HVZA (Book 2): Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse 2

by Zimmermann, Linda

  However, even though the post office and its warmth, food, and safety were in sight, Becks paused long enough to reach around inside the man’s flannel jacket and find his wallet. For some reason—maybe because in some ways he reminded her of her dad—she wanted to know who he had been.

  His driver’s license identified him as Burt Olson, 82 years old, and living at 75 Meadow Street. His wallet also contained his Veteran’s ID card, a picture of his wife, kids, and grandkids, a couple of fishing licenses that expired in the 1980s, one credit card, a supermarket discount card, and fourteen dollars.

  This was strictly against Becks’ usual policy of not wanting to know a zombie’s name, or any details that might humanize the inhuman creatures, but there was just something so sad and poignant about this man. However, when she noticed some long strands of black hair and specks of dried flesh stuck between his yellowed teeth, the sympathetic moment was shattered. He may have been a sweet old man in life, but he had nonetheless turned into a murdering geriatric zombie. Still, Becks pocketed his wallet before she began her final push for “home.”

  Several modest-sized mounds dotted the road before her, as the huge, compact herd that had literally stuck together in the first big snowfall, had spread out after Becks had awakened them. With this latest storm, smaller groups had huddled together and were then blanketed by the thick layer of snow. Becks hoped that smaller groups meant less total body heat, which meant a lower survival rate. However, she also wondered if this many were caught outside, how many were safely nesting in the countless houses, apartments, schools, and businesses around her?

  Just as long as none of them got the urge to mail a letter, Becks thought, as she knew her first order of business upon returning to the post office was to conduct another full sweep for zombies—and scavengers.

  Crawling and dragging herself as quickly and quietly as possible between the mounds, she was still forced to spear three zombies partially sticking out of the snow who had been awakened by her movements. One already had an eyeball hanging out of its socket, rolling back and forth across its cheek, which made it even easier for her to get the blade into its brain.

  More than two hours after emerging from the drain pipe, Becks finally made it back to the post office parking lot, which was blessedly mound-free. She was also even further relieved to see that there weren’t any tracks in the snow, which didn’t mean someone hadn’t entered the unlocked back door before the storm. As exhausted as she was, she picked up the pace the last 50 feet, and was thrilled to roll off the snow bank and onto the clear pavement under the awning by the stairs.

  Standing up wasn’t all she hoped it would be, however, as every muscle ached, and her head throbbed. Hanging onto both handrails, she methodically swung her stiff, swollen, left leg up a stair, put all her weight on her weary arms, and then stepped up with her right leg. The staircase seemed twice as long as it was when she left, but finally, mercifully, she reached the door and got inside.

  Too wired and tired for games, she immediately aimed a pistol at the ceiling and fired twice, and then started howling like a banshee. She figured if there were any zombies, that racket would have damn sure woken them up. If any scavengers had entered, they would probably be pissing in their pants right about now. Fortunately, after a full sweep, she found that no one else had breached her sanctuary.

  Making sure everything was locked up tight, Becks went down into the fallout shelter and made a roaring fire. Stripping off her filthy clothes, she put on multiple layers of L.L. Bean fleece jackets and pants meant for Mrs. Jackie Greer of 44 Dobbin Court. Mrs. Greer’s “wicked good” sheepskin slippers also felt like heaven to her half-frozen toes as she slipped them on.

  The next order of business was food, and lots of it.

  Like a rat on a corpse, she thought as she pushed food into her mouth at a completely uncivilized rate.

  Then sleep.

  A sleep so deep that not even images of rats crawling over her or zombies crawling into drain pipes could disturb her. She woke up briefly after eight hours, then again two hours later. Each time her only thought was that she wouldn’t leave the post office again until spring. After fourteen hours of sleep, she decided to get up, but only to build another fire and eat more food. And even once fully awake, she swore that if she had enough food and water, she would not leave her sanctuary until every snowflake had melted, and every frozen zombie had rotted to mush.

