Ultimate Undead Collection: The Zombie Apocalypse Best Sellers Boxed Set (10 Books)

by Joe McKinney

  ‘So you want to hide and stick your arse in the air at the same time?’ Jas asked.

  ‘If that’s what it takes. We’re getting like animals in a zoo in this place. All I know is I don’t want to end my days this way. I’m not ready to give up just yet.’

  DUCK AND COVER

  Councillor Ray Cox had never asked for this level of responsibility. He worked in local government purely for the social status and financial implications, not any other reason. Overpaid and underworked, he’d sat in the shadows at the back of the council chambers for years, doing all he could not to be noticed, except when it was in his interest to be seen and heard. It was a sad indictment of the apathy of his constituents that he had been elected, then re-elected, without actually having done very much for them at all. It had been different to begin with, of course. In the early days he’d tried to make an impression, to be somebody. But the novelty of office had quickly worn off. Ray’s priorities changed and his prime concerns became lining his own pockets and claiming back as much food, entertainment and travel costs as he could. Serving the community had long been forgotten; never completely ignored, but usually conveniently overlooked and put to one side. In the space of a single devastating day, however, everything in Ray’s world was turned on its head.

  Working with the council leaders had stood Ray in good stead, both financially and on a personal level. He’d made a few very public mistakes a couple of years back, getting himself mixed up in an ill-considered and wholly inappropriate (borderline illegal) business deal. His friends in high places had seen him okay. They found him a modest little office at the far end of a particularly long corridor and gave him responsibility for the borough’s tennis courts and football pitches and various other public amenities which tended on the whole to pretty much look after themselves. They had enough of their people working around him to keep him out of trouble and to ensure he made the decisions they wanted him to. All things considered, Ray Cox was pretty happy with the way things had turned out.

  Full council meetings tended to be long, drawn out affairs which frequently degenerated into tedious, overblown debates about the most trivial of issues. He’d sat there for hour upon hour before now listening to arguments for and against the politically-correct renaming of school blackboards to chalkboards, whether pavements should be tarmacked or block-paved, and whether or not the threadbare chairs in the council chambers should be reupholstered with dark blue or light purple material. Ray switched off whilst these pointless debates raged, not even bothering to listen, often deciding his vote on the toss of a coin. He never contributed to the discussions and it was hard to hide his disinterest. He’d always felt the same about the Emergency Planning Committee too, although, of course, he’d pricked up his ears and listened intently when they’d briefed the councillors on what they should do in the event of an emergency. He’d even found a reason to go down and check out the bunker on more than one occasion, just to be sure he knew where he was going. The committee – or EPC as they were known – were the butt of many private jokes and whispers: a group of fairly senior council members whose role it was to plan how the Borough should be run if the unthinkable were ever to happen.

  Ray had initially thought the EPC an unnecessary waste of time and money. He just couldn’t see the point of it, saying ‘we’ll all go together when we go’ whenever anyone asked him what he thought. The truth of the matter was the council did a pretty bloody poor job of running things at the best of times, so how the hell would it cope in the event of a nuclear or chemical attack or similar? And anyway, the Cold War was over, and despite the increased number of terrorist attacks around the world recently, such things never seemed likely here in Taychester. The borough was hardly of global importance. Listening to the EPC discussing the rationing of food, decontamination of the population, the disposal of mass fatalities and the like had seemed pointless and not a little surreal. If the world did come to an end, he thought, then the population would be buggered whatever happened, and no amount of council diplomacy and planning would help. Whenever he thought about the subject he couldn’t help remembering an old American public information film he’d seen again recently on TV. Duck and Cover, it was called. In the film a cartoon turtle walked happily though a cartoon forest, whistling a tune, only to have to hide away and cower safely in its shell when a nearby cartoon atomic bomb exploded. What was the point telling school children to get under their desks in the event of a nuclear strike? As far as Ray was aware very few materials had been discovered that could withstand the pressure, heat and after-effects of a thermonuclear explosion, and he was pretty sure that if such materials did exist, the wood that school desks in Taychester were made from wasn’t one of them. And even if the kids managed to survive the blast, what was the point? What would be left? Ray had always believed it would be better to be right under the first bomb. Duck and Cover was an absolute bloody joke as far as he was concerned, as was the Taychester Borough Council EPC and its underground bunker. If it ever did happen, he’d want to go quickly and painlessly. He didn’t relish the thought of being around to pick up the pieces afterwards. There’d be one hell of a mess for the council to sort out…

