HVZA (Book 2): Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse 2

by Zimmermann, Linda

  And here the lesions were again, clear as day, glistening in the bright sunlight inside the skull Becks had just bashed open. Someone was poisoning the zombies! Just to make sure, she cracked open two more heads and found the same beautiful lesions. As far as she knew, only the military had poison meat grenades, and Captain Lennox had mentioned that they were working on other delivery systems at the Picatinny Arsenal. Could the oft-rumored spring offensive to clear northern New Jersey really be commencing? Should she just go back to the house and wait for troops to come marching down the street?

  That was certainly an option to consider as she crouched between corpses, admiring the lesion-covered membranes—until one of the not-quite-dead-yet zombies raised his head and bit hard on Becks’ left wrist, right on the flesh exposed between the top of her glove and bottom of her jacket sleeve. Startled, Becks yelled and fell backwards onto another corpse, while her right hand reached for her .44 Magnum. The zombie’s head blew apart like a water balloon, but the damage had already been done.

  Several of the zombie’s filthy teeth had punctured Becks’ wrist, and blood was flowing freely. Of course, the bleeding was not her main concern, as ZIPs eggs were no doubt already coursing through her body looking for places to grow and multiply. And she had no Eradazole.

  The clock was ticking.

  Chapter 18

  So close, yet so far, Becks thought, as she wrapped the piece of pretty pink silk around her wrist as a bandage. Time was now of the essence, and she didn’t have the luxury of waiting for someone to rescue her. She had to save herself.

  A dozen emotions were swimming through her heart and mind, and tears were in her eyes, as she stood up and started sprinting. With pistols blazing, without hesitation, she cut down anyone in her path. If cars blocked her way, she vaulted up onto hoods and trunks and leapt from vehicle to vehicle. If there was a downed tree blocking her path, she used her hands and feet like a monkey to clamber over it. If there was a street full of corpses, she weaved through them without slowing down.

  Only a fraction of the zombie herds were still alive, but there were still enough of them to make every foot of ground she had to cover dangerous. At one point, about ten zombies began to surround her, but she climbed to the top of an SUV and calmly put a bullet in each of their heads. Reloading, she hit the ground running again, like a woman possessed.

  No more hiding. No more creeping and crawling. No more silent kills. Let every zombie and scavenger for a mile around know that Dr. Rebecca Truesdale was a on a mission. And if you got in her way, you would die.

  The landscape of modest, closely-packed houses morphed into opulent homes with large pieces of property. Zombies, both dead and alive, were fewer and farther between in the area, but still the roar of her .44 Magnum echoed for blocks around as she showed no mercy. It was as if all the months of pent-up fear, anger, despair, and frustration had reached critical mass, and nothing could prevent Becks from going nuclear.

  A curving road led her to an intersection with at least twenty energetic zombies blocking whichever direction she decided to go. Using a tree to get to the top of a nearby garage, she pulled her sniper rifle over her shoulder. Sitting with her left elbow resting on her left knee, Becks supported the rifle on her arm for better accuracy. She scored eighteen head shots, two shots missed a little low in the throat, and with three others she settled for bullets to the heart, as tree branches partially blocked those targets.

  The intersection clear, she sprinted past the bodies and took the road that appeared to go due west. As she headed up a steep hill, Becks thought she glimpsed the rock wall at the top of an embankment, just a few blocks away, but her attention was suddenly drawn elsewhere. At the crest of the hill, she stood and looked down on a sea of zombies, all looking back at her. With the hungry groans of hundreds of starving undead, they rolled like a tidal wave toward her. Spinning around, she saw that a hundred more were starting to make their way up the hill from the other direction, drawn by all the loud gunshots.

  So close, yet so far, she thought again, as she looked for any way out. Each direction appeared more hazardous than the next, but there was a big, old station wagon on the western downslope of the hill that could provide refuge until the herd passed. If the herd passed.

  It was a Country Squire station wagon with the fake wood sides and a tail gate that could swing open or drop flat for picnics or drive-in movies. Before Becks could become the main course for a zombie picnic, she ran to the tail gate, swung it open, dove in, and slammed it shut before the herd reached her. Lunging for all the door locks, she was safe—at least for the moment.

  Fists and faces pressed against all the windows, like some macabre 360-degree drive-in movie. Becks scrambled over the seats to get behind the wheel, and although the key was still in the ignition, the battery was as dead as she would be if she didn’t figure out something. And sooner rather than later would be helpful. Perhaps if she got on the floor of the passenger seat and remained still, the zombies would lose interest and go away. But after an hour, none of them had budged, and the temperature inside the car was reaching brutal levels. She could remain there another few hours, and possibly pass out from the heat—or worse—or she could try to do something.

