The Undead World (Book 1): The Apocalypse Page 7

  Unbelievably her head nodded, though her bottom lip quivered in fear.

  Just then her front door opened and the colonel she had seen earlier walked in. His hand still rested on the butt of his gun, only now he had more of a grip to it. “How's the commandeering coming along?”

  Singer gave Sarah a very pointed look and said, “We were just getting all civil with the civilian, Sir. Didn't want her to think we was stealing or something.”

  “I think public relations is more a job for an officer. Why don't you two go see about the neighbor across the way?” Though the words were softly spoke, there was a hardness to the colonel's brown eyes. The two left in a quiet anger and the colonel stood for a long time looking out of the window.

  Sarah buttoned her buttons and said nothing. Could she trust this man any more than she could trust the last two?

  “What a world we have now,” the colonel said softly. “You should start taking that into consideration. You and this whole Howdy-doody town. All of you walk around like this is still America.”

  “It's only been a month,” Sarah whispered, barely daring to contradict the man. “Maybe they'll all die out. And America will be back to normal.”

  He blew out in a long breath. “No, it won't. New York's gone. Boston, Washington...did you know that? Oh yeah Washington went last week and no one really cared. Florida, California, most of Texas are all gone. And Illinois, almost right down on your damned heads and you still have a friggin malt shop going for God's sake! The writing is on the wall and you people in this pristine little town just can't see it. I give the country ten days.”

  “Ten days...what are we going to do then?” Sarah asked. Desperately she wanted someone to be able to answer that simple question. The colonel did.

  “Survive or die. That's what I want you to think about before the next time we come through.”

  “The next time?” she asked breathlessly.

  He smiled. “Of course. We have twenty thousand soldiers strung across the whole of the Kanakee River and we're trying to hold back a million or so stiffs. And we aren't getting much in the way of supplies. If you don't feed us, you don't live. It's as simple as that. Which brings me back to the question of survival. How does one tiny slip of a woman survive in these hard days? Can you shoot? Can you fight?”

  She shook her head and looked down at the man's mud stained boots.

  He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. “Whatever you were before. That's not who you're going to be. We don't need any insurance salespeople or realtors or office administrators. Soldiers need something to fight for. A soldier needs his girl and you Ms Rivers are the finest girl I've laid my eyes on in a long time.”

  “You're no better than those others!” she cried backing away. Her anger only made him chuckle.

  “Fine,” he said heading for the door. “Good luck.”

  How he said this perplexed her and scared her at the same time; she asked, “Why do you say it like that?”

  “Because until you realize that this world had become a world of take, then you're going to need all the luck you can get.” He laughed and then laid his head on the door. “There'll be no more roses or boxes of candy for you. The men who survive this are going to be men who take what they want, not some hippy-dippy liberal, peace-assholes. So someone is going to take what you have, or...you can make the smart choice and give it away. Just make sure you give it to the right man. A man who can protect you.”

  “Like a colonel of infantry?” she asked breathlessly, and again her hands stole to her chest covering herself in a pathetic attempt at protection.

  “Is there anyone who could protect you better?” he asked, opening her front door. “Or feed you better? Or treat you better? All I'm asking is that you think about it. The choice is yours. I'm not a man who will take when there is a better option,” he said and left her reeling.

  Chapter 13

  Ram

  Devore, California

  For the last, who knew how many days, Ram had been DEA in name only. He wasn't even attached to Homeland Security or the US Army for that matter. He had been a man who stood shoulder to shoulder with other men trying to stop what had felt like an infinite number of undead.

  They had failed. The Army just seemed to disintegrate as a cohesive force—uniformed men still fought and died under the claws and rending teeth, or in a delirium of fever, however units had dissolved in the chaos, and logistics had broken down. Some places had a comfortable amount of ammunition while others were counting every bullet and waiting to fire until the stiffs were at point blank range.

  Eventually, when Glendora, Walnut, and San Bernardino fell in successive days, the remaining men realized that Los Angeles was lost. Gradually some eight-thousand pulled back to Devore, which was the furthest edge of the furthest suburb of L.A. There I-215 joined I-15 in a valley that was less than half a mile wide.

  So far the zombies weren't noted as mountain climbers; like running water, they followed the path of least resistance and so Ram and the men around him, despite their increasing exhaustion, dug in all across the face of the valley and beat off successive waves of undead. Sometimes the battles were enough to break a man and a number went screaming off into the night, or cowered in their holes and refused to look up at their oncoming death.

  And still the rest fought on. Stinking bodies lay in huge rotting mounds before the men. The mounds were covered in an undulating black shimmer; these were millions of flies, eating the dead, and they were the first inclination that another attack was coming. They'd rise up in huge buzzing cloud that couldn't be pierced by the sharpest eye.

  Now, after days of fighting, Ram felt something give within him. It started small, like an internal, mental hiccup; just a little nothing that had him pausing like a statue, unthinking and unmoving. This grew until he felt himself grimacing for no reason or waking up from a staring contest with a distant rock. By sundown, when the zombies began to gather again he found that his chest was aching and that breathing had started to be an effort.

