The End: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller

by P. A. Douglas

  *

  “Holy shit, they’re actually gunning for it. Can you believe that?” one guard said.

  The five men jumped up and immediately started playing rock-paper-scissors. One after another, each soldier booed at their loss and stepped aside.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Those are innocent people down there. You can’t just gun them down like murderers!” Lieutenant Rob Foster scowled and pointed a finger at them.

  “Orders are orders,” the man with the mustache calmly said. “Besides, we’ll be doing them a favor.”

  *

  “Victor, are you insane?” Ashley screamed in the passenger seat as the car sped out of control toward the horde of undead cannibals.

  “It’s our only chance…our only chance,” Victor said, his voice shook with desperation. Wide eyes bulged on his terror-stricken face.

  She reached up at the wheel trying to take control, but he was too strong for her. With the engine at full acceleration, the truck reached nearly 70 mph in the short distance. When the truck reached the first few zombies, it mowed them over with ease. Blood sprayed across the windshield, and the truck shook violently upon impact.

  But as the mass of dead grew under the wheels, the truck stopped almost dead in its tracks. Not wearing their seatbelts, both Victor and Ashley flew forward—Ashley slamming into the dash. The fence bulged where the truck pinned a large number of ghouls. Automatic gunfire rattled—hot lead rained down.

  Ashley was only out for a few seconds. When she came to, her head throbbed, and she was disorientated. She looked in the truck’s bed. Kieta was gone! Frantic and shaken, Ashley scanned the surroundings, unable to focus because of the chaos around her. The windshield was busted, and Victor was knocked unconscious.

  She looked in front and saw Kieta lying on the hood of the truck. Her eyes were open, glassy, and stared off into infinity. Her blood was everywhere. Zombies stood over her corpse and began feeding on her flesh. Bullets ripped through the sky and the ground around them. With the blood and bones shredding from pregnant woman’s limbs, Ashley watched as the horde of ghouls reached deep into Kieta’s swollen belly and gorged on her from the inside out.

  Ashley looked away, instantly throwing up. Loud thuds echoed out around her in succession.

  On each side of the truck, zombies pressed against the glass—pushing and pulling to get in. Several zombies tried climbing over the hood into the cab from the opening in the broken windshield. Ashley instantly reacted, bringing up her M-4, and started unloading into the pressing mob.

  Ashley suddenly remembered Jenny in the back and jerked her head around to look, fearing the worse, and knowing that she had likely been thrown out of the bed like Kieta. She was wrong. Ashley glanced back just in time to see three zombies pull the girl from the back of the truck. She watched as they each grabbed a limb and ripped the girl apart alive. Jenny didn’t even scream. Ashley watched as the last bit of life left the little girl’s body and that same blank stare gripped her face. She was gone. There was blood everywhere.

  She looked back to the front of the truck and shot more of the oncoming attackers. She screamed but couldn’t hear her own voice.

  Instantly, Victor woke to the bedlam and destruction around him. He yelled and panicked. Before he was able to reach for the steering wheel, a swarm of bullets cleaved through him from the guard tower. He shuddered as the volley of bullets pelted his body. Blood and flesh splattered inside the truck, coating Ashley with a thick spray of Victor’s remains.

  Had it not been for the sudden explosion that ruptured the hood of the truck right in front of her, she might have totally lost it. The engine sputtered as a shower of .50-cal rounds fell on the front of the truck. All hope was lost. She took in her surroundings one last time. The Chevy was completely consumed by the living dead. She couldn’t see past them in any direction. They pushed and pulled at the large metal structure with her trapped inside. The little bit of truck frame she could see buried beneath rotting arms and hands was a total bloodbath.

  “I’m not going to die like this!” She grimaced, throwing the empty M-4 out at the crowd at the front of the truck.

