Slow Burn: A Zombie Novel

by Mike Fosen

  Hammering the diesel engine, the trip home was a blur. Driving around cars stuck in traffic by any means necessary, he managed to avoid clusters of vehicles stopped in and around unattended accidents. Driving through one yard, he watched a Hispanic landscaper attacking the little old lady homeowner who had brought him out a bottle of water. He was too late to help her when he pulled into her yard, destroying the landscaper’s hard work. Chris lowered his shotgun out the driver’s window and shot them both in the head at point blank range from his cab, not even coming to a complete stop. Back on course, he made several calls to his live-in girlfriend Megan, but received no response. Megan was a second grade teacher at Columbus Elementary and should have been home by now. Chris was becoming more and more worried as he neared his residence, a two-story house with the typical beige vinyl siding and cookie cutter landscaping. He noticed that Kelly from dispatch, who coincidently lived across the other side of the cul-de-sac, had made it home. Her car appeared to be still running in the driveway, and the garage door was left open. He then noticed the trail of blood leading from the car to inside the residence.

  Chris lowered and shook his head and turned in his driveway, cutting the engine on the loud diesel. Megan’s car was still not parked in the driveway where it should have been. With a premonition of dread, he discovered a bloody smeared handprint on his open front door as well. He was greeted by more blood in the kitchen, dried on the hardwood floor, and followed the trail into the garage. Shotgun at the ready, Chris entered the still closed garage. He found that his girlfriend was not there either, but the blood trail ended. Kelly had ended up in his garage, and was lying in ambush. She lunged at him with a morbid determination just as he pulled the trigger. In an instant her head was gone. Chris wanted so badly to break down right then and there.

  He had to let it go, however, knowing that he had other, more pressing concerns. Stopping to take a deep breath, he recalled the plan that was discussed again while talking over beers around the campfire. That standing plan was that if the shit ever hit the fan, he, along with Mike and a few others, would try to make it to Stephen’s house as a rendezvous point. Now with a goal in mind, Chris cleared his residence, making sure nobody was inside. Finding no one, he made sure that all entrances and windows were locked before backing his truck into the empty garage. Closing the garage door, he quietly and efficiently went about packing his essential belongings. Toiletries and clothing he loaded into two large suitcases and left behind what he couldn’t fit. He made sure to bring all the camping and police gear that he had as well, throwing it into garbage bags. Cleaning out his pantry of food staples, knowing he might never make it back, he loaded them into cardboard boxes and then into his truck. Green army duffel bags containing his uniforms and most of his gear from Afghanistan were still packed and an easy load. His cooler, still with Miller Lite on ice from the weekend camping trip, was also loaded. Chris quietly wondered if soon there would no longer be any cold beer left.

  Now that would be sad.

  Running downstairs, Chris pulled his S&W AR-15 rifle out of the large green gun safe in the basement. It was topped with an EoTech holographic sight and x3 magnifier, both of which had been on his rifle in Afghanistan. He had just mounted them back onto his personal rifle and checked the zero at Stephen’s range. Chris also grabbed his Beretta 92FS pistol, which was just like the M9 he carried as an MP in the army. The army had also generously supplied him with a dozen or so spare magazines for both firearms, which he kept loaded in separate ammo cans. Finally he came to the four cases of U.S. Army MREs which he had set aside after a training exercise. He had figured they would always be nice to have in the event of an emergency, and they were the last items in the truck. Chris took one last look around his house, and left a note for Megan just in case. Satisfied that he had everything, he changed into a clean uniform and got in his truck. With a sigh he hit the garage door button and headed out the driveway. First he needed to check Megan’s school, maybe she was still alive. From there it was on to Stephen's place, and Chris prayed that he would find him at home, maybe with a few reinforcements as well. They could then regroup and figure this mess out.

