Dead Drunk II: Dawn of the Deadbeats (Dead Drunk: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse... One Beer at a Time Book 2) (10 page)

Rob and
Charlie were once again covered in gore and looked exhausted, but they were
alive. “I see little Toddy made it,” Charlie said and pointed in the direction
of the screaming child.

“Yeah, some
of the nuns didn’t though…” As Smokey’s words trailed off, Mother Agnes
appeared from around the corner. Her brown robes flowed behind her as she came
at them like something from a Victorian horror novel. But she was no
supernatural being, and Rob ended her existence with a few blasts from his
deadly softball bat.

Smokey pulled
the Mother Superior’s habit over her destroyed face and stifled his tears. “She
was a cool chick.”

Charlie
nodded. “Where’s Left-Nut?”

“No clue,”
Smokey said with a shrug.

Katya took
Todd into a different room and pushed a dresser against the door as the others
went to locate their missing friend and any other survivors. After a few
minutes they encountered several nuns barricaded in the chapel, but no
Left-Nut.

Sam noticed a
trail of blood going into the kitchen. Inside, a zombified Sister Martha
dragged herself around piles of vegetables and chairs as she came towards them.
Rob was once again forced to step up and do what had to be done. It was messy.

Sam gagged
and then threw up his meager lunch after witnessing the nun put down in a
gruesome, yet humane manner. Embarrassed, he hung his head and slunk to the
corner of the room, hoping to disappear into the wall.

“Nothing to
be ashamed of,” Charlie said. “That’s a normal reaction to the craziness going
on.” He turned to Rob. “And for better or worse, it seems Left-Nut has
disappeared. Though I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

“Like a case
of herpes,” Rob said and chuckled as he used a dishtowel to wipe the gore off
his size eighteen shoe.

One of the
overhead cabinets shot open and a person tumbled out, landing on the giant and
knocking him backwards. It was Left-Nut.

“About time
you ass-munches got back,” he said and stood up before noticing his wound had
reopened. “Man, I think I, I think I’m gonna…” Left-Nut’s eyes fluttered as he
fell forward, cracking his head loudly on the floor. A deep gash appeared on
his forehead that bled profusely.

Charlie
sighed and applied pressure with a kitchen towel, not knowing whether to smile
or scowl. “This guy always turns up, like a floater in the gene pool.”

At that
moment the Koreans walked in, and completely ignored the body, Left-Nut, and
the conversation. They scarfed down the blood-covered potatoes scattered about,
and it became clear they hadn’t eaten in quite some time.

In the past
few months, the duo’s lot in life had gone from horrible in North Korea to
unimaginable under Chinese leadership. Treated as second or even third-class,
their kind was used for cannon fodder at every turn. Or, to be more precise,
zombie fodder. When the food ran low or their jobs reached completion, the
Korean troops were dealt with like vermin. It was this type of cold and
calculating style that had the Chinese winning the war handily. But after
President Sanders destroyed half of the civilized world in a thermonuclear
downpour, the merciless communists could hardly be seen as the war’s lone
maniacs.

“I take it
we’re friends now?” Smokey said and tipped his head towards the ravenous
soldiers. “What are their names?”

“Not sure,”
Rob answered with a shrug. He grabbed one of the men by the shoulder. “My
name’s Rob, what’s your name?” The skinny soldier flashed a confused and
snaggle-toothed smile, then went back to eating.

“I said, my
name’s Rob, what’s your name?” he asked again, twice as slow and three times as
loud. Rob got the same reaction as the first time.

“You know, I
don’t think it works like that,” Charlie said and held back a chuckle. “It
looks like we have a bit of a language barrier.” Used to communicating with
non-English-speaking students during his time substitute teaching, Charlie
tried to converse using differing hand gestures and facial expressions. After a
short while the soldiers began to grasp what he was getting at.

“Yong Chui,”
the taller and older of the two men replied and pointed at himself. “Seung
Sahn,” he continued and gestured to the skinny one who was barely a teenager.

