Читать книгу Allied Zombies for Peace - Craig Nybo - Страница 22

Chapter 15

Schecky’s homemade gun acted like a pipe bomb; the galvanized steel barrel exploded as he let the pen spring firing pin go. Along with the .30-06 slug zinging off roughly in the direction of the Vietnam Vet marchers, bits of shrapnel buzzed away like wasps from where Schecky lay on the pavement. Schecky’s hand burst into a fireball of pain. He yowled in agony, his eyes instantly tearing up.

Bits of shrapnel from the exploding zip gun found various marks. A parade spectator with a leather overcoat and beaver fedora jerked forward, a sting exploding in his shoulder. The man reached over his ear to feel the spot and pulled away a palm full of blood. More surprised at being hit than reacting to the pain, he looked around with quick glances, trying to identify the source of the projectile.

Another man tottered hard to one side, dots of blood flecking out in a fan from his face, his ear cut to shreds by a flying piece of galvanized steel.

A woman with a stroller fell to the ground, her calf bleeding. She sobbed as she looked at her ruined pantyhose. Blood bubbled from a gash exposing puckered skin and ruined muscle tissue halfway between her ankle and the back of her knee.

Along with the shrapnel damage, Schecky’s single .30-06 round whizzed in a straight path. The bullet grazed the right shoulder of Ziggy Poulson, a Nam Vet twice decorated in the field for valor: once for toppling the gunning nest of a squad of VC who had hunkered along the side of a game trail; the other—a purple heart—for taking a piece of shrapnel in the rear end from a claymore.

The bullet continued on its path, zinging through the ranks of the Columbus High School marching band, nearly taking out a sousaphone player with halitosis at the rear flank. One of the bass drummers wondered why his drum had spontaneously boomed between the third and the fourth count of the marching cadence. It wasn’t until after the parade that he noticed the twin 1/4-inch holes blown through the drumheads.

The slug buzzed by the ear of an overweight woman with a wide-brimmed hat. Thinking the bullet was a fly, she flicked at the air with a fan she had folded out of a flier given to her by someone running for Columbus city council.

A squad of cheerleaders stood in a seven-girl pyramid in the middle of the street. The smallest of the troop, a redhead with pixie features, stood at the top of the formation, her face peeled into an almost synthetic smile. She punched at the air, cueing the twin, male cheerleaders below to catch her. “One, two, three, four,” she shouted before falling backwards. Just before she fell into the arms of the twins, the bullet zipped by, inches below her bare midriff. She mistook the slug’s high-pitched wine for a catcall from one of hundreds of young men in the audience. She turned toward the parade spectators, found a particularly good-looking guy—who she supposed had whistled at her—and winked at him.

Anton Fleschman, the Grand Cyclops of the KKK, Columbus, Ohio chapter, an avid hunter, recognized the bullet for what it was as it punched through the front of his red regalia just under his right armpit and blew through the back of his uniform, just missing his body and whining on.

At the end of its path, Schecky’s bullet found a permanent home; it thunked into the chest of AZP leader, Arlo Fitzgerald and lodged into his heart. Arlo rocked backwards, suddenly unstable. He felt what was left of his cold, vascular organ explode in his chest. He looked down to see a new hole in the white shirt he had just picked up from the dry-cleaner that morning. Gray fluid oozed from the entry wound. The pain overtook him. He collapsed backward. Unable to steady himself with his bad arm, his head made unyielding contact with the road, knocking him instantly unconscious or dead—nearby zombies couldn’t decide.

AZP marchers crowded around him, at first unable to recognize what had knocked their leader down. One of Fitzgerald’s aids, a man with one good eye, the other hanging out of the front of his face on a fleshy stalk, turned Fitzgerald over and spotted the oozing wound. “He’s been shot,” the aid shouted in a rasp.