Apocalypse- the Plan

by Gary M. Chesla

  The hand disappeared back through the window and a few seconds later the pounding started again.

  Next the top right panel fell from the door.

  All the while, Dave could feel Michell’s grip on his right arm getting tighter and tighter.

  Dave stood motionless as he continued to shine his flashlight on the broken window.

  Suddenly someone appeared, they could see the side of a face near the broken window.

  “It’s Betty,” Michelle shrieked as she began to move around Dave to run towards the door.

  Dave grabbed her arm and yanked her back towards him.

  “Let go,” Michelle said as she looked at Dave. “That’s Betty out there, she looks injured and needs help. I thought you said she was dead. We have to let her in before something happens to her.”

  “Michelle, stop it,” Dave said.

  “But that’s Betty,” Michelle said as she looked back at the door, then she let out a horrified gasp.

  Dave looked at the door and saw that Betty was now staring through the broken window at him and Michelle with her clouded over milky white eyes.

  The left side of Betty’s face was gone, revealing the inside of her mouth and cheek, full of bloody teeth.

  Her mouth opened, the gruesome appearance of the lips on the right side of her face parting was sickening enough, then she began to moan loudly.

  “My God, what happened to her?” Michelle asked.

  “When I was coming into the building, I saw four of those crazed animals on top of her, pulling her body apart, “Dave whispered. “I used my club to kill them. Betty was dead, just lying on the ground with her dead eyes staring into space.”

  “But she’s moving,” Michelle shrieked. “She’s trying to get into the building. How can she be moving in her condition?”

  “I don’t understand it either,” Dave replied. “I don’t understand any of this. It’s a damn nightmare.”

  Michelle just stared at Betty’s grotesque body, moaning and pounding at the door.

  “Bill was right,” Michelle said, “It’s the only explanation, what else could it be.”

  “What do you mean Bill was right?” Dave asked.

  “Zombies,” Michelle replied. “Betty and all those people out front aren’t crazy, they are all zombies.”

  “I thought Bill was just trying to be funny,” Dave said, “and I wasn’t in any mood for more of his jokes.”

  “People running around that look like they should be dead,” Michelle said. “They aren’t crazy, they are really dead. Isn’t that the definition of what a zombie is. Betty got attacked and killed by those four zombies you killed out there and now she is moving and trying to break into the building to get at us. She is now a zombie too.”

  Dave thought for a second as he stared at Betty reaching in through the broken window panes with her bloody arms.

  “It can’t be,” Dave said. “Besides I don’t believe in zombies.”

  “Then how do you explain that bullets don’t faze them, but if you hit them over the head with a club you can kill them?” Michelle asked.

  “You’re right about everything you’ve said,” Dave replied. “But Zombies?”

  “You told me that you thought there had to be a simple explanation for all of this, how they act, what they do,” Michelle said. “If you ask me, Betty being a zombie is a pretty simple explanation.”

  “This is crazy,” Dave replied.

  “It sure is,” Michelle said. “I hope she can’t feel pain, she looks horrible. Do you think you should put Betty out of her misery?”

  “Probably before she attracts any attention this way,” Dave replied.

  “Are you going to shoot her?” Michelle asked.

  “No,” Dave replied. “The sound of the gun might attract more attention than what Betty is doing. Wait here.

  Dave walked over to the door and used his club to push Betty away from the door.

  Then Dave opened the door and stepped outside.

  Michelle heard the loud crack when Dave’s club landed on the top of Betty’s head.

  Dave looked around the building, the four other bodies were thankfully where they had been when Dave had gone into the building earlier.

  He went back inside and locked the door.

  “Zombies?” Dave thought. “How the hell could something this crazy happen?”

  “Help me move a couple desks in front of this door,” Dave said. “They will help reinforce the door and keep anything from crawling through that broken window.”

  “No problem,” Michelle replied.

  Dave and Michelle went into the nearest office and started dragging the desk out into the hall.

  Chapter 8

  Dave stood at the window watching the staggering mob out on the street.

  Michelle noticed the look of deep concentration on his face, which then turned into a painful look of horror.

  “Are you still trying to decide if they are zombies?” Michelle asked.

  “No, whatever they are, it really doesn’t matter at this point,” Dave replied. “I’m just trying to think about what we need to do to survive.

  I also think I’ve determined why our ambulances never showed up at the hospital.”

  “What do you think happened to them?” Michelle asked.

  “Well, if this zombie theory has any validity, the passengers became zombies during the trip to the hospital and attacked the driver,” Dave replied.

  “I never thought of that,” Michelle said. “Besides I didn’t think you believed in zombies?”

  “I’m not sure anymore,” Dave replied. “But it doesn’t matter what I believe, all that matters is what is actually happening.

  We can call them what we want, but regardless of what they are, we have to try and understand them and to deal with them.

  Whatever they are, they’re vicious as hell!”

