Apoc Series (Vol. 2): Silence of the Apoc [Tales From The Zombie Apocalypse]

by Wilsey, Martin (Editor)

  It takes only a moment for Bill to forget the possibility of searching the place for anything useful and quickly leave, stopping only long enough to shut the sliding door, desperate to get as far away from the smell as soon as possible. He barely reaches the low gate when he doubles over it and heaves. Having not eaten for several hours, he doesn’t expel much—a small favor.

  Afterward, he retches, but nothing more comes up.

  “Shit…” he says thickly.

  ***

  Jim crumples the small, lunchbox-size bag and tosses it to the ground. It lands next to two more as he takes a fourth down from the rack.

  “Ah,” he says, “Sour cream.”

  As he tears into the top-end of the small bag he hears a familiar kind of groaning drone coming from around the corner of a nearby ski-ball stand. It is accompanied by the smell of rot.

  “Oh, shit,” he says, dropping the bag to the ground only partially opened.

  ***

  Bill hears the shot and looks to the north. He picks up the pace, going from a walk to a jog back up the alley.

  As he reaches the place where he and Jim parted he glances about. Jim isn’t at the truck when Bill passes, so he keeps going—north—up the boardwalk. Passing various shops and amusements, he still finds no sign. Shifting gears once more, he breaks into a run, and soon, as he nears the far end of the boardwalk, he notices a change.

  All at once he realizes that the surf is no longer the only sound, and underneath that steady rhythm is another more familiar sound. Another sudden change is the slight scent of death that rides the light, salty breeze coming off the ocean’s surface. It’s nowhere near as bad as the stench in the apartment, but it’s the smell he knows all too well nonetheless.

  Suddenly the booths and games give way to a pier, and there Bill sees the source of the moans, the scent of rot, and decayed flesh.

  Gathered at the pier—but being kept off it by a school bus being used as a blockade—are countless zombies. None yet seem to be aware of Bill’s presence; they are too busy trying to find or force their way past the bus and onto the long pier. Instantly Bill thinks he knows exactly what—or who—they are after.

  “Jim!” he calls out thoughtlessly, moving around the throng of undead, giving them a wide berth. There is no answer. He tries to get far enough around the zombies to see out onto the pier, but the combination of them and the school bus obstruct his view.

  “Jim!” he calls again, the slightest quaver in his voice. By now the zombies have taken notice of him, and those nearest him have started to shift their attention.

  There are far too many to start shooting; he’d be out of ammunition in seconds. Looking around, he sees a lifeguard tower out on the beach—a good fifty-yard dash or better. With no better options immediately available—and simply going back to the truck and leaving without Jim entirely out of the question—he makes for the beach, quickly descending a rickety, weatherworn flight of wooden steps down to the sand. As he goes, he sees that the zombies are not only packed at the front of the pier but also beneath it, desperately seeking access to whomever or whatever is barricaded there. Then he catches a glimpse of who they’re after and stops.

  Upon the pier, mostly hidden from view but still peeking over the side of the guardrail, is a young girl.

  “Hey!” he calls, casting a brief glance behind him to the zombies that now stumble-step their way down the rickety steps after him. He returns his gaze to where the girl was, but she isn’t there. What the fuck, he thinks. Then the dry shriek of a zombie coming up behind him spurs him into motion once more. He reaches the lifeguard station and quickly climbs the steps, throws open the door—surprised to find it open—and gets inside. Realizing the latch on the door is broken, and it won’t stay shut on its own he drops to his knees, pressing himself fast against it and trying to stay out of sight. Huffing he looks around the small station, stunned to see two pale blue eyes, staring right at him from only a couple feet away.

  “Jim!” he nearly shouts.

  “Shush!” Jim says, putting a finger to his lips in a gesture of silence, then adds in a hiss, “You’ll lead them right to us!”

  “You’re alive!” Bill hisses back. “Why didn’t you come out when I called? Didn’t you—”

  “Shush!”

