by TW Brown
Regaining my feet, I looked out front at the twenty or so zombies visible that were now coming my way. Michael was nowhere to be seen! I considered scrapping the plan right there, but decided I would do this for myself if nothing else.
I grabbed my bat and made for the darkened open-bay garage. I figured that if there had been more zombies in there with Rick, they would’ve already made it to the open door. As I stepped over the huge carcass, I glanced down and saw a nasty bite on his left leg at about mid-calf. I froze and quickly fumbled for my flashlight. Sure enough, dragging itself along the bare concrete was the upper torso of an old man that couldn’t be younger than seventy. He looked to have literally been ripped in half.
Two swings of my bat was all it took.
I was thrilled to see a portable battery charger. My luck held as I pushed an LED indicator that read “charged.” I pushed the hand truck mounted charger to the backdoor. Looking out, I saw a few zombies milling, but not towards my location. Of course that changed the moment I opened the door. The loud squeak of the hinges did nothing to aid my cause.
I pushed the waist-high charger in front of me, cutting across the back lot and to the street. I heard more shooting from the direction I was intent on, but at that point I was committed. I ran as fast as I could, dodging the outstretched arms of the growing number of zombies converging on the area. I glanced over my shoulder once. Once. The street was thick with hundreds of the damn things on my trail.
I rounded the corner, not sure what I would find. What I saw froze me. My eyes jumped from one shocking image to the next. All three of the Thompsons were dead!
Amber was closest. A pool of blood lay around her head on the gray sidewalk like a dark halo. A bullet hole had blown a dark hole in her face where her left eye had once been. Stephanie was only a few steps away, a trail of blood showing where she had tried to drag herself back towards her daughter. Unfortunately, the bullet wounds in her chest had not finished her off and two zombies were still feasting from the hole they had torn in her stomach.
Two more zombies lay sprawled nearby where it seems Michael had shot them before taking a bullet in the back. He now lay face down, a zombie feeding intently on his left arm. It glanced up at me as it tore a sinewy strip of meat from the forearm.
A shot rang out and chips of the brick wall next to my head flew, cutting into my face in a few places. I flinched and ducked as a second shot rang out. I was stuck. I couldn’t run back the way I’d come as the street was packed with zombies. I did the only thing I could do, I ran forward. A few more shots ricocheted off the asphalt nearby. I ducked behind the parked armored truck and the metallic ping of a couple more bullets rang out angrily.
I only had a second to catch my breath as zombies were swarming from every side. I glanced around, looking for a place to run. There was no direction that offered any sort of salvation. Reaching over in desperation I tried the door of the armored truck.
It opened!
I climbed in just as I saw Michael stir. The zombie that had been feeding on his arm was already walking my way.
The day has been warm. Fortunately not too much so. A constant cacophony of hands pounding on the flat metal exterior, punctuated a few times by the metal ping of a bullet threaten to break open my skull.
Wednesday, April 9
I am so overwhelmed. I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or just sit in a corner and rock back and forth. Greg Chase, Kevin Davis, and several men and women—many “deserters” from the Air Force base—rescued me.
It seems that when Greg and I got separated, he was taken in by a group of survivors who have basically turned Gonzaga University into a fortress. They send out nightly recon groups to try and rescue anybody who wants to come. Also, they do their best to quell some of the lawlessness that is so widespread.
Greg said he has not seen or heard from any of the others. His radio shattered after he landed on it when he jumped over a car. But with the city now effectively blocked off to any sort of incoming traffic he is not ready to give up hope. He was on recon with a patrol—he goes every chance he gets in hopes of finding any of our group—when they found Kevin. He recognized me from the description.
Turns out that our sniper was a sixteen-year-old boy! He was hidden in an office building across the street and halfway down the block from the armored truck. The kid was stocked with enough crystal meth to last a lifetime.
Once I was alone with Greg I asked if he knew that Kevin had been bitten twice and had no signs of turning. Apparently—and understandably—Kevin is keeping that a secret.
* * * * *
Greg, Kevin, and I spent several hours in my dorm room—I have a real bed to sleep in!—discussing what to do. While this place seems safe, organized, and well stocked, we’ve opted to leave. Each for his own reason, but we don’t want to stay longer than a couple of days. Since we’re not sure how this will be received, we’re not going to tell anybody. In a few days we will sign up for a recon and just take off.
Thursday, April 10
Spent today in my room. I really just needed to wind down after everything the past few days. From my room I could look out and see several steps that the folks here have taken to secure the area. Besides fencing, they have several access points blockaded by huge piles of gravel and rock. The zombie’s lack of coordination makes it very difficult to climb. When one falls, he often takes several down with him. Of course once they do manage to climb over, there are coils of razor wire and then open kill zones where those on watch sit and pick off all the over-achievers. Then, when the bodies start to pileup in the street, a bulldozer detaches and pushes the bodies back to the gravel berm and they torch the pile. That also keeps back any approaching zombies in the area for awhile.
