Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (14 page)

I thought I might have possibly heard a woman
scream. Eliza in frustration was my hope, but we were being hunted
vigorously and we did not have time to gloat.

“Zombies in front,” BT said breathlessly. His
trailblazing was beginning to take its toll. He turned left into
somehow thicker foliage.

“This is horseshit,” I said as a third branch
smacked off the side of my face. We would be leaving a blood trail
Henry could follow. (I’m implying that bulldogs do not make good
bloodhounds.)

Gary stopped for a second to take two well
aimed shots at zombies that made an angle of approach which would
have put them dangerously close to snagging BT.

BT pressed harder; he looked to be hung up.
He quickly shucked off his jacket and kept pressing. He popped
through a particularly dense bramble to emerge on the other side.
But zombies had somehow beaten him to the punch. We were nearly
encircled and barely had enough room to pivot around and find open
firing lanes.

“Stop BT!” I yelled. “We make our stand
here.”

“Not quite the Alamo,” he said with
resignation, placing more rounds in his rifle.

“Any chance you can make them go away?” Gary
asked, shoving rounds into his magazine.

“Yeah, one at a time and as soon as I move to
the next one, the previous one will come back,” I told him.

“Not very effective,” he told me honestly and
without malice; he was merely stating his feelings.

“Mike, now would be a most awesome time for
one of your last ditch efforts,” BT said between expended
rounds.

The noose was tightening quickly around our
necks. The sun was nearly at high noon, the preacher had said his
final words, the hangman’s hand was on the trip lever and the
townsfolk were staring wide-eyed, fearful to blink, lest they miss
something.

A zombie flew in from our right, a tree root
making it fall at the last moment. It latched on with its teeth to
BT’s pants, below his knee. The zombie’s hands scrambled to seek
purchase. BT quickly turned the butt of the gun and slammed it into
the side of the zombie’s face. The impact dislodged the majority of
its teeth from its head. It’s nasal cavity had completely been
pushed in from BT’s second head strike. It fell to the ground in a
heap of crushed bone and leaking brain.

“That would have been a good one to tell go
away,” Gary said to me.

“Thanks for that,” I muttered.

The trees and bushes, which moments earlier
were preventing our escape, were now the only thing keeping the
zombies from completely overwhelming our meager defense. As much of
an impediment as they were to us, they were double that for the
zombies, who were nearly oblivious to them as they tried to get at
us. I watched as at least two zombies lost an eye when finger-thick
branches pressed into their eye sockets. One had popped its left
eye completely free from its orbital socket; the other had impaled
the branch into her eye, yet neither one of them stopped trying to
get to us.

Something niggled in my mind. I placed my
hand on Gary’s back. “Stop shooting,” I told him barely above a
whisper.

“BT, quiet!” I said a little louder.

A zombie launched at Gary, and as if a
pit-bull on a short leash, it wrenched back in mid flight. “That
you?” Gary asked, wide-eyed.

I shook my head in the negative, and placed
my index finger to my lips.

One zombie, not more than a foot from BT’s
face, took one long mournful look at the meal it was foregoing and
headed back the way it had come.

“Eliza?” BT asked, wiping the sweat from his
brow.

“Tommy,” I said quietly.

“Tomas you mean?” Gary asked, correcting
me.

I didn’t know the reason for the name change,
if it meant anything at all. It, however, felt right calling the
presence in my mind Tommy.

“That was pretty fortuitous,” BT said.

“Almost too much,” I said.

“You think he was helping us?” BT asked.

“It sure seems that way. Let’s get out of
here before his big sister figures out what’s going on.”

“Back to the obvious, but I completely
agree,” BT said.

It was another twenty minutes until we were
finally able to push through the small woods and into the
neighborhood beyond. I almost wanted to kiss the pavement when we
got to it, but who knows what someone had on their tires when they
drove over this spot. I shuddered thinking about my lips coming
into contact with whatever it was. It could have been skunk road
kill, for all I knew.

“Something wrong?” BT asked. “You’ve gone all
pale. You’ve got that look like you just touched a shopping cart
without a sani-wipe.”

“Damn BT! How long have you known me?”

