Nuclear Undead: Wake the Dead

by N. J. McConnell

  I figured that would be the last time we’d see the little lady since we made such fools of ourselves stumbling around drunk like that and doing such an awful job of flirting. Heck, we were so drunk that out of the four of us, not one could even figure out which end of the lug wrench to use. I just kept there turning it around in circles trying to figure out how it fit while the others yelled out slurred directions that made no sense except to them. Virginia finally had enough, grabbed the lug wrench and changed the tire herself, leaving us to watch with confused expressions from the sidelines. This wasn’t such a bad thing. It gave us the opportunity to watch her bend over and well, I did say she was pretty, didn’t I? That little woman had curves in all the right places. Even our blurry eyes could see that.

  The next weekend, a few of us boys decided to try something different, so we ended up at the movie theater. We were standing there arguing over whether we wanted to watch Jaws or Monty Python and the Holy Grail when Virginia happened to glide by in that feminine way she has. I say glide because she doesn’t walk. She just sort of floats like an angel. Well, maybe not, but it seemed that way to me at the time. Until I met her, I laughed at people who talked about love at first sight, but damn if they weren’t right. I took one look at that girl and couldn’t think straight anymore.

  The guys and I were wearing our dress uniforms that night to impress any girls we might run into and this time everyone was cleaned up and sober. You have to understand that even though we were all brothers in uniform, when it comes to women, all bets are off. Not sure how it happened, but I’m the one that won the honor of buying Virginia a soda and some popcorn and sitting next to her that night. We watched a movie that I really hated called Barry Lyndon with Ryan O’Neil who was a popular actor at the time. If you asked me what it was about, I couldn’t tell you. I was too busy trying to make headway with the little red head. We set a date for the next weekend and tried to impress her with dinner at a steakhouse and another movie afterwards. I left the other guys back at the base this time.

  After a couple more months, we knew that what was happening between us was something special. The guys from my barracks picked up on it and had a grand old time at my expense. It was partly because they were jealous, but mainly because we had all seen some unforgettable things in Vietnam and used humor as a way of coping. The most beautiful woman in town had picked me and none of us could figure out why. I wasn’t the smartest guy out there, the most charming or the handsomest. To make the situation worse, I couldn’t keep my mind on anything and kept goofing up which got my ass chewed out by the sergeant more than once. I’d start thinking about her and trip over my own feet. Yeah, it was really that bad.

  Well, I guess she felt the same way because when I popped the question, she didn’t hesitate before agreeing to marry me. A month later, we got the license and showed up at the courthouse with all my buddies in tow to get hitched. Her family didn’t seem to know what to say. Her parents weren’t really happy with her choice of husbands and they made it clear from the beginning. First of all, we weren’t getting married in a church and second of all, their daughter was marrying a damned military man.

  Remember that it wasn’t the same back in those days. We were spit on when we walked off the planes and some people called us baby killers. We were already messed up from what we saw and went through over there. When we came home, instead of being welcomed, we were hated. Virginia never asked me what happened and I never told her, but just having her by my side helped me to heal. I finally had something to live for.

  I spent a few more years in the Marines after that and we had a decent life, but when my mom and dad got older and their health began to fail, there was simply no choice but to take my retirement from the service and go help out on the farm. It had been in our family for too many years to sell off or lose to the bank. My great-grandfather built the main house with help from neighbors and friends after he and his new bride got married. There were memories hidden in every board and nail in the place and there was no way that Pop could run everything by himself now that his health was failing. Heck, he probably couldn’t even plow a field with the tractor without passing out. The way I saw it, they took care of me when I couldn’t do for myself and now it was my turn. Life had come full circle as it always does.

  They both passed away not long after and I’ll never regret the decision that I made in taking care of the farm and them. We were at least able to spend their last few months together as a family. They loved Virginia and thought of her as a daughter. She loved them just as much and spent her time nursing them while I was outside doing the farm work. It was no easy task. Pop had a stroke that left him bedridden. He had to be bathed, turned and fed by hand.

  At first, Mom spent every minute she could next to his bedside caring for him, but she was fragile herself and sometimes overdid it. Virginia was the only one who could coax her into lying down and getting some rest. When Pop finally died, Mom was so heartbroken that she just gave up on living. One morning, when she didn’t come down to breakfast, we went up to check on her and found Mom lying there cold and stiff. The coroner said that she just stopped breathing. She and Pop were together now.

  The night the ball dropped and everyone else was running in circles trying to hide from zombies, we were in the barn with our veterinarian, Nicole. One of our cows decided to drop a calf, but although the poor girl was moaning something fierce, the calf wasn’t coming out. I called the vet at the first sign of trouble and she came right over and stayed with her.

  Nicole isn’t just our vet. We’ve sort of adopted her. She spends so much time on the farm taking care of our animals or sharing the meals that my wife keeps pestering her into eating that the wife and I remodeled the extra space in back of the barn as a small apartment for her. Smells from the animals would probably have bothered most people, but Nicole is a bit different. She loves animals and doesn’t seem to notice the odors at all.

