Interlude II
Frying Pans and Firearms
How many days had it been? Truthfully, she had no idea, but at least three had passed since the world began its descent in to madness. She knew the horrors first hand, having had only seconds to spare as she grabbed her small backpack and made a leap of faith out her first floor window. She somehow managed to catch the branch and hold on for a moment, the hammering blows became a loud crack as the door disintegrated under the barrage of blows.
The tree had been a well used short cut to avoid the bible thumping puritanical RA had taken a room that offered a strategic view of both the stairs and elevator, so that he could "save" as many "lost souls" as he could. Ironically, they had probably made a beeline for him, drawn by his taste for "calm soul cleansing music" and "always open door."
Her own leap of faith aside, she found herself wishing she'd spent a little more time outdoors, track and field perhaps so she could really put some distance between her and the infected maniacs now trying to eat her. Even as she ran, practiced fingers and thumbs tapped out messages to friends, family, loved ones on her cell phone, but her messages never made it out. There was a signal, but the networks were overloaded. A minute, perhaps two, of running and it felt like her lungs would collapse and her heart burst as she staggered to a stop and critically eyed the grocery cum supply cum hardware store on the edge of the campus that supplied everything that the students at Mercy City College could need or want, including substances of the illicit variety when the right cashiers were on duty.
The lights were on inside, the door swung back and forth in invitation. The heavily barricaded windows only added to the invitation and the appeal. She staggered inside, slammed the door, threw both bolts home and collapsed. Sweat streamed from her brow and plastered her hair to her neck. Although bright, the store had never been well lit, and it took her eyes some moments to get used to the dull brightness, the silence and peace.
After the madness she had just witnessed, silence and peace were welcome, now if only it was not quite so dingy. Her iPhone was fully charged, and so was her blackberry, but they were practically useless. Every friend, even family either never received her frantic messages, or they never replied. With her friends, it was probably the later, and family in to the former. She had never really gotten along with any of them. Most of the time, she received the same robotic idiot voice that gave her one of a half dozen variations on the busy operators or busy lines speech.
On day five, the batteries on her phones gave out. And the power to the store had already been gone for a day, perhaps a day and a half. Having spent all of her time inside, she had no problem navigating the store in the dark, especially since she could only open a few of the small windows to let the stench of rapidly decomposing food stuff from overwhelming her sanctuary.
Through those few open windows, she could hear them, the shuffling, the growling, the coughing and perhaps somewhat more uncommon was the gurgling of something and even once, the angry roar and pounding footsteps of something in the near distance. But she stayed quiet and they never knew she was there. So when something started booming just outside her sanctuary, she panicked. Scanning the shelves, she grabbed the nearest thing that she could wield and shrank back, knocking over a display in the process. She froze and whatever was outside did the same. Through the narrow gap in the window, she could hear the voice, muttering and mumbling and her heart beat went from street racing BMW to Japanese bullet train.
Whatever was outside immediately redoubled its efforts, slamming something against the door. The door cracked, and the first rays of sunshine crept in for the first time in a week. She lowered her scavenged mini-maglite and took a deep breath, trying to steady her fear and damped down her nerves. Whatever was outside continue pounding and she glanced towards the back door, wondering if she could get it open and then make another mad dash to freedom if the front door did give way. In the back of her mind, she knew that there was no way the bolts would move without the key to the padlock and she almost gave in to the wave of despair and fear.
All at once paranoid, insecure and terrified, she swore she felt something within snap, inside her. She was tired. Tired of hiding, tired of jumping at the sound of a windblown leaf, tired and angry with all of it! Rage welled up inside her and she grabbed her impromptu weapon by its long black handle and dropped in to a crouched, welcoming the shadows as she watched and waited, for the door to give.
The blast was sudden and completely unexpected and she nearly dropped her weapon in fright. There was a dull, mechanical, almost video game "ka-chink!" as another blast blew the door from its hinges, reducing it to matchstick and kindling. Her impromptu barricade disintegrated along with the door. She began to silently fume at the point. The door crumbled to the floor and the intruder stepped in, confident, and cocky, stepping on to the remains as light streamed in.
She cursed, barely above a whisper as she struggled and blinked against the rays of sunlight, left almost phobic of it by her days in the darkness. But she didn't need her eyes to see when she could hear, and sense where the intruder was. Within her sanctuary, he needed to take just another step to the right.
Glass tinkled as an empty soda bottle danced across the floor, and Zoey rose in rage before the tinkling had died away, screaming out her anger, frustration and hatred of a dying city, and of the Infected. The volume and intensity of her war cry intensity would have scattered children like tossed marbles. Locked in a two handed grip, the frying pan descended like a samurai sword.
