Zombie Rules (10 page)

             
I could see Rick scratching his beard. “A refugee camp huh? That’s the first I’ve heard of it, but like I say, I haven’t seen any real people in quite a while. Have you people seen any zombies?” I could see the old man look back at the people still sitting in the car.

             
“We have sir. They’re everywhere. Fayetteville is full of them. We barely got out with our lives. We were making our way along I-65 when we saw you in your truck. We thought we’d take a chance.” The old man looked around. “I could have sworn there were two of you.”

             
Rick chuckled. “Might have been two of us. I tend to see people who may or may not be there when I get to drinkin’.” Rick leaned toward him. I’m sure he did it so the old man could smell the liquor on his breath. “Say, do you guys have any fresh gas or food? I think I got some bad stuff in my truck. She’s not running worth a shit.”

             
The old man quickly shook his head. And I keep saying old man. He was actually close to Rick’s age, maybe a couple of years older. He was about an inch shorter than me with dark black hair, but the roots were almost white. The moustache had the same color scheme. He had run out of that Grecian Formula 44 about a week ago I’d guess. “I’m sorry sir, we don’t have much gas left and as you can see, I’ve got several mouths to feed.”

             
Rick changed the subject quickly. He was no longer exaggerating with the slurring. “You have a military bearing to you. What unit were you in?”

             
The man dropped his jaw open momentarily, but recovered quickly. “The 2
nd
of the 502
nd
, Charlie Company. What about you?”

             
“2
nd
of the 75
th
, Bravo Company. I thought you had the look about you.” Rick turned to me. “Zach! Come on out.” I heard the conversation. If he passed Rick’s inspection, it was good enough for me I supposed. I jumped out of the boat and walked up warily. I was holding my rifle casually, but kept it pointed in the direction of the occupants of the car.

             
The stranger held a hand up. “There’s no need for that son.” He looked over at his family, who were still sitting in the car. “It’s okay, come on out.”

             
There were two women. One was in her late thirties, one girl was a teenager about my age, and there was a boy about ten-years-old. “This is my daughter and her two kids.” His face clouded momentarily. “The rest of the family did not make it. This is what is left of the Frierson family. I’m Don.”

             
He shook hands with Rick and me. “This is Janet, her daughter Julie, and her son Tommy.” They were a sorry looking lot. They looked, and smelled, like they’d been riding in their car for a few days without bathing. Rick and I introduced ourselves. Rick took a particularly long time shaking Janet’s hand. I did a pretty good job of hiding my grin, until Rick looked at me and winked.

             
“Are y’all hungry? We’ve got some food with us.” I said. They all nodded and I thought that they were actually going to start salivating at the mention of food. I retrieved the cooler out of the truck and set it on the road in front of them.

             
“We’ve got an assortment of snack foods and Rick made up a big batch of biscuits. We had to use powered milk, so they may taste a little funny. In all, not very high in nutrition, but it’ll fill you up.” There was a collective gasp when I opened the cooler and they gazed at the food in stark wonder. I guess they had not eaten much in a while. Don went around to the back of the minivan and came back with a case of twelve ounce cans of Coca Cola.

             
“I found these in an abandoned car this morning. I’m afraid we’ve had the heater going, so they may be a bit warm.” He grabbed one and popped it open. It spewed on him. Rick burst out laughing, which caused me to start laughing. Don looked at us, as did the rest of them. I don’t think they had laughed, or heard laughter, in quite a while. But the laughter was contagious, and soon everyone was chuckling.

We sat in the middle of the road, eating and drinking, and asking questions of each other. “Rick, is Zach your son?” Rick shook his head, and reluctantly offered his jug of laced tea to Don. Don took it, wiped the mouth of the jug and took a swig before handing it back.

              “This here is the famous Zach, killer of zombies hither and yon.” Rick looked wistfully off into the distance. Oh no, I’ve seen the look before, I always called it the ‘here comes the bullshit’ look.

             
“One day, I was minding my own business, when suddenly I was beset upon by a whole slew of zombies. Must have been at least fifty of them.” He gave Janet and Julie a wide-eyed stare. “I tell ya’ ladies, I was a goner for sure. Then Zach came along, armed with the same rifle he now has. He killed every one of them with extreme prejudice.” He looked at Julie, who was casting glances at me. I was feeling a little embarrassed at the sudden attention and wanted him to change the subject. “He saved my life. We’ve been partners ever since.” He started to take another swig, but suddenly remembered that Janet, a real live female with an impressive rack, was sitting nearby. He offered her the jug. She hesitated a moment and then took it. She took a tentative swallow and handed it back to Rick with a quiet thank you. He beamed. Even I could see a shit eating grin through his thick beard.

             
Don chuckled. “No offense to you Zach, but I find it hard to believe a teenage boy saved the life of an Airborne Ranger. Rick, we might have bumped into each other a time or two back in ‘Nam. When were you there?”

             
Rick started to belch, but held it down. “Just a few months in the summer of ’68. Caught some shrapnel in my leg. Messed it up pretty good, so they sent me home. If I had to do it over again, I’d of joined the Peace Corps.”

             
“Was it a booby trap?” Don asked. Rick nodded once. Don looked thoughtful. “Those things killed a lot of good men.” You could tell the two men had triggered some past memories.

             
I glanced over at Julie. I caught her staring at me and she quickly looked away. In spite of her dirty hair and face, she was quite pretty. She had deep chestnut brown hair with streaks of either highlights or dirt, and pretty blue eyes. She was a younger version of her mother, without the big breasts. I suspected the mother had a boob job, but Rick sure didn’t mind. He could hardly keep his eyes off of them, even though she was wearing a jacket. I broke Don out of his reverie. “Mr. Fierson, can you tell us about Fayetteville and the trip up here?”

