Ran (Book 1): Apocalyptica

by Joshua Guess

“My first instinct is to fight,” I said. “And that’s dumb. We’re safe in here, and even if they somehow got in the house, we could easily just go to the bunker and close it off. There’s no immediate threat.”

  Robert nodded at this. “That makes sense. Shouldn’t we be worried about too many of them building up out there, though? What if they attract more?”

  I shrugged. “If there were a thousand of them, we wouldn’t have many options. Even a few dozen is a lot. I wouldn’t want to fight them with this many people out there on open ground. I suggest we radio Jem and Tony, let them know what’s up, and watch to see what happens. Remember, when they come home, they’ll be driving a loaded truck. Running down zombies will be a piece of cake.”

  “I can do that,” Maria said, glancing at me for approval. Suppressing a smile at the idea of someone needing my permission for anything, I nodded.

  “If you unlocked the guns, we could climb on the roof and kill them all,” Shane said. There was a muted round of reactions at this, making it pretty clear everyone had this thought.

  I tried my best not to look immediately dismissive. “Have you ever fired a gun?” I asked him.

  “A couple times,” Shane said, not at all defensive. “I mean, if we’re shooting from the roof at zombies ten feet away, it’d be pretty hard to miss.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I replied. “People who aren’t used to shooting can be spectacularly inaccurate, even dangerously so, when they first start. It has nothing to do with distance, just reactions. I’ve seen people flinch so badly at the expectation of pulling the trigger they shot twenty feet above a target.”

  Shane didn’t seem convinced by this. Nor, for that matter, did most of the others. Gregory, the mostly quiet redheaded man, cocked his head to one side. “I used to hunt. How about you and I go up there with rifles and pick them off?”

  The way he asked it was loaded, no pun intended. I couldn’t tell if anyone else caught the subtlety, but I decided to answer it outright. Better now than later, when things might grow out of hand.

  “You’re asking me if I trust you with one of my guns,” I said. “Before I answer that, let me point out a few other things. One is that there isn’t an ammunition tree where we can just harvest bullets. We’ll always be on the lookout for more, but we have to think long-term. Which means acting as if what we have is all we’ll have. Another thing to keep in mind is that these things are dead, not deaf. Gunshots carry a long way, and there are also living people out there who might not be as friendly as you.”

  This appeal to logic seemed to get through to them, which was my intent. The best way to convince someone to see your point of view, even when it treats them negatively, is to make them understand you’re not an idiot or an asshole.

  “And to answer Gregory’s implied question, no. I don’t trust any of you with guns.” I put up a hand to forestall the reactions I knew were coming. “I don’t know you well enough to trust you with weapons that could kill me or the people I care about so easily, not yet. I don’t know if you know this, but people have been known to act on a whim to take things they want from others. I’m not okay with risking that.”

  Gregory frowned. “Do you really think any of us would try to?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, stressing the words. “Which is the point. I like to think I’m pretty fair, so I want to give all of you the chance to get to know me while I do the same. Because the last thing I want to happen is to have my trust betrayed by someone who thinks a gun is going to gain them something from me.”

  Gregory opened his mouth to say something else, but Robert put a hand on his shoulder. The smaller man closed his mouth and swallowed whatever he’d been about to say.

  “I get it,” Robert said. “It’s only been a few days. I probably wouldn’t want to hand us weapons, either. But at some point we’ll have to defend ourselves. I don’t really think there’s any way to avoid it, the way things are.”

  “Sure,” I agreed. “If and when that comes up, I’ll be happy to arm you. I don’t want anyone to die because of my decisions.” I kept my voice level. “That includes me having to kill them because they aimed a weapon at me.”

  Robert recoiled. “You’d kill someone just—”

  “Absolutely,” I interrupted. “Have you looked outside?” I flung a hand toward a window, through which the shambling mass of zombies could be seen. “Those things are a threat to our lives, and we kill them without hesitation. Why would I act differently for someone who threatens my life? That’s what I want to avoid by getting this in the open now. Not misunderstandings, no mistrust because we’re not being honest with each other.”

