by Diane Butler
ROXANNE'S
STORY
Survival in the Zombie Apocalypse
Diane Butler
AuthorHouse™
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© 2015 Diane Butler. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
Published by AuthorHouse 09/25/2015
ISBN: 978-1-5049-5314-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-5049-5315-3 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-5049-5313-9 (e)
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CONTENTS
Introduction
Author’s Appreciation
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About the Author
INTRODUCTION
They concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other without purpose of direction taking the path of least resistance. Their clothes were torn and ragged, caked in dried mud from the last bog they had crossed. They smelled of the swamp but would not wash again until the next rain. They did not have plans or a destination or a purpose except for food. They had eaten squirrel, rabbits, snake, muskrat and even rats that had accumulated in an abandoned warehouse. Their eyes were void of any emotion; love, hate, hope or thoughts of the past or future. They did not know where they were nor did they care. They did not speak except for the woman who would whisper to her dog at night when she held him.
Mutt knew that he would need to leave them soon since he could provide for himself better than they could provide for him. He knew they were hungry as he was and so had not begged needlessly. He had watched his master deteriorate and knew that if he stayed much longer that he would be watching her die. They sat down to rest and Mutt put his head on Roxanne’s knee. She sighed and tenderly put her hand on the dog’s head. “Good boy,” she whispered.
Lucky looked up to see the two of them together and thought that if he had just one bullet left that he would kill himself with it. Roxanne was now a shell of her former self, as they all were and yet it was Roxanne who was keeping them alive with her crossbow. Everyone had deep cuts and scratches that would not heal due to malnutrition and were now beginning to develop oozing sores. Mutts coat was tangled, matted with burrs, small twigs and leaves when he had once been so regal. It appeared that the world was devoid of food, any kind and all kinds of food except for the wild. They ran out of ammo only three weeks after leaving The Park and it was Roxanne’s improving skill with the crossbow that was keeping them fed with what little animals they came across. But still, meals were few and far between.
Lucky hated seeing them like this and took it as a failure on his part. It was his plan that everyone had followed and for once Roxanne had let him take control. As the weeks, months passed she started saying less and less never interjecting a comment, suggestion or formulating a plan. There was nothing in her eyes anymore. She had gone somewhere far, far away in her mind after he started using her as bait when they came across a small group of men. The strategy had been successful at first until hunger caused them to miscalculate the number of men unseen in the forest. In the end it had been Mutt who had saved Roxanne from the final act of rape while he and Brandon were frozen, unable to come up with a backup plan.
AUTHOR’S APPRECIATION
To my fans Nymphadora Jackson, lou4eva, Natalie Laukus, Rick1976, Arayer, The Uncurable Llama, King and The Lionhearted, Daphne Whitlock-Potter, Martin70, Kodaful1, Nickie SaysStuff, Jurnee Fawkes, Seemeyaya and many others who reassured me that I could write an entertaining story.
Special thanks to Jingles, Therese Dupree and Jenny Ziegler whose excitement with each installment kept me going. Their remarks often made me smile or chuckle.
Special thanks to Kat Walker and Samantha Chritz who were the first to encourage me to push the envelope and extend my goals.
Author’s Appreciation to Brian Daniels who read the rough draft twice to catch my errors and whose enthusiasm with the storyline kept me inspired.
Author’s Appreciation to Tim Rudolph for his editing expertise.
And finally my deepest appreciation to Allen Henningan for his patience as I constantly badgered him for information on the Bayou in Louisiana which would not be found in reference books, but lived and experienced by a resident.
DEDICATION
For my late husband, James Barbour Jr., who never had the opportunity to see my writing accomplished and would be amazed to know that I am published with a second book on the way.
CHAPTER 1
Roxanne was going to kill her husband. She knew she could get away with it but did not know if she could live with it. They had been thrown out of two different groups because of her husband’s cowardice during the Zombie Apocalypse and were back on the road again, this time lucky to be alive. Ed was still sniffling and whining from his injuries. “A bunch of fools! I did what you’re supposed to do when you see movement in the night. How did I know the damn fool had gotten up to relieve himself?”
Ed had shot and killed a member of the group and the rest had turned against them. He would be dead if it hadn’t been for the leader who stopped the beating that Ed received from the group. And who knows what her fate would have been? Instead the group leader banished them and here they were, yet again with one gun and a pickaxe.
They had been banished from a previous group because Ed could not be trusted driving the car or going out on supply runs. While everyone was inside a building Ed would wait in the driver’s seat with the engine running, the windows up and the doors locked. At the first sight of a zombie he would freeze and the other members would be left to bang on the car in an attempt for him to open the doors again. They tried taking him into the buildings to search with the group but found that he would shoot at the slightest sound or movement, putting their lives in danger.
