“You picked up the truck,” I said casually.
“Yeah,” was his only response.
“You picked up the truck by yourself,” I said again expecting a little more reaction to his super human strength.
“Yeah,” He responded again.
“You really should have gotten involved in the MMA.”
Chapter 33
Well, I was right about one thing. A pickup truck isn’t designed to be slammed into a wall of corpses. We got about four miles away before the car started to overheat. I know about as much about cars as I do about nuclear fission, but I do know what a broken radiator looks like. Jack and I got out of the car and did the whole macho thing of popping the hood and looking at the jumble of parts that we really didn’t know anything about. I at least had experience with broken radiators and the cost associated with them. Jack blew air out of his mouth and shook his head like he knew what it was.
“It’s the radiator,” I said.
“Yeah,” He agreed. “Think you can fix it?”
“Sure. If you have another radiator and a solid YouTube connection, I could fix anything.” We looked at the unusable car again.
“If the radiator has a hole in it, I heard you can fix it by cracking an egg open inside.”
“Do you have an egg?”
“No.”
“Ah…So I guess we can’t fix it…” We continued to stare at the engine as I hoped beyond hope that a magical gnome would pop out and make the needed repairs. Is it too crazy to hope for a magical gnome in a world where zombies actually exist?
Jack grabbed the bag of supplies, and we started walking down the long stretch of road. Rex jumped out of the car and stretched for about five seconds before taking about thirty seconds to clean his balls. I watched him as he went to work on his grooming, and started to tap my foot impatiently. He looked up from his nuts to see me staring at him with my arms crossed.
“You about done?” I asked. His response was another ten seconds of self cleaning before he trotted off ahead of me. “Don’t think I don’t notice that that’s the only place you ‘clean.’” I grabbed whatever I could and jogged off ahead to catch up to Jack and Rex.
“Any idea how far we are from the zoo?”
“On foot? Probably a day or two.”
“Those guys said they were attacking on Friday. That’s two days from now.”
“Holy shit!” I said truly astonished. “You can tell what day it is today?”
“Wednesday.”
“I’m not shitting you, about a week or to into the zombies, I lost track of the days. Like when I was a kid in the summer, and I didn’t have school or any responsibilities. Every day just melted into the next.”
“Will we make it in time to save those people?”
The answer in my head was, I don’t really care, but out loud I said in the most sincere tone possible, “I pray to God we can!”
Rex snorted at my response, and when I looked at him he was staring at me with his head cocked to one side. I pushed him aside with my foot as we continued to walk on. “We can try to find another ride. There’s an intersection about a mile or two from here, and there are gas stations and strip malls. There might be another car there.”
“Busy intersection…We might not be the only ones there. What if another one of the smart ones has a trap.”
“I really don’t know,” I said. “We’re kind of stuck here. We can’t go back, and we can’t stay here. The only thing that makes sense is to keep moving forward. I guess just be ready for anything.”
We walked in silence for the next fifteen minutes, and we didn’t see squat. It’s almost maddening to be constantly expecting something to jump out at you. We made it to the intersection, and it looked like the aftermath of a full scale war. The street was scorched in places, and chunks of concrete were missing from what looked like explosives going off. There were several cars, but they look like they took their fair share of damage. A couple were on their sides, and a few more were just burnt out husks. We walked silently through the battlefield, and my senses were on hyper alert.
Rex let out a yelp that almost made me jump out of my skin. I turned around to see what he was warning us about, and all I saw was more empty battlefield. I looked back down at Rex, and his hair was standing up on end.
“Shit…” I hissed through my teeth.
“What is it?” Jack asked, readying his gun.
“I don’t know. Let’s keep moving.” I scooped Rex up, and his body felt like a tight coil that was ready to spring. Whatever he was sensing was not sitting well with him. He pulled himself up to my shoulder so he could look behind us into the woods beyond the street. Nothing good ever comes out of the woods. When was the last time you heard of anything positive happening in the woods? I don’t think I ever remember a story that started off with “We were walking through the woods…” that didn’t end with “That’s when we found the body.” The woods are the epitome of bad and scary things, and Rex growling in my ear while he looked at the woods and into what I couldn’t see literally made me want to shit myself.
There was a gas station up ahead, and it looked the most intact of any other building. The windows weren’t boarded, but they weren’t broken. The plaster on the outside was stained from smoke, but it wasn’t burned.
“Let’s get inside,” Jack said, spinning around looking for threats.
“Good idea.”
Then, we heard the groan of a single zombie. The sound was a relief and nerve wracking at the same time. A relief because it explained why Rex was freaking out, and it was only one slow shambler. Nerve wracking because it was still a rotting corpse that wanted to eat us.
“Thank God!” Jack said walking towards it.
