Riding The Apocalypse (17 page)

Max came out to the tee, with three beers in hand, and looked past us at the monster in the trap. “Anybody get ’em?” he asked, instantly recognizing our competition.

“I got ’em on his back,” I boasted proudly.

Max patted me on the back and smiled. He handed us the beers and grabbed the club from my hand.

Whoop!

We each took a few more swings, but not one of the ensuing shots found its mark. We laughed a little, drank our beers, and let some aggression out on those unsuspecting golf balls. For a few minutes we eased our consciences, and took a respite from the horror movie we now lived in.

“Uncle Frank ain’t coming with us, huh, Max?” Buell said.

“Nope, he is in a good place, in more ways than one. I actually envy him in a way. Even though he is at the end, he is self-actualized. He got all he wanted out of this world.” Max spoke in a somber tone. “It’s a good thing for him too, ’cause the world ain’t giving much back these days.”

“Let’s finish these beers and get going, daylight is wasting,” I added.

We toasted Uncle Frank with a clink of three bottles, downed our beers, and headed out. We made damn sure the area was clear and the doors were locked before we left. I heard a gunshot in the distance and saw Buell coming back from the sand trap.

“I actually felt bad for the poor bastard,” Buell said after he got within earshot. “He seemed distressed.”

“That was the only way you were gonna hit ’em,” I mused.

Max wasn’t laughing. “This ain’t his fault, man, these monsters are not the bad guys.”

A sobering thought. We mounted up without another word, and hit the highway.

We were about ten minutes down 9 when I saw Buell hit the brakes. He swerved quickly to his right, away from the dividing line, and yelled into the mic.

“On your left!”

It was too late. Max was hugging the yellow line and could not avoid the person who had suddenly appeared in the roadway, seconds before Max saw him. Simultaneously, I noted dust coming from about thirty feet up the hill that bordered the left lane and hit my front brake hard, causing my rear tire to lift slightly off the ground as I slowed.

It happened so fast. Before Max could react, the left side of his motorcycle struck the person in the road. I watched as Max was ejected and went sliding along the ground behind his bike. Due to the plastic contact patches, his bike skidded along the pavement much quicker than Max and his leathers could. The motorcycle took off ahead of him and stopped against the right hillside at the edge of the road.

I was able to stop before hitting anything. It might have been better to just go around, ignoring the damage Max’s bike had done to the guy splayed out in the road.

But I didn’t.

He was skinny, eyes black, mouth bloodred. He wore a faded pair of coveralls and a right boot. His left boot was still on his left foot, which had been severed when Max hit him at seventy miles per hour. The rest of the left leg was still attached but bent awkwardly. The injured leg was worthless, it could not hold the monster’s weight as he tried to rise, then fell abruptly.

I guided my bike off the roadway, onto the right shoulder, then slammed the kickstand down angrily and jumped off. I ran right past the disabled monster toward Max who was still down. I watched as Buell, who had already doubled back, pulled him out of the brush on the right shoulder.

“Don’t move him!” I yelled.

“Relax, Rem, he was sitting up when I got to him,” Buell shouted back.

“Shit, I think my ankle is broken.” Max winced.

As Max had struck the monster hard enough to sever the creature’s left foot, he had been thrown to the pavement with his own left foot pinched between the road and his bike on impact.

“I felt something, man. Look at it, Jesus!” Max said.

The ankle did not appear misshapen, but the area above his boot had already swollen to the size of a softball.

“I don’t think that is your ankle, dude, looks too high, maybe your lower leg. Either way, we gotta get you off the road,” Buell said as he put both his hands under Max’s shoulders.

Buell pulled him along the right shoulder, off the highway. I turned to see what Farmer Ted was doing, and saw it was making little progress trying to get to us. The anger welled up in me as I approached it. I walked past it, pulled the tire iron from the side of my motorcycle, and spun toward the creature. It was in the middle of the road, up on one knee, arms outstretched, moaning and snapping its jaws at me. I stopped about five feet from the beast. It looked remarkably unscathed aside from the broken leg and missing foot. There wasn’t much blood, though his bloody face was unshaven, and ugly to boot. However, it looked intact. I glanced up and saw a home with a balcony about a hundred feet up, with many bushes and shrubs between the house and roadside. The foliage must have slowed its descent, cushioned its fall, and kept it from spattering on the pavement.

