Hunting Season: A Zombie Survival Story

by Stoesen, Chris

  Once all loaded up, I climbed back in the truck. Sharon had moved over to the passenger seat and we took off.

  “We didn’t get all the supplies we wanted. Ran into some zombies and in killing one, I sort of shot Marty.”

  “You did what?”

  “The thing was about to eat him. It was pulling him up to its head, and I shot it in the head. I grazed Marty’s head at the same time. He's knocked out but otherwise looked OK.”

  “Why are your underwear hanging out of the back of your jeans?”

  “Must you ask all of these questions? I gave my self a wedgie drawing my pistol. It still hurts.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. I looked cross for about a minute. But even I had to admit, it was funny. Nearly got me killed, but it was funny. I laughed too. We avoided most of the zombies and I only ran over two of them on the way back to the house. I needed a bigger brush bar for the truck and a lift kit the way things were going.

  Chapter 15: Regrouping

  The truck raced toward home. But I suddenly pulled over when we were in an isolated area. I hopped out of the truck and unzipped my jeans. I adjusted everything and get rid of that awful pulled feeling when a voice behind me startled me.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I must have jumped a foot off the ground. My pants slid down to my knees and in haste to turn to see who was speaking my legs got tangled in the jeans and down I went. My butt landed on the gravel on the side of the road. I nearly bounced back upright from the pain of that landing. The shreds of my underwear, the only thing covering me. My hand shot down to prevent a second impact of my butt with gravel.

  “Damn it, Marty, you scared the hell out of me.”

  There Marty was. Leaning over the edge of the truck bed laughing hysterically at me. To make matters worse, Sharon was covering her mouth and was laying down across the seats. Her whole body vibrating with laughter.

  I pointed my finger and waved it between the two of them. “You both suck. You know that right?”

  Marty settled down after a while. Sharon didn’t. The more she tried to hold it in, the harder she laughed. I can’t blame her. With everything that has happened, we all need a release. If this was hers, so be it. I hate that I was coming out looking like a big dork but what can you do.

  I pulled my pants up and then stood. Buttoned and zipped my pants back up and gingerly sat down back in the driver’s seat. I waited for Marty to climb out of the bed and get in the back seat. He took a minute, and he looked like he got dizzy for a moment before he climbed into the truck.

  “How are you feeling Marty?” I asked.

  “Terrible. What happened?”

  Sharon kept laughing. She would be no help for the foreseeable future.

  “Earl grabbed you. He was about to eat you while you were slicing and dicing every part about him but his head. I gave myself a giant wedgie because the front sight of my pistol snagged on my underwear.”

  Sharon laughed harder. I shot her an annoyed look.

  “The wedgie made me fall down. I tried shooting the two clerks coming at me but only winged the beehive. Then I switched targets. I had a hard time seeing as my eyes were watering from the wedgie. I tried to shoot Earl, and killed him with that shot, but I also grazed you, knocking you out. Sorry about that.”

  Marty let that sink in for a minute. With all that has happened in the apocalypse, this was the closest I had become to becoming zombie chow. By the look on Marty’s frowning face, he was thinking more or less the same thing.

  “Thanks for killing Earl. I was panicking. I never encountered one so big before and he was strong as hell. My mind froze, and I was lashing blindly. How did you get me out of the store?”

  “You went on a ride in a shopping cart. I loaded you in the bed of the truck and took off. We got less than half of what we were hoping to come away with. There were more zombies in the store. If we would have stayed, we would have been overwhelmed.”

  Marty nodded soberly. We drove on in silence for the rest of the trip home. When we reached the house, there were five zombies in the yard that turned and headed toward the truck.

  Slipping his helmet on, Marty said, “I have these.”

  These zombies looked a little worse for wear. Their skin was gray and appeared more rotted than others. All were ambulatory, but some were missing arms. They were dressed as ordinary people. One fellow had a yellow hard hat and a yellow safety vest. He was lacking his lower left arm and had numerous bite wounds on his abdomen.

