Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (43 page)

I was losing the leverage battle. I pulled my
hands up into my jacket so that I would have at least one barrier
between the human goop that riddled the pole and me. I gripped it
with both jacket-clad hands and moved a foot off to the side.
Greasy Hands had two wet fingers shoved in his mouth and was
sucking deeply. His other hand was still located where my ass had
just been. I felt pretty dirty and violated. He winked at me when
he caught me looking. I would have vomited had I the chance to make
sure I could get away from it. My luck right now and this bus would
break down with the doors unable to open.

Greasy tried to slide over my way, but a
small, older woman blocked his path. I would have kissed her except
for the thick moustache she sported, well, that and the scowl,
well, those two things and the marble-sized mole to the left of her
nose, or did she have two noses? I hadn’t quite worked that one out
yet.

Someone else picked up the sneezing torch as
Georgie Germ stopped. I think Fanny Phlegm started hacking up a
lung. I could see particulates flying through the air like airborne
missiles. I was going for a world record in breath-holding,
forty-two seconds and counting. I wondered if anyone would pick me
up if I could find enough open space to topple over. Greasy Hands
probably would; that was of little comfort. And then I’d be left
wondering what was on the floor and if the rest of the shuttle was
any indication, then I’d be swimming in a sea of viral stew, with
chunks of unidentifiable material.

Six or seven days later, the cross country
journey finally came to an end. Two Nose cut me off as I tried to
make a hasty exit. Greasy Hands immediately pulled up to my rear
and Georgie Germ heralded our passage with a heavy barrage of wet,
viscous germ spewage.

“Tell your kid to cover his mouth,” I said
loudly to a mother, who was too busy playing on her phone to
monitor her child. Of course, until I said something about her son,
and then she became a Kodiak bear, protecting her cub. Her shrill
screams of “Mind your own fucking business” are still etched on my
eardrums.

Greasy Hands was making our last few feet out
a free for all. As soon as we hit terra firma, I turned and slammed
him back into the bus. He licked his lips at me.

I clenched my fists and was about to make him
pay for our encounter, when Tracy alit from the shuttle.

“Ah, Talbot, I see you’re making friends
again. I really can’t take you anywhere, can I?” Tracy said,
laughing.

Greasy Hands winked one more time and got
back on the bus. Obviously, this was something that got his rocks
off and it looked like he had been doing it the entire holiday
season. Tracy grabbed my tensed shoulder. “Come on, let’s go,” she
said without turning back around to witness what I had.

We had gone a few feet from the bus when I
made a great showing of patting my pockets down. “Aw shit, hon! I
left my phone on the bus. Go in, I’ll meet you there.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“I’ll be right there. Go in; get warm.”

I had hit the right button; she headed
towards the mall entrance.

I jogged back to the bus. Greasy Hands was
sitting in the empty bus on the seat that I had previously rejected
due to the supposed Orange Julius contents.

“Back for more?” he asked, standing up.

I pulled my fist back somewhere around
Detroit and let fly. I caught him flush on the cheek as he
attempted to dodge my blow. He sat back down heavily. He would be
sleeping for at least the next few bus rides.

“Fuck, that hurt,” I said, shaking my hand
around.

“You can’t do that here! Get out of here!”
the bus driver was yelling at me.

“Calm down, I was just getting my phone. And
why don’t you clean this pit up while you’re waiting for people?
Starting with Sleeping Beauty over there.”

“Get your ass off my bus or I’m calling
security! And don’t try to get back on, you’re not welcome!”

“I’d rather walk on my hands and knees back
to the lot than get on this lab, gone bad.”

Tracy was by the mall directory board when I
came in. “Your phone, huh?”

“My what?” I had already forgotten my lying
premise.

“Remember? You went back to get your
phone.”

“Right, right.”

“Did you find it?” she asked.

“I had it in my pocket the whole time.” I
explained, trying to get my most innocent face in place.

“Your knuckles look pretty raw,” she said as
I jammed my hand into my jacket so she couldn’t get a closer
look.

