Chaos Theory: A Zombie Novel

by Rich Restucci

  He looked at me helplessly and you know what I did?

  Yup.

  Stink eye. I had to turn away so he couldn’t see my shit-eating grin. I smiled so hard my face hurt. Payback’s a bitch.

  Once again though, there was a lot of if emanating from our plan. We really didn’t have much else though. The worst if was that if there were thirteen of us, how were we going to sneak anywhere? We had bags of shit, weapons and ammo. We needed to be quiet.

  We were. We were like thirteen ninjas, and if there was never a book written with that title, then every now-dead writer can suck it. Thirteen Ninjas is the best title for a book in the history of books. When I’m done with this spellbinding tome, that shit is next.

  We moved like water flowing around rocks; silent and fluid. I should have used some kind of cork to keep my shit in, but we didn’t have any. I was pretty damned scared when we got to within fifty feet of the road or so. There were thousands of these things milling about and they were damn close. By some miracle, none of them were where the gap in the vehicles were. Maybe that was the reason; they were searching for any stray morsels still in the cars.

  Suddenly Alvarez stood up and stumbled across the road. He had done it like a zombie would walk, all shuffling and shit, with a fucked up gait, and slow. Not a one of the dead things even glanced at him. A small group of us went next, then Ship and Kat.

  I was stunned. I know you want me to tell you that I went last and when I did every single zombie on the entire interstate, not just the ones in Mississippi, but the entire, multi-state length of the road looked at me and chased us. But they didn’t.

  They didn’t so much as shift their gaze. They were a fifty feet from me on either side, dozens, hundreds, and they just couldn’t be bothered.

  I made it down the embankment to the beach side and joined my friends. We were all as quiet as Ship, probably all stunned. Didn’t matter, we made it. A small chain-link fence was on this side of the highway, and it had gotten dark so we couldn’t see a break in it even with night vision. Alvarez produced a multi-tool and snipped the bottom link. It sounded like a nuclear warhead went off, but still none of the pus bags caught on. He clipped another, and then another and one of his buddies put his hand on Alvarez’s shoulder and pointed back to the road. I glanced back and used the night vision glasses to see that a few of the things had perked up a little, but not enough to come our way. When they went back to not being so perky, Alvarez snipped a couple more links, and his buddy repeated the shoulder touch.

  We did this several times, cutting stopping, cutting stopping. We were lined up against the fence, waiting until there was a hole large enough for us to walk through. Alvarez finished, and then motioned us to follow him through.

  We never did think to look on the far side of the fence and that was our undoing. A dead man smashed against the other side and began that fucking howl, and it was done. I looked through the night vision back at the highway, and you got your wishes dear reader, every flesh slurping one of them was coming for us.

  It suddenly got very loud as well. All the deaders were making like it was Christmas and they were all caroling. I gotta tell you, that’s some scary shit, when you know they’re right on top of you and it’s dark, and you’re running.

  Alvarez was through the fence first and he dealt with the infected on that side. Problem was, he wasn’t alone, and his buddies were coming as fast as they could from all directions. We all hustled through, and for a moment I thought about trying to mend the fence, but I looked at the amount of white figures coming towards my night vision, which was attached to my noggin, and I knew the fence was merely an afterthought to that swarm.

  Fucking fences.

  Sneaking is tricky for thirteen people loaded with gear. As I’ve said, I am not a soldier, and never received ninja training, so keeping quiet was tough. We did OK though, and it took at least a solid minute before the shit hit the fan. We were moving past a store with fishing poles in the big glass window when said window crashed outward and two dead dudes grabbed one of the guys from the Chevy. The guy yelped and fired off a quick round from his Berretta into the throat of the first dead guy. Of course, that didn’t do shit, and as the thing tried to bite him I hit it in the side of the head with my M4. It slid to the side, but didn’t let go of the guy, so I shot it. The guy took care of the second one with a better shot from his M9 to the head.

  We had slowed a little to deal with the decaying fisherman, and that was enough for several of the things to get close. We shot them and moved on, weaving in and out of abandoned and parked vehicles, moving toward the dock.

