by Nathan Brown
The screen cut to footage that Mike had seen pieces of and heard about earlier—a young, panic-stricken woman with most of her ear ripped off, among other things. Joseph didn’t need or want to see any of it. He had seen enough carnage on his way out of Dallas, but he kept his eyes glued to the screen despite his repulsion.
The montage of footage was a mish-mash of pieces from professional cameramen in addition to short clips and low-resolution photos taken by amateurs with home video recorders and even camera phones. The montage started with a few shots of police officers behind their squad cars, which were completely blocking certain roads. The shot cut to a group of maniacal people surrounding and pounding on a small car with bare and bloodied fists. They broke through the driver’s side window and dragged the driver halfway out of the car. Then they fell upon their victim in mass, so much so the camera was blind to what they were doing to her. However, the woman’s screams for mercy were enough to give any viewer nightmares.
The picture cut to a small tactical unit firing teargas canisters into a group of “rioters.” The horde kept walking forward with the same toe dragging, forced steps that they’d seen more than enough times. One of the officers fired his sidearm when one female offender got too close. She took hold of his arm as he discharged his weapon. Her knee blew apart, she fell away, and her chest sprayed blood and bone as he emptied his weapon into her. The line of police officers in full riot gear began to move their barrier back. No one noticed when the woman the officer had just splattered all over the concrete stood up and rejoined the ranks of the “rioters.” Even the news anchor didn’t seem to see it, or at least didn’t say anything about it.
While Dallas and Fort Worth officers man perimeter roadblocks, National Guard and Reserve troops have been deployed to assist tactical law enforcement units dealing with the riots. As of six p.m. Central Standard Time, the President of the United States authorized the use of lethal force. All residents of the areas in and around the Metroplex have been ordered to stay indoors until further notice. We would like to emphasize to our viewers that you are advised not to make any attempt to rescue loved ones within the metroplex area.
Mike and Joseph locked eyes with one another.
“Looks like I got out of there just in time,” Joseph said.
The coverage returned to local news topics. The screen showed emergency workers crawling over a trio of wrecked cars fused into a single mound of disfigured metal. A handful of firefighters and paramedics swarmed around what looked like the bed of a pickup truck.
“I think we both know what they’re about to find,” Joseph said, holding out his hand for the remote.
“Yeah,” Mike replied, handing it over. “I think we do.”
Joseph began flipping through the channels.
Mike had already seen more than enough to know three things with absolute certainty—one, Wichita Falls wasn’t getting any safer, and Bennett was probably right that west was the safest direction to go; two, like it or not, he and the P.O.G or “Person Other than Grunt”, Joseph, stood a better chance together than individually, and three, these infected people were impervious to pain, savagely cannibalistic, and would come crawling out of the woodwork if even one of them found “food.”
He glanced up at the clock on the wall.
“I’m gonna get some shuteye,” Mike said, sliding to the floor next to the TV. “You’ve got first watch. Wake me up around two. We’re hittin’ the road ‘bout six.”
Joseph scratched the side of his face in pantomimed confusion. Mike pretended to ignore him.
“Guess you trust me after all,” Joseph said, cracking a small smile.
“Tell ya what. I wake up in one piece, the house ain’t on fire, and you’re not asleep, then I’ll think about trusting you.”
Joseph channel surfed for about an hour. He knew that nothing new, or at least worth watching, was likely to be on the tube, given the state of things. Almost every channel was running the same useless information about Dallas and a few other major cities, telling everyone to stay indoors, and/or reporting the record-breaking frequency of car wrecks. He pulled out a random DVD and dropped it in the player. Turned out … he’d chosen The Goonies. Joseph hadn’t seen it since he was a kid.
Halfway through the movie, as he watched a young Asian kid plummet into a pit only to be saved by a spring-loaded set of false teeth, a light bulb went off in Joseph’s head. He crept into the closet and pulled out every pair of old shoes that they planned to leave behind. He sat back down on the chair, removed all the shoelaces, and began rolling them up into neat bundles.
