Billions, Tales of the Zombie Chronicles

by Mark Clodi

  He was in a residence room, something was in his mouth. He was facing the door, but he could make out some blinds to his right that were down and slanted shut. It was bacon. Dave saw the plate on a bed tray about two feet from his face. He was slumped over a bit in his chair and had a piece of bacon in his mouth, stuck there like a cigarette. It was delicious. The flavor was everything he remembered it to be and his mouth was full of the stuff.

  'The boy must have shoved a few pieces in my mouth before he left me in here.' Dave thought. He was quite alone, too.

  A heavy noise broke the silence. Something had pounded on the door to this room. The initial thump was followed by several weaker poundings, and then the heavy thump returned. The door handles were of the kind that resembled latches. Dave detested latches. They were for poor people who couldn't afford better. The latch to this room slid down, then sprang back up, followed by another thump. The thump was too slow and the door remained latched and closed. The room's door did not have a lock on it. It was a retirement home. The residents could not be allowed to lock themselves in.

  The door latch slid down again and the small pattering of thumps were enough to open it a crack. Dave saw the fingers first. They were on the ground, old person fingers pulling a wrinkled old arm along with it into his room. The door shuddered one last time as it took another heavy hit, which swung it all the way open. There were a half dozen old folks out there, all gummy and piss smelling as they looked in. Standing bold and firm in the front was a younger man with a hefty build that would have been called 'fat' back in Dave's day. He was a bare-footed hippy freak and Dave didn't like the look of him. For one thing it looked like one of his eyes was gone and part of his hair and scalp too. There was blood pouring down the side of his face, encrusted in his brown beard. The guy opened his mouth to reveal a set of broken teeth and a writhing purple tongue.

  Dave more smelled than felt his bladder let loose as the motley crew approached him. He chomped down on the bacon and tried to swallow it down. Dave thought about trying to yell for help, but he knew no help would come. This wasn't normal. These were bad people. This was the end. His mind tried to blank out as the undead tore into him, the pain acted as a great catalyst and kept him conscious of every bite, every pain inflicted on him until the very end. His last conscious thought before he surrendered to death's embrace was that the bacon really was as good as he remembered.

  Four in Billions

  Richard Mac Eddy was a rapist...

  Richard Mac Eddy was a rapist. Richard, 'Rich' to his friends, sat looking out of his cell into the hallway of the jail where he sat, waiting to be processed and sent on to another facility. The Central Florida Reception Center was about ten miles east of the Orlando airport where hundreds of thousands of people disembarked for their vacations at the various attractions around the area. Right now it housed one very angry and confused inmate. Two nights ago he had been brought into a closed cell, solitary, 'just for the night'. The second day he had only received one of his two daily meals and the quality of the meal passed in to him today was poor: some reconstituted eggs, a cardboard box of juice. Rich had a single window to look out of. The light was all artificial; there were no windows in his cell.

  The small window in his cell door carried noise in to him, and on the first day Rich heard screams and what sounded like gunfire from outside. No one would talk to him. The banter of the inmates had died down, the silence pierced occasionally by screaming. Rich was new to the prison system, however, even he knew something was wrong. He suspected there was a riot going on. As this was Richard's first time in prison, for a crime he believed he was innocent of on any account, he was okay with staying in a solitary room. He just hoped the meals would be a little more regular. And he thought he was supposed to get an hour a day out of his cell, too.

  Dinner arrived on time that night, and it was a hearty meal. Rich tried to talk to the other prisoner when the man shoved the food in, springing to the door to look out. He caught sight of the guy and was surprised to see it was a security officer, or whatever the fuck they called them in here.

  "Hey! What's going on outside? How come I ain't been let out of my cell in two days? I'm out of paper for the shitter!"

  The guard was moving on to the next cell. At the last comment he stopped, fiddled around on his cart, and came up with a packet of toilet paper, which he handed in through the small hole in the door.