It’s funny how seeing only one monster that wants to kill you can put you at ease. But in this new age of fast smart thinking zombies, one slow zombie was a nice change of pace. As Jack closed in on the shambling ghoul, a voice behind us chimed in.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
I spun around to see a man sitting on the roof of the gas station with his feet swinging over the side. In one hand he was holding beef jerky, and in the other he held a slushy.
How the hell did he get a slushy?
Jack looked back and forth between the zombie and the man who was watching the events unfold.
“Why?” Jack called out.
“I just wouldn’t!” The man said.
Jack slowly backed away from the zombie who continued to stumble and shamble forward. Then, from within the woods, the scream from one of the newer zombies seemed to signal the onslaught.
A wall of about fifty slow zombies came marching out of the woods towards us.
“Fuuuu…” Was all I got out of my mouth before the shrieking of three fast zombies who literally came screaming out of the woods on an intercept course towards us. They had the angle and speed to catch us.
“Better run!” The man on the roof said casually.
And run we did. Rex squirmed and tried to get out of my grasp, but adrenaline pumped through my body so quickly that the jaws of life couldn’t have freed him.
Jack fired three quick shots towards the three runners, and all three shots missed their targets. He must have been terrified.
“There’s a ladder around back!” The stranger said with a laugh. “Better hurry!”
I circled the building to find half of a ladder hanging off the roof. Unless my vertical jump was much better than physics would allow, that ladder might as well have been a delicious plate of breadsticks for all the use it would do for me. I figured I would give it a shot anyway. I ran as fast as I could and jumped with every ounce of strength my legs had, and I was still short by about two whole feet.
“Give me Rex!” Jack screamed as he came around the corner. I handed him the small dog without question, and he tossed Rex up about fifteen feet in the air where he landed on the roof after spraying urine down on both of us throughout the entire course
of his flight. I wanted to be angry at him for showering me with hot dog urine, but I probably would have done the same thing. Jack crouched down and interlaced his fingers for me to step in.
“Come on!” He shouted.
No sooner than I stepped in his hands, but I found myself flying quickly towards the ladder. I reached out frantically and grabbed it before feeling something heavy grabbing my legs.
“Hold on!” Jack screamed.
As if I had a choice.
I wrapped my arms around the ladder rungs and my body felt like it was being pulled apart as Jack climbed up my body. My still healing shoulder burned at the weight being forced on it, and I was fairly certain it was about to burst open again. Jack’s tremendous weight pulled at my legs, and my spine popped like bubble wrap as he pulled his way up. Once he was able to grab the ladder, his head was buried in my neck, and his body pressed me against the ladder.
“You realized you touched my penis again, right?” I said to him through painful breaths. “And currently, I can feel yours against me.”
“You’re not my type,” he said, helping me up the rest of the ladder. Once we both pulled ourselves up, we rolled onto our backs on the roof and took a moment to breath. It seemed like I hadn’t breathed in a long time. I was also ninety-nine percent sure that when I eventually stood up I would be about a foot taller. The sun burned my eyes as I tried to adjust to my surroundings. Rex ran to me and licked my face and got dangerously close to my lips before I pushed him away.
“Don’t think I forgot about all the time you spent on your balls!”
I sat up and was shocked that my spine survived Jack the giant using me as his climbing rope. I looked at Jack who was just as surprised by our survival as I was, and we started to laugh. On an intellectual level, I know we weren’t laughing at how close we were to death. It was a release of anxiety and is actually quite common after traumatic experiences.
After our laughter finally died down, we looked to the stranger who pointed a gun directly at us.
“Hi, friends!” he said, taking another snap into his Slim Jim while pulling back the hammer on his gun.
Chapter 34
“Don’t shoot!” Jack screamed while throwing a massive hand up as though he could actually catch a bullet to protect himself.
“Look, friends,” the stranger said casually. “I’m damn impressed that you made it up here, but it puts me in an awful predicament.”
“Look, we didn’t mean to put you in any danger, but we had nowhere else to go,” I said.
“Well, that’s not true.” He said. His gun was now waving around in his hands with each word. It was almost as if he was completely unaware of the deadly instrument he continued to point in our direction. “You could have just kept running. That’s one other option. There’s half of a KFC down the street. It’s not real safe, but the point is…you had options.”
I looked this man up and down, desperately trying to find a clue of how I should approach this. If he had any religious jewelry, or a Jesus tattoo, I could take the religious approach. If his clothes were too nice, there’s a chance he has money, and you talk differently to people who have money in our society. If you don’t believe that, you’re fooling yourself. Anytime you talk to someone about the cost of something, or an extension on a loan, or to anyone who might be giving you money, you suddenly pull out the four dollar words and try to stretch your vocabulary.
