OUTNUMBERED (Book 3)

by Robert Schobernd

  OUTNUMBERED vol. 3

  A zombie apocalypse series

  by

  Robert Schobernd

  Published by Robert Schobernd at Amazon

  Copyright 2015 by Robert Schobernd

  Cover Art by Katrina Joyner

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  The End

  Prologue

  The imminent decline of mankind has only now become apparent to and accepted by all of the survivors at Deliverance. Most of our people resisted acceptance of the eventual cataclysmic fall from the Age of Technology to the lifestyles and hardships of the fifteenth century. But as the life we've known slips away like a run-away locomotive hurtling down a steep grade and then over a precipice, they've grudgingly come to accept it.

  If we survive the zombie onslaught and the atrocities brought by other humans, our heirs will be privy to a spectacular regeneration as the earth cleanses itself of man's past wasteful and destructive ways.

  In the past three years our people have experienced man's inhumanity to man first hand. Because of that, we are back to the most basic of vigilante justice; we believe in the law of retaliation and literally take a tooth for a tooth, an eye for and eye, and a life for a life. Our code of justice is harsh and quick, but fair and final. We can't afford to be weak, for weakness begets ever more oppression and pain. We are the survivors at Deliverance.

  Tom Jacobs – 2022, the fourth year of the zombie apocalypse.

  CHAPTER ONE

  At 4:15 a.m. we'd been on the road for a little over three hours, and I'd been driving for one. Debris left on the highway made it unsafe to drive in excess of 50 MPH in the dark even with the high beams on. Abandoned or wrecked cars and trucks, decomposing bodies of both humans and zombies, and a myriad of everything I could image and some I'd never expected littered all lanes. My three passengers slept, but with Ed Jarnigan snoring like a twenty pound bullfrog I didn't know what kept Elsie Talbot and Kira Schaefer from waking.

  James Taylor crooned softly through the speakers when I saw them through the gloom. At the far edge of the high beam halogen headlights, a dense mob of figures spread across my two lanes of the four lane divided highway. I hit the brakes and shouted, "Wake up! Zombies ahead."

  The truck several hundred feet behind me was warned as I pumped the brakes vigorously. I pushed harder on the brake pedal to slow the heavy duty Ford F250 pickup pulling a five foot by ten foot U-Haul trailer. I knew I wasn't going to stop in time. Muttered waking comments floated by me over the high notes of Taylor's ballad "Fire and Rain" as my passengers groggily adjusted to the scene unfolding in front of them. The truck slowed considerably when it hit three lightweight, rotted bodies in quick succession. They made loud thumps before one was thrown off either fender. A third slid across the hood and scratched hungrily at the glass with boney fingers. Ed blinked himself awake and then pressed the barrel his .45 caliber Glock against the glass when I shouted, "Don't shoot, damn it." I let up on the breaks, and then stomped the pedal hard. The front end dipped and the rotted corpse slid forward over and off the end of the hood. The right side of the truck rose slightly as the tire crushed the decayed remains of a female, and then the trailer bounced roughly over the ungodly debris.

  The speedometer showed under ten MPH by then, so I swung to the right and then made a hard left in a half circle toward the other edge of the concrete pavement. I told the ladies, "Don't lower your windows for any reason, but keep watch on both sides for more zombies.”

  We had a clear view of the zombies caught in the headlight beams of our tailing truck. The power moon roof slid fully open as Ed stood with one foot in his seat and the other on the console. Immediately he fired his customized M16 in three-round bursts. Skulls shattered and bone and brain fragments danced through the artificial light as stumbling corpse after stumbling corpse fell to accurate and relentless gunfire.

  The front of our truck extended about three feet off the pavement, and the trailer sat across the left lane. I drove forward so both marksmen would have a clear line of fire without shooting at each other. Rotted bodies at the perimeter of the mob dropped when hot lead exploded their evil brains.

  My attention was focused to the killing circle on my left when an unexpected movement on the right registered in my mind. A single fast-moving zombie streaked from the moonless, ebony darkness into my headlight beams. Kira yelled and pointed as I yelled, "Ed, the hood, one's coming up."

