The Good, The Bad, And The Undead : A zombie Apocalypse (The Wild Wild Midwest Book 1)

by Gill, Bonnie

  Dean steps on a rock, and it makes a scraping noise and clatters as it hits another. The gabbies’ attention snap to us. Their milky, bloodshot eyes widen when they discover we are available for their next meal. They open and close their mouths like hungry baby birds and shuffle in our direction.

  "Here goes nothing." Dean raises the gun. He fires a shot, and it goes wide. The boom sound echoes in my ears. "Damn," he says. Headshots are tough. He shouldn't be too hard on himself. It’s one of the reasons why I chose not to bring a gun. They also make a ton of noise and will attract more. I say nothing.

  I sprint to the closest male gabbie and see it's Mr. Rodriquez. He makes a hoarse scream and raises his arms in the typical zombie pose.

  I bash my wrench into his head. A loud crunch reverberates from my hand up through my arm. It’s one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever done. Even grosser than cleaning the shop’s bathrooms. People tend not to care when it’s a public bathroom. Especially women. I mean, how hard is it to wrap your sanitary items in toilet paper and toss them in the garbage? And if you want to hover instead of sitting on the seat, you need to make sure you’re over the bowl. If you miss and a poop falls on the floor, get a piece of toilet paper and pick it up. Easy peasy. Don’t make some poor soul pick up your crap. This is even grosser than that. I can feel the cracking of his skull as it gives way, and the wrench makes a squishy sound as it goes through its brain.

  The gabbie’s knees bend before he falls to the ground. His head is caved in, and chunky gray and black stuff leaks into his brown wavy hair. My stomach rolls with the sight and the stench of rot and sewer. I can do this. I have to do this. For my family.

  Another shot sounds behind me, and I see a female dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that says “I don’t ride on the crazy train. I drive it” collapse into the grass. Brown stuff oozes from a small hole in her head.

  "Behind you," Dean shouts.

  I turn just in time to see gabbie fingers heading for my neck. I double hand swing my wrench, baseball bat style, and nail him in the temple. The gabbie flies two feet and splats in the dirt. I don't look at his head, only the feet, and they don't move. I don't want to know which neighbor I just killed.

  "I think we got them all," Dean says.

  Star is at the window, her thumb raised as if she's saying good job. But her face is pale, and a single tear drips down her cheek. This has to be hard on her. Her heart is filled with empathy.

  I wave and give her a fake smile, trying extra hard to make it look genuine.

  Bits of skin, hair, and some pretty gory goo cover my wrench. I look down at my coat, seeing the splatters from Mr. Gabbie Rodriguez on it. My first urge is to run inside and take a shower with bleach. I killed him.

  Mrs. Garcia opens the door. "What about Betty? She's all alone."

  Betty lives on the next block over. We can make it there in less than five minutes, but that's five-minutes no one will be protecting my family.

  "I can bring her back. Can you stay here and hold down the fort?” Dean asks me.

  "Please be careful." I don't know what I'd do if something happens to him. Right now, I need all the family I have.

  Star and Daria are in the utility room, pulling out our bug-out bags. I packed them right after we moved here and update them every month. They're filled with enough food, water, and supplies for three days. I also packed different survival tools we'd need, just in case. When Daria moved in, we made her one, too.

  "We're not bugging out just yet. We should stay here as long as possible."

  They both look at me like I've gone insane.

  "If you think it's bad here, I can almost guarantee the roads are worse. In fact, I bet everyone in the area will head to Wisconsin, even the sick ones. There's bound to be traffic jams even if we take the back roads. People will fight for transportation and supplies. Look, we have water and electricity here. We have plenty of food. Once we hit the road, we have a chance someone will take everything we own. I’m not going to risk it right now. We need to be smart about this." I tap my temple to get the point across.

  Star nibbles on her lip. "We should pack everything up, just in case."

  "I agree. But we need to help our neighbors as much as we can. Hopefully, Dean will return soon with Betty. We should go door to door and check to see who's still healthy." I wanted to say still alive but decided not to.

  Star and Daria gather the camping gear and the bug-out bags and place them by the back door. Most of the items are packed up, so it doesn't take long.

