by Mark Tufo
“How long have you been thinking about that?” I asked.
“Long enough that it went from sounding crazy to being a viable option.”
“Doesn’t really answer the question, as I could do that in under a minute. Walde, does this thing have night vision?”
“It should come on automatically once the lighting gets dim enough, sir,” she said, knowing, like we all did, that this was about to happen, sooner rather than later.
“Do I need the Dash 60 to keep this thing running?”
I could hear pages flipping as she was looking for answers. “Doesn’t say specifically, but sitting as long as it has, I can’t imagine it would be able to stay active without being plugged in,” she finally got back to me.
BT looked over the seat. “Shit,” was all he said before sitting back down.
The dash flickered and stayed lit. Another bank of lights was not quite as lucky. It was nearly horror movie dark. Dark enough that just about any monster could hide before striking its prey, but light enough, the camera could pick up all the gory deliciousness. A bevy of zombies were coming our way. It was likely they wanted some light to see with as they launched their offensive. Bullets whined down onto the deck and careened off; zombies were dying, but some were getting through. There were too many.
“We’re switching to NVGs,” Walde said.
That was all great and fine, yes, they’d see the enemy better, but the goggles and the depth perception issues made hitting targets more difficult, especially moving ones.
“Mike, can you fire that thing or not?”
“I’m sure I can.”
“What are you waiting for then?” BT asked as the zombies were halfway across.
“We need that greaver out in the open.”
“Might not matter.” BT stood to get a couple of rounds off before sitting and pulling the hatch closed.
“Where are you, you fat fuck.” I was moving the joystick around, keeping a close eye on the small display. “All the money spent on this jet, the least they could have done was put in a bigger display. This is like playing a Nintendo DS from across the room.”
Bullets were steadily walking their way toward us as they followed the enemy. I smelled fuel as one punched a hole through our wing. I looked up and paused, thankful we weren’t being consumed in a fiery ball. Another set of lights went down. Apparently, the directors of our horror flick had a low budget and didn’t want the prospective audience to be able to see just how cheap the special effects were. This would be about the time they made it rain, thus further reducing visibility. Cheap, common effect that still worked to create an extra creepy scene, and even though we all knew it for the sham it was, it didn’t matter. The zombies were on us. They were beating on the wings, the fuselage, pretty much the entirety of the plane. The tower was still shooting, but this was lost ground.
A couple of zombies had come up onto the wings and were staring in at us. That gaze, so malice-fueled, so menacing, and worst of all, intelligent. They smacked on the canopy a couple of times, but once they realized that something with a little more heft than their hands was going to be needed to crack the walnut and get to the meat, they stopped. They did not move away, though. As far as being a zombie went, they were in the safest place possible. The tower didn’t dare shoot and we couldn’t.
“Any time, Mike,” BT offered.
I could blow the fuckers on the deck to Kingdom Come; wouldn’t do a thing for the ones on the plane, and that greaver…I wanted that bastard. It was, however, rapidly coming down to need versus want. Somewhere along the line, the zombie that had been staring at me produced a good-sized wrench. It wasn’t enormous, but when he started using it to beat on the glass, it looked like a sledge.
“Is it going to hold up?” BT was looking back and up.
I had no way of knowing. I belonged in a jet as much as a toddler belongs in the driver’s seat of a Formula 1 race car. “It should.” This I said more out of hope than knowledge.
The firing line picked up the pace. I didn’t need the stick in my hand to vibrate to know what was happening. The zombies had brought out their big guns. I spun the gun around, they were too densely packed for me to see anything other than rotting flesh and snapping jaws.
“Getting ready to fire,” I warned.
“Does it even have bullets?”
I’d never even considered that it might not, like, honestly, it never crossed my mind. It should have. Most definitely should have.
