Nashville Summers (3 page)

In case you've never tried standing guard all night against a foul invasion of the living dead, let me tell you this much: it isn't half as fun as it seems.  I sat there, my precious fifty-dollar plaid shirt in ruins, and my knuckles white as I clenched the handle of my blood-soaked axe as tight as I could.  With my back to the wall, I stared at the door all night, half expecting some zombie beast to rip it off the hinges and come in, snarling for brains.

Well, ok now, so maybe that wasn't e
ntirely true.  So maybe I didn't spend the entire time staring at the door.  Or even any.  I'd been too busy fixing my gaze on Andrew’s angelic, sleeping form.  Every time I tried to tear my gaze away from him I failed, miserably.  Hey, even gay zombie smackers have hormones, and right now mine were running about a mile a minute.  Not once did I so much as feel the urge to sleep, because that would have meant abandoning my post.  I mean hell, even before Andrew and I had fucked - excuse me, made love - I'd wanted to protect him.  But now, now I was just about ready to take on the entire army of darkness in his name.

Yawning, I got up and stretched,
and even flexed a little.  I was bare-chested, having discarded my scrappy rags the previous night, and it made me feel a little tough, like Bruce Campbell on that Evil Dead 3 poster.  Granted I didn't have quite the abs or the pecs he did, but hey, give me time, I'm only a teenager.  I rubbed my hand down my torso, feeling gently for muscle.  There was a little that was sort of noticeable, but who the fuck cares?  I was strong enough to beat the undead shit out of zombies and hot enough to give Andrew a hard-on, and at the moment those were the only two things that I gave a flying fuck about.

I
gingerly crept over to the closet door and slid it open as quickly and quietly as I could with one hand, and readied my axe with the other.  If there were any zombies out and about I was ready.  But I figured there wouldn't be, and I was right; the room was empty, completely devoid of afterlife.  The entire night I had sat up watching over Andrew, and now it was morning, a new day. I had an empty gas can in need of a refilling and a chainsaw back home that was longing to tear into some corpse guts.

I swung open the door, and woke
Andrew with a gentle shake.  "Here's your wake-up call babe," I said coolly, brushing some black strands of hair and some dried blood out of his face.  "We gotta get moving while we can, zombies don't like to come out during the day."

             
Blinking, he just looked up at me, yawned, and rubbed his eyes.  "Huh?" he asked, still sleepy.  "Where are we going?"  "Not here,” I responded illusively, tossing him his clothes.  "Put these on, unless you feel like going back up to your room for some clean ones."

Again he yawned
.  "Nope, these'll do, it's nice and warm out.”  He slid his slender form into the pants first, then the shirt, as he forced himself to wake up.  In a timid voice he asked, "So... Victoria's gone now?"

"
Don't call her that!” I snapped, and instantly regretted being so rough.  "She's not your sister anymore man, I've told you, you need to stop thinking about her as Victoria!"  He nodded meekly.  "What should I call her?"

Huh
.  This stumped the hell out of me.  How the fuck should I know?

"Um, I don't know, anything
!  You just can't think of her like that, okay dude?”  As before, he nodded, and I breathed a sigh of relief.  Now I just hoped we wouldn't run into her again, ever.  At the same time I knew we would.  Garrote wasn't a large city, and there were only so many places for zombies to hang out, you know?  And besides, Victoria was a bit of a bitch.  I knew she wanted both me and my lover either dead, or as zombies ourselves.  Now there was a sickening thought...  being a zombie?

That made me want to hurl.
That and kick Victoria's bitch ass back to the grave.

As my thoughts began to run away wi
th me I realized Andrew had been talking.  "Huh?”  I asked.  "What was that?"

"I was just asking,"
he repeated, "where exactly are we going to?"

"Let's see," I thought out loud, bot
h to answer his question and to get my thoughts straight in my own mind.  "I got this chainsaw back home and it's really kickass against these things, tears 'em right the hell open, but it's out gas.”  Out of gas...  what a stupid concept!  I mean, when Ash was sent back in time to the middle ages in the end of Dead By Dawn, did his chainsaw ever run out of gas?  Of course not! 

