by Mark Tufo
“Hey!” Porkchop said, chasing after one of the rolling tins. When he stood, he looked where Doc was looking, the can all but forgotten as he raced to get behind the man.
The group coming was less than a hundred yards away. Doc looked to the left; there was a yard with a fence. He had no doubts they’d been spotted. Rifles were raised and trained on him. He thought that perhaps he could give enough of a distraction for Porkchop to get away. But once they were done with him, they would surely go after the boy.
“Stop right there!” Doc said in his most authoritative voice.
“Or what?” The man in front asked.
“I have a gun!”
“So do we…and more of them than you. Bigger calibers and greater range. You got anything else that might dissuade us?” the same man asked. They were still approaching, but slower and with more caution. They fanned out as they did so. There were definitely five of them, and two of them looked to be female.
“We don’t want any trouble,” Doc said.
“Have the boy come out from behind you. Hiders make me nervous,” one of the women said.
“Yeah, you don’t want to make Hildie nervous, she’s the best shot here,” the man said.
Porkchop came out from behind Doc’s legs. Inspiration hit him. “Stop right there, he’s carrying bombs!” Doc shouted.
There was some scoffing at that, but stop they did.
“Let’s say I believe you. Why are you making the kid carry them?” the man who Doc thought was the leader asked.
“Shit,” Doc muttered.
“Hildie.” The man nodded.
Hildie raised her rifle up, a wisp of smoke drifted off her rifle. Doc waited for the crash of bullet into sternum. When a sufficient amount of time passed he opened his eyes. Not such a great shot, he thought.
“NO!!!” Porkchop wailed.
Doc watched in horror as Porkchop was falling to the ground. Doc dropped his gun and suitcase to get to the boy. He didn’t hold out much hope, someone shot with a high-powered rifle without a chance to get to a hospital was as good as dead.
Doc’s left hand came down in slick pile of sticky wetness. Porkchop was sobbing, Doc rolled the boy over and cradled him in his arms. He was crying himself, he’d already faltered on one of his promises.
“How could you?” Doc wailed.
Chapter 11 – Mrs. Deneaux and Dennis
“How are your sucking skills?” Mrs. Deneaux asked. “Oh, relax,” she said when she saw the horrified look on Dennis’ face. “This beast is going to need gas soon and I was wondering if you knew how to siphon gas.”
“I’ve done it a few times…not my favorite thing in the world,” he replied.
“Better than walking?” she cackled.
“Better than walking,” he agreed reluctantly.
“We’re going to need a hose.” She stopped the truck where she was.
“What are you doing? There’s no hardware store here.”
“There’s a house, haven’t met a homeowner yet who doesn’t have one. Fetch.”
“Oh, you’re a peach.” He said as he got out.
She reached over and locked the door. “No hose…no entry!” she shouted before she lit another cigarette.
“Hope you stick the cherry in your eye,” he told her as he retreated up the lawn.
Dennis was still muttering about his misfortune of hooking up with Deneaux when he rounded the corner of the Victorian style house. It had been beautiful once, but a mast-laden ship captain had probably lived in it when that was the case. Most of the paint had peeled off, and the wooden clapboards were twisted and appeared in agony as they tempted time and fate while clinging precariously to the sides of the house.
He had not been prepared for the sight that awaited him as he strode into the backyard. A pile of zombies was stacked up against the house, hidden from the elements by a large overhang used in previous years for firewood, Dennis assumed. Directly in front of him, and a few feet away from the beginning of the zombies was the spigot to the house, and attached to it was a gray-green hose coiled around a hose hanger. Dennis licked his lips. Was Deneaux serious? Would she really not let him in? He knew she was a few donuts shy of a dozen. How far did he want to push her?
There was another house a couple of hundred yards away, there was, however, no guarantee he wouldn’t run into another zombie pig-pile. If he’d been thinking properly, he would have just cut off a length of hose with his knife. Instead, he moved closer to the deadly mass, gripped the end of the hose and began to twist. A milky eye opened, fluid dripped and fell to the ground. Dennis was struggling to get a good tight grip from the angle he was at.
