“So anyways, we each will choose a house to pillage. We are looking for food, weapons, medicine - anything that can be considered of use to us. Whoever returns back to this gate with the best booty wins.”
“The best booty? Looks like I already won!” Denise smirked.
“Let me rephrase that; the more valuable collection of items.” Hannah clarified.
The girls headed out, each with an empty pillowcase to fill and their weapon of choice in hand, ready to deploy.
The street was crowded with single-family detached homes. Hannah had her eye on a large gray two story modern-conventional structure that appeared to be in decent shape. The front picket fence apparently had been trampled over by a herd of dead heads and the large front picture window had been shattered. Large pointed glass shards hung like icicles from the top of the window frame.
Denise made her way toward a large, much less modern appearing, white Cape Cod-style house with brown shutters. She found the front door to be barely hanging by its hinges, as if it had been kicked or forced open previously. The adventurous one cautiously walked into the front entryway and heard classic country music echoing from the downstairs corner kitchen area.
Denise located a large walk-in pantry and scored her some cans of Chunky soup and pork and beans. She then made her way to an adjacent bathroom where she began to load up her bag full of prescription meds and aspirin, band aids, razors and toiletries.
The country music still blaring, Denise heard the county classic “All My Exes Live in Texas’. But the song was suddenly interrupted by the sounds of Hannah yelling “GET OUT! THEY’RE COMING!! DENISE!!!!“
The goth girl grabbed her goodies and ran back through the house and onto Mountaineer Drive. She was just in time to see her competitor running past, in the opposite direction of Stan’s safe house. Hannah was followed by about fifteen much slower, drooling, oozing foot draggers of mixed gender and race, size and shape.
Denise began to sprint alongside Hannah when they noticed directly ahead of them, at the intersection of Mountaineer and Morning Glory Drive, was another larger mass of munchers. So many, in fact, that they were breathing down each other’s corroded necks.
“Okay, plan B,” Hannah shouted as she made a 45 -degree turn to the right. She jumped onto and climbed over a six-foot picket fence, then cut in between two houses. This led to a large wooded backyard which eventually led to the adjacent street to the east. It took all Denise had for her to keep up with Hannah, but Denise never fell too far behind.
“Haaa! No problem at all! See how easy it is to outsmart those fuckers?!“ Having said that, Han realized she had spoken too soon. For she had just run through a thicket of shrubbery and now, was right smack in the middle of a pack of about eight more zombies. They were effectively blocking the girls’ path back to the rear gate of the Glazier compound.
At this point the teens were exhausted from all the running and climbing fences and hurdling corpses in the street. Hannah reached back to remove the crossbow from her back harness and began flawlessly shooting the mini projectiles right between the creatures' eyes. Denise deployed her improvised Louisville Slasher weapon and began to swing the bat furiously. The freshly sharpened ice skate blades were easily taking off the heads of the decaying deformities they encountered.
But for every cadaveric creature they stopped, another would join the ranks. Hannah was soon down to her last two arrows and began to hold them like knives, using the tips to puncture the heads of the dead.
Denise was steadily slaying the dead but was also running out of gas. She noticed Hannah was struggling to push creatures back and said, “Oh no, rich girl. Did your daddy not buy you enough darts?”
Denise went Wade Boggs on a couple of the mis-creations that were closing in on Hannah but was now too exhausted to swing the bat any longer. “Oh no, white trash girl. Is someone getting tired of swinging their ghetto bat around?” Hannah jabbed back.
“Shut the hell up! Why did I let you talk me into this stupid shit anyways?!“ More of the demented breed began to close in, as there were now fifteen of them between the girls and the back gate. “Oh, are you scared? Okay, watch this,” Hannah quipped as she pulled out her smartphone and pushed an app, which opened up a screen with control levers and gauges to operate something or other. Hannah began to feverishly push buttons on her touch screen.
“In three, two, one… here we go.” A three foot by three-foot drone with video camera rose up off the ground in the Glazier compound and lifted over the rear fence, then hovered approximately twenty feet above the abysmals.
