by Mark Tufo
“Quiet,” Mrs. Deneaux said through clenched teeth as dust settled all around them. “Take your damned foot off of the brake you’re going to give us away.” She extracted herself from the car quickly.
“Nice we’ll just let them race on by, then we’ll get out of here,” Gary said enthusiastically.
The first motorcycle raced past the Pinto’s detour before Mrs. Deneaux started firing. Gary threw his hands up to his ears, unprepared for the noise of the reports.
“What are you doing, you crazy old fuck?” BT shouted. “They would have driven right past!”
“For what…another hundred yards before they figured we weren’t up ahead?” she answered between shots.
After Gary recovered from the initial shock, he opened his door and grabbed his rifle. At least one motorcyclist had met his demise, and the rest still didn’t know what was happening through the kicked up dust. Gary fired three shots—the last of which caught the front of the motorcycle or possibly the driver, either way the driver planted his bike into the nearest tree. The gang banger behind him had been following too closely and crashed also. He was not dead, but his cries of pain most likely put him out of this battle.
Then it was quiet as the rest of the gang discovered the ruse. The bikes throttled down from their surge to an idle. The bike that had gone past was now slowly coming back. The roadway was settling and the carnage was visible to all. The man who hit the tree was twisted with his legs bent backwards and up over his head; the world’s most flexible gymnast could not have struck that pose.
“Ah fuck, Teets and Dogger are dead,” one of the men said.
“Come and get me.” The one that had wrecked yelled. “My arm and my leg are busted.”
One of the trailing men got off his bike.
“Don’t!” the man up ahead yelled. “It’s a trap.”
“Fuck man it’s Deuce. I’ve got to get him,” The first man replied.
“Give me your rifle,” Mrs. Deneaux said softly to Gary. The words were barely out of her mouth when she grabbed it from him.
“What are you doing?” he asked as he handed it the rest of the way over.
“I’m giving Deuce’s friend a little incentive,” she said as she fired a round off that caught the fallen man in his broken arm.
“Oh fuck!” he screamed. He was writhing in agony, the intense pain from his shattered elbow all he could think about. “Help me!” he screamed again. “Get me out of here!”
“Q-ball, I’ve got to get him, we go way back,” the man on the left said.
“Come on, come on,” Mrs. Deneaux whispered as she kept her eye to the rifle’s aperture.
“You sure are one cold bitch,” BT said as he came up alongside her.
“The Viet Cong were famous for this,” Deneaux replied.
“What is she talking about?” Gary asked.
“The Viet Cong would wound a soldier and lay in wait until other soldiers would try to rescue him, then they’d kill them all,” BT explained. “It was some pretty sick shit.”
“That’s what’s going on here?” Gary asked incredulously.
“Mike understood the value of a well-placed ambush,” Deneaux said.
“Not like this,” BT said.
“Really?” she asked finally looking up at BT long enough to arch an eyebrow. “Michael knew the aspect of our fair advantage.”
“This is murder,” BT said.
“How are you so dense?” she asked. “It is our survival or it is theirs, by any means necessary.”
“She’s right, BT,” Gary added. “Mike understood that. There are more than just zombies now. It is a struggle of good versus evil. The zombies have just marked the lines of delineation. Instead of scouring the earth of the scourge of humanity, those same lowlifes have risen to the top and are taking over. While the good people stay hidden protecting themselves and their own, these assholes take whatever they want and destroy whoever they want.”
“That man is defenseless.” BT pointed to the wailing figure on the roadway.
“And if he wasn’t?” Gary challenged.
“That’s not the point!” BT said, letting anger begin to inflect his voice. “He’s a human being and we’re treating him like a zombie.”
“You mean like this?” Deneaux asked as she drilled the man’s forehead with a shot. His head snapped back and his crying ceased.
“Q-ball they killed Deuce!” the distraught man yelled.
“How would I have missed that, Digger?” Q-Ball yelled. “We didn’t want to hurt you,” he added.
Deneaux started laughing in response. “Neither did we.”
“You’ve killed six of my men, this isn’t over!”
“It could be,” Deneaux said. “Just step into the clearing.”
“Yo, bitch, what is your problem?” Digger yelled. “That was my friend.”
“Well now I gave you a reason to pour some of your forty ounce beer on the ground. Isn’t that what you do? Kind of as a homage?” Deneaux cackled.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” Digger screamed as he began to run to the clearing, his rifle chattering from the multiple rounds he was expending.
BT shot him before Deneaux had an opportunity. The bullets had come dangerously close to their location.
“And then there were two little Indians,” Mrs. Deneaux said cheerily.
“Fuck you all!” Q-ball said as he hopped on his bike and headed down the dirt path. It was moments later and the last remaining man got on his bike and headed back the way they had come.
“Well that was fun,” Mrs. Deneaux said as she began to brush broken bits of glass from her hair.
BT was still at a loss for words. Gary was approaching the dead men.
“What are you doing?” BT asked him.
Gary bent over and grabbed the assault weapon.
“Oh,” BT said as he came over, “any ammo?”
“Check the bikes. At least one of them had saddle bags.” Mrs. Deneaux reloaded her pistol and Gary’s rifle. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Huh?” BT asked.
