Mark Tufo - Whistlers

I ran out of the woods. It was exhilarating. The air seemed fresher, or maybe it was because my personal body funk wasn’t as entrapped. However, there was no time for joy as more and more of the chasers popped out of the woods at various points. All of their eyes trained on me and the pursuit began anew.

This time I had a place in mind; there was a clusterfuck of cars and trucks up ahead. I didn’t know what they were at that moment, I only saw them as defensible bunkers; a place where I could wield my weapon. One more spurt of energy; I would have had an easier time of wresting a banana from a selfish gorilla. I saw the only thing that looked decent enough to stop at. Unfortunately, it was on the other side of the roadway. It looked like a school bus, but it wasn’t; unless it was for the kids attending St. Peter’s school of perpetually deviant little shits. The windows were covered with heavy mesh and the wheels were protected by sheets of metal. It was either a prisoner transport or some prepper’s wet-dream brought to automotive life. I figured it was the former, a prisoner bus. I mean, why would the preppers have left it? Prisoners would have bolted at the first opportunity; a prepper would have died inside that thing.

“Just let the door be open,” I managed to hiss as I made it over the median.

I was threading my way through a tight packing of cars when I literally felt air being pushed past me. One of the snarling, drooling, teeth-grinding hunters had found a faster way through the traffic and was now coming at me after having stepped on a hood and launching himself my way. I turned in time to see my field of vision dominated by a gore-caked hand coming for my face. I twisted just enough that his pinkie finger scraped against the side of my cheek. I might have smelled like I’d taken a bath in a sewer, but that was nothing compared to the aged belly-brine, nose-bristling reek he gave off as he passed. His head hit the grill of the car I was next to and I turned to make sure he got an unpleasant introduction to my knee. He seemed no worse for it. That threw me for a loop. I expected the hard hit to knock him completely unconscious, if not outright kill him.

He might have been a little foggy, but that didn’t stop him from attempting to get up. I kicked out at his elbow, shattering it in at least two spots. His arm folded in on itself and, for the second time in as many seconds, his face met an immoveable object. He should have been screaming in agony. Nothing…not so much as a whimper.

“Drugs?” I asked as I brought the heel of my boot down on the back of his head.

Impossibly, it was still trying to rise. I raised my leg up again and, supporting my body on two vehicles, I drove down hard enough that I damn near gave myself shin splints for the effort. At least he wasn’t moving. I made it around the back of the bus and found two more attackers between me and the door which, on one hand, was awesomely open, but on the other, depressingly blocked by two more drugged-up, insane people. They had probably been on this very transport up until recently when whatever events transpired that set them free to ravage the country side. Shit, for all I knew, I was one of them and they were hunting me down because I had ratted out Jimmy ‘the Salami’ Montevez. Nobody likes a tattletale, least of all convicts.

“Firestick, fuck-tard!” Yeah, I yelled those words out.

It was like part of me in the know was trying to gain the attention of the much larger, other idiot part that was still nearly clueless. I brought the rifle up and fired center mass like I’d been taught somewhere, at some time. The man staggered backwards and then started forward again. If I had not had on the night vision goggles, and witnessed the impacts and the stains of blood they had produced, I would have thought I was firing blanks, or somehow had missed a shot that nearly had the barrel of my weapon pressing against my enemy.

“Protective clothing,” I mumbled, even if somewhere within me, I knew that was not the case. They were bleeding for chrissakes.

“Nothing on your neck or head, though.” I was thinking or saying this as I fired higher.

A shot hit the closest being in the Adam’s apple, bisecting the protrusion. It must have severed his spinal column as it blew through the back of its neck. His head fell over to the side like he was a puppy and was just trying to recreate the cutest pose known to the animal.

“Puppy tilt my ass.”

I was horrified. The thing’s head was literally resting on its shoulder and it had not stopped. I fired a burst, not knowing what else to do. The first ripped its lower jaw clean from its body, exposing its palate and top teeth. The second went to the left of its nose. That one seemed to do the trick as the third drilled him just below the left eye. His subsequent fall tripped up his companion, who got tangled and went down hard. I would have finished him off but I was running out of time. I could hear the snarls of more of their kind coming. I had just jumped in the bus and was reaching for the silver handle to close the door when something grabbed the back of my leg. They were squeezing so hard that it felt like a damn vise. I was in serious danger of my muscle seizing up into a massive cramp from their less than careful ministrations. I shook my leg violently, but it wasn’t letting go, like a great white to a seal. I did the only thing afforded to me and just kept pushing the handle towards the driver’s seat, slamming that door repeatedly on the arm until I heard the satisfying crunch of bone. I just kept repeating that while jerking my leg forward. I should have been more horrified when the arm came loose. I was just thrilled that the door shut.

I was leaning against the handle catching my breath while the bus was being jostled back and forth from the ‘undead’ that kept hitting the sides. Another word had come to the forefront of my knowledge. I knew it was important but I just couldn’t find the necessary reference catalog to look up what it meant. I almost recognized what I was looking at. There was a name from my memory, but instead of trying to dance around what a ‘blue shitter’ was, I just went with what I know. Just remember, the bell in my head had been wrung hard and it was still vibrating at this point.

The bus was not a prisoner transport. It was indeed a prepper’s vehicle. Unfortunately, it was someone that was on a pretty tight budget. He’d somehow gotten a hold of a port-a-potty and retrofitted it to fit in the back of the bus. It looked like he’d ripped the top off with a jig saw and then used five or six rolls of duct tape to hold it into place. The door was closed and my first inclination was to blast a couple of holes into it and let the chips fall where they may. There was a sixty-seven percent chance that there was something horrible behind that door. Here’s my reasoning. One, it’s a zombie stuck inside. Two, it’s a person that hid when they saw me coming. Three, the inside is completely coated in blue chemical-infused crap after hitting a series of pot-holes and it all splashed out. Hell, I’d be doing whoever is hiding in there a favor.

“Come out.” I think my voice had a tremor to it. It wasn’t very authoritative. “Come out now or I’ll blow some holes in there.” There, that sounded more certain.

Nothing moved. The latch informed me that the toilet was indeed ‘not occupied.’

“This sucks,” I said as I shuffled closer.

I was as close as I could be without the door hitting me should it pop open and an unpleasant surprise jump out at me. Like a shitty monster. Even I had to shake my head at my horrible pun.

“Last chance,” I called out.

It didn’t help that the zombies outside were rocking the bus enough that the door would crack open from time to time like someone was peeking out. My imagination was in overdrive. I was positive there was some little girl in there with pasty pale features, a tongue half-torn out, and sharp pointy teeth getting ready to launch herself at me. With the barrel of my weapon, I exploited one of the times the door cracked open and shoved my rifle in, and slammed the door to the side. I’d done it so hard that it hit the side of the bus with enough force to come back almost as fast as I’d sent it. I damn near needed to use the port-a-potty myself after that, it startled me so much. What I did notice before I almost crapped myself was that, unless someone was inside the refuse holding tank, there was no one in there.