Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (31 page)

The heavens weren’t listening as the zombie
ran straight into Paul’s fist. Paul was sure he had broken at least
one knuckle on the zombie’s skull. The shot on the eye of the
zombie may not have put a man on his ass, but it should have at
least dazed him. It had no effect whatsoever on the zombie. The
zombie fell on top of Paul as they both went down onto the stinking
pile of refuse. The bag exploded, sending leaking diapers
everywhere.

Snapping teeth came within the width of a
fingernail from shearing Paul’s fingers off. Paul felt the slime of
the film that coated the zombies’ unbrushed teeth. Paul placed both
hands on the zombie’s shoulders and pushed away as the zombie
attempted to draw closer. When the zombie realized it could not
reach Paul’s face, it began to turn from arm to arm, looking for a
place to seek purchase. Paul had to keep alternating his hand
placement in an effort to stay one step ahead of the zombie’s
teeth. Already his arms were beginning to tire, he did not know how
long he could play Hide The Flesh From The Zombie before his arms
gave out.

No one is going to save me this time,
he thought.

Paul shoved his hips upward, gaining some
distance from the zombie as he brought his knee up, in what could
only be described as a ball-busting maneuver. The zombie did not so
much as flinch from the contact. Thick tendrils of drool and
liquefied plaque hung from the zombie’s mouth, dangerously close to
Paul’s face, Paul kept blowing out great puffs of air in a futile
hope to keep the mouth offal from striking him. The smell of the
old, wet, moldy diapers competed with the zombie for odor of the
decade. Paul was having difficulty getting in enough clean air to
work with.

Paul was trying to scramble from under the
zombie, but his feet kept sliding in rubbish.
Had a newly axed
girlfriend once tell me I was going to die in a pile of shit. I
can’t imagine she meant this
, Paul thought.
Or maybe she
did.

The zombie was fairly predictable in its
approach. After nine or ten times through the cycle, Paul got an
idea. As the zombie reached for Paul’s left arm, he pulled it away.
The zombie would make a slight attempt for Paul’s face and then
move to the right side. Paul moved his right arm quicker than the
zombie was expecting, then he thrust up with his left hip. The
death-tangled duo rolled to the right, precariously balancing on
their right side until momentum brought Paul on top.

“How about I eat you, motherfucker?!” Paul
screamed. Paul made a feint to bite on the zombie’s arm. Once
again, the zombie could not have cared less as it still tried to
bite at Paul’s hands, but it now did not have as much range in
motion. Paul still had no clue as to what to do. He did not want to
release his grip. He was afraid he might slip in the piles of
garbage as he turned to run and then they’d be doing this dance all
over again. Paul did the only option that was available to him as
the zombie went for Paul’s right hand. With his left, Paul grabbed
as much trash as he could, becoming utterly dismayed when his hand
went through decomposing diaper.

He began to shove as much refuse into the
zombie’s eager mouth as he could. The zombie, at first, greedily
took the offering and then began to fight against the force-fed
meal. Paul had already let go and was halfway to getting up. The
zombie was still struggling with a Pamper lodged in its throat.
Paul’s nightmare nearly came to fruition as he slid on a cliché.
No way! A banana peel? Are you kidding me?
But banana peels
were much more slippery in cartoons. Paul was quickly on terra
firma and shuffling for all his life to the doorstep closest to
him. Locked door, crazy resident, home full of zombies or just
pissed off squirrels, Paul was placing all his marbles into this
bag; there were no other options. He could not make it to another
house and he’d much rather see the zombie coming than get brought
down from behind like a gazelle on the Serengeti.

Paul’s ankle groaned as he climbed the first
step. If not for forward momentum, he would have brought his foot
down and brought up his left. That was no bargain either as his
foot wound broke open from the flexion of the move. Blood was
seeping through his boot at an alarming rate. Paul had no time to
take notice as he reached the top of the third step and got onto
the landing. His zombie friend had finally got its feet under it
and was now ready to continue its pursuit.

Paul reached out to grab the storm door, his
hands slick with an unidentifiable, or at least, unwilling to
identify, substance. His hand slid off as effectively as if the
handle had been Vaseline-coated.

