Riding The Apocalypse (16 page)

Not good.

Max ignored the dining area and headed straight for the bar on the right side of the clubhouse. Still nobody in sight, but as I inched closer behind Max, it hit me.

The smell.

I dry heaved as I took in the sour smell of feces and overwhelming body odor. I wasn’t ready for it, and drew in a full breath before I realized it. Actually, you are never ready for it. Buell shook his head and spit in reaction, but Max didn’t make a sound, or give any indication that he smelled anything. He was focused on the closed door directly behind the bar.

Then we saw it. The twice dead monster lying just behind the right side of the bar, flat on his back. His body position told the story of his demise. His face, or what was left of it, was obviously blown off by a shotgun. The blood spatter was under our feet well before we reached him. He resembled Rodney Dangerfield in
Caddyshack,
plaid pants and all. His shirt was so many different colors you hardly noticed the blood spatter.

Just then, from around the far side of the bar, I heard a moan. A brutally disfigured monster came around from the hallway on the opposite side of the bar. He looked to be over six feet, and his gray sweatshirt was almost opaque with blood. Staying with the
Caddyshack
theme, he was more of a Chevy Chase.

“Max!” I yelled.

Before I even finished the one syllable alert, Max was bringing the tire iron down atop the monster’s head, while expertly avoiding Chevy’s outstretched arms. The crack was sickening. Blood shot from the undead man’s head and open mouth simultaneously. The monster went down with a thud, face-first. As he fell to the ground, another monster was revealed directly behind him. The second assailant was a heavyset woman with long blond hair. Her skin was the first indication she was no longer living, pale as a ghost. As she stepped forward, her mouth opened wide, revealing bloodred teeth threaded with what I assumed was bits of flesh and bone. Her rasp chilled my blood. She looked down at Max, who was on one knee, trying to pull his tire iron from Chevy’s freshly cracked skull. Max looked up just in time to see her right temple explode as I fired from a few feet behind him. The gunshot spun her around like a top, and she landed on the beer taps to her right. Her armpit hooked on the Newcastle Ale tap, pulling it forward, and leaving her hanging there, her blood gushing into the tap overflow tray where it mingled with the flowing ale, creating a morbid version of a red beer.

From the corner of my eye I saw a flash and quickly focused on Buell running into the hallway from where the two monsters had appeared.

“It’s clear!” Buell yelled.

I watched Max stand up and rip a bar towel from under the hunched woman leaning on the bar. He carefully closed the beer tap then wiped the tire iron clean and looked back at me.

“Thanks, man, I didn’t see her back there.”

“How could you miss her fat ass?” Buell chirped as he returned from the hallway.

“Shit, Max, she was a foot shorter than that other one, had he not fallen I wouldn’t have seen her either,” I said, pointing the gun to the man lying on the ground with the split forehead.

Buell crossed the room to lock the double doors in the foyer. “If we gotta leave quick it’s easy to unlock it, but it looks clear so I wanna keep it that way.”

I nodded.

Max stepped away from the undead carcass carefully, to avoid slipping on the blood. With the tire iron high in his hand, he turned to the door behind the bar counter. He stepped back toward me and gave a nod. I looked back at Buell, and he was still hovering in the dining area, watching the door and snapping his head back to us every few seconds. I was going to ask him to cover our backs, but he already had it under control. I gave him an approving glance and he winked and walked back toward the double glass doors to take a look outside at the tee box again.

“Uncle Frank’s office is in here, remember?” Max said quietly.

“Vaguely. You just lead the way and stay low, I don’t wanna shoot you,” I said nervously.

“I don’t want to be shot, so good to know.”

Max tapped the door lightly, just above the sign that read,
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand. —Raymond Chandler.
I was not sure what that meant, or who Raymond Chandler was, but it did seem like Uncle Frank.

Nothing.

Just as he was about to knock again—

“Can I help you?” A familiar scratchy voice emanated from behind the door. “If not, please leave, ’cause my fingers are itchy on the trigger of my M-16 and it’s pointed at the middle of the door.”

