“I’ll be damned.” Jef contemplated a moment. “I thought I knew everything that was going on around here. So, it’s like a cure or something?”
“Not a cure, but a good defense,” Tom reckoned. “Only thing is… it doesn’t stay in your system forever.” Tom focused on Fleming. “That’s why you wanted the GPS. You’ve got a cache of that zombie juice stashed away somewhere, don’t you?” Fleming gave no response, even though Tom’s gut told him that he was right.
“You keep an eye on Fleming,” Tom said, as he tucked the GPS receiver into his pocket, then picked up the weapons he’d brought from the bunker. “I’ll take care of what’s outside.”
“No!” Jef blurted. “I mean, I think we’d better just make a run for it. We can take the major with us if you want.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got this.” Tom readied a 9mm, three more weapons he’d brought from the bunker, then stepped outside, leaving Jef with his fear and anger focused on his captive.
“Your new friend doesn’t know, does he?” Fleming inquired tauntingly. “He doesn’t know about your old friends — out there,” he nodded toward the window. Jef was silently seething with each word out of Fleming’s mouth. “I found your little secret you kept locked up out there. What did you think you could do for them? Save them?” Fleming laughed haughtily.
“So you stumbled across my crewmen in the Quonset hut. I couldn’t kill them. They were good men. They did their duty and what did they get for it? Turned into zombies trying to protect this base after the outbreak. I couldn’t shoot them — put them down like dogs. They deserve better than that.”
Jef’s anger strengthened with each breath. He hated Fleming for his role in all this. To Jef, Fleming may as well have been the S.O.B. who devoured his wife and kids; gnawed at them with the same teeth now poking from behind a sardonic grin. Releasing the zombies from the Quonset hut was just rubbing everything in Jef’s face now. Those poor souls outside were the ones that Jef had found in the aftermath. Corralled them one by one. When he’d found Tom, he was out looking for more of his crew, and putting down any creepers that weren’t his comrades in arms.
“Those service men and women didn’t deserve to die. But deep down I know now they don’t deserve to be zombies either. Death would be a mercy. Tom’s out there doing what I couldn’t bring myself to do. I can’t stop him. I know it needs to be done. I know that now. I accept it.”
Fleming remained silent.
“I hold you responsible for taking my family from me. And, because of you, some of the best pilots I’ve ever known are now reduced to shambling monsters, about to be put out of their misery. Do you feel any remorse at all?” Jef stooped down to peer into Fleming’s eyes to see if there was a soul inside. “Well, do you!?”
No answer. Nothing seemed to rattle Fleming. All Jef wanted was for the major to show some remorse and admit that he was a monster. Ironically, all he did was continue to show his monstrous side, by showing no contrition whatsoever.
“Did you ever wonder what happened to your little cohorts, major?” Jef tried a different tack. “You tried to lock us in that bunker, but did you ever wonder what happened to all the military brass that was supposed to be riding out this apocalypse down there?” The major’s eyes broke their unflinching distant stare, and cut to Jef for a split second before retraining on the far wall.
“Sure, I was just following orders, and maybe my hands aren’t clean, but the day I stopped following orders was the day I washed my conscience clean. They had to pay for what you all created, and you should have been in there with them, you sorry piece of shit.”
Jef’s eyes scanned the room for anything that would feed the impulse sparked by his emotions. He spotted the vodka bottle and snatched it from the desk. “I’m gonna correct that right now… major, sir.” He stooped and saluted Fleming mockingly.
No rationale could belay Jef’s intent. The major grasped the full gravity of Jef’s impulsive decision when the bottle cap was removed, and instead of the bottle going to Jef’s mouth, it was positioned above Fleming’s head. Fleming was incredulous and began to reason with Jef in vain. Soon all hubris was gone, and Fleming was like any other man begging for his life.
The alcohol poured over the major’s head and body amid cries for mercy. “Please. You can’t do this! Please! No! You can’t!”
Bottle emptied, there was just one more task left. Jef picked up the nub of a cigar perched in an ashtray, fished the lighter from his pocket and flicked the flame to life. Several draws on the cigar until the ashes were glowing bright, then a quick toss.
