“Ho-lee shit!’ he cried. “Welcome to hell!”
He called for backup, and they ordered him into the trailer park, which was relatively clear of zombies. We waited there for about fifteen minutes until someone else showed up in an armored National Guard hummer. The trailer park was on a slight hill, and as we sat there, we watched the rotten tide gradually coming in. Once the drab truck showed up, it’s .50 caliber guns started blazing. It was open season. Donaldson made some kid named Teddy stay back to snipe (come to find out, he was one of the best shots in the state militia) while we drove out into the fray.
I’m not going to lie. I was terrified. There were so many of them, and here we were in the back of a pick-up truck totally unprotected. The zombies were inches away from us.
After making two or three passes (thinning the zombie herd considerably), Donaldson ordered me and two other guys to get out of the truck and go door to door from 6th Street to 3rd Street, and then link up with a few other guys.
He put a guy named Ricky Swagger in charge. A big, fat man with short black hair and beady black eyes, Ricky led me and two others through the mayhem and brought us safely out. That didn’t mean we weren’t scared. Hell, I stopped at least three times to puke. The worst part was that by the time we set out, all of the zombies in the area were dead...except the ones that were indoors. And it seemed that every room of every house we came to contained at least one of the suckers. The power was off, so we were using flashlights. Talk about harrowing.
Swagger, for his part, barked orders left and right and gave me hell for puking every five minutes. Later though, he clapped my back and told me I did good for a newbie.
It was two, I think, when we linked up with the others. From there, we joined some other guys in the trailer park. A black guy named Lowey came up with the genius idea of torching the whole shebang, and that’s just what we did, standing by in case the fire got out of hand. We stood there watching it roast as the guns roared in the background. Just as the fire was reaching its peak, a huge explosion split the world in half, knocking us to the ground and scaring the holy Jesus out of us. Come to find out, Rhodes had ordered a piece of heavy artillery placed on a hill overlooking town. Without even letting us know, they started raining hellfire and brimstone down.
We left at dusk, as fires still raged. Rhodes radioed Donaldson and told him not to worry about keeping the fires in check. He was hoping that they’d spread to the woods and flush the zombies out. And it worked. For the next week we did nothing but shoot zombies. Some of them came in from the north (where sat Fredericksburg) and others from the south, but most of them seemed to come just from the woods, as if the forests themselves had birthed them. Within a week, I had fallen into a rhythm. Wake early. Eat breakfast. Go out on the hunt. Come back. Eat dinner. Work out with Rhodes and a few of the other guys. Go bed. That’s what I did for a long time (weeks and weeks). I became real friendly with a lot of the guys, even Rhodes. I thought that I was adjusting to the life really well.
But that changed on an afternoon in August.
We’d gotten a few new guys in earlier in the week, some National Guard privates who’d been trapped at the armory in Fredericksburg. We sent a team to go and get them (I didn’t volunteer, and I wasn’t asked) and it took two days to get in and out: the city was mostly rubble and zombies. The governor, I suppose, authorized a wide-scale bombing of all major Virginian cities. Our men survived that, but were trapped by the undead. By the time they got back, there were three of them out of six (two were bitten and another shot himself). One of them was a little white guy named Benny Charles. At first, things were fine. But after a few days, it became apparent that Charles was fucking crazy. So Rhodes partnered him with me so I could keep an eye on him.
One day, they sent us across the Westmoreland County line to a little town called Oak Grove. There was a pretty nasty traffic snarl their (stalled and abandoned vehicles) and Rhodes wanted it moved to the side of the road. We took a Highway Department tow truck and a pick-up. We got there about noon, and saw with sinking spirits that a “little pile-up” was really twenty-five cars plus an overturned UPS truck. The best part? Some of the cars contained zombies. Yeah. Charles and me were tasked with going car-to-car and putting a bullet in the brain of everybody (dead or undead).
It was nasty, rank work, but we handled it fine, until we came to the minivan. Charles cupped his hands against one of the windows and made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “Three occupants. One adult, two children.”
I looked for myself. Two car seats. The children in them were dead, bullets in their heads. Behind the driver seat, slumped against the blood-smeared window, was the mother, a gun clutched in one hand.
