by Mark Tufo
I moved my left hand so it was close to centered on his chest and pushed back; with my right I felt around for the knife I had put down. Nike got an idea of what was about to happen as he caught the glint of the blade out of the corner of his eye. Maybe he wasn’t too keen on dining with others, but he liked the idea of permanently dying even less. He had just started his shriek when I so rudely interrupted him. The extra energy juice I’d got from the scare shock he’d sent through me, forced my strike harder and deeper. The hilt of my knife was actually inside of his skull; when I pulled it back out, large wet pockets of brain and blood fell on me. My guess is it saved my life, but ewww. Just fucking ewww. Globules of matter rolled down my face. I did my best to keep it from my mouth...I hate to admit my success was limited. Trying to gag, retch, and spit quietly was not among the easiest things I’d ever done. A small troop of zombies were dangerously close; they knew something was going on. I sat back slowly, taking Nike with me. His mouth and teeth rested against the side of my face. I shivered with revulsion; I could not control myself.
A blood-curdling scream, far off in the distance, was my savior. The zombies started moving off. That someone else’s distress worked out in my favor was not lost on me. At least it was not a feminine scream; for that, I was thankful because it meant that it wasn’t my sister. Sure, a guy could reach a high falsetto given the right set of circumstances, but I’d yet to hear a woman go low for a bass sound when screaming. As far as I knew there were only two of us wandering around from our group now that Steve was long gone and BT was hopefully still in the quarry. So whoever was in trouble right now was low on my priority list of people I needed to help. I was going to count until twenty-five after I heard what I hoped was the last zombie to pass before I got up. I made it to eleven and a half.
The moon was up by this point and the zombies were now illuminated in a ghostly pale. The vanguard of the horde probably was a mile or more from my current location. I would not be able to fight my way up to the front, though that was exactly where I needed to be.
“Think, Talbot,” I said in a whisper as I snuck up on one of the slower zees. I stuck my blade into his temple and eased him to the ground. A sea of zombies was in front of me and it was at least fifty feet wide. If I went too deep forward I would be surrounded on all sides again and I’d lose more time—and possibly my life.
“Around it is.” I went back about ten feet and then cut across a hundred yards; now I needed to make up speed and try to get ahead of them. With the moonlight, I was afforded more speed, and in theory, able to avoid most trees. I ran with my hands up in the classic old school fighter approach. What I wouldn’t have done for a world class pair of goggles; odds were at some point I was going to send a branch straight into an eyeball. Had to think that would seriously fuck my night up. I was far from quiet, but as long as I didn’t make “human” sounds there was little chance I was going to be heard over the running feet of the zombies. I was so focused on moving forward and protecting my eyes I had no good chance to check my flanks; should have guessed at some point there would be stragglers outside of the imaginary boundaries I had created.
The zombie that hit me was at a full sprint. If he hadn’t slammed me up against a tree I would have been completely bowled over. The only reason I didn’t lose my knife was a bit of good fortune. I’d been running with my hands up and the knife blade pointed outward. He’d run nasal cavity first into my Ka-Bar—he was dead before I had the wind punched out of me by a hundred twenty year old aspen. Okay, so we all know I don’t know what kind of tree it was. Suffice it to say it was huge and infinitely harder than me. Running became more difficult, as I’d for sure bruised or possibly cracked a rib. I moved another twenty yards out in the hopes I’d got to the farthest peripheries of the zees. The problem I had not taken into account was the sound of their stampede was bound to draw in others from at least a mile radius.