  I glanced around the group, which was now absolutely quiet. I hadn’t wanted things to go this way. I didn’t want to put up the facts to bluntly, but that was life. “I just want us all to be safe. To work together. To get to know each other and build trust. But in the last few weeks the world fell apart, I was captured by murderers, and even before all that I had a lot of reasons to be suspicious. I’m willing to have you in my home, share our supplies and space with you, and all I want in return is some leeway to make sure we can all depend on each other.”

  Maria, who had finished making her call, spoke up from behind Robert. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m fine with that.”

  Gregory pursed his lips thoughtfully for a second, then bobbed his head. “I get it. I don’t like it, really, because I know I’m not going to hurt anyone, but I can see why you’re skeptical. It took a few days for me to trust Robert and the others.”

  “Maria,” I said, eager to distract everyone from starting a group discussion about the ways they’d mistrusted the others. “What did the boys say when you radioed them?”

  “They’re on the way back. Already had the truck loaded. The radio did a weird thing, though. Cut out for a second. Even the light went off.”

  I processed this information. There was a brief disconnect in my brain where my subconscious raised a flag but my intellect couldn’t quite make out what it was. Then it hit me.

  “Shit.” I walked into my bedroom, which was where the breaker box rested. It had a few extra bells and whistles thanks to my giant subterranean lair, one of which was a digital status readout.

  Everything was running on batteries. Incoming power was nonexistent. It wasn’t a disaster, but it would make things harder. I immediately began cataloging all the things we’d need to do in order to cook food, have light, shower…

  Fighting zombies might be more dangerous, but it was less frustrating.

  20

  We weren’t stupid about clearing the zombies out.

  Carla relayed the plan to the boys over the radio, then went about shutting down everything electrical that wasn’t absolutely critical to our survival. I had some solar panels in storage I’d never bothered to wire up, but they were going to provide a trickle of power compared to what we’d been drawing and using.

  I stood on the roof with everyone but Carla, Sandy, and Connor. No one wanted the girl and her brother anywhere even remotely dangerous, and Carla was coordinating with the boys. We watched as Jem got out of the eighteen wheeler, which was itself a bit of a surprise since they’d left in the box truck, and used himself as bait for the swarm.

  He did a great job, slowly teasing a dozen or so zombies over to the other side of the property and getting them between himself and the truck. Jem created some room, maybe ten yards, before Tony did his part just as well. The truck rolled forward slowly, gained a bit of momentum, then rammed into the rear of the smaller swarm in a burst of speed. Or at least as much as the lumbering vehicle could manage. It was good enough to knock down half of them.

  “Oh, that’s fucking awful,” Robert said as the sickening crunch of run-over bodies echoed across the ground.

  “Yep,” I said, swallowing the urge to vomit. “If you guys are ready, so am I.”

  Robert nodded and gestured to the others, who were ready to try out the idea I’d
come up with.

  Without resorting to our limited supply of ammunition, our options were few. Since there was no press for time, however, we could afford to take it slowly and use other means. More creative, safer methods of clearing the herd.

  In the distance, Jem loped easily across the field and jumped back in the truck. I smiled to myself as I imagined him watching what was about to transpire.

  “Okay, Gregory,” I said. “You and Maria go crazy.”

  The pair took their places on the porch roof, each raising a bow. Gregory had some experience from his hunting days, though he preferred guns. Maria, to my surprise, had much more. In her youth she’d done archery as a sport. It was longer ago than I was years old, but she assured me breaking off the rust wouldn’t be too difficult. Besides, we could always recover any missed arrows.

  While they picked targets with the two compound bows we had, a deficiency we needed to fix, the rest of us started doing our best impression of a bunch of cowboys. No, we didn’t wear chaps, even though I knew from a better-forgotten set of fashion decisions in college that I could pull them off.

