I blasted out onto Route 6 as soon as I saw that it was clear enough to travel on, and zig-zagged my way on down the road. The further I got down Route 6, the thinner and thinner the congestion got - it was pretty sweet. There were still tons of fuckin’ zombies, though, shambling around between the cars - and some of them right in my path - so to deal with that mess I unsung the Remington and propped it on the handle bars, kind of like when I was a gunner in the Army, and unleashed Hell on anything that had the misfortune to stumble along in front of me. Reloading that sucker was a bitch, though, I don’t know how many shells I left behind me, scattered around in the street.
After a while the way ahead was pretty clear of traffic and zombies alike, and the going was gravy. About a half-mile outta town there were practically no cars at all, and even fewer zombies. I figured that only the immediate ways in and out of cities and towns were gonna be fucked, and everything in between would be just like it was there - easy streets. I knew that I was gonna have some serious trouble when I got to Ottawa - the only major city that stood between me and Streator - but I had thoughts of bypassing that shit by taking some country roads around it.
I was about to the Utica four-way - that was about a third of the way to Streator - when I it came to me that maybe my earlier thoughts about “easy streets” was probably the stupidest thing to have been thunk since some moron developed “reality” tv. Up ahead, at the four-way, was chaos. Well, not really, but it still was kinda bad. More like just plain craziness, I guess. Either way, it wasn’t normal, even for times like these.
58
I quickly pulled my bike to a stop and ran it behind a stalled Butternut van, got my AR and as many mags as I could carry, and crouch-ran to a fender-bender that a thousand years in the future, would be a hill, or some ancient relic that the people then gazed at and wondered just what the purposes of such things were.
Thirty yards up at the four-way, there was a massive massive pile up - there were at least eight cars all smashed together there, nearly blocking off the road - and what had to have been at least fifty or sixty zombies (Utica zombies, I had guessed, since it was right there) going nuts trying and battling to get at the craziness that was stuck in the middle of them - the craziness that was the reason for my stopping and not going off-road around all that mess.
The craziness was a seven-foot-tall hairless black dude that was wearing a bright yellow banana-hammock and nothing else, that was fighting off the zombies with nothing more than a couple of big-ass weird looking knives. And doing a pretty fuckin’ good job of it, too, ‘cause I saw zombie after zombie fall to his blades - joining the multitudes that were piled under his feet - as soon as they got close enough for him to strike. I saw a couple get a hold of him, but for some reason they just slid right off the guy like he was covered in grease or something, and got fuckin’ chopped to shit right after.
“Hey!!!” I yelled as I leaned over the hood of one of the cars - an 80’s Datsun - and got in a good firing position. “Hey, man!!! I’m gonna take out some of these fuckers and get you outta there, okay!?”
“NO!!!” he yelled at me as he brought one of his blades to the neck of an obese woman zombie, severing her head clean from her body. “I can handle this on my own!!! I do not need any of your help!!!”
“Yeah, whatever you say, dude!!! You’re fucked and you know it!!! So… do you want my help or not!? I got a good rifle and I’m a decent enough shot with it!!!…”
By this time a good handful of the dead motherfuckers had turned and started in my direction, but there was still more than the guy could handle on his own, no matter how tough he was - and he looked fuckin’ tough, let me tell ya.
“Eh… Okay, okay!!!” he yelled after he violated three zombies in rapid succession. “I do need help… I am getting very tired!!! So, yes, help me!!! Please!!!”
“Okay!!! Try and stay pretty much in the same place you’re at, I don’t wanna shoot you!!! Here I go!!!”
I took aim at the closest zombie that was walking towards me, and fired away - and got a perfectly placed headshot. After that first one dropped, I kinda shut off and just let the gun take over, getting headshot after headshot, dropping one and moving on to the next, getting closer and closer to the guy with each shot, while the guy continued chopping up the zombies with his wicked blades from within. We were slowly but surely working our way towards each other.