The movie ended shortly before 1 a.m. Joseph browsed through the modest O’Connell family film library and selected another. Before he pushed play, he decided to go into the kitchen to get a pair of scissors and a plastic storage bag.
Joseph pulled the bedroom door closed behind him as he left. These things were like moths; they were attracted to any light or sound. He couldn’t think of anything else that would have gotten those things’ attention earlier. They had already made the mistake of leaving the front door open and the living room light turned on when they’d loaded their bags in the Blazer. It wasn’t a mistake Joseph planned to repeat.
The smell of death wafted from the back rooms, making him want to gag. He could hear the moaning and wailing of several of them as he passed the main entry hall. The sounds were too faint for them to be trying to get in. Joseph kept one eye over his shoulder just in case.
He moved slowly and stealthily into the kitchen, as though he was trying to sneak up on a late night prowler. He knelt to open the sink cabinet door … which, of course, creaked. Joseph cringed at the sound. A full minute passed before he did anything more than look side-to-side and listen. He didn’t hear anything to indicate that they’d heard him. He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. The outlines of sandwich and storage bag boxes were barely visible in the small amount of light escaping from under the bedroom door. He found storage bags in front on the left.
Joseph placed the box on the floor next to his booted foot. He shut the cabinet doors; they closed with a low squeak. He felt around for the countertop knife stand, where he remembered seeing a pair of scissor handles earlier.
Scissors and box in hand, he stole his way back to the bedroom. He opened the door just far enough to squeeze through. There was a soft click as the door latched into place. He pushed the towel back into its position along the bottom of the door and returned to his chair. He pushed play on the second movie, made sure the volume was as low as possible for him to hear, and unhooked the ice pick from his belt.
Joseph cut the end off one of the shoelaces. He wrapped it tightly around the handle of the ice pick. The string slipped a little when he tested it. He unwrapped it and started over. Slowly, he wrapped the shoelace around the handle, stopping every quarter turn to pull the shoelace tight. On the final turn he wrapped it around his pinky in order to leave a little slack for him to feed the extra string through. He fed the excess through the loop and secured it with a jerk. This time, when he tested it, the cording didn’t slip. He left about half-an-inch of the shoelace sticking out, tied it into a knot, and cut off what was left.
Joseph packed the remaining shoelaces into a plastic storage bag and shoved it into the backpack Mike had given him. He settled back into the chair and propped his feet up on Mike’s vacant seat. He’d chosen The Monster Squad, though he failed to find the irony. When the movie ended, Joseph stood up and stretched. The clock read 2:45am.
Crap … I should’ve woke him up already. Lucky bastard just got an extra 45 minutes of sleep.
“Mike wake up. It’s your turn for watch,” Joseph said, touching Mike’s shoulder.
Mike’s eyes snapped open and he lashed out instinctively, putting Joseph in a painful wristlock. He let go almost immediately, soon realizing where he was and what he was doing.
“Sorry man,” Mike said sincerely, “Should have warned you. Don’t touch me when I’
m sleeping.”
“Least you didn’t break it,” Joseph said, cradling his tender right hand. “By the way, it’s almost three, and I didn’t fall asleep.”
Mike looked at the clock then at the TV.
“What do you want, a cookie? I told you to wake me at two and you even managed to screw that up.”
“Sorry, man,” Joseph explained. “I wanted to make sure that all the monsters got sucked into limbo.”
“What?”
“Monster Squad.”
Mike just stood there, rubbed his eyes, and shot a sideways glance at Joseph.
“Get some sleep, Joe. You’re driving first leg,” Mike yawned, then said with a smirk, “Besides, it’s the monsters out there we gotta worry about.”
Dead Come Home
Chapter 8
A Good Idea at the Time
Well … It sounded like a good idea at the time, Mike would later think to himself.