They have quite a system. And you’d think that eventually the zombies would thin out.
They don’t.
Other than that, the folks here are friendly. It has some of the same qualities the compound I left behind has. Including the fact that it is confining.
I did discover how they keep the Air Force from just bombing them into oblivion. Some of the deserters brought stingers.
Sunday, April 13
Greg, Kevin, and I are back on the road. We’re joined by Steve Morgan and Colleen Kaufman. Both were members of the Air Force. Both worked as mechanics. They are not your typical poster candidates. They decided to leave when Captain Dahl assumed command. It seems that on his first night of power he made it clear that the citizens of Spokane were of no consequence and that it would be easier to let them die and then scavenge the supplies.
The civilians that did seek refuge at the base were kept in a fenced compound and treated like POWs. When a couple of them turned, the captain left it to the detainees to deal with the problem. All in all, a bad scene.
They say that over seventy percent of the base personnel deserted. Most took off during their watch or simply slipped out at night…with a lot of equipment. When the first helos came to strike the city and two were shot down, the captain stopped sending aircraft into the heart of the city and instead kept to the perimeter. Both sides seem to be waiting each other out.
Oddly enough, it was Colleen who came to my room and asked if I planned to stay. I asked if there was going to be any problems if I was leaving with my friends. She said she doubted it and that she and Steve would like to come.
The two returned an hour later to my room. They expressed a real concern that there would be an actual attack soon. Steve said that from what he knew of the base’s supply situation, they would be forced to take action very soon. When I mentioned what I had seen at Hangman Creek, they said we should leave tonight.
Since Greg, Kevin, and I have already decided to take off, we agreed there was no time like the present. The five of us spoke briefly of our past and Kevin recounted his story. Steve remarked that there was a rumor that some CDC team had landed at the base about a week after things got ugly…late January. The next day they were simply gone and nobo
dy knew where.
Greg and I shared a glance, but we didn’t say a word.
All of us are now heading back to Ritzville to see if we can talk some sense into Kevin’s brother Randy. If not, we’ll at least see if any survivors want to leave.
Tonight we managed to make it across the creek and to the Spokane airport. We are holed up in a DC-10 that was parked near one of the runways. We had to actually break in through the co-pilot’s emergency exit hatch. Fortunately there weren’t too many zombies around. It seems the airport was shut down early on so only a few stragglers remained, and by the time the sun came up, the few that were attracted by our noise had already wandered off.
Monday, April 14
Found Tim and Meredith. It is a mixed blessing. They managed to get a nice RV. They are parked next to the original and Tim has done a lot of modifying already. Thanks to Julia, Antonio has almost fully recovered. They stayed put the entire time! Julia was up in a cell phone tower with binoculars when we made our run into Spokane. She watched our plan fall apart. But, and this is amazing, she was able to keep an eye on us all. She lost me when I vanished into the tavern, but held out hope since a swarm of zombies clustered in one area and stayed for over a day before wandering off.
She lost track of Greg when he moved deeper into town. Everybody else stayed in radio contact. I guess Jim and Samantha are stuck in a bad position. They found a few good home and garden stores, but got chased by some locals and had to hide out. They were making their way to a top floor of some insurance office when a zombie managed to trip up Jim. In the struggle he took a minor bite on his left arm. Samantha sat through the entire ordeal of his downturn. I guess she had to put him down two days ago.
She hasn’t been able to leave because about fifty of those things followed them in and for some reason have not cleared the stairwell. They continue night and day to just pound and slap on the door. Fortunately they can’t get enough leverage to break in. She doesn’t dare risk trying to take on that many. So, she’s stuck on the top floor in a storage area at the top of the stairs.
We talked it over, it is unanimous. We are going back in. If everything ever goes right with our plan, I just don’t know what I’ll do.
Tuesday, April 15
The only hope Samantha had relied on our ability to break into a city that had been sealed by Air Force personnel. The military has gone to great lengths to hamper any exit or entrance to Spokane.
Steve Morgan offered to accompany us so that, just in case, we had a chance to at least try and bluff our way out of a situation if we encountered a military patrol. Of course, Tim, Greg, and Meredith came. Kevin offered and at one point tried to insist. However, we decided that with Antonio still not fully recovered, Julia and Colleen might need help if it became vital that the RVs move out.
We even decided that if all hell broke loose, Sparrow Falls was the fallback point that everybody would head for. Also, no matter what, whoever makes it back, the group moves on to Ritzville no later than the twentieth.
We went in just before sunset. It was rainy and a bit on the cold and windy side, but we had no other real problems getting in. Getting to Samantha’s location wasn’t much of a challenge. It seems everybody is staying out of the weather. Of course the zombies absolutely do not care about such things.
We did encounter something that almost cost us. A pack of zombies were grouped around a strip mall. One of the buildings, a wood stove dealership, had the windows boarded up. We heard screams from within and nobody could agree to just ignore it. So, we went to help. Everybody drew hammers, bats, any weapon that would not give us away.
