by Mark Tufo
Next was Carl, who nodded to me. He was an older guy, mid-fifties maybe, always in his garage working on his motorcycle with the door open whether it was ninety-five or negative five degrees out. He was quick with a wave and a smile, come to think of it I’ve probably waved to this guy a couple of hundred times in the months I’ve lived here and never once have I said hello. Strange. He had two pearl-handled revolvers holstered to his belt. He looked like he knew how to use them but I would have hoped that he was carrying more firepower. Oh well, his call. Next was Ben, he was older than Carl, he was probably pushing sixty-five or seventy—great. I was now dreading my decision to not bring the boys. I’d seen Ben around a few times. I don’t think he went out too much. He was always walking his Golden Retriever who looked older than him. I’m not sure which one of them went slower, neither one was in any great rush to get anywhere. I’m no Carl Lewis, but if we had to run for it, I’m not sure Ben—or Carl for that matter—could outpace the zombies.
Last but not least, okay by sizing him up maybe he was least, was someone’s nephew. He muttered something about an uncle or maybe elephant trunk, but I wasn’t able to pick it up and I wasn’t concerned enough to get clarification. His name was Tipper. I know! What kind of name is that? Tipper looked like a cokehead. He twitched more than Tom Arnold when Roseanne was yelling at him. I didn’t trust any of them. Even though this was my idea, I now didn’t want to go. I was more than half-tempted to turn around until Ben started to speak.
“Got the truck all warmed up for us,” he drawled.
Everyone in our small party turned and deferred to me. I just wanted to go home and eat one of Tommy’s Pop-Tarts. “Let’s get going,” I said instead. I inadvertently shivered, whether from the cold or someone walking over my grave; I wasn’t sure but it seemed more the latter.
The truck rumbled by Don Griffin’s small burial detail. They were headed out the northern gate, shovels in hand and a small Cat backhoe trailing with a cart in tow. It wasn’t until I actually saw the cart that the impact of what Don was doing hit. I hadn’t thought about where the bodies would be buried although it seemed logical that they shouldn’t be interred in the complex. There was a small field across the street well within the protective firing zone of the guards. Still I didn’t think it was wise to leave without weapons, I mean who would go and bury the burial team if something happened to them? We swung out and away from the group, heading first east and then north. It would, in a normal world, be about a fifteen minute drive with traffic and lights, though we now had neither of those to contend with. We had switched them out for zombies and bandits, a shitty exchange rate if you ask me. The drive was relatively uneventful, if not almost downright enjoyable. Ben knew how to handle the truck. Now if I could just get Tipper to shut up I might be able to think.
“Hey, Mike,” I winced. Tipper kept going. “Do you think we’ll get to kill some zombies? Huh? I want to kill me some zombies. I was pretty messed up the night it went down, I mean I slept through the whole thing.” He grinned sheepishly.
“My friends call me Mike,” I said, lacing as much menace as I could through each word.
“Hey, Mike, so how come there aren’t any more zombies around? Huh? Where do you think they all went? Do you think they died? Or do you think they went somewhere else like Seattle? Huh?” Tipper kept at this pace for most of the ride until, mercifully, Jen spoke.
“Oh shut up, you little twit!” she yelled. “Decent people stop between questions so the person they are talking to has an opportunity to answer.”
“Huh?” Tipper said, tilting his head like a dog.
“But then I guess there’s nothing to worry about, is there?” she continued mockingly.
Tipper finally shut up maybe he was coming down. Now that I knew I had less of a chance of being interrupted I figured I might as well pass the time talking. I looked longingly over at Carl who was fast asleep and wished I were, too. “I’ve been wondering the same thing, I mean, if these are ‘traditional’ zombies.”
Jen arched an eyebrow.
“I know! What the hell is a ‘traditional’ zombie?” I snorted. “Sorry, if these zombies are like the ones in stories, then they are not going to die without a little assistance from us.”
