Zed's World (Book 3): No Way Out

by Rich Baker

  “I knew they had suppressed weapons!” D-Day exclaims.

  “How are they not getting swarmed?” Carmen asks. “They seem to be walking completely unnoticed through that field.”

  “Not completely,” D-Day replies.

  A pair of zombies ambling through the field passes in front of them, but after a couple of moments, they turn and begin heading toward them. One of the people in the middle of the group raises a suppressed pistol and two ghouls collapse, one after the other.

  “Smart,” D-Day says. “The one in the middle did the shooting. Their movement would have been pretty well hidden by the people around them. A person might have noticed it, and we certainly can from our elevated position here, but the zombies probably didn’t. If that was on purpose, these folks are clever.”

  They continue their march across the field and eventually walk up a side street and out of view. D-Day and Carmen continue watching for about thirty minutes, and nothing else happens. He’s about to suggest they go inside for some afternoon delight when he spots the small white car driving on the road that borders the empty field.

  “Check it out,” he says, but Carmen already has her binoculars trained on it. It turns up the side street the group on foot entered earlier.

  A couple of minutes later, gunfire erupts from the direction where the people disappeared. A couple of individual shots at first, then what sounds like automatic fire. Within seconds, zombies start appearing from yards and side streets. The hundred or so that were heading north on County Line in the wake of that white car also change direction, some threading their way through the wreckage in the intersection and others walking into the irrigation ditch, then struggling to get out of the water and onto the bank on the opposite side.

  Another series of shots rings out.

  “D-Day, those people are in trouble! We need to go help them!”

  D-Day’s done the mental math. The group was carrying suppressed weapons, so the shots they’re hearing would not have come from them. That means another group is shooting it out with them. And as a bonus, a small army of undead are closing in on them. The only question D-Day hasn’t answered to his satisfaction is whether or not this is worth sticking their necks out. Carmen makes the decision for him.

  “Are you coming with me? I’m going, whether you go or not,” she says, as she heads to the ladder that descends into the warehouse.

  He sighs. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

  He follows Carmen down the ladder, through the maintenance area, and into the main warehouse. They both wear their pistols all the time, and D-Day has his rifle, but Carmen needs to grab hers from their top shelf ‘bedroom’ before sprinting to the dock. A quick check through the window shows the coast is clear, so they roll up the door. D-Day hops into the Jeep, then onto the ground. He runs around the Jeep to his motorcycle and starts it up. Carmen closes the dock door and is just a couple of steps behind him. She climbs on the bike, and D-Day takes off, turning left out of the dock area and then left again to the access road that used to be humming with in and outbound semis all day long. He makes a right onto County Line Road, dodges around a few zombies, then slows down and jumps the curb in the same spot as the white car. He crosses the footbridge and winds his way around the neighborhood to Deer Trail Drive, the main road through the development. He follows this around the large vacant lot, which, now that they’re right next to it he sees a large blue and white sign that reads “Future Home of a New School!”

  Not anymore, D-Day thinks. As he approaches the street they watched the group of people disappear into, a white Nissan Leaf speeds out of the street, squealing the tires as it goes the wrong way through a roundabout. It heads north, away from them. D-Day only sees one person in the car. Just before they reach the street, he slows down, then stops and turns his head toward Carmen.

  “Okay, something’s definitely up. Listen, I’m going to hoof it from here. You take the bike and head down the street, the same path that Nissan took, and try to lead some of these zombies away. I saw a sidewalk running through that field – I’ll bet it runs all the way through to the next big street. If it does, come back on that. If not, you know where we are; find a way back, or call if you can’t.” He pats the pocket on his vest with the walkie talkie in it. She has the matching one in a pocket on her vest.

  “Be careful!” she says. “Like you’re not going to. Forget I said that.”

  “You be careful too! I’ve seen how you drive a bike.”

  “Oh, ha-ha, you’re a riot!” she says, pretending to be mad but doing a poor job of it. He smiles and takes off running up the side street, taking cover behind a bush next to the driveway of the first house. She puts the bike in gear and rides away, revving the motor so the dead pay attention to her and not the man behind the bush.

