Zombie Rules (Book 3): ZFINITY

by David Achord

  Felix cleared his throat. “We have no problem at all,” he looked at Marc and Ward. “We’ll never hold it against you that you two are friends with Zach.”

  Everyone started laughing then, and it almost drowned out the hushed, yet heated conversation I could hear emanating from the hallway.

  “C’mon guys, I’ll show you where to get cleaned up.” I said and led them to the guest bathroom.

  The kitchen was too small for sixteen people, so we set up lunch on some picnic tables that were under some shade trees behind the house. I led the way with a large pitcher filled with ice water and several glasses.

  “Holy shit, you guys have ice!” Michael exclaimed in wonder. I chuckled.

  “Yeah, it’s a luxury, especially in the summer,” Terry said. “We rigged up the fridge to some solar panels and car batteries. It works for the most part.”

  Felix and his friends made the sounds of contentment as they enjoyed the water and caught whiffs of food aromas.

  “Felix, how’s it been going man?” I asked when I sat down. Felix shrugged his shoulders.

  “Okay, I guess,” he responded. I smiled and looked at him curiously.

  “Holy shit, dude, I’ve never known you to be so quiet. We haven’t seen each other in what, almost three years? Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself, how have you survived?”

  He finished his water, poured another glass from the pitcher and took a long moment before responding.

  “What day was it that we last saw each other? The day after Thanksgiving?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I believe so.”

  Felix clenched his jaw. “Mom attacked Dad that night. I ended up killing her. I called 911 but nobody ever came. Dad turned into one of those things about an hour later.”

  “Did you have to kill him too?” I asked quietly. Felix nodded, wiped his nose with the back of his hand and pushed his glasses up.

  “So, everything was pretty chaotic at that point. I made the mistake of walking outside, and started getting chased by about a dozen of those things,” he gestured over at Michael. “He was driving down the road at the time and saved my ass.”

  Michael grunted. “Those bastards were attacking everything in sight.”

  “There used to be twelve of us,” Felix said as he gestured at his friends. “This is all that’s left. Anyway, I joined up with this bunch and we’ve stuck together ever since.”

  “Yeah,” Kelvin added, “we’ve been thrown together by fate. We’ve mostly been surviving by scavenging and wandering.”

  “How’d you lose your friends?”

  “Some to zombies, others were killed by humans,” Felix replied and changed the subject. “Is Rick still around?”

  I shook my head. “He died of a heart attack or something.”

  Julie cracked the door open and motioned to me. “I’ll be right back,” I said and rushed inside. I came back out a moment later.

  “Alright everyone, lunch is ready. They set it up buffet style, so follow me.”

  There were the usual gasps of wonder at the amount of food we had. I encouraged everyone to have seconds, and even third helpings. Afterward, we all sat around with our bellies engorged.

  “That was a wonderful meal,” Michael exclaimed and leaned back in his chair.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” Julie said. “We cooked the food. You guys have to clean up.”

  Everyone started to stand, but I waved them off. “Don’t worry, I’ll clean up. Y’all relax and chill out.”

  I’d no sooner gotten started washing the stack of dirty dishes when Felix walked into the kitchen and joined me. I grinned at him. “Are you here to give me a hand or supervise?”

  He shrugged, grabbed a dish towel, and began wiping the clean dishes dry. “Y’all have a good set up here.”

  “It took a lot of hard work and no small amount of ingenuity,” I said and handed him a wet dish. “Your friends, are they good people?” Felix responded with a nod.

  “Good,” I said. “I went to your house a while back looking for you. I left a note.”

  “Yeah,” he said, but offered no further comment. I looked at him curiously, but didn’t push it.

  “Where are you guys living?” I asked. Felix shrugged.

  “Around,” he answered, “we move from place to place.”

  “We can set you guys up in a place close by,” I suggested. “There are plenty to choose from. We still have zombies around here, but not many. We’ve killed off a bunch of them. What do you think?”

  “I’ll have to talk it over with my friends,” he said. “So, you’re married, huh?”