“Did they use a damn impact wrench to put this on?” he asked the gods quietly.
He moved his body closer to the spigot so he could get better leverage. As the pile next to him stirred slightly, he looked over for any signs of trouble. When he was fairly confident it was probably just settling, he went back and tried to twist the hose off.
“Rightie-tightie, leftie-loosie, right? Or is it leftie…locking, rightie…relaxing? What am I saying? That doesn’t even make sense. Which one doesn’t make sense?” The zombies being so close had triggered a fear deep within and he was having difficulty thinking beyond anything more basic than RUN!
The pile shifted again. He almost cut and ran, not the hose, though, no, that would have made too much sense. His hands were sweating profusely, he was losing any sort of grip he had. He rubbed them vigorously against the front of his pants trying to dry them off. A zombie arm stuck out from the pile. He hoped it was merely a matter of an adjustment, and he held onto that thought all the way up until the fingers began to open and close.
His fingers slammed shut almost as tight as his sphincter. He twisted until he thought his hand was going to break. Rust broke loose from the connection just as a zombie rolled off the top. No matter how much he kept trying to rationalize, it wasn’t going to work. The zombies were moving. The hose twisted agonizingly slow.
Dennis was frozen with indecision, turn and run while he could still safely make it, or cut it entirely too close and finally get the stupid spigot to give up its prize. He kept turning, although he was certain he’d entered into some sort of time warp as the zombies were beginning to move entirely too fast, and he was crawling.
“This is like a bad dream.”
He kept his gaze steadily on the zombies. He made two more full turns before he realized the hose was free.
“No time to unwind.”
He grabbed the entire hanging apparatus; thankful it was only held in with two screws and into wood that had long ago seen its best days. He pulled so hard that he almost toppled over. He had not been expecting it to give so easily considering how the hose had been frozen. He righted his balance, gave a quick glance over to the zombie pile, and was shocked that at least two of the zombies were now getting to their feet.
Foot race, he thought. Dennis knew in his youth he’d been pretty fast, not world class mind you, but fast enough to make more than one opponent on the football field have to pick up their jock strap after he’d juked by them. He’d stolen more bases in his career on the baseball field, second only to Talbot and that lucky bastard usually went on an errant pitch and subsequent passed ball by the catcher. They’d joked about it for many years,
“You should have an asterisk by your record,” Dennis would complain.
“Don’t be a hater, man. It’s not like I was using performance- enhancing drugs when we played. Drugs, yes…but certainly not of the performance enhancing variety. You should get me a beer. I’d do it myself, but my legs hurt from all the miles I stole on the base paths.”
“Kiss my ass,” Dennis would tell him.
That had been MANY long years ago. Dennis hadn’t let himself go like some of his friends, but he wasn’t working out five times a week either. His job laying floors kept him fit, but the punishment to his knees had taken a lot of time off any sprint he’d be able to muster.
He wa
s halfway across the front yard, fairly secure in the fact that he had enough of a lead to make it with relative comfort to the truck. He could hear the first of the zombies just making it around the side of the house. He looked up to the truck, and at first thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Deneaux with one arm was sucking passionately on a cigarette and with the other she was beating furiously on an air drum to a beat he could just make out. She had the music in the cab cranked and was having a grand old time. She was staring straight ahead paying him absolutely no mind.
He was doing the mental calculations of knocking on the door and having her reach over with how close the pursuing zombies were. His comfortable lead was beginning to diminish rapidly. He could keep running; but to where? And his left knee that continually filled with fluid from his occupation was already beginning to throb. They’d be on him before he had a chance to get to the next house.
