by Won, Mark
“Because if you need a rest, that’s okay. We’re not in a hurry or anything.” Still nothing.
“Look, I’m not trying to be pushy here. It’s just that I need to know if you’re injured or something. So let me know if you’re hurt or if you just don’t want to talk, okay?”
“You saved me.” Oh no. She had some kind of brain damage.
“Okay, I’m really tired. Let’s rest right here.” Cindy with her head on straight was bad enough. In some kind of loopy state of crazyfied gibberland, she’d be even worse than worse than useless.
I got us settled off the road, on the other side of the ditch, and began to more closely inspect her head for trauma. Not that I could do anything about it if I’d found any. Aside from all her facial bruising she seemed alright.
“You saved me,” she said it again.
“Yeah, what’s your point?”
“Why did you save me?”
Then I got it. “Because I didn’t want you to get raped or murdered. Normal people care about each other that way, or so I’m told. I don’t know how else to explain it. You should talk to Larry.” Assuming we ever saw him again.
“But you were willing to kill me. Or leave me behind.” The way she said it, that last part was worse to her than dying.
“And if you make a great big point of going way the hell out of your way to endanger everybody else’s life, then those things are still on the table. I would never shoot you for just being a bitch, though.”
She still didn’t seem to get it so I tried again, “I don’t expect you to be useful. I certainly don’t expect you to be helpful. If you can just try to hold all that snobbish hate inside until we’re somewhere safer, then everything will be fine. You’ll see.”
After another half an hour wasted I got us on the road again. As we walked along I heard some low moaning in the trees off to our left. Cindy looked terrified. I took her hand and we picked up the pace.
After fifty yards or so I looked back and saw a zombie coming out of the woods toward us. Some dead chick with bare feet, her skin and clothes just hanging off her. It was having trouble with the roadside ditch. Even if it got through that, we could easily outpace it.
Nervously, Cindy said, “Shoot it.” An entirely erudite, cogent, and pithy request (the Weavers had always told me to look up new words so that I’d be more likely to remember them). I was happy to comply. I didn’t want that thing stumbling along after us in the middle of the night. It was necessary for me to lose the supply sack in order for me to aim, so I gave it to Cindy to carry. For once she didn’t complain. Then I dropped the zombie on my first shot.
All seemed well until I heard another zombie calling out. We attempted the same tactic, but once we’d moved along a little ways we heard another calling out ahead of us. Cindy looked close to panic. I told her to stay by me. I reminded her that I had the gun.
Then we heard others calling out from farther back in the woods and I started to panic a bit. We hurried along, not quite breaking into a run. At least until the first of them stepped out of the woods. There was no ditch along that stretch of road so the zombie went right from the trees to the side of the road in one step. I brought up my barrel and shot it in the forehead. Then we ran.
I tried to keep us moving forward, only shooting the ones ahead of us, but the situation got worse. It seemed that for every ten feet forward I had to kill another one. Then they started to come upon us two and three at a time. The road behind was crawling with them. The situation called for some evasive thinking.
I had to consider what I was seeing. The zombies hadn’t started this pursuit by coming at us all at once. They were so slow I knew they hadn’t just run into position. No, they’d been there all along. Maybe waiting? That first one seemed an accident. Then the rest showed up. Coincidence? Or maybe they’d heard me shooting. Could dead things hear? If they’d been there all along why didn’t they all just attack right away? Was it a trap? If so, why wasn’t it sprung all at once? Why this piecemeal approach? Maybe they were all blundering along through the woods. Perhaps they couldn’t see us through the trees any better than we could see them. I decided that it was time to leave the road and try to lose them in the forest.
I told Cindy to follow me and took her into the woods. We could hear them all around us but they couldn’t find us. One stumbled into our path and started moaning and moving for us. I took Cindy’s arm and led us off at a ninety degree angle. Then I did it again.
