Pork Chop Jones

Probably the best advice I’d ever had about singing the blues, a hobby of mine, was contained in the following observation from the noted blues master B. B. King, “It’s not enough to hit every note perfectly and in the exact order they’re written, that’s not the blues. You have to know and understand why they need sung in that order. School won’t teach you that, another blues man won’t teach you that … you have to get out there and live, or you’ll never know what the blues are about …”

                The bar was nearly empty that night, as it had been since the first zombies made their appearance in international airports across the world. No one knew where they’d come from and as the days had continued it became less important than putting them down and destroying the bodies. All attempts at locating the exact point of origin, or Patient Zero, had failed miserably. Not because no one knew what to do but simply because the communication networks which had once made that possible no longer existed.

They were one of the first casualties of the conflict

One of the many governments under attack on that day when the war had begun pushed the button. The button wasn’t the one to end all life on the planet as we knew it, it was the button to shut down all electronics. The higher the degree of technology in the device, the more certain it was that the EMP which girdled the planet was going to strike it down. All high tech devices ended within fifteen minutes of that button being pushed. That told us the weapons used had to be in high Earth orbit. That place where all nuclear powers had sworn they’d never let our wars touch.

            Someone had lied, obviously

            None of us saw or heard anything

            The first we knew of it was when the planes began to fall from the skies and crash into the mountains.

            The planes which still had cables running to their control surfaces managed to land, so we had something of a transport system. The others, though, the high tech marvels with two and three levels to them, the aircraft designed to be resort havens, in the sky, for the rich and famous.       

All of those died

            Which brings us back to our narrative, concerning what happened at the Whitewater Bar in Howland, Ohio.

You see, the first that we knew of the coming apocalypse was when the lights went out. That, in and of itself, didn’t cause much comment as it had happened before and would likely happen again because the Whitewater had originally been located in a spot fairly remote from the rest of the towns around it. But then that upstart town, Howland, had dared to spring to existence around it. Which meant that the section of the grid the rest of the town was on was fairly new while the area occupied by the Whitewater was decidedly old.  The patrons had no concerns about that because most of them had been coming to the bar before they were even old enough to drink; which is probably the reason that they’d first tried using fake ID’s, drivers licenses and such.

            The same as any other bunch of kids, anywhere in the world

            It never worked

            So the usual crowd was there when the lights went out

            Pork Chop Jones had been playing, and playing it loud. The song wasn’t one of the blues songs he was known for it was some rock anthem from the 60’s so he belted it out with gusto. About half the bar was singing with him but only about four or five of them were actually old enough to have heard the song when it was first released. The large screen televisions normally reserved for sporting events had begun running stories about riots. Once they saw that the riots were in such distant places as New York, Cleveland and Los Angeles everyone pretty much ignored them. None of the riots were close enough to affect them one way or the other. Then the lights went out and the music stopped … there was a moment of silence before the jokes started …

            “Does this mean the computer just lost my tab?”

            “FREE DRINKS FOR EVERYONE …”

            “Hey, genius, if the powers off, the bar won’t work ….”

            “oh …”

            “DRINK FASTER, SAVE THE BEER!!”

Meanwhile, Pork Chop sat there disconnecting his wired up acoustic guitar from the amplifier and doing a sort of sound check, to see how it would sound if he started playing again. Piotr, the Russian giant who worked as the bartender/barback and occasionally bouncer, waited for the emergency lights to come on before beginning his round of the bar, discussing what each patron had ordered and coming to an agreement with them as he wrote it all out on an order pad they kept for just such situations. Cheryl, the other bartender, went back to the manager’s office and retrieved the manual credit card machine. They made a striking team, Piotr over eight feet tall, bald and fairly muscular while Cheryl was a diminutive five feet tall, dark haired woman who could easily be mistaken for a youngish teenager.

            One look into her eyes though, left no doubt you were talking to a woman.

            You didn’t want to cross her either, believe me, you really didn’t ….