  The television is on in the living room. The news anchor coughs. There are dark circles around her eyes, and her skin is a dull gray. They cut to scenes of riots and people fighting in the street. Cars are on fire. I’m glad I don’t live downtown anymore.

  Mrs. Garcia rummages through our cabinets and stockpiles of canned goods. "Egads Raven, I think you have enough food to feed an army." She checks the date on each can before placing it into a box. "We should head to my house. I have a bunch of frozen tacos and enchiladas in the freezer."

  I’m not hungry right now. I don't know if I'll ever want to eat again. "I'll clean up. Please watch for Dean." I pull a long sleeve shirt from my dresser and sit down on the chair next to my bed. Mr. Rodriguez is dead, and it's because of me. I can’t believe I killed him with my pipe wrench in my front yard. This whole fiasco is unreal. Did Seth get out of jail and inject me with some kind of hallucinogen? I wouldn't put it past the sick bastard.

  Star clears her throat. "I think you should wear leather." She hands me a brown leather shirt and pants. My sister is an inch taller than me, but we wear the same size. She crosses her arms in front of her. "It'll protect you. They can't bite through the leather. Human teeth aren't pointed enough."

  She's right. The leather should protect me, but it’ll still hurt when they bite. "I'll take a shower. Keep a lookout, and yell if you see any gabbies."

  "Oh, I will. Don't take too long." She heads back to the others.

  I really don’t want to take a shower, but between the smell and the zombie guts stuck to my clothes, I can't stand it any longer. I take the fastest shower of my life. Just as I finish braiding my hair, Star yells, "Open the door!" It sounds like she's in the living room. I rush out of the bathroom.

  Daria opens the front door. "Come in here. There are two gabbies over there." She points outside and to the right. "Hurry."

  Clark Washington and his sons rush inside. They bend over panting, and they have beads of sweat on their foreheads.

  Daria slams the door behind them and locks it. She runs back to the window, peering out into our neighborhood.

  "Are you okay?" Star asks the family. "Is anyone bitten or scratched?"

  They look at her with wide eyes and shake their heads.

  "My wife went to check on her parents. They're sick, and we haven't heard from them in the past two days. She left three hours ago and hasn’t been answering my calls," Mr. Washington says in a worried voice.

  A knot forms in my throat. Was she attacked by her parents? I don't ask it out loud though. No need to scare them even more.

  "Do you think the monsters got her?" Thomas, the youngest, asks.

  Mrs. Garcia wraps her arms around the boy and pulls him into a grandmotherly hug.

  "She's probably just stuck in traffic. She'll be here soon. Don't worry." She kisses the top of his head and shoots me a look that tells me she doesn't believe what she just said. Thankfully, no one else sees it.

  Star claps her hands to get everyone’s attention. "I want everyone to double-check themselves for bites or scratches."

  "No. None of them got close enough. We might not have made it if you hadn’t let us in. We were about to get into the car to go look for Claire when two of those things came around the corner and crowded the vehicle. Before we could get back inside, one crawled out from under the trailer and blocked us," Mr. Washington shakes as he explains.

  "Why don't you have a seat?" Mrs. Garcia points to my couch.
"We're waiting for Dean to return with Betty. Did you see him?"

  They shake their heads.

  My small living room is filling up fast. "Do you want some water or anything?" I don’t know what else to do. I’m not a great hostess. More than anything, I want to run outside and see if Dean needs any help. It's been fifteen minutes since he left. What if he gets overrun by the gabbies? I catch myself pacing and stop.

  Tears stream from Thomas's eyes, and he buries his head in his father's chest.

  "They're really worried about their mother. Will you watch them while I run out and see if I can find her?" Mr. Washington asks.

  I motion him over to the hallway. "I don't think it would be a good idea to leave your kids right now. They really need you and think of what it will be like on the road."

  He shoots me a confused look. "Her parents only live ten minutes away."

  "You said her parents were sick. What if they didn't make it? What if they attacked Claire?" I didn’t want him thinking the worst, but he needs to face reality even if it is cruel. If he hasn't heard from her for this long ... I don’t want to think about it. I also don’t want him to leave those boys alone. They need him.

