Unrest

by Reed, Nathaniel

  “Yep,” Lupe nodded, “Only one way out for us. But for them too.”

  ***

  The car crashed through the doors and surrounding walls of the cabin, making the entire thing quake. Dust rained down from the ceiling. The car went halfway into the living area, two of the zombies hurtling through the air as Morris pushed down hard on the brake pedal. The horn was replaced with the squeal of the brakes, and the sudden noisy pop and poof as the airbag deployed and filled.

  The zombies were slowly rising off the ground.

  Now that they were inside, the car and its driver forgotten, they noticed the three living bags of flesh in the bedroom.

  George moved quickly to intercept them, blasting off the first one’s head with the double barrel. Lana swung the hammer at the other, which got too close for comfort as George reloaded. In her panic she had it facing the wrong way, not the blunt end she’d intended. The claw end caught the bridge of the creature’s nose between the split in the claw, causing blood to gush from it. She ripped the hammer free and the zombie’s nose came with it, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of its face. Lana screeched as the bloody faced nose-less thing kept coming at her. Xinga came in from behind her, stabbing it in the forehead with a Sai. The creature dropped.

  They looked toward the car. George had his weapon loaded and was pointing it toward the vehicle, approaching it slowly. Morris was gradually making his way out of the vehicle, nearly falling as he stumbled out.

  “That him?” George asked.

  “Yes,” Xinga said.

  George considered shooting him on the spot, but he was still human. George opened his eyes in surprise, “Ah shit, what is this?”

  “Don’t come any closer,” George told him.

  The other two zombies were making their way around the vehicle coming in from either side through the hole in the wall. Morris heard their groans behind him, and quickly waddled/shuffled toward the living, despite the presence of the shotgun.

  “Don’t let them get me!” Morris said. “Please don’t let them get me!”

  Just as George thought; a man who would kidnap a defenseless girl using his brawn wasn’t a man at all. The man was a coward when the shoe was on the other foot.

  “Fine, move your sniveling fat ass over here,” George said, “But just remember who’s got the gun.”

  Morris nodded. “Thank you, thank you.” He scurried over as the zombies moved in.

  “That’s far enough.”

  He was several feet from the man and the two women. The shotgun was pointed at his head.

  ***

  The standoff between the Marines and the feds was a massacre. The Marines fought valiantly but they were outnumbered and outgunned. Once they started firing back through the windows and the first fed was killed (a fair trade for the Marine they murdered, in Wilkes’s mind) it was a shooting gallery. Bullets from the handguns ricocheted and pinged, shattered glass, put holes in walls and bodies. The other feds ducked for cover and fired from the sides and backs of their cars, crouching down. They sent the SWAT through in their stead, geared up in full black riot gear: bullet proof vests, elbow and knee guards, and protective helmets with glass shields, coming in with a heavy barrage of machine gun fire.

  “We’re fucked,” one Marine said.

  “Yeah,” Wilkes agreed. He continued to fire in open opposition through the window, taking out as many feds as he could, and trying to hit the SWAT team where the bullets might do some damage. The doctor hid behind the couch trying to simultaneously cover his ears and his eyes in what looked like some odd back and forth pantomime.

  Wilkes screamed as he rattled off round after round from his AR-15. He was the first to go down. When they couldn’t overtake them through sheer firepower alone, the SWAT moved in, throwing canisters of tear gas through the windows and donning gas masks in place of their face shields and helmets. They took up black metal shields in their free hands. They breached the door with a battering room, coming in with guns blazing and shields raised.

  The Marines tried to cover their mouths and noses, tried to keep the tear gas from affecting them. Their eyes turned red and they began to cough, looking at each other with the same miserable conclusion- they were goners. They lifted their guns anyway and began to fire even as their eyes burned, their throats closed up, and their nasal passages were set on fire. Their resistance was brief. The SWAT moved in with high powered flashlights on top of the laser scopes on their semi-automatic rifles to pierce through the fog, and target each one of them. Even when they were completely incapacitated and were no threat to them, they targeted them with their scopes, taking each of them out, with bullets to the brain or heart.

  Even through the haze of his burning eyes and his prone retching form lying sideways beyond the couch, the doctor saw the true depth of man’s inhumanity to man, and shuddered.

  “Leave the doctor alive,” someone said.

  He didn’t think things could get any worse. That was before he saw what would happen with his formula.

  twenty-three

  Kamara swung the axe, but the zombie lunged at her in a crouch at the last instant, and instead the blade she’d intended for its head went into its shoulder, and its forward momentum pulled the axe free from her hand.

  “Fuck!” she said. She backed off, remembering the sword she had sheathed at her back. She didn’t have much room to swing sideways so she brought the sword up above her head two-handed, and bore down with all her might on the crouching shambler’s head. It sliced through the top of its skull, cleaving the head in two. It happened so quick that gravity stilled, and the neat wedges made the swaying creature’s head resemble the inside of a cracked walnut. Then the two halves of its brain fell out in gloppy piles, slapping wetly on the floor, trickles of blood slowly making their way down the ruined halves of its face, as it crumpled to the floor.

