ZPOC: The Beginning

by Laybourne, Alex

  Nobody knew what to say to offer the man any comfort. They had not found themselves buried under a pile of rotting corpses, each one intent on tearing away a mouthful of his flesh. It was James who stood from the table and put his arms around Taron, in a hug that can only be given by a child.

  Henry beamed, as his body warmed from the inside. His son was good, and considering everything they had faced, he still managed to keep that spark of simple innocence. It was remarkable.

  “We get to live,” James said, his voice soft, not a whisper but a soft tone that carried a world of emotion that a child of his age should not need to understand or be able to add to their words.

  Taron raised his head from the table. He was crusted over with gore, and a thick glob of something dangled from his ear.

  “That we do … but not here. This isn’t living.” Taron turned his head from James and looked at the others.

  “What do you mean?” Henry asked, his eyes narrowing as he looked at his friend.

  “I mean this place, staying here, it’s not living. We are hiding.” Taron’s voice gained strength as he spoke, sitting up straighter in his chair. “We built this for an emergency, to hide away and survive. That’s why we spent so much money over the years. It was lunacy, but we did it, and now … now that the time has come, I realize that hiding isn’t the way to live. Hiding away from the world, locking ourselves underground, we may as well be dead.”

  James flinched at the words, and a whimper escaped his lips.

  “Taron, please,” Henry said, looking at the frightened expression on his son’s face. Holding out his arms, James moved to him, almost falling into his father’s embrace.

  “I don’t mean to scare you, James, or any of you, but it’s the truth. The world has changed, that’s for damned sure, but the facts remain the facts. Living is about more than just surviving. When I was out there, surrounded by them, even though I knew I was going to die, I felt more alive than I have since this whole thing went down.” Taron straightened up as he talked and appeared on the verge of rising before he was interrupted.

  “So you are saying you wished we left you to die?” Hector snapped, his patience wearing thin.

  Taron gave a choked laugh as he settled back down.

  “No, I’m grateful to you for that. I’m just saying that this allowed me to see the bigger picture. We don’t have to live like this. We can go out there, fight back, and rebuild.” Taron’s eyes gleamed from behind the layer of gore.

  “I don’t understand,” Henry spoke, as he saw Vanessa begin to stir on the bed deeper in the shelter. “We are together here, we are a family. There is nothing that can tear us apart.”

  “Mommy,” James called out.

  “That’s all true, but there are so many people out there, and those things. It’s not radiation, or mutants. We are not fighting terrorists with hidden bombs and conspiracies. We are talking about fighting the dead. They are slow and brainless. Together, we … the survivors … we can fight back. We don’t need to fear them.” Taron rose to his feet as if his defiance would help sway their minds.

  James slid from his father’s lap and moved toward his mother, who was walking groggily toward the table.

  Henry called him back, Hector jumped up from the table, and Taron turned around, just as Vanessa sank her teeth into Taron’s throat, tearing away a thick chunk of flesh. The sounds of her teeth puncturing his skin were no different than if she were eating a tomato from their garden back home.

  Taron tried to scream, but all that came out was a thick gout of dark crimson blood. It spewed from the hole in his neck like water from the blowhole of a surfacing whale. The spray covered Vanessa, who stood chewing the mouthful of wet meat, while juices dribbled from the corners of her mouth.

  Henry felt his world slow down, as everything around him lost focus. Taron fell to the floor, revealing Vanessa like a falling curtain on a matchmaking gameshow.

  Hector lunged forward but slipped in the spreading pool of blood that covered the floor, and could only watch on as Vanessa swallowed her mouthful of meat and grabbed at James, whose momentum toward the creature that used to be his mother, was too great to be reversed.

  Henry screamed as fear consumed him, and as his world fell to black, the last thing he heard was his son screaming.

