by Geo Dell
“And,” Ronnie said. “People. A couple of generations and we will be our own people too. Our own race.”
Mike nodded. “I'm for it. I'm mixed race, so I've never really been anything at all... It will be nice to be part of something.”
Ronnie nodded. “But outside? We'll be different from them. And who knows how they'll view that. A good thing? A bad thing? We'll have to deal with that eventually,” he said.
“In our lifetime?” Mike asked.
“I think so. They'll know we're here. They'll know we've got something better than what they have. I mean they have to deal with the dead, up close and personal... And maybe something will come our way from that too... It would be naive to think that the dead will never come here... Never guess we're here. Maybe even be bought into our midst through the most common circumstances... Even mistakenly.”
Mike shrugged.
“All it takes is one body not taken care of. A group headed for us that dies on the way... Who's to say that hasn't already happened?”
“Jesus,” Mike muttered.
“Sorry,” Ronnie told him.
“No... No. You are my balance... Or I am your balance. Either way it completes the picture. I can see those outside taking a look at this and seeing how good it is and wanting it... Do you know what Bear talked to me about? He said we need a military branch. A part of us that keeps them away. That does the dirty work, makes the runs to the outside world. That makes sure paradise stays paradise forever. Or something close to forever,” Mike looked at him.
Ronnie raised his eyebrows. “Well... I think the man has a good idea... We need that exactly. That would make me worry less. And I would bet it wouldn't be all that hard to get people who want to do it either... Starting with Bear. Take it to them before they bring it to us.”
Mike nodded and shook his head. “Jesus... Where's the old non-talking Ronnie?” He laughed again. “You are right on it though. I can see it. We have to be ready for it... Bear had a name picked out even... The Outrunners.”
“Outrunners?” Ronnie asked.
“Simplistic... They're out there running down what we need. That's the public viewpoint anyway. How we sell it, but they're also doing the other jobs. The jobs that have to be done if the rest of want to live safely.”
“Good name... Makes sense... So it will be a private and a public business,” Ronnie said.
Mike frowned. “Yeah... Sounds like the old world, I know.”
“Yeah, but, we're not the old world sort. We're not trying to hurt our own people... That's the difference,” Ronnie said.
“So if we kill to keep our people safe?”
“Will you kill a zombie? Same thing. It's a preemptive strike. And, I'm not saying we have people out there to kill anyone. I'm saying if the fight comes to us we be prepared. These Outrunners, be prepared. That's all it is... Right?”
Mike nodded. “Just reminds me of the kind of shit I hated about the world... But I see your point,” He gazed out the window and they drove in silence for a while. “Okay,” he said at last. “When we get back we'll set it up... I'll talk to Bear... You too. We'll get the council in on it. Get it in place before winter kicks in.” He looked over at Ronnie. Ronnie offered his closed fist. Mike touched it with his own.
The Nation
Candace woke up next to Patty. Gray light crept into the room through the windows. She reached over and pushed Patty's hair from her forehead, smoothing out the frown lines that appeared as she did. Patty's eye opened. She rolled up on her side and faced Candace.
“Morning, Pats,” Candace said.
Patty smiled. “Morning, Candy.” She reached over and pulled her closer.
“Mike's going to think I look like a house,” Candace said.
“He doesn't know right? You couldn't tell him, right?”
“Nope. I'll tell him tonight. A girl's got to have some secrets, Pats,” Candace told her. “I love you, Pats.”
“I know you do, Candy. I love you too,” Patty said.
Home In The Valley
The long procession of trucks rounded the final curve in the foothills where they marched into the mountains, and a long narrow valley opened before them. In the distance a notch opened in the low mountain chain that was outlined against the light blue of the morning sky. Ahead the valley floor swept up to meet the level of the notch. Several tiny figures stood silhouetted against that notch. The entire top of the ridge seemed to be filled with people. Arms raised, waving as the caravan grew closer and began the slow climb to the top of the notch. As they reached the top, the stone ledge leveled out and stretched away towards another ledge and the rise that lead up to the cave.
The livestock truck pulled around where Mike had stopped: Reversed, and then lined up on the notch where it gradually slipped down into the valley. Josh shut the truck down and the other trucks pulled up and shut down as well.
The dogs jumped out of the cab as Josh climbed down. A dog barked from the top of the ridge. It sounded like Angel to Mike. The dogs below woofed back and then followed Josh around to the back of the truck where he and Bear pulled out the ramp, set it up, and then opened the wide rear doors. The two dogs herded the sheep out and followed Josh as he walked down the ledge into the valley below. “Looks like we're home, dogs,” he said, as he walked down the slope.
Mike and Ronnie walked up to the top of the notch. The sun in their eyes. The others following along behind them.
Mike's eyes fell on Candace as she stepped forward. Patty brushed by him on her way to Ronnie.
“I can't tell you how much I've missed you,” he told her.
“Just kiss me, Baby,” Candace said. “That will show me. You can figure out how to tell me later.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to her.
