by Mark Tufo
“I barely buzzed you. And besides, it was the only shot I had. You should be thanking me for saving your life instead of whining about it.”
“I’ll make sure to send you a card every year.” The zombies were beginning to make themselves known, flitting quickly through the shadows from light to light. Tiffany fired two wild shots; change clattered to the floor from the machine she’d destroyed.
“You’re a flighty little thing, aren’t you?” Deneaux goaded.
“That’s just what we need,” I said sarcastically.
“I’d rather be attacked. This shit sucks,” BT said.
“The better question is: why are they still here? If they’re intelligent enough to close a door they should be smart enough to open one. I’m thinking they live here,” I said.
“Live here?” Tiffany asked.
“Like in stasis?” BT asked.
“I don’t think so. They’d be covered in that zombie goo.” This changed things on a fundamental level. A group of zombies—not only staying together, but having a central place to call home? Wasn’t that how civilizations were born? I wanted to chuckle thinking about a thousand years from now when the first little zombie daughter sits at the table and says she needs a bump in her allowance and, oh, by the way, she no longer eats meat. Probably last as long as it takes mom to drop a fresh, ketchup-coated brainloaf on the table. But the topic will have been broached.
A zombie was already running full speed and straight for me when it appeared from the darkness. I pulled the trigger before my mind could even recognize the threat for what it was. The first shot was low, breaking open his exposed chest plate. I don’t think the man was ever heavy in life, but now he was all ribs; his stomach was concave—you could see his backbone through what was left of his skin. Clearly, he was starving. Why this particular group had not gone into stasis was troubling. My next shot took most of his lower jaw off, and then fortuitously the bullet took an upward turn and exited through the very top of his skull. He collapsed no more than three feet from me. Tiffany’s resolve was tested next. Unlike me, she only needed one shot with her much heavier-caliber weapon. She hit a female zombie in the neck, completely decapitating the thing.
I used to think that sexing the zombies wasn’t worth it; they just were what they were. Like, if a shark was trying to eat me, I wouldn’t care if it was a male or a female, and that had been true for zombies. But now I had to wonder with their advancements, would they, or even could they, procreate? And how long behind that would the first zombie porn film be made? There was someone, somewhere, that would jerk off to that.
Luckily, BT was tried next, distracting me from that horrific train of thought. We had formed a loose circle; I found it oddly telling that Deneaux was the only one that a zombie didn’t charge, as if they knew just how lethal she was...or maybe it was that they identified more with her; I hoped it wasn’t something more sinister than that.
“I’m sorry for getting us into this,” BT said over the roar of his gun.
“Let’s get our backs up to the machines.” I figured that way at least we had one less side to defend. It was good for a moment until we heard zombies starting to climb up and over. Deneaux turned to take care of them.
“I have one bullet left, Michael,” she’d said as calmly as if she were talking about how many Biscotti cookies she had left at her tea party.
“Right side cargo pocket.” I was carefully picking targets and eliminating them with extreme prejudice. Fucking Deneaux squeezed my damned ass as she reached down to grab the box of shells. Only supreme self control kept me from jumping forward, straight into the arms of the attacking zombies.
“Sorry. I’m just so nervous.” Refer back to the not having enough biscuits tone.
Tiffany had dropped down to one knee to reload her rifle. At the moment, only BT and I were firing. The zombies pressed their attack. It was difficult to get an accurate count because of the darkness, and some of the fuckers were merely running back and forth just at the edge of our flashlights, giving the illusion of multitudes. Was this a deliberate ruse?
“Any day!” I shouted to Deneaux, who was methodically, but casually, putting rounds into her cylinder.
“Haste makes one's hands twitch. Not my hands, mind you, but some hands. And nervous hands drop shells and miss their targets.”
I was yanking on a trigger for far too long before I figured out it would not depress because the bolt was open. I hit the release; cursed under my breath at Deneaux as I fumbled with the new magazine. Bitch saved me again when she brought her pistol up, the barrel inches from my nose, and fired off two quick rounds—obliterating the heads of the two closest zombies. Having to thank her was like kissing the ass of the boss you absolutely despised because he allowed you to keep the crappy job you needed to support your family. I grunted something that may or may not have stood up in court as a “much obliged”.
“Oh...it’s okay, honey. Now that we’re intimate I felt it my duty to save you. Again.”
Even through a zombie attack, BT had to stop everything he was doing to shoot me a quick questioning glance.
“Fuck off,” I told him as I released the bolt and got back into the battle, making sure that I didn’t need Deneaux to throw me another bone. The frontal attacks had stopped; there was a fair amount of gore on the ground. A few zombies were still running around but they seemed to have pulled back.
“Now what?” Tiffany asked.
“Now we get the hell out of here,” I told her.
“I’ll be damned,” BT said. I turned to look at him as he was shouldering his weapon. He was wrapping his arms around a machine that was directly behind him. “This is the one!”
“You realize this is a hot zone right?” I asked.
“Well you’d better cover me then, ‘cause this baby’s mine.” He grunted with heavy exertion. A loud crack of splintering wood exploded out as BT rocked that machine clean off its moorings. He yelled like an Olympic lifter as he wrenched it free and picked it up.
