I got down off the truck and walked to the passenger door with a noticeable limp due to my sole-less boot rather than any injury. Tracy had moved over so that I could get in.
“Thank you, Azile,” I said as I cradled my hurt hands in my lap.
“I’m sorry, Mike. I wasn’t thinking,” Tracy said, gingerly rubbing my purpling digits.
“Is she talking about when she married him?” BT asked Tommy.
“You want some Ben-Gay Mr. T?” Tommy asked.
I could envision me wiping sweat off my brow while they were coated in the pungent concoction. “I’m good, thanks,” I told him.
Zombies were getting scarce as were truckers, word of Kong’s passing was making the rounds among the remaining men and with their leader and the threats removed they were more interested in saving themselves.
“Time to play the Pied Piper,” I told Azile.
She got the rig turned around, and wasn’t going more than five miles per hour, continually honking her horn, zombies fell in step (or got run over, which was just fine) as we drew them away from Ron’s. Thousands had died over the last couple of days and still thousands remained. We had a few hundred with us, some would stay around the house and need to be dealt with, others would go into stasis and need to be dealt with at a later time, but for now the biggest threat to mankind was dead and I for one wouldn’t miss her.
Azile drove over twenty miles away from the house until she picked up the speed to shake our entourage. I gave her an alternate way back to the house so that the zombies wouldn’t merely turn around and come back.
“What now?” Tracy asked as we barreled down Route 1.
“Mop up duty,” I hoped.
As we pulled on to the street before my father’s I was (we were) wholly unprepared for the scene before us. Hundreds if not thousands of zombies had been destroyed under the heavy wheels of tractor trailers. It was beyond putrid, there was nearly a six-inch layer of compressed zombies on the roadway, so thick I didn’t think a snow plow would be able to sludge them off the roadway. Of all the smells I had encountered thus far during this apocalypse, this couldn’t even be measured it was so far over the top.
I could go into gory detail about how much stomach butter was churned in that cab but I’ll spare you the details. The truck at times slid sideways as we road over the crest of carnage, parts on occasion would be thrust out or particularly large blasts of air would pop as a vital organ was compressed past its limit much like those protective bubbles used for mail.
Zombies milled around Ron’s house, unsure what to do now that they were not being directed or there wasn’t a food supply available but that changed quickly when they saw us coming. I had Azile pull up to the wreckage of the first truck that had tried to make it in to the compound.
“Well shit…was kind of hoping they’d be gone. Let’s play Piper again, then I know a back way we’ll have to hoof it in by,” I told everyone. They weren’t listening much because I had just told them we were going to have to drive back over the horrid highway.
“You kind of suck, man,” BT told me.
“Kind of?” Azile asked.
This time she only went about ten miles out. We got maybe another hundred or so of the slimy bastards to follow before we turned back around. I needed to get home, my stomach was cramping with worry, I had seen no signs of life from the house and I had seen some significant damage too. Everything could be fine and they were all hunkering down comfortably in Ron’s prep shelter or...this was an apocalypse and I had to think of all possibilities.
Where I had Azile pull over was a two mile drive on roadways or about three quarters of a mile by crow flight. And that was about the only way someone should do this trek, was by air. There was a small field on this side but as we progressed onto Ron’s land the foliage would become so thick that to get a sight line of more than five feet would be a rare occurrence, and we were now only armed with sharp pointy objects at the moment.
The field was covered in a low lying fog, of course it was, how else would it be. At least it was penetrable, that was of course until we entered the brush which seemed to grasp onto the ethereal mist like a lover to the blankets on a cold night. The five hoped for feet of range was halved, if anything came at us now we wouldn’t have enough time to act surprised. We tried to keep our noise level to a minimum; mostly muttering as clothes were caught or thorns pushed through to rake against skin. The fog dampened noise and we stopped repeatedly to get our bearing and listen to anything else that might be in there with us.
More than once we heard things crashing through the trees, luckily heading away. The only zombie we stumbled across was one that had been run over through its midsection, its middle had been compressed to no thicker than a ream of paper and its spine must have been completely destroyed because it was bent over at the waist it’s head dangling down uselessly by its knees. I felt a tremor of remorse as I cut through the zombie woman’s neck that was at least until her pale blue eyes looked up from the ground at me with an accusatory glare. I pushed the sword into her mouth and flung the head away, that was not a sight that needed to infiltrate anyone else’s dreams.
Ron’s house was a mess. Smoke was issuing forth from his basement, not enough for me to think it was on fire, more like a swirling of dust settling after an explosion. I swear I could hear Tracy’s heart pounding in unison to my own. Zombies were still around, but we had not been noticed as of yet. We moved further down the tree line so that we could see into the basement. That was not going to be a way of egress. I could see multiple bodies of dead bulkers, some wooden beams and nothing more, it was effectively sealed from outside intrusion. That left the deck which, at ten feet, wasn’t insurmountable; but we still had to all get up it before the speeders noticed us and tried to eat us. That also involved getting to the other side of the house because the decking on this side was pretty much destroyed. I did not think that we would be able to cross over the cleared expanse without being seen.
“Okay I’ve got an idea,” I said.
BT and Tracy groaned in unison.
“Mike, I need to see my babies,” Tracy pleaded.
“I’m going to get on the deck.” I started. “I’ll get the zombies that are still here to follow me, then you guys just come up the other side of the house.”
“That’s not half bad,” BT said, nodding his head.
“You going to be able to climb, big man?” I asked him, looking at his sling.
“More pain than damage, probably only a sprain,” BT answered.
“No time for bravado, my friend. If you can’t climb, we’ll do something else, because nobody is going to be able to lift your ass that high,” I told him.
I looked at him for a few moments, trying to see how good my ‘bullshit detector’ was calibrated. I didn’t detect any deception. “Fine, Tommy, can you control the zombies?”
“No, I lost a lot with my sister’s death. And there’s more that I need to tell you,” he replied.
“Can it wait?” I asked.
“It can, but not for long.”
That sounded much more ominous than I was ready for. “Alright, give me a few minutes, I’m going to try to find a gun and make as much noise as possible to pull them my way. When you have an opening, go for it, because I’m sure any zombies that are in the woods will come back. I would imagine we’ll be under siege again.
“Will it ever stop, Mike?” Tracy asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “One minute at a time, my love, one minute at a time.” I kissed her forehead, went about another twenty feet down the tree line in case there were any eagle-eyed zombies that saw my point of origin and my group. I made it to the fence before I was spotted. Fuck they were fast. I nearly lost my footing as I jumped over the nearly filled-in trench. The zombies were closing in fast, I was down to milliseconds with whether to stand and fight or drop the weapons and jump. If I miscalculated and slipped, it would be over before I hit the ground. Breath was coming out of me in great plumes as I fought for more speed, I felt a zombie’s hand brush up against me as I launched forward and up, my right hand wrapped around a banister. I semi-missed with my left hand, ripping the fingernail of my middle finger clean off; the pain was significant but not a hindrance, not at that moment anyway. I’d had the good fortune to be alive for over four decades without ever losing a fingernail, now I’d lost two in less than a week, life is funny like that. I was just praying it didn’t come in threes. I quickly pulled my legs up and onto the lip of the deck. Zombies began to pool under me. I had the strange urge to piss on their heads. Hey! I said it was strange, don’t judge me.