“Whoaaaaa.” Denise was stupefied. “What the …?”
Hannah yelled, “Get behind this car!”
The couple retreated and took cover behind a disabled, abandoned silver Nissan Sentra.
One more push of Hannah’s finger onto the screen caused the unmanned aerial vessel to drop a stun grenade smack in the middle of the DEAD crowd.
A BOOOOMMMMMM!!!! rang out as several zombies were blown back from the concussion of the device, clearing a path for the teens. The girls began running through the newly created opening to the compound. Denise said sarcastically, “Why didn’t you just deploy a drone that has a flamethrower on it and barbecue them with that?”
“Oh, I would have. But that one is on backorder,” Hannah said.
Chapter Thirty-One - Dead Meet
Newport News, Virginia Mack’s mandarin machine turned onto Haystack Landing Road. The truck pulled up along the huge privacy fence that lined the front of the three-story monstrosity of a steel-fabricated structure. On the structure’s exterior was the number 501, which matched the address Mack was given for the Glazier residence.
“This should be it,” Mack asserted.
“Damn, looks like a steel castle,” Anthony chimed in. “Only thing missing is the moat. “And what’s up with all these junk cars lining the street and blocking the gate and
driveway? It’s as if they were driven here and then destroyed somehow and then just left behind.” “I don’t know, dude. But nothing better happen to my baby.” Mack parked his Avalanche on the pothole-covered concrete roadway in front of the solid abode. The three men and a Malinois prepared to exit the vehicle to make their way over to the gate’s intercom system.
Before the doors could open completely, the vehicle began to get showered with flaming plastic sacks. They were pounding hard against the windows, hood, and roof of the truck. Once they impacted the vehicle, they exploded and immediately discharged a thick brown substance consisting of feces and urine.
Although these bag bombs bounced off the windshield and doors without causing any harm to the vehicle, Mack’s SUV was now covered with this malodorous, putrid element. “Oh shit! IT’S SHIT!!!” Duy negatedwhile gagging. “Thank god we had the windows rolled up!” he exclaimed, just as another flaming feces bag was catapulted in through the open moonroof and exploded on the back of his head.
SPLUSHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! “FUCKKKKKKK!!!!!!! EWWWWWWWW!!!!!” Duy screamed while Anthony instructed, “Close the roof!!! Shut the moonroof!!”
The interior of the Avalanche was now not only sewage-soaked but was on fire as well. The travelers had no option other at this point other than abandoning the ass-smelling Avalanche.
“ABANDON SHIT!!! I Mean SHIP!!!!!
They began to walk past the other trashed-out vehicles, and Mack looked back to see his carbonized Chevrolet now becoming fully engulfed in flames. The pickup was rapidly becoming EXTRA Burnt Orange.
Mack was in shoc k and devastated at the same time. “SON OF A BITCH!!!!” The foursome approached the front gate, looking up at the twelve-foot steel wall with coiled barbed wire surrounding the top. There was an intercom button by the front gate, which Mack pushed, and then he paused. There was no response.
He pushed it again and put his face close to the microphone/speaker.
“Hello? My name is Mack McElroy. I am looking for Stan Glazier…and by the way, whoever trashed my ri
de owes me a new fuckin’ car too.” Apparently, all of the previous loud noises; the flaming sacks smacking the SUV, the screams from sewage-soaked citizens, and the sizzling and crackling reverberations of a Barbecue, were all enough to wake the DEAD.
For the human group had suddenly become surrounded by clumsy carnivores, and each of the missionaries was quick to defend themselves with their weapon(s) of choice. Mack pulled out his Ruger .45-caliber and blew out a couple of zombie brains before running out of ammunition. At that point he had to adapt and overcome. He grabbed the weapon by its long barrel and began to smash the butt end of his pistol grip into the faces of filth. He pistolwhipped several of the dying humanity until the Ruger and his hand were covered with stinking, rotted brown flesh.
