Chronicles of the Undead | Book 1 | Urban Gridlock

by Hernandez, Jaime

  “Thanks man,” he said hopping to his feet. “Name’s Vince.” He was around six feet tall, with dark blonde hair wearing jeans, a t-shirt, a ripped flannel shirt and black boots. “Cool if I hop over?” He lifted his shirt to show he was unarmed. A chain attached to his belt loop hung down to reveal a hint of a black wallet sitting in his pocket. His well-muscled arms were heavily tattooed, and his left forearm was wrapped tightly with a piece of his torn flannel shirt. Dark red blotches stained the strip of flannel.

  “Were you bitten?” Max asked in response.

  “Nah man, I laid down my bike this morning. Road rash, that’s all,” Vince replied holding his arms up to show them. Max and Jesse exchanged a quick look. Jesse nodded and Max told Vince to come across.

  “Max,” He said, taking Vince’s hand in a firm grip. He recognized the telltale signs of road rash on the man’s arm.

  Vince turned to reach his hand out to Jesse. “Jesse. You laid down your bike?” It was a natural question for him as he and Max were avid riders themselves. He couldn’t imagine trying to weave through the dead on a motorcycle.

  “Yeah and I’d been customizing that baby for years,” Vince said. “No choice but to leave it. Damage wasn’t anything I couldn’t fix, but I’d need a flatbed to get it home.”

  Max and Jesse nodded, commiserating with Vince.

  “How long have you been up on the train?” Max asked him.

  “A few hours I guess. Resting up a bit before trying the interstate,” Vince answered.

  “Where you headed to?” asked Jesse.

  “I’ve got a place in Bay,” Vince said. “Not really sure what my plan is from there. If my house is clear I figured I might pack a bag, get in my truck and head west. Open country and open water and all that.”

  Conversation started to flow easily among the three of them as they settled in and relaxed. Max and Jesse both popped bottles of water and handed one to Vince.

  Vince accepted the water, thanking them and telling them he had a backpack full of food and water on top of the other boxcar if they needed anything. He lit a cigarette then offered the pack to Max and Jesse. They all sat back and relaxed while Vince told them what led to him being on top of the train.

  Chapter 17

  Day 2

  It turned out that Vince ran a popular blue collar bar a few blocks from Public Square. It served good food, good beer and had even better IPAs on tap. Max and Jesse had been there before for lunch with some of the guys. They had liked the place.

  It was at the start of lunch hour yesterday when everything went to shit. Vince was behind the bar; a couple cooks were in the kitchen and two bartenders were pulling double duty bartending and waiting a dozen tables since it was lunch hour. He’d been half watching the news reports on one of the TVs above the bar while he served a mixture of regulars and other patrons sitting at the bar. The news reports were getting pretty bad, so he turned up the volume on all three TVs. Everyone in the place gradually stopped talking as the news grabbed their full attention.

  There were reports of NYC being on fire and video showing countless skyscrapers burning. People on the ground were attacking each other. They showed the airplane crash in Philly, Florida beaches full of dead people, Atlanta falling to the dead, areas of DC being taken over by the dead, people fighting viciously in Detroit as the cops tried to hold back the crowd of attackers, and then the news had flashed to a local hospital that was at the far edge of downtown. Everyone in the bar either sat glued to a TV or started talking to each other in hushed tones. Mostly it seemed like people were in disbelief.

  A couple that had ordered but hadn’t yet received their food threw a twenty on the bar and hurried out the door. During the few seconds that the door was open Vince was sure that he had heard screams outside. He headed over to the door to take a look outside and saw people running all over the place. He watched for a moment as some people shuffled about aimlessly, attempting to reach for others who ran by. About ten feet away a young woman tripped and was immediately pounced upon by zombies. She screamed as one tore at her fingers, ripped several of them off and started eating them one by one. Her scream was cut short when a security guard bent over her and slowly pulled a golf ball sized chunk of flesh from her neck. Blood ran down his face as he chewed on the gooey lump of skin, muscle and nerves. Her neck had thin, ragged sinewy strips of tattered bloody flesh still attached at the edge of the gaping hole. She bled out within seconds.

