They Rise (Book 1): Zombie Outbreak

by Morgana Wray

  The once docile group of people behind the door weren’t docile anymore. They had somehow been awaking from whatever trance that they were in before. Somehow, I had a gut feeling that this wasn’t going to be good for me and Diane.

  “Kid, run! Definitely run!” I shouted at Diane.

  Diane had been in a state of utter panic. My loud shouts had snapped her out of it. She darted away very quickly. I chased after her. I did not bother to look back at the group of crazy people that were after us. I heard them coming after us. I heard their feet stumping on the dirt behind us. They were slow. But they were tenacious in their pursuit.

  We easily outran our chasers. It felt like we had put some distance between them and our precious skins. The lady back there at the church was a biter. I assumed the others might have wanted a chunk of our flesh too. Perhaps, they were all druggies and cannibals. I didn’t give a blooming toss. I just wanted shelter from those guys with the dead, fish eyes.

  I wasn’t a kid. I couldn’t keep up my speed. Diane was injured. She was still leaking blood. I thought she had outran me. With hands pressed against my chest, I sucked in air, inhaling very rampantly. Those guys would probably mount my head as a mantle piece if they got their hands on me. My eyes roamed and painful spasms shot through my tired legs.

  “Your wound? Its still bleeding?”

  “That doesn’t look right. Your wound should have clotted by now. It must run deeper than I thought. We have to get back. We have to get back to the bus quickly.” I slurred my words with great effort.

  “We most likely are going to die here!”

  “You do know that, don’t you?” Diane cried in despair. “If you think any different then you are as stupid as the other kids say you are.”

  That felt like a big kick in the teeth. I was trying to be nice to the kid and she was being all high and mighty with me. I wasn’t the smartest tool in the shed but I wasn’t about to be taking a rollicking like that from some kid that hasn’t seen much beyond the comfort of her cosy home, paid for by her bigshot parents. They probably were lawyers or flipping politicians for all I knew.

  Whatever the case was, her tongue had not been tamed by whoever was doing a shoddy job of raising her. She definitely showed no restraint with the stinging words that incessantly rolled off her tongue. I hated to concur with Diane but I could not deny the fact that we were in a bad situation. We had worn ourselves out with all the running, and between the two of us, we didn’t have any food or water.

  I didn’t have anything to patch Diane’s hand. Hand pressed against a nearby tree, the feeling of hopelessness washed over me. There weren’t too many smart cards to play. There were only two options-either shake off our pursuers or risk being torn apart by a bunch of crazed people.

  “So are you going to sulk all day? Or are you going to quit hugging that tree and do something that actually makes sense, like making a phone call for help?” Diane beamed a scornful look at me.

  I had no response to her bickering. I wasn’t going to gratify her innuendos with the curtsy of an answer. Nope, I was going to make the damn stuck up princess stew in the rancid juices of the tall expectations swirling around in that head of hers.

  It was a good thing I was out of bullets. I would have been sorely tempted to silence her permanently. She was that annoying.

  “Are you really going to do the whole silent treatment thing?”

  “My mum says that is so immature. You really should consider acting like an actual grown up and handle the situation,” Diane nagged at me.

  She was standing right next to me. Her lips were in constant motion without pause. My goodness, that girl could talk. I did think about shoving my fingers into my ears and just leaving the jabbering, motor-mouth alone to fend for herself. If only I were that heartless. If only she wasn’t some helpless kid with nasty bite wounds on her arm.

  “Are you going to keep that up?”

  “You’re going to have to say something eventually. Maybe you won’t. Maybe you’re just a big, dum rock.” Diane’s probing eyes focused on my unmoving lips.

  “Do you think you can walk?” I asked, bowing my head slightly.

  “I am kind of feeling dizzy from all that blood I am losing. I am in no shape to do any of that. You should probably get out there and get some help,” Diane blurted out some quick mutterings.

  I smirked a bit and bent over, looking the injured blonde girl in the face, “then I am sorry for this.”

  “Sorry for what?” Diane shrieked in complete astonishment.

