Just Another Day

by Jacob Louis Sims

  While we waited for our ride (that neither of us really expected to get, due to Gus’s imagined, grisly death), I figured that I’d try and keep the alley as clear as possible for us and the tank, to facilitate a quick and easy getaway. So I set up a little rifle rest using the beer-bag, after I got us both a couple from it (of course), got in the prone firing position, and shot anything that walked into the alley from either direction.

  And I mean anything. I shot cats, I shot dogs, I shot zombies, and I even shot (if you can believe this shit) a fuckin’ horse. Seriously! A goddamn motherfuckin’ horse. I don’t even know what a fuckin’ horse was doing in La Salle in the first place, but there it was. Normally, I would’ve never shot a horse - even if I worked at a glue or dogfood company I wouldn’t have shot one. I think horses are majestic, beautiful animals, that belong running free through prairies and shit - but this horse, it was fucked up. I don’t know what had happened to it, if it had been hit by a car or something, but whatever had happened to it was bad. It had a huge gash down it’s left side that was literally gushing blood, and it’s left front leg was broken, as well. I felt very fuckin’ bad doing it, but I had to put Mr. Ed out of his misery. I used my AR for that, since I would’ve had to use about fifty rounds to kill it with the .22, and I don’t think my stomach or my conscience could’ve handled that shit.

  As I expected, as soon as the report from the AR echoed down the alley (since that motherfucker is so fuckin’ ear-splittingly loud), the zombies started coming into the alley a little quicker, some of them moaning as they came. I didn’t really care, though, it just gave me more shit to shoot at with the .22. Target practice is always a good thing. Sure beat shooting at empty beer cans at my friend Bob’s.

  I had my sights on the umpteenth fuckin’ zombie (I honestly don’t know how many I killed, just that it was a lot - that AR really brought ‘em in), when Gus’s Camaro came blasting around the corner into the alley, slamming into that zombie, and tossing its ass headfirst right into the side of a dumpster. Fuckin’ zombie hit so hard it burst on impact, splashing guts and blood in the air. Magnificent, it was… most indubitably (for some fuckin’ reason I got Peter Griffin saying this in my head - weird).

  Gus flew on down towards where we were standing, as we had climbed down from the roof, his car rocking and rolling over the meat speed bumps that I had left up and down the alley. He just got lucky the horse died on the side by the trees. I honestly thought that maybe he didn’t see us or something, ‘cause as he got closer and closer he didn’t slow down. I was thinking that maybe he had been bitten or something, and had just turned as he came into the alley. I was more than a little nervous. Just when I was about to push Linn out of the way and dive on top of her (and maybe cop a feel in the process) Gus came to a sliding, screeching halt, less than a fuckin’ foot from us.

  I ran around his car, yelling all kinds of bad things, pissed as hell that he had nearly killed us, and was just about to yank his door open, when Gus dove out of his car, collided with me and knocked us both to the ground.

  “What the fuck, Gus!!! Are you fucking crazy, man!!!,” I yelled at the top of my lungs as we both picked ourselves up.

  “Oh, man this is bad, this is so fucking bad, Dave!!! This is really, really bad, Dave!!!,” Gus said in a very fast rate of speech, in kind of a mix of Rain Man and the old Micro Machines guy. If he wasn’t so obviously freaked, I would’ve laughed at him. “How the fuck did it get so bad. I can’t believe it. You told me it was bad, but…… but I didn’t think it would be like this!!! Fuck!!!……. Fuuuuuck!!!!”

  I could see that he was obviously losing it, which is something that none of us needed at that moment, so to calm him down, I figured I’d do what I did when I was nervous, or angry, or sad, or just plain, fuckin’ thirsty - well… I gave him a beer, the answer to everything. What else?

  “Gus! Gus! Calm the fuck down, man! Here take this, and try to calm down. Just try and relax for a minute, okay? We gotta be cool here, man, okay? Pound that bitch, and I’ll give ya another. That should calm your nerves, alright.”

  “Okay, okay,” Gus said as he popped the top (a most satisfying sound, at which I had to get out a couple more for Linn and myself), “I’ll try, I’ll try.”

