Mountain Sickness: A Zombie Novel

by Frank Martin

  Together, the bloodthirsty fiend and Marshal Walker tumbled down into the crowd, and the last sight Peter could see was a set of gnashing teeth drive their way into the marshal’s face as the truck pulled away from him. “Travis!”

  Peter hopelessly reached out for his friend. It was a weak attempt that he knew meant nothing. There was no saving someone from such an abrupt and violent end, but the old man held him back anyway while coughing under his breath.

  The rest of the group remained stunned and speechless, except for Brooks, who coped with the loss by once again stating what was on everyone’s mind. “I thought we were done with those crazy fucks?!?!”

  Getting back to the matter at hand, Stephanie turned her attention to a crossing street, pointing out several rapid figures amidst the otherwise stumbling pack of moaners. “Apparently not.”

  The old man beside them followed the girl’s finger and focused in on the moving objects, which soon became clear as the same rabid, deranged lunatics the resort was plagued by earlier in the day. “We’ve got incoming, Eleanor!”

  Still in the middle of processing this new, startling information, the group’s attention was suddenly snapped to the front of the truck by the loud smash of shattering glass. Peter leaned over the side of the truck to see the back end of a zombie sticking out of the passenger side window. A second later a gunshot rang out, and the zombie dropped out of the shattered window missing half its head.

  The gruesome sight was just the latest added to an already long list of traumatizing events that had been thrust into Peter’s life. In a matter of seconds he went from relative safety inside the gondola station to being completely surrounded on all sides by a gang of deformed, blood-drenched zombies.

  He knew he needed to be strong. He needed to fight for his life and the lives of those around him. For the slim chance that his son could be saved. That his town could be saved. But after seeing Travis killed in an instant, after seeing a man (or thing) fall to the ground with half of its head torn off, Peter’s mind made the decision to check out of its current location…if only for a moment.

  That moment abruptly ended as the truck suddenly jerked towards the nearby sidewalk. The driver had yanked down hard on the wheel, sending the truck into a sharp turn towards the slim open space at the side of the street. As he tried to re-establish his bearings, Peter could sense the truck’s brakes lock up and the tires begin their sliding halt through the snow.

  Not a second after the truck came to a complete stop did the driver’s door fling open and out stepped a mean, old woman holding a mini-hunting rifle in one hand. “Everybody out! Now!”

  Her command was immediately followed by the other doors flying open and the passengers in the bed quickly hopping over the side. The woman moved through the snow around to the passenger side of the truck, where she helped another older gentlemen, injured with profuse amounts of blood pouring from his neck, out of the truck. Two other women came out of the backseat, but Peter was too caught up in their escape to get a good look at them.

  “This way!” The rough, wheezing voice was that of the old man from the bed, who led the group off of the snowy street and towards a series of freestanding houses further up the block.

  The free space around the truck wasn’t free for long. The flowing wave of lumbering zombies flooded in that direction just as the few pale and bloodthirsty fiends broke free from the pack. They took off ahead of the others as the survivors made their way towards a small cabin isolated from the other houses.

  The old man coughed horribly during the mad dash to the front door but still managed to be the first inside. He held it open as Peter and the others sprinted through. A few seconds later, the old woman, still clutching onto her rifle, made it with the injured man around her shoulder. Once inside, she moved to the back of the room and dropped him down to the floor. The old man at the door then slammed it shut just in time to lock out the lunatics approaching the front porch.

  For a few more moments, the tension in the silent room lingered, just to make sure the crazed attackers didn’t find some other way inside. And without the sound of a crash or any other type of forced entry, the whole group let out a unified sigh of relief, knowing that they were safe…at least for the moment.

  Still at the front of the house, the old man leaned forward against the door as if to catch his breath along with the others but then spoke with an agitated grumble in his voice after a series of deep, hoarse coughs. “I shouldn’t have let you drive, Eleanor. You didn’t know what the fuck you were doing!”

  He then turned around and began screaming in the faces of the shocked audience in the room. “And now it’s your fault we’re in this God damn…!”

  A loud gunshot rang out from the back of the room and the top of the man’s head suddenly exploded in an instant.

  Although more intense and disgusted, the stunned expressions remained all around. Only now the onlookers shifted their dumbfounded stares to the back of the room, where the old woman was still aiming the mini-rifle to where her victim stood.

  Nobody made a sound. Nobody made a move. They simply remained still, speechless and motionless, as the woman blankly lowered her rifle and took a slow, deep breath of reflection. “In over forty years of marriage, my husband never raised his voice to me. Not once. So whatever I just shot…wasn’t him.”

  Part III

  Avalanche

  21

  The air was strangely tense inside the barracks. Every one of the guardsmen felt it, but none had the courage to address the odd silence between them. As soldiers, they were certainly used to the extreme nerves and jitters that preceded an operation. The anticipation and impending excitement were nothing new. But something was different this time, and they all sensed it as they prepared for deployment.

