“So you’re afraid of losing your job?” Kyle gave a wry chuckle. “Got news for you pal. We killed your boss. I think you’re fired.”
I smirked in amusement. Reflecting, I decided to turn it back around at him.
“Okay, so what keeps you up at night?”
He paused for a moment, and his face turned serious.
“I don’t know if it keeps me up at night as much as I think about it from time to time,” he said cautiously. “Back in Iraq, before I got my wings, there was a tactical strike on this old hotel. My squad was moving in to make sure the place was clear of hostiles. The building was torn to shit; the bodies of dead insurgents still riddled the halls. I came across this woman. She was blood soaked, and barely alive. She had taken a round to the gut, and certainly wasn’t going to make it. She was begging for the end. I remember drawing my pistol, and pointing it at her head. All that time… I just stood there staring at her, wondering if I was doing the right thing…”
Kyle drifted off for a moment, then blinked and exhaled slowly before continuing. “She nodded, as if to say “yes, end it,” just before I pulled the trigger. The look she gave me… I keep seeing it in these creatures’ eyes, almost like they don’t really want to keep going.”
I thought about that for a moment, and said, “It makes it a little easier doesn’t it? Believing that these people wouldn’t want to be one of these creatures. It’s that much simpler to put them down.”
With all the chaos, I had not taken the time to think about the fact that we were killing people who used to be human, not unlike ourselves. Even though my stomach roiled unpleasantly, I felt numb, disconnected. We both sat in silence for several minutes, caught up in our own thoughts.
Looking down at the gas gauge on the Hummer, I grimaced and gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“You know right about now, what scares me the most is running out of gas.”
Kyle leaned over to look at the gauge, and then reached out, messing around with the navigation system again. He had it up and running in moments.
A few button hits later, three gas tank icons appeared on the screen. We decided to go for the one that was in the opposite direction of the highway. We would have to backtrack a few miles, but the hopeful idea was that it would be less likely to have been sold out.
On the way, we started to see the creatures lurking around again. For the most part, they were not following us, or at least we were moving too fast for them to catch us.
Thinking back, I really wish we had paid more attention.
One of them had been a postal worker when he was alive, and still had the blue mail sack around his shoulder to prove it. He was wearing the traditional blue and white striped shorts, although blood had run down his leg to paint his knee-high white socks a blackish red.
As we passed him, I noticed he was carrying a brown package in his left hand. It looked like he was still trying to deliver his mail.
Mundane tasks for a mundane world.
We approached the gas station with great disappointment, as we noticed that all the pumps had plastic bags over the pump handles. A quick check confirmed that they were dry.
Clearly, relying on gas stations wasn’t going to cut it.
That’s when we noticed another car parked in the lot. There was a pair of legs sticking out from behind the car as motionless as a mannequin’s. As I pulled the Hummer closer, we could see a red three-gallon gas can.
Kyle came to the conclusion that this guy was siphoning gas from the car. Odd that he didn’t move or stand up. The Hummer wasn’t exactly a stealth vehicle. We slid slowly from the Hummer, glancing around for any sign of the dead.
“Hey. Hey, Man. You alive?” Kyle called out. No answer.
I pulled my hammer from my belt, and left the Hummer running as we cautiously stepped down and toward the feet on the other side of the car. I approached from the back, and Kyle moved along the front of the vehicle. Still no movement.
Then we found out why. All that remained was the gas tank, a tube running into the tank, and a severed arm dangling from it; still clutching the tube. The legs were not attached to a body. They had been cleanly ripped off, while the torso, other arm and head were nowhere to be seen. Looking up, I closed my eyes for the briefest of seconds to get my bearings.
Neither of us spoke as I crept over and peeled the dead fingers off of the tube to slide it out of the gas tank. The cold, rigid arm fell to the pavement with a thump.
Two days ago, I would have shit myself at the sight of a severed arm. Today, I just touched it, and kicked its accompanying legs out of the way so I could steal some gas. It dawned on me that this was the new reality. There was no turning back.
As I moved towards the Hummer, Kyle opened the gas tank latch. I fed our escape vehicle its precious liquid.
“It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than three gallons to keep this thing full,” I said out loud.
Kyle agreed with an understanding nod. I fiddled with the siphon, taking a mouthful of gasoline, before I figured out how it worked. I choked and spat until my stomach heaved violently, but I couldn’t quite get the taste from my mouth.
We made it back and forth three times, though I had the feeling that the Hummer was nowhere near half a tank. We were so distracted that we didn’t see them creeping up on us until we were nearly surrounded.
The postman was the first one I noticed. A creature, bumping into him, knocked the brown package out of his hand, which alerted us to their presence.
Those tenacious fuckers, I thought. They had followed us for miles, slowly making their way down the roads. Looking for their next meal. There were ten of them; all the ones we had seen on the way to the gas station, plus a few extra that had lumbered in. It was a small swarm.
We both drew our weapons knowing that we were clearly outnumbered, but sometimes, the numbers don’t mean jack-shit when you have the right strategy and a little luck.
The first ones to attack were slower. Not like the ones from the day before.
Have to keep our cool, I thought as my clammy palms tightened around the wooden handle of my hammer.
Screaming out orders like a boot camp drill sergeant, Kyle had us working together building a fierce defense. As the creatures lumbered over one by one, he simply pushed them back by digging his pole into their chest, and I reached out and cracked them on top of the skull when they were off balance. They were spread out enough for this to work for the first six that approached.
Kyle and I were slowly retreating backwards. The Hummer was much farther away than I had felt comfortable with, and the engine was still running. We had let ourselves be pushed against the glass door of the filling station.
The more recently dead, like the postman and his thee friends, were too fast, making our current tactics useless. When they came at us from both sides, I lost my balance and fell backward bouncing against the filling station wall, thrusting me toward the hard pavement with a crash that sent my hammer bouncing a few feet from my grasp.
Kyle stepped back, swinging his metal rod around over his head to create a diversion. For the most part, it worked; three of them went after him. However, the postman lunged on top of me. I reached up and grabbed his postal bag satchel; sliding the strap between his teeth as he came down at my face.
Rotting flesh reeked from his mouth as I was barely keeping him from chomping down. The stench alone was enough to make my fight falter. One of the other creatures, a large bastard dressed in overalls, left Kyle and jumped on top of the postman, climbing up over his shoulders.