Slow Burn: A Zombie Novel (17 page)

"Jasmine, is that you?" Dan asked in a loud voice, with his pistol at the low ready. "You know I don’t like you to play around like this and I’ve always got my gun on me so don't fuck around here."

A large male subject appeared from around the blind corner and headed right for Dan, a terrible, demonic howl issuing from his mouth. Dan took a step back and fired three rapid shots at point blank range. All three found their marks and two crimson dots appeared on the man’s chest with the third shot striking the assailant in the head, causing it to snap back violently. Brain matter showered out of the large exit wound left by the .45 hollow point. The intruder’s corpse fell to the floor and knocked over his coffee table in the process. He lay perfectly still on his back with his legs twisted grotesquely under his body, which was now covered in gun and porno magazines.

It was over in seconds, and with his ears ringing, Dan scanned the room for any more threats. Not seeing any sign of a second subject, he approached the fallen man.

“
Damn!” Dan sighed. “What a rush! You picked the wrong guy to mess with, motherfucker!”

Dan was a bit angered when he recognized the dead man as one of the dozen Hispanics who recently bought and moved into the house next door. Although packed into the residence pretty tightly, they had kept quiet, were hard working and had not given him any trouble. Despite the fact that the guy was missing part of his head, Dan could tell that the man had also been sick. Dried blood was smeared from his nose and mouth, and he almost looked yellow. He also had red streaks radiating from his upper left arm, running the length of it, and was wearing only a blood-stained white t-shirt and boxers, no shoes or socks. It was obvious that the man wished him harm, but Dan did not see a weapon visible. As Dan moved past the body into the kitchen, he could see that his unlocked patio door was the obvious point of entry. A bloody handprint was left on the door, marking the spot.

He was already bloody?
Dan wondered, deciding not to touch the door as it was evidence in the home invasion and needed to be documented by the police. The smell of pizza also reminded Dan to pull it from the oven and let it cool on top of the stove. He threw the empty beer can on the counter into the trash and considered grabbing a slice of pizza as soon as it cooled.

As Dan was processing all of this and contemplating his 911 call, he walked back to find his cell phone. The phone was on his nightstand with the open drawer and missing gun. Looking at the empty space again, Dan noticed a slip of paper that he missed earlier sitting in the bottom of the drawer and picked it up. Dan, already in a daze from his first shooting, was failing to completely put together the fact that he was looking at a pawn receipt for $400.00 with what appeared to be a Colt 1911 as collateral. Slowly connecting the dots, Dan became aware of what sounded like a vehicle flying down his street. Leaning over, Dan glanced out the bedroom window and froze at the weirdness of what he saw. The vehicle that was accelerating towards his home was Jasmine’s yellow V8 Mustang GT. He also immediately realized it would surely not be able to stop in time and was probably going to crash right into his house.

Dan had only seconds to frown at how his night was turning out and futilely watched it slam into his attached garage with a deafening crash. His Dodge Durango was parked in the stall on the left, nearest the door leading into his laundry room. The other bay contained his prized Harley Davidson motorcycle. As Jasmine’s Mustang tore through Dan’s closed garage door, it managed to clip the rear passenger wheel of the Durango shortly before it smashed into the Harley as well. The Mustang’s momentum carried it and the Harley through the back wall of the garage and out into the backyard, with the wreckage finally coming to a stop in Dan’s now destroyed above ground pool. Dan ran to the back window just in time to see the water splash high into the air.

Now barely able to comprehend what happened in the last five minutes, Dan walked out his back patio door in a daze, down the steps to the Mustang. He could not help but stop and stare at the large hole in his garage, with his custom red toolbox smashed, lying on the ground. Scanning back, he wanted to cry at the sight of his Harley now pinned under the Mustang and submerged in water. The horn of her Mustang was blaring, and he could see Jasmine slumped over the wheel behind a now deflated airbag. Glancing again to his Harley sitting in the draining pool and watching the water flooding into his garage, Dan was not sure if he wanted her alive or dead at that point. Unable to think clearly until he could get the horn shut off, Dan struggled through the water and vehicle wreckage until he was able to get the hood up far enough to rip the battery cables free. Returning to the driver’s door, he coughed a few times from the airbag dust and noticed that Jasmine appeared semi-conscious and visibly sick with what looked like vomit staining her sequined halter top. She also had a bloody nose, which Dan assumed resulted from the air bag.

