Chapter 9
When the car was out of sight and their screams' echoes were gone, Maria let Patrick out of her arms. She checked him over—she knew he was okay, but couldn’t help herself. Her head was throbbing from the wound; when she stood, she could feel the day in her bones. Maria pulled the heavy cooler from its place, thankful that, one, Jude had such a large cooler and, two, that it had not floated down the river. Patrick said, “So what are we going to do now, Maria?”
“We are setting up camp right here. Because we have way too much stuff to haul it all anywhere.”
“How is Dad going to find us?”
She started to say something, but had to give herself a minute. She knew that, in all truth, there was no way to know how he would find them. He would look for them until Hell froze over, if that was what it took; she was not worried about his commitment to finding them. But she knew that, as far into the woods as they were, no one would be able to see them from the roadway. “I don't know, honey. Maybe we could move a little closer to the road; can you use those future man-muscles you have and help your aunt haul this heavy stuff?”
Patrick instantly showed her the minimal gun show going on under his shirt sleeve. The two of them gripped onto the cooler and went as fast as they could back toward the road. The dead which had driven them into the woods in the first place would still be nearby, Maria knew—unless someone or something had given them cause to leave. They could not get too close to the road without catching their attention. Maria winced with every step, as the rocks and twigs which usually would be nothing but a nuisance dug into her bare feet. When she felt the mud sticking to them, she saw that she was cut. Sliding off her jeans, she took Jude's hatchet and cut everything below the knee to make some temporary shoes. If she couldn't run, she might fall behind or compromise their safety.
When the two were within a few hundred yards of the road, she set up the tent as best she could. Jude could do it with his eyes shut in less than twenty minutes, even without directions. She had cursed her way through a hour and a half before finally getting the basic structure secure enough that they would be safe and dry. “Okay, Patrick, now we wait on your dad. Why don’t we grab some firewood so we can get these wet clothes dry, honey? We can get a couple cans of food cooking, also.”
Chapter 10
Jude looked over the stairs' edge. “You sure you couldn’t have thought of something better than being bait, Chuck? I mean, is this seriously the smartest thing a big-ass group of people can come up with?”
Chuck said, “Oh, this idea is horrible, but college girl didn’t have anything. I didn’t hear you screaming out ideas, and honey and the new kid were birds on the wire, just waiting for someone else to say something. So it might be a shitty idea, but it's our shitty idea, brother.”
“Really filling me with some serious confidence there, Chuck. How do we get all of their attention, though? I mean, did you have any plans for that? Your lame hand isn’t going to be able to take these things on like your usual crazy self.”
Chuck smiled in a way that failed to fill Jude with confidence. He pointed to a set of fire extinguishers on the wall, and each of them grabbed one. Chuck said, “I actually might have me a better idea, Jude.”
Chuck hung the idling chainsaw from his shoulder, the devil’s smile still on his face. He pulled the pin on his extinguisher, and the two friends descended the steps. Chuck said, “You just be ready to chop their heads off if it doesn’t work.”
“Okay, and what happens, Chuck, if it does work?”
“Well, simple, Jude; if it does work, then you don’t waste a bit of time running through here like a wild man, slicing them into fucking pieces. You take them down, and don’t stop till you have a path cut through them. You good with that?”
“I’d be a hell of a lot better if I knew what you were going to do. I can’t see what you're really getting at, honestly.”
Chuck said, “Seeing is exactly it, brother.”
Before Jude could say anything else, Chuck trotted down the steps. When he got within ten feet of the dead horde, he screamed, “Hey, lookie here, you ugly sons of bitches.”
When they turned to him, he squeezed the handle, painting the first row of the dead. When he let off, they looked like someone had dunked their heads into a white chalk bucket.
Jude screamed, “Yeah, and now what, Chuck?”
“Come on, come on and work, God damn it,” Chuck said, not talking to Jude so much as himself. When the dead didn't move, he screamed, “Come on up here, you ugly sons of bitches!”
