Elements of the Undead: Fire (Book One)

by Esmont, William

  One.

  Two.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Where’s the third? A moment later the truck rumbled into view, swinging wide around the front bumper of the police cruiser. She let out a sigh of relief. The traffic, as packed as it was, offered far too many places for the undead to hide. They were like a live wire in the brush, lurking until someone disturbed them, instantly lethal.

  “What the—” Cesar blurted. He stood on the brakes, and the truck jerked to a stop in the center of the road. Megan looked ahead and immediately saw the object of his concern. About a quarter of a mile down the road, there was a solitary figure facing them while sitting astride a motorcycle. The rider was clad from neck to toe in black leathers and wore a shiny black helmet with a smoked visor. It was definitely a man. Though it was impossible to see his face, his broad shoulders and narrow waist left little room for question.

  A thousand thoughts raced through Megan’s mind, but the one that set her heart racing was the possibility that they had driven into a trap. She had heard stories from other survivors in the compound and had even seen hints of it herself during her own journey south. Humanity had been reduced to interacting like dogs—bite first and make friends later.

  The yellow Motorola radio on the dash squawked. “What’s going on up there?”

  Megan answered. “There’s someone ahead. We don’t know if he’s friendly.”

  Silence for a second, and then, “I can’t see him.”

  “He’s on a motorcycle.” Megan watched Cesar’s face, trying to gauge his reaction to the situation. He looked lost in thought, hands at ten and two on the wheel, thumbs drumming as he pondered their options.

  “Hold on, Mike,” Megan said into the radio handset.

  The man climbed from his bike and put out his kickstand. He took a step away and checked his surroundings. He started to remove his helmet.

  “I don’t see any weapons,” Megan whispered. “What do you think, Cesar?”

  He shrugged and pulled a pair of binoculars from the door pocket to scan the area. “I don’t see anyone else.” He scanned behind them. “We go forward,” he finally said, removing his foot from the brake.

  As they got within twenty feet of the motorcyclist, Megan was finally able to make out part of his face through the shadow of his helmet. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling they were driving into some sort of ambush. She craned her head around and scanned the buildings lining the road, searching for anything out of the ordinary.

  Ten feet from the motorcycle, Cesar rolled to a stop and threw the truck in park. “Stay here,” he said.

  “Not a chance.” Megan grabbed her pistol and reached for the door latch.

  Cesar grabbed her forearm, his grip like a vise. “I need you here Megan. Just in case.” He gestured at the man with his other hand. “I want you to get behind the wheel and be ready to go.” The look in his eyes said he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “Okay,” she agreed. “But I don’t like it.” She cast her eyes down at his hand still gripping her forearm.

  He released her. “I’m sorry…”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She picked up the radio and told the other vehicles to hold their positions. Cesar exited the truck and walked briskly toward the man. Megan slid behind the wheel and placed her pistol on the dashboard. Just in case.

  The motorcycle guy looked a little rough, like he’d been on the road for a long time. Dirt caked his face, and fine lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes as he squinted into the sun. His short blond hair looked greasy, as if it hadn’t been washed in ages. Megan couldn’t hear their discussion over the rumble of the engine, but their body language looked promising.

  After a minute, Cesar turned and gestured at the convoy. The man said something with a smile and pointed north. She guessed that was where he had come from. They exchanged a few more words, shook hands, and began walking toward the truck. Megan took the gun off the dash and put it in her lap with the barrel pointed at the door. She straightened in her seat and waited.

  Cesar and the man arrived at her window. “Megan, I’d like you to meet Kevin…” Cesar stumbled, obviously having forgotten the man’s last name already.

  “Salerno,” the stranger interjected. His voice was deep and full of confidence, and Megan had a sudden intuition he had seen a lot in whatever life he had led before the end of the world. “Nice to meet you,” he said, offering his hand.

  “Likewise.” Megan stuck her hand out the window, and they shook.

