I told her. “You sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher.” I nodded in the direction we needed to go, and we all moved that way. We made a complete circuit of the building, scanning around it too, and soon found ourselves at the open but foreboding back door again. I shined my light into the opening, seeing nothing but bird droppings and some dried palm leaves. I gave five good whacks to the doorframe, all of us backing off to see what happened next. We gave it three minutes, then entered the Get-A-Way Adventures Lodge.
Some brown leather furniture greeted us under a vaulted pine-board ceiling complete with motionless ceiling fans. An errant palm leaf sounded like a gunshot when I crushed it between my foot and the stone-tiled floor. I could only imagine what Remo and Ship would have done if they had been here and heard me do that. A short, four-step set of stairs led to an elevated, railed corridor which ran all the way around the room for standing patrons. At the back of the open room was a bar. Straight ahead was a stairway down to a sunken floor with a bunch of chairs and a pool table. More steps brought you back out of the sunken area and up to the bar at the back. There were framed pictures of fish and people holding fish all along the railed corridors and behind and over the bar.
The place was beautiful. The best part of it was that it didn’t have any signs of the plague at all other than the open back door. No overturned furniture or signs of struggle. No blood or bodies, and no zombies that we could see.
I moved behind us, shutting and locking the door. “Kat, you stand guard here. If we come back, we might need to get out fast. Make sure we don’t gather a crowd out back either.”
She nodded, and sat down in one of the leather chairs. She shifted, and of course the leather made a fart noise. It was my turn to look at her in mock disgust.
“I didn’t—”
“Uh-huh.” I turned away not giving her time to explain, and tipping a wink to a silently giggling Chloe.
Donna, who had volunteered to go to possibly the worst place on earth, the Majestic Maersk, in the hope of saving some folks, actually looked nervous now that she might face the undead again. Her eyes whipped about, scanning everywhere at once. “The plan?”
I pulled my radio. “We clear this place, call the boys, and wait for them to show. In the meantime, I kick your ass in pool.” I pointed to the pool table.
We began our clearing session, and found a truly dead woman in one of the rooms. She had taken her own life with her handgun. She had probably lost everyone, or just couldn’t wrap her head around what was happening. I felt sad for her, and closed the door on her final resting place. Chloe reached for one of the doorknobs and I hissed for her to stop, nodding no. I opened the door, and this room, like all the others was devoid of any living or living dead people. There was a big bird’s nest of some kind in the pine rafters of one of the rooms with an open window. The room completed its ensemble of pine-board walls and more fishing pictures, with bird shit and broken eggshells. The birds had seen fit to vamoose a while ago by the look of the place though. Too bad, as this was probably prime real estate for a flock of whatever.
We made it to the front lobby, and noticed two dead people milling about out front who hadn’t been there when we had circled the building. They had most likely heard the sound of the Mary’s Joy pulling up to the dock, but had lost the sound when Ship pulled her back into the channel. We backed off and they hadn’t seen us. The front doors were glass, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows as well, but if they didn’t know we were in here, then fuck ‘em.
“We can’t leave them there,” Donna thought out loud. “Let’s take care of them.”
I considered smoking the two out front for a moment, but then nodded no. “Believe me, they’ll come to us as soon as Ship comes back with the boat.”
I realized I had broken my own rule if only for a few minutes. The thing was, a minute was more than long enough to make a deadly mistake nowadays. Hell, a bad second would get you dead. We had left Kat alone guarding the back door. Stupid, just stupid. Nothing had happened, but that is exactly how people got killed. When we got back, I motioned for her to come over, and I racked the balls on the table. “Me and her,” I said, pointing at Chloe, “against you two slackers.”
I called Remo, and Tim answered. “Trio, Mary. We have two out front, but the structure is clear. Waiting on you, over.” (I’m gonna skip the “over’s,” Dear Reader, you get it by now).
The truck is running rough, but it runs. We’ll be there in about twenty minutes. We keep drawing a crowd, and you guys are on a peninsula. We don’t want to trap ourselves and have to abandon the truck for the boat.
“Copy that. We’ll clear the ones we find in the vicinity, and get our gear off the boat.” I looked at the pool table. One game wouldn’t hurt, would it? We could do teams and finish in five minutes. Easy peasy.
