by Mark Tufo
“Zombies!” Justin screamed. At first I thought he was just weighing in, right up until his rifle fired.
Zombies were coming up out of the basement. What the hell? I thought, my mind trying to reconcile the impossible.
Travis joined his brother in the firing. They were spilling onto the first floor, getting dangerously close to where Henry and Gary had been slumbering, both of them now missing from the couch.
“Gary!” I yelled.
“Above you, Mike! I’ve got Henry, was trying to see if they had the new Koontz book. I’m really enjoying his Frankenstein series.”
That was one less thing to worry about. Now there was only the zombie repeller to think about. The territory it was in was quickly falling to the advancing army of undead. Tommy came out from a stack of books. I want to say it was the Self-Help section, but I wasn’t positive. He took two incredibly long strides to the table and, with one arm, scooped the heavy box up. He turned, took another two strides, and then was air-borne. He made Air Jordan’s famous leap look like something kids did on a sidewalk when they were playing hop-scotch.
“Holy shit,” was all I could manage to get out.
BT had taken the more traditional approach of running up the stairs. “How are they getting up here?” he asked as he got his rifle to his shoulder.
“Maybe they have a carpenter,” I said as I took my first shot. I caught the zombie high in the neck. The arterial spray lasted only a few moments as the thick fluid that arced out either congealed or dried around the wound.
“Ghosts are more scary, huh?” BT taunted as he fired rounds.
“Kiss my ass,” I said as I finished off what I had started with the first zombie. This round caught it on the side of the skull, and then the bullet exited and scraped down the front of the face to remove a fair amount of features along with it. “Who needs ghosts? That will haunt me for a long while,” I said as the zombie fell to the ground; the charge immediately brought forward by the next one. We held them at bay for a little bit, but more and more began to die on the stairs leading up to our level.
“This can’t be happening,” I said softly even as I kept shooting them.
They’d obviously found another way inside. We were no longer shooting at the small and malnourished. Full-grown speeders were coming our way.
“Ammo check!” I yelled as I sat down to start stuffing 5.56 rounds into my saved magazine.
I had a little over a hundred. When everyone checked in, I figured we had somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred. At one shot one kill, I thought we might make it. In a traditional combat scenario, it’s probably a hundred rounds per kill. With zombies, that number dropped significantly because they just didn’t give a shit. With good shooters and close quarters, the number probably went down to four or five bullets per kill. Maybe even as good as three; beyond that was pushing it. These zombies were fast, and nerves would always play a factor. Add in more than one rifle trained on a target and you start to see the problem. We’d be able to stop a hundred to a hundred and fifty of them. Then what? We still needed to get to the truck.
“Tommy, hit the switch!” I told him from the other side of the atrium.
“What about MJ’s warning?” he asked.
“Running out of options…we need to make it to Gary’s truck. Everyone get to Tommy.”
We were a tight ball of humanity within moments. The problem was, none of us were all that confident in MJ’s box, and zombies were streaming towards us. This was the ultimate game of chicken. This was harrowing; the twenty feet of distance we had to wait for the zombies to traverse was among some of the longest in my entire life. It’s one thing to fight the enemy to the end; it’s a completely different feeling to just let them come on in. I had a rough estimate of where ten feet was, and if the first zombie crossed it, I was ready to give the order to start shooting again. Of course it would be entirely too late, but I wanted to go out with a swirl of smoke around my head. I’d been born into a warrior’s family and I wanted to die with one.
I had my rifle up (as did we all). The zombie in the lead was snarling, blood and drool dripped from his mouth. Jagged teeth were exposed as his lips were pulled back in a snarl. Its arms were extended halfway. If this was the Revolutionary War and the battle for Bunker Hill, I’d never have been able to fire given the now famous orders to shoot only when you can see the whites of their eyes. The zombie’s eyes blazed a bright red as if he’d burnt them gazing at the sun too long. His footfall came down a good seven or eight inches closer than I figured it should have. His left eye blew out in a viscous spray of material as I neatly punched a hole into its skull.
“Dad?” Travis asked nervously.
“Not yet. Itchy trigger finger,” I told him.
We had to wait a bit longer. There was one more zombie that must have been faster than the group, after him…it was a horde. He was going to be our test dummy. How close could he get, though? This wasn’t a force field; nothing was physically going to push him back. He was running full tilt at us. Even if he absolutely could not stand what the box was emanating, he’d cover that distance to us easily before he could shift gears and get away from us.
“Tommy, grab the box! Everyone to the stairs!”
We had to bring it to them. They would be moving slower as a mass on the stairs, thereby giving them more time to be repelled. I shot our test subject. The zombies were three-quarters up the stairs by the time we reached the edge. We were now in ‘supposed’ effective range and they had not yet stopped, although strange looks began to crease some of their features. Three stairs became two, their mouths were gnashing wildly, looking for something with which to sink their teeth into.
It wasn’t until they were in hugging range that they faltered. They were scrabbling trying to get away from us. The issue was the press from behind. The zombies closest to us were being forced towards us. This was too close for comfort.
“Fire!”
