Uncivil War: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

by B. T. Wright

  “Can you run?” Jake shouted to the girl he was holding.

  She pulled her head back far enough to look at him, then to the porch that was only thirty feet away but was quickly becoming overrun.

  “I promise I’ll keep them off you, but I need you to be brave and make a run for it. Okay?”

  The fear seemed to deepen in her eyes. But she let go of her grip, dropped down out of his arm, and sprinted for the house.

  The infected closed in.

  They were in trouble.

  7

  “Go!” Jake shouted as he ran alongside the girl, trying his best to protect her.

  The stranger who was helping threw his empty pistol to the ground, grabbed the shotgun that was strapped around his shoulder, and began blowing the heads off the oncoming infected. The girl ran up the porch toward the front door and Jess pulled her inside. Jake felt something smack so hard into his right side that it knocked him off his feet. The axe tumbled across the front yard about six feet away. He would have moved for it, but the infected man who’d run into him was clawing at his face. Jake used his Brazilian jujitsu training and shrimped out away from him, but the thing kept coming. He wrapped his legs around the thing’s waist and grabbed its wrists, holding it in place. With no limbs to come at Jake, it began snapping its jaws, its mouth only inches from him. Its black eyes glazed over like a great white hungry for prey.

  Jake heard two more gunshots behind him, dug his feet into the hips of the monster, and pushed off as hard as he could, sending the thing flying backward. It quickly regained its balance and jumped back toward him, but just before it made it to Jake he heard a shotgun blast right behind him, and the infected man’s head disappeared into a pink mist. Jake scrambled to his knees, picked up his axe, and when he looked up to see the man who’d just saved him, he only had a split second to hurl the axe forward, the blade connecting with the head of another infected that was running for the man’s back. The man looked behind him, then back to Jake, then back to the thing as he watched it fall to the ground. He gave Jake a nod before removing the axe from the infected’s head, and both he and Jake hurried inside the house. Savage moans and ghastly shouts from the infected became the soundtrack outside.

  Jess slammed the door behind them and immediately shoved the man who had just saved Jake’s life.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?! You could have gotten me killed!”

  Jake grabbed Jess.

  “Control your woman, son. Or I will,” the man said.

  Jake didn’t hesitate. He turned, grabbed the man by the throat, and pinned him against the foyer wall. A flame of rage moved through him as if the man had never helped him outside at all.

  “If you ever”—Jake was right in his face—“ever talk to her like that again, I’ll throw you out there with those things, and then once they turn you, I’ll chop your fucking head off. You hear me?” Jake shook the man against the wall.

  “Please stop fighting. Please,” the girl said, cowering in the corner.

  “Jake,” Tyler said, putting a hand on Jake’s shoulder. Then to the man pinned against the wall, he said, “Dude, I suggest you do what he says.”

  Jake let go and the man immediately held his throat. He was as thick as Jake, hair buzzed, and looked like a silver-streaked G.I. Joe.

  The man replied, “I save your life, and this is how you repay me?”

  Jake stepped forward, and Jess jumped in between them. “Stop it, all right? We have enough to worry about.” She turned to the man, who was now standing upright, his chest jutted like a peacock. “You can leave now if you want. But I suggest we all stay together. The enemy is outside, not in here.”

  Jake wasn’t surprised by Jess’s resolve, but his respect grew deeper by the second. He knew better than anyone that a person’s true character emerged during tough times. Jess was everything he thought she was and more.

  The man took a step back and gave a sweeping look at everyone. “You can’t be shooting like that. It just draws their attention. War isn’t about who’s a better fighter. It’s about who’s a smarter fighter.”

  Jake began to cool. “At least there’s one thing we agree on.”

  The man scoffed. “What the hell do you know about war?”

  Jake didn’t respond. He had nothing to prove to this stranger. He walked over to the girl. “Are you okay?”

  She couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. Her blonde hair was stark against her tan face, and her deep blue eyes were wet with tears.