As they took charge of the scene, some of the regulars came together to discuss what should happen next. Sarge spoke quietly to his wife, Raechel; then stepped outside. Gunny went over to check on Pork Chop and after a hushed conference between the two men he went into the back to look in on the cooking staff. The young First Sergeant who was dating Cheryl went around to the patrons checking how well they were handling it, defusing potential problems by getting them laughing but there was still an undercurrent of tension. Everyone was accustomed to power outages happening during the winter; this was April; it didn’t generally happen at this time of year. Some of the customers had begun trying to use their cell phones only to find out that nothing at all was working. This increased the problems for the First Sergeant so Raechel stepped in, calming them by pointing out that the cell phones also depended on electricity to function. As she looked at phone after phone though, she felt a growing unease; despite the towers failing due to a power failure, the batteries in the phones should not have failed.

            Every phone she saw, including her own, had gone black.

After a few moments, Pork Chop began to play again. The familiarity of him singing helped to get things into a calmer perspective again. The singing was soft but distinct; the bartenders conferred between themselves and then went around offering the assembled customers one free drink or beer of their choice. Raechel stepped back from it all and waited by the door for Sarge’s return. She tried not to stare as she saw the grimmer than usual look on his face. He slid his arm around her waist as the pair of them leaned against the wall by the door talking quietly. A moment or two later Piotr joined them handing each one a beer.

            “I thought you might like this, it’s one of the darker German beers …”

Even though he’d been in the country for a decade, his Russian accent was unmistakable.

            “Was there anything to find out?”

Sarge took a sip of the dark brew, it was delicious but it failed to lighten his mood, “Just that the valley is dark as far as I can see …” he took another sip of beer, “… that, and the fact that there isn’t a car moving out there except for some pre-70’s car rodding around and probably having the time of his life.”

Piotr’s eyes grew dark, “You think this is EMP?”

Sarge stared at the large man thoughtfully as he took another sip of the beer, “You and I, my large friend, are going to have a very frank discussion, very soon ….” Piotr grinned, slapping his shoulder the way old comrades do, “I think you already know Sarge, but I will tell you, later …”

            Move forward a few more months

            Things hadn’t changed much until this point, the zed numbers were growing steadily but in the more remote places, the former rural areas, except for the EMP that some genius without an ounce of sense had fired off in an effort to keep the zeds from spreading, everything returned to near normalcy in short order. Some of the planes that had gone down were already carrying a full load of the infected and when they went down any zeds that weren’t destroyed on impact quickly spread into the area around the crash site.

            Creating more of their number

The only thing that they’d succeeded at, whoever the hell “they” were, was making it harder for us to mount a coordinated operation against the zeds. Without the ability to coordinate, we couldn’t share information or strategy. So we brought back the concept of couriers and made clear that any interference with them would result in ‘harsh responses.’

Some of the gangs in Warren and Youngstown had thought it would be good fun to mess with the couriers. They’d even captured, raped, and tortured them to find out what they knew; why they existed. The gangs labored under the impression that any official action which caused such a stir had to center on them. If they’d just left well enough alone, we might even have brought them into the fold. 

Those gangs don’t have any members now

Well, none that’ll admit they knew or belonged to them

Piss off experienced soldiers, people with decades of experience in dealing with insurgents in the harshest terms possible and you find out something

They didn’t earn all that experience or stay alive by being good little Boy Scouts

There was a trial, don’t get me wrong, but it was after all of their known members had been located and brought out to the public square. It took place next to the bodies of the couriers they’d intercepted; no attempt was made to conceal or cover them. Everyone could see exactly what the gangs had done.

 Despite the best efforts of some guy who claimed he was a lawyer, the trial was very short.

We still had a lot of work to do to safeguard our people

The sentence was fast in coming and quick in execution

Sarge handled that end of it; he wouldn’t permit anyone else to touch it.

When we began the trial, the mayor was tagged to act as judge and twelve people were taken at random from the people in the square. Everything was pretty plain, on the face of it and the jury’s verdict was quick in coming, guilty. The mayor looked a little shaky at the idea of having to do what the law said he had to do, but Sarge relieved him of that responsibility quickly. He made a short speech explaining everything to the crowd so that there wouldn’t be any doubt about the how and why of everything before getting to the grisly work of executing all twenty five of the gang members.

A single shot to each one of them … it was more humane than what they’d done to the couriers; better than any one of them deserved.

So we continued on ….

First Sergeant recruited and brought more people into the militia that was being organized. The initial task was to secure the immediate area of the town and restore as many of the services as possible. There was a low head dam on the outskirts of town that, with a little tinkering, gave us enough power to run the water filtration plant and pumping stations; which meant that we had potable water after the first month. The natural gas systems had to be pulled offline but there were still enough wood burning stoves in the area and willing hands to cut wood to keep everyone supplied.

