Enclave: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse

by Robert Morganbesser

  Moreau’s eyes opened wide. What the fuck? She thought. Reaching out with one hand, she grasped the man’s uniform and pulled. There was a slight sucking noise and the body fell forward. Mira and Neil’s eyes bulged at the sight. The man had been eaten from his back out. The back of his skull was cracked, the brains scooped out. All the flesh on his back, as well as the internal organs was gone. There, on the other side of the door sat and stood several zombies, chewing noisily. One of the zombies looked up at her and snarled.

  “FUCK YOU!” She shouted and fired a round off, obliterating the blood covered face and head.

  Neil ran up and pushed Mira aside. “Eat this you pommy bastards!” Neil carried an M11A, an assault rifle with a grenade launcher under it. This was what he used now. Thrusting the barrel through the hole, he fired off a round of high explosive. Several Zombies were splattered into bloody fragments, while others were knocked over, the windows of the pedestrian bridge shattering from the blast.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here!” He shouted. Mira needed no second urging. The zombies had their entrance. She could see more of the repulsive things filling the building on the other side of the bridge. Heads swiveling at the sound of the explosion, they started toward the bridge. Soon they would swarm the door and there wasn’t any time to barricade it. It was time to go.

  Activating her commlink, Mira ordered the troopers at the main doors to retreat to the roofs helo pad. Barely waiting for them to acknowledge, she contacted the chopper on standby. It was time to leave.

  Herding the remaining troopers – the doctors and nurses were long gone, to the roof, Neil stopped in the stairwell and listened. The zombies were in. The bridge had given them a perfect access way. Damn it, he thought. I knew we should have blown the fucking thing!

  When the zombies at the lobby entrance saw their fellows clambering in across the bridge they went wild. As one, they threw their weight in a savage burst against the doors. The creatures closest to the doors were crushed by the press of their fellows, many of them bursting in horrid explosions of pink and purple, crushed to immobility. This surge was all it took – the simple barricade failed, the doors bursting open. As the reinforcing bars snapped off, the welds failing, clanging to the floor, the last of the glass cracked and the hungry, fetid creatures forced their way in. The troopers, their nerve holding, backed away up the broad staircase, firing their weapons. Long tongues of flames erupted onto the zombies, setting them ablaze. As the first ranks of the creatures burned, those behind were stopped momentarily, fire being one of the few things the zombies reacted to. As the flames died down, the zombies, the weight of them enormous, crushed their way forward. Any zombie unlucky enough to fall down found itself destroyed by the stampede of its fellows. As they retreated, one of the flame-thrower men stumbled at the stairs and fell. Tumbling down the stairs, his mask came loose and fell away. Shouting in fear, he rolled to a stop at the feet of the approaching creatures. Zombies, some of them smoldering, were on him in an instant. Clawed fingers dug into the soft flesh of his neck, while his helmet, then his scalp, was torn from his body. A quivering finger tapped the trigger on his weapon, turning the zombies tearing at him into torches. One of them thrashed in barely felt pain and tore away the hose on the tank. With a stupendous roar, the tanks exploded, obliterating the man and his killers. The fireball expanded, catching one of the three retreating men, setting him on fire. Frantically he thrashed at the flames, screaming in pain. A second, seeing how fast the flames were spreading, pulled his pistol, put it against his fellows face and fired. The burning man went limp, dead instantly. The last flamethrower man, weapon empty, pulled it off his back and threw it down the stairs, knocking two zombies over. The last man, sobbing, put his smoking pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. This was enough for the remaining trooper who fled up the stairs, leaving the zombies to their meals.

  At the next to last landing, Neil stopped. Abandoned near the door was a large oxygen tank. “Leftenant!” Mira turned and saw him struggling with the unwieldy tank. Nodding, she helped him maneuver it onto the steps. The first of the zombies was at the bottom. This creature was a terrible sight. Its skin was gone, revealing dried out tendons and muscles. Blood still glistened on its body, marking it as a fresh kill, which made it a bit more dangerous. Its eyes, lidless moved about in their sockets the muscles clear to view. Neil wondered if it were one of their own. Pushing the tank over, it slid down the stairs and into the lead zombie, cracking its legs audibly.

