by Mark Tufo
“Feeling better?” I asked him without turning around.
“Worlds.”
“That sarcasm?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
“You really are going to need to get away from me when you get your first chance. A few years more with me, you’ll be my clone,” I said swatting his shoulder, his hunched over form getting a closer look at his refuse from the impact.
He stood straight up, eyes wide with fear. “She’s here.” He whispered.
“Like here, here?” I asked pointing to our general vicinity. “Or here in the camp?” I asked. I wanted to push him away from what was looking like a good place to dispose of any undigested food and maybe some twice churned stomach soup, I might possess.
“Close but not here.”
The worst passed, it was looking more and more like I might get to finish the processing of the omelet I had eaten earlier in the day.
"Can she tell that you're here?" I asked concerned. She could have us rounded up and served on a platter in under twenty minutes if she could locate us.
Justin was concentrating hard, a thick vein stood out on his forehead. Was he fighting for control of his mind, or was he trying to break through Doc's vaccine and back into the cold embrace of his dark mistress? Both were disturbing thoughts and I was getting nervous just standing here. If an errant patrol were to come around the corner of the building and they were of the ilk to shoot first and kick our bodies second, well that would just be shitty.
"Justin we gotta go." I said shaking his shoulder, I could hear movement and it was getting closer. It wasn't the haphazard flight of the retreating either. This was the stealthy approach of the nearly victorious. Justin was coming back from whatever depths he had ventured but as a snail's pace. If he hadn't been joined to my side for the last 20 minutes I would have sworn he had just got stoned, and then I'd really be pissed because he hadn't shared. No matter how much I wanted it to be, we were not on a movie set as extras for some Alfred Hitchcock horror flick. This was proved to me when I looked up and down the side of the building and there was no super convenient place to hide. If this was a movie we could just press flat against the building and miraculously the enemy would fail to turn in our direction. Yup, good chance that wasn't going to work.
I half-dragged Justin away from our tentative last resting spot, the cries of screaming men and women masking our move. We hid behind a deuce (that's a two ton truck to all you non-military folk, although if you're still alive you must have had some sort of training and would have known that.) I started taking Justin's camo pants off, that seemed to bring him all the way to his wits.
"Dad? Wait, where are we? What the hell are you doing?"
"Good to see your back. Now get your cammies off, we're playing for the other team now."
"What?" He asked still dazed.
"The camp's overrun, I want to look more like the enemy right now. You know, the whole hiding in plain sight."
"Dad that's not really going to work so much." Justin said flatly.
"Sure it is, it's a great plan, thought it out all by myself."
"Maybe that's the problem."
I stopped in mid-motion taking my blouse off (that's a camouflage top to all you non-military types, must I keep explaining myself?) and looked him square in the eye. "It's good to have Justin back." His wit and sarcasm had been severely lacking during Eliza's hostile takeover bid.
"It's good to be mostly back." He said, stressing 'mostly.' "Look through the windows, Dad."
We were on the driver's side of the truck. I looked through and past the passenger window; the two thick panes of glass did very little to hide the nightmare that stumbled our way. "Oh fuck." I said without much emotion. What is the best way to meet your end? Angry defiance? Resignation? 'Oh fuck' seemed an appropriate blend of the two. "You ready to run?"
"Too late, speeders have already passed us."
"Well aren't you just full of good news. Wish I had a grenade, I really saw myself going out in a big movie ending explosion."
"Dad, get behind me!" Justin whispered urgently. I checked my safety off. Zombies were within feet of us. Justin pushed the barrel of my gun down. "Dad, please get behind me." He beseeched.
"Justin, this isn't how I want to go out, it's the whole machismo thing. You know the guns a'blazing and all that." It's funny the words that were coming out of my mouth had nothing to do with how I really felt. I pretty much wanted to piss myself. Who the hell would know the difference? The zombies wouldn't give a shit if I self basted.
Justin pulled me behind him and pressed the both of us uncomfortably hard up against the body of the truck.
"What the hell are you doing? Even if I piss myself I'll be damned if I watch you die first."
"What?"
"Did I say that out loud?"
"Just shut up." Justin whispered. A few speeders had come around the back of the truck. I wriggled to break free of Justin's pinning. "Stop, this might work." He said out the corner of his mouth.
"Might?" I hate 'might'.
Two speeders ran right up to us, every fiber of my being fought for action a war raged in my skull, run! Fight! Puke! Sex! (oops, my bad, errant thought).
The nearest zombie sniffed around Justin, its eyes opaque and its mouth hanging open, small maggots wriggling in the meat-infested mouth. This one looked like he liked to gnaw on bones, its teeth were all jagged and in some serious need of dental care. The smell that emanated from his mouth was death incarnate. I can't even begin to describe that odor. If you found my first journal, I talked about carrying fresh Henry shit in a plastic bag around your nose, that would now be what you used to try and diffuse halitosis Hal's breath.
