The Mike Beem Chronicles: 6 Tales of Survival, Hope, and The Zombie Apocalypse

by Anthony Renfro

  “I do, but I prefer the cane.”

  “It would make more sense for you to be riding instead of hobbling along behind me. How good a shot are you?”

  “I’ve aimed and rarely missed. My daddy taught me how to shoot many years ago,” Captain replied, letting his mind drift off to some dusty memories.

  “So, if you were sitting down you would have no trouble firing a gun?”

  “I should be okay,” Captain replied, as Mike got up and walked over to the window. He looked out on the street and saw a couple of zombies shuffle by, pushing hard through the cold and snow.

  “How long you been out Mike?” Captain asked.

  Mike turned around, puffed a bit on his cigar, and watched the fire as he talked. “I left Raleigh before Halloween. I went to Virginia Beach first, and then just migrated southward, stopping for a bit wherever I wanted to along the way.”

  “That’s a long time to be on your own.”

  “It is, Captain. It truly is,” Mike replied and turned back to the window, as a gust of wind lifted up a pile of snow and tossed it across the ground.

  “Do you need anything before I turn in?” Captain asked, using his cane to stand up. He tossed his cigar into the fire and stood there a moment warming himself. “We can talk more in the morning about how to get to my boat. Let the brain rest a bit.”

  “I’m good,” Mike replied, turning around again. “I do appreciate this. Not many options out there this warm and inviting.”

  “Think nothing of it. My house is your house. Good night. Blankets are in the hallway closet along with a pillow or two if you need them,” Captain replied, and exited the room.

  “Good night,” Mike replied, and turned back to the window. His mind still churning, trying to figure out how to get down to the boat without getting both of them killed.

  +

  Mike pulled his truck up to the curb, unlatched his seat belt, and fell out of the cab onto the ground. He stood up and looked at his house, as Trivium screamed out a metal beat from the cab of his truck. He then looked up and down the street, twice more to be sure he wasn’t seeing things. Zombies, those things from the TV shows and movies he loved to watch, littered the streets in all directions. They were all around him, and as he stood there several of them tried to attack. He grabbed a tire iron and whacked both of them in the head, shattering their undead skulls, splattering blood all over the ground. He made his feet start moving and hurried up to his front door, which was hanging slightly open. He pushed it inward and what he saw stunned him.

  Blood.

  So much blood.

  Gallons and gallons of it.

  Dripping from the light fixtures.

  Splattered on the walls.

  The ceiling.

  The hallway floor.

  Five zombies lay dead, a rolling pin and cast iron skillet covered in blood and hair lay scattered near them. Mike looked from the dead zombies to the trail of blood leading to the back door. He saw one of his kid’s shoes and one of his wife’s laying in the blood trail.

  Mike walked into the house on feet that felt like lead. He tripped and slipped down the hall, a human zombie, fearing the worst, knowing the worst, but refusing to accept it. When he reached the back door, he pushed it open, and crumbled to the floor.

  At least ten zombies were bent over in a crude circle, chomping, gnawing, and devouring his family. He wanted to cry, wanted to scream, as he stood up and raced into the backyard. He started bashing zombie skulls, and only paused his assault when he saw one of the zombies was wearing a red devil mask complete with horns on top of its head. The Satanist looked up at him with eyes glowing gold.

  Mike stumbled backwards, dropping the tire iron, and into a bar filled with Satanists wearing red devil masks. They looked at him with glowing gold eyes. He turned to run and found himself sitting inside a truck cruising down the coast, but the ocean wasn’t the ocean he had come to love and know. The water was blood red and it seemed to scream as it crashed onto the shore, like it was alive and determined to swallow him whole.

