Immediately, the three I had sent for the oil came out of the diner each carrying two big five-gallon jugs. One of them had tied a cook’s apron into a satchel and had filled it with bread and some cans. Ranger had Steve on the ground and was trying to give him a sedative, but Steve was thrashing and spraying blood everywhere. My whistle also alerted the draggers in the store that a fresh meal had been delivered. They turned from Jason’s mangled body and came at me. These guys were old dead. You could tell by the way they moved. Zombies were by no means quick, even the freshest ones had little to no coordination, but these guys moved like they had just come out of a Romero movie. This also meant they would go down easy. The older bones started to rot and crunched a lot easier. I leaned my rifle against the wall and pulled Cappy from the sling on my back. I moved on the closest one and brought the crowbar down on top of its skull, careful to land with the back of the curved end. No sense in getting my favorite weapon stuck in one corpse when I had six others to deal with. And dealt with them I did. By the time Ranger and the others made their way inside the pharmacy, all seven corpses lay on the floor, the last one still twitching. I barely broke a sweat. The nice thing about being immune is that you really don’t have worry about the bites and scratches that keep other guys at a distance.
Ranger looked at me, “Steve’s dead.”
“I figured. You take care of him?”
Ranger nodded solemnly, “It was the only thing I could do for him. His throat had been completely torn out. There wasn’t anything else could be done.” We all nodded solemnly then. “What about that kid? You still want to go after him?” Ranger added after a moment.
I shrugged. I was legitimately torn. I didn’t want to risk losing any more men, especially so early in the mission, but could I really just leave some kid out here on his own.
Ranger caught wind of my hesitation, “Make the call, Boss. I’ll back you either way.”
I stared off into the woods for almost a minute, but finally I told everybody to load up, we couldn’t take the risk. As we drove away, and I know this was just my mind playing tricks on me, I kept seeing that kid in my rearview, only he kind of looked like William.
14
Amy
“Shit, shit, shit!” Mick had a way with words.
He had managed to get the truck turned around just in time to see Garett and Emma pulling past the RV that was now blocking our way to them. Those campers were great for storage and for giving you the illusion of having a safe place to sleep, but they were horrible in a situation like the one we all found ourselves in. They were beasts to maneuver and accelerating quickly wasn’t exactly an option you could add on to something that big.
“Zoe, turn around and tell me when the horde comes into sight.”
She flipped around towards the back window and let out a screech.
“I will take that to mean now. Shit, shit, shit!”
“Mick, the kids are getting further away. We need to catch up with them now,” I pleaded.
“Amy, I know, but right now we need to get out of this God damned mess! Garett was right, we should have left these a-holes a while ago. They’ve gotten sloppy and all these newcomers aren’t trained for these situations. Maybe if we didn’t pick up so many strays…” He shot me a look of death, “and don’t you for a second say we were strays once, too. We weren’t incompetent. These people are going to get us all killed, if they haven’t already.”
“Mick!” I screamed.
“Wha….” He couldn’t finish that question. We slammed head first into the RV. Mick looked away at just the wrong time as the camper had gotten itself wedged into a position on the road where there were too many abandoned vehicles to navigate through and had to come to a dead stop.
“Zoe? Zoe, are you OK?”
She nodded her head at me but I could see from her expression that she was in pain. She hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt, and was facing backwards when we smashed into the camper. That led her to bounce off the seats and supply boxes. We didn’t really have time to assess her condition, though. The dead were closing in and we needed to get out of their reach before we could check on anyone’s injuries.
“I’m going to try and get her moving again,” Mick tried to reassure me, but his words were slurred and I knew that was a bad sign.
“Take it slow.”
“I don’t think we have that luxury,” he observed.
It took several minutes to get the truck to unhook itself from the camper, and even then, a large chunk of sheet metal and Styrofoam from the camper was still attached to the grill of our truck as we backed away. The dead had surrounded us on all sides. They quickly swarmed the camper. There was no time to think about staying and helping any of the other vehicles. It was every man for themselves. Screams ripped through the air as we tore away down the road but I didn’t have it in me to feel bad.
