Dead Soil: A Zombie Series

by Alex Apostol

  “Whoa,” Gretchen exhaled between heavy breaths.

  “Your knife!” Rowan yelled next to her.

  Gretchen threw the gun to the floor and pulled for her knife at her belt. It was stuck on something. She tugged at it a few times before it loosened. Her arm pulled back forcefully to punch a robust corpse in dirtied flannel square in the chest. He felt spongey, like her hand would be absorbed into him if she didn’t pull it away quickly. She sliced its decayed neck, which hung by a few red threads. Blood rushed out like a river. Its head hung to the side and down to look at the floor. That didn’t stop it from snapping its broken teeth as it continued to advance on Gretchen.

  Olivia looked over. “Go ahead,” she urged as her face lifted.

  Gretchen drove her knife into the thing’s soft head and remained there. It took a few good jerks to break it free. The putrid body collapsed to the floor in a jumbled heap.

  “It’ll take some getting used to!” she yelled over the moans as Dan and Rowan took out the last two.

  Carolyn was backed up against the glass wall with her face turned to the side and her eyes closed. Her knife was on the floor.

  “Ya ready?” Lee shouted.

  The multitude of hands banging on the glass to get it was maddening.

  “Yeah,” Rowan said.

  “Yup,” Olivia yelled.

  “Go for it,” Dan called back.

  Gretchen stood with her knife in her hand. Her chest hurt every time she took a breath, but she couldn’t stop from heaving. She stared unblinking at the dead hands on the door and pictured them ripping into her as they devoured her alive.

  “Hey!” Lee yelled as he struggled to hold the door closed. “Ready?”

  She blinked a few times. “Yeah, ready.” She tightened her grip on the handle of her knife.

  Lee didn’t wait for Carolyn to respond as she sobbed in the corner. He opened the door as a few more pushed to get in and shoved the door closed behind them. One by one the group dropped them all to the floor in a clumsy, unskilled manner. Lee’s arms shook as his large muscles tired from the constant pressure. He let out a growling cry as it became harder to keep the door sealed. The ravenous bodies piled against it, smashing the ones in the front up against the glass. The heads of the ones in front crunched as blood oozed from their eyes, nose, and mouths.

  “We can’t go on like this,” Gretchen said in a high-pitched voice. “We’ve only killed seven and twenty more have shown up since!”

  “Barricade the door again,” Olivia said. “I have a better idea.”

  Rowan and Dan helped Lee push the door all the way closed as Gretchen and Olivia secured the floor and ceiling deadbolts. They shoved the crowbar back through the handles for good measure.

  “That won’t last long so we better hurry,” Olivia said as she ran back into the lobby. She waved everyone through and then secured the second set of doors.

  “What’s the plan?” Rowan asked with wide eyes.

  “We bust out through the bird watching room.”

  They all looked at her like she was crazy.

  “Hell no,” Gale said. “They’ll hear it and come after us.”

  “Yeah, but we’re quicker than they are. We can get away.” There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in her mind that she’d be able to escape unscathed.

  Gretchen shook her head. “I don’t know…it sounds insane.”

  “It’s either this, or we stay here and wait to die.”

  The words rang through Gretchen’s head. It was exactly what she feared, exactly what Rowan said they were doing. She had to break the cycle. They had to survive. “OK. Let’s try. I mean, we have to try, right?” She looked around to everyone else.

  They didn’t seem as eager to give it a go, but they all followed as the teenager made her way to the room off the lobby. She crept in. Her movements were slow and low to the ground. She peered out through the windows to assess how many were nearby and how long it would take for them to get to her.

  “Rowan,” she said and turned to him. In any other life she would have fawned over how gorgeous his eyes were and how perfectly his brown hair fell into them. But in this life she saw him as a coward. It was time he proved himself to her. “Unload on that window.” She pointed at the one facing the back of the building, farthest from the side with the dead beating to get in.

