ZOMBIE'S DOOM? Chronicles of Jack Doom

by Will Lemen

  "And what's with the salt Jack?" Derek asked in a monotone voice. "You're not planning on eating it are you?"

  "Hell no, I'm not planning on eating it, I prefer my tits attached to the women that grew them, they taste better that way don't you think," I answered laughing. "Besides, I think we've got enough cannibals stalking around the planet the way it is, don't you?"

  "Indeed I do, that's why I take the opportunity to kill as many of them as I can, every chance I get," Derek proclaimed.

  "Good, then we're going to get along just fine," I declared, as I dropped the seasoned yabo back onto the bitch seat and picked up my Beretta.

  "Watch this!" I said, sticking the gun out of the driver's window.

  Up ahead was a lone zombie hitchhiking on the wrong side of the road. I rested my pistol on the door and waited until the barrel of gun came into line with the zombie, then I pressed the trigger softly to the rear and felt Isaac Newton's third law of motion take effect.

  The bullet from my 9mm pistol slammed into the left side of the chest of the stumbling corpse, dislodging at least two of its ribs and sending them through its tattered shirt, and following the projectile out the backside of the its body.

  The zombie faltered for a moment, then leaned forward and continued to stumble toward us. We drove by the profusely bleeding zombie, narrowly avoiding the aura of flies that encompassed it, and watched as it tried to catch up to us stumbling even more than before.

  "Holy fuck Jack, you sure are a lousy shot. Hell, I could have put a round right through its eye from that distance," Derek insisted.

  "You're missing the point," I told him with raised eyebrows.

  "What point is that, you can't hit the broad side of a barn if your life depended on it?" Derek contended, as he began to chuckle and shake his head back and forth.

  I spotted another creepy cadaver ambling along the side of the road, and again stuck my pistol out the window.

  As we approached the second roadside maniac who was several feet farther away than the first, I quickly raised the gun, aligned the front sight with the rear sight, and lit off two 9mm slugs in the direction of the stinking mutation.

  The two rapidly fired successive shots sent the bullets hurtling into both eyes of the staggering dead man. The result of which was, before either eyeball had completely exploded, the twin full metal jacketed projectiles had ripped a five inch gaping hole in the back of the brain-dead beast's skull, and insisted that a large amount of its diseased gray matter exit the spheroid enclosure with them.

  "I stand corrected Jack, you do know your way around a firearm," Derek shyly confessed.

  "Just a lucky shot," I admitted sarcastically.

  "Well if that's the case, I would prefer to keep on the good side of your luck," Derek knowingly indicated. "But tell me, why the atrocious shooting display if you're able to shoot the balls off a bull-gnat at fifty paces?"

  "I decided some time back, that those eaten sons-a-bitches weren't the only ones that can run around the country and maim people, and then go about their business as if they don't have a care in the world," I explained. "So I made up my mind to do a little substitute teaching out here in the land of the free and the home of the brave."

  "You're wounding them on purpose, is that what you're saying?" Derek asked, shaking his head and giggling.

  "Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner ladies and gentlemen, Derek the Red, you may go to the head of the class," I jested, as I too giggled.

  "You're one sick psychotic son of a bitch Jack," Derek said laughing.

  "It's a gift, but you don't have to sugar coat it, we're friends, you can tell me what you really think of me," I prompted, still giggling like a schoolgirl removing her prom dress in the back seat of her dates car.

  "Well let me give it a try, I'm in the mood to do a little teaching today myself," Derek stated as he pulled his huge revolver from its holster. "Any particular place that you like to hit them?"

  "I prefer knee joints or collar bone, but I've been known to drop one or two of them with a bone splintering shot to the femur or the pelvis from time to time," I informed Derek, as he made ready to try his hand at crippling a zombie, instead of killing it. "But those shots usually leave the eaters in the middle of the road, sploshing around in a pile of their own excrement, and cause a road hazard to anyone that might be traveling that route behind you."