  Glancing down, Neil pulled a fragmentation grenade from his vest, pulled the pin, and tossed it. It bounced once and disappeared behind the oxygen tank. Without a second thought, Neil and Moreau ran for the chopper. They were halfway there when the grenade blew, exploding the oxygen tank. The resulting explosion knocked them to their knees and blew many of the zombies in the stairwell to pieces. More were knocked off their feet by the shock wave. As they stumbled back to their feet, they could hear the stairwell collapsing. But their trials weren’t over. There, between them and the chopper, were several zombies in hospital uniforms. All of them were in various states of death; one candy striper still had a needle hanging from her dead arm. For a moment, Neil and Moreau raised their weapons then lowered them. If they fired, they might hit the chopper, which wouldn’t do anyone any good.

  The gunner on the chopper made a motion with his weapon but it was clear from the angle that he couldn’t shoot. The bullets would rip through the zombies and hit the troopers. They had to run this gauntlet to escape.

  Shouldering her rifle, Mira quickly pulled on her sap gloves. The knuckles of the gloves were weighted with lead shot. She had used them in the past to stun people who panicked during a rescue, now she would use them to stun zombies.

  Neil’s choice of backup weapon was simple. A friend at the Enclave who was an aviation mechanic had given him a crash axe. Made to open up burning aircraft, it would just as easily carve a zombie. Checking to make sure that their masks were set, the pair waded into the creatures.

  Neil moved toward the overdosed candy striper. Alive, she had been a looker. Straw blonde hair, blue eyes (that were now glazed over in death) and a knockout figure. Neil didn’t wonder why she’d killed herself; suicides were rampant since the rise. Raising the crash axe, he brought it smashing down between her eyes, splitting her skull down to her teeth. Wrenching the blade out, he hopped over her twitching corpse and moved in on another zombie.

  Mira raised her fists and swung a left into the face of a medical orderly. Neat incisions along his wrists told the tale of his death. What he’d experienced was too much; so he took the easy way out. At six foot even, Mira towered over the zombie who staggered toward her. His head shook from the first blow and then he was staggered by a right. Mira moved him back with a series of blows and then snap kicked him in the chin. Arms pin wheeling the zombie staggered back and fell off the roof. Moreau didn’t stand around waiting to hear the splat. She crouched and with a spinning kick took the legs out from another zombie. This one was a workman, its belt festooned with tools. Grabbing the large carpenters hammer off its belt, Moreau sunk the tool into the back of the zombie’s skull, destroying it.

  Neil found himself faced with two zombies. As one reached out, he slashed with the ax, chopping off its arms at the elbows. It stared stupidly at the now useless limbs as Neil kicked it, knocking it off its feet. The other zombie, almost nude, her patients gown hanging down off her chest, showed the gaping wounds where other zombies had dined on her before she reactivated. With a single swipe, Neil took her head off at the shoulders. As the body fell, Neil kicked the still staring head savagely, booting it off the roof. “Show you fuckers why I was the best damn forward in the Army!”

  Moreau grabbed Neil by the arm and dragged him toward the chopper. From the other roof entrance a torrent of zombies had emerged. The pair leapt up on the chopper and, with a roar of engines, it carried them out of reach. Removing their masks, Neil and Moreau sucked in lung full’s of air. Hop
ing no one would notice, Mira slipped a hand onto Neil’s and squeezed. As he turned to face her, the skin on his face sloughed off, like paper in the wind. Horror lay underneath as maggots squirmed from one eye socket and the mouth of his wet, chewed face opened in a horrible grimace…

  Mira woke with a start. There, sleeping soundly next to her was Tom Neil, first her subordinate, now her lover. She lay back and nestled her head into the pillows. She hadn’t thought of that mission for a long time. She hadn’t taken Tom into her life fully until long after that mission; she didn’t want to get close to anyone. Who knew when a mission would be their last? After that mission, she decided either one of them could be killed at any time, so why not have each others comfort until then?

