Zombie Complex | Book 1 | The Battle For Chattahoochee Run

by Pain, Alexander

  Reggie had tried to get over the curb a little too early where it stood a little taller from the road surface. Part of his fiberglass spoiler had come loose and was hanging of the front bumper. Both wheels were on the pavement, but Reggie was hesitant. Now Zombies were reaching his doors. I hopped out with my 9mm SD9VE, lined up carefully to avoid hitting the van, and shot two zombies that were banging on his windows. One dropped from a head shot and the second staggered momentarily from a shoulder wound. He turned to charge towards me. I took my time, looked directly into his blackened, bloodshot, eyes and dropped him with a more accurate shot to the forehead.

  All that shooting motivated Reggie to hit the gas. The minivan scraped and bounced over the divider and joined the convoy in position behind the Mercedes. Marcus used the big Mercury as a battering ram and pushed his way through the car accident scene. We accelerated to thirty miles per hour and left the zombies behind. We were rolling. There were plenty of zombies milling around among the stalled traffic in the right lane. Every stopped car told a tragic story.

  We were glad to leave zombies behind. Going the wrong way, we cruised for almost a half mile of clear road. Then we found our path blocked by a fire truck about two hundred yards from the intersection that we needed to cross. They were stopped at the hulks of two burned out cars. The engine had hoses unfurled and oriented towards the scorched black wreck. But, there was no evidence of the firefighters.

  Marcus took the opportunity to pop up on the sidewalk and keep on rolling. We all silently followed. On our right, there was a large health clinic. It might be a good source of prescription drugs. But, we pressed on towards the grocery store. The intersection ahead of us was completely jammed with wrecked and abandoned vehicles. Too many people had tried to get on the highway at once. Some drivers had been in a panic. Some drivers had completely ignored traffic laws and added to the mayhem. Now, the majority of drivers and passengers were zombies.

  Since we were the only new movement in the area, the Zombies turned their attention towards us. Several dozen started shuffling our way. Within minutes, the gathering mass would engulf our vehicles and trap us inside. Marcus saw this and floored it. Smacking zombies aside, our convoy bounced over the sidewalk, across a small pedestrian park, and across Graham's Ferry Road and onto a service road that ran behind the neighborhood chain pharmacy.

  Chapter 32

  Our convoy pulled around behind the drugstore and formed a perimeter around the drive through window. I retrieved my knife from the floorboards, and got out with my Mauser. I threw a small sandbag on the hood of the Highlander and planned to take out approaching Zombies. They had noticed our mad dash across the street and had altered course to follow in our direction.

  Vijay and Preston got out of the Mercedes as planned and the two of them grabbed a large cinder block from the back. They ran up to the drive through window, swinging the huge block back to hurl it underhanded through the broad expanse of plate glass. Then they stopped short dropping the block awkwardly.

  I glanced over to see our friendly neighborhood pharmacist waving his arms wildly from inside the pharmacy. A pharmacy tech was also visible inside.

  Karen ran over to the window.

  "Meet us at the back door!" She yelled.

  The pharmacist cupped his ear unable to hear through the thick glass.

  "Back door!" She screamed again gesturing to go around back.

  The pharmacist stuck a pad of paper and a pen into the service tray and pushed it out to Karen.

  "We need meds. To escape meet us at back door!"

  The pharmacist smiled and gave a big thumbs up and scurried off to the back door.

  Meanwhile, I was shooting Zombies as they rounded the front corner of the store. I was working the bolt on my hundred year old Mauser as fast as I could. Blam! Kachunk. Blam! Kachunk. Blam! At 300 meters, the long and unweildy rifle was accurate. Unfortunately, the zombies were much closer. However, I was getting the hang of aiming low to account for the rising trajectory of the very fast 6.5 millimeter by 55 millimeter bullets. I didn't have many rounds, but I was making them count.

  With luck, I was able to drop five zombies zombies. Then with the 10-round fixed magazine empty, I pulled up the rifle, and hopped into the driver's seat of our truck to pull back. I tossed the big Swedish rifle barrel first into the passenger side seat. I had intended to back up a bit and keep on fighting. Unfortunately Karen took the keys with her into the drugstore. Three zombies hit the passenger side and started pressing their snarling faces against the window. They rocked the truck and the awkwardly wedged rifle fell over on my arm. It definitely left a mark.

