by Scott W Cook
Brenda eyed me, “Where’s your blade?”
I grinned and let my M4 hang in its tactical sling. I reached behind my back and pulled my weapon from a scabbard slung there. I then moved my sling out of the way behind me.
“Whoa!” Brenda exclaimed as we walked toward the gate and the pack of ghouls trying in vain to get at my two friends standing eight feet above them on the top of the small box truck, “What is that?”
“A combat ready reproduction of a roman gladius,” I said, holding the shiny short sword out in front of me, “A two foot broad blade. Very strong and easy to use in a stabbing or slicing motion in close quarters. It’s a real one, too. Not one of those just for show pieces. I’m told it’s an exact replica of the sword Julius Caesar carried at Elesia and Pharsalia. Don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds good.”
She looked at me askance as we stood at the gate, “Julius Caesar?”
“Yeah, you know,” I quipped, turning the sword back and forth so she could admire it, “Hero of Rome, lover of Cleopatra, defender of the people… the guy who invented the calendar we use today… awesome dude.”
At some point in the past, probably when the world was in the process of dying, somebody had closed and chained the gate. Although it was only about seven feet high, and easy climb, the difficulty lay in the fact that directly on the other side was at least eight or nine walking dead eyeing us with what I couldn’t help but feel was malignant intent… and the munchies.
“You guys gonna come out here and help?” Andrea said from her perch on the van’s roof.
“Love to,” I said, “But your friends here are looking for a free meal and are kind of in the way.”
“This chain is loose,” Brenda said, pointing at the rusting coil of heavy chain and padlock. She reached out to take hold of the gate but I managed to grab her hand just before she slid her fingers through the chain links.
“Seriously?” I asked, yanking her hand back.
Her face went ashen when she realized what she’d almost done. It stayed that way when she noticed that the G’s standing only a foot away had also been focusing on her hand, “Fuck me…”
I walked to my right and grabbed one of the dock carts that were neatly set against the outer wall of the high and dry. I turned it on its side and wedged the metal handle into the space between the gate and the fence pole.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m going to use this to push the gate back. You’re right, it looks like we might get a few inches or maybe a foot out of it. Maybe enough to squeeze through. Stand ready to put that machete into some zombie melon.”
Brenda got next to me and raised the big knife over her head, gripping it tightly in both hands like a Samurai.
“Here’ goes,” I said and pushed.
There was indeed some play in the chain and the gate slid sideways and left a gap of just over a foot. Not much, but a human being could slip sideways through it. Not that this would be easy, of course – the chain at about waist level would make it tough.
The hungry monsters crowding the gate pressed their advantage and all tried to squeeze in at once. A middle aged man wearing the tattered remnants of a Hawaiian shirt, what had once been white shorts but were now covered in crusty blood and unspeakable chunks of brownish-black awful wedged himself into the gap and was stopped by the chain.
He snarled in what sure seemed like frustration as he waved one arm around, clawing the air desperately for one of us. Brenda hesitated, gulped and brought her machete down on the crown of his head.
I don’t know if she was just having trouble doing this up close or what, but the blade barely broke the skin of his balding pate. The zombie’s grayish skin split and a small trickle of black ooze flowed forth. His deep set eyes rolled upward as if trying to see what had happened.
It would’ve been comical if the face that made the gesture wasn’t so hideous. These things were really unpleasant up close. His nose was half chewed off and his lower lip was gone exposing blackening gums and broken teeth.
Then there was the smell… I haven’t really talked about that yet… but the stench of rotten meat surrounded these things like a cloud. When you got a lot of them together in a small space, the wreak of corruption held an intensity that mere words were inadequate to describe.
The stink could literally overpower you and make it very difficult to concentrate and function. You got used to it, in a way, and fear and anger helped. We’d also developed several tricks to help to counteract this truly debilitating passive weapon of the dead.
When I saw Brenda’s eyes watering and the pinched expression she wore, I knew the foul air was starting to get to her.