One of the people recruited by First Sergeant was a retired officer who lived over near the base. The mayor kept his civil authority but we were on new footing now and the police chief, although he didn’t like it, had to acknowledge the need for a civil defense force. A lot of people were surprised by the chief’s knowledge of the Dick Act of 1902. They were even more surprised when he handed off defense of the Trumbull county area to the Colonel. The Colonel had apparently already discussed things with the Chief and informed everyone at the meeting that his troops would have no authority within any townships limits, other than for the common defense.

Deals were made, authority traded off and life continued on, for the most part.

Much to the distress of many children, school was one of the first things we re-instated

The difference being, that history dealt more with the military … and military skills

So life continued on, for a time …

There were a lot of things that we had to do without; if a favorite food wasn’t seasonal or grown locally we could pretty much forget about it.

Money was useless, which meant that bankers and financial experts who wanted to live had to find other job skills. Some of them did OK, they’d had hobbies like baking or some other nearly lost skill. One bank secretary even knew how to spin wool. After the first winter her skills gained a new appreciation. Others, found out just how truly useless their lives had been. Some of them apprenticed themselves to people who had real skills and others … well … let’s just say they didn’t handle the stress real well.

Barter became the new trade standard

We had a few problems with zeds and raiders, but the raiders hadn’t come under control of any of the former national military then and the zeds were pretty much confined to minor outbreaks as they found their way out of the cities.

After the second winter, with no real problems beyond what we’d anticipated, we thought we were doing pretty well. Most of our population was still alive, we had one of the best schools in the area and everything was pretty calm.

It was only the lull before the storm

We grew soft, in our ignorance

So there we were; pretty much the same crowd, in the same place … the Whitewater.

Piotr had some skill at brewing beer and some of the old timers had a surprising degree of knowledge in the skills of distillation. So the Whitewater was no longer in the business of distributing liquor and beer, it was also in the business of producing it. The walk in refrigerator had experienced some minor conversion work and now functioned as an old fashioned ice box. Slabs of ice from the Mosquito Creek reservoir had been cut, trimmed and now kept the food and beverages cold. Since the drink dispensers no longer functioned they’d been removed and the parts used for other purposes. All the beer now came in brown glass bottles and wine was tapped from five gallon glass bottles. The liquor was kept in mason jars. Payment was either through barter or membership in one of the vital services. Water, safety, medical, maintenance and militia drank for free as long as they didn’t abuse the privilege.

We were in the middle of our weekly meeting when it was shown to us just how little we actually knew of our enemy. We had outposts set up at all the access points with roads and paths. Scout parties ranged out to the limits of the county before turning back for home. They didn’t go further because as far as we knew, there was no need to go further. Contact had been made with Geauga, Portage and Ashtabula counties right after everything went dead but they’d assured us that the same steps we had taken were being taken in the other counties. In the normal course of business there was little or no contact with them so we labored under the assumption that everything was still fine.

You do know about that old saying radio operators have about the word ‘assume’?

Ass-u-me

When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me …..

Yeah ….. but it was worse, far worse.

Scouts had reported an increase in contacts with the zeds along the north and northwestern borders of the county. There also seemed to be a significant decrease in contacts with raiders all along the northern border, we didn’t have any idea why so couriers had been dispatched to the counties involved asking if they’d been taking any special actions to bring their problems under control. If they had, then we’d like the details so we could institute similar action plans. The couriers had only been gone for a couple of days but they’d been known to take as long as a week just to get to each of the county seats, so we weren’t worried at that point.

Pork Chop was tuning up his guitar, he’d converted it back to fully acoustic but it was still pure artistry when he played. A lot of what he was playing these days were the blues but no one could find any reason to criticize him for it, it was a pretty good reflection of how we all felt. He also insisted on carrying around this old Fender guitar he’d picked up; he took it everywhere he went and told everyone it was his good luck charm. The thing looked absolutely stock except for this weird looking metal piece at the base of the neck. It looked like some sort of custom decoration, engraved with all manner of Celtic symbols and wrapped with a Celtic knot that meant ‘forever’ so we just put it off as a quirk he developed after Z-Day. We’d all developed one or two of those after that happened. Hell … I still won’t leave my house without my Spec-Plus Bowie.

