For a second, the zombie let his face take the brunt of the punishment before he began to get pushed back. As the floor became soaked, he lost traction and was thrust hard against the wall. I’d love to say he was slammed up against the far side of the hallway hard enough to smash his fucking skull…but no such luck. He was down, but certainly not out, as his feet slipped from under him. More zombies were trying to fill the void but were kept at bay and repelled as Tommy moved forward.
“Time to go, Mr. T.” He was grimacing. It could have been from the macabre work he was performing or the exertion the hose was having on him.
I fell in behind, letting him clean the way. Once a zombie fell, it was easy to send him sliding down the hallway, much like a makeshift Slip ‘N Slide from my youth. He was keeping a good ten-foot push to the front of us, the rear was going to be my responsibility. Porkchop groaned as the M-16 went off. I should have thought to get some padding in his ears to help muffle the sound. He shifted his head to my other side to get away from the noise. I was careful to not step on the hose as I walked backwards. There were a few dozen zombies to our back, a lot, but not nearly as many as had been upstairs. I didn’t dare check out our front. As long as Tommy was still moving forward, that was a good thing.
“Two magazines,” I shouted to Tommy as I let one fall to the ground.
I could feel Porkchop twist in his seat, considering the “seat” was me, it wasn’t too hard to tell. “Next right!” he yelled.
Tommy grunted. Our pace was slowing. I hoped it was the accumulated weight of the hose as he pulled it along with the occasional zombie riding atop.
“How’s it going up there?” I asked.
He grunted again. It had to be gruesome. I was stepping in the human residue left over as the hose was stripping zombies clean like a pressure washer. The flaps of skin that had no definition were bad enough, but when you started to see the odd nose or tattered ear float by, well, that was sickening. The gray tiled floor was slick with water and blood. Mr. Springer would have had a hell of a time trying to get this cleaned up.
“Another right!” Porkchop yelled.
“One magazine!” I’d thinned the herd to the back, but I knew now that one more magazine wasn’t going to do it. It seems I’d slightly underestimated the strength of our enemy or, more likely, they were getting reinforcements attracted to all the noise as they came down the chute. My ass hit Tommy’s as he stopped.
“What’s up?” I asked him as I hit the bolt release button and took out the closest zombie, adding what could only be described as a third nostril, albeit bigger than the other two and not quite symmetrical…but yeah, a third nostril.
“Out of hose.”
I hadn’t realized that the thing was about knee high as he’d tried to stretch its length even further by force. “How much further, Porkchop?”
“Half an order of small french fries.”
“Kid, you can’t go changing the measuring device mid-stream, this is how spaceships are lost. One side of the design team uses metrics, the other Standard Fast Food fare. It’s a mess. In terms of that hot dog you were talking about, how much further? And this isn’t one of those stadium foot longs, is it? Probably should have discussed this earlier.”
I’d fired off two more bullets since I’d asked the question. The zombies had initially rushed us, but when we held them off—Tommy with the hose and me with the gun—they’d sort of retreated to a safer distance. We had a good twenty-foot bubble to our front and rear. They were waiting, they were patient, they had all the time in the world. Not like they were going to die, at least not without a little help.
It’s that predatory shit that really scares me. Mindless, eating, chewing machine is one thing, but to pause and reconsider needlessly injuring yourself in the pursuit of food, well, that’s an entirely different animal. I hated their progression. Although, right now, their caution was giving us more precious seconds of life. Sure, it was terrifying seconds of life, but it beat the tranquil quietude of eternal nothingness or in mine and Tommy’s case, endless wandering.
I was going to save my bullets for as long as they would let me. Every time they looked like they wanted to take a step nearer, I dropped one. They would snarl in anger but would come no closer.
“What’s going on up there?” I asked.
“They’re staying out of effective range. From where they are, I’m sure it’s just a refreshing splash of water.”
“A quarter of a hot dog!” Porkchop blurted out. “I was retracing my steps as I ate, I remember thinking that maybe I should go back and get another one, because if the trip was any longer, I wouldn’t have any left. I had ketchup and mustard all down my forearm and Mr. Springer said we were just about there as I licked it off.”
