Soldier On: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Trudge)

by Shawn Chesser

  Clomping boots jarred her from the moment of empathy. A fit looking soldier double-timed it up the ladder. Brook watched the top of his boonie hat until he reached the entrance to the guard platform. She was greeted by a wide country boy grin and an extended hand, “PFC Mark Farnsworth, I’m here to relieve you. Shrill sends thanks for your service.”

  Brook rubbed her shoulder, it was tender from the constant pounding, “It was the least I could do...considering the circumstances.” She propped the Remington up against the wall, with the safety on and the bolt open.

  “Thirsty?” Farnsworth reached into his pocket and handed Brook a silver and blue can of energy drink. “The colonel wants all of the volunteer shooters to stand down for now. Reinforcements will be on the ground any time now.”

  As he finished speaking, a landing C-5 Galaxy screamed overhead, rudely interrupting their conversation.

  “Good timing, my eyes need a good rinse and I need some coffee.” After inspecting the soldiers offering she handed the cold can back to him. I can’t drink that swill. No disrespect, I know it’s the thought that counts,” Brook said as she picked up her M4.

  “Here, hope you won’t need these, but just in case,” the soldier handed her two extra thirty round magazines for the carbine.

  “If those monsters get inside of here...these aren’t gonna last long,” Brook replied, stuffing the magazines in her pockets.

  She about faced and climbed down the ladder. Brook was looking forward to checking in on her comatose brother. She was praying for him, but the doctor’s prognosis was not good. Brook had to keep a positive attitude. After all, over the course of the last few days Carl had already cheated death more times than she cared to count.

  Chapter 5

  Outbreak Day 4

  Forest Service Road 5543 West

  Draper, Utah

  The trees on both sides of the road clawed their way heavenward, doing their best to block out the brilliant blue afternoon sky. At ground level, juniper and sagebrush prevailed, crowding the edge of the sun baked gravel road. Why it wasn’t paved baffled Harry, every kidney jarring impact with a pothole made him curse the person responsible for that decision.

  He was only fifteen miles into the long trek back to Portland, Oregon. He had been awake for most of the last three days. The first two had been spent running and gunning, trying to escape the ever expanding undead outbreak. The constant adrenaline highs and lows had done a number on his old bones. Every nerve ending was aflame, yet his body begged for sleep. The feeling was akin to an out of body experience. The death and destruction seemed like something out of a nightmare, as if the person that had gone through the unspeakable horrors was someone other than him. The events of the last few days would be etched indelibly in his memory and tattooed on his psyche for the rest of his life. If he didn’t redeem himself and at least attempt to find his wife, then the rest of his days wouldn’t be worth living anyway.

  The previous night had been spent attempting to sleep through the sounds of the undead assault on Camp Williams. The result was a scant few minutes of shut eye, disrupted by gunfire, shouting soldiers and the stress inducing racket of the ghouls outside the wire.

  While Harry fought with the steering wheel, dodging the ambling walkers and canyon sized depressions in the road, he caught himself nodding off. Twice he almost put the Ford in the ditch. He was delirious and couldn’t keep his eyes open and in a moment of surrender he decided to rest them for a few minutes.

  He drove on until a long stretch of zombie free road lay in front of him and for as far as he could see in the rearview mirror there was no sign of the walking dead. It seemed a safe place to take a quick catnap. His eyes closed without effort and sleep immediately followed.

  In his dream, he was following a woman through very tall, swaying grass, it was a warm spring day and she looked every bit like his wife; whom he had abandoned the day after the outbreak. Every few steps she would stop and glance back at him and flash the smile that he had loved for the last four decades. After a few more strides she would pause allowing him to get close enough to gaze into her azure eyes and feel her silky gray hair. Harry would let the strands glide between his fingers before inevitably she would turn and disappear, once again into the foliage.