“I fell,” came stumbling out.

“And you braced yourself with your
knuckles?”

“It was a very awkward fall. I was lucky to
even get that to stop me or I would have landed square on my
chin.”

“Oh, and then your new boyfriend would have
been so upset.”

“He could have at least taken me out to
dinner before he started to take liberties with me.”

Tracy laughed. “Let’s go, we’ve got a lot of
shopping to do.”

We hadn’t even started and I was already
wiped out.

The mall was packed, but fortunately not as
bad as the bus, but much more so than my living room, which I so
desired to be sitting in. Most folks looked panicked. They were
running out of time, and as of yet, not picked out their
significant other a proper gift. This led many to go over the top,
and at least one jewelry store was the beneficiary of that
panic.

There were two competing jewelry stores on
either side of an opening that led down to another string of shops.
There could not have been fifty feet separating the vendors, yet
one was filled to the brim with customers and the other had three
people in it, two of which were employees and one who had yet to
look up from her split ends she kept pulling up in front of her
face.

The packed one was Kay Jewelers, you know the
one. I bet you’ve already sung the jingle without any prompting
from me. “Every kiss begins with Kay.” Sorry, now you’ve probably
got that stuck in your head. The other was a place I’d never heard
of called J.D. Robbins Jewelry. The only difference I could discern
in the two stores was that one had a fancy ad campaign with a
catchy jingle and the other didn’t.

I pointed this out to Tracy, but she didn’t
seem nearly as intrigued about it as I was.

“I’ve thought of a jingle that I think would
get that store packed!” I told her excitedly.

“I’m sure you have. Do I even want to hear
it?”

“Okay, you know the one “every kiss begins
with Kay?”

She nodded.

“Now use the same jingle only with these
words, Every Jerk-off begins with J! That store would be fucking
packed right now!”

Tracy nearly snorted on the cookie we had
been sharing, but she quickly recovered. “What is the matter with
you? It’s Christmas!” She was trying to sound disgusted, but I
could tell she was inwardly laughing her ass off.

“I personally couldn’t think of a better
gift,” I said lasciviously.

“Go find your bus buddy!” she laughed as she
pushed me away.

One short year removed from that story, I
find myself huddled in the cold with the remnants of humanity. How
I wish I was back on that bus, not with Greasy Hands, mind you. I
hope he was patient zero, but I’d even take Georgie Germ as long as
he was on the far side of the bus. I could maybe do without Two
Nose and the bus driver and maybe Georgie’s mother, but I think
everyone else would be fine. This story has done what I’d hoped it
would accomplish. It has brought a smile to an otherwise tired,
scared man.

Blood Stone Part 2

Corporal Tenson could not believe his luck of late and he
attributed it all to the blood red stone he had found two weeks
previous at the destroyed Lakota village. He had been promoted to
sergeant. His commanding officer, whom he could not stand, had
swallowed a bullet and he was unimaginably wealthy if he could ever
bring himself to sell the stone.

He had been so paranoid about possessing the
stone, he had not even showed anyone, not even his best friend
Aaron Gentry, a corporal in the same regiment he was in.

“What gives?” Aaron asked. He had been
sleeping on his cot when he heard his friend rustling around.

“What are you talking about?” Scott Tenson
asked back, stashing a small bag quickly into his front pocket.

“I’ve seen you pull out that bag at least a
dozen times and you just stare at it.”

“You should just mind your own business,”
Scott shot back a little testily.

“Sorry, just looking for something to talk
about. It’s been so boring around here since the old man shot
himself. I can’t believe he killed himself. I guess I would have
too if I came home and my whole family was murdered. Some are
saying that it was the shaman from the Lakota tribe we destroyed,
seeking revenge.”

This had been a favorite topic of
conversation within the unit since it had happened. The stories
ranged from the mundane: the colonel had come home and discovered
his wife was cheating and had murdered his family then killed
himself; to the semi-paranormal and favorite among the men: that
the medicine man’s spirit had done it as revenge; to the completely
farfetched: a white witch had taken the colonel’s family hostage
and forced him to attack the Indians. Not many believed that
particular story, but speculation on it made the long nights go by
quicker.