  "Thanks man! What's going on outside?" Rich asked.

  "Nothing that you need to worry about. Extra dinner tonight, eat up." the man said.

  It was then that Rich noticed the guy was a bit shaggy around the edges, not prisoner shaggy, but unshaven, with a crumpled-up uniform, like he had slept in it. The guard shoved more food and another toilet paper packet into the next cell and was then out of Rich's sight.

  Sighing, Rich sat down on his bunk to eat. The meal was larger than expected, when it had been to him from outside it hadn't felt right. It was very heavy, not like the first couple of meals. Popping the paper lid off the tray he saw he had about half a fried chicken, a double helping of potatoes and gravy, a couple cups of green beans and two large brownies. For drinking, there were two bottles, one of water, another of a sports drink. Relishing in the food, Rich dug in, not stopping until it was all gone. After that he had nothing to do but wait for the inevitable bowel movement to take place later that night.

  Bored, bored, bored. Richard was going out of his mind. He was not a reader, but he would have read a paper, had one been offered. Never before had he spent such a long time alone. 'Its been a little more than two days since the verdict, and I am already stir-crazy. Even regular prison would be better than this.' Of course, a small part of his mind was concerned with the television drama of anal rapes, gang warfare and being killed for looking at someone the wrong way.

  When he was originally arrested he spent one night in the county jail before his pa had made his bail. That night was not so bad. Everyone pretty much kept to themselves. No one wanted to be there and no one spoke to anyone else. After that he was on bail until he was found guilty of raping that bar tramp, Janie Wilken. Oh, Janie came on alright that night. Sure, she was drunk, but so was Richard.

  Janie had been making the rounds of the room all night long and closed the bar with everyone else. The rape had taken place in the parking lot. Although how you could rape a willing woman was beyond Rich. Maybe it was the multiple partners that did her in. Rich was there though, and she hadn't been complaining.

  Of the four men Rich witnessed her having sex with, Rich was the only one they caught. The others were not regulars at the bar. Neither was Janie for that matter. The bartender, Jim, was a stand-up guy, and testified about the night on Rich's behalf, but it did no good. He was not there when it happened, so it was Rich's word against Janie's, and she had a cunt full of cum with his DNA all over it.

  Just thinking of it made him angry. How do you convict one man of gang rape? Rich had his bail revoked after being found guilty. Normally he could have remained free on bond until sentencing, but the price was too high and his pa and ma couldn't meet the requirements. So to prison he went.

  His lawyer was scheduled to meet with him the next week about filing an appeal. An appeal for a rape, when the woman wanted it, and was just ashamed she wanted it. The day the verdict was in, Rich got hit with a civil lawsuit too. Not that he was bothered by that. He had nothing to come after. Maybe his truck, but he already signed that over to his father, to help pay for the lawyer.

  Outside there was a scream. Some young guy screamed his head off. It ended in a flurry of commotion with the lights being turned back on. Rich went to his door to see if he could see anything down on the lower floor of the prison. Putting his eyes to the window in his cell door, he was surprised that he had a good view of the activity. He was on the third level of the facility, on one edge of a rectangular building. He could see the far edge of the bottom floor, and that is where the action was going on. The guards, five of
them, were in riot gear and standing outside of a cell. One of them called into their radio to open the cell door they were standing in front of, and it opened slowly with a loud ringing of bells. The men stood ready, not going in.

  This seemed strange to Rich, shouldn't one of them be heading in to knock heads or something? A moment later, a man came out. He looked high, stumbling out of the cell and into one of the guards. The guard pulled his arm back and brought his stick down onto the prisoner's head. Rich jumped, startled by the violence. The prisoner didn't even flinch.

  'He's higher than a kite.' Rich thought, watching as the guy took another four blows to the head before tumbling to the ground. "Oh my God!" Rich said out loud. "They killed him!" No one answered his statement.

