Zombie Fallout 9 (23 page)

“Who's out there?” Ron called from the deck once the truck simmered down from blazing inferno to camp fire. Meredith called out.

“It's me, Daddy!” she said triumphantly.

“Mer?” he yelled out. I caught the hitch in his throat. I'm not going to lie; I teared up a bit as well. Who wouldn't? His daughter, who he had no idea how she was doing, suddenly shows up and is right as rain. “Who's with you, honey?”

Zombies were beginning to meander over to the sound of her voice, looking around for the source. “Jesse, Travis, and Uncle Mike!” I watched a flare of flame come up from her spot then drop down close to the base of the tree, closer than I would have liked it. I didn't think the bomb had enough power to knock the tree down, but that wasn't a risk one took. If the ride to the ground didn't kill you, then the zombies would take up the slack. I could see her leaning over to watch the explosion.

“Meredith, hide!” I yelled, using as much force as I could. She peered at me for the briefest of seconds, and then I think it all kind of dawned on her. It was a damn shame that she had a fair amount of Talbot running through her as well. The explosion was glorious. There were vivid reds, deep blues, dark greens, and purply purples. Ran out of adjectives. It ripped the entire layer of bark off the bottom three feet of tree. Its days were indeed numbered. Although, odds were it wasn't going to fall today. Disease, rot, and ruin would be its downfall. The nearest zombies were propelled in the air along with various body parts. If it were people, I would have been sickened. That it was zombies only made it that much better. I conveniently forgot the simple fact that they once were human.

I was easily over fifty yards away from her, and still, I found a two-inch nail embedded in the tree not more than a couple of inches from my head. “Damn.” I used force and pulled a good half inch of it from the tree.

“Talbot where you at?” It was BT.

I made sure I had my voice under control. If it hitched while I replied, he would rib me mercilessly. It wasn't just that he was my best friend. It was now I felt like I could share the burden I'd been shouldering the last three days alone. Of course, the kids had been holding their own. It was just, at the end of the day, their safety was my responsibility. That was tough enough, but that two of them were my sibling's kids made it that much more difficult.

“Over here, man,” I said reaching as deep down as I could for my baritone.

“Good to see you. About time, man. Where the hell you been?”

“What are you, my mother?”

“I missed that.” I think he was talking to Gary.

“Me too, man.” I said softly. “We've come to rid you of your infestation!”

“Mike, I'm not thrilled you gave my daughter explosives.”

“Relax, brother. They're fucking sparklers. Fire in the hole!” I yelled before lighting one and ducking behind the trunk. Leaves rained down on me as my tree shook. It was twenty maybe twenty-five explosions later I called a cease-fire. I wasn't sure anybody would hear me, as I could barely hear myself, and I was the one doing the talking. My ears were ringing, and my eyes were bouncing. The zombies had taken hellacious damage, but even more importantly, they'd yielded ground. In all likelihood, we'd only killed ten percent or so of the horde, but they'd had enough, at least for this round. At some point, gunfire had erupted on Ron's deck. They were making the tactical withdrawal of the zombies a full-on retreat. I climbed down off the tree to see if it was any type of ruse on their part. I made sure to keep an eye out on the too-maimed-to-walk zombies that could still inflict a deadly wound. So far, so good.

I went over to each tree and waited for the kids to come down, urging them to run for the house while I watched their backs. It was while I waited for Jesse to get back safely when I thought about how I didn't have a weapon—well a rifle, anyway. I still had plenty of bombs, not great for in-close combat though. Meredith was the last down, and I ran with her back to the house. BT wrapped me up in a huge bear hug when I got to the top of the deck. I didn't have the heart to tell him I was covered in poison ivy oil. It wasn't a long hug anyway, once he got a big strong dose of me.

“You fucking reek, man! But it's still awesome to see you!” I noticed he was backing away before coming forward to grab me.

“Thanks, man,” I told him as he placed me down. He had a big grin on his face. “Before you go asking, everyone else is all right. They're in the bunker.” I consciously moved closer to him, just to screw with him.

