Apocalyptic Beginnings Box Set

by M. D. Massey

  With obvious relief, she scurries over to the large oak tree to wait for the rest of us. Once the children are over, everyone else picks their way across, hopping from stone to stone or balancing on the fallen logs. Gathered at the other side, Alma passes out slivers of jerky.

  “We need to keep our energy up,” she says. “There's still quite a way to go.”

  We begin the forward march, following the switchbacks. I pull my backpack around my shoulders, pinning my crossbow snugly to my back. Everyone moves in silence, traveling along the pavement. The children walk in the middle, carrying the backpacks each had been given, while the rest of us form a circle around them in formation. If not for the impending threat of certain death, the sun-dappled path would be pleasant.

  The sound of a shrill whistle cuts through the forest, a warning from the point guard up ahead.

  I drop my pack and swing the crossbow around into a defensive position.

  Everyone stands still. The signal sounds again, echoing through the mountainside, bouncing off the rocks. I glance at Alma.

  She shrugs.

  I don't sense the approach of any zombies, but I press my finger alongside the bow's cold metal trigger. I scan the tree line, waiting for something, anything to happen. The sound of shuffling feet, the lurching crunch of branches and leaves, anything unnatural. I whirl my crossbow, focusing the scope to a whisper of motion at the road's shoulder.

  A small brown rabbit hops across the leaf-strewn path.

  They step out of the forest, surrounding us on all sides, fifty of them at least, all armed, weapons at the ready. Humans, nothing more. A motley group, but even the old ones carry a steely gaze, hardened and worn. They wear clothing that may have fit them at some point in time but now hang off their skeletal, hungry bodies.

  A woman steps forward, dressed far nicer than the rest of them. Black leather boots tied up her legs, stopping just under the knee. Her crisp, blue-jeans fit snug against her slender frame. Her skin is perhaps most noticeable, healthy and pink, a look unique to those who have a constant supply of food. Around her head, she wears a white bandanna wrapped around long brown hair. Her arm drapes around our point guard's shoulders, the blade glinting sunlight against his neck.

  “Good afternoon, y'all,” she says in a thick southern drawl. “I'm assumin' this here's one a yours?”

  No one moves.

  This is a raiding party.

  I scan the group, trying not to draw attention to myself. They outnumber us, there’s no doubt about that, but we may still have the advantage. All of their eyes are cast towards her, perhaps waiting for a signal. I do not miss this detail. Their attention is diverted to her. I take note.

  Behind the woman is a cluster of children, scabby, thin, and desperate. One brown mop of hair stands out above the others. A lanky boy, wide-eyed, and in need of a good meal. I recognize him on sight.

  Marcus.

  Marcus!

  My breath catches in my throat and I will him not to notice me. He does, his eyes meeting mine and growing even wider. I shake my head only enough for him to see.

  Don't, I plead silently. Don't, Marcus.

  He stays where he is, but watches me with a wild ferociousness.

  “Well,” the woman continues, drawing my attention back to her. “Y'all are about as quiet as a Quaker meetin'. Either he's yours or he ain't. Perhaps I'm mistaken and I can do us both a favor and dispatch him? We wouldn't want him givin' away our position, right?”

  “He's one of ours,” I say stepping forward. I keep my bow level on her. “And you are going to let him go, so we can be on our way.”

  She glances me over, taking in every inch of my frame. Her laughter sounds like flint rock. “Well now, bless your heart! Why would I do such a thing when you have so many pretty toys?” Her eyes linger over the children sheltered behind us.

  “Because if you take so much as one step towards us, I am going to put this arrow through your skull. You may kill him before you die, but we will have lost only one. Your people will scatter, get picked off one by one. You already know there is a horde coming up the mountain behind us. It's only a matter of time before they get here.”

  Her smile stays frozen in place, but her eyes widen.

  “You know I'm right,” I say. “None of us would survive.”

  “Is that so? And who are you to make such a threat?” Her voice is silky smooth as if the surrounding circumstances are an everyday occurrence. Perhaps for her, they are.

  “My name is Ash, and you should know, if I pull this trigger, I won't miss.”

  “I believe you, darlin',” she drawls. “And yes, I’ve heard about you. You're the one keeping them at bay, aren't you.”

  It is not a question.

  “At ease, fellas,” the woman says. “There's nothing good here anyway.”

  She drops the knife and steps back, palms up in a gesture of surrender. The point guard runs forward until he is behind the safety of our defensive line. He rubs his neck and turns back, pulling his own knife from his ankle sheath and joining us in formation. I allow my gaze to flick towards Marcus once more. He trembles, watching me with palpable desperation.

  “That boy,” I say as my heart races. “That one there. He comes with us.”

  The woman's expression shifts to one of mild amusement. “Oh?”

  “A gesture of good will,” I continue. “A peace offering.”

