The Zombie Theories (Book 2): Conspiracy Theory

by Rich Restucci

  “Oh for Christ’s sake! You and me then!”

  He looked at me and grinned. “You’re a big damn hero, son.”

  I hopped out of the truck, and Stooge Number One took the driver’s seat. The back hatch was open and stooge number two would close it if anything got close, “Tom, use some of this shit to wrap your hand while we’re in there. We’ll be back in five minutes.”

  Not waiting for an answer, the sheriff and I went back into the hospital. We went down the stairs, into the morgue and I shouldered one of the last two duffels.

  “I’m sorry, son.”

  “Sorry about wha…” I turned around and the sheriff had that gorgeous lever action pointed at me. “What the hell are you doing?” My hands were on the duffel, and there was no way I could get to the HK on its single point sling before he drilled me.

  “Son, my town needs your truck. That thing is the perfect vehicle to keep doing these runs. We screwed up this time, but it won’t happen again. I’m really sorry, but nobody would understand me appropriating it from you, especially after you came in here to get us.”

  “You son of a bitch! This is why you asked for me to come? So you could kill me?”

  He nodded and looked truly sad. I would have felt bad for him if it were his dog he was putting down instead of me. He was still a sanctimonious prick though.

  He raised the rifle, thumbing back the double action hammer, and I put up my hand, backing toward the door, “Wait, don’t!”

  Click.

  We both looked at his gun. He levered it, but no shell came flying out.

  Click.

  “Shit.”

  I dropped the duffel and grabbed the HK. “Mine isn’t empty mother fu—” Rotten hands pushed through the door and grabbed me. They didn’t pull me toward them, but them toward me. The thing was on me quickly, and sank its nasty teeth into my shoulder. It got the pad under my sling, and pulled back, pinching me. I gave it an elbow, flipping it around, and shot it in the face. Before I could do anything else, the sheriff was on me throwing haymakers. He caught me in the jaw then yanked my weapon forward. He was trying to turn it around and shoot me while it was still slung around my neck.

  I brought a knee up and knocked it away from him, but he threw another punch and stunned me. He got behind me and looped his substantial forearm around my windpipe and suddenly it was damned hard to breathe. I couldn’t bring the HK to bear, and he was moving me around trying to choke me out or break my neck, so I couldn’t get my Sig. I also couldn’t reach my knife because his forearm was on it, digging it into my collar bone. I punched upward with both hands into his arm, and his grip slipped a little, his arm coming over my mouth.

  So I bit down for all I was worth.

  He took it like a man for half a second, but then the pain overtook his senses and he tried to push me away. He succeeded, but not before I took a wicked chunk out of his arm. Then I pushed him away and pointed my rifle at him.

  “You…you bit me?”

  I spit out the piece of him and wiped his blood off my mouth. “Fuck you!” I raised my rifle, and Stooge Number One picked that moment to burst through the door. Confused, he saw me pointing a gun at his wounded sheriff, so he pointed his exceptionally large hunting rifle at me.

  “Thank God, Nathan, this guy was trying to kill…”

  I pointed at the sheriff. “He’s bitten! That thing got him.” I pointed at the corpse on the floor. “Look at his arm!”

  Stooge Number One, also known as Nathan, took a comical look at his sheriff’s boo-boo, and shifted his aim toward Sabotino’s noggin.

  “NATHAN! WAI—”

  Nathan’s gun did not go click. It went boom.

  His sheriff, missing most of the top of his head, collapsed.

  Nathan picked up Sabotino’s rifle and shouldered one of the duffels. “Zero tolerance policy.”

  Bye

  “He was gonna shoot ya?” It had sounded like shootcha.

  “Yeah.”

  “For the truck?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So ya bit ‘im?”

  “I did, yeah.”

  “That was quick thinking,” Tim said.

  Eleanor and Clara were looking at each other funny, and I thought right then that it may not have been the best plan to tell the rest of my group of five what had transpired in the basement of Northern Montana Hospital.

