Becoming Badass

The camping supply store had just about everything I could need since outdoor activities often involve chopping, cutting, and axing. As a result its resume has a strong ‘transferable skills’ section. My little hatchet split skull just as well as it would split wood. I know from experience you can also split your shin open if you’re an idiot. My skinning knife was staying put since it seemed to separate ligaments when called to task however due to its size it was more intimate than I would like as a first choice. I decided to get some of its bigger brothers. Without boring you (just yet) with my, selection of up-close-and-personals, I strapped them about my person and decided to re-asses my current situation.

My plan in thus far has been – and will continue to be – surviving. Making it to the outdoor shop and getting some good kit added quite a bit to my armor class, and gearing up with some reasonable weapons hopefully lowered my THAC0. Keep in mind until now I’ve be fighting off reflex…and swinging a big stick.

I felt fully prepared to move forward and look for some medium/long range weapons and knew of only one place where Canadians can go to get just about anything: abysmal customer service, deals on crappy sockets sets, ice skates, shotguns, and tires. I figure with a reasonable arsenal of weapons, I can keep checking the quest boxes off my list and finally sort this mess out. First things first, I gotta geet meh sum guuuns.

To recap so far I am the brainchild for a worldwide event where every human jumps at the same time effectively having the Earth’s human population being zero for a few seconds.

When I landed a zombie tried to eat my brain so I kicked him…hard.

I battled my way out of a nice park using punches, kicks, a stick, and some sarcasm to get to a mountain equipment store so I could get some fresh new digs.

Inside I faced off against a bright red, black eyed super fast & strong demon zombie thing who got wtfpwnt and now I have to finish up my 3 point list before actually stopping and thinking about what was happening. Back to action, sorta:

After my fall (inertia fail) with an overloaded bag, I decided packing light was the way to go. I chose a medium size 28L bag with some nice strappy bits so I could hook things onto it. I had the advantage of taking only primo ultra-lite gear so when it was all said and done, my kit was light and felt prepared to go backpacking through the woods or battle zombies. The most fun of this whole experience is living the dream of the arming scene. I approached my armament with the calm cool…oh who am I kidding I was still shaking with adrenaline from the burner – easier than saying “the sun burned, black eyed…. – and knew I had lucked out. I made a plan to approach equipping myself like a French assassin who has a plant fetish and wants to teach a young black swan how to lay the hurt: long range first, then medium range for when sht gets real, and short range only when needed.

As much as I like reminiscing (or gushing) over the prowess of an average looking Korean at this point I have bigger, black-eyed demon fish to fry. Turns out even after being offered a mat my angry friend was not feeling the urge to ohm, and wasn’t particularly interested in sun salutations, downward or upward dogs. Judging from the clicking, garbled hiss that seemed to resonate from his chest I had the feeling ‘pancake brain, eat brain’ was more in line with his approach to inner peace.

I used what few seconds I had before he responded to my yogatic attack to pose all cool like in a low stance and scan the immediate area for something to do a little more damage. As I was in the bag section of the store there wasn’t too much I could do. Bah. A quick mental recap of the store reminded me there is an entire section dedicated to wonderful camping tools like knives and hatchets. Knives and hatchets, if only I had them!

Twwwwoooooo SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeep!!!

Oh ya, thus gai.

I stood up, refocusing on the maniacal jerk as he began his charge again. He blitzed toward me with is arms trailing behind his torso so that he looked like a fleet footed anime ninja, clearly aiming for ‘the mighty clap’ to splode my noggin.

…Press X to activate adrenaline….

Yaaay for adrenaline! It let me see things at a more reasonably terrifying pace. His head and body snapping backwards as he stopped to initiate the whiplash attack of his arms. Shoulders bulged, bending arms further back until they started to shoot forward. I also noticed one hand reaching behind to the small of my back while the other unclipped something from my left hip…

…His arms had nearly completed the 180-degree 'arc of the dominant' when I realized what my body had in mind. And a smirk showed up on my poker face.

Just as Dr. McSunburn was about to shatter my reality I dropped back into a low stance and shot my right had up to take the place of my head. The clap was nearly as deafening as I remember the first one being only this time a little squishier.

See, adrenaline is great for slowing things down and speeding things up, but most times the straight up ‘zomg I’m gonna get got’ fear is bad for your immediate short term memory. This is where training comes in. One of the first things I did when I got into the store was go to the knives n’ hatchet show and get me some. I had tucked a hatchet into the back of my pants until I could find a more suitable holster, and grabbed a small skinning knife and clipped it onto my hip. My immediate short-term memory didn’t remember that because, well, it was more concerned with being all emo about dying. The trained part of my body did, hence automated movement. Now we were coming together, automated response, and fully aware conscience. And the effect was devastating.

