The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory Read online

  Death by toothpick. Told you.

  Two were alive, but one wouldn’t be for long. The guy I shot in the back was trying to breathe, but his lungs were on the pavement in front of him. I gave him a quick tap to the dome for a finish. Alvarez had the surviving captive. Ship was about to crush some heads with his boot, but I stopped him. “Fuck ‘em. Let ‘em turn.”

  The last survivor was on his knees with a bunch of guns trained on him. “You gonna kill me now?”

  “Yup,” I answered and pointed my weapon at his face. He pissed himself and I lowered my weapon. I shook my head and called him a pussy. He was both seething and glad that I hadn’t shot him. He would also need a change of pants.

  A small crowd of undead had heard the commotion and was making its way toward us, but they were far off.

  “You got him?” Remo was speaking to Alvarez about covering the remaining asshole.

  Alvarez smiled a wicked smile. “Yeah. If he moves, or if any more of his buddies show up, I’ll shoot him in the lower spine. Won’t kill him, but he won’t walk again. Should be fun in today’s world.”

  The rest of us ran to get our stuff. There was quite a bit, but we made it in two trips. The infected were closer by the time we finished loading, but we had plenty of time. Alvarez had wasted another stray that had come from the surrounding neighborhood, and had destroyed all the shitheads who I wanted to turn. I asked him why and he said they had started to move.

  The truck was a Texas truck, and had all kinds of accoutrements: Rifle rack, huge tires, roll-cage with lights, dual exhaust, and a shit-ton of bumper stickers. Texas Big!, I Brake For Big Hair, They Can Take My Gun When They Pry It From My Cold Dead Hands. I’m sure there is some type of governmental regulation in Texas clearly stating mandatory four-wheel drive, so we got that too. The only issue was that the truck was a short-bed.

  Remo would drive. The kids, the girls, and Tim would ride up front, while Ship, Alvarez, and I, would ride in the bed with our shit, although I didn’t see any spare gas cans in the bed. We climbed in, and I began to reload my MP5 magazine. It was cramped back there, but on his best day, Ship would take up three spaces in the cab. He had to be back with us.

  “What about me?” the surviving asshole asked.

  “You can fuck off and die for all I care. I would shoot you now, but I think watching you run is better.” I pointed exaggeratedly to the fifteen or so infected a hundred feet away. He hadn’t seen them until now, so the douche’s eyes bugged.

  He held his hands out. “You gotta cut this!” He was referring to the zip-tie that Alvarez had cuffed him with.

  “Did you not hear the die part of fuck off and die?” I banged on the back of the cab, and Remo threw the truck in drive. The guy began running back toward the lodge, his hands still tied in front of him.

  “His name is Dave,” Alvarez told me.

  I cupped my palms, bullhorn-style, in front of my mouth, to get a good echoing yell. “Bye, Dave!”

  Remo thumped into one undead as we zoomed down the street. He avoided the others, some of whom had abandoned the chase for the truck as they noticed Dave running away.

  I harrumphed. “At least Davey-boy will have a nice new boat to keep him safe.” Ship smiled and dug in his pocket.

  He held up and jingled a set of keys attached to a small float.

  Momentary Respites and Mister Ed

  Turns out, we weren’t on a peninsula. Tim had misread the map, thinking the Port Mansfield Chamber of Commerce was where we were, when in fact, it was the Get-A-Way Adventures Lodge. Shit happens. It was definitely a good thing that we weren’t on a piece of land surrounded by water on three sides while driving a truck, because there were a lot of infected to contend with.

  I don’t know how we kept finding legions of zombies in very small towns, but there it is. They got thick fast, and with the abandoned vehicles, (this is Texas, so they were all giant fucking trucks), fuck-tons of infected, and coastal roads that hadn’t been maintained, we only had a top speed of about ten miles per hour.

