After the Apocalypse Book 1 Resurrection: a zombie apocalypse political action thriller

by Warren Hately

  “Just move slowly and keep your eyes open,” Miranda told him.

  They made plenty of noise exiting the vehicles. Tom barely took in the ten other crew members or the Asian woman jumping from the cab of the truck. He scanned their surroundings made bright under the morning glare, fussing with his upper buttons one-handed as he fought off the sense they’d come in from the wrong direction.

  “Can’t see the cockpit from here,” Tom muttered.

  “I don’t think it still flies,” Claypool said with a smartass snicker and shouldered past without actually jostling him.

  Tom eyed the loping man’s back, distracted as Tucker vaulted like a younger man from the personnel carrier’s shotgun door. A 9mm pistol jutted from his hip.

  “Vanicek,” the unit leader said. “First day on the job, just shadow what the others are doing. We’ve got three goals. We identify and log worthwhile resources for future use. We mark and retrieve anything we can use right now. And if you find any goodies, report to me direct. No looting. Got it?”

  “Can you tell me why none of us have guns?” Tom asked.

  He motioned behind himself to the other general crew, inadvertently drawing a few of them into his orbit and within range of their leader’s reply.

  “Furies are scarce,” Tucker said. “We’ve got two troopers with us keeping watch.”

  His brows furrowed as if reconsidering whatever appraisal he’d already made of Tom.

  “Feeling spooked, Vanicek?”

  “Just a little naked.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tucker said, unimpressed. “We’ll take your mind off that. Let’s get to work.”

  *

  THE GROUP ADVANCED down the blocked street, troopers at the front, Tucker leading the way just a few paces back from them, then the more senior hands advancing as Tom and half-a-dozen others loitered, waiting on the emergence of a plan. No one had tossed the technology park. No orange spray paint in sight. That left plenty of unknowns.

  Claypool headed with the men in the second ranks, leaving Tom easing just slightly back on his alert level with the Eurasian kid Lee and the truck driver and Chicago and Graves and a few others around him.

  There were six buildings in the complex including a broad warehouse with a loading bay, several forklifts left out in the open one afternoon nearly five years before and now rusting into slag. The airliner’s tail jutted out over the wreckage, throwing its shadow to the west across a swathe of lawn now beset with wispy, six-foot-tall weeds and no sign of any recent passage through them. Tom rested his hand on his tool belt, glad at least for the hatchet within reach. He pushed thoughts of Laurance out of mind.

  Ahead of them, the sentries paused in the street just as it became a tomb of shadows, confirming the blockage ahead was absolute. Hugh, the bigger of the two guards, consulted briefly with Tucker, and then he, Claypool and another man headed for a doorway in the building on the left. Crushed masonry fallen from the wing embedded over their heads marred the door they started forcing open. Meanwhile, Tucker motioned, and everyone started following him across the face of the lower building, circumnavigating as Tom and those around him trudged into the grass at a safe distance.

  The other guard Fitz wore a patch on one eye, long silver hair escaping from beneath a black paramilitary helmet and wool cap. There was a cheroot, unlit, set in one corner of his nicotine-stained mouth, an ornery old character who cradled his automatic rifle like a lover.

  Fitz led the way around the side of the building, all of them conscious of the shadowed bulk of the aircraft’s fuselage set higher than the rooftop, listing slightly and with the nose of the plane pointed down, somewhere beyond any immediate view thanks to the intervening scenery. The long grass was spotted with discarded mechanical parts, and finally the vivisected remains of a vintage four-wheel drive.

  A growling noise gave them pause and set Fitz, Tucker and Miranda rushing forward as stealthily as their pace allowed. The woman carried a crowbar like a baseball bat ready to strike and the trooper tossed his AR15 to Tucker and drew the shotgun from its sheath across his lower back. Thinking it better to stay informed than otherwise, Tom advanced after them, conscious of the remainder of the crew more than happy to see him pass them by on his way along the building’s side wall to where it opened into what used to be a parking lot, the eastern end filled with spilled bricks like some discharge from a giant’s diarrhea, the broken-open and listing cockpit of the passenger jet hanging down and through the neighboring structure it’d half destroyed.