“Long enough. Let’s get back to the
rest.”

“I’m glad we’re out of the woods, so to
speak,” Gary said, “but I hate feeling this exposed.”

Lower income housing dominated our left side;
most looking vacated. Some looked like a war zone and others looked
expectant, like they were waiting for a savior or a meal. Zombies
would be trapped inside some of them, as would regular people,
clutched in the vise-like grip of fear. People who would rather
starve to death than brave anything on the outside. The meek would
not inherit this world. They would die as they had lived, alone and
in the shadows. We, the bold, would either die in a blaze of glory
or triumph grandly over evil. Can you tell I was feeling slightly
magnanimous over our victory? Already forgetting our near
disastrous retreat. That’s how I survive. If I remembered every
close call, I’d be huddled in a bomb shelter. Thank God for short
term memory loss. See? All those years of smoking marijuana did
have a higher purpose beyond getting high!

Zombies started coming out from backyards; it
was one congealed mass of excrement and blood.

“All the noise must have disturbed a hive,”
BT said. “We’ve got to get off the street.”

“See how easy it is to become Captain
Obvious?” I told him. He didn’t see the humor, and to be honest,
neither did I.

Options were limited. The majority were the
deaders, but a fair portion were not. We would have a difficult
time outrunning them. I had no desire to go into a house for fear
of the inhabitants, whether dead, alive or a state in between.

“Which house looks the best?” BT asked,
popping off a few rounds for good measure.

“Any of them have a moat?” I asked.

“Or a gun turret?” Gary asked.

“Right,” BT said. “What more was I really
expecting?” he asked himself. He charged for the closest house.

I hoped the damn door was unlocked because if
he had to cave it in to gain entry, that meant the zombies would be
able to follow us. BT’s flight triggered something in the speeders.
They veered off from the main group and began to angle towards
him.

“Let’s go, Gary, or we’re going to be cut
off!” I yelled to his back. Gary had already figured this problem
out and passed me by before I could finish my sentence.

BT, with his rush of adrenaline, ripped the
screen door clean off its hinges. I was too scared to even comment
on him affecting the resale value. A bullet hole ripped through the
front door, and had to have been an eighth of an inch from BT’s
head, max. The splintering of wood forced BT to turn away. He
looked back towards me, wondering where the shot had come from. I
was frantically pointing to the next house. The shot had come from
inside; someone did not desire to entertain guests.

BT had already jumped down off the steps when
the next shot rang out. As the echo from the shot died down, all
that was left was my heavy breathing and the combined heavy
footfalls of BT, Gary, me and the zombies that pursued us. The next
house had a security screen door, which was locked tight. I didn’t
spare it a second thought as I jumped down the stairs, BT had
passed me up and was heading for the next house in line. Gary was
rapidly falling behind and in extreme danger of being overtaken. I
was stuck, I didn’t have enough bullets or the right firing angle
to do him much good. My heart lurched as Gary chanced a look over
his shoulder and stumbled ever so slightly, giving the zombies more
ground.

Gary had a three-foot lead on the closest
zombie. BT got into the next house or I would have to go back and
tell my father I had lost his son. “God, I could use a little help
right now.”

The security screen of the house I had just
tried swung open.” Get your ass in here!” A woman screamed at
me.

BT was heading to the fifth house when he
heard the woman. Gary was running towards me. I swung my head back
and forth. Gary might just make it, but no way BT could get back
though.

BT saw my dilemma. “Get your ass in there,
Talbot! I’ll figure something out!” he shouted, still running.

“Listen!” the woman shouted at me. “I didn’t
make it this long to die with my front door open. Either get your
ass in here or get eaten on someone else’s lawn!”

I spared one more look at BT, who was on to
the next house. “Godspeed, BT,” I said softly before running back
up the stairs and inside. The woman didn’t spare me a second glance
as she waited for Gary to get there. “He’s not going to make it,”
she said, more to herself than to me. “Your friend is not going to
make it,” she said, getting ready to pull the door shut.

