Her gaze shifted back to the heavens. We actually enjoyed an easy silence for a few moments before she stood up. “I’m going to get a few more hours of sleep. I believe that we will make it through tomorrow,” she said, heading back into the shed.
And then what? I wanted to say, but I wished her a good night and I meant it. I stayed there, looking at the stars swirling overhead until the morning sun began to bathe my face in its presence.
“You out here all night?” BT asked, stretching his arms wide.
“I guess so. I think I might have discovered a new planet.”
“Okay, so it’s early and now I’m not truly sure if this is sarcasm or are you telling the truth?”
“He’s full of shit,” Gary said coming up from behind. “So what’s on the agenda today?”
“Is Brian back?” I asked, I hadn’t seen him since he had taken over patrol duty and how long ago was that? Four or five hours at least.
“He’s not in there. Probably couldn’t handle Mrs. Deneaux’s snoring,” Paul said.
“Vivian,” I corrected.
“Who the hell is Vivian?” Paul asked.
“That’s Deneaux.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Mrs. Deneaux’s first name is Vivian,” I clarified.
“Okay, but what’s that got to do with Brian?” Paul asked.
“Nothing.”
“Maybe we should worry less about Vivian and more about Brian,” BT said forcefully. “He could be hurt and you two are worried about someone’s first name.”
“Who’s hurt?” Mrs. Deneaux asked, coming up from behind BT.
“Nobody we hope,” I said “But Brian hasn’t come back from patrol.”
Mrs. Deneaux immediately went back into the shed and began to put on all her clothes as well as strapping on her pistol.
“Good idea,” Gary said. “No guarantee we’ll be coming back.”
Within five minutes, we had all our meager supplies and mini arsenal of weaponry ready to go.
“Okay, once around silently. Hopefully, he’s just holed up somewhere, getting some shuteye. If we don’t find him and the perimeter looks safe enough, we’ll call out for him. Sound good?” I asked.
I got terse nods in reply. We all knew this wasn’t good. Most folks don’t stray too far when a zombie apocalypse is going on and Brian knew enough to come back to the shed to get relief if he was tired. He wouldn’t just fail to let his guard down. We walked for a few minutes, but the only noise were the sounds of zippers striking rifles or an occasional boot scuff. Conversation was non-existent.
“Mike?” BT said, softly coming up to my side. I stopped. “Isn’t this where we met Re-Pete?”
I looked around. It was still a storage facility and everything looked pretty much the damn same, but I would bet money that this was the exact spot, with one notable exception. Ree was missing, not the blood spot he had left behind, but his body was most assuredly not present and accounted for.
“What’s the matter?” Paul asked, sensing the new tension.
“Our zombie buddy has gone missing,” I said as I scanned the lot.
“How is that possible?” Gary asked, walking over to the fence.
“Mike, he was dead,” BT said. “I saw the exit wound out the back of his skull.”
“Please don’t tell me that now they’re adapting so they don’t die from a head shot,” Paul sobbed. “Could they?”
“No, he was dead,” I said flatly.
“How can you be so sure?” Paul asked, working himself up into a fervor. “I mean, so far, they’ve become fast, they can hibernate when there isn’t enough food, and apparently, they can thicken their skulls to try to preserve themselves. Wouldn’t it make sense from a purely zombie evolutionary trait to alter the one and only way that you can die?”
“We’d be fucked,” I said. “But Ree was dead.”
“Who is fucking Ree, Mike? And how can you be so damn sure?!” Paul was yelling now.
“I named the zombie and I know he was dead because I lost contact with him.”
Paul was just looking at me with a shocked expression on his face, not grasping what I had just told him.
“It’s the zombie whisperer!” Mrs. Deneaux cackled, lighting a cigarette.
“It’s a pity those things haven’t given you throat cancer yet,” BT said.
She held up her middle finger like it was a makeup compact while with her other hand she would dab her extended middle finger on it and pretend to apply base to her face.
“That’s actually pretty funny,” Gary said.
