“Plop is a funny word isn’t it,” he said thoughtfully, “I say the word PLOP and where does your train of thought go?”
He sure was unique, my friend Gordy, and I guess that’s why I liked him. The simple bastard made me smile and as it turned out, I enjoyed my coffee. We were planning on doing an all-nighter on the road, not because we were running behind schedule or in any kind of a rush, just because we were both so sick of driving. We wanted the trip to be over already. We finished up our beverages and our conversation about funny words, including words like ‘ointment, chutney’ and ‘elbow’ and we paid Flo and left. It’s funny, the things you still remember. As we paid Flo, I saw a sneak of her white bra popping through between two of the buttons on her uniform. I don’t know why I still remember that and it has nothing to do with anything, it was just something that was beautiful, simple and nice.
The moving van was a rental, an old beat up machine that had seen more than its fair share of road. The back smelt like someone had spent a weekend drinking and smoking, and then passed out, died a little bit, and oozed alcoholic sweat deep into cheap furniture fabric. It was the same smell that lived in the curtains of my old apartment. I wondered how many people had driven this van with their same stinky shit in the back, and of these people how many of them thought about driving it into a large body of water and starting fresh.
Without warning the night had turned on us. It was cold, so cold and oddly quiet. A thick mist was coming down the road to meet us. Gordy sat on the key trying to kick the guts out of the van. The old thing groaned and whined before it spat in disgust and started. I think it was irritated because we had woken it up on such a cold night. In all fairness it should have been going to bed just like we should have been.
We’d been driving for fifteen minutes before I realized that neither of us had said a word. It could have been the stillness of the night, the cold thin air or the mud like fog that had affected the mood on that cramped bench seat. I didn’t know what it was, but I didn’t much like it. The fog had become so thick that I couldn’t see more than a couple of yards in front of us. For a fraction of a second I thought maybe it was possible that this was my new reality, stuck in the cab of a worn down moving van with the rest of the universe gone, nothing but mist. The car had come with a CD stuck in the player, Queen, and the radio had no reception so Queen it was and we were on its fifth time through.
Freddy was singing about fat bottomed girls and Gordy was tapping his fingers along to the tune, seemingly oblivious to the unease I was feeling. No wait, he wasn’t being oblivious, he was concentrating. Concentrating and staring into the muck with imagined super sight looking for the danger he sensed was coming. That’s when he took his foot off the pedal and hovered it above the brake ready to pump it down if need be. Two yellow eyes reflected back at us, some distance away, off the side of the road at first, but then they started hovering directly in to our path…coming at us. As we got closer and closer a silhouette shape began to appear around the glowing eyes, it was human.
Still coming at us. Gordy hit the horn and flicked the head lights. Still coming at us. The silhouette shambled like a drunk, shuffling its limp feet down the road…still coming at us. Gordy jumped on the brakes with both feet but it was too little too late. The weight of the crap in the back and the age of the brakes did not add up to a short stopping distance.
CRUNCH! Quickly followed by BUMP BUMP!
The force of the impact almost threw me from my seat and the sound was like someone had thrown pumpkins at us.
We were both screaming now. When you aren’t ready for a tragedy you hear the screaming before you realize it’s you that’s screaming. Even as we came to a complete stop we were both bellowing and looking at each other. Gordy was first out and he ran to the front of the cab, saw a human sized dent, mud, black stuff and blood splattered everywhere. He stopped screaming and ran following the trail of blood and guts behind the Van. Whatever we hit must have dragged a little. Chunks of flesh and puddles of blood lead him down the highway. I wasn’t in that much of a rush to see the remains of whatever, or more likely, whoever we had just destroyed.
I walked slowly, concentrating on breathing and putting one foot in front of the other. It was the only way I was going to make it down the road to where Gordy knelt, covering his face with his hands, sobbing above a pile of minced body parts. It was like a human rissole splayed across the road.