  “I––I think so.”

  Jess came over. “Where are your parents, sweetheart?”

  The tears finally spilled over her bottom lids and flooded down her face. Jess took her in her arms and held her.

  “You guys go secure the house. If we’re staying here tonight, I want to keep her safe.”

  Jess looked over the girl’s shoulder and mouthed “give us a minute” to Jake. Jake turned back to the man who’d saved his ass.

  Jake reached out his hand. “Jake Maddox. Delta Forces.”

  The man’s demeanor changed entirely at hearing Jake’s military background.

  The man gave Jake’s hand a firm shake. “Tom Jackson. US Marines.”

  Jake dropped Tom’s hand. “I meant what I said. Fellow military man or not, you talk to her like that again, I’ll kill you.”

  The man held Jake’s glare for a moment. Then he softened. “Won’t happen again, I was just angry. Calling all those infected over with noise was a mistake.”

  “We understand that now. What else do you know?”

  “This house isn’t safe. They’ll come through the windows. How come all of you aren’t infected?”

  Jake looked around. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “Don’t know. Was hoping to find someone who did.”

  Jake motioned toward the pack on Tom’s back. “What’s in the sack?”

  “Food, water . . . medicine.”

  “That’s why you’re not infected. You’re on Beritrix, aren’t you?”

  Tom was taken aback. “How the hell did you know that?”

  “It’s the same reason we haven’t caught it yet.”

  “I’ll be damned. The problem I’ve had my entire life saved me?”

  “Looks that way.” Jake turned to Jess, who was still consoling the girl, and asked the girl the same question. “Are you on Beritrix too?”

  The girl let go of Jess, dried her eyes, and shook her head. “I’m not on any medicine.”

  Tyler instinctively took a step back.

  Tom said, “Maybe she should go back outside.”

  Jake shot him a look.

  The girl began to cry again. “No, please don’t send me back out there!”

  Jess hugged her as she gave Tom a death stare. “You aren’t going anywhere, sweetheart.”

  “Tom might be right, Jess.” Tyler sounded worried. “What if she . . . turns?”

  The girl’s face was wet with tears. “No! Please! I feel fine. Please don’t make me leave!”

  Jake wasn’t sure what to say. Tom and Tyler had every right to be worried, but he couldn’t send the poor girl to her death. “It’s okay, you’re not going anywhere. What’s your name?”

  “Amy.”

  “How’d you get here, Amy?”

  “I live just three doors down. My parents had me trapped in my room. I noticed them acting weird and then . . .” She started to cry again and couldn’t finish.

  Jess said, “It’s okay, Amy. You’re all right now. How long were you trapped?”

  “Since this morning.”

  “That must have been scary. So your parents are like those things out there?”

  Amy nodded, then pointed at Tyler. “I crawled out the window when I saw him standing on the car. I know it was dumb, but my own parents were trying to kill me.”

  “It wasn’t dumb,” Jake said.

  “Thank you for saving me.”

  Amy broke Je
ssica’s hug, ran over, and wrapped her arms around Jake. Jake wasn’t used to affection from a teenager, so he didn’t really know how to react. He looked up and Jess motioned for him to hug her. He gave a one-armed squeeze and patted her on the back. Jess stepped in.

  “Let’s get you some water, sweetheart. You must be thirsty. I’ll put this medicine in the refrigerator.”

  Jake looked at Tyler. “You managed to get the Beritrix?”

  Tyler looked proud. “Well yeah, tucked it all in my pockets when I saw them coming. That’s why I got trapped on the roof.”

  “Good, so you aren’t a total liability.”

  Tyler raised his middle finger.

  Jess rolled her eyes and led Amy away to the kitchen.

  “So how do we know she won’t turn and infect us all?” Tom asked.

  “We can’t know for sure,” Jake said. “But in Syria the men exposed to the infected became sick in a matter of minutes. So there must be something we don’t know about her that is keeping her from becoming infected. She was in the house with her infected parents all day. If she were going to become infected, I think she would have already. Maybe something other than taking Beritrix can keep people from getting sick.”