  Well now it had happened, and it was nothing like anyone had expected. The world had ended yesterday morning and now, sitting alone underground in the semi-darkness of the council bunker, Ray struggled to make sense of it all.

  Tuesday had begun normally enough. After taking a cup of tea up to Marcia in bed, he’d left home at the usual time and had driven across town to the council house. He’d driven down the ramp into the car park below the main building and it was there his nightmare had begun. He was reversing into his usual space when he glimpsed movement behind him in his wing mirror. Thomas Jones, one of the finance directors, had collapsed at the side of his car. Ray jumped out and ran around to help him, but Jones seemed to be suffocating, choking on something. Ray shouted for help but no one came. He wasn’t a designated first aider and he didn’t want to risk touching Jones in case the wily bugger sued, so he ran back up the ramp to the security guard’s hut, only to find another three people along the way who were all writhing in agony on the dirty concrete floor like the first man. Dan Potts, the security guard, was in a similar state also, thrashing around on the floor of his little square fibreglass cabin.

  Ray started to panic. Never mind how at least five people around him had been struck down by something he couldn’t see or hear, he was simply terrified he might be next. He continued out of the underground car park, running for cover, but when he reached the civic square, he stopped. His legs buckled with terror. It was happening everywhere. For as far as he could see in every direction, people were dropping to the ground, unable to breathe, grabbing and clawing desperately at their burning throats. He knew he should do something, and for a second he genuinely tried, loosening the collar of a particularly attractive woman’s blouse and trying to stop her arms and legs from thrashing, but when he realised he couldn’t help any of these people, the only option left was to help himself.

  Ray turned and ran back underground, moving faster than he had for years. Level G, Level 1A, past his car on Level 1B and then down to Level 2. And there it was, right at the far end of Level 2: a single, inconspicuous grey metal door – the entrance to the emergency bunker. He staggered towards it, his lungs about to burst but the fear that the invisible killer might be closing in on him keeping him moving. A woman lurched out of the shadows to his right and stumbled into his path, arms outstretched, desperate for help. Without thinking he grabbed her and dragged her along with him. He smashed into the bunker door, entered the access code on a hidden keypad with a shaking index finger, then yanked it open and disappeared inside with the woman. He turned back but paused before sealing the shelter. He couldn’t see anyone else. Where were the rest of the EPC? Were they already dead? He couldn’t risk waiting. He had to stay alive. Ray slammed the door shut.

  The woman was on the ground, convulsing. It was da
rk inside the bunker and the only illumination came from dusty yellow emergency lights hanging from the low ceiling. Ray crouched at her side and looked her up and down, not knowing how to help or even where to start. Before he could do anything her arms and legs went into a sudden flurry of quick spasms – some kind of seizure, he thought – then she stopped and lay ominously still. His eyes now becoming used to the low light, Ray took a torch from a rack on the wall above him and shined it into her face. Her wide, blue eyes stared desperately into space, but she didn’t react. She was dead. Her pale white skin, he noticed, was speckled with spots of crimson blood. Ray wept with fear as he wiped the blood away and shook her shoulder to try and get her to respond. He’d seen her around before. A nice looking girl, he had an idea she worked in Payroll, but he’d never spoken to her. The name on her ID card was Shelly Bright. Much as he’d genuinely tried to help her, Ray now wished she wasn’t there. He cursed himself for bringing her inside.

