by Joseph Coley
SIX FEET FROM HELL: CRISIS
BY
JOSEPH A. COLEY
©2013 – JOSEPH A. COLEY
THE SIX FEET FROM HELL SERIES
BOOK 1 – SIX FEET FROM HELL: RESPONSE
BOOK 2 – SIX FEET FROM HELL: ESCAPE
BOOK 3 – SIX FEET FROM HELL: SALVATION
BOOK 4 – SIX FEET FROM HELL: CRISIS
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. ALTHOUGH PERSONS AND PLACES DEPICTED IN THIS NOVEL REPRESENT ACTUAL PEOPLE AND PLACES, FICTIONAL LIBERTIES HAVE BEEN TAKEN WITH NAMES AND LOCATIONS. SO IF YOU LIVE THERE, DON’T GO LOOKING FOR YOUR HOUSE OR FAVORITE BURGER STAND. YOU PROBABLY WON’T FIND IT, AND YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO RUN INTO WHAT LURKS THERE NOW…
THE STORY SO FAR…
Joe receives an early call-in to work at Star Ambulance for a mass-casualty incident. The incident involves an underground coal mine explosion that rocks three local counties and, eventually, the world, due to similar explosions across the globe. The gas released underground kills those who are exposed to it in its concentrated form immediately; those killed are buried, then reanimate. The gas soon reanimates all of the dead, even those who were killed after the fact. Zombies are loosed upon humanity and chaos ensues. After being stranded in a vehicle accident, Joe is rescued by his coworkers and taken to a safe area. He, along with three other coworkers, decide to make an exodus home nearly fifty miles away and across three winding mountain roads. Joe, Jamie, Donnie, and Andrew escape the droves of undead and start their trek across the mountain. Along the way, they have a run-in with a disgruntled co-worker and psychopath-in-training, James. They continue their way across the mountains, losing Donnie and Andrew along the way to an undead attack and suicide, respectively.
Joe’s wife Buffey, son Rickey, and best friend Chris are given the heads-up about the undead just in time. They manage to stock up on food, water, ammo, and other supplies just before the town is overrun with undead. They hole up, along with Buffey’s best friend, Ashleigh, in Joe’s house. While Joe fights his way home, Buffey and the rest of the survivors fight the undead, anticipating Joe’s return. Buffey’s older children, Lori and Ronnie, show up after escaping from down the road a few miles. Lori is pregnant and gives birth shortly after arriving at her mother’s house. In the process of childbirth, Lori dies.
Joe and Jamie make it just in time to help fend off a horde of zombies that have amassed in and around Joe’s home. Chris is injured slightly, but the horde is staved off.
After consulting with his group, Joe convinces them that the house is not as safe as they think it is. They agree to steal a train that was left on the tracks five miles away, in an attempt to make an escape. The newborn child, Dakota, is in need of food and formula, so Joe and Ronnie make an impromptu run into town for the items. Along the way, they run into Balboa, one of Joe’s army buddies. Balboa has a military Humvee along with an abundance of guns and ammo. Joe brings Balboa back to the house with him, enlarging their group. After a narrow escape from another horde, the group leaves for the train. They get the train and head south towards Alabama.
While on a stop for a map and compass, along with some better clothing, Balboa, Jamie, and Joe are kidnapped by two religious fanatics. The siblings, Lucy and Bobby, take the three men to their father, Abraham. Abraham is a distraught, mentally deranged religious man who recently lost his wife to reasons unrelated to the zombie outbreak, but she returns as one of the undead. Her apparent resurrection causes him to lose his mind and kidnap nearly the entire town, turning them all into zombies for his “congregation.” Chris and Ronnie leave the train to come rescue the three men after hearing gunfire. While fighting off a small group of undead, Ronnie is bitten and Lucy is captured. Lucy and Bobby had come back near the train to look for the rest of the group. Ronnie and Chris make it to Joe, Balboa, and Jamie. A massive incursion of undead descends on them, along with Abraham's “congregation.” They fight until they are nearly out of ammo. Ronnie reveals that he is bitten and sacrifices himself in order for the rest of them to escape. While the rest of the group escapes, Ronnie blows up a fuel dump full of propane tanks and gasoline.