I could only hope Porkchop liked to eat that one last piece in one mouth-crowding bite, as opposed to taking littler and littler portions as he got to the end in a desperate bid to make it last longer.
“My left side pocket, Mr. T. I have an extra magazine. I’d get it for you, but my hands are full.”
I took a shot and then turned to reach for it.
“Other side,” Tommy said.
“They’re moving!” Porkchop warned.
I turned and fired, wasting a bullet on the breastplate of the closest zombie. She staggered back as her body absorbed the round. Of course it had to be a woman and why not go just a little further. At some point she’d lost her shirt, probably ripped away by Tommy’s hose, and to make it just a little more therapist worthy, she was a liberated, free-spirit without a bra. I wasn’t overly concerned for myself, as I’d seen a breast or two before. But Porkchop? This shouldn’t be the way he was exposed to some of the finer things the fairer sex had to offer. The kid was probably going to become a monk after this traumatic experience. Then it dawned on me that I seriously doubted it would be an exposed breast that sent him over the edge, not after all the devastation he’d born witness to.
The bullet had clipped the edge of her sternum, broken bone bits protruding from the top of the wound as viscous, thick, sticky blood dripped from the bottom. It was as black as coal in that hole. I may have seen something whitish pass over the gap from the inside, but I quickly turned away. Porkchop did not. This I knew because his helmet light never wavered. At least not until I put a bullet in her head.
“She was pretty once,” he said. “She looked a lot like what I expect Rachael would have if she’d had the chance to grow up.”
“I’m sorry, kid.”
“It wasn’t her, she’s already dead.” I turned and started fishing in Tommy’s pocket again.
“Mr. T, your other left,” he told me when I started looking in the original pocket he’d told me that had not contained what I was looking for.
“Right, right.”
“Left!”
“No, I was just agreeing with you.”
“Mister Talbot!”
I knew that warning. The zombies were pressing their luck again. This time, I made sure to drop two for their troubles. They once again pulled back and may have even added a few inches onto their initial perimeter. But they knew something was up; we were no longer moving, and as far as they were concerned, we were cornered. This time I turned the right way and fished the magazine out.
“I’m going to turn the hose off, Mr. T.”
I almost thought about telling him to leave it on. It could be used as a fair barrier as it whipped back and forth. I actually thought better of it when I realized it would be shooting us in the back and could very well propel us into the arms of the awaiting zombies.
“Hold on for a second. Porkchop, which way is out?”
He was silent for a second. I had a minor panic attack that perhaps he had forgotten or, more likely, hadn’t really ever known. Then, much to my relief, he spoke.
“There’s a water bubbler coming up, which I thought was weird, because it doesn’t even have cold water come out. Looks like a small sink with a handle on the side. Water b
arely came out any higher than where you put your mouth. It was hard trying to wash my arm, and even though I was thirsty, I didn’t want to drink it because it was warm like bath water, and that’s just gross. Nobody drinks bath water, right?”
“Probably not, at least I hope.” I was having an internal struggle thinking about someone drinking dirty bath water. The boy nearly sidetracked me as I got hung up on that detail. “So once we see the fountain, we can get out?”
“Almost, the next left is a short hallway that leads to the guard station, and that’s the door out.”
“A quarter of a hot dog you say?”
He nodded again, his helmet reverberating off of mine.
“Here we go. Okay, Tommy, on three, shut the hose off and we’ll start running at them.”
“One,” he started. “Two.”
Damn, that came fast. I was sort of hoping he’d do that, two and a quarter, two and five-eighths, two and whatever; but no…he moved right on to three without hesitation. I was already turning to the front when I heard the hose hit the floor with a clang. He was firing, and I joined a moment later, brass hitting the floor at an alarming rate; faster than the zombies to our front.
“They’re coming!” Porkchop was looking over both of our shoulders.