I spun the gun to roughly where I figured the big bastard beast was coming from. I flipped the safety off and pulled the trigger. There was a ventricle slamming shut moment of time where nothing happened. One neuron was in the process of firing the Oh Fuck signal and then brrrrppp, a burst of bullets so fast and devastating I could not even begin to pick up the number of rounds fired or the slaughter produced.
“Holy fuck,” I managed to say once the processors in my head caught up. A twelve-foot wide and ten-foot deep swath of zombies had been wiped from the scene like a vicious squeegee wipe to a bug encrusted windshield.
“Do it again!” BT sounded like a kid watching a particularly good magic trick.
Brrrrpppp. I did it again. The results were equally disastrous for the zombies and for us. I’d swiveled the gun too far back, blew right through the back landing gear—definite design flaw, I’d say. A shit ton of zombies were gone, but we were now canted awkwardly, the right wing the only thing keeping us from rolling completely onto our side. Now I know why you weren’t supposed to shoot while parked.
“Mike!” BT was pointing out the canopy; I was still busy looking at the display. The greaver was thundering toward us, his head looked about high enough to smack right into us. Whereas the wrench wasn’t going to cut it, the horn on that half-ton monster would punch right through our tin can and shotgun us out the other side.
I tried to move the gun but it was stuck, either wedged against the deck or by a crushed zombie. Either way, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t get him in my sights, and it was doubtful he’d change course to do it for me. I now had the Maginot Line of Gatling guns. All threatening menace with little ability to act.
“Fucking do something!” BT was squirming in his seat, which isn’t saying much, considering he was wedged in tight. I was fearful that, when the greaver hit, BT would shoot out the top like juice as an overeager kid jammed a straw into a juice bag.
“I’m trying!” There was a clicking in the gearbox as the teeth rotated over each other. A lot of weird shit happened in rapid succession. The greaver lowered its head, the foot-long, horn, tusk, battering ram now on a collision course for the plane. “Shit, shit.” I was trying to pull every appendage of mine inward like a turtle. The horn cut through the aluminum easily enough. The plane spun like a top and was moving dangerously close to the edge where we would plunge into the ocean some hundred feet below. The greaver had come in a little lower than anticipated; he was destroying everything underneath us. It was hung up on something, and he was bucking us around like a mechanical bull. I had no idea how much a jet weighed, but the strength of the greaver was unimaginable, as it was bouncing us around easily enough. The greaver moved his head up, taking the plane with him like he was a hydraulic jack. The gears caught and the gun moved. My screen turned black as the barrels were pressed up against his body. “Got something for you!” I pulled the trigger, ripping massive chunks of meat off the bone. He bellowed and jerked even more violently as he tried to get free. I let another volley go and he stilled. The greaver had done us a solid; we were once again propped up. Not quite level, but good enough the gun could turn.
“Holy shit,” BT said once all was quiet. Sometime during the brief struggle with the greaver, the zombies had retreated. We were once again alone. “Mike, I don’t know much about fighters, but I do know they usually only carry enough rounds for a minute or two's worth of engagement. We can’t have much left.”
“I don’t think I fired for more than fifteen seconds.”
“Thirty-seven.”
“What?”
“Thirty-seven seconds. You maybe have a minute of rounds left.”
“Fuck, pull the canopy back.”
“We making a run for it?”
“Not yet. I want to ask Walde something.”
He did as I asked.
“Walde!”
“Sir?”
“If fully loaded, how many rounds does this thing hold?”
There was a few second delay until the answer. “If it’s topped off, there will be thirteen hundred and fifty rounds.”
The if loomed large, weighed heavily, whatever…magnified its importance.
“Cyclic rate of fire?” was my next question. The answer came much quicker as she was already on the page. “There’s a selector switch—either twenty-one-hundred or forty-two hundred rounds per minute.”
“What’s the math?” I asked BT.
“Well, if it was on forty-two, you would have already run out. At twenty-one…fuck.”
“That sounds promising.”
“You have about fifty rounds left, best case scenario.”
