The Failed Coward Read online

  He already looked dead.

  *****

  One thing that Zach and Ryan were infallibly reliable about was being entirely unreliable. Both of them were fast asleep on the floor next to the front door within an hour. They were woken up by the plastic bamboo tree toppling over, spilling stale vomit all over, and hitting Zach flush in the nose, breaking it cleanly with an audible pop.

  “YEEOOOWWCHHH!” Zach blurted as he reached up to clutch his smashed nose. Blood flowed freely from the nostrils all over his enormous FUBU hoodie.

  “Who fucking did that you cunt?” Zach punched Ryan in the arm, waking him. Zach was fully sure it was a prank, and he would show Ryan that shit wasn’t funny, mercilessly once he was awake like he was.

  “What? Huh?” Ryan’s half asleep voice responded.

  “Why’d you fucking deck me with this big fucking tree bitch?” Zach asked him, spitting and spattering blood all over his groggy friend’s face.

  Ryan was shocked wide awake by the warm, wet spray. “Dude I didn’t fucking touch you. Get off my shit man. Where’s the fucking old dude? Maybe he did it?” Both of the young men sat up from the floor like a pair of moles in a whack-a-mole machine.

  The tall man’s feet were gone from the booth. Behind them the dawn light illuminated the cluttered restaurant interior with an otherworldly faint blue glow. Ryan’s brain experienced a miracle, and he realized a shadow was being cast out over them, spilling out past their feet. He turned slowly, knowing full well the tall man stood behind them.

  They heard the scrape of a man’s foot on the doormat before their heads turned. Much like the true cowards they were, they screamed like bitches, and dove out of the way just as the undead body of the tall man pounced on the space they had just occupied.

  Ryan’s scream was a lot like his tinny laugh. It was shrill, and high pitched, reminiscent of a ten year old boy who might have been kicked square in his newly dropped balls. Imagine the most irritating way you can scream this:

  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

  And you’re fairly close to his situation in life.

  Zach’s much more stoic scream included profanity, an admission that yes indeed, he peed the bed, and a short, unintelligible sentence about Bob Saget.

  The tall man was dead. His skin had gone ashen, and his eyes were sickly, and a color of white that looked like pus. His mouth sagged open, slowly drawing itself shut again as if the tendons and muscles tightened with a murderous mind of their own.

  “FUCK ME, GET THE FUCK UP!” Zach’s plan worked marvelously. He continued to scream at maximum volume, crawling backwards until he clocked himself in the head on the leg of a chair. Shocked by the impact, he got to his feet and dragged Ryan to his, despite his insufferable cries of fear.

  The two boys blasted their way through the double doors leading into the kitchen, and slammed into a stainless steel prep table. When the doors swung shut the light disappeared in the kitchen, and they were left in the dark.

  Two square window’s worth of the faint morning glow poked through the creaking doors. Ryan took a step towards them after he turned, creeping his chin up high to catch a glimpse of what was happening out in the restaurant with the tall man.

  No sooner had he got close enough to see, his vocal chords began their infernal magic, and he began his nerve rattling wail. Ryan spun like a top, and took off at top speed, smashing his hips once more into the steel table, sending dirty pots and pans flying with a tremendous racket.

  Both of the wannabe hoods dropped down low, and reached out in a panic, trying to find something to use as a weapon. From behind them, the double doors creaked loudly, and the long black silhouette of the tall man appeared, framed between the doors like the grim reaper manifested.

  Zach popped to his feet like a prairie dog, clutching a pot just as Ryan leapt up, holding a rolling pin like a bat. The two men issued a war cry that had a fair chance of scaring several kindergarteners straight back into a classroom, and they charged the zombie of the tall man.

  Like demented book ends the two men swung their weapons together, smashing into both sides of the tall man’s dead head. Unfortunately neither Zach nor Ryan spent any time doing anything more physical than packing bongs or bowls, and they struck with the combined fury of two nursing home residents. The tall man took a step back, and lunged into the kitchen towards them.

  Screams sharp enough to shatter bulletproof glass echoed in the dark, hot kitchen as the boys dove away from the grasping claws of the tall man. Ryan bricked his face square on the corner of the stove hood, sending streamers of light across his vision. In a stroke of good fortune, his brain was already so useless the concussion barely hindered him.