“Is that such a good idea?” Tiffany asked.
“You tell him, dear, that it isn’t,” Deneaux said.
“Alright. Let’s get out of here before they hit the dinner bell for round two.” We formed a cluster around BT. I don’t think any of us took a decent breath until we hit those doors. The entire time we were moving I fully expected an attack. It wasn’t until the doors opened and a sickly finger of sunlight broke through that I realized that this zombie family had taken some serious losses. Six zombies were about halfway across the casino peering out at us from behind machines; we’d dropped at least triple that number. Part of me thought going in after those six would be a good idea, but BT and the rest were almost to the stairs leading to the garage, and I’d be damned if I was going to be alone in that void.
The garage was four levels of emptiness; again it looked like the owners of this casino had been much more optimistic about the number of customers they’d draw. It was on the bottom most level that we found two large buses parked side by side. I went into the first one; it looked pristine, as if it had never even seen a guest.
“Clear,” I said, coming back out.
BT had put his machine down and was checking the second. He had taken considerably longer to come to the conclusion that his bus was free of zombies as well—long enough that I went to see what the problem was.
“How’s the bathroom in that one?” he asked when he stepped down off the stairs.
“Empty,” was all I could think to tell him.
“How empty?”
“There were no zombies, alive or dead, no people alive or dead, no pets, nothing. Not even a decent magazine collection,” I told him, trying to figure out where he was going with this.
“The toilet—did you look there?”
“What in the hell are you talking about? Why would I look in the toilet? It’s a Blue Chem kind. I don’t want to see old turds.”
“Mine was empty.”
“Perfect.
We’ll take yours, then.”
“You don’t understand. It was empty of everything; no blue stuff at all.”
“Even better,” I told him honestly. “That stuff smells horrible.”
“It smells better than the accumulated waste of thirty people sloshing underneath us all the way across the country.”
“Oh…oh. I get it now. Maybe I’ll just go and check again.”
“Yeah,” he smirked, “that’d be a good idea.”
I started to let my imagination run with this one as I went down the center aisle. I remembered a story I’d read on the internet once about chem toilets. I was hoping some Saran-wrapped pervert didn’t click a couple of pictures of me from inside the hole. I approached with the barrel of my weapon. If I so much as caught the glimmer of a flashbulb I was shooting first and apologizing later. Any motherfucker that got his jollies from taking pictures of people taking care of business from inside a toilet needs to die. There is no chance I’m letting that aberration reintegrate into society. Seriously, man, how many things have to go off the rails for that to be something you’re interested in? There’s not enough medication, whether professionally or personally prescribed, to bring someone back from that.
I’m not going to admit it, but this thought had me more spooked than the zombies. I could see him. There was the fucker, a dull nightlight glinting off his thick, plastic-wrap suit, goggles cover his eyes and he has a snorkeling tube firmly entrenched in his mouth. Almost put a bullet in the phantom. Even when I was pretty sure he wasn’t there I still almost shot just to be extra careful. Like BT’s bus, this one was also empty. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and took a deep breath to compose myself before I stepped outside.
“Empty too. I guess we just start them up and see which one has more gas.”
“You have the keys?” BT asked.
I popped my head back in to look at the empty ignition. “Only in Maine,” I said, as I looked on the expansive dashboard where a small ring of keys sat. I wouldn’t doubt it for one second if one of these went to the vault. My wife and I would joke when we visited Maine, that if we were to leave the keys in the ignition with the car running, someone would more likely turn it off for us than steal it. Not that this is a bad thing, just so vastly different from the other parts of the country I’d resided in.
“Keys are on the dashboard.” I sat in the seat and tried to figure out all the buttons. “Like sitting in a damned cockpit,” I shouted outside. “How the hell do I start this thing?”
“Get up.” It was Deneaux; she was at the door, pointing at me with her gun. “Stop looking at me that way; I’m not going to shoot you. I just know how to drive a bus.”
“How is that even possible?” I asked as I yielded my seat.
“There are many things about me you do not know, Michael.”
“Maybe we should keep it that way,” I said, as she started the engine.
“Three-quarters of a tank!” I yelled to BT and Tiffany. BT was already hefting his bounty up and inside once he heard the bus come to life.
“Do you mind if I drive?” Deneaux asked.
“Have at it,” I told her. “I would like the gun back, though.”
“I saved your life twice already today and still you don’t trust me?”
“Trust? I don’t think that’s something we’re ever going to be able to achieve. Let’s just aim for co-existence. We’ll try for some of them deeper relationship words later.”
“I caressed your ass, Michael. We’re almost lovers now,” she rasped.
I dry heaved a bit. I got that “What the fuck?” stare from BT again. Tiffany did her best to completely ignore the entire situation.
“Let’s just get this bus moving. The fumes are going to choke me out,” I said, sitting a few rows behind Deneaux. I turned my head when I noticed she kept looking at me in the rearview mirror. If she was trying to unnerve me, she was doing a fantastically wonderful job of it. The bus jerked forward so hard that BT fell back into his seat, I bounced my head off the seat in front of me, and Tiffany was sprawled on her ass.
