We both drew our weapons knowing that we were clearly outnumbered, but sometimes, the numbers don’t mean jack-shit when you have the right strategy and a little luck.
The first ones to attack were slower. Not like the ones from the day before.
Have to keep our cool, I thought as my clammy palms tightened around the wooden handle of my hammer.
Screaming out orders like a boot camp drill sergeant, Kyle had us working together building a fierce defense. As the creatures lumbered over one by one, he simply pushed them back by digging his pole into their chest, and I reached out and cracked them on top of the skull when they were off balance. They were spread out enough for this to work for the first six that approached.
Kyle and I were slowly retreating backwards. The Hummer was much further away than I had felt comfortable with, and the engine was still running. We had let ourselves be pushed against the glass door of the filling station.
The more recently dead, like the postman and his three friends, were too fast, making our current tactics useless. When they came at us from both sides, I lost my balance and fell backward bouncing against the filling station wall, thrusting me towards the hard pavement with a crash that sent my hammer bouncing a few feet from my grasp.
Kyle stepped back, swinging his metal rod around over his head to create a diversion. For the most part, it worked; three of them went after him. However, the postman lunged on top of me. I reached up and grabbed his postal bag satchel; sliding the strap between his teeth as he came down at my face.
Rotting flesh reeked from his mouth as I was barely keeping him from chomping down. The stench alone was enough to make my fight falter. One of the other creatures, a large bastard dressed in overalls, left Kyle and jumped on top of the postman, climbing up over his shoulders.
With the breath knocked out of me, my eyes locked onto the hammer that was just out of my reach. Pinned to the ground, with these cold monsters clamoring to sink their teeth into my body, I needed to make my move. This wasn’t where I was going to die.
Letting go of the satchel strap, I let the postman drill his forehead into my shoulder. Rocking back and forth and with two big jerks, I was able to pivot my upper body just close enough to the wooden handle that would save my life.
I brought the hammer down on the postman first. He still had the strap stuck in his mouth, unable to get his teeth clenched on any part of my flesh. I felt a cold liquid soak into my shirt when the dark red ooze flowed freely from its skull, and down across my chest.
As I pulled back to hit the second one, I heard the glass from the gas station shatter. In the flurry of the moment, Kyle had lifted one of them over his head and thrown it through the door of the shop. As the glass rained down, something moved within the shadows. There were more of them, though how many, I wasn’t sure.
Trapped under the creatures, struggling to free myself from the bastard still chomping at my face, I almost shit myself as I watched what emerged from the depths of the shadows. What appeared to be just a partial zombie, and what I quickly realized was the leftovers from the guy siphoning gas outside, slowly crawled out through the shattered glass.
Its one arm, head and torso were all that remained, and I found myself horrified at the thought of the thing still being able to function. The horror was magnified when I realized it was pulling itself directly towards me.
This torso creature was using its one arm and face to pull itself closer. Every time it brought its head down to move forward, little pools of flesh were left behind like footprints. Its lips were completely scrapped off, revealing a mouth full of broken teeth. Only one eye remained, as the other had been scrapped away by the ground.
With the awareness that this thing would be on me in just moments, I violently shook back and forth attempting to free myself. Beads of sweat and tears were running down my face, my muscles burned as I pushed with every ounce of energy I had left; to no avail.
Looking towards Kyle, he was screaming as he wildly fought back the creature he was dealing with. Turning my focus back towards the fat bastard crawling on top of me, I lifted the hammer, steading my shaking arm.
“Patience, John. You’ll get one chance at this,” I whispered to myself.
Letting the bastard on top of me loose, he dove in, mouth wide open. I could see his tonsils as I smashed the hammer sideways across his head. It fell limp, lying on top of the postal worker which still left me still pinned down between the pavement, the wall, and the two creatures.
My eyes were drawn back towards the abomination dragging itself closer towards me. With the rhythmic beat of a drum, it continued to bring its face down over and over again on the black ground, dragging itself within just feet of where I was pinned down.
The hammer was in the opposite arm to the direction the torso creature was coming from, rending it useless.
I thought of Jenn and my child. 900 miles away. I couldn’t stop. No giving up.
With the creature just inches from my shoulder, I let out a primal scream, and drove my arm down across its head with my elbow, driving its face into the pavement and knocking it back a few feet. Its one arm wailed around, frantically reaching towards me.
In that instant, a metal rod dove down through the torso creatures head. I could see the blood soaked metal come down through its teeth, knocking some of them out to the ground. Saved by Kyle once again. I knew he wouldn’t always be there. If I was a cat, I had just used another of my nine lives.
Pulling the weapon out of the skull, he placed it on the ground. He then casually walked over between the building and I, and put his feet up against the wall of the gas station to help shove the creatures off me.
They rolled off, spilling that familiar dark ooze across the pavement. As I stood up, I looked down at the Torso freak and said, “You know what? I now know what is going to keep me up at night.”
Chapter 9
There are moments in our lives when time is divided into two parts.
