by Mark Tufo
We were on the losing side; that was pre-determined. The harder we fought, the more zombies came to see what all the fuss was about. Zombies were crowding around the truck, completely overrunning the street and spilling onto the neighboring yards. Fighting our way through them was not a possibility.
“This can’t be happening,” I said as I looked out over all of them.
Trip stood on one of the seats and was looking over the same scene as I was. He lifted both of his hands in the air, spreading them wide. He threw his head back and screamed. “I am the Lizard King!” Harkening back to the days of Jim Morrison and The Doors, I would imagine, or he truly thought he was the king of lizards; with Trip, it’s always difficult to tell.
Stephanie was looking up at her husband. She wore the worrying like a cloak, probably because she had to do it for the both of them. I was thinking that Trip as a zombie would be a pretty funny sight. He’d always be hungry and would never remember to eat.
Chapter 25 – Lieutenant Barnes
“Captain Najarian, you asked me to apprise you if the situation changed,” Staff Sergeant Emerson said as he knocked on his commanding officer’s door and opened it.
“I know what I said, Staff Sergeant, what do you have?” he asked. “Holy shit!” he breathed when he saw the latest satellite imagery. “How many?”
The satellite that took the picture was designed for military crowd control purposes and had been equipped with powerful software technology that could count rioters or combatants with surprising accuracy.
“The computer says six hundred and sixty-six,” the staff sergeant said.
Captain Najarian looked up. “Really? Well that doesn’t bode well, does it.”
“Didn’t take you for a superstitious man.”
“I’m not, I only sent ten men. Now, the question is, do I risk their lives for those lost souls in the truck? What’s the ETA on the extraction team?”
The staff sergeant looked down at his watch. “Three hours forty-seven minutes, sir.”
“And what do you put the odds of these people being alive that long?” the captain asked.
“Sir, I’m amazed they’re not food now.”
“So I’ll put you down as doubtful. Alright, tell the men if they can’t get to those people safely, to come back.”
“Roger that.”
“Remember, Staff Sergeant, I don’t want any heroes. Those people mean nothing to me.”
***
“Lieutenant Barnes, I’m in position.” Corporal Godson said through the handset from the radio that PFC Vongim was carrying.
“Send me a feed,” the lieutenant said, referring to the wireless video camera mounted on the corporal’s helmet that would send a real-time image back to a monitor in the Humvee.
“How in the hell do they have a wireless vid and I’m stuck carrying this twenty pound radio? Does that make any sense to you, Godson?” Vongim asked.
“Listen, Gim, just do what PFCs are supposed to do; carry shit and be silent.” The corporal fumbled around until he pushed in the power button.
“You seeing this, sir?” Godson asked his lieutenant.
“Well, now I know why the staff sergeant said ‘No heroes,’” Barnes responded. “What a fuck fest. Looks like the whole town is out for the party. Stop panning around. I want to see the people in the truck.”
The corporal and the PFC were on the roof of a home six or seven houses away from the melee below them, and even that was barely far enough. The lieutenant fiddled with a dial that gave him the ability to remotely zoom-in.
“Are you nervous, Corporal?” the lieutenant asked.
“Sir?” the corporal asked back.
“Your picture is jiggling around.”
“Sorry, eating a candy bar, sir.”
“Listen Godson, I know you have a tapeworm or some shit, but could you hold off for a minute?” the lieutenant asked.
“You’ve got it, sir,” Godson answered. The picture moved rapidly as Godson chewed his last bite fast and then stilled.
“Well they sure as hell haven’t given up,” the lieutenant said as he watched the men and women in the truck fight. “How long did the staff sergeant say they’ve been out of ammo?”
“Couple of hours now, sir,” Godson replied, wondering when he was going to be able to eat the other half of his Kit-Kat bar. He’d had to trade two bottles of whisky to get it.
“They should have been getting ready to fall on their swords by now,” the lieutenant said softly.
“We’re going in then?”
“Of course. I didn’t come all this way just for your company.”
“And the ‘no heroes’ part?” Godson asked.
“I didn’t authorize any deaths today, Corporal. Pack up and get down here.”
“Yes, sir. I fucking knew he was gonna want to go in,” Godson said to the PFC.
“Corporal, the comm is still open,” the lieutenant said. “Now bend your head down and let me see what you’re so interested in eating. A Kit-Kat? That half is mine. I’ll consider it your punishment for breach of military protocol. Now get your ass down here, I’m starving.”
“Yes, sir. Shut the damn radio off this time will you, Gim. Dammit,” he added at the end as he stuffed the remainder of his prized candy bar back into his pocket.
“Sir there’s close to seven hundred of those ugly fuckers. How are you planning on getting through?” the corporal asked when he was once again face to face with the lieutenant.
“First things first.” The lieutenant extended his hand.
“I was hoping you’d forgotten about that.” Godson handed the candy bar over.
“Not a chance,” the LT said as he savored the morsel. “That was delicious, thank you, Corporal. As for your initial question, why, we’ll do it with superior firepower and potentially superior intellect. Although, in your case, that’s questionable. Those people are fighting like demons. They’ve inspired me to join in the fun.”