Finally, after what seemed like forever but was probably only fifteen minutes or so, the zombies were thin enough around the dude that he was able to hack and slash his way out from them and run over to the cars where I was at.
“Oh my…,” he said breathlessly as he leaned against the Datsun. “Thank you so much… I am grateful…”
“Hey, no problem, buddy, no problem,” I said. “I couldn’t just ride on by and let you get ate, you know?”
“Yes, yes, that would have been bad… At first, I thought I could handle them, but I was unfortunately very wrong. Had you not shown up, I would have surely been eaten… or worse.”
“No shit,” I replied. “You’da been fucked. So… not to be rude here, but, ah… why aren’t you wearing any clothes, man?”
Like I said, the only thing the guy was wearing was the banana-hammock, and now that he wasn’t surrounded by zombies, I saw that he wasn’t wearing any shoes, either. And upon further inspection, I saw that he was indeed covered in grease, or oil, from head to toe. What the fuck!?
“Well,” he chuckled, “I am wearing these… for a good reason, though…,” pointing to his yellow man-thong. “But anyway, I am Nigerian. I did not want to dishonor my tribe by going into battle using my great-great-grandfather’s weapons,” he said, holding up his strangely shaped blades for me to see, “wearing your… western clothing. I know it sounds stupid, speaking of ‘honor’ and such in today’s times, but…”
“Nah, not at all. Different cultures, man,” I said, instead of asking him if he’s wearing the thong ‘cause his dick got yanked on by a zombie. “And the oil, or grease or whatever it is?”
“Hah! The oil! I wanted to make myself as slippery as possible, so none of them would be able to get a hold of me. The method worked for me as I fought my way through Chicago, so I figured that I would try it again. And it worked wonderfully!”
“Yeah, it did! But… ah… why were you in the middle of all those zombies in the first place? I mean, there were a lot of those fucks surrounding you there. I mean, that was some crazy shit, dude, and believe me, I would know.”
“I rushed in to save someone, but I was too late. There were not as many zombies at first, but I was quickly overwhelmed. That is when I took my clothes off and covered myself in oil that had leaked from the vehicles and had pooled on to the ground. Shortly after, you arrived.”
“Cool, cool, I can dig it,” I said. “Hold on a minute, okay? Gotta take care of something.”
The zombies that the dude and I hadn’t killed were now getting a little too close for comfort, so I proceeded to take them out one by one. When the last of them were down for the count, I turned back to the dude.
“Nigerian, huh? And those blades are Nigerian, too?”
“Yes, yes, they are called ‘Hunga Munga’. They are made for throwing, but they are also very useful at close quarters combat, as well.”
“Yeah, I seen that. Well… cool… Check it out, my name’s Dave,” I said as I held out my hand for a shakin’.
“My name is Otuekongabasi,” He replied, shaking my hand. “And we are well met.”
“Wow, that is a name… I don’t really know if I can pronounce that,” I said very slowly and cautiously, fearing that I was going to offend the large, oil and blood covered man. “That’s a tuffy… I don’t want to try and end up fuckin’ it all up, ya know?”
“Hey, that is okay! As a matter of fact, that is what you can call me, everyone else does. It is what your people would call a nick-name?”
“Yeah, a nick-name. But, um, what was it now? Did you say it?”
“Hah! Yes, I am sorry! It is ‘O.K.’, the nick-name. O.K.”
“Ah! O.K.! Gotcha! Easy peasy, Japaneasy! So, O.K., what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere? You got a destination, or are you just traveling?”
“Actually, I do have a destination. I am not out wandering, although it would seem that I am. I was on my way from Chicago to visit my first cousin in a city called Streator when all of this insanity began to happen, and I am still trying to make it there to see her… What is the problem? Did I say something wrong, my friend?”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but my mouth was hanging open, unhinged, and again, there was a fly crawling around in there. I just couldn’t fuckin’ believe it, that this dude was going to the same exact place that I was, and was taking the same exact route at the same exact time. I was fuckin’ blown away, man. I mean, what a co-inky-dink! I spit the fly outta my mouth and answered his question.
