Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (12 page)

“Go figure, I find a camp potty, toilet
paper, a small flashlight and some damn comic books. The night
couldn’t be any quieter and I find the perfect spot to take care of
some personal business.”

“Sorry, man, but you should know better by
now,” I said. I felt for Paul I truly did. Women don’t really get
it, but a man’s time on the throne is one of relaxation, a time
when he can let go, both literally and figuratively. Not bathroom
humor, just fact.

“I’m going to see if the office is open.
Maybe there’s actually a door to the bathroom there.”

“Be careful, my friend.”

He waved a hand at me, I hoped it wasn’t the
one he had been using for other needs earlier.

Mrs. Deneaux was sitting outside in a plastic
lawn chair, smoking a cigarette, I couldn’t tell if she was asleep
or not. The fluid motions she made when extracting the smoke from
her lips and flicking the ash was a much-practiced maneuver. It was
her own small dance of death.

Mrs. Deneaux magically produced a half-empty
pack and one cigarette leapt out at me. I took it much like a
drowning man would take a glass of water, or an apple from a
serpent. You decide.

Gary had grabbed my shoulder and gave me a
brotherly squeeze as he went back into the storage unit. Brian
walked by, stopping only long enough to tell me he would take over
the patrol. I thanked him as Deneaux lit my smoke.

“BT doesn’t trust you,” she said after a few
peaceful moments. She wasn’t looking at me, but rather up at the
sky and the blazing stars.

“And you?” I asked, taking a heavy intake of
smoke, also marveling at the sight above us.

“All I know is that if you turn me into a
vampire and I’m stuck in this old wrinkled body forever, I will
make sure to never leave your side. I’m no longer a Miss
Stewart.”

I started laughing. “I’ll keep that in mind;
and who is Miss Stewart?”

“It’s of no concern now. So how are things,
Michael?” she said. At some point, she had stopped looking at the
stars and her eyes sparked brightly as they focused intently on
me.

“That’s quite a gaze you’ve got going on
there,” I said, trying to deflect some of that attention.

“It is not every day that someone has their
soul stripped from their body. I have also given mine up, but I
fear I will have to atone for it a lot sooner than you, I
expect.”

My mouth opened to ask her what she had done,
but she cut me off at the pass.

“It is not something I wish to discuss.
Perhaps I will write it down in a journal. I see you scribbling in
that thing all the time. I would love to know what you think of
me.”

“No you wouldn’t,” I said.

Now it was her turn to laugh. “No, perhaps I
wouldn’t. Do you lead us to salvation, Michael?” she asked in all
seriousness. “Is that even possible?”

“To be honest, Mrs. Deneaux…”

“Vivian.”

“Vivian,” I said. Her name felt like I was
swirling broken glass around in my mouth as I tried to say it. “I’m
just trying to make it through tomorrow.”

Her gaze shifted back to the heavens. We
actually enjoyed an easy silence for a few moments before she stood
up. “I’m going to get a few more hours of sleep. I believe that we
will make it through tomorrow,” she said, heading back into the
shed.

And then what?
I wanted to say, but I
wished her a good night and I meant it. I stayed there, looking at
the stars swirling overhead until the morning sun began to bathe my
face in its presence.

“You out here all night?” BT asked,
stretching his arms wide.

“I guess so. I think I might have discovered
a new planet.”

“Okay, so it’s early and now I’m not truly
sure if this is sarcasm or are you telling the truth?”

“He’s full of shit,” Gary said coming up from
behind. “So what’s on the agenda today?”

“Is Brian back?” I asked, I hadn’t seen him
since he had taken over patrol duty and how long ago was that? Four
or five hours at least.

“He’s not in there. Probably couldn’t handle
Mrs. Deneaux’s snoring,” Paul said.

“Vivian,” I corrected.

“Who the hell is Vivian?” Paul asked.

“That’s Deneaux.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked,
rubbing his eyes.

“Mrs. Deneaux’s first name is Vivian,” I
clarified.

“Okay, but what’s that got to do with Brian?”
Paul asked.

