by S. P. Durnin
“Wait until they’re at thirty yards, then pick your targets and shoot slowly,” Jake reassured the shaken guards. “This will be just like we practiced. Breath, aim, squeeze, repeat. Just take your time and I doubt we’ll even go through one magazine each putting those things down.”
“There must be a hundred—” One of the women, a brunette with curly hair and a face made for easy smiles prior to the zombies, began.
Penny cut her off. “So? That’s only, what? Twelve each?”
That surprised the brunette. Blinking at Carson’s easy reply, she knelt, raised her weapon, and sighted carefully downrange at the approaching creatures.
Jake smiled thinly and acquired a sight picture of his own between the eyes of one of the things closing in. “Fire on three.”
He counted in a loud, clear voice then pulled the Hammer’s trigger. Seven guns echoed his, sending hollow-pointed projectiles into the small herd at high speeds. Not every shot scored a skull. Jake and his companions were far more accurate than the other guards, but even they still missed occasionally as well. Moving targets were more difficult to hit, after all.
Strangely enough, Jake found ventilating zombie heads was almost soothing, in a disturbing and twisted way. Fear and horror could eventually cripple a normal person emotionally, causing their psyche to fracture—or even shut down—and leaving them unable to function. To avoid such trauma, the survivors made it a practice to daily engage in some sort of recreational amusement. Be that a “girls night” as the ladies had the evening prior, cards, board games, or even—Foster’s Favorite—target practice. Many an evening after dinner George, Elle, and her nineteen year old boyfriend, Leo Salazar, could be found at one of Langley’s walls taking pot shots at the occasional distant zombie. The aged fixer made it a point to drag along two or three of Mooney’s people—even if they’d been on guard duty prior that day—and that habit paid off now.
Your average person doesn’t realize that effectively using a firearm is a skill. If you don’t practice it on a regular basis (at least weekly, if not daily), that skill deteriorates. Once that happens, you lose your muscle memory and—when you get dropped into the shit storm—you get crapped up.
George had been quite firm with Jake and the other members of their group at least partially developing their abilities, prior to them leaving his Ohio safe house. He’d put them all through a grueling, forty-five day crash course in his subterranean motor pool/gun range, beginning with the basics of weapon safety and moving on to stress shooting. When they failed—and fail they did—the survivors got to do push-ups, or sit-ups, or run another ten laps around the motor pool. This not only encouraged them to become highly aware of their surroundings and their companions positions, but also drastically improved their physiques. The combination of high-calorie food-stuffs and rigorous exercise had caused them to shed much of their “baby fat” and built lean muscle at an accelerated rate. While upping their endurance and strength levels exponentially, this also—at least in Jake’s private opinion—really made a difference when it came to simple physical attractiveness. Especially when it came to the more appealing parts of the female anatomy.
While Jake admitted he was most certainly what was termed a nice guy, he was still a guy. And he wasn’t blind either.
It wasn’t long before the hundred horrors outside the wall lay rotting on the humid August pavement, no longer mobile. Jake was pleased that his prediction had almost been accurate. Some of them had found it necessary to change out magazines once or twice during the short, one-sided firefight. Penny and Sampson hadn’t, but two of the five other defenders had, along with Jake himself. In his defense however, the Hammer did only hold ten rounds.
“Not bad.” Foster said.
O’Connor nearly jumped out of his skin. “Jesus! When the hell…?
“I been standin’ here for the last few minutes, boy.” George sucked at his Cuban then sent a lazy smoke ring over his right shoulder. “Thought I’d have a look at how y’all been holdin’ up when it came to what I taught ya’.”
Jake worked on getting his heart-rate under control again. “Dammit, it’s bad enough Kat does that to me! Every, damn day! Next time cough or something! I almost soiled myself...”
“Don’t be a pansy,” The older man motioned beyond the wall, “You’re a grown-ass man. Come on. If you can clench yer’ sphincter up again, I’ll hold yer’ hand an’ help out with the mop-work.”
