This Plague of Days Season One (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial)

by Robert Chazz Chute

  Too many of them, Oliver thought. I’m dead. No way out.

  “Anybody downstairs?”

  “Nah,” Jackson shrugged. “The master bedroom is always where the best stuff is.” The boy looked to the twins, preening. “This isn’t my first B&E.”

  “You check downstairs yourself?”

  “Sure,” Jackson said. “It’s one of them splits. Lower level with like an office. Lots of books. Farther down is the basement.”

  “The people who lived here had good taste in beer,” added one of the twins. “Heineken.”

  The other reached for a wine bottle on the floor. “They had good taste in wine, too.”

  “How would you know good wine, Carl?”

  “Price tags, dumbass. Not a bottle in the house is worth less than eighteen dollars.” He began opening a bottle, working a corkscrew he’d pulled from a hook on his belt. “What goes with an occasion like this?”

  “Definitely red,” his brother replied.

  “Too bad, this is white. Champagne, actually. Probably left over from New Year’s Eve. Now, every night can be New Year’s Eve if we say so, huh, Earl?”

  Carl loosened the cork quickly and used both thumbs to shoot it at Oliver with a loud pop. The cork barely missed his eye and stung his cheek. Champagne shot across the rug.

  “Easy! You’re wasting it! They aren’t making more of that, you know!” Bently said.

  In answer, the man raised the bottle in a toast, brought it to his lips and tipped it back.

  Jackson leaned against a wall by the stairs and snickered, watching as the twins riled Bently.

  Carl smirked at Bently, and raised his voice to play to his audience. “You suck at math, huh, Bently? We can waste as much as we want. We’ll have a lifetime supply of everything. You’ll never get through all the champagne there is with the few survivors left. Drink all you want, and never pay the bill and toast the dead, dumbass.”

  Earl drank to catch up with his brother. “We haven’t done a thorough inventory of the basement yet. There’s a lot of stuff down there. You should have been more careful stocking the basement, Bently. Bad job! Bad dog! Imagine letting the old man run you like that.”

  Carl wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I hate it when people are disorganized.”

  “Lieutenant’s orders are to do inventory first,” Bently said.

  “You talk like we’re boneheads working retail,” Jackson said.

  “I’m in charge here!” Bently said.

  The boy shrugged. “Whatever. Just sayin’, what’s the point of not getting the plague if it’s business as usual?”

  Bently pointed his rifle at Jackson.

  Jackson crossed his arms. If he was at all bothered, he didn’t show it. “Whatever.”

  “Cheer up, Bently,” Earl said good-naturedly.

  “Yeah! We’re on a break,” Carl said. “I’m new to the militia but I’ve been a union man all my life. Some things are sacred. Taking breaks is part of the job.”

  Bently’s face burned. He turned on Jackson. “This old man is a black marketer. You guard him.”

  The tattooed boy sneered at Bently but gave a slow nod of assent. He reached out with his crowbar, prodded Oliver toward the stairs and pushed him roughly. If he hadn’t grabbed the railing, Oliver would have fallen down seven steps head first.

  The back door was to his right but before he could try to run, Jackson stepped close, holding his lantern high, swinging it back and forth. “Don’t even think about it.”

  Oliver turned, his hands up. He looked around. They stood in Theo’s rec room lined with books. There was nothing he could use as a weapon that would outdo the crowbar in the young man’s hands. He also knew he couldn’t match the boy’s strength in a fight. His breath was still coming in gasps.

  Oliver wished the archer at the mall had shot that arrow through his head. At least he would have died quickly. That was just this afternoon, but the ordeal now seemed a remote and friendly encounter by comparison. “Just books down here, huh? Nothing you could use.”

  “Don’t be stupid, old man,” Jackson said. “We’ll be needing lots of kindling for cooking fires.”

  Oliver rolled his eyes and the boy swung at him, slamming the knuckles of the hand that held the crowbar into the side of his head above his left ear. “Don’t do that. Don’t roll your eyes at me.”

