Chaos Theory: A Zombie Novel (2 page)

Trailer Trash

So the Runners. We all know they’re fast. We all know they hate us and want to tear into us. They eat us. But do they drink? I mean if you forced one to fire down a handle of Stolies, would it stagger like its dead buddies? And that’s something else…if they aren’t dead, why don’t the dead ones eat them? If you put nine Runners and one uninfected human in a room with a dead one, the dead one will come straight at the live guy. I’ve seen it. Well, not as an experiment, but I’ve seen that type of scenario. That would be a crappy experiment for the dude in the room with all those infected types. Downright cruel.

By nightfall, the heat of the day had been replaced with a biting wind. I had decided that I would slog into the woods and end it in a pretty place if I had the stones. It had gotten cold fast though and I had a fever. Have you ever had a fever and been subjected to cold? You might not remember what it’s like if it’s been a while. It sucks. I needed a place to crash pretty quickly, and a beat up old silver airstream trailer about a mile into the woods looked damned inviting.

I got in the trailer easy enough. It was state of the art. In 1963. It had holes in the walls and roof that had been poorly patched, and there were indeterminate stains all over. It was heaven. The wind howled outside and I told it to screw off. I found some ratty old blankets near the bed in the back of the trailer that were undoubtedly knitted by Betsy Ross herself. I clutched the revolver tight to me as I shivered, and then realized what an idiot I would be if my shaking caused me to shoot myself in the nuts or something. I put the gun on the moldy mattress next to me to avoid a .38 caliber vasectomy. If I died tonight, it would be with my twig and berries un-perforated.

I bundled up and waited for the sickness to get worse before I pulled the trigger. It got way worse. Other than one particularly vile experience I had with some scallops and tequila in Boston’s North End, this was the worst night of my life. I got sicker and sicker and finally, when I thought enough was enough I picked up the gun. I just couldn’t be one of them. I couldn’t.

Could I? How bad would it be? Would I just go away and be replaced with something else? What would happen to my soul? The part of me that was nobody else, where would it go? Then it hit me. What if it didn’t go anywhere? What if every dead bastard out there held a normal person screaming to be let loose of a rotting fleshy prison,  totally aware, but unable to stop this…this
thing
from committing the most heinous acts in history while it wears their skin.

Fuck that.

I put the gun my temple with a shaky, fever-ridden hand. The trigger was cold against my hot finger as I slowly squeezed. Then I released. I couldn’t do it. Those stones I mentioned earlier were nowhere to be found. Packed their bags and took off for parts unknown with no forwarding address or cellphone number.

I couldn’t kill myself because I didn’t have the balls I almost shot off earlier. Ironic.

I checked my leg and shoulder and they were horrible looking. Black lines radiated from both of them, my veins had grabbed the infection and were spreading it around inside me quite effectively. I stunk like the fat ladies who had tried to ingest me too. It was awful, so I did the only thing I could think of. I went to sleep.

Have you ever totally ruined yourself with booze and drugs on a two day binge? By 3:15 AM on the second night, you’re thinking you should quit, but your buddies are still raging so you keep going right alongside them. Eventually your body can’t take anymore, and that little guy we spoke about before pulls the master switch and you shut down completely. Oh how you hate yourself when you finally wake up. You feel like somebody did something revolting in your mouth and
everything
hurts. Head, stomach, eyes, ass, everything.

I had none of that. I was fine.

It was very cold when I woke, and my shoulder and leg ached, but I wasn’t sick. Immediately, I remembered the whole being trapped in the dead guy thing, and I felt for a pulse. I was alive. F those scientists and military douches. NOT everybody dies from being bitten. I was living proof, and I was bitten by
two
different infected, and their combined weight was that of five!

I didn’t die. I didn’t die. I must have said that out loud a hundred times while sitting up looking at my leg. The wound looked like when Billy Rickles (that little shit, I hope he got infected and did die) had bitten me in the first grade. It was a full on upper and lower teeth mark, but that was all. No black lines, no pus, no festering stink. Same for my shoulder, although there was a patch of skin missing there. I needed to fix that up or I could get an infection.

I broke out laughing when I thought that. Actual hysterics. That’s when I realized I needed to pee. The trailer had a bathroom, and I opened the little sliding partition, finding the toilet. My stream could have cut steel. It was like I had been hoarding urine for three days. This is when I noticed something out of place in the old trailer. Brand new toilet paper. I furrowed the old brow at that one, but whatever. I was so happy at not being dead, or sort of dead, that I howled at the roof of the trailer while I shook off the big guy.