  ***

  Harry awoke with a start; he was disoriented and didn’t know where he was. The one thing he was instantly certain of, it was night and very dark-the moonless kind of dark prevalent only away from city lights. His teeth chattered autonomously. A steady scuffing sound caused him to quickly forget his dream. The fatigue and stress accumulated since the dead started walking had taken its toll on the 65 year old man, culminating in nine hours of uninterrupted heavy sleep.

  Harry remembered he had left his glasses on the dash before he closed his eyes. He groped around in the dark blindly trying to find them. The scratching persisted. Harry located his handkerchief, the type that most men of his age were required to carry by some unwritten rule; he ritualistically wiped the lenses of his second set of eyes. It must be a tree branch brushing the side of the truck, Harry thought, as he placed the glasses on the bridge of his nose and pushed them into their proper place. He looked to the right, still unable to discern the source of the sound in the inky blackness outside of his metal cocoon. His best thinking led him to turn on the dome light, the sudden assault on his retinas made his eyes snap shut; he had to squint first before he could fully reopen them.

  The passenger window reverberated from a strong blow. Harry let out a yelp and fumbled to start the engine. Skittering and scratching-like fingernails on a chalkboard came from somewhere in front of the truck.

  Harry turned the key, the engine started and the headlights snapped on, illuminating several zombies. Somehow, even under cover of night they had sensed him inside the cab.

  “Go to hell and leave me alone!” Harry screamed pointlessly at the milky eyes coveting his flesh. He was still shivering from the cold sleep he had been so rudely awakened from when suddenly it dawned on him he had been dreaming about his lost wife. Harry longed to slip back into the warm comfortable embrace of sleep and visit her again.

  Harry slammed the truck into drive, jumped on the gas pedal and plowed through the group of undead. The Ford F-350 fishtailed left and right out of control the first hundred feet before he finally straightened it out.

  Speed was his enemy on the unimproved, storm washed track of dirt masquerading as a road. Slow down, he told himself. His fear wouldn’t listen. The speedometer hit forty and then pushed past fifty. Trees and scrub flashed by, Harry felt compelled to drive faster by the unseen demons chasing him. The F-350 started to shimmy on the washboard like ridges; it skewed sideways as the tires broke free. Oh God. Involuntarily his eyes snapped shut. When they opened he saw trees, road, trees and then road again. The locust cloud of dust overtook and enveloped the Ford as it ground to a halt in the middle of the road. Fine dust roiled silently through the headlight beams. Heart racing and short of breath, Harry started to recite the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father who art in heaven...” Slowly the dirt curtain parted. He halted the prayer and pried his arthritic fingers from the steering wheel. Obvious indentations, where his hands had been, remained in the rubber.

  Marveling at the fact that he had somehow survived the spinout alive, he looked up to see, not ten feet in front of him, a disheveled pale woman in the center of the road. A guttural sound exited her mouth as she raised her arms and quickened her pace towards the truck.

  Talking to himself, he tried to get his hands to work as he fumbled with the box of shotgun shells. “Harry, you damn fool. Why didn’t you load this thing before you left the base?” Like a clumsy running back, he fumbled the whole box of shells onto the floorboard of the truck. They rolled the farthest distance from him possible and pooled by the passenger door. Stealing a glance over the dash he saw that the figure was still advancing. He made sure his door was locked, popped out of his seatbelt and lunged across the truck scooping up
a handful of shells. Harry inserted the first one backwards; the expletives flowed as he tried to right the wrong.

  Harry bobbed his head up; the pale walker was just inches from his window when she spoke.

  “He tried to kill me. My asshole of a husband tried to kill me.”

  She was in a frenzied state, but Harry was elated she wasn’t one of them. “Slow down. Here take this,” he handed her a warm bottle of water and tried to calm her down. “What’s your name?”

  “Sally.” Only a whisper came out, the woman exhaled a deep sigh and collapsed.

  Harry got out and picked the woman named Sally up. She was petite and was very light-even to an old man unaccustomed to lifting anything except for an occasional pint of beer. With his head on a swivel, he worked his way around the truck and put the frail woman in the passenger seat. She was unresponsive, but still breathing.

