Once I couldn’t hear bullets whizzing closely by overhead, I lowered my arms from my head and looked up. In a big fuckin’ C around me, at least fifteen feet deep, dozens of zombies lay sprawled about with their heads ventilated by high-powered rifles, and more and more kept joining them as they single-mindedly kept trying to get to me, oblivious to the fact that they were only rushing to their deaths. I found it odd that I couldn’t hear any rifle reports, and saw the reason why when I looked over at the wall.
“Motherfuckin’ suppressors,” I said, upon seeing the tell-tale muzzle flashes of a ton of rifles all along the top of the wall. “That’s gotta be it. That is some really fuckin’ smart shit.”
I saw my AR a few feet in front of me - where I had dropped it when I was pulled into the horde - and crawled up to it. Once I had it in my hands again, I was about to hop to my feet and start my victory run to safety, humming “Eye of the Tiger” and all that jazz, when the mortars started dropping all over the fuckin’ place.
“FUUUUUUUCK!!!!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, as I curled myself up into the fetal position, and hoped and prayed that no shrapnel would hit me, as I could feel the concussions of some of the mortars as they exploded right around me - they were that close, it was fuckin’ sick.
After about a minute of laying there like a fuckin’ pussy, I yelled “Fuck this shit!!!” and grabbed my rifle and hopped to my feet - only to realize that I had laid there like a little baby for about a minute too long. I was smack dab in the middle of a very large group of zombies. I have no fuckin’ clue how they missed me as I lay there - maybe their ability to “home in” on prey, or whatever, was thrown off by the constant waves of the mortars, who knows - but hundreds had shambled their way by me, stranding me behind enemy lines. For a moment, I was too afraid to move. Then a hand came to rest on my shoulder… and that was all the motivation I needed.
I spun to my rear, brought the stock of my AR to the touchy zombies face in a vicious fuckin’ butt-stroke, and caved that fucker in like when Andrew “Dice” Clay punched mofo’s in the face in that movie “Brain Smasher - A Love Story”. It was awesome, and I was fully torqued, again. I knew that I wasn’t gonna make it outta that shit alive, but by god was I fuckin’ excited!!!
After I laughed at smashy-face for a couple seconds and pissed on his broken face (if ya gotta go, ya gotta go - but it was kinda hard to do with a boner), I turned back towards Grand Ridge, popped a fresh mag in my rifle, and charged forward - screaming with maniacal glee as I blasted away at anything that got in my motherfuckin’ way.
I felt like I was in some wicked Viet Nam epic like “Hamburger Hill”, or even “Saving Private Ryan” when they stormed the beach at Normandy - the mortars were still dropping outta the sky, exploding all throughout the horde and tossing the undead like confetti through the air; the snipers were still firing away from their perches atop the wall, as I saw the heads of many zombies get turned to pulp and vapor as I killed my way onward - I even felt the burn when a few rounds buzzed by my face and neck; and I was kicking, punching, and shooting my way to safety a la Schwarzenegger, Norris, Van Damme, Statham, Eastwood, The Duke, and all of the other heroes of the big screen that I had been watching my entire life. It made me wish I had a fuckin’ cameraman following me around like those stupid fuckin’ “reality” show pukes, ‘cause what it would’ve recorded would’ve been some award-winning shit - I’m talking Emmy’s, man, and lots of ‘em. That’s fuckin’ right!
Somewhere along the line I lost my ruck with all my spare AR mags in it, so when I fired the last round from the mags I had in my LBV, I spun that fuckin’ rifle around and used it as a club and began to hammer and smash my way a little further towards the wall. The fuckin’ zombies were mostly spread out from one another - anywhere from a foot to three - but after only about ten feet or so of skull-crushing I came upon a large group of them that were packed in so close together, I had no choice but to separate them and clear my path - which I tried to do, with all the brutality and pure fucking rage I could muster.
At the head of the pack were four zombies - one of them was a naked, portly blonde woman with a massive 70’s bush, and the other three were just dudes who were wearing regular clothes, although one of them did have sunglasses on - and I rushed at them and swung the rifle in a brutal arc at the side of sunglasses left knee, and shattered that shit with an audible “pop”.
