America the Dead

by Joseph Talluto

  I shook my head at Nate and went to the side door. Duncan looked up from the back table and came forward with his rifle. I nodded and we both went outside. I did a quick look around and saw that the noise from the little Z had attracted the attention of several others, who were slowly making their way over to investigate. Duncan moved out to have a clearer field of fire should they get too close and I circled wide to make sure I had plenty of room when my target decided to charge me.

  I was about twenty yards away from the RV and circling to the front of it when I saw it had gotten off the windshield and was starting to make its way back to the side door. When it saw me, it let out that weird hiss and charged at full speed.

  Ordinarily, I would be nervous about taking out a Z this fast. But this little twit had just chased me out of a building, made me fall on a dumpster and dive for my life into a recreational vehicle. I was too pissed off to care that it was fast.

  Bracing myself, I held the pickaxe high and waited for the Z to arrive, timing its steps with my swing. When it got within reach I swung as hard as I could, slamming the chisel end into its temple and sending it sprawling onto the pavement. I didn’t wait for it to get up again, I followed it and struck it again as it slowly climbed to its feet. I was rewarded with a loud crack from its skull from the second blow and the zombie was very slow in getting to its feet a second time. I reversed the pick head to the pointy side and slammed the pick onto the top of her head with a snarl. Her dead eyes rolled up into her skull and she fell in a heap. Dark fluid leaked out of the hole in the top of her head and stained the pavement a sickly brown color. I walked back to the RV as Duncan shot the closest Z, tumbling it into the ditch by the road. Duncan’s rifle cracked again and again, a signal it was time to go.

  As I went to the RV, Duncan commented, “Why didn’t you just shoot her?”

  I sprayed my pickaxe with kerosene from an industrial sprayer we kept on the back of the vehicle. It misted the kerosene over a larger area and put out less to burn, so we weren’t trying to constantly extinguish our weapons. I touched a lighter to the weapon and it flared briefly red, then went out.

  I turned to Duncan when I finished. “This way felt better,” I said.

  We climbed back aboard the RV and Nate pulled us out of the parking lot and back onto our preferred route. We passed a lot of zombies and a lot of dead areas, some still having the white flags on their mailboxes, a reminder of a time when people held out the hope that the virus could be contained.

  Back in the front seat, I looked over at Nate and sighed. He was savvy enough to say, “What?”

  I used my most petulant voice. “I said, ‘Let’s use the waterways, it’ll be safer,’ I said. But you said, ‘No, a land route is better for supplies.’” I shifted and tried to see around the zombie muck smeared on the windshield. “I wanted to be practical and get this done as quickly as possible, but noooo, you had to have your way, didn’t you?”

  Nate chuckled. “Cheer up. After this, how bad could it get?”

  As we travelled down the road I feared for a meteor to hit the RV.

  15

  We passed several homes and dead areas and as we travelled I began to realize the enormity of what we were doing and how long it was going to take to even start trying to rebuild. There was so much devastation, so much death and so many zombies, I wasn’t sure we would live to see it pass. I wasn’t even sure we had enough live people left in the country to start clearing out areas in earnest. I looked at the map and saw hundreds of small towns and I wondered if the infection had hit all of them. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. After all, we had found several towns making a stand in the small area we had been to. Maybe there were a lot more like that, just wondering what to do next.

  I thought about Major Thorton and resolved once again to make sure a piece of crap like that would never take over. People needed hope, even a little, to make it through this nightmare and if you took that away then we were nothing as a country, nothing as a people, nothing as a species.

  These happy thoughts bounced around my head as Nate maneuvered the big vehicle around stalled cars and dead intersections. We had a bit of a time getting through the Route 30 and Route 41 intersection since there were about three thousand zombies populating the parking lot of the two shopping centers. I looked over at Nate and he raised his eyebrows in a question that I answered with a flat “No.”

  He chuckled and continued driving. When we reached the intersection of Route 30 with Interstate 65, we had to find an alternate route. The intersection was jammed with cars and there was no getting around them. On the overpass I could see a long line of dead cars and hundreds of zombies roaming the freeway, too stupid to find an off-ramp.

  We swung south on 53, but that took us past a huge hospital campus, which looked like it had been bombed. Every window had been broken out and there was evidence of fire damage from a dozen windows. We could see dark forms shifting from window to window and there were dozens out on the lawn. When they saw us they started moving in our direction and some actually fell out of higher windows, just to land broken on the ground below.

  We swung down a side road while I scrambled to find another route on the map. I directed Nate down through a blighted subdivision, then back to the interstate. We took a turn back north on Colorado Street and found our way back to Route 30. That little side trip cost us about an hour and a half and it was getting darker. We were going to need to find a safe place to stop for the night. We drove for a little ways and I motioned Nate to pull into a place on the right. It was Deep River Water Park and I figured it would be as safe as anywhere and not likely to be a place that saw a lot of people seeking shelter.

  Nate pulled the big vehicle up to the visitor center, but I pointed at a spot closer to where they seemed to have been doing some construction before the Upheaval.

