I got to my feet and walked around to the back of the bar, to see if there was any orange juice back there, and found O.K. curled up around a half-empty bottle of Jack, snoring loudly. I didn’t see any sign of frick and frack, or whatever their fuckin’ names were. Like I really cared. I woke O.K. up, found a jug of Tropicana and a clean glass, and went back around and got myself a stool.
“Oh my lord,” O.K. said as he dragged himself into a semi-standing position - leaning heavily on the bar for support. “What did we do last night? I cannot remember a thing…”
“I got no clue, buddy, I’m drawing a complete fuckin’ blank. From the looks of things,” I said, gesturing to the bar where there were dozens of empty beer cans and bottles, and empty bottles of various liquors, “it could have been anything.”
“Oh, my… I hope it wasn’t too bad, whatever it was. Hah-ha… what is that on your shirt there?”
“Oh, it’s probably just puke, man, don’t worry about it,” I said, waving him off. “It’s not the first time I woke up with puke on my clothes, and it won’t be the last…”
“No… well there is that, yes, but there is also a piece of paper stuck to your shirt. It looks like it was pinned there or something.”
That was a first for me, and it got me immediately worried. I was thinking that nothing good could possibly come from waking up after a black-out drunk bender with a note pinned to your chest. I yanked that bitch off and slapped it on the bar, where O.K. took it and opened it up.
“Hmm…” he said as he read it. “It is from those soldiers that were in here with us… It says they have committed suicide… cowards… And they blame us. Here…”
I took the note from him - more like snatched it - and gave it a quick perusal. It was short, blunt, and to the point. Like he said, they blamed us for their suicide, saying that they feared us more than the zombies outside, and that there was no point in living as long as “the both of us” were walking around in the world. It went on for a while talking about the “atrocities” we both committed and how they were afraid for their lives after “witnessing such horror” …but O.K. and I both had absolutely no fucking clue as to what those guys could have been talking about. I crumbled up the note and threw it behind the bar and poured myself another OJ, and O.K. one, too.
“Well, I guess we should find their bodies…” I said, glumly, not really wanting to, but figuring we should. “I hope it’s not too messy.”
We found the pussies hanging in the bathroom. They tied their bootlaces to the handi-capped rail on the wall in front of the shitter, and did the sit-down hanging that only those that are really dedicated to suicide can do.
While we were standing there looking at them, the hands of one of the dead soldiers - Frack, I think - began to twitch, and his head began to move ever so slightly as he crossed the plane from death into un-death. The fuck must’ve got bit or something before he got to the bar, and neglected to tell any of us. I was glad the stupid shit had gone and killed himself, and considered the guy lucky he did it before I found out he was bit, ‘cause I would’ve killed him and made it drag waaaaaaaaaaay longer than he suffered by his own hand.
“What the fuck did we do to drive them to this, O.K….” I asked him after I bashed in Frack’s skull with a pipe wrench I found while looking for the two, preventing him from coming back the rest of the way. I did the same to Frick, to be on the safe side. “What could we have done? …This shit is insane…”
“I do not know, my friend, and I am actually afraid to find out…”
We got our answer when we stepped outside to continue our journey to Streator. The zombies that had filled the street the day before when we had taken refuge (or drink-fuge, ‘cause we weren’t really hiding, we were just getting completely shit-faced!) were still out there - and in even greater numbers ‘cause of the soldiers that had died and joined their ranks - but instead of amassing and trying to make a meal outta O.K. and I like any self-respecting zombie normally would, they didn’t do shit. Not a thing. They couldn’t.
The reason being, is that they were all fuckin’ dead. Really, truly dead, and not the slowly shambling along munching on guts dead. They had been massacred, butchered, some of them torn limb from limb, and scattered to the four corners. It was gruesome.