  Remo pulled up behind a jackknifed eighteen-wheeler in front of Sweet Gregory P’s Smokehouse Grill. I wanted some ribs. The jarhead skirted the big rig to the left, and ran smack-dab into a hidden horde of about fifty shamblers. I had hardly ever… no, wait, I had never seen Remo lose his cool, but when he ploughed into the first ranks of pus bags, and they all turned to look at us, I heard him yell, “Fuck!” before he threw the truck into reverse. The vehicle sputtered and died, and we all collectively shit our pants. The things were slapping on the hood and all four windows went up quickly while Remo fought to bring the truck back to life.

  It was that typical horror-movie scenario where you groan when the vehicle won’t start and you think cliché man, cliché. Well fuck you, you weren’t there. Try it. When the first of them reached over my side of the truck bed and brushed my naked bicep with its rotten fingers, I thought for sure we were screwed. They were three deep and getting deeper around the sides of the truck before we even had a chance to fire on them. Ship used his machete, trying to save on ammo, but F that noise, I selectively fired into the group with my MP5, dropping them one at a time. Alvarez was firing too, and his M4 was damn loud. One of his expelled brass casings hit me in the cheek, which caused me to miss my target. There were too many of them. Fifty might not sound like a lot to you, but when they’re so dense they begin using their destroyed brothers as steps to climb into the truck, fifty is more than enough.

  Dusty, who was usually as quiet as a mouse, and had learned to keep his dog-yap shut, went ape-shit, and began barking like he and rabies were well acquainted.

  Alvarez and I both yelled “Loading!” together, but there was no time. The MP5 isn’t really a rifle, it’s a big pistol. It’s not made for thumping victims, melee style, but I smashed it into one of the things that had almost made its way into the truck bed, then another. Remo finally got the truck started and he backed up quickly, dragging a few of the infected with us, and almost throwing Alvarez and me onto the street. The three of us in the back shook off the hitchhikers with our weapons, the infected rag-dolling to the pavement at fifteen (yeah, I know that’s more than the top-speed I just mentioned, but this was a special event) miles per hour or so. We were finally clear a few moments after Remo got us turned around. There were a dozen and a half bodies in the street behind us. The entire ordeal had taken maybe forty seconds, but that’s how fast your world can go to hell.

  We made it to Route 186 and stopped to catch our breath for a few minutes when there was nothing on either side of us but scrub land. Tower Road was off to our left, but I didn’t see any towers, just a couple big radio antennas. The truck was not running well, but it was all we had. We piled out of the vehicle and I realized I was getting a sunburn on my back and shoulders.

  Remo spread a big map across the asphalt road while Tim and Alvarez kept watch. Ship pointed out the Charles Johnson Airport to the northeast on the map, but we didn’t know what it would look like. Who knew if there were any planes that would carry nine plus our gear? Not to mention the condition of the runway might be for shit, and there was the question of fuel stability. Then there was the landing part. I had done the whole plane thing twice already, and I wasn’t in the mood to crash again. Tim had called it a water landing, but fuck that, we had crashed into the damn Gulf of Mexico. Screw planes. Screw ‘em.

  The plan was to head south along Route 186, then hook east. We would look for more supplies in a small town called San Perlita if it wasn’t too overrun.

  We made San Perlita in no time. The little town was empty. Devoid of anything, living or dead. I didn’t so much as see a mosquito. Are you getting it was empty? Because it was empty. It was also hot. Over the one-hundred mark on the thermometer on a random brick-walled house.

  We were able to get a couple of gas cans, and I added a bit of the paint thinner to the fuel we scrounged. Tim, Richy, and I put another eight or nine gallons of treated gas in the tank.

  Raym
ondville was a few more miles down the road. It would be dark in a few hours, and we figured we would loot what we could and move on. This was a bigger town, so we decided to stick together as a group. We pulled into a CVS parking lot, looking to loot anything we could. The front door to the drug store was gone. The whole thing. Someone must have pulled the door off with their vehicle, but they also must have taken it with them because it was nowhere to be seen.

  WTF? Where was the door?

