Silence of the Apoc_Tales From The Zombie Apocalypse

by Martin Wilsey

  “Ready?” asks Jack.

  “Born ready,” Pete answers, and Bill has to stifle a chuckle. For a split second, he is reminded of Jim and himself.

  “Be careful, boys,” Angel says.

  Both nod, and then Jack disappears from sight. It’s obvious by the change in the sound of urgency coming from the zombies that they have taken notice of the teenage walking buffet. Bill leans out away from the sandbags, looking up toward the hood, and just sees Pete disappear from sight as well. As he listens, he hears Jack shouting instructions to his brother—which way to go; which zombies to watch out for. There is the occasional heavy thwack or metallic clunk, and he can tell that they are fighting—using the golf clubs against the heads of the undead—and can’t help but wonder if they’re taking unnecessary risks. He considers just going out and joining them—or at least covering them—but a single glance over at Angel and Cara and he can’t bring himself to leave their sides. He sees that Cara wears a look of worry and places a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “Hey, Bill?” Jim calls from inside the bus.

  Shit… what now? Bill thinks.

  “Wait here,” he says. Both Angel and Cara nod quietly. Staying at a crouch Bill moves to the back end of the bus. He stops at the corner and cautiously peeks around. For the first time, he sees no sign of the things right there waiting to try and snatch at him. Pleased that the plan seems to be working, he hops up into the bus, but as he jogs toward Jim, he realizes just why his friend is calling to him.

  “Shit,” Bill swears.

  “It’s not working,” Jim says weakly. “Some of ’em followed the kids, but…”

  Bill leans over the partition in front of the first passenger side seat and sees that there are still at least a dozen or so zombies that seem to be more interested in getting to Jim and himself, content to stay put and claw vainly at the bus door rather than try to chase down the two youths.

  “I’ll have to lead these away,” Bill says.

  Jim watches as his best friend moves hastily toward the back end of the bus, then his eyes shift down to the flare gun in his pale, sweaty, nearly-lifeless hand, and then once more over to the gas can that sits less than two feet away.

  Bill hops down from the bus and hurries over to where Angel and Cara still sit huddled against the sandbags. Grabbing his shotgun, he takes a knee.

  “Okay,” he says, “the plan only half worked. Some of them are still right outside the bus, so I’ll have to lead them away.”

  “No!” Cara whines, worry once again marking her pretty, rose-cheeked face.

  “It’s okay, sweetie. Bill knows what he’s doing; he’s gonna be fine.” As Angel says the last, she looks at him, and he isn’t sure if she believes what she’s saying. Still, he nods and holds the shotgun out to her. She first just looks at it, and starts to shake her head, but she looks into his eyes and understands that he isn’t sure, either. She takes it and holds it awkwardly.

  “The truck’s back the way we came, south down the boardwalk, keys in the ignition.”

  Just in case.

  Angel nods, and he stands, following the boys’ lead and moving to the front end of the bus. Putting the toe of one boot on the hubcap and using both hands to pull himself up on the hood’s cool metal, he makes it with ease. There, he kneels, finding his balance on the slant and holding to the metal frame of the passenger side mirror in order to lean and peer around and down to the zombies at the door. From the corner of his eye, he catches movement within the vehicle. At first, he can’t make out what Jim is doing, as the windshield has collected dust. He wipes crudely at it with one hand; and then his heart rises into his throat, dread and panic filling his belly.

  “Jim,” he cries, “what the fuck are you doing!?”

  Jim ignores his friend, moving as fast as he’s able on only one good leg. The pain in his injured limb is still present, though mostly it has gone to needles and pins. He manages to stay upright despite the lack of feeling. Doing his best with what little gasoline he has, he douses the floor and seats of the bus, hobbling from the front to the back.

  Bill hops down from the hood of the bus and lands badly, twisting his left ankle and crying out as he goes briefly to the ground. He’s right back up though, and half-sprinting to the back of the bus when he hears the rear door being closed.

  “Jim?” he calls.

