by Mark Tufo
“Start the truck, Mike.” BT’s voice wasn’t hysterical or even raised, but his tone left no doubt what he wanted me to do and when. I turned the ignition. I got the same response I got from my wife if I gently touched her shoulder at three in the morning after I had spent a night of heavy drinking with my buddies and I was feeling a little randy. Nothing, that is. I got absolutely nothing.
Quasimodo had his gargoyle raised and was inching his way closer. From behind, a few zombies were trying to reach up and grab some part of me; again, the only thing saving me was that there were so many they could not reach in unencumbered. My seat was being pushed and pulled as they clutched at whatever they could.
“Not gonna say it again,” BT warned. Not sure what the fuck he was going to do about it. If the truck didn’t start, beating me into a pulp wasn’t going to help the matter. Might make him feel better, but that’d be about it. You’d think that by this stage in the z-poc, I’d know about glow plugs and their need to warm up before you can turn the engine over; maybe that tidbit would also help me with the wife. Just some shit goes right out the window when you’re up against it. There were zombies on the hood, and some were crawling up the belt in the back. We were pressed in from all sides, and the creepy part–yeah because that wasn’t ramped up enough–as near as I could tell, they were all staring at us. Yes, they were moving and trying to get in, but continuously through it all, their eyes never left ours. Whatever was flowing through Dewey’s brain, he was sharing. Quasi was close; I kept alternating between him, his raised arm, and the glow plug light. When it finally turned a bright yellow, I turned the key. There was a dreadful beat of my heart where again, nothing happened. Then, through the plume of a thick, lung-choking cloud of smoke, the engine chugged and turned over.
“Motherfucker,” I said as I put the truck in reverse. Quasi’s statue-clad hand smashed my side view mirror into oblivion. The truck was moving slowly; not sure if it knew another speed, considering what it did for a living. That, and the zombie bodies to the rear were taking away any momentum I could muster as I slammed the accelerator to the floor. The truck took off like a turtle high on crack. Same ponderous gait but with jerky movements.
“Any chance you could move a little faster?” BT was pressed against his seat staring down two zombies holding on to the lip in the hood, their faces comically smooshed into the windshield as they clung fast. The truck jostled and kicked before finally breaking free.
“Be aware, LT, you have seven stowaways on board with you.”
I thanked Winters for the information. The truck had a governor on it, maxed out at twenty-one and a half miles per hour. Couldn’t shake a sleepy toddler at full bore. Poor analogy; why I’d imagine a baby hanging on to a moving car I don’t know, and why I’d curse my inability to throw him off? Got no reasonable answer for that either. Although, a baby apocalypse would be terrifying in its own right. Just think of the biological warfare they could wage. There you are, a bunch of macho men sitting around a campfire discussing your conquests, when all of a sudden there is a barrage of incoming projectiles, fully-loaded diarrhea-laden diapers. The carnage would be incomprehensible.
“The exit is that way.” BT was pointing to his left; I wasn’t sure how he could see anything with the zombies planted in his face. “Get through the gate, then stop.” He was right, we needed to deal with our clingers before we got back to the plane.
It was the sun that saved my life, or rather the direction I found myself facing. Let me clarify. The sun was casting the shadow of the zombie standing on top of the belt directly over my head, where I could see it as I stopped the truck.
“Stop!” I shouted to BT just as he reached for the door handle. “Watch this.” I opened my door about a foot then pulled it shut quickly. Nothing happened.
“What?” BT asked, confused.
“Hold on.” This time I opened the door a little wider and actually moved my left leg out. That got the zee to move. It was a lot closer than I’d thought it was as it jumped down trying to grab me. I pulled my leg in.
“Damn! How’d you know?” he asked.
“It’s my attenuation to the enemy, my ability to put myself in the minds of those trying to do me harm.”
“Just answer the question.”
“Shadow.”
“Thought so.”
I pulled up a couple hundred yards to get some distance from my potential waylayer.
