In the Dead: Volume 1

by Jesse Petersen

  “Does that usually work in zombie movies?” Mrs. Floyd asked.

  When Zander glanced at her, he was surprised to see she was smiling at him. Weakly, yes, but a smile nonetheless.

  “Well,” he began.

  “Sometimes it works,” Carrie offered. “But you know as well as I do that at least one or two people die in those movies. Good guys.” Zander arched both eyebrows and Carrie shrugged. “I watch movies, too.”

  He paced across the room and peeked around the curtains a second time. The smoke in the air was twisting on the wind as it rose around and above the buildings.

  “I guess I’d rather try to get out, though, then starve to death in an apartment.” He let the curtain fall. “But that’s just me. I’m going to try to figure out how to get out of here. But if you two don’t want to go, I understand. I can try to send someone back for you if I find any kind of organized survivors or military.”

  Carrie swallowed and looked at her Mom. “Can we talk about it for a minute?”

  He nodded. “Sure. While you’re doing that, maybe I’ll go back to my place and just check out the ration situation.”

  He moved toward the door, but Carrie stopped him by reaching out for his arm. “Hey,” she said. “Take my shotgun. You never know.”

  He stared at the weapon, then took it. “Thanks.”

  She nodded and then motioned her Mom toward the kitchen. When he stepped into the hall, he heard her lock the door behind him.

  He drew a deep breath and looked at the dark hallway. Now that he knew there was something so sinister and terrible going on, he noticed things he’d been oblivious to when he first entered the corridor. There was a smudge of blood on one of the other doors near the elevator. And the clear window that led into the stairwell had been blocked from the hallway side by cardboard. Probably thanks to Carrie.

  He shivered and moved toward his apartment. He hesitated as he put his hand out. He hadn’t locked the door behind him. Why would he? His only plan had been to run down, confront Roger about the internet problem and then run right back up. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue, but now he couldn’t help but imagine zombies filling his apartment, waiting for him.

  “Calm the hell down,” he said out loud so he would hear the words. “Carrie locked the… zombies… or whatever out of the hall. They aren’t in there.”

  Still he double checked that the shotgun was loaded before he turned the knob and peered into the main room. It was empty, of course, lit up by the game screen from Bonewrecker 2 and a lamp he’d forgotten about days ago.

  With a sigh, he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He headed for the kitchen. It was a big, open room with an island in the center that was scattered with crumbs from the chips, cookies and microwave pizzas he’d been living on the last few days. An empty Safeway bag sat next to the leftovers and he grabbed it to fill it with whatever food he could carry with him back to Mrs. Floyd’s apartment. There wasn’t much to choose from. A quarter of a bag of chips, a box of sugar cereal with a cartoon gorilla on the box (he could only imagine what Carrie would say when she saw that), and a couple of cans of beans and soup.

  A sad little collection and one that wouldn’t get him through more than a day or two. Less since he intended to share with the women if they joined him on the road. Not that he knew where he was going.

  He moved back into the living room and stared at the game screen. It was the hand of Bonewrecker, the military hero of the game. He was holding a big ass gun and in the background were an army of monsters and zombies.

  Would the ones he found downstairs be worse or better than the ones he’d been fighting for years in video games?

  There was a rattle and the door to his apartment squeaked open. Out of pure instinct, Zander raised the shotgun and swung it on the intruder. As the door hit the wall and revealed Carrie, she froze, their eyes locked for a long moment.

  “Sorry,” Zander muttered. “You should have knocked.”

  “You should have locked the door,” she retorted, but there was no heat or anger in her tone. She shut the door behind her and locked the deadbolt. “So did you find anything of value?”

  He lifted the plastic bag of leftovers and she frowned. “That’s it?”

  He shrugged. “I’m a bachelor, what do you want?”

  She glanced around the room and sniffed in disgust. “You’re a slob, dude. Bachelor or not. So is this the famous game?”

  He nodded as the two of them stared at the play screen. She laughed. “Actually, they get the zombies pretty close to right.”