  She grabbed the steering wheel of the truck, even though there was now gaping holes with billowing smoke coming out from under the hood. She kicked Victor’s leg out of her way and pressed down on the gas with her left foot. Despite the oversize bullet holes and ungodly amount of damage, the truck managed to inch forward with sputtering steam billowing out from hood. The truck sounded like tin pots clattering together. The crowd of undead creatures around the truck shifted to the sides as the truck pushed onward through the hungry mob at a slow crawl. With a good dozen between the truck and the gate, the truck pressed forward, packing them in like a can of sardines between the fence and the sputtering grill.

  The gunner behind the .50-cal realigned his aim and let a torrent of six-inch ammunition careen down on the passenger seat, the gunner swiveling left and right.

  With only a few feet between the front bumper of the truck and the fence line, the truck stopped. Ashley was dead.

  *

  Up in the guard tower, Foster looked on in horror at the tragic and gruesome events. He felt sick and lightheaded. Beside him, the gunner stepped down from the .50 caliber, with a big fat grin across his face, as if to have just gotten his first lay. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” he said.

  Suddenly, loud screeching sounds of flexing metal echoed out from below the tower. All six men standing atop the tower quieted and looked down.

  The pressure between the truck and the several pinned in ghouls was pushing the chain link away from its post. From the ground up, the men watched as the fence line folded up in one place, the caged zombies falling in with it as it collapsed.

  DESTRUCTION

  1

  The second the fence line was breached by the first zombie, Rob Foster had bolted down the staircase of the guard tower, leaving the five defending soldiers to their impending doom. With one man strapped to the .50-cal and the other four clinging to their rifles and handguns, they hurled curses at the fleeing officer.

  The soldiers momentarily watched as Foster dashed past the first set of buildings, headed out onto the landing field. Wherever he was going, he was definitely in a hurry. The guy must have just flipped, they had said. Some people just are not cut out for a real war. Beyond that, they watched until he was clear out of sight, and then focused on the task at hand, staying alive and calling for support.

  One of the five soldiers jumped on the horn, sounded the alarms, and radioed to the General with news of the break in. With reinforcements on their way, the men leaned over the high ledges, taking out as many undead as possible. This had gone on for what had seemed like a long time, and the cavalry still hadn’t shown up.

  Within moments of the fence giving way, over a dozen zombies fell into the military base’s protected zone, having been pressed and pushed in by the hundreds that waited in the streets. Zombie after zombie fell into the opening on the fallen fence line, each one slowly making the hole grow, inch by inch. The wire lining on the fence gave more and more as it unraveled at the bottom.

  Even with the .50-cal in full tilt and blasting out endless rounds of rapid fire, the two other soldiers with their M-4s set to full auto, and the fourth gunner popping singles from his pistol, they just kept coming. No amount of gunfire was going to stop a mob of this magnitude. It was an endless tidal wave of rot and pestilence in the form of maggot-filled decay. The stench smelled so wretched that, while in mid-succession, Corporal Swift literally blew chunks all over himself while running the .50-cal. He didn’t let it stop him, however, as he relentlessly kept that massive gun going, watching as every single six-inch bullet ripped a gaping hole in the side of torsos and exploded moist, putrid heads. The rank decay, amazingly still, overpowered the smell of vomit sitting in the soldier’s lap and running down his shirt. He just kept shooting. They all did.

  The fifth guard on duty did
little to hinder the incoming mob as they flowed into the base past the fence line like water through a strainer. He sat crouched down out of sight. Having already pissed his pants, the soldier wept uncontrollably. He had given up in the face of overwhelming odds.

  The men in the guard tower could do nothing but watch as the zombies staggered past, farther into the military base.

  “Fire in the hole!” one soldier yelled.

  They all stopped firing for a second and watched the grenade land in the center of the massive horde of ghouls pressing forward on the outside of the fence line.

  For a split second, the grenade’s detonation had created at least an eight-foot hole in the mob. As quickly as the men had jumped to their feet to see, the blood and guts of that eight-foot radius quickly became swallowed up. The dead were on the march and nothing was going to stop them.

