ZOMBIE'S DOOM? "Chronicles of Jack Doom" (27 page)

Then as if I had tried to put a hex on myself, I began to wonder when my good fortune was going to run out, and that's when it did.

Just like in the past, I rounded a curve and found the freeway blocked. Ahead of me on the highway were two large box trucks from a now defunct rental
enterprise
.

The trucks were parked perpendicular to the road and blocked every lane and about half of the emergency lanes on both sides.

Dozens of cars and trucks were haphazardly filling the ditches on either side making it impossible to drive around the back of the rental units.

They were positioned so that the two men standing between the trucks could easily walk out from behind them for a parley if they chose to. Yet the trucks still afforded cover for the two of them if the feces was going to be flung into spinning rotary blades, and trust me, a copious amount, a superabundant amount of shit was about to hit this fan. At least for some it was.

This wasn't my first rodeo, and just because I couldn't see any more than two men standing in the road, didn't mean that there wasn't more hiding somewhere nearby.

It was too late for me to stop and turn around, even at the apocalyptic hyper-speed of 22 mph that I was traveling at the time. I was well within the range of their weapons the moment they came into view.

If I stopped and tried to make a run for it, I would surely die of lead poisoning if the two men were so inclined to inject me with a fatal dose of the heavy metal.

I figured my best chance to make it through the roadblock and into Indiana, was to try to negotiate with the probable road agents.

I slowed to a stop a couple of yards from the rental trucks and yelled to the two men that had cautiously moved from behind the trucks in my direction, pointing their assault rifles at me as they did so.

"Howdy fellows, how may I help you?"

"First of all you can put your hands were I can see them," the taller man ordered.

"Well sure, I can do that," I answered, leaving my suppressed pistol on my lap as I grasp the steering wheel with both hands.

"What brings you down my road, and where are you headed stranger," the other man gruffly asked.

"It's the shortest distance between two points is why I'm on
your
road," I said with a plastered on smile. "I'm headed into the Indiana Badlands."

"Well stranger, you've got more hair than I do, hell more hair than me and Tony here put together, wouldn't you say so Tony," the shorter man insisted.

"Hell yes Danny, you gotta have a huge pair of furry cojones to go up into Indiana. Mister, you might be okay on this side of Indianapolis, but any farther north and you'll be in the shit for sure.

Danny and I were up there once about five months ago, just in time for the spring thaw. Zombies were coming back to life everywhere, their blood, and muscles unfreezing, hell, we just barely made it out alive; We'll never go back up there if we can help it. Right Danny?"

"You got that right," Danny agreed.

"Tell me mister, why in the fuck would you willingly want to go into the Badlands of Indiana?" Tony inquired with a glare.

"I've got business there," I answered, still faking a smile.

"Business, in the Badlands, don't make me laugh," Tony said chuckling.

"Yeah, don't make us laugh," Danny agreed, his demeanor becoming solemn.

From past experiences, when somebody's demeanor changes from cheerful or congenial to solemn or harsh, it is usually not too long before bullets start flying.

"What kind of business might you have that would take you into the Badlands by yourself?" Tony asked suspiciously, still glaring at me.

With my fraudulent smile fading, I answered Tony's question.

"I'm going into the Indiana Badlands to find a guy that calls himself the Caucasian; He's the leader of a group of people up there."

When I mentioned the Caucasian, Tony and Danny hesitated for a moment, and I could see the look of fear in their eyes.

Then Danny stammered as he asked.

"Are... you... friends with the Caucasian?"

"Yeah...are you...a friend of the Caucasian?" Tony chimed in, also stammering.

The look of fear in the two men's eyes told me that they felt that they had more to lose than I did. That gave me a distinct advantage over them in a fight, so I thought that it was time that I took control of the situation.

"Lower your weapons," I ordered, as I slowly reached for my Beretta, hoping the two men were scared enough not to call my bluff.

To my surprise, the men immediately lowered their rifles, and their body language told me that they had assumed that the answer to their question about my relationship with the Caucasian was yes.

With their weapons no longer pointed at me, I grabbed my M-4 to complement my pistol, and with a gun in each hand, I got out of the truck.

"You two all alone out here?" I inquired, re-plastering my counterfeit smile back onto my face.

Tony and Danny looked at each other as if they were confused and trying to figure out how to answer my question.

Then Danny spoke up.

"No, we're not alone out here, we're not completely stupid."

"Well, I'm not anyway," Tony added, with a vague smile.

"We got a couple of guys hiding out there in the bushes with high powered hunting rifles just in case our roadblock stops a vehicle who's occupants are too much for the two of us to handle," Danny confessed, scratching his nose with his middle finger which was pointed straight up and directed at Tony.

Danny was smiling at his friend as if to get the other man's approval of his admission and of the obscene gesture that was brought on by the stupid implication, when his face exploded into Tony's.

Temporarily blinded by his blood, hair, skin, middle finger, and part of the cartilage that once supported Danny's nasal cavity, and stunned by the horrendous noise from the big bore gun that had just killed his friend, Tony never saw the man I would come to know as Derek.

Derek had sneaked up behind the two men, blown Danny's face off with one of the biggest and most powerful handguns ever produced, and then slashed the upper part of Tony's skull off with a large meat cleaver.

"Not any more they don't! I took care of them first while you guys were down here giving each other hand jobs," the man dressed in a blood red mechanic's jumpsuit announced, as I raised my rifle in his direction. "Calm down, I could have killed you first if I had wanted to."

