Chronicles of the Undead | Book 1 | Urban Gridlock

by Hernandez, Jaime

  Anna, Camille and Damon all sat in stunned silence for a moment.

  “We have to board up the house,” Anna said.

  “Mom, what about Dad?” Damon asked. “You saw downtown…” he trailed off.

  Anna looked them both in the eye and said, “Dad will make it home. We need to make sure we keep safe until he gets here.” She was relieved when they both nodded resolutely in response.

  Chapter 3

  Day 1

  Michelle Ramirez was busy in the kitchen making homemade potato salad, Cole slaw, beans and a cheesecake for the cookout tomorrow. She was thinking about making a batch of chocolate chip cookies, too. She enjoyed cooking and baking so much that she tended to make much more than they needed. But she figured nothing would go to waste with four hungry teenagers there. She ate almost as much as they did, although you would never suspect it given her petite size. She was tiny but made up for it with her confidence, loudmouth and attitude.

  She was looking forward to spending the day at Anna and Max’s house and was nearly as excited as the kids were about their pool being open. They lived in Avon, a western suburb of Cleveland. They could almost walk to the beach along Lake Erie, but the water quality was generally questionable. Plenty of people swam in it and it wasn’t as bad as beaches further east, but Michelle generally preferred the pool over the lake. Besides, when the beer and margaritas started flowing, it would probably result in a family sleepover at the Lopez house.

  Joey and Lucia were in the family room watching TV and arguing over the remote like typical teenagers. They were both good natured, they loved each other and generally got along great, but they also enjoyed arguing. They tended to argue just for the sake of arguing. They were both competitive so they one upped each other until someone won the fight. They were both smart and quick with good comebacks, so Michelle secretly enjoyed listening to them go back and forth with each other.

  Lucia was going to start high school in the fall. She excelled in school and planned to try out for varsity cheerleading after enjoying junior varsity in middle school. She was a bit boy crazy, but who wasn’t at that age. She had her dad’s dark curly hair, deep brown eyes, sun kissed skin, and his height, but she had her mom’s smile, nose and attitude. When she wanted something she worked hard to get it. She inherited that trait from both Michelle and Jesse.

  Joey resembled both his mom and dad so much, that he constantly heard people say that he looked just like one or the other. At times Michelle thought he was a spitting image of Jesse; other times she saw herself in his face. He had straight black hair like her, though he wore it pretty short. He shared her height, but he was still so young that he was likely to tower over her by the time he finished growing. His eyes were almost black like hers and he smiled easily, but when he wasn’t smiling his face had an intimidating angry look just like his dad’s did.

  Michelle listened to her kids arguing in the family room for a moment.

  “Keep rolling your eyes and maybe you’ll find a brain back there,” Joey taunted his sister.

  “Shut up shithead, quit blocking the TV,” Lucia replied as Joey stood in front of the television blocking her view.

  “Why don’t you try using some glue instead of lip gloss, dumbass,” Joey shot back.

  “Brother for sale,” yelled Lucia. “Really cheap!”

  “Joey! Lucia! Knock it off,” Michelle hollered toward the family room. Even though she secretly enjoyed listening to them trying to top each other with their insults and arguments, she still had to be mom. The TV remote fell to the floor with a thud and a news channel popped up on the screen. “Leave it,” she ordered. “You’re stuck with the news.” She stifled a smile upon hearing their moaning and groaning about being bored.

  They quietly squabbled back and forth for a moment; then they were completely silent. Michelle walked into the room to see what was going on since they were rarely quiet. She looked to see them both glued to the TV screen. Her eyes followed theirs to see a big breaking news banner that topped the screen as a lone solemn looking reporter stood in front of a Cleveland hospital. The newsfeed didn’t seem to have any sound, yet the studio didn’t cut back to the newsroom as they usually did when there were technical problems. The reporter was a young woman dressed rather casually with blond hair falling sloppily from her bun. She wasn’t in full make-up. Her lips were moving continuously, and her expression was grave.

  There was a steady flow of people moving frantically a short distance behind her all around the emergency room entrance. Ambulances were everywhere, most parked haphazardly with doors hanging open. Paramedics were rushing bloody patients into the hospital. Screams plastered most of the faces. Piercing, horrified screams that were felt even though they couldn’t be heard. Some injured rescue workers lay scattered on the ground. Other people with horrific, bloody wounds stumbled and shuffled about aimlessly until they came in contact with nurses and aids rushing out of the hospital toward them. At once, at least a dozen nurses and staff were overcome by the people who had been stumbling around.

  The newsfeed’s sound suddenly came to life as the hospital staff started screaming. The injured people were viciously attacking the nurses who had rushed out to help them. They bit and clawed at them, removing chunks of flesh from arms and necks and biting off fingers. Most of the nurses and hospital staff were on the ground within seconds. A balding middle aged man grabbed a woman’s cheek and tore it from her face then held it up to his mouth to chew on it. The few paramedics who had still been standing were hopelessly fighting off the attackers, and were quickly losing the battle. The people attacking them were brutal in their ferociousness. One ripped a young man’s throat out with his teeth, chewed for a moment then bent down for another bite of the man’s neck. At the second bite all fight left the man as he was clearly dead. Yet just seconds later the young man’s head started to wobble from side to side as he sat up. He slowly clawed his way to his feet and immediately grabbed the arm of a screaming nurse. He pulled her arm to his mouth as she tried to fight him off then took a huge stringy, bloody bite from her forearm. As she continued screaming, he bit several of her fingers and severed them from her hand. Then he stood there and slowly ate one after the other.

