Shocked, Trent reached back and grabbed the little boy’s shoulder. “Elvis is with his family now. In raccoon heaven.”
Brandon shook his head and pointed. “No, Elvis.”
Sure enough, the rodent with the telltale pirate shirt was sniffing around across the street. Brooke hadn’t told Charlie about her dangerous encounter, and everyone still assumed their mascot had been dead.
“I think we should go get him,” Trent said and surprised even himself.
Charlie shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no.”
Rob disagreed. “You never leave a man behind.”
“Raccoon,” Charlie corrected.
“You never leave a raccoon behind.”
His face covered in ink, Russ stepped forward. “This sounds like a job for someone with my particular skill set. Did I ever tell you how I used to be a bounty hunter?”
Smokey rolled his eyes. “We heard the story. You turned in coyote ears one time, and you ran over the damned thing while getting a b-j from a tranny. Not very hardcore.”
“That’s not exactly how I remember it.”
Charlie sensed a mutiny brewing. “Screw it, I’ll drop down and the rest of you get going by roof. I can meet you at the corner. We don’t have time for this shit.”
“This is dumb,” Brooke said, annoyed and nervous at the same time. “Please stick to the plan.” Of course, she hadn’t told Charlie about the pregnancy yet either and didn’t want the father of her child killed while rescuing a raccoon.
“It’s settled.”
“I’m coming with you then,” Smokey said. “I’m scared of heights, and I know what happened to Mike and Jim.”
“Fine, we’ll give the rest of you a head start and I’ll set the music to go off in fifteen minutes.” Charlie kissed Brooke deeply and then looked to Rob. “You’re in charge. No matter what, make sure Brandon and the girls make it to that helicopter.”
Rob nodded. “See you soon.”
Ten minutes later, Charlie and Smokey climbed down the blanket ladder after watching the others leapfrog their way to the corner. With the helicopter coming any minute, there was little room for error, and he refused to think about what would happen if it didn’t show up.
No zombies were in sight due to their effective culling program, so Charlie and Smokey hustled over and scooped Elvis up, easy like Sunday morning. She was happy to see them and chattered away as they turned to catch the others.
That’s when things got interesting. Motorcycles, four-wheelers and finally a bus pulled around the corner and blocked their way, heading right for them. Surrounded by heavily armed men on the smaller vehicles, Charlie and Smokey stood their ground as more filed out of the bus.
A muscle-bound man with a commanding presence came forth while barking out orders. “Doc, get what you need and do it quick.” He looked at the captured and now disarmed pair. “You busters have any reason for me to let you live?”
To Charlie’s shock, the man before him was the dreadlocked prisoner he used to flip off during his daily routine outside the prison. Smokey recognized him too. “Markee, is that you?”
Marquell Washington, pimp, thug and murderer, had also been Smokey’s long time dealer, and Smokey had been one hell of a customer. “Ah shit, Smoke, I haven’t seen you in a grip. What the fuck’s up? I didn’t recognize you with that marker all over your face.” He slapped hands with his old acquaintance. The two had shared many a blunt over the years, and just like that, the sheer power of stoner luck saved the day. For the moment.
Trent peered through binoculars to assess the situation. “They’re surrounded. What do we do now?”
Rob had taken his orders seriously. “Wait and see, but not for long. We’ll leave without them if we have to.”
Charlie avoided the strongman’s gaze as Marquell and Smokey glad-handed. Like usual, Smokey lost track of time and Charlie had to step in. “We need to get going.”
“You got something more important to do?” Marquell said as his tone lost its friendliness.
“We’re bringing food to some old people. Kinda like meals on wheels.”
“Good Samaritans, huh? So where’s the food?” Marquell was growing more curious by the second as the doctor emerged with his supplies and the rest of his men beat to death several zombies lured by the sound of running engines. The crooks appeared to be enjoying it.
“We gotta find it first,” Charlie replied unconvincingly.
In prison, one is completely surrounded by liars, and Marquell had naturally learned to recognize most tells — to him, Charlie’s arched eyebrow was screaming bullshit. “Carrying a pet would only slow you down,” he said as his men closed in. “You hiding something from me, bro?”
