Unhappy Endings

by Chris Philbrook

  I heard Ryan trying to get my attention so I spun around to see the mob that we had avoided earlier descending on our area. They were probably twenty yards from the car, so I had a few minutes. I yelled for Ryan to pop the trunk. He leaned over and did so. I looked inside and saw a first aid kit, a few cardboard boxes, shotgun shells, .45 cal shells, and a few more items that I didn’t have time to look through. The dead were getting closer and I had to scoot. I grabbed a few boxes of both ammos and jumped in the driver’s seat. I slammed the door and the dead started to pound on the hood of the car. They began to circle us, so I locked the door.

  “Wow,” I said out loud. Ryan let out a long, appreciative sigh and melted into the car seat out of exhaustion. I could hear them pounding all around us, so I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. I knew we’d be safe in here because police squad cars were built like brick shithouses. That means that it takes an awful lot to bring one down. I opened my eyes and nearly shit my pants when I saw a zombie head in my rear view mirror. Ryan let out a holler and turned to get away from it. Sure as shit, there was a zombie in the backseat of the police cruiser and we never even noticed it. The thin layer of Plexiglass was all that was keeping it held back and it actually saved our lives—had this been a normal car, we’d both be snack food right now. My nose finally registered the smell of shit and vomit, causing me to dry heave for just a second. The zombie was slowly moving its head against the glass and chomping its teeth at us, just like that dead woman we saw about twenty minutes ago. The only difference between the two is that this zombie had its hands cuffed behind its back and it was quite comical to see it moving around. Ryan and I both looked to each other and started to laugh hysterically. We both needed this. I wiped the tears from my eyes and took off my backpack.

  “Let’s get to my house. Then let’s go find your girlfriend,” I finally said. Ryan nodded and slowly put his seatbelt on.

  For the first time in three days, we finally had the upper hand.

  And Then There Was This Time

  Dennis Pekkala

  "Hey Bobby what you got for me?”

  “A swift kick in the ass if you keep it up, I’ve told you time and again Harper my name is Robert," said the man as he entered the room. For Robert the passage of time had not been kind, especially after recent events. He had more wrinkles, more gray than not, and a lot less hair to go around.

  “Did you bring me anything to drink? I’d kill for a rum and coke, hell I’d kill for a PBR.”

  “You know there’s none to be had here. I did bring ya a thermos of Kool-aid though, made with REAL sugar!” said Robert with a smile.

  “Ohhhhhh… you’re spoiling me Robbie, give me that sweet thing.”

  Robert handed it over with a smile. Harper quickly poured himself a cup and took a drink. He spat it right back out.

  “GRAPE! You KNOW I hate grape. I’m starting to think you don’t like me,” Harper griped and glared at Robert.

  If there is one thing that time has taught Robert, it’s a proper shit-eating grin. “Nawww I don’t dislike you Harper, you just have an ‘acquired taste.' So what did you want to talk to me about?”

  “I don’t know, don’t care either, I just wanted to TALK to someone, a guy could go crazy with all the solitude nowadays. Come on man all I want to do is jaw with you for a while” Harper held the cup out to Robert. “Sit and drink with me for a bit?”

  “God no… I’ll sit and talk with you, but I’m not touching that stuff, battery acid tastes better than grape Kool-aid.” Robert pulled up a chair from the room's sparse furniture. “So where were we last time? The zombie stuck in a swimming pool?”

  Harper laughed. “Yeah that was hilarious, stupid fuck stuck in 12 feet of water trying to catch the toy motor boat I was driving around the pool. Good times. Oh and then there was this time I found a TON of explosives in the basement of a house some army guys were using before they bit it. Saying I had a blast would be a complete understatement.”

  Robert rubbed his forehead. He could already tell today was gonna be a long day. “Alright lay it on me.”