The entire group makes it back to the train, minus Ronnie and including Lucy. Buffey is furious that Lucy was spared and Ronnie was not, even though Ronnie being bitten had nothing to do with Lucy. The group has a Mexican standoff and divides in two. They leave Southern Tennessee, headed towards Alabama. Just outside of Monroeville, Alabama, they make contact with a group of U.S. Marines claiming to offer help. Joe tells them to meet up at the train after it breaks down, stranding them. The Marines agree. In the process of checking out and guarding the train, the group comes upon a man named Curtis Lowe. Curtis explains that the Marines’ intentions are not as pure as they seem to be. Curtis’ group is camped in the Monroe County Airport, and Curtis offers to help Joe in exchange for some medical treatment and supplies. The group agrees, and Curtis takes them to the airport. At the terminal, he introduces his people and the two groups exchange information and help one another out. During a run to a local nursing home, they are forced to deal with a member of the group, summarily killing him. Buffey tells Joe that they should consider themselves divorced, as she cannot handle the stress of the life they are forced to live.
They return with medical supplies and drugs and suffer an undead outbreak that night that takes most of Curtis’ people. Lucy and a girl named Brittany are missing. Balboa gets the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) radio working with the airport’s antenna, only to find out they have a hurricane bearing down on them. They decide the airport terminal will not hold up to a hurricane, and make an evacuation across town to the hospital. They make it to the hospital and secure it as the hurricane is bearing down on them. Balboa and Jamie manage to get a radio signal and call the Coast Guard, just offshore, for rescue. While waiting for the Coast Guard chopper to show up, Lieutenant Wyatt, a Marine, shows up with Lucy, who had been kidnapped. The hurricane is beginning to blow full force as Lieutenant Wyatt murders Lucy and his Marines attack Joe and the group. As the Coast Guard shows up to evacuate the group, Joe is shot and taken aboard the USCGC Joshua James to stabilize him. Subsequently he is transferred to the USNS Mercy.
Joe wakes up on the USNS Mercy a few days later and is informed that he had turned and was revived by the Navy Corpsman that rescued him. Joe is told that he and Dakota have immunity to the virus that causes the dead to rise. Joe is told that a vaccine will be produced eventually. He, along with Jamie, Chris, and Balboa, agree to help on the Mercy and volunteer to be on rescue teams, nicknamed ZBRAs (Zombie Backup, Rescue, and Assault units).
NOW… NINE YEARS LATER…
PROLOGUE
Zombies
Muertos Vivientes
Зомби
Jiāng shī (僵尸)
إنْسان بَطيء الحَرَكَة وقَليل الذَّكاء
Zombi
זומבי
The signs were easy to see. They were easy to read. Every time Joe left, he noticed one. He’d even put up a couple of them. They warned every person born under a rock, or under the age of ten, that the rotten dead were out there, still in large numbers. The signs stood as a fair warning to anyone that wanted to stray out of the flock that the wolves were undead and hungry. The signs plastered the walls that led out of the outposts and makeshift forts. Seven of the most common languages on Earth got that point across to nearly everyone.
It had been nine years since the world ended, and now society truly lived in the post-apocalyptic landscape. Groups small and large lived in outposts throughout North America and most of the world. Entire towns were constructed out of whatever was available and could be scavenged without unnecess
ary risk.
The remaining survivors didn’t take pointless risks when it came to building supplies. The scarce amount of building supplies available at Lowe’s or Home Depot were raided within the first year. Due to that, most had to manage with whatever makeshift items they could grab. Most of the “walls” were semi-trailers and other immobile objects that they managed to shove together, often laying them over on their sides. Many towns were made from prisons turned into living areas. They had rooms, walls, and living commodities that were not easy to come by. There were an abundance of prisons in America, and now what was meant to keep prisoners in and people out, kept the dead from getting in. Small towns were the easiest to make into an outpost; all the survivors had to do was block off the entry roads to make a decent place to live. Main Street American towns were turned into nearly impenetrable fortresses. Major cities stayed off limits to most everyone. Country folks went back to the barter system, trading and exchanging goods and services. They were easier to bargain with, and one had a decent chance of getting some weapons or ammo.
