Slow Burn: A Zombie Novel

by Mike Fosen

  Reaching the helicopter, Matvei turned to look back at his unraveling army. Individual mercenaries were overcome as others fled in a chaotic scene of blood and terror. Matvei saw several men shoot themselves in the head while being bitten. He had only moments to reflect and wonder how many of the 1,500 men were able to get out on the convoy north. Matvei guessed six or seven hundred at most as he quickly emptied his pistol into three approaching undead. As the slide locked back on an empty magazine he ordered the pilot to take off. Four other men reached the chopper and Matvei helped them aboard. Reloading, Matvei fired rapidly as several dozen infected reached the helicopter pad all at once. Matvei and the others aboard were only able to down maybe half of them as the Huey helicopter rose off the ground, and the landing skids slammed into the horde. At least seven grabbed onto the skids and hung on as the aircraft struggled under the added weight to gain altitude. Reaching for another magazine to feed his empty pistol, Matvei reloaded and struggled to make head shots as the chopper swayed violently under the uneven load.

  Below him, Matvei watched a tidal wave of rotten flesh flood over the remaining survivors. Two of their unwanted cargo were scraped off when the helicopter nearly hit the top of a cell tower and Matvei’s .45 helped clear off most of the rest. The helicopter flew north over downtown Dallas, and Matvei observed firsthand the destruction and devastation left in the wake of the rampant virus. The city was completely destroyed with fires burning out of control everywhere.

  The view was breathtaking and momentarily distracted him. Snapping out of it, Matvei realized there was one infected remaining on the skids. He stared down at him as he struggled to reach the human flesh in the cabin. The creature was a former athletic male who seemed oblivious to the fact that he was hanging several hundred feet off the ground. Matvei made eye contact right before blasting a hole in the infected man’s forehead and it, he snarled in defiance, almost as if it knew what was about to happen. Matvei's hand recoiled from the shot, the man’s head snapped back and it fell from the skids. He watched the body free fall to the ground and then continued to stare at the urban apocalypse passing below.

  After a moment of relief shared with the others in the cabin, Matvei reached the front of the aircraft, sat in the co-pilot chair, and handed the pilot a map with the location of a rendezvous point well north of the city.

  "I have men waiting at that location," Matvei informed the pilot.

  “That’s going to be a problem, sir,” the pilot answered dryly. “We must have taken a stray round or two, and we are losing oil pressure rapidly. The controls are sluggish, and we have got a few minutes airborne at most.”

  Matvei sighed and considered his options as a warning light and buzzer activated on the Huey’s control panel.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I was wrong. We don’t even have a few minutes,” the pilot relayed. “Get on the radio and send out a mayday. I may be able to get us just north of the city, but we’re going down, and it’s gonna be a hard landing.”

  As the pilot struggled with the controls and tried to guide the crippled craft to an open clearing, Matvei turned to his men in the back of the Huey and told them to prepare for a crash. Grabbing for the radio, Matvei sent out a calm final radio transmission while watching the sand bunkers of a local golf course grow nearer. The helicopter began to spin as it lost altitude.

  “This is Captain Matvei. I’m north of Dallas near a golf course off toll road 289. We are going down, I repeat, we’re going down! If you can hear this, send a rescue party. If you do you will be greatly rewar—”

  47

  October 25

  Day 61

  Peoria, Illinois

  In the remote cabin tucked back in the woods of western Illinois, everyone was going about their work. The small group led by Dan’s brother Dave and Tom Ogle, along with a few relatives, was busy canning food and chopping wood for what was looking to be a long winter. Finishing a batch of canned green beans, Tom’s wife came up to him and told him she was going to go for a walk down to the pond towards the back of the property to try and unwind. She never did like to camp out at the cabin, and now being stuck here permanently, she had been getting a little testy as of late. Tom told her to give him a few minutes, and he would go with her.

  "No,” she replied, sounding irritated. “Don’t be so overprotective, I’ll be fine."

  “Well, you better take a gun with you just in case," Tom countered.

  “You know I don’t like those things,” she answered. “We haven’t seen any of those monsters for a long time. I’ll be fine."

  Tom Ogle again tried to convince his wife otherwise, but she just got pissed at him, turned around and headed off through the woods. The other group members were tired of her constant bitching and never even noticed she left.

  She took her time walking through the woods. It was a beautiful day and some of the trees still had leaves on them. It was getting cooler and she stopped often to watch birds and take a swig from the bottle of vodka she kept hidden under her coat. She had to drink just to keep her sanity while completing one mundane chore after another.

  She wondered exactly how many jars of green beans someone could prepare before they jammed a knife into their eyes from boredom.

  After about half an hour, she reached the back pond on the property where they would go to catch fish and hunt. It was a beautiful place surrounded by large oak trees, where she could sit and drink and feel sorry for herself in private.

  “I didn’t ask for any of this shit to happen!” she said aloud. “The others can kiss my ass as well if they don’t like my attitude! They have no idea what I’ve been through.”

