Officer Barcomb vs. The Undead

by Darren Barcomb

  “It’s just like cracking eggs,” Barcomb said.

  *

  The top edge of the boat was very close to the surface of the water as Barcomb pushed them away from the shore.

  “I don’t think these boats were really designed for people like us,” Barcomb said.

  “What do you mean?” Haws said.

  “I was trying to downplay it, buddy. You’re fuckin’ huge. You could fill this fuckin’ boat if you lied down.”

  Haws laughed.

  “Just try not to move around too much.”

  The boat rocked a little with each stroke of the paddle. It was very slow going.

  “We got out of a fuckin’ Dodge Challenger and into this piece of shit,” Haws said. “I’m get antsy. Can you hurry this shit up?”

  Barcomb frowned. “Do you wanna row and I’ll sit her complaining? We can switch roles, man.”

  Haws laughed, then sighed. “I’m bored, man. This is some slow-ass fuckin’ boat ride. You row boats like old people fuck.” Haws lifted up his pistol and took aim at a zombie that was trying to stand up and failing; its legs snapped under its own weight.

  Haws fired and its head jerked and rolled off, bouncing on the ground.

  Every single zombie surrounding the lake, roughly two hundred grey, blue and green faces in various states of decomposition, now turned and looked at Haws.

  “Oh,” Haws said, mildly surprised. “That’s, um, not so great.”

  Barcomb stopped rowing. “Be quiet a minute,” he whispered. “Don’t move.”

  The zombies looked around with their melted, jelly eyeballs which saw nothing. Their ears, however, were mostly intact. The blind dead began to stir, and, one by one, they crawled into the water, like pale, starved crocodiles.

  They all floated, their mangled legs trailing behind them like fish tails, and their efforts to crawl towards the boat produced a kind of eerie swimming motion that propelled them along slowly. They came into the water from all sides. Barcomb and Haws were in the boat in the middle of the lake. The floated past the island. Barcomb still didn’t care enough about the dog statue to read the plaque stating why it was there. He had other things on his mind.

  “This is just an idea,” Haws said, “but maybe you should be fuckin’ rowing.”

  Barcomb looked around. They were surrounded. He picked up his AR-15 and said, “I’ve got an idea.”

  Haws pulled up his pistol.

  “Let’s fill them full of holes,” Barcomb said. “They’ll sink to the bottom and we can just sail right over them.”

  Barcomb pointed to the shore in the direction they were heading.

  “This direction,” he said. “You row, and I’ll start sinking some battleships.”

  He handed Haws the paddle and got on one knee at the front of the boat with his rifle against his shoulder. There was a good twenty zombies coming from that direction and Barcomb couldn’t see their faces. They didn’t need to come up for air. They didn’t exactly know where they were going either, he didn’t think. They just heard a noise and jumped in.

  Barcomb popped a few rounds into the first few zombies. They sank like bricks with a cloud of bubbles appearing after each one touched the bottom of the lake.

  “It’s working,” Barcomb said.

  By the time Haws rowed the boat to the shore, they were floating past outstretched fingers which pierced the surface of the water. They jumped and pulled the boat onto the shore in case they needed it to get back.

  “That was some smart thinking,” Haws said.

  “And you can’t row for shit either,” Barcomb said. “I could’ve got out and swam faster.”

  “Maybe you should’ve,” Haws laughed. “Make some new friends at the bottom of the lake. How far to this house?”

  Gunshots sounded out in the night. In a dark, ten-story apartment building off the left, beyond the wrought iron fence, windows were lighting up with gun flashes.

  “It’s that house,” Barcomb said, pointing towards the source of the gunfire. “We better get moving. It’s starting to rain. Don’t want wet socks!”

  A feeble, skeletal hand latched onto Barcomb’s ankle from a grave. The stone read: Lawrence Mendelson. Barcomb shook his foot and the hand broke off.

  “Get a job, Larry,” he said. “Jesus.”

