Riding The Apocalypse (13 page)

“Those bastards are getting mighty close. They are on the highway and down the off-ramp to Winchester. I’d guess they will be here by midday tomorrow,” Max said.

“I will leave them a note, telling them we’re headed to a little town called none of your Goddamned business!” Buell chirped from the couch.

I walked into my office; my leather jacket was on the floor, covering whatever was left of Emily’s reminder that we are all mortal. I was again glad I could not conjure up an image of Emily’s disfigured face. My last image of her face was dark and terrifying, but it was intact. I will always be grateful for that.

Things had to get better from here, I thought. Without realizing, I answered myself out loud.

“I certainly hope so, for all our sakes.”

Chapter 17

“It walked right out of the water.”

Max, Buell, and I fired up our motorcycles at first light. We wheeled them out to the left, still behind the gate. Our idling motorcycles were there for two reasons. Obviously, one purpose was to warm up; but while getting them to proper operating temperature was important, we also hoped to draw the attention of the twenty or so monsters who were along the fence, wandering about the cul-de-sac. I stood there, in full gear, watching the condensation emit from our exhaust pipes. The motors were creating the illusion of smoke billowing from the motorcycles in the brisk morning air.

I looked at Buell out of the corner of my eye, he had a crowbar in his hand and was watching the same plumes of smoke. I could see Buell working out the physics in his head. If I asked Buell why motorcycle exhausts emit smoke in the morning air, he would
immediately tell me the exhaust isn’t smoking; it’s water droplets produced by the combustion engine. I could read that guy like a book. I always knew exactly what he was thinking, and I hoped this skill came in handy today. When that guy rode, he didn’t drive a motorcycle, he
was
a motorcycle. That makes no sense, unless you know him. Then it makes perfect fucking sense.

As the monsters were clawing at the fence to the left, where Buell and I parked the running motorcycles, things were going according to plan. We intended to bunch them up and take action. I noticed one monster in particular. He was a large Asian man, who looked like a sumo wrestler with clothes on, and his sheer weight was causing the fence to bend at the left corner. Max needed to get the hell out here.

I was holding a tire iron as I waited for Max to emerge from the garage. A tire iron normally is used to separate the bead or side of the tire from the rim. The tool is a heavy piece of iron shaped much like a crowbar. This one was two feet longer, thus heavier than a crowbar. It also had smaller, more pointed ends than a crowbar.

Max emerged from the garage with my other tire iron in his left hand and a crowbar in his right. He walked right past Buell and me without saying a word, helmet and gloves already on.

The plan was simple. Slaughter the monsters right through the safety of the fence. The cyclone fence would allow us to impale the creatures with minimum risk. Max, not wasting any time, walked right into the corner of the fence and thrust the tire iron through the cyclone fence and directly into the eye of the sumo guy. The force Max used was so strong, the iron actually went through the other side of the skull, shooting blood and gray matter into the faces of the others behind. The blood spray sent the others into a frenzy as Max pulled out the iron and lunged for his next target. I was seeing something in Max that I don’t remember seeing in all the time I knew him. He looked angry and apathetic at the same time. I realize that doesn’t make sense. He literally put our Max aside and brought out this unfeeling, angry version. The sound of the bar slipping from the monster’s eye socket was so gruesome it caused my stomach to churn its morning breakfast. Max continued on, with the air of someone tackling an unpleasant but necessary chore.

One dry heave later I shoved my own weapon into the mouth of an older woman who looked like Anne Bancroft. Her neck crackled and snapped back.

“Sorry, Mel,” I said. Then I realized the protrusion was too low. She remained standing, and continued to lunge at me through the fence. Since I crushed her larynx on the previous stab, her attempt to growl at me was fruitless. I pulled back to try again, but the bar did not slide as easily as it had for Max. Perhaps that had more to do with his strength than I wanted to admit, regardless, I had to put my foot on the fence to get the leverage to pull it out.

