by Nathan Brown
As the van entered onto a spiraling freeway onramp, Or turned towards his passenger and recited one of the few phrases that he’d forced himself to memorize in English.
“My friend,” He said with an eerie calm, in accent thick as molasses, and with a reassuring smile on his lips that looked well rehearsed, like the smile of a flight attendant. “Don’t worry. I am not trying to kill you. I’m just trying to get us there quickly … okay?”
With that said, Or turned his eye back to the road, shoved his foot to the floor, and jerked the steering wheel. The vehicle bounced between the concrete partitions of the spiraling ramp like a pinball in tilt. Mike closed his eyes, held on firmly to the handle just above his head that he’d always referred to as “oh, shit” handles … and tried to go to a “happy place.”
* * *
Mike had met Hansel Hanse (whose father was a bit of a joker, hence the name) when the two were bunkmates in boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot near Camp Pendleton. Hanse was going into vehicle maintenance, while Mike had opted for being a grunt in the infantry. Normally, grunts and grease monkeys didn’t mix. However, the pair had become inseparable during those fourteen weeks of boot training. After graduation, however, they’d had to go their separate ways.
A few years later, their paths crossed once more during a firefight on the mean streets of Sarajevo. They were taking heavy fire, and Mike’s squad leader had radioed in for another squad to back them up. Fate had it that Hanse was the guy driving the five-ton truck carrying the reinforcements … right into a wall of small arms fire.
Hanse took an AK-47 round in the belly for his trouble.
The 7.62mm round had passed through the truck’s radiator grate and bounced out through the dashboard before hitting Hanse through the mess of his lower intestines. On the way out, the projectile had missed his spine by no more than an inch and took a chunk of a kidney with it before finally coming to a halt in the back cushion of Hanse’s seat. The squad of Marines who were riding in the back of the truck immediately scrambled for cover, leaving Hanse slumped over in the driver’s seat … a sitting duck.
Mike, after breaking his squad leader’s nose for trying to hold him back, made it to the truck. He dragged Hanse to cover, with the wounded Marine screaming bloody murder the whole way. In the chaos, a ricocheting bullet from the M-16 of one of his fellow Marines caught Mike in the back of the upper thigh.
Hanse survived his gut shot. However, there are few things in this world that can compare to the pain of taking a bullet in the belly. The upside is that they take awhile to be fatal … but don’t you ever dare try to tell Hansel Hanse that he was lucky! A comment like that would get you a kick in the nuts, maybe just a punch in the solar plexus if you were lucky. More than once, after slugging some Navy corpsman in the diaphragm for just such a transgression, Hanse would ask them, “Tell me, how lucky does that make you feel?”
Funny thing was … Mike hadn’t even known Hanse was the wounded driver until he got to him. He didn’t put himself in harm’s way just because he wanted to go after a buddy. Mike’s motivating thought had been far simpler—he saw an injured man in need of his help. The fact that the guy he saved turned out to be his old boot camp buddy was just a coincidence.
They both spent a few weeks in a German Navy hospital, and Hanse bribed one of the hospital corpsmen to bunk them in the same room. They talked it up as their wounds healed, catching up on old times and swapping war stories. Well … they swapped stories, anyway. But few of them were actually about war. Those weeks in the infirmary were now among Mike’s very few fond memories of his tumultuous years in the Corps … well, if you left out the part about getting hit in the leg with a ricochet that missed his ass by a fraction.
Before parting ways, they exchanged contact info and home addresses. But Hanse had gotten out of the Marines about a year before Mike. Apparently, there was a clause of the oath Mike had recited during his swearing-in that said something to the affect of “I will serve the contract term of duty or for as long as my service is needed.” The Marines blocked his discharge for an additional year when the towers in New York got hit and war broke out. Hanse, “lucky” bastard that he was, had made it out of the military in the nick of time.