At that point, I brought the tire iron down hard on his skull, all I could think about was revenge for my friend. The monster’s head split almost perfectly in half down to the nose when the resistance of his skull eventually caught up to the iron. I fell to my right as the force was transferred to my body, and wound up on my ass three feet to his left. The monster stayed upright for a few seconds, then fell forward with the iron still lodged in his head. He hit the pavement with a clank. There he slumped, leaning forward at a forty-five degree angle, with a tire iron for a kickstand protruding from his head. I stood, kicked the tire iron out of his cleaved skull, and watched what was left of his face hit the pavement.

“Get the fucking thing off the road before someone else hits it!” Buell shouted.

Buell was now rolling Max’s Ducati to him.

There are some things that just look wrong in life and make you shake your head. For instance, seeing a beautiful woman with an ugly guy, California rolls on a sushi plate, wine coolers anywhere, and of course, a wrecked Ducati. Ducatis are the most beautiful motorcycles on the road, and seeing one demolished just doesn’t look right. It is almost criminal.

The bike had road rash all along one side, and there were red shards of plastic littering the highway like confetti, but the worst part was coming from the bike itself.

Oil.

Buell was doing his best to keep the oil from the crankcase from spilling on the highway as he walked it on the shoulder.

But the Ducati was dead.

Max knew it too. “So what do we do now, guys?”

I pointed up to where the monster had fallen from and spoke. “Well, we can go up the driveway to Farmer Ted’s house and see if we can stake claim there, ice that leg and figure it out?” I said, proud of my quick thinking.

Buell nodded his agreement. “Hell yeah, that guy owes us one!”

Chapter 19

“Serendipity.”

I don’t know what was worse, seeing the Ducati on the side of the road, smashed to hell, or leaving it there. But it had to be done. Max climbed onto the back of my bike, and we headed to the small gravel driveway that led us up the hill. I rode as slowly as I could toward the house with the balcony that had provided the monster its diving platform.

“How you doing, Max?” I whispered, hoping it hurt Max’s ankle less to hear the question in a softer voice.

“Hurts a little, but I am more upset that I am on the disabled list as of now. My poor Duc—”

“Sssh,” Buell interrupted. “No radio chatter, I am cresting the hill, and I can see the house now to my left.”

We pulled up to the front of the home. The house was not particularly large or showy. It was only one story and needed a gardener. We got off the bikes and took out our guns. Max stood against a tree in the turnabout in front of the house.

“Got your safety off, guys?” Buell asked.

“Yeah.”

“Aye.”

Buell approached the front door with his gun pointing downward. There was a body lying on the porch.

“Do you guys see that?” Buell said, pointing his weapon at the body, a black man, who was obviously infected before he died, again. He had a gaping hole in his temple and blood on his mouth and clothes.

“My God, the smell is horrible,” I said. He looked bloated as well. His fingers looked like that glove-hand character from the Hamburger Helper commercials, and the nails were stained red.

The door was closed, and the house was dimly lit inside. I could see light flickering through the bay window as I peered inside from the right side of the front door. Unfortunately, it was not enough light to see anything inside.

Buell, still wearing his helmet, knocked on the door and quickly stepped back into a firing position to the left, opposite of myself. I kept my gun pointed at the peephole of the large oak front door.

No answer.

“What do we do now?”

“Fuck, guys, I gotta sit, I am still right here. I will cover outside, but I gotta get my leg up,” Max said in obvious pain.

“No problem, bro, just be on the lookout, and watch behind if you can,” I added. “Check the road as well.”

“No problem, Remy, you need me to draw you a warm bath too?” Max asked sarcastically.

It never ended. We were about to break into the house of a zombie we had just killed, and Max thought it was amateur night. I needed to set him straight.

“Don’t be ridiculous, but could you limp over here and hold my dick for me, I gotta piss, but I am cover—”

“Really, guys?” Buell said.

I turned and watched Max drop down on one of the decorative rocks in the flower bed island. He lifted his injured leg in front of him and gently placed it on a smaller rock. Before going up the driveway, I had wrapped his ankle in a T-shirt, and a shin guard from Buell’s riding suit. I also used bungee cords to tie them together. It seemed to be holding, but it didn’t do much for the pain.

“I am gonna kick in the door,” Buell said quietly.

“You try to kick that thick door down, and you will be sitting next to Max with your leg in a bungee. That shit is oak, and your dental instrument legs will snap like twigs. This ain’t
Cops,
just break the damn window, dude. Let ’em bill us!” I snapped.

