by A. Rosaria
DEAD SHELTER
ZOMBIECLYPSE BOOK TWO
By A.Rosaria
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2013 by Alex Rosaria
This e-book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
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TABLE OF CONTENT
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
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Think about your life, a valuable thing that is so fleeting, and don‘t waste it. Instead, use it to do good in the world. Whatever may send you to the edge of an abyss, edging you closer to the point of falling and forfeiting your life, face it and try to turn it around. Tomorrow may be a better day, and the day after you may be able to do something meaningful, which may lighten a loved one‘s or a complete stranger‘s life.
CHAPTER ONE
Ralph wobbled on his feet. His right hand shot out to a wall that wasn‘t there. He staggered sideways, tried to regain his balance, but he was a little too late. He fell, digging his knees into the pebbled ground. It hurt like a son of a bitch. He swallowed a cry, gritting his teeth, trying to ignore the pain and failing miserably. The view in front of him danced in front of his eyes. Squinting, he tried to regain his senses, but failed. He shut his eyes, rested his butt on his heels, and tried to breathe.
How long had it been since he last ate? Three days? Or was it four? He had little to eat after barely escaping being nuked. Not by choice. Food was sparse. Almost everything around him was destroyed, and it didn‘t help he was being chased by the walking dead.
Lack of nourishment was getting to him, that and all this moving around. There was never a moment of rest. He should have eaten the little they had. It would have been the wise thing to do, but it also would have been the cold thing to do. Instead, he gave whatever he found to Sarah. Her bite wounds had gotten infected and grown red and painful to the touch. She could barely walk the second day out. He had cared for you, putting himself last. It was that or leave her to die, and he would never do that to someone again.
They had found an abandoned RV on the interstate. It had a broken axle and was left on the side of the road. Not voluntary. Ralph had found a blood trail leading from the driver‘s seat to the road, and the driver was nowhere to be found, dead or alive.
After he had looked around the surrounding area for the driver or any other zombies, he helped Sarah inside the RV and laid her on the bed. It wasn‘t much of a bed, more like a single stained mattress. Not that she cared. She wasn‘t aware of anything by then, and he had little choice. He tried his best to dress her wounds, which was a poor job really, and gave her the food he had found inside. On the third day, red lines had branched out from her wound, and the fever knocked her out. He feared she would turn if he did nothing.
He had searched the around the RV, but had found nothing useful. After going through the RV‘s dashboard, though, he had found a map. By the fourth day, their food ran out. There wasn‘t much to begin with; there had been little food in the RV‘s cabinets. The owner was probably on his way to stock up on food for his family when he was attacked, leaving his family waiting for his return. Not that it mattered. It was highly likely that his family was dead anyway.
His stomach grumbled. Four days. That was how many days had passed since he ate last. He had waited for Sarah to wake. She had opened her eyes near evening, sweating all over, running a high fever, and deliriously whispering about her brother and other stuff that made little sense. There was no getting around it. He had told her he was going to look for medicine, and she didn‘t say much, only nodded. Ralph hoped he had gotten through to her, so that when she woke she wouldn‘t panic when she found him gone.
He left after that and had walked to a town nearly twenty-two miles from their location. According to the map, the town had a medium-sized hospital, which probably also served the smaller townships in the area. He hoped to find the penicillin he needed—that is if anything in the town was still left standing, because if it had suffered the same fate as his hometown, there would be little to find.
It had been late when he left. At nightfall, he had followed the long stretch of the road. At daybreak, with the help of his map and the road signs, he found his way to the town. The sun was now two hands above the horizon; it must be around eight by now. He had walked much farther than he would normally. He had walked slowly in the dark, not wanting to cross too much distance and get lost. He‘d been walking for at least ten hours, and if he had made the effort, he could have probably done it in six. Not a chance. He couldn‘t do it while starving and feeling dizzy. It was a miracle that he managed the distance without passing out. Thirst, hunger, it drained his body of energy, beat it down. His muscles were running dry, screaming from the strain, alerting his mind with jabs of pain with every move he made.
Ralph opened his eyes. Slowly, the contours of the town in front of him fitted into place. Black smoke rose up from the destroyed buildings, and soot covered the walls left standing, most only rubble. As far his eyes could see, he saw more destruction. He hoped farther in that something was left standing. He could easily give up, lie down on the side of the road, and wait for a walking corpse to come and get him. Eventually, they would get him anyway, so why not now when it seemed as if all were lost? In a world filled with them, there was no avoiding fate, especially if there was no shelter left for humanity. How could they survive as a society in a world ruled by death?
He knew there had to be more people around, despite not having seen any since their escape. There were more survivors. It was impossible that everyone was killed. However, for all he knew, they were the only ones in the immediate area. Two people, miles apart, one lying in an RV sick and dying from an infection, the other one moping about. Ralph sighed. If he continued like this, there would be only one left alive, because Sarah was doomed if he did nothing. He stood up, ignoring the pain in his body.