  “Ok so this happened about a couple months or so after this all started, while I’m combing through a neighborhood for supplies. I noticed this military humvee at the end of the street. The place was boarded up tight and there were LOTS of DEAD people in the front lawn. After I called out and got no response I pried my way in and found the place literally shot to pieces. Seemed like someone died one way or another and then started in on his friends. Three of the guys inside were down and out but the fourth I had to finish with my crowbar, then I made sure the place was clear.

  That place was a gold mine of useful stuff, but the best find was a case of grenades AND a couple blocks of C4! Oh YEAH! I had me some fun with that! I found myself a tall brick apartment building with a large adjacent parking lot. Slapped the C4 to a car, wailed on the horn and made my way to the roof of the apartment. When the silent masses came to investigate, BOOM! That explosion put all those action movies to shame. Then came the next wave of zombies. A couple grenades later, they were just a pile of shredded bodies.

  Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Laugh maniacally. That was a great day. Wish I still had one of those grenades. That joker Raymond from 3rd shift deserves to have one shoved down his throat. Let's see him make a wisecrack then.” Harper glared at the door as if he expected the asshole to show up any second.

  “Hey give the guy a break, he has a job to do, we all handle stress differently. Ray is a pureblood smartass, no denying that, but when he’s stressed his cracks get sharper.” Robert said in an attempt to placate Harper, who only grunted in return. “What else you got for me today?”

  “Let me think… well there was this time I dressed a zombie up as a clown.”

  “You what?”

  “Dressed a zombie up like a clown,” Harper said grinning.

  “…”

  “Let me finish and you’ll be laughing right along with me. So one day when I was in a mood I decided to do the most random thing I could think of; dress a zombie up like a clown, place them on a huge Slip-n’-Slide, and record the resulting hilarity for posterity. I found this one zed off by his lonesome, I trapped him under a blanket and I CAREFULLY gagged and tied him up. One rainbow wig, clown suit, shoes and make up later… and we have a winner! I combined several Slip-n-Slides into a fifty foot square in the middle of some parking lot, hosed that down. A quick snip of the bonds, a hard shove and Bozo was ready for his return to stardom.”

  “Proof or it never happened,” Robert chided a grin.

  “The tape should be with the rest of my stuff I had when I came here, ask Raymond he should know where it’s at. Anyway whenever I moved along the edge of the slide, Bozo would attempt to get at me, but every time he managed to stand up, within a step he wiped right back out. This goes on for about an hour before Bozo is too beaten up from all his trips to the pavement that the best he can manage is a crawl… right into a face plant. This would have been an instant YouTube hit if the internet was still around.” Harper practically glowed imagining the hit count his video would've received had the world been as it should.

  “Haha I bet. I seem to remember you mentioning that you hooked up with another group of survivors at some point?”

  “Way to go buzz kill, just what I didn’t want to think about.” Harper sighed. “Yeah, so early on a dozen of us stayed in this shitty two bedroom house. Only reason I willingly stayed in that cramped a space was because of the brick walls and the bars on the windows. There was the three from the Evans family; mom, dad and son. A couple of college kids. An elderly couple from across the street. Some random schmuck. And THEN there was Derryl and his two drinking buddies.

  We had been cooped up in that house for a little over a week when the Evans kid ran out of asthma medicine. Sure enough the kid had a major episode and suffocated. This was before I knew that the dead got back up from more than a bite. The mother was holding the kid and sobbing uncontrollably, her scream
s of joy at her sons sudden return to life was short lived when he tore her throat out. In the resulting panic one of the college kids and the schmuck got bit as well.”

  Harper stops for a short while and stared at Robert. “Sometimes I really HATE how you poke and prod. Sometimes it feels like you do it just to pick my brain.”

  Robert just shrugged.

  “Humph. So anyway it took a while before the Good Ol’Boys sprung into action. They clubbed mother and son 'til they stopped moving and strong-armed the other two that were bitten into one of the rooms. After seeing the kid turn without being bit Derryl and his buddies saw the elderly couple as a threat and wanted to get rid of them. With the commotion we made there were zombies surrounding the house and there was no sending them on their way to look for another place to stay. The only option as they saw it was to club them right along with the others that got bit.

