Keep Your Crowbar Handy

by SP Durnin

  "Do you think we should take some of these?" She pointed at the racks of riding pants and jackets. "They'd be decent protection, right?"

  He broke off ogling her like a teenager with a quick shake. "Sure, but some of it would be damn restrictive, especially the jackets. Most people can't stretch their arms over their heads wearing one."

  "True," She replied. Then, bending over at the waist, she collapsed her upper body forward, placed her hands flat on the floor, and slid easily down into the splits. Kat looked at him with her legs extended out ninety degrees to each side and slowly rolled her pelvis forward, then back, in a display of great flexibility. Jake managed to keep his eyes from bugging out, but he was forced to swallow against a suddenly dry throat. "I'm not most people."

  "Good point. Take a few pair." He looked at the wall of helmets. "I'd say we should grab some of those too, but there's no traffic anymore. Besides, they'd limit visibility."

  "I think you're right. I for one, feel the need to have a really good view of my surroundings with all those things walking around." The pretty Asian rose smoothly to her feet again and pointed behind him. "You'd look totally hot in those."

  "Leather chaps? No way." Said items even had tassels on the outer seams.

  "Laurel would agree with me," she said, mischievously.

  "Changing the subject, now," he said firmly. "Let's go help the others."

  They gassed the bikes from a pump in the dealership's maintenance area, then swiped a few five-gallon containers for fuel. They also managed to load both Hondas quietly onto a small, two-wheeled, motorcycle trailer on the showroom floor. As Elle secured the bikes with tie-down straps, Jake and Leo opened the bay door, backed the Hummer inside, and hooked it up to the trailer. Kat had been keeping watch at the door, Jake's rifle held loosely across her body, scanning the area for movement as the others finished. She was the one who noticed the anomaly.

  "Um. Jake? I think you need to take a look at this," she called.

  The writer moved up beside her in the doorway and followed the line of her arm to a house seventy yards to the south. There was something strange in the yard on the opposite side of the two-story. Something he couldn't make sense of from a distance.

  That looks like… He frowned.

  "Sergeant, I want you to stay here with Leo," Jake said. "Lock this door and keep searching the shop for anything that might be useful. We'll be back shortly."

  "Got it." Elle punched the younger man in the shoulder. "Come on, kiddo. Let's see what we can loot."

  "I'm not a kid," he replied, helping her yank the rolling door down.

  * * *

  Kat pulled her pistol, then she and Jake began moving cautiously towards the home. The lack of zombies in the area had been nagging at him. Granted, Bainbridge wasn't a large community by any means, but something seemed off.

  As the two crept on, the almost ever-present smell of rot grew stronger. Its source was in the dwelling's front yard. A line of stakes ran before the face of the home, each topped with a human head in various states of decay.

  The smell wafted towards them, not only from the hideous display but also from a large pile of charred furniture and, to Jake's disgust, bodies. Thirty of them if you went by the number of staked heads. The remains were just too obliterated to tell.

  "What... in the hell?" Kat said, wide-eyed. "That's gross. I can understand killing zombies and all but taking their heads as trophies? Two words: Zombie goo. When exactly does getting that crap all over you become fun?"

  Jake's eyes moved along the awful line, looking intently at each face in turn. "How do you kill a zombie?"

  She gave him a quizzical look. "You destroy the brain? Duh."

  He stepped forward and took her gently by the shoulders. "Do you see any trauma to even one of these heads?"

  Kat looked past him, brow furrowing, then her eyes went wide. "But that would mean…"

  "They were survivors."

  Her dark eyes tracked across the yard. "Some of these are really small. Just kids."

  Jake didn't trust himself to speak.

  Kat's face went harsh as she looked back towards the center of town. "Do you think whoever did this is still around?"

  "With this many stakes? Oh yeah." Jake followed her gaze, realizing they probably didn't even have to look very hard to find the murderer's hideaway.

  Images of mayhem began flashing through his brain as they made their way back to the dealership. Even if it was the end of the world, there was just some shit he wasn't going to put up with.