  “Why there?” he wanted to know as he moved the RV around.

  “We can probably find some gas for the rig in the tractors and trucks over there,” I said, moving by the door and my gear.

  “Good one,” Nate said, working to get the RV as close as possible. “Where are you headed?”

  “Tommy and I are going to check the area out, you can look for gas with Duncan.” I beckoned Tommy out of his chair. Duncan was already buckling on his weapons.

  Tommy and I moved quickly away from the RV and to the first building, which looked to be a concession/restaurant kind of place. We had to break a small window on the door to get in, which was a good sign that the place hadn’t been open when the world ended.

  We went inside and searched around, but didn’t find any zombies. We found a good supply of canned goods and a few boxes of something that might have been hot dogs at one point, but neither of us was brave enough to guess. I found some candy bars that hadn’t expired yet and Tommy and I both enjoyed a Three Musketeers each.

  With his mouth full, Tommy remarked, “You know, before I had a real sweet tooth, but now it’s been so long since I’ve had chocolate, this seems almost too sweet to eat.”

  I nodded. “Me too, but I notice neither one of us stopped from eating the whole thing.”

  Tommy smiled a chocolatey grin at me then turned serious. I put the box of candy down and brought up my carbine. I had heard it, too. Something was moving in the back room and it sounded like it was headed our way.

  I moved to the door of the restaurant seating area and peeked in. I couldn’t see much because of the lack of light, so I waved Tommy over and he held open the door while I looked around with my flashlight. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  But then I saw movement. One of the chairs shifted slightly. Then another, closer this time. Then another, even closer. It was as if there was a ghost slowly making its way across the room.

  For a wild second I thought about invisible zombies, but then laughed at myself for being so stupid. But something was making those chairs move and it was headed our way. I could see a large black opening which might have been the k
itchen and there seemed to be some sort of light in there, but I wasn’t about to go charging in until I knew what was coming at me.

  Tommy looked at me and I waved him over. I pointed the flashlight at the chairs and sure enough, one of them shifted very close to us. Tommy jumped and brought up his rifle, flicking on the weapon light and aiming it at the ground. I could understand his reasoning. If it wasn’t above, it was below.

  Looking down, a pair of red eyes flashed out of the dark at us and Tommy nearly fired when I said, “Hold it.” I bent down and held out my hand and a skinny little black cat scampered out of the darkness and started rubbing its head on my hand, purring loudly in the silence.

  “Hey, little buddy. Where the hell did you come from?” I stroked the little cat’s back, feeling its ribs and thin frame. I had no idea how it got in here or how it managed to survive, but it had to have come from a home recently, since it didn’t seem feral. If it had been, it would have bolted when we opened the door.

  Tommy relaxed and moved to the kitchen doorway, scanning the area with his rifle before going in. He came back out holding his hand by his nose and coughing.

  “There’s a door open in the back, which explains how this little guy got in. There’s a ton of dead meat in there, so the smell is horrible.” Tommy coughed. “But there’s some stuff that we might be able to salvage, although it all seems to be in huge cans.”

  “We’ll see what we can take. We can always trade it if we need to.” I went back through the door and went over to the pool access area. We stepped out and looked around, taking in the multitude of water slides, wave pools, wading pools and a big lazy river. The water had turned green with algae and smelled rather badly, but it would have been fun in its day.

  We also saw the seven zombies that had come around the building and had managed to cut off our escape back to the RV. I imagine they had come from the subdivision across the way, since there were no other homes around here. They had apparently come through the public access gate and upon seeing us standing there sightseeing like fools, decided an evening snack was in order.

  This put us in a bind, since we didn’t want to fire any shots this close to night. The sound would attract every single ghoul from the surrounding area and I had every reason to believe there would be plenty. So we had to take these guys out ourselves and do it without firing a shot. Damn.

  I looked around and spotted a possible solution. Retreating quickly, I bumped Tommy on the arm to get his attention to follow me. Tommy was taking a few practice swings with his favorite melee weapon, a length of duct-tape wrapped iron pipe, with fittings attached to the end that made it look like a medieval mace. It crushed skulls without bursting them open, so the wounds were cleaner, but just as devastating.

  I moved over to the small bridge that crossed the lazy river. It was about ten feet wide, not ideal, but it would have to do in keeping us from getting surrounded. There was a fence that blocked off access to the river, which helped a little. Tommy followed quickly and as I turned to make a stand, I noticed our little furry friend had beat a hasty retreat to some concealing shrubbery. I slung my carbine across my back and took out my pickaxe. It still smelled of kerosene.

  The first of the zombies came lurching at us, stumbling slightly as it encountered the rise in the walkway. It was a man about my age, with a bald head that had tears all along the back. His head was down, but I could see him looking at us from beneath heavy eyebrows. As he took another step, Tommy moved in and swung at it’s head, knocking it to the side and over the fence. The zombie hit the brackish water and disappeared beneath the surface.

  “Nice one. You been working out?” I asked as I readied for the next one.

  “Yeah, a little,” Tommy replied. “I figured you and Charlie shouldn’t have all the fun.”

