Outbreak: Stories from the Quarantine Zone
By Robert Van Dusen
Forward by the Author
This is a collection of short stories set in the same world as my Outbreak Series of zombie fiction. These stories were written over a period of years while I was working on the original series and afterwards. Just so you know there are minor spoilers in here so if you haven't read my first three books Outbreak: Boston, Outbreak: Brave New World and Outbreak: Long Road Back I would suggest you do it before checking this out.
This collection also skips around in the timeline a little...okay it skips around in the timeline like a malfunctioning T.A.R.D.I.S being drunk driven by a bunch of frat boys. Some of them take place before the events of Outbreak: Boston and some take place in different locations but at the same time as the original trilogy.
I really like these stories and I hope you enjoy have as good a time reading them as I did writing them. Also I'd like to thank my friend Wesley Meadows for supplying the idea for the last story in this collection.
The 'Burbs
3 May 2011 07:43 hours, 34 Swan Drive Bayshore Gardens, Florida
“Can I drive to school today, Dad?” Trey asked around a mouthful of Crispy Flakes. He was a short stocky kid with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. The boy flicked a soggy piece of cereal off of his wifebeater and looked beseechingly at his mother hoping the woman would put in a good word for him. “My driver's test's coming up.”
Joy went to the coffeemaker and poured herself a cup. There was an awkward silence as her husband, Nick, was staring at something outside. She walked up tried to see what had the lanky salt and pepper haired man's attention. “Hon, Trey asked you a question.” the woman grumbled under her breath. Bethany Porter, one of the college students that rented the house down the block, was jogging on the other side of the street.
Nick started at the sound of his wife's voice. “Um...yeah sure.” he said quickly hoping that Joy did not notice him staring at the girl. Damn it, I'm only human! Nick grumbled internally as he turned and gave his wife a quick peck on the lips. Bethany was tall and lithe with long black hair. She had a body that could melt the proverbial cheese sandwich from across the room and she seemed to insist on wearing these skin tight Lycra shorts and sports bras while jogging. He glanced across the kitchen at his son. “Put a shirt on before you go outside.”
Joy stared up at Nick. She had turned forty recently and could not help but get upset when she caught her husband checking out younger women. Her blond hair was turning grayer and grayer every day and just this morning she found a good sized hunk of hair in the shower. “Go on. Trey's gotta get to school.” she said coldly as she pushed away from him.
The radio blared to life when Trey activated the remote starter on the late model Lincoln Navigator. Nick did his best to keep a confident look on his face as he climbed into the passenger seat and buckled in. Trey tossed his gym bag on the back seat of the SUV and jumped into the driver's seat. The radio had been turned to the local talk station and the host was prattling on about the latest Avian Pig Flu strain that was going to turn into the second coming of the Black Death. Nick scowled at the truck's center console as he dialed down the volume to a quiet murmur. “Dumbshits.” he grumbled and settled in.
Nick's fingers dug into the armrests when Trey backed out of the driveway a little faster than he should have and took off down the block. About two blocks down he noticed Bethany still on her jog, only the top half of the woman's back visible thanks to the cars parked along the street. The tires screamed when Trey stood on the brake pedal. Nick instinctively put his hands out to catch himself on the dashboard then glared at his son. The car ahead of them was stopped and the driver's side door was open. It was right about the time that the little old lady who had apparently been driving started screaming that Nick realized what had happened.
“Call 911!” Nick shouted as he threw open his door and jumped out of the truck. He rushed over to the car in front of them and snapped around at the sound of a scream behind him. The man's heart froze in his chest when he saw that some big motherfucker had tackled Bethany to the ground and was trying to do...something to her. Unthinking Nick ran to his son's gym bag in the back seat of the truck and grabbed an aluminum baseball bat.
The scrawny little spic had the girl down on the sidewalk. She was screaming and trying to hold him off... Nick swung the metal bat as hard as he could caving in the back of the man's skull. He gave the guy a couple more solid blows after he rolled off the girl. A car smashed into the one that had made Trey stop. “C'mon!” Nick shouted as he grabbed the crying woman's arm, hauled her to her feet and hustled her towards the Navigator.
