Run: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller

by Rich Restucci

  Ali stepped behind the access hatch that they had entered through and pointed at it. “Knock your socks off, Teach. When they’re banging at your door down there, what’s the master plan? Best weight loss idea ever. Gonna lose a few pounds by starvation or them chewing on you. Either way you’re over.”

  “Fair enough. What’s the plan then?”

  “I was thinking something like this,” Billy piped up. “We, like, leave here, run to the docks, get in the boat, and like, go to the island.” He raised his eyebrows, nodding for approval, and giving a double thumbs up.

  Abbey smiled, “Good plan. Let’s go.”

  Caleb pulled on his mother’s shirt. “Mumma, I don’t wanna go back outside!” Melanie had a firm grip on her kids, but it was obvious that she had checked out momentarily. “Mumma!”

  Billy strode to the kids and their mom, getting down on his haunches to be at eye-level with the kids, “We can’t stay here Caleb. Eventually the bad people will get in, then we’re in big trouble. There are good people on that island, even a little girl named Sam. Don’t worry, I promise you and your mom and brother will get there ok.”

  “Sam’s a boy’s name.”

  “It’s also short for Samantha.”

  “K.”

  Billy pulled Melanie’s hands off the kids, and she seemed to snap out of her fugue. She looked up at him blinking. “We’re leaving,” he said. “C’mon.” She stood without saying a word, and pulled the boys to her again.

  Abbey and Ali raced up the metal stairs and checked the perimeter of the building from the catwalks one more time. It seemed clear. Coming back down, they indicated so, and made for the doors to the facility.

  “Stay low, move quickly, and above all, be quiet,” Martin told them. “Any noise at all and they could swarm us in seconds.”

  “Roger, Wilco. Over and out!” Billy said and saluted. “I’ll go first there Captain Kirk, I’m not wearing a red shirt.”

  Martin looked at him, confused. “Uh, yeah, kids can you walk or do you want one of us to carry you?”

  “I can walk good,” Caleb replied, but Noah buried his face in his mother’s hip. Melanie nodded and picked Noah up.

  Martin opened the door and they filed out one at a time into the hot afternoon air.

  Billy squinted in the sun. “It’s quiet… too quiet.”

  “Stop it!” Martin hissed.

  They made their way quietly to the chain-link enclosed docks. The huge gate was wide open, and the tiny guard house was empty. Inside the gates, numerous huge, muti-colored shipping containers were everywhere, some stacked five high, creating an effective visual barrier for the entire dock system. Moving quickly past the guard house, the survivors let Billy lead them by about forty feet. There was power here, as the lights were on in the warehouse, but since the doors were wide open, it could be full of carnivorous former-humans. The group stopped at the nearest container, catching up with Billy, who was waiting for them.

  “This is where I first learned to drive,” he leaned over and whispered to Martin, “it was really easy.” He pointed to a bloodstained pile of clothes on the asphalt. Movement in the small pile was barely perceptible, as there wasn’t much left. “That used to be a gang banger. He wasn’t very nice. He sang in the end.”

  “Billy! The boat!”

  “Yeah, it’s this-a-way.”

  “Be very quiet!” Abbey told Caleb.

  “Yeah, we’re hunting wabbits!” added Billy.

  The group moved on. As they approached a particularly tall stack of blue containers, with MAERSK in bold white letters on the side, they heard the tell-tale sounds of the dead. Moaning and shuffling sounds were close by, immediately on the other side of the stack. “Stay!” Billy whispered to his friends.

  He stuck his head around the corner and quickly ducked back. “You guys can’t go this way yet. I’ll lead them away. The boat is at the end of this dock, you have to climb down a crappy wooden ladder, to a smaller dock, but it’s that way.” He pointed down the dock for them. “There’s an open blue container. When you see that, take a left and in ten steps you’ll be at the edge of the big dock. You should see the ladder, and the boat is just below. Give me one minute, and then go. Oh, and Martin? Stop taking life so seriously, you’ll never get out alive.” Without waiting for anyone to say anything, he drew his ice axes and casually strode around the shipping container, whistling. The moans and cries got exponentially louder the second the whistling began.