He had heard the collapse of the display and assumed that there would be more of the crazy vampires inside. He had on some level, already made peace with the fact that the vampires would be what killed him, when he ran out of bullets, luck or probably both. Death by vampire, he could live with. He could accept. But, by frying pan?! He shuffle stepped back on to something and felt his legs fly out from under him as whatever it was rolled out of the way while he winged his way through the air with the grace of crippled airplane, his hand jerked and a cloud of buckshot peppered the ceiling. Stone shards, dust and pain floated down as the pan collided with the counter like the slamming of the gates of hell.
Struggling, he'd pulled himself upright enough to grab his nearly discarded shotgun, and pumped the action to cycle another deadly shell in to the chamber. Francis roared as he sat up and blinked at the teenager standing over him with the frying pan raised for another stroke.
It was akin to that moment in the movies when the haughty talking cat and snooty arrogant dog with celebrity voices meet for the first time. "You… you're not infected," she whispered, almost in disbelief at seeing another human being, the first one she had seen in quite a long time.
They stared at each other for a few moments, "Oookay…. You wanna tell why you're trying to kill me when you could be killing those damn vampires instead?" he asked, rising to his feet and slotting another three shells in to his shotgun.
"They're not vampires. They're infected… they're…" she hesitated, struggling to find the right word to describe whatever they are, "… zombies," she concluded, sounding almost as condescending as her now Social Psychology professor - who upon reflection - bore an uncanny resemble to the infected.
"Whatever," he grunted, pumping the action, "Well kid, my name is Francis. What's yours?"
She swept her hair back and tied it with a ponytail using the hair tie that she had around her wrist for days, "Zoey." She replied and the blinked, "And don't call me kid."
"Whatever," he replied, "Kid." She scowled at him but the scowl turned to a cautious wariness as he heard footsteps outside. Unarmed, she did the smartest she could do, and slid behind Francis as he took aim at the shattered doorway. Seconds later, the smoking infected staggered in to the doorway with a hoarse shriek, until Francis provided the exclamation mark – twice, blowing the Infected half way across the street where it collided spine first with a parked car, twitched once and lay still.
Zoey almost lost her cool at that point. She'd seen the Infected, heard them shuffling around, almost as if they were mumbling to each other but she had never seen anything quite like that before, "What, the hell was that?"
"Smoker," replied Francis as he reloaded yet again, "They shoot out some kinda tongue like thing and if you get caught in it, you're probably gonna be crushed to death.
"But if it kills you with its," she shuddered, "...tongue, why's it called a Smoker?"
"Ah hell kid, I don't know. I just kill the god damn things ok?" she glared at him and he gave her a sorta half smile back, a look that she would later realize he saved just for her, "Anyway, I don't suppose you've got anything to eat around here do ya? I'm kinda hungry."
"Whatever you can find," she gestured round the store, "Dig in."
They sat in silence, as they both chewed their way through a strange meal of candy, junk food and beef jerky washed down with soda, "I hate soda," muttered Francis, "Don't suppose you got any beer around here?"
She shrugged, "Might be some in the back, but there's no power so its gonna be warm."
"I hate warm beer." His replied was muttered but filled with contempt for the topic at hand. She didn't reply as she squinted out the door towards the setting sun, and panicked.
"You blew the door off its hinges!" she almost shouted at him, her words practically running each other over as they streamed from her, "The door! We can't close it and with night coming…"
"I did what?" he asked, more than a little confused by her babbling until his eyes followed her finger, pointing to the ruined door, "Oh…." Was all he said?
"Oh? Oh? Oh! Is that all you can say!" she was almost half shrieking at him again, "It's not like I've got a gun to protect myself with!"
Francis's head was starting to hurt from her babbling and her screeching and he found himself thinking about the banshee of an ex girlfriend he'd left behind…. And then wondered whether or not she was still alive, but in all likelihood, she was right at home as one of the Infected. "Here!" he growled tossing her his handgun along with a half dozen magazines, "Now be quiet before you attract something with your shrieking!" She opened her mouth to retort but the look on his face made it clear that he was deadly serious. Her mouth snapped shut with an audible click, "Full magazine, one in the chamber," he commented as he picked up his shotgun. Zoey noted three things as the light splashed across her new companion.
The first was that the shotgun had a name done in a flowing calligraphic script, "Bertha." The second was that leather clad biker was not exactly unattractive. He was, kind of cute. The third was the growl. The fourth thing was that, he hadn't growled.
Something else had.
Having been so distracted, neither of them heard the creature slink in to the store on all fours, until it growled. They had barely a moment to react before its howling shriek shredded the silence as it leapt from the shadows. Halfway to his feet, Francis went down again, this time pinned by the savage lower body strength of his infected opponent. He jerked his head back to avoid the claws.
Zoey was crouched, petrified for a few moments as the somehow, Francis overpowered the creature and rolled on top for only a moment before it slammed him back to the floor, "Get it off me!" he shouted and that snapped her out of her stupor, as she brought the handgun to bear from a distance of two feet and pulled the trigger. It didn't even go "click." The Hunter looked up for a moment and stared at her, long enough for Francis to punch the creature in the head twice. It growled and returned to the task at hand as it swiped at Francis again, nearly piecing his left ear.
