Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution

by Schubert, Sean

  She took a deep breath, held it, and then fired again. These next rounds were much more effective. The stooped man in the lead pitched backward, holes in his chest, neck, and forehead. Emma exhaled and then repeated.

  Jerry dealt with another using his hunting rifle, the recoil of which no longer left his shoulder aching. He quickly chambered another round but paused when he saw William step forward with the M4 Neil had given him. Jerry said, like a player encouraging his teammate, “You can do it, man. Just don’t forget to breathe.”

  Jerry smiled at William who looked over at him. “They’re still a ways off. Fire from your shoulder and not your hip.”

  William knew how to shoot. He’d just never shot at people. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine them as something other than human beings. Looking at them, however, would likely have worked just as well. These things walking toward him were devoid of everything human except the rudimentary outer shell.

  Opening his eyes wide and then narrowing them into slits, William pulled the trigger once, a single shot hurtling toward the devils. It struck one of them in the shoulder, a burst of dark syrup exploding out its back.

  “It pulls a little to the right,” he remarked. He adjusted himself in his stance, narrowed his eyes and shot again. This time his target spun away, tripping the final one too clumsy to avoid the fallen carcasses around it.

  Emma shot again, having closed much of the distance to her quarry. Two bullets punched into the top of its head, driving down toward its neck and throat. Much of the scrambled matter traveling the length of the bullets’ path spilled unceremoniously out the beast’s mouth looking like vomited petroleum moments before it too toppled forward.

  “We’re wasting time!” she called to the group. “Let’s keep moving!”

  They skirted the knotted pile of dead bodies by running on the opposite side of the car. The bodies’ mildewy odor, ripe with the stench of decay, was unavoidable. It hung heavily all across the road in an invisible cloud filling their nostrils with its muted foulness.

  Neil whispered, “I never get used to the smell.”

  “Makes me wanna gag every time,” Emma said.

  Following their shooting, Neil saw what he expected; more of the undead drawn to their shooting.

  Chapter 25

  The short road in front of the group of survivors was clear all the way to the pier. The bottom of the road, sitting in a shadow, was still white with snow and frost. Neil saw no footsteps in the snowy road, which helped him control his mounting fear.

  The previous night, Jerry and Danielle had spoken for quite some time. The topic of the undeads’ moan found its way into the conversation. Jerry told Danielle about his theory of young ears and the sound the creatures made. He thought that maybe younger ears could hear more of the sound, and consequently felt it much more deeply. He asked if she had felt a sickening vibration in her chest when those things were around and she had. It had been a background irritation for her but one that did not go unnoticed. She had not put the two together. She hadn’t been around them as much as he had. It made her wonder what else she needed to know to stay alive.

  As they ran, Danielle realized she could feel that buzz again. She was about to say so when Jerry pointed out, “Still a bit off from us, but there’s a pretty good sized group coming. We better pick it up.”

  William asked, “What if the group is in front of us?”

  “They’re not,” Jerry said, “because the sound is coming from over my shoulder. You can hear that, can’t you?” Not getting an immediate response, Jerry said, “Doesn’t matter. They’re behind us...for the most part.”

  Hitting the snow at a full sprint, most of them made it through cleanly. Jerry, however, lost his footing, skidded forward a few paces, but never lost his balance enough to fall. He chuckled, “Jesus. That was close.”

  The pier too was slick, the wood planks coated with an icy gloss. They slowed down as they climbed down the steps to the launch.

  Neil barked, “Pile the bags into this boat. Quickly. Danny, climb in there and pile them in the middle. Watch your step getting in. We don’t need to start the day wet.”

  Neil was busy getting things situated and ready, while Emma and William watched behind them. At the top of the hill, a group of a dozen or so of the demons appeared, moving slowly. They hadn’t yet noticed the group of live humans.

  “Hurry the fuck up!” Emma whispered urgently. “We’re out of time!”

