“Okay, check it. You cats’ too scared to go running through a pack of these land-sharks? You guys can talk now, just be real fuckin’ quiet. Whiiiisssper. Got it? You do it too loud and I’m gonna knock your teeth down your fuckin’ throat. And if one of those fucks over there hears and signals the rest of ‘em, I’m gonna shoot you in the spine and throw your body to the fuckin’ wolves, you hear me? I’ve done it already, to the dude that lived in the house we’re on our way to right now. So talk, but do it quietly.”
Even though the guy shot himself and I threw his stupid ass out after he was already dead, I figured I’d embellish a little, to get how serious I was about silence through to the kids. They took me so seriously, that when they finally did get the courage to speak, I had to really strain to hear them.
“I’m not afraid,” whisper-whispered Eric, which didn’t surprise me a bit. That’s why I made him the thunder-bringer and not one of the rest: he was the biggest of the four, he looked like the meanest, and he was the first one to get smart with me. “We can make it. I’m not afraid.”
“Good. And the rest of you?”
Joe was the next to speak, and he said the same thing as Eric. Tommy soon followed with his version of the same - one chocked full of “fucks, pussies, and homo’s”. That left Rob, and he had the look of someone who would’ve liked nothing more than to sink slowly into the earth, or fade away into nothing rather than to go running into battle.
“Rob,” I whispered to him. I had crept over to him, by his side, so I could talk to him a little more personally - man to man. “I know you’re scared, we’re all scared here, Rob…”
“Liar,” he said before I could say more. Which I was kinda happy about, ‘cause I noticed that since I met up with the kids, I had been doing a lot of speeches, and was heading into yet another - I was getting all paternal and shit with the little fuckers. “You’re a fuckin’ liar. You’re not afraid, you shouldn’t say you are…”
“Liar? Motherfucker… I am not lying, Rob, trust me. I am scared shitless, pal. I just handle it differently than some folks. Instead of running away from things I fear, I run towards them, understand? (he slowly nodded, unsure if I was being honest with him) I swear. You know what I did the first time I saw one of those things? I mean up close, really looked at it? I shit my fuckin’ pants.”
He smiled at that and started to laugh, but remembered where he was at before he let it out. “Whatever, man. You didn’t shit yourself. Bullshit…”
“No, I really did. Straight up shit my pants. And then I had to run through this whole fuckin’ city for two days with a load steaming in my drawers. And even before that, the very first time I saw a zombie - two, in fact, that were tearing a girl and her baby apart - I fuckin’ puked all over myself. So, yeah, I was scared… and I still am. You just gotta overcome that fear, ‘cause if you don’t… well, you’re not gonna last out here, okay?”
“Ye…yeah… okay. I’m ready to go, I guess… Thanks.”
“Cool, that’s good. And for a little extra ‘confidence’ for ya, here, take this,” I said as I got my .40 from its holster and handed it to him. I took out four spare mags and handed to them to him, as well, and he put those into his rear pants pockets. “Just be sure to aim for their heads, that’s the only way to put ‘em down for sure. That goes for you too, Eric, aim for the head. If you get cornered, though, don’t hesitate to shoot them in their legs to drop ‘em, give yourself a chance to get away. Joe, Tommy - home run swings, guys. Knees and brains, brains and knees. I found that when going against more than one, breaking the legs and smashing the skulls when they’re down works best. Okay, I guess that’s it… You guys ready to rock?”
With that said, we all stood up, walked around the wrecked cars, and faced the field of battle, ready to slay some motherfuckin’ zombies. Fuckin’ A!!!
55
I was very fuckin’ uncomfortable with running towards a big yard full of zombies with four kids as my backup, but I really didn’t know what else to do with them. I couldn’t leave them to their own devices at the house where they were jamming at, ‘cause they most certainly would have died either by starvation or by being overrun, and I couldn’t very well have taken them with me on my trip to Streator, ‘cause I wasn’t even sure if I was gonna make it, so getting them to the house where Steven and his boys were at was the only option that I had.