  “Well, I sure as hell ain’t a doctor, so I’ll be keeping my eye on her,” Tom said.

  Jake thought of Emily in Washington. “We need to get her to someone who can run some tests. Maybe something about her can help us find a cure.”

  Tom slid the pack off his back. “You said you were in Syria around this? What else do you know?”

  “No more than you unfortunately. Except that our military is supposedly gone, and we are on our own. I have a contact in Washington who is with the president. They’re working on it, but it doesn’t look good. Maybe Amy, if she doesn’t get infected, can help shed some light on a cure. Or at least on a vaccine. That is, if there are any survivors by the time we get there.”

  “That’s a big if,” Tyler said. “What are we going to do now?”

  “This whole damn situation is a big if,” Jake said. “Our only strategy now is to survive the night. Then we’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

  Right on cue, something shattered in the kitchen, and then they heard Amy scream.

  8

  Jake ran down the hall and into the kitchen with his axe at the ready. He fully expected to see one of those things climbing through the window, clawing at Jess and Amy. For the first time all day, he was pleasantly surprised when all he found was a glass jar broken on the floor.

  Jake sighed. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  Jess looked up from where she was cleaning up the mess on the floor. “Sorry, my hands are still a little shaky.”

  Jake nodded.

  His relief was short-lived.

  Crash!

  A window shattered in another room of the house. Amy screamed once again, and Jake darted toward the hallway.

  “We’ve got company!” Tom shouted from the living room.

  Jake rounded the corner in time to watch Tom drive a Bowie knife through the throat of the infected who’d gotten stuck in the windowpane. He ran to the window beside it, pulled back the shade, and nearly fell backward in shock when he took in the sea of infected that was now gathered outside the house. In the glow of the porch light, he was able to count dozens of heads. They were being drawn like moths to a flame.

  “The lights,” Jake whispered unconsciously.

  “What?” Tyler said.

  Louder this time, he said. “The lights, they’re drawn to the lights. Shut them off, all of them!”

  Jake pulled the shade closed. Tyler hit the porch light and the living room light. They were plunged in darkness.

  “What do you mean they, Jake?” Tyler whispered. “How many of them are there?”

  Jake stopped Tyler in his tracks, and in what little light glowed from the kitchen, he gave Tyler a look that frightened him. “Too many to count.”

  If Jake could have seen the color in Tyler’s face, he would have been able to watch it drain completely.

  Jake’s military instincts kicked in, and he took command of the situation. He had to see if the infected were encroaching on the back of the house like they were the front. If so, Jake and his friends were in serious trouble.

  “Tyler, you take Tom to the basement and gear up. Tom, grab everything we need for a fight. A long one. I’ll be down in a second. Go!”

  Another window crashed to the floor in the living room. Jake ran down the hall and into the kitchen, past Jess and Amy to the French doors that led out to the back deck.

  “Jake, what’s going on? Is everything all right?”

  Jake couldn’t answer. His words were stolen by the blank face staring at him in the back-door window. The soulless black eyes of another infected man stared back at him. Multiple infected were gathering behind them. They were trapped.

  “Jake!”

  Jake turned and ran for the cupboard on the opposite wall. He grabbed the insulated cooler bag, turned, and handed it to Jess.

  “We’re trapped. The lights are attracting them.” He flipped the switch on the wall and the room went dark. He pulled out his phone and used the screen as a soft flashlight. “I need you to do everything I say, and do it right now. No improvising.”

  Jess didn’t question him; she took the cooler by the shoulder strap and grabbed Amy by the hand.

  Jake continued, “Get the Beritrix out of the fridge then put it in the cooler filled with ice. Keep all the lights off and don’t make a sound. Head upstairs and get up in the attic. Don’t make any stops in between. Pull the door up behind you. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  Jake walked over to the doorway. “And Jess . . . hurry.”

