by Jake Bible
“Uh-oh,” I say. “The Dark Ages is calling and wants its judicial system back.”
“Laugh all you want, Mr. Stanford,” Mondello says. “But it is effective. Chaos became order within the week after the first few executions.”
“Is that your re-election slogan?” I ask. “Teaching voters a lesson, one hanging at a time?”
“You have had it easy, Mr. Stanford,” Mondello says, looking around the SUV. “None of you have a clue what it has been like out there. You’ve had glimpses, but you can’t even fathom the hell I’ve seen. Not unless you’ve watched a city of millions turn on itself; watched governmental organizations go rogue; watched as other countries resorted to the nuclear option on their own people. I envy your mountain life.”
“Is that really why you set up shop here?” I ask. “Not just to oversee the repair and securing of the Parkway, but to have yourself a long term presidential vacation?”
“Asheville has been a favorite vacation spot for many presidents,” Mondello says. “But I don’t think the word vacation applies to anything these days.”
Charlie gasps and I look him in the eyes. Fear and anxiety look back at me, but something else…resolve? No, what is it? His eyes dart from mine to the front. I rub my forehead and turn, making it less obvious I’m looking at what he’s looking at. I see Greta staring at me then her eyes dart to the back of the SUV and then up front and down.
What the fuck are my kids trying to tell me?
They obviously have some plan worked out between them, but fuck if I know what it is. And I’m not even sure I approve of them coming up with plans. I have two highly trained military men in the SUV with us, and I’m no slouch at the thinking gig, so what could two teenagers figure out that we can’t?
“He’s turning purple,” I say to Mondello, “ease up.”
“Get me out of here,” Mondello replies.
“We can’t,” Stuart states. “We’re all stuck in here until the Zs go away.”
“Which won’t happen until we can turn out the light and stay very quiet and still,” John adds.
“And you won’t let us turn out the light,” I say. “So I guess we’re fucked.”
“Let me tell you how I interpret all of that information,” Mondello says. “Basically, I let you turn out the light, we are plunged into complete darkness, and you come after me, hoping you can overpower me before I kill Charlie. Or we stay like we are until we die of thirst and starvation. Either way, I die.”
“Please, President Mond-,” Stella starts.
“Don’t,” Mondello says. “Just don’t. I die in all of your scenarios. I die in pretty much every single scenario except for mine. The one where you clear me a path, create some type of diversion, and I escape out of this SUV and out of this tunnel. I take Charlie for as far as I need to, and then let him go. I live, Charlie lives, a couple of you may die clearing the way, but the important part is that I live.”
“You’re really a for the people kind of guy, huh?” I say. “I have another slogan for you-”
“Shut the fuck up, Stanford,” Mondello snarls. “Your mouth has stopped being cute.”
“Dude, I’m like forty, my mouth stopped being cute in my early thirties.”
Mondello pulls back on the wire and Charlie begins to choke, his eyes bugging out, spittle foaming at his lips.
“Jace! Shut up!” Stella screams. “Charlie!”
Mondello eases up slightly, but only slightly, so Charlie can take in short, raspy breaths.
“I’m not going to wait anymore,” Mondello says. “Get me out of here or Charlie dies.”
“How?” Stuart asks. “They way you present it sounds so simple, but it’s far from that. How do we even open these doors?”
“Like this!” Greta shouts and slams her hand against the dashboard at the same time Charlie throws his head back into Mondello’s face.
The man cries out as blood squirts from his nose, his eyes glassy and confused from the impact. Charlie throws his head back again and again until Mondello is reeling, his body swaying back and forth, close to unconsciousness.
Great plan except now Mondello is sliding down into the back, and pulling Charlie with him.
“Jace! Get him!” Stella shouts as I reach for Charlie.
I hook him under the arm pits and pull forward, but my leverage is shit. I don’t know if I’m doing any good or making things worse. Charlie is gasping and spitting, the life being choked out of him right before my eyes. I’m frantic and I tug at him, trying to pull him up, but he’s just getting pulled farther and farther into the back.
