Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (7 page)

“Told him what? All I see are garage doors,”
BT said. “Mike, this is a waste of time. There are easier ways to
go dumpster diving.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Let’s just give it
a go. There’re no zombies here and little chance there will be. A
small reprieve wouldn’t be so bad.”

BT growled, I don’t think he was seeing it
the same way as I did.

“Where do we start?” Gary asked me. It was a
daunting task; there had to be at least five hundred lockers spread
out on this lot.

Brian went over to the one closest to the
gate which we entered through, and with some moderate muscle power,
cut through the cheap lock, opened it and looked around. “Zero for
one,” he said with some enthusiasm. He grabbed his cutters and
walked over to the next unit.

I went to see what was in the unit. It looked
like whoever had this particular space had been saving newspapers
since the mission to the moon. Yellowing, dry, cracked paper
stacked floor to ceiling in most places all the way to the rear of
the unit.

“Zero for two,” Brian said, barely peeking
into the second unit.

There was one small, white kitchen trash bag
full of oven mitts in this one. “Who the hell does that? Spends
what? Thirty, forty bucks a month to store oven mitts?” I could see
if they came from maybe a defunct oven mitt store, but these were
used. Most had grease or burnt food on them; none of them were
pristine, and yes, I checked them all. And no, I didn’t touch them,
I ripped the bag open and kicked them around, just trying to wrap
my head around the person that put these here.

Brian was somewhere around “zero for
twenty-two” when he stopped counting.

“Talbot, we’ve been here for three hours.
Surely there’s a better way to waste our time. Maybe a museum or
something. I’d rather go look at something aesthetically pleasing
than rummaging around other people’s shit,” BT griped.

“Whoa! Got something!” Brian shouted from
pretty far down the alleyway.

“Holy crap! When did he get that far from
us?” I asked. We would have been able to get there sooner, but we
had to skirt around mountains of debris that had been pulled from
previous lockers.

Brian came out of the locker, holding two
giant rifles.

“What the hell are those?” I asked him.

“Firearms,” he said proudly.

“They look like they shoot grenades,” Paul
said, looking down the barrel.

“Those are pretty useless,” Mrs. Deneaux
said, coming up to us. “They’re smooth bore muzzle loaders, they
need black powder, I’d say a .50 cal ball, and have an effective
range of about seventy-five yards, at the most. And that drops off
significantly, depending on who is shooting the weapon.” She
finished off looking directly at Paul, who bowed his head. “Plus,
even if we had everything we needed, they take close to two minutes
to reload.”

“Brian, I don’t know how much more time we
can stay here trying this,” I told him.

“There’s weapons in here. I know there are,”
he said with a measure of desperation.

“There probably are, but look at all these
lockers! We could spend days here trying to find them,” I told
him.

“Leave me someone to watch my back. I’ll keep
looking and you guys can try some stores nearby.”

“I’ll stay,” Mrs. Deneaux said, lighting a
cigarette.

I looked over to Brian to see what he
thought; it was his back that needed watching. “Sure,” he said,
shrugging his shoulders.

“Alright, we’ll be back in a couple of hours.
If something happens here, go back to the Big 5 store.”

“Got it,” Brian said, already digging into
the next locker.

Mrs. Deneaux was sitting on the bumper with
her head tilted up, soaking in the sun as much as her lungs soaked
in the caustic carcinogens from the cancer sticks.

“Doesn’t much look like she’s watching
anyone’s back,” BT said as we walked out of the storage
facility.

“We’ve got to get some wheels,” Paul said
nervously. “I’m too old to run.”

“Buddy, remember we played on the high school
football team together? There was a reason you were the quarterback
and not a running back.”

“Not much of a scrambler then?” BT asked
Paul.

“You both know what you can do with my ass,”
Paul stated.

“Paul, to be fair, I watched a few of your
games back then. I think you could beat Dan Marino in a foot race,”
Gary said in all seriousness.

I started laughing. “Wasn’t he in the league
for like seventeen years?”

“Something like that,” Gary answered.