"Hey ugly!" she shouted. Where her first swing had missed its target, she did the Samurai of Ancient Japan proud as she brought the frying pan down, hard and fast, driven by fear, rage and adrenalin. The Special Infected were defiantly a mutation of the more common horde infected and were also smarter, mostly able to recognize the shape and sound of gunfire and to avoid it like the plague. The only sound was a whistling and it turned its eyeless face in the same direction. The Hunter had enough breath in its lungs to give a bark as its skull cracked and then pulped beneath the second and third blows from the angry teenager.
Zoey arms shook with the force of the blow and it took her a moment to steady herself, and stop the shaking so she could take a breath and help move the dead weight off Francis, "Glad you didn't take too long to swing that thing," he grunted, trying his hard to sound appreciative. It wasn't exactly something that he was very good at. Then again, as the last man standing from the Pennsylvania chapter of the Hell's Legion meant you weren't necessarily the nicest of people to begin with, "Now," he brushed himself off as nonchalantly as possible, "You wanna tell me why you decided to brain that thing instead of shooting the damn thing?" he raised an eyebrow as a few things clicked in his mind, "You don't actually know where the safety on that is do ya?" her nod was sheepish at best, "You don't actually know what a safety is."
She gave him a glare that came close to matching his own death stare, "I know what a safety is! I've never actually handled one of these before."
"You've never held a real gun before." He shook his head with a sigh, "You kids play too many video games, watch too many movies and are left without a handle on the real world." He spent perhaps ten minutes walking her through the basics of the 9mm handgun, "If you want to survive," he stared in to her eyes, "Learn, to pull, the trigger." She nodded and he did the same, "Good. Let's get moving. We don't have long till sundown."
The pair wandered the streets for several hours, cutting across streets, through alleyways, weaving in and out of buildings but Francis never backed down, preferring to kill rather than avoid, even with it would have been more prudent to do so. Their first gunfight had Francis screaming obscenities and heaping abuse on the infected while Zoey had shrieked she started shooting, "You call that a war cry? You sounded better with your frying pan." She did not make another sound. Truth was the sheer loudness of the gunfire had scared her for a moment. The she caught sight of the Infected she had gunned down. It wasn't quite cold blooded murder, but it was quite hot blooded either… more like lukewarm. She growled a good imitation of Francis and continued killing.
Two days since the pair had got together, two days of sleeping in shifts in semi secure locations. Perhaps a week, or maybe eight days since the initial infection, and the duo were still trying to make their way across the city to some kind of safety as they continued to rain bullets on any Infected that they encountered. They were firing in to yet another horde of rushing infected when the dull clattering roar of a submachine gun and an assault rifle joined their fire. It that came from behind an overturned car resting comfortably just across the street, "Who the fuck are you?" shouted Francis as he reloaded.
The street was a slaughterhouse, blood, brain matter, ichors and gore decorated the road, pavement and even the walls of surrounding buildings in nauseating patterns of chaos. "Considering we just saved your ass, the least you could is thank you," rasped the older bearded man in combat fatigues with salt and pepper hair.
Francis opened his mouth, only to have his jaws click shut from an elbow to the ribs, "You're right," said Zoey as she sized up the soldier, in comparison to the black man in a shirt and tie, "I'm Zoey. The big mouth…" Leveling his shotgun, he fired as the new arrivals brought their weapons to bear, in time to hear the sickening crunch of impact as a sole infected slumped to the ground. They relaxed slightly but their weapons stayed level as he meandered over to them, kicked over the creature and stomped his boot in to its face, "… is Francis," finished Zoey rather lamely.
The ebony skinned, half suited man just nodded, "I'm Louis," blinked as he stared in to the distance for a moment, "That's Bill," he gestured to the dog soldier snapping in a fresh magazine, "And that is a whole lot of trouble" he was pointing towards even the rushing Infected.
Bill eyed the new pair, and reached to his hip and then a webbing pocket, letting the rifle dangle from its sling for a moment, "Here," he passed his side arm to Zoey, "They're not the same caliber, so don't mix the magazines." She nodded her thanks and joined the impromptu firing line, somehow winding up with Louis on her left, and Bill on her right. Francis raised an eyebrow at where she had positioned herself, "I hate teenagers." He muttered.
"I hate leather wearing bikers," she snorted. Bill raised an eyebrow at the pair and then shot Louis a sidelong glance. Louis smirked in reply to Bill's question. Their twosome had just grown in to a foursome.
"Now that we're all full acquainted…" Bill raised his rifle, tucked it in against his shoulder, flicked the safety with his thumb and let his M16-A2 Carbine do the talking. The distance closed and Louis's submachine gun joined in, followed soon after by Francis shotgun and finally, Zoey's mismatched pistols.
They added more bodies to those already bullet ridden ones scattered along the street, as they stood their ground against the tidal wave of charging men women and children. They killed, and killed, and killed.
6
