“You and I have unfinished business, Charlie.”
“Which is?”
A.J. bristled, and he raised his shotgun ever so slightly. “Like you don’t know. You stole my girlfriend, asshole.”
The conversation had turned from bizarre to ridiculous, and Charlie clenched his fists tightly. “Oh for fucks’ sake, that was like fifteen years ago. I had a full head of hair and I liked Limp Bizkit back then, too. Times have changed.”
“Now you’re saying you did it all for the nookie? Trying to rub my face in it, city boy?”
“No, what’s wrong with you, man?”
B.J. laughed nervously and raised his own shotgun. “Bend over and lube up those bungholes, boys, you’re about to get plowed.”
Then it was Vlad’s turn to chuckle. “Very bold, but only making noise. Like way rooster is king of barn until brought to chopping block.”
A.J. looked at Vlad with a scowl, but then his face brightened as he recognized the former world champion. “Holy shit, it’s the Dragon!” He moved closer. “Man, I gotta shake your hand. That was priceless when you kicked Big Rob’s ass. Fat bastard had it coming. He knocked me and B.J. out at a cookout one time.”
“He did have it coming,” Vlad answered. And then it happened. Quickly. Vlad’s knife sliced through A.J.’s throat like hot butter and found its way into B.J.’s heart in one graceful motion.
The two brothers looked at each other in confusion before collapsing upon one another in a final embrace. It was quiet except for the sound of blood streaming onto the pavement, puddling around a dead pigeon.
Charlie’s jaw dropped. “Jesus Christ, I used to play hide and seek with those guys. You’re like a goddamned Michael Myers or something.”
“Is Austin Powers, right?”
“No, the killer, you dumbfuck,” Charlie said, still trying to process the violence as the others ran up to them.
“Never heard of him.” Vlad pulled the blade from the dead man’s chest and then wiped it clean on the B.J.’s acid-washed cutoff jean shorts.
Charlie looked at the bodies and shook his head. It was clear Vlad was too much of a loose cannon, and he had to go. “You know this just isn’t—”
He stopped midsentence as something caught his eye. Charlie bent over and picked the shotgun up as his heart sank like a stone. There was a familiar inscription engraved on the side plate – an inscription from his mother to his father. The two dead men were instantly forgotten as Charlie sprinted towards home. So close, and yet so far away.
Minutes later Charlie gasped for air as he stopped in front of his parents’ isolated house. Crickets chirped loudly in the overgrown bean fields as he searched for anything out of the ordinary. From the outside the place looked exactly as he remembered it, and Charlie hoped against hope for a simple explanation. Maybe his father traded the shotgun, or maybe he sold it?
He walked down the gravel driveway towards the front door and absentmindedly looked into his sister’s station wagon that was parked there. Big mistake.
Charlie’s sister, Melody, was nowhere to be seen. But her son, a precocious two-year-old named Cody who often claimed his boogers were cookie crumbs, was still strapped into his car seat. At least, the lower half of him was. The rest had been ripped away and digested long ago.
The sight was too much, and Charlie violently puked before crying out in anguish. Then he wiped his mouth and stormed inside the house before the others could stop him. Not surprisingly, what he found within was just as bad.
They say you can never go home, and during a zombie apocalypse, this is more often true than not. The house had been ransacked and the back screen door banged open and shut with the breeze. It appeared wildlife had moved in some time ago. And the smell was about as bad as expected. Sour. Wet. Dead.
However, the dilapidated state of the home wasn’t what bothered Charlie now. His mother was on the living room floor where her decomposing body was slowly melting into the shagged carpet. Melody was several feet away and in the same condition, but with a gunshot through her head and pants around her ankles. Charlie did not even want to think about whatever chain of events had led to such a scene.
And then, as he looked up, he came face to face with his father. Or, more aptly, what used to be his father. The infected man had come up from the basement as Charlie wept loudly, and was now heading right for him.
