The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  For a moment, Austin was indignant. Then he solved the problem. Putting the binoculars around his neck, he chose the best tree for climbing and dumped his belongings. Micah gave the semi-automatic to Corbin and selected a second tree for herself.

  Austin puffed and panted, swinging from branch to branch until he cleared much of the canopy of the surrounding trees. Only the redwoods were still in his way. Clutching the trunk with one arm, he lifted the binoculars. There was the green of leaves, yellow splashes of grass, gray stones, blue sky, a black splotch of a burned house . . .

  “Do you see anything?” Micah called.

  “No,” Austin said in disappointment. Yes. “Oh Jesus! Yes!” The breeze had shivered a branch, and in the second it moved, he caught a glimpse of white. He drew the branch down for a second look. The thrashed road came into view now and then, and beyond it was a tiny spot of a tall, white wall.

  Home. Austin was looking at his home. He yelled and pulled the branch down farther. Only the smallest sliver of the wall showed. It ran high and thick, and a watchtower rose above its top. He stared at that beautiful wall, calling down, “You guys should see it!”

  “Are there Shepherds around it?” Micah yelled. “I can’t see anything from this angle.”

  Austin moved the binoculars all around, but only that fragment was visible. It wasn’t just any wall but a smart one, and made of material so strong that nothing could knock it down. They were there. Almost. Beyond the shield, no interior part of the harbor could be seen.

  He and Micah got out of the trees and they started on this last mile the hard way. They had to stay off the road. Driveways led off it to houses on the side they were on, and the other side had a slope downward that never appeared to end. That was where they walked lopsided, one foot going up and one going down. Only twice did a driveway interrupt the trees and leaf litter. Though it was a pain in the ass, they dipped even farther down the slope to round the houses.

  Laughter rode on a breeze that carried the scent of death. They concealed themselves and spied on the road. There was a brace up ahead. A man and woman in Shepherd vests were sitting on chairs by a wooden roadblock. They had a partial view of the slope beneath them, and it was strewn with bodies. Men and women, children, a dog, none was naked or partially dressed as a lot of ferals were. One body trapped in bushes wore a Shepherd vest. Of the more freshly dead ones, bullet wounds were easy to make out. Austin said, “They’re killing people who want to go to the harbor.”

  “Of course they are,” Micah said.

  They surveyed the terrain and swung out, going so far down the slope that the road was gone. Every step was hard-won, the foliage untamed and prolific. “How to make one mile last all day,” Corbin whispered in aggravation. “We have to climb back up or we’re going to lose the road altogether.”

  They climbed to the road, which had grown even more broken. Hearing voices, they sprinted up a steep driveway. It curled around to a small, forlorn house, most of its windows shaded by trees. No car was in the open garage, nor was anything but graffiti on the walls.

  Skirting the house, they climbed over a rocky area to a ridge. Austin’s heart pounded hard. He didn’t need the binoculars now to see the harbor. The wall stretched out in an uneven line, the junked road curving to run along its north face. A dirt road broke off it and led to the harbor itself. The insides were still invisible, except for treetops. The wall was too high, and the structures within too low to the ground to be observed. Two watchtowers were in view, one over at the side and the other close to the dirt road. Both were manned. The wall was so wide that a third person was walking along it between the watchtowers.

  People were outside the wall. Not all wore Shepherd vests. Hanging around, looking up to the sky, talking to each other, they were standing on the regular road and the dirt road, in the grass between the trees, and two leaned on a huge set of double doors in the wall. Putting a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun, Zaley said, “Why don’t the guards just shoot those assholes?”

  “They don’t have enough ammo to fight battles with these idiots all the time,” Austin said. He couldn’t help but feel overcome with hopelessness. All they had needed was one last military convoy to ferry them in.

  It had been so long since Sombra C became personal to Austin, sitting in his chair at Palimi across from Mamma when that guy in a scarf attempted to join his friend’s birthday celebrations. Austin had crossed an ocean from that dinner to this rocky seat overlooking the only place that would welcome him in. But here were dozens of people aiming to keep him out. He was so mad at them for being there.

