by Brown, TW
“If you take us up to Pecos, we should be past the Walmart and able to hang a left and get back on to Tropicana,” Joel called over the headset once everybody was situated.
They rolled past a neighborhood on the left that looked to have mostly burned to the ground. Joel made the determination that at least some of the damage looked relatively recent. To him, that meant looters had already come through the area. Given the mentality he assigned most of the younger generation, he figured they likely hit all the medicine cabinets and liquor cabinets before setting the homes on fire.
He’d seen enough footage on the news the past several days taken from news and military helicopters that showed the rampant looting. Most of the individuals he’d seen in those clips were younger. They somehow thought firing their weapons in the air and making collective asses of themselves was the best way to ride out a zombie apocalypse. He had a feeling that many of those sorts of idiots were now part of that herd of undead they’d just skirted.
“What the actual fuck,” Will’s voice crackled over Joel’s headset.
“What is it?” Debra asked as she took her foot off the gas just a bit as a precaution.
“Right around your two o’clock,” Will reported.
Joel and Debra leaned forward and looked off to their right in the general direction given. It took Joel a few seconds to make sense of what he was seeing, but once he did, he felt a chill seep into his blood. He actually rubbed his eyes to see if perhaps they’d been playing a trick on him.
“Are those…?” Debra’s voice faded.
“Children,” Will finished, confirming to each of them what they were seeing.
“There has to be close to fifty of them,” Joel breathed.
“Why are they just standing there?” Debra sounded like she still didn’t want to accept what her eyes were taking in. “Zombies don’t just stand there…as soon as they get wind of you, they head straight for you. That’s part of what makes them so damn easy to kill.”
“Well I guess the youngsters didn’t get the memo,” Will quipped.
As if to add credence to Debra’s observation, a trio of adult undead waded through the cluster of zombie children and came straight for the Humvee that had finally rolled to a stop. It was obvious that they were homing in on this newest sound of an idling engine as they made very slight corrections to their course until they were now on a beeline to their eventual target.
“Want me to mow ‘em down?” Will called when nobody seemed inclined to say or do anything.
“Yep,” Joel answered.
The ferocious chatter of the .50 cal sounded and brass casings clattered in a thunderous concert of death and destruction. The human body is in no way designed to take the power of a .50 caliber machine gun, and at such a relatively close range, bodies almost seemed to vaporize into clouds of dark mist. Joel watched as the children disintegrated under the onslaught. The adults that had closed the distance came apart, bits and pieces flying as Will poured hundreds of rounds of hot lead into them.
At last the noise ceased, and the world suddenly fell to an eerie silence even more pronounced than it had been just a few moments ago. The scene before them now was more of a massive stain with larger bits and pieces scattered about.
Debra started the Humvee moving again. As they came abreast of what revealed itself to once have been an elementary school, Joel barked for her to stop. He moved to the side hatch, his eyes flicking to where Peanut hid in a narrow spot between cases of ammo.
Without a word of explanation, he unfastened himself from the seat and exited the vehicle. He made sure to look around and ensure nothing was coming, but at the moment, he wanted to confirm what he’d thought he’d seen.
At last he came to a stop and stared down at the ground at the small object between his feet. Kneeling, Joel pulled a knife from his pocket and opened it, feeling the blade lock in place with a click that he felt more than heard. Poking with the tip of the blade, he had to fight the instinct not to jerk away.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Debra gasped from his left shoulder.
Joel had been so focused on the head of the little girl that he hadn’t heard the woman approach. He cocked his head as he waved the blade first to the left, then to the right. The filmed over eyes followed his every move.
“So they do see,” Debra breathed.
“I never thought otherwise,” Joel groaned as he got to his feet. “But this shot to the head thing is a bit more literal than I think I had realized. This thing was basically decapitated. The head is still…alive? I know that’s not the right word, but I can’t think of any other way to describe their state of being.”
“I hate to confirm my stupidity by opening my big mouth,” Debra said as she toed the pig-tailed zombie head with her military issue boots. “But who cares? What does this mean in the big scheme of things?”
Joel looked around and finally found what he was searching for. He paused for a moment as if unsure how to proceed. At last he turned to Debra. “Do you have any gloves?”
“Sorry.” She shook her head.
Peeling off his shirt to reveal an immaculate white tee shirt underneath, Joel returned to the little zombie girl’s head and picked it up by one filthy braid with his shirt as a very tenuous barrier between himself and the lock of twisted hair. He carried it to a shattered torso that had a softball-sized hole in the chest that had blown out most of the back, pulverizing the slender spinal column where the exit wound existed.
He set the head beside the body and then stepped back, folding his arms across his chest as he simply stood in silent observation for several seconds. At last he seemed satisfied.
“Umm, I hate to interrupt whatever it is you think you’re doing, but can you maybe fill me in?” Debra glanced around nervously, suddenly aware that the sea of carnage laid out before her was not entirely still. There were very small and subtle movements amidst all the flesh, blood, and bone slurry that remained too gruesome for her to actually process.
