Dead Drunk: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse... One Beer at a Time (19 page)

Chapter
37

Steve Winwood

Charlie brought the women over early on the morning of their
planned escape to meet his friends for the first time. It went about as well as
expected.

“I wouldn’t fuck you if I was on fire and your dick was an
extinguisher,” Kate replied to a clumsy advance from Left-Nut. He still had it.

“Ah snap,” Smokey said while applying war paint to Russ with
a permanent marker.

“Oh come on, why not?” Left-Nut asked. “We’re all pals here.
You wouldn’t bend for a friend?”

“Isn’t that what you and Mike did?” Russ said, causing the
red-faced jerk to shut his mouth.

Charlie waved his hands. “Guys, focus. The sun’s rising so
there’s no room for jacking around.” Finally directing the conversation back on
topic, they went over the plan one final time and mobilized to make their move.

Trent tied Brandon to his back and prepared to cross the
ladder bridge first. “Ready to go, little buddy?” he said, not expecting an
answer.

“Elvis,” Brandon replied quietly. It was the first time he’d
spoken to them.

Shocked, Trent reached back and grabbed the little boy’s
shoulder. “Elvis is with his family now. In raccoon heaven.”

Brandon shook his head and pointed. “No, Elvis.”

Sure enough, the rodent with the telltale pirate shirt was
sniffing around across the street. Brooke hadn’t told Charlie about her
dangerous encounter, and everyone still assumed their mascot had been dead.

“I think we should go get him,” Trent said and surprised
even himself.

Charlie shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no.”

Rob disagreed. “You never leave a man behind.”

“Raccoon,” Charlie corrected.

“You never leave a raccoon behind.”

His face covered in ink, Russ stepped forward. “This sounds
like a job for someone with my particular skill set. Did I ever tell you how I
used to be a bounty hunter?”

Smokey rolled his eyes. “We heard the story. You turned in
coyote ears one time, and you ran over the damned thing while getting a b-j
from a tranny. Not very hardcore.”

“That’s not exactly how I remember it.”

Charlie sensed a mutiny brewing. “Screw it, I’ll drop down
and the rest of you get going by roof. I can meet you at the corner. We don’t
have time for this shit.”

“This is dumb,” Brooke said, annoyed and nervous at the same
time. “Please stick to the plan.” Of course, she hadn’t told Charlie about the
pregnancy yet either and didn’t want the father of her child killed while
rescuing a raccoon.

“It’s settled.”

“I’m coming with you then,” Smokey said. “I’m scared of
heights, and I know what happened to Mike and Jim.”

“Fine, we’ll give the rest of you a head start and I’ll set
the music to go off in fifteen minutes.” Charlie kissed Brooke deeply and then
looked to Rob. “You’re in charge. No matter what, make sure Brandon and the
girls make it to that helicopter.”

Rob nodded. “See you soon.”

Ten minutes later, Charlie and Smokey climbed down the
blanket ladder after watching the others leapfrog their way to the corner. With
the helicopter coming any minute, there was little room for error, and he
refused to think about what would happen if it didn’t show up.

No zombies were in sight
due to their effective culling program, so Charlie and Smokey hustled over and
scooped Elvis up, easy like Sunday morning. She was happy to see them and
chattered away as they turned to catch the others.

That’s when things got interesting. Motorcycles,
four-wheelers and finally a bus pulled around the corner and blocked their way,
heading right for them. Surrounded by heavily armed men on the smaller
vehicles, Charlie and Smokey stood their ground as more filed out of the bus.

A muscle-bound man with a
commanding presence came forth while barking out orders. “Doc, get what you
need and do it quick.” He looked at the captured and now disarmed pair. “You
busters have any reason for me to let you live?”

To Charlie’s shock, the man before him was the dreadlocked
prisoner he used to flip off during his daily routine outside the prison.
Smokey recognized him too. “Markee, is that you?”

Marquell Washington, pimp, thug and murderer, had also been
Smokey’s long time dealer, and Smokey had been one hell of a customer. “Ah
shit, Smoke, I haven’t seen you in a grip. What the fuck’s up? I didn’t
recognize you with that marker all over your face.” He slapped hands with his
old acquaintance. The two had shared many a blunt over the years, and just like
that, the sheer power of stoner luck saved the day. For the moment.

Trent peered through binoculars to assess the situation.
“They’re surrounded. What do we do now?”

Rob had taken his orders seriously. “Wait and see, but not
for long. We’ll leave without them if we have to.”