As it was, though, it wasn’t all that bad of an idea, after all. It turned out that even though they were a bunch of kids that looked like they couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper sack - with the exception of Eric, but even he looked like a weakling - they handled themselves pretty fuckin’ well as we fought our way to the house.
I took the lead with my .22, and laid out the first fifteen zombies that were the closest to us and that were the biggest threats. Fifteen zombies in fifteen seconds. Not too shabby.
“Eric, Rob!!! In front while I reload!!!” I yelled. “Move!!! Conserve your ammo!!! Only shoot when you’re sure it’s a kill!!!”
They both moved in front of me and began to slowly and methodically aim, fire, and take down zombie after zombie. It was pretty fuckin’ cool. Must’ve been from playing “Call of Duty” or some shit that made them so good. I wasn’t complaining. After I was reloaded, I retook the lead, and we continued towards the house.
“Fuck, I’m out!!!” yelled Eric as he stopped his advance, went to a knee, and began to fish shells out of his pockets, reloading as he found them. Right after he started fishing, Rob’s slide locked to the rear, and I had burned through another fifteen, making me empty, too.
“Tommy, Joe!!! Defend while we reload!!!” I yelled as they took up positions in between the three of us and the advancing zombies. “Remember!!! Knees and brains!!! Knees and fuckin’ brains, guys!!!”
I saw that the crotch of Tommy’s pants was soaked with piss and the front of Joe’s t-shirt and pants was streaked with vomit, but they both moved into position and charged the deadheads when they got too close without even the slightest hesitation - they went right the fuck to it like they were born for that kind of thing.
I saw Joe run swinging into a group of four - with a HUGE, strong swing - right at their knee-caps, bringing them all down in a heap, then bash their heads to a splashy, bloody pulp before moving on to his next targets.
I looked over to Tommy as he went from zombie to zombie, bringing the barrel of his bat down in crushing blow after crushing blow to the tops of the zombies heads, literally smashing their heads into their necks, popping eyes outta their sockets, and causing them to bite off their tongues and flay their lips as their lives were smashed the fuck out of them.
It was brutal watching them two kids in their wet-work - and I’m not talking the pissing kind, either, I’m talking the assassin kind, holmes.
After the three of us were reloaded yet again, we retook the lead and kept a trudgin’ through, repeating the same process of cover and reload three more times. We were halfway through the front yard, with piles and piles of bodies around and behind us, when one of the groomsmen ran up beside me.
“Hey Dave,” he said in a jovial manner, sporadically shooting a zombie here, a zombie there. He was fuckin’ shit-faced, and I was fuckin’ jealous. “How you doing there, buddy?”
“Oh, not too bad, I guess,” I replied as I shot a few zombies, trying to match his care-free attitude, and failing miserably. “Just another day in paradise, my friend.”
“Yeah, tell me about it! So… I thought I saw you leave earlier?” Slow talk, slow shoot, slow kill, the drunk motherfuck. “What are you doing now? You want to, uh… get drunk with us?”
“Nah,” I said as I stopped to reload. He stopped with me and pulled a beer from the pocket of the hoodie he was wearing. I didn’t yell to my guys to cover or anything, ‘cause by that point, Steven and the rest of the groomsmen had magically and drunkenly appeared and were slaying the undead alongside them. “No, I’m not here to drink, though I will have one… I’m here �
�cause of these kids I got with me. I found ‘em in a house surrounded by zombies, and their families are dead and they got no food. I was wondering if… well if they could maybe stay here with you guys.”
“With us, huh,” said Steven as he ambled up beside us, beer in hand. Most of the zombies in the vicinity of the house and street were dead, and the ones that were left were being taken care of quickly and brutally. “Let’s go inside and talk, okay? Vincent, Roger, and Lawrence are going to redirect the approaching zombies elsewhere, so we won’t have to worry about them. C’mon.”
56
Once inside, we were led to the kitchen, where we sat at the table. Not much had changed since Gus and I had been there, although - thankfully, for the kids’ sake - the bodies had been removed from the living room floor.
