Sam and Smokey braced the door with a small bed and waited to see if it would hold. It did, but that didn’t stop the zombie on the other side from breaking his hands while hitting it repeatedly. Little Toddy began screaming again, which caused the assault on the door to intensify.
The nun, Sister Katya from Ukraine, tenderly rocked the child back and forth. But he just kept screaming, and Smokey’s head began to spin as if he’d taken too many of Julio’s magic mushrooms. His friends were most likely dead, he’d gotten a bunch of nuns killed, and they appeared to be trapped. For once, Smokey was devoid of brilliant ideas, and he was scared.
A bloody hand punched through the door and Smokey grabbed a pillow to try to push it back through. A second hand punched through and Sam smacked at it with his empty rifle. Another swing and the beast would be inside.
TATATATATATAT! Machine gun fire rattled down the hallway and the probing arms went limp as blood swiftly streamed underneath the door. Zombie Kyle was no longer hungry.
The survivors heard voices talking excitedly in a strange tongue, and Smokey’s heart sank. He had heard that language days earlier, coming from members of the invading army. Smokey and the others were just as trapped as before, maybe even worse.
Smokey grabbed the rifle from Sam. “Sorry, but you should sit this one out. They might spare the women and children, if you’re lucky.”
“What about you?”
Smokey ignored the question and looked to Katya. “Put a word in for me with the big guy.” Of course, like the other nuns, she couldn’t talk. He took a deep breath and turned the handle, prepared to go out in a blaze of glory, much like Uncle Russ had.
“All clear?” asked a familiar voice.
Smokey opened the door, not to a hail of gunfire, but to the smiling faces of Rob and Charlie standing with the two North Korean soldiers from the forest. He stepped over the dead body and greeted his friends with a round of hugs before nodding to the Koreans. “Sup dudes?” They nodded back, albeit with little emotion, and walked away to continue securing the sprawling complex.
Rob and Charlie were once again covered in gore and looked exhausted, but they were alive. “I see little Toddy made it,” Charlie said and pointed in the direction of the screaming child.
“Yeah, some of the nuns didn’t though…” As Smokey’s words trailed off, Mother Agnes appeared from around the corner. Her brown robes flowed behind her as she came at them like something from a Victorian horror novel. But she was no supernatural being, and Rob ended her existence with a few blasts from his deadly softball bat.
Smokey pulled the Mother Superior’s habit over her destroyed face and stifled his tears. “She was a cool chick.”
Charlie nodded. “Where’s Left-Nut?”
“No clue,” Smokey said with a shrug.
Katya took Todd into a different room and pushed a dresser against the door as the others went to locate their missing friend and any other survivors. After a few minutes they encountered several nuns barricaded in the chapel, but no Left-Nut.
Sam noticed a trail of blood going into the kitchen. Inside, a zombified Sister Martha dragged herself around piles of vegetables and chairs as she came towards them. Rob was once again forced to step up and do what had to be done. It was messy.
Sam gagged and then threw up his meager lunch after witnessing the nun put down in a gruesome, yet humane manner. Embarrassed, he hung his head and slunk to the corner of the room, hoping to disappear into the wall.
“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Charlie said. “That’s a normal reaction to the craziness going on.” He turned to Rob. “And for better or worse, it seems Left-Nut has disappeared. Though I’m sure he’ll turn up.”
“Like a case of herpes,” Rob said and chuckled as he used a dishtowel to wipe the gore off his size eighteen shoe.
One of the overhead cabinets shot open and a person tumbled out, landing on the giant and knocking him backwards. It was Left-Nut.
“About time you ass-munches got back,” he said and stood up before noticing his wound had reopened. “Man, I think I, I think I’m gonna…” Left-Nut’s eyes fluttered as he fell forward, cracking his head loudly on the floor. A deep gash appeared on his forehead that bled profusely.
Charlie sighed and applied pressure with a kitchen towel, not knowing whether to smile or scowl. “This guy always turns up, like a floater in the gene pool.”