  Jim sees Bill disappear briefly, but then is keenly aware of his head bobbing past the bottoms of the windows as he himself hurries—as quickly as possible—back to the driver seat. Holding to the back of it, he leans over and works the lever to open the front door. As it opens, the zombies that were pressed right against it fall forward into the bus, onto the steps.

  “Come and get it, motherfuckers,” he says in a low, exhausted taunt.

  Bill gets to the rear of the bus and takes hold of the door handle, twisting, and pulling it open. As he laboriously climbs up into the aisle, he sees Jim coming his way—fast—using the seatbacks on either side to help himself along.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, ma—”

  Jim doesn’t slow as he reaches Bill. Instead, he body-checks his best friend, sending him right back out the way he came in. Bill falls roughly against the pier’s guardrail, barely catching himself as his ankle tries to buckle beneath his weight.

  “Sorry, buddy,” Jim offers with a wince.

  Bill tries to stand and has to favor his left leg.

  “Jim…”

  Jim forces a pained smile, with tears rimming his eyes.

  “Bill…”

  As Jim pulls the door shut for the second time, Bill notices that he now shakily grips the flare gun loosely in his other hand.

  “Goddammit, Jim!”

  He forces himself forward this time, practically throwing his body against the back door of the bus. Gripping the handle in both hands he tries to twist and pull, but there is limited give.

  Inside the bus Jim holds as firmly as he can to the rear door’s handle, using all of his weight, and every last ounce of strength which remains to him to keep the portal closed.

  “Get out of here, Bill!” he yells, then adds hoarsely, “Clock’s ticking.”

  Bill beats against the door with one hand as he tugs with the other until from around the side of the bus he hears Angel call out his name. Reluctantly he lets up on the door handle, sidesteps, and leans against the corner of the bus to peer around toward her and Cara.

  “The boys are coming!” she says frantically. Bill takes a step back gingerly, looks up at the rear door and then punches it, growling in anger.

  Jim watches the top of Bill’s head as he moves along the side of the bus, back toward the woman and the little girl, toward his new family. An honest smile quirks his trembling lips before his eyes go blearily back to the zombies. A number of them have now made it up the steps, and are hastily shuffling up the aisle toward him, so much in a hurry that they stumble, fall, and practically have to climb over one another.

  Bill first helps Angel up onto the hood, boosting her as she pulls herself up before handing up the boys’ backpacks. He then lifts Cara up, shifting all of his and her weight to his right side. Angel meets him halfway, helping to pull the girl up. Last, he hands up the shotgun, which Angel also takes, and then once more climbs up onto the hood of the bus himself, careful of his ankle. It’s a cramped space, and Bill only dares venture a fleeting glance through the bus’s windshield, seeing no sign of Jim through the dirty glass, only the rough shapes of a dozen zombies. At the sound of a high-pitched whistle, he turns to see both boys, still alive and well, coming toward the bus at a jog.

  “I told you they didn’t all follow us,” says Pete.

  “Whatever!” Jack shoots back. “Let’s just get the hell out of here!”

  “Hey—catch,” Bill says, tossing first one bag and then the other down to either boy.

  Angel helps herself down, and this time Bill hands Cara down to her.

  Jim leans weakly against
the back door of the bus, barely able to stay upright. He smirks grimly as the zombies get almost within arms’ reach of him. The flare gun hangs limply at his side. He fingers the trigger, hesitating only a moment before quickly squeezing it.

  Bill is about to hand down the shotgun when he hears a puff-bang sound from inside the bus. Angel, Cara, and both boys stagger away from the bus in a panic.

  “Oh, shit!” says Jack.

  “Fire!” Cara shouts, pointing at the sudden flames dance and roar within.

  “Shit,” Bill swears, sliding down over the passenger side of the hood, being sure to land on his good leg.

  Suddenly there is another cry from Cara, and Bill’s eyes shoot first to her, and then to the thing she is pointing at.

  He rights himself and shoulders the shotgun, taking aim at a flaming zombie as it stumbles down from the bus steps. It takes two steps before he has the sight set on its burning skull. He pulls the trigger, and half the zombie’s head explodes, spattering against the doorframe and leaving it briefly aflame. The rest of the flame-engulfed carcass falls to the ground motionless, continuing to burn black smoke into the blue, mid-morning sky.

