by H. L. Murphy
“Shut the fuck up, Lou,” Dub shouted, hate launched from his blood shot brown eyes like the broadside of a battleship. My stomach turned as I considered what the workers were undergoing at the hands of people that were supposed to protect them. Of course, just because these two assholes, and Nelson, had turned out to be crotch sniffing animals more deserving of a bullet than the undead didn't necessarily mean the others were too. The rest of the cops could all be the paragons of virtue we had always been manipulated to believe they were. Kindness, however, was not a hallmark of the zombie apocalypse so chance favored the survivors being more along the lines of these two, to a greater or lesser extent.
“Aw, don't be mad, Dub. Not like you was gonna have sex with either of them girls. Everybody knows you like boys,” Lou giggled. Actually fucking giggled as he said it. I glanced over to Dub for his reaction, but old Dub had gone pale. With anger, or shock, I couldn't decide until he exploded in a fit of rage.
“I'll fucking kill you,” he bellowed as he lunged for Lou. With Lou being face down on the concrete floor it wasn't as though the outcome would be hotly contested. Dub bounced Lou’s face off the floor while screaming incoherently. I gave Dub a good, solid three slams of Lou’s head before kicking his bloody stump of a foot. That brought him around quick enough.
“So Nelson is a rapist, Lou here is an idiot that couldn't keep from falling asleep, and you take your pleasure greek,” I summed up the moment. Dub repeated a series of invectives which lacked subtlety, creativity, and physiological possibility, but to which he lent volume and passion. “Hey, Peter Puffer, nobody cares whether you like boys or girls anymore. This is wholly about living past this moment in time.”
Fucking little shit Lou commenced a giggling fit again and repeating “Peter Puffer” over and over. Yeah, you can just imagine how well that went over. After a while, I went over to Lou and introduced his ribs to my steel toes.
“Names, what about the girls names?” I demanded.
“Nelson and Dub called them Fuck Pig One and Fuck Pig Two,” Lou laughed while trying not to cough. Well, I didn't need to know that, but it simplified my decision making paradigm somewhat. Monikers of that nature are never used to indicate a healthy and loving relationship.
“There real names, Lou,” I said calmly, already detaching myself from the situation.
“They said their names were Penelope Anders and Farah Degault,” Lou offered helpfully. I had never heard of either one, but the information might be useful later. You know, in case I could, like a blithering idiot, hat up and play my white knight role for two women I didn't know during a zombie apocalypse. I am an idiot sometimes.
“I guess that's it,” I said with a finality that Dub recognized right away. He was, undoubtedly, used to being on the delivering end. “Wait, how did you get the bodies to stay against the wall outside?”
“That? That wasn't us,” Dub grasped at the faintest hope I might let him live. “It was somebody else. Some freak came over from Palm City, killed everyone inside and nailed them to the wall. He lived in here for a day, maybe two, then lit out. Haven’t seen him since. He was fucking scary. He wore people's skins like a goddamn coat. Billy said he watched this freak have sex with a body on the wall before he left.”
Well if that wasn't specifically crafted by an especially cruel and sadistic universe to end my sleep for all time, I certainly haven't got a fucking idea what else could be.
I stood there a long moment, considering what I had learned from these two. Someone, probably the surviving members of the sheriff’s department in the area, was forcing people to fortify the hospital against possible future attacks. Okay. That sounds believable. At least one of two women, but chances are more, were coerced into sexual congress. Unfortunately, all too believable. One or both of the morally repugnant shit sacks before me had designs on one or both of the escaped women. Designs of a most decidedly non-mutual nature.
How long I stood there, I couldn’t say.
“Please…” Dub began and immediately regretted it because I shot him in the face with the twelve gauge shotgun. It produced a tableau of such mind blasting imagery I will never be able to forget. For his part, Lou was now laughing hysterically. He had slipped his final gear and showed all the world what lay within. A man who had stared into the mouth of hell, and lost both his soul and his sanity. Killing him was more an act of mercy than vengeance.
