Read Online Dead Lands Pass the Ammunition by Aaron Polson - Free Book Online
Authors: Aaron Polson
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Chapter 1
The biters were out there, gathering. You could smell them on the morning breeze, a rank stench like rotten meat, dog shit, and all the sour milk you’ve nosed in your life. Mack and I were perched on the south tower, pulling watch duty, and the sun had just hit the edge of the trees.
“Beautiful sunrise,” I said, pointing Dad’s shotgun to the east.
“Beautiful my ass.” Mack scratched his stubble with a makeshift blade he’d fashioned from a paper cutter, one of those big-ass art style ones from any school in America. “I smell the flesh bags. A whole mess of them.”
I rubbed a hand against my pant leg. If the flesh bags were coming, they’d come in a big bunch. Nobody I’ve stumbled across has enough brains to explain it, but they always attacked in groups, sort of like they waited until the whole lot got whipped into a frenzy and went wilding together. Folks from camp had seen a few on the hills and out on U.S. 81 earlier in the week, but by themselves, they’d never stagger our way. In a mob, they were deadly.
“They’re coming, P. Today.”
The gun sagged in my hands. “Today?”
“A whole mess of them. You got that pea-shooter loaded?”
After my brother Charlie died, I made sure I found ammunition—looted a Wal-mart with Mack and a guy we called Ghost before looting became a useless gesture. We were headed north, somewhere it was too cold for the bastards.
Mrs. Phelps made us do a little writing project in 10 th grade English about what kind of junk we’d grab if our house was on fire. Phelps was older than both my folks put together. Even her wrinkles had wrinkles, but you won’t see anyone that old anymore. They can’t run fast enough. They can’t swing a bat or sledge hammer hard enough to crack a zombie’s skull. Most kids wrote down inane shit like family photos or their Chihuahua. I think I wrote about my brother’s Playboy collection. That was a different life.
If I’d known what I know now, I’d have written about the importance of ammunition. Nobody in class said they’d grab the family shotgun and a case of shells. I sure as hell would. I’d get to the Wal-Mart before the shit really broke loose and dump the whole hunting season display in my cart. A bunch of meatwads killed my brother six months ago, gnawed the hell out of him while all we could do was run for lack of shells. My Playboy answer sounds pretty damn asinine, now.
Ammunition became scarce after the end of the world. I only had twenty-nine shells.
I figured it would be the thirtieth flesh bag that’d get me.
These weren’t thoughts for a nineteen-year-old, but I guess you grow up fast when every minute each day is about surviving. You grow up, even if you don’t. I’ve watched rot-faced flesh bags chew off a guy’s arm. The last time I saw my sister, she was coughing blood. I don’t know how long my parents survived.
As Uncle Gary used to say, shit happens.
Mack and I made were holed up in a compound in south central Nebraska—what used to be Nebraska. Some signs still called it Nebraska, but that was the old world, the world before the end. We were Kansas kids, but it’s all the same now. Kansas, Nebraska, Florida, bum-fuck Egypt. All the same. Mack’s real name was Greg Mackey, and he used to live on Yuma Street in Manhattan. We both went to Eisenhower Middle School and later played ball at Manhattan High. He played middle linebacker and fullback, all league in both, and really tore shit up.
Mack was all-muscle, pissed at the world, and if the number of giggling cheerleaders he bagged back then meant anything, hung like a donkey. It’s the kind of male-machismo garbage which made me want to puke back then. But I loved Mack like a brother—one of those real world ironic situations I guess. Mrs. Phelps would be proud of that if she wasn’t dead.
We kicked around lots of names for the zombies: flesh bags, meatwads, rotters, biters… Like Shakespeare wrote, “a rose by any
The biters were out there, gathering. You could smell them on the morning breeze, a rank stench like rotten meat, dog shit, and all the sour milk you’ve nosed in your life. Mack and I were perched on the south tower, pulling watch duty, and the sun had just hit the edge of the trees.
“Beautiful sunrise,” I said, pointing Dad’s shotgun to the east.
“Beautiful my ass.” Mack scratched his stubble with a makeshift blade he’d fashioned from a paper cutter, one of those big-ass art style ones from any school in America. “I smell the flesh bags. A whole mess of them.”
I rubbed a hand against my pant leg. If the flesh bags were coming, they’d come in a big bunch. Nobody I’ve stumbled across has enough brains to explain it, but they always attacked in groups, sort of like they waited until the whole lot got whipped into a frenzy and went wilding together. Folks from camp had seen a few on the hills and out on U.S. 81 earlier in the week, but by themselves, they’d never stagger our way. In a mob, they were deadly.
“They’re coming, P. Today.”
The gun sagged in my hands. “Today?”
“A whole mess of them. You got that pea-shooter loaded?”
After my brother Charlie died, I made sure I found ammunition—looted a Wal-mart with Mack and a guy we called Ghost before looting became a useless gesture. We were headed north, somewhere it was too cold for the bastards.
Mrs. Phelps made us do a little writing project in 10 th grade English about what kind of junk we’d grab if our house was on fire. Phelps was older than both my folks put together. Even her wrinkles had wrinkles, but you won’t see anyone that old anymore. They can’t run fast enough. They can’t swing a bat or sledge hammer hard enough to crack a zombie’s skull. Most kids wrote down inane shit like family photos or their Chihuahua. I think I wrote about my brother’s Playboy collection. That was a different life.
If I’d known what I know now, I’d have written about the importance of ammunition. Nobody in class said they’d grab the family shotgun and a case of shells. I sure as hell would. I’d get to the Wal-Mart before the shit really broke loose and dump the whole hunting season display in my cart. A bunch of meatwads killed my brother six months ago, gnawed the hell out of him while all we could do was run for lack of shells. My Playboy answer sounds pretty damn asinine, now.
Ammunition became scarce after the end of the world. I only had twenty-nine shells.
I figured it would be the thirtieth flesh bag that’d get me.
These weren’t thoughts for a nineteen-year-old, but I guess you grow up fast when every minute each day is about surviving. You grow up, even if you don’t. I’ve watched rot-faced flesh bags chew off a guy’s arm. The last time I saw my sister, she was coughing blood. I don’t know how long my parents survived.
As Uncle Gary used to say, shit happens.
Mack and I made were holed up in a compound in south central Nebraska—what used to be Nebraska. Some signs still called it Nebraska, but that was the old world, the world before the end. We were Kansas kids, but it’s all the same now. Kansas, Nebraska, Florida, bum-fuck Egypt. All the same. Mack’s real name was Greg Mackey, and he used to live on Yuma Street in Manhattan. We both went to Eisenhower Middle School and later played ball at Manhattan High. He played middle linebacker and fullback, all league in both, and really tore shit up.
Mack was all-muscle, pissed at the world, and if the number of giggling cheerleaders he bagged back then meant anything, hung like a donkey. It’s the kind of male-machismo garbage which made me want to puke back then. But I loved Mack like a brother—one of those real world ironic situations I guess. Mrs. Phelps would be proud of that if she wasn’t dead.
We kicked around lots of names for the zombies: flesh bags, meatwads, rotters, biters… Like Shakespeare wrote, “a rose by any
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