ZOMBIE'S DOOM? Chronicles of Jack Doom

by Will Lemen

  After all, I had beaten the living shit out of two of the Way Station's pilgrims.

  However, as I drove down the road away from that apocalyptic refuge, leaving all of the shopkeepers, whores, fighters, trouble makers, freaks, geeks, and whatever else, to their own mechanisms, no alarm was sounded that day, and maybe any day (unless you killed someone without do cause, whatever that was).

  For fighting and brawling, stealing and whoring, and just plain beating the fucking hell out of somebody was a way of life in that small oasis in the middle of zombie world, and I was just another passerby in a long line of people looking for whatever it was that we were all looking for in the world of the living dead.

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  INDIANA WANTS ME

  Beware of the Indiana Badlands were the words that kept popping up all along the trail to my destination.

  First from Jason, then from the boisterous bully at the Way Station that had begged me for, and promptly received, the excellent thwacking that he so richly deserved.

  And indeed, that's what the three hillbilly men in Arkansas told me just before they tried to take me prisoner and I was force to separate the top of their skulls from the rest of their bodies (well two of them anyway).

  They weren't the easiest kills that I had under my belt, but they weren't the hardest either.

  After the sun went down on the day we met, we were all sitting around the campfire that the three of them had blazing inside an old rickety barn.

  We were celebrating not getting ourselves killed by a medium sized horde (ten to twenty of the undead grisly cannibals) that happened to stagger onto the freeway close to their camp that afternoon.

  Okay, to make a long story even longer.

  You see, I had just come out of Oklahoma, still driving along interstate 40, and minding my own business I might add.

  I was cutting through their lovely scenic state on my way northeast to rendezvous with that Caucasian crowd I had heard so much about. You know, the group that the Sarge and Beth might be in cahoots with.

  I rounded a curve in the road and found myself face to face with that medium sized horde I previously mentioned.

  The members of that horde were not only blocking my way, but also had three strangers surrounded and backed up against a wrecked truck that had been hauling cases of soda and water before the end of the world scenario put an abrupt halt to normal interstate commerce, and pretty much everything else that was normal as well.

  Ordinarily I would have just driven around the whole bunch of them and let the three men fight it out on their own, for I had pressing business to attend to in Indiana. However, the water truck had stopped in the middle of the road because of a fiery crash of two semi-tractor trailer rigs sometime in the distant past, and had been abandoned there.

  Most likely, the undead uprising over a year ago had caused the crash, but whatever the reason for the burnt and mangled wreckage, the fact was that it, along with the water truck and the horde of pagan flesh eaters, had the road blocked, at least for the moment. And the steep inclines on both sides of the road prevented me from driving around the blockage on the soft shoulders.

  I could have waited out the deadly melee, and if the living citizens won the fight, they would probably be pissed that I just sat there and watched what could have been in their minds, their unnecessary ultimate demise take place (provided that all three of them lived), nonetheless, however many of them survived, they would most likely be pissed at me.

  On the other hand, if the ravenous horde of the dead won the battle, the three men that had lost the fight would not provide enough meat on their proverbial table to feed the mass of undead former humanity, and they would no doubt come after me to complement their four-course meal.

  So, I figured that one way or another I was going to have to fight someone, or something no matter what, so I might as well side with the living and spend my bullets on the dead.

  Besides, I was running low on water and could use a couple of cases of the precious liquid to get me through to Indiana.

  The crowd of fuming zombie beasts that were attacking the three men by the water truck was sporting as many maggots, as they were hovering flies that they paraded around themselves, which only added to the unsavory and ghastly chore of dispatching them.

  And while we're considering the revolting chore of zombie dispatching, I might as well share with you an unscientific observance that I had made over the past several months of tramping through the zombie apocalypse.

  It just might answer a question that had plagued (no pun intended) many before, during, and maybe even after the zombie upheaval, that is, if there is an after.

  As many watched movies and TV shows, bought and rented DVDs, read books and comic books about zombie invasions taking over the planet (before they actually did take over the planet), and as some were even participating in zombie runs, one question about the walking undead was never actually answered, and not even really addressed, not to my knowledge anyway.

  The question was either never brought up at all, or skirted around and left to the audience to contemplate without any real facts or clues to guide them.

  Well, with the endless meandering around the zombie infested countryside that has led me to this place and time. I can assure you that I do have the answer to the allusive question, although maybe not completely conclusive on the subject, and probably not the answer that you would like to hear. Nevertheless, the answer is the reality that we have to live with.

  What is the question, you ask?

  Do zombies defecate? That is the question.

  Do the undead discharge feces from their body on a regular basis?

  Do these insane rotting cannibals have a bowel movement at any time in their miserable existence?

  The answer is... unfortunately, a resounding yes.

  Yes, they shit their pants at certain intervals. These intervals seem to be about once every three months.

  They rot slower than normal dead things rot.

