Billions, Tales of the Zombie Chronicles

by Mark Clodi

  Billions

  Tales of the Zombie Chronicles

  by

  Mark Clodi

  Smashwords License Notes

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means (electric, scanned, photocopied, recording or otherwise) without the prior written approval of the copyright holder and publisher of this book. The distribution of this book without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author by purchasing this book.

  A Zombie Chronicles short story compilation

  For more stories in the Zombie Chronicles Universe please visit www.ctales.com

  Published by Ctales Publishing

  Copyright © 2011 by Mark Clodi

  First Edition: March 2011 vers 1.0

  Cover designed and © by Michael Picco, 2011.

  Abbreviated Content links:

  One in Billions

  Three in Billions

  Five in Billions

  Seven in Billions

  Nine in Billions

  Eleven in Billions

  Thirteen in Billions

  One in Billions

  A girl named Sammy

  Sammy ran into the house yelling. "Ma! Mama! A smelly-funny guy is outside! He tried to grab me! Ma! Call the police!"

  Her mother didn't answer. Sammy was seven years old; a sultry shadow of what she could become lurked in her scrawny body. She was more dirt than clean, and her cut off shorts and well worn 'Scooby-doo' t-shirt indicated a social class below that of the average citizen of the United States. Sammy kicked off her flip flops and ran towards the living room, still calling out for her mother.

  The house was empty. Sammy looked out the front window. There were more stinky, shambling people out in front of the house. Suddenly an old Ford Bronco ran up the lawn, running over several of the stinky people and the old picket fence that used to keep Sadie in the yard. Sammy screamed, putting her hands to either side of her mouth. "Mommy!"

  It was Kevin. Sammy knew Kevin shouldn't be running people over. He broke the fence too. That was wrong. Maybe he was drunk again and driving.

  The back door swung open and then slammed shut in the sultry summer heat. Spinning around like a top, Sammy saw an older black man shuffling towards her from the kitchen. He was like her grand-pa, with gray hair leaving a shiny bald spot on the top of his head. The man was wearing a normal sweat-stained t-shirt that didn't have any arms. His feet were bare, and he had on some bright blue shorts; they were the cotton kind, cut off above the knees and very loose. Maybe he was a sex fiend, one like her momma was always warning her about. Sammy fled up the stairs towards her bedroom, screaming for her mother the whole way.

  She made it into her room, slammed the solid wooden door, and hooked the latch key lock one of momma's boy friends had put in for her to keep the door from opening, because the lock didn't work. Sammy heard a crash from the front door, then she heard Kevin yelling, "Marla! Marla! Where are you Marla!"

  It was Kevin, he was yelling for her ma. "I don't know where she is Kevin!" Sammy yelled through her door. "Some guy is chasing after me! He might be a sex fiend!"

  "Sammy? Girl, you stay up there, don't come out of your room! These things are dangerous! Hide!"

  Looking around her room, Sammy sized up the possible places to hide. Under her bed? Too obvious, even for a girl her age. The closet? Maybe. Her house was old needed all sorts of work, Sammy was living in a room that wasn't quite finished yet, which left her with an interesting space to use as a closet. She had a closet door, but the inside was backed up against the bathroom and part of that left empty space. The previous renter had loosened the board in the back of Sammy's closet. It hadn't taken the girl a week before she found it and started making use of the 'secret clubhouse' the board had revealed. It was a space big enough for a couple of seven year olds to get into serious mischief with and Sammy loved it.

  Somehow the girl thought this might be the perfect place to hide now. This was especially true if she could wedge the board back in place behind her... The bedroom door shook as something slammed into it. Sammy let out a short yell then scrambled under her bed, despite her intentions of going into the clubhouse. Downstairs Kevin was yelling and Sammy heard fighting going on.

  Her door got hit again and swung open, Sammy knew the latch wasn't very strong; it was more for show than anything. Still she had been hoping, hoping it would keep the bad man out. She pressed herself back further under the bed, right up against the wall. It was no good. The old man's dark feet shuffled forward to stand right beside the bed. Sammy wished she had opened the window; in movies girls always opened the window and the bad guys went out of them thinking the girl had run away on the roof. The fighting downstairs was over. Kevin wasn't calling her name anymore.