Even after a major car wreck she still looked like a million bucks. He took the time to stare at her wondrous rack – that his hard earned overtime checks had paid for – spilling out of the halter top.

She was still wearing her seat belt, and Dan was unable to get it unbuckled. After a short struggle, he took a breather and tried instead to talk to Jasmine.

"What happened, baby?" he asked. "Where have ya been, and where is my pizza?”

Jasmine’s head eased back into the seat’s headrest, and she began to whisper to him about how she had been giving a Mexican laborer a lap dance in the VIP area at work the previous night.

“
He didn’t look too good, Dan,” Jasmine groaned while struggling to talk. “He’d been tipping real well, so I was going along with it when he became aggressive for seemingly no reason and ended up biting me in my left titty.”

Dan just nodded his head and continued to listen as Jasmine described how she went home to clean it up, but it had already become infected. Throughout the morning, she felt worse and worse. After sleeping most of the day, she decided to try to drive to Dan's house after she was unable to use her phone to call for help. She also told him how after traffic was all backed up on the interstate, she was forced to take the back way in and was losing consciousness at the end.

"Well, you made it!" Dan sighed as he looked at his shattered garage, destroyed motorcycle and wrecked pool. "Hold on a minute, and let me try to get you out of this car and inside the house. You don’t look so good, babe. We’re going to need to call you an ambulance!"

Suddenly remembering the dead neighbor in his kitchen, Dan again was pissed off with how his night was turning out.

“
Fucking unbelievable!” Dan cursed as he started to struggle again with her seatbelt.

As Dan was thinking of going to retrieve a knife to just cut the belt, his mind began to wander.

Did she say the phones weren’t working? And why’s the interstate all backed up?

Dan saw movement out of the corner of his eye. It seemed that all the noise from the crash and blaring horn had drawn the attention of several more of his neighbors who lived in the same house as the now dead man lying in his kitchen.

“
This is going to be an interesting conversation,” Dan said to Jasmine, “since I don’t speak any Spanish and their friend is dead inside my house.”

Dan approached them to say a rudimentary greeting in Spanish but hesitated, because something was not right with how they looked. As the first man got closer, Dan noticed he was missing a large chunk of his neck and was soaked in blood. Dan would have thought that the man was seeking help except for the fact that he had the same crazed look on his face as the intruder he just put down. He was followed by two women who, although did not look hurt, were acting in the same disturbing fashion. One of them was completely naked from the waist up and Dan hesitated for a moment, transfixed at the perfect B cups headed his way.

Only snapped out of it by her sickly moans, Dan backed up, pulled his Glock from his waistband and ordered them all to the ground.

"Get the fuck down now!" Dan screeched with no effect. “Stop or I'll shoot you all!”

With the trio now mere paces away, Dan fired a shot into the lead neighbor’s right leg. The man stumbled under the 800 foot-pounds of energy from the slug that his leg just absorbed but continued on undeterred. Dan retreated again and fired two more rounds to the chest, which knocked the man backwards into his ghoulish-looking harem. At this point he should have earned some compliance from the trio, but they lurched forward again. Dan had now lost his temper and pistol training kicked in. He stepped forward, raising his .45 to head level and completed his failure drill. His Glock locked back on an empty magazine in two seconds, and all three of his former neighbors fell lifeless to the grass from .45 caliber entrance wounds to the head.

"I'm fucked!" Dan said with dread to Jasmine. “Nobody’s ever going to believe this story. The media is going to portray me as some right wing extremist that went off the deep end and murdered all off his illegal immigrant neighbors.”