So Pork Chop tuned up his guitar and got to strumming a few tunes on it …. he was playing pretty softly …. mostly to himself …. everyone knew he’d pick it up as soon as he was comfortable with what he was playing so no one said anything. We just kept to our meeting and waited for him to feel like playing for the crowd.

Now ….. I know I haven’t said a lot about Pork Chop so far but there’s a few things you need to know about him, the first is that for a white man he’s got the blackest voice of anyone we’d ever seen. The man was truly remarkable because he could hit lows that make the table rumble in sympathy and highs that threaten to break glass.

He’s that good

He also played the twelve string with as much ease as other people played a banjo. My wife used to play that beast and I saw with my own eyes how much of a bitch it could be; not in his hands though. What really threw people who were meeting him for the first time was his size; as Gabriel Iglesias might have said, he wasn’t just a “damn,” he was a “DAAMMMN!!”

Six foot dead even and five hundred pounds

Size 7-XL shirts

Yeah

Damn!

Last but not least, Pork Chop dedicated his life to his family. His wife and children were the center of his world and he never went so far in his travels as a musician that he couldn’t spend each night at home. He might have had more of a career, before Z-Day, if he had …. but he refused to be that far away from them. Whenever he was at the Whitewater he didn’t talk a whole lot about them while he was working.

 After Z-Day, the lot of us were so wrapped up in the day to day work of surviving and trying to keep our own troubles from overwhelming us that we never noticed that he went from only speaking briefly about them, to not talking about them at all.

We should have noticed, if we had … things might have ended differently.

So …. Pork Chop was sitting in the same place he’d sat in for years, a table and two chairs set up about fifteen feet from the door. The table had once held a tip jar and his amplifier but now it held the miscellaneous gifts he was given in lieu of those tips. They ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous but he never turned them down.

He’d even gotten a couple of marriage proposals that way.

Smiling gently, he turned them down; explaining that he was as married as a man could get. No one would have said anything because plural marriages had become more accepted and less of an issue, but that was just the kind of man he was.

You needed to know that about Pork Chop, you needed to know that to understand what happened next.

Our meeting place was right in line with the door; like all bars the door had once been glass. Since Z-Day though, the door had been armored with titanium sheeting from the local foundry and a guard assigned to a semi-protected alcove next to it. If things got bad and he was able to react quickly enough there was a hydraulic ram system that could be dropped in front of the door and used to force it closed no matter what was trying to break through. Some raiders had experienced the joys of ‘radical amputation’ because they thought they could force their way past it.

So there we were, the usual crowd in our usual place …. when we heard screaming outside. Everyone immediately grabbed and prepped their weapons while still others moved to lookout perches; scanning the area around the bar. It was a clear sky but there was no moon so we took a chance and fired an illumination round into the night sky.

It was worse than we could’ve imagined

Everywhere we looked, everywhere we could see

Zombies

There didn’t appear to be a square foot of ground outside the bar that didn’t have a zombie on it and worse yet, it went on for as far as our eyes could see. One of the guys grabbed Cheryl and told her what we were seeing around the bar. She immediately turned around and called for the busboy, “Frank!” He came running up and Cheryl told him, “Get on the CB, talk to everyone you can, tell them that we have the biggest bunch of zombies anyone’s ever seen parked around us but we’re fine for now. What we need for them to do is to get home to their families and lock down tight. Have each one report back in as they get locked down.”

            “Yes ma’am”

He half turned to dash off to the radio room where the CB and shortwave were kept ….

            “… and Frank?”

            “Ma’am?”

            “Keep trying until you’ve reached everyone …”

            “Yes ma’am”

Frank touched his hat in salute as he dashed off to the radio room.

            Keeping as quiet as possible so we didn’t set off the zombies we all returned to the meeting table. The conversation was hushed and the only beverage being consumed was water. Pork Chop had stowed his twelve string and was watching the meeting with a great deal of interest. The case for his Fender was close by and, for some reason, I noticed that the latches on the case were open. Our conversation circled endlessly; we’d never seen the zeds do anything like this before and we needed an anchor, something to hinge a rational decision on; a piece of information about or reason why the zeds were acting the way they were …

            … and we needed it before the households without a CB woke up.

            The game changer was about to come and none of us even knew it ….