  “Kevin’s been on the road for a while,” Cesar added. Megan noted the desperate hunger in Kevin’s eyes. He’s searching for something.

  Cesar pressed on. “He’s going to stay with us for a few days. Maybe more.”

  Megan’s mind raced as she considered where Kevin would fit into the community. There was no doubt he was road-hardened. He knew how to drive a bike, perfect for getting through tight traffic situations. Maybe a scout?

  “I told him about our scavenging operation. He’s going to help today, and then follow us back afterward.”

  “Sounds good.” Actually, it was great, the more people on a raid, the better their chances of success.

  “Not many undead around here today, are there?” Kevin commented, inclining his head in Megan’s direction. “But it looks like you guys are loaded for bear.”

  “Oh, they’re here,” Cesar responded. He glanced nervously at the surrounding buildings. “I don’t know where yet, but they’re here.” There was a lull in the conversation as they all evaluated their new situation.

  Cesar spoke first. “Fall in somewhere in the middle, Kevin. Follow our lead for now, and you’ll be all right.”

  “That works.” Kevin pulled on his helmet and turned for his motorcycle. He fired it up and cut a wide circle around the group, placing himself in the middle, just behind Pringle. He sat and idled, waiting for the convoy to lurch forward. By the time Cesar had situated himself behind the wheel, Megan had already briefed the others in the convoy, including Pringle, who seemed oddly ambivalent about the new addition.

  They set off. They still had supplies to collect.

  Twenty-Two

  Albuquerque as Jack had known it no longer existed. The only thing left was the blackened stumps of buildings and charred earth as far as he could see. Ash and drifts of fine dust clung to every surface, turning the environment a muted, monochromatic gray. The pervasive stench of death blotted out the once fragrant scent of the high desert. Even the Sandia Mountains hadn’t escaped the devastation. Every tree on the west-facing slope had been burned away, allowing the late-summer rains to scour the denuded hillside, sloughing millions of tons of dirt and rock into the city below. Zombies ruled the countryside. They were everywhere, preserved for all eternity by the great clouds of radiation roiling in the atmosphere.

  It was colder than usual, probably ten or fifteen degrees below normal. This was because of the bombs; the dust they had kicked up was blocking the sun’s rays from reaching the earth, cooling the northern hemisphere in a vicious feedback loop that Jack knew wouldn’t end until all of the dust settled. And that could be years.

  So they headed south.

  It was the only way to survive. He had no idea how far he would have to go to reach a warmer climate, or if the radiation would get them first. He worried about poisonous clouds from southern California and Arizona sweeping over them, but there was little he could do. They had to go south, or they would die.

  The terrifying truth was that with civilization gone, Jack and Becka were going to have to learn how to produce their own food. Scavenging would only take them so far; canned goods would last a few years at best, maybe more, but they weren’t the answer to long-term survival. No, to really make it, they had to become modern-day farmers, and the New Mexico high country wasn’t the place for that. not anymore.

  He had to laugh at the irony of it all. Before the world collapsed, there had been whole magazines—hell, whole industries—devoted to the i
dealized notion of getting back to nature, of being self-sufficient. He knew this because he had a stack of those very magazines, complete with glossy full page advertisements for fancy micro-tractors and do-it-yourself solar water heaters, in his bathroom back in Taos.

  Jack wiped his brow with his sleeve, scrubbing away a thick rivulet of sweat before it ran into his eyes.

  “Are we there yet?” Ellie called out from the rear seat of their ancient Volkswagen camper. “Can we stop for nuggets soon?” Jack opened his mouth to answer, but found he couldn’t make the words come out. A tear leaked from his eye. He wiped it away. Ellie’s question had struck a chord deep inside of him, triggering a flood of memories of better times.

  Becka came to his rescue. “No, honey. Not yet.”

