Kirk Allmond - What Zombies Fear - A Father's Quest

I made it to the underside of the bridge without being spotted. I scrambled up the oil drum sized rocks that made up the embankment, and heard the zombies looking down over the railing shouting something. I found a good hiding spot in the crook where the bridge span reconnected with the ground, and climbed up onto one of the iron beams of the bridge, hopefully out of site of the zombies as they passed. I set the tool bag on the beam in front of me, and slid along the beam out over the rocks on my belly, as if crossing the bridge on the underside. When I’d gone about twenty feet, it was roughly fifteen feet down to the huge boulders below. I pulled out the three devices with the army man parachutes attached, and gently removed the black electrical tape from the battery poles of all three and very gently set them down on the beam in front of me. The wires were only a quarter of an inch from the terminals on the battery, and I was suddenly very worried about the sanity of this plan.

Just a few seconds after I was in position and ready, I heard three zombies round the corner and start moving down the slope beside the bridge. One of them said something about checking on Samantha as they passed my location. I grinned to myself, knowing she’d left her brains on top of the bridge when her body fell to the river bank below. I’m not sure if it’s okay to be proud of a two hundred yard head shot from below on a back lit target at night, but I still brag about that shot. Picking up the first of the three devices, I let the zombies get about five feet past my spot, and lofted the first bomb down the hill. The parachutes opened well over the zombies heads, orienting the bomb battery-side down. I saw it pass about a foot in front of the first zombie, and he started to turn around right as the metal wires hit the ground, and was followed a fraction of a second later by the battery terminals hitting the wires. Nine volts of electricity shot down the wires, igniting the thermite inside the PVC pipe. The sudden, drastic increase in temperature and pressure exploded the pipe bomb, launching molten BB’s in every direction. I heard and felt several impacts the other side of the beam that I was laying on.

I couldn’t hear anything moving, and although the steel beam protected me from the worst of the blast wave, my ears were still ringing. To be safe, I tossed another pipe-grenade at roughly the same spot, this time covering my head for the explosion. Before the first bomb, I counted three zombies coming down the hill, plus the one I shot from the ground, so that left one zombie up there somewhere.

With a hope that it was the slow zombie, I put the tape back on my remaining pipe bomb, peered under the steel I-beam and saw nothing moving in the charred gore. I slid backwards along the beam until I could safely hop to the ground, and scrambled up the rocks to the edge of the bridge. As quietly as possible, I slowly crept to the edge of the bridge, and looked over onto the roadbed of the bridge, but saw nothing. I waited, watching. Cognizant of how long I’ve been away from Max, I put my hand on the pistol in my pocket, clutching my arm to my chest, attempting to make myself look wounded. I started to fake-limp up the road, when I felt a huge blow across the shoulders and was sent flying. I hit the ground, skidded across the pavement and rolled over on my belly. Even though I’d flown and skidded about ten feet, the zombie was right on top of me by the time I got to my knees. She moved so fast that she was a blur. The one on the hill earlier today was amazing, dodging bullets, but this one made that one look like a zombie from a Romero film.

She picked me up and shook me. “Where’s the child?!”

“What? What child?” I stammered, this creature could break me like a twig.

“Your son, Max. Where is he?” She yelled, shaking me some more.

I managed to get my free hand into my coat pocket, and slowly thumbed the hammer back on the revolver. I had to be careful. This had to be perfect, or else she would kill me, and find Max.

“How do you know Max’s name?” I asked.

“Just tell me where he is!” She set me down on the pavement. I was taller than she was, but somehow it felt like I was eye level with her when she was holding me off the ground.

“Max is on the beach, about two miles down the shore,” I lied “I left him sleeping in some old army blankets near a big maple tree.”

She eyed me, and started to speak. Just as she opened her mouth, I leaned back, closed my eyes and squeezed the trigger of the revolver. The bullet exploded through the fabric of my coat. At this range, even she wasn’t fast enough to completely dodge the 44 magnum bullet, it entered through her jaw, and blew the top of her head out, splattering me with her blood. It had thick chunks in it. It felt almost gritty when I wiped my face, being careful not to get any of her blood in my mouth, nose, or eyes.

I sprinted to the truck as fast as I could. It was almost nine at night, but I had a full moon and adrenaline fueling me, plus the rush of having just killed four zombies. It was about a half mile run, I made it in five minutes. I chided myself, and promised that I would start running every day, as I sucked wind for the last two hundred yards. I rounded the corner of the bar and fell to my knees; the horror surrounding my truck was too much for me to take.

There must have been thirty zombies standing around my truck, and Max, standing on the roof. As I fell to my knees in the gravel parking lot, I brought the gun up and fired five rounds as quickly as I could, hitting two zombies in the head, before my revolver clicked dry. I reached in my cargo pants pocket and grabbed a handful of bullets, and paused when I looked up. The zombies were all just standing there, facing Max. I’d hit one three times in the back. None were moving at all. Even the two I’d shot in the head fell facing him.

“Hi, Daddy.” Max said.

09. Virginia

“Max! What’s going on?” I yelled. I stood up, continuing to load bullets into my pistol. I needed to practice loading, it was an unfamiliar movement, and took me forever to get five bullets into the cylinder. I also recognized the need for a melee weapon of some sort; it seemed silly to waste bullets on paralyzed zombies. A quick look around the parking lot yielded no 2×4's or branches or anything of use. Plan B involved walking up behind each one and shooting it downward into the top of the head. If I could get to the back of the truck, I could use the AK47, much less reloading, but then I had much less ammo for it. I started to move towards the first one, lifting my gun to its head.

“Daddy, no. They can’t hurt me.”

“Max, these are bad guys. I don’t know why they’re stopped, but they want to hurt you and we have to go!”

“These guys don’t have enough bugs, they don’t mean to hit me; she makes them.” He said.

His language skills had improved noticeably, I decided to see how far they’ve improved. “Max, what bugs? How do you know this? Who’s the one controlling them?”

“Penelope is their boss. She was close to here, and she was looking for me, but I can hide from her, I’m a good hider. Her bugs are very bad. She has a lot. When I hide from her, I don’t have enough to make these guys not hit. I talked to my bugs. They tried to eat me, but they didn’t like me. They’re all dead now. Before they died, they told Penelope that I taste bad. She put the bad guys on the bridge so you would go kill them, and then they could come get me, but you didn’t do what you were supposed to. Daddy, I don’t like Penelope, she’s a mean friend.”

Max had never been taught the word ‘enemy’, the word he’d made up a year or so before to describe a bully at daycare was ‘mean-friend’. It’s a statement that summed up Max for me. Everyone is his friend, even if they’re mean. It was also his way of telling me he was still my Max, my little boy was still in there. He’d been changed, fighting off the infection that had killed everyone else, but he was still my son.