Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series

by Bryan Cassiday

  “You started it,” countered Victoria.

  “Let it die,” Halverson told both of them.

  Becker shrugged in disgust, as if the matter was of no importance.

  “Where were we?” Victoria asked Halverson.

  “We were trying to figure out why you don’t have the plague.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Halverson tried to recall the gist of their conversation before Becker had interrupted them.

  “When you were in the safe, was its door shut behind you?” asked Halverson, picking up the thread of his earlier line of questioning.

  “Yep. I always close it behind me. I can open the safe’s door from the inside.”

  “Then what?”

  “When I walked out of the safe, I saw rioters running amok through the streets attacking each other and the city was ablaze.”

  Halverson thought about it. “Your safe is probably hermetically sealed. That prevented you from breathing the outside air at the time of the contamination.”

  “That’s only true if it’s an airborne pathogen that causes the disease,” said Becker.

  “Agreed,” said Halverson.

  “Then why didn’t I get the disease when I walked out of the safe and breathed the air outside?” said Victoria.

  “Maybe the pathogen wasn’t in the air anymore. I don’t know. We’re only speculating.”

  “If the disease is in the air, how come we don’t get it when we breathe the same air those creatures do?” asked Becker. He pointed at the two creatures shambling toward them along the outside of the chain-link fence dragging their fingers along the steel links raising a racket. “Why are they making that god-awful sound with their hands?”

  Victoria couldn’t resist. “They’re voters from your old district.”

  “Ha. Ha. Ha,” said Becker, not laughing.

  “Can you two knock it off?” said Halverson.

  “So how come we don’t have the disease when we breathe the same air as those infected things do?” asked Becker.

  “That’s easy,” answered Halverson. “Those things don’t breathe. The only organ that works inside them is their brain and it’s telling them to do one thing—eat living human flesh. We can’t contract the disease from their breathing.”

  “That begs the question—why didn’t I contract the disease when it first struck?”

  “Where were you when the outbreak started?”

  “I don’t remember any outbreak. I was riding in my stretch limo and we crashed and that’s all I remember. When I came to, I saw you two.”

  “Were your limo’s windows rolled up?”

  Becker looked upward, recalling. “Yeah. They must have been. I had the A/C on.”

  “Then maybe that’s why you didn’t breathe the plague pathogen when it infected everybody else. That limo must have an airtight seal.”

  Becker ran his hand through his hair in bewilderment. “This is totally insane.”

  “We need to get back into the cemetery. Those creatures are closing in on us.” Halverson indicated the two ghouls running their hands along the fence rattling it.

  “There are three more of those things in the cemetery,” said Victoria.

  “I think we’re safer in the cemetery though,” said Halverson. “We can shut the gate and keep any more creatures from getting in. All these dead bodies around us could reanimate any time now.”

  Becker surveyed the corpses littering the sidewalks and streets. Even the crashed cars had corpses slumped inside them. Pools of drying blood mottled the asphalt under the motor vehicles. Many windshields were splashed with blood on their interiors.

  Victoria looked over her shoulder at the three creatures already inside the cemetery as they closed the gap between them and her.

  “We may be safer hitting the road,” she said.

  “The thing is, these corpses could all reanimate at the same time while we’re on the road,” said Halverson. “Then we’d be screwed.”

  “Let’s get inside the cemetery until we can figure out our next move,” said Becker.

  “What if we commandeer a car and drive away?” suggested Victoria.

  “How can we drive anywhere?” said Halverson. “The roads are all blocked with abandoned vehicles.”

  “Maybe we could drive the abandoned cars out of the way.”

  “Think what you’re saying,” said Becker. “How could we possibly drive all of the cars out of the way? That makes no sense.”

  Victoria threw up her hands in frustration. Looking flustered, her face red, she paced around the sidewalk that skirted the cemetery.

  “Excuse me for breathing,” she said.

  Becker made for the cemetery. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have no desire to stand here and be eaten for lunch by one of those things, whatever they are.”

  Halverson started when he heard a commotion on the road. It sounded like a car door was opening.

  “If those things moved any slower, they could wear shells on their backs,” said Becker.

  Halverson ignored him and tried to home in on the direction of the clangor in the street.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Halverson caught sight of a chestnut-haired thirtysomething woman clambering out of a crumpled sedan less than twenty feet from him. The question was, Halverson knew, was she reanimating as a creature? Or had she somehow survived the plague like Becker?

  She slid out of the car seat and stepped awkwardly over the rocker panel.

  Halverson focused on her eyes. He wished he was closer to her. From this distance he wasn’t sure of the color of her irises. They didn’t appear to have that milky whiteness that filmed the eyes of the infected. Her eyes appeared to be brown.

  She waved at him. She sidled through the serried cars parked around her, heading in his direction.

  He stood still and waited for her. He still couldn’t tell if she was infected. She seemed to be lightheaded and was having trouble maintaining her balance as she walked.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Who are you?” she retorted.

  She could talk, noticed Halverson. She must be OK. He strode over to her and helped her pick her way through the mangled cars.

