Surviving The Aftermath (Book 1): The Dead Linger

by Roberts, Liz

  “Do you think there’s a real storm coming?” Tom questioned Casey as he walked over towards him and Kurt.

  “Let’s play it that way, just in case. Kill and burn up what’s left of the Zeds and let’s lock stuff down and get the people inside just in case a storm is coming. Keep a few people on watch in case the Zeds change their minds.” Casey said, looking out with confusion and hope. Hope that maybe there were still people alive and confusion as to why they would help. In the months the followed the zombie outbreak society quickly became a game of last man standing, everyone for themselves. That’s what Casey was used to, so why now suddenly did he get the feeling that someone was trying to help and what were the reasons for helping. The three men turned to head back down to the ground floor with the others when another building shaking explosion slammed through the air and the people’s bodies. They could actually feel the building lift slightly, gently, under their feet it swayed. Black smoke bloomed like a mushroom cloud through the sky with the people still watching perplexed.

  Jack and Jill had gone 4 blocks without seeing so much as one zombie. A few decaying bodies lying in yards or sitting in a car still, but they were very much decomposed at this point.

  There was dead zombie bodies lying around also, intermingled with real people dead bodies. Some houses on the blocks they passed were still neat and tidy looking, aside from not having a mowed lawn and weeds sprouting up through the cement cracks everywhere, it looked as if people still dwelled inside. Other houses though, looked as if they had been the scenes for several last stands, burnt out doorways and picture windows, dried blood that stained the houses, still lingered in areas, bullet holes riddled walls, most having come from inside to the out. One place they passed, not far from Jack’s house actually had arrows stuck into the side of the house, and it made them both think of cowboys and Indians. After a nice leisurely ride in Jack’s mom’s car, which he made sure to run every few days, something his dad had started, he wanted to be prepared. With the garage attached to the house, they never had to go outside, talk about luck. They came upon an elementary school and stopped a block away.

  “Are you nuts? A school?!” Jill exclaimed, not comfortable being this close to this death trap, in all her wanderings over the year abroad roaming the zombie-side, she hadn’t found one school that wasn’t a meeting place of sorts for people before this whole thing started. Now schools were just a breeding ground for the undead. Everyone flocked there, as FEMA and Red Cross and other military and emergency personnel told everyone that schools were the happening place to be at that time. Salvation was there and people went. But as always, organization was not a top priority at first and so many infected were let into these places, either they hid their wounds or they were over looked, but it was only a matter of hours before all those places were over run. About half of the schools Jill had come across had been chained or somehow locked from the outside, so that meant someone escaped, but the zombies were just inside, not having any motivation to try the door, and that is where they stayed. Until someone decided to go check something out. Twice Jill had been that dope to go by a school too close, once she was with a young married couple, she had found them hiding in a long abandoned gas station out in the boonies on the west coast. They banned together in search of food and survival. Well the husband had the bright idea they should drive by his old high school, talking about all the amenities this place had back in the day, Jill wasn’t thrilled with this idea, but she wasn’t driving at the moment. Yeah that idea turned bad quick, hubby and his lovely wife ended up taking a slug each in the dome. They begged and pleated with Jill for her not to shoot, but they were already dead, only mere scratches on their arms and legs, but it was still enough. It was on Jill’s top ten list of the hardest things she’s ever had to do to date, and she promised herself no more attachments/friends. She’d try it all alone. Now here she was with Jack, her new friend, sitting a block away from an elementary school. And guess what, a sign was taped on the door, Jill could only imagine what it said. “I’m gonna go check it out you stay here.” Jack said and started getting out of the car.

  “Wait, are you nuts?!” She said grabbing his shirt to yank him back in the car.

  “We have to see if it’s safe.” He replied, and booked it across the black top of the school. Jill didn’t like this at all. She saw Jack run close enough to read the sign, he stopped turned and came sprinting back just as fast. “Well how was your trip?”

  “Informative. The sign says: Do not enter, quarantined inside. It’s signed FEMA. Do you really think FEMA reps would put a sign like that up?” He asked.

  “No, like others, I think they were the last to survive escaping the building and are trying to warn Us to stay away, which is why We should go.” Jill, still on edge with being this close to the school, asked the most important question. “Were there chains on the door or something to that affect?”

  “Yeah, there are strands upon strands of bungee cord wrapped around the handles.”

  Closing her eyes tight, with a sarcastic tone Jill said “Yeaaaah, that’s not good. We need to go before they burst out of there and come kill us.”

  “Hey, you said we had to help those people, the guns are still firing sporadically so that means they are alive. This is the only idea I have to attract a whole mess of zombies from miles around.” He told her reminding her that this was her dumbass plan to begin with.