The major screamed with his last breath as his flesh bubbled and popped, and he was consumed.
Outside, shots rang out.
#
The best vantage point Tom could think of was to get on top of the one-story building and pick off the creepers one by one. No need to get up close and personal if he didn’t have to. It took a few moments, but he was able to scale the generator at the back of the building to climb on top of the roof and make his way to the perfect position.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Four shots. Four zombies down. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Tom was lining up his fifth shot, when he noticed the corrugated metal roof he was laying on seemed to be heating up. He squeezed off his fifth shot. Fifteen more to go.
Thick gray smoke began to billow up from below, and the metal roof was getting unbearably hot to lay on. He had seen the hatred in Jef’s eyes for Major Fleming. It may have been the same hatred that welled up inside Jef to make him incinerate the officers in the bunker. He’s given Fleming the same send off, Tom thought. Not that he gave a damn about how Fleming died. The fact that he was finally gone once and for all — no backsies this time — was good enough for Tom.
The matter at hand was dealing with the fact that he was like a cat on a hot tin roof at the moment, and he still had zombies to dispatch. In an instant the roof buckled from the heat, and gave way. All of Tom’s weapons slid into the fiery room beneath, and Tom fell from the roof line.
Part 6
The body slapped the ground, making impact like a wet sandbag. Mark spun around, saw the body, and then the blood that began to pool on the sidewalk between him and the girls.
Mark called to them, “It’s okay. It’s not a zombie.” He noted that the person that seemed to fall from the sky was a black male in his late thirties, and wearing a doctor’s white coat.
A drop of something hit the pavement. It resembled spit, with a thicker consistency tinged with a bloody color — bloody snot. Another gooey drop skimmed Mark’s shoe. The trio, now convened in the same spot, simultaneously looked up, and saw zombified faces peering over the edge of the roof at their fallen prey.
“He must have made his way to the roof thinking he’d be safe, but they cornered him,” Mark assessed. “Given the options, he made his choice.”
“This is a medical building,” Jemma observed. “Probably had a bunch of zombie bite patients that turned while they were waiting for the doc to see them,” Jemma said. Holly nodded in agreement with that speculation.
The three looked at the man on the sidewalk, thinking they should do something. They couldn’t just leave him on the street for zombies to scavenge until the scent of fresh blood and meat turned rancid, and no longer compelled desire.
It was beginning to grow darker outside, and lingering in one place too long wasn’t good for them either. They needed to forge on to Holly’s mother’s house, then onward to the safety of her cousin’s place in Rockford.
To afford the dead man some last remnant of human dignity, they felt obligated to move his body to where it couldn’t be desecrated. But where?
“Maybe hide the body in the building he jumped from?” Jemma suggested, limping over to a lamp post to prop herself up and rest her ankle, leaving Mark and Holly to think through the plan.
“Risky,” said Mark. “He jumped because there were zombies chasing him to the roof.”
“Yeah. God only knows how ma
ny more are on other floors of the building. They can’t all have followed him to the roof, could they?” Holly wondered aloud.
The question was answered a moment later when the door of the medical building swung open and a ghastly, gurgling, growl came from the fiend trained on their scent. Holly reacted quickly, reaching into into her backpack for the deadliest defense she had — the gun she’d picked up from the curb. Gripping it with both hands to steady herself, she aimed it at the beast in the shadowed doorway and pulled the trigger. Nothing.
“The safety must be on,” Mark shouted in a panic.
“Well, how am I supposed to know that,” Holly answered. “I’ve never used a gun before.” She defended herself out of sheer frustration.
“Neither have I,” Marked spat, “but I know there’s a safety.” He rushed to Holly’s side to help her figure out how to disable the safety feature.
The creature emerged from the shadow of the doorway, and Jemma was nauseatingly horrified at what she saw. “Oh my, God.”