I turned away from the two of them, no longer willing to play the part I had assigned myself. It was time to go. To collect what my family needed to live, and just go. Everything I could fit into the rucksack, went in. Then up the rope it went. While I waited for the rope to come back down I considered how often this scene was being played out across the quarantine zone, to varying degrees and with dramatically different endings.
And, almost of its own accord, my mind turned to the people used as slave labor. It was conceivable that they were better off the way they were, but I had serious doubts. Would it be that hard to swing by and check it out? How far out of the way would it take me? Two miles? Maybe? Wasn't I obligated as a fellow human being to at least try?
No, dumbass, you're not. Your obligations begin and end with your own family. Everybody else can fend for themselves. No one ever helped you, why should you bother with them?
Because I can. Because it's the right thing to do.
Right thing to do? You executed two guys that for all you know are legitimate law enforcement officers. The fuck you know about right?
Stuff your attitude sideways up your ass and have a Mack truck shove it all the way up your ass. I may not be a saint, but I do know right from wrong. My family comes first, but that doesn't mean I can't look out for other people from time to time.
Uh, yes. Yes it does. It means exactly that. If you aren't focused on your family all the time, something will slip past you and kill everything you love.
No. That's a feeble argument based exclusively on fear. Fear of loss. Fear of inadequacy. You have no basis in fact so you're attacking where you think I'm weak.
You'd know all about that, wouldn't you? Since, you know, I'm you and you're me.
Are we? I wonder. I don't abandon convictions and don't turn a reasoned argument personal. If I lose, I lose clean. That's how I roll.
It is now, but it was t too long ago that everything was personal to you. Every last argument, every last fight, and every last defeat. All so intensely personal.
Everything is terribly personal when you're hardly older than a may fly. Thankfully, I got past that and pulled my head out of my ass. Not everything in the goddamn world warrants a full scale reaction. And sometimes the best way through is around.
What the fuck does that mean?
It means, shut your flapping man pleaser and enjoy the ride.
One day, I hope I'll learn whether I'm having these conversations with myself or whether I've developed multiple personalities and they're just babbling back and forth. I honestly don't know which concerns me more
“Hey, get your lazy ass up here,” James stage whispers down. Now that mother fucker has his mind wired up tight. No issues with moral ambiguity. He knows exactly why he is here and what to do in order to return to his family.
“Just a minute,” I yelled and ran back to sporting goods. Snagging another hiking backpack I stuffed it with binoculars and rifle optics. Yes, they were just what Wally World normally carried, but they were vastly superior to what we had now. Which was nothing.
The climb back up is fraught with moral quagmires I can't escape.
On the roof I took several deep breathes of relatively fresh air. Even with the wind blowing the stench away from us, it was impossible not to practically taste the putrid mess of decomposing humanity. I snorted a laugh as I considered that before long there would be two more rotting bodies within the building. A nice clear message to whoever came next. My mind tuned back to the task at hand, and slung the heavy rucksack onto my back. Another backpack hung from each of my arms as we we
nt down the ladder to the old Trans Am.
And the entire way down I worked on the problem of getting close enough to the hospital to get the lay of the land without alerting anyone. The real problem would be spotting whatever scouts or guards were on station without being spotted. Those two scumbags had mentioned how we'd been seen entering the building so it was safe to say there would be more at every other way place we planned to visit. New sources of information? If I could get the drop on them, and could stomach the things I'd have to do to get information.
Of course, Lou and Dub could testify to my willingness to do just that, so maybe I should just stop my fucking whining and just get on with job at hand. Time enough to whinge and whine when it's all over and I'm in my grave.
Chapter Six
My favorite big box store of all time has to be Home Depot. Damn near everything a man will ever need can be found in there. With an unlimited credit line I could easily build my family an altogether new, and superior, home high on a hill looking down on all lesser beings. It had been, before the undead, my goal to buy acreage up in Georgia back in the woods a ways where I could build us a little get away cabin. If you could call a three bedroom, three bath house with a wrap around front porch and balcony a cabin. I guess we’ll never see it now.
One of my truly favorite areas in the store had to be the tools section. It wasn't the most comprehensive assortment of tools I'd ever seen, but they covered the basics remarkably well, with a little room left over for a few interesting oddball devices.
