NUKE Love!: A Road Trip Through the Zombie Apocalypse... (2 page)

“I
feel so bad for him…” says Margie, sipping her Mai Tai. “I mean, he’s stuck up there. Stranded… And she just left him!”

              “I think she’s doing the right thing moving on,” Ron dabs at a Mai Tai stain on his Hawaiian shirt. Pushes his wire-rimmed glasses further up the bridge of his long, middle-aged nose. “I mean, like she said… What’s she gonna do? Wait?”

              “I think she’s a slut.” Burt doesn’t pull any punches, as his sideburns and the flamingos that decorate his own flawlessly ironed shirt will attest.

              “I dunno,” Margie takes another gulp of Mai Tai and leans over the railing of the boat. “I just feel bad for him.”

              “Well, we ain’t here to feel bad, Marge,” Ricky smiles and pats his wife’s flabby arm. “This is the END OF THE WORLD – GET OUTTA DODGE cruise… And we’re here to parrr-ty like it’s… Well, like it’s the end of the world. Now hurry up and finish that drink, because I’ve got another batch of Mai Tai’s getting warm. And these good peeps,” he motions the twenty or so lounge lizards milling about the deck, chatting, sun worshipping and sipping their drinks, “are getting thirsty!”

T
he white van idles in the driveway of the rural Apple Valley home, thirty miles outside of Barstow. It’s night and there is no moon. In the neon green, system error skywriting, the bumper sticker is just barely legible:

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME!

              From the van’s radio—

              So hoard your food and load your guns, folks. ‘Cause the Big Shit has really hit the fan! Board up your windows and keep the kids quiet, ‘cause this thing’s only gonna get worse. I’m thinking that just about the only safe place to be these days is on a boat… So says Diamond Debbie!

              Inside the house, Mark and his wife are huddled around the TV with their two children. Alice cradles newborn Lucy in her arms. Four year old Max stares at the television, too, frowning but not understanding the gruesome images of man biting man. Mark, he’s got his shotgun by his side.

              From outside, the sounds of raucous laughter and a breaking bottle. The doorbell rings—followed by violent, overzealous pounding. It’s locked, but someone is turning the knob.

              “The hell?” Mark rises from his chair, grabs his gun.

              “Help! HELP!” from outside. “There’s zombies out here!” the sounds of muffled laughter. “Please! Quick! Let us in!”

              “Don’t open it,” Alice hugs the baby to her breast. “Mark…”

              Mark looks at his wife. Looks at the door.

              “What do you want?” he calls. Tries to keep the tremble out of his voice.

              “Pleeeease!”

              Mark pauses, stares at the knob. “We can’t just…” He opens the door.

              And with a heavy shove, they are in—three men in their late twenties. Harsh crew cuts, baggy cammo pants and oversized
‘Property of the L.A. Dodgers’
shirts. Two white guys—one short and powerfully muscled, the other, a hulking monster leading with an impossible beer gut—and a diminutive black man with coke-bottle glasses, tape over the nose. One arm crossed over his belly, he’s hiding a bundle of something under his shirt.

              “Gotta use your bathroom, bro” the muscular dude pushes past Mark. The giant is on Alice in three strides, towering over her, leaning in and patting the baby on the head. His only expression, an impenetrable, sickening sneer. And the black guy, he strolls about the room. Picking up vases, flipping through books, wiping greasy fingers on the walls.

              “You hear me, bro? I said, where’s your bathroom at?” the short, muscular dude pulls a smoke from his pocket and lights it. “Simon, you still gotta go, right?”

              The black guy nods.

              “Upstairs,” says Alice, eyes down on the floor. Clinging to her baby. Simon bounds up the stairs.

              Bo, the big guy, he’s opening closets, peering into rooms, flipping the lights on and off. The baby, she starts to cry. Mark’s shotgun, it hangs limply at his side.

              Little muscle guy, he’s leering at Alice. “Name’s Mike, by the way. Big Mike,” he grips his belt buckle. “Pleased to meetchya!” Standing on tiptoes, he leans forward and plants a sloppy, wet kiss on Alice’s forehead. After a moment’s consideration, he kisses the baby, too, then turns to the stairs, “You giving birth up there? What the fuck, Simon!”

              The toilet flushes. Simon appears, all wide grin and wet hands. Wipes them on his loose, baggy shirt. “All good!” he grins.

              “Then let’s go!”

And as quickly as they entered, they leave. After the door closes, no one speaks. Mark looks at Alice, she looks at the floor. The baby continues to cry, joined now by her brother, Max. The interlopers are laughing outside, by their van. Loud abrasive brays. A beer bottle shatters against the house, an engine roars to life, and they are gone into the laser-sky’d night.

And then, from upstairs: An ear-splitting wail.

A child is screaming.

              Alice jumps. Mark drops the gun.

              Cries from the upstairs bathroom
. “Heeeelp me!! It’s not my fault! Where am I?! I want to go home! I’m bleeding!”

For a moment the family is frozen in shock. Then Mark bolts up the stairs.

The bathroom door is locked from the inside. The child’s cries are becoming more frantic and hysterical.
“I’m dyyyyyying!”
Mark batters the door with his shoulder. Forces it open.

The bathroom is empty. Yet the child’s cries continue.

Mark tears open the shower curtain: nothing. He’s dumfounded, turning in circles, trying to locate the child’s screams. He dumps the wastebasket into the sink, and there he finds it: Amidst the tissues, tampons and garbage is a small iPod and speaker from which the cries are coming.