  She places her knife in its sheath at her waist and rubs her hands against her jeans. I still have the crossbow trained on her forehead. Glancing at the children behind her, she once again cuts her eyes back to us, crossing her arms over her chest. “Fine,” she mutters, signaling him towards us with a toss of her head.

  Marcus runs towards us, tucking himself into the center with the other children. The surrounding raiders step back into the forest. I keep my bow at the ready and we all hold our stance until the sound of their footsteps fade away in the distance.

  My crossbow clatters against the pavement as I take a knee, but Marcus' steely arms around my neck and shoulders still throw me off balance. “How are you alive?” I ask struggling to form words around the tears. “How? I saw them take you? Oh, Marcus! I'm so sorry! I'm so, so sorry.”

  He weeps into my shoulder, clinging to me as much as I to him. He is thinner than when I lost him, but the same fire still flickers behind his eyes. We stay that way for I don't know how long, until gentle hands, Alma's, touch my shoulders. I pull back, swipe my palms across my cheeks, drying away the sticky tears. It takes several minutes before I can steady my breath.

  “We need to go,” Alma says softly.

  “I know,” I reply. “I wasn't bluffing about that horde.”

  We stand and walk onward in silence, keeping the formation of the group. Everyone besides me keeps their weapons at the ready, knowing we will not be safe until we reach the checkpoint. Marcus clings to my hand, not wavering from my side. He does not speak but watches me with big wondering eyes.

  “You're like me aren't you,” I say. “That's why you are still alive?”

  He nods.

  “Did you know?” I ask.

  He nods again.

  “That's what you were trying to tell me that night, wasn't it? I guess on some level I already knew.”

  He smiles, just a hint of movement at the corner of his lips.

  “I'm sorry about your mother.”

  He shakes his head.

  “But I guess she wasn't your mother, was she?”

  He shakes his head again, a flicker of sadness in his eyes, offset by the motion of his hand swinging my arm back and forth. Rose and Alma walk ahead of us, side by side, helping each other up the slopes and rocky segments of the overgrown path. Thorn walks with some of the others, a few steps behind us.

  “There they are!” Simeon exclaims in a stage whisper loud enough for all of us to hear. One by one, our steps speed up, as the group realizes the end of the long journey has arrived. In the distance, headlights cut through the
darkening trees, snaking down the opposite mountainside and illuminating the pavement. The last of the setting sun gleams off the windshield of the distant vehicle, piercing my vision.

  “It's the rendezvous,” Simeon says. “There they are!”

  “Who are they?” I ask. “What does it mean?”

  “It means, Ash,” Alma says with a grin. “That we're going home.”

  Simeon waves his hands over his head, signaling our position. Through the break in the trees, we step out onto a paved overlook. Alma and Rose stand hand in hand. Thorn steps ahead, taking in the view. The relief is palpable in all of us, standing speechless, some taking swigs of water from canteens and plastic bottles.

  Mountaintops roll towards the distance, an ocean of pine-colored waves. With my free hand, I reach forward and slip my fingers into Thorn's hand. He starts with surprise, glancing at me, but I keep my gaze forward. His muscles relax, and he closes his hand around mine. The five of us stand amid the group, side by side in the fading light. Alma's words echo in the whisper of wind with the possibility of a new life awaiting us over the ridge.

  She is right.

  We are going home.

  * * *

  End

  About the Author

  R.G. Westerman has been writing nearly her whole life and has a number of short stories available on Amazon through various anthologies. She loves to explore and create stories about problems she will never have, such as oncoming zombie hordes and other creatures of the fantastic!

  * * *

  When not creating tales of horror and whimsy, R.G. can be found hiking the mountain trails of Appalachia. She occasionally dabbles in freelance and endures her fabulous day job. She currently lives in the mountains of East Tennessee with her husband and two genius children. Rising Ash is her first published novel.

  * * *

  Connect with R.G. On her Website!

  Empty Bodies

  Zach Bohannon

  Zach Bohannon

  www.zachbohannon.com

  * * *

  Copyright © 2015 by Zach Bohannon. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction of this publication in whole or in part without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  * * *

  Edited by Jennifer Collins

  Proofread by Christy McGuire

  * * *

  Cover design by Symmetric Design

  www.symmetricdesign.co

  For my girls:

  Kathryn and Haley

  The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.

  * * *

  Revelation 17:8

  1

  Will

  Nashville, TN

  * * *

  The warehouse sat at the end of a long line of almost identical facilities; the last building on the left side of a single, inclined, dead-end road that was sixty yards wide and parted two rows of buildings. They were large, brick-front structures with foundations five feet tall—just high enough to keep them out.

  On a normal weekday in the industrial park, the road would be a fury of semi-trucks backing up to loading docks, as blue-collar Americans inside the warehouses pushed boxes and drove forklifts, all in hopes of making a buck to live off of.