There was just so much death. It lay like a thick blanket across the landscape. Whenever another body was added to the pile, it became a bit more difficult to see much of a difference. We had all begun to have dead eyes anyway. All I could focus on was the five of us in my little family. We were now separated from two of them, and that fact had my anxiety at a peak level.
Mick was trying to control the truck as the horde caught up to our position and surrounded us, but the front axle had sustained some damage from the run in with the RV. Each swerve and pull dragged a few undead square under the wheels. All that did was make the truck harder to control. Mick, in a last-ditch effort, hit the gas hard enough to pull ahead of the pack but, in the end, all that happened was a peel-out on dead flesh. Suddenly, the truck gained traction and shot forward, sending us flying straight into a brick building façade.
That was the end of the beautiful garage-kept beast. The noise from the impact attracted the attention of a wave of undead that were shuffling along nearby. We had already been in a position where there were too many to fight. Now, with the added attention, we were stuck in a broken car that the zombies would be able to break into by their sheer weight alone. The busted windows would never hold against them.
I looked back at Zoe and was grateful to see that, while she looked stunned, she was conscious. We were going to need to move, and fast, so I needed to know if she was going to be able to get herself out of the car or if it would be up to Mick or me. What I had failed to see was whether Mick would even be up to the job. I was so accustomed to him seeming invincible in situations like this that it had never occurred to me that he could be injured.
I scanned the area for the most logical escape route once we broke the windows. Each step would need to be planned and executed perfectly if we were going to have a shot at getting out of the truck alive. Unbeknownst to me, while I was babbling off my step by step plan, only one of the other occupants of the car could hear me.
“… Then, if, by the grace of God, the door is unlocked, we can head into that brick office building over there. But we need to do it right. Sound good?”
Zoe made a sound that almost sounded like agreement but Mick said nothing.
“Mick? What do you think?” I asked as I continued facing the window, assessing the route one more time.
Nothing.
“Mick? MICK?” I turned my head a little too fast for someone who had just been in two car accidents.
That was when I saw that he was knocked unconscious by the crash. At least, I hoped he was just unconscious. My hand shook as I reached over to check if there was breath coming out of his nose. Thankfully, there was. As happy as I was that he was still alive, however, I now had a very big problem. There was no way I could carry Mick to safety. Even with Zoe’s help, which I was pretty sure I couldn’t count on, we would not be able to get him from the truck to the building.
“Zoe, are you going to be able to run? I need to know if there is anything wrong with your legs. We are going to have to get out of this truck soon.” My voice trailed off. She wasn’t answering and I had no idea what we were going to do.
There was a good chance that this was the end of all of our stories. The dead were slamming against the glass, cracking the already broken glass a bit more with each push.
The world slowed to a snail’s pace. The last few months played out before me. The initial outbreak. My brother attacking his wife. The kids and I hiding in my house while the world burned around us. The luck of us finding Mick, and then the preppers. Losing Hannah. Emma and Garett falling for each other. Even the punch that should have ended our time with the group. Instead, I was stubborn and scared. We should have walked away a long time ago. Now, my fear had put us in this situation. We would have been long gone if I could have just let go and moved on.
It was obvious for months, even before the punch, that this group had lost its way. They were unable to make any real progress, and the cold was coming. The kind of cold that we, as modern Americans, have not known since the invention of indoor heating. We were going to freeze and no one seemed concerned about it. Instead, the preppers spent day after day playing class president and ordering each other around for the sake of fairness. This led to an inexperienced person being in charge, and that had led everyone right into a death trap.
