“Alright, we have enough let’s get out of here.” Insisted Tommy.
“Not yet, flashlights.”
“We have flashlights at home!”
“You’d think that, but we don’t, I tried finding one the other day when I tried adjusting the cable inputs on the TV for a higher quality picture, becau-“
“ALRIGHT! Fine, let’s get flashlights.”
There weren’t any flashlights left. So they proceeded back to the car. When they got there, another man with a knife appeared, this one even scummier looking than the last, maybe even homeless. He pulled the knife out and pointed it towards Tommy, who looked startled.
“Give me the car keys, now!” said the deranged man.
Tommy’s startled look changed when he conveniently remembered the gun he has tucked in his pants, and he became even less startled when he realized the man wasn’t near close enough distance to reach him with the knife. He pulled the gun out confidently, expecting the man to become scared and scurry off. But that wasn’t the case, instead, the man charged at Tommy, a loud bang echoed. He saw the man fall to his knees, clutching his chest, as blood flowed around his fingers, finally collapsing to the ground. And that was the first time Tommy Nagel killed a person.
Tommy and Bobby made their way home in silence for the most part. This time Bobby drove because Tommy was a bit shaken up over him just having ended a man’s life. He was here one second and gone the next, and it was his doing. Bobby interrupted the silence with,
“I just… can’t get over the fact that I kicked that guy in the balls.”
“Bobby, I just killed a person.”
“Yeah, but… you don’t just kick someone in the balls like that that’s… cheap. At least what you did was honorable and stuff. You didn’t resort to cheap tactics.”
Chapter 5
Their town was beginning to become desolate. It seems most people took the “flight” response to the danger approaching. No lights were on in any of the houses, either people left or wanted it to seem that way. Most driveways were empty, and twice on the way home they saw families stuffing their cars with as many clothes and supplies as possible in a frantic frenzy.
Tommy and Bobby Nagel finally arrived home, more mentally tedious than physically. Tommy couldn’t walk normal, his hands trembled, and his face was pale. That scummy-looking man was alive and well, maybe not well, but alive nonetheless and then one second later he was gone from this Earth forever, nothing more than a scavenger victim for vultures, raccoons, and at this point, maybe even humans. All because of Tommy, that man was gone. It gave him a chilling sense of empowerment, but not enough to overshadow the guilt and shame he felt for killing another human being, as he didn’t see self-defense as a justification at this time. He didn’t necessarily need to kill the man; he and Bobby would have fought the man off with ease. Bobby had a knife too, making their odds even better. Tommy started to think maybe that man wasn’t even that deranged before the news broke, maybe he was normal, had a family who loved him, had a girl he idolized like Tommy did Melanie Kendall.
Bobby could see how troubled Tommy was feeling, but didn’t know what to say. He didn’t see the problem with what Tommy did, and thought he would’ve done the same, but Bobby hadn’t killed a man yet so he couldn’t be sure. They sat for the next hour in silence. Then Bobby saw Tommy looking at his phone, which was just an expensive rock now, realizing what really was troubling him.
“Isn’t she in Pittsburgh?” Bobby said, breaking the dead silence.
“Yeah.”
“That’s really far away from Philly man, there’s no way they will make it that far before the military stops them.”
“What about her family? Our friends?” Bobby thought about this for a while, before coming to a conclusion they’ve both been tucking away deep in their minds hoping it wouldn’t come to fruition.
“We’re all going to lose people in this Tommy, us included. For all we know we have already, hell we both have friends in Philly right now. But Melanie won’t be one of them, so don’t worry about her.”
“What about Jordyn? Where is she?”
“Grad school, a little north of here, suppose she’s fine too.”
Jordyn Thompson was Bobby Nagel’s best friend since childhood. She grew up in the same neighborhood as the Nagel’s, but moved to the other side of town at 15. Not a single person Tommy and Bobby knew had a bad thing to say about Jordyn Thompson. She was nice to everyone and everyone was nice to her, one of those people who made any room better just by being present. Not to mention she was gorgeous, with her flowing chestnut-colored hair, and perfect smile. Tommy was adamant that she and Bobby would end up together one day, but Bobby has never really been the girlfriend-type, and has been friends with her for so long that he insisted it would be weird. Tommy wasn’t buying it.
“What are we going to do, Bobby?”
“Well, what are our options?”
“We could hide out here, or flee to down south and find Barb and Tony, or…”
“Or we could find our friends and family first, then hide out or flea.”
“I knew you were going to say that, Bobby we can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’ll get killed!”
“So will they if we do nothing.” This stunned Tommy, the realization that he may be standing in between life and death for his friends and family. However, Bobby had such an air of confidence when he talked about it, and Tommy could tell that he had been thinking about this for some time now.
“What about the military?”
“You saw the news, ‘They’re doing everything they can,’ meaning they aren’t having the effect we thought they were. They aren’t going to specifically seek out the people we know and make sure they are ok, but we can do that, Tommy.” Damn, Bobby is persuasive, Tommy thought. And he really was coming around to it. He thought about all the people in his life he wanted to make sure were alright. “Tommy, we can do it. And look, we’ll bring our little friends along!” Bobby said, pointing to the stockpile of guns and ammo they just “found.”