  She was scooped up very quickly and thrown over my shoulder. I wasn’t going to hang around there and watch the injured child bleed out. I wasn’t going to be selfish and put saving my own skin first. The world was already full of selfish, self-serving people. I wasn’t going to add my humble self to that tally.

  “What the? What are you doing?”

  “Ahh! Put me down! My hand! My hand! It hurts!” Diane wailed loudly, kicking and thrashing about on my shoulders.

  My grip was tight and firm. I made sure that I held tightly unto her. She certainly did have a will made of stern stuff. Had she weighed a few more stones, I would probably have been knocked off balance. I was thankful that she was not.

  I stumped through the dirt and my hands brushed against thick blades of grass. Sweat trickled down my unamused face. I was slaving away on an empty tank. There wasn’t much left in me to give but I put everything I had left into moving the bleeding girl on my shoulder to safety. Blood from her arm lashed the sides of the blades of grass around us.

  Diane soon became a tedious load to carry. I was buckling under the strain of exhaustion. I nearly stumbled as I attempted to remove her from my shoulders. Without much hesitation, I managed to get her off my shoulders without doing more damage to her already injured arm. I was almost sure that she couldn’t stand the sight of me for dragging her, kicking and screaming to the spot where we had reached. The disdain on her scrunched up face said that much.

  I didn’t need a psychology degree for all that to register somewhere in my brain. I wasn’t keen on pacifying the vexed blonde girl. Her face was bowed and she chose to look only at her shoes. They were a muddy mess.

  “Now who is being immature? You do know it wasn’t safe back there?” I spoke unapologetically, putting on my best brave face.

  “I am not talking to you. Go bother somebody else.” Diane frowned.

  “Suit yourself kid. There are better ways to spend my time than burning it on the likes of you. When you’re actually ready to talk-give me a whistle. I’ll be trying to see if I can find any trails I might have made before I got lost looking for you.” I huffed in frustration.

  I walked away from Diane and her moody outbursts. My concerns were to get us out of our sorry predicament. I wasn’t very good with all the nature stuff. I hated the smell of dung and earth beneath my feet. Hands over my eyes, I looked to the west. I thought I had come from the west. The bushes we were stuck in must have an end or an edge. That was what I needed to locate-some way back to the road and back to the bus, or at least somewhere that wasn’t covered in green. I could see refraction of light in the distance. The lights must have been bouncing of something metallic. Could it have been the bus? Could I be that lucky?

  “I think I see something. I’ll just get a better look.”

  “You’ll be there when I get back, won’t you?” I asked, glaring at Diane probingly.

  I didn’t get an answer, just a muted groan. I guess she wasn’t in the mood for much chatter, especially with the pain that her wound must have been causing her. There was the odd grimace and cringe but no overwhelming buckets of tears streaming from her eyes. Guess the dam hadn’t burst yet. She looked pretty good at keeping all of that pain locked up inside.

  I strayed in the direction of the refracting light. My heart pulsated with hope. I was hopeful that I would finally get back to warm cups of coffee and buttered toast. A beer! I would have given anything for a cold beer there and then
!

  I licked my lips with relish as that thought lingered in my head. I was walking on cruise control like some butterfly floundering around in a senseless circle. I must have been getting a bit light headed from hunger.

  “What the hell is all that?” I threw my palm over my nose.

  There were mangled ravens all over the ground with their entrails hanging out of their hollow, bloodied chests. I was pretty sure those mauled birds did not tear open their own chests. Something had been snacking on them.

  “This is certainly not normal. This is so fucked up,” I muttered in a muted tone of voice to myself.

  I was in the midst of a revolting site. Probably one of the most disgusting sceneries I had ever laid my eyes on. Why would anyone want to do this to birds?

  The vicious act did not make any sense at all. I racked my brains but couldn’t find any logic to justify such an act of utter madness. Only a mind in chaos could have produced such bizarre works. I wasn’t going to call it art but the way the birds were displayed looked like some sort of messed up abstract display. Definitely not done to my tastes.

