She reversed again and as the groaning mass fell away she once again pulled forward and with more momentum and revving of the engine she plowed a path. The car advanced and there was a loud screaming that filled the air. Looking in the rearview mirror she saw that the creatures walked with their heads held back and, like wolves baying at the moon, they screamed.
“Sir, are you ok” she called back to the man, but he was motionless.
“Sir!” she called a little louder. There was no reply at first but she breathed a sigh of relief when he mumbled a soft low pitched groan.
She reached the front steps of her building in less than a minute. The distance between the creatures was not much but they appeared to be very slow moving and she was sure that she could cover the distance to her building.
She was reaching in her bag for her mace spray when she saw the office building doors open and Ted, the janitor, followed by her officer manager, Simon “Call me ST” Taylor, ran out of the reception door. Both men carried weapons that where hastily improvised from what was in the offices.
Ted was carrying a broom handle that had been snapped into a baseball-bat-length-club, and ST was holding what looked to be a leg from the Boardroom Table. Two other office workers held onto the doors as they ran.
She stepped from the car and called out, her Mace in hand
“Am I glad to see you, I was…” She did not finish her sentence; instead she was interrupted by a deafening scream from inside her car. The man on the back seat was looking up at her and his eyes where filled with the hatred of an animal that was about to strike. His brow was low, his mouth salivating and the pupils narrowed to pin points. It was a look she had only ever seen on a dogs face before it attacked.
The old man shot across the top of the seats with a flash of speed that was almost super human, lunging for Jilly. He grabbed her denim skirt with such ferocity she almost fell back into the car. However, the headrests were high and the momentum not sufficient, the man was wedged for a moment that was long enough for Jilly to react. She slammed her door shut and closed it sharply on the hand of the old man.
The door bounced off the now broken wrist and swung wide, but it had been enough to enable her to free herself from the man’s grip. She spun around quickly also and sprayed mace into her attacker’s face as he growled and then screamed, blood and mucus dripping from his mouth now. She pulled away as Ted’s broom handle speared the older man’s chest once, then twice and then a final third time.
Another sensation seemed to be pulling her away from the car. She realized it was ST, dragging her to safety. The other creatures where getting closer now and Ted was running towards her as she looked back while stumbling forwards under ST’s lead. The reception doors closed the instant Ted entered.
The others in the office began sliding desks across the doors as a hasty barricade and then they all retreated again to the safety of the main office floor. The two large metal safety doors giving a reassuring click as the electro-magnetic locks held them locked.
Within moments the outer office doors vibrated as the first thump of one hit it. It was followed shortly by a second and a series of several more hits to the glass. The barricade wobbled slightly. Soon it was a constant crescendo of thumps and low groans that was enough to keep the people inside alert. But the immediate danger had passed.
“What the fuck Jilly?” someone panted. She turned to see STY squatting down with his back to the wall.
“I know, late and out of dress code”. She mumbled this to herself more than to anyone else. “No excuse but traffic was murder” she said with a small smile that only curled the edge of her mouth a little.
“I mean are you ok!” snapped ST, with a hint of annoyance at the thought that she would even try to make a joke.
“Yes! Yes I am: I think.” She said, with a more serious expression, before adding “Thank you!”
“Looks like all hell as broken loose out there” said another member of the office night shift. Jilly recognized her face but could not recall her name.
“If this is hell I was totally lied to by my Van Halen Album covers” she said, with a nervous laugh. She then cursed herself silently for her dammed habit of making inappropriate quips.
“She is misquoting classic movies” said Ted, using a cloth to clean off his broken broom. “She is fine” he said to everyone. “Bill and Teds, excellent Adventure right Jilly?”
“Bogus Journey” she said almost absent mindedly and in a low voice. Then she looked back at everyone and pointed behind her to the door as the realization of what had just happened seemed to hit her all at once.
Addressing the group sharply, and with a surprisingly alert voice now, she said “Where those fucking zombies?”
Jake Break
If Jake had been gifted with a better vocabulary he may have used words like “Nondescript” or perhaps phrases like “Rurally typical of Pennsylvania” to describe his current location on route 611 North, or Easton Road as his GPS was so insistent on calling it. However, he was not gifted with such a vocabulary, and after the morning he had experienced, he described it simply as “This fucking road!” when he spoke into the CB radio.
The full sentence he used was “Jake Break squared wheeled on this fucking road north of Doylestown PA, anyone know what the fuck is going on out here?”
There was no answer. In fact there had been nothing on the radio at all. No static, no other white noise, it was simply dead. Even the AM channels were not saying anything, and there was always a sports channel, or even one of the God Squad channels, working: especially in Eastern Pennsylvania. Yet all the stations came back empty, which was also the position of the needle on the gas dial of his2006 Kenworth T600 Studio Sleeper Truck.
There was nothing unusual in his huge truck burning a lot of gas on the highway. But what with the route he had taken this morning, plus the added weight of the John Deer 8425 Tractor that currently occupied his truck bed, he was using a lot more fuel that he had wanted to, which stressed him somewhat. Then there was the added stress that he was also already over budget and fighting bankruptcy everyday now.