  “So, how did you decide the ambulances didn’t make it to the hospital because of zombies?” Michelle asked.

  “As I sat here thinking, what happened to Betty kept running through my mind. Then it hit me that Joe had been bitten over at that old lady’s place. I sent him with Bill to be checked out at the hospital. At 81 Sunnyside Drive we found a kid that was barely alive, I had Ted take him to the hospital to see if he could be saved. I was hoping that if they could save him or at least keep him alive long enough we might be able to find out what had happened at the house. Then it hit me, if they turned into zombies like Betty did, it would explain why Ted and Bill never made it to the hospital.”

  “That’s a horrible thought,” Michelle said sadly. “That explains the look I saw on your face.”

  “That would be part of the reason,” Dave replied. “There are a few other things bothering me.”

  “I hate to ask, but what else has you so worked up beside the obvious out there,” Michelle asked.

  “I’m becoming concerned about how we are going to survive until help arrives, that is if help arrives,” Dave replied.

  What do you mean if help arrives?” Michelle asked.

  “If this is happening all over,” Dave replied. “Who is going to be coming to help us? Everyone is going to have their hands full with their own problems. The only one that even knows we are here is that guy over at the State Police barracks. If he is as swamped as I think he is, we are probably the least of his problems, which means there may not be any help coming.”

  “The woman over at the hospital knows we are here,” Michelle said with a hint of a smile on her face.

  “Yeah, that’s right, help should be arriving any minute now,” Dave smirked. “But that brings up another problem. If we assume that the ambulances throughout the area have been taking injured people to the hospital that had been attacked by these so-called zombies. Can you imagine what is going on over there now if the injured people all began to turn into zombies? I doubt there would be anyone left alive at the hospital by now. It would be like what I saw at Sunnyside Drive but only hun
dreds of times worse.”

  “You’re starting to make me feel worse than I already do,” Michelle said. “I’ve just been thinking about what has happened here, but I guess this is a lot bigger than just what’s going on here.”

  “It might be a lot bigger,” Dave replied. “How big, I’m afraid to think about it. But for now, we can’t worry about that, we need to worry about staying alive. That’s my main concern right now.”

  Michelle thought about Betty trying to break through the door.

  “Seriously, are we going to be OK in here?” she asked. “Betty almost got in the building all by herself.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that too,” Dave replied. “If that mob out there discovers that we are here, we could be in trouble. I thought the doors and windows in this place were a lot sturdier than they are, after seeing what Betty was able to do I believe we would be sitting ducks in here if that mob decided to break in.”

  “There has to be something we can do.” Michelle said.

  “The size of that crowd out there is getting larger,” Dave replied. “Before much longer, one of them will be attracted towards our building by something. If that happens, we would have a hard time keeping them out of the building. I was thinking it might be best if we got out of here before anything like that happens.”

  “Where would we go?” Michelle asked. “Do you think there would be anywhere we could go that would be any different than being here. I’m not real excited about trying to go anywhere with all those zombies running around. But maybe we have this all wrong, maybe there is something different going on than we think. Maybe those people aren’t really zombies, maybe it is something else, something simple like you thought, something easily explained.

  There has to be some way we could secure the building. If we could just manage to stay here until it gets light outside, maybe we will see what’s really happening.”

  “You might be right,” Dave replied. “I honestly don’t know. But if we stay here, we could end up trapped, or worse. I was just thinking if we left before something happened we might stand a better chance.”

  “If we left, where would you think we should go?” Michelle asked again.

  “I haven’t figured that out yet,” Dave replied. “But I’ve been thinking over two possibilities. We could try going over to the Naval Base, it’s not far from here and if we could get inside the base there should be a lot of people with guns to help us.

  My second choice was to go out on Route 95 and go down to the State Police Barracks near Jacksonville.”

  Michelle walked over to the side of the window and looked outside, being careful not to stand where she could be seen by any of the zombies on the street outside.

  “How would we get by them?” she asked.

  “My patrol car is out back in the parking lot,” Dave replied. “We could out run them in the car. If we found any of the streets blocked by another mob, we could push through them with the car.”

  “Or we could just wait here until they all went away,” Michelle said.

  “Or we could do that,” Dave replied. “Now we have a choice, in another hour, we might not have a choice. Besides, what if they don’t go away?”

  “They can’t just stay here?” Michelle asked. “Can they?”

  “That’s part of the problem, I just don’t know,” Dave replied. “If I knew this might be an easy decision to make. But like everything else tonight, it’s a shot in the dark, a damn crap shoot.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m not much of a gambler,” Michelle said. “I always bet on the wrong horse, but if I had to make a decision, I would…..”

  Dave put his finger up to his lips, signaling Michelle to be quiet as a startled look flashed across his face.

  Michelle noticed the look of fear in Dave’s eyes and began to turn towards the door, but before she could move, Dave put one hand over her mouth and pulled her to the floor.