“Nothing.”

“Maybe we should worry less about Vivian and
more about Brian,” BT said forcefully. “He could be hurt and you
two are worried about someone’s first name.”

“Who’s hurt?” Mrs. Deneaux asked, coming up
from behind BT.

“Nobody we hope,” I said “But Brian hasn’t
come back from patrol.”

Mrs. Deneaux immediately went back into the
shed and began to put on all her clothes as well as strapping on
her pistol.

“Good idea,” Gary said. “No guarantee we’ll
be coming back.”

Within five minutes, we had all our meager
supplies and mini arsenal of weaponry ready to go.

“Okay, once around silently. Hopefully, he’s
just holed up somewhere, getting some shuteye. If we don’t find him
and the perimeter looks safe enough, we’ll call out for him. Sound
good?” I asked.

I got terse nods in reply. We all knew this
wasn’t good. Most folks don’t stray too far when a zombie
apocalypse is going on and Brian knew enough to come back to the
shed to get relief if he was tired. He wouldn’t just fail to let
his guard down. We walked for a few minutes, but the only noise
were the sounds of zippers striking rifles or an occasional boot
scuff. Conversation was non-existent.

“Mike?” BT said, softly coming up to my side.
I stopped. “Isn’t this where we met Re-Pete?”

I looked around. It was still a storage
facility and everything looked pretty much the damn same, but I
would bet money that this was the exact spot, with one notable
exception. Ree was missing, not the blood spot he had left behind,
but his body was most assuredly not present and accounted for.

“What’s the matter?” Paul asked, sensing the
new tension.

“Our zombie buddy has gone missing,” I said
as I scanned the lot.

“How is that possible?” Gary asked, walking
over to the fence.

“Mike, he was dead,” BT said. “I saw the exit
wound out the back of his skull.”

“Please don’t tell me that now they’re
adapting so they don’t die from a head shot,” Paul sobbed. “Could
they?”

“No, he was dead,” I said flatly.

“How can you be so sure?” Paul asked, working
himself up into a fervor. “I mean, so far, they’ve become fast,
they can hibernate when there isn’t enough food, and apparently,
they can thicken their skulls to try to preserve themselves.
Wouldn’t it make sense from a purely zombie evolutionary trait to
alter the one and only way that you can die?”

“We’d be fucked,” I said. “But Ree was
dead.”

“Who is fucking Ree, Mike? And how can you be
so damn sure?!” Paul was yelling now.

“I named the zombie and I know he was dead
because I lost contact with him.”

Paul was just looking at me with a shocked
expression on his face, not grasping what I had just told him.

“It’s the zombie whisperer!” Mrs. Deneaux
cackled, lighting a cigarette.

“It’s a pity those things haven’t given you
throat cancer yet,” BT said.

She held up her middle finger like it was a
makeup compact while with her other hand she would dab her extended
middle finger on it and pretend to apply base to her face.

“That’s actually pretty funny,” Gary
said.

“Wait! You can talk to zombies now?! When the
hell were you going to let the rest of us know?” Paul said with
spittle flying from his lips.

“Relax, Paul,” BT said, placing his arm
across Paul’s chest. “He just found out last night.”

Paul might have calmed down, but it was
marginal at best. His temper went from something like eating a
habanero pepper to rubbing jalapenos in your eyes; neither one is a
great suggestion.

“What did this zombie have to say?” Mrs.
Deneaux asked, leaning up against the closest shed.

“It revolved mostly around him being hungry,”
I said.

“That’s rich,” she laughed. “A hungry zombie!
Who would have ever thought it?”

“What good does that do us?” Paul asked.

“That in itself, not much,” I said.

“But,” BT prompted when I hesitated with the
rest of what we had discovered.

“But I can… with limitations now… I made
Re-Pete do what I told him to.”

“Are you guys pulling my leg? Are there
hidden cameras or some shit? Can you make them go away? Better yet,
can you tell their hearts to stop beating? If they even still
do?”