Max’s smile was ear to ear, and it felt good to see his joy; my eyes welled slightly and I took a deep breath.

“U.F.! It’s me, Max, open the damn door!”

A few seconds later I heard a staccato of dead bolts unlocking and chains sliding, ending with the doorknob turning and then a slowly opening door. Uncle Frank peeked out, then motioned us inside. He looked good. He had to be pushing ninety years old, but still moved with a quick step and his gait was not far off a younger man’s.

I followed Max into Uncle Frank’s office. I looked back to see Buell standing at the door, keeping an eye outside. From where Buell was standing, he had a good view of the front doors, as well as the sliding glass doors across from the bar. I always loved sitting at the bar and watching the golfers tee off. We used to play a drinking game. We would alternate picking golfers who were teeing off. If the golfer teeing off didn’t hit it completely out of the tee box, or missed it entirely, we had to slam whatever was left of our drinks and order another. We picked our golfers as they came up to the tee. Seemed like I always put my money on the wrong horse.

Being in Uncle Frank’s immaculate office was like being in a WWII museum. It looked nothing like the casual western décor of the clubhouse. All along the left wall were pictures of uniformed men in flat black frames. On the shelf just below were various keepsakes from the war, not the least of which was the shiniest belt buckle I had ever seen. Opposite the portraits were pictures of various planes, and even a couple of models hanging from the ceiling. I instantly recognized the P-38J Lightning, it had the words
Fork Tailed Devil
painted across its wings. You would recognize it if you saw it, it was the one with the twin booms, and looked almost like two planes in one.

“That plane is famous you know,” Frank told me. “The P-38J was the plane used to shoot down Admiral Yamamoto, the commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy.”

“He was the mastermind behind the attack on Pearl Harbor,” Max added, finishing Uncle Frank’s thought.

“Operation Vengeance,” added Uncle Frank, beaming a smile at Max, like a proud father at a spelling bee.

Uncle Frank had a replica of his plane, the SBD3, on his desk under a glass cover. My admiration of the décor was broken by Uncle Frank’s scratchy voice.

“Shit, good to see ya, Max, thought you guys would be long gone by now. Everybody hit the bricks when this end of the world stuff started.”

“U.F., you here all alone?”

“Yeah, when the reports started coming in of all these creatures roaming around, this place scattered like a Japanese command bunker in Guadalcanal.”

I welcomed the WWII analogies, and smiled warmly at Uncle Frank. Damn, it was good to see the old coot.

“Then ol’ Pete from Grass Valley came lumberin' in here from the tenth tee with blood on his face and lookin' like a damn feral animal.” Uncle Frank shook his head as he motioned to the dead man just outside the office door. “I had to unload on 'em, and then I closed the damn door,” Uncle Frank added as he tapped his shotgun sitting on his desk.

“Where is Tiny?” Max asked.

“He made sure everyone left and took off home.”

Tiny was anything but. He was a part-time bull rider, and the rest of the time he was the muscle around here. He was over six feet tall, and built like a lumberjack. I remembered him fondly. Tiny was Uncle Frank’s nephew, and he kept the club members who’d had a few too many drinks and bogeys in line. I was glad to hear he was okay.

“You know the damn doors were wide open,” Buell said from just outside the office.

“Yeah, I heard somebody come in and leave a few minutes after Tiny left. I heard some bottles clankin' and then nothin'.”

“Yeah, your beer cooler is open, come to think of
it—” Buell stopped mid-sentence and leaned down behind the bar and grabbed a Sam Adams.

“That’s six bucks,” Uncle Frank chirped. “Not happy hour for another hour,” he added.

“Put it on my tab.”

“There is no room!”

We all laughed and Max went to Uncle Frank and hugged him. “I am glad you are okay, you got a way to get out of here?”