  “What?” Rowan gave a hysterical laugh.

  Olivia rolled her eyes and cocked her head to the side. She sighed and waited for an excuse.

  “It’s not going to work. It’ll take too long to break. It—”

  “Give me the gun, then,” she demanded, holding her hand out.

  Rowan didn’t give it to her. His hands clutched at the cold metal. There was a clanking noise at the front of the building as the crowbar fell to the floor. The doors seemed to breathe in and out as the pressure of the dead beat against them.

  “Clock’s ticking. Let’s go. Do it or I will.”

  Rowan wanted to make the call on his own, to prove that he could be the leader of the group. He wanted to stand his ground and go with his gut feeling on this one. But his eyes drifted to the others to read what they thought about the plan.

  “Just do it, you pussy,” Olivia growled when his eyes fell back onto hers.

  His head jerked back as his face screwed up. Did he talk like that when he was seventeen? He tightened his lips and stood up straight. “Fine,” he said. “Stand back.” With a deep breath, he counted down in his head while everyone stood huddled behind him.

  There was a loud crash from the front as the first set of doors fell from their hinges. The dead stumbled over the broken glass, tearing up the loose skin of their feet. They had no reaction to what should have been excruciating pain as they pushed forward to the next set of doors. They pounded relentlessly, as they’d done with the first set. Their moans grew louder, more excited and urgent. The beating of hands against glass echoed throughout the building. A crack appeared between the two doors as they pushed against them. Several gray, grotesque fingers wriggled through to reach out for the flesh of the survivors inside.

  Rowan looked back and decided they were at their last second of safety. He pulled back on the trigger and let the rifle do the work as he swept it back and forth. The glass shattered and fell to the ground outside, mixing in with the white snow.

  “Go, go, go,” Olivia yelled. She pushed everyone through. Lee gave her a shove on the back to get her out before him.

  They ran as fast as they could with Lee bringing up the rear. Gale kept up with surprising ease. Maybe she wasn’t as out of shape as she let herself believe. She didn’t dare agree with what Rowan said about taking advantage of the group. She’d been saving her energy for this very moment. Her arms pumped like they never had before.

  Stragglers appeared out of the darkness alongside her, snapping their jaws and reaching out their bruised and beaten arms as she flew by without a pause to end their miserable existence. She side-stepped and dodged the dead hands like she was in the world’s most dangerous obstacle course.

  The group ran strong until Gale’s lungs started to feel a sharp stab from the freezing air. Every deep breath she took felt like little, sharp needles jabbing in her chest. She slowed down to a jog and then doubled over as she tried to relieve the pain. The rest stopped with her and scanned the woods in a three hundred and sixty degree circle.

  “Come on,” Rowan urged as he bounced on his feet. “Let’s get outta here.”

  “There’s one,” Gretchen said, squinting into the darkness a few yards away.

  “Got it,” Olivia answered. She swung her bat before she took off after it.

  All anyone heard was the sticky sound of wood as it smashed in a skull. They stared at her as she walked back with a bounce in her step, shaking the black blood from her weapon.

  “What?” she asked. She was taken aback by their judgmental faces, after all the times she’d saved their asses—in the last hour, no less.

  Gretchen avoided
eye contact. Rowan stared and then looked away when Olivia scrunched her face at him. Dan searched his pockets frantically for a cigarette, but all he found was loose tobacco and his notebook and pen. Carolyn stood with her arms wrapped over each other, her knife tucked in one hand. Tears ran down her tanned face. Gale was still concentrating on standing upright as she fought the urge to be sick. She hadn’t run that hard since Afghanistan.

  “So, can we start looking for a safe place to settle in now?” Gretchen asked as she threw her hands up and let them slap against her thighs.

  Rowan saw the chance to reclaim the group as his own. He took a step forward and straightened his back so that he was almost matching Lee in height. “Yes,” he said steady with his chin thrust slightly forward. “We’re going to find ourselves a home.”

