Albert looked at him and shrugged, but the casual look on her face quickly turned to horror. Peterson suddenly jumped up and grabbed her, then pushed her to the ground. She cried out and tried to push him away, but Peterson covered her with his body.
“What the fuck?” Neil dropped the stopwatch and ran across the track. He knew Baker and Allen were right alongside him. Neil made it halfway to the couple before he saw what was happening and stopped.
Baker and Allen did not.
Peterson was kneeling over Airman Albert, but she wasn’t screaming. Not anymore. He looked up at the approaching airman, a look of disgusting pleasure on his face. Baker and Allen kept running, but Neil stopped.
Blood.
There was blood all over Peterson’s face.
He had bitten Albert in the neck, bitten a hole right in her body, and her blood was pouring out onto the pavement.
And it was all over Peterson’s face.
“Stop!” Neil shouted, but the warning came too late. Peterson grabbed Baker’s ankle and bit him – hard – and reached for Allen.
Fat, pudgy Allen tried to turn, but he was tired and too slow. Peterson grabbed his leg and tripped him, then jumped on him. Baker was sitting on the ground, holding his ankle.
He looked to Neil, as if to ask for help, but Neil just shook his silently and backed away. He had seen one too many horror movies for this to feel real, one too many films where the hero dies trying to figure out what’s going on, one too many videos on Friday nights with his older brothers.
His feet moved slowly, backing away from the scene unfolding before him. Suddenly Airman Albert was sitting up again, her once-beautiful face now distorted and ugly. Blood matted her neck and the bottom of her long ponytail. Peterson chewed on Allen: the poor airman’s screams filled the field, but Neil stood still, blankly staring at them.
This couldn’t be real.
He told himself this couldn’t be real.
Then his training kicked in. Peterson looked up at him just as Neil turned to run. He ran to his car, fumbling for his keys, and climbed in. The beat-up Pontiac had never failed him, not since he marched down to the dealership the day of his first paycheck. He had been proud when he bought it, and excited, but now a growing sense of dread filled him. He stared at the four airmen on the track, watching them stand one at a time.
Even Baker stood, his bloody ankle seemingly forgotten. They turned, as one, toward him. They didn’t run or scream or growl. They just stared, blood and pus pouring from their mouths and noses.
He couldn’t allow the word to form in his mind, couldn’t let himself think, even for a second, that it was real.
Zombies.
His mind screamed the word and he pushed it away. No, there was no such thing. This was either a dream or there was a logical fucking explanation. Only, as he sat in the car, doors locked, staring at the group, he knew it was not a dream.
Sirens sounded on the main road and an announcement came over the loudspeakers situated throughout the base. While the speakers were usually used to play Reveille, they were sometimes used for storm warnings.
Only this was no storm.
He heard screaming from the building next to the track and looked out of his car window in time to see a woman in heels running down the steps. She didn’t stand a chance. The person chasing her jumped and grabbed her. They tumbled in a heap the rest of the way down the stairs until they collided in a pile of blood.
The chaser bit her, looking up, and his eyes met Neil’s.
Run.
There was no saving to be done. Every instinct in his body was screaming at him to save her, to do something, to think quickly. He was a problem-solver. It was why he made a good supervisor. It was why he was a good airman.
Not now, though. Not anymore.
There was nothing to be saved, and Neil suddenly realized that he was no hero. He started the engine. Turning back to the field in front of him, he realized the airmen he had been timing during the PT test were almost in front of the car. Their faces were dark: their eyes glazed over, as if in a daze.
He pulled out of the parking lot and started driving down the road. He managed to make out the voice of the announcer. The base was in full lockdown. No one was allowed on or off base. He knew that meant the gates would be closed. Everyone would be scrambling for the CDC to pick up their children or trying to get off base, anyway. There weren’t enough roads to avoid traffic jams at this point.
What the hell was happening?
He turned down a side road, noting the line of cars already waiting to leave base. It didn’t take more than five or ten minutes to create a full-on jam of the roads. Every 4th of July was a nightmare when Forrest Air Force Base did its annual “open-to-the-public fireworks display.” He didn’t even want to think about what happened when someone lost their unruly child at the commissary. The entire base would shutdown, complete with circling helicopters.
The Air Force didn’t mess around with safety.
Only today, he felt staying in a locked-down base full of raging humans was probably not the best idea for anyone.
There would be no way to get out the main or back gates, and if even a quarter of the airmen who had gotten their vaccines that morning were going to turn crazy did so at the same time, there would be no hope.
Three more turns and Neil was home, in his driveway, in his little house. He had managed to get the end home in a row of townhouses despite his single status because his mother was his dependent. She had died a few months ago, but the housing office hadn’t kicked him out yet, though he knew the day was coming.
He hurried inside, not bothering to close the door behind him, and raced upstairs. He threw his PT gear off and slid into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He considered his ABUs. They would be harder to bite through, he reckoned, if anyone wanted to take a jab at him. They were too hot, though, too restrictive. And they made him stand out like a sore thumb.
