“Look! Up ahead to the right,” Emily hollered to be heard over all of the noise. “There’s a bar on the corner. If we can just get a little bit ahead of the dead, we can hide in there.”
Anna looked and saw a small bar she had driven by many times. It was in an odd location at the end of a residential street where it intersected with the main road. She took a deep breath and pushed down harder on the gas pedal. There were more zombies behind them than there were in front of them. They had made it past the worst of them. If she could just get past the small group still ahead of her, they might have a chance to get to the bar. The main road up ahead was full of zombies, but they weren’t gathered near the bar. The small group still in front of her had been whittled down to less than a dozen. As she dodged several of them, she was unable to avoid the last one. Its body fell under the SUV, and the front passenger side tire blew out with a bang. The vehicle was still moving forward slowly while heavily damaged as the entire passenger side hung low and metal scraped asphalt with flying sparks. They made it to the edge of the parking lot before the SUV came to its final stop. They had a buffer of several hundred feet both ahead of them and behind them. With the eyes of the dead on them, they shouldered their packs, jumped from the SUV, and ran to the bar. Emily pulled on the back door, but it was locked.
“No, no, no,” Emily cried as they ran around to the front, desperately hoping to find it open. Anna reached the door first, and with anticipation of it being locked, she pulled so hard that it flew open and hit the outside wall with a loud thud. The zombies were still more than a hundred feet away in either direction, so the women hurried inside and pulled the door closed. Anna quickly bolted all three locks. The heavy door was windowless and pushed open from the inside. The zombies outside didn’t know how to pull a door open, let alone such a heavy door, and they definitely couldn’t bypass the locks. The front entry was secure.
Emily ran to double-check the back door while Anna ran for the windows. She quickly discovered that there were only a handful of windows, and they were set about head high. They were heavily tinted, and the zombies couldn’t see through them even if their faces were pressed against the glass.
Emily checked the locks on the rear door and put the drop bar in place. It was only then that she realized she could smell death inside the bar. There was a thumping noise coming from somewhere near the restrooms. Before going to confront the noise, she had to make sure that Anna was okay upfront. As she approached the bar, she saw Anna removing her knife from the head of a zombie on the floor behind it. Its legs had been so badly torn up that it had been unable to stand; otherwise, both women would have seen it as soon as they had come through the front door.
“You okay?” Emily asked.
“I’m fine. It was a crawler,” Anna said. “We’d better clear the rest of this place. Something is thumping around back there.”
“The restrooms are back there, and I’m assuming some kind of office and a supply room,” Emily said.
“Well, unless something jumps out at us, let’s clear one room at a time,” Anna said.
Knives out and ready, they walked toward the restrooms first. There was no noise coming from the ladies room, so they cleared it first. It appeared clean and normal, at least as clean as one would expect the ladies room in a bar to be. They found the men’s room to be the same, albeit dirtier. There were two doors left. The first one held a sign that said ‘private’ on it. They listened and heard a thumping noise coming from the other side of the door. Emily carefully opened the door as Anna stepped through it with her knife in one hand and her gun in the other. A lone zombie was sitting at the corner desk, seemingly stuck in place. When the door fully opened, it turned its head to reveal nasty bite wounds to its neck and shoulder. It tried to stand up but didn’t seem to comprehend that it had to push the chair back from the desk to stand. Anna quickly took advantage and thrust her knife through its ear before it could find the coordination it needed. The rest of the office was clear. There were a couple of filing cabinets, the large beat-up corner desk stacked high with papers and a computer, and an extra chair sat near the door; otherwise, the room was empty.
They could still hear another thumping sound as they carefully made their way to the last door, which was presumably a supply room. This time, Anna opened the door as Emily walked into the room. The room was slightly larger than the office and was brightly lit, with several sets of shelves lining the walls. Two zombies were shuffling toward them, trying to make their way around a few stacks of cases of beer in the center of the room. A twenty-something blonde wearing short shorts and a tiny halter top that had slipped below her chest bore a ring of bite marks down one arm, and her mouth, chin, and hands were stained with dried blood. A middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair, glasses, jeans, and remnants of what was once a concert t-shirt followed her. There was a golf ball-sized chunk of flesh missing from his neck, several holes in his arms where large lumps of fat and muscle had been torn free, and his abdomen was so nearly empty that his ribs and spine were visible. It was incredible that he was still walking. With no blood around his mouth and so much around the little blondes, it appeared that she had eaten him alive.
With the beer barrier between them and the two zombies, Anna and Emily easily made quick work of both of them. To their amazement, there had been only four in the building. Free from any further threats, they took a quick look through the supplies on the shelves. One wall of shelves held liquor, mixers, and glasses. Another smaller set of shelves was full of bags of bar mix, chips, peanuts, and more beer mugs. One corner held mops, buckets, rags, and cleaning supplies. Next to the supplies was a metal ladder bolted to the wall leading to an access panel to the roof, most likely for access to the AC unit and a place for employees to take smoke breaks. On the last wall, there were bottles of beer and beer kegs.
