The Turning

by Thomas Key

  I looked around and saw that we had lost three of our group. “Three dead just like that,” I said quietly. Rachel shook her head, “No, Arturo was right here. He was fine.” We all looked around as if he would just magically appear from beside us. “Damn it,” I said, and we once again spread out, this time in teams of two. I spotted the idiot at the end of the building, about to walk into the office area of the warehouse. “Stay where you are!” I shouted at him as I began to run his direction. “I’ve got this!” he yelled back. “You’ll see!” he said as he entered the doorway. “No!” I shouted. He stopped dead in his tracks and lowered his rifle. I saw him look back at me as he was bowled over by four infected. They were tearing him apart before he even hit the ground. I fired, hitting two of the attackers as my rounds drilled into them. The other two continued to take bites from the poor kid, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around them. More rounds flew past me as the rest of the group followed in my tracks. I kicked the head of the last infected so hard, I heard and physically saw the neck snap, and bones protruding from the skin. I slid to a stop next to the boy. He gurgled, with blood erupting from his mouth. “Relax, we’ve got you,” I said quietly as his eyes met mine. He knew, just like I knew that he was a goner. Even without the bites, there was nothing we can do for the amount of damage he sustained. “Did we win?” he asked, spitting out blood as he spoke. “Yeah buddy. We won.” He seemed to nod with satisfaction as his head lay back onto the concrete floor of the warehouse and his eyelids flickered. Blood ran out of the tear in his neck like a river, coating my hands as it slowed to a trickle. Within another moment, life left those eyes forever. “Damn it, kid,” I said with remorse as I closed his eyes one last time. I stood, and fired one round into his head before he could turn into one of the undead. Isabel and Rachel had cleared the rest of the offices with their teams. I gently lifted the kid into my arms and headed back outside once I was waved forward with the signal that it was indeed secure. We gathered the other two dead men and placed them into the back of our rides, each one received the mandatory bullet to the brain, just in case. We would mark this place on our map for resource collection. We were done for today. We’d return to base and have the all too well-known memorial service for people from Cannon. At this rate, we were going to be extinct sooner rather than later with all of the human lives lost since the fall. This was unsustainable and unfortunately for us, two other major players knew that as well, and they were counting on that very fact.

  Chapter Four

  We drove through the gate back into Cannon AFB, and headed for the motor pool. We parked our rides in a very neat fashion and proceeded to disembark. Crews were already waiting for us to help move the injured man to the makeshift hospital, and to transport the dead to be buried. All of us were exhausted. The short time that we were out of the fence; a whole 5 hours or so, had resulted in three deaths, one starved prisoner freed and the realization that things are not what they seemed with our undead friends. As if on cue, the man in charge of our unit, Sergeant Dail approached and wanted an immediate debriefing. Those of us left standing proceeded back to our meeting area and sat down heavily in the old metal chairs. “Can someone please tell me how the hell we lost three people on a reconnaissance mission?” he said with a look of frustration on his chiseled face. We all just kind of sat there, as if a teacher was wanting to know who put a thumbtack on their seat, and everyone knew but no one wanted to say anything. I figured I’d start the shit show, so I stood and looked him square in the eyes. I recounted the events from our leaving the base, to Arturo’s killing of the walking dead, to the infected ambush. His eyebrows raised visibly at the telling of that whole bunch of shenanigans. After I said my piece, I sat back down once again as if I had just spilled my entire life story. He too sat with a sigh and ran his fingers through his short brown hair. “Are you absolutely sure that they planned the ambush?” he asked me. I looked back up at him. “Yes, sir. It was too coordinated. They absolutely caught us off guard. I know for sure that had I not seen them above on the catwalks, I would have never seen them coming at all. I’d be there with Arturo waiting to leave this god forsaken place.” The rest of the group murmured their agreement. “A god-damned zombie ambush. That’s fucking great,” he sighed again heavily, and took a moment to think his thoughts through. “Alright. Go get some grub, and head to bed. You all have had a long day. Report back tomorrow morning at 0900 hours.” With that, we all stood, saluted and headed out of the room.