“Wait! You can talk to zombies now?! When the hell were you going to let the rest of us know?” Paul said with spittle flying from his lips.
“Relax, Paul,” BT said, placing his arm across Paul’s chest. “He just found out last night.”
Paul might have calmed down, but it was marginal at best. His temper went from something like eating a habanero pepper to rubbing jalapenos in your eyes; neither one is a great suggestion.
“What did this zombie have to say?” Mrs. Deneaux asked, leaning up against the closest shed.
“It revolved mostly around him being hungry,” I said.
“That’s rich,” she laughed. “A hungry zombie! Who would have ever thought it?”
“What good does that do us?” Paul asked.
“That in itself, not much,” I said.
“But,” BT prompted when I hesitated with the rest of what we had discovered.
“But I can… with limitations now… I made Re-Pete do what I told him to.”
“Are you guys pulling my leg? Are there hidden cameras or some shit? Can you make them go away? Better yet, can you tell their hearts to stop beating? If they even still do?”
“Well, I could tell a few maybe to leave, but once they got thirty or forty yards away, they’d turn back around. And it seems that I can’t make them directly hurt themselves.”
“Almost like they have a failsafe switch?” Gary asked.
“I guess,” I told him.
“Could you lead them to a precipice and have them walk off?” Gary asked, thinking of differing scenarios that would lead to a mass demise in zombies.
“Kind of like a zombie Pied Piper,” Deneaux said.
Gary shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, pretty much like that.”
“Like lemmings?” BT asked. “That would be interesting.”
“Right now, you guys know as much as I do,” I told them.
Thankfully, Brian shifted the focus, being under Paul’s scrutinous eye was starting to grate on my nerves. “Hey guys,” a slightly disheveled Brian said, rounding a corner.
“We’ve been looking for you,” Gary said.
“Sorry, I know I was on patrol, but there was nothing happening and I felt compelled to keep looking for guns. It’s like a quest now.”
“Did you move the zombie?” I asked him.
“Why would I do that? I was busy looking in lockers. Did you say how much time we have until our dinner guests arrive?” he asked.
“We’ve got about four hours,” I told the group. The range of emotions went from “Holy Shit! I’m scared” to “About time” and whatever else can happen with five other people. I was more on the “Scared Shitless” side.
“Should we look for more guns?” Gary asked as we all looked down on our less-than-adequate-looking ensemble of weaponry.
My head was going up and down in the universal language of yes, but my vote was a no. “It’s too dangerous.”
“We have enough time. I can go through a few more lockers,” Brian said.
Yeah we could also play a rousing game of Monopoly for all the good that would do, I thought. I told him it sounded like a good idea though. I wanted to do what every soldier did before going into battle, eat. For some reason, the only thing that keeps you from the thought of dying or killing is eating. We had pulled out packets and packets of dried goods from the camping lockers.
Beef jerky, here I come.
Paul and BT went with Brian. Mrs. Deneaux, Gary and I went through the dried packets, looking for the best stuff from which to make a decent lunch.
“Split pea and ham soup!” Mrs. Deneaux shouted triumphantly, holding the packet up to the sun like she had just reared the newborn king.
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked her. “I’d rather eat the packet it came in.”
“Who is insane enough to not like ham?” Mrs. Deneaux asked, looking sidelong at me.
Gary was pointing his index finger at me on the sly, thinking that I couldn’t see him.
“I can see you, brother,” I told him as he pulled his finger back quickly.
The weapons-of-mass-destruction-seeking team came back a couple of hours later with about as much luck finding anything as the US had been a few years previous.
“We got some swords,” Brian said, putting three sharp-edged blades on the ground.
“They any good?” I asked, picking one up. I’d seen some that would fall apart from the impact with a watermelon and others with a blade so dull they couldn’t cut a fart.
“They’re actually pretty good,” BT said. “I think they’re Japanese World War II officer swords.”