The dead started up the stairs, bumping into each other. When they walked right past Chuck, he turned around, giving a thumbs up to Jude.
Jude said, “You are a fucking genius, but what about the ones you didn’t hit yet?”
Chuck didn’t say anything; he squeezed back down on the handle, painting another thirty of them before stopping. The dead walked into each other, still hungry and angry, but clueless as to what they should eat.
Realizing Chuck's plan was actually great, Jude set down his extinguisher, running the saw across the dead's knee caps, dropping them one by one, and followed Chuck through the crowd.
Chuck said, “Well, shit, Jude, this is way easier than it used to be. What in the hell were we doing all morning long? We could have made our way through that town in no time if we just got us something to blind these assholes with.”
“You are a bona fide genius, Chuck. May no one ever speak ill of you again, buddy. If they do, then they can deal with my wrath.”
When they got within a few feet of the last group of the dead, Chuck said, “This shit couldn’t be any easier. I mean it, we got rhythm going. I shoot them in the face, then you do the easy work of chopping through their knee caps and splitting their heads, if time allows.”
Jude closed his eyes as he sliced through knee caps, sending blood everywhere. He wiped their remains off of his face with the inside of his shirt and said, “Oh yeah, this is just the easiest job ever. How long do you think that tank is going to last, Chuck?”
Chuck weighed it, looking down, and tossed it to the side. “Dead as a doornail, Jude. We need to find some more of these things around here. We need to get up there, or the others are going to think we're dead.”
Jude had forgotten about the girls waiting for them upstairs with Charlie. He said, “Now it's going to be their turn to give us shit for disappearing. You realize you're, like, king shit now, figuring out an even better way of taking these things down, right? Whoever is manufacturing something that can blind these things is going to be one rich son of a bitch."
"I think maybe they need to get me just a bit of the back end on that," Chuck said. "I mean, if we just kept only using these things for fires, they’d never make any money. Hell, these things just became God’s gift to zombie-stompers everywhere.”
“Given the manufacturers survive to collect on it, I’d have to agree with you," Jude commented. "Just remember that we need to take these things out. If we die before we can give anybody this tip, it's not going to help anybody."
Chuck said, “Well, it isn’t like I’m trying to keep it a Chinese secret or nothing. We just keep running into people who need their heads sliced off. I’d love to show some people what's up so we can get these damn things taken down and put back where they belong. At some point, Jude, I need me a damn meal and a nap.”
Jude understood completely, but knew two people complaining about things would only make it worse. “Why don’t we get the others and collect what's left of the extinguishers in the building to take with us? The minute we run out of the dead is when we can worry about the food and sleep.”
Chuck said, “Well, it is about damn time you started coming up with some ideas, Jude.”
Jude looked at the saw and at Chuck, who decided it couldn’t be a more perfect time to stop talking. They ran up the steps to see Charlie, who looked more bored than worried, and the girls, who both looked terrified. Joann slapped Jude across the face. “What the hell were you doing? You were supposed to get the dead to follow you and then come back up here and hop into the elevator. Exactly what happened that we heard chainsaws running for the last ten minutes?”
Chuck stepped forward
—
he could not have been more proud of himself. “I figured out how to immobilize the dead. Yeah, it was really just a matter of science, a little bit of experimentation. I’m quite frankly surprised I didn’t figure it out sooner than this, to tell you the truth.”
The three looked in bewilderment at Jude for an answer. Jude nodded, agreeing with him. “He sprayed the dead in the face with a fire extinguisher. It blinded them. We don’t know if it's forever, or if it's only temporary, but we took them down just fine when they couldn’t see.”
Leslie squeezed Chuck and gave him his first well-deserved kiss. “Now that is exactly the kind of shit you need to do if you want to be my man. I love a man who figures it out and gets shit done.”
Chuck said, “Then I might as well be Chuck fucking Norris, because if we can show enough people how, we can take every one of these things down. If we can find a chemist somewhere to talk to, then I bet ya they'll be able to tell us how we can blind them permanently. Maybe we could find some acid or some other horrible shit that'll eat through their eyes.”
