Apocalyptic Beginnings Box Set

by M. D. Massey

  “Huh,” he muttered, moving to the whiteboard where he kept notes.

  Kill the brain, he wrote, in big scrawling, red letters.

  8

  Tucker sped onto Santiago Blvd out of the trailer park, watching the undead residents of the run-down desert neighborhood lumber from the narrow, cracked sidewalks and onto the streets. He rolled down his window, aiming his pistol at a passing ghoul: an old man in a pair of extra-large blue plaid boxer shorts and a blood-stained tank top. His mouth was crusted with brown blood and his white eyes stared vacantly into the distance.

  Tucker shot, the bullet flying true, slicing through the man’s temple. Tucker smiled, but his mouth quickly twisted in shock when he saw how the sound of gunfire affected the mass of zombies stumbling, directionless, up and down the street.

  As if remote-controlled, the creatures turned one after another and began to run toward him. Wrong move. Tucker slammed on the gas and rolled up his window.

  Narrowly avoiding a woman in a pair of skintight yoga pants, he gave her a second look as he passed. Yep, she was dead. The vacant eyes and bloody bite mark in the back of her neck confirmed that. He could see down to the bone in her shoulder, yet she kept moving.

  The turned his attention from the rearview and back at the road, just in time to swerve around a group of teenage boys in low slung shorts and basketball tanks. The Nevada sun burned down on the dead, drying the blood that smeared and stained their clothing and skin.

  He lived in a small, low-income neighborhood outside of Reno. Never before had Tucker been so grateful he lived in this shitty little community. It didn’t take long to find his way out of town and onto the highway. Abandoned cars littered the road. Some held entire families of zombies prisoner. The virus must be airborne, he thought. How else could it have traveled so fast?

  He shook his head. The news of the spread had been between stories of some pop star’s new baby or eating disorder and the endless gridlock in DC. He pulled a cigarette out of his pack on the dashboard and lit it up, rolling down the window. The heat of late morning pulsed over his skin as he took a long draw.

  He’d been too drunk and too cynical to ever take it seriously. How many times had the latest scary infection turned out to be nothing? Too many times for him to count. This time was different. They’d tried to downplay the spread. Now it was too late.

  He didn’t see a single living soul on his way out of the shithole town he’d called home since his last deployment. His Bronco had enough gas to make it halfway to the mountains. But what then?

  After three tours, he’d come home to drink himself into a stupor and/or and early grave. He didn’t care much which. There wasn’t much left to live for. Shrapnel in his left shoulder and a darkness in his brain. The girl he’d left to provide for had run off with his best friend not long after his first tour. And he’d been sending her money the whole damned time, not knowing the truth.

  His parents had disowned him long ago. Juvenile delinquent, they’d called him. Maybe he had been. But what kid doesn’t steal cars and break into suburban Reno homes? Well, maybe some didn’t. But in Tucker’s world, that was the norm. He’d been given the chance to join up or go to jail. He chose joining up. It gave him a chance to take care of his girl, Selina Page. He gritted his teeth, remembering her big blue eyes and perfect teenage tits. Maybe jail would have been better.

  A bloody flashback full of fire and death slammed into the forefront of his memory. His ears rang, and for a moment, the zombie apocalypse disappeared. He was a nineteen-year-old kid again, loaded down with military gear, hearing the dying wails of his crew. He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes closed for a second, forcing the memory to disappear. He shook his head, throwing the lit butt out the window.

  A booming explosion lit up the highway behind him in a mushroom cloud of ignited gasoline. The zombies that had been lumbering behind him were caught in the blaze. He watched them walk through the fire. Their burning clothes, hair and flesh not slowing them down.

  Tucker held the wheel with one hand and reached in the backseat, feeling inside his duffle bag for a bottle. He grabbed it, twisted off the cap and took a long draw of whisky just before slamming on the brakes and stopping in the middle of the highway.

  The burning zombies were pulling up behind him, their pace barely slowed. A semi had jackknifed across the highway west to the Sierras, blocking his path.

