Sven the Zombie Slayer (27 page)

Damn people, she thought, damn them all to hell.

Jane put her foot on the brake and shifted the car into drive. Then she gently released the brake, and drove away.

66

This is it, Milt thought, the honorable death of the greatest warrior that ever graced the universe with his most generous presence.

The end.

Death at the rotten hands of the zombies. At least it was an interesting way to die. Then terror overtook him, and gone were his deliberations over the comparative merits of the various means by which a person may meet death.

Their hands were clamped so tightly, so firmly, around his ankles, and no matter how hard he kicked or pulled or tried to crawl backward, the undead talons that held him wouldn’t yield.

Milt was overcome by a sudden mourning when it occurred to him he might never consume another Snickers bar, or quench his thirst with the delightful sparkle of Coca-Cola. That was the worst thing of all, because whether he died or was transformed into a zombie, the worldly delights of food and drink would become forever off-limits. He was sure that zombies didn’t eat...that they couldn’t eat, except of humans. He figured that if they did still have the capacity to eat human food, they would be doing so now, instead of trying to eat Milt. If only they could still know the pleasure of sticky peanuts and nougat and caramel and if—

There was a thud, and then a crunch, and Milt’s eyes darted up to see a zombie’s head explode into a spray of eyes and nose and teeth and brain...desiccated solids but no blood. Then there was another thud and another crunch—crunchier this time—and another head turned into a vile spray of its shattered component parts. Milt recalled the destroyed Commodore 64 lying in its spray of electronic innards, and didn’t feel the bite of loss he had before. Then another head exploded, and another.

The pull on Milt’s legs lessened, and he saw that the zombies who were holding him in their undead grasp were all headless—headless but still holding on, relentless. No...wait, they were falling backward, away from him. They were dead, and they couldn’t let go because their hands weren’t working anymore. But what had made their heads explode? Was it divine providence intervening on Milt’s behalf so that he may live out his glorious destiny? It must—

“Are you okay?” came a voice next to Milt’s head. “Damn they’re still holding on, let me see if I can get the hands off.”

Milt turned in surprise to see that a man was there, and in his hands he held a baseball bat. The bat looked like it had seen better days. It was splattered with a generous coating of zombie gobbets of all shapes and sizes. Milt was quite confident that there was an eyeball on it, flattened down so that it looked like an imperfect square with a shriveled and twisted optic nerve hanging from the back. At the end of the optic nerve was a warped brain globule. Milt didn’t know if that was the right terminology for it, but it seemed correct enough. The globule stared at him, and made him extremely uncomfortable, but it also gave him an idea.

He waited until the globule was out of sight, along with the bat it rode in on, and then executed his plan. The man with the bat had lifted it over his head like a woodchopper ready to strike at the decapitated zombie’s arms...and, that was when Milt commenced his globule-inspired maneuver.

He pushed himself up on his left elbow as far as he could go and shifted the great bulk of his big-boned back to the right, trying to rock over onto his right side. It took two attempts, and he was there. Then, putting all of his strength into it, Milt pushed off his right side, twisting his body back to the left.

The maneuver went exactly as Milt had intended. His legs fluttered around as he rolled over, and the torque exacted on the zombies’ arms was too much for their brittle undead bodies to handle. There were snaps and cracks and a sound similar to that which paper makes when it is ripped, and Milt was free. He kept rolling until he came to rest against the side of a car.

The headless zombies that had held him now had torn bits of sinew sticking out where their arms and forearms had once been. The front of the zombie line was destroyed, and Milt was, at least temporarily, out of harm’s way.

The baseball bat man went at the rest of them, dispatching the remaining five zombies with precisely aimed blows to the head. They all fell, decapitated or mostly so, to the pavement.

And then there were none.

Milt propped himself up on one elbow. He looked down and was filled with disgust when he saw that around his ankles and lower shins, detached zombie hands still held firm to him. There were five hands in all—two on his left leg and three on his right—and two of the hands were barely hands at all, they were torn up to the point of only having two fingers apiece, and bits of bone and tendon where the backs of the hands and wrists should have been.

The other three hands were relatively whole, but they were coming apart in a fleshy, wiry mess. It was a revolting sight.

Cringing, Milt looked away and at the man with the baseball bat. The man had on flip-flops, blue shorts, a yellow polo, and a
University
of
Virginia
baseball cap pulled low on his head. He was panting, and his eyes were darting among the zombie bodies, as if looking to see if any of them still posed a threat.

“Are you in league with the damned, or are you as yet uncontaminated?” Milt shouted. “If you are in league with the ill-fated zombies, you shall meet the edge of my proud blade.”

That reminded Milt. Where was said blade? Milt looked around for it but didn’t see it. Then he spotted its hilt, covered in his own dried blood, the chocolate coating no longer visible. The sword stuck out from under a mangle of zombie parts.

“What? I just helped you get away from those things, of course I’m not with them. I’m human, not bitten or anything. See?” The man brushed his short sleeves upward to reveal his upper arms, then picked his t-shirt up, revealing a midsection devoid of any visible fat. “See? No bites, still human.”

What a show-off, Milt thought. “Well, that is fine, but be more careful next time, there are zombies about, as you may have guessed.”