No one wanted him, so here they were again.
Roxanne was thinking of killing her husband…
Roxanne saw a Hostess Twinkie truck pushed off to the side of the road and asked Ed to stop so she could check it out. “There’s nothing in there” Ed said as he kept driving. Later they were going through a small town and she saw a Laundromat down a back alley. “Back up” Roxanne said. “There would be vending machines in the Laundromat.”
“There’s nothing there. All that stuff is taken by now” Ed replied and continued to drive. A voice started whispering in her head. Kill him. Kill him now. But she suppressed the anger that was building inside her. Every place that she suggested to stop and search he would always say the same thing. “There’s nothing there.” Perhaps he was right but she felt that they were passing up essential supplies and possible food. When you were this hungry and desperate you searched everything even if it resulted in failure.
Fina
lly Ed stopped in front of a bar and told her to check behind the counter for a gun, “And don’t bring back junk that I can’t use neither!” He was right. In the beginning of the collapse of civilization Roxanne didn’t know anything about guns or bullets. Didn’t know which bullets went with which guns or how to load or unload one. Ed refused to teach her, always keeping the gun and sending her into stores with the pickaxe. She would bring back bullets that were not the right caliber for his gun or guns that his ammo did not match. He would always throw her finds away while telling her that she was useless. But one day she saw the look on his face when she handed him ammo and he realized that he had previously thrown away a gun that could use those bullets. After that he started keeping everything.
Unknown to Ed, she had approached the women in the last two groups and they had been happy to teach her about guns. Eventually she managed to find bullets that were the right caliber for a gun she had hidden in her backpack. The women also taught her how to syphon gas, but since that was the only thing that Ed left the car to do she never mentioned it to him.
She got out of the car at the bar and immediately heard the door locks hammer down behind her. She was hungry, so hungry that she felt faint and would rather look for food than guns. She decided that if she found anything to eat in the bar, she would not bring it out to Ed and would consume it there. She carried her pickaxe and looked in the front window of the bar. She did not see movement, but to be cautious she tapped on the window. While waiting for a response from possible zombies inside she sat down on the ledge before she fell down in the awful heat.
Roxanne saw that the bar was empty. So were the shelves and there wasn’t a gun behind the counter. She pulled her kerchief over her nose because of the stench and knew that someone had died here.
Other than the restrooms there was only one door leading to the back storeroom. She cautiously opened it a crack, waited, and then opened it another crack when she saw a dead body in a chair. Someone had taken his own life, or someone else had taken it for him since he was shot in the head. If he had been shot anywhere else on his body and left for dead he would have turned. She didn’t see a gun on the floor, but anyone could have taken it during their raid of the place.
She went into the room but knew that she couldn’t stay long because of the stench. Quickly, she pried open the back door to allow in some air and glanced through the alley to make sure it was free of zombies. Then she began to search the storeroom but the only things left were a couple of jars of cherries for mixed drinks and some tonic water. She stepped outside to open one of the jars and eat the cherries but her stomach lurched as soon as the food hit it. Her stomach was rejecting what it hadn’t received in such a long time.
She waited until it settled and then held some cherries in her mouth until her stomach adjusted. She ate them slowly while standing outside and looking into the storeroom. That was when she noticed a set of keys hanging from the pants of the dead body. Looking left and right down the alley again she noticed a compact car and felt confident that the keys would fit. But would it start? Perhaps it wouldn’t be necessary to kill Ed after all. Perhaps she could just start the car, drive down the alley, and leave by a different route.
Suddenly she heard tires squeal and ran through the bar to the front of the building to see Ed driving away as two zombies slowly followed the car. There was no need to shout after him since it would turn the zombies toward her, so she silently stepped back into the dark and coolness of the bar. Twice in the past he had driven away, leaving her behind but he always returned. Well, except that time when she found him parked on the side of the road a mile outside a small town. When she asked him about it, all he said was, “I knew you’d be okay and would find me.”
She opened a bottle of tonic water and leaned against the bar, taking her time to drink it. She gathered the rest of the cherries and water, putting them into her backpack, and was going to get the keys to try to start the compact car when she heard Ed return. Who is to say that she survived this time? She could just stay in the bar, and he would think that she had been attacked and killed. She knew he wouldn’t get out of the car to come looking for her, but was she ready to do this alone? She could die just as easily with or without him, but Ed would surely die without her.