  As we were all were in the process of the only hydration I really cared for, I took another walk around his car - the tank - so I could take it all in.

  He must’ve been through hell to get to us, ‘cause his once immaculate car was now seriously fuuuuucked up. Big time. It looked like he was the loser at a demolition derby, but only one where cars bleed when they get hit. From bumper to where his front bumper should’ve been, his car was covered in blood, meat, and bone. There was even blood all over the passenger seat and the floor, roof above it, and the inside of the windshield. It was a fuckin’ awesome sight. The passenger door had been ripped off its hinges, the trunk had been crumpled inward, it looked like a really fat person had been dropped onto his hood (which was probably the case), all the windows were smashed out except the windshield, which was spider-webbed, and the roof was caved in with the sunroof glass smashed in and scattered all through the car. It was now 100% badass - a motherfuckin’ blood-covered, Road Warrior, zombie-slaying tank! I liked it before, but this shit was better. I didn’t want to tell him that, though.

  “Goddamn, Gus, your ride is fucked, dude!” I said to him after I had finished my circuit of his car. He was just finishing his second beer and getting a third from Linn as they introduced themselves to one another. “I really appreciate you coming out here for us, but I am soooo fuckin’ sorry about your car. I know how you loved it. This is really, really bad. Wow.”

  Gus, who had calmed down considerably, said, “Yeah, thank god for full coverage insurance, right?! I… I didn’t think I would make it here. I had to… I had to run over so many people, Dave. I don’t even know if they were zombies or not. I was so scared I didn’t want to stop for nothing. There were cars flying everywhere, ramming into each other, ramming into me… it was bad.” A huge chug from the can. “At least I finally got to use the 1911. After the door got ripped off by some dick in an end loader, of all things, I kept having to shoot zombies or people - I don’t know which - that were trying to get in at me.”

  “Damn. Are you gonna be cool to drive back?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay to drive. We just can’t go back the way I came here. That end loader that hit me rammed into a fuel truck that had tipped on its side. I saw it blow up through my back window. When I still had one. The whole street there is on fire, probably more by now. It was going pretty good. Plus, I was going every which way. I had to back-track a couple times, and go clear out of my way, so I don’t even know if I could remember how I got here in the first place.”

  “Okay, in that case - if ya don’t mind, Gus, ‘cause we got some party-crashers coming our way - lets mount up here in a minute and get the fuck gone. We’ll make it back to your place fine.”

  “Hey, okay, you got no complaints from me, buddy.”

  “Okay. Check it out, wheelman. I’ll be the gunner and hang out the sunroof with my AR and take out any threats - foreign or domestic. Hah! I’ve always wanted to say that! (it’s a line from “The Rock” - a badass movie, if I must say so.) But seriously, I’ll be the gunner. Linn, I need you in the passenger seat with that scatter-gun. If anything gets close, bring the muthafuckin’ thundah (in my best Tracey Morgan voice), word? No hesitation.”

  “Okay, Dave,” she said, smiling a little, which was a good thing to see. “No problem. Um… how many shots do I have in here? Because I don’t want to run out when I might need them the most.”

  “Oh! Good point! I wasn’t even thinking of that! Shit! There’s seven in the tube and one in the chamber. Just ask me for rounds every six and I’ll hand ‘em down to you. Just don’t lose count, and when you’re reloading, I’ll cover you.”

  “Alright, show me how to work this monster.”

  So after I pulled my wang out (i
n my head), I showed Linn how to load the weapon, we mounted up, Gus turned us around, and we were off! To Victory! Nah, not really victory (I don’t think there’s a victory to be had in this situation), but it was still pretty cool, though.

  9

  I fuckin’ swear, we were going at least 80 mph as we rocketed toward them zombies that had followed Gus into the alley. I felt more than a little uncomfortable as I was hanging out the sunroof, leaning towards the front in a modified prone. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in turrets of Humvees countless times when I was in Kosovo, Iraq, and other places throughout the world, but never before in a sports car, flying towards a pack of ravenous zombies. It was a little freaky, to say the least.

