by Matt Hart
Looks like a child turned and attacked whoever was driving, but then couldn't get out of the car.
“Hrumph,” he said, walking toward the front of the store. There were a couple of zombies hitting the automatic doors, but clearly they couldn't figure out how to get in. “Get enough of them banging on it and they'll break through,” he muttered.
He casually walked up to the first one and bashed its skull with the wrench, then leaned back and swung it against the other one. They were so slow it was almost no fun.
“Not bad,” he thought. “One hit each.”
He put his big hands between the doors and pulled them open, then stepped inside. “Hello store!” he called. A head appeared from behind an island of women's running shoes.
“Hello,” said the head.
Richard recognized the voice. “Jeffrey?” he asked. “Jeffrey, izzat you?”
“Richard you son of a bitch!” answered the head.
Richard laughed. “Damned if I didn't half expect to see you in here!” he said as he walked over to shake Jeffrey's hand.
“Yeah, same here old man,” said Jeffrey. He looked past him. “Where's Richie?”
Richard's features grew hard. “Killed by a bastard kid out on route 2 a few hours ago, shortly after the EMP hit,” he said darkly. “But I know where he's headed, and I'm here to gear up and go after him.” He paused, then added, “You in?”
“Ain't got nuthin' better to do during the apocalypse than help my best uncle,” said Jeffrey.
“So you figure it was an EMP too?” asked Richard, walking to a case and pulling out a bottle of water. He downed it quickly and tossed the bottle aside.
“Yep, EMP,” agreed Jeffrey.
“Alright then!” said Richard. “Bastard's got no chance with the two of us hunting him.”
Jeffrey nodded and turned to the back of the store. “Hey kid!” he yelled. A frightened young man hurried up. Jeffrey gestured at him. “Found this poor excuse for an outdoorsman working in the shoe department,” he said. “Seven customers walked out a half hour after the power went out, and so did three workers. They told me I needed to leave, that they were closing the store.”
Richard laughed. “Yeah? What did you say to them?”
“I told them I had cash, and would like to get some boots first.”
“And did you have cash?”
“Hell no, but they didn't know that.”
They both laughed as the kid fidgeted. “The manager and the kid here stayed to help me. The manager turned into some kind of rabid freak and came after us. This kid here screamed and ran behind a counter. I pulled my SIG .40 and put a round through his chest. Damned if the guy took it and kept coming.”
“Holy... after a round to the chest? Was he wearing body armor?” asked Richard.
“The mess on the Nike shirts behind him says no, but I didn't ask.”
Richard laughed.
“So anyway,” Jeffrey continued, “the manager kept coming. I put a round in his heart and one more in the chest. Double tapped bastard kept coming like a damned zombie. I double tapped him in the head, both rounds. He stopped coming then, you better believe.”
“Yeah,” said Richard, “I saw something similar.” He gestured toward the door. “One of those things killed my mom and was biting her. So yeah, zombies or rabies, I thought. But still coming on after massive trauma like that...”
“Zombies,” said Jeffrey.
“Yeah, zombies,” agreed Richard. “What do you think,” asked Richard, turning to the kid.
“Ya.. yea.. yeah, I.. I.. guess,” he stuttered.
“What's your name, son?” asked Richard.
“T.. Tr.. Trent,” he said.
“Okay Tra Tra Trent, listen up,” said Richard. “We have no more power or sophisticated electronics at all, and zombies on the prowl. You need to gear us up! Can you lock these doors?”
Trent just stood there.
Richard looked back at Jeffrey. “What's this guy's story?” he asked.
“PTSD,” replied Jeffrey. “He can walk, and sort of talk, but he's not much use.”
“Okay,” said Richard. “Lemme see your piece,” he told Jeffrey, who removed it from his back holster and handed it to Richard.
Richard hefted the P229, then looked back at Trent. “Show us the keys to the firearms locks,” he said, still casually holding the gun. Trent didn't say anything, but was shaking uncontrollably.
Richard held the small gun one handed and pointed it at Trent, just a few feet from his face.
“Go get me a soda from one of those front refrigerators,” said Richard.
Trent shook and looked like he was about to faint.
Jeffrey put his hands over his ears, his eyes wide.
“P.. pl.. please...” began Trent.
The sound of the SIG crashed through the store and Trent crumpled with half of his face gone. Richard handed the gun back to Jeffrey.
“Can't get good service anymore,” he said, smiling and feeling better than he had since his son was shot.
“Time to gear up and hunt another bastard,” he added. Jeffrey looked at his gun and back to Richard. He holstered the pistol and looked at his shaking hands.
“I didn’t sign up for this,” he muttered.
Chapter 6
—————
Interlude: Ft. Hood, Texas
“Dammit!” yelled Private Matthews. He pulled the charging handle on the .50 caliber gun mounted on the otherwise mostly dead Humvee. Its headlights worked, but that was all. He pushed the trigger again and sent more rounds toward the approaching horde of creatures before the gun jammed again.
