Since the soldier-zombie had a busted leg and was taking its sweet fuckin’ time getting to me, I figured I’d kill the other two off quickly and take care of his ass at my leisure. Instead of going at them full-bore and exerting myself, I got down in a crouch and waited for them to come to me. Just as I was about to lose patience and go Wolverine on them fucks for taking so long, they finally got within my killing range, side-by-side like good little boys and girls, and came at me. I thought of doing some stupid ninja-type stuff that I had seen done in countless kung fu movies, but opted with stepping into them and driving my blades down into the center of their foreheads, killing them both simultaneously.
While I was standing there eating some beef jerky and waiting for the soldier-zombie - whose name I saw was Cpl. Santos - to come over to me so I could chop his fuckin’ head off and continue trying to figure out my plan, I couldn’t help but wonder if O.K. had survived the blast and whatever had happened to him afterwards. I decided I had to fuckin’ find out, one way or the other.
So instead of decapitating Santos like I had originally planned, I figured I’d use his fucked up dead ass - if it was possible. You see, even though O.K. had said he seen zombies in Chi-town attacking each other, I had some suspicions that he in fact did not. What I thought he saw was a “Quisling” - a person or persons who had completely given up on themselves and had taken over the characteristics of the zombies. Sure, quislings were a figment of Max Brooks’ imagination that he wrote about in his book “World War Z”, but it still made sense to me.
I knew that in searching for O.K. I would have to step into the hornets’ nest, so the plan was to “Quislinize” myself, to make myself as invisible to the zombies as I possibly could - by covering myself in zombie guts and using Cpl. Santos as a seeing-eye zombie, shadowing him. I figured that the only reason the quislings in Chi-town got ate by their “fellow” zombies was ‘cause they still smelled and moved like humans. I just hoped the soldiers who were still battling for their lives out there noticed I was still one of them and didn’t take any pot-shots at me.
While Santos was shuffling about, I went over to the waitress-zombie - June, her name tag said - and cut her stomach open from her panty-line to her breast-bone. I then reached in her and began to pull her guts out and loop them over and around my body - her intestines went over my shoulders like a second LBV and got tied around my waist and legs; I put her kidneys in a couple spare pockets of my LBV; and I yanked out her heart and squeezed it like a sponge so that all the blood from within drained over my head and body. I also smeared every exposed part of my body with her guts until I was completely covered in June. Then I waited for Santos.
I smelled like shit. I smelled like death. I smelled like road-kill. But to my good buddy Santos, I smelled just like a zombie - he walked right by me, completely ignoring me as he roamed around the hardware store trying to find the scent that he had lost. It was beautiful! I was totally invisible to the undead!
“Hey, dipshit,” I said, conversationally, to Santos. “I’m over here, fuckface.”
“Uhhhmmmmnnnnnuuuuhhhh,” he replied, as he spun in the direction he heard my voice come from, still not seeing me. “Nnnnnnngggguuuuuunnnnnnmmmm…”
“Yeah, buddy, I hear ya. I know exactly what you’re saying, pal. I do… Not to be rude, and all… but, uh, why don’t you walk your bum-legged as over here, all right? You see… I need ya, pal, I need you so I can go outside and find my friend O.K., okay?”
“Rrrrruuuummmmggggg,” Santos replied, when he was about seven feet from me.
“Well, that’s kind of right… close. What it is I need of you, is for you to be like sort of a ‘seeing eye dog’ for me. I want you to lead me through that fuckin’ mess out there, right the fuck in front of me. I’m gonna be so close to your ass, that when your dead buddies out there look at us, all they’re gonna see is you - not me. Got it? But first…”
At that point, Santos was standing right the fuck in front of me, looking all confused as shit, still unable to find me even though I was literally standing inches from him. I grabbed him by his shoulders and slammed his ass to the floor so he landed flat on his stomach, then dropped onto his back with my knees - pinning him - then went to work.
