For the Fallen Read online

  up and kicked against its belly, driving him backwards enough to extract my weapon.

  This time I took a solid swing square on the top of its skull. The bones held out

  as long as they could before they caved, sending splinters into its fucking diseased

  brain bucket.

  I didn’t have time to revel, nor did I want to. Zombies were coming in from both sides

  of the aisle. Tommy was like a ninja behind us, I could hear his blade whistling through

  the air. He was practically a food processor. ‘For all your zombie mixing needs!’

  BT could have been swinging a fly swatter and still would have probably stopped the

  zombies; he was putting that much force behind each blow. The three B’s were constantly

  arcing up and around us each time he would remove his blade from whatever he had hit.

  I’m talking blood, brains, and bone bits. Is that four B’s? I was going to tell him

  he should use a little more finesse, but the moments could not be spared, and I don’t

  think he would have appreciated it.

  The battle was mostly silent. I don’t think anybody outside even knew what was going

  on. Besides the occasional grunt and resulting thud of a fallen zombie, we were all

  too busy concentrating on the task at hand to talk. I wanted to call out for some

  reinforcements. The boys would certainly come in guns blazing, but for some reason,

  Tommy was against it and I’d have to defer to his judgment for now. However, if we

  started to lose more ground, I’d have to suffer with whatever those consequences entailed.

  Dying was dying anyway you sliced it.

  “The shelves,” Tommy said. I won’t swear on it, but the boy sounded a little winded,

  and if he was winded, then odds were that BT and I were exhausted. How long could

  the adrenaline hold out? And what about the damned shelves?

  “Oh.” I mouthed when I had a spare millionth of a second to check. Zombies were peering

  over at us; some of them were even in various states of climbing. “What in the hell

  is going on?” I swung, taking off an arm right above its elbow.

  “Mike, fight is up front,” BT said with a slight edge of panic lacing his words. “Is

  there a sale on lawn ornaments or something?”

  “Party crashers.” I told him, slicing Lefty across the face from his cheek through

  one of his eyes.

  BT was backing up, and I was getting caught in the middle between him and Tommy. Maybe,

  if they pressed hard enough, I’d shoot up in the air like a burst pimple. It’d be

  safer up there. Unless of course an industrial-sized fan was spinning and then all

  bets were off. Tommy pushed by me and was now side-by-side with BT as I sliced up

  Lefty who had finally made enough headway that I could get a kill shot. It wasn’t

  long before another took his place. I’d been so focused on the one in front of me

  that I’d almost failed to see that the entire twenty feet of shelving had climbers.

  “BT, help me!” I yelled as I pushed up on it.

  I’d love to be able to write and say that I was able to push it over on my own, but

  it was definitely BT’s bulk and strength that sent the thing toppling with a loud

  and resounding crash. Most of the zombies that had been coming up where pinned under

  the bulk of the metal. Of the ones that weren’t, they were strewn around trying to

  regain their footing. We pounced on them. I could see the boys out of the corner of

  my eye racing in; the crashing noise had gotten their attention.

  “NO GUNS!” I yelled. I had swung with a sideways twist of my arm. Again I caught a

  zombie in the mouth, this time no teeth as the blade cut through his lips, into and

  through the muscles of its jaw and then finally the jawbone itself. I tore through,

  coming out below its ears. The top of the head flopped onto my boots; of course, brain

  side down. There was another set of footwear I’d never wear again.

  BT was hacking away at the zombies pinned to the ground before they could get away.

  Two zombies had gotten up and were heading towards my boys.

  “I don’t fucking think so,” I said angrily as I tore into a zombie, the blade catching

  it in the hollow of its neck and slicing all the way down her back. The glistening

  of her spine was going to be another thing I added to the nightmare catalog of the

  day. She fell over as her head canted to the side. She wasn’t dead, but her lack of

  locomotion meant I could deal with her later. The next one I caught up to in a few

  strides. I launched from the ground, machete raised high and brought it down just

  as I landed, opening its head like a butterfly from hell.

  “Talbot!” Tracy cried, exiting the truck quickly. I spun, thinking there were more

  zombies coming. I was confused when I didn’t see any. Tommy and BT were also coming

  out.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, searching to find the threat she was so concerned about.

  Blood whipped away from my head with the centrifugal force of it. I’d forgotten completely

  about my head wound.

