by Will Lemen
That's provided that we weren't running for our lives in the opposite direction, from one of the many dangers that could materialize at any moment in our brave new world.
"Just grab the shotgun and your cleaver; I'll bring my carbine, Beretta, and tomahawk, we'll leave everything else and come back for it later.
It looks like the nearest vehicles are down the road at least two miles, and we don't know if any of them are in running condition. So I'm not about to burden either one of us with the weight of this old chainsaw, hell I don't even know if it works.
If we're lucky and can commandeer some transportation in the next few miles, we'll come back for it and the rest of the stuff," I said, as I hoisted my rifle up and slid the sling onto my shoulder. "I will however be taking my tit with me, I don't want to leave any skin in the truck, there's always a chance that it might attract an eater that's not on a low sodium diet."
"Not a problem, I'll carry the shotgun and machete," Derek agreed. "I'll carry the ammo for it too, if that's all right with you?"
"The guns are no good without the ammo, and the ammo is useless without the gun, so by all means, carry it all," I declared, as I stuffed Cassandra's rapidly drying out breast into one of the cargo pockets of my multicam camouflage pants.
"Are we sure that we don't want to bring that bottle of whiskey with us?" Derek asked, pointing at the bottle.
I laughed aloud at my hiking companion's offer; knowing that he had no idea what he was asking for.
"You don't want to drink any of this bilge water; I just keep it around for medicinal purposes, for cuts and scratches, that sort of thing. We'll find some of the good stuff in Indy, some good ole sipping whiskey," I told him, not wanting to reveal the secret hidden in my bottle of booze. "Anyway, before either of us partakes in any celebratory libation, we need to find ourselves a new vehicle, and I'm going to need a shit load of ammunition if I'm going to make it all the way into the Badlands."
I had known Derek every bit of 45 minutes, and even though we were getting along just fine, I wasn't about to give away all of my secrets just yet, I wanted to keep an edge just in case.
"I've been meaning to ask you about that Jack, but I got so distracted by the target practice on those cool moving road targets, what is it that you keep calling them... eaters? Anyway I got so caught up in all of the excitement shooting those eaters, that I just plain forgot to ask," Derek claimed.
"Ask about what?"
"About you going into the Indiana Badlands."
"What about it," I asked, as I scanned the neck of the woods we were in for a likely place to acquire more ammo.
"Well, I heard you tell those two dumbasses back in Louisville that you had business with that asshole baby (turd) called the Caucasian," Derek explained.
"So you've heard of him?" I asked.
"I've heard of him, I heard he's a real dick head," Derek answered grinning.
I pulled my tomahawk from my tactical vest and slammed its sharply honed curved blade down on the crown of an almost dormant zombie standing on the road with its back to me.
"That was kind of weird," I thought. "Maybe the eater was deaf, or sleeping standing up or something?"
Upon pulling my small battle-ax from the skull of the unsuspecting zombie, which was now a twitching pile of road kill, I responded to Derek's statement.
"Come on dude, I thought we were friends, here you go sugar coating things again, no kidding, you can tell me what you really think of this Caucasian character that I've heard so much about."
We both laughed at my slightly amusing attempt at humor, in spite of the heavy burden that we both were bearing as we approached the first vehicle we would try to appropriate.
Just so you know, any burden is a heavy burden when you're walking through a zombie apocalypse. No matter how light it is.
"Couldn't see'um from back there, but look at all the vehicles in the medium and down in the ditch," Derek observed.
"There must have been an attack here, and from the looks of things it probably happened on day one of the outbreak," I contended, surveying the scene of abandon cars and trucks.
"Looks like we've got our pick of vehicles if we can get them started," Derek surmised, as he peered down into the shallow ditch.
In our search for a vehicle that could get us at least as far as the border of the Badlands, wherever that was, we began inspecting the abandoned cars that had been left on the road.
If we could make it into the heart of Indianapolis, there we could formulate a plan and decide if the supplies we would scavenge along the way, and our vehicle, were adequate to make the dangerous journey into the Indiana Badlands.
We of course, meaning me, as I had yet to ascertain whether Derek would be joining me in my quest to track down Beth and the Sarge in what I knew would surely be a very precarious undertaking.
We cacked a couple of the undead cannibals that had chosen to seek shelter in their cars during the onset of the zombie plague. Of course, they weren't undead when they made that decision.
However, once their vehicles were at our disposal, the inside of said vehicles were not only covered with dried slime and rotting ooze from their occupant's lengthy incarceration within, but the sickening stench left behind by the encapsulated prisoners, along with the quantity of maggots squirming everywhere was a little too much to bear. Even for a couple of veteran serial zombie killers like Derek and I.
Besides, the massive amount of flies that the maggots had begot, left the whole interior speckled with fly dung, which rendered those vehicles even more unacceptable for our needs.
"We might as well not even bother wasting our time with the ones that have eaters in them, they're going to be useless to us," I ordered.
