Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse

by Nicholas Ryan

  Behind him, Cutter heard one of the women gasp.

  In another instant it was all over. The undead rushed up and over the sides of the vehicle and clawed at the soldier behind the machine gun. He flailed out with his fists, and then fell into the surging crowd, screaming in terror. The camera jerked again, and then zoomed close. The image became grainy, but not so obscured that Cutter couldn’t see three of the undead hurl themselves down through the open hatch of the armored vehicle.

  The camera cut away suddenly, and the image returned to the announcer in the studio. The man’s face was ashen. He stared at the screen for long seconds of shocked, grieving silence, and when he finally spoke his voice was heavy. He looked down at a sheath of typed notes clutched in his hands.

  “Repeating the news from earlier…” he said slowly. “A state of Martial Law has been declared across the eastern seaboard of the United States. Speaking from a secured bunker earlier today, the President confirmed that the military has been issued executive orders to shoot to kill anyone on the streets. Citizens are advised to remain in doors and all air traffic across the country has been grounded indefinitely by the FAA.” The man paused, then looked back to the screen. “There is a total blockade on all civilian vehicular movement, and the military is drawing a defensive line from Chicago in the north through St Louis, to Memphis, to New Orleans in the south, called Line 55. Those west of the I-55 Interstate are urged to avoid all contact with anyone wounded or presenting symptoms of abnormal behavior, and to report any suspicious activity immediately to authorities. Those people still alive east of the Chicago-New Orleans infection line are urged to seek the safety of any nearby military installations that may be operational. You are warned not to attempt to reach the defensive line being set up by the military. Repeat: do not attempt to approach the defensive containment barrier. Anyone approaching the I-55 Containment line from the east will be shot and killed.”

  Cutter turned slowly away from the television, while behind him, the screen filled with fresh images showing army helicopters airlifting huge iron pylons and concrete slabs.

  “It’s the Berlin Wall all over again,” one of the older women in the group said softly. “They’re building a wall and abandoning us.”

  Below the transport helicopters, long snaking lines of army trucks were winding their way across deserted roads, kicking up clouds of dust across the horizon, while sleek helicopter gunships swarmed through the sky. Tanks took up positions blocking arterial freeways, hull-down behind concrete barriers.

  Cutter went to the tiny sink and drank a glass of water. All the coffee was gone. When he turned back, Hos was changing channels on the television, scrolling through hissing static until he found another station that was still broadcasting. Two women reporters were sitting stiffly at a news presenter’s desk and behind them was a graphic showing three army tanks and the legend ‘Line 55’ in large red lettering.

  One of the women was reading from a teleprompter, while the other stared numbly at the camera.

  The graphic behind the presenters changed suddenly to an all-yellow screen with several lines of bold black type.

  “Here’s what we now know,” the announcer began expanding on each of the points that were showing on the screen. “The infection is a virus, and at this stage there is no known antidote. The virus is one hundred percent fatal. The virus is spread through bites and exposure to infected saliva or blood. Once infected, the dead re-animate – yes reanimate – within three to eight minutes.” There was a long pause, before the woman continued to the second point. “It has been confirmed that the infected become faster once the virus has fully taken over their body. Initial reports of the undead moving slowly have now been refuted by several incidents in Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York over the past few hours. Those still living east of Line 55 are urged to take extreme caution and should avoid areas of dense population wherever possible.”

  The woman went through the rest of the list but Cutter was barely listening. He heard the woman mention that the undead seemed to be aroused and enraged by noise, but little else until she came to the final point.

  “President Sharpe has promised full and violent retribution should the spread of the virus be proven to be a terrorist attack on America,” she said. “At this stage the government has not ruled out the possibility but remains guarded and cautious. So far eighteen terrorist organizations have claimed responsibility for the plague. Government investigations are said to be continuing, alongside the largest peace-time mobilization of military and civilian forces in the nation’s history.”

