I wrote this under the influence of muscle relaxants. I'm not joking. So basically, I had a medical problem that required muscle relaxants so I legally obtained muscle relaxants. After listening to Pink Floyd for an hour (the song Comfortably Numb was in fact inspired by muscle relaxants) I decided to write. So, I wrote a bunch. I'll fix the typos soon. But here it is, presented in its raw, unadulterated glory. If you're a child who is offended by gore or references to sexuality (like periods and gak), you shouldn't be on Dakka so you have no business reading this anyways.
Anyways, I'll be fixing the typos and completing this chapter within the next 28 hours. And yes, I know I'm breaking my own writing rules I whined about earlier. But I don't care. I'm sick and sick people are allowed to do whatever the feth they want and everyone else still needs to be nice to them.
…Isn’t This Where?
What had started out as a
1996 Chevy Astro Conversion Van™ had gradually become something else over the last few tumultuous months. It’s long since shattered back windows had been replaced with an assortment of metal bars, wooden bars and duct tape. The front windshield was a cut down sheet of green tinted glass glass that had been hastily taped on.
The front bumper had been mostly destroyed in a high speed collusion which had also caused quite a bit of damage under the hood. It had needed extensive repairs. At that time Stephen, a mechanic, had been with them. With his limited supplies he’d been able to keep the van running for ‘the time being’. He’d always joked that the Dedford Survivors couldn’t afford to get rid of him because when his mostly improvised repairs finally fell apart they’d need to him to put them back together again.
Lacking the proper cleaning supplies, they’d never been able to get the blood stains out of the back seat.
Even in corpse cities like these, humanity had still left clear relics behind. Most of the buildings were still standing, albeit with peeling paint and shattered windows. On the nearby sidewalk, weeds now growing freely through its cracked surface, an empty
Walmart™ bag lay pinned beneath a fallen street sign. Someone’s blood encrusted wheelchair was parked at the front door of what looked like a cheap Bed and Breakfast place.
The road ahead was choked with scarred wreckage. People had seemingly forgotten about speed limits and staying in the right-hand lane when the dead had begun to rise. Cautiously navigating around it would require fuel they didn’t have.
“We should really find somewhere to stay,” said Alicia, leaning towards Ryan and Ashlee in the front seat. “I mean, before we run out of gas.” Ryan lay reclined in his seat, face pointed towards the van’s dented roof while Ashlee focused on the road, hunched towards the wheel. “Guys?” She turned towards Jason, sitting with her in the backseat. The bastard was fast asleep. “GUYS!”
Jason jerked sideways smashing his head against the barricades where his window should’ve been. “Aaaah! What the feth Alicia?”
“Jesus, you gave me a freaking heart attack,” Ashlee said, still keeping her eyes on the road. “What is it?”
“Gas!”
“Oh… gak. Gas.” Ashlee brushed her greasy bangs back with her hand and gradually reclined into her seat. “I hadn’t been keeping track, I was just, just…”
Ryan cut her off. “How much do we have?”
“The tank is empty; we’re running on fumes. I was… alright, we’re going to need gas.”
“Yeah, no gak,” said Ryan. “And how the feth are we gonna do that?”
“Look, I’m open to suggestions. If you have anything constructive to say-”
“Alright, I’m sorry.”
Sub Chapter
Appearences
Alicia a tall woman (5’11 or 180.34
cm if you’re a commie bastard) with a broad nose and dull hazel eyes of African American descent, meaning she was the only non-cracker of the group. Like the other Dedwood Survivors she had taken on an unkempt, feral appearance. Her long hair was ugly and knotted and her eyes quite bloodshot. On the day of the insufficient fuel quantity she was using the group’s fourth to last tampon and though she was embarrassed to admit it they’d be needing to stop at a store to try and loot for a new one. She didn’t want to have to use dirty rags like she’d read girls in India do.
