The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  “What the fuck?” Stephen said frantically.

  “Get out of the car!”

  Slowly, Stephen turned and opened his door. Brennan’s door opened only a crack and hit the side of the ditch. He forced it, fearing to disobey the command, but the door went no further. Another man screamed for him to get out, and he banged the door to demonstrate the futility. Stephen got one foot out of the car and was lifted bodily away. He shouted in fright. Brennan shrank to see his friend disappear into the crazily moving jumble of arms and lights and guns.

  “He’s got nothing, Grizzly!” a man cried, his voice almost lost in the wind.

  “Check the trunk! Maybe one’s hiding in there!”

  “Get the fuck out of the car, boy!”

  Clumsily, Brennan climbed over to the driver’s seat and was dragged from the car by his arm. They swarmed him, a gloved hand grabbing onto his hair and yanking his head back to expose his neck. Dear God, he was going to have his throat slit! Light blinded him, hands patted down his body, even his groin. There was a click and the trunk was opening. “Clear!”

  “Why are you wet?”

  Brennan had no idea the question was directed to him, not until a man’s pale face behind a visor swam into his vision and repeated it. Was he wet? Stephen was lost among them, but his voice carried through. “We almost hit somebody and went off the road! That’s all!”

  “The kid must have pissed himself.”

  “Clear!” The hands on Brennan released. A walkie-talkie crackled and a woman’s voice said, “Counting sixty-two bodies in East, repeat, sixty-two bodies in East, that makes eighteen unaccounted for.”

  “I don’t give a shit about East, tell me about West!” a man shouted.

  “Counting fifty-five dead in West, repeat, fifty-five dead in West, that makes twenty-one unaccounted for. Squad A is northbound, Squads B and C southbound, come in Squad D-”

  Brennan was knocked against the hood. Stephen was huddled in the ditch, crying in the harsh yellow glow from the headlights. Most of the men scattered, shouting orders and arguing, some climbing back into the first van and pulling it straight to drive away. The second van stayed where it was. Shouting rang out from the darkness and choppy voices rattled through walkie-talkies. “-come in, Squad D!” “Squad A reports one shot and wounded, repeat, one shot and wounded, requests back-up to trace other zombies cutting east-” “-reroute Squad C-” “-Eagle to hospital-” -Squad E west-”

  The air exploded with the sounds of gunfire and screaming. A figure in shapeless tan garb was driven from the darkness to the road south of the vehicles. A window shattered from a bullet, only inches from Brennan’s hand. He and Stephen jumped away from the car and sprinted across the road. Behind them, more of those tan figures (were they zombies? Real zombies?) were running around crazily with those men in pursuit. The guns shot again and again as Brennan leaped the rain ditch and sprinted into the other half of the park.

  It was an empty swathe of grass, with no place for the boys to take cover save trash cans and goalposts, trees so thin that they gave little shield. The wind was against them, throwing grit and leaves into their faces. They passed through shallow pools of dirty yellow light along the path and kept running until the field ended with a stone fence. Trees grew thickly beyond it. Many of them were skeletal of leaves with the winter, their dressings sprawled over the earth in a heavy coat and naked branches drooping low to retrieve them.

  When they leaped the fence and broke through the tree line, Brennan slowed down and looked back. Passing under a light was a man in tan garb, his run at a lurch and his face oddly spotted with black marks. Then part of his head was gone at the same instant of a gun blast.

  “Keep going!” Stephen screamed, and Brennan bolted after him. There were no lights here, none but the shine from the moon slit into pieces by the cut of the leaves. The grass was now dirt and fallen leaves, rocks and roots jutting up through the packed soil to grab at their feet. The slope was going upward. Stephen fumbled with his phone and then a bright beam came from it. He turned it to the ground and Brennan pulled closer to move in the wake of its light.

  “Get him off! Get him off me!” a man was screaming. The reverberation of a gunshot swallowed his voice whole.