  Other shamblers stepped in the piles of brain. One of them slipped and fell and then struggled to get back up. Ian caved the back of its head in with the mace. Kamara continued to swing through the crowd of them with the sword, slicing off the tops of skulls, stabbing through their necks, their eyes, any exposed area of head. Off to the side, somewhere behind her, she could hear the rat-a-tat-tat of the machine gun, and the boom of the shotgun. Coupled with the clash of steel from the sword and Ian’s mace, the cut off groans, the thumping of bodies, and the splatter of blood, it created an industrial soundtrack unlike any other.

  “We’re doing it!” Samir shouted.

  They had stemmed the tide of undead considerably. Even in the close quarters they had the advantage of heavy weaponry and the fact that their enemy was slow. As more and more bodies fell they realized just how wide the space was, as if they’d entered a house of worship, a cathedral to the politician, with the bully pulpit front and center.

  Ian saw a senator he recognized. He smiled wide before bashing his brains in, and then hitting him several more times while he was on the floor, obviously dead, screaming crazily. The others stared at him, even as they continued to kill themselves.

  “What?” Ian looked from one to another; all of a sudden aware he had an audience, and shrugged. “I never liked that guy.”

  Marina took out the last few remnants of zombies, about a dozen, with the AK.

  Samir frowned. “What’d I tell you about leaving some for me?”

  “My bad,” she said. “I guess we can call this outing a bust. I don’t think there’s a live one here, besides us.”

  “I think you forgot someone,” Samir said. As they walked out the doors she realized he was right.

  “The dog.”

  Ariel looked up at them, whining at first, and then realizing they were done with the bad smelly people, she barked and wagged her tail happily.

  “C’mon Ariel,” Kamara said. She was good with animals and they took to her easily. Like her cat Bella, who she hadn’t named either-her previous owner had (she could come up with better names not based on characters in movies an
d novels) who her mother and sister now had. She was a pain in her butt, but she loved her. “We need to get you washed up, so we can see what you really look like.”

  There was a fountain not far from the grounds where they did just that. Ariel splashed around happily, jumping in and out of the fountain, bounding in the water less like a dog than a jack rabbit. This was probably the most animated she’d been in some time.

  Her fur, though overgrown and matted was pretty, dark brown in most places with patches of red and white. One black patch went over her right eye.

  “I knew you were a pretty girl.”

  Ariel wagged her tail and her tongue, grinning. They all took turns petting her now that she was mostly clean.

  “So we continue with the original plan,” Samir said.

  “Find Ian’s parents,” Marina nodded.

  “Where were they again?”

  “Where are they,” Ian corrected, not wanting to dampen his good mood with doubt. “Fredericksburg. Not far. Fifty five to sixty miles.”

  “Good, I suggest we eat, and then we’ll go straight there,” Samir said.

  “No more stops?” Marina said.

  “None,” Samir raised his hand, “Promise.”

  ***

  With their backs to each other, protecting each other, it was imperative that their weapons didn’t impede one another. They both had long weapons and it was likely they would clash being so close. At several points the spear and the Bo Staff did intersect, but always at the ends not in use, and always briefly, crossing each other in an X, as they faced their enemy at opposite ends of the diagonal, as if they had choreographed a routine; the whacks to

  the head and the piercing of flesh in sync. They continued to batter and skewer through the mob, sometimes from a distance, and at other times inches from them, picking them off one by one as they came toward them. The axis they’d forged with their bodies let the two of them see the zombies advance from every angle. They couldn’t have done better if they’d planned it.

  The herd was quickly dwindling. Groans be-came blood clogged croaks, and the living dead only corpses on the ground, defrosting in the heat of battle, before the rot that would inevitably consume them.

  Lupe and Jomo turned to each other briefly and smiled as they finished them off, but not before Jomo had a close call with one of them nearly breaking through their defensive wall and pouncing at his neck. Lupe cracked the woman across the skull twice, hard, with both ends, twirling the staff in both arms. Her skull was struck a third time as it bounced off the back room’s coated cement floor.

  “Bitch,” Lupe said. Jomo speared the last under the jaw, the point of the spear coming out the top of its head. He ripped it out with gusto, a steady stream of gushing blood from its neck heralding his victory scream.

  They turned, high fived each other, and breathed a deep sigh of relief.

  “You okay?” Jomo asked.

  “Yeah, you?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. No bites.”

  “Me either. Not even a scratch,” she said. “But I meant in general.”

  “Yes. I think so. We have each other’s backs now.”

  “Quite literally,” Lupe said.

  “Well, not literally literally.”

  “Ewww.”

  Jomo laughed.

  They walked back out into the store. Lupe eyed their unfilled shopping cart from afar. “Shall we?”

  “What, you mean continue shopping?” Jomo asked. “Well, yeah, now I’m really hungry.”

  ***

  George faced a dilemma. He couldn’t take his eyes off the kidnapper, and if he spent his rounds on one of the zombies, he wouldn’t have time to reload and cover the man or the remaining zombie. He would have to rely on his wife and the girl to cover him and finish off the other zombie. Now the girl seemed to be good with her weapons, but his wife wasn’t exactly handling the situation.

