Dead Clown Barbecue

by Strand, Jeff

  Okay, this was bad, but it didn't mean that my destiny was to be devoured. My neighbor Alex across the street had just come out of his house, carrying a large blue duffel bag. His six-year-old daughter was right behind him. I hurried over there to greet them.

  "Hey, Alex," I said. "How's it going?"

  "You heard the news, right?"

  "Yeah, yeah. Crazy stuff, huh? Thought we were safer than that. I hope the people in Clearwater don't have the same problem."

  Alex didn't say anything. He opened the trunk of his car and crammed the duffel bag in there.

  "You did make a wise car buying decision," I said, gently patting the roof of the vehicle. "Very roomy. Nobody can ever say that you don't know how to shop for cars."

  "I'm not taking you with me," said Alex, shutting the trunk.

  "Why not?"

  "Because you yelled at my daughter for writing in chalk on the sidewalk."

  "That's not true! I didn't yell at her. I just asked her not to squeak it so much. I was hung over."

  "Yes, well, a drunkard is not the kind of example I want for my daughter as we rebuild society."

  "So this is where it begins, huh?" I asked. "This is where we turn against each other in a time of crisis? This is where we lose our humanity?"

  "Looks that way."

  In theory, I could have wrestled him to the ground, bashed his head against the cement driveway, and stolen his car keys, but I wasn't quite ready to regress into savagery yet. Instead, I said "Fine," in a tone of voice that made it clear that I was more than a little disgusted by his behavior. Days from now, if I was dead, he'd remember the way I said "Fine," and feel a great sense of remorse. This would always haunt him, a subtle nagging at his conscience that he could never quite escape, until his dying day, which was hopefully at the hands of the zombies.

  Okay, no, I didn't really want him to get eaten by zombies. The guy had a kid. The subtle nagging at his conscience would be sufficient.

  I walked back to my own driveway. Alex hadn't even asked why I couldn't just use my own car. I wondered if he was the one who'd slashed my tires instead of Greg. Bastard.

  Maybe I could call a cab. What was the worst thing they could say? "Are you serious? You think you can just call a frickin' cab and get out of here at this time of widespread panic? And even if you could get a cab, do you have any idea what the fare would be with all the time you'll spend stuck in bumper-to-bumper dead-stop traffic? What kind of deranged idiot are you?"

  Actually, they probably just wouldn't answer.

  I took my cell phone out of my pocket an instant before it rang. The display said that the call was from Millie Loans. My "friend with benefits."

  I had only received those benefits once, mostly because I'd considered it a "friends with benefits" situation and she'd considered it an "eternal love" situation, and she'd reacted poorly when I corrected her afterward. I wondered if she was calling for one last fling before our doom.

  "Millie?" I answered.

  "Tony?" She was crying.

  "Yeah."

  "Have you heard?"

  "Yeah, it's insane. You'd think that the city of Tampa could afford more bullets."

  "Will you take me to St. Pete?"

  "I can't," I said, thinking I'd misheard her or she'd misspoken. She obviously didn't want me to take her to St. Pete. She wanted me to take her someplace that emphatically was not St. Pete, such as Quebec. "Somebody slashed my tires. I'm trying to get out of Tampa myself."

  "I have a car," she said. "I'm about five minutes away from your house. I just need you to come with me to St. Pete."

  "Wait a minute . . . you want to go into the city? On purpose?"

  "My brother is there. He just called. He's still alive."

  "Seriously?" It was not out of the question that there were survivors over there, I guess, but it was still a pretty big shock. Like everybody else, I'd written off the St. Petersburg population several weeks ago.

  "Yes. Nobody else will help. We have to go get him."

  This didn't sound great to me. "We can't just drive over there," I said. "The bridge is swarmed."

  "I know that. I have a jet ski."

  "You want to jet ski over to St. Pete?"

  "Yes."

  "And he'll be waiting there on the other side?"

  Silence.

  "Millie . . . ?"

  "He's kind of trapped. But not that far away from the beach. I have guns."

