The van I had mentioned was a one of those large 15-passenger vans, and was about twenty-five feet to our right - separated from us by a thick wall of teeth-gnashing zombies.
We had only made it about ten feet when my .22 ran out of bullets. I only had fifteen in the tube, and wouldn’t have even had the fuckin’ thing in my hands if I had known we were gonna see some serious action like that (I should’ve known better) - but I did have it, and even with me taking my time (nanoseconds) and only picking out the zombies in my path, the bullets still ran out pretty fuckin’ quick.
If I had been thinking clearly, I would have either yelled for Frank to cover me while I re-loaded my rifle, or shoved it between my back and my pack (as I had no sling on it) and gone to my Taurus .40 that was in my holster and been fine - ‘cause I had plenty of mags for that in my LBV. But I wasn’t, and instead of doing those reasonable, sane things… I took my .22 by its barrel and used it as a fuckin’ club. Genius!
I swung and I swung and I swung, caving in their faces and breaking their skulls as I waded my way through the zombies to the van, their blood and brains splashing on my face, chest, arms and hands - while behind me I could hear Frank firing away and re-loading when he had to, keeping them from closing in. I was almost to the van - just five feet from the front bumper - when the .22’s stock shattered on an exceptionally hard zombie skull. So instead of using it as a club, I began to use it as a spear, and drove it into zombie temples and eyes as I went.
It wasn’t until I got to the van’s bumper that I realized I had a perfectly good back-up weapon (so stupid!!!), and pulled it and plunged, firing, back into the mass to Frank, who was still fighting his way to the van. I kept the .22 in my hand, though. Figured I could repair the stock later on, or at least saw it and sand it down to a pistol grip. Plus, it was a pretty good brain-poker, as it was.
Frank had been forced to stop his forward progress and was in the middle of huge advancing circle of zombies, firing two-handed with his MP5 in his right hand and his Beretta in his left - looking like Cleric Preston in “Equilibrium” or Woody Harrelson’s character in “Zombieland” when he was in the trailer surrounded by zombies - spinning in circles getting head-shot after head-shot, firing to the front and rear simultaneously doing the same, and even kicking or pistol-whipping the motherfuckers if they broke the perimeter he had set.
I fought my way to him, burning through three fifteen round magazines and impaling at least a dozen zombie skulls with my brain-poker, and once there helped him clear a path out from the center - the both of us taking a serious gamble as we fired at the zombies that were in between us. With a big enough gap made for him to escape through, we both fought our way to the van and climbed up the bumper and onto the vans roof.
“Oh my fucking god, Dave!!! That was insane!!!” Frank yelled as we both fell to the vans roof in utter exhaustion. We were able to take a break and relax for a minute, ‘cause the van was too high up for the dead bitches to reach us and they hadn’t shown the ability to climb - yet. So, even though we were trapped in the middle of a huge, ravenous horde, we were relatively safe. Stranded on our calm island in the middle of the stormy seas. Just a couple a Gilligan’s.
“No shit, dude!!! Fuck yeah!!! …We made it!!!!” I replied. “I can’t fucking believe we’re still alive!!! Hah!!! Hey…want a beer? I mean, why not, right?”
“Of course I do! Break those fuckers out, man!”
So there we sat, on the vans roof, enjoying a few reebs as the swarm below pounded on the van and reached up towards us, moaning in their endless, agonizing hunger.
After the sweet nectar of the gods was drank, we went to getting our weapons ready, and made sure they were all fully loaded and that any ammo we may have needed was easily reached, free of obstruction for a quick re-loading. Since my .22 was down for the count (for the time being), I went to my AR-15, which I should’ve been carrying all along, since it is a much more powerful weapon with twice the number of rounds in its magazine. Frank kept the H&K in his hands, as it hadn’t let him down up to that point, and he felt very comfortable using it.
“Shit, I almost forgot why we came busting into this mess! The screaming girl? Do you see her anywhere, Frank?”
“Fuck, I did forget! No, I don’t see……. wait! Over there…” He said pointing to a yellow Volkswagen Bug that had a ring of zombies around it, battering at its doors and windows. “She’s inside there, I can see her.”
