A.K.A. No Time for a Love Story (Book 1): Just Another Day Read online

  End Times

  God has turned His back on you

  There is no more room in Hell

  The dead shall stalk the Earth

  Satan laughing, Legions forever advancing

  Condemned souls, they roam the Earth

  Heavens’ Gates forever closed

  Humanity is an endangered species

  On the brink of extinction

  Fighting a useless battle

  Against an enemy that they can’t defeat

  Lifeless reanimated beings

  Slaying friends and family

  Sons, eating mother’s entrails

  Daughters… ravaging fathers

  Satan Lord, Zombie Horde

  Satan’s earthly army, destroying Gods’ creation

  Holy lands defiled, by the battalions of Hell

  Rotting corpse, Zombie Horde

  Cities in peril, Countries destroyed

  Populace annihilated, Whole world in flames

  (By: Zombie Fog/Joshua Cook/Jacob Sims – 8/11/2009)

  Part Juan

  Only the Drunkest Will Survive…

  “I would kill everyone in this room for a sweet drop of beer.”

  -Homer J. Simpson

  “I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning,

  that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.”

  -Frank Sinatra

  1

  It was just a regular old Tuesday morning, and a beautiful one, at that. I rolled outta bed at the usual time I do - at around 11:30 or so - grumpy and alone, like I did every day since my girl dumped me for a fuckhead, midget junkie drug dealer. As usual, I had no plans for the day, since I was an unemployed loser who spent most of every day doing pretty much nothing: just listening to music, reading books, and watching the boob-tube. What a great life!

  Not that my life was bad, or anything. I mean it’s not like I was living in a cardboard box in some dank alley sniffing glue from a paper sack and sucking dick for a fiver (with a finger in the ass for ten) - I was actually not doing too bad: I was gettin’ my learnin’ on at the local community college, had a nice apartment, was living decently off of the G.I. Bill that I got from serving this great country (hah!), and I was pretty much making do - it’s just that I had no job prospects, no girlfriend, was bored as shit with my life, and was looking for a change of pace.

  After I got myself out of bed, I stumbled my way to the kitchen to turn on my boom-box - Mastadon’s “Crack The Skye” was in - so I could get my day under way, and began my daily wake-up routine: I took myself an excellent wizz (felt like heaven!); took me a fairly quick, hot motherfuckin’ shower; after the shower I combed my long and beautiful, yet manly beard; put the Q-tips in my ears; Old Spice in the pits; I lotioned up my face ‘cause I got some bad dry skin; threw on a pair of semi-clean pants, and my socks and shoes; brushed my grill; and then I threw on whatever t-shirt that happened to be on top o’ the pile - my Cattle Decapitation one, with the cow and human skeletons holding each other over a pile of guts.

  “Well, now what?” I said to no one in particular.

  I spend almost 85% to 95% of every day alone, so’s I talk to myself quite often, even answer myself sometimes. Little weird. Since I had literally nothing to do and no plans for the day, I decided that I’d do the same thing that I did every day, which consisted of a trip to the gas station where I always got a Snickers bar and a Mountain Dew, then a trip on down to the mall, so I could walk through a few stores (buying nothing), and stare at all the young tail that wouldn’t give my balding, hairy ass a second glance. A man can dream, though, right?

  As I was stepping out of my apartment, my neighbor, Linn (who I gotta say is pretty fuckin’ hot for a broad in her forties), was coming out of hers with a bag of trash for the dumpster out back and below.

  “Hey, Dave,” she said, “How’s it goin’?”

  “Oh, not too bad, I guess,” I said.

  “That’s good. Hey, did you hear the cop cars and ambulances flying around with their sirens blaring earlier?”

  “What?! Are you fucking with me, ‘cause I didn’t hear no sirens or anything.”

  “No, seriously, man! For the last hour or so we’ve been hearing them. Sounded like they were coming from the direction of the gas station down there. But not just there, it sounded like something was going on everywhere… it sounded crazy! Ben said he even heard gunshots, but I didn’t hear that. Whatever happened must be over, though, ‘cause it’s quiet now.”

