by Kirk Allmond
I channeled my rage, forcing it down; I struggled to turn it into calm, deadly detachment. Watley dropped to the ground, punching me in the face, smashing my nose and knocking me back to the dirt at least ten feet behind.
“You can’t hurt me,” he said. “I can see what you’re going to do before you do it. I am stronger than you, faster than you, smarter than you.”
The fat, stinking zombie launched himself on top of me and pinned me down, sitting on my chest with his knees pinning my elbows to the ground, exactly like Marshall used to do when we were kids. As if on cue, Marshall came running up, reversed the shotgun and swung it like a baseball bat at Watley’s head. Watley’s head snapped to the side, but he hardly seemed hurt. He grabbed Marshall, picking my older, larger brother up like a small sack of flour and bit his side, tearing a chunk out. He kept his mouth on Marshall’s side for several seconds before slowly chewing up the bite and going for a second. Marshall screamed as Watley bit him for a second time.
Just as when Marshall pinned me like this when we were kids, I lifted my legs up, wrapped them around the front of Watley’s head, and then straightened my body, pulling Watley down with my legs and smashing the back of his head into the ground. When he realized he was overbalanced, he tossed Marshall to the ground as he was pulled backwards.
I sprung up and drove both swords into his face. He saw them coming, his eyes went wide with surprise.
“Watley. My name is Victor Tookes, and I will destroy every fucking one of you.” I twisted the wide blades, using them like a lever, scrambling his brain and ending the twitching. Just to be sure I pulled them out and split his skull, spilling the gray matter all over the ground.
I stood up and kicked him as I yelled in a voice that carried across space “Do you hear me zombies? I’m coming for you, and I’m going to end every mother fucking one of you!”
In retrospect, that was probably not the smartest thing I could do. I’d just defeated an enemy vastly superior to me and my testosterone levels must have been off the charts. I was pumped up, and invincible. I swear I saw a red aura on the roof of the school. I looked up and it was empty.
I picked up the kukris and ran over to Marshall, who was sitting up, pressing his shirt into his side. “Vic. I don’t feel so good. Don’t let me turn, tell Max I love him. I don’t want to be a zombie.”
“Shut your hole Marshall, we’re immune. I’m certain it runs in the family.” I said wiping blood from my still gushing nose.
“I’m still going to bleed to death. Did you see him? He fucking ate a bite of me!”
“Marshall, it was just a hunk of lard off your love handle... you’re gonna be fine. Get up, we gotta go.”
I helped Marshall to his feet, and limped with his arm over my shoulder towards John.
“You gonna be able to drive Marshall?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I’m going to pass out.”
“Okay, it’s going to be a lot of trips. What did you guys drive?”
“We each drove a pickup.” Said Marshall.
“Okay, three trucks, I’ll get someone to drive yours.” At this point I was just keeping him talking.
“How can I be hungry?” asked Marshall. “I feel like my guts are on fire, but all I can think about is food.”
I grinned, remembering when Max first got bit.
“There will be a fever too; you’ll be fine in a few days. We just gotta get your side stitched up. You’re going to have a sexy scar.” I said.
We reached the grassy hill top where John was.
“John, can you take Marshall up to the farm house and take him in the first load? We’re going to start ferrying people back and forth. When you get people back to the house, bring every vehicle that you can find that runs, and bring some of the men as drivers.”
“I have one more thing to take care of, and then I’ll be along. I should be getting there with a load of people just about the time you’re getting ready to head back.”
I watched my two brothers walk towards the farm house and was grateful for them. I had no doubt that Marshall would be fine. I sat on my knees for a minute with my head tilted back trying to get the blood to stop gushing. When it stopped, I laid one finger on either side and squeezed it back straight and into some semblance of a nose shape. The pain was intense, but the sound was horrible. From the backpack I took out some electrical tape and taped my nose up, in an attempt to hold it open so I could breathe. Next, I reloaded the two magazines I’d emptied earlier, which took forever. My hands were shaking, the aftermath of all that adrenaline. Lastly, my remaining ‘grenade’, and the two cans of propane. Using electrical tape, I taped the two camp-stove propane tanks to the grenade and walked off towards the pen of shambling zombies.
When I got there, I lobbed the enhanced bomb as close to the middle of the packed pen as I could. All of the zombies were pressing on the fence towards me, I have no idea how it was holding them back.
The device flew over the heads of the first few rows of zombies, before hitting one of them in the shoulder. The resulting explosion threw me backwards, and started my nose bleeding again. There were still a few shamblers alive after the explosion, and they immediately started walking towards me. I stood up; there was no need for finesse here. I drove the machetes into the skull of each zombie. For the next ten or fifteen minutes I cracked open the skull of anything moving. Many of them weren’t even shamblers at this point; several of them were just the upper half of a body.
They would never stop trying to get Max. One was just a head and a bit of spine. It was trying to drag itself towards me by its chin. It would flop upright, open its mouth, curl its spine a little, close its mouth, and fall to the side. Over and over. I watched it futilely trying to get to me for several minutes while it traveled a foot closer to me. It snarled hungrily when I walked over to it. It was still snarling as I brought my foot down on it, smashing the skull with my boot heal and ending its miserable existence.
