The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors

by Meredith, Peter

  Here he came across a new sign of humanity: a long wall of rusty steel that would stop even the most aggressive zombie. Someone, likely the very same someone who had blocked up the city, had hauled cargo containers up from the port and had sent them end to end so that they encircled, strangely enough, a golf course of all things.

  “Now that is an exclusive course,” he said with a smirk.

  In truth it was an entire country club with many posh homes and buildings included within the walled area, however with the land as flat as it was, Ram couldn’t see much beyond only a few ill-tended fairways. Intrigued, he drove his Humvee closer and parked it just up the street from a tall tree that sat near one of the cargo containers. The tree, with its many branches, looked like a snap to climb and so, forgetting his illness and the fact that climbing trees was the sport of kids, he decided to hoist himself aloft to see what there was to see.

  In spite of dark clouds that had begun to mass in the west, it was still a fine afternoon and although the nearest zombie was a tiny figure far down the road, he slung his M16 on his shoulder and proceeded on foot toward the tree. It wasn’t more than a forty yard tramp through the new grass, but it proved nearly too far.

  He was halfway to the tree, humming a bit of nonsense, when a strange noise had him turning, and there in his tracks raced a pack of zombie dogs, charging at him with fearfully large teeth bared in either anger or hunger. In a split second Ram judged the distance between them, calculating how many he could bring down with his rifle before the rest were on him and tore him into shreds. It was far too few.

  Because it would only slow him down, he let the M16 fall with a clatter—he still had his Beretta at his side and more than enough ammunition to take care of the dogs—and raced for the tree. Though he had a good head start and wasn’t exactly slow, the dogs gained on him so quickly that there wasn’t time to climb; instead, as he neared the tree he leapt for one of the lower branches and not three feet behind him, the lead dog leapt along with him as well. It was a strange and unnerving sensation to feel the razor sharp teeth of a German Shepherd close on his ankle just enough for him to feel a hard pinch and then let go.

  Gasping, Ram clawed the bark, struggling higher into the tree, while below the dogs snapped and snarled, yet none barked. Instead they made an odd hu-reh, hu-reh noise deep in their throats. When he finally got a good perch beneath him, he pulled his pistol thinking he would kill these devil dogs and get back to his search for Julia’s murderer, only now that he wasn’t running and climbing for his life he saw that these were not zombiefied dogs after all. They were real.

  “Wow,” he whispered, eyeing the motley pack. Besides the Shepherd and an array of mutts, there was a Pug, three Dobermans, and a Labrador. These were the first live dogs he had seen since…he couldn’t remember when. “And they’re certainly not wild,” he added, realizing what their strange, quiet barking meant: their vocal cords had been surgically severed.

  Ram holstered his gun. He wasn’t about to kill a real dog. Instead, he eased lower and began to croon a long stream of happy sounding nonsense hoping that it would calm the beasts down. It did, to a degree, just not one that allowed him to feel safe enough to climb down.

  “Well this sucks,” Ram said, giving up after a while. “Look fellas, I can’t stay up here all day. I’ve got to get going…”

  Just then a pair of pick-up trucks came racing down the road toward him; the beds of both were crammed with men, each armed to the teeth. When they got close, the trucks slowed and the men came piling out, calling the dogs to them.

  Ram eyed the men close and with disappointment noted that they were all white, which meant it wasn’t likely that Cassie was within the bounds of the walled golf course. Still, they might have heard something of her passing.

  With a little wave of friendly gratitude, Ram climbed down and came forward to greet them. “Thanks. It’s not every day a guy gets treed like a…”

  “Shut the fuck up and get those hands in the air!” one of the men ordered, adding, much to Ram’s astonishment, “Spic.”

  “Spic?” Ram repeated, half in shock, half in anger. He was about to throw down a challenge, however the man’s clear hatred wasn’t singular; all of the men glared at him and it was only then that he noted how their guns were trained straight on his chest. “What’s going on here?” he asked, raising his hands to shoulder height.