The small town of Seymour had looked all but abandoned. Short of the tell-tale signs of past horrors that littered the streets, the place looked like a ghost town. At first, Mike had initially felt relieved to see that their drive through Seymour would be fairly trouble free. Then he’d seen four gigantic red letters painted across the white bricks of a small mason structure—G-U-N-S.
Guns they had, but Mike knew they were going to need more ammunition before they reached their destination at Hanse’s remote safe house in Arizona. They had a few hundred rounds for his father’s old Winchester. However, they only had about 50 rounds for the 9mm and the Desert Eagle had just a full clip of eight rounds.
As Mike scanned the vacant streets, those large red letters screamed opportunity. If they could loot a few more weapons, at least a shotgun or two (or three or four), and load up on as much ammo as they could find, he knew they’d be much better off.
“Slow it down a bit,” Mike said.
“What’s up? You see somethin’?”
“Yeah … a big red fuckin’ sign that says GUNS!”
“I thought the plan was to blow through town unnoticed?”
“Unnoticed? Look around you, man. Who’s here to notice us?”
“But we already have guns.”
“Guns, yes. But what ammo we have is gonna run out soon enough. And it wouldn’t hurt for us to have some shotguns on board. Round the block.”
“What?”
“Go … around … the block. Let’s make sure there ain’t a mob of dead guys waiting around the corner before we go exposing ourselves.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Say what?”
“Dead guys.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t know that shit for sure! These people might not be dead.”
“Yeah … these people are still just crazy, right? Most of whom have miraculously survived fatal wounds?”
“I get your point, Mike. But it just sounds crazy when you say it like that.”
“Okay … can I call them zombies?”
“…Yeah … Actually, that works for me.”
“Okay. So zombies it is … and that doesn’t sound crazy to you?”
“No … now that you mention it, I guess it doesn’t … weird, huh?”
Joseph turned right and brought the vehicle around the block. Every street they went down was just as empty as the first.
“See? We hit the store, snatch as much ammo as we can, and grab a few shotguns if they have any left.”
“Sounds easy.”
And it had been easy. They’d driven into the side alley and found a back door to the building so they weren’t exposed on the street. They’d smashed in the door with one of the sledgehammers and gone to work. The place was pretty slim on stock, but they’d been able to come away with a few boxes of .44 rounds for the Desert Eagle, as well as a pair of pump action Mossberg 12 gauges and two double-barrel 10 gauges. There had been plenty of shells for both, enough to fill two small duffle bags.
Mike had noticed that the store had a plethora of .38 caliber rounds. So he filled up another duffel bag and grabbed a snub-nosed .38 revolver, not bothering to load it. It was the only .38 caliber firearm in the place, which probably explained why there was such a surplus of ammo for it.
I guess that, when the world is going to hell, Mike had thought, everybody wants to have the biggest guns.
Mike sent Joseph on to the Blazer with the last few duffel bags of ammo and gave the shop one last inspection. He was ecstatic to find an AR-15 assault rifle, in pristine condition, hidden in a compartment behind the counter. However, his enthusiasm quickly faded when he realized there was no ammo for it. After a short moment of internal debate, he decided to leave the rifle behind and stepped out into the alley.
What he saw sent chills running up his spine.
Joseph had locked himself in the SUV, now encircled by well over a dozen zombies. They were beginning to rock the vehicle and Mike worried that they might be able to flip the Blazer onto its side. He also feared more would be coming soon, from only God knew where.
They must’ve been hunkered together in one of these nearby buildings when they heard us bash down the door.
Mike got their attention when he picked the first one off with a blast from the Desert Eagle. He had to be extra careful in his aim, shooting so close to the vehicle. One round through the engine block, he knew, would be more than enough to bring their journey to a very abrupt halt. The zombies turned away from Joseph and the Blazer, and began lumbering towards the more available meal. As they came away from the vehicle, Mike zigzagged as he shot, doing his best to fire at wide angles so as to avoid hitting the vehicle. Unfortunately, this made it extremely difficult to get off a solid shot. He fired eight times, and only managed to put down six of them … not his best moment as a marksman. Soon enough, he found himself wishing he had taken a moment to load the .38 revolver, which sat empty in his pocket.