  The wrinkly old man got down on his hands and knees, lowering his face to look under the bed, his teeth were stained red, his eyes were almost opaque white. He reached for her and Sammy kicked at his hand. The wild melee began earnest then, her bare feet kicking against his groping hand for several minutes. The man seemed like he was drunk, slow and not coordinated. Eventually the man got lucky and one of his hands caught one of her flailing legs with a firm grip. He pulled the squirming, kicking girl out from under the bed.

  Sammy's blows fell upon unfeeling flesh, the red-stained teeth leaned towards her bare leg and the first bite goaded the girl into a frenzy. She almost got away then. The man was slow and uncoordinated, plus he was chewing and the distraction of the fresh meat was almost enough to make him lose the meal. At the last second his grip tightened on her ankle and pulled her back.

  "Mommy!" Sammy screamed, her voice ending in a high pitch shriek.

  The man's second bite was closer to her throat and the fight faded from the girl like color from new jeans in the wash. The zombie suckled for a long time, until his prey no longer registered as a meal. Then he shambled off on a new search, leaving the girl to rise behind him.

  Two in Billions

  Jeremy just had to stop at the big box store after his graveyard shift was over

  It was cold in the Walmart. Jeremy didn't like coming in so early in the morning, but he worked the graveyard shift at the bottle plant and Walmart was one of the few places that was open at seven a.m. There was a convenience store that was open, but his ex-girlfriend Darla worked some of the morning shifts there, which was more than enough reason to avoid the place. Jeremy tended to pay at the pump if he needed gas and never went in, not since the fight. His break up had been full of fireworks and he had no desire to see the woman again. Maybe she would stop harassing him when she ran into him, if he stayed away long enough.

  Of course, his dad told him the harassment should stop when Darla found a new boyfriend, and Jeremy was counting the days until that happened. He'd even gone so far as to include a few prayers in that direction, asking God to find her a new man quick. Feeling generous, he threw in prayers for her to find a man who would make her happy; it was easier to pray for that when his own happiness was on the line. So far, God had other things to do. Shrugging as he went through the automated doors, Jeremy steered clear of the homeless guy in the cart corral on his right.

  The homeless were out in droves today, maybe there was a convention of them in town or something. He'd almost hit two of them on the way into the parking lot. Jeremy was going to mention it to the greeter but the man was nowhere to be found. Probably he was on a pee break; old people did a good job saying hi to people, but they had to pee a lot. Jeremy picked up a small plastic basket to carry his intended purchases, and hea
ded towards the food side of the super store. He walked oblivious passed the empty check-out lanes and equally empty bakery and meat departments.

  As he passed the canned goods aisle, he saw a man in a smock cleaning up a jar of spaghetti sauce or ketchup on the floor. The doofus was just standing there and rocking back and forth. Maybe he was waiting for someone else to bring the mop and bucket. Turning into the soda pop and chip aisle, Jeremy made it halfway down and stopped by the store brand pop. He plucked a couple of two liter-bottles of orange drink off of the shelf and put them in his basket.

  The clerk from the canned aisle shuffled into the pop aisle. His face and the front of his shirt were covered in blood. Jeremy was price comparing different brands of chips and had just, reluctantly decided he would not be able to buy the pretzels he liked and the spinach dip, unless he put one of his two liter bottles of soda back. It was Wednesday and payday was tomorrow.

  'Tomorrow,' he vowed to himself for about the hundredth time, 'I am coming over here and getting twenty of these pops and a dozen jars of dip. That much will last me for two weeks.'

  Jeremy's money never seemed to last two weeks, no matter how he tried to be careful with it. He was making more than he ever had in his life, but it flowed through his hands like water. The bottle plant had a union, and three months ago his trial status had been converted to full time. This gave him a hefty raise, even with the dues taken out of each check every two weeks. How did he ever get by on his trial pay before? He turned and started walking to the lunch meat, just to see what was on sale when he saw Darla.

