The Undead World (Book 1): The Apocalypse

by Meredith, Peter

  “Oh my, that was close,” he said, shaking again for the second time that day. “It's dead, Sarah. I killed it.” Again he was hoping for a better reaction than the one he received. She scampered into the hall, looked around and then went to the living room where she took up the M16 and pointed it straight at his chest.

  “Huh?” Neil said.

  “Put the chair down and get your hands up,” Sarah ordered.

  Neil did, more confused than afraid. “I say again, huh? Why are you doing this?”

  She stared at him for a few seconds and then let the gun sag. “Sadie tried to kill me. She sicced those stiffs on me. I swear she did. A little while ago, she was out in the rain and then she comes in, says something about checking the garage and goes through there. The next thing I know these two stiffs come walking in. She led them in here!”

  “It had to be an accident,” Neil said. He went to the big, muumuu-wearing zombie, worked the axe out of its head and went to the garage, again more worried for Sadie than afraid of Sarah who had resumed pointing the gun at him. “Sadie?” he said in a low voice. The garage was dark and silent. “Hello? Sadie?”

  When no one answered he went to the side door, a stiff aluminum piece and opened it, flooding the room with grey light. Sadie wasn't in sight. “You see?” Sarah said. “She came in. Led the stiffs right to me and walked out that door.”

  “Then where is she? And why would she do this? Did you two have a fight?”

  “No. We were just talking and poking around. She went back out to the barn and the next thing I know she walks these two in here and leaves me stranded.”

  It was impossible for Neil to believe that Sadie would do this. In a growing heat, he marched out to the barn and nearly walked right into two more stiffs. One was right there around the corner of the red building and Neil hewed it down with a single stroke and was quite proud of himself. The other was staring up at the loft with its mouth open, as if hoping that a human would just fall into it. Neil konked that one as well.

  “Sadie! What are you doing?” he demanded, he knew she was up there because the ladder had been drawn up. “Sarah seems to think that you tried to kill her.”

  “I don't want to talk about it,” she said. “Not right now.”

  “No, that won't do at all,” Neil said. “Aren't you even worried about her? She could be dead for all you know and you're acting like this. Like a child!”

  “I'm not. I can see her right through the cracks. And I heard you two talking, before. So I knew she was alright and I knew she would be alright in the house. We talked about how heavy the master bedroom door was.”

  “So you did plan this!” Sarah yelled. “Come down here right now young lady.”

  “No,” Sadie whispered. “Maybe you two should go on without me.”

  “That's not going to happen either,” Neil said. Sarah made a noise that suggested she thought it was very likely going to happen. He ignored her. “Come on down or I'll build a pyramid of these bales to come up there.”

  “They're too heavy for you,” Sarah said. “I know from experience, hay bales weigh a ton.”

  Suddenly Sadie appeared looking down with her bangs swaying from her forehead. “If Neil says he can do it then he can. He's stronger than he looks.”

  “Then let him,” Sarah replied. “Go ahead Neil.”

  Sadie glared once and then disappeared again, leaving Neil even more bewildered. “What is this about, Sadie? I thought you liked Sarah.”

  “I do, it's just she's practically blind!”

  Sarah's anger softened a little. “What am I blind to?”

  When Sadie hesitated, Neil spoke, “If we're missing something, you have to tell us. You just can't lash out. Now come on down and we'll talk about it. And I got a boat, with a motor and gas and everything. We could take it right down the Mississippi if we wanted to. I just want you to be there when we go. What do you say?”

  “Can I talk to Sarah alone?” Sadie asked. “This is between us, Neil. So if you could wait back in the house...”

  “No, that's not how we're going to do this,” Neil replied stepping back so he could see the teen better. “We three need to be a team...that is if you want to?” he said this to Sarah. It wasn't really something they had talked about.

  “Before I say yes, we need to hear what she has to say. And I want the full truth. Half-truths will breaks up a part just as sure as outright lies will. Can you be truthful with me, Sadie?”

