The four captains of the team gathered at the north wall which consisted of Justin Haynes and Mark Gibson, Brock Walker and I Atlas Wade. We looked around at all the other team members to see their faces. Though we were few, we felt like many. Standing directly in front of me was Kevin Karter. Kevin’s face hasn’t changed since I met him. We started working together one year before Z-Day and he seemed like a lost soul. He didn’t talk much until I found out he had a fascination with Botany. In his locker he had books and papers on the specialty but never had enough money to attend college to study. I offered him a side job helping me and the team build our safe house. Tyler Murphy was standing to the right of Kevin. Tyler was a bit of country boy who has always had a heart of gold. He would do anything for anyone no matter who it was. I met him through Chase Masters and his wife Ophelia who were standing next to him. Chase and I attended Church together years ago and lost contact with one another until I returned home from Iraq. He operated and owned a gun and ammo shop his dad had left him when he passed away. Logan Sidwell is one of my greatest friends. I’ve known him for many years through Shaun. No matter the situation Logan always brought a sense of humor. He tried to be a ladies man but in the most sarcastic way possible. On this day there was no sense of humor with him. He stood up against the wall with arms folded and a pistol in his hand. Zora Barnes and her girlfriend Piper Reins were in the same unit that I was in as telecommunications officers when we were stationed overseas and had moved to my hometown just a year ago. They both became city police officers when they left the army. Selest stood next to Brock with her hand clinched into his. With all of their eyes averted to us, there was only one question on all of their minds. What are we going to do next?
I stood before all the members with intent to keep the promise I have made to each of them when we first discussed the possibilities of the world turning to blood and decay. My left arm was hanging by my side and my right hand was placed on my forehead. As I gathered my thoughts, I addressed the room
“I know we are all taken back by the tragedy that is happening before us today. None of us expected to have to harvest these prophecies that have been foretold so soon. I can tell by the look in each of your eyes that fright is an emotion that has not left us. But do not try and forget that feeling because it will help us survive. The world, our family, and our friends need us now more than ever. So we need to step up right now and do the one thing we have been preparing for. We need to save all of the people that we can. Right now that is our job. Our lives before this day no longer exist. The people that were in our lives may not exist anymore, but we will try our hardest to find them. Our trumpet is calling around the world. Our symbol of hope is going to cascade the entire human race. We are the cure of this plague.”
I looked at everyone once more and said the two words they have been waiting to hear.
“Lets’ begin.”
As I walked forward and stood in front of the rest of the captains, I began explaining the next steps we were going to be doing.
“As soon as I give you an assignment, go ahead and get started. We need all inventory accounted for, weaponry, food, ammunition, clothing, water, gas, and medical supplies. I need you two, Angel and Aly, to take care of that. Piper, I need you to see if there is any information being broadcasted and find out exactly what is happening outside these walls. We need as many details as possible. Tyler, I need you to obtain information for me. We need to have a list of names and addresses of the families we need to rescue and bring to the safe house. After we obtain the names and the information we need, we are going to divide up into four teams of two….”
I was quickly interrupted by Piper who urged me to see what the news was broadcasting. I paced to the back of the safe house to see what information was being told to the public. What the anchor was speaking of was not what any of us wanted to hear.
“For those able to hear this I urge you to listen carefully. On this day mankind seems to be facing what appears to be the end of times. The death toll across the entire world is unknown. I am being contacted by reporters stationed around the world. So far the casualties in the United States is estimated to be above the millions marker. In Europe, it has possibly reached over 100,000 and still rising. The government has yet to make a statement. We can automatically assume the president has been moved to an underground bunker for protection from the virus. Ladies and gentlemen watching this broadcast, I hope you all have made peace with God because we are alone in this now and we need him more than ever. Our time has come. I do not know how much longer I will be on the air but I will stay in my chair, at this desk for as long as possible to keep you informed. Please, stay safe and stay alive. I will….”
