In my younger days, I worked in a warehouse. The days consisted of loading and unloading hundreds of boxes from trucks. It was the most mind numbing work ever. But I was seventeen, and the other normal kids had jobs. This one was perfect because I could work overnight and not waste my days away. Well, one of the other workers always seemed to go that extra mile for everybody. So when I told him a completely fictional sob story about my father beating me for bad grades, he started to really feel bad for me. I had originally just told the story as a form of entertainment for myself, but I found that this story had legs, and it opened many opportunities for me. One night, I came into work, and I just didn’t want to do anything. I looked at the schedule and saw that I was on “first position.” The person in the first position actually stands in the truck and lifts each box and hands it down the line to the next person. He’s the one that actually does the heavy lifting. The best job was what we called the counter. His job was to count the boxes and verify that the number of boxes matched the number on the shipping order. I never counted shit when I worked that position. I just assumed everyone else did their job perfectly, and there was almost never an issue with the count. Well, not wanting to do jack, I limped over to the guy I always told my sob stories to. He immediately asked why I was limping, so I told him I was fine, then made my eyes water just enough to make him show genuine concern. He took me into the back room thinking that I wouldn’t give him the real story without other people around. So I told him that my dad punched me in my chest and knocked me down stairs. I told him I thought I twisted my ankle, and my back was in constant pain. For the next three months, I was continuously assigned to be the counter. In fact, I never had to lift a box in that warehouse ever again. You see, if he had no sympathy, I would have had to do my fair share, and I certainly didn’t want that.
Once we finished eating, Jack spent the better part of two hours going through the various guns in the bag. While there were some pretty big ones with immense stopping power, I came to the conclusion that I wanted one small gun in particular. The Glock 19. It was small, compact, and didn’t seem unwieldily to carry.
“How many bullets does it hold?” I asked as I fingered the weapon.
“Rounds,” he corrected.
“Huh?”
“A bullet is what comes out of the gun. A round is the whole thing.”
“Ah,” I said “How many rounds?”
“Fifteen, and one in the chamber.”
“So, sixteen?”
“Sure.”
“Fifteen in the clip?”
“Magazine,” he corrected again.
“What’s the difference?”
“Gangsters say ‘clip.’”
“Gotcha,” I said making a gun with my fingers and winking at him.
Then it was time for school. He showed me how the whole thing came apart. He showed me what each part actually does. Not that I cared. Then he showed me how to clean and load it. All I cared about was how to fire it. After what seemed like forever of him explaining to me how to properly look down the sites to aim, he decided we should go outside and pick off some of the zombies that were further up the road.
Jack laid out his plan that was in fact quite simple. “We’ll neutralize a few to get you a little less green. Then we’ll pop back inside to keep any others from following.”
First we checked from the upstairs window to make sure there were no stragglers right out front. Once the coast looked clear, we decided to take our shot. As we approached the door, Rex ran up and clawed at the back of my leg. At first, I was thankful because I thought he had finally lost his mind and decided to try and take me out. I turned around to see him with the T-rex in his mouth, jumping up and down like an overly caffeinated spring.
“Awww!” Sara sighed. “He doesn’t want you to go.”
He pawed at me again, and this time he almost drew blood from his unkempt nails. He looked up at me and let out a very sad sounding whine before plopping the T-rex down at my feet.
I bent down, mimicking how I thought any responsible dog owner would, and scratched him between his ears. Then I pretended to kiss his floppy right ear, but in actuality, I was whispering words I know he didn’t understand.
“Why would you scratch me like that, knowing I have a loaded gun in my hands?”
As a direct response, he threw his front two paws up on my shoulder and proceeded to shove his tongue so far up my nose that I would swear he licked my brain. Jack laughed.
“Don’t worry, little Rex. Daddy will be back soon.”
That word sent chills up my spine. Daddy. But I repeated it anyway as to blend in.
“Yeah, buddy…” I said scratching his head again. “‘Daddy’ will be right back.” As we turned back to the door, Rex let out a bark and then scooped his toy into his mouth and dropped it back at my feet.
“No. No,” I said. “That’s your toy.”
He cocked his head to one side in his signature “huh” pose.
“I think he’s giving it to you,” Sara explained. “He’s offering it to you…Like a sign of respect. You know, like you are the alpha dog. Pack leader. It’s actually kinda sweet.”
I bent over, scooped up the toy, and shoved the head of the T-Rex through my belt to hold it in place. Rex lowered his head waiting for another scratch. Instead, I palmed his head and gave him a gentle shove away from the door. He apparently took that as me being playful, and he started to wag his tail. My response was to quickly shut the door in his face as Jack and I went outside.
