Apocalypse Atlanta (Book 1)

by David Rogers

  “The news said the military and the police and everything was falling apart.” a woman said from a booth fifteen feet away.

  “Yeah, but . . . we need help.”

  “We helped you.” Whitley pointed out.

  “Yeah, but we need more.” the man protested. “I mean, where are we supposed to go? Where’s safe?”

  “Maybe nowhere is safe.”

  “Why are we sitting in here?”

  “I’m hungry, I haven’t eaten in twelve hours.”

  Peter looked around as the aura of shock or fear or whatever seemed to break on all the civilians at the same time. They weren’t quite arguing, but they were trading comments and suggestions fast and furious. He walked over and tapped a couple of the soldiers on the shoulders.

  “Keep an eye out the windows, alright?”

  Leaving Smith, Nailor and Mendez to keep a look out, Peter headed for the kitchen. He was just about to go behind the counter when the lights in the restaurant abruptly came on. There was a general bout of cheering from the civilians, but it wasn’t enough to halt the back and forth that was still ongoing over what was happening, what to do about it, and where they should go next.

  “So, good news, the breaker was just tripped. Probably a surge or something.” Dorne said cheerfully as he emerged from the depths of the kitchen carrying a box labeled ‘ground beef patties, quarter pound’. “And Roper has grudgingly agreed to work the grill.”

  “Yeah, but you better get a couple more people back here to man the assembly line.” Roper said sourly from behind him. “I keep telling you I transferred out of kitchen services.”

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch. You hungry or not?” Dorne asked.

  “I could just make something for me.”

  “Hey, don’t be like that.”

  “I take it the freezer and stuff are still stocked.” Peter interjected.

  “Sure, plenty. Way more than we could eat even if we squatted in here for a couple of days with five times as many people.” Roper shrugged as he bent down and did something to the commercial sized grill that produced several rapid clicks.

  “Good.” Peter considered for a couple of seconds. “I’ll find at least three or four more people to help back here, and we’ll take a look through the convenience store for coolers and drinks and stuff.”

  “Soda fountains should be working.” Roper pointed out, holding his hand over the grill’s stainless steel surface.

  “Yeah, but there will be bottled stuff over there. And, probably, coolers or something. We can cook a bunch of stuff, grab some drinks, and take it all with us.”

  “I guess, but even with ice the burgers will probably only be good for the next day. Past that and we’re risking problems. And I don’t have any plastic or anything to wrap them with, so they might get soggy from the melting.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Peter said. “I’ll tell everyone I send back you’re in charge. If you want to step back and make someone else flip the burgers, that’s your call.”

  “See?” Dorne laughed. “You’re saved. If this was a damn Waffle House we’d have to wait for you to work your kitchen magic.”

  “Fuck you.” Roper said sourly. Peter left them to it and went back out front to find the civilians were still chattering away. He pulled Whitley, Swanson and Barker aside and told them to do a sweep through the store next door, then load enough bottled drinks, preferably water, to last at least two days.

  As they went over to the interior door separating the store from the Wendy’s, Peter stepped up onto a chair, then to a table top, and raised his hands over his head. “Hey, listen up.” Whitley smashed the glass on the door just then, and it was so effective in cutting through the din of cross talk he suspected she’d timed it that way on purpose.

  “Okay, here’s the plan.” Peter said into the sudden quiet. “First thing, who’s got any experience in a restaurant like this?”

  There was a long pause, then hands started going up. Peter pointed to five in sequence. “There’s enough food here for everyone to eat their fill, but we need hands to get it all ready. Any of you mind helping cook and prepare and so forth?”

  “Did you guys check everything back there?”

  Peter looked at Dorne, who was lingering near the counter. He nodded, and Peter repeated the gesture. “Two soldiers will be back there with you, and they’re both armed. But they can’t guard and cook at the same time, and I’d like to get out of here to someplace a bit more secure as soon as we can. So if you could help out, that’d be appreciated by everyone, I’m sure.”

