Chapter 3: Screwed
The car begins shaking again, waking me up once more from my deep, pleasant slumber. I shake my head, groaning. With the sleeve of my striped polyester sweater, I wipe off the small trail of saliva dripping off my chin.
"Columbus, stop it!" I hear Wichita whine. I look at her, wondering if she were drunk. Her eyes were closed, and she had this goofy smile on her face. The car shook again.
"That's not me." I explain.
Rumble! More shaking. Something's not right. We aren't moving. The car had been parked for the night in the parking lot of some rinky-dink town we encountered.
"Columbus, I said stop!" she repeats, her voice now angry. "Can you stop playing with my hair?"
"I'm not doing anything!" I retort. Her eyes snap wide open. As she looks out her half-open window, she spots a pale, bloody hand hanging from the roof, reaching out to grab her. She screams.
"Shit!" I yell, fumbling my sawed-off double barrel. "Tallahassee!"
The cowboy merely stirs. What was up with heavy sleepers nowadays? Damn, I guess it is all up to—"Little Rock!" I shout.
The girl jumps up from her seat, screaming as she sees the zombie. Quickly, she raises her semi-automatic 12 gauge and fires off a couple shots, severing the arm, though injuring her own due to the recoil. From above, I hear the sounds of groaning and dismembered roaring. Initially, there is just one voice, but in mere seconds it was accompanied by two, and then three. The zombies were gathering, preparing to attack en masse. The zombie on our roof dropped dead, apparently dying from loss of blood.
"C'mon, we need to drive out of here!" I shout, to Wichita. Gesturing towards the sleeping Tallahassee, I add, "Wake him up!"
With haste, Wichita grabs a canteen of water and begins pouring it on the cowboy's face, effectively waking him.
"We need to go! We're under attack!" Wichita explains.
With no questions asked, Tallahassee straightens up, inserts the keys, and puts the pedal to the metal. The engine roars and the tires shriek as the car begins to pick up speed. Turning on the headlights, we spot a dozen zombies, wandering blindly through the dark. Pathetic, I think. Ever ruthless, Tallahassee runs them over, backing up for the required double-tap.
"That was close." I say with relief once we were a distance away from the town.
"No kidding." Wichita adds.
Turning to her sister, she asks if she is alright, to which Little Rock replies, "I think I broke my arm." She winces, clutching the proposed limb.
Wichita stoops forward. "Here let me see that."
Pulling up the girl's sleeve, she examines the injury. "It's just a bruise," she concludes, "You'll be fine." Turning to me, Wichita then asks, "Why didn't you fire your gun?"
Lifting my double-barrel, I say with shame, "I-uh, dropped it."
"Great. You're a genius." She says, rolling her eyes before turning forward once more. She is so beautiful when she implies that I'm an idiot. I smile.
You may be wondering, with this huge stash of guns at our disposal, why I chose my ancient double-barrel. Simple, I survived the beginnings of the zombie apocalypse with this thing and don't want to part with it. It's like one of those transition belongings from when you're no longer a kid, like a blanket, or a toy. It's just so hard to leave it behind.
Flipping open the folding near the shotgun's breech, I reach into my back pocket and retrieve two shotgun shells, which I promptly load into the barrel. I realize that even if I didn't drop my gun, it still would have been useless. A mistake I shouldn't make in the future. And just in case I do make that mistake again…Flipping open my notes, I quickly jot down, "Rule Number 35: Keep guns loaded."
To compensate for whether I do forget that rule,I reach down to unzip our bag of guns. From inside, I extract two pistols: a Glock, and a semi-automatic .45 calibre SW1911 with installed grips.
Untrustworthy of the Glock's lack of safety, I throw it back into the bag and stick with the SW1911. I think that's what it's called. I'm never really good at identifying guns because, well, I didn't really need them until this whole zombie thing occurred.
In order to check if the gun is loaded, I press the button on the side of the grip, popping open the loader. It's empty. Rifling through the bag of guns, I retrieve the correct magazine and insert it into the loader. I decided not to fully arm it, in case it accidentally went off despite the fact that the gun had grip-safety.
"Not bad, I must say," I hear a voice comment. It was Tallahassee.
"Oh-uh, thanks." I reply.
"Where'd you learn to reload a gun?" he asks.
"I-um, kinda just improvised…" I explain, sheepishly.
"You could have gotten us killed but… That's pretty impressive." He nods his head in approval.
"Thanks."
Was that a compliment? That's… frightening. Tallahassee almost never compliments people. I guess I should be proud of myself. Taking the gun, I holster it at my hip, in case I needed it later. I hope I won't need it. Sure, I can load a gun, but firing it? No sir-ee.
"Where are we going now?" Little Rock asks with a yawn.
"We…" Tallahassee begins, "Are going to—holy shi-!"
I hear a pop and the car careens to its side, crashing into some unknown obstacle. The tinted glass on each of our windows breaks, and from outside, I hear air gushing out of our tires. On Little Rock's side, her door bends inward at an ugly angle, though she is unharmed yet breathing heavily. Wichita was similarly affected, as she suppressed the urge to scream. Tallahassee cursed, punching the steering wheel, setting off the horn.
"Is everyone alright? What the hell just happened?" I ask, panic creeping into my voice. "Are you g—"
"We're fine." says Wichita.
"It was the tires." Tallahassee explains, shaking his head. "We drove right over some tire spikes that the police musta laid out before the outbreak."
"We… Have spare ones, right?" Little Rock asks, looking worried.
"Nope." He answers, simply. Yup, we're screwed.
