Teenage Wasteland (I Zombie)

by Wallen, Jack

  The soft click of the Mag Lite brought to life the bluish LED beam and spilled it over the stained tile. There was nothing in the way between my feet and the door. Even so, I stepped with the caution of a mine walker. A single sound could summon the dead and dying. We’d come too far to make such a rookie move. Collectively, we were Player One, and we were beyond ready.

  I placed one Chuck Taylor in front of the other. I glanced down to my feet to see the two words of inspiration scrawled on the white toes of my shoes:

  Teenage Wasteland.

  Every oldie we came across assumed I was a classic rock fan. The last time someone shouted “Baba O’Riley” at me, I did my best Pete Townsend, ending with two flipped fingers flying high in the air. The resultant chase was glorious. Anyone near my age got it…knew we were a cast-off generation, wasting precious resources, and had next to nothing to offer society. We were the Wasteland, and society never hesitated to remind us of that.

  Millennials.

  We knew, knew, in the end, we’d be the survivors. Why? We were used to adaptation, accustomed to living an agile life. Technology was our one true God, and we lived by its never-ending mantra of “evolve or die”.

  When I reached the door, I turned my head to the side and placed an ear to the cold metal that stood between us and whatever lurked on the other side.

  Nothing.

  I waited.

  Surely whatever it was would sound off again; either that or it would smell the fresh meat and step up to the barbecue, bib in place.

  A muffled female voice rose from the darkness. “Did you find anything?”

  “No,” another female answered.

  The two voices continued on, muttering and mumbling.

  Relief flooded my system and my breathing returned to some semblance of normal. I gestured for Mikko to follow and pressed the door open just enough to allow me to see into the room beyond. Mikko focused the beam of light into the crack. On the other side of the door was a restaurant. My hopes immediately shot through the roof, but were quickly dashed back to Earth when the smell of rot forced itself into my nose.

  “Holy crap, Jingo,” Mikko whispered under her breath. The second her voice ventured through the crack in the door, the ghostly voices on the other side fell to silence.

  I turned to Mikko and nodded toward the restaurant. She took in a deep breath and responded in the affirmative. Without hesitation, I opened the door and we stepped through.

  “Hello?” I called out softly.

  My question was answered with laughter—giggles, actually—from opposite ends of the room. When all the funny died, a girl’s voice whispered eerily, “Death, death everywhere; I see, I smell, I taste. When I reach out and touch your soul, we both begin the chase.”

  The second voice, from the other side of the room, repeated the chant. Before I had a chance to solve whatever mystery the Scooby Doos had tossed out, a pair of ear-piercing screeches shocked my heart into death metal mode. Next thing I knew, a slip of a shadow passed before me and a hand smacked into my chest.

  “Death,” the pre-pubescent voice sang out as she darted back into the darkness.

  “Jingo,” Mikko warned.

  “I know exactly what you’re thinking. Son of a snitch. I’m not in the mood for games.”

  “Them’s the rules, boyfriend o’ mine.”

  I loved it when she called me her boyfriend…even when the words surrounding the title brought nothing but frustration.

  She was right, though. The rules of the Wasteland were simple—you play the game, no matter what said game may be. Half the time, we’d get caught trying to figure out the rules of whatever the hell we were playing mid-flight.

  This was one such instance.

  “Son of a bitch,” I hissed, and raced off. Mikko quickly fell in step beside me. The beam of the flashlight punched its way through the darkness to peel back whatever lurked within the shadows.

  “What’s the endgame here, Jingo? Catch ‘em and call ‘em death?”

  We turned a corner and sped down a hallway.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “What was the chant?”

  Mikko repeated the macabre little ditty.

  I pondered the words. “These are little girls we’re dealing with. Most likely it’s as simple as repeating the tagging gesture they used. That’ll be all on you, Mikko. I’m not about to go uncle creepy with those two.”

  Mikko unleashed a nervous laugh. We’d actually had an uncle creepy in our last gang. The man was impossible to be near without feeling the need to wash, repent, repeat. It came as no surprise that the only way to get rid of the man was to leave the group ourselves. Since then, Mikko and I had a very strict uncle creepy policy.