  #

  Adrenalin and fear kept Ray working uncharacteristically quickly for the next couple of hours. Like most council members he had a basic knowledge of the workings of the bunker and how the generator, lights and air conditioning and filtration systems were operated. Relatively fool-proof instructions had been provided and, to his immense relief, he was able to get the bunker fully operational in a fairly short period of time. It was a dark, depressing place which was stocked with basic supplies but nothing much of any substance. Originally designated as a regional command centre way back at the height of the Cold War, the equipment and stocks within the bunker had steadily dwindled over the last decade, and now just the basics remained. There was sufficient food and water to keep a small group alive for a couple of days, maybe as long as a week. Preoccupied as usual with thoughts of his own survival, Ray estimated that if he was careful, there would probably be enough to keep him going for the best part of a month. He didn’t want to think about what might happen after that.

  It was a short time later, once the initial shock of the morning’s terrifying events and his sudden confinement had begun to fade, that Ray truly began to appreciate the enormity of what had happened. Shelly Bright was dead and so, he assumed, was everyone else. Of course he had no way of knowing how widespread this attack or whatever it was had been, but the fact no one else had yet tried to gain access to the bunker almost certainly meant that vast numbers of people in the immediate area had died. But surely he couldn’t have been the only one who’d survived? In an unforgivably selfish moment he found himself hoping he was. Because, he realised ominously, if the other council members were dead, by default he would now be in charge of the borough of Taychester! He’d never wanted this level of responsibility. It wasn’t what he’d gone into politics for.

  He didn’t dare move. He couldn’t risk going back out there. Suddenly Duck and Cover seemed like sound advice. Ray sat alone in the cold, echoing emptiness of the bunker and waited.

  #

  He began to hate Shelly Bright’s body. The corpse frightened him. He didn’t want to look at it, but at the same time he was too scared to look away. What if she moved when he wasn’t looking? What if she wasn’t dead? He hated the pained expression on her face, her unblinking eyes searching for answers he couldn’t give. He’d once thought her attractive (Ray found any woman under the age of forty attractive) but her smooth skin and soft, delicate features had been hardened by the pain of her sudden demise. In the wavering dull yellow light underground the shadows seemed to shift and her expression seemed to continually change. He knew she hadn’t moved, but it looked like she was grinning at him now. A minute later she was sneering, then smiling, then snarling… Eventually, in a moment of uncharacteristic strength and conviction, he covered the corpse with a heavy grey fire blanket.

  The day dragged unbearably. Ray couldn’t switch off: his mind was filled with a thousand and one unanswerable questions and a similar number of nightmarish images, split second recollections of everything he’d seen aboveground. An inherently selfish man conditioned through years of regimented, nine-to-five working, it was only when it reached six o’clock in the evening – dinnertime – that he began to think more about his wife. Was Marcia safe? Would she be worried? Should he leave the bunker and go and find her? He already hated being underground but he knew he couldn’t do that. He’d had a lucky escape this morning. If he went outside now, he’d surely be exposing himself to whatever had killed everyone else. He had no choice now but to sit and wait.

  Never a man to follow procedures (usually because he didn’t understand them), it wasn’t until much later that Ray started to read the emergency planning guidelines which were stored in the command room. Following step-by-step instructions with the painful, awkward slowness of someone who had avoided as much contact with technology as possible over the last few years, he eventually got the radio working. He cursed the fact that he was so hopelessly inept. Forty-five minutes of fiddling and messing with the controls and all he could get was static punctuated by brief moments of silence. What he’d have given to hear another voice, someone out there who could reassure him he was going to be okay.