  The zombies were drawing nearer. It was decision making time.

  “Xinga! Cover him!” George shouted.

  She moved toward Morris and pointed the Sai in his face. “Don’t move,” Xinga warned him.

  Morris nodded feverishly, sweat pouring down his face. He could tell the little girl would have no problem killing him if he made any sudden moves.

  George took aim, blasting one of the zombie’s heads off from fifteen feet away. It disintegrated into flying chunks.

  It all happened too quickly. Before he could reload the other zombie closed in on him. It grabbed his arm making him drop the shotgun. George shoved the zombie away from him, and tripped on the area rug, falling on his rear. The zombie teetered to the side and moved toward Lana, who was now in its sights. She screeched, striking it with the hammer. It was a glancing blow that struck the side of its head and stuck there, flopping as it progressed toward her, groaning with an intense hunger.

  Xinga looked on nervously, trying to keep an eye on Morris and Lana simultaneously. Lana backed into the table and reached behind her for something, anything. She wrapped her hands around the handle of the drill. The shambler circled around the front of the table to the side where she was, and Lana continued to back up along the table’s edge, making her way toward the kitchen.

  Morris saw an opportunity as Xinga watched

  Lana’s predicament and lowered her weapons for a second. She saw the blow from the corner of her eye and ducked under Morris’s fist. She brought the Sai up, burying them to the hilt on either side of his throat; the hilts having two additional points made it six points of contact; six points that pierced through skin, hitting the jugular and major arteries. His eyes flung open in surprise. Blood spouted from his neck and his mouth as she pulled them out, splattering her.

  He looked at her with a pained look of betrayal as if she’d been the one who wronged him.

  “I told you not to move,” Xinga said. He fell on his back, blood still pumping out in spurts, choking.

  “Losers keepers.”

  A shrill piercing sound made her turn. It was the electric drill. Lana had made her way to the kitchenette and flipped it on, and thankfully the battery still worked. The shambler was atop her and she plunged the moving drill into the side of its head. The drill bit made an angry metallic squeal as it struck against the hammer already in its skull, showering sparks. The hammer fell to the floor, and the rapidly circling bit spattered blood into her face in concentric circles. Lana drove the bit deeper, boring all the way through so that the end came out the other side of its head, effectively lobotomizing an already all but brain dead subject.

  The zombie fell on top of her dead as her back arched over the counter bearing its weight. It thumped to the floor after Lana shoved it off of her in disgust.

  George was getting up and Xinga was moving toward her.

  “Are you all right?” Xinga asked.

  “Are you hurt?” George asked, frantic. “Are you

  bit?!”

  Lana looked around her as if she wasn’t sure where she was.

  “Lana?!” George shouted pleadingly.

  She looked down at herself, at the zombie and heard herself say, “No, I’m not. I’m fine,” from somewhere distant. Even when he embraced her his touch was far off, fleeting.

  George looked at her with worry.

  “She’ll be fine,” Xinga assured him. “The first ones are always the hardest.”

  “First?” George said.

  ***

  The doctor was expendable but they let him live, even after they forced him to lead another team of scientists into engineering the formula to kill faster. Fielding thought it was better if they had killed him than having to live with the knowledge of what he’d created.

  The government had the soldiers test it on animals, in several states and other countries covertly. Instead of starting with a cure and killing bad cells, it was eventually engineered so powerful that it actually produced sickness, attacking good tissue and bad tissue alike from the start and not just after it had destroyed the bad clusters,
ultimately weakening the immune system and attaching itself to the brain like a leech, which caused a temporary madness resulting in death within hours. The agents of government who sought this weapon were pleased. They never counted on it being transmissible to other living beings, especially animal to human, or with such ease. By the time they realized what they’d done it was already out of control. They never got to test it out on the battlefield, but witnessing the effects of it on humans was immediate.

  In an effort to quell the upcoming panic they shut down all broadcasts- TV, radio, and satellite, cell towers, and any kind of electronic communication. No internet, high speed or otherwise. The power was cut to the telephone companies so there was no land line service either. The only things that worked were government servers with limited capability. Because people would demand answers of their leaders they declared martial law in D.C. while the politicians hid in their bunkers and waited out the shit storm.

  The military followed orders they didn’t entirely understand, trusting that their leaders knew what was best, until they saw the living dead for themselves, and rapidly switched their loyalties. They were with the people.

  By the time everyone knew what was happening it was already too late for those remaining to turn the tide back.

  twenty-four

  It wasn’t long before they made it to Ian’s parent’s house. The house was a light blue with a deep shaded porch, but even from afar they could tell the place was boarded up. This tiny slice of suburbia was quaint. They parked along the curb in front of the house, looking around down the street at the other houses. Everything appeared quiet.

  Ian sprung out of the car. If they had the place boarded up there was a chance they were still inside alive!

  “Wait Ian!” Samir shouted. “We need to stay close together.”