  She appeared at the end of the chips aisle, between him and the lunch meat. The woman hadn't ever really looked that good, but right now she was looking really, really bad. He had never noticed how plump she was, or maybe she had just put on a bunch of weight. Darla was wearing her Git n'Go uniform. She must have switched to the graveyard shift there too, if she was here now. It was just the kind of thing she would do too, so she could keep better tabs on 'her' man.

  Darla's uniform was filthy, like she had been cleaning the pizza ovens again. In his tired, overworked state, the fact that she was only wearing socks didn't seem to register as he whirled around quickly to go the other way. Jeremy turned so fast that he slammed right into the store clerk before he saw the guy, knocking both of them down.

  "Sorry! I'm sorry!" he said as he tried to disentangle himself from the clerk. Standing up quickly he held his hand out to help the other man up. That's when he noticed the blood. Thinking he had caused the injury his apologies grew more sincere, "Oh God! I must have broken your nose! Shit man, I am sorry! I didn't see you there!"

  The man was slow moving and lethargic, but he grabbed Jeremy's hand when it was offered and pulled the both of them down again. His mouth ended up on Jeremy's arm and he bit down with a savage chomp, drawing a shriek from Jeremy. "What the fuck! Dude, don't, it was an accident! I didn't mean to knock you over!"

  Jeremy rolled over and away from the clerk, but he couldn't pull his arm free. The clerk was gnawing on it and holding it tightly with an iron grip. Jeremy lay on his back in a state of shock, unable to put the pieces of what was happening together fast enough to save his life. Darla approached him with a slow, shuffling step.

  'She's, uh, there is something wrong with her,' he thought, seeing his ex-girlfriend plodding along.

  Inexorably, Darla put one foot in front of the other, shrinking the distance between them. Jeremy gave his arm several quick jerks, timing them between bites as the man ate his arm. It took three yanks before he was able to wrench it free.

  Jeremy was bleeding profusely and had just staggered to his feet when Darla grabbed him from behind. Blood loss was dimming his vision and making him stagger about like a drunk as he tried to get away from his ex-girlfriend. She caught him around the waist with her arms and pulled him sideways into the shelving. Jeremy clung to the shelves, eye level with the bags of pretzels, struggling not to be pulled down. Darla, on her knees, sunk her teeth through his heavy cotton work shirt and into his side, just below the ribs.

  "Help me!" Jeremy screamed in pain as his ex-girlfriend continued to feed.

  The clerk crawled up to both of them where he grabbed Jeremy's legs and all three ended up in a tangle on the floor. The clerk started gnawing on Jeremy's leg while Darla continued biting a hole into his guts with her teeth. 'Why are they doing this to me?'

  "It hurts! It hurts! Oh God stop! Stop! Darla, stop!" Jeremy's voice rose in octaves as the woman forced her head ever deeper into his side. He pulled bags of chips off of the bottom shelf and flailed about with them. The bags spread an arc of crumbs throughout the aisle on either side of the pile of bodies. Finally Jeremy gave a high pitched shriek that transcended gender and age and then he was still. Darla's head was so deep into his side that it had almost disappeared from view. Blood poured from Jeremy's body around her face, spreading out in a pool to mix with the crumbs of snacks littering the floor.

  The harsh white light over the pop section was the only witness to the final moments of Jeremy's life. It wasn't long before three zombies got up and started shambling around the store, hunting for other early morning shoppers who may have wandered in.

  Three in Billions

  Dave Onstad's better days were far behind him, and he knows it! He'd settle for some bacon on the day of reckoning.

  Dave Onstad didn't know where he was. This was not unusual. Ever since he had a stroke when he was seventy-eight, Dave had a hard time remembering where he was. He knew some things. For instance, he was outside, in a wheelchair. Dave couldn't remember why he was in a wheelchair today, and he knew he needed to get moving if he was going to make it to the plant in time for his shift on the line. A few moments later the fog lifted over his blighted brains and he remembered he was eighty four and had retired long ago. He also remembered he was at the Sunny Vale retirement home, where they had full time nurses to care for him. His current soiled state disgusted him, as did the constant IV's in his arm to keep him hydrated and the baths every two days by nurses, some of them female!