Ashlee was about a head shorter than Alicia and had quite the thin frame, though for some reason she seemed larger than anyone else in the group. When she walked she strutted with complete confidence and when someone needed to drive she hopped in the driver’s seat without question (although this wasn’t always a good idea, as shown with her inattentiveness to the fuel gauge in her seemingly entranced driving state). Having not showered for almost a full two months she was experiencing severe acne breakouts.
Ryan was the most unambiguously attractive member of the group, unless you’re one of those people with weird fetishes (which is perfectly fine). If he were an actor, he’d probably be a highly gifted and caring doctor on one of those day time soap operas that they had stopped making when all the actors were partially devoured and reanimated as ghouls. He had broad shoulders, a sharp jawline and bright blue eyes. Perhaps the only blemish on his appearance was the fact that one of his ears was about a half inch lower than the other. He’d been planning on getting it fixed with plastic surgery but that was no longer an option for obvious reasons.
Jason, by contrast, was the type of person who would blend into a crowd. He had one of those average, completely uninteresting faces. His only real notable feature was the ugly wound stretching from under his left ear to just before his left nostril. Alex, a now deceased member of the Dedford survivors notable for her huge rack had slashed Jason’s face with a makeshift blade during a heated argument. The wound had been bandaged poorly and quickly grown infected with some unknown form of bacteria, causing it to fester for some time. Jason had powered through and survived the ordeal but it had left him with a scar that would never fade.
End Sub Chapter
“Wait,” said Jason. “That car doesn’t have flat tires!”
“So?”
“Someone’s been using it recently you idiot!”
It was some sort of sedan parked against the curb that, like their own vehicle, had gone through quite a few makeshift repairs and modifications. The front bumper was a piece of twisted wreckage barely held together by nails and duct tape. Oddly enough the car’s owner had gone through the effort of welding a series of ‘spikes’ (broken shards of metal) to it, as if they’d do anything besides impale the shambling corpses and drag them along for the duration of the ride.
Ashlee pulled the van alongside it and turned towards the other survivors. “I’ll crawl under the car and punch open the gas tank; I’ll just drain it out into a bucket or something.”
“Do we even have a bucket?” Alicia said. It was a difficult role, being the last sane (wo)man on earth.
The back of the van was essentially a pile of miscellaneous looted goods. Shovels, water purifiers, canned peaches, crowbars, compasses, flashlights, expired chocolate, worthless electronics (all of which were dead save an iPod with
Journey’s Greatest Hits and a weight-loss app on it), bags of cheetos, a Star Wars Expanded Universe novel and of course tampons all had their place back there.
Jason began rummaging through it all and, conveniently enough, immediately found a large plastic bucket. He handed it upfront to Ashlee. Nevertheless, Alicia was still uncontent with the plan. “What do you plan to break the gas tank open with? And do you even know what it looks like? And what if the car doesn’t have gas?”
With an impatient look on her face, Ashlee held up her crowbar. Just as she did, the survivors heard a scraping sound against the back of the van. Something groaned. Another creature, clearly visible from the front windshield, emerged from a Ferrari’s scorched remains and echoed the uncanny moan. “Alright, let’s go. All you guys have to do is hold them off while I get the gas. And if it’s not there, then we’ll just leave.”
Jason was the first to leave the safety of the van. He slammed the passenger behind him and turned towards the ghoul clawing at the van’s trunk. It began to shamble towards him, its left leg buckling awkwardly with each step. A piece of jagged bone jutted from its kneecap. A quick blow from his hatchet dispatched the creature easily enough.
Already Ashlee was crawling under the sedan. Ryan slumped against the driver’s side front door, holding his baseball bat like one would a cane or walking stick. Alicia was moving into position guarding the car’s other side, this one facing towards a small building with a large glass sign that proudly read SUNGLASS HUT. The shattered remnants of its display windows were encrusted with blood. From what she could see inside, it looked like all the racks had been long emptied.
“Look,” said Jason, gesturing to the road behind them. Four of the things were approaching, staring at the survivors with their cold, dead eyes. There were many things Alicia hated about the apocalypse. One of them was rotting genitalia. The dead had no interest in keeping their tattering clothing on. When it tore they would just keep walking (or crawling) onward until it feel off. Almost a quarter of the ghouls they encountered were wearing their birthday suits. “See that one with the plaid jacket?”