Holly looked up from the gun to see something different than any zombie encounter she’d had thus far. The dead-eyed creature had lovely tendrils of long fiery red hair, and wore a paisley patterned maternity dress. She looked to be about six months pregnant, and her fingers were bloodied. As she moved closer, it was apparent where she had been clawing at her own belly to get at the fresh fetus. No longer a mother’s instinct, but rather a zombie’s instinct prevailed. The only reason she couldn’t complete the task was because after she turned, the fetus wasn’t far behind. Drawing its lifeblood from its mother, the child soon became infected, transforming in utero into something unborn and undead. The mother’s desire to rip her own child from her womb and devour it ceased.
Despite the gun’s safety being unlocked, Holly couldn’t pull the trigger. Tears filled her eyes at the thought of shooting a pregnant woman. Helping Jemma crush a zombie’s head under a heavy trash bin was one thing. The crushed skull was hidden beneath the bin, so she didn’t have to see it. She was able to detach herself from it mentally and move on. This was different. This was deliberately aiming a gun in the face of a pregnant woman and pulling the trigger. True, she was a zombie, but in Holly’s mind there had to be another way.
“Go ahead,” Mark said. “Do it. Pull the trigger. What are you waiting for?”
Holly lowered the gun and observed. The pregnant creature dawdled around the doctor’s body on the ground, as if her innate instincts were trying to discern if the meat was fresh enough.
“See,” Holly said with a sense of vindication. “She’s not going to hurt us.”
“Maybe not at the moment, but we still need to get out of here. It’s starting to get dark and we need to be off the street.” Jemma interjected from beneath the street lamp’s glow. “There’s more of them in that building, and they’re bound to make it out here soon enough if we keep hanging around.”
The pregnant creeper decided that the doc on the ground wasn’t as fresh as the three live meals standing nearby. “Here she comes!” Mark shouted.
“Distract her,” Holly shouted back.
“What? Why do I have to be the bait?” Mark looked to Jemma, who simply shrugged her shoulders and pointed to her ankle to illustrate why she was not a good candidate.
Waving his arms in the air and shouting over here… hey, zombie, over here, Mark drew the zombie’s attention toward himself. Holly dumped the contents of her backpack, circled wide to sneak up behind the growling mother to be — that never will be — and, in one swift motion, she slipped the open end of the backpack over the monster’s red locks, and completely covered it’s face.
The trio watched as the creature flailed around, too dumb to figure out how to remove the bag from its own head. “There. She can’t see or smell us anymore,” Holly said, relieved that her impromptu plan worked.
“Brilliant. But you do realize that at some point we’ll have to do more than play hide and seek with these things.” Jemma warned. “Now, what are you going to carry all your stuff in?” She indicated the contents of Holly’s backpack, now strewn on the sidewalk.
Mark volunteered to scout ahead and peer around the corner to see if the coast was clear so they could move on. After the girls had hastily fashioned Holly’s hoodie into a makeshift backpack, they looked up to discover that two more former patients from the medical building were emerging. Not pregnant ones. This time they were two men. One fully clothed and the other in a flimsy examination gown, opened in the back. In her haste, Holly had tossed the gun in with the rest of her belongings, not thinking to keep it handy.
Jemma scanned for any sign of Mark. He was nowhere in sight. A split second before despair set in, headlights came around the corner. It was Mark driving a UPS truck. He had found the truck sitting just around the corner with the key still in the ignition. The poor driver had gotten out to make a delivery days ago to one of the buildings, and never made it back.
#
The drop from the roof landed Tom flat on his back, knocking the wind from his lungs. The creepers advancing on him hesitated out of instinctive fear of the fire, yet lingered, driven by their carnal craving for fresh meat.
Above the roar of the flames, and the bellowing of the attacking ghouls, Tom heard the rumbling purr of Jef’s M-72 motorcycle. It came around the burning building in a wide circle, coiled razor wire, like the kind Tom saw at the top of the perimeter fence, was spooling out from the sidecar.
“Get out of the way, and keep low!” Jef shouted to Tom while simultaneously gesturing the same instructions with one hand.