  Apparently the virus, or whatever causes them to reanimate and walk the earth craving the bodies of the living, and the dead if no living entity is available for consumption, slows their metabolism down to the point that they only need to discharge their waste products at a rate about 100 times slower than the living do, even though they tend to want to eat about 100 time more.

  I say unfortunately, because (as you may have already guessed) with the overwhelming stench of their rotting carcass's, along with the smell and sight of hundreds, if not thousands of maggots dripping off them, not to mention the flies that are constantly taking off and landing on them and their putrid discharges, things can get really ripe smelling in a big hurry.

  Now you throw in several pounds of fecal material (shit), some of which has been dried for weeks or months, and some that they might have just loaded into their underwear recently (depending on the date of their zombiefication and last unholy meal), being hauled around all over hell's creation in the seat of their pants.

  What you end up with then, is a bunch of undead cannibalistic savages that are not only looking to eat you alive, but also have the capability to stink up the place to the point that your eyes water so much that it's hard to see the bastards to kill them.

  This of course is a double-edged sword; you have to deal with their combination of fecal fetor, and rotting reek when you get close enough to them to hack them to pieces with an edged weapon of your choice, like a tomahawk or machete.

  However, on the flip side of the coin, much of the time you can smell their approach and avoid them altogether, thus sparing yourself the possibility of being killed and eaten, and then later toted around in the seat of their pant stinking up the joint. Or joining their ranks and marching around the heartland of America, killing and eating the living, and embarrassingly shitting your own pants at the same time.

  Granted, there are many of the undead maniacs galumphing around the countryside that are so horrifying that they might, and pr
obably without a doubt have, made some of the living humans survivors shit their own pants on the spot.

  However, for the most part, we among the living aren't prone to running around with a lump of half-processed smelly shit in our britches.

  So let's look on the bright side of the matter.

  These continually starving morons running around the country soiling themselves at every opportunity, is just one more good reason to put an end to their miserable existence as soon as humanly possible, before they stink up the whole planet with their poor hygienic practices. Not to mention, humanely relieving them from what has to be a monumental case diaper rash.

  Now back to the rescue attempt.

  Not wanting to damage my truck in a full head-on assault of the horde of ravenous monsters that were blocking my way into Indiana, I stopped my truck and gave the overwhelmed rednecks a helping hand.

  Only one of the men had a weapon of any consequence.

  He was wielding a four-pronged pitchfork against the crowd, and I noticed that all three of the men had pistols strapped on, but their sidearms were all holstered.

  This along with several dropped zombies on the perimeter of the skirmish told me that they were not only out of ammo, but were all smart enough to re-holster their weapons for use at a later time (after they had found more ammo).

  They were smart enough, or experienced enough, not to throw the empty pistols at their enemy in a panic during a futile endeavor to stave off the aggressors, as so many people in the movies had done.

  Stopping my vehicle and pulling out my suppressed M-4 rifle that had already killed dozens of the dead and at least one of the living, and with my best sarcastic voice I yelled to the men as I configured the weapon for battle by flipping the thumb safety onto semi-auto.

  "Have you girls seen any eaters around here?"

  Releasing the bolt and letting it fly forward thereby inserting a round into the rifle's chamber was not necessary.

  Because, I always traveled with a bullet in the tube of all of my firearms, in case of just such an emergency, as did everyone that wanted to stay alive.

  When zombies attack, and a fraction of a second can mean the difference between living to fight another day, or being chewed up and shit out; I usually opt to fight another day. But hey, that's just the way I am.

  I chose the suppressed gun because of the open area and the probability that the sound of my 9mm Sub-2000 would only serve to draw more of the undead that were within earshot into the fight.

  The sharp crack of the silenced M-4's supersonic bullets traveling at somewhere around twice the speed of sound, could only be heard for about seventy yards in every direction as they broke the sound barrier.

  Whereas the loud unencumbered muzzle blast of the Sub-2000 as it spits out its subsonic projectiles could be heard for more than a mile in all directions.

  So my choice was simple.

  In a zombie apocalypse, silence is golden, so always choose the quieter weapon if possible when dealing either with the living or with the dead.

  Two of the men thought that my sense of humor and timing was impeccable and smiled as I approached, probably out of relief that someone had come to help them.

  However, the third one, who I would later find out his name was Eric, looked a little pissed as he gouged out the eyes of a tall female zombie in a tattered wedding dress with his pitchfork.

  As the prongs of the primitive farm implement penetrated the zombie bride's brain, her mouth was so close to his face that he could smell the monster's fetid breath as it growled, snapped, and puked up a few choice maggots onto his shirt before dropping onto the road and quickly dying at his feet.

  As the horde slowly advanced on the three men, I decided that it would be prudent to begin shooting the zombies closest to the hillbillies first, and work my way to the rear of the crowd, just as I would if they were attacking me.

  Although shooting the zombies that were within arm's reach of the men increased the chances of me hitting one of the hillbillies by accident, it was a risk that "I" was willing to take.

