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

by Joe McKinney

  ‘I had Smith sitting next to me. You know Smith? The big guy with the crooked nose? Anyway, we start moving away from the base and he suddenly sits up and starts staring out of the window. He’s cursing and pointing and we all crowd around to look at whatever it is he’s seen. And that’s when we see them. People. I was thinking we should stop and try and help them but then I remembered what I’d heard from the others who’d already been out there. Sarge stops the transport for a second and we watch as they keep coming towards us, all slow and awkward like their legs are stiff. I could only see a couple of them at first, but they kept coming and then there was more and more of them. They’re coming out of the trees and from around the side of the entrance door and I counted at least thirty before we started moving again. I could see even more in the fields around us. From a distance they looked normal, just slow moving, but when they got close you could see that they were sick. Fucking hell, they looked like they were rotting. Their skin was all discoloured – grey and green – and it looked like it was hanging off their bones like it was a few sizes too big. Some looked like bloody skeletons, all shrivelled up and dry. Jesus, you’ve never seen anything like it. Sarge screams at the driver to ignore them and keep moving and she puts her foot down. She drives into a couple of them – there was nothing she could do, they just walked out in front of us. I watched one of them go down. We hit it so hard it virtually snapped in half. Its legs were all fucked up. But then I look behind and watch as it tries to get up again. Fucking thing’s lying there with both its legs smashed to fuck and it’s trying to get up again…

  ‘So we just sit there in silence for a fucking age. No one says anything. No one knows what to fucking say, you know? Anyway, we follow the track away from here and we see more and more of them everywhere. Christ alone knows how they know where to go, but it’s like they’re all moving towards the base. They stop and turn around when they see us, then start following. I mean, we’ve got to be doing about thirty or forty miles an hour and these things are following us like they think they’re gonna catch up. We get onto the main road and start heading for Ansall and I’m thinking about what we’re gonna find there. I’m thinking fuck, if there are this many people out here in the middle of nowhere, what the hell are we gonna find in town?’

  Kilgore paused to finish his drink. Spence said nothing. He just stared into the other soldier’s face. He didn’t want to hear anything else, but at the same time he had to know.

  ‘The roads were an absolute fucking nightmare,’ Kilgore continued. ‘It was like someone had flicked a switch and everything just stopped. I tell you man, everywhere you looked all you could see were bodies and crashed cars. Christ, I saw some fucking horrible sights out there. Anyway, because we’re on the road now the driver puts her foot down and speeds up. Our truck’s heavy enough to just smash through most of the wreckage. I started getting freaked out by it all, and I could see it was getting to the others too. It’s the sheer bloody scale of it. Everything’s been wiped out up there, you know, there’s nothing that ain’t been touched. I thought I was gonna have a fucking freak-out. It was so bloody hot in the suit, and the truck was like a fucking sun-trap, and all I could think about was the taste of fresh air and all I wanted to do was take off the mask and feel the sun and the wind on my face and… and then it occurs to me that none of us are ever going to feel that ever again. And then I start getting really fucking frightened thinking about whatever’s in the air that’s done all this. I’m thinking again about my suit getting ripped and not knowing until it’s too late. I can see Fraser’s face opposite me. His eyes are darting all round the place like a bloody mad man.

  ‘So we get to Ansall, and I don’t mind telling you I was scared shitless. I’ve never been so fucking frightened. I mean, you’re like me, mate, you’ve seen plenty of service, but I tell you, you ain’t seen nothing like what’s up there. Remember last winter when we were stuck in that school in the middle of that fucking gunfight that went on for days? Well this was worse. At least back then we knew who the enemy was and we could shoot back at them.