“I tell you what, it must be that stupid bitches lucky day, man, ‘cause that’s right in the direction we’re going. If we make it off this rock, that is.”
“Yup. And it’s looking like a big ‘if’,” Frank sullenly added.
“Yeah, no shit. Man, I wish I had some binoc’s, or a scope or something. I’d like to see into that car she’s in, maybe check and see if she got bit or something. ‘Cause I kind of want to shoot the gas tanks of some of these cars around us. You know… so the concussion of the explosions could blast these zombies to the ground, and give us an out.”
“That’s fucking stupid! It’d fucking kill us!”
“Yeah, I know… I know,” I said, sighing. “I read some book where that was done, and it didn’t work out very well in that. So, odds are, it wouldn’t in real life, either. I just have no clue as to how we’re gonna get outta this one, that’s all. I’m fuckin’ stumped.”
“Eh… I don’t know either. There’s waaaay too many of them to shoot through. I mean, we hardly made it up here.” The zombies were at least fifteen feet deep around the van, and more and more were coming towards us, attracted by the zombies moans and the loud hammering on the sides of the van.
“Yeah, and I don’t know about you, but my ass got bit the fuck up. Thank god - or whatever - none of those pus-bags was able to bite through this get-up I got on. That would’ve sucked! I’m also surprised my face or neck didn’t get scratched or anything.”
“I got bit up, too. Not on my neck or face, though,” Frank added very quickly, “just on my arms and legs. They bite pretty fucking hard, man. Fucking hurt bad! I can see why you wanted to find some thicker clothing than just t-shirts and jeans!”
“Yeah… Now I just wish I had a plan…….”
32
“That’s weird…” Frank mumbled to himself.
“Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” I asked. For some reason, I was thinking about Gary Coleman.
“Look… those zombies are all walking away from the car that girl’s in. It’s just weird… I mean, we still have a ton of fucking zombies around us, even though it looks like quite a few have left. Why are they leaving her alone?”
When the path to her car had cleared, leaving us a with clearer view inside, we saw why it was that the zombies had uncharacteristically turned away from their human sardine can - the girl had turned into a zombie. She must’ve got bit or scratched before she locked herself in there, and had finally succumbed to her wounds. I looked at my watch.
“It’s 12:15. We came into this shit at around nine. That means it took her two hours to die from her injuries and turn into a zombie. Two fuckin’ hours…… I wonder if that’s the standard, or if the time it takes for you to turn is based on how bad you got fucked up? Like maybe a scratch or a nip will take longer than something worse? It sure took Clark a while to turn…”
“No clue,” Frank answered. “As long as I don’t get bit, I don’t care…” Pretty much summed it up for me, as well. But I was still curious - I wanted to know how long I would have if I got bit. You know, before I had to kill myself.
“Yeah, fuck it…… Well, I’m gonna blow some cars up,” I said as I got myself into a good prone firing position and sighted my rifle on the VW’s gas tank.
“What!!! Are you fucking serious?!”
“As a heart-attack, man,” I answered as I did a double-tap on the gas tank.
The little VW went up in a ball of fire, and launched up into the air, pin-wheeling into the car that was ahead of it.
�
�Fuck yeah!!!!” We both yelled at the same time.
Thankfully, the book I had read was wrong - dead wrong. In that, blowing the gas tank of one car had started a chain reaction, blowing up every car in its vicinity. When I shot the VW, the explosion was a singular event. I really didn’t know what was going to happen, but I was getting tired of sitting on the roof doing nothing.
What the book had got right, was the flattening of all the zombies in the car’s blast radius (the book was a zombie book, called “Rise Again”, by Ben Tripp - and it was a good fuckin’ book, too). The ones that were the closest had been torn to fuckin’ shreds, and were scattered about in burning chunks, and the rest had been knocked to the ground, hard. Some of them had been hit by the blast so hard, that they were broken too badly to move - they just laid there on the ground, twitching, with maybe an arm or a leg still working as they should.
“Man, I am surprised that worked,” I said to Frank.
“Me too… Do it again, but a little closer. Not too close, though.”
“Okay. Just keep a low profile, in case any shit comes flying in our direction.”