  “Were your windows rolled up?” he asked.

  She stared at him with puzzlement. “I think so. What’s that got to do with anything?” She surveyed the roads chockablock with smashed cars parked in them. “My God, what’s going on?”

  “Your rolled-up windows may have saved you from the plague.”

  “Plague?” she repeated with horror.

  “My name’s Chad Halverson. That’s Victoria and Becker over there.” Halverson gestured toward the two.

  “I’m Reba Vitali. I’m a cashier at a supermarket.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “Oh no! I’ll be late for work. My supervisor’s gonna dock me. He’s a real prick when it comes to tardiness. If I don’t clock in on time—”

  “Your supervisor’s probably dead from the plague along with most everybody else,” Halverson cut in.

  Victoria came over to Halverson and helped him usher Reba out of the road.

  Halverson remarked the things approaching along the fence then scanned the road. “We need weapons.”

  He would give his eyeteeth for an H&K MP7 now. He would blow those creatures to smithereens on a dime.

  He heard another clang. He saw the door to a Brinks armored truck open. An armed guard stepped down from the driver’s side of the cab. Dressed in a butternut uniform, he had close-cropped black hair and looked to be pushing thirty to Halverson.

  Halverson could tell from the agile way the guard scrambled down from his cab that the guy had not been infected.

  “Over here,” Halverson called out to him.

  The guard jogged over.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he said, wide-eyed at the massive destruction on the streets. “Was there a riot?”

  “What happened to you?” asked Halverson.

  “I w
as in my truck when everybody started crashing into everybody else—for no reason at all that I could see.”

  “Were you knocked unconscious in the crash?”

  “No. I locked myself in my cab. I thought riots were breaking out. I knew I’d be safe in my truck. That thing’s airtight and bulletproof. It seemed like the safest place to be.”

  “It wasn’t a riot. The plague wiped everybody out.”

  “Jesus.”

  Halverson eyed the semiautomatic in the guard’s leather holster hanging from his waist.

  “Do you have another gun?” asked Halverson.

  Reflexively, the guard reached for his gun. He squinted at Halverson suspiciously. “Why?”

  “You see those creatures walking along the fence?”

  The guard checked out the two decaying creatures trudging toward them. “They’re all messed up. What’s with them?”

  “They’re infected with plague. All they want to do is eat living human flesh.”

  The guard rolled his eyes and shook his head, trying to come to grips with Halverson’s explanation. “You’re coming at me from ‘The Twilight Zone.’ What’s this all about?”

  “If those things bite us, we’ll become infected with plague and end up like them. They’re the walking dead.”

  “No way.”

  “They need to be killed.”

  “How can you kill them if they’re already dead?”

  “Look, we need weapons. Do you have any more in your truck?”

  The guard withdrew a stick of peppermint gum from his breast pocket. He unwrapped the gum, flicked it into his open mouth, and commenced chewing.

  “If this is a heist, it’s the weirdest one I ever heard of. You must be OK. I got another Glock 17 pistol and a tactical shotgun in my cab.”

  “Great.”

  Halverson sprang into the car-crammed street and snaked his way toward the armored truck. He found the pistol encased in a leather holster attached to the side of the door. The pistol was, as the guard had said, a Glock 17. Halverson withdrew it and wedged it inside his waistband.

  The shotgun he slid out from its sleeve that was affixed to the inside of the door. He inspected the shotgun. He noted with approval that it was a pump-action Mossberg 500 Tactical Persuader.

  He spotted a row of spare magazine clips for the Glock lining the opposite door. He climbed into the cab. He retrieved the clips and shoved them into his trouser pockets. He scooped up nearby cartridges for the shotgun as well. He thrust some of them into his pockets. The rest he carried in his hand.

  He returned to the others near the fence.

  “Is this a 12 gauge?” he asked the guard.

  “Yeah. You must know something about guns?”

  “A little.” Halverson couldn’t tell him any more than that.

  Halverson happened to know a lot about guns, since he worked for the black ops division of the CIA, the National Clandestine Service. But he couldn’t let anyone know about his profession. A secret agent with a blown cover was useless.

  Then again, everyone at the CIA might have become infected with plague and was now one of the walking dead, in which case it was pointless for him to worry about revealing his profession. He may have been out of work like everybody else. The question was, he knew, how far had the plague spread?

  “It’s a 12 gauge 18.5-inch 6-shot matte black pump with a Parkerized barrel,” the guard elaborated.

  “They don’t call it a Persuader for nothing,” said Halverson, admiring it. He held it up for the others to look at. “Who wants it?”

  Reba shrugged. “I’ll take it. Do you mind telling me what for?”

  She accepted the Mossberg from him. He gave her the handful of cartridges for the shotgun.

  “We need weapons for self-defense,” he explained.

  “Self-defense from what?”

  “From those creatures. They want to kill us. Haven’t you been listening to me?” He stared at the creatures for a moment. He turned to Reba. “Could I have that shotgun for a minute.”

  “Sure.” She handed the Mossberg to him.

