The Undead Chronicles (Book 1): Home and Back Again

by O'Brian, Patrick J.

  “Yes, you can stay,” Albert assured her, openly happy to see her joy. He leaned over to quietly speak to Metzger. “I’ve never seen her like this. And it’s a good idea to keep her out of harm’s way.”

  “We have a little bit of a walk to the car, but it shouldn’t take long after that,” Metzger said.

  Molly stepped forward slightly.

  “We can have a few people walk with you to the car if you want. There are still three of those assholes out there.”

  Metzger hated to inconvenience anyone, figuring the three Wardens were likely long gone after their sanctuary was invaded by a larger force. Before he could speak, however, Albert answered for the group, likely worried about his partner’s lack of fighting experience.

  “That would be great. Thank you.”

  Close to fifteen minutes later the three men and two more men carrying automatic weapons walked down the road to the Toyota. Metzger surveyed the ditch now on his left as they walked, and the intermittent buildings to his right. On a few occasions the undead staggered their way individually, or in pairs, and he dealt with them using the short sword to avoid anyone using noisy guns.

  When they reached the Prius, Metzger moved several items to the trunk to make room for his passengers while the two men assigned to them stood guard near the vehicle. He felt somewhat relieved that no one broke into the car, and more so that his family photos and other belongings remained intact. Already prepared to lose them at some point in the future, he wouldn’t have been shocked or surprised to see the items gone from his life so soon.

  Once the car was ready for travel the two men gave friendly nods and headed back to the school. Metzger assumed the driver’s seat and began heading to the now violated house that Albert and Luke called home well before the world fell apart.

  “Are you two sure you want to tag along with me, rather than stay at the school?” Metzger asked them a few minutes into their journey.

  “You act like you’re not sure you want company,” Albert stated from the front passenger’s seat. “You didn’t seem altogether thrilled back there when Molly asked you.”

  Metzger grimaced a little, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “It’s not that I don’t want company, but I hate feeling responsible for others. I spent a month on the road by myself dodging virtually every person I came across. It’s hard to trust other people, and when I do finally get there, I don’t want to see anything bad happen to them.”

  “You can’t control everything,” Luke said. “This isn’t a classroom where you’re responsible for defenseless kids. Some of us are more capable than others, but we all have to live with the choices we make nowadays.”

  “I know,” Metzger said dejectedly. “And you’re all more than welcome, but life on the road isn’t easy. It’s somewhat easier with other people, I assume, but it’s going to get worse as time goes on.”

  “You mentioned something about your brother and a military base in Virginia,” Albert said. “That sounds pretty secure.”

  Metzger shook his head.

  “I’m not sure what it’s going to be. I haven’t heard from him in over a week, and the last time we spoke he said the skipper had decided to bring the ship home because they weren’t receiving any orders from the Navy.”

  “What’s your plan?” Albert inquired.

  “To get close to the base, quietly and carefully, and see if I can find him or his wife and kid. Assuming I don’t hear from him first.”

  “You’re lucky,” Luke said.

  Metzger evaded some unevenly parked cars in the middle of the street, making his way around some corpses and debris as well. It amazed him how some parts of the city were crystal clear, and others looked as though a war ravaged the landscape.

  “How am I lucky?” he dared asked. “I just discovered my parents were rounded up like Jews into a concentration camp and murdered in just about the most horrific way possible.”

  “And we’re very sorry about that. But at least you still have someone. Most of us can’t say we had anyone left after things went bad.”

  “So far it’s the hope that’s kept me going,” Metzger admitted, looking to some of the abandoned businesses around him.

  Within urban areas, most of the businesses and apartment buildings appeared readily accessible because their doors were torn from their hinges, or the windows already smashed from looters. Civility went to the wayside like the thousands of corpses that filled ditches and open fields after people were brought down like defenseless prey. Metzger felt reasonably certain more people died as a result of attacks than from whatever chemical or disease that killed the initial wave.

  Every so often the trio spotted members of the undead shuffling along the side of the road, or sometimes in the road. Unwilling to bring harm to the car unless absolutely necessary, Metzger swerved around them until he reached the outskirts of Buffalo, drawing closer to the old two-story house.

  “Didn’t you say you were an ER nurse?” Metzger asked Albert before they traveled much further. “You probably saw some crazy shit when everything went down.”

  “I worked at Mercy Hospital,” Albert answered. “I was actually off that day, but they ended up calling me in for overtime after the factory explosion.”

  Metzger found it odd how so many major cities suffered factory fires and explosions around the same time on the same day. Americans were so accustomed to acts of terrorism being thwarted that he wondered if this time they had inside help, or worse, the terrorists were domestic.

  He questioned if the end results were intentional or a horrific side effect of the fires and the strange chemicals they emitted.

  “Only a few of the workers in the factory were killed by the initial blast,” Albert began his tale as Metzger avoided a few more awkwardly-parked cars and stumbling undead. “I heard later on that even they reanimated. My hospital took some of the overflow from the other hospitals, so we didn’t know what we were in for right away. We received three of the factory workers and they were suffering from some kind of respiratory distress because they breathed the chemical involved in the explosion.”