  Even as I yelled, the undead monstrosity vaulted up and onto the truck's hood. Its clothing was filthy and tattered, but the undead body was intact. Ed's left knee brushed my shoulder as he turned; a series of rifle blasts close together erupted from his M16 and lit the area above the hood in gold and crimson flashes of light. The zombie staggered backward to the middle of the hood from the bullets' impact then charged again. Ed's right hand flashed down then upward gripping his Glock as the rifle went silent. The rifle thumped noisily on top of the cab as the Glock belched fire into the night at least four times.

  I pulled my Glock in case Ed was injured. God, I didn't want to be the one to have to put him down if he'd been bitten. A magazine for the M16 dropped through the opening. Ed squatted and grinned at me. "Damn it, that was too close. That frigging thing almost got to me." His upper torso disappeared back through the moon roof, and rifle fire started anew. Cold air cascaded through the open roof and down my neck as I watched in front of and to the passenger side of the truck instead of peering at the zombie shooting fest taking place. We couldn't afford to lose our ex-SEAL and weapons expert.

  When the final undead were converted to dead, I turned the truck around and continued toward Chicago. Both trucks and trailers would have to be put through the high volume, high pressure deluge truck wash system our engineer, John Alton, had designed and rigged up at the beginning of the zombie onslaught. The two-thousand gallon a minute wash would clean everything off the equipment from the top of the cab to beneath the undercarriage.

  All along the way, we'd seen the undead bodies wandering aimlessly through the streets of small towns or near the highway up close or in the distance. Three times we'd stopped to shoot the smaller groups and left the rotting hulks scattered in our wake. Several of the whole bodied fast runners were in the numbers we killed. They were a conundrum; we had no idea how or why they had recently appeared, but we had fast learned of the increased danger they posed. Their speed, coupled with a minimum of noise they made, let them approach much quicker and closer than the original undead we'd grown used to. Whatever evil madness had created the original zombie now seemed determined to improve on its original design.

  Later that morning, Ed drove. At North Aurora, on I-80, we were still almost twenty miles from the Chicago city boundary. The number of undead we saw on and off the interstate increased with every mile we traveled closer to The Windy City. A few of the monsters clambered across our east bound lanes to loll in front of us. If they were the dried out, rotted, stumbling, hulks he'd run them down. A few times we encountered the full bodied fast runners that were becoming more common every month. At those times we stopped the trucks and shot the beasts one by one instead of taking a chance on damaging the body panels or wrecking the truck.

  We were on our way to visit a new Walmart distribution center on the southwest side of Chicago. It had been completed only months before the zombie apocalypse started in 2019. We hoped Walmart had followed the lead of many other international businesses in not advertizing the location of the facility with large gaudy signs. They'd learned the hard way that the identification only made them easy targets of crazy homegrown or international political and religious terrorist.


  "How did you come up with the address for this place?" I asked.

  "I didn't. We have to search for it. At the beginning of the zombie attacks on the coasts, I remembered reading about the new building because of its size. Its huge, one of the biggest warehouses ever built. That's the reason it was newsworthy, or I wouldn't have known about it. I looked it up on the internet three months before the internet shut down, but I didn't find the exact address. I have a general description of the location and a few photos. It's at Willowbrook, Illinois, and that sign ahead says we're there now." Ed handed me copies of photos and I passed them to our passengers in the back seat.

  We'd driven all night, switching drivers every two hours. After four hundred miles, we were all tired of sitting and squirming around to change butt cheek positions.

  At ten, we drove into an area of huge warehouses covering several square miles. After twenty minutes, the truck behind us called on the radio. Shane Holescheck said, "Janice thinks she sees the target building behind the one on our left. She said it looks even bigger than these monstrosities. The flat roof is covered with solar panels like Ed's pictures show."

  "Okay," I answered, "if you see it, pass us and take the lead."