  Chapter 14

  Was it January? February? Did it even matter? The dark, cold days of snow and ice stretched into weeks; maybe months. Every day was like the next, only the food reserves dwindled a little more, and anything that remotely tasted good was long gone. At least there was plenty of fresh water to be had by melting the seemingly unending snow.

  Becks had completely lost track of time in her fallout shelter. Her only trips outdoors were limited to the post office parking lot for snow and gasoline. She had been able to get the generator going by replacing the rotted pull cord with the string from a massive, 4X pair of sweatpants, ordered in both black and starlight blue by Mr. Jeffrey Donnard of 42 Paxton Avenue. The electric heaters kept her sanctuary toasty warm, while the ventilation pump brought in much needed fresh air. The fluorescent lights were wonderful—even though they had that annoying buzz—and she spent days on end opening packages, reading books, and going through some of the huge sacks of mail.

  At first, the letters had upset her with their desperate pleas for help, the pitiable expressions of hopelessness of the infected, and the heart-wrenching goodbyes from people across the country who knew they would never see their loved ones again. But the lack of any mentally challenging work and the complete isolation had started to get to Becks. Her heart and mind were suffering in strange and unpleasant ways, so as painful as these Letters from the Apocalypse were, she needed them to still feel connected to the rest of humanity.

  Before delving into the countless sacks of letters, however, she had gone into the sorting room to look for the mail set aside for Meadow Street, specifically for number 75, the Olson residence. There were four letters that had never been delivered, and Becks opened them in chronological order.

  The first was from Burt’s daughter, Elsie, in Virginia. She was frantic to find out how serious was her mother’s infection, and if “the men in those white suits and masks” had taken her away to “one of those horrible facilities” she had heard about. Elsie did try to reassure her father that she and her kids were doing fine, and were “completely safe in the base housing.” Her husband, Jim, was apparently in charge of troops sent to Washington, D.C. to “deal with the latest outbreak,” but she expected it would “all be over soon” and Jim would “be back in less than a week.”

  Elsie ended the letter by asking her dad to “give mom a kiss” for her, “if it’s safe,” and to make sure he didn’t leave the house. And above all, “don’t try to do something heroic, like you always do.”

  The next letter was from his daughter, Chelsea, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She related that things weren’t as bad there as they were on the east coast, “but still, Bob and I think it’s best to bring the family up to the lake house for a few weeks just to be on the safe side.” Chelsea obviously hadn’t heard that her mother had become infected, and even mildly chastised her parents for not having email or cell phones. “Maybe I could have found out what was going on if you two had ever decided to enter the 21st century!” she wrote.

  Chelsea also ended her letter in a similar manner to her sister. “And Dad, PLEASE!, just don’t try to be a hero this time.”

  Burt Olson, defender of truth, justice, and the American way, Becks thought. And I had to jab a knife into his brain…

  The third letter was brief, and from his son, Brian, in California, who didn’t mention a wife or kids. Apparently, Los Angeles was “turning to shit real fast.” Some friends had called and told him to join them “in the hills,” but as the roads were “all fucking parking lots,” and panicked people were “shooting
at anything that moves,” he couldn’t get out of the city. His letter ended with a description of some aches and pains he was experiencing, and he apologized for the sloppy writing, but his “hands kept shaking.” He was sure it was “just nerves,” and promised to write again soon.

  The last letter was from Elsie again. She hadn’t heard from Jim in two weeks, and no one at the base had any information. Two of her kids were sick, but she didn’t dare bring them to the clinic because she was terrified the guards would take them away. The base was still secure, but if she stayed, she wouldn’t be able to hide her children’s illness for long.

  “Dad, I’m coming home. I’m leaving today. I’ll stop in D.C. on the way and see if I can find Jim. I hope to see you real soon. With any luck, we will all be there before this letter arrives. Hope Mom is feeling better. Love you both so much.”

