A Plague Upon Your Family zf-2 Page 4

“But the gun.”

  “Probably just target practice.” She answered.

  Cash knew better, target practice meant using something that was in diminishing supply, while also alerting anything nearby to your presence. He strained his ears to listen for any signs of trouble.

  “I’m getting bored.” April said as she sat on the table.

  As the blood rushed out of Cash’s brain so did his higher reasoning. He unzipped his pants and in one deft movement pushed his pants and underwear down. It was at this point that he realized his mistake, at 10 feet away from his conquest, he would have to duck walk over to her, obviously not the sexiest move ever. As he began his penguin pace, a lone shot from the AR-15 rang out. It was too late. Cash’s lower brain was committed and its quarry was within striking distance. Cash shuffled over to the table, and like a heat seeking missile to a raging volcano he struck home.

  “Oh my God!!!” April screamed. Cash was inwardly pleased with himself that he was eliciting this reaction from such a beautiful woman. “Get off me!” She screamed as she pounded on his chest. Cash was dejected, confused and hurt. “Get the fuck off me!” As she placed her foot on his chest and pushed him back. Cash fell into something or more correctly someone. He turned simultaneously trying to say his apologies while pulling up his pants.

  “Sir I’m so so sorry.” He stammered. “We...We thought this place was abandoned, we didn’t mean any harm we were just looking for some food. Although even a blind man would have known that wasn’t the case. “We’ll clean up the place…right April?” Cash looked back towards April. She had got off the table and was slowly working her way towards the back door. “April...wait.” But April was having none of it. Her countenance was clearly on this new man’s face and she was terror stricken. Cash had finally gotten his pants up into a serviceable fashion when he was able to look up at the homeowner’s face. The stench was hideous, even the intense smell of the vinegar could not hide it. It wasn’t quite the unmistakable stench of death but it was damn close and making a case of its own for top dog. The face of the ruddy farmer, for the most part looked hale, there was a slight pallor but nothing a day or two in the sun wouldn’t cure. The sun however would not be able to fix those two flat black orbs, a shark showed more humanity in its eyes. April reached behind her feeling for the door handle, all the while never taking her eyes off the man.

  Everything else happened in an instance, cold air blew in from the back door, April lunged out, almost at a full tilt by the time she got down the three back stairs. Her screaming seemed to enrage the occupant of the house. The man reached for and grabbed a hold of Cash’s jacket. Cash didn’t think twice as he shucked his coat off and headed for the same egress April had left a moment before. Cash was down the stairs and barely away from the house, when the first asthmatic asphyxiation struck. ‘Calm down, Cash’ He thought to himself. ‘Just breathe, you got away, he can’t catch you. Breathe.’ Cash was halfway through his calming technique when the zombie appeared at the top of the small porch. ‘Okay that was a little fast.’ Cash thought, but I’ve been here for a few seconds trying to catch my breath. The zombie jumped down the three stairs and stopped, looking intently at Cash, he was now no more than 25 feet away.

  “Oh no!” Cash wheezed.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was impossible to not hear the girl’s screams. Her shrieks pierced the air like a cord of harpies’. “I take it she’s one of the missing people?” I asked Alex.

  He nodded, stress imprinted on his face. “Yeah April was with that pimply kid, what the hell was his name? Moola? Dinero? Cash? Yeah that’s it.”

  “Not sure that matters right now buddy.” I said as I was peering through my sights looking for something causing that much distress in the girl. April was no more than 25 yards away and still I saw no sign of trouble, was it just some contrived drama for our viewing pleasure? Possible, but I hadn’t seen acting that good since my daughter was caught sneaking out of the house and she tried to blame it on sleep walking. If I hadn’t been watching her the whole time and caught pieces of her conversation over her cell phone I almost would have given her the benefit of the doubt. Well…not really, I might be a guy but I’m not that stupid. Anyway, suffice to say, it was an Oscar worthy performance none-the-less. The girl never stopped shrieking as she hurdled up into the back of the truck.

  “One down, three to go, Alex.” I said. “I guess I’m going to have to go see what’s going on.”

  “Why?” He asked. “You have your family to look out for Mike.”

  “I know.” I said earnestly. “It just seems like the right thing to do.”

