Cinco De Zombie

by Albert Aykler

  No grunts, growls, or groans.

  Quiet steady zombie steps.

  Maximum creepy.

  By the time I caught up to the place where Zombie Soccer Dad had turned into the woods, I could see no sombrero. No tassels. Deep darkness as hard as I looked and some piece of it occupied by a hungry, well-balanced zombie. No sound of him back in there. He could be six inches off the road. Out of the light. Standing and staring into the void the way they do. Or he could be fifty yards deep into the woods. We had reached the area where the campground had cleared the forest floor of underbrush. He might go a hundred yards before snapping a twig or crushing a pinecone.

  I stopped, turned off the car, and listened. Good Jiu Jitsu teacher.

  Something in the woods, but maybe something that belonged there. Not footsteps that I could make out.

  The car door had a nasty creak, so I climbed out of the driver’s side window with my best imitation of cat burglar grace. I pulled the backpack on my back, rested the bat lightly on my shoulder, and left the key in the ignition.

  I stepped to the cracked and crumbling edge of the road, on the verge of swinging the bat blindly to clear my way into the woods, when I remembered that headlamp Ziggy was so keen on earlier. I dug around in the backpack, put it on, and as I was about to click it on—

  BANG. BANG.

  Scream (a man’s).

  And BANG.

  Something—metal on metal—up the road and into the campground, probably near the turnoff to the entrance. I knew Cool Camper Zombie Soccer Dad would turn for it so I ran that way along the road, maybe twenty yards. Figuring I had outpaced him, I flipped on the headlamp and turned into the woods, aiming to put myself between the Zombie Soccer Dad and the campground entrance.

  Bat up and looking to my left, counting on him walking to me.

  I was not wrong about his direction or that I had gotten a few steps ahead of him. But I completely misjudged his speed and his reaction to the light. Usually, zombies freeze like deer. Only dumber. Cool Camping Jiu Jitsu Zombie Soccer Dad with the dangling right forearm came at me full speed, good arm outstretched like a toddler chasing a soap bubble.

  By the time I spotted him, he had come within two feet of me. Stepping swift, sure, quiet, and groaning only upon nearly stumbling over his next snack. Me.

  I stepped back to get a better swing at his head, and the movement of the headlamp excited him so much that he tried lifting both arms, good and dangler, to grab the light source. Up went his shoulder and off flew his forearm right into my face as I was trying to find my batting stance in the dark.

  Zombie forearm to face. Fumbled swing. Clumsy step. A low bush or maybe a young tree underfoot. And down I sprawled, losing the bat in the dark and picking up a mouthful of pine needles. The arm landed under me and the hand at the end of it gripped my T-shirt.

  Zombie dad groaned louder. I looked up and back at him. He had stopped moving when I fell, losing sight of the light on my head, but began moving as soon as I threw the light back on him. I turned to look for the bat. It had rolled against the trunk of a tree about six feet away. I scrambled for it as best I could, ignoring the arm now dangling from my shirt and the hungry Zombie Soccer Dad behind me.

  Once I had the bat, I reached up and killed the headlamp as I ducked behind the tree to catch my breath. Zombie Dad sounded like he stopped short, almost as though he said, “What the…?” But he couldn’t say that. And didn’t. He lost track of his meal, and whatever made the thing controlling him excited and half alive, died all over again.

  I listened for his low top sneakers against the pine needles. After pausing long enough to feel the lustre fade from the internal shine of my adrenaline rush, I heard a step. Since he had been facing in my direction, that is the direction he moved. If he kept at the current trajectory, I would need to come around the tree and switch hit to strike him face-first or go all the way around it as he passed and swing at him from behind. I opted for the latter.

  Quietly, he stepped toward the tree, and as quietly, I stepped around it, raising my bat. One more step and I could pass around the tree without him spotting me and tee ball his head into zombie oblivion.

  Two things went wrong: The Sombrero and The Family.