  The slope became so steep that the boys bent and scrabbled to climb it. Stephen had to go one-handed to keep his phone out. Brennan’s sneakers slipped on the leaves, sending him down hard to one knee. The pain was subsumed immediately by the pressing need to move on. The light from the cell phone jerked up to show the crest of the slope, ridged by the scaled root of a great tree standing there.

  “Oh God!” Stephen was whispering repeatedly. Over the crest could be a place to hide and that sent them up even faster. Only in the farthest part of Brennan’s brain did he remember Mama and her Carlo, the jewels of girls at the South Haven gala, even the car ride. His body could hold only this animal fright and panic, alert to strange sounds that might mean danger, and roots reaching out to trip him. An animal chattered in the night. Guns blasted.

  Oh God oh God oh God beat a prayer in Brennan’s head. The blasts were too loud to have generated all the way back at the field. They were coming. Oh God have mercy I am going to die with a bullet through my brain here in the dark . . .

  They heaved themselves over the top and Stephen screamed. The ground did not flatten but slope downward sharply, and he lost his footing and tumbled. A lucky throw of Brennan’s hand caught that root along the crest, arresting his plummet. Light wheeled wildly as the phone fell with Stephen, and then there was a thump, a splash, and silence. The light wavered and went out.

  Letting go of the root, Brennan slid down the slope. The moonlight gave him some view of a stream with large rocks along its sides. Stephen was facedown in the water and still. Leaves and twigs, dirt and pebbles rained down the slope around Brennan, who halted with his sneakers in the water’s edge. He heaved his friend from the stream and laid him out, whispering, “Stephen?”

  His eyes were closed, and his hair was drenched and flat to his scalp. Brennan pressed his fingers awkwardly to Stephen’s neck and felt nothing, so he took a wrist into his hand and checked there. The pulse was steady. Shaking him, Brennan said, “Stephen? Stephen, wake up!”

  There was no reaction. The phone had gone into the water. Brennan wasn’t strong enough to carry him. Another blast shook the sky, and leaves were crunching not that far away. Brennan had to get away from here, call the police, guide them back to this spot and he didn’t even know where he was! Somewhere in a wooded area between Odalman and Melmer, at a stream with the sound of men screaming and guns shooting, he was somewhere with zombies running free.

  The crunching of leaves forced Brennan to his feet. Leaving Stephen unconscious by the water, he leaped the stream. He had to hide until this insanity passed. Lights swayed beneath the crest and men called, “Clear! Clear! Check up there!”

  Brennan slipped through trees, seeking the darkest of the dark places to conceal himself. Help me, God, please help Your son. He and Mama had gotten very irregular in their attendance at church, going for holidays mostly, and this could have displeased God even though they prayed at night. Not wanting to be alone out here, Brennan apologized and begged God to turn His face to a lost boy in the woods.

  “I hear something!”

  He froze, knowing it was the leaves under his feet. Then he stepped more quietly. A fallen log was in his path and he climbed over it. The ground was lower on the other side, and Brennan landed with a whump. A gun blasted farther away. From farther away still were sirens.

  Sliding down a rocky slope, he staggered between bushes into a clearing. It was a patch of land no bigger than his bedroom, the shag of the trees bending away from this place rather than toward it. The voices were coming closer, and he had to hide now. Crossing the clearing and slipping into an impenetrable darkness on the other side, he settled down within a nook of a massive tree trunk.

  It was very cold, and his jacket was light. H
is shoes were wet from the stream, his pants wet from his bladder. Why hadn’t he worn a heavier jacket? Because the lighter one was newer, more stylish, and he’d thought that he would be at a party. Being cold from the car to the party was not a great suffering. But out here it was. Wanting his clunky, bulky jacket, he tugged the sleeves lower and tucked his hands into his armpits when the pockets failed to warm his fingers. His gloves were in the pocket of the other jacket, too. He should be at the Welcome Mat party! Warm and listening to music, sitting with Stephen and Corbin at a table, looking at girls and not daring to ask them to dance. He should be warming a video game controller in his fingers on a night with the guys.