  Becks closed her eyes and imagined what she would find at 75 Meadow Street. Did Elsie ever find Jim, and did they all make it home, only to find that Burt was infected and his wife was dead. Or worse? It was like some addictive soap opera that was canceled mid-season. Becks’ entire life was spent in the pursuit of answers, but this was just another AZA mystery that would probably never be solved. And as she knew there couldn’t possibly be any happy endings to this story, perhaps it would be best if she didn’t know. Still, if her journey back happened to cross Meadow Street…

  And so the days dragged on with the heaviness and sorrow of the thousands of tragedies exposed in the letters. There was one day, however, where Becks actually laughed. At the bottom of one of the sacks, she found a bundle of letters from the Internal Revenue Service sent to about a hundred small businesses and self-employed people who had missed their quarterly estimated tax payments. The IRS actually had the balls to state that “Zombie infections, of either the taxpayer or a dependent, are not legal grounds for delay of payment.”

  However, the IRS was also quick to note that “Payments from infected individuals will not be accepted in person, and must be mailed by the specified date in order to avoid incurring additional penalties.”

  “Death and taxes!” Becks said to her sock monkey, Ginger, as she stuffed all of the IRS letters into the barrel and ignited them. “I’m surprised they hadn’t come up with a zombie tax. Or would they have called it an undead surcharge?”

  Physically, apart from being a bit undernourished, Becks was getting into the best shape of her life. Once her knee healed, which took almost three weeks, she started running—seriously running, not jogging. She had cleared a path through the packages that took her around the sorting room and both storerooms. She would then go over the counter into the lobby, and back over again. At first, she would just put her butt on the counter and swing her legs over. On the tenth day, however, she was able to jump up onto the counter and leap down. Two weeks later, if she got up enough steam, she was actually able to vault clear over the counter.

  The basement and back entrance stairs also were part of her route. After a couple of weeks she enhanced that part of her workout, as she started carrying heavy bags of ice-melting salt up and down the stairs.

  One ridiculously heavy package she had opened, which had been mailed at a cost of $112, contained some fancy barbells on a rack. Becks couldn’t believe someone paid to ship a weight set, but she took advantage by working her way through progressively heavier barbells in conjunction with her calisthenics and running. From ten minutes of running with no added weight, to an hour carrying as much as fifty pounds on her back and another ten in her arms, she began to discover a level of speed and endurance, the likes of which she never thought herself capable.

  Of course, this wasn’t just some excuse to pass the time. It had a purpose; a deadly serious purpose. Becks was well aware that the ATV probably wouldn’t be able to take her all the way back to the highway, especially since the last ice storm brought down many trees and limbs. In fact, from what she had seen just around the post office, she would be lucky to drive even a few blocks with all the trees, debris, and zombie corpses.

  No, Becks knew her only chance of rescue was to literally run for her life. And for that, she needed protein and calories. She had recently found a shipment intended for Mr. Harvey Hornbecker of 18 Bridle Path Lane, which contained a 5-gallon plastic bucket full of “Emergency Meals.” The meals were pouches of varieties of pasta dishes, to which you added boiling water. No matter what Becks tried, they all turned out like the consistency of wallpaper paste, and didn’t taste much better, but at least they provided calories. But with her jerky gone, and none of her remaining supplies offering sufficient protein, she had to do something.

  Deer never travelled in this neighborhood, due to all the zombies under the snow, but Becks had never been able to bring herself to shoot one, anyway, even on her many hunting trips with Cam. She had seen squirrels running from tree to tree, but they were just too damn cute to harm even a hair on their bushy little tails. Bunnies were also out of the question, and she hadn’t seen any birds big enough to waste ammunition. That left only one thing.

  “Rats!” Becks groaned, realizing that if she was to get the necessary protein she needed fresh meat, and lots of it.

  Although she had pledged an oath to die before she ever ate raw rat, she did have fourteen George Foreman grills at her disposal, ordered by men and women all over town. There were several rat traps in the maintenance closet, and enough spoiled cheese spread sent from Minnie Connor to her sister, Maxie, (their parents obviously had a sense of humor) to use as bait.

  “Maybe there aren’t even any rats around here,” Becks said as she set three traps in the parking lot late one afternoon. “Maybe they’re all back in the storm drain and won’t come out until spring.”

