This Is the End: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (7 Book Collection)

by Craig DiLouie

  Felicity spoke up next, with heavy emotion in her voice, “Is this really the end of the world?”

  Wilkins didn’t answer. Nobody spoke. The silent consensus was yes.

  Wilkins said, “Human civilization is going to be very different going forward.”

  Felicity looked down at the floor. I’m sure she already knew. Her question was little more than a desperate expression of hope.

  I spoke up next, “Look, like I was telling Jerome yesterday, I’m not sure how we’re going to get through the next few weeks or months, but we need to get somebody online right now. I don’t know when or if we’re going to lose electricity. I don’t know when or if the internet is going to go out.”

  I stood up to look at everybody, “Everything humans have ever learned or knew can be downloaded from the internet right now, for free, while it’s still up. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t know anything about farming and growing my own food. If what Wilkins is saying is right, we need to figure it out. It’ll be better for us if we figure it out with a book than by trial and error. There’s going to come a time when we run out of food to scavenge, and when that time comes, we’d better know how to grow something. We won’t be able to live through too many crop failures. And if we want to live anything remotely like the life we used to have, we’d better learn how to hook up some solar panels to an electrical grid. We need to learn how to manufacture gunpowder if we run out. There are a million little things that make life possible, and none of us knows much about any of them.”

  I looked around the room for acknowledgment—for confirmation—but they just looked at me like I’d changed color again.

  “Thoughts, anyone?” I asked.

  “Well,” Wilkins started, “this is as good a time as any to talk about how you fit into that, Zed.”

  “I don’t even have a computer,” I replied.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Zed?”

  What? That seemed odd to me. I looked around at the blank faces. Something wasn’t right.

  As I stepped back toward the couch to take my place beside Murphy, I saw a very slight shake of his head. He was reading something here that I’d missed.

  As I turned to sit down, I noticed Murphy’s hand move discreetly toward the trigger on his M-4. He flicked the safety off.

  “Zed,” Wilkins started, “we all appreciate what you‘ve done for us. Some of us definitely owe you our lives, and the rest of us probably do.”

  I nodded, curious as to where this was going.

  “Because you and Murphy and Jerome are infected, you can move among the other infected with ease. You’re in no danger.”

  “Mostly no danger,” I corrected him.

  “Zed, please don’t take this the wrong way, but you three are infected and that makes some of us pretty nervous. Not me, mind you. I’m not worried, but I have to speak for the group.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Again, as much as you’ve done for all of us, many here are afraid of you.”

  “Afraid of me?” This was starting to sound like bullshit.

  Wilkins went on, “We don’t know if we can catch the infection from you or how. We don’t know when we’re going to wake up and find you standing over our beds and attacking us. We don’t know what you are, and we need to do something about that.”

  I heard shuffling behind me, then Murphy’s big voice stopped everything. “I don’t know where this conversation is going, but just so you all know one thing, I’m leaving when this is done. Actually,” he continued, very deliberately standing and stepping toward the hallway, “I’m leaving right now. I need to go find my sister and my mom.”

  Mark butted in and said, very pointedly, “We need that ammunition you’re carrying.”

  Murphy, beside Wilkins now, turned so that he’d have no one at his back. He was holding the M-4 with one hand over the trigger and one under the barrel, in a way that made it clear that he was fully prepared to operate the weapon if necessary. “Zed and I picked up all of this ammunition. Zed and I picked up all of the guns that you bunch of pussies have right now. If it wasn’t for Zed, you wouldn’t have shit. You’d be sitting in that building next door like a bunch of zombie bait, waiting to get eaten.

  “All of you people piss me off. After everything that Zed has done for you, you’re going to tell him to hit the bricks, aren’t you? Oh, and you want to take our guns and our ammo while you’re at it. Well, fuck you. I’m leaving here with this gun and this vest and the twelve clips I’ve got. Just so you know.”

