Apoc Series (Vol. 1): Whispers of the Apoc [Tales From The Zombie Apocalypse]

by Wilsey, Martin (Editor)

  “Truck is clear, sir.”

  “Okay, y’all mount up.”

  Tommy swung the plate steel door open and waited until Olivia had scrambled in, then climbed in, pulling the door closed, and Old Tom heard the bar clang down inside as Olivia slid both firing ports on the left side open. He wrestled the driver’s side door open, cursing the weight of the plate added to it, along with the bars over the window. Sliding into the seat, he started the truck, waiting for the oil pressure and temps to come up, then turned on the A/C, making sure the duct was tight on the center vents and looking back to make sure it hadn’t fallen down where it went into the bed.

  Peering out through the bars over the windshield, he put the truck in gear, yelling, “We’re moving,” and hearing the kids yell back they were strapped in. The truck rumbled over the cattle guard at the first fence, then he picked up speed as he turned the radio on. Three miles up, he turned into the cattle guard at the north forty and keyed the mic. “Sheriff, coming into the north forty from the south now.” He glanced up toward 1469 and saw a small plume of dust, and, a quarter a mile ahead, six or seven longhorns milling around the feeder.

  Yelling back, he said, “Almost there. Sheriff is to the right.” He made sure he could get to the single action as he eased up the pasture behind the cattle, and finally saw the shamblers. The fence had slowed them down, and a couple of them were hung up as the steers looked on curiously. Finally, one made it over and headed toward the steer they called Brisket as he pulled the truck in behind them, yelling, “Off your right. One to three o’clock, nothing further back than that!”

  He heard a mumbled reply and keyed the mic. “Sheriff, we’re gonna light them up.” Static, then a pair of clicks sounded, as he heard measured fire coming from the back of the truck. Putting the truck in park, he slid over and looked out the right window. Seeing the sheriff pop the plate lid that replaced the sunroof on his Chevy and stand up, unlimbering his old bolt action rifle, he yelled again, “Sheriff is up and shooting.”

  Ten minutes later, all of the shamblers were down, heads exploded like melons by the rounds, except for one head that was stuck on Brisket’s left horn. He yelled, “Cease fire, cease fire!” Hearing the kids reply, he yelled, “Moving.” Putting the truck in gear, he eased behind the cows and steers, moving them slowly out of the way, as he pulled up to the fence.

  The sheriff had dropped back down into his truck, pulling up on the other side. Getting out, the sheriff confirmed they were all dead outside the fence, as Old Tom confirmed the one that had made it over was dead. Of course, since he was missing his head, that was pretty obvious, but procedures were procedures. Once that was done, he banged on the plate door. “Y’all can get down now and get some air.”

  Sheriff Coffee leaned on the fence. “I count twenty-two. Dunno how they made it out this far.” Nodding to Tommy and Olivia, he continued, “Good shooting.”

  Olivia smiled at the sheriff. “Thank you, but Tommy got more than I did. I only got six of them.”

  Tommy scuffed his boot. “Well, I had a better angle. But Olivia was more accurate. She didn’t miss. I missed one.”

  The radios went off, interrupting them. “Diamond J calling Sheriff Coffee, Diamond J calling Sheriff Coffee!”

  The sheriff went back to his truck to answer the radio and Old Tom said, “Okay, police up the brass and let’s get back to the house. Don’t like leaving it unoccupied.” Tommy and Olivia picked up what brass they could see, then played rock, paper, scissors to see who got to ride in the cab back to the house. Olivia slumped in the seat, butt of the AR under her chin. “Tom, what was wrong with them? They moved even slower than that last bunch.”

  Tom shrugged. “Dunno, maybe that guy up in Eaton Rapids is right, maybe they don’t eat enough, they die.”

  “Well, I’ll be glad when I don’t have to shoot any more of them. I know they’re not people anymore, but I still don’t like it.”

  “I know, Ollie, I wish you didn’t have to either.” Dammit, it’s wrong that we have two thirteen-year-olds who are having to kill people. Maybe Ollie uses that philosophy, but they used to be people. Thankfully, they haven’t had to shoot anyone they knew!

