Hell on Earth (Zombie Apocalypse Series Book 7)

by Jeff DeGordick

  The two soldiers guarding the door to his sleeping quarters shifted uncomfortably on the spot as they heard the girl's screams coming from inside.

  Sometime later, Sandra stumbled out of the room, forced to carry the tray with her. The soldiers eyed her pityingly as they shut the door behind her.

  She stumbled through the hallway, dressed back in her full maid's outfit and heels, but she had a difficult time walking on them, the strength all but sapped from her legs.

  She passed the security checkpoint in front of Glass's office and one of the soldiers made a tsking sound, feeling bad for her after seeing the black eye on her face. Her cheek was lacerated just below it, but it was only a thin cut, and all her other scars were hidden under her clothing.

  A soldier brought her down in the elevator back to the first floor and she stumbled to the kitchen, dumping the tray. The kitchen staff all avoided her gaze as she was left to saunter out of the area and back toward her own living quarters.

  On her way, a hand came from out of nowhere and grabbed her by the arm. She yelped and jumped on the spot, so lost inside her own head in that moment that she didn't notice anyone sneak up on her. She spun around and saw Jeb standing there.

  "Oh thank God!" she cried, and she wrapped her arms around him.

  He looked around the hallway then immediately pulled her into a small and empty room.

  "What happened to you?" he said, lifting her chin and inspecting her face with worry painted on his.

  "He did it," she said.

  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, just holding her. "I should have never let you come back," he said.

  Sandra quietly sobbed, still horribly traumatized from the event despite how many times she'd been raped, beaten and threatened before.

  When she calmed down, Jeb pulled a note out from his pocket. "Your friend left this for you."

  Sandra lifted her head from his chest and took the note, reading it.

  She looked at him. "Can you arrange a meeting with him?" she asked.

  "I'm sure I can."

  Before long, Sandra had a request to clean Ron's private quarters in the restricted area of the first floor. It was something she personally had never done before, and she was escorted and watched by more than just Jeb. A detachment of three soldiers in total kept an eye on her as they led her into Ron's private quarters, with one staying on the inside to watch her, and two others waiting on the outside. Jeb was forced to leave, not being assigned to the area and having no reason to stay.

  Ron was in the washroom in his considerably smaller quarters compared to Glass's, freshening up. He'd come off of a long day down in the basement lab, and he dried his face with a towel then came out into the sitting room, wrapping it around his neck over his damp white t-shirt.

  He didn't even pay any attention to Sandra, addressing the guard instead. "Is she here to clean?"

  The guard nodded.

  "Tell her to make it quick," he said.

  Ron disappeared into his bedroom as Sandra began to tidy up the sitting room. Ron fiddled around his quarters, not paying any attention to her, but always keeping her in his line of sight.

  "Hurry it up," the soldier barked at her, and Sandra turned her head and nodded to him.

  She dusted behind a potted plant sitting on a table, and she reached out and lifted up the low hanging leaves in order to dust the back of it. When her hand was there, she dropped the crumpled note behind the pot, then she casually moved on to dust some picture frames on the wall.

  Ron glanced up from the book he was holding to the potted plant, then he quickly looked away and set the book down. He headed back into his bathroom for a few minutes, then came out and angrily told the soldier to get her out because he was tired of her lollygagging.

  Sandra stared at the floor as she left, keeping herself for making eye contact with Ron, and when she and all the soldiers had left him alone, Ron casually walked up to the plant and grabbed the crumpled note. He sauntered over to his bedroom and picked up the book again. Opening the book up in front of him, he unfurled the note against the pages, hiding it from view of the cameras strategically mounted throughout his room.

  His eyes traced over the words that Sarah had written to him, informing him that she found his video and was on her way to complete the Eden Project.

  He smiled, a warm and happy feeling filling his body, as he sat there oblivious to the fact that Sarah was lost in the wilderness and being hunted by the undead at that very moment.

  9

  LANDSLIDE

  Her lungs felt like they were going to burst like balloons. Another quarter of a mile would have been the pinprick that did it and caused her to collapse from exhaustion. Sarah kept looking over her shoulder to see the maddening faces closing in. Wayne had been swept away by the rushing current of the river, and if he didn't drown, he would be alone and blind, left for dead. But Sarah didn't have time to think about that.

  She tripped over a rock jutting out of the ground and stumbled forward, regaining her footing but slamming into a tree. She twisted around and unloaded the rest of her pistol's magazine at the approaching zombies. Some bullets caught flesh, and others caught wood, but none of them did anything to stop the horde.

  The intelligent undead had spread around her in the forest, opening a wide net to ensnare her. The closest ones were now just ten yards away, and Sarah had no gas left in the tank. She should have taken a dive off the bridge with Wayne and let herself be swept away... let whatever would have happened, happen. But as she stood there in the forest, unable to move anymore, wretched thoughts of Wayne trying to seep into her head, she stupidly realized that she couldn't even painlessly end her own life anymore, having spent the last rounds in her gun on the undead.

  As the closest zombie to her made a beeline for her, Sarah mustered all the strength she could and hurled the gun at it.