  He stared at the image on the screen. Dead eyes, gray skin, black sludge around the lips. He shuttered.

  She looked at him in surprise. “I would have thought you’d be excited.”

  “Why?” he asked with an incredulous laugh. “I don’t even like to talk to the pizza guy, let alone fight a real zombie.”

  “Yeah, you do need to get out more,” she said. “But I guess you’ll get your chance now. My Mom and I decided to try your plan and make a move before the situation gets even worse.”

  Zander was surprised that relief flooded him. He didn’t even like people as a whole, Mrs. Floyd specifically, but he was happy not to have to head out into zombie-infested streets on his own.

  “Ok, well it’s still pretty early. What do you think of starting out today?”

  Carrie shifted slightly and he could see she was nervous. Scared. But then she nodded. “Yeah. Now or never, right?”

  “Right.”

  #

  The stairwell was eerily quiet. So quiet that Zander’s heavy breathing echoed in the empty space around them and sounded like freaking Darth Vader. He peered around and then motioned behind him so that Mrs. Floyd and Carrie would follow. Mrs. Floyd had surrendered her Glock to Carrie and Zander kept the shotgun, so Mrs. Floyd was right behind him, flanked by the two of them with high powered weapons. Not that she was unarmed. She had a heavy iron skillet raised up like a battle axe and Zander wasn’t so sure he wanted to find out if she could wield it.

  “How did you two end up with guns, anyway?” he whispered as they crept down the first set of stairs and rounded the corner past the 11 floor. “You don’t exactly seem all Pro-Second Amendment to me.”

  Mrs. Floyd answered. “Well, a woman of my age, living alone in an expensive apartment. I wanted to be protected.”

  Zander shot her a look over his shoulder. Shit man, there was a lot about this old lady he was totally shocked to find out.

  “And what about this guy?” He raised the shotgun higher.

  Carrie sighed. “I took it off a dead security guard on my way to Mom’s apartment after the outbreak started. And the thin amount of ammo we have left. By the way, shoot accurately because we don’t have a lot of ammo.”

  Zander shot her a look. “So I gathered. Man, I wish this was a video game.”

  Carrie snorted out a laugh. “Isn’t it? Scary stairwell, only two guns and three people, not to mention the freaking zombies.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Zander sighed. “But in a video game you can set the ammo to infinite.”

  “That would be nice,” Mrs. Floyd said with a sigh or her own.

  “And I’d also have double D boobs,” Carrie said. “But wishing for that is as useless as wishing for infinite ammo.”

  Zander glanced back and tried not to be too obvious about checking Carrie out. Her boobs looked fine to him, but he doubted bringing that up would win him points with either woman. And Mrs. Floyd had that skillet, after all.

  Luckily he didn’t have to come up with a reply because there was a noise in the stairwell. Unfortunately, the noise was the faint moaning of people. Plural. Well, maybe not people. Zombies.

  “Oh my God,” Zander couldn’t help but mutter. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

  “It’s okay,” Carrie whispered from above. “You’re going to be fine. Just aim for the head. Don’t get bitten.”

  “Great. Good advice,” Zander said through cl
enched teeth as he peeked down through the spiraling stairs below and caught a glimpse of their prey (and their predator, but that was another story).

  There were ten of them, gathered up together in the middle of the stairs between the sixth and seventh floors. They swayed back and forth, drooling and grumbling in a nonsensical collection of terrible sounds that were hardly even human.

  Zander hadn’t seen any of them so close before and his stomach turned. They were people, but not people anymore. Monsters in t-shirts and jeans and one even had a purse still bouncing around on her shoulder against her side. The same side that had a huge bite mark in it. He could see the white bones of her ribs through the hole.

  “Why are they stopped?” Mrs. Floyd asked as she peered over his shoulder.

  He leaned slightly to the left at a pile of debris in the way of the zombies. “Looks like someone set up some dining chairs or something to block them.”