  “Yes,” Sadie said in a low voice. “You don't see Neil like I do. You don't see his good qualities.” Sarah looked at Neil, who only shrugged, not knowing what good qualities he possessed that either of them had seen yet.

  “I'm looking at him right now,” Sarah said, looking his way. “And I do see his good qualities. He's a nice guy. And he's...”

  Sadie interrupted, “No, he's not a nice guy. He hates being called that. Neil is smart and brave, and he's loyal to those people he cares for. He did everything he could to get those soldiers to let me stay on that Island, even though he knew they'd never take him.”

  “It was a mistake to even try,” Sarah said. Her words were harsh, but that only set Sadie off some more.

  “You see, Neil? She won't understand. I'm trying but she's got her own shit to worry about. She'll never understand you, like I do.”

  Neil grabbed his hair and pulled at it in frustration. “Are you saying you like me, Sadie? I'm sorry but that wouldn't be right...”

  “No. I don't like you like that. I just want Sarah to.” A lull of thick silence followed the statement and as it went on Sarah and Neil only stared at each other not knowing what to say. After a bit, Sadie spoke again, “I let those zombies into the house so that you could save her. So that she could see your brave side. So that she could see you as a good man and not a nice guy. She only thinks you're sort of goofy and I hate that.”

  “I don't think that at all,” Sarah said, looking stricken over the accusation, yet at the same time Neil could see her searching for something nice to say about him. “Really, you're a...”

  Neil shook his head. “Don't. Just don't.” He went to the door of the barn and looked out at the cold day. The rain had picked up again which made him realize that his precious gas was only covered by a ratty shirt he had found in the bottom of the boat. “I got work to do,” he said and left.

  “Neil, please,” Sarah called, hurrying after him, her feet still bare despite the cold. “We have to talk.”

  He kept walking, his anger large in his mind as a way to compensate for his mortal embarrassment. Of course as a “Nice Guy” he did his best to hide his true feeling because that's what nice guys did. “Sadie is just mixed up,” he said. “It's not her fault so please don't take it out on her. We should just do our best to keep an eye on her.”

  “Yes I agree, but I wanted to talk about us,” Sarah said, stepping around the rocks and larger puddles. “It's not a good time for me. I just lost my parents and you know...”

  “Why are you telling me this?” he asked cutting right across her, his anger now growing so great that even his vaunted niceness wasn’t covering it any longer. “I didn't ask you out, did I? I'm sorry if you think I'm pining away for you, but I'm not. And I don't have a crush on you and I definitely am not doodling your name on my damned notebook in 5th period, so don't give me that crap about it not being a good time for you, because we both know it would never be a good time for you!”

  “I know, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, but Sadie put me on the spot and I just wanted to be clear.”

  Neil had been marching angrily back to the boat and now he climbed in and stood there looking at everything, seething as the rain pelted him, but as always his inherent niceness pushed its way forward and kept him from exploding on her in his rage. Yet he did sneer, “You were clear alright. Is this how you were back in the old days? Did you walk around telling men not to bother before they even knew your last name? I have to say, cutting a man off preemptively when h
e wasn't even going to ask you out is kind of rude, if you must know. Especially as the thought never even crossed my mind. Which it didn't.”

  Sarah hung her head and the rain dripped from her nose and even as mad as he was, Neil had to resist wiping the drops away, or giving her his coat. “Sorry,” she said again. “I guess that wasn't very nice of me.”

  “It happens, right? We all have our moments,” Neil replied, regretting having made her upset, turning back into the nice guy just like that. He gave her a smile to show there weren't any hard feelings. “We have to make sure Sadie is clear on all of this: You don't like me in that way and I don't like you in that way. Not at all. Here, this is for you.” He reached into the bottom of the boat and handed her one of the backpacks. “It's just some shoes and some clothes and some grape jelly I thought you would like...and some more of that perfume you were wearing. It's nothing really.”