  ‘It was still bright, but between the buildings the streets were dark and it was bloody cold. Coming into the shadow from the sun made it hard to see what was happening. We stopped on the edge of this little market and Sarge tells us to get out and start having a look around. We were supposed to be looking for survivors but all I could see was people in the same state as those we’d seen around here. The first one I saw up close was this little old lady. She’s half-dressed and her tits were hanging out and they’re all cut up but not bleeding, and I’m just stood there thinking this is probably someone’s mom and that my mom could be like this somewhere, and the rest of my family and probably yours too. And when you start thinking about home you get this urge to just get in a car and try and get back there to find out what’s happened to your folks and your girl and… and then you think, there’s no fucking point.

  ‘Fraser calls out for help and I look around for him. He’s holding his weapon out in front of him and he’s moving towards this building. It looks like an office or something and I can see there are people trapped inside. They’re stood there banging on the glass, and it looks like it’s a real effort for them to move because they’re so sick. The door’s been blocked by a crashed motorbike, so me and Fraser shift it out the way. He throws the door of the building open and straightaway the people start pouring out. I only have to look at them for a second and I know they’re just like all the other poor bastards we’ve already seen. One of them walks straight into me and I look right into its face. There’s nothing there. I swear, not a single bloody flicker of emotion. Not a fucking sign of life. It’s not even breathing. And I realise, these bloody things are dead but they’re still fucking moving.

  ‘Sarge gets on the loudhailer. He’s shouting the usual crap at them about how we’ll help them if they cooperate and he’s trying to get them out of the buildings and into the market square. I turn around to look back at the others and fucking hell, there must have been a couple of hundred of the bloody things getting close to us already. They’re crowding round and they start reaching out and trying to grab hold of us when they get close enough. I’m thinking about my bloody suit again and I keep pushing them away but they keep coming back for more. Sarge fires a few warning shots into the air but it doesn’t make any difference. Next to me Fraser starts hitting one of them and the fucking thing doesn’t even notice. Every time he hits it he’s doing more and more damage but the damn thing just keeps coming. Its fucking face is falling to pieces but it just keeps on coming.

  ‘Every way I turn now I can see more and more of them. We’re looking at Sarge for some frigging inspiration and he’s just looking back at us, scared as we are. I lose sight of him when a couple of them rush me. I lose my footing and before I know it I’m on the ground with them on top of me. There’s no weight to them. All I keep thinking is be careful of the fucking suit, make sure you don’t get cut. I’m punching and kicking out but the bloody things just don’t give up. I manage to get back up and I can see we’re surrounded. And there are more of them coming out of the shadows all the bloody time. I see Wheeler heading back to the transport and I can see the driver’s already back in her seat getting ready to leave, and I’m thinking fuck orders, I’ve gotta get out of here, and I start fighting my way through the crowd.

  ‘Fraser’s the last one back in. He tries to shut the door behind him but gets caught by one of them that manages to grab his leg as he climbs up. I’m watching and I can’t look away and I’m thinking this can’t be happening. It’s a kid, probably not even fifteen, and its body is so light and empty that it’s hanging off him and Fraser’s just dragging it along. It’s got hold of his boot somehow and he’s using the butt of the rifle to smash its hand away. He pushes it off and tries to get it back out the door. Wheeler leans out and pulls the door shut but the bloody thing hasn’t gone. Its head and shoulders are wedged in and Wheeler’s banging and pulling at the door, try
ing to get rid of it. The kid’s got one arm inside the transport and it’s still trying to get at Fraser and he’s just standing there. He lifts up his rifle and blows a fucking hole in the middle of its face, then kicks what’s left of the body out onto the street.’

  Kilgore rubbed his eyes and looked up into the light, then let his head fall. ‘And that, mate,’ he said, struggling to light a cigarette with shaking hands, ‘is just about all that you, me and everyone else who’s stuck in this fucking hole has got to look forward to. We either spend the rest of our time buried here, or we end up stuck out in that bloody mess up top, shrink-wrapped in our fucking plastic suits until whatever it is that’s done all this finally catches up with us.’

  HOME

  Steninger is less than two hours from home. He hasn’t been this close for almost a month. He hasn’t been this close since it happened. Twenty-three days ago millions of people died as the world fell apart around him.