  We were about thirty feet from the lead group, that was about twenty-five large, when I opened fire. I wasn’t really aiming for head shots in this situation, since it had been about eight years since the last time I had fired from a moving vehicle - I was only going for body shots, helping to clear the way for Gus. Body shots are much, much easier to do, as there is a larger target than a head, and the impact of the bullet alone is strong enough that anything that gets hit is tossed like a rag doll.

  It was fuckin’ cool, seeing those zombies get rocked by the rounds that were flying through their chests and stomachs, shoulders and necks, and yes, yes, their motherfuckin’ heads, too, oh yeah! I felt like fuckin’ Rambo, or the Terminator after he drove the car into the police station and started killing all those cops. By the time Gus reached them, there were only a few left standing (‘cause of my outstanding shooting skills, bitches!), and he flew right by them and sliiiiiid back around the corner into the parking lot of an auto parts store towards First Street, without a hiz-nitch.

  We blasted out from that parking lot into First like a fuckin’ rocket, Gus’s engine screaming in a demonic fury. I looked back at my building as Gus slid into an expertly done no-brake right turn, and saw that the entire front of the building was now ablaze, from the storage warehouse on the far end, to the old Elk’s building closest to us, and everything above. Including the apartments of Linn and myself. Everything I owned, gone up in flames. Fuckin’ sucked. At least I got my guns. I just hoped my cat, Buddy, got outta there. In the rush, I forgot about it. I did leave the window I crawled through open, though, so I’m sure he got out to safety.

  10

  Gus was an excellent driver. He can drive in the drive-way, and then some. He zigged, he zagged, he spun and he slid - nothing was able to stop him, no obstacle was an equal challenge to his driving prowess. He was the real fuckin’ Road warrior - not that drunk, jew-hating bitch Mel Gibson. Behind the wheel of his four-wheeled, fire breathing, blood-and-guts covered monster, he was a god amongst mere mortals. I looked upon him in pure awe as he expertly maneuvered his vehicle through the chaos that the streets had become, flying to the hope of safety and security that his apartment had represented. Unfortunately, while Gus was the epitome of driving in hazardous situations expertise, the conditions of the roads themselves were sub-par, or, in the vernacular of the street - they were fucked up - covered in all kinds of scattered debris.

  We were about half-way there, heading west on Shooting Park Road, when his right front tire blew (most likely from some of that fuckin’ debris), causing him to lose control and slam into a telephone pole, throwing my ass from the roof of his car like a dart towards a fuckin’ dart board. I slammed into the sidewalk, right on my back, and slid head-first into what I swear (judging by what the leaves looked like as they blurred through my line of sight) was a big fuckin’ oak tree.

  When I came to, I noticed three things: the first thing I noticed was the constant blaring of Gus’s horn; the second thing I noticed was the dreaded moaning of nearby zombies; the third thing I noticed - that scared me way, way more than the approaching land-sharks - was the fact that I couldn’t move a fuckin’ muscle. I was paralyzed. I was fucked. I was done.

  At least I thought.

  I was about to write myself off - as I heard what sounded like a basketball teams’ worth of zombies shuffling towards me through the grass - when some obviously drunk dude started yelling from the house whose yard I was laying in, and started playing what sounded like a fuckin’ xylophone, of all things. And he was actually pretty good at it, too. Odd choice of instruments, I thought as I lay there, but one that I was very grateful to hear, ‘cause all the zombies had changed their direction and were walking to the house. Another thing I was grateful to hear, or not to hear in this case, was that Gus’s horn had stopped.

  “Wooooooohoooooooo!!! Come on down, you motherfuckers!!!! Yeeee-haw, bitches!!!,” the dude yelled at the zombies as they amassed beneath the window he was standing in. “You like this shit, do ya? Fuck yeah, you should!!! Whoooooooo!!!!! Hey stupid!!! You in the yard!!! You need to get your fucking ass up, man, you hear me!!!”

  The reason that I knew the zombies were beneath a window of a house in the yard I was laying in, was because by that time, I was beginning to regain feeling in my body, and had turned my head in the direction of his voice and the music. Thank god for small favors. Only bad thing about regaining feeling, though, was the fact that I could feel - and I felt like shit. I was in so much pain, I was trying to will myself back into the numbness that I had just came out of. My entire fuckin’ body from the top of my head to the tips of my toes was screaming and pounding like a raw, exposed nerve. It felt like the worst toothache ever, but a whole-body toothache.