As I hefted up my rifle to show as an exclamation point, Jen’s grip tightened on her own. Tipper had his back towards us, attempting to hide his habit. The telltale sniffing gave him away, that and his acerbic personality. Jen shook her head in disgust. I would have been amused if we weren’t heading to a potential hot zone.
“More like a lukewarm zone,” I said as I stepped off the truck and into the parking lot of what used to be Rocky Mountain National Guard Armory 17.
“Huh?” Jen asked quizzically as she shouldered on by.
“Uh, nothing, and let me know if I’m in your way,” I said cheekily.
“I will,” she responded without turning around.
Someone’s sense of humor had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, I thought.
Carl was rousing himself out of sleep, buttoning his pants back up and putting his jacket on before he stepped out. Ben was busy securing the truck. Okay, I thought, three out of four accounted for. Then I had a slight panic attack.
“Where’s Twitchy?” I said louder than I meant to. In the cold still air of the morning it sounded like a shout.
Jen turned. “Who?” she asked
“Twitch…I mean Tipper,” I clarified. The reply was quick and forthcoming but not the one I wanted.
“Look…arghhh, oh fuck! Get it off!” Tipper screamed.
Jen and I both turned in horror. Carl was just coming down off the truck and gaped along with us. Tipper had walked up to the front door of the armory, which looked like it had been blasted off its hinges with a tank. Who knows, maybe it had been. But what was captivating our attention was the zombie attached to Tipper’s head. Blood was streaming down the side of his face as he howled in a combination of terror and pain; the two of them staggering from side to side in a macabre dance. I brought my rifle up, but I knew at this distance and their co-mingled movement that I could not get a clean shot off. I never would have guessed if I hadn’t seen it myself, but Carl was moving with all the speed and agility of a man half his age, unholstering his pistol as he went. Within moments he was within safe firing distance of Tipper and his new dance partner. The zombie paid no attention to Carl as the pistol was neatly placed against its head. If I thought my voice was loud, the Colt .45 shattered any of those illusions. The open entryway to the armory amplified the affect. The noise was deafening, but not to Tipper, his right ear went down with the zombie. Tipper was clutching at the gaping bloody hole where his ear used to be, screaming for all he was worth.
“Shut him up!” Ben was saying frantically. “He’ll have half the zombie population here in a minute.”
“Yeah, as opposed to that small cannon fire,” I said sarcastically.
Jen was walking over to Tipper to try and console him, but Tipper was having none of it. He kept pushing her away. She had finally had enough.
“Either let me see the damn wound, or I’m going to have Carl finish you off!” Jen yelled.
Carl was busy wiping the gore off his gun and didn’t notice that he had been involved in Jen’s plan. But it was effective enough to shut Tipper up. He was sniffling and close to blubbering. I wanted to call him a baby and tell him to shut up, but when Jen finally calmed him enough so she could examine the wound, I didn’t say anything. I was too busy holding my bile down. The zombie had bitten the ear clean off, but the ear had not come off without collateral damage. It had stayed mostly attached to his face when the zombie went down. The force had torn half of Tipper’s cheek off. So not only was there the exposed ear hole but also the muscles that lined the side of his face. He looked worse than the poor bastard lying on the ground. Torn tissue sprayed blood as he swung his head from side to side in obvious agony. I thought the best thing we could do for him was to shoot hi
m and put him out of our misery…I mean his misery.
“Ben!” Jen yelled. “Are there any rags in the truck?”
I didn’t see the point and I let my opinion be known. “Move away, Jen.” I motioned with my rifle.
“Are you crazy!” she spat back.
“What good is a bandage,” I said dismally. “He’ll be one of them in a few hours.”
“You coward!” she screamed. “I can stop the bleeding, and I have some aspirin.”
“And then?” I said lowering my rifle. I just didn’t have the stomach for it.