Roxanne walked back to the dead body and removed the car keys dangling from his pocket. As she was leaving, she noticed that a rawhide string was hanging on the door with one key attached. Since it was such an odd place to put a single key, she took it down and looked at the tag that was attached. “Above Apt,” it said. She had not seen any staircase in the bar to indicate that there was an apartment above nor had she seen a fire escape outside.
She left the back of the building and began to walk down the alley toward the car, and again she heard the squeal of tires as Ed sped off. She walked past the car in the alley, walked past the garbage cans and saw that there was an alcove with stairs leading to the top floor. She climbed the long staircase and listened at the door for any movement. After not hearing any movement within she gently knocked and waited for the sound of groans or shuffling of feet but there was nothing. She did, however, hear Ed return again and she actually jumped when she heard him yell out her name. “Roxanne! Come on, you Bitch! I’m not coming back again!”
If there was anyone in the apartment, alive or dead, they would have gone to the front of the building where Ed was yelling. She used Ed’s distraction as an opportunity to use the key and quickly slipped in.
It was starting to get dark and Ed had returned several more times. Roxanne had checked the apartment, which was free of zombies, and decided she would sleep here tonight and try to start the compact car in the morning. She went back down the stairs and used the garbage cans to block the staircase, knowing that she would hear the racket if any zombie stumbled into them. They didn’t usually climb stairs unless they heard a noise, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
She found a can of pudding and one can of peaches in the kitchen. The bathroom had a bottle of aspirin and a bottle of tums which she put in her backpack. She had eaten tums when there was nothing else. Under the sink she found a can of dog food which she also packed. She opened the valve to the hot water heater in the utility room and found that no one had thought to drain it for drinking water. She found some empty bottles which were tossed on the floor and filled them from the hot water heater.
Roxanne finally heard Ed leave for the last time and knew that he would not be back in the dark. Most likely he would find some isolated driveway and sleep in the car, if he slept at all. She wanted to sleep in the bed, but that part of the apartment carried the smell of the corpse below so she slept on the couch. She kept the windows open to catch some breeze and to hear if there was any activity during the night.
The next morning Roxanne woke feeling confused and couldn’t believe that she had done it, that she had decided to go it alone and hadn’t consciously made the decision. This time it had been her body pulling her along while her mind had been padded in cotton, numbed from hunger, fear and desperation. She felt rejoiced that the ZA hadn’t turned her into a murderess.
She took some men’s shirts out of the closet and packed them along with her meager supplies and headed down to the car in the alley. She stood at the car lightly running her fingers over it, whispering, “Come on baby, will you start for me? Will we have an adventure together, you and me?” She hoped that the dead guy who had the keys had only been a corpse for weeks and not for months and that the car still ran. She finally unlocked the door and got in, continuing to talk to it. “You don’t know me baby but I’m going to pull the seat up and make some adjustments and then you’ll talk to me, OK?”
The car turned over on the second try. Roxanne laughed uncontrollably and cried at the same time shouting, “Yes, yes, yes!” Finally she relaxed, sighed with relief, patted the steering wheel and said, “Okay, Dollywood here we come!”
Weeks later Roxanne sat in the car and studied the map. There was
something outside the park called “Dollywood Train Station” that showed tracks going through a tunnel. Perhaps that was how visitors were taken into the park. If it turned out that the park was safe it would be a good idea to block that tunnel with cars or maybe a bus across the entrance.
She sat back in the car seat and sighed, then reached over and patted Mutt on the head. She had come across the dog in the last town or rather it came across her. When she first spotted the dog it darted out of sight around a corner. She decided to follow because if it were still alive after all this time, then he had a feeding ground somewhere. She saw it again in an alley, this time slowly backing up from something hidden from Roxanne’s view. Then it barked, back-peddled some more and barked again. Soon two zombies who had been following the dog came into sight. The dog turned to run, saw Roxanne and ran behind her legs, whining as if to say, “Do something!” Roxanne grabbed the lid off of a trashcan and used it to knock down both of the Ze’s then used her pickaxe to finish them off.
The dog immediately ran past Roxanne to the end of the alley and through a doggie door. Then it popped its head back out, whined again and disappeared back inside. Roxanne tried the door but it was locked so she knelt down on the concrete and pushed her arm through the doggie door allowing her to reach the lock and release it. She was not afraid of zombies since the dog felt safe on the premises but she drew her gun in case the dog’s owner was inside. She entered a kitchen, waited then called out, “Hello?” The dog appeared again, stared at her for a moment then darted out of sight into the living room so Roxanne followed. She could hear a gentle, old voice talking to the dog and was cautious as she approached a bedroom.