Zombie Chaos (Book 2): Highway to Hell

by Martone, D. L.

  Apparently, he was trying to pull a reverse jailbreak, digging his way into the yard, not out of it. I suddenly grasped why he seemed so familiar: He didn’t merely resemble pets I’d known and loved, he was the actual dog in the family photo I’d recently seen.

  Poor guy. He’s hoping to come home.

  My gaze drifted farther along the fence, and I noticed two zombies stumbling down the rear alley, toward the hapless canine. Given my fondness for horror films, I knew zombie lore varied when it came to non-human animals. In some, the undead ravagers devoured other creatures indiscriminately, from horses to goats, while others left all non-humans with little to fear.

  Of course, in the real world, I’d already seen the mangled corpses of assorted dogs and cats in the French Quarter, not to mention the viscera of poor Francis, the resident feline mascot of the Pet Mart. So, I assumed the shaggy canine outside was in grave danger. From the whining and barking I could hear through the glass, I suspected the dog also realized his pursuers weren’t the friendly sort. Instead of running from the situation, however, he just carved up the ground more furiously.

  “Fuck.”

  If you knew me at all, then you’d already figured out how I felt about most of humanity. In truth, I believed the planet could’ve benefited from such a cleansing epidemic at least two millennia earlier.

  It wasn’t that I had no sympathy for the people who had perished (and continued to perish) in such painfully gory ways. I’d just never had much faith in humanity as a whole. In my defense, men, women, and children had been dying since the beginning of our existence, sometimes at the hands of disease, old age, and Mother Nature, but just as often because of their fellow humans.

  The rest of the animal kingdom, however, had always been a different story for me. True, some possessed venomous saliva, carnivorous appetites, and violent urges, but most non-human animals were usually innocent, loyal creatures… until awful humans got ahold of them.

  If any cosmic entity oversaw the universe (which I highly doubted), he, she, or it realized I couldn’t ignore the present situation. Although I was an omnivore by nature (and, therefore, more than willing to consume beef, pork, poultry, and seafood), my instinct to save or assist any helpless animal placed in my path resonated deep within my soul. Just as with the ill-advised Pet Mart rescue in New Orleans, I usually wouldn’t hesitate to risk life or limb for dogs, cats, foxes, elephants, and other non-human creatures, so the anxious canine on the far side of the fence was no exception.

  “You better be grateful for this,” I mumbled as I unlocked the sliding glass door and stepped onto the deck.

  Stuffing my flashlight in my shirt pocket, I hastened down the steps and across the backyard. As I made a beeline for the dog, who was still frantically clawing at the dirt beneath the fence, I surveyed the area and tried to craft a rescue plan. Unfortunately, the fence didn’t have a rear gate, and it was too tall, about even with my chest, for me to lean over and pick up the dog from inside the yard. So, as soon as I reached the perimeter, I kicked out one of the narrow wooden slats near the dog. Naturally, the impact of my sneaker on the wood startled the animal, but following a brief glance at me and back at the encroaching zombies, he must’ve figured I was the lesser of two evils because he resumed his frenzied digging.

  Before I could kick out a second slat, however, and grab the dog, I realized the zombies would reach him first. Quickly, I raised the Mossberg and trained the sight on the closest zombie, an obese woman wearing a green apron. Presumably, she’d been cooking a meal when someone had bitten off nearly half her face. As the slug hit her square in the forehead, she slumped to the ground and fell on her back. My eyes, which had adjusted to the dim light, could barely make out the saying on her bloodstained apron: Don’t fuck with me, or I’ll poison your food.

  “Hey, what a coincidence,” I said. “I’ve got one just like that.”

  Clare, grateful for my culinary skills, had given the apron to me as a long-ago birthday present. It was currently stuffed in a kitchen drawer in the step van.

  Dammit, Joe. Focus.