All up and down the street, the ravaged bodies of the zombies lay strewn about like trash tossed from a moving vehicle. On every light post along the street, zombies hung - eviscerated, their guts dangling to the street, and their heads smashed to an unrecognizable pulp. In front of the insurance agency where I was checking the clock the day before, there were piles upon piles of zombie body parts, all neatly sorted out: in one pile, there were right arms, the next, left; another pile had right legs, and the next left; their torso’s were in another pile - the only thing missing from the piles were the zombies heads. It was easy to find those fuckers, though - they were all impaled atop pikes that were stuck in a patch of grass that separated the insurance agency from the business next to it. Thirty-six heads stuck on thirty-six pikes. And on the outer wall of the bar we had come out of, were two still “living” zombies that had been staked to the wall, by what looked like rail-road spikes - one on each side of the door, set up kinda like the pillars that banks have at their entrances, only these were pillars of quivering, rotting flesh.
I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it - all that carnage, that fucking devastation, must’ve been what the pussy soldiers had been talking about in their gay little suicide note - carnage that they had seen O.K. and I commit.
I was about to say to O.K. that there was no fucking way that we could have done all that, killed all those zombies all by ourselves, but held my tongue when I looked over at him. He was just as gore-covered as I was the day before, and after looking myself over, I found that the gore on my body and clothes was a lot fresher than it should’ve been after a night of drinking indoors - and some of it was still wet and tangy. I was sore as shit, too, like I had spent the day before in the gym, or something. It had to have been us.
So instead of saying anything, I just laughed my ass off - ‘cause the look on O.K.’s face was classic - he looked genuinely appalled at what we had done, disgusted and maybe a little saddened, too. I didn’t get it. Me, I was just fuckin’ pissed that I had absolutely no fucking memory at all of what looked like had to have been the funnest night of my life. What was done was nothing to feel bad about - the zombies didn’t deserve to walk this land with us, and I saw it as a good thing that all those motherfucker’s were dead. Sure, what we did in our collective black-out may have been a little over the top, but it wasn’t appalling.
From the way things looked, we had killed every motherfuckin’ zombie in the area (aside from the door-zombies), all the way down West Main to Route 23, and I had no recollection whatsoever of having done a goddamn single fuckin’ thing - not even the vague “flashes” one gets after a hard nights drinking when someone else tells them what happened, or they see the results themselves. I was getting nothing.
65
“O.K., do you remember doing any of this, pal?”
“No, my friend… I do not. This is……… appalling.” I guessed that shit right! “These monsters do not deserve to live, most definitely not, but this… we have gone too far. I think that maybe it is a blessing that we have no memories of committing such gruesome acts…”
“What?! Fuck that shit, dude!!! That sucks!!! I’m fuckin’ piiiiiissed that this shit isn’t in my brain for me to sit back and enjoy for years to come!!! I fuckin’ love killing these shambling motherfuckers, and we slaughtered what looks to be fuckin’ hundreds, man!!! These dicks don’t deserve any better than this, man!!! What the fuck?!!!”
“I am sorry I do not share your enthusiasm about such wanton slaughter, my friend, but I left behind… pursuits… such as these when I left Africa and my family behind! At one time, yes, I would have been right there with you in your good cheer for the slaughter of hundreds - human or zombie - but not any
more, my friend, not anymore! Now, I am afraid, all I can do is hang my head in shame, and hope that one day I will be forgiven for all the wrongs that I have done!”
I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to say to that - at least nothing that wasn’t a stupid, childish, smartass remark - so I just kept my mouth shut and took a few steps away from him, and tried to figure out what to do next. The day was still young, we were looking at an hour tops for the rest of the trip to Streator, and we were seemingly zombie-free as far as I could tell.
“O.K., check it out, we’re almost to Streator, we gotta get moving,” I said to him, instead of the apology he deserved after I yelled at him at the top of my lungs, right in his face. “If we left any zombies on their feet around here, they’re probably headed in this direction now, and since you don’t seem to be down with the ‘wanton slaughter’, we had better get a move on. Got it?”
“Yes,” he grudgingly responded.