  Fading back into sleep, comforted by Tom’s slow breathing, she smiled.

  Chapter 16 – An Enclave Falls

  05 November 2033

  Enclave 9

  Near Phoenix, AZ

  Tom Neil stared out over the wall, watching the sunset. The air was dry, no hint of humidity in it at all and he’d finally, after being in the southwest for nearly four years, begun to tan. He never had to worry about tanning back home in England, but when the strangest war in human history began he’d been trapped here, forced to adapt to the weather, among other things.

  For a while, back in ’31 when the zombies began rising, he’d wanted only to get home, back to London and his mum, sister and fiancée, Janine. He only came to America to learn how to drive their tanks as part of a military exchange program. During the early days of the war, he’d been hustled around a bit before ending up in Enclave 9. Since he’d started near here, at the U.S. Armor Training Center, the desert made it feel, if not like home, at least familiar.

  Some home, he thought, squinting into the setting sun. A Fortress in Nowhere, Arizona! Transport elsewhere was limited to two options, air, or armored convoy. And where else could one go? All the Enclaves were the same; endless mission after mission, scavenging the world, trying to keep oneself and the civilian populace alive.

  Neil sighed and lifted a cigarette to his lips. He rarely smoked, since tobacco wasn’t high on any Enclaves scavenge or planting list. Getting addicted to it again (he’d quit a few years back) wouldn’t do him any good. Still, when he thought of the ways he could be killed, why worry about a little thing like cancer? Taking a deep drag he sighed, the American butts were decent but he’d have killed for a Dunhill.

  Neil stared down at the minefield that surrounded the Enclave’s walls. There were some blackened areas, surrounded by body parts being picked at by birds where mines had exploded. The enemy, the undead, moving, ravenous reanimated corpses of humans, always staggered into the field. Somehow, the bastards knew that humans were in here.

  Neil glanced down at the five stripes his sleeve bore. In the British Army, he’d been a corporal. Discipline problems had held him back. Here, there were no such problems because the usual way to deal with them was a bullet in the head followed by cremation. The ashes would then be used for fertilizer to grow animal feed. Little was wasted in an Enclave. No, he had no more problems with discipline. Now he was an E-6, a first Sergeant. Three stripes up; two down. He was in charge of other men and under the command of his lover, Lieutenant Mira Moreau. He wasn’t sure how much longer Mira would hold on. She’d survived a few close calls lately and he thought she was near the edge. He suggested that she have herself taken off the duty roster for a while, that had led to two days of silence. She had it rough, a woman in the armed forces (now combined due to the massive losses incurred) even now, when every single body was needed. He’d left her sleeping, but a recurring nightmare was keeping her from getting any real rest. Rather than wake her, as he had in the past, he’d slipped out, hoping that she’d be able to get some rest.

  Neil sighed again and removed some photos from his cargo pocket. They were satellite photos taken from a KH-13A Big Eye satellite passing over England. The clarity of them was amazing and depressing.

  Neil began thumbing through them. London was a mess. Zombies staggered through its famous streets and alleys. Big Ben was a hollow, burned out shell. Buckingham Palace was overrun, a regiment of the Queens Own giving their lives to allow the Royal Family to escape to the Lockerbie submarine base, where U.S. and Royal Navy units kept the zombies at bay.

  Neil flicked his lighter and burned the photo of Buckingham Palace, wishing it were the Royals he was burning. He’d friends in that regiment, lads who were dead now or stumbling about looking for human meals. Tears brimmed at the edge of his eyes. He missed London and wished he could return there, even to die.

  He looked at another photo. Bond Street, once a place to buy expensive suits, it was now home to rats, zombies and bones. Neil had once bought a suit there; it had cost him nearly 120 pounds which had taken months to save, but was well worth the effort. It had gone over well with the women; he’d been wearing it when he met Janine. A dark gray pinstripe, he’d left it behind when the exchange assignment came through. Likely, it was still hanging in his closet, if the NCO quarters hadn’t been looted or burned.