The squish sound was the result of me putting a hatchet blade in the place where his clapping hands thought my head should be. As the beast slammed his hands on what he thought was my skull, he inadvertently clapped one of his hands in half. In my left hand I held the small skinning knife like a cool 1980’s action hero knife fighter – upside-down if you will, with the blade coming out on the outside of my hand by my pinky finger.

That hand decided to join in the fun. I pumped my arm, slashing through the left tricep of my assailant, and watched the handless arm drop limply – I must have severed something important. I dropped the knife as I rose, reaching up and around his left arm trapping it against my side. Snapping my right arm forward I chopped three times with the hatchet, striking repeatedly to the side of his neck. At the third strike I felt the hatchet stick on something so I shifted my hips and brought my right arm up and behind his ugly face. Pulling the trapped arm, torquing harder with my hips, and with a mighty kiup I executed a head and arm throw sending black eyes sailing toward the shop wall. Without missing a beat I charged right behind my soaring, flailing, hissing, half broken friend and leapt into the air. He hit the wall fully inverted and looked like someone at a fair who wore one of those Velcro wall suits, stuck like an upside down starfished fly. He only remained that was for the briefest of instances because I had followed behind with a leaping bone shattering knee. I blasted him in the sternum, making his chest concave…like a cave.

Fewf. Chop off a hand, immobilize an arm, hatchet a neck, throw, and deflate a chest cavity. Pretty epic little combo imho.

….sss..sss..sseeeeeeee.pppp

"Really dude?" Bah, if I only I had thrown him into some explosives so I could have walked away all cool like without looking back!

Instead I calmly put one boot on his head, reached down and wrenched by hatchet free.

…tt..tttwoooo…..one arm tried in vain to reach at me. And then fell limp as I lodged my hatchet six inches into his head.



"You shoulda stuck with namaste."


Not as cool as walking away from splotions without looking, but a pretty good line.


Now, back to packing my bags

Master Kang was, and is still an enigma. A slight man, he stood maybe five foot eight inches tall or so and couldn’t have weighed more than a buck forty. He had the look of someone who was somehow thirty and eighty years old at the same time. In every picture I saw on the wall of the dojang he looked the same. Whether doing split kicks in front of the Eifel Tower, or a leaping jump kick over 8 crouched men a calm presence surrounded him. At the same time I knew a very small amount of what he was capable of. Sorta like one of those big green generating boxes you see in suburbs, you can touch it and it won’t hurt you, but the subtle humming of the energy store within warned it was not to be trifled with.

As I stared at the wall of pictures and achievements I read his marital mastery:
…Presented with the title of 8th Dan Master Tae Kwon Do
…Presented with the title of 7th Dan Master Kendo
…Presented with the title of 8th Dan Master Hapkido

There was one more title he had that I noticed:

…Presented with the title of 6th Dan Master &^DHW^&%^#

Never heard of ”&^DHW^&%^#” before? Neither had I. Why is it called ”&^DHW^&%^#”? Well that’s because it’s so epic I don’t think it registered in conscious thought. Not because I can’t remember…

&^DHW^&%^# is the same martial art he simply described as "You use anything. To, uh keeel your opponent". Oh yeah, that one.

Wow. For those of you who don’t know martial arts, that means he knew the high flying and spinning kicks of a Tae Kwon Do master, had the ability to cleave someone in half with a kitana – the sword of the samurai - and the means of tossing your around then breaking all your limbs through Hapkido, and just for good measure if his hands, feet, or sword didn’t end your existence, he could batter you with anything in the room. Impressive stuff.

Lucky for me I trained to at least a noob first class in Hapkido, Tae Kwon Do, and even sparred in Kendo. Too bad I never trained in that other one, because if I had, my yoga mat of doom would have done the trick. Who knew at the onset of a zombie apocalypse I wouldn’t be able to catch a break. Sometimes it just takes a maniacal, bright red, black eyed fiend trying to pancake your noggin to bring back the good memories. Apparently said fiend will also trigger the unconscious movement of a body trained for defense…

I was living the dream. I was in an empty store full of toys I could load up and use on zombies, and had the luxury of being able to take my time packing. Now, if this were a traditional fantasy novel, I would spend the next 2000 or so words explaining in glorious detail what items I put where. Good thing it isn’t. Suffice to say I figured I would at some point find some other humans and we could all team up, so I packed 8 ‘backpacker’ bags with the same gear:
Maps, dried food, water packs, med kits, a knife, a flint, a multi-tool, some rope, and some other goodies.

For myself I quickly realized that I’m not nearly as fit as I need to be. Once I packed up my bag of holding, I did my lower back the disservice of lifting it up and strapping it on. Apparently 150lbs of all the goodies I wanted weighed 150lbs. Also apparently, I’m not capable of moving all that quickly with a 150lb backpack strapped on. In fact ‘movement’ is more of a leaned forward duck waddle. Suddenly my whacking stick was looking mighty efficient.

