Survival In The Zombie Apocalypse | Book 1 | Worse Than Dead

by Brett, Cal

  “Sunshine,” the woman said, “why don’t you take a look and see what’s in those bags?”

  The thin woman knelt down and began going through their things. She grumbled as she pulled the cans of soup and dried foods out. “God damn, do you know how much sodium is in this crap? All these preservatives will kill you faster than those Undies, man.”

  Finally she looked up at her companion and said, “Nothing but shit food and standard survival gear.”

  “Ok,” the black woman said. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Kelly,” she answered, “and this is Robbie. We were living downtown but we thought life might be better over on the river. So, we were moving. We didn’t know there was anyone else out here, really.”

  “What did you do before?” the lady glared at her.

  “I was a student, at the state college,” Kelly continued, “working on my Masters in Fine Arts.”

  “And?”

  “And?” Kelly asked puzzled, “…and I worked at Applebee’s on the weekends, and taught art classes at the Senior Center on Wednesday nights. We, my husband and I, were saving to buy some land out of town where we could build a house, and…”

  “Alright, that’s enough,” the woman pushed. “You and your husband there been on your own this whole time?”

  “No,” Kelly stammered, “I mean, he’s not my husband.”

  The black woman lifted an eyebrow.

  “He’s my brother in law,” Kelly quickly added.

  The two older women shared a questioning glance and looked back at her.

  Kelly got the feeling they didn’t believe her. “But, there were more of us at first. One by one things happened, you know, some people just left to go find their families and never came back. Others, well, the zombies were everywhere in the beginning. We lost people. Friends. Good friends.”

  “What happened to your husband?” the thin woman asked.

  “He…” Kelly started. Her eyes had started to well up. “He went out for supplies about two years ago. We haven’t seen him since. We’ve looked but…”

  The two older ladies stared at her.

  “Look,” Kelly sobbed, “we can go. We don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “Ok honey,” the black woman said lowering her shotgun. “Why don’t you come out of the corn and let Sunshine take a look at your ankle?”

  Kelly hesitatingly crawled from the thick stalks which she now realized were corn. She kept her hands up and when she was out, she leaned back against the stacked railroad tie that made up the container wall. Looking up she saw light beaming in from the ceiling and realized it was not a regular roof at all. It was the glass roof of a green house. There were large areas where the glass was dark because of the growth on the top but, even then, pinholes of light broke through.

  “Oooh!” Kelly groaned as she stretched out her leg. “No wonder he broke through. We didn’t know it was glass. It was so dark.”

  “Yes,” the black woman said. “We have been meaning to clean it off but we aren’t as spry as we used to be.”

  “Hold still,” the woman called Sunshine said as she looked at Kelly’s ankle. “Oh, that is swelled up pretty bad, man. We totally need to get your foot out of this boot.”

  “Are you a doctor?” Kelly asked.

  “Yes,” Sunshine smiled, “not the MD kind… but I know a little about anatomy. Wait right here.” she said as she stood. “I need to take a look at your friend.”

  Kelly couldn’t move even if she wanted. She noticed the woman with the shotgun had stepped back. The gun was pointed down but the lady remained alert and clearly wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Can I ask your name?” Kelly said looking up at her.

  “Beatrice Baldwin,” the black woman said. “And my hippie friend is Sunshine Baldwin. No family relation. We just happen to have the same last name”

  “That’s a pretty big coincidence,” Kelly nodded, “especially now a days.”

  “We knew each other before,” Beatrice replied. “This is our place.”

  “Oh?” Kelly asked, “The greenhouse is yours?”

  “Well,” Beatrice shifted, “everything for a few blocks actually belongs to us. Not that it matters now.”

  “Baldwin Produce?” Kelly said as it suddenly came to her, “Oh yea, you are Baldwin Produce! I’ve seen the trucks.”

  “If you’ve eaten in any restaurant within three states you’ve probably had our fresh vegetables,” Sunshine said as she climbed back out of the corn.

