My buddy Ollie had stumbled out the door and tripped over the feet of one of the bloated strippers, and the both of them fell to the ground. I got off my bike and ran over to him, shot him in his face as he looked up, reaching towards me, and ran back to my bike and hopped on.
“Sorry about that, it’s just that I’ve known that guy for years. I had to do it, to end… this… I could care less about the rest of these fucks, but he was a friend. Okay, O.K., you ready to make some tracks here?”
“Yes, I am, very much so.”
“All right, let’s get back to it then. What we’re headed to here is Ottawa. Just past Ottawa, due south, is the little town of Grand Ridge - which is nothing more than a drive-thru town that takes about a minute to go through or less, be a piece of cake - and beyond that is Streator. Ummmm… since I really don’t know of any way to get to Streator from here - besides Route 23, which goes right to it, and is in the center of town - it looks like we’re gonna have to go on through this motherfucker. But I do know a way to bypass most of downtown, ‘cause I figure that shit’ll be fucked up, so that won’t be an issue. Should be easy… All right… ramblers’, let’s get ramblin’.”
60
The closer we got to Ottawa, the louder the sounds of battle got, and the odd sounding engine was even louder than that - the sound of it nearly drowned out the gunfire and explosions, it was that fuckin’ loud. The shit was so fuckin’ loud, that when I called us to a halt at the t-intersection of 6 and Boyce Memorial - the bypass route I was planning on taking down to West Main Street, which would’ve taken us right to 23 and the bridge out of downtown Ottawa - we had to practically yell at each other to be heard over the din.
“Okay, check it out, dude!,” I yelled to O.K. “We’re gonna take this road here almost all the way down and hook a left onto West Main. It should be a breeze, it looks pretty fuckin clear all the way down, which is fuckin’ awesome, man! West Main goes right to the road we need to get outta this town and to Streator! I just fuckin’ wish that goddamn engine or whatever wasn’t so fuckin’ loud, I can’t hear where the battlin’s at! Let’s just hope we don’t get caught up in that shit - knock on wood - that would royally suck! You ready to roll!?”
“Yes, my friend!” he yelled back. “I am ready! The sooner we get away from this horrible noise, the better! Lead the way!”
With that, I took the lead and we began to roll down Boyce at a top speed of around twenty. I didn’t want to go blazing on down the street and end up rolling right into a huge fuckin’ mess and get stuck or killed, even. That would’ve sucked. I figured at that speed we would’ve been able to get ourselves turned around and away from any danger, and still make good time.
The traveling down was pretty easy, and we saw no zombie traffic at all, but the further we got down the street, the louder the battlin’ and weird engine noise got. Unfortunately, it sounded like whatever was going on, the cause of all that racket, was gonna be in the general direction we were headed. I actually shot up a prayer to whatever gawd might’ve been floating around up there (if there even is one, but I really can’t say anymore - although it’s pretty fuckin’ doubtful) that whatever was happening, we wouldn’t have to deal with it. I looked over at O.K. and he was doing the same - ‘cause it did not sound too fuckin’ promising.
We were passing by West Madison, just a goddamn block from West Main, when both our fuckin’ prayers were crushed, ripped, and torn apart. We were able to see all the way down the street - clear down to 23 - and we saw the source of the horribly loud sound. What we had both originally thought was a massive engine of some sort, was actually the sound of what had to be thousands upon thousands of the undead standing with their backs to us. Undead that seemed to be pushing towards something, that were all moaning in unison, in the unholiest of choirs - the choir of the damned.
I wasn’t surprised to find that the both of us had stopped - it just couldn’t be helped. We both had also dismounted from our vehicles - something else I didn’t recall doing - and were standing there in awe as we gazed upon the Eighth Wonder of the World, at a sight much more entrancing than the Great Wall of China, more beautiful than the Colossus in Rome. Yeah, that’s right, I said “beautiful”. And it was… oh yes. It was savagely beautiful, like an ocean teeming with sharks, flowing like the deadly waves in a tempest, swaying back and forth and side to side in a violent fury. It was fucking meeeeeesmerizing.