  Mike slid the truck to a stop just as he tumbled off the couch and onto the floor. He stood up, and looked around the cold living room. He was somehow back in his house, and the place looked fresh and clean. He heard noises from the kitchen, smelled fresh coffee brewing. He made his way into that room, and saw his wife standing by the stove, wearing a dress and apron, cooking breakfast. He walked over and reached out for her, but when he touched her skin it felt lifeless. She turned to face him with dead grey eyes and that’s when he saw she was nothing more than a rotten zombie, face and body covered in maggots, blood oozing from the many bites she had sustained in the brutal attack that took her life. She reached out for him with a hand that was squirming with bugs, and as he backed away, he began to scream.

  Mike woke up, and lay on the couch for a moment trying to figure out where he was – dream world or real world. He smelled fresh food cooking.

  “You okay?” Captain asked from the doorway.

  “Yeah, just some bad dream demons,” Mike replied, sitting up and placing his feet on the floor. He sat there a moment and stared at the roaring fire, trying to let the nightmare fog clear in his head.

  “I know all about those. I have breakfast made. Sausage, oatmeal, nothing too grand. Come on when you’re ready,” Captain replied, as he made his way back to the kitchen.

  Mike stood up and stretched, and made his way out into the hall. When he was in the small hallway, he saw not only a packed duffel bag, but an ancient wheel chair. It looked like it’d rarely been used. On the side table near the door were three pistols and extra ammunition. Captain looked like he was prepared not only to leave, but to handle his business if need be. Mike smiled and made his way into the kitchen.

  +

  Two hours later, Mike stood on the rotten boardwalk, looking at the silent businesses filled with the ghosts of beach days long gone. It made him sad to stand there and see this once vibrant world in such disrepair. It also made him hate the zombies and what they had created even more than he already did. He wiped away a couple of tears as a zombie shuffled towards him. The female zombie was dressed in a two piece thong bikini. The white bikini, spotted with dried blood, did her no favors. It showed off her grey undead body in the most unflattering of ways.

  Mike aimed his pistol with the silencer on it, and fired.

  POOF!

  The bikini clad zombie crumbled to the wooden planks with a loud thump after her head blew apart in an explosion of bright red blood.

  A couple more zombies stumbled out of wherever they’d been hiding as Mike got his feet moving and made his way over to the truck he’d left smoldering the day before. When he reached the truck, he saw that the zombie head stuck in the grill still had its eyes and mouth moving even though they were covered in a thin layer of ice. He took out his knife and ended the zombie’s headless living by shoving the blade into its brain. He then wiped off the blade and put it away as he walked over to the cab door. Opening it, he quickly collected the rest of his supplies. When he was finished, he glanced at the water. The salty cool breeze lifted up his hair, as he watched the waves for a moment or two. They crashed onto the shore, eating away the sand and soft layer of snow. Two zombies shuffled towards him across the icy parking lot while he stood there thinking of better days. He shot them both in the head, and then made his way back to Captain’s house.

  +

  Captain hobbled up to his wheelchair, and sat down in it with a hard thump. The fake brown seat crunching under his weight. He pulled his feet up, adjusted them, and then grabbed the big wheels. He rolled over and grabbed the three guns on the small table, making sure they were empty, and then started rolling the wheelchair up and down the hall, getting used to the feel of it, getting used to being mobile without the cane. He would stop sporadically and pull up one of his pistols, pretend to fire at things coming at him from all directions, and then drop the gun back into his lap, trying to figure out which one was
best for a quick draw.

  Mike had slipped in unnoticed, and Captain paused when he saw him standing there watching him practice. “How long you been there?”

  “Not long. You ready to go?” Mike asked.

  “Itching to see what happened to my boy and that wife of his. Great kids. It’d be a fucking shame if they weren’t still in this world even though this isn’t much of a world now.”

  “But we’re still here, we’re still surviving,” Mike replied, thinking of so many families (himself included), that had lost so much during this time of the zombies. Maybe Captain (he hoped) wouldn’t have to be one of them.

  “Mike, you there?” Captain asked, snapping his fingers.

  Mike came to. “Yeah, thoughts are rambling. What’s for lunch?”

  “I can whip up a mean tuna sandwich. Breads homemade. Scrapped together with whatever I could find. You okay with that?”

