Enclave: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse

by Robert Morganbesser

  Nevers leaned back. “Then an idea came to me.”

  Taylor’s short patience expired and he exploded, “So you said! Spit it out already!”

  Nevers stared at the sergeant, then slowly lifted the whiskey bottle and poured three drinks. “Ever read any Homer?”

  02 October 2033

  Lazarites Camp

  Somewhere on the New York/Pennsylvania Border

  Veronica lifted the canteen and drank deeply, thinking of how she would never hold Lisa in her arms again. The woman had been so passionate in bed, so dominant. Veronica knew it a gift of the Blessed that threw them together!

  Now she was gone. Veronica put the canteen down, willing the tears that were blossoming at the corners of her eyes not to come. Lisa… she thought sadly. She never had a lover, male or female like the passionate acolyte.

  Veronica looked back in the direction of their last assault. She made those farmers pay! Oh how they’d paid! She had personally pushed the large steel needle with its wire thread through their flesh, making sure that every one of them, eight men, five women and two children, would last a long, long time.

  One had escaped her vengeance though. The tough looking woman who’d put a bullet through Lisa’s head. Veronica blinked as she thought about it. Lisa had led the assault on the farmhouse, the first one through when the walls were breached. A stocky woman with a short-barreled rifle stood in the shattered doorway of a small house, firing. Lisa rose to charge, pistols in hand, and was gone, the heavy caliber bullet smashing into her face just above her left eye. Veronica still had scratches on her face where bits of bone from the back of her lover’s head hit her. She still could feel the stickiness of blood and brains on her face, even though she’d washed several times. Veronica fell to her knees, screaming over the loss of her lover as the woman fired again. A Docent behind her went down, decapitated, the heavy caliber bullet ripping his head from his shoulders.

  Wiping brains and blood from her eyes, Veronica rose slowly to her knees. The stout woman was laughing as she shouted, “One more bullet!” Before Veronica could fire at the unbeliever, the woman calmly put the barrel of her rifle in her mouth and pulled the trigger. The force of the blast atomized the entire back of her skull, blowing off everything from the eyebrows back and up. The woman’s body actually rose off its feet, hit the doorjamb, and collapsed.

  Veronica tried to shove the memory away, thinking only of the vengeance she’d taken. It had not been enough. She hunched there in a trance as the Blessed, as was their right, took Lisa. They pulled her apart, sucking out her remaining beautiful, now empty green eye, tugging the flesh from her breasts, leaving nothing for Veronica but her memories of a few short days together.

  More unbelievers would pay, she swore. I will soak the land in their blood.

  05 October 2033

  Unnamed Hamlet

  Somewhere on the New York/Pennsylvania Border

  The small hamlet lay at the end of a valley. A stout wall ten feet tall topped with barbed wire protected one end. Steep cliffs to the rear were protected with a barbed wire fence, keeping that direction secure. Anyone attacking from that direction would be a sitting duck. Their fields were empty, but people moved among them, planting seed while others tended their few cows and chickens.

  Veronica stared at the small hamlet. Another group of people like the one’s who had killed Lisa. They would pay the price as well. Perhaps she’d leave one alive, to let the Enclavers know what they faced. That the tide was coming in and they would be flooded out of existence.

  Veronica patted the pistol she wore at her belt. She wore fresh clothing, her old clothes, spattered with Lisa’s blood, hastily tossed aside, before she could be taken by the Blessed. Lisa was in heaven now, one of the holy, seated before God. Now she would send more unbelievers to hell, their rightful reward for not observing that this was truly the resurrection!

  Veronica watched as her Docent’s and acolytes moved out, followed by the Blessed. This would be their last attack before meeting another group. Of this, she was glad. Perhaps someone from that group could help her forget Lisa. She needed reinforcements. Five were killed at the small farm, one of whom was now an angel. She was down to eleven Docent’s and thirty acolytes.

  The sun was setting from behind the hills that protected the rear of the hamlet when she raised her hand. Checking their weapons, the group moved out, followed by the Blessed who could smell the living humans ahead of them. This time, Veronica decided, there would be no subterfuge, the unbelievers would be attacked openly and destroyed.