Gary was opening the bike’s bags. “Damn, looks like a brass factory in here!”
Mrs. Deneaux pointed to the ground where a spreading pool of liquid was emptying from the bottom of the Pinto.
“Shit,” BT said as he ran back to the car.
Mrs. Deneaux was going over to Gary. “Help me lift this bike,” she said to him. Him helping turned out to be him lifting it.
Mrs. Deneaux straddled the machine; she held the clutch in and pushed down on the starter. The bike stuttered and died, she pushed again the bike started up. She got off and started to inspect the front end. “It should be fine,” she told Gary.
“Fine for what?” he asked her.
“For you or BT. I’m taking Digger’s motorcycle,” she replied.
“Taking it where?” Gary asked, obviously still confused.
“The Pinto is dead, so unless you want to walk, this is our option.”
“I don’t know how to drive a motorcycle,” Gary replied in alarm.
“First off, one does not ‘drive’ a bike, they ‘ride’ it, and you’d better hope BT can, then.”
“You’d really leave us then?” BT asked as he came over.
She didn’t reply as she went over to Digger’s bike and gave it the once over.
“And you do?” BT asked in reference to her knowing how to ride a bike.
“I belonged to a motorcycle club back in the late sixties,” she said with a smile.
“Of course you did,” BT responded. “This bike has some front end damage.”
“It’ll be fine, it’s just going to be a bumpy ride for you is all.”
“You know how to ride then?” Gary asked BT hopefully.
“I’ve had experience, I’m not great. With my size and the damage to the front end you should ride with Deneaux.”
“Fantastic!” she cackled. “You will be my bitch!”
They grabbed their meager
supplies out of the Pinto and stuffed every available pocket and saddle bag with it and started off. Gary was reluctant to wrap his arms around Deneaux, but when she started and he almost pitched off he thought better of his hesitation. Deneaux was laughing madly as they started for the road. BT was cautious on the rough dirt road and was already a few miles behind Deneaux as she was screaming down the highway.
Gary had his head huddled into her back and was holding on for dear, dear life.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mike Journal Entry 4
“Got another beer?” I asked John. Drunk was infinitely better than tripping and the quicker I could change my altered states the better. I had long ago stopped staring at the van’s gauges. They kept swirling and melting into each other anyway. The roadway wasn’t much better, but I still had enough presence of mind to keep watching that…barely.
I almost slammed into a tree when I felt the icy prick of death against the back of my neck, or it was the beer John was handing to the front. “Fuck,” I said as I reached back and grabbed the beer. “My hand, John, my hand!” I told him.
“What’s the matter with it?” he asked sitting up to take a look.
“Nothing, just put the beer in my hand next time.”
“Oh you need a beer?” he asked. “Why didn’t you just say something?” He reached in the cooler and placed another freezing can against the back of my neck.
At least this time I was ready for it and I grabbed it quickly. The glow of the burning city in my rearview mirror would have been surreal under normal circumstances. I couldn’t get over the sensation that Godzilla was real and he had just laid waste to the entire area. I hoped that Gary, BT, Mary, and Josh had made it out, because from my vantage point, it didn’t look like anything had survived.
“Man…you crying?” John asked, he was completely leaning over the seat, mere inches from my face.
“I’m fine,” I told him, trying as nonchalant as possible to wipe my tears away.
“Are you out of beer?”
“I’m good,” I told him, but we need to find a place to hole up. I can’t keep driving, if that’s what you’d even call this.”
“There are some cabins a few miles up the road. It’s a little bit off the highway, nice and secluded,” John said.
John’s flashes of lucidity were always welcome. “Just point the way,” I told him.
His index finger was up by the side of my face as he was quite literally pointing the way. I thought he might have been joking at first, or maybe he’d only leave it up there for a moment or two, but ten miles later his finger began to bend as we were coming up on our turn. Then straightened back out as we made the left.
“You think it’s safe?” I asked him as we pulled up to a small camp ground that had six or seven cabins for rent.
“We never got caught,” he answered.
“Who?”
“Me and the wife…we never got caught,” he answered.
“And who would have been doing the catching?” I asked.
“That’s not the point. Come on,” John said as he quickly exited the vehicle.
“Caught doing what?” I asked to his back as I followed. “And that’s exactly the point.” I was three mother fucking steps away from the van when I realized I didn’t have my rifle. I was paranoid, I swear I could see zombies all around, or it was light poles, reality was blurring heavily with hallucinations. I ran quickly back to the van and began to look inside when after a moment I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I had completely forgotten. I jumped, hitting my head on the ceiling when right next to my ear, John asked what I was doing.
“I don’t remember,” I told him.
“That happens to me all the time,” he explained,
“It was important.”
“It always is. If you were meant to have it, it will come back. If not, then you’ve set it free,” he told me prophetically.
“Isn’t that love?” I asked.
“We hardly know each other.”
“I’m never tripping with you again, John,” I told him.
“OH! That’s why I feel so funny. Come on we should go inside.” He said as he fumbled around with a large key ring he produced from God knew where. The keys themselves were making strange echoing vibrations inside my head as they jangled together.
