by Mark Tufo
I don’t even know how many times I repeated this over the next hour. I put my body in automatic mode and tucked the thinking, rational part of my mind deep inside a box, hiding it from the aching pains in my feet, in my calves, knees, thighs, the discomfort in my chest, hell—even the chaffing of my nipples on my shirt. I hid it from my constricting throat, dry eyes and blinding headache. I hid it from the dehydration and exhaustion I was feeling. I tapped into something that the Marines had maybe not instilled, but had honed: the ability to keep going even when there aren’t many reasons to do so, even when you don’t think you can.
Trip joined me, but of course, he put his own spin on it. “Mary, Mary. Why do you keep going out? Is it whiskey or is it wine? Or is it lack of rolling time? Spark up. Roll with us,1 hit, no good, 2 hits, no good, 3 hits, getting better, 4 hits getting high, 5 hits breathing harder, 6 hits Girl Scout cookies, 7 hits Boy Scout popcorn, 8 hits now we’re talking, 9 hits almost there, 10 hits Nirvana! Oh, Yeah! Oh, Yeah! Lo Right a Left Left Right Right your Lefty Right your Left. Left Right your Left Lefty Right your Left Left Right your Left. Lefty Righty Lo. With each left or right spoken, he would bring that corresponding hand up to his mouth, indicating he was taking a toke.
“I’m so high right now!” Trip was smiling over at me. I didn’t acknowledge him; to do so would have meant I would have to let the portion out that I was doing my utmost to suppress. I plodded on. For a while, I forgot why the hell we were even running. It was Kalandar that reminded me.
“I have some strength back. Keep going; I will delay the dead ones,” he said.
Oh, you have absolutely no effing idea how badly I wanted to stop. I would use the justification that I wanted to question him on his decision, but the real reason would be because I just wanted to stop. The problem with that was the likelihood I could get going again would be nil, to say the least. Regrettably or regretfully, I kept going. Trip finally showed he was human; he stumbled and fell over, a small dust cloud continued after he’d dropped. I had a burst of anger flare through me at the fact that I had to turn my ship around and help. But it burned out quickly, thankfully.
Trip was belly down on the ground, his face turned away from me, his thin frame rising and falling as he breathed heavily. I looked up to see Kalandar a few hundred yards behind; he was in the classic Superhero having jumped off a tall building-pose, you know, one knee, one fist on the ground, head hanging down. To any casual observer, it might look like he was praying or resting. The zombies were maybe a half-mile back from him. I did that math as I stiffly bent to check on Trip. We had a three minute lead on the horde. That was it. Any significant delay getting Trip up and moving and we were going to be in the thick of it.
“Trip,” I said hoarsely. I managed to lubricate my throat a bit before I spoke his name again. If he heard me, he did not stir. I said his name four more times, still nothing. I looked up to see Kalandar begin to glow, the zombies ever moving forward. Now came the debate of laying out my magazines for our final stand or leaving on my own. The internal discussion revolved around self-preservation, but there was a growing contingent that thought staying here and defending my friend was the right cause, though for the wrong reasons, partly, at least. Running again sucked. So yup, I was going to die the hero defending us until the end, but only because I was too fucking tired to do anything else. I wondered if they gave medals for that.
Instead, I switched tactics. “Grateful Dead.”
There was an abnormally long expulsion of air from Trip before he turned his head, his left eye looking up at me. “You got tickets?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Show them to me. Jimmy Snookers once told me he had tickets. We drove eleven hundred miles overnight, only for him to tell me he wanted to sell his homemade bootlegged shirts in the parking lot of a Kmart. They were horrible. He used a magic marker to scribble the band’s name on his old pit-stained shirts. Ponch, he even spelled the name wrong. Want to know what’s worse?”
I nodded, if only to delay the inevitable running.
“I had tickets to the show from the city we had just driven away from.”
“Harsh, man. Come on, get up…we don’t want to miss this show.”
