by Ray Wallace
ESCAPE FROM ZOMBIE PLANET
A One Way Out Novel
by Ray Wallace
Dimension Z Publishing
ALSO BY RAY WALLACE
The Nameless
The Hell Season
Letting the Demons Out
One Way Out Novels
Escape from Zombie City
Escape from Zombie Island
ESCAPE FROM ZOMBIE PLANET
(A ONE WAY OUT NOVEL)
First Edition: February 2014
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright (c) 2014 Ray Wallace.
Cover art: Zach McCain
Interior illustrations: Zach McCain
Print ISBN-10: 1494979284
Print ISBN-13: 978-1494979287
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce the book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Author's note:
PLEASE READ!
A One Way Out novel, much like the Choose Your Own Adventure books I used to love reading back in elementary school, is not meant to be read straight through. At the end of each chapter, you will be presented with choices. Each of these choices will lead you along a different path through the book. There are many different endings, and as this is a horror story, the vast majority of the endings are rather... unpleasant. Only one path will get you through the story safely. Only one results in your survival.
Best of luck finding the One Way Out.
You're going to need it.
Ray Wallace
Come on... There's got to be somebody out there...
Somebody, that is, besides the guy on 620 who's been ranting about fire and brimstone and the wrath of God for the last four days now. You turn the dial and get nothing but static... static... static... So many dead stations.
Nothing new there.
Once the Outbreak was in full swing they started dropping like flies. Still, each morning, after you wake up and get out of bed, you turn on the radio and listen to every station on both bands, AM first. The fire and brimstone guy is the only voice you've heard lately. You have to keep listening, though. You have to keep trying. Because if you stop trying it means... well, it means you've just given up. Period. End of story. And you're not ready to do that. Not just yet, at least.
"Yes, it's God's work, ladies and gentlemen. But it's our fault, make no mistake about it. We forced His hand. We left Him with no choice. The world had become a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, after all. What was He supposed to do? Turn a blind eye to it all? And He may have for a while there. Because He loved us, each and every one of us. He did not want to see us destroyed. But in the end... In the end there is only so much even a just and loving God can ignore..."
You turn the dial. 630... 640... On and on through the 700's. The 800's. Nothing but the hiss of dead air, like all the days before. But still, you've got to try, right? 900... 910...
What was that?
You stop, certain you heard something amongst the static.
A voice.
Standing up from the kitchen chair where you've been sitting, you walk around the room, the portable radio held out before you, clasped in both hands like a sacred object. You wander out of the room, trying to find a spot with better reception for this particular station. No luck in the living room or the bathroom. You'd try the bedrooms but you barricaded the hallway leading back there around the same time you boarded over all the windows in the house. It would take hours to dig your way through the pile of bricks and cinderblocks stacked to the ceiling midway down the corridor. Not that you'd want to anyway. You constructed the barricade for a reason. Cutting off half the house meant less ground to defend, less ways for the monsters outside to enter this end of the house which has pretty much been the entirety of your world for longer than you care to think about.
Just this side of the barricade, a ladder extends down from a dark rectangle in the ceiling. With one hand on the radio and one on the ladder, you climb into the attic where you have to duck your head in order to walk beneath the A-frame roof toward the front of the house. Once there, you put your eye to the circular hole in the wall you made several months ago using a drill.
Outside, the morning looks pleasant enough. Blinking against the bright sunlight, you take in the view of the house across the street, the yard surrounding it in need of some serious landscaping. The rest of the yards along the street - including your own - have fallen into similar states of neglect. You imagine it's much the same across the entire town. The entire state. The entire country.
The entire world?
Once the dead decided to get up and walk around and bring about the downfall of human civilization, proper lawn maintenance became a thing of the past. For some reason, having a picture perfect yard just didn't seem all that important during the Apocalypse. Go figure.
As you continue to look, the view remains unchanged. The only thing moving out there is the knee-high grass across the street, swaying back and forth in a mild and swirling wind. No sign of any -
Hold on a sec.
A man stumbles into your limited field of view from the right, walks into the exact center of the circle through which you're staring, stops and looks down toward the ground as if he sees something of interest there. A stray piece of garbage - maybe a section of newspaper - skitters across the asphalt in front of the man. After a few seconds of watching it go by, he loses interest, returns his gaze to the road stretching away before him and moves off in a slow, sort of drunken shamble you recognize all too well.
The zombie shuffle.
Before long, the dead man steps out of the circle and you lose sight of him. Keeping your eye to the peephole, you wait to see if any others of his kind go wandering by. A few minutes pass. Nothing. All the while, the radio hisses at low volume in your hand.