I blew up a total of eight cars that were scattered around us, killing many of the zombies in the area, and crippling even more.
“Okay, dude, check it out,” I said. “Get your ass ready to fuckin’ move. And I mean quick… I’m gonna blow this fuckin’ Escalade. I hate them fuckin’ things. The blast’ll clear these fuckers away from the van and leave us a big enough hole to get the fuck off this thing.”
The Escalade was about eight feet from us, and the zombies were crammed in between our van and it. Plus, they were still in a big fuckin’ ring around the rest of the van. All we needed was a hole.
“Jesus… I don’t think that’s a good idea, Dave…… Aaaaaaah!!!! Fuck it!!! Why not?! Fire away!!! Just don’t fucking kill us, man!!!”
I sighted on the rear of the monstrosity, took a deep, deep breath, exhaled very slowly… and pulled the trigger - twice (once to cause a leak and get some fumage going, and a second time to throw a spark - I actually did the same on all the other cars, as well).
Whoever had owned the motherfucker had to have filled the tank before they were forced to leave it behind, ‘cause that blast was fucking huge! The van Frank and I were on top of was tossed away like a fuckin’ tissue, and landed on its side a cars-length away. I say were on top of, ‘cause my ass had come to a sliding halt a good clip from where the van ended up, and I had no fuckin’ clue as to where Frank was at.
Somehow, I wasn’t hurt all that bad. I was just sore as shit, but didn’t have any broken bones or any serious cuts that needed stitches. I couldn’t believe it.
I got up off the ground and looked at the devastation I had caused. It was like some old movie about Vietnam, or something. There were burned and broken bodies scattered all over the fuckin’ place, and every car that was still on its wheels was on fire - even the ground was on fire.
The Escalade wasn’t the only vehicle that got blown up - a couple cars that were parked by the Escalade had blown up, and our van had blown the fuck up, too. No wonder why the blast was so fuckin’ massive! One plus to all that carnage was that most of the zombies that had us surrounded were either dead, or too fucked up to pose any real problem. One negative - a big, big fuckin’ negative - was that Frank was missing. I didn’t see him anywhere.
“Frank!!! Frank!!!” I yelled as shot a surviving zombie in its face. “If you’re alive answer me!!! If you’re not, moan!!! Frank!!! C’mon, Frank, say something!!!”
“Something….” Frank said, coughing, as he crawled out from under a hood of a car that must’ve been blown off in the blast. “Oh my god, did that suck, Dave! God… I feel like I got run over by a truck. Or a fifteen passenger van.”
“Yeah, so do I. You got any broken bones, or anything? Can you still walk?”
“No, I don’t think anything’s broken. Let me see if I can get up….”
He slowly made it to his feet, but paused in mid-rise to hold his head in his hands - probably ‘cause of a bad, fuckin’ headache or a near black-out - and stumbled over to where I was at.
“Well, that’s good, I guess,” he said. “I thought I was going to fall back on my ass for a minute there, my fucking head is pounding so bad. I can walk, though, and nothing seems like it’s broken. Thankfully.”
“You sure you’re good?” I asked him, as I handed him his MP5 that I had retrieved from under the hood. “We could break in one of these houses here and hole up for a bit if you want to…” I quickly regretted saying that, though, ‘cause his Mom was in the house right down the street. In the heat of the moment I forgot exactly where I was at.
“Nah, I’m cool, let’s get the fuck outta here before more of these fuckers show up,” he said, shooting another blast-surviving zombies head off, “‘cause you know they’re gonna.”
“Okay, if you’re sure… (a slow nod) let’s get a move on then.”
33
The trip to and through the graveyard was pretty uneventful; we only encountered a handful of zombies stumbling around before it and within, and quickly and quietly dispatched them with our machete’s. No sense in attracting any more than we could handle, especially since the blast had already done that for us - back around the carnage we had just left there were a fuckin’ ton of the meat-bags that had come over there ‘cause of all the racket, looking for something to gnaw on. We got lucky none of them had noticed us on our escape.
We came upon the fence that circles the airfields perimeter and crouched down, taking a little break, ‘cause we were both still pretty fuckin’ sore after getting tossed from the van, and neither of us was ready to climb up the fence yet. It was one of those high security fences with the barbed wire on top - two strands. Luckily it wasn’t concertina wire, that shit is fuckin’ treacherous.