“I think he had about seven yards rushing
total for all those years. We probably should make getting a car a
priority.”

“I like it much better when I’m not the
object of ridicule. Should we talk about Mike’s first
girlfriend?”

“Don’t you dare!” I said, spinning on my heel
to face him.

Paul threw his hands up in mock surprise.

“Let’s just find a car,” I said, trying to
change the subject.

We had walked about a hundred yards before
anyone spoke again.

“So what about her?” BT asked.

“Paul, there’re lines in the sand and once
they’re crossed, you can’t come back.” He didn’t seem fazed.
“Should I bring up…”

Paul cut me off. “Mike, you swore on your
word that you wouldn’t ever bring that up again.”

“We have an understanding then?” I asked him.
Paul nodded eagerly.

“Damn! Just when this was getting
interesting,” BT said, smiling, happy that he had just stirred the
hornets’ nest.

There were plenty of cars abandoned on the
street, most with the keys still in them, but the tanks were
drained dry. These people had left in a hurry, not even bothering
to shut their cars off. Some unlucky few had been eaten where they
sat. Sometimes their bodies were half dragged out, snagged by their
seatbelts as they were devoured alive. Some had telltale bullet
holes in them and had been wholly left alone from the main predator
that now prowled the earth; but the lesser scavengers still had to
eat. Birds invariably went for the softer-tissued eyes; just one
more reason to hate the flying vermin. Rats, I guessed from the
droppings, were mostly concerned with chewing through whatever
footwear the people had been wearing so they could get to the feet.
The meat-stripped feet and eyeless dead, for some reason, were more
disturbing than those that had been stripped clean by the
zombies.

Gary was right behind me. He had one hand on
my shoulder so that I could guide him as he kept his head pointed
heavenward. His gagging had been non-stop since we had come across
this snarl of dead in the center of town. The worst of the smell
had long since passed and the bodies began to resemble something
more along the lines of human jerky. But it was still no Yankee
Candle store out here.

“What the hell happened here?” Paul
asked.

“It looks like zombies came and whoever was
shooting didn’t care where their bullets landed,” I said.

Gary took this moment to throw up on my back.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked as I immediately handed my rifle to
BT so I could take my light jacket off. I swear I could still feel
the runny liquid rolling down between my shoulder blades.

“I…I can wipe it off,” Gary offered as he
bent over to get the jacket I had just dropped.

“Leave it,” I told him. And that was right
before he heaved all over it again.

“Sorry,” he said with a green-tinged
smile.

“Is there anything on my shirt?” I asked
BT.

“Aw, man,” BT said turning me around.

“Don’t fuck with me, man. I’m barely
functioning right now thinking about this.”

“You’re fine,” BT said, laughing as he gently
slid his hand down my back and mirrored the feeling of warm stomach
bile.

I jumped away. “Paul?”

“You’re fine, man,” Paul said, smiling.

“I’ll tell them,” I said desperately.

“You’re fine!” Paul reiterated.

“You sure you don’t want this?” Gary said,
picking it up by the right sleeve, just about the only part that
wasn’t coated in his stomach lining.

“You bring that over here and you’ll be
walking home.”

It was a few minutes and maybe a quarter mile
later when we came across our first promising mode of
transportation. It was an old Chevy Cavalier right at the outskirts
of town. Both curbside doors were open and there were some personal
belongings stowed in the backseat. A small house with the front
door ajar was only a few short feet from the car.

“Looks like they never made it out in time,”
Paul said with some sadness and regret.

“The keys in the ignition?” I asked Gary,
keeping an eye on the doorway like I expected the occupants to come
rushing out, demanding to know what was going on.

“No but there’s a box of ammo on the
dash.”

“That’s promising, what caliber?”

“30-30.”

“Good hunting round,” I said. The door was
intimidating. It was a black, gaping wound into a world I didn’t
feel that I wanted to enter. It was a normal setting, overlaid with
the surreal. “Something’s not right.”

BT did a quick three-sixty. “Nothing around,
Mike,” he said in all seriousness.