A few months before finally boarding a plane for home, Mike had received an envelope with no return address or letter … just a business card for something called Moto-man Transport with Hanse’s name and number on it. On the back was written “In case you ever feel like you need to call in that favor.” Mike never would’ve dreamed that he’d be calling in that favor only a day after getting his DD214 discharge papers.
* * *
Mike hopped out of the van, fighting the urge to drop to his knees and kiss the tarmac, as soon as it stopped in the parking lot of an out-of-the-way office building marked Moto-Man. The logo had a cartoon superhero who, coincidentally, looked a lot like Hanse, with a big “M” on his chest and a red baseball cap on his head with a non-descript car on it. Mike couldn’t help but chuckle a bit when he saw this. Hanse popped his head out of the building’s tinted glass front door.
“You coming in or are you gonna stand there staring at my ugly cartoon mug all day?” Hanse said with laughter in his voice.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Mike exclaimed when he saw the goatee and long hair on his old friend. “Look who’s gone hippy! What’s that thing on your chin? You forget to wash your face this morning?”
“Oh, shut the hell up and get in here, will ya? You’re lettin’ all the cold air out ya stupid grunt. Can you believe this weather? Yesterday it feels like a polar bear’s balls out there, and today we’re pushing into the high 80s. Talk about your global warming.” Mike followed his old friend indoors.
“Forget the weather. What the hell’s going on out there, Hanse?”
“Fuck if I know, man,” Hanse said, tousling his now shaggy, dirty blond hair before pinning it down with a red baseball cap exactly like the one that covered the head of his superhero likeness. “I’m getting different stories from everybody. And this ain’t just happening here, man. You remember Fish-man?”
“You mean Schrader? Yeah, I remember that crazy little bastard. What’s he up to these days?”
“Well, he’s been working as an underwater welder near Lake Tahoe. Last weekend he decides to spend some of his hazard pay in Reno. Now he’s stuck there and he says the place is getting hairier by the hour. He called me to see if I could get a plane to him. He says the airport looks like the second exodus right now.”
“You gonna be able to get him out?”
“I think so … I know a guy out that way that’s got an old chopper and a pad. He’s gonna do a quick snatch and grab on the roof of the Bellagio. Fish-man just has to get up there. He’s still in good shape … shouldn’t be a problem. My guy’s gonna get him patched up.”
“Patched up?”
“Yeah, some crazy old lady in the casino jumped on his back and bit him on the neck. Can you imagine that? Must have been his animal magnetism, right? I mean, holy shit, Mikey. It’s like somebody’s been passing out crazy sandwiches or something when nobody was lookin’.”
“Fish-man gonna be okay?”
“Oh yeah, he’ll be fine. He said it was bleeding like a mother but you now how head and neck wounds are. No arterial spraying or spurting blood or anything like that, so he should be in the green. He took shelter in a security room on the casino floor … that was where he called from. They had a med kit.”
“Well, tell him I said good luck when you hear back from him.”
“I will … my ass is gonna be gone come day’s end, man. I already started calling all my guys back in. Told ‘em to finish their current tasks and haul ass either here or home. I’ll worry about collections after all this craziness blows over.”
“Where you going?”
“Where else, man? I’m heading to the desert. I got a secure little place out in the badlands of Arizona.” Hanse pulled a card from his shirt pocke
t and handed it to Mike. “Here’s a card with the address. There’s a map on the back. Come and see me once you get your Ma squared away. Hell, bring her with you if you need to. There’s plenty of room to go around.
“Speaking of your Ma, we gotta get your happy ass home. So here’s the deal. My man Or is gonna warm up the chopper out back and take you to a guy I got waiting for you at the airstrip. You’re gonna ride a puddle jumper out of the city and you’ll land at an unmanned strip we use near Bowie. You’ll have to drive from there. I’ve got a vehicle and a ditty bag with the usual stuff waiting for you there.”
“Thanks man,” Mike said with sincere gratitude. He knew this gesture went above and beyond just paying back a favor.
