by Brown, TW
They were seemingly stuck. The pack had gone down the long ramp to the dead-end—no pun intended—and didn’t have the sense to turn around and backtrack. If nothing came by to distract them, it was conceivable that they could still be there years from now.
Shaw was contemplating the idea of going down there and killing them all. Partially for his own sanity, and partially out of mercy on their damned existence, when the distant sounds of small arms fire began. For a moment he was reminded of standing in the lobby of a movie theater while a fresh batch of popcorn was cooking. There were a few individual pops, then a small flurry, then a constant barrage that went on for what seemed like an incredibly long time.
The Basket!
Shaw did some fast mental calculating and came to a horrible conclusion that that swarm of undead must be at The Basket. They’d systematically been combing the region the past several months. Nothing could’ve evaded their detection sporting that much firepower.
Like that batch of theater popcorn, the popping lessened. Soon there were only a few single shots, then…silence. He wasn’t stupid. He’d seen how many of those things were walking in that group. He doubted that there was enough ammo in all of The Basket’s store rooms to deal with that entire mob. While it was possible that one, or even a few of his men escaped, the odds were decidedly against it. Suddenly, Charlton Shaw felt alone…terribly alone.
***
Reginald sat at his desk sipping from a steaming cup of coffee. Lucy’s wall rattling snores echoed from the bedroom. He adjusted the cold towel he had between his legs. Shivering slightly, then relaxing and allowing the cool relief to seep into his raw and abraded privates.
The snoring ceased suddenly and Reginald froze in mid-sip. Please don’t wake-up, he chanted over and over in his mind. After a loud bodily noise that he forced himself to neither process, nor try to identify, the snoring resumed and he relaxed. It was the mixture of teeth rattling noises and repugnant bodily smells coming from Lucy since she’d finally crashed that had him out of the bedroom and at his desk. Of course, this was preferable to the last sixteen-or-so hours.
He’d brought Lucy his batch of meth, nervous that he’d done it wrong. After all, her instructions had been a bit vague in places and the ingredients were a bit iffy when it came to exact amounts. Reginald Cox was a doctor and a man of science. He did not deal well with abstract generalities or approximations.
Lucy almost pounced on him when he announced what the contents of the pan he’d been carrying to be. She’d smashed and ground a chunk into powder, then, in a very unladylike manner, snorted it up one nostril. The primal grunt and howl that followed had Reginald backing towards the door. He just knew that a large dose of abuse—verbal and physical—was about to follow. Instead, she looked over at him and leered, then repeated the process with another chunk (she called them shards); this time she ingested it up the other nostril.
After another boisterously loud display, Lucy began to cross the room, peeling out of her clothing. She recited a litany of things she intended to do to him, as well as things she’d have him do to her. A few seemed more than just a little unsavory, and certainly unsanitary.
The next several hours were beyond anything he could’ve ever imagined. The sex just seemed to go on and on. Twice he’d actually fallen asleep, only to wake with her still straddling him, bucking her hips wildly. She hadn’t noticed, or at least gave no indication of it. He was certain after the second time because he distinctly remembered her shriveled and sagging breasts dangling just above his face. His next recollection, she was facing away and he was staring at a large mole on her lower back with three short, coarse, dark hours sticking out of it.
She’d gotten up a few times to “take another bump” while he lay in bed, praying that it would stop. Yet, each time she returned, she had that same expression. No doubt she thought it was sexy, but to Reginald, she simply looked constipated and confused. Her eyes appeared to vibrate in their sockets. She would kiss him, which eventually became less and less pleasant as her breath began to reek in a gagging mixture of chemical and sewage, like her guts had backed up into her throat. Then, she would slide down his body and bring him to arousal with her mouth. He resisted as long as he was able, yet, in the end, his genitals always betrayed him.
Then…in the middle of one of their ‘sessions’, she’d froze. A new look washed over her face.
“They’re inside,” Lucy hissed, scrambling off him and throwing the blankets over her head.