  But the noise came from a pair of Furies standing together, snapping and reaching uselessly up towards another of their number now hanging by its neck and kicking its feet almost aimlessly, suspended from the ground by an anchored steel cable at least thirty feet from the road’s surface.

  The mere impression of it was enough to convince Tom the scene was a trap or a set-up or some other evidence of recent manmade interference – and thus, enough to demand his ongoing paranoid security protocols. Paranoia had saved him plenty of times – too many to really call it that anymore. Dignity be damned, he did as he always instructed his kids to do, dropping into a crouch and advancing to the corner of the four-story office block, using it for cover as he checked there were no other immediate threats. Several of the others fell into his wake, a serious-looking woman wearing a cap on her shorn-short hair right behind him. A twenty-something black guy with a nervous skipping walk continued past them, following Tucker and the lead trooper, who cautiously advanced in a tactical gait with firearms readied.

  Tom used the pause to check the path between the ghouls and the cockpit, discerning in a quick assay how a manmade path through the rubble and the re-engineered fencing created a controlled gateway, as well as the anchor for the steel cable, tethered to stout steel poles sunk deep into the tarmac. Although the Furies didn’t feed on their own kind, they were drawn to its snarling without knowing its flesh was as rotten as theirs, dangling just out of reach.

  “Flypaper trap,” Tom muttered.

  The truck driver Hsu and Chicago Jones were also behind him. The Asian woman frowned to indicate Tom should explain himself, the capped woman watching them solemnly. Hsu wore a six-inch knife with a gaffer-taped handle low at her ankle, as if afraid someone might take it off her. Light freckles dusted her copper skin, the closest thing to green eyes a Chinese girl could have outside of fiction.

  “Someone’s here,” Tom said to them.

  The gunmen got their sights on the Dead, but Tucker had a hammer in his belt he used to good effect the moment the first of the Furies whirled about on them.

  The second biter was only distracted by the death of its fellow. The long-dead former postal worker was emaciated and rotten to the core. Bone showed through the moist tears in its pants. It was slower than the first one – a sign its lifespan was finally coming to an end – and the gnarled trooper butted the thing between the eyes with the sawn-off grip of his Remington, crunching its skull into oblivion with his combat boot once it fell onto its back.

  The vision somehow sent Tom’s thoughts flying to his kin, conscious of the distance between him and Lila and Luke hopefully bearing up under the burdens they also shared. It felt like madness to be so far apart after so many years.

  “DON’T MOVE,” a mechanical voice shouted out at them.

  It took Tom a moment to trace the bullhorn to the airplane cockpit, not entirely in clear view while Tom remained tucked around the corner of the office block. It was thirty yards to where Tucker and Fitz stood in open ground, and another hundred yards up the slope of rubble to the downed airliner.

  “NOTHING HERE FOR YOU FOLKS,” the bullhorn came again. “GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.”

  Tucker slowly lifted his hands in the air, nonsensically questing around as if it wasn’t immediately obvious the stranger was in position on higher ground. Fitz remained at rest, visibly unperturbed with the shotgun lowered, but still in his hands, cheroot in place as well.

  “We’re from the City!” Tu
cker yelled. “You can come out, we won’t harm you!”

  The synthesized laugh was chilling through the bullhorn, and Tom refastened his grip on the tomahawk and then on second thoughts drew it from Laurance’s belt.

  Tucker and the stranger traded invitations – to the unknown man, safe passage to the City, and the stranger in the cockpit for them to leave because he didn’t give a damn for their offer. Tom chanced a look, wary of a potential sniper, and like Tucker, spotted a bearded man in a green hooded top poised in the open doorway of the cockpit, the old bullhorn in one hand, a hunting rifle across his lap. It was impossible to see if it had a scope, though that seemed likely.

