Zombie Fallout 3: THE END .... (8 page)

"He shot himself."

I couldn't think of anything to say. There were reasons why in these times someone might decide to off themselves, but why then?

"He was bitten?" It was half statement half question.

"He must have been there was a bandage on his hand and when they laid him down I saw one on his leg, I don’t know how he even managed to get to Carol's."

I missed the kid, allies were falling fast and replacements were slow to come forward.

BRENDON'S STORY - CHAPTER NINE -

Brendon could never remember being able to change a tire that fast. Lug nuts that should have literally been frozen on, seemed hardly finger tightened as he used the tire iron to unscrew them. Adrenaline, fear and anger seethed through his system. He had no direction to focus his turmoil on. Justin was a spy, he was also his friend and the brother of his fiancée. Mike could just about be considered his dad and he knew what was up with Justin but did nothing. Realistically, what could he do.

Brendon felt justified and cowardly as he sped away from the Talbots'. They would never be able to survive without him.

"Oh who the hell am I kidding." He said to the steering wheel. "I won’t survive without them." His gut wrenched from the inner conflict. He was thirty miles down the roadway before he finally pulled over to reevaluate his situation. "How could I leave her?" He wailed. Pride is listed as one of the seven deadly sins for a reason. Brendon knew his life was almost forfeit but he'd be damned if he would grovel back to the all-knowing Michael R. Talbot.

He drove another five miles before he once again pulled over to rethink this course. He knew to within a few miles where they were going. He could just meet them there, all would be forgiven. "No!" He yelled. "Mike will have some smart ass comment about, I knew you’d be back. Or couldn’t stay away could you?" Brendon punched the accelerator, gravel spun out from the back of his truck. A lone crow perched on a non-functioning phone line watched his departure.

Brendon spent his first night alone in a mini-mall parking lot. He slept in fitful starts, always fearful that something would go bump in the night. The truck windows kept completely fogging over, so even when he did thrash to full alertness he could not tell if something was out there or an overactive imagination was to blame. Brendon quickly sat up. Wiping his sleeve across the wet glass, images of yellowing chipped, meat encrusted teeth pressed against the windshield jump-started his heart. "This sucks." He repeated for at least the twenty-second time. A little ribbing from Mike was a small price to pay.

Brendon spent the majority of the next morning sitting in his truck, constantly shifting his decision to keep on driving away from or toward the Talbots'. He dozed in and out of sleep, his legs cramped under the dashboard. It was sometime past noon when his knee slammed up into the steering column, his eyes were drawn to the far side of the parking lot as a young woman of nearly the same age as Nicole walked steadily in his direction. Age was the only thing his former fiancée and this interloper had in common. His heart snagged on a barb of realism as he realized that his engagement was now terminated.

The woman that was headed his way was dead and just didn’t know it. Her gore-streaked hair covered most of her visage but yet she did not once reach up and brush it away. Ripped lips revealed blackened teeth and a cavernous throat. She looked something between a sea gull and a shark with her black eyes. Her once white sweat pants were completely ripped up the right side revealing purple-bluish flesh that had torn in more than one spot. Oval mouthfuls of muscle and tendon were neatly removed. Brendon fumbled with his gun as his pulse quickened and his pupils dilated. He debated whether to leave, get out of the truck and kill it or shoot from where he sat.

He decided he would get a cleaner shot if he got out of the truck. He was completely unprepared for what happened as his foot hit the pavement. The zombie shifted from the typical side-to-side ambling and started a full on sprint towards him. The buffeting wind pushed her hair back to reveal red-rimmed black eyes. Saliva spewed forth from her mouth and ran parallel to the ground on her cheeks as she picked up speed. Brendon’s shot went wide right, nicking the girl's ear. She would never wear hoop earrings again. Her pace never wavered as she kept locked on like a meat seeking missile. Brendon’s next shot shattered the right side of her head. Head plate flew into the air, gray brown brain was clearly visible and still she came. Brendon's third and final shot dropped the zombie a mere 10 feet from him, the push of the bullet forced the majority of her brain out of the exposed hole. His heart nearly cramped from the encounter.

