Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (29 page)

“I need to kill her,” Brian pleaded.

Paul pointed to the house he had just come
from.

Deneaux threw the cigarette she had finished
onto the floor, grounding it out with her foot. “Son of a bitch,”
she said calmly as she lit another coffin nail.

Brian started walking towards the house. Paul
stayed where he was. He wanted to go, but he had only one boot on
and no weapon.

“I really need to think things out before I
do them,” he said as he watched Brian approach the house.

Brian was halfway up the drive when he
dropped onto his knees. Crippling stomach cramps hunched him over
as his body expelled everything in his stomach. Ropy strings of
blood and vomit hung from his chin as he stood back up.

Brian stood still in the driveway for a
second longer; he then turned around to look at Paul.

“Fuck me,” Paul mumbled. He wasn’t going
anywhere fast and now Brian wasn’t Brian anymore. Paul got into a
reasonable facsimile of a fighting stance.

Brian started running full tilt. “I love you,
Erin,” Paul said as Brian halved the distance. Bone, blood and
brain sprayed across Paul’s face as Brian’s body, sans the head
skidded past. Paul had yet to move from his fighting stance.

“You look like chum for sharks, you should
get in here,” Deneaux said from the porch of the small house, her
rifle still smoking from the shot she had taken.

The shock of the event took a while to wear
off. It was more the sounds of the dead in the distance that got
him moving. It was still a fifty-fifty debate on whether or not to
go back into that house or just keep wandering down the road. “I
still need my boot,” he said, heading towards the house.

“What do you think you know?” Deneaux asked
Paul as he walked over the threshold to the house.

Paul noted that she had lit another cigarette
and was sitting on the couch, the rifle draped across her lap.

“I know Brian turned into a zombie and you
saved my life by killing him.”

“That’s all you need to remember,” she said,
then taking a large drag from her smoke. He also noted that she had
not so much as a quiver in her hand as she did so.

“You’re one cool customer, aren’t you?”

“How do you mean?” she asked as she exhaled
her smoke.

“All I’m saying is you put a bullet into the
brain of one of our traveling companions and you look as calm as if
you were watching Lawrence Welk re-runs.”

“Oh I loved him.”

“Brian?”

“Lawrence Welk, you twit. That was before
television began to cater to the masses and we ended up with drivel
like Charlie’s Angels.”

Paul didn’t see the reason to argue the
merits of TV, but anything with Farrah Fawcett fueling his young
hormones was okay with him.

“What about Brian?”

“What about him? He was a zombie. Should I
have allowed him to eat you? Would that make you feel better?”

“No, and thank you for saving my life, but I
find your lack of compassion somewhat startling.”

“I killed a zombie, like I’ve killed a dozen
times before. I feel the same as if I killed a pheasant, maybe
less. At least we ate those.”

“I guess I don’t understand it.”

“Tell me what should I feel?” Deneaux asked
coolly taking another drag. “Should I go tell my therapist about my
touchy-feely feelings, about how I’m all broken up about Brian’s
death? It is a survival-of-the-fittest world out there and he
succumbed and now he’s dead; it’s as simple as that.”

Paul didn’t think it was quite that simple,
but she held the gun and he didn’t think she’d have any problem
using it on him. “I’m just coming over to get my shoe.”

Mrs. Deneaux tensed her hands on the rifle.
“Let’s not have any accidents.”

Paul couldn’t help himself. “Is that what
you’re calling what happened to Brian?”

“I don’t know what you think you know, but I
saw him get bit by a zombie. I didn’t stick around to see the
ending to an event I already knew the conclusion of.”

Paul bent down to grab his shoe. Deneaux was
mostly showing indifference, but Paul knew it was an act. And then
she struck deeply and cruelly.

“Maybe if you weren’t so busy being inept and
shooting yourself, you would have been able to get back and prevent
the whole thing.” Her cold eyes remained on his the whole time.

“You really are a bitch,” he told her, but
her words cut deep. He had been feeling exactly that, but to have
them spoken from someone else, even someone he couldn’t stand,
hurt.

The fight was out of Paul and she knew it,
she focused her attention away and to somewhere deep within her own
dark thoughts.

“I’m going to try and find Mike.”

“Not with this rifle,” she told him.

“It’s mine, Deneaux.”

“It was, but it belongs in the hands of
someone who knows how to use it.”

“Whatever. Keep it, I hope you shoot yourself
with it,” Paul said angrily.

“Oh sweetie, I’m not you,” Deneaux laughed as
Paul pulled the front door shut behind him.

He hobbled to the driveway, sprained ankle,
shot foot and no weapon, but he liked his odds more now than he did
inside the house.

Chapter Seventeen – Mike Journal Entry
10

As
worked up as BT was, he still fell asleep rather easily. His legs
were hanging off the large couch, but he didn’t seem to mind too
much. I had gone outside to pull the dead zombies around Mary’s
house away. I was pulling the last disgusting wretch away when Gary
showed up beside me.

“Need some help?” he asked.

“How long you been watching?” I asked.

“About half an hour.”

“Nice. I think I can finish this off on my
own.”

“Did you hear that?” Gary asked as the body I
was pulling was making excessively loud squishy noises. I did not
dwell on what could be causing it.