Even though I trusted ole’ Santos enough to lead me around out there - with me guiding him, of course - he still was a fuckin’ zombie. So there were some precautions I had to take to ensure my safety. So I bashed in his fuckin’ teeth with the back of one of my hatchets, and chopped off his arms. Safety… ensured. I yanked his ass up off the floor and we both walked to the front door, opened it up, and looked out.
There were neither any zombies nor soldiers directly in front of us, so I walked us out onto the sidewalk and looked around till I spotted O.K.’s Gator, which was wrapped around a light post about ten feet to my left. We shambled on over there, at Santos’ pace - which was pretty fuckin’ slow, but I figured it was what was needed to complete the illusion - and saw no sign of O.K. once we got there. I did find his AK, but it was pretty fucked up and useless.
While I was standing there trying to guess which way O.K. would’ve went, I heard a shuffling and a feet-dragging coming up behind me. The true test had come. Very, very slowly I turned Santos and me around to see exactly what was coming our way. Shuffling on up was a lil’ pixie zombie-girl that had been eviscerated and was dragging her entrails, and a librarian-looking zombie right behind her. The pixie kept going right by us without even looking, and the librarian bumped into Santos, causing him to let out a little moan, and she too kept on shambling by. They didn’t even see me. It was funny, even Santos didn’t realize I was there anymore.
I turned us back around to see what type of establishment we were standing in front of, thinking that O.K. may have decided to seek shelter inside to avoid the cacophony out in the street - ‘cause even though it was fairly quiet where we were standing, just twenty feet away from us it was fuckin’ insane - and was surprised and very glad to see that we were standing right in front of a bar.
And not one of those “bars” where you’d hear some stupid fuckin’ hip-hop or techno shit blaring from the speakers and see some heavily made-up skanks surrounded by a bunch of douche-bags wearing polo shirts or those gay Affliction t-shirts, or a bunch of metro-sexual motherfucker’s wearing skinny jeans and ultra-tight retro t-shirts of bands those fags were too young to even hear of - this was a real bar: it was seedy, small, and dirty looking. Shit, the place didn’t even have a fuckin’ name, just an old faded PBR insignia hanging in the window next to a small light-up “open” sign. My kind of place!
We were about to walk in the bar for a drink - ‘cause I was dry, let me tell ya, and fiending for a drink - when a couple of weaponless soldiers came running in my direction, with a shit-ton of zombies close behind them. They ran right by me and Santos (I even made eye contact with one of them and nodded - and I can tell that shit freaked him out, a zombie having the mental capacity to make eye contact and give a gesture of recognition) and burst through the front door of the bar, slamming it shut behind them.
I was immediately fuckin’ hot - those stupid fucks were leading a pack of one-track-mind meat-puppets right to my would-be sanctuary, where hopefully I’d find O.K. and be able to get a mean buzz on. Well, I wasn’t having that shit, so I waited till the zombies - there was ten of them - got next to me before I struck. And strike I did.
63
I jumped out from behind Santos and barreled into the pack like a wrecking ball, driving four of the ten to the ground in one fell swoop. Before they could get up, I lunged down at the two closest to me and brought my hatchets to their heads - burying the hatchet in my left hand to the hilt in the top of one zombies head, and nearly taking off the top of the other zombies head from the bridge of her nose up with the hatchet in my right. It was fuckin’ wicked.
Unfortunately, my left hatchet got stuck in the top of the zombie’s head, and while I was trying to yank that bitch out, the other two zombies
I knocked down had regained their feet and were leaning down to take a bite outta life - namely, me. So were the rest of them. Luckily for me, though, since the zombies were too stupid to make a coordinated effort to make me their meal and were all fuckin’ bunched up trying for me at the same exact time, I only had to worry about the two.
I did a sweet fuckin’ leg sweep on them mofo’s causing them to slam into the ground, and then did a backwards somersault to give myself a little distance so I could make my next move. I came outta the somersault, jumped forward to the two leg-swept zombies who were at that point picking themselves up, and brought the backs of my hatchets - the hammer side - down hard to the backs of their heads, doing a Gallagher to them, and then brought the hatchets back up in a blinding arc to the faces of the next two in line who were reaching in for the kill.
