Zombie Tales Box Set [Books 1-5]

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  When the news spread that this hadn’t been a freak occurrence of nature, that a brilliant, overweight Momma’s boy had designed the contagion as his vendetta against the world, the settlements had fallen into madness. People shrieked for his blood. The feeble bleats that killing him made them no better than he was failed to register, and those who spoke them became instant pariahs. The interim president and his senate of thirteen, one from each settlement, left his punishment to popular vote. It was ninety percent in favor of the death penalty, nine percent life in prison, and one percent forgiveness.

  There were no prisons now. The settlements didn’t have the resources to house and feed criminals, and no one was going to waste drugs on a lethal injection. There weren’t enough drugs to go around. It was decided that a bullet to the head would end the problem neatly, but the night before his scheduled execution, he was abducted from his makeshift cell. The Power Rangers were responsible. They didn’t have a settlement beyond their depots, much of their work being in hell trying to keep power and communications going. They dealt with zombies up close and personal on a daily basis, passing through abandoned cities full of bones and losing their lives when the zombies swarmed. The Collection Agency was in on the kidnapping too, as they often worked alongside the Power Rangers to scavenge.

  Since Olyvyr had given over his life to zombies, it was only fitting that he give over his death to them, too. His murder at the stadium was broadcast in the settlements three days later. They had their vengeance, but it felt hollow to Xan to watch Olyvyr bluster and plead and shriek as the zombies closed in around him, as they savaged him.

  The cameras only caught glimpses of him in the zombie horde, a bloody hand waving overhead, a frantic dive between legs to escape, his mouth sliced open in a scream as he was dragged back and fallen upon. A kicking leg. A piece of scalp. His one hundred and eighty-two IQ points ended up in several dozen stomachs, and then the Power Rangers opened fire to kill the zombies. All that was left of Olyvyr was a pool of blood, scraps of clothes, bones and a foot still encased in his shoe.

  Colette hadn’t watched that video. Xan had watched it three times. Bleakly. Blankly. During the kill, his mind always drifted to Katie’s hundreds of stuffed animals on her bed, how he could only see her in pieces around the teddy bears and cats and unicorns and turtles. When he took her for Saturday overnights to give Colette a break, Katie always loaded her friends into a giant garbage bag and brought them to his house. Xan had had to set a limit of two when they went on errands, or else the garbage bag was coming along.

  What he had lost was fathomless. That was why he didn’t feel anything during the execution video. It could not be grasped.

  Sometime later, the door opened. It wasn’t the couple returning from the cafeteria, but a solemn face over a white coat. “Mr. Alexander Spencer? Ms. Colette Daviau?” Xan and Colette jumped to their feet, Colette’s book hitting the rim of the box and falling off outside of it.

  Oh God, he’s dead.

  Since the contagion, medical care in the settlements had been distributed on a selective basis. No one threw everything at the centenarian with diabetes, dementia, and a broken hip to keep him or her alive these days. No one could be spared from work to tend a blind, retarded, wheelchair-bound man who had to be fed from a GI tube. Children born with severe defects, defects that couldn’t be remedied, were euthanized. There had been a schizophrenic man who wandered around the gardens of Newgreen, talking to himself and shouting at nothing, wending through bent backs and stepping on tomato plants. He disappeared in time and it was whispered that he’d been shot. People didn’t sweat through the daylight hours to feed those who didn’t or couldn’t contribute. The only excuse was extreme youth. Everyone else from age three to age eighty-five was working.

  Lucca was an irritable baby who had been having tet spells since he was two months old. When he cried too much, he turned blue. There wasn’t enough oxygen in his blood. Sometimes he turned blue when he was feeding. He got short of breath and tired easily; his little hands and feet were always cold. He showed interest in toys, but just didn’t have the energy for much exploration. He had needed to be fattened up for surgery, but he persisted in being on the low end of the scale no matter how much breast milk and formula was poured down his throat.