  As I got out again, a lanky zombie was rounding the back of the truck. I swung the rifle like a bat and caught him on the bridge of the nose. He tumbled backwards slightly impeding the zombies coming up behind him. From the big Mercury, SWAT Cop Larry fired three rounds from his rifle dropping my closest pursuers. Preston said something about luring them away. I could barely hear. Then his team jumped in the back, he slammed the SUV into reverse and backed out of view. Vijay tugged on my arm and guided me into the back of the drugstore.

  For a moment, there was peace. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. My body wasn't really built for a stressful office environment and a world full of zombies was never even imagined. My heart was pounding. My mouth was dry. My adrenaline was pumping and my ears were ringing. I really should have worked out and gone jogging prior to the zombie apocalypse. Walking the dog hadn’t been enough exercise.

  Karen was filling plastic bins with off-the-shelf medicines, vitamins, women’s essentials, and what little first aid supplies were left. One of the Indians was grabbing cereal, dog food, candy, and other sustenance. Another was shoving packages of disposable diapers into a garbage bag. Vijay kept an eye on the back door.

  We had plenty of drugs and even a pharmacist. But, the plan was unraveling. Even though I had once worked in a drugstore, we didn’t even check the stockroom. We had tons of stuff just from the shelves and we had to get it out to our cars without getting eaten.

  Chapter 33

  After catching my breath, I kept watch through the drive through window. It didn't take long for the team to fill several plastic bins with supplies from the drugstore and for the pharmacist to get a solid supply of prescription drugs together. The hard part was figuring out a logical next step.

  "Should we run for it or stay put?" I asked myself out loud.

  "We should get out of here!" Karen replied. "Before more Zombies come!"

  She had a point. The largest crowd of zombies had seemingly wandered off after the rest of our group. I just hoped that they were o.k. and that they were coming back.

  "How are we going to carry all this stuff and two extra people?" Vijay asked.

  "Just escort us to my car," the pharmacist said. "We'll follow you."

  We pushed all of the bins of supplies to the backdoor. I reloaded the Mauser. We had a solid plan. Now, we just needed to execute. Karen got the keys in her hand. I got the rifle ready.

  "Let's go!" I hollered and Karen and I raced out the back door.

  We heard lots of gunfire coming from the parking lot of the big box hardware store just down the road. No doubt Preston and SWAT Cop were down there hammering away at the insurmountable crowd of walking corpses. There were a half dozen zombies near us shuffling towards the noise. However, we made it to the truck before they adjusted to our presence.

  Karen cranked up the Highlander and I jumped into the back seat. She deftly zoomed up to the backdoor. I jumped out and folded half of the rear bench seat down. The pharmacist, his tech, and Charan and Vijay raced down the steps carrying bins. Karen popped open the rear lift gate.

  A couple of zombies were getting uncomfortably close so I shot both of them with my rifle. They dropped immediately but others were picking up the pace towards the commotion.

  "I've got the silver Mustang," the pharmacist yelled as he ran across the parking lot with a bin full of su
pplies.

  "Katrina, are you coming with me?" He asked the technician.

  "Well, I ain't waiting for no bus," she replied.

  I pulled my pistol and jogged with them about 60 feet to the car. As we moved beyond the back of the store, I looked to the right and saw more zombies--a lot more zombies. They were coming from the intersection and from the grocery store parking lot. There were easily hundreds of the moaning, moving, swarming dead.

  As the pharmacist started his car, Karen pulled up and I jumped into the front seat. Vijay was behind me and Charan had squeezed into the very back nestled among the bins.

  "Follow us," Karen said. "We live down mall road, take a left, cross over ..."

  "Babe," I interrupted. "We gotta go!"

  "Anybody coming?" She asked indignantly. "I can't see around your big fat head."

  "Just a few hundred zombies!"

  She slammed the truck into reverse and did a fast Y-turn at the drive through. As we reached the service road, the Minivan, the pharmacists Mustang, the Mercedes SUV, and the battered Mercury fell in behind us. The Mercedes and the Mercury had been down in the parking lot of the big hardware store. They took up the rear and we were in the lead with our Highlander.