  * * * * * * * *

  Running towards the school’s front entrance, I could not help but think how surreal this all was. Obviously this epidemic was just starting to break loose, as there were not yet thousands of zombies clogging the streets moaning for my brain. I cautiously opened the door and quickly stepped inside. According to the hot mama outside, I needed to go straight down this main corridor to a T-intersection, make a left, and then the first right, and the classroom should be the second door on the right. The main office looked deserted, with a bloody hand print on the glass that smeared downward to the floor. Leaning over to my left, I looked through the glass down at the floor. All I could see from where I stood was a pair of feet belonging to someone lying prone on the floor.

  It sure as shit wasn’t Lucy, as confirmed by the large work boots. I stepped through the interior set of doors and found it was an older man, and he was most certainly dead. I took a quick scan of the hallways. In front of me, several bodies of adults and children littered the floor. All of them appeared to have been ravaged by a pack of dogs. My eyes squinted as my stomach tried to purge itself onto the tiled floor. I quietly stepped over and around the freshly mangled corpses and tried not to look at them, I didn’t think I could handle it.

  My eyes never stopped scanning the hallway to the front as I ventured farther into the school. The sounds of something feeding hungrily began to overtake me, coming from the classrooms on both sides of the hallway. I tried to step past the rooms but still caught a glimpse of several people, adults and children alike, eating other corpses on the floor like wolves over a carcass. Unfortunately I could do nothing for those already wounded or dead. I needed to focus on the living. I knew that my current mission called for me to covertly locate Lucy, if she was still alive, and get her safely out if possible. Moving on, I could not help but notice the pictures taped on the walls of the hallways, drawn by the students. It made my anger soar thinking of the innocents maimed and killed from this virus or whatever was causing this nightmare.

  I reached the T-intersection and when I stepped around the corner, I predictably stepped into a large pool of blood and slid right into the wall on the far side of the hallway. Naturally, I made a considerable amount of noise as I swore and crashed to the floor. Of course I then gained the attention of several zombies, and I could hear footsteps and slobbering moans headed my way.

  Just fucking great! My head started to pound. So much for my stealth abilities.

  I clambered to my feet and moved with a purpose to the left, and then I made my first right. I could see the room in front of me now, and I swiftly moved into position with my rifle up and ready to unleash a rain of lead. Checking the room, I found it completely empty.

  Fuck. No kid in sight, nobody to return to mom. Well, I gave it the old college try.

  It was time to get my ass out of there before I got pinned down. Who knew how many of these zombies were around? The school was clearly infested with them. I exited the room, rifle up and ready. Hugging the right side of the hallway, I retraced my steps and passed a storage room. I froze in my tracks when I heard faint sounds of crying coming from the other side of the door. I entered hastily and closed the door behind me as the sounds of moaning and footsteps from my pursuers got closer. Inside I found two little girls, one of them matching Lucy’s description.

  “Is your name Lucy, sweetheart?” I softly asked.

  She nodded her head yes as the two of them hugged each other, crying in fear.

  Well what do you know? I was shocked. I actually found her!

  I crouched down in front of them and put my hands on their little shoulders.

  “My name is Mike," I told them quietly. "I’m a police officer, and I promise I’ll get you two out of here. Can you be brave little girls for me?”

  They both nodded their heads
as tears trailed down their faces. I had no idea what kind of horror these little angels had seen, but I swore I would not let harm come to them while I drew breath. I looked around the storage room and located a small jump rope. Grabbing it, I tied it off on my belt and handed the other end to Lucy.

  “Okay honey," I said gently, "I’m going to open this door. Lucy you hang onto this rope real tight and hold onto your friend’s hand. No matter what do not let go of it. It’ll get really loud if I have to shoot these monsters. If I move, you move. If I stop, you stop, got it?”

  Both little girls shook their heads vigorously while looking at me with huge frightened eyes. Walking to the door, I listened hard. No sounds came from the other side so I opened it cautiously and stepped into the hallway. The girls followed as instructed, right on cue. I made for the way I entered the school when I remembered a side door leading outside on my way to the classroom.