We slept in the Hummer that night, nestled behind a low hanging billboard that read: “Retirement is closer than you think!” I remember smirking when I saw it. I had pictured retirement a little differently.
With a blue sleeping bag over my legs, I pulled my phone down from the dashboard. The solar charger wasn’t in direct sunlight long enough, and was still not turning on. Already owning one of these things, I knew that they needed to sit in direct sunlight for four or five hours before I’d get even a few bars of charge. It was the proverbial blessing and a curse.
I looked up at the full moon, watching some dark clouds pass by. Kyle was asleep, or at least as asleep as one could pull off, given the circumstances. He had told me to sleep with one eye open.
I finally drifted off thinking about my wife, hoping that she had found refuge and was safe. Once my phone was charged, I would have to find an operating cell tower and call. At the very least, I hoped to get a message to her to let her know I was still alive.
Back in those first few days of this mess, I would fall asleep with my hammer sitting next to me. Now I can’t fall asleep unless it’s clutched firmly in my hand.
The night passed uneventfully, though morning came too soon. We received a rude awakening when three zombies stumbled past the billboard, moaning loudly. Neither Kyle nor I risked moving a muscle. I held my breath, listening to them until the sound died away.
I was standing outside taking my morning piss when I heard a sound in the distance. At first, I couldn’t tell quite what it was; it was just an echo really, carried on the gentle breeze.
I looked at Kyle, his face telling me that he heard it, too. We both sat in silence, an ear turned in the direction we thought it came from. It kept getting closer, and louder.
“Helicopter,” Kyle said, scanning the sky. He pointed suddenly toward the tree line.
I looked to the north, glimpsing it through the trees. The chopper was army green with two large rotating blades keeping it airborne. Kyle called it a Chinook, confirming that
it was military.
“Sure would be nice to be in that thing right about now,” I said.
He nodded, studying the aircraft with a scowl. “Maybe not.”
Looking back at the chopper as it hovered closer; even I could tell something was off. It was rising and descending wildly in the air when the tail suddenly jerked from side-to-side, and the whole thing plunged a good fifty feet. I found myself feeling glad to be planted safely on the ground.
As it passed by Kyle and I, the door on the side of the Chopper swung open. Even in the distance, I could make out a man emerging from the side. He was dressed in green, matching the color of the aircraft. I took a step back in disbelief as the person leapt from the side door. My heart skipped a beat as he was almost immediately followed by what appeared to be a woman as she cast herself out of the cabin in tow.
The guy in green pulled a parachute, but it didn’t have time to fully deploy as the woman came crashing down on top of him, crippling any chance of a slowed decent. I don’t know if they were zombies or people, but one thing was for sure as we watched the two of them tangled up together, plummeting toward the earth; they were heading for a certain death.
The chopper continued moving erratically, and we watched as it dropped another fifty or so feet.
“That thing’s coming down!” yelled Kyle. “If it stays in one piece, I can fly it!”
We both raced to the Hummer. Kyle had his head hanging out the side window directing me on where to go.
In the distance, hovering at maybe one hundred feet above a small park, we watched as the chopper started to spin completely out of control. The tail hit first, flinging the rotor directly through a small yellow slide nearby. The nose came crashing down, crippling under the force of its own weight. The two blades on top smashed into the grass at the same time, sending the entire thing hurtling into the rest of a nearby wooden playground.
I braked the Hummer just as a massive cloud of dust and debris rocketed into the air. The ground was consumed by thick black smoke. I wouldn’t think that anyone could have lived through that.
There are moments in our lives when time is divided into two parts. Before an incident, and after. These moments are usually life changing, and you can always look back on them, knowing that they existed. Very rarely do you know they are happening at the time.
My parents dying when I was in grade school, meeting Jenn, finding out we were pregnant – all significant moments, and each of them propelling me off into a different direction. Later, I would realize that this was one of those moments. This was one of those times where the pot would get stirred once again, and it all started with a scream.
The moment we opened our doors, we heard someone frantically calling from inside the downed chopper. Kyle and I made our way as close as we could, but the fumes from the leaking fuel filled the air. The twisted metal body was sitting on its side.
Kyle ran up a small wooden ladder that led him to the top of the broken playground. He was just high enough to look down through the open door that now faced the sky.
“He’s alive!” he said, shielding his eyes to see better.
I darted over to the front of the chopper, where the blood soaked windshield lay shattered. The copilot was missing his head, and his body was badly mangled. I could see movement in the midsection of the chopper, but could not make out exactly what was happening.
Kyle’s vantage point was better, and I could hear him yelling down to the person trapped inside
“We’ll get you out. Don’t panic!”
“Don’t panic my ass! I’m trapped in here with one of them!” came the frantic yet pain filled reply.
“Where?” Kyle demanded.
“It’s pinned between one of the seats and a wall, but it’s getting loose!” the guy yelled breathlessly.
I made my way up beside Kyle. The platform we stood on was actually part of a pretend pirate ship, complete with a skull and crossbones flag waving in the air. Quite fitting, if not a bit ironic.