  I grinned. “Julie and I met after the outbreak. We had a little bit of a false start at first, but we worked it out and became very close. We came across a preacher and he married us.”

  “And you have a kid with another one on the way,” he added. I nodded and handed him another plate. “You’ve done pretty good for yourself.”

  “I’ve done okay my friend, I’ve done okay,” I looked him over. He’d grown an inch or so, but had not gained any weight. His hair was long and unkempt, and his face was oily with a lot of acne.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Zach. When I bother looking in a mirror, I see how I look. It’s been a tough couple of years for some of us.”

  “Yeah, it’s been tough for us all,” I replied. Felix scoffed.

  “Shit, Zach, look at you,” he said. “How much weight have you gained since the last time I saw you? I’m guessing forty or fifty pounds and it looks like all muscle.” He gestured toward himself. “Look at me, all skin and bone. It couldn’t have been too tough for you,” he looked around, his eyes being magnified by his glasses. “You’ve got it all,” he murmured. I nudged him with my elbow.

  “It took a lot of hard work, brother.” I gestured at my scars. “I didn’t get these the easy way. We’ve had some tough times, make no mistake about it.” Felix looked at me but said nothing. “And look at you. You’re taller now, and tougher looking,” I said. Felix looked at me guardedly, perhaps wondering if I were messing with him. I chuckled.

  “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, but we’re together again. My best friend is alive and well,” I grinned at him. “Things are going to be good now, we always took care of each other back in the day and we’re going to do it again.” I pointed out the window. “These are good people here. Well, except for Janet, she’s a bitch, but the rest of them are good people.”

  Felix was staring out the window, as if lost in thought, but suddenly looked at me questioningly. “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “Oh, I was actually thinking of the dark headed girl outside,” he said with a bashful smile.

  I grinned. “That’s Kelly, she’s single and only a couple of years older than you,” I nudged him. “You leave it to your old buddy. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Felix shook his head. “No, I meant the other one. You called her Andie. I think she’s awesome.”

  I was surprised. Felix must have seen the look on my face. “Let me guess, she’s taken,” he said. I nodded. Felix looked crestfallen as he pushed his glasses up. “Figures.”

  “We’re running low on fuel and ammunition,” I told them. After the dishes were done, Felix and I joined everyone else, who had hardly moved from under the trees and were collectively watching the sun set.

  “We’ve still got a few hundred gallons of regular gasoline, but we’re desperately short of diesel.”

  Michael sat up. “Wait, did you say a few hundred gallons?” I nodded. “Holy shit, that’s a lot of gas.”

  “Not as much as you’d think,” I replied. “We’ll need more, and we need diesel.”

  “What have you got in mind?” Sue asked.

  “We’ve found a place with fuel, but it’s in downtown Nashville. I’m sure you guys are well aware that anywhere you go in that area, you’re liable to run into a horde of zombies lurking around any given corner.”

  “I know exactly wh
ere you’re talking about,” Felix said, “over by the Titan’s stadium, right?”

  I nodded. “We’ve done it before, but it’s risky, and in case you guys haven’t noticed, these zombies are changing, they’re getting smarter.”

  Felix and his friends looked at each other. “Yeah, we got attacked one night,” Felix said as he pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “They bit a couple of our friends. We had to kill them.”

  “Yeah, we’ve had something similar happen to us,” I responded. “I made up a rule about it.”

  Michael chuckled and pointed at me. “You’re the one who spray painted those rules all over town.”

  “Yeah,” I replied with a frown. “I thought I was doing something important at the time, but I’m not sure if many of them apply anymore though, except maybe the last one.” I was also thinking about what he said. He was aware of the rules I had spray painted, so that meant Felix was aware of them. Maybe I was stretching it, but I thought Felix of all people would have immediately known who the initial Z stood for.

  I saw them looking at each other, like they couldn’t remember any of the rules. I laughed, on the inside anyway. There were only two other people who had memorized them; Julie and the Captain, and I wasn’t sure Julie even knew them anymore.