I hefted the blade. It definitely had a deadly enough feel to it. “I plan on being a little closer to the action. Do you mind if I borrow one of these?” I asked them.
“Me too,” Gary said, “Where he goes, I do too.”
BT just plain grabbed the third. “So what’s the plan?”
“You’d think you’d know better,” Gary said.
I laid the entire thing out in all its lack of glory. Without rocket launchers, a battalion of soldiers, and an air strike, this would be far from the killing blow I would have chosen. This was more of a gesture, a giving of the middle finger, if you will, in the face of overwhelming odds.
“This isn’t going to do much more than piss her off,” Brian said.
“Exactly,” I told him. “Pissed off opponents tend to make mistakes.”
Brian nodded his head in agreement. “Makes sense, in a suicidal kind of way.”
“Have you met Mike?” BT asked.
Gary nodded in commiseration. I punched him in the arm. “I’ll tell Dad when we get back,” he said, rubbing the tender spot.
I hope you will, I thought, because that would mean we made it there.
Chapter Seven – Mike Journal Entry 6
Eliza was late or early (and gone), or she had taken a different route or she had laid a trap for us, realizing what I was going to do. These three very different scenarios kept playing out in my head, each vying for its own time in the spotlight. I could deal with her being late or even the trap. Those two scenarios at least meant we were still in the game.
If she had passed while we were messing with Re-Pete, then every second we wasted here put my family in more danger. Another route could potentially be as bad, but as long as we were running parallel to her and not hours behind, I could deal with that also. That crawling sensation kept worming its way up my back that Re-Pete had been some sort of diversion and she was laughing as she barreled down the highway. The wondering was a nightmare. I was seconds away from pulling the whole plug when I noticed the slightest sway to a young sapling; it was not windy.
“Everybody down!” I yelled.
Ten seconds went by, twenty seconds, I think we were closing in on a minute and still nothing. I was beginning to feel a little foolish and now that nagging itching sensation was coming back. Screw it. I was ready to go. Gary reached out and put his hand on my shoulder when he sensed that I might be getting ready to move. How I let the sound of that caravan slip by my senses, I had no clue.
“Thanks,” I told Gary.
“You always were a little impulsive,” he told me.
BT was on my left side, looking intently at the rolling nightmare coming our way. His grip tightened on his rifle. Fat beads of sweat rolled off his forehead.
“You good, big man?” I asked him.
“Right as rain,” he answered without ever taking his eyes off the lead truck. “You think she’s in that first one?”
“Maybe before that invasion on Camp Custer when I almost killed her. She might be an arrogant bitch; but she’s also a self preservationist.”
“Too bad,” BT said.
The three of us were down in a culvert on the side of the road. It was almost steep enough that we were just about standing where we lay. Two tandem-trailer semis thundered past. Following them was what appeared to be an endless chain of troop transports and more tractor-trailers.
“Looks like Eliza’s playing for keeps,” Gary said, sticking his head over the embankment slightly.
“When has that ever NOT been the case?” BT asked.
I can’t say that I had ever seen BT quite as nervous as he was now and I was picking up on it, which in turn, made me more nervous. Gary seemed blissfully ignorant of it all.
“Sure would be nice to get a hold of one of those troop transports,” Gary said.
“I vote for just making it through the day,” I told him.
“I second that,” BT said, sticking his hand up slightly.
We could hear gunshots up ahead of us. Paul, Bryan and Mrs. Deneaux were holding up their end and we were getting close to seeing what we could do about holding our own.
It was long seconds before the entire rolling army knew that it was under attack, but the lead tandem-trailer truck lying on its side kind of put a damper on their forward progress. The screeching metal as the truck slid sideways down the highway grated on my fillings, the vibrations hurting my teeth. I was thankful I did not have a steel plate in my head; it would have probably scrambled my brains more than they already were. The large truck had finally come to a stop. Sporadic fire was being returned as some of Eliza’s human sympathizers started to realize they were being shot at and that the lead driver had not simply had an accident.
