World of Corpses (Book 1): World of Corpses

by Cook, Scott W.

  Andrea had turned her M4 around and was bashing the butt into the faces of two of the closest monsters. As yet, their flailing hands hadn’t touched her, but all it would take was a single scratch.

  “Carl!” I barked, “Use your fucking pistol!”

  Carl seemed frozen in place. His eyes were bugged out and his face blanched as white as a ghost. He was in panic mode again.

  “Andrea,” I said, “Climb onto Carl’s lap and shoot the fuckers, he’s checked out!”

  After a rather substantial blow directly into the maw of one of the beasts, a blow that sent the thing reeling backward and onto its friends, Andrea managed to wiggle up onto Carl’s lap and turn her M4 around.

  With the butt stock collapsed, the carbine was usable in a confided space. Although her pistol would’ve been better, she was simply using what was at hand.

  By now, her door was nearly wide open and three of the monsters were trying to shove their way in simultaneously, their decaying hands reaching out only inches from Andrea.

  She fired several three round bursts which exploded inside the cab like atomic blasts, making my ears ring. I was pulling for all I was worth on my door handle. It seemed like there was more than one ghoul yanking on it now, making the job that much harder. I could feel my fingers cramping as I had to apply more and more force.

  “Can you get that door closed?” I asked.

  As I did, two more zombies made their way up onto the runner. Andrea shot them quickly, “Not sure. Get us outta here, Sharky!”

  I put the truck in reverse and stomped on the gas. It did move a little, but not enough. I realized what I’d forgotten and reach down to set the drive train to six by six. I jammed the gas pedal down once more.

  The truck lurched and bucked for a moment, taking its sweet old time getting underway.

  In the meantime, Andrea’s rifle went off in three more three round bursts. That was twenty-four rounds by my count. She only had six bullets left and then she’d have to swap out her magazine. Leaving more time for the thousands of oncoming ghouls to crowd into the doorway.

  “Fucking Carl!” I shouted into his ear and elbowed him in the arm, “Help her for fuck’s sake!”

  It was too late. Andrea fired again, blowing two more stiffs out the door. Faster than should’ve been possible, another one appeared in their place and I heard her rifle dry fire.

  The ghoul looked into the cab, its hideous mouth wide showing broken teeth and streams of drool dribbling down its chin. I could swear there was a look of… what? Satisfaction in its dead eyes?

  As the thing reached out for Andrea, who had already ejected her magazine and was fumbling one from her front pocket, the truck gave a mighty heave and suddenly plowed backwards, crushing dozens of ghouls as the front end dropped off whatever we’d been on. There was a sickening sound of crunching bones and exploding bodies and a geyser of gore shot up all around the cab as we bucked and heaved and lurched backward.

  The violent motion unbalanced the zombie in the door and he toppled backward, sent flying by the suddenly swinging door.

  “Close it!” I roared.

  Andrea leapt forward and snagged the door, bringing it in close and slamming it shut.

  “Hang on!” I shouted as I gripped the wheel and pressed the gas down hard.

  The truck moved backward in a wild slewing motion, the ass end swinging left and right, bowling over monsters and bumping up and over corpses, both old and new. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only thirty seconds, the truck blasted free of the horde, suddenly accelerating backward at an alarming rate like we’d been shot from a cannon.

  I slowed down, stopped and shifted back into normal drive mode. I put the truck in forward again and spun us around, heading back north on seventy-five.

  “Well, that sucked,” Andrea said, huffing and wiping sweat from her face.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “Are you okay? Did you get bit or scratched?”

  “No,” she said, “I’m good.”

  She turned her gaze onto Carl’s ashen face and her grin quickly turned into an expression of disgust, “no thanks to our brave hero, here.”

  Carl seemed to be coming out of his fugue, “I…”

  “Save it,” I snapped, “its over. I’m going to have to find another route. Fuck, too bad there isn’t an open car wash around.”

  That one fell flat. Not even Andrea smiled. She looked pissed.

