GRUEBERFEST '07: Under the Skin (Warning, this one is long) (915 hits)
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Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2007-10-04 19:06:08 EDT
"How does it work, Doc?" I looked at the green-gray sludge in the syringe. The thought of putting that goop into my own body was hard enough to get around. The thought of that shit going into my girls made my stomach cramp up.
Outside I heard a rising murmuring howl. There was an ud out there, a few blocks away.
"We simply inject it," the doctor said with a smile. "Under the skin."
His home and place of work were two huge rooms in a fancy inn. He called the rooms 'sweets,' and while they were awful big there didn't seem anything particularly sweet or special about them. He'd dragged potted ferns and stumpy palm trees into the room, and he'd set up sunlamps. The sunlamps shone down of all these garden boxes set along one wall and full of herbs and funguses.
It was like being on vacation down in Mexico in those rooms.
Outside the building, the streets were dark and filling with the walking dead.
--
It was just like it was in the horror movies I used to watch as a kid. The same rules. There were zombies everywhere. If one of them bit you, or scratched you, or spat at you, you were done. You'd get whatever disease brought the dead back, raised them up. The undead weren't very fast, but they were everywhere. Everywhere. Even here, in Bozeman, they were filling the streets, now that the government was gaining control of the bigger cities and driving these things away, driving them to places like Bozeman, and smaller towns in Idaho, Montana and The Dakotas.
You could smell the undead. You could hear them shuffling around day and night.
Unlike the movies, the undead, U.D.s, uds, want to talk, or at least make noise, spittle flying from ripped and rotting lips. Some say it is mindless vocalizing. Others say that the zombies have the minds of infants, and like infants they are crying because they are hungry. A few say that the undead are threatening us. Cursing us. Laughing at us. I don't know, and I don't care. I just wish they would shut the hell up. You hear them night and day. Groaning and roaring and chortling. It wears you down.
The east coast is called the dead crescent. That's where it all started. Some say it began somewhere in Delaware. Some say Philadelphia. It spread down to Florida and up and around to Michigan, taking out the Canadian government and half their population in one swoop across southern Ontario and Quebec.
Skirmishes were fought in the south for years as the disease spread. I was with the Kentucky & Tennessee 9th Infantry, one of thousands of militias formed after the United States government dropped the ball and sent hundreds of thousands of untrained troops to the slaughter. In a nutshell, the soldiers blew up the dead. Rockets, grenades, explosive rounds. Everywhere they went they turned the air into a soup, a mist of vaporized flesh and blood. They realized far too late that every soldier exposed, every soldier who inhaled the tiniest particle of undead matter was now contaminated. Infected.
In the 9th K&T our training was as simple as it gets. We were given a rifle, and as a group we shouted the words that kept us alive until the actions behind the words were burned into us. Our motto, our training, our strategy.
Head shots kill, nothing else will!
I met my wife in the fight to hold Arkansas. She was part of the AMA Regulars, and had to watch uds overrun Alabama, Mississippi, and then Arkansas.
I still have the .22 rifle given to me by my sergeant so many years ago. It's a slender, lightweight Winchester. I remember looking at the rifle and wondering if it would be enough.
"You got's to chew up the brain some, son," my sergeant had told me. His name was Cellars and he had grown out his beard and moustache like Buffalo Bill Cody. "Your big guns with their big loads are heavier. And a high velocity load more often than not blows right through a stinker's head. Leaves a hole. It can also leave behind enough intact brain matter that you gotta shoot again. An accurate shot from a li'l twenty-two like this generally got enough punching power to get the bullet inside the skull, but not out the other side. A poor shot might just bounce off the skull. But if a bullet gets inside the skull it fragments, or rolls around like a marble in a bowl. Now imagine a red-hot marble right out of the oven, and imagine a bowl full of Jell-O. I like lime flavor myself, but for this little mind picture let's make it cherry. Nice and red. Well, that red-hot marble is your twenty-two caliber round, and the bowl is a stinker's skull, and the Jell-O what's getting all tore up is the brain. Trust me on this, son."
He gave me a pat on the arm and went on down the line, giving weapons and words of encouragement to all the other kids volunteering for the 9th K&T that day. Sometimes, if I hold the rifle in my hands and close my eyes, I can hear his voice, and feel his strong hand on my arm.
Cellars had fallen from a tree hide in the woods outside of Springfield Missouri. We were all up in hides, plinking away as a herd of uds passed under us, clustering like sheep or cattle they way they do. Somebody in Cellars hide must have had a cut or scratch. When the undead smell blood, they go to it. They didn't push over the tree, but they shook it enough that the wooden planks of Cellars hide came apart. Men hung from the branches like piñatas within reach of the uds. With one arm wrapped around a tree branch Cellars killed three stinkers with his pistol. A pair of uds pulled his pants down and tore off his privates. They were eating his hind quarters when he stuck his gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He never called out in pain, but he did shout a few words to us before he died.
"Head shots kill, nothing else will!"
I had often wondered if I would find that kind of steel in me when the time came.
The time was now.
The U.S. government had been re-established in Denver, and then when Colorado fell they moved west, setting up in Las Vegas. Last I heard they already have plans to scramble over to Los Angeles if need be.
