Table of Contents
Dedication
Prologue: Two months post infection
Chapter One: Loss of innocence
Chapter Two: Reality check
Chapter Three: Old enemies, new friends
Chapter Four: Hard lessons from old friends and new enemies
Chapter Five: The making of a warrior
Chapter Six: New beginnings
Chapter Seven: Purposeful steps
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About the Author
No one could have predicted the way in which the plague spread or indeed, with such rapidness. Across the globe, inoculations ceased with nineteen-year-olds.
Kitch McCall is a nineteen-year-old Tourette’s sufferer who hadn’t seen much of the outside world. When the pandemic devastated the US, he was thrust onto the streets of Charleston, South Carolina to fend for himself. Armed with nothing more than his wits, Kitch battles not only the infected, but also the surviving town psychopath, Junior Watson, who’s convinced he’s a Viking warrior.
Unfortunately for Kitch and what remains of humanity, Junior Watson is off his medication. Junior provides shelter for thirty surviving teenagers who are more than eager to carry out his bloody, dirty work for him.
Kitch and four other survivors must not only face down millions of infected, but a determined Junior Watson whose Viking army is fanatically loyal. Together, the five teens find the courage to survive and learn to love as they experience deep, personal loss and reconnect with their humanity under brutal circumstances.
Surviving clusters of humanity battled not only the infected but each other for shelter, food, clean water, and a haven to call home. When you’re nineteen in a dog-eat-dog environment, life and death are reduced to two simple terms—kill or be consumed!
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
And Tomorrow
Copyright © 2018 Ralph F. Halse
ISBN: 978-1-4874-1967-7
Cover art by Latrisha Waters
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by eXtasy Books Inc or
Devine Destinies, an imprint of eXtasy Books Inc
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And Tomorrow
Survival Book 1
A novel of survival during the Zombie apocalypse
By
Ralph F. Halse
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my wife, Cathy, for raising our two wonderful grandchildren Ayden & Kaelan.
Prologue: Two months post infection
James Island, Charleston SC
2301 ACE
Beneath the stained bandanna masking his stubbled cheeks, Mike McCall stifled a fear-filled cry of surprise. In a adrenaline rush, he reacted on instinct, thrusting the fourteen-inch screwdriver he had wired to the old broom handle into the woman’s right eye as swiftly as he could. His only thought as he spiked her like a slow, fat fish in a shallow river was If she locks those flabby arms around me, I’m a goner. He grunted in consternation. Up until two heartbeats ago, he’d reckoned he could move in ultra-stealth mode and detect a purring kitten at ten paces at the same time. Apparently, he needed to work on those two particular skills, a lot! Nobody should have been able to sneak up on him without him experiencing some sort of inner alarm bells ringing in his head.
Almost losing his balance at the ease with which the makeshift weapon slipped through soft, ocular fluid, Mike rapidly regained control and focused. His eyes followed the long, narrow, rust-pitted blade as it passed effortlessly into spongy brain tissue. He felt the clunk of the star-shaped tip against unresisting bone channel along the handle and onto his sweaty palms. Instantaneously, reverse pressure increased on his straining muscles as the woman lunged forward, employing inhuman strength to get at him.
Like some impartial, detached third party, Mike considered what was happening in that moment of unusually high stress. Under normal circumstances, an intrusion into the human body by a forcefully-thrusted, sharp metallic object—particularly a human skull—would result in an outpouring of brain fluid, followed by gouts of sticky blood driven by a thudding heart. Coinciding with this act of brutality, one might also expect a shout of pain, followed by instantaneous death. Instead, nothing was offered up by his victim. Not a speck of blood, not a cry of pain, frustration or even rage at being fatally assaulted.
Mike, on the other hand, loudly cursed his misfortune. God damn it, he hadn’t employed enough muscle to punch through solid bone and out the other side—there hadn’t been time. Not that it appeared such a blow would have made a whole lot of difference. He had simply reacted to an imminent threat. In less than a heartbeat, he stabbed outward toward the human eye in what should have been a killing blow.
Setting his feet wide, Mike sucked in a deep breath and firmed his grip. As sweat beaded on his brow, he shifted his left leg forward, bent his elbows, leaned in and held the shaft steady in a rigid two-handed grip. Well, as steady as anyone could with a three-hundred-pound infected woman as wide as she was tall, determined to rip the eyeballs out of his skull with her bare fingers coming at him. God Almighty! The woman wasn’t even breathing hard—she should have been panting her heart out with the effort she was making to kill him. No, maybe not kill, that wasn’t technically accurate. Eat for certain. Well, the soft juicy bits anyway—then he would turn into one of those things. Say, come to think of it. Did these infected jerks ever breathe? Mike shuddered, tightened his grip and refocused.
Strong as he was, Mike was forced to step back two grudging paces by the aggressive, flailing woman. He hunched his shoulders and got onto the balls of his feet. Putting all his effort into it, he attempted to set his feet and lock them. But on a shiny ceramic-tile floor coated in a thick layer of dust, he had no purchase. Rising on his toes only resulted in him sliding slowly backward under her continual assault.
