Tattered Remnants

by Mark Tufo

  BT’s rope was shortening. There would come a point when he would be done with this war, whether it was done with him or not. I would keep him from slipping further down if it was at all in my power. I couldn’t imagine a life in which he was no longer around me, and I’d fight for that as I would my own life.

  I was within three hundred yards of the men. I could start taking shots, probably take down two of them before they figured out where I was shooting from and either took cover or took off. Neither of those things worked. If shots started, Ron and BT would come, these guys would take off, and we’d be compelled to chase. We would not be able to determine where and when the conflict would resume. I threw my sling over my head and let my rifle sit on my back. I pulled the strap tight so it wouldn’t move around, and then I pulled my Ka-Bar free from its sheath.

  Knives weren’t my weapon of choice. In this case, though, I felt it was the wisest course. I was within fifty yards, and I could hear snippets of the men talking.

  “…hope we find some women.”

  “…could go for some whisky.”

  They continued in this vein of conversation—basically, what they hoped to find and what they hoped to do. BT was right to want them dead. These were humans who forgot what it meant to be human. Fuck, who knows? Maybe I’m the one who has it wrong, and this was how humans were meant to act. Preying on the weak has always been something practiced in the animal kingdom. Why should we be any different? Of course, animals didn’t do it out of malice; they did it to survive. Would it make a difference if you killed someone and took their stuff so that you could survive as long as malice wasn’t involved? That was not a path I desired to venture down.

  Ten yards, I poked my head around a tree. I could see the truck and two men leaning against it. A third was inside, his legs poking out the open door; looked like he was trying to get some rest. Being a dick was apparently tiresome. A grunting off to my side got my attention and my heart pumping. For a second, I thought I’d been spotted by a wild boar, who even now was measuring me up to gore with his eleven-inch tusks. That would have been a serious detriment to my plans. I got down low when I realized it wasn’t a pig (although, I guess I could have called him one without anybody being to offended, except maybe a true swine) but rather one of the men. He was less than ten feet away. The only reason he hadn’t seen me was that he was halfway through taking care of a basic bodily function. His pants were down by his ankles, his back was braced up against a tree, and he looked like he was sitting on an invisible chair as he crapped.

  I don’t know what he’d eaten, but apparently, it had not agreed with him. Squishing wet sounds of expelled flatulence erupted, and diarrhea splashed onto the ground.

  “Fuck, Wayne. What the hell is wrong with you?” One of the men asked from the truck.

  Wayne’s face was red as he strained. “Fuck you, Collin.” He managed to get out between squirts. “Maybe if you cooked better, I wouldn’t be dying.”

  There was some laughter, and then the men over by the truck began resuming their conversation. No man deserved to die on the throne, such as it was, but a better opportunity might not present itself. I propelled myself up and was halfway to him before he could even acknowledge my presence. His mouth opened in surprise, and perhaps in preparation of a scream, before I shoved my knife up and into the soft part of his lower jaw. The blade gleamed as it blasted into and through his tongue and lodged into the roof of his mouth. His hands feebly reached up trying to pull the intruding blade away and out. His throat gurgled to match his stomach. I covered his mouth with my hand while I withdrew the knife. I made sure to keep pressure against him so he wouldn’t fall to the ground just yet. His eyes looked to mine. Blood poured past and through my fingers. I waited a few seconds. His eyes opened wide in fright and then shut. My grip slipped, and he fell to the ground.

  “Holy shit, Wayne, did you just lose your intestines?” There was more laughter.

  I grunted. I must have pulled off a reasonable impression of the dead man because the other men laughed. At this point, I probably could have got my rifle, aimed, and easily taken out the three men before they ever even realized what was happening. The thought never crossed my mind. I have a theory of why that happened, and I’m almost ashamed to admit it, even here in my most private of thoughts. It was the flow of that man’s blood across my hand, it was so warm it was like a small electric current was being dragged across my skin wherever it made contact. The half of me that wasn’t human loved it, reveled in it even, I wanted it. Sure, BT was slipping, but, maybe, so was I.

  I crept closer to the truck. My guess was my pupils were dilating and expanding … expanding at the desire to kill them, to make them bleed, and then dilating at the stress of the task that needed to be done and the concentration needed to hunt and kill. I was as close as I could be without exposing myself. There was a good twenty feet of open space between me and the men. And still, the idea of the rifle never flashed past my brain plate. I could almost feel the heat of the blood as it pulsed just below the surface of their skin. I backed up a good ten feet, made sure I had a relatively unencumbered exit from the woods, and started to run. I wanted to be at full speed before they ever even bore witness of me.

  I think Collin saw me first. My lips were pulled back in a silent scream, the knife up by the side of my head. He reached down for his rifle that was propped up against the truck. His friend saw the alarm in Collin’s face but, as of yet, had not turned to see what it was. I broke through Collin’s chest plate as I plunged the knife into him up to the hilt. He gasped as the knife severed everything in its path. The stench of fear-shit dominated as the third man evacuated his bowels in fright. I pulled the knife free. A gush of tepid air blew past me from Collin’s collapsing lung. I wrapped my left hand around my new victim’s neck and pulled him close to me as I repeatedly stabbed my knife into his stomach. He cried out with each impact, losing volume with each repeated thrust. I finally stopped when the fourth man sat up, a revolver the size of a small cannon blasting off.