Once James and I found where someone had half ass secured a side entrance, we moved through the store with purpose and gathered enough quality tools to keep the diesel engines in good repair. This time, we made sure to collect enough potting soil to grow our precious seeds in. Just like that, it became obvious we would need something other than the zodiac to bring this stuff back in. We would need to steal a speed boat or a cabin cruiser. Either one would do the job better than our little rubber dingy.
After loading the Trans Am, I took a moment to honestly observe the area. Somewhere out there were suspicious eyes watching our every move, and reporting to cruel men with training and guns. While we lacked their level of training, undoubtedly, we certainly had better guns than them, hopefully. The quality of law enforcement training varies so tremendously from county to county, city to city, and state to state it was impossible for me to say with any confidence what amount of training these men had received and how well they had been instructed. I was desperately hoping these cops didn't count ex-green berets or Rangers among their numbers. That would vigorously turn the suck factor all the way to Being Sodomized by Satan, and I'm just not up for that, white knight complex or no.
My entire body went still as I spotted the look out on the roof of the Wendy’s in the same plaza. Man, I could really go for a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and their death by sugar sweet tea about now. Just something that wasn't immediately associated with undead cannibals and ape shit nuts people trying to turn themselves into the masters of their own little fiefdoms. And I like their bacon cheeseburgers.
The lookout had chosen a good spot, all but hidden by the building façade. What little of him, or her, let's not be biased, that could be seen was covered by some camouflage intended to disguise the outline of their skull against the façade. Maybe a shemagh, they had certainly become popular in the wake of the Iraq and Afghan wars. The real question now was whether the lookout was in immediate contact with the others at the hospital, or if they sent runners back and forth. I would have thought immediate communication, but with the black out on conventional comms inflicted on the quarantine zone by the government/military that was a non-starter. Perhaps their radio system would be unaffected by the black out? I didn't know how the police radio system worked. Had that gone as high tech as everything else in the country? Did it depend on satellites or just relay towers? Were the relay towers still functioning? I couldn't see how since Stuart seemed to have lost power. When we passed Jupiter it had been pitch black, not a single light to be seen. Even the damn lighthouse had stayed dark.
With stupefying slowness it dawned on me that Wally World had carried hand held walkie talkies capable of transmitting over twenty-five miles, walkie talkies which ran off double A batteries. It didn't matter if the power grid was on, off, or spitting thirty foot high geysers of green flame, the bad guys had comms. Briefly, I considered whether to go back to Wally World and look for Dub and Lou’s communications devices. That idea went right out the window as it hit me that whoever had been watching the store had likely reported James and I leaving, alive and seemingly unharmed, while their men were nowhere to be seen.
Bad Finnegan, bad idea. Besides, the first semi-normal sound since landing at Sandsprit Park assailed my ears, the rising wail of a police siren fast approaching our position.
“Seriously?” James asked. I glanced over to see absolute incredulity plastered across his face. Whether he was looking for some kind genuine answer or just voicing his sense of the absurdity of the police coming to arrest us for stealing during the zombie apocalypse I didn't know or care, I just shrugged. Then I turned back to the observer and dumped rounds into his/her hiding spot. Snitches drove my vision scarlet before Outbreak Day, and nothing had changed that. A semi-automatic rifle may not match the cyclic rate of a select fire rifle, but the impact of the round is still the same. Moreover, the façade on the fast food restaurant was just that, a façade. Sure it looked like brick, and it felt like brick, but even brick wouldn't stand up to a concerted assault by seven point six two intermediate rifle rounds. Thirty rounds of steel jacketed, internal organ bursting hate later the façade was a memory and nothing moved on the roof. Either the snitch had dropped into an escape hatch, or was markedly past tense. Whichever his/her fate, James and I wouldn't have to worry about our movements being reported again anytime soon. I hoped.
“What is your problem? You just pissed you can't get a frosty?” James demanded. Give the man credit, James had brought his rifle up to cover the roof even though he didn't know why. Good man, good friend.
