In the moment it took Tom to look back at the fence’s zombie victim Jef was mimicking, Jef had drawn his side arm and ended the tortured beast’s cries with a bullet to the head. The force was enough to dislodge the creature from the fence; the odor of charred flesh lingered.
“One of yours?” Tom asked.
“Nope. That’s one of the locals,” Jef answered, disconnecting the electric cables. “I’ll leave this off for a while, or we’ll be smellin’ that sizzling flesh still stuck on the fence all night.”
Jef’s cursory tour of the base lasted another thirty minutes, made longer by his long-winded explanations at each point of interest.
Tom remained reticent in the shadow of Jef’s narrow six foot three frame, as they finally made their way back to the C.O.’s quarters; Tom’s head cutting through Jef’s trail of cigar smoke.
Settling into chairs across from each other, Jef reached for a bottle of vodka. Tom observed that there were several empties already littering the desk. Jef poured two glasses, then chuckled to himself as he watched Tom try to navigate the glass around his eroded lips, opting instead to just open his mouth and sling the shot down his gullet.
“Why so quiet… Mr. Zombie? You hardly said a word since we saw that crispy critter. You can’t be squeamish — not with that face staring back at you from the mirror every day.”
Tom took no offense to the remark about his face, recognizing the harmless biting banter between men he'd grown accustomed to on the force. “Oh, I’ve just been thinking.” The ten seconds of silence that followed begged the question: about what? “I told you my story earlier, but I don’t know much of yours. I was a cop back in Chicago, so I learned to be suspicious of anyone who’s a sole survivor. An entire family shot in their sleep and only the wife survives without a scratch? Turns out she’s the one that snapped and pulled the trigger. So how come you’re still here all by your lonesome?”
Jef paused in mid-sip of his second drink, and cut his eyes at Tom. “I guess you’re on to me, copper. I’m the creeper that ate everyone’s brains.” There was a pregnant pause while Jef slugged back the rest of his drink, puffed his cigar, and refilled his glass before Tom got a straight answer.
“All of us pilots got here days ago and were waiting for our payload — your ship’s cargo — to arrive. Reports started coming in from all over that the zombie epidemic was spreading like wildfire. ‘We just lost Poughkeepsie,’ someone shouted in the mess hall. Probably the guy’s hometown. Things got out of hand fast somehow. Zombies started popping up everywhere around here, just like the rest of the world. We scrambled to secure the airbase, but that didn’t stop the attacks from within the base.”
“From within?”
“This is ground zero, man. I hate to be the one to tell ya, but this is where the sausage is made. We had a stockpile of zombies right here on the base. People got careless in all the commotion, and it caused an internal breach. When all hell broke loose, many of us tried to bug out. Just abandoned posts. Personnel headed for the planes, and pilots were all too happy to take off. Maybe they knew of a place that would be safer. Maybe they didn’t.”
“But not you?”
“I didn’t say that. Oh, I flapped my wings, too. I couldn’t get that plane cranked fast enough. While I was in the air I started thinking about where I’d go, and then it hit me. Hell, I’m on an island here. All I’ve got to do is wait this thing out, fend for myself for however long, and I’ve got my own little paradise — well, once the clean-up is done.”
“Even though things are as bad as you say they are in the states, didn’t you want to try to get home to your family? I have a daughter back home and…”
Jef stared into his glass. “They’re gone.”
Tom uttered his next words out of quixotic reflex. “How can you be sure? I know I’d like to get back home to my daughter. Even got an ex. She was the good one. Not me. I miss her, too. The good times, I mean. I know there are lots of places they could go and be safe. I’m sure your family does too.”
The alcohol was allowing Jef’s temper to rise to the surface. “Maybe you didn’t comprehend me earlier when I told you the world has gone to shit. Overrun. Creepers got my family — even out in the suburbs. And, can you believe that my son said goodbye to me in a text message? A fucking text message!” Jef slapped the desk to punctuate his anger.