“You ready?” I asked as I put the truck in park.
“Yeah, if only to kill these two fuckers.” The zombies on the windshield had created enough drool that it had at first pooled on the windshield wiper and then flowed over. BT darted out, daring anyone from above to jump on him. He moved quickly to the front end of the hood before either of the zombies could react. He grabbed the closest one by its boot-clad feet. I thought he was going to merely pull it straight down; should have known that wasn’t going to happen, just because of who BT is and the strength he possesses. He whipped that zombie into a position where it was standing straight up before he brought it down violently. Its head crashed into the pavement with enough force to crack it wide open, the fissure big enough its brains poured out and began to flow down the crown in the road.
I wanted to comment on the grossness of it, but we still had six others to deal with. The other zombie, having witnessed what happened to its friend, was doing its best to make sure that the same fate didn’t befall him and was scrambling farther up the hood to get into attack position. BT had turned and was waiting for the zombie to launch. I fired two quick shots, the second one doing the deed, blowing its brains off to the far side of the road. It immediately collapsed on the hood, severely denting it; I hoped not enough to interfere with the fan.
Two of the zombies that were riding on the back found their way down while the other two were coming closer from above. Plus, we had a speeder running down the road toward us. I was backing away from the truck, realizing that this could go south quickly.
“Need a little help here!” I told BT when I realized that they all seemed focused on me. “Up top!”
It’s a hard thing to implicitly trust that someone is going to have your back. BT was easily one of my most trusted friends, and I know without a shadow of a doubt he would lay his life down for mine, as I would for him. It wasn’t that I doubted he would help; it was that I had fears he wouldn’t be able to kill them before they got to me. He fired a few shots, as did I. I was parallel to the truck and had just killed the zombie closest to me before I was hit from the side. The impact was jarring, and I was immediately sent to the turf. My right shoulder took the brunt of the force then, to a lesser extent, my head as it whiplashed down. Luckily, there’s not much housed there to suffer any damage.
The zombie took one lackluster snap at my ear before it was called into the great beyond or below or wherever plagues go to die. I was happy he’d killed whatever virus had kept him animated, but there were still three zombies in play and I was in no position to do anything about it. I felt a rough hand on my collar as BT was pulling me up with one hand and firing with the other. I was scurrying backward, doing my best to assist him, realizing that until I got my feet under me, he wasn’t going to aim properly. I wanted to shout at him to leave me and shoot the fucking zombies, but things were happening so fast, and by the time I got all of that out it’d be over, one way or the other.
He was Ramboing rounds, shooting from the hip, to clarify. He yanked me sideways; I was pinwheeling backwards, doing my best to not fall over again. He finally, and thankfully, brought his rifle up to his shoulder and fired into a zombie that was close enough to me that I could have figured out if he was happy to see me; he fell to the side, a gaping hole where his temple had been. I got myself under control and returned the favor to BT, who was so fixated on my well-being he completely missed the one about to run into his blindside like a ball-hungry linebacker to a defenseless quarterback.
I had a crappy angle and still took the shot; if I had one of
those super slow-motion cameras, I could have watched the bullet travel past BT’s chest close enough to ripple his uniform before colliding into the zombie’s shoulder. I had a bit of luck as the bullet must have careened off its clavicle, came back up the side of its neck, and blew a hole in its skull. Sometimes the 5.56 round got a bad rap for not being lethal enough, but in this instance, it worked much better than the heavier 7.62, which would have just gone deeper where it initially struck and thus, not killed it. We took care of the last one together. The adage, “friends that kill together stay together,” crossed my mind. Wasn’t much left of its head by the time it took its final convulsion.
“That was close,” BT said as the smoke from our bullets dissipated. We spent a few seconds catching our breaths. I heard the rumble of a plane high overhead.
“Randing. We have to go.”
“How about a ‘thank you?’” BT asked as he got back in.
“You’re welcome.”
“You too.”