And something howled back.

It was a caterwauling scream, the hybrid shriek of a mountain lion and Death himself. The boys (my nuts) had returned briefly from their hiatus, because I felt them shrink up into my stomach. That scream sounded again, and if I could have pissed myself I would have.

Whatever it was started smashing against the trailer, hammering for all it was worth on the side. The whole damn vehicle shook. I zipped up quickly, thankfully missing the good stuff, and grabbed the wheel gun. I checked the cylinder, all six rounds were there.

Pointing the gun at the flimsy door to my aluminum deathtrap, I waited patiently. Actually, I was so scared my nuts had come back and then left again. Twice. But I waited nonetheless.

The screaming and pounding ceased, and after a few grunts, all became quiet. I then turned into the smoking hottie in the horror movies that you are always yelling at not to open that or go there. I slowly parted the threadbare curtains over the sink in the airstream.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was that it had snowed. Flurries were still falling, but there was at least three inches of the white stuff blanketing the world. The second thing I noticed was footprints in said precipitation. Or I should say boot prints.

Now being from Massachusetts, I have seen some fauna. Hawks, squirrels, sea gulls, weasels, deer. I even saw a fisher cat once. Mean S.O.B. too. Said animal did not have the intelligence to strap on a pair of Timberlands though, and I was fairly certain that even the animals up here in New Hampshire didn’t parade around in shoes either.

Options on the species boot-wearing critter were limited.

I waited for at least an hour. It had stopped snowing, but the footprints were mostly covered. I peeked out the curtains one last time before I cautiously opened the door and peeked out of that as well. Nothing.

I took a furtive step outside, panning the .38 around. More nothing. I took two steps out the door and into the snow and realized that all this nothing was scaring the piss that I no longer had right out of me, so I spun around and made for the trailer door. I dunno who was doing all that yelling, but I no longer needed to find out.

I should have looked up.

On top of the airstream, with his ass on his heels in a crouch and staring right at me was the culprit. His head was cocked to the side, but only momentarily as he threw it back and screamed the scream of the damned. Then he launched himself off the trailer like a leopard pouncing on a gazelle. Gazelle = me for the slow people.

Blood on the Snow

Now I know you’ve been wondering why I’ve brought up the Runners twice previously, but only in a sort of an aside. They have been surreptitiously absent from this gripping tale. That’s because Runners are
different
. Some people use the word “zombie” for the dead folks that have taken over, but that term is incorrect. Look up your Haitian voodoo.

I’m going to call them zombies from here on out too, even though the term is crap.

Runners are as different from those walking pus bags (zombies) as you are from a can of spam. There are commonalities mind you, but they are most definitely not the same. I was talking about commonalities in the types of infected, not between you and spam. Although, come to think of it, I don’t know you, so maybe you’re as dumb as spam, and you’re probably fashioned out of meat like spam. God is fickle.

Anyway, the point is that the thing hurtling at me velociraptor style, was most assuredly a Runner. It was my first Runner, so you should consider that a particularly terrifying moment for me. Previously, I mentioned I had deposited what most would reflect on as an extremely manly and hard-hitting piss. I did this while flexing my un-infected pecs and standing over a filthy toilet containing Heaven knows what. So this is twice I had no urine to spare, because damn, my bladder let go with a bunch of nothing.

As it leapt gracefully through the cold pre-December air, I couldn’t help but notice that the thing looked like a mountain man. Scraggly beard, dirty clothes with a green military jacket, obviously fabricated the same year as the Airstream for a tour in Vietnam. It had scratches on its cheeks, above the whiskers. The eyes are what I remember most though.

People use descriptive terms like ‘inhuman’ to designate the infected, but you can’t really understand what that means until you’ve seen a Runner, or, more to the point, until you see a Runner who sees you. When you look into their eyes, you can tell that they are no longer human. To me, being human isn’t defined by anatomy, but by humanity. That is to say, many emotions. When you look at a human being, you can generally tell how they are feeling even if they try to mask it.

There was no masking this thing’s emotion. It only had one, and that was pure, unadulterated hatred, all of which was directed directly at yours truly. I’m not sure if it wanted to eat me, as would its dead cousins, but I am downright positive it had intentions on evisceration. If I let this thing have its way with me, it would be wearing my small intestine as a necklace forthwith.

