After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set

by Warren Hately

  More than a dozen vehicles were parked along the front of the bakery, testament to mankind’s mad rush for coffee and donuts in the last hours before the end of the world. The rest of the carpark was a crush of yet more cars and SUVs and minivans parked haphazardly, perhaps at a later time, a handful of wind-eaten cadavers moldering on the ground between them on a carpet of spent brass casings and dead leaves.

  To Tom’s widening horror, a second, seriously large Fury appeared at the other end of the walkway as if caught by surprise. It emitted a bark like a sea lion and threw itself into a mad run at him, the black guy with a powerful frame before his life was taken, revived in the last few months and now hurtling at him with big hands outstretched with rending fingers.

  Adrenalin dulled the pain in favor of survival as Tom twisted about and ran into the carpark, taking the longbow in his left hand, twisting the stave around to position it, and suddenly aware he couldn’t even draw an arrow. The loose gravel of the lot was slippery footing as he veered around the first odd-angled wreck, where he reclutched the bow with his right arm, forced back his hand to tug free an arrow, then turned and let the bow fall downwards, trapping it with his left hand and more or less slotting the shaft into the right alignment to be nocked and drawn.

  Except his right arm wasn’t playing along.

  Nothing but grinding gears and agony swept through him, and Tom lurched past the first few vehicles towards a dusty red 4WD wagon on the outer edge of the group, overwhelmed by the nausea of pain slamming him into the vehicle and not understanding at all when the dormant vehicle’s car alarm burst into life.

  The horn sounded shockingly loud even amid the violence of the two Furies’ chase, worsening Tom’s confusion at how the hell the alarm worked still at all. It was all Tom could do to stop from looking all around for signs of yet more undead attackers, the bow and thumb-trapped arrow in one hand nearly forgotten. Instead, in desperation Tom shucked his arm completely free of his sling and cursed, teeth grinding together as tears of pain trickled into his beard and he made his claw-like right hand perform the long-familiar nocking action just as the first of the undead things behind him came between the abandoned vehicles and at him.

  Tom’s shoulder pain was damned near psychedelic, and most frustrating of all, getting him absolutely nowhere as he realized far too late that drawing the bow really wasn’t an option. One moment, his right arm quivered just to get a hold of the bowstring. The next, the froth-jowled Fury slammed into him.

  Again Tom pounded back into the red 4WD and its maddening alarm. He caught a nonsensical glimpse of objects packed into the back of the abandoned vehicle, bundles of items concealed under carefully-wrapped camouflage netting, and then the weight of the Fury pressing onto him forced Tom down, his jeans-clad, stew-stained ass slamming onto the gravel surface, his left arm between the bowstave and the string and his hand in a pincer grip around the Fury’s throat as it snapped at him, rubbery flakes of its mucose skin peeling off in its rabid attempt on his life. The best Tom could do in that moment was direct the horrific thing away from his throat and into his left shoulder where its teeth clamped down and it tore backwards with the inhuman strength of its neck muscles, sending yet more dagger-thrusts of pain lancing through him.

  Tom tried to pull the ax from his belt and failed, needing his left arm just to stop his neck snapping as the rampant Fury bore down on him. His maimed right hand quested around for a rock or something else he could use instead and found a set of car keys.

  “God damn it!”

  He turned the keys and plunged them into the Fury’s eye socket, but it wasn’t enough to pierce the brain.

  Adrenalin coursed through him afresh. Tom pushed the monster back and up, ramming the back of its head into the 4WD’s side-view mirror – but the safety feature meant it flipped and gave way instead, and Tom gave a moan of frustration and was on top of the thing and then standing again. He released his hold pinning it down and reached across himself for the ax again and staved the thing’s face in as it reared up one final time.

  There wasn’t a chance for a second strike and none was needed anyway. Like some of the older, more weather-beaten Furies, this one was rotten to the core, and the dome of its skull gave way as easily as its suppurating flesh. Between pulses from the wagon’s strident horn alarm, Tom could hear the rasping of the bigger biter coming around the car, so he abandoned the useless bow and arrows there much to his regret, staggering backwards and away with the huge black Fury coming around at him and the sound of it all likely to draw any others nearby.

