Destiny Nowhere: A Zombie Novel Read online

  Billy was coming at me now with his stupid hair and his mouth open, and his speed caught me off guard so I did what came natural--kicked him right in the face as hard as I could. His little zombie body flew like a ragdoll and skidded hard on the asphalt. My sandal went with him, so I kicked the other one off and covered the last of the ground separating me and my front door.

  Inside, I locked and bolted the door. It wasn’t ten seconds before I heard a thump against my front window, which is a huge plate window that runs almost floor to ceiling. Oh shit oh shit.

  “Shakes!” I called, running for the hallway. I grabbed the ceiling rope and pulled the retractable attic stairs down at almost the same moment my front window shattered.

  “Shakes!” I called again, peering in the bedroom. Shakes was under the bed, looking up at me with her moon eyes and her tattered blue catnip mouse hanging from her mouth. More shattering glass from the living room sent me dashing up those hinged ladder-stairs, pulling them up behind me.

  I sat there in the dark, clutching my knees to my chest, rocking back and forth as silent sobs wracked my body. I’m such a coward, why didn’t I grab my cat? All of it was too much, but all I could think about was the thumping noises downstairs and my poor stupid cat alone with those things.

  Chapter 3: Now

  Cloudy nights are as black as can be since the power went out.

  If you had told my graduating high school class that a couple months after our 20-year reunion (which I didn’t attend) I would be laying on top of an armored big rig, parked on a hill in Camillus overlooking the Walmart Supercenter on Route 5, holding a Sauer 303xt rifle with a Pes T12 silencer and scoping the head of a sentry through an infrared sight, they would’ve gambled their mother’s virtue against it.

  If you’d seen me in gym class, you’d know that Woody Allen probably could’ve beat me at wrestling, since I’ve always been a scrawny, clumsy weakling with the strength of a girl. The funniest thing about it is that there’s a 98% chance that my entire high school class is dead right now, while I’m the star sniper on Team Doyle. Do I get Varsity letters for that, you pricks?

  Getting the tractor trailer into ramming position on Kasson Road was the trickiest part, because we couldn’t use lights, engine, or brakes, which would alert the sentries. Think: shielded Halloween glowstick for a mark, let a winch with 3,000 feet of rope and gravity handle the rest, and voila, our stealth Freightliner is allegedly ready to bomb down the road, take an 80 degree turn into Walmart parking lot, then blast through their front doors. At which time, Stan and Gary will jump out and start shooting, and I will snipe from my concealed turret on the roof of the cab.

  It has to be this way. This is the only direction we can approach from that will protect the driver from sniper fire: we know from our visit three weeks ago that the rest of the terrain is just sprawling parking lot, lit by motion-sensing floodlights.

  (Doyle’s hand drawn piece of shit map)

  Walmart looks like a fortress on a dark cloudy night. Our intel is patchy, but using Doyle’s infrared gizmos, we were able to spot sentries in the plaza on top of Bonton, Tops grocery, Lowes, and Walmart.

  My job here is four-fold:

  - Take out the sentry on top of Tops market before we start.

  - Hit two sentries in bunkers on the western roof of Walmart

  - Lay down suppressing fire using a .243 caliber Remington R25 semi-automatic with a red dot site while the rig I’m on goes barreling toward the front entrance.

  - Provide sniper cover within the store from the roof of the cab.

  I was somehow given more responsibility than the other guys because we discovered that I’m a natural with a rifle who can hit the ‘a’ on a Coke can from 300 yards away. That’s right, Spartans, you may be the Most Effervescent guy in the class of ‘97, Jason Liparulo, but odds are you’re wandering around with chunks of human sinew stuck between your macho Italian teeth, and I can shoot your pupil from across four football fields.

  Chapter 4: Thirty Minutes Before Chapter 3

  Thirty minutes prior to our Walmart Iwo Jima, Doyle caught me sneaking away like a coward in the night. This was a shit moment--we were having our final briefing at the old firehouse that served as our base, and the mood was so tense that a fart would’ve rattled our trigger fingers and made us gun each other down. We were T-minus thirty minutes from our impending death at the hands of an army of argyle sweater-wearing douchebags, thanks to Doyle’s suicide mission, which we’d all been herded into without discussion.