  He wanted more from his life than merely surviving it. He wanted a guy smiling to see him walk into a room, and little arms reaching up with a small voice crying dada. He wanted purpose. Even a lowly zombie like Austin could have the temerity to want to live. But to all of them blocking his way, there was no more offensive a notion.

  They couldn’t enter the harbor here. There had to be sixty or more people down there. Yet this wasn’t the only entrance. There was another road leading in from the east. There was the south path. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they had finally gotten to the harbor after all of this time, and there was no way to get in. They came so far only to lose at the finish line.

  Set Eighteen

  Zaley

  The house below the ridge was a natural place to stay for a Sombra C keen on the harbor. A grave behind it testified to those who had tried to weather the night there. Zaley had fallen into it, stepping into thin air and plummeting down a short drop as they circled the house to check it out. She hadn’t had time to scream, and didn’t dare to scream when she realized what she was standing on. The harbor was so close that her upraised voice could have carried.

  Covered only in branches, seven or eight bodies had been splashed with some chemical to aid in their decomposition. Corbin and Austin jerked Zaley up and away from the withered, disintegrating forms and she ripped off her shoes. They wiped them off with dead leaves and replaced the branches.

  They spent the night hidden in a nook of trees, afraid that the house would be searched. And it was, Austin waking up Zaley for watch just as four lights came up the driveway. The searchers were silent, their lights passing eerily behind the windows as they went from room to room, and only on the way out did one speak. “-not tonight. Let’s do 413 and don’t forget the tree house.” The lights returned down the steep driveway and disappeared. She was so shamefully relieved to not have the baby with them. An ill-timed cry or cheery screech of boo was all it would take to give them away.

  “That’s what they do,” Austin whispered. “Shoot people coming up the road to the harbor, and search around these houses for Sombra Cs to kill them.” Zaley was sick of so many people being ugly. It made the nice ones seem like flukes.

  In the morning, Corbin said the house had been searched a second time just before dawn. The two of them crept to the ridge overlooking the harbor and lay down on their stomachs. Bushes gave them good cover. They traded the binoculars for hours to get a better view of the wall and their adversaries. Micah and Austin had gone to look at it from another location.

  The shield was a strange creature, an opaque white that Zaley felt like she should almost be able to see through. It rose more than twenty feet into the air and pushed up watchtowers higher than that. An armored wall, a force field, Corbin was curious about its exact nature and Zaley just wanted to be on the other side.

  The north gate to the harbor was impassable, in Corbin’s opinion, and Zaley agreed. It wasn’t just because she always agreed like she once had with him. It truly was impassable. Sixty to seventy people were down there, in the trees and on the dirt road and the real road itself. Some emerged from tents, and others arrived by bicycle. The mood was pleasant.

  Food and water also arrived by bicycle, presumably from family members since the deliveries only went to one or two people there. People did this, pedaled up the winding road to bring food to U
ncle Joe or Aunt Siobhan at the harbor. A man on a bike that no one recognized aroused interest temporarily. Forced to stop, he was made to show his neck. An interrogation followed and then he was allowed to move on.

  A lot of the people were thin and half of them didn’t have guns, but still they were here. Chanting no harbor, go harbor at infrequent intervals, making friends, they stuffed food in their mouths that someone else had sweated over to make and deliver. One old woman marched in place and pumped signs into the air shaming the government for wasting tax dollars on special interests. Even though their only interaction was through a pair of binoculars, Zaley recoiled from the overt craziness on the protestor’s face. She was largely the instigator of the chants, her eyes wide and manic and her hair knotted into a messy white bun. Her floral skirt was on sideways and had a tear at the hem.

  Other bicyclists came along with supplies meant for anyone who could trade. Eggs for apples, coffee for what looked like medication in a plastic sandwich bag, they had a strange little market going on. It wasn’t really a market though, not as Zaley understood market as a constant stream of visitors going in with money and out with food over the course of a day.