Charlie avoided the strongman’s gaze as Marquell and Smokey
glad-handed. Like usual, Smokey lost track of time and Charlie had to step in.
“We need to get going.”

“You got something more important to do?” Marquell said as
his tone lost its friendliness.

“We’re bringing food to some old people. Kinda like meals on
wheels.”

“Good Samaritans, huh? So where’s the food?” Marquell was
growing more curious by the second as the doctor emerged with his supplies and
the rest of his men beat to death several zombies lured by the sound of running
engines. The crooks appeared to be enjoying it.

“We gotta find it first,” Charlie replied unconvincingly.

In prison, one is completely surrounded by liars, and
Marquell had naturally learned to recognize most tells — to him, Charlie’s
arched eyebrow was screaming bullshit. “Carrying a pet would only slow you
down,” he said as his men closed in. “You hiding something from me, bro?”

“Maybe they got some bitches nearby,” one of Marquell’s lackeys
said. The breaking and entering expert with a unibrow and bad haircut got right
into Charlie’s face.

“Yeah, or drugs,” another said after using a lead pipe to
deliver a deathblow to a downed zombie.

Defying their very nature, Trent and Russ left the group
behind and snuck towards their captured friends, moving from one hiding spot to
another. With only a pistol and shovel, it wasn’t quite clear what they hoped
to accomplish, but Trent stepping up was no small miracle in itself.

Marquell now looked Charlie square in the eye. “Your bald
ass looks familiar.”

Charlie silently cursed himself for derailing the plan and
hoped the others were sticking to it. “I get that a lot, my mom said it’s
because—”

“Yeah, I’m sure of it.” Marquell’s voice rose. “You’re the motherfucker
that used to talk shit to me every day.”

It was at that exact second the stereo kicked on, playing
Steve Winwood’s “Back in the High Life Again,” cranked up so loud anyone within
a mile could hear it. The thugs looked around in bewilderment as the dinner
bell rang, and zombies poured in from all directions, jumping through windows,
running out of buildings and even rising out of an open manhole.

Marquell quickly forgot about Charlie as deadly hand to
mouth combat began. The prisoners shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned their attackers
by the dozens, but were quickly overwhelmed by the growing army of the dead. It
was simple math.

The prisoner with the unibrow panicked and fled on a
four-wheeler when one of his friends rose from the ground, freshly zombie-fied.
Never one for cowardice, the boss shot him down in cold blood. “Kill anyone
that runs!”

Charlie grabbed the dead man’s gun and dove behind a car
with Smokey as Trent and Russ made their way over, now contending with incoming
zombies and stray bullets. At this point, Elvis, the reason they were even in
this predicament, ran off in the commotion.

That’s when the bus blew up and sent flaming debris and
shrapnel amidst the combatants. Sergeant Zhang’s forces had been drawn by Steve
Winwood’s smooth voice and the roar of battle, and they unleashed a volley of
type 69 RPG’s to announce their arrival. They sprayed the area with automatic
fire and things really got ugly.

“Fuck this.” Russ threw his shovel and ducked down an
alleyway before disappearing behind the buildings.

“Goddammit, Russ!” Trent screamed while firing at zombies,
prisoners and Chinamen alike. He soon reached his pinned down friends and
narrowly avoided a hail of bullets that flew past him and tore into a nearby
zombie instead. “Fatality,” he said after firing a round into the face of the
twitching creature on the ground. It had been Marquell’s conscripted doctor
minutes earlier.

“I never thought I’d be glad to see you,” Charlie said and
fired at a soldier trying to flank them, finally hitting the man on his third
shot. “Where’s everyone else?”

“They’re headed to the pickup zone. Except for Russ. He
bailed and—” Trent was interrupted by the sound of a low-flying helicopter. It
raked the People’s Liberation Army with rounds and took off, chased by a
withering assault of small arms fire and RPG’s .

Seeing the enemy distracted, Marquell crawled out from under
several corpses and slid across the hood of the car, crashing into Smokey. “Don’t
shoot man, same team,” he said quickly as Trent raised his pistol.

Charlie nodded. “He’s right, it’s gonna take all of us to
get out of here. What we gotta do is—”

Heavy machine gun fire rained down on the Chinese position
from overhead, interrupting Charlie’s plan but giving them an opening just the
same. Shouts of, “Get some, get some, get some!” rang out, meaning Russ was
deep in the midst of an imaginary Vietnam War flashback. He might have been a
deadbeat dad, a petty thief and a statutory rapist, but he was also a patriotic
son of a bitch.