  Read on for a free sample of Bad Day For The Apocalypse

  June 5: St. Joseph

  Chapter 1

  Raindrops pounded the restaurant windows in windblown sheets as Nikki Holleran cleared Table Six; the few cars in the parking lot, half of them owned by employees, occasionally invisible in the torrent. Three tables of customers dotted the dining area at Hooligans in St. Joseph, Missouri. It was Friday, 7:30 p.m. Prime dining time. Tonight, nothing. No crowd, no hum of conversation, no line of people at the door, no lucky ones holding pagers waiting for a table to open. Just a young couple, two locals drinking beer at a table next to the bar and high fiving each other over the ball game on TV, and a fat businessman eating a porterhouse in Nikki’s section.

  “This sucks.”

  Nikki looked up from a plate of half-eaten cheeseburger to find Tammy leaning against the back of the booth, the top of her uniform plunging low. Nikki hated the Hooligans waitress uniforms. She wore hers buttoned high, keeping herself in check, but the waist was much too snug for her figure to fit anything but awkwardly in the tight uniform. Tammy wore it expertly.

  “The rain?”

  “The rain, the two guys in the bar who call me Jugzilla every time I walk by, all the people who were smart enough to call in sick tonight. Everything just sucks.” Tammy was 23, a fifth-year senior at nearby Missouri Western State Community College and hated everything through a seductive smile. Nikki’s tips were good because she was a good waitress; Tammy’s were better.

  Nikki scooped the dirty silverware from the table and dropped them into a bus tub. The bus boys had called in sick tonight; all of them, which is understandable because bussing tables is the worst job at a restaurant. Americans, given the knowledge someone else will clean up after them, soil everything they touch.

  “There weren’t many people in my summer class today, either,” Nikki said. “And half of them looked confused. Not hangover confused, it’s like they didn’t know why they were there. Something must be going around.”

  “Well I’m not catching it. I don’t have time to be sick. I have my midterm next week,” Tammy said, slowly standing straight. “Oh, those assholes are waving at me. I gotta go. If you hear a scream, it’s one of them.”

  Nikki wiped the rest of the discarded curly fries and great spots of ketchup from the table into the bus tub with a damp rag, and worked her way back to the kitchen. She slid the tub on a wire rack next to Benny, the assistant manager at Hooligans, who worked the dishwasher tonight out of necessity.

  “Tough night?” he asked, smiling as he pushed the tub into the stainless-steel steaming monster, and slammed the door. The regular dishwashers had called in sick as well; two of the wait staff, too. That left Benny to man everything, and he did what he needed to do. Nikki liked him. For an assistant manager, he was a nice enough guy. Friendly, fair, and newly married, so at least with Benny, every waitress’s boobs were their own. Nikki returned his smile.

  “Tough for all the wrong reasons,” she said.

  “We’re just lucky the weather’s shit. If we got slammed. Whew. We’d be in trouble.”

  “What do you think’s going around?” she asked, grabbing an empty tub. “It’s summer. It’s not like it’s sniffle season.”

  Benny shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “H1N1? Bird flu? Swine flu? Brown bottle flu? Some guy on MSNBC today claimed the UN let loose the zombie virus to curb the world’s seven billion or so population.” He paused and grinned again. “But you know how they are at MSNBC.”

  Nikki nodded even though she didn’t know what he was talking about, but she did know if a wave of illness caught the attention of the talking heads on cable, there might be so
mething to it.

  “Did the news report talk about symptoms?”

  Benny opened his mouth, but his words didn’t have the time to come out.

  “Benny,” Tammy said, stomping into the strangely quiet kitchen, and slamming a black plastic drink tray hard on a prep station, the front of her black and red uniform soaked with beer. “One of those fucking rednecks at the bar grabbed me, and when I shoved him away he laughed and poured his beer on me. If I have to go back out there I’m going to kill both of them.”

  “Christ,” Benny whispered, shaking his head. He didn’t know what would be worse to deal with, drunken rednecks or a pissed off waitress. It didn’t matter; he had to deal with them both. “All right,” he said, gently grabbing her by the shoulders, although he knew deep down the people at corporate HR would have his ass for that. “They’ll be gone in two seconds. Do you have any other tables?” She shook her head. “Okay, just calm down back here. I’ll take care of this.” He dropped his hands from her shoulders, cracked his neck, and walked out of the kitchen.