Gone was the easygoing, devil-may-care last of the Mohican’s that spoke of the recent world plague as if it were the plot of some ridiculous B-movie. He was finally feeling. Feeling too much. Jef emptied the bottle of Absolut into his glass, reached absently behind a stack of binders, searching for another bottle to top off his swig, but there was none to be found.
“They started closing schools — sending kids home to be with their families so they could evacuate together. Only thing was, my kids had no family to go home to. I was here and my wife…” Jef cut himself off to reset. “My son found his mother’s body had been torn to shreds in our yard. She must have been watering her flowers that morning when they got her. My kids had no clue what they were walking into. My daughter didn’t even make it to the front door, but my son was able to lock himself in the house, and that’s when he started texting me what had happened. The only thing he didn’t know was that my wife must have left the patio door open. That’s how they got my boy.”
Jef grabbed his cell phone from the desk, thumbed through several screens, and held it out for Tom to see. “The last words he texted me were: OMG - IT GOT IN - BYE DAD - LUV U. If he could text, he could have called me just as easily. I would have answered a call. I didn’t check my text messages until it was too late. But I would have answered a phone call. Not that I could have done anything, but I could have at least heard his voice.” Jef looked at the phone’s screen and began to sob, “I would have answered the call. I would have.” Jef clumsily poured another shot out of reflex, forgetting that the bottle was empty. He roared with frustration, and threw the bottle across the room. It didn’t even have the courtesy to break.
Tom tried to provide rational comfort. “Your son went in the house to hide. He was trying to stay quite. I’m sure that’s why he didn’t call.”
Jef’s eyes met Tom’s. “I should have been home with them. Join the Air Force and see the world, the recruitment signs read. Well, you can keep this fucking world. I should have stayed with my uncle’s crop dusting business back home in Missouri.
So you see, zombie man, I’ve got no reason to go back. My ass is stayin’ put right here, pal.” Jef wiped the remnants of salty tears from the corners of his eyes, walked across the room and started up the record player again. The Girl from Ipanema.
“What’s with you and that song anyway?” Tom asked to hopefully change the subject. He was wrong.
“It reminds me of my wife.” Jef answered, and then began to sing along in a low melancholy, monotone murmur.
“Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes
Each one she passes goes, ‘A-a-a-h’.”
Jef grinned at the memory of his wife. “She sure was a tall drink of water,” he said, as his eyes grew misty. “Hey, speaking of drinks… we need more vodka.”
Jef retreated outside in search of more libations, leaving Tom pondering the reality that everyone he loved back home might well be dead. I was on that ship for a week, out of touch with the world. Oh, God, what if it’s all true? I came all this way chasing the truth and for what? I should have been with my daughter.
A gnawing feeling of hopelessness took hold of Tom that felt as constant as the unceasing daylight of the Icelandic sky. The nature of what the world had become, against a foreign landscape awash in eerie twilight hues, was so surreal that it taunted the psyche. Madness was held at bay only by the fact that Tom was not alone, and more vodka was on the way.
#
Fifty yards across the compound were the bulkhead doors leading to the bunker, and Jef’s s
upply cache. He’d planned to move all of the supplies above ground at some point — later. For now, the immediate need to replenish his alcohol was his only desire.
Logic would dictate that it would be safer to move his quarters below ground. But the bunker floor held puddles of stagnant, murky water, and the air was foul with an unpleasant odor. There was no way he could live in that same bunker. He simply couldn’t. The horror above ground was easier to live with than living in close quarters with the constant reminder of the horrifying act he’d committed days earlier.
Jef glanced down the hall to the soot blackened door that had been locked from the outside. Another door, locked like the Quonset hut, but this one was different. The atrocity committed behind the door in this bunker was by his own hand. Premeditated and cold blooded.
For now, he shook it off, opened the supply room door, fetched two bottles of Absolut Vodka, and retreated from the bunker – sloshing puddles of water as he trod to the steps of the bulkhead doors.
