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

by Wilsey, Martin (Editor)

  “There ain’t nuthin’ here for ’em.”

  “Right. I know. That’s why I came along the coast.”

  “Ain’t nuthin’ here for us, either. That’s the problem.”

  “How come you’re on the coastline?”

  “Buryin’ my dog. He was starving. I had to kill him.” The man eyed the boy for a reaction. “You ever had to kill anybody you loved?”

  “Yeah.”

  The man nodded and walked closer, extending a hand. “Vic.”

  The nineteen-year-old shook the hand. “Quentin.”

  Vic looked inland. “Rumor is there’s a fortified town about forty miles east. High fence all around it. The Dead can’t get through. They have towers set up to kill any agile ones that try. Town’s self-sufficient. Still has livestock, crops.”

  Quentin’s rush of excitement was soon quelled by disbelief. “I’ve seen a town like that but it got overrun. How you know about this one?”

  “I tagged alongside a group for a little while up in Oregon. They’d been there. Probably about three months ago they were there. About a month ago I last saw ’em.”

  “Why’d they leave the town?”

  “Find their families. You got family?”

  “No…not…”

  “Me neither. My dog was the last thing I had.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’d say we got another few hours of daylight. I’m campin’ out here. I need sleep. You’re welcome to sleep near me if you want.”

  Nothing happened that night, except both awoke every hour or so, which was the usual for Quentin. Like a wolf in the wild, he never slept more than two hours at a time, sporadically awakening to check his surroundings then falling back to sleep.

  In the morning Quentin’s belly pined for food. A button peeled from the cover of one of his pants’ pockets sufficed as a sucker. Saliva gradually flooded his mouth, giving the unsatisfactory illusion of drinking.

  Vic offered a canteen. “Just sip. We’ll get more later from the river.” From his pack he brought out a can of peaches. Quentin’s eyes grew wide and he had to stop himself from reaching toward it. But Vic shared.

  “People don’t really share anymore,” Quentin noted.

  “There’s good reason for that. Everybody makes his path out here, though. You trust people, you get trust. No road you choose is gonna be without risk, you know? We start now, we can make that town by night. If they got guards watching from towers they’ll spot us right away, let us in. So I heard.”

  They walked inland, leaving the sand for paved roads littered with occasional abandoned cars, a rare shriveled-up corpse, or bones. No meat was safe. Anything with an appetite scavenged, and anything edible was hunted. Quentin had seen people feasting on dead zombies, even, but he and Billy, no matter their hunger, had never stooped to that. Mostly out of fear of whatever contagion the Eaters carried. But some people didn’t care. They’d eat anything. They’d become no better than the Dead themselves.

  They found the highway, travelled eastbound. Silent hours passed, broken up by intermittent chatter. Quentin told tall tales of his exploits with Billy, of things they’d seen and done. At one point, he asked if Vic had heard the rumors about why all this had begun.

  “I’ve heard it all.”

  “Well, you know there was that comet that landed in Russia, and it started there first…”

  Vic chuckled. “Same time as that spill in Alaska? Or the strange lights in the sky over North Dakota? There’s no sense wasting time thinkin’ about why it all ended.”

  “But maybe if we knew, we could stop it?”

  “Stop what? It’s not a leaky warehouse full of zombie toxin. If it were, we’d have plugged it. This isn’t gonna change.”

  Onward they marched, winding through the mountains and hills. Quentin watched the road five feet in front of his boots, hungry and lonely despite finally having company again. He yearned for Billy, who whispered cheerful thoughts in his head.

  “Eventually, if you think about it, all the Eaters’ll die out. It’s not a sustainable creature,” he smiled.

  Vic snickered. “The Dead can’t die out, kid. It’s an ever-replenished species. The Dead’ll always be with us.”

  Quentin fell back into dark reveries. As they came around a bend in the road, Vic paused. He held out a hand and became stiff. Quentin heard the moist crunching of feeding time. He pulled his bat from the loop at his belt, held it like a katana. Vic unlatched a machete from his leg, leaving the pistol holstered. Making a motion with his head, he and Quentin stepped quietly around the bend.

