The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory Page 26

  Chloe was the first to do anything. She strode to me and stopped a half a foot away. WAY inside my territorial bubble. She shot her hands forward and grabbed my wrists. It actually made me shuffle back a quarter step.

  “We are never going to be better off without you,” she said, and all my fears and trepidations of what was about to happen fell away.

  “Y’all can leave in the morning if you want,” Deek called over through a smile, “after breakfast.”

  I felt like a total douche. I was a total douche. Someone had seen through my master plan, or Kate had ratted me out, but that was unlikely. I lowered my head as Donna and Kat came over.

  Kat shook her head, smiling. “Dumbass.”

  Donna, also smiling hugged me. “Need you,” was all she said, and she grabbed my mitt in hers.

  We didn’t leave in the morning. We decided to stay.

  I have repeatedly told you, Dear Reader, in several paragraphs of this and the other two texts I call journals, that I am a good person. I’ve killed people, and I have no doubt I would do it again if I have to, but they all deserved it. If there is a God, he has to understand that people need to protect themselves, no matter the cost.

  Do zombies count as murder? I mean, when I smoke a living dead thing, it can’t be murder. You can’t kill something that’s already dead, right? If I’m wrong, then I’m fucked. When I stand at the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter is checking out my stats, is he going to tell me to take the elevator down because of all the zombies I’ve killed? Cuz fuck him. I’ll kick him in the nuts and walk right into that cloudy paradise. No guilt.

  It was two days after my failed attempt at freeing these wonderful folks of me, two nights actually, at maybe nine thirty, and I was talking to Matt over by the solar array, near the water pumping station. We were talking about McDonald’s vs. home-grilled burgers. I was saying that there’s nothing better than a home grilled cheeseburger… until you craved a McD’s and got one. Eating that horrible, greasy thing out of that yellow wrapper was nothing short of orgasmic. No, it didn’t have the fresh cut lettuce or tomato, or your choice of cheese, but it was still fantastic.

  Matt had begun to speak about the differences between all the fast-food burger joints when a dark streak hit him from the right and brought him down. They immediately began to battle, and the thing on top of him began to throw haymakers. A handy piece of pipe called to me, and I used it to nearly decapitate the creature now astride my friend. I felt like Ship must feel every time he punches something and the head flies off of it like a golf ball off a tee. The thing’s neck broke with an audible snap, and there was a wicked dent in the side of its bald head, the ear now hanging by gristle. Fucker wasn’t getting back up.

  Matt got up quickly, brushing himself off and checking himself over. He had two scratches on his face, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the Runner or the tackle. A feral scream rent the air behind us, and of course, we both turned to stare into the darkness for a split second of indecision. Dozens of the slow variety infected were bearing down on us. The quiet bastards knew the jig was up, or they just straight-up saw us, and that fucking moaning started. We didn’t wait around to see what they wanted, and without a word, we simultaneously sprinted back in the direction of the main house.

  Matt yanked his radio as we ran, “Deek! Mike! Clint! Come in! We have infected inside, a whole bunch of ‘em! We’re gonna have to engage!”

  Immediately, light assassinated shadows in every corner of the ranch. Either Matt’s message had been received, or the person in control of the lighting had issues of their own. Darcy’s calm voice came over the radio, “Fall back to the main house. We’ll fight them off from here.”

  I thought about the lower windows of the two-story farmhouse, covered in rebar, and tried to do ammo and food calculations in my head as we ran. The ammo was stored in the basement and second floor of the main house, with scattered caches in several other locations. The only ways into the basement were a steel bulkhead set into concrete, and an interior kitchen door.

  I heard someone running behind us as I thought about our fortifications, and knew those footsteps weren’t friendly. I skidded to a stop, had a brief moment to aim my Sig, and put two into the chest of the bloody-eyed, six-foot woman who was chasing us. Bitch was big, and she looked strong. She clutched at her chest and fell to the side heaving. I didn’t wait to see if she got back up, I spun and sprinted after Matt, who was turning around with his own weapon, pointing it back in my direction. I caught up to him, and gave him a brief, “Come on!” before we continued our run back to the house.