  “I heard a shot, man. Didn’t you hear me calling for you?” Bill asks in a whisper.

  Jim nods. “I took a shot at one and missed. And I didn’t answer ’cause I didn’t wanna get their attention after I slipped past ’em,” he says, rolling his eyes.

  “Sorry,” Bill offers with a shrug. He quickly looks around. “They weren’t far behind me,” he says. “Find something to barricade this door. When they get here and pile up, we can go out one of the windows.”

  Jim nods, duck-walking over to where a folding chair sits tucked into a corner. “Yeah, we got to get up to that pier—there’re people up there. I couldn’t get past the zombies on the bus, so I ran down here.”

  “I saw a little girl,” Bill says.

  “I saw a woman,” Jim says, “and two boys—teenagers. The zombies were already at the barricade, but I saw the woman; she had the flare-gun.”

  He goes to his knees and walks toward Bill and the door, one hand dragging the chair along behind him. The legs scrape across the floor noisily, and both men cringe. Jim freezes. They listen, and almost instantly there is an audible increase in the dry, monstrous groans that approach the guard station.

  “Shit!” Jim swears. He gets to his feet, as does Bill, and braces the chair against the door, lodging the back of it up underneath the door’s handle.

  “Think it’ll hold?” he asks.

  “Hope so,” Bill says. “At least long enough for us to get out of here, and up onto that pier.”

  Jim nods his agreement, watching as the zombies begin to round the guard station and ascend the steps to the door.

  “It’s still gonna be hairy,” Bill says.

  “No shit,” Jim retorts.

  “I say we smash out that corner window, hop out and run like hell.”

  “Smartest thing you said all day,” Jim says, forcing a chuckle.

  “Watch your eyes!” Bill says, turning his head to shield his own as he smashes the butt of his shotgun through the window. It’s plenty noisy and doesn’t help any in diverting the zombies’ attention, but most of it falls down to the sand in just a few large shards. Bill quickly clears away the remaining glass around the edges and climbs out, straddling the window’s frame and then dropping down to the ground below, his boots crunching on the glass as he lands. He moves away, making a place for Jim to follow, and quickly glances around, getting eyes on the zombies.

  Jim follows Bill’s lead, first straddling the window’s frame, then dropping down to the glass and sand below. When he lands, however, the largest piece of glass has already been shattered further, and he is unable to avoid the jagged, six-inch shard that tears through his jeans and raggedly into his right calf.

  “Fuck!” he swears, cringing as he falls onto his side. He brings the injured leg up toward his chest, straining to reach the shard and remove it.

  “Shit!” Bill hisses. He rushes over to his friend, going to one knee long enough to help him up. “Come on, man. We got to go. Deal with it later.”

  Jim groans in agony as he gets to a mostly standing position, unable to put any amount of weight on the injured leg. Bill hooks an arm around him, and together they manage to three-leg their way past the clumsily reaching zombies and over to the rickety steps.

  “All right, one at a time, man,” Bill says.

  Holding loosely to the weathered handrail, Jim hops his way up the steps, the AR dangling behind him from its single-point sling. Bill follows closely behind, and as he feels a hand clasping at his shoulder, hears a high voice cry out from the direction of the pier. He turns, eyes going ever so briefly to the same little girl he saw earlier, now standing just on the other side of the school bus’s hood and looking down at
him, to the zombie that somehow managed to slip up close enough to get one bony, desiccated hand on Bill’s jacket. He cries out in surprise and shrugs away, immediately bringing the barrel of the pump-action up under the zombie’s chin and taking its head off in a veritable cloud of dust and decay with a single shot. When he looks back over to where the girl was, she is again gone. Perplexed, Bill hurries up the steps, once more going to assist Jim.