  There was a broken-down car, worn from exposure. One of the Dead leaned in at the driver’s door, devouring something. She rose abruptly, sensing them. She wore camouflage pants and shirt, was fresh enough that it was easy to tell that she’d once been attractive, probably yesterday.

  She came at them full speed. Quentin swung the bat with all his weight behind it, cracking her across the forehead. As she spiraled Vic brought the machete down across the top of her skull, planted his foot firmly at the base of her back and shoved as he yanked the blade free.

  “Hit her again! Quick!”

  Quentin lunged forward with another swing that snapped her neck and knocked her head sideways. She collapsed to her knees, roaring senselessly. Vic stepped in again with a chop to her skull. Again he shoved her away, now with a boot to the face, as he pulled the machete from her brain like the sword from the stone. She fell, convulsing and moaning. Quentin’s turn was up, and he brought the bat’s tip down on her skull with a crunch, caving it in and causing an eruption of brain matter to gush from the cuts made by the machete.

  Vic wiped the blade across her camo pants, resheathed it at his thigh.

  “I like the way you work, Quentin.”

  They checked her for supplies, scoured the car. Nothing but a half-eaten raccoon. Vic slung it over his shoulder.

  “You gonna eat that?”

  “After I cook it.”

  “I was always afraid you might become like them if you eat what they been slobberin’ all over.”

  “And that’s why you’re halfway starved to death, kid.”

  Hours went by and they came across a sign on the highway: SLATE CREEK 23. Below that, WENDVILLE 53.

  “Slate Creek, that’s the place. It’s gotta be,” said Vic. “We should eat. Let’s get some wood.”

  The redwoods stretched out around them in every direction. They left the road, and went into the forest. They located the creek by listening.

  “This is where they made that Star Wars movie with the Ewoks,” said Quentin, as they made a fire.

  Vic carved up the coon, cutting away and discarding the parts that had been bitten into by the zombie woman. “Put that on the end of your blade and let it cook good,” he said, handing Quentin a cut of meat. Quentin stabbed it with his Ka-Bar and put it near the flame.

  “You fight pretty good, huh?”

  Quentin watched the meat blacken. “I think that’s my calling. Me and Billy were like the best team, just how well we worked together. We killed hordes of Eaters.”

  Vic nodded. “Good. Always use a bat?”

  “It’s the best for me. Never liked guns. Too loud. And they run outta bullets.”

  Vic concurred with a grunt. He pulled a pot from his pack and placed it on a little metal stand. He boiled the water, then lowered the bottom of the pot into the creek to cool it. They both drank and ate. But Quentin had to go into the woods to empty his burning bowels. When he came back he was pale.

  “Fuck,” grumbled Vic. “You need rest.”

  “Sorry,” said Quentin.

  “Don’t be. Just lie down for a bit. I’ll stay on guard. Then you need to guard me for a little while, and then we’ll get back on the road and probably make it to Slate Creek by morning.”

  Quentin lay down by a tree, shivering. Feverish dreams assailed him. The tumult of a giant tromping through the forest then roaring jarred him from his nightmares. Sever
al moments went by before he realized he was awake. A few yards away, two zombies attacked Vic. Vic’s hand was in one of the zombies’ mouth, blood running down his wrist and forearm. Vic shouted out, writhed and kicked.

  Quentin’s adrenaline didn’t give him any time to think. He was standing, then shimmying up a tree.

  The two rotting, lethargic zombies wrestled to consume Vic’s flesh. He quickly beat them away and drew his weapon of choice. Before he could throw a single swipe, though, his game changed yet again.

  A muscular, bug-eyed man burst out from the woods like a fiend high on PCP and dove recklessly on top of Vic, sending them rolling toward the creek, knocking down the other zombies like bowling pins. Wiry Vic was up, swinging that machete, before they came to rest. He chopped off the hand of one of the slower zombies, then hacked halfway into his neck, so the thing’s head lolled over and hung ridiculously, one ear literally resting on its shoulder. He shoved the zombie back and it fell clumsily into the creek and drifted, eyes flicking side to side, body flaccid.

