“It will be there for all time,” he whispered in something like religious awe, “For all time my turd will sit on the pitcher’s mound forever mocking the ass pirate, pillow biting, anus drilling Diamondbacks. Yes, sir,” he finished then starting looking for an off ramp that did not lead to a vast horde of dead.
That almost proved to be a challenge that even James couldn’t overcome. The dead were everywhere and while we walked and walked and walked trying to find a break in the rotting masses, James was getting more and more aggravated yelling and cursing at the dead as they stumbled around below us, “Fuck you!” he’d yell at them as though they had intentionally gone and died and were reanimated just to keep him from his lifelong dream, “Fuck you! Fuck you! And fuck you, too!” he yelled as he chucked a piece of concrete at the dead mingling below. “Eat shit!” he’d scream as we’d approach another off ramp crammed full of dead, “Suck cock and die!” and, “Ahhh, fuck it all!”
After two hours of this, our water situation, which we could have resolved by hitting any of the gas stations we had passed, was now getting critical. But going into a gas station would have meant heading away from Chase Field. We would have been able to get water but the dead would have seen us and started a horde effectively ending James’ dream of dropping a turd on the Diamondback’s pitcher’s mound.
Finally, with water running low, the dead beginning to get an idea that lunch was in the area somewhere, and the chance of us bumping into a sprinter increasing, we found an off ramp marked “Chase Field, Exit 7th Street” that was nearly devoid of the dead.
“Holy fuck! You see, dipshit?” James said doing a little jig at the top of the off ramp, “The Pope himself must want me to desecrate Chase Field. And I will.”
I didn’t see the point of telling James that the Pope was probably dead, or if he was still alive, didn’t give a damn about Chase Field. So down we went into the Phoenix Wreck.
It was worse that I can tell you. It was worse that you can imagine. We should have died so many times that day but didn’t that, as we finally ran from the now burning hulk of Chase Field, I began to think maybe the Pope himself did want James to desecrate Chase Field. But I am getting ahead of myself.
I followed James off of the freeway and into the streets of Phoenix looking to the left and right, my head on a constant swivel for the hordes of dead that were a mere two blocks over on each side of us.
“Moses parted the Red Sea,” James said by way of explanation, “We are parting the Sea of Dead,” and giggled as we stopped in a gas station and filled out packs with water and grabbed all the candy that had been overlooked by past scavengers.
After drinking our fill, we geared up and moved towards the stadium. I had my rifle out with its silencer screwed firmly on and was terrified to see James had out his shotgun, “James!” I said and when he looked at me pointed to my silencer.
He glared at me apparently wanting to make a lot of noise but relented and put his shotgun away, pulling out his two silenced pistols instead while he mumbled, “Spoilsport.”
We approached the parking lot of Chase Field and froze. The smell coming from the stadium was nearly overwhelming. I pulled on a half face respirator I had picked up at a paint store while James tied a bandana around his nose and mouth. The bandana couldn’t be an effective filter. Did James actually like the smell of the dead?
The smell wasn’t the only thing freezing us in place at the edge of the parking lot. The Phoenix authorities has turned the stadium first into a vast field hospital when the flow of infected overwhelmed the regional hospitals. Signs were everywhere informing the potentially infected to wear face masks, wash their hands, and for God’s sake, do not panic! At some point the infected overran the place and turned the stadium into a vast charnel house. And from the smell, it seemed that all of the dead were still there.
“James?” I asked as we stood there contemplating just exactly what might be seated inside that stadium, “What’s the capacity of this placed?”
“Fifty thousand give or take,” he said then glared at me, “It’s not like the dead will all be sitting there you know, waiting for the game to begin, so it will be a lot less. Now go take a look.”
“Me? Why me?” I asked.
James pointed a pistol at my head, “Because you’re the one with a pistol pointed at your head,” he calmly replied, “Now go take a look and wave at me if the place is clear.”
James pointing a gun at me had become such a common occurrence that it didn’t even shock me. I still did not want to die just yet so I began to walk towards the stadium feeling the sites of James’s pistol on the back of my skull the entire way.