“Who’s inside?” he asked, absolutely confused, but incredibly relieved.
“The zombies.”
Reginald had jumped from the bed, grabbing the pistol from his drawer and running to the door. He’d peeked out to the hallway. Empty. Then, he’d slipped out and cautiously padded to the exit hatch. Locked. He tugged the door a few times for good measure. Still locked. Next, he checked each of the other living quarters. Nothing. Finally, he’d gone to the lab. Every specimen was accounted for. He even flipped on the monitor. The sea of undead faces had changed very little since yesterday. He’d seen the same faces for so long, he’d gone to the trouble of naming a few: Bert, Ernie, Elmo, Zsa-Zsa, and Cletus were still there.
He returned to the room and panicked when he couldn’t find Lucy. That is until she hit him in the shin with a broken off chair leg from under the bed. He’d yelped and tumbled to the ground clutching his shin in pain.
“It’s me, Lucy!” he yelled.
She’d scrambled out and wrapped herself around him, shivering and sobbing. Having been away from her for a bit, he hadn’t realized how bad she smelled from the sex, sweat, and chemical poisons that oozed from every pore.
He managed to get her to the shower, but only by agreeing to take one with her. Of course, this led to another of Lucy’s amorous advances which ended up with her straddling him on the toilet.
Once he managed to finally get her in bed, he’d laid beside her until she crashed into the most intense state of unconsciousness Reginald had ever seen. Looking down at her, he pondered if perhaps returning her to the lab weren’t such a bad idea. After a while, he realized that as not an option. He’d saved her, and now he was responsible for her.
After years of longing for the touch and embrace of a woman, Dr. Reginald Cox had come to a profound conclusion: it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Almost on cue, another horrendous bodily noise came from the room where Lucy lay sleeping. Not wanting to wait and see if the stench would make it out where he sat sipping his tea, Reginald got up and grabbed a pair of his scrubs from the top drawer of his dresser and headed for the lab.
Suddenly, the undead didn’t seem like such bad company.
***
Juan was surprisingly fast for his size and quickly outdistanced the others. He knew exactly what that commotion was. That was the sounds of a gun fight. Since he was relatively sure that they’d cleared the island of deaders, it left one option: Margaret.
Bounding over the ditch, he planted a hand on a fencepost and vaulted, only stumbling a little on the landing. He could hear Mackenzie calling after him, but he continued to sprint ahead. He tore up between the rows of melon vines, crossing the same field he’d first crossed the day he met Mackenzie and Margaret. His eyes flicked to the body of the dead dog on the edge of the lawn as he rounded the corner of the house.
The visible signs of a gunfight gave the front door and the area around it a pockmarked appearance. A trail of blood led up the stairs and inside. Juan burst through the door. A woman in her late teens or early twenties was crouched beside a man who was holding his side, blood seeping through his fingers. Both of them were so surprised that they never had a chance to bring up the weapons sitting beside them. Juan’s first shot caught the girl in the forehead, splattering the man sitting beside her with brain and blood. His second and third shots caught the man in the chest.
Juan stepped into the living room as two more guys came running from the direction of the kitchen. His eyes saw a pair of leg
s peeking out from the bathroom door just off the dining room. He didn’t have to see the body attached to know who they belonged to. One of the men was still holding a jar of Margaret’s homemade pickles in his hand.
“Looting bastards,” Juan said through clenched teeth and fired. The one holding the pickles spun, the jar exploding as the bullet blew through it and into his heart, killing him instantly. He swung his arm and fired again, catching the other man through the throat. The man fell back into the wall and slid down clutching the wound. He approached the bleeding, cowering figure and stood over him. His eyes darted to the body sprawled on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood.
“You killed an innocent woman.” Juan looked down at the man who was trying desperately to keep his life blood from pouring out between his fingers. His bloody lips moved, but no sound came out other than a wet gargle.
