by Nathan Brown
“A spook?” Joseph asked, with a skeptical grin on his face.
“That means he works for military intelligence,” Mike explained. “I guess protocols aren’t gonna do me much good now, so I’ll come clean with you. After all, what’re they gonna do? Throw me in jail while the rest of the world is going to hell? My buddy told me the CDC sent word to all field personnel that anyone with bites should be avoided at all costs or killed on sight. They also said the only way to put these fuckers down is to hit ‘em in the head. Apparently, it’s gotta be hard enough to seriously injure the brain if not destroy it. I nailed that lady who jumped you pretty damn hard with the butt of my pistol. But she didn’t go down until I busted a cap in her face. Same thing happened with the guy in the scrubs. I put one square through his chest, center mast, and he just kept coming. I even nailed him upside the head with a fireplace shovel … twice. It stunned him, but he didn’t stay down for good until I shot him in the head.”
“If you’ve got friends in high places, like you say, then why don’t you just call somebody and ask them to send help?”
“Because … my friend is already dead,” Mike said blankly. “So is another buddy of mine in Lake Tahoe. Even my Ma is …” Now it was Mike’s turn to choke on his words.
“I’m sorry,” Joseph said. “I didn’t know.”
“Well we don’t have time to fall apart about it right now, do we? Not if we want to survive the night,” Mike said, slapping his palms on the countertop.
Joseph made a decision that he would help this gentleman for just as long as it took them to find help—military, police, or otherwise. Then he’d just go his own way. After all, there was safety in numbers.
This guy doesn’t seem to have much need for help. He doesn’t need me, and I don’t want to get killed or worse following him on some crazy road trip. As soon as I see anything with flashing lights, I’m gone.
Mike decided that he would keep this young man safe until they came across some form of safe haven—military, police, or otherwise. After all, he doubted this … “kid” … would be much more than a burden once he got on the road toward Hanse’s place. The guy was better off under police or military protection.
I won’t abandon the guy, but he’s not my hostage. Once I get him dropped off in a safe place, we can both be on our own separate and merry ways.
“So what’s your plan, exactly?” Joseph asked.
“The Blazer you saw parked out front still has a good amount of gas, just about three-quarters of a tank. So we won’t need to worry about fuel just yet, unless we see an opportunity. Right now we need get our hands on food, clean drinking water, tools, and weapons.”
“What’ve you got here?”
“Ma always kept an emergency reserve of canned stuff—spam, soup, veggies, that kind of stuff. And I have some old MREs out in the shed; that is, if we can get into the shed without drawing too much unwanted attention. I say we take the Blazer into town and see what we can buy. What we can’t buy, we beg, steal, or borrow.”
“Steal?”
“You have a better suggestion?”
“Better than committing a felony?” Joseph asked indignantly.
“A felony? I’m not talking about armed robbery here, Joe-Joseph.”
“Would you please stop calling me that?”
“What?”
“Joe-Joseph.”
“Thought you said that was your name.”
“I was giving you a choice, Mike. Call me Joe or Joseph. Just pick one and, if you don’t mind, stop talking down to me like I’m a fucking child! I’m in this just as deep as you are, and if we’re going to do this together then I’m risking just as much as you are! So cut the shit!”
“Well,” Mike said, hopping down from the counter. “Joe … now that’s more like it. You just might survive the night, after all.”
“I need a gun.”
“Here,” Mike said, handing him the Desert Eagle. “I’ll use my dad’s rifle. Wait here.”
Joseph watched as Mike disappeared into the back hallway and emerged a few moments later, holding an old rifle in his right hand and a black-lacquered baseball bat in his left. He tucked the bat under his right armpit and cocked the rifle.
“You’ve got two shots right now. I’ll load you up with a new mag when we get to the truck. After that, you’ve got no more than 8 shots at a time in that thing and then you’ll have to reload, so make ‘em count. It’s a .44 Magnum, and it’s got one helluva kick so you might wanna hold it with both hands if you haven’t fired a heavy caliber pistol in a while.