  #

  I’ve been here hundreds of times before but it’s never looked like this. Georgie and I used to drive up here at weekends to walk the dog over the hills. We’d let him off the lead and then walk and talk and watch him play for hours. That was long before the events which have since kept us apart. It all feels like a lifetime ago now. Today the green, rolling landscape I remember is washed out and grey and everything is lifeless and dead. The world is decaying around me. It’s early in the morning, perhaps an hour before sunrise, and there’s a layer of light mist clinging to the ground. I’m alone, but I’m surrounded. I can see them moving all around. They’re everywhere. Shuffling. Staggering. Hundreds of the damn things.

  One last push and I’ll be home. I’m starting to get nervous now. For days I’ve struggled to get here but, now I’m this close, I don’t know if I can go through with it. Seeing what’s left of Georgie and our home will hurt. It’s been so long and so much has happened since we were last together. I don’t know if I’ll have the strength to walk through the front door. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand the pain of remembering everything that’s gone and all that I’ve lost.

  I’m as scared now as I was when this nightmare began. I remember it as if it was only minutes ago, not weeks. I was in a breakfast meeting with my lawyer and one of his staff when it started. Jarvis was explaining some legal jargon to me when he stopped talking mid-sentence. I asked him what was wrong but he couldn’t answer. His breathing became shallow and short and he started to splutter. He was choking but I couldn’t see why and I was concentrating so hard on what was happening to him that I didn’t notice it had got the other man too. As Jarvis’ face paled and he began to scratch and claw at his throat his colleague lurched forward and tried to grab hold of me. Eyes bulging, he retched and showered me with blood and spittle. I recoiled and pushed my chair back away from the table, then stood with my back pressed against the wall and watched the two men choke to death. Seconds later, the room was silent.

  When I eventually plucked up the courage to get out and look for help I found the receptionist who had greeted me less than an hour earlier lying in a pool of red-brown blood. The security man on the door was dead too, as was everyone else I could see. It was the same when I finally dared step out into the open – an endless layer of twisted human remains covered the ground in every direction I looked. What had happened was inexplicable and its scale incomprehensible. In the space of just a few minutes something – a germ, virus or biological attack perhaps – had destroyed my world. Nothing moved. The silence was deafening.

  At first I’d instinctively wanted stay where I was, to keep my head down and wait for something – anything – to happen. I walked back to the hotel as it was the only nearby place I knew well, picking my way through the bodies, staring at each of them in turn, looking deep into their grotesque, twisted faces. Each of them bore an expression of sudden, searing agony.

  When I got back, the hotel was as silent and cold as everywhere else. I locked myself in my room and waited there for hours until the unending solitude became too much to stand. I needed explanations but there was no one left alive to ask. The television was useless, as was the radio, and the telephone went unanswered. Even the Internet seemed to have died, frozen in time. Increasingly desperate, I packed my few belongings and made a break for home. But I soon found that the hushed roads were impassable, blocked by the tangled wreckage of incalculable numbers of crashed vehicles and the mangled, bloody remains of their dead drivers and passengers. With my wife and my home still more than eighty miles away I stopped the car and gave up.

  It was early on the first Thursday, the third day, when the situation deteriorated again to the point where I began to question my sanity. I had been resting in the front bedroom of an empty terraced house when I looked out of the window and saw the first one of them staggering down the road. All the fear and nervousness I had previously felt was immediately forgotten as I watched the lone figure walk awkwardly down the street. It was another survivor, I thought, it had to be. Someone who, at last, might be able to tell me what had happened and who could answer some of the thousands of impossible questions I desperately needed to ask. I yelled out and banged on the window but the person outside didn’t respond. I sprinted out of the house and ran down the road, then grabbed hold of their arm and turned them around. As unbelievable as it seemed at the time, I knew instantly that the thing in front of me was dead. Its eyes were clouded, covered with a milky-white film, and its skin was pock-marked and bloodied. And it was cold to the touch… I held its left wrist in my hand and felt for a pulse but found nothing. The creature’s skin felt unnaturally clammy and leathery and I let it go in disgust. The moment I released my grip the damn thing shuffled slowly away like it didn’t even know I was there.

