All posts by Victor Tookes

Author of What Zombies Fear, Remnants, The Evolution of Vaughn, and Hell on Rails. Father of Jack, I'm a single dad trying to make it as a writer.
Apocalypse, Fiction, Novel, Super hero, Zombie

5.07 Victor is Lost

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Marshall dove at the zombie, intending to knock it off his brother.  He brought all the force his legs could bear.  As he lept, his feet created waves in the white striped asphalt like a bolder being dropped in a smooth lake. The collision with the super zombie should have been enough to kill it.  Marshall hit with his shoulder.  As his body collided with the zombie, Marshall felt his own collarbone give way.

With a bellow of surprise, he bounced off the super.  Moments later, Renee drove her kitchen knife into the zombie’s neck.  The blade plunged in to the hilt.  She twisted the knife blade a quarter turn inside it’s neck, severing the spinal column, but when she pulled the knife out, the wound sealed immediately.  From the way its skilled ripped, it was as if the zombie was made of water.

Marshall was struggling to get up when the zombie threw one punch, hitting Renee in the abdomen.  The strength of the blow knocking her back almost to the truck.  She hit the gravel shoulder of the road with a grunt, dazed from the force of the punch.

All the while, Max was walking slowly forward with his head tilted to one side.  The look of confusion was plain on his face.  “Stop hurting my family,” he said softly.  As he spoke, a bright blue aura surrounded him, driving away the inky blackness that no one other than he could see or feel.

By now, Marshall had regained his feet and was pulling on his left arm, trying to align the collar bone.  He knew if he didn’t, the bones bones would knit together improperly.  “Max, get back in the truck,” he yelled.

“I can’t, Uncle Marshall.  I have to stop him from hurting my Dad.”  Max said, his face looking confused and almost desperate.

“Max, go now.”  Marshall’s voice was stern.  The older brother was approaching panic as Max continued to walk towards the powerful zombie.  He pushed aside the horrible thought that he may lose his brother and his nephew all in one night.

“But Uncle Marshall!  I can’t!  I really really can’t,” said Max, continuing forward.  He knew he was supposed to do what his elders told him, but he also knew his daddy was in trouble.  He was just three feet from the zombie, and stopped for a second.  ‘Steve.  I’m not supposed to hit people.  Daddy says ‘we don’t hit’ all the time.  But Uncle Marshall and Aunt Renee are hitting him.  He’s hurting them.  I don’t know what to do.’

‘Max, I’m not sure we should get involved.  He has many more E’Clei than we do.’

‘But my dad always says we have to take care of those who are weaker than us.’

‘Not if it gets you killed.  We understand you need to help your father, but he would be very cross if you were hurt.’

‘Then I won’t get hurt.  Can we just make him nice? Like I did with you?’

‘He is too strong, Max.  Please listen to us.’

Max stepped forward and put his hand on the zombie’s shoulder.  Blue light shot down into him, freezing him in place, like someone grabbing an electric fence.

Max spoke softly, “Stop hurting my friends.”

“I can not,” said the blonde zombie.

“You have to.  You’re not being nice.”

“I’m trying to save your father.”

“Then stop biting him,” Max said, increasing the pressure on the zombie.  Max felt the man start push back against him.

“I can not.  If I stop, he will die.  There are too many E’Clei in him, and you’re putting him in danger by stopping me.”
Marshall and Renee stood watching, afraid to get involved out of fear of hurting Max, or the zombie hurting Max in retaliation.  Panic was plain on their faces as Victor began to convulse on the ground.  His eyes had rolled back into his head and his body was violently jerking from side to side.

“Max, honey, get away.  We need to get to your Dad,” said Renee.  She was no longer hiding the terror in her voice now.

“I can’t, Aunt Renee,” Max said.  He was desperately trying to work out the right thing to do.  His four year old mind wanted to trust everyone, but the zombies actions didn’t mesh with his words.  Max had never encountered duplicity before.

‘Steve, I don’t know what to do.’

‘If you won’t run, hit him hard.  With everything you have.  Think about how much you love your dad and hit him.  We can sort this out later.’

Max thought of his favorite memory of his father.  He, his mother, and his dad were out on the back deck.  Max was riding his tricycle around the huge table pretending to be the ice cream man.  He had a small bell on the handlebars and was ringing it as he came around one of the corners and stopped.

“Hello, sir,” Max had happily said.  “Would you like some ice cream?”

“Why yes, young man,” his father had said in a funny voice.  “Could I trouble you for a strawberry cone?”

Tears streamed down Max’s face, thinking about that time when everything had been right.  His mother had been laughing.  He fondly remembered the three of them together on the deck on a beautiful summer afternoon.  The thoughts of his mother brought an extra powerful surge of emotion to him, as he hauled back and punched Drake in the side of the head.  Steve channeled all of Max’s E’Clei into protecting the little boys hand from the force of the impact.  Max’s aura solidified around his fist, just as his father had done.  The impact of Max’s energy, powered by his feelings of need for his father launched Drake off of his father and into the oncoming lane of traffic.  The zombie laid still.

Max wasted no time. ‘Daddy.  I punched the bad guy, I’m sorry.’

There was no response from his father.  Concerned, Max moved over to his father and rolled him onto his back.  Victor’s eyes were closed as Max gently nudged Victor’s shoulder.  He still did not answer.  With a furrowed brow, Max pushed inside Victor’s head, and saw turmoil.  New E’Clei were fighting for control; there were so many.  Max started squishing them one at the time, as quickly as he could.  Even then, the E’Clei were forming pathways inside Victor’s brain faster than Max could kill them.  He could feel them weakening from the poisonous environment, but they were building up quickly.  As the E’Clei formed large groups around areas of Victor’s brain, the outside bugs died but their corpses shielded the inner ones.

Max pushed into the center of the largest group and started killing the bugs that were in direct contact with his father’s brain.

“Uncle Marshall,” Max said, strain clear in his tiny voice.  “I can’t get them all.  I think there are too many.”

Drake groaned from his position on the opposite side of the road, and started to stir.  Marshall walked over to the zombie and stomped on his femur, smashing it.  He then kicked the blonde zombie’s foot up under his butt, and repeated the same process with the other leg.

The bones in Drakes legs healed quickly, almost as quickly as Marshall was working.  His femurs healed together in the shape of the letter W.

“I was trying to help him!” Drake yelled.  “He ordered me to bite him.  I warned him that this might happen.  I was trying to forcibly remove the extra E’Clei, but they’re determined to beat his immune system and bring down the great Victor Tookes.”

“Fix him!” yelled Renee.

“I can’t.  I was barely keeping up when you three attacked me. If we hadn’t been so busy trying to keep him alive, we would have killed all of you.”

“Why are you trying to save him,” asked Marshall.  “Don’t you want to kill all of us?”

“Victor is our Prime.  He created us.  He told me to collect all the E’Clei.  We were full.  There wasn’t any more room in this host to hold any more of us.  We came to try and talk him out of the order he implanted in us to kill ourselves.  He said he would only remove the order if we gave him the extra E’Clei we carry.  Even with our warning, he said he needed the extras to defeat Laura.”

“But Laura’s dead.  We watched her burn,” said Renee.

“Almost, but not dead.  She will heal eventually and be back.”

“Fuck,” said Marshall.

“Marsh, grab the corpse.  I’ll get Victor.  We need to get out of the open, and back to where it’s safe.  Crookshaks there may come in handy.”

Marshall grabbed the black suited zombie by one arm and dragged him over to the truck like a child carrying a rag doll.  With a flip of his arm, he tossed the zombie up over the side into the back of the truck.

While Marshall was dealing with Drake, Renee had grabbed Victor under the shoulders and was dragging him towards the truck.  Once Drake was securely nestled in, Marshall lept out of the truck.  He met Renee halfway and easily lifted his brother and set him in the back seat of the truck.  Max shadowed them all the way back, squishing bugs inside Victor’s brain as quickly as he could.

The trip back to the compound was a panicked one for Renee and Marshall who spoke in hushed whispers all the way back.  Max largely ignored then, instead focusing on his father’s predicament. He searched through his father’s mind, looking for anything familiar.  He saw a number of memories, and felt the emotions that went along with them.  The memory of the first time his father held him made him feel oddly uncomfortable, experiencing his father’s instant love for him from a different perspective.  ‘Daddy, are you in there?  It’s me, Max.  It’s Max-monster.’

He waited while he continued to squish E’Clei with his mind.  He dug deeper, looking for some sign of his father, ‘Dad, it’s your boy, Max.  Remember me?’

There was no response.

“Uncle Marshall, I can’t find Daddy,” said Max.

“Mommy.  I think Daddy needs your help,” said Max.

—-

Victor woke up in a familiar feeling white room.  He was in a huge wood bed with crisp white sheets.  The edges of the room were barely visible, the fog surrounding him seemed to get thicker the farther away it got from the bed, obscuring any decoration or anything on the walls.  The light in the room was soft and diffuse.   “The last time I was here you yelled at me,” said Victor.  “Could we skip that part this time? I know what I’m doing.”

“Tookes, you have no idea what you’re doing,” said Candi.  “But yes, I’ll skip the yelling at you.  For now, you need to fight what’s happening to you.  The E’Clei are trying to take over your mind.  The dose you got from Drake was way too strong, even for you.  You’re going to need to look inside your own head, find the parasites and kill them.”

Victor shook his head and asked, “What do you mean look inside my own head?”

“Search your mind, like you did when you first re-programmed Drake,” Candi replied.

“I programmed Drake?”

“Think about his face, Tookes.  Imagine it sagging off the bones.  He was wearing a blue button up shirt and shredded blue jeans.  It’s the zombie you messed with at the airport.”

“Oh, shit.”

“When you went into his mind at the airport, you changed him.  Do the same for yourself.  Find the E’Clei and will them not to exist.”

“I’m not sure I know how i’m supposed to get into my own head.”

“Tookes, you really are dense sometimes.  We’re in your head now.  Just get up and walk through the door.  And hurry, you’re dying.  There isn’t much time.”

As Candi spoke, the fog cleared, revealing a heavy brown steel fire door with a shiny brass deadbolt and knob. At head level there was a slide chain, and just under that a flip bar connected to the door frame.  The entire door had a steel bar crossing it, connected to steel braces on the wall.  Whatever was on the other side of that door was clearly not welcome on this side.

Zombie Book

5.06 Prime

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“Good Evening, sir,” said a zombie, appearing on one knee before Victor.  His fist was pressed into the ground, and his eyes were looking down.  His accent was strange, from somewhere in western Europe.  He was wearing a black suit and black shoes, and his blonde hair was cut short, and combed forward.

“Who are you, and what is your purpose,” asked Victor.

“My name is Drake.  You are my creator,” came the reply.

Victor kept his eyes on the man, clearly confused.  “Me?  I didn’t create a zombie, I’m a human.”

“You created my structure.  You’re my prime.”

“Stand up.  What the fuck are you talking about?” asked Victor.  He was starting to feel uneasy at this whole situation.
The zombie stood up.  He was a full head taller than Victor.  His skin was perfectly smooth, except for a series of ridges running up his forehead.

“What’s wrong with your head,” asked Victor.  “You look like a white Klingon.”

“You ordered us to take all the E’clei.  I have done so.  But there is no more room in this humans skull, so we appear as ridges under the skin.  Those E’Clei will die without access to the brain.  We can not continue to absorb more.”

“Then your orders are complete, kill yourself,” said Victor.

“Yes, sir.  However, before that happens, we hoped you might reconsider your order.”

“Why would I do that? You’re a zombie.  I’m going to kill every one of you.”

“Because, sir, we are valuable.  We have more E’Clei than any other creature on this planet.  We are your ally, and would like to continue to serve.”

“Can you kill Laura?”

“Probably not.  The E’Clei she carries are the original soldiers sent to earth in search of hosts.  The ‘bugs,’ as you call them, that she carries are older than this planet.  The E’Clei we carry are only months old, having been created after we arrived.”

Victor made a mental note of his confirmation that Laura was still alive.  “If you can’t kill her, how can you be useful to me?”

“We can infiltrate her upper command; we are powerful enough for that.  I will report her plans to you, and together we can kill her.  Then I will absorb all of her E’Clai.  Once I’m in control of the Primes, you will have won.  No more humans will die.”

Victor thought the proposal over.  He knew he was going to need allies.  He’d faced Laura twice and hadn’t managed to kill her either time.  The last time he fought her, combining his powers with those from Kris he hadn’t been successful. By the end of that second attempt, it took everything he could muster just to keep his friends and himself alive.  If that much strength thrown at Laura didn’t kill her, Victor wasn’t sure what would.

As he thought about it, Victor realized Kris didn’t really understand the full extent of her power.  In many ways she was more powerful than he.  Her particular talents were capable of such widespread destruction, abilities like hers were a key element in battles against massive hordes of undead. He felt a strong sadness at her loss, not just because of her combat abilities, but because she grounded him.  He hoped she was happy wherever she was.