Heartbreaking, but I was desensitized by then. I opened the door and made Charles help me.
We dragged her from the car and left her on the side of the road; we tried to ignore the stench, but couldn't. She was in a state putrefaction so advanced she didn’t even look human. Her skin was a slimy black and hung loosely on her frame, and her eyes bulged from her bruised face. Charles looked at me, his face ashen.
"You get the car seats."
"Fuck you," I said with my stomach feeling queasy.
"Come on, man," he pled, " I can't deal with that shit. Please."
I sighed. "Alright, fine."
I opened the back door and reached in, but poles my hand back the way a man burnt would.
"Jesus Christ," Charles squeaked again. He looked like a woman being stared down by a giant spider. The woman lie still at his feet, and for a moment I didn't know what the hell he was freaking out over. Then I noticed a slight movement beneath the woman's baggy blue dress, almost like a ripple.
"What the fuck?" I asked. Before Charles could speak again, the woman's stomach bulged outward, as if something living within her was trying to get out.
For one stricken moment, I stood gaping at her stomach moved and stretched. Then it dawned on me. Charles seemed to have reached the same conclusion I had.
"Oh, shit, man," he wined, "oh, shit."
I licked my lips. I'd never wondered what would happen to the fetuses of dead mothers, had never wanted to. But like everyone else, they come back.
"Oh, shit, oh, shit," Charles was saying, tears streaming down his face. The woman's flesh began to audibly rip, and Charles staggered back. "Kill it, man; kill it before it comes out!"
I slung my rifle from my shoulder and fumbled with it for a moment. Charles turned away and put his hands over his ears.
I aimed at the woman’s midsection. I could see the clear imprint of five tiny fingers beneath her dress. I didn’t realize that I was shaking until I pulled the trigger. Five shots found their mark, but a few others hit the dirt, kicking up dust.
Donovan came over and gave me shit for firing my gun. “You’ll attract more of the bastards, and this ain’t a search and destroy mission.”
Charles was blubbering by now. Donovan called him a dirty name and told us to get back to work.
So we did. Charles was shell-shocked and shaky, but I was fine.
Until later,
I guess my adrenaline insulated me at the time; the same way shock numbs grievous wounds until hours later. I went back to the compound, ate dinner, and went to bed. In my dreams, however, I relived it over and over again, and it was more horrible and heartbreaking each time.
It haunted me. Day after day, night after night. I had nightmares that I won’t even repeat to this day, dreams wherein I choked and the thing slopped out onto the ground, a small, slick, red thing with yellow razor teeth and beady black eyes. I started sitting up nights, too afraid to sleep, like a character from A Nightmare on Elm Street. It wasn’t long before I started going out of my mind; for a while, I lived life on the verge of cracking up.
As my situation got worse, things started affecting me that didn’t before. The whole thing – the zombies, the seeming collapse of society, the constant stress and fear – was getting to me. It was as
if that one little roadside incident ripped away my armor and everything that I’d been keeping out started getting in. It got so bad that Rhodes took me aside one day and asked me what the fuck was going on. I told him, my cheeks burning with shame. I expected him to call me a bitch or something, but he didn’t. He understood. I could see it in his eyes. So he put me on bed rest. For two weeks my main concern was cleaning: sweeping, washing dishes, mopping, scrubbing the toilets. At night, he gave me Valium, and I slept the dark, dreamless sleep of the drugged.
Not too long after that, Charles snapped all the way and stuck a pistol in his mouth; they found him in the barracks, sitting on his bunk, back against the wall. I almost followed him several times. I was sinking deeper and deeper. And it wasn’t just due to the incident. It was like that ripped by armor away, and everything just got in, past the shield I had erected. The whole situation became overwhelming.
In the weeks and months after, the great "zombie apocalypse" worked itself out, and Rhodes had me shipped to a VA hospital in Maryland, where I spent nearly six months of my life. I was thanked by the governor for my services, and even given a medal of valor. The government refused to pay for my psychiatrist, however.
