Shame there’s only two in there, he thought. Not much to go around.
As if created by his wistful thought, a second vehicle approached from an intersecting road, trailed by its own collection of zombies. Stanley recognized the truck instantly and watched Deloris pull in alongside the small Ford and match its speed. The two vehicles continued their slow crawl through town and onto Highway Fifty-Five. The two hordes of zombies merged and followed, feet shuffling, hands grasping, throats moaning, and teeth chomping. When a glow appeared in the distance, Stanley smiled. Ronnie’s Famous Truckstop, Grill, and Gift Emporium lit up the horizon like a beacon. The little car and giant truck were definitely going that direction. It was, Stanley realized, perfect. How many times had he shared a meal with his friends at the local truckstop’s diner? Ronnie’s was a symbol of coming together after travelling vast distances. What better place to finally eat his friends than the place they always went to eat? Fixing his gaze on the chrome testicles hanging from Deloris’s trailer hitch, Stanley move steadily and eagerly forward.
At last, the zombie horde was in the home stretch. Each dragging step brought them closer to the car, to Deloris, to the diner and its reunion dinner. They were so close. If Stanley had been able to feel his face, he was sure he would have felt the warm glow of Ronnie’s well-lit sign. His undead friends around him crowded closer, pressing up more firmly against his shoulders and back, their desire to feed feeding his own. He glanced left and right and noticed that semi-trucks had been parked along either side of the road. They made a narrowing chute that emptied into Ronnie’s parking lot.
That’s so nice, he thought. Making sure we all get to Ronnie’s.
Suddenly, the Ford pulled ahead and sped off toward the narrow gap between the furthermost semi cabs. Stanley watched its taillights disappear as it made a sharp turn out of sight. Disgruntled, he tried to move his wooden legs more quickly and catch Deloris. The big truck still rolled at a snail’s pace with Stanley, Laura, and the leading edge of zombies just a few yards behind. It threaded the space at the end of the chute, and stopped.
This is it! Stanley thought excitedly.
He reached the bumper of the truck and was pressed up hard against it by the mass of undead bodies behind him. He tried to squirm to the side so he could get to the driver’s side door, but wasn’t able to move. The press of undead flesh against him made moving impossible. He was trying to puzzle out how to get around the truck when a familiar voice called out from above.
“Gestrum nostuul, drothken zoll! Ground beneath, under shoe, hold you fast like sticky glue!”
Lois! he realized. Craning his neck, he peered up and saw her standing high atop one of the semi-trailers.
The witch had her arms splayed wide, her black jacket billowing in an unfelt wind. Herb stood to her side, his fangs glinting and eyes shining. Stanley tried to turn their direction, but something had grabbed onto his feet. He twisted left and right, but neither foot lifted from the asphalt below. Laura mimicked his twisting, but she wasn’t able to move either. And while multitudes of bodies still pressed in all around them, they were all clearly stuck in place.
“Heeeeeeeyyyyy,” he complained loudly, hoping Lois or Herb would hear, but neither one looked his way.
He was about to call for them again when the gunshots started. Lots and lots of gun shots. Stanley twisted from side to side. No matter what direction he managed to face, the sight was the same. His undead friends were literally losing their minds. Skulls shattered and bodies fell awkwardly, feet still magically glued to the pavement. Some bent at the knees and flopped backward. Others slumped forward, the weight of their bodies snapping bones in their ankles. It was horrible.
Stanley called again for Herb and Lois, imploring them to stop, to just stop. They didn’t understand. They weren’t in danger. Stanley just wanted them all to be friends. At least, that’s what he meant to say, but all that came out was a long strand of shapeless vowels. He turned to Laura, intending to ask her to lend her voice to his, and watched what was left of her beautiful face get blown away by a high-caliber shell.
“Naaaaaaaahhhhh!” he yelled, and Lois heard him.
The witch’s eyes widened, and she hopped down from the semi-trailer to the cab’s roof before Herb could stop her. Another jump, and she was in Deloris’s bed.
“Stanley!” she yelled over the gunshots. “Hang on!”
