Soldier On: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Trudge)

by Shawn Chesser

  Dan knew the layout of the house from previous visits. He went directly to his lady friend’s bedroom, the disgusting odor intensified the closer he got.

  Hundreds of loudly buzzing houseflies ambushed Dan when he set foot in the bedroom. His worst fear was realized, Elizabeth Paxton’s corpse was the source of the throat constricting stench. Lizzie was dressed in her Sunday best, an empty bottle of pain pills sat on the bureau next to a half empty glass of water. There was no evidence of foul play, but what really troubled Dan was the absence of a suicide note. Why in the hell would the old gal want to go out like that?

  Dan was trying to make sense out of it all when he noticed the rifled through Idaho Statesman newspaper. From where he was standing he thought the headline read, “Dead Walk.” Impossible, his eyes had to be playing tricks on him. Dan worked his way around the bed and fetched the newspaper and found he had, in fact, read it correctly. Even more troubling, the paper was dated days ago, not April 1.

  Sitting down, he read and reread the article. Dan could only fathom the editor of the Statesman allowing something this outlandish to be front page news, as a prank maybe, but only on April Fools day or Halloween.

  The remote control for Lizzie’s Zenith sat atop the comforter which was tightly wrapped around her bloated legs. Dan fanned away the flies and grabbed the remote; intent on seeing what had happened, that was so catastrophic, which still warranted having all of the passenger jets grounded. Dan pressed the power button, nothing. It finally dawned on him that he hadn’t seen any lights on in town; interior or porch. He had assumed that Bo’s store was without power because of the foul play. Dan didn’t profess to be a detective, but he didn’t often miss details like these.

  Dan turned his head and craned his neck in the direction of the main drag that cut through town. He noticed the distinctive sound of Harley Davidsons, the loudly throbbing motorcycles approached from the west. Dan parted the yellowed lace curtains and took in the spectacle passing by a block away.

  Bikes of all types careened through town, followed by dozens of civilian SUVs, mostly Suburbans, Cadillac Escalades and Hummers all of the vehicles not easily obtained before the apocalypse.

  Soon the air was filled with hoots and hollers. Rebel yells, cat calls and war cries sounded from the passing procession of black leather and gleaming chrome.

  United States military vehicles brought up the rear of the convoy. The people manning the turret mounted armament on the passing Humvees looked nothing like soldiers. An M1 Abrams main battle tank played caboose for the Mad Max parade. It lurched along, slowing down and speeding up like a drunken sailor on liberty. The thing that made the scene all the more maddening was the black and red Nazi flags flying from many of the vehicles-including the military hardware.

  Revulsion washed over Dan followed by a searing white hot rage that invaded his every cell. It felt like he was in the midst of a Twilight Zone episode and he knew Rod Serling wasn’t going to bail him out of the surreal nightmare.

  Chapter 26

  Outbreak Day 6

  Hanna, Utah

  Cade paused between the hedgerows listening for any movement, satisfied all was clear, he stepped out of the foliage and dashed across the two lane road, using every shadow for cover.

  Before venturing out of the farmhouse, Cade noticed the small cottage from the upstairs window. All of the curtains facing the street were drawn tight. There was no sound or obvious movement coming from within, so Cade worked his way around back, on guard for random walkers lurking in the dark. Nothing was stirring here and so far the block and a half that he had already covered had been zombie free, it seemed too good to be true, Cade was left waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  He needed to find an RV or similar vehicle, and it had to be tall enough so the two men could get on top without the walkers making a meal of them.

  Cade waited in the shadows for a heartbeat, then, he one eyed it around the corner. There was only an old beat up Volvo station wagon in the drive, and it wasn’t what he was looking for. He side stepped up the drive with his back against the wall, dagger in one hand the machete in the other. Cade went around the garage and stole a look in the dusty window; it was empty, nothing but shadows and cobwebs inside, so he moved on.

  Cade heard shuffling and scraping coming from the front of the house, and melted into the dark, between two thorny bushes, adjacent to the car.

