Chuck, who roared in laughter, asked, “Shirley thought that, huh?” He took the gun from Kenny and thanked him. Kenny skipped off happily.
“What is that?” Tamar asked.
“Mega Super Soaker!” Antonio cheered, while Rodrigo whooped, “How many do we have?”
Two days later, they were driving back to the pit. Chuck asked for volunteers for this mission. This was more dangerous than any undead mutation they’d encountered in this harsh new world. He had no illusions that they may not all make it back alive from this one. The only reason he refused Antonio’s volunteer, once again, was that he needed him to take over if something happened to him.
When they reached a safe distance from the quarry, they stopped and all got out to prep. Chuck, Zach, and Edd each carried a Mega Super Soaker filled with Number 5P (now nicknamed N5P). Straps were attached to the toy guns for easier carry and use. Rodrigo, Susan, and Tamar each carried basketball sized rubber bags filled with N5P, similar to huge water balloons. They would break easily on impact. JJ stayed at the truck with several more N5P guns and balloons to take to them quickly, if needed.
They paired off and quietly worked their way around to their intended locations: Chuck and Rodrigo; Zach and Susan; Edd and Tamar. While those carrying the N5P guns were to shoot any appendages that came near them, the others were to work their way closer to the pit and toss in their deadly water balloons. Once everyone was in place, they waited while Chuck tossed a rock near the edge of the pit. They wanted the all the appendages to be visible so there would be no surprises. The second the rock hit the ground, at least two dozen spiked appendages came out from the pit in all directions. They all inadvertently took a step back, then Chuck, Zach, and Edd stepped forward and shot out streams of N5P, sweeping from side to side. The effect was instantaneous and an earthshaking scream emanated from the pit. Even the tentacles that weren’t sprayed directly curled in on themselves, although they didn’t dissolve as the sprayed ones did.
It must be because they’re all attached to one creature, Rodrigo surmised.
It obviously caused serious pain in the monster, as a whole. These were much larger than the sample pieces so they dissolved at a slower rate. Rodrigo, Susan, and Tamar didn’t waste this opportunity. They ran forward, their guards jumping around them shooting anything that moved, and threw the N5P balloons into the pit. There was too much noise to hear them break but they had no doubt they would. They all ran back to the safety zone. Edd kept shooting the appendages even though most of them were balled up and writhing.
“Save it!” Chuck ordered, “Let’s see what happens first.”
All the spikes dissolved instantly, even the ones on the untouched appendages. It took almost two minutes before the hissing of N5P eating away at the flesh of the monster was heard, and it was loud; not so loud, though, that they couldn’t hear the unearthly roar still coming from the pit. As one, the appendages stood up vertically and shook violently; pieces of them sloughed off before they hit the ground and continued to dissolve completely away. The roar became a high-pitched, wavering scream of pain that was cut off suddenly and at the same time all the appendages dropped heavily to the earth, most landing back in the quarry, splattering into soupy green puddles as they landed. Everything went silent.
“How will we know?” Edd asked.
They looked around at the appendages and saw that the dissolved ones were already gone. The other ones were turning a sickly shade of greenish grey.
“I’ll go,” Tamar said. “I’m the fastest one here, anyway.”
“Don’t think so,” Zach teased her.
“Both.” She replied with a nod, “Take the sprayer just in case.”
Chuck and Edd spread out and got as close as they dared, holding their sprayers at ready in case there was movement.
“Wait!” Susan said, “Let me listen first.” She lay flat on the ground and put her ear to the silent earth, “Nothing. Go now. I’ll tell you if anything moves.”
Tamar and Zach walked quickly but quietly to the edge and looked down. The appendages on the ground were no longer attached to anything. Several feet of them hung over, stretched out and stringy, at the quarry edge and against the quarry walls, dripping as they oozed down the walls. The only thing left to see in the bottom was a black pool, shiny with grey and green residue. They ran back with huge smiles on their faces.
“It’s dead!” Tamar rejoiced while Zach said, at the same time, “It’s gone!”
