Whistlers

Michael Talbot — Journal Entry 4

The zombies departed the roadway as they watched our retreat. The one beauty of them was their inability to forecast our location. Instead of plotting an intercept course and meeting us at some point ahead, they kept adjusting to our present location. As long as we kept at a good clip, they wouldn’t catch us…at least the slow ones. The fast ones I had to keep stopping and culling through, they could seemingly run forever. Stamina was of no concern to them. Whatever drove them onwards did not get cramps, get winded, or even apparently care about blisters. Even the barefoot ones with ground-shredded feet didn’t miss a step. Relentlessly they ran.

It didn’t help in the least, no matter how many times I told John to keep going and that I’d catch up, he’d turn and ask me why I had stopped. Since my encounter with Eliza’s brother, I had some slight advantages over the normal man. As of yet though, I had not fully recovered from my injuries when I found John; add to that the fact that I hadn’t eaten or drank anything in sufficient quantities for days, and I was beginning to flag. Killing the rapidly approaching faster ones was going to be the only way we’d escape.

The Phrito fanatic next to me seemed to be doing wonderfully, like corn, oil, and salt was somehow a super food and he was deriving all the energy he needed and then some. Maybe I should have eaten more of them. I sighed as we got to our first chain link fence eight feet high and topped with everyone’s favorite—barbed wire. John tossed the metal ammo box over before I could warn him to do it a little differently. I ducked thinking we were in for one hell of an explosion. It struck a small outcropping of grass, and seemingly in slow motion, it teetered to the side and fell over. No explosion. Now I knew in the back of my head that unless a bullet is fired from a gun the odds of it going off are incredibly small but who wants to take that chance.

“Let’s go, John.” I grabbed the links in my hands.

“This is just like breaking in to the Pentagon,” he said gleefully.

Normally I’d cry ‘bullshit’, but in this case I believed him. First off, because I doubt he lacked the memory to sustain a lie.

For a career stoner, he was pretty spry John got up and over without too much trouble. The only hitch was when a bag of treats fell out of his pocket and onto the ground we had just yielded. I saw him debate whether to go back over and down to get it.

“I thought you were out?” I asked him as he stared longingly at it on the other side of the great divide. “It’s alright, man, I didn’t want any anyway.” I patted his shoulder. “Come on, they’re getting entirely too close.” Zombies were now within a couple of hundred yards of the fence, and some of them looked like track stars.

We still had at least a half a mile to the water tower. The horde that was coming would easily push through this latest barrier.

“I hate zombies,” I said as I turned and followed John who had already started his flight.

The howlers had picked up the chase as well it seemed. Their screams blistered through the burgeoning night. The sun, our greatest ally, had decided to sit this battle out and was rapidly descending as if it were a thief in the night.

“I hate howlers,” I added.

We were maybe somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a mile from our destination when we heard the metallic clanging of a fence meeting its demise. We had slowed up a bit to catch our breath, and right now that seemed like the least smart thing we could have done. The water tower was a great idea. The problem was that I had no idea if we would be able to get up to the maintenance ladder. We probably needed a ladder to get to the ladder if that makes any sense.

Most towns will have a water tower secured in a locked area or have the ladder only accessible with a cherry picker (those vehicles that extend out and are usually used for line repair). I was a dumb enough teenager to know that if I could have got up one of those monstrosities, I would have done so in a heartbeat. You got to figure that the townsfolk here figured out that little problem as well. I guess there are dumb teenagers everywhere. Oh yeah, and that doesn’t even bring into account those lovelorn folks that would pull a nosedive off the thing because Suzy or Sammie Rotten Crotch dropped them for someone else.

We’d make it to the tower ahead of our pursuers, but we were screwed if there was no way up. Now I was concerned.

“John, maybe we should find a house.”

“Ponch, I’m so thirsty.”

I was going to tell him that might be another reason not to go to the tower. I was relatively sure there would be no way to gain safe access to the inside. The zombies had caught sight of us, the pursuit was on. That many feet slapping against the pavement was an easy enough sound to hear as it reverberated off any available structure. Well…that, and there wasn’t so much as a lawn mower running anywhere in the country to drown out the noise. This was no longer the world of man. Yes, there were still some pockets of people left, but we weren’t living anymore, we were just trying not to die. Subtle difference in wording but a huge difference in meaning there. I started to track off of our present course.

“Trailer park. Of course it is,” I sighed. John was twenty yards away before I realized he wasn’t following me anymore. “John?”

He didn’t slow down. “Ponch, it’s like a desert in my mouth.”

“Yeah, that’s what happens when you smoke pot and eat enough salty snacks to keep Morton’s salt mines in operation.”