  9

  Jake left Jess to ensure she and Amy had a clear path upstairs. Another one of the infected was climbing through the window. Jake’s axe sliced through its neck, sending the head thumping against the hardwood floor. There were more lined up to come in behind the now headless woman, but her body was momentarily blocking them. Jake turned his phone back to the hallway in time to see Jess running up the stairs with Amy. They would be safe for now.

  Crash!

  They had left the kitchen just in time––a window had just caved in from that direction. Though every fiber of his being was telling Jake to run upstairs, right then he couldn’t leave Tyler and Tom by themselves in the basement. And if they were going to make it out of the house that night, he was going to need more weapons.

  Jake didn’t wait to see what might greet him from the kitchen; instead, he made his way for the basement. He shut the door behind him and ran down the stairs. When he turned the corner, he was greeted by the ends of two shotguns.

  “Shit, you scared us,” Tyler said. He and Tom lowered their weapons. “How’s it going up there?”

  Jake moved past Tyler and picked up his go bag, then began filling it with boxes of nine-millimeter rounds, twelve-gauge shotgun shells, and all the .30 caliber rounds he could manage. After he stuffed it full, he put it on his back, attached his waistband holster for his Beretta, and threw his 300 AAC Blackout AR-15 build over his shoulder, ready for war. He’d never intended for his and his father’s collection of weapons to be used, but he couldn’t be happier now that he had decided to keep it when he joined the Army.

  “You boys have everything you need?” Jake said.

  “Only thing missing is night-vision goggles,” Tom laughed.

  “Yeah, those didn’t make the collection.” Jake picked up the axe, slid it into the strap he had fitted to his go bag, and pulled his Beretta from the holster. He reached for the shelf beside him, picked up a silencer can, and fitted it to the end of his pistol. “But I do have one of these. They’re coming in through the kitchen and the living room. Let me do the shooting so we don’t draw any more attention than we already have. Only use your guns if you have to.”

  Just as Tyler and Tom nodded, readying their shotguns, they heard footsteps above
them. All three of them looked up in the direction of the kitchen first, then the living room directly above them. The sounds were coming from both sides of the house.

  “Let’s go before it gets worse. We’ll hole up in the attic until we can figure a way out of here. I have to make a couple calls before something happens to the cell towers.”

  Tyler’s mouth gaped. “You think it’s already that bad?”

  “No idea. But if it’s spreading like this all over the world, things are going to stop working pretty damn quick.”

  Tom nodded. “The power won’t last forever.”

  “Which might be a good thing,” Jake said. He moved over to the foot of the stairs and flipped the switch off on the wall. “’Cause they seem to like the light.”

  “We’re going up there with those things . . . in the dark?” Tyler said.

  “Afraid so. Just stay between me and Tom. And try not to accidentally shoot me.”

  Jake took the flashlight from the outside pocket of his go bag. Though the creatures were attracted to light, he had to be able to see what he was shooting at in order to safely make his way to the attic. There were more than one set of footsteps creaking the floors above them, but how many there were exactly was impossible to tell. He had to be ready for the worst. As he approached the closed door to the living room at the top of the basement stairs, he heard a thump. Something had banged into the door. It sounded like more infected had moved in. He paused for a moment to ready himself. He knew there would be no time for hesitation once he opened that door. How the hell he and Tyler had gone from watching a baseball game two hours ago to standing in his pitch-black basement with a total stranger, guns in hand, ready to push open a door into what seemed like some terribly cliché zombie movie scene just wasn’t computing. Even though he had seen the beginnings of this with his own two eyes with Emily back in Syria, neither of them had any idea it would grow into this. Whoever would have? This was madness. But it was also reality. And Jake knew that indulging the panic, relenting to the fear, and even what he was doing by dwelling on how they got here was a big mistake. They needed to do whatever it took to get to the attic unscathed. They could work on the next step after that.