  "You're right. But what if she needs my help?" Tears form in his eyes, and he makes a grunting noise from his throat.

  "Your boys need your help." I gesture to them sitting on the couch.

  His oldest son, Jackson, looks over at us. From the look on his face, he knows what we are talking about. "I can take the car and look for her," he says.

  Both of us answer, "No."

  He’s sixteen and just received his license. The last thing he should do is drive in a zombie apocalypse.

  We should clean out the mobile home park. There are sixty homes here. Two streets with fifteen trailers parked on each side. An eight-foot-tall chain-link fence surrounds the neighborhood. If there's an average of two people inside each home, that means there could be a hundred and twenty zombies running around, minus us. Maybe most people weren't home when it started or are staying safely inside their trailers. Either way, we need to find out. A group of ten or more gabbies can do some serious harm to the homes.

  Daria opens the door. Dean and Betty run inside.

  "I got her," he says.

  Betty looks as if she just ran a marathon. Considering she’s almost eighty years old, she’s hanging in there pretty good. Her cheeks are bright red and she’s panting. "I was about to go check on Dorothy when Dean showed up at my place." She pats his arm.

  "She didn't know about the gabbies. The news still hasn't mentioned that the dead are coming back to life. They’ve told no one that they're zombies, and they’ll eat you. They're reporting the riots are just people looting."

  "At first I didn't believe him. He made me look out the window. Those things killed poor Phyllis from down the road. I can't even..." Betty doesn’t finish her sentence. I can only imagine what Betty saw. Ice cubes glide up my spine as I think about it.

  "What are you wearing?" Dean asks. He's looking straight at my outfit.

  I look down at my body sheathed in leather. “What? You don’t like it? It’s the latest zombie combat fashion.”

  Star stands in front of me. "We thought it best that if she's fighting those things, she should be protected. Do you have any leather you can wear?"

  Dean laughs. "Nope. Well, they'll certainly have a hard time chewing through that."

  Daria walks into the living room. I didn't even see her leave. She's dressed in a purple leather top, black leather vest, and black leather pants. She’d pulled her short hair into a ponytail on top of her head. She could pass for an avatar in a video game. "Star, change into your red leather outfit. You need to be protected too.”

  “I’m so glad we found these leather outfits at the secondhand shop. I knew they’d come in handy someday,” Star says. I remember that day. They were so excited. Both of them had modeled their new outfits for me like it was a fashion show. They had stood, looking into the mirror asking if it made them look fat. Leather clings to everything.

  The oldest Washington boy's eyes went wide.

  "Let’s kill some gabbies," Daria says enthusiastically.

  "Count me in," Star says.

  Dean shakes his head. "I was just out there. I saw fifteen of them running around. You girls should stay inside." He looks at Mr. Washington.

  "No Dean, we’ll clear the streets. Mr. Washington should stay and protect everyone else.”

  Mr. Washington looks relieved. I know he's not a coward, so I think it's finally dawned on him his main priority is to keep the children, Mrs. Garcia, and Betty safe.

  Star pops out of her bedroom dressed in red leather, carrying her old baseball bat. "I'm ready. Let's kick some gabbie butt."

  4

  Dean stuffs more rounds into his pockets and then refills the magazine in his handgun. I grab my pipe wrench and pull on my winter jacket. Daria clutches a tire iron, and Star is armed with her old aluminum bat.

  "Wait," I say, and run into my bedroom. I open my safe and pull out another pistol and three hunting knives. I hand each of them a knife and sheath. "Strap these on. If you lose your weapon, you'll have a backup." I’ve never trained properly in knife combat, and now I wish I had. "Pull your hair back into a bun and stuff it under a hat, so they can't pull on it," I say, as I tuck the end of my braid under the rest of the French braid against my skull. "It's cold out there, so wear a tight-fitting jacket. One you can move in, but they can’t grab." We put on our wool hats and leather gloves.

