Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series

by Bryan Cassiday

  “Shut up and keep watch.”

  The eldritch moaning of the ghouls resonated through the air.

  “Damn,” said Tattoo Head. “They sound like they’re right on top of us.”

  “They must be using bullhorns or something on the mainland.”

  Tattoo Head pulled on his nose, wiping the cold mist off it. “Why?”

  “How do I know? Maybe they’re talking to each other.”

  “They can’t talk.”

  “Maybe moaning is their form of talking,” said Jones irritably.

  “What’s the point of them talking if they can’t even think?”

  “That never stopped you.”

  Tattoo Head flinched. “That’s not funny.”

  “You ask too many questions. Keep surveilling the area and tell me what you see.”

  “Fog.”

  Disgusted, Jones said, “What else, bonehead?”

  “There’s no way we should even be out on the ocean in this stuff.”

  “Concentrate on what’s ahead of you. It’s not your job to think.”

  Tattoo Head muttered a string of curses and swiveled the searchlight back and forth over the Zodiac’s prow. The xenon beam sliced through the grey fog, revealing more fog. The fog was so thick he could feel its clamminess like a living thing on his skin.

  “What was that?” asked Jones.

  “What? We’re nowhere near the mainland yet. There can’t be anything here.”

  “Sweep the searchlight to your right.”

  Grumbling, Tattoo Head followed his orders. “I don’t see anything.”

  “That.”

  Jones shrugged his AK-47’s leather strap off his shoulder, grabbed the AK’s stock and trigger guard with one hand, and trained the muzzle to the right while he held onto the tiller with his other hand to steady the boat’s course.

  “I don’t know,” said Tattoo Head, straining to peer through the fog.

  “It looks like something’s moving out there.”

  “Think about what you’re saying. That’s the middle of the bay you’re looking at.”

  Jones throttled down. “I know when I see something.”

  “What do you see? I can’t make anything out.”

  “There’s something moving out there. And the infected, they sound loud enough to be right next to us.”

  “Then we have to be near the shore. But we’re not.”

  “Can’t you hear them?”

  “They’re louder than you are, for Christ’s sake. How can I not hear them? Maybe their howls are carrying on the wind. I still can’t see what you’re looking at. What does it look like?”

  “I’m gonna bust you if you keep talking to me like that. I’m your CO.”

  Jones sailed closer to the movement he had detected on the ocean. It defied belief. But there it was.

  He saw somebody literally walking on the ocean!

  AK in hand, he sailed closer. He had to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. It must be a trick of the light. The beam from the searchlight must be reflecting off the fog and causing an optical illusion.

  “Can you see it now?” asked Jones as the Zodiac bobbed closer to the apparition.

  Tattoo Head did a double take and all but flipped over the side of the Zodiac into the ocean. “Christ! It’s one of the infected! He’s walking on the water!”

  “I told you.”

  “I’m seeing it, but I don’t believe it. Nobody can walk on water.”

  It was a swarthy twentysomething male with close-cropped hair, a hirsute face, and thick decomposing lips that looked like cured hide. He was wearing a white button-down shirt smeared with filth. His black trousers had one of the legs missing.

  Moaning, he shuffled seemingly on the surface of the water out of the fog toward Jones.

  “What do we do?” asked Tattoo Head.

  “Kill it,” answered Jones.

  “But it hasn’t broken the law. The boss’ll get mad at us.”

  The infected scrabbled toward Jones.

  Jones drew a bead on the figure’s head with his AK and unleashed a long burst. The figure’s head blew apart as he toppled into the rippling ocean.

  “It attacked us, for Christ’s sake,” said Jones.

  In no time, four more figures marched out of the fog toward Jones. Eyes popping out of his head, Jones emptied his thirty-round banana clip into the four infected.

  Two of the figures plummeted into the sea. The other two kept shambling toward the Zodiac.

  Tattoo Head sat and gawked at the infected as if in a trance.