Dozens of ideas floated through Victor’s head.  “Can you control the areas of the brain the E’Clei go to when they enter a host?”

“We are unsure of the intent of your question.”

He paused, rephrasing the question in his mind.  “If you were to transfer your extra E’Clei to me, can you control what brain functions they would attempt to take control of first?”

Drake’s response was immediate. “No.”

“If you transfer them all to me, what would happen to me?”

“There is a reasonable probability that you would die.”

“Why? I’ve been infected a number of times,” said Victor.

“That volume of E’Clei may be able to overcome the toxin in your brain chemistry long enough to shut down the gland that secretes it.  Then, they would genetically modify you to not excrete that toxin.”

“So they could make me not immune?”

The blonde nodded and replied, “And you would become one of them.”

Tookes knew his powers were not enough to take on Laura.  He knew he needed more.

“We can see where you’re going with this.  Allow me to educate you.  You actually have relatively few E’Clei in your brain,” Drake said, without a hint of expression on his face. “What makes you unique from every other survivor is that you killed a prime.  When you opened the skull of James Watley and were splattered with his blood, a small percentage of his E’Clei entered your system through your nose and mouth.  Reflexively, they attached themselves to your brain, where they died.  Normally, even in a non-immune human, those E’Clei wouldn’t be enough to take control of a host, and would die off.  Because James Watley was a prime, and was originally infected with ancient E’Clei, they were strong enough to start the process before your brain chemistry killed them.”

“So, I need to find Primes and absorb them slowly before I try to kill Laura?”

“That would be one way.  That path is dangerous though.  You are very strong, but you got lucky with Watley.  He was overconfident.  In the beginning, it was not known to the E’Clai that there would be humans who were immune.  They were still trying to figure out what you and your son were when you killed Watley.”

There was a long pause in the conversation before Victor finally said, “Give me some of your E’Clei.”

“We are under no compunction to obey new commands from you,” Drake replied.  “You didn’t include that in our original programming.”

“You said I am your Prime,” said Victor.

“That does not mean I am obligated to obey new commands, only the ones you first implanted.”

“If you don’t, I won’t remove the command to kill yourself.  That urge has got to be getting strong now.”

Drake looked at Victor, thinking of any possible way to avoid this outcome.  “We will comply.”

Victor held his arm outstretched, and braced for the pain.  Drake bit into his arm, sending searing pain up through his shoulder.  He was sure it was his imagination, but Victor was sure he could feel the E’Clei moving up towards his brain.  He felt his legs growing weaker and he sank down to his knees.  There was a heavy fog spreading through his mind and the corners of his vision began to fade into darkness.  Slowly, he fell to one side and then rolled onto his back.  As he lost consciousness, the last thing he saw was Drake standing over him.

“We told you,” Victor heard as the blackness encompassed him.

Max’s eyes opened suddenly and he knew something wasn’t right.  Even when he and his dad were miles apart, Max was always able to “feel” Victor.  Only moments ago, the line between father and son went silent as Victor’s body was overcome by E’Clei.  His daddy needed help.

The three children were all nestled together on a queen sized bed.  Holly, the youngest, was tucked between Max and Maya so she wouldn’t roll out of the bed. Renee, ever watchful, was sleeping on the floor between the children and the door.  She had taken one of the blankets and rolled it into a ball to use as a pillow.  It looked like she was still sleeping soundly.  For a moment, Max considered going out alone.  Quickly, he pushed the thought aside.  The last time Max went out by himself, he got hurt very badly and upset a lot of people.  He wouldn’t do that ever again; he needed extra help.  Not wanting to wake Holly, Max slipped out of the bed  and softly padded over to his aunt.

Max was very close to her ear as he softly said, “Aunt Renee?” The woman flinched in surprise as her eyes opened.
“What’s up, buddy?  Bad dream?” she whispered, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

The little boy shook his head.  “No, Daddy’s in trouble,” he said simply.  “You have to get Uncle Marshall and go get him.”
The color drained out of Renee’s face as she slowly sat up.  She tried to keep her voice calm as she asked, “What’s happened?”

“They bit him and there are lots of bugs.  I can’t hear him anymore.”

“Oh shit.  Stay here,” Renee said.  “I’ll send Jo to watch you guys.”

“I have to go too,” said Max.  He grabbed her hand.

In the bed, Maya had stirred from her sleep.  She slowly sat up and whispered, “What’s going on, Mommy?”

“Maya,” Max said, “We’ll be back soon.  Remember when we were in the truck with the mean guys and I told you that we would be okay, because your Mommy was out there?”

“Yes, Max,” said Maya, nodding.

“I have to go tell Daddy that it will be okay, because we are there.”

Renee pushed herself off of the floor and went over to Maya.  With a small smile, she placed a kiss on her cheek and said, “I’ll be back soon.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes.  I promise.”  She kissed her again. “Go back to sleep.  We’ll be back before you know it.”  Renee walked back over to her nephew and said, “Max, I’m going to give you a piggyback ride.”  She lifted him up onto her back.  As she lifted him, she marveled at the depth of thought that this little boy had.  At times, he acted well beyond his years.  “Hold on tight!”
Max clung tightly to Renee’s neck while she ran as fast as she could to the end of the compound where Marshall was working to get the water tower ready for the generators.  They covered the distance quickly, and found Marshall with his head buried in a manual, reading by flashlight.

“Marshall,” Renne said, reappearing in front of him, “We need to go, Victor is hurt.”

“I’ll get the truck,” said Marshall.

“I’m going to go get Jo.  I hope she can watch Maya and Holly, I’ll meet you at the truck in two minutes.”  Renee put Max down on the ground and knelt down in front of him.  “Max, we’ll get to your Daddy.  Tell Uncle uncle Marshall what you saw.”  Renee was gone before she finished the last word, a small trail of dust marking her passage in the thin moonlight.
Less than two minutes later, Max was in the truck seated between Marshall and Renee, Jo was heading over to get Maya and Holly, and the family was headed off into Yuma after Victor.

After they’d driven about ten minutes, Max’s eyes lit up as he spoke.  “I think.  I think we are close.  Yeah! We are close!.”  His smile at helping his aunt and uncle find his father quickly turned into a frown, and he added “I still can’t hear him.”
Renee pointed at the sign overhead, “There’s an exit here, Marsh.”

Marshall turned the truck left onto South Avenue at the bottom of the Interstate 8 off-ramp.  Less than a quarter mile later, he slammed on the brakes as his headlights lit up a blonde man leaned over the corpse of his brother.  The blond man’s mouth was attached to Victor’s neck next to a pickup truck loaded down with loot.  As the lights of the truck fell on them, the blonde man pulled back from Victor.  Dark blood ran down the corners of his mouth and chin, beginning to stain the collar of the white Oxford shirt he wore.  The man looked down to Victor again before sinking his teeth back into his shoulder.  Renee was invisible and out of the truck well before it stopped.  Marshall slammed the gear shift into park and charged the zombie killing his brother.  Max unbuckled his seat belt and slid out the drivers side of the truck.

‘Max, something isn’t right here,’ Max heard inside his head.  ‘That zombie has more E’Clei than anything we’ve ever seen.  He is very dangerous.’

Horror, Horror Fiction, Novel, Super hero

5.05 Darkness

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“I don’t know what bites a zombie,” Victor said, “And I’m not sure I want to find out.”  Victor gestured with his hands now as he added,  “Let’s check the garage and move on.  I don’t want to stick around here too long.”

The two men left the perfectly stacked corpses exactly as they found them, and walked over to the garage.  It had a small locking handle in the center.  Victor reached down and gave it a solid twist, breaking the tiny lock and opening the door.

“Not much for security here in America, eh?”  Sean asked from behind him.

Vic decided to brush the obviously condescending comment aside.  He was still annoyed from what happened with James and decided it was going to be easier to ignore the gibe than to acknowledge it.   At this point, he just wanted to get this the hell over with.  “Those locks are for show.  They were mostly to keep honest people out.  A thief would get in whether there was a lock or not,” Victor said.  “Watch out.”  The man took another breath and heaved the garage door open.

The two men backed off, but there were no zombies inside the garage.  A quick glance showed nothing particularly useful to Victor, but Sean started gathering everything he could get his hands on.  Power tools, screws, nails, yard tools, bits of scrap lumber, tool boxes, everything he saw went into the back of the truck.  Tookes stood in the entrance of the garage and watched him with great curiosity.

“Sean, these aren’t nice tools.  We’re going to go through at least a hundred garages before we find the generators we need.  Are you going to grab everything from all of them?”

“Every house in America has this many tools?” Sean asked, clearly surprised.

“No, but seventy-five per-cent of them will have better tools than this.”

“Fuckin’ American excesses,” Sean scoffed.  With a shake of his head, he muttered something under his breath and put the rest of the tools in the back of his truck.

Victor pursed his lips together and instead of coming back with a prickly response of his own, he stuck with “Whatever,” and tossed a case of bottled water into the bed of the truck.  The corpse piles had him a little on edge.  Vic wasn’t sure if Sean was being intentionally abrasive or if he was just being overly sensitive because his mind was elsewhere but Vic knew he had to concentrate on the job at hand.  He’d done enough of this to know it wasn’t just zombies you had to watch out for.  Victor hadn’t ever seen zombies stacked like that; this was something new.  And these days, “something new” was rarely a good thing.

“I’ll head to the next house.  Just back the truck into the driveway when you’re done,” he said as he walked through the yard.

The two men repeated this process through four houses.  By the time they’d reached the fifth house, the truck bed was full of junk.  Vic walked over to the truck and scanned the truck, trying to keep the frustrated look off of his face.

“Sean, we’re not going to have room for the generators if you keep piling shit in the back of the truck.  Remember, you can come back any time for this stuff,” he said, gesturing to the mound of stuff in the back.

“Not if some Drongo gets it first.  Never know when I might need this,” he said, hefting a wood-stove pipe into the back of the truck.  “Besides, we can always strap the gennies on the roof of the truck.”

There was a moment of awkward silence between them.  “Where the fuck are you from?” asked Victor.  “John never felt like he had to take everything.”

“John has talked non-stop about his ability to live off the shit you throw away, even now,” said Sean.  “He just doesn’t say anything to you.  Not that saying anything to you would have helped.  Fuckin’ Americans.”  Sean shook his head again and then headed back into the house for more trinkets.

Victor worked in silence for the next couple houses while Sean continued to pile every single screw, broken bucket, old mop, and half-empty bottle of cleaner he came across into the back of the truck.  And the higher the pile grew, the more patience Victor lost.

“Sean, at this rate, we’re going to be three days trying to find these generators.  We need to get water on quickly.  I don’t want to delay much longer.  I need to get home.”

“Nothing’s keeping you here, mate.  We can handle the house full of zombies,” said Sean dismissively.

My loyalty to John is keeping me here, Sean.  I don’t know what I did to piss you off, but we need to move.  We’re ten minutes drive from your town.  If you want to stay here all week and loot everything out of every house, that’s fine, but I’m going to grab a truck and find generators.  Surviving in this world means not taking your eyes off the goal,” said Victor, gesturing with his hands.  “You can’t just float along without a care.  You have to make a plan and stick to it.  I’m all for picking up a few things here and there, but this is ridiculous.”

“Alright,” Sean said.  “Next truck we pass, you can take it and go get ya fuckin’ generators.  I’m not passing up an opportunity to gather things that will make our life easier.”

“Fine.  See you back at Hazardville,” said Tookes.

Victor walked away from Sean, who continued loading his truck.  As he walked towards the next house, felt a sudden, small tickle on the back of his head.  As he ran his hand over the sudden itch, he shook his head at the same time.  The amount of bugs here was overwhelming – one of them was bound to be a mosquito.

He opened four different garage doors, never once encountering any undead, before he turned the corner and encountered another set of those unsettling zombie piles.  Just like the first, there were six piles, each with twelve along the bottom row, seventy-two bodies in each corpse-pyramid.  Tookes took a moment to stare at the piles, trying to make sense of it.  There is definitely a pattern, he thought as he walked around and in between the piles.  The corpses on the bottom seemed to be the ones in the best shape.  Those at the top were missing legs or large portions of flesh, while those on the bottom seemed to have all their parts.  In the middle of the piles were a couple missing arms, and several missing part or all of their face.  Every one of them that he could see had the same bite mark on their neck.

Victor, as he often happened when he was alone, was reminded of a movie quote.  “One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, the damn zombie vampires,” he said to no one.

Twelve piles of seventy-two.  ‘All zombies when they died, that’s like nine hundred dead zombies,‘ thought Victor.  ‘What the fuck killed nine hundred zombies?‘

After a few minutes inspecting the piles of corpses, Victor walked towards the garage of the next house.

