The thought arose with a calmness that frightened him a little. A man shouldn’t be so calm in the face of such unrelenting horror. There was something wrong with his brain if he was.
He glanced in the rearview mirror, checking the zombies behind them. He had to squint into the vermillion glare of the setting sun when he did, wishing again that they’d gotten on the road sooner. He’d let Brit delay him until today, and then he’d let her delay him some more, and now it was nearly sundown. He hated the thought of driving at night, but they just couldn’t wait another day. They hadn’t drunk anything in more than twenty-four hours.
Well, not exactly true. Maurice had drunk his own piss that afternoon. It had made him gag, but he had choked the warm, salty liquid down, and had managed to keep it down, a feat that made him feel oddly proud when he thought about it. He wondered if his dead dad-- a manly man was he-- had ever chugged a glass of his own hot piss.
Somehow, he didn’t think so.
He didn’t brake at the stop sign, but wheeled onto Speckman Drive, easing past a T-boned Camaro whose young driver hung partially through the windshield.
The first place he planned to stop at, once he got downtown, was a convenience store. See if he could get his family something to eat and drink. He just hoped he didn’t run afoul of any survivors. He had heard the distant rumble of motorcycle engines as he loaded the SUV earlier today. A whole fleet of them, it sounded like. He didn’t think anyone would bother if it was just him, but he was driving around with two fertile females, and two fertile females might be tempting for a group of desperate men. He had a pistol stowed in his glove box, but he only had about a dozen rounds for it, not enough to hold off a large group of armed thugs, especially considering he wasn’t a very good shot with it either. He had practiced. He just wasn’t comfortable around guns.
Stop worrying about things that will probably never happen, he told himself. Just concentrate on getting your children out of this city in one piece!
After he had taken care of their immediate needs, he planned to shag ass for the hills. He had an aunt who lived near Shawnee National Forest. It was a three-hour drive from Westland, but she had a big spread of land and not too many neighbors. It seemed the most logical place to try.
He turned again, winding his way toward the edge of the city. Their home, on Bookman Circle, was located nearly dead center in the sprawling midwestern town. They would have to pass through the most heavily populated sections of the city before they made it out to the countryside. He planned to avoid the main business districts, however. He had seen Dawn of the Dead. He wasn’t going anywhere near a shopping mall.
Instead, he planned to cut through the campus.
The Perry’s eased through the dead stoplights at the intersection of Speckman Drive and William Horton Avenue, headed west. There were more crashed cars here, closer to the college, more dead bodies lying in the streets. They rolled past deserted shops and restaurants, windows dark, no signs of life. Maurice had to drive up on the sidewalk once to get around a particularly nasty pileup. He counted ten, no eleven cars! Blood and glass everywhere. Bodies sprawled in the street. Or maybe he should say skeletons. They were all at least partially devoured.
Brit squealed at the top of her lungs every time she saw a zombie until, finally, Maurice began to think that it might actually be better to make the journey at night. Then, at least, she wouldn’t be able to see the monsters. Her mission of deafening him might go uncompleted.
He looked to his left. There, rising above the trees, were the top three floors of the university’s main dorms. Suspended from the edge of the roof was a series of bed sheets, lined up end to end. HELP US was written on the sheets in large, hand-painted black letters.
Maurice wondered if there were any kids left alive to help.
Didn’t matter. Nothing he could do about it. He had his own two kids to look after.
Up ahead, on the corner of University Boulevard and Horton, there was a large convenience store called the Pack ‘N’ Tuck. He had never been able to figure out what the hell that meant—what was a fucking ‘pack and tuck’?-- but it was fun to say. He had stopped there quite often in the good old days. For drinks, for gas, to flip through the girlies magazines. He’d try for supplies there first.
Brit screamed, pointing out his window: “OH MY GOD THERE’S ANOTHER ONE!” She nearly stabbed him in the nose with her nail.
Maurice swerved, of course, not out of surprise but because his eardrum nearly burst.
The kids squealed and cried.
“Damn it, Brit! I told you to stop screaming!” Maurice yelled.
He turned his head to look, though.
A zombie was standing on the sidewalk holding what looked like a sandwich board sign. The sign read: WILL WORK FOR BRAINS.