  The feeling of panic was nearly overwhelming.

  Tom ran with his breath aching, pain in his ribs sharp enough he feared puncturing a lung as well as any number of other dreadful scenarios, marooned in the middle of a nowhere town with just the junk of yesterday to mark his grave.

  The linebacker Fury was close behind as Tom threaded through the bizarre carpark, back up onto the bakery porch where he shoulder-slammed his way through the heavy main twin glass doors – fortunately not barred from within – and as they swung back shut after him, they caught the Fury at the moment of entry and there was a twisting, shattering noise as the glass in one broke and the linebacker staggered into the bakery foyer and tripped on all the mess he’d made and face-planted into the hard shell of a glass display cabinet which chimed rather than broke. Tom wasted no time vaulting the counter, amazed he could even do it, right arm a beacon of agony as he led with it anyway, charging to the right and through a doorway of plastic strips and into the private back kitchen area, surprised to see it filled with daylight. The back wall was nothing but raised roller doors adjoining a jungle of overgrown garden outside, at the back of the complex through which a second new big Fury fought to head his way.

  There was a door atop three concrete steps on the far side of the front of the workroom. Tom bustled across for it as fast as he could, too afraid to rue the lack of his archery gear or the strength to wield it or that the car alarm out in yonder carpark could draw even more of the treacherous things to him – or that he was already outnumbered as it was.

  And then he reached the far door and couldn’t believe it when the handle wouldn’t turn.

  There was time to give the locked door one good shake for confirmation, then he had to dodge as the latest Fury arrived. It’d been a mechanic once, or at least dressed to suggest it, the man with more than four inches on Tom, his big, bald dome with the skin and hair long gone from the predations of crows, but a hateful fire still blazed in its myopic gaze. There was a vague aikido principle in play as Tom palmed the creature on into the locked wooden door and its face exploded wetly, but it turned at once, half of its teeth now missing, and Tom scuttled over a small metal trolley and kicked it backwards into the thing, tripping it over and giving him just enough time to whirl around and jog out through the open cargo bay into the open scenery at the back of the bakery as the black Fury then burst into the upper kitchen behind him.

  The mere suggestion of a wire fence ran beyond the jungle out the back of the bakery, so Tom veered right and hurtled as best he was able in a lopsided run along the building’s back lot, little more than an alleyway, clenching his teeth to draw dead Laurance’s hand ax from his belt once again. The warbling of the intermittent alarm rang loud and clear over everything, even from the other side of the building, and as Tom reached the end of the block, chased by the two creatures now behind him, he gave a quick scan, the way into another field blocked by the same chain-link fence encircling the property and ending at the corner of an adjacent building framing the east side of the parking lot. The defunct fitness center’s main front window was long gone, and the elements hadn’t been kind to the array of machines inside. The now-familiar “HASTUR” tag stood out scrawled in paint across the remaining front brick wall.

  There wasn’t time for many decisions, though if the keys he’d found belonged to the alarmed 4WD, Tom realized there was a way to shut the damned thing down. But getting back the
re wasn’t much of an option right that moment, and he had to move at once with the two loping Furies right behind him. There wasn’t much for it, but to trust to luck, and so Tom ran on the diagonal and up and across to the gymnasium and jumped the slight step to enter, jogging in across the carpet of glass and leaves and old magazines with those monstrous snarls ringing in his ears.

  It was pointless trying to heft the big rowing machines or mounted exercise bikes into the Furies’ path. Hoping for something like the element of surprise, Tom instead snapped about and took his best swing with the ax – but that also didn’t do him much good. The first Fury was so close that it stumbled past, while the second one leapt back and growled and then bull charged Tom, catching him around the midriff and piling him back into one of the closest machines. They tumbled over it together, Tom lost the ax, and the pedals dug into his hip to cause yet more pain he couldn’t even register as survival mode took over and he somehow got his leg across the mechanic, trying not to gag on the reek and also the feel of rotting flesh sloughing away beneath him trapped within its coveralls. Tom scrambled for the ax as the creature snapped at him, grabbing his right arm to hold him back and lighting a match of agony once more.