  'This is what happens when you get old enough,' he thought bitterly, 'Hell on earth.'

  It was not so much that he prayed for death as an improvement to his condition. The doctors all said he might recover some ability after his stroke. He remembered his wife telling him that over and over, back when he still lived in his home with her. Then one day she stopped coming. Things got blurry after that. Something had happened to Darleene, his wife of over fifty years. His son, who called him 'pops', had been crying. The next clear memories were of Sunny Vale.

  So far he had not recovered the ability to walk, or move his arms with any sort of precision, or even talk. The best he could do was let out a loud moan when he needed something. But his mind was still there, at least about half the time, imprisoned in his earthly shell with no hope of relief from modern medicine.

  Today was a strange day. He had been shuffled out of bed and into a wheelchair and then pushed out onto the balcony in the cool weather. It was mid-summer, so far as Dave could tell, and the mornings were cold. The attendant had thrown a thick, scratchy blanket over Dave after wheeling him out to watch the sun rise. Dave could not recall the last time he had seen a sun rise. There were several other non-mobile residents out on the patio this morning too. Behind them all was the cafeteria, or 'dining hall' as the staff called it; the smell of bacon and eggs was making Dave salivate. He knew he would get oatmeal or Cream of Wheat or maybe, if he were extremely lucky, some fine chopped scrambled eggs, but bacon was what he was wanting right now. He tried to say the word, to practice it for when the attendant came to get him.

  "Whacol. Wh-ac-onl.", No, that was not right, not to his ears, "Wacon." Better. But would the attendant understand? Softly Dave mumbled the word to himself, practicing for his big moment. Suddenly all thoughts of bacon disappeared from Dave's head and he spent some more time in another place again. When he came back to himself he noticed several people on the lawn of t
he retirement home. They didn't look like they were supposed to be there. Their clothing was ragged and some of them looked hurt, bleeding hurt. They staggered up the lawn in the soft morning light, leaving trails behind them where they disturbed the morning dew.

  An attendant rushed out and yelled, startling the residents. Several more also came out and started hurriedly pulling the residents inside the cafeteria, when Dave's turn came he yelled, "Hacon!" as loud as he could. In a moment of serendipity, the attendant looked at him and said, "Dave! Good Lord, you said bacon!" then continued to push him into the room.

  The attendants closed and locked the doors to the room. The whole of the patio was visible through the glass, the entire wall facing east towards the sunrise was windows from floor to ceiling. Dave could see the people outside gathering on the patio. They looked frightening, wounded and bloody. One of them approached the glass and raised its fist to strike it. His fist bounced off, but the sound reverberated like a doom bell in the room. Soon the others got the idea and started pounding on the glass as well; the sense of fear was palatable in the room. The smell of urine soon joined the untouchable sense of fright and Dave hoped he had not added to the mess. The attendant, who had wheeled Dave in was arguing with some of the other attendants when the glass in one of the windows shattered.

  Most of the attendants fled then. Dave could hear screaming down the halls of the home. Then Dave was moving, the man who had taken him in leaned over his head from behind and said, "We are in for it now, Dave. I don't know what to do with you, but I won't leave you to the others."

  The boy, although the attendant was probably in his mid-thirties, Dave thought of him as a boy, wheeled Dave past the buffet, where Dave once again let loose with his new word, "Hacon!" as they passed a large container of the greasy, overcooked meat. The wheelchair paused, and before Dave knew it, a plate of the stuff was thrown haphazardly onto his lap. Pieces of the delicious meat were falling off as the wheelchair was raced down one of the hallways. Exerting all his force Dave still could not control his hand enough to pick up a strip of meat. A large dollop of spittle fell out of Dave's mouth to land on his pullover shirt. A pullover shirt. Dave would never have dressed himself so casually! The nerve of these people to dress a man as a child... his mind went away for a little while.