  The left side of the man’s head evaporated into a spray of brain matter. I tossed him toward the shooter as I quickly moved away, two more shots missing me by scant inches.

  “You fucker!” he spat. Another round kicked up dirt as close to my foot as possible without having blown a hole in it. He was completely sitting up now, and he had the oversized barrel pointed directly at me, center mass. I wondered, briefly, what it would feel like to have the crushing blow of a sledgehammer hit you in the chest. Click. He’d pulled the trigger. Five rounds, it was a five round cylinder! Joy, which is a strange emotion to have at this particular time, surged through me.

  “Bad luck for you, good luck for me.” I was coming toward him as he scrambled back into the truck, and for, I’m sure, an alternate weapon. I grabbed his boot and pulled him out with enough force he cleared the truck completely and bounced off the ground next to his dead friends. The brunt of the fall being absorbed by his back, shoulders and a solid smacking of his head.

  “Please mister, I haven’t done anything to you!” His hands were out in front of him in a defensive gesture. Of the four men, this one was clearly the youngest. Mid-twenties, if I had to take a guess. His shaggy hair giving him an even more youthful appearance.

  “Just got mixed up in the wrong crowd did ya?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, yeah that’s it. We didn’t mean no harm.”

  “But you caused quite a bit of it, didn’t you?”

  He was silent for a moment. I guess realizing that anything he said in defense, I would know for bullshit.

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “I can’t say I blame you. There is a reckoning, you know. Whether you believe it or not, makes no difference. I’ve got a feeling you’ve got plenty to answer for.”

  I heard the approach of a car. Apparently my reinforcements had heard the shooting. The quickening that been happening in me began to subside. I’d killed the three because I had to. Now what? Thi
s man was defenseless and begging for mercy.

  “Strip.”

  “What?”

  “Take your fucking clothes off.”

  He went down to his underwear.

  “Those, too. I’m not going to make you squeal like a pig. Just take the things off. Get the fuck out of here.”

  “Where am I going to go?”

  “Hell, I would imagine, but right now, I don’t give a fuck. Just get away from me.” He kept looking back at me as he ran across the median and down the roadway in the direction I’d come from. BT flew out of the car as they pulled up like he’d been ejected. I knew he was pissed, but a part of him was relieved as well. He swallowed whatever bitterness he wanted to direct at me and instead pointed up the road.

  “Friend of yours?” he asked.

  “We could have been so much more; he wasn’t interested. Tell Ron to stay in the car for a second. I’ll get rid of the bodies.” I couldn’t hide the buckets of blood, but that you could more easily dismiss than the lifeless fish eyes of the dead and damned. Like they’d seen what awaits them, and it had burned the flatness onto their irises. BT turned away, and stayed away, at least until I’d sufficiently dragged the dead men away. Ron had come out. He was riveted by the blood pools.

  “Let’s just get what we need and go,” BT told him. I silently thanked him for that.

  Ron made a wide berth around the stain. He looked into the woods and quickly looked away. I hoped I’d done enough to conceal the men. Who knows, maybe he got a glimpse of the man’s soul screaming in terror as it ran from whatever was chasing it, although I had a pretty good idea of what or who it was.

  Ron had grabbed a length of rope. “This will come in handy.”

  “Leave it.” I had an uncharacteristic flash of clairvoyance. I knew without a shadow of a doubt what it had been used for, and I didn’t want to be near it.

  Ron looked confused but put it back anyway.

  “Holy shit.” BT held up the RPG. It looked more like an ordinary rifle size-wise in his hands.

  They had a whole cache of weapons, which we confiscated. I’m sure most of them had already been used in crimes against humanity, better we had them than someone else.

  “How many rockets?” I asked.

  “Three.”

  That worked. Ten, twenty maybe, would have been better, and there were good odds that wherever the ass-wipes made camp they had more, or else why use one on us?

  “What about the truck?” Ron asked when we’d moved everything over.

  I opened the hood and cut through every hose, belt, and wire I could get to, then when that was done, I flattened all four tires. “That should put it out of commission for a while.”

  “You really going to let that one kid go?” BT asked after Ron had got back in the car.

  It was never a good idea to leave unfinished business. It somehow always had a way of finding itself back to you. I could use Mrs. Deneaux as the obvious object of that statement. I could only hope the old bat had found a slow and torturous end. Unlikely, but a boy could dream.

  “I am. I just hope he doesn’t go home and there are thirty more of them that come looking for us.” BT didn’t like that answer at all. Luckily, it wasn’t something we had to worry about.