I looked longingly at the van, wishing I had found or could even remember what I was looking for. But I still followed John to the cabin. I don’t know if the drugs were having an effect, but each cabin was painted in some of the most garish colors I had ever seen. The one we were going to was plum purple; the one next to ours—which I was glad we were not going to—was blood red.
“These are some intense colors,” I said to John, hoping that I wasn’t hallucinating this also.
“I’ve never noticed,” John said, standing on the small porch. “We should probably get in, the funky people are coming.”
I didn’t know who the ‘funky people’ were or why I should care, but John seemed to be distressed about it and that was good enough for me. He led me inside. I’d seen closets that were bigger than the cabin, but it had a bed, a small fridge, a television and a chair, pretty much anything a lone man or a couple on a getaway needed.
“I think I know what I forgot,” I told John excitedly.
“About what?” he asked. He was looking through the cabin’s side window.
“The beer, I forgot to get the beer.”
“It’s alright, man,” John said as he took two strides to get across the room to the small dorm fridge. “They’re probably warm but they’re wet.” He flashed a smile as he opened the door, at least a case worth of Natty Lite was stuffed inside.
Had I not been so fucked up on acid, I would have gagged at the display, but as it was, they looked like gleaming cans of honey. “Wonderful,” I said as a funky person slammed into our door.
“Whoa you think they want one, too?” John said as he went to open the door and ask just that.
“We don’t have enough to share,” I said selfishly as I grabbed one of the lukewarm god nectars.
“Probably right,” he said as he let the door handle go.
“Man they’re persistent,” I said as I downed the beer in two or three gulps. Even as high as I was, I was more in tune with how disagreeable the sub-par beverage was thonking around in my gut than I was with the zombies that were trying to gain entry. “I really wish I had a gun,” I said arbitrarily.
“Are you a fed?” John asked warily.
“What?” I asked as I turned to him, not realizing that I had another beer open and was now pouring it down the front of my poncho.
“You said you wanted a gun, only feds have guns.”
I turned back to my beer and with a conscious effort I tilted my hand back up so it would stop soaking me. “Naw, man, I ain’t no fed, I just think we need one.”
Glass shattered from the side window, at least four or five sets of hands reached through the curtains.
“Whoa that’s intense!” John said.
“Zombies!” The word finally found its way through the folds of my convoluted mind and out my mouth. Arms poked through the window and the door looked like it was in danger of giving at any moment. Like a caged animal I looked frantically for a back door, even in my state it would have been extremely difficult to miss something like that in a cabin so small.
“We should get in the basement,” John suggested.
Again I spun around like a top on Red Bull. “John there’s two windows and a door that leads outside. There’s no basement.”
“There isn’t?” he asked with alarm. “That’s bad news then, we’ll have to share our beer with the funky people.”
“John the Tripper, they don’t want the beer.”
“Well that’s good,” he said as he physically relaxed.
“Not so much,” I said softly, the seriousness of the situation was beginning to break through the stranglehold the hallucinogen had on my mind. I grabbed the l
amp and pulled the shade off. I started to swing it around to get a feel of the heft of it to see if it could do any damage if it came in contact with a skull, but unless that skull belonged to a squirrel I was going to be in a little bit of trouble.
“Hey, man, that lamp cost twelve dollars. Stephanie is going to be pissed.”
“Why would your wife care? And how do you know how much this cost?” I asked him, holding the lamp nearly under his nose, almost in accusation. I didn’t know why that seemed like such an important matter, but right now I didn’t have anything else to fixate on.
“Stephanie owns these cabins. I’m supposed to manage them but I usually forget,” he said sheepishly.
“So does this place have a basement then?” I asked, again doing a pirouette like a drunken ballerina, but I guess that analogy is wrong because the drunken ballerina would still have been more graceful.
“No, man, you told me we didn’t,” John replied forlornly as he grabbed the lamp from my hand. “It’s too bad, too, because I was growing some killer weed down there. I even had a little rhyme, too, ‘The Purple cabin leads to the land of enchantment, smurple!’”
“That’s how you remember?”
He nodded.
I backed up, and two zombie hands had sought purchase on my poncho. I wrenched myself free.
“We really should get in the basement,” he said his eyes wide.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I told him.
“Why not?”
“Why not what?”
“Why couldn’t you agree more?” he asked in seriousness.
“Figure of speech.”
“Like an hourglass?” John asked.
“Sure, the basement, John.”
“Oh yeah, and you’re not the Fed right? Because if I ask…you have to tell me.”
“I don’t think that’s the case anymore, John. But no, I’m not a Fed,” I told him as the door began to crack under the zombie assault.
“Good thing.” John moved a small throw rug aside. A little hinged trap with a recessed ring for a pull lever looked back up at us. “See, I told you we had a basement,” he said triumphantly.
“How big is this thing?” If the size of the trap door was any indication, we were about to be inside an earthen cubby hole, and I for one would rather have taken my chances with the zombies. The thought of lying in the dirt underneath the floorboards as zombies walked above us was sending me into a near state of panic. Zombies walking across our graves; something was fundamentally wrong with the whole picture that was flashing across my mind.