The Undead World (Book 1): The Apocalypse Read online

  Overnight, Los Angeles had officially gone from a clear zone to a red zone, though Ram had known for four days it was red. Ever since they had interrogated the Iranian, it was known who they were after and what was happening. Sadly they hadn't been believed…until now that it was too late.

  The terrorists were veteran killers and had taken out the bomb squad by the simplest method possible. They had put out a dummy bomb in an obvious location and had then set more bombs all around, and these were far more cleverly hid, and worse was the fact that the virus was an added element.

  The terrorist's aim was to cause as many injuries as possible, knowing what havoc would be caused when the men began to turn. This was their modus operandi all over the city. Their bombs were placed where people gathered: shopping centers, movie theaters, even the police stations, and all the bombs were shrapnel bombs filled with nails, and needles, and roofing tacks, and of course, the virus.

  Ram could honestly say that L.A. had turned. The zombies were everywhere, though nowhere were they worse than at the hospitals. With the blood and the wounds and the death, hospitals were the natural breeding grounds for the creatures and Ram wouldn't be caught dead in one.

  Still, despite the zombies, he had a job to do and it was why he slunk down below the level of a waist high chain link fence and eyed the mobile home. It was brightly lit and that was something. The other places had been dark house after dark house. Two had been booby-trapped and two others had been the home of living corpses. Fillmore had punched his ticket getting bitten on the shoulder in one of them.

  No one had known what to do with him. They had tried the county hospital, but when they had rushed into the Emergency Room it was their first inkling that the city was lost. The zombies came at them from every door and some even fell from windows to get at them. They had fled with poor Fillmore and in the end, when the fever was burning bright on his skin and no one wanted to get too close, he had shot himself in the head and they had left him there on some nameless side street.

  That had been only the night before, though to Ram it felt like days ago. They had gone from lead to lead without rest and this was going to be the sixth house since his death that they would search, and with each the team had shrunk.

  “Who's going first?” Ram asked in a whisper.

  “Man, I don't even know why we're bothering anymore,” Shelton hissed back. “Look at this place! The city is fucking toast.” To accentuate his point, or so it seemed, gunfire erupted on the next block and each slunk lower.

  Gunfire had become almost as ubiquitous as the zombies and Ram had ceased getting worked up over it. “You got a point. The city is toast, but what about the state? And what about the country? And what about Fillmore? I never even liked that guy and for some reason I'm pissed off that he died the way he did.”

  “I'll go first,” the federal agent said. “It's my turn.”

  “Damn straight it's your turn,” Shelton said angrily. Despite his talk he wasn't leaving his partner. “You've been hanging back all fucking…”

  Ram put his hand out. “He said he's going first, so let it drop.”

  The Fed, a member of the weak Homeland Security force ignored Shelton and Ram both. He was too keyed up. His breathing began to race in and out, and then he nodded and took off for the door with the other two agents right behind. There was no polite knock or even a 'hello', the agent went right at the door and slammed his bulk against it and immediately fell forward; the door hadn't been locked.

  “Allah's will,” rasped out a thick accented voice. “My work must be complete.”

  Ram stepped over the Fed and leveled his piece at a middle-eastern man who eyed him blackly. “Hands where I can see them,” Ram ordered.

  The man sat at a little table and before him were wires and a glass jar of nails and a little test tube filled with blood. “Or what?” the man asked. “Or you'll shoot me?” He laughed at this and Ram glared.

  “Or I'll shoot you and then roll you in bacon before burying you with a dog. How does that sound?”

  The man cursed in a foreign language and Ram stepped forward to let the Fed get up. Shelton stayed outside, watching their backs.

  “Where are the others?” Ram asked. “We got Al-Fadl two hours ago and Amir last night. So?”

  “The others? Denver, Chicago, Dallas, but it does not matter now. They can do no more harm. Allah has seen to it that only the most faithful will survive.”

  “How is he going to do that?”