  Clara looked up. “The sheriff would have done anything to protect this town. I don’t think murder is acceptable though, no matter how many he thought he could have saved.” She took my hand in hers. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too,” I said, gripping her hand tightly, “but it was me or him, and I like me better. I’m not a murderer, but I’ve had to protect me and mine since this started, and while I’m very sorry the sheriff had to die, I’m not sorry I’m alive because of it.”

  “So what happened next?” Eleanor asked. I had her attention, and I liked it.

  After Nathan, AKA Stooge Number one, had put a round through Sabotino’s dome, he and I grabbed the last two duffels and quickly got back to the MRAP. There were no dead in sight. We chucked the bags in the back and climbed in.

  Nathan sat down on one of the seats and looked at me. “I couldn’t let you guys go back in alone. I had to come.” He looked down.

  “I’m glad you did.”

  Stooge Number Two looked back at the two of us “Where’s…” was all he got out before he stopped himself.

  Suddenly big, fat tears were dropping from Nathan’s face to the deck of the MRAP. “I shot the sheriff…”

  Oh shit, all I could think of was Bob Marley. “He was infected. He would have hidden the bite and turned when inside the walls. He probably would have killed some people, and who knows how far it might have spread.”

  “How do I start this thing,” demanded Stooge Number Two looking for a key hole.

  I was rummaging around in the MRAP supplies looking for a bandage for Tom’s hand, when I just grabbed a newly appropriated duffel and opened it. Boom. Gauze bandages and medical tape right there on the top. “You don’t. I’m driving. You’re gonna take this,” I handed him the bandages, “and take care of Tom’s mitt.”

  The guy nodded and took the stuff. Tom and Number Two moved into the back of the truck with Nathan, and I sat in the driver’s seat. I turned the switch from ENG OFF to START, and my baby started right up. The switch flicked back to RUN of its own volition, and the MRAP’s diesel belched black smoke.

  Fifty or sixty feet away, a few pus bags moved into sight, curious at the sound of the truck. It was time to GTFO. I threw the gear shift into drive and we moved forward. We made maybe twenty feet when something impacted the passenger’s side door and window. A Runner had launched itself at us. It hung on to the mirror, screaming and smashing at the steel louvers over the bullet-resistant glass with its left fist.

  All three of the guys in the truck asked, “What was that?” in varying degrees of shocked fear at the same time.

  “That, boys, is a Runner. And before you say you don’t believe me, look out the back in a sec. Hang on to something.” When I could see that they were secure, I jammed on the brakes. We had been travelling at maybe fifteen miles per hour, but that was enough to send the Runner flying forward off the truck. He bounced away and got up immediately, with significant amounts of his skin on the road.

  Apparently neither he nor I gave a shit about his scrapes because I accelerated away, and he sprinted after us. Stooge Two stood up and looked out the double back windows. These were not louvered, but were like two windows stacked on top of each other, like a double pane with eight inches between them, and they stuck off the back of the truck maybe a foot.

  “Hey! Hey there’s a guy back there! He’s running after us, we need to stop for him!”

  Jesus. I mean, are you kidding me with this shit?

  “He’s infected, God damn it!”

  “But he’s running!”

  “Because he’s a fucking Runner!�
� All three of them looked at me like I had just shit diamonds. “Christ in a sidecar!” I slowed the truck down and stopped. “Do not open that door or we’re all dead!” I put the truck in park and moved into the back. Stooge Two looked like he might open the door anyway, so I drew the suppressed Sig. I didn’t point it at him, but I called to him, “Hey.” I had said it quietly, but he got my meaning and looked back at me. Then, comically, all three of them looked down at the gun at the same time.

  “What’s your name?” I asked Stooge Two.

  He swallowed, his eyes still on the pistol. “Mark.”

  “Mark, I will shoot you if you try to open that door.”

  “But that guy…”

  “That guy will rip into you and turn you into one of them,” I used the barrel extension on the Sig to point out the window, “and then where will you be?”

  During the fifteen seconds it had taken for me to speak to this trio of morons, the Runner had caught up with us and impacted the rear of the vehicle with a dull thud. Stooge Two AKA Mark, turned and looked out the rear window. Then he shot backwards and landed on his ass. “Holy shit!” He looked at me, his face a rictus of stark terror.