Justin flinched as the zombie licked up the side of his face. What would I do once that lick turned to a bite? Justin's screams would cripple me. The zombie kept licking though, up the side of his face and over to his left ear, where I was now eye to eye with this thing. It paused hesitantly, still licking Justin, but now its nose went into hyper action. He was sniffing around like Henry would be when I'm hiding a peanut butter treat in my fist. Henry knows it's there because he can smell it, he just can't see it. Then it dawned on me what was going on, Justin was somehow hiding us 'in plain sight'! See, this still could be a movie set! I'm holding onto that.
The confusion was evident, the zombie wanted to do what zombies do, 'eat' but Eliza held sway and by default Justin was able to bend a piece of that to his will. Rivulets of sweat were pouring down Justin's face. The exertion he was spending was burning through him like a wildfire. Halitosis Hal greedily licked up the fluids like it was the fountain of youth. Justin was burning like a furnace. I was soaked through and through and 'no' it wasn't because I had let my bladder get the better of me.
Distant screams off to our right perked Hal's interest. He took one long soul searching look into my eyes and ran to his dinner bell. Like that, the spell was over. The other zombies completely lost interest in us, as if Hal was their leader and if he didn't think we were worth eating than neither did they. Justin collapsed, the only reason I was able to keep him from hitting the deck was that I was almost meshed completely with him.
"Holy shit Justin, what just happened?" I asked him as I gently helped him to the ground. Zombies streamed past us, paying us no more attention than if we were a plate of brussel sprouts at a chocolate bar.
"I…I'm not a hundred percent sure, I sort of told the zombie that we worked for Eliza."
"Not that I'm complaining but why didn't Hal…"
"Hal?"
"That zombie, why didn't he eat me?" Ideas were popping up in my head.
"I was screaming in my head to him that you didn’t exist."
"He bought that?"
"Well he is a zombie, Dad, I don’t think he could even get a job at the post office."
"Again back to the whole this is awesome 'but' part."
"Why aren’t we still under attack?" Justin asked.
"Sure,
I mean maybe we weren't on Hal's fine dining experience."
"Hal?" Justin shook his head.
"Forget him." It was surreal to be having this conversation, actually any conversation, as hundreds, maybe thousands of zombies ambled on past us.
"Dad, best I can tell you is that they have an almost herd mentality. Where the leader goes the rest follow."
Idea number one popped in my head. "Can you do this thing." I asked pointing to his head. "Again, and get the whole family out?"
"I don’t think so." He said dejectedly. "If that zombie had stayed a few seconds longer I wouldn't have been able to hold him off."
I shivered knowing I had been that close to having my eyeball eaten out, or possibly my nose removed in a teeth-filled vise.
"I'd never be able to hide you all." A small tear of frustration coursed down his face.
"Justin, you just saved our ass, you did great. Can you get up?"
"You there! What are you two doing?" An authoritative voice shouted.
I had been so intent on using Justin's newfound powers I failed to realize that the zombies had gone on by. (Please don’t ask for a clearer explanation than that. I know it's difficult to believe that I could somehow miss the small fact that dead people who loved to feast on the living who were within biting distance had gone by without my noticing.) My first priority was to the collective safety of the Talbots and Company, all else was secondary. Still survival relies heavily on quick thinking.
"He's been shot!" I shouted.
"Leave him." The voice shouted, sounding impatient that someone had had the audacity to get wounded.
"He's my brother, I can't just leave him." I shouted back.
"Dad, what are you doing?" Justin whispered.
"Fake that you're wounded. I'll tell you what I'm doing after it's over."
"Ow, ooh, ah this hurts so much!" Justin moaned.
"Tone it down a bit, not looking for an Emmy." I slowly reached my right hand down to my ankle.
"Fine!" The insurgent said, clearly getting closer. I didn't look up to watch his approach. I was fearful that he would suspect my ruse and shoot us both where we were, me down on my haunches and Justin half sitting up and in my arms. Out of the corner of my eye I could see our discarded cammies, could he? The sun was blocked as the man came in to get a closer look. "Where's he shot? I don’t see any blood."
"Funny thing." I said as I launched up from my kneeling position. My K-Bar slid effortlessly into his Adam's apple. The angle of the blade pierced his jugular and went up and through his tongue. There was some small resistance as it burst through his upper palate and then into his brain. A look of shock and betrayal was lined on the man's features as I helped him down much as I had Justin only moments earlier. The man had expired long before I was able to pull my blade out. A strong suction was followed by an audible pop. Only Justin's retching disturbed the quiet morning.
"You going to be alright?" I asked Justin, looking around to see if anyone had witnessed this event. I wiped my blade on the man's jacket. A glint off his chest brought my attention to center, a tickle in my head fused into thought. A tiny vial no bigger than a push tack was attached to a thin chain that hung from the man's neck. A pin-prick amount of red fluid swam lazily within. "What do you think that is?" I asked Justin. He still appeared to be varying between a yellow and greenish hue.
"Please tell me you're not into trophies, Dad?"