Charlie and
company attempted to say the names for a few minutes, but continued to mangle
them badly. “All right, this is going nowhere and we have stuff to do.” He
pointed to Yong Chui. “I’m sorry, but I can’t pronounce that properly. So we
will call you Ping, and your friend is going to be Pong.”

“Doesn’t that
seem a little racist to anyone?” Smokey asked.

“What would
you call them then?” Charlie said.

“How about
Rico and Suave?”

“Not
happening.”

Rob said the
first names that came to mind. “Bert and Ernie?”

“Are you
kidding me? They’ll never be able to pronounce the R’s,” Smokey said.

Charlie
scoffed. “Oh, now who’s being racist?”

The Koreans
seemed somewhat amused by the conversation. The first soldier stepped forth and
pointed to himself. “Ping.” He pointed to the younger man. “Pong.”

“And there we
have it,” Charlie said, happy to be done with the matter. And so it was
settled. Ping and Pong, two soldiers from North Korea’s Special Operation
Forces, had joined the gang. What that actually meant was anyone’s guess. They
came from different corners of the world and their people were now mortal
enemies, but each side only drew breath because of the other. With a bond like
that, the other considerations paled in comparison. Or so Charlie hoped.

Rob gave his
new friends bloody bear hugs and grinned broadly. Ping and Pong humored him and
then went back to eating quietly and in a hurry as if they had to fill their
bellies before someone would steal their food.

Sam finally
got over his embarrassment and rejoined the group. “Why are you guys so happy?”
he asked with a furrowed brow. “A lot of good people just got killed here. And
you’re all still joking and laughing. It’s like nothing matters to you guys.”
Indeed, since joining them, he had found nothing but death following in their
wake.

Charlie
nodded. “You’re right. We’ve become a bit callous with the whole apocalypse
thing going on.”

“Not to
mention we were assholes before this whole thing got started,” Smokey added as
an aside.

“Regardless,
we should shut up and take care of business. These women deserve a proper
burial, not our witty banter. Let’s find some shovels,” Charlie said, even
though he could barely walk, let alone dig graves for the fallen. “This might
take a while.”

Phil piloted
the boat towards the water pumping station while Bobby paced back and forth,
hardly able to contain his excitement. It had been a week since they found the
isolated spot and the women trapped there, and it was all the creeps could
think about.

The former
high school employees hadn’t always been of such low character, but violence
and scarcity has a way of changing men to their very cores. With law
enforcement a thing of the past, these guys would only get worse. As their
actions spiraled out of control one heinous deed at a time, moral relativism
became more than just a vocabulary word from one of Bobby’s boring AP
philosophy classes.

The pair had
waited impatiently for the opportunity to slip away from their clueless
families, and it had finally arrived. Running low on food meant a supply run
was necessary, but food was far from either of their fevered minds as they
dropped anchor and tied off.

By now Jackie
and her friends had even less food since theirs had been taken, and they now
relied on whatever seafood Mary could pull from the lake. Some days they didn’t
eat at all.

Even worse
was the thought that the two men could show up at any moment and once again
steal what little peace they had left in a world gone mad. And without enough
food to feed themselves, they had none to spare for the Lake Shore pirates.
This would give the men another convenient excuse to fuel their brutality – not
that they needed any.

Now the
moment the women had dreaded had arrived as Phil and Bobby stepped cautiously
onto the concrete floor. They didn’t have the element of surprise this time,
but the moon was partially obscured by thick cloud cover, and so it was a
rather dark night. The wind was picking up and lightning sparked in the
distance as Phil looked around for any signs of their intended victims. Nada.
What he did find was a five-gallon bucket conspicuously placed out in the open.
He kicked it over and fish heads slid over the ground in all directions.

“You stupid
bitches.” Phil looked at his partner in crime and grinned. “That’s not the only
head we’re getting tonight.”

“Good one,”
Bobby said with a laugh. The teacher was out of his element on the lake and had
relied on the sketchy night shift janitor to survive in the beginning. But if
their ways parted, Bobby had quietly learned everything he needed to know for
the future.