I pulled up to the destroyed plane then backed the truck up to the rear cargo door for easier offloading. The aircraft did not have power, and we had to spend a few moments manually opening the hatch. The bomb, unlike most of the other stuff in the plane, was still latched down.
“What the actual fuck, Mike?” BT asked as we worked to get the straps loose.
“If I knew anything about bombs, I would sabotage this thing,” I said as I kept moving.
“Talbot’s hands in a nuke. Yeah, best not to think on it.”
I flipped a bird over the top of the box. When it was loose, it began to move toward the back of its own volition.
“You hold it and I’ll get the belt going,” I told BT.
“Perfect. I’ll stand here and hold the thermonuclear device in place. Sounds like a wonderful idea.”
As I got out of the plane, I did a quick scan of the area. I almost missed the lone zombie standing on the overpass looking at me. He was so still, I wondered if it was the mannequin that had plagued Will Smith in, I am Legend; it was just as freaky. Then it moved. The thought lingered a moment; I knew that the director of the film, in a bid to make that scene more intense, had made the mannequin move. But instead of a quick, cinematic head twist, my zombie started running toward the embankment.
“Shit.” I quickly went to the truck. What I figured was going to be a quick on-off switch ended up being three levers, none of them marked. The truck shook as the belt rumbled to life.
“Wrong way!” I heard BT yell.
I wanted to tell him to keep his eye on the very large bomb and not worry about what I was doing. There was grinding and crunching as I switched the direction of the belt; I think I was supposed to stop it completely, before changing its direction.
“Got it. Back up a little more!” he yelled.
With BT’s help, I got the truck close enough that the belt was less than an inch from skimming the floor of the plane. Once again, if I’d thought this through I would have realized the problem we were about to encounter. In all fairness, BT should have picked up on it as well.
“Zombie coming,” I told BT as we lined the box up.
“One?” he grunted.
“So far…but I doubt it. You ready to get a corner up?”
“Let’s do it.”
We’d no sooner dropped that box on the belt than the weight of it pushed the belt to the floor. The screeching and smell of burning rubber was intoxicating, and not in a good way. It had slowed to the point where it wouldn’t even move the bomb.
“Lift it!” BT bellowed.
I helped him heft it.
“The truck, the truck! I’ve got this!”
One lever was for reverse, one for forward. The other had to be to raise and lower, I reasoned. Had a fifty-fifty shot of raising the belt…yup, I dug that fucker deeper into the plane. BT was cursing up a storm as I quickly pushed the stick forward.
“Far enough!” There was a thud as he dropped the box back down. I was about to go and help him, when I saw a half dozen zombies closing quickly.
“Box is yours!”
“It’s not on right! It’s going to fall!”
“You better make sure it doesn’t.” If he wanted to yell back, it was going to have to be after I fired some kill shots. Took out three before the others halted their progress and headed for the side of the road. I knew they were waiting for back-up; it was my sincerest hope we would be long gone before any could arrive.
“Mike!” BT was following the box as best he could, holding up the half that was doing its best to inch over and off the belt; the big problem was going to be when it went higher up, past his outstretched hands, and either fell to the side or somehow miraculously kept going until it dropped straight down on the hood, completing the job the zombie had attempted earlier. A lot of things were on the brink right now, and each of them lethal in their own way. Maybe the bomb went off when it fell, or maybe it made the truck into a paperweight, or the fucking zombies got us. If we had to make a run for it, it was safe to say we were going to miss our ride.
I streaked past BT; I may or may not have got a “What the fuck?” Hopped into the cab and shut down the belt. In what felt like two heartbeats, I was back outside. BT was on his very tiptoes, outstretched arms and extended fingertips straining to keep the package aloft. There wasn’t going to be anything I could do from the ground. I hopped onto the ramp and grabbed an edge of the box; I was pulling for all I was worth. Hardly felt like it was moving. In contrast, the zombies were flying toward us.
“BT, you’re going to need to defend us.”
