by Zuko, Joseph
“Man, that reeks!” Sara covered her nose with the collar of her shirt. She smelled herself and realized after the day she had gone through she did not smell much better than the smoldering dead. The heat was so intense that there was no way to look down on the bonfire.
“Let’s go!” Jim waddled away from the wall and headed for the open hatch in the roof. They made their way back down the ladder, gathered their supplies and headed for the front door.
Sara peeked out to see if the coast was clear. A couple of stragglers milled around the vehicle. Sara signaled to the others that there were four zombies left and where they were standing. The two men nodded at her and she opened the metal door all the way open.
The three of them raced out the doorway. Jim skewered the skull of the first monster outside. Sara had Jim’s back and slaughtered a creep that was six inches from grasping his backpack. Her bat blade nailed it right in the neck and severed its head. Frank fired two shots. The backs of the two infected heads detonated on impact.
They dashed into the unlocked car. Jim fired up the engine and backed out of the spot. He headed for the exit with the pedal crushed all the way to the floor. The stack of burnt bodies outside the RS Medical had begun to fuse into one monstrous pile of sizzling meat. It topped the list of nastiest things the group had seen, smelled and heard today.
Jim weaved around three stalled cars that sat in the middle of the street. Half a minute later they pulled into the parking lot of the gun shop. Jim backed up into a spot right outside the front door. He hoped they would be able to load a ton of gear or ammo in the next few minutes. He checked his side mirror. The shop had its lights out and a gate locked at the front door. They jumped out of the PT Cruiser and darted for the entrance. Sara took out the door with her bat and glass exploded across the shop’s floor. Frank aimed and shot out the lock on the gate. Jim pushed open the metal barrier and entered the shop.
A thought flashed in Jim’s brain.
We didn’t check the back door to this place first.
It should be okay. We’re only going to be here for a minute.
They rushed into the building and closed the gate behind them. Their eyes strained to adjust to the low level lighting in the tiny little hole-in-the-wall store. Frank cruised over to the glass display and hunted for firearms and ammo. Jim stepped farther into the room. The dark black abyss at the back of the shop started to turn gray as Jim’s irises opened and allowed light to pass through. It took his brain a moment to register what he was seeing.
There’s a gun pointing at me!
Shit! There’s a fucking gun pointing at me!
A deep voice bellowed from behind the barrel of the shotgun, “Drop the spear!”
Chapter 6
Tina applied a cool cloth to Devon’s feverish forehead. His eyes had been closed for the last ten minutes and she was sure he was sleeping. She held his wrist with her fingertips and counted out the beats. The young man’s heart was limping along. He was going to need Jim’s blood before she could even attempt to clean out and stitch up his wounds. She kept checking the time. It had been fifteen minutes since her neighbor took off on a dangerous trip to get the supplies needed to fix this gunshot wound.
They better get back here soon. I can’t have him turning in our living room.
He didn’t have a lot of time left. He would bleed out if they didn’t get his leg closed up in a hurry. Tina used the time to look over her textbooks from nursing school. She wanted to make sure she didn’t skip a step or forget a vital part of the surgery.
“Ah Dios mio. What have I got myself into?” Tina talked to herself as she flipped a page. She absorb as much info as possible before they got back with the supplies. The stress of it was getting to her. Tina needed to stretch her legs and move around the apartment. She wanted another beer to help calm her nerves, but that was a horrible idea. She couldn’t get drunk or even have a slight buzz if she was going to stitch this young man up.
An old voice giggled from across the room. Tina flipped the cloth over on his forehead and then looked over her shoulder to check out the giggling noise.
Morgan sat a few feet from the flat panel TV, she nursed at her beer and had on an episode of the cartoon Metalocalypse. It was a violent part in the show, and the super fans of the band, Dethklok, were getting melted by a volcano of boiling hot coffee.
“My god, this show is nuts. I love it and the music is amazing. These guys are so stupid that it’s hilarious.” Morgan slapped her hand on her knee at the next joke. It tickled Tina how much enjoyment Morgan was getting from the crazy show. She closed her book and got up off the floor to go check on her girls.
Tina heard them playing in their bedroom. She waited for a moment and peeked through the doorway. Watching her babies play together always made her feel better. They were trying to build a fort out of blankets and pillows. Eve was doing her best to tuck the blanket in between the mattress and box spring and then stretch the blanket over to her sister’s bed and tuck that corner in between the other mattress and box spring. It created a roof of cotton two feet off the ground that they played under and called their fort. Alex and Brea laid on their backs surrounded by a mountain of pillows. They delicately clawed at the new roof and asked each other, “When’s the Prince coming to save us?”
“I’m almost done building the fort. I’ll be there to save you soon.” Eve tucked a little more of the blanket under the mattress so that the roof pulled tight.
Tina stepped into the room, “Don’t wait for a Prince to save you. Save yourselves.” Her children stopped playing and looked up at her. They looked so confused. Their faces said, “Why would we do it when there is a Prince coming to save us? Duh, Mama.”
“But that’s what they do? Remember when Daddy saved us today?” Eve itched at her nose and scrunched up her face. The logic seemed sound in her mind.