Phil started
walking towards the main building but stopped in his tracks with his foot in
midair. He had almost stepped on a bunch of rusty nails scattered around like
caltrops. Weeks before, puncture wounds like that would have been a painful
mistake. But now, without access to medical care, that mistake could prove as
deadly as a gunshot.

The men
stepped around the hazard while joking about the women’s incompetence. But they
didn’t find it funny when a three-ton load of steel pipes dropped on them from above
and smashed their bones like fine china. It turned out that violence and
scarcity has a way of changing women to their very cores as well. In this case,
it changed them into survivors.

Jackie opened
the door to the crane and ran to the fallen men, taking their pistols away in a
flash as her friends burst from hiding spots nearby, brandishing improvised
weapons. They didn’t need them. Phil the janitor had been killed instantly
under the load of metal and Bobby was left horribly mangled. He screamed in agony
as Jackie searched him for anything of value, and then dragged his ruined body
to the edge of the platform.

“Please, I
have kids,” Bobby managed to sputter out through the blood streaming from his
mouth.

“You don’t
have anything but regret,” Jackie said and stepped back.

At that
point, Jen, still bruised and battered from her rough treatment a week earlier,
came forward and looked into the dying man’s eyes. There was one final thing
she had left to say.

“Well, bye.”

With that,
Jen kicked hard and Bobby rolled into the water with a splash, vanishing
beneath the waves as if he’d never existed.

*                      
*                      
*

The fishing
boat was running on empty as it cruised towards the south end of the lake in
near darkness. Jackie did her best to avoid the bloated corpses bobbing up and
down in the water, but still hit them from time to time. Each loud thump of a
floater was a reminder of what they were about to face on dry land.

At that same
moment in the city, Charlie and his friends were arguing over cat food and the
smell of Rob’s feet, and Jen’s fiancé, Blake, was still alive and as pompous as
ever. But the two groups might as well have been worlds apart, separated by a
million bloodthirsty creatures and the dense fog of disaster.

The choppy
water was making Mary sick, and she did her best not throw up as cold spray hit
them continuously. They had no clue where their next meal was coming from and
she couldn’t risk losing what little protein was left in her stomach. She sat down
and closed her eyes. “Any idea how much farther?” she asked, her mouth
watering.

“Not far,”
Jackie said. “We’ll do this just like we talked about. Go as far south as we
can and put up anchor a good distance out. I’ll swim in and find us a car. From
there we head to the boonies and play it by ear.”

It sounded
like a reasonable enough plan when Jackie said it out loud, but there were a
lot of assumptions she was making and plenty of ways things could go to shit at
Mach speed. Even so, Mary trusted her completely. The straight-talking
businesswoman hadn’t failed her yet, and things were looking up after getting
off the station.

The boat
shook violently as it crashed into more bodies and Mary finally succumbed,
puking onto the floor as Padma held her brown hair aloft. “See, there’s land
just ahead,” Padma said, then turned to Jen. “You okay? You’ve been awful
quiet.”

“Yep. Just
dandy.” Jen had been looking at the wallet on the floor of the boat ever since
they had gotten in.

She knew she
shouldn’t care, but there it was, beckoning at her to take a peek. Finally she
ripped it open as the boat neared the shoreline. Inside was Bobby’s driver’s
license. Bobby Bradford of Michigan City, to be more precise.

The flip side
was more interesting, though, and that’s what Jen was curious about. There was
a photo of a man, standing with his family, dressed in their Sunday’s finest.
Bobby had a huge smile on his face, as did his wife and two rosy-cheeked
daughters. It was clear they were crazy about him and Jen could picture the
photogenic bunch frantically worried about his whereabouts. Would they survive
without their closet psychopath? She didn’t care.

Jen tossed
the wallet into the water where it floated for a moment and then, like Bobby
himself, disappeared under the surf.

Two weeks had
passed since the mayhem at the nunnery and Left-Nut had at long last healed
enough to travel, much to the delight of all the remaining nuns he had been pestering.
Over that period Charlie and friends filled their bellies with actual food,
slept in beds, and generally forgot about their troubles for a time. But as
comfortable as their sanctuary was, Charlie was eager to head back to the
wastelands beyond the fence. He had a budding family to find, made up of his
pregnant girlfriend and adopted son, and with every day that passed they felt
less and less real.