  “Hook us a zombie,” I said to Shane, who stood at the front of a line formed by everyone but me. He held the end of a rope fashioned into a lasso. I lifted the bat onto my shoulder and stayed back as he worked.

  The first try missed; the loop caught the arm of a zombie but the cannibal pulled free before Shane could snap it tight. The second was better, indeed effective, but sloppy. He called out to the others, who, anchored by Robert, hauled on the rope to pull the zombie up until its head poked just over the edge of the roof.

  Unfortunately, the awkward way the lasso constricted trapped its left arm against its head, which made my job harder. I stepped forward quickly, raising the bat overhead, and tried to aim my shot.

  I broke the thing’s arm with the first hit, eliciting a garbled, unearthly wail along with the stomach-flipping sound of splintering bone.

  My second try was better, caving in the top left part of the skull.

  “Okay,” I said when the zombie went limp. “Haul her up so we can undo the rope.”

  We got the body just far enough over the edge to get the job done, then Robert picked it up by a hand and leg and tossed it into the yard.

  The corpse smashed into a zombie looking up at the odd display with vacant, hungry eyes.

  It was one of those moments in life where something so tragically awful happens that you just can’t help but laugh. Robert and I both burst into uncontrollable gales of laughter.

  “You guys are fucked up,” Maria said, glancing over at us.

  “I know,” I replied, still rattling off bursts of laughter as I spoke. “But you should’ve seen it. Like a deer in headlights.”

  The next zombie was easier for everyone as we worked out the kinks in the system. The one after that? Even smoother. By zombie number four my arms were starting to get tired, and I thought back to that initial urge to go a-swingin’ against the whole swarm by myself.

  Yeah. Not my best moment.

  Zombies five and six I killed with my knife. I’d have been a little concerned since Shane was still unable to consistently trap their arms, but without leverage they weren’t much of a threat. Besides, I stomped their wrists to make grabbing me almost impossible.

  It was boring. It took forever. And most important, it worked. If I had to explain what survival boiled down to in three sentences, it would be those.

  We didn’t kill all the zombies that way. If we had tried to, it would have taken all day and night. Beside which, not all the damn things came close enough to be lassoed. Zombies might be significantly more dumb than your average human, but they had at least the capacity to learn of an animal, and even animals know not to walk over to where one of their pack disappeared. Not when it happens fifteen times.

  Fortunately, our team wasn’t working alone. Maria and Gregory turned out to be pretty good shots, helped somewhat by the competition between the two spurred by several rounds of friendly shit-talking. Jem and Tony were likewise active, picking off zombies at the edges. Overall it was a surprisingly effective show of teamwork.

  I handed the bat off to Robert when we stepped onto the front porch. Most of the zombies were dead, but the few stragglers needed to be cleared up. I didn’t feel another fit coming on, and was lucky to have had one just before all this shit went down, but it had been a few hours. I worried the stress would have some kind of effect on the Nero in my system and give me another one.

  Carla put a hand on my shoulder as we stood on the porch and watched the last few zombies put up a fight when the boys chased them down.

  “You did great,” she said.

  “I didn’t have a bad reaction from the stress,” I said. “I’m pretty happy about that.”

  She glanced at me sideways. “Not what I mean, Ran.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “You lost me.”

  Carla chuckled. “I meant with the others. You did a good job with them. You acted like a leader.”

  I squirmed a little at that. “We all wanted to not die. In that situation, I don’t think I had to try very hard.”

  “Or,” Carla said, stretching out the word, “you could see it from another perspective. Which is that you got a group of people you just finished delivering bad news to, almost threatening them in the process, to work with you in a potentially dangerous situation.”

  I stared out at the land in front of us and shook my head. “You know, I’d feel like a better leader if I wasn’t so monumentally stupid. We fucked up, but early enough that it probably won’t kill us.”

