Well Fed - 05 (22 page)

Gasping at the pain flaring in his shoulders, Gus swung himself to the right and left, seeing only long strips of gray highway and the unmoving metallic husks of cars decorating it. Sunshine made their rooftops twinkle.

He raised his feet off the rim—only an inch—and felt his body weight pull on the overhead boom. There he hung, shoulders screaming, until he squeaked defeat and stood once more. He yanked on his overhead bonds, weakly at first but with growing fury, all to no avail. Gus panted, his eyes watering, and looked around again. There had to be a way to free himself. He couldn’t go out this way.

The pickup had reached the campground and disappeared around a trailer.

“You fuckers,” Gus hissed with frustrated venom. “You goddamn, evil-hearted sonsabitches.”

The wind blew tenderly across his face, ironic for such a day.

The part of the boom where his hands were tied drew his attention. A tight-looking knot lay to one side of his left hand, like a filthy bow on a grubby present. His fingers twiddled with the knot, twanging the cut ends. Gus tried twisting his wrist to get a better grip but felt the fibers cut into his skin, refusing him. A gasp left his lips, and he growled, shaking in rage enough to make everything hurt.

Then he screamed.

Gus howled in the morning air. He rattled about, thrashing against his bonds. His mouth felt like a dried washrag, but water still leaked from his red-rimmed eyes. He pulled again on his wrists, fiddled in growing frustration with the knots, unable to grip them and furious because of it. He bellowed in angst again before he relaxed and stared with raw hate at the distant overpass.

“Sonsa…
bitches
. You rat-fuck cocksuckers. You diseased fuck twats! I hope you fucking
roast
in hell, you bunch of evil shitstains!
You hear me?
Huh?
Hear me, you goddamn preying pack of sick, depraved
FUCKS!”

Gus screamed again, long and hard, tapering off into a series of angry whimpers. Part of him wanted someone to put a bullet in him and just end the game. Maybe that’s what Comeau had in mind. They had the firepower to do so. The same rifles that had forced him off the road would let the air out of him like a pellet gun round through a water balloon.

Then he went berserk.

He shook and raved, calling them every dirty, offensive name in his vocabulary, insulting their mothers and fathers, their wives and girlfriends… their
boy
friends. He called them back, challenging them to a
real
fight. He dared them to stop holding each other’s dicks and come back. They could even use knives if they liked, and he his bare hands. He screeched and twisted and pulled with an energy that took him along like a monstrous wave about to crash down on a rocky shore.

Then it did.

Gus let his chin drop and felt the anger slowly ebbing away into despair. Why the fuck had they done this to him? There weren’t any deadheads around anymore—not like there used to be, anyway. So why?
Target practice.
He was going to be the recipient of some full-metal-jacket tickles in a few minutes, guaranteed to thrill and eventually kill.

“Do it!” Gus panted, shaking in disbelief, feeling infectious heat in his body for the first time since they shot him off the road. He glared at the overpass, too far to see any movement on the heights. They could be dancing jigs up there, for all he knew… or drinking coffee.

“
Do it
!”

The scene didn’t change. Nothing showed that anyone or anything had heard him, and that disappointed him almost to the verge of breaking.

“Do it,” he whispered miserably. Anything to be free of this life. He’d given it his best shot. Done what he could with what he had. He apologized to Maggie and Becky and Chad and hoped that, wherever they were, they’d get by as best they could. His thoughts drifted to leaving the farm in search of Talbert, recalling how he hadn’t wanted to, not for that guy. Adam had convinced him to go, and that set into motion the chain that killed him and torched the farm. The farm… the best little place he’d come to know since the zombies had arrived.

Gone.

His thoughts flowed in a circular current, right back to where he was––hanging like a slab of donair meat out in the middle of nowhere, waiting for someone to slice a strip off his hide.

Gus arched his head back, sniffled at the cold sun…

And just waited.

A scream jerked him awake.

He gasped as if breaking the surface of a deep swimming hole, blinking like a man who’d been underground for a month. A long, piercing cry of sheer, thrill-seeking delight spiked the stillness, coming from the direction of the overpass. The sun was past its zenith, and Gus squinted, trying to make sense of the single, startling note. He glanced around and saw nothing.