  The Sombrero Defense

  Zombie Soccer Dad passed the tree. I stepped to the other side of it. The wide brim of the sombrero brushed and nearly caught on the bark of the tree. Not enough to pull the hat off, but enough to turn Zombie Dad’s head to the left, to distract him and make him stop. I heard it and decided to make the most of it, speeding up to take a good step-into-it swing that would set up the coup de grâce.

  This all would have worked except my swing was short. When the bat and I came around the tree, there was the other side of that damned Sombrero. It came up too quickly and slowed my swing. The sculpted felt provided a surprising amount of cushioning between the bat and the zombie’s head. And as my weak blow fell, the second thing went wrong.

  The Screaming Family

  As the bat came in contact with the sombrero, screams came from the direction of the campground, off to the Zombie Soccer Dad’s right. Mom screams. Kid screams. SUV horn screams. All kinds of screams. Zombie Soccer Dad turned to the sound.

  My swing stopped him with a thud, but did not crack his skull. It did not even knock the sombrero off his head.

  The screams kept coming. The horn kept honking. Zombie Soccer Dad turned to me. I did a half-swing and hit him again. This time in the chest. The arm clutching my shirt flew off and landed near his feet. He showed no signs of noticing or caring.

  “Help. Someone. Help us.” Karen-Mother-of-Two’s voice.

  I ran for it, figuring I would take care of Zombie Soccer Dad later. I counted on him following the sounds as I followed the words.

  7 Yes. We deliver!

  Let’s play the Versus Game:

  Moths versus butterflies.

  Cockroaches versus ladybugs.

  Pigeons versus robins.

  Crows versus hummingbirds.

  Rats versus chipmunks.

  What have we learned? Cuteness matters.

  When chipmunks scurry around a campsite looking for food, most people think: “Ah, cute. We're in the outdoors now.”

  Maybe it comes down to personal taste, but I will bet that most people do not grant the same relaxed, warm welcome to rats.

  Both members of the rodent family live in groups near and among humans, sharing our food and our diseases, but they have distinctly different reputations.

  When it all comes down to it, chipmunks distinguish themselves by being better dressed and having nicer voices. Perhaps they are the Ed Sheerans and Taylor Swifts of the rodent world; cute, good looking (or at least not bad looking in Sheeran’s case), chic-ly folksy, and sweetly infectious.

  This cuteness factor created an interesting dynamic for the Soccer Camping Family. They had no fear or basic sense of repulsion for the surrounding viral vectors in the campground. Apparently, the infected chipmunks remained fairly docile and standoffish with the humans. Maybe their herbivorous traits prevented them from recognizing live mammals as a food source.

  But, according to Soccer Dad, the presence of the raw hamburger triggered the original chipmunk attack. They came after that meat and anyone who got in their way. And that is how Soccer Dad received the bite that made him Patient Zero at El Coyote Gordo.

  Whatever the cause of their earlier reticence to attack the family, it was gone now. They had found hamburger, tasted Dad, and now these chipmunk zombies wanted more meat. Human meat.

  It was an ongoing issue at Silvercrest, and one reason for my impromptu visits to labs around the globe. No one spoke of it openly at work. Many lab techs and scientists would blush at the mention of it until their third or fourth drink and, even then, speak of it in veiled terms. It became known as The Silvercrest Secret of NIMH or for the real nerds The Mrs. Frisby Issue.

  Twice, I saw senior scientists break down in tears over this questi
on and its implications during debriefings. All of them knew it should be the ruin of their work purely based on ethics. For lab techs and the data folks, it created prohibitively difficult challenges with replication and ‘determining non-stochastically derived valid controls.’ The issue: The Silvercrest virus could not be incubated and passed to any species other than humans.

  Hopefully, it comes as no surprise that our ethically minded research staff all wanted to create a test-worthy strain with fewer ethical and practical implications. Silvercrest, based on the debriefings I attended, discouraged, if not outright forbade, this line of inquiry.

  To my way of thinking, that of the only known surviving outbreak victim and one-man professional zombie eradication team, they were right to want to stop this kind of research. It was bad enough that the virus even existed and could spread from one human to another. Adding any other animal into that mix meant a potential explosion of contagion vectors. It is also obvious to me that the wisest and most ethical course would have been to cease all research into these strains and destroy every last one in hopes they never returned to planet earth.