  “You two,” obviously I was talking to Nathan and Tom, “look out the window.”

  They stood and did as they were told, Tom cradling his injured paw. The Runner had been a younger guy, but his anatomy was the only thing that was remotely human. His humanity was gone. Stolen, or eaten away by whatever shit was coursing through him. He was now just a shell for the red-eyed, slavering thing that was breaking its knuckles open trying to get in the truck. Remorseless and without mercy, all it was capable of was hatred, perpetrating horror, and spreading infection.

  Wide, bloody eyes and a shaky, feverish look greeted the two humans staring with shock, revulsion, and not a little sadness at this creature. The thing broke its teeth as is smashed its face over and over into the window in an attempt to get at us. Infected blood smeared the glass.

  Tom stared, and I saw his posture change a little. “Oh God, that’s Al. It’s Al Merrin.”

  Nathan looked too. “It is. It is Al.”

  “Was.”

  They all looked at me. “It was your friend. Now that thing is wearing him like a cheap suit. Everything that was your friend is gone, and the moment you show that thing pity, or anything but the business end of your gun, you’re dead.”

  I turned around and got back in the driver’s seat. All three of them looked out the back as we drove away, the thing that had been Al Merrin chasing us.

  We took a route east out of eastern Havre, and looped around south and then west, and finally east again on Route 2. Yeah, a big circle. It was interesting that there were hardly any infected once we got outside the city. Inside the city it got dicey a couple of times, but I was never really scared. We had seen hundreds, maybe thousands during the trip through the plague-ridden side of Havre, but once we got past them and out into the flat lands, we saw two. An adult female and a dead little boy. They were walking together, and I hoped they were mother and son with some semblance of memory of each other. At least they were together even in death.

  I might have mentioned this a couple of times, but seeing dead kids walk sucks. Kids represent our future and hope and good shit like that. To see them stumbling around dead and infected is horrible. Takes the wind out of my sails so to speak, and once I saw the kid, all conversation stopped.

  Tom called in to the gate that we were coming, and they opened for us when we got there two hours after sunup. The gate folks had already heard about the sheriff, and to my eternal shame, they all congratulated and thanked me for saving two of the five stooges and getting the meds. Mark and Nathan thanked us too, and we all loaded the duffels onto a horse cart to be carried to the doc. Tom showed me how to get back to Clara’s house, and then he went to see the doc as well to get his hand looked at. He told me he would get the fuel cans I was promised ready, and maybe some other sundries as well.

  “And that’s that.” I finished.

  Eleanor looked up. “So what now?”

  “I’m leaving. Tim, I’m hoping you come with me, but you’re welcome to make a home here if they’ll have you.”

  “I’m coming with you,” he said immediately.

  Eleanor stood. “Me too. I have a ton of supplies we can take, and even some ammunition.”

  “I got nuthin’,” the big guy interjected, “but I sure would like a ride a lil ways west. Clara too if she’s comin’.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Fair enough, there’s room. But,” I waited for everybody to look at me, “you haven’t been out there, Dallas and I have. Once we leave, there’s no coming back. I won’t even entertain the notion of it.”

  Eleanor looked scared. “How bad is it really?

  “Bad,” both Dallas and I answered at the same time. We gave sideways glances to each other. “Those things are everywhere. I mean it too, everywhere.”

  “I used to pull up satellite scans of the cities,” Tim added. “New York, Phoenix, Chicago. So full of the dead you couldn’t see the streets. London, Mexico City, Paris, Perth, Delhi, all gone. Swarming with the dead. When I pulled up scans of open highways in Nevada, there were dead there. The bottom of the Grand Canyon, and the top of the Space Needle are full of dead. But I never really understood until they got into Baldy. It happened so fast, then everybody was gone, and they were everywhere.”

  “And that was just an installation of a few hundred. Imagine a town of twenty thousand, or a city of a million.”

  “I need to see my husband,” Clara said, “I’m going.”