  “Fine let’s go, but do go around the school first so we can get a look at the other doors, and the classroom we need to get at.” Jill finally conceded to Jack’s stupid idea. The school was a complete square, and the block on which it was on was a square also. It was surrounded by what appeared to be old homes, but nice. You could tell kids lived around the area, with swings in the back yards, bikes and toys strewn everywhere, yeah they may have been rusted and dirty, but once upon a time kids roamed these areas. There were different sets of playground equipment on all sides of the school, a couple areas what looked like basic baseball fields with the fence back stops and the black top play grounds seemed nice and vast. If this worked, she would be ever so grateful. Slowly they drove around the school looking, a total of six main doors, you could look through one door and see all the way down the hallway to the other side of the building, unfortunately for the windows they all had that mirror affect and couldn’t really been seen through and only one other door was bungee corded off. Not the most comforting.

  “That class room there.” Jack pointed while stopping the car.

  “Oh you mean the one closest to the door that is unsecured? Of course that would be where we have to go.”

  “Hey what’s with the sarcasm?” Jack asked honestly.

  “This is just a dangerous idea, you have no idea what’s in there.” She replied. “I say we drive the car up on the playground and park close in case we have to flee quickly.”

  “Cool with me.” He said as he drove the car around the drive way of the parking lot where teachers parked and then up and around to the opposite side, he edged his way closer to the school. As they drove up slow, they looked down the hallways through the doors, completely empty. That was hopeful, maybe they were all inside a gym, or a windowless cafeteria and they could get in and out without dying. They backed the car in towards the building facing out so they could make a quick getaway.

  “Ok let’s do this shit.” Jill said out loud, more to pump herself up, it was one of her favorite saying, she found she often said it to herself out loud. Grabbing some of the tools and duct tape, they exited the car. Jack went up to the window, putting duct tape in a large X pattern over one window, Jill had a medium size sledge hammer she liberated from his garage and Jack with a small caliber pick axe his dad never used. His dad had a tendency to be a collector of tools that would never see the light of day, and they packed them all.

  “Switch hit.” She said, and Jack and Jill began smashing there tools into the center of the X on the window. After about 2 swings each they stopped and list
ened, accessing the situation, seeing if there was any new noise around the area. They commenced switching hitting. After what seemed like the 100th hit the glass had finally started cracking and breaking off in chunks, and they got a look at how thick this Plexiglas window really was. Now sweating, they were able to reach in and unlock the window and slide it up and out, Jack popped the screen off into the room and slide in. They already had discussed that once he was in, the noise would probably attract every zombie so he had to be quick. Jill stowed the tools in the hatchback trunk of his mom’s Pontiac Vibe and left it open for Jack to put his new toy in. She stood there waiting in the silence, she couldn’t believe that all that pounding hadn’t attracted anything. Suddenly skinny metal legs were appearing through the window.

  “Take it hurry!” Jack was thrusting this mini rusted, what looked like a small table lamp, minus the lamp shade out the window at her.

  “They’re at the door!” Crap! Jill put the thing in the trunk slammed it and turned to grab Jack’s hands and yank him out. He came tumbling out of the building on to the ground with his legs tucked up behind him as another more grotesque arm and face appeared, swiping at Jack lying on the ground.

  “Let’s go now!” Jack got up and they both raced around got in and slammed the doors just as 3 zombies were there pounding on the windows, moaning and gurgling a liquid substance that secreted from them.

  “Go Go Go!!” Jill was shouting to Jack. He hit the gas and they were off. Jill looked back and could see zombies spilling out of the window, up and running they were.

  “What? How are they sprinting?!?! How can they do that??!?” Jack was screaming, sending the car flying off the curb, barely missing hitting a parked car on the opposite side of the street.

  “Calm down, slow up.” Jill said putting a calming hand on Jack’s to get him to drive under 80mph. Jill looked back and saw the zombies still running at full steam but they were quickly leaving them in the dust.

  “Just tell me how they are running. That’s fucking crazy!” Jack slowly regaining composure and started breathing normally now.

  “I forget your use to the shamblers. Now this isn’t science, or 100% accurate, I can only base this off my experience, but when a zombie first starts out life, they are like invincible. Since they can’t feel pain in anyway shape or form, they are able to run and attack like nothing we’ve ever seen before. They can use the muscles in their body like we can’t, they push everything to the limit and they stay amped like that until something slows them down. So until they break a leg or a ligament bursts or they are shot in the head these things go full bore when they spot us.” Jill explained.

  “That doesn’t make sense, those ones aren’t fresh, and they’ve been trapped for over a year.” Jack clearly confused.