  That was the second time Carl had freaked out, and this time worse than the last. I could understand her being pissed off – his failure to act could’ve gotten her killed. Hell, I should be furious too… but I can understand how somebody could freeze up in a situation like that.

  People, that is people back before the world was eaten alive, would always spout off about how if “they were there” or “if that were me” and how they’d handle things. These statements were usually chock full of macho bullshit and confidence born from a place of zero experience.

  It was another thing to be thrust into a real life and death situation. It can get to anyone. I’ve seen hardened soldiers, sailors and pilots lose their shit over less than what we’d been through today. You never truly knew what you were made of until your mettle was tested.

  It was understandable… but not acceptable.

  “How you doing, Carl,” I asked as we wound our way along highway 301, swerving between stalled vehicles and the occasional zombie.

  “Okay,” Carl said in a small voice. He was uncomfortable for sure.

  “It happens,” I said, “I’ve seen it happen to trained military personnel. You can’t beat yourself up over this, Carl. It won’t help.”

  Andrea said nothing, just looked out the window.

  “I froze, Sam,” Carl finally said, taking in a hitching breath, “and it could’ve gotten Andrea killed… I… I’m sorry.”

  She looked at him with a stern expression on her face that slowly softened. She sighed and put a hand on his arm, “its okay, Carl. No harm, no foul, right?”

  Carl only sighed and started blinking his eyes, trying to hold back tears. I could see him grit his teeth and shake his head, “I’m not cut out for this shit, I guess. I’m not a guy you want on a mission, obviously.”

  “No,” I admitted, “And you won’t be on any more like this. Any small team jobs, that is. On a two or three person team, Carl, we all have to be able to rely on each other. Our lives are literally in each other’s hands.”

  Carl bowed his head and I clapped a hand to his shoulder, “Now, don’t get depressed on me. It takes time for some people. I know that you’ve been surviving all these months, so you’re no pussy. This was a pretty extreme day and probably beyond where you are for now. But if there’s anything that this fucked up world is good for, it’s for up armoring the soul and presenting you with the kind of adversity that forces you to improvise, adapt and overcome.”

  Carl shrugged but I caught the ghost of a smile cross his lips, “Be all that you can be, huh?”

  “That’s the army song, asshole,” Andrea said with a grin and another squeeze on his arm.

  We drove on in silence for a while. It took hours to go from Tampa to the two-seventy-five exit. Between zombies and vehicles and having to take all sorts of detours combined with an average speed of ten miles per hour, it was nearly sunset when we arrived at the southern toll booth for the Skyway.

  During the first few months of the zombie outbreak, local law enforcement had made an attempt at crowd and traffic control. This was a dismal failure for the most part. Both the Gandy and Howard Franklin bridges, two of the main arteries from Tampa to Saint Petersburg, had been hopelessly clogged with motorists as we’d seen several times already. This led to panic, chaos and a lot of death.

  Somehow, though, the Sunshine Skyway roadblocks had worked. Local law had placed police cars in the toll booths making it impossible for wayward motorists to jam up the vital bridge as they’d done just to the north. Of course, at some point, people had simpl
y bashed through these obstacles… yet the six lanes of the Skyway had somehow remained almost entirely clear of stalled vehicles.

  My conversation with the self-proclaimed Governor Drake did not go well, as expected. So I did the only thing I could. I stopped the truck a few miles away and let Andrea get behind the wheel. I went into the cargo area and opened the crate containing the M240 light machine gun. I also brought an ammo box back and set it on Carl’s lap.

  “Holy shit, Sam,” he said, looking at the bulky machine gun I hefted into the cab, “What’re you going to do with that beast?”

  The M240 was generally a crew-served weapon. Often called a SAW – squad assault weapon – like the M249 and others. A gunner would fire it and another person would help feed the ammo and yet another would act as backup. The big weapon was designed to be fired from the shoulder even though it was heavy. Not too heavy, though.