A generation of us was traumatized by the events of the summer of 2018. We all saw things that we’ll never get over. I'm not the only one; I’m just one of millions who will never cope with The Rising.
Skirmish at the Barbecue Pit
Dave Fragments
There was a time that I worried about making my family picnic a success. I worried about even the most despicable details; worst of my worries--the port-a-potties. Cheap port-a-potties look ugly and smell bad. I wanted those special disability-enabled potties with the genetically engineered bacteria that kill the stink and hide the evidence. I called eighteen rental companies before I found a company who could deliver high-end potties. I screamed with joy so loud, the neighbors came looking to see what happened. Ruth Cohen, a widow who lived across the hall, said, "such angst I've never seen" in her Yiddish accent. Self-proclaimed badass and third-floor neighbor Tony said, "drink a little wine, eat some linguini, and take the cannoli." He made his living breaking legs for the mafia and kept a roll of TP in his car for emergencies. I never asked for details.
After that, I worried about the food. I don’t cook. Several dozen family guests and a grill gave me nightmares about exploding propane, third-degree burns, and dysentery. Desperation. I lay awake some nights thrashing or walking the floors, and listening to Vivaldi flute concerti. Cecily and Tina in the apartment next door heard my Vivaldi-inspired footfalls and decided to end my bat-shit crazy, and too, too panicky condition. They gave me a price for accepting their services as cooks--they’re sous chefs, they're married, and they owned knives; Santoku knives, paring knives, meat knives, sharp knives, long knives, paring knives--or else they’d pickle my ears and man-parts in brine.
I agreed. Success seemed within my grasp. But still, I worried that the third of my family that raised chickens wouldn’t like the family with the big, old six-foot satellite dish rusting next to their horse barns, or my city relatives who like to pretending they weren't related to any of us hicks, would just not break bread together. My fears seem so breathlessly foolish and stupid now.
I rented Pavilion Three in Mingo Park. It’s isolated and away from the ball field drunks, away from the covered bridge photographers, away from the poison ivy hollows, away from the trout stream that mostly attracted children in leaky, poison-filled diapers. I spent much of my youth there watching the squirrels and deer. Thinking back, it was a viral and bacterially prescient choice.
The morning of the picnic, Cecily appeared at my door dressed in what she called her hetero picnic clothes; hooped earrings, Daisy Dukes with a fringe, a man's V-necked Henley that showed cleavage. Her bosom reminded me of the bongo drums, that is, banged by the eyes of every man in the samba line at Rio de Janeiro's Mardi Gras. Every red-blooded male at the picnic would go into lust overdrive. The conservative half of the pair, Tina, wore a chocolate chemise and Capri pants so tight that they would make the serpent fall out of the apple tree. Every wife would hate her. I freaked. My family would think that they were my lovers. Mother would take one look and pronounce me no longer a virgin and ask where we hid her grandchildren. Tina and Cecily would slaughter me in my sleep to prove them wrong. God in heaven what a foolish worrier I could be.
They shoved a much-needed Valium down my throat to calm my nerves, and loaded me into the back seat of their cooking van where eighty pounds of pig carcass on ice stared me in the face. You want to talk seriously disturbing. Food should not stare not with a purple-red tongue lolling from its dead mouth while lying naked and bloodless, de-haired, sans innards and spread-eagled waiting for the grill.
Cope with it, they yelled at me.
When we reached the pavilion, Tina ordered me to do man-things like fill start the grill. I bristled and fussed about the hundredweight of charcoal as it turned my hands and arms black. Flames rose high in the sky and then settled into the coals. The two ladies got their aprons on, twirled their knives with a mighty war-whoop and prepped the pig for the grill. I didn't argue with knives.
I iced down the potato and macaroni salads and stocked the bar with Yuengling, Blue Moon and tapped the beer kegs, opened two colors of boxed wine to breathe, Stoli and soda pop. I set out the potato chips, pretzels, cheese dips, cheesy puffs, and a killer salsa. Condiments went on ice on a side table. I set out plates and forks, readied the jumpy-castle-ball-pit inflatable and put on my best smile.