There had to be a reason they were amassing in such numbers, but I didn’t know what it could be. Hadn’t seen a mess of them this big since the very beginning when prey was abundant and still very ignorant of their status. Not many were ready to believe that they’d been so easily and thoroughly booted from the top of the food chain. Gunfire off to my left...no telling who that was, maybe the man I’d heard screaming earlier, or more likely, his friends exacting a measure of revenge. Great, fine...gunfire pulled zombies away from me. They could shoot those guns all night long for all I cared. There was a frenetic burst and then silence. I was hoping for reloading but when it didn’t start back up I figured he, she, or they’d been overrun. I’d been running for fifteen minutes when I guessed by now I was halfway through the group, so, in theory, I’d be at the front in another fifteen. Then what? Charge headlong into the front lines to find my sister? That would put me be back on the menu so even if I found her, we’d be in the same kettle we were before.
We’d be repeating a vicious circle, and we would not get a third try at this. By now my sister had to be flagging; I was winded. I ran a little faster, there were no other options. I didn’t have time to find a vehicle that could navigate in the woods; the odds I could find a Star Wars landspeeder were slim. As far as I knew there was no help in my general vicinity. No, my sister and I would live together or die together; those were the two scenarios I faced. Now I just had to figure out how to make one happen or not, and preferably the former. Suddenly there she was. I’d caught up to her faster than I should have; she was leaning up against a tree, possibly a poplar, catching her breath and checking over her rifle. Here was where she wanted to make her stand.
“Keep running!” I urged her on, motioning with my right arm.
“Tired, Mike,” was her reply, though she was doing what I’d told her to.
I shot a three round burst—dropped two zombies with thigh wounds, not dead, but not running either. Right now that was just as effective. We’d had a slim, twenty-foot lead as I caught up, it was shrinking fast. I grabbed her by the elbow and half-propped, half-dragged, half-carried. That’s a lot of halves, but the combination of them kept changing.
“Wicked bad stitch in my side,” she hitched.
“Better than teeth in your head,” I replied. She kept moving, one hand pressed deeply into her left side.
“Left hand above your head. It will help.” I wanted to turn and fire on the zombies, slow them down a bit, but I was afraid my sister would collapse if left to run on her own. Fuck, I was exhausted; I don’t know how she was still running. And before those of you with a feminist stance think I’m being chauvinistic, I’m a way better runner because I have vampire blood, not due to my having a penis. Is that clear enough? In real life, my sister was a fitness freak. She could have run the old me into the ground, done a little victory jig, and then continued on her way. The beer I liked to drink before the zombies came wasn’t overly conducive to healthy living. Darkness began to encroach again, I’d thought that maybe we had run through the night, the next day, and were coming back up on nightfall. Everything was beginning to blend. When the first fat droplets of rain hit my face I thought maybe myself or my sister had been caught and I was being sprayed in blood. A soft glow rose around us as the dawn began to emerge; soon we were soaked through and through, as the drops became a torrential rain that wouldn’t stop. It had done nothing to slow our enemy.
By this time, my sister had puked once...me, twice. The zombies were a couple of feet closer. What we had left was no longer measured in miles, maybe not even yards. Up ahead was a break in the woods; maybe we could make it to a house, barricade ourselves in a basement and wait for the cavalry to come. That all sounded like a wonderful plan until we stepped out of those woods and onto a large roadway. The landscape was dominated by its nothingness. A large sign signified the future home of The Guardians Mansions, a fine gated community starting in the low 1.2s. It literally said “the low 1.2s,” like that was fucking pocket change. I wouldn’t be able to afford to get my lawn mowed in this place, had it ever been built. So m
uch for holing up in a house. I was pissed at Mr. Romero for even suggesting it. The area had been so deluged with water from the storm that it was coursing down the roadsides, running along the cobblestone berm and down the storm drains.
“Storm...drain...” I barely got it out. Didn’t really need to tell my sister; she was about as close to being passed out on her feet as one can be. I was mostly dragging her at this point. “Stay with me, sis. I’m going to take the cover off and you’re gonna go down. Got it?”