  “My, I’ll bet you monsters lead interesting lives!” he shouted, and ran forward. The volume of his ravings degraded as he ran down the dock away from the group of survivors.

  After a little time, Martin looked around the corner. “Jesus, half the city is after him.” He ushered the group to follow, and they turned the corner, jogging toward where the boat should be. The surroundings were tight, barely two meters between metal walls as they negotiated the maze of shipping containers. A feral scream split the air, and the hackles raised on Martin’s neck. “What the hell was that?” demanded Tony quietly, “They don’t scream!”

  “It’s a speedy one!” Ali told them. “Everybody hush!”

  “Wait, what? A speedy what?”

  “A runner, a zombie that runs!”

  “What are you—”

  “Shhhh!”

  They all heard thumping on the metal containers. Not the thumping of many hands, rather a sound like someone was bumping into the walls of their maze as they tore around. Something whizzed past them two containers up and they all froze. Ali raised her bow, arrow nocked. A man walked around the corner where the thing had just run and stopped, his hands on his knees and looking down, heaving. He was out of breath. His clothing was torn, and there was blood on his arm.

  Before Ali could stop him, Tony called out to the newcomer in a harsh whisper, “Hey, are you ok? Come—” The man whipped his head up, staring at the group. Even from this distance Ali could see the man’s eyes were a deep crimson. The long guttural scream the man let out echoed through the containers, instilling a new found terror in the survivors who hadn’t heard this before. Ali had heard it, and she was scared shitless too.

  She let an arrow fly, but missed her mark. As she reached for another arrow, the creature bolted toward the group, arms and legs pumping in full sprint. Martin backed up and Tony issued a quick “What the fuck!” before the thing was on them. Tony raised his axe and thrust it forward like a pole arm, striking the sprinting horror just above the stomach. It stumbled back, holding its chest and looking confused, but only for a moment before it let out another short shriek and advanced, fingers slashing. Ali realized that she would never get a chance to shoot this thing before it got in amongst them, but tried to raise the bow anyway.

  Pap! Pap! Pap!

  If the thing’s screech was loud, then the gunshots from Abby’s pistol were earsplitting, especially as they reverberated throughout the metal canyons of shipping containers. Abbey had hit the man in the chest twice and the right arm once. It dropped and lay on its back reaching for them before Tony finished it with a whack to the cranium.

  Ears ringing, Martin looked at Abbey. “Bad idea. Now the others know we’re here.”

  “Yeah, like that screaming didn’t wake some shit up. Let’s go!”

  They moved forward, Noah crying slightly. “How did you know there were faster ones?” Abbey asked Ali.

  “I’ve seen a couple. I don’t think they’re dead like the slow ones though. They seem to drop when they get shot, just like you or I would.”

  “Do you think that they—”

  “They’re in front of us!” Tony shouted as a small cluster of undead appeared in front of them, rounding the corner of a junction in the shipping containers. The undead saw the survivors and advanced as fast as their decaying legs could propel them. “Turn around! Quick!”

  The group spun and moved quickly back the way they had come, with Abbey and Ali in the lead now. “This way!” Ali said and took a right. Caleb and Me
lanie were also crying as they followed the women, Tony and Martin now in the rear. They didn’t get far before they came across a grisly scene. Six undead were tearing at a prone figure, fighting over the choicest pieces. Abbey’s short intake of breath didn’t go unnoticed, and one of the monsters turned and looked directly at Caleb, who let out a short yelp of fear. The other five creatures looked up immediately, and all six decided that the fresher meat was better, and stood. They came on very quickly in the confined space.

  “Back! Back!” Ali shouted.

  “They’re behind us too!” countered Martin looking around desperately, “Up! We have to go up!” Using portions of the huge container boxes, he climbed nine feet to the top of one that was standing alone. “Give me the kids, hurry!” Melanie passed Noah up, and Martin grabbed the little boy’s hands. Caleb followed, being passed by Tony and Ali.

  “Go Melanie!” Tony shouted, the undead less than a container’s length away.