I looked for any jewelry, and all I saw was a gold Playboy necklace hanging from his open red and white Hawaiian shirt. His tan cargo shorts were stained from some unknown purple substance, and he wore brown socks pulled halfway up his calves with military style combat boots that looked about two sizes too big for him. His larger than average sized nose was bright white from the zinc oxide he rubbed on himself to protect from sun damage. If I could ascertain anything from his outward appearance at first glance, it would be that this man had terrible fashion sense or was completely out of his mind.
“Could you please not point that gun at us?” Jack pleaded.
“Oh, this?” the stranger asked, turning the gun towards himself and actually placing the barrel inside his mouth.
“Don’t!” Jack screamed.
And there’s the fundamental difference between Jack and myself. When a crazy man points a gun at me, then sticks the gun in his mouth to blow his own brains out, I’m perfectly fine with that. It means I live another day. Jack on the other hand was nearly begging for his life only seconds ago, and now that the threat has turned on itself, he pleads with the lunatic to not end his own life.
We both got our wish.
The lunatic pulled the trigger of his gun, and instead of a bullet bursting out and blowing the top of his head clean off, a purple liquid squirted into his mouth and he happily swallowed it.
“Kool-Aid!” He said before he started laughing like a madman.
I looked at Rex who had the same expression of “What the fuck?” as Jack. Then, without warning, his expression changed from Ha Ha crazy to oh shit crazy. He leveled the gun and rushed towards us. I rolled out of the way, but it became quickly apparent that he wasn’t aiming the gun at us. I spun my head fast enough to see the face of one of the zombies peeking over the edge of the roof where we climbed up. The crazy man with the squirt gun charged towards him with the look of a crazed killer. When the zombie saw the rushing psychotic gunman heading directly for him, he let out a scream and then dropped out of sight. Jack and I rushed to see how the zombie could have made it up here, and when we looked over the ledge, we saw all three zombies staring up at us. Those motherfuckers were working together. The other two must have boosted the first one up. Jack and I looked at each other, and it was clear that this situation wouldn’t end well.
“Chew on this you assholes!” The madman said dropping his slushy down into the middle of the three waiting zombies. They looked at the plastic cup confusedly, and then looked back at the three of us peering over the edge of the roof. The nut job in the Hawaiian shirt grabbed Jack and me by our shirts and pulled us to the ground just as an explosion rocked the building. Jack and I scrambled up and back to the ledge to see what happened, and what we found were tattered pieces of the clever zombies. Two of them were completely ripped apart and the third was missing one entire leg, half of his second leg, and both of his hands. After a second or two I was able to spot a finger about fifteen yards away, but I don’t think there was a lot that even all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could do for this undead asshole.
“What the hell was that?” Jack asked, spinning around.
“Party favors!” the man said, holding what looked like two grenade pins.
“Where did you get grenades?” Jack asked, rushing to inspect the pins.
“I got a whole bag of ‘em.” The lunatic beamed. “My name’s Terry! Terry Budd!”
“I’m Jack Hoffman, and this is Jeffrey!”
“Jack Hoffman?” He giggled.
“Jack!” I said quickly jumping in. “Can you look and see what our options are for finding a ride?”
“Sure,” he said, walking towards the other end of the roof.
“His name is Jack Hoffman…” Terry giggled.
“Yeah, I know,” I answered. “He’s also about three times the size of you and me put together, and I’ve seen him lift up a pick up truck with his bare hands. Can you imagine what he could do to you?” Terry’s smile turned into a frown.
“Jack off men,” He said, protesting my buzzkill.
“I get it. Do you really want to piss him off?”
“Guess not. What’s the dog’s name?!” He inquired as his mind clearly jumped to the new distraction.
“That’s Rex.”
“Hiya, Rex!” he said, going down on one knee and holding out his hand. “Put ‘er there.”
“He doesn’t shake,” I said as Rex lifted his right paw and placed it gingerly into Terry’s hand.
“Sure he does!” Terry said, excitedly shaking Rex’s proffered
paw up and down.
“Where are you and Jack Hoffman going?” He asked with a smile beginning to creep across his face.
“We’re heading to the zoo.” Jack said jogging back.
“The zoo?!” Terry whistled. “I’m pretty sure they’re closed today.”
“There are people there who are in danger, and we’re going to go warn them.”
“Will they let me feed the goats?” he asked.
“Are you serious?” I asked him.
“You’re right” He frowned. “They probably make you pay seventy five cents to feed them, and I don’t have any change. Oh well, can I feed your dog? I have Slim Jims!”
“Sure,” I said as Terry gleefully ran over to Rex and started sharing a Slim Jim with him. They exchanged bites back and forth.
Jack took that opportunity to take me aside.
The Inhuman Chronicles (Book 1): Inhuman Page 24