  Zach felt his way along the table as proficiently as anyone in that situation could, which may or may not prove that God does love idiots. Halfway down the length of the kitchen his blindly searching hands knocked over a tin can, and the tell tale spilling of sharp sticks reached his ears. Like a greedy child reaching for more candy, he snagged a handful of teriyaki skewers, and wielded them in his left hand like a vampire hunter’s stake, with the stove pot serving as his holy mallet.

  “Ryan, get my back homie!” He screamed out, suddenly filled with righteous confidence.

  “GEBLARB SHIZZY! FO RIZZEALIO!” Ryan hollered back in a brain damaged stupor. Perhaps the concussion did more damage than first appreciated.

  In a move that could only be described as mediocre, and only slightly impressive, Zach barrel rolled across the flat, cold steel table, and came up on his feet losing his balance for but a moment. The tall man loomed above him like a massive undead puppet, with arms too long, and legs toweringly thin.

  “TAKE THIS BIATCH!” And with that, Zach backhanded the mitt filled with teriyaki skewers straight into the eye of the tall man. The thin bamboo sticks stuck several inches in, rupturing the eyeball and sending its goo all over Zach’s hand. He heaved powerfully as the tall man dropped to his knees, nearly felled by the astoundingly lucky blow.

  In the dark of the kitchen Zach brought the pot back in a slugger’s stance, and with a PONG! He hammered the sticks fully into the brain of the macabre menace. The tall man’s long body dropped face forward, and fell fully dead in the middle of the black kitchen.

  “I got you bitch! You see that Ryan?! I killed that zombie motherfucker!” Zach spun to where Ryan was, and saw that his head was rolling back and forth, going in and out of consciousness.

  “Yo Zach,” he muttered.

  “Sup Ryan? I’m a fucking hero yo, I saved yo shit. What’s up homie?! Say something!”

  “Yo Zach your lazy ass forgot the sour diesel in the truck last night. You fucking dildo.”

  April 23rd

  Productivity up in this bitch. I feel like superman on crack.

  YO!

  Hadn’t used that in awhile, thought I’d throw that out as a re-run for ya Mr. Journal. As I said, I feel that’s an underused greeting.

  The last two days we have made a concentrated effort to focus more on getting things done on campus. Well, not all of us, but a fair part of us. We’ve split our group evenly down the middle to kill two birds with one… shit that doesn’t make any sense. Um, burning the candle at both ends? Fuck that doesn’t apply either.

  We will be doing two things at once. There. It’s not fancy, but it says... exactly what I’m trying to say. I suck at this writing thing. Periodically I ponder what the hell made me want to do this so much. Reading my writing must be like watching a chimpanzee pick its nose.

  Because Ollie is all hot and horny to get the damn field planted, we got the fencing started there. This will be a serious project. The area we are trying to fence in is huge. Granted, we already have a lot of waist high chain fencing already, and we are trying to work that in as well, but this will still take forever. Ollie in his infinite usefulness has built a gate already out of pressure treated lumber that was kicking around from our loot runs and campus or wherever. I don
’t know where he got the hinges, and frankly, I don’t care. The gate is large enough to fit the tractor through, and it latches with a pin latch (I think that’s what it’s called) and is damn sturdy. Of course a gate in the middle of a field with no fence attached to it just looks silly, but we’re working on that.

  Next to the soccer field are the baseball and softball fields. The backstops are on the soccer field side, and we started there because it formed a perfect fence side on one edge. If you hold both your hands in front of you making the index finger + thumb gun shape, with the fingers pointing out to the sides, that’s how the backstops are laid out. All we had to do to seal it was put up a section of fence in between the two backstops, which was maybe 65 feet or so. For extra sturdy measure, we put up one upright pole every 6 feet, and we made sure to use our 8 foot lengths so the fence was head height.

