Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 3): Mitigation Book 3)

by Sean Schubert

  Jess screamed and stepped back behind Simeon, who pulled another, larger pistol from a concealed shoulder holster under his jacket. He pulled the trigger three times, unleashing a storm of nine millimeter bullets which seemed to do little to discourage Trey’s rage.

  He squirmed around like a predatory lizard, his legs resembling a long trailing tail. Simeon and Jess retreated a few steps as Simeon discharged a handful more shots, none of which had any more effect than their predecessors. When Trey managed to turn himself around so that he was again facing the two of them, Simeon finally raised the pistol barrel and sent a bullet through Trey’s forehead, producing the desired result. With a single bubbling gurgle, Trey’s head dropped to the ground and ceased moving.

  By that time, Hank had started to move as well, though he no longer appeared to be himself. His dilated pupils burned with ravenous aggression while his face was twisted into an animalistic snarl. He reached out toward them, but his seat restraints held him in place. He stretched his arms to their fullest length and worked his fingers desperately, hoping that his manipulation would help close the distance between him and them. A frustrated quake rippled through his body. He was so close to his prey, but just out of reach.

  Simeon raised his pistol but Jess touched his arm in order to forestall his action. She said, “Shoot him in the chest. Shoot him in the heart.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it. I want to see something.”

  Thinking that perhaps this cute blonde girl wasn’t nearly as innocent or as helpless as she originally seemed, Simeon followed her directive and shot his friend squarely in the chest. To his surprise, the gunshot seemed to have no effect whatsoever.

  Jess demanded over the horrible moan coming from Hank, “Shoot him again.”

  Simeon again listened to her and shot Hank in the chest. The second bullet passed all the way through Hank’s body and struck some metal piece on the truck behind him. Regardless of the mortal wounds inflicted upon him, Hank seemed not to notice. If anything, he became more excited and animated in his efforts, straining against the seatbelt but to no avail.

  Simeon looked back at Jess, who was as incredulous as he was. He wanted to ask her something, but couldn’t form the words of his elusive question. He just didn’t know what to think.

  She finally said to him, “Now shoot him in the head just like you did Trey.”

  Simeon raised the pistol and squeezed off a single round. The bullet struck the squirming Hank just above his left eye, scattering the gray matter inside his skull upon the seat behind him. With this final bullet, Hank or, more precisely, the beast who was once Hank, fell limp against his restraints and struggled no more.

  When Justin started to squirm similarly, Jess simply said to Simeon, “We need to get outta here.”

  They ran over to Allen, who had just gotten the bleeding from the cut above his eye under control, collected the rifles and ammunition from the back of Simeon’s wrecked truck, and climbed into Jess’ car. The three of them sped away with Justin still hungrily fighting to free himself from his simple but seemingly effective prison. They drove south and couldn’t put enough distance between themselves and the horrible revelations behind them fast enough.

  Simeon kept looking over his shoulder, afraid of what might be following them. He wasn’t much for believing in fairy tales or ghost stories, but the things he had seen over the past day or so was changing the way in which he thought about the world.

  46.

  Not too long thereafter, the three of them riding in Jess’ little blue sedan came upon the tail end of a solid wall of cars and trucks all stopped end to end and packed tightly asshole to elbow as her father used to say. There was no driving through it and no driving around it. It may as well have been a brick wall. But all of the cars were empty; there wasn’t a soul to see in any direction.

  Allen wondered aloud for all of them, “I wonder what happened to all the people. Where the hell is everyone?”

  Simeon suggested, “Back up the car a bit and maybe turn around.”

  Jess looked over at him, her face screwed into a question. “What the hell will that accomplish? Homer’s that way...in front of us...not behind.”

  “But what else is in front of us?”

  Frustrated at having become no closer to Syd and possibly putting more distance between the two of them again, Jess had to grudgingly admit that it was probably a good idea. If they had to get out of there quickly, doing so in reverse could prove both difficult and dangerous.

