Apocalyptic Beginnings Box Set

by M. D. Massey

  When she made it back into her house, she opened the refrigerator and began to unload the perishables into her cart. Her little dog Fifi, a mixed Yorkshire terrier and Pomeranian, pranced into the room. Babs grabbed a piece of cheese and threw it to her pet. It landed on the floor, and Fifi didn't so much as sniff the treat. Babs blinked several times, wondering if Fifi was ill. That's when she noticed her pet’s eyes had gone completely white.

  "Are you feeling okay, Fifi?" Babs asked.

  The little dog pulled back its teeth, and blood dripped from its mouth. Babs scrambled back. The sight of that much blood in her beloved pet’s mouth terrified her to the core. Something was definitely wrong.

  Fifi lunged at her with a speed she had never seen from the dog. Her instincts made her kick, connecting with the tiny dog's body. It launched through the air and smacked against the kitchen wall, sliding in a bloody smear down the wall to fall in a heap on the floor.

  Babs covered her mouth with both hands, stifling the scream that ripped from her throat. The kick had surely killed the seven-pound dog. At least that’s what she feared, but the dog sprang to its feet, bearing its teeth and growling the most chilling sound Babs had ever heard.

  The dog lunged at her again, snapping its tiny, bloody teeth, trying to bite into the flesh of Babs’ leg. Luckily, she was wearing a velour sweatsuit and the dog couldn't bite through it. It clamped onto the material as Babs swung her legs back and forth through the air, screaming.

  She grabbed a rolling pin from the utility drawer and bashed at her sweet Fifi. It took several smacks to release the dog’s grip on her velour pants. The animal fell, still and silent on the ground, blood seeping from an impact wound on his head.

  Babs sank to her knees, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  "Fifi, what happened to you?" Babs pleaded with the corpse of her dog.

  She had just taken Fifi to the vet to get all her shots a week ago. Including a rabies vaccination. Had it somehow caused her dog to get rabies?

  Remorsefully sitting over her pet’s body, she wished beyond anything that she could have been able to capture Fifi and take her to the vet. Maybe she would have been able to save her — but Fifi was beyond saving now. The dog’s blood seeped onto the white tile floor of her kitchen, and Babs covered her face with her hands, sobbing softly for several long moments.

  After expressing her grief enough to retain control of her senses, she wiped her tears and snot from her face with the back of her arm, the fluid sinking into her velour tracksuit, and pulled herself to her feet. She let out a long, ragged sigh, moving slowly through the house as if she’d been punched in the gut. She found her cellphone and dialed Henry's number. He was at the golf club, getting in one last game with his buddies before they left for Wyoming.

  The phone rang and rang and no one answered. Sometimes Henry would turn off his ringer. He always told her he didn't hear it, but she thought that sometimes he was just ignoring her.

  "God dammit, Henry," she said, a fresh well of tears rising up and pouring from her eyes.

  She wiped them away with her manicured fingertips and took another ragged breath. She dialed him again, hoping that if she bugged him enough, he would finally answer. But the answer never came. She sat down her phone when she heard the sound of a vehicle pulling into the street outside her house.

  Babs went to the window and saw Henry's car. She let out a sigh of relief and hurried out to greet him. Fifi's blood had smeared all over the knees of her burgundy velour suit, darkening the once lovely color to a grotesque brown.

  Henry walked up the driveway, stumbling forward as he gripped his neck. Blood spurted from under his hand. Babs gasped at the sight of more blood. When he grew closer she could see he was holding a wound.

  "Henry, what happened?" she shrieked. But before he could reply, his knees buckled under him and he flopped on the desert-themed front yard.

  "Bit. By. Zombies…Run."

  "Zombies?" Babs said, unable to understand what he meant. Then the pieces came together in her mind like a macabre jigsaw puzzle, the picture becoming clear.

  “Fifi," she muttered.

  Henry blinked up at her and he flopped about on the stone covered ground, sliding into a prickly cactus. His eyes started to glaze over as he struggled to breathe.

