by Tufo, Mark
“You blow snot on this shirt and I’m going to be pissed,” I told him. He hugged even tighter, if that were possible. Tears fell from my face to join his, though I did not feel I could completely let go—not yet. I was very much in danger of not being able to stop once I started. After a while, the deep wracks began to taper off, but would occasionally come back with a vengeance, though these episodes were becoming fewer and farther between.
“I’m not even going to pretend to know what you think of me, BT, but as sure as I’m standing here, I promise I’ll never tell anyone.” He nodded without looking up. “Come on, we should get going.”
“Be there in a minute.” He did his best to keep his voice from breaking.
“Fuck.” I was looking down at my shirt; the entire left side was sopped, probably could have rung it out. “What are the odds you have another?” I asked Tommy, pulling the shirt away from my body. He shrugged and shook his head.
“How much time do we have?” I asked, taking a look down the path we had to take. It wasn’t sheer…maybe just south of that description. Arduous, maybe, definitely dangerous. Mountain goats would be fine. Sure-footed deer would likely make it. It wasn’t wide, either. Two malnourished orphans from Oliver’s time might be able to stand shoulder to shoulder, though the greedy little shit that kept asking for more, please, could mess that up.
“We should get going.” He was looking back the way we had come.
“How are they following us?”
“Trackers.”
“Nothing like a zombie bloodhound.”
BT emerged from the trees. He looked better than his red-rimmed eyes belied. “I’m ready.” He wiped his nose with his sleeve; I was immediately reminded of the shirt that was sticking to my torso.
“Drink some water,” Tommy told him. “We don’t want you getting dizzy on the trail.”
BT took it without another word. I didn’t like this compliant giant. I liked it better when he was perpetually salty. He drank his fill and we started walking.
“I’d like you out in front, Mr. T,” Tommy said without clarifying. Figured out soon enough when he positioned himself in between myself and BT that he wanted to be in a position to grab either of us should we falter. I hated to think that I was in that dire a condition, but I couldn’t deny it either. My body was depleted and my mind was spent. Not a great tandem, especially when we were very much in a flight-or-fight scenario. We were maybe a third of the way down when Tommy thought I should pick up the pace. I turned and was about to tell him I didn’t think that was such a great idea, until I looked up the cliffside and saw faces peering down at me.
“You got it,” I told him, though my jaws were clenched. It had been preternaturally quiet as we had been picking our way down; the only utterances were an occasional swear as feet slipped or scree gave out beneath us.
“Look where you want to go, not where you could,” Tommy had advised. Sound logic; so why did I want to punch him for it?
It was impossible not to keep glancing up and seeing the progress the zombies were making. They were definitely moving faster than we were, though they didn’t care at all about the peril, as first one, then two, then a dozen or more toppled over, breaking their bodies along the unforgiving rock as they fell. They didn’t seem to notice; probably figured them as acceptable losses. Not sure if their boss was in position yet, as their pursuit seemed haphazard. Zombies jostled for position, more intent on getting to us at any cost than employing any sort of safety precaution. Even with them killing themselves in pursuit, it was safe enough to say that the survivors would reach us before we hit the plains. Even if we made it to level ground before them, then what? Wasn’t like there was a Howitzer waiting there, ready to blast the monsters off the cliff.
“Faster, Mr. T.”
I was already moving at a clip a couple of times removed from what I considered prudent. Any faster and I would be at an uncontrolled descent. There was shuffling behind me as Tommy got BT to go past him.
“I’ll slow them up,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Go,” he urged. I was functioning well enough on some level. BT looked like an automaton placing one foot in front of the other; that was about the extent of it.
“Can you keep up?” I asked.
“I’m not getting eaten.” Good an answer as any. We hadn’t gone more than twenty feet when Tommy’s rifle fire opened up. The rock I stepped on rolled out from under me and my left food dangled in mid-air. BT’s hand shot out and just caught me.
