by Brett Abell
Beating her to the punch, he let go of the car, reached over his shoulder, and took ahold of whatever was pawing at him.
As her warning became a full-fledged scream, Tara watched in horror as a bent and broken man, much smaller than her brother, tried climbing onto his back, its mouth open, a bite about to be delivered to the nape of his neck.
Acting on near-dormant training, Riker shifted his weight right and dragged his would-be assailant off its feet and, with all of his strength, hunched forward. Like he was bucking a hay bale onto a waiting flatbed—which he was pretty good at—he clean finished the move, depositing a hissing little man on the roof of his sister’s tiny ride.
Seeing the passenger worming out of the Volvo and with the thing her brother had just tossed over her car up and clacking its teeth on her window glass, Tara put the car back into drive and wailed for Riker to push.
And he did. With his leg sporting the prosthetic rooted inside the car, he pushed with the other until the car was free and his good leg was being dragged along the road’s surface.
Eyes on the road and knuckles going white from her death grip on the wheel, Tara said, “It almost had you.”
He adjusted his ball cap and grabbed the bar near his head as she threw the car off of Main and onto University Drive, heading east away from MU, on a collision course with the low-hanging moon.
Using the moon like a waypoint, Tara kept to the far right of her lane, dodging erratically driven cars coming at them from the opposite lane. Twice, her stellar peripheral vision and quick reflexes saved them from getting pasted by drivers inexplicably blowing red lights on crossing streets.
“Running from something,” said Riker, his head on a swivel, scanning the streets ahead of them.
Tara said nothing. Knowing they were nearing their destination, she slowed and, once she picked up on the soft glow a few degrees left of the moon, turned toward it, taking a side street whose sign she failed to get a glimpse of. Halfway down the tree-lined drive, silhouetted against the harsh white light being given off by the hundreds of bulbs ensconced in the phalanx of rectangular standards ringing the Middletown High football field, they saw three people in the distance, moving with a slow, unnatural gait.
“We’re here,” she said softly, as if someone outside on the deserted lane could hear.
“Stop,” Riker ordered. He wished he had a pair of binoculars but made do, squinting and trying to make out the details. Once his eyes adjusted to the Klieg lights, he saw that the bleachers and press box were empty. He swept his gaze over the steadily advancing trio and saw slack faces on all three. No affect whatsoever. They looked like they were dead. And if he hadn’t already seen one like them up close and personal, he would have thought himself crazy for even thinking it.
Chapter 18
Tara tromped the gas and steered Tee in a crazy arc around the walking cadavers and then turned right and sped along the west side of the field. Soon the parking lot and more of the surreal sight they had seen from afar unfolded before them. They saw that, despite the lights burning and the hundred or so passenger cars, trucks, and SUVs parked helter-skelter in both the main lot and the overflow, the Silver Knights’ scoreboard was darkened, and the field was empty.
“Where is everyone?” Tara asked, slowing and pulling over to the right and stopping next to a row of Jersey barriers left in place to block entry to the field.
“No idea,” Riker answered. “But after that woman and man in the Volvo … coming back or whatever that was. And those three things back there plus the one that attacked me, though I didn’t get a clear look at its face … this”—he gestured at the lots on the left and then pointed toward the deserted field—”is one more good reason for us to head for the hills.”
“What hills? We’re in Ohio. Nothing but cornfields here.”
“You know what I mean.”
Tara looked over her shoulder and, seeing the three creepers still advancing on them, tromped the gas again, proceeding in the same direction they’d been travelling, double the posted twenty-miles-per-hour speed limit.
She slowed for the turn that would see them behind the school and to the interstate onramp just a quarter mile beyond Middletown High’s front stairs.
“Good call, Sis,” Riker said, just as an intense beam of light, at least a million candlepower he figured, blinded them both, and instinctively Tara braked hard.
The light flicked off and, with blue tracers darting in front of his eyes, Riker lowered his hand and recognized the squared-off forms of a trio of Humvees just as their widely spaced headlights flicked on. Then, a half beat later, silhouetted in the six flat cones of yellow, a half-dozen forms stepped from the vehicles.
“What should I do?” whispered Tara.
Riker said nothing.
With carbines in hand, muzzles trained on the ground near their feet, the forms advanced cautiously.
Low ready is what Riker’s first drill instructor called how they carried their rifles, and by the way the men were comported, advancing slow and steady and confident, he figured no hills or cornfields were going to be visited by him or Sis anytime soon.
Tara jumped when the uniformed man tapped on her window. He made a fist and, keeping his arm still, rotated it in a clockwise circle—the universal sign for: Roll down your window.
And she did. “We were just looking for the interstate … officer?”
Riker craned and looked at the five uniformed figures who had stayed back. Nothing about them save for their bearing—which screamed highly trained and likely special operations shooters—pointed to what outfit they hailed from. He looked back at the man talking to his sis. He was a ruddy-faced fella with bushy red eyebrows and a black beret cocked so far over his shaved head that it looked in danger of falling off. He looked to be fortyish, prime age for a top dog spot in the teams. The uniform they all wore was a standard MultiCam pattern, mostly browns with some black and green. Adaptable to all environments, the DOD bean counters claimed. There was no visible name tape. Nothing pointing to his rank, branch of service, or unit. Nothing. Save for the fact that the point man spoke perfect Midwest English, the soldiers could have been UN peacekeepers for all Riker knew.