By this point, Herb had rejoined her. Stanley looked up at his friends, teeth bared in a fierce smile, and stretched his hands toward them. Lois and Herb were clearly arguing, but that was okay. Soon, they wouldn’t argue ever again.
Something Lois said finally won Herb over. He gripped her arm and anchored her while she leaned over the gate and reached for Stanley’s grasping hands. It was tricky for him to get a grip since there were so many other reaching, grasping hands all around him. Lois had to bat them aside while trying to grab him at the same time. Their fingers brushed and then he had her. She started to pull, stretching his arm to its limit, but his feet didn’t lift off the pavement.
“Crap!” she yelled. “The spell!”
Stanley felt the witch try to release his hand. He felt the pressure lighten, felt her fingers go lax. She was trying to leave him. They were going to leave him again. He clutched harder and brought his other hand up to grab her wrist. He just needed to get one little bite in. One bite, and she’d be his friend again. Then she could bite Herb, and Herb could bite Dallas, and they’d all be friends forever.
Lois’s foot slipped. The vampire’s grip twisted just enough, and Lois was falling into Stanley’s waiting embrace. He wrapped her up in a fierce hug and bit down hard. Her scream was echoed from above by Herb, but soon it dissolved into the hundreds and hundreds of moans filling the air around him.
Something was pummeling him. The blows rained down, battering him from all sides. It was Herb. The vampire had leapt down among the undead and was swinging his fists so fast they were just blurred shapes trying to beat him back. Stanley recoiled from the onslaught and took a step back. The spell was broken, and the zombies surged. Herb was beset by zombie after zombie and fought against a sea of grasping hands and biting teeth. He managed to get an arm around the fallen witch and lift her to her feet, but it was a short-lived victory. Even with his incredible speed and strength, the crush of zombies was too much.
Released from their magical restraints, the zombies were free to press and push and shuffle and shove. They strained against the confines of their cage and reached for the humans perched precariously above on the trailer tops. Their surging rocked the trailers, and people began to fall screaming to the ground. As each one fell, the surrounding undead piled forward, eager to feast.
Stanley started to shoulder his way toward one of the fallen humans when a loud roar sounded from far behind him. He turned in time to see a giant hairy monster arc through the night sky and land in the midst of the zombies. Clawed paws lashed out and sent pieces of undead in every direction as the werewolf snarled and slashed its way forward. Dallas almost made it to where the vampire and witch had fallen, but there were too many zombies for even him to fight through. Stanley saw the werewolf drop to its knees, and finally disappear beneath a large pile of undead.
Shots still rang out from all around, but fewer than before, and they continued to dwindle. When the combined strength of the horde finally managed to overturn one of the trailers, the trap failed. Zombies spilled forth like flour from a split sack and filled the parking lot. Stanley and the others pushed through the breach and followed the hastily retreating hunters as they fought their way back to the diner. Stanley knew that this was it, this was the end. It was only a matter of time before the fighting would be done and everyone – everyone – would be friends again.
He felt a pressure on his shoulder pull him to a stop. Turning, he saw that the hand that had stopped him wasn’t a hand at all, but a large, clawed paw.
“Hhhhaaaaaaa,” the tall, hairy, undead beast moaned, its oddly-spac
ed and bloodshot eyes staring down a gore-covered snout.
“Hhheeeeeyyy,” Stanley answered with a smile.
“Uuuuurrrrrr,” Dallas growled, pointing over Stanley’s shoulder.
Stanley made a slow pivot and immediately saw what Dallas was looking at. The vampire and witch had regained their feet and were wobbling toward them. They forced their broken and twisted bodies forward, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the undead. Lois leaned against Herb, one leg so twisted it could barely support her weight. When Stanley and Dallas closed the distance, she moved one hand in the approximation of a wave while holding the vampire’s waist with the other. The vampire-turned-zombie opened his mouth in a wide, one-fanged smile. The other had broken off, probably at the same time that something ripped off most of that side of his face. Stanley pulled them into a hug and held them until the reunited friends were caught up in the swell of shuffling bodies around them and pushed forward. As one, they piled up against the barricaded windows of the diner, slapping their bloody palms and chomping their bloody teeth, hungry for the handful of humans that had taken shelter inside.