Just like the white man did when first coming to the continent hundreds of years ago, the uds are moving west, decimating the peoples they encounter. I know for a fact that the Indians of the southwest stuck on their isolated reservations have a higher survival rate than any other ethnic or socio-economic group. At least that's what I heard on TV, on 60 Minutes, just before TV went off for good.
My little girls never saw TV. I guess it's just as well. It was mostly shit anyway.
The Government dropped small nukes in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and northern Nevada. They killed a lot of good, healthy people, and left an arc of barren devastation that the undead will not cross.
And so the teeming masses of hungry uds headed north in their interrupted westward journey.
It was when Madeline and I saw as many as a thousand undead on the eastern horizon in Kansas that we decided to cut out on our own. She was pregnant then. We'd done enough. The fighting was over, now it was time to work on surviving.
We cut up through Nebraska and into Wyoming, trading shooting skills for food from small towns and traveling parties. We got our horses in Cheyenne.
When this all started I was only seventeen. Now it's now fourteen years later. I lost my wife, I have three little girls that have her pretty face and the fire in her eyes, the bombs have fallen, and it seems like all the uds in America are coming right at us.
I heard there's a couple of mountains in Idaho that are high enough and cold enough that uds will pass them by. The undead can't climb shit.
They can make a wall, though, and the uds have done just that. Thousands of them have been following interstate 15 up from feasting in Salt Lake City, to Butte, Helena and Missoula. The Mormons decided to make a stand in SLC. There's a whole lot of walking dead Mormons now. I guess you could say they are still trying to convert us who aren't like them.
My wife died three days ago, at her own hand.
We were in a tough spot not far from Bozeman with a crowd of uds on our heels. We'd stopped to get water from a stream. We didn't know about the undead heading north on the interstates in throngs so thick they looked like rivers moving across the land. In the open country we only came across them in ones and twos. One minute I'm relieving myself on a tree and the next my girls are screaming. The uds chased away our horses.
We were climbing a steep hill to make our getaway. I was pushing the girls when they needed help, Madeline was covering our tails. A rock slipped out from under her foot and she rolled down into the undead. Just like that. I guess you could say she was killed by a loose stone. One of the uds bit my wife right away. A tiny nip, high up on the inside of her thigh. For a second I felt a flare of anger that someone who wasn't me should touch her in such a personal place. She shot four or five of them, the ones in the lead. There were dozens still coming.
She cocked her head to one side the way she did when faced with a tough decision, and then gave me a look so full of sadness that I can't talk about it. She made a motion with her arm, waving me on, over the hill.
I looked at her for maybe a three-count, knowing this was the last time I would ever see her, drinking in every detail, her long brown curls, her blue eyes like chips of dark ice, her pale skin.
"Madeline," I said. If not for the girls I would have thrown myself down the hill and into oblivion.
She blew me a kiss and turned away and I turned away. From that moment on I was half the man I used to be. A father, but no longer a husband. And if I was half the man I used to be, I now had to do the work of two people, watching over the girls.
We topped the hill and heard a few more shots. Then there was a considerable bit of quiet, and a single muffled shot. After that all we could hear was uds scrabbling up and slipping down the other side of the hill.
"We got to go." I remember saying that, and I remember Anna slapping me across the face and asking me how I could leave her momma behind. Anna was twelve, the oldest, and the most opinionated. Jessie started to cry. She was only four. Mirabel was eight. Madeline and I often called Mirabel the peacemaker. She comforted Jessie and calmed Anna.
We started walking. A few hours later we found one of our horses. I put the girls up on the horse and walked alongside. I remember hoping I didn't cry. My girls didn't need to see that.
A few days later we came into Bozeman.
There were only a couple of hundred people left in town, or so I heard. The old and the sick. They were tucked away. That was the natural way of things wherever people had to pick up and run.
The ones who left Bozeman were headed for Canada. Word was that oil country north of the border was zombie-free and they'd had plenty of money to set up their defenses in advance while most other governments, big and small, struggled with budget limitations.
We met the doctor when looking for rooms in the abandoned Hilton Garden Inn, on Commerce Way. The doctor had a room there as well, a couple of rooms actually, all of them filled with books and all kinds of fancy medical equipment. Outside of a first aid kit I don't know what I'm looking at when it comes to that stuff. Cables snaked out of his room and down the hall to a generator out back of the inn.
When it came to birthing the girls all we needed was a few clean sheets and some hot water for washing and my straight razor to cut the cord. I suspect Madeline could have done all that herself, though, and still made me a fine beans and biscuits supper.
The man in the inn said he was a doctor, anyhow, when he just looked like a rat to me, rats being of course people driven over the edge by what was happening in the world. Rats were crazy people. They ran around in circles or hid in hidey-holes.
The doctor, who never gave us a real name, said he was working on a cure for what he called necromotion. It sounded like a load to me.
"The undead occasionally wander through town, but since everyone is hidden they find no sustenance and move on."
The only reason we stayed near the doctor while resting up was because he had a ham radio and news from all over.
It was through the ham radios we heard talk of something called ATRO facilities being set up by the government. They were using some kind of machines to kill the uds, from what we could gather.
We also heard about the river of undead bodies moving north along Interstate 15, cutting off our route to Idaho and those high peaks I'd been dreaming of.