Peering in, I could see the zombie pilot, still wearing his helmet, pinned at the front of the chopper. His arms were just inches from the guy, who appeared to have a gut wound. He had one bloody hand on his stomach, and the other on a metal case.
I looked nervously around the park. The crash had been loud, too loud. The sun was just peeking up over a large hill and I could see a bunch of the undead’s silhouettes moving towards us as they came charging over the hill along with it.
“Now or never,” I muttered. Kyle dropped in through the open side door. The pilot had his hands clutched around his would-be victim’s shoe when Kyle kicked the thing in the face, knocking the zombie’s helmet off.
After unlocking the guy’s shoulder strap, Kyle lifted him up to me. I reached down and hefted him through the side door. Trying to stand at the top of the play set, the man’s legs buckled causing him to collapse to the wood. Just as I started to pull Kyle up, the dead pilot ripped his own leg off in an effort to get at him. Kyle gave several hard kicks as his eyes urged me to hurry. I gave a final heave just as he hooked his foot on the edge. We slammed back against the play set, scrambling to get away. I didn’t know how long that thing would stay in there, but I certainly wasn’t going to find out.
With a grunt, Kyle slung the man, still clutching his metal briefcase over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Down the stairs, and around a tire swing, we made it to the Hummer just as the horde of creatures began to close in around the chopper.
I opened the back door, and Kyle threw him in. We both climbed into the front seats just as the first zombie reached us. It was dressed in a suit, not unlike the one I was wearing. We felt the front and back tires sequentially bump up into the air as I drove over Mr. Suit.
We traveled a number of miles, passing various groups of zombies; some of which had a couple dozen; others we passed only had a two or three. Knowing that we would not be able to stop for any real length of time, we tried to put as much distance between the last one we saw and ourselves before we pulled over to tend to our passengers wound. In the meantime, I had handed him my boss’s old coat, and Kyle applied as much pressure as possible to his stomach to slow the bleeding. I wondered how long it would take him to change from human to zombie. I couldn’t shake that thought.
A mile or so in, the guy stopped screaming. I glanced back, sure that he was dead. He was an older gentleman, still in great shape for his age, and had a full head of silver hair. He lay bleeding all over the back seat, clutching his briefcase as if his life depended on it. Kyle and I were discussing where to head when the man began to speak.
“Water. Do you have any water?” he croaked.
I looked back at him, and saw blood pooling on the floorboards, as Kyle reached into the small cooler and pulled out one of the bottles we scavenged the day before.
Twisting off the cap, he tried to hand it to him, but the old man couldn’t lift his hand to grab it. Instead, Kyle reached over and poured some into his mouth. He tried to swallow, immediately choking on the liquid, and shot blood splatter across the back of the front passenger seat.
Minutes later, he passed out from shock.
Kyle and I drove for twenty minutes or so in silence. We passed a number of wrecked cars, a downed power line and the remains of a small house that had burned to the ground.
When we were convinced that we had taken enough turns and detours to shake even the smartest zombie, we began looking for a place to pull over. We finally found a small bridge that had an access road, which twisted down to a sewer drainage system below. Agreeing that it would be a good place to hide, we parked under the bridge and positioned the Hummer so we could see one hundred yards or so in both east and west directions.
We pulled the old man out of the back of the vehicle, and laid him down on the concrete floor of the bridge. He was breathing, but just barely.
Kyle tore open his shirt, and we saw that there was something lodged in the right hand side of the old man’s stomach, keeping the
wound open, allowing the precious red-black liquid to pour from his body.
Kyle pulled out the less than adequate emergency kit that we had scavenged, and rummaged through the Band-Aids and Neosporin before he found a small needle and thread.
Taking a nearby stick, and shoving it sideways into the old man’s mouth, he asked me to put my hands over the guy’s face to keep him from screaming too loud and alerting any nearby creatures.
The gentleman’s eyes went wide, as he woke up in that instant, and realized what we were about to do. Kyle reached down, and grabbed the end of the metal object in his gut and carefully pulled it out. The man’s eyes closed hard, and he tried to scream through the stick and my hands, his entire body tensing and arching into the air.
Kyle fell back before he regained his balance and began sewing up the wound with the needle and thread. Still trying to scream, the man’s face was bright red, and had a mix of tears and sweat running down to the pavement, when he finally passed out again.
Kyle was no expert, and this guy was going to have a nasty scar, but he was able to close up the hole. Only time would tell if we did it soon enough.
Chapter 10
Enjoying the finer things in life.
We used the water under the bridge to help clean out the Hummer. Washing away dried blood, old food wrappers and that half-eaten sandwich from my boss. I found myself wondering which was really more disgusting.
Not spending too much time in that particular spot, we used the rest of the day scavenging through more cars for food and siphoning more gasoline. We had a good system down, and were mindful to keep an eye out for any zombies moving around to avoid the situation we had at the gas station.
The old guy was unconscious in the back seat the entire time. Every once in a while, I could hear him grunt in pain, but his eyes never opened.
900 Miles: A Zombie Novel Page 6