The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory Page 24

  “Hey,” I whispered, and that did the trick. I would like to tell you that the thing turned slowly and I smoked it, but in actuality, it whipped its head around and came at me instantly. Guess where it grabbed me? Yeah, by the boo-boo arm. That shit hurt, so I responded by bringing an overhead stab down on the forehead of the thing. This thing had a wicked receding hairline, so it was more like a sevenhead instead of a forehead, but the knife went right through his skull and into his brain on the first try.

  It couldn’t have cared less. He jerked his head, and I was so unready for that, my knife went with him. He brought my fucked-up arm to his mouth, and I yanked back so as not to be bitten. Tendrils of agony shot up into my shoulder, but it would be worse if this thing got its way. We played tug of war for my flesh for ten seconds or so before the thing abandoned the game and lunged. The bastard hit me and we both went down over the one in the chair. He landed on me, pinning my already screaming arm between us. He looked into my eyes, and I put my free hand on his throat, wrenching my left arm free from the sandwich. Fuck that hurt, but I was able to get my left forearm under his chin, tear the knife from his skull (took a sec), and stab him in the eye. I scrambled shit about for a second, and the rotten fucker fell on me.

  I shimmied out from under him, gritting my teeth from the pain. Hey, he hadn’t bitten me, so I should count my blessings. I stood, looking out the window, then back into the cube farm.

  Nothing. My undead battle hadn’t been soundless, but it wasn’t loud either. I still needed to be sure I wasn’t going to be inundated with infected. I crept into the cube farm, observing as best I could. I was done playing, so I wiped my knife on a stuffed pig on the corner of one of the cubes and sheathed it. My MP5 would be a bit difficult to use with my injured elbow, but it would be better than what had just happened. I considered staying with the knife to conserve ammo, but conservation wouldn’t help if there were several pus bags at once, and I needed to be prepared.

  The cubes were this sanitary-white material about as high as my lowest rib. They spanned about a seventy-foot length and were three deep with spaces for tables between each grouping. A slim hallway on the right led past the farm, with office doors dotting the wall at mismatched intervals. I had just stepped out of one such office. I checked the cubes as I snuck past them, but other than computer monitors, some dead plants, and a really cool R2D2 bobblehead, there was nothing of value. I would have taken the R2D2, but I didn’t have the space for it. Each cube had a small locker-type closet integrated into the desk, and I decided not to search them until I remembered where I was. This was Texas. There would be guns.

  Except there weren’t. I checked all the lockers and file cabinets, none of which were locked. There were some Chili-cheese Fritos in one locker, but they had been opened, and the prick hadn’t used a chip clip. I shut the doors to the offices as I moved past them.

  There were seven sets of cubes. The third cube held the mostly consumed remains of something in a brown pile of stuff. From the broken-open skull I could see that it had been human. It was gross. None of the other cubes had anything, but the last office held an occupant. He was just standing there. Maybe he had been motionless for months, I don’t know. I do know that I was the impetus for him to move. He was six-two with a huge beard which had once been white, but was now off-white and held morsels of something vile in it. He was also pushing three bills with an enormous belly.

  “Fuck off, dead Santa,” I told him, and gave him a subsonic round to the dome. His head snapped back and his cranial contents sprayed the drop ceiling and paneled wall behind him. Big guys produce big thuds when they fall and this guy was no exception. I waited, ready, but nothing came for me after his landing. Zombie Santa, bringing infection to all the good little boys and girls. Isn’t that just craptastic?

  I got to the exterior doors I had tried to enter a few hours earlier. They were steel fire doors with a key code entry from the street side. Weird to have doors like this on the front of a building, I would have had a glass entry, but whatever. There were no windows in the doors, but one of the offices facing the street had plenty of glass. I peeked. I could see two of the dead bastards milling about out there and figured I could take them easily. I was moving to leave, when a figure streaked past the window in the street. It stopped and looked around, twitching and flexing its hands into claws. It had been a woman, (is it still a woman? Is it human anymore?) and it sprinted at one of the two dead men, stopping short, changing its mind, and running at the other one. It started beating on the dead guy, and then it bit him, tearing a chunk out of the thing’s rotting face.