  “Hey, asshole!!! Are you even alive out there, man?!”

  “God!!!…Yeah, I’m fucking alive, you dick!!!,” I yelled back as I was struggling to my feet. “If you didn’t notice, I just got tossed from the roof of a fucking car right into a fucking tree, you fucking asshole!!! I am in a whole lot of fucking pain!!! You can’t just get up from this kind of fucking accident and act like nothing fucking happened!!! …You fuck!!!”

  “Well, fuck you for saving your life, you ungrateful fuck!” he said, picking up a beer he had resting on his xylophone. “I was just trying to do one last good thing before I go to meet up with my family! Figured you would at least appreciate it!”

  “I do fucking appreciate it, trust me, I really do! Thank you very much! I’m sorry I was rude, but I am really in a lot of pain! It’s a really bad thing to wake up to, trust me!”

  By this time, since we were yelling at each other due to the distance and height (he was in the second story of a house that was about a half an acre away) between the two of us, the stupid zombies had split in to two packs, and one was on its way towards me. Made me really glad I didn’t lose my grip on my AR as I did my home run slide into that fuckin’ tree.

  “You got company coming!”

  “Yeah, thanks!” I yelled as I popped off a couple shots at two of the ones closest to me, putting bullets through the center of their foreheads, spraying the air behind them with their brains and blood. I was about to pull the trigger and take out a third zombie, when from directly behind me, I heard the tell-tale sound of a zombie moving. I spun and dropped to my knee… and brought the barrel of my rifle right up under Gus’s chin.

  “Holy shit, dude!!! I about blew your fucking head off!”

  “Oh, man, it feels like someone already did,” he said laughing a little, holding his head in his hands. He looked pretty bad, face all busted up and bleeding. It looked like the air-bag didn’t deploy for some reason. “We are so fucked now, Dave. We’re only half way there.”

  “Yeah, well, we will die if you don’t start shooting some of these fucking zombies! Come on!” I said, shooting two more in rapid succession.

  “Oh, shit! Yeah!” he said, pulling his .45 from the waist-band of his pants and shooting a zombie that had come from behind us. “I got so dazed from the crash that I forgot what was going on! Hah! I remembered I had to get home, but not why! Gee-whiz!”

  “Well, it’s pretty obvious now!”

  “Oh, yeah! Most definitely!”

  The realization that we were one short suddenly hit
me, as I had a memory lapse myself. Stupid fuckin’ head trauma! “Gus,” I yelled over my shoulder, in between shots. He was a little behind me, taking care of zombies that had come from the east - strangely enough, there was a Chinese one. “Hey, did you see if Linn was okay when you came out the car? Where is she?”

  “Shit! I forgot about her, too! Wait a minute, I’ll run over and check and see! You’re clear from this way, Dave!”

  “Word! I’m gonna go see if that fuckin’ idiot’s gonna be cool! If he is, we gotta run, man, …his fuckin’ ass is gonna draw ‘em in for miles!” After Gus came out of the car, the dude in the house had begun playing again, but this time he was playing the bag-pipes.

  What the fuck, right?

  11

  Before I made my way to the house, I slung my AR tight across my back and pulled out my Taurus .40. I didn’t feel like using a long-rifle in what I figured would be some close quarters motherfuckin’ combat. I had enough spare mags for the thing, so I figured I’d be cool with it, plus the .40’s got some ass to it. Not as much as a fo five, but better than a pussy nine.

  There were, by now, a shit-ton of them bitches between me and the house. Since fuckface up there was playing what sounded like (and this really sucked, considering) a Scottish or Irish funeral dirge with his fuckin’ back turned away from the window, I had to try and get close enough to him so I could hopefully get his attention. I thought of just leaving him to his own devices, but figured I owed it to his ass to at least see if he needed anything before we jetted. He did save my life, in his own strange way.

  As I began my approach, I heard Gus shooting behind me, and wished him well. I just hoped he was doing the same for me, ‘cause we both needed a little luck right at that moment.