***

For the briefest of synapses, he remembered
that time in college when Mike and he had gotten a particularly
difficult Resident Assistant to quit his job. An RA’s job is sort
of like den mother. It is his or her responsibility to make sure
that no huge parties are held on the floor; or that any huge
violations are being broken, (like having an oven in a dorm room).
Sometimes they even act as a pseudo counselor when a freshman runs
across the familiar homesick blues. Paul and Mike had the
unfortunate luck of the draw, with their RA, he took his
responsibilities a little too seriously. Most of the RAs were
simply in it so that they could break all of the rules in a single;
as opposed to the standard, two-to-a-dorm room. Gert (yes, he was a
man) was studying to move on to grad school and could absolutely
not stand any noise whatsoever on his floor. He had once written a
sophomore up because her alarm clock was excessively loud.

Mike and Paul had been written up no less
than five times in their first month on the floor. Six meant an
automatic meeting with the dean and potential disciplinary actions,
up to and including, expulsion. Mike and Paul had on more than one
occasion caught Gert outside their door listening to see if he
could get that elusive sixth offense.

“Is he there?” Mike asked Paul as Paul had
snuck up to the door and quickly opened it, trying to once again
catch him.

“No, but he was here recently. I can almost
hear the echo of his goosestep as he went down the hallway.”

“Good one,” Mike had said. “We need to do
something about him. We’ve been good for a few days now, but how
much longer do you think we can last?”

“Not long, I’m already itching for another
fiesta.”

“That’s what I’m saying. We need to get rid
of the party Nazi.”

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to wait until
next semester and move off this floor?”

“You think we’ll make it that far? And then
we have to admit that he wins. And that sure doesn’t sound like the
guy that threw perhaps the largest spitball ever conceived at Mrs.
Weinstedder back in the sixth grade.”

“You sure do know how to flatter a guy.
What’s your plan?”

“You think he’s in his room?”

“The only time he isn’t is either when’s he’s
at class or writing a student advisory slip.”

“Alright, we’ve got to be careful. He’s got
the other freshmen on this floor so wound tight, they might rat us
out if they catch us.”

“You sure about all this, Mike?” Paul asked
with some concern.

“I’d rather go out in a blaze of glory than
skulking into the night.”

“I agree,” Paul said, feeling himself quite
possibly being peer-pressured.
There’s something to be said for
skulking
, Paul thought.

“Alright, I’m going to need your help with
this one.”

Paul nodded and noted Mike taking a stack of
pennies from their shared coin jar.

“When we get to Hurtie Gert’s door, you need
to press on the top corner as hard as you can.”

“Which corner?” Paul asked.

“Valid question, the one above the
doorknob.”

“What’s that going to do?”

“It’s going to give me the room I need to
shove these pennies in.”

“You know our fingerprints are all over those
things.”

“So? No way, do you think he’d get these
dusted?”

“Who knows?”

“We don’t have our fingerprints on file, do
we?”

“I don’t think so, but I’d rather not take
the chance.”

Mike wiped all the coins on his shirt and
then put a sock over his hand to grasp the coins.

“That doesn’t look suspicious at all.”

“Come on, let’s get this done.”

Mike kept his sock-clad hand in his pocket to
allay any prying questions, should they arise. The twenty-five-foot
walk to Gert’s door was uneventful. The only noise was when some
unlucky student had dropped his chemistry book on his foot and
cried out in alarm and pain. Paul and Mike had frozen, thinking
Gert would come busting out of his door to quiet the offending
student. He didn’t do that, but he had yelled for the clumsy
scholar to shut up.

“He’s a very caring individual,” Mike had
said, turning back towards Paul.

The door had groaned slightly as Paul pressed
on the top corner.

“Harder,” Mike had intoned, looking at the
gap being formed from the pressure.

The gap had finally widened to a liking for
Mike as he pulled the pennies from his pocket and placed about
seven of them in a stack against the bowed door and the frame.

“Let go,” Mike said.