  No mas.

  “Understood,” Mikko replied.

  We reached the end of the hall and froze. The building was eerily quiet, so hearing two young girls shouldn’t be an issue.

  Unless the moment was complicated and exacerbated by a damning chorus of Moaners.

  “Oh, hell no,” Mikko huffed. “This just isn’t our day, Jingo.”

  “It’s always my day when I’m with you.”

  Mikko slugged my shoulder. “Keep your cheese to yourself. I’m out of crackers anyway.”

  I could feel the smile radiating from her mouth. It was fleeting, but there.

  “We can’t stay here,” I said with finality.

  “Obvious much?” Mikko replied with full-on snark.

  Again the moans came.

  “Damn Moaners,” I said, disdain and bile in a race to meet the entryway of my mouth.

  “What do we do, Jingo?” Mikko asked, her fear a bit too obvious.

  “Can you pinpoint the location of the Moaners? I heard a rumor that there’s a guy who has this trick…”

  “No, Jingo, I have no tricks. It’s just me.”

  The moans called out, this time louder and more threatening. The undead battle cries were quickly followed by the giggling sound of girls.

  “What the hell? Why are those two still here?” I said–too loudly.

  Mikko gave me a wicked look that screamed shut up and pointed. “That way!”

  “You sure?” I asked politely.

  “As sure as I can be in a dilapidated building filled with haunted kids and the undead. So, what do we do?”

  “Follow the Wasteland rules, Mikko.”

  “Rules were made to be broken, Jingo.”

  “Touché, Mikko.”

  Together, we crept back to the mouth of the hallway and stopped. Mikko cast the Mag Lite beam out of the narrow space and into the room. A small figure darted past…flowing long hair and giggles trailed behind her.

  “Death, death everywhere; I see, I smell, I taste. When I reach out and touch your soul, we both begin the chase,” the girls sang out in unison.

  From behind, the sounding bell of the undead rang out.

  I turned to Mikko. “It’s time to break some rules.”

  Her eyes grew wide…too wide, in fact.

  “What?” As soon as I asked the question, the answer made itself known.

  Mikko shook her head.

  “You can’t be serious, Mikko.”

  “If we leave, those two girls are meat.”

  I grabbed Mikko by the shoulders. “And if we don’t, we’re meat.”

  “Sorry, Jingo, I can’t just leave them. Game or no, I won’t become that person.”

  She had me there. We’d so often complained about society spiraling into an abyss of selfie-righteousness, where the only mantra to apply was me me me me me. I hated that, in this moment of post-apocalyptic danger, she was right.

  “Fine,” I huffed. “I think our best bet is to ignore the girls and take out the Moaners.”

  Mikko nodded.

  The moaning sounded.

  I reached to my lower back and grabbed my pistol. Under normal circumstances, there’d have been a level of comfort in wrapping my fingers around the carbon grip. This time, a cold chill snaked up my
arm, past my shoulder, and into my chest.

  Be still, my heart.

  Mikko spotted me pulling the weapon out. She shook her head and placed a finger over her lips.

  Again…Mikko was right. The second I unleashed the bang bang, an undead flashmob would break out, and we’d be the after-party snacks. I slowly tucked the gun back into my pants, making sure the safety was very much on.

  “We need to find…”

  Before I could finish the sentence, Mikko turned back to me. “The kitchen.”

  Together we whispered, “Knives.”

  Without the briefest pause, we backtracked down the hall and made our way to the eye-watering stench. Mikko cut the darkness with her beam of glory until it landed on a rack of knives that screamed ‘malice’. Mikko grabbed a nine-inch carving knife and I a cleaver. Before she had a chance to question my choice of cutlery, I dashed out of the kitchen and raced back to the war zone.

  There are times I wonder if the undead horde knows just how underprepared it is for battle. The inability to comprehend stealth would certainly be their undoing at some point…or so one might think. Or maybe having sheer numbers worked in their favor enough that silence was irrelevant.