  The dead thing tried to go about its business, its teeth now clearly visible through the tear in its cheek, but Speedy kept clawing and hammering at it. The dead one didn’t really care about the injuries it was receiving. When it would fall over, it would just stand, and eventually, the Olympic sprinter chick got bored. She ambled off (Texas!) at a slow pace toward the diversion, limbs jerking and looking feverish. I did notice that she didn’t spit out the dead guy’s face. I had seen this before and now it was confirmed that the live infected ate the dead ones. Pity it didn’t go both ways.

  It was beginning to get dark when the noise from the vehicles stopped. The car lot was a good distance from me, but where the only other sounds were from the dead, when the last stereo stopped, it got pretty quiet. I hoped the two dudes trapped in the courthouse got to safety. I also hoped that the stereos drew most of the infected that way because it was time for me to vacate. Twenty-five miles back to my friends. Less than a half-hour ride on the highway in another time. Unless there was traffic.

  Only one of the dead things was swaying near the exit to my sanctuary when I opened the door and stole a quick glance about. It had its back to me, so I just hustled off to the right. I was travelling southwest, and needed to go northeast, so I hooked two rights and furtively avoided any infected I saw. Most were plodding toward the now silent sounds of the diversion, but some just stood there, or meandered around. By the time I got to the community pool house at a rec center, it was pretty dark. There were no more street lights, but I could see a little by way of the stars. I could see a dozen or so through the chain-link fence to my right shuffling around on the concrete by the pool. There was no way the disgusting water was devoid of undead, and the thought of them all bloated and nasty nauseated me. I shook my head in disgust, and almost shit myself when one of them threw itself at the fence between it and me, making an enormous clatter. It began to growl and hiss and shake the fence and shit, which was even louder. All his buddies began to stumble our way, and I looked left. Sure enough, there were a couple on this side of the fence, and they were coming.

  Cradling my arm, which was beginning to tingle, I moved northeast at a brisk pace. I left the pool and associated buildings behind, moving down a road into a more rural suburb. I saw the sign for Doolittle road, but I didn’t know if that meant I was in Doolittle. I sure as fuck didn’t know where the Tractor Supply was.

  I realized I was tired. Damn tired. I did one of those little tests you do when you’ve injured yourself and extended my left arm. It was a mistake, and the dude in charge of pain turned on the juice. I hissed an intake of breath, and was amazed at how loud it was on the empty street.

  Fuck this. I needed some sleep. I picked a little ranch house with a brick front and slunk cautiously into the backyard to case the joint. The rear of the house was surrounded by a six-foot board fence, the neighbor’s houses maybe forty feet away on either side of the house I had chosen. I tapped on the rear slider, waiting for something to come, but it looked as if the house was empty. The slider wasn’t locked, but when I pulled it to try to open it, it jammed on a stick set in the track by the floor. I smiled. This was every thief’s favorite anti-theft device. Setting my pack down for a moment, I stuck my SOG between the two sliders through the weather stripping, gripped the end of the sawed-off broomstick with the tip of my blade, flipped it up, and the house was mine. I locked the fu
lly functional but previously unused lock on the door.

  The zombie apocalypse sucks for so many reasons. Being alone in the zombie apocalypse amps up the suckage a billion fold. Not having someone covering your back, or keeping watch while you sleep, can be deadly, especially when you’re breaking into a place to sleep. Fucking horse!

  I could see starlight glinting off chrome, so I assumed I was in the kitchen. The entire house was shrouded in darkness, but I was nervous about using my tactical light. So, do I bump headlong into an undead monster in the pitch black, or turn the light on and attract a horde of a hundred thousand? Either one was a potential death sentence, so I might as well not collide with a zombie in the house. I flicked the light on my MP5 and panned it around low. The house was dusty, but well kept. All the windows in the kitchen and living room looked intact. I turned left and flashed the light down a short hall. Two doors on the left, one on the right, and one at the end.