  Now we got the entire length of fence done for that yesterday mostly because we already had the poles with concrete still stuck on the bottom. All we had to do was use a post digger and a shovel to make the hole, then drop the pole in, straighten it out, pack it tight, and then move on. No waiting for concrete to dry. When we have to do that, we’ll slow down dramatically. We also dug a small furrow in the field so we could sink the chainlink into the ground to help prevent animals from digging under it. Ollie says that won’t stop them permanently, but it’ll slow them, and tip us off so we can plink them off later on.

  Ollie and I are also going to reinforce that side of the fence because it is outward facing. We’ve got a ton of waist high fence poles, and we don’t want to use them on the “defensive” side of the fence. On the close side that faces the center of campus, sure. So we’re planning on using some of the shorter poles to buttress the outer fence in the event we get mobbed. If we place them at 45 degree angles facing outward, the fence should be very strong if a mob finds itself pressing against it.

  Of course, we’ve NEVER seen a dead guy or gal coming from that direction, so that’s a sort of secondary wish. Until we’ve got the field fenced off entirely, there’s no sense in reinforcing half a fence. That’s like putting a screen door on a submarine. BOO YAH MOTHERFUCKER! THAT ONE MADE SENSE!

  That was my entire yesterday. 65 odd feet of chainlink fence with Ollie. I’ll say this about the guy. He doesn’t know shit about what he doesn’t know shit about. But the shit he knows, he fucking KNOWS. He’s such an odd guy. I equate him to the farm boy savant. I am fairly sure he can build us a tractor out of a tampon and a RC Radio car. However, if I ask him to explain even just the basics of how to balance a check book, he gets this glossed over look in his eye and a streak of droll runs down his chin.

  It’s so strange. Amusing though, and I’m super grateful that he’s here. I keep finding things he’s done around campus to make things work better or to make life easier, and I’m astounded that he’s outside working alone while we’re away all day risking our lives. It’s too easy to think he’s back here on easy street. He is getting it done on the home front.

  Melissa is awesome too. She’s a sweetheart. She brought us out hot coffee in the morning, iced tea in the afternoon, and fed us lunch as well. I apparently equate awesome with being fed. Maybe it is true that the fastest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?

  Still no signs of a tummy bump on her, but she and Ollie both said that she’s now getting mild off and on morning sickness. I don’t know shit about pregnancy, but I guess that’s normal. It did occur to me that she should probably see Lisa back in Westfield soon because I’ve been told prenatal care is like, important and shit.

  Again, I’d just like to defend my ignorance regarding pregnancies and all things baby, and point to my penis as an excuse. It’s not my fault. Not that one at least. None to my knowledge actually. *crosses his fingers*

  While Ollie and I worked the shit out of the fields, Gilbert, Patty, Abby and Gavin were off fence and lumber hunting. Yesterday they returned to the STIG complex, and ripped up another 200+ feet of pole and fence. That was their entire day. They said the undead population was a motherfucker downtown again. That once again leads me to believe that something is stirring the proverbial pot down there. More motion in the ocean getting the undead moving back and forth seems like a shit storm waiting to happen for us.

  Happily, no one was hurt during yesterday’s fence operation. Last night we fired up the grill and cooked up some of the last tidbits of our venison. I guess it’s almost time to pray for a deer to be stupid enough to walk near campus again. While we were cooking, we all pitched in, and built a new home for the small wood stove we found a week or two ago. In the center of Hall E’s large dining area, we slapped down a brick floor and backing against the wall, and made sure the floor could handle the weight. Like I said before, the stove is small as hell, and the bricks are fairly light so there’s no issue.

  We got a hole in the wall, and got the pipes fed through, sealed up good and proper, and viola, now we have a wood stove in hall E. Heat in the event the generator or furnace shits the bed. This will cut down big time on our fuel consumption, as we’re not in Hall E all day, so we can kill the generator for longer, and use the batteries linked up to the solar panels, which incidentally, are generating good juice. We now have wood stoves and gas generators installed in Hall E, Hall A, and Hall B. I almost feel like a fucking boss when I look around here now. Straight up pimptastic survivors in the hizzy.

  Today was also a busy day. I really need to stop saying that. When was the last time I was like “Hey Mr. Journal, sat around with my thumb lodged in my asshole today because there was nothing to do around here. Sure do wish I had something productive to do.”