  "I have guns, too! That's not the point."

  "I'm about to turn the corner. See you in a second."

  "I thought we had five minutes!"

  She hung up. I snapped my phone closed and tucked it back into my pocket. This was going to suck. I could turn down a desperate woman in her time of need over the phone, but in person I'd be able to see the tears, and I was screwed.

  Her green truck turned onto my street. As she pulled up in front of my house, I saw that she did indeed have a jet ski in the back.

  "How many people did you call before you worked your way down to me?" I asked.

  "Several. You said you have guns?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. Throw them in the truck." Her face was tear-stained, but there was a definite no-nonsense tone about her. This was a very different Millie from the one to whom I'd said "Uh, I didn't realize that we weren't still just friends. My bad."

  I popped open the trunk of my car and took out my bag of guns. I only had two of them, a pair of pistols, but they were fully loaded and I had about four-dozen rounds of extra ammo. That was at least fifty dead zombies, unless I missed, which meant that it was more like three dead zombies.

  "I think this is a bad idea," I said.

  "I don't."

  "I'm not doing this," I told her, using my most authoritative tone of voice.

  Unfortunately, by the time I said it to her in that tone of voice, it was half an hour later (all of the traffic was intelligently moving in the opposite direction, so we made good time) and we were already in the water and sitting on the jet ski, with me holding tightly onto Millie with one hand and the bag of guns with the other.

  Millie didn't answer. She started the engine, and we sped off through Tampa Bay toward St. Pete. The Howard Frankland Bridge was several hundred yards to our right, and we could see a couple of army (Navy? Air Force? Marines? Coast Guard? I didn't know the divisions very well) soldiers mowing down zombies, but it was nowhere near the military presence we'd had before today.

  Nobody tried to stop us. I guess they had more important things to deal with, or figured "Screw it! If those morons want to get themselves munched by zombies, who are we to tell them to do otherwise?"

  Whether we saved her brother or not, I assumed that the "benefits" part of our relationship would return. That was only fair. If not . . . well, I mean, I wouldn't force myself on her or anything uncool like that, but I'd definitely be annoyed.

  After about a mile, she moved underneath the bridge. I asked her why, but she didn't hear me over the jet ski engine, and I didn't care enough about the answer to poke her to get her attention. I did have to admit that the jet ski was pretty fun. If you took the zombies out of the equation, it would've been a very enjoyable afternoon.

  When we were about halfway across, there was the sound of another engine, much louder than the jet ski. I looked around for the source. Sounded like a plane. Or planes.

  Ah, there they were. Three of them. Moving fast.

  I guess the missiles they launched shouldn't have been a surprise to me, but they were.

  My first thought, I'm ashamed to admit, was "Oh my God! They're trying to blow us out of the water!" How self-absorbed is that? Yeah, as if Millie and me on a jet ski were worth three sets of missiles. I mean, c'mon, it's not like we were secret agents or anything like that.

  No, the missiles were aimed at the bridge, and all three of them hit their targets.

  The bridge exploded above us. I screamed something (probably "Shiiiiit!!!") as Millie swerved the jet ski to
the right, trying to avoid the immense shower of bridge chunks that rained down upon us, not to mention a strip of bridge that — I swear this is true — had to be at least half a mile long.

  It smashed into the water like . . . well, like a giant piece of a freakin' bridge hitting the bay. It didn't crush us, which was nice, but the huge wave flipped over the jet ski. Millie and I plunged into the water.

  There was another wave, and for a moment I lost track of the jet ski. Then another piece of bridge came down upon it, and that was the end of our mode of transportation.

  About thirty feet away, Millie popped up to the surface and spat out a mouthful of water. "Are you okay?" she called out.

  "I'm fine!" I shouted back, although I didn't really mean that I was fine — all I meant was "I'm not currently dead!"

  We were screwed. Just as the spare tire would've proven extremely helpful, I found myself wishing that we were wearing life preservers.

  "We've gotta swim!" Millie said, doggy paddling toward me.