“Thank God,” Victor said aloud, when he opened the garage door and saw the control panel to a whole house generator next to the electrical panel.  One whole house generator would provide a huge amount of power, and would run on either propane or diesel.  Both fuels would still be in abundance long after the gasoline went bad.  There were three major components to it, the part that interfaced with the house wiring, the part that cut off the power grid so the electricity from the generator didn’t flow out and get lost in the grid, and the generator itself, which was probably mounted outside the garage directly behind the panel.

It took him about forty minutes to cut the panel down.  He cut all the wires, leaving the generator connected to the house panel, so that John could see how to wire it when they got where they were going to put it.

The generator itself was bolted to a concrete pad which quickly proved to be the worst job.  It was tucked back into some bushes.  Everything in this god forsaken desert was covered with spines, prickles, thorns or barbs.  These bushes seemed to be completely armored in all four.  Ultimately he threw a tarp from the garage over the abominable shrub, which only slightly diminished the vexation.

Victor had to search six additional garages to find the right tools to unbolt the generator from it’s foundation.  In the fifth garage was a small volkswagen pickup truck, fully restored to all of its mini-sized, 80’s glory.  Shiny chrome wheels, low profile tires, and a huge stereo system completed the build.  It was perfect for John’s group.  It ran on diesel, and probably got forty miles per gallon of fuel.  The truck had the utility of a bed, and easy wiring and mechanicals.  Vic opened the door and say down in the driver’s seat.  He was thrilled to see that the keys were still in the ignition.  It had to have been at least six months since it had been started and yet the truck started with the first crank of the starter.  As the engine came to life, that itch on the back of his head came back, but it was much stronger than it was previously.  Again, he ran his hand over the spot and realized it was much harder to ignore it this time.  That mosquito must have really dug into his skin and he was left wondering when the last time a mosquito drank the blood of a human that was still alive.  With a slight cringe, Victor decided to not continue that line of thought.

It was almost three in the morning by the time Victor had the whole thing loaded into the truck, and was on the road back towards the compound. Victor was not the least bit tired, still feeling unsettled, driving the mini-truck towards his family.  There was something nagging at the back of his head all night, besides Sean being a prick.  It was a little bit like the hairs on the back of his neck  standing up, except inside his head.  It was like something was pulling him, and the more he concentrated on the feeling, the harder it pulled.

The little truck rolled to a stop, and Victor shifted his eyesight, looking for auras, or lack of.  He was oddly reminded of an old spider man comic book, as if his spider senses were tingling.  The minute he re-opened his eyes, his breath caught in his throat.  He was completely surrounded by what he’d always thought of as negative aura, the type of blackness that surrounded zombies.  His own aura seemed stretched away from his body, as if something was trying to suck the colors off of him.

Reflexively, Tookes solidified the outer edge of his aura, and stepped out of the truck.  He left his hatchet and gun sitting on the seat, but had a fleeting wish that he was half a mile away safely behind Sammie’s scope, watching the goings on.  He made a mental note to go by Fort Hood on the way home and recover his weapons.  They wouldn’t do any good here, whatever this was was more powerful than anything he’d ever encountered.

He knew there was no sense in ignoring this, just like he knew that it had waited until he was alone to make it’s presence known.

“The theatrics aren’t necessary,” Victor said. “Show yourself.”

Apocalypse, Fiction, Novel, Super hero

5.04 Water

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“Let’s head out of here, James. Shut the door,” said Victor. “It would be a waste of ammunition to shoot them all.” Victor was fighting the urge to open fire. He knew they didn’t have much in the way of ammunition, but these things, these particular zombies were an affront to him. It felt like a personal insult, and it worked. He was angry.

James paused for a second after closing the door, and then asked, “What do you think that note meant?”

“It’s kind of a long story. It’s a crazy cult,” Victor said, waving his hand dismissively.

“Mate, the note had ya name on it,” said James, stepping forward towards Victor. “How do you explain that?”

Victor took a deep breath, obviously annoyed at the insinuation. “Alright, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version. A while ago, my son was kidnapped. He escaped his original kidnappers on his own, but another group of survivors found him. Max has some…unique talents. For one, he can make the zombies follow his orders. He can also kill all the E’Clei in them. Somewhere along the way, that second set of kidnappers decided Max was Christ reborn, and it started a whole cult. When we rescued Max, apparently I became the devil.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Jame’s hands went up and he shook his head. “You’re saying Max can kill zombies? By lookin’ at ’em? What the fuck are we doing then? If the boy can kill them all, why the blue fuck are we going house to house?”

“Do not raise your voice to me,” said Victor. He was an inch shorter than the Australian, but he brought himself to his full height and looked James straight in the eye. “Because I won’t send a four year old boy into a house full of zombies,” Victor said firmly. “I won’t endanger a child, any child. Our job, our only purpose is to provide them with love, safety, security, and knowledge.”

James looked furious. He turned on his heel and strode out of the house, followed quickly by Victor. Out on the lawn, James turned to face Victor again. “You know, Sean said you were a fuckin’ drongo, but I had no idea you were risking everyone’s life for nothing.”

Tookes already felt himself standing on edge; this man he just met was getting close to pushing him over that edge. “Nothing? It’s not nothing. It’s my son. There’s no way of knowing what using these abilities does to us,” he said, gesturing with his hands. “There’s no way of knowing what the super zombies are capable of.” Vic paused and lowered his voice. “He’s four years old, James. If he were sixteen, it would be a little different.”

“It’s no different. We have to use every weapon at our disposal,” James said.

“My son is not a weapon. He’s a little boy.” Victor was overcome with anger. He was angry at the insinuation that he was holding something back, and he was angry that these kidnappers of his child were spreading their lies this far across the country. Without warning, he shot his fist upward into James’s jaw. “He’s MY son. I will be the one to decide,” Victor yelled, throwing a left across the stunned Aussie’s face. Victor followed with a third punch, straight with his right arm into James’ nose. The bigger man went down on his back, blood running down his face.

James lept up off the ground. Victor watched a punch to the abdomen form, the only option James considered. Victor stepped back and to the side, dodging the punch, and snapped a low front-kick, knocking the wind out of his opponent.
James aura solidified around him, and he stepped towards Victor. He was wary this time, considering his options as he said “You’re fuckin’ crazy.” He settled on a feint with his left hand, and a strong kick towards Victor’s thigh. Tookes completely ignored the punch, knowing it was just intended to distract. Instead, he raised his foot and kicked James other leg out from under him.

“Stay down, James,” said Victor.

James jumped up again and lunged at Tookes, wrapping him in a bear hug. Tookes expanded his aura outward, enveloping James, and then parted the bubble, pushing the man off of him, leaving James stuck inside the shield Victor had learned from Lightfoot’s men.

“You can’t win this, James. I’m stronger than you.”

John and Sean were standing a couple feet behind Victor. Sean spoke first, “Easy James. This is over.”

“He fuckin’ sucker punched me,” said James, his voice muted by the shield around him. The sharp glare he was carrying never left as he wiped a hand across his nose.

“Tookes, You have him in one of those shields we were in?”

“Yea, John.”

“What’s this all about,” asked Sean.

Victor repeated the story of Max’s kidnapping, and of the note inside the door to the house, and then added James’ insistence that he put Max in harm’s way, just to make this easier.

“James, no one’s gonna put their kids at risk here. Without the kids, what do we have?” asked John.  “Tookes, please let him out.

Victor paused for a second and then released the shield holding James in place.

“There’s a note on the door, John. From a Maxist,” said Victor. “They said they intentionally infected themselves thinking Max would save them, instead of leaving to go find food and water.”

“Fuckin’ lazy Americans. Waiting on someone to save them, rather than saving themselves,” said Sean.

Victor cocked an eyebrow at Sean and said, “Really?”

“You’re nothing like normal, Mate. I reckon’ that’s why John hasn’t shot you yet,” he replied. Sean quickly changed the subject before Vic could respond. “ Can Max do that? Can he turn someone back?”

“When he was kidnapped, he took over a zombie. Before Steve died–”

“Who the hell is that?” Sean interrupted.

“The zombie Max took over,” he replied, losing patience. “Anyway, Max wanted me to build him a house because, he said, “zombies are people too.” If he could have turned him back, he would have.”

James spoke up then, “Maybe he didn’t think of it,” the man looked to his Australian friend and said, “I think we should ask him.”

Victor shook his head and said, “No. In fact, none of the children should know about this. I think we should knock the house down and burn it.” The sudden appearance of the Maxists created an odd resurgence of emotion and Tookes didn’t like it. The one thing he’d been sure of was his ability to keep Max safe, but this cult had shaken that belief. Even the suggestion of putting his son, his little boy, all he had left in the world, into the middle of his mess had been enough to coax him to violence. He wouldn’t even entertain the idea of including Max in this so he decided right then that he would ignore any further suggestion about involving his son.

“Flaming zombies? Do you think it’s a good idea to have flaming zombies walking around? They’d catch everything on fire,” said John.

“They’re all contained in the basement. The stairs have been removed. If we’re careful, we can collapse the house in on itself,” said Victor.

“We’d need a fire truck full of water,” said John.

“You’re going to need that anyway if you’re going to make a life here, John. We need to get ya well working. Jo and Renee went to have a go at that. Let’s go see what they found,” said Sean.

Renee showed them the well and the pumps. As they figured, the wooden water cistern was empty, the townspeople had drained it before turning themselves into zombies.

They talked about what they’d need, and how to start the plan. Ultimately, it was decided that Vic and Sean would go get generators and fuel.

About twenty minutes later, the two men entered Yuma in Sean’s truck. The drive to Yuma was largely through barren desert, nothing but sand dunes as far as they could see on either side of the highway. It wasn’t until they got to the outskirts of town that the first bushes and shrubs started to appear. The houses along the road were all southwestern in style, ranging from small adobo ranch houses to large spanish influenced two stories. Every house, no matter how small had a swimming pool, and there wasn’t a blade of grass anywhere within two hundred miles. Yards were landscaped with stone, the occasional Yucca tree or Saguaro cactus. Yuma wasn’t a ghost town, but it wasn’t a booming city either. The cars on the side of the road were average sedans, this had been a town full of working people.

Victor remembered from history classes in school that Yuma was a railroad town. From the coast of California, it was the last stop before the full desert, and from the east it was the first stop after a long, hot trip through the arid plains of Arizona and west Texas. There were train tracks everywhere, and huge metal warehouses dotted the landscape.

Victor led them to the a Sears store. The front doors were ripped from their hinges, shattered and bent in the parking lot. The two men decided to check it out anyway. Inside, the place was completely wrecked. Most of the hand tools were gone, although Sean did manage to put a couple tool bags together. All the battery operated tools were gone, and there were no generators. In the back of the store, there were three badly decomposed men in sears uniforms laying dead on the floor, black dried blood surrounding them. The two men returned to the truck with the few things of value they found and pulled out of the lot.

“Where to next?”

“I have no idea, I’ve never been here before, I saw the Sears sign while we were heading to the airport,” said Victor. “I guess we should try to find a phone book. Keep an eye out for a pay phone.”

“You reckon’ the hospital would have a gennie? In Townsville, the hospital always had a couple of trailer mounted units in case the power went out.”

“Usually here in US they’re built as part of the hospital, on huge concrete pads. We can take a look though,” said Victor.

“What about schools?”

“Same thing.”

Sean drove along in silence for a few minutes. “I can’t imagine being able to go this far in a city in Oz and not see one of them walkers. Where’d they all go?”

Victor had been wondering the same thing. There were some stragglers at the airport when they left, and this was a pretty sizable city.

“Maybe they went to the airport? That plane was loud. That may have drawn them all out to the edge of town.

“Hey, over there. What ya think about a vet’s office?”

“That might work, at worst we might be able to pick up some medications and other supplies.”

Inside the vet’s office, they found the first of the three generators they needed, plus they were able to find a huge haul of medications and other first aid supplies. Sean grabbed several drawers full of surgical tools, and all the saline bags in the office. In just under an hour, they had the truck loaded and were back on the road.

“I think we’re going to have to go house to house,” said Victor as Sean pulled the truck out onto the main road through Yuma. “Somewhere in this town a group of people survived, or is surviving. I’m worried that they’ve hit all the stores in town. That’s going to cause a little trouble for you guys, if you’re staying that close to town.”

Sean turned left off the main road, down a residential street, to start the house-to-house search. As he pulled the truck into the driveway of the first house, the two men looked at each other.

Victor spoke first, “Have you ever seen that?” he asked pointing to stacks of corpses. Sean backed the truck up a little bit, and turned the wheel. As he did, the headlights lit up six piles of bodies, each perfectly stacked.

Victor jumped out of the truck and walked over to the first pile, his gun in one hand and hatchet in the other. Each pile had twelve corpses face down along the bottom, then eleven in the next row, then ten, all the way up to just one body on the top, forming a perfect pyramid. The corpses were clearly zombies before they died, bits of rotten flesh were torn off and blackened from time and the elements. Each corpse had a fresh looking bite mark right at the base of the neck.