  He turned to look out the back window. The zombies lumbered on, some still burning. The smell of flaming corpses filled his nostrils. He almost gagged as he slipped out of the car, grabbing his rifle from the backseat.

  There had to be at least a dozen of them. The road had cleared out a few miles back. There were fewer monsters than there had been closer to the city, but they just kept coming. He looked from his Bronco to the zombies and considered his options. There was no way around that semi.

  He aimed at the zombies, who were closing in on him fast. He groaned and opened the back of the Bronco, pulling out his duffle bag full of supplies. He slung it over his shoulder. Crying shame, he thought as he pulled a crusty tank top out of the back of the truck. He loved this car. He shoved the shirt in the gas tank and lit the end with his lighter.

  Tucker turned and ran, scrambling between the cab of the semi and the payload. He landed on the other side of the truck just as the fire hit the gas tank. The explosion blasted the semi and pushed it several feet in his direction as he slammed into the concrete behind a stalled minivan full of a zombie family. Beach balls and an inflated inner tube filled the backseat. Must have been headed to Lake Tahoe for the weekend. A zombie baby strapped into a blood speckled car seat. It reached for him as he ducked for cover.

  When the fire settled down, he pulled himself up off the ground and inspected his handiwork. Most of the burning zombies had been incinerated in the Bronco explosion. A few still crawled under the semi’s trailer, trying to get at him. He pulled out his rifle, aimed, and fired, bringing down the undead one after another.

  When the last one fell, he inspected the road ahead. Heat blazed from the late spring sun. He squinted into the distance, the blacktop spread out before him as it ran up the mountain. It was a long way to climb with no car or water. There was a pileup of vehicles a few hundred yards up the road. He pulled out his open bottle and took a long swig of whisky and started walking. Sweat trickled down his brow as the sun blazed on his bare head. He squinted in the haze, seeing the mirage forming on the highway. Hefting his backpack, he took another swig.

  When he made it to the pile up, he inspected the interiors of the vehicles. An older model Toyota Corolla had smashed into a Ford pickup. The woman driving the Toyota had hit her head on the steering wheel. She looked like she’d died before turning.

  He took another swig of liquor, feeling drunker than usual on this amount of booze. The dehydration was getting to him, and he’d have to find some water soon or he would pass out. He inspected the Ford pickup. The truck had fared better than the smaller car. The rear fender was smashed, but the damage seemed minor. The driver was nowhere to be seen.

  Tucker tried the back door and it was unlocked. He threw his duffle bag in and then climbed behind the wheel. He turned the key in the ignition and the engine rumbled to life. He smiled to himself as he pulled out on the road.

  Out of the shadows of the rocky cliff, a zombie charged at him, running at full speed. Crap. These fuckers could run fast if they were fresh. The monster’s face was bitten half off, showing his teeth. It lunged at the car, jumping onto the hood and clawing its way up to the windshield.

  “Sorry. I had to borrow your car,” Tucker said, swerving left and right in the road, trying to dislodge the unwanted passenger. “No hitchhikers.”

  The zombie clung to the hood, snapping at Tucker as he picked up speed. He swerved again, but nothing he did dislodged the zombie. Tucker gritted his teeth and slammed on the breaks. A horde of several dozen zombies sprinted down the mountain, coming right at him.


  Tucker was feeling thirsty, and not in a good way. Fighting zombies was already interfering with his “me time”. He pushed down on the gas, determined to get through the zombie road block and find water. As he approached the zombie herd, his undead hood ornament kept climbing toward him. It clawed at the windshield, gnashing and growling right in front of Tucker’s face. He could barely see outside.

  He took another swig of whiskey and pushed on the gas, barreling through the herd at top speed. The bodies went flying. The truck bumped over the fallen, crunching under the tires. They groaned sickeningly as they were crushed. He’d probably fuck up the truck, but he wasn’t making payments on it. What did he care?

