“Mike, she didn’t mean it,” the new guy said, trying to placate me.
“Yes I did,” she answered with fire in her eyes.
“Well, this is interesting,” the new guy interjected. “My name is Mad Jack,” he said as he extended his hand. I gripped it way tighter than I meant to, it hurt like hell.
“Nice to meet you,” I growled.
“Likewise,” MJ said, pulling his throbbing hand away.
“Hi Mike,” Joann said next, trying her best to not get sucked into the argument. Marta barely managed a weak wave. The kid… Freddy? No, Eddy, was hidden behind Joann’s legs. I didn’t see his mother or siblings anywhere. There was no reason to ask where they were, if they weren’t on this roof they were dead. Didn’t much matter how.
BT came back with a rag wrapped around each hand. I couldn’t help but ask what I did, it’s ingrained in my genes. “You get some Bacitracin on those?” I asked pointing to his hands.
Without missing a beat BT responded. “Yeah, they got a first aid station on the other side, fixed me up just right.”
I almost, I said ALMOST, looked over his shoulder to see if he was telling the truth. He said it so dead pan I figured he just might be.
“Would you like a cigarette Mike?” Mrs. Deneaux asked me genially.
I might have taken it except for the murderous expression on Joann’s face. “Bitch,” she cursed before walking away.
I shook my head, damn thing was probably laced with poison. Deneaux shrugged her shoulders and lit the one that she had offered me, but she was smiling. I don’t know what got her rocks off but whatever it was, I could bet it was mean spirited. It was looking more and more like she hadn’t offered me that cigarette out of any sense of camaraderie, but rather to make a point of not giving one to Joann.
“Have you always been this way?” I asked her incredulously.
She responded by taking an extra-long drag on her smoke.
Marta had walked away to take care of her children she seemed to be warring internally with ‘glad to see us’ and ‘why are you here’. April walked off with Marta.
“She’s just under a lot of stress forget about her,” Alex said. “It really is good to see you my friend.” He clasped my hand. Did no one witness the ladder event? I pulled back sharply.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized.
I told him it was alright, but it was close to an hour before the crippling pain dulled. Most of that time I hid it in my coat pocket lest it be further abused.
“How did you find us?” Paul asked.
“Eliza led the way,” Justin said, coming up to us.
“She’s here,” I told them.
“Like right here?” Paul asked, not truly believing my words.
I nodded.
“I thought we were screwed, now I know we are,” Paul said, his right hand going up to massage the dull ache in his temples that my news had obviously caused him. “You got anything Mike, any sort of idea?” he asked as he began to pace.
I shook my head.
“Why in the hell did you come up here then?” he asked angrily. Not that he was being ungrateful, only that we had clearly endangered ourselves in the process.
Perla, Cindy and Brian had stayed in a tight circle amongst themselves. There had been introductions, but like cliques in high school people began to peel off into their own familiar groups. Joann and Eddy stayed close to Marta and her two kids. Mad Jack was pretty much a clique unto himself, but April would not stray more than a few inches from his side no matter how obviously he tried to lose her. Tracy sat down on the roof, her back against the retaining wall. The past few events had drained her damn near dry. Travis sat with her. Gary was off looking at the door that led down into the store. I so wished that he would stop jiggling the handle.
Paul, BT, Alex, Justin and I stayed together. We were the planning committee, so far without a plan. Mrs. Deneaux merely watched every group, a few moments spent studying each one.
“Anything yet?” Gary asked, thankfully coming away from his door handle turning expedition.
“Still locked?” I asked him.
“Yup,” he said straight faced. “And it’s a good thing too.”
“You think?” I asked him.
* * *
Gary hadn’t been away from the door for more than a few minutes when it looked like it was beginning to bulge out. I thought I was seeing things at first, but it was tough not to hear the groan as the metal of the door began to stretch and pop.
“Incoming!” Brian shouted.
What were individual groups moments previously now became one discombobulated mass.
“Joann, you and Eddy might want to get behind the first line,” I told her, motioning back. She looked terrified but she did it.
For all the pressure the door was under, it was kind of anti-climactic as it swung open gently. But what flooded through more than made up for the lackluster revealing. At first we could keep up with the zombies coming through the choke point. Zombies staggered in by ones and twos, then threes and fours, and like always they began to overrun our suppressive fire. So many zombies and so few bullets. It took me back for a moment to my time in the service when we were in class studying tactics.
When Iran and Iraq had been were having their Holy War (I always wondered if God truly approved of those that died in his name, whether you called him God, Allah, or Buddha, I doubt it. I can’t imagine an omnipotent being creating his children in his image so that they could murder, rape and pillage each other in his name. To me it sounds like a bunch of spoiled brats that were in need of some heavy slapping upside the head. Once upon a time he released the flood waters to purge man, the zombies were the modern version of a scouring. Lord knows we needed it, no pun intended.) Back to my original tangent; if I go off on too many branches, I’ll never find my path home. Iran was losing the war badly, so they did what any civilized country would do, they rounded up one million children, armed them only with the knowledge that Allah awaited them and then sent them in huge waves against the Iraqi machine gun nests.