  Everybody was motionless.

  I spoke first, “Is that what’s happening here, Wilkins? You’re kicking me out?”

  Mark muttered, “Of course we are. You’re possessed by demons. All three of you are.”

  Wilkins ignored Mark and continued, “No, no. Let me finish, Zed. Clearly some of us don’t feel comfortable being so close to you. We can continue to work together but we’d feel more comfortable if maybe you guys moved into the building next door.”

  “Without our guns,” I said.

  “No, that’s not what we’re saying,” Wilkins said.

  “That’s what Mark just told Murphy,” I retorted.

  “Listen, you guys can walk outside and get all of the ammunition you need. You have to admit, it’s more dangerous for us.”

  Murphy interrupted, “Zed, you want to come with me? Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

  “Wait.” I couldn’t believe it. I looked over at Felicity. I didn’t mean to plead but it probably came out that way. “I risked my life to save you guys.”

  Felicity quickly spoke, “Zed, we’re so, so, so thankful for that. But, we saw what you did to those infected outside a little while ago. Zed, you worry us. We don’t know what you’re capable of, or what you might turn into.”

  Amber looked down and shook her head, “I don’t agree, Zed, but…”

  “This is bullshit!” I said. “Fine. I’m outta here. I’m not going to live in the servants’ quarters next door and run around and do your dirty work. You guys are on your own.”

  I turned and started to walk up the hall as Murphy backpedaled beside me.

  “Just so you know,” I told them, “I’m gearing up before I leave. I got all of this shit. I’m not going out empty-handed.”

  They’d all stood up by then, and walked into the hall to watch Murphy and me go.

  I stopped and turned, “What about you Jerome, are you coming or are you staying?”

  Wilkins spoke up, “Jerome, we’d like for you to stay. We just need to work out some kind of quarantine to keep us all separate. We can’t risk getting infected. You understand, right?”

  “I’d be by myself?” Jerome asked.

  “Well…” Wilkins started.

  Jerome shook his head. “No, no. I don’t want that. I’m going with them.”

  We headed up the hall to get our stuff from the room.

  Mark walked a few steps further up the hall and stopped. “Begone demon! Begone mindless monsters! You’re all going to suffer and die!”

  “Put a lid on it, Mark,” Wilkins said.

  Ten minutes later, Murphy, Jerome, and I walked out of the dormitory, each with an M-4, a pistol, a full load of ammunition in our MOLLE vests, canteens full of water, and enough junk food for a few meals. We hustled around the corner of the building and out of sight of the dormitory, just in case Mark went even more nuts and decided to shoot at us from the windows.

  With the afternoon sun blazing in the sky, the billows of black smoke roiling up out of southeast Austin, infected lurking everywhere, and the sound of gunfire in the distance, we started our trek northeast to search for Murphy’s mother and sister.

  The End

  Follow Zed in his quest for survival in my next book, Slow Burn: Infected, Book Two, due out in September, 2013.

  If you enjoyed Slow Burn: Zero Day, Book One, please take a moment to check out my other books online, and consider giving a review on the
service where you purchased the book!

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  THE RETREAT

  Episode One: Pandemic

  Craig DiLouie

  with

  Stephen Knight and Joe McKinney

  Copyright © 2013 The Retreat Series, LLC

  Kindle Edition

  THE RETREAT is a work of fiction including a fictionalized portrayal of the U.S. Army Tenth Mountain Division, the Massachusetts Army National Guard and the City of Boston and its surrounding metropolitan region. It is not intended to depict actual persons, organizations or places.

  ONE.

  America. Boston. Christ Hospital.

  Forty-nine days of quarantine.

  At first, it was to shut the sick inside. Later, it was to keep them out.

  Outside, the world was dying. The world was going to die laughing.

  And the Klowns would own it all.

  The sirens had stopped long ago. All day and night, the air outside the hospital filled with heavy weapons fire as the Army fought to save what was left.