“You should be more careful.”
I would have given him the standard smart-ass answer but the lump in my throat prevented that. We were halfway down, and Tommy had not caught up to us. His rifle was still chattering away, so we didn’t have to fear that he’d fallen. He would check in with us over the radio when he stopped to reload, so we didn’t wait.
“Mike.” BT was breathing heavily. I suppose so was I; the front of my thighs were on fire from the unusual usage.
“Yeah.”
“What are we going to do when we get down there?”
“Thumb for a ride.”
“It’d better not be a Prius.”
“No chance. BMW, at least. Only the best for you.”
“I’d be fine with a good old Chevy truck.”
“Me too.” The muscles in my legs begged for a respite. They were as tight as overstretched guitar strings. I’d be surprised if the muscles didn’t snap.
My thought was prophetic, and not in a good way.
“In trouble…gotta…stop.” BT spoke haltingly. His left leg he kept straight, and was coming to a hopping halt to match his words.
I looked to the grimace on his face; his eyes were closed, teeth clenched. Then I peered over his shoulder to Tommy, two hundred yards farther up the slope. He was firing and slowly picking his way backward. I had a good firing lane, just needed to get past BT, who was busy vigorously rubbing his leg in an attempt to break the knot that had formed there.
“Coming around,” I warned him. His eyes were still closed and I didn’t want him pushing me off the edge. There was room, but not an abundance.
“I’ll be fine in a second.”
“When you’re ready, start moving. I’ll fall in behind you.”
He grunted an acknowledgment.
A blast of static came through my headset. “Attack…moving….position…”
Sounded like Stenzel; could have been the pope, for all I could tell.
“You hear that, Tommy?”
No response from him. I saw him fumbling with his rifle. Looked like he had a jam; I couldn’t tell because he was too far away and had his back to me. I braced myself and the rifle against the rock wall. There were enough zombies that acquiring a target wasn’t going to be a problem; I just wanted to make my shots count. There was enough room between Tommy and the lead zombie that this was where I started shooting. Zombies were not acting like they normally do. Dewey, or someone like him, was very much in charge of this column now. The first few I shot were unceremoniously tossed out of the way. When they decided that wasn’t working out too well, they held up their dead comrades and used them as a shield. A zombie buffer, if you will.
“Fuck me,” I muttered as I watched this new wrinkle develop. We’d been talking about moving to the heavier .308 blackout round, mostly to deal with bulkers, but right now, I could seriously use it. The 5.56 wasn’t so much known for its penetrating power as it was its ability to severely screw up the target being shot. Good chance a .308 would blast clear through the meat puppet and into the puppeteer.
Tommy had cleared his jam. He motioned with his hand for me to get moving again. I turned to BT, who was still working on his Charley horse. The zombie boss must have been getting pissed off at the lack of results from his minions, as he began to have them march right off the top.
“What is going on?” I asked as a zombie landslide began to tumble down. Got to admit, at first, I was all for it. Let the bastards c
rash against the rocks. Then it quickly dawned on me what they were doing. I was only partially right in thinking that they were attempting to thwart our escape, make their own teeth and claw wall. Then the bodies started getting closer; like an old Civil War combatant, they were using Kentucky windage to get a bead on us. If they couldn’t kill us straight up, they were going to try and crush us under a chucked body.
“BT, we have to go,” I said as a catapulted zombie exploded no more than ten feet from us. Blood blew out as if the thing had been packed in micro-explosives.
“Are they trying to kill us?” BT asked indignantly.
“I think that’s the idea.”
He started walking, a bit stiff-legged at first, but the more he moved, the better his gait got. Now, besides picking our way through the broken bodies, we had to stay vigilant from obstacles from the sky. It was slow going and it didn’t help that Tommy was getting closer. Disney’s murderous filmmakers couldn’t have made this many zombies fall. Reference lemmings committing mass suicide (or so they would have had you believe; the whole thing was staged for dramatic effect. Do whatever it takes to get the shot!). I lost my balance as a zombie came pinwheeling down; couldn’t move forward and couldn’t go back fast enough. I pressed my body as tightly as I could to the wall. I let out a cry as the top of the zombie’s head crashed into my right shoulder. “Fuck!” I yelled. BT kept me rooted to my spot. “That friggen hurt.” I was pissed.