  While she turned the car around, Simeon climbed out with his hunting rifle, which looked as weathered as he did everywhere but in its metallic action. Those parts that were the truly functioning pieces of the rifle looked immaculate and well kept. He walked cautiously over to the first truck he encountered which happened to be a couple of ranks of cars into the mess. He checked in the rear windows of every car he passed, hoping not to encounter another creature as terrifying as what Trey and Hank had become.

  Simeon walked like a hunter on the prowl. Jess watched him in her rearview mirror as he picked his way through and finally leapt into the bed of the truck. It was a big Ford that sat well above all of the cars immediately around it. Simeon hoisted the rifle to his shoulder and peered through the powerful scope. He stood as still as possible, letting his eye adjust to the incredible magnification produced by the optic device.

  He was able to see well down this open, straight stretch of road. There were dips and slight rises, but overall the road ahead was a fairly direct path forward. He saw cars and trucks and dozens and dozens of boats that had never made their way to water.

  Some of the boats more than others caught his eye. He admired some of the amazing water craft to which he would never have access. Of course, he had proven time and time again that he didn’t need a fancy boat or expensive equipment to catch fish or to hunt moose or any other outdoor pursuit he chose. His father had often told him that being a hunter was in his blood and having those expensive gadgets wouldn’t make him a better hunter, always warning him not to become a slave to modern devices because they were fleeting and would only thin his blood and make him forget his way. Looking out at all the vehicles sitting uselessly on the road, he couldn’t help but think about his father’s wise words. His father wasn’t a mystical shaman, but he did understand nature and man’s place in it. Simeon wondered what his father would have had to say about what was happening.

  Satisfied that he had seen all that there was to see, he hopped back down and trotted back to Jess’ car. He sat down heavily and handed his rifle back to Allen, who instinctively checked the rifle for live rounds in the firing chamber. Seeing nothing there, Allen leaned the rifle next to his on the floor of the back seat.

  Simeon said without much inflection in his voice, “Cars and cars. Miles of cars. But no people.”

  Shaking his head, Allen asked, “Where could they all be? It’s not like they just disappeared or somethin’. Did they?”

  Overwhelmed, Jess gushed emotionally, “My daughter is down there somewhere and I’ll be damned if I’m just gonna—”

  “D’you guys hear that?” asked Allen suddenly.

  Jess answered, “Hear what?”

  “That. It kinda sounds like a buzzing, but I’m feelin’ it all over.”

  Jess admitted, “I don’t hear or feel anything. You’re just distracting me. I need to find a way to get to my...”

  Allen was looking over his shoulder by then and could see some movement amongst the cars that were now behind them. He was seeing it in the narrow spaces between the vehicles. He quickly surmised that the noise was coming from whatever was moving. He rolled down his window just a crack and the buzzing became louder but it was accompanied by something more.

  They could all hear a screeching groan that sounded almost human. It was definitely coming from somewhere within the traffic jam and was getting closer by the moment.

  Simeon said to Jess, “I think we need to be moving.”

/>   “But Syd is down that way goddamnit!”

  Simeon’s face became very serious, and he said again, “I think we should get moving.”

  Jess put the car into gear and reluctantly let it inch forward. Moments later, three and then four enraged, terrifying people, who all shared common characteristics with Trey and Hank, emerged from the jam and started to sprint toward Jess’ car.

  “Please get movin’!” Allen said, agreeing with Simeon.

  Jess, still watching in her rearview mirror as the people got closer and closer, could see that all of them were either painters working with shades of red or that each was spattered to differing degrees with blood. She could also see, even from the rapidly declining distance between her and them, that their eyes were as steeped in fury as Trey’s and Hank’s had been.