Instead of fleeing, Russ had made his way to the back of the
apartment and scaled the alley gate in order to reach Trent’s window. From
there it was a quick trip upstairs to unleash his fury on the invading army.
Having the high ground and a clear shot, he was knocking them down like bowling
pins.

By this point, most of the prisoners had fallen to bullets
or bites, and the “good guys” were seriously outnumbered. Still, Russ kept up
his onslaught and dozens of freshly made zombies added to the mayhem.

But the soldiers kept coming too, and it didn’t take long
for Russ to run out of ammo. Like a man possessed, he jumped off the back of
the building and twisted in midair, his mullet flowing in the wind as he
grabbed the chain link fence on his way down. It was glorious, until Zombie
Cliff sprang at the fence and bit Russ’s finger off in one jerky motion. The
toothless and dehydrated nightmare’s rictus grin revealed a jagged jaw
sharpened by months of gnawing on brick walls.

“You asshole!” Russ flipped Cliff off with his remaining
middle finger. His next move was to bash in the window of Smokey’s hybrid SUV
and grab the keys under the seat. If there was anything deadlier than a drunken
suicidal redneck with a machine gun, it was a drunken suicidal redneck behind
the wheel. As Steve Winwood continued on repeat above the din of battle, Russ
blasted through one gate and then the other, obliterating Cliff and bursting
onto the main street, seventy starving zombies in tow.

Bullets riddled the car and the zombies on top of it, yet
Russ drove right into the ranks of the invading troops, acting as a blocker for
the bloodthirsty crowd behind him. It was a massacre and Sergeant Zhang was the
first to be swept away by the hungry zombie tidal wave.

Charlie, Smokey and even Marquell cheered as the momentum
shifted and the Chinese soldiers broke ranks and fled with the cannibals in hot
pursuit. That’s when Charlie noticed Trent was gone. Apparently, the cop’s
heroism had limits and after cheating death one too many times, his scumbag
side came roaring back with a vengeance. He’d used Russ’s distraction to slip
away unnoticed.

Meanwhile, Russ was about to pull around for a victory lap
when he realized his steering and brakes were out. And the engine was on fire.
And the local swimming pool was right in front of him. He lit a cigarette with
his good hand and went through one more fence before crashing into the deep
end.

The SUV began to sink as dirty water rushed in and Russ’s
stomach began to churn. He took a drag from the cigarette while engine smoke
filled the car and a handful of zombies splashed into the water above him. “And
they said THESE would kill me.”

Chapter
38

Fancy Meeting You
Here

Rob fought back the urge to rescue his friends when the
music started and the shit hit the fan. But this was the first time he’d ever
been in charge of something important, and he was not going to fail. He’d had a
lifetime of that already. Big Rob Magnusson the idiot, the dirty kid, the
punching bag, the laughingstock. Not today.

They watched in horror as the zombies swarmed by and then in
shock as the Chinese troops arrived. Still, Rob maintained a steady demeanor
and kept them focused by repeating the plan like a mantra. “Go down the ladder,
two blocks north, one block west, everyone follow me. Go down the ladder, two
blocks north, one block west, everyone follow me.”

The flow of cannibals past their position slowed to a
trickle, and when the helicopter flew by, it was game time. Rob zoomed down the
ladder and effortlessly split a slow moving zombie’s skull in half with the
whirl of his bat. Left-Nut followed with Brandon while the women huddled in
close behind. There was no turning back.

Charlie’s plan had crumbled through a volatile mixture of stupidity,
bad luck, and bravery. Now they were crossing no man’s land in early daylight
during the middle of a battle royal. A casual observer probably would’ve
expected their escape to turn out exactly like this.

The refugees made quick progress and only slowed down long
enough for Rob to annihilate whatever hapless zombie was dumb enough to give
chase. He was performing like a gladiator and it didn’t matter if the zombies
came two or three at a time. Headshot, broken spine, broken neck, splattered
face, over and over. He had help too, with Brooke firing away until her pistol
was empty while Kate put a cast-iron skillet to good use. Left-Nut continued to
carry Brandon and simply positioned himself between the others as blockers. His
self-preservation skills were finally put to good use.

Covered in blood and entrails, the genial giant now looked
like he was straight out of a b-horror movie. At one point, the killing tool
slipped from Rob’s hand and forced him to assume his old wrestling stance. He
maneuvered around one assailant and power bombed it onto the sidewalk like a
ripe pumpkin.

Kate wiped the bat clean on her shirt and handed it back.
“Almost there,” she said with a mixture of disgust and encouragement on her
face.