At that point, I realized that all was lost, that there was no hope for humanity. I was looking at our future - not just mine and O.K.’s, but the worlds - a future of endless need and hunger, driven by the most primal of emotions, a future of hell on Earth. I knew that to continue on would be pointless, that in the end, I would be just another zombie packed into a street - or be the food for the masses. Either way, I was strangely compelled to give up and began to walk to my future, to embrace it, to let it engulf and devour me like I knew it eventually would. Why postpone the inevitable?
I only got three steps to the end, when from directly behind me, O.K. let out an anguished wail and grabbed my shoulders.
“My god, what are we doing, my friend?” he yelled as he pulled me back in the direction of our vehicles. It seemed he was under the same hypnotic effect that I was. “I do not understand, but I was… driven…to end my life… I was thinking the most horrible thoughts… things that I would never do…”
“Aaaaah, fuck!!!” I yelled as we got to his Gator, the both of us breathing heavily like we had just ran a mile. “Fuck!!! Me too, man, me too! God, what was I thinking?! I will never give up, no matter how bleak the future may be! I will never stop fighting! Never!!!”
Much like when I heard the zombie moan for the first time, the thought of giving up had crossed my mind, only this time I had almost went through with it. I was so fuckin’ pissed at myself, I wished I could kick my own ass. The reason I was pissed was because I actually believed - really, truly believed - all the things that had flashed through my mind as I made my way to my demise. I knew that there was no hope, that to keep fighting was pointless - I had only been kidding myself up until then - that to fight was a fool’s game, a cruel joke, ‘cause you can’t beat the world, especially when half the world was out to eat you. Literally.
I knew that. I was no fuckin’ idiot. But I also knew - and this is the most important thing that I must never, ever forget - that I am no fucking quitter. I never quit a fuckin’ thing in my life (except a shitty job I had once, but that was just to spite them), and I wasn’t about to start now, odds stacked against me or not. So I stood myself up straight, grabbed my sack to see if I still had any nuts down there - I still did, and they were still big - and turned to O.K., who was leaning against his Gator.
“O.K.,” I yelled to him, getting his attention to where he was looking at me, focused. “I’m sure you were thinking the same negative shit I was, but fuck that!!! We can’t stop, we gotta keep on keepin’ on!!! You cool with that?! You ready?!”
Now, before all this shit with the walking dead came about, I had a real fuckin’ short-ass temper when I thought people were looking at me funny. Didn’t matter if they really were or not, I’d still get hot and bothered by it. I’ve been known to walk into a room and have someone look over at me as I entered with a smile on their face, or maybe they’d be laughing - for a completely unrelated matter, just bad timing on my part - and I’d completely fly off the fuckin’ handle. I’m extremely fuckin’ paranoid, I can’t help it - it’s just an after-effect of getting picked on when I was a kid. Sometimes that shit never leaves you, no matter how bad you want it to.
The reason for me bringing this up, is ‘cause O.K. was looking at me with a real funny look on his face, like he thought I was a fuckin’ idiot or something, or a troll or freak, and I felt the old rage bubbling up inside me - no matter that the fuck was twice my size, I couldn’t’ve gave two shit’s. Or a fuck.
I was just about to do something really stupid (thank jeebus I held back), when I realized that he wa
sn’t looking at me, but over my shoulder. I lowered my fists and turned to look at what he was seeing. The waves were crashing at our shore. And the sharks were hungry.
61
“Fuuuuuck!!!!! Movemovemovemovemove!!!” I yelled, breaking the hold the terrible sight behind me had on him. “Mountthefuckupnownownow!!!!”
I thought we were completely, utterly, and totally fucked (that’s pretty bad, all them adjectives). While my back was turned to the horde as I was thinking about how stupid I was to have almost committed the ultimate sin - giving up, not suicide - and while O.K. was seemingly doing the same, the zombies had poured forth from the street like blood from an open wound and were quite literally right at our heels. I guess we were so focused on ourselves that we both forgot we were standing in the worst possible place to have a little introspection.
Just as we mounted our vehicles and were pulling away, with the zombies clutching at our vehicles and ours backs, the battle we had been hearing came a-knocking at our door. Or more like pounding on it with a twenty-pound sledge hammer.