“Hey, when the world starts going to hell in a hand basket, ya gotta keep the right people breathin’ now, don’t ya?”
“Yeah, man … but, I mean. This is one hell of a payback for a favor, Hanse.”
“A favor? That’s my life you’re talkin’ about, dickhead.”
“I know. But still —”
“Still nothin,” Hanse said with a smirk. “C’mere, dumbass. I wanna talk to ya about something. It’ll still be a few more minutes before that crazy fuckin’ Israeli gets that chopper prepped.” He motioned for Mike to follow.
Hanse led Mike down a narrow hall to a thin door at the end.
“My office,” he said with a sarcastic smile as he grabbed the knob and pushed the door open to a small and quite simple office space with a large oak desk and a small, olive drab cot in the corner.
“Office or crash space?” Mike asked with a chuckle.
“You could call it both.”
“You know, being the big boss man and all, I’d think you could get somethin’ more comfy than a cot in here.”
“You fuckin’ kiddin’ me, dude? I either slept in the front seat of a vehicle or on a cot like this for nearly four years. I can’t get a wink of sleep on that cushy shit to save my life. Besides … those pillow top numbers are terrible for your back. Speakin’ of backs … how’s the ass?”
“It wasn’t my ass, retard. I took a round in the upper thigh. You know that.”
“Yeah,” Hanse chuckled. “But I still think that story would be a helluvalot funnier if you told people you got shot in the ass.”
Mike sighed, trying his best not to laugh … it would only encourage him.
“So … what did you wanna talk about?”
“You remember that crazy fuckin’ barracks mate they gave you about the time you tried to leave Recon? The one that got his scrotum trapped up in that Master Lock?”
“What? G-Love? Gleaver … Ebert Gleaver … I think that was his real name. What about him?”
“Well, remember that time you and he invited me over to watch horror flicks and get sauced on booze?”
“And?”
“And we got drunk on cheap beer and about a gallon of Cuervo and watched all those zombie movies. They were made by some guy that G-Love just couldn’t shut the fuck up about … do you remember?”
“Yeah … George Romero. G-Love was always talking up and down about what a cinematic genius that fuckin’ guys was. Then you had to go and ask ‘Who’s George Romero?’ and G-Love broke out the movies. I think we watched Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead. Must’ve seen those movies a hundred times with that wild-eyed sonuvabitch.”
“So you remember?”
“Yes … asshole, I remember. What about it?”
“Well, I’ve been thinkin’.”
“About?”
“About those movies. The state of things today. I gotta tell ya. Shit’s feelin’ awful familiar,” Hanse said as he reached into a desk drawer and yanked out a pint bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila.
“You mean all this craziness? Holy shit, Hanse. Drinkin’ on the job?”
“The job? What fuckin’ job? Do you really think there’ll be a goddamn thing left here for me? For any of us?”
“News says it’s just a riot.”
“Dickhead. You know better. You of all people. Since when has any riot ever been ‘just a riot?’ ”
Hanse unscrewed the cap and took a heavy gulp. With a grimacing exhale, he held the bottle out across the desk for Mike.
“For heaven’s sake,” Mike sighed, taking the bottle. “You always sound like a conspiracy nut when you talk like that.”
Mike tipped the bottle up and took two strong gulps before passing it back. The golden liquid warmed his lips, sending salty tingles down his tongue before scorching its way through his throat and settling like a warm pool in his stomach.
“Hey, it’s like my old man used to say. Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, hahaha.”
“So, what? Don’t tell me you think those are fuckin’ zombies out there.”
“I don’t know what the hell’s goin’ on, Mikey. All I know is I got a bad feeling about this. I got four drivers I ain’t heard from since this morning. And I’m pretty freakin’ sure it’s not because they forgot to call in.”
“Well, things are crazy out there, Hanse. You said so yourself. Maybe they had to hunker down somewhere.”
“You don’t get it. All my guys are like you, Mikey. Shit, you were the model I used for my hiring criteria.”