  The young reporter spoke louder as the screams rose, and she risked a glance backward after looking beyond the camera, presumably at her camera man who had been trying to get her attention. “Holy shit! We have to get out of here now,” She yelled to her camera crew. One brave camera operator held a shaky camera up to capture as much footage as possible as they retreated. On the open mic, there were panicked yells as the crew attempted to escape to their news van. Blood splattered across the camera lens just as the camera fell to the ground. Van doors opened and closed. The final image showed the young blond reporter lying on her side on the ground, her eyes lifeless as her guts were being torn from her body. The screen went blank.

  Michelle grabbed the TV remote from where it had fallen on the floor and switched to a news channel. New York City was on fire. A news helicopter flew above the chaos zooming in on different areas all over the city as a reporter aboard the chopper spoke. The camera views were hazy through the billowing smoke climbing skyward throughout the city. The Brooklyn Bridge was packed with people, but no one seemed to be going anywhere. They all stood still or shuffled about slowly and randomly in the packed space. Thousands of faces looked up as the helicopter hovered above them. Most of them were bloody and their eyes seemed vacant.

  Michelle turned up the volume and started paying attention to what the reporter was saying. He talked about a virus that was killing people. People were bitten, they died, but they didn’t stay dead. They got back up and attacked other people feeding on their flesh. He said that a bite was a death sentence, and that everyone who was bitten changed. New York was lost.

  The news channel cut to another report, this one covering the White House. There was no reporter this time. The news channel was funneling feeds from various remote cameras t
o their broadcast. At least a thousand dead people shuffled around the White House lawn. Sharpshooters on the roof were taking down one undead person after another, but there were so many that for each one taken down another took its place. Large portions of the fence were down, and tanks were visible. Military choppers flew above firing large caliber machine guns down into the crowd of the dead. Some stayed down while others rose back up with gaping holes in their chests, missing arms, huge chunks blown from their bodies. The sharpshooters were taking headshots at the dead, and every headshot stayed down. The machine gunners were ripping holes through the crowd but at rapid fire, many of them weren’t hit in the head. The news channel ran a constantly moving banner at the bottom of the screen giving brief updates on various cities, telling people to stay in their homes, to avoid being bitten, bites were deadly, the dead could only be killed if the brain was destroyed, if you’ve been bitten isolate yourself, rescue centers were being set up in sports arenas in large cities, and so on.

  The picture on the screen abruptly changed to a shot of the presidential podium standing empty. The picture was shrunk to the upper corner of the screen as a studio news anchor appeared. She reported that there had been no word from the White House in the last hour. The President had been taken down to the bunker, but communication had ceased an hour ago. The reporter hypothesized that the President may have been lost, but she had no confirmation to back up her report. Her fellow news anchor criticized her on live TV for such dangerous speculation, saying the military was still functioning and protecting the White House and the American people. Secret Service Agents were still on the roof firing at the dead. It was likely that the President was meeting with his advisors in the midst of this crisis and dangerously presumptuous to suggest otherwise. The news anchors actually briefly glared at each other before looking back to the camera.

  They cut to a live camera feed coming from Florida with images showing the beaches full of dead people, some standing, some stumbling around, but none living. The feed changed again, this time showing Atlanta. People were screaming, running, fleeing the dead. Police officers on the ground and military in helicopters were firing on the dead. The police were close to being overrun but continued to hold their ground. The camera feed changed again to show Detroit. The carnage wasn’t nearly as bad. People were being attacked and rising back up, but the dead didn’t yet outnumber the living. There was a lot of fighting as people struggled to escape and survive. The camera feed changed again. This time it was focused on Cleveland.

  “Holy shit,” Michelle said. She watched the helicopter vantage point as it passed back and forth over the square at the Terminal Tower. Jesse was there. She couldn’t see him, but that’s where he was working.

  “Oh my god,” sobbed Lucia. She had been crying since they had watched the first news broadcast. She sobbed uncontrollably when she saw that it was happening here and that her dad was in the middle of it.

  “Fuuuuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Joey yelled with his hands in his hair.

  Michelle grabbed her cell phone and called Jesse. It rang and rang. No voicemail and no answer. She tried again and got a recording that all circuits were busy.

  “Lucia, give me your phone.” When Lucia didn’t immediately respond, Michelle yelled at her and demanded her phone. Lucia shakily handed it to her mom.

  Michelle tried to call Jesse again, this time with Lucia’s phone. She got the same recording. She tried again and got nothing but a static silence.

  “We have to go,” Michelle told her children. “They’re downtown. They may already be here. We have to go. This place isn’t secure.”