  Eleanor looked around sadly. “There’s nothing here for me anymore, and winter is coming. The cold will kill at least a few on this side of the wall and I don’t want to be here when that happens.”

  I nodded. “I understand, and I’m not trying to talk anybody out of coming, but I promise you, this place is pretty good compared with what’s out there.”

  Everybody who wasn’t standing stood.

  “Alright then, we leave at first light.” I had always wanted to say that, and it was epic.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. Pack your stuff. I need to find Tom. He said he was going to the doc. Who can tell me how to get there?”

  “I’ll take you,” Eleanor chimed. “I might need help packing some things anyway and my house is near the clinic. I really do have a lot of supplies.” She smiled and it was a little slice of heaven.

  We left for the doc’s, everybody starting to bustle.

  We took my MRAP, and we were almost at the doctor’s place when I popped the question, “Eleanor, have you ever seen a Runner?”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Have you seen a Runner, an infected that runs?”

  She turned and looked at me horrified, “Oh my God, they can run now?”

  “They’ve always been able to run. Well, not exactly… The ones that run aren’t dead. They’re infected, and will try to kill you, but you can kill them. The thing is, they’ll be back up as one of the ones you’ve seen in a matter of moments sometimes.”

  She nodded slowly. “No. No I haven’t seen or heard about them.”

  She looked scared. “Have you seen one?”

  We kept driving. “Yeah. Yeah they’re scary, but they tend to work alone instead of in groups like the dead ones.”

  “Which is worse?”

  The clinic came into sight, and I could see a few guys moving some red jerry cans off of a horse-drawn cart. “Both are terrifying. Either can kill you. I guess I don’t like any of them.”

  We reached the doc’s place and got out of the truck. Two of the guys that were hauling my diesel shook my hand and thanked me for saving their buddies. I felt good, and that scared me. I was a magnet for doom and pretty much everywhere I had been in the past year had been attacked by the dead while I was getting comfortable. I wanted to get the duck out of Fodge, or in this case Havre, before this place became ju
st another overrun haven for the undead. I didn’t want to bring disaster to this place; they were doing well.

  The two dudes and I loaded nine diesel cans of varying size onto the MRAP. It got to the point where I had to use a chain through the handles of the jugs to secure them to the side of the truck. Eleanor and I strolled into the clinic, and we saw Tom with a freshly bandaged hand.

  He saw us and smiled. “Hey.”

  Tom was a disbelieving dumbass, but I liked him. He had gone over the wall to try to save his friends and get meds for sick kids. That was aces in my book, even if his sheriff buddy was an almost-murderer.

  “Hey yourself, how’s the paw?”

  “Doc said I busted a couple of meta-somethings. My fingers are OK, but the hand is broke.”

  “Tom, you’re so damned tough, I expect you to shrug this shit off and get back to work by morning.” I reached out my hand to shake his, but I realized that his shaking had was the injured one. We both chuckled, and I nodded and said good-bye.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  “You too, buddy.”

  The lovely Eleanor and I got back in my truck and she showed me where she lived. It was a quaint little ranch-style house, nice. We went in and it was nice inside too. She brought me through the kitchen and into a garage-turned-larder and I almost shit myself. She hadn’t been kidding when she said she had tons of stuff. Lots of food, some of it in a few glass soda machines, lights off, but I could tell they were cool from the frost on the glass.

  She deciphered my raised brows and vacant expression. “Solar power.”

  We packed several large boxes full of all kinds of food items, both perishable and not, but there was so much we had to leave most of it behind. “My waitress Stella is going to take over Havre House.” She looked around. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

  So that’s what we did. We picked up the others, a few more supplies from Clara, and one more mouth to feed; a giant bloodhound by the name of Clyde.

  Clara and Eleanor said good-byes to folks around town, but it didn’t take long, and in another hour and a half we were at the western gate. Three gunshots later, the bus was moving forward. Only three dead had been near the gate, but a huge, still-smoldering pile of corpses, with a greasy steam coming off of them was fifty yards outside of town. These must have been the zombies that had followed us down the road when we first got to Havre.