“You good?” BT let me go before I could respond. He was continually booting zombies off our path. Most were dead, but some clung to life, their bodies broken beyond repair, but if they could reach or chew, they did so. Bending down to move them wasn’t the wisest course of action. We were moving too slowly, and within ten minutes, Tommy was breathing down my neck.
“I’ll clear the ones ahead. You keep the ones behind slowed down,” he said as he pressed past me and then BT. The only thing that was helping was the haphazard flights of the zombies. They were still falling ahead of and behind us, and sometimes they would take down one of their own and clear a swath. I thanked them for that. I got into a kneeling position, drawing my sling tight to the side of my arm for added stability. It wasn’t overly necessary, as the zombies were close, but every shot needed to count. I’d take two or three shots then let them clear through the blockage. In the meantime, I would take a look at BT and Tommy, who, for some reason, never seemed to move any further away, like the cliff trail was built on a giant treadmill and though they kept stepping, they remained in the same spot.
I continued the cycle: kill a couple of zombies, check on their progress then look up to see if I was being targeted. More than once I’d had to readjust; it wasn’t necessarily close, but it swung the advantage to the zombies as they gained ground. They had all the time in the world, and the greedy motherfuckers were stealing my precious seconds. When I felt that Tommy and BT were far enough ahead, I began moving downwards, though now I was very much in danger of being left behind. The zombies were still streaming off the edge of the cliff, and just because Tommy had cleared the path once didn’t mean it was going to stay that way. Basically, like a country road in the midst of a blizzard, the plow had come along recently, but the drifts kept coming.
By the time I felt like I had moved enough to give myself time and also allow BT and Tommy space, the zombies were within twenty-five yards. Sure, shooting was a lot easier, but I found no comfort from that fact. Pretty much the opposite; I would look up a suitable synonym when I wasn’t fighting for our lives. We were three-quarters of the way down; the grassy plain spread wide and clear below us. Tall reeds swayed in the wind, irreflective to our imminent arrival. This whole thing seemed an exercise in futility. There was no escape pod down there, no sanctuary we could use to hole up in. Maybe if we were lucky we’d come upon a Cold War-era missile silo; it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think more than a few were hidden in National Forests.
To make matters even more fun, the zombies on the trail behind us began to think that the fall from this height might not be entirely debilitating and were walking straight off, taking the express route down. It was still too high, and it didn’t look like any of the idiots would be walking away from it, but the idea had been presented. Soon they would be able to make that quick journey intact, and at that point, they could cut off our only avenue of escape, even if it wasn’t a great one.
Pebbles, stones, and even the occasional boulder were dislodged by all the bodies being tossed around. I’d never much liked military helmets, but I’d rent out my left nut for one right now. Hate to say I’d give it up permanently, but yeah, rent it out? Sure. The ground began to rumble as a rock the size of a Yugo started rolling down. None of us were in any danger from it as it passed in between where Tommy and I stood. I was cool with it, in fact, because it was taking out zombies along the way, until it slammed into the path forty-feet from me and wiped a twelve-foot swath of the trail entirely away.
“You have got to be shitting me.” As I stared, shock-faced, at the open air ahead of me, somewhere in the back of my head, it occurred to me that the world record for the long jump was close to thirty feet. Sure, it was performed on a running start by a world-class athlete in the proper footwear wearing maybe thirty fewer pounds of gear, but one would think a reasonably fit guy should be able to clear just less than half that, right? Not like I was flush with options, anyway. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and started to run. Seemed like I was building decent speed until my boot slid out from under me as I stepped awkwardly on a pile of loose stones. It was all I could do to slow my forward progress as I stumbled my way to the precipice. My arms were flailing and my eyes grew wide as the edge neared. I was starting to wonder if I should try to get up to speed again and launch, or keep trying to brake. I dragged my right shoulder against the cliff, hoping the friction would be enough to keep me from free-floating off into space. Reasonably, I muttered the word “fuck” more than a dozen times in the process.