“Yeah.” Alicia could see it alright. You could a portion of its skull through its rotted eye socket. “So?”
“I saw that one back in Ridgemont.”
“Alright, I think I almost got the tank open,” said Ashlee.
“Ridgemont was almost sixty miles ago.”
“Exactly,” Jason said. “They’re following us. This guy must’ve caught up to us while we slept at that campground. How knows how many other ghouls have been trailing our roadtrip for miles?”
The conversation was interrupted by one of the things trying to crawl through one of SUNGLASS HUTS’ display windows. It was making a good deal of noise as it struggled to inch on its bloated gut its way through the broken glass. The shards cut deep into its dead flesh, leaving its abdomen a patchwork of leaky wounds. It wasn’t just blood leaking from its body so much as a black cocktail of lymph fluids, digestive acids, coagulated blood and plain old liquefied organs.
Alicia had found it disturbing how quickly she’d gotten used to the odor of death.
She took a step forward and brought her crowbar down on the ghoul’s head, putting her momentum into the blow. Its skull cracked like an egg. Already more of the ghouls were coming. Attracted by the noise they were clawing themselves free from wrecked cars, emerging from nearby stores and simply walking down the street. Most were still distant, but they were slowly gaining ground.
Ashlee was making a ruckus under the car, struggling to bash open the gas tank with what limited space she had. “Hurry it up,” said Ryan. “We don’t have all day.”
“Almost…” She was really hammering on it now. “Got… it! Aaah! gak! Aaff! Ahck!” Leaning down and looking underneath the car, Alicia saw the gas tank emptying its contents on Ashlee’s face. She was struggling unsuccessfully to position the oversized bucket beneath it. “Cocksuckin motherfuckin piece of gak!”
cocksuckin motherfuckin piece of gak [kok-suhk-ing muh
th-er-fuhk-ing pees uhv gak]
noun, an engine that empties its contents on your face
“Try and put the angle, I mean try to put the bucket at an angle,” Ryan suggested in a totally nonpatronizing way. “You know, so it can fit under the engine. I mean tank.”
“What the feth do you think I’m doing?”
“RYAN!”
One of the things had crept up on him while he was checking on Ashlee. A pale woman (or something that was once a woman) wearing bunny slippers and a pink bathing robe latched onto his back and leaned in, maw gaping. Ryan reacted quickly enough. He spun and simultaneously jabbed back with his elbow, just barely knocking her off. She came at him again, but this time he was ready. The baseball bat met her face with a tremendous THWACK and she was sent careening backwards.
Not quite dead, she grabbed onto the car’s side and began to haul herself up. Ryan swung again. Her rotting skull, pinned beneath the car door and the bat, didn’t have a chance this time. With a wet crunch her head lost a great deal of shape, turning into something closer to a leaking, fleshy bag of broken bone and decomposing biomass. She keeled over backwards, landing at the feet of another ghoul.
“feth, you could’ve told me earlier!” He knocked this one aside with ease. “It almost, well… you know…”
[in the voice of Morgan Freeman]By ‘you know’ he was referring to being bitten. The Dedford Survivors learned early on that, simply put, don’t let strangers with deceased rotting mouths full of teeth that haven’t been brushed in months bite you from the unfortunate case of Stephen. Their trusty mechanic had been mauled by a pack of ghouls, suffering bites to the face, arms, upper back and left ankle. He’d howled and squirmed and writhed and screamed in the backseat for a few hours before finally expiring. Stephen reanimated while they were burying his body in a roadside ditch and Ashlee had ended up bludgeoning him to death with a shovel.[/in the voice of Morgan Freeman]
“I shouldn’t have to babysit you donkey-caves!” Alicia shouted, bashing the sedan’s hood with her crowbar for emphasis. She forced herself to take a deep breath. “Just watch yourself next time.”
“Alright, I’m sorry.”
“Bucket’s full. Someone take it; we’re losing gas every minute,” said Ashlee.