When the doctor asked how far the uds had advanced, he was told by a couple of different voices that they had just reached Helena, they were all over Butte, and the last of them was leaving Dillon. Some of the uds were also coming along the 90 as well, from the east and the west. I looked at my road atlas, and did the math.
We were being surrounded, there was a wall of walking undead over a hundred miles long between us and the mountains, and the mountains were the one place where we could stop running from the undead.
"I sure wish I could get through that crowd of stinkers," I had said to the doctor. "I could run it on my own, but I got one overworked horse, there isn't a drop of gasoline or a usable car battery left in town, and I got my girls to look after."
That was when the doctor showed me the syringe, with the green-gray sludge inside.
--
"I've been working on a cure for the disease that causes necromotion," the doctor told me. He was a thin, balding man with unhealthy yellowish skin. He looked like bones dipped in tallow.
"I got a cure right here," I said, patting the rifle hanging off my shoulder on an old leather sling.
The girls were in the other room, watching an old reel of film projected on one wall. Men in suits were throwing pies at each other and the girls were laughing together.
The doctor made a face, and then brightened. "I mean something that can be injected into the living with no ill effects, something that will kill the necromotion disease within so they will not reanimate once they are dead. And fortunately for you, I am still in the preliminary stages of my research. What you see in this syringe is a synthesis of the undead microbe, measles, and an ingenious cocktail of drugs and vitamins."
I flipped my Winchester into my hands and took a step back. "You got the zombie bug in that syringe? Get the hell away from me and my girls."
The doctor gave his round head a violent shake. He was so thin I half expected his neck to snap. "No, no, it's harmless. Well, not harmless, but it won't kill you. It will try to animate that which is already alive. It's the side effects of the undead microbe that can be put to use, once the disease is concentrated in the skin thanks to the measles virus which infects the epithelial cells."
I didn't want to tell the doctor I had no idea what he was talking about.
"I have never been vaccinated for measles," he said.
That right there told me he probably wasn't a real doctor in the way back when. Everyone I'd ever known got a shot for measles, except for kids born after things began to fall apart.
"When injected under the skin, and I've tested this on myself mind you, the disease goes to work in the outer layer of dead skin which makes one look, and smell, like the undead."
I was getting confused. "But you said this stuff don't work on the living."
"Indeed," the doctor said. "But each and every one of us is covered in dead and dying skin cells. The undead microbe revives these cells, turning them an unpleasant grayish blue just like our flesh-eating friends. The effects last only a day or two. It also creates muscle aches, like one has the flu, and a dry rawness in the throat."
I was lost. "And the point of all this is what?"
The doctor heaved up a sigh. "If I had to I could inject your girls. They were all born post-outbreak, which means medical facilities and social programs strained to the limit, which means they did not get vaccinated against measles, which means this wonder drug will work on them."
"You're out of your mind if you think—"
"Your girls will look and smell exactly like the undead. To the simple minds of the undead your little girls will be undead. As long as they don't speak, which would be uncomfortable anyway, and keep their breathing shallow and move slowly, they can walk among, and through the hungry throngs to safety."
"Jesus," I said.
"I've tested it on myself three times in the last month," the doctor said with a toothy grin. "I felt nauseous at the outset and suffered muscular pain and a wretched intestinal disturbance, but otherwise I'm fine. I went out and walked among them. Went looking for tinned foods. Tied their shoelaces together and watched them fall over. I was never at risk."
I didn't say anything.
The doctor was wearing a short sleeve shirt. He raised his left arm, made a fist, and jabbed the needle into a skinny vein that popped up. He hit the plunger and the sludge was pumped into him.
"Sit back and watch," he said. "You'll see."
I felt them before I heard them. There was a window open and something changed outside, some slight shift in the air pressure. Then the room was filled with the chopping thud of helicopter rotors.
I slung my rifle and ran outside and saw at least ten aircraft, big twin-prop monsters. They were hovering all over this part of town, dropping straight down out of the sky. Cargo bay doors opened and what looked like bodies began falling out of the helicopters.
A helicopter appeared near the inn, just one street over. The bay doors opened and I saw that they were dropping animal carcasses. Cows and pigs and chickens. Lots of deer. Something big and shaggy, maybe a buffalo. Some of the animals were still alive. I heard a cow moo as if fell. Most of they were bloody, their throats slashed. Some of the animals burst open on impact, all of them bled out once on the ground.
I waved my arms, then took of my leather coat and waved it over my head. The men in the cargo bay saw me. The copilot looked right down at me. They all just stared, and then the machine carried them away.
A moment later the sky was empty and the town was quiet again.
There was a bus in the middle of an intersection jam-packed with vehicles. I hoped onto a car and climbed on top of the bus and looked around.
On every street were dead animals, some wrapped in the ropes of their exploded guts. The streets were slick with blood, and if I could smell that thick perfume in the air I knew the undead could as well.
Bozeman Montana had just been turned into an all-you-can-eat buffet, and we were right in the middle of it.
I jumped down to the street and ran back to the inn, shouting to the girls, telling them to pack up.
