Zombie D.O.A. Read online

  They stood there wide-eyed looking at me as though I was some peculiarity and then St. Louis’ eyes started to narrow and I was sure he was going to try and bring the AK up and get off a burst.

  “Don’t,” I said simply, and I could see him visible exhale, as though he suddenly realized how close he’d come to dying.

  “Mister, we got no fight with you,” the other guy said. With his emaciated face and the earflaps of the deerstalker hanging down he looked like an old hound dog.

  “Now here’s what we’re going to do,” I said ignoring him. “You,” indicating the big guy, “move your hand away from the trigger of that AK. Good. Now bend down and put it on the ground. I said bend, not crouch. Oh, fuck it. Just put it down. Now push it towards me. Now step back. Another step. Okay, stop.

  “You, Hound Dog, first I want you to put down the deer. Gently now, like it was your own little girl. Good, now unsling the rifle. Put it on the ground like I showed your friend. That’s good. You’re a quick learner. Now join your friend over there where I can watch both of you.”

  I watched Hound Dog walk over and then I said, “You boys been doing some hunting.”

  “Yeah, so what the fuck’s it got to do with you,” St. Louis said, “You some kind of park ranger?”

  “Just a concerned citizen who takes exception to fellers like yourselves blasting off at animals with automatic weapons.“

  “Man’s gotta eat,” Hound Dog said and spat into the dirt.

  “Granted,” I said. “But just one of those deer over there would have fed you for a while. The other will just rot before you get to eating it.

  “So what?” St Louis said. “So what if we want to kill every god damn deer in this entire forest? The whole world’s turned to shit. What’s it to you if we shoot the place up?”

  He had a point, I guess. What did it matter to me? Except that it did. It mattered because when there are no rules, it becomes even more important to follow your conscience. To do the right thing. Sorry if that sounds preachy, but that’s how I felt then, and still do.

  “Tell you what, mister,” St Louis said. “How’s about we share our kill with you, even stevens, fifty-fifty, right down the middle? Then we walk away, no hard feelings? How does that do ya?”

  “Here’s a better idea. I said. “I noticed you had a couple of shovels back there. You, Hound Dog, go get them.”

  Hound Dog looked at me uncertainly, “You ain’t going to kill us are you, mister?”

  “No unless you make me. Now go.”

  Hound Dog hustled off and returned with the shovels. “Now give one to St Louis here,” I said.

  “Name’s Gerry, asshole,” St Louis said accepting the shovel.

  “Now you boys get digging,” I instructed.

  “I ain’t doing it,” Hound Dog said, throwing the shovel down, “You’ll kill us if we do.”

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t,” I said, and I must have made enough of an impression because he picked up the shovel and started digging.

  The earth was soft and pretty soon they had a decent sized hole dug.

  “Now I want you boys to fetch those deer off the back of the truck and give them a decent Christian burial.”

  “Ah mister,” Hound Dog started to protest, then thought better of it.

  By the time the last of the earth had been shoveled in and patted down, it was getting dark.

  “You boys did good,” I said, “so I’m going to cut you some slack. Hound dog, this is your lucky day, I’m not going to shoot you after all. Here’s what you’re going to do, you’re going to start walking straight down this road…”

  “But our truck…”

  “Forget the truck. You walk down this road, you don’t stop, and you don’t look back. I see you peeking, I might just take a shot with that fine sniper’s rifle of yours, Hound Dog.

  “Oh, and one more thing, stick to the road. Don’t go thinking about taking a shortcut through the woods or anything. I heard there’s wolves around here, so you boys might just have the chance discover how brave you really are without a high powered rifle in your hand.”

  “Fucking asshole,” St Louis spat, and then turned and started walking. Hound Dog looked like he was thinking of saying something, then turned and followed his friend.

  I loaded up the AK-47, the M40 sniper’s rifle and the shotgun into my truck. There was some ammo and a couple of spare magazines and a cleaning kit for the AK and I took those too.

  It was fully dark by the time I drove away. About half a mile down the road, I passed St. Louis and Hound Dog and I slowed down and tossed out their truck keys.

  In the rearview mirror I saw St. Louis step into the road and flip me the bird as I drove off.

  ten

  Tom’s pickup had finally given up the ghost just outside of Tulsa. I felt sorry to leave the old hulk behind. It had served me well and had also kept me connected in some way to those good people I’d left behind in Kentucky.

  I’d found a photograph pinned to the sun visor. A slightly younger Tom and Betsy sitting at a table with a red checked tablecloth, a meal laid out before them. Tom had his arm around Betsy, and they both held wine glasses, raised in a toast.

  I took the photo now and pocketed it, knowing Tom wouldn’t have minded.

  I had a decision to make about my little armory. I knew I wasn’t going to take the shotgun, so I stripped it down and tossed the parts into the bushes. The AK and the .38 were a must of course, but I had to decide about the M-40.

  In the end I didn’t take it, simply because I didn’t know when I’d find another serviceable vehicle, and it made no sense lugging a heavy rifle that I might not need.

  Joe Thursday had been partial to the R-5 carbine, but I’d found over the years that when it came down to it, an AK seldom let you down.