  Tom savagely kicked down and across at the thing, smashing off the remainder of its face to reveal a disarmingly live skull, eyes embedded in pockets of festering meat blinking back at him as its flesh-bearded jaws snapped despite the missing teeth.

  Tom rolled away at that point, attention to his injuries long since gone, and with the ax in his left hand he stood just in time for the black linebacker to repeat its fellow’s trick and plough into him as well. The hard-won breath exploded from Tom’s lungs and they staggered down and through yet more fitness gear. Tom bounced off the treads of a running machine and rolled backwards over himself for the third time in twenty-four hours, sitting up to gasp, blood in his vision as the latest Fury scrambled like a demonic Spider-Man over and across at him.

  “Fucking hell!”

  The thing jumped before Tom could move, but he got both feet under its torso, using those well-tended muscles to good effect, the monster snarling and slavering at him for a split-second before catapulting away. It was a lucky hit, the first Fury slamming into the second. And again Tom rolled over to get on his feet again and resumed his staggered, breathless run past dusty mirrors lining the back of the room.

  The vehicle alarm outside fell mercifully silent. Tom only registered the reprieve as he cleared the breadth of the fitness center, moving past a gigantic plastic reception counter and pausing between the doorways to change rooms and a back office area with the two Furies closing in too fast for him to make a dash for outside.

  “Fuck it,” he said with absolutely no spirit of abandon, wishes on his thoughts if not his lips as he turned to the left and hit a locker room door into the dank chamber beyond lit only by the daylight congealing through frosted glass windows high up along the back wall.

  And the two starving Furies poured in after him.

  *

  THE TILED BATHROOMS were a trap and Tom knew it the moment he stepped inside.

  He didn’t have much hope, fighting to close the door against his inrushing foes, and quit that tactic before it really happened – and thus hesitating for a precious second he didn’t have. Weaponless, he ran deeper through the locker room, past a wall of cubicles with an ancient mop in a bucket at the corner of the turn.

  Tom grabbed the mop left-handed to swing the whole thing up and around, but the dried-out mop was wedged between the teeth of the metal bucket, striking the undead mechanic in the side of the head with a deafening clang at which point the mop handle instantly snapped.

  Jagged wooden stick in hand, Tom stabbed it into the next Fury’s face as it bulled past its fellow, the dead man’s full, fetid face sagging with decay despite the deathly twinkle in its black eyes. The broken mop stabbed into its cheek and tore the flesh aside and then the Fury slammed Tom into the wall in line with their long-favored tactic of knocking a target down and going for the throat.

  Tom wedged the broken shaft between the linebacker’s teeth, pushing with brute force to get the enormous Fury to one side, and when unbalanced, off of him. But it didn’t quite work that way. The other Fury returned from its stumble to pile in atop them, careless of its manner, reaching over the top of the linebacker’s living carcass to clutch at Tom’s head with both hands as if to tear it free and upend the contents like a starving man breaking his fast.

  It was a bad time for Tom’s strength to quit, but after the ordeals of the past days and Teller’s beating, it felt like his race was run. Tom groaned, legs kicking feebly beneath them all, bladder giving way for the final time as his head rebounded again from the tiled wall and he barely drew another breath.

  The black ghoul spat the broken mop free of its mouth. Weakening, Tom half-heartedly stabbed it up into the mechanic’s eye socket and twisted as hard as he could to force it through and into the Fury’s skull, stubbing out the faceless mechanic’s demonic life like a smoker with a cigarette to grind.

  The mechanic went slack, half-pinning Tom and the linebacker to the hard grisly bathroom floor. Tom’s left arm flopped, losing his pathetic weapon as the mechanic sloughed away to one side and off them. The surviving Fury struggled to reorient itself, grabbing Tom by the leg as Tom too tried to get to his feet, paralyzed instead as the Fury sank its teeth into his shin.