We’d finally given up on the discussion; realizing that we were at an impasse because this sort of behavior just didn’t exist in any of the information we’d shared with other counties. Sipping our water in quiet frustration, we stared at the walls, at each other; at anything we thought might trigger another thought which could explain what was happening.

            That’s when the tower lookout came down from his perch. Entering the tavern we all saw that he held a small piece of paper in his hand; that he was nervous as hell was evident in the way the paper trembled as he handed it to me.

            “I saw a signal light Tony …”

Signal lights were something we’d come up with early on, it was just a penlight with a red LED on the business end but if you didn’t know where to look, it was real easy to overlook. The things had replaced walkies as the long distance communicator of choice. Besides, the zeds couldn’t see them.

I hadn’t even considered the implications of his nervousness as I turned the paper idly and said, “OK, so what’s the big deal?” I dropped the paper as the words written on it came into view, “Sarge and Raechel”; rising from my chair I asked …

            “Where did you see the signal?”

            “There’s an old car, at the end of the parking lot ….”

Moving quickly I went out into the reinforced stockade that used to be the patio and climbed up to the lookout. It wasn’t much more than just a bo’sun’s seat on an old radio tower but a person could stay up there for hours and not have to worry about falling. Studying the far end of the parking lot I could barely make out the car; it was virtually obscured by the zombies. My signal light came out of my jacket and I signaled to the car.

            S-A-R-G-E

My answer wasn’t long in coming …

            Z-U-E

Damn, that meant that Raechel was out there too, we needed to know how well they were situated, I knew that Sarge didn’t normally leave his house without a BOB but I also didn’t know how hot things were when they got into the car.

            S-I-T-R-E-P

I held my breath waiting for the answer; if he had his BOB it was ugly but doable …

            … if he didn’t, though ….

            B-O-B__1-5__ M-E-T-E-R-S__N-N-E

            Damn, I looked up at the night sky; it was clear. That meant it was going to be colder than hell tonight and hotter than hell come full light tomorrow. Worse yet, they’d been intercepted on their way in to us which also meant that the trouble had come in from the north.

            R-A-E__I-N-J-U-R-E-D__N-O-T __B-I-T

            S-N-A-F-U

            Damn it all anyway, no matter what happened this was going to be ugly.

            I had to get back inside and tell the others. I transmitted, Z-U-J; then climbed down from the bo’sun’s chair, we needed to plan this as carefully as possible.

            Inside the bar everyone was gathered around the conference table, except for Pork Chop; who was nowhere to be seen. It was a little odd but not totally out of character. He usually sat at the periphery of our conferences and only occasionally added his own observations about what was happening or what needed done. He didn’t have much to say, but when he did, it was generally worth taking into account in decisions.

            This time though, the lives of two of his friends were on the line and he wasn’t sitting in, it was definitely strange.

            So there we sat, looking at each other without saying a word. The silence was a palpable presence among us, the situation was terrifyingly different from all the other changes we’d had to adjust to since our old world had collapsed in on itself. Another paradigm shift had occurred and we needed to work out the best possible method to deal with it or we risked losing everything we’d gained over the course of the last two years.

            Cheryl sat at the head of the table, her head resting on her hands as she stared moodily at the assembled group. Most of them weren’t even on any committees but any decision made tonight would affect them as much as it did the rest of us; that gave them the right to a voice in it.

            Yeah, it only took us five hundred plus years and the deaths of millions for us to become a truly democratic nation.

            Frank came walking out from the communications room; his face was nearly as white as the sheet of paper he held in his trembling hand. It was so quiet in the bar that the paper could be heard shaking. Nesting her face in her hands Cheryl quietly said, “Tell us how bad it is Frank, and don’t even try to soft pedal it …”

“The families north of North Bloomfield road and pretty much everyone west of Route 45 down to Route 305 aren’t answering. A lot of the others on the other side of that line are reporting situations kind of like what we have going on …” he swallowed nervously, “… everyone’s trying to maintain and keep things quiet but they aren’t sure how much longer they can hold out … a lot of them are pretty scared and getting desperate …”

We all sat there quietly; looking at each other, Cheryl sat at the head of the table where either Sarge or First Sergeant usually sat. Her hands were steepled almost as if she were praying and her face was rested in the cradle formed by her thumbs and index fingers. Then she sighed, wiping her face with both hands before looking at Frank, “I need for you to get back on the horn and tell everyone you can reach that they’re to keep as quiet as they can and stay inside, no matter what. We don’t know what caused this and we don’t know what might set them off …. So let’s try to avoid doing it ….” she looked around the table, “… anyone else want to add anything?” We all looked at each other, thinking, until finally we all replied, “No” to her question. Frank said that he’d get right on it and hurried back to the radio room.      