THE ZOMBIE PLAGUES: BOOK FOUR
Created by Geo Dell & Dell Sweet
* * * * *
PUBLISHED ON SMASHWORDS
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PUBLISHED BY:
Geo Dell and independAntwriters Publishing
The Zombie Plagues Book Four
Copyright © 2010 – 2015 by Geo Dell & independAntwriters Publishing All rights reserved
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your bookseller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places or incidents depicted are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual living persons places, situations or events is purely coincidental.
This novel is Copyright © 2010 – 2015 Wendell Sweet. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic, print, scanner or any other means and, or distributed without the author's permission.
Permission is granted to use short sections of text in reviews or critiques in standard or electronic print.
THE ZOMBIE PLAGUES: BOOK FOUR
CHAPTER ONE
Bear
August 4th
We were down along the river checking over some old buildings that are perched on the cliffs there, high above the water. Fall was not far away, and we knew we had to get moving, get out of this dead city. We had half the country to cross and find a place before winter came back around again.
We had left the others in our place off the park - an abandoned factory building I had found after I had lost Donita - and struck out looking for food earlier that morning. With the park and its crowds so near to us, the shops and small stores for blocks around us were stripped clean. Another reason to get out of the city. It was time. I remember thinking that as I walked along.
I was thinking back to March as I walked. Not really paying attention to the walk, where I wa
s going... March... Just a few months ago, but the world was still the world then. And for the next little while there, we didn't even know about the dead. Dead was still dead. When you closed your eyes for the long eternal sleep you didn't wake up a short minute later as something else. No. We were ignorant up until they decided to come after us. Ignorant. Stupid. Didn't know a thing. Didn't have a clue.
I had been in Central Park a few days after the first earthquakes hit. I had left Donita alone and went down on my own to see what the deal was. I found out nothing. No one knew any more than anyone else. There was a lot of speculation, but that was it. There had been earthquakes. It had rained hard for nearly twenty-four hours straight. The really freaky stuff hadn't happened yet. We were just starting down our new path, but what was clear was that thousands of people had died in the city, maybe more than thousands, maybe a million or more. And certainly millions if the damage here was the same across the country... or worldwide.
And my initial estimate turned out to be a kind. In the city alone: collapsed buildings, fires, exposure to the elements because there was no shelter. There were millions of bodies. It was not so bad in those first few days, but a few days later, when the smell of the dead rotting under the rubble began, it was horrible. The diseases started then too. And the diseases took thousands more, and we thought that was the end of it, but it was not. The dead came next. The same dead, newly risen to some other sort of life. But that day in Central Park I did not know about the dead yet. I had no idea what was ahead; what was before me was bad enough.
At six foot three and nearly two hundred ninety pounds I don't usually fear much. But that day I did. I realized there are some things you had better fear if you have half a brain in your head. It didn't matter that I could walk through Central Park unmolested. Something was on the wind, something that didn't care who it touched, did not respect physical size.
I walked through the park. There were hundreds there already. In the coming days those same people began to make the park home. But that day they wandered aimlessly, in shock. The subway was shut down, the buses. You could not find a cab. The same with the cops. Everything that was the same about the city, the things you could depend on to be the same day after day, were gone. A few short days, and they were gone. No more. And it had a feeling of permanence to it, a feeling of doom.
I sat down on a bench and watched the people shuffle by. No noisy kids. No babies bawling. No Joggers. No dog walkers. Hopeless people shuffling by. The occasional panicked whack job running around crazily. I saw no one shot that day, but in the coming days, they, the hopeless ones, began to shoot the crazies, chase them down and kill them. But that was later. That day I sat on the bench and wondered what had happened, and that was when the planes had overflown.
We all heard them from a long way off, military cargo planes. Slow, sometimes seeming to hang in the sky. That droning sound as they overflew, blocking the sun from the sky. This was no fly over to see how New York was, that much was evident immediately.
I was torn between running and needing to know what this was. Once you start down that path of just reacting to fear, it gets bad fast, so I sat there, as calm as I could be. 'They will not drop bombs,' was my thought. I remember it. And they didn't. What they did was spray the entire city. Trails of blue-tinged vapor drifting down out of the sky. That was the first time.
I finally did give in to the fear and took off through the park, thinking, like nearly everyone else, that it must be some sort of poison. The government's solution to whatever it was that was going on in the city.
We didn't know what the blue shit the government planes sprayed us with right after everything went to hell was. And I am still not convinced I know all there is to know, but I suspect things. I have been told things. I met a guy a few weeks back that said he worked at the Army base over in Jersey. He said he knew what it was. He said the planes came from somewhere down south, but stopped there on the way back to re-fuel. What he told me was it was designed to strengthen us, keep us alive a little longer, make us stronger somehow. Some dip shit scientist's idea.
I suppose it was meant as a boost for us, a help. The world slowed down, fell apart; everything stopped working. They knew they couldn't get to us. We would die. So they sprayed the blue shit on us, and I could suppose further that some of us survived the first few months because of it. I can't prove it, but I suspect it did help us evolve into...