“There was a brief second where the corner of
Mike’s sock got pinched in the door. Paul thought it had been
Mike’s finger and was waiting for the resultant scream that would
most assuredly get them kicked out of school. Mike quickly pulled
the sock out and bolted for their room, Paul hurriedly followed.
They had no sooner shut their door when someone down the hallway
had opened theirs.

“That was fucking close,” Mike laughed.

“Now what?” Paul asked, not sure what was
going to happen. All he could think was that Gert might be mildly
surprised with the clatter of change and would be seven cents
richer for their effort.

“We wait.”

“This seemed funnier when we were talking
about what we were going to do.”

“Wait, buddy, it gets better.”

As it turned out, it wasn’t too long of a
wait before Gert decided it was time to go to the cafeteria and get
some food. At first, there was nothing and then came the struggles
of someone beating on their door. If it had been anybody else
besides Gert, they would have received a violation. Nearly every
door on the floor opened to see who had the balls to make that much
noise.

Gert was beating on his door with closed
fists, swearing in his native tongue of German.

“I always wondered how to say that,” said a
pretty, little brunette named Debbie, who Paul remembered was
taking German as her language of choice. “Interesting.”

“Someone needs to call the Fire Department! I
am locked in my room!”

“He can’t get out?” Paul asked, turning back
to a laughing Mike.

“No man! The pennies wedge the lock up
against the slide; he can’t even turn the handle.”

“That’s brilliant, man.”

The ranting, cussing and general screams of
fear continued for a full two minutes longer until a junior who had
seen the prank before recognized it for what it was. He told Gert
to move from the door. He then pressed against the corner of the
door, and the pennies fell to the floor.

“What the hell is going on!?” Gert screamed
as he came through the door.

Most of the meek freshman retreated back into
their rooms.

“Was this you?” Gert asked the junior who had
helped.

“Screw you, man, I just helped you. I should
have left you in there.” And then he walked away.

The hallway was clear, save a few students,
who decided this might be a good time to go get some food. Gert
honed in on Paul and Mike like an eagle to a mouse.

Mike quickly pulled Paul in and shut the
door.

“Do you think he knows?” Paul asked,
smiling.

“I’m sure we’re on a short list.”

“Kind of like Spindler?” He was the boys’ old
high school principal, who followed them around relentlessly, at
least, until his car mysteriously burst into flames.

“Kind of like that, but by the time we’re
done, we’ll make all that look like child’s play.”

For two weeks, Mike and Paul had harassed
Gert to no end. On a particularly eventful evening, Paul gained
illegal entry into Gert’s dorm room via a credit card and some
precision maneuvering. Paul had hooked up Gert’s Bose stereo system
to a timer set to go off in the wee hours of the morning. At
precisely three-thirty-eight am on the morning of Tuesday the
eleventh of October, “Runnin’ with the Devil” by Van Halen ripped
through the night like a fire truck through a sleepy village.

“Fitting song,” Mike told Paul as they sat at
their doorway. They were careful to only open their door when they
heard the rest of the floor doing the same.

The music and Gert’s resultant cursing had
been heard on the floor below and above. Despite Gert’s
protestations, he had received his first written warning since he
had started school four years previous.

“How much more of this do you think he can
take?” Paul asked Mike after they had seen a hangdog expression on
Gert as he exited the student lounge.

“I guess we’ll see,” Mike had answered. “The
good thing is he’s been too paranoid to write anybody up.”

“He doesn’t look like he’s slept in days,”
Paul said. “I’d almost feel bad if he wasn’t such a prick.”

“If who wasn’t such a dick?” Debbie asked.
She was working the counter at the snack shop.

Mike looked up guiltily. “What did you
hear?”

“That Gert’s a dick,” she said, flashing a
smile.

Mike and Paul quickly rewound through their
conversation trying to see how much they had given away.

“We never said Gert,” Paul said. Mike was
inclined to believe him, but they had just shared a particularly
large joint and Mike wasn’t entirely too sure what they had said.
He had been so fixated on the large, frosted, chocolate chip
brownie, he hadn’t even noticed Debbie working the counter.