  Tom was about to retreat from his scan when a black movement caught his eye as the second trooper Hugh, previously dispatched into the office building, crept out of an upper-floor window and started carefully across the edge of the airliner’s upturned wing, assault rifle trained on the cockpit. He gave a shout and the startled hunter in the cabin realized he was caught before he could move his own gun into play, and Tom recognized the look that crossed his face – more annoyance with himself than imminent fear. The hunter put his hands up at that point and they walked him down from the plane and into the gory clearing. And although Tom wasn’t entirely convinced the stranger was alone, curiosity drew him out of hiding, though he alone of the others joined the impromptu parley.

  “What’s your trick with the hanging biter?” Tucker asked the man.

  Neither he nor the trooper with him lifted their guns. Once Hugh disarmed the stranger, Tucker did his best to make their conclave as unthreatening as possible, only upping Tom’s respect for the man who knew how much a little power went so quickly to so many heads.

  “He wasn’t one of the Dead until I made him that way,” the hunter replied.

  He tipped back the hood of his jacket still wearing his cheesed-off look.

  “You got me good, huh?”

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Tucker said. “We’re not taking anything from your lodgings up there and we’re not press-ganging anyone into the City. You’re welcome to come. I’m Tucker, this is Fitz and Hugh.”

  Tom decided not to introduce himself, one look his way from Tucker infused with a mild disdain for Tom’s lack of heroics so far. Now wasn’t the time or place for a renewed argument about their lack of weapons.

  “My name’s Jekyll,” the narrow-eyed hunter said. “I’d rather you call me Jackal than make any dumb book jokes.”

  “Noted,” Tucker said.

  “We’re gonna be clearing out all these other buildings and doing what we came here to do,” Tucker continued. “Do we need to keep guns on you when we do that, or are we going to be cool?”

  “There’s fuck-all in those buildings of any use,” Jekyll said. “You think I ain’t already been through ‘em?”

  “Then why not come to the City?”

  Jekyll gave a faint laugh now far less sinister without the amplification.

  “No thanks,” he said. “I do well enough on my own.”

  As if sensing Tom’s guilty concurrence, the lone hunter glanced his way, eye contact for long enough the two men slowly nodded at each other.

  “We still have to do the buildings,” Tucker said. “We’re looking for more than just leftover supplies. Nothing you’ll miss if you haven’t looted it already.”

  “Looting?”

  Jekyll gave him a curious look, his expression nothing like what you’d expect surrounded by armed men.

  “Whatever you want to call it.”

  “What do you call it when you guys do it?” Jekyll asked.

  “We’re Foragers,” Hugh said.

  Jekyll only snorted and backed quietly away.

  *

  WEAPONLESS, THE HUNTER followed the crew around on their duties, drifting behind them with his arms mostly folded like an unhappy landlord not expecting to challenge anything they might find. All the same, it was much as the “Jackal” told it, and the three women crewmembers and Chicago Jones went into action with clipboards making notes as they started at the top floor and worked their way down.

  The tech park was once home to a medical technology company, but they had more paperwork and industrial equipment than anything of immediate value, and whatever the various freezer rooms contained were ruined back when the power failed, plus whoever’d been through in the years since stomped thousands of glass phials into dust. The remainder of the building was likewise despoiled, a section of carpeted offices bearing trace of people living there once, a long while back. The desiccated remains of a dozen ex-Furies lay stacked in a rain-damaged boardroom.

  Tucker called a break when the first building was done, and then the workers were fed. Foragers got a meal on the day – another inducement, in addition to the double rations stamp – and Tucker wisely offered Jekyll a meal too. The hunter was too pragmatic to refuse, and after lunch was done, they started on the next building across from the one half-levelled by the fallen plane. Jekyll assured them the ruin was much the same, though Tom already overheard the talk between Chicago and the women noting their various finds worthy of later collection. Jekyll didn’t look like he had much use for copper pipe and furniture. Tucker assured the hunter that his team would eventually want to check the ruined offices as well – though that was work for tomorrow or one of the days still to come.

