The Apocalypse Crusade Day 4: War of the Undead

by Peter Meredith

  It didn’t take them long to lose interest in staring up at an empty hole in the ceiling. When they did, they saw Jerry foolishly standing out in the middle of the school’s atrium. He was basically surrounded. “Fuck!” he cried, when he saw them heading for him.

  Up in the ceiling, she could hear the slap of his running feet followed by a door slamming. He must have closed it right in their faces because only a fraction of a second went by before the door was attacked with such savagery that Thuy knew it wouldn’t last more than a minute or two—and then would come the awful screams.

  She wasn’t looking forward to hearing those, and yet, she was looking forward to the diversion they would cause. She’d be able to slip away. But where would she go? Where in the Zone was there a safe…

  Thuy jerked as the ceiling tiles forty feet in front of her suddenly fell in and Jerry poked his head up into the space. He turned this way and that, looking for her, but with the darkness she was basically invisible. Of course, he had a remedy. Hanging from a carabiner on his belt loop was a four-inch long flashlight. In a second, he had it out and she was caught like a rat in its hole.

  “Stupid bitch,” he said as way of greeting. Sticking the flashlight into his mouth he struggled to climb up as well. The light, though focused away from her, was enough for Thuy to see the thin line where the tiles met and she crawled along it as fast as she could. At the beginning of the fifth tile, she began tapping in front of her, afraid of falling through the tiles when she reached the hallway and the wall beneath her ended.

  It didn’t take long to reach the hallway and when she tapped the tiles bounced. Very carefully, she turned a rickety corner and then waited for Jerry Weir as he crawled towards her.

  He was huffing and puffing, struggling to keep from falling, but still managed to spit out, “You’re gonna pay, bitch. Oh, you’re gonna pay.”

  “You’ll have to catch me,” Thuy answered. “And I know for a fact that you are too slow and, judging from your attire and your speech patterns, not all that smart, either.”

  “You want the horns dontcha? You mess with this bull and you get the horns sweetie. That’s right. I don’t…” Jerry had been crawling towards her, and just as she hoped, he ran out of wall. One of his filthy hands went right through the ceiling tile and, as she watched, he nearly plunged through completely. First the one hand went and then the other, and then his left leg sunk up to his thigh. He screamed and flailed, breaking the tiles all around him, but somehow he didn’t fall.

  Breathing like the bull he professed to be, he righted himself, staring across at her. Between them was the hall, a gulf filled with the undead. “You did that on purpose,” he accused.

  “And you were going to rape me, so I guess we’re even.”

  “Oh, no, we’re not even. You’ll get yours. I know this school inside and out. Who do you think has to replace all these fucking tiles? Huh? Me. All those fucking nitwit kids throwing pencils and shit up here. I know where the walls are. I know where it’s safe.”

  Thuy knew where it was safe as well: in her RAV4. She began working her way along the bisecting wall. She knew the hallway ran for a good sixty feet before it branched. When it did, Jerry would be cutoff. There would be an even larger gulf between them. All she had to do was remain on her very narrow perch.

  She was sure that because of her size she would have a great advantage over the lumbering custodian. He sweated and cursed, working his way along a parallel course and, at first, she drew ahead. But with one careless hand placement, she fell through the tiles in a great storm of white dust.

  The room she landed in was where English was taught to incoming freshmen. There were no filing cabinets in this room to assist her in making a quick escape up into the ceiling. And she definitely needed a quick escape. Both doors to the classroom were wide open and out in the hallway were a whole slew of zombies.

  As fast as she could, she ran to the nearest door and slammed it in the face of an onrushing beast, what had once been a bank teller, but was now a monster out of a nightmare, missing most of its face. The ex-teller, its frilly blur blouse torn and dirty, threw itself into the door, rocking it on its hinges. The door wouldn’t hold long.

  Thuy didn’t have time to worry. She darted to the further door. This one was clear and she saw she could run into the hallway if she wished—it would be a quick death if she did. There were enough zombies in the hall to tear her into pieces in seconds. She slammed that door as well. There was nothing she could do about the windows. More of the beasts were at the glass, pounding on it and breaking them.