  Less than a minute later Vince watched as her eyes opened and she slowly and clumsily made her way to her feet. The dead moved achingly slow, but their grips were incredibly strong. She reached out and managed to grab hold of some poor guy who happened to be pushing past her at exactly the wrong moment. She held fast to one of his arms and tried to bite him as he struggled with both hands to push her away. Without loosening her grip on his arm she bit down on his fingers, pulling one loose while mangling the rest. He writhed in pain as she took a bite from his upper arm, pulling viciously and ripping his bicep completely free as his arm spurted incredible amounts of blood.

  Vince’s attention was drawn to a taxi driver who was running directly toward the door of his bar seeking the safety and shelter within. Vince started to open the door to let him in when one of the dead tried to grip his arm and managed to graze the back of the driver’s arm with its teeth. Just after the man barreled through the door Vince slammed it closed on the zombie standing just behind him. The taxi driver wasn’t bitten. It looked like a few teeth had barely grazed him, just enough to draw a tiny pinprick of blood.

  Nearly everyone in the bar had started panicking at that point. There was a lot of yelling and screaming, especially by those who’d seen the view outside when Vince had briefly opened the door. Vince made the quick decision to shut down the bar and told everyone inside that they were free to leave or stay but they had to decide right then and there. Of the three dozen or so inside, about two dozen chose to leave. A handful slipped out the front door right into the arms of the waiting dead, their screams harrowing to listen to. The majority of the group that chose to leave moved to sneak out the emergency door at the rear of the bar.

  The rear of the bar opened up to an alleyway. Vince opened the door carefully and saw that it was mostly clear of the dead. The leaving customers slipped out quietly. He had no idea whether any of them had made it to safety or not.

  The only people left in the bar with Vince were the two cooks, the two bartenders, three regulars and the taxi driver. Vince tasked everyone with helping him to shore up the windows and the front door. Within minutes there were overturned tables pushed against the windows at the front of the bar. A chair was wedged under the doorknob at an angle, making it nearly impossible for anyone to open the door from the outside. The windows were darkened as most were in bars, so the dead couldn’t see inside. Everything was locked up so Vince figured that if everyone stayed quiet they would be safe staying inside.

  The nine of them sat at the bar watching the news continue to unfold on the oversized TVs mounted above. Vince turned one of the TVs to a local news channel and watched as a helicopter news team streamed live video from the Terminal Tower and Public Square. He couldn’t believe how fast everything had fallen apart. They watched as the police and SWAT teams were overrun and they saw the helicopter crash. The local news feed went quiet for a few minutes after the crash. Just a few blocks away he felt the ground shake from the resulting explosion.

  After that, his cooks changed their minds about staying because they both had families at home that they wanted to get to. Vince had wished them luck and had let them out the back door to the alley. He was left with the three regulars, the two bartenders and the taxi driver.

  There was plenty of food and drink so he figured his best bet was to stay there to see if he could ride this thing out. He had a shotgun under the bar and a loaded handgun with a couple spare magazines in the safe in his office. If he had to leave, his bike was parked in the alley near the rear exit.
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  They had watched the news for hours. Some hotshot award winning reporter got himself killed at the local airport while trying to win himself another award. Cities around the country showed widespread destruction and dead activity as city after city fell to the dead. Some news channels started showing videos on a loop without any new reports. Around midafternoon a breaking news banner began playing on a loop at the bottom of every channel. It gave warnings about the dead, that everyone who was bitten was infected, that there was no cure, that the only way to kill the dead was to destroy the brain and so on. There had been something about FEMA shelters being put in place, but Vince couldn’t imagine how they could have set anything up quickly enough in order for any of the shelters to be safe. He had no intention of going to one.

