Zombie Short Story: Something You Oughta Know

     At a hundred miles an hour, Zeke Patterson felt alive and free.  Now that the dead reigned, he was done with 11 to 7 shifts.  He was done with spending his entire day down in the pit at the oil change place.  Civilization had crumbled and the old rules that held him back were gone.  He didn't have to put up with women who were too stuck up to go out with an oil change mechanic.  In this new world, sex really was free with a rifle.  Zeke grinned from ear to ear.  He had shown those office women a thing or two on his way out of Atlanta.  

   Now, he was on the open highway south of Tifton, Georgia, and the rumble of the old Mustang's V-8 through the glasspack exhaust was music to his ears.  Zeke wished he would have killed his boss and taken this car years ago.  Now, he looked over at the fully tricked out AR-15 rifle on the front seat.  It had a twin drum magazine with 100-rounds ready to go.  His trigger finger was itching.  He patted the rifle with his right hand and wished he could use it again.

Mustang Mach 1 - Photo by Joost J. Bakker from IJmuiden [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

     When his eyes returned to the road, he saw a frail looking dead woman in a blue polka dot dress shuffling along in the middle of the highway.  Zeke realized there was no time to use his rifle.  But, at a hundred miles an hour, it didn't matter.  The zombie was obliterated with a slight twitch of his hand at the wheel.

     "Mustang Mach 1, baby, Mustang Mach 1!" he yelled out of his window as the shattered remains of a woman disappeared in his rear view mirror.  Zeke was too far down the road to see the bloody torso of the female zombie continue her crawl towards Valdosta.

     "I am a total bad ass in this world," Zeke yelled to himself throwing an empty liquor bottle out of his window, "A total effing bad ass!"

     As the sun got lower in the sky, he realized that he was hungry.  He needed something to eat and he needed it right now.  These dumbass redneck farmers would feed him or they would pay.  Zeke pointed the yellow and black pony car towards the nearest exit.  They better turn over their daughters, too.

     He roared off the southbound ramp and onto the two lane black top with so much speed that the big muscle car slid across the road and put two tires in the grass of the shoulder when he cranked the wheel hard to the right.  Right lane, wrong lane:  it didn't matter now.  It was his lane.  He floored it and the Mustang left burning rubber and a trail of bouncing rocks behind him.

     Moments later, Zeke spotted an old farm house surrounded by fields and whipped the car into the driveway.  The blood-spattered Mustang made short work of the farm's flimsy front gate and roared to a stop in the driveway beside the old house and in front of the equally ancient detached garage.  From the backyard, an old bearded man perched upon a bucket looked up in disgust from a spot in his little vegetable garden.  Zeke grabbed his rifle, leaped out of the car, and ran into the backyard.  As he approached the garden he noticed a holstered revolver sitting on aluminum cover of  a small brick pump house by the garage.  This old man is slow and dumb, too, Zeke thought to himself.

     "What in the hell are you doing?" the old man asked taking off his dirty gardening gloves.
     "I'm here to take your food and anything else your farm has to offer,"  Zeke replied training his AR-15 on the old man's chest.
     "Well, my name is Jeb and, seeing as you just broke down my front gate, I'm not offering you much."
     "Old man, I'm here to take what I want and what I can use.  I make the rules now."
     "Since when?"
     "Since I'm the one with an AR-15 and 100 rounds of 5.56 millimeter pointed at you, I'm making the rules as of now."
     "You've got a hundred rounds in that thing?"
     "That's right! One hundred bullets to tear you apart and let your body rot in this little garden old man."
     "Alright," the old man said as he rubbed his furrowed brow.  "But, there's something you oughta know."
     "What's that you old coot?"

     The white haired man removed his well-worn Georgia Bulldogs ball cap and set it in the lap of his work pants.  Zeke involuntarily took a step to the side as a bullet tore through his left side, ripped through his heart, blew apart his back bone, exited his right side, ricocheted off his arm, and buried itself somewhere out in the peanut crop.  Then, as the crack of the shot echoed off the garage,  the younger man collapsed with a look of complete shock.

      With no satisfaction, the old farmer slowly got up from his bucket.  He looked up at his wife who was standing in the back window of their farm home and nodded.  Then he looked down at the fading outlaw.

     "It only takes one bullet to kill a man."
   

30-30 Winchester Round - Photo by Hmaag [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

[For the next Chronicle of Jeb story, read "The Road Trip - Part 1" For more background on Jeb, read my flash fiction story:  "Waiting."]