“You’re not snookering me, are you?”
“Trip, if we don’t leave now, the funkies are going to take all the good seats.”
He sat up. “General admission?”
“Sure.”
“Well, when you say it like that.” Trip raised his right leg off the ground like he wanted me to pull him up that way. I reached down and grabbed his shoulder instead. “Smart,” he said when he was finally on his feet. I felt, then heard, a loud whoosh and a hot breeze blew past. There was no light show from Kalandar’s direction, but something had happened. He stood and turned. He appeared to pause when he noticed us then he began moving again, though he had a pronounced limp, and even with us standing still, it was going to take him a while to get to us.
“You ready?” I grabbed Trip’s hand and we started moving. Not sure when I became the strongest runner of us three, but that didn’t bode well for our chances. We passed the helicopter; there was no sign of Jack or BT. The siren call of the seat inside was something I wasn’t sure if I was going to be strong enough to resist. Maybe just die inside the fishbowl; at least it’d be comfortable, and I’d be well-rested.
“Come on, Ponch.” Trip pulled on my arm as I slowed on approach. “You don’t want to eat from that truck. Their food has heavy metal additives.”
“Makes sense,” I told him and we were back at it. Could finally see Jack and BT ahead, maybe a quarter mile, the hills a distant two or three. I turned to note Kalandar had moved incrementally closer. Whatever magic the demon had employed, it had severely thinned out the zombies or at least delayed them, because they were a mile or more from him. Our lead had jumped up to five minutes.
We were catching up to BT and Jack, which was telling, considering we weren’t much above a trot. Jack was running backward like my drill instructors would when they had stragglers in bootcamp. Although, I was pretty sure Jack wasn’t swearing at BT and telling him how pathetic he was, or maybe he was; it was their lives on the line after all. BT was walking but making it look like he was running, his arms pumping, his legs moving in a shuffling manner. I matched pace which meant I was nearly at a standstill. It was more difficult moving like this than it had been running.
“BT.”
He grunted.
“Listen, man, I know you’re exhausted.”
He grunted again; not sure if in acknowledgment or a normal condition of his run.
“We’ve got another mile-ish.” I wanted to be as close to actual as I could. Speaking of bootcamp, it always drove me nuts when they said we were going out on a three-mile run and it ended up being seven or eight. He lifted his head as if to verify my statement.
“We’ve got about four minutes on the zombies. It’s going to take them just about eleven minutes to get to the hills, which means we have to do it in about nine if we want to put any distance between them and us.”
I hoped he didn’t call me on it because I had no clue what awaited us at the hills. Would it just be more running, but this time uphill? It was genuinely foolish to think the area afforded any type of shelter from the oncoming storm, but it was our one and only chance, and we’d been holding on to it for far too long to abandon it now.
“The last time I ran a mile in under nine minutes was high school.” His head dropped back down.
Jack glanced at me, it fell somewhere between “let’s leave him” and “let’s stop and defend him”. At least that was my take because that was exactly what I was thinking.
“Leave me.”
“As if. Who’s going to tell me to fuck off as many times as you?”
He looked over at me, the faintest ghost of a fire lit in his eyes…now how did I properly stoke the flame? Best bet would be to tell him that if he made it, I’d let him punch me a few times; I opted a
gainst that incentive.
I went instead with a heavy-handed dose of reality. “You die here, and Linda will never know what happened to you.”
“Fuck you, Talbot.” His legs moved faster, but we were comparing snails to turtles here.
“Going to need more than that from you.”
“Don’t got no more.”
“Cool. We’ll all die here because you couldn’t stop shoveling grits in your pie hole.”
“Hate grits,” he said. Instead of getting mad at me, he sped up.
“Just how many birthday parties did you go to then?” I asked.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Well, I’m figuring that’s where you ate all that cake you’re carrying around.”
He spared enough air to laugh and he again sped up.
“Jack, you and Trip go ahead, scope out the area, find us a defendable location.”
