Chapter One: Peel Out

2017:      


  The big scary Mexican on my left is Guillermo Gutierrez.  Whenever I want to piss him off, I call him Gigi.  Gutierrez is just shy of seven-feet tall, thick and broad and bearded.  He looks like the kind of guy who busts chairs across guys’ backs in bar fights.  Not that he wouldn’t; I’m sure he would.  All the bars we’ve come across are noticeably lacking in clientele,though, so I've never gotten a chance to test out my theory.  But the booze is plentiful and there are no lines for the bathrooms, so I’m pretty happy.  Gutierrez carries a big, big boomstick.  Pump action, matte black – he calls the shotgun Black Betty.  Bam a lam.
         
On my right is my baby brother, Lucas.  The kid looks like a younger version of me, but without my beauty, charm, or intellect.  Where I wear a newsboy cap to hide my Irish shame, Lucas bares his mussy ginger locks free to the world.  He keeps it relatively short, I’ll give him that, but still… Lucas carries an M16 rifle he scrounged from some dead soldier.  He’s not too dumb; there are plenty of dead soldiers around to keep his ammunition fully stocked.
           
And then there’s me.  My parents, whom I’m sure were in their cups at the time, had the bright idea to name me Sean.  Sean Shaughnessy.  Big thumbs up, there, old timers.  But they’re dead, so I suppose I win anyway.  Yay for me.  My gun is a big mechanical chrome brute, a two-handed handgun named Loki.  It’s shiny as hell, and I love it.
           
Easiest way to maneuver around streets clogged with the carapaces of long-dead Detroit-built monsters is via motorcycle.  Not exactly stealthy, I’ll grant you, but when you hear that rumble creeping up on you, even the undead get that momentary twinge of fight-or-flight reflex fluttering in their gullyworks.  It’s the charging roar of a predator crashing through the brush, the thunder of a summer storm, the feeling you get after drinking too much when your stomach flips over and the bottom drops out.  Primal.


Gutierrez was in a legit MC prior to the outbreak, a small 1% club called El Chupacabra.  He made us up some patches -- a rotting green fist outlined in black -- and some rockers.  “Zombie Fist” up top, “Philadelphia, PA” at the bottom.  Even rustled us up some 1% patches, but instead of signalling criminal alignment, now it just means we're part of the one percent of people that survived.  Lucky us.
           
There are loooong stretches of highway that will bore the shit out of you.  Especially in the midwest.  Nothing but weed-choked farm fields and free-range cows, udders swaying uncomfortably ginormous from lack of milking.  Their mooing sounds like a cry for help.  Plenty of steak dinners, though.  Damn things are so docile that they'll walk right onto your plate.  I wonder how many generations it takes for a cow to go feral.  I heard a pig will do it in two.  Two generations for a pig to go from pink, lazy and stupid to hairy and hoary and bloodthirsty-tusked.
           
Some people are like that, too.
           
Right now I'm staring into the fire, concentrating hard on the shadows in the wide open field around us and trying not to imagine that every crack of the logs is a footstep in the dark.  Loki is safely tucked under my thigh; if I had him drawn, I would be firing into the darkness by now.  Call it twitchy nerves.
           
Drawing first shift on watch sucks, but the last shift is worse.  Staring at the shadow-shifting horizon, knowing that when the sun comes up you'll be staring a full days ride in its bloodshot eyeball.  That's what I'm doing now.  Staring at the darkness just waiting for the sun.
           
At first I think that the movement is just my nerves playing tricks with my eyes.  But then I get that old familiar feeling and my heart just starts flipping out.   I slowly reach for Loki.  I don’t want to be wrong.  Holding the gun, aiming the gun, that makes it real, and it will completely tear my self-control away.  So slowly I reach.  And then I see the people shapes and Loki is out and staring with his single deadly eye.  The firelight dances along the chrome.  Gutierrez hears the sound of mechanical metal clinking in my fist and he’s awake; I don’t know how he does it.  Black Betty (bam a lam) joins Loki in staring into the darkness.
           