“Okay, good. First, I’m gonna find me some guns and some bullets… there’s gotta be a shit-ton lying around here. I seem to have misplaced my LBV with my .40 and my hatchets, and I kinda feel naked. I think you should do the same…”
It didn’t take us any time at all to find what we needed, with all the dead soldiers that were scattered about, and were standing back in front of the bar five minutes later, all awkward as shit, and not looking directly at each other. It sucked, although I was happy with my new weapons - I got me a sweet M4 carbine with three-round-burst and a M203 grenade launcher attached, a semi-bloody LBV packed full of M4 mags, and a Berretta 9mil with ass-loads of mags for that. Plus, I rounded me up a rucksack and filled that up with even more rounds for the M4 and 9mil, a bunch of grenades, and a few bandoliers of 203 rounds. I just hoped that they weren’t all flares or some sissy shit like that. I even found five M7 bandoliers of Claymores.
“Man, I am sorry, dude, all right?” I said to him. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that and I feel bad about it. Sure, we obviously have different viewpoints on the proper ‘treatment’ of these things, but that doesn’t give me the right to go and fly off the handle like that with you. Okay? I was wrong, I shouldn’t have said anything, and I’m sorry. With that said… let’s go.”
I then turned away from him and began to walk down the street to 23, not waiting for him to join me. I figured that could either be the point where we would part ways, or we would continue on as a pack - but I was hoping for the “pack” to make it to Streator together. After that, well, who knew? We both had different agendas. A couple beats went by before I heard him jogging up to me, then slowing down as he came alongside.
“You are an asshole, did you know that, my friend?”
“You got that right, pal,” I said looking at him with a big grin on my face, “I’m the biggest asshole you’re ev-” Then a three-round burst struck him in his heart, his neck, and his head, blowing his face and head from below his left eye up clean off. He didn’t even know what hit him, he was still smiling as his body crumpled to the ground.
I dove behind the ass end of a Honda that was half-way in a flower boutique and lugged off the rucksack, for better movement - and for some grenades. I had no fuckin’ clue where the shooter was, and was pissed as hell that he had got the drop on us. I didn’t want to get into a long fire-fight (or even a short one), so I figured I’d zero in on the son of a bitch and just toss a handful of frags at his ass. End of story, for that dude at least.
I crab-walked to the end of the car and peered very carefully around it, cutting the pie as I went - fraction by slow fraction, in the hopes that I would see him before he saw me. I was just about to go back behind the Honda, thinking that maybe the shooter had bolted, when I saw a muzzle flash come from inside of a van that was smashed into a telephone pole about eighty yards up, on the opposite side of the street. The bullets ricocheted off the bumper inches from my face. The fucker was a good shot. I quickly launched my ass back behind the car, and grabbed the rucksack and crab-jogged into the store, where I then ran to the back. Right when I got there, the Honda blew the fuck up, washing me with heat. Figured he would try and blow the tank - that’s what I would have done.
Now, I didn’t need to deal with this dude. While he was in the path that I had chosen to get to Route 23, he wasn’t in my way - I could have easily taken the alley or street that I was sure was behind the store, bypassing his ass completely, and leave his ass for the zombies that I could hear and see pouring back into the street. But I just couldn’t. No fucking way. He killed O.K. and he tried to kill me. Therefore, he deserved to die, and I was going to kill him.
I put the grenades I took outta the rucksack into the grenade pouches on the LBV, put on the ruck, slung the M4, drew my 9, and opened the rear door and stepped into a dark little alley that was overgrown with weeds and littered with garbage. Thankfully it was clear, ‘cause I didn’t want to have to fire off any rounds and alert the shooter that I was still alive and kickin’.
I crouch-jogged - with my weapon at the ready and my eyes and body alert to my surroundings (now) - to what I assumed was the eighty-yard point that I hoped would bring me parallel with the shooter. The store I stopped at was a restaurant called “Main Street Café”, with a big red “W” behind it all, to signify the West - since it was “West” Main, and not plain Main. I smiled to myself, ‘cause as I was making my way up the alley, it hit me how fuckin’ hungry I was. I figured before I killed the shooter, maybe I’d scrounge up some grubbage. The power was still on, surprisingly enough, so I figured the foodstuffs wouldn’t be rotten yet.