“What about these?” Chuck waved his hands at the rapidly decaying tentacles.
“They’re just hanging over the edge,” Tamar replied, laughing. “There’s nothing left for them to be attached to.”
They all went to the edge to look. We’ve done it. Moreover, no one died or even got hurt! They ran back to the truck and Chuck took off two shovels.
“If they’re dead let’s just put them where they belong.”
He passed one shovel to Rodrigo and they began pushing the dead flesh into the pit. They left slimy trails behind them. The others kicked dirt over them while guarding Chuck and Rodrigo. When they were done, they climbed back into the truck and went home.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rodrigo’s new fame made him very uncomfortable. People were giving him gifts and hugging him all the time. Chuck shook his head in amusement. Rodrigo damn well earned it, so he’d better get used to it.
Chuck got a Sabaton meeting together in the common to discuss their next option. They were still waiting on Trader Joe to come back with any Z.E.D. encampment information so they weren’t going to make any plans in that respect, not just yet. Members of Sabaton had been training anyone who came to the practice sessions on how to defend themselves. There were only two who refused to attend. Although Chuck had originally thought everyone had agreed, he wasn’t surprised that Margi and her son were the ones who declined. Most parents brought their children and encouraged them to learn. As far as the quarry went, they decided to leave the boundary flags around the quarry and check it every couple of days. Just to make sure the mutant didn’t re-form. Rodrigo eagerly wanted to test out N5P on zombies and the mutated zombies. This could be the first step in reclaiming their world from the undead.
Antonio, Rodrigo, Tamar, Edd, and Zach drove to an area that had been plagued with zombie sightings. It used to be a commercial strip center until the apocalypse. They liked to come back to areas after a storm hit. Frequently, new things to scavenge were exposed from the storm.
Less than a week after the extermination of the Pit Monster, they saw a huge storm in this direction; now they came here to see what had been unearthed.
“Look for pepper, cinnamon, and bleach,” Rodrigo said, excitedly. He was eager to make more of N5P even though they had quite a bit already made.
“We need to see if it works on others first,” Antonio said. “If it only works on that type of mutant, it won’t do us much good for the others.” He saw the downfallen look on Rodrigo’s face and quickly added, “But we need to have enough for any pit monster. If there’s one, there has to be more.”
Rodrigo nodded in agreement. The truck slowed down as they approached what Antonio jokingly called ‘7-11’.
“Spread out and make some noise,” he told everyone.
“So we scavenge while we use ourselves as bait?” Tamar joked.
“Now you got it!” he replied with a smile.
Zach walked around, whistling loudly, kicking the dirt. He stopped when he hit something more solid. He knelt and dug in the soil to find a small box wrapped in thin plastic. There were no tears so it was still completely sealed.
“What’s a Malboro?” he asked.
Antonio rushed over. “Wow!” he said in awe. “An unopened pack of cigarettes. This is worth gold to traders. The Z.E.D.s smoke something similar but not as potent.”
“The ones the Z.E.D.s had looked nothing like this,” Tamar commented. “They were twisted and crooked and stunk when they burned.”
“T
hese were made in a factory years ago,” Antonio replied. “The stuff the Z.E.D.s are smoking are hand rolled with no filters or flavors. They are pretty nasty; or maybe pretty good now that I think back to how these tasted.”
Suddenly, they all heard a growl. Zach stuffed the pack in his pocket and pulled out his blade. They turned to see a zombie dog walking menacing towards them, not a mutated variety, but it would still work for their experiment.
“Rodrigo, you ready?” Antonio asked him.
Rodrigo nodded and aimed the sprayer at the dog. The others kept all their weapons out in case it failed to work.
“Here doggie, doggie!” Antonio jeered at it.
The dog jerked its head and started running at him. Rodrigo sprayed the dog full in the face and it stopped and yelped, startled. His excitement was short lived when it shook its undamaged head and bolted at Antonio, who calmly stepped aside and swung his axe, decapitating it.