  “Well, shit, I didn’t hear anything, but I’m not surprised. I sleep with some pretty good ear plugs in, and as soon as I was up I had my tunes blaring, so it figures I’d miss the town going nuts. Wonder what happened, though.”

  As soon as I finished that sentence, two squad cars followed close by an ambulance, flew down the street out front, lights flashing and making all kinds of racket. Right after that, I heard the distinct sounds of rapid gunfire in the distance, a ways off but still close enough to be unnerving.

  “What the fuck is going on out there?!,” I practically yelled at Linn, causing her to shrink a little. “Sorry about that, Linn, but this is some fucked up shit! Sounds like a fuckin’ war zone out there! Man! …What a shitty way to start the day!”

  Screams and more erratic gunfire erupted from somewhere in the streets below, only closer sounding than before. By this time, I was getting pretty fuckin’ worried. See, my Dad (much to my Mom’s chagrin), was on this “End of the World as We Know It” kick, where he was buying up all kinds of guns and ammo, supplies and shit, preparing for the inevitable collapse of civilization, where it would go back to the law of the gun. Up to this point, I had just went along with him, agreed with him, but didn’t take him too seriously. You know, just tried to make him happy. Now I was thinking that maybe he was right.

  I started down the stairs, leaving Linn standing there holding her trash, to see what the fuck was going on. I got about three steps down, when what sounded like a massive car accident followed by a huge explosion shook the whole building, and caused the stairway door and the window above it to vibrate and clatter.

  “Jesus Christ, that was real fuckin’ close,” I muttered under my breath, not wanting to scare Linn any more than she already was. “Check it out, Linn,” I said as I turned to her, “I’m gonna go on down and see what’s happening out there, maybe see if anybody needs help, okay? Now, while I’m gone, I want you to go into your apartment and lock up tight, okay, and don’t open up till I get back, ‘cause whatever’s going on could be pretty bad, and I want you to be as safe as possible. All right?”

  “Okay,” she said, dropping her trash to the floor, “Just be careful, Dave.”

  “Careful is my middle name, next to Carl. Don’t worry about me, I’m sure it’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s probably nothing, right? Maybe a bank robbery gone wrong, or something. After all, there’re a shit-ton of fuckin’ banks around here, so I bet that’s what it is.”

  “Okay, Dave, watch yourself.”

  “Word.”

  So on down I went, into the great unknown. If I had been thinking clearly, I would’ve went back to my apartment and got a gun, since I had a small arsenal up there. But, as they say, hindsight is a motherfucker. I heard the clackity-clack of Linn’s locks engaging as I was on my way down, and was glad about that. I hoped she kept her door locked, though. When I got to the bottom of the stairs and was about to open the door and head out, I felt my ass vibrate and heard the tell-tale sound of a text message in my phone. After I responded to the text, smiling and happy, I opened the door and stepped o
ut into the bright day.

  2

  Before the door had even closed behind me (which is pretty fuckin’ quick, since it’s one of those hydraulic ones), I was plowed into by two dudes and some skinny, old lady, the four of us going down like bowling pins in a strike, my head smacking off the sidewalk. I hadn’t even started to drag my ass off the concrete, and the three knuckleheads were already on their feet and bookin’ on down the sidewalk, already sprinting by where my car was parked.

  “You motherfucker’s!!!! Fucking cocksucker’s!!!!,” I yelled as I dragged myself up, using the wall and window-ledge of the bar as a ladder of sorts. “Get the fuck back here!!! I’m gonna kick your fuckin’ asses, you fuckin’ dicks!!!”

  I was real fuckin’ dizzy from the impact, and had to lean against the wall, all wobbly and shit, until my equilibrium came back. I was standing there for not even a minute, still pretty fucked up, when I heard the most gut-wrenching scream I had ever heard in my entire life.

  “Well, now what?”

  I turned toward the sound, back by the stairwell door to my apartment, just in time to see two messed up looking guys, like bums or something, wrestling on the ground with a young woman holding a little baby, right in front of the door.

