Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Zero Hour

by James Loscombe

The gun he gave her was bigger than any she had held before. It had a long barrel and an aiming scope on top. It was heavy, but it was nothing compared to the weapon he handed Darrel. Beth had never seen a bazooka before, and the sight of it terrified her.

  “What about the others?” Darrel said.

  She shook her head. “There’s no time.”

  She didn’t think it would make any difference to have more of them standing there and shooting. Even with the crazy weapons they were holding she doubted they would be able to stop the creature.

  When she turned to look again, it was closer than ever. The sheer size of it was impressive. The zombies in its wake barely registered, but a part of her realised that, even if they managed to kill the creature, they might still be overwhelmed by them.

  “Ready when you are,” Russell said.

  Beth nodded. She lifted the gun and aimed at the creatures head. She squeezed the trigger, and the fight began.

  * * * * *

  The explosion was immense. Suddenly the whole hillside seemed to be on fire. Beth wondered if the bazooka had been a mistake.

  When the smoke cleared, she hoped to see the giant’s corpse but for a moment, she didn’t see anything at all.

  She turned towards the sound of gunfire in the distance.

  The super zombie emerged from the smoke like a beast from the depths of hell. Beth couldn’t see whether it had been injured by the blast or not, but she could see that it was still coming towards them.

  “Get down!” Russell shouted. His voice seemed about a hundred miles away, and she ignored him until she felt his hand on her shoulder.

  Beth fell on the wet grass suddenly struggling to breathe.

  “Crazy son of a bitch,” Russell muttered. He raised his head and shouted. “Hey! There’s people here!”

  The shooting continued. Beth kept her head down and wondered how far away the super zombie was. It had to be close. She wondered what it would do when it reached them.

  The shooting stopped. She thought that the creature had reached them. She still had the gun in her hand and wondered if she should use it to shoot herself.

  “Beth stay down!” Russell said.

  She ignored him and stood up. She raised her weapon and turned to aim, but the super zombie wasn’t there.

  * * * * *

  They stood together and watched the people who had been shooting walk down the hill.

  “Military?” Russell said.

  “Looks like it,” Beth said. Although she still couldn’t see them, she had a bad feeling. The last time she had encountered soldiers they had been chasing her out of Harmony.

  When they were close enough to identify, she saw Velma at the front. She looked a little less severe, a little dirtier, but it was undoubtedly the same woman.

  Beth turned away. If she was close enough to see Velma, then Velma was close enough to see her. She had no idea whether the woman would remember her but it seemed an unlikely coincidence that they would meet again, so far from the Harmony.

  She started to walk.

  “Where are you going?” Russell said.

  “To check on Dawn.”

  She heard one of the soldiers call out to Russell and, a moment later, he called back.

  Beth closed the door gently behind her. She went over and sat beside Dawn.

  Noel appeared from the other side of the room. “Is it over?” he said.

  “There’s soldiers outside,” she said. “Velma’s with them.”

  “The woman who was looking for Dale?” Dawn said.

  She nodded.

  The caravan door opened, and they all looked up.

  A large figure stood in the doorway. “Can I come in?” Russell said.

  “It’s your caravan,” Beth said.

  He closed the door walked towards her. His boots made a soggy squelch on the thin carpet, and she was suddenly reminded how wet she was.

  “There’s no sign of it,” Russell said. “The soldiers must have scared it away.”

  Beth nodded and wondered whether she should be pleased that the creature was capable of feeling fear.

  “The soldiers want us to go with them,” he said. “There’s a compound nearby. They say we’ll be safe there.”

  “What do you think?” Beth said.

  “I said I needed to speak to you. I’m not going to make the decision by myself.”

  Dawn squeezed her right hand and Noel her left. She felt like she was drunk and the room was spinning around her.

  “They know who you are Beth,” Russell said. “She was the one looking for Dale, wasn’t she?”

  Her chest fluttered, and she felt like she’d been caught in a lie, but she’d told Russell everything. She hadn’t kept any of it a secret. She nodded.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “That’s over now. She wants us to go back to the compound with her.”

  “You think it’s a good idea,” she said. It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t answer. “If you think it’s the right thing to do.”

  “You’ll come as well?” he said.

  Beth considered the alternative. They had been travelling with the convoy for such a short amount of time, and it hadn’t been easy, but it had been better than the alternative. If he went without her then what would they do? None of them were prepared to survive alone in the wilderness.

  “I won’t go without you Beth,” Russell said.

  She looked up and met Russell’s eyes. She could see that he wanted to go with the soldiers.

  “Okay,” she said. “But I don’t want to talk to her, not yet.”

  Russell nodded, and he seemed to be happy with her decision. He didn’t stay for long and, when they were alone again, she lay her head in Dawn’s lap and cried.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The journey seemed to go on forever. Beth had no idea where the compound was. She spent the days sitting by herself in the common area of the caravan. There were other people around, but she didn’t speak to them. It was as if they weren’t there at all.