At that moment the Koreans walked in, and completely ignored the body, Left-Nut, and the conversation. They scarfed down the blood-covered potatoes scattered about, and it became clear they hadn’t eaten in quite some time.
In the past few months, the duo’s lot in life had gone from horrible in North Korea to unimaginable under Chinese leadership. Treated as second or even third-class, their kind was used for cannon fodder at every turn. Or, to be more precise, zombie fodder. When the food ran low or their jobs reached completion, the Korean troops were dealt with like vermin. It was this type of cold and calculating style that had the Chinese winning the war handily. But after President Sanders destroyed half of the civilized world in a thermonuclear downpour, the merciless communists could hardly be seen as the war’s lone maniacs.
“I take it we’re friends now?” Smokey said and tipped his head towards the ravenous soldiers. “What are their names?”
“Not sure,” Rob answered with a shrug. He grabbed one of the men by the shoulder. “My name’s Rob, what’s your name?” The skinny soldier flashed a confused and snaggle-toothed smile, then went back to eating.
“I said, my name’s Rob, what’s your name?” he asked again, twice as slow and three times as loud. Rob got the same reaction as the first time.
“You know, I don’t think it works like that,” Charlie said and held back a chuckle. “It looks like we have a bit of a language barrier.” Used to communicating with non-English-speaking students during his time substitute teaching, Charlie tried to converse using differing hand gestures and facial expressions. After a short while the soldiers began to grasp what he was getting at.
“Yong Chui,” the taller and older of the two men replied and pointed at himself. “Seung Sahn,” he continued and gestured to the skinny one who was barely a teenager.
Charlie and company attempted to say the names for a few minutes, but continued to mangle them badly. “All right, this is going nowhere and we have stuff to do.” He pointed to Yong Chui. “I’m sorry, but I can’t pronounce that properly. So we will call you Ping, and your friend is going to be Pong.”
“Doesn’t that seem a little racist to anyone?” Smokey asked.
“What would you call them then?” Charlie said.
“How about Rico and Suave?”
“Not happening.”
Rob said the first names that came to mind. “Bert and Ernie?”
“Are you kidding me? They’ll never be able to pronounce the R’s,” Smokey said.
Charlie scoffed. “Oh, now who’s being racist?”
The Koreans seemed somewhat amused by the conversation. The first soldier stepped forth and pointed to himself. “Ping.” He pointed to the younger man. “Pong.”
“And there we have it,” Charlie said, happy to be done with the matter. And so it was settled. Ping and Pong, two soldiers from North Korea’s Special Operation Forces, had joined the gang. What that actually meant was anyone’s guess. They came from different corners of the world and their people were now mortal enemies, but each side only drew breath because of the other. With a bond like that, the other considerations paled in comparison. Or so Charlie hoped.
Rob gave his new friends bloody bear hugs and grinned broadly. Ping and Pong humored him and then went back to eating quietly and in a hurry as if they had to fill their bellies before someone would steal their food.
Sam finally got over his embarrassment and rejoined the group. “Why are you guys so happy?” he asked with a furrowed brow. “A lot of good people just got killed here. And you’re all still joking and laughing. It’s like nothin
g matters to you guys.” Indeed, since joining them, he had found nothing but death following in their wake.
Charlie nodded. “You’re right. We’ve become a bit callous with the whole apocalypse thing going on.”
“Not to mention we were assholes before this whole thing got started,” Smokey added as an aside.
“Regardless, we should shut up and take care of business. These women deserve a proper burial, not our witty banter. Let’s find some shovels,” Charlie said, even though he could barely walk, let alone dig graves for the fallen. “This might take a while.”
Chapter 13: Dangerous Liaisons
Phil piloted the boat towards the water pumping station while Bobby paced back and forth, hardly able to contain his excitement. It had been a week since they found the isolated spot and the women trapped there, and it was all the creeps could think about.