  The five he’d indicated got up and headed back into the kitchen, and Peter regarded the rest. “Now, after we get a meal squared away for everyone, I’d suggest we transfer over to the hotels on the other side of the interstate.” He pointed west where, according to the signage on 75, two motels were supposed to be. “We can secure them and everyone can maybe grab a shower and some rest.”

  “Do you know what’s happening?” asked the same man who’d been helping the pregnant woman asked. She was sitting next to him, looking flushed and worried, but reasonably calm despite that.

  “I probably know about as much as you do.” Peter said. “We were soldiers, but now we’re just like you. Survivors.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Yeah, what are you saying?”

  Peter waved his hands quickly to try and forestall another outbreak of chattering. “What I’m saying is we’ve tried to get in touch with our superiors, and all attempts have failed. The National Guard base in Marietta is deserted, and as far as we could tell all of Atlanta is overrun by zombies. As far as I know, we’re on our own.”

  The words seemed melodramatically ominous, but they seemed to hit hard enough to still any automatic reactions to demand more information. Peter let them all think it over for a couple of seconds, then spread his hands and gave an expansive shrug.

  “To be perfectly blunt, I don’t know what the best answer is. I don’t know where’s safe and where isn’t. We heard that there might be parts of the federal government and military evacuating to somewhere, maybe the Midwest, but it’s effectively just a rumor for all the confirmation I have.

  “I’m glad we were able to rescue you. I’m glad everyone here is still alive. But beyond getting some food into you, and maybe finding you a secure location to shelter in, I don’t know what the big picture next step is.”

  “You’re not going to leave us?”

  “You can’t be serious – you have to stay and protect us.”

  “Come on, there’s fucking zombies everywhere and you’re talking about walking out on us?”

  Peter started to wave his hands, but another voice cut across the others sharply.

  “Settle the hell down.” BB shouted. Faces turned toward him to find he was glaring at everyone with a scowl. “These people risked their damned lives to rescue us, and not twenty minutes afterwards you’re haranguing them. Show some gratitude.”

  Silence. A few muttered ‘thank yous’ drifted out. The man sitting next to the pregnant woman stood up. “Look. I’m grateful. I really am. I don’t know how I can properly thank you for getting us out of that camp, so all I can do is just say thank you over and over. And I will if you want, until you’re sick of hearing me say it. Thank you, really.

  “But my wife here is due in about five weeks. I need to get her somewhere safe, and not just board the windows up safe either. I need to know where people are still holding it together, and get there. She’s gonna need a doctor, maybe sooner than we think. If asking about all that makes me an asshole, then fine. I’m an asshole. I’d rather be an asshole than not do everything I can to keep her and my child safe.”

  “What’s your name?” Peter asked, his voice firm but not unkind.

  “Steve.” the man said. “Harris. This is my wife, Carol.”

  “Mr. Harris. I’m not unsympathetic to your plight, to any of your plights. And I want to help. I just don’t know . . . I don’t kn
ow where to go. The phones are hit or miss everywhere we’ve gone. We got online briefly when we were still trapped in Atlanta and found out enough that we know things are really, really bad. But . . . beyond that, we’re just like you. Trying to figure this out as best we can.”

  “Well, are the phones working here?” another man asked.

  “Yeah, the power’s on. Maybe the phones are working too.”

  Peter glanced around, then pulled Amy’s cellphone out. Flipping it open, he thumbed the power button.

  “I don’t have any signal.”

  “Me either.”

  “What about the land lines?”

  Amy’s phone finished powering up as a young woman got up and went behind the counter. Peter eyed the screen, but it was showing no bars. When he tried nine-one-one, it flashed the ‘no signal’ message. As he shut it off and closed it back up, the woman came back shaking her head. “It’s just dead. No busy signal, no nothing.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Eat and rest.” Peter said. “Then, I don’t know. We’ll figure it out a step at a time.”