  “Hey…hey, I gotta take a dump,” he announced suddenly to the men around him. Shaking uncontrollably, he got up in a hurry, and that was when one of them grabbed him.

  “Leave your ammo,” the man said. He was one of the older men and he had eyes that knew much.

  Ram shook him off. “I'm just taking a dump,” he lied. He had to go alright, very badly, but after he had squatted behind a car for a few minutes and cleaned himself up, he didn't go directly to where he had been fighting. Instead, as the firing commenced all along the line, he went up into the steep hills and just left. He just walked away in a sweat, and though he tried, he couldn't stop his own traitorous feet.

  To himself he made excuses, yet these were pitiful even to his own ears and he finally admitted, “I can't do it anymore. I can't! I need a break. That's all I need. Just a little one and then I'll be good to go. Just a break and then I'll be back.” He wasn't coming back. He had snapped. Whether it was shell shock, or posttraumatic stress disorder he didn't know. He just knew that he couldn't stop his hands from shaking, while tears were on the verge for no reason.

  Without really knowing where he was going he climbed a ridge and then another and was tromping down a long hill when he saw below him a rugged trail and upon it tens of thousands of zombies walked. Even in the dim light, he could see them stretching far into the distance and he stared at them with gritty eyes and a brain slowed by unbelievable stress and days on end of sleep deprivation.

  The trail hooked off to the left and gradually he came to realize that if it continued in that direction it would eventually cut across I-15—it would cut off the line of retreat of the men he had just left. That was a horrible thought, yet the idea of going back, of trudging over all those hills and facing all those zombies left him with a dread that he hadn't felt since all of this started.

  Ram knew in his gut that if he went back he would die. There were just too many of the creatures and there were just t
oo few men to stop them, and the men had too few bullets. It was a certainty in his broken mind.

  Yet could he leave them to die? No answer came to him. He stood there with his hand on a pine tree, feeling the sharp bark and no answer came to him. His courage, which had been that of a lion for so long had left him completely, and now his sense of duty was unraveling as well, because what did any of it matter? They were all going to die eventually and that eventually was fast upon them.

  “Everyone's going to die,” he whispered, forgetting completely the vial of blood in his pocket, and the CDC for that matter. His world had been narrowed. It was so full of such immediate death that the big picture eluded him. Just then his mind could only comprehend: himself, the river of zombies and the men he had left to die...and they were secondary.

  A sudden spurt of gunfire to the northwest had him wagging his head in that direction. Then a thought got through his numb mind. “There,” he said, relaxing. “They know now. They got their warning.”

  And just as his sense of duty died with that rationalization he saw a gap in the ragged lines of zombies. Like a cat he slunk down the hill, hiding behind bush and tree, feeling crazy for approaching the things like he was, but then came the gap and he raced across the road and sprinted up the hill on the other side. His breath was a storm in his ears and he was sure a thousand of the beasts had heard him, but it was only a few—twenty or thirty that came after him.

  Though he might not have been a sprinter, Ram could run for miles without let up, but thankfully the things turned aside when he cleared a hill and was out of sight.

  That night was the first he spent alone since the sixth of October, when he found a note from his girlfriend. She had gone back to Mexico; a huge mistake in his eyes. It was smart to flee the city, but Mexico was suicide.

  In the dark Ram walked until he realized that moving, stumbling about in his exhaustion, making a racket that could be heard for miles, was worse than just sitting still. And so he covered himself with some branches and slept like he hadn't for days on end. Voices woke him when the sun was high overhead. He sat up with his M16 in hand. It hadn't started out as his; he had picked up the assault rifle just as soon as the opportunity presented.

  It had been four days previous as they had taken a stand at Glendora. His unit had been holed up in an elementary school and had decided to use the fencing surrounding the building as a way to funnel the stiffs at them in an orderly manner. With the M60 machine gun chattering away, cutting them down as they came through the gate, more zombies had spread out and covered the fence like a wall full of roaches. Someone had screamed charge and half the unit had rushed forward with knives and makeshift spears. They had stabbed through the chain-link fencing making a mess of the zombies and killing many.

  A man came running up late. He had a spent M16 with a bayonet attached and just as he thrust it once the whole section of fencing came down pinning him. Ram and a few others next to him were trapped as well. The zombies rushed forward and it was the worst moments of his life. Crushed beneath the metal and the monsters as they were, none could defend themselves and the dead feasted. Ram was saved for a second when the zombie above him was bowled over by others pushing from the rear.

  The man with the empty M16 wasn't so lucky. He was screaming in a high-pitched wail as his face was being eaten away and more zombies came to feast—and then a large one, one that used to be a muscle bound man pushed aside the squirming mass and exposed Ram. The beast dropped to his knees with a strange gleeful hungry look on its grey face and came to bite him, but just then the M60 pivoted in their direction.

  Blazing lead raced above Ram' face, missing him by inches, and struck the zombie atop him, tearing off chunks of flesh and bone and brain. The creature fell back and others came forward to be shredded just as the first had been. Ram squirmed and kicked himself free and then he was crawling for his life and next to him was the man with the M16. Though he had only a single eye left to his face he was crying; the rest of him looked like bleeding hamburger.