  Longest fainting spell I’ve ever seen. Granted the only time he had seen anyone faint was on television or in a movie.

  Harry gave Sally a cursory inspection for any injuries, especially bite marks. Finding none on her exposed skin, he contemplated searching under her shorts and tee shirt, but decided it would be best to wait until the woman woke up and ask her if she had been exposed to the infected.

  Harry had no intention of driving at night, but his little bout of narcolepsy changed that. He picked his way down the mountain, driving a moderate twenty miles per hour.

  “Oh no,” Harry gasped.

  The road was impassable. Illuminated by the headlights, hundreds of shambling zombies were blocking his way.

  Sally stirred at the sound of Harry’s voice. Risking a sideways glance, as he worked the truck into reverse, Harry noticed the sheen of sweat coating Sally’s face.

  Rocks thrown from the spinning tires pinged off the undercarriage of the Ford as he tried to escape the dead. Harry found that steering while barreling backwards was nearly impossible. For the second time he lost control, and with a spine jarring impact the truck plunged into a yawning ditch.

  “Oooh,” Sally moaned. She had bounced off of the seat back and rebounded only to meet the dash with her nose and upper lip. She remained still with her eyes closed; red rivulets of blood streamed from her mouth and coated her splintered teeth.

  The dead were quickly converging on the high centered truck. One wheel was completely off of the ground and the other three were useless as they spun in the gravel unable to get purchase. Once more pale hands started impacting the windows and body panels of the truck, trying to extract the meat within.

  “Oohh.”

  Sally emitted a guttural moan; her eyelids snapped open revealing cloudy orbs.

  Unable to get the truck moving, Harry began whimpering. The moment that he realized Sally had become one of them, his whimpers turned to screams.

  The ghouls on the outside finally succeeded in breaking the glass, only to find Sally had already had her fill, and soon Harry would join them.

  Chapter 6

  Outbreak Day 4

  Camp Williams 19th Special Forces Garrison

  Draper, Utah

  The dead had been coming from miles around since the first days of the outbreak; most were drawn from Salt Lake City because initially the floodlights around the base were left blazing all night. A massive slit trench was cut into the earth with the tractors on the base, and then all it took was a boom box and loud heavy metal music to lure the dead over the edge where they were trapped and immolated.

  Little did Major Beeson know the lights weren’t the only draw, the dead were following each other like ants to a treat and once the steady stream started, it couldn’t be diverted. By the time the base commander ordered the lights extinguished it was too late.

  ***

  Corporal Litters blinked twice and then used the back of his hand to wipe the sweaty tears from his eyes. The damp bandana was tied tightly around his face but still didn’t filter out the smell of death, but it was effective at keeping out the dust stirred up by the constant movement of the undead. They were never still, like meth heads on the constant hunt for the next hit, only it was human flesh they coveted and no amount could sate them.

  For the third time in as many minutes he pressed the scope to his eye to reconfirm his worst fear. She had on the Sea World shirt, the one with the black and white orca; he had bought for her less than two weeks ago. Even though his wife Carmen was out of work, with no prospects on the horizon, Steve won out and convinced her to let him take them to Sea World in San Diego. If he had known it would be their last vacation together as a family he would have gotten her more than just that goddamn shirt. Steve cursed God. Billions of dead walking the earth and you put her front and center pressed against the fence. With her sandy blonde hair still pulled back in a pony tail, despite the pallor of her scratched and torn skin and lifeless eyes, she was still his little girl. He had last kissed and said good bye to Becca and Carmen in the kitchen of their little house in Draper on the morning of the first day of the outbreak. Now she was in his cross hairs and he couldn’t find it in himself to pull the trigger.

  Litters was in charge of the back perimeter fence, it abutted against the woods separating the two forest service roads leading out of the back of the base. Until now there hadn’t been much activity, the few dead that did show up he promptly put down. A pile of fifteen infected corpses littered the outside of the fence, scattered randomly where they had fallen, all having been killed by bullets from his M4.