Without hesitating, Charlie swung his dad’s shotgun overhead like a club and brought the man low. He slammed the butt down again and again until his father’s face resembled a spilled bowl of tomato soup. It was an inglorious end for such a kind soul, and that made it all the more horrible.
The others ran inside, and Charlie, covered in his own father’s blood and gore, turned to Katya with a cold glare. “How come nobody was looking out for them too?”
There was absolutely nothing Katya could say at that moment, so she grabbed Sam and quietly slipped out the back door. As unhinged as he was – and rightfully so – she wasn’t sure what Charlie was about to do. But she did know that Sam shouldn’t see it.
Muttering to himself, Charlie dragged the bodies into a pile, albeit gently, and closed their eyes while staring intently at each family member. He tried to focus on happy family memories, as if that could somehow alleviate the pain. However, nothing could block out the reality of the hellhole in front of him.
Having been raised by the Campbells due to his own dysfunctional family, Rob was almost as upset as Charlie. The big man would have collapsed into a blubbering pile of despair had Ping and Smokey not supported him. Even so, each trembling sob threatened to bring all three down to the ground.
Charlie grabbed a knit blanket from the couch and walked outside, quickly coming back with his nephew’s desiccated remains. He gently placed the blanket on his sister’s lap and then went to his own childhood bedroom, returning moments later with a handful of cardboard boxes. It was his baseball card collection, the ultimate symbol of youth and innocence. Those days were gone for good. For everyone.
The distraught son, brother, and uncle began piling the cards on top of his family in a bizarre funeral pyre. He threw unopened packs of Donruss into the mix, loose cards he never got around to sorting, and then his 1987 Tops complete set, the one with the brown borders. It was from the last year he collected the cards before they became uncool. Next came a stack of rookie cards for his favorite players including Bo Jackson, Ozzie Smith, and of course, Nolan Ryan. For some reason Charlie gripped the card tightly as he pictured the time the old pitcher beat the crap out of Robin Ventura for charging the mound.
He took the lighter from Smokey and torched the card, letting the flames lick his hand before dropping it into the pile.
* * *
The group left the house after it became fully engulfed in flames and marched silently through the forest towards their final destination. Charlie’s optimism from earlier in the morning had been replaced by utter and abject despondency. If bad news greeted him at the base, he was likely to end it all right there.
The loss of Charlie’s family had been a heavy blow, but with mere miles separating them from the alleged base, their plans moving forward needed to be addressed. Still smarting from his dressing down the day before, Left-Nut took it upon himself to broach the subject all the same.
“I know it sucks, Charlie. But we should look ahead here. It’s painful, I get it, but—”
“Don’t pretend you know what I’m going through,” Charlie said without slowing down.
Left-Nut moved in front of him. “Look at me. Look at them. All our families are dead too. We just didn’t have to see it.”
“Mine’s not,” Vlad said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Left-Nut shot back, using the phrase on someone else for once. “Far be it from me to be the voice of reason, but if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s self-preservation. And I’m telling you, we need to get it together and fast. I mean, do we think they’re just gonna let us waltz right into this military bas
e? Do we think they’ll like us showing up with one of the enemy?”
“Ping is one of us,” Sam said.
“They don’t know that,” Left-Nut replied. “Hell, they might shoot us on sight just for fraternizing with him.”
“So what are you saying?” Charlie asked.
Left-Nut lowered his voice. “I’m saying we need to think this through and try to put a more diplomatic spin on things here. Our meeting with the Johnson boys didn’t go too swell now did it? Just like our run-in with Crazy Pat, though I’ll take the blame for that one.”
“They killed my family.”
“Possibly, but we didn’t know it at the time Vlad cut them up like Thanksgiving leftovers. I’m just saying, you’re obviously pissed right now, and deservedly so. How about we let cooler heads prevail when we get there? I’d say Smokey does the talking.”
For once, the long-haired stoner nodded in agreement with Left-Nut. “He’s a bastard, but he’s right on this. As of now, I’m in charge. Ping will just stay back a ways until we defuse the situation.” He looked at Vlad. “And no bullshit out of you.”