  Chapter 37

  Ram

  Amarillo, Texas

  Hundreds of zombies, 27 rounds left, and a girl who had his heart in a tight grip, bleeding with a virus fighting to get into her system. Ram had zero choices. Running wasn't an option and fighting would have to wait. In his pocket was Julia's only hope, and he didn't so much as hand her his rifle, as he threw it into her arms and dug out the first bottle of vodka that he had hoped would ease them back into a more intimate relationship.

  Instead she screamed as he poured it into the jagged wound the broken glass had slashed into her flesh. “Shoot, damn it!” he yelled and then grabbed her leg and squeezes so that the blood and alcohol blended and came out pink. Another bottle joined the first and then the M16 started ripping the air with its thin thunder. He then spread the gash as far as it would go and poured a third bottle into the wound.

  It would have to do for now.

  “Come on,” he said and then not waiting even for a second for her to figure out what he meant by that, he yanked the gun from her grip and threw her over his shoulder. Whether she could run or not he didn't know or care. Some primal part of him had taken over and now he was Tarzan and she was Jane, and this was no longer a PC world—there were zombies to worry over, many, many hundreds of them.

  She had laid out those who had gotten close, some with head shots and some with hits that were just good enough. It gave him a lane and he pelted through it across the street where another low brick building sat ignored by the empty world. Thankfully glass doors were in vogue for front entrances.

  Dumping her on her butt and dropping his gun in her lap, he said simply, “Cover me.”

  Julia might have been a psychologist by training with a woman's soft heart, but just then she was a Spartan in her soul and with the horde closing, she shot with nerves as cold as ice. She aimed low, at knee height and a miss of a stiff in front still meant that the one behind stumbled and fell, making it an obstacle course for the dead.

  While she was buying time with the few remaining bullets, Ram was looking around in a growing panic; this time there wasn't a handy stone for him to use to break the glass and he feared to waste even a single bullet. With no other good choice, he threw himself against the glass door and all that happened was a shock went through him from shoulder to shoulder. He didn't try a second time, knowing it would do little beside bruise him. Instead he lashed out with a grunting front kick that set the power of his two-hundred and twenty pounds in a three-inch area across the ball of his right foot straight into the glass—it shattered and so did something within him. A searing pain raced up the tibia in his lower leg and right through to his knee, making his teeth clench.

  With him operating in fight or flight mode, the pain was nothing. However when he went to kick out the extra glass in the door, so that he and Julia could get through, his knee buckled and he went down. He knew that he injured himself badly, yet just then it didn't matter a hill of beans to him. His mind had set itself a goal and the punishment his body took in gaining the goal was secondary and of trivial importance. With his elbow he cleared the glass and then he reached for Julia who was already kicking backwards with her good leg, firing all the while. By the shirt, he took her and dragged her through the low opening, pushing her head down to keep her scalp from being sliced open.

  “I'm empty,” she said, showing him the open port on the side of the M16, and not at all upset with her rough treatment. With the danger, she didn't even seem to notice how he had manhandled her and in truth neither did he.

  Ram stared at the gun for a second and with his mind still in its Fire bad / Girl Pretty mode, he could not quite make the connection between her words and the actual fact that they were out of ammo. All he knew was: “We shouldn't stay here,” he said.

  The gun went across his shoulder while she slung an arm over him for support. Together they hobbled on through an unknown building where one set of cubicles looked like another and their only saving grace was that the zombies, in their zeal to get at their victims, had plugged the hole behind them with three of their wriggling bodies. Ram didn't know this and he pressed on as fast as he could, heading down a central corridor with no particular destination in mind.

  “Where are they,” Julia asked, glancing over her shoulder with every other step. He was about to say he didn't know, but there came a bang and a shattering of glass. Instead of answering he opened the first door on his left—the one on the opposite side of the building from which they had entered. He touched a finger to his lips to suggest she be quiet and he gave him a look that said: No duh.