While lamenting my lack of physical fitness I heard for the first time a sound that is permanently etched as a neural trace in my poor brain.

Two-Seeeeeep

Doesn’t look so bad does it? Two Seep. Oh noes, so scarzed!

Try for your own amusement to whisper the two, then inhale through your teeth and say seeeeeep as if sipping some hot tea.

Two-Seeeeep, click-ick-ick-ick-ick
Two-Seeeeep, click-ick-ick-ick-ick

Ok, now I’m getting freaked out. I duck-waddled around to face the sound and saw just what it was. At first glance it looked like a car mechanic wearing its coveralls down so its upper body was not covered. What was once a regular human torso was now a demented caricature of a fitness model. Bright red as if burned by the sun on March break skin clashed with bulging black veins to create a wickedly demonic looking zombie. It’s eyes were where a humans would be, however they were all black. Not dark and mysterious black. Black, 100%, no whites, no pupils, just darkness. Creepy. The sun burned, black-veined, black-eyed creature was spooky enough, but what really gave me the willies was the grin.

It was looking at me like I was crack and it needed a fix. It LITERALLY grinned ear to ear. Its mouth stretching beyond the capacity of any humans, it looked at me and uttered two simple words:

Twooooo (puckering its lips to accentuate the ooo)
Then back to the grin and
Seeeeeeeep

The Click-ick-ick-ick-ick was its teeth chattering and weirdly blistered tongue flicking against them.



So I might have peed a little.



It then flashed forward with the speed and grace of a raging anime ninja. Bounding at me it apparently was just like a Hollywood movie – it had a love affair with Parkour as well – and pulled some flashy acrobatics off by running along a wall for a few steps and side flipping over the pile of gear I had gathered.

Two hands whipped toward either side of my head as if boxing my ears because I swore at it. I managed to lean back just enough that its hands hammered together in front of my face, the force of their clap resounding loud enough to set my ears ringing.

I kept right on falling over, apparently that backpack had sided with Newton and wanted to party down with gravity. Thanks science.

Because the creature was moving full speed it continued right over me, making it look as if I pulled off some sweet back bridge dodge. What a sec, isn’t momentum in science too? Thanks science!

Howling in rage and lashing out with one leg, the ugly jerk hit my bag with enough force to send me spinning away into my collection of gear. I guess it was luck because if he had hit my body I think I might have been liquefied.

TWOOOOOO-SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!

Yeah, I know, you want to smash my noggin and eat my brains. Good thing this isn’t a movie or I would have struggled until just the last second to get the bag off. Turns out the clips worked just as they were intended to and I quickly unclasped them. Looking up I saw speedy McUgly streaking towards me again. Eeep. Diving out of the bag and rolling forward I reached out and grabbed the first thing I could get my hands on and threw it at the beast on my way around. Turning end over end I could almost hear the whistle as my implement of destruction whirled toward my adversary. With a soft thud my weapon struck, halting the beast in its tracks. It looked at me, down at its chest where my desctructo disk had landed, and back at me, tilting its head like a confused dog.

And that’s when I realized I had thrown a yoga mat…FML

My erratic flight through the park brought me closer to a great mountain equipment store, I just had to hope they’d be cooperative……zing!

As luck would have it I didn’t encounter any more slow hungries in my last mad dash to the store, but there was evidence of the goofy bastards all over the place. I entered through one of the front doors locking it behind me. I figure if I’m locked in a store with zombies I can use all the fun toys in here for practice.

“Oooooooh hello thur zombies! I figure if you come out now and try to eat my face, we can just have at it and get on with things”

….Cue zombie mmfffghrlgl…..

“……………….”


…I said CUE ZOMBIE MMMRRFGFHLER!

“……..”

Hmm. That sure made life easy. The thing about having EVERYONE jumping at the same time is that nothing was open for the great day, I guess no employees here to turn into zombies = no zombies in the store. Felt like a bit of a shallow victory. I thought I was gonna go all bullet time on some slow moving punching bag.

This situation seems to be both good AND true (enter shadowy movement behind me that I am unaware is there but makes you, the reader fear for my mortal coils safety).

Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. The walk out of the park should have taken 5-10 minutes…but with my hyped up adrenaline it seemed to take 4 months. 4 months is a long time to live through with nothing happening. I felt like my calmed down self was owed an apology from the adreno-monster. Good thing I got my breathing under control and reassessed my situation.

A quick mental check of my accepted quests showed I still needed supplies. Although my gore covered whacking stick was a handy addition, I couldn’t help thinking food, shelter, and more weapons would help flesh out my Casey Jones persona.

Let’s get rockin!