Those two zombies got picked up off their feet I hit ‘em so hard, and before they even hit the ground, I had my hatchets in the skulls of the next two - it was like an assembly line of death. Before the two I upended had a chance to get up, I back-stepped to them and stomped on their fuckin’ necks, killing them, while I chopped off the left hand of another who tried reaching at me while I was preoccupied, the fuck.
I shoulder-checked that dude - an emo-tastic fag-boy who was wearing those skinny jeans and retro shirt - as he tried to come at me again, not even realizing that I had just made him an amputee, and then drove him into the other three, causing one of them to fall to the ground and the other two to stumble a few feet away from me. I kicked the zombie that fell in the side of its head, snapping its neck and ripping it’s ear off in the process, and grabbed emo boy and ripped his head clean off in an over-the-shoulder falling headlock that I had seen done regularly during WWF wrestling when I was a kid. It was a complete accident, but I wasn’t gonna complain. I never knew something so gay as “professional” wrestling could produce such deadly moves. Maybe I should’ve watched it more…
The last two had just shambled their way back to me, and I decided to take care of them quick-like, so I just hammer-smashed their faces to pulp with one quick blow to each. At that point, I was beginning to get some unwanted zombie attention, as most of the soldiers on that part of the street were dead and dying and the zombie numbers were growing by the second. I looked down at myself, wondering why I was getting so much attention, as more and more zombies were stopping in their tracks to turn slowly towards me, looks of uncertainty on their faces - and saw that almost all of June’s guts had fallen off of me during the fight, and most of her blood had dried up or got wiped off. I was starting to smell alive again!!!
“Fuck!!!” I yelled, like a fuckin’ idiot.
That really got ‘em going. Now I had them coming at me instead of just standing there looking stupid. Smooth move, Ex-Lax, I thought to myself. I quickly got to my knees next to the nearest slain zombie and began to hack at its stomach and chest, opening that fucker up. I then did what I’m gonna call “The June Process” and quickly slathered myself in zombie blood and guts, from head to motherfuckin’ toe. For some reason the guts of that zombie smelled a whole lot worse than June’s, and I nearly puked on the first zombie that came to investigate the source of the noise it heard - and thankfully found nothing too interesting. I stood there in the street for a full ten minutes (an insurance agency across the street had a clock on its window), letting the curious zombies go elsewhere, before I decided it was safe enough for me to go back to the bar - where Santos was still dutifully standing.
“Well, Santos,” I said to him once I got there (there were no zombies in the immediate vicinity, so I figured it was okay to talk to him). “Looks like I didn’t really need you after all. Sorry I chopped your arms off and bashed in your teeth there, buddy. No hard feelings, I hope. I guess I’ll just send you off then. I’ll make it quick…”
With that said, I made it as quick as possible and brought one of my hatchets to his skull in a powerful two-handed blow, killing him instantly. I don’t really know why I treated Santos so differently than the rest of the zombies, or why I was even talking to him like I was, but for some reason it felt right. Maybe I was losing it – hell, maybe I lost it, and don’t realize it yet - or maybe I was just trying to talk to the human inside, if there was still one in there. I really don’t know. I was rifling through Santos’ BDU pockets, looking for anything that I might be able to use and talking to Santos (still) while I was doing it, when from the bar one of the soldiers spoke up.
“He…hey…” he whispered. “Hey… are you… are you alive, man?”
“What the fuck do you think?” I whispered back, over my shoulder. “I’m talking out here, aren’t I?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“What? You think these zombie fucks can talk, man… is that it?” I said as I got up and walked to the bars front door. “They can’t talk, man, and yes, I am alive. You gonna let me in, or am I gonna have to break this fuckin’ door down and let some of these land-sharks in there with you. They won’t do anything to me, oh no, but I know they’ll eat you guys right up…”
“Fuck, don’t do that!!! What are you fucking crazy?! Hold on a minute, jeez!!!”