I turned, and for a fucking second it was like the deadliest game of Red Light. The zombies seemed to all try and stop their forward movements, like they were hoping to not be detected and thus sent to the back of the starting area. Going back in this game meant a bullet, though, as allowing one to get to the “goal” meant we would become zombie droppings.
I unloaded almost the remainder of my magazine to keep them second-guessing their desire to come up from behind. Tommy was shooting so fast that it seemed he had his selector on automatic. I kicked his newly discarded magazine into the feet of a zombie.
“There’s the fountain!” Porkchop’s outstretched arm was pointing. It was close enough that I could even see the left he was talking about. Could it be possible? Could we get out of this? Hope did that whole surging thing, and then it was pretty much swept out from under me. No, I mean literally. I felt my body being torqued to the side and backwards as something grabbed a hold of Porkchop. He was screaming so loudly I thought he might shatter the safety glass on the helmet.
“He’s biting me!” Porkchop was flailing from side to side trying to escape its grasp. As I turned, so did the zombie. Porkchop’s legs were nearly all the way out of the safety strap, only the toes of his boots were still entrenched, and those not firmly.
“Tommy, I need some help!”
There was another huge burst of ammunition from his gun then he turned. All I saw was the meaty end of the butt stock coming for my head. He threaded the needle between Porkchop and me, striking the zombie. The bone-jarring and shattering hit sent the monster sprawling. I ejected hot brass in a bid to make some much-needed room between them and us. I don’t know if the zombies sensed we were close to escape or they were forgoing all caution in an effort to thwart their constant hunger.
I watched as Tommy was swinging his rifle like a club, skulls disintegrating under his attack. When he got a few feet of clearance, he tossed it at a zombie and quickly retrieved the axe he had by his side. This was going to get real interesting real quick. We’d both be swinging axes in a hallway not much more than six feet across. If we didn’t kill each other, I’d consider that a moral victory.
My bolt popped open and stayed that way. I was out. I grabbed my axe as well. The hands of a zombie were almost on my jacket when I drove the edge of my weapon with extreme prejudice almost completely through his head. I could see the blade through his open mouth.
I tried to keep as much of an up and down motion as I could so that Tommy and I wouldn’t interfere with each other, but the damned zombies wouldn’t get with the program. More than once, the sharp, barbed point of my blade had come within inches of hitting Tommy on my backswing. I knew this because his had come dangerously close to me as well. Our axes were blurring blades of death, looked a lot more like a snow blower ripping through a Nor’easter than it did fireman tools cutting through zombies.
I lost the axe completely at one point when it stuck heavily into the shoulder blade of a zombie. I’d overshot his head and drove deeply through his back, the heavy bone holding fast. That, combined with the gore-covered handle made me lose my grip. I ripped up and was rewarded only with my hands in the air. For a second, it looked like I was at a hip-hop concert. You get the reference, right? Hands in the air and all that?
Luckily, my zombie buddy didn’t head out with my axe. I was able to get my hands back on it and get a better grip. I placed a foot in his gut as I pushed away and simultaneously wrenched the blade free. “That was fucking gross.”
“Fucking gross,” Porkchop echoed. I could hear it in his voice as he tried to hold back the heaves.
Tommy and I were spinning slowly in a counterclockwise direction as we shuffled forward to keep the zombies at bay in a complete circle. It was effective for the most part, right up until I got bit. This wasn’t a 1970’s karate movie where the hero is being attacked by fifty bad guys, but only one at a time; these zombies had either not seen those movies and didn’t know they were supposed to fight that way, or they had seen them and learned from it. They were bumping and stumbling over one another in a bid to get to us first.
The axe was a great tool for caving in a door, and maybe a hostile or two, but a mad rush of them in a closed-in environment was not optimum. My left leg buckled as a zombie Tommy must have killed crashed into the back of my knee. I had been in mid-swing, and this was my plant and support leg, so I went all the way down, my knee striking the tile floor before I could recover. I was pushing back up when a zombie from my blindside struck.