  “Open fire!” cried Jones. “Don’t just sit there! They want our blood!”

  Tattoo Head stirred himself out of his funk and fell to blasting the figures. “This can’t be happening!”

  Jones realized the Zodiac was puttering too close to the infected. He veered to port in the nick of time, evading the phantoms. He circled the craft around and beheld the infected once again.

  His eyes must have been deceiving him. Ten-odd figures were now scrabbling across the ocean surface toward him. He closed his eyes for a minute. He opened them. The figures were still there.

  Then he witnessed an interesting thing.

  The infected were shuffling forward and then lying down on the ocean and stretching forward as more of the prostrate infected behind them held onto their legs.

  “They’re building a human fucking bridge across the bay!” he wailed.

  He reloaded his AK, racked a cartridge into the chamber, brought the muzzle to bear on the figures, and cut down three more of them. The victims dumped and splashed into the water and disappeared into its gloomy depths.

  More of the infected loomed out of the fog to resume extending their bridge on the ocean surface.

  Tattoo Head opened fire on the infected, cutting down two more.

  “There’s too many of them!” bellowed Jones. “We need more men!”

  “How can they hold onto each other like that and not drown?”

  “Who knows? We’re going back for reinforcements.”

  Jones circled the Zodiac around and made a beeline for Alcatraz.

  “Fucking a,” was all Tattoo Head could say, eyes wide, fog and spindrift spraying his face as the Zodiac cut through the ocean.

  Chapter 62

  Parnell was standing in his cell and facing Victoria, his arms dangling between bars into Victoria’s abutting cell. She was sitting on the middle of her bunk.

  “I’m starting to have my doubts about Bascomb,” said Parnell.

  “Starting?” said Victoria incredulously. “I was having them way before now. The man’s locked us up or haven’t you noticed?”

  “His intentions are good, though.”

  “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

  “He wants to keep the law. And he’s right about that. Law is essential for any civilized society.”

  “But society’s changed. What’s left of it after the plague.”

  Parnell steepled his hands in her cell and interlaced his fingers reflectively. “That doesn’t give us the right to loot and murder.”

  Victoria ground her teeth and shot to her feet. “If everybody’s dead and there’s sacks of money lying around, who does that money belong to?”

  “It belongs to whoever owned it in the first place.”

  “Even if the owners are zombies? That’s ridiculous. What are zombies gonna do with it?”

  “So, we just go around pilfering everybody’s money when we see it?”

  “If we don’t take it, somebody else will. If anyone’s still alive, that is.”

  “That line of reasoning won’t track in a court of law. You don’t have the right to commit crimes because others are going to commit them if you don’t.”

  Victoria threw up her hands. “I could care less about a court of law. I’m talking about the real world.”

  “I’m just saying I can see where Bascomb’s coming from, and it’s laudable. Not practicable, maybe
, but laudable.”

  “This is the same guy you’re talking about who molested Brittany,” snapped Victoria.

  Parnell pulled his hands apart and withdrew them from Victoria’s cell. “I know. That’s why I’m having my doubts about him.”

  “Welcome to the club.”

  “I’m losing my faith in mankind,” said Parnell, lowering his head and pacing around his cell. “I never thought I’d see the day I said that.”

  “Losing your faith in Bascomb isn’t the same as losing your faith in mankind.”

  “True. And I still think Bascomb’s basically a decent guy.”

  Victoria rolled her eyes. “As long as you conveniently forget about what he did to Brittany—and to Selena, I might add.”

  “I resent your remark. Are you insinuating I don’t care about Brittany and Selena?”

  “You’re behind the curve, Doc.”

  “How do we know that really happened? We have only Selena’s speculation on his assaulting Brittany.”

  “Selena wasn’t speculating when she said Bascomb assaulted her.”

  “She could be lying, though.”

  “Why would she lie?”

  Parnell shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe she’s mad at him for something.”