  “Oh boy,” she whispered, turning her back on them as they scraped through the jagged holes, leaving curls of diseased flesh behind.

  She was too short to just use the teacher’s desk, so she grabbed one of the student desks. They were much more solid and heavier than she remembered from her time in school. Her adrenaline was pumping and she managed to heave one desk on top of the other. Feeling younger than her thirty-seven years, she climbed up onto the two desks and popped out the tile above her with little ceremony. She leapt for the edge of the wall and clawed up into the ceiling just as the first zombie got to the desk. It tried to emulate her but ended up falling on its face.

  Thuy wasn’t watching. She was concentrating on where to put her hands and knees. A slip now would doom her. It was a moment before she realized that she couldn’t see the custodian or his light, which meant she really couldn’t see much of anything. “Follow the line,” she whispered, feeling in front of her for the junction of the tiles.

  This worked for a while and she passed two more classrooms before an insidious thought struck her: Where was the custodian? She hadn’t heard a crash or any screams. Did that mean he had climbed down and was now running around to meet her on the other side of the building? The idea freaked her out to such an extent that she stopped crawling and lifted up the edge of the tile in front of her so she could see where she was.

  Below her was a darkened classroom. Its doors were shut and beyond the windows was only empty lawn running down a green slope. Fear caused her to throw caution to the wind. As quietly as she could, she pulled back the tile completely and climbed down the wall, her sneakered feet bumping softly. The zombies in the hall were making such a racket smashing doors and growling that they didn’t hear.

  They didn’t hear the window squeak open, either. It didn’t open all the way. It only canted about eight inches back—just enough for Thuy’s slim form to shimmy through. Then she was alone in the night. Well, mostly alone. Fifty feet to her right, there were creatures still trying to get into the classroom that she had fallen into a few minutes before. To her left, in the direction she needed to go were three shadowy figures slowly turning towards her.

  Acting as though they were merely hoodlums she would find on a street corner, she tucked her hands in the pockets of her sport coat, dropped her chin and walked straight away from the building. Although she kept her face pointed forward, she was busy looking out of the corner of her eyes. The creatures followed, angling towards her. They were all lame, limping like they had just been run over by a truck. That was the good news. The bad news was that one of them was small; a child.

  In many ways, the small ones were far more terrifying than the big ones, even the huge ones that were whole and “healthy.” The healthy ones were fast and grotesquely strong. The children, though not exactly smart, were cunning and dangerous. Unless they were in a blood rage, the big ones listened to the children and did what they said, and right then, the child zombie was pointing for one of the big ones to go right for Thuy.

  To the other, the child said, “Stay!” It was a boy with a piping voice. His shirt was open, as was the flesh of his abdomen, which reminded Thuy of a torn vest. What was left of his intestines looked like thick grey spaghetti. He had cut Thuy off from where she had parked her RAV4, and was trying to send her north where there was nothing but miles of farm and forest. If she went in that direction, they would hound
her down and eat her alive.

  Even lame, the zombies would never stop and never tire. Thuy’s only chance was to string them out and then dart through, but she couldn’t string them out for very long. The child had called to the others and there were some who were physically whole enough to run. Thuy could sprint and in a short sprint, she was faster.

  She ran full out, heading north for thirty-five meters and then abruptly changed course aiming for a gap between the zombies blocking her way to the car. There was no doubt that it would be close as the child converged more quickly than she had expected. He was on her like a cheetah on a gazelle. His ragged, horrible claws closed on her with shocking strength and his momentum spun her around.

  He had a grip on her sport coat and wasn’t going to let go for anything, but with a twitch of her thin shoulders, she shrugged it off and he went flying. She turned on the jets, running faster than she had since she was a kid.

  With a twenty-meter head start, she rounded the corner of the building and saw her RAV4. She also saw, parked right next to it a beat-to-shit KIA Sedona and there was the drunken custodian trying to fumble the keys to it out of his pocket. Further on was another wave of zombies bearing down on him. He was panicking, making a whining noise in his throat as he struggled for the keys.