“I don’t know,” Joel finally admitted. “Something tells me that this is all important somehow. I just wish my Wanda were here. I would be willing to bet she could make sense of this madness.”
“What could possibly be important about—” Will began, but ended his question with a shriek as Joel snatched up the head and lobbed it at his feet.
“You were saying?” Joel snapped. “I believe this will have a purpose. Just give me a little time to figure out what it is.”
“Land mine,” Debra said with a snort. “Only, maybe you dangle these things from trees or something.”
There was a moment of silence before Joel clapped his hands in what could only be described as wicked glee. “We seem to have a window of opportunity here at the moment,” he announced. “Let’s see if we can find more of these.”
Unfortunately, they were only able to come up with three more functional heads. Two of them had most of their shoulders still intact but Joel remedied it with a swift stroke of a machete. They threw the heads into a burlap carry bag that had once contained an assortment of small tools that likely were used to keep the Humvee in working order.
Staring into the bag as Will climbed back into his turret and Debra slid behind the wheel, Joel was fascinated by how the heads seemed completely oblivious of one another. For the briefest of moments he considered where he might be heading. Would this be what Wanda had meant when she’d told him to survive…to live?
He recalled one of their conversations after she’d finished reading some zombie novel he couldn’t recall. She’d blasted the writer and the said the characters all seemed to be willing to rush into terrible situations and die.
“Why would you risk the lives of five people to save one?” she had ranted, slamming the book down on the kitchen counter where Joel had been mincing some garlic for his special spaghetti sauce. “If I was with a group and somebody got themselves in trouble…sorry about your luck.”
“Heat of the moment,” Joel offered. �
��Happened in the battlefield all the time. Your instinct is to save your brothers.”
“Sure,” she conceded with a shrug, “but some rando you met the day before? Sorry, fella, but you just became a zombie snack. I sure as hell wouldn’t expect some stranger to dive into a bunch of the walking dead to maybe pull me free…and then of course they always find out that the person wasn’t really rescued. They were bitten or scratched so all those other people died for nothing.”
Joel had decided not to press the issue. After all, a zombie apocalypse was fiction…a product of Hollywood and twisted people who couldn’t just stick to real civilization killers like those old nuclear destruction movies of the Eighties, or even a meteor strike, earthquake, or global famine.
“Hey, where are we supposed to turn?” Debra’s voice brought Joel’s focus back to the here and now.
“Left on Pecos and then right on Tropicana,” Joel said, returning his gaze out the front window.
The Humvee rounded the first corner and came to an abrupt halt. Literally sprinting for them were three people. In the distance, exactly where they would need to turn right, dozens of the undead were in a slow but steady pursuit.
“Dammit,” Joel snarled. “Turn right there.” He leaned forward and pointed to a side street just ahead and to the right leading into a residential neighborhood.
“Hang on,” Debra shouted as she stomped on the gas and wrenched the wheel hard into the turn.
Joel instantly regretted not being strapped into his seat as he fell hard into a stack of metal cases, his elbow connecting smartly, sending a burst of electric pain all the way to his fingertips. He pushed himself up and practically threw himself into the front passenger seat, his hands fumbling for the harness that would keep him secure.
“Those people are fucking following us,” Will called in the headset.
“Now is not the time and here is not the place to pick up stragglers,” Joel said calmly. “Anybody we add to our numbers is going to need to be a fighter and capable.”
“How do we know these people aren’t?” Will asked.
“For one,” Debra spoke before Joel could answer, “they are running down the middle of the street being chased by a pack of zombies.”
“But…” Will let that thought die on his tongue.
“If they had any brains, they would be someplace secure. And if that location fell, they would have a fallback. Running down the middle of the street is a move of desperation. They aren’t making any attempt to elude, and they tried to wave us down the moment they saw us. They need saving. That isn’t our mission.” Joel glanced over at Debra and saw her nod in agreement. “Is that going to be a problem for you, Mister Barnes?”
“I guess not,” came the confused sounding reply. “So…do you want me to gun them down?”
“We aren’t animals,” Joel laughed coldly. “Besides, why would we waste good ammunition for a job the zombies will do for us?”
The Humvee rolled through the non-descript neighborhood. Most of the houses showed signs of being either looted or torched. There were dead bodies everywhere you looked. Most of them were shrouded by a cloud of insects. A few were being feasted on by birds.
Debra slammed on the brakes again, sending Joel jerking hard against the restraints. He was about to ask her what the hell she was doing when he saw it.
Standing in the middle of the road was a dog. Based on its appearance, Joel thought it had to be a lab. Its fur was a matted mess that hid whatever its original color had been. One ear dangled from the side of its head and swung just a bit as the pathetic creature lifted its head to regard the Humvee. It tilted its head one way then the other before apparently dismissing them and returning to the body sprawled at its feet.
Joel found himself just a few feet away without even realizing that he’d even exited the vehicle. The body on the ground made a soft whimpering sound and he looked down to see the face of a woman looking up at him with eyes that pleaded for him to end her pain. He drew the blade on his hip and quickly drove the point of it into the eye socket of the dog just as it looked up to regard him again.