  "Safety first eh Jack?" Derek quipped.

  "Absolutely," I quipped back, pointing to the next zombie in a long line of zombies that Derek and I would be attempting to incapacitate that day.

  Derek stuck his massive firearm out the window and pushed the muzzle forward of the windshield, he carefully aimed the weapon from the other side of the glass, and shot the pedestrian corpse in the foot as it stumbled onto the road from the shoulder.

  "Nice shooting Tex, I think I saw some toes fly off his foot when your bullet tore through the shoe," I said, complimenting Derek's shooting.

  "Toes hell, half his foot flew off into the ditch," Derek argued as he laughed.

  "Yeah, that was some mighty fine shooting all right, but next time make it the whole foot," I beseeched. "They have a harder time walking with one foot missing."

  "The whole foot it is then," Derek agreed, as he again took aim at another roadside cadaver that was moseying along the highway.

  "KaBoom!" Derek's S&W revolver reported.

  "How's that Jack, did you see that foot fly into the air?" Derek the Red asked confidently.

  "I think you might have taken out some unsuspecting flies with that flying foot," I added. "It looked like it made a temporary hole right through the middle of the swarm."

  "Well, I meant to do that," Derek bragged still laughing.

  "I'm sure you did," I agreed, thinking that my new partner Derek was so full of shit that his eyes were turning brown.

  Derek and I popped bullets into almost every walking, stumbling, or staggering dead body that we came across from the time we left Louisville until we were forced to curtail our endeavors do to unforeseen technical difficulties.

  Before my shooting partner ran out of .50 cal. ammo for his hand cannon, I loaned him my Glock 19 so he could continue to impair the movements of the undead that frequented his side of the interstate highway, and save some of his ammo for something a little more serious that we might encounter along the way.

  However, rationing his handgun ammunition apparently was not part of Derek's plan, and he began to switch back and forth between the two guns.

  Before anybody gets themselves all lathered up over my quick acceptance to the partnership of Derek and myself. As he proclaimed at the onset of our relationship, he could have killed me first. On the other hand, he could have killed me second or third, but he didn't, he made no aggressive moves toward me whatsoever.

  He said nothing when he holstered his gun and I raised mine.

  He led me to the culvert where the dead bodies were hidden to show me what might have happened to me if he hadn't been there.

  He didn't even have a problem with me when I told him that I had no qualms about taking everything in both of the trucks, no matter who the stuff once belonged to.

  Moreover, when I told him how the old lady had begged me to administer my own brand of a proper thrashing using her own Louisville Slugger, that ultimately led to her untimely and grisly death, he didn't even blink an eye.

  And if he was trying to be sneaky and gain my confidence, all the while working with another person or two with a plan to waylay me sometime in the future, well then he left his cohorts in the dust many miles behind us in Kentucky.

  With all that said, I've said it before, and I'll probable say it again.

  Mama Doom didn't raise a complete idiot.

  I was keeping a hairy buffalo eye on my new found friend, and if Derek had decided to make a threat, toss a threatening look in my direction, or if he had chosen to make any kind of threatening or aggressive move towards me whatsoever, I was ready to send him to hell
with the rest of the ungrateful dead I had sent there previously. At least that was my plan, and I was sticking to it.

  We had only gone a few miles after leaving Tony and Danny to make their way through the twists and turns of the diseased and maggot clogged intestines of the marauding undead that were joining them for dinner (literally).

  That's when I noticed that the heat gauge on the dash was beginning to indicate that the engine temperature was rising to well over the manufactures suggested acceptable limit.

  Derek had been rotating the use of my Glock 19 pistol and his S&W .50cal revolver to pop caps into the wandering zombies on his side of the road, and had finished empting the 15 round magazine in the Glock.

  He had just traded the auto-loading bottom feeder for his huge wheel gun, and decided to see if he could take the whole head off the next zombie that meandered across the northbound side of the freeway with his last fifty cal. round.