  Mikko punched me with her non-knife wielding hand. “Damn it, Jingo.”

  “What’d I do?”

  “You’re thinking to yourself again. I need you present…now!”

  “How did you…”

  “I always know when you vanish into your mind. You chew your lip and lift both of your eyebrows. In most situations it’s adorable. Right now, it’s pissing me off.”

  In response, I raised my cleaver and shouted, “Zombie, zombie, zombie, zommmmmmbay!”

  Mikko repeated my call as she carefully placed the Mag Lite on a peripheral table and pointed it into the center of the room.

  The moans rose as if in answer.

  Together, Mikko and I called out again. The sound of Moaners drew nearer.

  I grabbed Mikko and spun her so that we stood back to back.

  Metaphor, meet reality.

  The first zombie crashed the party. The spill of light caught the sour milk sheen of its eyes. At one point in its life, it was a male. Judging by the tattered and torn clothing barely hanging onto its shoulders and waist, it had been a delivery driver. The UPS man dove at me, his arm getting the full-force trauma of my new best friend, Mr. Hacky. The blade of the butcher knife split the meat of the zombie’s arm with ease and struck bone.

  The knife froze, stuck tight in the radius. I twisted and tugged, but the arm danced about in the air like a nightmare puppet, refusing to release the metal guest.

  “Fuck!” I shouted in frustration.

  The zombie reached out with its free hand and snatched a handful of my hair. I raised my right foot, cried out, and dropped the hammer of my heel into the left knee of the bastard.

  Bone crunched hard and fast. The zombie dropped, but continued struggling against the stuck blade.

  His clacking jaw opened and closed as it tried desperately to reach the flesh of my calf.

  It was Mikko’s turn to cry out. I wanted badly to turn and fight with her, but that wasn’t how the game worked. We remained back to back for safety. The second we moved from that formation, we stood vulnerable. Vulnerability was weakness.

  Weakness was death.

  Or worse.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  Mikko screamed. I saw the arc of her arm fly by and then heard the wet sloppy sound of unsealed zombie. Something slopped to the floor.

  “What was that, Mikko?” I called out.

  “Intestines,” she answered in haste.

  With a quick twist of the wrist, the butcher knife came free. I wound up my arm and brought the glinting blade down hard into the thing’s skull. The crack of bone was nauseating…but effective. The Moaner dropped to the ground for the very last time.

  Instinct begged that I turn and help Mikko.

  “Don’t do it, Jingo!” Mikko shouted. She knew me too well. We’d promised to watch each other’s backs, knew it was the only way to survive. Promises were hard to keep at times like this. All I could think of was helping her face down the enemy, but I had to trust she could handle whatever hate-filled pus-bags the apocalypse tossed her way.

  And so, I remained.

  Mikko’s elbow crashed into the back of my head before it shot forward. I stole a glance over my shoulder to see the tip of her knife blade easily slice through the Moaner’s sweet spot…his eyeball. A flood of fluid poured from the open membrane as Mikko pressed the knife to its hilt.

  The zombie dropped like a sack of wet death.

  Mikko and I remained back to back. A blanket of cold silence fell over the room.

  “That was too easy, Jingo. You know that’s never a good sign.”

  “There’s always a first,” I replied.

  Before she could answer, the celebration came to a shrieking, screeching halt. The sound of a Screamer rattled the bones in my flesh.

  “Oh, no,” Mikko whispered as her body stiffened behind me. “That came from inside, didn’t it?”

  I swallowed…hard. “Yes.” The single word was deflating and damning.

  “Death, death everywhere; I see, I smell, I taste. When I reach out and touch your soul, we both begin the chase.”

  In response to the call, the Screamer unleashed a monstrous roar.

  Mikko broke rank and tugged at my arm. “We have to stop those girls…now!”

  I couldn’t find it in me to disagree.

  We slammed through the door and sprinted into the halls of the building. After a quick right turn, the hallway spilled out into a cavernous lobby.