  The strong one leapt at Vic like a leopard. The machete cut deep past his clavicle. As Vic tried to yank it free he tripped backwards on a fat tree root in the soil.

  Above, safe for now, Quentin gradually came to his senses. Vic was bit—no way to save him. But if he died, the others would eventually discard him, and that would be one more invigorated Eater to contend with. Staying in this tree was a trap.

  He slid partway down and jumped, tumbling when he hit the dirt. He pulled out his bat and thunked the back of the most energetic Eater’s head, dropping him. He closed in on the one who was coming upon Vic, timed it until the right instant and swung, popping the cretin across the temple. It lurched toward him and he sidestepped and hit it again with a diagonal downward blow followed by another. The zombie dropped, unmoving.

  Quentin looked again at the zombie he’d killed with a single strike. “Never done that before,” he said. “One hit.”

  He looked to Vic, who was bit in a few places. The bat rose above his head.

  “Don’t, you fucker. Don’t you fuckin’ do it yet.” He gripped his hand where the blood gushed, cringing. “I got a little time, so back the fuck up.”

  Quentin stepped back.

  “Fuck,” snarled Vic. “Fell a fuckin’ sleep. I never fell asleep. Never fell asleep. Why the fuck? Fuck, fuck.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Take my shit and go. Take all of it you wanna carry. Go find the road and go to Slate Creek.”

  “What about you?”

  “What the fuck do you think, kid? I’ll deal with my goddamn self. I can’t believe I fell asleep. Five fuckin’ minutes. It musta been longer than that.” He started to cry. “I thought I was gonna make it. I always made it. Everybody slipped up but I never did. Goddammit. Goddammit.”

  Quentin holstered his bat and gathered up Vic’s stuff. He threw on the backpack, but left the machete in the zombie. He eyeballed Vic’s gun.

  “No. I need that. Now go. Find that town.”

  “Sorry I got sick,” he said, and almost added he was feeling better now. But he hurried away from the creek and back north, toward the road. He wasn’t gone ten minutes when he heard the BANG! He turned and went back. Half of Vic’s outstretched body lay in the creek. The revolver was still in his hand, dry, inches from the water.

  “Poor Vic, Billy. We were good partners. Man, poor Vic.” He stripped him of the holster and put the gun in it, wore it around his waist. There were only two rounds in the chamber. No more ammo in Vic’s clothes or pack.

  “Fuck it. Come on, Billy,” he said, becoming unnerved.

  He travelled alongside the road, remaining in the woods. He felt safer there, with cover.

  Around dawn he found the fence line. It reminded him of something from The Great Escape, large logs crisscrossing, dressed with bundles of spiraling barbed-wire. He walked alongside it and saw a frill-less tower in the pre-sun haze. Unmanned.

  Two desiccated zombies were sprawled across the barbed wire, entangled. Vic’s supplies included binoculars, so Quentin fished them out of the pack, descried another tower, and other carcasses. Either shot or starved or timed-out. The Dead had a duration, like anything else, beginning fresh, malleable, fast, strong, and gradually deteriorating, until they finally dried up like mummies. Though the thought of them all disintegrating into dust amused him, he knew Vic was correct: until there was no more life, death would always be replenished.

  Nothing in sight moved.

  The barrier was about six feet high, maybe six feet from one side to the other.

  “What d’you think Billy? If we run you think we can make it? Yeah…just hop across those dead Eaters. Like stones in a creek.” With a run and a jump he hurled the pack and watched it soar over the corpses and fall to the other side.

  “What? Chickenshit. I’ll go first, then.”

  Carefully he climbed over the carcasses as they crunched and sagged beneath him. It was like a tightrope walk on all fours. A few times his pants got snagged, and he took a few cuts, but made it to the other side with a final feline leap. He stood and brushed himself off, shaking, tired. “See, Billy. Told you.”

  He found some dried meat in the pack and ate and drank one whole canteen of water. Afterwards, he went to the nearest tower and climbed up, lay down and slept. When he awoke the sun was overhead. He crawled from the tower and walked back to the main highway. Here the boundary was a locked gate, but he was within town limits now. A large, wooden sign had WELCOME TO SLATE CREEK carved artistically into it.