  The screen cut to a grab of the President, standing at a lectern. There was a blue curtain behind him. At the President’s shoulder stood several grim-faced men in uniforms. Cutter stopped listening. Presidential messages of hope and promise weren’t going to change the situation or alter the reality.

  They had been left to die.

  * * *

  Cutter lost all sense of time. Under the artificial light, every moment was the same, so he was surprised when the blonde woman he had first seen behind the steel door drifted out from the kitchen area carrying two glasses of water.

  “It’s eight o’clock,” she said. “I thought you might like a drink.”

  Cutter nodded. The woman sat down on the hard concrete floor beside him and leaned her back against the brick wall. She watched Cutter sip at the water and smiled wanly.

  Cutter studied the woman over the rim of his glass as he drank. She had fixed her hair, and washed her face. Her eyes were still red and puffy, but she had touched at her features with makeup in some small gesture of vanity.

  She was pretty, Cutter realized. He guessed that she was in her late twenties. She had long blonde hair that spilled over her shoulders in a cascade of curls, and enormous green eyes. Her features were petite, her mouth wide, her body slim and with a lithe athleticism that suggested long hours in a gym.

  Cutter smiled back at the woman, and set the glass down.

  He was hunched against the wall, using his pocket-knife to whittle the length of a broom handle down to a point. He had two other makeshift spears already completed. He stretched the cramped muscles across his back and shoulders.

  The woman held out her hand. “Glenda,” she said softly.

  “Cutter. Jack Cutter.”

  The woman’s hand was small and delicate. She had long sculptured fingers and nails that were painted pink. Her skin was smooth and soft, but her grip was surprisingly firm.

  The others in the group had drifted to all parts of the warehouse. Several women remained in the lunchroom, seated around the table. The television had been turned off, but the women sat chatting in a desultory hush, perhaps drawn by the comfort of the bright overhead lights. Others had taken books from the shelves and sat in quiet corners reading. John Grainger was pacing the room, walking between the rows of high dusty bookcases, measuring each step as though the monotony of walking was a hedge against his panic, while by the boarded-up shipping door at the rear of the building, Jimmy was preparing more weapons. Apart from the hammers, he had found a fire-axe and a short lump of lead pipe that he hefted like a club.

  Cutter watched them with a kind of detached fascination. Every person was handling the crisis in their own way, internalizing their fears and panic – blocking out the nightmare images – and trying to ward off the crushing despair of hopelessness that seemed to fill the very air.

  Only Hos seemed to be driven by a purpose.

  The big man was sitting at the foot of the stairs that led up to the steel door. He had the black bag at his feet, quietly going through the contents, checking and re-checking equipment. In the gloomy lighting he was just a vague shape, but every once in a while Cutter sensed the survivalist’s eyes upon him – watching him in stealthy, brooding silence from the darkness.

  Cutter turned back to the woman. She was sitting close beside him – so close that he could sense the warmth of her body and smell the faint lingering muskiness of her p
erfume. She had her head tilted back against the wall, her eyes closed in an attitude of weary fatigue, exposing the long soft lines of her throat. She had unfastened the top button of her blouse, and as Cutter followed the line of her neck, he could see a glimpse of pale cleavage. He looked away and stared fixedly off into space, then sighed.

  “I never dreamed this day would come,” he said softly. “I just never thought it could ever happen.”

  He sensed the woman’s eyes opening and her face turning to him. “None of us did,” she said softly. “There have been so many predictions about the end of the world. Who would ever have thought it would come unannounced, and without any time to prepare?”

  Cutter grinned wryly. “Hos,” he said. “He’s a survivalist. The bastard has been waiting for this day to come. It’s the moment he has spent his life preparing for.”

  Glenda nodded slowly. “When he first started work here at the bookstore, he used to creep me out,” she confessed in a whisper. “Just the way he acted and the things he said. All he ever talked about was guns, you know,” she shrugged. “I thought he was going to end up on the news – one of those crazy guys holed up in a house somewhere surrounded by police cars.” The thought made her giggle, and the sound was such a shock that Cutter turned to her so their faces were just inches apart.