  A woman in a business suit followed the construction worker. She was missing shoes but still had her purse slung over her shoulder. She had a bite on her neck that caused her head to flop to that side. Both arms bore scratches and bite marks.

  The third zombie was a teenager. He was wearing a band t-shirt whose name and print was obscured by stains of blood and who knew what else. His jeans were in good shape and his shoes looked old and worn.

  The fourth zombie was another youth. He was wearing plaid boxer shorts and jeans that had fallen around his ankles. Its knees were scratched and bloodied from numerous falls. In his approach to the truck, he fell twice. For a shirt he wore a stained white tank top. He was missing his right arm.

  The last zombie wore a fast food restaurant uniform. He still had the paper hat on his head. His pimple covered face didn’t get any better after becoming a zombie. He staggered forward in his polyester outfit with that hungry moan that many have.

  Marty slipped out of the truck and pushed the door closed. He was making no loud noises. He drew his sword and approached the first one. A quick slash of his sword lopped the head off the body of the construction worker. As the body fell forward, I could see the motto on the back of the yellow vest, “Safety First.”

  Business suit was next. She had both arms extended for Marty. His first swing took one of her arms off and the follow through decapitated the walking corpse.

  The third and fourth zombies approached simultaneously. Marty swung his sword and struck the knee of the pantsed zombie, causing it to fall to the ground. He moved away from it to the left so he could engage the teen. The teen lunged forward and grabbed Marty’s left arm and drew it into his mouth. Sharon and I both gasped. Marty brought the pommel of his sword down on top of the teen’s head, cracking its skull open. As its body fell away, we saw teeth fall from the open mouth. The chain mail that Marty wore was the real deal.

  The zombie with pants around its ankles struggled to rise. With the ruined knee that was impossible. Marty stepped over and brought down the sword blade on his head. The body collapsed and was still. The last zombie was on Marty by this time. With a backhanded swing, the pimply youth was dispatched with a severed head.

  Sharon jumped out of the truck and ran to Marty. She grabbed his arm and pushed up his armor. There was a slight bruise where the one zombie had bit down on it but no other damage. Sharon hugged him.

  “I’m glad you are OK. I thought you were bitten.”

  Marty nodded, “Thanks. This armor works. It's heavy and hot but it works.”

  The door to the house opened and Gretel ran out and threw herself into Sharon’s arms. The doc poked her head out of the door and looked around.

  She asked, “Are y’all OK?”

  I waved, “Yes, doing good. We got a few supplies but not much.”

  “Officer Jefferson is doing better. We should be able to move him soon. We might get him over to the Legion Hut like you planned. Let's get back inside. Those five have been here for a while. Who’s King Arthur over there?”

  I turned my head to look at Marty and smiled. Marty was rummaging through the pockets of the dispatched zombies.

  “Uh, Marty? What are you doing?”

  “I want to know where these guys are from. The construction worker lived in Macdonough - South of Atlanta. From his vest, he was working on a site in College Park. The business woman lived in Buckhead but worked downtown Atlanta from her business card. We are talking sixty to seven
ty miles of walking. Why are they… migrating?”

  The thought chilled us. Was Atlanta so completely dead they were looking elsewhere for a fresh kill?

  “What about concert shirt over there?”

  “You don’t recognize him? He was local and a freshman at our school. The dude was a complete pot head and was flunking most of his classes. Thomas W Whitworth esquire. Called himself that after watching Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Remember now?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Sharon and I said in unison.

  Marty moved over to the one with pants around his ankles. A quick flick through his wallet, “This guy was from Oxford. How on earth did he walk all that way with his pants around his ankles?”

  “What about fast food guy?”

  Marty moved over to the zombie and checked for a wallet.

  “No telling. He doesn’t have a wallet.”

  “We need to do something with these bodies before they stink up the place.”

