“Fine,” issued forth reluctantly from Azile’s mouth, but it was not difficult to see that she was not happy about it.
John was reaching over me heading for the door.
“Where you going, buddy?” I asked him.
“Philly cheese steak, I’m starving.”
“Yeah I’m hungry, too, but I’m not thinking this is the best time.”
“No, no, it’s the best time. All the street cart vendors come out for the parades.”
“See!” Azile said, throwing her hands up in the air.
“What’s your solution, Azile? Are you tough enough on the inside to sacrifice him?” I shot back.
“If he ever puts my life in danger I’ll—”
“Stop!” I told her. “Don’t say something you’ll regret or force me into a decision I don’t want to make.”
She turned to face forward; the set of her jaw told me she was straining to hold back a litany of words best left out of this journal.
The truck was starting to jostle around as an increasing number of zombies made our acquaintance and still more were coming. I know it’s wrong, I’m not so far removed from reality to know my thoughts aren’t politically correct, but the image I got of all those zombies around the truck was of those late night commercials that beg for money. You know the ones where the Red Cross truck pulls up into the village and the people all run to the truck for their allotment of food? Unfortunately, in this case, we were the food.
“Can you drive forward?” I asked Azile.
“This is a truck not a tank,” she replied as we looked over the expanding sea of dead.
“You guys need to find something to wad up and stick in your ears.”
“Fireworks?” John asked. I thought I might have caught a glint of fear in his eyes, but it was quickly replaced with a stoned countenance.
“Close enough,” I told him as I pulled back the charging mechanism.
“What are you doing?” Azile asked.
“I am going to destroy these motherfuckers.” I took off my hat under the severe protests of John.
“Listen, bud, I just need you keep the line of firecrackers straight as I set them off. Can you do that?”
“Sure, man, but you should still keep your hat on.”
“I’m fine for the moment.” And I was. The white noise was replaced by an eerie silence in my head. Eliza was nowhere around, at least not in broadcasting mode. I ‘pushed’ the closest zombies away from the running board and opened the door. The nearest ones were straining against invisible bonds, their teeth gnashing at the empty air like Doberman Pinschers trying to find a meaty thigh. And did I tell you how much Dobies scare the shit out of me?
When I was eight, I had a friend in my neighborhood that had two of them. To get to his door to knock, you first had to go through the gauntlet. The walkway was up against the house, and the dogs were chained on the right hand side, their saliva dripping muzzles could just reach the edge of the walkway. I would walk with my back up against the house with my arms outstretched as if I were walking on a six inch ledge forty stories up. Those dogs would be snarling and snapping; long lengths of saliva would be pouring out of their muzzles as they strained against their chains to get at me. The leather on their collars the only thing holding them back from my certain death.
I shuddered thinking of those damn dogs and pushed a little harder against the closest zombies, I wanted them as far back as possible. It didn’t seem to me that they were heeding my ‘advice’ quite as well as I would have hoped, but I had other things on my mind, so the dividing of my thoughts may have had something to do with. I placed the barrel of the machinegun in the crux of the window frame and the truck body. I pulled the trigger and nearly flung myself off the truck.
“Umm, Trip, maybe come over here and grab my belt,” I said before I dared shoot again. I was thankful when my instruction did not lead to a four minute explanation. When I felt he had a good grasp, I let loose with a torrent of hell.
Aiming wasn’t even necessary, annihilation surged from that barrel. Zombies liquefied as the steel-jacketed 7.62 rounds would slam into first one zombie and then into his mates behind him—maybe as many as three deep before the bullet was finally sated with death. As I looked over the multitude of zombies that day, there were all kinds from all races. Men, women, children…fuck, even babies. Some were black, some white, Hispanic, Asian, there were medical workers in scrubs, cops, construction crews, some McDonald’s workers (hopefully Becka was in there—see journal number two), my point being, no one escaped this plague. It’s that, in my memory, I choose to believe that ALL zombies resemble Durgan: white, male, asshole. That’s how I can sleep at night. I just need to pretend that every former human I destroyed that day resembled that one particular asshole. It was that and only that thought that kept me on the good side of the sanity line.
Watching what that large caliber round can do when it strikes a five-year-old girl is not something that is conducive to my already thinly spread mental health. My zombies are ALWAYS big goons who are deserving of that bullet. That is all I am saying. Zombies fell like wheat to a Harvester, and wasn’t that what I was doing? Harvesting the dead? The bullets slammed into them, the sound almost louder than the percussion of the rounds being expended. The ones that weren’t neatly cut in half were pushed back as if the thumb of God had pressed them in the abdomen. Heads disintegrated into a spray of blood, brain, and bone, to mist down on their brethren like a bloody spring rain. But there would be no bumper crop rising from the resultant moisture.
“Where are they going?” John asked over the din of the gun.
It was time for a break anyway, the belt was getting low on rounds, the barrel wasn’t glowing quite yet, but it was thinking about it. Something strange was happening, zombies were still being attracted to the noise, but they were moving away from my firing zone; well…at least the ones that still could.
Azile’s mouth was hanging slightly agape. I don’t know all she’d been witness to since this started, but it may have been safe to say it was nothing quite on this scale.
I leaned my head in so she could see my face. “Drive, girl, before they figure out I’m not firing.”
She might have been in a bit of shock. It didn’t stop her from getting the truck in gear, though. She slammed both feet on the brake, almost sending me once again off the truck, when she ran over the first fallen zombie. She was frozen, her feet were pressed solid on the brake, and her arms were locked straight out in front of her. Her back may as well have been adhered to her seat.
“Shit,” I said.
“You have to go number two too?” John asked.
I didn’t even have time to respond to that. “Hold this,” I said to John as I handed him the machinegun. “Do not touch the barrel.” And before I completely lost my mind, I removed the remaining rounds.
I had not even finished climbing over him when John screamed in pain. “That’s fucking hot!”
“I told you not touch the barrel,” I said as I got between him and Azile.