by Will Lemen
Tony and Danny looked at each other as if they were confused and trying to figure out how to answer my question.
Then Danny spoke up.
"No, we're not alone out here, we're not completely stupid."
"Well, I'm not anyway," Tony added, with a vague smile.
"We got a couple of guys hiding out there in the bushes with high powered hunting rifles just in case our roadblock stops a vehicle who's occupants are too much for the two of us to handle," Danny confessed, scratching his nose with his middle finger which was pointed straight up and directed at Tony.
Danny was smiling at his friend as if to get the other man's approval of his admission and of the obscene gesture that was brought on by the stupid implication, when his face exploded into Tony's.
Temporarily blinded by his blood, hair, skin, middle finger, and part of the cartilage that once supported Danny's nasal cavity, and stunned by the horrendous noise from the big bore gun that had just killed his friend, Tony never saw the man I would come to know as Derek.
Derek had sneaked up behind the two men, blown Danny's face off with one of the biggest and most powerful handguns ever produced, and then slashed the upper part of Tony's skull off with a large meat cleaver.
"Not any more they don't! I took care of them first while you guys were down here giving each other hand jobs," the man dressed in a blood red mechanic's jumpsuit announced, as I raised my rifle in his direction. "Calm down, I could have killed you first if I had wanted to."
Now standing in front of me and over the two dead men that he had just killed, stood a man in his mid-twenties, six feet tall with sandy brown hair and a mustache to match. He was dress in a red jumpsuit and he was holding a meat cleaver dripping with Tony's blood in one hand, and a big-ass stainless steel .50 cal S&W (Smith & Wesson) revolver in the other.
Figuring that the man may have just saved my life I said to him in a loud voice.
"What in the fuck is wrong with you? Put a silencer on that cannon before you draw every eater for a hundred miles."
"I'm sorry! I didn't think of that while I was busy saving your ass," the man in the scarlet suit explained sarcastically.
"What?" I said loudly again. "I think your howitzer broke my ear drums."
"Hey, I said I was sorry," the man said smiling as he holstered his gigantic revolver.
"Explain yourself!" I demanded, pointing my M-4 at the man. "Why did you kill those two?"
"These two clowns...well four clowns, had every intention of robbing you of everything you have and then killing you if the mood struck them," the man answered. "They pulled the same shit on me seven days ago, and the only reason that I'm talking to you today is that there used to be five of them, I had to kill one of them to escape."
Not being one to take anyone at his or her word in the zombie apocalypse (remember Cassandra) I said. "Well that's very convenient, you just happen to be their only victim that got away?"
"Yeah, pretty much," the man answered. "Take a look over there."
The man pointed down to a concrete culvert that ran under the freeway behind the rental trucks.
"Lead the way," I ordered, ready to blow this man's head clean off if he looked at me sideways.
The man turned around and began to walk in the direction of the drainpipe.
"My name is Derek if you give a shit," he said.
"I don't," I answered abruptly.
"Well you might after I show you this," Derek responded.
Derek galloped down the grassy slope beside the freeway almost giddy as he dodged the abandoned vehicles and led me to the hidden culvert.
In the sun, his bright red jumpsuit contrasted with the overgrown blue grass of the states nickname sake, and he stuck out like a sore dick in a snowstorm (even though it was the middle of the summer).
As I watched him almost gleefully scoot down that small hill bouncing off the fenders of some of the cars, I had to wonder how he had managed to stay alive as long as he had.
He stood at the opening to the drainpipe and waited as I cautiously ambled down the grassy incline.
As I approached the hidden culvert, a familiar odor began to permeate my nose, and a well-known sound accosted my ears.
The usual disgusting stench of rancid flesh pervaded the air in and around the opening under the highway, and as I got closer, I could just barely see dozens of mutilated rotting bodies stacked on top of one another through the almost opaque black curtain of swarming flies.
"See what I mean?" Derek said, holding both hands in a gesture depicting a game show host offering up a prize. "And if you look in the back of those two trucks, you'll find all of the ill gotten gains those assholes took from all of these people... and me."
Braving the stench and the multitude of flies, I moved nearer to the pile of human remains, and upon closer examination, I could see that most of the bodies had multiple bullet holes in their torsos, and all had at least one gunshot wound to the head for the prevention of reanimation.
"Okay, I'm convinced," I admitted, still pointing my gun at Derek. "Let's get out of here before we go deaf from this incessant buzzing."
"I'm going to get my shit out of their truck," Derek proclaimed, as he walked back up the hill, ignoring the fact that my M-4 was leveled at his back. "I'd take back my car too, but those dirty cocksuckers wrecked it when they rolled it down the hill and it slammed into the other side of the ditch."
Derek opened the back door of one of the box trucks and began to dig through its cargo.
"I'm only going to take what those highway men took from me, the rest of this stuff belongs to those poor bastards down in the pipe," he announced, as he fished out a bowie knife that had a buffalo engraved on its deer antler handle.
I climbed into the back of the truck with Derek after I secured one of the doors to the outside wall of the vehicle with a piece of wire and lodged a small rock between the other door and the frame of the cargo hold, heeding a warning that an over the road truck driver named Clyde had given me.