  I was definitely alarmed by this. My hands reached for the nearest thing I could find. I had managed to wrap my fingers round a big stick. Yep, if there was some sick fuck out there planning to rip out my insides like that of the birds, I wasn’t going to be an easy prey. I wasn’t going to be taken down without a jolly good fight.

  I skulked around the murder of dead ravens, taking carful steps and trying desperately to avoid stepping on any of the mutilated birds. I could hear some bubbling noises. I could not quite work out where the noises were coming from. I just knew that whatever was making those irritating sounds was really close.

  With ears raised and alert, I listened very carefully to every smallest sound that swirled around in loose air around me. I lowered my gaze, suddenly. I had realized that the bubbling noises was coming from everywhere around me. It was a spontaneous cacophony of disturbing noises.

  I gasped at the unsightly vision of black sludge bubbling away and spilling over from the inside of the hollowed chests of the dead ravens. I was hit with a haze of fractured thoughts. This looked more like a biblical plague of sorts. I wasn’t religious but seeing those shrivelled birds leaking black liquids sent a chill down my spine and not in a good way.

  My grip on the stick got even tighter. The bewilderment on my face grew more strikingly obvious. I was rattled. I knew that much. There was no hiding from that fact. I didn’t need to wipe my eyes. I knew this wasn’t a nightmare. This was all real life stuff, smacking me right in me right in the face.

  “This is some really fucked up shit! I am not seeing this right now!”

  “Could this be some sort of ritualistic rite? Maybe it is some sick sadistic fuck doing some really weird shit?” I gulped down some warm saliva, pacing about uncomfortably.

  Nervousness ate at me. I tore at my hair in a desperate move to pry out some sort of answers that I obviously did not have upstairs. I wasn’t that clever. I was better with my fists than with using my noggin. Point me to something or someone that needed beating down and I would gladly have done that. I would have knocked them flat on their backs. Thinking was hard. I was really doing myself a disservice trying to do that.

  I had barely regained my composure when I saw something lurking in the dark corners, beneath the shades of some bushes. Beams of lights danced on the black of the creature’s very still eyes. A growl sprang from the creature’s agape mouth. Slowly, it crawled from the blackness that had obscured the creature’s form. I could see my stalker as clear as day now.

  “You don’t quit easily, do you? What the fuck do you want, you ugly son of a bitch?” I growled angrily.

  My heart drummed so loudly, I could feel it rattle in my chest. The sheer terror of facing that monstrous-looking fox thing on my own was ripping me apart on the inside. My hands felt edgy and my feet were wobbly underneath me. I had to find some courage from somewhere. I wasn’t used to fighting things that seemed rather unnatural. Things that had died were meant to stay down and not prance around, terrorizing the living. I had never felt so terrorized in all my life. Not even in my tours in Afghanistan. At least the only time the monsters I had put down came back was in my freaking nightmares. Not in real life. Not before my naked and lucid eyes.

  “Well don’t be shy!”

  “Are you going to sit on your belly all day? Or are we going to do have a proper brawl?” I taunted the undead animal mockingly, thrashing the stick about in the air.

  The undead fox had a wrinkle form over it’s eyes. There was a menacingly wicked frown lingering on the undead fox’s face. With unbridled aggression, the undead fox charged at me. It tried to take a bite out of me. I jumped back and whacked the undead fox in the face with the stick. I heard the sound of something go “crack” on impact. The animal did not flinch. It was as if it was immune to pain.

  I slapped it in the face again and again with the stick in a desperate bid to fight it off. That barely neutered the undead fox’s ferocious resolve to carve chunks out of me with it’s very pointy fangs.

  “Why won’t you go down, you bastard? Why don’t you just fucking die already?” I roared.

  A mixed feeling of fear and frustration rushed through me like troubled waters. I looked at the creature before me. It glared angrily back at me. Those murderous eyes were fixated on my throat. Half of the undead fox’s face had fallen off. The stick had done that. I had inflicted some damage to the creature. I felt the air of hopelessness dissipate.