There were assorted glass panels on the door and it seemed that if you broke the lower left pane with the butt of your gun, you could just reach in and twist the dead bolt or doorknob lock.

But Buell was never one for the easy way. “I can do it, man, I just have to hit it in the right spot!” Buell argued. “I always wanted to—”

All of a sudden, there was a crash. Glass flew everywhere, and I ducked my head as Buell jumped back and raised his weapon.

“There, now let’s wait and see if anyone comes to the door!” Max shouted, having thrown a healthy sized decorative rock through the door’s window pane.

I smiled, took my helmet off, and waited.

Nothing.

“Okay, I will stick my arm through and unlock the door. Buell, cover me,” I said as I put my hand through the broken pane. “But first I am just gonna—Motherfucker!”

“What?” yelled Buell.

“Door was open,” I said as I pushed it open and stepped back.

I could hear Max laughing under his helmet. “I swear, you guys, stop it, my ankle is killing me. Don’t make me laugh!” He grimaced.

I looked in through the open door and saw what I will only describe as Hell on Earth. Three people were lying on the ground. Two women and a small girl, all lying facedown in the living room with bullet holes in their heads. A patch of blood the size of a kiddie pool had congealed in the center of the bodies. I looked around quickly and I saw one other body halfway out the broken sliding glass door leading to the balcony. I could not tell if it was a man or a woman lying there. The body was almost entirely consumed from the head down to the waist on its back side. The head, or whatever was left of the head, was facing down. I stumbled slightly over a rifle on the floor next to the bodies. My hand disappeared into the puddle of blood as I put my palm out to stop my fall. I could not see my skin below the wrist. I signaled to Buell to come in slowly, then watched him frantically try to pull his helmet off before he vomited into it.

No luck.

“Damn it, Jesus, this friggin’ hel—”

I somehow whispered and yelled at the same time. “Shut the fuck up, man! We don’t know if anyone else is here. Let’s go down the hall to the right, and don’t trip over the guns, or slip on your puke,” I added wiping my palm on a different patch of carpet.

The home was a ranch-style design. There weren’t many rooms, or fancy furniture large enough for a monster to be behind. From where we were, we could pretty much see everything in the home besides down the hall and in the bedrooms. Even the kitchen was open and clearly visible.

I walked over to the garage door, which was on my far left, and locked it. “We will deal with that later.”

There was decent light coming through the windows and broken sliding glass door so it wasn’t particularly difficult to see our way around.

The décor was quite rustic, yet had a certain Ikea feel to it, as if the antiques were not actually real antiques. The hallway was to the right of the foyer, and from where I was standing, I could clearly see there was nobody down the hall, standing or lying. The doors were all closed in the hallway, so I signaled Buell, who was shaking puke out of his helmet while making a face like he just smelled a gorilla fart.

Buell followed me down the hall, our guns drawn as we approached the first door on the right. I knocked lightly and waited. Monsters are not smart enough to wait quietly and ambush. Apparently, neither were we. This notwithstanding, I didn’t think anyone was in the room.

We methodically swept the rest of the hallway and rooms. We found nothing. The last room was a girl’s room, and it was filled with Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift posters. It saddened me to know that the little girl in the living room would never again sit in her room, looking at the posters and chatting with her friends. The kids get to me, they genuinely do. I guess if you look at the average kids, they are just like we were when we were younger. Except I had Def Leppard posters on my wall. Okay, maybe one Madonna poster, but it was the one with the mesh top—how could any teenage boy resist that poster?

I saw Max lumber into the house and plop down on the sofa. I heard Buell warning him not to look too closely although Buell had covered the bodies and his vomit as a courtesy. Buell surprises me at least once a day it seems, and I mean in a good way.

With Max on the couch and his foot elevated, I went to the freezer. Not much ice, but in the main compartment there was a large chunk of meat, which looked like a partial carcass of a deer. Luckily, it was still mostly frozen despite the blackout, probably due to its massive size.

“This isn’t going to smell too pleasant, but I think if you wrap it on your ankle it will help the swelling. Your leg actually doesn’t look broken, maybe just a high ankle sprain or a small fracture, I hope,” I said.

“Yeah, I can move my foot a little, but it hurts like a some-bitch when I do.”