I let go of Charlie for a second, just long enough to slap Mondello across the cheek a couple of times. It rouses him enough that he steadies himself, taking the weight off Charlie’s throat.
“Good,” I say. “Now listen you stupid fuck. I’m going- Fuck!”
Greta had hit the automatic tailgate release. In my desperation to save Charlie, I didn’t notice, or hear, the back doors opening wide. None of us did. But we fucking do now as Zs start to reach inside, their hands snagging Mondello’s pants, pulling him towards their hungry mouths.
More and more of them wedge themselves inside, all trying to get at Mondello, and then us. Charlie starts to choke again, even more now, as Mondello is pulled from the SUV.
“No!” he screams. “NONONONONONONO!”
But there’s nothing any of us can do even if we want to. He is taken quickly; his screaming body pulled into the mass of undead that is fighting over each other to get the first bite. I think it’s the lady in the old jogging suit that wins that honor as she tears a hunk from his ass cheek and begins to chomp away. Mondello’s screams are piercing until they are cut short, his throat shredded by several mouths.
There’s just one problem: Charlie.
My son is dragged up and over the back seat and into the cargo area as he pushes himself along, trying to keep from getting his head ripped off. I jump back there with him, alternating between kicking Zs in the face and trying to free his neck from the wire and Mondello’s wrists. The Zs aren’t pulling at Mondello anymore, they’ve got his body right where they want it. Which is draped across the back bumper, innards exposed and being strewn about.
“Give me something to hack with!” I yell as Charlie stops choking. That’s not a good thing. He’s stopped because the wire can’t go any further and because he has run out of air. I have seconds to free him or he’s dead.
“Here!” John says, slapping the handle of a very large knife against my shoulder.
I take it and plunge the blade into Mondello’s wrist then turn and twist, slicing through tendon and muscle. It takes me less than two seconds to severe the wrist, but it feels like an eternity as I watch Charlie’s eyes bug from his skull and turn glassy. The hand comes free from the arm and I get the wire away from Charlie’s bruised and bleeding throat.
As I shove Charlie over into the back seat, and Johns starts CPR, I feel the grip of fingers around my ankle.
Ah, fuck me.
Instinctively, I kick out, landing a hard blow to some fucking Z that can’t take my yelp of surprise as the no it was intended to be. Kicking again and again, I try to scramble up over the seat, but I’m caught as dozens of hands pull me in the opposite direction.
“A little fucking help!” I scream.
“Daddy!”
“Jace!”
“Long Pork!”
“Hold on!” Stuart shouts, reaching for me over John and Charlie. “Just take my hand!”
“Oh, just do that!” I yell. “Fucking brilliant, Stuart! The most brilliant idea you’ve ever had!”
“Here!” screams Elsbeth as she tosses the tire iron to me.
It hits me in the forehead. Fucking awesome.
Shaken, I slip further back and now hands are gripping my calves, my knees, pulling me to them, adding me to the Mondello buffet. It is gonna be quite the spread tonight, folks! All you can eat asshole and dumbshit! Well, not all you can eat. That�
��s just marketing, really. Eventually I’ll run out of meat on me.
“FUCK!” I scream as I turn and just start flailing, slamming my fists against every Z face I see. My good hand cries out as I feel bones bend. My bad hand hasn’t really stopped crying (fucking baby hand) so it starts wailing. The pain drives me on, though. With every sharp shock up my arms, I just double my efforts. Teeth are bared, wanting to bite down and get through my jeans at the chicken legs underneath. But I won’t let them. Those are my chicken legs, mother fuckers!
“Dad!” Greta screams. “Break the sensors and I can shut the doors!”
Break the sensors? What the fuck is she talking about?
“I’m a little busy, sweetie,” I screech. “Maybe speak fucking English please!”
“The sensors that keep the doors from closing on people!” she shouts. “Should be one on each side, down towards the bottom! Probably red plastic!”
Oh, well that makes fucking sense. Why didn’t she just say that?