  Still, he was deemed worthy of medical care. He didn’t have any other abnormalities but a microform cleft lip. It was just a little notch in his upper lip that wasn’t likely to affect his speech, and surgery would only be for cosmetic purposes. Xan barely noticed it, and the heart issues were so overwhelming that the insignificant lip malformation didn’t register on his radar.

  The baby had survived the surgery. But the cardiac surgeon wanted them to know that he had performed more of these surgeries in the last two years than he had in the three decades previous to the contagion. Perioperative mortality was higher. The kids just upped and died now and then in the seventy-two hour period after the surgery, and he had no idea why. He advised them to pray, to hope but not expect, and to be with their son. If Lucca pushed through the next three days, then the surgeon would feel a lot more confident about his chances.

  They were taken to an intensive care room where Lucca was dwarfed by the white expanse of his bed. Humming machines stood vigil at its head, and a tangle of tubes snaked over his body. He had such a tiny face. Xan was so sorry to have brought the boy into this world. Condoms came into Newgreen sporadically, and the connection that became Lucca had happened in one of those between times where their only protection was the rhythm method.

  A nurse was adjusting a machine. He gave Xan a comforting nod. “Chin up! Your little slugger will be cracking a homerun soon.” Then he left the room.

  Always sports because Lucca was a boy, always directed at Xan as his father. It irritated him. Whoever Lucca was would unfold in time, and he would show himself to Xan. If he lived. Xan didn’t need the bridge of sports to connect, and the joke there was that Xan enjoyed sports well enough, but it was Colette who was the P.E. teacher. There were books that Xan wanted to read to him. Whenever the Collection Agency came through Newgreen with books taken from abandoned homes and libraries and businesses, Xan always took one or two for Lucca. Little kid books, big kid books, there was a stack of them in the apartment.

  But he didn’t read them to Lucca. If he shared one, if Lucca liked it and then he died . . . the pile kept growing while Xan waited for this to swing one way or another. Now he knew that he shouldn’t have waited. A child could not be kept on hold. Xan would read a book right now to Lucca if he had one.

  Colette was leaning over the bed and touching the small part of his face not taped or covered in tubes. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Whenever she cried, it was quiet; whenever she was mad, she was quiet, too. Even in labor, she couldn’t stand to scream. Any time Xan coaxed some sound out of her when they made love, he felt triumphant. He didn’t need porn star screams. He wouldn’t have liked that, and it would have been forced and insincere from her. But one soft moan, or a grunt of pleasure, made him wild.

  Nurses passed by the room and the wheels on a stretcher squeaked. He stood helplessly at the bed of his son. There was nothing he could do to fix this, nor could he go back in time and prevent it from ever happening. This was what their lives were now, grinding away in a city-farm ringed by a moat, and zombies thick beyond it. One was Xan’s own daughter.

  No longer crying, Colette stroked Lucca’s hair. “What are you thinking?” Xan asked, needing the distraction of her thoughts.

  “Seventy-one hours, eleven minutes, and forty-three seconds. Seventy-one hours, eleven minutes, and forty-two seconds,” Colette said. “What are you thinking?”

  “Tell me I didn’t,” Xan blurted. His biggest fear was that he had attacked Katie after he was infected. That her last memory was of him looming over her, his eyes vacant and hands extended, his teeth ready to bite. Her hero had become her nightmare.

  “You didn’t,” Colette said. They had had this conver
sation many times. “I was there, Xan. You didn’t. The last I saw . . . you were going after a man. A teacher. And she was being . . . changed . . . by someone else.”

  The contagion had swept over the United States at exponential speed. Olyvyr had done his damnedest, kidnapping homeless people and infecting them, locking them up in a storage container with a timed-release lock, flying to another city and doing the same. Los Angeles. San Francisco. New York City. Chicago. A dozen others in the United States and several overseas. Then the locks released all at once and the zombies were loose. The world collapsed in sheer hours.