  “Hey, get the fuck off her!!!,” I yelled as I hobbled my way in their direction. “I said get off, now!!! I’m not messing around!!!”

  If those two douche-bags heard me, they made no attempt at all to comply, they just kept at what they were doing, clawing and scratching, and doing what looked like, to me, attempted gang-rape.

  One thing I gotta say. The distance from where I ended up after I was rolled to where the lady was being attacked wasn’t very far, maybe around ten or twelve feet. Nothing, right? But you have to take into consideration the head trauma I had just suffered. I smacked my head at a high speed onto solid concrete, a very painful and debilitating injury. If you’ve ever been hit in the head with something hard and heavy, or been pounded on by some huge mofo, you would have an idea of how disoriented I felt just then. I couldn’t walk a straight line, my vision was blurry, I had no balance, and I had a headache so big not even Excedrin could handle it. I was fucked up. So, the ten feet or so was multiplied to, shit, I don’t know, twenty or more, by circumstance. Got me? What I’m getting at is that what happened next was NOT my fault, I couldn’t save her. Or the baby. That’s the worst part. The baby.

  I actually fell on my way there. Some hero, falling on my side in my rescue attempt. Pathetic. I finally got my ass there and grabbed one of the dicks by his jacket, to drag him off, when the biting started.

  That’s right, Ladies and Gents, the biting.

  One of the guys was tearing into the young lady, and the other into the baby, like a couple of hyenas after the lions had their fill. I literally puked all over myself, which is funny, because I hadn’t had anything to eat yet. But I had a shit-load to eat the night before, and now I was covered in it. Taco salad. Mmmm hmmm.

  Now, I am no idiot. Most people, when confronted with a situation like that would double their efforts at rescue, maybe enlisting the help of others, as well. Not this guy. Me, I knew exactly what I was looking at. I had done my homework, read all the books, and seen all the movies. I knew that to do anything more would be virtually suicide, or worse, because I knew that what I was seeing was something that I had been waiting for my entire life: ZOMBIES!!! FUCK YEAH! Once that realization hit home, I did the most logical, sensible thing that, I have to say, I had done in my entire life - I ran.

  Or more like jogged, ‘cause I was still messed up. But either way, I got my ass outta there. Unfortunately, the way to my apartment (and my guns, which really fuckin’ sucked ) was blocked by the two feasting zombies, who, thankfully, hadn’t noticed me yet, so I figured I’d get to my car and get the fuck gone.

  I was about to pass the corner of the building, when a whole herd of the motherfucker’s (only about ten, but still a lot) came out from the grassy area beside the building, probably coming up the hill from the road below, blocking the way to my car. That put any hopes of driving off into the sunset out of the question. Now, not only was I unarmed in a city that was most likely teeming with the undead, I also had no wheels.

  Wright Street looked clear, so I quickly changed direction and ran down that, staying in the center of the road, in case any dead fucks popped out from behind a car or out of an alley. My plan, that I was thinking up as I went, was to head to the cop-shop and see if I could either get help, or at least a gun off of a dead cop. I figured the latter. I hooked it right down the alley next to the beauty school, figuring that the main roads would all be swamped with human, zombie, and vehicle traffic, and that the best route would be an indirect one.

  The alley looked clear as far as I could see, but I kept my pace slow and cautious, ‘cause I wasn’t about to end up in the loving embrace of something that wanted to gnaw my fuckin’ head off like a double-cheeseburger from the dollar menu at McDonalds. I must’ve came out into the hall with Linn during a lull or some shit, ‘cause right then at that point it sounded like WW3 out there: rapid gunfire, explosions, and screams galore were heard at seemingly every point. I wasn’t too confident that I would make it outta the alley without incident the way things were sounding, but, for once, I was being slightly optimistic (usually, I think the worst first, so I’m never surprised or let down). But only slightly.

  Surprisingly enough, I made it to the end of the alley to Gooding Street without a hitch, even though there were a couple scares (and I made a little splash in my pants). Shit happens… and piss does, too, evidently. There was a burning car smashed into the building at the end of the alley, and I scrambled for cover behind it, hoping to get a good view of the street and all around.

