ZWD: King of an Empty City (14 page)

It didn’t take long to get the last two cars into place after that. The beer truck started up quickly, but had to sit and idle for a while before I could get it into gear. I’d never driven a big truck like that before and wasn’t used to the wide turns I had to take to keep the trailer from catching streetlamps and signs. Unfortunately, someone had already pried open its bay doors and taken all the beer.

We were walking back to Main Street tired and hungry. It was about three in the afternoon. Although the snow was still coming down in big flakes and the wind had picked up a little, I wasn’t cold. I guess it was because of all the running around we’d been doing. From the east side of Eleventh Street headed towards us was another zombie. He hadn’t seen us yet. We had a little bit of gas left in the can, so I ran to him. He held up his arms like a father ready to accept a running child. That just pissed me off. I threw the gas on him as I ran by. He turned to face me and a flaming arrow caught him in the back. It took a moment, but he started to burn. I circled around him so he was between the hillock that separated Eleventh Street and I-630. While he stood there burning, I drop-kicked him down the hillock. He tumbled backwards down the slope till he’d rolled to the retaining wall, and then he tumbled over the edge.

             
From our vantage point, we watched him burn as more zombies from the I-630 canal moved over to him. A few more caught on fire and more came to watch. We didn’t stick around; instead we headed back to the Safeway. We had to crawl over the two layers of barriers we’d put in place to do it and somewhere in there I realized I stank of workday perspiration and gasoline. Gas was all I could taste in my mouth. We decided to go to the base house first so I could shower and hopefully find some mouthwash.                

              After a long, hot shower for the both of us, we washed our clothes and rolled up the area rug in the den and headed back to the Safeway. The gargoyle with his red eyes was smiling down at us. I clicked the button and we muscled the rug up the ladder. It made a big difference in the comfort of the tent, but we’d need a few more to really mask that damp cold floor. For dinner we treated ourselves to Poptarts and canned peaches. I told her I wasn’t up for another day of carjacking, so we could get started on the raised flowerbeds in the morning.

             
It was probably five or six in the evening, although the sky was already dark. The wind picked up and the flakes stung my face a little as I sat there on an ice chest looking out over my kingdom, such as it was. Not wanting to be seen by anyone, I moved away from the edge and lit up the cigar. It wasn’t as bad this time as it was last night. I still only managed a few puffs before I started getting dizzy.

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 17

ZWD: Dec. 15.

Saw three armed men walking this morn; thirty minutes later we heard the guns. Ten minutes later saw them again. They were well-armed zombies.

                 
“What are you worried about?” Dylan’s voice comes from behind me as I look around the high trees and down to the valley that stretches for miles directly in front of me.

“Nothing, everything,” I say over my shoulder. I look out across the valley below me.

Stager walks up and asks Dylan, “What’s he bitchin’ about?”

             
Sitting on a rock tying his shoe, Dylan tells Stager he was just asking if I was worried about anything and my saying everything.

“It’s real simple.” Stager offers me a strip of beef jerky. “All you gotta do is run. Just keep running and you’ll be alright. You get across that valley to your goal and you keep going, don’t stop. Don’t stop for nothing.”

“There’s going to be some bad motherfuckers in your way, bad like us. Mow them bastards down and keep running. Don’t stop!”

I take the jerky and that’s when I notice the deer rifle across his arms. Dylan picks up his rifle with its high-powered scope. “He’s right, you know, just keep running.” And he points across the valley. “Don’t stop there,” he continues. “You have to keep running.”

“What am I running from, then?”

With a chuckle Stager says, “Everything, us. You got to run like a rabbit.”

“Best get started,” Dylan says. “Run.” He raises the rifle to his shoulder and points it at me.

“Run, rabbit, run,” Stager chimes in as he does the same. Both barrels pointing at me, I drop the remainder of my jerky and start running blindly down the hill, looking for cover between the trees and boulders. There isn’t a cloud in the deep blue Colorado sky as I leap over fallen trees and scramble around million-year-old rocks. I run till my lungs are about to explode and I stop for air. I’m bending over with my hands on my knees gasping for breath, my butt resting against a tree. A tree limb explodes into a thousand splinters just in front of me. I can feel them digging into my skin.

“Goddammit, guys!” I scream to the sky above. “Do we have to do this?”

              On my left, Dylan and Stager are standing there with their high-powered rifles on their hips. Dylan pops a fistful of sunflower seeds into his mouth and mutters around the seeds, “We didn’t make the rules, we’re just the hunters; it’s the role we have.”

“Hey, man,” Stager offers me his canteen. “I don’t want to blow your brains out,” he says apologetically. “But if you don’t run, I will. It’s that simple. Now run.” He pulls a pistol from his belt and levels it against my temple. “Run!”