If the world was really going mad outside of Forrest AFB, did he really want to look different than anyone else? He grabbed a backpack and shoved in a change of clothes and his Glock. He had a box of ammo, though he regretted not having more on hand. It was expensive these days and hard to get. He kept telling himself he’d buy more, as a treat, when he had saved a little more. His mother’s funeral and burial costs had nearly wiped out his bank account. He couldn’t afford luxuries like ammo to use at the range.
Now, though, he regretted his decision.
He stopped in the kitchen long enough to grab water bottles, a can of soda, and a handful of protein bars. He had cash in the little canning jar in the cupboard, he remembered, so he grabbed the roll of bills and shoved them in his pocket. They wouldn’t do much to protect him if the world was going to hell, but they would have to do. On second thought, he grabbed his hammer from the table. He had been meaning to hang up a picture. It sat forgotten and discarded on the table beside a packet of nails.
Neil shoved his feet in his sneakers and headed outside.
The whole was screaming, it sounded like, and the smell of smoke filled the air. He hurried across the road to a wooded area and slipped inside, unnoticed in the chaos unfolding around him. What were his neighbors doing, he wondered?
Somehow, the idea of staying on base and hiding in his little townhouse never crossed his mind. He could, he supposed, but he could already tell that if he didn’t get out now, he never would. If everyone died, if everyone turned into monsters like Albert and Peterson had, there would be no escape.
He ran through the trees and up a little hill until he got to a barbed wire fence. Everyone had these ideas that military bases were impenetrable, but they weren’t. Sometimes, there were these little spaces, these little fences, these little roads that people just…forgot about.
He had seen this one while on a morning jog, and he used it to his advantage. Neil tossed his backpack over the fence and dropped to his belly. Memories of basic training flashed through his mind as he slithered und
er the fence, careful to keep his head low. When he stood again, he was unharmed, albeit a bit dirtier than when he’d started.
The fence lined a road, and he looked both ways, but saw nothing. No vehicles, no cars. Still, the sound of death and the smell of smoke overwhelmed him, so he began running, slowly, knowing that everything would be different after this.
Everything would change.
Chapter 1
Emily shot her sister first.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. She pulled the trigger a second time, this time killing Susan. It wasn't her fault, Emily reasoned. They were going to turn. It was only a matter of time. She couldn't afford to wait. She couldn't afford to hope for a cure. There was no cure. There was no hope. There was no help coming. There was only death.
She threw up in the wastebasket before grabbing her backpack and leaving the dingy apartment behind. She yanked her jacket on as she strode down the dark hallway. There was nothing left to hope for now. She probably should have just shot herself, too, but she was too much of a coward for that. Emily made her way out of the building, careful to stay in the shadows as she made her way down the narrow street.
Abandoned cars lined the road. The bumper-to-bumper scene didn't bother her anymore. She had seen it all before. Nearly a month since the infection first began and still, signs of humanity remained. What had once been a bustling city full of life and hope was now a graveyard, only good for one thing: holding the dead.
Emily knew how to step carefully around the cars now, knew which ones might have Infected lurking beneath them, knew how to gauge where to step and when to step. If you wanted to stay alive, you had to be alert at all times. There was no room for feeling tired. Not in this world. Not anymore.
She crept quickly down the road, careful to turn down a side alley before the highway became visible. Up ahead there would be a group of Infected. They were always there. Emily wondered sometimes what it was about that particular spot that fascinated those who had fallen. Did they sense that it had once been a way out of the city? Did they somehow remember going to the highway when they wanted to leave? The on-ramps were completely blocked off now.
Emily and Melanie had tried yesterday to go that way in an effort to find supplies. Despite their familiarity with the undead, however, actually being able to outrun or outsmart an entire group of them would be impossible. Melanie had always been hopeful. She had always clung to the idea that they would someday escape and find a way to be free.
"This can't be all that the world has to offer," she always told Emily. "There has to be something more."
Emily tried to push her sister's words out of her mind. Melanie was dead now: really dead. There would be no coming back for her little blonde-haired sister. The 20-year-old had always been Emily's support system. She had always been an anchor when things got tough. There was no time to miss her, though. There was never enough time to mourn anymore. It didn't matter what you had to do, who you had to kill, where you had to hide. You could not let yourself cry because if you started, you might never stop.
The alley was dark and dingy. Broken glass littered the streets and Emily was once again thankful for her black gothic combat boots. While she had originally purchased them as a fashion statement, they had served her well in the previous weeks. You never knew where you were going to have to run, what you might step on, or what might try to bite your foot. Why the Infected tried to eat her feet, she had no idea, but they did.
It had been nearly a month since the turning, nearly two weeks since Emily had rescued Melanie from her dumpy apartment in Worthington. She thought of her little sister as she made her way down the road. Flies buzzed around an abandoned dumpster. A soft clanging sound let Emily know why. It made sense, really. When people first started to turn, no one knew what was happening. No one understood. The hospitals overflowed with people who had been bitten or scratched, but they weren't prepared for how to handle those dead people coming back to life. Eventually, bodies made their way to dumpsters. Bodies made their ways to any place they would fit, really, at least until people figured out that they needed to leave the city.
