by D. S. Black
Humanity’s Death
A Zombie Epic
D.S. Black
Copyright 2016 D.S. Black
All Rights Reserved
Smashwords Edition
Humanity’s Death: A Zombie Epic
Copyright © 2016 D.S. Black
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication maybe reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Table of Contents
Head Lines
One Year Later
Chapter One: The Teach Family
Chapter Two: Plat Eyes
Chapter Three: A Ghastly Return
Chapter Four: Candy and Andrew
Chapter Five: Final Night in the Swamp
Intermission: Dead Letters
Chapter Six: Tommy “Duras” Morrow
Chapter Seven: The Incredible Okona and His Comic Warriors
Chapter Eight: Militia Interference
Chapter Nine: Rusty Ray and the Seekers
Chapter Ten: Professor Mary Jane
Chapter Eleven: Allies
The Epic Continues
Note from the Author
About the Author
Head Lines
THE NEW YORK TIMES—A virus is ravaging the country. People are falling over, reanimating, and eating the flesh off anyone they see. There is speculation of a worldwide pandemic. Some experts are suggesting a super bug may have been spawned by the Ebola vaccination.
THE NEW YORK POST—Hailed as a miracle cure, the vaccine promised to rid humanity of Ebola…early reports suggest that the outbreak originated in Africa where the vaccine was first used.
REUTERS—The situation is growing worse. Early estimates suggest millions are already infected. The CDC suggests staying home, locking your doors, and watching your television for emergency channel updates.
THE YOUNG TURKS—If you have been infected or know someone that has been infected, please blow their fucking heads off.
INFOWARS—The elite create virus that kills off 80 percent of the population.
THE GUARDIAN: The president is dead, mass sightings of paranormal activity reported.
There were no more headlines.
One Year Later
Chapter One: The Teach Family
1
Darkness surrounds Jack Teach while a bar of swampy moon light drifting through an open window streaks across his face. He lays in a semi unconscious state. Slowly his nervous system reminds him of the pain coursing through his body. The smell of infection is nauseating. Breathing causes exhaustion, his eyes barely stay open. How did this happen? What in god’s name was I thinking? He thinks to himself, absorbed in pain and regret. Outside the world is dark, frogs are burping, and something is moving.
Where is she? It hurts so much.
2
24 hours earlier.
Jack stared out of an open window. Hot morning air blew against his face. His black rimmed, round glasses slipped down his sweaty nose, and he pushed them back in place. He breathed in the smell of decaying vegetation and animal matter. A frog croaked somewhere in the thickness of the surrounding cypress trees. Gray mist floated like a cloudy haze, casting a worrying doubt over the swampy wet land. The vegetation was gray with desaturated green.
He dunked a spoon into a can, lifted it out, and swallowed cold beans as he watched sparks fly in the face of his cousin, Andrew, who put the final touches on repairs to the pontoon boat. Sweat streamed black grease down Andrew's thin arms. Faded green BDUs hung loosely around his legs; and his black boots dug into the soft marsh. Not far from him, sitting at a bench, Candy cleaned rifles with her daughters. The girls sang a low and melancholy tune, like a song from a funeral. Their legs dangled out of pale denim shorts; their hands rubbed bullets with stained red rags.
“They don’t have to shine girls—just gotta kill.” Candy said. Jody blew by them in his usually haste. His oversized belly jiggled as he carried a bag of ammunition. His large legs stepped in the boat and loaded the gear as sparks continued to fly into Andrew’s masked face.
Behind Jack, Papa spoke, “You about ready Jack?”
“Ready as I’m going to be.”
“Today the reign of terror is ends. Today we fight back. Don’t look concerned Jack. I believe in you.” The old man said.
“What do you think Mema would say about all this?” Jack asked.
In the distance Jack watched his family prepare to leave. A haunting morning dew surrounded them. Ghosts. Dear Jesus, they look like ghosts. Jack thought.
“She’d be damn proud! She’d be happy that you and your cousins are fighting back. Ain’t no way to know what she’d think about dead people walking around. Hell, nobody saw that one coming.”
“You’re right. She would want us to go out and help people. She wouldn’t want us to hide out here forever.”
Jack turned around. His grandfather sat hunched. The old man tried to stay tall in his wheel chair but slumped involuntarily. The old man stared at his grandson. “I’m proud of you, boy.” His body was shriveled and frail. His skin wrinkled and splotched. His eyes were a dark gray, his hair a silver white. “I know Papa… I know.” A white wife beater clung to Papa’s scaly skin; and the imprint of a pace maker pushed out from his chest.
The sound of the boat engine roared outside. The happy shouts of the girls rang through the air. Jack turned and stuck his head out the window, “We ready Andrew?”
He removed his welding mask, gave Jack a silent thumbs up, and wiped a thick coat of sweat from his brow.
“Time to rock and roll!” Jack said
Jack turned to see Papa smiling gleefully. “I really should go.” He said. His teeth were few in number, rotted and yellow; his chin thin, and his neck small with loose skin.
“You would only slow us down old man. Plus, who would watch after the girls while we’re gone?”