  Zander examined the situation. He was put to mind of the first Bonewrecker. There had been a similar situation in that game, with a bunch of monsters barely blocked from the hero and his band of survivors. How had he gotten out of that mess?

  “Carrie, give me that Glock,” he whispered.

  She stepped around her mom and held out the gun. They traded. “Why?”

  He lined the site up on the head of one of the zombies. “The shotgun is great, but I want to use something with more precision.”

  He swallowed. The person down there, he could tell she was sick. Her grey skin, black drool, empty, red eyes were all so damn creepy. But the person was still… human… ish. She was wearing a University of Washington Huskies t-shirt that had been two sizes too small in life. Her blonde hair was dirty, but still pulled back in a loose ponytail. A few days ago, she’d probably been pretty hot.

  “What are you waiting for?” Carrie hissed.

  He shook his head. “I’ve never shot a person before. I’ve never shot anything before that wasn’t, you know, computer rendered.”

  Carrie stared at him and nodded. “I know. At first it was hard for me, too. But that thing down there, all those things… they aren’t human. And they’ll kill us in a heartbeat if they get to us before we take them out.”

  He met her eyes for a minute and then nodded. “Yeah.”

  This time when he raised the Glock, his hand didn’t share nearly as much. He pressed the trigger firmly, kept the girl’s head in his sites and fired.

  The sound was deafening in the echoing confines of the stairwell and his ears rung with the explosion of gun powder and fire. He blinked and stared through a weird haze. The zombie he’d been targeting was now a headless corpse, collapsed against the barrier of chairs that separated human from monster. She was definitely not hot.

  The other zombies jerked their gazes up and Zander’s blood ran cold. They were looking, seeing and it was clear they were all thinking the same primal thing:

  FOOD!

  All at once, they rushed the barrier, clawing and climbing in a disorganized fashion.

  “Shit, they’re going to get through,” Carrie cried, her voice echoing in his still ringing ears. She raised the shotgun, but he put a hand against the barrel to keep it low.

  “Don’t waste the spray weapon,” he snapped, his mind turning to gaming tactics. “Save the shells for when they get through. Position yourself at the top of that stairwell and blast them once they’re past the barrier.”

  Carrie stared at him for a minute and then nodded as she ran down one flight of stairs lower and waited for the horde to break through.

  Zander reloaded his weapon from the precious collection of bullets in his pocket and said, “Mrs. Floyd, I need you to go up one flight of stairs. Your frying pan is a last resort weapon. If the zombies get past Carrie and get to me, run! Lock yourself in your apartment.”

  She stared at him, her lips parted and pale with fear.

  “Now!” he ordered and smiled when she jerked out a nod and scurried up the stairs.

  He turned his attention back to the zombies below. In Bonewrecker 2, one of the unlockable achievements in the game was called…

  “One Shot, Two Kills,” he muttered and lined up the site on the head of another zombie. He held his breath as the others milled around and finally another stepped behind the first. He depressed the trigger gently and the bullet exploded, slicing through both soft skulls and splattering infected brains across the back wall of the stairwell. Shell casings bounced off the floor with a metallic clink and he fired again.

  “Shit!” he snapped as the zombie lurched out of the way and the bullet only hit his shoulder. Flesh exploded, but the… thing didn’t even seem to register any kind of reaction. He continued to paw at the chairs in his way, even though his arm now hung at his side by just a thin collection of shattered bone and stretching sinew.

  “The head!” Carrie screamed from the stairs below. “Aim for the head!”

  “I know,” he snapped back, clenching his jaw as he lined up the next shot.

  This time when he fired, a zombie dropped but before he could move along to the next shot, the two who were climbing on the stack of twisted dining chairs applied the right pressure to the right place and the teetering stack of wood and cushion collapsed, the barrier shattering as zombies staggered backward.

  “Get ready!” Zander cried as he fired off another shot and caught one of the zombies as he staggered to his feet and started toward the gaping hole in the only thing separating them from imminent death, dismemberment and cannibalism. “They’re coming through.”