“Dammit!” he swore. He cleared the round and fired again. The big bullets had a pretty good effect. They sliced some of the creatures enough to slow them to a crawl, and a few lucky headshots managed to completely kill a few. The gun jammed again.
This time, the private just looked at the gun, realizing it was stopping after firing exactly the same number of rounds.
“The tracers?” he muttered. He pulled the handle and grabbed the warm round as it flopped out. He looked closely at the bullet. It had a red tip. He aimed and fired the big gun, and it jammed almost immediately. He popped that round and looked at it.
Another red tip.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “The EMP messed up the tracer rounds?” he asked himself. At least he understood what was happening now. But it didn't help him. None of the boxes of ammo were pure ball—they all had tracers every fifth round. So he could shoot four rounds and the next one would jam.
He looked around. There were at least a hundred zombies coming at him. The building behind him was full of them too—he'd barely escaped to jump in the Humvee, fighting his way through at least a dozen reaching, moaning former servicemen. The MP soldiers in the Humvee were mostly dead, one of them had turned, and he'd shot that one and the others when they started to wake up. He tried to start the vehicle, but it didn't even turn over. The headlights worked, but the only thing they lit up was a mob of former soldiers and civilians heading for him. He couldn't even button up the Humvee because of the .50 on its roof. He fired at the crowd, four shots at a time. He didn't know if the .50 could fire single shots—all he knew was to push the trigger. He wasn't even sure he could switch the rounds if he found all ball.
He resigned himself to his fate.
“Hey, sis,” he said out loud. “Sorry I lied to dad about the four wheeler,” he continued, remembering how he'd blamed his sister for his own damaged ATV. She'd been punished and he got to ride hers.
He fired four rounds and pulled the handle.
“Dad, I did steal more than just the one comic and Twizzlers before I got caught. I'm sorry.”
Four rounds. Pull the handle.
“Mom, I love you. I wish I would have said that instead of getting angry when you had to leave.”
Rat tat tat tat. Pull the handle...
“Trish, I should have asked you to the prom.”
>
Matthews let go of the .50 and pulled a revolver he'd retrieved from one of the dead MPs. He shot four zombies crawling up the tank.
“Into thy hands...” he said as he put the barrel in his mouth and fired.
Chapter 7
—————
Interlude: Boreling Empire: Plannel 6
Grodge the Merciful took the stim stick from his mouth and yawned, finishing it with a loud groan. He glanced back at the monitor on the right as the bio-creatures swarmed the lone soldier, who shot four more of them—none of them fatal shots—then turned the gun on himself.
That one was fatal. Grodge grunted and smiled. The fool didn't even understand what was happening. He smiled again. One of the Pay to Play viewers had done that, disabling just some of the ammunition for the large, primitive gun. He checked the Pay to Play production log for today’s programming.
“Hah!” he said. “Team Zeke again.” He switched views back to the man in the bunker. He was keeping an eye on this one in case he did something truly dangerous. Thanks to his manipulations to keep the guy safe from scrutiny, Pactain would hopefully get blamed, but you never knew for sure if it would work. He had to get exposed at some point, and Pactain had to be the one to take the blame, if Grodge was going to get that promotion. The human seemed harmless enough, just an overlooked bunker in a building, with bio-creatures on the stairwell trying to get to him. He was smoking some sort of stim stick and drinking a red liquid that was marked as intoxicating.
Grodge zoomed in a bit closer. He seemed to have some sort of radio? Might need to watch out and make sure he didn't…
Grodge jumped as his console buzzed. It was just half an hour before his shift was over, so it better not be his replacement, Corbig Iacrine. The console buzzed again. Annoyed, he hit the button to answer, “Yeah, what is it!?”
“Grodge, what are you doing? Sleeping?” yelled Pactain the Virulent, his supervisor.
“No, sir,” answered Grodge, switching the monitor back to the military base. “I was, uh, reviewing the military action I just watched and was considering replacing one of the other alien interest channels with it. It looks like we have almost a million viewers watching it, and about 30% of all viewers across the Galaxy are tuned in to camera drones that are watching Earth military units.”
“Okay then,” said Pactain. “Good work monitoring the events.”
“Yes sir,” said Grodge. “As though I care what you think,” he added under his breath.
“What was that?” asked Pactain, a hint of suspicion in his voice.
“I just said I need a drink,” answered Grodge. “I was thinking of trying our sponsor's new Spicy Chew.”
“Good thinking, Grodge, always support the sponsors!” Pactain paused. “Now here's why I called,” he began.
“I don't care you moron,” thought Grodge, silently this time.
“I'm thinking we're getting a high number of bio-creature kills in these early hours. Let's see if we can reduce that. I'd like to get more alien on alien violence and see what happens for the next three rotations after these 'humans' realize their power is out for good.”