  The attackers had just cleared the woods, and were in the open space before the walls when all hell broke loose. A series of explosions went off, blinding flashes of light and noise that dropped many to their knees. Then from the left came the stuttering of a machine gun. Screams of pain filled the early evening. Veronica started to move forward, felt rather than heard an explosion and flipped backwards in the air to land hard on her back. She felt something pop and with a scream of pain, lay still.

  The assault team from Enclave 13 had been in place for nearly a week now. Never’s plan, called ‘Trojan Horse’ was working to perfection. From the right side of the woods came gouts of flame as M-113 APV’s armed with flame-throwers, dumped their camouflage screens, and moved forward. The jellied gasoline erupted across the lines of the approaching Lazarites and zombies turning them into torches. The zombies moved about soundlessly as they burned, while the Lazarites screamed until their throats and lungs were seared, then they toppled to the ground, burning down until they were charred bones.

  The Bradley’s on the left took a fearsome toll on the Lazarites who were used to fighting civilians, not professionals. They chopped the enemy to bits, blowing off limbs, shattering torsos, exploding heads. Some acolytes dropped their weapons and raised their hands in supplication. It did them no good; they were killed as if they were zombies themselves, gunned down without remorse by the men and women of Enclave 13.

  The APC’s moved past the bodies of the Lazarites, rolling into the woods, shooting flame onto the approaching zombies. Those zombies that had better mobility turned away from the flames, the one element their limited awareness allowed them to fear. Soon a barrier of flames further protected the hamlet, which until a week earlier had been occupied. After being warned by an advance unit from 13, the inhabitants took the offer of evacuation.

  Taylor led his crew carefully onto the battlefield. Never’s plan had worked brilliantly. The Lazarites never had a chance. That’s what happens, he thought, when an enemy gets complacent. He hoped the Enclavers would never get this careless. Shotgun in hand, Taylor crept forward, eye moving from side to side. Survivors were to be checked and interrogated, then disposed of. The Enclavers had no qualms about killing Lazarites. Zombies were just walking instinct; Lazarites were traitors to the entire human race.

  Chung was to Taylor’s left when they heard a moan. Turning, weapons coming up, they moved toward motion in the tall grass. An area of flattened grass showed where one of the concussion grenades exploded. Taylor had chosen to use those rather than regular grenades since they would leave prisoners to be interrogated. They had worked like a charm.

  Taylor saw the body first. The legs were bent at a strange angle; body face down. Leaning down he roughly turned the person, he saw now it was a woman, over. This got a scream of pain and “I can’t feel my…” she went silent as she saw the camouflaged, armored soldiers.

  “Unbelievers!” Veronica hissed. She couldn’t feel her legs, having snapped vertebrae on rocks, but she could move her upper body. Her pistol was gone, but her knife wasn’t. As she reached for it, Chung’s heavy booted foot came down on her wrist, snapping it. In one hand he held a paper. On it was a drawing made by information from Laurie King. This would be her revenge. Glancing at it he said, “This is her, this is Veronica.”

  “Think she’ll talk?”

  Taylor knelt, grabbed her under the chin, and raised her head roughly. Veronica t
ried to bite him. Taylor laughed as he let her go and rose to his feet.

  One eye glaring down at her, the other covered in a patch, Taylor raised his shotgun. Veronica stared at the barrel – it seemed big enough to swallow her entire head.

  “Wait a second,” said Chung. “Why do you get to waste her?”

  Taylor looked at his friend, who was deadly serious, “Because I out rank you.”

  Chung crumpled the paper and threw it in Veronica’s face. “That’s bullshit. I’ll flip you for it.” A small group of soldiers, weapons ready, were watching. Some of them egged Chung on.

  “You tell him Chung!”

  “Yeah, let Chung do it!”

  “Bullshit! Taylor’s the top, let him do it!”

  Taylor made a face, “All right. We’ll flip.”

  Veronica couldn’t believe this. “I’m a prisoner, you can’t just kill me!” Her voice shrieked, getting the attention of the men and women around her.

  Taylor kicked her in the face, breaking two of her front teeth and nearly knocking her out. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Toss,” he said to Chung. “I call heads.”