  If I'd had enough breath to say the whole thing, I would've said, "Where the hell are we going to swim to? There's nowhere for us to go!" Maybe an Olympic swimmer could get back to dry land, but I sure couldn't, and from the looks of Millie's swimming technique, neither could she.

  About a mile ahead, part of the bridge was still standing, but swimming to it wouldn't do us a whole lot of good unless we could leap out of the water like a genetically enhanced Shamu.

  Millie screamed.

  Let me back up. You know the bridge that exploded and collapsed? You probably don't need me to remind you about this, but I'll do it anyway: the bridge was filled with zombies.

  Which were now in the water with us.

  Hundreds of them.

  Though I was relatively clear of the living dead — at least there were none within immediate biting range — there were several of them in the water next to Millie.

  She hadn't lost her guns, or at least not all of them. She pressed the barrel of a pistol against the closest zombie's forehead and pulled the trigger. Its brains burst out of the back of its skull, just the way they were supposed to, and bobbed on the surface of the water.

  She fired again. Another headshot.

  Unfortunately, swimming with one arm while shooting with the other wasn't working out for her, and one of the zombies chomped down on her elbow — not the meatiest nor most tender place to bite, but it sunk its teeth in deep and tore away a small piece.

  Millie shrieked.

  I gasped in horror.

  Blood darkened the water. What if it attracted sharks? Even as I thought this, I knew that I should be worrying about the real and plentiful zombies and not some hypothetical shark, but still . . .

  "Tony!" Millie screamed, as the zombie took a much larger bite out of her arm. "Help me!"

  Let's review my attitude toward helping members of the opposite sex: when a woman calls me on the phone to beg for help, I can turn her down, no problem. When she shows up in person, I end up doing dumb-ass things like riding a jet ski to zombie-infested St. Petersburg.

  So, what's my attitude when a woman is right there in person, but she's being eaten by zombies?

  I've gotta be honest. I figured I'd say, "See ya, see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!" and swim the hell away. I mean, c'mon, what good is fifteen seconds of heroism if you're dead afterward and nobody is around to document your glory? But I didn't take the cowardly path. Instead, I found myself actually swimming toward her. I even shouted, "Don't worry! I'll save you!"

  I regret to say that discovering I was not a chickenshit at heart didn't do Millie or me any good, since a moment later she disappeared beneath the water in a cloud of red. When she came back up, a zombie's mouth was latched onto her throat. She went under again, and when she came back up a second time the zombie was gone, as was most of her aforementioned throat.

  So at that point, my only real chivalrous option was "Swim over there so you can die together in a romantic and tragic fashion." Not my kind of thing. Instead, I screamed a little bit as she lived out her last fifteen-to-twenty seconds of life.

  I could've vowed that her death would not be in vain, that I would not rest until I saved her brother, no matter what it took, but I didn't know where he was or his cell phone number. So her death pretty much was in vain.

  Worse than in vain, actually, because she'd made things a lot worse for me. I would've been fine if I'd ignored her call and just kept trying to call a taxi.

  Ten minutes later, I was dead, too.

  No, I'm kidding. This isn't being narrated by a zombie.

  I paddled in place for a couple of minutes, trying to figure out what to do. If the planes came back to blow up more of the bridge, it was possible that I could get their attention, and they might call for a chopper or something, but most likely I'd have drowned by then.

  I looked around the water, desperately seeking a plank of wood or a buoy or something, anything that I could hold to keep myself afloat.

  But there was only one thing in the water with me that floated.

  Zombies.

  Had I taken the time to fully consider this plan of action, I probably wouldn't have done it, in which case I would have died and this story really would be narrated by a zombie. But I knew that my strength wasn't going to last much longer, and so I had to do this quickly.

  When one is attempting to fashion a life raft out of zombies, there are a few important points to consider.

  First, you don't want to get bit. That's your number one concern. If your zombie raft bites you, let's face it, you're better off drowning. Fortunately, a facedown zombie can't bite you, so if you're in relatively good physical shape, you can keep their teeth in the water and out of your flesh.

