Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [48]
“Machetes and clubs, please,” I whispered as we edged closer to our van.
I pulled out the cool bat with the blade Dave had created for me. He went for his machete and even The Kid pulled what looked like a police baton from one of the many loops on his cargo pants.
“Ready?” Dave asked.
I nodded and then squared up my body in preparation for battle.
“Hey!” I called out to get their attention… or whatever you want to call it. “Dumb asses.”
The zombies stopped pawing at the van door and slowly turned to face us. After so many months, all the undead were in an advanced stage of rot, though they seemed to hit that stage and then just… stay there. I don’t know how the chemical interaction worked, but I guess it was something like zombie botox. You know: keep eating brains, never age a day past disgusting.
Their clothing, though, didn’t get the benefit of daily brains injections. Or washing. So while at the beginning of the outbreak, you saw zombies in suits, uniforms, and bathrobes and could easily identify what they were doing before all hell broke loose, now it was harder. Cotton clothing was the first to fray away. Anyone who got turned wearing 100 percent cotton was now roaming around like Adam and Eve. Trust me, there is nothing more disturbing than rotting jiggly parts. Blech!
But other fabrics held up better. For instance, the group in front of us contained a nurse. Her polyester uniform had kept up pretty well, though it had long since stopped being pristine white. Red, sludgy black, and filthy brown were now her United Colors of Benetton. Her shoes had fared worse, though. She was missing one and the other was filled with holes and I swear I saw a cockroach climb from one to the other before she started moving.
She was joined by two male zombies. One was a cotton wearer so he was butt-ass naked except for what had once apparently been the waistband of a pair of jeans. The pockets were still attached to it and flopped around in the breeze along with his… er… bits and pieces.
The third zombie was a smaller girl. Maybe in her late teens, and her demin skirt was clean and fresh enough that I had to guess she’d been turned sometime in the last few weeks, rather than earlier in the outbreak.
I would have felt a bit sorry for the girl except that at that moment the three zombies started for us with growling grunts and a lot of angry tooth gnashing.
“I’ll take Nurse Betty,” I said as I started toward the zombies. “You take Bits and Pieces.”
“I’ve got Miley Cyrus,” The Kid said and forward we charged.
As the zombies swarmed, I turned my attention on the nurse. Her fingers clawed, with long, chipped pink fingernails grown out and slashing the air around me.
I dodged her attempts to grab me and swung my bat. I connected with her neck rather than her head and there was a crack. Her neck twisted at an awful angle, but she only grunted with frustration before she grabbed my arm in a literal death grip and started to yank me forward. I jammed the knife blade at the end of my bat toward her and slashed her face.
Again, she only winced a little, but continued to shake me like a rag doll as she moved me toward her ever-biting mouth.
But the third time was the charm and this time when I stabbed at her, my blade pierced her forehead and slid into her brainpan with the ease you’d expect from cutting a boneless chicken breast.
The infected woman howled this time and thrashed, but that only made the blade scramble around in her skull and quickened the inevitable. With a whine, she slumped and my bat yanked free, the sharp blade severing the top of her head as she fell at my feet.
I turned to offer assistance to The Kid first, but found that he was already done and wiping the blunt baton off on what had once been the younger zombie’s jean skirt. He looked