  Around dinnertime he threw some burgers on the cooktop in the kitchen and brought plates of food out for everyone left in the bar. His three regulars kept knocking down beers as well as the occasional shot. Vince himself stayed sober, but he kept the alcohol flowing freely for those who wanted it.

  As he was absentmindedly clearing plates to take back to the kitchen, one of his bartenders started screaming. In his shock, Vince dropped the plates and rushed back to the bar. The taxi driver had turned. The tiny drop of blood he’d shown from an infected tooth grazing his skin had been enough to turn him into a zombie. He’d been sitting next to Holly and when he turned he’d simply leaned sideways toward her and had bitten through her left cheek. As she shrieked, his fingers dug into the hole on the side of her face and roughly ripped her tongue out through the empty space that had been the left side of her face. Her silence came abruptly. The taxi driver sat there taking bites from her tongue as he held it in his right hand. On the other side of Holly, one of the regulars caught her as she fell sideways onto him.

  Vince saw it all unfold as he was rushing back from the kitchen. Holly turned within seconds and was already a zombie by the time she fell onto the regular sitting beside her. Her teeth instantly tore into his abdomen then she used her hands to pry his chest open exposing perfectly symmetrical ribs covered in blood and tissue, and she started feasting on the organs within. His screams lasted longer than Holly’s had as the other bartender jumped up and broke a bottle over Holly’s head to no avail. As she stabbed Holly’s head repeatedly with the jagged half of the bottle in her hand, the taxi driver slipped behind her and bit into her neck and shoulder. The regular with his gut and chest torn open became one of the dead and managed to chomp onto a finger of the next regular as he struggled to stand up and pull away.

  Vince grabbed the shotgun from beneath the bar and spent all five shells killing the taxi driver, Holly, the other bartender and one of the regulars. In his haste one of his shells went wide and was wasted but the other four hit their marks. It was then that he understood just how this thing had spread so quickly.

  He was left alone in the bar with just two of his regulars, one of whom had been bitten and was sure to turn at some point. Minor bites like his seemed to take a long time to turn, whereas major bites caused people to turn instantaneously.

  Vince was stunned when the bitten man asked him to cut his hand off. The man knew that he was going to turn in a matter of hours and wanted to try to stop the infection before it could spread. With little time to think and even less time to act, his other regular removed his own belt to form a tourniquet. While Vince rushed back to the kitchen to grab a butcher knife, the other two men downed a couple shots together. They’d been regulars together for years. They didn’t hang out anywhere else but spent hours together nearly every day sitting at the bar.

  Vince took a deep breath, waited as the man took a long pull from a bottle of whiskey and looked to both men to make sure they were ready. Vince brought the knife down as hard as he could. It severed the man’s hand cleanly just below the wrist. The tourniquet seemed to help with the blood spray, but the man was still heavily bleeding. He let out a muffled yell then his eyes fell closed. Vince figured the pain had caused him to pass out. He poured alcohol over the wound and wrapped it with some clean towels. When the man opened his eyes again Vince could see that he was no longer one of the living. The severing of his hand had just sped up his death turning him into a zombie. The other regular who had given his belt pulled a handgun from an unseen holster and shot the man in the head.

  Vince and the man looked at each other, both stunned at what had happened. They were the only two left and neither were bitten. They had both made a lot of noise firing their guns but there was so much noise outside that none of the dead out there seemed to notice anything. They were both still in agreement about staying in the bar.

  Vince decided to put together a bag of supplies just in case he was forced to leave quickly. He grabbed his handgun and the extra magazines from his safe and grabbed most of the cash that had been locked inside. He filled a backpack with as much bottled water as he could. He grabbed chips, fruit and beef jerky. Most of the food in the kitchen needed to be cooked to be of use so he threw some hamburger patties on the cooktop.

  He found a backpack that had belonged to one of his cooks and filled it with water, food and the remaining money from his safe. He handed it to his regular, so he’d have something if they had to make a run for it. By that time night had fallen.

