by Rand, Thonas
Inside the basement was the camera operator, a man in his fifties, gray haired and tanned, rough skin, he was the kind of man that worked outside a lot with his hands. He was the happy husband in the family pictures, but right now, he was dead serious. His son was behind him and past him was the rest of the basement—they had converted it into a survival shelter by expanding the square footage beyond the house walls. It was equipped with beds for all of them, stacks of boxed food were against the walls, many five gallon bottles of water, and there was a restroom stall that had a septic system built underneath.
His wife and two daughters were seated in the back of the shelter. One of the girls was listening to music with ear buds connected to her laptop. Her mother was in the middle of checking the world news on the Internet, which surprisingly still worked, but she had stopped to watch her husband and son. The computers were the only dim lights sources in there; they had turned everything else off to open the basement door. Except for the two young girls, all of them were armed. “How’s it look, Dad?” the son whispered.
The father whispered even lower. “Clear, doesn’t look like anything or anyone’s been inside.”
The father carefully put the snake camera away and looked at his wife. He signaled to her that they were going out and she acknowledged him. The mother motioned to her daughters to be quiet, and then she checked her pistol to make sure that it was loaded. She walked to the foot of the stairs and waited.
The father opened the basement door a little more, just enough to stick his head through; he cautiously looked around and was ready with a pistol grip shotgun. Once satisfied, he opened the door so he could step out, but he motioned his son to wait; he did as instructed with a large caliber handgun at the ready. The father crept to the front door and slowly peeked through the peephole—he saw the same thing that he did last time—walking corpses were in the streets, in every direction. His peephole was suddenly blacked out and he realized that one was right in front of his door.
He froze and held his breath.
The thing was an older man; half of its gray hair was missing, because its scalp was gone, the cranial pattern was clearly visible because its head was so dry. The scalp was missing down to half of its face and its right eye had no lid; it was a constant stare as its eyes slowly scanned around for anything of interest—it looked right into the peephole for a moment and then moved off.
The father released his breath and turned away.
The creature stopped…
He tiptoed back to the basement door.
“Okay, let’s go,” he whispered to his son.
The son signaled his mother that they were going; she moved up to the top of the stairs and waited at the door. The father and son headed to their garage, it had a locked door with four deadbolts, and it had two different peepholes. The father looked through them carefully and then gave the all-clear signal. The son began to unlock the deadbolts.
“Quietly.” the father whispered.
The son acknowledged him and slowly finished unlocking the door.
Outside, at the porch, the scalped corpse was back at the front door.
It sniffed…
The garage access door opened quietly, letting out one short creak sound, which made the father cringe, but nothing happened. They stood at the doorway and looked at the garage, it was full of more of their supplies, what they couldn’t fit in the basement. Sunlight streaked in through the rollup garage door that was a little battered but still intact. Some of its panel sections were loose and one at the bottom corner of the door was cracked open, but it was only a small four-inch section that was barely big enough for a cat. The sun made a warm spot through the hole in their cold, dark garage that reminded them of what it was once like being out during the day, or any time at all, for that matter. “Okay, we’re only getting the two cases of the cooking fuel,” the father whispered. “We’ll get more later.”
The son nodded and mindfully put his weapon in his holster, and then he entered the garage while his father waited at the door. What he wanted was across on the other wall, and as he got closer, he could hear them, just outside as they lurched along—dead feet grinded on the pavement and thudded in the dirt, making dull, heavy sounds. The son heard long dragging noises by whatever dead things that were missing legs and feet—the noises were keeping a pace with his heartbeat, which was steadily increasing; he needed to calm down and concentrate on the task at hand.
He got to the stack of supplies and very gently grabbed a cardboard case of Coleman cooking fuel. His father used the shotgun strap and put his weapon over his shoulder as his son gave him the case. He left with the fuel, and the son returned for the second one. He got there undetected and picked up the second box. He turned to leave, took two steps and stopped suddenly at the sound of a walker that came upon the garage door.
It was seriously interested in the door.
It tried to look through the cracks, and the son could see part of its foul eyes as it looked inside but didn’t see him. He was only several feet from the door, but he dared not move, especially when the thing dropped to its knees and stuck it face in the hole at the bottom of the door.
It was the scalped creature…
The father got to the basement and gave the case to his wife; he watched her take it downstairs, and when she came back, he headed back to the garage but decided to look through the front door peephole again…
The son didn’t move a muscle, except for his low breathing and his eyes; he fearfully watched the scalped corpse stick its rotten face into the hole of the garage door. It looked for something, anything, and it sniffed, constantly smelling the air in the garage. Most of the young man’s body was hidden behind a stack of tall boxes, but he began to sweat. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead as his glands went into overdrive, they began to track down his face.