  Rachel was right on my heels as I left the room. I didn’t turn back to look at her. The feelings that were going on within me were intense and varied to say the least. After everything that had happened with the kid; the loss of life and almost losing my own, I was lost in the abyss that was my inner darkness. During this damn apocalypse, I had lost everything that I had spent a majority of my life to build. Even the twelve years of schooling, from kindergarten to graduating high school had been nearly a complete waste of time. I sure as shit didn’t learn how to reload ammo in the 9th grade, or how to stitch up a wound in 11th. Very little of my education had mattered at all in the long run. My adult life I had spent working my way up the corporate ladder to become a grocery store manager. Again, for what? What part of making sure my store displays looked great, and getting on my hands and knees to clean the bathroom tiles before a corporate inspection helped prepare me for where I’m at now? I continued down my freefall into darkness until Rachel literally grabbed me and pushed me against a nearby wall. Since my mind was completely elsewhere, it totally caught me off guard. I let out a grunt as I hit the wall. She pointed her finger of doom into my face. “Listen mister, you are not allowed to push me away. I get that you’re upset. I get it babe, I do because I am too. I am here for you and we will get through this together,” she said with a tone of voice that I knew meant that it was not up for negotiation. I stared at her a moment, with the ‘Uh oh’ finger still pointed squarely at me and nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry,” I said, my head sagging lower. The stress and the sadness of the day weighing on me even more heavily as I stood there. She put her hand around my chin and lifted my eyes to hers. “Don’t say that you’re sorry. Just hug me,” she said as she wrapped her arms around me. The woman was a damn magician with how she could just get around any walls that I had up inside. Like the Trojan horse of the Greeks, she eventually always got in, but like in a nice way. What could I say to her in response? Any man worth his weight in salt would know to defer and hug the woman. We’re stupid sometimes, but not dumb. If that makes any sense. So I did just that and I wrapped my own arms around her, kissing her forehead and receiving a mouthful of hair for my trouble. The smile on her face though was absolutely worth every hair gagging second of it. “Now, let's go get some food and go back to bed. It's your turn to go first,” she said with a wink and she took my hand and led me towards the mess hall. Like the soon to be husband that I was, I dutifully followed.

  At 2:35am, or something like that, I awoke from another series of horrific dreams. This time, Rachel was awake and staring right at me. I stared back at her, feeling like I should be worried. I knew then that it was time to talk as this woman would stare into my soul and would reach right in and pull whatever she wanted out of my mind or body by force if she felt it necessary. Once again, taking it all in and deferring to her, I stood and walked the short distance from the bunk to the opposite wall by the doorway. The sweat on my body created a light sheen in the little bit of light filtering in from around the door. I put my arm on the wooden wall and stood there with my head resting against it. I heard her stand and follow me. She once again embraced me, hugging me from behind. I was one of those people that was always warm to others. Both emotionally and physically. In this case, I’m referring to physically which I attested it to being hot-blooded, but I know that’s not really the case. On the plus side, it made me one of those people that everyone wanted to cuddle with, simply because I was warm as hell to the touch. “Talk to me,” she whispered int
o my ear. I sighed, both outwardly and inwardly. It was going to happen sooner or later and one way or another. I turned around and saw her gorgeous eyes staring back into mine. “Alright,” I said as I led her back to the bunk and sat down. She sat across from me with crossed legs. I, for one, do not know how adults can still do that. Every time that I had ever attempted crisscross applesauce, it hurt the hell out of my legs. She just stared at me as my thoughts traced back around to the present. “Alright,” I said quietly. “You said that already,” she told me with no small amount of expectancy. I sighed out loud again and began to speak. “You know about my previous career.” She nodded and moved her hand in a ‘continue’ gesture. “I was married with a baby on the way before the world ended.” She looked at me completely stunned. “What?” she whispered as she looked into my eyes, tears already beginning to form. I nodded and began to tell her my story, with tears of my own not far behind.