  Their vehicle was remarkably well-preserved considering it was over a half-century old. There wasn’t a spot of rust on the body, and the engine, clattering and pinging like a sewing machine on steroids, ran like a champ. Finding the pre-electronic-ignition camper on the side of I-25 north of Albuquerque had been a stroke of unbelievable luck, for while he and Becka could walk for days, Ellie was another story. She could only put in six or seven miles on a good day, not nearly enough to get them to their destination, wherever that was. White with broad maroon racing stripes on each side, the camper was immaculate except for a large, dried bloodstain saturating the driver’s seat. Jack had no idea if the blood was infectious, and he wasn’t taking any chances. A blue tarp, liberated from a storage compartment in the rear, solved this problem in short order. Now he just had to deal with the constant crinkling as he shifted around. The sound drove him crazy.

  They were running along at fifty miles per hour, having just cleared the southern edge of Albuquerque, when things turned to shit. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a yellow and black sign announcing they were entering open-range country. That meant the cattle were not behind fences; they were free to move across the road at any time of day or night.

  He recalled a trip many years earlier, before Maddie and Ellie were born. He and Becka had been on their way to Denver to visit some college friends. It was early in the morning, just after sunrise, and they had been driving all night, pushing north through a late-spring snowstorm. Becka had spotted it first, as they crested a sharp rise about a hundred miles south of the Colorado border. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the road ahead. Jack leaned forward and squinted through the snow, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. It looked like a load of trash had escaped the bed of a pickup truck, but worse. Both northbound lanes were littered with snow-covered obstructions. He lifted his foot from the gas, allowing the car to slow on its own.

  Becka’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, my God, Jack! That’s an accident!”

  They had come to a stop a few feet away from the remains of a horrific collision between some sort of livestock, probably a cow, and a small car. The car appeared to be a Honda Civic or Toyota Tercel, but they couldn’t tell for sure. Whatever it had been, no amount of repairs would ever make it whole again.

  There was nothing left of the driver larger than a child’s lunch box.

  “Call 911,” Jack whispered.

  Becka had retrieved her phone from her purse and punched in the numbers. A moment later, she frowned and held it out to him. “No signal.”

  Jack cursed. That was in the days before the mobile phone companies finished expanding their networks, when it was still possible to get lost in the great empty spaces between the cities of the mountain west. It had taken them over an hour to reach an area with enough cellular reception to report the accident.

  The tragedy had been covered in the Denver Post the next morning. The driver, a man of about Jack’s age, had been on his way back from a family reunion in Las Vegas, New Mexico, when he fell asleep at the wheel and encountered a stray cow shortly after midnight.

  Jack swallowed the memory away. If that happened now, if we were to hit an animal or if we were to hit anything, there would be no one to call for help… He let out a nervous laugh. It’s just a sign, he told himself. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.

  Something moved on the side of the road.

  “Hold on!” He tensed up. He didn’t have time to put his hand out to stabilize Becka before the creature darted into their path. It was a runner, one of the irradiated ones from Albuquerque, and it was moving fast, almost sprinting.

  A man. One arm. No skin on the side of his head. These images were burned into Jack’s mind as the creature plunged into the scrub on the opposite side of the road. He feathered the brake. The undead never traveled alone. He was right. A second creature appeared as if summoned, and raced into his lane. Jack swerved, but not enough.

  The second zombie plowed into the right front corner of the bus, causing its body to explode into a greasy mist of gore. The old VW shuddered and jumped left a few inches as the steering wheel was torn from his grasp. He gripped the wheel and tried to bring it back to straighten the bus. Bang! They slewed violently to the right. Tire!

  Jack put every ounce of strength he possessed into straightening the van, but the top-heavy vehicle had its own plans. Time slowed. He felt the tires on the left side of the bus lose contact with the road. They went airborne. A second later, the earth reached up and yanked them back in a vicious embrace. Glass exploded around him in a million glittering fragments. Twisting metal screamed in his ears. Hot sparks peppered his face, minute pinpricks of heat that felt oddly comforting.