The police and military had set of a maze of barricades designed to efficiently funnel in and process the sick and dying. I could imagine tens of thousands of people queuing up, hoping and praying that the doctors and nurses inside could help them, then the terror as the first wave of reanimated dead got up and started feeding.
I walked through the maze of barriers and quickly made my way to the main entrance of the stadium. I could see the playing field littered with trash, hospital beds, surgical tents, and parts of bodies, but no walking dead. To my left was a series of huge jumbo trons, to my right was the pitcher’s mound. I looked up and could see that the roof had been left open. If it had been closed the place would have been as dark as a grave and you could have held all the guns in the world to my head and I would not have gone in there.
I jogged back to the front of the stadium and could see James at the edge of the parking lot with his hands in the air in a big, exaggerated shrug. I thought about running right there, just boogying through that field and out the other side leaving James and his particular brand of crazy far behind. But he’d catch me. He was older, stranger, faster, and he would find me and put a bullet in my head. So I waved to him that it was all clear. He let out a whoop and trotted across the parking lot.
He ran right past me an straight out onto the field. I followed him in and scouted around looking for other exits as he stood transfixed on the mound in the center of the field with his arms raised above his head in some type of weird religious ecstasy, then began to undo his pants.
I wasn’t going to watch this particular act of excretion and continued to walk around the edge of the field. I stopped as James did his business. I listened. I put my ear up to the wall of the and I could hear them, the dead, moving around inside the stadium in the hallways and rooms behind the bleachers. Hundreds of them, thousands of them. All it would take is…
“Yeeeee haaaaawwww!” James yelled. I whipped around to see him doing up his jeans, a large pile of shit placed neatly on the pitcher’s plate, “Take that you mother fuckers! Dodger’s forever!”
Then we heard the scream from somewhere deep inside the stadium. Then another from a different section of the stadium. Then a dozen from somewhere outside. James and I looked at each other and knew we were about to die.
* * *
From all around us came scream after scream after scream followed by the sounds of hundreds, then thousands of running feet. James stepped back and slipped in his own pile of shit sending him tumbling down off of the pitcher’s mound.
He actual laughed as he got back on his feet, “I slipped in my own shit! How’s that for justice?” he said as he wiped his boot off on the grass and unslung his rifle.
The sound of approaching sprinters followed by their hordes of dead were coming from every direction. For one split second I froze there and then I saw an opening past James and took off running. I blurred past him heading for a set of large, steel double doors that might have been the maintenance access and might in fact lead me right into the maw of the oncoming sprinters, but it was better than standing in one place waiting for the dead to block all the exits.
I had already put twenty yards between me and James when I heard him calling out behind me, “Hey, hey, hey, hey!” but I wasn’t about to stop and I burst into a large open room stuffed full of maintenan
ce equipment.
Behind me, the sprinters had arrived. I glanced back and saw James tearing after me and sprinters pouring in from a dozen different entrances. They were followed by hundreds of walkers that were now all worked up into a good run and filling the stadium up. What a fuck up.
“Fucking Diamondback fans! Run!” James yelled out laughing his fool head off.
I actually did spot a few of the dead wearing Diamondback jerseys but didn’t have time to ponder the irony of it as I took off into the semi dark of the stadium frantically looking for a way out. I burst into a side hallway that lead down to a large equipment garage. There I spotted multiple sets of roll up doors that I knew would lead to the outside. I spotted a side door and burst out into the biggest horde of dead I had seen since LA.
Not thinking, I immediately turned right pumping my legs for all they were worth running alongside the stadium and heading south back towards the freeway. If I could make it there, I might lose the horde of dead.
James was right behind me and the sprinters right behind him. Now I could hear what sounded like a hundred sprinters screaming at the top of their lungs attracting the attention of all the nearby walkers and shufflers. I looked back over my shoulder and nearly stopped running at the sight. The wall of dead chasing James seemed to go on forever with more dead pouring in from the side streets. If they caught us it would be over in a seconds. With so many dead trying to get a bite of us they’d tear us to shreds in an instant. But the animal that had taken over my brain and body had other plans so I poured on the speed.