  I grabbed a pair shovels out of the garage. Handing one to Marty and we moved to near the fence. There was a slight ditch near the fence. We deepened it some. Then we dragged the bodies over to the ditch.

  Marty looked at the full shallow grave, “We should burn them. We don’t want some animal eating them and then having undead dogs running around. Come to think of it, can animals get this? I haven't seen any.”

  “I’m worried that the smoke would being in unwanted visitors.”

  We both stared down a moment longer before heading back to the house.

  Sharon and the Doc had emptied the bed of the truck of the supplies we had managed to get. Also Marty’s things were brought into the house. When we entered, the two ladies were inventorying everything we had.

  I looked over Sharon’s shoulder while rubbing her back, “Well, what is the verdict? When will we run out of food?”

  She turned and kissed my cheek, “In about four weeks, we will be in trouble. We have plenty to last us that long. After that, no telling. We will need to forage more. Hey, here is that briefcase you took out of that car.”

  “Oh shit, I forgot about that. I wonder what it is all about.”

  We all settled into the living room. Officer Jefferson was awake and nodded to us. Gretel was coloring with some pens and paper on the floor. Things were getting crowded.

  “Marty, why don’t you take over Dad’s room for the time being. You can take off the armor and relax.”

  He nodded and moved with his gear to Dad’s room. The thought of Dad made my heart sink. If he hadn’t made it back by now, he wasn’t coming back home. I had no idea of what happened to him. I took in a deep breath and purposefully changed my thoughts. No use in crying in front of everyone.

  Marty came back a few minutes later in shorts and a TSR T-shirt. It was one of the old ones with the wizard in the pointy hat waving the wand on it. That was the Marty I remembered.

  I cleared my throat to regain my composure.

  I looked at the briefcase in my lap. It was a very nice leather briefcase. The latches were locked on it and I had no idea about how to pick a lock. Even a small one like on this. So I pulled out my knife and cut the straps.

  Officer Jefferson leaned closer to see what I was doing. The rest of the room was just chatting idly. Gretel was showing off her picture to Sharon and to Doc McCauley. Marty was listening in to Gretel’s explanation.

  I flipped open the now ruined case and leafed through the contents. The first folder was stamped ‘Top Secret - Chronos.’ Officer Jefferson, and I exchanged a look. Flipping it open, inside was a report on Center for Disease Control letterhead. I moved closer to Officer Jefferson to allow him to read over my shoulder.

  The first page gave the background of the Chronos project. From what I could gather, it started out as a research project by a small pharmaceutical firm as a way to engineer a virus to manipulate cell regeneration in cancer patients. At some point, the government took over the project when an accident happened at the facility. The facility's location was in Nebraska.

  I looked at Officer Jefferson, “Sir, wasn’t there a terrorist attack in Nebraska two years ago? Didn’t the president say this was the worst attack on American soil since 9/11? Could that have all been a bullshit cover-up of what went wrong there?”

  “I remember that as there was an immediate call up of all police and national guard units for a week. Everyone was to remain alert, but no one knew what for. The conspiracy theorists went nuts. Did you know Ed Hoskins was visited by the Secret Service for all the noise he made about it? Nothing else came out about it but a group in Indonesia claimed responsibility. Ed thought the attack originated from the air as a cruise missile. He had Google Earth pictures of before and after the site and showed what Gulf War cruise missile strikes looked like. It was a crazy two weeks but when it left the news cycle, it was forgotten. They could be related.”

  The document continued stating that the samples were taken to Fort Dietrich, Maryland, an unnamed facility in Colorado and the CDC in Atlanta. There they studied the samples, and it determined that the virus was too unstable and dangerous to be of use. The recommendation was to destroy it. Then there were pages of scientist responses to request further study of the samples instead of destroying it. What was fascinating was an appendix that had pictures of test subjects from the Colorado location. They tried this out on volunteers. There were pictures of before and after that showed humans that had become zombies like the ones outside.