  Corporal Swift squeezed the .50-cal’s trigger; nothing happened. He leaped from his position behind the monstrous gun. “Gun’s jammed! Get over here, Paterson. I need your help,” he shouted, over the sounds of two M-4s.

  Private Paterson looked like he was seasick on the deck of a boat.

  Swift shouted, “I said get over here and give me a fucking hand, Paterson!” He struggled to eject a spent casing.

  Paterson glanced between Swift, the machinegun, and the staircase leading down from the guard tower. He retrieved his 9mm from its holster and moved forward.

  “About time, Paterson,” the Corporal said.

  Private Paterson dashed toward the steps and descending down them faster than Swift could react.

  “That stupid prick,” the Corporal said in a low voice, finally un-jamming the empty shell from the mechanism.

  Near the bottom of the steps, Paterson froze. Two zombies had made their way up the first three steps. Easily a dozen more followed behind them. In a panic, Paterson slowly backpedaled up the steps. The gun in his hand shook. He slowly lifted the weapon while in reverse. His first shot was a miss. In a frenzy, he emptied the rest of the magazine into the ascending creatures. In a matter of moments, the gun clicked empty. Not a single zombie fell to the ground with a fatal hit. Bullets punctured arteries, lungs, and the like, sending small splats of blood out with each piercing blow. However, not a single shot went above the shoulder.

  As the zombies took each slow staggering step up the stairway, Paterson fumbled with reloading the pistol, his breathing laced with excited gasps.

  The first of several zombies climbing the steps was missing its lower jaw. Red, black, and gray mess covered the exposed mouth and neck. Its tongue hung out, wildly moving about. Its hair had once been long. The front of its head was scalped to the bone, leaving chunks of hair falling to its shoulders on each side.

  The dead woman following close behind was only recognizable as a female because her top section was bare. With her face torn and chewed away, she slumped heavily over to one side. Having one arm freely swaying at the hip, her other arm reached out toward Paterson. The drooling moan that proceeded from her mouth hissed and bubbled with reddish-gray matter liquid pouring from her torn throat down her bare chest. Several ribs were bursting from her side. They looked cracked as they bounced about with each looming step she took toward the tower.

  The other zombies that followed climbed the steps and crowded around at the bottom of the staircase pressing to get in on the action.

  The guard tower was surrounded. More and more shuffled into view from farther out in the streets, from every direction.

  “Shit!” The creatures were getting too close now, and Private Paterson was still struggling to slam the full magazine into the 9mm. In a raged lack of self-control, he threw the magazine at the oncoming mob as hard as he could. It flew through the air, crashing into the face of the first zombie. The zombie’s jawless face caved in at the nose, spewing out dark fluids. Despite the new injury, the undead ghoul didn’t waver. The creature kept coming, the others in tow.

  Paterson calmly holstered the pistol and dashed up the final few steps, back into the guard tower. Corporal Swift and the other men had relentlessly kept at it. Paterson walked into practically the same setting as before. No one had moved positions, firing everything they had into the crowd of zombies below.

  Blood and splattered remains lay in every direction. Undead bodies jerked and convulsed violently as bullets zipped through the air from above. As one zombie dropped, two more took their place.

  Paterson watched as Swift sat behind the sights of the machinegun, laughing his head off. The other men had become similarly unhinged.

  Paterson stepped up from behind one of the soldiers wielding an M-4 and removed their sidearm. The man didn’t even seem to notice. He just steadily focused on the ground below, only stopping to reload, when needed.

  With the fresh weapon, Paterson flipped around facing the staircase again. He could see the head of the first few zombies peeking up from the open pathway into the compromised sanctuary. He aimed the gun, waiting for the creatures to draw even closer before firing. He wasn’t going to miss. This time, it was going to be all headshots. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  He fired a single shot from the pistol, its pop not even heard in the onslaught of fire around him. The hit was dead center to the brain. He hadn’t missed and hadn’t intended to.