  The old man held his hands in front of his face. He cowered, expecting the next blow to be with the crowbar. The terror rose in him and he moaned as liquid warmth spread across the front of his pants and ran down his legs. His urine came not in little spurts but in a long uninterrupted stream. The ripe yellow puddle spread out toward the boy.

  Jackson cursed, long, loud and creatively. The boy stepped back to avoid the pool of urine at Oliver’s feet. Just as quickly as he was to anger, the boy tittered at his prisoner’s humiliation. “Get back! Pathetic old man!”

  He pushed Oliver with the tip of his crowbar, forcing him back toward the next set of stairs that led to the sub-basement. Without slowing so Oliver could turn and find his footing at the top step, the tattooed boy shoved the blunt end into his ribs so he tumbled backward down another seven steps. Douglas Oliver landed hard on the concrete floor.

  Oliver gasped and cried out in pain. The boy slammed the door after him, pitching him into blackness. “Useless, disgusting old man!” Jackson yelled through the door. Oliver cried, the snot spreading across his face. The warm wet mess dribbled down his chin as he slowly rolled onto his belly.

  Slowly, with great difficulty, he rocked back and forth, reaching into his front pants pocket. Hampered by pain and the wet cling of the thin fabric, Oliver pulled out what he needed. He took as deep a breath as his sore ribs would allow, closed his eyes and triggered the wheel on his small silver cigarette lighter.

  This step of his plan was very dangerous. However, if he was to survive the night, no part of his plan was safer than any other. When everything’s an emergency, he thought, then nothing is. The lighter flashed twice and lit on the third try.

  Through his tears, he crawled forward on his elbows, saving what strength he had for a very risky idea. He stank of urine, but he had peed himself on purpose.

  Despite the pain, he allowed himself a hint of a grim smile. His anger returned to take over from the fear. He hoped the pumping adrenaline would fuel his strength for what he had to do.

  The deepest wounds are those unseen

  Jack threw herself at the high wooden fence and, with a push from Anna, dropped into Oliver’s backyard. She landed roughly and, she thought, too loudly. She looked around. From what she could make out by moonlight, she was alone. Someone howled again from the street, but everything appeared as she had left it.

  Jaimie climbed the fence next, then Anna. He looked amused. A novelty, she supposed. Anna still looked as terrified as Jack felt.

  The back door to Douglas Oliver’s house was unlocked. That was also as they’d left it and, she thought, amazingly stupid. There were a lot fewer people around now, but they could be more dangerous. Jack was in too much of a hurry to enter cautiously. She sprang through the door, desperate to find her husband.

  When Jack rushed in, she almost knocked Theo over in the darkness. The truck in Mrs. Bendham’s driveway was parked at an angle to make room for the long U-Haul trailer. Its headlights shone into Oliver’s front room. If anyone had been looking, they’d have spotted her immediately.

  Theo gripped her arm and pulled her back from the window. She pulled her mask away and pressed her lips to his neck.

  Theo looked at her with a wan smile. “I’m glad you’re back. I-I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Doing nothing was the right thing to do. We’re fine.”

  Theo pointed across the street to their abandoned home. “No, we’re not.”

  The Jeep parked on their front lawn was equipped with a spotlight. The man in the wedding dress, Jack’s wedding dress, la
ughed and howled to the man in Bermuda shorts. The other man howled back as soon as the man in the dress ran out of breath.

  “Oh…,” Jack said. She took a half-step toward the window. Theo held her close so she wouldn’t be caught in the light.

  Anna and Jaimie walked in holding hands. Even in the dim light, Theo caught his son’s wave of Oliver’s walking stick. It meant, “Look what I’ve got, Dad!”

  Jaimie broke from his sister and held his father’s hand. Theo straightened as if he’d received a small burst of energy or was refreshed from a power nap. “They’ve got Oliver.”

  “Got him? I thought they worked for him,” Jack said.

  “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head. “He can’t be trusted. He’s been using us to build his little black market empire.”

  “Empire?” Theo said, incredulous.