“Want a sandwich?” Trip had come outside in nothing more than his underwear and mismatched socks. He held up what looked like three pieces of bread. “I always get hungry after sex, man. Me and the missus were going at it so hard the earth moved. A few times!” He smiled then proceeded to scratch his nether regions before once again thrusting the sandwich under my nose. “Whoa, man. I just realized I should have put pickles on this thing,” he said as he sampled the air and headed back into the house.

“Your wife isn't even here!” BT called him out.

“Whoa, man. Then I guess I rocked my own world.” He held up his right hand and looked at it with an awed expression.

BT walked away, disgusted. Muttering something about crazy whiteys. I too walked away when he grabbed his sandwich again and started eating. Unfortunately, Trip decided to follow me. Finally, I stopped and just started talking, trying to distract myself from him. I told everyone what was going on at the post office and about the new development with the zombies, although they'd witnessed some of that first hand. They were still out there, but they'd pulled back completely out of arm throwing range. We went into the house. I needed to get cleaned off and hydrated, and a little food wouldn't hurt, either. Especially considering that Trip's bread sandwich was starting to sound better and better. When I was done, Ron sat down at the table next to me.

“Now what?” he asked. “And yes, you still smell a little like vinegar—well a lot like vinegar, actually.”

“Must have soaked in. At least I'll preserve well. As for the post office, I guess we mount a rescue. Maybe it was a mistake to separate,” I told him.

“You think?”

“Hey Ron, I know you're worried, but I didn't come to that decision on my own. If you remember correctly, I wanted to take my family who I mistakenly thought was the source of this newest threat as far away from here as possible, and it was you that maintained, fervently, I might add, that we had to stay.”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I've just been so worried.”

He felt even worse after I told him what the kids and I had been through the last couple of days. He kept refilling my water and offering to make something for me to eat.

Gary came into the room decked out in all the football gear he must have been able to round up in the tri-county region. A
Star Wars
storm trooper would have looked underdressed next to him.

“Going somewhere?” I asked him.

“Aren't we going to get everyone else?”

“You're going like that?” BT had finally got some distance between himself and Trip. For some reason, Trip followed him around incessantly, and BT couldn't stand it. He would peek around corners in the house making sure Trip wasn't in the room before he would enter. More times than not, though, the perpetual stoner would be behind him, wondering what BT was looking at. You could oftentimes find him peering underneath the bigger man's shoulder and arm.

“The question you should be asking is, ‘Why aren't you going like this?'” Gary replied.

“I could round up five hundred brothers, and I guarantee I would not find as many crazy motherfuckers as are in the house.”

“That's true; the average rate of insanity is higher among whites than non-whites.” Trip had ducked under BT's outstretched arm and walked into the room. “Although, if you can believe it, Genogerians actually have the highest rate of all at a staggering two-point-three percent within their general population. Wait … is that this world?”

“Did he just say old people are insane?” Gary asked.

I shrugged. Sometimes you could only take a stab at what Trip was talking about.

“I'm not sure if I should agree with him or not.” BT looked confused.

“I wouldn't. He'll just change his mind about what he said later.” I figured this for sage advice.

Ron wanted everyone back on track. “We need to figure out how to get them back.”

“Through the use of overwhelming force,” Gary said.

“Nice.” I could get onboard with that plan.

“Not very helpful,” Ron chided him. Gary looked slightly deflated.

“He's actually on to something. You've seen it yourself; these new zombies aren't big on taking casualties. They are apparently becoming self-aware. Wow, I did not realize just how scary that sounded until I said it. Fuck. Anyway, umm … where was I? Yeah if they're getting routed, they will withdraw. We just need to show them the door so to speak.”

“Do we leave the house?”

“We can't leave it completely unguarded, but I think if a few of us head out now, we could be back before dark with the rest of our families.”

“I've got something that might help.” Mad Jack beamed. He handed us small boxes about the size of a garage door remote.

“And these are?” I asked him. He looked at us like we were supposed to know what they did.