  The black F-250 diesel crew-cab pickup passed us and we fell in behind the orange and white trailer it pulled. We were in an identical rig with a white truck. As we circled back to the building we were looking for, more zombies emerged from wherever they'd been loitering. Minutes later, we stopped in front of the gates at the biggest damn warehouse I'd ever seen. I couldn't even guess how many acres of ground it and the asphalt parking lot covered. Inside the fence, I counted four parked semitrailers with the Walmart logo painted on their sides.

  A dull brass bodied padlock and heavy length of chromed chain held the double gate frames where they met. Our security guy, Martin Radcliff, removed a step ladder from the top of the trailer and sat it at the gate. He'd put his coat on to work outside in the cold February breeze and pulled a pick set from a pocket. Silently he concentrated on picking the industrial grade lock, so we could relock it when we left. Ed stayed in our truck while Elsie, Kira and I moved outside to stretch and stand guard duty.

  We slipped into our winter jackets and thin leather gloves as Kira glanced around the area. She said, "Oh no. Zombies coming."

  Down the industrial parkway, a string of undead headed our way, at least forty or fifty stretched out down the block. As we watched, more joined the mob. We glanced in the opposite direction along the fence line and saw a similar sight. I called out, "Martin, get a move on if you can. Two bunches of zombies are coming to welcome us to the neighborhood, and it's their meal time. Get us inside as fast as possible."

  Vince Gonzales, and Marilyn Deutsch, joined us with their weapons. They fired at the advancing horde on the left, and our truck's passengers took on the other group. We had each gone through one extended magazine and started on a second when Martin yelled, "Got it. One of you, give me a hand disconnecting the operator on this section." The women continued laying down deadly fire as Martin and I spent precious minutes freeing the chain drive from the gate. The twelve foot wide section moved in sporadic jerks with both of us shoving and grunting until it opened fully.

  Both trucks entered the yard, and we frantically closed the gate behind them and relocked it.

  Our gunfire had only stopped for a minute or so as we rushed inside. That was long enough for the noisy zombies remaining to cover the ground and reach us. They stood outside clawing at the fence; some forced fingers or small hands through the wire links. The breeze shifted direction indiscriminately and the stench of the rotting undead dropped on us like having our heads shoved down a toiler.

  We walked along the mesh barrier firing at the deadheads. More undead continued to ramble toward us. Apparently the steady gunfire drew them like kids to fireworks. We'd learned to prefer the cold weather attacks by zombies simply because it eliminated the huge swarms of flies in warm weather that accompanied the rotting, maggot infested hulks like hovering dark clouds. For some time we'd watched the original zombies deteriorate to piles of walking bones as the flesh and organs finally rotted completely away. That was good as far as dealing with the smell was concerned, but it eliminated their skunky odor as a warning signal.

  We turned away from our enemies and hoped they would wander off if we ignored them and went inside.

  Fifty and sixty foot long box trailers were spotted at many of the loading docks or staged in two areas against the perimeter fence. Three yard tractors were parked at the fence line beside the empty trailers, and four newer over-the-road tractors were parked near the warehouse.

  Martin worked his magic on an entrance door while I surveyed the yard. More undead lined up at the fence to moan and shriek at us. Standing on top of the catatonic zombies we'd shot didn't faze them one bit. Shane and Vince Gonzales pulled their truck up to an overhead door leading into the warehouse and waited. The six of us turned and marched into the enormous structure, unsure of what we'd find. It could still be empty for all we knew.

  We clicked flashlights on as we sniffed the air for the foul odor of zombies, and were thankful for the absence of the dreaded smell. A musty odor permeated the air from the building being closed tight for more than three years, but it wasn't sickeningly rotten. Martin and Elsie went to the door where Shane and the truck waited. The other four of us split into two pairs. Kira and I marched down the aisles looking for items we could use in addition to guns and ammo. A loud mechanical ruckus announced the overhead door was being opened manually. Several shots cracked before the throaty growl of the diesel engine indicated Shane had driven in. The door closed noisily behind him to the accompaniment of more shots before silence settled over us again.