  “Sorry…my fault.” BT came up beside me. His hands were on his knees as he leaned over,

  catching his breath.

  “Are you hurt?” Tracy asked as she came up to me.

  “BT tried to kill me,” I told her.

  BT almost fell over as Tracy shoved him. “If anyone is going to kill him, it’ll be

  me!” she told him.

  “Sure, sure,” BT said, ambling away.

  Gary was directing the outflow of materials from the hardware store into the truck.

  Tracy was working on my head which had finally stopped bleeding. She had me wrapped

  up like you see in those old Revolutionary posters, all I needed was a fife and I’d

  be all set. At least BT had given me a valid excuse from doing any heavy lifting.

  He’d come over every once in a while to apologize to me. I had a sneaking suspicion

  he was doing it more to appease the missus.

  “Will there be any problem with the blood?” Tracy asked.

  I knew what she meant. BT had just pulled the blade out of an infected skull and then

  thwapped the crap out of my forehead.

  “I should be fine. The transmission seems to be through saliva.”

  “And what about Justin’s scratch?”

  “Maybe whatever that zombie had eaten was finger-lickin’ good.” Horrible pun and I

  wished I could take it back. Tracy gladly didn’t respond at all. Although I think

  I saw her face pale a little.

  “Mike, we’re still going to need to get some lumber,” Gary said once he was satisfied

  they had everything of use they could get out of the hardware store.

  “I’d love to be able to help, I’m still a bit woozy, though.” I was actually doing

  much better, the splitting headache was merely a memory of itself, but there was no

  way I was going to not malinger, especially since I now had a valid excuse. No one

  save me and probably Tommy knew how fast my body could heal itself, and he wasn’t

  saying anything. The kid was nearly silent as he went about his work. Looked like

  he was figuring out algorithms he was so lost in thought.

  “Why no guns?” I asked when we got back on the road.

  “We were surrounded by three zombie dens and they were huge,” Tommy told me. “They’re

  honing in on sounds that only humans make. Rifles and engines being at the top.”

  “They’re distinguishing?”

&
nbsp; “Resources are low.”

  “So then the truck brought those zombies?”

  “I guess. I think that was a patrol.”

  “A zombie patrol? Tommy, I’m not liking this at all. Did they send a runner back for

  reinforcements?” I asked. The implications of zombies with tactics was fucking scary.

  I can’t think of a better way to describe it. An idea flashed in my head like a strobe.

  “So somehow you knew the dens were there. Could you find them?”

  “No, Mike, it’s too dangerous,” Tommy said, alarmed.

  “So you can.”

  “Mike, what are you doing?” BT asked.

  “Be vwery, vwery quiet, I’m hunting,” I said in my best Elmer Fudd voice.

  “You’re certifiable and somehow I’m stuck with you.” BT moved to the far side of the

  truck bed. “Lord, I haven’t asked you for much, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never done

  anything in my life heinous enough to deserve this.” He was quiet for a moment. “Is

  this a test? Is that what this is? Am I promised a spot in Heaven if I can get through

  this? Probably a Sainthood. I could deal with that, Saint BT. Patron saint of dipshits.”

  “I can hear you,” I told him.

  “I’m not talking to you,” BT said.

  “Alright, first we get Gary’s wood, then me and you are going to reduce the zombie

  population,” I said.

  Tommy did not look nearly as happy as I felt. Normally, I’d let sleeping zombies lie,

  and maybe this was as bad as the Japanese waking the US into World War II, but they’d

  come out the other side an economic power house. It’s all well that ends well, I kept telling myself. I refused to remember anything about the atom bombs and the

  shit-storm Japan had been for a while.

  The lumber store went worlds better than the hardware store, and I was still able

  to milk my injury. I grabbed a couple of ten-foot long two-by-fours and then rammed

  them into everything around me. BT felt so bad, he had snagged them out of my hands

  and insisted I sit down. So I did.

  “You’re a horrible actor,” Tracy told me. She was standing guard.

  “Good thing then that BT’s not a critic,” I told her.

  We were halfway back to the DPW shop when I shouted at Gary to stop for a second.

  He’d almost sent the lot of us hurtling into the front of the truck.

  “What’s up?” he asked, looking out and up as I struggled to regain my feet. I told

  him to wait.