  Out of the corner of my eye I became aware of more movement. I turned and saw another body, then another and then another. I walked to the end of the street and stared in disbelief at what was happening all around me. The dead were rising. Many were already moving around on clumsy, unsteady feet, whilst still more were slowly dragging themselves back up from where they’d fallen and died days earlier.

  A frantic search for food and water and somewhere safe to shelter led me back deeper into town. Avoiding the mannequin-like bodies, I barricaded myself in a large pub on a corner where two once busy roads met. I cleared eight corpses out of the building (I herded them all into the bar before forcing them out the front door) and then locked myself in an upstairs function room where I started to drink. Although it didn’t make me drunk like it used to, the alcohol took the very slightest edge off my fear.

  I thought constantly about Georgie and home but I was too afraid to move. I knew I should try to get to her but for days I just sat there, hiding like a coward. Every morning I tried to make myself leave but the thought of going back out into what remained of the world was unbearable. Instead I sat in booze-fueled isolation and watched the world decay.

  As the days passed, the bodies themselves changed. Initially stiff and staccato, their movements gradually became more purposeful and controlled. After four days I observed that their senses were beginning to return. They were starting to respond to what was happening around them. Late one afternoon in a moment of frightened frustration, I hurled an empty beer bottle across the room. I missed the wall and smashed a window. Out of curiosity I looked down into the street below and saw that huge numbers of the corpses were now walking towards the pub. Attracted by the noise (which seemed louder than it actually was in the otherwise all-consuming silence) they moved relentlessly closer and closer. During the hours which followed I tried to keep quiet and out of sight but my every movement seemed to make more of them aware of my presence. From every direction they came and all I could do was watch as a crowd of hundreds of the damn things surrounded me. They followed each other like herding animals and soon their lumbering, decomposing shapes filled the streets outside for as far as I could see.

  A week went by, and the ferocity of the creatures increased. They
began to fight with each other and they fought to get to me. They clawed and banged at the doors but didn’t yet have the strength to get inside. My options were hopelessly limited but I knew I had to do something. I could stay where I was and drink enough so that I didn’t care when the bodies eventually broke through, or I could make a break for freedom and take my chances outside. I had nothing to lose. I thought about home and I thought about Georgie and I knew that I had to try and get back to her.

  It wasn’t much of a plan but it was all I had. I packed the meagre supplies and provisions I found lying around the pub into a rucksack and got myself ready to leave. I made crates of crude bombs from the liquor bottles behind the bar and those in the cellar and storeroom. As the light began to fade at the end of the tenth day I hung out of the broken window at the front of the building, lit the booze-soaked rag fuses which I had stuffed down the necks of the bottles, and then began to hurl them down into the rotting crowds below. In minutes I’d created more chaotic devastation than I imagined possible. There had been little rain for days. Tinder dry and packed tight together, the repugnant bodies caught light almost instantly. Oblivious to the flames which steadily consumed them, the damn things continued to move about for as long as they were physically able, their every staggering step spreading the fire still further and destroying more and more of them. And the dancing orange light and the crackling and popping of burning flesh drew even more of the desperate cadavers closer to the scene.

  I crept downstairs and waited by the back door. The building itself was soon alight. Doubled-up with hunger pains (the world outside had unexpectedly filled with the smell of roast meat like a summer hog roast) I crouched in the shadows and waited until the rising temperature in the building was too much to stand. When the flames began to lick at the door to the room I hid in, I pushed my way out into the night and ran through the bodies. Their reactions were dull and slow and my relative speed and strength and the surprise of my sudden appearance meant they offered virtually no resistance. In the silent, monochrome world, the confusion that I’d generated provided enough of a distraction to camouflage my movements and render me temporarily invisible.