  Chapter 34

  We planned to retrace our route. But, the shooting seemed to have triggered a massive movement of the Zombies. The intersection and Mall Road were literally filling with moving dead people. Instead of returning home the way we came, Karen took a right and went the wrong way down Graham’s Ferry road. The lanes going towards the highway were totally gridlocked. But, once again, we could move going in the wrong direction. We were going a half mile towards a quaint shopping district called the Olde Village in order to do an end around and avoid the big mass of zombies.

  The horde thinned out a bit as we put distance between ourselves and the big highway interchange. We still saw zombies but in groups of two to six. But, the road ahead was was both familiar and unknown.

  The road was at the bottom of a foothill called Mount Johnston. If we kept straight, we would end up going though historic Olde Village village and into the city of Atlanta. But, our plan was to turn left and climb the low mountain. On our left, we had large office buildings on our right, mid-rise, condominiums. All seemed to be in the hands of zombies now.

  We came up to a popular convenience store on our right. On an ordinary day, we would stop in for sandwiches, pretzels, or hot dogs. Now, the parking lot was filled with abandoned cars, dead bodies, and zombies. The smell of death was overwhelming. We turned left and headed up the mountain.

  The road up the little mountain had an S-curve at the bottom and then shot straight up hill. On the right a townhouse development was nested at the bottom of the hill. Its gates were locked with a chain. The street going up the mountain was littered with bloated corpses. It was interesting that the corpses hadn't risen from the dead. Very interesting. I was getting a creepy feeling.

  As we left the final curve, I realized that someone up the hill was killing zombies. Looking up hill, I saw that the road was blocked by an abandoned UPS truck--a carefully placed abandoned UPS truck.

  "Babe," I said urgently. "Go left through the parking garage of the office building!"

  To emphasize the point, we heard a loud whack against the front of our little truck. A headlight exploded. Karen hit the gas. Another whack and we heard a bullet enter through the rear cargo area and bury itself in a bin. With more shots, the rear window exploded and Charan screamed.

  "I am hit! I am hit!"

  Karen hesitated for a moment.

  "Go like hell!" I told her.

  I rolled down the window and stuck my pistol out. Blam! Blam! Blam! I fired mostly for effect in the general direction of the UPS truck. Reggie was right on our bumper ready to push out down the road with the mini van and the pharmacist's Mustang was right beside Reggie trying to use the van as a shield.

  Behind us, we heard more gunfire. SWAT Cop was acting as a tail gunner returning fire from the Mercury. The convoy zoomed through the parking garage popped out on the other side of an office building and zoomed down Mount Johnston at breakneck speed. With the front end damaged, Karen had no problem whacking though zombies for a very quick ride home.

  As we threaded our way through the accident scene and crossed the overpass, Karen looked in the rear view mirror and saw that all of the vehicles in our convoy were present. With that we thumped over some zombies, hung two quick lefts, and flew towards the gates of our complex. We were home again.

  Chapter 35

  The fellows guarding our gates opened them wide and we roared into the complex. We stopped at the tennis court, opened the rear lift gate, and pulled poor Charan from the truck. He was bleeding from a shot that had passed through the lift gate and into his arm. Apparently, a second shot had shattered the rear window and sent glass into his face. But, the bullet had missed him and embedded itself in a bin full of supplies. A third shot had smacked into the rooftop cargo carrier and left a dent as it zinged off into oblivion.

  The pharmacist had stopped, laid Charan out on the ground, and was applying direct pressure to the arm. The bullet had been slowed a bit by the passing through the car body and it didn’t sever an artery. However, it caused plenty of tissue destruction and bleeding. Behind us we heard the whop-whop-whop of a flat tire. Marcus and SWAT Cop stopped momentarily and then turned around to park the Mercury to block the middle lane of our gate.

  They had a front flat tire and were riding on the rim. The Grand Marquis wasn’t looking very grand. It was a total loss.

  Preston drove up in the Mercedes and told us that he was going to drive on in and get some more of our guys to keep watch on the entry road just in case we had been followed.

