by Woods, Shane
Somewhere, deep behind us and into the facility, came a screech. And, the more we listened, the closer and louder the shrieks became. They were coming.
“How?” Shannon asked, nearly wailing like a child with a stomachache. “The facility is sealed, how?”
Nobody knew the answer, but we did agree it was time to start moving. I began pushing everyone forward, at a walking pace at first, then slightly more hurriedly as the sounds grew.
Before long, we were all moving at a brisk jog. Clara took point, Grayson and I brought up the rear, as the three of us were the only ones armed with anything more than kitchen knives and chair legs.
We had nearly reached another bend in the hallway when a flurry of movement caught my eye behind us. About fifty yards back, an uninfected child of around ten came barreling down the hallway, with another hot on his heels. I nearly stopped to help as the one following jumped on the boy’s back and dragged him to the tile floor, biting deeply into a leg then nearly dragging the boy’s body to shove it behind him as he sprung forth after us.
The shriek that ensued was drowned out by the M4A1 as I squeezed a burst out and missed, chewing up the wall at the end of the hallway. I then corrected and launched two more bursts of automatic gunfire, the second one shredding an irregular grouping high into the freak’s chest, disabling the spine and making it useless as it fell at a running pace. Upon impact with the ground, it slid, then stopped, never to be of any more use than to lay there motionless, bleating out one long shriek after another as his final victim vaulted over his sire and took several rounds himself, high into the chest and lower skull, killing it in a hail of 9mm weapons fire from Clara.
Then, another humanoid shape appeared, now one-hundred yards away as we caught another bend in the hallway and picked up view of the entrance to this great facility as the halls tightened. I didn’t stop to fire, and neither did Clara.
Eventually, we were backed up against the infamous vault door to Cheyenne Mountain.
Grayson went fast to work on a terminal near the door as the majority of the group huddled nearby.
I slipped the .380 from his pocket and passed it off to Erik, as he was the closest to me. In that human grizzly bear’s palm, it looked like a toy.
“You got, like, six shots dude,” I informed him before the three of us with firearms stood off with the far end of the hallway.
Effectively creating a barrier between the unarmed survivors and ourselves, we stood. And we waited. The sounds of the infected, possibly following the scents of such a large meal on the move as we were, drew nearer.
And still, we waited.
Grayson slammed the ‘Enter’ button home one final time and the nearby red lights were replaced with a flashing yellow as the door slowly unbuckled itself from position and began to work free.
The first infected appeared at the end of the hallway, two-hundred yards straight down the alley.
“Hold,” I ordered, not wanting to expend ammo unless we had to.
Behind us, Grayson took over ushering survivors out the door and into a pair of trucks nearby in the large, open exit tunnel.
A veritable highway carved right through the mountain, this had to be the way out, the entrance and exit that fed this vast facility in times of peace.
As they filtered out, I urged my two companions in arms backwards step by step with a tap and tug each as more room was made between us and the door.
One-hundred yards.
Grayson followed Jennifer, the last of the unarmed and moved through himself.
Seventy-five yards.
I pushed further and watched as Erik, then Clara slid through the door.
Now twenty-five yards.
“GRAYSON!” I bellowed. “DOOR!”
“The control panel!” he called back to me, and I turned to locate it.
Not outside, with us, but inside. I raised my rifle, certain I could hit the panel. It was the size of a pizza box and only a dozen feet away. Of course, I could hit it!
Zero.
I unleashed a volley of deafening rifle rounds from the carbine. And right into the chest of the first infected.
The high velocity little copper-jacketed insects passed straight through the freak and buried themselves into the panel for the door, setting off further alarms and buzzers inside.
A shower and fog of Halon fire chemicals and much more, I was sure, began pouring in all directions inside the outer room from various nozzles around the door as one more freak tried to take a lunge through the chemical.
The swinging door knocked it askew and caught it mid-sternum as the multi-ton weight slammed back into place in its frame. The locking systems spun and slammed themselves into place as what was left of an infected middle-aged woman did little more than flop and shriek nearby on the ground as Clara casually placed a pair of bullets into her.