  William raised his rifle, to which Emma said quickly, “Don’t waste the ammo.”

  William was going to ask why they didn’t just shoot the damned things on sight but stalled his question. More of the things arrived, coming from everywhere. He wondered how many there were. His shooting at those few would have brought that huge mob of monsters down upon them.

  Neil said, “Okay, William and I will go over to his boat in this one. You guys take the other and wait out in the bay a little bit. Don’t get out too far but get far enough away that the zekes can’t get out to you.”

  “I think I should go too,” Emma said. “I’m the best shot. You’ll need me.”

  Neil was shaking his head before she had finished. “No, I need you to stay with the others and keep them safe. If you and Jerry are with them, I will feel more comfortable. I’ll be able to stay focused rather than worry about the others, especially the kids.”

  Emma smiled. “Bullshit! I’m coming. Jerry, you got this?”

  Jerry nodded. “We got more guns than you guys. You should be worrying about yourselves. ‘Sides, I got Danny with me. Help me get the boats out.”

  Neil and Jerry untied the boat while the others loaded themselves into it, the craft settling a little lower into the water as each person climbed aboard. Jerry was hardly sitting before Neil was pushing the boat away with his foot.

  Feeling anxious and worried, Jerry said, “Watch yourselves.” He caught Neil’s and Emma’s eyes and then started to row with all his might. Emma looked up to the road from where they had come. Several of the creatures were tumbling down the road toward them. Fortunately, the pace the creatures could achieve with gravity’s help also contributed to spilling most of them onto their posteriors or their chests when they reached the slick snow patch.

  The third boat, the nice silver one Neil had seen from a distance, was already untied and pulling away from the pier. Neil stepped in and lowered himself into the middle of the aluminum boat. There was a little pool of brown water in the boat’s bottom, which sloshed and moved with the Sound’s wavy current. William pulled the oars powerfully, rapidly propelling them from the pier.

  They were quickly away from any danger but Neil said, “Emma, pop off a few rounds. Maybe we can get some more of those things away from our dock.”

  Emma was more than happy to comply. “Cover your ears, gents!” She fired several rounds, some bringing down zombies with headshots and others merely churning reanimated flesh without causing any real harm.

  Neil touched her shoulder. “That’s enough. We need to have enough bullets over at William’s boat.”

  She patted her pockets. “I’ve got another four full mags on me and two that I can reload if you’d like.”

  “I hope it won’t take that much to get us away from the dock. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to get onto the boat and away without a fight at all. If we’re lucky.”

  Chapter 26

  William and Neil rowed the little boat quietly just out of reach of the stone and earth spit separating Prince William Sound proper from the boat harbor. Emma knelt in the front of the boat with her assault rifle at the ready.

  The eerie quiet was unsettling; the lapping water along the little boat’s hull was the only noise other than their own breathing. They kept several dozen feet between themselves and the long manmade rock wall that separated the boat harbor from the Sound. The tension was rising. Emma watched the wall closely, wary of any movement which could only mean that they were being hunted. She was afraid to blink for fe
ar that she would miss something.

  From this distance, she was fairly certain they would be safe from any potential threats that lurked on the wall high above them. William suggested to them that the worst moments would be after they were inside the harbor. Their little craft would sit lower than both the seawall and the piers where all the boats were moored.

  They turned left, making a nautical U-turn, and started to move into the harbor. Emma and Neil became acutely aware of the reason for William’s earlier concern. From where they sat, the world all around them seemed so much larger. They were seeing the world from Danny’s perspective lower than everything around. Lilliputians in the land of giants.

  Slowly and quietly, the little boat crawled into the harbor. They passed a row of boats and, more importantly, an empty pier. William pointed to the next row of boats and nodded. He dipped his oar into the water, turning them slightly and aiming the bow of their rowboat toward the rear of a boat sporting the big letters S-E-R-E-N-I-T-Y across its frame.