“Beer?” Frank asked as we hunkered down against the fence, facing the way we had just came.
“Sounds good,” I said. “Turn around, let me get ‘em outta your pack. Cut down on some of that weight for ya.”
I got out two apiece for us, and sat back down next to him, the both of us sitting Indian style as we kept a keen eye out for any zombies approaching through the cemetery. We weren’t too worried about anything within the airfield, so neither of us took even a single glance to our rears - we figured that if there was zombies in there, the fence would protect us from them.
“The way through this airfield should be a cake-walk, dude. This fence goes clean around it,” I said, making a circle pattern in the air with my right hand. “And I’m pretty sure there’s an access gate they keep closed up tight after business hours, maybe even all day. I don’t really know, though, I never been in there. Just guessing. But I figure the only zombies we’ll see - if any - are gonna be maybe a couple airline employees, and maybe some passengers if there were any when this shit started.”
“Yeah, it shouldn’t be too bad,” Frank said after taking a healthy swig of his first beer, finishing it off. “I’m not too worried about it. I plan on taking my sweet time in there, and walking the entire way through. My fuckin’ left thigh is cramping up something fierce, and I really don’t feel like running on it.”
“I hear ya, and feel the same. Walking it is.”
After we finished our beers, and had a couple more (Why not, right? It’s not like we had zombies coming at us!), we climbed up over the fence and began our trek through the huge expanse of land that the airfield took up. Just like we thought, the airfield was a breeze. We only encountered one zombie before we reached the center point, and we took turns taking whacks at it with our machete’s - a little fucked up, I know, but we were kinda bored.
When we got to the center of the airfield, we both stopped dead in our tracks. Off in the distance, where Dalzell (the tiny burg where Joey lived) was at, the sky was black with smoke and soot. It did not look good at all.
“Okay, that can’t be a good thing,” Frank said, as he shook his head in the ne
gatory. “Looks like Dalzell might be burning.”
“Yup, sure does,” I agreed. “So… what do you wanna do? Keep going, or turn around and go back to Gus’s? I’m for forward progress.”
“Shit… yeah, we made it this far, we may as well get a little closer and see what’s up.”
Thirty-five minutes and a few beers later, we were standing on Dalzell Road facing the town, watching it burn. The heat was so fucking intense, and the smoke was so thick we could hardly breathe. And the volume of the blaze was deafening. Whatever had happened, the entire east side of town was ablaze: the houses, the trees and telephone poles, even the lawns were on fire - everything burned. It was a pyromaniacs wet dream.
“This fuckin’ sucks!” I yelled to him through my shirt that I had pulled up over my mouth and nose, squinting at him through the cloying smoke. “Let’s keep going north on this road, see if the rest of towns the same! Joey’s house is away from the rest of this shit! It might be okay!”
“Yeah, let’s get away from this fucking heat!” he back yelled through his shirt. “Hey…… hey, your clothes are steaming! They’re gonna start on fire! Let’s get the fuck outta here!”
“Holy shit! So are yours! Run!”
We stopped running a few hundred yards down the road, at the edge if the north side of town. The fire hadn’t yet reached there, and the air was easier to breathe and considerably cooler - even though we could still feel the heat on our backs.
“That’s promising,” I said as we came down to a trot, then back to an easy walking pace. “Fuckin’ fire hasn’t got this far yet, but I bet it will soon. Now let’s hope that the dumbass is alive and ready to go.”
“He better be, or else I’m leaving his ass,” Frank vehemently said. “If he tries making us wait so he could do his hair and brush fucking his teeth or whatever, I’m gonna punch him in his fucking face! He better be moving fast, or he’s fucked!”
“I’ll drag his stupid ass out if I have to, and if he won’t hurry, I’ll just shoot him in his leg or something and leave him. I don’t even care that we’ll have wasted all this time, nearly dying and shit; if that motherfucker tries that ‘just wait a minute while I get ready’ crap I’m gonna fuck him up. Bad. We won’t have the fuckin’ time for that shit, once we get there.”
Just Another Day Page 12