  “Thou bringest forth the living from the dead and thou bringest forth the dead from the living, and thou givest sustenance to whom thou pleasest without measure,” the man said with a smile and hard black eyes.

  He had turned slightly in his chair when the door had burst open and Ram had a clear shot with his Beretta. When it came to how prisoners were dealt with, things had changed considerably with the declaration of Martial Law, and without the least warning Ram pulled the trigger on his gun, sending a bullet speeding into the man's knee. And then he waited as the man rolled around on the floor of the trailer grunting and moaning in agony. While Ram waited he inspected what the terrorist had been working on, and, taking rubber gloves from his back pocket, the DEA agent very gingerly took the blood-filled test tube and held it up.

  “You're going to tell me what I want to know or I'm going to pour this on your leg.”

  “Go ahead, poor it,” the terrorist grunted and spittle flew. “I am Allah's servant and that blood can't hurt me.”

  It had been a bluff only. There was no way in hell that Ram was going to open a vile of that blood and risk catching the virus. Yet his threat hadn't been in vain. He was a good agent and this was primarily because he could spot lies in an instant and there was something about the man's attitude that struck him as odd.

  “This blood can't hurt you? What about other blood? What about black as hell zombie blood?” The man answered Ram's question with the tiniest sneer, yet the agent read more into it than the terrorist wished. “What about pig's blood?”

  Now the terrorist set his face in stone and Ram reeled with sudden knowledge. The middle easterner did not fear being turned into a zombie yet he was horrified at the idea of pig blood. There could only one reason for this.

  “You've been inoculated, haven't you?” Ram demanded. The man looked away for the briefest second and said nothing, and Ram knew he was right. “Shelton! There's a cure. Did you hear that?”

  The other DEA agent backed into the trailer, staring out. “I heard and so did everyone else. There's some zombies heading this way.”

  They all ducked down so they couldn't be seen and Shelton locked the door. It was a flimsy door.

  It was tested a minute later as a number of the creatures pushed and pulled at it and then hammered and thumped at it, shaking the trailer. Shelton, his eyes huge in his brown face, had a firm grip on his gun with both hands. He had it pointed straight at the door and he wasn't the only one. Both the Fed and Ram had their guns at the ready as well.

  Thankfully they weren't needed. The zombies gave up after a few minutes and went shuffling down the alley in search of easier prey.

  “Oh shit, that was close,” Shelton whispered, passing an arm across his brow. “I thought for sure…” he stopped staring past Ramirez.

  The middle easterner was lying there, staring upwards and in his neck was a small screwdriver. He had killed himself.

  “Damn,” Ram whispered, staring in amazement. He then hurried forward.

  “What are you doing?” Shelton asked. “Don't touch him.”

  “I have to. He's got the cure in him,” Ram said pulling out a pocketknife.

  Chapter 9

  Neil

  Montclair, New Jersey

  Neil Martin saw his first zombie…his first human zombie on the thirteenth of October. It wasn't much of a sighting. It was an old lady with a great deal of her left leg chewed off. She was grey skinned and scabby with oozing wounds. Her hair sat limp and greasy, her clothes wer
e torn and hanging off of her, and her eyes were filled with a vicious, unnatural hate and as she wandered down the middle of Grove Street, people watched her from the safety of their homes. Neil clutched a broom to his chest until she was gone to who knew where.

  On the fourteenth the army rolled through the neighborhoods and there was some sporadic shooting and Neil felt safe enough to make an attempt at his neighborhood Whole Foods. He was out of many of what he deemed were essentials and had a craving for salmon and bagels. Climbing into his trusty Prius he drove the near silent machine the two miles to the store and in that time he only saw three people.

  They stared at him as if he was crazy and his friendly waves weren't returned.

  He found the Whole Foods was not just closed, it was also boarded up. Hoping that the one in East Orange was still operating he drove southeast, passing closed shop after closed shop, only this too was boarded over and so with nothing better to do, he drove on to Newark, but never did make it to that city.