  By now a small crowd was at the back of the truck looking expectantly in the direction from where April had come screaming.

  “I’ll go with you, Talbot.” BT said. His deep bass voice startled me out of my thoughts. Any animosity between us seemed to have been swept completely away with that small gesture. Well I guess it wasn’t that small a gesture, he was putting his life on the line. “I appreciate that BT, I really do, but I think our second wayward chick-a-dee is returning to the roost…look.” I said pointing.

  Cash swung the corner of a row of houses at full speed, even from this distance I could tell his pants were doing there damnedest to fall. Cash was struggling with one hand to hold his pants up and with the other he was doing a motion that only someone with experience might be able to pick up on. He was taking mighty puffs from an inhaler. I turned to Alex and BT. “I think this is more a case of a date going bad.” I breathed a sigh of relief, don’t get me wrong, I understand the severity of the potential crime and Cash would be dealt with accordingly but it still beat the hell out of the alternative.

  “I don’t think so Mike.” BT said as he pointed with his finger. I for the life of me did not want to follow the direction that offending digit indicated. Into the cold gates of hell it led. Like Icarus to the sun I went. Not ten feet away from Cash was one of the new breed, fast and hungry. The kid was easily a couple of hundred feet away and he was directly in my line of sight to the zombie. Between holding his pants and the inhaler he was losing more ground than the French in WWII. The outcome was a foregone conclusion and still I ran towards him, motioning him to drop down so I could take a shot. By the time the kid’s pants fell and brought him down in a gangly mash of elbows and knees, the zombie had pounced on him. It was all over except for the screaming, as the zombie took its first rending bite of meat, what was once that young man’s pride and joy, hung in bloody shreds from the mouth of the zombie. The high-pitched keening that issued from Cash was heart tearing. Every guy that witnessed the event had sub-consciously placed their hands over their own privates just to make sure their own house was in order. The first bullet should have been for Cash, just to put him out of his misery. Five shots later, my trembling hands were able to put a kill shot into the zombie’s head. I started to run over to the kid, what I was going to be able to do for him was beyond me. His all out wails had become more of a struggling wheeze. Blood vacated his body in gushes. I got down on my haunches by the kid’s head. I couldn’t look at the damage done, the chord it struck was entirely too fundamental to my existence. Cash’s hand grabbed mine, his fevered, pain addled eyes looked in to mine.

  “Don’t let me die.” He begged. I wanted to answer him and tell him everything was going to be ok, but I wasn’t the actor my daughter was, my voice would betray me, my posture would belie me, my cadence would divulge the truth. I barely registered the fact of the staccato burst of firearms but the angry hiss of displaced air as bullets passed dangerously close to my head got my attention. I looked to BT who was firing what looked like a bazooka when it was aimed at me. I guess our earlier spat wasn’t completed yet, but this seemed a little extreme. Alex was gesticulating crazily. Everyone else seemed to be yelling incoherent strings of words, but every once in a while I picked up the word “Run!” I looked behind me, before my heart began to start the trip hammer routine, I thought for one short millisecond my he
art might just stop from the exertion. Twenty maybe thirty zombies were running full bore towards me. I was seconds away from sharing the same fate as Cash, hopefully not in the same manner though. I grabbed the kid’s shoulder meaning to put him in a fireman’s carry, the cataract glaze of his eyes let me know the futility of the maneuver.

  “Run you stupid shit!” I heard BT yell over the roar of his rifle. A zombie dropped no more than 10 feet from me. More rifles took up the covering of my hasty retreat. Within three strides I was at full speed and still some of the zombies kept pace.

  I made it back to the firing line without any undue incidents. The tattered remnants of what were still pursuing me were quickly dispatched.

  “That’s not cool!” I said as I stood up and surveyed the scene laid out before us. “Thanks BT I owe you one.”

  “What is going on Talbot?” BT asked he looked more shaken than I did and I was the one that had been chased.

  “No time BT!” I pointed. A larger contingent of speeders were heading our way. I already had enough excitement for the day. “Let’s go!”

  “Mike, we can take them.” Brendan said. “There’s still two more of our own out there, we have to go get them.”