  Xan and Colette had been drinking coffee in the junior high school staff lounge at the time, both with third period prep and using it to hammer out Katie’s schedule for the next week. Usually her Saturdays were with Xan, but Colette’s mother had offered a trip to an amusement park with a young cousin. Colette wanted to make sure Xan got his overnight and Xan wanted Colette to understand that he wasn’t going to nickel-and-dime his time with their daughter and make it a misery for everyone. Neither of them wanted to involve lawyers and courts on custody or support. They were adults. They could handle this on their own, they’d been handling it for eight years, and they were proud of that. He wasn’t going to make his daughter miss out on a great trip just because it was supposed to be his time. Katie would be back on Sunday morning, and Xan could bring over a meal or two in the afternoon and help with homework, watch a kids’ movie or play a video game with her. He took a twenty from his wallet and gave it to Colette. That would be for Katie to spend on a treat at the park, and she was no doubt going to come home with a new stuffed friend.

  “You could always have me for an overnight,” Colette said in a rush. He met her eyes and it was there again, the connection flaring up between them. Xan’s mind shifted to the store where he would buy two porterhouse steaks and a bottle of wine, a Saturday night that ended up with her legs around his hips, a Sunday morning that started with her riding him and then a big breakfast of eggs and bacon and pancakes. He had to toss his bed sheets in the laundry machine before she came over . . .

  The intercom blipped, and they’d looked up to it with no idea that their world had just ended. The principal gave a panicked announcement that some kind of virulent rabies was spreading insanely fast and had just hit their city. Teachers were to lock their doors and turn off the lights. Then the bell rang for fourth period.

  They ditched the high school that minute, employment be damned, and fled for the elementary school in Xan’s car. One look at each other was all it had taken to decide. Their students were the children of other people, dear but removed. Katie was theirs. On the radio, frightened local reporters were demanding everyone get indoors and lock up tight.

  That was the moment that Xan finally felt the depths of what it was to be a father, Katie’s father, when she was in danger. After so long, he understood. He couldn’t drive fast enough. Blew through red lights, swerved onto a sidewalk, Colette urging him on, he had to get to the school, had to get to the school and find his daughter . . .

  But it was already too late. The elementary school was in chaos. Colette had only gotten away because she ran very, very fast on those long legs of hers. As for him . . .

  Prickle.

  It had been a long time since the last delivery from Meatfarm. One was due today, or perhaps it had been yesterday. Xan’s thoughts had been on Lucca, and he was assigned to Tomato, not delivery services. But there had been something recently on the radio about a convoy headed their way, a speaker for the council calling for extra guards to stand-by at the south bridge. The moat had two bridges that rose when they were not in service. Or else the zombies would charge across and claim Newgreen for hell. And zombies weren’t the only concern. God only knew if the convoy was genuinely carrying goods, or soldiers from another settlement planning to demand food, medical supplies, laborers, women, or ammunition for nothing. In the early days, some of the settlements had fought over resources and people, and one aptly called Battery had gotten crushed for taking Factory women against their will. Newgreen hadn’t seen any of that, but still summoned extra guards as a precaution.

  If the convoy included trucks from Meatfarm, there would be meat on the table again. There wouldn’t be much; it was strictly rationed. But still, it would be there. He hoped for it, and felt horrible for thinking about food at a time like this. Salad and fruit just left him hungry, and he swallowed on his saliva in disgust. He loved beef. He loved pork. He loved fish.

  He had once loved something else.

  He wasn’t in danger of taking a bite out of anyone. The antidote had quelled that insane drive for human flesh. His body just remembered it no matter how hard his mind tried to shove it away, to associate the prickle with inoffensive meats.

  Time stood still in the hospital as they stared at their son. Katie had been such a pink baby. Lucca was pale except where he was bruised from poke marks. His hand was wrapped up so he couldn’t pull out his IV. Xan wanted him to pull it out, to show some pep and temper, but when Lucca woke up, he didn’t do much of anything except shift uncomfortably and grimace about the nasal prongs. Once he rubbed at his face. A different nurse came in and gave him pain medication.

  “Can we hold him?” Colette whispered.

  “Not yet. Soon,” the nurse said sympathetically. She changed him very carefully, the spaghetti tangle of tubes making it an arduous task. Then her eyes went to the clock and she said, “Don’t stay too late.”

