Invasion of the Dead (Book 2): A Fistful of Zombies Read online

  “Hey, Mario Andretti,” I screamed, half in the car, half out. “You want to slow the fuck down before we travel back in time?”

  “Your buddy still back there?” James asked, thankfully not taking his eyes from the road.

  “I don't think so,” I said as I pulled myself back into the car. Out slid the spent magazine and I rammed a fresh one home, and scanned for the truck of doom. “I think he's gone, but I know I shot him at least once.”

  “So where to first?” James said at a more sedate pace. I dropped back down into my seat and smiled over him.

  “Where else? We’re going to Wal-Mart,” I said in a sing song voice.

  “Oh, joy,” James sneered. Few places on the face of the planet annoyed my friend like the multinational commercial powerhouse. Personally I think it had more to do with never being able to find what he needed, when he needed it. That there never seemed to be anybody working there didn't help matters at all. “Why Wally World?”

  “Can you think of another place that will have seeds, soil, bags of rice, flour, coffee, tools, and maybe ammunition all at once? Not to mention all the meds we need are probably still there. Besides, that fucking douche nozzle ruined my shirt. There is literally enough blood soaked into this shirt to clone my ass a hundred times over.”

  “I don't think that's how cloning works,” James looked over at my blood soaked shirt and shook his head. “Lucky bastard.”

  “Yeah, I feel oh, so lucky,” I snapped. My lungs were on fire, every muscle in my body ached, and my recently regrown ribs throbbed electric impulses of ball clenching pain. Everything is breaking my way.

  “Did you die?” He asked smugly.

  “No,” I sneered, unsure of his point.

  “Lucky. Bastard,” James repeated.

  “Okay, point taken,” I admitted. I ran my hand over the healing entry wound and decided I had sounded like a whiny little bitch and could stand to man the fuck up. “Wal-Mart, Jeeves.”

  “Suck a dick.”

  “And after I went to all the trouble of procuring this classic ride just for you,” I lamented with heavy gravitas. “Not even a thank you for handing you the keys.”

  “Yup, that's about right.”

  We lapsed into silence as we crossed A1A and headed for US1. It wasn't that we were pissed at each, we had just run out of things to say. All the smart assery in the world can only take you so far in the face of what we were seeing now. Homes torn open and the people within ripped to shreds, devoured without regard to age, sex, color, or creed. Hmm, thinking on it as we passed scene after scene of horror it suddenly dawned on me that the undead had ultimately achieved what all the activists had been screeching about. A state of mind thoroughly untainted by bias. To a zombie, everyone was the same. Something to eat, or to convert. Or both. The undead were the ultimate all inclusive group. They didn't care if you believed in a god or were a devout atheist. They didn't care if you called on allah or Buddha or Jehovah or yahweh. Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. All they cared about was locking their teeth onto you. How fucked up is that?

  I mused on that little nugget right until I saw Wally World, then I was too busy trying not to vomit on James to care.

  For Wally World had become someone's idea of a trophy rack. The entire front end of the building had covered with the bodies of the undead, and possibly the living as well. Heads had been converted into canoes by something high caliber. Don't get it? Give it a moment, it’ll come to you. I wasn't entirely certain how whoever did this attached the dead to the wall, and got them to stay. I was sure I didn't want to meet whatever sick fuck did this. Seriously, why would some mouth breathing, basement dwelling Hannibal Lechter wannabe do this? The wind shifted direction, blowing the stench of hundreds of bodies left in the south Florida sun to decompose directly into our disbelieving faces. I flung the door open half a second before my stomach declared a thirty second reverse flow penalty. I have never, never been so unfortunate as to inhale anything so gut wrenchingly horrible in all my days. Worse, somehow I could almost visualize the internal organs so bloated from putrified matter that bursting was no longer a possibility, but an inevitability. An inevitability that would result in rotting matter exploding out in a shower across anything and everything within, say, a thirty foot radius. Then my traitorous brain presented the image of not only a single body, but every body on that wall bursting.

  Stomach to brain, incoming traffic.

  Brain to stomach, send traffic.