I pushed Mick carefully. I was afraid his injuries would get worse if I shook him too hard, but I needed him to wake up. It was in that moment that I realized how much I depended on his judgement. I had allowed it to replace my own in many situations and I had become soft because of it. He groaned but was unable to gain any real consciousness. Instead, he mimicked the sound of the zombies that were trying their damnedest to break through the glass that separated them from their next meal.
I surveyed the area one more time and realized there wasn’t a chance in Hell that we would be able to get through the mob surrounding us right now even if we were in tip top condition, which we were not. Zoe was holding her head and staring blankly out the window next to her. She didn’t even look scared, and for that, I was sad. This was a horrible world to grow up in. The young ones had lost more than their innocence. They had lost their will to live because they knew this life was temporary. Our existence here was temporary and they were just barely hanging on with no real fight in them.
“Zoe, I need you to help me roll Mick over to my seat.”
She didn’t respond.
“Zoe!” That got her attention.
“Uh huh.” She nodded, not quite fully there.
“I need you to help me roll Mick to my seat. We need to be careful in case he hurt his neck.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean ‘Why?’ We need to try to move the truck, even if it is a little bit. Maybe I can drift it over near the brick building. We’re too far away to make it now. We waited too long.” I pleaded.
“What’s the point?” She asked as she turned towards the monsters chomping at her through the glass.
“To live, Zoe! The point is to live!”
“Why? We are just going to end up here again. Aren’t you tired of it? I am. I’m so tired. Maybe if I take a nap, I’ll feel better.” She murmured as she lay her head down on the seat.
There was a bit of blood trickling out of her ear. I may not be a doctor, but I know a head injury when I see one. Damn it. She had a concussion, and the worst thing for her to do would be to sleep right now. She may never wake again. Now I had two injured people that were unable to move themselves, a horde so big I couldn’t count all of them, and a broken truck. It was a Hail Mary, but if I could just shift Mick over by myself, maybe the truck would bless us with another hundred feet. Just enough to bump us into the wall under the fire escape. The ground level door was out of the question now.
As I pulled him towards me, Mick threw up all over himself and the floor between us. That was probably a bad sign. The smell hit me and I struggled not to heave myself. I gave up on being gentle and pulled as hard as I could, rolling Mick halfway across the seat into what looked like the most uncomfortable position I could’ve managed to have him land in. It left just enough room for me to squeeze past him and into the driver’s seat.
I prayed to the God that my parents had taken me to worship every Sunday, hoping he would remember me even though we haven’t ever been that close, and turned the key. The belt shrieked as the truck started, but it sounded as though a bag of wrenches had been thrown into the engine. This only drew more of the dead over to where we were. More prayers, this time out loud, as I slowly backed away from the wall we had smashed into. As the truck lurched inches at a time, it felt like a washing machine with an off-balance load in it. Now, the real test. I shifted into Drive and pushed the gas. Nothing.
“Fuck!”
I slammed my head down on the steering wheel, which was stupid for two reasons. One, it hurt like hell, and two, I landed perfectly on the horn, adding more noise to bring another wave of unwanted attention.
“Damn it, Mick! Get up! I need you to help me think! We are all going to die here and I don’t know how to change that!” I screamed at him as I shook him furiously.
Making his injuries worse really wasn’t a concern anymore. We needed a way out and I was unable to find one. There was no way we would all make it out of this situation, and I was seriously beginning to doubt that any of us would still be breathing by tomorrow. The only movement I could get out of the truck was Reverse, so that was going to have to do.
On the back seat where Zoe was curled up, there had been a large pile of supplies in bags and boxes next to her. They had been tossed about a bit from the crashes. Looking at them, the only idea for survival I could come up with that had even the slightest chance of working dawned on me. Sadly, it meant I had to leave one of them out in the open. I may have become numb to the death of acquaintances, but these two were my family. Nothing would ever make this decision alright, but it was the only choice I had.