  The two spread out, each hobbling; Julia went to the back wall, while Ram looked up at the noise dampening ceiling panels, wondering if he could get Julia up there and if they would hold even her slight weight. It didn't seem likely except where the walls ran together and so he limped to what looked like a break room; as he did there came a thumping and a rush of feet from the hall. The stiffs were hunting them.

  Julia glanced at him, more pale than he had ever seen her and then went back to searching the desks and rooms, looking for something, anything that would save them. Ram was beginning to think that being saved wasn't possible. He felt that putting off death for another minute, or another hour, or a single day was the best they could hope for. So he looked again to the ceiling, seeing in it a moment's refuge.

  He just had to get up there. With a near silent grunt he gently placed a chair up on the desk nearest to the break room and was just wondering how he was going to get his gimpy bulk up on it when he heard a short, urgent whistle from Julia. She had one hand pointing out the window, while the other waived him over with frantic motions. There was no hurrying Ram, impaired as he was by his bad leg and limited by the fact that any noise would alert the beasts that had descended upon the hall just beyond the doors. Still she tried.

  “Come on!” Julia hissed. “She's leaving.”

  Finally Ram came up to the window and saw the Bronco, slowly drifting down the street. Their salvation was right there and what was more, there wasn't a stiff in sight.

  Reaching for a tall, four-legged stool, Ram warned, “It's going to be loud. We may not make it.”

  “I don't want to die here,” she said, nodding and pointing at the window. “Do it. Break the glass.”

  It was easier said than done. His bad leg kept him from putting his full power into the swing and so the first attempt saw the chair rebounding off the window and nearly coming out of his grip. It made a noise like a stunted gong, though in its effect it might as well have been the dinner bell. The zombies went into an instantaneous frenzy. The door shook as they attacked it, but worse, in a visceral way, was that the walls began to vibrate as the beasts tore at the paneling and the thin sheetrock beneath in order to get at them.

  “Again!” Julia cried, slapping a desk with the flat of her palm repeatedly. A second time he swung and this time the glass flashed into a spider's web of cracks. Behind them was a splintering cracking noise—the zombies were breaking through the door!

  Ram didn't need Julia's urging; he began the hammer a
t the glass faster and faster as a small hole widened slowly. When it was just big enough he grabbed Julia by the arm and pushed her to it.

  “It's not big enough for you,” she said pulling back. The first zombie began to slither through the hole in the door, unmindful of the sharp angles of wood. “We both go!”

  Ram had fully intended on going, he had only wanted her to get to safety first. With a growl at even this tiny delay he went berserk on the glass, making the hole large enough with three tremendous swings of the mangled chair.

  “Go,” he said, breathing great gusts of air. He couldn't wait to help her through as he had planned instead he had the dead to deal with. Like horrible snakes the stiffs slithered through the opening they had made and already there were four of them in the room. In the first second he knocked one sprawling with the chair and in the next he over turned the desk at his feet and pushed it in the path of another.

  “Ram! I'm through,” Julia called. She then went limping out into the street calling Cassie back, as well as calling every zombie in the vicinity to her. There weren't any on the street, however there were plenty still trying to get into the building and these came charging around the far end. “Shit, shit, shit. Ram! Come on,” she cried.

  In the art of zombie warfare subtlety was wasted and Ram had learned well his lessons. There was only attack, attack, attack until the beasts were all dead. Unless...one was winded and weakened through injury; and unless there was a way to escape. Ram smashed the third zombie with the awkward weapon, but it took three tries to bring it down and then the fourth was on him, arms and taloned hands reaching. Defense was normally useless since a single scratch could doom a person, but now Ram brought up the stool to chest height and when the zombie reached through the metal it had effectively handcuffed itself. With its arms extended and trapped, Ram simply pivoted the creature back the way it came and shoved it at the next beast coming at him.