Six Feet From Hell: The Lost Chronicles (Book 1)

by Coley, Joseph A.

  “Yeah some kind of underground explosion or something happened a while ago. It felt like a damn earthquake to be honest. I don’t know what they have planned for ya’ll in Tazewell, but be expecting a shitload of work comin’ your way,” Josh said as he put the truck back in gear and backed out of his spot at the hospital.

  “How many injured are there?”

  Josh slammed the truck into gear and began easing forward, being careful not to hit any of the pedestrians that were still pouring into the hospital. “I'm not sure but I would guess they got about a hundred here at least and they are overwhelmed. You know how Buck General is; there ain’t much to go around so they are gonna ship ‘em up your way.”

  “Damn, well how are you guys holding up so far?”

  “Not too good at the moment, from what we can tell comin’ across the radio the same thing happened in McDowell and Pike County too. Some serious shit is hittin’ the fan here, dude.”

  “What the hell is happening with the patients? What are we gonna need?”

  Josh wheeled out of the parking lot and back onto the main road. “Valium, Benadryl, and Epi - I'm not real sure to be honest. It looks like seizures and anaphylaxis combined, some bad shit goin on with ‘em. It doesn’t look good.”

  “Well I'm on my way in; you guys…careful…need any…us…”

  “Joe, you’re breaking up. If you can hear me call me after this shit dies down, gimme a call.”

  Josh looked at his phone, the call disconnected. He slid the phone back into his pocket and focused back on driving. The sun had just come up, but in Grundy, it would be several hours before it would make any kind of appearance and it looked as if rain was on the way. The dark, gray sky was looking over top of the mountains, the clouds dancing on the edges of the tops. Josh glanced up at the ominous-looking coverage and then brought his eyes back to the road when he first noticed what appeared to be a drunken man walking in the middle of the road.

  “SHIT!” He exclaimed as he slammed on the brakes, bringing the truck to an abrupt halt.

  “What the hell is this asshole’s problem?” Steve threw up his hands in contempt. Josh quickly threw the truck into park and flung the driver’s side door open.

  “Hey buddy, what the hell? Get your drunk ass out of the way!”

  The man turned to Josh, as soon as he did Josh wished he had not said anything. The man missing the left side of his face was the first sign of something amiss. The unstable gait that he walked with was another. The man turned and faced him fully, arms drooping at his sides. Josh took an uneasy step back and the drunk man began shuffling towards him, raising his arms in front of him. Blood poured from the large gaping hole in the side of his head. The man got within ten feet of Josh when the stillness of the early morning was broken by a single gunshot. The man’s chest exploded and he fell to the ground. Josh ducked with lightning quickness. He quickly turned back to see his partner holding a 1911 .45, smoke still slowly rolling out of the barrel. He had opened the door, stood on the running board, and shot across the windshield.

  “What the fuck! What the hell are you doing with that thing on the truck?” Steve fired off another shot at the drunk man as he got up and staggered back towards the front of the ambulance. The second shot landed in the man’s head, splitting it like an old melon.

  “Do you really want to ask that kind of question right now? Can’t you see what the hell that was?”

  Josh raised his voice to near screaming. “AND WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?” Steve fired off another round at another approaching straggler, this one missing both of his hands, bloody stumps stopping at the end of his arms.

  Steve jumped out of the truck and stomped defiantly, moving the .45 around and scanning for more people. “They are goddamned zombies, Josh! Why the fuck do you think that first one got right back up after I shot him dead in the chest? These fuckers are zombies, there jackass.”

  Josh was unknowingly holding his breath as Steve explained himself. He left out a huge sigh when he realized that Steve might be right. Steve swiftly came over to the front of the truck and explained himself to Josh.

  “Look, that guy that we backboarded that was seizing like a son of a bitch, but when I put the monitor on him, he was asystole. I thought it was just a short in the leads, but I couldn’t get a blood pressure on him either.”