  I crept into the front room. Two chairs and a couch in front of a big picture window facing a silent TV. Pictures adorned the wall, and there were some in frames on a couple of small end tables, and a big one depicting a young soldier displayed on an easel with a folded US flag in a triangular glass case. Sorry for your loss, house.

  I hooked a left, going down the short hall of this small dwelling. First door on the left was a bathroom. Standard stuff except for the small carpet and matching toilet seat cover. Horrible dark green and completely out of place. Yuk.

  Right side door led to a small bedroom. The room was devoid of monsters and everything else, except a bed. All the shit in this room had been moved out.

  Same gig for the second door on the left, but this one had been lived in. Teenage boy by the look of the shit in there. Poster of a band I never heard of on the wall, a Yoda poster with Do Or Do Not, There Is No Try on the bottom, a poster of some hot chick I didn’t recognize in a bikini. Shit tons of video games and a computer on a desk. I closed the door and moved to the last room.

  Fuck me. A mom, a dad, and a teenage boy, all with holes in their heads, were lying on the bed. The small revolver on the floor next to the dad. So the family loses a son and brother probably in some country halfway around the world, then the plague hits, and the idea of being eaten is strong enough to make the family check out as a group. I can’t figure out if I respect that or not.

  There was no smell, the three of them having been dead for more than a year, but I knew that the undead could smell the living and I couldn’t, so maybe they could smell the dead too. If so, the family would mask my stench a little, so I opted for the teenager’s room. It was homier than the older son’s empty box.

  The lock on the kid’s door was as completely useless as the door itself, but I locked it anyway. I kept my clothes and boots on, and my pack next to the bed just in case I had to make a hasty exit. I put my MP5 on safe, and put my Sig under the pillow, which I shook out to rid it of dust. There wasn’t much. My SOG was sleeping next to me.

  Exhausted, I sat on the bed and swung my feet up. I crossed my fingers behind my head and thought about where I had been since this whole thing started. I’d been all over the country and travelled more than I had before travel was deadly. I’d met great people, who I now considered family, and I had committed murder. Living in a survivalist’s house, a gated community, a military base, an oil rig, an underground government facility, and now on a horse ranch had added to my skillset as well.

  I had also learned not only how to survive, but how to kill from the toughest, most well-trained soldiers and sailors on earth.

  My apology to Remo for lighting him up at dinner had gone over with few words. We both understood each other. He had also said he was sorry for calling me out the way he did. We left it at that.

  I drifted off thinking about Shaitan. That bastard was going to get an earful if he wasn’t already zombie chow.

  The Devil and Those Trapped

  T’was the night I was alone, no friends to be had,

  In the next room a dead mom, son, and dad.

  My Sig and my SOG placed next to me for fun.

  And on the bed leaning, a submachine gun.

  I lay in the youngest boy’s twin-size bed,

  Weapons close, to fend off the dead.

  I had searched the house over, bedrooms and halls,

  To make sure no zombies would bite off my balls.

  Visions of pus bags shot through my head,

  Remember: the family were all fuk’n dead.

  The father had shot them so they wouldn’t rise,

  Yet I heard sounds resembling undead cries.

  I sat up quickly, I don’t fuk’n spring,

  Realizing my refuge held an undead thing.

  Sounds from inside, real close, hereabout,

  Made me gather my weapons to check that shit out.

  Sure as shit I could hear them, I don’t know how many,

  It didn’t matter, the frightening number was any.

  How had they found me? I questioned myself,

  I had snuck in here like a deranged elf.

  I checked my guns, my knife, and my stuff,

  Thanking God I hadn’t slept in the buff.

  The things were anxious, and looking for me,

  They scared me so much that I had to pee.

  A scream from the kitchen, a guttural growl,

  Made piss an afterthought, I emptied my bowels.

  I hadn’t really shit myself, I wrote that in jest,

  But my heart thundered loudly, trying to escape from my chest.

  You may not have figured it, here’s a shocker, a stunner:

  The scream from the house meant that there was a Runner.

  They’re brutal and nasty and wicked fucking fast,

  In a sprint for my life, I wouldn’t outlast.

  I had to kill it before I could leave,

  Death would slow it, my only reprieve.

