by Jamie Marks
“After the cages collapsed the dead were everywhere,” Anderson said, “it created a snowball effect. More and more of them rose. The situation became untenable after they assaulted the armory.”
“The dead?”
Anderson shook his head from side to side. “The people we tried to protect.”
* * *
“Man, did you see that!” a short, bald man said, who before everything had gone to hell was an accountant at a small local firm in Forest Park. Now he held an M16A4 assault rifle combined with a grenade launcher, and cheered as a brick building went up in flames after a massive explosion blew its walls apart in a thousand different directions.
The blast killed several innocent civilians and barely contributed to the falling down of an infected, let alone dispose of one.
“Dude, where the fuck did you find that gun? Give me a turn, hey?” someone yelled.
“Get your own,” the bald man said, not bothering to turn around to see who had spoken to him.
“Watch out for the gas pumps,” someone else shouted among the crowd.
“Watch out yourself!” the bald man answered as he took aim at a dead one which was walking toward him. It would have been an easy shot for someone with a modicum of training.
The small bald man let the assault rifle rip, not caring where he was shooting. Who the fuck cares? Soldiers, Dead fucks, he thought. He switched his new toy to full auto and slammed a few rounds into the creatures’ chest and head. However, most of the rounds he fired missed and went whizzing by their dead target and through into the growing clouds of smoke, hitting anyone and anything obscured behind it.
“Fuckin’ yeah!” he screamed.
The area around tent city had become a blood bath as the Dead attacked and tore their victims to pieces, and thousands of rounds pierced the air in every direction.
As Tyler ran from the administration building, a bullet slammed into a step just below his feet.
A militiaman with an assault rifle gave him an apologetic smile and then continued to fire toward the broken cages on full auto.
“Stop it!” Tyler said, but his voice was lost to the chaos.
“Stop firing,” he tried again as he leaped from the administration steps, running toward the militiaman who fired off another burst.
When Tyler reached the man, he let fly with a right hook to the side of the man’s jaw, knocking him to the ground. As the man fell he continued to fire, accidently shooting a woman and a boy.
The militiaman lay on his side, looking up at Tyler. “What the fuck!” he said. “We’re on the same side...”
At that moment, the refueling station blew, and it was over.
ON THE ROAD
“I said, are we going yet,” Susan repeated.
Tyler looked back to her. “In a moment.”
“I can’t guarantee that the station will still be pumping, but I know the back roads,” Cook offered.
Tyler nodded. “Good. You can ride with us until we get there.”
“What about Charlie and I?” Susan asked.
“What about you and Charlie?” Tyler answered.
“Are Charlie and I supposed to ride alone in the truck without any protection?” Susan asked.
“You’ll be fine. You heard the man. We won’t be long.”
“You’ll be fine! We’ll be fine! It’s all fucking outstanding and tomorrow I’ll win the lottery too!” Susan shrieked at Tyler. “It’s not all fucking fine, Captain.”
“What is your problem?”
“My problem is I’m standing in the middle of nowhere with a herd of jackasses, who got their asses handed to them by some slow-moving retards. Now I’m out here in the dark on the side of a road, and I’ve had no sleep, because being in a bullshit coma after being shot doesn’t count as a rest! Most of all, I have no confidence in you, Captain, just as the committee had no confidence in you. That’s my problem,” she said.” And now you’re going to leave me alone with that fat fuck for protection?”
“Hey,” said Charlie leaning from the WolfPac’s window.
Susan turned to her cameraman and said, “Hey, fucking what, you great tub of lard, what are you going to do to protect me? Fall on them?”
Charlie leaned back inside the Wolfpac.
“Relax, Miss Shaw,” Cook said, attempting to broker the peace.
“You want me to relax?” she said, now looking at Cook. “Screw you! I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a pretty stressful day.”
Tyler put his hands on his hips. “Cook, climb in the Humvee,” he said, doing his best to stay calm.