Now standing in front of me and over the two dead men that he had just killed, stood a man in his mid-twenties, six feet tall with sandy brown hair and a mustache to match. He was dress in a red jumpsuit and he was holding a meat cleaver dripping with Tony's blood in one hand, and a big-ass stainless steel .50 cal S&W (Smith & Wesson) revolver in the other.

Figuring that the man may have just saved my life I said to him in a loud voice.

"What in the fuck is wrong with you? Put a silencer on that cannon before you draw every eater for a hundred miles."

"I'm sorry! I didn't think of that while I was busy saving your ass," the man in the scarlet suit explained sarcastically.

"What?" I said loudly again. "I think your howitzer broke my ear drums."

"Hey, I said I was sorry," the man said smiling as he holstered his gigantic revolver.

"Explain yourself!" I demanded, pointing my M-4 at the man. "Why did you kill those two?"

"These two clowns...well four clowns, had every intention of robbing you of everything you have and then killing you if the mood struck them," the man answered. "They pulled the same shit on me seven days ago, and the only reason that I'm talking to you today is that there used to be five of them, I had to kill one of them to escape."

Not being one to take anyone at his or her word in the zombie apocalypse (remember Cassandra) I said. "Well that's very convenient, you just happen to be their only victim that got away?"

"Yeah, pretty much," the man answered. "Take a look over there."

The man pointed down to a concrete culvert that ran under the freeway behind the rental trucks.

"Lead the way," I ordered, ready to blow this man's head clean off if he looked at me sideways.

The man turned around and began to walk in the direction of the drainpipe.

"My name is Derek if you give a shit," he said.

"I don't," I answered abruptly.

"Well you might after I show you this," Derek responded.

Derek galloped down the grassy slope beside the freeway almost giddy as he dodged the abandoned vehicles and led me to the hidden culvert.

In the sun, his bright red jumpsuit contrasted with the overgrown blue grass of the states nickname sake, and he stuck out like a sore dick in a snowstorm (even though it was the middle of the summer).

As I watched him almost gleefully scoot down that small hill bouncing off the fenders of some of the cars, I had to wonder how he had managed to stay alive as long as he had.

He stood at the opening to the drainpipe and waited as I cautiously ambled down the grassy incline.

As I approached the hidden culvert, a familiar odor began to permeate my nose, and a well-known sound accosted my ears.

The usual disgusting stench of rancid flesh pervaded the air in and around the opening under the highway, and as I got closer, I could just barely see dozens of mutilated rotting bodies stacked on top of one another through the almost opaque black curtain of swarming flies.

"See what I mean?" Derek said, holding both hands in a gesture depicting a game show host offering up a prize. "And if you look in the back of those two trucks, you'll find all of the ill gotten gains those assholes took from all of these people... and me."

Braving the stench and the multitude of flies, I moved nearer to the pile of human remains, and upon closer examination, I could see that most of the bodies had multiple bullet holes in their torsos, and all had at least one gunshot wound to the head for the prevention of reanimation.

"Okay, I'm convinced," I admitted, still pointing my gun at Derek. "Let's get out of here before we go deaf from this incessant buzzing."

"I'm going to get my shit out of their truck," Derek proclaimed, as he walked back up the hill, ignoring the fact that my M-4 was leveled at his back. "I'd take back my car too, but those dirty cocksuckers wrecked it when they rolled it down the hill and it slammed into the other side of the ditch."

Derek opened the back door of one of the box trucks and began to dig through its cargo.

"I'm only going to take what those highway men took from me, the rest of this stuff belongs to those poor bastards down in the pipe," he announced, as he fished out a bowie knife that had a buffalo engraved on its deer antler handle.

I climbed into the back of the truck with Derek after I secured one of the doors to the outside wall of the vehicle with a piece of wire and lodged a small rock between the other door and the frame of the cargo hold, heeding a warning that an over the road truck driver named Clyde had given me.

During the early days of the outbreak, my family and I had met Clyde at a rest stop on our way to Texas, and he was adamant about making sure that you never get into the back of a truck without making darn sure that nobody can close the back doors and lock you in.

That was a warning that I took to heart and had immediately began to practice religiously while scrounging through semi-trailers and any other vehicle that could ultimately end up being a metal sarcophagus with no way out.

Picking up a bag of what turned out to be
stale
marshmallows (big surprise) I told Derek that he could do whatever he wanted, but unlike him, I had been mercifully spared the ravages of a conscience and would be partaking in the so-called spoils of war if he had no objections.

After all, those poor bastards rotting away in that culvert would no longer have a need for anything in either of the trucks.

I took a bite of one of the stale marshmallows as my comment brought a smirk to my newfound friend's face, and we both continued to rummage through the contents in the back of the rental truck.

Being in Louisville Kentucky, I found it rather ironic that buried deep within the pile of pilfered goods I discovered a baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger.

As I picked up the wooden bat, it brought back the memory of months passed.

"Look at this Derek, boy does this bring back memories," I said, clutching the bat with both hands.

"Did you play baseball in high school or college; coach a little league team or something?" Derek asked, looking up from the pile.

"Hell no, I hate baseball, it's a slow and boring sport," I answered, mimicking swinging the bat at a fastball.

"Then, why the memories?" Derek asked, looking a bit confused.

"Once during a search of a home by me and my family, we were looking for supplies, you know how it is.

Anyway, this ninety-something year old woman came busting into the room with the intent of doing us bodily harm, and I was forced to give her the righteous beat down that she was begging for, that is after wrenching her Louisville Slugger from her frail, arthritic grip," I explained chuckling. "Those were the good old days, back when we only had eaters and rogue humans to contend with, no massive amounts of flies hovering over the dead, the ones that walk around anyway, and no other unbelievable... things."