ZOMBIE'S DOOM? "Chronicles of Jack Doom" (29 page)

The two rapidly fired successive shots sent the bullets hurtling into both eyes of the staggering dead man. The result of which was, before either eyeball had completely exploded, the twin full metal jacketed projectiles had ripped a five inch gaping hole in the back of the brain-dead beast's skull, and insisted that a large amount of its diseased gray matter exit the spheroid enclosure with them.

"I stand corrected Jack, you do know your way around a firearm," Derek shyly confessed.

"Just a lucky shot," I admitted sarcastically.

"Well if that's the case, I would prefer to keep on the good side of your
luck
," Derek knowingly indicated. "But tell me, why the atrocious shooting display if you're able to shoot the balls off a bull-gnat at fifty paces?"

"I decided some time back, that those eaten sons-a-bitches weren't the only ones that can run around the country and maim people, and then go about their business as if they don't have a care in the world," I explained. "So I made up my mind to do a little substitute teaching out here in the land of the free and the home of the brave."

"You're wounding them on purpose, is that what you're saying?" Derek asked, shaking his head and giggling.

"Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner ladies and gentlemen,
Derek the Red
, you may go to the head of the class," I jested, as I too giggled.

"You're one sick psychotic son of a bitch Jack," Derek said laughing.

"It's a gift, but you don't have to sugar coat it, we're friends, you can tell me what you really think of me," I prompted, still giggling like a schoolgirl removing her prom dress in the back seat of her dates car.

"Well let me give it a try, I'm in the mood to do a little teaching today myself," Derek stated as he pulled his huge revolver from its holster. "Any particular place that you like to hit them?"

"I prefer knee joints or collar bone, but I've been known to drop one or two of them with a bone splintering shot to the femur or the pelvis from time to time," I informed Derek, as he made ready to try his hand at crippling a zombie, instead of killing it. "But those shots usually leave the eaters in the middle of the road, sploshing around in a pile of their own excrement, and cause a road hazard to anyone that might be traveling that route behind you."

"Safety first eh Jack?" Derek quipped.

"Absolutely," I quipped back, pointing to the next zombie in a long line of zombies that Derek and I would be attempting to incapacitate that day.

Derek stuck his massive firearm out the window and pushed the muzzle forward of the windshield, he carefully aimed the weapon from the other side of the glass, and shot the pedestrian corpse in the foot as it stumbled onto the road from the shoulder.

"Nice shooting Tex, I think I saw some toes fly off his foot when your bullet tore through the shoe," I said, complimenting Derek's shooting.

"Toes hell, half his foot flew off into the ditch," Derek argued as he laughed.

"Yeah, that was some mighty fine shooting all right, but next time make it the whole foot," I beseeched. "They have a harder time walking with one foot missing."

"The whole foot it is then," Derek agreed, as he again took aim at another roadside cadaver that was moseying along the highway.

"KaBoom!" Derek's S&W revolver reported.

"How's that Jack, did you see that foot fly into the air?" Derek the Red asked confidently.

"I think you might have taken out some unsuspecting flies with that flying foot," I added. "It looked like it made a temporary hole right through the middle of the swarm."

"Well, I meant to do that," Derek bragged still laughing.

"I'm sure you did," I agreed, thinking that my new partner Derek was so full of shit that his eyes were turning brown.

Derek and I popped bullets into almost every walking, stumbling, or staggering dead body that we came across from the time we left Louisville until we were forced to curtail our endeavors do to unforeseen technical difficulties.

Before my shooting partner ran out of .50 cal. ammo for his hand cannon, I loaned him my Glock 19 so he could continue to impair the movements of the undead that frequented his side of the interstate highway, and save some of his ammo for something a little more serious that we might encounter along the way.

However, rationing his handgun ammunition apparently was not part of Derek's plan, and he began to switch back and forth between the two guns.

Before anybody gets themselves all lathered up over my quick acceptance to the partnership of Derek and myself. As he proclaimed at the onset of our relationship, he could have killed me first. On the other hand, he could have killed me second or third, but he didn't, he made no aggressive moves toward me whatsoever.

He said nothing when he holstered his gun and I raised mine.

He led me to the culvert where the dead bodies were hidden to show me what might have happened to me if he hadn't been there.

He didn't even have a problem with me when I told him that I had no qualms about taking everything in both of the trucks, no matter who the stuff once belonged to.

Moreover, when I told him how the old lady had begged me to administer my own brand of a proper thrashing using her own Louisville Slugger, that ultimately led to her untimely and grisly death, he didn't even blink an eye.

And if he was trying to be sneaky and gain my confidence, all the while working with another person or two with a plan to waylay me sometime in the future, well then he left his cohorts in the dust many miles behind us in Kentucky.

With all that said, I've said it before, and I'll probable say it again.

Mama Doom didn't raise a complete idiot
.

I was keeping a hairy buffalo eye on my new found friend, and if Derek had decided to make a threat, toss a threatening look in my direction, or if he had chosen to make any kind of threatening or aggressive move towards me whatsoever, I was ready to send him to hell with the rest of the ungrateful dead I had sent there previously. At least that was my plan, and I was sticking to it.

We had only gone a few miles after leaving Tony and Danny to make their way through the twists and turns of the diseased and maggot clogged intestines of the marauding undead that were joining them for dinner (literally).

That's when I noticed that the heat gauge on the dash was beginning to indicate that the engine temperature was rising to well over the manufactures suggested acceptable limit.