“What? I am like stray kitty cat.”
There was a collective eye roll and they took off again, at least with some semblance of a plan this time. As they worked their way through the trees, nobody knew what lay ahead, but they all understood things were about to change for better or worse.
Thirty minutes later the guessing game was over. “Guys, we’re here,” Rob said and waved them up to his position on the edge of the forest.
The sight that greeted them was not what they had expected. Instead of an actual military base, the fort was a massive shipping facility surrounded by vast walls of sandbags. Heavy machine guns were visible on the roof and only one road led to the main gate, with a charter bus parked in front of it. In an ominous sign, the surrounding field was littered with hundreds, if not thousands, of rotting corpses and random body parts.
“Zombies?” Rob said.
“Maybe,” Left-Nut answered. “Or maybe they were assholes like us sneaking up to a secret military base.”
“Guess we’ll find out,” Smokey said and took his wife-beater undershirt off, attaching it to a nearby stick. “Don’t worry, I’ve seen shit like this a million times on television. The important thing is to stay confident and speak in a direct but nonthreatening manner. I’ll go straight up to the side wall and work my way over to the main entrance.”
Without further ado, Smokey started the hundred-yard walk across the field of death, stopping every so often to wave his white flag to avoid being mistaken for a cannibal. Only a chorus of crows, angry at the interruption of their feast, greeted his arrival.
Soon he had reached the wall, but something wasn’t right. For starters, he should have been spotted by the sentries well in advance. Upon closer inspection, it became apparent why he hadn’t been. The watchmen were skeletons.
Smokey set the stick down and waved at his friends.
“It’s a ghost town, come on over!”
Big mistake. Dozens of zombies came streaming out from behind the back side of the fort with extreme prejudice. Smokey had been lulled into a false sense of security by the deaths of the countless zombies around him, and he would now likely pay for it.
The others were too far away to do anything but watch in horror as the pack descended upon their friend. Smokey looked at his stick, threw it on the ground and fumbled for the last joint tucked away in his underwear. The killers got within fifty yards as he pulled the joint out and prepared to light it.
Boom! Boom! Boom boom boom!
Smokey dropped his Grateful Dead lighter as the zombies detonated by the handful, having run straight into a minefield. He had somehow managed to walk through it unscathed, but the cannibals were not as fortunate, and Bouncing Betty fragmentation devices were blowing them up like moist fireworks.
The rest of the group hugged the edge of the forest and made their way towards the road. They reached it safely while the zombies continued to explode in the field.
Eventually, the last of the runners, an elderly woman, hobbled towards Smokey with great effort but minimal speed. She detonated into nothingness several yards from her target, showering Smokey in dentures and old lady parts, but leaving him otherwise unharmed.
As the smoke cleared, a semi pulled down the lone road and stopped in front of the group, causing them to clench their weapons in anticipation of whatever clusterfuck was next.
The passenger door opened, and after a few painful seconds of waiting, a heavily bandaged man limped around to the front, carrying a clipboard.
“Can I get somebody to sign for this delivery of two thousand dildos?” Trent said.
Laughing heartily, Smokey pointed his thumb at Left-Nut. “No man, we’ve got plenty of dildos already.”
As Trent’s group exited the vehicle, Left-Nut shook his head in amazement at Smokey. “I’d say you’re luckier than Justin Bieber’s dick right now.”
“Hey, I did win the lottery, remember?” Smokey said with a grin and stepped forward to grab his lighter.
Click. He looked down just as the landmine shot up from the ground.
“Bummer,” Smokey said while the explosion of shrapnel and death enveloped him. His fabled luck had run out.
* * *
Trent’s happy reunion had been short-lived due to Smokey’s sudden demise. But life, and the struggle to maintain it, had to go on. After a brief burial of the parts of Smokey’s body that had been blown into the safety of the road, the merged group climbed on top of the semi and made their way inside the looming base.