“What the fuck is this? Why would someone take the time to stack them? And what the fuck bites a zombie?”

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Apocalypse, Book, Fiction, Horror, Horror Fiction, Novel, Post Apocalypse, Super hero, Zombie, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Book, Zombie Story

5.03 Departure

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The runway was like the ending scene out of a movie. There were hugs and handshakes all around. Introductions were made, and Victor was finally able to put faces to all the names he’d been hearing for six months.

The last to approach Tookes was Sean, John’s twin brother. He had a huge grin on his face as he walked up, so Victor was surprised when shadows shot out from him. One of them solidified and developed into a right cross aimed at Vic’s jaw. Reflexively, Victor ducked his head, taking the punch right where his hairline met his forehead.

Sean jumped back shaking his hand, “Ahhh, ya fuckin hard-headed Drongo! I think ya broke my hand!”

“I knew you Aussies were a rowdy bunch,” said Victor. “But that was out of line. What the hell did I do to deserve that?”

“All that screaming you do! My head is still vibrating from that last one out at the army base,” he said, gesturing with his hands. “I’ve had to listen to you blasting my inner ear drums out for the last six months. You need to learn to control ya volume, mate.”

Tookes laughed. “To steal a phrase from your brother, I have a teaspoonful of concrete in my pocket. Swallow that with a cup of water – it’ll harden you right up,” Victor said with a grin. He stuck out his hand. Sean looked at him thoughtfully and then smiled again, gratefully accepting the handshake.

“John, lets put you and your whole family in one van, and we’ll all pile up in the other,” Tookes said to his friend. “We’re going to need to find a third vehicle and fuel up. We should get moving; the plane made a lot of noise and I’d like to be out of here before things get ugly again.”

The group crowded into any available spot in the vehicles, and the two overloaded vans took off towards the city of Yuma to find new transportation. Just inside the city limits, they pulled into a Chevrolet dealership. There were a handful of wandering zombies, which were easily dispatched.

John picked a white Silverado four-door pickup. James picked the same truck in tan. Victor and Marshall both picked Eco-Boost enabled suburbans. They were the newest model that could turn off up to four of the eight cylinders and, according to the stickers on the windows, got up to thirty miles per gallon on the highway. Behind the shop, they found the dealerships gas pumps and filled all four vehicles, plus the gas cans they had in the vans. Marshall transferred all the food and gear into the various new vehicles. Victor looked up to see John coming towards him. John’s face was troubled.

“Tookes, can I chat at ya for a minute, mate?”

“Sure John,” said Victor, knowing what was coming. It seemed like he had just had this same conversation with Kris not too long ago. Was everyone going to leave? He extended his hand and said, “Walk with me.”

The two men walked a short way away. As they walked, John absently rolled a cigarette, clearly uncomfortable with the entire situation. Victor didn’t want this to be harder on his friend than it had to be, so he spoke first.

“I assume from your choice of gas guzzling trucks, you’re not making the trip all the way back to the train.”

“Yeah, mate. Jo’s adamant. She says you’re gonna get me killed.” John paused for a moment, took a deep breath and said, “And, she’s right.” As he spoke, Vic fought back the flinch that was forming on his face. “I have my family to look out for now. Plus, you’ve won, mate,” John said. He was speaking with his hands now. “Laura’s dead. We haven’t seen fuck-all for zombies in the last eight hundred miles. It’s over, Tookes. It’s time to start living.” The Aussie paused and looked closely at his American friend. His voice dramatically softened as he continued, “You always said you were working to create a safe place for Max and we’ve done that. Good people died along the way, but we made this place safe. I met you on the side of the road, and followed you through the depths of hell.” He paused again before turning to fully face Tookes. “Go home Victor, it’s safe.”

“She’s not dead, John. This isn’t over, all it takes is one zombie and all this shit starts back up again,” said Victor sadly. “But I won’t stand in the way of your family. Blood comes first. Besides, Leo’s dead and I’m crazy. Your family needs you now.”

“You know if you ever need anything, just speak. I’ll have Nori taxi me wherever you are,” John said, putting his hand on Vic’s shoulder.

“John, I think of you like a brother. We’ll help you clear out a spot,” Tookes stated. “Do you have any idea where you want to go?”

“We passed a neighborhood right off the highway about thirty miles east of here. I checked it out when we drove by and it looks like a good spot,” he said. “It has a huge cliff on two sides, and the highway barricade on the third. All we’d have to do is close off the road leading in and it’ll be tighter than a platypus’ clacker.”

“What are you gonna do about water?”

“We’ll get it worked out. We’re Bushies,” he replied with a smile.

“Alright, man,” Victor nodded, “We’ll help you clear it out.”

John looked relieved, and Victor looked haggard. His team was falling apart, and there was nothing he could do about it. Leo left, and was now dead. Kris left and had a new life with Alicia in Tennessee. John was leaving. Thoughts and memories of the times they’d all spent together welled up and were quickly stuffed in the box – the box where he stored all his emotions to be dealt with later. And although he desperately tried to ignore it, “later” seemed to be creeping up on him much faster than he had anticipated.

It was a short trip to the little village John was talking about. Victor was filled with a sense of dread about the place, but chalked it up to John and his family leaving. They paired off to clear the houses. Each of the Americans had a lot more experience with this particular task, so each team had one American and one Australian. Victor paired with James, Marshall with Nori, and John with Sean.

Renee and Reggie led the rest of the crew and the children to find the local water source. The town was really just a flat spot at the bottom of a huge sandstone cliff. Thirty two houses, a general store, and a gas station made up the village. The highway ran along the south side. It was raised about ten feet high, with an impossibly steep hill and a guard rail at the top. On the north and west side, there was a sheer cliff that rose hundreds of feet in the air. The area was only accessible from the east from a small, two lane road. The narrowest part of the road was just over one hundred feet from the road to the cliff. Against the short western cliff face was the town’s water tower, just atop a wellhead.

“Jo, let’s head into the store there and see if we can find some supplies, and something for the kids to do,” said Renee.

“Are you sure? They haven’t cleared it yet,” said Jo.

“It’ll be fine, I have a few tricks of my own,” said Renee with a wink. “Would you mind watching Max, Maya, and Holly for a few minutes?” Jo nodded. Renee made herself invisible before continuing, “Zombies can’t see me either. I can scout the store, but it’s likely empty or we would have heard something by now. The kids aren’t being exactly quiet.”

“Okay, but if you hear me scream, come quickly,” Jo said.

“I wouldn’t go if I thought there was any danger,” she said. Renee began to climb the stairs and called over her shoulder. “I’ll be right back. I’m just going to look.”

She opened the door to the hardware store, and saw a very good sign. The shelves weren’t bare, and there was no sign that the place had been looted. It only struck her as odd for a single moment before she remembered how small the town really was. There was a high probability that the entire town either turned or had fled before raiding the stores. The parasites had spread so fast that most people didn’t have time to react or even realize what was happening being it was too late. Renee searched the store quickly; there wasn’t anything living or undead inside. Renee grabbed a couple of large styrofoam airplanes from the small section of toys and took them outside.

Renee reappeared infront of Jo and said, “Nothing in there. But I brought some toys.”

All of the children heard that magic word and ran over to them. Renee laughed as the planes were taken out of her hands and began soaring through the air. Jo was standing there watching the children play with a smile on her face. Max was talking to John’s older son and the girls were running around looking carefree and happy. The children were their hope for a future and so far, that hope was still going strong.

“We can find a generator to run the pump for a little while, but eventually you’re going to need to put a windmill up on top of that cliff to run your well pump,” said Renee.

“John knows all that. He can fix it up.” Jo paused and looked around. She had a sad smile on her face as she added, “This is going to be a good place for us. It has to be.”

“I wish you’d come back east with us,” said Renee. “It’s much easier living out there.”

“For you, maybe,” Jo replied. “This is what we know, and this is what we love. We came all the way here and I want the kids to be in familiar territory.” She crossed her arms over her chest now and looked down. “Our whole life was there. Everything we loved and all of that is gone now. We need something that’s at least…somewhat familiar. Besides,” she looked over to Renee with a small smile and said, “John says out at Victor’s place he feels like he’s going to drown with all the humidity.”

The two women looked up at the sudden sound of three shots that exploded in quick succession. Down the street, Marshall and James were standing near three dead zombies. Marshall yelled something they couldn’t hear, and John waved his hand out of the second story window of a house.

Victor and James worked well together. After the second house, James had the routine down pat and Victor let him take the lead on the third. James stood in front of the door and knocked hard. The two men stood silently and listened for any sign of movement. Victor backed up a step to try and catch a glimpse of anything inside the porch window, but everything seemed clear. Victor nodded to him, and James opened the door. The two men instantly knew something was wrong. The second James opened the door, the stench hit both men like a brick to the face.

“There’s gotta be a bunch inside,” said Victor, suppressing a gag. He had pulled his shirt up over his nose. “I’ve never smelled anything that strong. Keep your wits about you.”

“I know that smell,” said James. “I smelt it in a petrol station. Musta had forty zeds in it.”

The two men waded into the house, warily checking every corner, doorway, closet, and kitchen. When they finally opened the door to the basement, they found what must have been the entire population of the town milling about. Taped to the door was a note:

The situation is dire
We have no food. We lost water when the power went out.
It has been six days without water and we are dying.
We are desperate. The only way we can preserve our bodies and return to Your service is to infect ourselves.
When Max arrives, He will save us, smiting the evil from our bodies and returning us to glory
We will spend the rest of our lives spreading the word of Max.
I have sealed these people in this basement with one of the minions of the Evil Father Victor Tookes, so that they may be preserved until The Savior arrives, and moved on to spread the Gospel.

In the service of Max, Nathaniel Rotelle.

“Oh shit,” said Victor, frozen in his tracks.

Apocalypse, Fiction, Horror, Horror Fiction, Zombie

5.02 Gander Acres part 2

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Kris only heard the tail-end of a conversation as she was coming up the stairs.  “Markus, I know you think you can do this.  But I swear to God, you’ll be more of a pain in the ass than an asset.  You can hardly walk for pete’s sake.”

“Alicia, come on.  I can do this.”

“Bull shit.  You’re sitting this one out and that’s the last I’m going to say about it.”

“Jesus Christ, Alicia.  I’m–”

“Markus, stop being a prick and just listen to me for once in your life!”

As Kris peered around the corner, the brother and sister were standing across from each other.  Even though Markus now stood a foot and a half taller than Alicia, she did not back down.  Having been a US Marshall, she was used to making herself appear to be the largest person in the room.  Although it was almost comical to watch the big man versus the petite woman, there was no doubt who would win this argument.  The two of them continued to yell at each other.  Alicia’s hand gestures were getting increasingly more and more dramatic and Kris knew she had to interject.

“She’s right, Markus,” Kris said from the doorway.  “I know you think you can help but for fuck’s sake, please listen to her.  We don’t have time for this.  You’re staying, even if I have to hold you here.”

“Hold me?” He said, walking over to her.  “Have you seen me?”

“Yeah, I have,” she replied, placing a hand on his upper arm, “But I can still lock your stubborn ass down.”

Markus started to laugh but before he got the chance, Alicia disappeared and then reappeared behind her brother.  She placed her hand on Markus as well and in a swirl of chilly darkness, Alicia transported the three of them out of the house and to the opposite side of the farm.  She was only there long enough to drop Kris and Markus off before disappearing again.

Alicia had dropped them off one of the spring houses on the property.  She had chosen the one that was farther away from the house and the battle.  The stones had all been hand-laid by Riley’s grandfather decades ago and even so, the small building was in excellent condition.  Of the three spring houses on the property, this one was the least used.    There was no furniture inside the single-room, save a couple of sections of an old tree trunk that were roughly the right height for sitting on.  The spring bubbled up through the stone floor, creating a small pond right in the middle, before flowing out a channel built into the middle of the floor.  The air inside the small building was almost chilly and Kris wrapped her arms around her body and sat down on one of the small retaining walls.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Markus said throwing his head back.  He sighed heavily and began limping over to the doorway of the little house.  “I’m going to fight.”

“No, you’re not,” Kris said.  She tilted her head to the side and threw her dome across the floor and over to the door.  She pulled it taut across the opening, making sure to seal the edges.  He tried to take another step, and ran into the dome.

Markus drew his fist back and slammed it into the shield.  Kris felt her brain vibrate with the force of the blow.  He pounded on the shield over and over, lighting Kris’s brain on fire.  She wasn’t about to let him win, no matter how strong he was.