  Neil lit this photo up as well, and then the others he had asked for. The docks on the Thames were burning, the only living people on a RN destroyer which was hosing the dead down with its main gun, allowing people to get on boats and escape. Just like in the U.S., and likely other countries around the world, there were still people, hardy survivors, who needed help.

  Supposedly, the Isle of Wight and the Orkney’s were free of zombies and kept that way. U.S. and RN ships stopped in on a schedule for supplies as well as transporting people. Perhaps, thought Neil, I could get there one day. Idly he wondered if he could get a transfer to the Royal Navy.

  Neil dropped the flaming pictures over the edge of the wall and briefly thought about jumping himself. He liked America and he liked the Americans. Even while their own civilization was being destroyed, they still took the time to give aid, a small amount true, to their British cousins. Who knows, he thought. If we do defeat the zombies, perhaps Patton’s prediction would come true; America and Britain would rule the world.

  Neil had to laugh at that thought. Fuck the future. All he wanted to do was get through another day. One day, if the zombies could be defeated, perhaps he would return to England and find out what happened to his family. All he hoped was that they were alive and safe, or dead forever not stumbling around like the undead things he was destroying.

  Pulling on his battered blue beret (the last part of his uniform left from his British service) Neil turned away from the sunset and headed down into the Enclave. His duties for the day were over and he wanted to lift a pint to the memories of old friends.

  05 November 2033

  Outside Enclave 9

  Near Phoenix, AZ

  Neil didn’t know it, but hostile eyes were watching him as he sat on the wall. One set was looking through binoculars, the other through a Leopold scope on a .475 Holland and Holland high-powered rifle. Had the man chosen to fire, he could have blown the British soldier in half.

  The hostile eyes belonged to Lazarites, humans who lived and often, died among the zombies. How they did this was unknown to the Enclavers, but they were considered the worse of two evils and, orders for prisoners be damned, were killed on sight. The Lazarites felt the same way about Enclavers. Those damned unbelievers were stopping the righteous hand of their Lord, holding up the rebirth of the world. Any Enclaver the Lazarites caught was sure to die - tortured then fed to the zombies while the Lazarites watched. If they were lucky, that is. Sometimes the unlucky captive was kept alive; a few pieces chopped off each day, made to watch as the zombies were given it like a gift. Both Enclavers and Lazarites tried very hard not to be taken alive.

  The Lazarite with the binoculars was Truman Fields. Once an officer of the Arizona State Police, he was now in command of the Host of Arizona. Since the troopers frowned on joining the Order, Fields kept his membership a secret. When the dead started rising, he’d openly showed
his allegiance to the Order, believing their message that the zombies were actually Blessed, and sent by the Lord to cleanse the world. He’d overseen the end of the last Enclaver captured. It was a helo pilot, one Joseph Puller. His chopper had crashed when a Lazarites lucky shot had torn through the hydraulics. The rest of the crew was killed on impact, their corpses taken before they could revive, skulls cracked open, bodies thrown to the zombies. There would be no salvation for them. Fields tried to convince Puller to join, to live with them and help them over throw the Enclave, but the man wouldn’t give in. Fields had watched as his second, Capshaw, had raped the man, reveling in his screams as others, even women using assorted tools, abused him.

  Puller was given to the zombies, but not after being further tortured for information. His fingers were split open, the bones within them broken, one of his eyes burned out with a white hot coin, his toes skinned of their flesh and dipped in salt, then his feet were amputated and the stumps seared with flame so he wouldn’t bleed to death.

  But Puller said nothing. In the end, he cheated them by chewing off his own tongue and swallowing it. It lodged in his throat and he choked to death before it could be extracted. An angry Fields decapitated the man and thrown his body to the Blessed. Still angry, he cracked the skull, scooped out the brains and thrown them to the Blessed. To Capshaw, this was too good for the filthy Enclaver. They should have burned him, scattered the ashes to the winds. Pullers empty skull sat on a table in Fields headquarters where it was used as an ashtray.