by Tony Urban
The Ark
Life of the Dead Book 3
Tony Urban
Copyright © 2017 by Tony Urban & Packanack Publishing
All rights reserved.
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Created with Vellum
Dedicated to George A. Romero, the father of zombies. Without George and his groundbreaking films, I never could have created these books.
Stay scared & R.I.P.
Contents
Introduction
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part II
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Part III
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Part IV
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Part V
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Author’s Note
About the Author
Introduction
Author’s Note
“The Ark” is the third book in the Life of the Dead series and begins several months after book 2, “Road of the Damned”, ended. There’s a bit of nonlinear timeline hopping which I hope I’ve pulled off without being confusing.
I hope you enjoy the book and reading what becomes of our large cast of characters.
The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.
- Cicero
And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
Genesis 7:21-23
Part One
Chapter One
The worst thing about this end of the world zombie shit is that women don’t wear yoga pants anymore.
That thought rolled around Caleb Daniels mostly empty head as he approached the gym. Neon yellow paint above a row of glass windows declared it ‘Fanatical Fitness’. Yoga pants were pretty much the only reason he’d ever gone to the gym. He hadn’t even cared much about the size or shape of the wearer. Truth be told, he preferred if the girls were on the big side. Like his dad always said, ‘That’s more cushion for the pushin.’
It had been over almost half a year since those assholes at the Ark abducted him. Him and Juanita, the woman he’d been traveling with at the time. And on days like this, he wished he’d have taken a different route south and avoided them altogether. The only good thing about the Ark was that it was safe. There weren’t zombies everywhere, waiting to eat your balls or rip your face off every time you rounded a corner, and he appreciated that. But Caleb Daniels wasn’t an idiot, or so he thought. And he knew that, as far as pecking orders went, he was barely above that hick farmer with the stupid name.
Caleb didn’t hate Wim, even if his name was weird and the man was too damned quiet. He liked him for the most part. His annoyance stemmed from the fact that the two of them, plus whatever lackey Doc deemed dispensable, kept getting sent out into the danger zone. No one cared that Caleb and Wim risked their lives every time the Ark was running low on canned fruit or pig slop or fuel for the generators. The important people, Doc and his ass sucking followers, they never abandoned the safety of the walls. Nope, they stayed inside where it was safe and they could pretend the world was still hunky dory.
Every time one of these missions (suicide missions, he often thought them) arose, Caleb told himself that this time he wasn’t coming back. That he would hot wire a car (an act he’d never so much as attempted, but it looked easy on TV) and hit the road for Texas. That place was so damned big he could build himself a ranch on about a thousand acres and never have to deal with this zombie shit again. That was the plan, but every time they went on a supply run, Caleb did as told and brought back whatever they wanted. No car. No hot wires. No Texas. No ranch. Only obeying.
He hated that about himself. Hated getting bossed around all the time and never doing a thing to stop it. Even in the apocalypse, he seemed destined to be a follower. In life before zombies, his passive, do as he was told attitude had landed him a peach of a job pushing carts at Walmart for a buck over minimum wage. For that barely livable salary he had the pleasure of getting reamed out by the manager every time he moved too slow or blocked the aisles too long or didn’t flash big, fake smiles at the customers all day long. Like they gave two shits about the guy pushing buggies anyway.
The first time Caleb saw zombies he was at work. He’d rounded up thirty or so carts and was steering them toward the entrance bay when the bastard came hauling ass across the parking lot. He slammed right into Caleb’s centipede of shopping carts without so much as an “excuse me.” He was a middle-aged man, only half a decade or so older than Caleb himself, and he wore a Marlboro jacket. There was blood smeared on his coat. Blood which was hard to see against all the red. Caleb remembered that specific detail because he always wished he could afford Marlboros. But he couldn’t, not on cart pusher wages, and he had to settle for generics that tasted like week old ass.
The Marlboro man bounced off the carts and tumbled onto his skinny rump. Caleb was halfway to rushing to his side to see how bad he’d hurt himself when the man hopped back up and made a beeline for a woman on a motorized scooter. The old gal, who reminded Caleb a bit of his own grandma, floored the accelerator and the scooter lurched forward at three miles an hour. That wasn’t nearly fast enough and the smoker tackled her like a linebacker taking out the star QB. The next thing Caleb knew, the woman was screaming and a pool of blood ebbed out around them and turned the dull, sun-faded gray pavement black. Caleb grabbed his walkie, ready to radio in, but realized he hadn’t a clue what to say. There sure wasn’t a code for this. That was when he realized the Marlboro man was eating the scooter rider. He’d taken three big bites out of her double chin but seemed to lose interest when a trio of teenage girls stumbled onto the scene.