Ammo and food supplies were hard to come by at the end of the world, so Joe and any other survivors were forced to hunt or grow their own food and reload their own ammo. Food was grown in the Midwest; Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas were lucky to have small populations and large, open areas. Food had become more heavily guarded than gold. Everyone, for the most part, did what he or she could in spite of abysmal conditions.
A place for everyone, and everyone in their place, in general, at least.
For Joe, it was service in a ZBRA - Zombie Backup, Rescue, and Assault unit. They went when they were called, mostly by CB radio or other shortwave transmissions, to the various outposts when they were overrun or in danger of being overrun. They were QRF (Quick Reaction Force) for the various settlements. They went to rescue stranded survivors when they strayed too far to make it back to their respective posts. In the pre-apocalypse days, they might have been considered a heavily armed rescue squad. That title fit Joe just fine, having worked all his adult life (until the last decade or so) doing just that. He liked being the person that others called on when they needed help, and he and his team were happy to oblige.
Joe was currently stationed at Camp Dawson, West Virginia, just outside of his former home area. Joe had not had a chance to make it back home to his corner of Virginia, although his curiosity beckoned him there constantly. Every time Joe and his team went out, he’d pray that it would be somewhere towards Southwest Virginia. The closest that he’d come was a trip near the Kentucky/Virginia state line that turned out to be a wild goose chase. A team of five men had taken too long on a hunting trip in the Cumberland Gap and had run upon an abandoned moonshine still. The men had managed to get completely shitfaced the prior night and passed out drunk. They were just lucky that the zombies did not get to them.
Joe and his boys were really tempted to grab some of the shine for themselves. The end of the world was a motherfucker and most days they just wanted to get drunk and forget about the past decade, and they’d nearly had a chance to then. Like all opportunities since the collapse of modern society, they were fleeting at best. Cooler heads prevailed and they left the still where it lay.
* * *
It was no comet or asteroid or global warming that brought about the end of the world, just a gas that acted as a catalyst to activate a long-dormant virus inherent in everyone. The virus targeted the deep-seated instincts inside every human being. It would attach itself to the nervous system, both sympathetic and parasympathetic areas, then make the feed or breed and fight or flight parts of the nervous system go on overload. There was no more flight or breed, just the overwhelmingly desire to fight and feed. Once you died, the virus started to affect the frontal lobe of the brain, causing you to forget who you were. Gone were all memories of your past life. You were merely a dead body, now a reanimated killing machine that only wanted to kill, feed, and repeat.
The virus only worked if you were dead, however, much to the chagrin of the few remaining researchers that were studying it. It was the first virus of its kind that worked on a non-living subject. The few scientists that were left had little interest in working hard on something that they had little to work with, aside from Dakota. The little guy had grown up fast in a harsh world, now a bouncing, rambunctious boy who was nearly nine years old. Joe had personally delivered him and the rest of his people to the USNS Mercy in the Gulf of Mexico.
According to the people that took Joe in and took care of him, he had turned. He was cursed with the most terrifying and realistic nightmares of what being a zombie was actually like, as if that part of his brain was now hardwired to take over once he slept.
When he did sleep, that is.
He was now not only immune to bites, scratches, and general undead attacks; he carried within him a specific antigen that was used to make a vaccine for the plague. Every child is now immune from the virus - now nicknamed the “Romero Virus,” for obvious reasons. He or she is also branded with a “V” on their left shoulder, signifying that they have received the vaccine. Shot records are nonexistent, and no one cares if you’ve had your tetanus vaccine. They don’t pay you any mind unless you don’t have that emblazoned “V” on your arm.