  They would have stayed all night had the hospital allowed it, or at least for another few hours, but Newgreen had a strict curfew and neither Xan nor Colette had a night pass. There was such concern that a zombie might brave the water by darkness and breach the city. By ten o’clock, everyone save Patrol was to be inside. People who refused were flagged, and two flags got them a pass to the regulations committee of the council for a talking-to.

  Xan and Colette each dropped a kiss on oblivious Lucca and left the hospital at a quick clip. Six months ago, a defiant group of college kids had tried to lead a revolution about the curfew. They had walked the streets of Newgreen night after night, banging on drums and chanting. It had woken up Xan several times and he’d been especially resentful the night it woke up Lucca. The group had gotten flagged repeatedly, taken to regulations, and then done it again without remorse. It had been a while now since he’d heard them. In the gardens, people said the officials in regulations had told them to shut up or get out of Newgreen. If they wanted to be outside at night so damn badly, they were welcome to do it in hell.

  There was a rumor that the ringleader had taken up the officials on the threat and quit the settlement. Xan didn’t believe it. Even the most pig-headed little activist knew that out there was death. The common sense that no one would choose that didn’t stop the whispers from flying that the boy’s apartment over in the patrol quarters was empty, and so-and-so’s cousin who shared that room over on Watermelon Lane never came back from her third time in regulations.

  Not everything had changed since Olyvyr Gravine’s revenge. People still made up scary stories to pass the time. Like they weren’t living the scariest story of all.

  It was a long walk to their apartment. It was warm, the day having drawn to a close but leaving its heat as a final farewell. On many nights like this long ago, Xan had cracked open a beer and kicked back with friends at a barbecue pool party, his stomach aching from too many hot dogs and water splashing against his legs as someone did a cannon ball. They hadn’t known back then how very simple their lives were, and now none of them except Xan were left to learn the lesson.

  They got to their building a few minutes after ten. Once in the apartment, the sight of the kids’ books stacked up filled him with regret. If Lucca died, Xan would hate himself for never reading them to him.

  Colette said that there was no way she could sleep, but she was going to lie down. When he checked on her, she was curled up in a little ball under the blanket and unconscious. She had pulled
Lucca’s empty crib-box close to her side of the bed. They had done what they could to make it look like less of a box, covering the sides with soft fabric decorated in balloons and bunnies, but the shape was undeniable. Their son slept in a box. His high chair was their laps. His diapers were cloth; his clothes and toys had come out of rooms belonging to dead babies out in hell. The only thing new that Lucca owned was himself.

  Xan watched the clock. Seventy hours, two minutes, two seconds.

  Seventy hours, one minute, nineteen seconds.

  Seventy hours flat.

  Please don’t. Please don’t. Oh God, dude, please . . . It was a shadowy memory of a guy crying out for Xan to stop. Pleading for his life.

  In the initial hours of an infection, the parasites sent their host after others to infect. Then the hunger started. The two parasitic states traded back and forth within the hapless victim, driving him to infect or feed in turn. The cycle of the feeding state lasted much longer. Had Xan gone without the antidote even one day more, he would be out in hell now and beyond hope.

  The walls trembled and he glanced out the window. The convoy. A long line of trucks was going by. Most of the streets grew crops now, but a small network of roads had been left untouched to allow vehicular traffic to pass. Xan’s apartment was at the far end of the third floor. Out the west-facing windows was Tomato Alley. Out the north-facing was a regular road. The first five trucks of the convoy had the giant M of Meatfarm painted on the sides. The next two were Power Rangers. Having a sense of humor about their name, they’d painted the sides with pictures of the characters from the old television show for kids. Another Meatfarm truck was behind the Power Rangers trucks, and a Fueltown tanker behind that. Then came an extremely battered Collection Agency truck. Unidentified trucks streamed along in its wake.

  Everything had been outfitted for combat: bars over the reinforced glass of the windows, flake-aways or slicks on the armored sides. When zombies tried to swarm the trucks, they had trouble getting hold. There were gun ports and thermal imaging cameras and rotating sniper stands on some of them. Getting through hell wasn’t for the weak of spirit.