  "How are we going to find them?" Kat said quietly as they trotted across the grass-choked lot.

  He smiled coldly.

  * * *

  "Now." Jake whispered.

  He watched, with great satisfaction, as a rocket-propelled grenade streaked down into the large propane tank behind the pizza parlor. Elle had been very willing to climb the nearby rickety water tower lugging an RPG, and the enthusiastic explosion put a huge smile on her face.

  The tank had been sitting approximately fifteen yards to the right of a quartet of corn-fed assholes, shooting at the corpse of a young man. They'd hung it from the lamppost behind Mama Malscone's. The fact that the four had been taking pot shots at it with their rifles alone had been enough for Jake to mentally sign their death warrants. The clincher had been the obviously restrained female forms he'd seen inside the restaurant on the forward looking infra red or FLIR.

  George had insisted they take both a Jager Pro thermal scope, along with a pair of ATN starlight goggles, and Jake had agreed. Both could be worth their weight in gold under the right circumstances, and they didn't take up much room in the bed of the zombie-proof Hummer.

  Jake experienced the brief but strong urge to pitch a grenade through the front door, when he saw the guard who was watching the women begin to paw at one of them. Both had been secured to tables somehow because, while the orange-toned female image struggled, her arms remained stretched out over her head. Jake refrained from pitching because not only would he have pulped the lone guard but also the prisoners inside. Flames shot up behind his eyes as the bastard started cutting away the woman's clothing, tossing it on the floor near the tables. By the time Jake made his way up the dangling rope to the restaurant's second-floor window, he was seething inside and abso-fucking-lutely ready to fucking kill the first fucking man he fucking saw.

  After hoisting himself through the window, Jake pulled the massive Hammer pistol from his thigh holster. His M4 would've been bulky at best and noisy at worst, even during such a short climb, so he'd left it in their Hummer. The Hammer would do for close quarters. Loud, powerful, intimidating. Everything the doctor ordered for an afternoon of mischief and mayhem.

  His low command signaled Elle to smoke the four out back. The explosion caused by the RPG rupturing and then igniting the propane within the tank was loud. They needed to wrap this little rescue operation up quickly, because dead for miles around were sure to have heard the noise and would come stumbling in. The enormous fireball shooting skyward was a bit hard to miss, too.

  All the building's back windows blew inward, peppering Jake with sharp little chips of hot pain. He ignored cuts that opened on his arm, and the shallow one along his jaw line, as he sped down the narrow staircase to peek into the restaurant proper. Almost a quarter of the buildings rear had collapsed (what he assumed was most of the kitchen.) There were broken fixtures and glass everywhere. Even a few of the rearmost tables had toppled with the force of the explosion. Redneck Number Five was fumbling with his pants, as the blonde he'd been assaulting kicked at his legs and torso. Her friend was preoccupied with screaming her head off, too distracted to be of help.

  Thumbing off the safety on his pistol, Jake slid towards the startled trio.

  "Don't move, asshole!" he yelled.

  The guard was too frazzled to deal with him and ran for the back door, firing his deer rifle wildly. Jake dove behind a pair of booths along the wall as the bullets tore up nearby p
added bench seats, sending splinters and tufts of stuffing everywhere.

  The guard's gun clicked empty, allowing Jake to roll out from the shelter of his booth and send a quartet of rounds at the man's back as the bastard ran. The writer had no qualms about doing so. The fleeing shithead had just assaulted at least one woman then shot at him. And a back shot was still a shot. His aim suffered as he rolled, so while one creased the outside of the guard's thigh and another passed close enough to his ear that he felt the heat of its passing, the man made it to the rear exit.

  The would-be assailant got half a dozen strides through the door when a storm of bullets tore him in half.

  Leo had driven their Hummer through vacant backyards, merrily murdering helpless yard gnomes, covered by the noise of the explosion. Pulling abreast of Mama Malscone's back door, he waited for Jake to flush the last man outside. The guard was smashed to the left as Kat unloaded on him with the M123 mini-gun, sending its projectiles through the cretin's body at two-thousand rounds per minute. She tore up quite a bit of asphalt around him too, but that was to be expected. After all, she'd only fired the weapon once in Foster's safe house.

