APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (29 page)

             
“I can’t hear shit,” Bodie said and listened.

             
“There it is again.”

             
Bodie nodded “Yeah I heard it that time.”

             
Daniel pointed to a doorway behind them. “There.”

“
Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”
  The female voice cracked and whistled through the speaker of the shortwave radio. Its sudden resurrection freaked Daniel out and he began to turn to run back out, but Bodie grabbed his shirt and held out a hand.

“Easy, brotha,” Bodie said soothingly.

Daniel looked at his friend sheepishly, “Sorry, man. I guess I’m just a little jumpy.”

             
Bodie nodded, understanding perfectly. “C’mon, let’s get in there and shut the door behind us. I don’t wanna be snuck up on.”

             
Daniel composed himself, walked into the room and saw a radio on the desk; he took a deep breath and grabbed the mike and keyed it. “Hello?”  He heard Bodie behind him close the door with a light click.

             
“
Who’s this?”
was the reply.

             
Daniel and Bodie looked at each other. Neither one was sure if they should answer. Then Bodie took the mic and said boldly, “This is Bodie Barnes and Daniel Tyson, formerly known as numbers 47 and 48, work camp prisoners at Dayton Correctional. If this is any part of the military, we ain’t comin’ back, so you’ll just have to come and get us.”

             
There was a pause that seemed to stretch into minutes.

             
“Go to Parkersburg… be at the far end of the Wal-Mart parking lot tonight. There will be someone there to meet you. If we see anything funny we will leave and you will never see us.”
sounded the voice again.

             
“What time?” asked Bodie.

             
There was another pause on the other end. 
“Where are you now?”

             
“I’m not telling you that,” answered Bodie, Daniel nodded in relieved agreement.

             
“
How far away from Parkersburg are you? In hours and minutes estimated.”

             
“Maybe an hour, give or take.”

             
“We’ll give you an hour and take fifteen minutes. If you aren’t there by then we will leave.”
  They listened quietly as the radio clicked out to static. Bodie adjusted the volume down.

             
“What do you think?”

             
“Didn’t sound like military, there wasn’t enough of their jargon,” answered Daniel.

             
Bodie nodded in agreement “I think we should do it. She sounded hot,” said Bodie smiling.

             
“You’re a dumbass.”

             
“What? It’s been a while.”

             
“You just nailed that anorexic chick on top the dumpster behind the barracks about a week ago.”

             
Bodie giggled; it was a raspy laugh deep in his throat that reminded Daniel of Wolfman Jack.  “Yeah, she liked to binge and purge…” he winked, paused for a second then said, “Listen, brotha, I would kinda like to be around a few extra people. There’s safety in numbers, you know?”

             
“There is also the fact that the more there are, the bigger the target,” Daniel said smugly.

             
“So you would rather stay here in this creepy ass hotel bunker where we don’t even know how to shut and lock the doors?”

             
“Good point, Parkersburg it is. But we are going in style this time.”

             
“I don’t have a problem with that,” agreed the big man.

             
                                        
Chapter 31 - The Fun Factory

Parkersburg
, West Virginia 

              Drew Finley called the factory home; that and the surrounding neighborhood was his kingdom. His two year Associates degree in business management had really paid off. Life was all about micro-managing. He had looted plenty of food and water, and had spent his time between reinforcing all the weak points of the huge building and setting up roadblocks through the neighborhood that might lead any chance survivor to his location.

             
He had witnessed first-hand, the terror of people being eaten alive by the throngs of dead. The dead were virtually brainless, and had nothing in the way of problem solving skills. Hell, he had seen about fifty of the stupid bastards stuck in the seatbelts of their vehicles because they had turned after being bitten and had tried to go to the hospital for aid. Finley figured that these infected had known that the hospitals were pretty much empty buildings, but desperation had spurred them to do something even if it was moot. He had watched as helpless wanderers searching for other survivors to pair up with. Sometimes they yelled for someone to answer them, mostly they scurried in the shadows like rats as they looked for survivors, for food or for a way out of the city to find refuge in some peaceful cottage with white picket fences. Finley had watched from his black and white monitors as they were slaughtered one by one. It had enraged him, and he had decided to do something about it.

             
It had been two weeks since he had seen anyone outside the factory alive. This morning, as he drank his coffee, the wait under his watchful eyes paid off. In one of his monitors he saw a filthy young woman running, falling down and getting back up as she shook with sobs, the tears rolling down her cheeks digging furrows in the dirt on her cheeks. He thought that she looked like the stereotypical girl in any number of horror movies. He thumbed the controller to the left and the camera panned to see about a dozen or so of the undead in pursuit, they couldn’t quite sprint, but they were moving pretty fast. They took turns throwing their heads back as their mouths widened. Though Finley couldn’t hear them, he knew they were howling for their friends. He put the cup down on the desk and ran for the door closest to the girl; he would be damned if he let those travesties kill another survivor in his front yard.

             
He skidded to a stop in front of a steel door that he had braced with a thick steel bar, barring it shut. He slid the bar out, disengaged the deadbolt, and threw open the door. He called for her, “Hey, over here!” Finley yelled as he waved his left arm over his head back and forth in an exaggerated manner.

             
“Help me!” he heard her scream. “Please…Help me!”