“Shit,” Rodrigo simply said, looking at the zombie dog’s face. “Didn’t do a damn thing to it.”
“Hey, we weren’t sure if it would work, remember?” Antonio said, “That pit monster was a completely different type of substance than the zombies.”
Edd added, “And it might still work on the mutated zombies. That pit monster was mutated so maybe that’s the difference.”
Rodrigo agreed, downcast but still hopeful. Abruptly, Zach screamed and clutched his right leg. His foot had sunk into the sand past his ankle.
“A pit monster! Get me out!” he shouted in a panic.
As the others ran towards him, his leg slid further down, to his knee.
“Get me out now!” he shrieked.
Antonio and Edd each grabbed an arm and pulled as hard as they could. They expected resistance, so they were surprised when he pulled out of the ground without a problem. They all went flying and Zach landed hard on his tailbone. His ankle and part of his leg was scraped and bleeding but it looked like a regular scrap. Tamar smacked him on the back of the head.
“You scared the hell out of us,” she said.
“Scare the hell out of you?” he replied with a maniacal laugh, “After seeing that monster in action, I was sure it was another one.”
Edd got up and turned away with a smirk, but Rodrigo bent down to look at his injuries.
“I don’t blame you for freaking out,” he told him as he felt for any breaks. “That was too similar.”
Zach nodded and looked up to see Tamar and Edd laughing to each other. He supposed he did look pretty funny and he started laughing himself.
“Ouch,” he looked back down to see Rodrigo wrapping his injury.
“We’ll get you cleaned up back at Salvation,” he said. “I don’t think you sprained it but it does need cleaning.”
“Well if it wasn’t a pit monster,” Edd asked with a giggle, “what was it?”
Tamar was already on her knees with a shovel from the truck digging.
“This would go faster if I had help,” she stated bluntly without looking up.
Edd and Antonio both ran to the truck and got the other two shovels.
“What are we looking at?” Zach asked them an hour later. It looked like a giant metal tube buried under the ground. Chunks of rocks and concrete were mixed in along the top. There was a round capped opening at the top. Antonio smiled; he knew what it was.
“If it’s gas, it’s probably useless. But if it’s diesel...” he trailed off, imagining the amount of diesel that might still be intact in the tank.
This had once been a gas station. No one imagined that any of the gas tanks survived. The cap was scratched and unreadable so there was no telling what was inside.
Rodrigo smiled, “The gas will still be useful, no matter what. You want to attack the Z.E.D.s? Even old, the gas is still plenty flammable. I can think of lots of uses for it. Napalm baby!”
Antonio grinned wide, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!”
He and Rodrigo laughed and slapped hands in the air. Tamar and Zach just looked at each other before looking back to him confused, while Edd cocked an eyebrow.
“It’s from an old movie...” Antonio trailed off. “Never mind; before your time. But we can make Molotov cocktails with it!”
Antonio bent down and grasped the cap, twisting it but finding it stuck.
“Let me help,” Edd came over and together they got the cap off. The smell hit them the moment it was opened.
“It burns my eyes,” Edd said, about to put his hands up to rub them.
“Don’t do it,” Antonio warned. “They’ll burn even more if you get any residue in them. Use a little sand first, then water, on your hands.”
Edd backed off while Antonio tried to peer inside. It was dark so there was no way to gauge the level of the gasoline.
“There should be at least one more, maybe two, tanks,” Antonio said, recapping it and rubbing sand on his hands.
They took turns with the three shovels and dug areas parallel to the tank as Antonio had suggested. They found one more gasoline tank but the entire end of it was crushed; concrete chunks half-filled the opening and sand had sifted inside to soak up the liquid.
“Got one here!” Tamar shouted.
With all three shovels at work, they uncovered the cap and Rodrigo twisted it open.
“Jackpot!” he yelled. “Diesel!”
The celebration was cut short when they heard a loud growl. They all dropped the shovels and pulled out their weapons as one.
“Where is it?” Edd looked around.