Part 4
A few yards quickly spread into the length of half a block. Mark had advanced ahead of the girls by a good margin to scout for any zombie trouble. Despite his own fear, he presumed it was the manly thing to do in light of the trauma Jemma suffered aboard the bus that left it difficult for her to walk, let alone run, should any danger pop up without warning.
Tom Dexter was a good man in Jemma’s eyes, and she saw that his daughter was obviously cut from the same cloth by the way Holly so instinctively came to her rescue, diving at the gunman on the bus. There was something noble about the Dexters to be so selfless. And now, Holly was a physical crutch to lean on as Jemma hobbled down the block with a sprained ankle, and battered and bruised from her ordeal. If the circumstances that brought them together had been different, Jemma felt she and Holly would have been good friends — simply because they wanted to be, rather than out of necessity for survival.
The fact that her physical features caused by the virus didn’t deter Holly, was a plus. She presumed that having a father with the same virus made her desensitized to it a bit, or at least empathetic. Another reason to prize Holly Dexter’s friendship.
As Holly supported her new friend, a’rm around her waist, striding together as if in the worlds slowest three-legged race, she was offered time to reflect, and question Jemma further about her father.
“When you came to my house, you mentioned that my father was a hero. What exactly did you mean by that? Did he help you? Is that how you met?”
“Actually, I helped him.” Jemma could have bitten her tongue for speaking without thinking. Why couldn’t I have just said that he was a hero by virtue of the fact that he was a police officer, and leave it at that, Jemma scolded herself. She was so focused on the pain in her ankle that she just blurted out the truth without foreseeing the next barrage of questions.
“Really? What help? How exactly did you two meet, anyway? Why didn’t he try to contact me himself to let me know he was alive? And why did he wait so long?”
Jemma wanted to say as little as possible about the circumstances that brought Tom into her life. Telling Holly that her father was brainwashed into killing a United States Congressman in cold blood might be more than Holly was ready to hear. If she just danced around the subject, sprinkled in a white lie here and there, everything would be fine.
“Your dad wandered into my shop and… ooooo, bugger.” Jemma winced, then sucked air between her teeth, using the pain of her injury to buy time, as she thought of a suitable lie to connect the dots.
“Oh, of course. He must have been looking for a way to send me a message when he came up with the idea of using a zombie comic,” Holly interjected to help connect the dots, sympathetic to Jemma’s painful distraction. “You helped him pick one out.”
Well, that was easy, Jemma thought. “Right. Right.” To answer Holly’s initial question about her father’s heroism there was no need to be dodgy. “I think the reason he took so long to contact you – and why he sent me – was to protect you. There was an attack on NATO a while back...”
“I remember hearing about it on the news. It was some extremist group. Right?”
“No. When your dad learned that a major at Fort Sheridan was really behind it, he risked his own life to save the president and other NATO members. That’s why I said your dad was a hero. And he’s still out there, trying to be a hero, looking for answers to stop the people who started this outbreak. Although, it looks like he’s too late.”
Holly didn’t know what to say. “You’re as gobsmacked as I was, I see.” Jemma said, pleased that she was able to preserve Tom’s image with barely a white lie.
Telling her mother that Tom was still alive was something Holly couldn’t bring herself to do the last time they spoke by phone. Paula Dexter had no concern for her ex-husband at all. The circumstances that led to their divorce had left her cold. Maybe the news of Tom’s heroism might make a difference. Holly will have time to deliberate over whether she’ll tell her mother or not as they make their way to her house. Given the fact that Paula was so worried about Holly getting back home quickly, Holly was amazed that her mother hadn’t blown up her cell phone demanding an ETA every fifteen minutes. Was cell phone service still available? she wondered.
As if on cue, Holly’s cell phone rang.
#
Jef had been gone nearly fifteen minutes before returning, only to be met by the muzzle of his own gun being pointed in his face. He was so startled that he almost lost his grip on the two vodka bottles he was carrying.