Buell was able to strike over the fence by standing on an oil drum. The height the drum provided was an advantage, though a tad risky. Swinging over the top of the fence, Buell followed Max’s lead and brought the weapon down on top of the head of another monster who was already missing part of his face. I noticed that lately there were more injured monsters. These guys had seen battle in one way or another downtown.

This was what was coming.

The blood splattered against my helmet visor as Buell claimed another victim. It was hard not to associate these people, or things with celebrities. Buell just dropped Kramer from
Seinfeld
with one blow. Giddyup! I had to wipe the visor clean with my gloves before I could get back in the fight. The smell was beginning to permeate my helmet, and a wave of nausea hit me hard. That fucking smell. Why didn’t they warn us about this in the zombie movies? I opened my helmet just in time to projectile vomit my breakfast bar at the base of the fence. I tried to stand up, and almost fell again. After taking off my helmet and walking from the commotion, I was able to regain my bearings. I felt slightly embarrassed by my battle fatigue, but the guys never mentioned it. Either they didn’t notice it or decided to spare me the shame. I think it was the latter. I put my helmet back on and rejoined the fight.

This is how it went for five or six minutes. We let them push against the fence, then stabbed them through the cyclone holes or bludgeoned them over the top, all from the safety of my lot.

Genius plan.

Things were going as well as could be expected until we hit a snag. The snag’s name was Charles. There he was, my delivery driver and friend. He had been bitten on his left cheek and his pupils shone black in their red setting. I wondered how long he had been wandering out there. I must have missed him among the others in the cul-de-sac. Seeing him there clawing at the fence, trying to get at me, I felt sick. Had I not already thrown up the contents of my stomach, I would have. I looked at his eyes, black as night. Charles always talked
Star Wars,
and I was always eager to indulge him. We shared the same fascination with the movie series, and our talks were always fun, even if nonsensical. Now he was standing next to Emily’s abandoned Corvette and trying to eat my flesh. He was gone, and it hit me hard. Had that asshole Riley realized the infinite amount of human relationships he had dissolved?

Anger began to well up inside me. My rage traveled from my brain to my arms, and then to my hands. I did not want my friend walking around trying to eat people. The sight of him as a monster boiled my blood. I jumped onto the oil drum to my right, reached over the top of the fence and drove my tire iron down, pointed end first, through the top of Charles’s head. As I rammed the iron through his skull, then down his neck, it did not stop until the bottom of my hand struck the top of his head. The other end of the iron had exited through his upper abdomen and sprayed blood through the cyclone fence and onto the front of my pants. The blood infuriated me even more. I tried to retrieve the iron to strike again, but failed. It was lodged in his body like Excalibur. It was stuck deep, and my bloody hands were slippery. My fists slipped off as I tried to pull up on the bar, and with nothing to anchor my weight, I flailed and fell forward. My lower body pressed against the fence and my torso flopped over the top. Had Charles not been instantly killed by my initial blow, he could easily have attacked and bitten me.

Still I was stuck and it was not a good place to be, draped over the top of the fence, and holding on to the opposite side for dear life. I grabbed for the iron protruding from the monster’s skull and pulled it close. Keeping the iron in hand kept Charles’s body against me, an inhuman shield. Other monsters began to claw at me, but I used the dead body to block them as best I could.

That fucking smell!

I started to panic. I imagined Charles reanimating and biting my neck, shoving his head between the back of my helmet and my leather jacket. Was he alive, or at least undead? Did he just move? Or was that the other monsters, did they get around Charles? I began to flail my legs, trying to hook something to use to lift myself away from my dead friend.

“I’m sorry, Charles, shit, I’m sorry!” I screamed, trying to thrust him away but afraid to let go of the protection he afforded me. Suddenly, I felt weightless. The body, the clawing arms, the thick smell, and the tire iron in my grasp were all gone. Buell had jerked me back over the fence. He then pulled me to the ground and grabbed the front of my jacket with both hands.

“Rem, it’s okay, man, it’s okay. Fuck, he was already dead!” Buell yelled. “Just sit for a sec, chill, we got this.” He got up and returned to the fight.