  “Holy hell,” I whispered. “It’s a hotel.”

  Mikko scanned the room with the flashlight. I locked my attention on the beam and followed it into and out of the shadows. A dark figure dashed away from the light and quickly vanished.

  Perfect. The last thing we needed in the apocalypse were living shadows. Pile on fate, pile on.

  “Over there!” I pointed.

  “What was it?” Mikko asked.

  We were answered with a round of laughter—the same as before. We’d found them.

  The Screamer’s cry shattered the brief moment of peace.

  The girls chanted again. “Death, death everywhere; I see, I smell, I taste. When I reach out and touch your soul, we both begin the chase.”

  I no longer had patience for this game. “Shut up! You’re going to draw the bastard to us.”

  One of the girls answered from beyond the veil of shadow, her over-sweet voice an abstract opposition of the moment. “That’s the point of the game.”

  Mikko slanted the light toward the sound of her voice. I ninja’d my way to the focal point and whispered, “This is no longer a game.”

  The raging beast sounded off again.

  “Did you hear that?”

  I was answered with another giggle.

  “That thing will pop off your head and crap down your neck.”

  Again, the girls chimed, “Death, death everywhere; I see, I smell, I taste. When I reach out and touch your soul, we both begin the chase.”

  The roar of the Screamer drew nearer. Mikko rushed to my side. “We have to get out of here. Game or not, I’m not going to die because these two girls aren’t willing to break the rules.”

  I leaned into Mikko and whispered, “I have an idea. Shine the light on me.”

  Mikko did as I asked. I took in a deep breath, knowing what was about to happen could be the end of our world as we knew it. I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Death, death everywhere; I see, I smell, I taste. When I reach out and touch your soul, we both begin the chase.”

  The participants of the game shrieked; both girls rushed at me, full speed. As soon as they were near enough, I wrapped my arms around their small frames and lifted them off the ground. They were young…far too young to be making a game of death. Without wasting a moment of time, I shouted, “Go!”
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  The second my voice faded to nothing, the third participant reminded us all that hell was about to rain down on our parade.

  Mikko led the way. With every ounce of strength and resolve I had, I followed. The girls screamed and kicked against me, desperate for release back onto the playing field. I held them tight, my arms burning against the effort.

  “Put us down!” one of the girls shouted above my gasping breath and racing pulse.

  “Sorry girls…not gonna watch you die on my dime.”

  Their continued pleas threatened to give away our location to the mad bastard in search of a mindful meal. The sound of hatred drew closer.

  Mikko took a left turn into the kitchen and stopped. “No way we’re outrunning that thing, Jingo.”

  The wonder twins belted out their merciless limerick again.

  “We don’t have any choice,” I insisted.

  Without a word, Mikko scanned the room. The walk-in fridge drew her attention. She pointed. “We hide in this.”

  She pulled the door open, stepped inside, and closed herself within. After a few seconds, a barely audible sound vibrated from the door. She opened the fridge and peeked out. “Did you hear that?”

  “Barely,” I answered.

  Mikko waved me in, but not before saying, “Prepare yourself from some serious funk.”

  She wasn’t kidding. The stench within the metal container was a mixture of rotten meat and stale air. A flood of tears dropped from my eyes against the sting of stink. I pulled the door shut and held the emergency bump release tight in my hand. With a stern whisper, I addressed the girls.

  “I want to live, okay? So the two of you are going to keep your traps shut, or that’s not going to happen. We love playing the game, but I want to live to play it again. I won’t allow either of you to decide if it ends now or later. Do you understand?”

  The smaller of the two girls drew in a deep breath, in preparation for the unleashing of some pre-teen Kraken. Mikko snaked her hand around the girl’s head and sealed her mouth shut. The muffled cry fell short of bouncing off the metal walls. Mikko looked at me and rolled her eyes. “When in the hell did we become the adults?” she whispered.

  “Blasphemy,” I answered.

  Before the second girl had the chance to cry out, the beast reached the kitchen and bellowed its Jurassic cry. The girl froze, her face paled to a porcelain white.