As expected, it was completely abandoned. The place also appeared to have been evacuated in a hurry as plenty of supplies and weaponry seemed to have been left behind. This was little comfort for anyone at this point, but it was better than nothing.
Marquell and Jackie took a group and set about gathering those resources while Charlie, Left-Nut and Rob searched for clues about the evacuation.
After two hours of searching, they still had nothing. Charlie was about to give up when Sam came to them holding a piece of paper.
“This might be something. I found it on a bulletin board by the kitchen. You said you were looking for a child, right?” Sam handed over a crudely drawn picture.
“Wow, great work,” Left-Nut said sarcastically. “Let’s put it up on the fridge.”
But Charlie smiled broadly. “That’s Brandon’s. I’d recognize his shitty drawings anywhere.” The picture showed a small black child up in a tree surrounded by what looked like bucktoothed vampires. Also in the picture was a man in a red outfit who looked like a bald superhero, his arms reaching upwards. It was Charlie.
“Why’s he wearing a football helmet?” Rob asked.
“Huh? That is strange,” Charlie said and looked closer. Indeed, the Brandon in the drawing was wearing a Denver Broncos football helmet, and the helmet had been drawn much better than the rest of the picture, possibly by an adult’s hand. “I think it’s a clue. Maybe they weren’t allowed to leave us a message, but they did anyways.”
“And?” Trent said.
“And we’re going to Denver. Might even be able to catch them along the way. We should hurry up.”
Left-Nut exhaled deeply. “We barely made it halfway across the state and now you want to try and cross half the country in some sort of Lord of the Rings-type caper?”
“Yes,” Charlie said flatly.
“All based on a fucking hunch? And for argument’s sake, what if we find the base and everyone’s dead?” He was interrupted as a giggling Vladimir walked by like a kid in a candy store, draped in ammo belts and carrying a .50 caliber Browning machine gun. Left-Nut ignored him. “Or what if your girlfriend’s moved on from your pathetic, pining ass? I’ve seen enough Maury Povich to know that just because you’re baby’s daddy doesn’t mean you get the keys to the castle. She could be knocking combat boots with half the National Guard by now. Fuck, she might not even be pregnant.
I mean, how well do you actually know her? It wouldn’t be the first time you got suckered by a chick.”
Charlie could ignore Left-Nut’s diatribe except for the last part. The truth was he didn’t know Brooke all that well. If she had used him, she got exactly what she wanted: a one way ticket out of shithole Chicago. But there was a flicker of hope still alive for Charlie, and for the rest of them. And he was going to seize it.
An ominous rumbling was suddenly heard far away in the distance, accompanied by the telltale sounds of gunfire. It was coming from tanks. Lots and lots of them. And now they knew why the base had been evacuated.
“You got something better to do?” Charlie asked, arching an eyebrow.
“No,” Left-Nut replied.
“That’s what I thought.”
Epilogue
Russ had remained quiet for a full thirty minutes as the president piloted the aircraft in similar silence. Ahead were dark skies and darker thoughts.
Finally, the truck driver could take it no longer. “Time for some Columbian marching powder,” he said and pulled the kilo of cocaine out from underneath his seat. Next he cut a small hole in the plastic with his pocket knife. The knife went to his nose and Russ snorted long and hard. “Yikes. That’s some good shit.”
“I hardly think that’s what we need at the—”
“It’s gonna keep me from eating you in the near future,” Russ said. “Plus, I like to party yo.”
“I suppose we can’t have that,” the president said, his eyes lingering on the contraband.
Russ instinctively lined the gentleman up with his own bump and President Childers took it like a champ. “That is good shit,” he said and refocused on flying. But the drug had already loosened his tongue, and soon the reserved politician was spilling his guts. He told Russ about the war, how big of a prick the former president had been, and even about his childhood.
Amped up on weasel dust, Russ was a surprisingly good listener. But he had topics he wanted to discuss as well.
Dead Drunk II: Dawn of the Deadbeats (Dead Drunk: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse... One Beer at a Time Book 2) Page 19