  When the nosy walker reached the top of the drive it stopped, head lolling back and forth and stayed in one place for a moment. Cade wondered if the thing was aware of his presence. As far as he knew he hadn’t made a sound. Mysteriously the monster staggered in his direction. A shaft of moonlight illuminated the creatures face revealing two empty eye sockets, not only were the eyes gone but the so were both ears and some of its fingers. It was pretty ripe and probably was one of the first to be infected days ago. The thing stopped two feet from where Cade knelt and appeared to be looking directly at him.

  Cade felt the first tingle of adrenalin caress his brain and surge into his extremities. He had a growing suspicion somehow the zombies other senses remained intact-maybe even enhanced. It knows I’m here. Cade knew that if push came to shove, he could hack its head off and be on his way, but with noise discipline being high on the list he held back, there was no telling how many more were nearby; and he sure as hell didn’t want to be pursued by a pack of the things.

  Patience Cade, he admonished himself.

  The ghoul spent five minutes standing still as a statue, and then shambled between Cade and the car. He must have remembered this place from when he was still alive, Cade thought.

  Strangely, as if this whole area was memorized or ingrained into some deep abyss of its memory, the eyeless walker abruptly turned left and reached for the door. The nubs that used to be fingers couldn’t find purchase; they only left a slimy sheen on the door knob.

  Cade watched the struggle taking place inches from his head; it took all of the patience that he could summon to remain still while marinating in the rotten stench.

  After fumbling with the handle and getting nowhere, the corpse abruptly turned away and wobbled around the back side of the house.

  It was the perfect opportunity to beat feet in the other direction, and Cade took advantage. Once he was away from the small cottage and the walker, he continued along the street, there were no streetlights and the moon hid behind clouds leaving everything cloaked in darkness.

  Cade estimated he had travelled roughly three-fourths of mile from where he had started. No joy, it appeared that everyone had left town in their RVs. He was about to settle for the first SUV or big truck he came across and improvise from there-when lo and behold, wedged between a ranch style house and a chain-link fence; he spotted a medium sized motorhome. The big white hulk was probably a 1960s model and appeared to have been sitting for some time. A thin layer of mottled green mold spackled its boxy exterior from the roof on down to the under inflated tires.

  ***

  In the hour since Cade left, the creatures had been successful, by sheer numbers alone, in shifting the furniture blockage.

  “If that thing fails...I’m feeding you to them first,” Daymon yelled at the top of his lungs, he wanted to make sure that Hoss heard him. After being under full assault for hours by the undead house party downstairs, his ears were beginning to ring; adding to it was the incessant braying of the motor mouth lawyer. This dude should bill by the word, Daymon thought, not by the hour.

  “I had a feeling that GI. Joe was going to leave us here.” Hoss voice wavered; it seemed that he was on the verge of panicking.

  Daymon couldn’t find a shred of sympathy for his cell mate. The fat fuck had led the horde directly to the house and he was going to pay.

  Hoss yelled from the bedroom, “I could use a hand in here.”

  It took both men to move the antique armoire, the heavy piece left deep gouges in the hardwood floors. After pushing it through the doorway and severely damaging both si
des of the jamb they sent it tumbling below. Almost everything upstairs that wasn’t nailed down now teetered precariously on the zombie dam.

  Daymon sat on the floor hoping the obstacle would do the job while he cursed himself for stopping at the house to rest in the first place. If I ever get out of here, I’m going to make Hoss wish he had never crossed paths with me, he thought, as he tried to ignore the big man’s labored breathing.

  Chapter 27

  Outbreak Day 6

  Hanna, Utah

  Cade held in place for a few minutes observing his surroundings before sprinting to the Winnebago. Pressing his back to the skin of the RV he reached for the door handle, which happened to be unlocked.

  Once inside, the only smell to assail his nostrils was that of your garden variety mold and mildew. The interior was as dirty as the outside: food wrappers, beer cans and articles of clothing, both men’s and women’s, were strewn about. It appeared someone had been using the vehicle for their “play” house.

