We did run into one “gang” that tried to block our way. They looked like they might have been tough at one point, but now they were in even worse shape than us. I think they were trying to make us believe that there were more of them behind the burned out cars they had stacked in the road, and that there were reinforcements in the buildings lining the street, but I could tell right away their leader was bluffing. He knew we had the numbers. He had no way of knowing that most of the people on our side of the rubble wouldn’t have been able to hit a target at half that distance with the weapons they were carrying. He also knew, probably because I told him from around the sight of my ’16, that I would make sure that no matter what went down, if they tried to stop us, he would be the first one to get his fucking head blown off. After a tense few minutes, they moved aside and let us pass. I kept my weapon on him until we were almost completely out of sight. I wish we faired that well when we ran into the fucking moaners. You can’t out-bluff them. You can either fight or run, and we were too tired to do either.
The only reason any of us were left at this point was that we didn’t come across more than three or four bigger groups of them. That, and one giant swarm.
We had just crossed the Delaware Memorial bridge into the southern part of New Jersey. We were still on the overpass and that’s probably what saved our lives. Below us in the streets were hundreds, if not thousands, of those fucking things shuffling around aimlessly. A couple of the Townies started freaking out. I hushed everyone up pretty quick by pointing out that they had no idea we were up there and if we wanted to stay alive, it was probably a good idea to keep it that way. I had to hope they would thin out by the time we got to an off-ramp, it had taken over an hour to navigate the bridge with the mass of wrecked and abandoned vehicles blocking the road.
We continued along the interstate for another two miles, all the while watching the unending mass of undead below. It was un-fucking-real to see that many zombies in one place, you couldn’t see the end of them. They just moved around slump-shouldered and silent. The first off ramp we came to was so choked with cars that the moaners couldn’t have gotten to us even if they knew we were there. An hour later we came to a full interchange. One of the four ramps was completely destroyed, like somebody set a bomb off underneath it. Given the wreckage of charred vehicles and blackened skeletons, that’s exactly what may have happened.
According to the map, and the road signs, we had moved onto the Turnpike. We were still moving roughly east and as long as all we ran into up here was the occasional rotting, bloated meatbag stuck inside a car (admittedly fucking disgusting, but mostly harmless), I didn’t see any rush to get down to ground level and try to contend with what looked like a damn meat grinder on legs. Later on, I would regret the fuck out of that decision, but fuck it, we had places to be.
6
Vincent
The air in Loveladies always seemed better somehow. Standing on the back porch of the oversized oceanfront mansion we had moved into, I took a deep calming breath. It’s been two months since I lost her. I can’t seem to get a straight answer from anyone on this island when it comes to Jessica. She was here when I marched down to the line to single handedly bring order back to our side of the island. But when I went to share my victory with her, I arrived to discover an empty room. The guards all pointed fingers at whose turn it was to keep watch, so I slaughtered them all.
There were always more people in line willing to be the extra muscle that I needed, but Jessica was different. She was special. I spent two months trying to replace her and have been met with nothing but failure. I refuse to let this setback hold me back from fulfilling the future that I am destined to achieve. Even though, I found someone capable of continuing my memoir in her place, he isn’t a writer of Jessica’s caliber. Not many authors are though. How many internationally renowned authors existed before the apocalypse?
Finding a substitute for her other purpose has been much more challenging. I gave up on waiting for a woman to get infected and show immunity naturally. The men were ordered to bring me a new candidate each day, two as of late. Each was exposed, and each died. The plebs are getting restless, but they are blind to the true need of these sacrifices. My higher purpose is more important than the lives of a few women who would have been dead months earlier without my generous invitation into our kingdom.
I have decided to move on to my next plan. It may not be possible to find another woman like Jessica. I need to move forward with passing my genes into the next generation if we are to survive as a race. Another set of my men are looking for the best candidates to carry children for me. They will be impregnated, then the children will be tested for immunity after their birth. A mansion of this size can comfortably hold a dozen women, guards, and all our citizens with medical backgrounds. Every king deserves his castle, and I have happily conquered mine.
Earl is constantly bitching about the morale in the camp. He seems to think that it would be in our best interest to “throw them a bone every once in a while” as he puts it. I tried to explain to him that I can’t be bothered with the little things, but he still kept complaining. That was when I put him in charge of doling out some comforts to the people within our walls. Not too many though, I wasn’t positive they had earned the right to be too comfortable. You would think that just the act of keeping them alive would be enough, but it wasn’t, and deep down that offended me.
It seemed that no matter how much you gave them, they always wanted more. They cried for houses. So, I gave them to them, but the houses were too small. So, I moved them to bigger ones. Then, they complained that the furniture inside wasn’t nice enough, or the clothes didn’t fit. They wanted new things, nice things. I told Earl to grant their wishes. “Do whatever they want, just keep them happy,” I said.