During the early days of the outbreak, my family and I had met Clyde at a rest stop on our way to Texas, and he was adamant about making sure that you never get into the back of a truck without making darn sure that nobody can close the back doors and lock you in.
That was a warning that I took to heart and had immediately began to practice religiously while scrounging through semi-trailers and any other vehicle that could ultimately end up being a metal sarcophagus with no way out.
Picking up a bag of what turned out to be stale marshmallows (big surprise) I told Derek that he could do whatever he wanted, but unlike him, I had been mercifully spared the ravages of a conscience and would be partaking in the so-called spoils of war if he had no objections.
After all, those poor bastards rotting away in that culvert would no longer have a need for anything in either of the trucks.
I took a bite of one of the stale marshmallows as my comment brought a smirk to my newfound friend's face, and we both continued to rummage through the contents in the back of the rental truck.
Being in Louisville Kentucky, I found it rather ironic that buried deep within the pile of pilfered goods I discovered a baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger.
As I picked up the wooden bat, it brought back the memory of months passed.
"Look at this Derek, boy does this bring back memories," I said, clutching the bat with both hands.
"Did you play baseball in high school or college; coach a little league team or something?" Derek asked, looking up from the pile.
"Hell no, I hate baseball, it's a slow and boring sport," I answered, mimicking swinging the bat at a fastball.
"Then, why the memories?" Derek asked, looking a bit confused.
"Once during a search of a home by me and my family, we were looking for supplies, you know how it is.
Anyway, this ninety-something year old woman came busting into the room with the intent of doing us bodily harm, and I was forced to give her the righteous beat down that she
was begging for, that is after wrenching her Louisville Slugger from her frail, arthritic grip," I explained chuckling. "Those were the good old days, back when we only had eaters and rogue humans to contend with, no massive amounts of flies hovering over the dead, the ones that walk around anyway, and no other unbelievable... things."
I stopped myself before disclosing the fact to I'd seen dinosaurs roaming the fruited plains, not to mention that a pack of the rogue prehistoric beasts had killed my wife and two sons.
I had just met Derek and thought it might be prudent at this time not to come across as a complete raving maniac.
"Stop right there! Unbelievable things? What could possibly be more unbelievable than dead bodies standing up and attacking people for their brain matter?" Derek asked, being careful not to disclose an unbelievable secret of his own.
"Are you trying to tell me in your own rather cryptic way, that I've got more to worry about than just zombies, wild dogs, rogue humans, and the average ordinary bullshit this world seems to conjure up on a daily basis?" Derek asked, as he continued to dig through the items in the back of the truck.
"Oh, no, I think you've covered it pretty well, especially the bullshit part," I retorted, looking at him with raised eyebrows.
Before Derek had time to quiz me further on my enigmatic statement, and long before we finished inventorying the items in the truck (we hadn't even looked in the second vehicle yet) the sound hundreds of swarming flies hovering around the approaching zombie horde warned us of the impending danger and hastened our retreat.
"I hear eaters coming," I warned, as I jumped to the ground. "Come on, let's go, leave all that stuff, it won't do you any good if you're churning around inside some eater's gizzard."
Derek jumped to the ground and joined me at my truck.
"Fuck!" he yelled. "We gotta move one of those trucks."
Running back to the truck that we had just abandoned, Derek jumped into the cab.
"Hey, the key is in it," he shouted.
"Well move the fucking thing then," I shouted back, as I sent a 5.56mm round diagonally through the skull of the first walking dead man to make it onto the scene. "Quit fucking around and hurry the fuck up dumbass."
"Roger that," Derek answered, turning the key and starting the engine. "I mean about hurrying up, not the dumbass part."
Derek slammed the truck into reverse and it began to roll backwards, he then jumped from the truck without attempting to stop it.
While he was running back toward me, I took the liberty of blowing the top off another zombie's head that had stopped to snack on Tony.
Then I watched as the truck that had been blocking our way, rolled off the shoulder of the road and careened down the hill toward the drainage culvert.
It spilled some of its contents along the way, and took out several approaching zombies that were approaching from that direction, before coming to rest wedged between two overturned cars; this helped to clear the way for Derek and me to make our escape before we were surrounded by the looming horde.
"Damn it, you might know the fucking truck would slam into my car," Derek complained, shaking his head from side to side.
As I stomped my foot down on the accelerator pedal and felt the truck lurch forward pressing me against the seat, two of the undead ungracefully walked in front of us.
With no other options at my disposal, I continued toward the two with the hopes of doing minimal damage to my getaway vehicle.
One of the wayward decomposing pedestrians that had inadvertently wandered into my speeding truck's crosshairs was a lanky male dressed in a lime green jogging outfit complete with matching expensive, not to mention trendy, running shoes.
His stature along with his position relative to the front of my truck, afforded his leg between the left knee and hip to be the prime target for the right front fender of my vehicle to strike.
Although the truck was traveling at only twenty miles per hours at the point of impact, the angle and contour of the leading edge of my vehicle, together with the monster's gate, sent the ungainly dead man flipping head over heels ten or so feet into the air.