  We quietly negotiated the hallways, and I noticed some of the bodies that were sprawled out on the floor beginning to twitch. As we passed a few, a blonde teacher began to moan and claw her way up onto her hands and knees. Without altering my pace, I planted my size 11½ boot into her face as if I was kicking a field goal. With a bone shattering crack, the blonde literally flipped into the air and landed onto her back. Most of her front teeth were now scattered across the hallway, and her jaw appeared to be dislocated. Unfortunately, both girls picked that time to shriek at the top of their little six-year-old lungs. Howls and moans erupted all over the school followed by footsteps all rushing to our location.

  I watched as several zombies around us clambered unsteadily to their feet. I shoved Lucy and her friend into an open doorway, followed them inside and slammed it shut. The room we found ourselves in was the teacher’s lounge, with a couch and table, along with pop and vending machines. A door on the other end of the room led out into a different wing of the school, but my door did not have a lock on it. Needing to slow down pursuit, I grabbed the edge of the nearest pop machine and, with considerable effort, managed to tip the machine over in front of the door we’d just come through. As the huge Coke machine crashed to the floor, the little girls once again took up their screaming sessions while several pairs of fists began pounding on the barricaded door.

  “Well that should slow them down.”

  Turning back to the girls, I told Lucy to hold tight, for we needed to move fast. We ran out into the next hall, and I looked left to see that there were at least a dozen zombies shuffling down the hall directly towards us with many more pouring around the corner to join them. In the administrative offices to my right, the windows exploded with several creatures trying to claw their way through the shattered glass to get to us. That startled even me. For the moment, the hallway behind me was the only way open. I turned and dragged the girls with me to the end of the hallway to a T-intersection. To the right, scores of twitching bodies filled the hall. Thankfully, I saw an emergency fire exit dead ahead (no pun intended), and hollered for the girls to run for it. Spinning around, my balls shriveled tight when I saw the hallway was now packed shoulder to shoulder with hungry, disgusting, mutilated zombies all after one thing— my hot, gushing blood.

  Desperately I swung my M4 rifle up and the orange triangle of my reflex scope stopped on the skull of the first creature coming at me.

  Crack!

  The sound of rifle fire in these tight confines was deafening, but so rapidly did I fire one round after another, that my rifle’s magazine ran dry in seconds. At least I could now use the second or two of borrowed time to reload as the zombies stumbled over the several fallen corpses, downed from well-placed headshots. I slapped the bolt home on my rifle, and like a video game gone bad, I burned through another thirty-round magazine in seconds. The smell of cordite in the air was overpowering and made me hack repeatedly.

  Where in the hell could all of these zombies be coming from?

  Sweat poured down my face as I slammed another magazine into my rifle, which was now hot to the touch. I continued wreaking havoc with head shots while I retreated back down the hall towards the door. Before I knew it, I backed up into the exit door. I figured the girls had enough of a chance to get out of harm’s way, and I turned and bolted out of the door. Next to the door lay a shovel some janitor had been using for landscaping in the nearby flowerbeds. Remarking how I thought I just shot what looked to be the janitor in the head, I grabbed it and jammed it through the door handles to prevent the zombies from following, for now at least. I ran to the front of the school, and at that second, it hit me like a truck that I had just sent a whole ambulance full of infected bite victims to the hospital from the domestic battery address across the street.

  “Son of a bitch!” My yell was dry and hoarse.

  As I neared my squad, I didn’t see Lucy or her hot Latino mother anywhere. However, I didn’t see their bodies either, and nobody else was moving in the parking lot. Good. Hopefully they had found one another.

  I didn’t have the time to worry about them right now. Tossing my rifle into the passenger seat of the squad, I fished my keys from my pocket and fired it up as the sound of breaking glass made me look up. Several zombies were now spilling out of the school into the parking lot.

  “Fuck this!” I decided. “I’m outta here!”

  Tires squealed as I gunned the engine, heading for the hospital.