“When we get to the vehicle, get inside as fast as you can. If any of those things gets on the Blazer, we’ll need to knock them loose with the bat. No shooting once we’re at the vehicle. We don’t want to risk disabling our one mode of transportation with a stray shot, do we?”
Joseph nodded his head in agreement as he eyed the Desert Eagle. He’d never held a real gun before. He’d had a BB pistol once, when he was a teenager, but his grandmother had taken it from him when she caught him shooting at squirrels in her backyard.
How different can it be, Joe? Just point and shoot, right?
“You ready to do this?”
“At this point, I think whether or not I’m ready is irrelevant.”
“Well put. Now I want you to take a peek out the front door and tell me if you see any of them out there. I’m going to make sure that the master bedroom is secure, since that’s gonna be our fallback point. For now, we’re just going to have to deal with the fact that the back side of the living room is vulnerable.”
Joseph cracked the front door and looked outside as Mike shuffled off to the bedroom. Joseph heard some crashing from where Mike had gone.
“Mike! You okay?”
Seconds later, Mike appeared from the bedroom door and hustled over to Joseph.
“Hey, genius,” he scolded, “do you think we could make an agreement right now that we won’t do anymore yelling unless it’s absolutely necessary? I thought I’d made it clear that these things are attracted to sound?”
“Sorry,” Joseph whispered. “What the hell were you doing in there?”
“There’s a big glass door at the back of the bedroom,” Mike told him. “Can’t be too sure how solid it would be if they saw us in there, so I flipped the mattress up against it. What do you see out there?”
“Nothing,” Joseph answered. “It looks dead out there.”
“Hardy-fuckin’-har,” Mike growled. “Now, if you’re done auditioning for amateur night at the Laugh Factory, you think you could move over and let me take a look?”
Mike scanned the area through the crack in the door before shutting it quietly.
“There are two of ‘em out there, at least,”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“You wouldn’t have,” Mike said, taking a ready grip on the rifle. “One is behind the back fence of the house across the street. There’s a faint shadow that doesn’t belong there. The other one is crouched behind a flowerbed in the driveway of the house on the corner to the right. From the way the shadow is moving, I think it’s feeding … so it might not bother with us.
“These things aren’t all that bright, but they’re not always slow. I tangled with one earlier today who came at me like he was walking through molasses, but the three of ‘em you helped move to the back all came at me pretty fast.”
“So what do we do?”
“Well, we can’t leave the house unsecured on both sides. It’s bad enough that the window got blown out,” Mike said, pulling the D-ring of keys from his belt loop and removing the car keys. “We can do this one of two ways. You can head for the vehicle while I lock up the door or you can hang with me and cover my rear while I lock up and then we can head to the Blazer together.”
“Let’s do that.”
“What?”
“The second one. I think sticking together is a better idea.”
“If we’re gonna do that, I have to know that
you’re not gonna lose your nerve and take off on me.”
“I won’t. I’ve got it under control now … I promise.”
“You’re sure?”
“If one of them comes at us, I’ll stay behind you and put it down.”
“Good enough for me,” Mike agreed as he held out the baseball bat. “Tuck that thing in your waistband and take this. If they come at us, it could be from the direction of the car. You’ll have to beat ‘em down with this. Think you can do that?”
“I got it.”
“Okay, we move on three”
“One.”
Joseph gripped the bat, his knuckles white.
“Two.”
Mike placed his hand on the doorknob.
“THREE!”
Mike pulled the door open and let Joseph out first. As he pulled the door shut and fumbled with the keys, Joseph positioned himself at Mike’s back, bat at the ready over his shoulder. Mike slipped the key in the hole as a low howl came from somewhere across the street.
“I think the one across the street hears us.”
