Chronicles of the Undead | Book 1 | Urban Gridlock

by Hernandez, Jaime

  Max nodded then left the elevator lobby and stepped back into the hallway. The zombies were there, but they were spread out. They went back to their exhausting work of killing them one by one. When they rounded the corner, they found a nearly empty hallway that ran the length of the building. They both heaved sighs of relief at the brief respite before them. They made it halfway down the hallway before Jesse brought his hammer down on one. The skull splintered and it dropped instantly. Max stepped forward to kill the next one. It was grabby so he held it back with one arm while he used his other to plunge his screwdriver through its eye and deep into its brain. Next they saw a zombie on its knees feeding on a body on the floor. It slowly raised its head when it heard them and started to stand but was brought down abruptly with the swing of Jesse’s hammer.

  They were amazed at how the dead would abandon a meal in favor of a potential new one. It was terrifying. But neither man could give into fear right now and continued forward running purely on adrenaline.

  Near the end of the hallway they saw two small dead children. “Jesus Christ,” Max muttered to himself. They were both so little, no more than five or six, probably brother and sister. The little girl had rings of bite marks going up and down her arm and was missing fingers from both hands. The boy had been bitten on his neck and shoulder and his left cheek was missing; exposing the side of his jaw and his baby teeth. Max imagined they had probably been attacked by their own parents. His eyes felt the slightest bit misty, but he forced himself to trudge forward. He grabbed the boy by his hair and thrust the screwdriver through the boy’s ear. As he reached for the little girl, her vacant eyes seemed to focus on him, and her lips opened in a snarl as she prepared to bite. He grabbed her by the hair and pushed the screwdriver through her ear, as he had done with her brother.

  Jesse had just cracked another skull of an adult woman then looked at Max. They shared a look, and then they moved forward together. They were almost done. The hallway in front of them held the window they sought at the very end. They moved among the dead, swinging their hammers and plunging their screwdrivers almost mechanically. At the end of the hall, they checked to their left and double checked behind them to make sure that no stray zombies were left standing. They saw nothing. It was quiet.

  They knew that another elevator door could open and bring a group of zombies at some point but there was nothing that could be done about that. Many of the rooms might still be occupied, but the dead seemed unable to open any doors. They had made it to their destination.

  The glass in the oversized window was shatterproof, but Max and Jesse weren’t concerned with that. They knew it would break after enough hits from their hammers. “Nearly there brother,” Jesse said. They both swung their hammers. Surprisingly quickly, the glass splintered. After that it only took a few more solid hits before it broke.

  Jesse and Max looked down at the small patch of roof that sat about two feet below the window and climbed out onto it. From there they walked onto the roof of the parking garage. They continued to the farthest point, where there was a ten foot drop to the roof of the lower attached parking garage that was used for valet parking.

  “We should go down. Get on the other side of those AC units,” Max pointed at the industrial sized AC units just past the center of the roof below them. “We’ll be clear of the dead and we’ll still be able to see a lot from three stories up,” Max said.

  Jesse nodded in agreement. The drop was only about ten feet. There was no need to use rope or their safety harnesses, so they dropped all four back packs to the roof below and then positioned themselves to jump. They worked their way over the edge, held tight with their hands and let themselves drop the remaining four feet or so without any problem. There was some sort of maintenance floor between the top parking level and the roof of the garage they had just dropped from so they weren’t exposed to any open walls of the parking garage. Three stories up on the roof of a building they were relatively safe for the time being.

  All around them on the streets below were scenes of horrific violence and chaos. Fires burned around the city, but for the most part they couldn’t see which buildings were on fire. Smoke hung in the air and flames burned in the distance. The streetlights illuminated what looked like thousands of dead shuffling about on the streets below. They could see occasional headlights in the distance but for the most part the streets were gridlocked. Cars held captive both the alive and the dead alike. The cars that held the living were surrounded by the dead who pushed and banged on the windows in an attempt to get to the meals held within. The zombies packed so tightly around those cars that it was inevitable that they would get to the people within. The glass would press inward until it broke.

