I was passing another of those concrete and brick yard dividers (yeah a wall), and it hit me that I couldn’t die. I mean I could die, sure, but I really had to strive not to. OK, so everybody strives not to die, but I was special. Shit I sound full of myself, but you know what I mean. But you’re also thinking that I could quite possibly be a huge part of stopping this damn plague in its tracks, and I was out here, alone, trying to save the life of one insignificant guy.
Well fuck you. Yeah, that’s right, screw. Who are you to decide the fate of my friend? He has as much right to live as any of us, including you or me, and if I choose to risk my life for his, then it’s my decision. And if I don’t try to help, then what the hell are we all fighting for?
I had already been with umpteen doctors and they didn’t find out shit. Lynch would have killed a million people if it would have protected me, but for what? A chance? Every one of those million people that would have been killed for me also deserves a chance.
I’m not him. I’m not Lynch, and I wouldn’t kill anybody that didn’t need killing either. I intend to live, but not at the expense of everybody else.
Unless those people are trying to kill me.
So, those thoughts all plowed through my noggin in a heartbeat, and they hadn’t quelled my fear but for a fleeting moment. When I got my reality slap, I heard something moving on the other side of the wall. It didn’t sound friendly, so I kept to my crouch and moved on.
It was weird that this section of the town looked like a warzone. Bullet casings littered the ground, a Hummer with the doors open and a fifty cal on the roof stood abandoned, and there were stains and bullet holes everywhere. But there wasn’t a single body or pus bag in the vicinity. One of the damn infected must have been killed. At least one. They don’t get back up if you shoot them in the dome, and humans certainly wouldn’t have moved them in the middle of a firefight, so where were all the bodies?
I moved down the center of the road, between cars and a pock-marked fire truck, scanning for anything odd. I made it to the front doors of the CVS without incident, and put my hand above my eyes, pressing myself to the glass to peer inside.
Nothing looked amiss other than the store appeared to have been looted. Shit was on the floor, but I didn’t see anything moving, so I pushed on the door. It was one of those automatic types that opened when you stepped on the pad, but the power was out, so it needed persuading. It opened quietly, and I stepped inside.
It was darker than what you would have seen pre-plague, but there were tons of windows, so they brightened the place a bit. One of the windows must have caught a stray bullet, the only thing left a few clear shards in the frame. The breeze blew some type of banner, making it sway, but other than that, I was the only thing moving.
I was still effing scared. If you’re reading this, then at some point you have been out there, hopefully not alone, but out there avoiding them. Skulking in a place you shouldn’t have to be skulking in, like a gas station or a convenience store trying to find some spam. You get it. You understand the feeling I had in that CVS.
I checked every aisle, and there wasn’t a single infected. No bodies, no drag marks or directional spatter. No bullet holes that I could see either. Sure the place had been looted, but barely. It looked as if this place had been hit hard and fast, or with a specific goal.
I got to the back, where the pharmacy was, and it was just like in Havre. I pushed through the half door that separated the counter from where the patrons would be, cleared it, and looked through the shelves. There was a whole section for antibiotics, and I took everything that would fit in my bag. There wasn’t a lot, but I got most of it.
I got to the pain killers and found tons. Oxycontin was a winner, as was Oxycodone. I took it all.
Then I left back the way I came, grabbing some OTC stuff like aspirin and Neosporin. I even had the foresight to grab a big tube of SPF 30 sunscreen. Easy-peasy. I got outside and left the door open, thinking I would never come back. I had an epiphany, and turned around going back inside. I grabbed a couple of boxes of stuff and put them in one of those red plastic hand-held shopping thingies, then made my way back to the doors, and then out. This time I closed them, I dunno why.
I began my skulk back towards the truck when I realized something had changed. All the cars had been about the same height when I went in, but now something was different. I turned and focused on that different and was a little surprised at what I saw. On top of a cranberry Toyota Camry crouched a man in rags. He was on his haunches, his ass almost touching the roof, his fists on the top of the car between his feet. He looked at me with one eye, as the other had a black patch over it, his head cocked a little to the side. I had seen this stance before. It was on a trailer in New Hampshire.