“What about me?” Susan said. “I deserve the same protection.”
Tyler stared at her in disbelief. “Miss Shaw, he’s going to show us the way to a gas station, pure and simple.”
“So can I ride with you? Charlie can follow behind by himself; he’ll be all right. You have plenty of space in that hot-wheels car of yours. Because it’s either I go with you, or you can give me a gun.”
Tyler broke into a fit of laughter.
“You have a snowball’s chance in hell with either traveling with me, or of getting your hands on a gun, Miss Shaw,” Tyler said as he brushed past her. “In fact, this conversation is over.”
Cook followed behind Tyler, as Susan stood alone in the glowing headlights of the Wolfpac,
“You can’t talk to me like that!”
“I just did and I don’t doubt that I will do so again very soon, Miss Shaw,” Tyler said as he continued to walk away.
“What about some protection; I need a gun,” Susan demanded.
Tyler opened the Humvee’s door and turned to face her in the same motion. “I would give you one, Miss Shaw, but I’m afraid that if I do, Charlie there,” he pointed back to the Wolfpac as he said it, “might be tempted to use it on you,” he said with a smile.
“I wouldn’t stand out there for too long anyhow, Miss Shaw,” he continued. “You’re a sitting duck outside in the dark on a deserted road.” After a walk back to her truck, Susan slammed the door to the Wolfpac and said to Charlie, “Charlie, you know I didn’t mean what I said out there. I was just ribbing you --- people like the captain respect tough talk. I couldn’t think of anyone else I would feel safer with.” She put her hand on his leg and gave him a wink.
Charlie smiled. “Thanks, Susan. I knew you wouldn’t have meant it.”
“Hey, we’re a team,” Susan said as she rubbed her head.
She didn’t feel right; she didn’t feel well at all.
STEVE AND KATHY
“Just open the door for Christ’s sake!” Kathy said in a terrified voice.
Steve suddenly disappeared from her sight. “Steve!”
“I dropped the key,” he said from under the Dodge.
“You dropped the key?”
“I dropped the key. I didn’t mean to,” Steve answered Kathy as the Dead Stevie Wonder placed a bloodied right hand on the tail-lights of the truck, smearing it with a bloody print as he moved closer to Kathy.
Steve shoved his arm further under the vehicle until he could almost touch the key, which lay a little to Kathy’s side of the center.
Clenching his teeth, Steve tried to stretch a little further... but he couldn’t reach them.
He then tried to visualize his fingers stretching outward toward the keys; he could almost feel the cartilage in his fingers expand.
God, please give me a fucking miracle. I’ve never asked you for a goddamn thing --- shit! I take that back. I’ve never asked you for anything before, help me. Please help me right now. But he still couldn’t reach the key.
Turning to his side, Steve bumped his head against the side of the Dodge. As he yelped with pain, he saw, to his horror, a myriad of slow-moving feet coming closer toward them.
I’m running out of time --- fucking stretch, you fat prick!
It was then Steve thought of his best idea since marrying Kathy...
Brilliant! Steve sucked in his stomach as far as it wo
uld go, and tried again to squeeze under the Dodge a few inches more while his foot waved about in the air tempting fate. He was just about there.
I’ve almost got it...
He could feel the key...
Suck it in!
At that very moment, something touched his boot.
“Oh, Fuck!”
“Steve, watch out!” Kathy said as she turned in her husband’s direction and saw one of the creatures grappling with his boot, and surprisingly without much success.
“Get up!”
It was too late; the thing was practically on top of him.
Steve, quicker than he could have ever imagined, slid out from under the Dodge and lay on his back staring up at the disfigured and terrifying thing that stood over him.
Without a second thought, Steve sat up as the Undead thing stood motionless, drooling and snarling, and reached for his baseball bat in the dark, found it and swung it upward, and into the thing’s chin --- toppling it over.
“Are you all right? Can you open the door?” Kathy said.
