Zombieboy

Chapter 12

"I...I, okay. I don't remember a bunch of stuff real good.", Kyle started.

Chuck nodded, "Well what do you remember? Do you know what happened to your mom and dad?"

Shaking his head Kyle said, "No. Nothing, I just kind've woke up in an alley. When I woke up I couldn't think so good, I didn't even know my name...then something happened and I could remember stuff better." Kyle looked at the floor and slid one foot out of his crocs nervously.

"Did you...did you kill somebody Kyle? And eat them? Did you kill your mother?", asked Chuck, his anger starting to rise.

"What? No! I don't know, it was someone else, they were already, you know...", Kyle's brain said 'Miss Wallace', startling him, he sat up more straight and made circles in the carpet with the toes of his crocless foot.

Sighing, Chuck said, "Okay, just start from the beginning and tell me what you remember."

Kyle told Chuck about waking up, slowly remembering things and deciding to head for home. He told them about how he spotted them on the old furnace behind the ice arena and how he sneacked by them on his way home. Kyle told them about the engineer and Jeremy and how that went badly, finally he told them a heavily modified version of what happened when he came back to their house to get Chuck's gun. In place of the young woman, Kyle substituted spotting the engineer and having to hide out in the house until he was sure the old guy was gone. At the end of the tale Chuck was certain Kyle was lying or covering up parts of it, but he decided not to question Kyle's version of events for the time being.

"Kyle, I am sure you told us as much as you can, now I need to ask you some hard questins, okay?"

Kyle nodded.

"First, you know what you are, right? You are one of 'them', a...a 'zombie'. This might, well is probably going to be a problem for us pretty soon. Do you need to eat? I mean, are you constantly hungry?"

"Ah, I know what I am, I get hungry, yeah, I am not too bad right now, not really hungry.", Kyle replied.

"What happens when you get hungry? Are we going to be in danger?", Chuck asked.

Kyle thought about that for a moment, a long awkward silence stretched into a minute of tie while Kyle thought. He wanted to say 'No!', however he remembered the woman in the bedroom and finally admitted, "I don't know. I don't think I would do anything to you or Katie, I know you."

"Well at least you are honest, mostly. Right now we need you, we gotta get out of this place and the other zombies won't look at you twice, unlees they are some of the smarter kind, like you or that kid at the park. Crap. Maybe there are too many smart ones around to make getting away possible."

"What happened to you? Where is Missy? And Chuckie?", Kyle asked, half not wanting to know.

"We-ell,", Chuck began, "Missy and Chuckie ar supposed to be with her mom, Katie's grandma Judy, you met her when school let out, she brought you and Katie out for ice cream, remember?"

Kyle nodded 'yes'.

"As for what happened to us, well yesterday, no it would have been Tuesday, two days ago. Anyway Katie had swimming practice, Missy had gone up to Judy's for the rest of the week, we were supposed to meet her tomorrow and, look I am not telling this too good, am I? Of course I have been trying to sleep on top of sheet metal with starving zombies 12 feet below me too. So I brought Katie down for her afternoon swim lesson, there were a few news items on about some drug crazed people attacking random people, we live out in the suburbs, ya know? Nothing happens out here and the pool didn't call and cancel the lessons or anything. So we went. Everything was okay at first, just kids swimming, a few parents like me watching them, then this guy comes up to the chain link fence and starts staring at the kids. Me and another father see him and we don't like it. We thought, I don't know, that he was some sort of pervert or something. So we tell him to shove off. The guy slowly turns his head towards us and says real slowly, 'Make me'."

"The fu-, the nerve, right? Well the guy with me was like 200 pounds of muscle, he goes for the gate to, well make the guy leave, I tell him to hold up and pull out my cell phone to call the cops. Muscle man doesn't hear or doesn't listen, he just disappears into the building to get out there while I dial 911. The cops are busy, no answer, so I figure I better start moving, muscle man is already out there telling the guy to move on, up in his face and all about it. The guy turns to stare at him, now this guy is just a normal Joe, gray haired, 50-ish, about 5'9" and maybe 165 pounds soaking wet. He just says he ain't leaving. Muscle guy grabs him and I run for the exit so I miss what happened next, when I got out there though Muscle man was lying on the ground, bleeding a bit from his nose and in serious pain. The swim instructors are telling the kids to get inside and I am faced with some sort of old man kung-fu fighter or something."