When he had left New Holland that morning at a little after six am, he had done so believing he would have clear roads to his next destination, where he was to collect another piece of plant machinery. However, the roads had been busy, and a massive pile-up plus a continuing riot in the city of Philadelphia had caused back-ups so bad that route 76 had been closed.
The detour along route 23 had been simply awful. The traffic had been moving along at little more than five miles an hour. At Route 422 there had been another diversion at Collegeville, and again he was sent along a road that he would never normally have attempted in his huge rig.
This route, which he later determined was route 363, was almost at a standstill. As an alternate, he took the North East Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike at Lansdale. He was no more than forty miles into his journey by nine am. He regretted not having had breakfast now, and as he drained the last of his water, he knew that he would have to stop at some point.
Traffic was so slow that when he reached Lansdale he actually left the rig running and walked into a seven-eleven. The place was filled to the point where he had to squeeze in between people in the aisles between the shelves.
What the fuck is it with people in Pennsyltucky he had thought to himself, everyone just staring at the TV when the traffic was so messed up? He paid the TV little mind other than to disturb the man behind the counter.
“Hey Brother,” he said, in a less than polite tone, “Are you working or watching TV?” The man looked at him almost in disbelief for a moment and then quickly scanned the food items, sodas and waters that Jake had placed on the counter. Jake handed over a twenty dollar bill but the associate behind the counter was already looking back to the TV.
He heard someone muttering something about New York closing its bridges into Manhattan, but again paid it no mind. What did he care about New York? He was from C
hicago, where they knew how to make a Pizza.
“Dude,” he said loudly, holding out the twenty dollar bill once more.
“Yes, thank you very much.” Replied the man behind the counter in a heavily accented voice, his eyes never looked away from the screen. Jake pocketed the money and went back to his truck. There had been no movement and he saw other people leaving their cars and doing the same.
“Any idea what’s going on?” asked a young mother in a Honda. Jake raised his Brazilian bush hat onto the back of his head and smiled.
“All I know is them dot-heads are giving away shit.” he shook his head and got back in the cab. He had finished his meal of Doritos, two donuts and a Pepsi and moved less than two hundred yards in the next hour.
As he had meandered his way through the suburban sprawl of Pennsylvania for another two hours and gotten onto the route 202 bypass, he was moving at a slightly faster pace. He was on route 61 by noon and only a few miles south of his destination. That was when the traffic had stopped.
Shortly after one in the afternoon he messed around on the seat for the chicken salad sandwich he had brought that morning. He was not really hungry, but he was bored and he had already gone through a pack of cigarettes today. His search was interrupted by a dull and distant thudding from the West. He looked up and saw what had to be a squadron of military helicopters flying towards him. He recognized the helicopters immediately as Apaches and Blackhawks. He knew because he was an avid viewer of the Military channel and the History Channel when he was not on the road. Yet he had never seen them in such numbers.
They were only a little over 200 feet from the ground and as they approached the highway he could see the sun reflecting from their fuselages. In the distance and to the rear of the helicopters was the hulk of a C-130 aircraft and two larger helicopters. He recognized the latter as Chinooks.
He reached for his CB radio and switched to channel nineteen.
“Breaker, breaker, one nine this is Jake Break out here north of Doylestown, anyone else seeing this?”
“I got ya Jake-Break, This is Hog-tied on 611 South of you in Willow Grove, and the old Air Station here just got real busy real quick. We got Bears all over the place and Transport Aircraft landing on the old runway, Come on back”.
The excitement in the man’s voice was hardly contained and Jake was about to reply when a fleet of ambulances suddenly went by, sirens blaring, with a police escort.
“”Ten-four Buddy” Jake replied before adding, “I think you got yourself some more action headed that way. Whole bunch of meat wagons just went south.” As he looked up he saw that the helicopters were now circling. The Apaches seemed to be lower and occasionally one of the Blackhawks would make a rapid decent. He stepped out of his cab and boosted himself up onto the roof to get a better view. He could see little, but the Helicopters circling.
“You see anything?” The voice was that of a man looking up from his car.
“Nah!” he replied before looking down “seems like they are picking something up. What’s over there?”
“The Airport and the Hospital, but that’s a small civilian field” the man replied. Jake nodded a reply before sliding back down to his seat and grabbing his CB handset again.”
“Hog-tied this is Jake Break, come on back.” He called and waited for the response.
“Hey Brother, get the fuck out of there” came the reply, and then there was the sound of several gunshots on the other end of the call.
“Hey Buddy, what’s the skinny?” Jake replied to the voice that sounded much more panicked than excited now.
“The Army is killing people!” was the response. Then the screams and shots, that had filled the airways, simply stopped.
Suddenly, as if to exclaim the CB message, the silence was broken at once by an eruption of fire and noise in the direction of the Hospital. The thudding noise of the Apaches’ blades was replaced by the pop-pop-pop of weapons’ fire.
