Days With The Undead (Book 1)

by Snow, Julianne

  Something similar was reported in Australia where a cruise ship had been noticed just drifting off the coast. With the way of the affairs at the moment, no one was of the mind to rescue a listless ship; especially not one with no visible signs of life on deck. It didn’t matter anyway since the ocean current had a different plan altogether.

  It took the ship a few hours to fully make its way into the harbor. By that time, people had started to notice that it was a collision course with the myriad of connected docks. A listless ship is a dangerous one. It’s unpredictable in that it will go anywhere that the currents take it.

  A bystander video taken from the deck of another cruise ship docked in the harbor showed its slow advance on the network of docks. There were no signs of life on the decks, but lots of evidence that something horrific had befallen the passengers. Deck chairs were overturned and a few of the life boats had been partially lowered to the water line. Something terrible had happened on that ship but no one staring at it from the safety of the moored vessels in the harbor or the wharf dared to guess what it could have been.

  Slowly but surely it was headed for the elaborate system of docks. From the video, you could the voices of people stating the obvious: It’s going to hit something. As the currents drove it closer and closer to the infrastructure, the panicked disbelief at the fact that nothing was being done to stop its advance started to take over. Many distinct voices could be heard shouting that it was high time someone did something.

  Once the ship was directly in the harbor, someone approached in a tugboat, hoping that it would be able to push the ship back out to sea. The forward momentum was too much however, and the tugboat was only pushed back by the larger, more substantial ship.

  The momentum of the cruise ship tore through docks and destroyed other vessels when it finally connected. When it came to rest, it hung in the water lopsidedly. Many of the voices on the tape expressed relief that the order was finally over and hope that the vessel wouldn’t sink into the water of the harbor.

  The relief ended quickly as the throngs of the Undead started to appear on deck, brought out by the commotion and perhaps the lack of uninfected people left to attack in the bowels of the ship. They were dressed in their best but bloodied cruise attire with a few in crimson stained uniforms. Seeing the crowd that had gathered by the harbor, the Undead started to leave the ship to get to them, plummeting over the railings.

  Some landed in the water, fighting for a few moments against the weight of their own wet clothes before disappearing beneath the surface. Others landed awkwardly on the wooden docks, climbing to their feet and starting to close in on the crowd that had gathered to watch. In their haste to devour, many of them were pushed into the water off the side of the docks. The crowd still hadn’t gotten the inkling that they were in grave danger. It wasn’t until the first Undead actually managed to traverse the twisting network of wood that the danger of the moment actually penetrated the laze of concern that had befallen the crowd.

  The massacre was awful - and caught on tape by the bystander on the neighboring cruise ship along with the Undead that turned their attention to trying to board the other ships moored in the harbor. Once the situation was recognized for the danger that it held, the other ships started to leave the previous sanctity of the harbor.

  The last moments of the video showed the shore populated by the Undead receding from view. Stories like this are appearing by the hour. Pretty soon there will no place left on earth safe from the Undead.

  Our escape took us through Arizona today. The benefit of having the truck and four capable drivers is that we can pretty much drive for twenty-four hours straight. Periodically we stop out of necessity particularly in the hotter states because we don’t want the car to overheat and for the sheer fact that we need to keep the truck fuelled.

  So far we haven’t had to drop much below a half a tank - and we have reserves of gasoline stored in jerry cans in the back. There is no telling though when we will no longer have access to the pumps or when the tanks at the stations will run dry. At this point we are fairly certain that no one is out there delivering to your local Texaco station…

  The roads are beginning to look like something out of The Stand. Burned out carcasses of vehicles are littered everywhere making passage tricky at times; especially when a few unexpected Undead appear as you are trying to deftly maneuver around wreckage in the dark without ending up in the ditch.

  Hopefully we can reach the coast sometime in the daylight either tomorrow or the day after. At this point in time, we are thinking of hi-jacking a boat or yacht that someone out there is less likely to need. The only issue is this: we have no idea where to go from there. If the epidemic is becoming more and more widespread as the days go on, soon there will be no safe havens.

  I think that is part of the reason that I scour the Internet. I’m looking for that one place that is going to be free from the Undead. It may be a stupid mission but in the end, if you don’t have hope you don’t have anything. Ideally, I’ve been thinking about the fact that we need to find an isolated island with a very small population that is essentially shut off from the rest of the world. Seems like a fool’s errand in this interconnected and reliant world of ours, but there has to be a place. And I will find it. That I have to believe.

  I’m also not sure how long I will be able to keep posting these communications to you. My mobile Internet service provider could stop providing me with service at any point and while I could scan the area for unsecured Wi-Fi connections it would mean staying in one place for longer periods of time, especially while I researched the web for news. That could be the difference between life and death for us.

  The Undead army is growing exponentially and nothing seems to be able to keep it in check. Is there nothing that can kill them? There’s the obvious “shoot them in the head” kill shot or decapitation but there has to be something else that can stop them - or at least slow them down.