“Fuck,” I echoed. At the rate the gun fired, that was hardly more than a gentle squeeze. “I’ve got missiles.”
“Absolutely not.” He turned to reiterate his point. “Don’t you dare! And because I know you have this thing about people telling you what to do and damn the consequences anyway, I want you to take a good long look at what we’re pointing at.”
It was the con tower. I didn’t know for sure, but it made sense that the missiles needed more distance to arm themselves, and even if that was the case and they wouldn’t explode upon impact, I was still sending high-speed battering rams directly into my squad’s area. No matter how much I wanted to make big booms, that was not a wise move. I don’t know if it was the loss of the greaver or the zombies' inability to get the rest of the lights out, but they did not attack for the remainder of the night. My body ached from being crammed into that confined space; I couldn’t even imagine the hell BT was feeling, though he never complained about it. I didn’t get much sleep. Couldn’t even say I tossed and turned, for obvious reasons. BT got a few minutes, this I could tell from his soft snoring. When the sun came up over the horizon, we were both awake to greet it.
8
Mike Journal Entry 8
“I can’t stay in this thing much longer.” BT said what we were both thinking. I unfurled from my seat, my muscles protesting every movement. I looked upon the deck; there were torn up zombie carcasses strewn all over, the acids in my stomach swirled about at the distasteful sight. When I looked down, it was upon the greaver, who not only looked disgusting but was beginning to smell the part. The zombies had reloaded. There were as many, if not more, waiting for us up against the tower. “I’m getting down to stretch and take a piss.”
“You have something in your bladder?” I was acutely aware of how dry my throat felt. I got out and moved geriatrically to the wing.
“What are you doing?” Walde asked.
“Don’t you sleep?” I asked back. She had the benefit of the speakers; I had to shout. The dry air pushed over my already parched vocal cords made my throat sore.
BT came up to my side a few moments later, wrapped an arm around my shoulder and gently rubbed. “What now?” he asked as we both looked upon the horde.
“You just wiped your hand on me, didn’t you?”
“It’s just a little bit.”
“We’re going to have to make a run for it. The door in is on the other side—if we can somehow get them to move away.”
“Does Rose have anything to make smoke with?” BT asked.
“You could ask her yourself.”
“I could but my throat hurts.”
“Rose.” I tried for volume, but my uvula got hung up on my tonsils and it came out more like a strangled “Rah.”
“Say again, sir?” Walde asked.
I coughed and tried to make some lubrication; felt like a car engine without oil. “Does Rose have any smoke canisters?”
“That’s a negative,” Walde answered after a moment.
“How close do you think they would let us get before they made a move?” BT asked. “What?” he responded when I looked at him. “I’m fucking hungry and the thought of sitting in that plane again is making me angry. You don’t want a hungry and angry BT.”
“We might have to go back down into the ship,” I told him. We had limited rounds; we both knew that for the folly it was, but it wasn’t like we had many other options.
“When I was taking a piss I saw something.”
“Aw, buddy, you found your penis for the first time. Should we have the talk?”
“Right now?”
“You should know better than anyone.”
“I suppose. Anyway, at the front of the ship there appears to be a machinegun nest.”
“Seriously? Like a hastily set up zombie defense?”
“No, like a built into the ship to shoot at enemies type of thing.”
“You want to hold down the fort or should I?”
“I’ll check it out,” BT replied.
“Be careful,” I told him.
He looked like he was going to give me a sardonic comment, instead, he thanked me.
“Top might need some covering fire,” I yelled up, or more like rasped, but the message was conveyed. There was movement among the zombies. Like the impulsive monsters they can be, three made a play for BT. Stenzel gunned them down quickly. I thought about moving closer toward the zombies, see how many I could entice to give it a go, but that would put BT at an unnecessary risk. Sure, there were other planes he could hop into, but being stuck was already bad enough, neither of us wanted to do it alone. Well, I take that back, maybe BT did. I wasn’t the best roommate, especially in something smaller than a closet.