  It wasn't long before his next target came into view, and firing his weapon from a few yards away, he easily managed to accomplish his self-imposed task.

  The large bullet shot from Derek's stainless steel hand cannon not only decapitated the monster instantly, but also scattered small chunks of the zombie's head in a ten-yard radius from the point of impact, thereby littering the road and our truck with indiscernible pieces of what was once the ravenous cannibal's cranium, along with a multitude of dead and wounded flies and their larva.

  The pressure pushing outward from the middle of the unfortunate monster's head caused by the large caliber bullet, had turned what would have been a temporary wound cavity had the projectile impacted somewhere in the body, into a permanent wound cavity that had obliterated the skull.

  The forces interacting inside the skull had been so great, that all that remained in the space that the head had once occupied, was a cloud of pinkish-green mist that had helped to disperse with extreme prejudice the congregation of swarming flies that had been hovering around it.

  Now the only thing that was hovering over the headless twitching corpse that had collapsed on the freeway was a quickly fading cloud of tiny diseased blood droplets suspended in the atmosphere above it.

  We slowly rolled passed the decapitated body that was oozing some kind of yellowish jelly looking goo (a new look) out of its tattered neck hole, as steam from our overheated engine began to seep up through every seam in the forward compartment of the truck's body.

  We were both still laughing about how the skull had exploded and rained down an array of minute pieces of bone, brain, skin, and what was left of the hair on the balding cadaver, onto the hood, windshield, and top of the truck as I gently pushed on the brake and brought the truck to a stop.

  "What are we stopping for?" Derek asked, as he pointed to an overweight zombie that was struggling to climb up the small berm next to the road.

  "Oh I don't know, you think it might be because of all the smoke pouring out of the engine compartment," I asked sarcastically.

  Derek still laughing replied.

  "Uh... maybe?"

  "Kill that one with your cleaver," I firmly suggested, referring to the obese walking corpse. "We've got mechanical problems and we may be here awhile, not that it really matters at this point, considering that your gun just rang the dinner bell for every eater rambling about in the greater part of southern Indiana."

  "Roger," Derek answered, as he exited our vehicle and headed for the corn-fed mutant beefeater with his meat cleaver in hand. "I've got to take a serious squirtation break anyway."

  I got out of the truck and stretched my legs, then plodded forward to inspect any damage that I figured we had incurred earlier by turning the Cub Scout into a mushy speed bump in the middle of the freeway.

  When I rounded the front fender and saw the cause of the damage, I turned toward Derek and whispered as loud as I could.

  "Hold off on that serious squirt of yours, we've got a serious problem right here."

  Bending down to take a closer look, I could see radiator fluid spraying out around what I believed to be the young scout's front teeth.

  The kid's teeth had penetrated the front grill and were now lodged in the truck's radiator, causing some of the liquid to leak from its cooling system.

  That along with the top half of his torso minus his head, and what remained of his torn and bloody shirt, less the numbered sleeve and of course his severed left arm that went with it, which was stuffed into the fins of the radiator, were stopping the airflow and causing the engine to overheat.

  After clobbering the nearest menacing monstrosity (the fat one) with a swift downward hack to the top of its skull with his trusty meat cleaver, Derek rejoined me at the front of the truck.

  "Trouble boss?" he asked, putting his hands on his hips while still clutching his heavy meat ax that was now dripping with blood.

  "Yeah, big trouble," I answered, pointing to the green mist spewing from the front of the truck. "The little bastard took a bite out of our radiator."

  "That's just great, what are we going to do now?" Derek asked, shaking his head.

  "Well the first thing you're going to do is take that serious squirt of yours and drain your main vein into the truck's radiator," I answered smiling, as I dug out the Cub Scout's mutilated upper body from the grill of the truck, and pulled the blood dampened uniform that was clogging our cooling system from the grill as well.

  I then used the moist rag to insulate my hand from the hot radiator cap to prevent scalding myself as I loosened and removed it.