I passed through the lobby of the inn. Our last horse was still there. Mirabel had named him Whicker on account of him always whickering his ears every which way. He'd come into town with a full belly. There was lots of fruit and grasses for foraging animals these days. He'd left a big old pile of shit on some expensive-looking carpet.
I ran up the stairs to the first floor and the girls came running. Matilda and I had trained them well. We went to our row of rooms and packed up our things. Every once in a while I stepped to the window and listened carefully. I was hearing groans and mutters out there, somewhere. Uds.
When the girls were ready we headed back down the hall, and all of us came to a dead stop when we saw the doctor standing outside his room.
He was swaying a little, and his jaw was hanging slack. His skin had a bluish color in the hollows of his arms and throat, and under his eyes. His tongue was dark blue, like he'd been drinking ink.
I caught up my rifle and he raised a hand.
"Waih! Waih a mimmit, gah-dammit!"
I thought about all he'd said in regards to his crazy potion. "What's three times five times two minus ten?"
"Twenny," he shouted. "Twenny! Twenny! Twenny!"
The dead are dumber than shit. They can parrot words back at you sometimes, but ask them a simple arithmetic question and they are done for.
He shambled back into his room and almost fell on his ass trying to sit down. The doc sure did look undead. The white in his skin was now pale gray, and the pink parts were cigarette ash blue. He let out a long, rancid fart, and then grinned at me.
"That's disgusting," Mirabel said, pinching her nose shut.
It was considerably foul, even with the windows open.
Jessie hugged my leg, scared.
I saw Anna rest her left hand on the automatic slung on her hip. Anna was twelve. She'd been shooting for years, and carried a little .25 Beretta Bobcat. She was still developing her shooting skills, but her eyes were sharper than mine. She and I were teaching Mirabel how to shoot.
"Easy," I whispered.
She shot me a look that was pure Madeline and then crossed her arms, looking put out.
The doctor winced as he drew a deep breath. "You fee? Afide fwom paffing howwenduth gaff, aching muffles and numb libs, I am compleedly fine. As fid as a fibble."
"That was fast," I said.
The doc nodded. "The undeb viwuss iff fast."
I heard an indignant series of wuh-wuh-wuhs, the moaning, barking noises uds made when fighting over food. They were close.
Christ almighty. There was no way I could get my girls out of there safely with just one horse, but could I really inject that shit inside them and leave them behind?
I looked in the discolored crook of the doc's left arm. There were a whole lot of needle marks there. He had to be telling the truth. Then again, he could be a junkie.
We all reacted when we heard Whicker start fussing downstairs. Me and the girls ran to the head of the stairs were we could see the horse stepping away from an ud. The doctor caught up with us right after, and without even hesitating he walked down the stairs all stiff like he had a groin pull, and went right up to the ud.
The doc didn't talk, and I noticed that he was breathing real shallow.
The ud let out a wuh-wuh. I guess he was saying this horseflesh is mine. Then he went back to fussing with the horse, ignoring the doctor.
"Well I'll be god-damned," I said. I raised my rifle and shot the ud in the head. He fell and drummed his feet on the floor a bit and then went full-on dead.
I hunkered down and explained the situation to the girls. My girls grew up in a world were the undead walked and took big bites out of the living. They knew how to take bad news, and Anna and Mirabel were old enough to see that this was our only way to the freedom of the mountains and a place where we could stop running.
I took each of them aside for a moment.
I told Anna that she was in charge after I was gone, and that I had to go because the bug that could save them wouldn't work on me. I'd take the horse. The girls would walk out of town. I told her she had to be real careful before firing her gun or doing anything that would give the uds a reason to take a second look at her. I told her that the dead animals in town would draw in every ud for many miles. The river of undead moving up I-15 was now sweeping right toward us. I told her she had to take her sisters west on highway 84. There was a small town about forty miles away. Norris. A voice on the ham radio said he'd only seen a few uds. Norris is where I'd be waiting, hopefully on the far side of trouble. She took it all in, then gave me a hug and returned to her sisters.
"Jeefuf Cwyfe," the doctor said, making faces as he pulled himself back up the stairs. "The injebshuns onny laff about two daif an your kibs have to twavel foddy miles alone."
"Shut the hell up," I said.
I gave a simpler version of that talk to Mirabel, told her to watch her sisters always, to keep Jessie quiet and keep Anna from doing anything rash. She hugged me and I could see she was trying not to cry.
I turned it into a game for Jessie. I told her that the girls were going to get a quick shot of vitamins (we always tried to find usable bottles of vitamins from the old days, along with other important things like toothbrushes and floss), and that I was going to sneak away and hide and then she and her sisters were going to turn funny colors like the uds, and that they would have to try and find me. I was gonna make it really hard for them to find me, but we'd all have fun.
That story would only hold up for so long.
"We can fedate her," the doc whispered once Anna was helping Jessie with a tiny backpack. "It will welax her. Fee iff a small child. If fee panigs among the undeb..."
"She's gotta stay on her feet and stay moving doc, otherwise they'll never get through."
I took a moment to stand alone.
I didn't want to inject the girls with that crud, but I had to.
We did it and we did it quick.
Jessie cried a lot.
I went and got my own pack together, and got Whicker ready.
When I went back upstairs the girls were already turning. The stuff worked real quick.