  I stopped and looked questioningly at Kira. "It's warm in here. It must be forty degrees or more." She took off her thin leather shooting gloves, unzipped her winter jacket, and said, "Could the heating system be running off the solar panels on the roof? There's no other possible explanation, is there?" We went back to the door we'd entered and laid our coats on the floor. The heavy shirts and sweaters we'd worn were adequate in the breezeless enclosure. As we'd walked I'd noticed the walls and roof panels were insulated. We were in a premier, state of the art warehouse.

  We walked to the trailer as Shane and Vince unloaded a small generator with wheels under its chassis. Electric forklifts were lined up several hundred feet from us and the men headed there to charge the batteries on two units. Shane was with us because, in addition to being my best friend, he's our electrician. Vince is a mechanic training under his father, Albert. Elsie and Martin disappeared to the dark interior down goodies laden aisles.

  We stopped Shane and talked about the solar panels and the heat system. I asked, "Do you think there's enough power from the solar panels to flip on some lights in addition to the heat?"

  He cocked his jaw and ran his fingers through his short red hair as he thought. "I doubt it as cloudy as the sky has been the last few days." He shook his head. "I don't recommend taking a chance on it. I don't know how the system is set up yet. Best to leave it alone if it's worked on automatic to heat this huge space for the past four years. The building being full of stock helps ease the heat load because it serves as a heat sink to retain the heat and reduce the area to be warmed. I'll check the system before we go, but I'll bet this is a huge geothermal system. Electric heaters would need more current than the panels would generate. It's disheartening to me with my electrical and instrumentation background to know this level of technology will be lost to us in a few short years." He shook his head and frowned. "And worse yet, it won't be rediscovered for hundreds if not thousands of years. We're living at the end of a great technological era."

  Kira and I ambled along past pallets of miscellaneous items stacked four high. Ed called on the radio. "You aren't going to believe the amount of ammunition we've found. We're in aisle 23 past cross-aisle P. There's enough guns and ammo here to have won
a war in a remote banana republic."

  I replied, "I hope it's the same with food supplies. With the temperature held above freezing the food should all be good, and nothing should have frozen and burst like a lot of what we've found so far this year. If we can find a trailer in the yard with electric heaters we can take a whole trailer load back with us. But first we need to find the food storage section in this monstrosity." Shane cut into the radio conversation, "Two forklifts should be charged and ready to operate in a few hours. I'll call when you can have them."

  Kira and I continued to explore the vast building. As we walked, she said, "A while back you predicted religion will again be popular with the majority when all of our present technology fails or wears out. Why do you think that? I'm especially interested because I've gathered from what you've said before that you're not inclined to practice religion."

  I stopped walking, and we leaned against a single pallet of goods left at the edge of the aisle. We turned the lights off to conserve the batteries and spoke into the total darkness. In the ebony space I lost all sense of direction and focused on Kira's fragrance so close by. "A majority of people need something bigger than themselves to believe in. It becomes more prevalent in hard times. It's a human condition. We, the survivors of today's zombie curse, have had religious leaders, politicians, movie stars and sports heroes to look up to all of our lives. I believe the reverence paid to most of them was misplaced. Now that they're all gone, I still strongly predict someone will slip under the holier than thou cloak of religion and preach about a benevolent but strict god that all must worship or be condemned to eternal damnation."

  She hesitated and I waited... "And from your tone, I gather you think that's bad. Why?"

  "I do. Throughout the entire recorded history of mankind the worst atrocities were committed in the name of religion or politics. I'm lumping dictators as well as democratically elected officials under the mantle of politics; they've waged war, destroyed economies as well as the people in villages, towns, cities and entire countries under the guise of national security, racism or to expand the reach of their power. Man has done it in the past, and he will do it again in the future. While the earth will have hundreds or thousands of years to regenerate itself, man will foolishly repeat the same mistakes. And we'll do it soon. It's in our nature to not be satisfied; we've always looked for a shortcut to wealth and happiness or to blame someone else for our failures and shortcomings." Silence enveloped us when I stopped talking, and only the slightest of sounds in the distance assured us we weren't alone in the world.