“Interstate is closed,” said the man with a slight twang. “As of 1500, per the governor’s orders, Middletown is under martial law.”
“Can I back up … go home?”
The man stepped two paces closer. Raised his black carbine. He means business, thought Riker as the soldier padded left and then right, eyeballing the inside of the vehicle. “Do you have any weapons in the car?”
They both shook their heads, slowly, side-to-side.
“Bites?”
Caught off guard, Tara screwed up her face and asked, “Bites?”
“Have either of you been bitten? Or scratched?” He paused in thought. “Or ingested anybody’s blood?”
“It’s not fucking Halloween yet,” shot Tara.
Riker put a hand on her arm and leaned in front of her. “We’re clean. Been in all day. What do you want us to do, sir?”
Gesturing with a nod to the patch of street lit up by the headlights, he said, “Hands first. Get out one at a time and go to your knees, placing your hands over your heads, fingers interlaced.”
Tara shot a look at Riker. Her hands were kneading the wheel. He reached over, turned the car off, and pocketed the keys.
***
While five of the six men trained their carbines on Tara and Riker, the point man slipped a pair of rigid plastic flex cuffs over Riker’s wrists and cinched them down. Not pain-inducing tight. But tight, nevertheless. While they did the same to Tara, who was shooting a pissed-off look his way, Riker shifted his body slightly and saw between the two Hummers, about a hundred feet back, a sea of body bags, all of them glossy black and reflecting the ambient light from the standards illuminating the distant football field. And as he heard the zipping noise of his sister’s hands being bound, he realized that many of the bags were und
ulating slowly. Now and then one would tent up for a second and then go back to lying flat.
Then the only man to have spoken to them thus far pulled a pair of black hoods from a cargo pocket.
“For our safety,” he said.
Tara set her brown eyes on the bag and then parked them on Riker.
Though he didn’t quite believe the words as he thought them, he locked eyes with her and said them anyway. “It’s going to be all right, Sis.”
A tear flowed down her cheek as the stony-faced soldier hooded her up.
Riker looked over his shoulder and asked, “Can you tell me where you’re taking us?”
As everything went dark and he found it difficult to breathe, he heard the scraping of Tara’s shoes and a rustle of fabric as she was helped to her feet. Then, whispered by his right ear, he heard: “The high school bunker along with all of the others.”
***
Riker estimated barely two minutes had ticked into the past when he heard a door open to his fore. He was guided through by the elbow and the hood was removed. The cuffs were removed and he was asked to strip naked. Which he did without resisting, seeing as how the soldier issuing the orders was armed with a carbine as were the others he was certain were right outside the door.
Without warning, a female soldier entered and visually inspected his body from afar. She had him lift and cough, like this was a prison in-processing or something.
Finally the male soldier’s demeanor changed and he told Riker to get dressed, adding a please prior to issuing the order.
Riker dressed and held his hands out to be cuffed.
“Not for quarantine,” said the soldier.
“What about my sister?”
“Follow me.”
Walking tentatively a couple of paces behind the soldier, Riker followed him through another set of double doors and instantly registered two things. The first was the eye-opening scale of the facility. It was no bunker. He was standing in a fallout shelter, immense in scale and currently home to at least three hundred people. Some were lounging on cots with their kids. Others were sitting on folding chairs, solo or in small groups, talking quietly amongst themselves. Out of the blue, a soldier offered him a bottled water, which he politely declined, for a dozen feet in front of him was Tara. No hood. No cuffs. And a smile spreading on her face at the realization that everything was in fact going to be all right—for now.
About Shawn Chesser
Shawn Chesser, author of the best selling ‘surviving the Zombie Apocalypse' series, has been a zombie fanatic for decades. He likes his creatures shambling, trudging and moaning. As for fast, agile, screaming specimens … not so much. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, two kids, and three fish.
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Middletown Apocalypse
Mike Evans
My name is Floyd. It has been almost one full day since the outbreak started in my best friend, Charlie’s, small laboratory at Middletown University. The virus spread like wildfire. We don’t know why or how it got delivered to the school and to Wilson’s lab. It was literally hell in a bottle and the fact that it had ever been created was insanity on its own; once someone knew what it was, it should have been destroyed or locked away a thousand miles beneath the earth.
Now the only people coming and going from the town belong to the military, and they’re out in full force. The Army National Guard was deployed almost instantly. Unfortunately, with the little amount of knowledge, the spread of the infection was not limited to the townspeople; some of the military troops were infected as well.
The city has been shut down and is now under martial law. The government, it seems, has gone insane for fear of the disease spreading outside of our small city’s limit. The fear of the spread is greater than the worry about the townspeople and their personal, God-given rights as Americans.