I stood there, not knowing what else to do. Ten minutes later, BT came back. He was walking back and forth, sometimes kicking over zombie bodies, or more accurately, zombie parts.
“Um, whatcha doing?” I asked.
“The gun is bolted to the deck.”
“Okay.”
“Looking for the asshole with the wrench.”
“You think you can get it loose?”
“Not with my fingers. Now help me look.”
“It has bullets?”
He stopped what he was doing. Didn’t say a word, just looked at me.
“Right, why else would you be trying to get it loose. You can’t blame me for not wanting to look through this mess. Looks like Nicole’s room when she was a teenager. Except for the bodies. Though with as gross as it was between cleanings, she could have hidden a body or two in there.”
“Mike.”
“Sorry.” Of course, I found the thing within the first few minutes of looking. It was caked in coagulated zombie juice and I didn’t have the slightest desire to touch it. I was doing my best to direct BT over toward it without him knowing that was what I was doing. It didn’t help that I kept staring down at my feet and wasn’t doing more than shuffling around.
“Mike, what are you doing? You have to actually move shit around.”
“Fuck.” I had to come clean. Wasting time so you missed out on a social engagement you never really wanted to go to was one thing; this wasn’t that. Although, I’d met my fair share of blood-thirsty savages on some of those outings. “Dammit.” I leaned down and pried the stuck tool up. Strings of things, intestines, tendons, sticky blood, I don’t know, but they came along with it. Utterly disgusted wasn’t even a reasonable description.
“Great. Now clean it up and hand it over.”
I was holding the thing as far away from me as possible. “Fine.” I moved away from the debris field, dropped the wrench down and, internally, I juiced my bladder for all it was worth, which, given the circumstances, was surprisingly a lot.
“You’re seriously pissing on it right now?”
“Could you step back, I don’t usual
ly have a show for my performances.”
“Usually?”
“Not talking about it. Not now, not ever.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to be a problem,” he assured me. “This is, though.” He was pointing to where my nearly rust-colored urine was cutting through the encrusted gore. BT began to search for some clothing that was not covered in blood and shit. Might as well have looked for a dry towel on the Titanic. “Think they have a t-shirt cannon up there?”
I was shaking around, doing my best to make sure that last little bit didn’t end up in my pants. I don’t think women have this particular problem; it’s not something they’re willing to talk about anyway. Tracy said if I asked about it one more time, she was simultaneously going to file for divorce and have me committed. She seemed serious, so I let it drop. Still, though, as a guy, it’s an irritating thing to have happen, and almost every single damn time, too, no matter how long you shake it all about.
“What are you doing, Talbot? You look like a budget Elvis impersonator without the good looks or passable singing voice.”
“Done.” I proudly pointed to the wrench that somehow looked grosser than when I started. “All yours.”
“You getting back at me for wiping my hand on your shirt?”
“Do I look that petty?” I asked. “Though karma did circle around pretty quick on that one.”
We found a section of denim, roughly the size of a snot cloth, that was somewhat clean—I use that term in a relative sense. A single guy that hadn’t washed his clothes in a month and a half and scouring through his dirty pile of laundry looking for something serviceable to wear would have put this in the do not even sniff pile, but as for picking up the wrench, it was like something straight off the rack at a department store.
“Just a dick,” BT said as he gingerly picked up the wrench. He held it away from himself like I had. BT was entirely too wrapped up in his personal misery to notice that the zombies had taken a much more active interest in what we were doing. Maybe because we were paying so little attention to them. I wouldn’t have noticed at all if not for the shooting, which tends to grab your attention real quick. Even more so than a passionate lover when she squeezes things harder than some things should be squeezed. Stenzel had laid waste to another two zombies. I waved a thank you to her. She gave me a stern look like maybe I should be more in tune with my surroundings. I had to agree.