"One zombie." He said shaking his head. "Just one more and I'd be dead." He didn't know it on an intellectual level yet but his instinctual side had clearly made up its mind. If he wanted to survive, which he did, he needed to get back with the Talbots. He pulled out of the parking lot, passing seven zombies who started their relentless pursuit.

He got a few miles away from his close encounter, his breathing finally under control. He stopped this time on the roadway with a 360 degree view all around him, with at least 100 yards or more of clear sight. Nothing or nobody was going to be able to sneak up on him, at least not until night. His fuel tank and his stomach were both running on empty; he would need to rectify those situations soon.

Brendon looked at the flat black matte finish of his 9mm pistol, one pull of the trigger could end all of his doubts and misgivings. “Would it hurt?” He asked no one. A response was not forth coming. He smacked his gun-laden hand against the steering wheel. The bullet pierced the cab roof, a brilliant beam of light struck him in the eye. “Holy shit!” He said sticking a finger through the new exit point. “Great that ought to make it a little cooler in here tonight and let anybody in the general vicinity know I’m around.” His ears stung from the noise in such a confined space, his mood souring by the moment.

There was a Wendy’s up ahead, but unless he wanted to eat frozen ketchup packets he didn’t see the point. In a few more hours though, those would probably sound good. Brendon started the truck and drove slowly up the roadway looking for a place to grab some food and to keep a look out for any signs of the dead. A mini-mart that had seen better days came up on his right hand side. Both front doors were smashed and an F3 tornado seemed to have swept through the inner aisles but there still seemed to be plenty of food available, or at least food-like products, this was a mini-mart after all.

Brendon pulled up close to the front doors and then reversed a few feet just in case he needed the extra space to get away from something. He hesitated in the cab whether or not to leave it running or take the keys with him. “At this rate I’ll just end up pissing my pants where I sit so I won’t have to get out.” He smiled at his own grim realization that paranoia was taking more than a foothold. He opted to shut the truck off. The idling diesel engine was loud enough to sufficiently hide the dragging foot falls of zombies. His only middle ground was to leave the keys in the ignition so that there was no chance he’d drop them and not be able to find them.

The popping of the door as it opened startled him more than the earlier gunshot. His breath lingered in front of his face causing a momentary smoke screen. The morning was quiet, there was no traffic, no bustle of everyday life. Just the occasional ‘caw’ of a distant crow and the more unsettling barking of dogs that were increasingly becoming feral without ownership. Brendon laughed as he thought of a snarling mad Henry, but then immediately chilled when he thought the same thing about Bear, the Rottweiler. A bunch of poodles and a Chihuahua might not be so bad but throw in a Doberman Pinscher or a German shepherd and things could really start to get ugly.

Brendon had his gun drawn as he stepped onto the broken glass. He noted that more than one person had been here just for the fact that most of the glass had been ground down to almost a fine powder. The thought that live humans were in the vicinity was of no comfort. People could be just as deadly as zombies and you had the added bonus of not knowing which side of that line they were on. At least the zombie didn’t try to pretend. As if to confirm his worst fear there were at least six or possibly seven scattered dead people, it was tough to tell because the aforementioned wild dogs had ripped them apart. They were nearly stripped clean and the bones that remained shone a bright white. Even the skulls had been crushed and the contents muzzled out.

“
They had to have been humans, the dogs wouldn’t have touched zombies. Right? Who am I asking?” Dogs hadn’t done the initial killing though, various caliber brass littered the floor, and there were no guns around. The empty shells sounded like broken rain as he kicked through it. "It was bound to happen sooner or later." He thought. "Dwindling resources bring out the worst in folks." Brendon shivered as he saw the outline where the previous blood spills were. Tongue marks criss-crossed the floor, leaving red smears behind. His hunger, which had seemed such a pressing need only moments earlier, was rapidly losing its appeal. “You’ve seen worse.” He said aloud trying to bolster his nerve.