I really wanted to see the business man. I don’t know why I had such a hard on for him, but I wanted him to be the first kill with my shiny new glock nineteen. But, alas, the business man was gone forever. Off on his own adventure. Maybe getting killed by someone who doesn’t give a shit. I took a breath. I’m just going to have to let that one go. I thought.
“There,” Jack said softly out of the side of his mouth.
About thirty yards up the street, there was a slowly shambling corpse making his way towards us. He looked like a beefy high school quarterback who got tackled by a riding lawnmower. His tight buzz cut was a pale blonde streaked with crimson. His lips were nonexistent. I don’t mean he had thin lips. I mean his lips were gone…along with most of his lower jaw. He was wearing his deep blue letterman jacket with a large “B” on his left hand breast. “B” stood for Brexton, as in Thomas J. Brexton high school. It was about a mile away, and I only really knew about it because I hate having to slow down for traffic in that damn school zone on my way to work.
Shouldn’t we be doing the opposite? Shouldn’t we be speeding up traffic at that intersection where the kids have to cross? Hell, shouldn’t we do away with all traffic laws in school zones. Make the kids actually watch the traffic and problem solve. Sure, some kids would get splattered, but the smart ones would figure it out. Isn’t that the natural law? Survival of the fittest. If you are too intellectually challenged to figure out a safe time to cross the street, chances are you aren’t going to amount to anything as it is? By slowing down traffic, we are giving the lowest common denominator a chance to add their shitty DNA to the gene pool.
But, I digress…
So, this chunk of a kid has seen much better days. If my aim is halfway decent, his day is about to get much worse.
“Okay, line it up just like I showed you,” Jack coached. “Use the front sight, and line it up just below the buzz cut.”
I watched as the front sights floated over the quarterback’s face. I controlled my breathing to help prevent any unwanted twitching. Jack walked up behind me and coached uncomfortably close to my ear.
“Keep looking up that front site. Remember, don’t pull that trigger. You’re gonna squeeze that trigger. Don’t use too much finger. Just the meaty part of the tip.”
I made the appropriate adjustments and visualized the shot before taking it. I imagined the blackish brownish slop that would come burping out of his head as the bullet made its way through that ugly me
llon. I envisioned the way his body would collapse onto itself like a mangled and bloody Raggedy Andy doll.
I took one final breath, steadied my aim, and fired. Then, as I watched him shamble towards us, the quarterback’s head disintegrated into a disgusting mist. I could even see the path of the bullet as it entered and exited his head nearly simultaneously. There was just one problem…I never fired the gun.
Then, at the very second the quarterback’s “neutralized” body hit the street, I heard two things. One was the scream of a woman who quickly came into view. She was barefoot and wearing what looked like a dirty women’s business skirt. She ran with a pronounced limp, and the second sound seemed like what she was running from.
Laughter.
I’m not talking about “ha ha” laughter. I’m talking about good ol’ boy laughter. Crazy raping and killing laughter. After a second, they came into view. There were five of them in total, all on foot, and all packed to the gills with weapons. Jack grabbed me by the shoulder, and we ducked into my azalea bushes. My heart began to do something I thought was impossible. It was racing. I was suddenly feeling…excited.
Now, don’t go thinking that I’m sicker than I actually am. I wasn’t excited to see this woman’s obvious fate at the hands of what appeared to be renegade hillbillies. But there was something pulling at that space where excitement used to exist in me.
The rednecks shot the woman in the back of her shoulder, and she spun to the ground. Jack started to stand up and make an attempt to save this woman, but I put my hand on his chest to stop him. Mind you, this was the equivalent of trying to stop a moving bus with one hand, but in this instance, the bus realized his heroic action might kill us all.
The Podunk Posse hooted and hollered over their victim as they approached. She squirmed on the ground, obviously in pain and shock of her current predicament. Within about a minute, a black pick up truck arrived and stopped in the middle of the street. One of the guys from the original five went to the driver’s side window and began to have a little chit chat with the driver. The man returned to his group and shot the woman twice in her head. Her struggle was over. The men in the group laughed as the woman convulsed on the ground as her essence bled out of her. Then, she was still.
Then the men began to look around the neighborhood. They pointed at several houses. What they were looking for, I have no earthly idea, but they piled into the back of the truck and slowly made their way down the road in our direction. The truck rolled to a stop right in front of my house, and I could see the driver of the truck looking at a piece of paper in his hands as he looked to the house directly across from me. They were looking for Pete the Zombie Rapist.
Chapter 13
Once they were sure of the address, the truck pulled into the driveway, and the Bumpkin Brigade came piling out of the back and into Pete’s house. Once they were out of sight, Jack and I made a beeline to my front door. Sara had apparently been watching, so she opened the door as quickly and silently as humanly possible. The very second the door closed, I could hear Pete’s front door swing open hard.