  ***

  Bill and Jim reach the sandy boardwalk to find that there are still a good many zombies trying their best—and getting nowhere—to breach the school bus barricade’s boundary. The bulk of the throng of undead is concentrated at the rear-end of the bus, as it was parked at an angle—obviously backed in—and looks as though there may be a way to push past it where it meets the pier’s guardrail. Some, however, are already coming their way, and Bill knows that they’ll never be able to just waltz right past them with Jim’s lame leg, and there are still too many to take out. He looks around, searching for any possible means of even temporary safety, maybe just somewhere that he could stash Jim until he can draw the zombies away, but there seems to be nothing close by.

  Then a distantly-familiar sound pulls both men’s attention back over to the school bus. They watch as the door creaks open; first to about halfway, and then the rest. A quick glance back to the zombies, and then Bill sees that it’s the little girl.

  “Hurry!” she urges, beckoning to them with one hand still on the door-opening lever. Jim half-hops his way toward the portal while Bill covers the zombies, and once Jim is inside the bus, Bill follows, strafing the zombies before quickly climbing in. He doesn’t wait for the girl to shut the door; instead, he leans over and does it himself. Almost instantly he hears undead hands beating at the metal and glass that separates them from the outside world.

  Jim is sitting in the first seat on the bus’s passenger side, and Bill plops down just across the aisle with a short sigh. Momentarily he leans forward, intent on thanking the mystery-child, but he is cut off by the sound of a pistol hammer cocking, followed by a woman’s frantic voice coming from right over his shoulder.

  “Don’t move! Cara, come over here! Get away from the men, honey!”

  Bill freezes, wondering if he wouldn’t have been better off making a run for the truck. He’s all too aware of the flare-gun that is being aimed right at him.

  “I don’t know who you guys are, but you can’t stay here.”

  Cara moves past Bill, and he sees a look almost like guilt on her sweet face.

  “Look, we don’t want any trouble,” Bill says. “If you want we’ll just stay on the bus. But we’re not going back out there. Not yet.”

  “You’re not staying—”

  “Look, lady, I can’t even walk!” Jim barks.

  “They can help us,” Cara says, tugging at the sleeve of the woman’s wool sweater.

  “They could also—” She stops; Bill can imagine what she’s imagining.

  “Listen,” he says, swallowing dryly, “just let us hang in here a bit—then we’ll be off. I just need to fix up my friend’s leg.” He ventures to turn his head enough to look the woman in the eye. His voice catches at first, caught off guard by how young and attractive she is. He pushes the thought aside. “He’s hurt pretty bad.”

  The woman seems to glance down, quickly studying the large shard of glass that juts from the steadily growing patch of red in Jim’s pant leg. Bill watches her a moment longer.

  “Fine,” she says, “but if either of you tries anything… you’ll deal with this.” She gives the flare-gun a light flourish before cautiously lowering it. Pulling Cara along with her, she backs toward the bus’s rear exit. Bill watches her just a moment longer before a groan from Jim pulls his attention away.

  Going to one knee, Bill tries to examine the glass, but he can’t tell how deep it is. Since Jim isn’t bleeding all over the place, he figures it isn’t too deep, or at least that it hasn’t severed an artery. Gingerly he takes hold of Jim’s leg, starting to turn it, but Jim winces, and he stops.

  “What do you want me to do?” he says.

  Jim shakes his head. “I don’t know, man. It hurts like a son of a bitch.”

  Bill considers whether he should pull the glass out first or try to rip the pant leg open first. Taking his jacket off and laying it across the seat behind him he shifts down to both knees. Then the slightest shift of the bus snaps his attention toward the rear exit once more.

  The woman has reappeared, still pointedly toting the flare gun, but now also bringing along something else in the opposite hand. As she moves cautiously toward them, Bill sees that it is a first aid box. She stops just two seats away and sets it down, not taking her eyes from Bill.

  “If you’re gonna do it, you may as well do it right,” she says. She starts to leave but stops when Bill speaks up.

  “Thanks,” he says, reaching over and grabbing the small plastic box. He seems to study her.

  “What?” she asks defensively.

