Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (25 page)

And then blissful sweet air! Paul’s chest
heaved with the glory of it. The cold of the night was exhilarating
on his heated skin. Paul glanced over and back to the car. Death
was becoming a phantom shadow once again. Paul let loose a scream
that Jamie Lee Curtis would have been proud of as Mike dragged him
further away from the pops and cracks of his car while it went
through its death throes. Paul looked one more time into the car
before he passed out. Death flared brightly for a moment and then
was gone.

“Did you see that?” Paul asked. But Mike was
looking in the other direction and Paul had the feeling he might
have already blacked out.

When he awoke three hours later in the
hospital, he was hooked up to a variety of machines, each with its
own distinctive trills and beeps. Mike was asleep in the bed next
to him and Dennis was nowhere in sight.

“Mike? You awake?” Paul asked, barely above a
whisper. His chest hurt, but it wasn’t the all-consuming pain that
it had been in the car.

“Dude, they gave me Diadlin. If I open my
eyes, the room spins like a top on a playing record,” Mike
said.

“Is it any good?” Paul asked.

“It’s unreal, I’ve tripped with less
intensity.”

“Where’s Dennis?” Paul asked, concerned that
possibly their friend hadn’t made it.

“I think he went to get some potato
chips.”

“Huh?”

“He’s fine. Got a knot on his head; that’s
about it. I think he’s going home tomorrow.”

“What about you?”

“Compound fracture on my left arm, no
baseball for me this spring. But if they keep giving me this shit,
I won’t really care.”

“Dude, I’m sorry,” Paul said, almost
crying.

“For what? It was an accident.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t so
fucked up.”

“Nobody died, man.”

“We would have, if not for you.”

“I guess that makes me a hero,” Mike said.
Paul knew he was kidding but kidding or not, it was the truth.

“I guess it does.”

“Dude, you’re embarrassing me, and you need
to be quiet for a while. I think I’ve found a way to move things
with my mind.”

“Are you shitting me?”

“Nope, try it man. You’re on the same shit as
I am.”

The remainder of the night went quietly as
Paul and Mike tried to move things around their room with mind
control. It was an unsuccessful experiment, but thoroughly enjoyed
by both.

***

Paul was still staring deeply at the candle;
half of it had burned. “Four hours, I can’t have too much time
left. I sure wish I could get on WebMD and see what the symptoms
were, so I’d know when to take myself out…to the disco!” He
laughed. “Okay let me run down everything I’m feeling. My right
ankle twinges and my left foot burns a little, my eyes feel like
someone is hanging barbells on them, my mouth tastes like dry
cotton and…that’s about it. No fever, no craving for brains. Can
the virus not survive outside the host? Come on, how long would it
have taken the bullet to go from its head to my foot? That can’t be
it. Was the bullet too hot for the virus to survive?” Hope, which
was at an all time low in Paul, surged. “It’s a pathogen right? How
hot was the bullet? It’s got to be some absurdly high temperature,
right? Maybe it cooked it! I friggin’ might be alright.” Paul
thought about getting up and doing a jig, but even in his
painkiller-addled mind, he knew that to be the bad idea that it
sounded like.

Chapter Fourteen – Mike Journal Entry
9

“What are you doing, Mike?” Gary shouted from a window he had just
opened.

“He’s been bit,” I said. At this point, I was
full on crying.

I watched as Gary’s head dropped. The zombies
who had previously been at the front door began to quickly move to
the sound of Gary’s voice. I was just so sick of it all. The
pressure of everything was taking its toll. My friend was dying
because of some stupid idea I had of giving Eliza a black eye. Even
if I had succeeded in killing the bitch, it wouldn’t have been
worth the price of my friend.

“What are you going to do?” Gary asked. He
was obscured by the zombies, but his words were not.

Just stop!!
I screamed in my head. The
zombies by the window didn’t move away, but they did stop jostling
in their ever earnest need to eat us.

“Wow, that was weird,” Josh said, I guess
from behind Gary. “They look like they’re frozen.”

“Mike, what’s going on?” Gary asked, but I
barely heard it as I looked over to BT, whose spasms had stopped.
He wiped his lip, and then began to stand up. I looked up into his
eyes as he got to his full stature.

“You alright?” I asked him, fearful of his
answer.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “The pain
stopped.”

“Stopped? That’s the word you’d use to
describe what happened?” I asked him, a glimmer of hope beginning
to flower.

“I guess. I can’t think of a better way to
describe it. One second, I was in such intense pain, I couldn’t
think, and the next I wasn’t. What’s going on?” he asked. Then he
looked at the grin, which I think was spreading across my face.

“I think I’ve gone two up on the lifesaving
competition,” I told him.

Horror showed in his eyes. “No way!” he
sputtered out. “I just killed fifteen zombies with a damn baseball
bat! I think I just saved your ass, right then! At worst, making us
even.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I
was never really in danger. The closest I came to getting hurt was
when part of his bat almost hit me. “Fine. I’ll give you that one,
although I might lodge a formal protest.”

“What’s going on, Mike?” BT asked, picking up
on my now good mood. It was hard not to. I had just been holding a
gun to his head and now I was smiling like it was Christmas day and
I was seven years old.

“I’ll explain it to you when we get in the
house. Come on, my friend.”

Within a few moments, we were at the door
having a rather heated, one-way discussion with Mary. She was doing
most of the yelling and we were doing most of the listening.

“Was he bit?” she asked for maybe the
umpteenth time.

“Well technically, yes,” I answered her in
kind.

“Well then, didn’t I already tell you that
you cannot bring him in?” Her pitch elevated each time she asked
the question in the hopes that it would finally register with us on
some level.

“His name is BT,” I told her.