“Sir, we’ve got two Hummers, three RPG rounds, and some small arms. We’re not really equipped to take on a horde that big,” Corporal Godson said as he replayed the video he just shot.
“Relax, Godson, I know that. I’ve called in a helicopter for extraction,” the lieutenant said.
“Oh thank God,” Godson said. “I thought for sure you wanted to go in and get them.”
“Not quite.”
“Not quite, sir?” Godson asked.
“It’s going to be a little over an hour before that chopper gets here, and we need to run interference, otherwise I don’t think they’re going to make it. Relax, Corporal, I’ll make sure you get back to your woman in one piece.”
“She’d appreciate that, sir,” Godson said seriously.
“Doubtful, but I’ll still get you home.”
Chapter 26 – Mike Journal Entry 12
We were down to swinging and sticking things, on occasion even throwing punches and kicking. My worst nightmare was coming to fruition. Tommy had a tire iron that was shaped like an ‘x’ and was wielding it like a samurai. He was just about the only thing keeping us from being overrun. He would run around the truck to help out anyone who was in a mess. Something had clicked in Trip’s head; the man looked like a stiff breeze could blow him over, but he was swinging a piece of two-by-four like Babe Ruth. Stephanie had been fighting side-by-side with him, but after a couple of near misses she figured it was safer to get a little further away.
“This is the most intense game of Whack-A-Mole I’ve ever played!” he shouted at one point. “The prize had better be worth it!”
Tracy and Steph were keeping their corner of the truck bed free and clear. Tracy had an ax handle and Steph was copying her husband’s lead with the wood framing. Justin was in the corner opposite them, swatting at zombies with his rifle. Travis was next to him using a machete. Gary was next to Travis and they would switch off with other people in the truck as they got tired. BT, however, was my biggest concern. Here we were fighting off hund
reds of zombies, and I couldn’t help but take glances at him from time to time. He would join in the fight for a few minutes and need to rest for double that time. He looked like the walking dead, and I mean that in the absolute worst way.
I would greatly mourn my friend’s passing when I got a quiet chance to do so. My concern now was that he was going to turn at any moment in that truck bed. Every time he hung his head down, I expected him to raise it up with that opaque glaze on his face. It would be my job to kill him before he could do any of us any harm; a job I did not take lightly. I noticed him more than once looking over at me, sometimes angrily, like maybe I should do him in now before he had the chance to cause harm. I think if he could have beaten his brains in himself, he would have done so.
I don’t know what the fuck I was waiting for, the man was spiraling down the drain. Where he was going to end up was a foregone conclusion. The one thing I noticed that got more nerve wracking the longer it went on was that every time BT stood and fought for a little while, he would invariably move closer to me when he sat down. Either he wanted to see if he could get a bite of me when he turned, or he wanted to make sure that I was the one that did him in when the change happened. Both scenarios sucked wet diarrhea-laden ass.
I had the front of the truck where the majority of zombies were making their push. It was the easiest access, and more than once I’d felt arms on me before Tommy would rush in and help push back the onslaught. I jammed that blade into more heads than I could count. I had a hard time believing zombies could even get enough traction to get up towards me. The front end of the truck looked like we had plowed into the decomposing body of a brachiosaurus; chunks of tissue along with gallons of blood covered every available surface. I’d slammed the front of my rifle against so many of them, I’m not sure that, if I even had bullets, I’d be able to take the chance and shoot any of them. The barrel looked slightly off skew, although some might say that’s just my natural perception of the world. Of course that was before my stock shattered and I switched weapons out.
My shoulders and forearms ached, and if I was hurting, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what the others were going through. Nobody said anything as they went dutifully and diligently about their business. Okay…except for Trip, who would sometimes yell out things like. “Double combo!” or “When are we going to play table shuffle-board?”
“Does he think we’re at Dave and Buster’s?” BT asked from right behind me.
He startled me. I didn’t know he had gotten so close. He was sitting, and his head was down. Sweat poured off his body in streams, it looked like he had a hose on him there was so much of it.
“It’s almost time, Mike,” he breathed out shallowly.
I wanted to tell him to fuck off and stop being so selfish, that maybe he should go jump into the crowd and save me the trouble of having to cave-in my best friend’s head. It would save me a lot of nightmares if I survived. Now who was being selfish? I couldn’t even pony up enough balls to give my friend the send-off he deserved.
“Fucking zombies!” I yelled, driving my machete into the nasal cavity of one and through the back of its skull.
I was pulling my knife blade back; I had to kick the zombie away to completely extract it from the steel, when I heard the chattering of gunfire.
“AKs?” BT asked.
“Sure sounds like it,” I said. The AK had a louder, heavier, more ominous sound than that of the M-16, which sounded like a chirping canary in comparison.
“I wonder if they’re as fucked as we are?” BT asked, looking up. That act alone seemed to drain him.
“Oh I doubt it. We’ve got some special sort of fuck going on up here,” I told him as I drove the point of my large knife into the front of a zombie woman’s forehead. I stirred the point around like I was performing a lobotomy for a second or two and then pulled out. The damage was done as she twitched and fell off to the side.
“Incoming!” Gary yelled.