The movement stops.  The figures seem to assess us.  “It’s okay,” one of them says.  “I’m alive.”
           
The voice wakes Lucas, who sputters sleep-groggy curses and fumbles around for his gun.  He’s not nearly as slick as Gutierrez had been.
           
“Whoa, whoa,” the voice says.  It’s a female voice.  “There’s just the two of us.  We’re not armed.”
           
“Tough times, lady, you understand,” I say.
           
“If we thought you were a threat we would have fired by now,” Gutierrez says.  “Come on a little closer into light.”
           
We watch as they shuffle closer.
           
She has dark chocolate skin and light brown eyes, thick hair worn long.  The jeans she’s wearing have seen better times, and there are little frayed rips and tears here and there, sparking all kinds of badness in my imagination.  I’m a little in love, I must admit.  Parts of me are, anyway.  The old white guy she's with is….disarming.  I don’t know what it is, but I feel a little uncomfortable around him.  Like he knows something I don’t.  It could be that secretive little smirk he’s wearing, or it could be that he’s completely unfazed by the hardware aimed at him.  But there’s something a little off about him.
           
“I’m Mercedes,” she says.  “And he is Dante.”  I make the round of introductions for us and we put the guns at ease.  The skyline on the horizon is just starting to bleed around the edges.
           
“Are you travelling on foot?” I ask.  They are.  I tell them that we’re on motorcycles, which instantly feels like a stupid thing to say seeing as how the motorcycles are parked alongside us, and I ask if they know how to ride.  She says that they do.  I notice that she does all of the talking for him.  Curious.
           
We're all up now, anyway, and the sun is rising, so we kick dirt over the fire and start gathering our things.  Today's task: poke around for a couple of bikes for these two.  I'll let someone ride bitch as a temporary solution, but I don't want them taking up residence there.  I do admit, though, that the thought of Mercedes wrapped around me isn't exactly a turn-off.
           
"Mercedes can ride with me," Lucas says.  He's wearing his shit-eating grin.  He points to me and winks.  "Dante's your bitch, bitch."  He laughs.  Gutierrez joins in.
           
"Can it, Gigi," I say.  He doesn't.
           
A quick word on motorcycle selection: that which you ride defines you.  Gutierrez rides a white Softail: big, loud, sturdy, a classic.  Lucas rocks a VRod: agile, modern, just a little pretensious.  I myself have a matte-black Indian Roadmaster because I refuse to be boxed in, nor will I be bullied into riding a Hog just because I face ridicule if I don't.  So catching rides for our new friends isn't just a matter of finding some keys in the ignition, it's about findng the lost part of their souls left stranded on the highway somewhere.  I peg Mercedes as a Rebel or a Shadow.  Something foreign.  Something small.  The other guy keeps me guessing.  He’s an older guy, so maybe something classic, but he’s whip-thin and white-haired, so nothing with too much balls.  Contemplating this gives me something to mull over as I ride with his wrinkled hands around my waist and his old man breath in my ear.  Very sensual.


           
We find a dealership late in the afternoon in a small freeway town named Cold Irons.  The streets are deserted, surprise surprise, and parking is pretty open.  We roll right up the sidewalk to the big glass doors.  Bikes gleam just inside; it's a beautiful sight.  When the kickstand goes down, Dante lets go of my waist and something catches my eye.
           
"The hell?" I say.  I look closer.  "Jesus!"
           
I lurch off the bike, knocking the old man flat on his back, and I pull at my jacket.  Enraged, I draw Loki and bear him down on the white-haired head.
           
"Don't!" Mercedes yells.
           
"Look at me," I say.  There is a patch of blood running down the belly of my jacket.  "Has he been bit?"
           
"No," she says.  "No.  Dante, show them your hands."  He does.  Ragged-edged holes, one in each palm, weeping blood.  "They're just like that," she says.  "I don't know why."  Gutierrez crosses himself and Lucas does the same a half-second behind.  "It happened the day of the outbreak.  They just appeared.  Please, please.  Don't shoot him.  Please."  I look at my soiled jacket, discharge my rage in an emotional outburst of shouted obscenities, and discharge my gun at the plate glass window.  The window shatters and falls to the earth in a glittering shower.
           