  She pressed the accelerator and asked over and over, “What is happening? What is happening? What is happening?” As she repeated the phrase, Jess’ words found themselves steeped more fully in desperate sorrow and agonizing, like a bitter tea that left a sour taste in the back of her mouth. She needed to get to her daughter, but there didn’t seem to be an immediate way to make that happen.

  Her car gained speed and put their pursuers firmly in the distance but it didn’t seem to be deterring them from the pursuit. Glancing in the rearview mirror often, she saw Allen visibly shiver, the prickly goose bumps rising on his neck. She completely agreed with his sentiment, whether it was spoken or not.

  They drove hard back toward Soldotna, noticing for the first time there appeared to be people wandering aimlessly in the open spaces off the side of the road. They all knew, despite the distance between their car and those souls on foot, that there was something different about the other people. Sometimes they were wearing torn or otherwise tattered clothing. On one occasion, they saw a woman dressed in a nursing uniform who appeared to have seeping, lethal wounds on her neck and face. Part of her cheek had been peeled back, exposing teeth and gums to little black gnats and flies who hungrily swarmed the open and inviting wound.

  As they neared Soldotna, on their left hand side was Skyview High School. From the highway, they weren’t able to see the school itself, but they knew that it was there just the same. Jess pulled into the parking lot, surprised to see a series of school buses parked end to end to form a kind of a barrier. The great yellow and black wall cordoned off the front entrance of the school and part of the parking lot in front of the building.

  Jess stopped her car and waited expectantly. Sure enough, one of the buses slowly began to reverse itself, making room for her to drive her car into the enclosure. She, Simeon, and Allen were relieved, but Jess still felt sick over the distance separating her from her daughter.

  47.

  The first pair of zombies found the school on the second day after Jess and her companions arrived. Simeon was alongside the other men swinging his bat like a club. There was no denying its rudimentary effectiveness. It wasn’t as loud as one of their guns and it still got the job done.

  As it was, Jess, Simeon, and Allen were among the few people at the school to have firearms with ammunition at their disposal. The three of them were immediate celebrities as a result. At least two of them accompanied every excursion outside the wall. They were rarely called upon to use their guns for fear that the sound would attract more of the ghouls, but the reassurance of having the guns along eased many worried minds.

  On more than one occasion, however, especially the further they were from the first day, their guns were the difference between everyone returning to the school and none of them returning. Jess was a capable shot with her pistol and put it to good use. Both Simeon and Allen toted powerful hunting rifles. Though the rifles were slower to shoot than the pistols that several people carried, the large caliber bullets which hurtled from their barrels were quite capable of dispatching more than one of the devils at a time so long as the angle was right. Simeon learned this fact very early during a trip to the gas station.

  They had a couple of very efficient generators to run a limited number of appliances and some lights, but the generators required gasoline. A recent survivor who had found his way to the school told everyone about a tanker which was parked partially in and partially out of the road at the Chevron station near the juncture of the Sterling and Kenai Spur Highways. He told all of them that it looked like the driver had just left it there.

  The gas station was only a little further than they had been already. They could take Jess’ car and as many gas cans as they could carry. If they were lucky, the truck would still have its keys in it. A woman named Francine, a pretty, young Native girl, had experience driving heavy equipment, so she agreed to come along. Simeon and Jess were in the front seat, while Francine and another older man named Royce rode in the back. They had four large jerry cans, each capable of holding five gallons of gasoline, loaded into the trunk. There was room for more, but at their disposal they only had the four empty cans. There were two other cans which still had gasoline in them at the school. The hope was that they would lay their hands on more gas cans at the gas station or on the truck.

  Jess sped them across the bridge and into Soldotna. Every time she found herself back in the city, she felt more and more like an interloper. This wasn’t her home anymore. This wasn’t the town that she had always called home. It was still, painfully familiar however.