He had completely tuned me out and was like a guided missile that had already locked onto its target and nothing was going to dissuade it from its course of action. I looked back at the doublewide before picking up my pace to catch up with John. The thing would have caved in within hours with zombies pressing in, and I didn’t even want to dwell on what howlers could do to the tin can.

Would they work together? Would they even acknowledge each other?

If howlers were as mindless as zombies, they really wouldn’t give two shits about each other…only us.

“I guess the pink flamingos will have to wait,” I told John when I caught up.

“If I wasn’t so thirsty, I’d get them,” he said in all seriousness.

“They’ll be fine.”

I followed John for a couple of reasons. Primarily because I wasn’t going to let him wander too far off, and secondly, he had that luck. You know…that crazy fucking luck that some people are just born with. Like the baby that fell out of the third story window onto concrete only to land on a urine-soaked diaper. The gel material exploded like an over ripe melon under a car tire. The baby, however, besides trying to figure out how it had got to where it was, was completely unharmed. That’s the luck John had, and I wanted to be around him. It was going to be luck and a healthy dosing of lead injections that was going to get us out of this mess.

The fence leading into the water tower complex was down, it looked like someone had come in and stolen one of the maintenance trucks and, not having a key for the locked gate, had decided to just run the damn thing over.

Works for me, I thought.

We were on a concrete slab some hundred feet by hundred feet square, big enough to support the huge metal tank’s legs. I glanced quickly over to the ladder that led up, it was a good ten feet high. An NBA star would have a difficult time jumping high enough to grab the bottom-most rung. We were now in the world’s largest boxing ring, and this was a one round affair to the death.

“Shit,” I said, skidding to a halt past the downed fence.

I turned, got down on one knee, and started to drop our nearest and most immediate threat. Zombies were in high gear, having found another speed when they realized food was so near. Cracked lips were pulled back to reveal brown and black chipped teeth. Outstretched hands with fingernails caked in gore and blood reached out. Old, young, fat, slim, women, children, men—they all were coming towards us. Some dressed in business suits, others gym outfits, in a few cases there were pajama clad zombies and they were all headed our way. I rocked slightly as I fired; the beauty of the M-16 is its minimal kick. I was able to bring the barrel back down quickly to reacquire targets as I drenched the ground in gray gristle.

“Hold,” I told myself like a Revolutionary War sergeant would tell his ranks of green, unproven militia men. Much like then, to leave now meant death. “Hold,” I said as I dropped my empty magazine and shoved a new one in.

I lost precious seconds as I fumbled to find the bolt catch release. A quick tap on the forward assist and I was back in business. The zombies were close enough, I could hear them as their broken bodies collided with the ground and each other. I stood while I kept firing. They were close enough now that what I lost in my shooting stance was more than made up for in their proximity. I sincerely hoped John was going to make it as I held my ground…mostly. I found myself involuntarily stepping back at just about every shot. I dropped dozens with kill shots and a couple of scores more were hindered with devastating wounds. Those that didn’t get out of the way fast enough became stepping stones, the zombies merely finishing off what I had started.

“You coming?” John asked in between shots.

I didn’t have the luxury to answer or even turn around. He sounded like he was behind me by the base of the water tower. I had hoped he had bugged out or at least found somewhere to enjoy his last few moments.

“Screw it might as well die together,” I said as I turned and ran for it.

My surprise came when I didn’t immediately see John. It was entirely possible that his voice had echoed off of something and I hadn’t triangulated him correctly. Even more likely, I was so deaf from the shots that I couldn’t hear-place him at all. I elevated my gaze. I practically stopped when I realized he was fifteen feet up the side of the structure.

He had gotten up the ladder. How was that possible?

It was then that I saw it, like a desert mirage, a telescoping ladder was placed against the housing structure of the water tower ladder. I had a bunch of questions, but now was not the time to ask them as I sprinted for sanctuary. My heart was slamming in my chest, adrenaline burning through my muscles as I sought a speed I hadn’t felt since my high school football glory days. Provided I didn’t turn an ankle (errant fucking thought) I’d make that fucking ladder in all its height-defying glory.

“They’re right behind you!” John shouted.

If I dared divert any energy to anything other than my legs, I would have shouted, ‘Really? I would have never figured that out considering I can smell the stench of death and decay coming from their mouths they’re so fucking close.’ Instead, I wisely kept pumping my legs on for a ladder that would not get close quick enough. I hit it so hard that I almost toppled the damn thing. That would have been rich with safety so close. I was halfway up, or five feet in the air, when zombies slammed into the ladder as well. I reached up a couple of rungs from the top, and with my trailing leg, I jumped. I knew how this was going to play out. The ladder was falling away from me as I was launching myself skyward. Unfortunately, I was more like a North Korean rocket than an American missile. I was going to fall inches short of my desired destination.