Before that sentence was finished, the camera blacked out. All that we could see was a black screen with no anchor, no lights and no sound. With eyes still staring at the screen, I took a step back and inhaled deeply. All the other members were surrounding me silently praying for the anchor to be ok. I asked Tyler if he had gotten all of the names and addresses of the ones who we had to leave behind. He handed me the list and I split it into four different sections. Each team captain received a section and was responsible for rescuing their loved ones.
“Alright everyone, grab a hand held communicator to keep in contact between each other. Cell phones may not last too much longer. Kevin, I need you to load extra gas cans onto the trucks so we can obtain extra fuel as we go through the town. Now each captain is assigned a partner. Mark, you and Zora are Team Alpha. Brock and Chase are Team Eagle. Justin and Logan are Team Hunter and Shaun and I are Team Omega. Selest, Ophelia, Kevin, Tyler and Piper are going to be Watch Tower. If anything compromises the safety of this place or any one in it, take that black SUV parked on the right side. Radio us if anything should happen to keep us informed. Here is a map to a second safe house located thirty miles away from here. Go North East for twenty five miles and you will find a dirt road on the right. There will be a huge Z painted in black on each side of the building. Piper, I need you to go to the roof and keep guard around this area. Use the rifle hanging on the wall. The scope is already set. If any zombie appears, put a bullet in its head. We will be back as soon as we can. Stay safe everyone and stay alive.”
Search and Rescue
Shaun and I went to search for our families on our old street we grew up on. They were approximately twenty five minutes in distance from the safe house. Shaun’s driving has become more impressive with his maneuvering around wrecked cars and fire pits in the middle of the road. The country roads weren’t as glamorous as they used to be. The city limits weren’t as welcoming as they once were. The town was infested with rubble, walkers and lifeless people. No survivors were in first glances or defining stares. Mutilated bodies were being eaten around every corner and zombies were roaming the streets. I tried to convince my mind that I was trapped in a bad dream, but in the back of my mind I knew that wasn’t true. The cell phone towers had been destroyed from the carnage of the chaos, so we had to maintain contact through our hand held radios. I had only obtained an update from Team Alpha since we left Watch Tower. They had discovered stranded survivors that were fighting their way through a mob of flesh eaters about ten miles east of the safe house. I contacted Watch Tower and told them to keep a close eye on the east side.
As we approached the edge of the city, a barricade was placed with overturned cars and burning tires blocking the road way. We completed a quick U turn to try and find another route, but all exits leading towards our destination were occluded. We parked the truck at a distant location from the barricade and began the rest of the journey on foot. Sweat was dripping from our faces and our boots connected to the burning asphalt during the race against time. We raced around buildings and across cracked sidewalks to avoid attracting any attention to ourselves. An old cigarette shop became our resting point for observation of our surroundings. We kneeled down next to the dusty brick wall of the building as I peeked around the corner with my gun aimed down t
he street. We could hear distant moans of the hungry. The screams we once heard in this town diminished and were replaced by crackling blazes and the smell of burning rubber. A faint ruffle next to the window above our heads caught our attention and a sudden burst of glass appeared towards Shaun as a man fell onto him. Shaun caught him holding him above his body as they fell to the ground. Blood was dripping from his mouth and his hands attempted to claw at every inch of flesh that was exposed. My gun fired two bullets into the zombies head and Shaun quickly pushed the shattered body off of him. He stood with his hands on his knees and looked at me breathing heavily and focusing on arms examining his skin to see if the zombie had left its mark.
I looked at Shaun and asked, “You good brother?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. That son of a bitch about made a human happy meal out of me.”
