by Mark Tufo
Like all humans, I value alone time; a time to reset one’s inner workings, a centering of your chi, or whatever your belief calls it. But being alone and being lonely are vastly different. I was soul-sucking lonely. I was so alone that I didn’t even know who my self was. My mother could have come out of the woods to save me, and I would have stared at her trying to ascertain her intentions. I was basking in self-pity, which is actually kind of funny if you think about it, because I didn’t know who I was—unnecessary tangent I suppose. Errant thought aside, the water flow was beginning to ebb. My feet slogged down onto wet earth, and my knees gave out when I attempted to put weight on them. I was on all fours with water running over my bleeding knuckles; dizzy, light-headed and nauseous. Then, I realized it wasn’t my knuckles bleeding but rather a steady stream of blood coming from my head.
I reached up and froze for a second when I felt a large outcropping up there. I’m not going to lie. I panicked a bit until I realized it was some sort of head gear and not some giant lesion or protruding railroad spike—or something equally as nasty.
When I was confident it wasn’t William Tell’s missing arrow, I pulled my hand back down to find it was covered with a fair amount of my life fluid. I looked hard to make sure there wasn’t any brain intermingled within. I used a tree as a support as I rose unsteadily to my feet. I leaned against the thick bark, taking in some breaths. I might have stayed that way for a few more minutes, hours, until daylight, or the end of times, but the fucking howlers had a different idea as they began their incessant wailing.
“Night runners,” I hushed out softly, not even realizing I’d remembered something.
I pushed away from the tree. My first steps looked like I’d just left a bar at closing time with draft beers having only been a penny. I staggered and weaved, then found some semblance of stability as I departed the area. My flight did not go unnoticed. Something was coming my way, but it wasn’t a night runner. It was as pale as death and a large gash oozed blood from the side of its head. A chunk of muscle the size of my fist was flapping on its thigh, part of it having been severed; most likely during the toppling of the tower. That didn’t stop him, though. The anger in his eyes was enough to let me know that if he got within striking distance, he meant to do me bodily harm. I was lucky his attempt at fast locomotion was thwarted by his damaged leg. He groaned as he dragged his useless appendage. His arms came up; his spatial abilities were pretty terrible if he thought he was in range of grasping me.
It was sort of humorous in a dark way, right up until his buddies heard his groan for help. Yeah, then it wasn’t quite so comical. All eyes turned toward me, like I was the office intern and I just returned with the boxes of bagels the boss had ordered.
“Uh-oh.”
Yeah I’m pretty sure I said that, and then, I turned and ran. I had completely forgotten about the M-16 I had hanging down on the middle of my chest, held on by my tactical strap. Even as the thing kept repeatedly hitting my sternum, I ran. If I’d had the misfortune of running between two trees too close to each other, the rifle would have bridged the gap and I would have slammed into it like it was a crossbeam. My head ached; every beat of my heart was agony as it sent a pulse of blood into the area. The pain was nearly debilitating. The lack of light and the canopy of the trees made any kind of vision nearly impossible. I was running blind with no direction in mind. I did not know of any sanctuary, no safe haven, no help…nothing. I was running to not die; it was the pursuit of the damned. I stumbled over a root and nearly went down.
Don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip. This became my mantra.
The word ‘trip’ seemed important, but given the circumstances I was in, it held up to its own merits without me having to look for a deeper meaning. I could hear night runners off in the distance. They were a threat, but not as immediate as the one I found myself in now. The thick woods were slowing down those that followed, but it was having the same effect on me. Plus, they didn’t seem to give a shit that they couldn’t see anything. Either they were scent driven, or they could see in the dark. I didn’t know which and it didn’t really matter. They were closing and if I didn’t do something soon, I would die a violent death.
It was a branch that saved my life. At some point in my existence, I must have been a tree-hugger, because the woody plant life was helping out whenever it could. The growth caught the apparatus on top of my head and threatened to yank it clean from my skull. I don’t know why I cared; I didn’t even know what it was, but it was mine dammit, and I was going to do whatever I could to hold onto it. I yanked the thing back onto my head with a little more force than necessary, and it crossed over the top part of my field of vision.
I damn near stopped running when I realized, for a brief second, that I could see. Clearly I mean. Sure, it was this ghostly green, but I could see a patch of poison ivy to my left, a small outcropping of scrub brush I was about to get entangled with straight ahead and, yup, the ugly green-ass zombie coming up on my right. I lost a fair amount of peripheral vision as I dropped the wonder glasses into place, but I could see the hazards directly in front of me, and for right now, that was going to have to suffice.
I quickly weighted my options: Itching for a week, ripped to shreds from thorns and possibly hung up and then ripped to shreds from a man-eating monster or, I could avoid the step of getting shredded by thorns and go right for gruesome death by ingestion. I took avenue number one. At least in this one, I’d be alive to suffer through the insufferable scratching. Odds were I had to know someone that owned enough oatmeal for a bath. Right?
I was getting a bruise on my chest from the object that kept slamming into me. I looked down, but due to the length of the optics, I could only make out a piece of the gear as it swung away from my body.