She nodded. The timing on this was going to have to be better than a precision crafted Swiss Time Piece, performed as smooth as German Engineering, greased as well as the pockets of American Politicians. Too much? I’d be happy if it worked like a piece of clunky post revolution Russian technology as long as we were safe. I more or less flung my sister forward past the grate, bent down, and wrapped my fingers around the heavy cast iron bars. For two agonizing seconds, I strained, cords stood out on my neck, muscle in my arms bulged, my back cursed in protest, my knees threatened to blow out sideways. I didn’t think it was going to budge, until it did. I yanked up and sideways, nearly dropping the beast on Lyndsey’s foot.
“Down—” I labored.
She looked dubiously into the darkness but otherwise went without uttering a word. It took a second to stretch my fingers out, they were still bent into claws from their previous strain. I brought my rifle up and emptied the entire magazine; the last shot had my barrel pressed firmly up against the belly of a zombie. I was bowled over by falling zombies and went down under a heap of bodies—I cried out in pain as I was being trampled. If not for a protective zombie covering I would have been mashed into the street. I turned over and reached out to the lip of the drain and dragged myself towards it. The zombies behind had yet to determine where their food went.
Lyndsey popped her head up to see what was happening, she reached out and grabbed my arm, straining to pull me in. My legs were tangled up in two bodies; when I got free I fell through the hole head first. Would have cracked my skull on the concrete below if not for the torrent of water sluicing through the pipe. Lyndsey saved my life as she reached down and grabbed my foot, although my head was underwater and I was unsure as to how I was going to twist up to grab something without going for a ride like a flushed turd. Ended up being a zombie that rescued me. Weird how that crap happens. One had stepped neatly through the hole, narrowly missed my sister, but was a big enough douche to drive his foot into my crotch. Swallowed a lungful of water as I yelled out in misery. Fortunately, he was kind enough to accidentally knock me away from Lyndsey’s grip and twist me violently upright from the blow. I was choking on water, my nuts were screaming in agony, but I had the wherewithal to use at least one hand to reach out and grab ahold of a ladder rung. The other was clamped down on my newly injured nether region. The zombie took a fleeting snap at me then was sucked away as swiftly as if we were unbuckled on a jumbo jet flying at thirty-thousand feet when a two by two foot hole was ripped through the fuselage. He went that quickly.
What little light would have trickled down to us was being blocked out by zombies, another of which had fallen in halfway. One leg had dropped through. If he still cared about his privates we would have been able to commiserate—the way he smacked whatever junk was left to him up against the lip of the opening. I had to get up and past my sister before more started dropping in. One would eventually get lucky and get a bite into one of us or pull us off our perch and into the jet stream below.
“Pull in close,” I told my sister. She hugged the ladder tight. I crawled over and past as she went down a couple of steps. I rested the zombie’s foot on my shoulder and climbed, pushing him free of the hole. Fucker didn’t even say thank you. The tricky part now was going to be popping up, grabbing the cover, and pulling it back over the hole without letting any parasites latch on. Where the ruptured zombie had been was now a flood of water pouring onto my face. I was pretty sure this is what waterboarding felt like. I had to keep turning my head so I could get a proper breath. Without us in sight, the zombies seemed hesitant; not sure what to do. They’d been hunting us for so long and they knew they had been right on top of us. As far as they were concerned, we had simply vanished. Replacing the cover had been easier than I thought it would be, and I hadn’t garnered any attention until it dropped back into place. The scraping sound as I dragged it over had been completely masked by the torrential downpour; none had taken notice until the loud clanging sound as it re-seated, almost like a dinner bell for them, though I’d still not been spotted. We were out of immediate danger of being eaten, but far from being safe in general.
The water in the hole had risen almost a foot just since we’d been in. The maintenance ladder had fifteen steps that dropped down into a small square opening; on either side was a large pipe that, in theory, was supposed to channel the water away. Either the rain was coming down too hard for the channel to keep up with or there was some sort of blockage down-pipe that was damming up the water. If the horde above would just move on, we could escape a potential drowning, but they were just loitering around now that there was nothing worth chasing. I hated to admit it, but I wouldn’t mind if a fascist rally had just adjourned nearby, sending the attendees exiting this way. I don’t have any personal grudge against fascists, just needed a diversion and it seemed way worse to wish for a Lamaze class to have just finished. The zombies were milling, while we were nearly swimming.