This was a necessary practice more often than not. Inevitably, there were always a few of the creatures who’d had their legs blown away—or their spinal cords severed by a round—and either attempted to drag themselves onward or lay there, mouths snapping like awful, stinky paperweights. While not serious threats, it was never a good idea to leave a still-active ghoul anywhere near their defenses. Not only could the stray ribcage or femur puncture the tire of a civilian vehicle, someone could conceivably still fall victim to a “dragger.” Granted, you’d have to be moving quite slowly, likely with your eyes closed, but it was still possible.
So at Foster’s recommendation, every other day—if anyone “snuffed a maggot-head”, as he so eloquently put it—Mooney had a team of at least five individuals who would venture beyond Langley’s walls to deal with any bodies. After donning raincoats, boots, and bright yellow dish washing gloves, two would stand guard while the others made speedy work of the pacified dead. Taking into account that Langley was virtually an island (thanks to the Pensacola Dam), this was a brief process. The volunteers would simply tote them across two lanes comprising the road, heft them over the southern lip, and toss the dead over the edge into the spillway waters far below. While it wasn’t the most dignified way to dispose of what had once been a human being, there was no choice. Some days it would’ve been necessary to dig a dozen—or more—graves. The survivors couldn’t maintain such a pace, let alone bear the awful chore month after month. So the Neosho River carried the inert bodies south to wherever their final resting place might be, and Langley in general tried to ignore the growing discoloration on the southern wall of Pensacola Dam.
They couldn’t toss the bodies very far, and the nasty things tended to scrape down the concrete surface on the way down.
While the Langley defenders had done well, Foster instructed them to stay on the wall while he, Jake, Sampson, and Penny took care of the clean-up. That would provide them with a bit of security and give the townsfolk a break. Unlike the crew of the Mimi, they hadn’t seen as much up-close combat with the dead, and—while no more could be see approaching just then—they looked a little green around the gills after witnessing eight dozen ghouls stumping up to chew on their livers. The four women remained in place above; Oliver climbed into the dump truck cab and brought the engine to life. After spewing a little blueish smoke from its chromed stack, Keen put the truck into reverse and opened a three-foot opening in the barricade.
Sampson had to turn sideways to push his massive frame through the gap, but that was fine with him. If more creatures arrived, such a small opening could be defended if need be until they could seal it up.
Taking care not to slip in the pooling body fluids—or stray chunks of tissue—Jake and Henry began checking the bodies while George and Penny circled around the killing ground to cover their backs. This didn’t involve anything ridiculous, like say checking for a pulse. There was no point. Zombies, you know? It entailed making damn-sure everybody they approached would never rise again by destroying the ol’ brain-holder: O’Connor, with the chisel point of his crowbar and Sampson, with his awful sledge.
It was hard, nerve-wracking, messy work, especially since Henry had a tendency to swing his heavy hammer like he was trying to “ring the bell” at a town fair to win a cheap stuffed walrus or something.
While Henry played yet another round of Whack-a-Mole Jake speared the next cranium nearby, absently wishing he’d found a moment before they’d begun the disgusting chore t
o wrap a Vape-o-Rub smeared bandana over the lower half of his face.
Fun, little piece of trivia: The Apocalypse in general—and zombies specifically—stank. Literally. The nearest comparison Jake could come up with was if someone left a pig carcass in the sun to rot for a few days, covered it in warm, spoiled, pickle-flavored yogurt, and then dropped it into a vat of fresh human excrement. And it never went away. It was as if some inventive chemist had crop-dusted the whole world with the most awful perfume ever.
Eau de’ Butt-cheek. O’Connor grinned wryly at the thought, and gritted his teeth so he wouldn’t puke at the vile smell wafting up from goop coating the chisel end of his crowbar.
That was something else no-one took into account when it came to Zombie Doomsday scenarios. The dead weren’t particularly sanitary creatures to begin with. One: they were corpses, so they were each slowly decomposing in unpleasant and repugnant ways. Two: all of them were covered with various types of yuck. Blood, body fluids, pus from their rotting death wounds, that kind of thing. Three: every, single, one of them had a load in their shorts. Consider how badly a single person can stink up a public bathroom. Then, think about the most memorable and foulest aroma you’ve ever had the bad luck encounter in one.
Now. Multiply that by a hundred. A thousand. Ten thousand.