  Doyle had tried to keep the mood light for our final briefing, and the team was cheerfully going along with it like peppy saps in an Amway seminar. “Keep track of your kills,” he told us. “Whoever has the highest kill count gets first choice of female booty!”

  “In that case,” Army Dave said, hefting his spiffy M32 grenade launcher like a phallus and thrusting his hips, “y’all better stay outta my way!”

  Army Dave was one of those Iraq War vets who’d done truckloads of heroin, meth, and LSD and knew that “the government was behind everything, man.” He always went on and on about his Army buddy who told him this was deliberate population control.

  “Nothin’s gonna stand between Sam and the prize,” Stan replied, and they all had a laugh at my expense, because of my nonexistent prowess with the ladies.

  The elephant in the room was the likeliness that most of us, if not all, would be dead within the hour.

  I looked around and none of these idiots seemed conscious of anything being amiss. That creeped me out even more, and I began realizing that I needed to ditch these clowns before this suicide mission got started.

  When Doyle got to my assignment on his list, he joked, “Sam’s in charge of the four S’s--sniping, sentries, suppression, and sexing up the ladies!” He laughed and gauged my reaction. He must’ve known what I was thinking, because he was staring hard into my eyes like he could tell I was the weak link.

  I was quiet. I had cramps and a knot in my stomach, like I’d just eaten the salmonella platter at China Buffet. I nodded at Doyle, since he apparently wouldn’t look away unless I acknowledged his joke.

  Doyle’s stare became a glare—obviously, this wasn’t about the joke at all; he’d somehow read it in my eyes that I planned to go AWOL. I’d given myself away. He could see right through me and he was daring me to oppose him. Big ape dominating small ape with eye contact--the ancient language of men!

  Speak up, my mind urged me. Just say no. Because once you’re in that turret, you’re trapped.

  “Uhhhhmmmm,” I sorta gurgled out a limp, protesting sound.

  “Isn’t that five S’s?” Brock’s voice cleaved the room, and my chance to speak was gone.

  “What you mean?” Doyle asked, thankfully turning his beefy inbred eyes to look at Brock.

  “Sentries, suppression, sex, sniping,” Brock paused before his punch line with a goofy grin, “and Satan!”

  I was the only Atheist in the group, which they equated to Satanism, so everyone chuckled politely at his moron joke. “That’s funny,” Doyle said flatly, giving me a sidelong glare as he turned back to the map.

  I was visibly shaken and feeling like an obvious pussy.

  Doyle had looked weak there, too. He’d tried encouraging me and I’d snubbed him. If our leader was this insecure, how smart could his plan really be? The truth is: the only reason I was doing this is because I was afraid of saying no. Maybe we all were, maybe none of us wanted to be throwing our lives away, and we were all just going along with it like spineless conformists because Doyle was 225 pounds of scary muscle-bound redneck?

  Our truck loomed silently beside our war table, in one bay of the fire station. Doyle had converted the cab roof into an iron-reinforced turret, and the only feasible thing that could go wrong is the clearance on the doors might rip the entire turret off the vehicle with me in it. But only if the lintels are made of steel.

  “How likely is that?” I’d asked Doyle earlier, not feeling nearl
y as confident of his plan as he seemed.

  Doyle had given me that loathsome stare that slips onto a survivalist’s face when they hear the word ‘college,’ hacked a tobacco loogie to punctuate how stupid I am, and replied, “When’s the last time you saw them build donut boxes outta iron and carbon?”

  Doyle might as well be speaking Karankawa for all I understood him. I think he meant “it’s unlikely.”

  So Doyle doled out everybody’s assignments, cleverly reminding these testosterone mongoloids of all the pussy rewards. “There’s gonna be three women for each of us!” he told them, as if we would just take over raping these traumatized women once we deposed Mav.

  I was afraid of Doyle, but I didn’t like the direction of things and I actually spoke up. “What if they don’t want us? Or what if all the women only want Stan or something?”

