Day One (Book 1): Alive

by Michael McDonald

  “Which one of you two killed my man?” he asked them.

  Both of them shrugged their shoulders and although the Captain had to have been upset to not get the answer he was looking for, he simply smiled and shook his head. “This isn’t the Spanish inquisition. I just need to know which one of you to lock up, because the rules of the land haven’t faded even though the world is falling apart. We still need order even if all there is around us is chaos.”

  Johnny looked up with an angered look. “That douche bag was going to shoot a child… he got what he deserved!”

  “Is this true?” The Captain asked as he looked my way.

  “Yes it’s true, and had I been on my game and had my weapon up, I would have drilled that son of a bitch for even pointing a weapon at her… she’s a child! She did nothing wrong!”

  The Captain nodded his head, as though he were agreeing with my comment. “I apologize for that, I sincerely do. Before all of this happened I had a family and I understand the frustration and anger you must be going through, Brandon,” he spun around quickly. “However, you must also realize that I am responsible for each of these men’s’ lives, and if someone takes a life, they must be punished.”

  I smarted off. “You mean taken outside, judged by you and then shot?”

  He looked at me oddly. “I’m not really sure where that came from; I understand you are all scared. But we aren’t here to dish out vigilantly justice and shoot anyone for the hell of it.”

  “That’s funny, because we watched two of your men execute a friend of ours,” I stared coldly at him. “A woman that was just trying to get help… she wasn’t even armed.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, there are things out there running around killing anyone and everywhere that isn’t like them. If someone charges us we don’t have the luxury of giving them warning shot or yelling for them to stop a million times. We have to protect ourselves as well. She was given ample warnings to stop… she chose not to.”

  “And then you executed her while she lay dying on the ground!” I shot back.

  “We aren’t setup to save lives. Like you, we are limited in the supplies we carry and have to think of ourselves in this situation. I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “What about our other friend lying just feet behind you?” I asked. “His mistake was accidently turning a porch light on and was shot down by your trigger happy nazi storm troopers… so if anything, I’d say we’re even when it comes to your man. You killed two of ours, we got one of yours!” I knew that somehow the Captain would relate things differently, seeing that his men were more important than all of us put together. I felt the exact same way, as all of those with me were far more important than any soldiers coming to offer assistance a week late.

  “If that’s the case, then we are at an impasse. Neither able to back up or move forward,” he stated.

  “Horseshit!” I answered. “There is no impasse. You simply get the hell out of my house and go on about your marry way.” My anger was building and my trigger finger was starting to get a mind of its own. This Captain, or whoever the hell he thought he was, had nothing but dual standards on the brain and that wasn’t going to fly with me. Kember and I had survived a full week without their help, yet now they wanted to show up, flex a little muscle and try and condemn our actions, that in any court of law would easily have been deemed justifiable.

  “You look like a smart man, and you’ve survived this long without any real help. So you have to know that we can’t just load up and leave or look the other way,” he said. “One of my troopers is dead and someone has to answer for that.”

  “And one of our group is dead, so which one of you bastards want’s to answer for her?” I swung the barrel from the closest soldier to the next and so on until every one of them had had a turn. “I don’t care much for dying tonight, but I swear as God is my witness that if you want a fight, then I’ll give you one. Starting with you,” I explained and stopped the barrel on Captain Andrews.

  “And now the foolishness surfaces,” he said.

  “We needed you a week ago and where were you then?” I shouted. “Everyone in this town is dead now; because you were too busy thinking of yourselves to help the little people! So let me am the first to tell you that your services here are no longer warranted or needed!”

  “It doesn’t have to happen like this,” Andrews said calmly. “There’s been far too much bloodshed already tonight. The last thing we need is anymore.”

  “Then leave,” I added harshly with hate filled eyes.

  “I’m not going anywhere until I find out who killed my man,” Andrews said, calling my bluff. Now we were at an impasse, there was no doubt about that. My scare tactics hadn’t worked, as I’d hoped they would, which meant that only one thing remained and that was to prove to them that I was not playing around and what I had said would be backed up. However, I still could not bring myself to shoot anyone. I had killed two of those things because I had been forced. The people before me were human – assholes at best, but still human.

  “I did!” A voice escaped into the utter silence. Everyone looked to see Devin looking at Andrews and he repeated himself even louder. “I did it, okay! He was going to shoot a kid. I stopped him!”

  “Shut up,” Johnny whispered.

  “No, I will not shut up,” he replied and looked to the Captain. “I did it, not them. Do whatever you need to do with me, but leave them alone!”

  The Captain moved around in front and lowered himself to the young man’s level, looking deep into his eyes. “You have courage, I will give you that. Giving yourself up to save your friends is a selfless act. I admire that.” He looked to the nearest soldier and nodded. Instantly they stood Devin and lead him away. The Captain stood and faced me. “I’m glad this could be resolved without any more bloodshed.”

  “You got what you came for! Now get out!” I said.

  Johnny piped in. “So that’s it, you’re just going to let them take him away and do nothing about it?” The anger in the man’s voice drew the coward that I had managed to repress so far. “He saved your kid and this is how you thank him?”

