I kick started the bike as I dreamed dreams of exploding zombies, and the sweet reward of a hardware store to call my own. I took an extra loop or three around the area, just to satisfy myself that I had a good grasp of the urban topography… and to dry the effluvia and remains on my clothes.
I’d rather be crispy than gooey.
According to plan, I stopped by the fountain I’d patronized earlier, and found the corpses I’d left behind had been moved into a tidy pile… and stripped of every scrap of clothing.
There’s nothing quite so pitiful as the decapitated male form, if you ask me. The one thing you most want to use in life droops like a forlorn sausage casing. How can you find dignity and pride in the afterlife with a saggy member decorating your headless body, left behind in the mortal world?
Why did I care? I didn’t, and I don’t. I just needed something to distract me from how fucking cold the water in that fountain was. I didn’t demurely sit on the edge and wash my pits; I went all in. I shouldn’t have.
When I rose up out of the chilly, pink, water, there was a gun barrel sucking on the end of my nose. I froze in the water, and looked up into the face of the older nerd that, I assumed, was my target.
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to manage a gang of reanimated, angry, motorcyclists?” He asked me.
“Is that a trick question?”
His thumb pulled back the hammer on the revolver. I could see that it fired from the bottom chamber in the cylinder, which was oblong, not round… Chiappa Firearms… I guess it could have been one of their Rhino series revolvers. Not that it mattered, since a bullet through my nose, .40, or .357, would blow the back of my skull off.
“You are a smart ass, Mr. Zombie Hunter.” His look in his eyes was hard, almost as if I wasn’t worth the trouble of appraising in a tactical manner. “How have you not been killed before today?”
“I think I fly like a butterfly and sting like any of the poisonous spiders from Australia.”
For a split second, his expression changed, and I took that instant to get the gun away from my face, or vice versa. I stepped into him, and fell the rest of the way, which took the gun offline from my face.
That was the good.
The bad? I was lying on top of him, and I didn’t have control of his gun hand.
The ugly? I am ashamed to say that I used a simple Sistema (Russian “Aikido”) loose-fist punch to make his day more memorable. His testicles, popped with the knuckles of my left hand, probably had a completely different outlook on how their day was going.
I don’t know if zombies screw—I pray I never have the opportunity to find out one way or another—but as loudly as he howled, I must have done a good job at ending his sexy plans for the day. He flailed underneath me, and to my delight, tossed the gun away.
To my chagrin, he started beating me with both hands, since he didn’t have anything in them anymore. It was annoying, chaotic, and painful. I wanted him to stop long enough for me to get up, grab his gun, and shoot him with it. So I hit him again, in the upper left quadrant of his… ahem… groin. Why? I was betting the pressure point in that area would make him react, and I’d be able to get off him.
It worked. He yelped and writhed like a dying cockroach. I launched off him like a water-propelled plastic missile in the direction of his discarded weapon. I snagged it, and spun to shoot him.
“The chamber is empty.” He croaked.
“Bullshit!” I pulled the trigger.
It clicked on an empty hole, just like he said. I swore and pulled the trigger again, hoping the pistol was double action. No luck.
He had enough time to get up and close the distance. I told you: zombies are fast.
“I’ll Rochambeau you for it!” He cried, and kicked me in the nuts.
The kick lifted me at least two inches off the ground. I can’t remember what I screamed, but I think it sounded something like this: “Hawwwachugglybaw!”
I didn’t let go of the gun. I’m proud of that, and delighted that I managed to cock the trigger on my way back to earth. Then his foot caught me in the guts. That’s when I stopped caring—between the fire in my nads, and the explosion of pain in my midsection—about anything other than “Do not get killed.”