  Sometimes she heard the soldiers talking outside, but they never came in. Russell kept her informed, but she could tell by the way he looked at her that he was becoming less sure of her ability to make decisions.

  They had talked about her, she realised, Russell and Velma. He didn’t tell her what the woman had said, but she could guess.

  She thought that he would stop coming to see her eventually. That they wouldn’t speak again. She would be left in the rear caravan with all of the other Harmony survivors. After a while, she began to hope that would happen. It was what she had wanted before, and it was becoming what she wanted now. She wasn’t cut out to be a leader.

  They reached the compound before Russell stopped coming to visit her, but she felt the inevitability of it there. When they stopped for the last time he sent Darrel to inform her and, she realised, that was the start of it. That he no longer considered her important enough to visit himself.

  Beth didn’t go to meet their new keepers. She sat in the caravan with Dawn and Noel and waited. Sooner or later they would come for her, and she would be forced to leave, but for the time being the caravan felt like home.

  She sat by the window and listened to them talking. Eventually, they left together. The door to the caravan opened, and Colette was standing there.

  “You can come out now,” she said. “They’ve taken dad to look around.”

  Beth nodded and climbed down. The others followed her.

  She found herself standing on concrete in the middle of a vast open space. In the distance, she could see walls, but they were far away. There was a cluster of grey buildings in front of her.

  “We’re staying then?” Beth said.

  Colette nodded. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Where have they gone?”

  “To show dad where we’ll be living. They’ve got a whole building full of rooms. We’ll each get our own.”

  Beth forced herself to
smile because it seemed like Colette wanted her to, but as she looked around, she couldn’t help but see the place as a prison. No matter how big it was there were still walls surrounding them and plenty of men and women with guns.

  “Are we supposed to wait here?” Beth said.

  “They didn’t say,” Colette said. “Why? Do you want to take a look around?”

  She didn’t, not really. What Beth really wanted to do was go back into the caravan and close the door behind her. She wanted to stay in there until she was forced to leave. But, instead of saying that, she shrugged.

  “I guess we’ll wait,” Colette said. “They won’t be long.”

  The other caravans emptied and soon everyone was standing around taking in their new home. Beth heard snippets of muttered conversations, and she was gratified to hear that plenty of other people weren’t in favour of the wall they found themselves on the wrong side of.

  Russell returned half an hour later and this time, he was on his own. His smile looked false, and he waved away the questions that were thrown in his direction.

  “What’s the plan?” Darrel said.

  “They’ve got space for us,” Russell said. “But we don’t have to take it. We can still go if you want?” He addressed the whole group with the question, but no one answered.

  She looked around again. The walls were disconcerting, but she thought she could get used to them in time. It was difficult to argue that they wouldn’t be them safe from the zombies there.

  Her own reasons for wanting to leave had little to do with the landscape, she was scared of what Velma and Harold would say to her, whether they would want to perform experiments on her as they had done with Dale. Which was ridiculous. She wasn’t immune to the zombie virus.

  “We’ll stay,” Beth said. Not meaning to talk for anyone else. She couldn’t let her own selfish desire to leave put anyone else at risk, and she knew they would be safer there than on the road. It solved the problem of running out of fuel.

  “Anyone else?” Russell said. It really sounded as if he was waiting for someone to argue that they should leave. Beth wondered whether he had seen something to change his mind about the place.

  No one else answered, and that settled the matter. With his shoulders slumped, Russell turned away and went to give the news to Velma.

  * * * * *

  Beth sat in a plastic chair by the window and looked down on the compound. She could see all the way to the wall. There were some soldiers walking around, but not nearly as many as she had expected. After twenty-four hours the feeling of being in a prison had not dissipated.

  There was a knock on the door, and she turned away from the window. The room was small, containing only the chair, a single bed, and a cupboard to store all of the clothes that she didn’t possess. Although they hadn’t been able to share a room, Dawn was right next door.

  She got up and crossed the room. Having her own space had seemed like it would be one of the benefits of life in Eastern Bridge, but now she wasn’t so sure. She wouldn’t like to say she was lonely, but she certainly missed having people around her.

  There was a knock on the door, and Beth opened it, expecting to see Dawn, but instead it was Velma.

  They looked at one another, but neither of them spoke. Beth didn’t know what to think about her visitor. Up close Velma didn’t seem as scary as she had thought. She was a red-headed woman in her fifties, wrinkled around her eyes but still pretty. Her left ankle was wrapped in a bandage.

  “Can I come in?” Velma said.

  Beth nodded but still couldn’t bring herself to speak. She stepped away from the door and Velma followed her into her room.

  “I suppose I’m the last person you want to see,” Velma said. She closed the door behind her. “I don’t blame you.”

  Beth sat back down on her chair by the window and looked at Velma. She didn’t know what to say.