  Ram couldn't look in his direction except to shoot him once in the head. It was a mercy he told himself in that second when the blast echoed in his ears…and then he took the man's rifle.

  Though just at that moment, four days later, as he sighted down the length of the black weapon at six men walking far too casually, he couldn't remember where he'd gotten the gun. He remembered being trapped under the fence, but very little of what had happened before or since.

  He did remember these men coming toward him, not specifically, just their type. As a hispanic they were an embarrassment to him. They were six walking stereotypes: gangbangers with moronic neck tattoos, inked knuckles and even worse, they were still wearing their gang colors despite that their city had been overrun with the undead.

  Regardless of this Ram hurried forward. He'd been alone for a little more than nine hours and already he was missing people more that he knew. With his weapon pointed to the sky, he came to them and immediately despised them, while they distrusted him. Still they accepted him, while he tolerated them.

  The alternative was to be alone in a land of death.

  In the past, in the before, Ram had contemplated the different forms death could take: bullets, fire, drowning, heart attack. Fire had always seemed the worst, but now after seeing what he'd seen, he knew he could embrace a death by fire. The trick was to just accept it and breathe deeply, letting the flames and the heat destroy his lungs.

  It was these thoughts and the nagging surety of his approaching death, which allowed him to tolerate the gang-bangers. They were ill mannered, unkempt, and completely undisciplined. They traveled north east with little thought as to their destination and they argued amongst themselves to distraction.

  Still they were people and Ram felt his mind coalescing again into something that was vaguely familiar. He even laughed with them once or twice. It was strange to smile after so long with dealing only in death, and he touched his face and his teeth as if it was his first time. Though he still wasn't close to being his old self and this was evidenced when the sun went down and a girl joined the group.

  She was a hood rat out of Compton and how she managed to get as far as she had, he never found out. They could hear her out in the dark creeping close as if she couldn't tell which was the greater danger to her, the zombies or the gang-bangers.

  “Hey? You got sumtin to eat?” she asked from the supposed safety of a shrub.

  One of the bangers grabbed his crotch and said, “Yeah right here. It's all you can eat, baby.”

  This should've been warning enough, but she came closer and asked, “What's that you got there?” The seven of them were sharing a large can of pumpkin pie filling. A few weeks earlier Ram would have laughed at the idea, now he made sure his spoon was heaping before he passed the can on to the next guy.

  The girl was maybe eighteen and as she came forward with her large brown eyes staring about nervously, she reminded Ram of a doe stepping lightly through a forest. She had nothing but the clothes on her back, and when she came and knelt she was tense as if ready to flee, but it was too late for that and everyone knew it.

  The bangers let her eat with them and as she did they began to paw at her and although she grew angry and pushed their hands away she accepted what was happening. What choice did she have? They were all armed to the teeth and she had nowhere to go.

  For the most part the girl was silent when they took their turns with her, only grunting if the man on top of her was particularly rough. She only spoke once, when the last guy had his turn and seemed to take too long. “What you waitin for?”

  This caused the others to laugh and one of them turned to Ram. “What about you, Ese?”

  “I'm good,” he replied. His hand had been on his M16 the entire time, yet he hadn't been anywhere near to firing it. Things were different now. Right and wrong had been turned on its head. What did he owe this girl? If zombies came he would kill them for her. And he'd share his food. But wou
ld he risk his life for her because she didn't have the sense to stay away? He knew, just as she did, what sort of men these gang-bangers had been in the old days.

  “I'll go first next time,” he lied. In a nest of her clothes, the girl laid on her back, shaking and looking up at the stars. “Why don't you give her a drink,” Ram said to the man closest to her.

  “Shit. She can get her own,” the man said, and then tipped a water bottle back and emptied it into his mouth.

  The night passed and no one guarded the girl, or even much looked at her. She could've run away at any time. Instead she stuck close to the men who raped her and when one made a joke at Ram's expense she laughed harder than the rest. He was weak in her eyes. A real man...a man in this new world would've done whatever he wanted with her.

  On some level she understood the new fundamentals better than any of them. There were no laws anymore. Might made right. And any man who was too weak to take what he wanted would be too weak to protect her. She despised him for his weakness.

  He didn't really care, not just then, in fact he was hard pressed to find anything he did care about. At some point he found the last vial of blood he had taken from the terrorist and after looking at it he nearly tossed it away. To him the CDC was in another world and maybe even another time, though in the end he stuck it back where he'd found it.

  They walked until midday neared and it was then that the group found a pile of cars jumbled at the intersection of two country roads. One of the cars had a case of bottled water and a few bags of groceries in the trunk. Still without discipline, they gorged themselves and drank greedily, which sparked their libidos again. One grabbed the girl and rubbed up against her and she rolled her eyes as if they were asking her to sweep the kitchen the floor.

  “How bout I just blow you guys? My puss hurts from last night,” she said. They took their turns and Ram turned away.

  “What are you some sort of fudge-packer?” one of the bangers asked.