I finally stopped my nose from bleeding for the fourth or fifth time today as I walked towards the trucks and the people, never noticing the auras on the roof of the school building watching my every move.
We ferried families home all that day. I think I made ten trips myself. It cost a lot of fuel, a lot of food, and a lot of energy, but it was worth it. I met some of the people we’d saved; they were from all walks of life. One of them was a lawyer, another was a landscaper. Those two didn’t have a lot of use for their pre z-day professions, but in the last group I ferried from the farm house, there was a doctor and a veterinarian, and John said he carried a couple of farmers and an electrician.
I hoped some of them would stay with us, and I hoped a lot of them would go somewhere else and start up their own community. There were several reasons; primarily I couldn’t feed them all, at least not this year. Also, putting all of our people in one location seemed like a bad idea. It seemed better to split us into two or three different locations for security and diversity sake.
By the time we all met at the dinner table, I was weary and exhausted. My eyes were swollen mostly closed, but I hugged Max as we washed our hands and sat down to eat. Food was getting scarce, but Mom had somehow managed to put together a balanced meal for us. I half wondered if she’d been bitten, and conjuring food was her zombie ability.
I needed this time with my family to decompress and try to remember who I was.
27. Supper
I sat down at the large cherry dining room table, grateful for just a few minutes to catch up. So much had changed in the last ten days, most of which I was unconscious for.
Marshall was sitting at the end of the table, he was sweating profusely, pale, and he winced in pain every time he reached for some food, but that didn’t seem to be stopping him.
“So, tell me what happened while I was gone. John, what did you get up to?” I asked.
John began to tell his story.
“Well a few days after the gun club we got most of the basic defense plan
s up, which were great plans by the way; we decided to head back to the club. Marshall drove and I sat in the back of the pickup, keeping an eye out for places to stop on the way back ‘ere.
“There wasn’t any trouble on the way to the club. When we got there the bodies were still strewn about the place. It stank worse than a diaper in a sauna house and the birds eating the bodies made a hell of a noise.
“We headed inside the club and realized the place had been cleaned out after… Well after our last visit. The guns, knives, ammo, everything was gone. It even looked like some of the furniture was gone. We pulled down the smoke alarms and clocks and pulled out the batteries, which were the only decent things we could get from in there.
“That was genius, I wouldn’t have thought of pulling the batteries,” I said.
“We decided to check the bodies and found that most them had been moved or rolled over. No wallet, no jewelry, no watches, no nothing! We headed down to the river so I could check where I was hit with those bloody explosions. Which was lucky we did.”
“The body pieces were left as they were, kinda like no-one was willing to touch ‘em. We found a few guns mate, the bastard of things was bent, melted to themselves or in pieces. All we could scrounge up was a really nice Winchester 308 and a Savage Arms 30/30.”
“That Savage 30/30 is a fantastic rifle, and we have a lot of bullets for it. Great work,” I said.
“Thanks, that’s what I thought. Anyway, we were about to head when that familiar smell of metal hit me and I was drawn to the car park. I walked straight to a pickup, smashed the window in, opened the door and picked up a duffle bag. I opened it up and the refreshing smell of a Smith and Wesson .38 filled my snout. A five shot with ivory finishing and a box of bullets beside it.”
John was proudly patting it on his chest holster.
“I pulled out a few radios with throat mic thingies and threw one to Marshall. A leather jacket, hygiene kit, first aid kit and a fishing kit was in there to. We threw the lot in our pickup and tried to siphon the gas from twenty odd vehicles. We barely got a spare gallon after filling up the pickup but we found a few tools and a bunch of spare tires.
“Anyways, we left the club, headed back down the road checking each house that we could see from the road and they were all cleared out too. Either someone is or was clearing our possible supplies or we have survivors close by.
“It would stand to reason that there are survivors nearby, but if they have the ability to clear houses on such a large scale, we should be careful. I think we should at least check it out,” I said.
“That’s what we thought, too. So, it was an hour or two before sunset when we reached a cat rescue centre and decided it would be the last one of the day. They place had been ransacked too, but there was gear all over the floor. We collected a few bandages, new syringes and shite and then went out back to get a few cages for trapping.
“As we were walking out of the cat place, I whipped out the 9mm and put a bullet straight through a zombie head. It looked rooted with a missing foot, half its guts hanging out and a fresh hole through its right eye. The drag marks looked like it walked straight passed the truck and was going to walk straight past us.
“Poor fucker, he was a civilian medic. Marshall checked him over with a pair of disposable gloves we just scored from inside. He had a picture of his family in his pocket; it reminded me of my boys back in Oz.
“Marshall pulled your rifle up and scanned the area and stopped sweeping when he reached the road. He started adjusting his aim, left a little, up a little, took a deep breath and lowered his shoulder. He repeated the process twice more, readjusting himself before I cracked the shites. I whistled softly, Marshall looked at me and as I looked back at him I raised the 9mm and shot.