“No it’s in there,” I said.

“Forget it then, let’s move on,” he said.

“There’s a car, which probably has gas
because they were packing it to get the hell out of here and at
least one rifle. We need both badly.”

“Gary, you’re going to stay out here and
watch our backs.” It felt strange protecting my big brother, but
that was exactly what I was doing.

“I’ll go in first.” I took a big breath and
gulped down my fear. “We ready?” I asked BT and Paul.

BT nodded tersely; Paul didn’t even
acknowledge my question, but he was right on BT’s heels as we
entered. First, we were in the living room, which was stacked with
suitcases and multiple bags that would have never fit into that
car, even if there were no passengers. But I could tell by the toys
strewn around the house, that would not be the case.

“Who cares about
things
when you’re
trying to save your life?” BT asked softly. “They probably would
have got out of here if they weren’t trying to save this,” BT said
disgustedly as he pushed over a George Foreman grill stacked on a
couple of the boxes that looked like they were getting ready to
take with them.

To be fair, it looked like one of the
top-of-the-line models, but I’m not sure when they thought they
were going to get a chance to cook a hamburger, or worry about the
fat they would end up eating because it wasn’t draining down into
the little drip pan. Don’t get me wrong, there were possessions
that I absolutely cherished when the world was still spinning
somewhat on a normal axis. But life and the preservation of it top
the list. I have yet to come across a Star Wars Astromech figurine
that could ever replace the love I have for my kids, my wife or my
Henry. But since they were all safe, I did have a pang of remorse
that I had not been able to save at least one of the little R2
units I had.

“I see legs,” Paul said, moving over to the
far side of the room. He was looking down a narrow hallway.
“They’re not moving,” he added as we rushed to his side, rifles at
the ready.

“Is that blood?” BT asked, looking over my
head.

The hallway was in the shadows and the rug
that was down may at one time have been taupe-colored, but years of
use had left it something closer to brown and now something stained
it even darker by the doorway where the legs were jutting out.

“My guess is yes,” I said. A cloying stench
clung to the walls of this house; a blinding dose of claustrophobia
struck quickly, lingered for long seconds and then began to
diminish. “Wow, that sucked,” I said. Paul and BT, who had suffered
no such attack, looked at me questioningly.

“I’ll go,” Paul said, trying to bolster his
nerve.

“I’ll do it, this was my stupid idea.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” BT said.

The five steps it was going to take me to get
down the hallway were worse than at Fitzy’s house. At least, this
time there wasn’t any techno music. But maybe that would have
helped drown out the sound of my heart trying to blow through my
rib cage.

“Talbot?” BT whispered from the end of the
hallway.

I threw an A-OK sign over my shoulder
although it really meant shit. Something bad happened here, even
above and beyond what you might think in this situation. I kicked
what I figured were a man’s legs judging by the clodhopper boots he
(it) was wearing. No movement yet, I waited a few ticks more,
making sure this wasn’t the newest brand of sleeper we’d been
encountering more and more of. I moved in a half step further, my
foot coming down on the hardened rug--the blood, barbecue sauce,
and ketchup having completely dried. “Keep telling yourself that,
Talbot,” I said as my foot sunk into the sticky fibers.

I turned the corner into the bedroom, wholly
unprepared for what I witnessed. God had died, pure and simple. Dad
had blown the left side of his head completely off. It looked so
clean, like it was one of the cut-aways you used to see at the
doctor’s office. “Here, kiddies, is what the inside of your brain
looks like when you place a high velocity round up and through the
soft palate. See the separation in tissue as the bullet travels
through the jelly-like material of your thoughts?” But this was
just the beginning of the nightmare.

Across the room lay a crib. I said a silent
prayer to a silent master, and all I received was a silent
response. A small, blue fist reached up, the fingers not yet deft
enough to do much more than clench and unclench in an unending
struggle to reach a food source it could not attain. I glided
across the room like I was on a moving walkway.

“Whaddaya got, buddy?” a nervous Paul asked.
I could hear him approaching.