  I took an overhand swing at the next one, burying the point of my pick into the top of a smallish woman’s head, arching her eyebrows and killing her with a surprised look on her dead face. I shook out my weapon then grabbed her by the arm and leg, heaving her at the mass of undead charging us. The woman’s body collided with three of the others, causing them to stumble and fall. The remaining two walked around and came at Tommy at once, causing a tactical dilemma. I swung at the same time he did and we managed to slam the zombie’s heads together like a couple of overripe coconuts. They went down in a heap and we stooped quickly to move them into the path of the remaining three who had gotten up from the one I had tossed earlier.

  The first one, a middle aged guy who was missing a lot of flesh from around his eyes, came stumbling along and actually managed to get a hand on my shirt. I shoved the pickaxe into his mouth and heaved him into the fence, flipping him over and into the water. Thankfully he let go as he fell. The next one was on top of me before I could get a good swing in and I had to block his attack with the handle of my pick. He snapped and snarled at me, grabbing at my arms and trying to pull me in for a chew. I twisted, lifting him off his feet and slammed him into the fence. I could hear his vertebrae snap on impact and he fell to the ground on useless legs.

  I moved forward and killed it with a strike to the head, leaving him hanging on the fence. Tommy was finishing off his attacker with a blow to the neck

  I took a minute to catch my breath and Tommy did the same.

  “You know, its not that I’m out of shape.,” he started.

  “I know.” I finished for him. “The end of the adrenaline rush really sets you down.” We heaved like a couple of aging boilers and when we recovered we hustled back around the building. The sun was setting quickly and I really didn’t need to spend the night out here. A small shadow detached itself from a bush and scampered over to us as we stopped to check around the side of the building.

  “Well, hello, Skinny. Nice of you to lend a hand back there,” I said to the cat that had rejoined us who was now rubbing himself on my legs.

  “Cat probably has fleas and worse,” said Tommy as the cat rubbed against his legs as well. He did reach down to scratch between the cat’s shoulder blades.

  “Coast is clear…wait. Damn.” We were fifty yards from the RV and a stupid zombie was stumbling around like it was looking for the bathroom. It figured to be a teenager, by appearances. I was just about to rush it when the cat ran out from cover, stopped and meowed at the zombie. The Z spun around and locked onto the cat, which then proceeded to stay just out of reach by scampering forward every time the teen reached for it. The cat kept this up, leading the zombie away from us and into the construction zone. I had to know, so I silently followed and bless me if the little cat didn’t lead that dumb zombie into a construction hole. The cat climbed out easy as you please, but the zombie was in for good.

  If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn that little scamp had a big shit-eating grin on its feline face as he came back for more pets.

  Tommy summed it up nicely. “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. That cat is coming with us and if anyone says different, they’ll have to take it up with me.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more. As we got back aboard the RV to clean our weapons and secure for the night, I couldn’t help but wonder what else we were going to see on this trip.

  16

  The convoy out of California had been on the road for nearly three weeks. They had spent considerable time moving around large population areas and combating zombies when necessary. Considering the distance they had travelled, it was a marvel that none of their number had been killed.

  There had been battles and some communities were not as welcoming as others had been. Major Thorton was savvy enough to realize when he was holding a losing hand and didn’t press the issue. When some communities showed a preference for fight it was a wiser choice to hold back.

  The overall picture Thorton got as he crossed the heartland was there were more survivors than he originally had anticipated, but the lack of effective communication kept them isolated from each other. A few communities had set up runners, but for the
most part, they were self reliant. This worked well for Ken, as he intended to make sure no other power came into being after he took over the governing of the country.

  For the moment, he was enjoying a little rest and relaxation. He and his men had fought a number of zombies around the St. Louis area, so much so that he had been forced to take his convoy off the designated path and head around the city area. When they reached the river, Thorton realized he had to find a way across as the river was higher than he expected.

  Fortunately, the Mississippi is crossed by several small bridges and the group managed to find one in short order. After the crossing, Major Thorton and his men found themselves in a state park, Pere Marquette and were taking a little rest after their weeks on the road. The park was in pretty decent shape and the hotel on the premises gave each man a room to himself and a bed for the first time in a while. There was plenty of water, thanks to the river and the woods provided a good amount of fresh meat. The men had explored the area and had not found much in the way of zombie activity. Down the road a little bit were some homes and a couple of businesses, but they had been looted and destroyed.

  Right at the present, his men were combing through the forest preserve and the Major was enjoying a moment on the grand porch of the lodge. His captain was out with the men and Ken was appreciating his surroundings. Wouldn’t this make a great place to start the new regime? He thought to himself. Good place, plenty of resources and if the map is right, damn near in the middle of the country. Just about perfect.

  Thorton’s ruminations were interrupted when a very wet and nasty looking creature stumbled into view. It apparently had been hanging out in the river area and finally motivated itself to see if it could get a meal with all of the activity of the men thrashing about in the woods. Water dripped off decaying limbs and the clothing it wore was simply in tatters. From this distance, it looked like pieces of skin were coming off with the water as well.