Teenage Wasteland (I Zombie) (3 page)

Mikko punched me with her non-knife wielding hand. “Damn it, Jingo.”

“What’d I do?”

“You’re thinking to yourself again. I need you present…now!”

“How did you…”

“I always know when you vanish into your mind. You chew your lip and lift both of your eyebrows. In most situations it’s adorable. Right now, it’s pissing me off.”

In response, I raised my cleaver and shouted, “Zombie, zombie, zombie, zommmmmmbay!”

Mikko repeated my call as she carefully placed the Mag Lite on a peripheral table and pointed it into the center of the room.

The moans rose as if in answer.

Together, Mikko and I called out again. The sound of Moaners drew nearer.

I grabbed Mikko and spun her so that we stood back to back.

Metaphor, meet reality.

The first zombie crashed the party. The spill of light caught the sour milk sheen of its eyes. At one point in its life, it was a male. Judging by the tattered and torn clothing barely hanging onto its shoulders and waist, it had been a delivery driver. The UPS man dove at me, his arm getting the full-force trauma of my new best friend, Mr. Hacky. The blade of the butcher knife split the meat of the zombie’s arm with ease and struck bone.

The knife froze, stuck tight in the radius. I twisted and tugged, but the arm danced about in the air like a nightmare puppet, refusing to release the metal guest.

“Fuck!” I shouted in frustration.

The zombie reached out with its free hand and snatched a handful of my hair. I raised my right foot, cried out, and dropped the hammer of my heel into the left knee of the bastard.

Bone crunched hard and fast. The zombie dropped, but continued struggling against the stuck blade.

His clacking jaw opened and closed as it tried desperately to reach the flesh of my calf.

It was Mikko’s turn to cry out. I wanted badly to turn and fight with her, but that wasn’t how the game worked. We remained back to back for safety. The second we moved from that formation, we stood vulnerable. Vulnerability was weakness.

Weakness was death.

Or worse.

“You okay?” I asked.

Mikko screamed. I saw the arc of her arm fly by and then heard the wet sloppy sound of unsealed zombie. Something slopped to the floor.

“What was that, Mikko?” I called out.

“Intestines,” she answered in haste.

With a quick twist of the wrist, the butcher knife came free. I wound up my arm and brought the glinting blade down hard into the thing’s skull. The crack of bone was nauseating…but effective. The Moaner dropped to the ground for the very last time.

Instinct begged that I turn and help Mikko.

“Don’t do it, Jingo!” Mikko shouted. She knew me too well. We’d promised to watch each other’s backs,
knew
it was the only way to survive. Promises were hard to keep at times like this. All I could think of was helping her face down the enemy, but I had to trust she could handle whatever hate-filled pus-bags the apocalypse tossed her way.

And so, I remained.

Mikko’s elbow crashed into the back of my head before it shot forward. I stole a glance over my shoulder to see the tip of her knife blade easily slice through the Moaner’s sweet spot…his eyeball. A flood of fluid poured from the open membrane as Mikko pressed the knife to its hilt.

The zombie dropped like a sack of wet death.

Mikko and I remained back to back. A blanket of cold silence fell over the room.

“That was too easy, Jingo. You know that’s never a good sign.”

“There’s always a first,” I replied.

Before she could answer, the celebration came to a shrieking, screeching halt. The sound of a Screamer rattled the bones in my flesh.

“Oh, no,” Mikko whispered as her body stiffened behind me. “That came from inside, didn’t it?”

I swallowed…hard. “Yes.” The single word was deflating and damning.

“Death, death everywhere; I see, I smell, I taste. When I reach out and touch your soul, we both begin the chase.”

In response to the call, the Screamer unleashed a monstrous roar.

Mikko broke rank and tugged at my arm. “We have to stop those girls…now!”

I couldn’t find it in me to disagree.

We slammed through the door and sprinted into the halls of the building. After a quick right turn, the hallway spilled out into a cavernous lobby.

“Holy hell,” I whispered. “It’s a hotel.”

Mikko scanned the room with the flashlight. I locked my attention on the beam and followed it into and out of the shadows. A dark figure dashed away from the light and quickly vanished.