  Josh’s eyes widened in horror. “So we just dropped off a goddamned zombie at the ER! Why the hell didn’t you say anything when we were there? We gotta go back and take care of that shit!”

  “And tell them what exactly? ‘I’m sorry, doc. The patient we just dropped off is a zombie, do you mind if we go ahead and shoot him in the head?’ Think about what you're saying, dude.”

  The unmistakable sound of moaning and choked gurgling was slowly getting louder and louder. The approaching undead were wailing in the wind and mixing in with the sounds of sirens and the vehicles coming down the road. Both men looked around to see if any other zombies were approaching.

  “Let’s get outta here, dude. We gotta get to my house and get more guns and ammo. If all those guys are gonna turn into zombies then we are in some seriously deep shit. The guy in the back was blabbing on about some kind toxic gas that was comin’ up through the ground. If that shit is in the air, then we are gonna have a lot of zombies to deal with, and soon,” Steve said as he ushered Josh back to the truck. Steve motioned Josh to get into the passenger’s side of the truck; Steve would be driving to his own house to arm up. As Steve closed the door on the truck and threw it into gear, more zombies began to appear in front of and behind them.

  “Shit! See, I told you! They are damned zombies, Josh!”

  Josh could not wrap his mind around the concept of zombies. Sure, he had played plenty of video games that had zombies in them, most notably the Call of Duty games with Nazi zombies, but this was different. These were real life (or real death) zombies that were wandering the streets. Steve wheeled the truck and got it turned around near the law school in town and started back towards his own residence. Daylight was finally breaking (such as it was) and the light of the day was not going to get very bright for the day. Steve’s eyes darted back and forth on either side of the road for more of the undead, spying a few more as he went back by the hospital. As he neared the hospital the traffic began backing up as more and more family members and injured miners were making their way in. Steve quickly flipped the lights and siren on, attempting to clear out some of the vehicles in his path, to no avail. The cars that were there were either not able to move due to the deadlock or simply remained oblivious to the wailing siren. People abandoned their vehicles on the side of the road - as frustrated as Steve was - trying to make it into the parking lot of the hospital.

  “Go through the pharmacy parking lot, man. I think we can fit,” Josh said, grabbing the ‘oh shit’ handle on the truck. Steve was thinking the same thing and jumped the curb over into the parking lot of the pharmacy, and shot across it. Steve managed to squeeze out of the parking lot and sped down the road to his own home. As they sped away, Steve could have sworn that he heard a gunshot, but it could have been a backfire from one of the numerous cars that were now parking on both sides of the road. Steve kept the lights and siren going long enough to get away from the hospital.

  Numerous other police cars and ambulances were coming and going in quick succession as they got further away, coming in from other mines that had experienced the same seismic anomaly earlier and transporting some of the overflow of patients to other hospitals. The steady noises of helicopters were also in the air as they too transported patients to trauma centers further down the road. The choppers were going towards Roanoke, Jonson City, Kingsport, Bristol, and Pikeville. The injured were being spread across four states, as they just simply did not have the room for them in the small hospital in Buchanan County.

  Josh glanced over to the clock on the Dodge. It had taken them nearly an hour since they initial rumbling to get their patients, get them dropped off, and be o
n their way. It had been nearly an hour into the accident and no one had noticed anything amiss. The phrase ‘fog of war’ also applied to EMS; it would be a while before the smoke settled and the actual word got out as to what was going on as opposed to what was being told was happening. Of course, by the time word got out as to what it really was, it would be too late or no one would believe it until their dead relatives started showing up at their front door trying to take a bite out of them.

  More helicopters swirled overhead. Josh looked up to the sky and saw one that he did not recognize, however. It swooped low over near where the new Wal-Mart had been built. There had been a Red Cross Bloodmobile parked there at the store for its grand opening providing assistance where it could, but it was quickly overwhelmed.

  Steve was still clutching the 1911 .45 in his right hand as he drove home. He felt a pang of guilt as he realized that, aside from Josh talking to Joe that no one knew about what was transpiring in Buchanan County. If he could just make it home to his guns and ammo, then he might be able to take care of a few others, but for the moment, he needed to arm up before he or Josh would be of any use to anyone.