The collision broke both of his legs and left him sprawled out in the ditch at the side of the road squirming and oozing a dark liquid out of most of his orifices, and encircled by a gaggle of his most loyal flies.
The second target that my truck had picked out to obliterate was a little more disturbing, that is if one were to be disturbed by such an escapade.
It was a nine-year-old boy suited up in a Cub Scout uniform, troop 495 if I recall correctly.
Yes, troop 495, that number was sewn on the sleeve of his dark blue uniform, it was momentarily pressed up against the windshield in front of me when the little boy's arm was disjointed by the impact and tossed onto the hood, then rolled up onto the windshield blocking my view.
That was the number that was being dragged in front of me several times, along with several trailing hemorrhaging veins, as my windshield wiper raked the bloody stump that was enclosed in the sleeve of the youth's blue shirt back and forth in front of me before tossing it off my front window.
I remember watching that number spiral down as the amputated arm slid across the fender and fell to the ground.
"That was a close one, that little fucker almost broke my windshield!" I thought at the time.
It was hard enough as it was, driving through a zombie apocalypse, dodging abandoned cars and trucks, trying to increase your felony hit and run count without becoming a fatality statistic yourself.
Trying to accomplish all of that, and doing it in a safe and unobtrusive manner with a broken windshield obscuring your view of the outside world would be verging on the impossible.
As we sped away, I could see in the rearview mirror that three zombies had chewed a hole in Danny's head and were busy fighting over the chunks of his brain that they had extracted from his skull.
It reminded me of a pack of stray dogs fighting over scrapes of food that had been left in a garbage can that they had tipped over.
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CRIPPLING TIMES
Along with the guy who called himself Derek riding shotgun, and Cassandra's tanning severed breast riding bitch, the three of us had shot the gap between the remaining parked rental truck and the zombie horde that was quickly filling the landscape, and were heading north toward the Ohio River and the Indiana border.
We had no choice but to leave the cargo left in the trucks and littering the countryside to the multitude of marauding monsters that had chased us away, escaping with our lives seems more important at the time, and we both knew that we could find needed supplies somewhere in a less populated area.
"Did those fuckers seem faster than normal to you?" Derek asked, as he leaned back and put his feet up on the dashboard.
"I think that is the normal nowadays. I noticed their new agility a couple of days ago," I informed him, keeping my eyes on the road while groping for the bag containing the salted booby, as I narrowly avoided an overturned armored car. "The good news is, even though they're faster and more agile, they still stagger around somewhat with a gaggle of buzzing insects announcing their arrival, and a well placed 9mm slug or a tomahawk blade has the same effect as before."
"I prefer this here meat cleaver," Derek said, holding up his blood stained rectangular-bladed hatchet. "The thick heavy blade on this bastard sinks into their skulls right nice, cause I keep it sharp enough to slice down the middle of a nun's cunt-hair and separate it into two distinct pieces, even the thin blonde ones."
"Each to their own, my tomahawk has served me well on numerous occasions, although I've never tried slicing a nun's cunt-hair in two before, not even one of the blonde ones," I told him vehemently, thinking that I wouldn't mind trying it if the opportunity ever presented itself. "But it has split the craniums of many of those repulsive maggot wagons, and if I live long enough, it'll crack the skulls of many more to come."
"Indeed," Derek agreed.
; Within minutes, we could see the bridges that spanned the Ohio River; two were dedicated to automobile traffic, one for trains, and oddly enough, one was solely for bicycles and pedestrians.
As usual, traffic on all of the bridges was inadequate for the purposes for which they had been constructed, taking in consideration that they were now serving only the population of a zombie apocalypse that had been inflicting a high attrition rate upon its members for quite some time, both living and dead.
As we crossed the river, we were in the only moving vehicle on the I-65 Bridge, and that was no big surprise, hell, we were in the only moving vehicle period.
I had not seen a moving train since this whole dead people coming to life thing began, and although there were some pedestrians traversing the walking bridge, as one might guess, they were all zombies searching for their next meal.
A few minutes later, we were in what was once referred to as the state of Indiana.
Of course, all of the states were no longer states as we remembered them, having no centralized government in existence; they were now just lines on maps and borders marked by welcoming signs, most of which depicting the state's nickname.
Nevertheless, calling them by name gave everyone who referred to them as such a way to designate a plot of land that was familiar to most of the people still living.
Welcome to Indiana, the Hoosier State, the small, almost apologetic sign attached to the bridge read as we crossed the now meaningless border into Indiana.
Once in Indiana, and relatively safe from harm, that is as safe from harm as one can be while traipsing through a zombie apocalypse on their way to a place called the Badlands, Derek spoke up.
"What's with the tit riding bitch?"
"It's just a trophy given to me by a traitorous conniving cunt that needed to be taught a good lesson in the ways of a doomsday lifestyle," I answered snidely, remembering how Cassandra had betrayed me.
"Oh... by the way, I never caught your name," Derek said, without revealing any emotion from my response to his inquiry.
"My name is Jack," I said, as I kneaded Cassandra's salted down tit with my right hand to spread the sodium chloride into every pore.
