Dead Run_A Zombie Apocalypse Novel

by R. J. Spears

  It took nearly twenty seconds for the tide of pain to roll back out to sea, and when he opened his eyes, he saw flames. Fire outlined a large, dark form in front of him. Some comparative process fired off in his brain. The form looked different than past images flashing in his memories. It was canted at a strange angle, and he knew he had struck pay dirt. It was the chopper, and it was burning.

  Flames licked at the front of the truck, and he saw men running in his dimming field of vision. Each breath felt like a knife in his chest. He tasted blood in his mouth, thick and coppery.

  A voice yelled, but he couldn’t see where it was coming from. “Someone get a fire extinguisher. We can’t lose the choppers.”

  Russell tried to move his hands, but they felt numb and dead. Yet, he had to move them. If they got the fire out, then they might be able to save the chopper. That would make all he had done a waste.

  “Move your damn hands,” he said, but the words came out slushy and indistinct, sounding more like, “Moo you da hans.” The impact with the steering wheel had done a number on his teeth and mouth. Blood drooled off his lips onto his waist.

  The voice outside the truck shouted again, “See if the drivers dead or not.”

  Again, the alarm bells sounded inside Russell’s head. If they got him out of the truck, then they might be able to save the helicopters. That just couldn’t happen.

  He made his hands move. They lifted like broken wings from his lap, shaking furiously. The next step of his final plan required him to shift in his seat. Just a little, but each move seemed like someone was grinding glass inside his body.

  He nearly screamed, the pain was so bad, and blood burst from his mouth onto the steering wheel, but he pivoted slightly in the seat. His right hand fell upon the seat, but what he was after wasn’t there, and the panic began to rise again.

  Where was the bag?

  Where was the damn bag?

  He shifted in his seat again, and this time, he did scream.

  “That guy’s still alive in there, but he looks seriously messed up,” a voice said outside the window, close to yelling and obviously speaking to someone not in close proximity. “What should I do, Lieutenant?”

  The response came in a yell some distance away. “Get him out of there, Private!”

  Russell urged his body forward, still searching with this right hand. It slid forward on the seat and touched something. It was made of a soft, braided material, and he recognized it as the handle of the bag.

  He shifted on the seat sending a sharp, stabbing pain into his abdomen, but he ignored it and grabbed the handle, his hand feeling almost insubstantial and not a part of his body anymore. He pulled the bag next to his hips and pushed his hand down into it. It immediately found what it was looking for -- hard and cold. Now was the question as to whether he had the strength to lift it free.

  Whatever strength he needed, he reached deep and found it. He had held one of these babies before and he recognized its hard, metallic shell.

  The voice outside the truck spoke again and said to someone closer by, “Cover me, Thompson. This guy looks half-dead, but you never know.”

  A shrieking of metal sounded next to him, and Russell knew it was the soldier trying to open the door, but the impact of the crash had crimped the metal in such a way that the door resisted the effort.

  “Come on and open up, you son of a bitch,” the soldier said as he yanked at the door, putting his foot on the side of the truck while keeping his pistol trained on the door just in case the attacker had any tricks up his sleeve.

  Russell pulled his hand from the bag up to his chest, and his left hand came to meet it.

  The door gave way to the soldier’s last tug, and Russell felt the cool night air waft into the cabin. As badly as his hands were shaking, his right index finger looped into the pin and pulled it free.

  The soldier outside the truck screamed, “Grenade!”

  Jo jumped when she heard the explosion, and she looked through the woods back toward the complex. The trees blocked most of any details of what happened, but she saw a bright flash of white and yellow that dimmed some a few seconds later. The sound of the explosion rolled through the woods until it died out, leaving the forest quiet again.

  “What the hell did Russell do?” Del asked.

  Jo looked around to make sure there were no soldiers in the area. After leaving their hiding place, they had taken a path that led them through the woods in a wide arc around the complex. At times, they had to slow down or even stop as they saw soldiers stream out of the woods and toward the complex, an obvious response to whatever Russell was up to.

  “Should we try the walkie?” she asked.

  Del looked down at the walkie-talkie that had been dangling at his waist. “Oh shit, I should have done this minutes ago.” He retrieved it and turned it on. “I turned it off because I didn’t want the soldiers to hear it.”

  He had barely turned it on when Madison’s voice flowed out of the tiny speaker. “Jo, Del, are you there? Please, please talk to me. Something’s happened.”

  Del immediately pressed the talk button and said, “Madison, this is Del. Jo is with me. What’s wrong, honey?”

  He let up on the talk button and Madison replied. “He ditched me and took the truck. He left me alone in the woods.” She stopped talking but kept transmitting. Jo moved in close to Del to hear the walkie-talkie better. It was easy to hear that Madison was crying. “I think Russell is dead. I didn’t see everything because I had to run to the edge of the woods. He was driving around the buildings, and the soldiers were shooting at him. Then the last thing I saw was Russell ramming the truck into one of the helicopters, knocking it over. Then the truck exploded.”

  Madison was crying full out then. Both Del and Jo could hear her sobs.

  Jo’s legs felt like they had turned to rubber, and she slowly leaned into Del for support. “Oh God, what have I done?”