  Instead, Silvercrest played the game of versus with the scientists:

  Known humans versus strangers?

  Nearby humans versus distant humans?

  Humans who look like you versus humans who look a little different?

  Naturally, they did not even have to inquire about rich humans versus poor humans, the rich simply do not occur in great enough abundance to serve as test subjects.

  None of this stopped Quiet Kevin. The same way those peppers burned, management attacked and tore at his attempts to pursue this alternate species research. They maligned his intelligence, set impossible bureaucratic barriers, and took turns whipping him with a rash of plain unkindnesses. None of it stopped him.

  Sadly, it was not a rebellious punk rock streak that drove Kevin. Quiet Kevin knew, or thought he knew, that if he could test strains in more rapidly reproducing populations, and those with less ethical ramifications, he could get to the desired outcome faster and better than anyone else at Silvercrest. No one shared the details with me, but I heard the senior leadership had incentivized the scientists at Silvercrest with a significant financial bounty for creating a working viral solution meeting specifications never shared with the likes of me post-amnesia.

  All of that happened before they put me on ice, so I can only conclude that a big part of Kevin’s particular perceived contribution to the Silvercrest Virus Boondoggle was his risky research into cross-species transmission.

  It turns out, Kevin ultimately succeeded. The chipmunks at El Coyote Campground had contracted the virus, and they were doing what most humans do when we get it: die, come back to life, and attack anything fleshy that moves in hopes of eating it.

  None of this meat eating made sense for an herbivore, so it would be of some interest to know how long chipmunks could run on food their systems could not process. Zombie longevity is a woefully under-researched area and, with luck, will remain so for some time.

  And now, I bring you Singleton versus Chipmunks.

  I outpaced Soccer Zombie Dad to the campsite. Probably something along the way confused him. Some obstacle maybe. Or the scrambling and scratching sounds in the trees overhead worked on his zombie nerves the way they worked on mine. The creepy frantic forest sounds grew louder and more disturbing the closer I came to the source of the honking SUV horn. I clicked off my headlamp, hoping to become less visible. I slowed to a fast walk while my eyes adjusted to the moonlit forest.

  I kept moving. As the yelling died down, I picked my pace.

  By the time I arrived at the Soccer Camping Family’s campsite, it became clear the yelling had moved into the SUV with the family. Dozens of chipmunks scratched and clawed at the windows and doors.

  Stopping a few feet outside the high beams, I remained undetected by the rodent horde. Karen-Mother-of-Two kept trying to start the engine and only made it go clickity-clickity amid the din of sick squeaks and tiny claws on car paint. From the looks and sounds of things, the chipmunks had climbed into the engine and started chewing everything softer than metal. The little zombies would make it through the air vents into the passenger compartment soon.

  This looked sticky. Lots of irritated, scratchy, bitey, zombie chipmunks and no long-range weapons. The scratching scrambling sound overhead died down as the chipmunks finished raining onto the SUV. All the partygoers had arrived except dear old zombie dad.

  Once I had finally gotten the family’s attention by waving my arms in the edge of the headlights, I motioned/mouthed for them to keep making noise, figuring that must be what the rodent terrors were focusing on as they had not detected me even though I stood only ten or twelve feet away.

  I moved around to the rear of the vehicle and used the bat on the ones trying to squeeze in through the rear window and one or two scratching and chewing at the taillights. When the rear looked clear, I moved to the passenger side as that was not directly under any trees, so it seemed unlikely any would land on my head.

  There was a heavy concentration of them around the headlights and rattling under the hood. I could hear them scratching inside the door panels. Because so many had wriggled and scratched their way inside, it didn’t take me long to clear off the ones still scratching at the doors and windows on both sides of the vehicle.

  I stuck to a simple and effective kill method. An abrupt firm hit to brush them off the vehicle, then an immediate pounding with the bat. They were zombie chipmunks. It did not take much to end them.