“No… nothing’s wrong, believe me, dude, it’s all good. It’s just that I’m going to the same city as you are, that’s all. I’m just… shocked, awed… that I ran into someone with the same destination as me…”
“Well!” he said, excitedly, “we can travel together, if you do not mind!? It would most certainly be safer, and I would not mind the company. It has been quite lonely since this began.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’d be cool. Sure, we can travel together. Um… do you have any means of transportation? All I have is a little motor-scooter, that can hardly hold me, let alone two fully grown people…”
“Yes, I do have a vehicle,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder to one of those golf cart looking off-road vehicles that John Deere makes - a “Gator” I think it was called. “I also have some cleaning supplies and some extra clothing and food. I have some… other weapons… as well, that I got from my brother, Osuofia, before I left Chicago.”
“Okay, O.K.,” I said with a smile on my face. “You go ahead and get your Gator, get yourself cleaned up if you want, and I’ll get my bike and I guess we can get a move on. See you in a few. And for god’s sake, get some clothes on!”
After he was cleaned up and dressed, we met on the other side of the zombie-strewn wreck, in and on our respected vehicles, and began our journey to Streator - no longer traveling as lone wolves, but now as a pack.
59
We rode side-by-side as we drove down Route 6 on our way towards Ottawa, rolling at a top speed of around twenty-five or thirty m.p.h. or so, and shot the shit. And the occasional zombie, even though we didn’t run into a whole lot of them - out of the fifteen we saw, we only had to kill around half that. We each swapped stories of what our lives have been like since the Zombie Apocalypse started, who we had lost since then, some of the things we each had had to do to survive, and shit like that.
As we rolled, it came to my attention that O.K. was one seriously baaaaaaaaaaaad motherfucker, despite his polite manner and well-spoken attitude. From what he said, Chicago was completely decimated in the first day alone, with zombies just swarming out of its numerous hospitals, clinics, and police stations and attacking anything that moved - even their own kind (if that can be believed, but I have to say, the way he described it, it can only be the truth).
He said that the police (what was left of them) and the National Guard that had been called on to try and restore order had, after only a few hours into the outbreak, taken to shooting anyone and everyone on sight - whether or not they were alive or a zombie. And even the numerous street gangs had joined up with the police in their “shooting gallery” - but only because they wanted to shoot people, and not to try and make things better. He said that more innocent, living people were killed when the gangs started shooting than were killed by the police and the Nasty Guard combined - it seemed that the gangs were killing off anybody that had crossed them in the past, plus their families and friends. After a while, they had even taken to killing the cops. For them it was a free-for-all.
As for himself, O.K. told me that he had joined up with his older brother, Osuofia, who was a high-ranking member of a Nigerian heroin-running “cult” (it’s the word he used - I guess it has a different meaning in Nigeria) and was in Chicago on “business” along with two of their cousins. He told me that the four of them were enforcers back in their home country, and also in England, before O.K. came to America to attempt to get out of the life and get an education.
O.K. said that he had hacked and slashed his way through thirty-two blocks of hell, using his great-great-grandfathers Hunga Munga - fully nude that time, but still covered in oil - killing literally hundreds of zombies all by himself. He said that by the time he reached his brother and cousins, he couldn’t even lift his arms and that the three of them had to carry him to the safe haven that Osuofia had taken control of (by killing everyone inside and tossing their bodies to the undead to feast upon). O.K. must’ve seen the disgusted look on my face when he said that, ‘cause he immediately explained that they were enemies of the family, and that the killing was justified by “tribal law”. Whatever, how would I know that, right?
Once he was recuperated enough to handle himself again, he said that the four of them loaded up an old Nissan pick-up truck with enough AK-47’s, RPG’s, grenades, uzi’s, and ammo to take on anything that was thrown in front of them, and blazed their way outta Chi-town, leaving a trail of bodies behind them that was so vast that it could have been seen from space.