  Nikki watched as Tammy’s shaking hands fumbled with her purse that hung on the wall next to the time clock. “You okay?”

  Tammy nodded as she pulled out a prescription bottle of pills. Nikki didn’t have to ask; it was Ophiocordon. Seems like everyone took Ophiocordon nowadays. “Yeah. It’s just jerks like that. There’s no reason for them.”

  She wrenched open the childproof cap, dropped a white oval tablet into her hand, popped it into her mouth, and swallowed hard. Seconds slunk by before Tammy gasped, and her body tensed. One of the side effects of the newest anti-depressant Ophiocordon; it gave women an immediate orgasm, then tapered off to simple euphoria. Nikki heard it did something like that to men as well, just not as sudden, not like she cared. Out of all the side effects modern pharmaceuticals carried, like diarrhea and the occasional hallucination, an orgasm wasn’t too shabby. Nikki sometimes wished she suffered from some kind of depression.

  “If he’s outside when I go home,” Tammy said, shaking the sudden wave of ecstasy throughout her body, “he’s dead.”

  “They all get what they deserve, Tammy. Just focus on that,” Nikki said, gently patting Tammy’s hand, and walking toward the dining area. “I still have one out there, but I think he’s about done. Hopefully we’ll close early, and get out of this nightmare.”

  “Can I get you anything else, sir?” Nikki asked the fat businessman, although given his nearly spot-free plate that once sported medium-rare porterhouse and baked potato, she would have felt a little guilt at helping him die slowly with dessert. The man shook his head. Something about his demeanor worried Nikki. Sweat beaded across his round face, his skin was waxy and white. Good God, she thought. A heart attack would just top off this night.

  “I … uh…” wheezed past his lips in great blasts, his breath pinching Nikki’s face tight.

  Christ. What’s that smell? She coughed, the taste of vomit in her mouth.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, her left wrist over her mouth.

  “I’m … I’m …” he heaved. “Oh, God. I don’t feel so good.”

  “I’ll get the …” manager, Nikki tried to say, but the blood stopped her. Tendrils of thick, crimson liquid shot from the man’s nostrils. He coughed, the rancid, sweet smell of death brushed over Nikki, a clot of blood splattered across his plate.

  “Benny,” she screamed, backing away from the table. “Benny. Benny. 9-1-1. Oh, my God, 9-1-1. Benny, 9-1-1.”

  “What the hell?” came from behind her from one of Tammy’s rednecks Benny hadn’t been able to make leave. “What the … holy shit.”

  “Heh… heh… help me,” the businessman hissed, grabbing for Nikki’s uniform, blood now running from his nose like his face was a dam about to break. A red spot grew in his left eye and popped, sending another red river pouring down his cheek. Nikki screamed and stumbled away from the man’s grasp.

  “What the fuck?” Tammy’s redneck whispered, backing away from the bleeding man who had fallen to the floor, and crawled toward Nikki.

  “Do you have a phone?” Benny screamed at the redneck.

  “What?”

  “Do you have a God damned fucking phone?” he screamed again, grabbing and shaking the man’s Toby Keith concert T-shirt.

  The man nodded.

  “Then call the cops,” he hissed. “And if you ever harass my waitresses again, I will personally kick the shit out of you.” Benny rushed to Nikki, pulling her away from the bleeding customer, and sat her in a booth. “You’re going to be okay,” he said, and turned to the redneck. “You got someone?” The man nodded. “Then tell them to send an ambulance here now. NOW.”

  “That was some fucked up shit,” Tammy said, finishing a beer. “Did you see all the blood on the carpet? No way am I cleaning that up.”