I’m running through the forest. From somewhere in the distance, I can hear Stager’s voice singing the choirs to that old sweet song, “Fox on the Run.” Over and over again he sings that. Sometimes I hear Dylan singing, “Fox say I don’t run.” A chunk of rock explodes next to my head and I stumble to the ground.

A shadow looms over me and Stager with a pistol in his hand pointed at me says, “Dammit, Rabbit, don’t you listen to anything?” Dylan is kneeling beside me and he’s still humming “Fox on the Run.” He mouths out the words again; “Fox say I don’t run.” With a heavy sigh Stager cocks the hammer back with his thumb and steadies his aim at my head. There’s a large bang as I throw my arms over my face.
                  

I jerked in my sleeping bag, wide awake. I couldn’t breathe. I sat up. A hand reached up and touched my back, giving me a slight start, and then I heard the gentle shushing of her voice.

“It was thunder, that’s all.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I said.

“Did you have a bad dream?” she asked, trying to stay awake enough to hear me.

“Yes.” She rubbed my back more and shifted to one elbow.

“What was it about?” The glow of the rope lights around the tent door gave her face a bluish tint. I told her I didn’t remember, that I forgot as soon as I woke up.

              I lied.

                  Outside another clap of thunder rumbled and the wind shook the tent a little harder. I kissed her face and told her to go back to sleep, that I’d probably be awake for a while and she shouldn’t suffer because of me. It didn’t take much convincing before she rolled over on her other side and was out again. I slipped on my coveralls and slipped outside the tent.

               It wasn’t raining. The wind had picked up a little; I couldn’t really see clouds because the entire sky was one big cloud, dark gray and oppressive. The rain coming down almost looked like it was running away from the sky.

              There was still a little ember burning in the hibachi so I threw a few more sticks on top and stoked it till I had a little flame, then I added two more charcoal bricks to it so we’d have something for morning. Hovering over the little fire, I thought about my dream. About Dylan and Stager. They were high school friends I hadn’t thought about in years.

              In school, they were inseparable adrenaline junkies. On weekends they’d go caving with little more than a canteen and a flashlight. Sometimes they’d go hiking with just a knife, Rambo style. Or they’d go to one of the Indian reservation casinos dressed in suits and gamble all weekend. How I got to be the guy who tagged along I’ll never know, but I was and they’d “pussy it down” for me and bring supplies when I went. Half the time I didn’t know if they were kidding or if they meant it. We used to do some of the craziest things together.                

                  They took me camping, hunting, rafting, gambling, you name it, and if they were going to do it eventually I was invited to come along. I loved those two like brothers, but they scared me to death sometimes with their antics.

                  So why was I dreaming of them? What did Stager mean by “Run, rabbit, run”? And what was Dylan doing singing “Fox on the Run” to me? What was I trying to tell myself? I’d gotten another peach cigar and stuffed it in my mouth. I didn’t light it, just chewed on the plastic tip as I thought of what all this might mean. I really didn’t have any answers. I sat there till dawn thinking. Dawn was simply the dark gray sky turning into a light gray sky. Later in the day, there’d be breaks in the clouds and rays of sunlight would stream down like God was revealing something glorious, like a star we should follow to be shown a wonderful secret. Shortly after this mess all started, I did that once and it lead me to a garbage can. Oh, great mystery.

              Since there really wasn’t a lot to think about concerning Dylan and Stager, I started working on the song. I couldn’t remember the words that well. This got me to thinking about other songs. I love music and I had tons of it. When you work on web sites all day you get to listen to a lot of music. I couldn’t remember any of it, not one word. No Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Genesis, Rush.

              I actually remembered a Spice Girls song better than I did some of my favorite songs. “Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.” I could go on with that song, really I knew all the words.
And sitting there trying to think of these things, I felt like I was losing my humanity, like I was losing me.

               By the time I heard her stirring in the tent, I’d chewed the plastic tip of the peach cigar to a garbled plastic mess. The cigar itself had fallen to the ground. I stood up tired and stiff, so I stretched and pulled a can of mixed fruit out of the storage bins and threw the last two frozen burritos on the grill.

                  As I was gathering the tools and letting it gnaw at me about the singers I heard the crunching of fresh snow below. Creeping to the edge of the roof, I looked out and saw three armed men. They were strolling along more like three guys who were going hunting than three guys on the hunt. One had his rifle slung over his shoulder with his Elmer Fudd hat on, flaps down to cover his ears. The other was wearing a hunter’s vest and his rifle was draped over his arm with the stock tucked under his armpit. He wore waders that came up to his chest like a duck hunter. The last guy carried a shotgun across folded arms and a pistol on his hip. They were talking quietly and laughing at something one of them said. Nothing about them said they were dangerous. Still I kept down and out of sight as I watched them move down Seventeenth Street headed east, the same direction the black truck with the red flames went the day before. One of them punched the other in the arm and he staggered away from the line laughing. I heard him say, “Now you know it’s true.” And he started laughing again as he fell back in step with his friends. Just before their faces went out of my line of sight, they became stern and lowered their guns, checking the safety catches and readying them for shooting. They kept looking straight ahead and from my vantage on the roof I couldn’t see what they were looking at. They moved on out of sight.             