“Where’s my fuckin’ guns?!” The voice screamed.
I looked through my peephole, and I could see the driver of the truck screaming into the face of the youngest of the group.
“I don’t know, Axel! He said he would put them by the door.” The younger one said.
I turned my gaze to the big black bag of guns. It wasn’t too difficult to realize what they were looking for.
“I don’t see them by the door,” Axel screamed in a very whiney high pitched voice. “Do you?”
“No sir. Maybe he put them somewhere else?”
“Maybe he put them somewhere else?” Axel mimicked before shoving the young one to the ground by his face. “Then how ‘bout you go find my weapons?!” The kid picked himself up quickly and ran inside. Axel took a cigarette out from behind his ear and lit it as he surveyed the neighborhood. I saw him squat down next to two straight lines in the grass where my dragging feet pulled up the grass. They made a direct line towards my house. If the clever clodhopper looked close enough to my house, he would see the same drag marks leading straight to my door.
“Shit,” I whispered through my teeth.
Then, from inside Pete’s house we could hear uproarious laughter. Well, they must have just found Pete and deduced the same scenario as me. Pete fucked a zombie.
All of the noise of them tearing apart Pete’s house didn’t go unnoticed by passing zombies. Two dead douchebags meandered up to the house to investigate the delicious sounding noise within. After a few minutes, we could hear screaming from inside. Not the frightened screaming as though a zombie got inside and caught everybody off guard. This was the screaming of a temper tantrum like a child who doesn’t get the candy bar at the check out of the grocery store. After another minute, the door flung open, and Axel emerged in a blinding rage. He paced back and forth in the driveway before seeing the two curious corpses slowly making their way towards him. Rather than show fear, or back away from the threat, he huffed and pulled out a bowie knife the size of his forearm. With very deliberate steps, he walked straight to the first zombie and shoved the blade hilt deep into the monster’s eye. It deactivated like a robot that had just been unplugged. Then he kicked the second unfortunate corpse square in the chest, and before it could even hit the ground, Axel was on it, stabbing the face over and over with a rage that told us all that Axel had some issues he needed to deal with. Maybe he should try meditation. I thought.
The rest of his gang emerged from Pete’s house and watched as their leader continued to stab and slice the face of the motionless zombie for much much longer than he needed to.
“What now?” one of them men asked.
“Now?!” Axel said, jumping to his feet and kicking what remained of the face of the zombie he just disposed of. “Now?! We find my guns!”
“How?” another man asked.
“Someone took ‘em…Prob’bly someone in this neighborhood.” He spit on the ground. “We go from door to door and find my guns.”
“Door to door?” one of the men whined. “That’ll take forever!”
Axel turned to his men and decided they needed another reason than just fear to listen to him. “Look around, fellers.” He said opening his arms to the neighborhood. “Not a lot of damage here. That means there are prob’bly survivors hunkered down. And if there’s survivors, you know what that means…?”
“Women!” one of the men exclaimed.
“That’s right,” he said with a smile that showed every single one of his tobacco stained teeth. “Women. Hell, we might even be able to find more than one. That way we won’t have to keep sharing the one that we have.” He looked up the street at the woman they murdered earlier. “Well,had.”
The men all laughed at their leader’s morbid joke. I turned around to look at Sara, and she clutched Jack’s arm so tight her knuckles were almost transparent.
“Don’t worry,” Jack whispered. “I’ll kill every last one of them if they try to hurt you.”
To further add to her comfort, Rex stood next to her and puffed out his chest while giving the most menacing growl he could muster. It sounded about as threatening as a happy squirrel, but I could see his heart was in it.
I, on the other hand, was looking more for a way to keep myself safe. So while Jack and Sara watched and waited for these hazardous hicks to find us as I went to the back door. I looked out over my back yard and contemplated my situation. My back yard is actually pretty large, and it’s completely fenced in. On the other side of my fence is a small clearing that leads directly into some woods. I have no idea how deep the woods go or what’s on the other side. I grabbed a handful of clips (Sorry, magazines) from the black bag, and stuffed them in my backpack along with as much candy and canned food as I could fit. I put the bag next to the back door and went back to check on the situation out front. The fact of the matter is I hadn’t made up my mind just yet on whether or not to bug out
of this situation. It was six against three, and those odds weren’t too terrible. Jack was as big as three people which made our odds six to five. Then, take my inexperience of having never fired a gun, and the terrified look on Sara’s face that made it look like she was about to pass out, and we were back down to six against three.
The Inhuman Chronicles (Book 1): Inhuman Page 12