No Flesh Shall Be Spared

All I wanna do is get home and get back to my life, but as time goes on, I start getting more and more nervous. Not really sure why, but this anxious feeling starts skittering up my spine. So, I pull to the side of the road and drive up onto the shoulder, thinking I can circumvent this shit by doing some off-roading and get my ass home faster. I go four-wheeling through the toolies and get to the next exit. I bounce up and over the curb and come screaming down the embankment.'

Weaver had a faraway look in his eyes as he continued. From the look on his face, it was like he was back there, seeing it all play like a movie across his mind’s eye.

'Anyway, long story short, I finally get to my street and as I pull up to my house I see the place surrounded by a dozen or so of those motherfuckers. They’re all milling about, but gathered around something on the lawn. At first, I was like, ‘what the fuck?’ and start fearing the worst. Little did I know that not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined ‘the worst.’ I start turning toward the house and, as I come up the driveway, I see that the thing on the ground is Fran Johnson from next door. She’s lying on the ground and her clothes are all pulled open and there’s blood and guts and who knows what else spread all over my lawn. Now, I’m still thinking that this is some kind of joke, like a Halloween prank, but the look on her face told me that it was all real as shit. These animals had torn Frannie to pieces and, from the blood on most of their faces, they looked like they had, as weird as it sounded, been eating her. I mean, fuck me…'

He chuckled in disbelief.

'Anyway, as soon as these fuckers see me coming, a whole slew of them, all pasty-faced and bleeding gashes, come lurching across the lawn, toward the driveway. Unable to stop, and not really wanting to for that fuckin’ matter, I hit the sidewalk and plow straight through them sons-a-whores. I mean, I slammed into ’em. A handful goes under the front wheels and their bodies make loud thumping sounds under my wheels as I run right over them. The others bounce offa my fender like bowling pins.'

Weaver lifted up the bottle and drank again to both wet his whistle and to calm his nerves. In a moment, he cleared his throat, swallowed, and continued talking.

'I slide to a stop near the front door and I’m about as scared and pissed off as a cat in a washin’ machine. Not really thinking about whether it could or would be dangerous, I jump out and get a clear look at the situation— Frannie torn open on the lawn, the blood, the people I’d run over starting to get back to their feet, the whole mess—and I know somethin’ ain’t right, y’know? I mean, I’m just fuckin’ smart like that.

'Then, I see Frannie move…'

Weaver paused long enough to take another pull on the bottle.

'So, I dive back into the car and pull an old tire iron out from under the seat. I get back out and just start swinging. I mean, I’m cavin’ in heads and breaking off fuckin’ limbs.'

Weaver looked over at Cleese in the waning light and smiled.

'You’da been fuckin’ proud of me, man.'

Cleese grinned and nodded.

'Anyway… It was about then that I hear my Dora screaming from inside the house and I panic! I start beating my way through the crowd of these sons-a-bitches. I must have flattened a football team’s worth or so, I swear to fuckin’ God! So, with my adrenaline now pumping, I make it to the front door and kick the motherfucker down. Inside, there are one or two more wandering in the front room and entryway. I lay them out and go running through the house and up the stairs toward our bedroom. I get to the doorway and I see Dora…'

Weaver’s voice cracked suddenly, tied tight with emotion. His eyes welled up with tears that he quickly swallowed down. Bolstering his resolve, he looked out across the compound and continued.

'I see her… and she’s surrounded by like four of those things. The only thing I can figure is that they must have gotten in through the back patio door, coming over the fence from the neighbor’s house. They were all gathered around her, trying to negotiate the furniture, knocking it over and scattered shit off of the dresser as they did whatever they could to get at her.'

Tears were streaming freely down the big man’s cheeks now and Cleese didn’t blame him one bit. Weaver was a tough guy, but… every man had chinks in his armor and they usually were gathered somewhere around his heart.

'I’ll never fucking forget the look on her face as I came into the bedroom, Cleese,' he said wiping away at the tears which had gathered in his beard. 'Her eyes were wide—scared, scared as I’d ever seen her—and her face was covered in these scratches. It’s kinda funny… Through all the commotion of those things in the room and the ones that were trying to break in outside, through all of that shit, I heard her softly say my name when she saw m…'

Weaver’s eyes brimmed over with a new wellspring of moisture and his voice cut off, suddenly sounding constricted. He coughed softly and cleared his throat and did his best to continue.

'And that was when they got a hold of her. I remember her screaming as they dragged her down to the floor. I mean, she sounded so fucking scared. By the time I was able to beat ’em off of her, she was gone; torn apart. There was blood everywhere.' His voice trailed off into nothing. 'There was just so much blood…'

Cleese looked deep into his friend’s face, but quickly realized that he was no longer telling the story for his benefit. He watched as tears freely spilled out of Weaver’s eyes, rolled down his face, under his glasses, and soaked into his already wet beard.

'Later, Emergency Rescue crews showed up in the neighborhood and started rounding up The Dead. I never saw if Dora came back or not. I assume she did, but I wasn’t there to see her… or take care of her. I was taken out to the EMT vans and checked out for any bites or signs of infection.'

Weaver wiped at his running nose and took another drink from the rapidly emptying bottle.

'Anyway, once things were relatively safe, they took survivors off to some of the Shelters. There, they had some real doctors check me out and, once they saw I hadn’t been bitten, they let me go. The only problem was… I had no place to go. With Dora gone, my life meant shit. It was fucking rubble, man. So, at first, I joined the cleanup crews and helped trying to get things back under control. For the longest time, I went out on the ‘house to houses’ and I’ll tell ya… I took great delight in watching each and every one of those bastards I came up against being put down. Hell, I still feel that way some times. With every one of them being killed, it’s like a little bit of my pain, a tiny bit of my grief, gets washed away. My heartache seems a little more tolerable anytime I feel as though I had even a small hand in putting those fuckers back in their goddamn holes.'

He paused again, obviously trying to get control of his emotions. He took another shot and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Cleese idly thought that, before this night was out, he was going to need to go get that other bottle from his Crib.

 'It wasn’t too long after that that things settled down and we got back to what we all remembered as ‘normal.’'

Weaver turned and looked Cleese in the eye.

'But… who gave a flyin’ fuck? A lot of us had no place to go. Most of us couldn’t—and wouldn’t—go back to our homes. Hell, everything at my house only reminded me of what had been stolen from me, of what I’d lost. I’d heard from some guys on one of the cleanup crews about this guy Weber and his plans for this League thing. When it looked like it was a go, I signed up right away. It seems that I still needed to see some blood spilled before I was ready to call things square,' he chuckled and shook his head. 'Once I signed on, it was pretty apparent that I was no fighter. Fuck, I usually come out on the losing end of a pillow fight. So, since I’d always had a head for organizational shit, I volunteered to head up their armory. And with that, The Chest was born.'

Weaver lifted the bottle in a half-hearted toast and drank deeply.

'I’ve been here ever since.'

'Jesus…' was all Cleese could muster. He went over Weaver’s story and had to admit, it was something. One thing wasn’t clear though and that was closure. 'So, are things about even between you and The Dead, Weaver? Are things any closer to being settled?'

Weaver looked at Cleese, his normally jovial face now grim and set in stone.

'Well, I’ve considered that a time or two, to be honest. And after a lot of thought, I’ve decided that things will never be even or settled between me and those fuckers, Cleese. Not ever. Never. Ever… Ever…'