“He said something about me being a smart arse and a freak, and said we needed to save the bullets of the rifle anyways. Something about you never bring enough ammo.
I smacked John with my right hand. “Just tell me what you shot!”
“Heh, sorry mate. We shot lunch, a good sized buck at that.”
“Right, so we drove down and Marshall was showing me how to clean it before we brought it back to slice it up when I shoved him down next to the truck and raised both my 9mm’s.”
“Four bodies walked towards us and as I lined them up to figure out if they were alive or not all four blurred in different directions. Not as quick a Leo but still hard for me to get a good aim on. They kept diving and hiding behind trees and debris.
“I fired one shot and clipped the closest in the chest before it slid behind a vehicle. Marshall fired off a round and put it through both the car doors as I fired two rounds each from both pistols in front of the darting zombie. We both hit home and both let out a ‘woop’ as we tracked the other two. I told ya brother to stay down and keep his aim on the one behind garage wall and I stood over him with my legs on either side of his body.
“I put a bullet into the fuel tank of the car and one into the toe of the zombie behind the other tree. I was hoping it would bend down in pain so I could give it lead poisoning, but the prick of a thing didn’t budge.
“Marshall grabbed the pistol from my ankle holster and laid the rifle down and fire two shots at the corner of the wall. We were at a standstill the moment I moved, I knew these things were going to move on your brother and I wasn’t gonna let that happen twice.”
“I was drawn again to behind the tree, the smell of metal floated in the air. I told Marshall to keep his aim three meters right of the wall. ‘In feet!’ he yelled. ‘Oh right, uhh, nine feet. The moment you see him move pull the trigger, you’ll hit him.’
“The sound disappeared from around us. The same muffled sounds from the club. I stomped my foot and the noise was barely there. I wasn’t sure if I was going deaf from all the bullets I have fired off or if something was fucking with us.
“The moment my foot hit the ground Marshall fired his shot and all I could concentrate on was the blur zig-zagging behind obstacles and rolling around. I fired six rounds all hitting but not bringing her down. She was leaping over a log when I finally slowed her down. I hit her in the throat and she hesitated as if she was checking herself to ensure she wasn’t dead…again and slid behind the car where the other zombie laid with 50 cal in its skull.
“I aimed up a stone below the car and shot it causing a spark in the now drenched in gas ground. Nothing happened and I tried again. Nothing, expect another spark.
“I walked towards the car firing systematically in the areas where the zombie chick would leave and as I reached the car she slid from underneath and grabbed my legs and brought me down.
“She was straddling me, holding both my arms down. A smile crept across her face, I have to admit it, she was good looking and those boobs were distracting. She leant down and whispered, ‘If the zombie chick was really hot, would it be worth getting bitten just a little?’
“A shot rang off from behind me and she released one of my arms as she caught the bullet in her shoulder. She opened her mouth wide and leant in to rip my throat out. I put the 9mm in her mouth and blew the back of her head out all over me.
“I looked back to Marshall and with my blood covered face I winked and looked to where the zombie hiding behind the wall had clumped to the ground.
“I tried to clean up best I could but Marshal had to lift the beast in the truck himself. I sat on the bulbar as he drove back, to ensure no blood got on the seats or on the carcass. When we got back your mother and Leo were not happy we were late for dinner.”
“Wow John. I take it she wasn’t that hot?” I asked, and we all had a good laugh.
“While you were sleeping,” said Leo, “Marshall took the courtesy to show me how to work the tractor. We had to work quickly to build up our defenses and I found myself actually enjoying riding around in a vehicle that big, digging into the land.”
“Every now and then I stared into the distance; the intensity of eyes following me was constant. I knew t
here were unfriendly eyes upon me, I could feel them; I could practically smell them. If there was something John and I had learnt, was to trust our senses and our instincts.”
“John had advised me numerous times about the various smells he kept picking up as well, but we are uncertain as to how we could distinguish them. It is a matter of experience and we know that it could be potentially handy in the future.”
“I visited you in your room a few times, Max always sat next to you looking over his Dad like a guardian angel. It was worrying that you had been out of it all those days but Max would smile up at me and say, ‘Don’t worry Leo, Daddy is only sleeping, he will wake up right on time.’
“I felt sorry for Max, he shows a maturity beyond his years but he is nevertheless still a child. I took him outside, staying close to the mansion, whilst both Mrs. Tookes and I kept a watchful eye on him. The days have been warm and it would have been a shame keeping Max locked up inside the house like a prisoner the whole time.”
“He stooped over me putting his hands on his hips, ‘You need to play more tag Leo!’ I was sitting on the ground watching him draw pictures in the dirt with a stick, when he approached me. ‘The bad man is really good at playing tag, we can’t let him win!’ his eyebrows pulled together. Max is a special kid, his abilities never cease to amaze me, and I knew that if I ignored his advice it would work against all of us.”
“I’ve found that to be true myself,” I said.
“He’s a good boy, Tookes. Well, I had to wait until John and Marshall returned from their salvage mission to take any action, there was no way I could leave Max and Mrs. Tookes on their own, with you unconscious and the zombies lurking outside our perimeter waiting to attack at any moment.”