Justin couldn't bring himself to look at the dead man. Killing the dead is one thing. We're just finishing what nature had intended all along. Killing a living breathing man, that was an unnatural act. It violated all that should be sacred. I wouldn't lose much sleep, if any, over this piece of shit. He had chosen his fate the moment he hooked up with Eliza. Who in their right mind aligns with the living dead and the undead and doesn't expect a bad ending? That's just piss poor planning on his part if you ask me.
I ripped the chain off the guy and held it in front of Justin's eyes. Probably should have wiped some of the guy's blood off first though. The quickly thickening blood hung in long dangles before releasing from the chain links and striking softly into the not so pristine snow. Justin was rapidly going for a complete disgorging.
"Blood." Justin said breathlessly as he heaved what little remained inside of him.
I looked to his puddle of vomit, alarmed. Blood is never a good thing to discard. I was relieved when I didn’t see any. I looked at him questioningly.
"Blood, it looks like blood." He said pointing weakly to the vial in my hand.
"I think you’re right." I said looking more closely at it.
"Why?" He asked.
"I think we need six more."
Justin lurched a little with the thought of killing six more 'live' men. "Why?" He asked even more weakly.
"I think I'm holding zombie repellant here."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - JOURNAL ENTRY 15 -
I removed the charm from the chain and placed it in my pocket. "You up for this?" I asked Justin.
He gave a thumbs-up and a greasy smile. It wasn't the 'Ooh Rah' war cry of the Marines but it was going to have to do.
"Dad, you sure that thing is going to work?" Justin asked alluding to my new favorite piece of jewelry. Mind you it's not that I have other jewelry that I'm fond of, it's just that this piece could potentially save my family's collective asses. "I don't think I've got enough energy left to mask you again."
Now he had me thinking. What if this thing was useless, no more than a trinket fished out of a gumball machine. Death by rended flesh was not my ideal way to go. I was really looking for a massive coronary during mind blowing sex as my opt out. "Maybe you're right. Let's do a test. Let's make this quick though, time is definitely getting short."
Some of the slower ambling zombies were no more than 100 feet ahead of us. I was figuring better to let one of the deaders realize I was food than a pack of speeders. We approached some of the zombies who looked like they had gone through in an industrial washing machine full of glass. They were torn to shreds, shards of skin hanging askew. Occasionally birds would swoop down and feast on the proffered meat. To say it was disgusting would be like saying Henry's farts smelled like sweet ambrosia. I was willfully getting as close to them as I could; the repulsion I felt nearly rivaled the fear. My blood was blistering through my veins. The flight mechanism in me was in hyper drive. I could just turn around and…do what? The zombies were heading in the direction I needed to be in. Whether I blended in or fought my way through I had to get to where they were going before they got there, and I had to do it fast. The speeders up front were still meeting some resistance but it wasn't the resistance of a dug in enemy, it was the sporadic firing of an opponent during controlled retreat. The Marines were giving up territory in an attempt to save lives.
My concern for my family spurred me on. Justin fought to keep up, his reserves nearly depleted from his magic act. I was within 15 feet of the first zombie when he turned to look at me. One eye had completely rolled back up and into its head, his nose had been stripped clean of all edible pieces as had half his lip. The exposed brown teeth were forever frozen in a sinister looking stare.
"Shithead, should have used a whitening agent in your toothpaste." It was my way of dealing with the horror within. "I bet you've got the breath to match that smile."
The zombie had stopped its forward momentum to get a better look at us with its one good eye. His tongue flapped independent of any conscious thought. A seagull took that opportune time to swoop in and latch onto the lolling appendage. I nearly vomited when the bird used every ounce of its wing strength to rip the tongue from the zombie’s mouth. The zombie paid it no attention whatsoever as his tongue first stretched to unimaginable lengths and then like an over taut rubber band just snapped free. Viscous black liquid oozed forth from the wound. The zombie smacked its lips around the new au jus.
"Oh Dad, what the fuck?" Justin cried.
My sentiments exactly, but if I had voiced my thoughts
it would not have been the only thing to spew forth and with the human enemy behind us I could not give them any reason to suspect that we weren't part of their group.
"What do we do if he tries to eat you?" Justin asked realizing we couldn't kill it without exposing ourselves to some serious issues, flying lead being among them.
"Well he's a deader and he looks like he's been through the ringer. We should be able to outpace him without drawing too much attention." I was however intentionally leaving out the thousand or so zombies to our forefront.
The zombie wavered a few more seconds as we got closer, like he was deciding if we were tasty enough to eat.
"Come on, come on." I said softly. "Make up your mind, it's not like you're doing trigonometry." Then I laughed.
"Dad, is this really a laugh worthy moment?"
"It is if you're wondering can a zombie do trig, when even I can't."
"Real hilarious Dad."
"You had to be there."
The zombie made one whistle snort sound through his completely open sinus passage and turned. I would swear that he looked a little bummed that we weren't on the menu but it's difficult to tell these things on a person who has had most of their facial tissues destroyed.
"I think this vial is our golden ticket out of here, Justin." I said excitedly.
"How are you planning on getting more?" Justin asked. We knew how I had to get it. The question was HOW was I going to get it.