  “Foods food,” Mike replied, stripping off some of his cold weather gear, leaning his rifle against the wall, and placing his pistol on the small table by the door. The house was toasty warm. Amazing that one small fireplace could heat it so easily.

  “How come you aren’t armed with more than that?” Captain asked, as Mike rolled him into the kitchen, trying to get a feel for the weight of the chair with Captain in it.

  “It drags me down. One pistol and one rifle seem to be the best fit for me. I did have a couple of hand grenades.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “I had to handle some business back home, and then out on Duck I got into a nasty horde of surfer zombies. They were all dressed out like they were ready to wax up their boards and hang ten, but instead they decided I looked more interesting. I dropped the bomb, took off running, and splattered them all over the beach.”

  “That would have been fun to see.”

  “It was,” Mike replied, as they stopped at the kitchen counter.

  Captain pulled himself up after putting the guns in his lap on the counter, and then hobbled around the kitchen for a moment or two looking for bread and tuna.

  “How’d you get the bad leg?” Mike asked, taking a seat, not sure if it was rude or not, but he’d been curious since he met the old man.

  Captain dropped some chips onto a plate after making the sandwiches, and then hobbled back to the table. He put the plates down, and dropped into a chair in front of Mike. “Got shot by a whore in Singapore. Bitch claimed I owed her more money than I was giving her. She pulled the pistol before I could react. I took off running with blood gushing as she and most of her whore friends took off after me. The leg got infected before I could get to a doctor, and the infection killed off a lot of the stuff that makes a leg work properly. Been limping ever since.”

  “Was she worth it?”

  “She’d make your eye lids flutter.”

  They both laughed, settled into silence, and finished their lunch.

  When they were finished, they cleaned up and headed back out into the hallway.

  It was time to suit up.

  Time to get ready.

  Time to face whatever was waiting for them down at the harbor.

  +

  Mike was dressed out in long sleeves, camo pants, black combat boots, and his black vest, as he and Captain (dressed in jeans, sneakers, coat, and tee shirt) rolled down the cracked and broken sidewalk towards what they hoped was a clean and zombie free harbor. Mike had his rifle slung over his shoulder, silenced gun in his right hand, and knife in its sheath on his belt. Captain had his favorite pistol on his lap and his other two guns (along with the ammunition for all of them) stowed away in the pocket on the side of the chair.

  “It’s a shame,” Captain replied, as he looked around at the ruins of Carolina Beach. The air crisp and clean, snow in patches spread all over the ground and sidewalk. “This used to be such a nice beach town.”

  Mike glanced around, as he too felt sad for what he was seeing even though he’d never seen this place in its pre-zombie days.

  “I guess someday we will rebuild it all. Once the world is free of zombies, if we can ever tip the balance the other way,” Captain replied, as he brought the wheelchair to a quick and sudden halt.

  Mike almost walked into him, before managing to stop himself. He had been watching four zombies in a nearby alley who were now heading in their direction. They were the only ones he had seen so far, and they looked starved and hungry.

  “Why’d you stop?” Mike asked.

  “The harbor.”

  “What?” Mike looked to where Captain was pointing, and his heart sank.

  The harbor was covered in zombies. It looked like every zombie in Carolina Beach had decided this was the undead spot to be. They were everywhere.

  “Where’s your boat?” Mike asked, eyes scanning the four boats still docked in the harbor. One boat was almost completely submerged, the stern bobbing in and out of the water, the rest of it underneath the waves. The boat beside it was covered in barnacles, rust, gull poop, and mold. The other two boats seemed to be in pretty decent shape. They looked to be clean and well taken care of except for one minor detail. One of them was covered in blood, fresh blood. Its back deck looked like someone or something had been recently slaughtered.

  “The one on the very end,” Captain replied, looking at his boat that had multiple zombies shuffling back and forth in front of it. He then shifted his eyes to the sail boat beside it, the one covered in all the blood. “I think they got Randy. He was taking care of my boat for me. Told me when he was leaving for the harbor, just after all this started, that this would be the safest place in town. If the corpses got bad he would just sail away. Guess that plan didn’t work out.”