Maybe it was the hour of the night, maybe he
was sick of hearing the same topic of conversation repeated over
and over, but Corporal Tenson did something he never planned on
doing.

“Want to see what I picked up at that
camp?”

Gentry sat up. “Is that what’s in that pouch?
Do you have a scalp or something? I thought they’d smell, but I
haven’t smelled anything.”

“It’s not a scalp. Check this out,” Tenson
said, turning the pouch over into his hand. The large red stone
dropped into his palm.

Gentry inhaled sharply and then reached out
to grab it, Tenson pulled his hand back.

“Sorry,” Tenson said, letting his friend grab
the stone.

“What is it?” Gentry asked, holding it up to
the lantern.

“My ticket out of the cavalry, and into a
life of luxury.”

“Have you found out how much it’s worth?”

“No I haven’t told anyone I’ve got it. I’m
too afraid they’ll make me turn it over to the captain.”

“Nobody knows you have it?”

“Just you, now,” Tenson said, smiling.

“I’ve got to show you something then,” Gentry
said conspiratorially. He handed the stone back to Tenson.

Gentry reached under his cot and pulled
something out that caught a glint of light a moment before he
plunged it into Tenson’s stomach. The long bowie knife ripped
through his stomach, spleen and kidney and brushed up against his
spinal cord. The pain had been too intense to even formulate a
scream. Gentry was not going to give him the opportunity anyway. He
clamped his free hand over his friend’s mouth and twisted the knife
back and forth as more and more pain and shock blazed though
Tenson’s eyes. Gentry spoke.

“I’m sorry my friend, I really am. You saved
my life once, and now I’m taking yours. It hardly seems fair. But I
fucking hate it here and now I’ve got a way out and I had to take
it, no matter what expense you had to pay for it.”

Gentry waited until he was completely sure
his friend (although that didn’t seem like the right word anymore)
was dead before extracting his knife from Tenson’s mid-section. He
then wiped it off on Tenson’s blanket and covered him up with it.
He quickly grabbed anything of any value in addition to the stone,
which he clutched greedily, and slipped quietly into the night.

***

Eliza had watched the entire battle from her
higher vantage point. She was mildly impressed with the Lakota’s
savagery. Here were a people who had already lost everything dear
to them, and still they fought viciously. She hoped the colonel
would live, if only to be reunited with his bride, but either way,
all that mattered was that the medicine man died.

She waited until the cavalry men departed as
she walked amid the smoking ruins of the destroyed village. The
Indians lay where they had been struck down. She checked each one
of them, yet she could not find the shaman. A little known feeling
rose in her breast; it was a sense of unease. She checked the only
teepee that was not burning. It was the largest in the village and
by its decoration, she figured it was a ceremonial gathering
place.

The shaman was in there, but he was dead. He
had been set in a place of honor in the center of the room,
enshrouded in soft blankets made of deer and bison hide. Instead of
her unease slipping away, it grew.

“This man died before the battle,” she said
as she walked around him. She ripped the shroud off him, looking
for a wound that could have caused his demise. She savagely ripped
his clothes off, unsure as to the root of her anger. She kicked his
body over onto his stomach when the front did not reveal any
damage.

She kicked him again, this time from spite
when she could not glean any information. His broken body hit the
far side of the large teepee and rolled to a stop as Eliza strode
out. Had her anger not burned so brightly, she would have been able
to pick up on the faint traces of the information she so
desperately sought.

***

Tomas had been one state removed when he
began to hear rumors about the cursed cavalry unit. Each story
sounded more fantastic than the last. But he had been around the
frontier long enough to know that people with too much time on
their hands like a fantastic tale. He did not sit up and take
notice until some of these tales began to hint about a white witch,
her cruelty only rivaled by her beauty.

“Eliza,” he muttered, draining his tankard of
beer.