Whatever was left of the hospital would have to do, though it would be difficult to find anything if the place was a complete ruin. If he failed, he would have to figure something else out. Finding a workable car would be nice, but seeing this much destruction, he doubted there was any left that could still be driven. On the road, they had been lucky to find one. The interstate was empty, the broken-down RV the only vehicle they had seen after they escaped. The military had done a great job in keeping everyone quarantined. Not that it did much good when the military decide
d the best option to contain the virus was destroying everyone.
Ralph had convinced Sarah that their best option was to take the route back to the containment area from which he had barely escaped with his life. It was the only place he knew outside of the town he grew up in. He hoped they could find the construction site where he met Norm. It would be the perfect place for them to hole up, and maybe if they were fortunate, they could make it their permanent residence. It could become their shelter against nature and the zombies. However, they didn‘t get that far. Luck wasn‘t with him. Luck was with no one. Luck died the day the dead started walking the Earth. They found no car or any other way to get around, and then Sarah‘s illness had stranded them. No cars on the road, and none here. He knew eventually he would find one, though not when he needed one most.
He plodded up the road, avoiding the molten car wrecks and carbonated bodies as he went into town. He had not seen a zombie in days. The military had done a thorough job destroying them, killing the living along with them. The immune, the resistant, and the infected alike. One target, all the same to those with the big guns. A target. That was what he was. What was the point of getting rid of the zombies if it would leave no one alive? Or were the chosen survivors safely hidden away in bunkers while the rest died?
He let his gaze travel over the destruction around him, and recalled the nuking of his town, a large town, much larger than this one. All the death and destruction. Maybe he wasn‘t far off with his idea that somebody out there must be somewhere safe and wanting to keep the world safe for themselves and no one else, even if it meant they had to sacrifice everybody else to get that. Evil sons of bitches.
No zombies here. Or they must be hidden, lurking and abiding their time. He saw only charred bodies, molten cars, and soot-covered buildings, or what was left of them. It looked like a warzone. Unlike those in computer games, this wasn‘t behind the safety of a screen while one sat in a chair in the comfort of one‘s home. He felt the horror firsthand and experienced the carnage. This was the real thing and it wasn‘t fun. It gutted all hope out of him and made him drown in its blood.
He continued walking aimlessly, avoiding the many craters made by the shells dropped on this town. He went a long time without finding anything until he turned the corner by what used to be a bank and saw in the distance Crawford Commemorate Hospital, an old ‘50s building, two stories high, with a right and left wing. The right wing was caved in, but the remaining building was still intact—if not for every window being shattered, surrounding the building with broken glass.
He gazed at it for a long moment, taking it in. There wasn‘t a single movement behind the windows, or any sound coming from the building. If there were any survivors inside, they would be hiding. He gripped his shotgun tighter. He had a score of shells left. It wouldn‘t do much good if the place was crawling with zombies, but neither was going around shooting the first dead thing he saw the wisest thing to do. Before he could take a second breath, he would be surrounded and made into meaty a lunch. He had not seen one zombie coming into town, but that didn‘t mean they weren‘t around.
The sun lit his surroundings, the brightness paining his eyes, but for all that light, the sunrays reached only so far inside the hospital, casting the white walls in a dark gray shade. It would have shocked Ralph if he had found the reception desk manned, but as expected, it was abandoned, just like the building. Not a single soul in sight. The seats in the waiting area were empty. The floor was littered with syringes, bloody bandages, and upturned gurneys. Not one body or any sign of violence. It was like there had not been a zombie apocalypse going on, only a hasty evacuation—a successful one at that, seeing as there were no bodies left. The only blood he saw was on the bandages. No zombie attack happened here, but from those bloody bandages, it was a given that there had been infected people among the survivors, and they would have turned later. They might have escaped, but they were already doomed.
Ralph shook off the unease he felt. Getting antibiotics for Sarah was the only thing he should care about. Later, he would sort out what really happened here. That was if he ever got the chance to. He moved deeper into the corridors of the hospital, the silence creeping up on him, making him feel on edge with every odd sound he heard. The creak of a window hanging loose. The screeching of his sneakers on the linoleum floor. The odd sounds the building made. Though what upset him the most were the sounds he didn‘t hear—that of any other living being inside. The utter feeling of being alone, the only living thing for miles, gave him the sensation that at any time a zombie could jump out at him from out of nowhere.