  Chapter 8: Crazy Cat Lady

  Barcomb and Haws scrambled over the fence as the rain started to drizzle down and they jumped into the shared back yard for the apartment building. Haws slipped on his ass. He looked up and saw that a half dozen little crosses made out of twigs were scattered around, stabbed into the dirt. Haws put his ear to the ground beside one of the crosses.

  “Holy shit, Barcomb,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “I ain’t shitting you now,” Haws said, laughing, “but I can hear meowing!”

  Barcomb chuckled.

  They ran for the fire escape on the back of the building. Haws gave Barcomb a boost up and he pulled the ladder down for them to climb up. There hadn’t been any more gunfire and Barcomb was concerned. He ran ahead, taking two steps at a time. Ash lived on the top floor. Why the fuck did she have to live on the top floor? Barcomb thought, as his legs started to ache. Haws was a dozen steps behind and he looked like he regretted carrying that heavy sledgehammer around with him.

  Barcomb got to the top and stopped. He hadn’t thought this through very well. He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t spoken to her about anything other than her dead husband, Jimmy, his former partner, since Dutroux put Jimmy’s head a box and presumably threw the rest away in the Bay. He didn’t look in the window in case she saw him. He needed to think of something to say first. Something clever or witty or romantic. Maybe not romantic, he thought. That’s coming on a bit strong. But Barcomb did have feelings for her. Always had.

  Haws was clanking and clumping up the metal staircase to the top, so he had no time to prepare a grand speech. Fuck it, he thought. I’ll see how it goes.

  Barcomb stepped in front of the window and looked inside.

  Ash was in her early twenties and tanned with raven hair. She stood at five foot six. Right now, she was stood only in her underwear, facing the television with her back to the window with a large meat cleaver in her hand. Her ass was also facing the window. Barcomb couldn’t help but admire. Her ass was in very small white panties, lit only by the moonlight and the highlighted by the blue glow of the TV in the background. Barcomb had a difficult time focusing on the task at hand.

  Haws got to the top. “Hey, is this-” he began.

  Barcomb shushed him.

  Haws looked in the window too. He struggled not to swear when he saw her. He nodded at Barcomb in approval.

  Ash wander over to the coffee table, which was hidden from view behind the sofa. They could see the side of her now. Her figure was incredible. Barcomb had about two seconds to admire her before she did something which surprised him. She started hacking at something on the table. She brought the meat cleaver down again and again, splattering blood all over her body. She wiped some from her eye with the back of her hand and carried on.

  Barcomb and Haws exchanged worried looks.

  A hand came up from the table. A human hand. Ash pushed it away and continued hacking with the meat cleaver. The sound was sickening: crunch, crunch, crack, splash. After a few more hits, Ash bent over the table and put her foot on it. She pulled with all her might and with another crunch she stepped backwards. She lifted an old woman’s head up in her hands.

  Actually, Barcomb saw it was a zombie’s head.

  Its mouth wriggled and writhed in pain and its eyes rolled all around in its head. Ash held it up to her own face using both her hands and looked at it closely. Blood spurted from the neck stump down her body, but she ignored it.

  “Die,” she said, looking it in the eyes.

  It made screaming faces, but no sound came out. It showed no signs of slowing down or dying again. Ash held it closer.

  “Die,” she
said.

  Its blood ran down her breasts and down her stomach and legs and pooled on the carpet around her bare feet.

  Haws whispered to Barcomb, “She’s a fox, but she looks fuckin’ crazy. You sure about her?”

  Barcomb nodded.

  Ash lower the zombie head and held it by the hair. She sighed and dropped her shoulders in disappointment. Suddenly, the zombie head locked its eyes on Barcomb and Haws at the window. It tried to scream and snap, but there was no sound save the clicking and clacking of its teeth as it flew into a rage. Ash moved the head back up to look at it.

  “Thanks for nothing,” she said to it.

  Ash noticed the zombie head’s eyes were fixated on something behind her. She didn’t turn right away. The head was raging, snarling and biting at thin air. It had seen someone. Ash slowly leaned over and picked up her Taurus Judge, a stubby, silver handgun with a pink, rubber grip and loaded with 45 colt cartridges. It could take a chunk out of anything or anyone. She hid the handgun by her side, out of view of the window, and casually dropped the zombie head on the coffee table. Spinning, she saw two figures at the window and fired three rounds as she ducked behind the sofa. The glass shattered and she heard a man swearing and the clatter of them diving for cover on the fire escape.