They listened carefully for it to repeat but the only sound was the light wind whispering on the sand. They stepped away from the tanks and gathered, back to back in a circle.
“Dammit,” Rodrigo said, as he heard two eerie howls from both directions, “I set down the sprayer back at the truck so we could dig.”
“Then we take them out the old-fashioned way,” Antonio said, raising his axe.
“But we need to know if it works,” Rodrigo whispered.
“Not worth your life right now,” Antonio replied firmly. “There will always be another one.”
Rodrigo looked disappointed but nodded. More growls were heard, and the sources finally showed themselves. Two mutant wolves came out from behind large rocks across from each other. Zach and Rodrigo were on both sides of Antonio and they moved to intercept the one in front of them. Tamar and Edd spread out to engage the one coming at them from behind.
“Remember the reach of their tongues,” Tamar said.
Edd jumped to his right side, yelling while Tamar jumped to her left side quietly. In the past, the zombies would follow Edd and Tamar would flank it. This one seemed to be different.
Damn, even the mutant wolves are getting smarter; this one seems more intelligent than the one I killed at Salvation, Tamar had to think. The wolf stood its ground and looked warily back and forth between them. Its mouth opened and the oozing, spiked tongue began to snake out.
“What do you want to do?” Edd asked her quickly.
“We’ll run at each other and you put out your left arm so I can go up,” she said, putting away the blade in her right hand.
He nodded and she said, “Now!”
They ran directly at each other instead of at the mutant. It froze in confusion then looked up as Tamar soared through the air above its head, Edd’s strong arm propelling her up. She landed next to the mutant’s left haunch and as it whipped its head towards her, she sliced the tongue off. Edd ran forward with his machete and stabbed it directly into its eye. It swung its heavy head back at him, knocking him several feet, but there was no whipping tongue to infect him. Tamar took advantage of this distraction to impale the beast at the base of the skull with her dagger. It dropped with a thud. At the sound of this, the other wolf stopped moving, ducking its head and peering between the legs of the others to see the first wolf dead. It howled loudly then took two steps back. Tamar and Edd turned around to join the others. As it watched them, it looked like the wolf was
assessing the numbers it was up against.
“You okay Edd?” Tamar asked without turning.
“Pretty as pie,” he replied.
The wolf turned away and Rodrigo took that moment to run back to the truck for his sprayer.
“What the hell are you doing?” Antonio roared.
The mutant jerked back and angled for Rodrigo just as he reached the sprayer that was sitting on the hood. The mutant got within reach and opened its mouth to release its tongue. Rodrigo quickly sprayed and the tongue sizzled and dissolved almost immediately. The monster howled in pain and shook its head. It was about to continue its charge when the head suddenly came off with a quick swing of Antonio’s axe.
“I should kick your ass!” Antonio said as he dropped his axe and pushed Rodrigo up against the truck.
“But look,” Rodrigo said happily, pointing, “it may not work on the mutant itself but it worked great on the tongue. It must be a similar makeup to the pit monster.”
He was smiling crazily, oblivious to the fact that Antonio was furious with him. Antonio turned to look at the puddle of dissolved tongue and turned back to Rodrigo.
“Yes,” Antonio admitted, “it did work on its tongue, so that’s great, but you still disobeyed me and put yourself at risk.”
“Sorry,” Rodrigo replied, “I just really wanted to test it. It won’t happen again.”
Antonio let him go and picked up his axe. “Did you forget about Lori? I don’t want to have to tell her that something happened to you.”
Rodrigo nodded. He did forget about her for the moment. He was so excited to test N5P that everything else had flown from his mind.
“Pretty as pie?” Tamar asked Edd, “What does that mean?”
Edd looked to Antonio for help.
Antonio grinned at him, “I think you mean easy as pie. Pie is pretty but the saying is easy as pie.”
Tamar repeated her question, “Okay so that’s the correct way to say it. But what’s so easy about it? I’ve never had a pie, but I figure if it were easy to make we’d be eating it at Salvation. Is it quicker to make?”
Survive (Book 1): Salvation Page 17