“Maybe they got some bitches nearby,” one of Marquell’s lackeys said. The breaking and entering expert with a unibrow and bad haircut got right into Charlie’s face.
“Yeah, or drugs,” another said after using a lead pipe to deliver a deathblow to a downed zombie.
Defying their very nature, Trent and Russ left the group behind and snuck towards their captured friends, moving from one hiding spot to another. With only a pistol and shovel, it wasn’t quite clear what they hoped to accomplish, but Trent stepping up was no small miracle in itself.
Marquell now looked Charlie square in the eye. “Your bald ass looks familiar.”
Charlie silently cursed himself for derailing the plan and hoped the others were sticking to it. “I get that a lot, my mom said it’s because—”
“Yeah, I’m sure of it.” Marquell’s voice rose. “You’re the motherfucker that used to talk shit to me every day.”
It was at that exact second the stereo kicked on, playing Steve Winwood’s “Back in the High Life Again,” cranked up so loud anyone within a mile could hear it. The thugs looked around in bewilderment as the dinner bell rang, and zombies poured in from all directions, jumping through windows, running out of buildings and even rising out of an open manhole.
Marquell quickly forgot about Charlie as deadly hand to mouth combat began. The prisoners shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned their attackers by the dozens, but were quickly overwhelmed by the growing army of the dead. It was simple math.
The prisoner with the unibrow panicked and fled on a four-wheeler when one of his friends rose from the ground, freshly zombie-fied. Never one for cowardice, the boss shot him down in cold blood. “Kill anyone that runs!”
Charlie grabbed the dead man’s gun and dove behind a car with Smokey as Trent and Russ made their way over, now contending with incoming zombies and stray bullets. At this point, Elvis, the reason they were even in this predicament, ran off in the commotion.
That’s when the bus blew up and sent flaming debris and shrapnel amidst the combatants. Sergeant Zhang’s forces had been drawn by Steve Winwood’s smooth voice and the roar of battle, and they unleashed a volley of type 69 RPG’s to announce their arrival. They sprayed the area with automatic fire and things really got ugly.
“Fuck this.” Russ threw his shovel and ducked down an alleyway before disappearing behind the buildings.
“Goddammit, Russ!” Trent screamed while firing at zombies, prisoners and Chinamen alike. He soon reached his pinned down friends and narrowly avoided a hail of bullets that flew past him and tore into a nearby zombie instead. “Fatality,” he said after firing a round into the face of the twitching creature on the ground. It had been Marquell’s conscripted doctor minutes earlier.
“I never thought I’d be glad to see you,” Charlie said and fired at a soldier trying to flank them, finally hitting the man on his third shot. “Where’s everyone else?”
“They’re headed to the pickup zone. Except for Russ. He bailed and—” Trent was interrupted by the sound of a low-flying helicopter. It raked the People’s Liberation Army with rounds and took off, chased by a withering assault of small arms fire and RPG’s .
Seeing the enemy distracted, Marquell crawled out from under several corpses and slid across the ho
od of the car, crashing into Smokey. “Don’t shoot man, same team,” he said quickly as Trent raised his pistol.
Charlie nodded. “He’s right, it’s gonna take all of us to get out of here. What we gotta do is—”
Heavy machine gun fire rained down on the Chinese position from overhead, interrupting Charlie’s plan but giving them an opening just the same. Shouts of, “Get some, get some, get some!” rang out, meaning Russ was deep in the midst of an imaginary Vietnam War flashback. He might have been a deadbeat dad, a petty thief and a statutory rapist, but he was also a patriotic son of a bitch.
Instead of fleeing, Russ had made his way to the back of the apartment and scaled the alley gate in order to reach Trent’s window. From there it was a quick trip upstairs to unleash his fury on the invading army. Having the high ground and a clear shot, he was knocking them down like bowling pins.
By this point, most of the prisoners had fallen to bullets or bites, and the “good guys” were seriously outnumbered. Still, Russ kept up his onslaught and dozens of freshly made zombies added to the mayhem.