  “Well he’s the one who is laughing now,” Cutter whispered. “He’s the one guy we need to have any chance of surviving Armageddon – and he’s the only one who doesn’t need any of us to help him.”

  Cutter’s thoughts drifted back to the horror of the day and he felt a cold sense of clammy despair clutch at his heart. Was their really any point in trying to survive? Why couldn’t he just lie down and die – maybe end it all right now by chewing on a bullet?

  He closed his eyes and asked softly, “Did you have family?”

  “No,” Glenda said sadly. “Not really. I was an orphan. I lived with a foster family in Omaha until I was seventeen. Then I moved here to find work…” her voice drifted to silence for a wistful moment. “There were a couple of guys… but nothing serious.” She shifted her weight subtly, until her shoulder was brushing against his. Cutter didn’t move, but he felt a sudden sense of intimacy.

  “How about you? Did you lose anyone?” Glenda asked him softly. “Do you have family nearby?”

  Cutter thought about how to answer. It was a simple question, but for Jack Cutter, the answer was darkly complicated. He nodded slowly. “I lost my wife and my son,” he said. “But not to the virus. They were killed in a car crash last week.”

  He heard Glenda gasp softly. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry,” she said, and Cutter believed her. “Was… was it an accident?”

  Cutter nodded, and felt the crushing despair and misery of his loss well up until it was like a knot in his chest. “Yes,” he said. “I was driving. It was late at night. A dog ran out on the road. I swerved…”

  “But you survived.”

  “Yes. Not a scratch on me, but my wife and son were so horribly crushed and disfigured I could barely recognize the bodies.”

  They stared at each other in the gloom for long uncertain seconds of silence and anguish, and then a sudden movement caught in the corner of Cutter’s eye made him turn away. One of the other women who worked in the bookstore was walking past them, her heels loud and echoing in the sullen silence. She was a tall woman, very young. She walked with her back straight, thrusting her breasts out firm against the fabric of her blouse. She had long red hair. She sensed Cutter watching her and she gave him a lingering glance as she passed. Cutter felt Glenda’s hand on his forearm.

  “I’m not surprised,” Glenda whispered, and there was a harsh sound of distain in her voice. “If anyone was going to try it, I knew it would be that little slut.”

  Cutter frowned. “Try it?”

  Glenda followed the younger woman with her eyes, tracking her as she sauntered towards where Hos sat on the steps. “She’s going to make a play for Hos in the hope he will take her with him when we break out of here.”

  Cutter shook his head. “You’re fucking joking!”

  Glenda sniffed. “It takes a woman to know a woman,” she said with a kind of abstractness that Cutter didn’t follow. “Jillian is just doing what a lot of the others have already considered.”

  Glenda’s words hung in the air for a long moment. Cutter turned back to her slowly. “Including you…?”

  Glenda didn’t answer. She glanced towards the stairs. Jillian was standing in front of Hos, leaning against the railing with her other hand resting on her narrow waist. Her hips were tilted at a sensual angle so that her skirt pulled tight across the shape of her thighs and bottom. As Glenda and Cutter watched, Hos muttered something and Jillian leaned closer to the man and then nodded her head willingly.

  Glenda turned back to Cutter. She sighed. “I don’t blame her…” she began, and then shook her head and started again. “You know, we think we’re civilized. We think we’ve evolved in the thousands of years man has walked the earth. Women have more independence and have been completely empowered – and yet – within twenty four hours of the world going to hell, we revert back to those base animal instincts that we’ve always inherited but learned to suppress,” she said. “Like the instinctive need to find a mate, and to reproduce, the instinct to survive is the strongest one mankind has, and Jillian is just doing what women have done for thousands of years. She’s drawn to the strongest male because it’s her best chance of protection and survival – and she’s appealing to him in the one way men are instinctively created to respond. She’s offering him her body, in the hope he will want her and will protect her. It’s what every woman instinctively craves,” Glenda confessed.