Uncle Frank’s expression turned serious and he looked down at his desk as he answered. “There is no place to go for me, Max. I am just going to hole up here,” he said, looking around the room. “If Tiny comes back, I s'pose I will head to his mom’s place, maybe. No place else I wanna be. Look, I don’t know how much ya' fellas know, but this is some pretty dire shit going on. I got a shortwave, and made a few calls to some of my contacts in the Air Force, and this virus thing has our boys licked at the moment. It is spreadin' pretty fast, and we are not on the offensive, we are on the defensive right now.”

I didn’t like the despondent look on his face as he filled us in. It was unnerving to see such a brave man speak pessimistically. I saw Buell walk away from the doorway toward the glass doors as Uncle Frank paused to take a drink of a brown liquid I assumed was whiskey.

“We will catch up to this, U.F., we always do,” Max said.

“Not in this lifetime,” Uncle Frank said with a halfhearted chuckle.

It really hit me hard when he said that. Here was a wise, brave war hero. He was pretty much laying it on the line. We were in serious trouble. He had seen some dark times, and to him, this was the darkest. What he was saying was on our minds too, but we had this purpose, and we were gonna see it through. If this ever was going to be fixed, it was going to take some time, and most likely the older folks were never going to see normal life again.

Would anyone?

“Here, take these,” Uncle Frank said, handing Max a few boxes of rounds. “Those will fit in your weapons. I got plenty of ammo and my M-16, and tons more shotgun shells. Get out while the gettin’ is good, I am gonna hole up here and wait for Tiny to come back.”

“What if he doesn’t—”

Uncle Frank cut Max off mid-sentence. “Look here, I am ninety-one years old, and I’ve had a nice run. I got one more battle in me at most, and this is where I want to make my stand. I promise I will go down fightin’, if necessary. Anyway, I will only slow you guys down—get the Sam hell outta here, and find yourself one of those safe harbors down south.”

“We will send help when we can.”

“If Tiny doesn’t come back for me, I don’t wanna be rescued. This is my hill to die on if need be,” Uncle Frank said with a smile that could charm a cobra. “I got everythin' I need right here,” he said, looking around the room. “Grab a few beers and some water out of the cooler. I got plenty. Now that you have secured the clubhouse I got more room to move about. I thank you guys for coming here, means a lot to me.”

Max was welling up, he looked like he was fighting to hold back the tears.

Whoop!

I looked out the office door and caught the end of Buell’s backswing. He was out in the tee box, with an iron in hand, and a tipped-over bucket of balls on the ground next to him.

Whoop!

I followed the flight of the ball as I walked toward Buell, leaving Max alone with Uncle Frank. The ball flew majestically toward the green. Buell’s shot landed pin high about ten yards to the right of the hole and stopped with a light thump barely audible from this distance.

“Shit,” Buell yelled.

“What the hell, Buell, that is one of the best shots I have ever seen you hit. Why’re you complaining?”

“I was aiming for the trap. Look,” he said, pointing his club to the left of the green.

There it was, in the deep sand trap about one hundred and forty yards away. The monster was trapped, for lack of a better term. The poor fucker obviously lacked the dexterity to climb out of the sand trap.

“I guess you would call that a bio-hazard?” I joked.

“That’s not bad,” Buell said. “Did you write that yourself?” he added after a courtesy laugh.

Whoop!

Wide to the left, but closer this time. The comic relief was welcome. I suppose we could have been one hundred percent serious and on point, but sometimes you just can’t help the need to laugh. Even with all that was going on, and even with our plan to head to Monterey.

“Give me that club,” I said, reaching out to Buell. Buell happily handed it over. I think he was pleasantly surprised I was so willing to join his diversion from the pending Apocalypse. He smiled and stepped back, giving me a wide berth to swing the club.

Whoop!

Though not as high and majestic as Buell’s attempts, my aim was true, striking the monster just below the shoulder blades. The creature turned back quickly in reaction to my well-struck eight iron. We were too far away from the poor bastard for him to figure out where the stimulus came from, but it definitely put the creature in a frenzied state.