Rage: Z Is For Zombie Book 5

by catt dahman

  Doc and Steve tossed everyone out as soon as they could, leaving Ann to help Beth so she could rest and get to know her babies. Katie, Hannah, and Jet stayed a little longer to see their sisters. “You aren’t related by blood, but you are all my children,” Beth told them. “Jet, you have a big responsibility to care for your sisters.” He was thrilled.

  It was that evening that Jett removed his ‘piercings’ with care, cut off his long hair in a style like Len wore, and started his journey to becoming a man. He never gave up his affinity for black clothing, but he began stepping up more to help the others.

  Misty gave birth to Lexie, her daughter, a day later, and Mark was able to sit and grin like crazy over his child. To her credit, she screamed less, was not grumpy, and had an easier delivery.

  8

  Expansions

  The survivors were fortunate that the winter was mild in Texas. Although there were plenty of food and warmth, they had taken in so many additional survivors that the compound was crowded; the teams reinforced it against future threats.

  Not far from the front gate was an apartment building that Norman Pope, founder of the compound, fought against it being built, but it was built anyway. It would be perfect for housing more people who came to live at the compound.

  George and Len thought that the reinforcements would be a lot of work, but they were well worth the effort to lengthen the security fence around the big building and to dig outside trenches. The building could be used to house all of the survivors who were already in and for those who still filed in every few days.

  While some were refused entrance and others were asked to leave because they didn’t fit in, most were welcome additions.

  George set up the compound with certain principles and ideals of patriotism, family, work, and ethics. Those who didn’t accept that or who would not follow the set standards had to find another place to live. An entire world was out there to choose from.

  Len drew his plans: go through the apartment building and clean it, floor to floor since they knew to expect zombies.

  All of that month, they set up a new fence, dug moats, and prepared the housing addition but did not open it to the main compound. Teams guarded the area while others added the security around the building.

  Not once did anyone forget that as many as a hundred thousand of the infected patrolled the ruined downtown area, attacked people who came through the city, and hunted down anyone who went close to his usual area.

  “It stinks in here,” Len said. He didn’t have to point that out or remind them since they already had pulled bandanas over their noses when they went into the lobby of the apartment building. They passed around a container of Vicks to rub under their noses.

  Len saw two zombies moaning as they saw the intruders. The creatures finished a last meal long ago, leaving only bones of a body near a pair of expensive green chairs in a sitting area.

  Both bodies were covered in old, dried bites and bruises on their grayish yellow skin, which remained after all of this time. Neither starved to death or stopped being animated, despite having no food and water; the only big difference was that no food went down their throats nor came back out, so their clothing was matted with old waste, but nothing new.

  They didn’t rot completely although some pieces of them did when they were torn off of the body and left hanging. The prions somehow kept the tissue from disintegrating, so it eroded and could be torn off, but the bodies were much the same as they were when they met their end. They weren’t totally alive, but they weren’t dead, body-wise either.

  Len shot one in the head as Kim took the other, almost casually putting them down, two more of many they found during the last year. Most felt that the essence of the person or the soul was long gone, so it was only right the body should be put down and not used as a meat puppet.

  Len called out, hoping to bring any of the shambling creatures to the group, rather than their seeking out the shamblers.

  “Hey, dead things, here we are; come get us,” he stopped yelling. “It still makes no sense even with what we know: they don’t decompose or starve, like get skinny, or something.”

  He shot, missed, and fired again, killing a nude woman whose clothing was torn off of her body and whose stomach was ripped open. Her bowels and stomach area were long-since dried out, matching her ripped out hair and scalp.

  The shamblers were always more and more disgusting. Seeing people shambling even though they had massive wounds was offensive; if they were their old selves, they would have been horrified to be acting like that.

  Rae shrugged. “I don’t think they even understood what they created anyway; maybe the doctor made his stupid vaccine, but what did that do besides lightly infect people?”