  “Yes but they haven’t had to use up their bodies yet. They have just been remaining still, dormant if you will, until something triggered them, us, and they were ready to go.” She felt like she was talking zombie 101 to Jack.

  “I guess I just thought since they were dead, they’d act dead. That makes no sense but you know what I mean.” He said. Jill wasn’t sure how many blocks they drove, but they were pulling into a gas station now, this was the second part of the plan. They got out, each grabbing some crow bars and heading to the covers that housed the gas. There were 3 man-hole like covers in the ground maybe 20ft from the pumps, they pick one each at random and begin prying to tops off each underground compartment, the pungent sent of gas hits them in the face and while yes much of the gas could have evaporated over time, they didn’t need much for what they wanted. There were a few slow zombies around and they easily took care of them with some smacks to the heads.

  “So what’s this thing do now.” Jill asked as Jack got the old metal object out of the trunk. Setting it upon the ground, Jack said “This, is an air raid siren. It’s been in that classroom for years.”

  “And how did this come to randomly be there?”

  “I don’t know something about her husband getting it off of some WWII naval destroyer he was on.” He said as he was taking bottles out of a cardboard box that they packed.

  “So that would make your teacher like 90yrs. old, there’s no way.” Jill saying as she was helping him.

  “So then it was the woman’s dad who was in the navy, god get all technical on me. I just knew it was there, and I’ve always wanted to crank it up.”

  They swiftly prepared their bottles, all they could find back in the garage that was flammable and not gasoline was paint thinner. They filled 5 bottles pretty full and were now sticking old cut up tshirts into the opening of each. Zombies being the intrigued creatures they were started to wander over more frequently and steadily, they had to hurry and get this show on the road. Because of Jill’s gimpy ankle, it was decided that she would sound the siren and Jack would drop the cocktails down the holes.

  “Let me just crank it a couple times.” Jack said with excitement. “I’ve waited my whole life to do this.”

  Sitting in the driver’s seat now, sideways, hanging out the open door, Jill watched Jack star to crank the siren, this 2ft tall 60 yr. old air raid siren started slow but really started to scream. With wads of Kleenex in their ears, they mimed the next steps to each other. Jill took over the cranking and turned that handle for all it was worth. They hadn’t really decided on how long to do this for, but they wanted to get a nice gathering. From all around them zombies were shambling up, they wanted them closer, close enough so that at least some would get taken out by the blast. Again the car was parked facing outwards, at the end of the row from the ground gas compartments. The idea was Jack would race down dropping bottles down the holes, Dirty Dozen style like Jim Brown’s character in the movie. And then he’d launch himself into the backseat of the waiting car. That was the idea. About two minutes had passed, zombies, seemed to be flocking around now, Jack threw a bottle right through the large glass window of the station, it shattered and caught on fire instantly. He was still waiting, needing them to get closer. Jill wanted to keep cranking, hoping the noise was reaching the survivors and pulling those zombies away, but now the dilemma, their current situation was getting hairy, the zombies maybe 50ft from her, she was going to crank as long as she could. The zombies continued to draw near and she heard Jack say something, she turned to look “Jack behind you!” Jill shouted. Jack managed to scoop his crow bar up and smash the zombies head in. Zombies had nice mushy heads. He was trying to battle off 2 more shamblers and a crawler that snuck up on him. Her first reaction was to get out and help, but she couldn’t or else they’d be sitting ducks. The zombies in front of her were now 20yds, she shouted at Jack to drop the bottles and run. Jill had one Molotov cocktail with her, she lit it and tossed it at the ones closest to her. She grabbed her siren and shut the door and buckled up, car started she was now just waiting for Jack. He managed to shake the shamblers off, he lit all 3 bottles and went sprinting by each opening dropping them in fire instantly erupted threw the holes knocking him down. He quickly regained his footing, now sprinting balls to the wall for the car, he dove in the open back seat. “GO GO!” He said signaling with his hand, as Jill gunned it the door shut behind Jack and they shot off. Each one looking back, Jill in the rearview mirror and Jack out the back window, they were watching and waiting. They were 2, 3 blocks away and nothing. Jill brought the car to a slow stop.

  “Should we go back?” He asked breathing heavy.

  ”No we can’t it’s too risky. Damn I thought this …” KABOOM BOOM, and a third deafening blast ripped through the air BOOM, raising the back end of the car up. They watched a gas pump shoot up into the air and out, the blast and flames easily had to have taken out at least all the walkers within 100yd radius. Debris was starting to rain down on them, and they headed out in the direction the gun fire and smoke had been coming from.

  Chapter 2

  “Ho . . ly … Shit… . Did you see that?” Tom asked standing next to Casey and Kurt.