The zombies were pounding on the windows, seconds away from busting through the cracked glass. No more time to think. There was no time left to do anything but react. I threw the truck in Reverse and hit the gas. We didn’t speed off, but we were able to break away from the dead ones that were working their way in through the windows. I got us rolling and, by luck, catching the only break I managed to catch that day, started to roll down a hill.
The truck was rattling and shaking, but it was moving. I let go of the wheel and turned towards the back seat. My landing was awkward but it was perfectly timed. Zoe was so much lighter than Mick as I pulled her down to the floor. Hopefully, my body being wedged above hers between the seats would block the hungry monsters that were sure to break in. Laying across her, I was unable to see what we hit, but it didn’t matter anyway. Wherever we landed was where we would make our final stand. I pulled the bags and boxes down over us, leaving Mick as the only one the horde would see as they broke through into our truck.
I prayed again. This last prayer I whispered over and over.
“Please Lord, let me sleep. Don’t make me hear him die. Please Lord. Give me just this one thing.”
That prayer went unanswered.
15
Ken
One thing that never got talked about in all those zombie movies and books and TV shows that used to be on is the smell. The smell of dead, rotting flesh is everywhere. Between the bodies everywhere and the zombies themselves, the wind carries the stench of death with every puff of breeze. I guess after a while we got used to it, but it never went away. When we reached the CDC building, we broke through a hastily constructed barricade into the foyer of the CDC building. Ian swears this wasn’t here when he left, meaning someone took up residence after he had gone. From the looks of the entry way, there had been a hell of a fight here. Ian pointed out the rotted remains of zombies he himself had killed and estimated that the number of bullet casings on the floor had doubled since he last saw this place. There were fifteen more dead on the floor and several bodies in the stairwell. Ian said those were new too, well not new judging by the decay, but more recent.
Ian led us up the stairwell. “Weapons at
the ready guys, it looks like somebody definitely tried to make a home here after I left. There’s no way of telling who, if anybody, is still here.”
We moved slowly to the second floor with me in the middle of the group. I had the pistol that Ian had shown me how to use, but I still felt kind of useless. I was impressed with the way these men handled themselves. Some of them had been soldiers before, but even the ones that weren’t still acted like they had been their entire lives. As we reached the second-floor landing, Ian signaled for everyone to stop. He and Ranger nodded at each other and took positions on either side of the door. Jacob eased the door open a crack and peered through. After he judged the coast to be clear, he pushed it the rest of the way open. The hallway was empty. Ian moved back into the lead position and we fell in behind him. He used hand signals to direct group of men to check each room. One by one, rooms were cleared and we moved to the back of the building to a row of executive offices.
The rooms had been ransacked. Desks overturned, files scattered, cabinets smashed. Judging from the content I found on the floor, these were administrative offices. I didn’t need payroll forms, I needed research. “We need to find the lab,” I told Ian.
“Fifth floor was where they were holding me. There’s also some rooms in the basement that might have what you want.”
Ranger piped in with a groan, “The dark, creepy basement… Great.” The rest of the group chuckled nervously.
“Let’s check upstairs first while we have the light,” Ian said.
We cleared the rest of the floor and moved back to the stairwell and up to the third floor. The men went through the same motion of checking each room and, again, all were empty. This floor held more executive offices, a large cafeteria devoid of food, a small gym, and more bodies. Ian didn’t remember if there were more than were here last time. The fourth floor was essentially a barracks. Every locker had been raided and anything of use had been taken. We moved to the fifth floor, where patients had been kept. As the men cleared the rooms, I rifled through papers at the nurses station. I found mostly activity logs, timesheets, takeout menus, nothing of real value. I found charts for the fifteen patients that had resided here, Ian’s among them. I stacked the thick binders on a cart and went back to my search. I saw Ian and one of the other men stop outside one of the rooms and overheard Ian say that this was where he was held. They pushed the door open. Ian leaned his head in, scanned, and shrugged. They continued down the hall.
Aftershock Zombie Series (Book 2): Breakdown (A Collection of Survivors Tales) Page 8