  I packed the extra magazines, cleaning kit and some extra loose ammo for the AK into a rucksack I’d also taken from Tom’s. I also packed in some ration packs I’d pilfered from a broken down military truck somewhere near the Missouri / Arkansas border. They tasted like shit, but they were light, which made them easy to carry.

  Besides, I’ve always been a ‘food as fuel’ type of guy. It had always bugged the hell out of Rosie whenever she tried a new recipe and wanted an opinion on it. ‘It was good honey, I’d say. ‘Yes,’ she’d insist, ‘but what did you like about it?’ To which I’d normally offer some inane comment like, ‘It was, er…crunchy?”

  I’d just gotten my stuff together when I heard the sound of a car engine far off. I soon realized that it wasn’t a car engine at all but the distinct rumble-splutter of a Harley Davidson motorcycle, and by the sound of it, more than one.

  The area I was in was a wide featureless plain. There was very little cover other than fields of tall yellow grass and the corpses of abandoned vehicles that littered the highway.

  As the sound of the Harleys grew louder, I moved about twenty yards from the road and sunk down into the grass. The field had an upward slope, giving me a good view of the road.

  The bikers approached and I saw that they were escorting another vehicle, a yellow school bus. As they spotted Tom’s truck with the hood up, they slowed and came to a stop. One of the bikers dismounted and rummaged through the cab.

  Then they seemed to be having some sort of debate, while one or two of them shaded their eyes and looked off into the distance, probably hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever had abandoned the truck.

  After a while they got going again, five bikes at front, then the empty school bus in the middle, and three bikers bringing up the rear. I could just make out the insignia on their leather jackets as they passed, a picture of a skeleton riding a motorcycle, with the words ‘The Dead Men’, embroidered above it.

  In my time on the road, I’d never had a run in with any of the motorcycle gangs, or road crews as they were commonly called, but I knew them by reputation. They were cut-throats, rapists and slave traders, and some were rumored to be cannibals. I’d heard s
tories of them using human victims as decoys, throwing them to the Zombies to keep them occupied, while they raided a city for provisions, or more often drugs.

  I waited until the sound of the Harley’s had faded before I got up. It was mid-afternoon and hot. I took a sip from the canteen where the water was already turning tepid.

  My original plan had been to continue along route 412 until it crossed the river and then to swing south and skirt the city, but this latest encounter told me I’d have to stay off the road and make the trek cross-country.

  I took one more swig of water and set off across the sea of grass.

  eleven

  By nightfall, I’d reached the river and I found a place to hole up for the night. I ate a pre-packed beef teriyaki meal that could have been flavored rubber and had a couple of hardtack military biscuits with arm-pit flavored spread cheese and a Hoohah bar. I washed it down with an orange instant drink that was the best tasting thing in the ration pack.

  Sometime during the night I woke to the sound of what I thought was gunfire. Instead it was a huge fireworks display, which lit up the sky above Tulsa. I fell asleep thinking that we were living in strange times indeed, and drifted into a dream where Ruby was beckoning me towards the door of the house on the cliffs.

  There was a brass nameplate fixed to the door and I could make out something on it. P-E-N and then something else obscured by the glare of the sun.

  I woke before dawn and went down to the river, filled my canteens and washed up.

  When I returned to the campsite there was a man sitting on my sleeping bag, with his eyes closed, his legs folded under him and my AK-47 cradled in his lap.

  I immediately ducked for cover behind a clump of bushes and started moving left to try and flank him.

  “Don’t bother,” the man said, “I see you.” Which left me in a quandary, I had the .38 but, with no real cover around, getting involved in a shootout could only end badly for me.

  “Pretty careless of you leaving your weapon unattended,” the man said.

  “Didn’t think there was anyone around,” I said, still crouching in the bushes.

  “There’s always someone around, Chris. Remember that if you want to stay alive.”

  I rose then, “How do you know my name?”

  The man chuckled, “Now you see that right there, showing yourself to a man holding a rifle, that will get you killed too.”

  “I asked how you know my name?”

  “We have a mutual friend. He knew I was going to be in the area, asked me to look you up.”

  “A mutual friend? Who…”

  “Joe Thursday.”

  “Joe Thursday? Joe’s still alive?”

  The man chuckled again, the laugh of someone who enjoys a good joke. “Take a whole lot of killing to put that tough son of a bitch in the ground,” he said.

  “But how? Where is he? And how does he know I’m here?”

  “That’s a lot of questions, the first I believe I’ve already answered. In answer to the second, it’s best you don’t know. In answer to the third, you’ll be amazed how much you can learn if you cock your ear in the right direction, even in this messed up world. Now, you going to stand out there in the bushes like a pathfinder, or you going to come over and be formally introduced?“

  I walked over while he put the rifle tenderly down, got to his feet and extended a hand. His grip was firm. “Charles Babbage,” he said. “My associates call me Charlie B, my friends call me Babs.”

  “What’s Joe call you?”

  “Dipshit mostly,” he laughed.

  “Babs it is then,” I said, shaking his hand.

