After the Bite (24 page)

“Guys!” His bandmates looked at him. “We got ourselves a bassist!”

“Is he any good?” Harry asked.

“Yeah,” the man
said. “Hate to be brutally honest, but I’m a lot better than you guys. But you guys happen to be the only ones interested in touring or making music, so you’ll have to do.”

Sam
’s smile diminished a bit, but he tried not to let it get to him.

“I
’m Sam.”

“Dante.”

“Well, Dante, welcome to our band.”

“What
’s your name?” Dante said. Sam fell silent. “Don’t have one, do you?”

“We
’ll think of something.”

A scream erupte
d near the door. Some of the people had tried to leave, but a crowd of zombies had been waiting outside. The girl who had opened the door (and likely also screamed) pushed backward into her friends, who also scrambled through the tables and chairs, trying to get away.

Sam
readied the shotgun and fired. Two zombies fell, and a few more staggered back.

“Guys!”
Sam said.

Wilder headed for the stage, while Harry and Eddie used chairs to push the bottlenecked zombies at the door back outside.

“We can’t hold them forever!” Eddie said.

“I
’m low on ammo!” Sam said.

“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Wilder
said. He had retrieved his guitar from the stage, which he then leaped off of and rushed at the door. He swung his guitar as hard as he could. It struck a zombie in the head, blood spewing out as it crushed the creature’s skull, and it fell into some of the other zombies with enough force to knock them down. Eddie and Harry pushed the rest out into the street.

“Go, guys!
” Sam said. “Thanks for coming!” The audience rushed passed the dazed and fallen zombies to their vehicles. Only the band remained, and the zombies started to recuperate.

“Guys, we need to get our shit!” Harry
said.

“Working on it!”
Sam said. He fired another shot, and another zombie fell. There were still at least half a dozen heading toward them.

Wilder swung again, knocking another zombie out. Dante and Eddie began rushing back and forth between the stage and the van, furiously packing up their equipment. Harry continued using the chair to push zombies down
, but they would get back up and shamble effortlessly toward him, only to be pushed down again. It was as funny as it was depressing.

“All right, let
’s go!” Eddie said. The five boys climbed into the van and sped down the street.

Sam
was laughing hysterically. All of them were sweating profusely, and they were incredibly cramped in the van, especially Wilder, who had climbed into the back with the equipment since the van only had four seats.

“What the hell are you laughing about?” Eddie
said.

“I think we earned ourselves a name!”
Sam said. The others looked at him. “We are the Bad-Ass Zombie Killers!”

As the van drove into the night, the others eventually began to laugh along with him.

****

Harry and Eddie were asleep as the van rolled along the desolate highway in the middle of the night. Wilder had made himself comfortable.
Sam didn’t talk much as he drove. Dante turned around and looked at Wilder, leaning against the back door of the van, his guitar between his legs, broken.

“Sorry about your guitar,”
he said.

“It
’s all right. We’ll get a new one. We need some drums anyway. Lost a few toms the night the shit went down.”

“Ah,” Dante said. “That explains why your songs were off.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “We’ll need a bass for you, as well.”

“And some shells wouldn
’t hurt, either,” Dante said.

Sam
slammed on the brakes, and everyone in the van jerked forward, Harry and Eddie ripped from their sleep.

“What the hell,
Sam?” Harry asked.

“Look,”
Sam said.

I
n the headlights of the van, stretched across the entire road, was a massive hoard of zombies, the last remnants of what had once been a panicked traffic jam.

It
was too late to turn off the lights. The hoard had noticed them.

“Back it up,” Harry said.

“And do what? Drive all the way back to the nearest city? We’ll never make it, we’re almost empty!”

“Go around, then!” Wilder
said. The hoard began to slowly make its way toward the group.

“I can
’t see shit,” Sam said. “Can’t tell where the road ends or begins!”

“Fuck this,” Eddie said, opening his door. “If I
’m going to die, I’ll do it in the fresh air!”

The others also got out of the van.
Sam looked frantically at the road, trying to size up how much of the black mass before them was cars, and how much was workable road.

“Guys, we need to figure something out
now
!” Harry said.

“Do you hear that?” Dante
said. Beneath the gathered moans of the group of zombies was a low hum.

“What the hell is it?” Wilder
said.

“Maybe it
’s God,” Harry said, “coming to take our souls.”

“That
’d make a great song,” Sam said.

“We
’ll have to remember to play it in Hell,” Dante replied.

The sound was
, in fact, not God coming for to carry their souls away. The zombies and the cars became illuminated, but from behind, as dozens upon dozens of motorcycles made their way through the traffic. The teens stood in awe as the bike gang did what was apparently their work. They shot and clubbed at the zombies. One sliced with a machete, decapitating a zombie as he passed it at thirty miles per hour. Another biker tossed a chain across the road to one of his buddies, and the two tightened it as they rode on either side of a zombie, cutting it in half.

“Oh my God,”
Sam said. “It’s fucking beautiful!”