  Broomfield Avenue was blocked by four military humvees that sported dreadfully large machine guns atop them. Along with the vehicles, thirty or so soldiers stood guard or slept in the October sun, which was unseasonably warm. Though the soldiers on duty had their guns initially pointed away down the street, most turned and leveled them in Neil's direction when he came up.

  “Excuse me?” Neil said as one of the soldiers walked over after he had slammed on the brakes. “Can I get by? I'm trying to get to the Whole Foods in Newark.”

  The soldier, a man with three little chevrons on his arm, gave a laugh of disbelief. “No, you can't. Don't you listen to the news? Everything from here east is quarantined.”

  “I don't, actually,” Neil admitted. He tended to look down on people who watched TV, though this wasn't something that he would admit to a soldier. He tended to look down on them as well, but was smart enough not to do so when one was so near. “So those people who live in those houses over there can't come over here?”

  “Nope,” the soldier answered. “And you can't go over there. That's how it works. Though why either of you would want to go in any direction is beyond me. You should go back home, you're not supposed to be on the streets.”

  “And what if we need some stuff from the store?”

  This was answered with a shrug. “I'm sure it's all being worked out. They'll let you know. Don't worry.”

  Easier said than done.

  Neil drove home, spotting his second zombie as he did, a very large one, wearing only a single shoe. It's lower lip dangled from a shred of skin, yet still it managed a fierce glare as the Prius scooted by. The sighting sent Neil's heart banging in his chest and when he got home he rushed to his living room where upon he immediately turned on his dusty TV. It showed nothing but static, which was an unpleasant shock. Like bagels and salmon, there was supposed to always be TV if one wanted to watch it.

  Shut in his house as he had been, there was no way for Neil to know that only the day before, Navy Seal teams had been dispatched to destroy the broadcast studios of every news station in the quarantined zones.

  The administration believed that the news coming from inside the Q-zones, as they were called, would only demoralize the rest of the nation if they understood the breadth of the issue. So, the Seals swooped down in their Blackhawks, planted a few hundred charges, shot some first amendment resistors and a number of zombies, then zipped out again just as the charges detonated.

  Neil smacked the top of his TV set in annoyance and then went to make a sandwich, which he ate on his screened in porch, keeping his only weapon, his trusty broom, near at hand.

  That evening there was much more shooting in his neighborhood and he woke the following morning, to what sounded like a battle. Wearing nothing but striped pajamas and a green terrycloth robe he went to stand on his stoop, facing west.

  “That isn't right,” he said to himself, aligning his arms with the rising sun. The army should have been east of him not west. “Oh, no,” he whispered. Had they expanded the quarantine zone? Was he now on the wrong side of the barriers and the guns? Without a working TV, he had no way of knowing, so Neil went across to his neighbors, forgetting completely his broom.

  A zombie, not fifty yards away reminded him. It was rooting around in the ivy next to Mr. Park's house and Neil froze out in the open.

  “Neil! What are you doing out there?” Mr. Krauthammer asked from his second floor window. This caused Neil to practically squeak in fright and he grabbed the only weapon he could find that was near at hand—a garden gnome. “Hey, that's my gnome,” Mr. Krauthammer said angrily.

  “Shh,” Neil said with his finger to his lips. He then pointed at the zombie, only Mr. Krauthammer couldn't see it because of the angle.

  “Is it one of them?” Krauthammer asked without changing the volume of his voice in the least.

  The zombie looked up from the ivy and stared at Neil for all of a second before he went charging across the fading green of Mr. Park's lawn. Neil squawked and then ran for his front door, which he had left open.

  “That's my gnome!” cried Mr. Krauthammer.

  Neil wasn't about to reply, nor was he going to return the gnome anytime soon. He sped across the sidewalk, leapt his flower border and made it to his front door safely, slamming it shut behind him and then locking it. And then he waited, listening to the zombie sniff at the door and then shake the handle, and bat at the heavy wood with its fists.