Sunglasses fell hard to the ground, and I quickly drove the rifles stock down into his face and split his skull in half. 70’s bush was the next closest zombie to me, so I lunged up at her and rammed my left shoulder into her jaw - that bitch came off her fuckin’ feet I hit her so hard. As she was falling to the ground, I spun the rifle up and slammed the stock down hard on the next dude’s forehead - so fuckin’ hard I saw his neck shrink as the vertebrae in it were shattered and turned to dust.
One of the other zombie dudes was reaching in for the kill when I was still on my down-swing, so to keep him from getting ahold of me, I literally threw myself at him, caught him in his chest, and we both slammed down onto the ground. I knew I was fucked if I stayed on the ground like that for too long, so I hugged my rifle tight and barrel-rolled through about a half-dozen more zombies, and caused them all to fall to the ground in a heap behind me.
When it looked like I could, I hopped to my feet and launched the rifle into the face of a biker-zombie that was a little too close for comfort. Before that hit him in his face, though, I had my 9 out (that I had forgotten about having on my LBV) and began to fire away at the heads and faces of the zombies who were by that point completely surrounding me.
Even though I was most assuredly fucked, I still found myself smiling and laughing like I was watching a really funny movie, or doing something that I really enjoyed like hangin’ out in a garage with my friends and knocking back some brews - I was having a really good fuckin’ time.
Plus, I thought I was making some serious head-way, and was less than a hundred yards from the fuckin’ wall. I could even see some of the snipers faces as they shot at the undead horde that was slowly but steadily making their way towards them. It was probably wishful thinking, but I began to get a little hope that there was a slight chance that I was gonna make it to the wall and live to see another day, and maybe even enjoy some brews with the snipers and mortar-men who were helping me get to safety… when a fuckin’ mortar dropped right into a small group of zombies that I was just rushing into, gun a-blazin’.
72
I opened my eyes and found myself staring at a water-stained ceiling. It was funny, the stain kind of looked like Elvis - fat Vegas Elvis, not the prime of his career skinny Elvis. It was a hunka-hunka burnin’ water-stain. After I looked at that for a little bit and hummed some excerpts from whatever Elvis songs I could remember, I looked around the room so I could see where I was at, as I had no fuckin’ memory of anything after the mortar dropped.
The room itself didn’t have anything in it that could’ve given me even the slightest fuckin’ clue as to where I was at, but I was able to figure it out by the view out the window - there was one of those short-buses parked in the lot in front of the building, plus I remembered some of the other shit I saw out there from the countless times I had driven though Grand Ridge (not that there was whole lot to look at). I was in one of the classrooms in the elementary school that ran next to 23.
After I had that little puzzle sorted out, I sat up - which I found extremely hard to do, for some odd reason - and looked at what the room did have in it. First off, I was in a bed. It looked like it was some kids bed that had been taken from its room, ‘cause the sheets had some cartoon character that I was unfamiliar with - one of those stupid new japanimation fuckin’ things that in my opinion ruined cartoons completely. The bed was quite a bit higher up than it should’ve been, and after I leaned over to peek underneath (to see why and to look for zombies) I saw that it was perched atop cinderblocks to bring it chest high if someone was standing next to it - just like a h
ospital bed.
The rest of the room was MacGyver’s wet dream - some crafty fucker had filled it with what amounted to a big crazy looking life-support system. One that was obviously made to keep me alive, and that did its job wonderfully, I must add, despite the fact that it looked like some crackhead retard had put it together.
Aside from the bed, over half of the room was filled from wall to wall with what looked to be about a hundred inter-connected and relayed car batteries that were all sitting on top of milk crates, to keep them from grounding out. All of the batteries were then connected to around twenty of those two-bagger IV drip machines (that all had some weird-looking home-made timer mechanisms attached to them), by what looked like a tangled mess of wires that ran all over the fuckin’ room; and the IV’s from the drip machines had lines that all ran to me, that were connected to me somehow under the sheet - the sheet that I still had covering up my body. It hadn’t fallen off when I sat up and I didn’t have the energy to pull it off me afterwards.