Bending his knees slightly to increase forward pressure, he leaned his shoulders down onto the slim pole and pushed upward as he prayed for the poor woman’s struggles to cease. Turning his head to avoid her stinking breath, Mike contemplated his rapidly diminishing options as her filthy, blackened fingernails windmilled a foot from his face. What made the arm-shaking, gruesome task harder than it ought to be was the fact Mike knew the infected woman passably well, and had liked and respected her when she was in the land of the living.
Prior to the plague, she had been a pleasant, knowledgeable pharmacist working at O’Meara’s Drug Store who knew and understood Mike’s family medical history by memory. She dispensed medications pleasantly and professionally. Smiling and ever helpful, she would calculate Kitch’s dosages in a heartbeat. She often pre-empted Mike’s order with a genuine, welcoming smile from behind the dispensary counter. She always addressed him as Mr. M
cCall, only slipping during December, near to Christmas, to call him Mike. A true people person, if ever he’d met one.
Now, Greta Carlow was a white-eyed, undead killer responding to a murderous, primal instinct brought on by the goddamn plague to tear the flesh from Mike’s body with her filthy fingernails and devour him with her blackened teeth. Her primary goal involved chowing down on him alive and kicking—after that was anybody’s guess.
Not happening, Greta!
Mike made a mental note to attach something much heavier and with a broader edge to the straining makeshift spear. Maybe that busted hedge clipper blade laying under the bench in his potting shed. Sharpened up, that’d do the trick, because this godawful screwdriver wasn’t cutting it. No sir, about as useful as a fly screen door on a submarine, it was. Damn, but he should have known the thing was too flimsy in the first place. But hey, what did he know about killing the infected? Not much. that’s for goddamn sure. Greta was the first he had to deal with one-on-one.
More specifically, this piece of homemade crap wasn’t cutting Greta’s brain to the point where it ceased to function. Nope, Murphy’s Law had trumped him again. Jackass! By God, he was going to construct something stronger when he got home—if he got home.
As bad luck would have it, the thin blade was jammed up solid against the back of her rather large, bony skull, going nowhere near anything debilitating. With any luck, if he increased pressure, he might—just might—be able to pop it through to the other side. The way the shaft was bowing under her considerable weight, he didn’t have all that long before it snapped and then he’d be in real trouble. He took a deep breath and heaved back on the straining pole with all his strength. Stupid idea, Mike, that’ll mean withdrawing the damn thing an inch or two to get up a decent short range thrust. Way too dangerous that close up to an infected, not an option, Mike. C’mon buddy, think before the damned thing snaps in half and those fleshy arms are wrapped around you.
With a three-hundred-plus-pound infected violently intent on snacking on him, Mike didn’t have all that many objects at hand to improvise with. The woman had a square jaw shaped like a gorilla’s and large, broad teeth to match, both of which looked like they could crack walnuts without a whole lot of effort. Bones would prove no challenge for that set of magnificent-looking choppers. If Greta got the opportunity, she would make short work of him.
Step by grudging backward step, Mike found himself retreating as Greta’s flabby bulk increased pressure on the flimsy weapon to snapping point. When his back thumped into a pharmacy shelf lined with shampoos and conditioners, Mike knew he was in trouble with a capital T. With no retreat possible and the point of his screwdriver wedged firm in brain and bone, he was forced to briefly drop his right arm and withdraw a long-bladed carving knife used annually for slicing turkey meat at Thanksgiving from his ever-tightening belt.
Now came the tricky part. Mike needed to be quick, lightning quick. He had to release enough pressure to permit Greta to do what he had been desperately trying to prevent her from doing for the past five minutes—get close enough to him so they could touch. Only Mike wasn’t about to let Greta sink her nails or teeth into him, no way this side of Hell or the muddy Mississippi. He had a sick teen at home who required regular doses of a specific medication to lower involuntary tics and twitches, and dear old Greta was the only person in the pharmacy standing between Mike and his son’s meds.
“Bye, bye Greta,” Mike hissed between clenched teeth as he twisted his body sideways around the spear shaft to plunge the long, shiny blade swiftly into her temple. Along the extended angle of his taut wrist, he felt the sharp point and serrated blade crunch through the thin bone above her left ear and pass through brain tissue to thump dully against opposing bone.
When it sank to the hilt and refused to exit out the opposite side, Mike cocked his wrist and wrenched it counter-clockwise with a satisfyingly brutal half twist. Bone crunched loudly, gristle popped and scraped hideously against the serrations churning through her brain, mushing it into slop and goo. Out of the gaping hole in her head, Mike watched a sticky black ichor oozed over the shiny blade to drip down Greta’s pale cheek.