However, a tingling settled into the base of his neck, turning his head back to the right. He still heard nothing, but that little buzzing wouldn’t stop. He strained against the ropes, twisting his body and neck as far as they could go, the ache in his joints growing.

Hearing the faint
clip-clop
of boots, a drunken tap dance of doom approaching from behind him, Gus held his breath. The sound paused for a moment but then continued in a dragging scuffle, as if that one stop had rusted the joints of the walker.

Gus’s eyes widened. He cranked his head around, expecting the crack of vertebrae.

Then he spotted it.

He realized with sinking horror why the watcher from the overpass was screaming his head off. Gus chuckled darkly, perhaps even a touch insanely.

Moseying into the very outer rim of his peripheral vision, a shadow swayed. Gus closed his left eye to better focus his right as fear crashed over him in a freezing wave. Dark forest camouflage clothes covered the figure. It came on very slowly, as if each step was upon shattered ankles and sparking the utmost agony, and when Gus heard its low moan, his breath crystalized in his throat, and his scrotum tightened.

A deadhead.

One
deadhead, but Gus figured it would eat like a family.

“Well… shit.”

Another cry of delight flared from the overpass. Gus cowered from the undead creature and the yells from whoever was watching. That realization struck him cold, and he stared in that direction. They were
watching
.

“You sick bastards,” Gus muttered, flabbergasted at their depravity. He’d met a few assholes in his time during the apocalypse, but this sank them all. “Sick, twisted fuckheads.”

He strained to see over his right shoulder, muscles protesting. The gimp took its time traversing a line that would cross the highway. It ignored the traffic lights. Gus’s flesh broke out in a sweat he didn’t believe possible. Like some evil, diseased scavenger creeping out of its hole, the corpse shambled toward him. Gus no longer felt like shouting. He silenced himself, suddenly hoping the underworld fright might miss him and just wander on by, oblivious to the sacrificial snack.

He closed his eyes and waited.

Then he opened them.

The gimp was still on course for the tow truck.

“
Fuck
.” Gus gnashed and looked at his wrists. He pulled back on them with whatever strength he possessed, feeling the rope cut into his skin. Any moment, he expected blood to dribble over the bonds. He bared what teeth he had remaining, shook his arms as if that might help, and lifted his legs up from the bald rim, hoping the extra weight might bring results.

Nothing
.

Gus wheezed and glanced over his shoulder. The gimp waltzed across the highway as if gut shot, boots scuffing raw asphalt. It wore a soldier’s kit, but what really chilled Gus’s guts, what really made his balls go cold, was the vest protecting the chest and the helmet covering the head. A military-issue pot helmet rested upon its skull, with a visor slapped down over its upper face, masking its nose and eyes.

He could see the mouth, could see it hanging open.

“Sweet Jesus,” Gus whispered in panic.

He freaked out.

He exploded in a bout of frenetic thrashing, twisting his body in every direction, hoping to work himself free or break the ropes. The skin around his wrists finally broke, and bright blood beaded over, some drops lining his arms all the way to his shoulders. He pulled, joints
screaming
at him to stop, until his last reservoir of strength drained empty and left him spent, panting, and still hanging. A few drops of blood fell from his triceps to the ground.

Gus checked on the whereabouts of the gimp.

His breath caught in his throat.

The undead stood at the corner of the tow truck, leaning against the metal as if having a smoke, its dusty visor gleaming in the overhead sun. A grimace of green-black teeth appeared waxen until the thing moved its jaw. Something dark and sluggish shifted within the shallow cave of its mouth. Then Gus smelled it, a pungent cloud of spores that bypassed the combat uniform clothing the zombie, and simply breathing that filthy air made him feel infected.

The softest of moans seeped from his throat.

The undead gimp rolled itself around the corner of the truck and almost stumbled, giving Gus a fleeting flare of hope where there wasn’t any.

Then the creature coolly righted itself and staggered toward Gus.

“Jeeee
zus
,” Murray said from where he stood with his binoculars, his mouth morphing between a twisted smirk and a grimace. “After all this time and them fuckers still creep me out.”

“What’s it doing now?” asked Prout, leaning in and holding out a hand for Murray to relinquish his set.

“Just standing there.”

“Huh?”