  ***

  Old Tom glanced up at the cameras as he heard Tommy yell, “They’re back!” He counted the trucks, seeing one extra one that didn’t have any kind of protection, and wondered who that was.

  Grumbling, he got up slowly, grabbed his cane and limped to the back door, telling Olivia, “You’re on radio monitor. At least until I can get back.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Limping out the back door, he rubbed his shoulder ruefully after the barred outer door banged into him in the wind. He automatically scanned the people. Mrs. C, John, Bruce, and Tammy were there, and an old, white-haired, stooped man he didn’t recognize, along with two thin, traumatized kids. They look about the same age as Tommy and Olivia, give or take. Scared shitless? Or what? Limping over to the trailer he whistled, “Wow, that’s a haul!”

  Cherie Crane nodded. “Turns out that was a restaurant supply warehouse. We’re good for six months now, and we’re going to go back for more. Everybody loaded up everything they had space for. Lots of number-ten cans and big bags of staples.”

  “Any problems with zombs?”

  “Not till the very end. Dunno whether they smelled us or the movement brought them, but they were real slow. Only a coupla’ dozen. We took ’em down and skedaddled back here. You heard anything from Micah?”

  “No, ma’am. Not a word, which is probably a good thing. Who are the newbies?”

  Cherie nodded toward the old man and kids. “They apparently lived near the warehouse, watched us until we started to leave, then came hell-for-leather down the road, plowed through the last bunch of zombs, and begged to be allowed to follow us back here. He’s named Sean, the kids are Billy and Bonnie. Apparently they are his grandkids.”

  Old Tom winced. “Oh, damn.”

  “Yeah, damn. Who’s on radio?”

  “Ollie for now. I needed to get up and move.”

  “Okay, send her and Tommy out, maybe they can get the kids to unwind a bit.”

  “Will do, ma’am. Just out of curiosity, where we gonna put them?”

  Cherie looked around. “Ah, damn. Uh, the old man in the bunkhouse, the boy in with Tommy, the girl in with Olivia. And we’re out of beds, aren’t we?”

  “There is one folded-up hide-a-bed still in the bunkhouse, so that’ll have to do, but yes, we’re out of beds.”

  They both turned when they heard trucks growling up the road and across the cattle guard, heralding the return of Micah and Dot in the armored 3500, followed by Jose and Eric in the old Miller’s Propane truck. Eric stuck his hand between the bars, holding a thumbs-up as they swung into the parking area in front of the barn.

  Tom limped over to Micah as he stepped down out of the cab. “How’d it go?”

  Micah bent over, groaning and stretching. “Oh, damn… Bad backs suck. Good, once we figured out how to jury rig a hose to the truck. The tank car has bled down, but I figure we got probably three-quarters of a truck full. Stopped off at the Box H and filled them, then the Diamond J. We’ll fill our tanks tomorrow, getting too late now. Anything happen around here, other than the shamblers?”

  “Nah, pretty quiet. But Brisket has a head he took off one of them stuck on his left horn, so if you see it, don’t be surprised.”

  Dot came around the back of the truck. “Head on horn?”

  “Yep, one of ’em made it over the fence and went after Brisket. He objected, to the point of stomping the zomb in the ground and hooking him a few times. Took his head, literally, and it stuck on his left horn.”

  Dot rolled her eyes and shuddered. “That’s an image I didn’t need in my head.”

  ***

  At dinner, everyone was eating quietly, the three newcomers huddling together at one end of the table, with tiny portions. Finally, Cherie said, “Y’all can get more than that to eat.
We’re not going to starve out here.”

  When she said that, Sean broke down. Tears streaming down his face, sobbing into his hands, he kept shaking his head, as the young girl Bonnie, hugged him and cried too. The boy, while not crying, sat with his head down, hands in his lap. The old man finally looked up, wiped his tears and said softly, “You don’t know how much that means. This is the first food we’ve had that didn’t come out of a can in almost nine months. And the first time we’ve seen lights too. We were down to nothing, other than what we snuck out of that warehouse. Oh, God…”

  Micah asked softly, “Bad?”

