Zombies! (Book 3): Violence Solves Everything

by Merritt, R. S.

  “You can never have enough guns or ammunition.” Tony replied casually. He started pulling the body up a little bit to pull the belt off and see if it had bullets on it. With a wet sloshing sound, a bunch of black liquid gushed out the back of the corpse and made a big puddle on the ground. A big puddle with one of the most horrible smells any of them had ever experienced and that was saying quite a bit at this point. They all backed up in disgust and started moving once again towards the terminal building. They stopped when they heard the sounds of puking and turned to watch Gordon hurling his breakfast behind the small memorial to the flying aces of WWII.

  Once Gordon was done being sick, they got moving again for the terminal. Randy had idly been wondering how they’d get through the glass doors of the building without making any noise. As they got closer, they could see getting in wasn’t going to be a problem. Whoever had shot the security guard had also put a few rounds through the doors to let himself in. The doors were all slightly ajar and missing most of their glass. They crunched their way across the broken glass covered floor and out the back door of the terminal. The two snack machines sitting outside by a couple of covered picnic tables had also had their glass shot out and were missing their contents.

  “Looks like someone else had the same idea on how to get out of here and decided to bring some snacks.” Tony said.

  “Too bad for the security guard. I wonder what made them even care if someone came and took their plane to get out of here. Why would the security guard even have stayed instead of just going home?” Kelly questioned.

  “Some people just have that stay your post military kind of mindset I think.” Randy answered.

  Gordon maintained his silence except for occasionally spitting to try to get the puke taste out of his mouth. They followed him as he made a straight path across the runway to a small hangar on the other side. Randy noticed one of the hangars on that side was standing wide open. He assumed that would’ve been the one the man who shot the security guard had stored his plane in. Gordon was busy pecking away at the small lock box on the front of the hangar he’d walked them over to. They all stood around and stared at him until he finally fumbled the doors open.

  An hour later they’d rolled the plane out and were sitting comfortably in the plush leather seats waiting for Gordon to get it started up and fly them to the friendly skies. Gordon rolled through his preflight checklist making sure everything was good to go. He twisted nobs and stared at arcane readouts while Tony made inappropriate jokes about stewardesses and bags of peanuts. Gordon finally finished doing everything he was supposed to for the pre-flight and turned around to speak to his passengers.

  “We can make it to Orlando pretty quick from here once we get in the air. The fun part is going to be finding an airport we can set down in. The main airport, MCO, is probably crawling with Zombies. Who knows? I’m leaning more towards a regional airport I used to use a lot. There’s the one in Sanford and there’s also a small executive airport in another part of Orlando as well. We need to leave now to get there with enough sunlight left to check out the runways and the area around them to make sure we can safely land. We’ll only have enough sunlight to check out those two airports to see if they’re safe. If we left tomorrow morning instead it’d be a lot safer since we’d have more time to check out potential landing spots.”

  “We leave now.” Kelly said before anyone else had a chance to speak up. The finality of her statement left no room for argument. She wasn’t about to sit around twiddling her thumbs another day.

  “Ok fine. One last thing. I’m not planning on coming back here. I want to help you find your kids. I let my family down. I want to make up for that somehow. That’s my deal. I’ll fly you there, but I want to help you find them.”

  Kelly and Randy exchanged looks with Tony. Tony was shaking his head no. Randy was thinking it was a horrible idea. The old man would slow them down. He hadn’t even been man enough to rescue his own granddaughter. Other than being a pilot he had no skills they needed. He was horrible with a gun and had zero understanding of how to survive in the world of today. Plus, he was old and slow and kind of a bitch. Once again Kelly took matters into her own hands.

  “Absolutely. We’d love to have you. Now, let’s go.” She reached forward to pat the old man on the back. Gordons eyes shone once more with tears at the chance to do something to atone for his dead daughter. His shirt still had the remains of the breakfast he’d puked all over himself on it. Just another day in the apocalypse.

  Chapter 4: The Lake House

  Eric lay in bed trying to ignore the urgent requests his bladder was sending his brain. He was exhausted. All the kids were safely tucked away in the room next to this one except for Cait who was on guard duty. They’d finally made it to the lake house that morning after walking for two days through the woods and the muck. Eric insisted they stick to walking in the woods parallel to the road versus actually walking down the road. He could barely remember how they got here. He’d been in severe pain from his wrist and his back the entire time. He’d been slamming about a pill per hour from the bottle he’d been collecting pain pills in.

  Codeine, OxyContin, Motrin, Aspirin or Midol were all mixed up in that one bottle. He really didn’t know what he was popping in his mouth by the time they’d finally arrived at the house. He just knew if he didn’t keep popping pills, he wasn’t going to be able to deal with the pain from his wrist and back. Especially not while carrying Doreen. They’d slept some in the woods. Curled around each other like a pack of feral dogs. Shivering in the cold night air as the screeches of the damned split the air all around them. The smaller girls silently sobbing themselves to sleep. Eric asleep as soon as he lay down.