“So, how you been doing, Dave?” asked Steven as we all got situated at the table. Since there were only four chairs at it - not enough for all of us - one of the groomsmen, Alec, got a few lawn chairs out of a closet and set them around the table. “Haven’t seen you or Gus in a little while now. You guys make it to his house, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, we made it. Although there were a couple close calls… But yeah, we made it, and everything’s going good over there. His woman’s alive, and so is his brother. We made a supply run one day - all day long - and they have enough of everything there to last them quite some time.”
“That’s good… So why are you leaving? You are leaving, right?”
“Yeah, well… I am leaving, yeah… but not for any particular reason or anything. I mean, we didn’t have a falling out or anything… It’s just that I feel out of place over there, you know. We rescued another survivor - well, not rescued, really, she took care of the zombie herself, we just picked her up - but now I feel like a fifth wheel over there, ‘cause Frank - Gus’s brother -hooked up with her. It’s… awkward… Plus, I decided that I’d head back home, to Streator, and help out some friends as they try to take back their town.”
“Streator… no shit? I know where that’s at, and that’s quite the trip, especially now.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s not gonna be easy, and I might not make it… but I figure ‘what the hell’, right? Truth be told, the real reason why I’m heading there is ‘cause I feel more like I belong out there with the zombies, killing them, than I do indoors being all civilized and shit.”
“Wow! Really? With the zombies, huh?”
“Yeah,” I chuckled, “pretty stupid, right?”
“No, not at all, Dave, not at all. As a matter of fact, we here feel the same way. That’s why we were out there when you were. We were out killing zombies, setting up explosives and traps - and don’t worry, we put up big, visible signs telling where they are so no one can walk into them accidentally. Thankfully the zombies can’t read. So, no, you’re plan is not stupid at all. It’s very commendable, actually. Brave.”
“Okay. Thank you for that.”
“Hey, no problem. Now, these kids,” Steven said, gesturing to Joe, Eric, Rob, and Tommy. “You told Brent that you found them in a house surrounded by zombies, and they had no food, and you wanted to see if they could stay here with us?”
“Exactly, Steven, that is exactly right. Down on Marquette Street there were - and I’m sure still are - thousands of zombies surrounding the house they were in. These guys were boxed in. They did dig tunnels that went to the basements of two of the houses next to it, but they were still out of food, and were too scared to even step outside to try and find more. The only reason they came with me was ‘cause the zombies had overrun one of the houses they had tunneled to, while we were all in it, and I think it brought home how dangerous their situation was. Plus, they are just kids, you know, and they were scared to be alone. So I brought ‘em here. I couldn’t leave them there - that just wasn’t gonna happen, you know?”
“Yeah, I get it… I would’ve done the same… So, guys,” he said, looking to each of the boys at the table, taking his sweet drunken time before he finished what he was gonna say. “You can stay here with us if you want, okay?”
Up until he said that, the guys were all tense and even looked scared, but as soon as he did, they all sagged with relief in their chairs and let out big, deep breaths that they were holding in, in anticipation.
“Only thing is, though,” continued Steven, “It’s not going to be a free ride, okay? You’re going to have to pitch in and do everything that the rest of us do. I know you’re just kids and all, but I was watching you fight outside, and I know you all can handle yourselves if you had to. So, with that said… welcome home, I guess. Now, Dave, I know you probably want to be on your way… but can you at least stick around for a beer? Just one?”
57
The next morning at six in the a.m. I stepped off the porch, hung over as fuck but glad that I had found the guys a safe place to live with people that would protect them, and made my way through the big front yard to the street. Vince, Rog, and Larry (fuck that Vincent, Roger, and Lawrence shit that Steve liked to spew) had done a great job of leading the zombies away, ‘cause Shooting Park in both directions was zombie-free for as far as I was able to see.
I got to my bike - yes, my bike, which was still there, and still covered in rancid garbage - without seeing a single zombie, and fired that fucker up and continued on my trip down to Joliet Street and Route 6 that I had started the day before. It felt really fuckin’ good to be on the road, actually doing something, instead of lying dormant inside four walls. Sure, I knew the chances of my actually making it clear to Streator alive were pretty fuckin’ slim, but it still felt damn good nonetheless.