  We were back on the road in five minutes. Naked man had gone close to a mile. We were coming up abreast to him, albeit on the other side of the highway. He barely spared us a glance as he continued to run as fast as his bleeding feet would allow. Five zombies were matching his pace some hundred yards behind. If I were a sicker bastard, I would have made a bet with BT that he wouldn’t make it another half mile, and we could use the highway mile markers as indicators. He was leaving bloody foot prints with every footfall; at this pace he’d run out of blood sooner than he would exhaust himself. Ron sped up and we zipped past him. The boy watched. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed his eyes pleaded for help. I would offer no quarter. He was not worthy of saving. I’d let a higher authority deem that possibility. I may have seen him being dragged down just on the edge of my vision; I would have won the bet. I almost questioned why Ron was pulling off the highway again until I realized we’d only done half of the proposed mission.

  “What a waste of supplies,” I said, looking at the store.

  “I don’t think you’re looking at this from the right angle,” BT said while he was lining up the shot. “We close enough?”

  “Trust me. We’re as close as we want to be. Only a really terrible shot would miss from here.”

  “Glad to see you haven’t lost your inner asshole just yet.”

  The rocket ignited and blew out, like rockets do, lots of noise and fire. We watched its progress as it spanned the hundred yards or so, and then, like it had been invited, it slid right into the front door of the store and blew beef jerky, motor oil, pretzels, and most importantly, zombies into oblivion. Wood, glass, and cement flew out in a wide arc, coming up short from pelting us but not as far away as I would have liked.

  “Whoa. That was intense,” BT said as he took the weapon off his shoulder. We waited until everything that hadn’t been launched into the stratosphere landed and the major part of the fire burned before we started to get back into the car. This place would soon have its fair share of zombies investigating, and even if they didn’t want to avenge their brethren, they’d still want to eat us. Only two zombies came out, ablaze and stumbling. They looked like lone holdouts from a hornets nest after a powerful zapping of bug spray. I got shivers thinking about the burning zombies from Little Turtle, and the idiot who had lit them on fire, he was almost more at fault for the destruction of our homes than the zombies themselves. I put my rifle up to my shoulder and fired. I’d like to say I hit something, but it’s my journal. Who would I be kidding?

  “Nice shot, Tex,” BT said.

  “I’m taking a standing shot, trying to hit a person’s head from a hundred yards on a moving target. Give it a go, Annie.”

  “Annie?”

  “As in Oakley.”

  “Just kill them.”

  The next shot I took my time, controlled my breathing, followed the wavering zombie, and slowly squeezed the trigger, not even realizing I’d done so until the butt stock pushed against my shoulder. A spray of blood flew onto the lone survivor as the zombie I hit crashed to the ground in a flaming heap.

  “Damn, that was a nice shot.”

  “One second you’re ragging on me, the next you’re praising. You need to stay consistent, or you’re going to mess me up.”

  Apparently, I’d used up all my sharpshooting skills on the first zombie. Three shots later, I had not so much killed the zombie as I had incapacitated it. My first shot was low and to the right and nailed it in the shoulder, the second was a complete miss, and the third was more of a mystery than any of them as I crushed its left knee. The leg bent backward, and the zombie pitched forward, face first. It continued to crawl forward, but it was safe to see that the conflagration was going to get the best of him, melting his brain before he would be able to wander off and start an irreversible blaze.

  6

  Mike Journal Entry 6

  We’d gone some twenty miles, none of us saying much. When I’d adjusted to get a little more comfortable in the small confines of the car, I heard wrappers.

  “Oh shit, I forgot I grabbed some stuff.”

  BT turned to look. The first was a bag of Ollie’s ostrich jerky, the next was a package with three bran muffins, and finally, six packs of sugarless gum.

  “That’s quite a haul you have there.”

  “Hey, man. I was under a little duress. I didn’t really get a chance to pick and choose.”

  “Obviously, now give me some of the jerky.”

  I thought Henry had stowed away when he opened that bag. A more foul odor I don’t think I’d ever had the displeasure of smelling, and our world was full of zombies. BT couldn’t get the window down fast enough.

  “I might have to kill you, man,” BT said after anoth
er five miles. A sufficient transfer of fresh air had cleaned out the car although there was a good chance the smell had been burned into our olfactory senses. “Give me one of the muffins.”

  “Really?” Ron asked. “He just handed you bagged death, and you’re willing to try again?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “There’s food in the trunk. I’ll pull over.”

  “Give me the damn muffin, Mike.”

  “I guess you would want your fiber. A man as big as you gets backed up, you could destroy a toilet. Make the damn thing unserviceable. Probably shatter the porcelain.”

  “Shut up, Mike.” BT undid the wrapper. We all waited for the stench of odor, like perhaps everything in that store had been tainted from being in such close proximity to the zombies. After a couple of sniffs, he took a small bite. Satisfied he wasn’t going to die, he finished the muffin off in silence.

  All things being equal, I’d rather have a blueberry muffin, but this was still pretty good and I was happy to have it. Ron ate the third one as BT eyed him jealously.

  “Better eat that fast, Ron, or he’ll eat your arm trying to get to it.”

  “I’d eat you if I thought it would shut you up. More than likely, you’d make me sick, and I’d keep hearing from you as you shot out both ends.” BT sneered.

  “Trying to eat here.” Ron’s words were muffled as he spat muffin bits onto the windshield. BT and I laughed.