  “Got two zombies over here.” Mendez announced suddenly. Peter glanced over and saw two zombies emerging from the weed strewn grass on the far edge of the parking lot. They were making right for the restaurant. “Cover me, I’ll take care of them.”

  Peter started to suggest it might not be a good idea to make a lot of noise by shooting, then stopped himself. Now wasn’t the time to go silent. And with any luck they’d be out of here in fifteen or twenty minutes anyway. So he held his tongue and Mendez went outside and around the corner. Smith shifted, covering him through the windows.

  Mendez took his time, pulling his rifle in tight and clearly aiming carefully before he fired his first round. One of the zombies’ heads snapped back, and the walking corpse folded abruptly to the ground. Mendez glanced to either side of himself, then drew a bead on the second zombie and dropped him too.

  As he lowered his rifle, a resounding boom echoed across the area, like a titanic thunderclap. It wasn’t loud, exactly, but it was impossible to mistake, and it reverberated over and through the building over the course of several seconds. Before Peter could really register having done it, he was off the table top and crouching next to it. Most of the other soldiers had similarly gone to ground, and some of the civilians uttered cries of surprise.

  The echoing report seemed to move on after several seconds, and Peter cautiously straightened. He glanced around, but the noise seemed to have been just that; only a noise. There was no damage that he could see, no broken windows, nothing was on fire, and the scene outside the windows looked as normal as could be expected. As far as he could tell there was no threat.

  “What was that?”

  “Atlanta.” Smith said.

  Peter nodded, remembering. “That was probably the bombs we heard were going to be dropped on Atlanta.”

  “Oh shit, really?”

  “Why would they bomb Atlanta?”

  “If they’re dropping bombs, that means there’s still something left. I mean, doesn’t it? They can’t drop bombs if there’s no one left to fly the planes and stuff, right?”

  Peter realized most of the people in the room were looking at him. He shrugged once more. “Like I said, we’ll just have to take things as they happen. For now, let’s just eat, then we’ll see about resting and getting cleaned up. After that, maybe someone will have a good idea and we can go from there.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Nineteen – Day trip

  Jessica

  “Oh here you all are.” Jessica caught just a flash of Dennis’ exasperated eye roll before he fixed a slightly positive expression on his face and turned.

  Trudy Morris was a little more than ten years older than Jessica, and was aging as well as either good genes or – more likely in Jessica’s opinion – money paid out to cosmetic surgeons could allow for. Jessica had always found Trudy to be pleasant enough, but perhaps a little too artificial for her to truly like. Now, however, even with Trudy’s current behavior, Jessica had a hard time summoning anything but sympathy for the woman.

  The Morris children, Wendy and Robert, were both missing. Wendy was a student at Georgia Tech and lived downtown, in the middle of the worst of the outbreaks in the area. Robert had apparently been on a school fieldtrip to Fernbank, which was less than two miles from the CDC and Emory University, both also the sites of heavy zombie activity. Neither Wendy nor Robert had called, attempts to call them went unanswered, as did any calls Dennis and Trudy had made to their schools, teachers, or friends.

  Jessica didn’t say it, and Dennis very carefully didn’t either, but it was all but certain both of the kids were either dead or zombies. Certain enough there were no plans to go looking for them, even before Tyler’s people had almost all deserted. Almost entirely as a result of the likely fate of her children, Trudy was heavily dosed on Xanax, and it left her placid but with a pronounced tendency to fixate on activities.

  Now she held up a honest to God picnic basket, a large one, like you’d see in a romance film. “I packed a lunch for the trip. I was going to put it in the car, but the young man on the front porch wouldn’t let me past. Said I needed to talk to you Tyler. Can you get him to let me out?”

  “Honey, I’ll hang onto that. We’re not ready to go outside just yet.” Dennis said in a tone of forced calmness. Everyone except Trudy apparently heard the patience he was putting into his voice.

  His wife just nodded, smiling. “Okay, there’s a few more things I want to pack in the suitcases anyway. You just hang on to this then, and don’t go forgetting it. I made your favorite, ham and turkey with the horseradish.”