“Jesus, man,” JoJo breathed, stepping up beside the big Hispanic who currently had his .45 pressed on the top of the head of the guy with blood all over him.
“These fucks killed Margaret,” Juan growled, his finger tightening just a bit on the trigger.
“Mom!” Mackenzie’s voice cried from the front porch Juan heard her run up behind him and then stop. He heard her breath hitch, then he heard her wail. His vision swam as tears filled his eyes.
“Oh wow,” Thad breathed, walking in. “This is a bad deal.”
“How far back are those two?” JoJo asked.
“A ways,” Thad stepped up beside the other two. “Dude ain’t movin’ that fast and the girl won’t leave him behind.”
“Good,” JoJo nodded, “that’ll give us time to figure how we’re gonna deal with this.”
Juan still stood over the man, but his eyes were so filled with tears that he wasn’t aware that the man was dead. He could hear Mackenzie crying and wanted desperately to go to her. Only, he couldn’t bring himself to move.
“Hey!” Thad reached over and grasped Juan’s wrist. “The dude’s dead.” He pulled the bigger man’s arm away and gently removed the pistol from his hands. “JoJo, go head that couple off.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. This scene is bad. We better get the drop on them,” Thad grabbed a shirt hanging from the back of a chair and draped it over the dead body. Juan still stood there, tears now leaking from both eyes. “Peel their weapons.”
“What if they resist?”
“You tellin’ me you can’t take a girl and a gimp?” Thad turned to face the other man.
“No…it’s just—”
“We ain’t got time for this, man,” Thad snapped. “The big guy here is vegging out and…” He tilted his head towards the bathroom where Mackenzie held her mom’s head in her lap and continued to cry.
“Sure could use you backin’ me up,” JoJo grumbled.
“And I’ll be right there, but I want to cover up the bodies first. The only chance we got of those two not flippin’ the fuck out is if they don’t walk in and see their friends all shot up.”
“You think they ain’t gonna know?”
“Not at all. But seeing it will only make it worse.”
JoJo shrugged and headed back through the house. A shadow on the stairs made him jump. He was fumbling for his gun when a familiar voice spoke in a raspy, barely audible whisper.
“Can’t a guy get any sleep around here?”
“Keith!” JoJo clutched his chest a second, then quickly brushed at his shirt to try and play it off.
“What the blazes happened?”
“Now’s really not the time.” JoJo glanced outside and began edging towards the door. “We’ll catch up later.”
Keith watched JoJo leave and came down the last few stairs. He could smell death before he saw it. A pair of bodies lay sprawled on the floor of somebody’s living room. Something about all of this looked familiar.
As he rounded the corner, Thad came through an open archway with an armful of sheets. The man froze and his jaw dropped open in astonishment.
“What the hell is goin’ on?” Keith asked, hoping to have better luck getting an answer this time.
“Whoa,” Thad breathed.
Keith’s gaze drifted past Thad. A big Mexican was standing over a body that sat at the base of a fresh blood stain that still dripped on the wall behind it. A shirt was tossed over its head, but Keith figured it for dead. Then his eyes slid to a pair of legs jutting out of an open doorway to the left. Memories flooded back bringing a wave of realization.
“Mackenzie!” Keith managed to say. If it were possible, his already dry throat had gotten drier. He nudged past Thad who looked completely confused. “Missus Sims?” Keith stood in the doorway.
“You guys know each other?” Thad asked.
“Keith and I were engaged,” Mackenzie said, looking up from the body of her mother.
***
The screamed echoed in the hallway. It sounded like that elderly woman. At least five of those things had gone through the door and four more were in the hallway. Chad and the others had yelled to get the things’ attention, but it’d only been partially successful.
Brett reached them first, bringing his razor sharp weapon across in a sweeping motion that took the top third of the head off a zombie that looked as if he’d been a student at this school. Chad plowed into a short fat man with several bites out of his hairy man-boobs. He’d try very hard not to think about that feast later.