  We entered as a group, Dusty, Chloe, and Alvarez standing guard at the front entrance. (I almost wrote front doors). One side of the place had been cleared out, and there were bloodstains and drag marks at the top of one of the aisles. The place was gloomy, but not dark, with the windows letting in the end of the daylight. We cleared it in under two minutes and began to shove shit in bags. We got as many drinks as we could out of the dark refrigerators, and made six trips full of water, soda, and snacks. There wasn’t any real food, but we were able to procure a whole bunch of nuts and dried fruits. We left feeling pretty good. Hadn’t seen an infected and got some good stuff.

  Is it some latent sense of camaraderie that makes these fucking things group up? There are lone zombies all over the place, I know, but if there is a large swarm, any infected nearby will join it. Maybe it’s a flock mentality where there’s both safety in numbers, and a better chance of success in hunting is achieved. Maybe it’s just because a swarm of the rotten bastards makes so much noise that the others follow the sound. I don’t know.

  What I do know is that, at the risk of repeating the sentiment in the last sentence, a large group of infected is fucking loud. This is what I’m staring at now, inside the cupola on the peak of the red-tiled roof of the Sleepy Times Motel, just off of Route 186 in Raymondville, Texas.

  The truck sputtered when we were passing Sleepy Times, and Remo pulled in. The motel was a two-story with eight rooms on each floor and an attached office kitty-corner to the main structure. Both ends of the small building had wooden stairs and both floors had an ice machine and vending machines equidistant from the stairs.

  The truck engine quit when we were in a parking spot outside the main office. This also had a thermometer, and yeah, it was still on the north side of one-hundred. Remo tried to start the truck a few times to no avail. “Pop the hood,” I told him, and we piled out.

  I inspected a few things on the truck while Remo and Ship looked the motel over. I did what I do best, but couldn’t find anything wrong with the exterior engine components or lines. Whoever had owned this truck before must have been a bit of a gear-head. The engine was pristine, with a chrome fan and valve covers, and pretty red and blue bushings and bolt caps.

  I came to the conclusion that it was our fuel, but draining and refilling was going to be a bitch. We would need another vehicle, and some more fuel. Maybe I hadn’t added enough xylene, or maybe the gas was too far-gone. Neither of those ideas changed the fact that when Alvarez nudged me and I looked across the parking lot, I saw something weird.

  A black cloud was coming our way, maybe a mile off across the scrub. No, Dear Reader, not a funnel cloud, that’s a different book. This was just… I don’t know how to describe it; weird. It was really low, and it moved like no cloud I’ve seen. I radioed to the guys, and when they returned, Ship’s eyes got really big. He pointed to the motel and began to scribble. He passed me the note when he was done and I shared it with everyone as he began to grab shit out of the back of the truck. The dog was uttering a low growl.

  That is a cloud of insects. The only reason there would be a cloud that big is if there were an equally large group of undead.

  The entire band of us, other than Ship and our furry friend, squinted into the distance. I couldn’t make out any infected, but Ship was rarely wrong, and what he had just said made sense. There was no time to get another vehicle, pack our shit in it, and hope it worked. There was no place to hide or run to either. I was about to start barking commands, but Remo beat me to it.

  “Everybody get as much stuff as you can, and get it to the top floor. Alvarez, you and I will clear the rooms now.”

  No zombies jumped at them from the rooms upstairs, which I consider a boon. Ship took off down the upstairs hallway after he had brought a bunch of stuff into one of the rooms. He disappeared around the corner to the far set of stairs. I packed the shit in one room, checked my MP5 magazines, then went to see what Ship was doing. He had begun making a bit of a racket at a time when we should be extremely quiet. I turned the corner and had to marvel, yet again, at Ship’s ability to be a smarty-pants and the Hulk at the same time. He didn’t have any tools, so he used brute strength to straight-up rip the treads off of the stairs. He got to the fourth one before he saw me. I nodded to him and he nodded back.