“You’re welcome?”

“Yes, you are welcome to join me in my quest. You may be my squire. You may call me Miltimore the Mighty.”

Milt stuck out his hand to the man, who was obviously some sort of simpleton, but that was alright. It wasn’t a day to be exceedingly selective in one’s alliances.

The man looked at Milt’s hand and shook his head. “We’ll shake later, looks like you got a lot of blood there, and I’m not taking any chances today. Oh, and you’re bleeding pretty good from your head.”

“I am certainly not infected. What is your name, young squire?”

“My name is Brian.” Brian seemed to be speaking slowly, like he had some kind of learning impediment. “And you’re being really weird. I think you have heat stroke. Let’s get out of the sun and take care of that wound.”

“Very well. That will do. Allow me to retrieve my sword first.”

After getting to his feet, Milt trundled to the pile of destroyed zombies, eagerly inhaled their aroma, bent over, and clasped the hilt of the sword. He pulled, and with the sword came a spray of zombie bits, and with the spray, a resurgence of the wonderful smell.

Then Milt began to lumber after Brian, who was already walking toward a patch of shade underneath some trees at the edge of the parking lot. As he lumbered, Milt pictured himself an agile stalker, returning from a victorious battle in which he had saved his cowardly squire.

“I’ve got a first aid kid in my car,” Brian said. “I think there are bandages in there. Why don’t you sit down and rest for a moment?”

“I must confess that is not a bad idea.” Coca-Cola bottles were dancing in Milt’s head. “Do you have any means of carbonated refreshment in your vehicle?”

“What?”

“Are you not aware of fizzy, carbonated refreshment? I believe in your world they sometimes refer to it as
pop.
”

“Pop? No, I don’t drink that stuff.”

“You don’t drink the nectar of the gods? What is wrong with you man?” Milt was beginning to huff and puff in disbelief, and he wanted to go back to the smattered pile of dead zombies, to prod and poke at them, and to be engulfed in their sublime aroma.

“You really need to try to stay out of the sun, and it’s understandable if you’ve had a bit of a shock. Just try to calm down, if you can I mean. I’m freaking out myself. I mean can you believe what’s going on? It’s crazy, just plain crazy.”

Milt pondered on that. “I stipulate that it is not crazy. I stipulate that it is the next stage in evolution.” Then Milt added with distaste, “
Our
evolution.” He knew it was really his own evolution to which he was referring, and not Brian’s. But even Milt had to admit to himself that he could not foretell what was to come, and Brian, in his role as squire, might grow to become an admirable servant.

“If you mean like a disease or something,” Brian said, “I guess you could put it that way, yeah. Do you think that’s what it is? A disease?”

“Perhaps, that seems to be a logical conclusion.”

Brian knelt beside Milt’s heaving body. Milt saw that Brian had gauze, a little spray bottle, and some tubes of ointment in his hands.

Milt was suspicious at once. “What are you doing?”

“I’m bandaging you up, remember? You’re bleeding all over the place, and for all we know that’ll attract more of those things.”

Milt didn’t feel like he was bleeding all over the place, but when he looked down he saw that the left side of his shirt was covered in blood. He turned his head to look at his shoulder and flinched at the pain. The left shoulder of his t-shirt was sopping with blood, and Milt felt light-headed at the very sight of it. The sudden wave of light-headedness made him realize that he had begun to get dizzy some time ago. Maybe the squire was right about the heat stroke. After all, Milt did try to avoid the sun at all costs. It had never been a friend to his particular constitution.

“Now turn your head and keep still for a minute,” Brian said. “I don’t think it’s serious, or even deep. The scalp tends to bleed a lot with even a small cut.”

Milt reluctantly obeyed. “Are you a medical man then?” Milt didn’t want a lecture about the size of his body. Doctors—back when he had gone to them—always lectured him about his diet and weight loss. But they knew nothing of his accomplishments, they were ignorant fools, just looking to be paid for nothing more than lecturing him.

“No, not really,” Brian said. “I used to be an EMT, so I’ve seen worse.”

“Worse than the zombie apocalypse in which we now find ourselves?”

“No, I mean worse than the cut on your head. Just hold still a minute.”

Milt felt a spray of water behind his ear and liquid dribbled down his head and onto his shoulder. Then Brian was dabbing warm ointment out of a wrinkled tube on Milt’s cut, and then the bandaging began. Milt watched as Brian ripped off a piece of gauze from its roll and brought it up toward Milt’s head.

“Ow!” Milt yelled, feeling a searing pain as Brian plastered the gauze into place on top of the ointment. “Please be more careful, I am quite fragile.”

“Oh grow up, it’s barely a nick.” Then Brian was unrolling a bandage. He began to wrap it around Milt’s head.

“Are you really going to wrap that thing all the way around my head? I’m going to look ridiculous.”

“Sorry, I gotta do it. The gauze won’t stay in place by itself.”

So Milt let Brian finish, but he wasn’t sure he believed the man’s claims.

“There,” Brian said. “All done.”

Then Brian plopped himself down next to Milt and began to hum a tune Milt found annoying, but Milt was too tired and his head pulsed too much for him to care to reprimand Brian.