I turned to see the telltale trail of smoke as someone had let loose an RPG. It smashed into a house not more than fifty feet from us—a house that had been surrounded by zombies that were waiting patiently to get to us.
“Who are these guys?” Trip asked. “How can they miss a giant plow in the middle of the roadway?”
I was wondering who the guys were as well. It had to be the same men that were in charge of the drone, but why go through all of this trouble? Who were we to them? They were obviously a remnant of the military, their equipment lending credence to that assumption. While I was playing twenty questions, pieces of the burning house were raining down among all of us, zombies and humans alike. It may have not been a death peel to the zombies, but it did, for at least a little while, take the main focus off of our small group. The zombies on the periphery started to send out patrols to see where this new threat and food source was. Not enough to make a difference in our small brutal corner of the world, but it was still comforting in its own right.
More gunfire came from our right, it wasn’t sustained, though. Whatever or whoever was out there, I was not getting the feeling that there were enough of them to make a difference. Which again began to raise the question: why bother? At this point, all they were really doing was wasting ammo and giving the other occupants of the truck some hope, even if it was of the false variety. And then another RPG slammed into a car not twenty feet from us. The truck swayed back and forth from the percussion.
“That’s it!” Trip yelled encouragingly. “You’re getting better!”
BT wrapped his face in his hands and shook slowly back and forth. “I truly thought you were as bad as it could get.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I told him.
I noticed Tracy leading Stephanie to the bench seat. The woman was so tired, I don’t even think her eyes were open as my wife helped her sit down. Justin was fading fast as well; most of his last few swings had looked like an arthritic ninety-year-old’s attempt. He was barely getting his gun past his hips.
“Justin, take a break!” I told him. He was no good to anybody that way. If even five minutes of sitting got him back in the game, then it was worth it.
***
“Sir, they’re dropping like flies,” Corporal Godson said into his handset. He had got into a house and was on the second floor looking down on the holdouts.
Lieutenant Barnes was about to call off the chopper. “Bitten?” he asked.
“I don’t think so, but three of them look like they’re out of the fight. The big black man, one of the women, and one of the younger men.”
“Are you certain they’re not bitten?” Barnes asked.
“I am, sir. I just think they’re exhausted. Not that they could, but no one is attending to wounds of any kind. I don’t see any blood. Something else isn’t quite right here as well, sir.”
“What is it, Godson?”
“Sir, two of the men, the way they’re fighting, it just doesn’t look…I don’t know, it doesn’t look natural. It’s too quick. I feel like I’m watching those old time films where the speed was off and everything was moving faster than it should, especially the younger of the two. Are we sure we want to pick them up?”
“Scared of a few civilians?” Barnes asked.
“These ones I am,” he said, making sure he was not depressing the send button.
***
I saw it before I heard it. It was a Huey helicopter, something I’d gone for many a ride in during my Corps days. Were we the subject of the extraction, or were the men that were shooting around us the chosen few? Although that made no sense, they could have left on their own volition at any time. Chain-fire erupted from the side of the Huey as it sought position over us. Between the blades slicing through the air, and the bullets slicing through the zombies, it was impossible to hear anything. The rescue sled that was being lowered left little doubt of their intentions though.
“Justin!” I had to scream as loud as my throat was capable. When I realized he had heard me, I pointed
to him then the basket. ‘You first,’ I mouthed. He shook his head and pointed to BT.
‘You!’ I mouthed and pointed angrily.
There was a good chance that, if I sent BT up there first, they would roll him out the chopper on the other side once they saw the condition he was in. I needed someone up there to fight for his safety. Plus, he was looking more and more of a liability the longer he stayed down here. I was concerned for his safety as well. The basket took an agonizingly long time to descend. I swear the more they dropped the bucket, the higher the copter went. Plus, the backwash from the rotors was no easy thing to contend with. It blew everything into the air and, invariably, the eyes of all of us.
“Looks like my helicopter!” Trip yelled.
I wanted to tell him ‘No it didn’t, this one was still airborne.’
I looked up in time to see the winch operator. He was making a two with his fingers.
“Justin, grab Stephanie!” I screamed.
She was shaking her head side to side when Justin grabbed her shoulder.
“Get your fucking ass up there!” I screeched. “The longer you delay, the more danger we’re in!”
She looked at me like I had stomped on a brood of kittens, but at least she went—albeit reluctantly. I can’t say I blame her. I’m sure that on more than one occasion Trip had taken her up in his Tonka toy. And now she had a respectful fear of anything that even remotely resembled it. I think I celebrated another birthday by the time the basket made it down again.
“BT, you’re up!” I told him.
“Not before Tracy and Travis,” he said as loudly as he could, which wasn’t that voluminous.
“You’re taking my other kid up,” I told him.
This was killing BT, but he dutifully grabbed Henry and got into the basket. Henry was like a board in BT’s arms, I don’t think the big dog was enjoying the ride. Then, upon closer inspection, I realized both BT and Henry were petrified. The duo were peering off into the horizon on some fixed spot, neither looking down at the horrendous scene below them. I thought it was kind of funny. Not that I’d say anything to BT about it…ever.