To help facilitate matters, I brought Mom along on my looting runs—if only to have her carry shit. Sadly, being a mom, and probably knowing deep down that my sister had less brains than a bag of hammers, that meant bringing Darlene, too.
Still, despite the torture of listening to my sister’s constant commentary about this place or that being “yucky,” our stock of supplies continued to grow.
For a time, it was easier work than you’d expect. Zombie movies will have you believe that the dead will keep haunting us for years. But one nasty winter was enough to fuck up a good chunk of them. The ones that survived weren’t nearly as spry once they thawed. Cold weather combined with decomposition had taken the spring out of their step.
The problem with things being too easy, though, is it makes you drop your guard.
So when the shit finally does hit the fan, you’re left standing there gaping long enough to catch a mouthful.
♦ ♦ ♦
“This place sucks.”
“You suck,” I shot back at Darlene, as I searched through the cabinets in the kitchen we were busy ransacking. Whoever had owned this place sure as shit loved their SpaghettiOs. Not my favorite, but they beat the canned beans that Otis favored by a country mile.
“I wish you two would learn to get along,” Mom complained, stepping in from the back yard. She still liked playing the parent card every so often. Guess it made her feel useful or something.
Pity that I wasn’t in the mood to indulge her. “Find anything out back?”
“Most of it is useless or rusted out, but the propane tank for the grill is full.”
“Leave it.” I continued filling up the Radio Flyer wagon we’d brought. It made hauling shit back a hell of a lot easier.
“But...”
“If society ever recovers,” I interrupted, “then we can grill some fucking hotdogs to celebrate. For now, leave...”
“Oh, God! Someone help me!”
“What was that?” Mom asked.
“Shut up!” I hissed. The voice had come from close by. Too close.
“You shut up,” Darlene replied, sticking out her tongue.
She was damn lucky I wanted silence; otherwise, I’d have plugged her then and there.
“Both of you, stay here.” I shot my sister a dirty look then crept into the living room. The cry had come from somewhere out on the street, so I cracked open one of the front windows and readied myself.
I’d known this day would come. Eventually desperation would set in and the Shop-More clan would have no choice but to venture out. It was either that or turn on each other. I’d been hoping for that latter one personally—would have made my job a hell of a lot easier—but hope was a fool’s errand and I didn’t fancy myself a fool. Besides, Darlene had already filled that post.
“Help me!”
I checked the magazine on my weapon—full—then raised the gun. I was expecting an ambush, a ruse, maybe even a full-on assault. Ever since my run-in with McCarthy and his buds, I’d been waiting for this inevitability. I was ready for any scenario. Hell, I looked forward to it. There could be only one top dog in this town, and that was me. I was...
I wasn’t even remotely prepared for what I saw coming.
A guy stepped into my crosshairs from down the block, moving at a running limp. He was another like Bert—saggy folds of skin hanging off him, as if he’d dined well during better times only to have gone on a crash diet as of late. He was holding a metal gardening rake but using it more as a walking stick than a weapon.
I put my finger on the trigger, ready to see what came next but then froze as his pursuers scampered into view.
The fuck?!
“Aw, how cute!” my sister screeched at the top of her lungs from right behind me, almost causing me to open fire. Fucking idiot!
Cute wasn’t quite the word I had in mind at seeing a small army of squirrels chasing after the man.
Sadly, Darlene’s shrill tone was loud enough to be heard from outside. The runner turned our way and saw me gaping at him through the window before I could duck down. Damn it all!
I briefly considered gunning him down where he stood, but then caught a better look through my scope at the rodents in hot pursuit. The vast majority were seriously fucked up. We’re talking three-legged, mutilated tails, eyeless, you name it. All of them were missing fur, looking ragged, gaunt and...not quite alive.
Zombie squirrels, who’d have ever guessed?
“Oh my goodness,” Mom said, having likewise entered the room. Good to know my family was so adept at following simple commands.
However, before I could say anything to that fact, she crossed to the door and opened it.
“What are you doing?!”
“Get in here!” she cried out to the man.
If the horde of undead rodents hadn’t noticed us before, they sure as shit were aware of us now. Fuck me! I quickly calculated the greater of two evils and decided it was probably the dozens of demonic squirrels bearing down on us.
“Shit!” I lowered my gun and slammed the window shut. “Lock that door the second he’s in,” I said, before turning to Darlene. “Go make sure the back door is locked.”
“But I want to play with the hamsters!”
Hamsters?! “Do as I say or I’m going to fill your hamster head with enough lead to...”
“Darlene, honey,” Mom chided, “please go close up the back before you catch a draft.”
“Okay, Mom.”
I stared slack-jawed as she skipped out of the room. That had actually fucking worked?
I was barely beginning to comprehend the idiocy I’d just witnessed when our flabby guest burst into the living room.
“Thank goodness,” he wheezed. “Thank...”
“Shut the fuck up!” I leveled my assault rifle dead center at him. “Step away from the woman and drop the goddamned rake before I drop you.”