Being bitten didn‘t scare him as much as it should, for it wouldn‘t outright kill him. He had been bitten before and nothing happened. Although Sarah got an infection and fell ill, the bite wasn‘t killing her; it was a normal bacterial infection of the wound. If she died, she would turn. It was only those who were immune who had nothing to fear from a zombie‘s bite. Like the guy he killed in the pharmacy—he didn‘t turn, although his friend did. Becoming a zombie was a given for those who only had a resistance to the virus, not for him though. Still, he would rather he didn‘t get bitten because it never just stayed one bite. They would bite him until he died and then keep biting him long after, eating him whole. Only when someone turned did they stop. The zombies he had seen, very few had only one bite and many had chunks missing, mauled even.
How would Sarah feel about knowing one day she would turn? He had no idea. Before this all happened, Sarah was the most popular girl in school, but now he couldn‘t really picture her as the superficial and shallow girl she used to be. She had changed, or maybe she was showing her true self at last. She could be cold, calculating, and yet she cared about things, but couldn‘t show it. Could Lauryn be resistant? Heck, why did his thoughts always go from Sarah to Lauryn? It had been happening since he teamed up with Sarah. He felt bad about Lauryn. She could still be alive, alone out there with no one to back her up, all because he left her.
He tried every door, and those left unlocked, he entered, searching for penicillin or any tablets containing ingredients ending with cillin. So far he stumbled on gurneys, MRI machines, CAT scan machines, radiography machines, the ER with a bloodied floor and a lone gurney, but no corpses or zombies. From the TV shows about life and work in a hospital, he knew that the main action always occurred in the ER. That was why he hoped to find what he needed there. He found boxes of medicine in the cabinets with ingredients he could not pronounce, but he didn‘t find any antibiotics. He turned over the desks, emptied the cabinets, but he still found nothing he could use. It was like the staff and patients took as much as they could carry with them before they left the hospital. Having found nothing on the ground floor, he took the flight of stairs up, but he didn‘t fare any better. He found empty beds with their sheets tossed, some bloody. Not a thing left of any worth to him.
He went back downstairs to the right wing. Maybe, just maybe, they had had no time to get anything out in the collapsed area. Pulverized concrete, brick chunks of wall, and broken rebar blocked his way inside. The sun was now straight up in the sky, and it was getting warmer now. He sniffed the air. If the sun stayed like this for days, any corpses left under the debris would stink up the place, but he smelled nothing of that sort here. They left and emptied this building before it got bombed. Left and took everything with them. Ralph sank down, resting his back against the wall, shoulders slumped, head down.
A tin can bounced over the floor, followed by quick footfalls drawing near to him. As Ralph looked up, the stock of a rifle descended on him, knocking him out cold.
CHAPTER TWO
A wrecking ball bounced inside Sarah‘s skull, mashing her brains to a mush, while she was being slowly cooked in a bowl of boiling water. The sweat poured over her body, and it couldn‘t quell the burning sensation. She tossed aside the sheet covering her and writhed on the mattress. No matter how much she tried, she couldn‘t get rid of the pain or the fever.
Sa
rah opened her mouth to call out for Ralph. The words dragged through her throat like sandpaper, and instead of waves of sound, she uttered a sad croak. She licked her dry lips and tried again. “Ralph.”
No answer.
Louder this time. “Ralph, please, water.”
Talking tired her. With her body in pain, her head about to explode, and her throat dry, she just wanted some water. Why didn‘t he answer her? She turned her head from side to side, her eyes laboriously traveling around the small space she was in. It was the RV; the same one they found abandoned beside the interstate. She couldn‘t remember how she got inside or what day it was today. She tried to raise her wrist to her face to look at her watch. The strength left her and she dropped her hand back to her side. How long had she been out?
It didn‘t really matter. It came back to her that even if she could bring herself to read her watch, it had stopped working after the nuclear blast devastated her hometown. EMP, Ralph had explained to her—a magnetic wave produced by a nuclear explosion that destroys all unshielded electronics in the immediate area of the blast. Although, it could also be that it broke during the beating their bodies took while escaping the madness before and after the blast.
Sarah tried to sit up straight. She cried out in pain as her head pounded to the beat of her heart, which was running the hundred meter dash. After a few excruciating tries, she gave up. Her head felt light and the ceiling rolled like the ocean. She kept staring at the cigarette-stained ceiling in silence, trying to make sense of it all. Maybe she could use a smoke; maybe it would do her good. It was silly to have a craving for a habit she had never picked up. She smacked her lips. Dry, dry, dry, when was the last time she had water?
How many days had passed since they found the RV? And where was Ralph? Everything since finding the RV was a blur to her. The questions kept returning at her and the answers kept evading her. Still, she asked herself again. How long had she been out? And where had Ralph gone? She couldn‘t remember him leaving. She couldn‘t even remember being in the RV. Why would he leave her alone? Damn it, why after all they had been through was he gone? She was there for him when he needed her most. Why then wasn‘t he here for her? She lay flat, unable to do much else, and her pounding head wasn‘t making things better. He had left her alone.