I was a kind ruler. But my patience wore thin. The demands got more ridiculous by the day. The final straw was when Earl came to me asking that we send a search party out to find gluten-free food. That was when I saw that I had allowed my subjects to cross a line that may become my undoing. They were no longer afraid of me, or grateful to be alive. They were reverting back to the same spoiled lumps that they were before the outbreak occurred. It was time to teach them a lesson.
When darkness fell, and they fell asleep with full bellies in their fluffy beds drunk off of wine they had demanded so rudely, I asked my men to move the fence five blocks back. Once the line was moved, they opened the gates and knocked away the walls that separated half of them from the army of undead that roamed the other side of the island. Earl begged for leniency, but I grew tired of his advice on this subject. If it wasn’t for his firsthand knowledge of my greatness, I am sure I would have thrown him on the other side of the fence with the others. I have no use for those that question my orders.
As I lay my head down as day broke, on what surely was a hundred-dollar pillow, I was serenaded by the screams of those sacrificed to prove my point. Rest came fast and easy, and as usual the world disappeared as I closed my eyes. The funny thing was that no one ever brought a request in front of me again. Turns out, as usual, I was completely right in how to handle those in my care.
7
Jeremy
For the first time in months, I was able to race down a road. I settled into a calm as the needle pushed towards 80 mph. Trees blurred past and my mind cleared. It was like a glimpse of my life before, speeding down the road to nowhere with nothing but my thoughts. I had finally had it with the dimwits that I had been traveling with for the last few weeks. I packed up and took off in the middle of the night. Doubling back to the old mustang that I had seen a few miles back, I hit the somewhat open road.
The final straw was when Crystal made a pass at me in front of Big Ben that was obvious enough that even a blind man could see what she was aiming at. In the beginning, I thought she had just taken a shine to me, but what was really happening was she was bored. When the walking got long and monotonous, she would poke the bear to see if she co
uld get a reaction out of him. She was just using me as part of some tired old game that women had been playing for years.
I probably should have been upset that she had no interest in me, but my ego didn’t need to be fed by the attentions of some high maintenance apocalypse queen. It is a sad state of affairs when you aren’t worth fighting over even if you are the last woman alive. So, I looked for a way out of that precarious situation. If I wasn’t trying to escape, I may have pointed out the mustang as we hiked past it. Crystal was too busy telling one of her glory day stories about her days on the stage to notice the car sitting like a sore thumb in the parking lot we crossed through. She kept insisting she was a singer, but I still held a belief that singing was code for stripping. It was a bit strange that we never heard her sing for us if she was really a singer. I never pressed the issue though, it seemed like it may earn me a right hook from Ben.
My uneasiness grew as we walked further away from the car. I needed to find that goldilocks zone when it came to the car, not too far for me to walk, and not too close for them to hear the engine roar to life. We were covering too much ground, so I faked a fall over a log. That resulted in us having to take an hour break just to let me rest my newly injured ankle. When I felt enough time had been burned in one place, I got ready for the best acting I had ever preformed in my life. My limp was one for the books, and each moan made my companions wince at the sound of my pain.
We made it another half mile to a parking lot of a shopping center. Sad to say, but I was pretty sure this one was dead long before the rise of zombies. The anchor stores were empty and all that had made it to the end of civilization was a pizzeria named Eli’s, a puppy mill pet store, and one of those “We buy gold” shops. Crystal, self-centered as always, convinced Ben to take her on a shopping trip to find something shiny to hang around her neck. She explained that, once they found a big enough group of people, gold would be worth something again.
I knew it was bullshit. She knew it was bullshit. Ben, on the other hand, wouldn’t know bullshit if it smacked him in the face, and was going to end up with a backpack filled with useless trinkets that he would have to lug around like some kind of end-of-the-world pack mule. That gave me the opportunity to start setting up camp. There were a few busted up cars that weren’t road worthy but would give us enough protection from the monsters wandering around to get a good night’s sleep. It was a small blessing that people didn’t have enough time to lock their doors as they abandoned their vehicles. They may have been too distracted running away from zombies, or they figured that it was already broken so who cares?
I wasn’t planning on sticking around, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to make sure they were safe on my way out. By the time Crystal had Ben lugging a suitcase that looked like it weighed a ton back to the spot where I was resting with my fake busted leg up, I already had dinner roasting on the fire.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” she purred as she leaned in to show me two teardrop diamonds that hung from her ears.
“Gorgeous,” I said, showing just enough interest to appease her, but not enough to tick of her body guard. “Did you two clear the place out?”
“I couldn’t make up my mind and Ben said he would be willing to carry all of it. We are going to live like royalty once we make our way back to people. Hopefully by then, I will know which ones I can part with. I mean they all look so nice on me.” She pouted as she dished herself a plate and sat staring at us. “Well, aren’t you hungry?”
“Yeah, but my leg is acting up. Do you think we could just call it a night after dinner? I want to give it some time resting to see if it feels better.” I asked hoping she would pick up the hint and make a plate for myself and Ben.