  Ash waited for return fire, but it didn’t come.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she shouted. “Get the hell out of here! I got more ammo than you got balls and I’ll shoot the little bastards off you with this fucking thing! Just you see if I don’t!”

  Outside, Haws wiped blood away from his eyes. She’d skimmed his head. An inch lower and his brains would be back down in the yard. Barcomb put his back to the wall and peered in the window. Another shot came and he ducked back.

  “Ash!” he shouted. “Relax! It’s me!”

  “Me who?!” she shouted back.

  “It’s Barcomb! It’s Darren!”

  Ash went quiet for a minute.

  “Who’s with you?” came the eventual reply.

  “It’s my buddy,” Barcomb said. “He’s good people.”

  “Please stop trying to shoot my face off!” Haws shouted. “It’s not good for my complexion!”

  “Stay there!” Ash shouted.

  “What are you doing?” Barcomb said.

  “Hold your horses! I’m putting a damn shirt on!”

  Haws laughed.

  Ash appeared at the window with the bleeding, headless corpse of an overweight old woman over her shoulder. She stepped out onto the fire escape and looked at Barcomb and then Haws.

  “Jesus,” she said. “You two look like shit.”

  She pushed the headless corpse over the side of the fire escape and it tumbled down to the yard, hitting the ground with deep squelch sound.

  “Well, don’t just fucking stand there,” she said, walking back inside.

  Barcomb and Haws stood up and shrugged at each other. Barcomb was about to walk in when he had to dodge the zombie head that Ash had thrown through the window. It sailed down to the yard after its body. Barcomb and Haws climbed inside the apartment.

  “Don’t mind her,” Ash said. “She was just leaving.”

  The apartment was nice. Barcomb had always thought so. The blood sprayed all over everything, though, somewhat ruined the cozy effect of all the exposed wooden beams and leather-bound books. There was an empty cat basket in the corner of the room.

  “Where’s the cat?” Barcomb asked.

  “Cleo died last week,” Ash said. “Buried her out back. Happens, I guess. The crazy cat lady down the hall - you just met both pieces of her - she’s got a load of graves out there already, so I figured one more wouldn’t hurt.”

  Haws winked at Barcomb. Barcomb frowned.

  The door was boarded up and nailed shut. The kitchen area was stacked with supplies.

  “You seem to be doing good,” Barcomb said.

  Ash nodded. She grabbed a cloth and wiped all the blood from her face. “I’m doing OK, considering it’s the end of the world and all that jazz.”

  Haws flicked on the light.

  “Hey,” Ash said. “Don’t be a dumbass.”

  She walked over and flipped it off.

  “You want to put up a big sign to everyone saying we’re home?”

  “Zombies don’t climb fire escapes,” Haws said.

  “No,” Ash said, “but you did. Humans are twice as dangerous as those fucking things right now.”

  Ash sat down on the arm of the sofa and reloaded her Taurus Judge as she spoke.

  “I went out for supplies a little while ago,” she continued with that faint Southern accent of hers. “I barely made it back alive. People have turned into goddamn animals.”

  “We know,” Barcomb said, perching on the coffee table. “We got a problem. A real big problem.”

  “An asshole-shaped problem,” Haws said.

  Barcomb and Ash looked at him, a little confused.

  “Like, a man who’s an asshole I mean,” Haws explained. “Not an actual asshole. That would probably be pretty small, pretty solvable by ourselves. I’ll shut up for a minute. You got any Spaghetti-Os?” Haws walked off to the kitchen.

  “You want my help?” Ash said to Barcomb.

  “I wanted to make sure you were OK,” he said, “but, yeah, we need your help too. We got it good. We got a plan. We got supplies. We got a fuckin’ military Humvee and a guy who knows somewhere safe in the hills.”