Two seconds later the door was open and I was stepping inside. As soon as I was in, the other soldier came up and they both pulled the jukebox away from the wall and barricaded the door with it. The window was high enough up and small enough that they didn’t have to try and cover that up. All in all, the place looked pretty secure, even though I didn’t plan on staying any longer than I had to.
I must’ve looked like quite the sight to those guys, all covered in gore, holding onto two dripping hatchets - after they barricaded the door, they backed away from me and stood there staring at me, clearly unsure if they did the right thing by letting me in there with them. I couldn’t help but laugh in their faces, making them back up even further.
“You got nothing to worry about, guys,” I said to them. “You can relax, I’m harmless. You can trust me. My name is Dave. I hope you can understand why I don’t shake your hands.”
“Ye… yeah, of course,” said the soldier who I was talking to from the window, clearly the braver one. “You’re a fucking mess… Um, I’m Jerry, and this is Oswald.”
“Cool, guys. So… have you guys cleared this place yet? Have you found any survivors in here?”
“Yeah, it’s clear,” Oswald said, getting a little braver. “There’s a big black guy behind the bar… We think he’s dead, but we don’t know…”
“O.K.!!!” I nearly yelled, and ran around the bar, dropping my hatchets as I got to him. “Oh man, I hope you’re alive!”
Thankfully he was only unconscious, and after a few shakes he came to, groggy but alive. “Dave, my friend! …I thought I would never see you on this plane again! I am so glad you are alive! Oooohhh!” he groaned, holding his head with his left hand and supporting himself with his right as he tried to get himself up. “My head is aching terribly… Can you help me up, my friend?”
“Sure, no problem, man,” I answered as I grabbed him under his armpits and helped him to his feet. “There you go, buddy, up you go… Let’s get you around this shit and get you into a stool, okay?”
Once I got him into a stool, I went back around the bar and got myself a beer from the cooler - a deeeeeeee-licious Pabst Blue Ribbon (aka “pork chop in a can”). “You want anything from back here, O.K.?”
“If you do not mind, I would like a glass of rum, my friend. I do not care what the brand is, as long as it is dark and strong. Like I like my women.”
At that he broke out into hearty, long laughter. It was the first time I heard the big guy laugh, and it made me feel good that he had it in him. I was worried that he was all business and no play, since up until that point the had been so serious and polite. It was good to know that he and I were kind of of the same mind. I poured him some Captain Morgan’s over ice - but strong, with little ice and heavy on the Captain - and slid it over to him.
“Anything else f
or ya, pal,” I asked, fully getting into the bartender mode.
“If you can find me some aspirin or some ibuprofen, it would be greatly appreciated. My head is throbbing something fierce. I feel as if I was hit by a rhinoceros!”
“I know the feeling, man. I just dug an eight-inch piece of glass out of my stomach. I feel your pain. If I find some, I’m gonna hit ‘em up, too.”
I didn’t find any aspirin or ibuprofen anywhere behind the bar, but I did find someone’s Vicodin in a purse that was probably left behind by a bartender and gave him two of those, and also took two for myself. I also poured him another drink, as he was dry, and got myself another brew. I stayed behind the bar for at least another couple hours, re-supplying O.K. and myself with drinks until we were both completely shit-faced, while the whole time the two soldiers just stood in the back of the bar staring at us like we were a couple of pychos ‘cause we were having a good time getting loaded while out in the street their friends were being eaten alive. They just didn’t get it - that nowadays you were gonna have to take moments like that whenever you could get ‘em, ‘cause odds are you won’t.
64
I woke up the next morning at 9:45, the clock on the wall said, peeling my face up out of a pile of dried vomit. Strangely enough, I wasn’t panicked as I should have been after waking up like that with absolutely no idea of how I came to be there, as the last conscious memory that I had was of giving O.K. his seventh Captain and telling him that we had better get going if we wanted to make it to Streator by dark. I was strangely at peace and feeling grrrrrrrreeeeeaaaat, as ole’ Tony the Tiger is wont to say.
A.K.A. No Time for a Love Story (Book 1): Just Another Day Page 24