I gave each of them another hug. My skin crawled because they felt almost cold to the touch.
I had to get going. I had to leave the girls behind. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, harder than leaving their mother at the bottom of that hill.
The doc said he'd send the girls on as soon as it was safe.
I slung my rifle over my shoulder, got on the horse, and starting riding fast.
There was a mass of undead crowding the street a half mile away. An old white-haired lady came busting out of a house between me and them, running and screaming. They grabbed her. There was a bit of commotion and then she was running again. Her arms were gone and she was spilling blood. She got about ten paces away and collapsed.
What with the old lady and the buffet of dead animals, I wasn't noticed as I took Whicker down a side street. We stayed to alleys and small lanes, cutting across a lot of back yards.
I only had to shoot twice. I realized I had a good chance of making it out of town. I also realized there was no way all of us could have done this. The horse was in a lather I was working him so hard.
I saw a line of dark green up ahead and at first I thought I was coming up on the outskirts of Bozeman. As I got closer I realized it was men, and trucks. Real infantrymen, in green uniforms, and a lot of Humvees.
As I got close I hear the wasp-buzz of a bullet passing by me. I was going to shout and ask when any of them had last seen an ud riding a horse when I felt an impact in my ribs and Whicker let out a grunt and started blowing foamy blood.
You sons of bitches shot my horse, I thought, then Whicker fell and I cracked my head against the road and knew nothing more.
--
When I woke up it was full dark. I was in a small tent hospital on a cot. I could hear trucks roaring around and men shouting, and the deeper diesel grind and roar of bulldozers.
I sat up and a kid in white ran over.
"Settle down, sir," he said. "A bullet bounced off your ribs. It broke one and fractured another. You're lucky the damage wasn't worse. You've been stitched up and taped up but you aren't going—"
I got to me feet wearing nothing but my britches. I found my clothes on a hook. "Where's the doctor?"
"I am the doctor," the kid said. He looked annoyed that I asked.
I pulled on my pants and boots and slipped out of the tent. I stood there buttoning my shirt and trying to figure out what the hell I was looking at.
Beyond rows of tents and Quonset huts, bulldozers were tearing up streets and lawns and creating steep mounds of earth in some places. In others, rows of high fencing had been set up. The army engineers had worked fast. Whatever they were doing, they had done it before and they were good at it.
There were signs on the fences every hundred feet or so. Some of the signs were bent and pitted. They'd been used before, in operations like this. Many of them had been spray-painted with graffiti.
WARNING
ATRO
FACILITY #7
!!!DO NOT ENTER!!!
AUTOMATED TRANSITIONING
OF REANIMATED ORGANICS
MACHINERY NOW ACTIVE
WITHIN THIS PERIMETER
I felt my heart start speeding up.
An infantryman was standing nearby having a smoke. A real cigarette, not a hand-rolled one.
"What's all this?"
"Cleaning out the town," he said.
"How so?"
"We got machines. Sorta robots. They move around on treads and wheels. We drop bait for the deadies, pen them in, and then release the machines. Then it's kill time. They kill 'em and incinerate 'em. Real neat stuff."
He squinted and said, "Hey, you're the guy on the horse."
"Yeah. Listen soldier, my kids are inside that fence. And there are other living people, How do you—"
He held up a hand. "If they stay hidden, they will be just fine. The machines target two things. First they look for motion, then they look for body heat. If there's motion and no heat, it's a deadie. If there's motion and heat, the machines pass it by. It's all automated. Oh, and sorry about your horse. We've got some new recruits and they're kind of jumpy."
I thought about my girls. Injected with the bug that would keep them alive. A bug that made them look dead, and feel like the dead, cold to the touch.
"I have to get to them."
The soldier shrugged. "You can't. It's a sealed perimeter. Hell, most of us have pulled out and moved out to set up another camp in Helena. By sunup we'll be gone, we'll let the machines do their work. We'll swing by this way in a week to take it all down."
The soldier flicked his cigarette butt at one of the signs and then walked away. I looked at the sign. After the letter ATRO, someone had spray-painted CITY.
Atrocity.
I got the feeling I wasn't the first one to worry about the machines being able to tell the living from the walking dead.
I asked the doctor for my leather coat and rifle and pack. They were in a locker. He advised me to stay put and heal. I left the tent.
I found an unattended Humvee and tossed my bag inside. It was big. Inside someone had stuck a cheap digital clock to the dash, the ones about the size of a button. I hadn't seen one of those in years. It was just after midnight. I'd been shot down in the late afternoon. My girls had been alone for over six hours.
There was a key in the ignition. Who was going to steal a Humvee, an ud?
I started it up and drove straight for one of the high ramps of earth. I heard some shouts and saw flashlights bobbing around and ignored them. I knocked down part of a fence and went up and up, fearing the vehicle would roll or get stuck in the dirt, but then it tipped forward and slid down a ways and the wheels got some traction.
As the wheels touched down on asphalt I heard someone on the other side shout, "It's your funeral!"
I recognized a street name, oriented myself, and drove, having to play with the shift since I hadn't had to change gears in a long time.
Something crossed the road right in front of me and I hit the breaks, catching a glimpse of it in the headlights. It was about five feet tall, battered metal. It was moving on treads. There was a white cone of plastic on top of it, and it had long metal tubes sticking out from its blocky body.
