Zombie Fallout 8: An Old Beginning (22 page)

Chapter Fifteen – Mike Journal Entry 7

The sounds in the next room began to abate as the ape had either cleaned house, moved on, or had succumbed. My hope was that pieces of it now resided in a few dozen regular zombies. The beast was without precedent, and it was my sincerest hope that the thing didn’t live out the day. I had no desire to ever meet up with it again.

“Trapped again,” I said sourly as the lights flickered.

“What was that thing?” Tommy asked.

“Fucking
man, experimenting with shit again that they should have just left alone. What could possibly compel them to make zombie animals? Is not this current fuck-fest enough? Mankind is in such a dire rush to rid itself of mankind they don’t stop to think of the repercussions of their actions. I’m sometimes amazed we’ve made it this long.”

“Oh, shut up your drabbling, will you? I have a splitting headache.” Deneaux sat
up, one bony hand caressing the side of her head while the other was fishing in her pocket for a pack of smokes or an emery board to file her hooves.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” I told her.

“For what? Allowing me to nearly have my head split open by a relative of yours?”

“Tommy, remind me again why I saved her?”

Tommy shrugged.

“Where are we?” Deneaux was now puffing away on a cigarette. Must have had aspirin shoved in it, because she seem
ed to have forgotten about her aching head as she looked around.

“The other half of the lab. For animal testing would be my guess,” Tommy told her as he looked around at the rows of cages full of all various sorts of animals.

It was mostly mice and rats; there were a couple of smaller monkeys, rhesus maybe. They didn’t look good, and I truly felt bad for them. I had to assume though that they’d been infected with whatever the ape had and could not be released. I was extremely happy to not see any dogs; I think I would have had to let them out just on principle.

“How are you planning on getting us out of here?” She shakily pushed herself up off the floor and sat quickly in a chair. It was nice to see that the crone actually had a little humanity in her and was bound to the same chances of injury as the rest of us.

“I was thinking teleportation device. Of course we’d have to test it with you first, just to make sure there are no kinks in it and that your atoms wouldn’t reappear all disfigured and stuff. That would be a shame.”

She over-exaggerated a smile at me.

“Did you say the animal testing half of the lab?” she asked after a moment.

She was already standing before Tommy or I could answer. She walked directly over to one side of the room. “Here’s our way out,” she said proudly.

Tommy and I went over to look. “Furnace?” I asked. “Seems like a one way ticket.”

She had pushed the small door open and was looking inside. I stepped back expecting a furnace type blast of heat and fire. “Idiot,” she said when she pulled her head back in and saw me retreating. “The
incinerator is two floors beneath us.”

“How the hell was I supposed to know that?” I defended myself. “Why an incinerator? Is it for trash?”

“It’s for the animals,” Tommy said calmly.

I guess I knew that on some level; I just didn’t want to admit it. Any failed experiment, all the scientists had to do was send the animal’s carcass down into the blaze below. The poor
thing would be forgotten the moment it passed through the steel opening. Talk about eradicating one’s mistakes.

I stuck my head through and was looking down a large shaft. It had a slight angle to it, but there wasn’t anything to hold onto once inside. It would be an express trip down.

“This is our way out?” I asked, pulling my head out. I’d swear Deneaux had gotten closer; she also had a very strange expression on her face, like maybe she had just missed an opportunity to push me in. I cautiously stepped away. Who knows what kind of strength a demon possesses. “Seems like a death trap. Maybe you should check it out first.”

“I will.” Deneaux was on the move. Tommy and I looked at each other.

“Did she really just volunteer?” I asked him.

“Sheets!” she said triumphantly. She was pulling theses strange, gray woolen pieces of material out of a cabinet. “They wrap the animals in these before they send them down. They’re specially treated for an even burn.

“So wait, you want us to lower you down a two story shaft with a makeshift flammable rope into an incinerator designed specifically for burning at temperatures hot enough to melt bone?”

She nodded.

“Fine by me,” I said as I grabbed one of the oily sheets.

Tommy and I tied, and tested the ten sheets we knotted up. “Just one needs to fail,” I whispered to him.

“I heard that,” Deneaux said from across the room. I don’t know how the hell she heard us as her head was all the way in the incinerator opening, and she was looking down the shaft.

“Why now?” I asked her as we tightly tied a sheet around her waist and up and underneath her arms.

“Whatever do you mean?” she asked me coyly.

“Come on, this isn’t your style and you know it. Putting
yourself out in front. Taking one for the team. Exposing yourself to danger. Whatever. Pick your cliché, it’s not you.”

“Maybe it’s time.”

“Yeah, I believe that like I believe Tommy would forgo a Pop-tart.”

“Hey, I’m right here,” he said, his words slightly muffled.

“Sorry, wait, what the hell do you have there?” I asked, walking over to him. He tried to angle his body away from me to hide whatever it was. “Oh, what is that smell?” I asked, pulling back and covering my nose.

“It’s an onion-and-liver pâté-glazed Pop-tart.” His smile was waxen.

“Oh, come on, you’re just doing that on purpose now.” I made sure I was far enough away before I removed my hand from in front of my nostrils.

I waited until Tommy was done before I let him come anywhere near to where we were putting Deneaux through.

“Well, I guess this is goodbye,” Deneaux said tenderly as we began to lower her down.

My expression probably made it look like I was trying to pass gas in church silently. My features were all contorted from trying to figure it out. We had her about halfway down when I damn near pulled her back up to ask her what the hell she meant. Tender was not a word one used at all around Deneaux and she sure as hell wasn’t sacrificing herself. No, the biddy had something else up her sleeve.

“I’d hate to see it all go up in smoke.” I laughed at my own pun.

“What was that?” she asked, looking up.