But the soldiers kept coming too, and it didn’t take long for Russ to run out of ammo. Like a man possessed, he jumped off the back of the building and twisted in midair, his mullet flowing in the wind as he grabbed the chain link fence on his way down. It was glorious, until Zombie Cliff sprang at the fence and bit Russ’s finger off in one jerky motion. The toothless and dehydrated nightmare’s rictus grin revealed a jagged jaw sharpened by months of gnawing on brick walls.
“You asshole!” Russ flipped Cliff off with his remaining middle finger. His next move was to bash in the window of Smokey’s hybrid SUV and grab the keys under the seat. If there was anything deadlier than a drunken suicidal redneck with a machine gun, it was a drunken suicidal redneck behind the wheel. As Steve Winwood continued on repeat above the din of battle, Russ blasted through one gate and then the other, obliterating Cliff and bursting onto the main street, seventy starving zombies in tow.
Bullets riddled the car and the zombies on top of it, yet Russ drove right into the ranks of the invading troops, acting as a blocker for the bloodthirsty crowd behind him. It was a massacre and Sergeant Zhang was the first to be swept away by the hungry zombie tidal wave.
Charlie, Smokey and even Marquell cheered as the momentum shifted and the Chinese soldiers broke ranks and fled with the cannibals in hot pursuit. That’s when Charlie noticed Trent was gone. Apparently, the cop’s heroism had limits and after cheating death one too many times, his scumbag side came roaring back with a vengeance. He’d used Russ’s distraction to slip away unnoticed.
Meanwhile, Russ was about to pull around for a victory lap when he realized his steering and brakes were out. And the engine was on fire. And the local swimming pool was right in front of him. He lit a cigarette with his good hand and went through one more fence before crashing into the deep end.
The SUV began to sink as dirty water rushed in and Russ’s stomach began to churn. He took a drag from the cigarette while engine smoke filled the car and a handful of zombies splashed into the water above him. “And they said THESE would kill me.”
Chapter 38
Fancy Meeting You Here
Rob fought back the urge to rescue his friends when the music started and the shit hit the fan. But this was the first time he’d ever been in charge of something important, and he was not going to fail. He’d had a lifetime of that already. Big Rob Magnusson the idiot, the dirty kid, the punching bag, the laughingstock. Not today.
They watched in horror as the zombies swarmed by and then in shock as the Chinese troops arrived. Still, Rob maintained a steady demeanor and kept them focused by repeating the plan like a mantra. “Go down the ladder, two blocks north, one block west, everyone follow me. Go down the ladder, two blocks north, one block west, everyone follow me.”
The flow of cannibals past their position slowed to a trickle, and when the helicopter flew by, it was game time. Rob zoomed down the ladder and effortlessly split a slow moving zombie’s skull in half with the whirl of his bat. Left-Nut followed with Brandon while the women huddled in close behind. There was no turning back.
Charlie’s plan had crumbled through a volatile mixture of stupidity, bad luck, and bravery. Now they were crossing no man’s land in early daylight during the middle of a battle royal. A casual observer probably would’ve expected their escape to turn out exactly like this.
The refugees made quick progress and only slowed down long enough for Rob to annihilate whatever hapless zombie was dumb enough to give chase. He was performing like a gladiator and it didn’t matter if the zombies came two or three at a time. Headshot, broken spine, broken neck, splattered face, over and over. He had help too, with Brooke firing away until her pistol was empty while Kate put a cast-iron skillet to good use. Left-Nut continued to carry Brandon and simply positioned himself between the others as blockers. His self-preservation skills were finally put to good use.
Covered in blood and entrails, the genial giant now looked like he was straight out of a b-horror movie. At one point, the killing tool slipped from Rob’s hand and forced him to assume his old wrestling stance. He maneuvered around one assailant and power bombed it onto the sidewalk like a ripe pumpkin.
Kate wiped the bat clean on her shirt and handed it back. “Almost there,” she said with a mixture of disgust and encouragement on her face.