  X.

  Zack left early without stopping at Liam’s to check over the apartments in their building. He didn’t see the point. They hadn’t found a single body, dead or alive, since Ralph and his wife weeks ago. He spent more time out on his own, searching for Anita and supplies rather than in the comfort of his own apartment.

  The place wasn’t a home anymore. It was a prison, keeping him closed off from the world and from ever finding the one person he wanted so desperately by his side through it all. He walked the woods with his sword in his hand and his heavy canvas jacket zipped up tight. He wore fingerless gloves so he wouldn’t lose his grip in the middle of an inevitable upcoming battle with the growing numbers of the undead. The hood of his jacket hung low over his head to shield his eyes. Christine had made him laugh the other day when she warned him against wearing it like that.

  “It’s impairing your vision. What if you don’t see one coming?” she’d said in her motherly voice.

  “Where are they hiding? In the trees?”

  It was the last time he saw Christine.

  As he walked aimlessly, everything exposed in the whiteness of the snow-covered ground and trees, he thought about Anita—about what she looked like. He didn’t have a picture of her so the only time he was able to remember her face, picturing the littlest details, was when he was completely alone. He didn’t want to forget her in case he never found her. The very thought drove him mad. He whacked his sword against a tree trunk as he passed by it, the only sound to penetrate the silence of the woods besides his lumbering footsteps. He turned back to his thoughts and tried to focus on the good.

  He remembered the way Anita would come into the store, meandering around, picking up games and comics and putting them back down, never buying a single thing. He laughed to himself as he thought about how she always found a way to bring up a conversation so naturally with him. One time they’d even talked about breadsticks for fifteen minutes. Breadsticks! He laughed again to himself. That was the kind of hold she had on him.

  He pictured the way she pinned her brown hair up into a retro fifties style, secured by the blue bandana around her head. And the outfits she wore. He let out a pleasurable sigh as he imagined her long legs in those tall red heels. The ones that matched her cherry-red, full lips. He had to find her. That was all there was to it. He had to.

  For the first time, he let his mind think about what they would do once he actually found her. The plan was always to bring her back to the apartment to live, but how long would they be able to live there? Every day it seemed like there were less people on the Earth and more undead to take their places. The feeble wooden fences wouldn’t hold them out forever. Eventually, they would get in. And if they didn’t, then that meant they had something good and someone else would seek to take it.

  He forgot about his snowy surroundings completely as he got lost in thought. Maybe they would leave Indiana all together and try somewhere new, somewhere warm where he wouldn’t have to deal with dead people while also trying to survive through a negative ten degree wind-chill. He pictured himself lying on a beach, the waves lapping at his feet, and Anita next to him in a tiny red and white bikini. His heart raced as he smiled. It was settled. They’d go to the beach. But which one? Long Beach or Miami?

  A quick snap pulled him from his dreamy state back to the cold woods. He stopped dead in his tracks and raised his sword. His lungs skipped a breath. A dirty-covered, bloodied woman stood fifteen feet in front of him. He hadn’t seen her coming. He didn’t know why his heart was ready to burst from his chest as it beat against his ribcage. Killing zombies was almost second nature to him. He’d done it countless times.

  The woman took several shuffling steps forward, dragging her boots along the inches of white snow to mix with the dirt underneath. He raised his sword even higher, ready to bring it down on her head once she got close enough. She stopped. Her mouth was parted and her eyes were unblinking. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was caked with mud. Her light skin was smeared with blood and guts. Zack swore he saw her eyes grow wet as she reached a hand out to him, still ten feet away.

  “Zack?”

  He heard the whisper escape her cracked lips, unsure if it was real. His sword was still raised over his head. He lowered it slowly as he tried to control his heavy breathing. When he saw tears fall, leaving streaks in the carnage on her face, he let his sword slip from his fingers and fall to the ground.

  “Anita?” he said, more to himself than as a call to her.

