Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (36 page)

“Shit!” BT yelled, sitting up. He turned to
me. “Was that Paul?”

My head dropped as I nodded.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Paul was foggy as he began to pull from the slumber. Something
darted by his face. The swish of a tail under his nose would have
tickled if not for the fact that the pain from his broken leg
blotted every other sensation into near muteness. All of his other
injuries combined were little more than dots in the rearview mirror
of the semi tractor trailer that was his broken leg. Another
something landed on Paul’s stomach, he barely registered it.

It was night and that was the only thing Paul
was certain of… Oh, and that he was still alive; he could tell
because his leg repeatedly told him so.

“Got to sit up,” he said gritting his teeth.
He craned his head around, looking for a chair or a couch that he
could pull himself up to. “Coffee table will have to do,” he said,
uttering the words more to shatter the silence and to help him
concentrate on anything besides his leg. He first tried to use his
hands to pull himself over, but the shards of glass still embedded
in them made that an impossible task. He cried out, not in fear,
not in frustration, but in futility. His leg, which he thought
could not hurt anymore, became ignited with a white phosphorescent
flare of immovable pain. He used his shoulders to prop up and see
what was going on. A cat had bitten down on his pants where his
broken leg was protruding, trying to get at the blood and meat that
lay beyond the material. Paul tried to kick it away. The emaciated
cat was faster, however, and hissed at him for his troubles.

The burst of adrenaline got him moving. At
least, it lasted long enough for him to get his back up against the
wooden frame of the table. He cried out again when he placed some
weight on it and it slid further back, this time resting up against
the couch beyond. Paul looked behind him and up; two cats with
swishing tails and hungry looks stared back at him.
I love
cats,
Paul thought. He had read the stories growing up about
how when an owner had died and was not quickly discovered that his,
but usually her, cats would eat their former master. He had
believed it to all be propaganda perpetuated by dog owners, who
invariably pulled out the article about the dog that had died on
top of its master’s grave, presumably from a broken heart.

Paul clucked his tongue, trying to establish
some sort of repertoire with the feral cats. One hissed and one
jumped down by his left side, making sure to stay out of the range
of Paul’s arm. The third pulled up his front paw and began to lick
it, Paul could not help but think it was washing up before it
dined.

“I am not food!” he yelled. The paw-licking
cat looked up momentarily and then resumed its business. The one
that had come down had jumped on Paul’s leg, ripping a small piece
of denim away. Paul had to bite down on his tongue to keep from
passing out again; he knew he would not awaken a second time. He
blindly kicked out, finding a great deal of satisfaction when he
heard the cat mewling in pain, something in its side, most likely a
rib, had cracked.

“Huh! One down, two to go, fuckers!” Paul
spat. “Oh no,” he said as he looked from the entry to the room he
was in and saw two large toms sitting there, eyeing him greedily.
“I’m in a cat lady’s home,” he bemoaned. He realized he could be
dealing with dozens of cats and a toddler had more range of motion
than he did. The majority of the cats were patient; they were
predators, after all. Their meal was wounded, but could still
deliver lethal blows. That was made evident by the cat that had
been summarily ripped to shreds by the pack when its rib had been
broken. The cats were starving and cared little where there next
meal came from. They did not suffer any moral dilemmas with the
prospect of cannibalism. The ones that had survived this long were
the biggest and baddest of the lot and now all attention was back
on Paul with the quick meal made of the one that had attacked
him.

Paul looked around the room, star-lit eyes
shone at him from every angle. He had never been so close to such a
large assemblage of animals. It was unnerving, but still he could
not reconcile the fact that they could do him any real harm.
Through the haze of pain and the real danger ever present, Paul
kept finding his head nodding down every so often, only to be
jerked up. On more than one occasion, he noticed a few of the
braver, or perhaps hungrier cats, had closed the distance to him.
Their tails were wagging back and forth in an aggressive behavior.
Paul had seen it many times before from the ones he had owned. They
were getting ready to pounce. He felt around looking for anything
that could be used as a weapon.

His hands made him wince every time he
reached out, but he pulled them up as close to his face as he
could. He needed to get out as much of the glass as possible, short
of daylight, a pocket knife, a needle and some tweezers. The
majority would stay embedded exactly where they were. While he was
pulling out a particularly large shard, a gray tabby came within a
few inches of his broken leg before Paul instinctually jerked his
damaged leg back. The pain was immeasurable. Doctors always ask on
a scale of one to ten how severe is the pain, Paul did not think
that ten could even begin to describe what he was feeling. The room
spiraled out of focus as he fought desperately to stay aware of his
surroundings.

At least six cats had come to within a few
feet as Paul, degree by degree, dealt with the pain. The smarter,
larger toms waited behind for the kill to take place. Then they’d
come in and take the lion’s share, without any of the risk. The
smaller cats had to be more aggressive or they would not get any
food whatsoever.

“Mike!” Paul screamed. The cats took notice
of the words, like a long, lost vestige of a previous life, but not
one moved away; hunger was an all-consuming feeling. They could
move no closer to their own self actualization while the baser of
their instincts was not yet sated.

“I will not be eaten. Not by a zombie and
certainly not by a bunch of mangy fucking cats,” Paul said harshly.
“And to think I used to love you more than dogs.” Paul pulled
himself further up, almost sitting completely perpendicular to the
floor. Either shock was setting in or Paul’s pain threshold had
increased, but his leg was almost a manageable constant at this
point.

A small cat with most of its left ear
missing, had had enough and jumped on Paul’s chest, all of its
claws in the ready and locked position. Sixteen thumbtacks pierced
Paul’s midsection. Paul grabbed the cat by the neck, squeezing as
hard as he could. The cat spat and hissed, bringing its hind legs
up to scratch and tear at Paul’s wrist and forearm. The pain from
the lacerations almost made Paul release his grip. Instead, he
slammed the cat down by his right side. The cat was stunned, but
not quite dead. He repeated the steps three more times, each
bringing a satisfying crunch to the animal that desired to eat his
flesh.