  He lay in the bed now having to take a piss and dreading it. He’d slept long enough that the drugs had started to wear off. Without that comforting halo of numbness covering his body everything was starting to hurt again. His wrist was wrapped in gauze and some metal strips Caitlyn had found in the house. Eric vaguely remembered her working on his wrist while he was passed out in the bed. He’d been on enough drugs then that he recognized the sharp pain coming from his wrist but didn’t really realize it was his own wrist that was in pain.

  Now a burning sensation was hitting him from that wrist. He got up carefully trying not to put too much strain on the wrist and managed to torque his back. When he torqued his back, he fell back into the bed. When he fell back into the bed, he automatically stuck out his hand to brace himself. He then spent the next three minutes screaming into his pillow in pain. Once he felt like he’d screamed enough he carefully got back up again. This time he was able to make it to a sitting position with his legs dangling off the bed. Feeling a little too proud of himself for accomplishing that he stood up and realized he was extremely dizzy and a tad bit on the nauseous side. Like the kind of nauseous feeling you get, and you know you’re eventually going to puke but you don’t have to do it right that second.

  Sitting back down again he noticed he was wearing a large, fluffy, extremely pink robe. That told him at least one of the smaller girls must’ve been awake when Caitlyn was taking care of him. She’d have taken the extra time to get the robe on him just to amuse the girls. Pink or not it did feel pretty good. Especially after having spent the previous night sleeping off a morphine high on the hard ground with the girls all trying to worm their way against him to stay warm. He took a deep breath and rocked himself up to a standing position.

  He stood there for a minute waiting to see if he was going to fall back over again. When it didn’t seem like he was in imminent danger of collapsing back onto the bed he looked around the room he was in to see if Caitlyn had arranged for his very own personal bucket. The room was glowing a muted green from the chem light Caitlyn had broken and left in the hallway. She had put it in the hallway on a chair in between the rooms the girls were in and the room they’d put Eric in. That way they’d all have some light at night to help them get up and use their buckets if they n
eeded to. It would also be a major help if they were attacked in the middle of the night and needed to move quick. It was always going to be better to be able to wake up able to see than the alternative.

  Eric used the bucket without falling over. He stood there thinking about puking in the bucket as well to get it over with but then decided to just try holding it down until the puking sensation went away. Wanting nothing but to get back in bed he walked out into the hallway instead. He looked down the hallway and saw Caitlyn had hung a sheet across both ends of the hall. That’d serve to keep any random glow from the chem lights from being noticeable from outside. He knew the curtains would’ve been closed up tight by her and Myriah as well. They’d secured enough houses by now that they all knew the drill.

  Eric peeked in on the girls in the bedroom across the hall. By the light of the glowstick he could make out Myriah and the little girls all sprawled out on top of a king-sized bed. Looking around the room he saw a large easy chair sitting in a den-like area of the master suite. Caitlyn was slumped over in the chair with the M-16 sitting beside her. She’d made the rookie mistake of thinking a big comfortable easy chair was a good place to sit when you were trying to stay awake all night on guard duty. Deciding not to wake her Eric went back across the hall to his bed for the night. He’d been trying to stay awake himself since Caitlyn had fallen asleep. His bladder emptied and another random pill downed he found himself accidentally asleep again in no time.

  The room was slightly brightly lit when he opened his eyes next. Caitlyn was shaking him lightly on the arm to wake him up. He came to with a start wondering how long him and Caitlyn had both been asleep. God knew they’d both needed it but that was a long amount of time to be defenseless with no one on watch right after they’d moved into a new house. Caitlyn didn’t seem like she wanted to bring it up, so Eric decided to play dumb about it as well. They were still alive so no harm no foul this time. He made a promise to himself to make sure it didn’t happen again though. After all, if being hurt and tired were reasons to slack off in the apocalypse then no one would ever get anything done.

  He opened both his eyes wide and looked up at Cait to let her know he was awake. She stopped tapping him and took a step back.

  “How’s your wrist?” She finally asked.

  “Hurts like hell. This little magic bottle of pills is about the only thing keeping me from crying like a baby every time I move. You could tell the bullet went in and out, right?” Eric asked.

  “There was like, a lot of blood and it was dark. I looked and it seemed like there was a hole with nothing left in it, so I thought you’d be good. If it’s hurting that bad though, we should take a look again while you’re awake so you can look too.” Caitlyn looked at him questioningly. Looking at the wound was going to require unwrapping it which was going to be extremely painful.

  “We probably should be changing the dressings anyway. Sounds good. You ready to do it now?” Eric asked. He wasn’t looking forward to the process but figured it was best to just go ahead and get it over with.

  “Let me go tell Myriah to make sure the other kids stay in the other room and then I’ll have her come in and hold a flashlight so I can see good. Be right back.” Caitlyn turned and left to get Myriah while Eric leaned back against the musty pillows bunched up at the head of the bed. He thought about asking for a bottle of tequila or something like they did in the movies to numb the pain for something like this. He had no clue what kind of drugs he’d been eating like skittles though so assumed adding alcohol to the mix may be a bad idea. No matter how wonderful it sounded to be drunk through what he knew was coming next.