As we lost that zombie another moved in front of us. I tried the same maneuver and it worked again. We kept moving quietly. I shouldered my rifle and drew out my knife. I wished I had something bigger than a combat knife. The next zombie that was about to notice us I ran up to and stabbed in the head, before she could alert the others with that hellish moan.
That seemed like a good plan. With the next zombie I tried the same thing. I could tell it was a zombie and not an ogre by the way it stumbled toward us. When I moved in he reached up and grabbed for my arm. I’d seen how strong those things were and pulled back just in time. His fingers closed on my shirt sleeve and he pulled me off balance. I jerked back with all my strength and he just stumbled a bit and hung on with a three fingered grip. Luckily my sleeve tore off at the cuff. Then I backed off as he started moaning. I took Cindy’s arm, and tried running some more.
We ran out of the woods and suddenly found ourselves on another road. Looking both ways, we crossed with alacrity. Along one way we had seen what I thought was another zombie on the road. She must have been two hundred yards away. Once we’d crossed the road we found the forest on the other side was free of zombies. We slowed down to catch our breath.
Something from the way we’d just come began crashing through the underbrush, fast. I had enough time to turn and face the rustling when a ghoul broke free of the underbrush and jumped at my face. She was that same one I’d seen along the road we’d just crossed. Damn, those things were fast.
My knife came up and sank into her belly. She reached out and tried to bite my arm. I grabbed her neck with my other hand and tried using the knife again. We struggled like that for awhile before I managed to get the upper hand. She was stronger and faster than me but had no sense of leverage and no fear of my knife. Eventually I tripped her face down, knelt on her back, and stabbed her in the brain. Thank Christ and Major for all those Judo lessons.
I looked over to Cindy, who was frozen with terror. “Thanks for not screaming. Let’s go.” Someplace in this barren wasteland we needed to find a place to hide. I needed to rest up.
I knew there were farmhouses in the area. We’d driven by several. All we could do was keep going and hope to find one. Uninhabited, preferably. I had no idea where all those zombies had even been coming from. I had thought that Wisconsin was almost entirely an underpopulated nature preserve.
It took a few hours but eventually we came upon an old fashioned Quaker type building. Like on the reality TV show Crazy Amish. All around it for hundreds of feet was open dirt land. I’d seen similar overturned dirt in Minnesota. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like the kind of stuff hicks would plant things in. The house looked good to me so we went up to it.
Having learned a hard lesson the last time I’d knocked on a farmhouse door, this time I tried peeking in the windows first. In the kitchen I saw a zombie standing over the sink. That was good enough for me. I figured if there was one zombie there were probably no people, so I could shoot the place up safely.
Throughout all that running around we’d managed to retain the blanket I’d been using as a sack for our food and stuff. I’d thought to bring a small pillow for Cindy, in case we had to camp out. I wrapped my pistol in it and asked Cindy to open the door.
Inside everything looked fine. No zombies in the living room, which was always a plus. There were stairs to the left but I moved ahead to the kitchen as Cindy shut the door. I went around the corner fast with my pistol held high. As soon as I saw the corpse I shot it in the head. Or I tried to,
anyway. It turns out that it’s really difficult to aim a pistol with a pillow wrapped around it. Also, as a silencer, it sucks. My .45 boomed throughout that house like a herd of thunderstorms. The woman zombie turned toward me so I dropped the pillow and tried again. At a range of three feet I scored a hit that finished her off.
The kitchen opened up into a big room with a fireplace and a couple of armchairs. Another zombie started shuffling toward me so I took aim and opened fire. As he lurched forward he tripped over a small step on the threshold, spoiling my aim. He fell flat on his face so I shot him through the back of his skull. Then I heard one falling down the stairs, so I went back the way I’d come a shot a teenager zombie as she stumbled getting to her feet.
Cindy let out a scream, giving me just enough time to step forward and spin around, looking for the next threat. Another zombie crashed through the railing above and fell right where I’d been standing. The zombie reached out a hand and grabbed my leg just as I put an extra hole in her head.