After taking a breath Chuckie continued, "Muscle man is getting back up and II rush over to help him, yelling at the guy to get out of here before the police come. The old guy just says the police won't come and comes towards us. Muscle man gets to hs feet, he was not stupid though, he says to me, 'The guy is stronger than he looks, he might be one of those druggies from the news'. I nod and we turn to see the guy about five feet away. I looked around for a weapon, nothing, I mean it is a public pool for Chrissake! Muscle man swings a fist at the guy, who takes a couple good blows, then starts hitting back. Muscle man is pretty agile and has learned that the guy hits hard so he dodged out of the way, seeing an opening I throw my cell phone at the guy's head, I got him right in the eye!"

"Of course getting hit in the eye with a cell phone didn't hurt him much, but it gave us a chance to back off again. Muscle man wasn't doing so good, plus he really couldn't fight so well either. You know I have been taking Judo down at the rec center there for a couple of years, right?"

Kyle nodded.

"Well competing in tournaments is not like really fighting, I figured muscle man had given it a shot and I had better step up to the plate now." Chuck sighed wearily, putting his head in his hands, then looking up to continue, "It worked, kind of scary really, the came on towards us and I stepped forward to meet him, a second later the guy was slamming into the concrete sidewalk and me and muscleman were backing away again, back towards the entrance to the pool, through the building. The old guy was getting up again, slowly, but it didn't look like I had done anything much to him. Let me tell you Kyle, if I had been tossed like that onto the concrete like that I probably wouldn't have been able to get up again. In fact, I probably would have been so badly hurt, I...well we backed away from him into the pool house. We got there and really there is no great way to close it up, just those chain link gates, during the day the employees padlock them to the walls, so kids can't swing them shut, the employees were just standing around with their thumbs up their asses. I yelled that we needed the keys so we could shut the gates. One of them got his side unlocked and shut while the other one, she could find where the key was, by the time she got her side unlocked and almost swung shut the guy was there. The teenagers were just getting the second door shut when the guy slammed into it, forcing it open far enough so he could grab at them, me and muscleman tried to stop him, we tried, but he grabbed the girl by the hair and started pulling..."

Chuck lowered his head into his hands and surpassed a sob, trying with some success to turn his raw emotion into a cough or sneeze. His audience, just kids, didn't know what to make of this so they remained politely quiet until Chuck pulled himself together. Rubbing his face with his hands he brushed away some fatigued, angry tears and continued.

"Well it got the girl, we managed to pull the gate shut and muscleman held me back from going after the teenager while the boy finished locking up the gates. It was too late though, way too late. A group of slower people approached the pool from across the open lawns, I don't know of they were drawn by the noise or if the main guy had somehow communicated to them. Anyway by the time me and muscleman got back to the main pool area the life guards and instructors had all the kids gathered between the locker room doors, still outside. I got there saw the crowd of, well zombies, and immediately said we had to get out, before the mob arrived. Some disagreed, most were just kids, I mean it was a swim lesson for 8 to 10 year olds, most parents just did the old 'drop and run'. The others, including muscleman, said to hang tight and call the police.

Chuck looked Kyle in the eyes, “I couldn't stay there, no way, the mob was closing in, it was get out or die sooner or later, there were no good places to hide in the swim building, you know? Hell, the roof is only chain link fence! Maybe the concession stand would have held up. That is how we got out, by the way. I took Katie and we ran to the concession stand is, you know how they have it half in and half out of the pool fence, so you can buy stuff if you are in the park or in the pool? Well they had the park side open and it was facing away from the mob of people, so Katie and I just climbed over the counter and got out. It seemed easier and I didn't want to deal with unlocking the front gates...or the guy that was out there either. So we made it out, right, just didn't make it far.”

Chuck put his hands on the table top, then put his chin on top of his hands. Kyle noted the flowing rainbow colors getting slower, not dimming by any means, just slowing down slightly, he though Chuck must be falling asleep.

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