  “I don’t know. That might be overstating it. It’s just…Oliver only cares about himself. He wanted us out of our house so we’d take care of him if he needed help. When did he ever talk to us before his trip to the hospital. I think he wanted a tribe and he chose us. But he’s selfish.”

  “He’s bad burrito,” Anna agreed.

  Theo turned back to the window. “From what I saw, there are worse men than him. And they have him now.”

  The man in the dress was back on the front step, still howling back and forth at the man in the Bermuda shorts.

  “Those guys choose one song and play it to death,” Theo said.

  The screen door Anna’s boyfriend had destroyed lay cast aside on the grass, like a small insult forgotten because of deeper wounds.

  The man in Jack’s wedding dress shook a can of something. He stretched his arm up and sprayed paint back and forth in broad strokes. When he stepped back, a thick orange phosphorescent ‘X’ was visible across their front door.

  “Wolf Pack!” the man in white yelled in triumph.

  “Wolf Pack!” the man in Bermuda shorts answered. They howled at each other again. The sound rose, up and up, a terrifying animal sound.

  Jack began to cry. She put a hand to her head and Anna moved forward to catch her in case she fainted. Jack stumbled forward into her husband and lay her head on his chest.

  The curtains moved against the window pane under the steady eye of white light. The guard in Bermuda shorts caught the movement from the edge of his vision. Was that a trick of the light, or was someone watching them? He’d been watching that window and wondering.

  He stood, dug a white hospital mask out of his back pocket and grabbed his shotgun.

  Between what we were and where we've been

  Oliver pulled himself up by the rough wooden workbench. He tried to disregard the sharp pain across his back and chest, but his breath was ragged.

  How many ribs had Bently cracked? That could be nothing in the long run, if a jagged rib didn’t pop one of his lungs first. If the end of a broken rib did rip through the lining of a lung, deflating his balloon and pressing on his old heart, he’d die. He doubted Jackson had the skills or inclination to perform a thoracotomy to save him.

  In the flickering light of his old lighter, his cold hands shook as he searched in vain for a weapon. Years of accumulated junk littered the workbench: Discarded training wheels for a bicycle; old rolls and scraps of wallpaper; coffee cans of screws and nails. A forgotten flower pot lay on its side.

  Oliver would have preferred a long, flat screwdriver but all he could find were smaller ones. Perhaps Bently had already gone through the workbench, taking what he thought useful for their cache. Oliver almost fell reaching for a tiny Robinson screwdriver from a plastic rack.

  At the top of the small flight of stairs, the tattooed boy was still cursing him, laughing at him and making gagging sounds through the door. Terrified Jackson would rush in and swing his crowbar any second, Oliver grabbed the small screwdriver. It was so small, the tool disappeared in his palm, but he would have to make do.

  He fumbled and gasped as he knocked a can of screws over. The screws and nails scattered and clattered across the concrete floor towards the washer and dryer by the far wall. To his despair, the sound had carried to Jackson’s ears.

  “What you doin’ down there, old man?”

  Oliver snatched up the empty flower pot and, despite his pain, pushed off the workbench and launched himself back toward the stairs and off into the darkness to the left going by feel and memory. He’d hidden his treasure by the furnace.

  The red plastic gas cans lay under a tarp. This was the inventory he’d told Bently to store in the Spencer’s house. The fuel was meant to power their escape to the promised haven of Theo’s father’s farm. It might save him now.

  The old man felt the cool plastic under his hands in the dark. He could save himself if he had enough time, but time was slipping away.

  His hope didn’t last long. His captor pounded down the stairs.

  Oliver was fit, but he was still an old man. Even without a broken rib, he wouldn’t have tried attacking Jackson on his best day.

  But there was another, long-shot option.

  Jackson headed toward the laundry room. His lantern held high and swinging wildly, Oliver caught just enough thrown light in his corner of the basement to help him close on what he needed with a sure hand.

  That moment saved Oliver from immolating himself. In his rush and desperation, he’d come close to using the lighter. Instead, he stabbed at a gas can with the screwdriver point. He had meant to stab it low, close to the floor, but as he stooped, pain shot through his chest and he heard something crack and shift.