  Snapping back to the present dilemma, I noticed the remaining zombie, a lanky, decaying man in overalls, leaning toward the dog. Immediately, I kicked out a second slat, grabbed the canine’s collar, and tugged him through the opening. Just in time, too. The zombie clacked his nasty jaws where the dog’s ass had recently been.

  I stumbled backward and landed hard on my own ass. With the collar still in one hand, the shotgun in the other, I tried to recover from the jolting impact, which reverberated from my tailbone to my already throbbing skull. Though the dog beside me trembled with fright, that didn’t prevent him from licking my face with wild abandon, obviously more than a little relieved to be standing in his own yard once again.

  Grinning in spite of his stinky breath, I turned my head and caught a glimpse of a man watching me through the back door of the neighboring house. I had little time to wonder who he was or what the hell he thought of the scene before him when I heard a ruckus at the fence.

  Looking past the dog, I realized the second zombie had knelt onto the ground and stuck his head through the hole in the fence – no doubt in an effort to reach the tasty dog and even tastier (or at least less hairy) man on the other side. Quickly, I released the dog collar, scrambled onto my feet, and aimed the shotgun at the zombie. A few seconds after I unloaded the shell (which, given the short distance, blasted out a three-inch-wide hole through his face), his head slumped forward… onto the barrel of my shotgun.

  For an instant, it resembled a fucked-up carnival game in a horror movie.

  Get the dead zombie on the rod and win a stuffed animal!

  Stepping backward and yanking the shotgun from the zombie’s skull, I noted the barrel was covered with chunks of bloody brain tissue and the disgusting black goo I’d come to associate with the undead.

  Yeah. I’ll definitely have to clean that off.

  Meanwhile, the second shotgun blast proved to be too much for the poor, freaked-out dog. Pivoting toward the house, I spotted him bolting up the deck steps and through the open doorway. Before following him, I glanced toward the neighbor’s house, but I could no longer see the man who’d been watching me.

  Nope, not too creepy at all.

  Chapter

  8

  “No, I don’t believe in the Devil. You don’t need him. People are bad enough by themselves.” – Detective Bowden, Devil (2010)

  Earlier in the day, I’d learned that sentimentality had no place in the new undead world. Out of misguided respect for one of my favorite aspects of New Orleans culture, I’d impulsively veered around a flame-engulfed, zombified Mardi Gras Indian, promptly rolled over a rusted iron post in someone’s yard, and ended up with a busted radiator hose for my trouble.

  Unfortunately, though, that was only the first of several major, uber-necessary lessons in the burgeoning zombie apocalypse, and just like the first, the second one hit me like a ton of unwanted bricks: Don’t get distracted.

  Trying to banish the odd neighbor from my mind, I hastened across the backyard toward the open doorway. Although I needed to deal with more pressing matters, I suddenly felt compelled to trail the dog inside his family’s abandoned house, worried he might get into further trouble.

  Yep, there I was, concerned the dog I’d just saved from zombies would ransack his family’s already ransacked home or maybe just endanger himself amid the debris.

  I could hear Clare’s voice in my head. “Sigh,” she would’ve said. “You’re as bad as I am.”

  I’d nicknamed her Sidetrack with very good reason, and she knew it. Despite well-meaning intentions, she often allowed distractions to derail her focus, which usually made her late for appointments, miss deadlines, or mess up more important issues – and then feel totally guilty about all of the above.

  So, given the shifted focus of my one-track mind, I probably shouldn’t have been stunned by what happened next. But I was.

  As I
stepped between the door jamb and the sliding glass doors, I felt the cold, heart-clenching sensation of a gun barrel pressed against my left temple – an impotent moment that would be forever etched in my memory. What a grim fact about the present-day world: Living humans had proven to be more dangerous to me than the goddamn, flesh-eating zombies.

  “Drop da fuckin’ shotgun!”

  Shouting at me from somewhere on my left, the gruff voice no doubt belonged to the asshole holding the pistol to my head.

  Figuring I’d end up with a bullet in the brain if I didn’t comply, I let the Mossberg clatter to the tiled floor. But, man, how I wished I could’ve blasted the evil cocksucker with it instead.