“Shit boy! I don’t watch after them. They watch after me!”
Jack walked around behind him and gripped the handles of his wheel chair. The handles were red and cracking. The old wood floor crunched underneath the wheels as Jack pushed Papa down the rickety front door and onto an old splintered porch. The sun threatened to gleam down through the grayish green canopy above. Around the marshy island, thick trunks of cypress trees disappeared into black water. From within the fog, sounds of wild life murmured—like eerie unseen ghosts, just waiting to show themselves.
Jack pushed him down a cracked concrete slant. The old man whistled an old war melody while rolling through thick humidity. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet and sweat already dribbled down every inch of his body.
The girls ran up to Papa, “Let us push him!”
“Yes ma’am”
Candy walked over and punched Jack in the shoulder. “You ready to make our mark in this apocalyptic shit hole?”
Jody marched over, “Don’t bruise him up baby, we need his skinny behind!”
“Rather be skinny than with a fat belly like you. How the hell do you keep that bulgy pouch, anyway? It’s not like we’re eating steak and potatoes these days.” Jack said.
“I’m just big boned.”
Andrew shouted from the boat, “Ain’t never seen a fat skeleton, Jody!”
Candy kissed her husband on the cheek, “At least we know the dead will eat you first, babe.”
“Enough clamming! It’s getting late and you kids have a long mission ahead.” Papa said.
Jack turned and looked down. “You really enjoy playing General, uh?”
“Lucky for you, I already whipped the Germans a long time ago. Compared to storming Normandy, this is a walk in the park!”
Jack walked over to the boat and smacked Andrew on the shoulder. “You sure this thing won’t sink?”
Andrew looked up with a sly grin.
“Nothing I fix sinks.”
“I don’t know… do you remember that inflatable raft?”
“Shit! That was what…” He scratched an unkempt goatee as though thinking, “fifteen years ago!”
Behind Jack, Candy and Jody kissed the girls goodbye. “Don’t worry girls, we’ll be back as soon as possible.” Candy said.
Jack looked around at his family. A dark mist surrounded them, blurring their faces. For a moment, Jack felt as though none of this existed, like a foggy nightmare he couldn’t wake from. He climbed into the boat. The metal floor showed a scorched, welded section. The boat rocked in the dark, murky water. He took a seat near the front. His glasses slid down his nose, and he pushed them back in place. Jody and Candy climbed in, followed by Andrew, a sniper rifer jiggling on his back as he sat behind the steering section of the engine. Candy’s revolver was barely visible, hanging deftly from her faded police uniform. Jody’s shot gun rested over his broad shoulder.
Jack's AR15 rested against his camouflage chest rigging. The rigging had three front pockets filled with extra magazines. He touched the cold metal and breathed deeply, taking in the dying world around him. He watched as the girls waved good bye from the water’s edge. The engine’s exhaust made him grimace. Black swamp water gurgled around the boat’s exterior as Andrew guided them through the dank, deathly water.
3
The air gushed around Jack's face. He held his head high, making sure his glasses stayed put. Tall cypress jolted through the black water like moss covered pillars. A cloud free blue sky hung above. A dark, shadowy forest covered both sides of the water.
Jack found it hard to believe such dark beauty could exist. It was easy to want to forget about the dangers ahead. Staying within the safe insulation of the swamp for the last year almost made him forget that almost everyone he'd ever know died, reanimated, and started eating the flesh off everyone in sight. The horror of those first days still wake him up at night. The screams of children, and cries of the elderly haunt his dreams. Traveling down the river was like a dream in itself, and his mind drifted back to that first day of the Fever.
The news anchor blared, “Stay inside your homes. Lock your doors.”
Jack turned it off. His heart pounded. He had to save him. Had to get him out of that nursing home before it was too late. He called his cousins; the cell phones working for the time being. They were on their way; the pandemonium in the streets was wild. People were unprepared for the what was happening.
Jack waited at his window. Time seemed to slow and tick away with painful agony. He chewed at a nail to help pass the time. His glasses slid down his face; he pushed them back.
At the sight of Andrew’s black Humvee, draped in the color of camouflage, he breathed a little easier. He'd emptied his book bag of all his college books earlier, and filled it with food stuffs—chocolates, canned beans, and SPAM.
He ran with earnest towards his cousin’s red neck dream of a truck, opened the door, and slammed it behind him. Before Andrew could lay on the pedal, flashing blue lights came from behind, and swung around to the driver’s side. Candy’s voice echoed out of a loud speaker, “Follow me! There isn’t much time!” Jack saw that her daughters were in the back of the cruiser like a couple of child convicts.
As they dashed through the streets, the bodies of the recently deceased moved about in slow, jerking movements. Kids ran and women screamed as their blood drooling husbands dug their hungry teeth into flesh. Nothing could be done to help them. It was far too chaotic to stop. The window of opportunity would close and Papa would be dead, or worse, reanimated and chewing on the muscles of some sexy nurse.
The sky was dark and rain threatened to make the rescue wet and dreary. The chaos was still new, and it’s for that reason, people obeyed the flashing lights whirling above Candy’s patrol car. Cars and trucks let them pass. But, the dead didn’t budge for a moment.