“Stay cool, Joe,” Mike said as he turned the key in the lock, brought it back home, and pulled it free. “Go … GO!”
Joseph made a beeline for the passenger side as Mike ran for the driver’s. The car beeped and the parking lights flashed as Mike depressed a button on the keychain.
“It’s open.”
“Here they come!” Joseph shouted as a short figure came sprinting from behind the house across the street.
“Get in!” Mike barked at him. Joseph did as he was told and slammed the door shut behind him. “Hang on!” Mike yelled as the engine roared to life. He threw it into 4-wheel-drive and slammed the accelerator. The charging figure bounced off the grill as they sped out of the gravel drive.
“Was that?” Joseph began.
“One of them? Oh-yeah.”
“How do you know?”
“Would a normal person charge directly at an SUV and not even try to get out of the way?”
“Well put,” Joseph said with heavy breaths, his chest gripped by another sudden yet still unfamiliar surge of adrenaline.
“We’ll hit Sutherlands, the hardware store, first,” Mike suggested. “It’s the closest to us.”
* * *
Mike drove at considerably faster speeds than Joseph considered safe. He raced out of Lakeside City along the same route that Joseph had come in on. Even though he didn’t have Mike’s obvious years of military training and combat experience, the young business intern began carefully scanning his surroundings. Joseph glanced over at the smoking wreckage as they passed and wondered if anyone had even called the police about it. The neighborhood appeared to be totally abandoned, quiet and still in a way that disturbed Joseph. He expected to at least see some of those things walking around, even if the normal people had all taken to hiding. Assuming of course, they weren’t all dead.
The road was clear, too. No one seemed to think that driving the backwoods route of Highway 79, running to and from Archer City, was much of an escape plan. Mike cranked the steering wheel to the left as he hit the intersection, gunned the engine, and pulled a fishtail turn onto the road like a Hollywood stuntman.
“You normally drive like this?” Joseph said nonchalantly, but still instinctively braced himself with the door handle.
“Nope. But this ain’t exactly a normal day.”
“Not to tell you what to do or anything, but won’t driving like this attract even more attention — I mean from normal people and the crazed ones? Not to mention the cops.”
Mike thought about this for a second and decided to err on the side of caution, slowing down to a more reasonable speed. He blew past the funeral home with the dozen or so walking flesh eaters still milling about the premises. The new Wal-Mart Supercenter around the corner didn’t even register with Mike; his mind was tunneled in on getting to the hardware store. They reached Southlands hardware in record time. Mike zipped through the back half of the parking lot and stopped haphazardly, crossing a number of yellow lines, out in the “boonies.” He’d left plenty of room between them and the entrance.
“Why so far out?” Joseph asked; the distance made him feel exposed and vulnerable.
“We won’t get boxed in by some moron this way,” Mike said, pulling the key out of the ignition and opening the door. “I don’t wanna get eaten because some dumbass who’s compensating for a small penis doesn’t know how to park well enough to leave us some space. You comin’?”
Joseph opened his door and climbed out. The alarm chirped twice as Mike hit the keychain button to lock the doors. Joseph rounded the Blazer and noticed Mike had left the archaic rifle in the vehicle. He extended the bat to Mike, who took it without a word.
They walked toward the entrance, their movement almost too slow for them to look normal. They kept their eyes moving, looking between cars. About thirty feet ahead of them, a person shuffled out from between a full size pickup truck and a minivan. His head hung low, as though depressed, or as if he might be looking for something on the ground. The young man turned to face Joseph and Mike without lifting his head. His AC/DC T-shirt was ripped from collar to left sleeve. Blood soaked the bleached hair of his goatee and poured over the screen-print logo. Joseph couldn’t see a bite, but had not a doubt in his mind the man was infected. Joseph raised the Desert Eagle and pulled the trigger … the trigger didn’t budge. He tried again with the same result.
The young man began moving toward him.
“Quit messing around and shoot him,” Mike scolded.