  Victoria heard a noise and gazed toward Halverson’s cell that was situated farther down the cell block. “Did you hear that noise?”

  “What noise?” asked Parnell, frowning.

  “It sounds like gurgling water.”

  Chapter 63

  Key in hand, an armed guard was standing at Halverson’s cell, scoping out the water gushing out of the broken drainpipe under Halverson’s sink.

  “What kind of a mess are you making in there?” demanded the guard, a stocky guy with a Fu Manchu mustache and a Mohawk, as well as a gold earring in his left ear.

  “The pipe broke,” answered Halverson.

  “Stand back while I come in there and take a look.”

  Halverson backed away from the cell door as the guard withdrew his Glock 17 and trained it on him.

  With his left hand, the guard withdrew a large ring of keys from his belt and inserted one of the keys into the cell door’s lock. The guard slid the steel door open, flourishing his gun in Halverson’s direction. The door clanged all the way open.

  The guard stepped warily into the flooded cell, wincing as he felt his feet get wet in the two-inch-deep water.

  “This is one hell of a mess you made,” he said.

  “I hope you don’t charge as much as my plumber!” roared Reno from his neighboring cell.

  Distracted by Reno, the guard glanced toward him.

  In that second, Halverson burst into action.

  He stormed the guard, batting the guard’s Glock out of his way and coiling his arm around the guard’s neck. The guard’s neck in the crook of Halverson’s elbow, Halverson wrenched from behind the guard and crushed the guard’s hyoid bone and cricoid cartilage. Then with his other hand he twisted the guard’s head with a sudden jerk. When he heard the muffled click of the guard’s neck snapping, Halverson released his death grip.

  The guard slid lifelessly to the flooded floor.

  Halverson scooped the Glock out of the guard’s hand.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” asked Reno, stunned and sickened by Halverson’s ruthless efficiency in dispatching the guard.

  “I used to be a chiropractor,” answered Halverson, searching for the key ring under the pool of water around his feet.

  Reno sniggered despite himself. “Remind me never to pay you a visit.”

  Halverson stooped down and groped through the dirty water. “Did you see where he dropped his key ring?”

  “To your right, I think.”

  Halverson slid his hand through the water on his right. “We don’t have a lot of time to be fooling around here.”

  Feeling the floor under the water, he moved his hand back and forth, probing for the keys.

  Reno scanned the prison apprehensively. “Another guard could show up any second now.”

  Halverson felt the keys and dredged the crowded key ring from the water. He scooted over to Reno’s cell and tried the wet keys one at a time on the locked door.

  “Damn,” said Reno. “How many keys are on there?”

  “Too many,” said Halverson as he tried out each key on Reno’s door.

  Reno glanced up at the CCTV in the corner of his cell. “You do know the camera’s on.”

  “I know. The guards will be here any second.”

  At last Halverson heard the tumbler click as he applied one of the keys. He wrenched Reno’s door, sliding it open.

  Reno bounded out onto Broadway.

  Halverson and Reno whipped down the aisle toward Victoria’s and Parnell’s cells.

  Halverson fumbled through the keys again, trying to unlock Victoria’s door, as Reno kept lookout for guards approaching on Broadway.

  “Isn’t it the same key you used on my door?” asked Reno.

  “No,” answered Halverson. He had to start from scratch again, inserting each key in the lock.

  “Are we glad to see you,” said Parnell, watching Halverson.

  “This cell is getting on my nerves,” said Victoria.

  The lock on her door snicked. Halverson slid the creaky steel door open.

  Victoria popped out of her cell in a trice.

  “Where do we go from here?” asked Reno, keeping alert for any signs of the guards. “They’re gonna be all over us any second. We could do with more guns.”

  “That’s where we’re heading,” answered Halverson, working a key into the lock on Parnell’s door.

  “Where?” asked Reno.

  “To the armory. I bet one of these keys opens the armory.”

  “Bogey at the end of the hall.”