  I called to Kat, and she came running. “Cover Ship. I’m going to start on the other set of stairs.” She nodded and began scanning without a word. I booked it down to the truck, checked behind the rear bench seats, and lo and behold, there was a toolbox. I love Texans. I came back with the box, which not only held a plethora of useful tools, but contained a .38 special revolver and a half a carton of shells. I feel compelled to reiterate my affection for all things Texas. You put an already-fired piece of brass in a vehicle by mistake, and it’s a felony in Massachusetts. Here they have guns in toolboxes. I grabbed Alvarez, and the two of us began ripping off the treads of the east-side stairs. There were no risers, but the center stringer had to go as well. Never know if a zombie gymnast will be able to negotiate the balance-beam of stringer-steps.

  Oh, sorry. Treads are the part of the stairs you step on. Risers are the vertical part of the stairs, but this was an open stairway (you could look through them), so there were no risers. The stringers are what the treads and risers are nailed to. Now you can look at steps and know what the fuck each piece is. Yay.

  It took fifteen minutes for Alvarez and me to destroy our set of stairs. When I looked up, dripping with sweat, Ship was leaning against the second-floor wall, drinking a 20-ounce Pepsi. He passed one to Alvarez, who uncapped and drank quite a bit before letting out a billion decibel belch. I looked longingly at the soda, and Ship passed me my very own cola. Yup, you read me right; cola. I looked at it, then at him. He blinked, smiled, reached behind him, and passed me a Mountain Dew. He winked and I smiled as I took a huge pull. I let out a burp too, but it was nothing compared to my friend’s. Alvarez shook his head, “Pussy.”

  The toolbox held a small (very small) hand saw, and we used that and Ship’s giant foot to rid us of both center stringers. There was no way any infected was getting up here now.

  “Let’s get inside,” Remo said, looking at the cloud. It had gotten significantly closer, and we could barely make out figures moving beneath it. Lots of figures. I followed Kat into the second room, and holy shit. Just holy shit. Two twin beds on the right, with a chair, a small table, a beat-up TV, and a dime-store picture of a horse on the wall. It looked like a bad paint-by-numbers jobbie, and that was the good part. Hideous black and white wallpaper adorned the walls with hunting pictorials from the 1700s. Muskets and deer and did I mention holy shit? I’m no interior decorator, but, damn. Shouldn’t there be good-old-boys toting lever action rifles and wearing cowboy hats? Dusty was sitting on the floor in the heat, his tongue lolling, staring at that horrible wallpaper. I’ve heard that dogs only see in black and white. This poor fucker probably loved the scenes.

  Each room had two doors that opened into the other rooms as well. Soon, we had the entire top floor for ourselves. Every room had identical RCA TVs and that horrible wallpaper.

  It was perfect. We were off the ground and the pus bags couldn’t get to us, so we ate, cleaned our weapons, and waited.

  The sound hit us first. You know it, that awful hacking rasp. Moans, cries, you’ve heard it. The bugs hit us next. All kinds, but mostly flies. They swarmed the motel, but weren’t interested in us when they had a mobile smorgasbord. There were fuck-tons of them on the screens, and soon, the
rooms had a few buzzing around as well.

  We had the curtains drawn, but we kept peeking. The first of them stumbled into the parking lot a half hour before dark. It was about then that I got a look at my first, honest-to-God swarm since Keesler Air Force Base was overrun in Mississippi. There were thousands. They must have come from one of the cities nearby, and it was just my luck that they picked this direction to travel. The kids sat back down and actually hugged each other. They had never seen anything like this. It was new for Tim too, but he took it differently. He had seen mega-swarms on satellite cameras, but not up close.

  He was fascinated. “Look at the way they move. They’re like a flock of birds, or a school of fish. There doesn’t seem to be any alpha, they just go whichever way they go. I wonder if a noise or something they saw in any direction would make them go in that direction until they received some other stimuli?” Ship passed him a note, and Tim nodded vehemently. “Yes! I agree!”

  He had said that way too loud, and everybody hissed at him to Shhh! Tim looked properly chastised, and he and Ship moved down a couple of rooms to speak nerd.

  The kids looked scared, so I tried to comfort them. “Don’t worry, as long as we’re quiet, they’ll move off while we sleep tonight.”