  “I see,” Kelly nodded and motioned with her thumb over her shoulder at Robbie. “How is he?”

  “I’ll tell you straight, man,” Sunshine said. “He’s out cold. Could be a concussion or bad internal head injury and coma. Without a brain scan or something there is no way to know what it is or how long it could last.”

  Kelly’s shoulders slumped and she felt like she might cry again.

  “On the bright side,” Sunshine continued, “he is breathing, there are no major injuries visible, he isn’t bleeding out, and most importantly he isn’t bitten. Nothing looks or feels broken and there’s no major swelling. Just a few cuts and bruises really. He could wake up any minute.”

  “Oh,” Kelly sighed, “you say you’re not a medical doctor?”

  “No,” Sunshine said, “but I do have a Masters in Biology, a PhD in Science Education and was a tenured Professor in the Science and Biology faculty at Taylor-Whitehouse University for 25 years. Plus I’m certified in CPR and first aid by the Red Cross. So, I know a little about how the human body works. Is that good enough for you?”

  “Yes,” Kelly said quickly. “Sorry, we just haven’t seen anyone in a long time. Thank you for looking at us. So what do we do? Do you want us to leave?”

  Beatrice glanced over at Sunshine with a raised eyebrow. The thin woman wrinkled her own eyebrows and looked back at her. Kelly could tell they were in some sort silent conference with one another but wasn’t sure what the outcome would be. After a few seconds they both nodded and looked down at her.

  Finally Beatrice spoke, “It doesn’t look like you could get very far with that foot and your boy there isn’t going anywhere either. You can stay here for a few days if you like. Hopefully your boy wakes up soon. If not…well, I don’t know. Let’s see how things progress.”

  “Oh!” Kelly sputtered. “Thank you! We won’t be any trouble and we can help out with the work if you like…”

  “Don’t get too excited,” Sunshine cut in. “We don’t know you so we aren’t exactly inviting you into our house, dig? You and the boy…”

  “…Robbie” Kelly said.

  “Yea, Robbie,” Sunshine continued. “You two will have to stay down in the warehouse storage room. It’s a little dusty but you can clean it up so it’s not too bad. There’s a pull out couch and a sofa down there. More important, it’s safe. Nothing can get in and as long as you don’t start banging on the walls the things outside shouldn’t hear you. Dig?”

  “Yes,” Kelly said enthusiastically, I… dig. It’s fine. We won’t be any trouble I promise. You don’t even have to feed us. I’ll take care of Robbie until he wakes up and we can eat what we brought with us.”

  “Oh hell no,” Sunshine winced, “we’re not going to let you eat that crap. That shit will clog up your arteries! We have plenty of fresh food. You’ll eat healthy while you are under our roof.”

  “Easy there, Sunshine,” Beatrice interjected. “They may want to eat their own food. Let’s not be forcing anyone to do anything.”

  “It’s ok,” Kelly beamed up at them, “we would love to have something fresh. We haven’t had anything fresh since… well, I don’t know how long.”

  “Alright, we will see, but first things,” Beatrice said. “Let’s get you two out of the greenhouse and up to the office.”

  “Probably need a wagon for the boy,” Sunshine said and then yelled, “Maurice!”

  Beatrice looked at her friend and rolled her eyes. “Sunny, Maurice has
been gone for almost a year.”

  “Oh yea, man,” Sunshine replied as a look of sadness swept over her face. “Damn, I’m getting forgetful in my old age. I really miss him.”

  “Me too,” said Beatrice, “why don’t you go get one of the wagons while I talk some more to our new friends?”

  “Yea, yea, will do,” Sunshine said before loping away through the stalks.

  “She really is a PhD and a very smart lady,” Beatrice said conspiratorially as she watched her go, “but age takes its toll on all of us in its own way.”

  “It’s ok,” Kelly replied as she rubbed her ankle. “This whole thing has made everyone lose their mind a little.”

  Beatrice smiled and after a short pause asked. “So you were an art student? What about him?”