Once they got past the suburbs and onto the open road on I-55 - he said that the inbound lanes were nearly completely free of traffic, and that only the out-bound lanes were heavily congested - he separated from his brother and cousins to go to Streator to retrieve their other cousin, Adamma, kill her husband who beats her, and meet back up with them at an agreed upon location. They didn’t even know if she was still alive, but since she was the only other relative they had in the United States, he said they had to know one way or the other.
I told him that it was good of him to try, but the odds were that she was either dead or a zombie, and that was why I wasn’t wasting my time trying to find out if my family was still alive - especially since I heard the voice-mails and read the texts and knew that most of them, if not all, were dead. He just said that she was a Nigerian and that she was still alive. I kinda shrugged my shoulders and said that if she was anything like him, then maybe he was right.
We were talking about our favorite foods and how much we were gonna miss eating them when we finally reached the outskirts of Ottawa and pulled up in the middle of Route 6, a good ten feet from the back edge of the second-nastiest little titty bar I had ever been in - the Lamp Liter (the first-nastiest was a hole that I walked in and right out of that was outside of Fort Riley, Kansas, where I saw a pregnant girl stripping up on the stage). Somewhere off in the distance, inside Ottawa, we could hear the sounds of a raging battle and some other loud humming noise, like from a huge engine or something. I was beginning to second-guess my plans of driving through the town.
“The Lamp Liter…” he said, slowly, as he read the sign at the road’s edge. “What is this place, the Lamp Liter? A bar or some kind of restaurant? And what is that place over there?” he asked, pointing to the adjacent building that shared the same parking lot as the Lamp Liter.
“Hah! A restaurant!” I said, laughing. “Nah, man, that’s no fuckin’ restaurant, although it is a bar… It’s a titty bar.” He had a confused look on his face, so I explained it a little differently. “You know, a strip joint?”
“A strip joint? Do you mean where women take their clothes off for money?” I nodded, glad that he had understood. “Oh… I have never had the desire to frequent such places, although I have heard of them. Have you ever been here before, my friend?”
I didn’t want to answer him, ‘cause I wasn’t proud of the truth - but I did. “Um… yeah… I have been here before, a couple times. Not proud of it, though. Nope, not at all… It’s a nasty, sticky-floored shithole in there, dude. The strippers were nasty and
the beer overpriced. Fuckin’ sucked. My buddy Ollie just loved this place, but if I had to go to a titty bar - which I didn’t really like to do, ‘cause who wants to have to pay girls to act like they like them, right? - I preferred the Silver Slipper on the other side of town. The place over there… that’s The Rural Oaks. It’s a restaurant and a bar. They have a stage in there, too, where lots of bands played through. I had a band once that played a show there. Was pretty fun.”
“Oh, you were in a band before?” he asked. “Did you play an instrument?”
I was about to answer him, when from the direction of the front of the Lamp Liter, came a series of loud crashes and the sound of breaking glass. “That doesn’t sound too promising,” I said instead. We rolled ourselves up a little ways so we could see what all the commotion was about. We both figured that it was zombies we heard, but thought there was a slight possibility that someone alive was making all that racket.
We got far enough past the place so we were able to see clear down the front of it, and saw the source of the noise. A shit-ton of zombies - half of them the strippers (naked and bloated - even more than they were when they were alive) and the other half sorry-ass losers that had had the misfortune to die in such a godforsaken shithole - were stumbling out the front door that they had broken down from the inside, and were pouring out of the single window that wasn’t boarded over. They must’ve been drawn out by the sounds of our engines.
“Oh my, what a horrible sight,” O.K. murmured. “I am not even sure if we should kill them, you know? Somehow it just does not feel… right. I cannot explain it… I think that these people were dead even before all of this occurred, on the inside, and now it has come to the surface. It would be a waste…”
“Yeah, I hear ya buddy. I feel the same way,” I said. “Tell ya what, let’s just - hey look, it’s Ollie! I gotta kill him… I can’t just leave him here like this.”
A.K.A. No Time for a Love Story (Book 1): Just Another Day Page 22