Jude nodded, thinking about it. “We might want to grab us a scientist who could advise us of that. Probably want to make sure that we aren’t pissing in the wind, if you know what I mean, before we go and shoot off acid.”
The five of them walked down the steps, and when the dead in front of them were on display for all to see, Charlie and the girls stopped walking. Chuck and Jude turned around, seeing the others' amazement at what they were taking in. Chuck said, “Kind of breathtaking, isn’t it?”
“Holy shit, you know what?" Leslie breathed. "You guys might know how to rid the world of these things. You did all this with just a fire extinguisher?”
“Well, Jude’s chainsaw did a lot to work, also," Chuck admitted. "I mean, I can’t take all the credit…except for that part about being a genius and it totally being my idea. That’s okay to keep as my little claim to fame
—
saving the world, just another day's work for good ol' Chuck.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick if you don’t stop talking, Chuck. True story, brother,” Jude said.
Chuck waved him off. “So if we get all of the extinguishers in this building, we can load up the truck and drop them off to people along the way home. Anywhere that might have lots of them, we can swing in and grab some. Sound like a plan?”
No one protested, and a half hour later, they were pushing a maintenance trash barrel filled with twenty extinguishers ready for action. The dead were running around, wild-eyed. Few of the dead in the streets had come from below ground. These dead had been rain-drinkers or bite victims, hungry and looking for meals.
Charlie said, “Hey, at least the truck's still there. It’d be a long-ass walk home without it. I don’t care how many of those extinguishers we have, I still don’t want to be out on the open road. You get too many of those things coming at you, and it isn’t going to matter how much of that shit you're shooting at them. One of them, just out of luck, is going to hit home and get a bite out of us.”
Jude took one of the extinguishers, pulling the pin so it would be ready to go. He brought it up high over his head, smashing it into the glass that separated them from the dead. He did not stop hitting it until it shattered, and by that time he had all of their attention. He stood back a foot as they began reaching in, and started the saw back up, as did the others. They took turns as the dead reached in, going through their skulls. Within a few minutes, they had to move to another window; the dead were stacking up outside. Chuck said, “It almost seems kinda unfair, don’t it? You know, like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Oh, I think I can live with this advantage," Leslie said. "Hell, who needs the extinguishers when you can do it this easy?”
Chuck immediately responded, “Just don’t forget, when we get out of here, I am right back to genius status in your eyes.”
Leslie sliced through the top of one of their heads, nodding. “Yeah, you're my big stud
—
nothing like seeing the inside of all these poor bastards' heads to make me think about jumping between the sheets.”
“Really?”
“No, Chuck, not really.”
Joann patted her on the shoulder and said, “Well, you did say you wanted a smart man, going forward. He just might not be smart all the time. But good luck finding a man who is.”
Jude, ignoring the conversation, yelled over the saw, “Hey, you guys think now is a good enough time as any to get out of here? I think we’ve made a pretty damn good dent in these things. You ready to make our move?”
They all nodded, and Leslie, Chuck, and Joann each grabbed extinguishers. They unlocked the doors, and the bodies of the slaughtered dead pressing up against them fell to the lobby floor, along with a disgusting amount of blood and brains. The few dead who had not been able to make their way to the front to have their heads split open were still waiting impatiently, growing more agitated by the second.
Jude and Charlie walked directly behind the other three. As they blinded the dead, Charlie and Jude were there to take turns putting them out of their misery. By the time they made it to the truck, they saw that the dead who were still out there had more than enough to keep them busy. Not until they heard the sounds of the saws did they start making their way towards them. Chuck took up his chainsaw, and the three men held off whoever made their way toward them, while Leslie and Joann filled the truck bed with the fire extinguishers they had taken from the building. When the women had the truck filled to the brim, Joann slid in behind the wheel and started the truck, revving it up.