They went around the corner and found the helicopter parked
ahead as promised. Fifty yards to go. Forty. Thirty. The Black Hawk fired on
several nearby zombies and the group waved frantically to avoid getting shot as
well. Twenty yards, so close that the downwash battered their clothes and blew
the women’s hair around.

One last zombie approached and Rob unleashed every remaining
bit of rage he had left. The aluminum bat bent on impact and the broken beast
tumbled end over end before stopping in a pile of shattered death. Success.

Before Rob knew what was happening, Kate grabbed him by the
jaw and planted a passionate kiss on his lips. Left-Nut lined up for his own
smooch and was quickly turned down. He still had it.

The soldiers gave a warm greeting, checked them for bites,
and brought Brandon into the cockpit. Next, they strapped the women in while a
still blushing Rob grabbed the gunner’s shoulder. “Can you wait five minutes?”

As though on cue, more zombies streamed towards the
helicopter, and the gunner effortlessly mowed them down. “We’re leaving now,”
the man said unemotionally. “This city’s a goddamned graveyard and we’re not
coming back.”

Rob stepped out of the helicopter. “Where are you going to
take them?”

“There’s a camp due south of Cantonville. Do you know the
area?” the man asked.

Big Rob beamed a toothy smile. “Know it? That’s where we
grew up.” He reached in and forcefully dragged Left-Nut off the helicopter.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Never leave a man behind, remember?”

Brooke made eye contact with Rob as the chopper took off.
“Tell Charlie I’m pregnant!”

Viking Rob Magnusson picked up his bent baseball bat,
grabbed his cursing friend by the scruff of the neck, and headed towards the
sound of gunfire.

* * *

Trent was jolted awake by what he hoped was a bucket of warm
water splashing into his face. Helpless and scared, he strained against his
bonds in the darkness, only making them slick with blood.

The dirty cop had abandoned his friends an hour earlier and
against his own intuition, snuck inside the Halloween store. It was his nature
to be a coward after all, and as things headed seriously south, it was the
obvious choice. But he hadn’t even shut the door when a hard object crashed
upside his head and knocked him out cold. Now he was at the tender mercy of
whatever lurked in the pitch darkness. He could hear it moving closer.

“Uh hello,” Trent said and played his best average Joe
routine. “I’m a cop.” His jaw hurt like hell and was most likely dislocated.
Possibly broken.

His captor turned on a flashlight and revealed a person
wearing a translucent clown mask with makeup haphazardly smeared across the
face. Trent hated clowns. The thing crept forward as liquid hit the floor.

“A fear piss? God you’re such a pussy,” came the familiar
female voice. It was the last one he expected to hear. Sarah Birdsong removed
the mask and was even prettier than he remembered. On the downside, she had
turned pants-crapping insane.

“Thank God you survi—”

A fist flew out of the darkness and solidly connected with
Trent’s eye socket, rocking his head against the metal chair. “You rancid piece
of shit,” Sarah said with bile rising in her throat.

“I’m sorry I—”

Another punch cut him off. “Shut it.”

“Sarah, I’m different now. I was scared.”

She covered his mouth with duct tape. “You’re not talking your
way out of this. I do suppose you’re wondering what’s going on. After you
abandoned me, I shot so many bastards crawling into the car it was like a
cocoon of dead bodies. And I was there for a whole day until somebody cut me
out. Do you know how much pain I was in?” She patted his head. “You will.”

Sarah pulled up a chair. “After an elderly couple nursed me
back to health, I made my way over here. Of course, like the herpes you gave me
and lied about, you were still around.”

Trent continued to quietly work at the tape around his
wrists, but the more he strained, the farther it pushed into his flesh.

“Then I watched and waited and hoped you’d screw up. By the
way, you and your idiot friends snuck up on me a while back. One of those
mannequins was me. I just stood still and you morons walked right by me.”

The tape began to tear. A
little more and he’d have an arm free. She continued, unaware and clearly
enjoying her captive audience’s discomfort. “You called me a badge bunny, a
holster sniffer. You even sexted my naked pictures around the department. And
you know, I could forgive all that. But what kind of human shit-stain leaves an
injured person behind like you did?”

She finally noticed Trent’s efforts to escape and laughed
heartily. “You’re not getting off that easy.” Sarah re-taped his limbs to the
chair and made sure to rip the long hair off his arms in the process. “And I
watched your friends leave, so don’t expect any last minute James Bond-type
rescues. No, you’re going to hear what I have to say for once in your life.
Then you’re going to feel the same pain that I did. And then you’re going to
die.”