  The pistol sailed through the air, but the zombie moved its head out of the way and let it fly by as it continued to run for her.

  Sarah instinctively picked up her feet and backed away from it. She never noticed she had reached the edge of the woods, and when her heel moved back to step on the ground behind her, it wasn't there anymore.

  She went tumbling down a steep slope, her neck twisting and pulling on the harsh ride down. A cloud of dust rose up from her disturbance, and she landed on a flat bed of loose gravel.

  The wind that she didn't even have was knocked out of her, and as she lay on her back staring up at the sky, she saw the zombie she'd thrown the gun at rush over the edge and tumble down the slope after her.

  The momentary pause she had, even if it was only for a few seconds, allowed her to get one or two good breaths of air into her lungs. And when the zombie hit the ground next to her, she pulled the knife out of her sheath and stabbed it in the head before it could get its bearings.

  She scrambled up to her feet, knowing more were coming. "Come on, Sarah, work!" she told herself as she hobbled along, more from fatigue than injury.

  She found herself in a large granite quarry with abandoned machinery sitting around the unused area. The makeshift gravel road she was on spiraled down in a circle, lower and lower into the ground, allowing the machines to get at the solid granite deposits embedded in the earth. She had found herself in the upper ring of the quarry, and the only way to go in front of her was down.

  It looked like there was a passageway at the far end of the quarry that led through high walls of granite, and it looked like the only way out; the rest of the quarry was surrounded with walls that were too steep and high to scale.

  The undead came over the edge from the forest in waves, spilling down the incline and landing behind her. Sarah wasted no time and ran up to the lip of the ring she was on, and she sat down on her butt and rode the slope down to the next layer. She could have run around along the curving road, but she knew as soon as the zombies got back to their feet, they would catch her in no time at all. At least this way, she could bu
y herself some time to think as she let gravity pull her down from level to level toward the center of the quarry.

  Some sections had been dug out by machinery, leaving gaps in some of the spiraling roads, but there was still enough room for machinery to get by.

  There was a foreman's office at the far side of the quarry near the exit leading out through the high walls. A few porta-potties lined up next to it, and aside from that and some old, rusted machinery, there was nowhere useful to hide in the quarry. But as Sarah went down deeper into the quarry and the undead tumbled down after her, she got a better angle on the exit. It looked like there was only more woodland beyond it, and even if she escaped, it would still do her no good. She needed to think of something, and think of it fast.

  Sarah reached the bottom of the quarry, her hand and ankles scraped raw. But despite the pain, the journey down each slope gave her a little bit of time for her to rest her heart, and she felt like she could run for another stretch.

  The zombies followed her down the slopes the same way as she had gone, but their dry and leathery skin was more sensitive than hers, and their gray flesh had been torn up quite badly on the way down, especially the ones that had little to no clothing affixed to their bodies.

  Sarah crossed the wide center of the area, running past a rusted CAT excavator. She briefly considered it, but she knew climbing inside would be a short and swift deathtrap, so she carried on. As her eyes hurriedly searched the empty space, she had very few options and she was quickly running out of each one. Nimbly navigating the slopes had bought her a little bit of time, but now that the dead were on the flat terrain, they were closing in again. Sarah's eyes settled on the foreman's office. She would be trapped inside, but she had no choice.

  The exit to the quarry ran past the foreman's office about fifty yards out from it. But as she got closer to it, she still saw only more wooded areas. And her alternative wasn't much better; Sarah had nothing on her but a knife now, and she would be holing up against a breed of zombie that had not only the strength, but the know-how to bust into the office to get at her, even if she could barricade it.

  As she swallowed, feeling her dry throat scrape against itself, she started to accept the fact that this might be the end for her. Unless the office contained a Gatling gun, she would most likely be re-creating Custer's last stand.

  She made it up the steps leading to the door of the long portable office and she twisted the handle. To her utter delight, it wasn't locked, and she rushed inside. It was dim in the interior, but the light coming through the windows across from her was enough for her to see.

  Sarah slammed the door shut behind her and locked it as the first zombies slammed into it from outside and began twisting the handle. She searched around, thinking quickly. She found a tall metal cabinet and shoved it over in front of the door. It slammed down onto the tile floor, cracking it and shaking the whole building.

  The zombies battered against the door, but there wasn't much room on the landing at the top of the steps outside, and the undead couldn't generate much force.

  Still, these zombies had all the strength and ferocity of the scratchers, and an alarming amount of intelligence that the rest of the undead lacked. As Sarah thought about that, she had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach which caused her to check the windows. As she peered out, she saw a large group of the undead huddling down below them. The floor of the office was elevated off the ground outside, and the windows were eight feet up from the ground.

  Some of the zombies began to bend over, offering themselves up as stepping stools while other zombies began to climb on their backs to gain height.

  "Shit!" Sarah muttered as she worked herself around the office, searching for anything she could use to defend herself.

  The door handle sounded like it was loosening with each slam, and before long, the doorjamb had broken, the metal twisted and useless, and the door shoved open half a foot, pushing against the filing cabinet.