  D-Day peeks behind him, checking how many undead are still tracking his location. There’s a half dozen, but as Carmen rides away, they turn toward her and file past his position and on up the main road.

  He turns his attention up the street. The group walking up here, the gunfire, the Nissan speeding off, it could all be a coincidence – except D-Day doesn’t believe in coincidences. He kneels, taking advantage of the concealment offered by the bushes, and raises his rifle, looking through the scope.

  He sees a body lying in the grass next to a driveway four houses away and a woman with long blonde hair struggling to put in a new magazine. A young man and another blonde woman carry another body from the side of the house. A brown-haired woman takes the pistol from the first blonde, inserts the magazine and releases the slide. She hands the pistol back to the blonde. Another man limps around the corner, a strip of white fabric tied around his leg. He leans against the brick siding that surrounds the garage door.

  The first blonde is also wounded. She struggles to get her poncho on with a bloody shoulder that has left her right arm hanging limp. The group is talking back and forth and doesn’t notice the black Ranger all-purpose vehicle parked on the wrong side of the street several houses farther west. D-Day sees movement and pans the rifle scope to the right. A man and a woman sit in the front of what amounts to a fancy dune buggy. The man has a rifle resting on the folded over windshield, and D-Day sees a puff of flame flare out of what looks like an improvised suppressor. To the left, in the driveway, the injured blonde collapses and falls against the man with the wounded leg. Several more shots find the blonde woman, and she and the man with the wounded leg slide to the ground. The group is searching for the shooter, but haven’t returned fire yet.

  D-Day re-sights the rifle on the man in the APV and pulls the trigger, seeing a puff of red from the man’s chest. He fires again, and another red puff erupts from his chest, a few inches from the first one. He gets up and runs up the street, shouting at the group as he passes.

  “Gather up your wounded; we need to go! There’s an army of the dead coming this way!”

  One of the men starts to raise a gun on him, but the second blonde woman stops him and points at the APV.

  D-Day hears him scream “That giant fucking bitch!” as he runs past. The blonde in the APV is freaking out, covered in the blood from her counterpart’s wounds.

  “You,” he says, pointing a finger at her, “settle down. Sit tight.”

  He grabs the wounded driver and moves him to the bed of the APV, then hops in and hits the gas, driving down to the house where the group waits.

  “Load ‘em up!” he says, gesturing to the bed of the APV.

  The blonde in the poncho lunges at the blonde in the passenger seat. D-Day stops her.

  “Time for that later!” he shouts. “Let’s go! Time is a factor here!”

  They all hesitate, looking at each other, not sure if they should listen to this guy or not.

  He raises his rifle, and fires six shots, dropping four zombies that were within one hundred fifty feet. Another two dozen aren’t far behind them.

  “Look, I’m trying to help you guys here, but if you don’t want it, I’ll tak
e this APV, and you all can hoof it through this horde that’s coming. There’s only another couple hundred behind those four.”

  The man and the poncho-wearing blonde run and grab the wounded man’s arms and carry him to the APV, helping him get in the bed of the vehicle by the unknown man who was shooting at them. The brown-haired woman is dragging the dead blonde’s body toward them, and the man rushes to help her, while the blonde goes and starts moving the dead man’s body. A few seconds later brown haired woman and the man show up to help her, and they put the body in the bed with the others.

  Poncho blonde points at an open garage door across the street and to their left, close to where the unknown shooter and his blonde companion were parked. The front end of a golf cart is just visible inside the opening. The young man nods ‘yes’ to Poncho Blonde, who sprints towards the cart.

  “Folks, we need to go,” D-Day says. “Where are you staying?”

  “One minute and we’ll show you,” the man says.

  Poncho blonde reaches the cart and gets behind the wheel. A second later it rolls out of the garage and turns their way.

  The brown-haired woman and the man hop in the cart, and they head down the street, weaving through the undead and knocking a few of them aside. Poncho blonde sees the mass of zombies coming from the right, and jumps the curb, steering the golf cart into the big, vacant field. D-Day follows in the APV, making the horde turn like a flock of decaying, grounded geese.