It was the first time I had experienced a Runner.
The man looked at me for a second longer then stood from his crouch, his head tilting a little more.
I did that sharp intake of breath that is repeated countless times in this text, and that was all the impetus the thing needed. Its eyes went wide and it let out that awful shriek. It propelled itself off the car and landed on all fours scrabbling. Up very fast, it sprinted at me. I had my pack full of stuff, and a red shopping thing full of more stuff.
Going hand to hand with this thing wasn’t out of the question, but I had a bunch of shit with me. He was thirty feet away when I was finally able to get the Sig out and shoot him in the chest.
Silencer. Bullshit.
I’m going to find they guy who coined the term “silencer” and punch him in the friggin’ nose if he isn’t dead already. Shit is loud. More than that it doesn’t belong, and that is what tipped off the pus bags. It echoed through the formerly soundless cars and houses. Or maybe it was the shriek from that Runner. That brings them too. The moaning started. That wet gurgling cry or the hacking scrape that they do. It shrinks my nuts when I’m by myself. Hell, it shrinks them when I’m in an armored convoy. There were a shitload of moans. A shitload.
When I had crept down the street a half an hour ago, I hadn’t seen any of them, and they hadn’t seen me or they would have been on me. Now they came from under vehicles, out of doors and windows, from between houses, from the back of the burned mail truck…they were everywhere.
Back the way I came was not an option. The road was thick with them and they were coming my way. I ran back to the CVS and got inside. There was nothing more than a cardboard sunglasses display to bar the door with, and all they had to do was push on it and it would open.
I ran to the back but before I got there, they were already inside, stumbling and smashing their way toward me. I ran by the drive through window, and noticed it was relatively clear of infected outside, but I couldn’t fit through the receptacle, so I had to opt for the door that I had missed. Yeah, I know, I’m a dumbass. In my defense, it was painted the same color as the wall, and had an eye-chart on it. And I was scared shitless and just above panic mode.
It wouldn’t open though. It had one of those push bars, but nope, not opening. I descended into panic, and was about to start futilely pounding on the door until I saw the little silver turn-lock. I turned it and ran out into the parking lot behind the store. They were out here too, but not nearly as many. I ran across the lot and into a big school playground, them on my tail, the mass of them maybe two hundred feet back.
The things were in front of me too, and they came from the other sides of the park stumbling across the pavement. They were everywhere, and I could see where this was going. I was trapped. I was going to die on a yellow hopscotch court. Had I not returned to the store I might have made it. More than that, the reason I had gone back into the store was for feminine hygiene products for the ladies.
Yup, I was gonna die for tampons.
It started to thunder, and I realized I was going to get eaten alone and wet. I had been hoping to go when I was a few years older, in the midst of banging the A-list celebrity actress of my choice, but that wasn’t going to
happen. I was about to be eviscerated by the nails and teeth of two hundred undead flesh-eaters. Hopefully the feminine goods would sop up some of my blood. I had a horrible image of me stumbling around as a zombie with maxi-pads permanently stuck all over me, but with this many of the dead, there wouldn’t be much left to re-animate.
The thunder pitch had increased, and it now seemed to come from everywhere, like an earthquake. God had a funny way of sending me off, with his angels playing bass. The zombies were hearing the rumble as well, and not a few of them turned to look in all directions, but most were focused on me.
I was totally encircled, no way out, and they closed in. I hoped the folks in the truck would make it, they were all good people. Maybe Tim would go with them to San Francisco. That would be the smart choice. None of my friends at Atlantis would ever know what had really happened to me, and that made me sad. I hoped they were alright as well, and would live long lives, but in this world that was getting harder to envision. I put down my bag and shouldered my rifle. I had almost two hundred rounds of ammo, and there were probably two hundred undead, but with reloading and missing some noggins, I knew I was screwed. Time to man up.