There were eleven zombies that we could see. As quick and as quiet as possible, we rushed in. Four of them hit the ground before they even knew we were there. In no time we had cleared them out. Tim, knocked on the door but nobody answered. He called out as loud as he dared but still nothing. Finally he just kicked the door in. A zombie was waiting on the other side. At first we thought it was a really dirty teenage girl until she lunged at Tim and tried to bite him. As he was fighting her off, six more of the things came from the darkness. We managed to take them down.
Then, another woman sat up from behind one of the several wood stoves on display. I took her down and, after a brief look around, the best we can figure is that at some point there had been survivors here. How they got infected we can’t tell. But, and this is our best guess, the woman I killed last had finally committed suicide by zombie. She was obviously freshly turned. There is a store room in back that had to be where the woman stayed. Also, it looks like there had been at least two more people in there judging by the nest-like bedding heaps.
Maybe she had simply given up. Or perhaps she tried to make a run for it. But since she wasn’t carrying any supplies and we found two bottles of water back in the storeroom, I’m guessing it was the former versus the latter.
We got to Samantha’s building and cleared the stairwell. Now we are parked in the woods off the main road (I-90 is becoming almost undriveable in spots due to washouts in several places). Tomorrow we should reach Ritzville.
I made an observation to Tim which got a laugh. We were so overprepared with contingency plans on Samantha’s rescue and it was no problem. Maybe we should overplan everything.
Wednesday, April 16
A sixty mile trip should not be so damned hard! That is the distance from Spokane to Ritzville. But, we can no longer travel freely on the interstate.
Early this morning we were startled awake by rapid pounding on the side of the RV. Now that we have two, we park them side-by-side. In the newer one it is me, Steve, Colleen, Kevin, Meredith, and Joey. The other of course has Tim, Greg, Samantha, Julia, and Antonio. So we wake up and it is not hard to know that those are not the hands of zombies slapping the flat siding of our vehicle.
Kevin covers me as I go to the curtain that isolates us from the driver’s seat. Meanwhile, Meredith moves to climb up and out our roof hatch. Steve is right behind her and Colleen stays with Joey. I peek out and see this flashlight beam waving erratically around the front through the windshield. A man in combat fatigues—obviously standing on the front bumper—is peering in. He sees me, screams, and falls back out of sight.
Hoping to get a jump on whoever it is, I scramble forward and out the passenger side door. Lights are coming on in Tim’s RV now as I am looking everywhere with no idea what to expect. A bunch of zombies on the heels of a hot meal…a squad of soldiers…or perhaps pursuit from Spokane Air Base…the last thing I expected was Perry Rose.
At just about five-feet-eight inches tall and easily over two hundred sixty pounds with curly, sandy blond hair, blue eyes, more freckles than any five people that I’ve ever known combined, a permanent blush in his cheeks, and a stutter that only gets worse when he is excited, Perry is a terrified twenty-year-old who had been serving his enlistment in the army at Ft. Lewis. Once he was able to speak, which was a few minutes, he told all of us just how much worse things could get from what we imagined.
The United States of America is dead.
The world is dead.
I’ll let Perry tell you.
* * * * *
“My name is Perry Rose. I was stationed at Ft. Lewis in Washington State. When the Z-Plague began, the Powers-That-Be spent so much time arguing that the events taking place could not possibly be happening that by the time they faced reality, it was too late.
Nations around the world began blaming each other. Moscow managed a “limited” nuclear strike of China. Before they went completely silent, Israel eliminated Tehran, Cairo, and Damascus with tactical nuclear weapons.
Our own armed forces fractured shortly after the President was reported dead. The Vice-President simply vanished and the chain-of-command with it. Nobody stepped forward, and when somebody in our own military suggested nuking our own cities, the last straw burned away. Still, New York vanished in a mushroom cloud before the power grids failed.
There are rumors that DC, Philadelphia,
Norfolk, Chicago, San Diego and Atlanta also took warheads. But, communication is gone. Also, it was being said that a rebel faction of our government launched two of our space shuttles with orders to eliminate specific satellites.
There is no order. No law. Only chaos. Expect no help. Trust no one.
The last estimates, and this was the one that convinced me and several others to abandon our post, were issued on February 24th. The ratio of Z-Plague units to living, uninfected humans was 7,346:1”
* * * * *
We’ve invited Perry to join us. Julia looked him over and pronounced him clean. He was grateful. We then filled him in briefly on our plans for tomorrow. He was skeptical that there were any survivors left in Ritzville.
He spent the last six days in the basement of a house there. There were no sights or sounds of survivors. Still, we’ll go to be certain.
Additionally, after hearing about what sorts of folks are traveling the roads, we travel only at night and must find a hiding place every morning.
Thursday, April 17
In the basement of an old brick building in downtown Ritzville, we found Kevin’s brother Randy and his followers. The building itself was flooded ankle deep in vile smelling water. It was clear there had been a fire.