  Stomach to brain, interrogative. What the fuck is your problem? Why would do that to us? Over.

  Brain to stomach, wait one. Stomach, I have received data concerning the chimichangas last Tuesday. Apparently you indicated an ability to process, then reneged. Over. Stomach to brain, so this was revenge? You dick. Over

  Brain to stomach, you're thinking of the secondary processing unit. How copy?

  Stomach to brain, stomach copies all. I'll get you for this.

  How I imagined the conversation between my head and gut went as I evacuated even more stomach bile. Acid gnawed at my recently healed esophagus, adding to the overall experience.

  “I don't care if there's blonde headed, big tittied beer babes in there handing out prime rib and blow jobs like puffy stickers, I'm not getting any closer,” James got out as soon as he stopped gagging and choking.

  “Bullshit,” I gasped. “You'd be the first through the fucking door for both. Lying mother fucker, you'd insist on a BJ while you ate the prime rib. Who do you think you're talking to?”

  “That smell…” James started, then stopped talking as his stomach warned of a need to evacuate its entire contents.

  “I've seen some of the women you've dated, so don't talk to me about the smell,” I prodded. I was, at this point, skating way too close to the line. One wrong word and I'd be heaving again, but I couldn't pass this opportunity to stick it in and break it off. Verbally, of course.

  “Bastard,” James both spoke and vomited in the same instant. It was disgusting, but kind of awesome. The one scarcely preceded the other, and the force of his projectile vomiting helped get the obscenity out.

  “Drive around to the back, Puke-a-matic,” I said, an idea trying to form despite the aromatic assault. It took James a minute to compose himself, but eventually he maneuvered the car through the parking lot to the rear of the building which was, blessedly, clear of all corpses. Better yet, since we were now upwind of the wall of the dead it didn't smell half as bad. Which wasn't saying all that much since rotting meat stinks to the high heavens no matter where you stand in relation to it.

  “Great, now what are we going to do?” James asked, breathing slowly returning to normal.

  “See that ladder?” I pointed to the ladder bolted to the side of the building.

  “You mean that ladder that starts ten feet off the ground?”

  “Yeah, that one,”’I confirmed while I riffled through my rucksack.

  “What about it?”

  “Park this wreck under it,” I said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Then follow me.”

  Doing as I explained, James stopped the Trans Am under the ladder before he followed me onto the roof of the car. With a small jump I could grasp the bottom rung of the ladder, which I used to pull myself up. Hand over hand I pulled until I set a foot on the bottom rung. Some very unpleasant obscenities floated up to as James followed me up. The roof was exactly as I expected, flat and covered with solar panels. The Big W had spent a lot of green trying to become eco-friendly over the past decade, and the panels were a big part of it. Since making landfall, I hadn't seen a single light on anywhere so it was safe to say the power plants weren't cranking out the juice. Hopefully, someone remembered to shut them down before things got out of hand.

  “Okay, now what?” James asked. I knelt down next to one the glass panels the building used to supplement its interior lighting by allowing direct sunlight to pass through. I ran my hands around the edge checkin
g to see if perhaps there might be a release lever, but came up empty. Instead, I reached into the rucksack and produced a thirty-two ounce ball pean hammer. “Aw, shit. Why don't you just shoot the glass with your AK?”

  “One, because it's way too loud,” I began as I pulled out a wad of folded over duck tape. This I unwound and applied to the window pane until I was certain enough glass was covered. “Two, the duck tape should muffle the sound somewhat.”

  With that I brought the hammer down like the wrath of God on judgement day. It made surprisingly little noise, and even kept most of the glass from falling. Twenty minutes later James and I had cleared the pane of all glass. The rope I brought along as a just in case earned its keep. We secured one end around the base of a nearby solar panel, and the other went into the gaping, yawning maw of absolute black. It seemed to me as though all the evil in the world had coalesced into this spot wherein every horrific action conceivable by the mind of man was not only possible, but most certainly existed within this space.

  “So, want to go first?” I asked James after staring into the ebony mouth of hell.

  “Oh, no, I wouldn't want to deprive you of the experience,” James returned. “Please, by all means, go first.”