“Hold the damn thing.”
I had to jump on an edge and put my entire body weight on it as BT let go. I was expecting to hear shots soon, instead, he got on the ramp and was striding up. The rocking of the entire truck was definitely accentuating the whole teeter-totter effect I was trying to prevent. This was one of those cases where if a pair of mating dragonflies landed on the other side of the crate, it would be enough to tip the scales. My end lifted an inch; this was it. We were both going for a short ride followed by an explosive conclusion. BT must have seen this because he lowered his shoulder down and drove it into the side of the box closest to him. Managed to get the whole thing on the ramp while sending me off to the dirt.
My shoulder hit first, then my back; felt most of the life-giving oxygen head out to parts unknown. It wasn’t that crippling “can’t breathe!” feeling, but he certainly wasn’t getting a Christmas card from me this year.
“You all right?” BT’s face swam into focus above me.
“Dandy.” I stood with as much alacrity as was possible. The zombies had reached the back of the truck. I was getting into position to fire.
“Just drive! Get us out of here!”
Can’t say I was thrilled with BT being exposed up there like he was, but he had a point. Staying and fighting was a rapidly losing proposal as more zombies were closing in. I got back in the cab, careful to not take off too quickly–not that that was really an issue, given the gearing of the truck. Through the windshield, I could see Randing making his final approach.
“Package in hand…how’s it looking?” I asked.
“Sir, this is Winters. Runway is awash with zombies. Major Randing is taking the only clear avenue and he told Major Eastman he’s only stopping long enough to pick us up. You’ve got maybe five minutes.”
“Roger that.” I looked to my speedometer which, for some reason, went to eighty. We were hovering at a blistering nineteen. In my rearview mirrors I could see zombies climbing the ramp and half the population of Rhode Island following.
“BT–you need help?”
“Naw…I’m cool, surfing on a moving ramp truck, giant bomb next to me, and a half dozen of my closest friends coming to visit. Everything’s fine.”
“Well, when you say it like that.”
“Just keep moving. They’re picking their way slowly.”
“Winters, have the squad ready. We’re bringing our own comp
any.”
“Got it, sir.”
Saw the puffs of burnt rubber float up into the air as Randing put his plane down. We had just made it back through the gate. Randing was like that one final hottest game system left at a department store on Black Friday. The convergence was underway.
“This is Major Randing. I am going to attempt to pull as many to the far side of the airfield as possible; we will do the pick-up and the on-loading at the opposite side.”
I appreciated what he was doing as it afforded BT and myself an extra minute or two, but I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. There was a good chance zombies were going to be flooded on the runway. I’d let the flyboy worry about it; my plate was overflowing with a whole bunch of inedibles; looked like a buffet of kale, Brussels sprouts, and cherry glazed ham. Oh, and that weird shit the health freaks keep trying to pass off as tasty: pureed cauliflower that was supposed to be like mashed potatoes. What kind of abomination is that? No matter what you believe about capital punishment, the inventor of that cuisine needs to go. If left to his/her own devices, who knows what they could come up with. Beet fries perhaps? Chocolate covered liver? Maple glazed ham? People like that need to be stopped at all costs. BT began to fire his rifle; the zombies must have moved closer. I couldn’t spare a glance to see how he was doing as I was now entering the minefield of zombies.
“BT! You need to hold on; going to start evasive driving!”
“They’re close.” Another shot.
I was doing my best to make the turns as sweeping as possible, clipped a zombie in the hip; I could hear the crunching of her pelvis as the bumper cracked into her. The jolt was far from jarring, but it was enough to have BT swear at me. There wasn’t anything I could do except to keep driving. I swerved again; I was doing my best to miss them but they seemed determined to make a claim against my insurance. The latest victim was not going to enjoy any payout; as I hit her side she spun down and in front of the truck where I proceeded to go straight over her skull, shooting out the contents like a stomped-on ketchup packet. Had enough experience with those to know.