  The voices moved away. He wanted to call Mama, to tell her to come and get him. Under the Christmas tree at home was a gift of a brand new cell phone for him. Tighter and tighter he curled in on himself for warmth, even dragging over dead leaves and piling them on his feet.

  A wind blew east, wrapping itself around him in a freezing embrace and scattering the leaves. This side of the tree offered no shelter from the wind, worse than none, since it netted the cold air in this nook and trapped it. Brennan trembled miserably as the temperature dropped, and he knew that he couldn’t stay in this place all night. To be so cold at nine or ten (he guessed it was around then, there was no way it could be midnight) was to be freezing by two or three. He wasn’t dressed to survive out here.

  Going west long enough would drop him off on Melmer, and down the road was that big street of decorated businesses. They had passed two gas stations there, the Gas-O Cheap-O and a crummy little We Got Gas. Never had Brennan thought of a gas station with such lust. Warmth, a cashier to call the cops about Stephen, and Mama would pick up Brennan. Everything would be all right once he got to a gas station.

  A soldier kept going into hostile territory. Reluctantly, he uncoiled himself and stood up. In this darkness, he’d have to move very slowly. Then he remembered his nano light. Not once had he ever used the thing, just affixed it to his key ring over the summer and forgotten about it. With stiffened fingers, he removed the key ring from his pocket and felt for the narrow aluminum tube.

  He pressed the button. The sudden light was as beautiful as the girls at South Haven. Not the strongest beam, nor a wide one, but it was enough. With this light he could travel through these woods, get to Melmer and the road below, the gas station that was waiting for him. God must have put that nano light at the garage sale, pushed Brennan to spend his quarter on it.

  Forcing his creaking legs to work, he plunged forward. The shouting men and gun blasts had stopped some time ago, although he still heard the faintest cry of sirens. He walked and walked through the woods, frightened that he might never come to the road, yet knowing from the map earlier that he couldn’t miss it.

  Night creatures hooted and scurried from his advance. Over another slope was a gigantic fallen tree blocking his path. It was split near the base. Since it looked easier to push through the foliage around the base than climb over the trunk, he did so and came out the other side.

  Christmas lights.

  His heart jumped to see them in the distance. Christmas lights upon a house, and he forgot about the gas station. He would knock on that door and ask for them to call his mother and the cops-

  Something screamed, and Brennan turned his light in terror. The beam struck not a person but once a person, tufts of hair and no eyebrows, the lower lip split in two . . . his chest was bare and rent with scratches, the pallor of the skin rivaling the moon, and there was a decayed spot on his belly. His abdomen and legs were covered by tan trousers, ripped up the sides and filthy. Brennan had only the time to think zombie before the creature jumped for him.

  The light was knocked to the ground, and Brennan back to the trunk. He threw up his arm in defense and screamed to feel the teeth tearing at his flesh. Then the creature grunted as Brennan kicked him in the belly. Turning as the zombie fell back, Brennan climbed up the trunk and fell down on the other side. There was a tiny groove between the curve of the trunk and the dirt, and into that curve he wedged himself. The creature was moving out there, chattering like a strange beast, leaves crackling and a twig snapping under his feet. Brennan held his breath at a scratching. The creature had climbed up the trunk.

  Dear God, have mercy.

  The creature paced the log once, twice, three times, and got down on Brennan’s side. He stayed still, hearing feet go one way and another. When they did not come back, he thought of those Christmas lights but decided to stay put. It wasn’t safe to try for them yet.

  Hours passed while he lay there frozen and listening. Listening with his broken hearing, willing it to heal and save him. His arm hurt badly where he had been bitten. Bugs crawled over his neck and he did not brush them away, fearing the zombie would be alerted and return.

  The wind blew harder and harder yet could not touch Brennan in this place, although it was still very cold. In time he did not notice it so much, warmth stealing through his body from nowhere, and he slept.

  Micah

  While they screamed, she searched for a way out.