The military is the most dangerous thing in town right now. Nothing is scarier than an armed man who is uneducated about the dangers around him. The young soldiers in the streets are shooting to kill. Every citizen they see is another target, and they shoot first and check for signs of infection second. The only soldiers who are not shooting to kill are walking the streets with the other infected—now victims and targets all at the same time.
Many of the townspeople have escaped into the shelter. There are two shelters in town and some, in the confusion, went to the wrong one; those people didn’t fare so well. The first to arrive at the correct one were saved, but those who didn’t make it in time were locked out, forced to fend for themselves. I was one of the unlucky ones and did not make it to safety.
I have been walking the town aimlessly for hours. Every time I think there’s a way out, there’s someone there, waiting to shoot. I realize it’s a matter of time before they see me, but I keep to the night’s shadows, hoping to make it to dawn. But that doesn’t drown out the constant clank of metal on metal and the motorized hum of machinery—the sound of fences being built around the town to keep people out. And to keep people in. It does not fill me with very much hope.
*****
Day of the Outbreak
The dark brown delivery truck was flying through town. Earl was tapping along to a country song that he didn’t know the name of, but loved that he was singing about telling his boss to shove it. He sped across the countryside, which seemed to stretch forever. He was cursing his boss and couldn’t stop thinking how the son of a bitch always gave him the shittiest of routes that a boss could.
He looked in the rearview mirror, shaking his head at the amount of packages that needed to be delivered; there seemed to be a thousand boxes staring back at him. To Earl, each one meant saying his mandated spiel. Hello, please sign. Please have a great day … and remember, ASOT gets it there first, and gets it there right. He resented having to drive all the way to Middletown because in his opinion—and every other delivery driver’s opinion—the town was out in the middle of nowhere.
As Earl pulled into city limits, he saw the red sign of Middletown welcoming him. He tried to focus on his driving, but he looked at his clipboard, trying to remember the name of where he was going. Earl scanned a giant finger down the list and saw that he was going to Middletown University to some biology center. The directions said it was a basement building underneath the school gymnasium.
He shook his head thinking, What podunk department that must be, being crammed in the asscrack of the school somewhere. Earl passed by a grocery store that looked like it could blow over if the wind was just right and shuddered at the clown that was painted on the window. He didn’t care if it was a happy clown or Pennywise, he thought they should all be banned and the performers shot twice; once to put them out of their misery, and a second because they were a goddamn clown.
*****
Knock, knock, knock.
“Dude, if you don’t get out of bed, that professor is going to bust your ass!”
Knock, knock, knock.
“Look, assclown, if you don’t get out of bed, I don’t care. I’m going to class, but if you lose that job as TA, that’s going to totally fuck up your plans when you graduate. Nothing like a wannabe teacher not showing up on time to help them get the dream job they want.”
Charlie rolled over in bed, stretching. The words from the other side of the door were finally becoming more than just a bad Peanuts movie when the teachers say wah, wah, wah repeatedly for an hour and a half.
He rubbed at his face, looking at the clock. The red numbers were blurry. He rubbed his eyes and put on his glasses. The time, mixed with the words his roommate, Albert, was yelling at him finally brought him to the realization that it was eight o'clock and that he needed to be on campus by eight fifteen. It was a sickening thought that he was trying to wrap his head around.
Albert yelled one last time, “If you don’t get your ass out of bed it’s totally
your fucking fault, man. But don’t come to me begging for rent money; I don’t have a dime to my name either, so don’t ask cuz I don’t have it to lend, man.”
Charlie snapped up. “Fuck, I’m up! I’m up. Shit, Albert, why’d you get me up so late, man?”
“Blow me, ass, it isn’t my job to get the genius up. Christ, there’s like seven different electronic things in your room that probably are equipped with an alarm of some sort. If you are too stupid to set them, that’s your problem. Anyway, I’m leaving. I left you a cup of joe on the counter. You’d better get moving though, man.”
Charlie jumped out of bed, hopping on the cold wood floor. The crisp October morning was going to be a chilly one; he could tell. The fact that the ancient home he shared with four other guys was in a state of disarray and that the heater only worked half the time was of little worry to a group of college guys. He pulled his jeans on, bouncing, trying to get both legs in. The jeans and his feet slipped out from beneath him, and he landed hard on his side. He smashed his head against the wood floor, and for a moment, his stomach rolled and his vision went blurry. This, of course, was second to the pain coming from his balls, which had been thoroughly smashed between his legs, making that rolling feeling in his stomach grow rapidly.
He did a mad circle around the room, grabbing books and his ID to get into the building’s laboratory. Every time he looked at the clock, it seemed that three minutes had passed. He knew that he needed to get out of there or he would have no chance to make it on time. Charlie flew down the stairs, skidding into the kitchen, thankful for the coffee left by Albert. He picked up an empty cup with a sticky note on it saying, “Oh, sorry, your mom must have drunk it. Love, Albert.” Charlie shook his head, checking his phone; he had six minutes. He fumbled getting his bike out of the shed and ran with it, jumping on, and pumping his legs until they burned. Each bump reminded him of his testicles and the pain that he knew he’d be feeling all day long.