  The linebacker could hardly bite through the crusty jeans fabric in one fell move, but it gave it a damned good go. Tom was momentarily transfixed by the brilliant agony of it, such that an exhausted kind of soporific ecstasy swept over and through him, and it was only the mad barking of his rational mind telling him he still had a chance to survive and now wasn’t the time to surrender. With his fingers clawed into the tiled wall, Tom hauled himself up, swung his numb leg out of reach, then swiveled on the spot to kick down with it, the black Fury’s head rebounding off the hard ground and its jaw smashing into pieces.

  But it wasn’t spent.

  The ghoul was recently risen, and its muscular frame retained sufficient strength to simply leap at Tom from the ground. Only by accident, Tom twisted out of the way as the Fury hit the wall, then at once pushed off to chase after him.

  Tom staggered away with the Fury right on him, and finally his right arm joined the effort to wrench the horrific thing off course and into and then through one of the nearby bathroom stalls. Fresh, radiant, life-affirming pain flooded through Tom’s ruptured shoulder and he fell back, as if drawn by some non-Euclidean gravity to turn the change room corner toward its open row of showers, a tin safety door set in the back door.

  The Fury was on him every inch of the way, scrabbling on the grisly tiles, gore splattering from its wrecked mouth. But Tom charged the door as he scanned for the position its hinges and then battered through with his shoulder to spill back out into the brilliant day.

  The thin metal door came down with Tom atop it followed by the Fury on top of him.

  The thing got its fingers into the back of Tom’s scalp, not enough hair to hold him, and Tom twisted beneath it, got his left elbow under its ribs, and levered the monstrous thing aside, his nearly useless right hand questing around for any loose obstacles and coming up with jack shit. Just as quickly, he abandoned any fantasies about picking up the whole metal door and killing the Fury with it. Now his strength was almost wholly gone.

  Bricks lay scattered behind him where a car had clipped the brick-walled lip of the parking lot. Ungainly, Tom scrambled for them, throwing the first one back over his shoulder as if it were much of a deterrent, chancing a look at the Fury now with half its rabid face hanging off, a length of metal pipe embedded in its midriff at some point during the fracas without Tom’s notice.

  Tom turned to face off as the thing lurched at him, going into a clutch with the bigger brute, headbutting its stinking face away as his left hand sought the end of the black metal pipe jutting out from under its ribs. He grasped it, an
d started the awful business of wrenching it back and forth to get it free. Gelid drops of black decayed matter splattered his feet and the dirt around them as crows cried out circling above them, jealous of the feast.

  He elbowed the Fury’s jawless face and caught a fresh flash of movement off to the side.

  The little girl was only about three.

  That didn’t stop the dead hunger in her eyes.

  *

  THE TODDLER SPRINTED from where she emerged between the abandoned cars and SUVs, taking one look at Tom in his decomposing dance with the hulking linebacker and deciding she wanted in on the feast. The child Fury was there almost before Tom’d registered, literally getting under his feet. He took big cautious steps backwards for good reason. Enough of the iron rod was free now that he could hold the mewling linebacker at arm’s length.

  Tom backed over the low brick wall, stepping out from the side of the fitness center and its parking lot, and then once again fell flat on his back, misjudging the gap.

  At least the pipe came free. It was a broken length of steel rod, possibly part of a metal doorframe, bent in the middle at some point during the melee. Tom backhanded the big Fury with the length of it, driving the monster off for a nanosecond – just as the little girl pounced on Tom’s face like a kitten set to kill. He stabbed at her with the rod without success, then had to put his right arm to work again, clutching the child by its sodden, rotting blonde ringlets, pulling her off him, giving Tom just enough time to rock his legs for the momentum to get onto his knees amid the crushed plaster and chips of broken brick beneath the parked fender of a dusty saloon, already smashed and dented prior to the latest catastrophe, a dead woman and child mummified inside with their dried brains upholstering the cloth ceiling.