I noticed Trip was repeatedly pressing the green button on the side. I was thankful it was not a personal detonation device used to blow yourself up in case of an emergency.

“Zombie repellers shrunk down!” He beamed.

I was skeptical. We'd had mixed results thus far. I mean sure, practice makes perfect, but when a failed experiment could lead to death, one got wary.

“I improved the battery life and the odds of a fire have been halved.”

“Halved you say? And what were the odds of a fire before the improvements?”

He didn't look too particularly pleased to answer that question. He turned his head and mumbled a number.

“He said sixty-three percent.” Trip was drinking something that looked like ice cream.

“We have chocolate chip ice cream?” Travis asked.

Tommy pulled him away when my son reached for it. He shook his head. “It's milk.”

What I thought had been a whiff of zombie wafted by my nose. I now realized it was old and curdled milk, with some sort of foreign object in it, probably fly larvae.

“We need to save them, if only to get Stephanie back and rein his fool ass back in.” BT could not get far enough away from Trip. He covered his nose with his hand.

I nearly forgot about the box in my hand. “Wait, sixty-three percent chance of bursting into flame, really?”

“Yeah, but I halved it.”

“Oh great, so there's only a one in three chance of this thing bursting into a white phosphorous grenade then?”

“Thirty-one point six seven is not one in three,” he said indignantly. “And it does not burn like a phosphorous grenade. The wearer would suffer no more than a second-degree burn roughly the size of a bowling ball.”

“Oh, is that all? And what of the bite marks from the zombies nearby?”

“Well, that would be an unfortunate side-effect.”

“Did he just call getting eaten by zombies a side-effect?” BT looked like he was about to take up arms.

I smiled. Sure, it was serious business, but the sight of BT about to lose his fucking mind was priceless.

“What if I were to wear two; that way if one burned up, I'd have a spare?” I asked.

“Oh, I wouldn't do that.” He sounded very troubled by that thought but did not elaborate before leaving. He oftentimes did that. I don't think he meant it as a slight. I just think he had the social graces of a pre-pubescent boy suffering from crippling shyness mixed in with the attention span of a moth.

“He's a weird bird,” Trip said before taking in his last big gulp of whatever the hell he had in that glass. Hearing the thick liquid slide down his throat threatened to loosen my lunch's hold within my stomach. He smacked his lips and rubbed his belly. “What did I just eat?”

“Are you seriously thinking about using these things?” BT looked on the verge of smashing his against the floor like a television remote after his favorite team lost in the playoffs because of a bad call.

“It still works two out of three times.” I said, thinking I did more to rev him up than calm him down.

“We still need to get out of here.” Ron brought the discussion back full circle. “Just because they've withdrawn doesn't mean they've given up.”

“That's why I'm wearing this!” Gary thumped himself in the chest with a hockey stick I'd yet to have seen. He winced from the strike.

“You all right?” Meredith asked him.

“I'm fine,” he forced out.

This was not a good scenario. We had already split the group, and we were going to do so again. The house would be undermanned while we made our rescue attempt. There was no doubt it had to happen. We just couldn't go about this the traditional Mike Talbot way.

“It might be better to leave them where they are?” Tommy paced around the room, not focusing on any one thing, at least not in this realm.

“What the hell does that mean?” Ron was not too thrilled with the prospect of leaving his wife alone.

“They'll be fine for at least a week,” he said, never looking at anybody.

“And then what?” Ron asked.

“Then? Then they might be on their own.” Tommy left the room.

“Duh, duh, duh!” Trip sang the words. “That sounds ominous! They usually play that music in the movie when someone is about to jump out of a closet.” Trip's gaze immediately went to the outside door. He stared at that thing longer than I figured he could until what I thought would happen happened. “Are we waiting on pizza?” he asked. “My stomach hurts. I maybe shouldn't have had that second blueberry and mayonnaise smoothie.” He went in the same direction as Tommy, although I think he was heading for a bathroom. I had no idea where Tommy went, probably the roof to get better reception for whatever signal he was tuning in to.