“Eat this!” he yelled, throwing the carcass
into the fray.

Only a shark feeding frenzy would have been
more disturbing. The mewls of pain as cat bit cat in their attempts
to get at the meat of their peer was ear-piercingly loud. Fur flew
in the air as the smacking of wet, tendon-snapping bites tore
though the skinny feline. Paul looked away as one cat tried to
escape from the pack with the eyeless head of the carcass. He noted
the bloody welts on his shirt as he looked down. They stung, and
they could possibly get infected, but right now he had much, much
bigger fish to fry. He had to drag himself into a room that did not
house any cats so that he could somehow set his leg, find a weapon
and get the hell out of this house of horrors.

Paul looked to his left and right, trying his
best to figure out a potential layout for a home he had never been
in. To his right was some linoleum flooring which generally meant
kitchen, the left looked to be his best avenue of escape. The
carpeted hallway was less than fifteen feet away, might as well
have been a mile with the condition he was in.

“Here goes nothing,” Paul said, trying his
best to prepare himself. He positioned his hands on the flooring
and moved his ass a few inches towards his destination. Then he
dragged the rest of him to follow. A couple of the toms, who had
not seemed interested in the least with him, now stopped their
various inactivities to see what he was doing. Paul repeated the
same step until he was at the far edge of the coffee table. The
largest cat, a black and white, looked at Paul, then the direction
he was heading, and padded silently past him and into the inky
blackness of the hallway.

This oughta be fun,
Paul thought as he
moved again. This time, he would not have the table to rest
against. His head swam as his dangling foot caught on the rug for a
moment and then released. He nearly bit his tongue in half in an
effort to stay coherent. Blood pooled in his mouth and flowed out
the sides, mingling with tears rolling from his eyes. For the first
time, Paul thought that he might finally succumb to what all of
humanity strove to avoid--death. It hung heavy in the air.

He waited long minutes, his tongue searing
from the teeth wounds. His hands enduring their own unique form of
torture, begging to be raised from their perch. The iron-rich scent
of Paul’s blood sent the cats into another frenzy. At least three
that he could see were advancing. “Fuck you!” he screamed. They
halted, but they did not retreat. Paul looked down at his broken
leg. He could just make out the problem he was having. The
open-ended eyelets on his boot, which were of the fast-lacing
design used for speed in cold weather, were now catching on the
fabric of the rug. The placement of his foot now ensured that every
time he pulled back, they would snag.

He needed to remove the boot or somehow brace
his foot in the upright position, although neither idea was
something he knew how to accomplish. Going forward was not an
option, not like this. Paul scooted back towards the table to catch
his breath and re-think his strategy. He noted his boot did not
seem so inclined to grab the carpet in that direction. He was not
sure if it had to do with the pile of the carpet or if he had
already pulled the carpet loops out. But at the moment, the kitchen
seemed like the better option, but to what end?

“I can get a knife!” he said aloud. A cat
that had been slinking closer tilted it’s head.
That is, if they
have fallen on the floor
, he thought sourly. “At least it will
be easier to slide on the linoleum.” Paul started his long
migration down the coffee table and towards the kitchen. His boot
did not seem to be snagging on the rug and he thanked his stars for
that small fact. His right hand slipped out from under him as he
splashed down onto the linoleum floor and into a puddle of an
unidentifiable liquid. His shoulder and most of his lower back
became soaked in the foul ammonia-laced smell.

“Cat piss,” he said disgustedly. Paul pushed
himself back up with a grunt and took a longer survey of the room
where he had decided to make his final stand. A small island
dominated the larger than expected kitchen. Cat feces and urine
covered much of the flooring. There was no clear path to the
cabinets where he was headed. The cats lined up at the entryway as
he sloshed his way in. Wet, warm piles of shit slogged through his
splayed fingers; urine soaked his pants and burned as it came in
contact with his bloody hands. As he made his way further in, the
cats followed. Some jumped up on the island, others on the counter
tops where they had been “shooed” by their previous master at least
a hundred times. That was, until they ate her.

The ones on the counter followed Paul, step
for step, as he slid below them. Paul looked up at their watchful,
wary, hungry gazes. “I was wrong about you guys. I should have
listened to Mike. He always said you were nothing more than rats
with a ‘c’.” He finally got to the corner he had been heading for.
He rested for a moment with his back against the cabinet. He tilted
his head back. A cat was no more than six inches from his face,
peering down at him. Paul reached up and was able to wrench it down
from its high ground advantage by its ear. The cat screamed in
terror as he used the momentum to throw it against the island. His
grip had not been secure enough to deliver a death blow, but the
supposed weakness was more than enough for the other cats to
descend on it and disembowel the cat before it could muster any
sort of defense.

“Can’t we all get along?” Paul panted, trying
to humor himself. It worked badly. For the first time, Paul noticed
the blood trail he had left coming into the kitchen. He was alarmed
by the volume of it. “I don’t feel woozy,” he said aloud. “Better
get moving.” Paul noticed as he spoke, the cats didn’t relent their
hunt, but they did sort of hesitate. Their movements were more
tentative, like they were being given a reminder of how times were.
Paul turned his gaze on the cabinet he was resting against.
Traditionally, corner cabinets were the biggest in the whole house
and sometimes they did not even have sides. If that were the case,
he thought he might be able to fit in it. He wasn’t sure what he’d
do at that point, but it would buy him some time and maybe there
was the off chance that a machine gun was in there next to a deluxe
first aid kit and a charged cell phone with Mike on speed dial.