  Cade planted himself in the driver’s seat and scanned the instruments; they looked no different than the ones found in any U-Haul he had ever driven. Now all he had to do was figure out how to start the thing

  His first inclination was to check the glove box. It was empty save for some maps, an ice scraper and miscellaneous paperwork, but no keys.

  It was a hunch, he’d seen it on television and the movies a hundred times, there was no way that they were going to actually be there, but he was compelled to look anyway. The vinyl sun visor on the driver’s side was stuck in the up position and wouldn’t budge. Cade took off the kid gloves and manhandled it, finally getting it to flip down. Deposited on Cade’s lap, like Manna from heaven, was a fob full of keys. “I’ll be damned,” he said out loud. Incredibly, whoever owned the vehicle was a fan of cliché.

  Cade didn’t have high expectations for the worn down Winnebago. He turned the key in the ignition, the planets must be in alignment, he thought. First the keys and now the whining starter did what it was designed to, and with only a little bit of complaining. Black smoke billowed from the tailpipe until the engine decided to turn over. A gun-shot like backfire beckoned the dead to come and get it. Cade had a visual of a cowboy cook, banging on a triangle, calling all hands to dinner.

  Cade found he couldn’t see a thing through the grimy windshield, it was obscured with an opaque brown coating of tree sap, dirt and, who knows what. After finding the wiper control, Cade liberally spritzed the glass with windshield cleaner. The crumbling wiper blades beating a rhythm, swishing back and forth reluctantly, only made things worse.

  Cade snatched the ice scraper from the glove box and reluctantly left the idling land yacht. With his M4 in hand and his head on a swivel, he began furiously scraping away at the glass.

  The sun would be making an appearance very soon, the first rays of light were slowly revealing the details of his surroundings and for the first time in many days Cade was aware of the faint chirping of the early birds.

  He was working at cleaning the windshield when the moaning started, he had already heard the eerie sound a hundred times, yet it still caused the hair on his neck to stand at attention.

  A number of walkers abruptly appeared, emptying from the open doors of the Handy Pantry food mart a block away. The surging wave of pale walking corpses quickly homed in on the RV.

  Cade shouldered the M4 bracketing a female walker in the Trijicon ACOG crosshairs. Her face bore the marks of a violent attack, waxy skin and purple muscle sloughed from one side of her head, the torn cheek bounced up and down with each lurching step; the bared orbital bone and mandible caused a permanent half smile.

  Cade caressed the trigger sending the 5.56 hardball downrange. The bullet struck the exposed part of her skull below the eye socket sending a fan of razor sharp bone and tooth fragments into the trailing walkers. He expended half of the magazine on the first few ghouls, buying him a little more time.

  Turning his attention back to the window seemed foolish considering the encroaching mob, but hanging his head out the window and trying to drive the ungainly Winnebago through a throng of undead seemed even more asinine.

  He risked five more quick passes with the scraper and jumped back into the driver’s seat. Without hesitating, Cade put the RV into gear and mashed the accelerator to the floorboard. The Winnebago lurched forward when the underinflated tires jumped the wheel chocks meant to keep it in place.

  Cade kept his foot to the floor and heaved the rig into a sweeping right-hand turn, intent on getting back to the house before sunrise and the cover of darkness was totally lost.

  Fifty feet in front of the RV Cade noticed the same ghoul from earlier. He couldn’t believe the tenacity of the blind zombie, it was in the middle of the road, head panning side to side totally oblivious of the speeding motorhome. Rooted in place, the walker met the grill face first. The dual rear tires cleaved the creature in two. The monster’s severed lower extremities did a strange looking cartwheel and rolled into the gutter, what was left clawed across the asphalt, trailing blood like an injured animal.

  Chapter 28

  Outbreak Day 5

  Stanley, Idaho

  Dan was at home with death. He had dealt it. He had come face to face with it many times in Vietnam. None of that made it any easier to sit with Lizzie’s corpse and wait for darkness to come.