  Part Two: The Puckett’s

  One

  Danny Harris’ Basement, Longview, Colorado Saturday, May 24, 2013: Z-Day Plus 7

  “Tony, do something terrible.”

  “Easy!” Ben Puckett exclaims. “Snatch. Dennis Farina.”

  “Dammit! I thought I had you on that one,” Andy Briggs says.

  “Must go faster!” Ben says.

  “Too easy! Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum.” Andy smiles.

  Ben grins an even bigger grin. “Nope! Jurassic Park, but also Jeff Goldblum.”

  “Independence Day was first. I get that one,” Andy protests.

  “Andy, not even close. JP was like four or five years before Independence Day. Google it if you want.” He pauses for a moment. “Oh that’s right, the world ended so you can’t! My point. I’m leading, one forty-one to one thirty-nine.”

  “And I’m going to blow my fucking brains out,” Keith Wallace interjects. “This is fucking boring.”

  He gets a hard look from Stephenie Sims.

  “What?” he signs to the deaf girl, then it dawns on him – it’s only been a week since her uncle killed himself because he could not take life without his wife, who had been bitten by a zombie and turned into one of the undead creatures. Her uncle literally blew his brains out, and for her, the causal joke isn’t funny. “Sorry,” he signs. “I wasn’t thinking,” he says out loud.

  “There’s something I can relate to.”

  They all turn and look at Danielle Heneghan, the tall blonde who, until he met Stephenie during the groups’ exodus from Fort Collins, Colorado, had been Keith’s girlfriend. They haven’t resolved that issue, and Danielle intends to take care of that now.

  “Funny, Danielle,” Keith says.

  “I’m not trying to be funny, Keith. You never think. Like when you dragged me down here and practically ditched me for Helen Keller before we were even out of the apartment for fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s rich, coming from you,” Keith fires back.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Don’t act like you weren’t going to break up with me after graduation. You had one foot out the door, and you know it! And now that the world is ending you want to act like I’m the asshole?”

  “I wasn’t -” she stammers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  Keith has her on the defensive and decides to press the advantage.

  “Save it,” he says. “Toni spilled the beans to Ben, and my boy wasn’t going to leave me hanging.”

  “Hey!” Ben says. “Leave Toni and me out of this. I never said anything to you!”

  Keith smiles.

  “It’s what you didn’t say, bro,” he says. “It was all over your face. That’s why you always lose at poker. You can’t hide your emotions.”

  “I should have known better than to trust Toni and Natalie with a secret,” Danielle fumes.

  “What did I do?” Natalie, Andy’s girlfriend, asks from the corner of the room where she’s been working on a laptop. “You asked if I could keep a secret, and I told you I didn’t want to, but you insisted on telling me anyway! For the record, I didn’t tell anyone anything. This is between Y'all.”

  “Don’t blame them, Danielle,” Keith says. “I was just making incredibly accurate assumptions based on body language. You’re the one who just confirmed it by admitting that you told them about it and asked them to keep it secret.”

  “Fuck you, Keith. We’re done,” Danielle says. She looks at the rest of the group. “And fuck you guys too. Glad to know I have no real friends anymore.”

  She turns in the doorway and storms off.

  “Well, that was fun,” Keith says.

  “For you maybe,” Ben says. “For the rest of us, this basement just got a whole lot smaller.”

  “Hey, I’m the one who has to sleep with one eye open now. I’m just glad I don’t have any rabbits for her to boil,” Keith says.

  “Fatal Attraction! Glen Close! That’s MY point!!” Andy cries out, trying to take credit in their movie quotes game.

  “No way, Jose,” Ben says. “That one wasn’t even a quote, and Keith isn’t playing!”

  Keith looks back at Stephenie. “Sorry,” he signs. “She’s crazy.”

  “Don’t worry,” she says out loud in her stilted fashion, and she signs while she talks. “I’ll protect you.”

  Stephenie’s sister, Annie Sims, walks in.

  “What did you guys do to Little Miss Sunshine? She just went into the bathroom and slammed the door. Like, harder than normal,” she says.

  “She and Keith just officially broke up,” Andy says.