  Unable to sleep, Vince kept stealing quick glimpses of what was happening outside from a tiny corner of one of the windows. Zombies shuffled about everywhere as far as he could see. Fires burned throughout the city and a faint trace of acrid smoke had crept into the bar. It was right about that time that Vince noticed that the smell of smoke had grown stronger and there was smoke visible outside near his window. A quick look at the small monitors in his office showed that his security cameras at the front and rear doors revealed that the establishment next to his had caught fire. Given that nothing but some concrete and a brick wall separated the two businesses, he knew he had very little time before his bar would go up in flames.

  Vince grabbed his go bag then he headed back to the kitchen to throw a half dozen of the burgers he’d cooked into a zip-lock bag and added it to his food stash. He tossed another bagful to his regular. They both grabbed a couple bottles of whiskey for medicinal purposes.

  They both slipped out the back door into the alley and took off in opposite directions. Vince rode his bike and weaved his way toward the interstate making constant detours through alleys and small one-way streets. As careful as he was there were just too many zombies. He laid down his bike just before the bridge he was now under. The dead had crowded him and grabbed at him and his bike. He fired off a half dozen shots before climbing down under the bridge. For a while, the zombies had cartwheeled over the side of the bridge landing on the rocky path below or on the nearby rusted tracks. He’d climbed up onto a boxcar and they lost sight of him. After dozing on and off for several hours, he’d woken up to the sounds of Max and Jesse entering the tunnel.

  Chapter 18

  Day 2

  Max and Jesse were blown away by Vince’s story, especially the part about the people in the bar turning so quickly. They had been eager to hear some news other than what little they knew from what they had experienced themselves. Hearing about the details broadcasted by the news channels was chilling. Knowing that most, if not their entire country had fallen was tough to take. All of those new details made them both feel a bit more frantic about getting home to their families.

  Vince seemed like a solid guy. They knew his bar and his story rang true. With all three of them on foot now, having Vince join them seemed like a no brainer. They could use an extra set of hands and he was the only living person they had come across so far.

  After getting more comfortable with each other as Vince had told his story, he hopped back to the other boxcar for his gear. He had a shotgun, a handgun with two full magazines, a crowbar, some water and some food. He pulled out the burger patties. Knowing they wouldn’t keep much longer in the heat, they split the remainder between them and ate their fill. They felt
good having some real food in their stomachs rather than just protein bars and smashed potato chips.

  They still had six hours of daylight left, so they decided to make their next move. Both Max and Jesse had decided they couldn’t waste that precious time when their families were waiting for them. They huddled together forming their plan for the interstate. It wasn’t enough to get onto the interstate. They would need to find a vehicle quickly. From what they could see, the highway looked passable for the most part. Shit fell apart so quickly the day before that only so many people were able to take to their cars to try to drive away from the chaos. Yesterday’s chaos would help them tremendously today. Traffic didn’t appear to be gridlocked nor did the highway appear to be overly full of cars. It was hard to tell anything for sure though from their vantage point.

  Their plan was fairly simple. They would follow the train the rest of the way to the onramp overpass. They were on top of a line of double boxcars back to back with two of them sitting below the bridge. Once they got closer they’d find out whether or not it would be an easy climb, but regardless they were determined to make the climb.

  They gave Vince a pair of heavy work gloves, a hammer and a screwdriver and redistributed some of their gear among the three of them so that it was weighted more evenly. Vince kept his handgun but handed Jesse the shotgun and a single box of shells. Jesse fashioned a sling from some of the rope so his hands would be free. Max’s shoulder was tweaked so after some debate they had decided Jesse would carry the gun.

  A sudden crash, as loud as an explosion drew their eyes toward what they could still see of the Terminal Tower building. It had been burning steadily since yesterday afternoon and had reached its structural limits. They watched as the building collapsed to the ground. The noise was deafening, and enormous clouds of smoke and debris billowed up and out in all directions.