  Other than the soon to be dead trapped within their cars, Max and Jesse didn’t see a single living person anywhere. The zombies had fully taken over the city. It had taken less than a day. And it had taken Max and Jesse nearly nine hours to fight their way through the hotel. Night had fully fallen. Max checked his phone. No signal. Jesse did the same.

  They settled on the far end of the roof behind some industrialized cabinets and air conditioning units. They were well out of view from the broken hotel window and they could see a little more of the city from their new position. It felt safe enough for them to drop their packs, but they wore their tool belts keeping their hammers and screwdrivers within easy reach. They sat down and rested their backs against one of the units.

  Max pulled out one of the packs of cigarettes he’d found earlier, lit one for Jesse then pulled one out for himself. Both men sat quietly, adrenaline long since exhausted, and enjoyed their cigarettes.

  Chapter 8

  Day 1

  As the garage door opened Michelle’s eyes were glued to the rearview mirror. Joey watched the screen on the center console where an image of whatever was behind the vehicle popped up on the screen whenever the SUV went in reverse. The door seemed to open in slow motion. There were at least a hundred zombies across the street and many of those turned their heads in the direction of their garage as the door slowly opened. She hoped to speed out of the driveway before they could move in her direction. She wasn’t sure how her SUV would handle if she had to mow any of them down with her car.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” Michelle yelled at the garage door. A half dozen of the dead were already crossing the street toward her driveway. With the door finally open, she hit the gas and reversed around the growing cluster of zombies, but she backed over at least two of them. There was an incredibly loud pop as one of their skulls was flattened under her rear tire. She desperately hoped no bone had pierced the tire.

  Upon hearing the skull being crushed and seeing the zombies nearly surrounding them, Lucia let out a loud scream. “Shut up!” yelled Joey, “We have to help Mom see what’s around us.”

  “Sorry,” Lucia said quietly. “Mom, there’s a huge crowd coming from the right.” Upon hearing that, Michelle finished backing down the driveway and turned to the left. The dead were there too, but most of them were behind them or flowing from the neighbor’s house and yard. She hit the gas hard.

  She immediately hit several of them head-on but they flew to the sides of the SUV rather than underneath the tires. She was counting on being able to drive to Anna and Max’s. Her initial thought had been to avoid hitting the dead at all costs, but that plan quickly proved to be impossible.

  Michelle swerved around several of the dead scattered in the road. The crowd of zombies was now half a block behind them, but there were scattered dead nearly everywhere she looked. Just ahead were four zombies shuffling slowly in the road. Upon hearing her SUV, they all took a step or two forward and toward the middle of the road. Michelle tried to pass them on her left but hit one of the dead that had been on the far right.

  The zombie had formerly been a twenty-something blond woman dressed in a white tank top and jean shorts. Her body seemed to cartwheel up and over the front of the SUV, landing with a loud thud against the windshield. Her vacan
t eyes stared through the glass and she raised one perfectly manicured hand as if trying to reach through the windshield. Bite marks ringed her neck and left arm. Her left hand was missing most of its fingers, most likely defensive wounds from attempting to fight off her own attacker. But her untouched manicured right hand began to scratch and push on the windshield. Her lips were ringed with bright red blood from a recent meal and blood ran down her chin onto her white top. Her left hand with its missing fingers joined with her right in trying to push through the windshield.

  All three of them let out a startled yelp at the intrusion then Michelle veered hard left to try to knock the dead woman off of her windshield. The dead woman barely moved an inch, so Michelle tried to weave hard to the right then back to the left with no success. The woman seemed to be glued to their car. Her view obstructed by the dead woman; Michelle sped up with the intention of braking hard to try to throw the woman off. She didn’t see the two zombies in front of her as she unexpectedly mowed them down and heard two more skulls crunch under the tires of her SUV.