My family arrived like a hoard of starved circus gypsies arriving in a Podunk town—ready to eat, gossip, and fleece.
A wheezing, clattering truck announced the first arrival. Aunt Flo, her five children and their families rattled into the Grove. Barely a moment later, Charley and his equally large clan of Izod wearing wannabes turned onto the lane in the largest SUVs ever created. The third wave of family brought Aunt Tessie and her minions from fast-food-eating hell, most of them waddlers. They disembarked from their land-boats. Then Uncle Woodruff with his three ex-wives and their motley crew of country hayseeds and flea-ridden rug rats in ten-year old pickup trucks. They looked like the Grapes or Wrath in their Sunday best--blue jeans and cowboy hats proclaiming Texarkana the Garden Spot of the seven continents.
My festivities began with these. More arrived as I said hello--cousins, aunts, uncles, in-laws, kids, pets, partners, live-in roomies, significant others, moochers and hangers-on. All of them related to me by blood or through marriage thanks to my Mom and Dad's prolific antics in the bedroom and the state’s divorce laws.
Baseball games started. Horseshoes pitched. Bocce balled. Kids in diapers waded in the stream. I was a success. Not a bombastic spectacle like ancient Rome under Caligula but a small, satisfying festival of minor-league gluttony sans the public debauchery and bloodshed.
Tina rang the dinner bell as Cecily and I served roast pig, chicken, bacon cheeseburgers, and hot dogs grilled to perfection. The horde of hoary men and their wives and children reached out, mouths watering, lips slobbering, hands grabbing for the food. Uncle Woodruff declared the roast pig to be the miracle of a porcine god. Aunt Betty declared the potato salad the best she ever ate and with that declaration, the picnic launched into the high orbit of success.
My family loved me, accepted me.
Bobby and Belinda, second cousins once removed, came back from the creek with a dozen kids in tow. They all had fluorescent-green, foamy slime smeared like goofy finger paint on their bodies. They said something made the water green. They noticed it after wadding in the deeper water near the covered bridge. The kids were playing in the green stuff in the shallows a few hundred feet downstream. The kids pretended to be aliens and ran around the tables, poking their parents and spreading the green stains in a game of tag.
I was helping Cecily carve the roast pig and used cleanliness as an excuse to keep from being slimed. I told them to go wash off before eating. Th
e grove had a garden hose for washing behind the port-a-potties. That's the last time I saw them alive.
A few minutes passed and we heard banshee wailing from the port-a-potties. The kids were vomiting green slime all over the potties and Bobby and Belinda. I blinked uncomprehending, like a man on drugs seeing red and green Christmas banners at a summer barbecue. The kid’s limbs shook. Their eyes turned devil-red. They bit their tongues and lips. Blood dribbled down their mouths. Cousin Harry Hwinsian stepped out of the middle port-a-potty having relieved his bladder. The kids jumped him, bit open his neck. Bright red blood gushed. He screamed high like a hyena before they ripped his throat out.
Nothing moved. When Harry’s body stopped twitching, the kids ran to their families. At first, the parents thought they were looking for shelter but they chowed down on the living like rabid hyenas. Panic.
It wasn't a sight I’ll easily forget--children eating the flesh of their parents.
People started running to cars, rubbing the green slime, and trying to remove it from their skins. Several took out cell phones and called 911 or took pictures or texted to persons unknown. Others tried to stop the dead from eating the living. Blood splattered everywhere. Uncle Twirly, one of our resident Second Amendment lovers, stood on a chair and announced in a loud basso profundo that no child would eat him, yanked out his .357 magnum, shot his foot, fell off the chair and got his throat ripped out by Sally, who was once a cute towhead.
Sally's bigger brother Bobby, not known for his IQ but idolized for his firecracker acumen, discovered the pig on the grill. He tried to eat it off the grill. His face and hands blackened and scorched. I lobbed a can of chafing dish fuel at him. It caught him square in the face and exploded into flames. He ran into the serving tables, spreading the fire.
My picnic turned from bucolic to Grand Guignol. Thoughts of how would I live this catastrophe down entered my worry-ridden brain.
Undead War (Dead Guns Press) Page 7