  But things had changed.

  Now, all the vehicles were vacant and still. Rows of cars sat where their owners had left them, parked to the top of the hill. Eighteen-wheel trucks remained backed into many of the docks along the street, but their cabs were empty, just like the cars.

  And while the automobiles lay idle and the workdays were over, plenty of shadows still crept along the dead-end road. They walked up and down the street all day and all night, sometimes bumping into each other, but unaware of doing so. No life was left inside them, only the ability to make inarticulate noises and to hunt.

  At the top of the hill, a large group of them loitered in front of Element Distributors; the company occupying the last building on the left. They gathered around it like it was a famous person, clawing at the cracked, brick walls.

  Inside, Will Kessler looked out of a peephole that he’d made in one of the four aluminum, garage-style doors. He watched as hundreds of the creatures fought to get inside. They knew he was in there. He sensed that they could smell him. But Will wasn’t worried. Standing over five feet tall, the loading dock seemed to make a good barrier between him and the things outside, as they had shown no ability to climb. His main concern was that he would run out of food, as he had very little.

  Element was one of the country’s top distributors of musical instruments. Since the late 1960’s, their parent company in Belgium had been producing guitars and percussion instruments all around the world and, ten years ago, had opened a distribution office in Nashville, Tennessee. The facility consisted of a 30,000-square-foot warehouse with rows upon rows of metal uprights, crossed with matching beams, holding pallets of merchandise in each slot. Additionally, the building had an 8,000-square-foot office where twenty employees spent their days running the small company.

  But Will was alone now.

  Leaving the decrepit howls of the dead behind, he backed away from the doors, turned, and made his way back into the office.

  Earlier that day…

  * * *

  Nearly every day, Will Kessler spent his lunches the same way: he’d go to the lunch room, make a turkey and cheese sandwich in the toaster oven, scarf it down, and then go to the vacant office across the hall and take a forty-five minute power nap. He was young, just shy of twenty-five, but working in the warehouse was hard work. Unloading forty-foot containers by hand and lifting boxes onto pallets all day wore him down. He’d often go home sore from head to toe, but because he was a night owl and suffered from regular bouts of insomnia, often sat in his room and played guitar. So, he was glad that the company had left one of the offices vacant when they moved into the newly-built office two months ago. The only thing in the room was a small desk with a computer for employees to use on their lunch breaks. Other than that, there was plenty of floor space for Will to snooze.

  He was twenty minutes into a nap when he was suddenly awoken by a scream down the hall. He was sitting up before he knew he was even awake, and shot a sour look toward the door. The company consisted of thirty guys and no women—not on purpose, it’s just that women never applied to work there—so there was always a lot of joking going on.

  “Assholes,” Will mumbled as he curled back up on the ground and closed his eyes.

  Then he heard another scream. Much closer this time.

  He opened his eyes and shot to his feet, just as he caught a flash of something going by the window at the front of the tiny office.

  Will crept over to the window and, right as he was about to press his face against it, saw Dean, one of the guys who’d worked with him in the warehouse, hit the floor on the other side of the door. Will looked down and saw blood spraying into the air, out of Dean’s arm.

  As Will put his hand on the handle and started to rush to Dean’s side, two figures pounced on Dean, who was only able to get a single yell out before one of the things tore his throat out.

  Will thought quickly. While the two things were distracted, ending his friend’s life in the worst way he could imagine, Will grabbed the desk from the middle of the room and put it in front of the door, making as little noise as possible. Then he stood in the dark corner, behind the door and out of sight.

  His whole body quivered, his lips danced, and he waited. The silent air between the screams and the howls was filled with echoes of his heart beating in his chest.

  Then he heard a slam against the window. He kept himself hidden in the corner behind the door. One
of the things pressed against the window, trying to see into the room. Will heard it but couldn’t see it. The snarl went into his ears and made him cringe.

  Banging continued on the door. It sensed that something was inside the room. With nothing to defend himself with, Will’s mind began to race about what he might do if the thing broke through the door. He looked to the exterior window on the opposite wall. There was no way of opening it, but if he had to, he could throw the chair through it and escape that way. But he decided that should be a last resort.

  Then the banging stopped. He heard a voice down the hall.

  “What the fuck?” the male voice demanded.

  Will couldn’t quite make out who it was, but from the Northeastern accent, it sounded like Mel, one of the sales representatives who traveled to the New England area on a regular basis, selling Element’s products to local music shops. He was supposed to be on a sales trip, but had canceled it at the last minute, which now appeared to be the biggest mistake of his life.

  Will heard a howl from the same voice and the sound of heavy footsteps moving down the hall, away from him and toward the voice.

  He poked his head around the door to look out the window. It was clear. He walked over to the desk and opened the top drawer. There has to be something in here to defend myself with, he thought. There was nothing in the top drawer that would do any harm to anyone or anything.