  Through this, the dead woman still clung to the windshield. Upon impact with the two zombies that fell beneath the tires, the dead woman found the necessary momentum to hit the windshield with her hands hard enough to crack it. Michelle sped up then slammed on the brakes, the woman finally fell from the car but not before causing the entire windshield to form a spider web of cracks.

  “Fuck it! I can’t see,” Michelle hollered. Quick to respond, Joey grabbed a shotgun and used the butt of it to knock the windshield loose from the car, just in time for Michelle to see another zombie and swerve around it.

  “One block down, Mom,” Lucia called from the back seat. “Only two more before you can take a left.”

  It was usually about a two minute drive to Max and Anna’s house if they used the main road and about a five minute drive if they circled through the back roads. Michelle felt certain that they should avoid the busy main road, but it had just taken them ten minutes to get through the first block. She could only hope that the SUV would get them all the way there.

  Michelle glanced in her rearview mirror and saw that they had gained quite a following. Well over a hundred of the dead were following them and even more slowly stumbled from houses they had passed. There wasn’t anything she could do about all of the noise they were making but she was glad to learn that they were attracted to noise. She filed that away to give more thought to later on. Right now she had to make it two more blocks so they could make their first turn.

  Even with the parade of the dead slowly shuffling along behind them Michelle felt it necessary to take it slowly. If another zombie were to be thrown up onto their hood, they no longer had a windshield to offer any protection. The dead were spread much further apart ahead of her, so it was easier to weave around them. As she passed some of them, they could hear the raspy howls and the sounds of hands that occasionally made contact with the side of their SUV. In one particularly tight squeeze, one of the dead pressed his face against Michelle’s window, leaving a brackish bloody smear behind. When the zombie’s face pressed onto Lucia’s window, she gave it a glare that only a teenage girl could. On Joey’s side, she heard the rake of fingernails as several hands attempted to grasp the side of the vehicle as they passed.

  Michelle pressed forward dodging the dead here and there, nearly to the turn that would bring them closer to their destination. Half a dozen zombies were directly in front of her about a hundred yards up the road. They were placed perfectly to block her from making the left turn.

  “Hold on!” Michelle yelled to Lucia and Joey. The house on the left corner had a large front yard so she sped up and turned left jumping the curb and driving through the yard bypassing the road itself entirely. The tires on her SUV slid through the grass flattening it as she drove. At the sidewalk, she made a hard left to dodge the metal post of a streetlamp that had been directly in her path. For a moment she pushed the SUV forward, straddling the sidewalk and green lawn until two zombies appeared in front of her. She took a hard right to turn back onto the road and missed a fire hydrant by mere inches.

  “Holy fuck!” yelled Lucia. “Mom, look out!”

  At least a dozen zombies were standing in the middle of the street. Hearing their approaching SUV, all of the dead began stumbling toward the front of their car. Michelle tried to dodge them but there were too many. Several glanced off either side of the SUV, taking her driver side mirror with them. She plowed into more than half of them. At least three of them were mowed down under the car and they heard the loud pop of two skulls as they were flattened under the tires. The front passenger side of the car immediately dipped as a skull fragment pierced the tire.

  A dead man dressed in a suit and tie landed on the hood of the car. His right ear and all of the skin on the right side of his face were missing, exposing shattered teeth and blackish blood on the side of his head. The blood trailed down his neck onto his formerly white dress shirt. His hands, lacking several fingers, were blood covered and sought to grab purchase on the hood of the SUV. As Joey tried to push him off with the butt of the shotgun, Michelle heard Lucia begin to scream as two of the dead attempted to push through her window.

  Michelle grabbed her 9mm and shot the dead man on the hood. She hit the gas and the SUV moved forward, the front passenger side tire getting lower by the second. They had a brief respite with none of the dead in their path. The number of zombies trailing behind them was growing rapidly, but they were falling further away as Michelle continued forward with the twice dead man still on the hood of her SUV. She took the next right turn which brought a change in scenery. The houses were spread much further apart on large parcels of land. It was a little bit of country before actually hitting the true rural areas a little further to the west.