            Which left ‘What to do about the Sarge and Rae’ as the only currently pressing question. Without Sarge’s BOB their chances of making it through the next twenty four hours problematic, and the two of them had contributed enough to our recovery efforts that none of us were willing to just let them sit out there. Don’t get me wrong, we’d all worked our tails off to make it all happen and no one of us were able to lay claim to putting everything back to rights.

            But somehow, someway, whenever a steady hand was needed, or a calm word needed to be spoken … one of the two of them; sometimes both … would be there.

            We needed to do something but no one quite knew what.

            So … we sat there looking at each other … thinking.

            Until we heard one of the interior doors open and close softly and a voice spoke softly,

            “Don’t you just hate it?”

Without looking around Cheryl asked, “Hate what, Pork Chop?”

            “That uncomfortable silence when no one knows just exactly what to do ….”

One by one, we turned to look at Pork Chop. I don’t believe there was one of us there who felt like calling him anything other than ‘Juggernaut.’

Not a one of us knew where he’d gotten the material for it; nor did anyone care to guess how long it took him to do it but we all were fairly certain we had just seen the first ‘Zombie Resistant Armor’ that had ever been made in this world.

            The upper piece had started with the pads from a football player’s uniform and the leather had been fastened to it by various methods; the leather was all full thickness steer hide dyed black and buffed up with a good coat of mink oil. Spikes covered virtually every inch with patterns created by varying the height and color of the spikes; the one uniform thing about them was that each one was sharpened to a lethal point. Beneath the open areas of the armor sections you could see chain mail. Which sure went a long way to explaining why he’d been seen hanging around with Donavon.

            Donavon was our local SCA craftsman; he was also the head of his guild.

            … and yes, he hand crafted various accouterments for ‘knights’ and their ‘squires.’

The helmet had once been a football helmet. Pork Chop had been busy with that also, he’d added a face visor that fit tightly over top of the face guard and had either replaced the neck pad or wrapped in leather, either way there was no way any zed was going to chew on his neck. Spikes covered most of the surface of the helmet, also.

There were also gloves but I don’t think describing the reworked hockey gloves as merely gloves was ever going to do. It would be a lot like describing a protection trained wolfhound/Rottweiler mix as just another watch dog. These gloves had definitely been designed with evil intentions in mind. They even had a set of blades, welded onto a plate and bolted to the gloves, that couldn’t help but remind you of a comic book superhero except that the sharp edge of these blades faced outward.

            The real surprise though was his ‘good luck charm.’

            That Fender he’d been toting around had undergone some work also and his classic ‘axe’ had become … well … an axe.

            The odd neckpiece with the Celtic artwork on it was the place where the blade of the axe fastened to the handle. The axe blade itself was fashioned to fit into the body of the Fender. It would seem that the body of the guitar had become reduced to mere casing for the guitar’s new purpose. Although it gave it something of an odd appearance there were two working edges to the blade which appeared to be razor sharp.

            Formidable?

            The word seemed woefully inadequate …

Although he was a soft spoken man, Pork Chop had always been formidable. Now … he was more … mythic.

            The stuff of which legends are made

            Everyone stared … until Cheryl quietly asked, “Pork Chop, what the hell do you have in mind?”

            “I can get to the pack and get it to the car, I can’t get them out and I can’t do much else but I can manage that much,” he looked down at Cheryl, “… at least that way they’ll have a chance.”

            “What about Helen and Patrick; what about the twins?”

            “They’d have wanted me to do this ….”

            Shitfuckpissdamnmotherfucker

            We’d had no idea … none.

Cheryl stared at him; then slowly got up and walked up to him. Very deliberately, she pulled a chair over to him and stood on it. Releasing the catch on his face plate she lifted it clear; then kissed his forehead.

            He stood there wordless, as she closed everything back up again.