“I’m flattered, but what’s your point?”
“My point is that all my guys are former spec ops, disenchanted spooks, and other assorted badasses. They’ve been through shit so hairy it would turn Al Sharpton white.”
“Jeez, Hanse, could you finish a fuckin’ thought for once. So what?”
“So … they aren’t the kinda guys that get taken down or freaked out very easy. And they certainly aren’t the kinda fuckin’ guys who just forget to call in. I’m tellin’ ya, man … those boys are fuckin’ dead.”
“My condolences if they are. But weren’t you talkin’ about zombies a minute ago?”
“Yeah, I was. Like I said, I got four drivers ain’t called in. One of ‘em’s a Brit named Edmond Muntz … a former dyed-in-the-wool, MI-6, double-0-kick-some-ass member of her majesty’s secret service. He stopped callin’ in after I sent him on a snatch-and-grab to pick up a VIP who got himself caught downtown when this shit broke out. When he didn’t check in on time, I called the client … no answer. Then I switched on the news.
“So they’re talkin’ on the news about some poor girl who got dragged outta her car by a bunch of rioters. They even had footage some kid got with his camera phone. So I’m watchin’ this footage and low-and-fuckin’-behold, there’s Edmond bitin’ on this girl’s ear like it’s a friggin’ potato chip!”
“Are you fuckin’ with me?”
“NO! I’m telling ya, Mikey. Somethin’ out there is turning people wacky. I’m not sayin’ it’s zombies. What I am sayin’ is that the shit is feelin’ really fuckin’ familiar. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah … you mean we’re all fucked.”
Dead Come Home
Chapter 3
Escape from the City
Joseph was dragged from sleep promptly at 7:30 in the morning, groaning an impotent warning at his alarm clock. Four hours of shuteye had simply not been long enough. He’d planned to put in a couple of hours of work, catching up in the quiet, comforting solitude of his apartment. Instead, however, an attractive girl he’d met during an inebriated evening at City Streets came calling about an hour after he’d finished his microwave dinner of Kung Pao Chicken. She kept him up until nearly 3 a.m., though he didn’t exactly pose any complaints. He had enjoyed himself, but he knew that, come morning, he would have to pay for it. Well, morning was here.
Joseph rolled out of bed and nearly fell over when he tried to stand up. He staggered the eight or so feet to the bathroom, flipping on the radio as he passed it. When the shower hit him in the face with an icy wake-up call as he forgot to wait for it to warm up, he realized the radio wasn’t playing the usual alternative rock music that was part of the morning form
at. As he stuck his head back under the now warm water, he tried to focus his attention to what the announcer was saying.
The newscaster, fortunately for Joseph, was now repeating the update from the beginning.
What started as a minor disturbance last night has escalated into an all-out riot. Police urge people to remain indoors and away from windows. SWAT units from area cities are being deployed to help street officers bring the situation to a close as quickly as possible. Stay tuned to any local radio channel or TV station for updates.
Joseph toweled off, threw on a decent set of jeans and a black T-shirt, and turned on his TV to get a better idea of exactly what areas were being affected by the rioting. It didn’t take long for him to realize that this thing was more widespread than he had originally thought. On the screen was a map of the downtown districts, with designated “riot zones” outlined by red lines. The edge of one zone was near his apartment, practically at his doorstep. He found his destinations as he looked at the screen; both Ryan’s apartment and their office building were squarely in the middle of the chaos. For a fleeting second, he considered calling in.
Joseph cursed between his teeth. There was no way he could afford to miss work today of all days. “Damn. I had to go and say it, didn’t I? I had to say today was going to be hell,” he muttered.
He wolfed down a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice. He needed them to balance out all the coffee he would be guzzling later on. Then he hastily brushed his teeth before snatching a shirt, suit, tie, and shoes from his closet and heading out the door. He found his car where he’d left it in the parking garage. He hung the clothes from the hook above the backseat and got behind the wheel.