  The coin spun, Veronica’s eyes locked on it. A triumphant Chung grinned as he lifted it, “Tails! I have a great idea!” Veronica could only watch as he slid a long, wicked machete out of his belt. Handing his rifle to Taylor, Chung grinned. “You’re gonna work for us now, Veronica.”

  She started to scream, “No! I’m one of the…” when her voice was cut off by the meaty chop of the machete blade going through her neck bone. As her eyes blinked, her brain dying of oxygen starvation, the last thing she heard was Taylor saying, “Pack it up! Let’s go!”

  07 October 2033

  Unnamed Hamlet

  Somewhere on the New York/Pennsylvania Border

  The hamlet, having served its purpose, was blown apart. As the APC’s rumbled off toward home, the hamlet burned nicely, flames reaching up into the sky.

  On a tree near the clearing, surrounded by burnt and shot corpses, hanging by its hair, was Veronica’s head. Eyes open, mouth moving, carved into her face was a simple warning:

  THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO LAZARITES HERE.

  Veronica’s hair was thick and strong. Her head would hang there for a long, long time.

  Chapter 15 - Nightmare

  11 October 2033

  Enclave 9

  Lieutenant Moreau’s Quarters

  Near Phoenix, AZ

  Mira lay in bed; head nestled against her lover, Tom’s chest. Sweat slid across her body, causing the bed sheets to stick to her. Her eyes moved rapidly in REM sleep as she relived an earlier mission outside the walls…

  It was a dark, overcast day in November of 2032. The southwestern states, less populous than those in the east, had held out longest against the Zombie plague. Now with the zombie’s numbers rising, they were finally evacuating into various Enclaves, or fleeing for more remote, less accessible areas. Tucson was one of the last cities to be abandoned. The northern part of the city was in flames, looters, and zombies running rampant. Control there collapsed as the police and National Guard who hadn’t yet abandoned the city, did so now. Some went rogue, taking what they could, and fighting anyone in their way. Others remained organized, fighting their way south to join with Enclave forces.

  Still there were things that the Enclaves needed, so missions were run to collect them. This would be a ‘routine’ mission, so said the brass. The officers who were already safe in an Enclave gave orders as if things were still normal. How could anything be normal when the dead were rising to devour the living? How could anything be normal when a computer made choices as to who could live and who should be left on their own? To the troops who carried out the missions, words like routine and normal didn’t mean a damn thing.

  The mission was twofold: to airlift as many Doctor’s and Nurses as could be rescued from a hospital in Tucson. The second part was to take as much of the supplies stored there as could be carried. The supplies would go out on an armored convoy, the personnel on choppers. Moreau was part of the convoy team, a job she proved repeatedly that she was among the best at.

  Things had gone well at first. An area around the hospital was napalmed, the jellied gasoline killing and driving back the zombie horde. Then the convoy, mostly slow, boxy M-113 APC’s, seconded to the National Guard years ago, guarded by Bradley’s rumbled in. The troops extinguished a ten-foot section of the blaze, drove right over whatever zombies were in the way, and then, using flamethrowers, restarted the blaze. Behind the fires, barricades of steel four feet high were airdropped in. Made to be welded together, this time they were chained to save time. The Hospitals entrances were blocked off, the APC’s driven down into the parking lot/loading bays, and the job was underway.

  As usual, fickle fate took a hand. A series of thunderstorms moved in, storms like Arizona hadn’t seen in a hundred and fifty years. The barriers of flame were extinguished and the zombies, moaning their hunger, moved right in, crushing themselves against the barriers, almost moving them with their weight alone.

  It was a common fallacy among survivors that zombies were strong. This was incorrect. The average zombie, by itself, was weak with little muscle control. The creatures were pure instinct. Whatever intelligence they had was gone with their first death, lost forever. It was their numbers that gave them strength. A strong man or woman with a weapon and their wits could easily take out ten to fifteen zombies. But behind those ten to fifteen lay fifty or a hundred more, untiring, unrelenting in their search for flesh. A human tired, a zombie didn’t. This was their greatest strength.