"So I was
just on my way to the gas station to refill it," I continued, "so I guess that's where we go now.”  For a brief second I paused, as a new thought came to me.  "You know...  I bet I could use fireworks to scare the hell out of the zombies, and to blow them up too.”  Andrew just gave me a confused look, and I realized he had no idea what the fuck I was talking about.  "A friend of mine lives, well, used to live anyway, just a few blocks from here, and he was an incredible pyromaniac.  If I can get my hands on his stash...”  I let the thought hang.

Andrew
gave a small smile.  "That sounds cool," he said, his voice as soft as ever.  "But what if you see your friend there, and he's a zombie?"  Rather than answer the question, I grabbed Andrew by the hand, and pulled him into a deep, long kiss.  When we broke I said, "C'mon...  let's get those fireworks."

The rain hadn't let up at all through the night
.  I had known from the telltale patter I had heard on the roof as I sat guarding.  But now it seemed to have stopped, or at least turned into a slight drizzle so I couldn't hear anymore.  Sure enough, when Andrew and I reached the door and swung it open my suspicions were confirmed.  The rain had slowed to a stop and the heat of the morning had covered the land with a thick blanket of fog.  It had a very soothing effect, or at least it might have for someone else under different circumstances, but not me.  "Crap.”  I stated flatly, staring out into the mist.  "How in God's name are we gonna find our way through this?”  The question was obviously rhetorical, and Andrew made no reply.  I sighed deeply and exaggeratedly.  "Well, come on," I said, and set out on our way.

For the first few minutes of ou
r journey we walked in silence, with Andrew still half asleep and me lost in concentration, trying to peer through the mist in search of zombies to slice open.  Yeah, it was true they didn't like to hang around during the day, but they were cool about fog.  It worked the same way darkness did, covering them up and allowing them to sneak real close before attacking.  That's the sort of things zombies liked. They were sneaky bastards, especially during the day.  Even still, I didn't expect to see many between sunup and sundown, but it never hurt to stay vigilant.

Soon enough, after we had walked ma
ybe ten minutes or so, the paved road branched off into a dirt one.  This was our turn...  or was it?  I peered down the gloomy path, as far down as I could see.  Unlike the main road, this one led deep into the forest, and was not lined with houses.  To take this path would be quicker, but it certainly wouldn't be easier.  "Ok, babe, decision time," I said, turning to Andrew.  "We can either take the main road, which is much, much longer, but relatively safe, or go down here and risk running into some ferals."

Andrew
scratched his head idly.  "Ferals?"

"Yeah..
.  feral zombies.  In most cases, when the dead arise, they become zombies like your sis...  like that thing that looks like your sister.  Y'know, still able to walk and talk and fight and shit like that.  But when they've been dead for too long and they arise, something fucks up.  I think they've been rotting for too long and their brains don't work right.  The result...  well, it's hard to explain.  You must have at least seen Night of the Living Dead, right?"

             
He shrugged.  "Parts of it, I think."

             
"'68 or '90?"

             
"Huh?"

             
"Never mind...  anyway, these feral zombies as I call 'em can barely even think.  They just sort of moan and clump around a lot.  They look a lot scarier than they actually are.  The thing is, they're determined, and there's a fuckload of 'em.  They start coming and they don't stop.  They like to hang out in groups.”  Again, I peered down the unpaved road, a little more apprehensively this time.  "Usually in forests or under bridges, or even in cemeteries.  Especially in cemeteries.”  I shifted my gaze back to him.  "So...  which path you wanna go down?"

With a confused look he stared back at me
.  "Why are you asking me?"

Good point, why was I asking him
?  I was the one with experience.  I'd been doing this for weeks, or months, or however long it had been since the uprising, while he was still hiding out in his little closet.  This was my decision to make.