  “I’m going to blast those shitheads into oblivion,” I said simply, “And you’re gonna help me.”

  “How?”

  “By acting as ammo man,” I said, “This thing goes through belt fed 7.62 rounds like a pregnant broad motors through a gallon of Haagen-Dazs.—“

  “Fuck you, Decker!” Andrea said with a laugh.

  Even Carl chuckled at that.

  “I’ll be burning through one hundred round belts fast,” I said, “So I need you to keep them from getting crimped and feed more in when needed, okay?”

  “I’ve never worked anything like this before,” Carl said uncertainly.

  “It’s easy,” I told him with a grin, “I mean… this thing is designed for the jarheads to operate—“

  “Kiss my ass, Decker!” Andrea said with another laugh.

  “Hell,” I continued, “Even the army can use it. Seriously, though, Carl, it’s simple. Watch.”

  I opened the feed tray and the ammo box. I pulled out the end of one of the ammo belts and fed it into the machine gun’s feeder, “Just remember brass over grass. See?”

  Carl nodded, “I got it.”

  “Okay,” I said, “Then let’s get this show on the road. Andrea, head for the top of the bridge, pronto.”

  The truck roared across the bridge at nearly its max speed of sixty miles per hour. As the roadbed began to rise toward the one hundred and sixty foot suspension span, I could see the bikers begin to notice us. Like the fuckwits they were, they formed a line across the road and began firing their AR’s as we drew close enough.

  Bullets began to ping off the armored grill and hood and clack into the Plexiglas windshield. The truck was doing its job, no rounds penetrated. The armor was designed to repel the standard 5.56 NATO round pretty much indefinitely.

  At least that was the theory. After what seemed like hundreds of bullet strikes, I began noticing tiny chips in the windshield. Not a concern at that point, but eventually, if given enough time and ammo, the windshield would fail.

  “But you’re out of time, fuckface,” I muttered as I rolled my window down.

  I stuck the barrel of the machine gun out the window, aimed it through the side mirror supports, pulled the charging handle back and squeezed the trigger.

  My aim wasn’t great. I couldn’t aim along the gun’s sights because I had to keep my body inside the truck to avoid the bullets zipping by. At first, my rounds fell short, striking the pavement fifty yards ahead of my targets.

  Just as all new recruits were taught during basic weapons training, however, I simply followed my tracer rounds and walked my bullets up the street and into the crowd of unprotected men. The fools didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late and the effect was devastating.

  Before the first belt had cycled, the machine gun had torn through three of the bikers and had ripped into one of the motorcycles, turning it into a blazing orange fireball that lit up the top of the bridge.

  “Jesus Christ,” Carl breathed as he fumbled in another belt.

  There were screams and shouts as men broke and ran for their bikes. Several of them dropping their weapons where they stood. Having watched several of their friends literally being torn to shreds in a matter of seconds had totally demoralized the men and they couldn’t get away fast enough.

  I fired another few dozen rounds over their heads just to keep that fear fresh and as bright as the still burning motorcycle.

  It worked like a charm and the remaining gang mounted their machines and all but flew down the other side of the bridge, heading for Saint Pete at dangerous speeds.

  “Impeached! “Andrea exclaimed as she pounded a fist on the wheel.

  Carl grinned and I shook my head, “Really?”

  “Hey,” Andrea said with a gleam in her eye, “If this were an action movie, we’d need a catchy one liner after that rout.”

  “Impeached?” I asked with a grin.

  “He said he was the governor… it was the best I could do on short notice,” Andrea said, sticking her tongue out at me.

  I threw back my head and laughed. Even Carl joined in heartily, which was a good sign.

  We got in touch with the boats and watched them sail under the bridge and out into free waters before turning the truck around and heading for the Manatee River.

  Point Delta, one of the landing spots Tony and I marked out on our charts as good pickup and drop off points, was the Desoto memorial in the Manatee River in Bradenton. The memorial was the center piece of one of Florida’s thousands of state and national parks. It wasn’t far up the river and was a great spot for people to come and anchor up. The water was deep, well protected and adjacent to the park.