  “Well, shit,” I said, and double checked my weapons were ready to spit death at whatever lay within. Then I took hold of the rope, said a silent prayer, and, desperately trying not to piss myself, over the side I went.

  Chapter Four

  I had planned far enough ahead to tie knots in the rope about every three feet, but as I lowered myself deeper and deeper into the pitch black I wondered all at once whether or not I had remembered to install fresh batteries in the NVGs. It's the little things you think about while suspended twenty feet above what might be a floor crawling with undead that will absolutely turn your guts to water. There was unquestionably no way whatsoever I could switch out the batteries now, even assuming I had a spare set. Which now I thought about it, I didn’t. Why? Why didn't I have a spare set of batteries? Because I knew I could obtain them at my first stop, whatever that turned out to be. Deep breath. Deep breath. Steady breathing, just ignore the imaginary monsters waiting below to turn you inside out and make you into a cock sock. You still have hours of NVG time left. Remain calm, and carry on. Did you read that in Winston Churchill’s voice? Because I goddamn well heard it his voice. Although maybe an octave higher since I was fairly certain my testicles had climbed up inside my chest for the duration of this too poorly planned out excursion.

  Given my recently acquired ability to rapidly heal seemingly fatal wounds, if I were to light a flare while wearing NVGs I wondered how long it would take for my sight to return. Not that the answer would mean a goddamn thing since I didn't think to pack fucking flares. Outstanding work, Finnegan. Way to reason your needs out. If, on the other hand, there was a store full of darkness dwelling Lovecraftian horrors just waiting around for an opportunity to munch on my stupid ass I would just as soon not alert them to my exact position by setting off a brilliant, eye blinding flare.

  Wait a minute. The moon is riding high in the night sky so there should be some ambient light penetrating into the building. So why can't I see anything?

  Because your dumbass has your eyes welded shut.

  Oh, thanks.

  You're so terribly welcome, now open your eyes, dumbass, before you get us fucking eaten alive.

  Everybody’s a critic.

  Yes indeed, it would seem that I may have closed my eyes and honestly forgotten to open them again, because the interior of the store came into focus. Hanging above the floor I took a big look around, and noticed something odd. While the interior of the store itself hadn't suffered from the insanity outside, it had been rearranged. A lot of the dry goods I had wanted to bring back had been stacked in the area before the registers. Rice, flour, sugar, cereals, some canned goods, and even the heavenly blessing that was coffee. The majority of the canned goods seemed to still be on the shelves. Whoever had decorated the exterior must have done so as a warning to others to stay away while they took what they wanted from within. This belatedly raised the question where the hypothetical band of aesthetically challenged psychopaths currently were. After all, if they were inside with me I could count on catching a bullet or thirty any second. Then I would undoubtedly be added to the mosaic of the dead outside. Provided they hadn't descended into cannibalism, but it was still early in the apocalypse for that. At least, I hoped it was still too early, but who knows? When people lose their grip on sanity they're capable of damn near anything.

  When a minute passed and I wasn't perforated in my vital organs, I got my sorry ass out of the line of fire. The moment my feet touched the ground I tugged on the rope to let James know I was down. Not that he would need a signal from me if he had kept his fucking eyes open unlike yours truly. I would never tell anyone that little detail. What passed for communications between James and I taken care of, I spun around into what I thought of as a tactical crouch. Suppressed pistol raised, knees bent, and my NVG covered head turning this way and that to spot targets before they spotted me. Thinking about it, it's all too possible I had read one too many Tom Clancy novel and was imitating John Clark. Yeah, mother fuckers, Rainbow Six in the house.

  One day I'm going to get killed while I'm daydreaming, I know it.