“Mike, are you sure about this?”
His expression indicated whether my life was worth staying with BT, as he wasn’t sure the big man would make it to the top of the ridge in half a day, let alone nine minutes.
“As much as I can be. None of us are going to make it if we have to run uphill for any length of time.”
“Or at all,” BT grimaced.
“Or at all,” I echoed.
Jack was not thrilled with this. Aw who am I shitting; neither was I. I didn’t want to die being run down by zombies. No great surprise there, can’t imagine there is or was anyone that ever lived that desired that cruel fetish. I could be wrong, but still.
“Come on, Yack. I think Ephialtes was here,” Trip said as he moved forward almost eagerly.
The name pinged something in my brain, but no response was forthcoming.
“The Spartan, Ephialtes?” Jack asked. And that was it, they were off. Ever been to the airport, and they have those moving sidewalks? This was like that. Jack and Trip were effortlessly pulling ahead of us, BT was on the verge of sprouting roots.
“Maybe…” He was out of breath. “Maybe I can catch a ride.”
I know what he was thinking, but his Uber looked like it had been dragged through the streets on the back of a chariot. Kalandar was limping, and not only hunched over, but canted to the left; he wouldn’t be anybody’s ride. Whatever was wrong looked serious. He was wearing a frown that dragged down the corners of his mouth to reveal much too large fangs.
“Don’t think so. We do this together or we don’t,” I finished.
“Mike…can’t.”
Fuck this pretender to my friend. I was angry, and I don’t think it was irrationally. This was our lives on the line. “You can shove your ‘can’t’ straight up your gelatinous ass, BT!” I yelled. “Do you have any idea how much a zombie bite hurts? The first one will most likely be on your shoulder. It will clamp down so hard you’ll feel this paralyzing electric shock. Thing about human teeth is they’re not really efficient for tearing, so it’ll shake its head back and forth as it tries to rip a piece of you free. The pain will be so intense you won’t be able to think of anything else except trying to make it let go. And maybe you’ll be lucky enough to shake that one free just as another bites into your side, or your calf, or if you’re really lucky, one will get a hold of your neck and just rip the side of it straight out. Sure, you’ll die in under thirty seconds, but it beats the hell out of the few minutes you could survive while you’re being eaten alive. You can’t even begin to imagine the panic that flows through your mind while you’re watching yourself being consumed. And oh, BT, they like their flesh warm. They know how to prolong your life to get the most blood and soft meat, where to bite that ensures you stick around for the whole party. Now pick up your fucking feet and run for not only your life but mine. I do not want to die in this pus-filled crusty excuse of a world!”
He didn’t say anything. I think he was debating whether to stop and call it or find a gear he didn’t have. He finally did pick up the pace; I didn’t time it, but it felt around ten minutes a mile. He was trying so hard I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it wasn’t going to be good enough. Kalandar gimped up next to us at about a half-mile out. He looked like absolute shit. I’d seen people in the midst of malaria that looked better.
“Go,” I urged when he matched pace. This seemed to spur BT on for a bit. The hill was close, but so were the zombies. We were about in the middle ground—half a mile to the hill, half-mile lead on the zees. I hoped Jack had a camera so he could determine the winner with a photo finish. Speaking of which, I could not see either; I also couldn’t see a pathway up the hill. In fact, it looked more like a raised bluff. Sure, that’d be great if we were already on it, but how the hell we were going to climb up was beyond me.
With a quarter-mile to go, Kalandar had just reached the destination. I got a good idea of just how high the bluff was, as he was dwarfed—had to be at least a forty-foot wall. We had roughly three minutes to get there; the zombies, by this time, no more than a minute or two behind us. It wasn’t the worst—to be fighting, literally, with a wall to your back—but the outcome would already be determined. BT had his head down and was willing his legs to move forward. I was watching Kalandar; one moment he was there, the next gone. I would have thought it a feat of magic, or possibly one of this world’s fantastic sleight of hand tricks. Then I saw Jack emerge from where Kalandar had disappeared.