Tipper was doing his best to hide his tall wiry frame behind Jen’s petiteness, his misery forgotten for a moment under this much bigger threat. Ben was watching the stand-off when, for the second time that day, I thought my eardrums were going to burst. Jen stood stock still as blood and gore from Tipper’s demolished head sprayed all over her.
“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST DO?” she was screaming at me.
I was looking down at my rifle. ‘I didn’t do a damn thing, did I?’
Carl was walking into the armory. “He would have been one of them soon enough, I did what I had to do.” And he offered no further explanation.
Jen still had not moved, at least not in a lateral direction. Even from this distance I could see her shivering, from either fear or rage. Ben hopped back up into the truck looking for a rag, but now for a different reason than before. He came down from the cab with a roll of paper towels. I grabbed his arm lightly before he passed by.
“Uh, Ben, after you get her cleaned up, could you stay out here on guard duty?”
He nodded sternly. I think Ben was doing his best to not let the situation affect him. If so, he was doing better than I was. I hastily passed Jen who was too intent on the gore running down her face to pay me any attention. I wanted to catch up with Carl before something else happened.
The blown apart doors were only the beginning of the destruction to the armory. The inside looked as if an F5 tornado had swept through. Um, maybe that isn’t right, it was more like an F3. There was still SOME stuff lying around. Rows upon rows of empty racks that at one time contained M-16’s were now empty. As I walked to the left, I discovered even more foreboding news, the heavy stuff was gone, too. You could see where there had been a few .50 caliber machine guns, about 10 SAWs (light machine guns) and two rocket launchers that were now missing. Just wonderful, there was a band of somebodies out there more heavily armed than an average battalion. Getting razor wire seemed like less of a priority; whoever had all this stuff wasn’t going to be stopped by any glorified chicken wire.
“Hey, Talbot,” Carl beckoned. “Could you come over here and help me with these?”
I walked over to the armory repair station. Carl was rounding up about a dozen or so M-16’s in various states of disrepair. I looked at him questioningly.
“We should be able to get at least a couple of these working with all these parts,” he answered me without even looking up.
Seemed like a worthwhile venture to me. I shouldered my weapon and grabbed a handful of rifles. There was loose ammo all over the place. Whoever had been here before us must have been in a hurry. Maybe they were leaving town. That would be awesome. They had spent enough time to clean out every working weapon and the vast majority of ammo, but it appeared as if some of the cartons had fallen and spilled out on the floor. They hadn’t warranted those bullets important enough to pick up. There had to have been at least a few thousand rounds on the ground alone. God, how many did they take with them?
As I walked out into the brightness it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Ben was just finishing getting most of the viscous material off Jen. They both looked more than a little green-tinged.
“Jen, when you’re done here, could you go into the armory and start grabbing all the ammunition that’s on the floor?” I asked. I’m not a psych major. I didn’t know if I should approach her in a caring tone or a conciliatory one or any other damn method. I needed a job done and that’s how I went about it.
“No,” came her monosyballic reply.
I stopped short, one of the rifles threatening to fall out of my arms.
She started back up again. “I’m not going in there and I’m not staying out here. I’m getting back in the truck and lying down.”
I wanted to throttle her. We were all a little thrown off by what had just happened, but we had a mission to think about. That’s what you get when you take civilians on a military endeavor.
“Jen, we have more to think about here than what just happened to Tipper. He messed up by running ahead and trying to be a hero. We have to get the remainder of this ammo and wire for the people back home,” I almost pleaded. We were already one person short; if Jen flaked out now, we’d be out here for hours longer than I had expected.
She turned to look at me, and fire flashed across her eyes. It was more likely sunlight reflecting off her sky blue irises, but the effect was staggering nonetheless. “See, that’s where you’re wrong, Talbot! I don’t have anyone at home! There’s nothing for me there! I lost everything! I don’t care whether we all live or die, I just don’t care!”
“Then what the hell did you come out here for!” I yelled back. She flinched a little but nothing worth writing home about.