  A guard brandishing an AK-47 burst onto Broadway from the main entrance.

  Halverson stopped inserting keys, snaked his gun hand around, and double-tapped the guard, who dropped in his tracks.

  “You’re a regular killing machine,” said Reno, eying Halverson suspiciously.

  Halverson resumed fumbling with the keys, jamming them one after another into the lock on Parnell’s door.

  “We don’t have time for this,” said Reno. “We need to get a move on it.”

  Halverson stepped up his pace, sprang the lock, and released Parnell from his cell just as two more guards barreled down Broadway, guns in hands.

  “Where’s the armory?” asked Parnell, his face breaking into a sweat at the sight of the guards.

  The two guards were about to open fire on Halverson and his group when Jones and Tattoo Head exploded into view.

  “Hold your fire,” Jones told his men, barging out in front of them to face Halverson.

  Halverson leveled his Glock at Jones.

  “Throw it down,” said Jones.

  “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t drop you on the spot.”

  “We need your help. We need all the shooters we can get.” Jones lowered his AK and gestured for Halverson to follow suit with his Glock.

  “What are you talking about? You locked us in jail. Now suddenly you need us?” said Halverson, holding his gun steady with Jones in his sights.

  “Listen! If we don’t stop them, the infected are gonna be swarming all over this island in a matter of minutes.”

  Knocked for a loop, Halverson commenced lowering his pistol.

  “It’s a trick,” Reno told Halverson. “Don’t listen to him.”

  “How can the ghouls possibly cross the bay to get here?” Halverson asked Jones.

  “They’re building a bridge,” answered Jones.

  “Do you take us for idiots?” Reno scoffed. “You can’t build a bridge across the bay in a day or two. It would take them years.”

  “They don’t have the coordination to build anything,” pointed out Victoria.

  “They’re building a bridge out of humans,” said Jones.

  Reno gawked at
him. “Humans? What humans?”

  “Themselves.”

  “A bridge of corpses,” said Halverson in awe.

  “We just came from the bay,” said Tattoo Head, face twisted in panic. “We saw them doing it. They’re almost here!”

  “It’s got to be a trick,” Reno told Halverson. “How could the walking dead build a bridge out of cadavers? Jones just wants you to throw down your gun so he can toss us back in the slammer.”

  “He couldn’t make something like this up,” said Halverson. “It’s too fantastic.”

  “We need all the manpower we can get to fight the infected,” said Jones.

  “We need guns.”

  “We’ll arm you. We have plenty of ordnance in the armory.”

  “I ought to kill you for betraying me,” growled Halverson, training his pistol on Jones again. “You’re a snake.”

  “I love you, too,” said Jones, gripping his AK-47 tighter.

  “Well?”

  “I don’t know what the deal is with you, where you learned your skill set, Halverson. All I know is you obviously can handle a weapon. We need shooters to fight the infected.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I saw you double-tap that guard like it was second nature to you.”

  “If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be free.”

  Jones shook his head, no. “The boss would have locked you up for looting. Your goose was already cooked without my intel about your plot to kill him.”

  “He’s right,” Parnell told Halverson. “What’s the point of killing Jones only to have the infected kill us afterward?”

  “The ghouls are our prime enemy,” agreed Victoria.

  “The question is, can we trust Jones?” said Reno.

  Halverson thought about it.

  “We’ll finish this after we polish off the ghouls,” he told Jones and lowered his automatic.

  “I can’t wait,” hissed Jones. “Now let’s get down to the armory, tool up, and hit the infected with everything we got.”

  He exploded into action, reversing direction and charging down Broadway with his guards, a blur of churning arms and legs.

  Halverson, Reno, Victoria, and Parnell tore after them in hot pursuit.

  Chapter 64

  Halverson and his group scuttled down Park Avenue, down Seedy Street, then turned left into D Block. From there they took the steps to the basement, in the middle of which was the armory.