  “Get those hands higher,” an older man with a patchy grey beard growled. “And turn around nice and easy.”

  Ram shrugged and did as he was told. He wasn’t exactly scared of being shot since his life’s meter was running down anyway, as evidenced by the fact that he was already starting to feel a little queer inside. His main worry was that out of spite they would allow him to turn; a fate worse than death in his mind.

  When he spun in place to face the rows of cargo containers, rough hands yanked out his Beretta and then he was pushed to his knees where he was thoroughly and properly frisked. “I also dropped a M16 over there in the grass,” he said helpfully. When they had gone through his pockets he began to get up.

  “Stay down, Spic,” one of them demanded, threatening him with a rifle.

  With a roll of his eyes, Ram got up anyway. “Are you that afraid of me? There are ten of you and you’re all armed for goodness sakes. Now really, what’s going on? What’s with the rough treatment?”

  One of the men came forward and his blue eyes were like hard diamonds. He pressed a long barreled shotgun into Ram’s chest and said in a soft voice, “I should plug you right now.”

  The older man, the one with the grizzled beard put a hand out and said, “Let’s find out what he knows first, Scott. There’ll be time for revenge later.”

  The word revenge got Ram’s attention more than the shotgun did. “Revenge? What happened?” he asked quickly. “Was there a girl? A black girl? I’m looking for a girl named Cassie. She’s a murderer. She killed my…someone close to me.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” the younger man drawled with a stony sneer. “We learned the hard way you can’t trust the blacks…or the spics.” Ram began to splutter in anger over this, but the man nodded to his friends who grabbed Ram and wrestled him down to the ground. And then, when he was trapped beneath them, Scott pushed the shotgun down onto Ram’s left palm, pinning his hand to the dirt. “You’re going to tell me what you’re doing here or I’m going to take off this hand in a manner you aren’t going to much like.”

  It was clear he wasn’t playing games, yet Ram was so bewildered that the threat of the gun still wasn’t striking home. “I already told you,” he said. “I’m after a girl…a young woman of about nineteen, named Cassie. She’s around five and half feet, 135 pounds, African-American with a dark complexion. She’s a murderer. She killed a woman named Julia with an axe. That’s why I’m here.”

  The older man stood above Ram and stared down; he wore an old Phillies baseball cap with a sweat stained bill. He took it off and scratched his bald pate. “And you think she’s with us? Is that what the Blacks told you?”

  “The Blacks? If you’re talking about black people, then no. You guys are the first people I’ve seen since I got here,” Ram said. “I just came up from the CDC in Atlanta.”

  A man lying across Ram’s chest pulled back slightly and said with some excitement, “The CDC? Is there any news of a cure? Or a vaccine? A free one I mean?”

  Scott stepped on the man’s shoulder, forcing him back down onto Ram. “Don’t be an idiot, Herm. This guy’s not from the CDC, he’s from North Philly. You can make book on that.”

  “You’d lose that bet,” Ram said in a muffled voice. Herm had been heavy to begin with, but now that Scott was resting his foot on his back the weight across Ram felt doubled. “I’m from Los Angeles. Whoever took my wallet can check.”

  “He is,” someone said in a quiet, guilty voice. “And he was a DEA agent.”

  There was a murmuring and the men began to get off Ram one after another and now
it was Scott who looked puzzled and uncertain. “What are you guys doing?” he asked. “We aren’t going to let him go. He’s one of them, damn it!”

  “One of who?” Ram asked, though he had a gut feeling he knew already.

  Some of the men toed the dirt, while others gave a glance to a flock of birds that were mere dashes in the blue sky they were so high up. The older man stroked his beard and told a story that had Ram shaking his head.

  “Philly is not a good place these days,” he said quietly. “When the zombies came, those that survived sort of clumped together, you know? There were a lot of white people out here in the suburbs and most of us came here when we heard that the walls were holding. And in South Philly there was a big trucking company that ran out of this warehouse. It had been almost a fortress to begin with and supposedly it was chock full of food and fuel. That’s where the blacks went.

