Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (18 page)

“Go,” Mary said, her eyes wide with fear.
Partly because I had the front door to her house open and partly
because I wasn’t moving yet.

I jumped down the three steps and started
running in the direction I had last seen BT heading. As soon as I
hit my stride, I began to doubt the validity of my entire plan. I’m
all for “alone time” and the need for it, but somehow during a
zombie-pocalypse doesn’t seem like the right time. Should I shout?
There weren’t tons of zombies out, but I also didn’t want to change
that status. By my reckoning, one zombie is one too many.

I skipped Mary’s neighbor’s house, and as I
approached the next, I began to wonder if BT had maybe traveled
through a backyard or two and maybe got on to another street. I
mean, what then? He knew where we were, but I had no clue where he
was. Why don’t I think this shit out before I act?

I could hear Josh’s car off in the distance,
but for some reason, that distance was getting closer.

Chapter Eight

“That’s awesome, Josh, they’re all following it,” Gary said
excitedly.

Josh did not immediately answer, as sweat
began to form on his head. “I’ve lost control!” he shouted. “I
think the batteries in the remote are dead.”

“Shouldn’t the car just stop?” Mary
asked.

“No,” Josh said in resignation. “I put the
car on ‘auto’ so that it would keep running when it was out of
range.”

“Well, that’s alright then, isn’t it, honey?
We’ll get you another one,” Mary said, leaning up against the front
door as if she thought it might open without her there to stop
it.

“Which way did Mike go?” Gary asked, moving
from the window on the side of the house to one of the side lights
by the front door.

“Left,” Mary answered.

“Figured as much,” Gary said as his eyes
tracked Hugo heading left.

“Shit,” Josh said.

Mary did not correct him, not this time. If
ever there was a time and a place to use an expletive, this was
it.

Hugo was heading down the street towards Mike
like a heat-seeking missile.

Chapter Nine – Mike Journal Entry
7

“Shit,” I said, watching Hugo head my way. “I bet Gary’s working
the damn thing.”

Hugo was cool; the two dozen speeders trying
their best to catch him were not.

“Here we go again,” I said as I began to run.
Couldn’t I get déjà vu, at like Oktoberfest, while I was sampling
different beers? Because that would be so much cooler.

I started running down the sidewalk. Hugo was
about dead center on the street. I don’t know about you, but I’d
never had much luck with RC cars. Usually, I crashed them into
something or they broke consistently, but not good old Hugo! Nope.
He was running straight and true right down the bloody center
(English slip) of the road. He was looking like he could do it all
night long. What was even way better was that the damn street we
were on did not have a curve in its foreseeable future. The one and
only thing I had going for me at the moment was that the zombies
were completely focused on the truck and its bloody contents (not
an English slip, actual stuff it was hauling).

I had a few options. First, keep running in
the same direction. Hugo would pass me up shortly and I would
become victim to those old zombie posters. You know the ones, “I
don’t have to be fastest, only faster than you!” Hugo would zip
away and the zombies would turn to me for solace and food. I might
be able to keep one or two at bay, but I did not understand my
powers well enough or even know if it were possible to do much more
than that.

Second, I could cut across a yard and start
searching elsewhere, but here we come back to the
needle-in-a-haystack analogy, although with the size of BT, it’s
more like a cop’s nightstick than a needle, which in reality,
shouldn’t be all that hard to find in one haystack. Or third, I
could hide behind a bush against the house I was next to. I didn’t
like the idea of not moving, especially if even one zombie was
looking my way when it happened. But it might work, I’ll just let
them run on by. I thought through all of these scenarios in a
flash, and was already diving into a small mulberry bush as I was
thinking it. Hugo was almost even with me by the time I was able to
turn and feel that I was completely concealed from the road. The
zombies were a good twenty yards trailing, but they didn’t look
like they planned on stopping. My upper torso was completely under
the bush, but the bottom-most branches were still a good six inches
above my back, and my legs were uncovered. This, all of a sudden,
felt like not such a great maneuver. If a zombie saw me and headed
this way, it would be all I could do to extricate myself from my
hidey-hole and get up to full speed.

“Dumb, dumb,” I said softly as the zombies
approached. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of the crunching of
plastic, and the high-pitched whining of spinning tires upturned.
Are you shitting me?
Hugo took this most inopportune of
times to flip. I stuck my head out an inch, two at the max to see
what happened. I was done in, by a fucking pothole! How damn ironic
is that? The very job I had been doing before the zombies came and
my equivalents down in North Carolina couldn’t do their part to
make our streets a safer place to drive on.

The zombies pounced on the truck. The wheels
stopped spinning as Hugo’s life came to an abrupt end. Gary’s shirt
was shredded in the feeding frenzy, bandages and swabs flying like
chaff in World War II. Zombies sprang up as they realized they had
been duped. Well, maybe they didn’t figure that part out; they just
knew they weren’t eating anything with substance and now they were
on active search mode again. I pulled my head in slowly, not
wanting to give my spot away. The moonlight felt like it was
shining bright enough to rival a morning sun. Sure, no clouds when
you want one, unlike that time back in 1978 when I was trying to
watch the lunar eclipse. Oh yeah! They were all over the place
then. Stayed up all effin’ night, didn’t see a damn thing except
for clouds. I told God that he should probably stick to his day job
and leave the ironic comedy to the professionals.