  “Thank you dear.” Dennis said, taking the picnic basket from her.

  Trudy nodded, and started to turn to leave, then stopped and fixed her glassy eyed gaze on Jessica. “Oh, Jessica, I found some of Wendy’s old clothes in one of the storage closets. I think some of them will fit Candice pretty well.”

  “That’s wonderful, thanks Trudy.” Jessica said, and she actually meant it as she put her hand against Candice’s back, unconsciously reassuring herself the girl was still here and safe.

  Jessica hadn’t protested much when Vanessa suggested Candice and Jessica not bother putting their damp and dirty clothes back on after the ‘exam’. However, there wasn’t another child in the house, young or otherwise, which left Jessica having to jury rig some clothing for Candice. Currently the girl was wearing a shirt big enough to qualify as a dress since it hung down to her knees, with a pair of old swim trunks underneath in lieu of proper underwear.

  She also refused to be separated from her mother, for any reason. Jessica hadn’t yet decided what she’d do when either of them had to go to the bathroom. It wasn’t like a house’s bathroom had separate stalls like a ‘commercial’ restroom did. She kept putting it out of her mind as something to worry about later.

  Jessica was in slightly better shape clothing wise, since she could fit into most of Trudy’s without a problem. In her case, the only real issue was Trudy was rather more busty than Jessica was, which left her completely unable to make use of any of Trudy’s bras. She felt a lot more undressed than she supposed she should without one, but she had compensated by wearing the tightest shirt she could find under a much looser one.

  “So, you were saying?” Dennis said, turning back to his brother as Trudy went back inside.

  Tyler Morris was a little bit taller than his older brother, but even though their hair and eyes were different colors, both were almost unmistakable as anything except family. They shared the same general features and builds, though Tyler’s was more athletic. And both had the same aura of competence, a uniform expectation of being able to handle anything that came along.

  “We’re still having trouble getting hold of anyone who knows anything about the federal evacuation plan. At least, who has updated information rather than rumor and speculation.” Tyler said as if he hadn’t just
been interrupted by the delivery of a picnic lunch at nine thirty in the morning. “I think it’s best if we just head straight for Knoxville. I don’t think we have the manpower to roam around picking people up, however much I’d like to get some of them on board.”

  “We’ve sent emails and left voicemails for most of them.” Vanessa said. “I’m sure any who are willing and able will to try to join us there.”

  “What makes you so sure we won’t have a repeat of what happened here when we get down to Knoxville?” Dennis asked, frowning slightly.

  Tyler smiled, but there was just a hint of tightness in his eyes that Jessica spotted. “Well, for one thing, there are only four caretaker staff on-site at the moment. They’re going to need the extra manpower to fully secure the Training Center. And there are other Eagle facilities in Knoxville we can divert to if we can’t utilize the TC for some reason.”

  “I still think we should head for the Lake Lanier property.” Dennis said, frowning harder.

  “No, that’s likely to be a draw for a lot of refugees.” Vanessa shook her head. “It could easily turn into a second or third wave outbreak area.”

  “I agree.” Tyler said, fixing his brother with a level stare. “Trust me, Knoxville is pretty small, too small to be able to fuel any massive hordes like Atlanta is suffering. It’s half an hour away from Macon, so there will be plenty of opportunities for scrounging without having to travel too far. And, as I said, there are a number of Eagle properties we can make use of.”

  “Dennis.” Jessica said, and held her expression without flickering as the others turned to look at her. “I think Tyler’s right. And Vanessa too. If we go to an Eagle property we’ll probably have reinforcements who’ll come to us, people who’ll fit in without raising a fuss.”

  “Not necessarily.” Dennis pointed out. “We could just be inviting a repeat of what happened here.”

  “Dennis.” Tyler frowned.

  “No Ty, you’re too close to it.” Dennis said a little sharply. “What if some of the stragglers show up armed and ready to fight to take control of the facility? Some of them could even be people who left here earlier.”