Derek had been rotating the use of my Glock 19 pistol and his S&W .50cal revolver to pop caps into the wandering zombies on his side of the road, and had finished empting the 15 round magazine in the Glock.

He had just traded the auto-loading bottom feeder for his huge wheel gun, and decided to see if he could take the whole head off the next zombie that meandered across the northbound side of the freeway with his last fifty cal. round.

It wasn't long before his next target came into view, and firing his weapon from a few yards away, he easily managed to accomplish his self-imposed task.

The large bullet shot from Derek's stainless steel hand cannon not only decapitated the monster instantly, but also scattered small chunks of the zombie's head in a ten-yard radius from the point of impact, thereby littering the road and our truck with indiscernible pieces of what was once the ravenous cannibal's cranium, along with a multitude of dead and wounded flies and their larva.

The pressure pushing outward from the middle of the unfortunate monster's head caused by the large caliber bullet, had turned what would have been a temporary wound cavity had the projectile impacted somewhere in the body, into a permanent wound cavity that had obliterated the skull.

The forces interacting inside the skull had been so great, that all that remained in the space that the head had once occupied, was a cloud of pinkish-green mist that had helped to disperse with extreme prejudice the congregation of swarming flies that had been hovering around it.

Now the only thing that was hovering over the headless twitching corpse that had collapsed on the freeway was a quickly fading cloud of tiny diseased blood droplets suspended in the atmosphere above it.

We slowly rolled passed the decapitated body that was oozing some kind of yellowish jelly looking goo (a new look) out of its tattered neck hole, as steam from our overheated engine began to seep up through every seam in the forward compartment of the truck's body.

We were both still laughing about how the skull had exploded and rained down an array of minute pieces of bone, brain, skin, and what was left of the hair on the balding cadaver, onto the hood, windshield, and top of the truck as I gently pushed on the brake and brought the truck to a stop.

"What are we stopping for?" Derek asked, as he pointed to an overweight zombie that was struggling to climb up the small berm next to the road.

"Oh I don't know, you think it might be because of all the smoke pouring out of the engine compartment," I asked sarcastically.

Derek still laughing replied.

"Uh... maybe?"

"Kill that one with your cleaver," I firmly suggested, referring to the obese walking corpse. "We've got mechanical problems and we may be here awhile, not that it really matters at this point, considering that your gun just rang the dinner bell for every eater rambling about in the greater part of southern Indiana."

"Roger," Derek answered, as he exited our vehicle and headed for the corn-fed mutant beefeater with his meat cleaver in hand. "I've got to take a serious squirtation break anyway."

I got out of the truck and stretched my legs, then plodded forward to inspect any damage that I figured we had incurred earlier by turning the Cub Scout into a mushy speed bump in the middle of the freeway.

When I rounded the front fender and saw the cause of the damage, I turned toward Derek and whispered as loud as I could.

"Hold off on that serious squirt of yours, we've got a serious problem right here."

Bending down to take a closer look, I could see radiator fluid spraying out around what I believed to be the young scout's front teeth.

The kid's teeth had penetrated the front grill and were now lodged in the truck's radiator, causing some of the liquid to leak from its cooling system.

That along with the top half of his torso minus his head, and what remained of his torn and bloody shirt, less the numbered sleeve and of course his severed left arm that went with it, which was stuffed into the fins of the radiator, were stopping the airflow and causing the engine to overheat.

After clobbering the nearest menacing monstrosity (the fat one) with a swift downward hack to the top of its skull with his trusty meat cleaver, Derek rejoined me at the front of the truck.

"Trouble boss?" he asked, putting his hands on his hips while still clutching his heavy meat ax that was now dripping with blood.

"Yeah, big trouble," I answered, pointing to the green mist spewing from the front of the truck. "The little bastard took a bite out of our radiator."

"That's just great, what are we going to do now?" Derek asked, shaking his head.

"Well the first thing you're going to do is take that serious squirt of yours and drain your main vein into the truck's radiator," I answered smiling, as I dug out the Cub Scout's mutilated upper body from the grill of the truck, and pulled the blood dampened uniform that was clogging our cooling system from the grill as well.

I then used the moist rag to insulate my hand from the hot radiator cap to prevent scalding myself as I loosened and removed it.

After the geyser of steam subsided enough to insure that Derek wouldn't be burnt by the super-heated gas, he unleashed his manhood in the direction of the radiator and relieved himself.

As Derek shook the dew from the lily, I prepared to make my contribution to our cause and unbuttoned the fly of my pants (no zippers on military fatigues).

The smell of warm piss hung in the muggy summer air as I too drained
my
main vein into the leaking radiator.

Then with the truck's radiator full, and
our
radiators empty, and both of our weezers tucked neatly back into our pants, I jumped down from the bumper, buttoned up my pants, and screwed the radiator cap back on.

Then I informed Derek of my plan.

"We're not going to make it too far in this vehicle, thanks to that newly formed quasi-paramilitary speed bump back there.

We're going to have to go into silent mode for awhile, at least until we get some reliable transportation."

"We need to stop shooting right? So no more gunplay unless absolutely necessary right?" Derek concurred.

"Roger that, we're running dangerously low on ammo anyway, and besides, my borrowed Glock is not suppressed. So if we need to do any shooting,
I'll
take care of it with my Beretta or M-4.

We need to get moving, the sound of that mammoth handgun of yours travels for miles, and since you just decapitated one of the slobbering beasts a few of minutes ago, unwanted company is already arriving," I warned, as I pointed to four zombies less than fifty yards away and coming in our direction. "I'm going to have to scrounge up some more bullets before I go into the Badlands."