  Fire had appeared like it might be a viable option to someone in Philadelphia. Unfortunately the plan backfired (forgive the pun) and now the entire city is burning. I don’t know exactly what their plan was but it didn’t work.

  Unlike a living victim, the Undead don’t feel pain and they just kept right on coming, only at that point they were also on fire. And the fact that they are dead and going through at least some of the stages of normal decomposition they would act like torches in a sense. Fuelling the fire on them until the last possible moment of second death. And even after that, their bodies would likely still burn until of the fuel comprising it had been consumed. Terrifying thought, and one I wouldn’t want to be faced with. The Undead are frightening enough, but can you imagine the flaming Undead?

  We started a silly conversation today that just reminded us of how much of the world we’re going to miss. Ben posed the question, asking each of us what we were going to miss the most. Immediately Max answered with Melissa, then followed it up with fresh baked chocolate chip cookies and cold milk.

  Bob was quiet for a moment and countered with seeing a long awaited movie on opening night at the theatre with the never ending bag of hot buttered popcorn and ice cold Coca-Cola.

  Ben piped in with long walks along the boardwalk of the Beaches on Lake Ontario’s shore while eating ice cream. After that the three of them took turns trying to one up each other. Max: cold beer. Bob: vacations. Ben: still warm pecan butter tarts from his favorite bakery. Bob: lazy Sunday mornings with the paper and a cup of coffee. Ben: the joyful, innocent play of puppies at the pet store. Max: listening to the new album from his favorite group. Ben: sleeping in, just because you can. Bob: sex.

  Bob’s last answer stopped each of them for a moment. Max turned to me from the passenger seat and gave me a long, hard look. It wasn’t a look that I interpreted as interest in sex; these men were my family and I trusted them implicitly.

  After staring at me for a moment, he said that I hadn’t offered an idea of what I will miss most. I looked at hi
m, hating to end the moment of boyish excitement. My answer: freedom.

  So I leave you tonight with the hopes that I will be able to touch base with you all tomorrow. Godspeed to you all and I pray for the living.

  Day 16:

  We had hoped to reach the coast today. It looks like that is not going to happen. I’m trying really hard not be pessimistic at the moment but with the day that we’ve had there’s nothing to be optimistic about.

  It all started out on our way through the southern part of Nevada. We had planned on avoiding the large urban sprawl of Los Angeles and San Francisco and aiming a little further north for areas like Crescent City and Eureka, maybe some of the smaller coastal towns in between. We saw no reason to put ourselves into any danger and driving through Los Angeles or San Francisco might attract too much unwanted attention from the Undead while we were attempting to scope out the perfect vessel to borrow for our escape from land.

  At some point while passing through Nevada today, we picked up a bus load of survivors. I’m using the phrase “picked up” very loosely of course. They saw us moving on the road and decided to follow us. The bus was the 101 Capital Metro Transit from Austin, Texas (I only know that because I Google…). You could see the bloody hand prints and smears across the vibrant green hue of its protective shell. Through our binoculars the people on the bus looked exhausted and terrified but there was an overall look of relief that they were moving and somewhat safe.

  You could clearly see the looks of horror and skepticism that they carried. I wondered if our faces bore those same emotions? Confusion, determination, fear, nausea, strength; those were the looks that we could see through the binoculars. There were nineteen people on that bus and each of them looked haggard. Men, women and children - all of them looking like they hadn’t slept in days.

  This may sound callous but we didn’t want them following us. We didn’t want to be responsible for a group of people that firstly we didn’t know, and secondly, we weren’t sure we could trust. For all we knew, someone on that bus could have been infected and in the incubation stage. Any one of those people could become one of the Undead at any moment.

  If we did decide to let them tag along that would be X amount of people that we would then potentially have to protect. We had no way of knowing who was on that bus and what kinds of skills they might have. And in the end, we really didn’t want to give up any of our limited gear in the event that they were unarmed.

  Besides there were more of them than there were of us; we could not run the risk of their intentions being less than honorable. Unfortunately in these times we really need to be on the lookout for those people that were willing to pirate anything and everything that you’ve managed to accumulate.

  It’s better to be safe than sorry. For the time being, they could follow us but only because we couldn’t prevent them from doing so.

  The driver of the bus, a middle aged woman in a frilly pink apron, had been trying to get our attention for quite some time and since we needed to stop for gas we decided that we would scope out the next station as a possibility. Through our binoculars, the place was deserted. It was almost too perfect a place to stop. You could see for miles and there was only a small convenience store attached to the pumps. We decided to drive in and wait for a bit to see if any of the Undead put in a surprise appearance.

  This had become our pattern when we had to stop for gas. The first thing that we had to do was observe the station from a safe distance. Choosing a set of pumps in a somewhat remote location seemed to work the best so far; a lower population usually equated to a less of a chance for the Undead and the greater the chance that there would be fuel left in the pumps. Observing the station helped us to determine how active the station was.