Tommy, having seen my plight, was racing back toward me, but unless he had a jet pack, there wasn’t much he was going to be able to do. Between speed and gravity, I was going to come up short on real estate. I did the only thing I could think of, the thing I’d taught my kids when skiing: if you are in trouble and can’t stop, just fall down. I dropped to my knees and placed my hands out in front of me as I continued to slide. Had the distinct feeling it was going to be too little too late. First, my left hand slid out and over, then I was staring straight down the drop. My right hand grabbed ahold of whatever it could, involuntarily closing as a last measure of independent self-preservation. The upper half of my torso was hanging over the edge; my stomach muscles clenched tight, keeping me stiff like I was planking, a weird fad back in the days of the internet. Didn’t understand the appeal then; absolutely loved it at the moment.
Every muscle in my body was taut, seeking equilibrium. I was like those cars that have slipped over the edge of the highway and are hanging perilously, teetering back and forth, waiting for either a bird to land on the hood and send it hurtling down or a friend to sit on the trunk while the driver quickly climbs into the back seat and out the window. Didn’t seem like either of those things was bound to happen; more likely I would get a crippling cramp in my gut that forced me to stretch out.
“What the fuck,” was all I could manage to say as Tommy spanned the gap. A hand shot out as he flew over me, grabbed the back of my calf, and pulled me back from the abyss. There was no time to thank him. The zombies had kept coming. We weren’t even going to have enough room to back up and make another go. In the end, it didn’t matter much. Tommy grabbed me by the collar of my clothes and the seat of my pants. I should have, and I did, feel indignant being tossed like a toddler into the shallow end of the pool. I soared through the air like a counterfeit Superman. The initial thrust had seemed like it would be enough to make it, but I wasn’t built to be aerodynamic, and my scrabbling arms and legs weren’t helping matters.
Any air I’d had
in my lungs was blasted out as the top of my chest slammed into the far edge. My arms and hands once again had a mind of their own, trying to grab hold of anything they could. My eyes could only see black and red spots, and my chest begged for air. My mind was so overrun with panic it couldn’t focus on what it wanted more—oxygen or purchase. Not sure where BT had come from, but I could see well enough to spot his large frame in mid-dive. He grabbed my right hand and wrist—my left had already lost the battle. I was gasping for air and twisting in the breeze. He pulled me up and over. I was flat on my back next to him. I wanted to thank him, but couldn’t yet, and then he was pushing me hard up against the land wall.
He grunted as he absorbed some of Tommy’s weight. The boy had pulled his own super-hero flight, though he was much better at it. He’d tucked and rolled, attempting to do as little damage to BT as he could. They were both sitting up and singing each other’s praise; I was just trying to take a breath of air without my chest feeling like it had collapsed in on itself.
“We have to get going.” BT was looking over at me. I wheezed a response. Tommy grabbed an arm and was helping me up. Not sure if you have ever had the misfortune of having the air forced out of your lungs; it is singularly one of the most terrifying and uncomfortable sensations there are, and the only way to power through it is with a little bit of time, and the opportunity to lie still and relax. I was not going to have that good fortune. Sure, the zombies most likely couldn’t make that jump, but that hadn’t slowed down their aerial assault. I was hunched over for the first couple hundred yards, sometimes pulled or pushed into a direction to avoid being hit. After a couple of minutes, I felt like my ribs had slid back into their appropriate positions.
“Thank you. Both of you,” I said when I could stand fully erect like my distant ancestors had intended.