  The screwdriver, with all his lurching weight behind it, plunged through the thin plastic easier than he expected. Gas slopped out. Oliver gasped and dropped the flower pot. His hands on his knees, the old man stooped, each breath a misery. He shifted the flower pot with his foot till he heard gasoline splash into it.

  The boy heard him. Jackson rushed forward but was hampered by a pile of cardboard boxes. He wound through the mess, holding the lantern and the crowbar higher, searching the basement.

  Douglas Oliver straightened as best he could and leaned against the furnace. “I’m here.”

  The boy slowed, cautious now. He saw Oliver bend down and heard his pained gasp. The boy smiled and came closer, bold and sure, raising the long crowbar.

  The old man straightened again and held up something silver in the light.

  Jackson faltered for a second, thinking his prisoner had a knife or a gun, but it was far too small for that.

  “Time to die, old man.”

  “Alright.”

  The clay flower pot had a hole in its bottom. There wasn’t much gas in it, but Douglas Oliver swung it up from his knee and the fuel hit the teenager in the face.

  Be killed or kill in days like these

  “Somebody’s over there,” the man in Bermuda shorts said, pointing at the house across the street.

  “Nah,” said the man in the white dress. “Your imagination. And the wine.”

  He howled his wolf howl again but this time his fellow guard ignored him. “I’m almost sure I saw something.” He pointed again to Douglas Oliver’s house, at the living room window.

  Jack stood behind that window, the horror building as she peered through a narrow gap in the curtains. It was as if the lens of a powerful microscope had been turned on her. The man in the white dress — her wedding dress — shrugged and gestured with a wine bottle, urging the other guard to have another drink.

  No. Not a microscope. A rifle scope. The crosshairs would be aimed between her eyes. She could feel it like a real pressure between her eyes. “Oh, please. Oh, please…”

  The guards argued. It was a soundless pantomime, but their gestures were clear. Jaimie began twirling the walking stick as he had seen Oliver do. Anna grabbed it and in a hoarse whisper told her brother to be still.

  The man in Bermuda shorts put his shotgun down, sat back on the Spencer’s couc
h and adjusted his surgical mask so it now sat on top of his head. Anna, Theo and Jack let out a long sigh. Only then did they realize they had been holding their breath.

  The man in Bermuda shorts stood and pulled his mask down. The man in Jack’s wedding dress sprang forward and picked up his shotgun from the ground by the front step. The guards hurried toward the Spencers.

  A wide-brimmed hat stuffed on her head and a winter scarf across her face, Marjorie Bendham crossed the street carrying a small black suitcase and an umbrella in one hand. In her other hand she carried a large cooler that banged against her knee. The old woman made a beeline toward Douglas Oliver’s house.

  “We’re Anne Frank and the neighbor’s an idiot,” Anna said.

  “Head for the garage!” Theo ordered, “If we don’t get out of here, they’ll kill us.”

  “Or worse,” Jack said.

  Jaimie thought Mrs. Bendham looked like an older version of Mary Poppins. He loved that movie, especially the song about the very long word. He wished he could say it loud so he could sound precocious. All language was multidimensional music to Jaimie. Mary Poppin’s voice made it prettier.

  If Mary Poppins were here, she would take the bull by the horns, or, as the Romans put it more elegantly: Tenere lupum auribus. Hold the wolf by the ears.

  Pray for God's mercy or the Red Queen's disease

  Though the gas burned the tattooed boy’s eyes, he kept coming at Oliver. Gagging, spitting, cursing — but still coming. He hadn’t dropped the lantern or the crowbar.

  Douglas Oliver retreated until his back was to the furnace. Gas spilled at his heels. The old man thought Jackson would run as soon as the gas hit him. At worst, he thought his guard would pause long enough for Oliver to hold up his silver lighter and threaten him. He thought he’d have a moment to relish the look of terror in the boy’s burning eyes. It had been the perfect plan.

  Half-blind, Jackson swung out with the crowbar. Vicious after-images followed the arc of metal. It clanged against a thick furnace pipe by Oliver’s head.