I dropped to a crouch and took aim at a particularly fat dead man with no face. My finger tightened on the trigger and the thunder, which had gotten exponentially louder, came into view.
It was not a tank. It was not the MRAP. It was about fifty armored horses, with all manner of people on them. The front ranks were dressed like knights, (no shit) with lances lowered. They were in various types of mismatched and homemade armor, looking like something out of a Mad Max movie, and they plowed through the lines of undead in front of me like the Reaper mowing souls. Dozens of infected were trampled down by the horses or impaled by the long wooden lances, and then the second rank of riders were in amongst the dead, swinging swords and axes, some shooting pistols or rifles. One guy had a big ice scraper and was thrusting it at the zombies, taking off the tops of their heads from the eyes up. Two riders on heavy horses rode fifteen feet apart with some type of wire between them. They didn’t decapitate any of the dead but they sure as shit fucked them up as that wire hit infected in the face or neck. Some of the riders had bows, and they shot into the crowd behind me, and suddenly there were small explosions, the dead being tossed around.
I was so stunned I hadn’t begun firing and that changed quickly. The riders in front of me were totally wrecking the zombies, so I turned and was surprised to see the dead behind me were only twenty feet away. Nearly shitting myself, I began firing slowly, picking targets as I backed up toward the knights. A pickup truck that looked like something out of the Road Warrior (shut it, I’m a fan) came into view and guns opened up from inside the armored bed. Four men got out and ran to stand beside me, shooting shotguns and rifles into the crowd. I swear to Holy Christ one of them was yelling Yee Ha! They were efficient, and within moments only the living were standing.
The dead never made it to within ten feet of me. One of the four that had jumped from the truck, dressed exactly like a cowboy, with hat and chaps and spurs. Holstered one of his twin six-guns and began to reload the other. “Mornin’,” was all he said.
Another one, a fifteen-year-old kid by the look of him, looked at his over-under shotgun and cracked it open, shoving fresh shells into it. “Saved your ass, didn’t we?”
“Uhh…”
“Yeah, you were about to have a bad day. What the hell were you doing coming in here anyway?” He looked at me sideways as the horses came trotting over. “This is where they all came when Great Falls burned.”
“I needed…” He turned and looked the other way, and I could see that the right side of his face was covered with what looked like scales, and his right eye was a yellow color.
He looked at the bag, then at the red shopping basket I had dropped and he smiled. “Yeah, I hate it when Aunt Flo shows up too.” He started to chuckle, and so did I.
He shouldered his weapon and stuck out his paw. “Name’s Carter.”
I shook his hand and started to tell him my name when, a guy in medieval armor carrying a gore-spattered, double-bladed battle axe got off his horse, raised the visor on his motorcycle helmet and looked at me hard. “You bitten?”
“No, they never got close to me. Thanks.”
“Sure. You scavenging? Got anything good?” His eyebrows lifted. “Any beer?”
‘Sorry, just antibiotics and some pain killers.”
Carter stuck his face in the conversation. “And tampons!”
The knight took his helmet off, and a gunshot made everyone turn toward the south. “We can’t stay here. I’m assuming you’re with the folks in that armored vehicle a couple blocks over?”
I really didn’t want to answer that question, so I didn’t.
He smiled and snorted. “I don’t blame you. Trust is a hard thing to come by these days.” He looked back towards another gunshot from the same direction and then radio chirped on his belt. He picked it up and we all heard through the radio that another sizable horde of dead were on their way. “Copy that, Mark. Stay high, we’ll come back for you in two days. Out.” He looked back at me, “We can take you to the vehicle if you want, they won’t answer us or move when we try to talk to them. Do you want to go?”
I nodded in the affirmative.
“Carter, get him and his tampons on the truck and back to his vehicle.” He got back on his horse and looked at me. “You’re welcome to come home with us, or you can be on your merry way. If I wanted you dead you’d be dead, so consider that. We’d love to have you, but if you want to stay you have to contribute.”
He turned his horse and trotted off with the rest of them, back toward the west. Carter looked at me sideways. “You’re taking this well. Whenever we meet somebody new, they kind of freak out at our little group, at least at first.”