  The Army was losing.

  TWO.

  Dr. John Braddock had fought malaria, cholera, sleeping sickness, kala azar. He’d seen people bleed out of their eyes in Africa and shit themselves to death in droves in India.

  He’d never seen anything like the Bug.

  He eyed his watch with rising irritation. Chief Nurse Robbins was late.

  It was time to get her report. Do the rounds to check the patient charts. Review their dwindling supplies.

  He already knew the score. They would find some of the patients dead in their beds and supplies low across the board. But he had to take stock of everything.

  Normally, the Chief of Medicine handled that stuff, but she had the Bug, so the job had fallen on him.

  He closed his eyes and listened. A woman was crying in Pathology. Distant footsteps marked the progress of one of his skeleton crew.

  As a young, idealistic doctor, Braddock had joined Doctors Without Borders. After several years in Asia and Africa, the horrors he witnessed began to wear on him. In Aleppo, Syria, children lined up for measles vaccinations were torn apart in a rocket attack. In southern Sudan, refugees died from malaria after rebels looted his hospital.

  He’d come home but had a difficult time reintegrating. America lived in a bubble of prosperity. He regarded his colleagues as petty and competitive. Getting things done required socializing with people he didn’t understand. Hospital administrators and insurance companies constantly told him what he could and couldn’t do to save lives. He didn’t get along.

  Braddock resigned from one job after another. Nobody lifted a finger to make him stay. He was a big man, too intense and culturally out of touch. He intimidated people. He started drinking to dull the anger. He had no sense of self. America, his home, began to feel like another foreign land.

  Ellen White, Chief of Medicine at Boston’s Christ Hospital, visited Braddock in his shabby motel room and offered him a job: I believe in you, John. She offered him a place he could call home.

  He quit the bottle. Stopped fighting the system. Spent years in trauma therapy. He practiced medicine. Over time, he again began to feel like he was making a difference. He literally owed White his life. She’d brought him back from the dead.

  Then she caught the Bug. So many of the others had gone to be with their families, leaving thousands of patients in his care. It was an impossible task, but he wouldn’t let her down. He’d show them all, not least himself, what he was made of.

  Shoes pounded the floor. He opened his eyes as Robbins approached.

  “Dr. Braddock,” she said, her voice edged with panic.

  Another crisis. Adrenaline flooded his body. He welcomed it like a drug.

  “Soldiers,” she said. “They’re in the hospital.”

  “The Army? Here?”

  “They have guns.”

  “They’re the good guys,” Braddock assured her. “It’s going to be all right.”

  At the places he’d been, soldiers usually meant trouble. Guerillas, freedom fighters, Army, paramilitaries. But not in America. In America, soldiers didn’t loot hospitals.

  He couldn’t help but feel hopeful. They’d been on their own for months. Maybe the soldiers were here to help. Maybe they’d brought supplies so the hospital could keep functioning.

  He asked Robbins why they’d come.

  “I don’t know,” she said, fighting tears. “I asked them what they were doing here.” She started crying, her voice escalating. “They said we had to evacuate. They pushed me!”

  Braddock glanced over her shoulder. Another nurse watched them from a distance. “You’re Chief Nurse,” he whispered harshly. “Keep it together.”

  Seven weeks ago, she’d been overweight. Now her scrubs hung on her rail-thin body. Her sister was quarantined on the fifth floor. She hadn’t heard from the rest of her family in ten days. She was under enormous stress, as they all were. But he couldn’t have her cracking up. They all needed to be at their best, or they wouldn’t get through this.

  Robbins took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he said in a softer tone. “Just tell me where they are. I’ll get some answers.”

  “They went upstairs.”

  His heart pounded. “Did they have protection? Masks, gloves—”

  “No. I don’t know. They weren’t wearing any when they came in.”

  “Christ. How many of them are there?”

  “A lot. Ten? Fifteen?”