  Second, you need about six zombies. This is based on my own personal experience and your mileage may vary. If you're particularly obese, you may need nine or ten, and if you're petite, you may need only three or four. But six worked for me, and I'm an adult male of average build.

  Third, binding them together can be challenging, especially if you're adrift in Tampa Bay without any rope. I used shirts. Fortunately, most zombies, at least the ones who were wandering on bridges, are wearing clothing, so if you can tear off their shirts, you've got some makeshift zombie binding materials.

  They do struggle. Be aware of that. But they don't struggle anywhere near as much as live humans would in this situation, so again, if you're in relatively decent physical shape and are consumed by the urge to survive; you should be able to handle it. And once you get two of them tied together (I won't lie; it's a real bitch) the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth aren't as problematic.

  Yes, if you're brave, determined, strong, and a little insane, you too can construct a zombie raft. I'm not going to suggest that it was a fun raft — I mean, I certainly wasn't sitting there saying, "Look at me! I'm Tom Sawyer having a magical rafting adventure!" But it kept me from drowning.

  The biggest downside? A zombie raft is very, very difficult to steer. Almost impossible. This means that if you wanted to float to, say, Tampa, which was still relatively safe, you might end up floating to, say, St. Petersburg, which was infested with zombies.

  It would've been nice if Millie's brother was waiting at the shore in a motorboat. He could've grinned and pretended to check his watch and said "Hey, what took you so long?"

  But . . . nope.

  And that's pretty much where my story ends. I'm in St. Pete with no way out; no weapons, and no clue what to do. You probably thought I was going to get back to Tampa because of that part earlier where I said that the neighbor kid Kyle got some fingers bitten off a couple of days later, but I made that up. I'm not a very reliable narrator.

  Okay. Well. I guess that's it. Sorry to leave you hanging like this. If anything changes, I'll let you know. I'll just add an epilogue or something.

  * * *

  Epilogue

  Killed seven zombies without a gun. Yay me!

  That leaves approximat
ely three hundred zombies outside of this tiny pet store where I took refuge, (not including the zombie pets in cages inside the place) and if they got through the military barricade, they're getting through this weak door with a tiny little bell that tinkles when you come inside.

  So there won't be another epilogue.

  Sorry.

  P.S.: Millie's brother says "Hi."

  IMMUNITY

  Believe me, I howled when that corpse — putrid meat dangling from its bones — sunk its teeth into the underside of my right arm. I won't say the pain was indescribable, since there are plenty of good descriptive words: excruciating, agonizing, unbearable, and so on. I'd seen friends, family, and strangers get bit, and even while they shrieked I'd never imagined it could hurt this much.

  I pulled my arm away, leaving a strip of flesh in the zombie's jaws, and cried out for help. Not that it was necessary; my traveling companion Allen was right there. He shot the zombie in the head and it dropped. Then he looked at me sadly. "You know what has to be done."

  No. No way. I'd been on the other side many times, but I wasn't going to let Allen murder me. I could fight off the infection. I knew I could. So before he had a chance to get over his moment of melancholy, I dove at him, tackled him to the ground, and pulled the gun out of his hand. Then I blew his brains out.

  Heh. You didn't often see zombies shooting humans in the head.

  Stop that. I wasn't a zombie. I'd never be a zombie. The others were weak. They succumbed to the infection because they believed what everybody said — you couldn't fight it. Well, I could fight it. I'd fight it and be stronger for the experience. I'd be an inspiration to The Bitten. A hero.

  * * *

  Not dead yet, so that was a promising sign. I'd been bit twelve hours ago, according to my watch, and I was the furthest thing from a shambling, mindless creature. The average time from bite to death? Two hours. But not me. Still alive and kicking, thank you very much. I was awesome.

  * * *

  Twenty-four hours. I didn't sleep during that time because that might've allowed the infection to overpower me, but I felt fine. My arm didn't even hurt.