It spun around and faced me, sensed my heat or the heat of the truck engine, and then moved away.
I drove slower now, noticing mounds of charred bone everywhere.
An ud staggered onto the road ahead and one of those machines came after it. I found out what the tubes were. One was a gun barrel. It must have been firing big shotgun slugs, because there were a few booms and the ud was down, its face missing from the eyes down, one left blown off at the knee. Two tubes pivoted toward the fallen ud. A slander claw-like clamp came from one, and grabbed the ud's head. The other one must have hade a captive bolt gun in it, because I heard a pneumatic thudding and the thing's head came apart. Then the machine backed off, and blue flame poured out of another tube, setting the ud to blazing.
I drove another block and turned the corner and on the wide avenue ahead I saw clusters of uds bumping into each other and knocking each other down as they tried to escape ten or more of the machines. There were different configurations to the machines too. One was low and wide and had what looked like chainsaws mounted in front of it on swaying bars. It just zipped around cutting off legs. Then smaller machines studded with gun barrels raced it on big rubber wheels and shot the hell out of the fallen uds.
I could heard uds wailing and crying out over gunshots and mechanical roars and they pop and snap og burning bodies.
The living had suffered through a holocaust at the hands of the undead. Now it was the ud's turn.
There was a light flickering to one side. I looked over and saw my girls crouching down behind a wood and iron bench in front of an antiques store. God only knows how long they'd been running around out there. Anna was flashing the light. She'd seen me. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw three of the killing machines coming up the road behind me, right at my girls.
I put the truck in reverse and floored it. I took out one of the machines, one of the wheeled shooters. A catch and burn machine hung back while a cutter went to work with its chainsaws. The bench started coming apart. I jumped out of the truck and ran around the cutter. The catch and burn swiveled towards me but I guess it sensed my body heat because it turned away.
Two more shooters were wheeling down the road. When they were ten yards away they started shooting. They had a clear shot at the girls but I was hidden from them by the bulk of the catch and burn.
"On your bellies, girls! Crawl to me!"
They all flattened out and started coming my way. Wood and metal chips were flying away from the bench as the chainsaws worked into it. The catch and burn machine started swiveling between me and the girls like it was trying to make up its mind what to do. I raised my rifle and put a few shots through the white cone on top of it just as I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I turned and saw the rat doctor. I was about to thank him when I realized a big chunk of his neck and shoulder were missing.
The catch and burn machine was making ratcheting, clicking noises. Its bolt gun went into action, blindly stabbing at the air on the end of its metal tube.
The doctor reached for my gun. I raised my arms out of the way and he wrapped his arms around my middle, squeezing my ribs. The pain was incredible and I felt stitches popping.
The girls were circling around toward the Humvee, but Anna was half dragging Jessie, who was crying up a storm.
The bolt gun nearly left me deaf on my right side when it took off the top of my ear. It reached out again and smashed the stock of my Winchester into splinters. I turned around and faced the catch and burn just as the doctor opened wide, hoping to chow down on my throat. The bolt gun came up behind him, and then his face came apart and I let out a hollow yell as the bolt passed through his head and shattered my collarbone. I heard a sputtering sound from the catch and burn and stepped away just as the doctor went up in flames.
The plate glass window of the antique shop exploded and a fat naked ud came staggering out onto the street. He zeroed in on Jessie's crying, ignoring the line of small holes blasted across his belly by the guns of one of the wheeled shooters. Blood was filling the bandages around my rib cage. I squeezed the bandage and flicked a few drops of blood in the fat ud's face.
The ud looked tickled pink. "Ooh-ahhh!"
"Yeah, ooh-ahh," I said trying to ignore my collection of aches and pains and moving so the fat ud was between me and the machines and both of us were angling away from the Humvee.
The fat ud looked like he was dancing as wheeled shooters started plugging him. I started backing away before any rounds could pass through his bulk, when the cutter took his legs off with its chainsaws. He fell and I was facing the two shooter machines on the other side of the broken down catch and burn. A bullet hit me in the right thigh and another thumped into my bandaged ribs.
I fell on my back and shouted god-damn or something along those lines, and then all hell broke loose. The fat man erupted into greasy flames.
A herd of at least fifty uds spilled onto the street near us. They were running from a single catch and burn, running right into more machines.
I heard the roar of more than one engine and saw Humvees coming down the road. I guess the soldiers thought they were coming to the rescue, but every time the halogen lights mounted on the trucks swept across an ud, soldiers opened fire, and those lights were now sweeping toward my girls, the three of them frozen by the side of the stolen Humvee.
Uds were all around me now, stepping over me and tripping on me. I got on all fours and started crawling, and that's when the fuel in the malfunctioning catch and burn machine went up and the thing exploded like a bomb. A piece of metal sliced open the skin on the side of my head. I felt the blood running and figured that was what an apple felt like when it was about to get peeled, but I kept moving. Shrapnel blew through shambling uds and froze the Humvees in their tracks. Burning uds ran back and forth, muttering and moaning.
I got to the Humvee and threw the girls inside and put it in gear. We got the hell out of their. We left the soldiers to clean up the killing zone they'd created.