  There seem to be no more coming back out of the bus, though in the distance—about fifty yards to the north—coming the same way that Jack and Pete had come, are the rest of the zombies; added to that are the ones that were previously occupied beneath the pier, now laboriously making their way up the beach and toward the burning beacon.

  “Time to go,” says Bill. “Everybody follow me.”

  ***

  The way back to the truck is clear, and even with Bill’s twisted ankle, there is no chance of the shambling zombies catching up to them. Still, he keeps the shotgun loosely shouldered and at the ready.

  When the vehicle comes into view the doors still sit ajar, just as he and Jim had left them, in case a hasty getaway had been necessary. Going to the driver’s side, Bill quickly checks through the window to make sure there are no nasty, undead surprises. There are none.

  “Everybody in,” he says, leaning into the cab and replacing the shotgun on the rear-window mount. While the boys bicker over how all will fit into the truck, Bill looks back toward the beach, toward the black column of smoke that has begun to paint the sky above Port Romero in shadow.

  “Come on,” he says, slipping the rifle sling over his head and leaning into the truck once more. “Pete, Jack, you two hop in back for now. We’ll figure it out later.” He opens the small window in the center of the truck’s back glass before returning the AR to the mount as well.

  “Bill, no—” Angel starts.

  “It’s okay,” he says, “I’ll drive slow, and I’ll stop as soon as we’re out of town.” He climbs into the driver’s seat, and seeing Jim’s sawed-off lying in the center, pulls it close, tucking it next to his leg. Already Jack and Pete are following his instructions; Cara, too, is making a place for herself, climbing into the cab and seating herself next to Bill. “The road in was totally desolate, Angel. We just need to get out of here.”

  With a brief glance toward the boys—and getting a reassuring thumbs-up from Pete—she quickly gets into the passenger seat and buckles in. While Bill does the same Angel buckles Cara in as well.

  “Hang on, guys,” Bill says. Both boys nod.

  “We’re ready,” offers Jack, slapping the side of the truck bed.

  Bill turns the key in the ignition, and it whines. He tries again, and the same thing happens.

  “Bill?” Cara says a bit nervously.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” he says, first glancing down at her and then up at Angel. “It just takes a couple of tries sometimes.”

  He hopes he’s right, hopes his rig hasn’t finally reached the end of its road as well.

  Over the distant sounds of fire, breeze and surf, the sound of groaning zombies slowly but steadily approaching comes into earshot.

  Come on, motherfucker, start.

  With the third turn of the key, the engine comes to life. Bill sighs and puts it in reverse. He gives it gas and turns the wheel to the left until he has the truck turned nearly one hundred eighty degrees, then puts it into drive and retraces the path that he took coming into town the morning before.

  ***

  The truck crests the hill overlooking Port Romero for the second time, and Bill eases to a brief stop. Looking in the rearview mirror from so high, all he can see is ocean and horizon, though he doubts he’ll soon forget what was lost there.

  “Bill?” Angel says softly, reaching over and gently placing her hand atop his on the steering wheel.

  “Last looks,” he says. She gives him a squeeze and then takes her hand away.

  Bill gives the truck some gas and they’re on their way.

  He looks over at Angel, and then down at Cara, and thinks, or gained.

  7 Order of the Second Death by Darren Todd

  While I was camping with my brother, the world ended and we never even knew. Not till we came out of the woods a week after we’d entered, only to find Garrett’s car all tore up. Battery gone, gas gone. The trunk empty even of the fabric lining. Still, we figured we’d been robbed, even way out in Hanging Rock, a half hour from pretty much anything in southwest Virginia.

  “You got your phone?” Garrett asked me, the first thing he’d said in ten minutes. He’d gone quiet, always did when he was super angry. That habit used to creep me out when we were kids, ’cause it meant he’d turned off our twin-senses and gone rogue on me, but I had to respect it now.