After Joe and his group reached the USNS Mercy, they were asked to help out on the ship, and then on various oil platforms that served as floating cities. The limited stable of doctors was tasked with bigger problems such as minor surgeries and other duties that were above Joe’s training level. The certifications that were issued back in the day did not mean much now, but their limited medical training still helped. They did sutures and other minor procedures as needed, but they were in short supply of nearly everything. The ZBRA units were formed in an effort to provide stability instead of a full-on assault of the undead population of the United States. They were not only tasked with helping in any way they could, but also to try to provide stability in a very unstable world.
* * *
Joe was surprised that he’d made it this far in his life. At the ripe old age of forty, he had become aged well beyond his years. The years weren’t as bad as the mileage that he’d endured the last nine years. In that time span, he'd managed to survive the initial days of the zombie apocalypse, made a cross-country escape into the waiting arms of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, lost a marriage, and gained an infinite amount of responsibilities instead. Joe was in charge of his group of ragtag rescuers. They had no formal boss, no official orders, nothing that would hold them to their responsibilities. They simply carried on doing what they had done before the world had gone to shit.
They helped people.
They rescued the well-to-do, the underprivileged, the well-prepared, and the fly-by-night. They made no distinction between those who deserved to be saved, and those who would be better off dead. Just like the life Joe had lived before, the choice of who lived and who died was not solely on his shoulders. He would do everything in his power to make sure that they were not left behind; after that, it was up to the will and determination of that person or group to decide what they were capable of handling. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Joe’s ZBRA team of five consisted of Joe, Chris, Jamie, Balboa, and a new kid that had just come in. He was Joe’s son, Rickey, or just “Rick” now, as he liked to be called. He had recently joined up with them after a stint with the Medical Corps; he’d trained as a paramedic, just like his father. The Medical Corps were set up to train every man, woman, and child that was of age as paramedics, or as close to medics as was possible. Medicine was in short supply, as were doctors, so everyone got a basic medical training instead of suffering through the doldrums of high school. The few doctors that they did have were relegated to doing what used to be minor procedures, stuff that would have you in and out of the hospital in a day or two. Those procedures now were considered life threatening, no matter what. Appendicitis was now the number one cause of death in the United States.
/> Well, maybe the number two cause of death.
The men that Joe was in charge of were as close a group as any set of people can be. The five of them had been through hell and back. Joe and Jamie had responded to the outbreak in Tazewell, while Chris and Rick had been busy holding the fort down in Rural Retreat. They all escaped with their lives, but others weren’t so lucky. Four people were lost in the fracas that ensued after the dead began to rise.
Rick did not have the best of lives during his time at his former home. He’d had to stay with his mother, Buffey, until he was eighteen at an offshore oilrig named Southern Hospitality, which was a misnomer at best. The residents on the rig weren’t the best folks to raise a child. Since there was no way of finding out who had been in prison, who was a sex offender anymore, or who may have murdered and eaten a dozen people, the dregs of society went unchecked. There was rampant crime aboard the different oilrigs. Sometimes it was the person or people in charge of so-called “law enforcement” that needed to be on the other end of the law. Rape, murder, assaults, shootings, and stabbings were commonplace and happened more often than most people were aware of. Most of the law breaking went unresolved. Rick was just glad to be off that hellhole and on the front lines, as it were, with his dad.
ZBRA teams such as Joe’s were not primarily tasked with taking food and water to the rigs, but he would still make time to get on some of the food and medicine runs when he had a chance. Joe didn’t get out to visit Rick as much as he would have liked to, but that was the way of the world. Sadly, it didn't become much different from the way it had been before. Parents spent less time with their kids than they wanted to, out of necessity. Instead of trying to make that Little League game or recital, however, Mommy and Daddy were off on the mainland or in an outpost, trying to help others wherever they could. Just like in the days before, though, there were people who would take advantage in order to get whatever they could by whatever means possible, and they’d take everything a person had if given the opportunity.