“Sorry! It’s been a while,” Deneaux said, I noticed she’d already put her seatbelt on.
“Horse and buggy while ago?” BT asked as he adjusted and braced himself.
I helped Tiffany up; she quickly sat. I heard her belt buckle snap shut just as the bus lurched forward again.
“It’s not as easy as it appears. It will smooth out as this warms up.” Looked to me like she was having the time of her life.
We’d no sooner left the garage when BT announced he had to “go”.
“Really man? In a water-less toilet?”
“I ate your damn sister’s pancakes. Now they’re sitting like stones at the bottom of my stomach.”
“What the hell is wrong with you, man? Nobody eats those things.”
He was holding his stomach.
“Maybe go use it and we’ll grab the other bus,” I told him. “I mean, now that you’re about to fill this one up.”
He flipped me the finger and stood. I did my best to not think about what was happening at the back. Saran Wrap Man threatened to muscle back into my thoughts. Deneaux’s driving was indeed smoothing out and she was cruising right along. We’d had a rough start, but things seemed to be getting better. That was right up until BT opened the lavatory door and a big steaming whiff of what my sister liked to pass off as food wafted up my way. Tiffany was hunched down with her jacket pulled up over her nose.
“Come on man!” I said to him as he shrugged and sat. It was not difficult to see the proud smile he tried to stifle for being able to stink out the entire bus. Deneaux had slid her window open. I thought maybe she was passing out from oxygen loss when the bus began to slow down. I looked up front, thinking I was going to have to take over driving duties, when I noticed the red and white Plymouth from earlier.
“Michael, I would very much like your pistol back,” Deneaux said as she put her hand out. I placed it in her palm.
“Now what?” BT asked.
“Well, it’s safe to assume we’re not going to be able to outrun them. You comfortable with ramming them?”
Deneaux already had her foot floored before I could finish the question. It was a bus, so it wasn’t like we dashed forward; the men in the car had plenty of time to open fire. The large windshield shattered as multiple rounds penetrated.
“Feel free to return fire,” Deneaux said. “I would, but I’m a little busy.” The pistol was in her lap and she was holding on to the oversized steering wheel with both hands.
“Mike—couple of cars coming up from the side.” BT was looking at the main console which had a back camera view of what was going on behind us.
“One thing at a time I suppose.” I braced myself against the railing that led down the stairs and opened fire on the men who were using their car to shield themselves. We were starting to pick up steam now and between the bus barreling down on them and my suppressive fire they were in a bit of a quandary. Better them than us. The car was parked horizontally in the roadway; Deneaux was going to make contact here in the next couple of seconds. One of the men had enough smarts to make a dash for it. Of course, he paid for his escape attempt with his life as I shot him through the side, most likely ripping his lungs apart, but hey, he got an A for effort.
I was just about to ask Deneaux if she planned on hitting the thing head on when I was tossed sideways as the bus pulled to the far side. The impact was jarring but I’m sure it was nothing compared to what the three behind the Plymouth got. For a brief second, they were exposed as Deneaux shoved the front of the car farther down the roadway while the rear turned toward the side of the bus. I had the most unfortunate angle when the hood spun and pounded into the men who hadn’t even had time to act surprised before they were slammed. The first’s head exploded against the quarter panel and then he disappeared under the wheels. The other two were launched by the impact. Judging by the force, they had at minimum a dozen broken bones be
tween them. One lay still when he finally hit the ground on the other side of the road. He was either dead or paralyzed. In this new world, the former was a much better option. The other guy was rolling around in that extreme pain—the kind that makes it difficult to think of anything else.
Bullets were now pinging the sides of the bus as we were catching gunfire from mobile vehicles. Glass was being blown out and the wheel was jumping around in Deneaux’s hands, which led me to believe we’d suffered at least one flat.
“A little closer,” Deneaux hissed as she looked in the rear view mirror. “That’s it...come on dearie...you know you want it.”
I personally don’t think anybody at any time had wanted anything from Deneaux, but that’s just me. Apparently, the car next to us had come looking for what she was offering. The bus jerked violently to the left; if the door had been open I would have been tossed out. As it was, I had the wind knocked out of me when I slammed into it. A trio of bullets whistled past my head. I turned to see that the other car had come up alongside us. They slammed on their brakes when Deneaux went to shoulder them off the road like she had their comrades.
“There're three more cars back there,” Deneaux said as she pointed to the screen.
“Why in the fuck do they want us so bad?” I asked.
“I’m sure part of it right now is that we’ve killed at least four of them,” she said.
“Wouldn’t have been any if they hadn’t started this shit,” I said.
“Do you really believe they are going to see it that way?” she asked.
“It would be nice,” BT said from behind me.
There was a heavy burst of fire and then the rear left of the bus dipped down. They’d taken out both tires. We slowed considerably.
“I’m going to cut their throats,” Deneaux said evenly.
“I was sort of hoping we wouldn’t have to get that close,” I told her.
Another round of bullets and the right side dipped down; we were dragging our ass like a dog with worms.
“Going to be on rims soon, Michael. This should be the time you begin to root around in that bag of tricks you carry around with you.” She looked at me far longer than anyone driving a bus should.