  After all, if I hadn't happened along when I did, they would most likely have been killed and eaten anyway, so if I would inadvertently dust one of them off, their death would be far quicker and much less painful than being an entree for the midday gathering of the savage hordes.

  I had been experimenting with a tactic that I was trying to develop, when the situation was conducive to employing such a tactic, and this looked to me like the perfect time and place to further test this process of zombie eradication.

  The stage was set, I didn't know or really care about the men I was getting ready to save, there was a target rich environment well within the range of my weapon, and I had plenty of bullets in case things went sour.

  Moreover, if things really got bad and the horde turned on me, I always had the option of flipping the switch on my gun to its full-auto mode, and employing a spray and pray tactic without too much regard for anyone's safety but my own.

  Like I said, I didn't know the hillbillies, and I really didn't care about the hillbillies, so give me a break.

  The method that I chose to test in this situation was what I called the multiple head shot.

  It goes like this.

  You take aim at your target (a zombie head in this case), and you try to hold off on your shot until one or two more zombie's heads (if that's your target) are in line with the bullet's future trajectory.

  Your goal is to splatter at least two of your targets back to the lower depths of hell where they belong (living or dead) with only one bullet, and send three or more of the barbarians to their doom (pun) if possible.

  It sounds easy enough to do if all of the targets are willing, and happen to fall into a single line in front of your gun, but the reality of the technique is that most of the time you have to be patient and wait for your targets to unwittingly cooperate.

  That's the main reason that you wouldn't try this particular method while trying to rescue someone that you actually gave a shit about.

  Anyway, back to the story.

  So I let loose with my M-4 utilizing the method that I had been experimenting with, and watched through the iron sights of my rifle as its bullets caused slobbering menace after slobbering menace to hurl their ensconced maggots and pieces of their rotting flesh, matted hair, and chunks of their degenerated brains onto the three men that I was trying to save, as I aerated the skulls of the zombies in front of them.

  Although not getting the massive body count that I was hoping for with my new experimental approach, many of the attacking zombies that were nearest to the imperiled hillbillies did bite the dust. Which was a refreshing change.

  After exhausting the first 30 round magazine (not clip, there's a difference), with less than satisfactory results using the experimental tactic, I dropped the empty spring-loaded sheet metal bullet holder to the ground and inserted a fresh, fully loaded replacement into my rifle.

  Then I abandoned the multiple head shot with one bullet strategy, and adopted the more efficient technique of one shot one kill as a matter of policy.

  Half way through my second magazine and with most of the pack of zombies ravaged and weighted down with lead, the remainder of the horde was a simple mop up operation.

  After devastating most of the remaining festering throng of cannibals with well placed head shots and a couple of sharp force trauma inserts to the brain with my trusty battle hatchet, as a gesture of good will, I saved the last survivor of the deadly legion of undead flesh eaters for the hillbilly with the pitchfork to dispatch.

  Seeing my intentions were honorable, he wasted little time planting the long spikes of his farming tool deep into the skull of the last of the raw-flesh eating connoisseurs.

  Immediately after the monster hit the ground, the man stomped his foot onto the side of its head and jerked firmly upward on the handle of his pitchfork, prying it from the still twitching body.

  After pulling the farming utensil
out of the zombie's skull and leaving four perfectly round 1/4 inch holes which allowed the maggots that occupied the outer circumference of its brain to crawl out through the small openings.

  Several squirming fly larvae oozed out in single file, leading the way for a small surging stream of dark red, almost black colored blood to empty onto the road.

  "Thanks mister," the man said, as he propped himself up leaning on the handle of the fork, as if he had just finished filling a barn's loft with a day's worth of hay.

  "Any time," I answered, thinking that the road being blocked was the only reason that I had bothered to stop and help.

  Besides the realization that the reanimated corpses had a tendency to take a deep meaningful crap in their drawers on occasion, the older, or should I refer to them as the more mature of the walking dead, seemed to be evolving a new attribute as part of their ongoing distasteful and visually disgusting death ritual.

  I had seen a glimmer of this trait on the bus as we plowed through the gigantic horde that almost stopped us in our tracks on the way to the armory.

  After Jacob and Beth had shot off some of the probing fingers of the zombies whose hands were intruding into the bus through the gun slits made in the side of the bus. We noticed, but weren't concerned at the time about the severed fingers that squirmed and flexed on the floor of the vehicle after being dislodged from their recently nubbed hands.

  However, their evolution, or de-evolution, had now increased to the point that many of their body parts seemed to have a life of their own after being disjointed from the parts of the body that they had been previously attached too.

  Although, this was a common occurrence from the beginning of the zombie takeover of our world when appertaining to the decapitated heads of the undead troglodytes, and a sight that every survivor was growing accustom to seeing.

  An occurrence that my family and I had been privileged to witness, as this phenomenon was present from the very start.

  When the glass from our broken patio door cleanly sliced off the head of our neighbor Julie, her severed skull had rolled underneath our kitchen table still snapping at us and foaming at the mouth, until I oxygenated the hostile cranium with a neatly placed 9mm slug.