  This ‘do or die’ mission had turned into just that, but it was only a ‘die’ mission, taking one of their own and letting another one be captured. There were few worse ways for it to turn out, and Jo began to doubt all of her decisions. It had been utter insanity to think they could take on a complex of soldiers. When they had left, the soldier’s numbers had been depleted, but now, it seemed they were restocked, loaded, and ready for war.

  They should have turned around as soon as they saw all those new soldiers, but they were on a mission. Never mind that there was only five of them, including a man with a serious brain injury and a barely teenage girl. Add to the fact that there was dissension in their ranks and this whole operation was doomed before it started.

  She should have insisted they abort as soon as Jones set down his new rules. Tears filled her eyes, and Del saw them glinting in the moonlight.

  “No, no,” Del said. “You can’t go there.”

  “If I hadn’t insisted we take out those helicopters, Russell would still be alive.”

  Del had to work to keep Jo from collapsing. “Come on, Jo,” he said in a quiet voice. “We all do the best we can, and if that’s not good enough, then it just has to do.”

  “It’s not good enough,” she replied, her voice thick and breaking.

  But there could be no time for self-pity. Survival didn’t care how badly you were broken.

  Madison’s voice came out of the speaker on the walkie-talkie, “What should I do?” As bad as Jo sounded, Madison’s plaintive cry was heartbreaking. She had just seen a friend die, and she was alone in the woods with soldiers possibly searching for her.

  Del pressed the talk button and spoke in a slow, clear voice, “Do you remember where we hid that Jeep, Madison?”

  It took a moment for Madison to respond. “Yes.”

  “Do you think you can get there?”

  Again she responded. “Yes.”

  “Get there as fast as you can,” Del said. “Don’t wait for anything. Jo and I will meet you there.” He paused and closed his eyes for a moment then
opened them and added, “If we don’t get there in thirty minutes, you have to go on without us. You hear?”

  Static filtered back to them for several seconds then Madison said, “Yes.”

  “We’ll do our best to get there. Now go.”

  He held the walkie-talkie to his ear for a few more seconds, but Madison didn’t say anything else. She was a survivor. She had lost everything, and she had found the will to go on. Del knew he needed Jo to get back with that program.

  She still leaned hard into him, as if she couldn’t stand on her own. He felt her body shaking with quiet sobs, and he let her have thirty seconds. They just couldn’t spare any more.

  “That little girl needs us,” he said to Jo in a gentle tone.

  Jo didn’t react, and Del wasn’t sure what to do next. He was afraid to play it too tough. He had never seen Jo this broken. Then the cold cruel world made up both their minds as the sound of footsteps came from behind them and instinct took over.

  Jo pushed off Del and went into a crouch as she pulled up her rifle. Del whipped up his rifle and readied himself for whatever was coming, but he wasn’t confident they could handle a half-dozen soldiers.

  A grunt and a low moan told him that soldiers weren’t coming. It was their old friends, zombies. They never let you take your guard down. They never let you rest. They were as ever-present as the wind, and they were as relentless as they were ruthless. They didn’t care if your whole family was killed. They wanted their pound of flesh. And then a pound more and even more after that.

  “Shit,” Del said.

  Jo said, “How many do you see?”

  “Four, maybe five. All the noise must have brought them in.”

  “We can’t shoot them. The soldiers will hear that.”

  “Well, that leaves hand-to-hand or running.”

  Jo let out a long breath. “I’m not up to the hand-to-hand shit. At least, not now.”

  “Then let’s get to running,” Del said and gave her arm a gentle tug as he started off away from the zombies. Inside, he groaned at having to run again. It seemed to be a constant in their lives, and he wondered if it would ever end.

  Chapter 52

  Captive

  Sergeant Nathaniel Jones drifted in and out of consciousness. His memory was fractured, coming at him in fuzzy snapshots. He saw himself in the field clutching his leg, pain tearing through his calf. The next image was a view of the tree line -- so far away, as he inched toward it. The final slide was an image of his point of view looking up as soldiers surrounded his prone body. The perspective made them look like giant statues - statues with their guns trained on him.

  His eyes were closed, but he was on the move. He also knew he was in a vehicle because it bounced up and down the way a car or a truck did when it rode along uneven ground. The pain in his leg was down to a dull throb, and he had a slight narcotic buzz going on. While his thought processes were muddy, as if his brain were made out of cotton candy, he guessed they had given him some morphine for the pain. That thought led to a question, and he wondered why he was still alive, but he gave up on that line of questions and just went along for the ride, both figuratively and chemically.

  The vehicle he was riding in slowed and came to a stop. Jones listened but didn’t open his eyes, a childish phrase echoing from deep in memory -- what you can’t see can’t hurt you. He knew better, of course, but again went with it. It was far better than reality.

  There was a metal clanking noise and then the vehicle started moving again. It ran over something of substantial size because Jones felt the vehicle lurch up in the air, the motion coming from the front of the vehicle, then the back end rose up. Jones’ head came off the surface it was lying on and bounced off it. The impact of his head with the surface was a bit of a buzzkill, but the situation went back to normal, and he was serene again.