“Let’s go!” I urged as the others fell back to the vehicles. Cody was already in the driver’s seat of the nearby 7-ton troop transport as our people occupied the back section meant for them and whatever cargo.
Grayson was in the lead vehicle, a M1035 HUMMVEE marked for medical purposes by the military. I could see Jennifer and Gwen in the back seat of the vehicle, and I vaulted the tailgate and waved inward to them from the covered cargo area.
Turning and looking, I could see I was essentially cushioned by wooden crates and plastic totes of different types. If we were taking this vehicle, I only hoped it contained enough good stuff to benefit us.
“You have keys for these trucks?” I called up to Grayson.
“They’re military vehicles!” he called back, irritated. “They don’t have keys, only switches!”
As if to punctuate his statement, both trucks fired up nearly in unison and Cody began charging the air system in the Oshkosh as we prepared to set off. I guess I should have interviewed the guy better, as I had no clue he could operate such a machine.
A moment later, we were in motion, the truck tugging me backwards a fair bit as Grayson accelerated, the troop truck behind us, doing its best to keep up but falling well short on acceleration. Regardless, we were moving now. The banks of lights flashing by overhead just as if we were traveling down any mountain tunnel in the United States.
Apparently, the way had long been cleared. Grayson made mention of it, and that the vehicles were staged as they had been sending out regular sweep-and-clear crews and scouting teams, much the same as we had done back in Ohio but clearly, on a larger scale.
I started drifting in thought as we broke from the tunnel and into the crisp Colorado air, the sun already down low enough in the horizon to play peekaboo as we started our journey.
It would be a long way back to Ohio, and I settled in. Much as a kid on a family vacation, I had little to do but watch the scenery as we passed, leaving Cheyenne Mountain and its hundreds, if not, thousand or more survivors behind, and Colonel Parker as well.
Good. I hoped they never got to him. No civilian rescued him, and no freak made it in to feast on him. It would give me a slight, crooked smile for life to learn that he had felt nothing but the pain of starvation as he lay trapped in that control room with the stench of death and body odor to keep him company.
We traveled for what seemed like a hundred miles or more, Grayson using Clara as navigator and pointing us east, but away from any major population centers. Partially, we were kept humble and scared by the higher number of infected in those places, but we also just weren’t ready to see if all had been nuked, and unfortunately nobody in our car knew much about exclusion zones and what would be safe or not safe to inhabit after a bombing.
Jennifer, Erik, Dave and Rich all sat quietly as I turned and began detailing the story of Grayson, Parker, and the nukes. Several looks were given toward Grayson, and he nearly became exhausted explaining how little he had to do with Parker’s end plan. Swearing up and down that he knew not one single word of it. I wasn’t fully convinced, but I didn’t feel alone in that regard. As I recounted everyth
ing we knew, I watched several times as one person, then the other, would shoot Grayson a penetrating glare.
Eventually, we pulled alongside a desolate stretch of road as Cody had started flashing his headlamps.
He was low on fuel, the gauge in his truck having dropped into the red.
Clara spent time with her nose in the map, and finally found a nearby motel that would suffice.
We rolled several more miles to reach it and found it relatively empty. No healthy, living people nearby, and oddly enough, not an infected in sight. At least, none we could see.
Taking this as an omen for the positive, we set up a guard schedule and agreed who would share which weapons with each other.
Several of us took to blocking the stairwells on each end with spare beds, dressers, and a vending machine. A few rooms were opened, convincing their locks by force to let us enter; the doors were propped open as we inhabited the interior spaces, huddled under blankets from other rooms to add to those in our own to find comfort.
Having opted for second guard shift, I lay back on an amazingly soft pillow and stared at the pair of blonde heads on my chest. One of my wife, the other my daughter’s.
They were already fast asleep as I gently placed a kiss on top of each of their heads, then lay there myself, staring at the ceiling.