  “What kinda retard risks his life for a fuckin’ dog?”

  Now, I really wanna shoot this asshole.

  My unknown assailant lowered his weapon, grabbed my left arm, and shoved me face-first against the wall on the other side of the sliding glass doors – not before, however, one of his cohorts flipped on an electric lantern, and I caught a glimpse of three trailer-park rednecks in stereotypical camo outfits. My canine buddy cowered beside a baldheaded joker, who gripped the dog collar in one hand and a semiautomatic handgun in the other. I assumed there were at least four guys in the den, including the mystery man with the pistol.

  As my cheekbone pressed painfully against the wood paneling, I tried to calculate my terrible odds of taking them all down, especially if there were other adversaries waiting in the wings. Hunger, thirst, sore muscles, irritating injuries, and extreme fatigue would certainly impair me, but I had no intention of dying at the hands of such assholes. Before I could even attempt an ill-advised counterattack, however, I received a pistol whip to the back of my overtaxed head, which immediately drove me to the floor, onto my bruised knees.

  Apparently, my heroic deed in the backyard had made a lasting impression on the dog. Despite my blinding headache, I heard him growl and lunge toward the guy who had just whacked me. The man yelped, cursed, and stumbled away from me, and the momentary distraction enabled me to pivot my torso and survey all four of my attackers.

  Three of them appeared to be in their late teens to early twenties. Given their varied hairstyles, vacant expressions, and beefy frames, they seemed like the overgrown offspring of a well-fed Cajun that had crossbred with the Three Stooges. In my mind, I dubbed the frizzy-haired one holding the lantern Larry, the youngest one Moe, and the baldheaded one Curly. Easier than learning their names before they unceremoniously killed me and stole my shit.

  I glanced at the man who had pistol-whipped me and was presently swiping at the dog. He definitely seemed older than the other three guys (by at least two decades), and the family resemblance was apparent. No doubt, he was the patriarch of the inbred clan.

  Blood splotches and goo splatters covered all four men. Not only their boots and hunting attire, but their faces and hands as well. In a zombie apocalypse, that wouldn’t have seemed all that unusual. I myself had dirtied at least three pairs of duds in one day. Still, based on our brief acquaintance, I guessed that some of the blood had come from non-zombies. Safe to assume those assholes had already killed a bunch of innocent people.

  I’d thought it many times before: The world had been in serious trouble long before an undead infestation spread across the globe.

  Maybe we should just let the zombies have it all. Most humans don’t deserve to live anyway.

  Although I’d started life as a fairly optimistic kid, my faith in humanity had long since faded. Jokingly, I’d once told Clare I assumed 99.98 percent of the people on the planet were assholes. She might’ve thought I was kidding at the time, but given that she was a pretty smart cookie and had loved me for almost two decades, I had to believe she knew the truth when she heard it.

  Either way, I was certain the four pieces of shit presently threatening me were part of the asshole majority, and I couldn’t help but wonder where they’d been hiding when I’d first entered the house. Due to the swampy nature of southern Louisiana, basements weren’t as common there as in the Midwest, where I’d spent much of my childhood. So, I doubted they’d come from below.

  Of course, they could’ve hidden in the attic, or one of the bedrooms I hadn’t had a chance to investigate before getting distracted by the family pet’s dilemma. Given my typically bad luck, they’d likely just happened by the empty house, no doubt in full-tilt marauding mode, while I was in the backyard, rescuing the damn dog.

  Whatever the case, they’d likely been attracted by my rumbling engine and the subsequent shotgun blasts. I cursed myself for my lack of situational awareness – and the partial hearing loss that had helped them get the drop on me. No matter who or what was to blame for my current predicament, though, I was fucked and so was the poor dog.

  Curly stepped forward and raised a gun to the canine’s head. My heart pounded with anger and fright. Abandoned by his family, pursued by zombies, and rescued by a well-meaning fool, the unfortunate fella was about to die like… well, like a dog.