  Moreau had seen the last of the APC’s loaded when the first barrier collapsed. The zombies, in every state imaginable rushed the hospitals main entrance. The bulletproof glass in the doors cracked in places, but the steel beams that teams welded on their frames at ten-inch intervals held. For how long no one knew. This was why the barriers hadn’t been welded; there was only enough acetylene for one job. The Colonel in charge chose the doors. The barriers were cheap and could be abandoned; the lives being risked in the hospital were the real value here. Four nervous soldiers armed with flame-throwers guarded the area. Their orders were simple. If the glass fell out stick a flamethrower nozzle through the opening and fry the zombies. The inner area of the entrance was cleared of flammables, so if they had to take action, it wouldn’t cause too much danger to the evacuation.

  Moreau decided that she and her people would leave by helo. For every one soldier who wasn’t on an APC, that much more in supplies could be recovered. Clearing the convoy to leave, she watched from the loading bay as the APC’s rumbled up the driveway, pushed the barriers aside and rolled over the waiting zombies. As the last APC left, she was bringing down the door when a large number of zombies got past that part of the perimeter, rushing toward their human meals. The gate came inexorably down, crushing a few creatures in half, but a small band made it past. Moreau cursed herself for not having her M11. Locking her gasmask into place, she drew her .45 and fired through one zombie’s disgusting face. Another, its intestines catching around its feet, tripped into her legs, knocking her down. Clutching her pistol as if it were the Holy Grail, she fired into this zombie’s fetid mouth, blowing off the back of its head. The creature was destroyed, but fell forward, pinning Moreau under its dead weight.

  In seconds, they were on her, grabbing and clawing, trying to get a purchase and begin their feast. She couldn’t smell them through the mask, but their touch, even through her armor and uniform, was repulsive. One female zombie, her breasts chewed off, half her face gone, the other half alive with maggots, leaned over and tried to bite through one of Moreau’s eyepieces. Gore from the creatures face smeared across her right eyepiece, fogging it. Mira could feel her bile rising up when a fusillade of shots blew the zombies off her.

  Moreau’s commlink chattered into life, “Leftenant! Are you all right?”

  It was Corporal Tom Neil, her Bradley’s driver. She was wishing
she were in that Bradley right now! Moreau rose groggily to her feet. “I’m o.k. No damage.”

  Neil, his own mask in place, wiped her fouled mask off, stared into her eyepieces, his insectoid look almost making her laugh. “Then let’s bloody well get the hell out of here!” A series of bangs on the flimsy gate gave urgency to his words. Mira followed him and the other two troopers, swearing she would never be without her M11 again.

  Upstairs, she removed her mask and tucked it away; sucking in lung-full’s of air. Calming, she decided to make some rounds of the perimeter. First, she retrieved her weapon from where she’d left it in the lobby, made sure it was loaded and the safety set. The main entrance was still good, the steel beams across the doors, and two windows successfully keeping the zombies out. The flame-thrower men still looked nervous, but she knew they’d do their jobs.

  It was at the second checkpoint that trouble began. A bridge led from the hospital across the street to the annex. The bridge should have been blown, but there was equipment that the doctor’s wanted and that buildings roof couldn’t hold a chopper. So the stuff was hand carried across. The heavy steel door was sealed, but it had a glass cutout large enough for a zombie to get an arm through, so was placed under guard. This job was given to hospital security. If those watching the bridge saw anything, they were to raise the alarm. This was a simple enough job.

  Moreau, followed by Neil stopped as they entered the corridor. Veterans of city fighting against the zombies both entered any area like this carefully. Such areas were natural death traps. One of the guards stood with his back to the door. The other was nowhere in sight. Moreau frowned. Didn’t the idiot know better than to do that? Holding her rifle ready, she walked quietly down the corridor. There were a few bits of broken glass around the guard’s feet. Moreau looked at the man’s face. It was ghostly pale. Then she noticed the blood stains under his feet. Holding a hand up to Neil, who nodded and raised his weapon, stopping where he was, Moreau reached out with the barrel of her weapon and poked the guard in the chest. The barrel moved the flesh inward to the point where three inches of it was inside him.