  “Rule fourteen: They’re Evolving.”

  Michael snapped his fingers. “Ah.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, anyway, their behavior used to be entirely predictable, so it was pretty easy to work around it.”

  “Not anymore though,” Terry said. “They’re doing some pretty scary shit lately. Anything you try with small numbers these days is pretty risky.”

  “We’ve agreed it’s much safer if we go only in large numbers,” I added.

  “Yeah,” Julie chimed in, “we had this problem with one particular member of our group who occasionally gets a bad case of Rambo on the brain.”

  I grimaced. Here it comes, I thought. She continued.

  “Yeah, he’d go out by himself dressed up in his raggedy sniper outfit and hunt zombies like he was on a personal quest to rid the world of them.”

  I hastened a glance at everyone. Terry and Andie were smirking. Fred was looking at me with his patented arched eyebrow, like he was saying ‘I told you so.’

  “Who was crazy enough to hunt those things by themselves?” Sue asked, and then she saw everyone looking at me. “Oh,” she said. Terry started chuckling.

  “In my defense, I thought it was the right thing to do at the time,” I retorted.

  “Bullshit,” Julie counter-retorted. She was right, I knew it and she knew I knew it. I wasn’t going to win and decided to change the subject.

  “Well, anyway, with the four of you working with us, we should have no problem getting back to business. Strength in numbers, right?”

  “I’m afraid we can’t help much, Zach,” Felix said. “We only have around a dozen rounds of ammo left,” Michael looked at him harshly. It was obvious he did not want that information shared. Felix caught the look.

  “It’s okay, guys, we can trust Zach.” He continued to get stared down by Michael. Felix, feeling chastened, looked down at his hands.

  “Alright,” I said, “ammo is the number one priority. You guys can help us raid the National Guard first.”

  “We’ve tried it already,” Felix said, “but the armory is built like a bank vault.”

  “We’ve got to try,” Andie said. There were some murmurs of agreement.

  “I know where the keys are,” Janet said quietly. She looked up to see everyone staring at her intently. She had been morose since Julie’s talk. I was hoping God had answered my prayers and the bitch was never going to speak again, but what she just said had my undivided attention.

  “I mean, back when Tommy and I lived there, I knew where the keys were kept. I’ve no idea if they’re still there.”

  I caught Julie looking at me. She winked. I was going to have to get the scoop on her little talk she had with mommy dearest, but at a later time.

  “Well, I believe you’re going to be worth having around after all,” I said. Janet looked at me with cold, appraising eyes.

  “It’s settled then,” I said and looked at Terry. “The Corporal is going to put together a mission plan. We’ve got quite a few farm chores to catch up on first, but I’d say we should be ready to do it in a couple of days. Everyone okay with it?”

  Julie murmured in contentment as I massaged her back. She had to lie on her side, which made it a little difficult, but I managed to evoke more than one sound of pleasure.

  “That must have been some lecture you had with your mother, it seemed to have had a positive effect,” I commented. Julie chortled.

  “I made it plain that she was going to have to change. She didn’t like what I had to say, said I had a bad attitude, and blamed you for brainwashing me.”

  I snorted and continued massaging. She cooed some more. I think I found her weakness.

  “Anyway, I think I got my point across. She could have kept her mouth shut about the keys, so maybe she’s coming around.”

  “I hope so,” I responded.

  “You hate her, don’t you?”

  I carefully thought of my answer before responding. “I don’t care too much for her, but I don’t hate her, even though she planned on killing me once.”

  Julie didn’t answer and after a minute, I realized she had fallen asleep. I kept massaging her back until I drifted off too.

  Chapter 43 – Ammo

  Fred opted out of our mission. Even though he didn’t say as much, I don’t think he liked Felix and his friends. He definitely didn’t like Janet. I didn’t argue the point.