  Suddenly, pulling the gun to his head, he pulled the trigger. The shot sent skull fragments and pinkish red chunks into the air from the side of Paterson’s head. Before the first bit of it splattered to the floor, his lifeless body fell back, toppling over the side of the tower railing. His dead body crashed onto the top of the fence before limply flipping over it and into the horde below. Instantly, his body disappeared under a swarm of undead creatures. Hunched over to gladly stop and feast, they feverishly tore him apart in seconds, devouring his remains.

  Not one of the soldiers had let their fallen comrade distract them, or the mob of zombies filing in on them from behind, for that matter. With their focus solely on what gathered below, the dozen of more undead monsters that had made their way up the steps crept in, uninvited and unnoticed.

  From behind, three zombies instantly came down on Swift and his men. Swift was still holding tight to the trigger of the .50 caliber machinegun, bullets wildly spraying out into the sky as he lost control. Still laughing uncontrollably unto death, the three zombies fell on him with open mouths. One of them landed its teeth into his exposed forearm, and another one bit into his throat—both pulling away chunks of the dying man’s bleeding muscle and skin. The jawless ghoul hovered over him, sinking its top teeth deep into Swift’s skull. The bone easily cracked open, caving in with the intense pressure. Blood poured out around the wound, sending it down the front of his face and onto his vomit-stained shirt. With eyes fixed open, the man was dead, and so were his fellow soldiers.

  *

  With the tower compromised, the dead feasted freely; others made their way farther and farther into the confines of the once-fortified military base.

  In the distance, a dozen Humvee’s rolled up, lining a defensive perimeter. Along with the loads of soldiers falling into line from each Humvee, every man and woman, soldier or not, filed out into the parking lot at the front of the military base. Men and women wielding various types of guns poured out of buildings in every direction to meet the line of Humvees. Within a matter of minutes, the very large lot overlooking the front entrance to the base was lined with several hundred soldiers, scientists, custodians, and cooks. Each person armed and ready to fight the horde of undead staggering toward them.

  Having dealt with his fair share of battle, General Baker, along with two other commanding officers, quickly setup a human shield the length of a football field. They sat in the security of a lone Humvee set at the back of the line. Like the cowards they were, Baker barked out orders from an amplified speaker. With Baker in the passenger seat of the Humvee holding the microphone to his lips, he safely gave out orders to the line.

  “Everyone prepare for battle!
We’re doing this old school, boys and girls. Musket style,” he shouted, the static popping in his voice over the speaker. “Check your weapons. Safety off. First line fire until you run out, then fall to the back of the line leading in the next set of shooters. Do I make myself clear?”

  A small spark of prattle echoed out amongst the men and women.

  “I want a steady stream of fire at all times. Keep it focused, headshots! Repeat, headshots only.”

  The overwhelmingly large mob of zombies creeping forward steadily drew closer. From the line, their numbers seemed unending.

  When the soldiers in the guard tower had called in the breach, General Baker took immediate action. Having been aware that this was an inevitable possibility, due to the amount of in and out traffic the extraction teams had been doing, Baker took it upon himself as leader to run several drills related to the potential scenario. With his mouth to the microphone and the full base at his command, it had paid off. He sat there for a second, taking in the accomplishment, mostly proud of great job and teamwork of those around him. He felt like a leader.

  The final stand was at hand. Who would be the victor? Baker, for one, felt rather cocky about it.

  *

  From overhead, a lone helicopter flew across the swarm of countless dead entering the facility. Passing them from above, the passengers and pilot watched in horror as the base was overrun. Past the fence line and before the landing zone, the outlandishly large firing line of soldiers came into view. The dead were heading right toward them.

  “Holy hell! This can’t be good,” Clay said holding onto the safety rail of the chopper as they passed overhead.

  Gus just looked down in awe, speechless.

  “What are we going to do, man?” Clay asked.

  “Refuel and get the hell out is my vote!” Watts chimed in as he readied to land a little way off from the waging war at the entrance. His target, the landing field nearly center of the base its self.