  NEVER. We’re human doings, not human beings lately. I’d love to sit down and just… be there, chilling out. Sipping on a mai tai, watching the sun set, perhaps jamming out to some Bob Marley or something but NOOOOOOOO. Someone had to flip the switch and go all apocalyptic on the world.

  Whoever or whatever did this… You better have had a good fucking reason for it, because I’d love for this shit to chill the hell out.

  Moving along before I incur the wrath of the almighty... Again…

  Today we had our meeting with Blake. We promised him we’d meet him at noon at his old place of work, Mike’s Automotive, and that’s what we did. Oddly enough, the area around Mike’s was deadly clear of anything remotely close to a zombie. Patty and Gavin went with me, and they both pointed it out as being weird. By the time we pulled into the small parking lot where Blake’s truck was, we had come to the conclusion that Blake was in fact living at the garage, and he was keeping quiet, and putting the few undead around down using something silent like a bat, or a wrench or whatever.

  Blake was inside the garage’s office, and he came out to meet us. I had Patty and Gavin stay inside the HRT and Gavin’s truck (respectively) until I knew Blake was chilled out, and was willing to meet two new faces. Almost immediately, he seemed at ease, and after we bullshitted for a few more minutes, I asked him if he was game, and he said “hell yeah!”

  Patty and Gavin came over when I waved to them, and they introduced themselves to him. Right from the jump he took to Patty, but there was a little cold shoulder action towards Gavin. I dunno know why. Maybe it was his camo trousers, or his perpetual smile, or the fact that they were similarly aged guys, but Blake seemed a little, wierded out. After a bit, I asked Gavin to pull security to make it less odd.

  Blake took to Patty. It was like an aunt and nephew from old times. I think Patty just wanted to eat him right up. I can’t tell if it’s a motherly thing, and she just exuded her willingness to be a friend to him, or maybe if it was the whole failure to save Tony from STIG/loss of a son thing. Either way you slice it, they were thick like thieves in short order and I was more than happy to see it develop.

  Blake had good news, and bad news. Bad news first. Moving about town he has seen quite a few folks. He guessed at maybe as many as twenty since we last saw him. Blake said that most of them seemed like r
eturning families, or locals who somehow had remained completely out of sight the entire winter. That seemed unlikely to us though.

  He unfortunately reported that he had personally watched many of them get killed, repeating the same fucking mistakes that people made back in June. He said several of them returned to the grocery store, which is now empty, as well as the police station (also empty), and the pharmacy (yet again, empty). Basically people who left town are returning and going where there’s nothing left, hoping or expecting shit to still be there for them. Shit, I think most of the food in town is now either incinerated in the wreckage of STIG, or sitting in our cafeteria here at ALPA.

  Of the twenty or so people he has seen in the past four days, Blake thinks maybe ten are still alive. Morons have no idea what they’re doing. Trying to clear a major group of undead with a fucking bolt action rifle, no armor to speak of, no backup, and no goddamn plan to gtfo safely. How did they think it was going to end?

  Sigh.

  The good news is this: stupid people die, and leave their shit behind. Blake showed us his haul inside the gas station, and he’s picked up five rifles, and seven handguns. I am very happy to report that one of the handguns was a 10mm, and Blake was more than happy to part with the ammo and the weapon, which suddenly made the Kimber back here a lot more attractive as a sidearm. It’s just a fine weapon, and honestly, I’d really like to carry it at one point.

  Blake also said that the farm has been lackluster in terms of evidence. He pushed pretty hard for someone to join him on his daily recon mission, but we kindly backed out of that idea. I still don’t trust him fully, and the last thing I want to do is disappear somewhere in the woods with someone who strikes me as a few letters short of an alphabet. AEIU and pretty much never Y.

  Nonetheless, he claims that there is daily activity there, and he thinks it is very sketchy.

  As a big thank you, we gave him a few eggs, about ten cans of various foodstuffs, a six pack of Coke, and I kicked him another ten rounds of .303. I’m hoping I find more, as keeping him slightly dependant on me for Enfield ammo makes me think he’s less likely to do anything weird. Of course he has other guns now, as well as ammo, so maybe that’s entirely moot, and I’m just a dipshit.