But even still.
  "Are you like, okay with going down this way?”  I asked, gesturing to the forest path with my axe.  "I mean, I'm kinda desensitized to mad zombie slaughter but you..."

"I'll be fine," he cut me off, with forced enthusiasm
.  "Don't worry."

Although I wasn't entirely convinced, what could I
do?  With a shrug I turned in the direction of the dirt road, calling back to Andrew over my shoulder, "If we see any ferals stay close behind me, but not too close.  I don't want to smack you with the axe by accident.  That might ruin my whole day.  And if you see any behind you when I'm fighting lemme know, so I can take care of it.  But," I added as an afterthought, "don't worry!  These things suck, they're wicked slow and some of 'em don't even have teeth anymore.  It's just when they swarm you that you're in trouble...  and we might not even run into any anyways."

Nodding gently,
Andrew followed me down the path, as we walked down towards my friend's house.  Moist leaves and gravel crunched under our feet, providing a shuffling sound that must have alerted any nearby zombies that we were coming, at least, any whose ears hadn't rotted off yet.  Damn this fog!  I couldn't see more than five feet in front of my face, so I knew I'd have to stay alert.  If the zombies started coming I'd have to strike fast.

Sure enough, a face appeared in the mist. It was a long dead face that reminded me a little of my science teacher before the schools had shut down.  It was old, fetid, decomposing; the mouth hung crookedly open and it was moaning softly, "Brains...  brains...”  I lifted my axe and swung, connecting right above the eyes, taking the top of his head clean off and splattering rotting zombie brains everywhere.  That was easy enough, I thought, but before I could tie that thought down in words two more materialized right in front of me.  The one on the right was moaning for my brains like the last one was, but his friend was missing the lower half of his jaw. His flesh was so rotten that bone was poking through the surface in several places.

"Aw, go to hell," I muttered, and brought my axe down
on the moaner's head, splitting it clean in two and embedding my axe between his shoulders.  To the other I raised my right foot in a high snap kick that hit it right where the lower jaw should have been, sending it sprawling backwards.  It twitched a little, trying to stand up, but it had no luck - its muscles were far too decomposed to allow it.  No sooner had I dispatched those two that three, four, five more emerged from the forest, some moaning, others mute, all disgustingly dead and in various stages of decomposition.

Again I tore my axe out of the dead
zombie's carcass and raised it for another swing, but from a few feet behind me I heard Andrew call out, "Nash!”  I turned and saw a particularly ugly feral advancing on him.  This one looked ready to keel over on its own, but Andrew was afraid.  Quick as I could I ran over and delivered a punch, harder than I had thought possible, right to the center of its forehead.  It fell backwards, smacking its head on the ground as it landed, and moved no more.

By now, at least seven more
ferals had gathered, drawing nearer, maybe attracted by the smell of blood, or maybe because I had such bad fucking luck.  "Shit," I murmured, wiping a bead of sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand.  I grabbed Andrew’s hand in mine, tightening my other around the handle of my axe.  There were too many of them, there was no way could we fight our way out.  "C'mon, let's get the fuck out of here."

Pushing a pair of
ferals aside to clear the path, I started to run as fast as I could.

The zombies were coming out of th
e woodwork now, lining the road and still continuing to appear; if we had waited any longer to make our escape we wouldn't have been able to.  They would’ve blocked our every route and then just keep coming and coming until I became too fatigued from killing them.  Other zombies would actually retreat when they knew they hadn't a change of winning a fight, but ferals were driven solely by their hunger; they hadn't the brain power to realize they were dumber than shit.

As we ran past them they clawed at m
e, or tried to at least. I just rushed past their outstretched arms and hands, occasionally giving my axe a weak little swing to cut one down.  But they couldn't chase after us, their running days were long behind them.  Most of them could barely shuffle forwards.  But they didn't need mobility, or even any sort of skill whatsoever.  They had numbers.  The forests were full of them.  I made a mental note to never go into the forest again.