  “I saw you with the convoy, but I didn’t think you’d want to talk to me,” Velma said. She seemed as unsure of herself as Beth felt.

  “Do you think I feel differently now?” Beth said.

  Velma smiled, but it might just have been relief that Beth was talking.

  “We’ve never really had a chance to talk,” Velma said. “I thought, seeing as we’re going to be living in the same place, that maybe we should try to clear the air.”

  Beth raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t sure what Velma thought was going to happen here, but she wasn’t about to roll over and forgive her for killing Dale.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Velma said as if she had been able to read Beth’s mind. “I wanted to help him. There was no reason for him to die that night.”

  “He told me you did experiments on him,” Beth said.

  Velma nodded, and Beth was glad that she hadn’t denied it. “That’s true. We took blood and DNA samples. He was an asymptomatic carrier of the virus. Do you know what that means?”

  Beth nodded but, apparently Velma didn’t believe her because she proceeded to explain it anyway.

  “It means that he had contracted the virus but displayed none of the symptoms. It means that, although he was unaffected by the virus himself, he was able to transmit it to others.”

  “It was in his blood,” Beth said.

  “Exactly. We wanted to find a cure, and he was the only one of his kind. We still aren’t sure how common it is within the population.”

  None of this was news to Beth. Dale had told her as much, and she had seen the effects of his blood in the water supply. “Did you know his blood could kill the zombies?”

  Velma shook her head. “We were as surprised as anyone when it happened. Obviously, we would have preferred he hadn’t been killed, but the information might prove useful.”

  “If you can find another asymptomatic carrier?”

  “Exactly.”

  Velma leaned against the wall, and Beth watched her. She didn’t know what to make of the woman but, despite herself, she was warming to her. She wondered if Dale had felt the same.

  “It wasn’t just about a cure,” Velma continued. “You saw what happened in Harmony. If Dale had been in our lab, those people would still be alive.”

  Beth nodded, she’d figured as much, but hadn’t wanted to put it into words. She still loved Dale, and it made her uncomfortable to think that, despite his best intentions, none of this would have happened if he’d stayed in the hospital.

  “We don’t have to be enemies,” Velma said.

  “I don’t want to be friends,” Beth said.

  “I understand,” Velma said. “But I hope you won’t spend your time here hiding in your room. There’s plenty to see and do.”

  Beth nodded, and they fell back to silence. She didn’t ask Velma to go but after a few minutes, the other woman turned and walked away, leaving Beth to wonder what she was supposed to do next.

  * * * * *

  Velma limped away from Beth’s door wincing with the pain of each step. The mark on her leg wasn’t infected, and it had happened too long ago for her to have the virus. A part of her knew what that might mean, but she wouldn’t allow herself to think about it. She was too important as a doctor to allow herself to become a lab rat.

  If she was right then, the wound would clear up soon, and no one would be any the wiser. She just had to keep it to herself for a few more days. If anyone did ask she would tell them that she’d fallen onto a rock or tree stump. There was no reason to tell anyone and every reason not to.

  She stopped outside Harold’s office. He had been asking her to come and see him since she’d got back and she couldn’t put it off any longer. She still felt as if everyone was looking at her but, when she turned to catch them, she saw nobody there. It was just an old habit, she told herself, things were different now.

  Harold called her inside after the first knock. She found him at his desk, papers spread out in front of him.

  “Close the door behind you,” he said.

  “You wanted to see me.”

>   “Sit down,” he said.

  Velma sat down. The chair was uncomfortable, but she was glad she wouldn’t have to stand. If anyone would be able to tell she’d been bitten, it was be Harold.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier,” she said, after what seemed like minutes of silence. “I had some things to take care of.”

  Harold grunted but continued looking down at his papers. She decided that she would wait for him to finish before trying to talk again.

  When he was done, he signed his name at the bottom of a sheet and gathered it all into a pile which stood about an inch high. He slid the whole lot into a manilla folder and put it to one side. Once his desk was clear, he leaned towards her with his hands together in front of him.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said.

  Velma tried to hide the panic that was quickly rising in her chest. Did he know? How could he know? “What do you mean?” she said.

  “The super zombie escaped,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “And you’ve brought survivors back to the base. That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”

  “The creature was attacking them?” Harold said.

  Velma nodded. “We scared it away.”

  “I see,” Harold said.

  Velma waited for him to say more.

  “I understand that one of the survivors is from Harmony?” Harold said.

  “About a dozen of them,” Velma said.

  “That’s very interesting, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not sure it’s any more than a coincidence,” Velma said.

  “Come now Velma, surely there aren’t so few survivors in the country that the odds are in favour of such a coincidence,” Harold said. “It seems like there must be more to it than that.”

  “Do you think so?” she said.

  “That’s what I’m asking you,” he said.

  She didn’t answer, but she was thinking about it and the more she thought, the more she began to think that it really couldn’t be a coincidence.