She swirled quickly to avoid hitting them, and lost control. Steam gushed from the engine when it crashed into a tree. The air bag deployed, and Candy’s head snapped back. Jack heard the girls screaming in the back seat.
Andrew didn’t hesitate; he slammed straight through a gang of zombies. Their bodies crunched under the jacked up suspension of the truck. “I told you it would come in handy one day!” He said.
A hoard of around ten or so dead folks lurked towards Candy’s position. She’d crawled out of the cruiser, and lay on her knees on the edge of some grass that connected to a side walk; her daughters still screaming in the back. Andrew brought the Humvee to a screeching halt beside his sister’s position.
The dead were only a few feet away.
Jack jumped out of the Humvee to help her, but no help was needed. Before the pitiful dead bastards had the chance to taste her pale white, freckled flesh, her revolver reported. Jack smiled with wild, adrenaline induced excitement as the heads of the dead exploded, painting the asphalt with gray and bloody brain matter.
He'd never seen a head explode in real life. It was as though a small bomb went off in their heads, cracking open their skulls, and erupting blood, brain, and skull fragments from the exit wound.
Steam and smoke was coming from under the hood of the engine. Jack and Andrew were out of the Humvee; Candy was opening the back door. The girls, their blonde pigtails bouncing, leaped out of the cruiser. “Get em in the Hummer! I gotta grab some shit!” She said.
Jack helped the girls into the Hummer's huge, gray leather back seats. Andrew was at the cruiser with Candy helping her grab the riot shot gun, along with a huge black bag of ammunition and assorted rifles. On the side of the bag, written in large gold stenciled letters: Sheriff’s DEPArtment
“Jody’s already there, and he says it ain’t pretty!” Candy said as her and Andrew rushed back over to the Hummer. Her red hair was in a wild disarray, her blue eyes glaring with adrenaline. Around them, the world screamed with death.
Andrew jumped into the driver's seat, and pulled the trunk latch; Candy threw the guns and ammo in, and slammed the hatched closed. She then climbed in the back with her girls, slammed the door.
“We set?” Andrew asked.
“Hit it!” Candy said.
Jack was watching the pandemonium as Andrew sped around crashed cars, running people, and the stumbling dead, whose flaying arms thudded against the vehicles hard exterior, and snapped off with bloody precision as they attempted to reach for the bodies inside, clearly not knowing that their attempts were futile.
This time the cars didn't yield for them, but this was Andrew's chance to show the world why he paid so much money to make his Hummer look like a Transformer, or some kind of modern dinosaur. The Hummer jumped over concrete curbing, tore through bushes, and drove through parking lots.
Ahead, the nursing home came into view and Jack's stomach turned.
He knew hell awaited, but what he saw almost caused him to announce Papa and Jody dead on arrival. Streaming out of the nursing home from a hospital across the street were hundreds of growling recently risen nurses, doctors, patients, kids, oh my.
Then he saw them. “There they are!” Jack shouted.
Miraculously, Jody stood beside papa’s wheel chair firing loud buck shots through the brains of the charging dead. Beside Jody, brandishing a sawed off sho
t gun (presumably given to him by Jody, it was hardly an item the Calm Waters Nursing facility allowed), was Papa screaming obscenities and firing at the mob of death. They were completely cornered at the back entrance of the nursing facility. How, in the name of Jesus and Lucifer they'd accomplished this incredible feat of survival, was beyond Jack's imagination—at least at that moment.
The Hummer stopped about twenty yards from the hungry crowd.
Andrew turned and shouted, “In the back!”
“Girls, you stay right here and don't move!”
The just stared at their mother and nodded, scared out of their wits.
Jack opened the trunk, and before him sat a collection of AR-15s, Ak-47s, and tactical vests already filled with extra magazines. This didn't include the bag of ammo Candy had thrown in. God bless rednecks, is all Jack could think.
He strapped on a vest, and grabbed an AR, pushed its stock against his shoulder, pointed the barrel in front of him, and moved strategically around the Humvee. God bless video games, he now thought. He'd only shot large rifles at the firing range a few times. But it was like the insane Virginia Tech shooter (who'd never actually had any training); when a person plays the scenario over and over in their head (or in a video game) the actions become internalized as though the person were actually doing it. The brain, by golly, is an incredible piece of bioengineering, rather by God or Nature, the choice is yours to make.
“Cover us, Drew!” Jack said.
Andrew jumped on the roof of the Humvee and started firing. Jack and Candy moved in perfect harmony, taking care not to waste one bullet. The bang of their rifles filled the air and the dead dropped to the ground, this time for good. Jack's aim wasn't quite as good as Candy's, but he was warming up fast. The world around him came as sharp and clean as high definition television picture.
The sound caught the hordes attention and gave Papa and Jody breathing room; half the mob was headed for Jack and Candy. Jack's rifle rattled in his hands as he pulled the semi-automatic trigger over and over. He dropped magazine after magazine, inching his way towards his grandfather. Fear didn’t exist in that moment, only the determination to live.