Nick practically threw Bethany into the back seat of the SUV and sprinted around the vehicle. “Back up and go home!” he shouted at the boy behind the wheel. Nick stared at Trey for a moment when he noticed that the vehicle was not moving. “Drive!”
Bethany groaned in the back seat and that's when Nick noticed that the woman was bleeding from a nasty looking gash on her forearm. She pulled a shirt out of Trey's gym bag and wrapped it around spot where the dark red blood was oozing from. Trey groaned inwardly as he threw the SUV into reverse and backed away from the wreck. He screamed when a woman pressed her bloody face against his window. There was a brief flash of gnashing teeth and pale skin before he mashed down the gas and wrenched the wheel around attempting a half assed five point turn.
Something smashed into the SUV rocking the heavy vehicle on its suspension and sending Bethany, the only one not buckled in, into the rear driver's side door. “Drive! GO! GO!” Nick shouted. He was looking at a man and woman driving one of those shitty little hippie hybrid bullshit sushi rolls. The man grinned to himself. The smug little bastard's car looked like it was fucked but his good ol' American SUV seemed to be alright.
Trey gunned the engine and sped off gritting his teeth at the squealing sound of metal on metal as they took off. The Navigator was Dad's pride and joy. He spent almost every Sunday afternoon washing and waxing it polishing the chrome...was he going to be pissed?
“I need a doctor!” Bethany screamed from the back seat. She had one of Trey's tee shirts pressed against her forearm but there was still lots and lots of blood going all over the seat. “Please, can you get me to the hospital?”
Nick glanced at the woman in the back seat his eyes going wide. The woman's tanned, healthy complexion was taking on a waxy appearance and Bethany looked like she was going to be sick or something. “Yeah, sure. Sure, just hold on a little bit, okay?” Nick said as calmly as he could manage under the circumstances. Trey steered the truck into the driveway and stopped it with a screech of the brakes a mere foot from smashing right through the garage door. The young man dove out of the truck, tugged open the rear door and helped Bethany out of the vehicle.
“C'mon! C'mon! Get inside!” Nick shouted as he shoved his son and Bethany ahead of him towards the front door. Joy threw open the screen door, looking pale and scared out of her mind. She glanced from her husband to that chick that had been jogging by earlier. What the hell was going on? “Joy, get the first aid kit!”
Joy nodded dumbly as the three of them bustled by her and into their living room. Nick slammed the door behind them and shot the deadbolt then, as an added precaution, set the the chain in the little metal slot. “Trey, shut the blinds!” Nick shouted as he helped Bethany sit down on the couch in front of the television. Joy came down the stairs with the first aid kit in its cheap plastic blue and white box in her hands and opened it on the coffee table.
Joy found herself a little glad that she had taken that Red Cross first aid class last
spring over at the state college. There were sirens wailing in the distance...what the hell was going on? She was starting to get really scared as she put on the pair of rubber gloves in the kit and got out some alcohol rubs, gauze pads and an ace bandage. “Let me see. It's going to be alright.” she told the pallid young woman as she reached out and took her wounded arm.
She cleaned the area around the wound with the alcohol rubs then used the ace bandage to hold the gauze in place over it and keep pressure on the... Joy pursed her lips at the brief sight she had of the gash in the woman's arm before more blood welled up and obscured it. It looked like...a bite. And not like a dog bite or what have you...but a human bite.
Trey did has his father said then sat down in the recliner next to the couch and snatched up the remote. The television would not come on no matter how many times he pressed the button. Alarmed he crossed the room and tried the light switch. “Power's out.” he announced when none of the lights came on in the room. Nick dug his cell phone and dialed 911 and after about half a ring he was politely informed via automatic answering machine that all circuits were busy and that he should try his call again in a few minutes.
Nick nearly threw the goddamn thing out the fucking window. “Fuck! Okay, c'mon Bethany. I'll drive you to the emergency room.” he said as he went to the window and peeked outside. The sirens were getting louder and...fuck...was that goddamn smoke? Was shit on fucking fire out there?