  Outside the door to the teenager’s room,

  I heard tentative scratches indicating my doom.

  A loud fucking thump was all that I needed,

  Training from Remo and Alvarez heeded,

  I fired through the door with my MP5,

  Opened the window and out it did dive.

  I landed with grace, and seeing nothing in sight,

  Vaulted the fence and ran into the night.

  My lonely predicament having just one source,

  I vowed sick-ass vengeance on that fucking horse.

  I’m not a poet, I’m not, but I’m pretty proud of that. I was thinking up verses as I fled the area. There may or may not have been some manly giggling. One verse had some shit about demons and death, but I can’t remember it. That pisses me off. It was zombie Santa that got me thinking about Christmas.

  Christ, I’m having trouble focusing. I have no idea how much sleep I got earlier, but it couldn’t have been much. My thoughts are all over the place right now and I want a cheeseburger.

  Right, so, I rounded a corner, thinking about something that rhymes with “many” when I ran headlong into a pus bag. Fuck those doctors at Baldy who said these things couldn’t be surprised, because the outright look of astonishment, complete with raised eyebrows (in this case brow) and mouth shaped like an O, was all over this thing’s face as we hit the pavement.

  Fucking ouch. Like ouch and shit. No, Dear Reader, I didn’t land on my messed-up elbow, I thundered into the zombie, we both fell, and I skidded on my other elbow across the concrete sidewalk. Who thought up elbows anyway? Jackass.

  So I left my skin on the sidewalk. I could see it. I looked at my skinned elbow and it wasn’t bleeding. Then it was. A lot. The infected I had just knocked over also saw my skin, but realized there was more of it on me, and stood, looking famished.

  This one was gross, I could see he was missing half of its face, the bone catching the starlight in the darkness. His face looked like my peeled elbow. He also had an arrow sticking out of his back, and a couple nubs of bone where his left hand should
be. He reached for me with one hand and one nub, so I shot him with the MP5.

  It was a one-tap, but it couldn’t have gone unnoticed, even with the suppressor. They aren’t silent like in the movies. I may have mentioned that before.

  I made myself scarce, and booked it down the sidewalk, dodging a knocked-over baby carriage and skipping past the bony carcasses of several permanently dead people. I reached a crossroads, with nothing in front of me but road and scrub, and lo and behold there was a Tractor Supply. Smiling, I jogged over to it, expecting a warm welcome from my friends. Nope. It wasn’t the correct Tractor Supply.

  There was more than one. There was more than one Tractor Supply in Doo-fucking-little Texas. I mean, how many tractors could these people have? Not only was there a surplus of tractor businesses I could care less about, I had chosen the wrong damn one.

  I sighed, expelling tired air, and when I did, something that had been sitting on its haunches behind a dusty, but still pretty, red backhoe, stood up. It had its back to me, but it knew I was around. It was the speedy infected chick from outside the building with the cubicles. I ducked behind the backhoe as she turned. She hadn’t seen me. I could see a couple dead folks coming down the street. They saw me, but their proximity wasn’t alarming. The fast one was five feet away on the other side of this machine. I could hear her sniffing the air, and I looked down at my bleeding arm. Could they smell blood? Could she smell me even if I weren’t bleeding? Did she prefer curtains or drapes?

  I snuck around the corner of the backhoe, leading with the MP5 and hoping to catch her unaware. Unaware? Unawares? Shit I dunno, I’m still tired. I leapt out, prepared to fire at her, but she wasn’t there. My moment of confusion almost cost me my life. I heard footsteps behind me, and spun to see her rounding the same end of the red contraption I just had. We sort of saw each other at the same time, and were equally as surprised. A low growl emanated from her and she narrowed her eyes. She began to intake a breath, and the ball-tightening scream that would follow would bring every infected within earshot. I gave her a quick burst before she could let loose with the howl. She stumbled backwards and fell on her ass. She sat up and gurgled, but I think it’s physically impossible to scream when your lungs are filling with blood. She tried to stand, not giving a shit about the agony she must be in, and I tapped her in the dome with a subsonic 9mm round.