  When we first showed the place to her and explained that it was hers to use anytime she was here and needed to clean up or was tired and didn’t want to go right home, she gave us both a hug and kiss on the cheek with tears forming in her eyes. I had to walk off and act like there was work to do in the pasture. That crying stuff just makes me feel strange. I mean, what do you say when women do something like that? For that matter, why do they cry at the drop of a hat anyway? I love women, but I don’t understand why they do the things they do.

  As usual, I was up before the sun and after a hearty breakfast, I donned my thick coveralls with thermal underwear underneath. After kissing my wife on the cheek and whistling for my dog to follow me, I headed out to get the animals fed and start work on the old tractor to make sure it’s ready to plow the fields come spring. Jack, my dog, is a medium sized mixed breed that somebody dumped on the side of the road when he was a puppy. I don’t know why people do stuff like that. I doesn’t make sense. How do they think a puppy is going to know how to feed itself? You dump it out on a back road and it’s the same as a death sentence. Jack got lucky. We found him almost dead on the side of the road and nursed him back to health. We’ve been best pals ever since.

  I may have already mentioned this, but it’s a lot of hard work running a farm. Most people think we just sit around watching things grow, but that’s not the case. We’re competing with corporate farms that are getting million dollar tax breaks from the government and selling their crops in bulk. We can’t compete with that uneven playing field so we have to work a lot harder and earn less profits for what we do. It would have been easier to just sell the place and retire to Florida, but I made a promise to my Pop to do whatever I can to keep the farm in the family and I intend to keep that promise.

  We didn’t go to the ball drop on New Year’s Eve because we get up early in the mornings and can’t stay up that late. We also didn’t hear the sirens ringing because we don’t have any this far out of town. Normally, I turn on the television in the mornings for the Farm Report, but with the cow givi
ng birth and all the work I still had to do before spring planting started, I just grabbed a cup of coffee and bacon biscuit then headed out with Jack to get started on the day’s chores.

  While Virginia was cleaning up the breakfast dishes, I was already pulling the tractor wheels off and wondering how the calf did last night. Nicole hadn’t come over to tell us anything, so either nothing had happened yet or she fell asleep. Either way, I’d let her be for a while. I was sitting there caught up in my thought when I heard Virginia scream. I grabbed the tire iron lying on the ground beside me and ran toward the homestead with my heart beating like it was going to break out of my chest.

  “Virginia!” I yelled as I threw the screen door to the kitchen and ran inside as fast as my legs would move.

  A bear of a man had her backed up against the kitchen counter and she was trying her best to hold him off. Virginia was beating the man over the head with a cast iron skillet, but he didn’t seem fazed when the pan connected to his head even though blood was flowing down his face and what wasn’t soaked up in his clothes made its way onto the floor at his feet causing his feet to slide under him.

  “You bastard, get away from my wife!” I ordered, but the man didn’t even turn to look at me or pause his attack. Jack began snarling and tugging at the material on the giant’s pant leg, which at least got his attention off of Virginia for a minute. As he swatted at the dog, I smashed the tire iron into his back as hard as possible. He still didn’t go down. I then kicked his legs out from under him and beat the tire tool across his body several times as I yelled at my wife who was standing there almost in shock to move away and run. Jack stood in between her and the man with spittle dripping from his teeth and gums pulled back ready to bite.

  “Get back, Virginia!” I yelled when I noticed the intruder trying to stand back up. Having a hard time because his feet were still slipping on the blood smeared across the floor, he turned his attention to me, so Virginia used the opportunity to slide along the counter until she reached the door to the pantry where she locked herself inside.

  It was time to get serious. I lifted the tire iron back up and beat the man about the head until blood was pouring out onto the floor and he finally stayed down, then threw the weapon away from me like it was a poisonous snake. I just killed a man in my own home. It’s not the first time I killed a man, but this isn’t wartime. It’s different.

  Virginia peeked out the door when the room became quiet and after making certain that the man wasn’t going to get up to attack her again, she opened the door wide and ran towards me. I backed up. “Wait just a minute, Honey. I have to wash this blood off of my hands before I hold you and then we need to call Sheriff Stoner.”

  It made me feel terrible to not be able to hold her because she was shaking and had tears pouring down her angelic face. Instead, she sat down at the breakfast table on shaky legs and Jack walked up to lay his head in her lap. “You’re such a good boy, Jack. Yes, you are,” she fussed as she scratched him behind the ears and wrapped her arms around his body. He glanced over at the man every little bit, but ate up the attention in the meantime.

  I washed up the best that I could without destroying most of the evidence then tore my clothes off where the blood was splattered and placed it in a plastic bag instead of throwing them out in case the police needed evidence. When I was finally done, I sat down in a flannel work shirt and denim jeans at the table and held my wife’s hand while I dialed 911 for help. Jack snorted once, then lay on the floor at my feet and fell right asleep. He had done his part for the day and now he was tired.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Honey. I promise.” I said reassuringly as I squeezed her hand gently. I was trying to calm her down, but to be honest, I wasn’t so sure myself. The call to the sheriff’s office wouldn’t go through. After a while, I decided that help might not be coming anytime soon, so I covered what was left of the man’s face with the kitchen rug and led my still trembling wife into the living room with a yawning dog at our heels.