Honestly, I was afraid to pull the sheet away, and I wasn’t too sure I could anyways, my body was so fuckin’ stiff. Hell… to tell you the truth, I was more than afraid - I was petrified. I’ve had IV’s before, sure, one here, two another time, but NEVER had I at the same exact time had fucking FORTY of the motherfucker’s stuck in my body. NEVER!!! I couldn’t fuckin’ believe that someone had stuck forty fuckin’ IV’s in my body, but all those IV lines running from all over the room to under my sheet was proof enough.
It’s funny, up until that point I couldn’t really feel a thing, my body was so numb, but once I saw what the room was filled with and the realization of what I was gonna find under the covers hit me, the pain just SLAMMED!!! into me - all at once - and I was feeling everything. I mean, fucking everything. I spasmed from the pain like a grand mal epileptic, my body alight with forty pinpricks of fire, and the sheet fell to the floor, exposing what I had been too afraid to reveal.
After the brunt of the pain subsided and I was able to breathe somewhat normally again, I looked down at what my seizure had revealed… and it wasn’t as bad as what I had envisioned. I was thinking it would look like something outta “Hellraiser” that Pinhead conjured up for my eternal torment, but instead I just looked like a big, stupid human pin cushion. Although, it was still a pretty disturbing image, with all those IV needles stuck in my body - all up and down my arms and legs, on my chest and sides, on my hands and feet, and even on my neck - surrounded by deep, painful purple and black bruises. It was pretty fuckin’ gross, but at least none of the IV injection points looked infected or gangrenous. At least there was that.
“Jesus christ,” I rasped as I reached with my right hand to an IV in my left arm, “this is gonna hurt…”
And hurt it did, but I managed to pull all those fuckin’ needles out of my body without screaming like a little bitch even once, and I didn’t even pass out, which is something I did not want to do - ‘cause who knew when I would’ve woken up next. I sure didn’t, and I didn’t want to find out. The worst part of the whole ordeal was that I bled like a sieve after pulling each needle out, and it took a while for my blood to clot and close the wounds. Normally, it wouldn’t have been that big a deal, but I had no idea if there was anything for me to eat and drink in the school that could’ve given my body the vitamins and nutrients it needed to get it back in good working order - ‘cause right then, I was running on fumes, and sputtering.
Once all the needles were pulled out, I fell back to the bed, utterly exhausted. When I felt I could maybe move again, I sat back up and examined my body. Sometime during my coma - which I was sure I had been in, judging by the obvious weight loss I had underwent (not too much, thankfully), and by the lengths of my beard and hair - I had been operated on, and I had a few new scars to show for it. They were all pretty fuckin’ easy to see, too, ‘cause whoever had left me in that room all iv’ed up like I was had also left me naked. As a jaybird.
There was a long scar on the front and back of my left thigh where I assumed that some tendons or whatever inside there had to be reattached; there was a really long scar going down my left side where the piece of glass went in (most likely ‘cause something vital was torn inside me that the super glue missed, or maybe even because of some massive internal bleeding); on my right forearm I was surprised to find sewed up entry and exit points where a bullet had passed through - it must’ve been from when the snipers were shooting, but I don’t remember being actually shot by them; on my groin there was what looked to me a new hernia surgery scar, which I was actually pretty glad to see, ‘cause I had had a hernia but didn’t have the insurance or money to get it taken care of before; and my right calf had some pretty nasty scars running down it.
I must’ve been in a coma for quite some time, I realized as I looked myself over, ‘cause all the scars were well healed, there was no redness that sometimes surrounds incision points after surgeries, and there wasn’t the usual pain and tightness around those areas that should have been there for a while as the wounds healed. Aside from all the places where the IV needles were stuck in me, I felt pretty fuckin’ good. Sure, my body was stiff from disuse, my joints were sore from finally being used again, I was seriously malnourished and dehydrated from what was most likely weeks of being “fed” through IV’s, the bed I was laying in was covered in my shit, and I had a catheter hose (with no bag attached) hanging out my dick - but other than that, I felt that after I got some food in my stomach and drank a couple gallons of water, I’da been good to go, dontchya know. One thing that I did find odd, however, was the fact that I didn’t have any bedsores and the fact that my muscles hadn’t atrophied from lying on my fuckin’ back for god knows how long.