She sealed the dome to the floor, and whispered as softly as she could, “Keep on goin’, big man.  I’ll be here all day.” She trailed off and watched Markus closely.  He was hell bent on getting out.  He hated not being next to his sister, especially now that an attack was imminent.  Knowing the land as well as he did would have been a huge asset and Markus refused to believe that he would have been nothing but a help to his sister.  And now that she had gotten her way without a fair fight, he was angry.

Markus continued to beat on the inside of the shield for a full thirty seconds while Kris’s message bounced around, reverberating and gaining volume.  She had separated the dome for only a moment to create a second barrier around her own ears; she knew how loud it would get.

The strength of the sound continued to grow and as it did, Markus’s speed dramatically slowed down.  The large man shook his head, trying to ignore the pressure building inside his ears.  Before long, he brought his hands up to cover his ears and he was grimacing in pain.  Markus slowly sank to his knees, resigning himself to his fate. “Stop,” he muttered.  He took a breath and then yelled, “Kris, stop!”

As the words exploded from his mouth, Kris collapsed the dome.  In a second, she snuffed out all of the sound that was reverberating inside the small house.  Moments later, the soft sounds of the woods and the gentle trickle of the spring filtered back into the air.  Kris’s eyes never left Markus but she continued to maintain a look of neutral indifference.  The man stayed on his knees and sighed again.  Glancing over his shoulder, he met Kris’s gaze.

“You weren’t kidding,” he said simply.

Kris shook her head. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Alicia was telling me about what happened in Atlanta.  Is that what…” his voice trailed off.  Markus didn’t need to finish his thought – Kris already knew what he was going to say.

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Fuck me,” he muttered with a look of slight bewilderment on his face.  He pushed himself up off of the floor and as he stood, a grimace of pain flickered across his face. “Man, just trying to get the hell outta here wiped me out.  Maybe Alicia was right.”  He looked over to Kris and smiled weakly.  “But don’t tell her I said that.”

Kris laughed and said, “We’ll keep it between you and me.”  She patted the stones next to her and said, “Come on.  Sit next to me.  Alicia would kill both our asses if something else happened to you.”

“You have no idea,” he replied with a laugh.

____________________________________

Martin and Neil took off on the two tractors heading towards the oncoming horde of zombies.  When the they were about twenty feet away, Martin slowed dramatically and turned left.  At the same time, Neil sped up, pushing his tractor to its maximum speed.  The wire caught the outer edge of the zombies at waist height, and dragged them inward.  Neil arced around the walking dead, and then rocketed down through the middle, closing the loop.  He slowed down to match Martin’s speed as the two tractors dragged a hundred zombies towards one of the pits Joey had dug.

“It’s not gonna hold ‘em all,” yelled Martin over the sound of the two tractors.

“It’ll hold em’,” yelled Neil.  “It has to.  We can gather up the stragglers later.”

The two men dragged their haul of zombies into a pit where they separated the tractors and raked them in with the line.  Martin circled around and reset beside Neil, and the two of them started over.

“This time you take the outside.  You’re gonna have to gun the hell outta that tractor to keep up.”

“I know how this works, Neil,” said Martin.  “Joey!  Watch your ass; there’s a few stragglers.”

Joey hefted a spear over his head, and charged one of the few zombies that managed to avoid being dragged into the pit.

“I got ‘em Mart,” he yelled.

The two tractors rocketed off, repeating the same maneuver and dragged the rest of the horde into the pit.  When they were done, the two men parked their tractors and walked over towards where Joey was spearing zombies.

“It’s like fishin’ in a barrel, Neil,” Joey exclaimed with a broad smile on his face.

Neil patted Joey gently on his shoulder and then said.  “It was too easy.” He looked to Martin now.  “Did that feel right to you? There’s gotta be somethin’ else going on here,” said Neil as he speared a zombie through the top of the skull.  Something off to his left caught his attention.  It was pitch black now and a small sliver of moon barely lit the landscape.  On the ridge, silhouetted against the thin moonlight, were two lumps that shouldn’t be there.

“Joey, there’s two on the ridge watching us,” Neil said after several minutes of watching them.  “They’re not doing anything, they’re just laying there.  One of ‘em just moved his head, otherwise I mighta missed ‘em.” The older man pushed the brim of his baseball hat up off of his forehead, deep in thought. “Whaddya think they’re up to?”

“Looks like they’re fixin’ to start somethin.  No way to know.”  The younger man shrugged.  “Weren’t no other zombies anywhere ‘round when I was scoutin’.  We got em all, Neil.”  Joey pointed behind the older man.  “Watch behind ya.  One comin’ up.”

Neil spun.  With a grunt, he speared the zombie through the face, then put his foot on its chest to pull the spear out.  He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was way too easy.  Were the two smart ones sizing them up?

Alicia spoke from behind Neil.  “Is it just the two of them?”

Neil jumped in surprise.  “Holy shit.. err… crap, Alicia.  When did you get back?” Neil asked quietly.  “Sorry ‘bout my language.  And yea, just two of ‘em.”

He heard her chuckle softly, but she didn’t reappear. “No problem Neil.  You guys handle these.  You’re doing an awesome job,” she put her hand on Neil’s shoulder.  It was like a ghost was touching him.  “I’ll go take care of the two supers.”

Neil heard Alicia’s holster click, and then her heard her work the slide, chambering a round.

“Alicia, I gotta tell ya.  This whole “invisible” thing is weird,” said Neil spearing another zombie in the hole.

“Sorry, Neil.  I don’t want them to know I’m coming.  You three be safe,” she said.  She lifted her hand from his shoulder and left the three men.

Alicia ran up the hill as fast as she could, cloaked in her invisibility.  She knew nothing could see her.  ‘Other than Kris,’ she thought to herself.  Kris was such a mystery to her but on the other hand, she’d never known someone so well.  Their minds had been merged not once, but twice.  Kris’s mind was elegant, if slightly disorganized.  She was the most beautiful person Alicia had ever known.  Ever since she was 16, Alicia had openly acknowledged that she was attracted to women but there was something about Kris that was different.  It was more than just a physical attraction; she adored what she saw in her heart.  But then again, the way she bit her bottom lip was so…  ‘Snap out of it Gander.  Focus on the job,’ she thought to herself.

The lone woman reached the top of the ridge, where she paused for a second.  Two zombies were laying prone, watching the three men by the pit work.  She raised her gun and drew a bead on the first one.  She let out a slow breath as she squeezed the trigger.  Between the time she started to exhale and the time she squeezed the trigger, both zombies were on her with their hands at her throat.

“Shit,” croaked Alicia.  The blonde to her right was her first target.  She kicked him in the leg, then squirmed sideways and dropped to the ground.  She helicoptered her legs, spinning on her back so fast her legs were a blur, in an attempt to sweep their legs out from under them.  Both zombies leapt high into the air, dodging her kicks.  They landed squarely on their feet as Alicia threw her legs upward and flipped herself onto her toes.  She extended her arm, and pointed at the dark haired one.  “You’re done.”

Alicia sized them both up.  They had some skill, but she’d been top of her class in hand to hand combat, and her Krav Maga was better than the academy instructors.  They were faster than she was, but she’d fought faster.  The way she saw it, she just had to wait and bait them a little.

The woman decided to play with them a little bit.  She grinned and asked, “You just gonna stand there?”

In perfect unison, the two of them split and circled around her.  They came from both sides at once.  The two men moved so fast that they were a blur.  She dropped to her knees and brought her fists upwards, catching both zombies in the groin.  ‘Stupid,’ she thought to herself.  ‘They have no use for those.’

The two zombies brought their knees together, smashing Alicia’s head between them.  The force of the blow made the woman see stars.  Out of reflex, she wrapped her arms around their legs, and somersaulted backwards.  As she moved, she twisted their legs and brought the two of them to the ground with her.  She released one, rolled over sideways and scrunched her body up, breaking the leg she had in her hands.  “That’ll slow you down,” she said, bringing her heal up to smash it into his face.  As she did, she drew the KA-BAR knife from the small of her back.  As she knew he would, the second zombie caught her heel.  The moment she felt that pressure on her foot, she lunged forward and drove the knife into its nose.

The zombie with the broken leg screamed “No!” as she did, but it was too late.  The blade penetrated the soft bones of the first zombie’s face, into the brain.  The blonde zombie fell, dead, and Alicia jumped to her feet.  She’d twisted the dark haired zombie’s leg up pretty well; he was a little slower getting to his feet.  She wasted no time and drove her knife into his shoulder, severing the ligament that controlled the arm.

Alicia stepped back to catch her breath, knowing he was using the time to repair his leg and shoulder, but she needed a second to get her head.  He was enraged, and had to be worried about how this fight was going to end.  In less time than Alicia expected, he lunged forward, driving a huge fist into her nose.  At the same time, he simultaneously kicked the inside of her thigh with the leg that had just been broken.  He wasted no time, spinning and driving his foot solidly into her chest, knocking the wind out of her.

Alicia rolled over backwards and got to her feet, slightly dazed.  The zombie closed the distance, launching another punch towards her already broken nose.  Through the blood in her eye, she managed to bring her knife upward at the last second, driving the knife point-up through his arm at the base of his elbow.  The knife-thrust stopped most of the energy of the punch, but he still connected with her nose, causing a fresh geyser of blood.

The zombie pulled his arm back, splitting it wide open.  When the blade hit his wrist, Alicia twisted the blade, dislocating all the tiny bones in his wrist.  “Heal that, fucker,” she said as she reached around grabbing his shredded arm.  She stuck her fingers inside the slice she’d just created, wrapped them around his radius bone and yanked it fully out of his arm.  Without missing a beat, she used drove his arm bone into his eye socket and left him wobbling on his feet, dead again.  It was a full second before the corpse hit the ground.

Apocalypse, Fiction, Horror, Zombie

4.07 Injection

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“Uncle Marshall,” said Max.  “Daddy says there’s a shot in that fort that you have to go get. ”

‘What kind of shot?” Asked Marshall.

“One that kills bugs.  Only it doesn’t work unless the bugs want to take it into themselves.  They can just ignore it.”  Max said, looking slightly skeptical.

Victor Sr asked, “Vic wants us go into that place for a shot that doesn’t work?”

“Yes, Poppy.  He knows about it though, he thinks he can still make it work.  It’s the same shot that made my bugs sick.”

“What bugs?” Asked Max’s grandfather.

“When I got bit at school, I got bugs.  They made me sick at first, but now they’re my friends.  They live in here,” said Max, pointing to his head.  “They tell me things.  Like right now they’re telling me that you don’t believe me.”

Victor thought about Max’s statement.  It was a big insight for a four year old to make.  Max had always been an exceptionally bright child, but would he pick up on body language this early? “It isn’t that I don’t believe you, Max.” Said Victor.  “But how could it be?  How come you aren’t one of them?”

“They say I’m different.  Daddy thinks that’s why Mr. Frye wanted to take me,  and why the zombies want me.”

Marshall was still worried about whatever was in that fort.  Whatever had been in the area that smashed those cars was bigger and stronger than he was.  “Did he say where it was in there?”

“Nope.  Just that it was in there.  I think you should take Mr. Shelton with you, Uncle Marshall,” said Max.

“Why Mr. Shelton, Max?”

“He’s been there before, when he became an army man.”

“Okay.  How did you know that, Max?” Asked his grandfather.

“The bugs told me.”

“Dad, we’ve all learned not to ask.  True or not, the fact is that Max is always right.  We should listen to him.”

“I’m going in there too.  You need someone to watch your back,” said Victor.  “I’ve been watching it for forty years.”

“I need you to stay with Max, Pop.  He’s way more important than you or me or Victor.  Everyone on this train would give their life for him.  If something goes wrong in there, I need you to keep Max safe.  I need you to get this train out of here and get him to Vic.”

Again Victor was unhappy with the response, but he saw the wisdom of Marshall’s thinking.  If Shelton was a military man, and if Max was right that he’d done his basic training here, then he was the man for the job.  “Come on, Max!  Let’s go read a book,” said Victor.

“Yay!” Exclaimed Max, following his grandfather out of the room.

Marshall headed the opposite direction, towards the locomotive.  When he stepped out of the dining car onto the locomotive platform, he saw the first zombie he’d seen in days.  He was standing in the back yard of a small run-down looking house, wearing a faded red tee shirt and a pair of brown cargo shorts.  The creature looked up as the train passed and started walking towards the tracks.  It hit a chain link fence, and continued to try to walk.  Marshall wondered how long he would continue to try to walk through the fence after the train was out of ear shot.

The big man stepped into the locomotive with Corbin Shelton, their military tactician, and told him about the shot, leaving out the part about it not being effective.

“It makes sense that they’d have something like that there.  Fort McPherson was a research base.  I spent some time there before I was deployed.  When I was there they were researching nerve-agent darts that could be fired out of a regular rifle.  We were looking for a way to put enemy combatants down without killing them, and without doing permanent damage.  They were working on a chemical agent that even a small scrape could put a man to sleep for two days.”