“Plenty of alcohol and snacks,” Emily said. “Let’s check the office and the bar.”
Anna led the way into the office. Looking closer than she had the first time around, she still didn’t see anything of interest. All she saw was desk supplies, paperwork, keys, and a computer, all of the usual stuff one would expect to find. She knew there had to be a safe somewhere, and after looking in all of the likely places, she realized it must be under the desk where the dead zombie sat on the chair. She gave him a shove, and he slid right down to the floor. She bent down and found the safe, but it was so small that there wasn’t likely to be anything of use inside it. It had a combination lock, so she left it alone.
“Let’s check out the bar. Then I think we should move the dead into the office, so they’re all in one place out of the way,” Anna said, and Emily agreed.
A closer look around the bar revealed a jukebox, pool table, dartboard, a few pub-style tables and chairs, and the bar itself. Behind the bar, they found the expected alcohol, mixers, mugs, beer coolers, taps, a working double-sided sink that still ran fresh water, an oversized flashlight, and a shotgun. There were a few other expected odds and ends. And, of course, the dead zombie Anna had killed.
“This guy’s a mess. I’ll grab his arms, and you grab his feet. Let’s try to lift him, so we don’t smear blood everywhere,” Anna said as she hefted the top part of his body. It took a few minutes, but they managed to carry him to the office before dropping him.
“Might as well finish up and get Blondie and her boyfriend from the storage room,” Anna told Emily. “Keep all of the germs and hopefully most of the smell in one place. If the power goes out, the AC goes with it, and it’ll get pretty awful in here pretty fast.”
It took them a good fifteen minutes, but they finally had all four bodies moved to the office and closed the door. They knew the building was surrounded by at least two hundred zombies and probably a lot more. They tended to follow each other. With nothing to do for the moment but stay hidden, they got the mops and cleaning supplies out to clean up where the dead bodies had been. An hour later, and they had both areas as clean and sanitized as they
were going to get. They both drank some water then went to look out the windows to see just how bad their situation was. It was four in the morning, and they knew they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Anna was frustrated as hell that she managed to get herself stuck in the bar while her daughter was still out there somewhere but held out hope that Camille was holed up someplace safe.
Chapter 6
Day 4
Camille awoke with a start. The sun shone brightly on her face causing her to squint as her eyes adjusted to the light and her surroundings. She was lying in the most comfortable bed she’d ever been in. It was queen-sized, soft, full of oversized and decorative pillows, and she was covered in a satin-down comforter. She stretched then a quiet cry escaped her lips at the pain that seemed to assault her entire body. Every muscle felt strained from all of the running she had done. Her hands were scraped up from using them to catch herself when she had taken a nasty fall on a rocky path. Clean gauze was neatly wrapped around both of them. Her knee was sore from an awkward twist she’d made when she had jumped over a small creek and fallen down on the other side. There was a room-temperature ice pack on the bed next to her leg. It had been cold on her knee when she had fallen asleep but had warmed as the hours had passed. As she sat up, her muscles screamed in protest, and she let out a soft groan.
She was in a brightly lit room with one full wall constructed of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Lake Erie. She could hear waves lapping the shore of the beach behind the house. Listening closely, she also heard the raspy moans of the dead coming from outside. The memory of the events of last night came crashing back to her as she remembered how she came to be in this place.
Camille remembered running endlessly with the horde of thousands following behind her. The noise of the horde drew in more zombies from all around her. She kept watching for a place she could dart off to so she could hide and rest, but with all of the zombies joining the group, she had trouble finding an opening. The further she ran, the further the horde fell behind her, and fewer zombies came from other directions toward the noise. Before she knew it, she had run more than two miles. Exhausted, scared, hot, and tired, she finally took a left turn and ran north toward the lake. She ran through a small park and stumbled, trying to jump over the creek that ran through it. She winced, remembering how she’d hurt her knee.
The horde had been far enough behind her that they hadn’t seen her turn, but there were dozens of zombies nearby that turned to follow her. She swatted at their grabby hands and shoved them when they got too close. She zigzagged as she continued running north, but she still maintained a strong following. Where there had been dozens, there were now a hundred. Zombies came wandering from houses and yards as she passed by. She couldn’t seem to shake them long enough to slow down and rest. Her lungs were on fire, pleading with her to take a break. Her knee throbbed with every step she took. She felt like she couldn’t possibly keep going, but the raspy moans all around her pushed her further than she ever thought she could go.
As she approached Lake Road and the mansions that stood between her and the lake itself, she decided to try to make one last push past the mansions and to the beach. The homes had private beaches, and many of them had boat docks with pleasure craft moored alongside them. If she could just make it to a boat and push off into the water, she might survive. She chose a path between two incredibly large mansions and ran for the beach behind them. One of them had a boat, but about a dozen zombies were blocking her way. Her heart sank, and she decided to just run into the water. She was a strong swimmer. If she could swim out a little way, she could let herself float. It had to be better than running.