“Nothing, nothing.”

“Go slow you idiots. There’s a pressure sensor down here that triggers the flames, if I can get by that I can shut it down.” She knew
the switch could be activated by a scientist up top or it could be manually overridden, down below, to always stay on. Something she planned on doing as soon as she was on the ground.

“You know
, you could have told us about that earlier and we could have done it instead,” I told her.

“It’s time I contributed. Don’t you think?”

“It’s been time for a good long while. Why now, though, you snake?” I mumbled to Tommy. He nodded his head agreeing with me.

“The acoustics are amazing inside this pipe. I’m almost there. Do you think you could pay more attention to what is going on rather than talking amongst yourselves?”

“We could just let go.” I was looking Tommy in the eye, part of me was kidding, but a part wasn’t.

“We’d lose the sheets,” he answered seriously.

He was right. That was the only part worth saving.

“Careful!” Deneaux shouted up. It was the first time I’d heard something like alarm.

“How big is it?”

“Normal male question,” I heard her hiss.

It was slow going from there as we lowered her an inch at a time. After ten more minutes or so, we finally got the ‘all clear’ from her. The sheet-rope became slack as she undid herself.

“Give me a minute to disable the incinerator and then you can come on down!” she shouted. She could not be seen due to the angle of the shaft, but we heard her just fine. We pulled the rope up.

“I’ll go next, Mr. T,” Tommy said as he started to fit the makeshift harness around himself.

“Are you sure?”

“All clear.” Drifted up from below.

“Alright, we’ll be down in a minute,” I answered her.

Tommy was just finishing up and getting ready to climb though the doorway.

“Hold up,” I said, grabbing the back of his shirt. “This smells worse than that thing you were trying to call a Pop-tart.”

“She’s trying to help, Mr. T, so maybe she’s seen the light.”

“The only light she’s ever seen was from the end of her cigarette. Take the harness off.”

“Hurry up!” she called from below.

I went over to the cages and grabbed a small goat that had died relatively recently. “Sorry,” I told him. I quickly tied him into the harness.

“Is this necessary, Mr. T? We’re wasting time.” Zombies were once again hammering at the doorway to our retreat.

“Oh yeah, most definitely necessary,” I answered as I gently placed the goat into the shaft. “Tommy is on his way down!” I shouted.

“Good, good.” The second good was muffled halfway through as if spoken through a doorway.

We were at just about the same point on the sheets as when Deneaux had us go slow when we felt intense heat blaze up. We both pulled back as a blast of super-heated air flowed
past us. We let go of the rope when we realized fire was consuming the sheets at an unnatural pace.

“Fucking bitch tried to kill me!”

I had to laugh, hearing swears come out of Tommy was almost as rare as watching him eat a normal Pop-tart. “Don’t feel bad, I’m pretty sure she was hoping it was me.”

We both found ourselves now staring at the closed door marked with a warning sign and the word “Incinerator.”

After a few moments, we both heard Deneaux’s voice drift up. “Michael, are you well? I’m sorry about your friend, but I believe I’ve figured out how to shut this off now.”

“You know I’d love to give it a try, but now the rope is gone.”

“Pity. I’d like to wish you good luck, Michael, but I wouldn’t mean it.
C’est la vie
.”

Tommy was about to shout something when I placed my index finger over my mouth. “She thinks you’re dead, let her think that.”

“Fucking heartless bitch,” Tommy was muttering as he walked away.

I shook my head. It was like listening to a toddler swear for the first time
; simultaneously hilarious and frightening. Frightening, only because you hoped your spouse wouldn’t come home while the baby you were tasked with watching was now running around the house shrieking at the top of her lungs, “fucking shit, fucking shit!” after mimicking your earlier outburst.

It was one time—I can’t be held accountable for that
…

The Red Sox had just given up the tying run in the top half of the ninth and I was stressed out. This gets worse because Nicole wouldn’t stop
, no matter how much I cajoled her or tried to bribe her…or even scold her. Probably because every time she said it, I would giggle uncontrollably. There is just something endearing about a baby swearing. Maybe it’s because they have no idea what they’re saying, or maybe it’s just because of the sound of their infant voices saying something so scathing.

Who knows? But if Tracy came home and her daughter was running around screaming that profanity
, I was going to end up sleeping at a friend’s for the next couple of days. Which ultimately made no sense since she swore like a sailor on drunken shore leave her own self. Nicole wouldn’t stop. Most babies move on quickly to their next point of distraction. Not Nicole, she held onto that phrase like a Bible thumper to the scripture. “Shit, shit, shit.” I was running my hands through my hair. My eyes were looking down to the bathroom and the medicine cabinet. Nicole followed me down that hallway swearing the entire time. I’m sure it didn’t help that my shoulders were rising up and down as I laughed.

“Stop it,” I admonished her, turning around and sticking my finger in her face as I got down to her level.

“Fucking shit,” she answered me.

“Wonderful.” I stood back up and went to that medicine cabinet
, hoping we had what I was looking for. “Bingo,” I said as I grabbed the bottle of Nyquil. “Want some cherry-soda?” I asked her. With my small swearing machine in tow I headed to the kitchen. “I’m going to burn in hell for this,” I said as I dumped some of the cold medicine into her sippy cup with some cola.

Her face wrinkled up as a taste she enjoyed
was very much tainted with the bitterness of the medicine. Apparently the pull of sugar was stronger than the repulsion of the sour drug, because she drank everything. I washed out her cup to get rid of any residual smell. I thought my plan was going to backfire for a moment as the sugar coursed through her body; she ran around like she was hopped up on pack of Pixy Stix. Then, as if I was watching a wind-up toy on its last few turns, she began to slow and finally crash.