I switched off all the lights and drove in the dark. I went up a hill of earth and down the other side, burst through a fence, crossed an empty field, and then we were rolling along an open road, somewhere.
I dug a map out of my pack. Anna climbed into the passenger seat and struck a wooden match and I was able to see were I was going. We were on a small road heading northeast. Good enough. I looked at Anna and flinched. She really looked like one of them.
"Sorry baby," I said. She leaned close and gave me a squeeze. I could feel ribs gnashing at the tissues around them, but I didn't make a sound.
I turned on the interior light for a second.
Mirabel said, "Hi daddy." Jessie was asleep beside her. Mirabel had a long scratch down one arm. I saw a little dried blood. I wondered how deep the scratch was and what had caused it. I also wondered if my girls would ever look normal again.
The only gun we had was Anna's pistol. We had a few days worth of food and water in our packs, and a half a tank of gas. But we were alive.
We were headed for Idaho. I hoped we'd make it, safe and in one piece. And I hoped that beneath their undead masks, my three girls were still healthy and normal, under the skin.
User Reviews
Submitted by supadupapupa (user info) at 2007-10-31 03:43:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I thought this was pretty good, I like your zombie works, it did feel a bit rushed at the end
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2007-10-09 23:51:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Oh, and one other thing; too much time spent on the backstory of the zombie infestation. For a one-off like this, I don't need to know all that stuff; but it probably seemed more tedious to me because I've read similar stuff before, in that series, what was it, the one that nearly took over my entire life reading and writing entries...oh yeah, AFTER THE PANDEMIC.
Jesus. Jack, you zombie loving bastard.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2007-10-09 23:46:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Not bad, Jack...I really liked the way you incorporated the title into the story. Good show, there. But it's not your best work...
I like that you try to think of original terms and little realistic touches to the story, like the .22 bullets and the 'uds' thing, but sometimes it seems a little forced...I mean, zombies are walking the earth...wouldn't at least SOME people refer to them as 'zombies' instead of 'uds?'
Also, I thought your tendency to put your protagonists through physical hell ran away with you there. This dude took a bullet through the ribs (twice), one in the thigh, and one in the shoulder, which broke his collarbone?? C'mon dude, he's not Wolverine with some crazy mutant healing factor. He's a freakin' dead man, if he got hit with all that stuff, and then didn't get a lick of medical attention.
Anyway, by and large I thought it was a pretty good story.
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-10-08 12:10:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Just so you know, I would never give uber my money. I'm pretty sure you think I was doing the uberboard shenanigans, I don't even come remotely close to caring enough about this site to do something that retarded.
P.S. Fuck paypal.
Submitted by ColchesterDr (user info) at 2007-10-07 12:53:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
You're a damn good writer but I think you got bogged down in there.
Needed more gore and maybe more up close and personal zombie action.
Some nice touches, though. Like 60 Minutes still on the air till the end, and zombies in herds.
Submitted by TechnoRatty (user info) at 2007-10-06 14:56:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Yea, well done
Submitted by beeltea (user info) at 2007-10-06 04:41:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It was very readable, I certainly followed it well enough, which in my book is a triumph on uber.
Submitted by ilikesteak (user info) at 2007-10-06 00:44:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I read this six times today.
I can't say this was poorly written, or badly thought out. I can't say this was a waste of my time reading it, or at least less wasteful than usual. I can always say something negative, or unkind towards something, but I won't here.
One slight thing I must bring up however. This is not horror.
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-10-06 00:19:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-10-05 18:01:11 PDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I didn't vay you were. You didn't come in calling names like the douchebag below you, assuming he knows what is what.
=======
Ha, who gets offended by "lamo", seriously.
You're cute.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-10-05 21:01:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I didn't vay you were. You didn't come in calling names like the douchebag below you, assuming he knows what is what. I've been busy as fuck all week, got caught up in the story posted here in what free time I had, and finally have a bit of time to rate before the deadline Sunday. I've given +2s to +2 material, but there isn't a lot of it here.
v
v
v
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2007-10-05 20:25:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I usually really enjoy your stories, but I just couldn't seem to get into this. A typo or two early on, plus "ud" (without context until after) threw me off, I thought it was also a typo.
Also, rating honestly is a good aim, but I agree that lowering your opponent's average rating before deadline is poor form, and I don't think it makes me self-righteous to say so.
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-10-05 19:06:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-10-05 11:41:38 PDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-10-05 14:17:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
It seems like guns had a slightly better rating then yours, so you dropped a zero to barely edge it out.
That's lame, I'm taking back my zero, lamo.
--
Actually, I finally have the time this week to start reading Gfest entries, and haven't seen one yet worth a +2. In contests, I rate very honestly. If something bugs me I mention it. The only entry I've read so far worth a +2 is the one forensic did, the first one I read before really getting into working on my own. I still have a lot of reading and rating to do.
Happy now? Have I satisfied your sense of self-righteousness?
=====
No.
Submitted by lungfish (user info) at 2007-10-05 17:10:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
The undead can't climb shit.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-10-05 14:45:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
haikumikoo, I just gave orgasmatron a 2 as well. I enjoyed his post a lot.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-10-05 14:41:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-10-05 14:17:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
It seems like guns had a slightly better rating then yours, so you dropped a zero to barely edge it out.
