Just like when Marshall pinned me like this when we were kids, I lifted my legs up, wrapped them around the front of Watley’s head, and then straightened my body, pulling Watley down with my legs and smashing the back of his head into the ground. When he realized he was overbalanced, he tossed Marshall to the ground as he was pulled backwards.
I sprung up and drove both swords into his face. He saw them coming, his eyes went wide with surprise.
“Watley. My name is Victor Tookes, and I will destroy every fucking one of you.” I twisted the wide blades, using them like a lever, scrambling his brain and ending the twitching. Just to be sure, I pulled them out and split his skull, spilling the gray matter all over the ground.
I stood up and kicked him as I yelled in a voice that carried across space “Do you hear me zombies? I’m coming for you, and I’m going to end every mother fucking one of you!”
In retrospect, that was probably not the smartest thing I could do. I’d just defeated an enemy vastly superior to me and my testosterone levels must have been off the charts. I was pumped up, and invincible. I swear I saw a red aura on the roof of the school. I looked up and it was empty.
I picked up the kukris and ran over to Marshall, who was sitting up, pressing his shirt into his side. “Vic. I don’t feel so good. Don’t let me turn, tell Max I love him. I don’t want to be a zombie.”
“Shut your hole Marshall, we’re immune. I’m certain it runs in the family.” I said, wiping blood from my still gushing nose.
“I’m still going to bleed to death. Did you see him? He fucking ate a bite of me!”
“Marshall, it was just a hunk of lard off your love handle... you’re gonna be fine. Get up, we gotta go.”
I helped Marshall to his feet, and limped with his arm over my shoulder towards John.
“You gonna be able to drive Marshall?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I’m going to pass out.”
“Okay, it’s going to be a lot of trips. What did you guys drive?”
“We each drove a pickup.” said Marshall.
“Okay, three trucks, I’ll get someone to drive yours.” At this point I was just keeping him talking.
“How can I be hungry?” asked Marshall. “I feel like my guts are on fire, but all I can think about is food.”
I grinned, remembering when Max first got bit.
“There will be a fever too; you’ll be fine in a few days. We just gotta get your side stitched up. You’re going to have a sexy scar.” I said.
We reached the grassy hill top where John was.
“John, can you take Marshall up to the farm house and take him in the first load? We’re going to start ferrying people back and forth. When you get people back to the house, bring every vehicle that you can find that runs, and bring some of the men as drivers.”
“I have one more thing to take care of, and then I’ll be along. I should be getting there with a load of people just about the time you’re getting ready to head back.”
I watched my two brothers walk towards the farm house and was grateful for them. I had no doubt that Marshall would be fine. I sat on my knees for a minute with my head tilted back, trying to get the blood to stop gushing. When it stopped, I laid one finger on either side and squeezed it back straight and into some semblance of a nose shape. The pain was intense, but the sound was horrible. From the backpack I took out some electrical tape and taped my nose up, in an attempt to hold it open so I could breathe. Next, I reloaded the two magazines I’d emptied earlier, which took forever. My hands were shaking, the aftermath of all that adrenaline. Lastly, my remaining ‘grenade’, and the two cans of propane. Using electrical tape, I taped the two camp-stove propane tanks to the grenade and walked off towards the pen of shambling zombies.
When I got there, I lobbed the enhanced bomb as close to the middle of the packed pen as I could. All of the zombies were pressing on the fence towards me, I have no idea how it was holding them back.
The device flew over the heads of the first few rows of zombies, before hitting one of them in the shoulder. The resulting explosion threw me backwards, and started my nose bleeding again. There were still a few shamblers alive after the explosion, and they immediately started walking towards me. I stood up; there was no need for finesse here. I drove the machetes into the skull of each zombie. For the next ten or fifteen minutes I cracked open the skull of anything moving. Many of them weren’t even shamblers at this point; several of them were just the upper half of a body.
They would never stop trying to get Max. One was just a head and a bit of spine. It was trying to drag itself towards me by its chin. It would flop upright, open its mouth, curl its spine a little, close its mouth, and fall to the side. Over and over. I watched it futilely trying to get to me for several minutes while it traveled a foot closer to me. It snarled hungrily when I walked over to it. It was still snarling as I brought my foot down on it, smashing the skull with my boot heel and ending its miserable existence.
I finally stopped my nose from bleeding for the fourth or fifth time today as I walked towards the trucks and the people, never noticing the auras on the roof of the school building watching my every move.
We ferried families home all that day. I think I made ten trips myself. It cost a lot of fuel, a lot of food, and a lot of energy, but it was worth it. I met some of the people we’d saved; they were from all walks of life. One of them was a lawyer, another was a landscaper. Those two didn’t have a lot of use for their pre z-day professions, but in the last group I ferried from the farm house, there was a doctor and a veterinarian, and John said he carried a couple of farmers and an electrician.
I hoped some of them would stay with us, and I hoped a lot of them would go somewhere else and start up their own community. There were several reasons; primarily I couldn’t feed them all, at least not this year. Also, putting all of our people in one location seemed like a bad idea. It seemed better to split us into two or three different locations for security and diversity sake.
By the time we all met at the dinner table, I was weary and exhausted. My eyes were swollen mostly closed, but I hugged Max as we washed our hands and sat down to eat. Food was getting scarce, but Mom had somehow managed to put together a balanced meal for us. I half wondered if she’d been bitten, and conjuring food was her zombie ability.
I needed this time with my family to decompress and try to remember who I was.
27. Supper
I sat down at the large cherry dining room table, grateful for just a few minutes to catch up. So much had changed in the last ten days, most of which I was unconscious for.
Marshall was sitting at the end of the table, he was sweating profusely, pale, and he winced in pain every time he reached for some food, but that didn’t seem to be stopping him.
“So, tell me what happened while I was gone. John, what did you get up to?” I asked.
John began to tell his story.
“Well, a few days after the gun club we got most of the basic defense plans up, which were great plans, by the way; we decided to head back to the club. Marshall drove and I sat in the back of the pickup, keeping an eye out for places to stop on the way back ‘ere.