Tom scrambled to clear the intense heat of the flaming building, trying to stay close to the ground. Once he observed that the wire was wrapped taught around a light pole twenty yards away, he understood what Jef was attempting to do. Jef made his semi-circle behind the zombies, hooking them in the razor wire. Once he completed his loop around the building, the wire had reigning all fifteen creepers in like a tightening noose, dragging them all into the fire.
Jef had already come to terms with the fact that those former airmen where just that — former. Former people. Former friends. They were monsters now, and the only thing to do was finish what Tom had started, and save his new friend. There was no other choice.
After cutting loose the tail end of the razor wire from the side car, Jef motioned for Tom to get in. They’d bunk down in other quarters for the night.
“I’ll dig us up some fresh duds, that don’t smell like smoke,” Jef said. “Hey, I could go for some lamb dogs. How ‘bout you?” The last thing Jef wanted to do was talk about the evening’s events. Anything to keep Tom from asking about the airmen that the major set free. There was no point in talking about them anymore. They don’t exist. No need to even open up the conversation.
“Sounds good, man.”
“Maybe I’ll grab us some sodas. I think I’ve had enough vodka for a while.”
Part 7
The next morning, the air held a lingering burnt smell, and Tom’s back had a lingering pain from his fall from the roof. Both reminders that pain and destruction seem to be the norm these days. He dug his thumbs into his aching back to try ease the pain, but it only served to increase it as he put pressure on the developing bruise he couldn’t see.
Tom hadn’t forgotten his demand to Jef that he fly him back home. That all got sidetracked with the evening’s chaos, but now that plan needed to get back on track.
Trusting Jef took time, only after recent confessions and revelations. Jef was the only ally Tom had, and he surmised that the feeling was mutual. Tom thought about the last friend he had. Roger Norton was once a true blue partner in blue. Although they both were corrupt cops, Roger’s greed corrupted him further, turning him against his best friend.
Was Jef going to turn on him too? Burn him alive like he’s shown a propensity to do? Tom had to believe that Jef was different. Different because he and Jef shared a common hatred for Major Fleming and the entire brain trust that spawned this zomb
ie nightmare.
Meandering his way across the base, Tom surveyed the smoldering debris where the major met his end. A raspy gurgle came from the blackened heap as he made his way closer to it. For a split second Tom was incredulous. Damn! Doesn't this guy ever just die? He was relieved that it was only one of the zombies that Jef dragged into the fire, and not the major.
As it clawed its way across the ground toward him, Tom could see the charred creature’s legs were completely gone, yet its brain was still able to carry on its zombie nature. Tom stood above it. Even in this near powerless position the zombie reached up feebly to grab Tom’s ankle. Tom’s boot heel was quicker, and came down on its skull like cracking a walnut. One day, you’ll all be gone, Tom thought, recalling Major Fleming’s words of how in a few years the zombies will all rot away to nothing. “So will I,” he sighed. “But which one of us will go first?”
In Jef, Tom had to have hope that in the new world landscape they would need each other to survive. It never hurts to have hope… or a little back up. All he had to do was convince Jef that in a world turned upside down, they can still make a difference.
Tom contemplated as he wandered over to the F15 jet. “I know what you’re thinkin’,” Jef called, strolling from across the air field, his eyes trying not to focus on the now empty Quonset hut. “You still want to go home. But, let me ask you, Tom. I fly us home. You manage to find your daughter. Then what? We’d be in more danger there than here. This compound can protect us. Okay… last night’s events notwithstanding. I’ll hook the electric fence back up.”
“Saving our own asses isn’t going to do either of us any favors. Now is our chance to be better. If we truly want to make things right, then maybe each of us has one last shot at redemption.”
Tom had been thinking back to his time in the cargo container and his one-sided conversation with the zombie version of a man named Garvin. It was less than a week ago when Tom rationalized the need to make sense of his existence. He had thought that all his wrongs would be redeemed by putting an end to whatever Major Fleming was doing before the world was overrun with zombies. Now, it looks like it’s too late. The world is already overrun, so what’s the plan now?
The Tale of Tom Zombie (Book 4): Zombie Redemption Page 4