“Sounds like some potent stuff.  I wonder if that’s the stuff Vic was talking about.  In any case, we gotta go in there and find it.  Since you’ve been inside the labs, I’ll need your help finding what we’re looking for.”

Shelton looked startled.  Marshall didn’t think he was going to back down from the challenge, but the look of fear that briefly crossed Shelton’s face before being tucked away was an alarm for Marshall.

“They did a lot of other stuff in there too,” said Shelton.  “Rumor around the barracks was that they were trying to make a real life Captain America.  They were trying to genetically alter a human to be bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter than a normal person.  It was just a rumor, you know how people always have something to talk about.”

Shelton eased the throttle off on the train, and applied the brakes.  Victor had put post-it notes all over the cockpit labeling everything.  It made the train very easy to operate, in the limited capacity that they needed.  They were only hauling a handful of cars, as opposed to the two-million pounds the train was designed to carry.

“We should be pretty close to the fort now.  Stop the train, lets gear up and get this over with.  We’ll have time to discuss more details while we walk to the base.  The gates and doors have been open for a long time.  There’s a chance we’ll be able to walk in and out.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Shelton looking doubtful as he stepped out onto the ledge around the locomotive.  “I’ll grab my kit and meet you in five minutes.”

Marshall stood in the locomotive and pondered Shelton’s reaction.  He drove this train into a huge horde of zombies without a second’s hesitation.  But something in that military base was making him fearful.    Eventually he shook it off, I’m probably just overreacting, he thought to himself as he headed down the train to gather his own weapons.

When he was fully geared up, he found John sitting in the dining car over a hot cup of coffee.  John was staring intently into his cup.  “We’re not going to make it to my family in time, Marshall,” he said.  “Tookes has gone off on walkabout, Leo’s gone, we’re stopped again, and we’re not even a whole day’s travel from where we started.”

“I know it’s tough John.  Vic hasn’t ever let us down.  He hasn’t ever led us astray.  He’ll get you to your family,” replied Marshall.  “Shelton and I are going to run into the fort.  Max said I should take Shelton over you, I’m not sure why, but I’ve learned to rely on what the little man says.”

“Alright.  I’ll stay here and play wet nurse again.  But when Tookes gets back we’re going to have a talk.  Another talk.  My family is the reason we’re on this trip, they have to be the priority.  If they crash that bird and we’re not there to catch them its not going to be good.”

“Getting to your family is my priority John.  I know it’s Vic’s as well.  We’ll get there in time,” said Marshall as he paused at the door to the next car.  “I’ll be back in a couple of hours and we’ll be back on schedule.”

John returned to starting into his cup of coffee, thinking about seeing his wife and children after so long.

Marshall and Shelton met on the ground at the base of the locomotive, and without a word between them set off south towards the base and whatever mystery syringe Victor was looking for.  Marshall hadn’t ever doubted his brother.  One of their father’s favorite sayings was ‘Never tell them everything you know’.  Victor had always taken that to heart, he was not known for being forthright with all the info, ever.   His little brother had done pretty well by all of them, and Marshall knew he had his reasons, that was enough for him.

The two men were less than a block from the train when they came up on a pair of zombies.  “So much for having killed them all in the park,” said Shelton quietly.

Marshall pulled a hammer out of its clips on the back of his leather vest and motioned for Shelton to stay back.   He whistled a low note to get their attention and right on queue the two zombies started walking towards him.  The one on the left had been a female, about middle aged.  Not bad looking, thought Marshall as he swung his hammer over his head in a big circle.  Marshall was easily a foot and a half taller than this corpse.  The hammer hit the bottom of its arc, and caught her in the side of the jaw on the upswing.  The  arc ripped her skull from her neck, launching it forty-five degrees into the air and spraying zombie number two with gore.   Marshall continued the circle, bringing the hammer up and around in one smooth motion, and did almost the same to the second zombie.  The second circle was much flatter, and just scalped the man-zombie, smashing its skull in and flipping the zombie over onto its side.

There were three distinct almost simultaneous splats.  The woman’s head hit the brick wall across the street, the rest of her corpse slopped to the ground, and the male zombie impacted the asphalt all at the same time.  Quick, silent, and relatively clean.  Marshall wiped the head of his hammer before replacing it in its cradle on his back.  The two men continued the trek towards the army base in less than five seconds.

“Jesus, Marshall.  I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Corbin.

“I’m just big and strong,” said Marshall.  “I’d rather have Leo’s speed.”

“I’d just like to have some sort of edge,” said Shelton.

“You have training and experience.  That’s your edge Corbin,” said Marshall.

The rest of the trip to the fort was fairly uneventful.  They walked into the yard with all the corpses still laying where they’d been killed or re-killed.  “This was a cluster-fuck,” said Shelton.

“Yea.  Must have been something ugly to do all this.   Lets get in and out before whatever did this comes back,” Marshall said stepping up to the door.

Inside the hallway was gloomy, the only light came from the door they came in.  Marshall reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out a flashlight.  He held it in one hand, and his gun in the other.

“Marshall, flip your flashlight around in your fist, then cross your wrists,” said Shelton crossing his flashlight hand over the wrist of his gun hand, so the flashlight shone down the barrel.  “It lets you steady your gun, and keeps your light and gun pointed in the same place.”

“Thanks,” said Marshall, following Shelton’s lead.  “Anything else I’m doing wrong? Before all this I was a management consultant.  I can use all the help you’ve got to give.”

“In this situation you’re doing fine.  Let me breech the doors, watch how I do it.”  Shelton moved towards an open doorway on the right side of the hallway.  Standing almost five feet back from the door, he leaned his arm against the wall.  “From here,” he whispered.  “I can see a few feet of the room through the door.  When you present yourself to the door, you want to stay well outside, and limit the angle something on the inside has to see you.”

Shelton leaned a foot out into the hallway, peering into the room a little more before returning to his spot against the wall.  “That gave me a couple more degrees of sight into the room,” he whispered, before leaning further out in front of the hall.  He repeated that process, over and over, each time moving further away from the wall, allowing him to see more of the room with each pass.  When he was square with the door, he whispered. “Alright,   I’ve cleared the whole room, except this front corner.  To get that one I’ll step into the room.  I know that three out of the 4 corners of the room are clear.”

Shelton stepped into the room, then Marshall heard Shelton yell “Put your weapons on the fucking ground! Hands where I can see them!”

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Apocalypse, Book, Fiction, Horror, Novel, Post Apocalypse, Zombie, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Book, Zombie Story

4.06 Alicia

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This entire book, as posted on this site, is a rough draft.  It’s the cost of reading as I write, instead of waiting until it’s available on Kindle.

She wasn’t out of this yet.

Kris was furiously pacing the floor, deep in thought. It was obvious that she had spent too much time dwelling on what she could not do verses what she could. The knowledge that there was much more to her than she had ever imagined was invigorating. She felt revived with a new sense of purpose. As she paced from one side of the dark room to the other, a deep driving need to survive filled her mind. She was consumed by it.

They had underestimated her the first time, but they wouldn’t make that mistake twice. Kris knew that she needed to be well beyond their reach by the time they got back.

Two hours passed. Thin, deep red streams of light stretched across the industrial carpet and Kris could feel the temperature dropping. She needed to get out of here and the only thing standing in her way was that damn door, but she wasn’t strong enough to break it down. There had to be another way.

“Miss Kris?” It was Max again. “Are you still there?”

She forgot he had been listening. “I’m here, Max. I’m sorry you had to hear that. I don’t know how, but I have to get out of here.”

“Daddy says all the things have a reasonable frequency. Find the tone and use your shield to amplify it.” There was a pause and Kris wondered what a “reasonable frequency” before Max corrected himself and said, “Resonating.”

Kris smiled slightly at the word correction. Victor must have been listening in to their conversation. He was such a good father to Max. It was strange that children were not something that Kris ever felt drawn to. When Leslie, one of the girls she worked with, brought her four month old son into the restaurant, Kris felt the urge to run the other way. All of the other servers were so excited over the baby but Kris found herself purposely avoiding the entire situation. She had awkwardly waved at Leslie from the opposite side of the bar and then hid in the kitchen. Just the idea of holding the baby made her skin crawl and that’s when Kris decided that some women just weren’t meant to have children. Maybe she was one of those women. From her experience, children were usually loud, obnoxious and rude. But little Max was different. He was sweet, adorable and very intelligent. As much as she hated to admit it, she really liked him.

“I’ll try that, but what if I can’t make the right sound?”

“Then we’ll try something else, but you can do this Kris,” The voice was Victor’s now. “When you get out, find out where you are and tell Max. I’m going to go get Leo and we’re coming to find you.”

We’re coming to find you. His voice echoed inside her mind and their connection was abruptly silenced and Kris was alone again. Conversations were also so damn short with these people. The world had complained about what technology had done to the ability to converse, but no one even considered what an apocalypse would do. Kris wanted nothing more than to have a moment of normalcy and have a real conversation with someone that didn’t involve how they were going to survive. Or about some insane crusade to save the world. Or maybe where she didn’t have to worry about what was coming to kill her next.
The frequency of resonance is linked to the time it takes for a vibration of sound to spread throughout a building, reverberate and then how long it takes for the “echoes” to return to the oscillation, The voice told her in its usual clipped fashion. By finding the correct frequency, any structure can be destroyed. Kris took over the conversation and told herself, Find the right frequency, and I can bring the house down.

Kris stopped pacing and stood in the center of the room. Her feet were placed shoulder width apart and she stood tall, exhaling slowly. She let all of air out of her lungs and focused on expanding her ribcage as she inhaled. Air filled her lungs again and she picked the lowest note she could sing. Kris created a small dome just in front of her lips and sang into the bubble. With a flick of her hand, she pushed the bubble across the room and morphed it around the door. The metal door vibrated gently and began to produce a beautiful cord inside its frame. Kris listened for the highest note in the cord and shifted her voice to fit the sound. She was singing a few octaves under the highest tone and pinched the dome into a tall cylinder to bend the pitch. As the dome pinched together, the note was pushed to screaming heights.

The note permeated the door and filled its core. Kris could feel it rattling around in the frame, and the door shook violently before it slowly began to crumble. Before her eyes, the steel door turned into nothing but dust and the the aluminum door handle clunked to the floor. The sound was abruptly snuffed out as the door disappeared.

“Holy shit, that actually worked!” she shouted and threw her arms into the air and shouted with joy and made a mental note to thank Vic later for that bit of genius. She ran towards the open door frame and into the hall. Kris pushed the dome out from her body and had it expand over the floor of the Sheraton hotel. The entire layout of the floor filled Kris’s mind and she could once again confirm that she was alone. Part of the dome brushed against the elevator shaft 400 feet in front of her and a distinct “8” bore into her mind. Eight floor.

The industrial carpet was golden yellow, tan and black in a typical modern block formation. The pattern was over-sized and terribly standard-looking. As she ran, she had to be careful where her feet landed. There was wooden debris, glass and discarded pieces of furniture that littered the floor. In her bare feet, every step was a risk. Even though she healed very quickly, Kris didn’t want anything potentially slowing her down. At the end of the hall, she found the emergency exit and threw herself against it. Kris drew the shield back around herself like a warm blanket as the door flew inward and rattled roughly against the interior concrete wall. As she stepped inside the door, she glanced around the staircase. It was silent. Kris knocked on the metal handrail and as the sound reverberated through the open stairwell, she expanded the sphere that protected her to fill the entire area. Aside from a half dozen rotting corpses in tattered clothing and a broken-up love seat, the emergency exit was empty. Kris trotted down the cold cement stairs. Her bare feet made soft padding noises as she crossed each step.

It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it. Henry Allen’s Law of Civilization, the Voice told her. Oh, thanks for that. Always so God damn cheerful, Kris snapped in response.

She only had to side step once to avoid a shattered portion of the stairs before she pushed open the emergency exit door that lead into the hotel lobby. It must have been beautiful before the world collapsed. The tan, deeply veined marble floor still gleamed brightly in the late evening light. Whoever had polished it last did a remarkable job and would have deserved a raise for his work. The lobby was enormous with a squat, arched ceiling and four large, multi-coloured glass chandeliers. One of the four chandeliers had crashed to the marble floor and shattered into thousands of rainbow shards. All that was left attached to the ceiling were a set of wires with a few left over strands of glass. Gathered into small groups around the expansive room were black, leather bound love seats paired with two wing-back chairs and a circular, glass coffee table. The furniture groupings were anchored together on what used to be brightly colored, hand woven rugs. In the passing months, they had grown dark, dingy and some had been stained with blood. There were more corpses in the lobby than anywhere else Kris had encountered and the stench was overwhelming. She felt bile rise up in her throat and she swallowed hard to avoid throwing up.