That’s what living—with a working olfactory sense—was like surrounded by corpses, mobile or non. Needless to say, a bottle of Fabreze was a coveted item. And in short supply.
“Watch that one on your left.” Henry bashed in another skull, sending its eyeballs bulging from their sockets to hang down the horrors now-truly dead, slack face.
Jake glanced over his shoulder and saw a one-armed ghoul attempting to claw its way over the bodies of its fellows. From what he could tell, a round had passed through the creature’s spine just below the sternum, which was why the thing couldn’t rise. This also inhibited its ability to roll, effectively limiting the zombie’s movement to a pair of snapping jaws and a vainly fumbling arm.
Stepping closer, O’Connor inspected the pathetic thing. The zombie registered his approach but, while it attempted to advance, couldn’t find purchase with only one weak and grey-fleshed limb. It had been a youngish woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with long brown hair and a slim build. He supposed the creature had been pretty in life, though it was hard to tell now. Its eyes were colorless with yellowed pupils, its long hair matted from months of exposure and filth, and the things desiccated face held absolutely nothing resembling humanity. Whatever dwelled inside the husk at his feet wasn’t a person. If pressed, Jake couldn’t even say whether or not it was really aware, or simply acting on commands somehow programmed genetically into its bug-simple brain. He squatted before it on impulse and looked inquisitively into the things milky eyes.
“Can you understand me? Are you in there at all?”
The creature continued its attempts to reach him.
“I don’t know how this happened.” Jake told it. “I don’t know if what killed you is a crazy super-virus cooked up in a government lab somewhere, or what. It could’ve been caused by a naturally occurring bacteria or disease from the Amazon I suppose. Hell, it could’ve fallen to Earth on a meteor for all we know. Or even been dispersed planet-wide by a race of super-intelligent space-badgers, who just got sick of watching us ruin the world for other life forms and decided they didn’t want the crazy humans eventually roaming around the galaxy, shitting all over other planets or something...”
Only moans came in reply.
He shook his head. “I’m feeling pretty silly here. Talking to what I pretty much know is a dead person so, if you wouldn’t mind? Don’t tell anyone. It’s just that Kat pointed out a couple months ago that we’ve never tried communicating with any of you, so I though what the hell. It’s not like you’re really that dangerous just now.”
The dead woman snapped her teeth at him.
“Oh. That wasn’t really... Well. Anyway. What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry.” Jake sighed. “I’m sorry you’re like this. I’m sorry we don’t have any way to help you. I mean, you’re dead. There’s no cure for that. No flu shot is going to help, that’s for sure. And if gene therapy has progressed far enough to do you any good, none of us know about it. I kind of doubt there’s such a thing as working Nanobots at the moment either. They’d just begun to explore that technology when all this happened anyway.”
Piss-yellow orbs followed his movement as he leaned slightly closer.
“But I can end it. I can give you... I don’t know. Peace? Rest, maybe? Or at least an end to existing like this.” Jake’s gaze bored into the dead things face. “Do you understand what’s happened to you? Are you trapped in there watching? Awake and aware of what you’ve become, like Leo suggested a while back?”
Ragged fingers clawed at the asphalt. The creature’s saliva-blackened tongue dropped from its mouth as it unknowingly bit its tip off with snapping teeth.
Jake sighed. “I guess that’s my answer.”
That was when a bullet hit the creature in the left temple, sending its brain spattering across the bodies to Jake’s right. The remaining animation went out of the thing’s eyes, and it slumped bonelessly to the surface of Pensacola Dam as he rose and snapped his head around to see Penny lowering her rifle.
“Were you talking to that thing?”
“More likely to myself,” he admitted, “Conversation was one sided, anyway. You didn’t need to do that. I had it covered.”
The ex-deputy sheriff didn’t look at all convinced. “Uh-huh. Yakking it up with a corpse doesn’t instill me with a lot of faith in you, you know.”
“It was no big deal. Just something—”
“Give me a break,” Penny cut him off, “You need to stop naval-gazing and focus. Christ, I told her it was a mistake putting you in charge again...”