“Awesome,” I whispered, putting my head down
for a second. Had to be at least thirty zombies just milling about,
no more than thirty to forty feet from where I was. They didn’t go
back to Mary’s house, which would have been a blessing. They just
milled around, like stoners in their parents’ basement. They just
didn’t know what to do with themselves. I’d been one of them, so I
knew this could possibly go on all night. I guess zombies were a
lot like stoners; neither did much in the way of action until food
was involved. At least, I would be able to keep myself amused.

I would have to do something before daybreak.
I was entirely too exposed like this. I decided I was not going to
wait until the very end to do something. Normally, I’d wait until
the sun was beginning to peek up over a nearby rooftop. I was sick
of close calls when it was time to move. I slowly inched further
back and closer to the foundation of the house I was hiding next
to. The loud snap when my rifle sling caught a branch above my
head, snapping the dry appendage in two, did not go unnoticed. I
stopped moving completely. I mean, except of course, for my heart
which was banging so hard it was popping my chest off the ground by
a good six or eight inches. (Yes, yes, it’s my flair for the
dramatic, I was scared. You have thirty or so zombies stop
everything they’re doing and more or less look in your direction,
and let me know how you hold up.)

I didn’t even want to breathe, but when your
heart is slamming away and your adrenaline is juicing the works, it
just isn’t possible. I let a small exhalation of air go.
GOD,
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!
I screamed in my head. The night was just
cool enough that I could see my breath as it lazily swirled past my
face. Might as well have been crashing cymbals together. A couple
of zombies had honed in on the movement of coiled, cooled air, but
as of yet, had not made any direct connection between it and a food
source. But I had to imagine that they would come check it out.
What the hell else were they going to do? I’m sure they weren’t
worried about missing an ice cream social or something.

A few of the inquisitive zombies started to
slowly make their way over towards my location. I was gradually
inching my way back even further, so that I could stand and make a
run for it. I was tempted to head back towards Mary’s, but I wasn’t
sure if I’d make it, or more likely, if she’d even open the door.
Oh, I’m sure she’d make a good show of it for Gary. But I could
almost picture her fingers fumbling with the lock on the security
door (yes, the same one she had already twice proved how adept she
was with) as zombies began to chew on my flesh. And then she’d have
this small, devious smile that would flash across her features
right before she shut the front door.

I wasn’t even going to attempt that avenue.
Mothers are entirely too protective of their offspring and now that
she knew who and what I was? Yeah, better to not try that at
all.

The problem at hand was that the three amigos
kept advancing on my spot, not with any determined reason yet, but
that was only a matter of time. I thought about sending them off
one by one, but then I would definitely be giving my position away.
If the rest of the troop joined in the fray, I would not be able to
divert my attention to each of them in turn quickly enough to repel
them.

“Piss, shit and vinegar,” I muttered. Pretty
archaic curse words, but it seemed like the right thing to say. I
must have been channeling an old man because I don’t remember ever
using or hearing that particular combo of words in that fashion,
ever. My feet were up against the house, I wasn’t going any further
back, next thing for me was to rise and run.

“Did it crash?” I heard Josh’s voice from up
the street.

“There’s a bunch of zombies in the road, but
I don’t see your truck or Mike for that matter,” Gary answered.

Every last zombie turned to the voices, I was
completely forgotten as the zombies went from ambling to full
throttle in mere moments. It might not have been the cavalry to the
rescue, but the outcome was just as effective.

“We should probably get back inside,” Gary
told Josh.

My smart-ass comment would have been, “Do you
think?” But right now, all I wanted to do was a small jig. I wanted
to, but I wouldn’t. There was still a good chance that somebody
alive and breathing would be in one of these houses and they would
never be able to unsee that. I didn’t want to put anybody through
any more stress than they had already been. There’s a few things in
this life we should never be exposed to, one is my dancing; another
would be anyone picking their nose and eating it; and third would
be zombies. Anyone still alive who had already seen two of those, I
would not heap anymore misery on.

The zombies were racing down the street, I
could hear Mary urging the boys in and then the resounding thuds of
both doors being shut. I once again felt alone and scared. Man, I
just can’t seem to get my shit together. Two seconds ago, I was
praying for this and now that I’ve got it, I don’t know what to do
with it. Time to find my friend. I didn’t have a shred of proof,
nor any type of psychic link to him, but I just couldn’t shake the
feeling that BT was in trouble. I stayed as close to the houses as
I could. Hating every time I had to run across a side yard to get
to the next dwelling. I was figuring I was in more danger of
catching a round from a homeowner at this point, while I was in the
open.

I had traveled another two houses when I
started to see signs of a struggle. This was no CSI crime scene
where I needed a magnifying glass and special chemicals. The
headless zombie kind of gave it away, followed by a second and a
third. I was passing the front of the house, and the zombie bodies
were beginning to stack up. My heart or maybe my stomach or just
plain both were struggling to find room in my throat. On the right
side of the house, I could see a six-foot privacy fence. The gate
was gone or buried under even more zombie bodies. It was impossible
to not step on a zombie as I made my way through the constricted
area. I now heard the distinctive sound of metal on metal. The
repeated click was nerve-wracking. I pictured all sorts of
travesties, but nothing could live up to the truth. I turned into
the backyard, thankful that the space opened up and I could stop
stepping on bodies. Twenty to thirty zombies lay strewn about, some
with bullet holes, most with caved-in skulls, some with sliced off
arms and decapitated heads.