All of these considerations were contemplated in the time it took for the thing to spring from the roof of the trailer and impact my left shoulder. It was slippery in the new fallen snow and we both went down scrambling, both of us fighting for my life. The .38 went off, and I swear to Christ the bullet took the zipper of my prison issue Wranglers with it. Yeah, after all I wrote before, now was the time I shoot off my dick. I didn’t have time to check if my little pal and I were still friends, because the Runner rolled and looked at me while on its hands and knees. Its eyes narrowed and it tried to attack again, but its boots slipped in the snow and it fell on its belly.

Snarling in rage and frustration, (two more of my least favorite emotions), it fought for purchase in the snow and tried to scrabble on all fours toward me. That was all the impetus I needed, so I shot it in the face. The creature’s head snapped back, and whatever was inside his noggin sprayed out on the slush behind it in a conical shape.

I flopped on to my back and looked at the sky, thinking how ridiculously lucky I was. Then I remembered my penis, or possible lack thereof, and had a wee (he he) bit of a panic attack. I checked and everything was where it should be, thank all that is holy, but I would need some new pants. And I don’t mean because of the zipper.

Eventually I got cold and sat up. I gave myself a once over, just to make sure I hadn’t been scratched. I was less scared of bites and scratches now, but why take the chance?

I seemed to be unscathed and was somewhat overjoyed. I used said joy to fuel a search of the dead hillbilly. He had dog tags. Maracek, John J., 016626262, O+, Lutheran.

I remember every single letter and number on that dog tag, but I have no idea what my cell mate’s last name was. His first name was Benny. I lived with him for just over a year.

The only thing in Mr. Maracek’s nylon bi-fold wallet was a grainy picture of a kid on a swing. The photo was torn in half, excluding whoever had been pushing the cute little blonde girl. The only other things on poor Johnny were a G-Shock watch, a dented Zippo lighter with some type of military sigil I didn’t recognize, and a bite mark resembling the one on my leg on the meaty part of his hand.

I took Mr. Maracek’s jacket because the temperature was starting to drop. New England weather. I also pilfered the watch and the lighter because those were items I could use. It was then I realized how thirsty I was. I had left my meager food and water stores in the trailer in the small pack that I had been given by the prison convoy. I reached down and grabbed a handful of snow, wolfing it down. It was delicious and so cold it hurt my teeth. I strapped the watch on and pocketed the lighter. Checking the watch, I could scarcely believe my eyes. The date told me it had been three days since I split up with the convoy. I had slept for three days, and if John J. Maracek had been skulking out here all that time, that meant I had been sleeping in this trailer while he skulked, probably pawing at the door here and there. The Airstream was probably his anyway.

To sound like a New Englander: Wicked wake-up call, kid.

The flurry flakes were getting larger and more frequent as I stared into the sky. The temperature would drop another twenty degrees by the time the sun went away, so I searched the perimeter, for what I don’t know and I hid out in the trailer. I wanted to wait out the storm before I went trudging through the snow to God knows where.

It took two days. The snow fell for two damn days. It wasn’t a blizzard or anything, but it put close to two more feet of the white stuff down. There was some split wood in the trailer with more logs outside, and a pot-bellied stove sat close to the mattress so I was able to keep warm thanks to the Zippo. A thorough search of the trailer revealed some photographs of that little blonde girl, so I was able to deduce that the Airstream had in fact belonged to John Maracek. Or he was squatting, not that it mattered.

My search also added a beat-up machete, a hunting knife with sharpening stone, a double-bladed Collins axe, and some sundries to my cache of survival crap.

When the snow stopped, I looked out the window. John’s carcass, complete with ventilated melon and cranial spray, was covered with snow and I could no longer see it.

I also scanned for footsteps, of which there were none.

I had been wondering if the gunshot a couple of days before would have brought anybody knocking, but no one seemed to come. I was about a mile off of the highway, the entire forest was blanketed with snow, and I had food and supplies for a month and weapons.

I was safe.

On day four of my New Hampshire exile, I grabbed the axe and went out to split some of the cut fire wood. I still had plenty, but half of what had been inside before had been burned away. Getting to the stack I noticed something scary. Fresh trudge prints. I hadn’t been to this side of the trailer in a while, so I knew they weren’t mine. The prints came from the woods right up to the window of my new home, then they went back into the woods.

I packed my stuff and left.