He nearly cried when he passed a smashed box of pop-tarts on the floor. “Maybe I should grab them and I can use them as an excuse to go back. You know Mike, I was heading to Mexico and I came across these cherry pop-tarts and I turned around because I figured that Tommy would want them. No.” He said shaking his head. “Tommy hated the cherry ones, are there any strawberry?” Brendon was so intent on looking for a different flavor he did not realize when visitors came to join him.

The deep bass growl was his first inkling that all might not be right in his world. He looked up at not the largest dog he had ever seen but clearly the most ferocious. A Siberian Husky stared back at Brendon, no wagging tail on its emaciated frame. “That’s a good fella.” Brendon said. “Want a pop-tart?” The dog’s growling increased. “I don’t blame you, the cherry ones suck.” The dog warily moved forward never taking its eyes off him. Patches of fur were missing from its black and silver coat. Dried blood had solidified on its right side, half of his left ear was torn. Brendon at first thought that possibly the virus had gone cross-species. Except for the eyes, they were a deep blue, he might have kept on thinking that.

Brendon held up his gun, the dog paused. “You know what this is don’t you!” Brendon said forcibly. The dog hesitated but only long enough to wait for three of his friends to join him in the hunt. A Golden Retriever, a Black Lab and a Dachshund joined the fray. The retriever and the lab could be trouble because of their size, but Brendon could not wrap his head around a violent dachshund. That was of course until the Dachshund seized the initiative and charged head long down the aisle at him.

“
Oh come on.” Brendon pleaded. “A freaking wiener dog?” All the same, he scrambled up on the shelving, pushing some boxes of half eaten Cheerios out of the way. The Dachshund stopped below him, yipping up a storm. If not for his larger and fiercer friends this would be comical. The Lab and the Retriever slowly approached coming down the same aisle as the smaller dog. The Husky came down the aisle to Brendon’s rear. ‘Great, they know how to hunt.’ He thought.

The Lab looked ready to spring. Brendon placed a well-aimed shot in its chest, the dog skidded backwards and slumped against some Angel Soft bathroom tissue. The softest final resting place anybody could ask for. The dogs had backed up a bit but they weren’t leaving quite yet. Brendon turned to get a better shot at the husky, figuring if he took out their leader the rest of the pack might lose heart. Seemed like a great idea until the pack began to swell, Brendon stopped counting when the tenth dog came through.

“
Three shots at the zombie, one at the Labrador. That gives me six, and there’s at least 13 of you.” He looked to his truck. The husky followed his line of sight. Backing it up earlier which seemed such a great idea now might end up being the last great blunder in a long string of them. Cognitively he knew the husky wasn’t smiling at him but it sure did look like a shit-eating grin from where he sat. Two more dogs jumped up at him only to be met with varying degrees of fatality. The one that was shot in the throat would die much sooner than the one that had its paw blown off, but it was still only a matter of time.

A few of the dogs were paying no heed whatsoever to the melodrama playing out, too busy foraging for scraps that previous hunting parties might have missed. A particularly vicious fight broke out between an Australian cattle dog and a Boxer over what looked like a bloody hairpiece but was in fact some poor soul’s scalp. Brendon absently touched the top of his head. A good portion of the dogs began to rip pieces out of their fallen brethren. “Glad to see that cannibalism isn’t just a human trait.” Brendon said darkly. No matter what else was happening in the store the husky never took his eyes off of Brendon. It was unnerving and to make matters worse the dog had pulled back far enough to make any type of shot difficult. "Does he know how much ammo I have left." Brendon didn’t voice his thought for fear that the hound might understand what he was saying. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing that had happened to him in the last few weeks.