  She shot at a man who crawled along: his lower half was missing, hands eroded by the floor he crawled on, making them look as if he had paws. He snapped, hissed, and bit at the air with his dirty teeth until Rae blew his brains out through the back of his head, spraying the wall with grey, red, and greenish yellow gore. Rae looked at the spray of gore where the prions were, knowing they controlled the infection and the behavior but couldn’t be seen, which mystified Rae.

  “I may be one of those people who think UFOs are after us and that conspiracy shit is real, but I wonder what they were really after?”

  “And did Dr. Diamond develop it?” Kim asked, “We should have made him tell us.” He stretched his hands and worked out the kinks. His hands ached at times, and they weren’t like they used to be, but they were healed well. He knew Zane had something to do with it.

  “He always lied. I’d never believe a word he said. He never did admit he was patient zero,” Rev said. “I think it was more like he wanted to live forever; he said the vaccinated were Angels, a special species. What a nut. He played God; that is all he did.”

  “They’re ‘special’, sure they are.” Len nudged a corpse. “Maybe, there is a deep meaning to all this, but I sure as hell don’t get it.”

  Rae went around and down the hallway with Rev and several others following her.

  “Storage and amenities on this level; fourteen one-bedrooms on floors two through ten; then eleven through fifteen are three-bedrooms, seven per floor; and sixteen through twenty are more spacious three-and four-bedrooms, with four per floor. Two hundred six apartments.” Len viewed the fire escape plans on the walls as he announced his findings. That was a lot to thoroughly search and secure, but these would be welcomed rooms for more people.

  “That should get every family into a place, and singles can double up with that many rooms,” Kim said. “Is Mark going to add that to his platform?

  Len laughed. “I think he had governorship locked down with George’s helping him talk to everyone and making good with people; everyone likes Mark, and he’s become rather calm and sage-like.”

  “Sage-like?” Kim almost lost it, laughing at that. “I never thought I’d see the day. Mark, calm, but George will be around a while anyway; he’s a tough old bird. We need him more than we even realize.”

  “I saw your twins today…almost two months old; I can’t believe they’re so cute.”

  “Fat. I think Beth over feeds them but try telling her anything; she knows all about babies,” said Kim as he sulked.

  These days, he had all of the time he wanted with his daughters, but Juan always seemed to be around. That was okay; Kim owed the man his life, but this was becoming an emotional rollercoaster. He wanted Beth back so badly, but she didn’t seem to be choosing Kim or Juan: she was always busy with the children.

  “Gym and pool cleared,” Julia announced as she and her team checked the storage areas. They found only one more shambler on the entire bottom floor; the rest of the floors were clear of danger, a definite relief. The fewer they found, the less work they had in removing bodies and the stench that went along with them.

  Another team swept back through with a slower, more careful approach in case any were hidden in small spaces. In her mind,
Julia thanked whoever drained the pool to repair it so that they didn’t have to search the water.

  The first floor was a lot of the same: their nerves on edge as they went into tighter places: a strong risk of being backed against a wall and overcome by small zombies and crawlers.

  In several apartments, infected families were still aimlessly wandering, waiting for food to stumble by.

  In one apartment, a father and a baby obviously caught Red and went into a coma, cared for by the mother. Kim looked greenish, thinking about his own daughters, wondering what he would do if they were infected. He shuddered.

  Then, looking around at the apartment, Kim thought it would need to be stripped of all belongings, repainted, carpet removed, and scrubbed.

  Len, Rae, Rev, and Big Bill were reminded of another time when they walked into a room to find a baby in a crib who was dead and then returned to wail and moan; Len shot the baby, and afterward, Len was unable to look Kim in the eyes. That was the first time they ever saw Len vomit with pure revulsion. It was sickening and sad to see the smallest of victims.