I got creative and waited. Sure enough, one more zombie from the hallway on the left and one more from the stairs. One shot each. Then I searched the rest of the house for stragglers. That was the lot of them. I remember thinking You know, for not being welfare moms, these damn Wisconsinites sure have a lot of kids. They’re all fat, too.
Then I went to the windows and tried to see if anything had heard us and was approaching. It was all clear so I chucked the bodies outside and locked the door.
Then I went upstairs and got some sheets from the bedrooms and markers from another room. A room with a strange machine in it. The thing had thread running through it and a shirt half way under it. It looked like something to make clothes with. Whoever lived here had some bizarre hobbies.
I had Cindy help me write our names on the sheets with the word ‘here’ and we hung them out the upstairs windows, facing the road.
I found a bunch of tools in the garage and got to work reinforcing the house. This time I did the job right. Thick screws, heavy doors, the ground floor was safe. We ate some tuna from the pantry and then I took a nap. That car wreak had really taken a lot out of me. Cindy seemed pretty good, though.
I woke up to find Cindy asleep. I figured that was just as well, so I quietly got off the couch and moved through the rest of the house looking for anything useful.
I found a gun rack. The keys for it were in a desk. The former inhabitants had a bolt action hunting rifle with a scope, and a double barrel shotgun. At first I didn’t know what the shotgun was. I hadn’t known they made the double barrel version in a non-sawed off model. They also had a .22 rifle, a semi automatic shotgun, and another rifle with a lever thing by the trigger that seemed to serve the same function as a bolt action. Also, there was an odd two barreled gun with a .30 caliber barrel over and a shotgun barrel underneath, with a little switch to choose between them. Neat! I wondered what they called it.
In one room there was a chair set up by a big magnifying glass. In front of the glass was a little bitty bunch of thread all tied together. It looked half finished but there were plenty of finished thread thingies off to the side, each in its own place on a mat. They looked like bugs with fishing hooks. That’s right. Somebody sat in a chair and tied together string so it looked like bugs, then mounted the string bugs on a mat like some kind of trophy. I think I would have really liked to know all the people I’d just killed. They seemed interesting.
After a while Cindy woke up and we spent the rest of the day looking out the windows, hoping for help. Around nightfall we saw a truck driving by outside. They must have seen the sheets because they drove right up the driveway and got out. It was Pete and Bill. We waved, they waved back.
Once back with the group I gave Sue a big kiss. I asked how Phil made out. He’d been shot in the stomach. Fortunately, he’d been wearing a bullet resistant shirt. Some really expensive piece of shit that looked like ordinary rich people clothes but supposedly stopped bullets. It did not work as advertised. Still, he lived, so I guess it worked well enough. Our dentist was able to remove the bullet and stitch Phil up, no problem.
All in all, folks were pretty stoked that Cindy made it back. By the way they acted you’d never know how much they hated her. Even Natalia seemed happy.
Chapter 7: Looking for Magic, Finding Jesus, and Another New Beginning
Cindy and I weren’t the only people who’d noticed an increase in zombie activity. During the search for us they’d encountered a couple dozen zombies and figured more were moving in. One far ranging scout, Don, reported to us that the highway he’d approached had a horde of thousands. They were headed toward us from the west.
Everybody was tired but I didn’t care. It was time to move. I made sure to tell anyone not driving to get some sleep if they could. My intention was to go slow but keep moving all night long. Sue got some sleep while I stayed behind the wheel.
We started out heading east. After an hour or two I got a call from Larry, in the last car. He said they had ghouls closing in on them and they were going to speed up. I told everyone to accelerate. Then, as we were picking up the pace, some cars materialized out of the night directly ahead of us. I swerved and hit the breaks, but it was too late. We clipped a car and went off the road, ending hung up on some downed sapling. Everyone else managed to stop in time.
I grabbed my radio and told everyone with a gun to get to the last vehicle, and wait for the ghouls. Then I ran there with Sue as fast as I could. The shooting started before I’d arrived.