  “You need help, Mike?” BT asked.

  “I’ll be right back.” I jumped out of the truck. I thought I heard him tell Tommy

  that ‘I looked fine now once all the hard work was done.’

  I was breaking all my rules today as I walked into Anne’s Bike Shop. Number one was

  having to fight zombies with a bladed weapon; and second was using a mode of transportation

  that was unprotected. I grabbed a couple of bikes and then handed them out to the

  boys. I went in and grabbed a couple of more. Plus a few flat repair kits and some

  spare tires.

  “What are you doing, Mike?” Tracy asked.

  “Going green,” I told her as I hopped back up.

  “What’s with the bikes, Mike?” BT asked, not at all pleased with the wheeled machinery

  by his feet. “You know I don’t know how to ride, right?”

  “It’d be interesting to watch for sure…almost like a circus act.”

  “I’m sure I could wrap one of these things around you, though.”

  “Zombies like the sound of engines. I’m removing that from the equation. Tommy and

  I are going to wipe out a few dens.” I told him.

  “This your idea?” he asked, looking at Tommy. “No, of course not,” he answered before

  the boy could say anything.

  “Listen, I’m not doing it because I’m looking for any more trouble than we already

  have. Just hear me out. It doesn’t look like zombies will die on their own. Neither

  time or starvation seem to play a part in their physiology. Fuck, they’re like Styrofoam

  coffee cups, they’re never going anywhere.” BT nodded. “And now it looks like they

  are starting to tap deeper into the brains they infest. Day by day they’re getting

  smarter. I mean, I don’t know if it’ll come down to it, but what if they start to

  figure out how to wield weapons or shoot guns. What then, man? We’re already swimming

  in a pool of shit and now they want to try and drown us in it.”

  “Fairly graphic analogy…but probably fitting,” Tommy said.

  “The stasis time is going to be our best chance to take out as many of them as possible,”

  I told him.

  “On one level, Mike, I’m completely with you. On the other…what are the odds your

  wife is going to let you do this?”

  “I’m not telling her,” I said without skipping a beat. “And neither are any of you.”

  I pointed to Travis, Justin, and BT.

  “Tommy and I are going to head out tonight and see if we can make some Z’mores.”

  “That’s fucking gross,” BT said. “If you’re not telling her, then we never had this

  conversation.” He pointed back and forth between us.

  Gary had us all doing things while he welded different supports and brackets to the

  truck. Most of it I really didn’t have a clue what they were going to end up doing,

  but when he started cutting out gun wells with the acetylene torch, that I knew. It

  was brilliant! He was making a homemade tank. And then I had to revert back to ‘What

  the hell took so long?’ There were two ports on every side including the front. He

  also cut out a large window that let the folks in the cab see into the back and vice

  versa. He welded a couple of runners and then slotted through a good-sized piece of

  Plexiglas so that we could slide it back and forth.

  I’d argued with Gary for a bit as the sun began to set. He wanted to throw on the

  generator to run some lights so he could see and also use some of the power tools

  that would have made the building process quicker and easier.

  “Are you thinking this through?” I asked him. “You want to be the only place in the

  entire city lit up and making noise? Might as well throw on an ‘open’ sign.”

  “I could just about finish tonight,” he begged.

  “It’s looking great, man, it really is. We’ll work on it tomorrow. Plus we won’t have

  a hostile audience watching us.”

  “We’ve got the fence to keep them out.”

  “Zombies are starting to climb. Do you want to spend the next two days trying to defend

  this area and not be able to? Or do you just want to do what you need to do tomorrow

  and we can get out of here?”

  “Well…option two sounds better, but option one gives me lights.”

  “Funny guy, do what you can tonight.” And then I walked away to find Justin who was

  patrolling the perimeter. “I’m going to need you and your brother to have a late night

  tonight standing watch. You alright with that?”

  “Whatever it takes,” he told me. “Unless mom comes looking for you…and then I’m throwing

  you under the bus as fast as I can.”

  “That’s not being a team player.”

  “I am a team player, just her team.”

  “Fair enough, she always wins anyway. Seriously though, I want the both of you out

  here tonight. This isn’t just a matter of watching the gate anymore.”

  “Do you know what’s going on?” he asked in seriousn
ess.

  “Yeah, the zombies are using the resources available to them and I don’t like it one

  bit.”