  Sean nodded. “Real bad. Billy and Bonnie stayed with us while Rob…” Fresh tears poured down his face, and both the kids teared up this time. “Robert, my son, and Jean, his wife, worked downtown. They never come home that night. My Bonnie, she died… Well, she didn’t make it but three months. Diabetic. Ran out of meds. We buried her in the back yard.”

  Scrubbing his face, he pushed back from the table, “I’ve been out of meds for six months, just trying to hang on for the kids. Y’all saved our lives, or at least their lives.”

  He got up and stumbled out of the dining room, wiping his eyes. As the kids started to get up and follow him, Cherie said quietly, “Billy, Bonnie, please give your grandpa some time, okay? All of you are as safe as we can make you, and you both need to eat some more food.”

  Billy asked quietly, “How come you have lights?”

  Bruce smiled from across the table. “Well, we’ve got solar panels and batteries. We don’t flaunt it, you saw us pulling the blackout curtains, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “As soon as dinner is over, we’ll be turning off the lights and everybody goes to bed, except for the watch. With the blackout curtains, there isn’t any light to attract bad things.”

  Bonnie asked in a high-pitched voice, “Watch?”

  “We have cameras to watch the perimeter of the ranch yard, and the road to the ranch. They run off those batteries, too. And we maintain a listening watch on the ham radio. If one of our neighbors has problems, we go help them, like we helped y’all today.”

  Bonnie glanced at Olivia. “What do you do?”

  Olivia smiled at her. “I do whatever I’m told, but I can man the radios and do the watch. I help cook and clean, too. We take turns, except for Old Tom, ’cause he burns everything to a crisp. We don’t let him cook.”

  Everyone at the table, including Old Tom, laughed at that, even as he turned red. “I cook good enough for myself, kid. Just because you don’t like your food well done ain’t my fault!” Grabbing a plate with a piece of pie and a fork on it, he got up and limped out of the dining room. He found Sean sitting on the back stoop, scrubbing his face with his hands, “Here, you look like you could use this.”

  Sean took the plate, looking up at him in wonder. “A pie? Something else I haven’t seen in nine months.” He dug in, finished the pie quickly, and handed the plate back. “Thank you. Can y’all take care of the kids?”

  Old Tom nodded. “And you, too.”

  Sean shook his head. “Not unless you’ve got Toprol. I’ve been having pretty bad chest pains for the past two weeks. I know I ain’t got long.”

  “Nah, I think we might still have some aspirin, but that’s about it. The drug store burned the first night. Pretty much everybody that needed meds is already dead and gone. We haven’t found any since, not that we’ve really been looking for it. Not saying we can’t look the next salvage trip.”

  “If I last that long…”

  ***

  Cherie Crane sat in front of the radio stack, head cocked as she listened to the weekly check-ins, checking organizations and names off the list as people spoke up. Finally it got quiet, and a plaintive voice asked, “Anyone else, SoCal? Anybody from the Northeast? Begman? You still out there?”

  Scanning quickly down her list, she saw there were at least ten more stations that didn’t answer the call-up. While the reasons could be many, she felt in her heart that they were done and gone. There hadn’t been that many ham operators left anyway, and most of them were getting up in years. They’d been and still were the lifeline for these circuits, considering that there really wasn’t any government left, per se.

  She listened for a while longer, mostly reports of a few new outbreaks, but, more interestingly, the fact that there did seem to be some die-offs occurring in greater numbers. Maybe that guy up in Eaton Rapids was right… Most of the shamblers we saw today were women. He’d said the men would be gone first, something about body fat and survivability. What was it? Two hundred days, or some such, and percentages of die-off around ninety percent? So what would that be out here? We don’t have nearly the population they do in the cities…

  ***

  Micah followed the Box H trailer hauling the dead steer as it maneuvered up the on-ramp on I-40. They’d wanted to get it far enough west of the warehouse and a couple of drug stores that might still have some meds in them to give the zombs something to fight over and distract them. Cherie and the scroungers from Box H and Diamond J were an hour behind them with the trailers, and Sheriff Coffee, Bruce, and a couple of trucks from Diamond J were up at the Love’s Truck stop off 207 trying to siphon more diesel. Bruce thought they’d come up with a rig that would work, and Old Tom had ridden along to run it.