  "Barbara," he whispered. "I love you."

  That was the last thing Henry ever said to her. Unless, of course, you counted the gurgling, grumbling, and groaning that came next as he rose mechanically to his full height.

  "Henry?" she whispered, not wanting to accept what she saw before her. He had told her to run, but her legs refused to move.

  "Henry!" she shrieked,

  He lurched at her. Barbara screamed as she sprang to her feet and ran for the RV, swinging the door open as her beloved husband dragged a bad leg behind him. She slammed it closed just before he reached it. She could hear bashing and groaning from outside as he repeatedly smashed his face into the door. She locked it quickly and began to pace back and forth in the RV. What was she going to do? What had become of Henry? Was there anyone who could help her?

  She opened the gun drawer and pulled out her lovely Lady Glock, running her hands over the smooth cool metal. She didn't want to believe that her husband was a zombie, but what else was she supposed to think? He’d said it himself.

  The bashing continued, growing louder as zombie Henry increased his efforts. Barbara clutched the gun to her chest and squeezed her eyes closed. She didn't want to leave her beloved husband like this.

  He had been a sweet and supportive partner for all their many years together. Henry was a wonderful father to their three children, and someone she respected above anything else. They'd had their rough patches, as most couples do. Once in a while, they rubbed each other the wrong way, but their lives together had been good.

  As they had stood on the precipice of a whole new adventure together, it had been destroyed by something she didn't understand. Something she couldn't even comprehend. She flipped on the radio, sitting on the table in the RV, she'd been listening to CDs and books on tape through her headphones all morning.

  She'd heard something about a virus in the Northeast several days ago but hadn't thought much of it. Usually the hysteria over viral illnesses died out after a few months. But as she listened to the radio, the horror set in and sank down into the pit that had become her stomach. Thousands, if not millions, had already succumbed to the illness. The broadcaster advised staying indoors, holing up with supplies and finding weapons.

  "The undead can only be stopped by killing the brain," the announcer finished with a shaky voice.

  Barbara turned off the radio as the uncontrollable tears slid down her face. She knew what she had to do, but that didn't make it any easier.

  "Oh Henry," she said.

  The memories of their life together flashed through her mind. Their wedding day, the births of their children, their son’s graduation from medical school, the birth of their first grandchild. It was all too much to bear.

  For a moment, she considered using the gun on herself, but the possibility that her children were still alive kept her from doing it. She shook her head as she clutched the gun in her hand and rose from the table. She went to the front passenger seat of the RV and slid down the window.

  With shaking hands, Mrs. Hollister aimed at her husband, trying to grip the weapon like her shooting instructor had told her. It was difficult to hold it steady at this angle, especially with her eyes so blurry with tears. She sniffed and wiped her nose again, taking aim at the man she loved since childhood.

  "I love you too, Henry," she said and then she pulled the trigger.

  The bullet whizzed past his face, hitting the telephone pole behind him.

  “Shit,” she muttered, aiming again.

  The creature that had once been her husband looked up and snarled, ambling toward her on his unsteady legs. She fired again, and this time her aim was true. The bullet sliced through his skull. He fell fo
rward onto the pavement, blood seeping from the wound and coating the blacktop.

  Barbara gasped, a painful shriek escaping her throat. She frantically closed the window as she noticed the neighbors rushing down the street, their gaits strange and awkward, their eyes glazed over.

  Barbara jumped into the driver seat, turned the key in the ignition, and threw the RV into reverse. She’d driven the vehicle a few times around the neighborhood, getting a feel for the massive machine, but it was Henry she'd expected to drive most of the way to Wyoming. She slammed on the gas and smashed into several of her neighbors who stood dumbly behind her. She could feel the bodies crunching under her tires as she turned in the street and threw the RV into drive.

  "Goodbye, Henry," she wailed as she drove up the street, the sound of The Guess Who classic, American Woman, blaring from the CD player as she drove away.