  The guy on the ground didn't twitch, didn't move at all. Two of the guards gathered him up and pulled him out of Rich's view. A minute later the lights went off again, and Rich, still standing by his window, was wondering what he would do if the guards came for him. The senseless thing about it was they didn't even talk to the poor bastard and tell him what to do. No 'Stop right there!' No 'Down on the ground!' They just started hitting him. Richard Mac Eddy, the man with three first names, didn't sleep well that night.

  The morning came with a guard banging on the cells a bit down from Rich. By the time the noise got to him, Rich was ready to pull the breakfast tray in. He tried to push the dinner tray back out, but the guard said to keep it. He then said to be ready for exercise in the yard at eight, no stopping for piss breaks, just be ready to move.

  Rich's breakfast was back to reconstituted eggs, with bacon, tortillas and salsa. Again, there was plenty of food. There was a small covered plastic cup with hot water and a packet of instant coffee, sugar and cream on the tray as well as a pint of milk of the kind that Rich hadn't seen since grade school.

  After eating as much of the breakfast as he could, Rich waited around a bit. Something was happening down below him on the main floor. The prisoners were being assembled, and the guards he could see were all dressed in riot gear. There was a clanking as the door to Rich's cell opened. He poked his head outside, and the guard at the end of the causeway beckoned him and the others confined to solitary confinement to make their way down to the floor. As they got there, they had to keep moving as everyone was going into the yard. Only it wasn't the yard.

  They were being herded into the road that led from the main admitting area to the street. A narrow length of chain-link was cut off by two gated fences topped with barbed. There were six guards up in the towers by the gates, three in each, plus some sort of suited guy with a megaphone, like a circus announcer used.

  Rich could not see the street from his position at the end of the line. Behind him the guards pushed the inmates forward until they could close the other gate, cutting the prisoners off from the main building.

  "What is going on?" Rich asked the guards behind him.

  They didn't reply, but one of the guards pointed to the guy with the megaphone. Rich looked up and the man started speaking. His words were hard to hear from the back of the pack, but Rich got the gist of it. For some reason the prisoners were being let go.

  He mentioned some crap about cannibals running loose and moral obligation to let the prisoners get back to their families to protect them, and then the first gate between them and the street started to open. Behind him, Rich heard one of the prison buses start up, followed by another, and then some cars in the parking lot started too. Looking back Rich saw the guards all getting into the vehicles. Up ahead the prisoners surged forward and some sort of fight seemed to be breaking out. The guards started firing at targets outside of the prison yard and the outer gate began to open.

  At first there was a rush out of the prison, then a few people started pushing their way back in. Rich wanted out. Being free was much better than being stuck in a cell. If he were in there much longer he knew he would go crazy.

  Passing the often bloody people making their way back to the inner gate, Rich laughed at them. Who would want to stay in prison? Then he saw the melee at the prison gates. The prisoners, all easily distinguishable by their orange jump suits, were fighting with a mob. They had sticks, lengths of pipe and even a few baseball bats. Looking around as he passed between where the two outer gates were located, Rich saw the makeshift weapons littering the ground. There was an aluminum bat that was unclaimed, and as he bent over to pick it up, a civilian rushed at him. He used the business end of the bat to push the man back.

  "I don't want to hurt you, buddy. Back off and let me go!"

  The man fell over as his foot landed on a length of pipe and rolled out from under him. 'Good enough,' thought Rich, turning away and heading towards the fight. He was looking for a thin spot in the action, some place he could push through and get away from the mob. The inmates were not holding back. The civilians were hitting them, grabbing them, and when they could, hauling them to the ground to....

  "What the fuck?" Rich said out loud, his bat lowering. The civilians were biting that prisoner, they were eating him! Right in front of Rich's eyes! "Holy shit." he whispered, "Zombies."