Up on my left I could see a series of fuel storage tanks. A few hundred yards beyond that was a walled off electrical transformer station, and past that, the freeway. I ran to the gas tanks as I pulled off my pack and ripped open one of the large outer pockets. I pulled a claymore out and hoped to God that I had read the instruction carefully enough as I slapped it onto the giant fuel tank. James could see what I was doing and whooped and hollered as I set the timer for thirty seconds, hopefully enough time to make it over the wall of the transformer station. I hit the “arm” button, grabbed my pack, and raced for the transformer station with everything I had while counting to thirty in my head.
I hit the wall at twenty five, threw my stuff over as I clambered after it, and huddled against the cinderblocks wondering if I had set the explosives correctly, wondering if the dead would get here before the explosion, wondering if I was still too close when, if, the tanks did explode. I looked up in time to see James jump over the wall and then the claymore went off.
Boom. Boom! BOOM! BOOM!
Then the whole world seemed to ignite as each tank detonated. For a second maybe two everything was light and silence. I saw James as he frantically tried to get over the edge of the wall, then saw him fly across the walled in area as the shockwave hit him. The wall I was leaning against shifted and parts fell over. Then the sky turned so bright I had to close my eyes as the great wall of sound and heat hit us. The roar of the exploding tanks went on and on. The light seemed to get brighter as I squeezed my eyes shut waiting for a tsunami of flame to engulf me and end my life.
When the incineration didn’t arrive after a few seconds, I looked up and saw a giant piece of one of the tanks sail far above my head trailing fire and smoke. Trailing behind it were thousands of flaming pieces of debris looking like a failed rocket launch. These pieces began to rain down on us. Some were the size of my fist, others the size of cars. All of them potentially lethal. James had scrambled against the far side of the wall and was frantically trying to put out his pants that had caught on fire when a smaller piece of flaming metal hand landed on him. The rain of debris was saturating the area. I thought that at any second a chunk would land on me.
I thought we were dead. I hoped we were dead. But as the shock wave and fire passed us, as the debris from the tanks and bodies of the dead that rained down around us tapered off, I realized we had survived. My animal brain shifted into survival mode again and I quickly grabbed my gear and started running for the freeway.
I cleared the rubble of the transformer station and looked back at the carnage I had wreaked. The sprinters and their waves of dead had been either vaporized, flattened, or set on fire. I could see thousands of the dead on fire but still getting back to their feet and wandering around. Far behind them I could see Chase Field had partially collapsed in from the force of the explosion. Then I saw James pop his head up out of the rubble, still laughing as he began running towards me. I turned around and sprinted up the on ramp as a series of secondary explosions went off.
I ran until I found a semi-truck. I jumped in and slammed the door, checked the sleeper compartment to ensure it was clear, then locked my door and tried to catch my breath.
James jumped in a second later laughing and huffing trying to catch his breath, “Tell me, Mr. Gloomy Gus Mother Fucker, you tell me right now that wasn’t fun.”
I wanted to put a bullet in his head right there but instead said, “Fuck you, James. I don’t care what you do, I am never, ever going into an urban population center again, let alone a downtown area.”
“Well fuck you too, Mr. Lilly Liver. Next time I’ll go in and have all the fun by myself.”
“Do what you want, I’m not going through that again! Got it?”
“Oh, yeah, I got it, Mr. Big Balls. I got it real good.”
We sat there in silence for an hour watching the flames spread north to the city center waiting to see if the hordes of dead were going to spill up onto the freeway and continue chasing after us. But they didn’t and we got out of the cab and continued our way east until as the sun started going down, we found a shitty little motel to seal ourselves up in for the night.
* * *
I should have seen it coming, seen it in his eyes. James sulked around and kept mumbling to himself as we sealed up the door to our room. Usually after an adventure like that, he’d be happy as a pig in shit, but apparently I had spoiled all his fun. The last thing I heard him whisper before he fell asleep was, “You ain’t my mother.”