  Josh anxiously tapped his foot on the floor as they neared Steve’s house. He was still wrapping his mind around the word zombies. He did not want to admit it, not even to himself, but he was actually excited. The possibility of getting to kill some of the undead was not something that excited the average person; however, Josh and Steve both were not average people. They were by no means bad people, just typical southerners. They liked shooting and hunting just as much as the next man, and now were going to be given a ‘license to kill’ for zombies.

  And what could be better than killing some real zombies?

  Steve was also slowly coming around to the idea of getting to shoot zombies. He had remembered from a few of the zombie movies that he had seen that you had to shoot them in the head, and all of his rifles were sighted in and dead accurate. They wheeled into Steve’s driveway with gravel-throwing quickness and both men jumped out, leaving the doors open and the engine running.

  Steve looked around with his .45, not seeing any activity, undead or otherwise, and darted into the house. Josh followed suit and bolted inside. Steve went to his gun safe and grabbed his 7mm hunting rifle and a shotgun, along with a pair of handguns and holsters. Both handguns were 1911 .45’s that Steve was fond of and had collected over the past few years. Both guns were also loaded, with several boxes of spare ammo and clips. Steve quickly and silently handed one of the .45’s and a hunting shotgun, a Remington 870 in RealTree camouflage. Josh racked the shotgun and grabbed a box of 12 gauge 2 ¾ buckshot and stuffed it into the cargo pocket of his EMT pants. Steve shed his Star Ambulance shirt and grabbed a RealTree jacket that he used for hunting, with a built-in holster for his .45. He stuffed the handgun into the holster and grabbed the hunting rifle.

  Steve was not a tactical expert, nor a military or police veteran, but he knew his way around hunting more than anyone. He checked the chamber on the rifle as Josh grabbed another one of his jackets and took off his uniform shirt. He stuffed the .45 into the waistband of his pants and grabbed the shotgun. Both men paused at the same time as they realized that they both had heard the same sound emanating from the front of the house. They made eye contact and exchanged a devilish grin. They both calmly grabbed their respective guns and walked slowly to the front door.

  The zombies outside looked as if they had recently died, they were still moving about faster than the zombies that Steve and Josh had seen in video games and movies. They had not been the slow-moving George Romero zombies that they were accustomed to. It did not matter, however, they were locked and loaded and ready to go. Steve and Josh exchanged another look of anxious excitement. Steve raised the end of his rifle towards Josh to indicate a toast. Josh in turn laughed and raised the shotgun, clinking the barrels together gently.

  Steve grinned and opened the front door; at least a dozen zombies were now within earshot. He checked the bolt one more time and took off the safety on the rifle. Josh did the same with the shotgun, clicking the safety to make the gun hot. Steve raised the rifle from the front porch and aimed it to the head of the closest zombie.

  “Let’s go have some fun, shall we.”

  As the faint glow of impending sunrise came across the small town of Grundy, Virginia, gunfire could be heard coming from the small back road near the edge of town. Josh and Steve could tell they were outnumbered, but they did not care. They had friends out there amongst the undead, and they had plenty of ammo to go around.

  And they had work to do.

  THE END…?

  THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE

  “It is my duty as a Pararescueman to save lives and to aid the injured. I will be prepared at all times to perform my assigned duties quickly and efficiently, placing these duties before personal desires and comforts. These things I do, that others may live.”

  – USAF Pararescue creed –

  Captain Travis Myers closed his eyes and let the salty spray from the warm, inviting waters of the Gulf of Mexico waft over him. In the days and weeks following the end of the world he had managed little time to pause and reflect on what once was. The warm sunshine and smell of the ocean rose towards him and reminded him of better days, days when he and his family had taken short vacations to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and the same feel and smell had relaxed him into a blissful daze. The world had been simpler, better, and seemed like it was decades ago compared to now.