  Lizzie had taken her own life, Dan thought, what could have been so tragic and devastating to make the woman take the cowardly way out?

  The power was out, but the afternoon light was enough for him to read the entire article in the Boise paper one last time. Something clicked, even though there was no mention of the grounding of the entire commercial airline fleet; Dan knew that he had to give credence to the Omega story.

  Bang.

  It sounded to Dan like the screen door was opening and closing with some help from the wind. Strangely he didn’t remember the wind blowing during his walk to the house.

  Bang. Bang.

  Now it seemed like someone or something was smacking the back door. Dan pulled his Colt from the holster and out of habit pulled back the slide to make sure a round was in the pipe. He skirted the bed and in passing, gave his old friend Lizzie a pat on her cold foot.

  Bang.

  “All right, all right, I’m coming-keep your shirt on.” Dan had no problem talking to himself. As long as he had lived alone, up in the Sawtooth Mountains, he had made a habit of talking to himself. It was his way of conquering the loneliness.

  Dan navigated the shadowy dining room, careful to watch where he put his feet.

  Bang.

  He entered the kitchen and waited a moment for his eyesight to adjust to the bright light streaming in the glass pane. All he could make out was a man’s silhouette peering in through the window, he was over six feet tall and nearly filled out the doorway; probably a drunken Nazi biker, Dan theorized.

  Bang. Dan put the pistol behind his leg. If the man was high or drunk, he didn’t want to make matters worse by openly brandishing a firearm.

  Bang.

  Dan had never seen a person so determined...yet so out of it at the same time. The guy’s skin tone reminded him of those monsters that were featured in the old Boris Karloff movies-he couldn’t remember what they were called. Damn, getting old is for the birds.

  “Stop, I’m armed and will use deadly force.” Dan raised his black pistol and aimed it at the crazed man. It didn’t deter him; it seemed only to further fuel his rage. The door frame splintered a little more with each blow. I am not going toe to toe with this yahoo, Dan told himself. For some reason the famous Revolutionary War quote, “Don’t shoot til you see the whites of their eyes,” popped into his head the moment he locked eyes with the intruder. Dan noted that the guy’s pupils were fixed and the “whites” were yellow and jaundiced. The lights are on and there’s no one home, he thought, as he summoned the resolve to shoot the seemingly unarmed maniac.

  The door blasted from the frame and car
omed off the small breakfast table, landing lengthwise partially blocking the doorway. A normal human would try to step over the obstruction-the mindless druggie tried to bull right through it.

  The man smelled rotten, worse than Lizzie. Like the tumblers in a lock everything instantly fell together and started making sense. The Boise Statesman was right; Dan thought incredulously, the dead really are walking.

  Dan leveled his weapon point blank at the struggling man’s head, the pistol bucked twice in his hand. The Colts report was thunderous in the confined kitchen, momentarily deafening him.

  The abomination collapsed over the splintered door.

  The Colt .45 is a very effective man stopper, not much skull was left from the eyebrows up. Dan watched the dead man’s brain dribble out in slow motion, clumping in a mound on the black and white checkerboard linoleum.

  He prodded the body with the still smoking muzzle and then rolled it over with his free hand. The fact that the unmoving corpse was already ice cold to the touch further confirmed what he had read in the fish wrapper.

  His newfound knowledge of how his world had changed around him dictated his next move.

  My daddy fought the Nazis, he thought, and I sure as hell aint gonna let them repopulate the town I was born and raised in. There has got to be someone, somewhere, upholding the rule of law.

  With Sheriff Blanda swinging in the wind and Lizzie gone for good, there was no reason for Dan to remain in Stanley.

  Dan searched the cupboard where Lizzie kept her car keys; he found them after moving around countless bottles of prescription medicines.

  Over the course of the ensuing three hours, two more large groups of brigands roared down the main street in the direction of the Aryan’s fortress like compound. For good measure Dan waited until half past two in the morning, with only the two corpses for company. He wanted the thugs to do their usual and get good and shitty before he attempted to sneak past them.