  “I’m going to drive on that flat tire until we find a good place to stop,” Michelle said, “or until this damn car won’t go any further.” She desperately wanted to get the dead man’s body off the hood but couldn’t risk stopping yet.

  “Mom if you can get to the turn up ahead there’s that barn just past that first sharp curve,” Lucia suggested.

  That turn would take them slightly off their route to Max and Anna’s house, but it might be the safest place for them to go right now. The tire was already nearly flat. They weren’t going to make it all the way there in the SUV as Michelle had hoped. But if they could get around that sharp curve in the road and pull their car up behind the barn, they would be out of sight of their pursuers. It may give them a chance to lose their dead followers and catch their breaths before planning their next move.

  “Good idea Lucia,” Joey told her as she beamed. “There’s that big fancy house with the huge yard, then a bunch of trees before the property line with the barn. If you can get around the curve fast enough, they won’t be able to see us through the trees. They definitely won’t see us behind the barn.” His voice gave away his excitement at the thought of having the perfect hiding space.

  Everyone who lived in the area knew of the ‘big red barn by the fancy house’. For some reason, a mansion had been built right at the sharp curve in between farmhouses that sat on large parcels of land. Any reference to the barn or the fancy house was immediately understood by nearly everyone.

  “Let’s do it,” Michelle replied. The dead were slowly falling further behind them as she pushed the car forward. Just ahead on the right, they saw two zombies shuffling around in a yard. By the time the dead realized that they were there, they had already blown past them in their SUV. They didn’t pass any more zombies as Michelle made the turn. This little bit of country road was entirely different from the streets they had started on. The houses were few and far between and there were no dead in their immediate vicinity. She felt sure that this plan was going to work.

  They came up on the sharp curve quickly. The large group of dead that were relentlessly pursuing them were a half mile behind them now and disappeared from view completely as they rounded the curve.
Michelle passed the ‘big fancy house’ as Joey had described it, then the small bit of woods. She abruptly made a sharp left turn with the woods on her left and acres of green grass on her right. She winced as the SUV bounced along the slight dirt driveway unable to maneuver effectively around the hidden holes where the path had been washed out in places. She closed in on the old big red barn quickly, slowed the SUV and pulled behind the barn.

  “Joey, go see if the barn door is unlocked. If it is, open it and I’ll pull inside. Take your gun,” Michelle instructed.

  “Lucia, watch the woods on the tree lines on the side and back,” Michelle said. “I’m going to see if we lost our tail.”

  Joey hopped out and quietly approached the barn door as he watched his surroundings. He listened for sounds of the dead, especially from the wooded area but heard nothing out of the ordinary. A big farmhouse sat on the opposite end of the property, nearly two acres away from the barn. Between the barn and the house sat lush fields of grass, several large gardens, a grape trellis that ran a hundred feet in length and a cluster of apple trees.

  As Joey approached the oversized barn doors, Michelle hurried from the car with her 9mm and watched for signs of the dead on the distant road. Everything beyond the sharp curve in the road was out of her field of vision. Taking a careful look from behind the back corner of the barn, she didn’t see any dead coming around the curve. She walked quietly to the opposite rear corner of the barn to see if there were any zombies coming from the other direction. There were five or six barely visible a little ways down the road. They were far enough away that as long as they kept quiet, the dead probably wouldn’t turn toward the barn.

  Michelle heard the sound of wood scraping lightly against metal and turned to see that Joey was struggling with the barn door. The slight sound seemed incredibly loud in the silence behind the barn. She hurried over to help him until the heavy door was propped open at a 90 degree angle, leaving just enough room to pull the SUV inside. A quick look inside the door confirmed that there was plenty of space for their vehicle. Joey waited at the door ready to close it once his mom pulled their car inside.