“You alright, buddy?” I asked him.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” he answered a few octaves higher than normal.
“Gary, you think maybe you could take care of the radio and the wipers?” I asked him.
“Sure thing,” Gary answered. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn they had both found some helium, and had just moments before, been sucking some down. Gary was nearly as high pitched as Paul. But after some initial fumbling, he was still able to shut down the radio and the wipers. Curiously, his hand had hovered over the hazard button and he decided to leave them on. I could deal with the minor clacking, my headache and the possible concussion that I figured was going to ruin my entire day had already faded into obscurity. I could at least thank Tomas for that.
We had driven a few more blocks. The car was pretty quiet as the first of the fat droplets of rain began to fall. Paul, without any conscious thought, turned the non-existent windshield wipers on. I don’t think he even noticed the grating sound of metal on glass or that the rain, that was now coming in sheets, was not being pushed from his field of vision.
Luckily, the rainstorm did not last long. By the time we got back to the storage yard, it had dwindled down to something resembling an ant pissing on a flat rock. (Think about that for a second, it’ll come.)
“Are those zombies?” BT asked, sticking his head out the window and into the soft spray as the car came to a stop.
It was still difficult to see through the wet, streaked windshield so we all rolled our windows down to take a better look.
“Better yet, where are Brian and Mrs. D?” I asked.
“I’ve had better days,” Gary intoned.
“That’s like comparing whether or not you’d like to get kicked in the nuts or eat an ice cream sandwich,” I said to him.
“Ice cream sandwich,” Gary said, without even blinking.
“Wise choice,” I said as I got out of the car. The zombies immediately started heading towards us.
“Do you hear that?” BT asked as he placed his new rifle on top of the car door frame.
“Sounds like someone is banging on the locker,” Paul said.
“Canned zombie?” I asked.
“Hopefully it’s Brian and Mrs. Deneaux,” BT said as he aimed for the approaching zombies through his steel sights. The rifle blast rocked the car slightly as the lead zombie’s head disintegrated. It was the first zombie kill that actually looked like a movie prop. The head looked like someone had stuffed it with some C4 and just blew it up.
“That was disgusting,” Paul said, turning away.
Gary was already gagging.
It took me six shots with my .22 before the second zombie stopped. I may have missed a couple because he was running full tilt at us. But I watched the connecting hits. Its head would snap back a little, like it had got caught up momentarily on a small branch, and forward it would keep coming.
By the fifth shot, I could see BT in my peripheral vision. He was wondering if he should finish the thing off. The sixth shot dropped him like a penny from a skyscraper. Its knees just buckled and he went down, no skidding, nothing.
“What the hell is going on?” BT asked, still sighting through the rifle to see if there were any more targets to acquire.
“Zombie 3.0,” I said as I went forward to check out the increased banging on the orange steel doors.
“Brian?” I asked directly outside the banging door.
If he didn’t answer, would I have to open the door to see if it was them? Deneaux, I think, I could shoot without too many issues; Brian would be another matter.
“It wasn’t my fault,” a whiny sounding Mrs. Deneaux said.
“How the hell wasn’t it? You fell asleep,” Brian said. It sounded like I was interrupting a repetitive argument.
“You killed all the zombies?” Brian asked through the doorway.
“How many did you think there were?” I asked him as I pulled up on the handle.
Brian shielded his eyes from the light as he stepped out. Mrs. Deneaux sat in the shadows a few moments more, letting her eyes adjust slowly.
“That’s it?” Brian asked, looking at the two prone bodies. “I figured there were dozens,” he said, a little embarrassed.
“Wanna start from the beginning?” I asked him.
“I was looking in the lockers and Mrs. Deneaux was supposed to be watching my back.”
“I was, but I got tired of your repeated failures,” she interjected acerbically.
“You’re priceless. No wonder nothing ever took root in that cold, barren womb of yours,” Brian shot out.
“If it were you coming out, I would have made sure to wrap the umbilical cord around your neck a few more times,” she said, not missing a beat.
“Whoa, whoa!” BT yelled, “How long have you two been locked up?” he said, stepping in between them both.
“You’re lucky it was dark in there!” Mrs. Deneaux yelled, “or I would have shot you!”
“That would have been preferable to listening to you drone on or almost die from your carbon monoxide emissions.”
“If I could have smoked more in the hopes that it would have suffocated you, I would have!”