  Micah keyed the CB radio. “This should do it, Jake. If we dump the steer here, Amarillo Lake gives us a clear field of fire to the south, and we’re okay to the north side, too. It’s a little over a mile back to the Walgreens and United pharmacies, and who knows what else we might find, right?”

  Jake answered, “Yep, let me get turned around and we’ll dump the steer. Straight line for the vehicles?”

  Micah looked around, mentally gauging where to place the four trucks and Jake’s rig with the trailer still attached. “Nah, let’s set up on a forty-five across, with you in the middle. That way we can gun front and back, and cover both sides, too. We don’t want a protracted battle here, just want to get them riled up and coming, then we bolt back west. Two ahead of you, two behind you.”

  “K.”

  Jake jockeyed the truck and trailer around, as the other four trucks backed and filled to get headed back east. After clearing the area quickly, Micah saw one man jump down out of the cab and two more jump down from the box in the bed. One ran and hit the tip release on the trailer, and whirled his arm as Jake jumped on the gas and the steer came rolling out of the trailer.

  They quickly secured the trailer back down, and he saw the guy from the cab pull out a big knife and split the steer’s belly open, then run for the cab. Once he was back inside, Jake started honking the horn, followed by the other four trucks.

  Micah got a whiff of the spilled entrails when the wind gusted, and thought to himself, If the sound doesn’t bring ’em, that smell damn sure is going to! Glancing over at Tommy and Billy he asked, “You boys know what we’re trying to do and why?”

  Tommy fingered the safety on his AR. “Uh, well, uh, we want to get the zombs away from where we want to be, and we know they react to smell and movement, especially food, right?”

  “And?”

  “Uh, we don’t have a lot of ammo, so no pitched battle. Let them fight among themselves?”

  “Yep, that’s what we want.” Turning to Billy, Micah continued, “We’re just trying to lure them away from the warehouse. We can get supplies there that they can’t use, so they don’t gang up around the place.”

  Billy nodded. “Okay. So you’re kinda feeding them, right?”

  Micah replied, “More or less. Now we want to be looking for the fast ones, the just turned. Those we want to take out as soon as we can.”

  Billy asked tumultuously, “I don’t have to shoot, do I?”

  Micah said softly, “No, you don’t, Billy. Not unless you have to, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The CB broke the conversation as Jake came on. “Inbound. Looks like some runners up front.�
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  Micah yelled, “Heads up in the back, runners inbound! We’re locked and loaded up here!” More quietly, he said, “Tommy, make sure you just put the muzzle and nothing else out the window if you have to shoot, okay? But we shouldn’t have to shoot, since we’re in here, not up in the box.”

  Tommy nodded. “Sure. It’s kinda hard to see what is happening from the box, so this is new for me.”

  ***

  Old Tom nodded in satisfaction, “That’s going to work! We’re drawing fuel now, boys!”

  Bruce laughed, “Well, I gotta admit you can cobble some hot shit together, Tom. I’d never have thought of trying that.”

  “That’s why all ranches look like junk yards out in the back forty. Never throw anything away, cause sooner or later, you’re going to need it.”

  Bruce just shook his head and kept swiveling around, checking for zombs as the boys from Diamond J took turns rummaging through the truck stop and standing watch. So far, they hadn’t seen a single zomb, but one never knew. Even as far out as the truck stop was, there had been eight or ten of them around the first time they’d come looking for supplies. They’d popped them and done a quick sweep, but didn’t come away with a lot, since most of the stuff was not useful.

  Hoppy, the old Diamond J cowboy who had driven the other truck, came out of the store and yelled, “Hey, Tom! Guess what I found?”

  “What’d you find, you old blind fart?”

  “Robertson’s beef jerky! You still like that shit?”

  “Hoppy, you better not be funnin’ me!”

  “Two whole cases of it!”

  “Well, dammit, bring it on out here!”

  “If you ask real nice, I’ll think about it.”

  “Hoppy, I’m gonna climb down off here and…”