Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series

by Bryan Cassiday

  All Mellors knew was that Byrd reeked of bad breath. Mellors crinkled his nose in reaction to the stench. He had the misfortune to be sitting next to Byrd and was getting the full brunt of the miasma.

  “How about a Life Saver?” said Mellors, reaching into his jacket’s breast pocket and digging out a roll of peppermint Life Savers.

  He tore open the roll of circular candies and offered Byrd the top one.

  Byrd looked down his nose at the Life Savers.

  Mellors never should have sat next to Byrd. The two of them didn’t get along. Basically, it was hate at first sight. Mellors figured Byrd was jealous of him because he had graduated from Yale while Byrd had graduated from West Point.

  Mellors didn’t think much of military men. They had tunnel vision. It was his experience that they could see the world only in zero-sum military terms. After all, what could you expect from a guy who idolized Clausewitz?

  Mellors winced. Byrd’s breath smelled like a small animal had crawled into his mouth and died. Mellors turned away from Byrd to avoid the odor.

  “Maybe Ho has lost his grip on reality on account of the plague,” said Dr. Laslo. “A crisis of this magnitude can inflict severe psychological trauma on people.”

  “You mean he’s bonkers?” said Byrd.

  Dr. Laslo grimaced at Byrd’s terminology. “His means of coping with an Armageddon scenario could be his declaring he’s in control of the world.”

  Slocum shifted uncomfortably in his seat and cleared his throat. “I say we ignore Ho. He’s the least of our worries if you ask me.”

  “I agree,” said Paris. “Dealing with the plague demands our full attention.”

  General Byrd gently patted his comb-over. “I disagree. If Ho’s telling the rest of the world what he just told the president, he might be able to convince others he really is the sovereign of the world.”

  “And?” said Slocum.

  “And impose his will on everyone.” Byrd paused. “I say we nip him in the bud and bomb him before he can stir up any trouble.”

  “That would be a drastic overreaction and could cause severe repercussions,” said Paris. “World opinion could turn against us once it was divulged we had assassinated Secretary-General Ho.”

  “We mustn’t underestimate Ho—even if he is mad. His insanity doesn’t discount his viability as a threat. Hitler was a psycho, and look what a mess he made of the world.”

  “Not everyone would agree with you that Hitler was mad,” said Slocum.

  Byrd looked disgusted. “I don’t want to split hairs with you over Hitler’s sanity. You get my drift.”

  The president closed his eyes and pondered the dilemma. At length, he said, “Let’s ignore Ho for now. We have bigger fish to fry at this stage.”

  “If we don’t do something to stop him now, Mr. President, he might become too powerful for us to stop him later,” said Byrd.

  “We’ll monitor Ho, General. If it looks like he’s becoming a force to reckon with, we’ll reassess our current evaluation of him. Right now he’s on the back burner.”

  Cole cut Byrd a look that brooked no argument.

  Fetching a sigh, Byrd sat back in his chair. He contorted his mouth, but said nothing.

  Cole leaned forward in his chair and spread his palms on the tabletop. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, where do we commence our war against the plague?”

  “I hate to bring this up, but it’s about time somebody did,” said Dr. Laslo.

  “What’s on your mind, Doctor?”

  “For the time being, the plague isn’t airborne.”

  “Thank goodness for that. We caught a break.”

  “Didn’t it start out airborne, Doctor?” asked Klauss, picking at her short ginger hair on her forehead.

  Dr. Laslo nodded. “What concerns me is, what if it becomes airborne again?”

  “Oh my God! Don’t even think such a thing. There would be no stopping it. The first few days it was airborne was when it wreaked the most havoc.”

  “Is there any real danger of it becoming airborne again?” asked Cole.

  Worry creased Laslo’s brow. “I wish I knew.” He hung fire. “This plague isn’t acting like any other virus I’ve ever encountered. It’s impossible to tell what it’s going to do next.”

  An unnerving silence cast a pall over the room.