“Who are we going after?”
“Jordyn.”
“Of course, we have to save your lover. Who else?
“Screw off, and Cousin Ryan, Ben, Uncle Ned, and Aunt Julia?”
“Sure, right across town that’ll be an easy one. Melanie.”
“Not Melanie.”
“Why not Melanie?” Tommy said with a raised voice, as if Melanie was the only reason he agreed to this whole thing.
“We’d have to go across Philadelphia. We can’t risk going into the heart of the outbreak, Tommy. Three of my best friends from school are in Philly, but we can’t try it.”
“We could just go around the city! Get there and spend the night at her brother’s place, then drive back in the morning.”
“Maybe, we’ll think on it.”
They ended up deciding on Uncle Ned and his family, Jordyn Thompson, Keith Hawke-Tommy’s childhood best friend who was at school upstate, Adam and Alysia Abbott- friends from high school who lived down by the shore now, and Melanie was still listed as a maybe. It wasn’t guaranteed any of them would even be alive, but they had confidence and hope. And they were going to get their loved ones to safety.
At this point, it was almost three in the morning. Suddenly, they heard the noise of a car outside. They looked out the window to see a military Humvee. And out of that vehicle came their fatigued and frightened cousin, Sergeant Major Matthew Mickelson. They helped him inside and he told his story, while shaking in his chair and stumbling through his words.
Chapter 6
“My squadron was called into an emergency in the Philly area. We weren’t sure if it was serious or just a drill to be honest, because we’ve had situations like this before where it was just a drill. But something was different about this… They looked at us as if they were sending us to the guillotine when we were leaving. I don’t know if they even knew what was really going
on, but they knew it was severe. My buddy Jack O’Connell, crazy son of a bitch, joked that aliens were invading.
“On our way towards Philly, cars were flying by in the opposite direction, some going over 100 miles per hour. We saw multiple accidents, and in three of them the cars that were capable of still driving did not stop. As we approached the city the fleeing got more severe. There were even some instances of people running away, guess they didn’t feel they had time to get back to their cars.
“We were part of a large number of teams stationed around the city, in charge of keeping ‘them’ from entering. They told us ‘Aim for their heads’ ‘Whose heads?’ ‘You’ll know when you see them.’ And that’s all they told us. The outside of the city was just a lot of suburbs. We lined up down a main street that was usually filled with traffic, but empty tonight. And around the city we stood, soldier after soldier, lined up to defend the city of Philadelphia from God knows what. We sat there a few hours, unaware that we were led into our slaughter.
“A large crowd of people began to appear on the horizon, each second more and more of them were visible. It took a while to realize they were sprinting towards us, we raised our assault rifles and held our fire. But more and more kept appearing, hundreds of them, and there only about fifty of us in our area. Were we the weakest spot in Philly’s armor? When they were about 100 yards out, one person fired, so we all did. We aimed for their heads, pumping out round after round at the hoard approaching us. I saw a few of my guys’ shots hit the bodies of these people, and it hardly slowed them down.
“As they got closer, I saw that they weren’t human. They were, but they… They weren’t, if that makes sense. Which scared the hell out of me, but I kept shooting, kept fighting back. But it was only a matter of time before their numbers had an effect, and they reached us.”
Sergeant Major Matthew Mickelson was silent for a few minutes.
“They started attacking us. They were stronger than people, throwing my friends to the ground with ease. I looked to my left and saw O’Connell’s throat being savagely ripped by the teeth of one of them. I shot the thing off of him, and stared at him hoping he would be alright. A few moments later he got up, and started attacking our young private, Joseph Bujnowski, a kid from Cleveland.
“I looked around and… everyone was being attacked, so I started running. Some chased me, and they were fast, so I was constantly turning around and shooting the heads off of my attackers. I ran back to the Humvee I came in on and got in. They began to jump on my car, I really thought they would be capable of clawing their way in. They hit, they scratched, and they bit but couldn’t make a dent in the thing. Luckily as I drove off they began to fall off of the car. And I got away.
“I became one of the fleeing cars that I saw on my way in. I tried to get people going towards the outbreak to turn around. I beeped the horn and waved my arms. Some of the cars got the message I think, ‘cause some turned around. Most didn’t though, and kept driving towards hell.
“I decided to head back to my Fort, about a half hour east of Philly. I showed up expecting to see a large group of people getting ready for battle. But instead, it was desolate. Nobody was there, so I began to look around. There were some stray guns on the ground, occasional blood puddles. Inside the place looked destroyed, like a goddamn tornado just swept through, and that’s when I saw the only person still in the place, General Shellenberger. He was sitting at his desk with an almost empty bottle of whiskey in his hand.
‘General! Are you okay, sir?’
‘Mickelson! I thought you guys were sent to Philadelphia?’