  I understood the hero mentality, I truly did. But they were a lost cause, if they weren’t already dead they soon would be. “To what end Brendan? We risk ourselves, our loved ones and we waste bullets. There is no honor in casually throwing away one’s life in a hollow attempt at bravery. They’re gone.” I was all for the eradication of this plague, but this was akin to trying to put out a seven-alarm blaze with a super soaker.

  “Mike what if it was one of your kids?” Brendon asked brazenly.

  “Don’t you fucken dare Brendon!” I screamed. He backed up. He was bigger than me but I was definitely crazier, and in case you didn’t know, crazy out trumps size. “I have done everything I possibly can to keep everyone around me safe! If you’re so fucking ready to die go find them. I’ll wait, but only for as long as I can still make a safe retreat!” Brendan’s shoulders sagged as he looked back at Nicole who was witnessing the entire event. There was a look of unbridled shock on her face. I watched as the inner demons in Brendan wrestled for control, on one side was the overwhelming need to protect Nicole and on the other was the need to help someone in need. “Not so easy now, huh?” I taunted.

  “Fuck you, Mike.” He answered dejectedly.

  I swung the Jeep past Alex’s big rig. Brendan was following closely. I was watching in my rearview mirror as some of the faster zombies, they looked mostly like high school kids, smashed headlong into the truck. I had no desire to see how many hits my Jeep could take. I flooded the engine with high-octane gas and I was rewarded with the desired result. I was putting this particular circle of hell behind us. Alex was finally getting the tractor-trailer up to a speed where even the track team couldn’t keep up. I had to look over my shoulder to get the full brunt of what my rear view mirror was trying to convey. I should have left it alone. Half the population of what had once been Bennett, Colorado was in one form or another in pursuit of our small caravan. Speeders bowled over their slower cousins, the deaders. So it looked like manners hadn’t made the cross over into death.

  “I don’t think we should go back there, Mr. T.” Tommy said. “Is Cash going to be alright?”

  I couldn’t fathom how to even begin to answer that question, because first off he was dead. He had bled out after having his crotch savagely ripped from his body. Was he going to turn into a zombie? Odds were against it, I had seen a small dog pile of the living dead making short work of his remains. Would he get to pass through St. Peter’s gate? If I was so inclined to believe in this path, I’d probably say yes, but then what God would allow this situation to be unfolding on its present course. Oh yeah, God can’t have direct involvement, how heretic of me. Wouldn’t want some omnipotent being that basically can control ALL of creation to lend out a helping hand. God helps those who help themselves, you know. Okay enough deity bashing, I was under the false impression that once we got out of Denver we would have put the worst of it behind us, silly me, the fun was just beginning.

  CHAPTER 7

  Justin slept on, in the back seat of Brendan’s truck, barely acknowledging the quick jerky maneuvering as Brendan evaded first one and then another speeder that had sped out from a gas station at the outskirts of town. His dark dreams were bothered only by the incessant buzzing that pervaded every aspect of the tortured vista his fevered mind had drummed up. A brigade of zombies had stormed mankind’s last holdout, as they overwhelmed the humans piss poor defenses the zombies had planted a flag that consisted of an unnaturally large femur for a pole and a flag when unfurled, looked entirely too much like a weathered flap of human skin. Justin smiled in his sleep, the final victory of zombie kind resonated strongly in the deep recesses of his mind.

  ‘Justin’ – Justin jolted awake at the sound of his name being spoken out loud.

  “What?” Justin answered groggily.

  Nicole looked back, her features looking paler than should be right, even in the dead of winter.

  “Huh?” She answered back.

  “What do you want?” Justin said annoyed. “I was sleeping.”

  “Nobody said anything.” Brendan chimed in, before his fiancé and his friend got into it. He’d known them long enough to realize it didn’t take much more than a cross eyed look to get them at each other’s throat and right now he just couldn’t take it. This new development of fast zombies was fucking with his head and there was no room, at least not right now, for any more bullshit.

  Tommy stared through the back window of the speeding Jeep and directly into the windshield of Brendan’s trailing Ford. “Oh no.” He muttered solemnly. He turned back around, his hands visibly twitching. The tic went completely unnoticed from the rest of the occupants in the car. The horror of Bennett was still fresh and everybody was doing their best to assimilate the new information in the best manner available to them.