  “About time,” Annie says, then points a finger at Keith. “You hurt my sister, and I will feed you to the zeds. You understand me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I think you’re going to have to get in line on that one. Danielle has dibs.”

  “Cute. Seriously though, you should watch your backs with her. She’s not happy,” Annie says. “Hey, you guys should come out here. Robert found something.”

  Robert, Annie and Stephenie’s older brother, doesn’t like Keith, but since Stephenie does, he tolerates him. In the week since the group locked themselves in the basement of their gunsmith/prepper neighbor, Robert has been watching the security camera footage and reviewing the things recorded on the DVR. Apparently, he’s found something interesting.

  The gang gets up and files out of the bedroom into the media room. Danny Harris, the owner of the house, left Longview for his property in the mountains at the start of the outbreak. He and Ben’s father, Kyle are friends, and so he left then with access to his fortress of a basement. They would have followed him out of town, but Ben’s girlfriend Toni is recovering from gunshot wounds she received on the trip to Longview from Fort Collins and is in no shape to travel.

  Danny had a lot of modifications engineered into the house when he had it built. The basement has nine-foot ceilings and extends under the front and back yards, making it larger than the main floor. Instead of window wells, he had cement pods mounted on the side of the foundation, capped with concrete and buried, so there is no access from the outside. He replaced the windows with steel doors opening into each pod, and at the rear of each one is another steel door resembling a hatch on a submarine or a door to a bank vault, complete with the spinning wheel in the middle. On the other side of each door is an unfinished tunnel leading to a window well on his neighbor’s houses. Escape routes.

  He has a bank of large, industrial style UPS batteries that
store energy gathered by the solar panels on the roof. Because of this, they’ve had power in the basement for their critical things – like the refrigerator – even after the power went out almost a week ago. Danny used LED lighting throughout so there’s minimal power drain by keeping the lights on.

  Robert Sims has been putting that power to good use, using Danny’s security cameras to watch and learn about the habits of the undead, or zeds, as the group calls them.

  He’s got the sixty-five-inch TV on as they file into the room. On screen is Blanca Nunez, well known to everyone in Colorado as the hottest news personality on any of the four major local network stations. She’s in her early thirties, has shoulder length black hair, dark skin, bright green eyes, and her large breasts perpetually strain against her outfits.

  The image of her on screen now, however, looks terrible, and not in the ‘this is high definition TV, and she’s a low-def anchor’ kind of way the news people usually look bad. It’s more of an ‘I’ve been up for a day and a half, and exhaustion is stalking my every step’ kind of way.

  “I found this on the DVR,” Robert says. “I’ve been checking the recordings, working backward, and they’ve all been static. Then I found this. It’s from last Saturday.”

  “The day after,” Annie says.

  Robert nods. “You guys ready?” They all say yes, and he presses play on the remote.

  Bianca is mid-sentence when the image goes into motion.

  “…for twenty-four hours, but I’m staying up as long as I can. There’s only a skeleton crew working here at Fox 31, and if you’ve been staying up with our newscasts, you know why. This crew is awesome. When everyone else ran, they stayed so we can keep you all as informed as possible. If we can help save someone’s life, then this is worth the effort. Here's a timeline of events so far.”

  The image cuts to a bulleted list that populates the screen as she talks.

  “Last night - that was Friday night - around 5:30 PM, Mountain time, riots began breaking out in European cities. The violence seemed completely random. A demographer with the US State Department has since found a pattern that shows any city with a population greater than 150,000 people has been affected. For the record, there are more than one hundred and thirty cities in the United States with more than 150,000 people in them. Similar uprisings began in the United States in these larger cities about 30 minutes later. There are four of them in Colorado: Denver, including sites throughout the Metro area, Colorado Springs to the south, Fort Collins to the north, and Aurora to the east of Denver. While they do not have 150,000 people, Boulder to the northwest of Denver, and Grand Junction on the Western Slope have also seen the rioting. In states like Wyoming where there are no cities that large, their largest cities have been affected. Cheyenne has reported widespread violence, and Laramie has as well. One common thread, at least locally, for the smaller cities like Laramie and Boulder is they contain college campuses.