  Her keys were also in her pocket, however since she had left the doors open, she’d be safe in seconds. Jumping in, she lifted her hips, dug her hand into her pocket and fished them out, just as the custodian dropped his on the pavement. He screamed, “Fuck, oh, shit!”

  Sucks to be you, Thuy thought and jammed the keys into the ignition. Just as she turned the engine over, the custodian opened the passenger door to the RAV4 and jumped in next to her.

  “Drive! Drive!” he cried.

  She drove, backing frantically out onto the main road with dozens of zombies chasing. A minute later, she began to turn west, but he grabbed the steering wheel. “Go south,” he said. “You’re going home with me.”

  2—Baltimore, Maryland

  Charlie Martin was a long way from his beloved twenty-acre spread down in Denver City, Texas. He had never liked the bustle of the big city—Denver City had more cows than people—and if he could have gotten his fifth-wheel out of Baltimore, he would have just been the happiest man alive.

  But he was stuck, pretty much like everyone else in Maryland. Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania had shut their borders. No one in and no one out. He could go to Delaware, but why would he want to?

  Still, he had it better than most. Although the army had come by and had cleared traffic from all the main highways, he was safe and cozy in a honking big Northwood Arctic Fox. It was thirty-eight feet long and with the slides out, eighteen feet wide. It was bigger than his first apartment. Leticia, his wife of so many years it wasn’t worth counting any longer, called it their “go anywhere house.”

  It was well stocked with enough food to last them a month. Where it lacked was in true protection. The doors were terribly flimsy. Any child with a crow bar could pop right in for a quick hello or to snatch the thirty-inch flat screen. Charlie had seven guns at home back in Denver City. He had his Remington “Turkey Thumper,” his 30-30 deer rifle, his Smith & Wesson .44, his sawed-off twelve gauge, his .22 rifle for heckling the crows with, a 30.06 just in case a moose ever wandered into Texas, and finally, a vintage 1911 colt .45 which he was plum afraid to shoot for fear of the thing blowing up in his face.

  In his “go anywhere house” the only weapons he had were a rolling pin and a set of steak knives that Leticia had bought off the TV. Then again, he was a friendly, easygoing Texan and tended to think that a smile, a tip of the sweat-stained cap, and a beer was enough to settle almost every difference known to mankind.

  Even when traffic had snarled for a full day and he hadn’t been able to budge more than a few miles in all that time, he hadn’t been swept up in the road rage that had overcome everyone else. He had put on some Waylon & Willie and sang along with every song.

  Charlie loved his Arctic Fox, but there was one major drawbacks to it, and to all RVs in fact, and that was the limited grey and black water waste storage. Black water was what went down the toilet and a black water overflow was something ol’ Charlie wanted to avoid at all costs. It was why he was out at four-thirty morning looking for a dumpster to piss against.

  With the army clearing the roads, he had found a parking spot for the thirty-eight feet of RV and the eighteen foot GMC Silverado that towed it around in the parking lot of a burned-out grocery store. It had been nothing but a smoking crater when he showed up. As sketchy as the neighborhood was, he knew that no one would be coming back. Why would they? There was nothing here that anyone would want, not any more.

  Even with the area deserted, Charlie didn’t like the idea of draining the lizard right out in the open. He unzipped and ran a yellow stream against the building, leaning back and breathing in the smell of ash and wet air. He was just thinking that a storm was coming in from the west, when he heard a voice say: “Excuse me?”

  Charlie jumped and almost zipped up his goods. “Oh, hey little lady. Y’all don’t wanna go sneakin’ up on a fella when he’s doin’ his business.”

  She was a pretty young thing. Blonde, but frazzled and rough around the edges. She had bruises around her neck, more around her wrists and mangled fingers on her left hand. “I’m sorry, you’re right,” she said, in her Yankee accent. “It’s just scary out here and I’m all alone.”