I grab a Z’s head and twist, popping it off like a mother fucking grape, then use it to batter the other Zs, moving them from one side of the SUV. There. I see it. I toss the head, which is still trying to bite at me, at the Zs and pick up the tire iron. Slam! Slam! Slam! Crack!
“One down!” I shout. “Try it!”
Maybe it’s like a garage door opener where all you have to do is disable one sensor. The doors start to close, the top folding down, while the bottom starts to lift. Then they stop and a loud buzzing fills the SUV. The loud buzzing also pisses off the Zs and they hiss and growl at me. Sensitive fuckers.
“The other one!” Greta yells.
“Yeah, yeah, thank you, I figured that out!”
I smack at the other sensor, but a stubborn Z just won’t move. Every time I slam the tire iron down, the fucking Z gets in the way and I just end up slamming it. And the fucking thing won’t die! It must have a steel plate in its…oh, yeah, it does. The gleam of metal winks in the weak light as its scalp is torn away. Jesus.
Here is one bummer of the zombie apocalypse after almost an entire generation has been at war halfway across the planet against enemies that use improvised explosive devices: reconstructed skulls. You come across it every once in a while out in the field. Go to crush a Z’s skull and your weapon just bounces off. Sometimes the metal is easier to get through than the plastic; that shit is seriously high impact resistant. And a crow bar counts as high impact.
So here I am, slamming a tire iron against a Z that doesn’t give a fuck. I reach down with my bandaged hand and shove the Z’s head away, stabbing it though the eye with the tire iron. The fucking thing finally dies, but the iron slips from my grasp and goes out the door with the Z.
“Fuck!” I scream as more Zs start to wedge inside.
Only one thing to do…
I smash my bandaged hand against the sensor over and over and over until I hear loud cracks from both hand and plastic. My hand is fuckered as I see bone shards sticking out from the gauze. At least the sensor is busted and the doors start to close finally.
But not before a Z grabs my fuckered hand and takes a hard chomp. I scream as the bones grind against each other and against the teeth of the Z. It may be wrapped in gauze, but I did so much damage to it that the Z’s teeth get through, piercing my flesh, tearing into my hand.
“No!” I yell, as I yank my hand back. The tearing sound of my flesh almost makes me vomit. With every ounce of my strength, I kick and kick and kick at the Zs, sending them tumbling from the back of the SUV. The doors are almost closed, but jam as a Z gets its head stuck. I rip the fucker from its neck and the doors close. The Z looks at me, jaw snapping my face. I grip it by the back of the head and smash it into the floor over and over until its brains explode everywhere.
Then I look at my hand. And over my shoulder at everyone in the car.
Their face tells me all I need to know. I’m fucked.
Maybe…
“Where’s that knife?” I say, looking around the cargo area for the blade I used to sever Mondello’s wrist. “Where the fuck is it?”
There. In the corner, in a pool of blood and ick. I pick it up, take a last look at everyone else, then cut.
“JACE!” Stella screams as they watch me slide the blade into the soft flesh of the inside of my elbow.
The pain. Holy fuck. Holy, holy fuck. My mind detaches from my body and it’s like I’m watching a TV show. I know I’m cutting through my own flesh and muscle and tendons and shit, and God does it hurt like nothing else I have ever felt before, but at the same time, I’m able to think through every single turn of the blade. I have a pretty decent knowledge of anatomy and I know just where to slice, cutting up then down and around until my forearm is hanging by threads of sinew. A quick flick and it falls to the floor of the SUV.
Then everyone in the SUV springs into action.
Charlie is pulled up front with Stella and Greta, as John, Stuart, and Elsbeth crawl back to me. Elsbeth hands Stuart a belt and he tightens it around my upper arm while John is busy jamming his torn shirt against the stump that is spurting blood. Fuck if I know where Critter is.
“Greta!” John shouts. “Look under your seat! There should be a breakdown kit!”
“This?” Greta asks as she holds up a large metal box.
“That!” John nods.
Woo, is the SUV spinning or is it just me?
“Pull out the flares that are inside and toss them to me!” John says, looking directly into my eyes. “Jace? Buddy? You hear me?”