  “He was in high school,” Kelly looked back over her shoulder at Robbie who lay on his back in the corn. “When it all went down, my husband Roy was able to rescue him and a bunch of his friends from the school. They went looking for their parents but… weren’t able to find them.”

  “How did you survive?” Beatrice asked.

  “We found a house boat up at Moonlight Warf, so when they got back, we were able to shove off and anchor out in the river just in time to watch the city go absolutely crazy. We didn’t know if those things could swim so we kept our heads down and tried to stay quiet.”

  “How long were you on the boat?” Beatrice asked.

  “About a month,” Kelly looked down at her knees, “it wasn’t a great boat to begin with and it started to leak being out in the main part of the river. It was pretty old for all the rocking and rolling and extra weight. There were a bunch of us on board with all the kids. We ran out of food and water in a few days and started making runs to other boats for supplies. When the boats ran out of stuff we started going along the pier, to the little shops.”

  “That’s when we started losing people.” She went on as she massaged her ankle. I don’t know what happened to most of them. They may have been killed by those things, or whatever. Part of me hopes they just ran off and never came back.”

  “I’m sorry,” Beatrice sympathized. “What happened to the boat?”

  “The boat. Yea.” Kelly continued with a sigh. “One night, something big hit us. Roy said it was probably a tree, but we didn’t know. After that, the boat started listing and we knew we had to get off. Long story short, we got ashore and most of us were able to get to an office building we were able to lock down. We’ve moved around some since then but that’s our story in a nutshell.”

  They both looked over at the sound of a squeaky wheel rolling towards them from the front of the greenhouse.

  “Have you been here since the beginning?” Kelly asked.

  “Before the beginning,” Beatrice answered. “We built this company up from a small stand at the farmer’s market. We bought our first warehouse 30 years ago and now, or at the end, we were the second largest produce supplier in the region.”

  “Why did you stay?” Kelly asked.

  “When it all went down we couldn’t evacuate, we just couldn’t,” Sunshine added as she pushed through the overgrown stalks of corn, pulling a large red wagon. “The green houses needed to be tended 24/7. If we left, it would all die, man. We just couldn’t. We had our hearts in the soil, man.”

  “Back then they were saying it would all be over in a few weeks,” Beatrice said. “The walls here are thick, the windows are high. We had plenty of fresh food and our own well for water. We figured we could ride it out and be ready to start distribution as soon as the roads were open again. We knew people would need our food when they came back.”

  “That shit didn’t happen,” Sunshine said with a cackle.

  Beatrice lifted an eyebrow and nodded her head in agreement. Then she looked over at the figure laid out among the stalks and said, “C’mon and let’s see if we can’t get your boy loaded up and moved someplace that’s not on top of my corn.”

  After some struggle, the three of them were able to get him loaded onto the large wagon and head back to the main entrance of the warehouse. A large enclosed breezeway separated the growing yard from the main entrance. Kelly thought it may have originally been used to back trucks into the greenhouse. The width, and small offices along the sides, gave it the look of a stable. Luckily, two huge wooden doors sealed off the street entrance. She noted that there was no light coming through so they were probably reinforced and sealed from the outside.

  Kelly soon found herself on an old lounge chair next to Robbie who was laid out on a pull out sofa in what the two older ladies called “the basement.” The room was small with concrete walls and a narrow window at eye level. The window had bars and was covered except for a small area that let a little light in from the street. Their hosts had also lit a few candles to provide additional light. Aside from being a cluttered, and a little dusty, the room wasn’t bad, Kelly decided. Not the Ritz, but much nicer than many of the places she had slept over the last few years.

  She really didn’t like that they were locked in. Sunshine had apologized but stated the obvious, that they didn’t know them and couldn’t have them wandering around unsupervised. Kelly was in no position to argue and just prayed that the two ladies weren’t actually crazy witches looking for human sacrifices, or barking mad cannibals. She doubted the latter since there was plenty of food around. She had seen more fresh vegetables in the greenhouse than she had seen in several years, and heard Sunshine mention that she had to go calm the pigs.