‘We… We were, sir, I… left, sir.’
‘Smart man, no point in adding a warrior like yourself to their army. And drop the ‘sir’ shit, will you?’
‘Yes s-… What happened here General?’
‘Well they came here what the hell do you think happened? We sent most of our guys out to Philly to defend the city, suppose that didn’t work out so well either since you’re here, huh? We were outnumbered and they got us.’
‘Where are all the bodies then, sir? I mean, General.’ Shellenberger chuckled at my inability to drop the sir.
‘They turned them, turned them all into them. They must’ve figured having some Army and Marine fighters on their side couldn’t hurt.’
‘How’d you survive, General?’
‘Oh me? I hid in the ceiling.’
‘The ceiling, sir?’
‘Yup, the ceiling. Hid like a coward.’
‘General, what is going on?’
General Shellenberger let out a loud grunt, ‘Ahhh the damn zombies are kicking our ass, that’s what’s going on. Yeah, they’re zombies. I’ve heard stories from mad cow disease, to a crazy scientist trying out a drug trial, to a terrorist attack that caused all this but who the hell knows what’s true. But they were dead, now they’re not, that’s the gist of it.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘Us? Jack shit. We’re going to sit here and wait for our doom. They’ve quarantined this section of the country off. The whole section, nobody gets in or out. Containment, that’s our goddamn strategy, but that doesn’t really help us now does it.’ Then he gulped down the rest of his whiskey. ‘All those people fleeing from the outbreak won’t make it too far, then the people at the roadblock have to tell them ‘hey you can’t come to safety because you might be infected.’ And me? I’ll be dead before you know it. You see that smog out there, Mickelson? It’s not just a foggy day, that’s the antidote, it didn’t work, clearly. But what it has done is take out the functioning humans.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, it’s bad Mickelson, it’s bad. It makes people slow, makes them sitting ducks. Should wear off in a day or so, but by then the zombies’ army will be massive.’ He tried taking another swig out of the bottle but he forgot it was empty, and threw it against the wall in anger, shattering it to pieces. ‘Get out of here, Mickelson. Go hide out and hope you last until it’s over. You got some great survival instincts on ya, you’ll be fine.’
“I paused, not sure what to say as I looked at the old General for the last time, and just said ‘Yes, sir.’
“I’ll never forgive myself for leaving my squadron, those men were my brothers and I left them for what? To die another day? I should’ve just fought to the end with them. I don’t know, maybe I’m just being dramatic or something.
“I didn’t know where to go, my family lives down in Virginia now and I knew they wouldn’t let me past the edge of the quarantine. So I came here, figured you two would be scheming to stay alive, so let’s hear it?”
“First off,” Bobby started after a moment, “What you did was heroic, there’s nothing you could’ve done to save your friends. So don’t beat yourself up on that. You survived, and thank God you did ‘cause we love you, Matty.”
“Love you guys, too.”
“Second, we plan on driving out to where our friends are and bringing them back here, to the Fortress.”
“The Fortress?” Matt interrupted.
“Yep, the Fortress.”
“I like it, and why is it called the Fortress?”
“Because it’s the safest place around.”
“And it’s the safest place around because it’s the Fortress.”
“Brilliant.”
“Boom!” Tommy said as he and Bobby high-fived.
“Alright STOP!” Matt said, “You guys can’t be serious, after everything I just told you this is your plan? You’re going to get yourselves killed!”
“Well, it’ll definitely help our chances having a marine with us… Especially one with a little zombie experience…” Bobby implied.
“No chance, Bobby. I’m not going out there and neither should you guys.”
“It also might help to have some better guns and a little extra ammunition… That we could possibly get from say… An abandoned military fort?”
“Look I know you guys are pretty talented guys.”
&nb
sp; “Thank you.”
“Thanks, Matt.”
“You’re welcome, but you’re also a bit conceited. And if you think you guys are just going to drive around killing zombies like a video game then you’re also naïve. Do you guys even know how to shoot a gun?”
“What’s there to know, you just point and pull the trigger?” Tommy said.
Matt sighed and scratched his head, “Alright, if you two are really serious about this, I’ll at least show you how to handle a gun, how to reload, how to fix a jam, and effective form. But that’s the best I can give you right now, I’m not going out there yet.
“Yet?” Bobby said with a confident smirk.
“Give me some time, and maybe I’ll be your third wheel. Maybe.”
Chapter 7
As late as it was at this point they still decided to try and get some sleep. But Tommy didn’t sleep that night, he kept thinking back to the last night he spent with Melanie Kendall.
****
“Cheers!” Tommy said.
“To a week without classes!” Melanie clinked Tommy’s beer bottle with her own.
“To a week without you!”
“Ass,” Melanie said as she punched him in the arm.
In the morning they would both leave for Thanksgiving break. It was a night that most college students used to go to parties or bars. But Melanie and Tommy chose to spend it with each other. They would have a few drinks, play some video games, and curl up on the couch and watch a crappy movie. And Tommy would love every second of it.
The Fortress Page 3