“Yep,” I nod. “I hear you loud and clear. Clear as a bell. Loud as a whistle.”
Stuart slaps me.
“No going into shock!” he shouts in my face. “You fucking hold on!”
“Shock bad,” I say. “Fucking holding on good.”
I look hard at John and he is very serious.
“Why so serious?” I laugh. That’s funny shit right there. Comedy gold, bitches!
“This is not going to be fun for either of us,” John says as he holds up one flare so I can see it. “Do you know what I’m about to do?”
“Cook some Jace meat?” I say, reality taking hold a little. Ah, shit…
“Yep,” he nods as he pulls the cap and strikes it against the end of the flare. The whole SUV is bathed in a red glow. Like blood. Glowing blood.
In all honesty, I don’t think there is a way to describe what I feel. Cutting off my own arm was excruciating. Having a flare jammed into the open wound? Excruciating times eleven. Off the mother fucking scale!
“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
The smell of my flesh burning makes me gag and I turn my head and puke while Stuart and Elsbeth hold my arm still. I kick out against the sides of the cargo hold, my throat raw from screaming. But I can’t stop. I have to keep screaming. If I stop, I know I’ll die.
The flare fades and John doesn’t hesitate as he strikes the next flare and goes back at it.
“THROW ANOTHER SHRIMP ON THE BARBY!” I scream. I don’t know why. It seems appropriate. Shut up.
The pain builds, which I didn’t think was possible. It builds and builds and builds and then is gone. Well, that’s the mother fucking whopper of all lies, it isn’t just gone. But the searing pain that was stabbing through my brain, spine, ass, dick, stops. Now I’m left with a sharp, throbbing pain. And the smell of my own burning flesh stuck in my nose.
“Charlie?” I gasp. “Is he ok?”
“He is,” John says, wrapping my stump with bandages from the emergency kit Greta found. Gotta remember to thank her for finding that. Saved my shit.
Maybe…
“Will it work?” Stella asks quietly from the front, her eyes finding mine. “Will it keep him from turning?”
“Jace?” Stuart asks. “How do you feel?”
“Really, dude?” I ask. “That’s your fucking question?”
“You know what he means, Jace!” Stella shouts. “Tell him how you feel!”
“Righ
t,” I say. “Sorry.”
We’ve all watched friends and family turn. Sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it’s slow. When they die, they come back in just minutes. Bam, they’re a Z! But when bitten? It’s variable. Some take days, coming down with what seems like just the flu or a bad cold. Then they die and get all bitey. Others have turned in minutes, whatever it is rushing through their systems, killing them and turning them faster than anyone can track.
Regardless of how they turn, every single person has said they feel like their head is swimming, like their mind is being squeezed and then covered in gauze. They say they can’t think straight; they can’t reason. And all they start to feel is a gnawing hunger in their belly.
I do feel a bit peckish, but that’s probably because I haven’t eaten in who knows how fucking long. And I need to pee. Like really bad. I look down. Oh, wait, I think I just took care of that.
“I feel shitty,” I say honestly. “But I feel like me.”
They all watch me as John finishes dressing my stump. Looks like I’m gonna need to swing by Wal-Mart and check out their selection of hooks and prosthetic arms. They do carry prosthetic arms, right? Sure, they’ll be cheap, and made by the hands of Vietnamese five year olds, but I don’t want to start expensive and find out I’m more of a just let it hang free guy. Try one on, and then invest wisely in an upgrade later.
“Jace!” Slap. “Jace!”
“Don’t hit me,” I say, swatting at Stuart as he gets ready to smack me again. “I’m sensitive right now.” I yawn and lean back, out of his reach. “Just going to take a nap. Wake me when we get to Wal-Mart.”
“What the fuck?” Greta says.
“He’s going into shock,” John says. “We have to keep him awake.”
He starts to climb over the seat, but Elsbeth grabs him and pushes him down.
“I’ll do it,” Elsbeth says. Or I think she does. Is this a dream? What the fuck is that smell?
