by Mark Tufo
He’d been holding it like some dipshits I’ve seen repurposing their weapon as a hammer, meaning, he was holding the barrel and using the grip to smack the door with. But of all the things he could have used to rap on that door, that it was a weapon? Troubling was a good word. BT was making short work of what was in the hallway; bullets were screaming and careening, digging grooves into the walls and rending flesh in the most biased of ways. There were great showers of sparks as lead ricocheted everywhere. He was getting close to sweeping up, a brutal, unforgiving custodian, when our dead sailor pulled a Lazarus. I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye but wrongly assumed it was Reed or even Tommy; though I didn’t think he would have left his post, it was possible. There was screaming, but it was faint and hidden deeply within the percussions of the machinegun.
“Watch out!” Blared over the speaker system. Would have been great to know from which quarter we should be looking out, but Gary had not any more time to warn us than we had to react to this new wrinkle.
BT was blindsided. The rifle was pushed to the side, and dozens of rounds went marching toward Bags as he hit the deck to get away. Bullets were whining around the room. Metal bunk beds were torn asunder, metal dressers and cabinets had holes as big as fists punched through them. I got hit in the shoulder by an elephant, kicked, I suppose, does it matter? I was straight lifted off my feet and went for an ass jarring short flight as I came down. My M-4 had taken the brunt of the impact and fell away in shards upon impact. That my rifle had been kind enough to take one for the team by no means meant that I’d come away unscathed. My arm was still attached, so I had that going for me, but blood was pouring down it and running off my numb and useless fingertips. Now that BT had stopped shooting, it was easy enough to hear the yells and cries of pain and surprise, some even coming from me. The sailor who had crossed over had apparently decided he didn’t like it on the other side and had come back for dinner. Bags was rushing toward Reed, who was on the ground holding the side of his head. Blood was pouring through his fingertips. I didn’t know if he’d been hit by shrapnel, like I had, or the zombie that had run into BT had struck. The zombies had sent that sailor in here knowing what he was. A fucking time bomb that had detonated within our ranks and with devastating results. Dewey had taught us this lesson; that I was ignorant enough to ignore it would weigh heavily, if I was given the opportunity to reflect.
BT put an elbow in its face that sent it sprawling away with a mouthful of broken teeth and a busted nose. Baggelli was the one to put a bullet in its head. I was doing my best to stand; the shooting pains in my arm were making that a tricky proposition.
“The door!” I managed to get out. Baggelli was torn between helping his friend and keeping anything else from coming in. He quickly shut it and used his rifle as a wedge to keep the zombies from opening it.
“Shit, Mike.” BT came over. I was now sitting on the floor, my useless arm in my lap, a thick layer of blood was beginning to pool. He dragged me to the wall and, as gingerly as he could, ripped my camo top away.
“How’s Reed?” I asked as we both winced. He’d seen what was causing the bleeding just as he’d inadvertently brushed up against the four-inch-long, inch and a half-wide sliver of buttstock protruding from me. “Sliver” doesn’t do it justice—sounds like something you could get out with a pair of tweezers. In this case, you would have to open up a pair of channel locks to get a good hold on the thing embedded in me.
“Don’t know…want me to pull it out?”
“That’s what she said,” I managed through gritted teeth.
“Mike.”
“It hurts like hell! Pull it the fuck out.”
“That’s what she said,” he replied.
I managed the smallest of smiles, but that was quickly replaced by a series of cries. I didn’t even know they were mine until they ceased. He tossed the shard away and was ripping my shirt into strips to staunch the flow. On a good note, some sensation was coming back to my fingers; on a sour note, the sensation was pain. I was breathing heavily through the extreme discomfort as BT got a dressing on. I looked over to Baggelli, who was doing what he could for Reed. Then my sight traveled along to Tommy, whose lips were pressed tight and he shook his head once. I knew what that meant. Either the bullet hit had been too severe or it had been a zombie bite. Either way, that spelled Reed’s end. The SEALs were taking some heavy casualties.
“Sir.” Baggelli looked over with pleading in his eyes. I knew he realized nothing could be done, but there was comfort in another’s presence during dark times.