There were dark patches of dried blood spread across the marble floor. There were streaks of it that led from the revolving door and straight to the main desk. Kristina Thompson, checking in. And have the bellboy pick up my bags, please. Just to the side of the streak there were awkwardly placed, bloody footprints that seemed to stagger off behind the desk.

She was suddenly standing just outside of the Humvee that picked her up the night the world changed. With horror, she watched a set of zombie teeth tear into a bicep of the man that wore black swimming trunks. The teeth sunk into his muscle and out of reflex, the man’s elbow snapped upwards. Another set of teeth tore into the base of his neck. Both zombies pulled their heads backward and strings of muscle, skin and gore fell from their gnashing teeth. Blood exploded from the wounds and bubbled down his shirt. Another zombie had the man’s left hand in its mouth and was chewing slowly. Kris heard his bones snapping and popping and the zombie bit down again and pulled with its teeth. The flesh and muscle was pulled from his hand in one solid motion and all that was left was the skeletal remains.

The man screamed.

With a shout, Kris tore herself from her past and pushed the memory back down where it belonged. Breathing deeply, she focused on what was real and stomped her feet against the cold marble. She was cold, hungry and in need of somewhere safe to spend the night. And the first order of business was to find some God damn shoes.

As she pushed through the revolving doors, she spread the dome out and stretched it across ¾ of the block. As she walked, Kris had the entire layout of the block etched perfectly in her mind. From what she could see, the area looked like a scene out of some over-done, Hollywood disaster movie. Only in this world, the credits would never roll and the dead never stayed dead. Lifeless bodies and destroyed, burnt out cars lined the silent streets. The air, just like the city, was still. Kris pushed the sphere out farther and it fully covered the block and aside from a small flock of seagulls, there was not another living thing in the area.

“Jesus Christ,” she sighed and wrapped her arms around herself as she walked down the small staircase that lead to the sidewalk. The first ten corpses she passed were either men, or women with much smaller feet than her. She tried very hard to ignore that she was about to steal shoes from a dead body.

Stealing shoes off a dead man. Oh, we’re going to hell. Weekend at Bernies 2, The Voice said.

That was one of the shittiest movies I’ve ever seen, Kris retorted with a snort.

But Jeff wanted to watch it. So you did.

Kris brushed the last comment aside as she jogged down the street, keeping her eyes open for shoes that looked like they would fit. Eventually, she found a pair of lime green and yellow Puma running shoes. As she crouched down to remove the shoes, she turned her head to the side. The skin and bones had dried out and as Kris pulled the shoes off, the bones made a sick snapping sound and she flinched in disgust. Standing up, she tied the laces together and tucked the shoes under her armpit. She could handle shoes from a dead body, but socks were something else entirely. Half a block down, she found a CVS with all of the glass windows broken in. She did a quick search and managed to find a bag of men’s socks, an XXL black hooded sweatshirt with the word “MOBILE” across the front, a bottle of water and two Lara bars. In desperation, she also grabbed a mop. After placing it on an angle against the floor and wall, she stepped on it and snapped it to a sharp point. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was better than nothing.

She tore one of the wrappers off of the Lara bar and bit into it. It still tasted like cardboard, but it was the best tasting cardboard she had ever eaten. With a sigh, she sat down on the curb of the street and ripped open the plastic bag of socks and took out four pairs. With a cringe, she realized that the only thing separating her feet from the feet of the shoes’ previous inhabitant was a thin piece of cotton. And then she realized that doubling up on socks was not an option because the shoes weren’t large enough. Her face was tightly scrunched as she pulled the socks onto her feet and then the sneakers. “Oh, this is all types of fucked up,” she muttered and as she stood, she twisted off the cap of the water and drank it greedily.

She pushed the extra socks and the second Lara bar into the front pocket of the sweatshirt and pulled the deep hood up over her head. The sun was getting perilously low and she still had no safe place to go. After another deep sigh, she stuffed her hands in her pockets and began to walk down the block. The only thing she was grateful for in this entire trip was that their little stunt in Atlanta had apparently drawn all of the zombies in the surrounding area into Georgia and out of Alabama.

Fucking Tookes. God damn crusade… She thought, shaking her head. And yet at the same time, she found herself missing his drive and his passion. If not him, who? She thought. Followed immediately by, I must be losing my mind.

The last thing she expected to hear were running engines shuttering to a stop three blocks away. And as if hearing those engines wasn’t enough, she heard nin distinct heartbeats pumping warm blood to live bodies.

Her ears picked up a clear, distinctly feminine voice. “Jackson, spread your men around the trucks. Keep your eyes peeled for walkers. Tommy, move your teams into positions around the pumps. We have thirty-thousand gallons to pump, move your asses!”

“You got it, Alicia,” one said.

“We’ll get it done,” said another.

“We’ll get you back to that beautiful baby tonight, Tommy. You have my word.”

Kris ran towards them and as she did, she carried the sphere with her and began to project it forward.


Book, Horror, Horror Fiction, Novel, Zombie, Zombie Book

4.05 Departure

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Victor stood just inside the doorway leaning on the shopping cart, trying to puzzle everything out. Leeland stood on the front side of the cart where he’d dragged it inside the door. A few seconds later, Mother Rotelle walked in, set her rifle barrel up in the umbrella tree, and looked at the groceries.

“That seems like way more than I asked for, Victor,” she said.

“Well Mrs. Rotelle, I didn’t want you to run out, and I wasn’t able to get everything on the list. But, now I see how you were able to survive this long by yourselves.”

“How’s that deary? Survive what,” she asked.

Leeland looked puzzled at the entire conversation.

“You shoot as well as my friend John. And Leeland, do you often end up places and not know how you got there?”

“No, never,” Leeland replied.

Victor decided not to push any farther. Either they were both firmly entrenched in their dementia, or they were pretending and not going to let go. He liked them and decided to just play along.

“Alright,” Victor said. “Lets get these groceries put away, and then I need to be on my way. I’ve been gone from my son for far too long.”

“Oh, you have a son? What’s his name?”

Victor thought about lying, but he decided against it. He watched for reactions, switching his vision to see their auras. He looked to see what their actions would be. Their auras were as they always were, swirling rainbows of color. Most people’s auras were one solid color, or slashes of different colors. Both Leeland and Mrs. Rotelle’s were always shifting through all of the colors in big swirling patterns. It added weight to his thoughts that they may be suffering from dementia.

“Max,” said Victor.

“That’s a good strong name,” said Leeland. “What was your name again?”

“Victor Tookes, sir. It’s nice to meet you.” No change in either of their auras as he spoke. Either they really didn’t remember their dinner conversation or they just didn’t care, Victor couldn’t be sure.

He finished putting the groceries away while Mrs. Rotelle made lunch for them. One thing he missed about normal life was regular meals that consisted of more than one thing. Victor was so used to eating whatever food came out of the can he happened to open, even lunch consisting of Spam sandwiches and processed cheese-food were a treat.

When he was finished eating, Victor checked out for a minute in the middle of Leeland’s third telling of the time he arrived at the house just out of the army in the summer of ’53. ‘Kris, are you there?‘ he asked.

“Well hot damn, Mr. Tookes! Glad to hear from you again. Ya get a little cooked in Atlanta?” He could hear the smile in her voice and she continued, “That resonance idea was GOLD. I’m out if the hotel and there’s no sign of those pricks that took me. Or Laura.”

‘Great news. Where can I pick you up? I’m in Mobile now.‘

“Moblie? Damn, you work fast. I ran into another group of humans that have a settlement up in Tennessee and I’ve decided to go with them. I honestly think I could help them. And to be honest? I think it’ll be more…normal than the usual bullshit,” she replied.

His heart sank. I really thought after we connected, after we worked so well together she’d reconsider leaving me. I liked Kris a lot.

‘Nothing against you, but I’ve had my fair share of humanity saving.‘

‘Kris, if we don’t do it, no one will. We’ll never be safe, we’ll never be able to relax our guard. I’d rather be sitting back at the farm with my mom watching the crops grow too, but this is way bigger than both of us,’ I replied.

‘I get that. I really do. I’ve been in your head, Tookes. We’re all on the same side. Why can’t I do my own part by helping another group survive?’ She replied. “Besides, if you really need me, all you need to do is ask. You’ll always knows where I am.’

‘Do what you need to do. If you ever get in trouble, call Max. We’ll be there for you. Stay safe out there, keep your head down and try to find some happiness.’ I said, ending the connection. He tried to shove his anger down into its box. His team was now down two members. How was he supposed to keep them all together? Not that it mattered, he’d do this alone if he had to.

Victor opened his eyes, or rather, refocused them. They’d been open the whole time, staring into space. Leeland was looking at him strangely. “You alright son? Looked like you left us for a while,” he said.

“Oh yea, I’m fine. I was just thinking about getting back to my family. I really need to be going. Leeland, do you know where the east-west train tracks are, up in Montgomery north of here? My family is on a train heading west, and I need to get to the tracks before they pass through here.”

“Oh yea, its about two and a half to Montgomery, but just over the boarder in Louisiana the tracks turn south and run down to Naw’lins. We can be at those tracks in Hattiesburg in under an hour.”

“Would you be willing to drive me to the tracks?” asked Victor.

“Oh, sure. Nothin’ to it. Let me know when you’re ready. Probably gonna have to gas up the truck though,” Leeland said.

“I’ll cover the gas, its the least I can do.”

“That’s a deal then, son. Let me know when you’re ready.”

“I’m ready now, just need to thank you both for your hospitality. I needed this night here,” said Victor.

“It was nothin’ deary, it was our pleasure to have you. Safe travels,” said Mother Rotelle, hugging Victor tightly. She laid her head on his stomach, as she hugged him. Once again he was astounded at how small she was. He hugged her back as best he could.

“It was a pleasure having you with us, son,” said Leeland holding out his hand. Victor took Leeland’s hand for what must have been the twentieth time. Before he could shake his hand, Victor felt the cold of travel surround him. A millisecond later he was shaking Leeland’s hand standing on a rail bed.

“Thanks for the lift,” Victor said. “Be safe when you head home, I don’t want you to doze off like you did on the way up here.”

“Oh, it’s always better when I’m driving. Nell always says I there must be an off switch on my ass that gets tripped when I’m in the passenger seat,” said Leeland turning to walk away. He’d gone about five steps when he yelled back, “Stay safe Victor Tookes.” And then he was gone, leaving only that familiar black mist.

Victor looked around. He was standing at an intersection where a small road crossed the train tracks. There weren’t any buildings in site. He was surrounded by hay fields. There weren’t even crossing gates at the intersection, just a diamond shaped sign facing away from Victor about a hundred yards up the road in either direction.

Victor slowly got down on his knees near the train tracks and put his ear to the steel. It had always worked in the old cowboy movies, but he couldn’t hear anything on the tracks. ‘Maybe they are still too far away,’ Victor thought to himself. He turned around and sat down on his backpack. It was a little lumpy, but far better than sitting on the road. He sat for the better part of an hour, getting up to listen to the tracks every ten minutes. He started to worry, which lead him to thinking about Kris leaving the group. That lead into Leo leaving, and that lead to Victor getting angry.

Like always, Victor shoved his anger down into a box specifically built in his brain to handle excessive and unnecessary emotion. A box he kept promising he’d open one day, and deal with. For now he needed to be busy, so he strapped his pack on his back and struck off up the road towards the nearest farmhouse. The house was up on a small rise, about half a mile from the tracks. It was the only thing he could see from where Leeland had dropped him off, so that was the target. He told himself it was to get out of the cold. It couldn’t be more than a few degrees above freezing. Victor was wearing lots of layers, but the constant breeze was blowing right through them all.

It took him about fifteen minutes to walk to the house. He moved slowly and deliberately, walking down the middle of the road looking through the tall grass for any sign of the undead. When he got to the house, he looked it over thoroughly. It was old, probably antebellum, although Victor was no expert on architecture. The wooden siding had once been painted white, although now it was mostly gray weathered wood with white flecks of paint. The shutters were still mostly black, and the tin roof looked like it had been painted within the last several years. It had a huge bi-level porch that wrapped around three sides of the house. On the back was a small addition, probably a wash room or a laundry room.

Victor slowly stepped up on to the front porch, trying to avoid stray creaks that a porch this old was bound to have. He failed miserably at that task. The porch creaked with every step. The whole area was eerily silent, there were no birds, no crickets, no grasshoppers chirping. It sounded like his footsteps carried for miles. That should have struck him as odd, but he was concentrating all of his energy on listening to the inside of the house. The front door was unlocked, and opened easily. The inside of the house was dark, and it took his eyes a couple of seconds to adjust from the bright sunlight outside.

Sitting in an ancient wingback chair in the middle of the parlor to his left was Joshua Frye. In one smoothe motion Victor pulled his gun and fired two shots. his aim was true, but Frye was surrounded by some sort of shield. Frye still had an aura, and hadn’t ever let on that he was a super.

“I told you he’d shoot first,” said Frye.