“Don’t you remember when Mama saved that little girl outside? I didn’t wait for Daddy or a Prince to do the job. I saved that little girl and I saved myself.” There was no point in going into how much Karen had been involved in saving the little girl. That wasn’t the point. She wanted her girls to be strong and think about saving themselves, not wait for Prince Charming to show up.
“We’re just playing fort.” Eve shook her head up at her Mama.
“Yeah, fort.” Alex seconded.
“Fort.” Brea tried explaining to her silly Mama.
Tina could see her advice was falling on deaf ears, “Keep playing so sweetly and maybe we can have some ice cream later, okay?”
“Yeah, ice cream!” The children cheered in unison.
“Mama, is that boy going to be okay?” Eve asked as she pushed the last bit of the blanket under the mattress to lock it into place.
“Yes baby, Mama’s going to get him all fixed up.”
“Good. He’s handsome.” Eve giggled out the word handsome.
“He’s handsome.” Alex covered her mouth with her hands. The admission was too much for her.
“Handsome?” Brea grabbed a pillow and pulled it over her face. Tina smiled at her boy crazy girls and turned to go check on her other big baby, before going back to being a doctor out in the living room. She pushed open the door to her bedroom and found Cliff with all of his tools tossed onto their bed.
“What are you doing?” Tina asked as she leaned against the door frame.
Cliff had been tinkering in his bedroom since Jim left. They didn’t own a garage so most of Cliff’s tools stayed on his side of their walk-in-closet. He carried out a few scraps of metal and a drill from the closet and set them on the bed next to the other tools.
“I’m trying to make my own bladed weapon, like Jim’s spear.” Cliff scanned over his stash of tools and scrap metal, plotting the design.
“Just take down the wooden dowel from the hallway closet and tape a knife to the end like his.” She made it sound so simple. Cliff looked at her in disbelief, it was practically the same face her girls had just given her w
hen she told them to save themselves and not wait for a prince.
“What?” she said with a smile.
Cliff went back to work, “I don’t want to copy him. I want to create my own weapon.” He picked up two nearly identical lengths of aluminum that stood about three-feet high and two inches wide. They were two solid, strong chunks of metal that wouldn’t bend easily and would never corrode. If he put the two pieces together that would make a really nice handle. That was a good start. Also on the bed was a brand new, still in the package circular saw blade. A plan was forming.
“Okay, I’ll leave you to your inventing,” Tina said as she stepped away from the door frame.
Men are so weird sometimes. Why would he waste his time building a weapon when he has a cleaver and a gun? Tina thought as she headed back down the hall to check on her patient.
Women are so weird sometimes. Don’t they get how cool it is to build a sweet weapon with your own bare hands?
Cliff shook his head as his lady walked down the hall. Then he took the largest drill bit that he owned and slid it into the end of his drill. He held the aluminum handles over a trash can. He centered the tip of the drill at the end of the handle and started to make a hole. The little slivers of aluminum fell into the can. His three children came running into the bedroom to investigate the sudden noise.
“What are you doing Daddy?” Eve led the charge into the room and hit him with the first question.
Cliff paused for a moment and looked up at his three girls. He had heard them playing in the other room and heard the comment she had made about him saving them and being like a prince.
“I’m making a weapon only a Prince can use to save beautiful princesses.” He finished the sentence with a big bright smile and the little girls melted over his answer.
“That’s so cool,” Eve said with a twinkle in her eyes.
Cliff started again. The children got bored watching their dad and they raced back out of the room. It took him a little time to get through the metal and make a clean hole, but he finally got it. Cliff drilled another hole at the other end of the handle he was working on and did a matching set on the other half of his handle. With all four holes cleaned out he opened the circular saw package and carefully set the blade between the two handles. The teeth in the saw were so sharp that even moving slowly with it he almost nicked his skin open. He lined up the two halves of the handle with the hole in the blade and dropped a bolt through all three of them. Cliff used two crescent wrenches to tighten the nut onto the bolt. His powerful arms pulled against the handles of the wrenches until they couldn’t move anymore.
His weapon was starting to come together now. He had the handle and the blade but the handle had hard edges that were very uncomfortable on his hands. He needed to soften up the grip on this thing and give himself something better to hold on to.
About a year ago, Cliff saw a video online about wrapping Para cord around knife handles. It looked so badass that he wanted to do it himself. So he bought the cord, but never got around to buying the knife. Money was tight at the time and spending fifty bucks on a blade that would just sit in the closet was a hard sell for Tina. Cliff found the black cord in his sock drawer and went to work trying to remember the pattern he had seen on the video. It took a couple of tries but he finally figured it out. He pulled the cord tightly as he covered half of the aluminum handle in the black rope. Once he had it set he also looped a chunk of cord through the hole he drilled at the bottom of the handle to make a lanyard to keep the saw in his hands and not the skull of the infected. The last thing he needed to do was dip the handle in boiling water to shrink the wrap so that it was as solid as the rest of his new weapon.
As the saw’s handle cooled in the kitchen sink Tina’s eyes widened as she took in his new zombie killin’ tool.