“I’m okay,” I told BT. “Go.” Okay was a relative term. I was “okay” in the fact that I most likely wasn’t going to die, but if I was looking at one of those doctor charts that asked how to express a level of pain from smiling green face to crying red face, I was much closer to the bawler. My left arm wasn’t much more than a paperweight. Seemed I’d been taking my fair share of abuse recently. If not for the fact that I was something I loathed being, it was likely I’d be dead by now. And if that were the case, those I loved and cared for would be on their own. It wasn’t that they weren’t completely capable of watching out for themselves, but fuck if that wasn’t my job, my duty as a husband, as a father, as a brother, a friend and a leader. I was now convinced that this was the sole purpose for which I’d been placed on the planet. It sure as hell wasn’t to hold the hands of whining, entitled employees who felt that they’d been wronged in some way. As much as I’d loved my Human Resources job, I sort of had a distaste for the human aspect of it. Looking back, it probably wasn’t a good fit.
7
Mike Journal Entry 7
I managed to get up, cradling my injured wing so it didn’t hang down like a broken branch. Reed’s injury was grotesque. I’m not making light of the situation; I was disturbed and my heart was laboring in an effort to keep up with the number of beats per minute I was forcing it to perform. The best I can describe it is if you have ever had a particularly large hangnail and instead of cutting it off with some cuticle clippers, you have wrongly decided to rip it free but instead of the small piece of offending skin coming off, you rip a ridiculously wide swath that travels all the way to your knuckles. Now transfer this to the side of Reed’s head, where his ear was ripped free from his body and a large patch of tapering skin, roughly six inches across and ending somewhere down by his shoulder blade, had gone with it. I don’t know if his body was in shock and couldn’t figure out what to do, but it was nearly a bloodless wound, a true flaying. All of the tissue that the skin had been protecting was clearly visible, glistening like a model in a creepy doctor’s office. It was not an easy sight to take in. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain he must have been feeling. The bloody rag of skin was lying on the floor. The ear had a jagged, semi-circle ripped out of the top. There was a chance that by tearing the ear free, the infection did not have an opportunity to enter his bloodstream; that was my hope, anyway.
Bags looked up at me with pleading eyes. We were ill-equipped to deal with a medical emergency. No pain killers, nothing to clean the wound out with and no gauze to wrap it with to keep potential infections out. BT had rummaged around in some of the dressers and came out with clean shirts. I didn’t think that was such a good idea; the shirt would meld with his tissues, and if and when we could get him some real medical attention, they’d never be able to get the material free. BT was looking at the wound and the shirt, coming to the same conclusion. Reed was hurting; he had his eyes closed and was panting like an overheated dog.
“This is a Marine barracks, for Christ’s sake. There has got to be some alcohol,” I said as I went to open up some cabinets. I had a good idea what I was looking for. Five minutes later, I had blue vodka in a mouthwash bottle and an industrial-sized jar of Vaseline. Don’t ask, don’t tell, I thought as I grabbed it. “Take a shot or several,” I told Reed, who opened his eyes to look at what I was offering.
“Is my breath causing you a problem, Cap?” he f
orced out through clenched teeth.
“Just drink it,” I told him, handing him the bottle and BT the jar of petroleum jelly.
He took a small sip, then a larger one, followed by a half-bottle guzzling. I took it away before he could finish it; the odds that this was the only bottle were slim, but I didn’t want to risk it. I gave the alcohol another minute to dull some sensation, but nothing short of a half dozen Quaaludes were going to prevent the pain he was about to experience.
“Reed, you ready for this?” He knew what I was about to do.
“Bags, hold my hands. I don’t want to punch the captain in the nuts.”
“Yeah, I don’t want that either,” I told him as I moved to the side, making the angle a little more difficult.
Baggelli grabbed his hands. “It’s all right, brother.”
I don’t think any of us thought that, least of all Reed. “Ready?” I asked.