  All the while Neil shook in fright.

  Eventually the creature left and Neil tiptoed to his bathroom and urinated for over a minute with quivering hands. For once he didn't care about the mess, nor did he wash his hands. He didn't even flush. Instead he went to his own second floor window and called to Mr. Krauthammer.

  “What do you want?” the old man asked. “You know you shouldn't yell so loud it attracts the undead.”

  “Are we in the quarantine zone? I only ask because my TV isn't picking up any channels and that's got me a little shook I tell you.”

  Mr. Krauthammer looked up the block and nodded with a grimace that was nearly a smile it was so twerked. “Yeah, they moved it sometime last night. It's now out to interstate 287 on the west and it goes north all the way to Nyack.”

  Neil didn't even know where Nyack was which made him think it was far indeed. “So what do we do?”

  “Stay indoors. Keep em' locked. And wait for all this to blow over. I'm sure the army is doing something. And the administration says that they don't expect the quarantine to last for more than two weeks. But then again they keep telling everyone it's Legionnaire's Disease, so who knows?”

  “Two weeks,” Neil muttered. Did he have food enough for two weeks? If he cut back on his snacking and rationed what he had left, he probably had enough for three. “Well, thank you, Mr. Krauthammer. And don't worry about your gnome. He's in safe hands.”

  Neil shut his window and then decided to get some work done. If he had two weeks to kill he figured he would put it to good use, after all his quarterly taxes would be due soon. He worked steadily until the sun began to set and then fixed himself a very small dinner. He cut his usual portion by a third, not realizing even then how significant food had become.

  For both sides—the human and the zombie—food would mark the difference between containment and outright anarchy.

  Chapter 10

  Dade County, Florida

  The men of the 504th of the 82nd Airborne Division were the “ready brigade” in October, meaning they had to be prepared to deploy anywhere in the world with eighteen hours notice. Who knew the deployment would be to Florida and who knew they'd be fighting their own countrymen?

  Certainly not Private First Class Marshall Peters. He had enlisted with the express purpose of going overseas and fighting America's enemies, not figuring that the Iraq war would end so quickly. By every news account the war was going horribly and then come 2009 it just ended and somehow we had won.

  Quite the opposite was true in Afghanista
n. It was the quiet war for so long, but then we made a promise to leave and it flared up—just not for PFC Peters. Somehow he just missed a deployment by the first Brigade Combat team and ended up sitting around Fort Bragg bored to tears.

  But then they got the call.

  “Miami?” he had groused. “What the hell's in Miami?”

  No one knew, and though they all joked about fighting alligators and toothless hillbillies, it grew serious when they were given a full combat load. And when they waddled, as only paratroopers do when carting sixty extra pounds around with them, onto the C-17 with their chutes on their backs it got serious indeed.

  PFC Peters' unit dropped along a twenty-mile stretch of Okeechobee Road and was told to form one continuous line and not to let anyone across it. The orders were of such a vague nature that on that first day they didn't know which way to face. By the third day they had things worked out and they faced east toward the lights of the city, and on the fourth evening, they began to turn back their first stragglers.

  “You don't understand,” a man said in a pleading voice. “The dead have risen. They're walking around eating people!”

  They shooed him away, but he was replaced by others who said the same sorts of things and soon rumors went up and down the line like fire before the wind. Peters had the second guard shift on the sixth night of their deployment and he had never been more afraid.

  In the dark things moved and whispered and rifle fire broke out occasionally. Mostly it was one sided with dug in paratroopers firing blindly at imagined monsters, however twice fire was returned and Peters hunkered down when that happened. Near the end of his shift screaming began, running across the night air to freeze his bones. It was about a hundred yards away and then came more rifle fire a long pop, pop, pop and then silence.

  Even after his shift Peters didn't sleep a wink that night. Gradually it came to be that guards were needed more in the daytime than at night since very few could sleep when the sun sank and the night came alive and the guns flicked little flashes of light.