“Here,” I said to Brenda, handing her a bottle of Vick’s vapo rub I pulled from my ruck, “put a dab of that under your nose.”
I then stepped forward and rammed my gladius straight into that diseased gray face, penetrating the nasal cavity and burying the blade a foot deep into the brain case. The body stiffened and began to convulse. I gave the blade a little twist and jiggle just to stir up the diseased brain that even now struggled to survive. The thing that had been a man crumpled to the earth and another clumsy ghoul tried to take his place.
“Sorry…” Brenda gasped, a healthy dollop of mentholated cream above her lip, “I didn’t hit as hard as I could.”
I nodded, “You’ve got to forget that these things were once living people. They’re monsters now, Brenda. They exist only to eat and infect us. I know it’s hard, but try not to let your empathy give you a false sense of their humanity.”
She nodded and as if to illustrate her resolve, swung the machete down hard onto the head of the zombie woman who was almost exactly imitating Hungry Harry – yeah, I name them sometimes. The blade broke through the skull and went in at least four inches, cleaving the brain and dropping the thing.
“So what do you call this group?” Andrea asked as she and Tony expended the last of what was in their current magazines.
“Definitely a gobble,” I said, shattering the skull of another deader.
“What?” Brenda asked me indignantly.
“That’s his classification,” Tony said as he jumped off the roof of the truck onto the hood and then down to the ground on the left side of the truck where it was clear.
Andrea slung her shotgun and followed Tony as she said, “Sharky says that anything from like fifty to several hundred zombies is a munch, over that and they’re a gobble and over that…”
“Are you fucking shitting me?” Brenda asked, looking at me like I just kicked her poodle.
I shrugged, “Gotta call em’ something. Over a few hundred is a horde… or a hell no. Not sure yet. There’s also a gnaw and a chomp on the small scale. I’ll make a nice chart later on.”
Brenda stabbed her knife into the eye of another zombie. The blade was too wide and didn’t penetrate enough, so I thrust my hard steel into the other eye and dispatched him. She shook her head, “Crazy fuckers… had to be crazy fuckers to come running to our rescue…”
Tony and Andrea had taken down a lot of the G’s. The parking lot of Fish Tails was littered with corpses… well, dead ones that is. A few dozen still shambled toward us. The two of them stepped out from behind the van and Tony shouted, “Hey, shitbags, easy pickings over here!”
All the remaining zombies, even those jostling to be next to get stabbed in the face through our gap turned almost in unison. They began ambling toward my friends, their arms out and their moans rising to a fevered pitch.
“Sweet Jesus,” Brenda said.
“Okay, now’s our chance,” I commented, “Let’s push through the gap and help them whack the last of these pricks.”
“You first, Navy man,” Brenda said.
I shrugged, “Fine by me. Remember what I said, once we’re both out, it’s shoulder to shoulder.”
I used the heel of my boot to shove the last two ghouls we’d killed aside so I could step up and over the chain and through the gate. The problem was that b
etween my rifle in its tactical sling and my ruck, I couldn’t fit through. I could swing the gun around and angle it ahead of me but I had to wriggle out of my pack and hand it to Brenda.
I got through the gap, but it wasn’t easy. My size and my gear made it a bit of a process. Brenda handed my pack through the gap and I shrugged into it and stepped forward as a ghoul had turned to see what all the fuss was about.
Now that I had room, I could both stab with my short sword as well as swing it. For this customer, I swung my razor sharp blade in a sideways arc that brought the steel into contact with the monster’s neck. With surprisingly little resistance, my sword passed through completely, only stopped by the spinal column. A quick sawing motion with a little elbow grease behind it sent the body crumpling to the gravel and the head rolling away.
Brenda appeared beside me, ‘Fucking things’ sharp!”
I grinned as we waded into them. With all of the scattered bodies, the G’s couldn’t group together into a large enough force to overwhelm us. Within a few minutes, we had the remaining few dozen dispatched.
I held my gladius high and said, “Veni, vidi, vici!”
Brenda grinned and shook her head.