  Mike looked at Captain’s sail boat. It was white, and in good condition. It had one mast, small living quarters, and a decent sized deck. It would be tough for four people to live on it for any length of time, but it would at least get them all safely out of Carolina Beach. They could worry about the living arrangements once they were sailing away to what he hoped would be calmer and more peaceful surroundings.

  “Does it have a motor?”

  “Yep.”

  “So we have wind or gas power?”

  “I used the motor mostly to get me in and out of the harbor or if the breeze isn’t in my favor,” Captain replied, as the zombies started to notice them.

  “We better find a place to hide out,” Mike replied, as he watched the zombies drawing closer. They were shuffling slowly, but they were in hordes. Those were dangerous kinds of walking corpses.

  “Restaurant. Used to be the best seafood in town,” Captain replied, and started moving towards it.

  Mike shot a few of the zombies that were now a little too close for comfort with his silenced gun and followed after Captain.

  +

  Inside Captain’s boat, peering out from one of the small round windows, Lee and Mitchell Twiggle watched Captain and Mike rush off towards the SEA DOG restaurant. They saw the two men reach the three wooden stairs that led up to the small porch. They saw Mike turn Captain around, pulling him ever so slowly up each step, rotten wood somehow holding all the weight the two men were putting on it.

  Lee and Mitchell watched as Captain shot zombies with a steady hand, gun shots echoing throughout the empty town. When they reached the porch, Mike left Captain sitting and shooting while he tried the door that led into the restaurant.

  Locked.

  Mike slammed his shoulder into the heavy door several times, but it didn’t budge. Frustrated and out of options, he stepped back and aimed his pistol at the tarnished brass knob. The door knob and part of the door disintegrated when Mike shot it, disengaging the lock. He kicked the door open, pistol ready to fire, and stepped into the gloom of the restaurant that smelled like human decay. Two zombies rushed up towards him, hungry, ready for a feast. One was dressed like a fry cook and the other a fisherman, complete with hat that said: “If you think my fish is large, you should see my trouser snake.” The zombies were
scrawny things, skin hanging off the bone, rotten and smelly from head to toe. They’d been trapped inside the restaurant for a while, and it showed. Mike shot them in the head as Captain quickly backed the wheel chair into the restaurant.

  On the boat, Lee and Mitchell watched Mike slam the door closed, but they both knew it had no lock.

  “What are we going to do Mitch?” Lee asked. Her skin was black as marble, her dread locks long and thick, and she had a figure any man would kill for.

  “I don’t know,” Mitch replied. He was her polar opposite. White as a ghost, round black glasses, and stick thin. He stood about six feet tall while she stood shorter on a five foot two inch frame.

  “Do we still have flares?”

  “Three. Why?”

  Lee could see the zombie’s hording around the main door of the restaurant, starting to push their way inside. “If we shoot off one of the flares, I’m sure one of them will see it,” she replied, turning away from the window in order to check their ammo situation, which wasn’t good. “What I plan to do is open the cabin door, go up on deck and shoot as many zombies as I can until I’m out of ammunition or I’m comfortable they’re thinned out enough. While I’m doing that I want you to step out and fire that flare.”

  He looked her over. “You sure you want to do that?”

  “I’m the better shot, and you know it,” she replied, loading up their one and only pistol. “Besides, if we don’t thin out the horde on the dock then those guys will have no way to get down to us if they do decide to make a run for it.”

  “Okay, but let’s make this quick. I don’t want you in harm’s way for too long.”

  She nodded, and stepped up to the small window on the door that led out of the tiny cabin. She looked up the steps and then onto what she could see of the deck. It looked clean and zombie free. She reached for the door handle, and opened it.

  +

  Mike slid a booth over to the door and blocked it, trying to do his best to keep the zombies from entering the restaurant while Captain tried to game plan, tried to think of their next move. That’s when he heard the gun shots, and as he looked out the window he saw the flare shoot across the sky and explode.