  “I just…” he trails off, looking down at the box as he opens it, and briefly digs through the meager supplies.

  She again starts to leave.

  “Don’t know who I’m thanking,” Bill finishes. He takes the small pair of surgical-style scissors from the box and proceeds to carefully cut away the lower half of Jim’s pant leg, leaving only a small patch that surrounds the spear of glass. He sets the half-soaked swatch aside and leans in again to get a better look at the wound and the shard. He still has no clue how deep it is, but the bleeding seems to have slowed if not stopped. Setting the scissors down, he takes out a sterilizing wipe and tears it open.

  “Angel.”

  Bill stops halfway reaching for the shard and looks up at the woman. He can’t help the tired puff of laughter that escapes his lips. Immediately he sees a look of vexation flit across her pretty face.

  “Seriously?” he asks.

  “Yeah—seriously,” she says, then turning and hurriedly walking away.

  Bill sighs, not having meant insult, but finding it most ironic that such a “sight for sore eyes” was earnestly named Angel.

  He gingerly removes the shard of glass from Jim’s leg. It’s buried about two inches into the flesh, and Jim lets out a short, tight string of expletives as Bill smoothly pulls it free, bringing the remaining patch of blood-soaked denim with it. He then goes about wiping it down with the sterilizing pad.

  “Son of a bitch, that stings!” Jim says through gritted teeth.

  Bill quietly wraps what small amount of gauze there is in the kit around Jim’s skinny leg. His friend looks studiously down at his suddenly too-quiet friend.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Bill,” Jim says with a stifled groan.

  “What do you mean?” asks Bill.

  “I’ve seen that look in your eye before. The way you looked at her? I’ve seen it.”

  “Shut up, Jim,” Bill says flatly.

  “You had that same look the night you met Ronnie.”

  Bill stops just shy of adding the surgical tape to hold the gauze in place.

  “Shut up, Jim,” he says a bit more forcefully. He applies the tape and rises to sit on the bus seat, elbows resting on knees and head hanging.

  “She reminds you of Ronnie, and the girl reminds you of Jess.”

  Bill doesn’t deny but doesn’t admit either that Angel did remind him of Veronica, and Cara made his heart skip, summoning thoughts of his daughter Jessica.

  Jim says nothing else about it, unable to imagine what his friend is thinking—or feeling. It had been hard enough for him to see what had happened to weekend warrior’s family, but now this?

  “Thanks,” he finally says, gesturing down to his newly bandaged leg.

  Bill nods but says nothing.

  ***

  A while passes, and Bill has neither seen nor heard any sign of Angel or the children—only one of which he’s seen. He stares down at the plastic first aid box in the seat beside him and tries not to think about
his family. He ventures a glance out the bus’s dingy window, and there is still no sign of anyone on the long, deserted pier. With a shallow sigh, he stands, picking up the white box, and starts toward the back of the bus.

  “I thought we were staying on the bus,” Jim says dryly.

  Bill stops, looking down at the kit.

  “Why’d she signal if she didn’t want help?” He glances up at Jim, who shrugs. “I get they’re afraid, but… they can’t wanna stay here.”

  Again Jim shrugs, not bothering with trying to stop his friend again.

  Bill walks toward the back end of the bus, hearing the calls of the zombies just outside the tube of metal. Momentarily, he is almost grateful that his wife and daughter hadn’t been around for all the shit he’d been through, all the shit they would’ve been through—were they lucky enough to survive.

  Standing at the rear exit of the school bus he hesitates, not wanting Angel to think him a liar—and that much more untrustworthy. Then he rationalizes: she needs her first-aid kit back. Carefully he hops down, noting just how close a couple of zombie straining hands come to clasping his bared lower arm from under the back door of the bus.

  Stepping out of their reach, he peers through the space left between vehicle and pier. They can’t squeeze through, and countless sandbags placed all around the bus keep them from getting under and onto the pier, but he can’t imagine that even this place would be safe forever. Turning, he starts out onto the pier.