  Based on what he saw on the news before his untimely departure from Ohio, Metzger questioned whether every factory contained the same chemicals involved in the explosions because they all seemed to produce the same illnesses.

  “By the time they arrived, all three were beginning to turn ashen from the chemical,” Albert continued. “We gave them oxygen and monitored their vitals, but they continued to decline. With all three, we ended up putting them out to help slow their breathing because they couldn’t remain still, and we knew we were going to have to intubate them to keep their airways open.”

  “What exactly does intubate mean?” Metzger asked, having never been one to watch medical dramas on television.

  “Basically sticking plastic tubes down their throats to keep airflow possible. But all three faded fast, and when they expired, we tried CPR along with oxygen therapy, but nothing was bringing them back.”

  Albert appeared a bit somber about the situation, which seemed a bit out of place for someone who dealt with death and sickness on a daily basis.

  “Things went from bad to worse pretty quickly. Two of the bodies were left in place while the first was wheeled down to the morgue. All three of them started moving about the same time, and when people first saw these factory workers all covered in dirt, grime, and soot walking down the hall they made the mistake of rushing to help them instead of studying the details first.”

  Metzger looked in the rearview mirror, noticing from Luke’s expression that he already knew this tale and wasn’t particularly thrilled about hearing the details all over again. He kept looking away, out the side window, at something, anything to distract him from the harrowing story.

  “People were bitten,” Albert said with a pained wince. “At first we all thought we screwed up and misdiagnosed one or two of them, but our own started dying and coming back. The hallway floors became
rivers of blood, and we tried saving the ones who didn’t die right away. Hospital security and the police ended up shooting some of the attackers, and that’s when I realized something really wasn’t right about the people returning from the dead. They weren’t people in any sense of the word anymore because they didn’t feel a thing. I think the cops thought they were sick, because they tried shooting them in the legs, and eventually the chest, but nothing worked until they aimed for their heads.”

  Albert stared out the windshield at a zombie with the lower part of its jaw hanging onto the deceased man’s face by just a shred of flesh. Its eyes continued to glare with a predatory stare at the car as it passed, turning the heads of every undead straggler.

  “It’s hard to believe how quickly things escalated,” Albert said with a numbness that mimicked shock. “People just kept coming to the hospital to check on the loved ones, which just made it worse. More and more people just kept becoming them, whatever they were. I don’t know how I didn’t get bitten. We were trying to help the living, so when they expired I just simply moved to another table and went back to work. Things got so bad that within a few hours they were talking quarantine, and military, and a lockdown of the hospital until order was restored. Word spread, and now we had patients who were already bitten running into the streets, dying and biting. I left before they closed off the hospital to outsiders. Told them I was going to grab a few supplies down the hall, but I just walked out, got into my car, and somehow made it home.”

  Shaking his head, Albert openly continued feeling shameful about his actions.

  “You couldn’t have done anything more,” Metzger said sympathetically, knowing he planned on missing work the day after everything fell apart.

  “I just think of all the people I saw daily,” Albert confessed. “Now they’re probably locked inside that building, condemned to shuffling around the halls for eternity.”

  Silence filled the car during the last few minutes it took Metzger to reach their home, finding the neighborhood and their house much the way it looked the previous morning. Sunlight provided ample light for them to spot any danger as all three emerged from the Toyota. Metzger offered to conduct a quick search of the area and stand guard while they gathered what essentials they needed for the trip south.

  Finding no undead roaming the streets within eyeshot, Metzger passed through the front gate and took the stairs leading into the front door, closing it behind him. Holding the MP5 he retrieved from the Prius once he returned to the car from the school, he observed the house from the center of the downstairs, keeping his finger just outside the trigger guard. Although his father initially taught him how to use guns, his brother later taught him a few additional things about gun safety that stemmed from his military training.

  Metzger learned some valuable lessons from Bryce, wishing he’d taken more time to soak in knowledge like a sponge. Learning on the fly was a good way to get killed, and thus far only sheer luck kept him from dying or getting captured a few different times. He saw very little of his brother, a committed lifer in the Navy, except when Bryce came home from deployments during seemingly random times. Christmas was never actually in December with the family, Thanksgiving was often a conference call, and most other holidays didn’t even count when he was halfway around the globe.

  Bryce passed up several opportunities to remain stateside where he could instruct at a base, or take an assignment that kept him closer to his wife and son. Metzger wasn’t sure if his brother was pursuing higher aspirations, or if another reason kept him far away from family. Their brotherly discussions never got too deep, as though Bryce felt certain his sibling couldn’t possibly understand the motivations of a military man.

  Taking in the simple beauty of an organized house around him, Metzger heard a few thumps from upstairs as the two men packed their essentials. In a world of chaos, with death literally everywhere around him, he appreciated any setting that reminded him of the old days, even if those times were only a month behind him.