Emily was more than ready to go home. Her cabin was a haven in a world of chaos. She only hoped it would still be in one piece when she finally got back. While she didn’t think zombies would have wandered that far out of Howe, she wasn’t so sure about coyotes or drifters.
The journey to save Melanie had been fruitless. It had taken Emily nearly two weeks to reach her sister after the outbreak, and another two weeks of trying to get back had gotten Melanie killed. It had been all Susan's fault, really. If she hadn't been so pregnant and so slow, and if Melanie hadn't insisted that she come along, things would have ended differently.
A snarl from the darkness brought Emily back to reality, and she kicked the Infected that was sprawled on the alley ground. She wouldn't waste a bullet on the mass of flesh that had once been alive. She didn't need to. The Infected had obviously turned a long time ago, probably at the start of the outbreak. Only a month, but its skin was rotting off. Its eyes were hollow as she kicked its head again and again until her boots were bloody and the creature had stopped moaning.
Melanie was dead.
Emily tried not to think about it as she turned from the alley onto the next street, but she knew it was useless. She wouldn't be getting home anytime soon. The sun was already setting over the little town and when the sun set, you needed to be inside. It wasn't a matter of what was fair anymore. It was simply a matter of reality. If you were outside, you would die. End of story. It wasn’t just that the Infected were more active at night, but that you couldn’t see where the hell they were. No electricity. No lights. Just darkness and decay.
Emily walked a few more blocks, carefully avoiding any Infected until she got to a street of houses. She walked on autopilot down the road, knowing exactly how and where to step to avoid making noise. After awhile, Emily busted a window in a tiny, blue house that looked decidedly empty. She crawled inside. Breaking and entering had never been something that she had planned to do. Then again, neither was killing her kid sister. In this world, you did what you had to do to survive no matter who it hurt. You did what you had to, no matter who it cost you.
She didn't bother trying to find anything to board up the window. She wouldn't be here that long, anyway, and the Infected weren't exactly sneaky. From the pristine condition of the house, she doubted that the owner had a toolbox, anyway. Emily made her way up the narrow staircase to the second floor, found the master bedroom, and locked herself inside. The heavy dresser slid against the doorway and she dropped her backpack, jacket, and clothes on the floor.
The oversized bed had the softest blankets Emily had ever felt and the biggest pillows she had ever seen.
She only hoped they would drown out the sound of her tears.
Chapter 2
Neil slowed the truck as they approached a sign.
“Howe,” he read aloud.
“More like ‘how in the world are we still driving,’” Cody piped up from the passenger seat. Neil glared at him, but Cody grinned at his stupid joke. “Come on,” he said with a goofy grin.
“He’s right,” Kari said from his lap. How she was comfortable sprawled on top of Cody, Neil didn’t know, but he didn’t ask. The unlikely pair had been cozy ever since he’d found them outside of Forrest, trying to sneak their way past Z’s to get to I-70. “We’ve been driving for days. It’s time to stop.”
“We’ll find a place,” Neil insisted. “South of town.” He noticed the blockage of cars on the main road. There would be no way to make it through the makeshift parking lot. What had once been a bustling town now was filled with abandoned trucks and minivans. All of them were half-covered in dirt: a sure sign the owners had lived on nearby country roads.
“There are going to be plenty of empty houses,” Kari agreed, suddenly serious. Neil knew she saw the dirt marks, too, and knew what they meant. “You can’t live on a gravel road and keep a clean car,
” she commented.
“We need to go around,” he shifted to reverse and backed up, pulling a three-quarter point turn that would have made his Driver’s Ed instructor proud. He went to the last intersecting gravel road, turned east, then took the next turn south again. “This should take us past town,” he commented, but no one was paying any attention.
Butter was undoubtedly asleep in the back of the truck, while Neil knew Robert would be watching, carefully keeping an eye out for other survivors, for Infected, for anything. Robert had been tight-lipped on his job before the infection, but Neil would bet half of what he did was off-the-books, special-ops type stuff. He had that look about him.
They bypassed the town easily enough. When they turned back on the main road, Neil glanced back in the rearview mirror.
“Lot of Z’s,” Kari commented. She was right. They covered the road and several turned to look at the truck puttering past. “Step on it,” she said. “We don’t want them following us.”
Neil had been maintaining an even pace, keeping his gas usage low. They were at less than a quarter tank now and they wouldn’t make it far. It was time to find a place to stay. They needed to hole up somewhere, even for the night. Maybe they’d find a place they could stay longer, he didn’t know. They had been running for so long that all he wanted to do now was find “home.”
Any place would do. He wasn’t picky.
“There have to be houses around here,” Neil said. “And if all the Z’s are in town, I’m guessing most of the farmhouses are empty.” He took a random turn and then another. Soon they were in a forested area on a gravel road. They passed a house right in front of the road, but he kept going. If they were going to find a place to stay long-term, they would want to be a little ways back from the road, to avoid prying eyes.
They hadn’t run into cannibals or rapists or murderers, not the way he would have expected. Not with something this severe, this extreme. Neil had expected an infection of this magnitude that had ravaged the world to bring out the darkest of humanity, but all it had done was cause people to squirrel away.
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse (Episode 6) Page 6