I stood up straight, I wanted to cup my ear
to get a better grasp on any incoming sound, but I’d be damned if I
was bringing those gloves anywhere near my head.

“I didn’t hear anything. What was it?”

“Gunshot.”

“Just one?”

“That’s all I heard, but it was impossible to
hear much beyond your bellyaching about moving these zombies.”

“You could have helped.”

“Could have.”

“Fine, smart-ass, any idea which direction
the shot came from?”

“Best guess is back that way,” Gary said,
pointing to the side and back of Mary’s backyard.

“You think it’s Paul and them?” I asked,
hoping, although how would he know?

“My guess is probably. Haven’t heard much of
anything since we pulled into this town and now a gunshot.”

“I’m going to check it out.” I had made the
decision there and then.

“Well, let me get some stuff.”

“I didn’t mean to volunteer you too.”

“That’s alright. I feel like doing
something.”

“Helping me move all these zombies would have
been helpful.”

“Probably would have,” Gary said as he headed
back to the house to go and grab a few supplies.

I dropped the gloves on top of the last
zombie I moved. I swear I could feel microbes crawling around on
top of my skin, looking for a particularly large pore to gain
access into my system so that they could wreak their havoc. Nothing
short of a bath in bleach was going to make me feel any better.

“You alright?” Gary asked, coming back a few
moments later.

He handed me a bottle of liquid,
anti-bacterial hand soap. I contemplated kissing him.

“I’m with you if you want to go, but are you
so sure this is a good idea?” Gary asked.

I knew what he meant, we were low on ammo, it
was nighttime and we weren’t really sure what we were walking
towards. “Nothing else going on.”

“That’s the spirit,” he said sarcastically.
“Why did BT think staying with you was a good idea?”

“Beats me. Let’s go and be careful.”

“Did you really think you needed to add that
last part? Were you afraid I might start singing or something?”

“Sorry, it’s just something I added with the
kids all the time, it’s second nature, kind of like saying ‘bless
you’ when someone sneezes.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Gary said huffily.
“It was commonly believed in the middle ages that when a person
sneezed that they could potentially let a demon into their body and
corrupt their soul, that was why people responded with God bless
you. It would keep the demons from taking hold inside.”

“Okay,” I answered confusedly. Gary still
looked peeved. “You still believe in the demons part?” I asked him
cautiously.

“It was rooted in some truth!” he said
heatedly.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Can we go check the
noise out now?”

“Just make sure you say God bless you and not
just bless you or you are not conveying the true meaning of the
message. That shit really infuriates me.”

“And yet I’m labeled as the crazy one. I
demand a recount.”

“Just go. I told Josh I’d read him a story
when we got back.”

“He’s a good kid,” I said absently.

“So’s his mom,” Gary said.

“A good kid?” I asked, turning to face him as
we came to the end of Mary’s backyard.

“I meant good person.”

“Oh no, you’re falling in love. I’ve seen
that look before, we’ve known them less than two days.”

“The heart cares not for such trivial matters
as time.”

“Gary, her ex-husband could still be alive
and even if he is zombie chow, he’s only been gone a few
months.”

“Time is less significant now, Mike. Nobody’s
planning their summer vacations anymore, they’re planning out how
to get their next meal or where the safest place to sleep is.
Nobody gives a shit about the Monday morning commute anymore. It’s
all about the basest of all human instincts.”

“Sex?” I asked.

“Survival,” he corrected. “Could you please
get your thoughts to a loftier perch?”

“But our survival depends on sex,
procreation.”

“What possessed Mom to have a fifth kid?”
Gary asked the heavens. “How can you take something so beautiful as
love and debase it?”

“You’re like the sister I never had,” I told
him. “You can cook AND you have feelings.”

“Feel this,” he said as he smacked me upside
the head.

“Can we maybe get going again?” I asked as I
rubbed my head. “You even hit like a girl.”

We crossed through Mary’s neighbor to the
back and then through their yard and onto the street.

“It was further away,” Gary said as I turned
to him.

“Man, it’s quiet,” I said, turning back
around. “I wish we could hear gunshots. At least, we’d know where
to go.”

“Or where to avoid,” Gary added more
prudently.

“Or that,” I said to him, not really
agreeing.

Chapter
Eighteen

Paul slowly moved down the roadway,
constantly weighing his decision. More than once he had stopped and
pondered going back.

“How dangerous is she really?” Paul asked
himself on more than one occasion. “She saved my life. But she shot
Brian and somehow got him bitten. She’s a snake that lies in the
grass, waiting to strike her unsuspecting victims.” That was
usually enough to get him moving.

Mrs. Deneaux was not worried in the least
about her secret getting out. Paul was a dead man stumbling, she
thought. She even allowed herself a laugh at her pun. Still, she
was not fond of loose ends. More than once, they had come back in
her long and storied life to add some disruption to her plans. She
reasoned with herself that she was down to four rounds and why
waste one on him when the zombies or something equally as deadly
would save her the much-needed bullet. “A ferocious hamster could
take him out right now.” She laughed again, and long-buried, stale
lung smoke ventured out her nose as she chortled.