“I don’t have the key. You’ll have to get the fucking thing,” he said to Kathy, whose heart sank when she heard what he had said.
The key is just going to have to wait; Kathy thought as Stevie Wonder launched at her from the side...
In a free-flowing motion, Kathy removed her --- thankfully heavy --- backpack and swung it to the face of Mr. Wonder, knocking him backward and sending the look-a-like Motown legend sprawling to the ground.
She then stormed the prostrate figure like a rugby player and slammed her backpack into its skull repeatedly.
“Take that, you fucking dead prick!” she said.
On the other side of the truck, Steve, now on his feet, swung his bat with as much energy as he could muster to keep the other ghouls at bay, while Kathy begun to start kicking her attacker in the face, smashing its teeth. Her rage was absolute; it was total.
She pounded away while Steve swung until the surrounding ghouls were nothing but a bloody mess. Kathy’s head spun with a blood lust that she never knew that she had, it was as if she was in a dream. Kathy’s mind began to drift away, to drift into another dimension of her being, falling, deep down, into humanities base love of slaughter. She felt pure and energetic, alive with the euphoria of power, uncorrupted and unconcerned with mercy.
“Kathy, reach for the damned key!”
She didn’t hear Steve, as she continued to pound away at the dead flesh.
“Kathy, get the fucking key!” Steve tried again
As quick as the blood lust had begun, it stopped, and she looked over toward Steve, who was swinging away with everything he had in the tank.
The key, get the key...
As she knelt, Kathy heard a loud crack as Steve smashed open another skull.
Getting down on her belly, she reached under the Dodge in the dark. Feeling the key, she pressed the unlock button and the doors unlocked. Sliding back out from under the Dodge, Kathy grabbed her backpack, which gore now covered, and opened the door, throwing her backpack in the rear cabin. Leaping into the passenger seat, she leaned over and opened Steve’s door for him, giving it a nudge to force it open. However, by now Steve was in the middle of their yard, raining blow upon blow on any Dead thing that came near him.
Having destroyed another two creatures, Steve launched after another, and with a crushing blow, he slammed his bat into the Dead thing’s shoulder blade, shattering it like a twig, and forcing the thing to list to its side, its smashed arm hanging useless.
The Dead thing now attempted to grab Steve with its only good arm, ignoring any pain it may have felt. Do they feel pain? Steve thought for a second.
With another swing, he slammed the bat down to the creatures remaining outstretched arm, snapping its forearm.
With one more swing of his bat, Steve hit the Dead thing in the forehead, cracking its skull and causing it to fall to its knees, where Steve whacked it once more, splintering the remains of its skull, and creating a large dent in the top of its fractured head.
“Steve!”
However, he wasn’t finished yet.
He wasn’t going to leave his yard until it was clear of these wretched things.
Steve stepped toward another ghoul, a woman who wore a torn blouse, which exposed her breasts and pale white-blue skin. She was a frightening image under the orange glow of the fire next door, but not as frightening as Steve.
No matter, the blood that covered her face or the hate that shone in her eyes, none of it combined compared to Steve, his face twisted, and distorted almost beyond recognition.
“Steve!”
He took another step to get an inside swing against the frontal lobe of the Dead woman’s skull and slammed the bat to her temple, popping her eyeball from its socket, which now hung by a thread of veins and sinew, swaying from side to side like a pendulum.
Steve swung the bat back again, but this time from the other direction. The impact slid her nose halfway across her face and caved in her cheek.
Steve swung again, and this time his bat connected beautifully with the hanging eyeball, detaching the eye from its tethers and sending it flying across the yard.
Kathy watched as the eyeball flew against the house and bounced off the weatherboards and on to the bonnet of the Dodge.
Kathy’s stomach begun to lurch and claw and then she released a spurt of vomit from her gut.
Steve now raised his bat above his head and brought it down through the Dead woman’s skull to the top of her spinal cord at the base of her brain.