“Might be better if you don’t…”
I didn’t let him finish as I liberally doused the entire exposed area with the vodka. I swear I heard the shit sizzle upon contact. Reed went rigid, I was fearful he was going to start snapping bones or breaking teeth as he clenched his jaw. Tendons stuck out on his neck. He breathed one drawn-out “fuuuuck,” as the burn settled deep. BT dipped an end of the shirt into the Vaseline jar he was holding. He started by Reed’s exposed ear hole and slathered the entire area in a half-inch thick layer of protective gel.
Reed was breathing in and out quickly, like an expectant mother doing her best to push out the alien that had invaded her body. Baggelli’s hands were turning white from the pressure exerted on them, when Reed eased up, I told Baggelli to wrap it as best he could.
“You did good, man.” Bag’s hands were shaking, might have been for the concern he had for his friend or the blood rushing back into his appendages.
“They still trying to get in?” I asked Tommy as I walked to him. I knew they were, but that wasn’t the reason I’d gone over. “Is he infected?”
“I’d have to get closer.”
“I’ll hold the door.” We switched positions.
“Here, let me help you,” Tommy said as he took some of the shirt strips and was making a decent showing of covering the wound, considering its size and location. To me, it looked like he got uncomfortably close as he performed his work, but neither Bags nor Reed noticed. He came back a few minutes later, once Reed was as comfortable as he was going to get.
“Looks like he can be called Van Gogh of the living, for a while,” Tommy said.
“Should we save the ear, see if it can be sewn on later?”
Tommy shook his head. “First, we don’t have ice and second, it has a zombie bite on it. Thing might start moving on its own.”
And for the briefest of moments I imagined the ear inching its way back to its owner.
“Can you figure out a way to keep this door from opening?” I asked.
“I can, but you’re going to want to make sure that the SEALs are busy.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” Baggelli was helping Reed to a bed so he could sit.
Tommy went over to a small desk, made as much sense having one of those in Marines Quarters as having a computer in a pig’s pen; neither were going to be used for the purposes they were built for. He got underneath and pushed up, forcing the wooden top from the metal frame bolted to the floor. Bags looked over but was immediately back to tending to his friend. Tommy then wedged that thing so tight between the flooring and the handle we were likely hermetically sealed inside. Although, that was sort of the point. We stepped back to admire the handiwork. If the zombies were trying to get in, their efforts didn’t show on this side.
“How’s Reed?” Walde asked. I think she’d been going for an aside to me, but considering where the sound was coming from, it was about as private as sex on a public beach.
“Fucking fine,” Reed managed, even gave her a thumbs up. “Got my own blowhole now.” He turned his head to the camera. Though, with the bandages, there wasn’t much to see except a weeping pinkish jelly.
“I saw. If you ever get married, you’ll be able to tell your wife you can’t hear her. Or, wait…will you be able to hear her more? Like, could she shout down the hole right down into your brain?” Walde asked.
“Thought Marines were fucking nuts. I’m feeling like SEALs tell you guys to hold their beer,” BT said.
“Walde, how’s our exit route looking?” I asked.
“About the same,” she replied after checking her monitors.
“Reed?”
“Yeah. Anything to get away from my mother. Any more Scope?” He asked, pushing Bags away.
Baggelli went and grabbed the bottle off the floor. He spared a glance at the strip of flesh there before backing away and handing it off to the man. Reed downed the harsh liquid in two gulps.
“How the fuck we going to do this?” BT asked. “Reed’s in no shape to fight and drunk, you have one arm, and we have two large crates.”
“Life finds a way,” I told him.
“Don’t quote movie lines right now.”
“You caught that?”
“The movie was about dinosaurs. What part of that did you think I wouldn’t like?”
“I can hold a pistol. Reed, can you hold a pistol?”
“I think so sir. I’m a little worried about the sound, though.”
“What if we wait it out until you’re better?”
“Not advisable,” Walde said from her perch. “Got crazy amounts of movement throughout the ship. I’m not sure what exactly is going on, but it’s easy enough to see they’re mobilizing. Looks like a general-quarters…sir.” The last word came out as an afterthought. I saw no need to call her out on it. If I was watching zombies getting combat ready, I would have forgotten a thing or two myself.
“Can you check and make sure I have one in the chamber?” I asked BT, taking my pistol from the holster.