Yeah, nope. How To Get Folks Killed 101. Might be my new major. We had the time now to do all the shit I just said. I don’t know what will happen in five minutes, maybe another apocalypse. Aliens this time? I looked back at the pool table and sighed, “We can play later, let’s get the food and weapons off of the boat and get Ship in here with us.”
I called the big guy, and we went out the back door and onto the dock. I hadn’t forgotten about the infected out front, but Ship and Richy might need a hand tying up the Mary’s Joy to the dock. Richy was waiting with a box, a duffle full of stuff, and a dog. He passed it (except the pooch) to me over the gunwale. We tied up, and had just begun to unload when the two pus bags from out front made their debut. Kat raised her rifle, but I told her no. I raised my suppressed MP5, but Chloe said no.
“I need the practice.” She took up a firing stance, lined up her M9A1 on the dead girl’s noggin, and squeezed the trigger. The thing’s head snapped back and it collapsed. Kid had gotten a headshot on her first try. I was impressed. She missed the second shot, but got the dead guy with no lower jaw on the third.
We had everything including the Sasquatch off of the boat and up by the back of the lodge when we heard the truck out front. It didn’t take long for gunshots to sound. My radio came to life, but the voice wasn’t directed at me. It was a conversation.
“…see what you boys got in there.”
“We don’t have much, just this truck,” Alvarez said loudly. I looked at Ship and he nodded. I motioned for everybody to put the stuff down, and we snuck around the side of the lodge. Right out front, exactly where the two zombies had been, were six guys with rifles, two were aiming at our recently acquired blue Ford F250 quad cab, but the rest were nodding or smiling.
Fucking people. Plague of the living dead, and there are more assholes than good folks left. I shut my radio off, and motioned for Ship to take Kat to the far side of the building to flank them and possibly catch these douches in a crossfire. They made it to the other side just as one of
the dickweeds punched Alvarez in the stomach. They were jeering and shouting racial epithets. I could see where this was going. Tim saw us, and nodded helplessly and not a little sadly, as he knew what I was about to do.
I got down on my haunches and looked at the kids. “Listen, you cover the rear. Face that way. If things go south, Donna will take you back to the boat. Then you run. Rich, hold Dusty, and keep him quiet.”
Donna’s brows furrowed in anger, “I’m not—”
“Yes, you are,” I snapped. “If we can’t save them,” I pointed at the kids, “then what the hell are we doing any of this for?” I would not have the kids murdering humans until it was absolutely necessary, and if Ship, Kat, and I couldn’t take these assholes by surprise when we were already behind them, then we should hang our shit up now and quit. I turned and looked around the corner of the lodge. Ship had his massive melon poking through a shrub, and he nodded.
I sighed, sighted the nearest asshole who had his rifle aimed in the general direction of my disarmed friends, then began walking toward him. I could see Ship in my peripheral copying me. We got to within thirty paces before one of the douches spit out a cigarette and leaned forward to crush it out with his filthy sneaker. He saw me and I saw him see me. I gave a three-round burst to his pal, then he got one, and I moved the barrel of my sub-machine gun to the right selecting targets. Ship did the same, shifting his weapon until we met in the middle.
The guy who had hit Alvarez got a .30-30 round through his back. He didn’t fall forward, he just collapsed straight down, dead.
The two shitheads who used the often employed but rarely successful tactic of getting too close to Remo, turned their gaze toward the commotion and, well, you know what’s coming next. I saw the jarhead grab the closest guy and literally tear his head off. Okay, so it didn’t come off, but he wouldn’t be using it again. Remo stepped up, reached around the guy to grab his face, and administered a stiff push into the dick’s back, while giving a vicious upward jerk to his chin. I heard the snap from twenty feet away. I missed what happened to guy number two as I was focused on killing everyone else. Tim would tell me later that Remo reached up to his own face, grabbed his toothpick, and jammed it into douche number two’s eye. The guy got a chance to let out a quick scream before he had his Adam’s apple crushed by his own rifle butt. I was busy checking my bad guys to see if any were still kicking.
The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory Page 18