“It’s better than I thought you were going to make,” she said with a surprised tone.
“Thanks, I guess,” Cliff slid on his leather work gloves and lifted the metal weapon out to give it a test run. He looped his wrist through the lanyard and held his weapon out in front of his chest. Not only did it feel awesome in his hands but it looked medieval. Cliff swung it around in the living room of his apartment and the thing felt deadly. It was heavy-duty enough to hit like a bat and break bones, but it was also sharp enough to cut that bone in half. Cliff hoped he would never have to use it, but he was also absolutely sure that he was going to be forced to use it in the near future.
“What’s that you got there?” Morgan wheeled herself away from the TV to get a better look at the hunk of metal in Cliff’s hands.
“I made it out of some old junk I had in the closet.” Cliff pulled at the blade to make sure it didn’t move. It looked like a heavy metal lollipop. No matter how you swung it the weapon was deadly.
The three little ones raced down the hall to witness their father’s version of Excalibur.
“Whoa, wicked!” Eve poured praise on her Daddy’s genius.
“Is it sharp?” Alex reached to touch it.
Cliff raised it higher out of their reach, “Yes it’s very sharp, so don’t touch it.”
Brea backed away from her Daddy with fear, “I no touch it! Don’t kill me Daddy!”
“I would never kill you baby, don’t worry. It’s only to kill the bad people outside.” Cliff looked over the saw and pride in its construction gleamed on his face.
“Boys and their toys,” Morgan said as she wheeled herself back in front of the TV.
“Boys and their toys,” Tina agreed.
Cliff needed a place to store the weapon that would have easy access but keep it out of the hands of his children. He reentered his bedroom and found a package of coat hooks they had purchased from IKEA but never installed. Cliff tore open the package and mounted the hooks in the hallway next to the front door.
He sunk the last screw into place and tested the hooks. They were secure. He raised his new saw up eye level and laid it across the hooks. It fit perfectly. The light gleamed off the blade and aluminum handle. The weapon was a work of art. It was a pity that someday it would have chunks of infected brains and skulls stuck in its teeth.
A gun was fired in the lot outside.
Maybe Jim was back?
Tina joined Cliff on the sprint back to their bedroom. Another shot was fired. Cliff opened the blinds just enough for them to see what was happening.
A man they recognized was standing at the bottom of the stairs in front of the building across the lot from Cliff and Tina. They had seen him every summer at the pool with his four children. The kids were close in age with Cliff and Tina’s youngest girls and they always played well together. The guy had a small caliber revolver in his hands and just gunned down another infected.
“Come on!” he yelled up the stairs. His young wife and four children marched down the stairs behind him and the five of them headed straight for their SUV.
“Keep running! Come on kids get in!” The wife tried her best to keep the children out in front of her and moving fast. The gunfire and shouting alerted a fresh horde of the infected to this family’s escape attempt.
The man emptied his gun into a monster that was sprinting towards him. The woman just finished getting the last child up into the tall vehicle.
“Let’s go!” She called after her husband.
The horde was closing in fast and hot on his heels as he stepped up quickly into the driver’s side. He slammed the door shut and a set of monsters crashed into the door. The beasts pounded at the window as he struggled to get the key into the ignition. Finally the engine roared alive and the wheels began to peel out of the lot. A zombie smashed in the driver’s side window and clawed at the man. Cliff and Tina lost sight of the action as the SUV passed by the garbage and recycling center in the middle of the lot. The SUV swerved suddenly as it passed the garbage bin that blocked their view. The SUV was now heading straight for a parked car. Half of the zombie’s body was up inside the window of the vehicle. The man had his foot to the
floor and was screaming along at thirty miles an hour. They hit the parked car so hard that it pushed it from one parking spot all the way over to another. The airbags blew, the bodies inside the SUV hadn’t buckled in and they crashed around the interior.
“We have to do something! We have to help them! Right?” Tina pulled at Cliff’s sleeve. Cliff wanted to, but there were so many infected outside it seemed impossible to survive the rescue.
“We can’t!” The words felt rotten in his mouth.
The muffled sound of the family’s cries could be heard even from Tina and Cliff’s bedroom.
The horde shuffled over to the scene of the accident. Thirty seconds after the crash the SUV was surrounded. They punched and head-butted at all of the windows.
“We can’t just sit here and watch them die, Cliff!” Tina’s panicked voice cranked up her accent and the words zipped out much faster than normal. “Get the guns and the saw! We have to try!” Tina stepped away from the window and bolted towards the front door. She got five steps away when she noticed that Cliff hadn’t moved. “Come on!”
“We can’t!” Cliff kept watching even though he didn’t want to.
“Why not!” Tears had begun to form at the thought of something horrible happening to those young children.
“What if we get bit? Who would take care of the girls? I want to save them too, but we can’t risk it!” Cliff was full of rage. He hated that he couldn’t save them, but being a father meant doing things that you hated to keep your girls safe.
Tina didn’t want to admit that he was right. Her hands twitched and her mind raced. She became extremely anxious and was trying to think up some way to run down there and save them. She was on the verge of a full blown meltdown. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing!” She took another step toward the front door.