I remember thinking, praying that this was all some kind of elaborate joke. That any second now a B-grade TV celebrity would come out of the fog, lights and cameras shining in my face and I would be so mad but so happy and nobody would be dead and nobody would be going to jail.
I took one knee beside my friend and rested a gentle hand on his shoulder, a simple gesture to give him comfort and help me find strength. Eventually I forced myself to look at what we had done. The first thing I did was vomit where its stomach should have been. I didn’t mean too, but I couldn’t help it. The sight and the smell were just too much for me to handle. I was also pretty emotional, so the second thing I did was start to whimper. I don’t know if it was my vomit or the body but steam was rising from the human puddle. White glossy bone stuck out of skin and entrails laid spread out like a disgusting maze. There wasn’t as much blood as I figured there should be, but maybe that’s because it was spilled over such a long distance. And there was so much yellow, chunks of yellow insides on the outside.
The vans tires had done too much damage to the body and genitalia to be able to tell if this person had once been a boy or a girl, so I tried looking at its face. By this stage Gordy had gone off the side of the road to vomit, he doesn’t handle the smell or sight of other peoples vomit very well. I figured it must have been a lady, her hair was matted and burnt but had some length to it. A lot of her skin had been grated off but I thought I could see some blue eye liner below where her eye should have been. Also, there was no facial hair. Her mouth hung open at an unnatural angle, it was almost hypnotizing. She must have been out here awhile, in the middle of bumfuck. Her teeth were all crooked and yellow and the gaps between them were filled with animal fur. Poor lady had probably just been through the worst kind of hell, lost, eating wild animals to survive then the first car she see’s plows her down. I started softly crying.
Click…
I froze, stopped breathing and wide eyed stared at her mouth…CLICK! This isn’t right. CLICK! By some miracle her mouth was opening and closing, her dry tongue thrashing about like a dying lizard and the top and bottom of her mouth hit with force…CLICK!
“Gordy” I screamed, “GORDY SHE’S ALIVE!”
I don’t know why he believed me, probably a mixture of denial and hope, but he came racing back, almost slipping on some of the spilled yellow jelly stuff.
CLICK
“FUUUUUUUCK” He said.
We were both so mesmerized by the mouth that neither of us saw her hand move. Her arm was barely attached and blood no longer pumped through those veins but nevertheless, her fingers crawled spiderlike along the ground. Her nails grabbed on to Gordy’s shoe and gripped…HARD! He yelped and kicked frantically at the hand, pointing some of the fingers in directions fingers shouldn’t point.
“What are you doing?” I asked him as I pulled him away, “You’re going to hurt her hand.”
“Hurt her?” He yelled back at me, “Some scuff marks on her hands are the very least of her problems! There is a puddle of your vomit where her guts are supposed to be. We need to go get help…?” He more asked than said, “You want to wait here while I go get help?”
“Noooo, you can stay and comfort her if you want, you’re the one who turned her inside out. I’ll go get help.”
“We’ll both get help.”
That was good enough for me. As long as I didn’t have to stay there I was fine. We didn’t think about other cars on the road running her over, again, or how we were going to explain what was happening to whoever we found to ask for help. We just wanted
out of there.
A couple of minutes later some lights appeared up ahead. It was a petrol station. I have never seen a more welcoming, friendly sight as those blinking neon lights. Neon lights meant people and people meant help. We pulled in fast and skidded on the gravel to a halt. I heard my shit in the back falling and crashing, but it didn’t register with me, we needed to find help. Gordy was out like a bolt and he almost ran straight into the automatic doors as they were a bit slow to open. I jogged in behind him. Both of us were calling “HELP,” but our calls went unanswered. I became agitated, how dare nobody be there, the lights were on and the door was open, how could there be nobody there?
“What the shit balls is going on?!” I screamed, “Something is wrong with everything!”
Gordy was staring at a knocked over magazine rack. He looked as if he knew or at least expected what was going on. “Go put fuel in that thing,” he said as he pointed to the van.