“But...” He must’ve seen the look in my eyes and realized I was serious. Good for him. He’d just bought himself another thirty seconds of life. As for Mom... “Close it up! Or have you forgotten the draft from the front has teeth?”
“Oh, sorry.” She shut the door just in time for multiple tiny thuds to be heard hitting the other side.
Tempted as I was to stare out the window and witness the weirdness going on outside, I kept my gun trained on our unwanted houseguest. “Talk!”
“About...what?”
I motioned toward the window. “For starters, about that.”
“Dude, do you think I have even the slightest clue as to what the hell is going on? I didn’t have time to stop and ask them questions.”
He might have had a point there.
“Hi. I’m Anne Perkins. What’s your name?” Mom asked, as if she’d just invited him in for tea and cookies. It truly hurt my head to be related to such morons.
“I’m Jack.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah,” I interrupted, “charmed, I’m sure. Maybe we’ll serve some fucking quiche after we’ve all had a chance to become better acquainted. But for now, Jack-off, how about you tell us where you’re from and how you came by your fan club out there.”
He eyed my gun then nodded. I directed him to a chair in the middle of the living room as an incessant chittering started up outside.
“Settle down and grab a seat, Mom. Story time is about to begin. Best make it good, Jacky boy, because it looks like we’re a captive audience...for now.”
11
HELL’S HAMSTERS
“I don’t want any trouble.”
“Trouble?” I asked, feigning a hurt tone. “You’re not in any trouble, yet.”
“Maybe I can join you...or your group. I’m a useful guy to have around.”
“Useful, eh? Well, how about you answer my questions first, Bubba, then I can decide whether I want you to fill out an application.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed at me. “Listen, kid, maybe your mom and I could have a moment in private to d
iscuss this.”
I put pressure on the trigger. “You seem to be confused as to who’s in charge here. Let me assure you, it’s not her.”
Mom let out a nervous little laugh. “Really, Jimmy, would it kill you to be polite to our guest?”
I stared daggers at her. “It’s the goddamned apocalypse, Mom. We’re talking zombies and bands of marauders. Everyone out there either wants what you have or wants you dead. So, yes, being polite could very well kill us. Anything else you’d like to add to the conversation?” She shrugged, so I turned back to our guest. “I’d offer you some refreshments, but how about we cut the shit before I get tired of your fucking face and throw your ass back out there?”
“Fine, kid...”
“A baby goat is a kid. Do I look like I should be off frolicking with Farmer Brown to you?”
That seemed to get through to him. “Um, no.”
“That’s one answer in your favor. Let’s see if we can make it two.” I waited to see what came next out of his mouth. If it was any variant on kid, chum, buddy, pal, junior, or sport, I was gonna put one right in his dick hole.
Fortunately for him, Jack-o seemed to have finally gotten the memo, which was good because the chittering coming from outside was starting to get on my nerves. I quickly glanced over my shoulder and saw three squirrels—bloated and definitely dead—sitting on the windowsill and staring in at us with unblinking eyes. Goddamned creepy motherfuckers. Made me miss the cats.
“I’m with, or was with anyway, a community that made its home at...”
“Shop-More?” I finished.
“Yeah.” He raised his eyebrows. “You know about us?”
“Had a run-in with some of your buddies a couple weeks back.”
“You didn’t tell me that, Jimmy.”
I glanced at Mom out of the corner of my eye. “There’s lots of things I don’t tell you. It’s for your own good.” I focused on Jack again. “You were saying?”
He nodded. “Well, then you might have heard we’re getting kinda desperate.”
“Define kinda.”
He seemed to consider this for a moment, and when next he spoke, his tone had changed. Gone was the guarded speech, and in its place something that almost sounded sincere. “Look, I’m gonna lay it all out for you. The place has gone to hell. At first it was fine. People camped out in the aisles. There was plenty of food to go around. We set up smoke pits to dry any meat we couldn’t cook right away. There’s a Builders Depot right next door. Some of the folks moved over there. We formed a cooperative. They got food. We got tools and weapons.”
“That’s nice to hear,” Mom offered unhelpfully.
“Uh huh. Nice,” I said with a wave of my gun. “Nice until the food ran out, right?”
“I’m bored.”
Freaking Darlene. I was trying to set up some fucking atmosphere here conducive to an interrogation and all she could do was whine from the back room.
“Go find some paint chips to eat!” I yelled back, which only caused the chittering outside to grow louder. That couldn’t be good. I took a deep breath to calm myself. There was no point in upsetting the natives, and I sure as shit didn’t mean Jack. “Please, go on.”
“You’re right. The rationing started near the end of winter, but the people in charge hid how bad things really were. The community started falling apart piece by piece, but that wasn’t the worst of it.”
As I listened, I noticed the chittering had changed pitch, becoming lower in volume. Maybe the stupid rats were finally giving up.
“People started disappearing,” Jack continued.
“Let me guess, then the food situation started getting better again?”
“Yeah. But it never lasted. I think, deep down, we knew what was happening, but nobody wanted to say a word. We tried to make up for the shortages, but half the scouts we sent out in search of supplies didn’t come back. The ones that did said that pickings were slim.”