  We didn’t encounter any infected on the way, and hadn’t heard any other shots. The door opened as we ran up to it, Deek, Kelly, and Stacy all pointing weapons at us.

  “Human,” Matt managed between catching his breath and holding his side. I could hear Rusty and Dusty going absolutely nuts inside someplace.

  “Do we have everybody?” I asked as the door slammed and Kelly slammed home or turned the deadbolts of about a billion locks.

  Stacy shook her head, “No. James and Daniel are out on the back forty someplace. Mike and Clint are up in their perches, and I haven’t seen your daughter and her army boyfriend. Darcy can’t raise any of them.”

  Remo was checking the sling on his MP5. He didn’t look up when he said, “I saw Kat and Alvarez by the barn earlier, I’ll go get them.” He moved toward the door, but I forestalled him with a hand on his arm.

  “No, buddy. We need you here. Alvarez will take care of her.” I considered for a moment, then added, “More like she’ll protect him.”

  The jarhead nodded. “How many did you see?”

  “A bunch,” Matt answered. “It might be that swarm that’s been lookin’ for us.”

  Donna, Richy, and Chloe came into the great room, and over to me. Richy punched me in the arm. “Glad you could make it.”

  I was relieved to see them but also very worried about Kat and Alvarez. Donna grabbed my hand and Chloe the other. I squeezed, feeling safe.

  Remo pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket. “We should get all the food and ammo upstairs. We need to plan on them getting in here, and—” something impacted the front door hard. Scratching and scrabbling came next. We heard it run down the farmer’s porch, then an arm punched through the far left window. It pulled its arm back, infected blood streaking the glass shards and rebar.

  They could break all the windows they wanted, they weren’t getting in that way, and if they could break down that door, they were damn strong. The thing outside screamed, and began hammering its paws on the side of the house.

  “Unnerving damn howl, that is,” Remo confessed. “As I was saying, we need to get all our supplies upstairs and figure out how to block the stairway so they can’t get up. Eventually, they’ll get in here, and we need to be ready.”

  Deek started to take charge. “Stacy, you and Matt go get the ammo.” He pointed at Remo. “Do like he says. Richy, Chloe, you go help with the food. Me and Ship are gonna figure out how to block the stairs.” He pointed at me. “You and Donna make sure everything is loaded and we have backups to the guns. Kelly, you, Kate, Dix, and Javi make sure all the windows and doors are secure. Block ‘em up with whatever you can.”

  We heard the moans as soon as we started to get to work. The moans preceded a radio call as well.

  This is Alvarez. Is everybody safe?

  I pulled my radio. “Yeah, buddy, are you?”

  Affirmative. Kat and I were in the barn loft when we heard gunshots, we climbed up on the barn roof and can see infected all over the place. They’re coming in from the north.

  I was confused. “What were you doing in the loft?”

  I was… we were… I mean…

  “Forget it. Keep each other safe. Do you have any rations?”

  Negative, just what I had on me.

  Deek motioned for me to give him the mic. “Alvarez, this is Deek. Is there any way you can get to the horses? I can’t stomach the th
ought of them getting killed in their stalls.”

  Already done. We let them out and they took off out the southwest end of the barn. I haven’t seen them since, but I didn’t hear any horse screaming.

  Deek heaved a sigh of relief as he thanked Alvarez and passed me the mic back to me.

  “Sit tight, you two,” I told them. “We’ll smoke these pus bags and get you down in time for corn flakes.”

  I heard Kat in the background through the radio, Cheeseburgers or I stay the fuck up here!

  One of the windows shattered and a bunch of hands poked through. It didn’t take them long to rip the curtains down and then we were staring at a bunch of dead faces through the bars. The other windows followed suit, and a couple people gagged at the olfactory assault. The smell these things give off when they get ripe is absolutely another weapon. I am not even fucking kidding. It’s bad.