  “I know,” Carrie muttered, her tone tight.

  Zander continued to fire his handgun a few more times. He had to force himself not to just go crazy, not to just unload on the monsters without any precision. Every time that wild fear threatened to overtake him, he thought of Bonewrecker and all the other video games he’d played over the years and somehow he stayed calm and in control.

  The zombies had gotten themselves back together now and started streaming past what was left of the dining chair barrier. There were five of them who made it past the last splinters of wood and Zander cursed as he rushed toward the stairs where Carrie was crouched.

  She started firing the shotgun before he got there. The smells of cordite and blood filled the air as he vaulted to her side and continued to fire his own weapon.

  “Nice shooting,” he panted as he looked at the two dead zombies who were already collapsed against the stairs one level down from them. The remaining three were already starting to crawl over the bodies, drooling and growling out their desire for blood and brains.

  “I hope it’s worth it,” Carrie said as she shot him a side glance. “Because I’m out.”

  He jerked his head toward her. “Out-out?”

  She nodded. “That was my last shell. I told you we didn’t have much ammo.”

  “Ok,” he breathed as he fired off another shot at the zombies below. He cursed as the it went wide and hit the wall and not the male zombie with the sideways baseball cap. Seattle Mariners. “I think I have about five bullets left. Use your shotgun as a bludgeon and go up to where your Mom is waiting.”

  She stared at him. “But-”

  “Do it!” he snapped.

  “Be careful,” she said as she ran off behind him.

  Zander grunted an acknowledgment of her advice and fired again. This time he hit the baseball fan and he collapsed back against the zombie behind him, sending them both toppling out of sight on the stairwell.

  “Four zombies, four shots,” Zander said to himself.

  His hands started to shake. What the hell was he doing anyway? Really shooting things, really killing monsters? He was a gamer! A slacker! He wasn’t built to be a real hero.

  Except if he wasn’t, then he would die. And so would Carrie. And so would Mrs. Floyd.

  The zombies who had fallen down the stairwell had already climbed their way back up and around into his sightline again. One of them had broken his arm in the fall, too. The
bone stuck out of his rotting flesh in a twisted, sickening manner.

  Zander swallowed back the vomit that had risen into his throat and fired at the zombie with the broken arm. With a hissing gurgle, it jerked and the bullet hit the side of his head. A flap of skull and hair flew off into the distance, revealing brain, but the zombie kept coming.

  “Shit!” Zander said, stunned momentarily by the image of exposed brain material and unstoppable hunger.

  “Shoot it!” Carrie screamed from somewhere above him.

  Zander shook his head. Yeah, he could not get too distracted. Not if he wanted to live. The four remaining zombies were coming faster up the stairs now, sniffing at the air like rabid dogs and screaming and gurgling with hunger and rage.

  He fired his final three shots in rapid succession. One after another, three of the zombies fell as they moved up the stairs. But the last one, Mr. Exposed Brain Matter, kept coming.

  Zander backed up in horror, and without thinking, threw the gun at the thing.

  The weapon bounced off the zombie’s face, breaking his nose off at the tip and making the thing hiss and vomit sludge. Then the damaged monster leapt forward. Zander raised his arms and the zombie landed on him, his dead weight crushing Zander against the stairs and forcing his elbows to bend with the pressure.

  “Oh fuck!” he screamed, though he hardly recognized his own high-pitched, terror-filled voice.

  The zombie pushed toward him, growling as he snapped his teeth and tried to bite. His breath smelled like rotten meat and something metallic.

  “Get off!” Carrie’s voice came from somewhere behind him.

  And then, miraculously, the butt of the shotgun swung dangerously close to his head and connected squarely with the zombie’s face. The monster flew back off of him with a hissing whine. Zander sat up and scooted backward, away from the creature and watched in horror as Carrie swung her shotgun three more times, pulverizing the skull of the creature until it released one last shudder and then lay still.