  William’s smile was almost as big as those letters as he pulled up close to his boat. He reached up and stopped them by grabbing hold of a thin railing running along the edge of the craft’s gunwale. He was at full extension in doing it, causing Emma to marvel at his impressive reach. He was as big as a tree.

  As luck would have it, they got on the boat without being detected. And just as William had predicted, Serenity was full of gas and more or less ready to be untied and pushed off from its mooring. Moving stealthily, William cast them off, hopping back onto the boat without incident. The motor kicked on with a bit of a chest-clearing growl before settling into its combustion hum.

  They started to move away, and the docks and boats around started to bustle with activity, like this was any other busy day at this marine community. Emma watched in amazement as several of the undead fiends came to the end of the piers and plunged into the brine, sinking into its depths.

  “Jesus,” she said in hushed despair. “They just keep going. They’re not smart enough to stop when they come to the end.” She looked away as another one, a woman, looked at and through Emma as she too walked into the Prince William Sound, disappearing in a series of bubbles.

  “Probably not a good place to go swimming,” Neil remarked.

  William added, “Never was. The water’s always been too cold here to swim. Some folks used to come out here to scuba but the gear they had to wear was pretty substantial. It ain’t ever been too hospitable to taking a dip though.”

  Emma looked over the boat’s edge at the murky brown water but couldn’t see beyond the oily surface. She wondered how many zombies had sunk below the waterline and were waiting there with their hungry, reaching arms. The prospect of mistakenly ending up in the water and getting pulled below the waves by the remorseless hands of the undead sent a sickening fear through her like a jolt of cold electricity. She backed away from the boat’s edge and entered the main cabin, which was warming steadily by blowers turned on full.

  Serenity was a surprisingly spacious boat with a good-sized galley below decks and two sleeping compartments. William had also been right about the provisions aboard the boat. There was Alaskan Amber beer and a few varieties from Pyramid, including Emma’s favorite, Hefeweizen. It wasn’t ice cold, but the water into which it had been sunk was still pretty frigid. She twisted off the top of a bottle and took a long, grateful drink, enjoying the carbonated tingle on the back of her throat and her nose.

  Emma wandered back out onto the much colder deck and stood back while Neil helped Jerry and his group up into Serenity. The extra supplies and gear were hauled up and stowed as well.

  Walking over to Jerry and Neil, who were watching the docks of Whittier get smaller in the distance, Emma handed each of them an opened beer. The three clinked their bottles together and then shared a drink. They finished their beers quickly, sitting down afterward to enjoy the buzz a single alcoholic beverage could have on them this day and age.

  Danny and Jules soon joined them, each with a hot cup of cocoa that Jess had prepared for them.

  Neil said, “I didn’t think we were gonna make it.”

  “Don’t jinx us,” Emma warned. “We’re not out of it yet.”

  “No,” Jerry cut in, “but this is the closest to getting out of it that we’ve come.”

  Part III

  Chapter 27

  “What’s taking so long?” Colonel Bear grumbled from his Humvee. He hadn’t exited the oversized vehicle since they’d left Skyview.

  Carter, feeling as impatient as the Colonel, shook his head in disgust and turned on his heels to see about injecting some urgency into their electrician’s pace. He walked back into the power station shed and found the electrician, Cody Benson, twisting wires together. He was hard at work with another man, Oscar Torres, helping him as much as he could as a simple laborer, knowing little about wiring but possessing enough skills as to be of assistance.

  Carter entered the room and immediately the two men stopped, their eyes instantly drawn to him. They were still quite jumpy from the fight just the night before. Oscar had in his hands a rifle, a Mini-14 that was never out of reach. Carter sensed the jolt in the atmosphere as if Cody had subjected them all to live current.

  Partially complaining and partially apologizing, Cody said, “Jesus, Carter. Sorry. You just came in here so fast and quiet. It was like you was just there all of a sudden. Shit! We mighta shot you.”