“Jef, I know you saved my ass on the dock, but I can’t stay here. I need to get back home to my daughter, and the way I see it you’re the sky jockey that’s gonna fly me there.” The timbre of Tom’s voice was as steady as his hand holding the gun.
“Whoa, zombie man! You’re chasin’ the wind. Like I said, there’s no one left back home. This is home now.”
Tom held something up to Jef’s face. It was the glowing screen of Jef’s own cell phone. He’d left it on his desk next to the empty vodka bottles, and his weapon.
“My daughter’s alive,” Tom uttered with equal parts of relief and anger fueled determination. “I just spoke to her. Took a chance that cellular systems aren’t completely down yet. She’s trying to make her way to her mom’s cousin’s place. They’ve prepared a bunker there. So, don’t tell me there’s nobody left. There are survivors and my daughter’s one of them.”
“Well, that’s just peachy,” Jef said snidely. “You’ve got family still alive out there. I don’t have mine anymore. If you think waving a gun in my face gives you the upper hand, you’re dead wrong. You’re not going to shoot the only person who can fly you home.” He paused a moment to let the words sink in. “I guess you don’t have the leverage you thought you did, eh, zombie man?”
Jef walked away, dismissing the gun as any threat at all.
Tom pulled the trigger, and the gun blast pierced the room. Shattered glass and a puddle of vodka lay at Jef’s feet. “Shall I go for the bottle in your other hand as well?” Tom asked coolly.
Jef’s gaze moved from the spilled alcohol and glass shards on the floor to Tom. “Well, it looks like you’ve managed to find some leverage after all. But, before I agree to fly you nearly three thousand miles, which could all be for nothing by the time we get there, let me ask you one question. Tell me again, why you stowed away in the cargo container? What were you looking for that brought you all the way to Iceland?”
The steely look left Tom’s eyes. He was subdued by the question, slowly lowered the gun, and answered matter-of-factly, “I was looking for the truth.”
A sardonic smile spread across Jef’s face. He exaggerated the expression to mimic the perpetual half skeletal grin on Tom’s ravaged face. “Right. You were looking for the truth. Okay, you want to know the truth? Follow me.”
Jef set the bottle of Absolut on the desk, then headed outside, never looking back to confirm that Tom would follow, yet certain that he would.
Tom observed that Jef was walking over wet footprints leading in from the doorway as he was walking out. It also occurred to Tom that the cuffs of Jef’s pants were wet – before the vodka splashed on them.
“Where are we going?” Tom asked, gun at his side.
“I told you. To the truth.”
#
Fluorescent lights flickered to life and bathed the subterranean corridors beneath the Keflavik Naval Air Station. Jef led the way through the labyrinth of the bunker designed to house offices, lab rooms and supply storage.
The floor was wet, and a damp ashen smell filled every nook and cranny. It smelled as if fire had obviously tried to recently claim the bunker as its own before the sprinkler system prevented complete devastation. But, the only evidence of fire damage was the charred looking door that Jef was headed toward.
When they reached the door, the scent became more than a musty burned smell. There was a smell oddly similar to burnt pork mixed with a pungent coppery, metallic, and sulfuric odor. Jef pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, then nodded to Tom. “Go ahead. Open it.” Tom hesitated. “Go on. You wanted the truth. It’s in there,” Jef assured him. Tom took a step forward, turned the handle, then opened the door, stifling his gag reflex at the stench that hit him in the face.
“My God,” Tom breathed out upon seeing the charred remains of more than a dozen bodies that littered the dank, dark room.
“Had to be done,” Jef said.
“Are you saying you did this? Were they infected?”
“They were worse than zombies.” Jef pointed into the room as if pointing into the past. “They had to be punished. They unleashed this unholy shit on the world. And because of them my family is dead, and they’re taking us all back to the Stone Age. They had to pay for what they did. I only wish Fleming had been with them, but you said he got what he deserved too, thank God.
The Tale of Tom Zombie (Book 4): Zombie Redemption Page 2