Dammit, Patterson!

“Dammit, Patterson!” by Elizabeth Fenley

When the screaming started, the smart thing to do would have been to run away. Unfortunately, as I ran toward the noise, I admitted to myself that I am just not that smart.

Collins grabbed my arm, “You are not going without me.”

I shook his hand off my arm. “Of course not. I might need a human shield.”

“Dammit, Patterson!”

I heard his boots landing heavily behind me, and then quickly beside me. The next second, he was in front of me. “See? I knew you’d make a great human shield. You already have this whole thing down---”

He stopped abruptly, ruining my lovely quip, as I ran right into him with a very unladylike “Ummmph.”

“What the fuck?” Collins said, pulling his cap off his buzzcut head.

“What the fuck do you mean, what the----” I stopped, shook my head a few times to see if it would clear my vision. Nope. “Uhhuh, sure, yes, right, I mean, obviously, definitely.

Collins turned to smack me on the shoulder with his cap. “You’re doing it again.”

A bad habit of mine, especially under stress, kind of like right now. “Right, I know, sorry, I just, sorry, I—”

“Shut up!”

“Because me talking is making this worse? How do you figure?”

“Just shut up.”

“Sure, ok, shutting up, yep, I’m shutting right up, and yes, I’m doing this on purpose because suddenly there’s this giant bridge that’s never been here before and under the bridge it’s raining zombies into the river, which was never here before either, yep, sure, shutting up is going to make this so much better.”

Collins doesn’t hit me or tell me to shut up again, so that’s… I don’t know, something.

“I thought this whole Zombie Apocalypse thing was so ten years ago. Then vampires, and then---”

He turns to look at me, his face an unhealthy florid, his blue eyes glassy. He’s clutching his cap like it’s the only thing holding him together. It seems like a 6’4” man in US Army fatigues and boots, with his side arm and tactical knife, and the MP armband should look a little more confident than he is at the moment. I try to remember what you’re supposed to do to see if someone’s having a stroke. Something about slurred speech and drooping on one side of the body, a really-hangover-times-a-million-headache. His mouth is gaping, like a fish trying to speak English; he looks ridiculous—I wish I had my phone to get a picture.

“Zombie got your tongue?” I finally manage.

He doesn’t look amused. That vein on his forehead is twitching like the time our C.O. ordered us to let an officer go after throwing his girlfriend through a bar window because he was friends with the abuser. Maybe it’s an embolism or something.

He takes a quick step toward me and lunges, grabbing onto both my arms—hard.

Ok, not cool. I grasp the shoulders of his fatigues to pull him down into my raised knee, planting it firmly in his stomach. He releases my arms as he doubles over. I sidestep, bring both elbows down full force on his back while sweeping his legs out from under him. He lands on his face in the grass.

I’m an MP too, dammit, not your little sister.

I step back a safe distance while he lies there groaning. Does he sound like a zombie? How would I know? I’ve never met a zombie to ask for a sample groan sound bite, but I could pop over the ridge and climb down the riverbank to ask one of the ones in the water, but that sounds like a bad idea, and I’m not really sure if you can turn into a zombie just by looking at a zombie, but I wouldn’t really know because if that’s true, then maybe I’m already a zombie, so now that I think about it, it really wouldn’t matter, would it? Oh, my God, I have a problem—two problems—oh, right, the zombies—make that three problems.

Collins rolls onto his back and looks up at me. He looks pissed, and he’s got dirt on his face, but I’m pretty sure it’s just human pissed.

“What the fuck was that for?”

“Well, you grabbed my arms. I thought maybe you were going to bite my face off or something, so I thought I’d let you have a little snack, something healthier for both of us, I hear grass is pretty good roughage, but I guess you’d have to ask a cow and there don’t seem to be any around here, which is too bad because then we’d have something for the zombies to eat instead of us.”

Collins climbs to his feet and brushes off his uniform, retrieves his cap and puts it regulation straight on his head.

Pretty sure zombies aren’t that meticulous.

“Did it occur to you, in that popcorn machine you call a brain, that you might be making enough noise to attract the zombies?”

Oh.

“Obviously not.” He brushes past me, peering discretely around the tree line toward the river.

The zombies are still falling from the underside of the bridge.

“And here I always thought the song was about raining men. I don’t think zombies count.” I grab my binoculars and take a closer look at our swimming undead. “Huh, all guys. I guess zombie men are men too. So that kinda works.”

Collins is really fighting to keep it together. “Are you trying to start a Zombie Invasion?”

“Only on Tuesdays.” I don’t know why I said that, but I know it’s not Tuesday, so that’s a negatory.

“Dammit, Patterson—”

“It’s not like it’s my fault it’s raining zombies under a magic bridge into a zombie river, and I can’t believe I actually said that out loud, despite the thousands of stupid things I’ve already said in the last five minutes alone, but you know what I really think would work here—napalm—and I know just where we can get some.” Ha. That was a good one. I’m on fire—well, not literally, but I know a bunch of zombies who are about to be.

“Dammit, Patterson!”

Maybe I should legally get my name changed to that. It has a ring to it.