For the first time since he’d woken up after the fly bite, Stanley felt a genuine warmth inside his cold, stiff body. He didn’t know if zombies could cry, and certainly couldn’t feel his face well enough to know for certain, but he decided there were happy tears rolling down his undead cheeks.
Chapter 28
“Crappers. C-crap crap crap,” Stanley muttered, teetering on the verge of hysteria. “C-crap.”
Only Aletia, Jonah, and Stanley had survived. All of the other hunters were part of the undead mob, either actively beating at the walls and windows or filling the bellies of those trying to force their way inside.
Aletia grabbed Stanley’s shoulders and shook him hard. “Keep it together. We’ll get through this.”
“How?” he wailed. “We’re d-doomed.”
The sounds from outside underscored the statement, lending his words a dark certainty. The windows rattled behind their plywood reinforcements, and wave after wave of moans broke over the diner like storm-tossed waves over a sinking boat. Stanley paced frantically between the booths and tables. He’d seen his friends fall, and if that wasn’t bad enough, had seen them rise again. Being surrounded by zombies was bad. Add a zombie vampire and zombie werewolf to the mix, and things were definitely worse. He wasn’t sure about the zombie witch. Spells were probably tough to cast when all Lois could do was stagger around a moan a lot, but who knew? It had been a strange weekend.
“How the heck are they z-zombies?” Stanley asked. “Is that supposed to happen?”
Neither Aletia nor Jonah had an answer for that. They were out of their depth, and said as much.
“Oh b-boy, this is bad. So, so b-bad,” Stanley muttered, hysteria eroding his fragile self-control.
“Jonah? What do you think?” Aletia asked. “Can we get out of here?”
The large hunter had been peering through a slit between the plywood sheets and reinforcing two-by-fours. He stepped back from his inspection of the hell outside the diner and shook his head.
“I think Stanley may be right,” he opined. “I think we’re screwed. We thinned the herd before the trap failed, but there are still way too many zombies out there to fight our way through.”
“Mierda,” Aletia swore. “We can wait it out. More hunters should be on their way.”
Jonah shook his head sadly. “If, and that’s a big if, anyone gets here before the zombies break in, they’re going to have the same problem. If we can’t fight our way out, how can we expect them to fight their way in?”
“C-call the Army. The National G-Guard,” Stanley suggested. “They got the tanks and the j-jets and really big guns. They can save us,” Stanley pleaded.
This time, it was Aletia shaking her head. “Can’t risk it. The more people that come here, the more people are going to get bit and turned. It’ll only make things worse.”
“Worse,” Stanley repeated, shocked. “I d-don’t think things could g-get much worse. Oh, crappers. Gotta knock on wood. Don’t want to j-jinx us.”
Stanley scurried over to a large sheet of plywood spanning one of the diner’s plate glass windows. He gave it a quick knock and then staggered back as the window it was covering shattered and the masses outside smashed up against the wooden board. The plywood creaked, bowed, and snapped, and undead bodies fell face-first into the diner booths lining the wall.
“It g-got worse!” he screamed. “It j-just got a whole lot worse!”
Large hands grabbed him and lifted him away from the growing pile of undead.
“Run!” Jonah screamed. “Grab the alarm clock and run! You have to stay safe!”
The hunter had retrieved his long, heavy club and started to swing. Bodies flew and heads exploded, but the zombies were climbing in faster than he could smash them. Aletia leapt to his side, her blade flashing. Stanley clutched his little plastic alarm clock to his chest and took clumsy steps backward through the diner. When his back hit the countertop, he quickly rolled over it and continued to retreat, pushing his way through the swinging door to the kitchen. Frantic, Stanley ran back and forth between the walk-in cooler and the flattop grill while hungry, inhuman moans boiled the air and made it difficult to breath. There was no escape. The front of the diner was filling up with undead. The back door that led from the kitchen to the back lot rattled and shook under the onslaught of more zombies. There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to go.
Except up.