Shaun and I cautiously ran towards a barricade blocking our way out of town. We stood researching the wall of debris trying to find a way over it. Shaun clinched his hands together and boosted me to the top of the blockage. I turned around and lowered my hand to him and pulled him up to the top with me. A stout stench that smelled of rotten wood and burning hair wisped towards me. Shaun turned his head behind him as I lifted him the rest of the way and aimed his gun down the road. I stood upon the rubble and noticed a hoard of dead pacing their way towards us. We had to try and keep the roadway clear of the infected for our return and we knew we had to open fire on each one of them. Bullet after bullet, they fell to the pavement. The dead trampled over the fallen and others were pushed aside by the more hungry. The reference I thought about making about this situation would have been in bad taste so I kept it to myself as we kept shooting. Let’s just say it dealt with The Last Supper. Once every one of them collapsed to the black top we lunged over to the other side of the barricade.
After pacing for miles down the road, exhaustion had settled in. While the heat forced our bodies to be weakened even miracles still existed. We discovered a military truck stationed in the middle of the road. Very cautiously, we stepped towards the vehicle with guns aimed. I motioned Shaun to the passenger side as I walked towards the driver side. I aimed my gun towards the window and slowly put my hand on to the handle. As I exhaled deeply, I swung the door open. Shaun quickly opened the passenger side door and aimed his revolver to the back of the cargo area to find that it was abandoned. We climbed inside to search for ammo, supplies and possibly a set of keys to drive the truck. Shaun crawled inside the cargo area and discovered extra guns and first aid kits. I searched for the keys in the floor because they were not placed in the ignition. The sun visor and glove compartment did not contain the keys either, so I stepped outside the truck to see if I could find the keys on the pavement. I pushed my bangs out of my eyes and wiped the salty water with the back of my hand to clear my vision. A sound of rustled leaves and broken twigs with a faint moan appear behind me. From the bottom of the bluff, a limp body climbed to the roadway wearing a soldiers’ uniform. The stench of death rained from its clothes as it came closer to me. I gripped my gun from its holster and pulled back the hammer. The barrel was aimed towards its head as it began to stretch out its arms. An eerie scream presented itself from the mouth of the soldier and the bullet was fortunate enough to be of greater destruction than the scream as its body fell to the pavement. A flow of black and read blood began covering the road and fertilizing the grass behind it. I stepped towards the body keeping my gun aimed at its head for precautionary actions. I kneeled down to it as I began searching the corpse for any type of identification. As a fellow soldier I felt a strong connection to this man and I didn’t want to remember his face as a dismantled bloody carnage that was burned into my skull. I found his wallet in his back pocket with the name engraved in the bottom left corner and a license inside. Sargent Connors of the 623rd National Guard Armory it read with a photo of him and three little girls encased in the pocket. They were all smiling in the photo. That will be a good memory to have of him instead of the first appearance I had just encountered. I searched his body for possibly the keys to the truck and I discovered ammunition, three frag grenades and a set of keys. I gripped the materials as I stood back onto my feet and stepped towards the truck. As I placed the keys into the ignition, I was silently praying for a miracle to happen. While twisting the keys, a loud roar came from the engine and gas evaporated into the air. After gripping the steering wheel, I realized that the truck was a manual operating truck. You would think that being in the army I would have learned to drive a stick shift truck but I never mastered that technique. Shaun crossed to the driver seat as I ran around the truck to the passenger side. As both doors closed, he shifted into first gear with the screeching tires becoming a drowned noise in the daylight.
I have always thought when these dark days came to be that the sun would not be gracing us with its presence. I pictured the sun being encased with a dark shadow or blood dripping from it and surrounding the ground, but instead it seemed as another sunny day in Kentucky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight along with no shade to protect us from the incredible heat. Even the wind touching our faces was intensely suffering. We had two more miles of road to cover before reaching my father’s house. Anxiety for his and his wifes safety was settling into my mind. We had encountered a couple of roamers along the way, but it was nothing that the grill of the truck couldn’t handle. Some of their blood splattered on the windshield, but the wipers and windshield cleaner did the trick. We could see the tree lines as we passed them along with houses with no walls or burnt roofs. Dead bodies had fallen on to the lawns of what used to be nice suburban areas. Ashes ruled the ruins of the so called country side. The grass wasn’t green anymore. It was covered by a gray tissue that clogged lungs and suffocated the living. This substance has no effect on the lost unless its’ primary source still has life from the inside. A gruesome cloud of black smoke appeared from behind the tree line that was near my childhood home. Fear consumed my body in a way it never had before. My hands began to shake as I told Shaun to drive faster than he ever has. As we approached the top of the hill, the smoke became larger. We passed the tree line that obscured my vision of the house and my heart came to a halt. Engulfed by flames, the house had fallen. Shaun stomped on the brakes and the truck drifted to a stop. With our guns locked and loaded, we pushed the doors open and stepped onto the road. Walkers took notice of our screeching tires and began coming towards us.