  And then everything went black.

  ~~~

  Consciousness seeped into Jack’s mind with agonizing slowness. The first thing he noticed was the temperature. It was much colder, almost freezing. He was shivering, his entire body quaking uncontrollably. He tried to move. He couldn’t. His hips felt torn, as if some enormous creature had taken hold of either side of his body and wrung him like dish rag. He tried to open his eyes but his lids wouldn’t budge. Glued shut.

  “What the hell…?” His head pounded. Blood thrummed in his ears, the rushing boom boom drowning out everything around him. Stretching the muscles of his face, he finally managed to open his eyes. He let out a surprised cry. The world was upside down. No. Wait. He was upside down.

  The pain in his hips was from the lap belt digging into his waist and cutting off his circulation. He hung there for a moment and stared. With his right hand, Jack felt for the roof and discovered it was only an inch from the top of his head. Windshield glass lay scattered below, tiny stars twinkling at him from a false night sky.

  He groaned. His head was thick, full of itchy wool. His mind tripped over itself, trying to piece together the events that had put him here. It all came back in a terrifying gut-wrenching rush.

  “Becka! Ellie!” he shouted. He twisted in his seat, searching for them. Becka wasn’t there. He couldn’t turn far enough to see into the rear. “Becka! Ellie!” he called again.

  As he twisted, a lance of pain raced up his arm and into his shoulder, flooding his mind with an agony beyond any he had ever experienced. Bile tumbled down his throat and dribbled onto the roof of his mouth. He vomited an explosive torrent of steaming fluid that gushed back into his upturned nose, choking him.

  Looking at his arm, he discovered the source of the pain, a jagged shard of glass, embedded in the meaty part of his upper bicep. Protruding at an obscene angle, the glass was lodged deep inside the muscle, grinding against bone every time he moved. His vision went gray around the edges. He realized he was about to black out. He fought it, wrapping his mind around the wispy tendrils of consciousness as they sprinted away from him, reeling them back in and gathering them close.

  Becka. Ellie. Got to find them. Gritting his teeth, Jack grasped the shard with his good hand and tugged with all his might. He couldn’t hold back a scream as the glass slid free. Blood welled up from the wound, then splattered on the roof of the van. Reaching for the belt buckle with his good arm, he took a deep breath and pressed the release.

  Although he didn’t have far
to fall, the impact still knocked the wind out of him. It seemed as if every square inch of his body had been pummeled during the accident. He lay still for a moment, panting, trying his best not to black out again. Free from his bonds, Jack rolled over and began searching for his family.

  They were gone. He crawled to the front passenger seat and took Becka’s seat belt in his hand. Panic welled up as he fingered the ends of the straps. They were torn and shredded, as if something had gnawed through them.

  He crawled into the back. It was empty as well. The windows had all imploded, compressed beyond their engineering limits when the bus landed on its roof. A chill desert breeze flowed through the empty frames. He flicked the switch on the dome lamp between his knees. Dead.

  His stomach sank. Blood coated every surface, congealing pools soaking through the knees of his jeans and coating his hands as he turned in frantic circles.

  Zombies. He sat back on his haunches to consider the situation. This doesn’t make sense. If zombies took them, then why am I still here? Why didn’t they take me, too?

  Maybe they had been ejected from the bus as it rolled. Jack’s hopes soared. But no. That wouldn’t explain Becka’s seat belt. Or the blood in the rear. Ellie’s blood. Hell, he couldn’t even remember if Ellie had even been buckled in. Probably not. She hated seat belts.

  Jack kicked open the door and crawled onto the desert floor. The sand was cool under his palms. The moon rode high overhead. Midnight, maybe later. I wasn’t out for long. A wave of nausea assaulted him as he struggled to his feet. He put his hands on his knees to stabilize himself and retched, burping up foul acid. He spit.

  Mangled beyond repair, the bus lay at the bottom of a shallow wash. Their supplies, ejected during the crash, charted their unexpected departure from the freeway like a trail of enormous breadcrumbs. There was a sleeping bag at his feet, and their Coleman stove lay a few yards beyond. He found his pistol half-buried in the sand a few feet from the bus.