So a million unarmed children running at full speed across the desert did what the entire Iranian army could not. They overtook the Iraqi positions. Oh, it wasn’t that the Iraqis couldn’t fire upon and kill children, it’s just that they couldn’t fire enough rounds to stop them, and that was what was happening to us. Although I could say I was eternally grateful I was shooting flesh eating zombies rather than innocent children who believed death by machine gun fire was a viable alternative to living in Iran.
We were yielding inches of precious footing on that roof and the zombies were taking feet.
“Hold tight!” I yelled, watching April. She looked like she was going to bolt followed by Joann. Where did the hell they think they were going to go?
Brass flew. I was burned more than a few times as the hot ejecta passed me by. We were so tightly grouped one hand grenade could have taken us all out. My drill sergeant would have kicked my ass if he could see me now. I wondered what happened to him. He was entirely too mean to die, probably scared the shit out of the Reaper when he came to collect him.
I dry fired my rifle, quickly feeling around for a replacement magazine that wasn’t there.
“This sucks!” I shouted to the wind.
Gary looked over. He was placing well aimed shots center mass in the foreheads of our opponents. “What?” he yelled over the din.
“I’m pretty much out of ammo.” I uttered the two words in battle I swore I would avoid at all costs. “Fix bayonets!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” BT asked, raising his cheek off of his stock.
I grabbed the Bowie knife I had strapped to my side. I didn’t actually attach it to my rifle; it was just a play on words. Our position was tenuous to say the least. Our backs were against the wall (no, literally, they were). Zombies had completely taken over the roof. Some of the speeders were actually so close that my weapon could be of use. I’d never stabbed anyon
e in the head, until now that is. I figured a direct thrust into the forehead most likely wasn’t the best idea. I was afraid that if my blade did penetrate, that it would get stuck and then I’d be down to hand-to-mouth combat. Or possibly, if I didn’t get a straight enough push, the blade would glance harmlessly off the thing’s skull. Sure, it would open up a wicked wound and rip the flesh clean off exposing the white bone beneath, but the zombie sure wouldn’t care. I came in sideways striking home through the temple. I’d had a harder time cutting off pats of butter back in the day than I did driving that knife home. If anything, I went too deep scrambling that thing’s blackened brain matter. It couldn’t drop fast enough as I pulled my knife free.
“That’s pretty gross,” BT said, kicking one of the zombies away before placing a pistol shot in its skull.
We were so tightly packed together at the end, it was tough to tell where I ended and the next body began.
Tracy whispered in my ear, “I’ve always loved you, Mike, even after all these years.”
“Even after all my idiosyncrasies?”
“Maybe even more so because of them; they make you who you are.”
“So you pretty much thinking this is the end then?” I asked her as I pulled my blade free from its errant placement in a zombie’s shoulder. Its teeth snapped dangerously close to my hand. Gary blew the side of its face off. Its exposed chattering teeth made it seem that much more dangerous. If it got a hold of my fingers now, I could watch it eat them and swallow. I know that would have been too much.
“You should be more careful Dad,” Travis said, finishing the beast off.
I nodded my head in thanks.
“Just know that I love you,” Tracy said behind me.
“The fat lady isn’t singing just yet,” BT said, eavesdropping on our conversation.
“This is an intimate moment right now, do you mind?” I asked.
“Not at all, take a moment, maybe go find a quiet area,” he said, breathing heavily. He was also out of bullets and was using his rifle as a club.
Thank the stars he was so tall that when he swung, no one needed to duck.
“The fat lady might not be singing yet, but she sure is stuffing her face at the buffet table,” Justin said between rounds.
“Is anyone not listening to our conversation?” I asked the group. I received no response. “Great,” I said sarcastically.
My arms hurt from swinging and I only heard a few shots going off. The roof was covered in the detritus from zombie bodies, so much so I thought the roof might be in danger of collapsing under their combined weight. I knew it was only a matter of time. Nobody ever survives a zombie apocalypse, it just isn’t in the cards. A speeder came up on me so fast I was only able to raise my knife in defense. I watched as his mouth closed down on the blade. His teeth splintered on the cold metal and his lips ripped where they made contact with the sharply honed blade. He shook his head from side to side. I guess he thought that he had struck a particularly tough piece of human gristle and if he shook hard enough and long enough he would be rewarded with the sweet, savory satisfaction of meat.
What the ass did succeed in doing was to pull my knife from my blood soaked hand. Not sure who finished the blade stealer off, but he let go of my knife at the same moment a bullet pierced his skull. The backward push on his brain bucket sent my knife into the air, not far mind you, but I was in a little bit of a sticky wicket. You know, being in the middle of a battle with nothing more than my wits was not a great place to be, considering my wife would probably tell you I’d be wholly unprepared for such a confrontation.