  It doesn’t take long, and now that everyone is geared up, and we peer out the windows. There are about twenty gabbies outside surrounding our trailer. It’s as if they can smell us in here. Daisy Morris, a woman in her thirties, looks almost human. Her skin is still pinkish, and her face has a healthy, plump shape. The blood seeping from her sores is thinner and red. She must have just turned. Mr. Brown appears to have been dead longer. His skin is a dull grayish color, and the blood on his face and neck is congealed in brownish clots. They wander around making moaning noises. Every once in a while, one will attempt to bite another. There's a big show of teeth and growling. Mr. Brown bites into Daisy's neck then pulls back with a chunk of her flesh in his mouth and chews. The others pounce on Daisy, and she goes down. I throw up a little in my mouth.

  "There's too many for us," Dean says. "Maybe we should shoot from inside?"

  I shake my head. "They're attracted to sound. The more you shoot, the more will come. You need a non-firing weapon." Shooting in such close quarters might cause us permanent hearing loss.

  He pulls out a large hunting knife. "Like this?" He smiles, and it lights up his face.

  We need a plan. "Star, you stick with me. Daria and Dean, you two get the back. Don't take any unnecessary chances."

  "Got it," they reply.

  "Good. Let's go."

  Gabbies block the front door, so we leave out the back. Daria and Dean head out first and creep toward a couple of gabbies who are looking the other way. Dean sneaks up behind a male gabbie and clears his throat. The tall zombie turns, and Dean stabs him in the eye. Daria pulls out her tire iron, and bashes the ear of a woman in a pink and green moo-moo. Both gabbies drop to the ground.

  Star and I dart around the corner of my house. We both screech to a stop. Five more gabbies have joined the party in our front yard. I see my neighbors with bloody chunks of gore crusted on their noses and cheeks. They lumber around making sick whimpers and keening noises. My mouth dries up at sight of the undead.

  Todd Jacobs, a beast of a man, tall and big, gallops toward Star. She gives me a wide-eyed look before she shakes it off. She raises her bat and strikes his face. He sways but doesn't go down.

  A woman gabbie violently grabs my arm and pulls it to her mouth. As I kick her knee with my boot, it cracks under my sole, but she still stands. I swing the wrench and clobber her in the face. I look over at Star standing above Todd with her blood-stained bat. She must have nailed him again b
ecause now he’s facedown and unmoving.

  More zombies head toward us. Two gabbie women approach Star. She swings like a pro and strikes them each in the head. I remember going to Star’s first tee-ball game. She was so cute with her pigtails and pink, light-up gym shoes, standing next to the tee. She hit the ball and ran to third base. Everybody screamed “wrong way”, but she was so happy, dancing on the white bag. The coach finally jogged over to her and pointed to the correct base. She ran diagonally through the infield, pigtails bouncing, over to first. Some jerk behind me started yelling to tag her out. I told him to shut up, or I’d give him something to scream about.

  Now I look at Star all grown up and whacking gabbie faces. I’m so proud of her.

  By the time I come to my senses, three male gabbies are almost on top of me. I double-hand swing my wrench and connect with the closest one. Thick blood oozes from his mouth like old, dirty oil, and it leaks onto me. My arms vibrate with each hit. While I swing at one, I kick at the knees of another. They go down, but some crawl or stand back up. They won't stop unless they're dead or immobilized. I need a sharp sword or machete to cut their legs off. Too bad I don't have one. I’ll find one for the future.

  There’s more down the road and heading in our direction.

  Daria and Dean join us.

  "We got all of the ones in the rear and thought you can use more help," Daria says. She has dark blood sprayed across her face, and there's a chunk of something dangling from her spiky ponytail.

  Dean also has gore in his hair. They both raise their weapons and slash and stab the gabbies as they enter our yard.

  Star takes on another big guy. I need to tell her to go for the smaller ones. The male gabbie grabs her around the waist and pulls her to the ground. Dean runs up and stabs him in the temple before his teeth can latch onto her. It takes an incredibly sharp knife to puncture the bones of the skull.

  I swing my wrench at zombie Martha, a woman in her sixties who lives on the next block over. It seems none of the gabbies want to miss out on this party. She goes down with little effort, leaving her wiggling and hissing on the ground. I swing and smack her nose, smashing it into her face, revealing cartilage and bone. She doesn't get up.