  There was a building to his right that said OPEN DOOR CLINIC, with a small tank parked in front. There were sandbags out front like a WWI stronghold. To his left was a gas station, and on the road before it was a large olive-green military truck, and a jeep with a mounted machine gun aimed at the entrance of the town. There were grocery stores and little shops. There were a few vehicles: trucks, cars, all parked and empty.

  “Military,” he said. He climbed into the jeep. The keys were in the ignition but it didn’t start. Same with the transport truck. A label on the dash read, PROPERTY GARY’S AUTO. The plates weren’t government. Civilian owned.

  Every vehicle he bothered to try had no gas or dead batteries. He walked past Gary’s Auto, and saw more vintage military vehicles parked within its gates.

  He stayed on the main road until he came to the other end of town, with another fortification guarding the opposite locked gate. Sandbags, a few sideways parked pickups, but no people.

  He walked back to the middle of town. Between a bank and a park there was another highway intersecting the one he’d followed from the coast to here. He walked along it, toward the north. There was a police station; a tiny, shoddy motel; an elementary school with a kiosk that read “TOWN MEETING WEDS 6PM.” Then there were homes, side roads that led to more homes. Big fields of overgrown grasses, unmanicured yards. Sporadic vehicles but no signs of life except the occasional crow in a tree.

  Here and there, on the roads, in the yards, there were bones, picked clean.

  And then he was at the other end of town, fortified but unguarded. The river was in sight, to the east. The fence line bordered this side of the water. Fishing poles reached off the ends of abandoned towers, so the townsfolk could fish while the river swept any invading zombies north.

  “It’s gonna be night soon, Billy. Let’s find a house.”

  Heading back along the highway southward, he spotted a nice home off the road with at least two acres of brush around it.

  “See that? Critters could hide there. Edibles, Billy. Vic hooked us up, man. This place is gonna be all ours. I don’t know what happened here, it’s a good question, but I got a lotta good questions. That don’t mean they’re gonna get answered.”

  The house was furnished but empty. Family pictures lined the walls. He gathered them up, and stacked them near the fireplace, face down. The bed in the master bedroom was still made. He slept on top of it after he drank the re
st of his last canteen.

  “We’ll go to the river tomorrow,” he said. “Get more water.”

  Face buried in the pillows, the family photos flashed through his mind, haunting him.

  For days he walked around town in search of people but found none. On the third day he came across a zombie rummaging through town, and quickly beat it to oblivion. The next day he found two more, one who was almost starved, another who was probably months old and ambled towards him like a demented geriatric. Both easy kills.

  A week went by. He took a bike from a yard and used it to get around town faster. Using his binos he surveyed the stretches of fence line but never saw a gap.

  Food was scarce. He caught crawdads with a fishing net set up from one of the towers, found dog food in one house, and caught grasshoppers to eat. His proudest meal was gopher. Traps were simple to devise, but the high grass hid their holes.

  One day, venturing up a paved road off the north/south highway, he thought he spotted someone in a window. The house was a single story abode with a high wooden fence set on a hill with acres of land around it. He set down his bike, hopped the fence. He was certain it was a zombie but Billy swore otherwise.

  He knocked on the door and called out. He hollered and yelled. An Eater would be clawing through walls to get to him; only the living would hide. He slammed his bat against the door.

  “Stop!”

  A young man a few years his senior walked around the back of the house, holding a rifle aimed at Quentin’s head. Sable hair, dark eyes, thick rimmed glasses, he was tall and healthy, wore a t-shirt, jeans, tennis shoes.

  “Why wouldn’t you answer?”

  “We don’t need any company, is why. What do you want?”

  “Nothing…”

  The man hesitated. “What’s your name?”

  “Quentin. Yours?”

  “Rob. Behind you, that’s Thomas.”

  Quentin turned and saw another one, blonde and also healthy, wearing shorts and a long-sleeved t-shirt and sandals. He casually held a .45 in his hand.