“Revenge! I thought I could exact some sort of pay back for what they did to Jo and to me! But I know that’s useless now. They just don’t care. No, it’s even worse than that, they just don’t know. They are mindless, one-track mind, killing and eating machines. They’re almost as bad as MEN!” she shouted.
Wow, I guess there isn’t going to be any hetero conversion there. Men and zombies were near enough equals in her mind. I didn’t want anything more to do with Jen. She was a pulse away from going into shock, and I had enough problems. I didn’t bother answering her as I headed for the back of the truck.
A few seconds later, I heard the cab door shut as I exited the rear of the trailer. I hurried over to Ben.
“You have the keys?” I asked him apprehensively.
“Oh, you betcha,” he replied.
“Any chance you could pick up the stray ammo?” I pleaded.
“I’d love to, Talbot, but I’ve got a bad back, I couldn’t bend over to save my life,” he replied.
“Wonderful,” I said scornfully. Ben looked a little taken aback. I had no desire to stroke his bruised feelings. “Keep guard then.”
Carl had made a stack of rifles that he wanted to take with us. I guess I was the muscle. Carl had at least understood the necessity to grab all the strewn ammo and was down on his hands and knees pushing a large ammunition container in front of him as he filled it. Damn that thing was going to be heavy when he was done. I had grabbed another stack of weaponry when I heard Ben’s shrill cry. I rushed out into the blinding light. Ben was pointing and trying to speak, but I couldn’t make it out yet. He was about as useless as Tipper, and as we all know, Tipper was dead.
“Zombies!” Ben finally vocalized. My sight was catching up. I saw a small contingent angling our way. The noise or the smell of meat must have garnered their attention, didn’t matter which at this point. Jen sat up in the truck and locked the doors.
What have I got myself into?
Ben was shaking so bad I thought his pants were going to fall off. Carl had followed me out when we heard Ben scream.
Thank God for Carl, of all the people here, he was going to be my only true ally. He assessed the situation in a crack.
“Talbot, why don’t you shut the gate. I’m going to finish gathering the bullets,” he said and then turned and walked back into the armory.
“I love that guy,” I said out loud.
There were six zombies heading towards us. If I crawled backwards on my back to the gate I would still have had plenty of time to roll the gate closed. But zombies were zombies and they still scared the bejesus out of me. I jogged over to the gate and closed it. Then I wrapped the remnants of the remaining chain around the fence, jus
t in case that, by some grace of the devil, they were able to figure out how to roll it back from where it came. We were effectively down three out of the five people we had started with, but I wasn’t going home empty-handed.
I went back into the tractor-trailer and grabbed the small ladder that we had placed in there so I could start the job. I cautiously approached the fence. The zombies didn’t seem discernibly closer. I climbed the ladder and fished out the wire cutters that I had in my jacket. This was not going to be an easy task considering the thinness of the gloves I had put on for protection (or lack thereof). That, and the fact that my goggles kept fogging up, was making this a difficult venture. I had learned over the years that it is infinitely better to wear protection, no matter how cumbersome, rather than find ways to staunch the flow of blood from one’s body.
Over the years as a handyman, a do-it-yourselfer and a general klutz, I had racked up more emergency room time than Tim the Tool Man Taylor. Please tell me you know who he was? Let’s see, where do I start? I have broken a rib from installing an attic fan. I nearly cut off my index finger with a compound miter saw installing flooring. Put a drill bit through my thumb. Bruised my eyeball throwing a bunch of trash away at the dump when the errant cord from a toaster hit me. Cut a vein in my hand and sliced my head open while changing a light bulb. Sliced my leg open with a box cutter, you guessed it, while cutting a box. There are a least a dozen more instances over the years. I’m just listing the lowlights. So these days, most of the time, I like to err on the side of caution. If there is some sort of safety gear for the task at hand, I want it. I’ll take fogging up goggles over loss of sight any day.