  We got to within fifty or so feet of our objective before they caught us again. A small group of them appeared from a bait shop and stumbled right into our path, effectively blocking us. There was nothing for it, so we shot them, Ship using that giant machete to hack up any that got close. More came from the sides, and suddenly there were a lot of them. We hacked and slashed and shot our way to the dock. We must have destroyed twenty of them. One of the dead things managed to latch on to Babe, but he did this underhanded knife thrust thing to the underside of its chin, and it dropped like a rock. Now that was cool shit.

  Babe slashed the last one across the eyes and it stumbled back a little, blind but in no way less hungry. The others had closed some distance, and I almost shit myself when I saw how many there were. They had been spread out on the highway, but when they funneled in between the cars and little shops by the docks, they concentrated their numbers and it was terrifying. There must have been hundreds.

  Alvarez ran down the dock yelling, “Cover us while we cast off!” He, Kat and a couple others jumped on the shrimping boat, and began to load gear while another couple of guys started to remove the lines securing the boat to the pier.

  Ship, Babe, and I took up firing positions at the head of the dock to repel any invaders. Ship stood and Babe and I went to one knee. Two of the guys behind us were fiddling with something on the pier, when one of the Army guys from the Hummer yelled, Grenade! and chucked one about fifty feet back behind us into the approaching horde. It almost got me killed. Nobody had taught me not to look at a grenade exploding while wearing night vision goggles. I was totally blinded for a moment, and I stood stumbling sideways, my hand to my eyes. Thank God I didn’t get shot.

  Course I fell right the F of the dock and into the water. Ship swears up and down he reached for me so I wouldn’t go in, but in I went. Guy has arms the length and breadth of Redwood trees, but could he catch me? No. My gear was heavy, and if Ship hadn’t grabbed me, I have no doubt I would have drowned. It being dark, and me being all blind and shit, I probably would have swum the wrong way and pounded on the sand until I ran out of breath.

  As it was I got my sight back pretty quickly. I felt Ship’s massive mitt on my shoulder, and I looked up and grabbed his hand, feeling wet and embarrassed.

  “Get him out, they’re almost on us,” Babe hissed frantically.

  Ship started to lift me out, and I just knew I would be fine. There was plenty of time to get on the boat and get away. Plenty of ocean between us and the zombie hordes of North America. Plenty of food and water and beer and tequila and hookers at the paradise we were headed to. Yup, all fantastic, all good. I just needed to get dry and kick my feet up with some of the items I just mentioned. Especially the last one.

  If you’ve never seen the movie Jaws, then you are either A. an asshole or B. a pussy. It is hands down the best movie ever made. The acting, directing, and special effects, are second to none. Hell, even the music is memorable, and it was made in the nineteen seventies. So Quint, the bad-ass shark killer who scraped his fingernails down the chalkboard, and had so many memorable lines? Remember him? Remember the noises he made when he was sliding down the deck toward gigantic toothed maw of the shark? The kicking and screaming and little girl noises he made during the stark raving terror he was feeling as he absolutely knew the jaws of that shark were going to reach him?

  Th
ose were the sounds I made, and there was quite a bit of kicking and screaming, not unlike a little girl at all, when the first set of dead hands grabbed my ankle under the water. It wasn’t like I had any notions these were the hands of a porn star pulling me to heaven. These were the claws of a demon dragging me to hell.

  So there I was, crying like a girl, while Ship and quite possibly a legion of the undead played tug of war for my soul. Ship dropped his HK417 and it hung on his single point sling over the water as he used two hands to pull me from the inky blackness. Babe noticed my yelping and decided to lend a hand as well. So there they are pulling me, with the dead pulling back, and me screaming, and the horde of dead just about reaching the dock, when my buddies finally get me far enough out of the water that they see slimy alabaster hands gripping my clothes and ankles. Ship told me later, and Babe agreed, that there were eight hands on me. My math tells me that was four bad guys against two of my buddies, and I was kicking like hell. Kat and one of the other guys were suddenly there, and they were hacking ever so close to my feet with machetes. It was enough to sever most of the hands, and the others must have lacked the strength when mostly cut, because the living beat the dead and they got me out.