  As she went to bed that night, Becks couldn’t decide whether or not she really wanted to catch any rats. While she had dissected her share of sanitized lab rodents in school, she didn’t know if she could skin and gut a filthy street rat, and then actually eat it! At first light, she grabbed a bucket and went outside to see if she would have to find out just how strong a stomach she possessed.

  Three traps, three rats—two dead and one huge one still squirming. Grimacing, she held down the body of the flailing rodent and quickly pulled her hunting knife across its throat. She wanted to gag, and actually stood up to go back inside, but the lightheadedness she experienced upon standing made her determined to go through with it.

  The first things to go were the tails—she was absolutely disgusted by rat tails. Then the feet were severed, followed by the two remaining heads. Peeling the dirty fur skins off the carcasses brought on the dry heaves, but that was nothing compared to gutting the little creatures. Heaping snow on top of the pile of rat organs and remains, so as not to attract zombies, Becks tossed the prepared bodies in the bucket and went inside to cook them.

  Firing up the generator, Becks plugged in one of the 14 George Foreman grills, and while it was heating up, she grabbed the box that contained all the bottles of hot sauce she had found in the packages. There was quite a collection, and it seemed that each one promised to be more brutally hot and painful than their competitors. She always liked reasonably spicy food, but she wondered how her digestive system would react after months of eating small quantities of bland food.

  Digging around in the box of bottles with colorful labels and clever names, she found one that was actually called Death by Zombie, Bitingly Hot Sauce. It seemed oh so wrong, yet right, all at the same time, so she sprinkled some on one of the rats and slapped it on the grill. On another one, she just sprinkled salt and pepper she found in the break room. For the third and largest rat, Becks coated it with some homemade Texas barbeque sauce that Angel Sanchez had mailed to his cousin Jorge, along with a photo of himself and some friends armed to the teeth in the back of a pickup truck. The truck had a sign taped to the tailgate which read, “Bring it on Zombie Mothafuckas.”

  Becks almost pitied the zombie population of that Texas town—if there were any still sta
nding.

  Once the aroma of the cooking meat hit her nostrils, her aversion to the idea of eating rat quickly dissipated.

  “Well, it doesn’t smell like chicken,” she said to Ginger, “but damn, it doesn’t smell bad!”

  Letting the meat get well done to make sure the heat killed anything these rats may have been carrying, she set the table with the monogrammed china plates and silver-plated flatware meant as a wedding gift to Donald and Sheila Percy of Belmont Avenue. Placing the crispy rats on the plate, she paused with a “What am I doing?” moment, but her growling stomach drowned out her mind’s protestations.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said, cutting off a hunk of BBQ rat, closing her eyes, and shoving it in her mouth.

  Chewing as hesitantly as if there might be broken glass in the meat, she slowly opened one eye, then the other, and began chewing in earnest. It was gamey, with a distinct flavor—to say the least—but not a completely bad flavor. The one with the zombie hot sauce was way too hot for her taste, but she ate it anyway. The one with only the salt and pepper was too…ratty, so she doused it in the Texas barbeque sauce and sucked the meat off every tiny rib and vertebrae.

  Waiting a couple of days to make sure she had no ill effects from the rodent meat, Becks then started setting five traps every evening. And rather than letting all the melted fat from the grill go to waste, she recalled that Civil War soldiers would break up their barely edible hardtack crackers and fry the pieces in bacon fat. In her Cold War/Apocalypse version, Becks ground up the Civil Defense crackers, added some spices, mixed in the rat fat to form a kind of dough, then grilled the little cakes. They weren’t great, but they didn’t suck, either, and she couldn’t afford to waste anything that would give her the strength to run and fight.

  After two weeks and dozens of grilled rats later, Becks was feeling strong. She joked to Ginger about starting to grow fur and whiskers, but she was grateful she had overcome her cultural disgust of the revolting vermin and had done what was necessary to survive. And with the temperatures routinely spending daylight hours in the forties now, she knew the snow would soon melt and it would be time to go.