  Dix and Javi began firing into the crowd, who had amped up their noises when they saw us. One of them got her little head through the bars, leaving an ear behind, when Javi shot it.

  “Whoa! Easy killer.” I put my hand on his arm. “We should save ammo.”

  He looked at me incredulously. “What the hell are we supposed to do, be mean to them? Ask them to leave?”

  “Nope, you go do what Deek said, I do this.” I stepped to the couch, careful not to get into the reach of any of the shitheads trying to eat me, and pulled it away from the window. I stepped to the side closest to the door, out of view of the dead, and unsheathed my knife. Remo moved to the other side of the window and nodded at me. I could see the shift in their filthy paws as they reached for this new target. I stepped to my right and jammed my blade into the eye socket of the former kid who was reaching for my pal. She collapsed and I stepped back quickly.

  Javi looked impressed and moved off with Dix to get to work. Remo nodded in the negative and I knew what he meant. This was way too slow. We needed polearms of some kind to jab from a distance.

  I moved over to Remo, daring a glance outside. There were so many of them out there. I couldn’t see an end to the sea of dead faces. It looked like there were more coming, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

  Remo moved his toothpick around in his mouth, looked at the zombies, then at me. “Might need the rifles if we can’t come up with something long and sharp.”

  “You mean you can’t just fucking glare them to death?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  I nodded. “And here I thought that was your super-hero power; killing shit by looking at it.”

  “Nope. It’s putting up with your bullshit.”

  We both looked up as we heard something scrabble up onto the roof of the farmer’s porch. It moved quickly down the roof and we heard glass breaking.

  “Shit,” we both said at the same time and raced for the stairs. There were no bars on the upstairs windows.

  That scream that comes from a Runner sounded from inside the house, sending shivers down my spine, and chasing my extremely large nuts up into my stomach. Something was tearing around in the second bedroom on the right. Hint: it was not a bunny. It started smashing things and slapping on something, then human screaming started. “Dadda! Dadda! Daddadaddadadda!”

  We got to the door and I reached for the knob, but Remo stopped me and gave a hoarse whisper, “You go left!”

  We burst into the room to see it a shambles. The thing had destroyed everything it could in the thirty seconds it took us to get upstairs. It used to be a decent-looking young man, but now it would scare horrors from a nightmare away. Shirtless, sunburned, and bloody, it whipped its head sideways and glared its crimson eyes at us. Those red orbs almost bugged out of its noggin when it stared for a moment. A little pee eked its way out of me right then, and I was as used to this kind of sight as I was ever going to get.

  The thing had ceased its beating on the door, but the yells from inside the closet only increased. It was Kate, and she was terrified.

  Staring moment over, it decided that the meat on this side of the door was easier, and it came, growling and hissing at the same time. More pee…

  Remo and I shot it as it scuttled up on the bed. He hit it in the chest and I got the fucker in the abdomen and leg. It fell face first on the sheets, life starting to leave it in gouts of infected blood. It had a bit more in it, and pushed up to see if it could reach us, but I shot it in the face, the back of its head flying back out the window it had come through.

  Kate was crying and howling for her dadda, so I skirted the end of the bed and spoke to her through the door, “Kate! Kate, it’s me, the bad man can’t hurt you. He’s gone. I’m going to open the door, okay?

  She answered after a slight pause, “Okay.”

  I opened the closet door and she peeked around it and into my eyes. She smiled, came running out into my arms, saw the dead thing, pointed at it, and ran right back into the closet. She tried to pull the door closed, but I stopped her. She fought me for a second, but I told her I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She came out slowly, hugging me and not taking her eyes off of the dead Runner.

  We heard a thump behind us and all three of us spun to assess this new threat. It was a wide-eyed Deek. He glanced at each of us, then focused on the dead thing. He looked horrified, and then looked at me. “Is… is she…?”

  “She’s fine. She’s really smart and hid in the closet while the thing tried to eat through it.” Kate squeezed me, and Deek let out an audible sigh. We heard gunshots outside, and Deek put the radio to his face, but told Kate to come to him before he spoke into it. She ran to him, engulfing his belly in a bear hug. He stroked her hair as he spoke into the mic, “Who’s firing? What you got?”