You turn and walk toward the far side of the attic. Another hole offers a limited view of the overgrown back yard, the gazebo and the privacy fence at the edge of the property.
Not a zombie in sight.
You return to the opening in the floor where the ladder leads downstairs, step around it and push on a section of the ceiling. A makeshift door made from a sheet of plywood and a pair of hinges swings open. Taking care not to drop the radio, you pull yourself up and onto the roof.
Once there, you crouch down and look around, wanting to make absolutely certain there are no zombies nearby. Staying low to the roof, you half-crawl toward the peak where you peer over to the other side. A lone figure - the same one you saw through the peephole - makes its way slowly toward the stop sign at the intersection half a block away. Satisfied you're in no danger of drawing any unwanted attention, you stand up, turn up the volume on the radio and start to walk around, the soles of your tennis shoes gripping the roof's shingles.
Almost immediately, the signal gets better, coherent words emerging through the hiss and crackle.
"If the weather holds" and "eleven AM sharp" says a woman's voice. The signal is far from perfect, frustrating you as it cuts in and out. It continues to improve, though, as you approach the front of the house and eventually comes through loud and clear.
"Anyone alive out there, please listen carefully to the following message... One last shuttle bound for Olympus I, the multinational off-world colony, will depart the Tampa spaceport tomorrow morning. If the weather holds - and we have no reason to expect any change from today's clear skies - lift-off will occur at eleven AM sharp. As of this announcemen
t, there are twelve seats available. They will be filled on a first come, first serve basis. So make your way to the Tampa spaceport for the chance to start a new life off-planet and leave the horrors of the Outbreak behind..."
Silence for a few seconds. Then:
"This message will repeat itself in one minute."
For a few moments, you can only stare at the radio in your hands while trying to process what you just heard. You figured all the shuttles had left for good during the early stages of the Outbreak, that you were doomed to spend the rest of your days - however many you might have left - trying to not end up as zombie food. And now this!
After listening to the message one more time, you turn off the radio and head back into the house, make your way down to the ground floor and remove a duffel bag from the shelf in the living room closet. In the kitchen, you pull some canned goods - Spaghettios, Beefaroni, Chunky soup - from the cupboard over the sink and toss them into the bag. From the refrigerator - which hasn't been cold in a long time - you grab several bottled waters, put them in the bag also. On the counter separating the kitchen from the living room rests the handgun you took from a house down the street a while back. It goes into the bag, too, along with an extra box of cartridges.
You make your way to the bathroom, a bottled water in hand. Once there, you grab the flashlight sitting on the edge of the sink and turn it on. After brushing your teeth, you splash some water on your face and dry off with a towel. The jeans, tennis shoes, and dark t-shirt you're wearing should prove sufficient clothing for the journey to the spaceport. With a nod at your reflection in the mirror over the sink and an emphatic, "Let's do this," you turn off the flashlight, bring it with you into the living room and place it in the duffel bag.
The spaceport lies less than fifty miles from here, the proposed launch time a little more than twenty-four hours away. You have plenty of time to get there. But you have no way of knowing what sorts of obstacles might lie between here and there. Also, you have to arrive before all the seats are taken. So, undoubtedly, the sooner you leave the better.
You head back to the kitchen, take one last look along the way at the place where you've lived these past several years, where you managed to survive the horrors of the Outbreak. Then it's into the garage where your four wheel drive, extended cab pickup awaits, key already in the ignition. After setting the duffel bag - unzipped, granting quick access to the weapon inside, just in case - on the passenger seat, you walk over and manually open the garage door. Then you start the truck and pull up to the end of the driveway, hang a right and cruise over to the four way stop at the intersection down the street. Out of habit, you come to a complete stop even though the chances of running into another vehicle here would have to be about the same as getting hit by a meteorite.
As you give the truck some gas and start to roll through the intersection, a teenage boy appears as if from nowhere, darting out in front of the truck and waving his hands. You hit the brakes to keep from running him over.
"Help me!" shouts the boy. "Please!"
Before you even leave the neighborhood, it looks as though you've encountered one of those obstacles you were concerned about.
CLICK HERE if you decide to play Good Samaritan and see how you can help the boy.
CLICK HERE if, instead, you swerve around the kid and just keep on going.
It's been so long since you've seen let alone talked to another living person, you find it impossible to abandon the first one you encounter. And so you motion for the kid to head around to the passenger side door as you place the duffel between the front seats. Within seconds, the kid opens the door and hops in.