  I still had to make it across Gooding to the alley, then on down to Marquette, plus a couple more turns before I got within view of the police station. The way across the street was clear as can be, but forty feet or so to the right of where I was crouching, there were what looked to be thirty or so zombies yanking and pulling people out of a massive car wreck. It looked like a couple knuckleheads had smacked head-on into each other, then collided with two other cars, one of which being the car that I was hiding behind. Thankfully, the impact must’ve killed everyone in the cars, or the zombies did it before I got there, ‘cause I didn’t hear any screams or see any fighting going on as the bodies were pulled out and feasted upon.

  Even though not all of the zombies were enjoying their Meal-on-Wheels, as there was a handful milling about, I didn’t really feel like waiting until the coast was clear or until they were done eating, ‘cause let me tell ya, it’s pretty fuckin’ sick how those motherfucker’s eat. It’s like watching “Animal Planet”, but with people. Gruesome shit. I fuckin’ puked again, this time just bile, since I was still running on empty.

  I decided that I had waited long enough, grabbed my sack to see if it I still had any nuts (I did, big ones), and dove out from behind that burning piece of chicken-smelling shit into the street at a sprint, trying to be as quiet as possible, hoping to avoid detection. I had only taken two steps when this flayed man turned towards me and let loose a loud, mournful moan. I stopped dead in my tracks - no pun intended. Until then, I wasn’t sure if the zombies moaned like they do in the movies, and, well, they don’t. No. They sound worse… much worse. I can’t describe it. All I know is that when I heard it… for a fleeting moment… I thought of just giving up and waiting for it to come and kill me. Hearing that sound took all the drive and will to live right outta me, nearly made me lose all hope. I even shit myself, and I think that is what made me come to my senses, the smell of my own overpowering shit.

  But I didn’t run… not right away. I had to see what it was I was dealing with. Sure, I knew it was zombies, but up until then I had been running my ass off, and not looking at them. Call me curious (yes, I was thinking of the cat then), call me stupid, call me whatever you want, but I had to look, I needed to look.

 
; I had two reasons for standing there with my mouth hanging open while my would-be executioner made its way towards me: the first was that I wanted to prove to myself that I could handle this shit, that I was under control, and wasn’t going to let my fear and panic (both of which I was feeling, big time) get me killed. Check, under control-ish I was. The second reason for my hesitation was to see if what I knew about these things from all the books that I’ve read and all the movies that I’ve seen had any basis at all on reality. ‘Cause let’s get real for a minute - how the fuck would any of those assholes have any fucking clue as to what this shit would really be like? This was something completely brand-new to the world, and they all could’ve been way the fuck off. Right? Another thing I was looking for was a weakness, ‘cause from the fuckin’ look and sound of things around me, it was Zombies: 1,000, People: 0.

  As that walking nightmare shambled towards me, I studied his ass like it was final exam time at school, probably better. First things first: this shit was nothing like what they look like in the movies. In the movies, while some of those special effects are pretty fuckin’ good, taken from actual morgue pictures and shit, you can still tell it’s fake. Also, there’s the knowledge that you’re watching a fuckin’ movie to comfort you. This shit was, real. Still is.

  This dude was straight-up fuckin’ horrible to look at. Been fishing, anyone? Well, if ya have, that means you have probably at one time or another either skinned a fish, or at least seen it done. Someone or something skinned this dude. From his forehead down to his belly-button he had been peeled like a fish on the cutting board. All of his muscles and tendons and fatty tissues were exposed for the world to see, and he was bloody as shit. Of course. Kind of reminded me of “Hellraiser”. (Get ‘em off me, get ‘em off me!!!!) If there was another injury like a bite lost somewhere inside of all that gore, I couldn’t see it, but there had to be, or else I didn’t think he’d be a zombie. It was kinda funny, even though most of his torso and arms were bare of skin, he still had skin on the lower half of his forearms and hands. Skin gloves! That line from the Roger Rabbit movie popped into my head - “These aren’t kid gloves, Mr. Valiant!”. Crazy, how the mind works.