  Jekyll wasn’t thrilled to learn it was more than a one-off visit. Midafternoon, the sentries killed a Fury loping towards the trucks as Graves, Claypool, and two of the other men loaded crates of sealable glass jars with lids. The crew stood around swapping anecdotes after that, joking the dead Fury was the “best-dressed zombie” they’d seen in weeks, and later confirming Graves kept a book on such things.

  Tom’s work eased off after that, not amounting to much more than the shadowing work he’d already been advised. There was a stack of steel pipes gently corroding in the head-height weeds around one side of the third building, so he walked over and started clearing the vegetation, ignoring Claypool’s catcalled insult as he stripped down to his cotton vest and started carefully, methodically lifting the end of one of the heavy pipes from the ground and lowering it back down again.

  “What the fuck you doin’, fool?”

  Claypool sauntered towards him, for some reason with the Jackal in his wake.

  Tom straightened, conscious of the tightness in his lower back commanding attention thanks to the lifting. He met Claypool’s eye, said nothing, and slowly squatted to his lowest position, then stood again, feeling the tightness relax.

  “Don’t want to lose your strength,” Tom said when he was good and ready.

  He waited on the big man’s reply. Claypool only made a face – like the answer didn’t make sense – and the hunter moved slowly around behind them.

  Tom looked at Jekyll and then Claypool still before him.

  “I don’t much like the way you talk to me,” Tom said.

  “That a fact?” Claypool replied.

  “Yep, thought you should know.”

  “Ha, you don’t think I didn’t?”

  “Oh,” Tom said as if it was his turn to play dumb. “So you’re doing that on purpose?”

  Claypool again regaled him with one of his open-mouthed looks as if he didn’t quite know what was going on. Presumably, under ordinary circumstances dudes would normally be trying to fight him by now. In that absence, he looked utterly lost.

  “You’re fuckin’ weird, man.”

  Claypool walked away shaking his head, and Jekyll stood watching Tom still, only a dozen feet away radiating some kind of underhanded bemusement. Tom took a deep breath and returned his attention to the steel pipe, resuming his careful underhanded grip.

  “Living fat in this City of yours help you keep that muscle?” the hunter sneered.

  “Hardly.”

  Tom didn’t say anything else for a moment. Each of the pipes weighed an easy five-hundred pounds. He did another rep lifting one end of the pipe, going s
low and careful and feeling the cords in his arms and lower back as they worked. Then he set the pipe down again and straightened with the mildest wince.

  “I’ve only just come into the City myself,” Tom said. “Six-week hike, too much cardio, yeah?”

  They’d exchanged introductions earlier in the day. Jekyll was antisocial, but not inept. It didn’t stop him eyeing Tom top to bottom again in an overt appraisal.

  “You’re lifting to keep them muscles,” he said rather than asked.

  “Yup.” Tom shrugged. “Use it or lose it, right?”

  “That’s a lot of meat to carry,” he said. “A lot of calories.”

  “I’m no bodybuilder,” Tom said. “I eat lean like everyone. But strength is a skill. Knew that before the Fall.”

  “The Fall,” Jekyll echoed unconsciously.

  The hunter nodded, meditating on Tom’s words and offering nothing more.

  “You want strength, you got to eat right,” Jekyll said after Tom did two more reps.

  “Meat, I know,” Tom said. “Out in the wild like you, I hunted.”

  Jekyll grunted.

  “If you did so good, why go the City at all?”

  “I don’t know about ‘good’,” Tom said. “Short answer to your question though: kids.”

  Jekyll grunted again.

  “Gotta look after that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got meat,” the hunter said. “How many kids you got?”

  “Not for trade.”

  “Lol,” Jekyll said – the word about the only thing that could’ve surprised Tom at that point.

  “Two,” Vanicek said. “A boy, eleven, my daughter, sixteen.”

  “Trade you something?”

  Tom thought about it a second, then remembered the bullets in his pocket.