  Marcus jogged down down to us while SWAT Cop remained behind to guard the gate.

  "Man," he said. "I just can't believe those guys were shooting at us."

  "Who were they?" Karen asked.

  "Little punk ass gang-bangers!" Marcus replied. "If they were better shots they would have killed us all."

  "How bad is he Doc?" Marcus asked the pharmacist.

  "I'm not a doctor," the pharmacist replied. "And, he really needs to see a Doctor."

  Marcus shook his head. "Do you know how many zombies are shuffling around between here and Grady, Marietta, or North hospital?"

  "If he doesn't get proper care, he could lose his arm or his life."

  “Can you at least stabilize him?” Marcus asked. “I haven’t talked to my dad. But, transporting him like that will be a major undertaking.”

  “Now, we have Zombies and criminal gangs just outside our gates,” I added.

  We gently moved Charan over to our infirmary. Dorothy had transformed one of the furnished corporate apartments into a makeshift clinic. Now, we had drugs, first aid supplies, and a critically hurt patient. But, we didn't have a doctor or a nurse or any sophisticated medical equipment.

  “What’s your name anyway,” Marcus asked the pharmacist.

  “Mike,” came the reply. “I’m Mike Stevens.”

  Under the circumstances, it was nice to be able to associate a name with a familiar face. We’d had prescriptions filled many times, but I couldn’t remember his name.

  “Sure, we know you.” Karen replied. “Our dog loves it when you send him dog treats through the pickup window.”

  “Mike,” I said. “You are the closest thing we have to a doctor right now. Just do what you can and let us know what you need.”

  “If more people are going to get shot,” Mike said. “We are going to need a lot more medical supplies.”

  “There is an HMO clinic just on the other side of perimeter,” Marcus noted. “They might have some of what you will need.”

  “Let me see what I can do with his wounds,” Mike said nodding towards his first patient.

  “Right,” Marcus said. “Let’s clear out.”

  We turned and left the first apartment in an orderly line. We had much to t
hink about. As we went back to the parking lot, we heard a few gunshots from outside the complex. Our ears were already ringing anyway and we were all still running on adrenaline. But, our view of the world outside had changed. We weren’t just dealing with hordes of unthinking dead. Now, we were dealing with bad people, too.

  “We’re going to have to upgrade our defenses,” I told Marcus.

  “You’re right,” he replied. “Zombies don’t shoot back.”

  “We have to fortify and hide our guard posts,” I continued. “Maybe sandbags or something?”

  “Yeah,” Marcus agreed. “We’re gonna have to watch our fences for sneaky peeps.”

  “Let’s meet with Preston, Reggie, SWAT Cop Larry, and Vijay.”

  “Let’s round ‘em up and meet by the pool.”

  “War council meeting!”

  The pool was evolving into a headquarters of sorts. On the backside of the entrance hill, it had a commanding view over much of the complex. It also had a gym and a community room and all the office supplies we needed were right upstairs in the rental office. As I trudged up the hill, I thought of all the places we had guards posted, how we could fortify their positions, and how we could adjust their positions so that we had eyes on all parts of our perimeter.

  I started moving slowly as I got up to the trash compactor and the entrance gate.

  “SWAT Cop? SWAT Cop Larry?” I called out as I dashed up into the brick vestibule that formerly held all the recycling bins.

  “Shhhh….” SWAT Cop said. “I’m right here! I’m watching these dudes.”

  SWAT Cop was standing on a small platform constructed with cinderblocks and boards. It allowed him to see over the six foot brick walls of the recycling area. Beside him was a large charity contribution box. It was a 6 foot by 6 foot by 6 foot wooden hut that had been a spot for donating household goods to charity back in better times. It had a door with a small slot where goods could be donated and possums and rats could be kept out. The front gate guards had pried the door open, removed all the donations, and converted the box to a rain shelter. The top of the recycling vestibule was protected by a two-foot tall decorative aluminum railing. It didn’t offer much protection, but it helped conceal our guards as they peaked over the wall. Since the vestibule area was somewhat concealed by surrounding hedges. It was almost like a World War II pillbox. We just needed an armored roof and a machine gun or two.