“What the fuck are you going to do in battle if you need to reload?” BT pulled the slide back an inch to take a look before handing it back.
“You’ll just have to drop what you’re doing and help me.”
We were out the door in under a minute. Tommy in the lead, BT pushing our goodies cart, Baggelli was helping Reed and I was at the back, which, right now, was the safest place in our small caravan.
“Bulker is gone,” Tommy said flatly as I was coming up on the armory.
“Eaten?” I asked, wondering if the reavers had decided to fatten up for the winter.
“Dragged off.”
Wasn’t much Tommy had to be scared about, but I swear I heard a tremor in his voice. Maybe he was concerned for the rest of us. I could hope so; I wouldn’t want to face off against whatever had him spooked.
“Walde, did you see anything?” I asked.
“I didn’t, but I wasn’t paying any attention to that area. I could check the drive.”
“Don’t worry about it. If we need to, we’ll figure it out later,” I told her. This was one of those teachable moments; I’d just not realized it at the time. “How we doing?”
She took a few seconds to respond. “Uh, still clear. Like, unnaturally clear.”
“Can you find any reason as to why that would be?” I asked.
“I’m not being federally prosecuted, sir, and withholding testimony.”
Reed let out a snort. “Fuck! That hurt.”
“Tommy, move us faster.” I was throwing caution not only to the wind but into a category four hurricane. I knew in my heart the zombies were about to send something terrible our way—why else would they clear the area?
“I don’t think that’s wise. We’re moving past doors; anything could be hiding,” he replied.
“No time for caution. Move.” I could feel it in my bones; a slow, menacing advance eating away at the marrow. We got out of here now or we never did. I could tell Tommy wanted to call me on my recklessness; instead, he turned and pressed on. Not quite the spri
nt I was hoping for, but BT was struggling to push the cart fast enough, and Reed was beginning to lag, to the point Bags was supporting most of the man’s weight. I took the sparest of glances behind me.
I thought about telling them I saw movement, but that would only halt the column, and we couldn’t afford that option. My left arm had come back from “slept on pins and needles” to “slammed my funny bone,” an altogether uncomfortable sensation, but it did give me the ability of movement, although somewhat limited. In a pinch, I could fire a rifle righty; the thought of extending my left arm that much forward wasn’t sitting well, but neither was having the buttstock up against my injury. This was like that old saying, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” and in this case, the cake was Brussels sprouts, so did you really want to eat it anyway? And then, at that point, why would you want it at all? Tommy fired up ahead. He must have killed it, as we were still moving. That, or he’d been spooked, like I was.
“Reavers behind!” Stenzel shouted out. I turned but couldn’t see anything.
“How close?” I asked, splitting my time between looking ahead and back.
“Oh, sweet Jesus.” That was my brother. Either his Walkman had broken or we were fucked. We all felt it before we saw it. Gary was able to fill us in on the details.
“Bulker reaver!” he shouted, coining a horrible new term. The deck plating under our feet was vibrating heavily as the half-ton beast loped our way.
“Back or front!?” It was impossible to tell.
“Behind—run, Mike!”
It felt as if my heart had stopped for a few beats as it struggled with the amperage flowing through.
“Move!” I managed to yell. What was barreling down on us was like a reaver only in the fact that it was on four legs. Otherwise, it was as similar as a dog is to a rhinoceros. It was coal-black and difficult to see, as if it was sucking all of the surrounding light into itself, like a black hole. Its head hung low, a flat shovel-like protrusion, half as wide as the hallway, above its mouth that it used like a snowplow. There was also a foot-long tusk mounted high on the head, didn’t need to see it in action to know what that was for. It had huge flaring nostrils and beady eyes nearly swallowed up in the enormity of the face. A loud clicking sound emanated from the thing. I could feel each individual pulse; it was some sort of echo-location system. If I thought the eyes were useless, that mattered little. It knew we were there and was going to do everything in its power to run us through. I took a couple of shots. The entire head was armor-plated; my bullets whined off and struck the walls as they were deflected away. It was possible the .50 cal might punch through, but we didn’t have the time to test out that theory.