  9

  August 26

  Day 1

  Mattie was bored. She was tired of sitting in this nearly soundproof hospital room babysitting Officer Sherman’s prisoner. She was sick of the damned moaning and growling the smelly prisoner made whenever she got too close to his hospital bed. If not for the leather restraints on his hands and feet, she was sure he would attack her again. The way he kept trying to bite her reminded her of an old ex-boyfriend.

  It stunk like ass in there, and she thought he’d probably crapped his pants.

  She stood and began to pace impatiently by the door. The man reacted to her sudden movement, thrashing on the bed, clacking his yellowed teeth together.

  “Yep, just like my ex-boyfriend,” she chuckled. “What a loser he turned out to be.”

  She exited the small one bed room, closed the hospital room door with a giggle and took a deep breath of sterile air. Across from the room was the nurses’ station, where a group of them stood around talking.

  “Is it a full moon out there tonight?" one asked. "We’re bursting with people lined up out the door waiting for treatment.”

  “It looks as if the panic from this supposed flu epidemic is hitting us hard,” another commented.

  This nurse was younger and seemed worried.

  Mattie stretched her shapely arms over her head, and she heard a cart roll to a stop next to her.

  “I’m here to get a blood sample from the patient,” the young female tech said.

  “Have at it. Just be careful, he’s a biter,” Mattie cautioned her.

  “Oh great!” the tech replied, fanning the air with her hand as she entered the room. “Phew! And he soiled himself.”

  Mattie left the tech to do her job and walked down a few rooms to see how Officer Sherman was holding up. Pushing the curtain to the side, she entered his room and looked at him lying on the bed with his eyes closed.

  He looked like shit.

  He was sweating feverishly, white as a ghost, and the bandage on his ribs where he’d been bitten was soaked with yellowish blood. Sherman cracked his eyes open at the sound of the curtain closing.

  “How are you holding up, Sherman?” she asked.

  “Not good,” he replied dryly. "My ribs hurt real bad where that guy bit me and the rest of my body feels like I was hit by a truck.”

  Sherman looked down at his bandage and peeled it back to study the wound. The injury was nasty; the edges of the bite mark had angry red and black streaks radiating outward from it. If that wasn’t infection, she’d hate to see what was.

  “Great, I’ll probably get AIDS or some weird shit from that d
ude,” he groaned.

  “It doesn’t look good," Mattie admitted. "I’ll go grab the doctor.”

  “Gee, thanks for cheering me up," Sherman mumbled. "And can you bring me back some water? The medicine they gave me tasted like I ate a turd.”

  Leaving the room a little worried for him, Mattie walked back to the nurses’ station where the on-duty ER doctor was talking to several nurses, detailing his orders for treatment of patients. Hospital staff rushed room to room, trying to get patients treated and the rooms cleared for the next in line.

  Mattie waited quietly to the side for the doctor to finish his business before getting his attention. Finally the doctor finished, and as the nurses left to attend their orders, she grabbed the doctor’s sleeve before he could walk off.

  “Hey, Doc, sorry to bother you, but my friend Officer Sherman is not looking very good. He’s here for a bite wound to his ribcage and if anything, it looks much worse and very infected. He was only bitten an hour or so ago. Can you look at him real quick?”

  “Sorry, I’m swamped right now, Officer,” he replied, “but I’ll have a nurse see to him right away.”

  True to his word, the man grabbed a passing nurse and told her to drop what she was doing and see to Sherman.

  Sometimes it was a good thing being a cop. At least they got a little respect here.

  Following the nurse into Sherman’s room, she watched her check his chart and then his vitals. The nurse had a worried look on her face, which got worse when she looked at the nasty injury on his ribs. Sherman had already dozed off.

  “How long ago was he bitten?” the nurse asked.

  “I believe it was over two hours ago, but less than three,” Mattie replied.

  “That cannot be right,” the nurse answered, now pointing at the streaks in the skin surrounding the gash. “This bite wound looks at least a week old, maybe older. It is seriously infected and is spreading outwards throughout his body.”