  Once we determined if the area looked safe, we would pull our truck into the outermost pump and wait with it running. Again, it’s better to be safe than sorry. We’d wait for a fairly decent amount of time, maybe ten minutes just to see if the station was occupied in any way. There were a few times previously where the Undead had made an appearance, usually exiting the station’s accompanying building, either a convenience store or small diner. If we saw any Undead, we just drove away.

  In the event that the place was totally deserted, we’d get out of the car with our weapons at the ready. Two of us would stay with the car, one in the driver’s seat, the other watching the area around the truck. The other two would head into the station in order to activate the pumps.

  Most people believe that in the event of an apocalypse of any kind that the power will eventually go out. We thought the same thing, which is why we’ve been collecting gas in jerry cans whenever we can. The funny thing is that we have not run into any situation where there is no power. We do realize that this good luck might not last. We also realize that we may be entering areas that have not been hit as hard or as soon as others. In any event, I’m beginning to surmise that any power outages will roll outward from the epicenter. That puts us in a lucky spot for the time being, every mile we go putting us further and farther away.

  With a simple flip of the switch we were usually in business. Back outside we would go to watch the surrounding area while the fuel was pumped into the truck. Once we were full, we always turned the pumps off (if we could, that is; sometimes the Undead found us before we could do so).

  Turning the pumps off was just a safety thing for us. If we turned them off, the chances of other survivors driving into them and blowing themselves up was less likely. It also meant that we could mark the station’s location on a map and return in the event that we had to retrace our path. Anything was possible. Any direction could end up being less than hospitable once we got there.

  We pulled our truck into one of the outer pumps and the bus pulled into the spot designated for diesel. Immediately the doors to the bus opened and the living started to unload, stretching their muscles and heading the short distance to the convenience store.

  Max rolled down his window and shouted for them all to get back onto the bus, that it wasn’t safe yet. It was too late.

  One young man, probably about seventeen years old with long shaggy hair and a Metallica t-shirt, had already made it to the store, more than likely intent on foraging for food. His only mistake was not realizing that inside the store could be something else also looking for a meal.

  As soon as his hand touched the handle of the door, a grayish waxen face pressed itself up against the glass leaving a greasy face print in its place; the pressure of the body pushed open the door, the little bell signaling its exit.

  Thank you, come again.

  The teenager recoiled, trying to stay out of the grasp of those searching hands. He teetered on the edge of the curb for the breadth of a moment, his body rocking back and forth. The Undead launched itself at him, propelling him completely off balance. Once on the ground, the young man couldn’t fight it off and only got a huge bite taken out of his forearm for his trouble.

  Two more Undead followed close behind.

  Thank you, come again.

  A few of the group rushed to his aid, only to be attacked themselves while the rest of the group ran back to the safety of the bus. Most of them were still in the flight mode. Even they realized a losing battle when they saw one.

  Our position at the pump and the proximity to the convenience store did not really allow for us to defend the inhabitants of the bus. Getting out of the car would be certain suicide at this point. There was nothing we could do to help them, especially those that were under attack and already potentially infected. Knowing we could do nothing to help at this point, we put the truck back into gear and started to pull back out onto the road fully expecting the bus to follow us.

  Ben had been watching the bus and realized that it was having a harder time getting itself back onto the road. The multiplied numbers of the Undead were now attacking the bus, only slowing it down that much more. One of the Undead had managed to pry its way into the exit doors located on the side of the
bus. Through the binoculars you could see the living fighting hand to hand to mouth with the Undead and witness each of them lose their last battle. With the driver in certain peril as well, we realized it was only a matter of time before that bus became a possible liability.

  Max accelerated smoothly and we shot away from that gas station as quickly as we could, snaking our way down the road. The bus continued to move forward, heading in the direction of the unleaded pumps. It did not appear that anyone was steering the vehicle mainly because it was on a direct collision course with the outside pump; the exact spot where our truck had just been.

  The bus picked up speed on the slight down grade, its driver’s seat now empty. It only took a moment for the bus to crash into the pump; unfortunately the pump was still on. The resulting explosion was massive. The sound of the blast was deafening and we could feel the heat of the fireball even at our distance. The concussion from the blast rocked our truck and managed to twist us sideways on the road.

  The good news is we didn’t hit anything and there are about thirty-five less Undead in the world tonight. Thank God for small miracles….

  Day 17:

  After our ordeal yesterday we’ve realized that we need to avoid the larger cities and metropolitan areas as much as possible. We can’t have another repeat of that again. We decided to start our journey north through California on the United States Highway 395 but then head west again when we could without hitting any major urban areas. While we realized we can’t avoid all signs of civilization, we can limit it as much as possible.

  Our new plan was to cut west just south of Carson City, Nevada and then pick up the California State Route 89 north. We figured that if we kept heading northwest as best as we could that we would eventually meet up with the coast somewhere south of Eureka. Mainly we were just thankful for Ben and his immaculate maps. If one road looked particularly unpromising, we could always find another route.