  Tilting the bottle back for several swallows of the smooth liquor, she sighed with content as the alcohol burned inside her belly.

  She sat drinking in the lawn chair that she had left out near the pond, and she saw a little girl approaching through the clearing. She recognized the girl as Alice, who belonged to the neighboring family that had a farm just down the road.

  What’s she doing out here by herself? she thought. She must be so scared. Her family must be out here looking for her.

  She got up and began calling to the girl, and sure enough, Alice’s family appeared from the woods as well, walking in her direction.

  “Hello!” she called, but received no response.

  Tom’s now slightly drunk wife walked up to the little girl while calling to her family that Alice was over here. Something just seemed a little off to her as the girl’s family didn’t reply and just kept walking – or more like stumbled – in her direction. Suddenly she saw many others, who were not part of the little girl’s family, emerging from the woods as well. Horror filled her eyes as she realized that she was now alone in the woods with several dozen of those “monsters” that she had so easily dismissed earlier. She momentarily forgot about the little girl and looked down just in time to see Alice grab onto her shirt. It was obvious from the large hunk of flesh missing from her cheek that Alice was infected as well.

  The friendly little neighbor girl tried to bite her on the arm, but she was able to push Alice forcefully in the chest, which sent the little infected girl into the pond with a splash. The fear finally burned through the alcohol-fueled fog of her brain, and she started to run, screaming for help. She sprinted through the woods back towards the cabin, but the vodka she had been drinking wasn’t helping her progress. She foolishly turned around to look at what her husband labeled “zombies” heading her direction and didn’t notice the hole in the ground that her foot fit tightly into.

  It didn’t come out as easily as it went in, and as she fell to the ground, she heard a loud crack come from her ankle. The pain was enough to make her scream again.

  As the eerily silent killers grew ever closer, she painfully pried her foot from the small hole and tried to walk, hobbling on the damaged ankle as pain lanced through her leg making her scream with every step. She was heading straight for the cabin and without even realizing it, was bringing
the horde of undead with her.

  “Help me!” she screamed hoarsely, losing any remaining stamina.

  She knew she was too far away from the cabin for them to do her any good. She also couldn’t stand to admit that her gun crazy husband was right, and she should have taken some sort of firearm with her, even if it was to just to go out for a drink. When the “monsters” gradually caught up to her, she turned, held her hands out and begged for mercy.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to end up sick like you.”

  Mercy was long gone from the doomed creatures that descended on her whimpering body. Finally, as her life was about to end, she gathered the courage to fight back. She screamed in fear as she tried to fight them off, punching one zombie in the head while lashing out at another with a tree branch. One of them got in from the side and gave her a bite on her flailing arm that would soon change her for the worse.

  “You bit me,” she softly whispered, making eye contact with the infected woman while bright red blood ran down her arm. “You bitch!”

  The blood and the fresh pain pulled her from her trance. Breaking free and knocking the infected woman free from her clawing grasp, she used the sudden adrenaline boost to make one last dash for the cabin. Although they had been working to clear the area around it for a kill zone, it was only open maybe thirty or so yards around the cabin, and the small group had instead been counting on its remote location for safety.

  * * * * * * * *

  Tom Ogle was sitting in the cabin cutting up some venison to make into jerky when he heard the scream in the woods. Grabbing his rifle, he heard the crashing in the woods as his wife suddenly burst into the open, hobbling up to the cabin on what looked to be a broken ankle.

  “There are monsters chasing me!” she screamed as she hopped past him through the door and into the safety of the cabin.

  Tom walked out the front door onto the porch, and scanned the tree line just as the first of many infected appeared out of the dense timber. The hair stood up on his neck as he raised his rifle to fire.

  “I hoped this day would never come,” he prayed. “God be with us.”

  They seemed to appear from everywhere at once, and Tom lined up his iron sights on the closest one and squeezed the trigger. The head of his former neighbor exploded. He took a deep breath, lined up his sights, and fired again. After downing several directly in his path he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. More zombies had appeared to his left. He took a few steps back closer to the doorway and began firing desperately at this new threat. Burning through an entire magazine, Tom paused to reload. As he slapped a fresh magazine home, sounds of a disturbance behind him caught him off guard. Looking back through the open front door, he saw his wife attacking Dave in the kitchen of the cabin.

  “Oh please God, no!” Tom cried.

  Rifle fire exploded from the other side of the cabin, and Tom realized he had never even called for help. It was obvious from the shots, however, that the enemy had found his remaining friends and family as well. He emptied his magazine into the approaching horde, only getting a few head shots, and quickly tried to reload. All he could think was that he needed to get inside the cabin and find his kids; he needed to be with them. Around the cabin, the gunfire died down and was soon replaced by screams of terror. The zombies seemed to be everywhere at once now, and Tom tripped while trying to turn around. He lost his rifle as panic set in.

  “What did she do to us?” he asked himself of his wife, as several of his group members now turned on one another.