So as the sun
rose one morning, the gang packed up and said their goodbyes to the group of
speechless nuns and the screaming baby they were leaving behind. By the look on
the elderly women’s faces, they were just fine with it.

As the group
neared the gate, one of the nuns ran to them and handed over a piece of paper.
It was the woman named Katya – or Scarface, as the guys called her behind her
back.

“Sorry, but
you’re not coming with us,” Charlie said and handed the paper back to the nun,
noticing a small tattoo of a flower on her hand. “It’s too dangerous, and this
note stuff just isn’t going to work. We all have to pull our weight and look
out for each other. If you see a zombie sneaking up and you can’t shout a
warning, well that’s gonna get us all killed. And we’re already doing a pretty
good job of that.”

Rob appeared
agitated. “I think she should come. We could always use an extra pair of hands,
and she knows how to cook.” And there was the reason. He was a mountain of
consistency.

Charlie
believed he had a way out. “All right, she can come. If she’s willing to talk.”

Katya looked
down and took a deep breath. Regretfully, she nodded her head. “Okay,” she
said, in a barely audible tone. The nun hadn’t spoken in quite a while and her
vocal cords were in need of exercise. More importantly, she had just broken her
vow of silence. But Katya believed God wanted her to join these men who were so
desperately in need of guidance. Not to mention the convent was slowly but
surely driving her insane with boredom.

Surprised,
Charlie smiled. “I guess that’s a start then. Keep practicing.” He turned to
Rob. “This is on you, so she’s under your protection. Keep her safe and show
her how to defend herself.”

“No problem,”
Rob said. He grabbed one of the shovels from the nearby garden and handed it to
his new friend. “Stay close to me and aim for the head when you can. If they
bite you it’s all over, so don’t let that happen. And most importantly, stay
away from Left-Nut.”

Katya nodded
before donning a backpack and hugging several of the less dour nuns goodbye.
Then she pinched little Todd’s angry face and turned to leave with the others.
The gate closed behind them and nobody looked back as the padlock snapped into
place. Katya took a deep breath and smelled the freedom of the open road. Then
Rob farted.

“Woops. That
cabbage is still doing a number on me. Can’t say I’ll miss it.”

Katya held in
a smile – and her breath – and walked a bit farther away from her protector. It
wasn’t long before she noticed Left-Nut was following closely behind. Or, more
specifically, just her behind.

“Move it,”
she rasped and cleared her throat. This was a different lifestyle indeed, and
they hadn’t even gone a hundred yards yet.

And so
Katya’s new adventure began as they traveled by foot through a countryside
she’d lived next to for years but had never seen. The morning went by without
much excitement as Charlie talked to Sam about sports and Smokey babbled on
about his favorite TV shows, neither of which Katya had any clue about. Still,
she enjoyed the company and the sound of human voices, even if Rob had to shoo
Left-Nut away from time to time.

She didn’t
know it, but the reason the morning had gone by so smoothly was due to the
Koreans. Ping and Pong had forged ahead to scout for the group and had already
dealt with several random zombies in a discreet and efficient manner. Obviously
they had been a worthy addition to the gang. It remained to be seen if Katya
would be the same.

After several
hours of hiking under a cloudy sky, Charlie decided it was time for a quick
break and stopped them by the edge of the forest. The group huddled together into
a protective circle while sipping from water bottles. Katya produced a crusty
loaf of bread from her pack and it was quickly passed around.

“I baked
this, today,” she said with effort.

“Thanks,”
Charlie said. “You sound better already. Now if we only knew what the hell they
were saying, we’d be in business,” he added while pointing to one of the
Koreans coming back from across the next field.

“I might be
able to talk to them,” Left-Nut said casually between chews. “Wow, this bread
is drier than an old lady’s—”

“Don’t you
think that might have been important to know?” Charlie asked while forming a
fist. It was something that happened every time he talked to his white-haired
frenemy.