  “How so?”

  “We relied on things staying the way they were,” I said, jerking a thumb over my shoulder toward the house. “Two weeks of electricity and we got comfortable. How are we going to cook? Battery power will drain in no time if we use it for that. Instead of putting all our effort into Tony’s plans, we should have been focusing on survival without things like electricity and running water.”

  Carla chewed her lip. “Well, we assumed…”

  “Exactly,” I said. “We assumed we had more time. We don’t. After we clear up these bodies, we have to get our shit together. This is going to get a lot harder. We need to rig up a way to cook inside without suffocating ourselves on wood smoke. We’ll have to collect water and purify it for drinking. How about hunting? Because the food we have and what we can find around town won’t last forever.”

  I heard the note of mild panic in my voice and stopped talking. Intellectually, I knew we were okay for a while. The water tanks in the bunker had long been topped off by the municipal supply. Our food stores gave us a lot of leeway.

  But I knew what could go wrong, and how quickly. My natural inclination was to control everything, to know every facet of every potential problem, and manage accordingly. Except now it wasn’t just me. If it was, then the only person I could hurt by fucking up was myself.

  Apparently I mumbled this out loud, because Carla squeezed my shoulder firmly. “You’re putting too much on yourself. You just told me what we need to do. Let me handle the details. You go inside and rest for a bit. I’ll tell the others you’re feeling under the weather.”

  I wanted to tell her how to build a jet stove out of a coffee can and cinder blocks so everyone could at least cook a little food. Or the best way to capture rainwater, what materials to use, despite the perfectly clear skies with no hint of precipitation in them. I felt the crazy sort of rise up all at once, and recognized it for the panic-induced overreaction it was.

  So I went inside and flopped down on the bed. Nikola padded over and climbed up with me, his comforting weight pressed against my side. Like, my entire side. My dog is huge.

  The thing about panic disorders is that you don’t have much control over them. Mine isn’t inherent. It’s not a structural thing. It’s chemical, sure, but built upon the foundation of my youthful adventures. Nor was it the crushing weight many other people suffered under.

&nb
sp; But man, it was enough.

  Nikola whined, which was odd for him. He’d bark or growl in the face of danger, but he never whined. The keening only increased, and kept going right until the first seizure hit me.

  It wasn’t as terrible as it could have been. Certainly not as bad as the earlier attacks. By my reckoning I only had the one, and it couldn’t have lasted very long. What followed was the single oddest sensation of my life. Once upon a time I had a CT scan, and the dye injection made my entire body warm up instantly. Not like a fever, but like a microwave burrito. Which, considering the amount of X-rays involved, probably wasn’t far from the truth.

  This was similar, but beyond. All of a sudden my body warmed to uncomfortable levels. Ten seconds later it felt like ice water replaced my blood. My muscles, rather than firing at random and trying to crush me with contractions, began tensing and relaxing in waves. Every tension brought a surge of heat, every relaxation a wash of cool.

  I became acutely aware of every errant draft of air on my skin. Hypersensitivity made me feel the coarse, dense fur pressed against me in exquisite detail.

  Keeping an eye on the clock was impossible since I’d never put batteries in it and the main power was off, but this phase didn’t last long either. Call it ten minutes.

  I would learn later that someone called this experience the Shivers, a name which stuck as the most common way of referencing it. Another, less frequently used name was Nero’s Shakes. It was a side-effect of a complex set of biological processes driven by the combination of the virus and my own physiology.

  But I didn’t know that then. At the moment the fit ended, the only thing I felt aside from the gaping void of the unknown before me was an intense, powerful need to eat. The only thing I knew was the basic shape and size of all the stuff I didn’t know.

  It wasn’t an unfamiliar state of being for me. I was perhaps uniquely suited to it. My job, my passion, was the pursuit of knowing things. Figuring them out as a means of striking down the fear all people seem to have for the things they don’t understand.