As I reached out to grab the knife and came back up to defend myself, I felt the press of teeth on my shoulder. ‘What a way to go,’ I thought to myself as I came completely up. “What the…!” is what I yelled.
Staring back at me, tongue lolling all over the place, was Red Neck Number One. Of course if you remember correctly, he was missing his jaw due to some heavy facial reconstruction from Henry. So Redneck Number One, for the third time, almost got the best of me. “Third time’s the charm,” I told him as I shoved the knife up through his soft palate. There would be no fourth encounter.
“Sorry man,” BT said, “I missed him completely!” he shouted, blowing a few more zombies to their version of Kingdom Come.
“It’s alright, this one was personal,” I grimaced as I pulled my knife free. RN#1’s cowboy-boot-wearing feet twitched a couple of times and then I lay to rest at least one of my nightmares. And then I prepared for more. The zombies stopped their approach at precisely the same time I heard my name spoken.
“Michael,” Eliza’s voice came silently but with force.
“That Eliza?” Paul asked.
“You heard that?” Justin asked him.
“I thought that was in my head,” I said.
“Conversing with the enemy?” Alex asked.
If I thought we were tightly packed beforehand, I was now able to tell who had Chapstick in their pockets and who was just happy to see me.
“That’s her?” Perla asked, the whites of her eyes more abundantly exposed as fear pulled her features taut.
“She doesn’t sound so bad,” Cindy said, trying to bolster her flagging spirits.
Just the sound of Eliza’s voice was enough to suck the soul from a preacher and not many of us looked pious just now.
“Why are you keeping her waiting?” April asked anxiously.
“If you’re in such a rush, why don’t you go say ‘Hi,’” BT told her heatedly.
Like a little kid April hid behind the petticoats of Mad Jack. That is, assuming that he had petticoats on, but you get the picture.
“See, I told you she only wanted him. El Diablo!” Marta screamed.
“El Diablo,” Mrs. Deneaux mirrored. “That’s rich!” as she took a puff off her cigarette.
“When the hell did you have enough time to light that?” I asked her.
“If I was to die I thought it only dignified that I do so with a Chesterfield in my mouth,” Mrs. Deneaux said smoothly.
Not a bad ad campaign I thought. Pretty sure Chesterfield wouldn’t have agreed.
Travis stood up precariously on the lip of the wall so that he could get a better angle over the tops of the zombies’ heads. He blasted two rounds through the open door. We all hoped he got lucky.
Eliza’s echoing laugh in the stairwell soon answered that question. A lone cataract-eyed zombie fell face first through the portal, his tongue hanging out inches below his open mouth. I was instantly transported back to Day One and Sir Licks A Lot. That was back when a zombie invasion was what it should be, all slow shufflers with no one to lead them. Ah, the Good Old Days.
“If your spawn deigns to live through the day I would suggest that he does not fire his rifle again,” Eliza said, her voice traveling elusively in the acoustic laden stairwell, making it difficult to get a fix on her. But what do I know? It could be some Vampire trickery.
“Still though, it is a damn shame he missed,” I told her.
I think she hissed, either that or a cat got its tail stepped on.
“I’ve got a surprise for you Michael,” she lilted.
I quaked as I realized what her surprise most likely was. ‘Oh, poor Tommy.’ I was already mourning his passing.
“Michael?” a labored voice asked.
I looked over towards Tracy, whose interest was piqued as was BT’s.
“Is Lawrence with you?” the voice struggled to ask.
Questioning looks passed throughout the group. This was a gravely serious time, but still I couldn’t resist a small dig on my friend. Who knows? It could be my last time, might as well do it while you can… no regrets! “Hey Doc, yeah, BT is with us.”
“BT’s name is Lawrence?” Alex asked me.
BT looked at me like he was going to rip my spleen clean from my body.
“I’m here Doc,” BT said.
“She’s killed my wife,” Doc said, choking back the tears.
“What about the kids, Doc?” I asked hesitantly.
“She… she hung her upside down and then slit her throat. She made Tommy drink all of her blood as it fell… oh God!” The doc was having a very difficult time reliving the event, but he kept on going.
“She turned Tommy,” Justin said bowing his head in grief.
“Then, when the boy was done, she just let the zombies have the rest, like my beautiful wife was a side of beef.” Doc was full on crying, “She made me watch the whole thing. She swore she would do that to my kids… I believed her. I had to do it!”
The doc was needlessly asking for our forgiveness. He did whatever he needed to do to protect the rest of his family. Who am I to judge, and I told him so.
“Doc, you did what you needed to,” I said, putting as much commiseration into my words as I could.
“Mike…” he paused. “I saved her. I saved Eliza.” He started crying again, or had he ever stopped?
“Are you not happy, Michael? I once again walk among the immortals,” Eliza said gleefully.
We could hear the doc being removed from the scene.