“He’s just standing there,” Comeau said, holding the only other pair of binoculars to his eyes. “Just sizing him up. Like he’s inspecting a fuckin’ buffet or something.”

That rendered the other men speechless. The entire pack of them stood behind the makeshift gun ports of the overpass, nestled between a scattering of derelict cars and spike strips, casting their attention at the not-so-horrific ending of their most recent prisoner.

“They do that?” Cam Boll rumbled at his leader. “I mean, can they do that?”

“This one is,” Comeau reported, adjusting his focus.

“Maybe it’s just tickled with having a last meal or something,” Edgar proposed and was ignored. No one really paid him any real attention at the best of times. Comeau secretly debated shooting the man outright, just to spare the rest of them from his annoying attempts at humor. He still might, and he wondered if Edgar’s buddy Prout would come to his defense. Those days, numbers meant strength, and Comeau realized killing his own wasn’t effective management of human resources.

But, goddamn, he was tempted at times…

“
Now
what the fuck is it doing?” Murray asked. His goggles were pushed back on his head, ogling the sun. Prout lost patience and snatched the pair of binoculars from the man, who merely scowled at the lack of manners.

No one tried to take Comeau’s. “Looks like fireboy is talking to the thing.”

That drew stares of surprise from the others.

“The man’s a fucking dead whisperer,” Boone chortled.

“People do that?” Cam Boll asked. “Seriously?”

“No, they can’t fuckin’ do that,” Comeau snarled. “Jesus Christ, Boll.”

“That zombie’s got headgear on,” Prout said as he focused on the situation. “Maybe it can’t bite for some reason?”

“Helmet only covers the upper part,” Comeau answered. “The mouth is free.”

“So what’s he sayin’ to it?”

Comeau shrugged. “Maybe it’s a man.”

That quieted the pack and made the others gaze intently in the direction of the tow truck.

“Can’t be a man,” Prout said. “I can see the hands. Look like they’ve been dipped in a full shit pot.”

“I don’t think it’s a man either,” Comeau agreed. “But fireboy is sure as hell conversing with the thing.”

“I could fire off a couple of rounds,” Boone offered. “See if the dead fuck can dance.”

“Nah. What will be will be. That’s a zombie, and it could be the only one around for kilometers.”

“Maybe it’s just enjoying the sight before it digs in,” Edgar said, but no one took him up on his theory.

Regardless, in the middle of nowhere, the helpless living and undying dead were facing off.

“What the hell is fireboy saying?” Prout demanded. “Who can read lips?”

Grunts of derision answered that question.

“I know what he’s saying,” Edgar offered, a smile coating his words. “Oh fuck. Oh shit. Oh fuck-fuckiddy-fuck-
fuck
.”

“Y’know,” Murray said, rubbing at his nose, “once heard that actors who fill up the background of a scene, say if it’s in a coffee place or restaurant, all they say is ‘watermelon’ over and over, to make it seem like they’re having a conversation.”

“I heard that too,” Cam Boll said.

“‘Watermelon’?” Boone asked. “Why fuckin’ ‘watermelon’? Why not have a real conversation but just whisper it? Or just mouth the words?”

“Sounds fuckin’ retarded to me,” Prout threw in.

“Only saying I heard, is all. Hell if I know if it’s true or not.”

“Watermelon, watermelon,” Comeau muttered, standing tall and not dropping his gaze.

“I call bullshit,” Boone scoffed. “Stupid.
Watermelon
.”

“It’s because that one word works the mouth in all sorts of directions or something to that effect.”

“Once knew a woman who could do that,” Murray said.

“She was your sister,” Boone snapped.

“Ah,” Comeau smiled under the binoculars before any further shots could be fired between his two companions. “There we are.”

The zombie moved in and raised a hand to an exposed shoulder. Fireboy dangled and twisted and screamed at the touch, suddenly very much alive and very vocal. His lingering screams drifted across the open space of the grass fields, sounding very far away.

The dead thing leaned in close to the twisting, turning prisoner, smothering the weakened man with an arm. Fireboy wailed as the zombie dipped its hard-shelled head to his wildly moving one. They struggled, like an old couple waltzing on an uneven dance floor, one partner visibly tiring while the other slowly closed in, intent on delivering a very messy hickey.