When the burritos were ready, we sat down to breakfast huddled around the hibachi and its faint heat. I did the mental checklist on the tools we’d need to take decks apart. We had everything. We talked about taking apart the little deck next door to Tommy and John’s house first because it was closest. When it got time to gather dirt after building them, I planned on using the Pages’ Ford F-150 to haul a bunch to the back of the building. I still had to come up with a pulley system to haul it up with, but I had to build the boxes first. Because I was stiff and sleepy I was in no rush to start taking apart a deck. I guess we’d sat there for half an hour eating the burritos and a can of fruit when we heard a lot of gunshots.

              It sounded like a small war coming from the east. With binoculars we tried to see what might have been going on, but it was all out of sight. The shots dwindled down to just a few, and then they stopped. She went to get her gloves from the tent and I stayed at the edge of the roof watching. It wasn’t long till I saw the three hunters walking back. There was something wrong with their gait. They were stiff, not joking. Their guns were slung all wrong for men who looked like they knew how to carry a gun.

                  Through the binoculars I could see why. They’d been turned. They were shot in the chest and bitten. They were zombies. I couldn’t imagine what happened to them. They must have panicked and started shooting each other. Perhaps they got themselves surrounded and in a panic hit one another then got overrun. That was all I could come up with. Now they were well-armed zombies.

              Nothing like a killing to start the day. I knew I had to kill them and I wanted those guns. But what drove me into action was when one of them turned his head and looked straight at me. I wasted no time. I had the bow in a moment and fired, missing them completely. They all looked at the arrow sticking in the ground between them. I turned to the tent. “Shoot them,” I said as I grabbed
Harold
and headed for the electrified ladder. Clicking the fob on the way, I made sure the rope lights around the tent door were off before I touched the thing. A moment later found me on the ground running for the zombie hunters. Two of them had arrows in their heads when I got there. The last one was staring up at her with what almost looked like anger on his face. When he heard me coming he turned towards me and pointed up at her like he was blaming her for killing his friends. With a running swing I took off his head. He fell to the ground and blood oozed out of his neck. For good measure, I took the heads of the other two off.

After going through their pockets, I took all the ammo I could find, the pistol, and their IDs. They still carried their wallets; one of them I glanced at was named Wallace. I didn’t get to read much more when she cried out, “Hi-Oh” like the kids from the other night. Coming up the road was a herd of zombies. I guess they were following their last meal, wanting more. It was more than I wanted to kill today, or at least at that moment. Taking the rifles, I headed to the U.S. Drug Store. Since I was in the herd’s line of sight, I wanted to draw them away from the roof entrance. I left the heads of those three over there against the wall; I thought she’d want to place them with the others at the cemetery. I could always come back for them.

              Circling around the building, I crossed Main Street and hid in the bushes of the house on the corner. The guns were cumbersome so I stashed them there and settled down, hoping they didn’t notice me.

I held my breath. One stopped in front of the bushes. I think it heard me take a deep breath.

It started moving forward and I let the breath out as slowly as I could. There’s just one problem with letting your breath out slowly. You really want to breathe because your body is screaming for oxygen. Controlling that when you’re not a swimmer and your life depends on it is impossible.

At the bottom of that first inhale I parted my lips a little so I’d have more air coming into my lungs and I held it.

All I could see was these damned things’ legs as they moved past me. A branch was sticking me in the neck, which didn’t help me in trying to hold my breath, and I couldn’t very well move to get it out of my neck without shaking the bush.

I started to get a little dizzy from holding my breath and let it out much faster than I’d intended. Two zombies stopped in front of me. A third one bumped into them and the first one fell. I curled my lips into my mouth and forgot breathing all together. My hand slid down my body to one of my knives. His head was facing away from me. The other two moved past him with the herd. As he struggled to get to his feet I pulled the knife from my belt. The zombie sniffed the air a few times and as he was about to turn his head my direction, another passing zombie kicked his far hand from under him, causing him to tumble back to the ground. I eased backwards from within the bush to the back edge, ready to run. The zombie cried out and struggled to his feet and moved towards the zombie that had kicked his hand from under him. It was almost as if somewhere in his brain was the memory of being tripped and he was angrily going to chase the guy down and fight him.