Дэвид Нордли - How Beer Saved the World

We sat inside that night licking our wounds. Not talking.

The news feed was still on. A cute young news girl from up the valley was reporting on the epidemic. She was interviewing a biker dude with heavy leathers, heavy gut and beard he must have figured would cover it all.

He said he “wasn’t worried.”

He said it was a “government plot to get his gun” and then patted the saddle bags. That was when a dozen or so of the critters came out of the ditch. They were yipping like a pack of wolves. He got his hand in the saddle bags and pulled out this foot long shiny cannon of a revolver that looked like something Clint Eastwood might jack off to. About that same time a couple of Mexicans came out of a Hop field hollering and motioning for them to run. He didn’t, but the girl and her camera guy did. A bunch of the kind of jerky camera work we’ve all gotten used and she was in the field. These Mexicans looked strange. They had their straw hats and their guns and machetes but every damned one of them had Hop vines strung around them like bandoleers.

The camera guy filmed the whole damned thing. The biker dude lasted long enough to get off a round into the asphalt and then screamed like a wet panther while they drug him to the ditch. Then he screamed some more off camera while the camera guy did a thoughtful serious shot of the gun lying on the blacktop while its owner screamed for his mother.

Then it got creepy. The zombies were bloody when they came back up on the road and started towards the reporter and the folks that were in the hop field. You could tell from the camera angle that the camera guy was backing into the field. The tall hop vines grew up the ropes, framing the zombies perfectly. The pack broke into that run they have. I’d have said adios to my Mexican friends and the cute babe. But the pack got to the edge of the field and stopped. These guys just sniffed the air like some freaking dog and paced. A machete wielding arm flashed out and a streak of red crossed some fat zombie guy’s belly. It howled and stepped back. Finally, they just left. The girl got back in the camera van. She tried to get the Mexicans to go. They kept saying no and kept trying to wrap her in Hop vines.

“You take, you take.” Their English was bad. Her Spanish was worse. She tried to ask questions and just got hop vines shoved in her face. Finally both sides gave up and some very nervous farm workers escorted them to the van.

The footage made it to the station, she didn’t. The Burger Fest traffic cam caught her and the camera man being dragged out of a burning van when they took a corner too fast on the way back to the station. According to the news guy that survived, she was a hero. She looked dead to me.

The news guy rambled on about camouflage and brave young Amber. Camo my ass. Hops stink fierce, like being in a pot field in August. It made me think. Actually it made me want to be stoned. Of all the shit Angus made sure we had, he never thought about pot. For the first time in twenty years nobody would care if I got stoned and not a freaking bud in sight.

On other fronts, updates were coming through the emergency channels. It was simple, if you were alive, and safe, stay there. If not. Directions on where to go.

I grabbed Angus, Sally, the Piper brothers, a chicken, and a growler of cold beer and went to storage room. The hops and grains were in bags against the wall. I shut the door behind us and set down the chicken who promptly found a few grains scattered on the floor and settled in to happy murmurs.

I cut one of the hops bags open and grabbed a handful of the smelly leaves and shoved it into Angus’ shirt pocket.

“Feeling lucky?” I asked.

We spent a day on our Hop Vests. Table cloths had little use in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Turned out the trucker’s wife could sew.

Sally and I took a break on the Hops bags. Nobody seemed to care that we were gone. My drummer certainly didn’t. The stigmata of his raised hands, the jerk of the pistol, flashed through my consciousness at wrong times, but Sally and I still left the room with a bit less of whatever pain we went in with.

We were up with the sun. The trucks still sat idling. The Pipers took their spots.

The street was clear of bodies. Only stains. Zombies eat dead zombies. Waste not want not. We armed ourselves as before, the plan had worked except the zombies just hadn’t cooperated.

We gathered in the parking lot and saluted my drummer, each of us with a sixteen ounce mug of Autumn Gold Ale. The hoppiest beer in the brewery. It must have made us a bit relieved because we took a second round. Sally leaned in and kissed me. I kissed her back and she dumped half her beer over my head. “For luck” she whispered and kissed me again. Our lips were wet with beer. Would have made a good commercial without the zombies and all. I poured the rest of mine into her moderate cleavage. She laughed and I wished she wasn’t covered in the hop vest. What was under would be respectable in any wet tee shirt contest I’ve ever been to. The hop vests looked like thick children’s bibs. The Piper brothers called beer foul over the spillage, but repeated the action, as did all.

I took more clips. I had a truck load of ammunition. That wasn’t a problem, but I sure wished I had something for the Pipers that wasn’t a bolt action. Sally took my 8 shot Luger pistol this time, an easy reload. Not a big gun, but it didn’t need to be big, and she still had her little pocket 32. Angus and the driver took the driver’s side and Sally and I took the left.

There were a couple of zombies prowling around the truck. The Pipers played their tune and the zombies fell in unison. One was a grandmother looking old woman. Clothes tend to not last long on the zombies. She was no exception. Her pot belly, shrunken breasts, and granny panties made a picture. I’ve still got it. The head shot didn’t drop her completely and she tried to get up. I gave the younger Piper a look. He shrugged and fired again. This time she stayed down.

I kissed my chicken on the head and threw her over the fence.

The zombies dived.

The chicken ran. And it was on.

Pop. Pop. The gate was open. The waitresses looked calmer. We all looked ridiculous with our beer stained vests packed with hops.

Like clockwork the pack showed around the corner. I was curious where they stayed. Must be the mattress factory a block down. Made sense, Zombies need sleep too.

I added my heavier rounds to the steady pops of the Piper boys. The younger, faster lead zombies leapt the dead with ease. I was beginning to feel screwed. A head shot on a running zombie ten seconds from ripping your throat out is not as easy as it sounds.

Behind me I heard a scream and the scrape of the gate and cook and dishwasher helped the waitresses start to pull them closed.

“Not even.” Sally’s voice behind me. The scraping sound stopped, the Piper boys fired and two more zombies tumbled. A truck door slammed. I heard the roar of the diesel and the sulfur fumes joined the hops and gun smoke.

And the zombies slowed.

The chicken launched itself back over the fence.

I shot two more, a couple of teenage boys who spent too much time on the X box from the look of their sunburned skin with patterns of white hiding from the sun, the rest a pink mass of teenage fat boy skin.

I’d never really been this close without a fence. It was like looking into the eyes of a rabid dog. They stopped, nostrils flaring as they scented the hops. We stared at them. I was afraid as hell. By the time we brought the second truck in everybody outside the fence was all but out of ammo. But they didn’t attack. The Pipers kept up the fire, working the edges and when the gates closed, they left.

The chicken sat atop the fence.