Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (41 page)

Mike knew he was still alive because the cats
on his legs were making him painfully aware of that fact. The
fireball of matches passed dangerously close to his head as Gary
gently tossed it deeper into the kitchen. Mike felt Gary’s hand
close around his collar as Gary pushed the storm door open and
pulled Mike out with him. They were still falling backwards as a
flash of ignited gas blew past them. A wave of burnt fur and hair
blew by Mike. The fur came from the cats inside, but the hair was
his own. Glass shattered as the fire sought air in a need to
increase its size. Two of the cats let go of Mike’s legs and were
running around wildly in the yard, they were on fire. Mike hoped it
took them a long time to die. The third cat was trapped between his
legs as he pressed them shut more tightly. The cat was ripping
wildly at Mike to get away. He grabbed him by the scruff and pulled
him up and away. The cat’s claws were lashing out. Mike held it up
and punched it as hard as he could squarely in the face. He was
confident he had crushed its skull with the blow. Mike dropped it
to the ground. It had paid the ultimate price for its betrayal to
humanity and now he was done with it.

“Where’s my rifle?” Mike asked.

Gary tackled Mike. “Roll, dumb-ass, roll!!”
He was screaming. “You’re on fire!” He was pushing Mike around on
the ground. Mike might have been thick, but he finally figured out
what was going on, as the smell of burning hair and skin did not
decrease, but rather increased.

Mike rolled around like his life depended on
it, which it did. He was finally not actively burning, but smoke
was pouring off him; he looked like he had busted a radiator
hose.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Gary kept muttering,
looking down at his brother.

“Pretty bad?” Mike asked. He was in a great
deal of pain, but nothing that compared to the look of despair in
his brother’s eyes. Odds were, Mike had third degree burns and had
burned right through the nerve endings. “Help me up,” Mike said,
extending a blackened hand.

Gary did not reach to grab it; he thought
that maybe Mike’s skin would slough off if he did. The house roared
behind them as the flames began to engulf the structure.

“Zombies are going to be coming, Gary. Help
me up.”

“Umm,” he said and then he took off.

Mike passed in and out of consciousness for
the next few moments as the pain began to catch up with him. Blasts
of super heated air roiled over him as the house blazed. He thought
he may have seen the large gray staring at him from the back door,
but he couldn’t be sure. His corneas had been damaged and vision
was becoming increasingly difficult. Burning tabbies streamed from
some of the blown out windows just in time for the advancing
zombies to hunt them down. Mike watched in horror as bulbous
blisters began to form on his arms and hands. He may have cried out
in pain, but the noise was lost in the destructive thunder of the
flames.

Something passed by his immediate field of
vision. He stuck his hands up to stop the ensuing bites, either
from cat or zombie. Instead, he was hefted up from under his arms
and deposited onto the cold, unyielding steel of a wheelbarrow
bottom. They, or at least, the person who was pushing it, were now
in motion. The heat from the fire hurt his face as the flames came
close on the left side as they passed through the gate that led out
to the front yard.

Zombies were everywhere. Mike tried to shut
his eyes to the horror, but for some damned reason he couldn’t, his
eyelids had been seared off.

“What’s wrong with me?” Mike asked.

“Don’t talk, Mike,” Gary said with labored
breathing. “You’re going to be fine, fine.”

Mike had watched enough movies to know that
line pretty much meant he was a dead man.

“You gonna make it?” Mike asked him. Gary was
in pretty good shape, but running for your life pushing a
wheelbarrow didn’t really sound conducive to a successful
escape.

“Maybe, they haven’t seen us yet…Dammit! Said
it too soon.”

“Gary leave me, I don’t think they’ll eat
me.”

“Don’t think?” He paused to catch his breath.
“Or know?”

He kept running. The wheelbarrow was about as
comfortable, Mike imagined, as the old time, horse-drawn buggies of
a bygone era, and probably worse because they at least, had some
sort of crude, spring shock absorber.

“Mush,” Mike told Gary.

His comment did not elicit a remark. Gary was
scared and running for both of their lives and Mike didn’t think he
had the steam in him to make it.

“Gary, get me out of this thing.”

Gary didn’t say anything or slow down, at
least not consciously, but he was flagging.

“Can’t…touch…you,” he said.

“If you don’t, we’re both toast,” Mike said
and Gary winced. It was not the wording he was looking for. “Now,
Gary,” Mike said with as much force as he could muster. It wasn’t
much, but it would have to do.

The wheelbarrow almost tipped as he came to a
stop. He quickly came around and picked Mike up underneath his
arms, Mike was standing on shaking legs. “Run now!” Mike told
him.

He looked to Mike and then directly over his
shoulder at the zombies rapidly closing the gap.

“Run fucking now!” Mike told him, gingerly
placing his smoldering hand on top of Gary’s shoulder. Layers of
skin stayed behind as he removed my hand.

“No,” he said.

“Gary I…I can hold them from eating me, but I
cannot protect the both of us, will you make me watch them kill
you? Please don’t let that happen.”