  “There is something in the hallway outside the door,” Dave whispered.

  “How?” Michelle mouthed the word silently as she stared into Dave’s eyes.

  “Stay here,” Dave whispered and then began to crawl over to the door on his hands and knees.

  As he got near the door, he began to hear something bumping into the walls out in the hallway.

  He crawled to the bottom of the door and held his ear to the door, hoping to hear the sound more clearly.

  As he listened, he looked back towards the desk and saw Michelle looking around the side of the desk.

  Dave quickly signaled for her to stay behind the desk.

  The sharp look in his eyes made Michelle jerk her head back out of sight.

  Dave turned his attention back to figuring out what was on the other side of the door.

  From what he could hear, there was definitely something moving out in the hallway.

  Dave became more concerned when he began to hear multiple sounds coming from different areas out in the hallway.

  The bumping and sliding sounds were also joined by an occasional groan or grunting noise.

  “How many?” Dave asked himself as he looked down at his club in the loop on his belt. The dried blood covered club reminded him of the numerous times he had used it so far tonight.

  “If there are only a few of them,” Dave thought, “I could rush out and hopefully put them down quickly before any more showed up. Then I would need to find how the hell they got inside the building and secure that location before any other zombies found their way inside.”

  Dave continued to listen through the door.

  He was now hearing more strange sounds coming from the hallway.

  “I could be opening the door to a real hornet’s nest,” Dave thought. “But if I don’t open the door and the hallway is full of those bastards, they will find us in this room and we would be trapped, that is if we can keep them from breaking down the door.”

  Dave mulled over his options and decided all of them were bad. He could only hope that he would get lucky and find that there were only a few in the hallway, a few that he could easily handle.

  “If not, if there are a shit load of them out there,” Dave thought, “I’m screwed no matter what I do.”

  As the amount of scraping against the outside of the door increased, Dave reached down and slid his club from its loop.

  He crawled to the side of the door, put his back to the wall and slowly stood against the wall.

  He took a slow breath to relax when he realized how tightly he was gripping the club.

  Then he slowly slid his face to the edge of the window to look out into the hallway.

  Dave almost dropped his club when faces began to viciously slam against the window.

  He immediately knew he was in trouble.

  The glass cracked as blood was smeared across the window from the grotesque faces throwing themselves at the glass.

  It sounded like the entire hallway had erupted into a mass rush of bodies trying to get to the door in the narrow passage.

  Bodies crashed into the walls as the moaning blended together to become one loud roar.

  Dave turned from the door and yelled to Michelle as he ran back into the room, “Help me with this desk!”

  Michelle stood, stunned by the violent sounds coming from the door.

  Glass breaking, wood cracking amid a chorus of angry inhuman animal howling filled the air.

  Michelle stood staring as Dave got behind the big old metal desk and shoved it towards the door.

  The phones and the computer crashed to the floor with large pieces of the computer screen shattering and skidding across the floor.

  When he reached the door, a loud crash sounded as the desk slammed into the door.

  Dave grabbed the side of the desk and struggled to stand the desk on its side.

  When he had the desk on its side, he rocked it and let the large flat top of the desk slam back against the door, blocking the door and covering the broken window.

  Dave turned and put his
back against the desk.

  He could feel the vibration from the door through the desk as bodies relentlessly threw themselves against the door.

  “How did they get inside the building?” Michelle asked as she leaned against the desk next to Dave.

  “I don’t know,” Dave gasped, trying to catch his breath.

  “I didn’t hear any glass breaking,” Michelle added nervously.

  “I didn’t either,” Dave replied. “Maybe they came in through one of the office windows or the emergency side door. I screwed up not checking all the office’s after I came in. Maybe someone left a damn window open, I don’t know.”

  “You had your hands full killing zombies,” Michelle said. “You had other things on your mind, you can’t be responsible for doing everything. So much for trying to decide whether we should stay here or leave.”

  “Yeah, unfortunately that choice has been made,” Dave replied. “We have to get out of here.”

  “How?” Michelle asked sounding confused.

  “I’m not sure, but we can’t push against this desk all night,” Dave replied. “Fortunately, the hallway in this building is narrow so they won’t be able to get too big of a crowd slamming into our door all at once. We should be able to keep them out for maybe an hour, that will give us a little time to find a way out of here.”

  Dave and Michelle could hear what remained of the window, breaking and falling to the floor on the other side of the desk.

  Even with the desk blocking the door, the sound of moaning grew louder inside the room, along with the horrific odor.

  “If that smell doesn’t kill me, I think all this noise will drive me crazy before we find a way out of here,” Michelle said.

  “Any ideas?” Dave asked.

  “Me?” Michelle shrieked. “I had a hard time finding my way in to this room. I felt I would be lucky to find my way back to the parking lot to go home.”