Without leaving the chair she turned to us and spoke quietly,

“I want anyone who can shoulder a gun accurately on the roof to give this man what cover we can ….”

            As she stepped down from the chair Piotr came out of the kitchen with two AK-47’s and a carryall of miscellaneous hardware. He looked over the crowd of us and then easily tossed one of the battle rifles to me, “Tony, you were a sniper, can you use this?” I ran my hands over it making a quick check, “It’s been a few decades you Russki bastard …” dropping out the magazine I could see it was full, standard issue thirty round noisemaker, someone had fitted an optical sight to it but it remained to be seen if it was sighted in well enough “… but let’s see if the old guy can still light up a few caps ….” He smiled and we headed off to the roof hatch.

            Most of the people who’d made it, myself included, were military retirees. We hadn’t had some sort of arcane knowledge that we needed to settle around the airbase. We’d just moved there for access to the PX and the medical facilities.

            Strange how that works out, isn’t it?

            By the time we gained the roof, Frank had managed to get up to the lookout post with some sort of bolt action rifle. He was a good kid, had been an Explorer Scout and all that happy stuff; seriously interested in electronics, but he’d never imagined in his wildest dreams that he might have to pull a trigger.

            He’d do it though, especially to save a friend.

            But he’d be heaving his guts up for hours afterwards.

            That’s why a lot of us joined … so that guys like him wouldn’t have to do the dirty work.

            It’s also why we were working like maniacs to rebuild everything.

            For the truly gentle souls among us ….

            Piotr and I cat walked around so we stood above the eastern door where Pork Chop was going to come out; first we heard the hydraulic cylinders releasing and then the door swung inward. Slowly, Pork Chop eased his massive body out the door and then stood there blocking it until he heard a soft knock from the inside telling him it was secured once more.

            Then he began his slow, graceful dance out to where Sarge and Raechel waited.

            The sight was incredible; I don’t believe anyone ever thought a man so large could move so smoothly or quietly. Every time an opening appeared he just seemed to drift into it and if it didn’t look like it was going to be large enough, somehow it always was … a ballet dancer couldn’t have done better. There was the sound of the roof hatch opening and closing behind us but Piotr and I stayed focused on the scene below us. Cheryl stepped up between us, Winchester in hand; whispering, “How’s he doing?” I nodded down at the man below us, “See for yourself.”

            We knew that any human noise would set them into a frenzy of activity; no one was willing to risk Pork Chop by even talking so even on the roof, we whispered.

            The delicate dance between zombie and Pork Chop continued for what seemed like hours but eventually he reached the end of the parking lot, axe still in hand. He vanished from our sight for a few moments and the reappeared, BOB in hand. I glanced over at Piotr and he gave me a thumbs up; a grim smile on his face, I silently nodded agreement. The pair in the old car had a chance now, but just a chance.

            Slowly the large man made his way back to the car, everyone held their breath as the door slid open; the BOB was slid inside and then the door closed.

            With a click …

            It couldn’t have been avoided, we all knew that Sarge would never have let it happen if he could have found any way to avoid it.

            So all hell broke loose …..

            Zombies were lashing out at anything that was close enough for them to rip into; but Pork Chops’ armor seemed to be working well. There was a lot of blood but none of it appeared to be his and the zombies closest to him appeared to be getting the worst of the deal. Pork Chops’ axe reached out with a deceptively smooth motion and removed body parts from the walkers with no appreciable loss of speed.

            From our vantage point we were all engaged in following Wyatt Earps’ advice about shooting, “Take your time, but be quick about it!” There were so many zombies that every shot had to count, it seemed as if there were no end to them and the magazines were going faster than we’d have ever believed. The optical sight was almost dead on so I had to figure that Piotr had installed it, the man was amazingly talented.

One of the boys made a brief appearance while we were taking part in the seemingly endless fight and threw a second bag of magazines and ammo can of shells up on the roof with us. By this time it was almost getting to first light. Below us Pork Chop had his back to the wall of the tavern and was only making minimal jabs into the crowd. After a while though, as the sun’s initial rays began shining on him, something seemed to change in him. He began taking longer strides into the mass of zombies; kind of like someone testing the water before getting into a hot bath.

            It was making me nervous, he was up to something and I couldn’t even imagine what it might be; Sarge and Raechel had a good chance now that they had his BOB. Pork Chops’ position was pretty good and we had a chance of clearing the area around the door enough to get him inside.