  We got lucky for once and the park was mostly empty. By mostly empty I mean that there were no marauding humans or people who thought they were petty dictators who wanted to fight us. On the other hand, there were a couple of straggling zombies wandering around and they homed in on our truck as we drove toward the river.

  “I got this,” I said, parking the deuce and ahalf near the beach, “You guys start unloading. I imagine they’ll be here in an hour or so. Andrea, lend me your Glock.”

  I had a silencer on my Desert Eagle, but it was kind of overkill. Her 9mm was also silenced and we had more rounds for it.

  As Carl and Andrea began unloading crates and boxes, I started toward the chomp of zombies. They were all conveniently in a group of about eight shambling across a wide grassy field toward the waterfront.

  I took them down quickly and efficiently. It was almost a pleasure, in one sense. A simple job of eliminating eight slow moving threats rather than fighting desperately against overwhelming odds. Somehow I knew that this easy kill was no longer going to be the norm.

  Something Drake said was bothering me. The man, who at first I just figured to be trying to make himself sound important, had said that he was appointed as governor of west Tampa Bay. Did that mean something or just more bullshit?

  I walked over and examined the pile of dead zombies. For the most part, they were your typical ghouls. Shabby and torn clothing, grayish skin and wounds varying from minor scratches to half eaten limbs. Nothing special.

  I scoffed at my own thought. There were four men, two women and two smallish zombies that had probably been junior high kids. They’d been human beings once. People with hopes, dreams and family…

  And through no real fault of their own, they’d been transformed into hideous things that slouched across the land, seeking the flesh of the living. Mindless monsters that somehow walked even though they were dead. At least technically speaking.

  “I’m sorry,” I told them glumly.

  I wasn’t sorry I shot them. I was sorry that circumstances had made it necessary that they had to be shot. That their lives were cut short by this plague that had robbed them of their humanity.

  When all of this had started, many of the world’s religious fanatics were quick to proclaim that God had passed judgement on humanity. That we’d earned his wrath through our sinful ways, of course.

  Yet what God could conceive of this? What “lovi
ng” super being could ever even toy with the idea of turning his children into zombies?

  No, this had to be man’s folly. Not even nature would concoct something as outlandish as this. This plague had the distinct mark of Man’s foolishness all over it.

  Perhaps there was some natural agent at work, or the virus or bacteria or whatever had been created from something natural. Yet the final zombie disease was something intentionally created by someone or some group of evil people.

  It had to be. After all, only Homo sapiens were susceptible to it. Animals didn’t reanimate. Only human beings, and only under certain conditions. There had to be enough of the body left to function. It seemed that if a group of ghouls ate a person to the extent that there was little muscle tissue remaining or the brain was consumed, then there would be no reanimation.

  That in itself was troubling. If one zombie bit or scratched one human, that human would eventually turn. Okay, fine. A single zombie would probably not be able to eat a single human so long as that human wanted to survive. A single zombie might surprise you and get in a bite or two… but they were weak and slow and could easily be outmaneuvered or even outfought.

  Yes, it was possible that a zombie could get in a neck bite and knock you down and start chomping before you could get away, but by and large, one zombie wasn’t going to consume you.

  So it takes a village, right?

  You’re surrounded by six or ten or twenty of the stinking beasts and they fall upon you and rip you to shreds. Then there’s nothing to reanimate.

  So why are there so many of them, then? How could ninety percent or so of the human population have been turned into zombies rather than simply be eaten by them?

  You had to figure that once you had large enough groups of the ghouls, they’d roam the land devouring anything that came there way. Along that line of thought, you might have ten or twenty percent of humanity becoming ghouls and the rest either being eaten or hiding. It only made sense.

  So how come there were so many of the fucking things? It didn’t make sense and because it didn’t, I’m still convinced this wasn’t natural.