The former high school employees hadn’t always been of such low character, but violence and scarcity has a way of changing men to their very cores. With law enforcement a thing of the past, these guys would only get worse. As their actions spiraled out of control one heinous deed at a time, moral relativism became more than just a vocabulary word from one of Bobby’s boring AP philosophy classes.
The pair had waited impatiently for the opportunity to slip away from their clueless families, and it had finally arrived. Running low on food meant a supply run was necessary, but food was far from either of their fevered minds as they dropped anchor and tied off.
By now Jackie and her friends had even less food since theirs had been taken, and they now relied on whatever seafood Mary could pull from the lake. Some days they didn’t eat at all.
Even worse was the thought that the two men could show up at any moment and once again steal what little peace they had left in a world gone mad. And without enough food to feed themselves, they had none to spare for the Lake Shore pirates. This would give the men another convenient excuse to fuel their brutality – not that they needed any.
Now the moment the women had dreaded had arrived as Phil and Bobby stepped cautiously onto the concrete floor. They didn’t have the element of surprise this time, but the moon was partially obscured by thick cloud cover, and so it was a rather dark night. The wind was picking up and lightning sparked in the distance as Phil looked around for any signs of their intended victims. Nada. What he did find was a five-gallon bucket conspicuously placed out in the open. He kicked it over and fish heads slid over the ground in all directions.
“You stupid bitches.” Phil looked at his partner in crime and grinned. “That’s not the only head we’re getting tonight.”
“Good one,” Bobby said with a laugh. The teacher was out of his element on the lake and had relied on the sketchy night shift janitor to survive in the beginning. But if their ways parted, Bobby had quietly learned everything he needed to know for the future.
Phil started walking towards the main building but stopped in his tracks with his foot in midair. He had almost stepped on a bunch of rusty nails scattered around like caltrops. Weeks before, puncture wounds like that would have been a painful mistake. But now, without access to medical care, that mistake could prove as deadly as a gunshot.
The men stepped around the hazard while joking about the women’s incompetence. But they didn’t find it funny when a three-ton load of steel pipes dropped on them from above and smashed their bones like fine china. It turned out that violence and scarcity has a way of changing women to their very cores as well. In this case, it changed them into survivors.
Jackie opened the door to the crane and ran to the fallen men, taking their pistols away in a flash as her friends burst from hiding spots nearby, brandishing improvised weapons. They didn’t need them. Phil the janitor had been killed instantly under the load of metal and Bobby was left horribly mangled. He screamed in agony as Jackie searched him for anything of value, and then dragged his ruined body to the edge of the platform.
“Please, I have kids,” Bobby managed to sputter out through the blood streaming from his mouth.
“You don’t have anything but regret,” Jackie said and stepped back.
At that point, Jen, still bruised and battered from her rough treatment a week earlier, came forward and looked into the dying man’s eyes. There was one final thing she had left to say.
“Well, bye.”
With that, Jen kicked hard and Bobby rolled into the water with a splash, vanishing beneath the waves as if he’d never existed.
* * *
The fishing boat was running on empty as it cruised towards the south end of the lake in near darkness. Jackie did her best to avoid the bloated corpses bobbing up and down in the water, but still hit them from time to time. Each loud thump of a floater was a reminder of what they were about to face on dry land.
At that same moment in the city, Charlie and his friends were arguing over cat food and the smell of Rob’s feet, and Jen’s fiancé, Blake, was still alive and as pompous as ever. But the two groups might as well have been worlds apart, separated by a million bloodthirsty creatures and the dense fog of disaster.
The choppy water was making Mary sick, and she did her best not throw up as cold spray hit them continuously. They had no clue where their next meal was coming from and she couldn’t risk losing what little protein was left in her stomach. She sat down and closed her eyes. “Any idea how much farther?” she asked, her mouth watering.
“Not far,” Jackie said. “We’ll do this just like we talked about. Go as far south as we can and put up anchor a good distance out. I’ll swim in and find us a car. From there we head to the boonies and play it by ear.”