  Sarah looked up from the drawers she was searching and scampered across the room, shoving herself against the overturned filing cabinet and slamming it back into the door. She used her bodyweight to keep herself pressed against it as her eyes frantically scanned the room.

  One of the windows to the office in front of her smashed as a zombie's fist came through. A shower of tiny shards sprinkled across her and she bowed her head and closed her eyes to shield herself.

  Just as the sinking feeling in her stomach grew and she thought it was the end, she spotted a little black safe in the far corner of the long office from her. Its door was ajar, and she could see something inside.

  Her eyes lit up.

  It was too dim to make it out from where she was as she pressed herself against the filing cabinet, but if it was what she thought it was, then things were about to get a whole lot more interesting.

  Another window smashed, and the dead began to climb up into the both of them.

  Sarah shoved herself up to her feet and stabbed her knife at the first zombie crawling through. It hadn't seen her and she stuck it right in the head, causing it to go limp and fall out of the window as she pulled her knife out. The second zombie, who had its arms wrapped around the interior of the frame, dodged her shots as she swung the knife at it. She clipped its flesh and sunk the blade into its shoulder, but it kept its head bobbing and weaving like it was Muhammad Ali. Frustrated, Sarah picked up a heavy book off the desk between her and the window and backhanded the zombie across the face with it. It lost its balance and tumbled out the window, falling on some of the zombies trying to prop themselves up down below.

  The restless corpses on the other side of the door started to shove it open again, inching the heavy cabinet across the floor, but Sarah didn't have time to worry about that. She wrenched open the safe door nice and wide and pulled out the item sitting in it.

  It was just what she suspected: a bundle of dynamite, seven sticks in total wrapped together. Each of them had a fuse extending out of it that twisted around with each of the others, intended to set off an enormous explosion. But it would be useless without something to light it.

  Sarah moved back through the rest of the office, pulling open drawers and rifling through loose papers, trying to find a lighter. Periodically she would turn and shove the cabinet back into the door, but eventually the zombies had pressed it open enough to start wedging themselves through. But still Sarah slammed the cabinet into them, trying to crush any of them stuck in between while she also tried to hold off the zombies climbing up through the windows, like she was playing a demented game of whack-a-mole.

  "Come on!" Sarah said to herself as she stabbed a zombie in the eye coming through the window. She searched through all the drawers in the desks lining the office to no avail, but as she pulled a microwave out of the way on a table and saw an old lunchbox and pack of cigarettes next to it, she saw the singular holy object she was looking for: a Bic lighter. She'd never smoked, and she'd never been so happy to see a lighter before in her life. She set the bundle of dynamite down on the table and cut the bands holding them together. She prayed that this would still work, and as she kicked a zombie in the face that was climbing through one of the windows next to her, she untwisted the dynamite fuses from each other and flicked the spark wheel of the lighter.

  To her utter joy, it produced a tiny flame and she held it to one of the fuses. It sparked into life and started chewing through the fuse, and as soon as she picked it up and held the awesomely destructive power in her hand, she realized the utter insanity of what she was doing.

  "Oh fuck."

  She hurled the dynamite out the window and a few seconds later it exploded.

  A huge blast went off and shook the entire office, causing all the desks in the room to momentarily lift off the ground before slamming back down. Any windows that hadn't already been broken now were, and dust and gravel permeated every part of the air, choking Sarah's eyes and lungs. She leaned out the window and saw the blast mark on the ground.
It had been a little ways away from the zombies, and despite the impressive force, many of them were still huddled below the windows, unharmed.

  Sarah shoved herself into the cabinet again, and she lit another stick of dynamite. In her haste to maim the zombies trying to climb in the windows, she leaned out one of them and threw the stick almost straight down at the base of the office where all the zombies huddled.

  Her eyes widened, realizing what she had done, and she scooped up the rest of the dynamite in her arm, taking the lighter with her, then she ran to the other end of the office as fast as she could. She dove into the corner right as the blast went off.

  The explosion ripped apart the corner of the office, sending in a hailstorm of glass, metal, wood, stones, and other debris to kill anything in its path. The whole office rocked upward momentarily before gravity took its course and the whole damaged corner of the building sank down to the ground, tilting the floor along with it.

  Sarah started to slide toward the wreckage, gaining speed as gravity sucked her out of the office. She was flung outside, her lungs hacking horribly from the layer of dust residing in them. She landed on a huge pile of mangled and murdered zombies, with eviscerated chunks of flesh blown in every direction. The smoky and nauseating smell of cooked meat filled the air, and Sarah fell onto her knees, trying to cope with the shellshock. Her ears rang and she couldn't hear anything. She looked around and the sun suddenly seemed too bright. When she got her bearings, she stumbled for the exit of the quarry, still clutching the remaining five sticks of dynamite and the lighter. Her knife she had lost somewhere in the office, and she wouldn't even realize this fact until later.

  The large group of zombies that had gone around to the other side of the office and tried to get through the door had been unharmed in the blast, though they too were a little shellshocked, and they came out from the side now and chased after her. Some of their legs were wobbly too, the blast doing a number to their nervous systems, but they quickly recovered and set after her.