Perfect. The last thing we needed in the apocalypse were living shadows. Pile on fate, pile on.

“Over there!” I pointed.

“What was it?” Mikko asked.

We were answered with a round of laughter—the same as before. We’d found them.

The Screamer’s cry shattered the brief moment of peace.

The girls chanted again. “Death, death everywhere; I see, I smell, I taste. When I reach out and touch your soul, we both begin the chase.”

I no longer had patience for this game. “Shut up! You’re going to draw the bastard to us.”

One of the girls answered from beyond the veil of shadow, her over-sweet voice an abstract opposition of the moment. “That’s the point of the game.”

Mikko slanted the light toward the sound of her voice. I ninja’d my way to the focal point and whispered, “This is no longer a game.”

The raging beast sounded off again.

“Did you hear that?”

I was answered with another giggle.

“That thing will pop off your head and crap down your neck.”

Again, the girls chimed, “Death, death everywhere; I see, I smell, I taste. When I reach out and touch your soul, we both begin the chase.”

The roar of the Screamer drew nearer. Mikko rushed to my side. “We have to get out of here. Game or not, I’m not going to die because these two girls aren’t willing to break the rules.”

I leaned into Mikko and whispered, “I have an idea. Shine the light on me.”

Mikko did as I asked. I took in a deep breath, knowing what was about to happen could be the end of our world as we knew it. I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Death, death everywhere; I see, I smell, I taste. When I reach out and touch your soul, we both begin the chase.”

The participants of the game shrieked; both girls rushed at me, full speed. As soon as they were near enough, I wrapped my arms around their small frames and lifted them off the ground. They were young…far too young to be making a game of death. Without wasting a moment of time, I shouted, “Go!”

The second my voice faded to nothing, the third participant reminded us all that hell was about to rain down on our parade.

Mikko led the way. With every ounce of strength and resolve I had, I followed. The girls screamed and kicked against me, desperate for release back onto the playing field. I held them tight, my arms burning against the effort.

“Put us down!” one of the girls shouted above my gasping breath and racing pulse.

“Sorry girls…not gonna watch you die on my dime.”

Their continued pleas threatened to give away our location to the mad bastard in search of a mindful meal. The sound of hatred drew closer.

Mikko took a left turn into the kitchen and stopped. “No way we’re outrunning that thing, Jingo.”

The wonder twins belted out their merciless limerick again.

“We don’t have any choice,” I insisted.

Without a word, Mikko scanned the room. The walk-in fridge drew her attention. She pointed. “We hide in this.”

She pulled the door open, stepped inside, and closed herself within. After a few seconds, a barely audible sound vibrated from the door. She opened the fridge and peeked out. “Did you hear that?”

“Barely,” I answered.

Mikko waved me in, but not before saying, “Prepare yourself from some serious funk.”

She wasn’t kidding. The stench within the metal container was a mixture of rotten meat and stale air. A flood of tears dropped from my eyes against the sting of stink. I pulled the door shut and held the emergency bump release tight in my hand. With a stern whisper, I addressed the girls.

“I want to live, okay? So the two of you are going to keep your traps shut, or that’s not going to happen. We love playing the game, but I want to live to play it again. I won’t allow either of you to decide if it ends now or later. Do you understand?”

The smaller of the two girls drew in a deep breath, in preparation for the unleashing of some pre-teen Kraken. Mikko snaked her hand around the girl’s head and sealed her mouth shut. The muffled cry fell short of bouncing off the metal walls. Mikko looked at me and rolled her eyes. “When in the hell did
we
become the adults?” she whispered.

“Blasphemy,” I answered.

Before the second girl had the chance to cry out, the beast reached the kitchen and bellowed its Jurassic cry. The girl froze, her face paled to a porcelain white.

I nodded.

She nodded.

We all remained perfectly silent.

Outside our little hideaway, the Screamer slammed its fists against the commercial-grade prep table. The metal shuddered under the crushing blow. I stole another glance at the second girl to see her cheeks glistening with tears. Her lower lip quivered. Slowly, I shook my head and placed a finger over my lips.