I sat there in a daze, looking at Charles’s body with the tire iron protruding out from his head and torso. He was still upright, having fallen face-first against the fence. His bitten cheek tucked neatly into one of the thousands of diamonds formed by the metal mesh. What were the fucking odds? It fit so perfectly. His mortal wound was highlighted for me to see. Like I needed to be reminded. Why the fuck did that happen?

I laid back in the dirt, flipped open my visor, and stared straight out of my helmet. The blue and white pattern of the sky and clouds was a temporary reprieve from all the hell that surrounded me. There was no blood, gore, or fighting from the view of my helmet. I lay there motionless, grateful for the lack of peripheral vision.

Just blue and white.

The last few monsters climbed atop of the previously fallen at the base of the fence and made a valiant attempt to reach us. However, they were quickly disposed of by Max’s and Buell’s well-placed blows.

I was exhausted, but as far as I could see through my blood-soaked visor, we had cleaned them all for now. Not using the guns kept us from attracting too much attention from the other monsters farther away from my garage. I sat up, looked at Buell and Max. They didn’t say a word. Max put his hand out, helped me up, and with a firm slap on the back, Max set me at ease.

Max was just that guy.

We jumped on our bikes as Max opened the gate, and—with one last glance at Emily’s ruined Corvette—began what we hoped was a sojourn to the coast.

Buell was running point as I watched him carefully maneuver around a few new monsters who had approached from the end of the street after hearing the ruckus. Max was also ahead of me; his bright red Ducati was shining in the morning sunlight. It truly was a gorgeous bike. I hoped it would stay that way.

“Hey, Max, why didn’t we do the
kill all the monsters through the fence and then leave
plan
the first time Buell and I went to Kmart?” I chirped on the intercom. “Wouldn’t that have been easier and less risky than our previous plan? Couldn’t we have just done that?”

“Nope,” Max answered laconically.

“Why the hell not, Max?” Buell added.

“ ’Cause we didn’t think of it,” Max replied dryly.

Buell’s cackling through the helmet sounded like a flock of ducks in a phone booth full of pita bread.

“Oh, yeah, gotcha,” I replied.

While it seems funny, Max made a darned valid point. I can remember so many times watching a movie and thinking, why didn’t the actor just do
this
or
that
instead of whatever they were actually doing in the film. Now I realize it’s because in real life, sometimes you just don’t think of it. There is no writing and rewriting in real life. It never crossed our minds to kill the monsters through the fence, not once the whole time we planned Buell’s and my original sojourn.

Bygones.

We leaned into Big Lazy just fast enough for my rear tire to break loose and slide a tad rounding the turn. The pace Buell set would certainly be a challenge. Looking forward, both bikes were completing the turn and braking hard for the sharp U-turn at the bike path.

“Heading for the Par Course’s path,” Buell said through the intercom.

We decided we were going to ride the bicycle path through the middle of the Campbell Recreational Center. This path, Par Course, runs along the city’s percolation ponds, used for water purification. It virtually bisects the small city in half. One side is the ponds, which can also be fished during the summer months, and the other side is the foothills leading west toward the mountains. If we headed west through the park, we could skip the congested roads and save time. That was the plan. This bike path would take us to the base of the foothills in Los Gatos, and from that point, we could subsequently ride on fire roads south toward Monterey and Senator Punkass.

I had ridden the eight miles of this bike path at least a hundred times, but always on a bicycle. The path was narrow, but because there were no crowds at the moment, it was easy to avoid the shoulder and hills along the right. Of course staying out of the ponds on my left would also be advantageous.

Looking ahead, I saw the brake lights on both motorcycles go bright red, with Max’s Ducati leaving a black skid mark resembling a profile of a slithering boa constrictor along the path.

“We have a slight problem here,” Buell quipped as he stopped short.

We pulled alongside of him, three abreast, narrowly fitting on the skinny path. There was a young woman and a child hunched over right in the middle of the trail. There was another person, lying facedown on the path. The body was perpendicular to the trail, thereby completely blocking our route. At first glance it looked like a large glistening red chunk of flesh. Had it not been for the one unmolested foot, this poor human would have been virtually unrecognizable.