Jake raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
Carson snorted. “When you miraculously came out of your fugue? I told Kat she was stupid to step down, that you weren’t capable of—”
“Is this really the time?” Henry paused in his work, but kept a wary eye on the next group of bodies.
“When is it?” She demanded.
* * *
Unknown to the rest of their little group currently outside the wall, Penny still wanted to turn their blue-haired fan of Hello Kitty’s focus away from O’Connor. She’d had a very enjoyable time on girls night, and it was possible a certain someone might be convinced to have even more if Penny could take him down a notch or two. Maybe even convince him to give up the whole leader position. Who knew what might occur if that happened? Three wasn’t always a crowd.
Carson turned to Henry. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me you’re okay with a Talks-To-Zombies over there running things?”
“He’s doing fine. Besides, he’s under a lot of stress right now.” Sampson replied.
“Yeah. I can’t imagine why.” Penny waved a fly away with one hand. There were quite a few gathering over the bodies now. “I’m sure he’s got tons of things on his mind. Maybe Rae’s right. Maybe he needs to take another swim or something, just to relieve all that pressure.”
That got Jake’s attention. “Wait. Are you…?”
“Look the fuck out!” George snapped and leveled his weapon in Penny’s direction.
The ghoul had been lying just to her right, unnoticed among a few other now-harmless bodies. There’d been no warning. None. It rose almost unbelievably quickly from beneath one of its compatriots, all grasping hands and frightful hunger, and all but tackled their pretty companion as she was focused on Jake’s growing discomfort. Wounds from multiple rounds had punctured the zombie’s torso and neck, silencing its dead vocal cords which was why it made no sound while laying pinned under two other creatures. It didn’t require a voice though. Only teeth. Teeth it now used to bite through the fabric of Penny’s je
ans and into the warm flesh of her vastus lateralis, the muscle of her outer thigh.
Her scream was ringing in Jake’s stunned ears as Foster peppered the zombie with rounds. Unable to go for a headshot for fear of hitting Carson in the process, he tried to hit its spine to at least disable the thing and render its arms useless by severing the spinal cord. That had all the effect of throwing ping-pong balls at a washing machine, which is to say, none. The creature ignored the rounds and sank its teeth deeper, worrying at Carson’s leg like a feral canine would a piece of flank steak. Penny screamed again and began using her rifle to beat at its head and shoulders, trying to knock the horror away and keep it from taking off a chunk. In her pain and shock she couldn’t get the weapon turned around to get a shot off, so she used it as an awkward club against the thing biting at her leg.
Jake and Henry both bolted towards her, ignoring the bodies and gore they ran across in an attempt to reach her before the zombie managed to do even more damage. Sampson’s heavy sledge caught it in the ribs—breaking several audibly—and sent it flying, which allowed Carson to stagger away as he supported her with one muscled arm.
Jake followed the zombie’s flight and, when it skidded to a halt on the ground, took his crowbar in both hands, leapt high over it, then drove the chisel point down at the thing’s face. His weapon’s steel tip rammed into the zombie’s skull, crunching through the nasal chocha (upper nose) at the top of its maxilla, shattering the bottom of its supraorbital foramen (forehead), and speared its rotten head to the pavement. While disabled, the creature didn’t seem willing to die right away. It batted weakly at Jake’s tactical vest as it lay pinned under him and—enraged at its attack on Penny—he began whipping the crowbar’s hook end from side to side, sending its opposite tip rotating about within the zombie’s skull like the mother of all coffee stirrers.
That had the desired, and immediate, effect. The thing quit pawing at his vest and its arms fell limp to the ground. O’Connor yanked the tool free and speared it again for good measure. His aim was a little off this time and—instead of going into the front of the zombie’s skull once more—the crowbar punctured its left eye. He felt the ghoul’s sphenoid bone pulverize as he spiked it again, then pulled the weapon free. Even though the thing was well and truly dead then, it took every bit of self-control he had to not keep stabbing it. Jake was shaking in anger and wanted to let it loose on something, but the creature was definitely beyond retribution. Body trembling, he settled for standing up and caving in the left side of its head with a rage fueled kick. His boot took the front of the zombie’s face away, and sent pieces flying off to splatter over the Dam’s northern guardrail.