“You don’t say.”
“We have lots of food,” Darlene said idly, stepping into the room. She was busy pressing some of her broken dolls together. I guess they were supposed to be kissing, but it looked more like a cripple gangbang.
“Ignore that one,” I barked. “The apocalypse has traumatized her into a fucking melon head.”
“That’s awesome,” Jack said to my sister, visibly brightening. “See, that’s exactly what me and my friends were hoping to find.”
“Meaning what?”
“Last week, the guys in charge...they gave up all pretense of pretending. They instituted a lottery. Said it was for the greater good. That those who got chosen would nourish the community and ensure we stayed strong.”
“Cannibal roulette. Let me guess. There weren’t too many hoping to win that one.”
“You could say that. I got to talking with four of my buddies. We decided to volunteer to go out scavenging, but it was a ruse. We planned to make it a one-way ticket. I was certain there had to be other survivors, other communities out there. So we were hoping to find them.”
I narrowed my eyes, smelling a setup. “And what happened to your buddies?”
He pointed a finger over my shoulder. “Those things. They came out of the trees. At first, we didn’t think anything of it, but then they swarmed us like fleas on a dog. I was...the only one to make it out.”
Wait, fleas on a dog?
A faint recollection stirred in my memory from back when this all started, a news report I’d ignored while searching for pertinent information on the zombie outbreak.
Scientists have identified a new strain of pesticide-resistant flea.
Holy shit! I’d wondered about the cats, how they’d gotten infected. It seemed crazy to think that lurching zombies were somehow catching and biting them. Yet the virus seemed to be progressing down the food chain nevertheless.
Suddenly I realized how wrong I was.
It wasn’t progressing down the food chain. It was going up. The squirrels were the missing link. I’d seen and heard them ever since the start, thinking nothing of it when all along, they were the key.
I wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, but maybe those fleas were actually the source of it all. Perhaps they were too small or carried a strain of the virus too weak to affect people. It didn’t matter. What did was that it was enough to infect the squirrels, who, in turn, bit the cats, who then passed it on to us.
That actually almost made sense.
The fleas almost certainly didn’t survive the winter, which was a good thing. But their initial hosts had. The little fuckers just froze to their tree branches and waited to thaw, safely out of reach, unlike the larger zombies I’d been busy ridding the town of. And now they were free to start all over again.
“Um...Jimmy.”
“Not now, Mom. I’m thinking.”
“You might want to think faster.”
“Why do I need...?”
And then it hit me. The chittering...it had changed pitch earlier. Or had it?
I realized that what we were hearing now wasn’t chittering at all. It was the sound of gnawing. They were chewing their way in.
Fuck!
I spun toward the front door to find it starting to rattle in its frame as dozens of tiny little teeth worked tirelessly to get through it. Shit! “We need to get...”
“You’re not a nice man.”
“Shut up, you little cunt.”
I knew even before I turned around what had happened. Fucking Darlene. She’d gotten close enough for Jack to pull her in and use as a human shield. So predictable, yet I’d allowed myself to get distracted enough for it to happen.
“Toss me your gun,” Jack demanded.
“Fuck you,” I replied.
“I’ll break her goddamned neck.”
“Yeah, so?”
“It’s going to be all right, sweetie,” Mom said, adding absolutely nothing of worth to the standoff.
“He broke Camilla!” Darlene protested, as if being held by th
e throat wasn’t that big of a deal comparatively. Talk about a little girl with some seriously fucked up priorities.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” Jack backed up into the kitchen with my sister, keeping an iron grip on her. “You’re going to give me your weapons. Then we’re going to march out the back door and head to your place.”
“What then?” I asked, just for shits and giggles.
“Then?” He laughed. “Then I’m going to eat your food and fuck your mom. And maybe, just maybe, if that makes me happy, I’ll let you live. And if it doesn’t, I’m going to fuck your mom again while I leave you and your brat sister tied up outside for those things to get. How’s that sound?”
I raised my gun and took aim, well aware that the chomping behind me was growing louder by the minute. “Sounds like a recipe for an asshole casserole to me. Congratulations. I’m thinking you get to be the main ingredient.”
“Jimmy, don’t.”
I glanced toward Mom and almost dropped my own weapon as I saw she was pointing her gun at me. It fucking figured that she would pick the worst time imaginable to grow a set. “Lower it, Mom.”
“No. You drop yours, young man.”
“You can’t be serious. This asshole isn’t going to let us live.”
“He said he would.”
“He also said he was going to fuck you.”
“That’s...better than your sister dying.”
“But not better than shooting me?”
“Y-you’ve been out of line for a while, mister. It’s time you remembered to respect your...”
She didn’t get a chance to finish. While I’d like to claim some John Woo style shit, mowing her and Jack down guns akimbo and all that, the truth was that stuff only worked in the movies.
No. In real life, other things tended to put a damper on my plans—like the front door finally collapsing and dozens of flesh-eating squirrels swarming all over my mother like economy-sized fire ants.
Yeah, it was one of those days.
The Legend of Jimmy Headshot (Shingles Book 6) Page 6