  A man’s jacket hid her figure, but Charlie could tell she was too thin. Leticia would want to fatten her up.

  “All alone? That’s no way to be, not with all this, whadyacallit goin’ on. I wonder if I even believe it. Monsters? It sounds like hooey. You know like the War of the Worlds and all that.”

  “The people are real,” she said, looking around at the dark with big eyes. “They’re real and they’ve all turned crazy and mean.” She shivered and Charlie knew he had to help her. Even if he didn’t want to, Leticia was a fine Christian woman; she would never turn away someone so helpless.

  Charlie gave her a warm smile. “It’s gonna be alright. Y’all can stay with us for a whiles, if you wish. We got plenty of all sorts of food and stuff. What’s y’all’s name, sweetheart?”

  “Um, Ginny. I wouldn’t be putting you out or anything, right?”

  He put an arm around her and steered her toward the fifth wheel. “Oh no, don’t be silly, child. We have a pull-out bed and more room than we know what to do with.”

  At the door, she said, “Thanks, it’s very kind of you.” When she opened the door, she took a sharp breath. It was one of wonder and not of fear.

  Charlie laughed. “It’s pretty nice, ain’t it? Leticia wanted it all gold-plated and leather-coated, and all that hoo-ha. Hey, step in a little, will ya? That’s it. See, I think that’s y’all’s problem. You’re too trustin’. For all you know I could be like one of them serial killer types.”

  “Are you?”

  He laughed, his Texas-tanned face breaking into a wide grin. “No way. And neither is the missus. She might put y’all in a food coma, but that’s about it. Oh, hey, here she is.” Leticia came out from a back room. She was tired and old and wrinkled, and was strictly angular as though beneath her nightgown she had copper pipes for bones. She had a bit of a lurch in her step. “Look what I found wandering around out in the dark,” Charlie said. “I thought you might be able to help her out.”

  “Of course,” Leticia said, coming forward. “Look at you, dear. It looks like someone put you through the blessed ringer. It’s just a shame when people…” Leticia’s mouth came open when Anna Holloway produced her Beretta. “W-What are you doing?”

  Before answering, Anna reached over and flicked the light that hung on the side of the RV on and off. “It’s just the two of you, correct?” she asked. When they only stared at each other in shock, she added, “I just don’t want anyone to get hurt. Do you have any grandkids or anything back there?”

 
Both started shaking their heads, the extra flesh on their necks swinging gently along. Eng came in seconds later, gun drawn, his dark eyes roving back and forth. “Face the TV,” Eng ordered, speaking curtly. “Hands up.” Anna kept her gun pointed at them as Eng frisked Charlie and Leticia. They were clean. “Sit,” Eng said, pointing to the two leather chairs.

  He then went through the RV, opening drawers and looking under mattresses, making noises of approval over all the cans of food. Next, he checked the Silverado, noting the half tank of gas with only a grunt. The CB scanner, a little black box with seven knobs, got a pat and a smile.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Charlie asked, when Eng returned.

  “Chances are we’re going to save your life,” Anna said, dropping down onto the couch, glad to finally have a chance to rest. She sighed long and deep, stretching her legs out. “Those monsters you were talking about are very real and they can’t be stopped. We’ve seen them rip right through the 82nd Airborne and the 42nd Infantry Division and every pansy-ass National Guard unit from here to Connecticut. Our only chance is to get as far away from them as possible.”

  Leticia raised a hand. It was blue-knuckled and spotted with age. “But no one’s allowed to travel. The roads are closed and they won’t let no one past the check points.”

  Anna knew that better than these two old geezers. They had ordered the chopper down in the middle of Baltimore, thinking that they were far enough away from the fighting that things would be calmer. They had hoped the local officials would be facilitating an evacuation and that they could just slip away with the rest. They had been wrong. The people of Maryland were bottled up, trapped as an army of undead poured south. They would all die in the next couple of days.

  “We have to try,” Anna told Leticia. “If we wait until it’s too late, we won’t live long enough to regret it.”