  His eyes wandered to the front door where he spotted a shadow crossing the frosted glass centered within the upper portion of the door. Slowly walking toward the door, Metzger refused to blink, much less let his eyes wander from the door. He never felt completely safe, knowing he couldn’t let his guard down for one second or dismiss any activity around him as coincidence.

  Tapping his finger against the trigger guard, Metzger prepared to shoot anything on the other side of the door that didn’t belong. After his experience at the school, where his parents were murdered, he didn’t possess nearly the amount of patience or mercy when it came to strangers.

  When he reached the door, Metzger peered outside of the frosted side panels, seeing no one standing on the porch. Although the door window components prevented him from making out details, he was able to distinguish a human shape from anything else if he spied someone outside. Just because he didn’t see anyone outside didn’t mean they hadn’t passed by the front door and moved to the side of the house. Growing more paranoid by the second, he decided to head upstairs to check on Albert and Luke.

  “Albert!” he called with a repressed yell to avoid anyone who might be lingering outside from overhearing.

  “What’s wrong?” Albert asked as he reached the door of the room where he and Luke had been packing.

  “I saw a shadow cross the front door,” he answered in a hushed voice. “When I looked through the window I didn’t see anyone out there.”

  “So?” Albert asked with a confused look, unsure of what Metzger wanted.

  “So hurry. I don’t want the wrong people paying us a visit.”

  Understanding completely, Albert gave an affirmative nod before hurrying into the room to redouble his efforts.

  Metzger returned to the front door, peering out of each available frosted window before carefully looking out of the larger picture window along one side. He saw no people, no undead, and no unfamiliar vehicles sitting through the open front gate. Not entirely willing to believe what he saw at a glance to hold true, he darted to the backdoor for a look in that direction. Less cautious, he walked from window to window, seeing no intruders.

  Less than a minute later Luke reached the first floor, holding a black trash bag with Albert close behind. Albert carried a small suitcase with him, clutching it as though it held items far more important than clothing and toiletries. Metzger looked from the suitcase to Albert, knowing all too well the importance of clinging to memories of the old world. A select few remained inside the Toyota for him, reminding him of his parents, and his brother. Metzger felt certain if he lost all of those items he might disconnect from the world and numbly walk into a deadly trap.

  “Out back,” Metzger said, pointing to the backdoor, motioning for them to exit the house that way in case someone was lying in wait for them at the front gate.

  As the only one of them openly holding a firearm, Metzger opened the door, peered outside from side to side, and took a step after seeing no movement. He chose to round the corner, circling the house around to the front with Albert and Luke behind him. When he reached the inside of the front gate, Metzger motioned for them to stop as he looked outside, hoping a sniper rifle wasn’t aimed at his head from afar.

  Seeing no danger outside of the wooden fence, he led the way to the Toyota, which hadn’t been parked very far away. Albert and Luke quickly jumped into their respective seats, getting their luggage situated as Metzger assumed the driver’s seat. Starting the car hurriedly, he pulled out of the neighborhood, taking a look back as he spied someone in the center of the road looking ominously at the back of his car. Like some fictional horror movie killer, the person wanted to make certain he was seen, standing erect and perfectly still.

  “What the hell?” Metzger dared ask aloud, fixated on the rearview mirror.

  “Look out!” Luke yelled from the backseat, causing Metzger to return his eyes to the road ahead, seeing a different form of danger awaiting them.

  A small barri
cade of cars cut off their return path, with two men standing ominously behind them. Metzger immediately recognized one of them as the man with the ponytail a few nights back in the darkness. If that man was present, that certainly meant the infamous Xavier was either the man beside him, or the threatening figure staring from behind the car. He also knew these men followed them to the house, a second time no less, leaving little doubt they meant to harm the trio inside the Toyota.

  Though they presented no weapons as of yet, Metzger felt certain these men were armed. Left with the option of ramming their barricade, or veering to the right where a shallow ditch stood between them and a small city park, he didn’t foresee either move ending well for the Prius. He did know that stopping the car meant certain death for him and his two passengers, because the Wardens weren’t going to accept the loss of their sanctuary lightly.

  Grabbing the steering wheel with both hands, he veered toward the ditch to the right, hoping the car somehow avoided crashing or getting them stuck.

  Thirteen

  Metzger fully expected a loud thud when he crashed the front end of the car, followed by an airbag punching him in the nose like an MMA fighter, predicating the end of his natural life. Instead, the front right tire managed to land on something solid within the ditch that kept the car level enough for him to reach solid ground at the edge of the city park on the other side. He didn’t dare slow down for a second as he caught a glimpse of Luke whirling around in the backseat to assess their situation.

  “Are they following us?” Metzger asked.

  “No. They’re just standing there with stunned looks on their faces.”

  Sighing a breath of relief, Metzger managed to quickly find a concrete path within the park that eventually took him back to city roads. He remained weary, picking up speed slightly once they were surrounded by buildings and street signs again, knowing it wouldn’t take long for the Wardens to regroup if they wanted to pursue the Prius.