  When Tucker hit the herd, the impact loosened the old owner’s grip. The tenacious zombie slid down the length of the hood, leaving a trail of gore and blood behind. His hands slipped on the blood as it tried to get a hold. It fell to the front bumper and clung to the grill.

  “You just don’t give up, do ya?” Tucker asked, plowing through the rest of the zombies.

  The ones he didn’t manage to hit, scratched at his windows as he passed, their gruesome faces a nightmare of chomping, bloody teeth. He passed a road sign.

  Next rest stop 100 miles.

  “I missed my turn off,” he said to the zombie still clinging to his front bumper. “I blame you for this.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror, noticing the rest stop behind him for the first time. That explained the herd of zombies. People must have pulled off the road when they started coughing up blood.

  Amy had turned so fast after the cough started. The same thing likely happened to these people. The thought of Amy made a tear well in his eye. He wiped it away and took a swig. He stopped the truck a mile up the road, pulling his pistol from his holster as he opened the door.

  The zombie clinging to his bumper had his legs crushed during the drive and fell from the bumper the second he saw Tucker walking toward him. It started to crawl across the hot pavement, trying desperately to get to him.

  Tucker shook his head, aimed, and shot a hole in the back of the zombie’s head. Brains and clotted blood sprayed out over the blacktop and hit Tucker’s shoes.

  He frowned at the blood on his shoes and pushed the pistol back into his holster. Climbing into the truck, he lit a cigarette and started back down the road.

  9

  “Niah, I want you to pack your things. I know you’re scared, but I need you to listen to Mommy right now.”

  Niah let go of Jada’s waist and began to put her things into the tiny suitcase her mother had pulled out from under her bed. Jada hadn’t packed anything when she had left her house. Between the time she had left Menlo Park and arrived in San Jose, the infection had spread so rapidly there was no time to think. She told Niah to stay in her bedroom while she covered the bodies of Rick and Tiffany with several thick blankets, trying to spare Niah the sight of it.

  Jada grabbed a duffle from Rick’s bedroom closet and shoved Tiffany’s clothing into the bottom before she went to the kitchen and raided the pantry. She pulled every non-perishable item of food she could find from the shelves and dropped them in the duffle bag as fast as humanly possible. She then went to the hall closet where they used to store the camping gear and found a tent, a water filter, and a machete that they’d used for hacking through brush on long hikes. There was also a collapsible fishing pole and tackle box. Jada shoved everything that would fit into the duffle bag and went back to check on Niah.

  “Can I bring my toys, Mommy?” she asked.

  Jada checked Niah’s suitcase and found it filled with dolls.

  “We are going to need things like extra shoes and warm clothes,” Jada told her.

  She removed most of Niah’s dolls and toys and replaced it with what the child would need for what lay ahead of them. Jada’s mind was moving so fast she didn’t have time to stop and think about the horrors that the world had become. One thought was central in her mind: get her daughter to safety.

  Somehow the two of them had managed to avoid getting sick so far. But the things attacked with mindless ferocity and would tear apart any living thing in their path. If one of those things caught her or her daughter, it would be the end of them.

  The infection had taken over, and she didn’t know what to expect when she left the apartment. She had to arm herself on the way out of the building to the car. Jada told Niah to stay in her bedroom, and she returned to her pile of things outside the hall closet. Checking the sharpness of the machete, she found it was too dull to cut through anything thicker than a blade of grass.

  In the kitchen, she shuffled through the utensil drawers and found a knife sharpener. Taking the machete and the sharpener back to Niah’s room, she sat on the bed beside her daughter.

  “What are you doing, Mommy?” Niah asked.

  “I’m sharpening this machete in case we run into any bad guys out there,” Jada explained.

  “You mean like Daddy?” Niah asked.

  “Your daddy wasn’t bad, he just got really sick,” Jada explained as she ran the machete over the knife sharpener.

  “Did Tiffany get sick too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are we going to get sick?”

  Jada continued sharpening. The sound of metal singing against metal filled the silence as she thought of what to say.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Jada rose from the bed to test the machete’s sharpness. She pulled it up over her head and slashed it down onto a doll’s head. It cut the doll in half, and Jada smiled.

