Zombie Apocalypse Survivor: The Crawlspace Of Daryl Ingram

by Jason Thornton

and secure. I wondered about how Joe became infected with his home as secure as was. Joe had one vehicle in his Garage, an ugly 1980 Chevy Blazer. The paint was faded, but there was no rust on the body. A friend of mine used to call his 1980's Blazer “The Hate-Wagon”. I had no doubt that the Blazer in front of me was a zombie hating rig that would plow a six foot path through a horde of moaning zombies. I took the time to fortify it as best I could, like some of the other survivors were doing. I couldn’t armor the windows, but I did grease the sides with a thick layer of axle grease in order to keep zombies from latching on to the vehicle. I found that Joe had already stashed some supplies in the back; water, gasoline, military rations, ammunition and a small .22 rifle.

  I didn’t spend too much time upstairs, having read that being too active in one location will always draw the zombies to your location, even if you were indoors. When I finished working on the truck, I sequestered myself in the bunker and waited for my opportunity to escape.

  Days turned into weeks. I followed one survivor’s story as he worked out of an auto shop and scavenged stores in up-armored cars. I was later horrified when I read how the zombies raided his garage and killed two members of his group. I read his updates as he and one other survivor cruised about in their pedal-powered armored car, finding WIFI links to communicate and scavenging supplies. Eventually they settled into farm supply store. That’s when I decided to join them.

  I decided to ask the Biehl family to join me in my effort to escape. Rescue wasn’t coming they had to be short on food. There was plenty of room in the Hate-Wagon and I could always use help.

  Tunneling was easier on my return trip to the Biehl home since I didn’t have to break through the hard pan again and I was much healthier. I carried only what I needed, which was digging gear, lights, and Joe’s pistol.

  It was evening when I arrived at the Biehl home. I usually waited for dawn before breaching a home, but I didn’t see the point in waiting.

  Eric Biehl had dragged something heavy over my last point of entry, so I took a few moments to find the second entry that was built into each of our neighborhood homes. I found it and opened it with a shovel. I stood up in the Biehl’s closets and froze. The stench of death was ripe.

  I stood there for five minutes and listened. The house was silent. Even in my own home, Stumpy and the other zombies were always moving. They never stopped, whether it was rocking gently back and forth or brushing against a wall. There was always some audible cue to the presence of zombies.

  Against my better judgment I exited the crawlspace and opened the closet door. The smell of death was strong, but it wasn’t overpowering. I drew Joe’s pistol from the holster and stepped into the Biehl’s front sitting room, next to the front door.

  My first observation was three adult bodies. I could tell they had been zombies by the state of their clothing and the nature of the wounds upon their flesh. The bodies had been dragged into the corner. Their ruined skulls and inert corpses told me they were dead. The lack of body fluids around the corpses told me that they had been turned long before entering the Biehl home.

  My second observation was the state of the entryway. There were splashes of blood along the walls and across the floor. They lead away from the door and further into the home. The doorway itself was barricaded with a piled of furniture, which left the sitting room floor bare of anything except for the three zombie corpses. Capping the top of tall pile of furniture barricading the door was a refrigerator.

  As quietly as I could in my heavy boots, I made my way into the home. Immediately I found Lizzy. Her corpse was slumped against a wall in the living room. There was a ragged tear on her neck and a hole in her forehead. She looked to have been dead for several days.

  I cleared the first floor, checking to make sure all of the barricades were still in place, before returning to the bottom of the stare well. It seemed like it had been forever and only yesterday since I had climbed those stairs and met the Biehls. This time, instead of a pick, I advanced up the stairs with Joe’s pistol held at the ready. This time, I wasn’t greeted with the image of Eric and his baseball bat ready to strike me down. This time I came upon the image of Eric Biehl standing in front another mass of furniture piled against his bedroom door. The door where he and his family had lived...once.

  Eric was standing motionless, swaying ever so slightly. He was facing away from me, so I could not see if he still wore a scruffy beard. Still, the hair in his head ran past his shoulders in a wild tangle. Half his shirt was torn free, exposing one darkly stained arm. At Eric’s feet lay his wife’s corpse. Next to her corpse lay a small revolver.