  He tried to move his feet, but they felt too heavy to lift. His vision blurred. Was what he saw real or was it all in his head? Had he wanted so desperately to find her that he was starting to imagine her, see her before him?

  She moved forward again at a slow pace, her feet still dragging along the ground. Her arms reached forward as she closed the gap between them. Zack waited to feel the embrace he’d dreamt about for countless nights before the world fell apart and after. He’d waited so long for her.

  A loud crack echoed and Anita crumpled to her knees. Halfway hidden behind one of the trees was a young man with a pistol that shook in his hands. Zack’s eyes darted back and forth between the gun and Anita until he couldn’t see through the wetness any longer. He dropped to his knees at her side and rolled her over to cradle her in his arms.

  She took a slow, ragged breath as her body began to shake. “Zack,” she strained softly.

  “I’m here,” he sobbed as the tears ran down his face and onto hers. “I’m here now. You can’t leave. I’ve been looking for you. I have. Every day. I finally found you. You can’t leave me now!” His voice escalated as her eyes grew distant.

  He felt the full weight of her body slump against him as her head fell back onto his arm. “No, no, please, no,” he begged, pulling her closer to him.

  Bright red blood stained the white snow underneath her as a pool quickly spread. Zack held her face close to his and cried into her neck. Snow crunched ahead as someone approached.

  “Oh, God,” Zack heard a man gasp under his breath. He didn’t raise his face to look at him. He was afraid that if he did he would lose control and kill whoever it was that took his Anita away. “Are you…?” the man started to say as he stood over Zack.

  With a gentle hand, Zack brushed Anita’s hair back from her face.

  “Oh, God!” the man said again, louder. “Anita?”

  Zack snapped his head up to look him in the face.

  Dan Anderson stared down at Anita’s unmoving body. His lips trembled. He dropped the pistol on the ground and raised his hands to his head. No, no, no,” he repeated over and over again as he turned frantically. “No!”

  Tears streamed down his dark face as he squeezed his eyes shut. “She was my friend!” he shouted. “She was my friend and I…” He broke down and collapsed to his knees, his shoulders heaving up and down as he sobbed.

  Zack gently laid Anita on the ground and closed her eyes. He kissed his fingertips and placed them on her lips for a moment, sniffing back his tears to regain some semblance of control over himself. He slowly stood and looked down at the hysterical man on the ground beneath him. Deep, steady breaths seemed to work against him as they built up a roa
ring hatred in his heart. He clenched his jaw and ground his teeth together. His vision shook. He was going to do it. He was going to kill him.

  Five other people raced forward from the trees at full speed.

  “Come on! We have to get out of here,” one of them called, a tall man in a leather jacket who was leading the way. “They’re headed right for us!”

  No one else waited for Dan to get up and join the group, or took the time to wonder who the other man was and what happened with the woman on the ground, except Gretchen. She came to a halt in front of them and kneeled down, placing a hand on Dan’s back. He was bent in half at the waist, his hands covering his face.

  “Dan, we have to go,” she said and tugged on his arm.

  He shook her off. Gretchen’s eyes darted to Zack and then back. “Dan, are you OK?” she asked, more panicked than before.

  “I killed her,” she heard him whisper from behind his palms.

  The anger boiled up in Zack. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He took two bounding steps toward Gretchen and Dan with his fists clenched tightly at his side.

  “No!” she yelled as she sprang to her feet and shoved at his chest. “We have to go now! Please!” She yanked on Dan’s arm as he rose slowly, who put little effort in getting himself back up to his feet.

  Before Gretchen stood upright again she snatched the fallen gun from the ground and tucked it into her pants next to its sister. “Let’s go!” She huffed as she dragged Dan to follow the group. His feet were lazy and clumsy causing him to stumble forward. He collapsed again and refused to get up.

  Gretchen turned back to Zack and her face softened when their eyes met. She looked down at Anita “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Please, come with us.”