  Melanie clumsily climbed, taking quite a long time, to reach the top. Tony and Ali realized at the same time that there was no way they were all going to get up before the pack of dead reached them. Abbey made it to the top as Ali ran across to the other side of the corridor, climbing a different container. Tony covered fifteen feet in two steps, and threw his axe into the small crowd of six creatures. A normal human being would have been seriously injured by a flying axe striking them in the abdomen, but this ex-socialite shrugged it off with a slight backwards stumble, and the axe clattered away harmlessly.

  Weaponless, Tony began to panic. He jumped at the container next to the one the rest of his friends were on and began to climb as well. Unfortunately, the container section he chose to climb was stacked two high, and he had to go up almost twenty feet. Between the two huge metal boxes, there was little to grab to assist in his climb and he was stopped only five feet up with nothing to grasp in reach. The first rancid hand grabbed his pant leg and he screamed, redoubling his efforts. An arrow hit the creature that had grabbed him in the neck, causing it to stumble slightly. The thing let go of Tony, and he shot upward, finding a hand hold at last. Abbey also fired into the crowd, actually destroying another undead that was closing on Tony’s exposed legs.

  “Get up! Get up!” screamed Ali as she fired another arrow into the mass of dead. Tony reached the midway point of the second box, and looked down. The dead could no longer reach him, but that didn’t deter the sea of dead faces from trying, looking at him with longing and hunger. More creatures came from every available access point, filling the six foot metal corridor with bodies, all reaching for the living. Caleb spit on them. Tony scuttled over the top of the container like a spider and sat for a moment, heaving.

  Martin, the boys, and Melanie, climbed up the second container, and Tony reached down his hand to help them. Ali was on the other side of the chasm, alone.

  “I can see the water!” Abbey pointed, “It’s not far at all!”

  “May as well be on the moon,” Martin groused, “how can we get there?”

  Tony walked to the edge of his high vantage point and looked down on the dead reaching for him. He backed up two steps and leapt the distance, the dead following his jump like fans at a tennis match. He made it with ease, and jumped back. “That’s how,” was all he said.

  “But the kids…”

  “I got it. C’mere little dude.” He picked up Noah, and before Melanie could protest, he jumped again, spanning the chasm with no problems. “Now you just wait, I’ll be back in a jiffy, you ok?” Noah nodded his tiny head. Tony jumped back and picked up Caleb. “You’re a heavy one son, you ready?”

  “What if we fall?”

  “We won’t,” he assured, and soared again over the heads of the flesh eaters. Looking back at the rest of his friends, he shouted “Come on dammit I aint got all damn day!” One by one, Melanie, Martin, and Abbey jumped over the gap between double stacked MAERSK containers.

  Ali was on a box that was too far from the others to jump in the same direction as the rest of the group. Tony could see that she would never make the jump. She was only thirty feet away from her friends, but there were countless dead below them, and no way across. “I can’t get to you,” he told her flatly over the mournful wails of the dead.

  “I know. I’ll have to go back the way we came until I can make it to your side.

  “Give yourself plenty of room, two steps at least, then just jump over, but make sure you don’t go too far or you’ll…”

  “Thanks, I’ll be fine. Just go, and I’ll meet you at the boat.”

  “Ok. We won’t leave without you.”

  “Yes you will. If I’m not there in an hour, or you get swarmed, get out. At least get deep enough where they can’t get to you and wait. If I’m not there soon, I’m not coming.”

  Tony nodded and waved. Ali waved back and walked to the opposite edge of her metal refuge. Looking down she realized that if she fell, she wouldn’t hit the ground, there were too many dead beneath her, and they would gladly catch her. Sighing, she began leaping from box to box back the way they had come. The dead followed.

  On the other side of the docks, the four adults and two children also bounded across steel chasms. The dead were left behind when they couldn’t negotiate a turn fast enough, and got lost in the maze. The humans kept up their jumping. Tony made it twenty-two times with the kids before he landed wrong and twisted his knee. He drew a sharp intake of breath at the pain, but didn’t fall. He looked to Martin.

  “You’re gonna have to jump with the kids now, Martin, I’m busted up.”