  He was startled to action by the bus horn blowing behind him. The tower guards had stopped firing at the zombies and were busy taking the stairway down to the ground. The buses started moving forward, fast. Rich had to get out of the way, but he had nowhere to go... except forward. Going to either side would have been fruitless; there were thousands of people out there trying to get in.

  The man who Rich had pushed away was back on his feet, reaching for Rich. When the bus horn went off again, he turned, saw the zombie, and swung his bat up and around, hitting him in the head. The thing hit the ground and didn't try and get up again.

  "That's it? One pussy blow to the head and they die?" he asked. Of course, Rich was a big man, with a solid layer of muscle under a slab of fat; the bat had hit hard.

  Rich stepped up to a prisoner who was being eaten by a pair of zombies. One, two strikes, and the guy was free. Bleeding from several bites, he was barely able to get to his feet as Rich helped him up.

  "I'm dead. I'm dead."

  "Nah, you're alright. Those bites just hurt real bad, they won't kill you." Rich said.

  "Bullshit! Didn't you hear the warden? Bites are fatal. One hundred percent. I will turn into one of them now. And I can hardly walk. What do I do, man? What do I do?"

  "Go out fighting or pussy walk your way back to the prison. I don't much care, I thought you would want to fight, which is why I helped you out."

  The man grabbed the front of Rich's orange jumpsuit. When he spoke, spittle sprayed Rich's face, "I am dead man! Dead! There ain't no fighting!" Then he released Rich and turned to start walking back to the prison. Rich looked as his bat then at the man's back and swung the bat overhand to land it on the guy's head. The other prisoner fell to the ground without a sound.

  "I hate people spitting in my face, asshole." Rich muttered as he turned back around to survey the combat. The buses were starting to move now. Rich had to move too. At the front of the mob, the fighting was breaking through the zombies. Some of the prisoners were running away, pursued by slow moving zombies. Rich moved forward, pausing to pick up a length of iron pipe in his off-hand before charging for the opening in the lines.

  As he sprinted, the hole in the line opened, closed, and moved about continuously as the fight ebbed and flowed in the road. The men who got away were running straight into the swamp, not even slowing down to look for crocodiles. At first, Rich through that was stupid, but then he saw the zombies coming from the nearby communities down both sides of the turnoff to the prison. There were thousands. Rich hit the lines, smashed a zombie head in, bowled another over, pushed a prisoner down who he was jumped on by three other zombies, and got turned around as he lashed out with his bat and iron bar.

  He almost made it to the ditch and the relative safety of the swamp beyond it. He had one small group of zombies left to skirt around. They were feeding on a prisoner who
hadn't made the ditch, and Rich decided to jump them instead of veering off to one side. Midway through his jump, a zombie straightened, and Rich's feet brushed its back, sending both of them to the ground. Rich ended up toppling head first into the shoulder of the road. He felt something snap in his shoulder and briefly everything went black from the pain.

  He couldn't see anything, but still felt his body sliding down the well-trimmed grass into the ditch. He ended up with his legs in the water, curled up and crumpled under him. When his sight returned, he tried to push himself up and found his right arm wouldn't work right. Rolling onto his stomach, he pushed up with his left hand instead and immediately fell into the ditch, his right ankle buckling beneath him.

  "Oh fuck. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" he said as he saw the trio of zombies crawling down the side of the ditch towards him. Rich didn't see his bat or the iron bar anywhere; they were probably in the bottom of the ditch. Rich spun about as quickly as he could and made for the swamp on his hand and knees. Panting with effort he pulled himself along, casting furtive looks over his shoulder. The zombies had stood up and were shambling towards him; they were closing the distance. Looking about, Rich tried to find a weapon. A good bat or iron bar and he could have crushed the three of them with no problem.

  Of course there was nothing in the swamp to use as a weapon. All of the sticks and tree limbs he could see were either alive and healthy, and therefore would be as difficult as all hell to break loose and make into a weapon, or they were rotted from being soaked in swamp water. Rich knew he was screwed.