When I was about to Marquette, where the guys house of jams was at, I killed the engine and rolled up to the street, ‘cause I wasn’t sure if the swarm was still there. They were, but instead of battling for entry into the house for a meal that was no longer there, they were all melted and congealed into a putrid pile of indistinguishable bones, bodies, and charred clothes - and some of it was still quivering with “life”. It looked like the house had either started on fire in the night, or someone had come there and tossed a buncha gas-bombs or Molotov Cocktails into the zombies and the house and let the both of ‘em burn. I bet it was that.
Instead of firing the Vespa back up and driving the next block to Joliet, I kept it off and walked it there. I didn’t know what I was gonna come up on to - tons of zombies, or no zombies at all - and didn’t want anything that might’ve been there to know I was coming before I got to it. I wanted the element of surprise to be all mine. As it was, Joliet was clear, too. No problem. The only problem I did have, though, was that the street was congested as fuck, from yard to street to yard, all the way across. Same problem I had when I was taking the wheelbarrow of beers across 251 - but at least the Vespa was narrower.
I found a gap in the traffic and made my way into the maze, zig-zagging my way through, until I was finally at the Route 6 turn lane. The going up until that point was pretty easy, as - even though the motorists had been driving through people’s yards - the traffic was pretty uniform, and was pretty much obeying the rules of the road about “proper” lane usage and shit. It was a fuckin’ completely different story at the turn lane, though, and for at least thirty more yards down into Route 6 before it thinned out to where I could use the road again.
The fucking cars were literally sandwiched together, fender to fender and bumper to bumper, packed in between the church on the north corner and the house on the south corner - and all of it was heading east, right in the fuckin’ direction I was going. There was no fucking way through that mess. For a brief moment I thought of trying to get the Vespa up onto the roofs of the cars, and driving over them all like I had seen done a while back in a Jackie Chan movie, but I figured doing that would probably not end well, as the guys in the movie were using big-ass high-speed dirt bikes with over-sized tires and I was on a girly little motor scooter.
So instead of doing that crazy shit - even though it looked cool in my head as I
fantasized it with sweaty, naked nubiles awaiting me at the end with cold brews and plenty of lube, yelling and cheering, rubbing on one another’s titties and coochies, and bouncing all around as they poured beer on each other and licked it off oh so slowly and sensually - I just backtracked a ways, found a gap that let out by the church, and went around it, then went yard to yard - keeping my eyes open for the undead and the end of the congestion - until the road was clear enough for me to get back on it.
Instead of walking the Vespa like I had been doing all the way from Marquette Street, I rode the sucker - as fast as I possibly could - as I made my way past the church and through the yards. Which was kinda dangerous, ‘cause there were plenty of blind corners, clothes-lines, yard furniture, and other obstacles in my path.
The reason being for my blasting through all that shit, was the ass-load of zombies that had come “From Out of Nowhere” (awesome Faith No More tune) and were coming at me in their slow and shambling, yet ever-persistent manner. I didn’t see a single fuckin’ zombie clear from Steve’s house to the Route 6 turn-lane, and now I had fuckin’ dozens coming at me from all directions.
“Fuck!!!” I yelled as I stopped the bike, so I could swap out the .22 for the Remington - I figured the situation required less precision shooting and more area clearing, as I was currently in a very fuckin’ narrow alley (between two fenced yards) where there were six zombies to my front and three to my rear. “Goddamn motherfuckers!!! Where the fuck were you guys hiding at!? In the church!? There’s no fuckin’ church on Thursday, is there!?”
After the swap, I took aim at the approaching six, and unloaded the motherfucker into them, cutting them all to fuckin’ pieces. I then reloaded, slung the 12 gauge over my shoulder, hopped on my bike and fired her up, and flew over the dead that I had littered the alley with, spraying a rooster-tail of their blood and guts high up into the air as the back tire slid and spun over them.
A.K.A. No Time for a Love Story (Book 1): Just Another Day Page 21