That was going to be the least of his problems, he realized soon enough. He was dragging a good twenty to twenty-five feet of hose behind him and the zombies were stepping on it, not intentionally, he hoped; but it kept jerking in his arms and threatening to pull away from him. He got to within fifty feet of the truck when he found himself airborne…and not in the correct direction. The hose was pressed tightly to his chest, and when two zombies simultaneously came down on his tailing’s, he was pulled from his footing. His ass thudded to the ground and he let out a loud grunt as he made contact. With his right hand, he pushed up and was moving again. How much ground he had given up, he didn’t care to check.
He could hear the footfalls behind him. He didn’t have a chance.
“LEFT!” bellowed out from the truck.
He didn’t know if she meant his left or hers and then he figured she was a pretty self-serving individual and it would ALWAYS be her left. He moved to his right, as a bullet blazed by his head, the trail of it leaving a finger of heat along the side of his face. The zombie behind him fell, dragging its fingers on the back of his leg. That was enough to spur him on.
“Better hurry,” she prodded, as if he needed the extra incentive.
More bullets flew, none as close as the first, but he was running directly towards the hand-held cannon she was wielding. It was a truly unsettling experience.
“On your own,” she told him, sitting back down on her seat.
Dennis’ knees were screaming in protest with the speed he was forcing upon them. He figured he’d be lucky if his meniscus didn’t just snap from the stress. He timed his steps to make sure his stronger right leg was the first to hit the running board on the side of the truck. He launched himself so hard he nearly missed the door handle. He jammed his finger so bad that he was positive he’d broken it. The handle engaged and the door swung open; he shifted his body to allow it to open freely. He tossed the hose assembly into the back sleeper portion of the cab. Mrs. Deneaux was calmly loading more shells into her gun.
“I think you should hurry,” she told him without looking over.
Dennis slammed the door shut, not having enough time to pull in the rest of the straggling nylon.
“That’ll get your blood pumping,” Mrs. Deneaux said as she snapped her cylinder shut.
Does a reptile’s blood actually pump? Dennis thought.
The truck began to rock gently back and forth as zombies began to run into it. It became more frequent, louder, and caused the big rig to move even more.
“Like a hail storm.” Mrs. Deneaux started the truck back up.
“In what fucking world is this like a hail storm?” Dennis asked, trying to catch his breath. There wasn’t too much on him that wasn’t throbbing in intense discomfort or outright pain.
“I see you’ve been letting your cardio slip.” She grinned as she lit another cigarette.
They had just started down the street, when Dennis’ door flew open. He thought for a moment that the hose trapped in the bottom had done it. Then, when he saw the zombie hand reaching in, he knew that wasn’t the case. Mrs. Deneaux reached into her lap and in one fluid motion, pulled the gun up, and drilled the zombie flush in the forehead. He fell away, rolling into his comrades who were struggling to keep up.
“Might want to shut that,” she told him. “Maybe lock it this time as well.”
Dennis was hesitant to reach out. He did it quickly before another zombie that was hanging on could get in position to reach the door. He slammed his hand down on the lock just as a zombie appeared in his window. Even over the roar of the truck’s cylinders, and the slow crooning of Conway Twitty, they could hear as the zombie attempted to open the door by repeatedly lifting up and letting go of the handle.
“They’ve never done that before,” Mrs. Deneaux said, not yet putting her still-smoking revolver down.
“Now what?” Dennis asked.
“Ask him what he wants.” She stopped for a heartbeat…then she cackled.
“This shit funny to you? I almost died!” Dennis said angrily.
“Did you?” she asked calmly.
“Did I what?”
“Did you die? Because if you didn’t, you should just quit your bitching.”
Dennis didn’t know how to respond. He’d never met anyone quite like her, and for that he was thankful. They went a little further, most of the zombies became distant memories; a heroic few were still trying to keep up. Then there was the one right next to Dennis. The zombie had finally stopped attempting the handle and was now smacking his hand against the glass. The glass and Dennis jumped with every contact made.
“Roll down the window,” Mrs. Deneaux said.
“I’d rather not,” he replied even as he grasped the handle. “How far?”
“Far enough so he can stick his head in and take a bite out of your ass.”