Zombie Book

4.04 Shopping

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Victor awoke with a start just before daylight. He’d been dreaming the same dream for weeks; every night, he relived fighting the zombie horde outside of the family home. Every night, he experienced those few steps into the sea of undead after he was forced out of the truck. Every night, he relived the pain and despair of being eaten alive as he struggled to reach his son, and failed.

Like every morning, Victor sat up in bed and said out loud, “I won’t let you down again, Max.”

He stood up, stretched the night’s kinks out of his back, and pulled his borrowed clothes on. The backpack in the corner of the room still had books in it, one by on he set them on the desk. “College English Essentials”, “The Norton Field Guide to Writing”, and “Practical Statistical Analysis” went by without a second glance. The last book in the bag was “Oryx and Crake”, by Margaret Atwood. Victor had read that book years before and it had always been one of his favorites. Victor thought if he was going to carry a book of fiction, this particular post apocalyptic story would be a good choice, so he left it in the bag. On top of that he put his now dry pants and tee-shirt. He strapped his gun on his belt and dropped his trusty hatchet into its loop.

When he got downstairs, Mrs. Rotelle was already cooking breakfast in front of the gas stove. “Good morning, Mrs. Rotelle,” said Victor. “That smells heavenly. Do you have a grocery list for me? I’m going to run out to the grocery store for you.”

“Not without a hot breakfast you’re not. It’s cold enough to kill hogs out there, you need something to keep you warm. Besides, you look like you’ve skipped too many meals as it is. Sit down at the table son, it won’t take a minute,” she ordered, handing him a sheet of paper. “Here’s the list, thank you for going to the store for me. All walking up and down the aisles wears an old woman out.”

Victor could find no valid reason to complain other than he didn’t want to mooch any more than he already had, so he sat down at the table. After a short couple of minutes, Leeland entered from the barbershop, wearing a gray suit, wide blue tie, and matching gray fedora. He took his hat off as soon as he entered the room, hanging it on the hat rack in the corner before joining Victor at the breakfast table.

“Are you ready to go to the store, son?” Leeland asked. “What was your name again? I’d better drive you, my old truck’s almost out of gas so we’ll have to stop by Fred’s Service Station on the way home.”

“My name is Victor, Mr. Rotelle, but you can call me Vic. All my family does. I’m ready to go when you are, but… Mrs. Rotelle didn’t give me much choice about sitting down to breakfast. I got the feeling she’d hold me down and spoon feed me if I didn’t eat enough. And I believe she could do it,” Victor chuckled. It felt good to laugh. These people were slightly off kilter, but not harmful at all. He still wondered how they’d managed to survive this long, but he liked them well enough to avoid asking any questions that would destroy their delusions.

Mrs. Rotell entered the room carrying a steaming plate of sausages and a huge bowl of grits. It looked like enough grits to feed a dozen people. Victor had been able to smell the sausages since the minute he walked into the kitchen. “Oh, sausage! I haven’t had breakfast sausage in forever,” he exclaimed. Mother Rotelle rolled four off the serving platter on to Victor’s plate with a smile.

“Is that enough for you? A young boy like you needs strength for a day like today. Are you sure you can’t stay another night? It’s been so nice having someone to talk to,” she said with a wink and a nod towards Leeland. “He’s not much of a conversationalist.”

“No, I really have to be going after I get back from the store. I have to get back to my son, I’ve been gone too long already. I promised him I’d be home last night,” Victor said.

“We understand that,” said Leeland between mouth fulls of grits. “A man’s got nothin’ if he ain’t got his word.”

“That is a true statement indeed,” said Victor, spooning a bite of grit’s into his mouth. “Oh, Mrs. Rotelle, these are fantastic.”

“Why thank you, deary. See Leeland, someone has good taste around here.”

Leeland smiled as he said “The poor boy’s starved half to death. Doesn’t look like he’s eaten right in months, no wonder he likes your cookin’, Mother!”

Victor really liked this couple. They were fun, they jabbed at each other, but it was easy to tell that it was based on decades of love. He forked a sausage in half and ate half a sausage in one mouthful as if to agree with Leeland.

“Don’t forget to chew, Victor.” Mother Rotelle said.

Victor slowed down his chewing, and ate smaller bites for the remainder of his breakfast. When he was done he pushed back from the table feeling full and happy. Leeland followed suit, although he’d only eaten about half of what was on his plate.

“I’m ready whenever you are, Mr. Rotelle,” said Victor.

“Alright son, lets go. Would you hand me my hat?”

Victor took Leeland’s hat off the hat rack and handed it to him. Leeland rolled his hat in his hand with a flourish before parking it on top of his head, and said “Alright son, lets go.”

Victor walked towards the door in the kitchen, the closest door to the truck, followed closely by Leeland. As they stepped out onto the back porch, the elder man handed the keys to the truck to Victor and said “Don’t tell Mother, but you’d better drive. My vision isn’t what it used to be. I’ll ride shotgun,” said Leeland clapping Victor on the back.

Before he could form the words of his response, Victor felt a familiar cold sensation. It was an unmistakable cold; one he’d felt so many times travelling with Leo. Then they were standing in the produce isle of a mega-mart. It took a couple of seconds before it dawned on Victor how Leeland and Mrs. Rotelle had survived.

The smell of rotting food assaulted Victor’s nose. There were piles of vegetables in their stalls, all marked with summertime prices. There hadn’t been a delivery of fresh produce since that day back in early summer; everything on the shelves was at least six months old and either growing some sort of white furry mold or had melted into puddles of goo, which had long-since dried on the floor.

“Oh my, I must be getting old,” said Leeland. “I don’t even remember the trip up here. Did I fall asleep on the way?”

“No, we…” Victor paused, eyeing Leeland. He wasn’t sure if the old man was acting or not. Surely he wouldn’t carry the act this far; he had to really be this delusional. “We made it fine, not a bit of trouble,” Victor said, putting the keys to the truck into his pocket. “It seems like I forgot to get a cart though. I’ll run back and get one.”

Victor walked back towards the front of the grocery store and eased his head around the wall to peer out the front window. There were dozens of the dead out in the parking lot, milling around aimlessly. A pair of gruesome zombies stood right by the doors that led into the airlock where the shopping carts were kept. One of them was missing its entire bottom jaw, his tongue flopped around as he moved, hanging down well past the second button of his gore covered oxford shirt. His upper teeth were mostly broken, and drool ran down his tongue neck-tie and dripped on to a substantial beer gut underneath. The other was more intact, missing only a chunk of her cheek. Her blackened teeth were visible through the hole in her face as she opened and closed her mouth. She was wearing ripped sweat pants and a shredded tee shirt. Victor wondered briefly if they’d been that ripped up prior to the apocalypse. Heading into the airlock to get a shopping cart wasn’t an option. He’d have to find one inside the store somewhere.

Leeland watched Victor back away from the window with his hand on his gun. Leeland noted that as Victor backed around behind the check-out lanes, his eyes never stopped moving. He was constantly aware of his surroundings, looking for threats down any isle and behind every display. The man paused for a second at the entrance to the cereal isle, then darted down the row. Victor returned a second later with a shopping cart already full of canned goods from behind one of the registers. “Definitely not a hippy, he moves like a soldier. Reminds me of myself back in the day,” Leeland thought to himself proudly.

Victor returned with the cart he had found in the cereal isle, and pulled out Mother Rotelle’s list, and marveled at its organization.

MEAT/POULTRY
1 large bag of frozen, skinless chicken breasts (found in the freezer section)
1 package low-fat sliced chicken or turkey deli meat
24 ounces eye of round beef steaks
1 package turkey burgers
½ pound turkey sausage
1 package turkey bacon
1 pound ground turkey
1 New York choice lean sirloin steak
GRAINS
1 container old-fashioned oatmeal
1 package of whole-wheat tortillas
1 box low-fat whole-wheat frozen waffles
1 package whole-wheat English muffins
1 package pita bread
1 loaf whole-wheat bread
1 package whole-wheat hamburger buns
1 box whole-wheat spaghetti
Whole-wheat flour
VEGETABLES
1 stalk celery
1 portion water chestnuts
1 portion scallions
1 jar dill pickles
2 bags spinach leaves
3 fresh tomatoes
1 cucumber
2 bags frozen carrots
1 bag Romaine lettuce
2 bags frozen broccoli
2 sweet potatoes
1 potato
1 head lettuce
1 onion
1 can whole tomatoes
1 bag fresh mushrooms
2 cans kidney beans

No matter how well the list was organized, most of it just wasn’t available. Victor eyed the produce section where he and Leeland were standing. Victor pushed the cart in front of him, to where the onions were. Those on top had sprouted, but were still good. Underneath there were several bags of onions that hadn’t sprouted. Victor put two of those in the cart. He rooted around the potato section, and found the ones that had been individually shrink-wrapped for baked potatoes seemed firm and in good shape. He put two dozen in the cart.

Across the department there was a display of acorn and butternut squash, they seemed firm and fine, so he put a couple of those in the cart. That pretty well covered the fresh produce section, which he was anxious to get away from.

In the middle aisles, he grabbed boxes of whole grain cereals, several tubs of oats and a twenty pound sack of stone ground grits. The cart already had several of every type of canned fruit and vegetable in it, but he stopped off at the Chef Boyardee section and picked up a dozen cans of Max’s favorite raviolis. He loaded up the cart, making sure he had some sort of canned version of everything Mother Rotelle had asked for. Canned chicken, canned ham, canned chipped beef, every can of tuna, and several packets of salmon went into the cart.

In the dried foods section he loaded up with powdered milk, butter flavored sprinkles, popcorn and beef jerky, as well as coffee and tea and several dozen bottles of coffee creamer.

As Victor put the last of the coffee creamer in the basket “She had all that on her list?”

“Yep, and a few more items. We still have to see what’s left in the dairy section,” Victor replied, turning the corner into what was perhaps the most disgusting part of the store. The smell of rotten eggs battered his nose. Gallon and half-gallon jugs of milk had expanded until the plastic tops could no longer hold the pressure, exploding chunky rotten milk all over the shelves, floor and even on the ceiling. Victor was after two things; ultra-pasteurized vacuum sealed tubs of margarine, and a few blocks of his favorite processed cheese-food, both of which would still be edible for years to come. He was able to find both that weren’t too covered in gooey mostly dried milk chunks, and threw several packages of each in the cart.

“Alright Mr. Rotelle, that’s it,” Victor said turning the cart.

“They really should get someone to clean this mess up,” Leeland said, motioning to the milk everywhere. “This store is going to the pits. I think this is the last time I shop here.”

“We’ll let them know there’s a clean up on Isle 18 if we see someone up front,” Victor said, still unsure whether or not Leeland was all there and just pretending or if he’d really lost all his marbles.

When they reached the check out counters, Victor purposely stalled and let Leeland pick which one they went through. He stepped into the one nearest the raised managers area. Victor followed him with the cart, and Leeland stood there for a minute. “Where is everybody gone?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Leeland. But we probably shouldn’t be standing right here. The parking lot looks a little dangerous. Bunch of crazies walking around out there.”

Leeland looked outside and said, “Fuckin’ pinko hippies. They do look kinda dangerous. I’ll just leave my card and the list here, so they don’t think we stolt all the stuff, and we can make a break for the truck. You ready?” he asked, laying his hand on the cart.

“Leeland, I don’t think…” Victor started, but the chill cut off his words, and then they were standing in the driveway.

“What were you saying, son? Musta dozed off in the truck again, last thing I remember you saying was in the store, something about them commie bastards outside.”

“Doesn’t matter now,” Victor replied looking behind Leeland. “But we should get inside, there’s a group of crazies coming up the driveway.”

“Mother!” Leeland shouted. “There’s another group of them commies comin’.”

“Push the cart up to the door please, Leeland,” Victor said, drawing his Sig from it’s holster. I’ll hold ’em here.”

Mother Rotelle stepped out onto the porch holding an AR15 rifle with ACOG scope and suppressor on the barrel. “Get on outta here,” she yelled, raising the rifle to her shoulder. “Boys, get on in the house with them groceries,” She squeezed off three rounds, dropping three of the zombies where they stepped. The action of the rifle knocked her back a step, but she firmed up her stance and said again, “Get in the house, now!”

Victor squeezed the trigger on his pistol, clipping one just above the nose.  Blood sprayed out behind it coating two zombies behind with blood and brains before he holstered it.  He stepped two feet to the left, grabbed the whole shopping cart full of canned goods and heaved it up onto the porch. Leeland, who was already up on the porch, pushed the cart inside the house.

“If there’s one thing I hate about this place, It’s all the fuckin’ zombies,” Mrs. Rotelle said, squeezing the trigger. The AR was fully automatic. She never missed. The kick of the rifle knocked the tiny woman back three steps, but she didn’t miss a single shot, from almost 100 yards at full auto firing speed.