  5

  Carlos Sandoval stared out the barred window at the trimmed grass lawn, trying to hold back the visions that had plagued him since his teens. The creatures ambling across the manicured lawn were no different than any he'd seen in his many hallucinations. They’d told him they weren’t real so many times, he’d begun to finally believe them.

  Hours and hours of therapy, coupled with a cocktail of antipsychotics, had dampened the symptoms of his illness to the point where he could almost function. That hadn't kept his parents from committing him to the psychiatric hospital three months ago. His crime? He’d given away his used BMW to a homeless man. The vehicle had of course been retrieved from his friend — the bum, as his parents called him.

  They’d been mortified. How could he possibly give away such a valuable asset like that? Maybe a pair shoes or jacket was acceptable, but not his car. But Carlos could not see the difference between a car and a pair of shoes when it came to helping someone.

  The homeless man in question had been there for him at a point in his life when no one else had. Carlos had been roaming the streets, high on the drugs he'd used to dampen the symptoms he'd hidden from his family for so long.

  But in the process, he had triggered his delusions. The voices whispered in his ears, and hordes of zombies stumbled and lurched everywhere he looked. Sparky had taken Carlos in. Given him a place to stay in the alcove inside an abandoned warehouse. Fed him and given him a warm jacket. Carlos had been safe with Sparky. He’d helped him through the worst of his symptoms.

  When he'd finally come down off the drugs, Sparky had convinced Carlos to seek medical help. It was then that he got his formal diagnosis of schizophrenia and the medication he needed to feel safe at home with his little sister.

  After returning to college, Carlos had wanted to repay Sparky’s kindness by giving him something of value. Something real. His new car. But his parents confirmed the reason he’d kept his illness a secret for so long. They’d had him committed for repaying his friend.

  He was now on such a heavy cocktail of drugs, the horde of zombies rushing across the lawn didn’t bother him at all. The writhing mass of fast-moving undead approached the window of the institution and began banging against the bar-covered glass. The orderlies in the recreation room spotted the zombies and began to react accordingly, herding the inmates of the asylum away from the windows.

  What happened next was a blur of chaos. Carlos watched the unfolding events the way a normal person watched entertainment on TV. He leaned back in his Adirondack chair and observed an orderly bite into the neck of an elderly woman with dementia and severe bipolar disorder. Margaret was nice enough, on good days when she wasn't crying or pulling her hair out. Even though he knew it was all an illusion, he was sad to see her go.

  Worried that the orderlies would notice him, he stood and ambled back to his room. An orderly he knew as William ran toward him in the hall, blood running down his mouth as he charged. Carlos blinked his eyes several times and sidestepped, hoping William wouldn't take his behavior as strange. His heart sped up as his fight or flight reflexes instinctively kicked in. It was just a delusion. It couldn't hurt him. But he was relieved when William attacked a nurse by the name of Penny. He didn’t mind. Penny was a mean bitch.

  He went to his room and shut the door behind him, pacing back and forth as the sounds of the carnage outside rang in his mind.

  "Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet,” he said, crushing his palms into his ears.

  The sound was muffled by his hands and he took them away to test. Usually, the voices in his head couldn't be muffled that way. He'd learned to differentiate between illusion and reality when his shrink had asked him to start testing his delusions like that. He blinked, assuming his delusions had evolved. He sat down on his bed and crossed his arms over his chest, squeezing his eyes closed and refusing to believe that the asylum had been taken over by zombies.

  "This isn't happening," Carlos said. "This is not happening."

  He continued to repeat it to himself like a mantra, hoping that when he opened his eyes again, his mind would have convinced himself that it was true. There was a slam against his door and he saw the grotesque face of a zombie, smearing his tongue across the heavy glass of the small narrow window in the thick steel door.

  Carlos groaned and put his pillow over his head, trying to drown out the sounds of the carnage ringing through his ears. He spent hours like that until his stomach rumbled. He knew that it was just about dinnertime for the inmates.