I could do that, at least it was something I knew how to handle. I went back out to the van and left Gordy inside. Everything we did seemed to come with more questions, and I hate questions, big questions or little questions. How was that thing back out there, the puddle lady thing, still moving? She wasn’t a reversible jacket, how come she was inside out and still moving? How were we going to pay for this petrol? Jail? No work on Monday? Death maybe? And the big one that kept clicking through my mind was simply…WHY? I watched the meter tick over as the fuel slowly pumped in to the van, it was taking so long. The only thing keeping me calm was the numbers slowly rolling over on the pump.
From behind me, over the noise of the pump, I heard a familiar CLICK…CLICK noise. I turned to see, Geoff. At least that’s what his name badge read. I’ve found that referring to a stranger by name is a really good way to break the ice, and at that time I realized I’d successfully programmed myself to look for name badges. I’d noticed Geoff’s name badge before I noticed he was dragging one leg with no foot on it. Even before I noticed the outstretched hand that was missing all but a thumb and index finger. By the look in his eyes, I don’t think Geoff would care much if I called him by his name or not.
Evolution has done a real number on modern man. Being safe all the time is not good for you if you are ever in real danger. Luckily I had Gordy. He was not a modern man, he didn’t really fit in anywhere but he always saw things for what they were, not for what society had told him. I stood there, contemplating this while staring blankly at Geoff; inches from his grasp as he dragged blood and cheese grated his leg stump across the ground. I was too dumb and too scared to BE scared.
CLICK…CLICK…his mouth wanted something.
But it was to be denied. A can of soup flew past my head and landed squarely in Geoff’s. Geoff stood there a moment, with half a can of chunky soup protruding out of his forehead. His eyes closed, his mouth stopped wanting, and he fell in a sloppy heap to the floor.
“What the FUCK did you just do to Geoff?” I screamed.
“I stopped it.” was Gordy’s rational reply.
“Stopped him? Stopped him? You killed him with a can of pea and ham?”
“It’s not my fault. It shouldn’t go around attacking people if it has a head like a watermelon.”
Gordy didn’t seem to care enough about Geoff, or the puddle lady back up the road. He was at the back of the van throwing armfuls of tinned goods and bottled water in; now he’d taken to stealing.
“WHAT.THE.SHIT.BALLS?” I asked, “Are we on a rampage?”
“No.” Said Gordy, “Now I’m sorry but what I’m about to say is probably going to upset you, but because I’m your friend I’m going to say it anyway and I really want you to listen.”
“Ok.”
“Zombies.”…
…”As in the un-dead?”
Gordy slammed the door shut and started filling up stolen jerry cans, “Here” he said as he passed me an empty can, “It’ll be quicker if you fill too.”
We stocked up as much as we could, Gordy insisted we each go to the toilet, he stole toilet paper, and we got back on the road. How did we go from having small talk, and hot beverages, and looking at bra’s to this in such a short amount of time? Driving again through the mist gave me time to think. It all made sense except it didn’t. The puddle lady should have been dead for sure, but she wasn’t. Geoff was missing a foot and looked as if he’d had some fingers bitten off, most likely by a zombie. He should have been on the floor wailing, but he wasn’t. I didn’t see it at first because I wasn’t looking for zombies. Gordy saw it because Gordy see’s what he is looking at.
We were not far away from the nearest city, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. Now we had gone so far I was kind of hoping it was zombies. What if it wasn’t? How would we explain what we had done? ’We thought it was zombies’ probably wouldn’t fly in court. But if it was zombies then that would mean that it was zombies, and zombies kill and eat people.
I began to hear the approaching sound of jet aircraft, lots of them. They sounded awful close and I panicked a bit because I couldn’t see where they were. By the sound of them they were going to crash right on top of us at any second. And then they were gone and we kept driving. We were going a lot less than the speed limit and both of us were scanning the roads. We hadn’t seen any traffic since we left Flo. I wondered what Flo was doing.