I was still surprised the next morning when I woke up and James was gone. I really didn’t think he’d just up and leave me.
I woke up to the sound of a door banging somewhere down on the first floor. Probably just the wind. I rolled over to get a few more minutes of sleep, a few more minutes before I had to face this world again with James and all the dead. A few more minutes of peace.
Then the door banged again and continued to bang at regular intervals. I thought maybe James was fucking around downstairs but even he wasn’t stupid enough to go around making noise randomly. That brought me full awake. I looked over at the bed James had slept in and saw that it was empty. The next thing I notice was that our room door was wide open.
I froze. I was terrified, exposed, and completely alone. It was just like James to leave when I was sleeping but worse he’d left the door open for any dead thing to wander by and see me as I lay there completely out. At least he’d left my gear. I sat in the bed and listened to the door banging downstairs. I couldn’t hear any wind. Maybe it was James down stairs banging away at that door. Then I heard them coming. The sound of multiple feet stumbling up the stairs let me know that James hadn’t been banging on the door, it had been the dead and many of them coming inside the motel. I quickly gathered up my gear watching the door guessing I had maybe thirty seconds or less to get my stuff and bolt out of the motel room. I was wrong. I had much less.
The first of the dead drifted by the door of my room without looking inside. A few more followed the first. This first group was in bad shape. With most of their cloths shredded and falling off, severely eaten, and now in an advanced state of decay. That’s probably what saved me. As the dead get older, that thing in their head that lets them track you down slowly gets worse. So these dead knew I was here, but just couldn’t figure out where. But even though they had not seen me, they had created another dilemma for me. They had blocked off my escape route. Now if I bolted out th
e door, I’d run into the dead that had passed me by or into the dead that were still coming up the stairs. I was trapped.
And worse, the next dead that drifted by the door turned to have himself a little look-see in my room and spotted me standing there with my dick in my hand. He was not amused and said so, “Bah, bah, bunga!” he said and the party began.
I ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. I could heard the dead getting excited now and starting to run towards the sound the first walker was making. A second after I locked the bathroom door, the dead guy was banging on it simultaneously letting others know where the meat was and letting me know that the door wasn’t going to hold for very long. I watched as the door vibrated with the thing’s pounding and saw a crack appear in the center of it. I scrambled up on top of the toilet and pushed open the small window above it. I pushed my pack through, then my rifle and shotgun, followed by my jacket, ammunition belt, and utility belt. The fit through the window was going to be close and I didn’t want anything to get hung up on the window frame.
I got hung up on the window frame.
I had gotten halfway through before I realized that the window was so high up from the back of the toilet, that once my hips were through the window, my feet had no leverage. I felt panic spill into my brain like a flood. I could clearly visualize the dead breaking down the bathroom door, piling in and seeing breakfast hung neatly from the window, and beginning to eat. They’d start with my feet and calves, work their way up to my thighs where they would hit my femoral artery. I’d bleed out, yes, but not before they started on the really sensitive parts of my body. The pain would be excruciating and long lasting. Then, when it was all over, I’d come back and be forever stuck here in this bathroom window. No one living would ever even waste a bullet on me, they’d probably just laugh and laugh before moving on.
I pushed my arms against the window frame with everything I had but didn’t budge. I was going to die here today. I heard the door give way and I pushed again. I felt the first hands of the dead grab my left leg. I kicked and began to scream while I pulled hard enough that I thought I might rupture a blood vessel in my eyes. I felt the dead trying to get a hold of me as I kicked. If one or two more got in the bathroom, they’d have me. But the kicking seemed to break the hold the window frame had on me and I felt myself inch forward and the dead pawed at my legs. I kicked hard and pulled at the same time and popped out of that window and onto the roof of the motel. I scrambled back away from the window and could see the tops of many dead heads moving around in the now living free bathroom. I lay back panting, trying to get myself under control and the shaking to stop. What a way to start the day.
The Great Wreck Page 19