Joy helped Bethany put her feet up on the arm of the couch. “What? Are you insane?” she said in a tense hiss. The woman crossed the room and put a hand on her husband's arm as she looked at the street outside too. “No. You're not going out there, Nick.” For some reason she was even more scared than when the two of them had been sitting in Doctor Franklin's office as he explained the results of the biopsy he had taken from the lump on her left breast a few weeks ago.
“Don't worry, babe.” Nick said quickly. He looked into Joy's big blue eyes and immediately felt like an asshole. He frowned and held her tight. “Mercy General's like a quarter mile away. I'll run Beth to the ER, get her stitched up and we'll be back before you know it.”
A crash from the back of the house made everyone jump and turn as one. It sounded like something smashing through the glass door that led to the porch in the back yard. Nick rushed to the kitchen to find the big fat whale of of a greaseball whop rolling around on the floor next to the table in a shards of broken glass. The dumb greaser looked up at him with these weird sharklike eyes, its face studded with glistening shards of his former back door. Fuckin' guy's high as fuck. Nick thought in the scant few moments he made eye contact with the intruder. Gotta be. Look at the fuckin' guy!
Nick turned and ran back into the living room. “Go! C'mon!” he shouted as he herded everyone out of the front door and towards the Navigator. The four of them piled into the truck and Nick shouted in frustration when he grabbed for the keys in the ignition. He patted the pockets of his jeans: wallet, handkerchief, spare change. Keys? Where were the fucking keys?
A half dozen keys on a fob with the Lincoln logo on it dangled in front of his face. “Here, Dad!” Trey shouted. He and Bethany were in the back seat with Joy in the passenger seat next to her husband. Nick grabbed the keys from his son and stabbed the big black one into the vehicle's ignition and cranked it just as the jerkoff that had busted out his back door came after them. Joy screamed when she got a good look at the drug addled fuck. Nick put the SUV into reverse and jammed out of there.
Joy turned up the radio as Nick pulled away from the house with the man in hot pursuit. After a few moments it seemed like the intruder realized he would not be able to catch the speeding black truck and stopped, staring after them for a moment before wandering off towards the Billings' house across the street.
“Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.” Trey muttered under his breath as he stared out the rear window of the SUV at the figure fading into the distance. Was that...was that goddamn glass stuck in that guy's face? Why wasn't he bleeding all over the place? The fuck?
Bethany stared out the window not really seeing much of the stuff going on outside of the vehicle. A woman with her face smeared with what looked like chocolate syrup crouched over a corpse cramming stuff into her mouth. A policeman waved them past his cruiser, its light bar flashing. It sounded like there were fireworks going off. “Fuck.” Mister Glover muttered, making her sit up and pay attention a little bit more.
The block or two around the hospital was an absolute anarchic mess. The streets were jammed with cars and trucks, people were shouting at each other. Two guys started beating the shit out of each other like five feet away. Nick opened his door and stood on the floorboard peering off into the distance hoping to see away for them to actually get to the hospital. He shouted when somebody grabbed his shirt and threw him to the ground skinning his palms on the rough blacktop.
A slavering pallid face leered at him and he screamed. The face's teeth snapped mere inches from the tip of his nose as he tried to push the...man...thing...off of him. There was a hollow thunk and the creature stiffened. “GET OFF MY DAD!!” Trey roared as he brought the bat down again and again spattering his father with reddish liquid and chunks of what Nick really hoped was not skull as he kicked the thing off of him.
There was a gunshot and Trey stared at the deep crimson stain spreading on his white wifebeater. The boy seemed puzzled by the new hole in his chest and he touched it tentatively as if trying to figure out how the hell it had gotten there. The bat clattered to the tarmac. “Dad?” he asked, staring at the ever expanding bloodstain.
Joy screeched and ran around the truck to her boy. She held her precious little boy to her chest bawling and rocking him, wailing and crying as she begged her son to get up. Nick stared at his wife and son his brain clearly not understanding what his eyes were telling it. A young man in a policeman's uniform approached tentatively with his pistol in his hands. “Oh...oh God...” the cop muttered almost to himself as he seemed to realize what he had done.