  Lucia looked stunned and she shook her head in disbelief. Joey nodded his head in understanding and agreement. He knew that their house wasn’t defendable. It was a brick ranch with a small front yard that sat close to the street. The two acres that ran deep behind their house was surrounded by a privacy fence, but the front of the house was completely exposed.

  Chapter 4

  Day 1

  Downtown, the black and red news chopper hovered over the casino as it captured images of thousands of people in and around the square. Most of them were of the dead searching for living victims to consume. The pilot’s adrenaline was running high as he took in the scene below while the news anchor kept pointing him in different directions. He was hovering near the roof of the casino close to the Terminal Tower building that it was attached to. Suddenly shards of glass rained down on the chopper scratching but bouncing off the windshield. Then the rotor made a strange noise and seized up. They were only a dozen stories from the ground but being so close to the building the pilot had no time or room to maneuver. The helicopter pitched nose forward and dropped face down into the ground on the square. The propeller blades broke off and flew in different directions hitting some of the dead on the ground and breaking through a group of windows. Everyone on board was killed instantly.

  Max and Jesse both flinched and took cover when they saw the glass hit the helicopter. Smoke had instantly appeared at the base of the rotors. They didn’t know if the dead had broken through the windows trying to reach the noise of the helicopter, or if the living had hoped to be pulled to safety from the building. It didn’t really matter because the helicopter had been damaged and quickly crashed to the ground. Flames appeared on impact and after a minute or two the flames reached the fuel tank causing a massive explosion.

  Max pulled out his phone to call Annalise. There was nothing there. No ringing, no recording, just silence. He tried again and found the same result.

  “Try your phone,” he hollered at Jesse. “Mine’s not working.”

  Jesse called Michelle. The phone didn’t connect; he just heard a static silence.

  “Fuck! No signal, nothing,” he yelled back to Max. “I’m going to try texting her. Maybe it’ll go through.” They both started typing messages to their wives. Jesse told Michelle to grab the guns, ammo and hunting knives, then whatever else they could gather up fast. He told her to find a way to get her and the kids to Max and Anna’s house and to stay there. Wait there for him, he would get there somehow. He was about to send the message, then added “head shots only”. He ended the message telling her that he loved her. He turned to Max and saw Max hit the send button on his own phone then slip it into his pocket.

  “We’ve got to move,” Max yelled. “The top three floors of the hotel are empty unless any of the crew stayed for lunch. Maybe we’ll find some of the guys in there.”

  They carefully climbed through one of the enlarged luxury suite windows and unclipped their safety harnesses from the line. As they walked further into the empty suite, the screams from outside diminished slightly. The suites were unfinished, but they were structurally complete. The luxury suites were each the equivalent of two stories due to obscenely high ceilings, so the top three floors of the hotel actually covered about six stories. During all of their recent overtime, they had nearly completed construction on all three floors and were working mostly on the exterior touches around the newly enlarged windows. Inside each suite, all of the rooms had been rebuilt, kitchens and bathrooms were in place, and staircases had been finished in the suites that encompassed two floors. Those that had two floors, in reality, took up the space of four floors with their high ceilings. No paint, tile, carpet or décor of any kind had been installed.

  The lower six floors of the hotel contained regular rooms and were currently in use. Max hoped that since it was lunchtime on a Friday, most of the rooms would be unoccupied. They were going to have to make their way out of the hotel and he didn’t relish the thought of finding it full of dead people. Hell, he thought, what the fuck were they going to do once they got out of the hotel? The streets outside were full of thousands of the dead. He thought about how many thousands of people must work downtown throughout all of the office buildings. How many might be alive and safe and how many were now among the dead. He just shook his head. They had a long road ahead of them.

  “Let’s try the
lunchroom,” Jesse said. The lunchroom was actually just another suite down at the end of the hall where they kept a fridge, microwave, table and chairs. Four suites stood between them and the lunchroom on either side of the hall. No doors had been installed yet, so every suite on the floor was open to the long hallway. The end of the hallway near the stairwell housed the tools they were still using to finish the remodel. Since it was nearly completed most of their tools had been removed by the construction company.

  Max nodded. They slowly and carefully made their way past each suite, checking to make sure no surprises awaited them. The sounds outside of sirens, vehicles crashing and people screaming were still easily heard even in the hallway but were definitely more muted than they had been near the open window. They found each suite empty as they approached the last one to check the lunchroom area. There was a strange moaning sound and shuffling footsteps that sounded like someone walking around wearing a pair of slippers that was two sizes too big.

  “Fuck,” Max said quietly. “Let’s see who it is.” He knew it had to be one of their buddies from the crew. No one else ever spent time on the top three floors. They rounded the corner to peek just inside the doorway. The suite had a foyer the size of a bathroom. Straight ahead was the large living area. To the left of the living area were two large bedrooms and a luxury bathroom the size of his kitchen at home. To the immediate right was a small bathroom. Just past the bathroom and living area off to the right was the kitchen. There was an open first aid kit on one of the counters, its contents strewn all over the place. Fred was stumbling around in the kitchen bumping into the walls and counters. He was a tall, muscular guy they had worked with for the last decade. His arm was heavily bandaged and thick with congealed blood.