  “No one knows where the Latinos first congregated, but it was in North Philly someplace, but it turned out to be too close to the blacks. They quarreled over territory and before we knew it there was full-fledged war going on. That was about two months ago.”

  “A race war? Really?” Ram asked with disgust in his voice. “This is the thing about humans I just don’t get. We have plenty of enemies all around us, yet we insist on fighting ourselves. So how did you guys get involved?”

  “We're not really sure. Maybe because we were trading with both sides,” the man said. His name was John. Ram gave him a sharp look and he grew defensive. “We have fourteen hundred people to look after and trading is the best way to get what we need in bulk. It benefits both sides, you know.”

  Ram gave him a little shrug, “I suppose…sorry.”

  “It’s ok. In retrospect I wish we hadn’t traded with either of them. Both the Latinos and the Blacks demanded that we stop trading with their enemy and when we didn’t bad blood turned into spilt blood. Ever since it’s been constant strife. We keep to our side of the river, but that doesn’t seem good enough and there isn’t a one of us who hasn’t lost someone close.”

  All the men, including Scott, nodded along at this. Now that they were no longer pointing their weapons at him they seemed to be just a normal group of guys.

  “Maybe I can help you,” Ram offered. “I have to go into Philly. If I live long enough maybe I can get the Blacks the message that you want a cease fire. That’s if you plan on letting me go.”

  John scratched beneath his cap again and asked in a surprised voice, “Why on earth would you want to go in the city after what I just told you?”

  Ram flicked his eyes to Scott and said, “Revenge. Retribution.”

  “If you’re going into the city, you won’t live long enough for either,” Scott said. “They don’t take prisoners. If they get you alive, they feed you to the zombies. And then just as you turn they’ll set you free among your own people. I don’t know if you know what that’s like, seeing a friend in that state. It’s horrible what they do.”

  The idea made that queer feeling inside Ram ramp up in tempo. It was like the distant clouds—a storm was coming and there was nothing he could do about it. “I’ve seen my share of friends who have turned, and had I known all this crap was happening I don’t know if I would’ve come. You can only take revenge so far, however…” Here he paused and then opened his shirt to show the angry scratches that were at his throat. “I got careless this morning and now I don’t have much to lose.”

  The men backed away.

  “There’s one thing you have to lose,” Scott replied. “A good death. A proper death. It’s something you can’t take lightly these days.”

  Ram knew that was true, but he didn’t know how true until an hour later when he sat trussed to a tether ball pole in an elementary school playground as three angry men took turns punching him in the face.

  Chapter 7

  Ram

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  “Don’t do it, man,” Scott said. “Don’t go. It’ll only end badly for you.” He made to put out a hand to Ram, however the presence of the virus in Ram was like a force-field that kept the man at bay. He pulled his hand back, curling his fingers in as an extra precaution.

  “Listen to him,” John advised. He squinted at Ram. “How long do you have left? Two hours? Three?”

  Ram touched his face with gentle fingers as if to assure himself that he hadn’t changed already. “Four hours I think…I hope. Do I look that bad?” His insides had really begun to bother him and now he could feel a fine sweat at his brow.

  “You don’t look good,” Scott said. He then glanced down to the ground where the grass was still bent from the scuffle and added, “I’m, uh…I’m sorry for how we treated you. My brother disappeared a few days ago and I’m not dealing with it well.”

  “It’s alright,” Ram said, still with his fingers on his face. He had a deep sense of expectancy about him as if his doom was in the air he breathed. “It’s understandable, I guess. But I have to go. I can’t just sit around waiting to die.” He had seen too many of his fellow soldiers wallowing in their own sweat, pissing themselves in the extremes of the fever. That couldn’t be him, and yet his Beretta at his hip never seemed further away.