“You never
asked,” Left-Nut said. “And to be honest, my Korean’s a little shaky. I met
this hot chick from Seoul while playing in a StarCraft tournament online. I
wanted to bang her so bad but then I found out she was only sixteen… so then I
really wanted to bang her. Never did, though. Such a shame.”

Smokey looked
absolutely disgusted. “Not cool, man. But leaving your creepiness factor aside
for a moment, it’s worth a shot. Let her rip.”

Left-Nut
smiled at Pong and tried to communicate. This amounted to him asking if “Pong’s
sweater nipples were hungry apple.”

Pong arched
an eyebrow, obviously baffled by the string of what resembled authentic
frontier gibberish. “Mo-na-ra-dŭt-kke-ssŏ-yo,” he replied, clearly
confused.

Left-Nut
looked at Charlie. “See, now we’re making progress. I asked him if he had a
sister and he said he would love for me to meet her.”

“Damn it,
just ask him if they plan on sticking around with us. Every time they go off we
don’t know if they’re coming back or not.”

“Fine, fine.
That’s out of my range, but I’ll get serious.” He turned back to Pong. “Chŏ-nŭn
han-gung-mal chal-mo-t’ae-yo,” he said, admitting that his Korean was bad. The
pronunciation was way off, but Pong understood. Progress.

The soldier
nodded with a smile and pulled him aside so the two could set about learning
each other’s language in earnest. It was an odd pair for sure – a North Korean
trained for asymmetric warfare and an American lowlife skilled in the arts of
douchebaggery – but these were odd times.

 While
they worked on the fundamentals, Charlie told Katya of their plans. They had about
a hundred miles to go before reaching their destination, and that was as the
crow flies. Dealing with the terrain while avoiding cannibals and the Chinese
army could add plenty of extra ground to cover. “We just have to keep putting
one foot in front of the other and keep our eyes peeled. Plus, no more delays
would be nice,” he added while casting a glance in Left-Nut’s direction.

After fifteen
minutes the group got back at it, rehydrated and ready to rock. They crossed
the next empty field in high spirits as Big Rob quietly serenaded everyone with
an amazing rendition of the Elvis classic “Don’t Be Cruel.” Even Pong was
humming along, though he had no clue what the words meant.

As they
prepared to enter the next wooded patch, the other Korean popped out from the
trees and was in an unmistakably agitated state. “Tta-ra o-se-yo!” he
exclaimed, motioning them to follow.

Everyone
gripped their weapons tightly as they followed close behind, the language
barrier adding an extra layer of worry. Nobody was prepared for the sight that
greeted them inside the forest.

Bodies. Lots
of them. Everyone save Katya had already seen their fair share of the dead, but
this was something different entirely. Some were skeletal, others fresh, but
all had been impaled on crudely carved wooden stakes that protruded from the
ground.

“This isn’t
good,” Rob said as he swatted away a large crow that had been pecking at a
woman’s putrid eyeball.

Katya grasped
her rosary and began saying as many prayers as she could, fighting through the
pain that each word caused her.

“Were they
zombies or people?” Sam asked as he looked at the body of a red-haired girl
about his age. She could have been his sister.

“Does it
matter?” Left-Nut asked.

“I think so,
yes,” the boy answered.

Smokey
checked a few of the bodies. “Yep, they all have bite marks. Whoever did this
is a badass.”

“No, whoever
did this is mucho loco,” Charlie said. “We’re talking Dahmer level here. We’d
best keep moving.”

Katya said a
few more prayers and then they hurried from the macabre setting. Minutes later
the group arrived near the edge of the forest where they came upon a small
farmstead. A few scrawny head of cattle milled about behind a wooden fence as
dozens of chickens foraged for insects in the tall grass.

A tall man
opened the gate to gather the chickens and then stopped, looking in their
direction. He was built like Hercules and his haircut was very distinct, sort
of a hybrid mullet with the sides shaved off. Rob wasted no time and charged
from their hidden position with the war cry of a fanatic on his lips. Rather
than bash the man’s brains on the spot, however, Rob tossed his bat aside and
collided with him instead, taking the guy down hard.