  I flopped on the dock like a fish, all of us panting, when the first foot stomped on the wood twenty feet away. As one we snapped our heads up and were able to see the things advancing toward us through the darkness. I got up unbelievably fast with the help of Ship and we all ran. It was maybe two hundred feet to the far end of the dock and that’s where we headed. I was last, as I was soaking wet and weighed an extra fifty pounds with my gear saturated. Alvarez’s pals were pushing the boat off the dock, and they all jumped in and waited for us. I was about thirty feet behind the other sprinters and I was tired.

  My friends in front of me all jumped for the gunwales and made it easily, but by the time I got there the boat had moved a good ten feet away from the dock. I didn’t even slow down. I sprinted as fast as my soaking wet, gear-laden ass would go. I didn’t make it. Let me tell you, having been in the zombie infested water once was scary. Waiting for those hands to reach up and grab me again totally fucked with my sanity. They never came though. Either there weren’t any at this end of the dock, or those dead bastards were reaching and the water was too deep. My friends reached over and pulled my super-heavy ass aboard. Again I flopped like a fish on my back and looked up to the circle of people surrounding me.

  “I’m good,” I said.

  Babe knelt and immediately rolled up my pant leg; I presume he was looking for bite marks. I let him. He moved to the other leg and checked that too. Satisfied, he sat on his ass and let out a heavy sigh.

  I sat up and looked at him, “Babe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’ll do pig.”

  Avast Me Hearties!

  I love talking like a pirate. It almost got me killed in the joint, but I couldn’t help it. Guy had a fucking eye patch, so I called him cap’n, and he tried to shiv me. How was I supposed to know the dude was some kind of Aryan royalty? Actually, now that I think of it, he was covered in Aryan tattoos and I was just a dumbass.

  But I digress.

  One of the bad parts of our grand plan, something we didn’t think of, was starting the boat. There were no keys, and we all kinda stood around until Ship took charge and tried to hotwire it. It would seem that my genius buddy was no criminal. He couldn’t hotwire…well…something that could be easily hotwired. Yeah I got nothing.

  Anyway, they all looked to me. I was, in fact, a criminal. The worst part of it was that I figured it out in about five minutes. Not because I had been in jail, not because I was illicit, or felonious, but because I had been a God damned mechanic.

  F you and your thoughts on my past, Dear Reader.

  So Ship comes and gets me, (and believe me, I was doing something important) and now instead of being terrified, I’m pissed and full of righteous indignation. And terror. There was terror.

  See, this is where the intelligent reader says, “Whoa. Just whoa. Where are my zombies? Weren’t they right on top of you? I mean, your criminal enterprises and ability to circumnavigate an electronic ignition not-withstanding, you seem to have misplaced the true antagonist of the tale. Furthermore, everybody knows that old shrimping vessels do not have electronic ignition.”

  Firstly, Fuck you.

  Secondly, Yes, shrimp boats do have electronic ignition. The boat was ancient, some might consider it pre-Columbian art. Every piece of equipment on said vessel was brand-spanking-new however. Including the state of the art key hole missing the key (he he) ingredient in starting the boat. The key. Guy must have hit the lottery, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why he upgraded the electronics on this tub and just didn’t buy a new piece of shit to shrimp with.

  Thirdly, and most importantly, I didn’t misplace dick. The infected were there and in force. They were itching to dine on us as well, and were pushing each other off of the end of the dock, floundering for a moment, and sinking. I could see them going down, and I would lose sight of them at about fifteen feet or so. They would reach for us all the way down. It scares the shit out of me to think of how many just walked or were pushed off the end of that dock. Hundreds. The line of pus bags went all the way back down the dock, up the gangway, and into the parking lot. It looked like free crock pot day at Walmart, or the line for Space Mountain on a busy Disney afternoon.