Nick screamed an inarticulate cry as he sprang at the policeman. His hands found the cop's throat and he squeezed he squeezed till his arms ached he squeezed even though the young guy's face turned the color of pickled beets he squeezed and squeezed and squeezed even though he could hear Joy screaming he squeezed as the policeman smacked him on the head and face he squeezed even though the man went down he squeezed and squeezed and started beating the man's head against the blacktop he squeezed and squeezed until the bastard went limp...
Nick rolled off the policeman panting. What the hell just happened? He blinked at the man on the blacktop next to him. The back of his head was all bloody and he stared up at the sky. Somebody was crying. Joy was holding Trey a few feet away... He stood up and went to the woman. There were people around them screaming and some of them were tackling the others and attacking them. “We gotta go, hon.” Nick mumbled almost to himself.
The Navigator was probably not going anywhere. The truck had become trapped as more people tried to get to the hospital. An idea struck him. The key to his boat was in the center console of the SUV. If they could get to the marina they could get on the boat and...fuck...go someplace?
Nick found the keys to the boat right where he thought it would be. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Bethany opened her door and got out of the truck. He had almost forgotten that she was back there. The young woman hurried over to Joy and took the woman's arm trying to haul her away from her son's body. “Come on, Mrs. Glover. We gotta go.” she panted as she tugged at Joy's arm. Beth let go and stood there her chest heaving, feeling lightheaded. The young woman grabbed Joy again and finally managed to extract her from the dead boy. “I'm sorry. Please, come on.”
Nick turned. “Alright. Change of plans. We're going to the marina. Gonna get on the boat and get the fuck outta here.” he announced as they climbed into the truck. Two or three people stumble ran towards them then stopped and fell upon Trey's body like a pack of piranhas. After banging into
cars in front and behind them and beside them Nick managed to pull the massive SUV up onto the sidewalk. People screamed and dove out of the way as he tried to find a way around the traffic jam. A face flashed into view before the windshield cracked and something heavy rumbled across the roof of the SUV before landing behind them with a wet crunch.
The three of them screamed when the truck veered to the left and a streetlight appeared in front of them. All of a sudden Nick sat up with a start. “What the fuck?” he tried to say but it came out more like “Whu da fuk?”. He blinked at the white air bag hanging like a deflated balloon out of the steering wheel. The windshield was a spiderweb of cracks and there was a lot of steam hissing from under the hood further obscuring the view through the glass. The man dabbed, puzzled, at the wetness on his face. There was a lot of blood on his fingers. The shit? Joy! Nick thought all of a sudden remembering his wife and Bethany in the back seat of the SUV.
Nick tried the door and shouted when it would not open. After two or three hard blows with his shoulder he managed to get it open. Nick spilled out onto the sidewalk and groaned. Goddamn his fucking head hurt. He struggled to his feet leaning on the truck to help him up. “Oh my god, Nick!” Joy shouted when she saw her husband. His mouth and shirt were covered in blood from an obviously broken nose.
“I'm alright! C'mon! We gotta go!” Nick said quickly as he helped the two women out of the truck. He almost reminded Joy to grab the bat then he remembered that Trey had it when... Nick looked around and tried to spot a street sign or something to help him get his bearings. How far was it to the fucking marina? He checked his pants pocket to make sure he still had the key to his boat on its squishy yellow foam fob. Thankfully it did not fall out or anything. It was right where he left it.
The three of them looked around for a moment stunned by the sheer chaos. Everywhere there were cars screeching by and smashing into each other. People were screaming and running around. Some of them were attacking each other. Two men and a woman tackled a guy running out of a coffee house down the block and started ripping into him. It vaguely reminded Bethany of watching hyenas take down a wildebeest on Animal Planet. One of them noticed the three of them standing there gawking and jumped up from the screaming man on the sidewalk his face and shirt covered in gore.
Outbreak: Tales from the Quarantine Zone Page 1