  Len and Rae remembered an infected, unborn baby, half in and half out of the womb, its mother dead. Some how situations like that brought all of it home in a personal way. “We have to be more secure; what if we aren’t secure enough?” he muttered as the rest of the shamblers were put down.

  Sometime later, Len made notes on a small pad and frowned. “That’s half of the apartments cleared with only one or more bodies inside; where are the others? Where did they go?”

  “Maybe they tried to get into a rescue center, or maybe they were some of the ones in cars on the highway. If they had Red, and I heard that the churches were packed with those who caught it, maybe they would still be there,” Rae said.

  With his team, Juan came huffing down to meet them in the lobby so that they could call it a day and report back to all who waited to see what the sitrep evaluation of the apartment building was.

  “Len, I won’t ask you to trudge all the way to the twentieth floor to look out on the balcony….”

  “Appreciate that,” Len chuckled, “what did you all see? Good view?”

  Juan didn’t respond at first. From that vantage point, he was able to see a lot of the city from all directions.

  In one direction was the city where a few places smoldered, and concrete and rubble were amid the stalled out cars. Some buildings were without their glass, had crumbles of masonry, and looked as if they were from some old-time war era, which, in a way, was exactly true.

  Shambling dead were so thick that they bottlenecked many streets in their ceaseless search for food, forming groups to hunt and calling one another with the infernal moaning if they found a food source.

  In another direction were more of the neighborhoods like those where George lived; the houses had three bedrooms with small yards but were well built and nice for a family. These yards died with the dry heat and then with the winter. Swing sets, fences, and even the homes themselves were deep with rot or burned in the years after Z day.

  Some had pools in the backyards, bringing to mind the zombies that had been under the water and attacked one of Julia’s crew the summer before.

  Mosquitoes thrived there, now. A few zombies shambled through the houses, and old rotted bodies and stalled out cars were in the streets, some of which the survivor teams left behind. It was a pitiful thing to see the nice homes so torn up, an epitome of the world as a whole.

  In another direction was where the ammunition plant was bombed, leaving scorched earth, ashes, rubble, and a blast radius of ruins. Glass twinkled amid the trash.

  That was a bad thing to look at, wondering why the government bombed cities to end the plague but instead only killed survivors. The fires and blast took much to the ground or to unrecognizable heaps, but it didn’t cleanse the world.

  It was the fourth direction that captured Juan’s attention, and in some ways, he would have preferred not to have seen it nor reported it.

  Right on the highway nestled into the unmoving, old traffic of cars and trucks, was a large airliner, broken into small and some huge pieces by the failed landing attempt.

  Off to the side road was a series of commercial places: restaurants, bookstores, sporting goods stores, a home improvement store, shopping centers, boutiques, and a few apartment complexes; one had a fairly new SOS white sheet hanging from an upper floor.

  Juan didn’t see any movement as he watched, but he felt people were waiting for a rescue, hoping someone was coming to help them, yet not knowing that the survivors had a secure compound close to them.

  Len listened carefully and bit the inside of his mouth as he considered it: “Could be people who came this way and got trapped or people who had been there a while, makes me curious, regardless.”

  “It made me think that pockets of people must be all over the place. Trapped or hiding a year after the fact, scavenging for supplies and wondering what will happen,” Juan said. That idea made him sorry for those who were still out wandering.

  “A year,” Kim muttered, “I can’t imagine that they have hidden that long. Think of all we’ve been through in a year’s time.”

  “In a way it could be better…saner, but then imagine no fresh food and no news about the world, I’d go crazy.”

  “You have gone crazy anyway, Len.” Kim laughed. “Hey, Juan, climb up to floor twenty, look around some more, and see if you see anything else.”

  Juan gave him a dirty look. “You go; you need the exercise.” They all shared a long laugh. “That’s a hell of a climb.”

  They walked back to the main grounds, going through security for bite checks: all showed clean, not infected.