  “Don’t waste da ammo, ya idjit,” the older man said.

  In reluctant response, Curly lowered his gun, kicked the dog square in the chest, and sent him sliding across the tiled floor with a grunt and a whimper. He collided with an overturned armchair and remained still, just a crumpled pile of bones and coarse hair. When his sad eyes met mine, he whimpered again, as if to apologize for his futile act of revenge – or blame me for his current predicament.

  No worries, pup. Don’t think I could’ve done much better.

  “Check da truck,” the father ordered Moe.

  After turning on a flashlight, the dark-haired kid disappeared into the kitchen and stomped through the utility room. His footsteps faded near the garage.

  No one made a sound, not even the dog, until he returned.

  “Damn thing’s all locked up,” Moe reported, then huffed petulantly.

  With my eyes on the kid, I didn’t notice his father edging toward me until he clocked me with the gun again.

  Rubbing my sore skull, I looked up into his maniacal eyes. He seemed to be enjoying the abuse a bit too much. No wonder his kids were fucktards, too. The bad acorns hadn’t fallen far from the vicious oak tree.

  “Give him your keys,” he growled.

  I winced from the blinding pain, then noticed a flat, open palm inches from my face.

  For an instant, I considered tackling the son of a bitch to the ground, then remembered how fucking exhausted I was. Not to mention severely outnumbered by his malicious spawn.

  “Not gonna ask again,” the man said, aiming his pistol at my forehead. “Don’t give ’em to me, an’ I’ll jus’ shootcha in da head an’ git ’em off your corpse.”

  As I dug the keys from my jeans pocket and dropped them in the meaty hand hovering in front of my face, a wave of self-loathing crashed over me. Compliance might extend my life long enough to defeat the four idiots surrounding me, but I certainly didn’t enjoy succumbing to their demands. Not with Azazel hiding among the weapons that such hillbillies would surely covet – and Clare still waiting for me in Baton Rouge.

  The father tossed the keys to Moe, who darted through the kitchen again. Perhaps half a minute passed before I heard the faint but distinctive creaking of my rear doors. Not long afterward, the kid bounded back into the den.

  “Holy shit, Paw, it’s loaded wit’ guns,” he said breathlessly.

  If he’d discovered my cache of weapons beneath the tarp, then he’d probably spotted Azazel, too – a fact he would’ve mentioned to his father. Since he hadn’t remarked on seeing a cat, I had to believe that, sensing trouble, my little furbaby must’ve hidden herself somewhere else.

  Smart girl. Smarter than your daddy anyway.

  Moe’s father grinned, then looked at me. “Well, boys, looks like we hit da jackpot.”

  Great, just fucking great. Hee Haw and his fucktard kids are gonna get my guns. What else can go wrong today?

  “Listen,” I said, “the rig is busted,
but you can take the rest and go.”

  Curly stepped forward and kicked me in the ribs, propelling me against the wall. “We’ll go when we fuckin’ wanna go. Now git your ass up.”

  With the wind temporarily knocked from my lungs, I had trouble following his command. Exasperated, Curly and the redneck patriarch had to drag me to my feet and pull me across the den, with Moe and Larry leading the way. Glancing over my shoulder, I caught a glimpse of the dog, who’d gingerly raised his head to survey the scene. I lost track of him in the gloom as my adversaries yanked me into the kitchen, through the utility room, and down the steps leading into the garage.

  I’ve had some pretty close calls today, but how the fuck am I gonna get outta this one?

  Chapter

  9

  “People say you should always do the right thing, but sometimes, there is no right thing, and then… well, then you just have to pick the sin you can live with.” – Ig Perrish, Horns (2013)

  Larry’s electric lantern illuminated the interior of the garage just enough that, as soon as Curly and his father pushed me against the van, I noticed a narrow gap between the side outer door and the jamb.

  “Dammit, Kevin,” the father said to the kid I’d mentally dubbed Moe. “Thought I told ya to close da damn door?”