When the zombie took off after them, the woman who’d been his midday snack climbed to her feet. At first, she stumbled around like she’d just come awake after a long nap, but then she shook her whole body like she was doing some exotic Indian rain dance. Then, she
didn’t need the scooter anymore and in a half dozen lumbering steps she disappeared into the store.
Caleb stood there, too shocked to move. Shrieks and squeals from inside Walmart spilled through the automatic doors along with a sea of shoppers, many bloodied and frantic as they dashed toward their vehicles. There were more zombies amongst them, running with and through the crowd. Occasionally there’d come some sort of guttural roar and a human would fall and the zombies would dive onto him or her, ripping and tearing and eating. It reminded Caleb more than a little of the nature shows he often watched where a bunch of lions or tigers would attack a herd of zebras. Only this wasn’t Africa and these were people.
His walkie had crackled and he heard a voice he recognized all too well as that of Drayton Sawyer, the Assistant Manager, mumble something about ‘calling the fucking police’ and ‘blood everywhere’ but the noise was cut short and the box on Caleb’s thigh remained silent from there on out. Around him, the people who had been attacked and munched on were rising to their feet. One woman had an eyeball dangling to and fro from the socket. He watched it sway back and forth so long he worried he might get hypnotized by the movement.
Hypnotized, he thought, realizing that he almost was. All around him chaos reigned and there he stood doing nothing but staring. Useless as a scarecrow.
With a shake to clear his head, Caleb abandoned his carts and sprinted up the lot toward employee parking. He tried three times to pull his keys from his pocket as he ran. Finally, on the fourth try and five yards from his Ford, he succeeded. He dove into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine, drawing the attention of Lynn, a plain, but buxom girl he recognized from working in the ‘Beauti-que’ hair salon. She clutched a pair of scissors in her fist and Caleb thought he saw blood dripping from the blades.
He waved her toward him. “Get in!”
Lynn the hair stylist jogged in his direction, but she didn’t see the toddler. It was five years old tops, but the blood ringed around its plump lips showed it was just as dangerous as the other zombies. The tot jumped onto her, catching hold of her ample thigh and chomping down on the exposed skin below her denim skirt. Lynn flailed and struggled, knocking the kid to the ground, but Caleb had already seen enough to know she was toast. He stomped on the gas pedal and put his career pushing carts in the rear-view mirror.
In the days afterward, when everyone else was dying, he clung to a small piece of hope. Not that things would get better, but that maybe he could be different now. Maybe he could be someone who mattered for once. That crashed down on his bald head when he met Juanita. She saved him from getting chomped by one of the zombies while he stood outside a gas station and tried to write his name on the concrete block wall with his own piss. He’d just finished the ‘e’ when he heard a rifle report, then felt the undead bastard crash into his back. Juanita was only 20-something, much younger than him, but she was already the boss.
When he wanted to head west, she insisted they go south instead. And he obeyed. “Yes, ma’am. That’s a fine idea, ma’am.” “How about you sit in the back seat while I drive you ma’am.” It was along one of her stupid detours where they came up on a road block, got gassed, and ended up in the Ark.
There, life returned to the same old, same old, only without the benefit of cable TV to take his mind off his shitty life at the end of the day. If he wasn’t being shipped out on supply runs, he was burning trash or emptying the composting toilets, which were really nothing more than fancied outhouses. Even during the apocalypse, Caleb’s life sucked ass. And meanwhile Juanita had run off for greener pastures while he stayed behind, stuck and miserable.
An opaque layer of dust cloaked the windows to Fanatical Fitness. Caleb tried to peer through it, but had no luck. He knew he should continue, to locate a store with food or toilet paper or any of the other things on his list, but he couldn’t get the idea of yoga pants out of his head. Maybe some little sweetheart had been working out in there when the shit hit the fan. And even if she was a zombie, it would still give his sore eyes a sight he’d been yearning to see. After all, it had been almost six months.