  Braddock rubbed his eyes. He had to find them quickly. The thought of fifteen heavily armed soldiers catching the Bug horrified him to the bone. There’d be a massacre.

  THREE.

  Braddock parted the plastic sheeting and entered the quarantine zone. Smiling plague victims slept or stared at the ceiling. Intravenous drips fed them a barbiturate cocktail to keep them sedated. Glazed eyes followed him as he passed.

  He shook his head. They shouldn’t have been awake at all.

  The stale air stank of disease, sweat and neglected bedpans. It was the height of summer, and the air conditioning and ventilation had been turned off to conserve power. The hospital had become an oven. He heard the steady hiss of breath from hundreds of mouths.

  On a warm night six weeks ago, Braddock had been working in the emergency room. He thrived on the pulse of the ER—the rollercoaster of boredom and crisis. Even after everything, he was still an intensity seeker. The volume of admissions was staggering. Not a single patient had a disease. They were all trauma cases—broken bones, lacerations, gunshot and knife wounds. A man with a broken bottle in his ass. A woman with a yolky pulp where her left eye had been. A man partially flayed alive. Most were in deep shock. Those who could speak told stories of horror, about how the people they loved had savaged them.

  He’d never seen anything like it. When morning finally came, Braddock was sewing stitches into his ninth stab wound. The victims just kept coming. The wail of sirens filled the city—police vehicles, ambulances, fire trucks. The sky grayed with smoke.

  A SWAT team wearing respirator masks brought the first diseased people in armored cars. They dragged them inside by the necks with restraint poles. The doctors sedated them, and orderlies strapped them onto gurneys. The first quarantine ward was established on the third floor. Then another and another until the hospital filled with carriers of the Bug.

  After that, the police quarantined the entire hospital, enforced it at gunpoint.

  The disease killed the old and the very young, while everybody else suffered from frontotemporal dementia similar to Pick’s Disease. The dementia resulted in a dysexecutive syndrome that manifested as severe aggression.

  All of which was a very scientific way of saying that men and women would suddenly decide to go after their loved ones with garden shears for a few hours of torture and murder.

  Nobody knew why they laughed.

  Pathological laug
hter could be caused by tumors, drug addiction or chromosomal and neurological disorders making the nervous system go haywire. Of all the possible causes, dementia seemed the most viable.

  But the laughter seemed purposeful. The infected appeared to enjoy inflicting or receiving pain. They laughed while they shoved a toilet plunger down somebody’s throat. Putting a bullet in their guts sent them into hysterics.

  Otherwise, the crazies retained higher brain function. They walked and talked. They displayed a rudimentary cunning. They remembered how to load a shotgun and where they kept the rake in the garage. But they had no sense of self. They felt compelled to seek out others and hurt them until they killed or infected them. They were puppets pulled on a string by the Bug. More than that, they were partners. The Bug wasn’t evil. It only wanted to be spread. The method of spreading was up to those it infected—their memories and creativity. That was the evil part.

  After a while, the Bug was categorized as a virus, but nobody knew where it had originated. It appeared to be synthetic, but if the government knew who made it, they weren’t telling. For a time, the media reported that members of an apocalyptic cult called the Four Rider Army had cooked up the Bug and had flown around the world spreading it. It boggled Braddock’s mind that a few crazy people could build a virus that could make the whole world go insane.

  Transmissibility: bodily fluids, which mainlined the virus to the brain.

  Infection rate: 100%.

  Incubation and symptoms: ten seconds to ten minutes.

  Braddock theorized that some people might not show symptoms for days. From a medical standpoint, it was fascinating. From a human standpoint, the worst horror imaginable. Humanity might not become extinct, but it might go crazy.

  If the Four Rider Army wanted an apocalypse, they were sure as hell getting one.

  The disease continued to spread outside the hospital. The news trucks sped off in search of other horrors. The police left with their barricades. The supplies stopped being delivered.