I laid there for a little bit longer, resting and building up some strength, before I figured that I had been on my back long enough, and sat back up and shifted my body so that my legs and feet were hanging off the bed. They were still a good two feet from the floor, which meant that I would have to push myself off the bed and try and land on my feet. I didn’t think I would be able to make the drop down due to the disuse of my muscles - even though normally it wouldn’t have been no thang - but I shoved myself off anyways, and just like I thought, my fuckin’ legs gave out beneath me and I fell to the floor and took with me three of the IV’s on the way.
I landed with a loud fuckin’ crash - so loud that it should’ve been heard by whoever it was that had retrieved me from beyond the wall and put me in there, who should’ve been running through the door to see what the commotion was as soon as they heard it. But no one came. I laid there, waiting for someone to come, for at least five or ten minutes before the realization hit me that no one was going to walk through that door - not ever. I had noticed that it was awfully quiet after I woke up and when I was painstakingly taking the IV needles out of my body, but it was something in the back of my mind - I noticed it, but it was like when you hear traffic out your windows as cars go by, something on the periphery of your attention, but not really worth all of it. Or even a little bit of it. Something just there, like the air you breathe.
What was even weirder, was the fact that I didn’t hear any zombies anywhere, either. Ever since the first day, the horrible moans of the undead accompanied by the sound of gunshots had become commonplace - another one of those background noises that are always there, on the periphery - and it didn’t matter where you were at, your peace (if you were lucky enough to get some) was gonna be violated. But suddenly, there wasn’t even that. To say the least, I was unnerved.
As I lay on the floor, all tangled up in IV tubes, I spotted something that I had missed when I was giving the room a once-over - there was a note or a letter taped to the center of the door out. I untangled myself and got to my hands and knees, and immediately felt self-conscious that somebody’d walk in and see me and laugh at my nudity or at the awkward position I was in (not that there’s anything funny about me being naked, it just looked like I was waiting to either give it or take it in the a
ss). I knew that no one would (I had an inkling feeling that I was gonna be the only person left in Grand Ridge - alive or dead), but the apprehension was still there.
Since I didn’t yet trust my legs to carry me, I had to crawl over all the batteries and wires to get over there. It was slow going, and I got tangled up in the fuckin’ wires a couple times in the process, but I eventually made it to the door. Once there, I collapsed on the floor, utterly exhausted from the short trip across the room - and then passed the fuck out.
73
I opened my eyes and found myself looking up at another fuckin’ water stain, but I didn’t ponder that one for too long ‘cause it didn’t look like shit. I’m not sure how long I was out, as I had no clue as to what time it was when I came to earlier - or if I even woke up again on the same fuckin’ day, even - but when I rolled over onto my side to look out the window, it was nearly full dark. There was just enough light left to read the ominous letter, though, so I reached up to it and yanked it down to my level to see what the fuck it was. For all I knew, it could’ve been class schedules and shit, but I had an inkling it was for me. And it was…
Here is what it said:
Hey stupid,
I say stupid because you had to have been stupid to go charging the gates of our little compound with hundreds of zombies behind you like you did. Or crazy. Either way, it took some balls to be out there like you were, and I know not even the toughest grunt here in camp would have had the stones to be out there running around on foot like you were. Took some guts, more than any of us in here have, and you must have had a damn good reason, too. I wish I could have asked you… Anyway, if you are still alive (which I really hope you are) you probably have lots of questions, like “why did I wake up naked in some stupid kids bed?”, right? Well, here’s what happened. After the snipers and the mortar crews had brought the zombie threat to an acceptable level, our CO sent out three teams: two to kill whatever zombies were left, and one to retrieve you. That’s right, you were left out there the entire time, lying on the ground while hundreds of those fucking zombies fought to try and eat you.
Just Another Day Page 28