Behind me I could hear
Andrew start to breathe hard, and he started to slow down a little, which made me begin to worry.  If he couldn't take the run, what could we do?  Nothing, and die.  Oh well, if he got tired he'd just have to suck it up, that was all.  It was either run or die.  But I wasn't too concerned. My friend's house was drawing nearer, and the ranks of the zombies were thinning out the closer we got.

Finally, another dirt path branched off to the right and I made the turn, pulling
Andrew along with me.  "This way...  it's his driveway.”  With our destination in sight Andrew seemed to get his second wind, and we took off down the driveway.  His driveway was a long one, and once we got about thirty feet down it the zombies stopped appearing, as if this section of the woods was devoid of them.  I didn't think about that right now; I just kept running, I could think later.

Before too long the house loomed over us
.  It had seen better days, back before the zombies, when I used to visit Alexander Bogosian, my friend who had lived there, just about every day.  Everyone called him Bogo. The only time I ever called him Alex was when I wanted something, as in, "hey Alex, got any food?”  He was a bit of a nerd, a bit overweight, and a bit of a pyromaniac.  He enjoyed sneaking out at night and blowing up fireworks in the middle of the forest and waking up the whole neighborhood.  He was a hell of a guy.  Now, his love for fireworks would help me blow the shit out of the undead.

"Almost there," I grinned at
Andrew, holding his hand tightly.  He looked back and returned it, opening his mouth to say something. But before any words could come out, I heard a very familiar but very different voice cry out, "Die die die die die!” Our grins vanished, but before I could do anything a gunshot rang out and a small red splotch appeared on Andrew’s chest.

"No
!  “I yelled before I had time to wonder why Bogo would be alive and shooting at us, but Andrew just looked confused.  He reached down and touched the splotch, then looked up at me.  "It's paint..." he said, sounding more confused than ever, looking to me to explain.  I was at a loss; sure, I had known Bogo was a weird guy but what the fuck was up with this?  Had he just like snapped or something?

Yeah, it was cool to know that he wasn't z
ombie food but even still, this was just weird.

I looked around, but I could
n’t see where he was hiding.  "Hey Bogo!  “I yelled, just loud enough so as to not draw the zombies closer.  "What the fuck?"

"Sorry, man," he called back, still in hiding
.  "Thought you were zombies.  I'm over here, could you like gimme a hand dude?”  Together Andrew and I walked over in the direction of the voice to discover Bogo lying on the ground, his left leg crushed beneath a fallen tree.  He'd changed in the months since I'd last seen him. He had lost a lot of weight and grown a lot of hair, and the acne that had plagued him since age twelve was thicker than ever.  He wore a slightly torn, dirty, and very ragged Def Leppard shirt that hung loosely off his body, and a pair of bloody and faded jeans.  "Thanks dude," he gasped, as together Andrew and I lifted the tree from his leg.  Glancing downward at the wound, he moaned in pain.  "Ow ow OW that hurts.  Hey, you two wanna do me a favor and help me inside?  I could hop, but somehow I think that wouldn't be much fun."

"Sure thing," I said, and
Andrew and I got on either side of him, allowing him to wrap his arms around our shoulders for support.  The three of us walked what little distance there was to his house.  I opened the door and we helped him inside.

Man,
Bogo’s house had really gone to shit in the last few months.  Actually, in a way it resembled the Garrote homestead as I had found it last night.  Similarly, they both looked as if wars had been fought in them; Bogo's stuff was demolished and strewn about the house in a random manner.  There was something missing though...  what was it?  I couldn't put my finger on it until I glanced over at Andrew and saw the red paint on his top...  blood!  There was no blood anywhere in the house.  What was up with that?

Bogo
noticed me staring and grinned.  "I've redecorated a bit without my parents around.”  On his good right leg he hopped over to a chair in the corner and plopped down into it lazily.  "It's good to be home."

Again,
Andrew and I exchanged a glance.  Was Bogo going to explain anything, or what?  "Hey, what the fuck happened out there?  Why were you pinned beneath a tree?"

"It fell on me."