  We located the keys in a lockbox in the commanding officer’s office. I found it a little bit ironic. The keys to unlock the armory were locked in a small metal lockbox. A little work with a cutting torch yielded us easy access to them. Janet led us to the armory, which was a concrete structure with a massive steel door. Even with a healthy shot of WD-40, the locks turned only in great reluctance. The hinges were just as bad. We took turns yanking on the handle before the rusty hinges reluctantly broke free.

  “Shit,” I said. The gun racks were totally empty. The only items left were some spare parts. Terry frowned.

  “Alright,” he said, “we may or may not be able to use this stuff, but let’s load it up anyway.”

  It took us less than five minutes to load up the sparse inventory, and then we made our way to the ammunition magazine. It wasn’t as hard to make entry this time, but we didn’t have much luck there either.

  “Well, Corporal, how much?” I asked.

  “A grand total of three ammo boxes,” he said. “Two of them are empty, the third one has about five hundred rounds of 7.62,” he opened one of the boxes and inspected the ammunition. “It’s all linked, so that’s a plus.”

  I looked in the box. They appeared in good shape with the copper showing only a slight tinge of patina. Every fifth round was orange tipped. I pointed at one and looked at Terry.

  “Are those tracer rounds?” I asked. He nodded.

  “If only we had some machine guns,” Kelvin lamented. I thought of our M60s and hastened a subtle glance at Terry, who made brief eye contact with me.

  “Yeah, well, we’ll take it with us. Maybe it’ll be a good barter item,” he said innocently.

  We were suddenly alerted by a poor imitation of an owl call coming from outside. It was Felix. Andie snickered as we hurried out.

  “We’ve got zed company,” he said excitedly. I looked to where he was pointing and observed twenty to thirty of them, slowly walking down Sidco.

  “It looks like it’s a bust here,” I said, “let’s head out.”

  “You’re not going to kill them?” Janet asked with an edge of contempt in her voice. “There’s only a few dozen.” I shook my head while she stared at me in disbelief.

  “Only a few dozen we see,” I countered. “When we start shooting, we’re liable to have twice
as many in no time.” I looked around. “Ammo is tight right now, no need wasting it when we don’t have to.”

  “Yeah,” Michael added, “unless you guys got plenty to spare, I’d rather not engage them. Let’s load up and get the hell out of here.”

  Everyone agreed and we exited onto Sidco in the opposite direction from where the zombies were coming from. Suddenly, Andie pointed.

  “Look,” she said. She was pointing in the direction of the motor pool. “I see portable tankers.”

  “Yeah,” Terry replied, “but the military uses mo-gas. We might be able to flush one out and use it for our needs.” He grabbed the radio microphone and raised Michael in the truck behind us.

  “Do you guys see those tankers over on the left?” he asked. Michael acknowledged. “We can come back for them when we don’t have tankers already in tow. Y’all are going to need one or two of them if you’re going to settle down in our neck of the woods.”

  We waited for some kind of comment about it, but they changed the subject.

  “Where to next,” he asked, “the fuel reservoir?”

  I nodded. “Yep, we’re going to take Franklin Road downtown, it’s the shortest route and there aren’t very many obstacles.”

  Franklin Pike was four lanes wide, so it was an easy ride, but as we drove through the Melrose community and into downtown Nashville, we encountered another horde. Andie stopped the truck and scoffed in disgust.

  “Shit, where are they all coming from?” she asked nobody in particular. I grabbed the microphone.

  “Alright, there are about ten to fifteen of them up ahead, blocking the roadway. We’re going to drive through them. Go slow and there’s less chance of them getting hung up under the wheels. Hold your fire unless you have no other choice.”

  “Roger that, Zach,” Felix responded. Andie closed the distance and then slowed to a crawl. Our makeshift triangular shape bumper did a mostly successful job of pushing them out of the way, only a couple of them fell directly beneath the truck, but they didn’t get hung up. It only took a minute for both vehicles to bust through the line and then we increased our speed.

  “I hope that’s the only group we run into,” Felix said over the radio. I swapped a look with Terry. We both hoped he was right. He was wrong.