Once I finally made it to the rearmost vehicle in our motorcade the ghouls were among us. Everybody was firing wildly but no one was hitting anything. I dropped my rifle and drew my knife and pistol. Then I ran toward the nearest ghoul shouting like a madman. He saw me coming and got off Pete to jump at me.
That’s what I’d been hoping for. As it grabbed for me I tripped it, followed it down with my knee on its back, and shot it in the head. Then I turned, looking for another victim.
I ran up to one that was perched on top of Robert and made like I was going for a sixty yard field goal. My boot lifted that thing right into the air. The ghoul managed to land on her feet, though. She looked at me with an evil calculating gaze, her tongue slithered out, impossibly long. That’s when Donald made the top half of her head disappear with a 12 gauge blast from heaven. Or, if not from heaven, at least from the top of a minivan.
I turned around and saw that we had finished the last of them. I counted three ghouls downed. We had numerous wounded, but none dead. That body armor had really held up. The worst was a bite on the back of Bliss’ neck. I had everyone get back in their vehicles so we could move out. I put Bliss with the Doc so he could help her out.
I went back to the cars that were blocking our way to give them a closer look. Each had one or more zombies in them, either too clumsy or too lazy to step outside. I put a bullet in each of them and then we pushed the offending vehicles out of the way before continuing.
We traveled until about 2:00 am. Then one of our cars swerved off the road and crashed into a ‘wrong way’ sign post at a private driveway. We all stopped and made our way over as fast as we could. I got there first and saw the Fullers still in their crashed car. Pete was crushing the neck of his daughter Liz. Tony, Tonya and his wife Sophia were already dead. As I watched Sophia Changed before my eyes. I brought up my rifle and put a bullet in each of the zombie’s heads. Then I waited to see if the kids would Change. They did not, thank Christ.
I had to wonder what the hell happened. His bite hadn’t seemed fatal. I had us make camp right there. We bunched the vehicles up with a space in the middle and huddled there. I had all the wounded stay in the center. Jerry led us all in prayer. Around 3:00 Bliss suddenly died. No apparent cause. I mean I knew the cause. Obviously, the wound she got in the battle. The bites. I just didn’t know why.
After that we watched Donald closely. I figured he’d be next. Morning came and he was still with us. I assigned him to the rear vehicle, all alone. That
way if he did Change the rest of us would be safe. We could just keep driving.
We trudged on, everyone tired, everyone on edge. We tried to turn north but our way was blocked by a few hundred zombies. We went south only to be blocked by a couple thousand more. Traveling east we went into a true forest. Some kind of actual nature preserve. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see dinosaurs roaming the earth.
We camped again that night and everyone got some sleep. Come morning I decided to have a talk with Larry.
“Hey, Larry, do you think the zombies are demonic things?” I felt that I might as well get right to the point.
Larry replied, “I believe so. I don’t know if the devil made these ‘zombies’ directly, but all disease is ultimately from Satan. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a physical solution to be had, however.”
Whatever. “What I mean is, should we be trying holy water and crosses instead of bullets?”
“Oh, I take you point now. No, stick with the bullets. I’m not aware of any scriptural promises regarding our current threat. If these things are actually diabolical, then prayer may be of some special assistance. All of the biblical examples of possession I can remember involve living people being possessed, not dead bodies. And certainly not living people being bitten, so that they die and became possessed corpses.”
“Okay, what about that prayer thing? Was Pete a big prayer? How about Bliss? I know Donald’s part of your church.”
“You’re asking how much people pray?” He seemed confused by the concept. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen Pete pray. I invited him, of course, but he wasn’t interested. Bliss was a recent member of my congregation. She was always so cheerful.” The pastor seemed genuinely saddened.
I didn’t think there would be a connection but I had to ask. “One last thing. Does the church do any magic rituals that actually are supposed to do anything?” I know, grasping at straws.
Just then someone screamed. Not Cindy. I ran toward the threat at top speed. What I found was a wall of the walking dead stumbling through the trees toward us.