"No shit!  "

Chuckling a little, he yawned
.  "Well, I had to prepare for the zombies, right?  So I went out to cut some wood, you know, like for a barricade or something.  But I fucked up, I couldn't get outa the way fast enough.”  He glanced down at his damaged leg.  "Well, now it's shot to shit.  I really fucked it up.  I won't be going anywhere anytime soon.”  He was right.  I was no doctor but I could tell his leg was broken; the lower half hung limp and useless, and there was blood everywhere.  "I sure hope no zombies decide to pay a visit."

"Well, if they do, I'm here now," I assured him
.  "By the way, what the fuck were you thinking with that paintball gun?"

He shrugged
.  "I don’t know, maybe scare them off a bit if I start shooting at them."

"Zombies don't scare.
”  I stated flatly, raising my axe.  "Not these kind.  You have to hack 'em apart, or else they'll just keep coming back for more.  "Again, Bogo just shrugged, so I changed the subject.  "Hey Alex, got any food?”  I was hungry, and I bet Andrew was too.  After all, we hadn't eaten last night, we'd been busy with something else.

Much to my dismay
Bogo just shook his head.  "Nope, sorry dude. I got nothing.  I was gonna go out to snag some shit from the grocery store after blocking myself in but no such luck."  Again, he turned his attention down to his mashed up leg.  "I wonder if I could make some crutches or something."

"That'd wouldn't help
you out much," I said, scoffing lightly.  "With crutches you'd be able to walk alright, but you'd be slower than shit.  The zombies could still catch you, even these things you hang out with here in the forest."

With a grin, he replied, "Yeah, but I could use them to beat
the assholes over the head or something!"

I rolled my eyes
.  "That wouldn't work either, except maybe to slow them down a little.  You need to give 'em a really hard whack to the head if you wanna get anything done."

"Yeah, I know
.  Hey, what happened to your shirt?"

"It got ripped
, to shreds actually, which sucks 'cause it was a nice shirt.  It was all bloody and shit anyway from killing zombies.  Have you had to fight many?"

"A few," he responded,
shrugging.  "At first they came right up to the house but I had a chainsaw then and I tore them all to pieces.  It was sweet.  Then they stopped for a while, but I think they've been gathering in this area, getting ready to storm the house."

"What happened to the chainsaw?"

Scowling, he replied, "It ran outa gas..."

"Yeah..
.  I know what that's like."

After that there was a brief silen
ce, as we both pondered our own separate thoughts, until Andrew broke it.  "Um...  do you have fireworks?"

Suddenly I remembered why I had come here; to get supplies
! 

The grin returned to
Bogo's face.  "Fuegos artificiales!  Hell yeah!  Good thinking, we can use them to blow zombies to shit.  I like it!”  Still grinning, he got out of his chair, balancing himself on his good leg.  "C'mon Nash, help me up to my room.  I still have a shitload left, let's go."

In
unison the three of us walked swiftly as possible, up the stairs.  That was a hell of a task; Bogo nearly fell backwards and broke his ass twice.  But eventually we made it up to his room, which was the one part of his house that remained exactly as I had remembered it.  Junk lay strewn about the floor, posters advocating various rock and metal groups adorned the walls, and in the corner lay the beat up old mattress that served as Bogo's bed.  On the right wall sat a large window overlooking the driveway, and on the opposite side sat another overlooking his backyard.  But right now I didn't give a flying fuck about any of that; my attention was focused on the shelves, which were full of as many fireworks as Bogo'd been able to get his pyromanical hands on. 

"Sweet
!”  I exclaimed joyfully. This was more than I had hoped for.  Even Andrew seemed impressed.  "This is perfect!  With all this shit we can really fuck some zombies up good!" I didn't know much about explosives, but this looked good.  This was something that was going to help me at last, this was even better than more gas for my chainsaw.  "Wow...  I murmured under my breath, just staring, while Bogo stood nearby, chuckling at my amazement.  I would have stared even longer had I not suddenly been jolted out of my concentration by a loud smashing sound, coming from downstairs.