"Yeah, they're all going to be the same, nasty as hell and unusable," Derek agreed, as he ignored a ravenous female zombie in a small red sports car, who had her face pressed up against the side window, and was clawing at the glass in a feeble attempt to devour him.
The first thing on the agenda was to check the cars for keys.
With the newer computerize vehicles it was useless to even bother to check the battery if the keys weren't in the car, for without the key to stick into the ignition, the computer would not let the engine start anyway, even if the battery was fully charged.
Unless maybe you happened to be a mechanic or a professional car thief in the zombie free world of the past. Then you might know a trick or two to get the cars to run, but neither Derek nor I was either one, so we had to do things the old fashion way.
We had opened the hoods of the few older modes of transportation that we deemed useable, only to find that their batteries were completely dead.
Then Derek spotted it.
It was a completely restored 1951 Chevy Deluxe fastback, flat black with chrome fender skirts and a gray interior.
"Look at this Jack," he yelled.
"Shut up! I softly yelled back. "The eaters will hear you."
"Sorry," he whispered back, as I approached the vintage ride.
"It looks like someone just didn't have the heart to leave their pride and joy setting in their garage while they made a run for it; instead they decided to make it their get-a-way car." I said, admiring their choice in automobiles.
"Is there an eater inside?" I asked, expecting an affirmative answer.
"No, there's no eaters in it. This beauty is cleaner than a nun's cunt," Derek answered grinning ear to ear. "And the best part is that the key is in it too, and it looks like it's got a manual transmission, three-speed on the column."
"Which means if the battery is dead, we can push start it," I said, hoping that the battery still had some juice in it.
"Roger that," Derek agreed, lifting the heavy metal hood.
One trick that everyone learns rather quickly when they're thrust into a zombie apocalypse, is that a really quick way to check to see if a battery still is holding any amount of a charge, is to lay a piece of metal between the two posts on it and s
ee if it sparks.
I bent the radio antenna on the old Chevy until it broke off in my hand (radio stations had stopped broadcasting over a year ago), and tossed the radio wave receiving wire across the battery posts.
To both of our amazements, sparks flew in every direction as the silver rod began to glow red-hot.
I quickly knocked the antenna from between the lead polls on the rapidly discharging black storage cell.
"We've got power, now let's see if we have enough to start this beast," I asserted, as I turned to implant my tomahawk in the skull of a walking disease carrier Derek had inadvertently called in by his earlier caterwauling.
I heard a thump, as the tomahawk split the forehead of the advancing brute, and as it began to drop, I shoved it to the side of the car so it would not impede our progress, as we would soon be attempting to flee the scene.
"Turn the key and see if it will start," I ordered.
Derek quickly turned the key that was already inserted in the ignition slot to the right.
"Nothing," he said, as he jiggled the key.
"There might be a button that you have to push, sometimes these older cars have a push button starter along with the key," I indicated. "Look around on the dash for some kind of a button."
I had no sooner finished my sentence, when I heard the engine begin to slowly grid.
"Pump the gas pedal," I suggested, slamming the hood closed.
The engine turned over slowly several times but didn't come to life. It slowly gridded and began to turn slower and slower.
"Enough!" I called out as I rushed to the driver's window. "The battery is too far gone, we'll have to try and push-start it."
"There's no way we'll be able to push-start this heavy beast," Derek, complained. "The grade of this hill isn't that much, just a few degrees, but it's still up hill."
"Get out of the car and let a real man take the wheel," I jested, knowing that Derek would retort in kind.
"I will, but where do purpose to find a real man around here?" he asked, with a smile, prompting me to answer.
"Shut up and get out, you're burning my daylight," I answered, reaching for the chrome plated door handle on the older car.
Derek relinquished his seat and exited the automobile, making a glib comment as he walked by me.
"You know Jack, you make an excellent doorman."
I returned his disingenuous observation with an insincere comment of my own.
"Shut up!"
With our bonding session complete, I jumped behind the steering wheel of the three-speed contraption.
With my foot on the brake, I made sure that the key was turned to the on position. Then I pushed the clutch pedal all the way to the floor and forced the transmission into its reverse gear.
I let off the brake, and the flat black steel behemoth instantly began to lumber backwards down the gentle slope.
Just before the 50's icon began to level out at the bottom of the grade, I popped the clutch and felt the vehicle shutter.
Quickly shoving the clutch pedal back down to the floor, I heard the powerful inline 6-cylinder engine begin to roar.
Black smoke poured out of the single exhaust pipe as I pushed repeatedly on the accelerator.
"What's the fuel situation look like?" Derek choked out, as he fanned the dark exhaust fog that was drifting in front of his face.
"If the gauge works the tanks over half full," I answered smiling.
Cramming our new ride into 1st gear, I pulled the restored jalopy back up to the crest of the hill and onto the concrete road.
I maneuvered our new car around several of the vehicles that we had earlier rejected, or had rejected us, then parked and waited for Derek to join me.
Meanwhile, Derek dealt with two more zombies that at their own peril had chosen to menace him on his way to meet me, and had met their final doom at the business end of his meat cleaver.