  He was glad that he was not at home, experiencing an episode like this. The last time he'd spun out at home, he’d nearly scared his little sister to death. The horrified look in her eyes when he had started raving about zombies was a memory etched in his mind that he would never forget. He’d left home that night and wound up on the streets, looking for anything to dull the pain.

  Carlos rose from his bed and peered through the blood-smeared window. He let out a deep sigh and rolled his eyes, seeing that he was still hallucinating. He was hungry enough to emerge from his room — delusions or not, he had to eat. As long as he didn't let on that he was hallucinating, the nurses wouldn’t up his medications. He didn’t want to feel even more separated from himself and reality than he already was.

  He slowly opened the door and looked up and down the hall. A fluorescent lightbulb hung from the fixture in the ceiling, casting light and shadows swinging across the abandoned hall. His survival instincts wouldn't let up.

  "It's in your head," he told himself. "None of this is real."

  He took a deep breath and let it out, standing to his full height and trying to regain his confidence. Carlos stepped out into the hallway, ignoring the swinging lightbulb. He made his way to the dining hall. Instead of finding the usual buffet sitting out for dinner, he found groups of inmates and orderlies feasting on each other.

  No matter how hungry he was, he couldn't eat in a room with that carnage all around him. He backed away and started to the nurses’ station to turn himself in and ask for more medication. That's when he noticed that the locked door that kept the inmates inside was wide open. He put his hand in the empty space where the door should be and found it passed right through.

  That was no delusion. He stepped through the door and into the lobby that was devoid of living people. A disemboweled inmate with a missing leg rolled back and forth on the ground, groaning. His eyes were stark white, and his mouth was covered in blood. Carlos edged around the dying shell of Frederick Hopkins and hurried down the stairs to the front door of the institution.

  Outside, in the light of day, he found the parking lot almost empty except for one of the asylum’s vans, ‘Peaceful Brook Mental Institution’ printed across the side. He jumped into the driver seat and closed the door. He considered that maybe he was still back in his room, and this was all just a massive illusion, created by the insanity inside his mind. But at least it was a change from the monotony of the four walls of his bedroom. He would take whatever he could get.

  He turned the car around and pulled it into gear, leaving Peaceful Brook behind him. At least, that's what he hoped he w
as doing. He still wasn't sure.

  6

  The wire cutters sliced through the chain bike-lock and fell away from the fender onto the concrete. Sasha Marks smiled as she yanked the chain away from the bicycle. The thousand-dollar hybrid bike was an amazing find, and she couldn't believe her luck. She threw her bolt cutters back into her backpack and hopped on the bicycle, pedaling away from the scene of a crime.

  She sliced in front of oncoming traffic, riding north up the road. The smell of coffee brewing wafted through the streets from the café on the corner. She turned and maneuvered down an alley, cutting through the streets with the grace of an athlete and the agility of a long-time thief.

  As she came out of the alley, she took a sharp left up the street and continued until she came to a stoplight, holding out her left hand. She maneuvered to the left lane and waited to turn at the stoplight. A police car stopped at the light across the street. Her heart pounded as she gripped the handles of her hoisted contraband. She bit her lip, trying to seem inconspicuous.

  When the light turned green she waited for the oncoming vehicles to clear the street, but to her utter dismay, the police siren flashed, and the car moved toward her. She heard the officer speak through the loudspeaker.

  "Pull your bike over to the sidewalk," he demanded.

  "Shit," she muttered, wondering if she could outrun the cop.

  She motioned to the sidewalk as if she was going to comply, but quickly cut through traffic, headed left, barely avoiding a truck headed straight at her. She pumped her pedals like she was being chased by a lion, changing gears like a Tour de France rider and increasing her speed until she was riding faster than the cars rolling slowly down the street. She ran a stoplight and kept going. A car nearly clipped her back wheel, and she gasped as the driver swore loudly at her through his open window, laying on the horn.

  "Shit, shit, shit," she said as the sirens came from another direction.