  I was speechless.

  Andrews looked at Johnny. “His confession saved all of you, so I’d be a little more thankful if I were you. He gave himself up… no one turned on him.”

  Johnny eyed Andrews with a menacing glare. “And these cuffs saved you.”

  “You are more than welcome to come with us, if you so choose. There is plenty of room we have a full medical staff, hot food, hot showers and relative safety,” Andrews offered.

  “As prisoners… I don’t think so,” Johnny replied.

  Andrews shook his head. “How many different ways do I have to say it? You are not prisoners, we are not here to eliminate you or put you in some work camp,” he said.

  “Whatever this is, you couldn’t stop it… even with all your fancy machinery and armed men, the world still fell apart and now you want to try and make up for your mistakes?” Johnny spouted. “How about you go to hell and take them gun totting nazi’s with you.”

  Andrews turned his attention to me, seeing that Johnny was too far gone to understand or at least try and hear things out. “This is no place for your daughter to be. It’s dangerous out here and very unpredictable; you have to realize that by now, and all I’m offering is a chance for her. As a father you should take that offer.”

  There was no way I could be sure that he had children at one time or another. There was no look upon his face that one father could detect in another father, no sign that his sorrow was weighing him down, breaking him. All I could see was a high ranking officer trying to guilt me into giving up what little freedom I had left and willingly incarcerate my daughter and myself.

  “You’re right about it being dangerous and unpredictable, alright,” I said. “But don’t use my daughter as a guilt trip to get me to do what you want me to do. You got what you came for, which means you can leave now.”

&
nbsp; The Captain could not contain the laughter and held a hand out to me as if to tell me that he wasn’t necessarily laughing at me, but rather with me. I wasn’t laughing though.

  “What’s so damn funny?” I asked, even angrier that I had been.

  He went to answer me when gunfire erupted from outside. It was rapid and came from many different weapons. His small radio crackled to life and I could hear the person on the other end scream into it, telling him that a large group of infected had come out of nowhere and they were in danger of being surrounded. “Hold the line, we are coming out.” He looked at me. “This is your last chance,” he told me. “When we drive away, that’s it. There’s no coming back, no begging for us to return and take you with us. We are gone for good.”

  “Bye,” Johnny said as the nearest soldier cut him free and backed away with his M4 at the ready, in case the man decided to attack him. Johnny glared at him as he rubbed his wrists to try and erase the pain.

  I had no intention of going anywhere with them. They could leave and never return and that wouldn’t hurt my feelings any. I had made it this far without them; I could make it a little longer. Those thoughts ran through my mind and I was about to express them when the side door glass shattered and three of those things came through. The soldier turned to fire but was overrun before he could get a single shot off. I pushed Kember forcefully into the bedroom and fired in rapid succession at the things. My ears rung like I had taken a baseball bat to the face. I had to cover my ears before shooting anymore or I’d permanently damage my hearing. The last thing I wanted in this new and exciting world was to be deaf.

  Kember began to scream.

  Johnny caught the soldier turning to fight and was able to disarmed him, pushing him out onto the front porch. He turned toward the side door and opened up with the M4 rifle. It wasn’t as loud as my SBR was, although to Kember it might as well have been. My ears rang even more.

  The Captain pulled his Springfield Armory 1911 .45 and began firing as he retreated toward the front door to the safety of his troops and more weapons.

  The situation had completely spiraled out of control and there was no way in hell that Johnny and I could fend off the horde of undead coming into my house. I had to make a decision that would benefit us all and it had to be made now, not minutes or hours from now. As the last of the three things fell out of the doorway and I had a second to breathe before the next wave shuffled through the broken door, I saw Anderson at the front door and I yelled to him. He stopped long enough to look back at me. “We’ll go… wait up!” I shouted, knowing exactly where my sudden change of heart had come from. I wasn’t sure that he had heard me at first, even though he was looking directly at me, and I was about to yell even louder when he motioned for me to advance.

  Johnny stopped me as I passed him, grabbing me by my arm. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “It’s either go with them or stay here and die,” I said. “This place is lost; they know where we are now!”

  He watched me hurry through the open door before taking one last look at the living room, which was filling up with the undead. There was no denying anymore that we could hold them back, and even though he hated the idea as much as I did, dying wasn’t on his priority list at the moment. He gunned down two more undead and gave chase.

  Moving across the porch, I was overtaken at how many of those things there were. They were everywhere. I didn’t have to force myself to shoot them, as my arm shouldered the SBR on its own and took care of every threat that approached me. With Kember not in my arms, but on foot being led by me, I was able to move and shoot without any constraints. Although I did stop and look back to make sure Johnny was right behind me. I covered him as he ran past me, grabbing Kember from my grasp, leaping off the stairs, across the garage, and out to a waiting HUMMV.

  When they were both safely inside, I finished of the thirty round magazine with a wall of solid lead, reloaded on the run as I headed for the vehicle myself. Andrews was only a few feet in front of me when one of the undead blindsided him and he dropped his weapon. I raised and fired a single shot. The undead dropped and I pushed him forward. “Get the lead out of your ass and move!” I shouted over the deafening gunfire.