The woman jerked and convulsed, and only stopped jiggling after Steve removed his bat from her brain.
Another one down, one more to go!
Steve swung his bat again at the last creature and missed it entirely, causing him to lose his footing on the blood and gore, which made the grass slippery as ice, and sending him toppling into the garden, by their white picket fence.
The baseball bat flew from his hands and hit the driver’s side door.
The last Dead thing spun in Steve’s direction, and for the second time that night, Steve found his feet were getting into harm’s way.
The creature made a lunge toward him.
Steve attempted to parry the thing away with a kick, but the thing somehow maintained its balance and lurched toward him again. Reaching outward with its bloody and mangled hands, it pushed Steve’s foot high into the air, straining his hamstring. Steve searched for something to defend himself with, anything to use at all. He grasped at a rock. Steve’s fingers wrapped their way around the stone, and then he threw it as hard as he could, and missed. “Fuck!”
The garden rock flew high into the air, and eventually landed on the neighbor’s roof, where it disappeared into the rising flames.
The Dead thing opened its mouth to take a massive bite from his calf.
Steve then heard a shrill sound fill the air, and saw a metal glint about five feet above his head.
Whatever it was had whizzed by in less than a nano second and lodged itself into the oak tree with a THWAK!
The creature’s mouth was agape and poised to bite. Then for a moment, it froze, its head suddenly toppling from its shoulders.
The head landed in the garden next to Steve, its eyes blinking as it stared directly at him.
The body then fell away.
Steve glimpsed over to Kathy, who was standing by the Dodge, looking just as amazed as Steve, who then glanced back to the oak and saw a Chop-Master ten-inch saw blade stuck fast in its trunk.
“Nice throw.”
Kathy smiled.
“Get in the truck, honey,” Steve said. “It’s time we hit the road.”
THE PRESIDENT’S NEW HOME
Holtz laughed once more.
“It’s just amazing. I cannot believe it --- Turner Field of all places.”
The new President reclined back into his plush, beige, leather chair as he kicked his slippers off. The Presidential Executive suite aboard Air
Force One was quite luxurious.
Holtz took another sip of his aged Scotch and tried to hold back another round of laughter.
Harris poured himself another drink.
Holtz leaned forward. “I just can’t believe this. It’s brilliant. You know, Harris, I have actually been there to watch the Braves on more than one occasion, and I would never have clued.”
“Nobody’s supposed to,” said Harris, “after the Greenbrier, we decided to do a few things differently, but of course, we couldn’t begin to build a whole new complex straight away, not without the media catching on,” he gave the President a wink, “but when opportunity comes knocking you don’t ignore it.”
“The Greenbrier Resort, West Virginia,” Ambrose said. He was sitting away from the other two.
Harris nodded the affirmative. “Yes, Cornelius. I thought you would have known about it.”
“Vaguely,” he said.
“Well it’s a simple story. In the late 1950s, the Federal Government asked the Greenbrier if it could come to its country’s aid, the cold war was just beginning and the threat of nuclear war was very possible. An atomic war was a clear and present danger to the leadership of our great country, so with the help of the Federal Government, the Greenbrier added a West Wing to the hotel, The West Virginia Wing. However, under that wing, we added something truly special. We created one of the world’s greatest and most advanced bunkers ever conceived to protect the President and the entire Congress of the United States.”
“I have seen it for myself, Cornelius. It’s quite remarkable,” Holtz added.
“Indeed,” said Harris. “The complex began construction in 1959 and finished in 1962. The bunker even contained a broadcast center, complete with backdrops revealing all four seasons. However, in 1992 the Washington Post exposed the Greenbrier’s secret bunker, and our legislative assembly was once again left without a home --- until Turner Field.”
Holtz leaned forward and jingled the remaining ice afloat in a sea of Scotch. “Now tell me more about that. It’s just unbelievable.”