  A young guy came up with a bicycle rigged to carry a comical number of covered baskets. The crowd below got very excited at his appearance. The crazy woman dropped her signs, hiked up her ripped, sideways skirt, and cut a woman off rudely to make it over to him first. As the bicyclist rested and wiped the sweat off his forehead, half of the people there flocked over to see what he had and held up what they wanted to trade. They went away with eggs, fruit, and paper sacks holding mysterious contents. The guy tipped his bike against a tree once the trades were concluded. He liberated two laden baskets and took a walk down the road. Nobody looked in the remaining baskets in his absence and the crazy lady returned to waving her signs after shelling a hardboiled egg onto the ground and eating it.

  “How the hell do they find shit to trade?” Corbin asked.

  “Raid houses,” Zaley said. Some of them wouldn’t even need to do that. The Shints’ linen closet in Sausalito had been packed end to end with loads of old medications, antibiotics and pain pills from their surgeries, antidepressants and gastric reflux aids, bottles of cough syrup and tubes of hydrocortisone cream. They had enough to open a pharmacy of their own with the contents of those shelves. Just one pain pill should be worth a nice meal from someone sick or addicted. If Zaley were in Cloudy Valley and facing this situation, she would have stolen her father’s pain pills for his bad back to do exactly that. She had had her own pain pills for her arm, too. Those were extremely valuable in a way she hadn’t appreciated until just now.

  One man was disturbingly similar to her father. It wasn’t actually him, but the lumbering walk of the morbidly obese man, the way he’d slapped the shoulder of the fellow with the baskets put her in mind of someone she never wanted to see again. The Mother Hen of the blockade, he pushed her back in time to the dark hallway of her home, spying into the living room where Shepherds postured over their beer. Except these guys didn’t have beer. Two-thirds of them didn’t even seem to be Shepherds, if one was judging by the vests. They were dressed in regular clothes and just hanging out.

  If only the guards in the watchtowers would shoot them! No one could get into the harbor, which only existed because Sombra Cs needed to be inside. But the guards had to protect those already in there. Perhaps they were at capacity. So let these idiots scream and shout all they wanted outside, allow them to kill any Sombra C coming up the roads; the harbor couldn’t fit one more body behind its walls anyway. None of the loons outside the wall were trying to get in, and she supposed it was wrong to shoot a batty old woman who was only marching and holding up signs. Zaley shifted the binoculars to the two watchtowers. Each manned by a guard wearing sunglasses, their faces were utterly impassive as they kept watch.

  Humboldt. They were going to have to try for Humboldt. And if it wouldn’t take them, they’d move on to the harbor in Oregon. And if that harbor wouldn’t take them . . . Were they supposed to wander around the country until a harbor opened its doors or they starved or got shot?

  “Go away,” Corbin whispered at them. But they were here for the long haul, lawn chairs and coolers and potted plants around the tents, board games in a pile upon a stump. This was their home.

  An unfamiliar man on a bike went by and was ordered to stop at gunpoint. It didn’t appear that these people were in possession of saliva tests. All they could do was search for stamps, which didn’t mean much when those hadn’t been given since the breakdown.

  Whatever the man on the bicycle said was rude, since the two guys inspecting him shouted to shut up. The man raised his voice even more loudly (and bravely, since he was outnumbered almost seventy to one) that this was a public roadway, for fuck’s sake, he was going to his great-aunt’s house over on McMann Lane to see if she was still alive and get out of the goddamned way. The Mother Hen of the protestors pulled out a gun and yelled to get the hell out of here. If the bicyclist showed his face again, they would assume he was a zombie and he was going to die for it. The man rode away, rocks raining down on him from a catcalling pack of teen boys. “Would they have just shot him right there if he hadn’t said a street name they knew?” Corbin asked. Zaley watched helplessly. She hated that feeling more than anything else. There was nothing for them here.

  At midday, Austin and Micah returned to the ridge. “What did you see?” Zaley asked as she relinquished the binoculars to them. The guy with the baskets had come back for his bicycle and was riding away.