“That’d be pretty far.”
She stopped to look at him. “Now I see why Michael may have enjoyed your company.” Her voice was a little softer when she spoke again. “Far enough where I can blow his ugly head off and not break the glass.”
Dennis unrolled the window half an inch. “I’ve seen you shoot, that should be plenty.”
She motioned with her gun-holding hand to go further. He was not happy that, with every down turn of her hand motion, the missile launcher was pointed at his crotch. He complied, quickly, knowing that nothing she did was without purpose. The window was about a quarter of the way down. The zombie gripped the lip of the glass and was trying to pull his head in.
“This is going to get messy,” she said as she pulled the trigger. An explosion of gelatinous zombie material sprayed Dennis across his face and chest. He rolled the window back up with his eyes closed.
“Use this.” She handed him some sort of cloth.
Mrs. Deneaux might not be his favorite person in the world, but she’d scored points with that small gesture.
“You did well. Now let’s go find some gas.”
Dennis could only hope that would be easier than getting the hose, but he doubted it.
Chapter 12 – Doc and Porkchop
“Bomb huh?” the leader asked as he came up next to the duo on the ground. He lightly kicked the burst can, sugared beans spilled out.
“What?” Doc asked, trying to clear his eyes so he could get a better look at the ‘shot’ boy.
“He’s fine.” The man laughed. “My name is Captain Najarian. Most of what’s left of my platoon just call me Cap.” He extended a hand to help Doc up. “The shooter is Corporal Hildie. Her illegal fraternizing partner next to her is Lieutenant Butz. Just call him ‘Buzz’ or he gets mad. This is my wife Dina,” he said, introducing the woman to his right. “And then there’s Chaplin. We think he might be prior military, but since he hasn’t said a word in the two months we’ve known him, we don’t have a clue.”
“I’m Doctor Baker and this here is Porkchop,” Doc said, still shaking from his earlier encounter.
“Doctor as in physician? Or one of those PhD types with an advanced degree in like astronomy?” Lt. Butz asked.
> “While I do like astronomy, I am a practicing physician. Or at least I was.”
“You’re a pretty valuable commodity, Doc. What are you doing out here?” Cap asked.
“Oh, you poor thing,” Dina said, trying to comfort Porkchop over his fallen comrade.
“It’s a long story and we really must be going,” Doc said curtly. He did not want to become another hostage for his services.
“That way?” Buzz asked. “Nothing but zombies up there.”
“This is Hildie…bring the ride,” the corporal said into a radio handset. He had not noticed she was carrying a pack that housed the piece of electronic equipment.
“We can’t go with you,” Doc said, trying to find a way to extract himself. “I need to find a safe place for Porkchop, and then I have some personal business to take care of.”
“Doc, just come back with us. Look around…decide if it’s somewhere you’d like to stay. You do a few things for us and then decide it’s not someplace you want to be, I’ll outfit you with a ride and something better than a .38 snub-nose.”
Docs eyes grew wide. Dina was shushing Porkchop.
“Do it for him, Doc. It’s a safe place.”
“Camp Custer was a safe place,” Doc said.
“Whoooeee! You were at Camp Custer? We were getting ready to rendezvous there, by the time we showed up, there wasn’t much left,” Buzz said. “Thing looked like it had been plowed under, dead people and zombies everywhere. Shit was still burning, thousands of birds were circling for meals.”
“Buzz! Dammit! I think he has a fair idea of what happened there,” The captain said heatedly.
“Oh…sorry.”
“Buzz here is a Marine, they’re not known for their smarts,” Captain Najarian said. Buzz smiled wanly. “At least let us get a better meal in you and your boy and pay him back for that dead can of explosive beans.”
Doc nodded reluctantly. They weren’t going to let him go quite so easily anyway. The ‘ride’ was not a tank, half-track, or any other type of military truck for that matter. A white mini-van pulled up. The driver, who did not look much older than Porkchop, stepped out.