  Like most missions, the soldiers wouldn’t know where they were going or any other details until they were called into the briefing room. But rumors and speculation were already slowly circulating around the room one quiet exchange of words at a time.

  Something was happening in Telluride. And the massive blitzkrieg of a storm had nothing to do with it. Whatever little contact the men had with the outside world was driving both their imagination and fear of what was in store for them. Was it a riot? A plague? Some kind of hysteria fueled epidemic? Radio broadcasts and grainy (yet violent) cell phone videos had stopped coming out of the small ski resort. And the news reports (all of which the soldiers were only hearing about second hand) were scrambling to paint a picture of what was going on.

  In the command center building adjacent to the barracks, the unit’s three commanders were using the data available to them to do just that. There wasn’t much in terms of intelligence. Besides several recorded phone calls from the mayor, the only evidence of the incident they had the media already made public.

  The lingering storm patterns made any flyover of the mountainous terrain impossible. However, the air was clear enough over Telluride to allow satellites a clear shot of what became of the town. What the imagery showed, though, made the hardened military men curious, to say the least. The streets were barren, filled with a sleek sheet of untouched snow that extended over every rooftop in view. The blizzard ate up every building in the valley and spat it out with a pristine coating of snow. There was not a single body in sight, and the entire community had seemingly become a ghost town completely consumed by the storm.

  The men didn’t know what to make of it. Their superiors higher up on the military and political food chain weren’t offering any guidance, either. One thing was clear, though: the governor wanted boots on the ground, and that made their decision simple enough.

  But despite all the uncertainty and anxiety felt by the troops, the confidence in the command room was apparent to all who were in it. The only real obstacle was going to be getting through the unplowed road that normally brought cars to and from the isolated town. But the military surely had vehicles that were more than capable of making the trip.

&
nbsp; Other than that, the commanders were hard pressed to imagine a scenario that could give them any trouble. After all, what problems could arise in a small town that was populated by hippies and the one percent? They would be armed with much more firepower than they would probably need and well equipped to handle any possible chemical or biological agent in the area.

  Contrary to the publicity surrounding the mission, the commanders were expecting a relatively uneventful evening. So in a few short hours, with a planned ETA of just after midnight, their troops would enter the mountain town and bring order back to Telluride.

  ***

  Stephanie still couldn’t believe the old hag blew her husband’s head off. What was even more shocking, though, was the manner in which she recruited help to move the body to the back of the house. The woman was cold and focused, but her determination felt familiar to Stephanie. It was a state of being that, in the past few hours, the teenage girl found herself experiencing for the first time.

  She didn’t know exactly the moment when her mind retreated into a hardened, callous shell. It could have been when her brother attacked her or when Chris drove his ski into her father’s chest. Perhaps she fell into despair when they stumbled across the chairlift’s wreckage. Or maybe even when she committed herself to dropping a crazed little boy with a single punch to the face. Most likely it was a combination of all those events that slowly chipped away at the soft girl she used to be at the surface. And looking back over the past twelve hours, Stephanie was surprised at how quickly she changed over the course of a single day.

  Now she found herself in a strange house with six other people she didn’t know when she woke up this morning. Upon arrival, the tension in the room was obvious. Their dramatic escape had rattled some nerves and put the survivors in an awkward position. But as the minutes ticked on, conversation began to percolate between them. At first, there were merely soft introductions. An exchange of names and a brief re-telling of stories while Chris used whatever was around the house to patch up the injured man’s wound.

  Then the more curious attendees started strolling over to the windows. Darkness had completely covered the town except for the small and quaint street lamps sporadically placed down the main streets. Within their faint light, silhouettes of the zombie crowd could be seen slowly roaming about without any cause or direction. It was hard to tell exactly through the blackness, but there seemed to be more of them than when the group first arrived. A lot more. So much so that the truck they drove in couldn’t be seen, completely engulfed by the wandering horde.

  As the scattered conversations picked up around the room, Stephanie noticed one set of voices starting to ring out above the rest. It was that of Peter and the old woman who killed her husband. She introduced herself earlier as Nellie Sheridan, and Steph recognized the name from a Telluride tourist guidebook.

  But as the woman spoke, she didn’t exactly come off as the fun-loving cowgirl her ad made her out to be. “All those years the council fought me and not once did you have my back. But I knew you personally placed restrictions on that mine. So don’t tell me you didn’t have an idea of what was going on.”

  Always the diplomat, Peter addressed her while doing his best to diffuse the tension. “You’re desperate to place blame, Mrs. Sheridan. I get it. But nobody could’ve predicted this.”

  “Bullshit. I saw the men up there months ago in their white space suits. Nothing goes on in this valley without me knowing about it. And it certainly looked like you had something to hide.”

  Nellie’s words froze the small chatter in the room as everyone turned to face her. They all had on the same curiously baffled expression, and the awkward silence persisted until Chris broke it by speaking directly to the village manager. “What’s she talking about?”

  Peter bashfully laughed off the insinuation. “It’s not what you think.”

  But Chris pressed on. “Then start explaining.”