  “When the zombapoc began, I was the store manager of a local grocery store in the heights. The heights in Albuquerque were regarded as the high-end neighborhoods. The well off, the high class, whatever you wanted to call them lived in and around the northeast heights. Before becoming a store manager, I had worked my way up from a bagger to a cashier to pretty much any position that I hadn’t previously worked before. I was the jack of all trades type of person. I had met this wonderful girl when I had first started and I fancied her something fierce right away. She was one of those chicks that everyone found attractive and she did not have a hard time getting attention. I’m not sure when it was that I went from just one of those other guys working at the store to the one who caught her eye. To be honest, I don’t even know when I made the leap from the bagger who was so socially awkward that I couldn’t look customers in the eye when I asked them how they were doing that day, to full-blown won’t shut the hell up type of person. I was always truly a shy kid, the kind that played video games, ate Doritos and drank mountain dew almost exclusively. When I made the leap into her line of sight though, my entire world changed. When she gave me her attention though, I changed almost overnight. I started to become the man that I knew I could be. It took a shit ton of work. For the first time in my life, I spent money on clothes, I got a stylish haircut and so on. It was really the first time in my life that I felt powerful. When we began to date, it was the most amazing thing that I had ever experienced. Fast forward a few years later, and several more promotions later, she was still the facet of my fascination. Gorgeous, free-spirited and someone that I wanted to spend forever with. Things began to get rocky shortly before the apocalypse. Being in such a position of responsibility and working so many hours caused me to neglect the things that really mattered in life. The new Xbox games that had just been released and my now wife. That was a joke by the way. My wife was the most important thing in my life and everyone around me knew it. She told me shorty after my taking the store manager position that she was pregnant. I was naturally on cloud nine. I was both freaking out and thrilled to bring a new life into the world, a new little Shepherd. However, as the work hours continued to rise and my attention continued to leave her, things got bad. I won’t go into details about our marital issues as it’s fairly mute at this point. My hobby had quickly turned from playing co-op on Left 4 Dead to purchasing a pistol and going to the range over and over again. That was my getaway from the world. I suppose in the end, it paid off. In fact, after the end of the world had come, I had an opportunity to regain some of my pride by shooting a certain guy in the head. Don’t worry, the guy was dead, or undead rather. It was an absolute pleasure to move him from undead to dead dead. It was the loss of not only my wife but the child that had put me at the edge of suicide. As the world was burning around me, I sat in an empty home. One that had once been filled with laughter, with moans of pleasure and with the occasion sounds of a horror flick or Netflix series. With the sirens in the background, and the screams outside, I sat in the dark with a pistol to my head and a bullet in the chamber just chomping at the bit to be released from this life’s confines. I never did pull the trigger though. It would have been too easy. I deserved all of the pain that I felt, or so I thought. As the hordes of refugees left Albuquerque, I stayed put. I didn’t have the energy to leave with those hundreds of people. I would live or die at home, slowly but surely going through my remaining liquor supply. It was not until a fire started in the housing complex that the decision was made for me. In emotional pain or not, the idea of burning alive was scary as shit. I left the home with my pistol, two magazines of ammunition, an extra box in my pocket and a backpack filled with what little survival gear I had stashed away.

  I ended up walking for two miles before I came across two people running from a pack of zombies. I watched them with morbid fascination as the infected followed their every move. It wasn’t until one of them tripped and fell that I stopped my onward progress. The two people were obviously a couple, as before the trip to the ground, the man had been pulling the woman's hand behind him, pulling her forward. I heard an audible snap as one of the woman's bones broke with the fall. My guess was it was her foot, as it looked like it got snagged on an open storm drain. The man was trying to protect her, and was thus far holding his own with what appeared to be an old wooden baseball bat. It was not until another group of infected, numbering eight, appeared and joined their brethren that he began to lose steam. Something inside of me, maybe empathy, or memories of being a chivalrous gentleman, to this day, I’m still not sure what it was. Something flicked a switch inside of me and I went from casual observer to rescuer. I pulled my pistol, a Ruger 9mm and fired round after round into the heads of the zombies. In no time flat, I had the group of undead fuckers eliminated. The man, was now standing between me and the woman, as if guarding her from me. I just stared at him. “We don’t want any trouble,” he said with his weapon of choice. I saw more movement down the street heading our way. “You should help her get up and go before more of them get here,” I told him as I stood between the duo and the incoming groupies. “You can’t take them on your own,” he said as he stood beside me. I grabbed his shoulder and turned him to me. “Take her and go. Find a safe place. Take care of her. Nothing is more important than that right now,” I told him, looking into the teenager’s eyes. He stood staring back into my own eyes and eventually nodded in agreement. He walked back to the woman, and helped lift her up. She let out a loud yelp as she stood, trying desperately to not place any weight on her right foot. He supported her weight, with her arm around his shoulder. He looked back at me as if to ask for permission. “Go kid. I’ve got this. Good luck,” I told him as I turned back to the incoming group of infected. With that, they left. I truly hoped that they would make it. I never did see either of them again.