That's lame, I'm taking back my zero, lamo.
--
Actually, I finally have the time this week to start reading Gfest entries, and haven't seen one yet worth a +2. In contests, I rate very honestly. If something bugs me I mention it. The only entry I've read so far worth a +2 is the one forensic did, the first one I read before really getting into working on my own. I still have a lot of reading and rating to do.
Happy now? Have I satisfied your sense of self-righteousness?
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-10-05 14:17:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
It seems like guns had a slightly better rating then yours, so you dropped a zero to barely edge it out.
That's lame, I'm taking back my zero, lamo.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-10-05 13:21:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-10-05 13:15:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i enjoyed it even with all the typos but you of all people should not be substituting thier for there. don't remember where i saw it but I want to crawl through my compy and kick you in the junk.
--
Agreed. Typos are my curse. I spent too much time writing, not enough reviewing.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-10-05 13:15:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i enjoyed it even with all the typos but you of all people should not be substituting thier for there. don't remember where i saw it but I want to crawl through my compy and kick you in the junk.
Submitted by triangle_man (user info) at 2007-10-05 12:22:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
nice story
my tea got cold...I was going to stop reading but didn't
Submitted by lostnphound (user info) at 2007-10-05 11:03:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice work. I don't mind the long reads. It gives me something to do when work is slow going.
Submitted by lover101 (user info) at 2007-10-05 10:33:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I was looking forward to your post and I wasnt disapointed.
Submitted by FALLEN (user info) at 2007-10-05 10:29:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
wtf I HAVE to read all that, I'm sucker for a zombie story.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-10-05 09:12:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
A lot of these comments are spot on. I've done this before, trying to tell too much story in not enough time, with kind of a rough result. Not enough gore either. I did enjoy writinh this one though, as the length shows.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2007-10-05 09:07:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good read.
Your next mission, should you choose to accept it: a story in 500 or less words.
Submitted by hour_man (user info) at 2007-10-05 03:08:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-10-05 01:32:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Seems like you could have done more with that title. I was hoping for a crazy, gory, serial killer story...or some kind of...torture type nonsense...you know?
Submitted by jamowilly40 (user info) at 2007-10-04 23:15:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
trash.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-10-04 23:04:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
pacing was off
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2007-10-04 22:04:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I don't know about this one.
Maybe if I read it again.........
Submitted by HotWillie (user info) at 2007-10-04 21:28:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
Meh.
I'm sick of all the post-apocalyptic zombie stories, to tell you the truth.
Plus, after all that, I still didn't care about the people in the story. I wasn't worried about the little girls or their dad.
Would have been kick-ass if you ended right after the dude tells the guy the machine killed all the zombies in town while he was unconscious.
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2007-10-04 21:13:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-10-04 15:36:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm gonna hunt down Bill Gates and cut his fucking balls off. My wonderful PC here at work froze up and I lost somewheer btwn 1 and 2 pages of story.
That shit happens with this PC all the time.
That shit never happens with my MAC at home.
God damn it.
------------------------------------------------
So I started reading your story, and I was noticing all the typos and whatnot, and thinking, damn, maybe I didn't do so bad after all.
I'm guessing that you're comment above is the reason for all the typos?
I thought it was a bit drawn out, and it took for-fucking-ever to read, but overall it was a good story.
Honestly, I was hoping you'd either forget, or somehow have some problems, just so that I could win, although I didn't really think the power of prayer would have so much effect. Sorry bout that.
Not too sorry though, because I still hope to win, and your minor problems are the only hope to my success.
Competition: http://www.ubersite.com/m/112159
Submitted by beer-turtle (user info) at 2007-10-04 20:51:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Jack... this was good, BUT not as good as you are capable of.
I did think it was drawn out a little bit about the infestation of the undead, reminded me of resident evil extinction (what I have seen of the trailers anyways).
Submitted by wrinklebeast (user info) at 2007-10-04 20:01:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Just because its long doesn't make it good.
-1 for being unimpressive
-1 for being unimpressive and long
Submitted by forensicgirl3 (user info) at 2007-10-04 20:01:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
As excellent as I thought it would be.
Now see?! All that bitching and moaning for nothing.
Submitted by Jeanneee (user info) at 2007-10-04 19:45:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Generic, but good. Real good.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-10-04 19:42:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Would it have killed you to off at least one of the girls?
Somebody we care about has to die, goddamnit.
Submitted by Zampano (user info) at 2007-10-04 19:15:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
wtf im not redin all taht
Actually, I enjoyed it a lot. It was not unlike a fusion of Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' and George Romero.
Submitted by ChaosJester (user info) at 2007-10-04 19:14:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Okay, I'm *far* too drunk to read this now, but I'm rating this on an average of what's come before...
Also, would it kill you to break these bad puppies up into a few chunks?
It's pretty tough (and daunting) to read all this at once on a bloody screen.
...
And yes, I realize how hypocritical this sounds coming from me...
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-10-04 19:09:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
CUT back some story. Typos in the story, typos in my comments, jayzuz.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-10-04 19:07:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
This was actually going to be LONGER, but I spent so much time dicking with that photoshopped pic I had to back some story.