“Excellent idea, sir! I was just noticing that there were a lot more of those 'zombie' creatures appearing than first predicted.”
“Mmm hmm,” said Pactain, clearly not believing the fawning Grodge. “Just make it happen!” he finished with a yell, closing the connection.
Grodge rubbed his eyes and clacked his thumbs against his skull. He looked down. “What are you looking at?” he said, staring at his doglard as it happily wagged its tail. He kicked it hard, and it yelped and scrambled out of his reach.
“Looks like I won't be taking that seltzer bath tonight after all,” he muttered, stabbing a button to record a quick message to Corbig.
“Listen up, Corbig! I'm working on a specially commissioned project from Supervising Producer Pactain the Virulent himself! So although I'll show online, I don't want any interruptions! You do your normal shift and stay out of my sight until I finish this project.” He paused and opened a Spicy Chew drink and took a bite.
“Grodge the Merciful out!” The recording stopped and he sent it to Corbig to play immediately upon the start of the next shift. Grodge sat back and sipped his drink, grimacing at the flavor. He preferred the sweeter chews overall. Setting aside the drink, he cracked another stim stick and took a deep breath.
How could he use this turn of events to his advantage?
Chapter 8
—————
Erin
I killed my friends. Erstwhile friends. Kids from school. I jammed a jack handle into their eyes and they dropped to floor.
I felt sick. I walked over to the Jeep and sat down, crossing my legs and facing a tire. Joe said something to me, but I ignored him. I started counting, breathing in and out.
I heard the thumps at the door. I heard Joe puttering around. I heard the sound of my breathing too, but the counting in my head drove everything out. There was nothing except the next number. Around eighty, I started to forget the next number. I made it to one hundred, then stopped and stood up.
“Alright,” I said, “What's next?”
Joe looked at me with a question. “I don't know. We can risk the side door.”
I walked over to the side and listened. I didn't hear anything. “Alright, how about this? Let's get ready to run out the side door. If it turns out there's a mob of the undead out there, we'll shut the door and rush through the house.” I grabbed the hammer, went to the door into the house and started pulling the boards out. I wasn't having much success.
“Here Camo Joe, you do it.”
I gave him the hammer. He took it and smiled, then set it on the workbench. With both hands, he grabbed a board at the end and pulled. It ripped from the door, taking part of the door’s frame with it.
“Oops,” said Joe, grinning sheepishly.
That's my word for the day. Sheepishly. Great word to describe the huge black man ripping two by fours out of the wall with his bare hands.
He pulled slowly on the next board and it came out without destroying the door. The zombies became more agitated, thumping against the outside door with the stubs of their arms and snapping at the slit, bending down to reach it. They would trip and fall, or other zombies would nudge them out of the way and take their place. It looked like most of them had no hands.
Too bad it wasn’t teeth they were missing.
“Alright,” said Joe, ripping away a splintered board and tossing it to the side. “That's the last one.” He rubbed imaginary dust from his hands and gripped the rifle hanging on its sling in front of his massive chest. Then he walked over to the Jeep, put it back into neutral and pushed it back into the middle of the garage so that it was no longer blocking the side door. “Ready to go?”
“Just a second,” I told him. I found some rags and tied them around my neck. I tried to tie one around my head, but didn't really know how, so I wrapped it around my arm. I looked at Joe.
“Zombie armor?” he asked.
“Zombie armor,” I agreed. He walked over to the side door.
“Here we go,” he said. I held the shotgun in my left hand, and the baton in my right. I didn't know if I could shoot one-handed, but I could try. Joe turned the handle slowly and inched open the door, peering outside. He slowly started to close it again when a massive THUD hammered it. The door opened a bit more and a zombie hand reached through. Joe let go of his rifle and it dangled on its sling, and then shoved against the door. I ran over, dropping my baton and raising the shotgun. I edged around Joe and fired through the partially open door. The sound of the shotgun crashed into my brain, but it sounded almost distant. The shell popped out and struck Joe on the shoulder and bounced off. I fired again, but even I could see that there was a horde out there pressing their way to the door.
I unloaded the rest of the shotgun, trying to drive the creatures back. Joe pushed hard against the door and it finally closed, but it didn't look lik
e it would hold long.
“ARE YOU ALRIGHT?” Joe yelled past the ringing in our ears.
“WONDERFUL!” I yelled back as I reloaded the shotgun from the shells in my bandolier. “OPEN THE DOOR TO YOUR HOUSE!”
I finished loading my gun as Joe bent down and picked up one of extra tires that was currently wedging the door shut. He tossed it like a Frisbee at the side door, then did the same with the other three tires. I picked up my baton from beneath a tire and put it back into my belt. I put down the shotgun and shoved the tires around so they would press against the door. I could feel the pressure against it.