  Doyle the Barbarian dismissed me with a snort. “Believe me, these women will be ready to show their gratitude once we save them from the rapists. I know women. If you can’t turn them on, that’s your own damn fault then, Mister Psychology.”

  Everyone laughed and Doyle continued fielding questions, but I’d had enough.

  I edged to the back of the group, making my silent exit. I didn’t know where I was gonna go, and I didn’t relish being alone in this cold, zombie-infested town, but it beat the alternatives. And maybe my sneaky disappearing act would save some of their lives. Slip out the back door into the night, and by the time they realized I was gone, they’d have to cancel this grand blitzkrieg that was built solely on magical thinking and delusions of grandeur.

  I’d gotten all the way to the locker rooms when Doyle said, “Hey, Sam, get your ass back here.”

  “I was just going to use the bathroom,” I said.

  “Yeah and I’ve got a twenty-inch cock,” Doyle said. “I know what the fuck you were doing, chickendick. Saw it in your eyes, you squirrely faced wimp.”

  I was quiet, my chest tight and my mouth dry. “Sorry,” I said. “I just don’t really think this plan…”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Doyle growled in a low voice. Doyle’s eyes told me they would kill me. “Alright,” he said, “you and me understand each other now, don’t we? You’re our sniper, and you’ve got a job to do.”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. There was only one thing I wanted from Walmart, but there were definitely better ways to get it than going in with Team Doyle.

  “Get up in that goddamn turret, then. And don’t you even think about running or I will personally remove your balls with my bare hands and feed them to a zombie.”

  And that was that. I wasn’t going anywhere; Sam the coward had failed again. Either way I went, I was 96% likely to die.

  Thirty minutes later, here I am, tensely crouched in the turret, waiting for the signal. Stan is driving truck with Gary riding shotty. If anyone else had any reservations, they’d been squashed by Doyle’s threat.

  Doyle’s out behind Walmart wrangling a handful of zombies that we’d stashed in the shed behind the fire station. He’s gonna cut through the Walmart automotive garage with an acetylene torch and release them inside to cause a diversion.

  Army Dave and Brock are heading in the front, opposite the truck, on the Lowe’s side. They’re supposed to send a fire truck with a cinderblock on the gas pedal crashing into the building, lights and sirens raging, while they dispatch all the snipers on that side of the plaza.

  Team Doyle consists of us six boneheads, armed to the teeth and trying to take down what our recon shows us is an entire militia holed up and sitting on five years’ worth of supplies. That’s not why we’ve become the bandits in this ridiculous Mad Max epic, though.

  The sad, despicable truth of the human soul is: we’ve become the marauders here because they’ve got women in there.

  Chapter 5: Then

  I sat barefoot in front of the attic window, peering out at the street and feeling sorry for myself. In this type of situation, normal people would probably think about their loved ones, family, friends, etc. I was a loner mostly. My social life consisted of my studies, of course. I was an adjunct professor of Psychology at Syracuse University, hoping to get tenure, and I needed to publish regularly to keep the university happy. Academia had become so stale it didn’t matter what anyone published; it was just a quantity over quality game, and an unscrupulous one. My life pretty much revolved around the university and, I’m embarrassed to admit, a bit of an addiction to gamer geekiness with my weekly Warhammer 40K group.

  Okay, I’m not embarrassed, really. I’m just aware that there were a lot better ways I could’ve spent my life when our cushy little civilization existed other than playing with little plastic men.

  Warhammer is a tabletop strategy war game, vigorously enjoyed in the back rooms of hobby shops for nearly three decades. It’s been my social life for way too long, and apparently, it took a mass human extinction for me to look at what an absolute waste my life had been.

  I thought of the faces of these gamers, their goofy jokes, and it was as if our Tuesday night gaming sessions were an ongoing sitcom that had gotten staler and more repetitive as the years went on. I barely knew them anymore, and I felt a strange numbness at the thought of them all being dead. Or undead. I also thought I should care a lot more than I did, and I felt like there hadn’t been one person on earth who ever really knew me. Just this cast of misfits who sat around mocking everyone else while making fools of themselves, like Seinfeld when it got really shitty.