  Jug-band Casanova didn't even have a chance to scream as rounds chewed away flesh, shredded vital organs, and splintered his bones on their way through, tearing on to perforate the side of the Dairy Queen next door.

  Kat released the trigger as what was left of the poor bastard finished skidding, mainly in two large and messy lumps, across the pavement.

  "Yuck!" Leo called up from the driver's seat.

  "Yeah, but effective," she replied. "Jake?"

  "I'm good!" Ensuring the mini-gun wasn't pointed in his direction before stepping through, he waved out the door. "Leo, pick up Elle and get back here! Kat, help me with the survivors! Bring a couple pairs of those pants along!"

  He jogged to the Humvee, snatched the bolt cutters from its rear toolbox, and sped back through the thickening smoke into the restaurant. Kat made sure she had her sword, pistol, and ammo clips, then grabbed the saddlebags full of biker wear before trotting after him. She paused momentarily, to spit on a smear outside the door that used to be human.

  Upon seeing the two women, she fervently wished those men out back would rise as zombies, just so she could kill them again. From the sick expression on the writer's face, she could see he was thinking the same thing, and she felt a rush of heat that had nothing to do with the growing fire in the kitchen.

  Bad Kat, she thought. Burning building, remember? No time for heavy petting. Darn it.

  The nearest woman was a peroxide addict. An obvious bleached-blonde, who was too relieved to do much but repeat thank you over and over as Jake cut her restraints. He left Kat to help the traumatized woman dress and moved to free the second. She was also blonde, but without her friend's tendency towards all things Clorox. The woman watched him closely as he cut the shackles securing her to the pool table and attempted to cover her important bits when the tough steel finally parted.

  "Who the hell are you people?" she demanded.

  "No time to explain. Come with us if you want to live." He held out a pair of leather pants and a Harley Davidson tank top.

  Kat laughed and Jake looked at her in confusion as the women hurriedly dressed.

  "Where ees Sar-ah Conna?" Kat grated in her best Austrian accent. "Take meh too har... Now!"

  He sighed and they all started for the back door.

  Smoke from the kitchen was getting mighty thick. As he cleared the swinging metal doors, Jake noticed the paint beginning to bubble from the awful heat within. Then the group was in the parking lot where Leo and Elle waited in the Hummer, just beyond the circle of blasted pavement and the pyre of Mama Malscone's. Both relaxed as their friends hurried to the vehicle, with the two newcomers in tow. Leo hopped into the bed, allowing the blondes to share the bench seat with Elle. Jake slid behind the wheel again, and after insuring all its doors were locked securely, raced the Hummer into the empty streets. Thoughts of zombies were looming large in all their minds just then, and it seemed like a good time to get the fuck out of Dodge.

  "Everyone okay?" Kat began pulling water bottles from a cooler between the front seats and passing them back to the others. She opened one, handed it to Jake, and then grabbed another for herself, as the pair they'd rescued nodded.

  "We are now," the less shaken of the blondes replied. Her friend was still a wreck, extremely pale and a little wild around the eyes.

  "What are your names?" Elle asked.

  The calmer of the two looked at the pretty soldier hesitantly.

  "Unless you want us to call you Barbie One and Barbie Two?"

  The woman gave an amused snort and downed half the water in the twenty ounce bottle before answering. "I'm Gwen Harker. That's Donna Blake with the day glow hair."

  Said blonde waived listlessly.

  "Are you military?" Gwen asked.

  "Just survivors. Like yourselves." Jake turned onto Route 41 and accelerated up to a whopping thirty-seven miles per hour. That wasn't a high rate of speed before the outbreak, but now? With all the wrecked and burned out cars, abandoned roadblocks, and the odd walking maggot-head, it was about as fast as you ever wanted to drive on unfamiliar roads. At least if you didn't want to become a stain across the front of an SUV. Or end up wearing flaming fuel after ramming into the side of a gasoline truck. "How did Cletus and the Moonshine Brigade back there capture you?"