Eliza was close, I could sense the waves of cruelty emanating from her like ripples in a pond. I’m sure I could have followed the signal back to its source, but then she would have known I was here.
We could hear multiple truck doors opening and men scrambling to get into a defensive posture. Boot falls fell no more than five feet from where our heads were. A troop transport truck almost at the edge of my abilities was parked with the engine running; it was full of zombies.
“Anything?” BT asked, gripping his rifle so tightly, I thought he was going to fuse the metal with the wood.
Now it was my turn to sweat. “It’s full of zombies. They’re just sitting in there.”
“They’re very well behaved,” Gary said. Not sure why; it was most likely nerves.
“Mike, these guys are getting close. It’s only going to take one of them to look over and we’re screwed,” BT said.
“Cool, so I wasn’t already feeling enough pressure; that oughta help.” I told BT I was doing my best to not cause a self-induced brain bleeder.
A hastily thrown cigarette butt flew by the left side of Gary’s face. I thought he was going to start coughing from the smoke. Gary, in his entire life had never smoked, not one normal cigarette and not one of those funny, little left-handed ones that I had enjoyed so many of in my youth. Who am I kidding? I still enjoyed them from time to time in these latter years, especially at Widespread Panic shows.
Gary was turning blue in a desperate bid to keep himself from coughing. I grabbed the cigarette and chucked it further down the slope we were standing on.
“Talbot,” BT said, with no small measure of alarm.
We could hear men talking. The gunfire from our band had stopped. They had done their part and left before becoming outmanned and out gunned. Eliza’s men were about to fan out and find whoever had attacked.
I turned my thoughts back to the zombies, who were still waiting patiently in the truck. “Eliza’s got them under her control,” I told the group.
“We gotta go, Mike,” BT said
, gripping my shoulder. “We might be able to make it to the tree line before they see us.
“Doubtful,” Gary said.
“Okay, she’s not communicating with them now, or she would have found me meddling about,” I said aloud, but mostly for myself.
“Mike, it’s now or never,” BT said, flipping his safety off, while Gary did the same.
“Okay, so she sent them an order and kind of tied it off. Does that make sense?” I was still only talking to myself. “It’s almost like a repeating message and she just has it on loop.”
“You should maybe pull the plug on that machine,” Gary said as he got himself into a proper shooting position.
“No power cord,” I said, intensifying my concentration. I’m still uncertain as to how this is done though. Can you really think harder? I find just thinking about thinking leads me astray. “More like a rope or a cord.” We were seconds away from capture and/or death or vice versa. My senses were so heightened, I could hear individual pebbles as they were crushed under the boot heels of the troops approaching. “I found the knot!” I said excitedly.
“Weeks! I heard something over by the side of the road!” one of the men said.
“Time to die,” BT said, though whether it was about the man that shouted or for us, he did not clarify.
I felt sort of sorry that the last thing that man saw on this planet was most likely the biggest man he had ever encountered, popping up from the side of the road with a rifle.
“Got it!” I shouted triumphantly just as BT’s rifle shuddered from the gas release of two bullets. Weeks’ friend caught the first round in the side of his neck; blood pumped out as the man tried in vain to staunch the flow.
A small piece of hell broke out that day as BT’s rifle kept jumping from the expended rounds. He was screaming a war cry. I watched in horror, almost matrix-like, as return fire began to pass him by, coming dangerously close. I was convinced I was going to watch my best friend die in slow motion. And then the real fun began. Shouts of alarm, pain and terror began to ring out all around us as “freed” zombies began to pour from the troop transport.
Speeders had come to our aid. As Eliza’s men had begun to coalesce on us, the speeders had attacked from behind. They were relentless as they chewed on anything within reach. Shots fired wildly as the men turned to face their new threat. BT was still screaming and firing. I had to get up from my hiding spot to drag him down. Okay, to be fair, nobody really drags BT anywhere. He sort of let me. Watching people, even the enemy, being eaten is not something to be witnessed.