  “I can see the boat,” Abbey said, “It’s not more than a hundred and fifty feet down this dock. There are only seven of them between the ladder and us, and I have…” she ejected her magazine and counted the ammo left, “four shots to go.”

  Martin walked to the edge of the container. “So we go then. I’ll climb down first with Noah, Mel, you pass Caleb to me, then follow. Abbey, you cover, then toss me the gun and climb down. Tony, you…”

  “Keeping the gun, thanks.”

  “I’ll give it back to you, I swear.”

  “Yeah, I’m saving one bullet there, chief, so I don’t want it fired if you get my meaning.”

  “I do. Take one bullet out.”

  “Deal.” She ejected the magazine and removed one nine millimeter shell, sticking it in her pocket.

  “Tony, can you make it?”

  “Bet your ass… butt I can.” He looked at Caleb.

  “Let’s do this,” Melanie said.

  They all reached the ground without incident, and true to his word, Martin passed the pistol back to Abbey, who immediately ejected the magazine and fed her last round in. They walked quickly and quietly, remaining unnoticed until they were almost at the ladder. A dead dock worker, holding a yellow hard hat looked up and moaned loudly. The rest of the flock of zombies instantly turned and started stumbling toward the fresh meat.

  Abbey pointed her Glock at the dock worker and put a neat hole under his nose. “Go!”

  Martin grabbed Caleb, Melanie grabbed Noah, and they climbed down, the rickety wooden ladder creaking with every step. Dead people appeared in droves at the sound of the gunshot. A small army of them was approaching as Tony hobbled down the ladder. Abbey fired three more times and the slide on the Glock stayed back, she had totally forgotten about who her last bullet was for.

  “Abbey Hurry!” someone yelled, from the lower dock. Abbey also heard the boat engine crank over and chug to life. She covered the retreat of her friends until the first undead, a man in blue hospital scrubs who looked undamaged, lunged for her. Not bothering to look below, she ran to the side of the dock and propelled herself over the boat, pin-wheeling her arms as she flew through the air. She hit the water fifteen feet below with a tremendous splash just as Martin pulled the small boat away from the dock.

  Not two seconds later the dead doctor appeared and walked off the edge of the higher dock. The thing impacted the lower dock and snapped its right leg,
the femur jutting from the side of its hospital scrubs. The creature reached out toward the boat with one hand and tried to push itself up with the other.

  Abbey surfaced quickly and made for the boat. Martin sped to her and together, he and Tony pulled her and a few gallons of seawater aboard. Like lemmings, dead folks walked off the edge of the higher dock and smashed themselves on the lower one. Some got up, some fell in the water, but all moaned and stretched their broken appendages toward the boat as it meandered across the waves.

  Martin pulled the boat three hundred feet out into the bay and cut the engine. “We’ll wait here for a while to see if Ali shows up.”

  “And Billy!” Caleb cried.

  “And Billy.”

  28

  Wizneski died three hours after being bitten. Two SEALs, Martinez, the corpsman from the Florida, and Captain Meara were with him as he passed. The doomed policeman had volunteered to let the doctor monitor his symptoms as they progressed. This was their first real viewing of a person in the throes of turning. It was awful.

  The dying man’s fever had reached one hundred and six degrees Fahrenheit, and the bite looked as if it had been given to him a week ago in the deepest darkest jungle. Clearly infected, the small wound first reddened, then turned black and leaked a putrid black fluid, the ichor of the damned. Dressed in a biohazard suit inside a locked cell in the medical ward with his patient, Dr. Arvid from the sub wrote the symptoms down as they presented. Blackening around the wound, black veins, chills, vomiting, bleeding from the eyes, and finally fever. When Wizneski started to convulse, Meara ordered the doctor out of the cell, and they locked the barred door behind him.

  He lay still after a minute or so of shuddering on the iron bed. Then his blood red eyes opened and he stood. Wizneski rolled out of bed like he was hung over, and approached the bars of the cell door. Everybody backed up as the dead man let out a woeful cry, and reached through the cage. His good nature had been replaced with iniquity, his crimson eyes holding nothing but depraved need.