  “It’s too bad this had to happen to you right now,” one of the others mentioned. “That’s some real bad timing.”

  This brought a rueful chuckle out of Ram. “When’s it ever good timing to get scratched by one of them?”

  “You don’t know?” the old man asked uneasily. “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?” Ram asked with a sinking feeling.

  John glanced at the others as if asking for help, but even more they seemed extra interested in the everyday minutia than in catching his eye. “There’s a vaccine,” John said finally. “Some guy in New York City figured out how to make one and he’s selling them for a thousand a vial.”

  Stunned at his ill-luck, Ram sagged at the news and could only ask, “A thousand? A thousand dollars? That’s weird, you can get money anywhere.”

  “No. A thousand rounds of ammo or a hundred gallons of gas, or their equivalent. There was some kid who came through the other day with this big ass missile launcher. He’s gonna try to get ten vials”

  “And the vaccine works,” Ram said. It wasn’t really a question, it was more of a statement concerning the present state of his luck which wasn’t good.

  “That’s what they say,” Scott put in. “There’s some who are skeptical so they’re doing a demonstration. It’s supposed to be in a few days. John and I, and a few others are hoping to go as representatives, but we’ll have to see.”

  The subject seemed to cast a pall over the group of men and Ram took a guess at what the issue was from the tenor of the man’s words. “You don’t have enough ammo or gas?”

  Scott gave a half shrug, lifting only his right shoulder as if a full shrug was simply too much work. “We do, but we really can’t spare that much, not when we’re at war.”

  “You can have mine,” Ram offered. “And the gas in the hummer. I just need my Beretta and enough fuel to make it into the city.” He certainly wasn’t going to need much else. If he came across a horde of zombies he’d shoot fourteen of them and then himself. And if the Blacks were in the mood to fight…he didn’t think he would. Not so close to death. Not with heaven or hell on the line. However, he would kill Cassie if he got the chance, and do so with a clear conscious.

  His offer pleased the men, who went right to work draining the Humvee of its excess gas and stripping it of anything that Ram wasn’t going to need: extra food and water, clothing, and medical supplies.

  While they did this, John offered him a beer. “It’s warm, but they say warm beer is better than no beer.” The old man drank his with relish, and among the many things he talked about as they sat in the darkening afternoon was of a way into the city. The Whites, as they called themselves, had turned a Volvo upside down on one of the bridges and by using the bumper of his hummer he could spin it lik
e a revolving door. “Just make sure you spin it back," John reminded him.

  Ram decreed that he would and then pretended to give his warm beer another swig. The little of it he had drank made him so nauseous that he was forced into hurrying his goodbyes and as soon as he was out of sight of the tall tree and the little group of men, he pulled over and stood, bent at the waist until he vomited.

  Over and over he hurled until at last, dizzy and weak he went to his knees and knelt over the hot mess until he was sure he was done.

  “Damn,” he whispered to the pale man in the hummer's mirror. With the heavy clouds glooming the sky, his skin was already a shade of grey that portended things to come. Groaning, he felt his neck, however the adenoids hadn’t swollen yet, and neither had his fever progressed beyond mild. Mostly the virus was in his guts, turning them to knots, and in his muscles, making him feel kitten-weak.

  “A little further,” he added and then turned his attention to driving, making sure to keep his pace slow enough that his precious little fuel would last him to his destination. The bridge with the overturned Volvo was five miles to the south and when he saw it he gave a sad little laugh; he’d seen the Volvo earlier that day and had not suspected a thing.

  Now he came up to its edge with the hummer and gently turned it sideways. It scraped back, grinding loudly on pebbles and loose grit. When he had gone through the new lane he kept his word and backed the hummer around to use its power to swing the car back into place.

  Then it was just him, a few hundred thousand zombies and the city, hiding its remaining human population. Like all major cities, Philadelphia was thought to be a veritable nests of zombies. Even John had filled him with tales of stiffs uncountable streaming down the streets like dead grey waves, killing and eating everything in their path.