The thing could smell it, and it became agitated, but it was still only the one, and it didn’t growl yet, alerting others. The son looked at the house door, which was in the creature’s sight, and his father wasn’t back yet, but the moment that he returned—the corpse would see him immediately.
He didn’t know what to do.
And then a second walker came to the garage door.
Sniffing…
Scratching…
The father headed back to the garage, unaware of what he was about to walk into…
The son was scared stiff, but he forced himself to slowly step toward the house door.
But three steps and it would see him.
A third one joined…
The scalped one almost had its entire head in the garage, and then it began to growl.
The son’s eyes darted to the house door, and he saw the preceding shadow of his approaching father.
Scratching…
Clawing…
He looked back at the garage door, and they still hadn’t seen him.
The father appeared at the door and the son tried to stop him. “Dad?” he whispered intensely.
But the scalped one heard him, and it squealed loudly, setting off the others.
“Dad!” his son screamed as he dropped the box and ran for the house door.
Dozens of the undead rushed the garage door and broke through it in a hail of plastic panels and metal framing. The son got in the door, and they both slammed it shut, but dead arms reached in and blocked them from locking it.
They both pushed with all their might, but by now, dozens of them were in the garage, and they pushed back with rage to get in.
The father knew it was hopeless. “Get back to the basement and lock the door, I’ll hold them off!”
“I’m not leaving you!” his son answered.
They were giving it everything that they had, but they couldn’t close the door, and the undead were starting to win the battle to get in.
Inch by inch…
The son fired his weapon through the door crack, killing one, two, three of the stenches, but they were replaced by man
y more. The wife appeared in the living room behind them with her gun in hand. “Run back to the basement!” she shouted at them.
But they knew that they wouldn’t make it there if the things got in.
“Christina, get back with the girls and get ready to lock the door!” he shouted at his wife in a strained voice.
She reluctantly went back and the father looked at his son with desperate eyes. “You have to protect your mother and sisters, go!” he shouted.
He didn’t want to leave.
“Go!” his father repeated louder.
The son went against his will and a couple seconds after he took his weight off the door and left his father alone—they broke in—his father was thrown back and fell on his ass.
From the ground, he fired his shotgun at them, worked the pump and loaded another shell.
BLAST!
PUMP.
BLAST!
The son turned to help his father just in time to see several of them jump on him. He managed to fire the shotgun two more times from under the pile of cannibals, buckshot splattered through and impacted into the ceiling.
“Dad!” He fired at them but his father was gone.
He continued to fire in anger, and then his mother came behind him. “Carl!” she yelled to her son. “Run!”
The boy turned to run but they were already on top of him and took him down.
“Carl! No!” his mother yelled.
She fired in hatred at the dead ones eating her son, but there were too many and more of them came after her. She ran for her life, got to the basement door and pulled it in.
They got their decayed arms inside the door…
She couldn’t close it and they ripped the door open out of her hands.
Pointblank, she fired in the faces of two of them, but more stomped on the falling corpses to get at her.
She staggered back and tripped…
She tumbled down the flight of stairs and fell onto the screams of her two daughters.
With a bloody face from a broken nose and her pistol still in her hands—she fired at the waterfall of death that swelled over her.
Her gun went empty, and they smothered her.
Her daughters tried to run but there was nowhere to go.
They got the oldest one first.
The mother’s laptop was knocked to the floor and the news site that she was looking at showed the rate and extent of the infection on a global map.
It had touched every continent on the planet.
The youngest girl had two seconds to watch her sister’s face being bit off by a large ghoul and then others attacked her small body.
She was struck to the floor and her ear buds were yanked out of her laptop, some teenage pop song blasted through the laptop speakers, but the dead ignored it. They were busy listening to the screams of agony music from the girls as they devoured them.
Her laptop was tossed to the floor and the music player skipped in distortion and then another song started to play.
It was soothing jazz music that didn’t fit this scene of the macabre.
Mr. Armstrong’s voice was an insult to the death at hand—
“I see trees of green…”
Blood splattered the walls of the basement…
“Red roses, too…”
Blood dripped down the laptop screen displaying the global infection map…
“I see them bloom for me and you…”
The girls’ screams became guttural death moans and then went silent…
“And I think to myself…”
All that was heard were them eating and the song…
“What a wonderful world…”
DAY 200:
THE FALL of SOCIETY
The Los Angeles sky had a red pall, what little blue there was among the gray clouds, fought against the abundant pollution to breathe. The dark building skyline was police tape that outlined this murdered place.
L.A. was gone.
Buildings that once stood tall and shimmered in the sun at the peak of humanity’s brilliance were now dilapidated slivers of nightmares. They rotted in squalor and the insects of this great, dusty hive were the walking corpses—many walked the streets and alleys without direction, some lingered at bus stops as if they waited for buses that would never come. There were dormant buses here and there, abandoned in the heat of the infection, some of the dead sat in them, content on a motionless commute. Some of them walked in and out of building lobbies repeatedly, a few even carried briefcases as they went to the echo of a job that they once had. Others tried to enter buildings with blocked-off entryways that had been sealed by the living, a last ditch effort to survive. Those buildings had no signs of life now.