Stick, was my initial thought, although I couldn’t figure out why I would have attached it to myself in such a way as that it would not come off. Then, the word ‘fire’ began to resonate.
Wonderful, I thought, what a bunch of useless, random thoughts I was having as I struggled to hold on to my life.
‘Fires’ and ‘sticks’ were pretty much one of the earliest thoughts of man. Well, that and bopping a cave-woman over the head with a club and dragging her to their cave. Upon where she would chastise him mercilessly for having a pig-sty for a home and why couldn’t he bring her home a mammoth fur like Ubrach next door? Yeah, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion. I was going to die tonight. Then, something wonderful happened as I thought about Nugla and Ubrach’s dysfunctional cave life. I circled back around to ‘fire’ and ‘stick’, only this time I stuck the two words together. At first this meant nothing.
What the hell is a ‘firestick’?
Then an internal light shone brightly. Firestick equated to rifle. I didn’t know what a rifle was per se. I wouldn’t be able to give anyone a definition, but I started to see pictures of me handling one; of me breaking one down into its individual components and putting it back together, of pulling back on a charging handle, of watching rounds enter the chamber, of rounds coming out of the barrel.
“Holy shit!”
I wasn’t quite sure what I had, but I was positive that it could do damage. I was still running for all I was worth. The things behind and to the sides of me had not dropped off. I had to find a place to make a stand, and these woods weren’t going to be that place. I could see and I had the means to defend myself. I still had no clue who I was or why I was here, but I had hope, and right now, that was the only fuel I needed to spur me on. I found another gear. I was emboldened by my ability to see and not be impaled on the very branches that were doing their best to keep me alive. I ran. My legs were ablaze, my head throbbed, my chest heaved, my lungs burned, and yet…still I ran. At times I shouldered into a tree, always losing that particular confrontation. My momentum would slow for a mere moment before I would press on.
My feet felt like bricks. My knees were protesting the uneven terrain and my back begged for a seat, but s
till, I ran. Hope is a wonderful thing. It can make seemingly unattainable goals possible. But it is not an infinite well into which you can dip an over-sized ladle whenever you want. Even hope demands fuel of some sort to keep burning. It can be a drop, even a mist of fine spray, but it does need something. My reservoir of hope was beginning to consume itself like the malnourished dream that it was. Then, like that, there was an opening. At first I thought I was having a hard time processing the information being supplied through the green lens, but the farther I ran, the wider the gap became. I was close to getting out of the woods. Open ground wasn’t necessarily advantageous, though. The trees were the only thing keeping those chasing me from dragging me down. At least I’d be able to better see where I was going and potentially increase my speed. I may even be able to tell which direction my enemy was attacking from, although, odds were that would be easy enough to figure out as ‘being surrounded’ came to mind.
I ran out of the woods. It was exhilarating. The air seemed fresher, or maybe it was because my personal body funk wasn’t as entrapped. However, there was no time for joy as more and more of the chasers popped out of the woods at various points. All of their eyes trained on me and the pursuit began anew.
This time I had a place in mind; there was a clusterfuck of cars and trucks up ahead. I didn’t know what they were at that moment, I only saw them as defensible bunkers; a place where I could wield my weapon. One more spurt of energy; I would have had an easier time of wresting a banana from a selfish gorilla. I saw the only thing that looked decent enough to stop at. Unfortunately, it was on the other side of the roadway. It looked like a school bus, but it wasn’t; unless it was for the kids attending St. Peter’s school of perpetually deviant little shits. The windows were covered with heavy mesh and the wheels were protected by sheets of metal. It was either a prisoner transport or some prepper’s wet-dream brought to automotive life. I figured it was the former, a prisoner bus. I mean, why would the preppers have left it? Prisoners would have bolted at the first opportunity; a prepper would have died inside that thing.
“Just let the door be open,” I managed to hiss as I made it over the median.
I was threading my way through a tight packing of cars when I literally felt air being pushed past me. One of the snarling, drooling, teeth-grinding hunters had found a faster way through the traffic and was now coming at me after having stepped on a hood and launching himself my way. I turned in time to see my field of vision dominated by a gore-caked hand coming for my face. I twisted just enough that his pinkie finger scraped against the side of my cheek. I might have smelled like I’d taken a bath in a sewer, but that was nothing compared to the aged belly-brine, nose-bristling reek he gave off as he passed. His head hit the grill of the car I was next to and I turned to make sure he got an unpleasant introduction to my knee. He seemed no worse for it. That threw me for a loop. I expected the hard hit to knock him completely unconscious, if not outright kill him.
He might have been a little foggy, but that didn’t stop him from attempting to get up. I kicked out at his elbow, shattering it in at least two spots. His arm folded in on itself and, for the second time in as many seconds, his face met an immoveable object. He should have been screaming in agony. Nothing…not so much as a whimper.
“Drugs?” I asked as I brought the heel of my boot down on the back of his head.