  "We were spending a week at the cabin Donna's family owns... owned... just outside Shawnee State Forest near Blue Creek when it happened." The blonde rubbed her forehead and continued. "There were eight of us then. We lost the twins, Amy and Andy, that first day. There were six zombies down by the carports when we tried to leave. They were employees of the Lake Lodge down the road, I think. The things were all over Amy before we saw them. They started eating her. Her brother tried to help, but a pair of them ignored his punches and started biting him too. We ran back inside and locked the doors. Ryan, Josh and, Brandon... barricaded the first floor, then we watched from the loft while those things kept roaming around outside the cabin. "

  "How long were you trapped?" Jake asked.

  Gwen shook her head. "Not long. They wandered off five or six hours later. We kept quiet and out of sight, so I guess they just lost interest. Once they left, Brandon suggested we search for weapons and stuff. We found a few shovels and a pair of baseball bats in the maintenance shed next door. We had plenty of food at first, and there was a well out back. We all thought we could wait whatever this is out."

  Jake shook his head and lit a smoke after cracking his window. He'd taken a few cartons of American Spirits from the dealership, and he was seriously stressed. After blowing up Corn-fed Red and friends back at the pizza parlor, he needed some sweet nicotine.

  "How did you end up in Bainbridge?" Kat asked, short hair waving with the breeze. She'd dropped her window too, even though his smoking didn't bother her.

  "We were running out of food, so we hiked through Rarden and up Route 124 earlier this week. We ran into a group of them, fifteen or so, just outside town at the bowling alley." Gwen's face displayed a thousand yard stare as she relived the event. "Ryan and Josh never made it back outside. Tammi kind of flipped out and just took off running. We don't know what happened to her. The three of us tried losing those things in town, but we kept running into more. By the time we decided to bag looking for a place to hide, there were over thirty of them following us. We were about to go cross country, up to South Salem, but..."

  "But those guys found you?" Kat prompted.

  Gwen nodded, her eyes harsh. "Yeah. They were waiting in the lot behind that pizza shop. When they started shooting, we thought we were saved. Then, after they checked the bodies, they turned their guns on us. Brandon tried to talk with them, but the fuckers ignored him. They started calling him nigger and telling us we were whores. One of the younger ones put the shackles on us, while the other three kept us covered. Afterwards, they took Donna and me ins
ide. They made us strip down, to check for weapons they said, but they were just getting their jollies. We realized we were in some serious trouble when they chained us to the pool tables. Then they started on Brandon."

  "They killed him," Donna said quietly. "They beat him for almost an hour. Then they shot him and dragged him outside. The one guarding kept chuckling as they hung his body from the light out back."

  "They bragged about how they'd add him to their trophy collection," Gwen spat.

  "Well, they won't be doing anything at this point," Elle chuckled, "except being used as prophylactics by thorny-dicked demons in the Ninth Ring of Hell."

  The writer was at a loss over what to say after that comment. "Well. Uh. That's... um... graphic."

  Elle grinned. "I've always had a way with words."

  "Kind of comforting actually," Gwen said with an evil smile.

  Jake got the feeling she'd left a few details out of her story, but he didn't want to push. Both women had been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours and needed a little time to wrap their heads around it all.

  But that was life for you in the zombie apocalypse.

  * * *

  What had been Tracy Dixon was stumbling along down I-71.

  The creature was in decent shape, considering. Even after months of being exposed to the elements, she would still be recognizable to someone who'd known her prior to the outbreak. It still had most of its skin, both its eyes, its limbs, even much of the once-pretty woman's clothing. The Manolos—even the unbroken one—were long gone.

  Tracy had joined a pod moving south. They walked day and night. Sleepless, restless, stumping ever onward. Driven not by any higher purpose or will, but by the hunger that ruled them. Not one of them had anything resembling higher brain functions. The creatures were done with that. They moved purely on instinct.

  A deeply ingrained need to find prey.