The city of the dead was without power as it slowly crumbled in darkness.
In an alley behind a high-rise, muted gunshots broke the silence, and then a back door suddenly burst open as a lone man kicked it out and ran at a breakneck speed, which wasn’t fast because he was emaciated from starvation. Several undead came out after him; he fired back at them and hit nothing in his blind panic trigger pulls of his handgun, but the gunshots cracked loud and echoed throughout the area.
And the city…
Every dead thing close by snapped out of their snail-paced walks and sprang into runs after the man. Long howls and squeals filled the desolate, empty air, and right away, sixty chased after him.
Ninety…
Two hundred…
The man disappeared into a building-parking garage with a ravenous avalanche chasing after him.
He had no chance.
And a moment later—
His short scream of agony wailed and was gone in the squall of the dead.
And more kept coming.
About thirty miles south of L.A., which was several miles past Long Beach, was the same scenery—everything was in ashes and destruction. The walking corpses didn’t have as many numbers as they did in the big city, they were few here, but still just as eager to kill anything that crossed their path. Most of the ones in this area were slow movers that consisted of different types, like the elderly and ones with missing limbs that had to crawl or drag themselves to get around.
It was quiet here, except for the intermittent undead screech, there was nothing.
And then a distant sound made itself known as it grew in definition—the low rumble became distinctive and unmistakable—the sound of a car motor.
Two of them came rolling down the boulevard at about 30 miles an hour, not too fast so their engines would make more noise and not too slow so they would be open to attack by any fast movers. The vehicle leading the way was a standard military Humvee with a topside mounted .50 caliber machine gun, and bringing up the rear was a big Chevy Silverado 3500 truck that had four rear wheels, a dually, which wasn’t a girly-girl’s kind of truck, but a woman was driving it.
In the Humvee were two men; the driver was a black man that looked to be in his fifties, but he was in great shape, short military-style haircut with the chiseled facial features of a man in charge of this group of survivors. His name was Ardent Keller.
“We’re getting close to the shipyard, Ardent,” the passenger said and he was a Caucasian man in his forties, a big guy that looked like he had some Spanish ancestral background. He was also clean-cut with short black hair. Ben Reyes was his name.
Ardent slowed the Humvee a little. “Yeah, just a few miles in that direction.” He pointed.
They reached an intersection and Ardent stopped, the Chevy truck came to a halt behind it in line. There were a few undead in the area, but they were all slow movers. The closest one was about forty feet away—it crawled on its belly because one of it legs was gone, and the other was smashed up—which each pull of its decaying arm, its destroyed leg was pulled along, literal dead weight that was held in tow at the knee by a couple inches of leathery, stringy flesh. The gender of the creature was unrecognizable because it was so battered, and the clothes on it were no indicator either bec
ause they were withered rags. It was crawling around a corner, away from the caravan, but turned around when it heard the motors. It scraped and pulled itself toward the truck.
Lauren Mobley was the driver of the truck; she was in her thirties with long brown hair. She was beautiful but had that tough, tomboy look, as if she was raised on a ranch. The truck was definitely hers because she handled it better than any cowboy. She picked up a radio. “Bear, whatta we got going on? Over,” she said and spied the dead crawler coming her way.
“Bear” was Ben’s nickname, and it was size proportionate. “Just getting our bearings, give us a minute. Over,” he answered.
Lauren looked at her low gas indicator light that had been on for a while now. “Okay, but look for gas stations again, I’m on fumes here. Over.”
“Same for us, too. Out,” he answered.
In the truck with her, were two other people—one was a woman in her early forties, a hard, but gorgeous looking Pacific Islander with jet-black hair, named Milla Siln. The other was a Hawaiian looking guy in his thirties, had the stoner thing going on—well, he used to, since the apocalypse had put a strain on the supply of pot these days, but he’d adjusted. His light brown hair was a little too long, which he usually tied up in a bun or a tail, he had a couple random tattoos. He was Derek Montgomery. He sat in the back of the truck and Milla was in the front passenger seat.
All of them were dressed in battle gear to protect their bodies from attacks by the dead. Besides military, rugged hiking clothes, or sports gear, they had on body armor, but the exteriors of their clothing was what made it interesting—it was plastic PVC plumbing pipe that they had cut in halves, thirds, or quarters and sewed them together with wire to assemble a low-tech, corpse bite-proof outer shell. They wore it around their biceps, forearms, thighs, calves, and ankles. Complete with a PVC pipe neck-guard and spray painted all in black or camouflage. They had helmets, too.