Slow Burn: A Zombie Novel (20 page)

“
Sounds good.” I turned to Mattie. “Can give me a hand carrying supplies out?”

“
Gladly, Mike.”

“
Great! You smell better than Stephen anyhow.”

Climbing down from the ambulance, I did a 360 degree scan of my surroundings, and after concluding that the coast was clear, I waved for Mattie to follow me. Opening the gate to my fenced-in yard, I walked to my front door. I didn’t see any evidence of tampering on the door, so I put the key in and unlocked the deadbolt. I heard Bruiser’s deep, roaring bark as I pushed open the door and playfully rough-housed my dog, who almost tackled me while licking my face ferociously. Once he realized I had a visitor with me he ignored me to investigate Mattie and soon was clamoring for attention and trying to lick her face as well.

"Hey, Bruiser! Long time no see!" she said with a smile, her spirits raised by the friendly dog. "What's it been, a few hours?"

I pried him off of her by the collar. “Alright dog, get down, go out and do your thing, boy.” And with that I shoved him outside.

After he bounded past Mattie and out the door, I paused, turning back to the inside of my home and looked at her.

“
Say…did you close the front gate when you came in?”

“
Umm no I don’t think I did."

I leaned to the right and looked over her shoulder, out the door and down the sidewalk at Bruiser taking a huge dump. Right next to my wide open front gate!

“
Oh shit! Bruiser!”

Bruiser, now finished with his dump and facing the open gate, looked back at me from over his shoulder. I knew what he was thinking.

“
Don’t you dare, boy,” I ordered.

Bruiser, his tongue lolling from his fang filled maw, gave me a laughing look and exploded into a full out sprint through the front gate. The last thing I saw of him was when he paused to piss on my neighbor’s Mercedes’ tire and then was gone. I closed my eyes and groaned, slapping my hand over my face.

“
I’m so sorry, Mike,” Mattie said with obvious regret.

“
Don’t sweat it," I said reassuringly. "He runs away every chance he gets anyway. I’m tired of looking for him, and it usually takes animal control and $150.00 ticket to get him back. Let’s get to work. You bag up all of the food in the kitchen and take it out to the ambulance."

While she set up to work in the kitchen, I decided to change out of my zombie blood-soaked BDUs. I grabbed a pair of olive drab cargo pants, and my favorite Metallica workout shirt. I pulled on my combat boots and grabbed a large duffel bag and packed as many changes of clothes I could fit inside of it. Yanking the zipper shut, I headed out of the bedroom to the front door where I dropped the duffel bag. Next, I took an empty pillow case, went into the bathroom and tossed every piece of personal hygiene products I owned into it followed by every roll of toilet paper. I had spent way too much time in the field to forget one of the best luxuries to have. Something to wipe your ass with is worth more than gold.

Back out at the front door again, I grabbed the duffel bag, made my way out to the ambulance and tossed them inside. I noticed Stephen was on top of the truck staring down the street with Sherman’s shotgun at the ready position.

“
What’s up, bro?” I asked. “We got trouble?”

“
Not sure yet, take a look,” he responded and motioned down the street.

I looked down the street and observed a handful of infected bastards pounding on a front door. The owner looked to be dead in the front yard and was missing an arm and most of his left leg. I wondered who else was inside his house.

“
Keep your eye on them,” I decided. "If they get bored and want fresh meat, put them down fast. We want to draw as little attention to us as possible while we are vulnerable right now.”

“
Will do, boss,” Stephen replied. “Just hurry the fuck up with the rifle ammo.”

I jogged back inside to check on Mattie’s progress and saw her munching on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

“
That looks good, why don’t you make a bunch?" I mentioned to her. "Take a few out to Stephen. We could all use the chow right about now.”

Mattie nodded her head and tried to say something around a mouthful of food. I walked past her down into the basement and stopped to take a long look around my gym. Now that the world had gone to shit I was more pissed off that it appeared I would not be able to keep my workout routine than anything else I had seen so far. Kind of callous after so many people had died and been born again as flesh eating zombies, but if it kept me from snapping, I could really care less.

I walked through my workout area and over to my small preps section and started hoofing bottled water up to the ambulance. Next, I grabbed two military duffel bags and tossed every box, can, and bag of stored food off my shelves into them. Another trip out to the ambulance completed, and I was starting to work up a sweat. I looked over to see what the status of those infected bastards was and noticed several new corpses lying in the street. I looked up at Stephen questioningly.

“
They got tired of dead meat and wanted yours truly to munch on. I disagreed with their line of thinking," he said and shrugged his shoulders as he was feeding shells into the bottom of the shotgun.

"Funny, I didn’t even hear the shots."

“
Might be a good idea to hurry, the noise probably will draw more,” he answered back, pumping the action of the reloaded shotgun.

Back inside, I told Mattie to lug all the bagged food to the ambulance and meet me downstairs when she was done. Heading back down, I opened my gun lockers. I reached in and removed my personal Bushmaster AR-15 with an EoTech holographic sight and loaded a full 30 round magazine. I also pulled out a small range bag which contained 10 additional loaded magazines. Setting it aside, I then retrieved out my “zombie killer”, a Mossberg 500 12 gauge with folding stock pistol grip and side saddle shell holder. I loaded the shotgun to capacity and retrieved a bandolier with twenty extra shells loaded onto it. Finally, I grabbed another bag and loaded all my remaining shotgun shells into it. Mattie finally came down the steps, and I handed the rifle and ammunition to her.

“
Here, this is for you. Now carry these upstairs,” I said and handed her the load before she had time to object.