  Needless to say this didn’t go over real well, and in all the commotion someone stuck a knife in Derryl’s shoulder. And if that wasn’t enough the asshole was right, the excitement was too much for the old bird, cause granny keeled over right then and there. Let's do the math; two dead-dead, two soon to be dead, one dead about to become undead, one distraught father, one distraught grandpa, one freaked out college kid, one bleeding buffoon, two angry stooges, and the whole neighborhood pounding on the doors, leaving me to somehow get the hell outta there before things got REALLY bad.

  Just as it's about to really kick off between dad, gramps, college boy and Derryl’s crew, before I could attempt to make a break for it granny raises up enough to bite my hand. Well, more accurately she attempted to gum my hand. Oh thank God for old age,” Harper said as he shuddered. “I pulled my bruised hand back, I kicked her in the face, said fuck this then I ran down the hall and locked myself in the master bedroom. By the sounds that followed it seemed Derryl and his crew pummeled the others but apparently someone attempted to leave the house letting the other dead in. The sound of the dead… eating… is indescribable. I was holed up in that room for at least four days. Thankfully we had kept some food and water in there.

  After the fourth day I couldn’t stand it anymore. I yanked out the closet rod to use as a club and once the place was quiet I made a break for it. I hit anything that got directly in my path and ran past everything else. Thankfully the keys were in Derryls truck out front, the one good thing the douche bag did right. I drove until I was damn near out of gas, found an empty house that was isolated from any others and stayed there for a while. From then on I avoided the living right up until you guys found me.”

  Robert cocked his head to the side. “Considering what you went through, what makes you comfortable being around us?”

  “Well Rob Zombie, truth be told I was starting to lose it a bit out there by myself. Plus you guys got your shit together, and this facility is about as zombie proof as you can get.”

  “Glad to hear you approve of the accommodations here.” Robert smiled. “Any adventures that just about result with you ending as zombie food?”

  “Other than my brush with death during the 'Derryl Debacle?' I would have to say it was the time I was running over zombies and both tires on the right side blew at the same time on that humvee I found. What made that situation worse is that when the tires went it sent the humvee right into a parked car. In the crash my knee went right into the steering column. Attempting to out run a horde of those shambling bastards with a bum knee was anything but a breeze. More than a few times they made swipes at my back but thankfully none of them could grab hold."

  “You are one lucky mother fucker you know that? Cheating death at every turn.”

  The comment managed to wipe the smile off of Harper's face. Harper glanced at Robert before lowering his head and staring at his feet. “Honestly I don’t know how I survived as long as I did considering all the shit that I pulled. But I have the feeling someone was watching over me. It was like in those old cartoons, a little angel standing on my shoulder giving me advice, telling me what to do and that no matter what I was going to be ok.”

  “Hmm so you think an angel protected you from harm during your various ‘adventures’?” Robert asked.

  “Maybe, I dunno but you wanna know what else? It was like the Devil was on my other shoulder saying, ‘Yeah listen to the White, you’re gonna be fine, go big or go home bitch. Enjoy yourself, you’re only gonna live once, so strap a lawnmower to your chest and SHRED that group of zombies into little bits.’ And before you ask no, I did not strap a lawnmower to my chest and go to town on a zombie, that’s just stupid.”

  “Good to see you’re not crazy enough to actually do that,” laughed Robert.

  “A steam roller works much better anyway… what? Lionel was a pussy and there is no way in hell that a lawnmower would get the job done in the first place. It was that experience with the humvee that led me to find that steam rollers are the BOSS for running down zombies left and right. Fortify the cab, get that puppy going at a good clip and enjoy as 12 tons of steel barrels through masses of the undead with ease. Hahaha, I gotta take you for a ride one of these days. At least through that near death experience I found the mother of all rides for a zombie apocalypse.” Harpers million dollar smile said it all. He’d finally rendered the Doc speechless. “Earth to Bert come in Bert, say something before I brain you.”