  I was ready. I was ready to save my own skin, literally. I would kill the monster or be eaten alive by it. The latter would be messy and very inconvenient, especially for me. I wasn’t keen on being torn apart limb from limb. I would rather pound that fox to an even uglier pulp.

  “You will not be taking my life today! You will not eat my insides! You will not be feasting on any of this, mate!” I said with a shaky voice. “You want this? Have at it! Better monsters than you have tried! I put them all in the ground!”

  It was almost as if the brainless beast had understood me. The undead fox snarled viciously at me and dug it’s paws into the dirt. The position it took looked ominous. Then came the leap. I had very little time to consider my next move. I was knocked to the ground and fell backwards. The fox was on top of me and lounged at me face with it’s sharp teeth. The undead fox did so with unforgiving, vicious intentions.

  The only thing that stood between me and the sharp end of the fox’s fangs was the stick in my hands. I rammed the shaft of the stick between the undead fox’s savage biting jaws. My attacker bit ferociously on the sides of the stick, beavering away strenuously at it. It nearly got me once or twice. My fingers could easily have been gnawed clean off by the attacking fox’s chumping teeth. Try as I might have done, It was nearly impossible to knock the rabid animal off me without getting bitten or mauled by the damn thing.

  There was something not normal about the undead fox. I didn’t know if whatever it had was catchy and I did not want to get whatever it had. Maybe the Koreans had developed something lethal and got it over the border somehow. The birds on the floor were definitely not in a good way. Neither was the bloody fox that was desperately angling to take a bite out of me.

  All I could think about was protecting my neck from getting bitten into. I had never handled a dog before. I was clueless as to how to neutralize a rampaging breed of the canine variety. How was I going to get this thing off me without doing mortal damage to myself?

  The stick was wearing thin. It wasn’t going to protect me for long. When it finally snaps in two, I would be as good as dead. I knew that and it frightened the hell out of me. I could only keep up this dance for survival as long as I had a barrier between my neck and the undead fox's teeth. I hadn’t ticked most of the things I needed to do off the bucket list. This wasn’t how I planned to go down. I never saw myself becoming dog meat at the jaws of an unrelenting mauler.

  CHAPTER 4

&n
bsp; I closed my eyes in brief resolution to my faith of impending doom. With each piece of wood on the stick that wore thin, a big chunk of my will to fight wore away with it. I started to count in my mind. It was what I did when I was stressed. The trauma of war had left an indelible mark on my psyche. I was flung mentally, back into one of the most traumatic experiences of my life as a royal marine.

  The memory lingered in my head and rolled on like a bad movie. I could do nothing but relive the awful experience without much hope of respite. I saw a hailstorm of enemy fire tear apart men I had known for almost a decade. I was the commanding officer and I froze. The hopelessness of the situation was all too overwhelming. I remember the voice of the junior officer ringing in my ears, “we are getting killed out here, Captain! What are your orders?”

  My answer was an unequivocal numbing silence. Sweat crisscrossed my temple and my fingers shook ceaselessly on the trigger of the AK 47 that was held precariously by my fidgety right hand. I was as useless as a pile of wet cigarettes. Even if I had tried to support my troop, I wouldn’t have been able to be of much help. I could not shoot straight in that broken, sorry state.

  The best I could do was mope like a sitting duck while good men that put their trust in me got perforated by enemy fire. I was never really certain how I managed to survive that campaign. I came out without a scratch. Not one battle scar on me. I was drenched in the blood of my men. I have never managed to get rid of that stain. It lingers like a festering ghost, making me go crazy every time I close my eyes and dream.

  My dreams were no place to hide. They wouldn’t protect me from the real world. They brought me far worse pain than this wretched reality ever could. The post traumatic stress thing had kicked in and was obscuring my focus. My hands were almost going limp. I was half awake and partially asleep. My memories were a vivid nightmare, entombing me in my own body whenever they took hold of me. The bad ones were definitely the worst.

  It was looking like the hell I had been through as a soldier would be the last thing that I saw before the raging beast would free me from this mortal coil. I did not want it to end like this. But who on this crappy earth gets to choose how their lights go out.