  “Including you…” Cutter said again, this time not asking the question. Just stating the fact.

  Glenda sighed. “I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t jealous,” she admitted. “Like you said, Hos is the one person in this room who is prepared for what is happening. It makes him the dominant male. Instinctively, he’s drawing every woman in here towards him.”

  “And so why are you talking to me?” Cutter asked. His tone had suddenly become harsh. “Why aren’t you lifting your skirt to Hos and throwing yourself at him? Or did you realize Hos would choose one of the younger girls, and so you thought maybe I would be your second choice?”

  Glenda turned away for a moment, and when she looked back there was a flicker of venomous anger in her eyes. Cutter saw the conflict in her expression flare brightly and then turn cold.

  “Would it make any difference?” she said flatly, grinding down on her urge to stalk angrily away. “You decide. If you want me, you can have me. You can take me right here, right now. You can take me up against the wall and I don’t care if everyone else in the room sees.” She snatched at his hand and the look in her eyes was urgent and primitive. “I want to survive this,” she said. “I’m too young to die. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me and I want to live it, no matter how horrible the world becomes.” Her legs fell apart, and she slid Cutter’s hand up under her skirt and held it pressed against the soft damp silk of her panties. “Take me with you, Jack. Promise you’ll protect me, and I’ll be yours any time you want. Every time you want. That’s what I’m prepared to pay for you to get me out of here and keep me alive.”

  Cutter recoiled. He dragged his hand free and glared, his expression appalled. Glenda started crying soft tears of despair and humiliation. She jerked away from him. “I’m sorry,” she said in a tiny choking sound. “I… I’ve done this all wrong…” She covered her mouth and began to sob. Cutter sat frozen, watching the woman’s pain. Over her shoulder, in the gloomy distance, he saw Hos take the young redhead by the hand and lead her away towards one of the small storage spaces. He hunted the darkness with his eyes until the couple disappeared.

  When his eyes flicked back to Glenda, she was hunched against the wall, her body shaking and heaving with the depth of her desolation. Finally he reached for her. Dr
ew her close to him and she looked up into his face with meek, fragile hope.

  “Thank you, Jack,” she whispered urgently. Her hand went to the front of his jeans in a desperate flurry to please him. “I promise I’ll be everything you want,” she said. “I promise you can have me whenever you say.” Her fingers were practiced, and with quick movements she unbuttoned the denim and began drawing down the zipper. She felt the hardness of him.

  Cutter grabbed her wrist. “Not that,” he said, and shook his head firmly. “Not anything.” Glenda’s head was nestled against his chest. She looked up at him, her eyes wide in alarm and renewed fear. “But –”

  Cutter shook his head again. “Just lay still, and get some rest,” he said. “I’m sorry. But for now, comfort is all I can offer you.”

  * * *

  Rough hands shook him awake and Cutter sat up with a start. Hos was standing over him, leaning close so that his voice was just a whisper.

  “It’s midnight,” the big man said. His eyes drifted down to where Glenda was laying with her head resting in Cutter’s lap. The woman was breathing steadily, but shallowly, her brow creased into a furrow as she slept. Hos said nothing, but there was a knowing look in his eyes. He grunted. “You’ve got sentry duty at the steel door. I’ll relieve you at 4am.”

  Cutter nodded. His hand went to the bulky shape of the pistol that had jammed itself against his hip as he had slept. “Okay,” he said.

  Hos leaned an inch closer. “Stay the fuck awake,” he warned, his voice pitched low, but full of menace.

  * * *

  Cutter climbed the stairs and sat on the cold concrete of the landing with his back against the locked steel door. He felt numb with the weary fatigue of exhaustion, and his thoughts were chittering and inconsequential.

  It was as though his mind had finally shut down, denying him the ability to think clearly. The enormity of the peril – America on the brink of Armageddon – had forced his conscious mind into denial.