  “Mommy!” Niah protested.

  “Sorry, babe.”

  She removed the doll parts from the blade and sharpened it again just to be sure. When she was done, she tucked it into the holster she’d hooked on her belt and took her daughter’s hand.

  “Get your suitcase.”

  Jada escorted Niah through the apartment to where she had left her supplies in the entry hall, careful to avoid letting her daughter see what had happened to her dad and Tiffany.

  She gripped the doorknob and opened it slowly, looking up and down the hallway through the crack in the door. The coast was clear, so she slung the duffle bag and tent carrier straps over her shoulders and took her daughter’s hand. She pulled her machete from her belt and slowly stepped out into the hallway. They quietly and carefully padded down the hall to the stairs.

  Jada looked down the stairs and didn’t see anyone there, so she led her daughter down the first flight. When they came to the second floor, Jada stopped and looked around the corner to check the hall for monsters. She found her neighbor Harvey bent over the body of his boyfriend Chase. Jada cringed and fell back against the wall, remaining out of sight of the zombie. She took a deep breath and bent down to whisper in her daughter’s ear.

  “Don’t look down the hall, and stay quiet,” she said. “It’s very important that you stay quiet.”

  Niah looked up at her mom with panic in her eyes and nodded her head. Jada nodded back at Niah and squeezed her hand. She cocked her chin at her daughter and stepped quietly around the corner. They hurried down the next flight of stairs like scurrying mice avoiding a cat. Before they entered the lobby, Jada stopped again and checked for zombies.

  She peered around the corner and found no one there. A loud whack reverberated through the lobby as Niah’s plastic suitcase fell on the hard linoleum floor. Growls and the shuffling of quick feet came from upstairs.

  “Pick up your suitcase,” Jada barked. She grabbed her daughter’s hand and ran through the lobby.

  “I’m sorry, Mommy!” Niah cried, clutching her suitcase as they ran.

  They made it to the car and shoved everything through the driver’s side door, including Niah and her suitcase. The child was piled up in the passenger seat with the bags under her feet and on her lap. Jada jumped behind the wheel and slammed the door closed. She saw Harvey smash against the glass door of the building. He didn’t seem like he knew how to open it, but Jada wasn’t
going to hang around to find out.

  She pushed the keys into the ignition and turned on the car, not waiting to buckle seatbelts or anything else. She pulled out of the parking lot like a demon out of hell and turned out onto the street. There was barely any room to drive around all the stalled cars as she maneuvered around them on both sides of the road.

  The drivers stuck in their cars snapped at her as she passed. For the first time since finding her ex had turned into a monster, Jada began to really consider what her next move should be. She didn’t slow down as she drove through packed streets of San Jose, looking for a clear path out of town.

  Thoughts raced through her mind as she dialed her mother’s phone number. No one answered after the third try. Then she tried her dad’s with the same results. She had no choice but to assume that they were gone, or in a similar situation to her. Thinking of her parents gave her an idea. They owned a small vacation cabin in the Lake Tahoe area. It wasn’t a guarantee of safety, but with a lower population density, it at least gave her some direction.

  She was slowed in traffic by a pileup of cars. The zombies roaming the streets were attracted to the movement of her jeep car and ran toward her, pounding against the glass and jumping on the hood. Niah screamed, terrified at the sight.

  “Get down, Niah,” Jada said, pointing to the foot space of the passenger seat.

  She didn’t want her daughter to see this. She threw the car into reverse and ran over a zombie as she sped at forty miles an hour backwards down the crowded street. She turned the wheel and slammed the car into drive, speeding in the other direction. She had to find a clear path out of town, so she could get to the mountains.

  This was her plan now, and her only hope. She found her way onto the back streets of San Jose that weren’t nearly as crowded as the main roads. She’d noticed, on her way through town, that these creatures couldn’t do simple things like open doors. But a mass of them working together could break through glass. They seemed to be attracted to movements or sound.