             
He looked up and then realized I was talking to him. “Oh, sure. When the flu outbreak first started we, as in the city officials, had created refugee centers at the schools. It was working out fairly well at first. There were a few scuffles here and there, and it was pretty crowded, but overall it wasn’t too bad. But within a few days things got ugly. The sick, and there were a lot of sick, started turning into these, these things.”

              “Zombies.” Rick piped in.

             
“Yeah, whatever you want to call them. They started attacking people. The police were forced to start shooting, but it didn’t seem to stop them.”

             
“Zach’s zombie rule number one: you got to go for the head.” Rick said smugly, and took a big swig. I saw Julie looking at me again. So, yeah, I’m a teenager and have raging hormones. I haven’t even been near a female since before Thanksgiving. Her attention, no matter how innocent it was, was having an effect. I hunched forward and crossed my arms in front of my lap lest someone would spot the particular effect it was having.

             
“What’s that?” Don asked of Rick. Rick smiled and pointed over to me. “Are there some kind of rules or something?” He asked me.

             
I hunched over a bit further. “Well, not really.” I replied. “I’m kind of making them up as I go along. I’ve been trying to analyze them with the scant amount of information we’ve got. For instance, we don’t know how it started, its genesis. From what we’ve seen on the news reports, and the Internet before they went down, it started out as some type of flu bug. It quickly grew to pandemic proportions, apparently faster than any other flu outbreak in modern history.” I took a breath and continued.

             
“It appeared to have originated in the Middle East, maybe Egypt. Rick and I tracked it as it spread across Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. It had no predictable pattern, which is probably due to the modern age of travel. You know, a person can hop on a plane and travel from Cairo to France to New York in twenty-four hours or less. If they’re infected, they can spread it everywhere they go, and then of course it spreads exponentially.” I stopped a moment but everyone was giving me their undivided attention, so I continued. “The virus, and that seems to be what it is, seems to gestate quickly and mutates the host. It seems as though a deadly side effect of the infection is the host becomes very violent. They lose their higher reasoning and thinking processes. They can’t figure out things like how to climb over a fence or maybe open a door, but their gross motor skills are probably enhanced. They feel no pain. It’s possible their central nervous system is just gone, but at least parts of their brain still works. So, only if you go for the head will they truly die. Oh, we know for a fact they can hear and see, so they can probably smell as well. You might want to consider those facts in the future if you light a fire and cook outside. Or wear perfume.” I had noticed the females were wearing perfume, which even though the body odor was still noticeable, smelled good nonetheless. “How long did you guys stay in Fayetteville before you decided to come north?”

             
The four of them continued to stare at me a moment. Don looked over at Rick. Rick winked. “He’s a smart one. He would have been a doctor or rocket scientist one day.”

             
Don chuckled and reached for the jug. Janet spoke up. “A group of us managed to secure the gym of the high school from the zombies. We had plenty of water, but the food quickly ran out. My husband and a few other men tried to go out and scavenge for food. We watched helplessly as they were attacked.” She looked over at me. “They shot at them, but apparently nothing to the head. The zombies kept coming and…there were just too many of them.” She stifled a sob and grabbed the jug. She took a long swallow.

             
“This stuff grows on you.” She said.

             
“They were all eaten alive.” Julie said quietly. Tommy began sobbing.

             
“Now hush Julie. You know it still upsets him.” Janet said. She grimaced as if she was holding back her own tears, but it seemed contrived.

             
I slowly nodded my head. “We read of similar stories on the Internet. I kind of thought it was BS, or imaginations run wild, but apparently it’s true.” I looked at them. “Did you see any of the zombies attack animals, like the family dog or cat, or did they only go for humans?”

             
“Oh yeah, any living animal they could get their teeth on.” Don said.

             
“Did anyone become infected after the people were secured in the schools? I mean, you lock down the school with people who appear healthy, and one day someone turns. Did anything like that happen?”

             
Janet nodded. “A little girl about Tommy’s age. She seemed as healthy as anyone, but one evening she got sick. Then, she attacked her mother. It snowballed from there.”

             
“Were you there?” She nodded again. “Tell me how it happened. What were the first symptoms?”

             
Janet shook her head. “The little girl’s mother probably saw the first symptoms, but hid them from everyone else. The first time anyone noticed, the girl was sweating, incoherent, and her body was having spasms. It’s hard to describe, but it wasn’t really a seizure. They were odd muscle tics. Her skin became pale and splotchy. Oh, and she had a lot of phlegm. About an hour after we first became aware the girl was sick, she opened her eyes and latched onto her mother’s neck. She had bitten a hunk out before anyone could act. It was horrible.” Janet snatched the bottle out of Rick’s grasp again and took another long swig. I’m fairly certain the grin on Rick’s face indicated he was elated because he had a new drinking buddy with big tits. I could already tell he was planning on more trips into town to find liquor stores.

             
“What happened next?” I prodded. “How long was it before the mother turned?”

“It was less than an hour. She began having spasms and when a couple of women tried to comfort her, she went on a biting rampage. She was ultimately shot.” She looked at me. “It was a head shot, but we still didn’t know that was required at the time. He did it as an act of humanity. In any event, the damage was done.”

              It was a lot of information to digest. I desperately wanted to get back to the farm and review my notes. I checked my watch and confirmed the time with the sun setting.               “Ms. Frierson,” I paused. I did not know what her married name was.