I don't know. Whatever the hell we are now. I know we're alive. I know our hearts beat. I still feel human, and I truly think I am still human. If it made changes to the living, they are very small changes... at least so far.
But the dead - oh, the dead. That's a different story. It did something else to the dead.
I walked along now thinking my thoughts. I was lost in them - I'll admit it - right back in March for a few seconds. But I came back fast.
We were right in front of a line of cliffs that overhung the river, spread out a little. At least I was. It's funny how you can forget to be careful so goddamn fast. It was somewhere past midday when they came for us.
“Bear! Bear!”
Cammy from a hundred yards down. The panic and fear in her voice made my heart leap into my throat, and because of her fear, and probably some of my own, I did a really stupid thing right then that cost me time. I was so panicked, that I threw my rifle down and sprinted toward the sound of her voice. I got maybe twenty feet when the realization of what I had done hit me. It would have been comical to see the way I locked my legs up and tried to turn around before I had even come to a stop if it had not been so goddamned serious.
I had the rifle back in my hands, the safety off, just a fraction of a second later when Cammy and Madison opened up on the UN-dead closing in on them from the mouth of the narrow trail that lead up from the river. I added my fire to theirs before I had run another fifty feet, and their leader, a shambling wreck of a corpse, folded up, and then flopped over the side of the trail and down into the river. I continued to run as I fired, and I was shocked to realize that I was screaming at the top of my lungs as I closed in. I am big, but I can move when I have to.
“Goddamn-son-of-a-bitching-goddamn-bastards,dead-fuckers!” All strung together. Fear words. I did not hear them at first so I did not know when they started, and I could not shut them down once I did hear them. The panic and fear were just too hot.
I watched as, unseen by Cammy and Madison, a Zombie crouched on a narrow path above them swiveled his rotting head to me, seemed to take my measure with a wide, yellowed grin, and then dropped from the ledge on to Madison's back.
“No! Goddamn-son-of-a-bitches-dead-bastards-bastards!” I could not say, 'Madison Look Out!' Or speed up my feet or any other damn thing. Time had slowed, become elastic, strange, too clearly seen. The Zombie hit her hard, and she folded like an accordion, driven into the ground, a few hundred pounds of animated corpse riding her down into the dirt, clawed hands clutching, mouth already angling to bite... to taste her.
I was still thirty or more yards away. I could not see how that could even be possible. I should have been closer, but I was not. I saw Cammy turn, panicked, take her eyes off the other UN-dead and start towards Madison. Unchallenged, the other Zombies closed ground far faster than they should have been able to.
I saw the Zombie on Madison take a mouthful of her back, just below the curve of her neck, and rip the flesh away from her spine. Cammy's rifle came up and barked, and the zombie blew apart, raining down on Madison, a storm of black blood. Somehow, I managed to switch to full auto, get my rifle up, and spray an entire one hundred round clip into the other zombies where they rushed along the path towards Cammy and the fallen Madison.
Madison screamed. Time leapt back into its proper frame, and I found myself five feet away as Madison arched her back, screamed and tried to stand. Blood ran in a perfect river from her gaping wound, across the white of her T-Shirt and down to the waist of her jeans.
“I think... I think...” Madison tried
.
“Baby... Baby,” Cammy sobbed. She dropped to her knees and pulled Madison to her. “Oh, Baby... Baby,” Cammy sobbed.
I looked back up at the trail. Empty. At least of moving UN-dead. Three or four, it was hard to tell with the tangle of legs and arms, lay dead on the pathway. Silence descended. I heard a bird in the trees above calling as if nothing was wrong with the world, Cammy sobbing, Madison crying hysterically, the wind moaning through the empty buildings that were set just back from the cliffs and the river on this side of the city.
I was thinking, 'That wind is colder. Colder even than when we started out this morning. Maybe the weather will turn back to snow and cold. Maybe winter is not done after all... Or coming sooner... It could be. It's all so screwed up. Maybe, if it does get cold, it will slow those bastards down. Maybe we will be okay... My, God... They bit Madison... They BIT Madison!!!' I sagged to the ground, my mind full of confusion and numbness.
Cammy was sobbing uncontrollably. Madison had lapsed into shock. I was sitting crossed legged, wondering where in Hell this would all end up, my rifle fallen from my hands and laying on the ground next to me. Time spun out, dragged, seemed elastic once more, sticking in places and jumping ahead from those places to where it should have been had it continued to run properly.
Cammy sobbing, holding Madison up, kissing her forehead, telling her how much she loved her... how she was her world...
Madison, eyes rolled back in her head... face pale... fine beads of sweat standing out on her forehead... her back a bright slick of red running across Cammy's hands where she held her. Slowing... Slowing... Cammy mouthing words in such slow motion that I could not understand what she said. Madison's body sagging, eyes rolled up to the whites... bright dots of blood speckled across Cammy's cheeks. Then time jumped, staggered, came back to normal, and Cammy was screaming and screaming...