“Oh fuck they are shooting at the Hospital!” The man on the road yelled as he ran to his car. The C-130s seemed to bank to the north slightly and in the direction of what Jake could only imagine to be the Airfield. Apaches also circled as fire and rockets spewed down in all directions.
“The Ambulances are moving onto the planes” It was Hog-tied again, and he was speaking in whispers now, but his words of warning followed “but dude, seriously. Get the fuck out of there. These aren’t people they are shooting at, they are something really fucked up!”
Jake jumped down to the road and began to uncouple the flatbed of his rig. Hospitals getting bombed, the army shooting people and traffic like he had seen so far meant that something was wrong and he was not going to wait around and see what it was.
He was almost done when he heard the high pitched scream coming from somewhere further down the road. He did not want to find out what it was.
The Passenger
A lot of people were thinking about their past today. Of their mistakes and how the world was going to hell on express elevator downwards. Yet she wasn’t, she was enjoying her new leather jacket and the comfort of the Escalade in which she was a passenger.
Her hosts, the driver, his wife and teenaged daughter, were quite possibly the most boring and annoying people she had ever met. And it was growing harder to keep her conversation polite.
“I mean lady; you are one lucky girl. If I hadn’t come along and found you next to that bike lord knows where you would be now! I mean, the world is going to shit,”
“Jefferson Johnson Wilson you mind your language in-front of our daughter and guest!” his wife interrupted from the back seat.
The mother must have weighed three hundred pounds and was only a little over five feet tall. The woman in the leather jacket could easily understand the expression of anguish on her daughter’s face when her mother had given up the front passenger seat to their road guest.
The girl was obviously embarrassed and when she caught the girl looking up at her passenger’s reflection in the rear view mirror, the passenger had winked back at her with her beautiful hypnotic eyes.
“My apologies hon, and to you miss” the driver continued “I can hardly believe that I was watching the season opener between the Pirates and the Cubs just two days ago and now the news is saying all kinds of crazy horse poop! Yes-sir lady! You are lucky I came along; they said people are eating each other in fits of rage out there in Kentucky and Chi-town! Let’s check the radio again, what do you say miss?”
“That would be wonderful” she had replied. The curling sounds of her accent and her beautiful smile seemed to radiate outwards and hide the thoughts she was having.
If she were to slice his throat and push him quick enough she could control the car, but that was too much of a risk. She was going to kill both he and his wife. She had already decided that their deaths would be a quick thrill and more of a worthy revenge. Based on the fact they had had the nerve to show her a promise of hospitality and all she had got was a bait-and-switch leaving her with brain numbing boredom for the last three hours.
“She looked into the mirror again and caught a glimpse of the girl once more. She was sneaking looks at her again and she smiled. This one, she might keep.
“How old are you kitten?” she asked the girl in her raspy accent.
“Nineteen.” She replied with a little too much enthusiasm. The woman in the leather jacket smiled to offer a reassurance. She knew the effect she had on people. The fact that two slobs could produce such a beauty was nothing short of amazing she thought.
“Now honey, why do you need to lie?
Her mother asked this before replying to the woman in the passenger seat. “She won’t be nineteen until this December; CeeCee has a habit of exaggerating the truth a little.”
The Girl looked down in embarrassment and stared at her phone. There were a lot of “#zombie” posts and she had little interest in that, so she put down the phone. There was a rustle of leather from the passenger seat as their guest tu
rned to face her.
“Is CeeCee short for something?” The woman in leather asked.
“Oh yes, interrupted the mother, “When she was a child she couldn’t pronounce Cecilly, so CeeCee stuck, and she was just so cute that we had no choice but do go with that.” She continued and chuckled, which caused her oversized chin to wobble. The woman in the leather jacket was disgusted by this woman and fought the urge to lean over and drive the knife in her pocket deep into the obese woman’s mouth.
“We truly are blessed,” said the father in his flat monotone voice.
The girl mouthed the words “Help me” and smiled as if sharing an inside joke with the stranger. The passenger smiled back and winked back at the girl.
The car suddenly came to a halt and as if to emphasize the inconvenience the father managed to raise his voice an entire octave.
“What’s with all this Gee-Dee traffic, I know that things are rough in the cities, but here in West Virginia we don’t have to deal with this!” He looked to the passenger and apologized for the yelling.
You call that a yell you pathetic asshole? She thought to herself, and smiled. She was more interested in another type of prey now, and turned her attention back to the girl.
“So why were you in Ohio?” she asked the girl. The mother started to interrupt by saying there was no need to go into those details but the girl spoke out.
“I was in Rehab” the girl blurted out, and was immediately scolded by her parents.
“Meth?” The passenger asked. She made the assumption that it either had to be meth or oxytocin for someone out in West Virginia. The girl shook her head.
“Oxy,” the girl replied.
The mother and father protested, but the girl was enjoying this freedom and the passenger was encouraging it.
“Miss that really is enough; we like to keep our private matters if you don’t mind. Hate to be rude to a guest and all, but…” The passenger was no longer listening and continued her conversation with the girl.
Zombie Outbreak Z1O5 (Book 2): Zed Dawn Page 8