Roscoe was as persistent in shredding mutants with his muzzle blades as he had always been in performing tasks for his favorite reward - tennis balls. He continued to thrash the domes of the demented while Duy, machete in one hand and a stainless-steel battle axe in the other, was busy cutting and pasting his own share of wretched worm food.
Anthony, though small in stature, was holding his own. He was kicking the legs of the decayed out from under them, bringing their disgusting heads down to his level where he would put the final nail in their coffin. They were five-inch stainless steel nails which he fired into their brains with his cordless Makita nail gun. After going through several nails and wearing down some battery, Anthony switched over to deploy his new expandable police baton with the retractable switchblade. He found this weapon to be quite capable as well.
Just as they were finishing off the final sludge monster, all looked up to see the sliding front gate open about a foot, just wide enough for a small crossbow to fit through. A crossbow which was now pointed at Mack’s head. And standing behind this weapon was a brown-haired teenage girl who abruptly bellowed, “You’re trespassing! What are you doing on our property?”
A second teenage female, this one with jet-black follicles, walked up behind the first. She was carrying a metal softball bat with improvised blades attached to the barrel and looked as menacing as the first female.
Mack reasoned, “Maybe I’ve got the wrong house?” The black-haired, bat-toting girl enlightened him with, “Yes, I would say so. Now you need to leave while you still can.” Caught off guard by the tenacity and toughness of these two young girls, Mack explained, ladies, calm down. I’m just looking for Stan Glazier. He used to work for Dallas PD where I work now. I was hoping he might know where I might find our mutual friend, a guy named Jake Hathaway.”
Hannah radioed inside the house on her twoway radio. “Hey, Dad, this guy claims he knows you and Jake.” Stan looked at the monitor in his living room and questioned his friend who was seated nearby. “Hey Jake, do you know that guy on the screen? He told the girls his name is Mack and he is looking for you. And there’s an Asian guy with him, too. And either a kid or a little person.”
Jake peered at the monitor s creen, saw his good friend, and shouted in jubilation. “I’ll be damned! Yes, that’s McElroy! He’s the guy I was telling you about. And my other friend, Duy! I don’t know the little guy.”
The gate began to slide open just wide enough to be accessible for the visitors to pass through. “Okay, follow us,” Hannah chirped somewhat untrustingly as she and Denise began the five-hundred-yard trek back across the front yard to the front door of the homestead. The small group followed behind and made their way into the Glazier dwelling.
Jake and Mack spotted each other from across the vast living room and approached each other. They stopped about three feet apart. “Dude,” Mack exclaimed. “You’re a sight for sore eyes! We’ve been searching for you all over the eastern half of the U.S.! We were unsure if you really were alive or if we were just chasing a ghost. But it’s really you! You look bigger, like you’ve been working out twice as much. Your hair looks kind of fucked up with those blonde highlights, but you lookgood, man.”
“Thanks, Mack! Hey Dew -man.” The three men shared bro-hugs and continued catching up.
“You guys look great too,” Mack said. “It’s nice to be around people I trust again, I’m tired of being on the run and not knowing what the hell is going on in the world. Sometimes I wonder if I would be better off still locked up in the pen rather than out here in these apocalyptic conditions. I still wonder why I’m not sitting on death row right now, but...”
Mack interrupted, “Oh shit. I forgot, Jake - I have a surprise for ya!”
Mack yelled out, “Angeriest kommen!” the command of “come here” in German. Everyone soon heard the prancing of heavy paws comingfrom the front entryway. Jake’s eyes were wide open in anticipation, hoping that he was right in his assumption of whom was running his way.
Suddenly, through the double doors of the living room ran a full-grown little person man. Jake was quite caught off guard and somewhat disappointed as he had been expecting someone quite a bit furrier to make that entrance. “Umm, am I supposed to know him?”
“Dammit, Anthony, not you!” Mack said.