  “Problem in medical bay, Len. You might want to check it. Mark and Alex are on it, but….” Conner shrugged. “It’s not Beth, or one of the regulars, jeez,” he added that as soon as he saw worried faces looking at him. He reminded himself that they were worriers with good reason.

  A few trailed Len as he went to medical bay. Whatever the problem was, medical bay was fairly quiet as only a few were around. George sat in medical and waved at them. “’Lots to tell you, later,” Len said to him, “what’s up here?”

  Mark and Alex stood by a closed door with guns down, but available, frustrated, tired looks on both of their faces. Doc went through and waved as he passed, “Mark and Alex have it…don’t mind me…not a thing I can do.”

  Len looked perplexed. “Huh? Since when can Doc not do everything?”

  “Remember that lady who came in yesterday with her husband? She had the small baby with her?”

  “Yeh, I saw them at dinner; they were both half-starved.”

  “The problem is the baby; Doc says it has Red.”

  Len felt as if he were slapped. “No. It couldn’t. That ended after they turned; that was a year ago. We never saw later cases.” He slumped into a seat beside George.

  “It’s a strange thing.”

  “Those symptoms could be other things, right? It wouldn’t have to be Red.”

  “We didn’t see any more after that. Doc guesses that was because they all turned; everyone either came down with it or was immune,” George said.

  “But Doc thinks…again; he’s guessing that maybe that was the initial outbreak, but whatever it was could be viewed more like a common cold. It’s with us all the time, and those of us with immunity are safe, but new people or babies, wouldn’t have immunity automatically.”

  “My girls may be in danger?” Kim asked, knowing that if Beth had heard, she was already in a panic.

  Mark shook his head. “Doc is going on a theory that Steve agrees with. He thinks that if both parents have immunity, then they will be okay.” He explained they knew the man with the woman was not the father of the baby and the father died of Red during the initial outbreak. “So the father didn’t have immunity, but she was. The baby had a fifty-fifty chance.” His calm demeanor made Kim and Juan both stop worrying about the babies so much.

 
; “The problem is that Doc says this is Red for sure; he saw many cases, remember. But, of course, he did what he could; there’s only so much that can be done for a hemorrhagic virus.” Alex grimaced. They all knew the symptoms and didn’t wish them on anyone, much less a small child: the victims bled so badly, had diarrhea, vomited, had high fever, and then went into a coma. “And there we have the problem.”

  “I’m sorry to hear the baby is sick,” Kim added.

  Alex was a sensitive soul, and his eyes were sad. “It’s terrible.”

  Mark shook his head. “That’s not it. Kimball…think….”

  “Poor thing will go into a coma; that’s rough….” He imagined what would happen then.

  No doubt Doc and Steve would give the baby something so that he never finished the cycle and could be taken care of; if Mark and Alex were here, that would be their duty to put the child down, a bad deal.

  He didn’t envy anyone this job at all. Maybe Mark wasn’t the best one for it since he had a small son. Kim gave Len and George a glance.

  “It’s advanced in this case. It may be the age, or it may be mutated, but he’s already gone into the coma.”

  “That…well…is he…did you?” Juan tried to work it out.

  “The mother and dad locked themselves up with the baby in here.” Mark motioned to the room behind him.

  “We’re waiting,” Alex added.

  “That’s why I came here; this isn’t easy for anyone, especially for those of you with kids,” George said.

  He almost jumped out of his skin as a shot thundered from the room, a second one. A third. Mark pivoted and popped the door open, gun drawn. Alex was right beside him, face dejected.

  Kim, Len, and Juan immediately pulled side arms to cover them.

  The man was to one side, his own gun beside him, his face partially obliterated by the shot. Everything below his eyes was a mangled mess of red flesh and muscles, the tongue half-extended, teeth littering the floor.

  He was somehow still alive, probably, Kim thought, what they called a flincher or someone who flinches at the last second, throwing off the gut just enough to cause massive damage to the face but not enough damage to the brain to be a killing shot.