Mark tries to turn it off, then yanks the wire from the speaker. “What the fuck?”

B
urno is driving as the Sun peeks over the horizon. Lasers still light the sky, spelling out the computer error of the world’s last defense.

              Down the road, lights are flashing.

              But Debbie… It’s not fair… You’re not being fair to me… How do you think I feel? All alone up here?

              Alone? What about the other colonists? Sure they’re all dudes, Jones, but desperate times… Wink, wink…

              The lights, closer now. And the sounds of sirens.

Burno eases on the gas, as the military escort flies by. Humvees and Cargo trucks. And between them, a yellow school bus.

              Pressed against the window glass, the terrified faces of children.

              “Holy shit!” Fizzy watches the bus pass, lost in the eyes of the frightened kids. “Where the hell are they going?”

              “Maybe bringing ‘em to shelters?” Howdy is trying to light a roach with trembling hands. “You know, to save them?”

              “More’n likely to the camps,” Burno calls from the driver’s seat. “Debbie says they got internment camps set up all across the Midwest. Slave labor.”

              “No way,” says Fizzy. “They’re just kids…”

              “I dunno, man,” Burno’s voice, a dry whisper. “Bad people take advantage of bad times…”

B
ill Hendricks is arguing with the Bombs’ chosen spokesbomb.

              “This is ridiculous,” he says. Pounds his fist on the console. “You’re being unreasonable. Why don’t you want to explode?”

              “You think it’s so great, why don’t you go out there and blow up?” The spokesbomb is getting testy.

T
he church lies in embers and smoldering ruin—the screaming dead, flailing in flames. It’s uncertain whether the dead are living or the living are dying, but all are burning. By noon, the entire gasoline inferno is reduced to ashes and bone.

              And Stephen Redding, the antichrist, he’s proud of his handiwork. Only wishes he could’ve seen the look on his face as Father Bob melted in front of his burning flock.

              “Yeah,” he thinks, warming a nuclear wing over the glowing coals of Christ on the Cross. “It’s a good day to be the Bad Guy…”

R
oger has finished his pre-flight preparations and is taxiing down the rural runway, before he realizes that something is wrong. The Cessna isn’t responding properly—the throttle is sluggish, the engine is beginning to sputter.

He tries to abort the take-off, but the brakes are not responding. The engine won’t quit—in fact, it stops sputtering and begins to rev and race. With dawning horror, Roger realizes that he can’t stop the plane as it continues to accelerate down the runway.

Hoping to keep it grounded, he veers into the open private airport field. The plane is beginning to shake, the increasing speed is making it more and more unstable. Heading for the woods at the field’s edge, Roger realizes that he needs to either take off or crash.

He opens the cockpit hatch, ready to jump. Unclasps his safety belt. So much for scouting the Aurora suburbs for dead hordes. He clenches his teeth and leans into the gusting wind.

And then, a small voice from the cabin:

“Daddy?”

Roger desperately yanks back the throttle and the plane takes off. As he climbs into the laser-lit sky, the steering control stops responding. The Cessna climbs steeply… and the racing engine sputters out.

From the corner of his eye, Roger sees one of the globules drifting past—closer than he would ever have dared a flyby. Long twines of what look like black tissue paper flapping in the breeze. Oily feathered gasbags dripping venom. A million twittering eyestalks and suckered tentacles—all slimed together with no cohesive rhyme or reason.

The dead plane begins to fall.

              Roger lunges from his seat and dives for the cabin. Grabs his emergency parachute and slings it over his shoulder.

              “Brandon?” he screams, “Is that you? Where are you, Brandon?”

“Daddy!”

              “Where are you!” Roger flings open cabinet doors, kicks open the lunch cooler. He’s running out of places to look on the small plane.

“Help me, Daddy! I’m bleeding…! I’m dyyyyying…!”

Tears stream down Roger’s face as he tears the cabin apart. The plane continues to plummet. He rips open a small storage cabinet—a cold sweat runs down his neck. Inside, an iPod and speaker.

Roger holds the device in shaking hands. The last thing he sees, out of the small port window as the plane hurtles to the ground—all the while wondering if the voice on the iPod is even his son’s—is a dirty white van.

              A white van with a peeling bumper sticker.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME!

M
argie is looking out over the water, watching the waves. The ocean is getting choppy. She shakes her head.

“I don’t think I can do it, Ricky.” Tears draw dark lines of mascara across the sunscreen that cakes her face.”

“How many Mai Tais have you had, hon?” Ricky places his arm lovingly around his wife’s enormous girth.

“Five.”

Ricky laughs—his face, it’s turning blue. His neck is beginning to swell. “Then not only CAN you do it, Sweety… you already have!”

Ron is already dead, his wife’s once orange tanning salon face now dark and bloated and nestled in his lap.

              Margie can feel her throat constricting. The rest of the lounge lizards and sun kings, they’re either dead or convulsing on the deck. Half-finished plastic glasses of suicide cocktails tipped over and spilling, rolling across the floor.

              “I only feel bad about leaving Father Bob…” Margie whispers, slumping to the deck next to her husband. “I’m sure he could’ve used some help keeping the faithful in and the crazies out of the church.” But Ricky, he doesn’t hear her—he’s already dead.

And the END OF THE WORLD – GET OUTTA DODGE cruise, it drifts further and further out to sea.