“Don’t!” she yelled even louder. I can’t
imagine how it must have echoed in that small house. She was making
my ears ring and I was on the other side of a thick steel door. “I
do not want to know what his name was.”

“I’m telling you, I’ve stopped it. He won’t
become a zombie now.”

“Holy shit!” she yelled. “Do you see
that?”

BT and I looked around, thinking there must
be some new threat.

“I think I just saw a fat pig flying!” she
continued.

“Hilarious, Mary. I’m telling you he isn’t in
any imminent danger of turning into a zombie.”

“Imminent?” BT asked quietly.

I shushed him with my hand. “I’ll explain
later.”

“Imminent?” he asked again.

“Gary, could you please tell her?” I asked my
brother through the door.

“Tell her what, Mike? I wouldn’t even know
what to say, and besides this is her house.”

“Come on Captain Fix-It, tell me how you
stopped a virus once again with your mind control.” Mary was
taunting me with a sneer in her voice.

“Did you see the zombies by your bedroom
window?” I asked her.

“She’s nodding her head,” Josh said for his
silent mother.

“Why do you think they just stopped
attacking?” I asked, trying a different avenue.

“They’re just asleep or something. Zombies
sleeping doesn’t mean that you’ve learned how to cure people from a
zombie bite,” she said.

“I never said anything about a cure,” I told
her.

“I’m not cured?” BT asked quietly.

“Mary, please, I need to get his wound
cleaned out and a quiet place to think about this.”

“Why don’t you just fix his germs along with
the virus, or whatever the hell it is?”

“Mary, I’m not a doctor.”

“But yet, you’ve somehow managed to stop
zombieism.”

There was that sneer again; it was
infuriating. “It’s not like that. I told you. I was given some sort
of link to them and I have some moderate control, if they are
nearby.”

“How nearby?” BT asked. “I mean, do I have to
go into the bathroom with you now?” BT asked, looking completely
mortified.

“I shouldn’t have even let you in! You
jeopardized my entire family.”

She was right, anyone around me was in more
trouble just for being in proximity. I couldn’t argue that
point.

“What if I can guarantee you that I can
control a zombie if it is around me?” I asked, but Mary didn’t
respond.

“She’s listening,” Josh said.

“Meet me back by the bedroom window.”

“What are you going to do?” Gary asked.

“Just hand me some rounds through the
windows,” I told him.

The six zombies were right where I had left
them. Gary dropped the rounds out the window, not wanting to expose
any part of himself, I couldn’t blame him.

I loaded my rifle up. “You guys might want to
cover your ears and turn away.” Nobody immediately moved to do
either of those things until I placed a round dead center in the
forehead of the closest zombie. Mary was shouting something, but I
couldn’t hear anything, at least not until the fifth zombie fell,
leaving one zombie standing.

“…Does that prove?” she was yelling.

“Huh?” I asked; my ears were ringing. I had
not felt anything from dropping those five zombies. I was wondering
if it was due to the loss of my soul or the callousness of the
world we now lived in. Both reasons sucked. I didn’t see one being
much better than the other.

“What does that prove? You killed five
sleeping zombies. Aren’t you the great white hunter?” she said with
contempt.

I didn’t answer her because it would have
been laced with expletives and I didn’t feel like going down that
road. Looking back, I wish we had just gotten Gary and gone to a
different house.

I handed BT my rifle.

“Now what?” he asked. He had, apparently, not
gotten the memo.

I was staring intently at the zombie. Its
frozen state evaporated as its hunger lust came back into its eyes.
BT immediately brought the rifle up.

“Hold on,” I told him; the zombie did a quick
scan of those around him.

“Mike, this really has a feeling of one of
those things that sounds way better on paper,” Gary said.

The zombie didn’t seem very interested in me,
but BT looked pretty good from the way the zombie was licking its
lips.

“That’s disgusting,” BT said, holding the
rifle up; the barrel was almost touching its forehead. “Mike, I
have absolutely no idea what you’re up to, but I’d really like to
know what you’re up to.”

“See how he’s keeping it from attacking?”
Josh told his mother. The kid was pleading for my case. His mother
hurrumphed.

With some effort, I was able to pull the
zombie’s attention away from BT to myself, but it kept looking over
at BT, hoping he wasn’t going to leave.

“People don’t get it. I’m always telling them
the dark meat is sweeter,” BT said.

“There is no way you just said that in this
situation,” I said, trying to keep all my attention focused on the
zombie.

“Why’d you kill all the other zombies?” Josh
asked.

“Because I wouldn’t have gotten them all to
listen,” I answered him. I could feel the temperature of my body
begin to rise as I worked in overdrive to try out an experiment I
wasn’t even certain would work.

“If you’re all focused on this one,” BT
asked, “am I going to be alright?”

“You’ll be fine, I have enough concentration
to work on this zombie and keep your virus at bay, but if people
keep asking me questions, my strength is going to get a little
diluted.”

“Mike! Come on, brother! What are you doing?”
Gary asked.

“Zip it, man!” BT said, taking one hand off
the rifle and pointing a huge finger in Gary’s direction.

I think it was the first time I had ever seen
BT raise his voice to Gary, but I guess when you have the threat of
becoming a zombie hanging over your head, all bets are off.

The zombie jerkily moved closer to me. It was
like trying to force magnets of the same polarization together. The
zombie really did not want anything to do with me. I kept reeling
him in closer. My eyes were watering from the stink of it. Its
gray, vein-lined face was less than six inches from mine. It
finally stopped trying to find BT and its eyes locked onto mine.
Its mouth opened up. It ran its gore-encrusted tongue over the
shards of its remaining teeth. This one looked like it had eaten a
bag of marbles; blood welled up from where its tongue made
contact.