  Having been out on more than one occasion, all the grim reminders of their current circumstances were also becoming horribly familiar. The empty buildings, the abandoned cars, and the bodies...always the bodies. She wondered about each and every nameless, faceless corpse. She likely knew more than a few of them. Like Dante’s torments in his Inferno, the sorrow she felt each time she saw the decomposing piles of bones was as if it were the first time. The bitter burning acid scorched her stomach and her heart simultaneously, taking her breath away. She couldn’t deny the distraction that it threatened to be every time she drove them near any of the bodies she had spotted.

  Of course, the bodies that were still moving around gave her equal pause and they lacked predictability. The threat of their unpredictability had her and all of her fellow pillagers on edge from the moment they drove away.

  Luckily, on that day, they didn’t see any of the walking dead lurking about. They could see the stalled tanker truck as they passed the Carrs grocery store and they all became anxious. The furthest any of them had ventured into town was to go to the Spenard Builder Supply store which sat just across the river. Had any of them gone the slightest bit more, they would have seen the tanker clearly. It didn’t matter. They were on their way now.

  Francine hopped from Jess’ car and into the cab of the big rig while barely touching feet to ground. Royce got out, opened the trunk and took one of the cans with him. In his other hand was his bat. Simeon too was up and out. He still carried the bat he had used during his first close encounter with the undead at Skyview but over his shoulder was slung his rifle.

  Simeon circled Jess’ car, looking at their surroundings from different angles. When Francine tried to start the big truck, the diesel engine choked loudly, causing everyone to jump. She leaned out of the cab and said with an embarrassed laugh, “Sorry, I should have warned everyone. My bad.”

  The loud, mechanical bark echoed through the quiet morning air. Simeon knew they were there on borrowed time as soon as she did that. Royce hurried over to a valve on the tanker trailer but was puzzled how to proceed. The wrong move and he would be doused with fuel and become a walking fire bomb. Maybe Francine would know. He walked back over toward the cab but was stunned to see one of the walking corpses pull itself from the wheel hub of the truck. It had obviously been run over by the truck’s driver and assumed dead. Stuck and immobile, the zombie must have been dislodged by the sudden lurch caused by the engine. It slithered out of its lodgment, pulling itself along by its hands, its legs largely missing from about mid-thigh down.

  From the distance at which he was standing, there was
no way he could arrive in time to save Francine, who was unaware of the danger and concentrating on getting the truck started. He shouted and finally got Jess’ attention. Royce pointed excitedly. It didn’t take another look.

  Jess was already holding her pistol in her hand. She took a few steps to narrow the distance between her target and herself, but was already in the process of raising the revolver and siting down its barrel. She took a couple of final steps, steadied her arm the way her boyfriend Bob had shown her, and squeezed the trigger.

  Jess shot the slinking abomination in the back of the head, its congealed gray matter spattering all over Francine’s legs. Francine’s terrified expression froze on her face, her eyes and mouth wide with surprise. Deciding that the truck was beyond starting, she gave up on trying.

  Luckily, she did know how to get gas from the tanker’s out spout, but there didn’t appear to be time to do so. The sound of their car had apparently drawn the attention of several of the undead loitering in some of the surrounding parking lots. The truck engine’s bark and the gunshot had piqued their interest and set them on a course toward the four human beings.

  Simeon saw the first one as it appeared around the far side of the truck. He dangled the bat at his side expectantly and started toward the thing, however, he stopped dead in his tracks when the second and then the third creature joined the original one. Seeing their quarry, the zombies became agitated and excited. Their unwieldy, slow gait became much more focused and fast, their quickened steps rapidly propelling them forward. Dropping his bat, Simeon pulled his rifle into his hands and quickly chambered a round. He took one quick look and fired. The bullet punched its way through the closest devil’s eye and exited the back of his head. The bullet then continued into the forehead of the woman following closely behind. Both slumped backward without any fanfare, their brains having been scrambled.

  The third ghoul continued forward without missing a step. Simeon calmly chambered another round. By that time, Jess had joined him and was raising her own gun. Simeon waved her off and finished the third attacker with a single bullet.