  It was not that Micah was immune to terror or panic. That was strong within her, a primitive drive to flail and run around with the others, but something cold and deliberative overrode it. Those people huddled in corners, cowering under tables and behind the fallen Christmas tree, all of them were open to the bullets blasting through the windows and around the room. The others screaming and crashing into each other to escape the zombies were unwittingly agitating them further with the noise and chaotic movements.

  One boy was being held up by the throat, another was savaged and bleeding on the floor. There would be time later for Micah to be frightened about these things, to let those images register. Cullers (she assumed that was what they were; they wore no Shepherd patches) with bloody visors shrieked orders but no one could hear them. The music was still playing and the cracks of the guns were deafening. People pounded on the restrooms begging to be let in while those on the inside blocked the doors and shouted they were full.

  A bullet had blown one of the zombies apart, and people were in hysterics to be covered in contaminated blood and tissue. Shelly Cray was dead in her chair, her head thrown back to the heavens and blood streaking through her hair. Nothing stirred within Micah, nothing could stir to see this, or she was going to die.

  They had been dancing together near the Christmas tree when it started, Micah and Austin and Zaley, the buzz still riding through her veins but on its downward arc. That was the key to drinking undiscovered, to do it at the beginning of the party and let it work its way out of the system by the time she went home. Micah had never been caught in a whole year of doing this, and thought well of herself for it. Two shots to break in the festivities, eat and dance and drink punch for the next four hours, and when she climbed back into her V-6 to drive home, she’d be sober again. Only sloppy kids got caught, and Micah had no intention of sitting through the talks (Honey, you’re underage! Honey, we’re wondering if you’re rebelling about something. Honey, it isn’t like you to be so irresponsible!) and the grounding to ensue.

  The alcohol had riled her up at first and now blissed her out as it ebbed. Music thrummed within her, vague images and emotions flitting by her closed eyes while she danced to a techno beat. Annoyance about home, since her parents were excited about her learning Italian and going to a school for international studies, indifferent to Christmas, she thought of that canopy bed and doll’s cradle packed with toys, the desk with the preschool shapes. That was funny, how Zaley was this gigantic baby in a baby’s room. When Uma had asked what Micah liked to do more than anything else in the world, she rattled off the appropriate replies and kept back I like to prowl around the city at night and peek through windows. But that would not have shown her the astonishing sight of Zaley’s bedroom, not with the boards. She opened her eyes and laughed about the star rugs. Zaley said, “Fuck you. I know what you’re thinking about.”

  “She
didn’t swear so much before,” Austin observed.

  “And she doesn’t swear much to anyone else,” Micah said. “Because she’s an echo, Zaley is. She and I do the same thing but for very different reasons-”

  Something cracked, and Zaley staggered forward a little like someone had bumped into her. Then she dropped to her knees. Micah had no idea why, nor what the cause was of the crack. She looked around for a fallen table. Why would Zaley have gone down with one of the tables across the room?

  Outside the glass, lights were jerking around. They were growing larger and larger, yet they were not why some people had broken out in screaming by the door. Her alcohol-addled brain worked to find connections between these odd occurrences until she saw the blood and knew that Zaley had been shot in the upper arm. The wail of the synthesizer was overcome by the screaming. Still Micah looked down to Zaley in an effort to pull all of these disparate events together. Her red holiday light earrings blinked on and off.

  People began to run around crazily. Zaley was looking at her bloody sleeve in shock and confusion. “Something burned me.”

  And then it had all fallen apart.

  Every square foot of the room was in pandemonium now, and a floodlight going on outside revealed no better place to go. Figures in black caught students fleeing the building and threw them violently to the ground; others were chasing a person in tan garb between the cars in the parking lot and shooting. Windshields were breaking, students were sobbing, and even as Micah looked, Trevor lifted his hand on the path and screamed, “NO!” before a bullet rendered him silent. Her body jerked as he fell.

  “Where do we go?” Austin shouted. They were flattened against the far wall, and a bullet could slam through the window and nail them at any second. Zaley was mobile but had gone into shock, her face pale and her figure trembling from pain. Blood was gushing down her arm unstoppered, her injury no flesh wound from television but a blast that macerated her skin.