They went around the corner and found the helicopter parked ahead as promised. Fifty yards to go. Forty. Thirty. The Black Hawk fired on several nearby zombies and the group waved frantically to avoid getting shot as well. Twenty yards, so close that the downwash battered their clothes and blew the women’s hair around.
One last zombie approached and Rob unleashed every remaining bit of rage he had left. The aluminum bat bent on impact and the broken beast tumbled end over end before stopping in a pile of shattered death. Success.
Before Rob knew what was happening, Kate grabbed him by the jaw and planted a passionate kiss on his lips. Left-Nut lined up for his own smooch and was quickly turned down. He still had it.
The soldiers gave a warm greeting, checked them for bites, and brought Brandon into the cockpit. Next, they strapped the women in while a still blushing Rob grabbed the gunner’s shoulder. “Can you wait five minutes?”
As though on cue, more zombies streamed towards the helicopter, and the gunner effortlessly mowed them down. “We’re leaving now,” the man said unemotionally. “This city’s a goddamned graveyard and we’re not coming back.”
Rob stepped out of the helicopter. “Where are you going to take them?”
“There’s a camp due south of Cantonville. Do you know the area?” the man asked.
Big Rob beamed a toothy smile. “Know it? That’s where we grew up.” He reached in and forcefully dragged Left-Nut off the helicopter.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Never leave a man behind, remember?”
Brooke made eye contact with Rob as the chopper took off. “Tell Charlie I’m pregnant!”
Viking Rob Magnusson picked up his bent baseball bat, grabbed his cursing friend by the scruff of the neck, and headed towards the sound of gunfire.
* * *
Trent was jolted awake by what he hoped was a bucket of warm water splashing into his face. Helpless and scared, he strained against his bonds in the darkness, only making them slick with blood.
The dirty cop had abandoned his friends an hour earlier and against his own intuition, snuck inside the Halloween store. It was his nature to be a coward after all, and as things headed seriously south, it was the obvious choice. But he hadn’t even shut the door when a hard object crashed upside his head and knocked him out cold. Now he was at the tender mercy of whatever lurked in the pitch darkness. He could hear it moving closer.
“Uh hello,” Trent said and played his best average Joe routine. “I’m a cop.” His jaw hurt like hell and was most likely dislocated. Possibly broken.
His c
aptor turned on a flashlight and revealed a person wearing a translucent clown mask with makeup haphazardly smeared across the face. Trent hated clowns. The thing crept forward as liquid hit the floor.
“A fear piss? God you’re such a pussy,” came the familiar female voice. It was the last one he expected to hear. Sarah Birdsong removed the mask and was even prettier than he remembered. On the downside, she had turned pants-crapping insane.
“Thank God you survi—”
A fist flew out of the darkness and solidly connected with Trent’s eye socket, rocking his head against the metal chair. “You rancid piece of shit,” Sarah said with bile rising in her throat.
“I’m sorry I—”
Another punch cut him off. “Shut it.”
“Sarah, I’m different now. I was scared.”
She covered his mouth with duct tape. “You’re not talking your way out of this. I do suppose you’re wondering what’s going on. After you abandoned me, I shot so many bastards crawling into the car it was like a cocoon of dead bodies. And I was there for a whole day until somebody cut me out. Do you know how much pain I was in?” She patted his head. “You will.”
Sarah pulled up a chair. “After an elderly couple nursed me back to health, I made my way over here. Of course, like the herpes you gave me and lied about, you were still around.”
Trent continued to quietly work at the tape around his wrists, but the more he strained, the farther it pushed into his flesh.
“Then I watched and waited and hoped you’d screw up. By the way, you and your idiot friends snuck up on me a while back. One of those mannequins was me. I just stood still and you morons walked right by me.”
The tape began to tear. A little more and he’d have an arm free. She continued, unaware and clearly enjoying her captive audience’s discomfort. “You called me a badge bunny, a holster sniffer. You even sexted my naked pictures around the department. And you know, I could forgive all that. But what kind of human shit-stain leaves an injured person behind like you did?”
Dead Drunk: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse... One Beer at a Time Page 19