  Remember five or so paragraphs ago when I said I had been doing something important? Yeah, we had to push off the dock with these huge gaffs because we were drifting back toward the dock which was loaded with infected. What the hell did a shrimp boat have eight six foot gaffs for? I dunno, but that thought kept peeking over the abject terror I was feeling. Picture six of us pushing against the wharf with these poles, keeping the boat just out of reach of several hundred dead hands, while the owners of those hands just kept coming and coming. That boat was fucking heavy too.

  So there’s a six to seven foot gap between the inconveniently un-started boat, and a wall of cannibals incapable of pain or fear. Said cannibals are walking off the end of the pier and beginning to clog that space. Now the dead shit heads are crawling over their struggling buddies, and we can see that all the six foot poles in the world aren’t going to stop them from reaching us. In addition, every couple of seconds one of them will grab a pole or get stuck on the gaff, and it’s a bitch to get the pole back. We lost two poles in two minutes and were down to four.

  It didn’t take long for the first dead bastard to crawl across his pals and slap his rotting paw on the gunwale. Kat shot him, and the next ten or twelve dickweeds to follow suit. That’s when Ship grabbed me and pulled me toward the ignition. I said it took me five minutes before, but when the living dead are trying to eat you, and people are screaming to hurry up or we’re all gonna die, five minutes is a friggin eternity.

  There was a toolbox in a crate in the wheelhouse and I used a flathead screwdriver to pry…you know what? F this, I just got it started with a screwdriver and a safety pin. Yup, MacGyver didn’t have shit on me. That dude is probably dead too.

  The boat started, and I threw the red handle forward from neutral to go. I dunno nautical terms. Drive? Forward? Underway? I had seen enough boats to know that pushing that thing forward meant we were gonna go, and we did. Half a squad of army guys, and possibly the smartest giant on the planet, and I saved everybody’s ass.

  Almost.

  Several dead had managed to get aboard and the guys were fighting them off. I heard three gunshots and Kat scream before I could get back out to help. I couldn’t just let the boat sail into the other docks; the channel was narrow, and I had to make sure we wouldn’t wreck the boat or get beached or something. Once we were heading out to sea, I hurried.

  The dead were all re-killed, but one of the Chevy guys was on his back bleeding out. His hand was on his neck, but there was no saving him. We all knew it and so did he. He tried to stand, and his pals helped him up. Befor
e we could do anything, he shot himself in the dome and toppled over the side. We sailed out to sea watching him float face down like he was playing a game in a pool. I never got his name.

  Ship put his hand on my shoulder, and pointed to the wheelhouse. “Fuck if I know how to work this thing,” I told him spreading my arms. Everybody was looking at me. A huge blood stain was on the blue deck.

  “Shit,” I said aloud, “fine, I’m captain. You,” I pointed to Babe, “clean that shit up. I dunno if that blood can infect us, but I don’t want to find out. Get it off my ship…er boat.” I looked at the big guy and gave him sorry face.

  I grabbed the kid whose idea it had been begin this caper. “So where’s this oil rig?”

  “Idunno.” He said it as one word, that’s why I wrote it like that.

  “What?”

  “How the hell do I know where it is? It’s in the gulf someplace.”

  Fuck.

  “So your grand strategy was to get a boat, go out into the gulf, and look out the fucking window?” I was incredulous.

  “Yeah.”

  He had me. The little prick had me. We didn’t have any living dead to contend with and we had some supplies. The fuel indicators told me we had 2/3 of a tank. We could look for almost a week before we had to abandon the search. That’s a week with no dead, and how big could the gulf be? Weren’t there tons of oil rigs out here?

  I smiled and patted him on the back. “We’ll be fine,” I said, nodding. “Yeah, fine.”

  Yeah, so the Gulf of Mexico is friggin big. We lucked out though and found a platform on the first day. It was very small and occupied, and they shot at us so we moved on. We found a few more, most were rusty, dilapidated pieces of shit, not fit to visit. One was a big one, but that had a dozen or so boats tied up to its base. When they didn’t answer the radio, we pulled close and I honked the horn. Nobody shot at us. That would normally be a good thing, but the reason they didn’t shoot was because they were all dead. The rig was crawling with pus bags.