  As I squared off with the new group, something caught my attention, or someone rather. A beautiful woman was about half way in the group of infected. The group was mid-sized with over a dozen or so. The woman though, kept grabbing my attention. Even from a distance, she looked familiar. When I realized just who she was, I hit my knees right then and there in the roadway. The woman, with an extended belly was my wife. My pregnant wife that had previously left me was there on the street, heading my direction, infected. The thought of joining my love passed through my mind. Maybe we would be happy together in death. It was not until the pain and the anger of the betrayal carved its way back into my mind that I slowly picked myself up off of the asphalt. I lifted my pistol once again and I fired the remaining rounds of ammunition left in my magazines, save for one final round. I stared at her as she shambled towards me. The formerly pregnant love of my life made it within a foot of me and I did not see a single spark of recognition or intelligence. She didn’t know me, and I would no longer know her. She was not the woman that I fell in love with anymore. With that dawning of realization, I raised my pistol and fired the last round point blank into her head. I caught her as she fell, and I gently laid her down onto the road way, chivalrous to a fault. As I stood back up,
I took one last look at her, and down at the baby bulge that she had been carrying for five months. I put my hand gently on the belly, hoping to maybe feel something. A kick maybe. Her skin was almost ice cold to the touch, and I felt nothing else. No signs of life from my would-have-been child. I left my hopes and dreams behind with them as I turned and walked away from my past and into the sunset, or whichever cliché works best.”

  I snapped out of my memory and saw Rachel beside me visibly crying. Looking around slowly, I realized that I was not on that street in the thick of it and I too officially broke down. I cried into her arms, and her into mine. I don’t think I had ever cried as much as I did that night, but I’ll be damned if it didn't help.

  Chapter Five

  Many miles away in the New Mexico desert, a series of TV monitors were hung along the wall of a posh office space. Directly across from the screens sat a brown mahogany desk. Adorning the desk was a series of photographs of various people in fancy gold lined picture frames, a very expensive clock and a nameplate with gold trim. ‘Praetor Julius Hart’ it read. Behind the desk, sitting in an extremely expensive leather office chair was a short, unhappy looking grey-haired man. The man was fairly plump as far as people in the zombie apocalypse were. It was apparent that while people were fighting over a can of spam, this man was not only well fed, but would send food back if it wasn’t made exactly how he liked it. The man was on his office phone, and swung his chair back and forth as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line. “Yes dear,” he said into the phone in a tired voice. “Okay. I'll see you at dinner. Love you,” he said as he hung up the phone. He sighed. He honestly could not stand his wife and only brought her here when the shit went down to continue his uninterrupted claim to power. He would look weak if he had let his wife become one of those things. Now that she was here with him in the bunker though, it made him slightly regret it. His secretary, a gorgeous blonde who always wore a tight-fitting black dress knocked on his door. “Enter,” he said. She did just that, closing the door behind her and walked over to him. She looked around the room to make sure no one else was there and proceeded to sit on his lap. The old man smiled broadly as the twenty-something bombshell stirred his loins. “You have a meeting in an hour with the General, and another meeting with the council in three hours,” she said with a wink and she ground into his lap. “Thanks, dear,” he said to her, grinning ear to ear. She stood back up, and he gave her a light slap on the ass. She giggled as she walked from the office and back to her desk just outside of the door. He was sure that his wife knew that he was having an affair, but even he knew his wife wasn’t stupid enough to tell anyone about it. It would not end well for her at the very least, and he had had people killed for less. As she left, he continued to marvel at her backside until she was out of the room. The door closed with a well-oiled light click. His smile faded as he glanced back at the monitors on the wall. One of the monitors had a full live satellite image of Cannon AFB. The group that he had helped found called themselves the ‘New World Order’. Not to be confused with the Japanese dance troupe of the same name, of course. The group consisted of men and women from the House of Representatives, the Senate, and even a select few from the White House and Pentagon. Established decades ago with the hope of world domination, many of those selected had different views on what the new world should be like, and many more views of why it had to change. Some felt the poor had to be purged. Others felt that if they reboot the world, they would no longer have to fear the elections and remain in power. Some even deep down wanted the extreme, a place to rule where they could do anything that they wanted with no fear of repercussion. Human nature with the veneer of our current society removed could be a truly cruel thing. There will always be do-gooders, of that everyone was sure of. Some felt that those individuals be convinced to stand down by words, bribery or just torture and be forced to join the winning side. Others, like Julius, knew better. Do-gooders like the ones at Cannon AFB needed to be wiped from the face of the Earth if they were to have the best chance at restarting this post-apocalyptic world into what it should be. A world ruled by the powerful, with one military that also policed its own citizens. Of course, with capital punishment for any that do not fall in line, and rewards for those in power. Just imagining such an Eden always brought his mood up. Julius though could not seem to get Cannon out of his mind. The fact that they had been unable to vacate the occupants did not sit well with him at all. He sat and stewed as he stared at the monitor that was the single focus of all of his efforts as of late.