“Zombies?” I asked Gordy. “Shit no? Zombies? Really?”
“I can’t be sure, I’ve never seen a real life walking dead person before, but those two back there both look like zombies to me.” Gordy replied.
I noticed on the other side of the road a small truck pulled off to the side with engine and lights on. The driver’s side door hanging open. Someone, a big guy with no shirt on was looking back down the road. He wasn’t moving. Had he hit someone? I could just make out a body lying on the road and someone trying to give them mouth to mouth. When we heard screaming, we both pretended like we didn’t and we just kept driving.
“Do you think we are driving in the right direction then?” I asked, “I mean if it really is zombies, shouldn’t we be driving away from the mass population, the newest self-recruiting food group?”
We passed two more abandoned cars.
“Dunno,” Said Gordy, “Let’s go and see. If it is zombies, but not too many zombies maybe we can stay and help before it gets too out of hand. We’ve killed two already and we were barely even trying.”
“And if it’s too many zombies.” I asked
The pause before Gordy’s answer was excruciating, “Dunno…We may have to wing it?”
“….poo….”
We continued driving and got closer to the city, the signs weren’t good. More and more abandoned cars littered the street. The sun was just starting to come up and the fog was beginning to clear a bit. We could see the town in the distance. Flying above it, in the suns glare were three jet fighters. They were moving fast, directly at us and flying very low. Gordy stopped the van and cut the engine. We were watching the planes come at us, leaving the city, when a bright white light burst out and engulfed the skyline swallowing everything whole in an instant. A few seconds later we heard the explosion and felt the earth move.
My ears were ringing in pain and my vision was all blurry. I managed to make out the three jets fly overhead and moments later heard their engines roar. The cabs interior flooded with the stench of shit.
Gordy was gripping the steering wheel with a white knuckle death grip. He was leaning over and yelling something at me. It felt like the world was on a time delay and I was late for my own brain. I stared at him and concentrated so hard to make my thinking work.
“I THINK I JUST SHIT MYSELF!!” he was yelling.
I’d never been in this situation before, “YEAH!” I yelled back, “I CAN SMELL IT!!”
The ringing slowly came to a stop and my hearing came back to at least mostly normal. My brain stopped knocking about in my head. The world stopped spinning and I could see again. I could still see the flash when I
blinked but I was glad to be able to see clearly again.
Gordy started the car. Freddy was still playing on the CD player. He was asking us who wants to live forever. Gordy leaned across and tuned him off.
“SHALL WE GO SEE IF FLO HAS ANY CHAINSAWS?”
We were lucky we had a van full of some furniture, some clothes and the food and gas we stole from the petrol station. I was lucky I was with Gordy, my socially awkward friend, the zombie killer.
Justin Dunne
Adulting is hard. Justin Dunne, Australian father of three, husband of one, and brother of two, knows this. When adulting gets too hard, he turns to writing. One half of the three Brothers Dunne, you can sample more of his escaping of reality in, 'Tales of The Nothing Man'.
Sink or Swim
By Suzanne Casey-Olsen
"Mom.....that lady next door is acting weird again!" yelled Mikey. His mother walked to the kitchen window and peeked out the curtains.
"Well at least she is completely dressed for a change." Mikey's mother said dismissively as she went back to stir the pot on the stove.
Jen was oblivious to the fact that anyone was watching her. Any other day she might have felt ridiculous...but not today. She was adorned in a long flannel white robe, pink fluffy bunny slippers and had her hair wrapped tightly in a towel. Her face was covered in a now dry and flaking cucumber mask. A glass of red wine sloshed around in her glass as she tried to comfort a growling gray tabby she held under her arm. Both Jen and Luna, her very pissed off cat, had stood in exactly the same spot for well over half an hour staring into the pool, completely and totally focused on the unbelievable sight before them.
All Things Zombie: Chronology of the Apocalypse Page 11