  Babs was tall and gaunt with graying hair and a roadmap of laugh lines across his ebony features. I figured him to be late fifties, early sixties at least but he moved with the languid ease of a much younger man and I was sure he could hustle when the need arose.

  “You got any chow?” Babs asked.

  I gave him one of the military ration packs and he tucked in with relish. “I been eating this shit all my life, it tastes a lot better after you’ve learned the jerk off technique.”

  “The what?”

  “The jerk off technique. You know, your imagination. You imagine this beef teriyaki here is the finest steak or you ever ate, same as when you…”

  “I think I get the picture.”

  “It works I tell you,” he said, scraping the last remnants from the bottom of the sachet.

  “You said you were in the area. What, you live around here?”

  “Me?” he said, “Hell no, Phoenix, Arizona born and bred. No, I’m on the job. Well, doing a favor for a friend, a lady friend, truth be told.”

  Babs lit up a smoke and stared out towards the river. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to say any more, but then he said, “World’s gone crazy, ain’t it, Chris? And yet folks still have the capacity to surprise you.”

  He didn’t elaborate but sat in silence, finishing his smoke. After a while he asked, “You see the light show last night?”

  “Yeah, what the hell was that about?”

  “That my friend was Stanley Tucci, you know like the actor, only not him of course. Stan Tucci, a.k.a. Stan Ritz,” Babs said, then when I didn’t say anything, he added, “on account of he’s totally crackers.”

  “But I still don’t understand…”

  “…about the fireworks?” Babs finished for me. “You ever heard of the Resurrection Men?”

  “Heard of them, yeah, I just didn’t figure they were for real.”

  “Oh they’re real alright, crazy son’s of bitches.”

  “So what’s the deal, I heard all kinds of weird stuff?”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Well, I’m kind of embarrassed to say. Heard they’re bounty hunters for zombies, try to capture them alive, I heard they do experiments and stuff, I heard some of them even get off raping zombie women.”

  Babs laughed then and I could feel myself blush, “Can’t say I’ve heard that last one myself, not that I’d put it past the crazy mothers. Everything else is pretty much spot on.”

  “But why?”

  “Same reason everyone does anything. Kicks or money.”

  “Money? What’s that worth these days?”

  “Not what its worth, what it will be worth in the future.”

  “Hell, who’s even thinking of the future?”

  “Oh, some are,” Babs said. “Some are thinking long and hard about it. There are new forces at work, Chris. New alliances being formed, new territories being carved out.”

  “Okay, so if money is the object, why not just dynamite every bank from here to California? You’d be rich enough to buy your own country.”

  “Because the good old greenback ain’t what it used to be. Pretty much useless now, you might as well rob a truck load of writing paper from a Staples store.”

  “So who do these Resurrection men work for?”

  “Man, you folks out east sure are living in an information vacuum. Look Chris, I’d love to shoot the shit with you but I’ve got a prior engagement. I see Joe, I’ll give him your best.”

  “One last thing…”

  Babs looked back in my direction and a look of annoyance flashed momentarily across his face. “Shoot,” he said.

  “You know anything about a bunch of guys, go around dressed like the Blues Brothers?”

  “You seen them?”

  “Had a bit of a run in with them back in Kentucky.”

  “Those are Corporation men. You stay clear of them if you can. Well clear.”

  In the distance I heard the familiar sound of motorcycles and Babs said, “That’s my cue.” He walked back in the direction of the road, stooping once to pick something up, before disappearing into the trees.

  twelve

  I stood there, watching the gap where Babs had disappeared for at least a minute, and then I picked up the AK and followed him.

  About fifty yards down the track, I found him learning agains
t a tree. “Figured you’d come,” he said and then set off at a brisk, ground-eating walk.

  As I caught up he said, “I been tracking these fellers for a week now. They come by this way every couple days to make a collection from Tucci. There’s usually between two and five of them, on motorcycles.

  “What I need you to do is stand in the middle of the road and, when you see them coming, put your hand up like a cop. Can you do that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Now, I’m going to be in the crow’s nest and I’m going to put them down. All but one, you understand?”

  “Yeah, all but one.”

  “The one I wing, I need you to cover him with that handgun of yours, till I get there. No more no less. He moves you put a bullet in his kneecap, but I need him alive, so whatever you do…”

  “Got it.”

  We’d reached the overpass and Babs instructed me to lay the AK on the ground. He unslung his own rifle, a R-5 with a scope, and then scampered up the embankment under the bridge and took cover to the side of one of the concrete supports, seeming to blend into the background.

  I stood in the middle of route 421 feeling very vulnerable, and hoping Babs was as good a shot as his friend Joe Thursday. After a while I heard the sound of motorcycles approaching.

  “You see them yet,” Babs called from above. “How many?”

  The bikers were just coming into view now. “Three,” I said.

  “Good. You be cool,” Babs said.

  The bikers were a few hundred yards away when they noticed me. I saw them slow down, and two of them came together and shouted something to each other, but they kept rolling.

  As they reached the overpass, the lead biker stopped and let the back wheel slide, so that he was side on to me. The other two continued past, and I heard them come to a halt, heard the low grumbling of the Harley engines. Belatedly, I raised my hand in a cop stop signal.