  CHAPTER 19

  Southern California

  Halverson and his group found a black Ford Explorer SUV shoehorned between parked cars on the I-15. They dismounted. The Explorer’s owner had left the key in the ignition when he had abandoned the vehicle. Now all Halverson had to do was figure out how to get the vehicle out of the jam of abandoned cars that surrounded it.

  “Are we just gonna leave the horses here?” asked Victoria, standing beside her horse and patting its muzzle.

  “If we take the SUV, we can’t take them with us,” answered Halverson. “We need to adapt to the situation. Now that we have a car for transportation, we don’t need horses.”

  “What about my chopper?” said Chogan.

  Halverson glanced at the Harley. “Will it fit in the back of the car?”

  A McIntosh apple in his hand, Chogan scoped out the rear of the SUV. “That’s a definite maybe.”

  “Might come in handy if we took it.”

  Chogan took a crackling bite out of his apple. “I’m glad we raided that Ralphs and got something to eat before we came here. I feel better already.”

  “There won’t be anywhere to eat in the desert.”

  Emma was carrying a canvas pouch with food items in it draped over her shoulder.

  “I should have taken more formula with me,” she said, glancing at her pouch. “Millie might get hungry before we reach Vegas.”

  Chogan shrugged. “Not again.” He faced Emma. “You won’t need more formula.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “You don’t need any, period.”

  “Now you’re being cruel to Millie again,” said Emma, her voice trembling with emotion.

  Chogan shook his head in frustration. He stalked off. He didn’t want to get into it again with Emma. To avoid getting riled up he decided it was best for him to stay clear of her for a bit.

  “How do we get the car out of all that traffic?” asked Victoria.

  “We’re gonna have to play dodgem cars with it,” answered Halverson.

  “What?”

  Halverson strode onto the freeway’s asphalt, threaded his way through the parked cars, and entered the Explorer. He wasn’t surprised the key was still in the ignition. The same could be said for most of the other vehicles. He fired the ignition.

  “Could you release the emergency brakes of the cars in front of and behind me and put the trannies in neutral?” he said through the open window to Victoria.

  “I guess I’m elected,” she said, seeing that nobody else was nearby.

  She made her way to the Chevy in front of the Explorer and found that the emergency brake wasn’t even set. Sitting down in the driver’s seat she shifted the transmission out of park into neutral. She picked a path through the parked cars to the Honda behind the Explorer, climbed in, released the handbrake, and shifted the transmission into neutral. The car rolled a few inches as she climbed out of it.

  She made her way back to the freeway’s shoulder and flashed the thumbs up to Halverson.

  He drove forward and crashed into the Chevy sedan in front of him. The Explorer slammed into the Chevy’s trunk, crumpling it, shoving the Chevy forward. He ground the transmission into reverse and crashed into the Honda behind him. The Honda’s front bumper fell off and dropped to the asphalt with a clang.

  Halverson cursed. Now he would have to drive over the bumper to reach the Honda. Setting the handbrake he clambered out of the Explorer, retrieved the steel bumper, and hauled it out of the Explorer’s path.

  He returned to the Explorer, released the brake, shifted into drive, and rammed the Chevy again, creating more room for the Explorer
to maneuver back and forth. Clanging metal resounded through the air.

  “You’re gonna draw more of the flesh eaters to us making all that racket,” said Victoria.

  “There’s no other way to get out of here,” said Halverson.

  “If you wreck the car, it’ll be useless to us.”

  “I need more room to drive out of here,” said Halverson, plowing the Chevy forward a few more inches, crumping its trunk.

  “If you bend the SUV’s fenders too much, the wheels won’t be able to turn,” said Emma, approaching Victoria.

  “You think?” said Halverson, riled at the peanut gallery he was attracting.

  He backed into the Honda and tried to bulldoze it backward, applying more gas to the Explorer. The SUV’s rear wheels screeched against the asphalt, raising smoke and filling the air with the reek of burning rubber.

  Frustrated, he shifted into drive, floored the gas pedal, and mashed the back of the Chevy. The Chevy’s rear window spiderwebbed in its frame.