  Becca had been quietly swaying back and forth, both numb hands gripping the chain link fence, for over an hour. Her stare was getting to him. Inexplicably Litters stood up from behind his blind of filled sandbags and put his rifle down.

  One last time, I need to feel my baby’s soft hair, one last time. Corporal Steve Litters didn’t cry often. During the solemn trudge towards the perimeter fence he completely lost control.

  Becca stopped swaying; a low guttural moan emerged from the gaunt, stooped over ten year old. Behind her, like wraiths, more of the dead materialized from between the gnarled trees.

  “Honey it’s me, Daddy.” Litters wiped his nose on his fatigue sleeve, a long silver slug trail of snot remained behind.

  Litters stood six inches in front of his undead daughter. In the far recesses of his mind a voice urged him to back away. If his little girl’s catatonic gaze and eerie moaning wasn’t deterrent enough, nothing was going to keep him from trying to fix her. He stammered, hot tears burning trails down his face, “Hold still, I won’t hurt you.”

  He swallowed, a dry Mojave Desert throat cracking swallow, and reached his hand through the fence to comfort his Becca. Even though she only vaguely resembled the love of his life, her hair still had the same silky texture that he used to stroke while reading her bedtime stories.

  For some reason the little ones were faster. Becca snatched her dad’s hand and plunged her incisors into the soft flesh of his forearm; the bite was deep and violent and caused his hand to reflexively snap shut. The plug of flesh and tendons slid down her throat. Litters stared in disbelief as her second bite shredded the veins of his wrist. Hot blood surged from the jagged wounds. She no longer was daddies little girl.

  What was I thinking? Were his last thoughts before he blacked out. Corporal Litters’ life pulsed into the soil, pooling near Becca's bruised and bloodied bare feet.

  Chapter 7

  Outbreak Day 5

  River Bend Campground

  Wasatch Mountains, Utah

  Sure enough the thunder clouds hadn’t been bluffing. Another low rumble, closer than the first, stirred Cade subconsciously. His eyelids twitched in response to the nightmare he was attending. When he was awake it was easy for him to separate who he was in the normal world, when there had been one, from who he had been trained to be when he was on a mission. The nocturnal thoughts were his brains way of purging. His dreams and nightmares had been coming few and far between after standing down from active duty in the elite Delta Force. Now that he was
thrust back into the throes of combat and in a constant state of hyper vigilance, the midnight visitors had once again taken residence in his skull.

  In his head Cade was back in Tora Bora, hunting Bin Laden, high in the mountains of Afghanistan. He watched the contrails of the circling B-52s. They were so high the occasional glint of sun off of metal or canopy was the only proof that a jet was indeed responsible for the chalky white lines. The explosions of the munitions falling from the silver specks boomed, the sound rolled and echoed across the valley. An Arc Light strike sounded like thunder, only on a grander scale.

  The slight patter of rain drops didn’t wake him; it was the second booming clap of thunder that had the honor. The storm had parked itself against the Wasatch front and was struggling to hurdle the craggy peaks.

  Cade opened his eyes but didn’t move his body; it was how he always woke up when in a hostile environment. Nothing moved in the dark but he was careful to remain statue like, seated in the Jeep. A jagged fork of sheet lightning briefly illuminated the camp. What was that? Cade asked himself, hoping his eyes had been playing tricks. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a stationary figure, standing in the bushes twenty feet in front of the Jeep. One one thousand one, an explosive clap from the thunder cell followed, that was very close. He forced his body to remain still and not give away his position, the darkness was his friend. Turning on his night vision goggles could wait as well. Any movement in the 4x4 would rock the small vehicle on its creaky suspension.

  He didn’t have to wait long for the next lightning strike. Once more the surrounding camp site was revealed for a split second by the strobe effect of the lightning. The figure was no longer there. Cade’s mind was trying to fool him into thinking it had been but a figment, a shadow or the moon and clouds fucking with him. His eyes and gut told him otherwise. Ever so slowly he reached up and swiveled the goggles down, letting them hover in front of his face, at the same time he retrieved his pistol from the passenger seat.