  Nikki sat at the bar with Tammy, the lights low, the storm outside off somewhere to the east. Police filed through Hooligans, taking blood samples, food samples, and statements from the few people there. Nikki just wanted to go home. She saw a man bleed like he’d been hacked by Freddie Krueger, and drop over a booth table in a fat wet slap. Then he stood, pushing himself up from the table, and stumbled around, like he was dumb in every sense of the word. The EMTs put the man on a gurney, but his legs and arms moved like he was still walking. And he didn’t make a sound, not even a moan. The EMT said the man wasn’t dead, yet. No amount of beer with Tammy would change any of that.

  “Did you even see it?” Nikki asked.

  “No,” Tammy said. “I got there for Benny saying ‘if you ever harass my waitresses again, I will personally kick the shit out of you,’ though. That’s manager of the year stuff right there. I will nominate him.”

  Nikki took another drink. The beer was cold, sending alcohol dancing across the scene in her head, but it didn’t change anything. The fat man, blood spewing from his nose, his mouth, his eyes, and his horizontal legs trying to walk on air, burned themselves into her memory.

  “Did you see the blood on his face?” Nikki asked.

  “Yeah,” Tammy said, sliding out of her seat. “I’m going for another beer. Want one?”

  “It was gushing,” Nikki said, ignoring her. “Gushing.”

  Tammy walked behind the bar, slid open the cooler, grabbed a Bud Light and sat it in front of Nikki. “I had a customer the other night with a nosebleed,” she said. “Nice guy, cute. Kinda dorky.”

  “And?”

  Tammy shrugged. “I don’t know. His friend was worried because he’d just taken an Ophiocordon. Something about it sending too much blood to his junk and not enough to his brain.”

  Nikki grabbed the beer and took a drink. “Were either of them worried about it?”

  Tammy shrugged and opened another beer. “I don’t know. They were pretty drunk, and I was showing these off pretty good,” she said, pushing her arms under her breasts. “They tipped well.”

  “Did the man mention anything about his nosebleed?”

  Tammy shook her head. “No. He just had a hell of a time stopping it. This might not sound attractive, but watching a drunk nerdy guy flirt while drinking beer through a straw because he has a paper napkin shoved up his nose is actually pretty cute.”

  A large body stood between them.

  “Miss Holleran, Miss Dankenbring,” a police officer said. Dan, Nikki remembered, his name was Dan. “I have your statements, and I’m sorry you young ladies had to see something like this. You can go home now. If you’d like, I can have an officer take you.”

  Nikki shook her head. “Thank you, Officer Dan, but I need to be alone right now. I can take Tammy home if she’d like.”

  Tammy shook her head. “I’m good. I just need sleep.”

  He nodded. “Understood. Just remember we’re out there. I hope you’re okay to drive.” Nikki nodded and Officer Dan walked away.

  The yellow glow from streetlights glistened off Hooligans wet parking lot as Nikki and Tammy walked across the asphalt, the storm long sinc
e gone.

  “What do you think that was?” Tammy asked, stopping in the middle of the lot, fishing a cigarette out of her purse. The rush of the Ophiocordon must be wearing off, Nikki thought. “I mean, the fat guy. I saw him when he came in. Hell, I seated him. He looked fine. What do you think happened to him?”

  Nikki shrugged. “I don’t know. He just. He just started to sweat blood.” Tears welled in her eyes. “It was awful,” she said, stopping, words choked in her throat. “Just awful.”

  The yellow-orange flame of a cheap convenience store lighter erupted in the night as Tammy lit a Pall Mall and took a long, slow drag. “Not awful,” she said, smoke rolling from her mouth. “Totally fucked up. We will never – never – see anything like that again. I guarantee it.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Nikki said, pulling keys from her purse and stepping toward her scooter. “And at least he’s not dead.” She paused to look at Tammy who stood in the full light of Hooligans parking lot. Things weren’t right; they weren’t right at all. They were very, very wrong.

  “Shit, Tammy,” Nikki said. “Your nose is bleeding.”

  Bad Day For The Apocalypse is available from Amazon here!