  By the time civilization-as-we-know-it ended, all my gaming buddies had babies except me. That’s the ultimate sitcom killer--the minute a baby enters the picture, a show is dead.

  Harris O’Malley started bringing his crying, puking son Elric to gaming sessions years ago, whenever his wife worked. It set a precedent. God, I hated those babies. That’s probably why those guys were dead and I wasn’t—how do you convince a baby to shut up when the walking dead are smashing in your windows and trying to eat you? You have no choice but to just chuck the baby at the horde as a distraction and book it out the back while they tear the thing to shreds. But nobody would ever think of that, except people without babies.

  I was, of course, infuriatingly jealous that they had wives to go home to, while I had Lubriderm and Pornhub. There I was, showing up week after week to Cloud City Comics, secretly hoping for the once-in-a-blue-moon girl to come play Warhammer for a night. At least then I could chicken out all night long until the last minute, when she was walking away in the empty mall while I was saying goodbye wishing I had the balls to walk her to her car or ask for her phone number.

  I always told myself that I’d ask her out next week, and that’s how I pussied out every time. Of course, they never came back. The worst part was all week long how I dreamed of these ‘one-hit wonders’ and begged the universe to make them return to our geekfest just one more time. I figured out what I would say in advance, then I got there early the next week. But I would play half-assed, distracted by the painstaking ticking of the clock, not even present in the game as my Land Raiders were decimated because I’m dreaming last week’s vixen will walk through the door, her hair blowing in my imaginary slow motion wind as she tosses her head back and smiles at me. Such a loser.

  Maybe I just hoped I could osmose whatever skills got my gaming buddies wives. They had nicknamed me ‘McFly,’ which was even more humiliating to be the nerdiest nerd among nerds. I had nothing but hope to cling to that one day my empty life would be filled with the adoring gaze, soft curves, and musical laughter of a woman. I mean, something had to give; even George McFly got the girl!

  For a guy who doesn’t own cable, I sure have studied television in depth, and I know more about it than almost everyone. It’s the sort of skill that’s rendered thoroughly useless by the advent of a zombie apocalypse. Kind of like the art of playing Warhammer 40K. And the art of dry, self-deprecating humor.

  So where another person may be sitting in the attic plotting their heroic trek across town, battlin
g their way through zombie hordes with a golf club to rescue their girlfriend, I was staring out my attic window and thinking about what a pathetic cartoon my life had been. I felt regret to the deepest core of my soul, like my life was a joke, and no one actually loved me. And in this moment, I knew it was my own fault for not showing myself to anyone.

  I watched all those dead people lurching up and down my street, and felt like all of them must’ve had more fulfilling, rewarding lives than I did. Yet, here I was, and there they were. When they were alive, strolling past the hobby shop at the mall and looking at us inside, we must’ve looked like zombies to them. Grown men, sitting around a table for hours per week playing with little plastic dolls and dice.

  A lamp fell over somewhere downstairs, probably in my living room. Every thump down caused me to wince. Shakes…my beloved Shakes… I’d left her on a platter for the zombies because I was in such a hurry to save my own worthless skin. What a coward.

  In Psychology, they call this Chronic Self-Derogation. Something you must know is: I’ve been doing this a long time. In every possible situation where something bad happens, I immediately begin this cycle. I’ve been trying to break it for my whole life, but I think a zombie apocalypse is a good excuse to just let my mind keep on trashing me. It’s cathartic, I’m sure, to quit taking yourself seriously and just admit that you’re nothing more than the microscopic anal fungus of life, preparing for the next big gay dick of probability to scrape you raw and topple all your edifices in the shit-filled rectum you call home. More succinctly: all we are is dust in the wind.

  There’s a long running joke in my field that only the most fucked-up people go into psychology. And it’s true--the act of studying the mind always drives the mind crazy. Or maybe, the most mentally ill people are just drawn to the field because they’re looking for the way out of their crazy.