A commotion was coming from the class room now, and Chad was certain he heard Ronni’s voice amidst all of it. It felt as if a hand were holding his heart and slowly squeezing. Then the gunfire started. A puff of dust erupted from the wall inches in front of his face. Pulling his hand axe free from the skull of hairy-man-boob-zombie, Chad flung open the door to the classroom. Just to his left, an undead cheerleader was pulling away a chunk of stringy flesh from the throat of the elder lady, Emma Passel. His eyes scanned the mostly dark classroom lit only by a Coleman lantern and a pair of flashlights lying useless on the floor.
“Ronni!” Chad called as he brought the axe down on the skull of a Hispanic man wearing a heavily stained apron over jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
“Daddy!” The voice was to his left. In the shadows he saw his daughter engaged in a twisted parody of ring-around-the-rosie with a zombified old man.
Just then, Cheerleader-zombie clutched his leg. Chad kicked it away and bulldozed through a row of desks. He brought his axe down in the center of the bald spot wreathed with a band of gray hair.
“Daddy, look out!” Ronni screamed.
The cheerleader had continued after him and her hands grabbed at his weapon-holding arm. Chad tried to pull away and tripped over the sprawled body of the old man he’d just dispatched. The two tumbled to the floor in a tangled heap of arms and legs. He heard teeth snap just beside his left ear. He jerked his head to the right and suddenly everything went black as a shadow blocked out what little light there was. A strange sound beside him made him yell. The body on top of Chad went limp and he shoved out from underneath it to find Brett standing over him, his Katana pinning the cheerleader-zombies head to the floor.
“Thanks, buddy,” Chad said as he climbed to his feet. He pushed the last remaining desk aside and grabbed Ronni in his arms. His daughter clutched him tightly, her body shivering with fear. He looked around the room, grateful that all of the zombies had been put down.
“We can’t stay here,” the large woman, Penny, said as she wiped off the metal-tipped flag pole she’d liberated from somewhere.
“She’s right.” Brett stepped up beside her. “Between the screaming and the shooting, we’ve probably attracted every zombie in a three mile radius.”
“Do a headcount and tell everybody to gather their things.” Chad tried to move, but Ronni held on tightly, refusing to let go.
“There’s more comin’ down the hall!” Scott called from the doorway.
“On your feet everybody,” Chad yelled above the nervous commotion. “Grab all your stuff
. We have to go…now!”
There was a flurry of activity as people hastily stuffed whatever they’d unpacked back into their bags and began shoving them out the window. Chad tried once again to move, but still Ronni clung to him.
“Sweetie,” he tilted her face up, “we have to go.”
“One of those things got Tammi,” his daughter sobbed. “I had her hand and tried to pull her, but…” Ronni burst into fresh tears and buried her face in his chest. Chad stroked her hair and looked around the room. He spotted Krystal standing over a body, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.
“We lost two,” Brett said, startling Chad. “That little old lady, Emma, and Ta—”
“Thanks,” Chad cut the man off, his eyes flickering down at his daughter. Brett nodded in understanding.
“We’re ready to move,” Penny joined the huddle.
“What was the headcount?” Chad asked. “I mean, how many of us are there?”
“Fourteen,” Penny replied.
“Okay,” Chad nodded. Still holding his daughter, he turned slightly so he could see everybody. “Listen up, folks,” he spoke above the din. “We have to move, all the noise will probably bring more of those things.” On cue, something slapped at the door to their classroom. A small jumble of desks had been shoved in front of it. It would hold for a little while, but not long. “We need to stick together if we’re going to have any chance. Keep your eyes peeled for someplace we can crash for the night, but be prepared. We might be walking for a while.”
More hands joined in on the door. That was all the further prompting anyone needed. One by one, the group climbed out the window and into the cool night air. The sky was clear and stars glittered providing an unappreciated beauty along with a little ambient light to see by.
The last two out were Ronni and Chad. He slipped his hands down, reluctantly prying his daughter loose.