  ‘Pigs!’ Kelly imagined the luxury of fresh pork and bacon. If these ladies were half what they seemed, they would need to find a way to start trading with them as soon as they got settled again. She had to find out what they might want or need. To her, it seemed they had everything already, but there had to be something. She stretched out her injured ankle and tried to relax while she considered what that might be.

  Chapter 10

  There was a click in the lock and Sunshine appeared with a tray of steaming food. It smelled delicious, causing Kelly to cast aside thoughts that it might be poisoned or drugged, and dug right in. There was no pork, but there was fresh bread, vegetable stew and some sort of tea that she thought must be mint.

  “How is it?” Sunshine asked as she watched Kelly stuff cornbread in her mouth.

  “Delicious!” Kelly muttered with her cheeks full. “Thank you. I, we, haven’t eaten like this in quite a while.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” Sunshine said. “That crap food you’ve been eating will kill you same as the Undies.”

  “Undies?” Kelly asked between slurps of stew.

  “Ha! Yea man,” Sunshine laughed. “Before the TV stations went out there was this idiot preacher who kept talking about the undead walking the earth in the end times. I guess his church had their own broadcast tower somewhere around here because it was the only thing on after everything else went dark. He was broadcasting like 24 / 7 for a while and had his whole flock gathered inside. One of the ladies that was a regular kept calling the undead – ‘undies’ so we picked it up as a joke.”

  A shadow fell over her face before she went on. “Of course, the undies, the dead, got in eventually… They left the cameras running as the damn things tore them apart.”

  There was a long pause.

  “But, we still call them Undies,” Sunshine finally snorted. “Sorry to be such a downer at dinner, man.”

  “It’s ok,” Kelly replied, “thank you for the food. It’s delicious and I don’t know how to repay you.”

  “No need missy, eat up, heal up and carry on. It’s all we can ask.” The older woman smiled and looked over at Robbie. “Any changes there?”

  “No,” Kelly sighed.

  “He’ll be fine,” Sunshine said patting her on the knee. “I’m sorry we don’t have any ice for your ankle.”

  “It’s ok, I’ll just keep it up for a while,” Kelly nodded at her propped up foot.

  “I’ll be back later to pick up the tray and
I’ll bring some blankets. It gets chilly down here at night. Anything else you need?”

  “No, we have more than enough,” Kelly replied, “thank you.”

  The older woman left and Kelly heard the lock click in the door again. She leaned back in the chair and looked over at Robbie on the couch. He was so still she couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. After a few minutes, this bothered her enough that she got up to check on him. Limping over, she placed the back of her hand in front of his nose and was relieved to feel warm air gently stroking her skin.

  She sighed, stood up and looked around the small room. It was jammed with boxes, old furniture and, never to be used again, office equipment. Some of the angular plastic and metal machines looked like they were probably out dated long before the undies showed up. Spotting a glimmer of wood and silver against one wall she hobbled over to investigate. Behind several boxes of printer paper was hidden an aging dressing table and mirror.

  After a few minutes struggling to move the boxes without putting any weight on her foot she also uncovered an aged bench. The green fabric on the seat shimmered through the dust and looked as if it was quite nice at one time. The old desk was chipped and worn with the remnants of what looked like a painted floral pattern on its sides. Kelly recognized the splotches & stains on its surface as fingernail polish and other spilled make up. Kelly ran her fingers over the scalloped carvings running along its edges and around the tall mirror.

  The glass in the mirror had taken on the appearance of mercury, cracking and surrounded by gold and black scales. Her reflection looked back at her as if it were on the other side of a looking glass, in a different time and place. She found an old napkin and wiped away the dust.

  She wondered if one of the Baldwins might have used this for getting ready for dates back in their younger days. She imagined them sitting there doing their hair and nails. Getting dressed to go out, back in a time when nobody had to worry about the undead stalking their every move.