“I’m trying. It’s not working.”
Mike sidestepped and held the bat at the ready. He waited for the attacker to get close. The man reached out to grab Joseph. Mike stepped forward. He swung for the fences, putting his whole body behind the blow. Wood connected solidly with the back of the man’s head. He pitched forward, falling on his face. He twitched once then remained completely still. Mike raised the bat straight overhead and brought it down one last time, turning the man’s head into a splattered mess of blood and bone.
“Give me the damn gun,” Mike said angrily. He snatched the weapon out of Joseph’s hand and held out the bat. “Here. By the way, the safety was still on, genius. Why didn’t you just tell me you didn’t know how to use a gun?”
Joseph took the bat without complaint, feeling a bit stupid. Mike turned and started walking towards the store again. Joseph stayed close behind him.
“Once we get inside,” Mike said over his shoulder, “grab some axe handles and I’ll head over to the …”
“Nonononono. Uh-uh. I think we’ve established that, for the moment, staying together is the better plan.”
Mike didn’t argue. He tucked the pistol into the back of his waistband as they walked into door marked ENTRANCE. To the left stood another pair of doors marked EXIT. Just in case there were normal people inside, they both did their best to look as inconspicuous as possible … and failed miserably. Joseph, bloody bat in one hand, grabbed a green plastic shopping cart once they got inside, while Mike looked at the overhead aisle signs. They quickly located the aisle for axes and sledgehammers.
Joseph stood ready with the baseball bat while Mike pulled armfuls of axes, axe handles, and multi-sized sledge hammers from the shelf and dumped them in the cart.
“Hatchets,” Joseph said, nodding to the racks of handheld, steel hatchets. Mike pulled down as many as he could in one grab and dropped them into the cart.
A sudden clatter gave them a start. It sounded as if someone had knocked over a display. The two men looked at each other in silence. Mike signaled for Joseph to follow him. He reached into the cart and pulled out one of the hatchets. Joseph tightened his grip on the bat. Another crash came from other side of the store, the sound of many metal items hitting the concrete floor, as if a dozen crowbars had been dropped.
“What else do we need?” Joseph asked just above a whisper.
“Hammers and other tools.”
&nb
sp; “I have plenty of tools in my car,” Joseph said, looking to the far end of the aisle.
“Okay, but I think we can both agree that hammers are gonna be a handy item to have,” Mike said.
“Agreed … Let’s just get the hammers and get the hell outta here.”
Mike started to nod, but something made him freeze. Joseph slowly turned when he realized Mike was looking past him. A woman, obviously injured, staggered toward the EXIT door. She gasped and whimpered with fear and pain. Two more figures charged down the aisle and tackled her to the floor. She didn’t scream, but only let out a pleading grunt as she disappeared under her ravenous attackers.
“Wait here and watch the door. We’ll make too much noise trying to lug that cart around. I’m going for the hammers. We’ll make a beeline for the door when I get back,” Mike said.
Before Joseph could protest, Mike slipped away with feline stealth. Joseph crouched behind the cart and waited. He kept one eye over his shoulder to make sure nothing came up behind him. He hated himself for it, but he found his attention focused on the two that were feeding.
Maybe getting to a cop isn’t such a good idea. After all, where the hell are they? I might be better off staying with Mike. He might be completely psychotic … but maybe that’s not such a bad thing, given the situation.
A hand touched Joseph’s shoulder and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He immediately spun around, bringing up the butt of the bat. He stopped just short of jamming it into Mike’s face. The former Marine took firm hold of Joseph’s forearms.
“Whoa, easy, killer,” Mike whispered. “Decent reflexes, even if they were a little late. At least you didn’t scream. Come on, let’s go.” Joseph relaxed and Mike released him.
They scooted the cart up and Mike peered around the corner. The pair that was feeding seemed fairly preoccupied with devouring their kill. Mike wondered if they would pay them any mind at all.