  After the geyser of steam subsided enough to insure that Derek wouldn't be burnt by the super-heated gas, he unleashed his manhood in the direction of the radiator and relieved himself.

  As Derek shook the dew from the lily, I prepared to make my contribution to our cause and unbuttoned the fly of my pants (no zippers on military fatigues).

  The smell of warm piss hung in the muggy summer air as I too drained my main vein into the leaking radiator.

  Then with the truck's radiator full, and our radiators empty, and both of our weezers tucked neatly back into our pants, I jumped down from the bumper, buttoned up my pants, and screwed the radiator cap back on.

  Then I informed Derek of my plan.

  "We're not going to make it too far in this vehicle, thanks to that newly formed quasi-paramilitary speed bump back there.

  We're going to have to go into silent mode for awhile, at least until we get some reliable transportation."

  "We need to stop shooting right? So no more gunplay unless absolutely necessary right?" Derek concurred.

  "Roger that, we're running dangerously low on ammo anyway, and besides, my borrowed Glock is not suppressed. So if we need to do any shooting, I'll take care of it with my Beretta or M-4.

  We need to get moving, the sound of that mammoth handgun of yours travels for miles, and since you just decapitated one of the slobbering beasts a few of minutes ago, unwanted company is already arriving," I warned, as I pointed to four zombies less than fifty yards away and coming in our direction. "I'm going to have to scrounge up some more bullets before I go into the Badlands."

  Derek quickly moved to the passenger side of the truck and said. "Then let's move before all the piss leaks out."

  Now responding to my traveling partners warning, I climbed into the cab of the mechanically unreliable vehicle and we drove off, leaving a trail of warm piss on the road behind us as the hot liquid spewed between the detached teeth of the deceased Cub Scout.

  Although we had stopped the roadside target practice, partially because of fear of attracting zombies by the sound it was making and possibly not being able to escape if the truck were to break down (again).

  However, our main concern was that with all of the fun and excitement we were having while engaging in the sport of zombie disabling, we committed the cardinal sin of any apocalypse by using up more ammunition than was prudent.

  Our only excuse, and it was a weak-tit excuse at that, was that with the surprisingly abundant
amount of targets along the freeway, and with both Derek and myself shooting at the sinister savages, we had in what seemed like a very short period of time (time flies when you're having fun), through attrition, reduced our ammo supply to an unacceptably dangerous level.

  We made one more stop along the way to pour the remainder of our water into the leaking radiator, and drained our weasels into it once more as well.

  By the time we reached the outskirts of Indianapolis in the crippled truck, my once plentiful supply of 9mm ammunition had dwindled down to less than fifty rounds and my water supply was now non-existent.

  Much to our surprise, by urinating and pouring the remaining portion of our precious water supply into the truck's radiator, we were able to make it most of the way to Indianapolis before the vehicle finally could take no more abuse, and with the radiator finally empty, its engine overheated and seized up.

  We were on foot again.

  Derek and I had been having such a good time breaking the bones of the undead along the side of the interstate, that neither one of us was paying much attention to the shrinking ammo supply. An amateurish mistake at best.

  However, now that our ride was sitting in the alleged slow lane of North I-65 (I always contended that the speed limit was the same in every lane), ready to be towed to the nearest junk yard. We had no water and less than fifty rounds of pistol ammo between us, one magazine of M-4 ammo, and an old chainsaw that may or may not be operational; we were defiantly paying attention now.

  Oh yes, we still had the coach gun with a few slugs for it (thanks to Carla's generosity), we had a couple of empty firearms, a few edged weapons, a half of a fifth of drug-tainted whiskey, and of course my salty tit to tote with us too. None of which I was ready to abandon at that time.

  However, without knowing what hellish circumstances might befall us during our hunt for another vehicle, to burden ourselves with heavy gear as we searched was not a cunning tactical maneuver.

  We could always make an effort to backtrack and pick up the items that we left behind once we acquired a new set of wheels.