  “Fuck… You…” Robert said as he shook his head. “You are a special kind of crazy you know that? You don’t know when to quit, but then again that’s probably what got you here. Any idea how abnormal it is to deliberately put yourself in dangerous situations on the ‘feeling’ that nothing could go wrong?”

  “Never thought about it, but I’ll say this, I’ll take God’s love and the Devil’s luck any day if it means I get to see tomorrow. That being said, as fun as killing zombies in new and exciting ways was, I’m glad you guys found and took me in. I finally feel safe enough to sleep through the night without the constant fear that the tiniest sound is one of those bastards creeping up on me. I know I’m safe here but I still can’t shake the feeling that something bad is about to happen, and I’m talking thick shit like the day it all started.” For a brief moment Harper scanned the room to reassure himself that there were no zombies.

  “Hey don’t worry about it. Between the walls, gates and security guards nothing is getting in here,” replied Robert after seeing Harper’s worried looks. “My shift is about up, got anything pressing to get off your chest before I go?”

  “Other than to tell you to scrounge me up a god damn beer for your next visit… nope. Send Dumbass my regards”

  “Right… I’ll see what I can do. You gonna give me an idea of what to expect for next time?” Asked Robert as he headed towards the door.

  “Well there was this time that I used these bear traps to…”

  *****

  On his way out of the room Robert closed and locked the door behind him. He walked down the brightly lit hall passing by one of the guards. He nodded to him in greeting. At the end of the hall was the staff lounge. There were about a dozen people seated about the room, a couple on the couch, others seated around various tables. Robert walked up to the counter and picked up a mug of coffee. Once fixed with cream and sugar he leaned against the counter and took a sip. A man at one of the tables waved Robert over to sit with him.

  “Hey Bobby how’s it goin'?” asked the man.

  “Fuck you, Sunshine,” replied Robert as he took his seat. It was always the same old song and dance with Ray. Having known each other for years, Ray was the only one that got away with calling him Bobby.

  “Yeah that’s right I’m a fuckin' ray of sunshine. So, how’d it go with Harper?” asked Ray sarcastically.

  “You know, ‘And then there…’”

  “‘… was this time,' yeah but you gotta admit his stories are pretty entertaining.”

  “In a morbid sort of way. It would be a lot more entertaining if they weren’t all about zombies and the end of the world as we know it.�
�� Robert sighed.

  “Well what do you expect? The man’s a fucking head case. He bashed that old guy's head in so bad that they had to identify him through his dental records and even then most of his teeth were either on the sidewalk or in his stomach. It still amazes me that he did it right in front of a cop, and when he was being dragged off the man’s corpse he was yelling that he wouldn’t have done it if, ‘the pig had did his fucking job and shot the zombie in the head’. I shudder to think what those eleven individuals went through in that house, so don’t even get me started.” Ray finished his coffee as he finished his rant, with disgust. Hospital coffee is just as bad as the food. Getting up Ray asked Robert the question of the day, “You want another cup of this shit?”

  “No thanks, I filled my daily quota for shit listening to Harper. So what do we do next? Any chance we can rid ourselves of him?” asked Robert.

  “Not much we can do, in all likelihood he’ll be found criminally insane and will be our problem till he dies. Only way we’ll ever get rid of him is if we treat him to the point that he becomes ‘sane’, then he becomes the Department of Corrections problem. No more mental hospital for him.”

  “Well for the next two weeks… It’s. Not. My. Problem. I am going to enjoy my vacation and there is nothing you can do about it.”

  Ray held up his hands in defense. “Hey you deserve a break Bobby, spending hours each day with Harper is enough to drive anyone insane. Going anyplace nice?”

  “Taking the family up state, we’re going to Gramps’ camp on the lake. Think I will actually take one bit of advice from Harper, celebrating the 4th a couple weeks early by lighting off some illegal fireworks should be a blast.” Robert got up and went over to the sink and rinsed out his mug. After putting it back on the shelf where his mug lived when it wasn't in his hand, he turned to leave.

  “Hey Robert, watch out for the zombies… Don’t get bit.” Ray smiled.