  “I might not have a military Humvee or Arnold Schwarzenegger backing me up,” Ash said, “but I got supplies. I got this place locked down.”

  “You got this apartment locked down.” Barcomb looked over his shoulder to the kitchen. Haws pulled open a can of Spaghetti-Os and started drinking it. “You got enough food to last you a couple weeks. What then?”

  “I’m not leaving my home.”

  “Listen,” Barcomb said. “This place, it’s vulnerable. You’re in a populated part of town. The zombies get wind that you’re up here and swarm the place, you’re gonna have nowhere to go.”

  “I’ve set up ladders on the roof. I can go across to the next building.”

  Barcomb was taken back a little. “Well,” he said, laughing. “OK. That’s real smart. Seriously. Shit. I’m impressed.”

  “I can take care of my own damn self,” Ash said.

  “But if this place is swarmed and you get up on the roof, if you even get down through the next building, where you going?”

  Ash looked away.

  “How many bullets you got for that thing? I mean, that’s a fun little gun, but what the fuck good is that gonna do when you have to reload it after every six shots? You haven’t thought this through.”

  “What makes your plan any better?”

  “Not very much, to be honest. It’s sketchy at best, and we don’t have what we need. Everything we had just got taken from us. Some fuckin’ dick bags stole our Humvee and three of our people, one of them the only one who can get us into this safe house in the hills. But, listen, if you come with us, you’ll be set. I promise you. You’ll be set until this whole thing blows over. And if it doesn’t blow over, then you’ll be with a tough group and we’ll make ourselves as safe as we can and play the hand we’re dealt.”

  “No,” Ash said. “I’m staying in my home. If the zombies come for me, they’ll have a fight on their hands. If they take me,” she shrugged. “I’ve made up my mind, Darren.”

  *

  Haws booted up Ash’s laptop and a happy little jingle played. Haws frowned at the computer instinctively. When a desktop background featuring fluffy penguins appeared, Haws was visibly doing everything he could not to just snap the damn thing over his knee.

  “You’re too old for this cutesy shit,” Haws said through gritted teeth.

  “I like penguins,” Ash said. “Bite me.”

  “You sure this GPS shit is gonna work?” Barcomb said.

  “If it’s all still online and this thing can hook up to it, yeah. I’m not exactly a tech g
uy, but it’s pretty fuckin’ fool proof.”

  “What if they disabled it?” Ash asked.

  “They ain’t that smart,” Barcomb said.

  “Who are they?” Ash said.

  Barcomb took a sip from his beer. They were all sat around the breakfast bar. “One of them was a cop,” he said. “I don’t think I recognized him. Must’ve been from the other side of the building.”

  “Whoever they are,” Haws said, “they ain’t gonna be it for long. I got a sledgehammer with their name on it.”

  “Seriously, though,” Ash said, “what’s up with this sledgehammer shit? It’s a little scary.”

  Haws laughed and winked at her. She didn’t know what to make of him.

  “How you been coping, Ash?” Barcomb asked.

  “With what?”

  “With everything.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Jimmy now,” she said. “Thank you for thinking of me, Darren, but I’m gonna be fine here by myself. I don’t need to be taken care of and I don’t need to be running after a truck-full of assholes just because they stole all your shit. You can use the computer to find his Humvee, but then you gotta go.”

  Barcomb touched her hand and she pulled it away.

  “I can’t be around people,” she said. “It’s been less than a month since Jimmy died, and now all this. I can’t take it. I just need to lock myself in a dark room and wait and see. Maybe it’ll all blow over.”

  “We’ve been all over the city tonight,” Barcomb said. “Ash, listen to me. This isn’t gonna just blow over. We need to take action to make ourselves safe. Nobody else is coming. No-one gives a shit any more. It’s every man for himself.”

  “The GPS is still working,” Haws said. “I told you those dumb motherfuckers wouldn’t realize it was tagged.”

  “Where is it?” Barcomb asked.

  “It’s just loading it up now.”

  Barcomb turned back to Ash. “What were you doing when we got here?” he inquired. “What were you doing with that zombie?”