I couldn’t tell what was the cause - with the sounds of the zombies’ soul-crushing moans being the only things I could hear - but as we were about to pass the corner, either a rocket, grenade, or something else exploded from within the horde sending hundreds of zombies flying through the air in a wave of torn limbs and gouts of blood. Then at another point… and then at another… and another - and they were all getting closer and closer to the end of the street where O.K. and I were speeding away from.
“Artillery!!!” I yelled to O.K. as it suddenly hit me, “that’s fuckin’ artillery!!! Holy shit! Drive faster!!!”
Artillery was the only thing I could think of that could cause that kind of devastation, as the explosions were much greater than those that a grenade would make - like a hundred times greater. I figured that somewhere within a half-mile or mile radius - yet somewhere close enough that they would be able to get accurate hits like that in the middle of the street - there was either Howitzers or some Paladins set up taking fire missions. And if that was the case, there were gonna be some troops somewhere nearby, to relay the proper grid coordinates for such precision shooting. I had an inkling that we were gonna run into those guys sooner or later. I just hoped they didn’t mistake us for zombies and unleash on us.
When we were half way in between Madison and Main, I looked over my shoulder and saw three more impacts (I was pretty sure by then that it was indeed rounds impacting the earth from high above) as they continued to travel on through Boyce and over into the fields, sending hundreds more of the zombie fucks to their true deaths.
“Fuck yeah!!!” I yelled, laughing and pumping my fist into the air like a kid at his first rock concert. “Death from above, motherfuckers!!!! Try and walk away from that shit, you fuckin’ dicks!!!”
I was still laughing as I turned the corner onto West Main, with O.K. right behind me, and nearly ran over two infantry troops who were tangled on the ground with half a dozen zombies, fighting for their lives. We had driven right “Into the Pandemonium” (Celtic Frost rules, bitches!).
West Main, all the fuckin’ way down (at least as far as I was able to see), was packed with zombies and infantry troops, pitched thick in battle. It looked like a few platoons’ worth of soldiers fighting tooth and nail against the undead, some with their rifles and hand-guns, and some reduced to fighting hand-to-hand, using whatever they could find to try and survive. And they were losing.
This was the reason why the zombies had their backs to us when we first came upon them - they were waiting in line for the buffet. While the ones closest to us couldn’t possibly see or hear what was going on up ahead, they still knew that something was, ‘cause the zombies in front of them did, and the ones in front of them, and the ones in front of them… You get the picture, right? They were just following the cues of the ones in front, the dumb fucks.
I wasn’t about to stop and help the soldiers out and get killed myself, so I just blasted past the fighting when I could and shot my way through when I couldn’t. I felt bad about what I was doing, ‘cause some of the troops I passed by were calling out to me to help them - begging as they were torn apart - but I knew that to try would be futile, so I kept on going, avoiding eye contact as much as possible. But still making it as I passed by each and every fighting and dying soldier. I saw O.K. doing the same as he passed them by, with a look of deep regret on his face.
We were coming up on Leland Street, stray bullets flying through the air around us - some so close you could feel the heat as they buzzed on by - when from beneath a writhing pile of zombies that we were passing, a huge explosion erupted, sending the zombies flying in all directions, and blasting the two of us and our vehicles right off the fuckin’ ground.
I didn’t see what happened to O.K., but my ass got blasted through the plate-glass window of some mom-n’-pop hardware store, where I landed hard on my back and slid to a stop against a rack of candy bars. It fuckin’ hurt like hell. As I was picking myself up off the ground, I felt a stabbing-burning pain in my left side and looked down and was very surprised to see a long piece of fuckin’ window glass sticking outta me. I couldn’t believe my fuckin’ luck - I survived that shit in the street and the body-tossing explosion, only to die a slow death due to blood loss. Fuck me running!
Normally, when one is stabbed and the stabbing implement is still in the body, the smartest thing to do is to keep that shit in there, as whatever was used is actually stopping the wound from bleeding, essentially blocking off any arteries, veins, and tissues that it ripped through. You’ll still bleed, but not nearly as much. Pulling it out before the proper medical attention is given is the worst possible thing one could do, as it just opens the floodgates, so to speak. I know this from experience, as I was stabbed a few years back and nearly bled the fuck out on my kitchen floor. It’s a fuckin’ miracle I survived, as much blood as I lost.