  Peter sighed and took a deep breath as he thought how best to tell the story. “A couple years ago we started thinking about expanding the ski resort’s terrain towards the old mining settlement. The board of trustees finally started considering it, but first they sent an environmental team to survey the area. They found some…discrepancies with the soil. The team wanted to do additional testing but since the board already ruled against our proposal for expansion they didn’t see the point.”

  The room collectively gasped, but Chris was again the one to vocalize his frustration. “Didn’t see the point?! You’re telling me this whole outbreak could’ve been prevented and…”

  Peter put out his arms to defend himself from the verbal assault. “Whoa. Hold on a minute. It wasn’t like they found some zombie virus in the dirt. There were abnormal minerals and bacteria. Nothing that could cause this.”

  After being emotionally exhausted from the day’s events, Stephanie took the news with nothing more than a simple shrug of her shoulders. “Well, something did.”

  Knowing the sacrifices Peter had made for Telluride’s sister community, Molly felt obligated to step in and defend him. “Leave the man alone. This isn’t his fault.”

  However, Nellie was quick to scold her. “And I’m sure you have a better theory as to what caused this?”

  “I do. The mine…it’s cursed.” Neither Nellie nor anyone else in the room knew how to respond. And Molly went on only after realizing they wanted her to explain. “I’m a history teacher so I know all about this region. Ute Native Americans used to make camp up and down the San Miguel River until Spanish explorers ran them out. But before they left, those Indians put a curse deep within the mountains to protect its riches. That’s what happened to those miners. And it’s happening to us now, too.”

  After another brief pause of bafflement, Scott threw his hands in the air as if the discussion was final. “There you go. Magic curses. Anybody else wanna add something?”

  Georgia, from her position in the corner of the room, chimed in with a soft addition. "Don't forget about aliens."

  The entire room, still processing Molly’s theory, turned and gave the DJ a look of peculiar condemnation, which she readily accepted before continuing. "Some people believe that a mountain's 'back bowls' were formed by spaceships."

  The silent stares persisted, and Georgia finally put her arms up to proclaim her innocent sanity. "Not that I'm one of them."

  Nobody knew whether to discuss the current theories or come up with alternatives, so Chris broke the growing awkwardness with practicality. “Look, we can sit here all night debating why this is happening, but the cause is irrelevant. We need to figure out what we’re going to do next.”

  Peter responded with a voice of calm composure. “Don’t worry. The governor assured me the National Guard is on its way. He won’t take my calls now, but all we have to do is hold out, find some more survivors, and help will be here before we know it.”

  But Nellie made it her duty to ground Mr. Hayden’s optimism. “It’s not that simple. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with or even how it spreads.”

  Uncomfortable with the seriousness of the conversation, Scott offered his two cents while giving himself a tour of the cabin. “Zombies one-oh-one: you get bit. You turn.”

  Remembering their injured comrade, Molly looked down at the old man sitting back against the far wall. “Hunter got bit.”

  He appeared to be in a daze, swaying back and forth as well as in and out of consciousness. Stephanie wanted to feel sorry for him, but she just couldn’t muster the pity. “What should we do with him?”

  Georgia, on the other hand, was a bit more concerned by Hunter’s near zombie-like stupor. “Is he turning? He looks like he’s turning.”

  Shaking his head, Chris eased the girl’s worries. “No. That’s just from the blood loss.”

  Even though she barely knew him, Molly still felt responsible to help the man she fought alongside. “Should we bring him with us?”

  And on that note, Scott couldn’t help throw
ing out a quip of his own. “I know little ‘Miss Trigger-Happy’ over there wouldn’t mind putting him out of his misery.”

  Ignoring the joke, Nellie decided to answer it earnestly. “Not until he starts showing symptoms.”

  Through his wobbling haze, Hunter surprised the room by blurting out an opinion on his fate. “I’m fine on my own. Just let me be.”

  Everyone was a bit taken aback by the outburst, especially since he immediately went right back into his stupor. But after the old man’s remarks settled in, Scott again had to put his own spin on it. “Yeah. That’s what they all say…before they get a little brain hungry.”

  Pulling the conversation back to its practical nature, Stephanie offered further analysis on the subject. “But my brother wasn’t bit. Neither was my father.”

  Peter lowered his head and solemnly added to her statement. “Or Ryan.”

  A short lull hit the discussion until Georgia made a reluctant admission. “I was.”

  The room collectively gasped, but Nellie was the only one brave enough to question the girl. “When?”

  “I don’t know. Couple hours ago.”

  “And how do you feel?”

  “Cold. Tired. Hungry…but not crazy.”

  Chris then took that information and devised a theory. “So if being bit doesn’t turn you, then what? It’s airborne, and we’re all just immune?”

  But Molly was quick to amend his hypothesis. “Maybe it varies depending on the person. Some people turned right away. Others in a couple hours.”

  And with a grim interjection, Stephanie suddenly changed the tone of the dialogue. “But then we’re not immune, are we? We’re just taking longer than everyone else.”