We moved to the pickup. “Well, it is a little…”
“Odd,” he finished. “Hell, I used to be the Alligator Boy, and we live in a world of walking dead people. I grew up a freak, I’m used to odd.”
He got in the back of the truck and reached a hand down to help me in. I hesitated, and he brought up the same point the guy with the axe had. “You see all the weaponry? If we wanted you dead, or if we wanted your shit, what could you do?”
“Like your friend said, it’s hard to trust people nowadays.” I grabbed his hand and he pulled me in the truck.
“Yeah, but you should never look a gift lizard in the mouth.” He seemed to get a kick out of himself, and we both laughed.
We got back to the MRAP, the pickup at the back of the column of riders, and I hopped out. Dallas was smiling at me through the bullet-resistant glass behind the armored louvers of the driver’s side window. I held up the bag of drugs. “Got them!”
His smile faded and he pointed to all the folks that were around me. “They saved my ass, big guy, you can open up.”
He did, and Carter followed me over to the MRAP. “If you want some hot food, you can follow us back to our camp. You’re all welcome. If not, best of luck, and don’t get your asses bitten off out here.” With that, he got back in his truck and drove to catch up with the horses.
Eleanor hugged me and Dallas looked out the window as I passed the drugs to Clara. “I seen some weird stuff, but…ah who cares? Can I drive?”
“Yeah, follow them, how’s Tim doing?”
Tim craned his head to look at me. “It hurts, but I’m OK.”
Clara looked through the bag, “Oh well done!” She was reading off some of the names of the drugs, “Augmentin, Cephlezxin… Ibuprofen. This amoxicillin will need to get mixed…” She opened a bottle and lifted Tim’s head as she gave him two pills which he washed down with water.
“What was that?” he asked weakly.
“Percocet. That should help you out with the pain. I need to check the expiration dates on the antibiotics, but this is what we have, so we’ll need to use them even if they’re expired.”
“
Can I drive?” Dallas asked again.
“Sure, I could use a sit-down.”
And that’s just what I did. Dallas put the MRAP into gear and we followed the rag-tag group of weirdoes that had pulled my fish out of the fire.
Carnies and Tough Guys
A group of carnies and some folks from a renaissance faire walk into a bar after a long day on the road. One of the ren-guys orders a beer and sits down at the bar, the other folks looking at menus or using the bathrooms. The faire guy begins a polite conversation with the pretty young bartender, food and drinks are delivered, and merriment ensues. The creaky tavern door opens, and the renaissance guy doesn’t even turn around, because things are going well with the bartender. The drink slinger leans to the side to look behind the hot guy she’s working up, who works as a knight in the show, and is the hero of the faire. Her eyes go wide and her mouth opens in the shape of an O. Naturally, the knight (who is not in his dress clothes), turns to look and sees this bloody, disheveled guy stagger in. Another member of the faire, the king, stands up to render assistance to the obviously injured man, and the man latches on to the king and tries to bite him. The king starts yelling, and the knight, true to his station, attempts to rescue his liege. The crazy man maneuvers in and takes a big chunk out of the king’s forearm, so the knight sends a beefy roundhouse right crashing into the side of the offender’s noggin. The biter is unfazed. Everyone keeps yelling at the man to let go of the now bleeding king, a couple of folks stepping in to help. They are bitten as well. Not seeing any way out of this, the knight realizes that this particular individual is either bat-shit crazy, or on drugs and bat-shit crazy. He draws his knife, utters a threat to the man, who pays no heed, then drives the knife into the man’s side. While the man is still unfazed, the rest of the bar is extremely fucking fazed, and they all realize there is more at work here than bath salts. Benny the dwarf, one of the carnival workers, decides he has had enough, puts down his cigar, pulls out his .32 pistol and drills the guy in the forehead. Benny calmly sits down and says to the bartender, “Might wanna call your sheriff for this one.”
The Zombie Theories (Book 2): Conspiracy Theory Page 12