  “Holy Shit!” I yelled out. I had found documentation on the damn apocalypse.

  “Daniel!” Sharon fussed. “Gretel is here. Watch your mouth.”

  “That briefcase was from someone who worked at the CDC. They have documentation on the virus.”

  Now everyone was paying attention to us. Officer Jefferson explained what we had read so far. I explored the briefcase more. There was a set of identification inside for a CDC employee. It was laminated with a clip on it to attach it to your clothing. There was a key fob to allow entrance through a secured doorway. Also there were three small flash drives in it.

  Officer Jefferson brought us back to reality, “We have found something important but what have we found? We really can’t do anything with any of this. We still need to address our supply and security situation.”

  I was next to speak up.

  “Well, we need to figure out a more permanent solution to live in. I still think the Legion Hut would be the best spot to check out. There are probably survivors there. It's on a hill and already had walls around it. There is no way for the zombies to get in. As much as I love my house, if they wanted to get in, there are enough windows for them to break through. What do y’all think?”

  Marty nodded, “It makes sense. Some of those guys at the hall are tough old birds. If anyone is still alive and kicking, it's them.”

  I looked at Officer Jefferson. He nodded his head. “Makes sense. I’m a member of the hall so I think I can get in. As long as you can contribute, they will let you join. Henry Stoe has been planning for some doomsday after another for years. He was down at the hall for Y2K.”

  Officer Jefferson stopped and laughed for a moment. “Do you know, the man was actually upset that the world banking system and electricity didn’t die on that day.”

  I pointed to the Doc next. She was already frowning in thought. “Well, with the walls, it will be safer for my horses. I can’t think of anything better. Now that the clinic is overrun, I don’t have any place better to suggest.”

  “Sharon, what do you think?” I had saved her for last.

  “I don’t know. If it's possible, I kind of want to see my father again. But yeah. It makes sense. We should go to the Legion Hall.”

  “Gretel, what do you think? Do you want to go with us to the Legion Hall?”

  She looked up from her coloring long enough to give me a look that communicated, duh. “I don’t want to be left here alone. Yes, I’m going with you.”

  “Great, it is all settled then. Once Office
r Jefferson can move, He and I will go to the Legion Hut and check it out. If it seems safe, we will come back and get everyone. Does that make sense?”

  Everyone nodded.

  Marty went back to Dad’s room and went to sleep. Gretel kept coloring, and the Doc went into the guest bedroom. Sharon and I went to the basement to check out the radio set. The doc had moved it down here a while back so it wouldn’t wake up Officer Jefferson. I checked out the set and everything seemed OK.

  “Go ahead and try to reach your Dad.”

  She dialed in the frequency he contacted us on in the truck. There was a cheat sheet she had made with all the frequencies of people she had talked to written on it.

  “Buckley, this is Peaches, over.”

  There was only light static on the other end.

  “Buckley, this is Peaches, do you read me, over?”

  Still nothing.

  “Remember, he could be in the bathroom. That sort of thing has happened before.” I was grinning.

  She punched me in the shoulder.

  “Buckley, this is Peaches, over.”

  Then a burst of static came across and then her father’s voice filled the room, “This is Buckley. I read you five by five.”

  Something didn’t sound right. The voice sounded weak. It lacked the forceful quality it had before.

  “Daddy, are you all right? Is everything OK?”

  Some muffled laughter and then some coughing came through before he spoke again, “The town turned on me. They tried to attack me. Me! I held them off and drove them away.”

  There was more coughing.

  “Now the house is surrounded by the dead ones. The fence didn’t hold anything back. The house is still good. Nothing had made it in, just as I thought. But I’m not doing well, sweetheart. I had a little accident.”

  There was a few seconds of dead air. Sharon looked at me with pleading eyes as if I could make her father speak faster.

  “I broke my leg falling down the stairs into the basement and have been here three days. I don’t think I will make it. The bleeding is stopped but I couldn’t do more than that. Please tell me you are well?”