One second later, a happy, healthy Roscoe ran around the same corner and saw Jake. Reunited with his best friend and partner again for over a year, the jubilant K9 leapt into Jake’s large sculpted open arms and proceeded to wash Jake’s face with his tongue.
Jake was overwhelmed with elation. “Oh my god, buddy. I thought I would never see you again! Good boy!” Stan and Hannah hosted the diverse assemblage, providing them with a scrumptious, hot, homecooked meal. All had all sat down to enjoy the dinner when Mack’s cell phone began to buzz.
Mack stood up from his chair at the large dining table and motioned for Jake to follow him into the adjacent room. There he would be able to talk without the other party hearing any background noise.
“It’s Michelle. Don’t make a sound, “ Mack whispered to Jake.
Jake was puzzled but complied.
“Hi Michelle. How’s it going? “
“Hey, sexy. I got some information I thought you might be interested in.” “Oh really? Cool-what you got?”
“It seems as if multiple sources of intelligence are indicating that there is some sort of
secret laboratory operating out of a house down near Hidalgo, Texas. But it’s on the Mexico side. Apparently, there’s been many zombie sightings coming from that area over the last few months.” “Hmmm. Why the hell would there be a lab in Mexico? That’s crazy, Michelle…”
“Yeah, I really don’t know the answer to that one. So where are you guys at? Have you found Jake?”
“Nope, still no signs of him. I hate to say this, but I’m starting to wonder if some of the Jake stories and sightings were not accurate. Maybe he never even made it out of that prison bus crash alive.”
Jake remained silent, but his facial expressions were screaming, “WHAT???”
“I think he’s out there somewhere, Mack,” said Michelle. You gotta believe that. Trust your instincts and you will find him.”
“You’re right. Thanks, Michelle. I’ll let you know if we get any closer.”
Mack disconnected and responded to Jake’s bewilderment. “I know you’re wondering why I’m lying to her. Something she told me a few days ago it just didn’t make sense. She told me she was out at your brother’s place the day of the birthday party, after you and I left. She said that her office received an anonymous call about a body being at that location and needing transport. I don’t think in real life they would respond to a pickup call from someone other than a law enforcement agency. Responding to an anonymous call? Sounds like bullshit to me. So, my question is: why was she there?
“And furthermore, when I called her on it she really started stepping on her own feet. I’m not sure what ‘s up with her, but I’m having a tough time trusting her now.”
“So, do you think this whole Mexican lab thing is not true?” Jake asked.
“It’s odd. She has been giving me information that has panned out and been accurate, but I just don’t feel safe in
giving her any help back.”
“Something does smell fishy. You’re probably right.”
“So, Jake, now that we have found you, what’s next? Do we need to find a way to get your name cleared? Because I think I have the evidence that we need to do that. I came across a video taken at your brother’s house that captured the whole Birthday Incident. It’s obvious from the footage that Rich and Holly were no longer Rich and Holly.
“But I also came across a video your brother made not long before the incident. He talked about being abducted in Florida some time ago, having crazy experiments done to him in some bizarre secret lab that he was eventually able to escape from. Michelle had told me before that there were apparently reports of experimentation and testing being done on both coasts.”
Jake was flabbergasted by the news. “Well, that may explain why his whole life went to complete shit after he came back from spring break. His personality and behavior changed completely - he was unrecognizable.
“So, Mack, do we know if there’s any link between the Florida lab and the west coast lab and this one in Mexico that Michelleis talking about?”
“I really don’t know about that part, Jake. Maybe if we can go to locate this place south of the Texas border, we can get some answers.”
“I think you’re right, dude. At this point it really doesn’t seem to matter anymore whether my nameis clear or not. That’s the least of my worries. Of OUR worries. And as crazy as this sounds, I wonder if we may be the only hope for the future of our nation. Because I don’t know if anyone else out there will be able to get to the root of the problem. And it needs to be done soon. Someone needs to slow this decimation down. And it’s just a matter of time before this epidemic begins to spread worldwide.”
Wicked Awake Page 31