“You ready Shaun,” I asked him with anger in my eyes.
“Hell yes bub. Lets’ kill them all.”
Firmly gripping our weapons, bullets escaped the barrels of our guns and lodged into multiple zombies. As widespread as the roamers were my eyes supported tunnel vision. I was aiming left, right and in front of us. There was no gap from which my gun hadn’t ventured. Shaun kept moving further and further away from me to insure a kill shot on each zombie. I aimed my sights towards the hoard and the hammer clicked with no shot. The zombie I had my sights on was to close for me to reload my gun. I flipped it around and clutched the barrel tight and created a handheld blunt object. The gun connected to the walkers head and I punched it with my left hand. I realized that wasn’t enough to keep the infected woman away from me. Her arms stretched out towards me and my boot left an imprint on her chest. She stumbled backwards while presenting a painful grunt noise. I grabbed another clip from my belt and placed the warm steel magazine into the handle of my pistol. I gripped the chamber and pulled it back allowing a bullet to enter the chamber. One shot to her head rid her of the pain and the dust behind her flew into the air. I caressed the trigger over and over again and could see the flames coming out of the barrel. Each bullet split the humid air and the dead kept falling all around us. Shaun’s focus had been on the beings that were in our eyesight rather than the surroundings. Blood was trailing behind the walker with a gimp leg and melting skin that had become too close to Shaun without him realizing it.
As I raised my gun towards the walker I yelled, “Shaun, behind you!�
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Before I was able to shoot the zombie, Shaun realized the reason for my commotion. He swiftly lowered his body towards the ground as the zombie swatted towards him. As he kneeled towards the ground, he gripped his double bladed hatchet from his side holster and swung the weapon towards its head. The hatchet rested at Shaun’s side and the head of the walker disconnected from its shoulders with blood oozing down its torso. The walkers’ body remained in a standing state with the arms twitching uncontrollably. Shaun stood before his current foe and mercilessly kicked the body to the ground. I stood there in amazement as he placed the hatchet back into the holster and gripped his revolver while placing a speed loader into the side of the handle. His quick precision with strike and death left zombies deactivated on the ground after his reloading. As Shaun’s last bullet rested between the eyes of a zombie, he realized that he had left his other handgun in the truck. He placed his revolver back into his holster. As I was shooting the walkers in my eye sight, I look over at Shaun and saw him reach around his back only to pull forward a fully automatic UMP with a red dot scope, extended magazine and shoulder strap.
I lowered my gun while looking at him with a surprised expression on my face.
“Where in the Hell did you get that?”
With a smirked look on his face he replied, “In the back of the truck.”
He reached to his lower back and gripped a Desert Eagle with his left hand. He then threw it towards me while I extended my arm to apprehend the gun while it was in the air. The cold steel of the Desert Eagle caressed in my left palm and the warm grip of my Beretta in the right made me feel invincible. Two barrels, one objective and a whole lot of blood to spread was said with both of our faces. Our footsteps were leaving their marks into the ground as we marched towards the flesh starved crazies. The grass that was once green was charred and tinted red. Our focus was not absent as our rampage was succeeding in a grateful way that everyone should understand.
Z.E.D.S. Series (Book 1): Z.E.D.S. Rising Page 2