  Climbing back into the driver’s seat, she put the transmission into neutral, and pulled like hell to turn the wheels straight, pointing down the hill. She hoped gravity would do the rest, but with the mass of zombies in front of the car, it was going nowhere. She scrambled back to the tail gate window and started banging and yelling. Aroused by the noise and movement, the zombies in the back started pounding on the car, while the ones in the front started moving toward the back.

  “Come on, you ugly, motherless fucks, is that all you got?” Becks shouted, whipping them into a frenzy.

  Suddenly, the station wagon lurched forward a few inches. Continuing her tirade, more and more zombies pressed against the back of the car, and it actually started to roll, ever so slightly. Then it picked up some real speed. Crawling back to the front seat, Becks attempted to control the massive vehicle, which was no easy feat without power steering. Zombies were pushed aside by the growing downward force of the mighty suburban assault vehicle, and those that didn’t get out of the way became mere speed bumps beneath the wheels.

  After about 100 feet, the station wagon broke free of the herd, and once there was nothing in its way, it picked up a frightening amount of speed.

  “Uh oh! Shit, shit, shit!” Becks yelled, reaching with both hands for the safety belt while her boot pounded away at the unresponsive brake pedal, but it was too late.

  Bracing for impact, the huge station wagon slammed into a fallen tree at the base of the embankment. Becks was thrown hard against the steering wheel and windshield, cracking a couple of ribs, opening a big gash in her forehead, and spraining her bitten left wrist. But the herd was already heading in her direction, so she didn’t have a second to spare.

  Getting out of the car, she felt a bit woozy and everything hurt, but she still managed to start crawling up the embankment as fast as she could. Three days of rain had turned the dirt to slick mud, and for every hard fought yard, she slid back two feet. The herd was closing in, but she fought tooth and nail to reach the base of the wire mesh and rock wall, which was much higher than she thought. Clutching onto the wire, she grimaced in pain from all her injuries as she began to ascend. Exhausted, she didn’t know if she had the strength to make it.

  Then she heard something in the distance that was unclear at first, but grew closer and louder. Was she hallucinating, or were voices calling out her name?

  “Come on Becks, you can do it!”

  “Keep going, Becks, don’t give up!”

  The blood running into her eyes from the cut in her forehead made it hard to see, but looking up, there were definitely faces looking down at her! Struggling to climb higher, the zombie herd had now reached the embankment, and when one of them slipped and fell in the mud, five more climbed over its body
to get ever nearer to Becks.

  Shots rang out from the top of the wall, taking out those zombies closest to her, but there were just too many of them. Then she heard a voice shout at her to stay still, so she froze and looked down at the hungry mob below. Suddenly, zombie eyes, ears, and noses started to bleed, and row after row fell dead to the ground. Becks had seen a weapon like this at work before—in fact, she had taken great delight in using it—at the Picatinny Arsenal. It had to be the “whale bone,” or “sonic disrupter,” as she had liked to call it.

  With renewed strength and determination, she fought her way up the wall inch by inch, until a hand reached down to help, but it was just out of reach. Hanging on with just her sprained left wrist, which caused shooting pains that made her see stars, with her right hand she pulled off the yard of pink silk. Gripping it tightly, she used a whipping motion to send the other end into the helping hand, which grasped it like an iron clamp. With one mighty pull, she was yanked to the top of the wall and into a strong pair of arms that held her tight.

  “My dearest, dearest Trues, baby,” a very familiar voice said, as she was clutched even harder. “Oh my god, look what’s happened to you!”

  Wiping the blood from her eyes and looking into Cam’s face, she replied, “Yeah, well you should see the other guys.”

  Chapter 19

  As Army medics swarmed over Becks, Cam, Captain Lennox, and several familiar faces from Cam’s compound stood by, each one blurting out pieces of how they had found her, and how some had given up hope, while others never lost faith.

  Becks learned that the photos the helicopter had taken of Eddie’s house in flames had first given them a glimmer of hope that she had survived. But then the long months of winter with no signs of life brought them to despair. Then spring arrived and they spotted more fires, each being successively farther west toward the highway, bringing them back to hope, which grew to belief that she was out there somewhere—a belief confirmed by more aerial photos of the messages she had left behind.

  For a week, a desperate Cam and his men kept up 24-hour patrols along a several mile stretch of 287, while Captain Lennox and his men launched new aerosol dispensers into the herds of zombies to spread the competitive ZIPs. The three days that Becks had been delayed because of rain turned out to be a lifesaver, as the poisoned zombies had time to die, be eaten, and infect others, giving her a clearer path. Her gunshots had narrowed their search, and the crashing station wagon pinpointed her location, directing all forces to come to her aid and defense.

  “But I guess you have a few stories to tell, too,” Cam said, gently taking her right hand, which was just about the only part of her not damaged. “Save your strength, though. You can tell us all about it after you’ve had time to rest at the hospital at West Point.”