  Tom screamed his children’s names as he drew his pistol and retreated down the hallway, firing blindly behind him into the thick ravenous mob which was now giving chase. Hearing their young and terrified screams coming from the back bedroom, he found his kids hiding in a small closet. He braced the bedroom door with a dresser as the infected mass of bodies now flooded unchecked into the cabin. Tom swung his head around looking for a way to escape, knowing that the combined weight of the attackers would soon push open the door. Seeing the large bedroom window, Tom grabbed his kids and moved them to it. He flung back the curtains, and the sound of breaking glass and more screams filled his ears as several infected broke out the bedroom window and grabbed at him with bloody cut hands.

  “Oh God help us!” Tom prayed, reloading his pistol while shielding his children with his own body.

  From what Tom could hear happening all around him, there was to be no help. As he began to fire, all he hoped for was that it would just be over soon.

  Epilogue

  October 25

  Day 61

  Conrad stood atop the prison walls and used his hand to shade his eyes from the brightly glaring setting sun. Patrolling the gate was boring work, but sometimes survivors would show up randomly, and it was an important job to get the gates open before the mobs of undead overwhelmed the poor souls.

  Boring, yet important, Conrad reminded himself. Just a couple of weeks ago that had been him out there.

  It was just as the sun began to set on the horizon when his Motorola radio crackled to life.

  “Hello? I’m outside the walls and need to get inside quick. I got separated during the corpse burning detail, and the fuckers left me behind.”

  Conrad looked around, slightly confused. The corpse burning detail? Conrad was surprised. That crew had returned hours ago. However, there had been an argument when they got back over how many guys had gone out, as they never had taken a strict headcount on burning crews leaving the prison. Shooters on the walls always kept the zombies at bay when the crews were out, and no casualties were reported.

  “Message acknowledged,” Conrad replied, “Meet me at the gate.”

  After notifying the towers that the gate needed to be opened, Conrad pocketed his radio, grabbed his shotgun and scrambled down the stairs to the control box. The towers reported no zombies on the west wall and cleared him to open up. The control box had a lever attached to it along with two LED lights, one red and the other green. When the red light was on, the gate was locked, and it could only be switched by an operator in either the command center or a nearby guard tower. This made opening the gate a two man job, lessening the chance of a screw-up getting everyone else killed. Conrad waited patiently for the light to switch from red to green, and when it finally did he pushed the lever up. Since its installation, the attached electric winch allowed for a quicker entry into the prison yard. As the large steel doors clanked open, Conrad peered out at his unexpected arrival. From out of the deepening dusk, a figure wearing a hooded jacket emerged and held up his radio as he approached. As he entered, Conrad pulled the lever back down, closing the gate. After they boomed shut, the red light came back on locking it, and he let the tower know the gate was again secure.

  Conrad turned to check out the man who was left stranded outside. He was a little wiry guy, who had the look of a coiled serpent waiting to strike. The odor coming of the coat confirmed that he had indeed been burning rotting corpses because nobody in their right frame of mind would wear that smelly thing just because they were cold!

  “How did you manage to get left outside?” Conrad asked.

  The man looked around carefully, and pulled a bottle of Captain Morgan from his jacket pocket.

  “I won’t lie, my friend, I went out scavenging and found a few bottles of these. Let’s say I was to forget one of these bottles here, and you were to find that this never happened?”

  Conrad smiled as he took the offered bottle and looked up at the wiry man. “I would think that guard duty is a boring job, and the mind can play tricks on someone when they’re tired.”

  “Excellent,” the wiry man replied.

  “Thanks for the gift, friend,” Conrad added. “By the way, there is no law against scavenging here. If you want to go on your own time you can get whatever you want. But you are not supposed to go alone; you should be quarantined to make sure you’re not bit.

  “Have you see
n how fast the infection spreads?” the man asked, “I would have turned already.”

  “True,” Conrad answered with a shrug as he started up the stairs to return to his post. “But you still owe me… what did you say your name was?”

  Conrad didn’t see the look of camaraderie fade from the man’s eyes and quickly be replaced with one of fury.

  “I didn’t say,” the man hissed in barely controlled anger as he lessened his grip on the knife concealed in his lower back.

  Conrad was beyond earshot and caring. He was already thinking about drinking the bottle of whiskey at the end of his shift.

  The man turned and scanned the interior of the prison yard as darkness set in. No one paid him much attention as he wandered about in the secure confines, tucked safely behind the massive stone walls. He heard laughter and a dog barking near a large open fire pit. Several men and women could be seen conversing around it, seemingly without a care in the world.

  “All cozy in their little castle,” the man hissed as the delicious smell of cooking food reached his nose. “But they’re not out of reach from my master’s judgment.”

  Locating the dead man’s small camper just where it should be, he pulled out the Motorola radio. Turning the knob to the correct frequency, he lifted it to his mouth and pressed the talk button.

  “I’m in,” he whispered.

  The reply signal was weak but understandable, “Excellent, my son, you know what to do. Go with God.”

  Jonas smiled cruelly as he opened the door. “Thy will be done.”

  “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

  *2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. ©1791 All Rights Reserved.

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