The gang rode around the group of zombies like cowboys herding cattle. The two with the chain rode
circles around the last two zombies, letting the chain slacken just a bit as they passed by, back and forth and around the two zombies, the chain beginning to tighten as the bikers neared the ends, squeezing the zombies together, tightening ever more. Then, both bikers gunned their steeds in opposite directions, holding the chains tightly. The zombies came apart, woven through the bits of chain as it tightened, and chunks of the zombies flew in all directions.

“Yeeeee-haaaaaaa!”
Sam said, raising his fist in the air.

The bikers then turned to the bandmates. They drove toward the five boys and their van, circled it, kicking up dust which entered unwelcomed into their eyes and mouths. One biker stopped before them on the road, followed by another at his left, then one at his right, then another and another until the entire gang formed a complete circle around the van and the boys.

“That was brilliant!” Sam said. He was the only one that didn’t seem at all nervous about what was happening.

“What are you kids doin
g out here?” the first biker said.

“We
’re a band,” Sam said. “Bazk.”

“A
… band?” the man looked at his fellow bikers through his sunglasses, then roared with laughter, his arms folded. The other bikers also began to laugh. “Well I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he finally said. He spat something brown into the dirt. “You kids have some balls on you, that’s for sure.”

“Same to you,”
Sam said. “That was incredible.”

“We do what we can to clean up the world,” the biker replied. “You headin
g for the city?”

“Yeah,”
Sam said. “We need gas, and supplies. It wouldn’t hurt to play another show, either.”

“Ain
’t no way,” the biker said. The smile faded from Sam’s face. “You’ll be torn to pieces. That city’s a slaughterhouse.”

“Well
…” Sam said. “Can we at least get some gas there?”

“Y
’all can try,” the biker replied. “But you won’t last five seconds.”

“Oh
.” Sam looked at his bandmates, unsure of what to think. “Well, thanks for the heads-up. We’re no winkies, though. We can manage.”

“No idea what the
hell that means,” the biker said, “but there’s no way you can make it. Not without some help, anyway.” He laughed again, and nervous smiles started to creep onto the boys’ faces.

They made their way into the city, bikes surrounding the van on all sides. The symbiotic relationship worked well; the bike gang guarded the band as they put up their posters (most of which were branded with the band
’s new tagline: “Bazk in the glory of the last rock band on earth!”)

The bikers were happy to hear music again, even if it wasn
’t quite their style. Together, they helped the boys get some new instruments and set up a few shows. The bikers would line the entrances of every venue, some inside, others out, and make sure everyone could see the show safely.

The shows themselves got bigger and bigger as word of America
’s last touring rock band spread like wildfire. More people joined to help out; some became roadies, managing the band’s equipment. Others helped the bikers guard the crowds and the band at shows. Every now and then, someone with a laptop would record the show and burn CDs to give to fans. The bikers thought the boys crazy for giving away the music for free, but Sam and his friends were happy just to have someone listen to the music they were making.

B
azk were eventually able to play outdoor shows in amphitheaters. Graffiti and word of mouth drew crowds, and one night, in the town of Carroll, Iowa, they played an outdoor show that drew a crowd of several hundred. Sam couldn’t believe the sea of people he was looking into as he readied the crowd. The band made their way through a few songs, and then Sam looked at the others.

“We
’re going to play a brand new song for you guys tonight!” The crowd cheered. Sam spotted a few people who appeared to be new to the experience, but they seemed to be enjoying it. He smiled, then looked at his bandmates, who signaled to him that they were ready, in a form of communication only bandmates can share.

“This one
’s for you guys and it’s called ‘On the Day That We Die’,” Sam said. The crowd let out a sympathetic “Aww!”

“You guys can
’t ever fucking die!” someone shouted. The crowd cheered him on.

“Right on, mate!
” Same replied. “And neither can any of you!”

Dante started the song off with a bass line. He had been right; he was good. Far too good for the others. But
Sam was glad he had stuck around.

“Thank you all for being here,”
Sam said. “You can never know how much you mean to us.” The crowd cheered louder than ever before.

Eddie and Harry broke in with the rhythm guitar and drums, and then Wilder did his thing on lead guitar.
Sam grabbed the mic.

“
Born in a garage, I was conceived in a dream

Only hoping the world could understand what I mean

A lot of time went by

We saw our loved ones die

But that could never stop me trying to sing

We traveled high and low

And played a
couple shows

Lost some
strings, but that’s how it goes

It couldn
’t stop us all from taking to the road

And on a darkened highway, in the middle of the night

We were faced with death, but we saw heaven
’s light

We heard the sound of God coming for our souls

But we kept riding on

We had to play our songs

For reasons nobody on earth could ever know.”

Sam
paused as Wilder broke into a solo. He was good, not great, but the crowd roared anyway, and that’s when Sam’s eyes began to tear up. He realized that the people in the crowd needed this just as badly as he did, that in that moment they were all one. All of their loss and all of their pain could be put aside, just for a little while, and music could fill in the holes left in their hearts.

“
We will never stop

We
’ll be playing a gig on the day that we die

And the angels will be singing along on high

The devil himself couldn’t take it away

So while we run out the clock