When he turned back to Jasmine, he was shocked to see that she was now very much awake and had turned aggressive, thrashing in her seatbelt. She seemed unaware of the need to remove it, apparently not even trying to. He walked over to her, frowning at seeing the same blank and menacing stare coming from his girlfriend. She snarled in anticipation as he approached. Her teeth showed her intentions of what she wanted to do to him, but not in her normal playful way. He looked at the three dead bodies lying in his yard that had taken multiple gunshots without uttering a word of pain and then back at Jasmine, who looked worse than she would coming off a weekend of heavy heroin use. Dan then added that to the fact that she kept trying to bite his arm whenever he tried to reach in through the window.

"What the fuck? They act just like zombies!" He couldn’t believe he’d just said that. “Well, that could explain a lot I guess.”

Dan could have used a few minutes to let this all sink in but was not afforded the luxury. It would never be known for sure if the fire was electrical in nature, from the damage to his garage, or from a gas leak due to a damaged line. The end result was the same either way. Dan was standing there thinking of zombies as a flickering light grew in the backyard. He was snapped back to reality when he remembered the single streetlight out front didn’t give off this much light. Dreading what he knew he was going to find, Dan slowly turned and simply grimaced at the fact that his house was now on fire. And it was spreading fast. Feeling the growing heat on his face, Dan knew he did not have long before everything he owned would be totally lost in the blaze.

He knew it was useless to try to get back into his basement to grab anything of value and instead sprinted to the front of his house to his Durango sitting in the garage. The keys were still in the ignition, and although the back tire was damaged, Dan was able to back it out of the garage and into the street. His house was now totally engulfed, and from there it looked to Dan like Jasmine was going to quickly go from very wet to very much on fire as the collapsed roof of the garage fell onto her car in flames.

She doesn’t deserve to go out like that,
Dan decided, yet knowing full well there was nothing he could do.

Rounds started cooking off in his basement, and it was looking to be quite a show for the neighborhood. A few neighbors were now out in their yards watching the fire in amazement. Dan was never all that friendly to any of them, and they all kept their distance as he looked totally oblivious to the fact that his house was burning down. They simply stared in wonder as Dan walked over to the Hispanics’ driveway and stopped at a late model 3500 Chevy pickup that was filled with landscaping equipment. Dan broke out the driver’s window with his empty pistol and had the truck hotwired in seconds.

Backing it up to his Durango, he got out of the truck and opened his back hatch, retrieving his large B.O.B and Pelican rifle case. He opened the case and first grabbed one of his several loaded magazines for his Glock 21 and slammed it home. Then he reached for his rifle, a home build he was quite proud of. Working for a small department had its privileges and especially when you were drinking buddies with the Chief. Department letterhead can go a long way, even in a state like Illinois. The 11.5 inch barreled AR-15 rifle was outfitted with an Aimpoint Comp M4 and a Surefire scout light and sound suppressor. With a Redi-Mag and a dozen extra loaded Pmags, Dan was always ready for war. Also in the rifle case was his equally prized Springfield TRP 1911 with a Streamlight TLR-1 light on the rail, along with a dozen loaded magazines for it. He kept a single point sling and drop holster in the case as well, and his chest rig was always in the Durango's bed with his smaller travel bag. Most of Dan’s friends thought of him as a survival nut, but he just called himself prepared. Sure he had been wrong about 12/21/12, but he always knew this day would come. He just didn’t think it would be zombies by any stretch of the imagination.

The travel bag Dan grabbed contained clothing, and due to the fact that he was soaked to the bone and not wearing any socks or shoes, Dan stripped down naked in the street in front of his remaining neighbors and changed into Woodland Camouflage BDUs, followed by socks and boots. He did notice that he received a lingering glance from his hot neighbor before she was dragged inside by her jealous husband. Now dressed, Dan located the box of Cuban cigars he kept in the glove box of the Durango, along with the bottle of Jack Daniels from the center console. He also grabbed his handheld Yaesu FT-60R 2-meter HAM radio which was lying on the front passenger seat and pulled the magnet antenna from the Durango’s roof. Dan then finished by throwing his B.O.B along with the secondary bag and pelican case in the back of his new ride and set his carbine, locked and loaded, on the seat next to him.