  Annoyed now at what he was seeing as a distraction, Carter said only, “You shoot me, even by mistake, and you better make sure I can’t get back up.” Carter’s smile shared no warmth or mirth. It was a serpent’s smile.

  The two men settled back into their work while Carter sat down and enjoyed the new pinch of tobacco in his lower lip. When his mouth filled with a soup of saliva and wintergreen flavored tobacco juice, he leaned over his shoulder and spat just outside the doorway. It was a disgusting habit; one which his mother would never have approved. He reveled in his yellow and brown teeth and the sores he sometimes got on his lip and gums. Every time he rinsed his mouth with a salt and water solution the Colonel had given him to clean the sores, the burning feeling he got was sheer pleasure.

  Oscar, having finished his share of what he was capable of doing, turned to Carter and asked, “How long you been with the Colonel?”

  “‘Bout half my life.”

  “Were you in the Army with him?”

  “Army? The Colonel’s never been in no army, least none that would have done this government’s bidding. He and I are above that. Government’s probably behind this whole mess. Too bad for them ‘cause it’s gonna turn around and bite them right in the ass. This is working all according to the Colonel’s plan. We were on our way... ya know. Those people needed us. Too bad they didn’t figure it out ‘fore they all got killed. What the hell were they thinking? Comin’ at the Colonel like that? He had no choice.”

  Getting back to his original question, Oscar asked, “How did you meet Colonel Bear then?” Oscar also wondered where the Colonel earned his rank, but thought better of asking.

  Spitting into a gathering pool, Carter said, “Well, I was never too fond of rules. My mom and dad and me didn’t see eye-to-eye on many things. They rode my ass about everything. Who my friends could and should be; girlfriends; school; work; life; everything. Nothing I ever did was good enough.” Carter spat again and shook his head. “I thought about killing them at one time.”

  Carter could feel both sets of eyes on him at that comment. “They put me in the fucking JROTC. They tried to turn me into a robot. They wanted their little Carter to be the same tool that they both were. It wasn’t even about me. They were embarrassed for themselves. They needed me to act better for them. They didn’t care about me. It was always about them.

  “Well I figured it out. I learned how to play the game. I just started getting better grades, hell all it took was reading a bit, and learned to say, yes sir and yes ma’am. It was all about appearances for them. As
soon as they had their backs turned, it was on. I don’t know if I had a sober day my last two years of high school and they had no idea or didn’t care enough to say. Either way, they stayed outta my shit.

  “JROTC sucked. We had to go to school early and usually stayed late. Some of those freaks really took that garbage seriously. Some of ‘em wanted to have careers in the freakin’ military. How stupid is that? Well, something good did end up coming of wearing those stupid green uniforms.

  “I was out on some stupid community service project. It was an invasive weed-pulling afternoon on some trail that I’d never been on and didn’t plan on visiting ever again. We all gathered at Soldotna High School. Anyway, we were all in the back parking lot waiting for the event sponsors to come pick us up. Up drives this big Humvee. It was gorgeous and black as hate. The license plate read: BEAR. It came to a stop and outta the passenger door steps this bigger than life guy. You guys know what I mean about him. Yeah, he’s fat but it’s more than that. He fills the room, no matter how big. Well, that parking lot got a lot smaller all of a sudden. He was hauling a bunch of the tools they would be using, so he only had room for one passenger.”

  “And you stepped up?” Oscar asked. “Just like that?”

  “Hell no. The Colonel looked too military for me. He looked like a guy who might have lived an entire life in the Marines or something and now only did it as a hobby and to feel important and powerful. I had no interest, but I was the closest. So I climbed into his backseat and was surprised to see that the seat next to me was empty. He could’ve taken more. If I had any sense, I probably should have been worried about being carted off somewhere, but looking back, I think I kind of invited that sort of thing because then I could get away with killing someone and not getting into trouble for it.”

  Oscar and Cody shared a quick, worried look, which was not missed by Carter.