When he saw the iron ladder in the corner, he did the only thing a man trapped by a zombie horde in a diner kitchen could do. He scaled its rungs toward the ceiling. Stanley had just reached the small access panel at the top when the first zombie lumbered through the swinging door. He screamed and shoved at the panel, terror giving him a strength he’d never known he had. The panel lifted, and a blast of winter air washed over Stanley’s tear-streaked face. A moment later, he was on the diner’s roof and slamming the access panel shut behind him. A rising wind buffeted him as he ran across the snow-covered rooftop and peered out over the edge.
Zombies. Lots and lots of zombies. He made a slow trek around the diner roof’s perimeter, shocked at the sheer number of living dead below. For a small town, Trappersville had made a surprisingly big zombie horde. They pressed against every side of the building. The diner, gift emporium, even the long, low building that housed the rent-by-the-hour cots and showers were all completely surrounded. Ronnie’s was an island in an undead sea, and Stanley was its castaway, clinging to a life that was no longer to be measured in years, but in minutes.
“My goodness, this certainly does appear to be the end, doesn’t it?” a voice said behind him.
Stanley yelped and spun around. A few feet away, Stanley Prime stood in his colorless single suit, a look of resigned sadness on his face.
“I admire your determination. You’ve certainly made me proud of myself. However, I do think this has gone far enough. Now, I’ll take that,” he said, pointing at the alarm clock Stanley still clutched in his trembling hand, “and I’ll be on my way.”
Stanley was mortified. He glared as his progenitor, a temper he didn’t know he had rising to a boil.
“No, you will not,” he said. “No sir. These are your friends, your neighbors. Even if you h-haven’t been living with them, they’ve been living with you. You c-can’t just let them all go on like this. Especially when we g-gots a way to save them. Every single one.”
When Prime raised a skeptical eyebrow, Stanley explained the plan they’d concocted with the Society and how it went horribly wrong when Lois fell to her death and the spell holding the zombies was broken.
“But if we c-can just kill ‘em all, we can still save them,” he begged. “Maybe your alien friends c-can help. Maybe they c-can, I don’t know, fly back and forth with a ray g-gun and zap ‘em all.”
Prime bowed his head, sadness plain on his narrow, angular face. “The Gerploonkian
s are here on a science expedition. Researching and cataloguing indigenous lifeforms. They aren’t fighters. They don’t have any weapons. If they encounter trouble, they hide. I’m sorry, Stanley. The good people of Trappersville are lost. Every last zombie would need to be killed to stop the spread of the infection. It would take an army to kill them all, and we simply don’t have an army.”
Stanley Prime was right. There were too many zombies for just the two of them to handle. But there didn’t need to just be two of them.
“Can this thing make more of us?” he asked, holding up the clock.
Stanley Prime’s eyes widened at the suggestion, and he slowly nodded his head.
“Any limits on how m-many?” Stanley asked.
“… No,” Prime answered slowly. “At least, not that I’m aware of. There’s certainly never been a need to test that particular scenario.”
Stanley hmph’d. “Well, we’re g-gonna test it now.”
He cast about until he found was he was looking for, an outlet near the rooftop HVAC unit. After plugging in the clock, he popped its plastic cover off and started to poke around its innards.
“Okay, now we j-just need to do… that,” he said, “and that. And if this here wire goes over there…”
Stanley Prime leaned in, curiosity piqued. “Actually, it would be better to rerun the black wire so it creates a loop with the scanner,” he offered. “And here, you’ll need this to solder the new circuit bridge,” he added, passing Stanley a futuristic, pen-shaped tool.
Stanley zapped the suggested circuits, popped the plastic cover back on, set the time, and finally, the alarm.
“One Stanley army c-coming up,” he said with a hearty thumbs’ up. “Best army ever, and that’s a fact.”
The twins waited without breathing, the world around them forgotten. For a long moment, all that existed was the little plastic alarm clock. A reliable wonder of plastic and circuitry with a blue liquid crystal display that had woken Stanley every single day since high school, even if he’d been dead.
Undead Cheesehead (Monsters in the Midwest Book 3) Page 20