I had to use the barrel of my weapon to push the zombie away that I wanted to kill. Fifty or sixty rounds later, we had created the bridge in distance we had been seeking. The downed zombies had sufficiently slowed up the ones following enough so that they had time to feel the effects of the box and give us our full ten feet. I would have been much happier with a hundred yards, but I’d take what was given. We’d asked for and received a reprieve. Now we just needed to use it to our advantage. We descended the stairs slowly—agonizingly slow to be honest. It wasn’t that the box was not working, it was just the press of zombies was so dense as we moved, that it took longer for the ripple effect to reach them. At some points during our escape, our protective radius was reduced to half because the zombies nearest us just couldn’t push back hard enough.
If you thought the stench of a zombie was bad, you haven’t yet had the wonder of experiencing its breath. Maggot-infused meat, bursting with pustules of pungent pus, capped off with crusty skin growth was preferable. We’d mostly kept the zombies in a hundred and eighty degree arc around us, always keeping a wall to our backs. That was about to change as we filed out of a side entrance. The zombies outside who had as of yet not discovered the secret entrance couldn’t believe their luck when they thought lunch was being delivered. We weren’t more than fifteen feet down the sidewalk when we found ourselves completely surrounded by snarling, swiping, biting zombies. I’d been in some torturous situations since this crap had started, and I’ll tell you right now, this one was right up there with the best of them.
“You smell something?” BT asked.
“You’re kidding right?” I asked back.
Anything less than a fully stocked Yankee Candle store was not going to break through what the zombies had to offer. Who hasn’t been to a mall with one of those stores? You can smell the damn thing from the food court on the other side of the building. I’d been dragged in a few times only to have my head begin to pound from the sickeningly sweet cloying smell of sandstone and petunia. I think in order to work there you h
ave to have your olfactory senses removed.
“Smells like plastic,” BT pressed on.
And yeah, there it was. Subtle, compared to our surroundings, but it was there, that sharp smell of plastic heating up. And there was only one thing capable of doing that right now.
“Gonna have to move a little faster,” I told everyone, trying my damnedest not to instill any more panic than we had going on at that moment.
Tracy glanced over at me and thought better of asking ‘Why?’ when she saw my face.
“Umm, Mike?” Gary asked as we got closer to the truck.
“Yeah, brother,” I said, tight-lipped as the stink of heating and frying wires began to become more prevalent.
“The truck is locked.”
“Okay, unlock it then.” I wanted to ask him who he thought was going to steal it here. The zombies seemed like a pretty good theft-deterrent, but I let it go. When he didn’t immediately respond I was figuring there was something more going on. “Did you lock them in the truck?” We’d have to break the glass and that gave the zombies a way in, but if we took off fast enough, that shouldn’t be an issue. Again there was that silence. “What, Gary? What’s going on?”
“The box is on fire!” BT said. I could see the glow of it shining off his face and eyes.
“Gary!” I demanded an answer. If we had to make a stand, the library was still our best chance, and we’d need to just about sprint there to make it.
“IgavethekeystoRon!” He said it so fast that it sounded like one word.
“Why, man? In what fucking universe did that seem like a good idea?!” I was pissed. He was going to get all of us killed.
“Talbot!” Tracy shouted at me; whether for giving Gary a ration of shit or to get me focused on what we should do next, I don’t know.
Gary was near to tears. “I was afraid that I might lose them, or if I died you wouldn’t be able to get them. And I locked the doors because I’d seen zombies messing with handles and I didn’t want any of them to get in.” His voice was near to hitching.
Now I felt like an asshole. Everything he had said was a valid reason. He’d even thought of the contingency if he had fallen while trying to save us. Fuck, I’m an asshole. Well, I guess that’s already been established. Why I felt the need to keep reiterating the point still eluded me. Tommy had placed the box down. I would imagine because it was becoming too hot to hold. That it was still keeping the zombies at bay was a slight miracle.
I caught a glimmer of light on the side of my face; I was thinking that the box was finally flaring up, and then it dawned on me that it was from the wrong direction. Ron was coming! I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a wide-brimmed hat and a sword. The cavalry was coming, and the throaty roar of his engine let me know he was being quick about it.
“You ready, Mike?” he yelled.
He was holding up something shiny. At first I thought it was a bullet or bullets and I couldn’t figure out what he meant. As he got closer, I realized it was the key. With the press of zombies around us, he would not be able to get close enough to just hand them off; the truck would not be able to take that kind of damage. I played center field for a few years in high school, but back then, a dropped ball only meant derision from your teammates, a potentially lost game, and not getting into Suzie’s skirt because of an error. I guess the stakes were just as high now.
He never waited for my response as he sent it spinning out into the night. I didn’t think they were going to have the distance needed to get to me. BT had watched Ron’s toss and was moving away from the limited protection of our frying box and into the fray of zombies. I was on the move as well. I was quickly placing targets in front of my peep scope. Firing and moving, firing and moving. BT’s gaze was not wavering from the key ring. Justin turned when he heard the first of my reports.
I don’t think he knew about the keys, but it was impossible to miss BT and him heading away and me cutting a path for him to move. It was his additional shots that helped keep BT safe.