“Are you sure?” he asked desperately. “I can
keep pushing the barrow.”

“Absolutely,” Mike said, although he had no
fucking clue.

“I love you, Mike.”

“I love you too, Gary. Now, get the fuck out
of here!”

He wanted to hug his brother, but thought
better of it. He turned and started to run. Mike stood there for a
few seconds, contemplating how he was going to get his legs moving,
when cats in varying states of disrepair began to stream by. Some
had been burnt as badly as Mike had guessed. He had yet to take a
complete inventory. Some had bites taken out of them and at least
one or two looked like they might survive the entire ordeal. And
then Mike heard their pursuers; zombies were coming up behind him
and he didn’t have the strength to even turn around and look.

“Time to find a happy place,” Mike said
aloud. Gary gave one long, woeful look from a few houses down
before he turned the corner and was out of sight.

Chapter
Twenty-Five

“What do you mean you left him behind!?” BT
was asking, clearly agitated.

“You weren’t there, BT, he begged me to. I
didn’t want to,” Gary said, finally catching his breath.

“I know, I know how he is. Stupid Talbot and
his death wish persona.”

Mrs. Deneaux had not said anything from the
corner of the room, but secretly she was overjoyed. Surely any
questions of her culpability in the death of Brian and Paul’s
disappearance would die with Michael.

“You ready to go back out and get his
ass?”

“You know it.”

“You coming?” BT asked Deneaux.

“Not a chance. He got himself into this mess,
he will have to get himself out,” she replied.

“I would have expected nothing less,” BT said
flatly. “That’s the woman whose words you want to believe,” BT said
to Mary. “If she had to step two feet out of her way to not step
over you, she wouldn’t do it. We’ll be back.”

Josh raced out the door before his mother
could stop him.

“Josh! What are you doing?” Mary cried from
the front door; she was too afraid to follow him outside.

“I’m the man of the household now and I’m
going to help them get Michael Talbot back here,” he answered not
once raising his voice, just stating a factual matter.

“You will do no such thing!” she screamed,
her face turning a bright crimson.

“I am and I will. Let’s go,” he motioned to
BT and Gary. “I know all the short cuts around here.”

“Joshua Hilop! Get back here!” she screamed
uselessly. “Do something!” she asked BT desperately.

“He’s safer with us than with her,” he told
Mary, looking back at the hawk-eyed Deneaux.

She grabbed BT’s arm, but he shrugged her
off. “I don’t have time for this little family drama. I have a
brother to retrieve. I promise he’ll be as safe with us as he would
be at your house.”

Mary was now beginning to doubt the sanctity
of her own home, and looked to be moments away from joining the
rescue party. “You hurry up and get back here,” she said to Josh.
“I love you.”

“Mom, you’re embarrassing me.”

Mary went back into the house, shut the door
and watched the small party of three head down the street from the
vantage point of her living room window.

“They’re probably all going to die,” Deneaux
said from the chair across the room. She lit a cigarette and took a
long slow drag.

“What?” Mary didn’t think that Deneaux had
just uttered those words because no one with a soul could have. She
chalked up her missed hearing to stress. “There’s no smoking in
this house.”

“Sure there isn’t,” Mrs. Deneaux said,
shaking her ash on the carpet.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Tracy was alternating between sitting at the radio, pretending to
read a series of books she couldn’t get into and working on the
beefed-up fortifications Ron was installing when Henry started
barking. A sound that was much closer to a sound a seal might make
than any dog.

Tracy crossed the room quickly, trying to
follow Henry’s line of sight, but since he was looking at a wall,
she didn’t understand what he was getting all riled up about.

From Ron’s front door, you could see the long
gravel roadway that was his street and that was where she went. She
was slightly hesitant to open the door, lest something previously
unimaginable was on the other side. But Henry never turned to look
at her as she disengaged the lock and pulled the door open quickly.
Kind of like the band-aid removal method--do it fast before it can
sting.

Ron had come quickly with rifle in hand,
almost pushing past Tracy to shield her from whatever Henry was
going on about. Henry was all about conservation of movement and
energy and would only reveal his true inner wolf when someone he
loved was in danger.

“What’s going on?” Ron asked wide-eyed,
looking around expectantly for any signs of danger.

“He just started barking, but he keeps
looking at that wall,” Tracy said, clearly confused.

“Mice maybe?” Ron asked, trying to fill in
the knowledge gap.

“Henry? Barking at mice? Not unless they are
carrying his cookies away. What’s on the other side of that
wall?”

“That’s south so about a fifty-foot clearing
and then the woods,” Ron answered.

“South?” Tracy asked and she began to turn
ashen.

“What’s the matter?” Ron asked in alarm.
“What’s south?”

“North Carolina.” Tracy was slammed with a
heavy dose of vertigo. “I’m…I’m sorry,” she said as Ron helped her
to a chair.

“Let me get you some water.” Ron was back in
a few seconds, Tracy felt a little better as she drank. Henry
barked a few more times and then yelped once before he walked out
of the room with his head down. Tracy’s glass shattered to the
ground as she passed out.