  “Fine.” Justin said as he laid his head back down.

  “Justin.” Again with his name being called out. Even though the voice was loud this time somehow Justin knew enough not to wake up. A warm breeze flitted through Justin’s hair, the sun as large as a ripe cantaloupe blazed high overhead. Justin spun in a slow circle, chest high golden wheat swayed all around in a gentle current. Curiously the growth flowed in a different direction from the prevailing breeze, even Justin’s shadow stretched in the same direction as the wheat though the sun was at high noon. Something inside him knew enough that to stay here was dangerous but leaving might be worse. In the hazy mist of distance Justin saw something coming. It shimmered in the sun much like a mirage. Even as he watched it, no her, come closer, the wind at his back picked up in a vain attempt to try to slow her progress. The wheat arched further back in a futile attempt to get away, if the stalks could have miraculously grown legs it would have been the biggest crop exodus since the great dust bowl of the 20’s. Justin had legs and his shadow was showing him the way he should be going, his higher psyche just couldn’t get the transmission in gear, for all the revving the engine was doing.

  Justin looked down at his feet wondering why they were betraying him so. When he looked up, death was inches from his face. That feeling was quickly replaced by euphoric feelings of love and devotion. The girl, no the woman, that stood before him was the epitome of beauty, grace, black bottomless cruelty, and awe. ‘Wait, go back one.’ Justin thought. But as soon as the doubt crept into his mind it was washed away in the glory that was Eliza. ‘Eliza! Eliza!’ His mind screamed in triumphant joy.

  “Where are you going my love?” Eliza said without moving her mouth. Her soft angelic hand caressed his cheek.

  “How are you talking in my head?” Justin answered.

  The sound of the loud crack was quickly followed by the sensation of pain in his cheek. She had moved so fast he hadn’t even seen her hand strike. Justin’s heart seized for the briefest of seco
nds as Eliza let her true visage show. Soft smooth skin faded into sallow pale cheeks, her sky blue eyes transformed into twin black pools of death and destruction. Her soft hand that a moment before had stroked his cheek was now a gnarled, calcified hideous claw of bone. In an instant she once again became the object of a cold ethereal beauty. Justin couldn’t hope to keep up with the transformations. His mind could not make sense of the events as they unfolded before him.

  “I asked you a question Justin.” Eliza smiled. Justin could tell it was not a gesture that came easily or willingly. A cobra would have had an easier time pulling that off.

  Justin was scared and with good reason. “I don’t know.” He stammered.

  The smile never left her as she struck again. The blow burned on the side of his face. “I think you’re lying to me Justin. But we’ll talk more.” Justin shivered. Eliza looked over her right shoulder and then was gone.

  “Justin! Justin! Wake up.” Tommy shook his friend a little harder than he meant to. Justin’s head bounced off of the car window.

  “What the fu…? Oh hey Tommy. What’s going on? Did we stop?”

  “What happened to your face Justin?” Tommy asked.

  Justin sat up and looked at his right cheek in the rear view mirror. Angry red welts the size and shape of a slender woman’s fingers, were clearly outlined. “Shit, hell if I know.” Justin said as he gingerly pressed along the edges of the contusion. Justin had never been so scared about a nightmare in his life.

  “I think you’re lying to me Justin.” Tommy said with a sad disappointment in his eyes. Tommy had stepped out of the car and headed back to the Jeep.

  “I’ve heard that before.” Justin said as he wrapped the blanket tighter around himself.

  CHAPTER 8

  We had traveled fifty miles east of Bennett. I thought my bladder was going to burst. I was looking for any excuse to pull over and relieve myself. So when Tommy said he needed to talk to Justin I was all for it. I flashed my high beams until Alex acknowledged me with a quick toot of his horn. The big rig stopped in the middle of the road. There really was no reason to pull over into the shoulder. The beauty of being this far east of Denver is that the landscape is much like Kansas, flat and unremarkable. We’d be able to see zombies for miles, unless of course they were hiding in snowdrifts or scrub brush. ‘Great’ I thought to myself. ‘I’m not even going to be able to enjoy this piss, I’ll be so busy looking for the damn things I’ll probably end up pissing on myself.’ That was number 33 on my list of hang-ups, but who’s counting. Obviously I am, I answered.