I stand there slumped.  There is no dignity in the moments following a tantrum.  Mercedes stands like she's trying to become small.  "There's another thing," she says.  I feel my bile coming back up.  "Dante can't ride," she says.  "I only said he could because I didn't want you to leave us behind."
           
I blink at her a moment, then I laugh.  "Of course he can't."  The laughter frays at the edges a bit, becoming a little villainous.  Still, I can't stop.  Can't stop, won't stop.  "Of course he can't.  I mean, he'll bleed all over the grips."  The laughter bears a histerical glint.
           
Gutierrez says something I can't hear.  "What?" I ask, wiping the tears from my eyes.
           
"Stigmata, bro," he says.  "We have to protect this man."
           
"Of course," I say.  "Sure.  I mean, clearly he's the second coming of Christ."  I indicate the old man, long white hair pooled around his head.  He’s still laying where I dropped him.  He's not hurt; he just lies there and watches us.  Lucas jumps forward to help him up.
           
"I think he's right," Lucas says.  "We could be like disciples or something."  I just stare at them.  In a world gone mad, everyone had just gone a little madder.  But there was no use arguing with them.  They were both as Catholic as the Eucharist and no persuading on my part could ever budge them on matters of religion.  Believe me, I had tried.
           
"Fine," I say.  "But he's not riding with me anymore."
           
"No problem," Gutierrez says.  He's smiling.  He points at a DynaGlide in the showroom, a DynaGlide with a sidecar attached.  "The old man rides with me."  He shoots the old guy a look of tenderness.
           
We crunch our way through broken glass into the showroom.  Gutierrez and Dante are beelining for the DynaGlide, Lucas and I are admiring the bikes and occasionally trying to slap one another in the balls, and Mercedes is shopping for something to stick between her legs.  So we're all spread out like a shotgun blast when we hear that old familiar zombie feeding call.  That low moaning gutteral grunt that seems to sound to other zombies like a dinnerbell.  I've got Loki, but Lucas and Gutierrez, like chumps, seem to have left their hardware by their bikes.  The dead fella is standing by the bikes, moaning his sad, slow battlecry.  I draw Loki down and line up the sights, and that's when I hear Mercedes scream.  Half of another zombie got the drop on us and is crawling toward her.  I pop the trigger on the first guy and try to get an angle on the second.  He's too low to the ground and too hidden behind showroom bikes for me to do any good.  I can't figure out why she's not running until I realize that there are zombies in the hallway, coming out of offices, essentially cutting her off.  I try to pop a couple.  Gutierrez draws his telescoping baton, slaps it open, and goes charging into the fray.  Lucas is weaving his way back to the bikes.  We've danced this dance before, so why does it feel like amatuer hour all of a sudden?  These two noobs distracted us, gotta be.  Things would have gone smoother if Mercedes and Dante hadn’t wandered into the picture.  Gutierrez clears a path for our ebony damsel and so he saves the day, scores the brownie points, and joins my brother on the list of douchebags trying to cockblock me.
           
With her safely out of the ring of rotting clutching death, we fnd ourselves in the wonderful position of having all of the zombies on one side of the room and us all on the other.  Lucas runs back with his M16.  "Drop your drawers and kiss the floor," he says.  We comply with the second part.  The gun blats a horizontal hailstorm and the zombies are cut down where they stand.  Cleanup consists of Loki and I double-tapping the "survivors".  Gutierrez rustles up the keys to the Dyna as well as a black and orange custom Sportster for Mercedes.  The black and orange makes me instantly miss the Flyers; I'll never see another hockey game in my life.
           
Revving engines, the motliest of motorcycle crews rides off into the sunset.


           
I don't remember much about the bible, but I do remember that there's not much difference between Christ and the anti-Christ.  Looking at the old man, his whispy white hair whipping in the wind, I wonder which side he's really on.  And then I remember that all of that religious shit is just nonsense.  A story.  A myth.  A fairytale.  You know, like the dead coming back to life to eat the living.  Like zombies...