I don’t know if zombie jaws were evolving, or possibly that I’d just never really been bit by a person, but when that thing latched on to my calf, I cried out. I mean, it was a manly cry, full of deep overtones and grunts. But shit…that thing hurt. My leg buckled in on itself again as he clamped down on the muscle, not allowing it to completely flex.
“I’m bit!” was the only thing I could think to yell. Really, it was the only thought I had at that moment.
Tommy spared a glance, but no help was coming from that way as he was being swarmed. If I didn’t deal with my attacker in the next second or two, he would be joined at his dinner party by a table of twelve or thereabouts.
“Smash him in the head!” was Tommy’s sage advice. The pain was so blinding I was hoping that’s why I hadn’t come up with the solution on my own.
“Yeah, smash him in the head,” came Porkchop’s terrified echo.
We were both staring at the zombie who was shaking his head back and forth in a tearing motion. I quickly turned my axe upside down and drove the head of it down into the zombie like I was purging a clogged toilet from the world’s largest shit. Impossibly, he bit down harder, I think in a purely reflexive action, because when I brought the axe back up, it was covered in a fresh layer of brain.
It took two more hard jams before the zombie finally fell away. I was horrified to see four teeth stuck in the heavy material of the fireman pants. I brushed them away; I did not, however, have the luxury of checking the wound to see if he had broken skin. There were more zombies coming to finish off what the other had started. I fought with anger; whereas, before, it had been a mixture of survival and fear. Now it was pure unadulterated rage. Rage that I could potentially even now be dying from the bite, rage that I would never see my family again. Rage that some zombie asshole had the audacity to bite me.
I was swinging the axe around like a kid would a baton trying to hit a fly. I didn’t care what I hit as arms flopped to the ground, the hands still opening and closing. Breastplates were shattered, exposing internal organs, genitalia rendered from their hosts. Skulls were caved-in, heads were decapitated. Grisly did not even begin to scratch the surface of what I was doing. Humans thrown into a cement mixe
r would have looked less horrific.
Eyeballs shot from sockets, intestines fell like ribbons thrown from rooftops during a holiday. I was heavy-chopping zombies, cutting straight through them when Tommy shouted.
“Mr. T, they’re gone, they’re gone!”
For a moment, my primal mind could not conceive of why the enemy would up and leave so close to their target. They hadn’t left though, not in the traditional way. Piles of dead zombies were strewn about the floor. Some were moving but due to some various injuries like a severed spinal cord or amputated leg they weren’t going anywhere.
“We did it,” Tommy said, I think maybe trying to bring me back off the edge he thought I was on. But I wasn’t, not this time, the anger had clarified everything. It had burned away the guilt, the self-doubt, the regret. It was a cleansing, making ash of the burdensome feelings we as humans carry around with us. Not going to lie, it felt good. I knew at some point I’d start to feel those things again, but right now it was fantastic.
“The door is down there.” Porkchop was pointing.
The escape from the building had been brutal. We’d had a betrayal and a rescue, and yet I could not get it out of my head that we were not done. We’d earned it, so I just couldn’t place why I felt the way I did. As we got closer to the door, the more my concern built up. That the damn thing was propped open didn’t help either.
I was expecting a dozen shock troops with riot gear and fully automatic weapons or a few dozen bulkers just waiting to smash stuff. Or…shit…if I’m going to go down that path, why not just have it be Eliza and Deneaux standing there hand in hand. That would be enough to stop my heart from beating.
I cannot even begin to tell you how much I wished I had some ammunition. To be able to push the door open with the barrel of my weapon and have rounds speeding to clash with the opposition I was sure was out there in some form. It was right there, a threat, just not one I could have foreseen. Tommy took the lead, the only way I could have been closer peering over his shoulder was if we were sharing the same suit, and that would have just been plain awkward on many different levels. We were looking down a narrow corridor. It was impossible to say how long it was as our flashlights only penetrated so deep, like a carrot in a whale’s ass. And no, I have no idea why that analogy popped into my head, it just did.