“He’s my brother,” I told her, placing my
rifle against the doorjamb to hold the rifle steady, and more
importantly, to keep her from shutting the door too early. I had a
shot, but it was a shitty one. There was about a three-inch window
between Gary’s head and the closest zombie’s head. As long as Gary
didn’t do any bobbing and weaving, I should be fine. At least,
that’s what I kept telling myself as I applied slow, steady, even
pressure to the trigger. The rifle went off before I was ready. I
watched in alarm as a tuft of Gary’s hair blew back from the force
of the bullet. His trailing zombie fell, taking with it some of the
closer ones in pursuit.

Gary’s hands were still pumping as he fought
for more speed. I saw the glistening of red welling up from the
side of his head as he hit the bottom step. He jumped, launching
past me and the stunned woman, collapsing on her living room floor.
Blood pumped from the wound on his head. “I’ve been shot,” he said
right before passing out.

The woman slammed the door shut, or at least,
tried to as my rifle was still in the way. “How the hell have you
made it this long?” she asked as she pulled my barrel in, quickly
slamming the door and reengaging the lock.

“I get that a lot,” I told her as she moved
me inside so she could shut the heavy steel front door. I admired
her security. If I had half this set-up, I would still be in
Colorado, riding the apocalypse out in relative style. That was a
pipe dream, but a dream nonetheless.

“Josh! Get the first aid kit!” the lady
yelled up the stairs.

A kid of about twelve or thirteen came
running down, carrying an oversized white case with a large red
cross on it.

I expected at any moment for her husband to
come down the stairs also. When that didn’t happen immediately, I
began to wonder if this lady and her son had opened up their door
to strangers. I would remember to ask her later, after she finished
making my brother stop bleeding on her carpet.

“There’s a lot of blood, Mom,” Josh told her.
“He didn’t get bit, did he?” the boy asked in alarm.

“No, the one over there shot him,” the lady
said as she cleaned the wound.

“Why mister? Why did you shoot him?” Josh
asked me.

“He’s my brother,” I tried to say in
explanation.

“If I had a brother, I wouldn’t shoot him,”
Josh told me.

“Wait, no. I didn’t shoot him because he’s my
brother. I was trying to save him.”

“By shooting him? Mom, didn’t Uncle Dave tell
you not to open the door for the crazy people?” Josh admonished his
mother.

The woman looked up at me. “Are you crazy?”
she asked, still wiping blood and placing gauze in the wound to
staunch the blood.

How did I answer that? More than a fair
amount of people, especially recently, had called me crazy. I did
the prudent thing, I stayed silent.

“Wonderful,” the woman said sarcastically,
wrapping tape around Gary’s head. “Your brother will be fine unless
of course you’re not quite through with him yet.”

“Why do I keep running across comedians?” I
asked her.

“Come on, put your rifle down and help me get
him onto the couch,” she told me.

“What about the zombies?” I asked her, not
yet quite willing to yield my only means of defense.

“They can’t get in,” Josh told me. “The only
way things can get in here is if we let them in,” he said pointedly
looking straight at his mother.

“They needed help,” she told him quickly.

By the time we settled Gary down into the
couch, he looked to be more comfortably asleep than anything
else.

“He’ll be fine,” she said, sticking out her
still bloody appendage. “My name is Mary, Mary Hilop.”

I looked in horror at the proffered hand.
“Um, your hand is soaking with blood.”

She pulled it back slightly to look. “There’s
like three dots and it’s your brother’s blood anyway.”

“I don’t know where he’s been,” I told
her.

“Oh, for Christ’s sakes,” she said, heading
into the kitchen and turning on the faucet.

“You’re not worried about contaminated
water?” I asked her in all seriousness.

“It’s well water and are you going to make me
regret my decision to let you in?”

“My name is Mike Talbot and that’s my
brother, Gary,” I told her. “And why did you let us in? You don’t
know what kind of people we are.”

She stood for a long time with her hands
under the water. (And, I’ll happily admit, she was using liberal
amounts of dish soap.) I think she was deciding what she did or did
not want to tell me. She finally turned the faucet off and turned
to face me. “This morning I was saying my prayers, like I do every
day. You know knees on the bedroom floor, hands on top of the bed,
and I was just getting up when I heard an answer back.” She looked
me straight in the eye, wondering if I was going to think she was
nuts.