Impossibly, it was still trying to rise. I raised my leg up again and, supporting my body on two vehicles, I drove down hard enough that I damn near gave myself shin splints for the effort. At least he wasn’t moving. I made it around the back of the bus and found two more attackers between me and the door which, on one hand, was awesomely open, but on the other, depressingly blocked by two more drugged-up, insane people. They had probably been on this very transport up until recently when whatever events transpired that set them free to ravage the country side. Shit, for all I knew, I was one of them and they were hunting me down because I had ratted out Jimmy ‘the Salami’ Montevez. Nobody likes a tattletale, least of all convicts.
“Firestick, fuck-tard!” Yeah, I yelled those words out.
It was like part of me in the know was trying to gain the attention of the much larger, other idiot part that was still nearly clueless. I brought the rifle up and fired center mass like I’d been taught somewhere, at some time. The man staggered backwards and then started forward again. If I had not had on the night vision goggles, and witnessed the impacts and the stains of blood they had produced, I would have thought I was firing blanks, or somehow had missed a shot that nearly had the barrel of my weapon pressing against my enemy.
“Protective clothing,” I mumbled, even if somewhere within me, I knew that was not the case. They were bleeding for chrissakes.
“Nothing on your neck or head, though.” I was thinking or saying this as I fired higher.
A shot hit the closest being in the Adam’s apple, bisecting the protrusion. It must have severed his spinal column as it blew through the back of its neck. His head fell over to the side like he was a puppy and was just trying to recreate the cutest pose known to the animal.
“Puppy tilt my ass.”
I was horrified. The thing’s head was literally resting on its shoulder and it had not stopped. I fired a burst, not knowing what else to do. The first ripped its lower jaw clean from its body, exposing its palate and top teeth. The second went to the left of its nose. That one seemed to do the trick as the third drilled him just below the left eye. His subsequent fall tripped up his companion, who got tangled and went down hard. I would have finished him off but I was running out of time. I could hear the snarls of more of their kind coming. I had just jumped in the bus and was reaching for the silver handle to close the door when something grabbed the back of my leg. They were squeezing so hard that it felt like a damn vise. I was in serious danger of my muscle seizing up into a massive cramp from their less than careful ministrations. I shook my leg violently, but it wasn’t letting go, like a great white to a seal. I did the only thing afforded to me and just kept pushing the handle towards the driver’s seat, slamming that door repeatedly on the arm until I heard the satisfying crunch of bone. I just kept repeating that while jerking my leg forward. I should have been more horrified when the arm came loose. I was just thrilled that the door shut.
I was leaning against the handle catching my breath while the bus was being jostled back and forth from the ‘undead’ that kept hitting the sides. Another word had come to the forefront of my knowledge. I knew it was important but I just couldn’t find the necessary reference catalog to look up what it meant. I almost recognized what I was looking at. There was a name from my memory, but instead of trying to dance around what a ‘blue shitter’ was, I just went with what I know. Just remember, the bell in my head had been wrung hard and it was still vibrating at this point.
The bus was not a prisoner transport. It was indeed a prepper’s vehicle. Unfortunately, it was someone that was on a pretty tight budget. He’d somehow gotten a hold of a port-a-potty and retrofitted it to fit in the back of the bus. It looked like he’d ripped the top off with a jig saw and then used five or six rolls of duct tape to hold it into place. The door was closed and my first inclination was to blast a couple of holes into it and let the chips fall where they may. There was a sixty-seven percent chance that there was something horrible behind that door. Here’s my reasoning. One, it’s a zombie stuck inside. Two, it’s a person that hid when they saw me coming. Three, the inside is completely coated in blue chemical-infused crap after hitting a series of pot-holes and it all splashed out. Hell, I’d be doing whoever is hiding in there a favor.
“Come out.” I think my voice had a tremor to it. It wasn’t very authoritative. “Come out now or I’ll blow some holes in there.” There, that sounded more certain.
Nothing moved. The latch informed me that the toilet was indeed ‘not occupied.’
“This sucks,” I said as I shuffled closer.
I was as close as I could
be without the door hitting me should it pop open and an unpleasant surprise jump out at me. Like a shitty monster. Even I had to shake my head at my horrible pun.
“Last chance,” I called out.
It didn’t help that the zombies outside were rocking the bus enough that the door would crack open from time to time like someone was peeking out. My imagination was in overdrive. I was positive there was some little girl in there with pasty pale features, a tongue half-torn out, and sharp pointy teeth getting ready to launch herself at me. With the barrel of my weapon, I exploited one of the times the door cracked open and shoved my rifle in, and slammed the door to the side. I’d done it so hard that it hit the side of the bus with enough force to come back almost as fast as I’d sent it. I damn near needed to use the port-a-potty myself after that, it startled me so much. What I did notice before I almost crapped myself was that, unless someone was inside the refuse holding tank, there was no one in there.
I just about turned, and was going to scope out the rest of the bus, when I decided I needed to check. I’d read more than one news story in my life where some sicko would bind himself up in plastic wrap and hide inside that blue goo with the hopes of getting some sort of thrill. On a side note, what has to go wrong with your life that Saran wrapping yourself and getting into a human shit and piss-filled chemical tank for hours so you can watch random people expel waste product is your idea of a good time? I mean really, how far off the rails have you gone? Is there any chance of coming back from that? If there was someone in that tank, I may have had to shoot them just out of principal, because I’m not ever going to shake their hand.