I found the door unlocked and slowly eased it open, my 9 aimed right in the gap, chest high. The way in looked clear, so I stepped in. I only found one zombie in the place, that I killed with a cleaver I got from the kitchen, and no living survivors. With the place cleared, I went back to the kitchen and made myself a fat three-meat sandwich piled with all the fixin’s one could want, got myself a tall glass of beer, and then got me a nice booth in the restaurant so I could enjoy my meal. While I was eating, I could hear the asshole outside firing off shot after shot, as the zombies became aware of him. I hoped they didn’t get to him before I did, but wouldn’t have been too angry if they had.
When I finished my meal, I put my ruck back on and slung my M4, re-drew my 9 and crouch-walked to the front door to see if I was near the shooter, who was still firing away at the zombies - he even tossed a few grenades when I was eating. Sounded pretty cool. I spotted that douche-bag immediately - he was directly across from me, completely boxed in by the undead. I nearly laughed out loud.
The up-close-and-personal shit I was wanting to do to him was outta the question, so I holstered my 9 and began to take the grenades out of their pouches to throw into the melee. It’d be quick, but it’d be bad. Good enough for me, I guessed. One of the grenades snagged as I was getting it from the pouch, and I took my eyes off the fucker across the way for just a second to see what the problem was. Just as I glanced down, bullets ripped through the restaurant door, as the motherfucker seemed to think that I was of more import than the sixty or so zombies that were surrounding him. I threw myself to the floor outta the line of fire, but the fucker still managed to wing me in my left thigh. Fuckin’ hurt like hell - white-hot fire burned all through my leg, throbbing with the smallest movement.
After a couple minutes the fuckin’ idiot quit spraying the door with lead, and went back to shooting the zombies. I couldn’t have been happier at that moment, ‘cause I was really wanting to check out my leg, but couldn’t with all those bullets flying in right above my head. I un-slung my M4 and shrugged off my ruck, then loosened my belt and gently slid my pants down to my knees - fighting the screams that boiled in my throat - exposing my wound.
I got lucky, at least as lucky as you can be when getting shot. The wound was a through-and-through with a clean exit, and it missed my femoral artery. If I was religious I would’ve done that funny little “cross thing” those people do - you know, the head, hear
t, shoulder, shoulder gesture that looks like they’re making an inverted crucifix ‘cause the distances are wrong - and sent up a thank-you prayer to God.
Instead I just laughed at my “luck” and pulled my pants back up. Once they were up, I got in the ruck and pulled out a brown t-shirt that I had seen in there when I was filling it with ammo earlier, wrapped it round my leg at the wounds, then took the sling off my M4 and tied it around the shirt, over the entry and exit point, making a battlefield tourniquet. Hurt like a bitch doing it, but I figured it would at least stop the bleeding for a little while.
66
After I slipped on my ruck, I leaned up a little and looked out to the street through the holes that the douche had blasted in the door. None of the zombies had figured out that there was a meal in the restaurant, as they weren’t smart enough to follow the complexities of gunplay - that when you shoot, you are usually shooting at something. I was glad for that, ‘cause I wasn’t up for a chase at that moment.
There wasn’t any obstacles in my way from where I lay to the van where the fuckface shooter was at, and he had shot all the glass outta the windows in the door, so it looked like I had a clear shot for a little grenade tossin’. I made a nice and neat pile of grenades next to me on the floor, grabbed one from it, and pulled the pin. I hadn’t thrown a grenade in about ten years, so I wasn’t sure if I was gonna be able to make it to the van, but I figured it was worth a shot. Plus, I figured that shooting my M4 or 9 was outta the question, ‘cause then I’d have a bunch of zombies after me as well (‘cause of the noise it would make), and I didn’t think I’d make it very far crawling - so the grenades it was.
I tossed that fucker as hard as I could and watched it soar through the air… and go right in the window of the van. I couldn’t fucking believe it! I heard the guy scream right before the grenade blew, taking him, the van, and the zombies closest to it straight to hell. I gave myself a mental pat on the back, then threw the rest of the grenades out to the zombies. It was a fuckin’ meat grinder out there, but by the time I was done, nearly all of the zombies were wiped out - and still none of them knew I was in there.
A.K.A. No Time for a Love Story (Book 1): Just Another Day Page 25