The wind outside blew gently. Just enough to cause the occasional commotion outside as a nearby guard would rush to the window or the railing to investigate.
Aside from that, and the steady footsteps of a guard here and there, I had only my thoughts as I drifted slowly into a deep, deep sleep.
END
Read on for a free sample of On Quiet Earth: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel
Author’s Notes
Okay, cool, is the editor gone now? I can speak freely? Ah, good! Not that I have anything against editors, you have a tough job, but this is my little spot. So, go pour a drink, have a stretch, you’ve earned it!
Now, on to the rest-
Thank you. Yeah, you. My reader. My friend. My family. My fan. Whatever name you go by, you…fucking…ROCK.
I’ll probably never be rich, nor will I likely ever be famous. So, all of this? Over a year on each story so far? Yeah, this is for you. And whether you hated it or loved it, I want to take a moment to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to check out the Scott Pfeiffer Stories. It truly means more to me than I think I’ll ever be able to express. Thank you.
A special shoutout, of course, to my mother and father. My wife, beloved offspring, my friends who have been there and inspired a truly amazing cast of characters, those that have heard me drone on and on about ‘maybe this, maybe that’ as I build this story, the gods themselves, I could keep going but at the end of the day, if you’re reading this, thank you for the part you’ve played in my life.
I’d love to stay and grovel even further, but I can’t. I have more writing to do! So, on that final note of gratitude, I’m off. Off to begin the next book in this series, and maybe start formulating the backbone for a much, much larger project I’ve got in store for the future!
Chapter One
Fallen Silent
Go to sleep, you little baby.
She begins. My wife to my son. That same old song. In a voice slight from silence all day. I imagine her backlit in the doorway, the light in the hall haloing her silhouette, leaning softly against the frame as she sings to my son, his little face turned up from the blankets of his crib. I am so used to the lyrics I can’t help but sing the refrain. Go to sleep, you little baby.
I remember the warmth of the morning, of waking before the alarm woke us both. The sun, as it sat on my night table, made a strange shape, at once oblong, at once square, that rippled with the wind through the lace of her curtains. Her expression was the same as a thousand mornings before. Her voice, as she swore at the hour, was ever the same.
But she didn’t swear today. She coughed. She didn’t say a word. I shake my head, shake my memory loose. She was quiet. I raise my eyes from the still of my chair in the centre of the room. My wife has fallen silent.
I thought she would have continued to sing.
There is panic in my son’s cry. Brief though it was, it rose awful and sharp in surprise. The sound is primal, and I experience a moment of clarity. My hands tighten into fists, my stomach lurches. My knees quiver in anticipation. It is the first time my son tells me what to do.
I was sick with worry when he was born. I stared at his little limbs, worried at my lack of connection to what they called my son. Even the few weeks he’s been home, the few times I’ve been alone with him, I’ve held him and looked at him and called him son, but never felt convinced. Perhaps, I think, as I scramble to my feet, he just needed to speak first.
I pause, a few feet from the doorway, overwhelmed by disquiet. I step forward, then pause again, shake my head. There’s something wrong with me, I’m over-compensating. My wife is in there with my son. He only cried once. I step back, embarrassed and ashamed in my own hallway. But my heart pounds, sent breathlessly beating at the sound of my son. I step towards the room. Stop myself again. My heart thunderous as I say it aloud:
My wife is in there with my son. He only cried the once.
My wife stands next to the crib, her back to me. She holds her hands to her face as though embarrassed. She isn’t singing, but I hear the familiar sound of her hum. I rest my arm on the door frame, my head on my arm, and I watch her for a moment.
‘You stopped singing.’
She doesn’t react. The noise fades. She turns her head but doesn’t raise her eyes.
‘You stopped singing.’
She stiffens and I feel guilt at my tone. The impatience I hear. I’m halfway to an apology when she drops her arms and drops something heavy into the crib.
‘Hey, careful,’ I say and step into the room. That accusing tone again.