The intentions of whomever or whatever had peeped on me were unclear, so it was time to go. I figured I would find a farmhouse, or something more defensible, and wait out the winter in solitude. Pack on my back, machete and knife strapped to my sides, gun in my pocket and axe on my shoulder, I looked exactly like Mr. Maracek. Especially since the trailer had yielded no razors and I was wearing the dead guy’s jacket. I looked like a total badass.

What an idiot.

Three hours into my journey, I realized I had no idea where to go. Everything was covered in snow, so I couldn’t even find the road. Badass? How about dumbass. Rather than turn around and follow my footprints back to the Airstream, I figured I was committed and should keep going. I certainly should have been committed. I was friggin crazy.

Six hours later the skies began to darken. Not only was it getting dark, but it looked like another storm was on the way. Terrific. I soldiered on, until I saw smoke. Now the whole point of me being in that trailer was that I wanted to be alone. If I’m alone, then nobody can kill me to take my stuff, or die in their sleep and eat me in mine. The smoke was a conundrum:  do I risk all that I just listed and join up with the smokers, or go in the opposite direction and probably freeze to death?

Admittedly, I needed someone’s help. I was cold and it was getting late, so I moved toward the smoke. It took about fifteen minutes to find the source and I walked into a clearing that stretched endlessly in both directions. I climbed an embankment, cautiously peering over to find out what the smoke was.

If I wasn’t so cold and tired, and if the sky wasn’t full of clouds, I would have been able to tell that the smoke was all wrong. It wasn’t smoke from a campfire or fire place, it was the greasy black smoke of burning vehicles. A prison bus, as luck would have it, and a large Deuce and a half truck had collided, and there was no way it had been an accident. Bullet holes peppered both vehicles and bodies littered the ground. Some of the bodies had been torn to pieces and some were whole.

My old friends were there too and some new folks I was soon to be acquainted with. Almost every one of them staggering about, covered in blood and worse.

All of them but one. He was simply walking around, looking for something. One of the zombies (there I said it) staggered too close to him and he screamed and threw it to the ground, punching it with giant haymakers as it tried to stand. The other dead folks just looked at the scene for a second, continuing with their meanderings in short order.

For reasons still unbeknownst to me, the guy stood, whipped around and stared right at me. He hooked his hands into claws, threw his head back and screamed long and loud. He was wearing a police uniform.

Every single dead person looked at him when he screamed, then they all turned their collective gaze on me. As one, they came plodding toward me, but I didn’t hang around for drinks and a cigarette, I ran like a little girl. I ran back toward the woods, all my stuff clanking against me. I was not the epitome of stealth and the snow was two feet deep at least. It was hard going and I got tired quickly.

I paused and leaned against a pine to catch my breath. I saw the cop bounding through the snow, chasing me like I had just snatched a purse. I knew I couldn’t out run him, so I pulled the machete and waited, heaving.

The thing coming at me was grunting and growling from exertion and hatred, no trace of the cop who had not shot me when I had been bitten left in him. My back was to a copse of trees, and I raised the machete high in anticipation of his death charge. I heard a
twang
, felt something moving past my face, and suddenly the cop had an arrow sticking out of his chest. The Runner had a comical expression of surprise on his features, just before he collapsed, clutching at the thing stuck in him.

I turned around but all I could see were the trees. Until one of them moved.

Do you remember your seventh grade science teacher? He was probably a little bald guy with glasses who had trouble picking up textbooks with his pipe-cleaner arms. My teacher was the polar opposite of yours. Mr. Sheldon. Mr. Sheldon was six foot eight and four hundred pounds of solid muscle. This was the kind of man that would make professional wrestlers piss themselves at the thought of a bout with him. He had tree trunks for arms, and legs the size of…well…tree trunks.

So when I tell you that the man I was looking at was bigger than Mr. Sheldon, I want you to store that in your memory bank. Guy was a house. I have no doubt that he could have played football against the New York Giants and won. By himself.

He was holding a camouflage compound bow, which was dwarfed by his giant frame and massive hands, and he was looking at me. He cocked his head to the left to look past me and pointed behind me.

My former friends, the ones who had left me to die because I had been bitten, were coming through the snow a few hundred feet behind. I swallowed hard and turned to face the giant. With a simple nod of his head, he beckoned me to follow, and he moved into the woods with a grace that belied his size.

So I followed, the cries of the dead not far behind.