  “Pete, who was that man? “ asked my wife with a dazed expression on her face. “There was something wrong with him. Was he on drugs?”

  “I’m not sure, but don’t you worry your pretty little head. He’s not going to bother you anymore.” I said to comfort her as I flipped on the television to help her get her mind off of things and because I also figured there might be news about why the phone lines were down. There was a thin layer of snow on the ground and it’s cold as hell outside, but not enough to knock out the power or phone lines. It has to be something else.

  Virginia leaned her head on my shoulder as we sat there in stunned silence and listened to the newscasters one by one explain the catastrophe that took place the night before. It didn’t take long to realize that the man was one of these creatures the newscasters called zombies that have been affected by the virus or whatever it was last night. If that’s the case, there are more of them. A whole lot more of them.

  “Nicole!” We both shouted it out at the same time. If there was one in the house, there could be more outside and Nicole was alone. She couldn’t call if she needed help because the phones weren’t working. I stood up quickly and grabbed the loaded Mossberg 12 gauge double barrel shotgun we kept over the doorway as Virginia followed me out to the barn. Jack stood up and stretched, then followed us out, but looked like he’d rather go back to sleep again.

  The lights were off in the barn and it was pitch dark inside when we carefully approached. I could hear some rustling, but when I called out to Nicole, there was no answer except the sound of shuffling feet. The noise could be coming from an animal, but I can’t quite figure out what kind, which is odd since I run a farm. Whatever it is, Jack didn’t like it at all. He was standing in the doorway snarling again like he did in the kitchen. I trust my dog’s instincts, so instead of just walking inside to check it out, I decided to use a shovel that was leaning against a hay bale near the entrance to reach where the light switch was located and turn it on.

  It’s good that I listened to my dog because one of those zombie things was standing a couple feet in front of me ready to bite. The damned thing surprised me so much that I almost tripped backwards when I saw him, but Virginia is depending on me to make things right, so I have to suck it up and be a man.

  I fired the 12 gauge point blank at the intruder, but even after taking a straight hit in the torso, he continued walking toward me with his arms outstretched and a crazy look in his black eyes. It took a couple of seconds because I was still in shock, but I finally remembered what the news anchor said about how to kill these things and raised the gun back up to shoot him straight in the head. Brain matter exploded all around and settled in the hay. At least this time, he didn’t get back up.

  I barely had time to reload the weapon when I noticed two more of the corpses turn around and stumble in our direction. I figure they had been standing at the door that led to Nicole’s apartment trying to get inside until I drew their attention. Well, I’d rather them try to come after me and my loaded rifle than a young lady who’s unarmed.

  While I quickly finished reloading, I yelled, “Nicole, if you can hear me, step back away from the door.” Hopefully, she’s conscious and understand what I’m saying, because I don’t know how Virginia will handle it if I shoot Nicole by accident. The problem is that from this angle, if I miss, part of her door will be shredded along with anything close behind it.

  Fortunately, the two shells found their marks and the creatures soon lay bleeding on the ground with their brains blown out the back of their skulls and blood pouring out onto the ground around them.

  I didn’t want Virginia to see the gore, but I can’t leave her alone, so I gently took her arm and led her slowly past the stalls, taking time to check each one until we reached the door where they had been standing earlier. I pressed my ear to the door to Nicole’s place and listened for signs of life. Nothing.

  “It’s safe to come out now,” I said loud enough for her to hear, but not
loud enough to draw more unwanted attention from those who might still be lurking outside, but then it hit me that I’d already made enough noise to draw attention with the report from the Mossberg. That gunshot was much louder than my voice will ever be.

  “They’re dead. It’s okay to come out now.” I added, hoping that it would reassure her that she’s safe, though to be honest, I don’t feel so safe.

  At first we didn’t hear anything and I thought I’d have to go back to the house to rustle up the spare key, but then there was a faint sound of movement inside. I stepped back so the door would have room to open up all the way and placed Virginia behind me just in case there was something coming out that will try to attack, then waited with my weapon at the ready.

  Nicole slung the door open, then ran straight to my wife and fell sobbing into her arms. They were both crying and hugging. Like I said before, I’m a man and that kind of thing makes me really uncomfortable. I can’t just stand there like an idiot, so I walked over and reached an arm around them while I tried to keep a watch out in case we still weren’t alone.

  “They killed Bessie.” Nicole sniffled and pointed over to what was left of the mama cow who hadn’t even had the chance to finish giving birth before being torn to shreds. “I tried to save her, but she wouldn’t move, so I ran inside and locked the door, but I thought they were going to get in. I tried. I really did. She just wouldn’t go with me.”

  She looked over at the cow that she had helped us raise from a calf and began sobbing again. Virginia and I weren’t raising Bessie for meat or to hook up to milking machines to make money. Bessie is more of a pet or part of our family and we’re all going to have a hard time dealing with this. “I tried to call for help, but my phone wouldn’t dial out,” she added questioningly.

  I nodded. “Our phones are down, too. There’s a lot that we need to catch you up on, Nicole.”