“Well, I could tell a few maybe to leave, but
once they got thirty or forty yards away, they’d turn back around.
And it seems that I can’t make them directly hurt themselves.”

“Almost like they have a failsafe switch?”
Gary asked.

“I guess,” I told him.

“Could you lead them to a precipice and have
them walk off?” Gary asked, thinking of differing scenarios that
would lead to a mass demise in zombies.

“Kind of like a zombie Pied Piper,” Deneaux
said.

Gary shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, pretty
much like that.”

“Like lemmings?” BT asked. “That would be
interesting.”

“Right now, you guys know as much as I do,” I
told them.

Thankfully, Brian shifted the focus, being
under Paul’s scrutinous eye was starting to grate on my nerves.
“Hey guys,” a slightly disheveled Brian said, rounding a
corner.

“We’ve been looking for you,” Gary said.

“Sorry, I know I was on patrol, but there was
nothing happening and I felt compelled to keep looking for guns.
It’s like a quest now.”

“Did you move the zombie?” I asked him.

“Why would I do that? I was busy looking in
lockers. Did you say how much time we have until our dinner guests
arrive?” he asked.

“We’ve got about four hours,” I told the
group. The range of emotions went from “Holy Shit! I’m scared” to
“About time” and whatever else can happen with five other people. I
was more on the “Scared Shitless” side.

“Should we look for more guns?” Gary asked as
we all looked down on our less-than-adequate-looking ensemble of
weaponry.

My head was going up and down in the
universal language of yes, but my vote was a no. “It’s too
dangerous.”

“We have enough time. I can go through a few
more lockers,” Brian said.

Yeah we could also play a rousing game of
Monopoly for all the good that would do
, I thought. I told him
it sounded like a good idea though. I wanted to do what every
soldier did before going into battle, eat. For some reason, the
only thing that keeps you from the thought of dying or killing is
eating. We had pulled out packets and packets of dried goods from
the camping lockers. Beef jerky, here I come.

Paul and BT went with Brian. Mrs. Deneaux,
Gary and I went through the dried packets, looking for the best
stuff from which to make a decent lunch.

“Split pea and ham soup!” Mrs. Deneaux
shouted triumphantly, holding the packet up to the sun like she had
just reared the newborn king.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked her. “I’d
rather eat the packet it came in.”

“Who is insane enough to not like ham?” Mrs.
Deneaux asked, looking sidelong at me.

Gary was pointing his index finger at me on
the sly, thinking that I couldn’t see him.

“I can see you, brother,” I told him as he
pulled his finger back quickly.

The weapons-of-mass-destruction-seeking team
came back a couple of hours later with about as much luck finding
anything as the US had been a few years previous.

“We got some swords,” Brian said, putting
three sharp-edged blades on the ground.

“They any good?” I asked, picking one up. I’d
seen some that would fall apart from the impact with a watermelon
and others with a blade so dull they couldn’t cut a fart.

“They’re actually pretty good,” BT said. “I
think they’re Japanese World War II officer swords.”

I hefted the blade. It definitely had a
deadly enough feel to it. “I plan on being a little closer to the
action. Do you mind if I borrow one of these?” I asked them.

“Me too,” Gary said, “Where he goes, I do
too.”

BT just plain grabbed the third. “So what’s
the plan?”

“You’d think you’d know better,” Gary
said.

I laid the entire thing out in all its lack
of glory. Without rocket launchers, a battalion of soldiers, and an
air strike, this would be far from the killing blow I would have
chosen. This was more of a gesture, a giving of the middle finger,
if you will, in the face of overwhelming odds.

“This isn’t going to do much more than piss
her off,” Brian said.

“Exactly,” I told him. “Pissed off opponents
tend to make mistakes.”

Brian nodded his head in agreement. “Makes
sense, in a suicidal kind of way.”

“Have you met Mike?” BT asked.

Gary nodded in commiseration. I punched him
in the arm. “I’ll tell Dad when we get back,” he said, rubbing the
tender spot.

I hope you will
, I thought, because
that would mean we made it there.