  I dug into my cargo pants and turned on my cell. I’d done this only twice during our annual camping trip, once because I’d lost my flashlight and the other time to reference an ebook. At the site, I hadn’t expected a signal and hadn’t wanted one. Now, though, I waited patiently to latch onto some cell tower. Even 2G would be enough to call Triple-A.

  “I got nothing, bro,” I said after waiting a couple minutes. “Did we have service on the way in?”

  He shrugged. Not sure why I even asked, just my sisterly compulsion to get him talking. When it came to phones, his twenty-five years looked more like fifty-five. He still had a flip-phone and had logged about ten minutes a month on it since cell technology began. In person, he’d talk your ear off, especially about film, and he’d pepper clients with emails so long you’d swear he’d slapped in a novel excerpt, but if you could keep him on the phone for more than a minute, you deserved a medal.

  He held up his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “I came that close to leaving the new recorder. Didn’t want to get it dirty. Would’ve been long gone.”

  This was mostly talk. He’d picked up his latest toy not two days before the trip and would sooner have left his sleeping bag as leave behind a piece of tech. He’d been my sound guy for going on five films, and we’d finally landed enough investors to replace his DAT with a digital recorder at about a tenth the weight.

  I dug around in the console. “I don’t know about that,” I said. “Whoever it was left about a hundred bucks worth of memory cards but drank the melted ice from my McDonald’s soda. That or they poured it out, and it dried by now. Just seems weird.”

  “We could ask this jack-off,” he said, his mood lightening some.

  I poked my head out of the car to follow his pointed finger. Well behind us on the road was a guy walking our way. Only, it looked more like a drunken stumble, like he was falling forward as much as walking.

  “Come to see if we have any white lightning to share,” I said, adopting a hick accent I knew Garrett would appreciate.

  “It’s not even ten yet.”

  “It’s five’o clock somewhere,” I said. From my pack, I pulled the camcorder, the 3-CCD model I’d also just gotten, care of our recent investors. Just as Garrett had spent the week playing around with his new audio recorder, I had learned the in and outs of my new camera. Sure, most of our footage from the last week came from our two new GoPros, but nothing beats a clean camcorder image, especially with this baby’s specs. My ol
d camera had landed on eBay, not a day after the DHL guy delivered this one.

  “So here we have a rare, native species of Virginian,” I narrated, whispering so only Garrett could hear. The guy was still a good football field away, but the moxy I showed with a camera faltered when it came to sound; that was Garrett’s job.

  “He’s gonna see you,” Garrett said, but I could tell by his tone he thought it was funny.

  “I’ve got about two minutes of battery left, and this is what I spend it on.” I turned off the camera. “How far away is that bar on Thompson Memorial?”

  Garrett’s shoulders slumped. “We gotta walk that far?”

  “You want to ask that asshole for a lift? Maybe he’s got a phone we can use.”

  “Fine.”

  ***

  We rucked up, my pack feeling about twice as heavy as on the hike back, probably because I had figured on not wearing it again until the following year. The day was mild, and the trees filtered most of the sunlight, but still, the smell of sweat permeated the fabric of my pullover.

  I closed my eyes as we walked the lonely road, imagining the exquisite feel of a proper, hot shower back at our apartment. Garrett would deal with the cops and the insurance company for a few hours, no doubt. I loved my twin brother to pieces, but by the time we’d covered another two miles, I had decided on an epic bath, complete with bubbles and music, maybe candles, and leave him to deal with the car details.

  “He’s still back there,” Garrett said, his voice forcing my eyelids open.

  I squinted into the sporadic flicker as the sun danced behind the tall trees. “Who?”

  “The dude,” he said and pointed back over his shoulder.

  Sure enough, the stumbling drunk was extending his walk of shame, and no way could we write off his following us as coincidence.

  “What’s his deal?” I asked. “You got your hatchet?”

  “Jesus, Shy, you want me to go all Dexter on the guy just for walking behind us? He could be headed to the same place. We haven’t passed a car in twenty minutes, so what if he’s hoofing it, too?”