I counted the dead and there were twelve in total. Nate’s rifle had a scope, and he was the best of us to have that little accessory, so he wanted me to use the iron sights of my rifle. It would make me a better shooter, he says.
“Soccer mom,” he said, gesturing to the distant undead.
It took me a minute to realise what he meant. When I scanned the advancing zombies, I snorted. There, in the centre, was the quintessential “soccer mom.” She looked supremely white middle-class, had all the trappings of a woman who spent her days at home and her evenings transporting her little angels to sporting clubs, shouting at anyone who tackled her babies a little too hard on the field.
I put Soccer Mom in my sights, slowly exhaling and squeezing the trigger as Nate had taught me at the end of the breath, not pulling the trigger. The bullet was too low, smacking her in the chest and staggering her gait, but she came on.
“Too low,” said Nate softly. “A fraction higher, distance is still the same.”
I adjusted, repeated the action, and Soccer Mom went down with a cracked melon.
“Nice,” approved Nate. “Next up, Stompy Chav.”
It was obvious which one he referred to. The one out in front of the pack seemed to have a little more purpose and speed than the others, the hood of a knock-off designer top pulled up over his head as he seemed to stomp towards us.
You’ll remember I have a distinct distaste for the chav species from my adventures at my old high school escape. It felt like a personal victory when Stompy Chav went down first time.
“That’s it,” said Nate with an open grin, clearly starting to enjoy himself. “Our next contender, Janet from HR.”
It was hard to keep my aim straight, suppressing my laughter. Nate’s hard exterior and dry humour was all I was used to, but with the naming of each target, he seemed to be letting himself go a little more. Dare I say, he was getting a little ‘Lockey’ with the labels he gave them, like some of my goofy humour had rubbed off on him and he was giving into it completely. We had Mary Lou, who looked like a southern belle with fucking cowboy boots on, believe it or not. Lemmy, who looked like the lead singer of Motorhead, as the name suggests. Gollum was a big hit, mainly because I was blown away that Nate actually came up with that one himself, and pop culture references usually go over his head. Do we have a secret fantasy nerd in the old soldier?
“Ooh, Matron,” pretty much broke me, as Nate ripped out a fucking terrible Kenneth Williams impression to say it, in his best Carry On movie style. The woman looked like Hattie Jacques.
It was awesome.
Steadily, I worked through each of them, but each were getting harder as the two of us started collapsing in laughter with each label more stupid than the next. Let’s not lose sight here that I was shooting live bullets into the heads of vicious undead, and that they were once people with hopes and dreams. It was pretty dark, us laughing about giving the undead stupid names as I shot them in the head, but Nate put my mind at ease on the drive home when I brought that up.
“As a soldier,” he explained, “you’re forced into some pretty dark situations. The only way you and your team can keep any kind of sanity is by finding some humour in the shitstorm you’re wading through. If you let the darkness in, it might swallow any light left in you, so don’t feel guilty, Erin. Hold on to whatever light you can; God knows there’s enough darkness to go around.”
Wise old bugger.
By the time we got to the last two, I was really struggling.
“Paolo from accounts,” snorted Nate. “He’s such a fucking arsehole.” Then he full on laughed at his own joke.
A dark-haired man in a suit, his shirt and tie all messed up and covered in blood, would have been late twenties in life. He was close enough now that my shooting was on point, and as Paolo’s melon popped, the stupidity of the situation overtook me, and I totally lost it. There was only one left.
“You’ll have to do him, Nate,” I said through my tears of laughter. “I can’t see a fucking thing.”
The final undead must have broken his neck somehow, as his head wouldn’t sit up straight and was rolling around his chest and shoulders like a ball in a bag. I just managed to point at him and snort out, “Bobblehead!” before I completely lost it.
Laughing, Nate raised his rifle and popped the bobbling head with a single shot. With a string of corpses lining the car park from the entrance to about thirty feet from the front of the truck, it was a grisly sight. The two of us near pissing our pants in goofy laughter was totally incongruous (another great word) with the bloody evidence of our afternoon’s work. Without doubt, any survivors passing by would have seen two crazy bastards holding assault rifles—laughing like lunatics with the weed giggles at the twelve strung out corpses—and given them a very wide berth. We must have looked batshit crazy.
We were still chuckling for most of the journey home, and still sharing looks back at the lodge