“Then don’t do that, fucker,” Buell said with a wink.

“Come sit down next to me, bro, within punch…umm, talking distance. You ever get your ass kicked by a disabled man in tight leather pants?” Max asked.

“I’m sorry, man, just nervous. All kidding aside, what the hell do we do now?” Buell asked.

I kept running the scenario over and over in my head. There was no way I could let Senator Fuckface ride this out in his hidey hole. I had seen far too much to let him off the hook, it wasn’t even about Emily anymore.

“I am still going.” I stood up.

“I figured you were gonna say that, man, and I don’t blame you a bit, but I can’t go, Rem, not yet. Maybe that truck outside will start if we find the keys? I just don’t know if we can get there from here in a car. Fuck it, I will try—”

“No, it’s all good, Max, I got this. Look, I am gonna say this once, I think this is my quest, and I am really grateful you guys got me this far. So now I am just gonna go see if I can find the damn place and have a look around. Shit, he might not even be there, and then I will be back before dark, but I need to at least go see what’s going on. It is killing me not knowing. Thirty more miles, that’s it, and I can take the old Fort Ord Military Road.”

“But I can—”

“Buell, you can’t leave Max alone here on a couch in a house that has no power. Look, I am just gonna go check it out, you take care of Max. If it is empty I will be back in a few hours, hell before dark,” I said.

“I don’t need someone taking care of me!” Max snapped.

“With all due respect, Max, you have a deer carcass on your leg and can’t put weight on your left side. Buell, can you please search the house for some candles or food or some shit? I will be back in a few, bro.”

Buell knew damn well that, as tough as he is, Max would be an easy target if left alone. At least Buell could keep a constant moving watch, and get him in the truck in a pinch.

“All right, man, I will go look for the keys, but I bet they are down at the bottom of the hill with Hee Haw,” Buell answered.

I walked outside the sliding glass window, stepping over the body now covered with a curtain which had assumed a bloodred color. I looked over the edge of the balcony at the crash site, and could see the monster on the side of the road. I could also see how the balcony railing had collapsed. The dumbass probably heard the bikes, leaned too far, and broke through the weathered wooden railing. I should not be such an asshole. He could have been a decent guy just behind on his home repairs. It wasn’t his fault.

“So what do you think happened here?” Buell asked as he was washing his helmet in the sink.

“My guess is the jumper was bitten by the guy outside the door before, and he then decided he didn’t want to eat his family, and chose to end it. Maybe whoever is on the balcony showed up after,” I said, looking down at the body.

“Maybe they knew they were all infected. Word had been getting out about the flu vaccine. A couple of guys from that BBQ at the reservoir told me they had heard about it. Maybe they all had the vaccination and knew what was coming,” Buell theorized.

“Did you tell those guys at the BBQ about the senator? Or where we’re going?” I asked.

“Naw, man, this is all you, bro, nobody’s business.”

“Shit, I gotta go if I am gonna be back before dark,” I said while looking at my watch.

It was already twelve-thirty and Monterey was only thirty miles away, but the sun sets around five p.m. in California during November, so I needed to leave. I did not want to be rushed, and who the hell knew what I would find when I got there.

It was time.

“Aighty, bro, put the safety on your gun, so you don’t shoot yourself on the ride there. Oh hey, take this rifle,” Buell said as he lifted it from the floor. “It has a scope, you never know.” Buell then grabbed the opened box of rounds that was lying on the floor and stuffed them in my jacket pocket, zipped it closed, and slapped me on the back. “There’s the safety.” He pointed. “It’s got a scope on it ’cause it’s a deer-hunting rifle. That sucker will shoot at least a thousand yards with decent accuracy. Don’t lose that thing, I want to use it later.”

Thump.

We heard a noise coming from the kitchen—more like a soft tapping than the open-handed monster slap we had become so accustomed to. It came from the door to the pantry at the far end of the kitchen. I picked up the rifle, and Buell took it right out of my hands, gave me a tire iron, and pointed.

“You didn’t check?” I whispered.

Why did I ask that? I mean, if he had, we would not be standing here in this situation. It reminded me of when you lost something, and your mom said,
“Where was the last place you saw it?”

As I approached the door by the kitchen nook, I saw a small piece of folded paper, wedged chest high in between the pantry and the door jamb. I grabbed the note, while Buell covered the door. Out of habit, I idly tried the door while still holding the folded piece of binder paper.