Mike now found himself standing alone. Wisps of smoke curled upwards from the open slide of the pistol in his hand. He was out of ammo, and had yet to break his way clear to the vehicle where Joseph was waiting. He looked over the heads of the zombies before him and could see his new “partner in crime” arise from the sunroof of the vehicle. Seconds later, he saw Joseph draw out the Winchester.
Is he gonna try to shoot them off of me? Oh, SHIT! He IS!!!
“Don’t you even think about it!” he scolded loudly as the undead assailants sauntered towards him.
Joseph lowered the rifle and gave Mike a questioning, hands up gesture, as if to say “What the hell?”
“You just stay put!” Mike commanded with a pointed finger. He shoved his pistol home in its holster and reached for the hatchet at his hip. “You won’t do anything but draw their attention back to the vehicle. I’m fine!”
A quick scan of the situation and Mike had a headcount of six. He thought about the odds and remembered that he’d gone toe-to-toe with almost as many angry Bosnian soldiers in the not-so-distant past. And he’d been drunk at the time, not to mention that those Bosnian boys he scuffled with had been combat trained, young, fast, and (perhaps most importantly) alive. These things were slow, clumsy, and dumb as rocks.
I should be able to handle this easily enough with close combat.
The comfort of this thought didn’t last long. He could handle the situation, yes. However, he didn’t like the idea that a single bite or scratch would be the end of him. Fighting at close quarters is a dirty business, and Mike recalled the injuries he’d walked away with from that brawl in the Balkans. His face and neck had been scratched up something fierce, and he’d suffered a pretty nasty bite wound that left a lasting impression on his left forearm. In the situation he now faced, he could not afford any such wounds. Mike knew he’d have to do this quick, and somehow keep clear of their fingernails and teeth. As he contemplated the what-ifs, his assailants continued to draw closer.
No pressure, Mike. But thinkin’ ain’t exactly doin’. And this might be a helluva good ti
me to move your ass and start doin’ somethin’!
Mike adjusted his grip on the hatchet and shuffled closer to the advancing zombies, making sure to provide appealing enough bait to keep them coming. He waited for one to draw closer than the others, waited for one to reach out for him … and he didn’t have to wait long. The fastest of the group proved, oddly enough, to be a considerably fat fucker, and his girth was making it hard for the others to maneuver around him. He reached out for Mike, grabbing at him with nothing but a thumb, a pinky, and a few bloody stumps. Apparently, his other digits had been gobbled up as “finger food,” if you’ll excuse the pun.
Mike stepped back and to the side, just out range. The fat zombie overreached, causing his head and shoulders to come farther forward than the rest of his body. His target now available, Mike brought the hatchet down with as much force as he could. The skull split open like a rotten coconut. The impact made a squishing sound that was almost sickening. Certain that his first attacker was down for good, Mike immediately recovered and prepared to repeat this process. It was then that he noticed a shadow moving across the tarmac extremely close to his own. Problem was … the sun was to his back. Which meant …
“Check your back side!” Joseph called out from the SUV.
Mike’s training took over. He raised his left elbow, shifted his weight, and pivoted on the ball of his right foot, catching the zombie sneaking up at his back across the face, briefly stunning it. Mike brought the hatchet around and caught the rotting flesh eater at center ear. No sound of a cracking skull this time, no sickening rotten-coconut-squish. The hatchet blade stuck in place, embedded in the side of the zombie’s head. To make matters worse, Mike realized that his strike had somehow managed to miss the brain and spine, since the thing was still moving. And, for all he knew, there were still five more coming his way, slowly but surely, from behind.