  He had lost two of his best friends and nearly his own life in pursuit of reaching help from whomever he could. Once he had reached the Gulf, not all was lost, but nearly so. A Georgia native with eight years in the Air Force, he was no stranger to being away from home. After serving five tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, he longed for home, wherever it may be now.

  Captain Myers, or “Moose” to his fellow pararescuemen, became lost in his own thoughts so much that he did not initially hear MA2 Hale tell him that they were two minutes out. Due to the lack of adequate personnel, MA2 Hale had been assigned to the crew as an impromptu communications officer. Hale was a master-at-arms – a Navy cop. Moose still had not completely familiarized himself with the rest of the crew he’d been assigned, but they were sly enough and smart enough to have made it this far.

  He was the lone officer among them, so he was in charge of the six aspects of CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue), which were prepare, report, locate, support, recover, and reintegrate isolated personnel and materials. A motley crew of a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, an Air Force PJ, two Navy Corpsmen populated the Seahawk, along with MA2 Hale and their pilot, an Army warrant officer named Shupe.

  There wasn’t much to choose from when it came to making a crew for the missions, but they somehow managed. There had been word from some of the other naval vessels and Coast Guard cutters that they nicknamed the units “ZBRA’s.” It was short for Zombie backup, rescue, and assault. It seemed a fitting name for what they did. Moose was Air Force pararescue. Their Coast Guard swimmer was PO1 Swafford or “Swamp Thing,” as he was called, and the two Navy corpsmen, HM2 Fox and HM2 Owens, made up the rest of the team.

  The team was upbeat after they had received news earlier that day. There had been a group of survivors aboard the USNS Mercy that had brought in a child. It was no ordinary child, however. The infant had been born while the mother had perished, giving the newborn extraordinary abilities to fight off the infection, effectively immunizing him. The limited resources on the Mercy were hard at work attempting to reproduce the antibodies and hopefully garnering enough knowledge to create a vaccine. It was a painfully slow process, but it was process nonetheless.

  The group that had brought the child in had travelled all the way from Virginia with the infant – Virginia! Moose was no less astonished that the crew had made it, let alone with a newborn baby. He and another group of sailors had rescued the group from a hospital in Alabama, delivered them to the USCGC Joshua James, and managed to save one of thei
r group members in the process. Rumors swirled the man they managed to get back from the brink of death was developing antibodies similar to the child.

  The Seahawk lurched upward as they neared the coastline of what had been Biloxi, Mississippi, fluttering Moose’s stomach for a brief moment. They had made berth from the USCGC Mohawk headed towards Kessler AFB. The base had been overrun just a few short days after the dead began to rise, and now – nearly a month later – sat derelict. No one was there to be rescued, no military unit left behind to try to hold the base together.

  Or so it appeared.

  The Mohawk received a dozen or more random radio transmissions per day, mostly from automated systems broadcasting everything from the weather to so-called “safe areas.” Most of the transmissions went unheeded by the crew; the Stephen Hawking-style voice was commonplace. One message, however, was not the work of an automated machine. Approximately two hours ago, a transmission sent in Morse code was received by the Mohawk, as well as other ships in the area. It was a simple message, but got to the point rather curtly.

  S.O.S. – Kessler AFB – Hangar 18 – help

  The message repeated twice and was on a third run when it abruptly stopped. Moose had been briefed by the Mohawk‘s communications officer and decided that it warranted a visit to Kessler AFB. Since there had been no indication of any activity in the area aside from the message, it seemed to be a safe bet. Commander McBride, the commander for the Mohawk, authorized the team to gather recon on the area and, if possible, secure any vital resources as well as rescue the victims. He advised there would be a Chinook standing by on the USS Nimitz to load up any assets that might be obtained from the venture.

  Moose stared out into the sea, barely making out the edge of the mainland. Fires still burned out of control and no attempt had been made at a large-scale attack of the mainland United States. The dead were simply too numerous for an all-out assault.