It sounded like a reasonable enough plan when Jackie said it out loud, but there were a lot of assumptions she was making and plenty of ways things could go to shit at Mach speed. Even so, Mary trusted her completely. The straight-talking businesswoman hadn’t failed her yet, and things were looking up after getting off the station.
The boat shook violently as it crashed into more bodies and Mary finally succumbed, puking onto the floor as Padma held her brown hair aloft. “See, there’s land just ahead,” Padma said, then turned to Jen. “You okay? You’ve been awful quiet.”
“Yep. Just dandy.” Jen had been looking at the wallet on the floor of the boat ever since they had gotten in.
She knew she shouldn’t care, but there it was, beckoning at her to take a peek. Finally she ripped it open as the boat neared the shoreline. Inside was Bobby’s driver’s license. Bobby Bradford of Michigan City, to be more precise.
The flip side was more interesting, though, and that’s what Jen was curious about. There was a photo of a man, standing with his family, dressed in their Sunday’s finest. Bobby had a huge smile on his face, as did his wife and two rosy-cheeked daughters. It was clear they were crazy about him and Jen could picture the photogenic bunch frantically worried about his whereabouts. Would they survive without their closet psychopath? She didn’t care.
Jen tossed the wallet into the water where it floated for a moment and then, like Bobby himself, disappeared under the surf.
Chapter 14: Enter the Dragon
Two weeks had passed since the mayhem at the nunnery and Left-Nut had at long last healed enough to travel, much to the delight of all the remaining nuns he had been pestering. Over that period Charlie and friends filled their bellies with actual food, slept in beds, and generally forgot about their troubles for a time. But as comfortable as their sanctuary was, Charlie was eager to head back to the wastelands beyond the fence. He had a budding family to find, made up of his pregnant girlfriend and adopted son, and with every day that passed they felt less and less real.
So as the sun rose one morning, the gang packed up and said their goodbyes to the group of speechless nuns and the screaming baby they were leaving behind. By the look on the elderly women’s faces, they were just fine with it.
As the group neared the gate, one of the nuns ran to them and handed over a piece of paper. It was the woman
named Katya – or Scarface, as the guys called her behind her back.
“Sorry, but you’re not coming with us,” Charlie said and handed the paper back to the nun, noticing a small tattoo of a flower on her hand. “It’s too dangerous, and this note stuff just isn’t going to work. We all have to pull our weight and look out for each other. If you see a zombie sneaking up and you can’t shout a warning, well that’s gonna get us all killed. And we’re already doing a pretty good job of that.”
Rob appeared agitated. “I think she should come. We could always use an extra pair of hands, and she knows how to cook.” And there was the reason. He was a mountain of consistency.
Charlie believed he had a way out. “All right, she can come. If she’s willing to talk.”
Katya looked down and took a deep breath. Regretfully, she nodded her head. “Okay,” she said, in a barely audible tone. The nun hadn’t spoken in quite a while and her vocal cords were in need of exercise. More importantly, she had just broken her vow of silence. But Katya believed God wanted her to join these men who were so desperately in need of guidance. Not to mention the convent was slowly but surely driving her insane with boredom.
Surprised, Charlie smiled. “I guess that’s a start then. Keep practicing.” He turned to Rob. “This is on you, so she’s under your protection. Keep her safe and show her how to defend herself.”
“No problem,” Rob said. He grabbed one of the shovels from the nearby garden and handed it to his new friend. “Stay close to me and aim for the head when you can. If they bite you it’s all over, so don’t let that happen. And most importantly, stay away from Left-Nut.”
Katya nodded before donning a backpack and hugging several of the less dour nuns goodbye. Then she pinched little Todd’s angry face and turned to leave with the others. The gate closed behind them and nobody looked back as the padlock snapped into place. Katya took a deep breath and smelled the freedom of the open road. Then Rob farted.
Dead Drunk II: Dawn of the Deadbeats (Dead Drunk: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse... One Beer at a Time Book 2) Page 10