It was so frustrating watching him follow her like a puppy dog. She just wasn’t good people. Someone who cared for others would feed the injured first. I knew I was faking it, but she didn’t. And Ben was willing to carry a few hundred pounds of gold around to make her happy, and she couldn’t even toss some chili on a plate for him. There definitely wasn’t going to be a knock down drag em’ out fight for that woman. Ben could have her.
He grunted at me as he slopped two giant spoonfuls of the slop onto two plates and handed one to me as he sat down. He was good people. Not too bright, but he deserved so much better than the two of us. He wasn’t lying to get an opening to take off, and he wasn’t a self-centered floozy, but that is who he ended up with. It almost made me feel bad enough to stay. Almost.
After dinner, I crawled into the cab of the smallest car I could find. I wanted to make sure it was going to be only me in it as we tucked in for the night. I packed up everything that I felt entitled to and did my best at faking sleep. Crystal made her way over to my car and jiggled the handle only to be met with a locked door. Not even worth a roll in the hay on the way out. If my friends could only see me now. They would be proud of me for having some standards. That was something I was lacking back in the days when only the living were up and walking around.
My leg felt a bit weird from all the limping I had done over the last few hours, but it wore off pretty quick once I was able to move with a little less tiptoe. By the time I made it back to the Mustang, I was moving at a full run. The next part was a bit trickier but being out on the road and hanging out with who would have been the wrong crowd before, taught me how to get a car moving without the keys. The delinquents were more useful than the goody two-shoes these days.
I drove through a few towns before I got out of the wreckage and into the clear. This part of South Jersey was filled with long stretches of narrow roads that slashed through miles of farmland. People forget that it’s called the Garden State. All they seem to remember is the crap they saw on cable TV. Most of this state is green in one way or another, and not covered in oil refineries or guidos. Hell, even the northern part of the state will be taken back by nature soon enough.
The sun peeked over the horizon, and I knew it was probably a good time to stop. No reason to try driving head on into a blind spot. It was too wide open for me to just pull over and fall asleep. The dead really aren’t an issue if you are locked away sleeping in a giant steel machine. It was the living that might wander up and see this sweet ass ride and put a bullet in my head for it. So, I started searching the horizon for a safe place to pull in before I drifted off into nothingness.
After an hour or so of frustration, I was rewarded with Small Town USA. Nothing more than an old, long abandoned gas pump and a few of busted up farm houses. That gas pump was dry long before the apocalypse. The signs above it read 64 cents a gallon and I don’t think it ever ran on electric. This would be the perfect place to pull in and get some shut eye. There wasn’t anything worth sticking around for, so I was almost positive it was empty.
I clicked the tape deck off and pulled in as quietly as you can in a Mustang running on fumes. I turned the keys but didn’t pull them out. If there was trouble, there was no way I was wasting time trying to find them and get the engine turned over. In movies, those moments make for the best, most suspenseful moments, but in real life those extra seconds are life and death. Damn, I was tired. I didn’t realize it until I stopped.
Well, there go any plans I had for making myself some food. My eyes, heavy with exhaustion, fought my every attempt to keep them open. My stomach growled, and hunger pains shot through my gut, but I just couldn’t catch that second wind. Just a few minutes rest, I lied to myself. I allowed myself to drift off and thanked God the night wasn’t filled with the snores of Big Ben. With my last moment awake my head fell to the side, and I could swear I saw a sliver of light from the attic window of one of the old farmhouses. Too late now, I would have to check on it in a bit later in the morning.
8
Ian
“Listen to me very carefully, and please let me finish before you freak out.” I leaned close to Ken and locked eyes to show him that, despite being extremely drunk on stolen scotch, I was in fact completely serious. While he was just as hamm
ered as I was he nodded an affirmative and leaned back in his lawn chair.
“I need you to help me figure something out. Something big. I’ve been turning it over and over in my head trying to figure out what the hell it means, but I’m no good with this kind of shit.” I paused for a minute trying to pick the right words out of the slurry running through my mind. “You know I was a soldier, and that I came here from Virginia. What I never told anybody was what I was doing there.” I filled Ken in on the details of Bentonville, and the short series of events leading up to the line I knew would knock him on his ass. “It was my sergeant. I thought he needed my help, but as I reached out to grab him and drag him out from under the vehicle, he sank his teeth into my wrist up to the gums.”
The color drained from Ken’s face, but he sat and listened to the rest of my tale like he promised he would. I told him about the hospital and the testing and finally getting out after killing that fucking doctor. Then I told him about William’s scar and the story he told me about his parents.
Ken bolted out of his chair. I thought he was going to take off toward the nearest guard, but he leapt at me grabbed my shoulders and, completely sober now, shouted, “Do you have any idea what this means!? Please tell me you aren’t fucking with me. This means we could develop some kind of vaccine, or even a cure! We have to get Mike, we have to get everyone!”
It was then that he took off toward the command center, assumedly to wake up the entire leadership staff and anybody else within earshot. I got up and followed, figuring there’d be some questions I would have to answer.
Aftershock Zombie Series (Book 2): Breakdown (A Collection of Survivors Tales) Page 4