  Alvarez came back, That’s us. We’re still on the roof of the barn, but we can see some infected roaming under the lights, and we can take out a few here and there.

  “Keep it up,” Deek told him. “We could use the help.” He clipped the radio back to his belt. “Dang it. Never thought to bar up the second-floor windows. Didn’t think they could climb.”

  “Some of ‘em are smarter than others,” I told him. “I’ve seen some shi… stuff. If you’ve got any boards, we might want to board up the windows up here just in case we get more of the faster variety.”

  “Give me hand,” Remo asked me, and we moved a chest of drawers in front of the broken window, and pushed the bed against it. “Best we can do until we can fix it permanently.”

  We filed out past Deek, who was still getting compressed by Kate, and Deek put his hand on my shoulder and nodded a thanks. I nodded back, and saw people bustling when I got into the hall. Remembering what I had been looking for earlier, I called back to Deek, “Hey, do you have anything we could use to poke those things in the head and save ammo?”

  Our host gave a gigantic, Texas, shit-eating grin, showing tons of teeth. “Yup. Katie, you go see momma now.” Kate took off without a word, and started down the stairs. Deek moved off down the hall and motioned for us to follow him. We entered a bedroom and he pointed to the wall. On six plaque-type shelves resided six swords. They looked commemorative, but I thought they would do nicely in a pinch. I reached for a Roman short sword, a Gladius, but then thought better. There was a Rapier below and to the left of it. Basically, a long, skinny blade with a pointy end used for duels and fencing. Perfect. Remo grabbed the other five weapons while I marveled at what this thing was about to do. He moved to the door and I followed him.

  We got some looks as we descended the stairs with a bunch of swords. I heard a power tool start, and noticed Ship under the stairs with a circular saw. He cut the support struts of the stairs under the risers one at a time, and put them back so the stairs were just resting on them. Not very safe, but the whole shebang would come down in an instant if too much weight was on it at once, or if it were cut from above as well.

  The house was bustling, both inside and out, and it was loud. The things outside were going ballistic, and the dogs inside were just as bad, barking and running every which way. R
ichy turned the corner from the basement with an armload of something, began climbing, then stopped on his way up the stairs. Ship looked at him funny, and then I remembered the Sasquatch had just cut the stair supports.

  The kid had a stern look on his face as he looked around then focused on something on the other side of the couch from me. “Dusty! Shut up and come!” Both dogs hightailed it (literally) up the stairs after the kid. I heard hammers on nails upstairs over the din of the dead, and figured Deek was getting to work on the upstairs windows.

  Remo looked at me, and I at him. I felt a wicked smile cut across my face, and threw my left hand up in a half circle over my head as I did this lunge thing with my new dueling weapon, just like I had seen in every movie based on a Dumas book. “HA!” I shouted and skewered a horribly mangled guy, the end of my skinny sword sticking out the back of its dome. I yanked back and the foil came out of the thing’s noggin with ease. I smiled. Fuck dueling. Fuck the Olympics. Fuck French aristocrats! I was the MAN with this thing. I continued shoving my new toy into the eyes of the dead for the next hour. Remo did the same, but he had a wider, cutlass-type weapon. Soon, Javi and Matt joined the fray, and we slaughtered those fucking dead pricks. The stack of bodies got so high that the ones behind were reaching down over their re-killed pals and through the bars.

  The things had surrounded the main house, and were banging all over the place. We heard glass break. The back kitchen door had been the target.

  “I’ll go,” I told my merry band of swordsmen. Ship followed me with his machete. The wood reinforced door in the kitchen and bars on its upper window were holding. Revolting shit dribbled down from the lacerated dead arms that reached through the bars and were cut on the shards of glass.

  “Watch this,” I told Ship and continued one of my best zombie-slaying nights. I impaled another dozen or so brains before I ran out of zombies. They seemed to have their focus elsewhere.