  While she couldn’t get back to West Point a minute too soon, Becks refused to get into the ambulance until they gave her a map of the area.

  “This is where someone was shooting at me. Looks like a massacre took place, so there could be some bad characters in the neighborhood,” she began.

  Retracing her steps, she next pointed to the area where all the feral children and the crazy lady lived behind barricades. She found the post office were she spent the winter, and Sparrow Lane where Sgt. Colaneri and the others had lost their lives, and she handed Captain Lennox the sergeant’s dog tags, which she had worn since the day he died.

  Then Becks pulled out the chemistry book taped to her jacket and showed everyone the bullet still lodged in chapter two, and told the story of how Little Eddie had died. She told them about Isabel Tasi’s death, and the courageous Eddie Tasi, who may or may not still be alive, and Angie, Jennifer, Donnie, and the Rovers, and New Ridgelawn, and all the people there who needed help. She even mentioned Buttons and Smidgey, and the Doberman who sheltered them. And she made Captain Lennox promise that once they got boots on the ground for the spring offensive, they would add Kidtown and New Ridgelawn to their list of objectives.

  Only then, after she made sure help would soon be coming to those who needed it, did Dr. Rebecca Truesdale get into the ambulance and finally head for home.

  After two weeks in the hospital, Becks was hounding Phil for complete updates on all the projects, and begging to get back to work. She had played cavewoman with her spear for too long, and needed to breathe the rarefied air of a laboratory again. Phil obliged her first request with stacks of project files just to keep her in bed a few days longer, but he knew Becks was an unstoppable force and promised to let her start working the minute the doctors gave her the okay.

  Cam barely left her side for those two weeks, and many other friends and acquaintances stopped by. Becks became so sick and tired of recounting her story over and over, that she actually welcomed a reporter from the new single-sheet newspaper, Hudson Valley Survivor, so all the details would be in print and she wouldn’t have to keep rehashing the unpleasantness any longer.

  Becks thought the far more interesting story was what had happened in the Hudson Valley since she left so many months ago, not the least of which was that someone was printing a newspaper again!

  Farms were springing up everywhere. In an ironic twist, housing developments that had been built on farm land, were now having their once finely manicured yards plowed for crops, and their houses and garages used for livestock. Parks were turned into tomato and vegetable farms, and golf courses were becoming waving fields of wheat, barely, and oats.

  One of the few smart things the government had done in the Hudson Valley before everything collapsed, was to send a special team to the Indian Point nuclear reactors with orders to keep them operational at all costs. Not only did this dedicated crew prevent a meltdown which would have made the region uninhabitable, but it now meant that power was being restored to the east side of the river, with plans to run a cable across to the west side. The nuclear plant that had once been so reviled, became a shining beacon of resurrection for communities trying to piece themselves back together.

  With power came some manufacturing, and despite decades of everything being made in China, people found that Yankee ingenuity had not been lost. Some cars were getting back on the road, although a full day’s labor on a farm or in a factory would only get you one gallon of gas. But at least now there was some work available, and something to work for. The towns along the river were becoming trading centers again, and the river, an avenue of commerce. A couple of one-room school houses had even opened, and a few hospitals tried to at least establish emergency clinics for basic treatments and Eradazole distribution.

  Of course, except for the areas with electricity, the Hudson Valley now resembled more of the early 1700s than it did the 21st century, both in terms of its small population and living conditions. But the region that had been ground zero for the apocalypse and was initially the hardest hit, was the first to start getting back on its feet.

  Much of the credit for that belonged to people like Cam and his men, who had formed the Civilian Action Patrol, or CAP, whose branches spread the length of the river. Unlike the useless ZAP organization, CAP helped survivors with food, shelter, and protection. Their handmade flyers could be seen on sign posts and telephone poles from Albany down to the border of New York City.

  “Warning to all zombies,” they read, “We gonna CAP yo asses.”

  That was all the good news. All the other news was bad. No one had to tell Becks that New Jersey was a hell hole. New York City was even worse. Everything basically south of the Mason-Dixon line was considered to be a total loss. Little news was available for the Midwest and west coast, but the general picture was that cities and towns in warmer regions were decimated. However, those in colder climates, as well as isolated communities, were hanging in there, but just barely.

  Beyond the borders of the United States, Canada was doing quite well with its frigid weather, but past that, it was anybody’s guess. The majority of the countries around the globe had gone dark, with no word from anyone for months.
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  It was a grim picture of the end of humanity. But as Becks looked out her window at West Point at the green trees and the sparkling Hudson River below, she knew that there was something about the human spirit that was indomitable. If there was one chance in a million for survival, a person would fight, body and soul, for that chance.

  And if Becks had to face a million zombies alone, she would find a way to kill them all.

  ***

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