But since I didn’t think any doctors or e.m.t.’s were gonna be jumping through that window to help me out any time soon, and since I didn’t want to have to fight my way outta fuckin’ Ottawa with a hunk of glass crunching and breaking apart inside my body, I grabbed that motherfucker and yanked that bitch right the fuck out. Like a man. Then I cried. Like a baby - ‘cause that shit hurt! Man, did it ever!
The blood immediately started pouring out the gash, like a faucet on high. It didn’t help that I was all amped up on adrenalin, and my heart was pumping faster than a hummingbirds from the fear and excitement I was feeling as I drove through that battle. Even flying through the window was exciting. I knew if I didn’t get that shit sealed up soon I’d just as well kiss my black ass good-bye, and I figured that a hardware store would have what I needed to do it, so I ran from shelf to shelf and rack to rack till I finally found what I was looking for - Super Glue! Battle tested in the jungles of Viet Nam, and used in the bloody streets of Ottawa during the Zombie Apocalypse!
I gave the gash a good squirt (funny how that sounds, right?), and held it closed for a couple minutes till I was sure the bleeding had stopped, then made my way to the front of the store to scope out my ride and gear and figure out my next course of action. On my way there I had a brief thought of internal bleeding and dying from it, since I only closed up the external wound leaving everything inside all ripped to shit, but I pushed that business outta my mind, ‘cause I had more pressing matters to attend to - like getting outta that mess alive.
Back at the window, I was pretty sure I was fucked. I didn’t realize it as I was flying through the air, but my Vespa had somehow exploded, which fuckin’ sucked ass, and all my gear on it had burned the fuck up, which sucked even more. I had lost it all - my food, drink, clothes, and most goddamn importantly, my shotgun and my .22 and all my fuckin’ ammo! And to make matters worse, either from crashing through the window or the hard landing onto the floor, the barrel of my AR got bent - not much, but there was no way I was gonna fire off any rounds through that bitch. All I was left with was
my .40 cal. and four spare mags. Oh yeah, I was definitely fucked.
Since I had limited ammo for the .40 and didn’t want to burn through it before I made it a block - there was that many zombies out there - I figured I’d better find myself another source of defense. So after I mowed down six candy bars, four things of beef jerky, and drank two large Gatorades to try and make up for the blood I lost, I found just what I needed in the back, in the camping gear section - two sweet little, razor-sharp hatchets. Just what the doctor ordered! I always thought it would be cool to fight zombies using hatchets, and now I was gonna get my chance.
I had just finished attaching the hatchet holsters to my LBV and taking a piss, when from the front of the store I heard glass breaking and shelves being knocked over as some of those zombies that were eating the troops outside had finally spotted me and were crashing into the store.
Looked like I was gonna get to try out them hatchets sooner than I thought.
62
I charged them motherfuckers like a bull. There were six of the fucks in the store with me, and I rammed into the closest one to me at full speed, lifting it right off its feet, and as we came down, I brought both the blades of my hatchets down into its fuckin face, cleaving that shit in half, splashing its blood through the air and spilling its brains to the floor.
As I pulled my blades outta the zombies face, contestant number two lunged down at me for a grab and I rolled into its legs like a bowling ball, causing it to trip over me and smash its face into the floor. I quickly jumped on it, landing on its neck - snapping that shit like a fuckin’ twig - and used it as a springboard to go at the next zombie who was reaching in for the kill. I finished that zombie off with one swift strike to its neck, nearly chopping its head clean off - it was left hanging by tendons and gristle. It was fuckin’ disgusting. That left three.
I couldn’t help it, but the last three zombies in there made me smile - I almost didn’t want to kill them. You see, they were “zombies with jobs”. George Romero, in his zombie movies, always liked to put in some zombies with jobs along with the “regular” everyday zombies. So you’d always see something like cop-zombies, or doctor-zombies, and always clown-zombies. The zombies with jobs that I was facing were a waitress-zombie, a mechanic-zombie named Bob, and a soldier-zombie (sans weapons) with a broken leg. It was great!
A.K.A. No Time for a Love Story (Book 1): Just Another Day Page 23