After doling out the two well-deserved one-way tickets back to hell, Derek again caught up to me.
Driving the old Chevy like I stole it (because I did), and with Derek sitting shotgun (Cassandra's hollowed out jug would have been riding bitch, but was still in my pocket at this time), we headed back as fast as possible to the place where we had abandoned our truck, so we could reclaim the weapons and supplies that we had left there.
We were lucky enough to find a new working vehicle only a couple of miles from where the truck had broken down, so it was a short and quick trip back to retrieve our stuff.
Upon our arriving back at the truck, I decided to leave the car running as we hurried to transfer the weapons, chainsaw, and what was left of our supplies into the trunk of the zooted out old Chevy.
"Let's not take any chances, we'll let the battery charge up as much as possible before we shut this bad boy off," I declared.
"Good idea, I'd rather waste a little gas than have to push this heavy son-of-a-bitch with a bunch of ravenous bastards chasing us," Derek stressed, as he put the last of our assorted junk in the trunk.
"As soon as I can, I need to find out if this saw works, there's no need to haul it all over hell's creation if it's busted," I proclaimed, slamming the trunk closed.
"Yeah, we'll check it later, more eaters are heading our way, let's get out of here before I decide to stick around and fuck'um up," Derek insisted, as he climbed back into the car.
I again jumped behind the glassy looking white plastic steering wheel of our reconditioned automobile before commenting.
"You really do have a rhetorical way with words don't you?" I asked sarcastically.
"Indeed I do, whatever in the hell that means," Derek answered smiling.
Without further hesitation, I slammed the clutch pedal to the floor and crammed the three speed manual transmission into first gear, and then in a coordinated fashion between pushing on the accelerator and slowly engaging the clutch, I let up slowly on the far left pedal.
The beefy steel-bodied 1950's Chevrolet began to rumble up North I-65 toward Indianapolis, and we were on our way once more.
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BETH
Three days before Jack met Derek...
A woman's voice softly broke through the late night silence as Beth's bunk was gently rocked.
"Beth, wake up, it's time to go," Jolene whispered, "Are you ready? We've got to go now before they change the guards."
"Yes, I'm ready," Beth answered, sitting up and reaching for her .22cal rifle. "I just wish I could kill that bastard Ron before we go."
"Well you can't, not if you want to get out of here alive," Jolene pointed out. "So, come on let's get the hell out of here."
The guards changed shifts at exactly midnight every night, and the four that were due to come on duty that night had not made a deal with Jolene, and would surely stop the two girls from escaping the Caucasian's fortress.
Jolene never told Beth what prompted her desire to leave the fortress, but she had been planning her escape from the compound for several months, and part of her escape plan was to bribe the guards on duty to look the other way while she and any companions that she might be able to recruit made their get-a-way.
There were four guards on each shift, and her plan was to leave before midnight so that she and her party would have all night to distance themselves from the camp, and anyone that might chose to come after them.
It was a very risky venture to try to leave the region controlled by the Caucasian. Even though he was not a stickler for details for some unknown reason, he was a sociopathic megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur, and he took great offense to anybody that tried to leave his self-proclaimed jurisdiction. Especially somebody that was not granted permission first, and very few were ever granted permission, first, last, or otherwise.
Nobody at the Caucasian's stronghold had much to bargain with; the nature of the socialistic structure pretty much brought everybody down to the same level. This equalization of the population ensured a black market type of mentality among certain indiv
iduals who were brave enough, or stupid enough, to buck the system and risk the punishment that would be inflicted on them if they were caught.
The result of such a system left most of the people with nothing that everyone else didn't have, and although the penalty for a person breaking the rules, or a guard that was found to be derelict in his or her duties was not set in stone, they could expect to be dealt with in a very harsh manner.
Fortunately, for Jolene and Beth the rotation of the guards had not changed for several weeks prior to their escape attempt, and all four guards that were scheduled to be on duty that evening were the men that she had bribed.
Jolene had used the only bribe that she had at her disposal that the male guards did not possess; in short, she had been sleeping with all four guards on a nightly basis for the previous three weeks before the escape attempt was to take place.
She had convinced the troop of paramilitary sentries that she would not rat them out if she and her group (Beth) were to be captured and brought back to the fortress, as long as she was the only female participating in the payment of the bribe.
This arrangement saved Beth and the other two women who eventually chickened out and turned down the offer to join the conspiracy to escape, from having to become women of ill repute, and have to live with the fact that they had whored their way out of captivity. A fact that didn't seem to bother Jolene.
Beth had grown tired of being used as a water-filled punching bag at the Sarge's discretion, which seemed to be becoming more prevalent as each day passed.
Most of the so-called men in the place acted as if they were afraid of Ron, so nobody intervened to stop the all too frequent public poundings.
When she made the mistake of taking the issue to the Caucasian, thinking that as the leader, he would be inclined to protect all of his subjects, and make the proper determination in her case, and then justice would be served. Or at the very least, the Sarge would be forced to stop beating on her.
He just laughed in her face and told the Sarge to try slapping her.