I had resigned my fate. As my skyward arc began to peter out, a hand shot out from above. John clutched my forearm. My mind was reeling, between, “Is this possible?” to “Get me the fuck up there!”

I looked up at him. His face was a grimace of grit and determination. Zombies had clutched my dangling feet and where even now trying to sink their teeth into me; more than one got a piece of boot sole to round out their nutrients. I think rubber is on their food pyramid. It goes something like, brain, meat, fat, bone, plastic, leather, rubber. I was just doing my part to help with their general well-being.

I didn’t know if I wanted to tell John not to let go, or to let go so I wouldn’t drag him down with me. He must roll some heavy damn marijuana cigarettes, because the bastard hoisted me up to the first attached rung. He let go of me when I pulled up to the third or fourth. I was right below him and I had gotten my leg up onto the bottom most one.

“Holy fuck, John, thank you,” I told him, tears of relief in my eyes. Maybe it was sweat, because that was pouring off both of us.

He looked at me, a twinkle in his eyes. “Dead shows wouldn’t be the same without you, Ponch,” he told me as he headed up the long climb.

I looked down once at the upturned faces of the zombies. If it was possible, they looked more pissed than normal. I was thankful for the shell housing that surrounded the ladder. It allowed a view out and a place to lean against as I tired during my ascent. I was halfway up the two hundred and fifty feet-plus before the shakes subsided. I kept drawing death as my dance partner, and eventually he was going to be able to dip me before the music stopped.

“Another close call, Talbot,” I said aloud.

“Swear to me now, you will never tell Tracy about this,” I admonished myself.

“I swear it,” I answered back.

The adrenaline flow had finally come under control, and my muscles were beginning to feel like wet noodles, deprived as they were of the go-go juice that had been careening around my veins. Now I had another problem to deal with. I was deathly afraid of heights. It stems from an older brother who had dangled me by my feet from an old ranger’s station. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world while I begged him not to drop me.

“You tell mom about this,” he had said while I stayed motionless, “and I’ll bring you back up here.”

The threat was implied and understood, even if I was only seven, I knew better than to test his sanity. He hauled me back in, making a big show about almost dropping me. I’ll never forget that view of the world as I hung precariously from the perch some fifty feet in the air upside down. One gains a certain perspective when you’re looking straight at the ground. I had never truly gotten over that fear. Even as I jumped out of planes during my Marine Corps days, the panic always threatened to overwhelm me. I had learned certain breathing techniques that could bring it under some semblance of control, but it was always there, rippling in the undercurrents of my thoughts like a sea serpent ready to strike at the most inopportune time. It seemed this was one of those times, I didn’t have the energy to fight back the heavy flood of hysteria that wanted to render me incapable of moving.

“How bad could sleeping on a ladder be?” I asked myself, trying to rationalize my present predicament. John had already completed the climb. “Shit…how long have I been stuck here?”

He was looking down the open chute at me. I couldn’t make out features, but I’ve got to imagine he was wondering what in the hell I was doing. “You alright?” he shouted down with some concern.

“I hate heights,” I told him, gripping the rung with my right arm draped over it like I was going for a choke hold.

“It’s not high, not much more than two, maybe three hundred feet,” he shouted back down as if that was going to help.

I could count the number of times in my adult life I had been on a ladder higher than ten feet—seven. I won’t go into what I was doing, but that I catalogued each endeavor should be proof enough of my sincerity.

“Want me to come down there with you?” he asked.

“I’ll get there…just going to take a minute.”

That minute was somewhere closer to a half an hour, and John never moved, every once in a while alternating between offering a word of encouragement or terrifying the hell out of me. With phrases like “I think the air is thinner up here” or my personal favorite “Can God hear us better because we’re closer to Heaven?”

By the time I pulled myself up onto the top, I was coated in a sheen of sweat. I was better, but only marginally. John had pushed back on the three foot wide parapet. He had his back against the tower and his legs extended out into space. He was alternating between smoking a joint and shoving Phrito’s in his mouth.

When I got up there, I stepped over his legs and slid down the cool metal to sit next to him. I didn’t even hesitate when he passed the joint. I took a long hit, reveling in the feel of the tickle it left in my throat and chest as I exhaled. I was alive, still alive. We finished off the smoke, I got my emotions in check, and luxuriated in the high. It was long moments before I spoke. My eyes were closed and my head was against the tower.

“I don’t have words, John,” I started.

“Where’d they go?” he asked, looking at me. I opened my eyes when I heard him shift.

“I think somewhere underneath that haze; you know what I’m talking about.”

“Want some Phrito’s?”

“Of course.”