“Naw, last time I ate here they messed my order. Just wanted to express my discontent with the status quo,” I answered carelessly. “But I think we should leave this spot post fucking haste.”
“Yeah, you think?” James responded, already climbing into the car.
“I don't, absolutely don't, want to leave those guys in command of a forced labor camp,” I said as I climbed in. “The thing is, I don't want to try taking them on their terms. That's how we end up dead, and they end up skull fucking our corpses or something equally as unpleasant.”
“Uh, that's disturbingly foul,” James said as he turned onto Indian Street headed west. “You know, it's possible the other cops aren't the total scum your buddies painted them out to be.”
“True,” I conceded. “It's even likely some really decent officers survived whatever happened here.”
“I smell an ill conceived argument,” James quipped.
“It's just,” I tried to organize my impressions and feelings into a legitimate argument. “If they are actually trying to do good, to save what's left of the people here, why send out men like Dub and Lou to round up survivors. Why send men more likely to shoot than to help. Those two came in the store with death in their hearts. It didn't matter who was there, or why. I have a feeling that if they had found women instead of us it would have gone down a much worse road. Before they either killed them or took them back to the work camp, hospital, fucking fortress of Fuckedtitude. Which, feasibly, would have been worse than death.”
“Okay, that's Dub and Lou,” James admitted that part of my argument. “That doesn't mean the rest are that way. The way things are now, if you have people that can fight you don't necessarily get rid of them because they do evil things.”
“I have,” I said flatly. “Not to mention, it's their jobs to do just that. To uphold the law, and to protect the people they seem to have enslaved.”
“Yeah, I was hoping you hadn’t spotted that flaw in my logic,” James took a hard left onto state road seventy-six just in time to impact the biggest fucking zombie I had ever seen. Impact occurred so abruptly I had only a flash of the rage filled face before the zombie was flying over the roof, it's ebony hands grasped at my face as it flew by. Cognitive dissonance froze my reactions as I recognized the face of the undead as Danny Green, only that wasn't possible because I had killed Big Green at the factory. Hadn't I?
“Stop,” I yelled at the top of my lungs. James slid the old car to a tire screeching halt even as I threw open the door to step out. My rifle tucked hard against my shoulder as I fought through the sudden mental fog threatening to incapacitate me. On the asphalt before me lay the broken form of the giant of a man I had spent years laughing with, a man whose skull I had caved in with a ball pean hammer. I knew I had done it, but then came the image of Zombie Green convulsing on the factory floor.
If you have never heard bones grind against bones it is something that cannot adequately be described. I know because I had read description after description and as I stood there watching Zombie Green rise to his mangled feet it was unlike anything I had ever read. It should go without saying, I was utterly unprepared for the site of Zombie Green’s shattered body healing itself before my very eyes. Compound breaks reset and healed as pulped, shredded flesh closed and muscle fibers reintegrated to return Zombie Green to the peak of physical operation.
“Oh, fuck this. That's not even close to being fair,” I mumbled as I watched, fascinated and horrified in equal measure. And because I was so thoroughly engaged in what I was seeing it never once entered my foggy brain to just shoot the bastard. Even when Zombie Green spun around with impossible speed to swing the car’s bumper into my gawking face. Yeah, I know. Way to stay on top of things, Finnegan. The blow lifted me up off my feet and hurled me ten feet to impact on the hood of the Trans Am, which I could now see hadn't fared particularly well. The only bright side of catching that hit was the mental fog had burnt completely away by the three alarm agony that was the right side of my face. Broken bones and pulped flesh screamed volumes about just how strong Zombie Green still was. Even as I recount the events I don't think I'm accurately portraying the level of pain I was in. Imagine someone has tied you to a table and has made a small incision in your abdomen, from this incision they pull a length of your small intestines. Now, further imagine this unbearably evil fuck slices open your small intestines perchance to stuff in a cage full of starving rats. Not content with that, this evil fucker fills your small intestines with hydrochloric acid. Now you have a gut full of starving rats and hydrochloric acid making your life entirely more interesting than you ever wanted it be. That's what my face felt like.