  “Don’t rupture the gas tank or you’ll catch fire,” said Victoria.

  She realized she sounded domineering. She wasn’t trying to, but she had to admit it sounded like she was barking orders. Maybe stress brought that out in her.

  “Keep your shirt on,” said Halverson.

  The Explorer’s tires spun wildly, fishtailing, trying to gain purchase on the asphalt as Halverson attempted to plow the Chevy forward. There were too many cars parked in front of the Chevy for him to move it very far. The only way to make enough room for him to drive off the freeway was by crushing the Chevy like it was an accordion. He was too close to the Chevy for the Explorer’s wheels to gain purchase.

  He reversed, crushed the gas pedal, smoked his wheels, and rammed the front of the Honda.

  In the rearview mirror he picked up on his rear window cracking on impact and exhibiting hairline fractures. The steel-on-steel collision resounded through the air.

  “Take it easy!” said Victoria.

  In the rearview mirror he marked the Honda’s hood bent upward and, looking forward, realized he had more room ahead of him to maneuver the Explorer. He cut his wheels all the way to the right, shifted into drive, and tried to pull off the freeway.

  Chogan raised a cry. “Bogeys at three o’clock!”

  The jarring of the car collisions must have attracted them, realized Halverson. There was nothing he could do about it. Using the Explorer like a battering ram was the only way he could think of to free the SUV from gridlock.

  He didn’t have quite enough room to clear the Chevy’s rear bumper. He was so close to breaking free he could taste it. He floored the gas pedal. He couldn’t progress. His left front bumper was hung up on the Chevy’s bumper. He stuck his head out the driver’s-side window and checked out his front bumper. All he needed was another inch of space in front of the Explorer and he would be free.

  He cut his wheels hard to the left and reversed. He didn’t have much room behind him, he knew. He crashed his rear bumper into the Honda, stopped, turned hard right, shifted into drive, and plowed forward, grazing the Chevy’s rear bumper and driving onto the freeway’s shoulder.

  He heard a gunshot and whipped his head to the right.

  Chogan was blowing away one of the three zombies that were shambling across the desert toward the Explorer. The male thirtysomething creature spun on its heels and keeled over, its brain pulped, the back of its skull shooting off into the desert.

  Chogan tried to take out the other two creatures, but his pistol’s slide had locked back on empty. He glanced angrily at his empty gun then retreated toward Halverson.

  “We need more ammo,” said Chogan at a dead run, gun in hand.

  “Everybody pile into the car,” said Halverson.

  The two walking dead became enlivened by the proximity of living flesh. Their herky-jerky movements accelerated, but the creatures’ lack of coordination hampered their speed. Their flailing gestures became exaggerated and more dreadful to behold.

  “We need weapons,” said Chogan, climbing into the backseat.

  Emma sat across from him. Victoria claimed the front seat.

  Fifty-odd flesh eaters now appeared in the shimmering thermals of the desert, zeroing in on the Explorer with their ungainly shambling strides, making their way past a couple of stray Joshua trees that dotted the barren landscape.

  “We’ll have to get guns in Vegas,” said Halverson. “We can’t hang around here.”

  “I could take the Harley back into town and hit a police armory. Be back in a flash.”

  “We forgot the bike,” said Victoria.

  “Damn,” said Chogan.

  Halverson was on the verge of telling Chogan to forget it when Chogan bolted out of the SUV to retrieve the Harley.

  “Hurry up!” called Halverson.

  CHAPTER 20

  Chogan barreled to the Harley, straddled it, fired the engine, and roared toward the Explorer.

  He skidded to a halt in back of the SUV. He scanned the area around him. He needed a board or a plank that he could slant against the SUV’s rear bumper and roll his bike into the interior. At over five hundred pounds the chopper was too heavy for him to lift.

  “I need a ramp so I can roll my bike into the SUV,” he said.

  He booted the Harley’s kickstand down, dismounted, and grabbed the handle on the SUV’s crumpled rear door. He tried to pull open the door. It wouldn’t budge.

  Grunting, he yanked on the door handle again.