  Since someone was kind enough to collect the dry goods in one spot I headed directly for the garden center, and the wonderful array of seeds offered therein. My path lead straight by the personal hygiene department and I may or may not have stopped long enough to acquire a couple bottles of body wash as well as a few packages of soap. The freighter was proving to be a god send in many ways, but hygiene wasn't one of them. Whatever the hell the crew had used to clean themselves had apparently evaporated along with their presence. A handful of toothbrushes joined the soap, along with some lovely toothpaste. Entering the garden center proved to be somewhat problematic. The power was, in fact, out. Fortuitously, my KaBar served double duty as a pry bar adequately to wedge the doors open enough for me to grab hold and pull. From the look of the outdoors area we could have easily entered through here instead of playing fucking commando on the roof. Guess I'll just add this to the list of things I'm not telling anyone about.

  There were a lot of seeds. Enough so I went back inside to grab a plastic bag so the packs wouldn't be loose in my rucksack. I considered taking the already growing plants, but decided against it since they would take up too much room. From there I headed straight back to the sporting goods section. Ever since the gutless swine in the White House brought pressure to bare to force the Big W not to carry evil black rifles they've been slowly disappearing from stock. However, the board of directors weren't altogether spineless, nor were they stupid. The real money to be made was in ammunition, not rifles. Boxes of ammunition lay stacked within locked glass cases. Well, my trusty ball pean hammer dealt with that obstacle quite nicely. Instead of filling my rucksack, I grabbed one of the heavy duty hiking backpacks off the rack and stuffed it with boxes of five-point-five-six and seven-point-six-two. Everything they had went into the bag. Including a couple boxes of forty-five. I slipped a box of fifty full metal jacketed rounds into my not so snazzy tactical vest, just in case.

  On my way back to the rope, I stopped in the ever shrinking men's department for a clean shirt. Even though it was bad ass as hell to cruise around wearing a shirt drenched in blood, it got real old, real quick. Especially when it's your own blood. I grabbed two dark, sleeveless cotton ‘wife beater’ tee shirts, and then picked out a cotton button down work shirt. All things being equal I would have liked to have had a little more time to choose, but time was a factor. Into the rucksack they went. If I had the time I would need to secure a package of baby wipes to clean up with. You laugh, but think about it. If those wipes can clean up the repulsive physical wastes produced by your bouncing bundle of baby joy, they can damn sure clean up a bloody Irishman.

  Not willing to risk everything on a last m
inute withdrawal, I ran back to the rope and tied the backpack to it.

  “Pull it up,” I said loud enough to be heard on Mars. Not really, but that's how it felt in the tomb like ambience of the store. Have you ever walked into a building when the power isn't on? Remember how creeped out you felt in the sudden stillness? That's because whole generations have been born, lived, and died with the constant hum of electricity running through the walls and appliances. It's become so much a part of our awareness that when it isn't there we become uneasy. How fucked is that?

  “There's a car approaching,” James stage whispered. The backpack rose at an accelerated rate. James plainly didn't want to leave the more precious than gold ammunition behind, while I hoped he wouldn't leave me behind.

  “From what direction?” I asked hotly. It was all well and good to say someone was coming, but I needed to know where they were coming from.

  “Southeast corner,” James said. Then the ninja like prick disappeared from sight.

  “Southeast corner my ass,” I grumbled. Keeping myself oriented to the compass directions within structures was decidedly not my strong suit. Closing my eyes for a moment I worked out where the car was approaching and groaned. “The fucking garden center.”

  Christ on fire, did I remember to close the goddamn doors back? Doubtless not. I ran flat out to the garden center to close the doors before anyone could take notice. I arrived just in time to duck out of sight as a vehicle pulled up outside, headlights on double fuck your night vision goggles intensity. That hurt, oh, fuck me that hurt. While I was busy trying not to cry like a little girl who just watched a weed whacker dismember her favorite dolly, the car doors opened, then slammed shut with authority. Whoever was out there believed they were fully justified in all they did. Does that seem like a huge leap to make just from the slamming of a car door? Well, follow the logic train. Remember back before Outbreak Day when a police officer would pull you over and after making you wait an eternity the cop would step out of his vehicle. Remember the sound of his door closing? It was never a gentle sound. It was always done with calculated force. With an authority you had no right to question. The same authority I heard the people outside use. The concept that all they do is right and correct and must never be questioned by anyone beneath them, which is everyone. Whoever was coming in genuinely believed in their right to do whatever they intended.