I opened my arms and she fell into my embrace.

The door to the fridge took a hit. Either the Screamer had slammed itself against the reinforced metal, or decided to play a rousing game of dodge ball with any inanimate object that could be hurled, with Hulk-like strength, at the barrier between him and meat.

The door held.

The girl’s bladder, on the other hand, did not. First, I heard the pitter patter of drops falling to the floor. Next, I got the faintest whiff of urine just under the stench of rot. I glanced down to see the liquid pooling between her feet.

And then fate pimp-slapped us across the collective face. Gravity took hold of the pooled liquid and drew it toward the door.

My eyes went wide. Should the Screamer catch wind of the piss, nothing would stop it from getting to us.

I glanced around the room. There was nothing I could use to stop the stream from making it to the door.

I stepped back, ripped off my shirt, and tossed it to the floor, just in front of the flowing gold.

Mikko glanced to me, eyes wide, and mouthed, “Thank you.”

I nodded.

She followed up by mouthing, “Smokin’ hot.”

I smiled and gave a quick flex of the pecs.

The destruct-o-con on the other side of the door came to a conclusion. We waited, still frozen in time and space, until there was no doubt the Screamer had moved on for a bigger, better meal.

I motioned for everyone to move to the back of the room and gave the emergency bumper a push. The door cracked open and fresh air wafted into my nose. I greedily drew in a lungful and glanced about the room. A fading scream gave me all the proof I needed that the beast had moved along. I released the door and let it swing open wide. We stepped out of the walk-in cautiously.

The crying girl had finally managed to pull herself together.

“You two now understand that this game is serious stuff?”

Both girls nodded.

“If you’re going to play, you have to be willing to do whatever it takes.”

Another nod.

“And you have to know that, in the end, the prize could be death.”

Both girls locked up tight.

I had to ask the hardest question that remained. “Are your parents still alive?”

Neither answered…which, in and of itself, was all the response I needed. Shit. I stole a glance to Mikko, who had clearly read my mind. She turned to face the girls and asked, “How long have you been in this hotel?”

The girls looked at one another and shrugged.

I glanced down at them and said, “Don’t move,” and then pulled Mikko aside. “We can’t take them with us.”

“You’re joking, right?”

I shook my head. “No. They’re too young. You have to know they’d slow us down…or worse.”

“Jingo, we can’t leave them behind…it’d be a death sentence.”

The sound of a door interrupted our conversation. I turned from Mikko to see the exit slowly swing in and out, in and out.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Mikko huffed.

Before the impulse took hold, I grabbed her by the arm. She turned and gave me
the glare
.

“No, Mikko. They had their chance. Obviously, the game is more important to them. Those girls just made it easy for us to walk out.”

“Easy for you, maybe,” Mikko growled, and jerked her arm away.

“You know I’m right, Mikko.”

The stern look on her face melted away. “Fine,” she capitulated. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

I quickly scanned the room for something to cover my naked torso, and came up with a chef shirt. It was too big, but I was in no position to complain. Once I was fully clothed, we wasted no time and retraced our path to the point of egress. I stepped in front of Mikko before she attempted a blind escape. I cracked the door open and listened.

An agreeable silence met me. I waved Mikko on, and we stepped out of motel hell. I eased the door shut, propping it open with a brick, on the off-chance we might need to disappear into its somewhat comforting shadows again.

Mikko laughed.

I didn’t join in.

“We went into that place with nothing and came out with nothing. What are we doing, Jingo?”

“Failing, Mikko.”

“We’ve gotta do something about that. We’ll never beat the game like this. Why didn’t we at least walk out of there with knives in our hands?”

“You wanna go back in? If so, have at it.”

Mikko stared at me, frozen stiff.

“It’s getting late. We need to find a place to crash.”

Mikko glanced back at the hotel.

“And risk getting ripped apart by a trapped Screamer? No thanks. I’d rather face down a few hundred Moaners.”

Mikko nodded. I gestured toward the alley entryway and took off. Mikko fell into step behind me. As we walked, I scooped up a two-foot scrap of rebar and held it tight in my clenched fist.