  I took another cautious step forward and the stairs creaked ever-so-quietly. Eric turned around slowly. His milky white eyes, half buried in a ragged beard that matched his wild hair, fixed upon me. He moaned, louder than I thought was possible, and began a shuffling charge towards me. I brought the pistol up, sighted on Eric’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

  Weeks of studying and practicing with Joe’s pistol in the shelter had served me well and I hit Eric squarely in the forehead. Unfortunately, weeks of study and practice had not prepared me for the first time in my life that I fired a weapon and I was stunned by the overpowering report of firing a weapon indoors or the bright flash of fire as the bullet erupted from the muzzle of the gun in the dark hallway. Once again I found myself stupidly mired in shock.

  It was only a moment before I brought myself out of it and heard shouting. Behind the barricade a voice was shouting, “Hey, I’m in here, I’m in here!”

  I called back, “It’s Daryl Ingram, and I’m here to get you out of here.”

  I moved to the piles of furniture and began clearing debris. I started with started with the corpses of Eric and Geri Lynn. As I worked, I heard loud moans and pounding from downstairs.

  Behind the piles of furniture, the bedroom door opened and I could see Hank’s face peeking out from a small gap between the wall and a mattress. He said, “If you can get this mattress out of the way, I can squeeze out.”

  “Alright, hold on,” I said and clambered over the other furniture to work on the mattress. Using the wall as a brace, I pushed against the mattress and created a gap. Using my arms for support, Hank pulled himself up into the tight gap and began wiggling through. It took nearly a minute for Hank to squeeze through, during which the moans and pounding from below doubled in intensity.

  When he was clear Hank said, “Let’s go,” and clambered down from the pile. At the bottom of the pile he reached down and picked up the revolver that was lying on the floor. He looked back at me, “My Dad’s,” and then moved toward the stair way.

  I dismounted the pile and followed him. I moved quickly and descended the stairs two steps at a time. At the bottom, as I was turning toward the front of the house, I heard a loud crash with splintering glass and snapping wood. Stepping into the sitting room, I saw that the barricade over the front window had failed. There was a zombie sprawled on the floor. Behind the zombie on the floor, massed just outside the broken window, was a writhing crowd of zombies. I pointed to the closet and said to the Hank, “In there, drop down the hole and move to the side.”

  Hank moved quickly past me and dropped into the hole as a several zombies clambered in through the front window. They advanced quickly. I stepped back into the closet and tried to close the door, but they were already there, only inches away from myself. I fired the pistol into the face of the nearest one. He staggered back for a moment, but was forced forward into the closet by the growing mass of zombies behind him. I dropped into the hole just as his corpse smacked the wall above me. I scrambled towards my exit hole, physically dragging Hank as I went.

  Seconds later I heard movement and glanced back. Zombies were diving head first through the trap door and filling the crawlspace with their bodies. I shoved Hank into my first tunnel and shouted, “Move Now!” I dropped my feet into the hole and poin
ted the pistol back towards the crawlspace entrance and began squeezing the trigger. I shot the gun fourteen times before the slide locked to the rear. I dropped to my knees then and made my way through the tunnel.

  Hank was waiting for me as I exited. I grabbed a shovel that I’d left at the entrance and was just beginning to toss in dirt when a zombie popped out of the hole. Hank pointed the revolver and fired. It struck the zombies face, dropping it back in the hole. I hoped that it would help seal the hole, but its corpse was quickly dragged back and another zombie moved up to take its place. I turned to Hank and said, “We’re going.”

  Without taking the time to collect any of my tunneling gear, we left that crawlspace and made our way back to the shelter. The zombies had our scent and when we reached the bunker they were less than two minutes behind us. Their moans were fainter as they came on from a distance, but still bone chilling. At the entrance to the bunker I said to Hank, “If we stop here, they’ll trap us in the shelter with no way out. We’re leaving now.” We ascended the ladder into the house and shut the door behind us. I realized with regret that the cross braces to lock the entrance were on the other side of the door.

  We moved into the garage and climbed into the Hate-Wagon. I started up the beast and pushed the garage door button. The garage door rolled upward. The street in front of me was clear of zombies. I idled the beast out of the garage. Looking to my left, I saw a massive swarm of zombies pouring into the Biehl house. Looking to my right, I saw open road. I turned right.

  Five minutes later, I was parked at the fortified gates of the farm supply store, shaking hands with another Zombie Apocalypse Survivor.