Caleb spat into his palm, then rubbed his hands together. Once thoroughly lubricated, he used them to wipe clear a ten inch by ten-inch section of glass. He pressed his face against it, pushing his nose sideways as he peered into the cavernous gym.
Was that movement? He thought so. But who or what? He strained, trying to see inside. Something moved to his left, he was sure of it that time. He hocked another wad of spit into his hand and just as he started to wipe clear more of the window, the glass shattered.
Large chunks sprayed outward, crashing onto the sidewalk and exploding. A shard the size of a slice of XL pizza fell into Caleb’s face, peeling open his cheek, but he barely noticed because something was coming through the hole in the window. No, not something. Someone.
A man who Caleb thought looked as big as one of those wrestlers on Monday Night Raw pushed his way through the broken window. Glass clawed and tore at his gray flesh but the man was dead and no blood flowed from the wounds. Caleb spied a large tattoo on his bare chest. ‘No pain, no gains’ it declared, in harsh, script font. As soon as he was through, another zombie appeared at the window. That one had upper arms which were as big around as Caleb’s head and thick, black veins popped up like he had yards of rope embedded underneath his flesh.
Caleb took a staggering step backward, trying to grab the pistol he had tucked in the small of his back. In the process, he pushed the gun all the way into his jeans and he felt it slide down against his ass cheeks. He gave a little shiver as the cold metal hit his hot flesh.
As he backed away from the bodybuilder zombies, his right foot dropped over the curb. The four inches drop to the road was enough to send him careening down where he slammed onto his back. His head bounced off the pavement and everything went black. Then he felt two hands grab his ankles.
His sight came back in flashes. The first zombie was at his feet. Pulling at them. Its fingers entwined in his boot laces.
Black.
The vein-riddled zombie was above him, leaning down, expelling the rotten stench of hot death from his mouth. Caleb saw vaguely white mucous seep from its slack, gaping jaws and fall free.
Black.
He felt the zombie’s slobber splash onto his face where it dribbled down his cheek before ending up in his own mouth. The pungent taste of it made Caleb think of spoiled fish.
He gagged and his vision returned. The drooling zombie was inches from him now, coming in fast for a bite of filet a la Caleb. He flailed with his arms in an attempt to push the zombie away, but it caught hold of his hands. Even in death its grip was unbelievably strong and Caleb thought it might break his bones. Instead, it pulled.
The zombie at his feet grunted and jerked his body in the opposite direction and Caleb felt himself rise off the ground as he became stretched out between the two monsters. The creature with his hands yanked and he felt a shoulder dislocate, sending shockwaves down his left side. Before he could concentrate on that pain, his legs were forced in the opposite direction. Joints popped and cracked. Muscles and tendons ripped, then burst. He stared up at the overcast, milky sky above and tried not to hear his skeleton coming apart. He tried to think of anything but that. But the pain was too intense. He couldn’t even conjure up a vision of yoga pants.
The pain in his arms and legs was replaced by an excruciating fire in his abdomen. It was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He wouldn’t have imagined such agony could be real if he wasn’t experiencing it firsthand.
Caleb screamed, the high pitched, wounded wail of an animal in the throes of death. It was like every nerve ending in his torso had been doused in kerosene and set ablaze.
And then it stopped.
He was moving again.
The zombie which had hold of his arms dragged him along the street, bouncing him over potholes and debris, but Caleb was so relieved that the tug of war was finally over that he didn’t mind
the rough ride.
His head felt cloudy, like he’d gulped down a six pack too quick. And his eyes, they seemed so heavy. Must be from cracking my noggin.
He raised his head up and, in doing so, looked down his body toward his feet. But his feet were not there. Neither were his legs. Or his hips. Or his pelvis. Not even his damned dick. His body now ended in a ragged jumble of tattered flesh and intestines that were strewn out before him like streamers.
Then, he spotted the tattooed zombie sitting on the sidewalk. The creature still held the lower half of Caleb’s bisected body, but now he raised it to his mouth and ate from it like he was holding a rack of ribs.
“Well, shit,” Caleb said as he let his eyes fall shut. He’d seen more than enough.
The feed sacks weighed fifty pounds each and Wim carried them two at a time. The mill had been free of zombies but filled with a variety of animal feed, grains, seeds and fertilizer. It was a treasure trove and, being less than an hour from the ark, an asset for which he thanked God. Nevertheless, it annoyed Wim that he had to make regular trips here.