  “Not much. There are a couple of bodies going west along the wall,” Austin said. Despite everything, he looked somewhat awed and excited. “Someone tried to shoot over the wall while we were watching, this scruffy guy who smelled so bad that I was holding my breath when the wind blew past. He never got off the shot. The guard in the watchtower over there suddenly turned, one smooth move, and shot him dead. I don’t know how he even saw the guy. Dude sneaked up and was pretty well hidden.”

  “It’s a Smart Shield,” Corbin said. “Sensors could be telling the guards where people are all around the wall. Using heat signatures or something. We need to know how bad it is at the east entrance.”

  “Then we’ll do that while you two stay here and watch the marketplace,” Zaley said.

  “If it’s clear over there and you get a chance, just go for it,” Micah said. “We’ll know if you don’t come back tonight.”

  They had food for a light lunch and dinner, scraps for tomorrow and nothing the day after that. So either they found a way into the harbor, or turned around and walked down to a vineyard for not-quite-ripe grapes to tide them over while they located a source of food. Zaley had already chosen the source. She and Micah would hide along the curves of the road and wait for the guy with the baskets, or another one of those guys bringing up goods. She felt no qualms about taking from the fools bringing supplies to the protestors. Then it was on to Humboldt.

  She followed Corbin through the trees. They were very careful crossing the road, and then they climbed a driveway to an abandoned home. It also had a grave behind it, although holding fewer bodies than the other one. Through the broken windows were smashed furniture and torn books, empty backpacks and garbage, and blood sprayed on a wall.

  The sensors might be picking up on their travel, if they weren’t too far away. Zaley wished the sensors could read her will to be in the harbor. Let us in, let us in, let us in . . .

  There were no natural breaks in the tree cover or terrain to let them see the wall, so Corbin climbed an oak. Even that didn’t help, higher trees blocking his view, so they pressed on and slid down a ravine. Within minutes, Zaley was hidden by bushy plants and staring at another portion of the wall. The soldier had told Austin that there used to be thousands of Shepherds around here, and then hundreds, and now it was down to dozens of random freaks. Evidence of a former mass occupation was all around. A landfill’s worth of food wrappers was heape
d around and snagged in bushes. There were tons of collapsed and torn tents, crushed foliage, and trees with gouges in the trunks. A shredded white backpack with brown stains all over it was caught on a branch.

  A woman biked past on the road, weaving around the potholes. She was headed for the market. A blue towel shielded the baskets on the back of the bicycle, but a corner had come loose and revealed bread rolls underneath. No sooner had Zaley seen that than cheers rang out from the encampment at the north entrance. “Bread and Butter Lady!” “It’s the Bread and Butter Lady!” “Hope you didn’t trade it all to East first!”

  “Gotta be real quick so I can get home!” the woman shouted as she rode along.

  Beside Zaley, Corbin said, “I can’t see how much farther the wall extends.”

  The only way to know was to move nearer to the road. Rock blocked them from moving any farther at this distance. They cut through bushes and stood behind trees as a man walked a bike with a flat tire by. Then he lowered the kickstand and laboriously applied sunscreen to his face and neck, just a little too close to Zaley and Corbin for them to risk moving.

  At the edge of her hearing, she could make out the noise of the marketplace. She listened to it resentfully. Two or three people in the way at the north entrance and the four of them could blast the last of their ammunition and dash to the doors. Dozens . . . that wasn’t doable. Dozens was a death sentence.

  The man finished applying his sunscreen and plodded on with his bike. Although she and Corbin wanted to keep space between them and the road, the topography pushed them even closer to it. Just as she looked up to Corbin’s back and opened her mouth to suggest they backtrack, she stomped on a potato chip bag by accident and jerked away at the loud crackle. “Shit!” Off-balance, she staggered into the foliage just as the woman with bread and butter reappeared. Wheeling down the road, she hit the brakes and stared to the bushes that Zaley had just shaken while trying not to fall.