Of course, the four of us paid the price of victory in filth. You just couldn’t bash in a few dozen skulls without getting some rather unpleasant fluids and chunks on your clothing. Nothing too bad, nobody had gotten anything on their face. But Brenda’s, Andrea’s, Tony’s and my shirts and pants would have to be burned.
The zombies were dead, but their stench remained…
Imagine walking along the side of the road and passing by a rotten dead animal – a big bird or even a dog maybe. That putrescent rotting stench that always makes you cringe is bad enough… now imagine that multiplied by several hundred times. It’s all around you and even the hardiest soul has to actively control their gag reflex. You could actually taste the death around you. The Vick’s Brenda and I had applied helped, but was by no means a complete defense against a sour stomach.
“Oh, fuckin’ A…” Hector, one of the two men who’d been guarding the entrance said as he appeared from a door that led from the kitchen into the parking lot, “Smells like shit out here, meng!”
Mark followed him as did Carl and the younger woman I’d caught a glimpse of earlier.
“Jesus,” Carl said, waving a hand in front of his nose, “I thought it stunk inside…”
“What do we do now?” The young woman, she was definitely no more than twenty, asked, pinching her nose. She wasn’t armed either.
“How’s Maria?” Hector asked, turning to the girl. He seemed mildly annoyed.
She scowled at him, “How do you think? She’s burning up and getting delirious.”
“Then why you out here?” Hector snapped.
“Hey, I’m not a nurse and I’m not your slave, Hector,” The girl shot back, “why the fuck don’t you go inside and see for yourself?”
“Cuz you can’t shoot,” Hector said, moving toward her.
To the girl’s credit, she didn’t back down, just levelled a hard glare at the short stocky Hispanic man. He only pushed past her and went inside.
“What’s wrong with Maria?” I asked, although I had a pretty good idea what it was.
“She’s been bitten,” Brenda said sadly, “Just as we got here. She went into the kitchen and one of those… things… was in there and latched onto her arm before we could shoot it.”
“Fuck…” Tony said quietly.
“She’s already delirious?” Andrea asked with concern.
Carl nodded, “Yeah, we got here about two hours ago…”
“We probably shouldn’t leave him alone with her, then,” I suggested, “That’s an awfully fast progression of the symptoms.”
“Maybe she won’t turn,” Mark, the tall skinny guy said without much conviction.
“She’ll turn,” Andrea said in a hard voice, “It’s a shitty deal, but it’s how things work now. We really should wash up a bit, Sharky. I don’t like leaving this much zombie goo on me.”
Tony, Andrea and I wore something like a uniform. Long sleeved woolen shirts and jeans. The three of us set our packs down and started unlacing our boots.
“Let’s cut the shirts off,” Tony suggested, “To limit exposure.”
“What’re you guys doing?” The girl asked.
We removed our footwear and each took out a combat knife. K-bars for each of us, and cut through the shirt and pulled the fabric away. We then slid the jeans down and let them fall to the ground.
We were standing there in T-shirts and underwear. The girl giggled, “Hey, a peep show! Nice.”
Andrea grinned, “Yeah, these two boys aren’t too hard on the eyes, are they?”
“Neither are you,” Mark said with a leer that seemed mostly good natured.
I reached into my ruck and pulled out anti-bacterial cleanser and rubbed it on my hands, face and neck and passed it to my friends. I then reached into the sack and pulled out a spare pair of jeans and put them on along with my boots, which were surprisingly clean. I did use a baby wipe on them though to clean off what little gore had made it onto the footwear.
“You ought to do the same, Brenda,” I suggested.
“I don’t have any spare clothes,” Brenda said, “This was just a scavenging run.”
“Those slacks are okay,” Andrea said, “But that shirt has to go. I’ve got an extra T-shirt I can give you. Here…”
Andrea helped Brenda get cleaned up. Once done, we looked around at the carnage.
Tony had moved off a few paces to check down Fifteenth Avenue and Third Street, “Two or three stragglers coming our way, Skip.”
“Roger,” I said, “they couldn’t have done that before we cleaned up?”