“Mike...I’m...I’m getting tired.”
I looked down to my sister; I’d seen drowned rats that looked less water-logged.
“Climb up,” I told her, giving her the room to do so. I went down, her feet were right in front of my face. I figured if she slipped I’d have ample opportunity to halt her descent, provided I could hold on myself. I looked down to note that my boots were completely immersed, as was half my calves. Water from below, water from above. Of all the ways I wagered I would leave this world, a watery grave seemed pretty unlikely, considering my aversion to deep water. After another half hour under that barrage, the physical pounding and the leeching of body heat from the cold water was taking its toll on both of us. When the water was a few inches from my crotch I climbed a couple of rungs higher. Lyndsey said nothing. She had one arm hooked over a rung, her head hanging low. She looked as miserable as I felt.
Her teeth were chattering. She looked to me and held eye contact for a heartbeat or two.
“He’s dead.”
I nodded curtly. She wasn’t asking and there was nothing I could really say to make it any better. I tried anyway. “He died to give us a chance to live, sis. We have to honor his memory by doing just that.”
She nodded in response, or it might have been a shiver. Either way, she didn’t say anything else. Another ten minutes, another rung. The water was not abating. Near as I could tell given the current state of affairs, we had about an hour left.
“How you holding up?” I asked as I finally came abreast of her.
“When we were kids I never really liked you all that much. I feel bad about that.”
“Whoa—hold on sis. Nix the disclosure. We’re not dead yet.”
“You were the baby; I just remember mom making me do stuff for Mikey—get Mikey’s breakfast, wash Mikey’s clothes, pack Mikey a lunch for school. I felt like I was your personal servant sometimes. It wasn’t until I finally moved out that I cared much for you. I mean, I always loved you...I just couldn’t stand you.”
“Is right now really the time you want to do big reveals? I was perfectly fine with the status quo. I always thought I was a pretty good younger brother, and I’m really starting to hate these confessions and what I’m discovering about what my siblings truly thought. I’m not sure if I can take any more, especially if Gary feels the need to get something off his chest, too.”
“I didn’t want anything bad to happen to you...I just wanted you to get adopted or something.”
“Oh okay, that’s not so bad. Just have me ripped from my family.�
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“It wasn’t like that! I was the youngest for five years before you came into the picture. I got all the attention, all the pampering. I was not a fan of having to step down from my throne.”
“You moved out when you were what, eighteen?” She nodded. “Thirteen years is a hell of a long time to hold a grudge, sis.”
“I got over it. I guess I really didn’t mean to start there. What I meant, Mike, is that I love you as only a big sister can. I’ve watched you stumble and fall and yet you always get up, dust off your knees, fix your crooked smile and march on. It’s something I’ve been proud to witness all these years. It was the same even during my difficult years; I had a gut feeling that you were going to do wonderful things in this world. Didn’t expect exactly this, but…” She hesitated. “I just thought you should know.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said after a guilt-wracked minute.
“What?”
“It was me that got you in trouble with mom and the whole diary thing.”
“What about it?” She turned to look at me.
“I needed a piece of paper.”
“And?”
“Well, I couldn’t find any.”
“And?” The look of defeat she had on her features just a few seconds ago was quickly transforming into anger. She’d been grounded for three weeks after my mother had got a hold of her diary and read some particularly incriminating passages.
“I picked the lock.”
“You read my diary!?” She was hot and indignant.
“What nine year old cares what his fourteen year-old sister is up to? I was making a list of all my Matchbox cars and I needed a piece of paper.”
“I had that crammed under my mattress. How did you even find it?”
“Come on sis. What kid hasn’t thought that was the perfect hiding spot since the dawn of the mattress?”
“But mom said she found it on the kitchen counter top.”