Despite his tension (and annoyance with his shrieky wife), Maurice laughed a little. It slipped out like a hiccup, before he could swallow it back.
Is that…? Am I seeing that right? he thought.
Further up the street, shuffling around in front of a sporting goods store, was another zombie. It was a huge fucking zombie, too! It was obviously male, with massive shoulders and legs like tree trunks. Looked nearly seven feet tall.
It was also dressed in hot pink tights and a ballerina tutu!
“What the fuck,” Maurice said, laughing again.
He drove past the big zombie in the tutu, craning his head to watch it.
The creature, whatever—no, whoever-- it had been, had obviously possessed a keen sense of humor once. The massive dude’s hair was put up in pigtails. It also looked like he had taped his mouth shut with duct tape, and there were big cartoon lips drawn on his muzzle.
Maurice had to admire the guy. It seemed to him to be a very wise and selfless act to muzzle oneself, to render those oh-so-deadly chompers harmless, knowing one was dying. And to dress up like that! Now, that was balls! To laugh in the face of death like that! That was like going up to the Devil and spitting in his eye!
That’s what I’m going to do if I catch that awful virus, he promised himself.
He rolled into the intersection of University and Horton, still looking over his shoulder at Ballerina Zombie. He intended to do a little circle in the four way, check up and down University Boulevard before pulling into the Pack ‘N’ Tuck, just to make sure it was clear.
He didn’t see the herd.
His wife did, though.
Brit shrieked something, yelling the words so loud and so fast he couldn’t understand a thing she said. He did, however, feel his right eardrum finally burst, and he howled along with her, hands flying from the wheel to his ears. As the SUV turned in a slow circle, a naked guy in a Richard Nixon mask swung into view. The zombie swiped at the air, his fingers splayed out in twin V’s. He was wearing a sign that said I AM NOT A CROOK. Below that, his guts dangled like a very gruesome apron.
The SUV hit the naked Richard Nixon, plowing him under.
In his pain and confusion, Maurice stomped on the brakes. The tires squawked and the vehicle rolled over the zombie. Maurice and Britney jerked forward in their seatbelts.
“That’s it, goddamn it! I want a divorce!” Maurice snarled.
He looked past his wife then, and his jaw dropped to his chest.
Standing less than a block from them was a massive herd of zombies. There were hundred of them. Maybe thousands. There were so many they stretched from one side of the street to the other, shoulder to shoulder. They were at least two or three blocks deep. They had been shuffling their way north after losing interest in a gang of bikers that had outrun them earlier that day, but at the squeal of the SUV’s brakes, they stopped and turned around.
They stared for a moment, their eyes glazed, their faces slack, and then all at once, they thundered toward the SUV.
Maurice stomped on the gas pedal, his lips peeled back from his teeth. The Kia, a good, dependable vehicle, even if it wasn’t Made In The USA, spun its right rear tire in the guts of a
very unlucky college sophomore. The boy’s intestines shot out behind the vehicle in bloody gray ribbons. Forty feet of slippery entrails unwound from the lad’s smoking torso before the spinning tire finally ejected his body completely from beneath the car. The SUV slewed forward and crashed into a light post. The hood flew up and a cloud of steam hissed into the air.
The collective roar of the zombies sounded to Maurice like a crashing 747. He threw off his seatbelt and kicked open the door.
It wasn’t his intent to flee. He would never abandon his children. What he intended to do was yank the kids from the backseat and run with them as fast as he could. Hope Brit kept the zombies busy long enough to get away. Instead, what he did was fall to his hands and knees.
There, directly in front of him, was a pair of red sneakers.
He looked up. Slowly. Past the sneakers and the pants puddled around the ankles. Past a pair of boxers and a funny checkered tie. He looked up, and he couldn’t help but smile.
The zombie had an arrow through its head and a pair of googly-eyed glasses.
It snarled.
Maurice Perry died laughing.
About the Author
Joseph Duncan is the author of eleven novels, including the indie bestselling Oldest Living Vampire Saga. He lives in Southern Illinois with his wife, his kids, and all the voices in his head. If you’d like to contact Mr. Duncan, you may do so at [email protected]. You can also friend him on Facebook, or visit his blog Red Ramblings.
Die Laughing (The Fearlanders) Page 8