            But Pork Chops seemed to have gotten another idea

            So he began stepping out further from his semi-protected position and then stepping back. He continued the game long enough for Piotr to notice; Piotr saw his jab and return then looked at me, questions written all over his face; I shrugged and continued to pound the zombies with 7.62 rounds. Blowing head after head off their owners’ shoulders and piling the bodies deep around the building.

            Finally, Pork Chops came to a decision and surged forward into the swirling mass of zombies. Cheryl saw him take off and shouted, “Get back here you suicidal moron!”

            If he heard her, he didn’t give any indication of it

            He’d hit his pace by this time and the axe swung around him with a slow ease that could only have come from long hours of practice. The blades on his gauntlets were covered with gore and almost couldn’t even be seen. The rising sun glinted on the spikes protruding from his armor emphasizing the mythic aspects of the whole scene. It had the feel of a big budget science fiction movie; the part where the hero makes his last great effort.

            My heart grew chill with fear for the big man

Steadily he made his way back across the parking lot to the car where our friends were imprisoned. I saw him slam his axe a couple of times against the driver’s side door as he walked past it and then he pointed at the tavern while shouting something. A shiver ran down my spine as it occurred to me what he was trying for …. it was a rescue.

            He was going to bring them back to us

As fast as the realization came to me I shouted for everyone to change their targeting, take out the zombies at the sides and try not to leave any bodies in front of the vehicle where they’d bring an end to his plans. Below us, Pork Chops had put his hands on the sedan and began to push it forward; the going was slow but the zombies eventually had to move when the car crept up on them, whether they wished to or not.

            Eventually the car was pushed up to the entryway that, hours ago, Pork Chops had come out of; as the car’s brake was set and the trapped pair bolted into the tavern Pork Chops stood there smiling, almost idly swinging his great axe; decapitating zombie after zombie. Sarge stopped in the doorway and turned to wave Pork Chops on in but the big man just smiled even more broadly; shaking his head in a very clear ‘no.’ Singing a song that could almost be heard above the noise of the gunfire and the screaming of the zombies he walked off to the west.

Slicing bodies and relieving them of their heads as he walked.

The end of the horde was anti-climactic, a unit mobilized at the airbase and used their AA guns to slice the proto-horde into small piles of protoplasm. When they reached the Whitewater a smallish man poked his head out of the APC’s top hatch and asked, “Did someone call a taxi?”

A lot was lost in those hours when the horde engulfed our town but we also learned that we couldn’t expect to live in a new world without discovering it’s rules. We now know that hordes will eventually accumulate where we have large centralized populations and that when the horde reaches critical density they’ll attack. So now we have scout companies to watch for them.

The Warren/Youngstown area was a complete loss, crops had been trampled and where they weren’t trampled they’d been contaminated by the amount of zombie blood that had been spilled near them. Homes were destroyed and worst of all, entire families were lost.

Cleanup, and the burning of all the bodies took years and because of that we had to find somewhere new to establish our town. We’d grown used to working together; we wanted to keep as much familiarity around us as we could. Eventually we found the area around Moraine State Park and managed to fortify it well enough to resist most zombie incursions.

The strange thing was though, during all the years we cleaned and did what we could to sanitize the area around the Youngstown/Warren area, we never found a trace of Pork Chop. Not his armor, his chain mail or that immense body of his.

We did find his axe, it’s in the Hall of Heroes now; in a diorama that shows how it was when it was found … the blade end was lodged in the skulls of two zombies who’d been standing far too close together. Both were taken out in one shot.

We also found the remnants of zombies that had run afoul of the big man and his juggernaut’s armor. Hamburger is probably the best description of what he left behind.

You wouldn’t want to eat it though ….

So … if you happen to come across a large man, who plays the guitar incredibly well and has the voice of a classic blues man, how about contacting the Moraine Enclave or the NUS/DF and passing on word about him. We don’t want to bother him, or even try to convince him to come back to the Enclave.

But it sure would be great to know that he’s alive, and where we could go to hear him sing, again. 


For those who may be interested, the hard copy book containing this story is available through Amazon and the ebook is available, through Kindle. Both links have now been moved to the "Places of Interest" listing on the right side of this page and closer to the top. 
Thank you for your interest, and I apologize for any inconvenience.