“Most inconsiderate,” Tony said with a grin. He and Andrea both had machetes as well but Tony had something else. He pulled out a small crossbow and walked to the corner with a pocket full of bolts, “I’ve got this.”
“Silent but deadly,” I said.
“Like a dog fart,” The girl replied with a giggle, “I’m Tara, by the way.”
We introduced ourselves.
“So what were you guys after here?” I asked Carl and Brenda.
“Non-perishables,” Carl said simply, “You never know.”
“Find anything?” Andrea asked.
“Don’t matter,” Mark said a bit too hastily and with a little bit too much emphasis, I thought, “We got here first and it’s ours.”
I shrugged, “No problem. Only asking.”
“Yeah, well maybe you shouldn’t worry about it,” Mark said coldly.
“Oh, here we fucking go…” Andrea said tiredly.
“We came to help you out,” I said with a little less friendliness, “Saved your asses one could argue. We didn’t come looking for an argument or an attitude, Mister.”
“Yeah, well,” Mark said defiantly. He swung his rifle casually at his side, “Times are tough, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, “they sure are. Well, we’ll get out of your hair, then. Thanks for the fun.”
“Mark, relax,” Brenda said with a frown, ‘these guys helped us out.”
“Yeah,” Mark said, “And pretty well equipped, too. Maybe you guys know about supplies we don’t?”
“Maybe we do,” I said defiantly, “Based on your way of looking at things, though, we don’t need to share, right? Times are tough.”
“Fucking Mark, chill out!” Carl barked.
Mark suddenly raised his rifle and pointed it at me… from the hip. Real fucking Rambo this guy, “Maybe you should put your hands up and let us see what else is in them packs.”
Andrea sighed heavily. Tony was about fifty feet away and slowly taking out the few shamblers that were still on the way. I know he noticed but he did a good job of pretending not to.
“Mark,” I said in as condescending a tone as possible, “I want you to look up and to your right.”
“What for?” Mark s
aid, his gaze never leaving me.
“Because I’ve got a sniper deployed on top of the high and dry,” I said flatly, “And if I or Andrea or Tony raises our hands over our heads, that’s a prearranged signal that we’re in trouble. He’ll immediately put a .308 slug into your brain. Understand?”
“Fucking Mark, lower that weapon!” Tara almost shouted, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Hey,” Mark said, his eyes narrowing, “The last people we met damn near got all we had and took you girls! I’m not in a trusting mood, you know?”
“Mark,” I said, “I get it, I really do. We met some shitheads last night too. We didn’t come here to take what you have or harm you. If we’d wanted to do that, we would’ve waited until the zombies took care of you or just came in shooting, right?”
Mark frowned but didn’t move.
Chapter 7
Zombie War Journal – 12/3/2019
By Andy Summers
I kind of figured that one reason Sam asked me to go up on the roof was that I’d be out of the fight. I felt a little bit pissed at first until I realized a couple of things.
First, it was a good idea to have somebody in a sniper position to cover everybody else. Second, he’d probably picked me to make my mom feel better. It’s still a little irritating, but I get it.
I like Sam a lot. He and my mom hit it off pretty fast when we first met. A lot of guys my age might have resented that – but I was cool with it. I mean, come on, Sam is like a fucking super hero or some shit. Navy SEAL, pilot, sailor, even knows how to run a submarine. If that’s not bad ass I don’t’ know what is.
My dad hadn’t been around for years and frankly I was glad of it. He was so not a good match for my mom. I mean, he was the one that insisted on my name. Andy and Andrea – what the fuck?
My mom was always there and always pretty cool, too. Having a marine pilot for a mom isn’t the worst thing in the world, either. Of course, having a mom who is, admittedly, a hot chick sometimes was weird… my friends always wanted to hang out with us lol.
Okay, anyway… I don’t think I see Sam as a dad, really. Not yet, anyway. But he’s a good dude, too. He always treated me with respect and has taught me a lot. I feel like I’m actually part of the team, which is really awesome.