             
He was reluctant to leave his bastion, he wasn’t a fool. You didn’t get an Associate’s degree in business management by being stupid.

             
“Please…help!”  Her scream was close by and sounded nearly hysterical. He had seen this before; people froze when they were too scared, it was like their motor skills just shut down. If she was going to get away from those things it would have to be him that did it for her.

             
He took a deep breath and checked the 9mm in his belt holster at his back. It was there. He yanked it free and sprinted into the sunshine.

He ran about thirty yards and saw her cowering alongside the scorched husk of a

Volkswagen Jetta. As he neared her he started yelling, his breath nearly spent and he gulped air in long, deep gasps. He thought that it might be a good idea to start a cardio program.                “Hey…girl…c’mon,” Finley wheezed between heavy breaths.

             
She jerked her head back toward him and shook it violently back and forth.

             
He almost stopped right there and ran back to the fortress.
What do you mean ‘no’?
Drew thought, bewildered.

             
He shook his head in exasperation and ran forward a few more yards and saw the zombies were getting close. He stopped beside her, winded, his hands on his knees, one hand still clutching the 9mm. He could hear the zombies screaming and looked up. They were only twenty yards away. He was also aware that because the dead didn’t breathe, they never got winded.

He stuck his hand out to her. “C’mon, girl,” Drew said, wheezing; his eyes pleaded with her. He saw that she was probably a very attractive woman underneath all that grime. Every time she sobbed her chest heaved and it was a mighty well-endowed chest he observed, he also noticed that in her anxiety, her nipples stuck out against the tight cotton t-shirt. He had no idea why she was dressed like this in the middle of a holocaust, but that didn’t stop him from taking a few extra moments to ogle the view.

              The zombies were now less than fifteen yards away and he saw that they had succeeded in calling two more packs of the dead. The next pack numbered about thirty and they were less than one block up, and behind that pack the street was filled with walking corpses.

             
The dead were ten yards away now. Finley could hear them snapping their teeth together like they were already eating.

             
Five yards away and the girl finally slapped her hand in his as he fired off three rounds from the semi-automatic. One round sailed past them all, the next hit the pavement to the right and the last round managed to hit one of the zombies in the side but it never slowed its pace. Drew and the girl turned and ran as fast as they could and slowly gained a few yards as they flew into the open doorway. The girl fell onto the smooth concrete floor, her breasts still heaving, her nipples still pointing like twin turkey thermometers saying it was time for the Thanksgiving feast. Behind her, Drew slammed the door shut and clicked the dead bolt as the first of the zombies reached the door. The dead man crashed against it with a loud boom that echoed through the desolate factory as he slid the steel bar into place securing it.

             
He turned his back to the door and slid down to the floor, exhausted and out of breath. “You OK? You’re not… bitten are you?” he asked puffing heavily as he fought to regain his air supply. His forehead was slick with sweat beads that rolled down his nose.

             
She shook her head and her sobbing starting to slow.

“I’m ...Drew… Drew Finley…. this is my factory,” he said in between breaths

              She raised her eyes to his and he saw that she was actually a pretty girl under the dirt and tears. Actually he thought the tears made her even more attractive, he had always been a sucker for a chick that was crying. “I’m Annie…. Annie Lambert.” she said, trying a smile. “Thank you for saving me,” she added, and stuck out a filthy hand.

Drew stood up walked over to her and bent over at the waist to shake her proffered hand. “C’mon,” he said, helping her to her feet. “I’ve got some clean clothes that might fit you and I have running water in the restroom so you can get cleaned up.”

              She smiled. “Any food?” she asked sheepishly. “I’m starving.”

             
Drew laughed. “Yeah, I’ve got plenty. That is as long as you like canned tuna or condensed soup.”

             
“It’s my favorite.” she said as she stood up straight.

             
From somewhere behind her in the empty confines of the factory she heard someone scream for help. She jerked her head around and her eyes scanned the darkened distance. Her eyes were large. “What...” her question was cut off as Drew slammed the handle of the 9mm onto the back of her skull and she crumpled to the floor unconscious.

             
He leaned down, checked her pulse and found that it was strong and steady. He walked over to a set of shelves and grabbed some industrial zip ties, carried them to her and bound her wrists behind her back and then bound her ankles together. He easily lifted her from the floor. He carried her down the aisles of twenty foot shelves and stopped in front of a large walk-in freezer. He unlocked it and gently laid her inside. He looked to the right as he straightened up and saw that the black woman had somehow managed to spit out her gag. He walked toward her as she swore at him. She was bound at the wrists and ankles as well, but her wrists were also bound to a rail built into the inside of the freezer. “Silly girl,” Finley commented with a smile and his ever present thousand-yard stare.

“Go to hell!” screamed Shere Howard with an expression of undiluted disgust.

              Drew backhanded her across the face, but his expression was kind, even demure. Then he yanked the gag back into place and cinched it up even tighter than before.

“You first,” he said then stuck a thumb out and motioned over his shoulder. “Annie, here, will soon be replacing you.” Finley lowered his face toward hers, his eyes mere inches from hers. “I only saved you from the zombies because
I
want to kill you. Then
after
I kill you, when your body is nice and cold and stiff, then I’m going to do you so hard; you have no idea how hard.” He shivered like a dog shedding water as he thought about the rapture he would languish in, and a grin stretched over his greasy face.