Almost immediately, Mike felt the pressure come off his left arm, sagging knees and strained back muscles as Greta slid to the floor, making like a rag doll with the stuffing knocked out it. As the stinking black ichor puddled around her head, Greta stared at him with dull, milk-white eyes and died.
Mike stood there gasping for air, holding the dripping blade, waiting for the adrenaline to ease off to the point he could function without shaking like a leaf. Hypersensitive, he was pumped for action. He knew from bitter and recent experience that waiting a minute or two to get his faculties together would be required. Leaning forward, hands on thighs, he sucked back air and concentrated on lowering his heart rate.
He paused a moment to regret Greta’s death and say a little prayer for her newly released soul. It wasn’t like she’d been begging to be infected—Greta was as much a victim of the plague as he was. That sobering thought distracted him from his hammering heart and settled the black spots dancing across his vision.
Squatting beside her corpse, he grimaced more than a tad remorsefully at her peaceful form. Wiping the stained blade with a rag soaked in disinfectant, Mike’s gloved hands cleaned first the knife and then the screwdriver as he let his body functions return to normal.
Mike remained squatting as he tugged the bandanna below his chin to ease his labored breathing. He slipped the knife slowly back into his belt, tilted his head to the right and strained his ears long and hard, separating the inside silence from the faint night noises outside. One hard lesson he had learned in over a month and a half of dodging the infected—the sneaky creatures could be as still as death, especially at night. Well, that was until you were foolish, dumb, or desperate enough to venture within clawing or biting range. Then the mean assholes became agitated and downright lethal. As far as he was concerned, all that they go to sleep at night crap was just so much guesswork by officials with no up close and personal experience of the infected after sundown.
The only sound Mike could identify for certain was a rare and distant police siren wailing. Most evenings, there was the occasional gunshot echoing through the muggy summer air, but that was perfectly normal these days. In the beginning, for almost a month, that was all anybody heard day and night. Sounded like a goddamn war zone with the military and cops going at it like they couldn’t run out of ammo. Hundreds were killed by stray rounds punching through homes and public facilities.
Collateral damage, the newscasters grimly said. People complained to the cops, the chief of police, the mayor and, in the absence of anyone taking the deaths of their loved ones seriously, the Federal government. But nothing was done, and the body count of the innocents mounted at an alarming rate. People were as afraid of those sent to protect them as they were of the infection. The fact was, it was an urban war zone back then, with bodies piled every which way on sidewalks, front yards, and public places. The stench of death had been overpowering until the government sent out portable incinerators.
My God, and those flies. Big, fat, buzzing blue things with no fear of the living or the dead. Swarms as thick as summer thunderclouds made walking about impossible without a bandanna. Otherwise, they would fly straight into your mouth or nose without fear of being swatted. He shuddered at the thought of where the filthy things had been shortly before battering his lips.
Mike and his Tourette’s-suffering son, Kitch, bunkered down to wait it out. Help would come, the vaccine would be invented, the United States military and scientific forces would prevail, a pale-faced Governor had promised with a nervous smile.
Only, it never stopped. Constant gunfire, military engines roaring, blatting emergency vehicle sirens, horrific screams, pleas for mercy, running feet and that godawful moaning was all they’d heard for six long weeks.
When their food, medicine, and personal items ran out, Mike became somethin
g an honest citizen would not normally contemplate. He turned himself into an accomplished looter. The harsh truth on that score was that accomplished simply meant managing to live. Sneaking about Johns Island day and night, Mike had observed lots of infected with backpacks. The only reason the infected carried backpacks—they were former military, or civilians who tired bugging out for a safer pasture and failed.
For the past two weeks, almost eight weeks into a plague that had decimated the world, Mike was lucky to hear one emergency service vehicle a day. In the beginning, first responders were run off their feet, but they got smart really quick. Had to, he supposed. Ambulances, fire trucks, and cop cars all retreated to hospital grounds made into safe havens by the military. No matter the emergency, not an ambulance or fire truck poked a vehicle out without a military escort, not that he blamed them one bit.
Cops were a different breed though, hard men and women used to observing the worst of humanity, and they were all lone wolves these days. He had seen cops back up to a wall or vehicle to face down a horde, guns blazing until they were overcome and torn to meaty shreds.
That had been a week of insanity by any accounts as Mike recalled the newscasts he had watched with a tightening gut. No one in their right mind could imagine so many people doing the horrific things they did to each other, sustaining death sentence wounds yet remaining upright and lethal. Countless cops had gone down under the weight of mini-hordes.
Mike could tell right off the bat what the cops were thinking as they approached the white-eyed killers—he’d think it too. It’ll be seconds before this guy collapses from a loss of blood. Then I’ll call the meat wagon. Pairs of cops would sidle up close, take a good look and relax slightly, convinced the standing guy was a dead man upright, then the infected would launch themselves at the unsuspecting police and despite suffering multiple gunshot wounds, claw and bite the cops with inhuman strength until they were killed. Later they would rise and join the infected in their wicked pursuit of fresh human flesh.
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