  A few seconds later, dim light filled the vehicle then it came to a gentle stop again. Jones was grateful for the driver’s thoughtfulness. He didn’t want anything interrupting his little trip again.

  Jones sensed that the source of the light was outside the vehicle. That was confirmed when he heard a metallic clicking sound then a slight creaking noise, and a brighter intensity of light reached Jones’ eyes. Even though they were closed, he sensed the change of intensity of the lights through his eyelids.

  Oh no, a voice said inside him. Don’t let the nasty old light ruin your trip.

  But it did.

  There was a lot of movement around him, feet moving, little grunts of exertion, then he felt himself being lifted with grunts of effort. Sergeant Jones was not a little man.

  He floated along in the air, feeling light as a feather. It was almost peaceful, except for all that damned light. The light level went up several degrees and forced him to scrunch his eyes closed against it.

  His ethereal trip ended in a jarring crash as whatever he was being carried on left the hands of the carriers, leaving him in free fall. The impact forced Jones to open his eyes.

  The next problem came with his focus. Blurry figures towered over him, the backlight forming halos about their heads. Despite his drug-induced state, he knew these were soldiers, and they were not good news. A slight sense of alarm broke through the drugs, and he decided it was time to get a little more serious.

  That was easier said than done as the effects of the morphine weren’t ready for surrender. Some voice inside told him just to surrender to the drugs. If these soldiers were going to kill him, he might as well let them do it when he was less there, but Jones knew this was the easy way out.

  One of the figures bent at the knees and lowered itself down, looking down on Jones, blocking out the light to some degree. The figure pushed out a hand and grabbed Jones’ face and squeezed it. This was no grandmother’s love pinch when she said how cute you were. This was a forceful grasp, feeling more like a pair of metal tongs.

  “Come on, Jonsey, come out of it,” the figure said, its voice sounding far away.

  The figure looked over its shoulder and asked, “How much morphine did you give him?”

  No one answered, so the figure returned its attention to Jones. “Jonsey, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.” The figure stood up and said, “Get him to lock-up. We’ll deal with him soon enough.”

  Jones closed his eyes again and drifted away into the darkness of unconsciousness.

  Chapter 53

  Road Weary

  Brother Ed had barely stopped the truck when Kara appeared by the passenger window. Even in the dark, I could see the concern in her expression. Over her shoulder, I saw the dark outline of a huge barn that I recalled from all my trips up the road to Columbus in the past. It had been a farmers’ market run by the same family for years, maybe decades. The name escaped me and probably would forever.

  Anyway, they had the best sweet corn and apple cider, depending on the time of year you visited. In the fall, they sold pumpkins of all shapes and sizes. Of course, there would be no more visiting. They were not only closed for the season -- they were closed forever as was the rest of the world. I restrained an audible sigh.

  “Joel, are you okay?” she asked. “You look like you’ve been washed with charcoal.”

  “I look that good?” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

  She took my cue and said, “No, you look worse.”

  “Seriously, I’m okay,” I said and heard the fatigue in my voice. Up until that moment, I hadn’t taken into account the strain of the day. That was the way of the zombie apocalypse - relentless and uncaring.

  The sound of footsteps on gravel came from behind Kara, and a couple seconds later, Jason’s face appeared over Kara’s left shoulder looking somber. A second later, the tip-top of Naveen’s head came over her right shoulder. Her face was discernible in the dim light.

  “Joel, Joel, Joel,” Naveen said, her voice rose in pitch each time she said my name.

  “I’m here, Naveen, I’m here,” I said.

  Naveen shoved
by Kara, who gave way. Naveen got on the running board of the truck, reached into the window, and did her best to give me a hug, despite my appearance. It was good to know I was loved no matter what condition I was in. But I wondered why it was Naveen giving me the hug and not Kara.

  Kara tapped Naveen on the shoulder and said, “That’s probably enough.” When Naveen reluctantly disengaged with me, Kara leaned in. At first, I thought she was coming in for a kiss, but instead, she craned her neck, trying to see what was in the back seat of the truck.

  “No Linda or Chelsea?” she asked.

  Any happiness I had over getting to see the people that mattered most to me in the world dissipated. “They left going east. I didn’t ask where because I didn’t want to know...just in case.”

  “Brother Ed told us about their tracker,” Kara said. She paused a moment and looked to the ground then looked up, and I could tell she had a question that she didn’t want to ask. So, she let it out as cautiously as she could. “Brent?”

  All I did was shake my head. With Naveen there, I didn’t want to be explicit, but in truth, she was smart enough to know what had wordlessly been communicated, and it showed in her body language as her shoulders fell.

  Jason’s hand extended into the cab holding a note. “When do we leave?”

  All my body and soul wanted to do was rest. To lay down to sleep to forget the world for a week. When I quickly reassessed how I truly felt, I wanted to make it two weeks.

  Instead I said, “There is no rest for the wicked. We need to leave right away.”

  I left out the fact that we could have an insane Colonel and his bloodthirsty crew coming up the road at any minute, but I’m sure they already knew that.

  “Let us grab our things,” Kara said. She started to walk away, but Naveen stood still, her head down.