  The Gunner on top of the HUMMV opened up with the M240 Bravo machine gun. The massive echo of the weapon thundered down into the cab of the vehicle and I had to cover my ears to keep from going deaf. Johnny had his shoulders hunched up and his head sunk down to cover his own ears as best he could, while he used his hands to cover Kember’s ears.

  We began to move and I felt the adrenaline in my veins still pumping as if it were lighter fluid. I almost expected that if a spark from one of the spent shell casings landed too close to me, that I would explode in a ball of orange and yellowish death, rolling through the interior of the military vehicle and obliterating everyone within. I didn’t of course, but it sure felt like a possibility to me.

  My door suddenly opened and as I turned to see a soldier maybe trying to get in, I was shocked to see one of those things grab me by my left arm and shoulder. Its grip was stout and I began to fear that I would be pulled out of the moving vehicle into the street and torn to pieces by a large group of them. “Get this damn thing off of me!” I screamed.

  Johnny couldn’t help, as the gunner was still pounding away at those things in front of us and if he let go of Kember’s ears to help she could be injured.

  It pulled with all its might and I teetered on the brink of falling out. My right hand gripped the seat as my left did its best to fight the thing off and keep it from coming into the vehicle with us or biting me. The foul odor of its decaying body and breath heaved at my stomach and I wanted to throw up, but doing so would give it more than enough time to pull me out. I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “Screw you, you piece of shit!” I shouted and used my legs to pry it off of me. It hit the street and rolled as I shut the door, looking for a locking mechanism to keep another one from trying the exact same thing. There wasn’t one, so I brought the SBR into my lap, barrel pointed toward the door, that way if another one tried I’d just blast it in the face. “Get us the fuck out of here!” I shouted to the driver.

  The small town was over-run with the supposed dead. We fought our way up four blocks to Main Street, got a few seconds to breath before another large group attempted to attack us. We used the brush guard on the front of the HUMMV’s and plowed through them. Those that were not rundown were vented with the M240 Bravo and M4’s, although I kept my SBR in the vehicle and at the ready, never firing a shot as we sped through the small town.

  Once again I found myself glancing at the places, which cast by in a blur – places I had known my entire life and would probably never see again. It was all too surreal to me. Nothing ever happened in my small town. There was never any real action, no police chases, and no muggings. It was like Mayberry in modern times. I hated it… and missed it already.

  When we passed the city limit sign and the gunfire stopped, Johnny handed Kember to me, holding long enough near my ear to whisper. “Are you sure we did the right thing here?” he asked.

  I could tell by the hint in his voice that he wasn’t sure. I couldn’t be absolutely sure myself, but I do know for a fact that we would have died if we hadn’t got in the HUMMV when we did. To that I am more certain than I have ever been about anything in my life, thus far.

  “We’d be dead right now had these guys not come along,” I replied. “Good or bad, I can’t honestly say right now, man. I did what was best for all of us… I hope.”

  “They drew those things to where we were,” he stated, watching the driver and the front passenger busy trying to get them all out alive. “We hadn’t seen but a few of them the whole time we were at your place. That is until these trigger happy cowboys showed up.”

  “Yeah, but it was just a matter of time before they found their way to us,” I stated. “We would eventually run out of supplies and have to go out looking. They could ju
st as easily have followed us back then.” I wondered if those words held any truth. Johnny’s point was more than valid. We hadn’t seen very many of those things and one block past my house was nothing but woods and farm land. So those things had to have come to us due to the noise of their machinegun fire. I shrugged it all off, not going to worry about something that no longer held any bearing. We were safe for the moment and I wasn’t going to ruin that. Safety was safety… no matter how short or long term, and no matter where.

  I watched through a small window in the rear of the vehicle as the small town faded into the obscure darkness. The faint orange tint in the sky put off by the flames of several houses and businesses burning were all that were left. As the darkness grew the small town seemed to be swallowed up, like it was sinking beneath the surface of the ocean, never to see the light of day again. In its watery grave it would forever hold the secrets of the people that went down with it. People that I had known, loved, couldn’t stand, and innocent.

  I felt a sinking in my stomach, realizing how serious things had become and wondered if things would get any worse. Of course they will! My mind answered my rhetorical question. I felt sick to my stomach now, so I raised the small plexi-glass material that was supposed to be a window and stuck my head close to it. The cool night air, which poured in, soothed me for the moment. Kember curled up in my jacket and was quiet, more than likely traumatized by what she had just went through. I felt sorry for her and I held her close. The wind blew through her hair and my head leaned slowly against hers, trying to make her feel as safe as possible.

  Chapter Ten.

  I listened to the thunder in the distance, watching the lightning flicker through the window above the bed and create shadows upon the far wall. The gentle constant hum of the falling rain pounding on the roof was serene – like a tranquil paradise you could hear but not see. The bedside fan, set on low, flung cool soft air across my face and upper body. I was as comfortable as one person could be.