The chickens
fluttered around in a panic as the two titans fought for position. With much
effort, Rob was able to stay on top and began to rain blows down on his
adversary. The old ground and pound.

But the
pummeled man somehow pulled a Rambo-style knife from his belt and shoved it
upwards at Rob’s thick neck. The sound of automatic gunfire made him stop mid
slash, however, and he dropped the weapon to the ground.

Pong lowered
his weapon and Charlie pulled Big Rob back. Now was his chance to recognize the
wounded mystery man.  His jaw dropped at the revelation. It was Vladimir.
The Dragon. Draganov. World Champion fighter and all-around villain.

“You ruined
my life you piece of shit,” Rob said as he gasped for air and contemplated
another go of it.

Vladimir was
also fighting for breath, but he had a dumb smile on his face at the same time.

“Unfortunate?
Yes, but are not all lives ruined?” He spit a mouthful of bloody teeth onto the
ground. “Nice to see you, too.”

“Fuck off.”

An elderly
man and woman tentatively walked towards the group, carrying pitchforks and
speaking a Russian-sounding language. Vlad waved at them to back off. “Besides,
not my fault. Owner set you up. Owner set me up when problems with skanks
began. We peas in pod.”

“No, we
aren’t anything alike,” Rob said and continued to glare at him with murder on
his mind.

Charlie
intervened at just the right moment to prevent further meathead mayhem. “Why
don’t you bring up the rear for a few and cool off?” he suggested to Rob.

Rob nodded
and sulked off as the others scanned the premises for danger. They were very
close to the impaled bodies, after all. Charlie struck a conciliatory tone.
“Look, we’re just passing through on our way to Cantonville. Obviously Rob was
surprised at seeing you, and the fight was unfortunate. Sorry.”

“Still many
miles to Cantonville,” Vlad replied as he sized up the group. “Very dangerous
miles.”

“That’s for
us to worry about,” Charlie said.

“Headed to
base there?” Vlad asked.

“None of your
business. Again, sorry for Rob blasting you in the face thirty times, and
goodbye.”

“Don’t be so hasty.
We off on wrong ankle with scuffle, but that is no biggie.” The Bulgarian’s
broken English was reminiscent of Vidu’s halting speech and just as irritating.

Charlie
sighed. “I don’t have time to beat around the bush. What do you want? In one
sentence.”

“Direct
approach. I like that—”

“That’s it,
we’re going.”

“Fine, fine.
Take me with you,” Vlad said, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice.

Rob came
charging back. “No fucking way he’s coming with us. The guy’s a rapist.”

“Not guilty,
bitch.”

“Like you
didn’t pay off a juror?”

Vladimir
failed to contest Rob on that point. “Not matter. Vlad innocent anyways.”

Charlie
stepped between the two giants. “I’d swear you guys used to date. Anyways,
let’s crank the testosterone down a notch, both of you.” He turned to Vlad.
“Why would we want to take you along?”

Vlad
retrieved the long knife from his belt and threw it at a wooden post fifteen
yards away, burying it to the hilt. “Was Bulgarian special forces ten years.
Trained to kill, live off land, and travel undetected. All things needed to get
to Cantonville. Plus, Vlad has chickens. Armies march faster on full bellies.”

Rob let his
guard down ever so slightly when food was mentioned while Charlie ground his
teeth, pondering the offer. For sure, Vladimir could prove to be a deadly,
albeit annoying, ally. On the other hand, he was a known psychopath with
extremely violent tendencies and a total disregard for authority.

So basically,
Vlad was no different than half of the ragtag band of survivors.

Charlie pointed
to the aged couple. “And you’re okay with leaving your parents here,
defenseless?”

“That Vlad’s
mother, but not Vlad’s father. Father was great warrior, died in battle with
communists. That is uncle. The coward is good for cleaning chicken coop and little
else.”

“Regardless,
I mean… there’s a bunch of bodies on spikes not far from here, not to mention
the zombies and the Chinese soldiers,” Charlie pressed.