  As if to illustrate his point, he confronted one of the things walking toward them. He turned the shotgun around in his hands, grabbed it by the barrel, and set to clubbing the creature’s head, bashing its brains in with the shotgun’s sturdy synthetic stock.

  Victoria screamed at the sight.

  “Are you crazy?” Reba asked Halverson with a grimace.

  Its head caved in, the creature collapsed to its knees then toppled over on its rotting, haggard face. The stench from the creature’s putrefying flesh was unbearable. Halverson gagged and retreated. Flies swarmed around the creature’s smashed head.

  “Those creatures smell horrible,” he said, wincing.

  “Why don’t you just do this?” asked the guard.

  He withdrew his semiautomatic and shot the other creature in the chest. The creature backed up two steps then kept shambling forward.

  Puzzled, the guard unloaded three more shots into the creature’s chest. One round hit the creature squarely in the heart. Still the creature did not go down. It kept approaching.

  “Don’t use your gun,” said Halverson.

  “Why not?”

  The guard aimed again for upper body mass. He fired. He knew he hit the thing in its heart. No matter. The thing just kept coming. The guard could not believe his eyes.

  Halverson snagged the guard’s gun hand and pushed it down. “Don’t shoot anymore. If there are more of those things anywhere nearby, they’ll hear the gunshots and come here. Loud noises attract them.”

  “The thing should be dead. I hit it twice in the heart.”

  Shotgun in hand, Halverson bolted toward the creature. He pummeled the creature’s head with the shotgun’s rugged stock three times. The creature dropped. It sprawled motionless on the grass verge outside the fence.

  “You have to kill their brain,” said Halverson. “It’s the only part of them that’s reanimated. All their other organs are dead.”

  “Can we move away from here?” said Reba. She pinched her nose. “Those things stink worse than garbage.”

  “Let’s get into the cemetery. We’ll close the gate just in case there are more of those where they came from.”

  Halverson and the others retreated into the graveyard.

  As soon as they did so, the three ghouls already inside it shuffled toward them.

  Still holding the shotgun Halverson waded into the creatures.

  After he dispatched the lead creature, Halverson had to retreat to avoid the clutches of the two remaining creatures that lunged after him.

  “I’d help you out, but I don’t have a club,” said the guard.

  “Just distract one of those things while I go after the other one,” said Halverson.

  The guard beset one of the creatures, kicking it in the back of its knee. The creature reacted by turning around and trudging after him. Not wanting to use his gun and invite more creatures with its report, he darted away from the gangling thing.

  Halverson took the opportunity to bludgeon the other creature’s head. Halverson had to bash the cranium four times before it cracked and he was able to make contact with brain tissue. With that, the creature crumpled on the grass near a white marble tombstone.

  “You’re worse than they are,” said Reba, eying Halverson apprehensively.

  Jacked up on adrenaline, he said, “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen these things in action like I have.”

  Seeing that the guard was out of reach, the remaining creature reversed course and homed in on Halverson, who was nearer to it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The creature looked like hell, Halverson noticed. One of its milky eyes was dislodged from the socket and hanging down the creature’s cheek on a stalk. Sickened by the sight, Halverson wondered how the creature could see anything in the first place with those white-filmed eyes, let alone with just one eye.

  The creature’s wardrobe was in
no better shape than the creature. Its black leather bomber jacket had both of its sleeves torn off. What remained of the jacket and its lining hung in tatters on the ghoul’s button-down shirt, which was also torn and ragged.

  Beltless, the creature’s grease-mottled beige trousers hung low on its hips and appeared to be on the verge of sliding down over its pelvis.

  Halverson could not stand the sight of the thing any longer. Furiously, he charged the ghoul with his shotgun raised over his right shoulder and swung the stock down on the creature’s skull. The power of his anger-fueled swing was such that Halverson was able to dispatch the creature with a single blow that crashed through the creature’s skull and reduced the reanimated brain to jelly.

  The creature dropped dead on the spot.

  “You’re scaring me,” Reba told Halverson.

  “If we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us,” he said. “Believe me.” He handed her the shotgun. “You’re gonna need this.”

  “How do you know so much about these creatures?”

  “I’ve dealt with thousands of them before.”

  “Are there that many of them around here?” asked Becker.

  He flicked his eyes around the graveyard, casting around for more ghouls.

  “LAX was infested with thousands of them,” said Halverson. “There are at least hundreds of them over that rise at the UCLA medical center, too.” He gestured toward the university, whose sprawling medical center stood concealed behind the nearby hill across the street from the graveyard. “We can’t go there.”

  Halverson ventured over to the open gate and drew it shut. He flipped down the gate’s latch, securing it to the fence’s steel doorjamb.

  “What are we gonna do?” asked Reba. “Just stay in this graveyard forever?”

  “No. We need to find somewhere safe.”

  “This seems safe enough for now,” said Becker, “but I sure don’t want to end up here too long. It’s not exactly the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

  “The creatures could be swarming over that hotel this very minute. We can’t assume anywhere’s safe.”

  “How do you know so much about these creatures?” asked the guard.

  Halverson faced the guard. “What’s your name, by the way?”