With nearly two hundred zombies shuffling slowly but persistently behind her, she ran through the sand with a worsening limp, getting closer to the water when she heard a voice. A middle-aged man with graying hair who looked to be at least ten years older than her dad held open one of the back doors of the striking mansion and motioned for her to come inside.
“Hurry, they’re coming,” he yelled to Camille.
Seeing the possibility of refuge and a chance to finally rest, Camille didn’t hesitate. She turned away from the water and ran for the door dodging three zombies on her way. The man immediately closed and locked the door behind her, and within seconds zombies were pushing against the door. She glanced around and saw that she was in a great room that was nearly the size of her whole house. She had a few seconds to catch her breath before the man beckoned her to follow him upstairs. Camille saw a woman she presumed to be his wife standing near the top of the tall staircase waving them up, so she forced her legs to keep moving. She nearly fainted when she reached the top and tried to force air into her lungs.
“It’s okay sweetie, we’ve got you,” The woman said in a kind and gentle voice. “I’m Elizabeth. That’s my husband, Bradford.”
“Camille,” she gasped, unable to say more. She glanced around at her surroundings to see that they were in an upstairs foyer of sorts. Several rooms and hallways branched off in various directions. Looking down at the great room below on the first floor, she took in the expensive décor and the full-sized grand piano. From her vantage point, she could see most of the lower level of the house, and it appeared to be designed solely for entertaining. Extravagant furnishings, paintings, sculptures, and light fixtures filled the space. A long, beautiful polished bar filled an entire corner, with matching pub-style tables and chairs spread throughout the area. The piano sat on a luxurious marble floor with open space all around it for dancing. Plush sofas and chairs were interspersed with small tables adorned with vases and floating candles. A giant crystal chandelier was centered over the area. Striking original art pieces hung on the walls. The entire rear wall of the house was constructed of floor-to-ceiling glass, which would have been a beautiful sight if zombies hadn’t been pressed up against it. With the high ceilings and expansive space in the house, she felt like she was up much higher than just the second floor. She looked down with wonder at the space twenty feet below. If the back wall hadn’t been made of glass, the house looked as if it would be secure indefinitely against the zombies lingering outside. Her thoughts were interrupted when the husband spoke.
“You’re safe now, Camille,” Bradford started. “The zombies shouldn’t be able to get through the doors. We have plenty of food, solar power, and a private water line from the lake. There are plenty of bedrooms and bathrooms on this floor and a few more upstairs.”
Camille was momentarily speechless. Of all the places she could have run to, she never could have dreamed of such a safe location. That is if the wall of windows held against the zombies. Elizabeth returned to her side with two bottles of water.
“Don’t drink those too quickly,” Elizabeth said. “It might come right back up if you do.”
Camille couldn’t help but chug most of the first bottle of water before she slowed down and started sipping it.
“What about all of the glass? It looks like the entire back wall of the house is made of windows,” Camille said.
“The glass is thicker than it appears. We’re hopeful that the zombies won’t be able to push through it,” Bradford said. “If they do, we’ll block off the stairs. From what we’ve seen, they’re rather clumsy. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be able to make it up here.”
“Honey, Camille is clearly exhausted. Why don’t we go sit in the living room so she can relax? She must have been running for a while to have amassed such a following,” Elizabeth said. She turned to lead them down one of the hallways.
After hours of running, Camille had been standing still for the last ten minutes. As she moved to take a step forward, her knee gave out, spilling her to the floor, and she let out a pained yelp.
“Oh dear, I didn’t realize you were hurt,” Elizabeth said. “Honey, please grab my medical bag while I help her into the living room.” She helped Camille up then put her arm around her to offer support as she limped down the hallway, which opened up to an oversized sunken
living room overlooking the lake at the rear of the house. Camille sat down on the closest couch and let out a sigh of relief.
“I’m a doctor, sweetie,” Elizabeth said as Bradford returned with her bag of medical supplies. “Let me take a look at your injuries.”
As Elizabeth tended to her wounds, Camille began to explain how she ended up at their house. She told them about the horde and how she’d had no choice but to run to protect her family. How she had to keep running because more and more zombies came after her even when she tried to zigzag around to lose them. And also of her last-ditch plan to swim out into the lake to escape and stop running. They had saved her life.
Camille winced as Elizabeth finished examining her knee. “Nothing’s broken, and nothing seems to be torn. I think your ligament was just stretched a bit. Some rest, ice, and pain medication should take care of everything,” Elizabeth told her as she handed her two pills. “Take these. They’ll help with the pain and swelling.”
Camille accepted the medication gratefully. Her aches and pains were becoming more intense since she’d sat down.
“You must be starving. I’m so sorry I didn’t think of it sooner.” Elizabeth said, then went to make Camille a plate of food. She was back a moment later with a big sandwich and a bowl of strawberries.
SUBURBAN JUNGLE: A Post Apocalyptic Zombie Survival Thriller (Chronicles of the Undead: Book 2) Page 5