  I had never killed a chipmunk or any other rodent before that night. I suppose I still haven’t as every infected animal is nothing more than a dead animal reanimated by the virus. This is the story everyone tells me whenever I start in to asking them if they consider me a murderer.

  The virus is the real killer, Singleton. You’re cleaning that up.

  Sure.

  To keep calm, I counted the nasty beasties as I cleaned. Without tackling the front end, my count reached twenty-two.

  Turns out, it was not an electrical issue that kept the car from starting. It was a too-smart-of-a-car issue. Karen-Mother-Of-Two jostled something inside, looked at me and said, Shit, this stupid thing. Then the eight-cylinder family-sized soccer bus roared to life. Mass chipmunk death ensued under the hood, complete with high-pitched chipmunk zombie screeches and the wet sound of the big engine biting back at its attackers.

  Karen-Mother-Of-Two meant to drive away and leave me with the rest of the mess, but something prevented her from getting it out of neutral. Perhaps too many chipmunk carcasses.

  The doors and sides of the SUV continued to rattle, hiss, scratch, and squeak with the sound of chipmunks trapped inside. After the initial grind of rodent flesh from the engine, it ran smooth as she tried to shift, but fairly quickly, I could hear a deeper grinding. Too much bone, gristle, and chipmunk hide had found its way into the moving parts.

  I smelled smoke. Karen-Mother-Of-Two kept giving it more gas, revving the ailing engine. I motioned for her to stop between fending off the chipmunks who had figured out my yummy flesh remained outside this weird metal box.

  I backed away from the SUV, tripping over a tent stake and tangling myself into one of the tent lines. Playing Whack-A-Chipmunk flat on your ass is a full body workout. The furry fuckers bit and scratched me through my fancy new jeans, and one got a good hold on my left thumb before I whacked it against one of the rocks around the fire pit. My count hit thirty-seven by the time the frontal assault seemed to have abated.

  I looked over to the SUV and saw flames shooting out of the hood. The nasty smell of burning engine and rodents turned the tacos in my stomach. I looked behind me, expecting to see Zombie Soccer Dad at any minute. A renewed wave of burning zombie chipmunk screams filled the forest as the SUV’s engine died.

  I yelled for the family to get out of the SUV. They came out coughing through the putrid smoke. Quick Thinking Young Chad had the small fire ext
inguisher from their emergency roadside kit. He made his way to the front of the vehicle with a Smokey the Bear sense of purpose

  I stopped him with a six word lesson in situational awareness and prioritization: “Forget the fire. Kill zombies, kid.”

  “OK.” Good student.

  We must have taken out another twenty chipmunks around the campfire pit. Once the full frontal rodent assault died down, we took a breather.

  By some undeserved luck, the engine fire died on its own while Chad and I battled the pint-sized monsters. The scrambling and scratching in the car vents stopped, but I am not certain all the Zombie Chipmunks cooked to completion. They remained there. Trapped and singed but not cleaned up.

  Karen-Mother-Of Two looked at me. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

  One more chipmunk came scrambling over the ground at Tara, who looked like a clinical illustration of a pre-adolescent shock victim. I swung and missed as she danced backward.

  Then Chad scrambled past me and nailed this last well-dressed zombia rodentia with the fire extinguisher less than an inch from his sister’s cross trainers. The kid had real promise.

  “Ew.” Tara wrapped her arms around herself, eyes wide in imitation of every animal ever made prey by another. She stood there staring down, not sure how to find safety or how she could believe in it once found.

  “We have a big one incoming.”

  “Is it my husband?”

  “Don’t think like—”

  A shotgun blast from the direction of the main road interrupted me. With luck, it would draw Zombie Soccer Dad away from here. I shushed them. We listened. Besides the lack of chipmunks, we heard nothing. Too much nothing for my peace of mind.

  Another blast came from the same direction. And another. Young Chad squeaked, dropped the fire extinguisher, and covered his mouth with his hands. We all crouched down near the tent, now little more than a sagging lop-sided heap since my chipmunk induced collision.