The closer I get the more I smell the dank of turned earth, but when I open my mouth to ask after it, I can’t stop the scream which comes.
I scream again. My son in his crib, my son. I see the blood. I smell the blood. I scream again.
My son is dead. My body, the world, drops away. My son is dead, a ragged doll twisted over himself, bleeding from where she bit him. I grab his crib to steady myself but the shake of my arms unsettles his corpse. One of his eyes is still open.
I look at my wife. I scream.
‘What did you do?’
The sound leaves my throat. I shake her shoulders, shake her again when she won’t say, shake her as she shakes. I try to ask again but I scream when I look at my son in his crib. I try to lift him but he’s wet, slippery, and I can’t shake the feeling of desecration.
‘What,’ I say, and am finally able to look at my wife, see the way she stands. She doesn’t respond to my shaking, won’t even look at me. I want her to, just to see her eyes for even a moment, but I can’t in the dark and she doesn’t look and the frustration wells within me and I am surprised by the urge to slap her. I feel sick at the thought and draw breath and try to find her eyes.
‘Why?’
She turns and a little of the light from the hall falls across her face. She has bitten herself as well, chewed her lips away from her teeth. Her eyes still haven’t focused. Perhaps they can’t now, drowned in a muddled white. Her jaw stops, settles, the hum disappears. She reaches out her hand and places it against the curve of my face. Her hand is wet and warm and fast and strong.
My voice becomes a bark as her fingers tighten around my throat. I grab her wrist and tug but she resists and tightens her grip. She is so strong. I can’t shake my surprise at her strength, can’t push past the idea that maybe she was always this strong, that maybe she only held back on my account.
I don’t know what to do. I can’t think of what to do. I don’t want to hit her. I don’t want to hit her, but she leans in suddenly as though she’d bite me too. I collapse my body quickly, twist and fall out of her grasp. I feel foolish at the mov
e, how I scramble away, and just try to get to my feet as fast as possible.
I swear she speaks as she turns to track my movement towards the door. She moves unhurriedly, stiffly, and staggers a little at the larger demands of a step. The arm she used to grip my throat sticks out, rigid, as though she’s forgotten its purpose.
‘Is it a seizure?’ I say, starting at my own voice. I peer at her as though I could see disease. No, I whisper, as she gets close enough. She lunges, off-settles me, and I dance backwards into the dark of the room.
Again, the sound of my voice, over-extended, stretched beyond recognition.
I know I should keep my eyes on her, but my son’s body still lies in the crib. I want to pick him up, tell him I heard his voice. I was just too late. I reach for him but my wife draws too close, lunges and grabs me and I don’t realize I’m cornered until I can’t dance away.
She falls on me, wraps her arms around my torso and pulls me to the floor. Her teeth scrape at my stomach. With both my hands on her shoulders it is all I can do to keep her away. I yell her name, but doubt it matters. I beg her to stop. When her head is accidentally knocked against the dresser in our scuffle, and the unbearable strength in her arms weakens, I pretend for a little longer than I should that the idea doesn’t immediately cross my mind.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, even though I see what she has done. I scream a little, shout as I punch her in the head. The sound distracts me from my hands. My voice in my throat. Her grip loosens. I concede to the indifference of instinct.
My spine tingles at each impact. My skull rattles beneath my skin. My eyes are closed. I can’t watch. Though my son lies dead nearby. Bursts of strength surge through my arms. But she doesn’t relent. So I can’t. I can’t. Every time I swear I can’t. My love. My heart.
She bites me and claws at me and pushes down on me, pushes her bared jaws towards my stomach, my chest, my throat. As though she would chew straight through me. I try to push against her but I can’t; I can’t hold her back any longer. Her teeth gnash at my shirt. I shove her head against the thick dresser leg, quickly, quickly again. Her grip loosens each time but not enough to get free and I put more force into the next and I am sure I scream on the last at least. I scream again. I say her name. Again and again.