“Got it!” he said excitedly. For a wild moment I thought he might spike them like a wide receiver will once they reach the end zone. Then I remembered he wasn’t me.
“Hurry up!” I shouted.
I think the only thing keeping the zombies back now was the flame from the box. At this point, it couldn’t still be broadcasting a signal. Luckily, it was only one key. BT’s hands were shaking violently, and if he had to fumble for the right one, things would have gotten a lot hairier. With the door open, I started flinging family members inside, bouncing them off the steering wheel, headrests, dome lights, I didn’t give a shit; a contusion or a concussion was better than what was being offered outside.
“GO!” BT shouted at me. I was going to argue, you know the whole hero complex thing. “I need this one, man, I think I’m two behind,” BT added.
If I stayed any longer we would have both died trying to one up the other. And as long as I was still in the lead, I would yield this one. I slid quickly into the driver’s seat. BT handed me the key as he slammed the door shut and jumped into the bed of the truck. There was some grousing from the back as people rubbed their heads or checked for various scrapes and bruises from their rough ushering in. Ron was already speeding off, a bunch of zombies in tow.
Unfortunately, we weren’t rid of our entourage; they were banging on all sides of the truck, the glass was next. I took off, noticing that a zombie had actually attached himself to my driver’s side rear view mirror. I don’t know if he thought he could eat the image or that the image was actually a person, but that sucker had latched on tight, it was a good block before he fell away. One lone tooth had been imbedded in the hard plastic shell that housed the mirror. No way was I going to touch that thing.
“I didn’t really have that much fun, Mike,” Gary said from the rear seat.
“You don’t say?” I asked him. Now I just needed to catch up to Ron, but it was easy enough to follow the trail he’d left behind. Zombies that had stopped following him, and that had begun to mill around like they do, once again started running when they saw us.
“They’re like those little fucking lap dogs that yip when anything comes close,” BT said in complete disgust. Travis had opened the small window that divided the cab from the bed.
I didn’t agree. My aunt had one of the little bastards; all you had to do was give it a slight kick in the head and it would go away. No such luck with the zombies. We were a couple of miles out from the library when the smell hit. I thought for sure we had a zombie straggler, maybe hidden in the bed of the truck with BT, although I’m sure he would have said something by now. I wasn’t the only one to notice the stench either. Heads began whipping around, looking for the offender, then we all began to settle on Henry. He was the only living being capable of producing that kind of odor.
“IT fwas meef,” Tommy said sheepishly.
“What?” I asked him.
He held up a foil packet.
“Foiled froccoli,” he said as small pieces of the pastry fell from his mouth.
“Did he just say he’s eating a boiled broccoli Pop-Tart?” BT asked.
“Wiff femon glaze,” he managed after finally swallowing what he had.
“Out the window,” I told him.
“I eat when I’m nervous,” Tommy begged.
“Come on, man, who eats a boiled broccoli Pop-Tart with lemon glaze? Mike, man, tell him again to get rid of it!” BT pleaded. We’d stopped a few miles back so that he could get in the truck. Now I think he wished he’d stayed where he was.
“Can I have a bite?” Gary asked. “Sounds delicious.”
It ended up being another five miles until we caught up to Ron. He was being overly safe and I thanked him for it. We’d had enough close calls, and I’m just talking the last half hour.
I hugged him tight. There would always be time to give him shit. But right now, he’d saved my family’s life and I expressed my gratitude the only way I saw fit.
“
Thank you,” I told him as I let go of the embrace.
“We’re family, Mike. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Interesting way of putting it, brother.” I smiled.
“Everyone’s okay?”
I nodded. I was suddenly exhausted. You sometimes forget how much the high stress situations take out of you. The body can only produce so much adrenaline, and when it’s done, it’s worse than coming down off of a caffeine-laced eight ball. (Not that I know what that would entail.)
“You still going forward with this?” He phrased it as a question, but he already knew the answer. I had to; there were no choices in the matter.
“Where’s the box?” MJ asked, looking inside our truck.
“You mean the kindling?” I asked him back. He had a blank expression on his face. “It caught fire,” I explained.
“What! How? Why? You didn’t discharge the R2 capacitor before you started it, did you!”
“Missed that step,” BT said.
“We were a little rushed, but for the sake of argument, let’s say we knew about this D2 resistor.”
“Capacitor,” he clarified. “R2.”
I think he was going into shock. “How long would it have taken to discharge?” I asked.
“You have to go slow or there’s the risk of fire.”
“Risk,” I repeated.
“Six minutes should be sufficient.”
“BT, how much time you figure we had to get that box on before the zombies ate us?”
“Not six minutes, Mike.”
“Listen, MJ, I can’t thank you enough for the zombie repeller, it saved our lives, it truly did. And you’re a friggin’ genius for inventing it. Couple of things, though…it’s far from a portable device, especially when you start tossing spare car batteries in it. And you may want to work on that discharge thingy. Other than that, man, thank you.” I hugged him as well. MJ stiffened. He wasn’t one for too much human contact. I made sure to stay in longer than was socially acceptable.
“Okay, Mike, now I know you’re fucking with the man, but now you’re starting to make me feel uncomfortable,” BT said.