She left without saying a word, and I started loading up a large rucksack with all of my remaining rifle and handgun ammunition. I was never able to stack the ammo quite as deep as Stephen or our buddy Dan, but I always kept at least 500 rounds of each caliber on hand. I grunted as I grabbed hold of the backpack and started upstairs.

Ammo is fucking heavy, I learned yet again as my legs burned under the weight.

Returning from the ambulance, I directed Mattie to another pile of gear as I opened a different locker to pack up my other hobby.

I always liked knives and blades of any kind. The beauty of a knife was that you never had to reload them. I reached in and grabbed one of my favorites. It was an Ontario Spec Plus survival machete, made of really thick steel with a square tip and a rubber non-slip grip. I was dying to try it out on one of the zombies. I also retrieved a huge Bowie knife. I had brought it home from work and over the course of several hours, cleaned it up to a mirror polish. It was close to the Spec Plus in size and weight, so I belted the Bowie knife to my left side and strapped the Spec Plus on my right thigh.

I next grabbed my Colt Commander 1911 .45 pistol and that went into a holster on my right hip before I pocketed several spare magazines for it. I tossed my Glock and all remaining spare magazines for the pistols into my last empty range bag. Finally, I grabbed my already packed three day “bug out bag” and my much larger long term camping rucksack. They contained two .38 caliber revolvers as well. My uncle had given me a Colt Detective Special years ago for helping him roof his house, and the other was a cheap Taurus that was too good of a deal to pass up from the pawn shop that was in my old patrol zone. Again I ran - or rather, waddled - upstairs and tossed the gear into the ambulance.

“
One last trip, Stephen," I sighed. "Mattie, stay here and help Stephen stand watch.”

Stephen had been busy arranging the gear in the ambulance in an attempt to save space.

Not waiting for a reply, I ran back inside and grabbed my shotgun from downstairs. I was about to close up and lock my gun safes back up and stopped. I would rather some looter see them empty than destroy them to get inside only to find them empty.

I might come back someday, I figured, and didn’t want the house destroyed, if possible.

On impulse, I grabbed my iPod filled with all of my workout music and car charger/player. I then stopped by my book shelves in the living room. I was always an avid reader and had filled multiple bookshelves with an ever-growing collection. I never caught on to the whole electronic book phenomenon, preferring the paper instead.

Hope I can come back for these
, I thought as I grabbed my newest stack of books, ones I hadn’t had a chance to read yet.

Only wanting to do one last thing before I left, I set out a bag of dog food and cut it open, spilling its contents on the floor next to a large bowl of water in case my idiot dog ever returned. I didn’t bother shutting the door either, just in case. Tossing the bag of books into the back of the ambulance I climbed in and shut the door. Stephen was already behind the wheel and put the big truck into gear.

“
Next stop, Mattie’s place,” I told Stephen as we began to roll.

It was full on dark now, and the headlights on the ambulance cut a path towards our next destination. We didn’t need to go far, since Mattie lived relatively nearby. We pulled up to her apartment complex and Stephen once again pulled guard duty while Mattie and I went into her building. Sporadic shots echoed in the distance. Some really close, most way off from our position. The most unnerving sounds were the blood curdling screams of people on the losing end of a zombie lunch break.

The front door to the building was made of glass, which lay shattered on the ground. The crunching glass under my boots sounded like a pack of black cat firecrackers as we approached. I stepped through the void where the window was and waved Mattie in after checking for infected. She told me she lived up on the third floor at the other end of the building.

Of course she did.

With my shotgun ready, stock folded from the tight confines, I led the way up the stairs as Mattie covered our backside with her pistol. Reaching the top floor without incident, we hastily traversed to her apartment. When she unlocked the door, I heard the adjacent apartment door open. My shotgun flew up and halted inches from the face of a middle-aged woman holding trash bags. Her eyes damn near popped out of her head as she shrieked in fear and slammed the door in my face.

“
Nice one, Mike,” Mattie kidded. “Get inside please.”

I stepped inside and she shut the door behind me. She told me she had just moved here about two months earlier and did not have much in the way of supplies. She made her way to the bathroom to pack up some items and asked me to grab a duffel bag out of her room.

I looked around and laughed at the difference between her place and mine. My place was filled with weapons of war and workout equipment with little concern for interior decoration. Her place was filled with girly furniture and frilly pillows everywhere. Baskets and candles that served no purpose other than decoration where placed all over and the scent of potpourri filled the apartment.

My place probably smelled like a sweaty ass.

I went into her bedroom and looked at her bed that had a large comforter on it with a flower pattern. Glancing around for the duffel bag, my search stopped when a flash of metal made me take a look closer at the headboard. On both sides of the headboard were sets of handcuffs latched onto the posts.

"Sweet lord… a dirty girl,” I chuckled. “God bless her!”

I turned my gaze and once again was distracted by what I saw in an open dresser drawer next to me - I was pleased to see several pairs of lacey panties and thongs of all different colors.

“
Yes, definitely God bless her.”

“
I don’t think that will protect me from zombies,” a seductive voice said right behind me.

I jumped about six inches in the air and the black thong I was holding went flying into the air and landed on top of my head as I spun around. Mattie slowly reached up and pulled them off my head while I stammered out a perfectly good reason for why I appeared to be raiding her panty drawer.

“
Maybe I’ll pack some of these for a later time to model for you,” she said teasingly.

I retreated from the room as if it was filled with zombies, her laughter chasing after me.

She changed her clothes and we grabbed the few bags that she wanted and headed back to the ambulance. As we exited the building we made out a very large group of infected heading towards us from out of the darkness, a mere fifty or sixty feet away. Stephen looked up at us from the reflex sight on my newly reloaded Colt M4.

“
Oh good, you made it," he said with relief. "I thought I was going to have to waste more ammunition on these guys.”