"Wow, thanks a lot for stopping," says the boy - he can't be more than fourteen or fifteen - as soon as he's pulled the door closed and settled in. "You're a real lifesaver. I ran into a bunch of corpses a few streets over. They almost had me surrounded but I managed to give them the slip. I wouldn't be surprised if they were headed this way."
You let off the brake and continue down the road. The kid's tale has you a little spooked. The last thing you need is to get hemmed in by a bunch of zombies. One at a time, they're easy enough to deal with, either by avoiding them altogether or by putting them down with a bullet to the brain. But get surrounded by a large number of them and your odds of surviving start to go way down, even if you're inside a vehicle. Because if they can find a way to stop the vehicle then it's only a matter of time before they'll find a way in. You saw it happen far too many times - both on the news and in person - back when the Outbreak was in full swing.
"Where did you come from?" you ask the kid. "Have you been living nearby? Because I haven't seen anybody around these parts in... Well, let's just say it's been a while."
The kid shakes his head.
"Nope. Just passing through. Had some car troubles. Was out wandering around, looking for something else to drive, something that still ran. Hardly even started before those corpses came along. Then I saw your truck pulling up to that stop sign. Couldn't believe my luck."
And that's when the kid jams something hard and metallic into your side, just below the rib cage. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what that something might be, either. A gun. When you look over at the kid, he tells you to keep your eyes on the road, to keep driving. You glance toward the duffel bag sitting next to you, think about the gun stashed inside. So close yet so far away. The kid notices the gesture and reaches into the bag, smiles when he pulls the weapon out.
"Dang, this really is my lucky day." As you watch, the smile fades away. "I thought I told you to keep your eyes on the road."
To emphasize his point, the kid pushes the gun into your side a little deeper. You do as you're told, maneuvering the truck around a car flipped upside-down in the middle of the street.
"Hang a right at the next stop sign." After you make the turn, the kid tells you to pull over near the curb about halfway up the block. "There, behind the white minivan."
You pull over and put the truck in park. The gun doesn't leave your side.
"Okay, we can do this one of two ways. You can get out of the truck and run away from here as fast as you can. Or I can pull this trigger and dump your body on the street. Either way, the truck is mine."
You turn to look at him once again, can tell by the expression on his face he means what he says.
Or at least he thinks he does.
Not all that surprising, really. You can only guess at what he's been through since the Outbreak. Whatever it was, it must have been tough, made him grow up in a hurry.
You clear your throat, ready to tell the kid to take it easy, he can have the truck. Before you can speak, however, you notice movement through the windshield. A young woman, one of her hands pressed under her stomach which is noticeably swollen, walks up and taps on the passenger side window. The kid jumps a little and you experience a bad moment, certain he's going to pull the trigger. But he doesn't.
"Garrett?" says the woman, her voice muffled by the glass of the closed window.
The kid, Garrett, speaks loud enough for the woman to hear: "Go back to the van, Sis."
Brother and sister then. You wonder about the father of the young lady's unborn child, what might have happened to him. He could be inside the minivan but you don't think so. The boy seems to be playing the role of sole protector here.
"It doesn't have to go like this," you say, trying to sound as calm and reassuring as possible.
"You're wrong," says Garrett. "This is exactly how it has to go. I need the truck and I need you gone." The gun presses a little harder into your side. "Now I'm gonna count to three. And if you're still here, I'm gonna pull this trigger. Okay?"
Does he really have it in him, killing you like this? Sure, he's been through a lot but he's still just a kid. It's a good possibility he's never actually had to kill anybody before. And if he hasn't, is he ready to do it now? A cold blooded execution? Over a truck?
"One..."
The kid squints his eyes. A kil
ler's gaze or his way of trying to bluff you?
"Two..."
The bottom line here is that you need the truck to get to the spaceport. Sure, you might be able to find another working vehicle, one with keys in it since you've never learned the art of hotwiring. Then again, you might not. And without a ride you'll never reach your destination on time.
CLICK HERE if you decide to sit tight and call the kid's bluff.
CLICK HERE if you tell yourself no matter how important the truck might be, it's not as important as your life.
No, this is definitely not the time to pick up hitchhikers no matter how badly they may need a ride. So you beep the horn and give the truck some gas, turn the wheel enough to keep from running the kid over and leave him behind. At the next stop sign you hang a right, pass a number of houses similar in design to your own. A few zombies can be seen wandering around and a particularly gruesome looking specimen - it appears to have been in a fire at some point - staggers across the road. You swerve past this slow moving obstacle and make your way to another stop sign, this one at the exit of the subdivision where you've resided these past five years. With a twinge of nostalgia, you pull out onto the four lane road that will take you away from this place, hopefully forever.