Jack was running about as fast as I’d ever seen him go. Gotta have some adrenaline pumping when you’re heading straight into the teeth of the enemy. He was waving his arm for us to hurry.
“No, shit, Jack.” I wasn’t mad at him, just the situation. “BT,” I said softly.
“I fucking know, Mike.”
At this point, I wanted to rail a little that if he knew, maybe he should get his ass moving. Wouldn’t help; he was already going as fast as he could. Pretty sure I had freaked myself out with my description of a zombie attack and had no desire to see just how prophetic I had been.
“Trip…” Jack needed to catch his breath as he caught up to us. “Goat trail.”
“Ephialtes.” Now I got it, he was the Spartan that betrayed his countrymen and led the Persians around the defenders on a goat trail.
“Can we help him?” Jack asked.
I shook my head. BT was so big we couldn’t prop him up under our shoulders.
“I’ve got this.” BT was huffing and puffing like a locomotive of old. If Trip were here, he’d be able to supply the smoke. Speaking of which…. “Where’s the stoner?”
“Waiting at the top.” I could see Jack; his feet were practically begging to start running again. He’d look behind then forward. I got to admit, I had happy feet syndrome going on as well. One of us had made it, so it was possible. On the flipside, not only could we hear the pursuing footfalls of so many zombies, but it was also now possible to hear their growls. I would have turned and fired if I thought it would do anything in the way of delaying them. Even something as minor as ten seconds could be the difference between freedom and becoming a digestible.
“BT, whatever you got left, you need to use it now.” I could now make out individual faces in the crowd; it wouldn’t be long until I could tell eye color. He did not respond. If he sped up, it was imperceptible.
“Just around this boulder,” Jack said. We were within a hundred yards of the bluff, two hundred from the massive boulder he was pointing at. But as far as I could tell it looked like a unified rock wall, something the ancient Chinese would have been proud of. BT was trying, lord knows he was. It just wasn’t going to be enough. We were fifty yards from the opening and the zombies were a hundred from us; this was a straight toss-up on who was going to make it first. The opening wasn’t much wider than a standard door, the perfect place to make a last stand, as the zombies would have to funnel before they could make any headway.
The zombie horde chasing us was so massive that Kalandar’s attack had been localized, meaning, it had given us room to the immediate rear, but the flanki
ng zombies had overtaken us and were even now reaching the bluff wall and angling alongside it in a bid to cut us off, and yeah, it wasn’t a desperate bid, because right now they looked to have positioning. We were caught in the world’s largest and bloodiest pincer. The zombies racing along the west side were closer; no doubt in my mind they were going to make it there before we did. Jack had his weapon up as he ran. He was firing; it was more of the spray and pray variety. Hitting a moving target in the head while you are running is an impossibility, unless you just throw enough lead at the problem.
“I’m sorry,” BT managed to get out. I think it was an apology for putting us in this elevated amount of danger. Or who knows. Maybe it was for all the pain he was putting his body through. Jack had taken down a couple, but this was about as effective as stamping out individual roaches in a condemned hoarder’s dwelling. Twenty feet, we were twenty fucking feet away when the westbound bastards made up the gap.
BT groaned as he looked, took him a few more strides to bring a halt to that much bulk. Jack was now in a tactical position. He kept firing, but he was no longer moving forward. He couldn’t; none of us could. I had my rifle up, but with so many targets, I was having a difficult time deciding. The zombies, realizing we were surrounded, miraculously stopped their pursuit, except for the ones coming at us from the east, but once they met up with their counterparts, they stopped as well.
“Mike, what’s going on?” Jack asked, sparing the quickest of glances over toward me as if I was the zombie whisperer. Unfortunately, I had more experience than everyone here, but that still made me far from an expert, it was akin to when my two best friends missed the first day of first grade and I was there to learn what four plus four was. Yeah, I was ahead of them but hardly a math genius.