  Nothing doing.

  “The door’s so bent out of shape, I can’t open it,” he said.

  “Just forget it,” said Halverson from the driver’s seat.

  Increasingly agitated by the proximity of living flesh, the walking dead plodded closer to the SUV, all but tripping on their own feet in their eagerness to reach Chogan.

  “We really need to leave,” said Emma in the backseat, eyes locked on the lurching creatures that were steadily narrowing the gap between them and Chogan.

  “See if you can push open the rear door from inside,” said Chogan, gesturing at Emma through the rear door’s window, his face contorted with anxiety.

  Emma crawled over the backseat toward the rear door. She clutched the handle and strained to push the door out. She shook her head.

  “It’s jammed,” she said.

  “I don’t want to leave my bike,” said Chogan.

  “Put it on the roof.”

  “That’s not gonna happen. It weighs over five hundred pounds.”

  “Just leave it,” said Halverson.

  “Ride it and follow us,” said Emma, returning to the backseat.

  Under the gun, Chogan thought about it. The zombies were so close he could hear them scuffing through the dirt toward him. He had to make a decision on the fly. He didn’t look forward to riding the motorcycle through the hot desert.

  The first three ghouls approached to within ten feet of him.

  “If you don’t get back in here now, I’m leaving you behind,” Halverson told Chogan.

  He could always get another motorcycle, decided Chogan. He left the bike and bolted into the SUV’s backseat, slamming the door shut behind him.

  The ghouls reached the SUV and pounded their fists clumsily against the window nearest Chogan.

  Halverson fired the engine, shifted into drive, and jammed the gas pedal. The SUV lurched forward, crashed into two of the ghouls that had crabbed in front of him, and flattened them. The SUV’s tires ground them into the dirt, crushing their bodies and skulls.

  With a twinge of disgust Halverson felt two distinct bumps as the SUV drove over the pair of cadavers. He could feel the sensation of the tires squishing the bodies and cracking the skulls as the wheels ran over them.

  The SUV cleared the bodies.

  Halverson tried to pick up speed through the desert.

  “Is this as fast as you can go?” said Chogan.

  “Something’s dragging on the car,” said Halverson.

  He
checked the handbrake to make sure it was off.

  “Maybe one of the wheels is hitting a wheel well that you dented,” said Victoria.

  Halverson nodded.

  “We can still go faster than those things,” said Chogan, eying the flesh eaters that streeled after the SUV.

  In the rearview mirror Halverson watched the creatures diminish in size in the distance behind him.

  A murder of crows swooped over the walking dead, wondering what to make of the ambulatory rancid flesh, wondering whether they should dive down and feast on the cadavers.

  Drawn by the reek of rotting flesh, a score of the birds dropped out of the sky and attacked the heads of three of the walking dead, pecking at their putrescent decomposing flesh. The ghouls thrashed at the crows and tried to bite off their heads.

  One outsized crow contrived to peck out an eye of one of the zombies and flew off with the milky orb in its beak.

  As the walking dead swatted at the crows, the crows decided to leave, confused by the mixed signals they were receiving from the walking corpses. On the one hand, the crows scented the stench of death emanating from the zombies. On the other, they saw the zombies amble like living creatures.

  As crows fed on carrion, they had no intention of trying to feed on moving prey that fought back.

  Halverson drove alongside the I-15.

  “It doesn’t feel like you’re even going fifty,” said Chogan.

  Halverson cut his eyes toward the speedometer. “I can only get it to go a little over forty.”

  “Why don’t you stop and let me take a look at the wheels to see if something’s blocking them?”

  “What’s the point?” said Victoria. “One of the wheels is hitting a wheel well. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “Maybe I can hammer out the well.”

  “With what?”

  She had a point, decided Chogan. He thought about it. “If one of the tires is hitting something, we might end up with a flat. Then what are we gonna do?” He craned his neck behind him and checked out the SUV’s storage bay. “I don’t see a spare anywhere.”

  Emma threw up her hands. “This is a nightmare that’s never gonna end.”