The woman’s mouth opened and closed, but only a spray of blood managed to make its way out, dribbling down her chin and from both corners of her mouth. Her eyes flicked to the weapon in his hand and he saw her fear increase. Her head moved weakly back and forth.
“You want me to end the pain, don’t you?” he whispered. She nodded slightly. “Then close your eyes and it will all be over in just a second.”
Again her eyes flicked to the blade. He saw tears start to leak from the corners, and again she gave the slightest shake of her head.
“Fine.” Joel shrugged his shoulders, turned, and walked away. As he walked away he heard a strangled cry.
“What the hell was that all about?” Debra asked as Joel climbed back into the Humvee.
“Fucking dog.” Joel strapped himself into place and then looked over at Debra when the vehicle hadn’t started forward again. “What?”
“What about the dog?” she asked hesitantly.
“It was one of those…things,” he spat.
“You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“Nope.”
“So we have to worry about animals and humans?”
“Looks that way,” Joel said with a shrug. “What’s the big deal?”
“Rats? Birds? Fucking bugs?” she practically yelled, her pitch rising with each word.
“Let’s not get hysterical.” Joel pointed forward. “How about you just drive for now and we worry about one thing at a time.”
The Humvee started forward with a jerk as Debra stomped on the gas. It was not lost on Joel that the woman swerved to run over both the woman dying in the street and the carcass of the dog he’d already ended.
They turned left on Alfalfa Street and then another right on East Reno Avenue. The deeper into the neighborhood they ventured, the worse things seemed to become. More of the undead began oozing from the shadows in their staggered and awkward gait.
Some of the houses had clusters of the undead gathered around. Many of those had various banners—usually made from bedsheets—hanging from one window or another. Huge letters announcing “Survivors Inside!” or just pleading “Help!”
On a few occasions, Joel was certain that he saw movement through one window or another. On one instance, one of those windows flew open and a person jutted from the opening waving arms frantically in an attempt to get their attention. If Debra or Will saw, they never acknowledged it. Joel simply dismissed it as unimportant.
They reached Pearl Street, and Joel instructed Debra to turn left. The Humvee swept wide around yet another collision and screeched to a halt. Up ahead was what looked at first like another defunct military roadblock. Joel saw the flash and winced when he heard the metallic ‘ting’ of rounds pinging off the exterior of the Humvee.
“Fuck,” he hissed when he saw the wide-mouthed barrel of the grenade launcher appear and rest across the hood of the burnt-out husk of a blackened SUV.
5
“I sentence you to the darkness.”
“What do you want me to do, boss?” Will’s voice crackled over the headset.
Joel heard the turret moving as he obviously lined up whatever shot he thought he might take. Joel cleared his mind for a moment and tried to assess the situation with a calm head. These people hadn’t fired the big guns yet, but it was obvious that they were packing at least some semblance of firepower. He made up his mind and unclipped his harness.
“Are you seriously getting out again?” Debra said out of the corner of her mouth like she might be afraid of being heard, or perhaps having her lips read. “This is becoming a bad habit of yours.”
Joel ignored her remarks and exited the Humvee, making a point of putting his hands in the air in that universal sign of surrender. He moved to the front of the idling vehicle and then very slowly dropped his hands, clasping them in front of himself. After a few seconds that began to feel like minutes
, a lone individual emerged from behind the vehicle roadblock. He or she was dressed in what looked like riot gear and had what Joel identified as a military-issue M4 slung across their chest. He breathed an inner sigh of relief when the person set the weapon on the hood of one of the vehicles and took a few steps toward him. Joel reciprocated, and the two began a slow and cautious advance. Twice, there was the report of a rifle and an approaching zombie tottered and fell to the pavement with a meaty thud.
At last, Joel and the stranger were standing just a few feet apart. The person in the riot gear flipped up the helmet’s visor to reveal the face of a man who appeared to be in his early fifties. His gray hair peeked out from the edges and framed a weather-worn face that had seen its fair share of sunshine over the years. The man had piercing eyes that were a blue that verged on gray.
“Tim Wistrom,” the man said in a voice so quiet that Joel felt compelled to lean forward in order to hear.
“Joel Landon.”
“We seem to have a situation,” the man said with an easy smile as he leaned just a bit to get a look past Joel at the Humvee idling almost a block behind.
“Doesn’t really have to be anything.” Joel let that seep in, and then continued when it was clear that the stranger was not inclined to say more. “We are heading out of town. Figure the best thing to do right now is stake a claim to a place that is defensible and offers us enough seclusion from the main population while still making it feasible to return in order to make supply runs.”
“So then, you folks ain’t actual military?” the man asked, giving a nod to the Humvee.
“I’m retired, but the two others in the vehicle are both active.” Joel slapped himself in the forehead mentally as soon as that answer slipped from his mouth. He’d just given away vital information for free. And worse, he’d exposed his numbers.