  Caitlyn came back in with Myriah and they started working together to peel the bandages back of his wrist. Eric tried to see what was going on at first so he could help them diagnose but after a few minutes he decided his bigger job was to not scream out in pain loud enough for the whole city to hear. He lay back as the two girls tried to pry the bandages off his skin. His blood evidently had the adhesion power of super glue based on how long it was taking them to unstick the bandages. Every time they moved his wrist it was like being shot all over again.

  They finally got it unwrapped and Eric came back from his virtual tour of pain land to watch them doing their best to clean up his wrist without moving it around too much. Caitlyn had a bottle of peroxide she’d gotten found under the sink. She was dumping that all over his wrist and wiping the blood away with another sterile gauze wrap after she let it bubble on the wound for about a minute.

  “Your wrist stinks.” Myriah said with a crinkled nose.

  That wasn’t good. When someone said something smelled bad in today’s world of Zombies and bucket bathrooms it meant something different than it did back in the old days. Eric would’ve happily exchanged the smells of most the places they slept now with any truck stop bathroom from the old world. His wound smelling bad could only really mean one thing. Eric summoned his strength up and had Caitlyn help him sit up in bed while Myriah kept the flashlight aimed at his wrist. Looking down at his wrist it was obvious the wound had gotten infected. Red lines went in multiple directions from where the bullet had punched through his skin on both sides of his arm. There was a noticeably nasty aroma coming from the hole in his wrist that the peroxide had done nothing to wash away.

  “It’s infected.” Eric said out loud. He just wanted to get the words out in the open to see if they rang true. He knew he was probably screwed. Unlike other medicines out there that people kept in medicine cabinets and such for forever most people took all their antibiotics once it was prescribed to them. For one thing the pharmacists and doctors all emphasized you had to take it until it was gone. For another thing antibiotics had an expiration date associated with them. Even if they could find some laying around somewhere this wasn’t the kind of infection that was going to be cured with the same pill’s doctors handed out like candy to everyone who complained of the sniffles.

  “Do we need to go find antibiotics?” Caitlyn asked.

  “There’s a Walgreens right up the street.” Myriah said excitedly. “We used to go there before we came over here to get suntan lotion and sodas and stuff. They should have plenty of antibiotics there.”

  “Ok. Great. How far is right up the street?” Eric asked. He watched as the girl’s brows furrowed in concentration. He understood the issue. Distance in the apocalypse wasn’t the same as distance in the old world. It could take them days to move a few miles. In the old days they could’ve hopped in a minivan and been at Disney in forty-five minutes. They’d tried to make Disney when they’d originally met up and it’d taken them almost a week to admit defeat and turned around to limp back to where they’d started.

  After some coaxing and conversation Eric calculated it was about two miles away. That wasn’t an insurmountable distance. He’d just need to do it at night with a wrist that felt like it may fall off his body at any time. It also meant he’d have to leave the girls alone again. He knew they weren’t going to like that idea seeing as how every time he left them alone someone seemed to show up to try and kidnap them.

  “I should take you there.” Myriah said. Before anyone could tell her no, she kept talking. “I know the way there and you’re too sick to really be able to depend on yourself. I know you won’t just let Cait and me go get it for you. We can’t leave the little kids unguarded and Cait has already showed you she can handle a gun. It just makes sense. You can’t go by yourself since we need you. I’m not sure you’d make it yourself as messed up as your wrist is.”

  Eric opened his mouth to argue and couldn’t really come up with anything. It made sense to have someone go with him to watch his back. It wasn’t like these were the same girls he’d first met at the church either. These girls weren’t cowering in fear in a closet anymore. They were fierce. They protected the little kids with the ferocity of mama bears. They’d been through a lot since this started. They’d seen things kids should never have to see. They’d done things kids should never have to d
o. He belatedly realized he probably needed to start looking at them like the strong young women they were instead of as ‘kids’ to be protected.

  “Ok. We leave once it gets dark. Let’s work on setting this place up like a fortress until then. We also need to make more flyers describing this place to go drop off at your mom’s house and we need to come up with some flyers to leave in this house to give your parents more clues just in case we’re not here anymore either. These drugs are starting to hit me again so wake me up in about an hour and I’ll help. Until then let’s make sure all the windows are secure and keep the noise down.”

  Myriah and Caitlyn walked out. Caitlyn didn’t seem phased by Eric letting Myriah go with him. Instead she’d given him a look that conveyed she thought it was about time he started treating them like adults. Eric closed his eyes thinking how messed up this was. Myriah should be getting yelled at for talking back and punished by having her phone taken away or being sent to her room. Instead she was volunteering to go on life or death missions through a wasteland filled with infected demonic cannibals. As if the infected demonic cannibals weren’t enough, they kept bumping into those mad max wannabes who were trying to kill them for some reason. Or, at least they wanted to kill him. God only knew what they wanted the girls for.