  #

  It felt like the morning would never come. The lack of natural light was strangely disorientating but, having slept intermittently for a few hours, Ray got up just after five o’clock. He managed to pluck up enough courage to start properly investigating his surroundings. He’d already found the stores, the plant room (where the generators and air purification equipment machinery was housed) and the bathroom, but now he also discovered two musty smelling dormitories and a hopelessly inadequate kitchen. Perhaps it was the lack of any proper illumination which made things appear worse than they actually were, but the whole place seemed to have fallen into a state of terrible disrepair. He found himself cursing those people (himself included) who’d mocked the efforts of the EPC in those endless council meetings. If only he’d listened and been better prepared…

  It was only when he returned to the command room that he realised just how much the body on the ground was still playing on his mind. Even though it was covered up and was almost impossible to see clearly, he found it hard being in the same room as the corpse. What if he was stuck in there for several weeks or longer? Imagine the smell… He knew he had to do something about it. It took him an age to decide what to do, and another hour before he was actually ready to do it, but he eventually managed to shift Shelly Bright’s dead bulk into one of the dormitories. The corpse was stiff and awkward to move. Rigor mortis had frozen her arms and legs into position and Ray had to push, pull and shove in order to get her from where she’d died, around the corner, down the corridor and into one of the dorms. Panting, sweating profusely, and scared half to death, he slammed the door shut and sobbed his way back to the command room.

  If only there’d been a window in the main door or a camera so he could see what was happening outside. A paranoid part of him began to wonder whether the carnage he thought he’d witnessed aboveground was really as bad as he’d thought. It all seemed so bizarre – had it happened at all? Was this unbearable self-imposed incarceration truly necessary? Would he eventually emerge from the bunker to find everything back to? He’d be a laughing stock (again). If he stayed underground long enough, someone would probably have moved into his office and taken over his desk. And how would he explain the girl’s body…?

  The urge to open the door and take a look outside was almost impossible to resist. Just a quick look, he thought, just long enough to see what, if anything, was happening out there. Just long enough to see if there really were bodies lying around or if other people had survived.

  But he knew he couldn’t risk it.

  In frustration, Ray leant against the door and wept. He wept for the family and friends he was sure he’d lost. He wept for the easy, comfortable life which he was certain was gone forever. First and foremost, however, he wept for himself. His retirement from office had been on the horizon and an even easier and more comfortable future had be
en in the offing. Now, through no fault of his own, he found himself buried underground with only a corpse for company. Even worse than that, if and when he eventually emerged from the shelter, as potentially the last council member left alive his life would inevitably become harder and more complicated unless he found a way of resigning his position. Maybe he should have stayed out there and let it get him too…?

  Wait, what was that?

  He could feel cold air; a slight breeze on the back of his hand. It was little more than the faintest of draughts coming from the side of the door just below its hinges. Fear gripped him and he stumbled further back into the bunker. The bloody door was supposed to be airtight. If he could feel a draught then the seal had been broken, and if the draft was coming from outside then whatever it was that had caused all the death and destruction out there had probably already seeped into the bunker. He scrambled away from the door and hid like a frightened child on the other side of the command room, waiting for it to get him.

  More than an hour elapsed before Ray finally allowed himself to accept that he probably wasn’t going to die, not yet, anyway. The people outside had been struck down in seconds. He’d been out there with them when it happened, and since then he’d been breathing in the same air, albeit through a filter. The fact he might have some immunity to what had killed so many seemed more improbable than the arrival of the infection itself. Ray distracted himself by eating a little food (a powdered meal he made with cold water), then fell asleep clutching a picture of Marcia which he’d found tucked amongst the crumpled bank notes, credit card receipts and out of date business cards stuffed in the back of his wallet.

  #

  He could hear something. Ray had been dozing again, but a sudden and unexpected shuffling, bumping noise had disturbed him. Something falling off a shelf? A problem with the generator or the pumps circulating the air? There it was again… He jumped up, a cold, nervous sweat prickling his brow. In the deathly quiet of the bunker the direction of the noise was clear. It was coming from the dormitory where he’d left Shelly Bright’s corpse. But it couldn’t have been, could it? As much as he wanted to walk the other way and cover his ears and pretend nothing was happening, Ray forced himself to walk towards the room.