by R. J. Spears
Sanctuary From The Dead - R. J. Spears
Sanctuary from the Dead
By R.J. Spears
Edited by: J. Ellington Ashton Press Staff
http://jellingtonashton.weebly.com/
Copyright.
R.J. Spears
©2013, R.J. Spears
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book, including the cover and photos, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. All rights reserved.
The characters, places, and events depicted are fictional and do not represent anyone living or dead. All characters depicted are over the age of 18. This is a work of fiction.
PROLOGUE
When the shit hits the fan, you get to see the true character of the people around you. The problem is, in most cases it’s the character defects that rise to the surface. They say there are no atheists in foxholes, but I can tell you that when things go south; assholes, idiots, and the-every-man-for-himself types come out of the woodwork. Some of these people find a way to believe -- real fast. Maybe even me.
CHAPTER 1
The Horde - Part I
“Joel, we have a horde coming down Waller,” Logan said in a soft voice. Logan was a member of the warriors, and while he was only a couple years older than me, he seemed a lot more worldly after a tour of duty in Afghanistan. War will do that to you, I guess. Before the Outbreak, the worst action I had seen were schoolyard fights in middle school -- which I usually lost.
“Pass it on,” he said.
This was how we communicated. The warriors setup a chain of communication with each person in the chain responsible for communicating with the next. It was now my job to get to the next link.
As for handling the zombies that roamed into our area, we were able to take out the small packs of the walking dead by cooperating; the individual parts worked together in a well-coordinated sum. When a horde came on us, we knew that it was time to go dark and quiet.
During the first weeks, we were at the church and our defenses weren’t all that strong. A large group of zombies descended on the area. They roamed around the exterior of the church for at least an hour, clawing to get in and moaning, before one of the small kids broke and screamed. That brought the complete focus of the undead on us.
Unlike us living breathing humans, they have limitless patience. They never sleep, never take a break, and rarely get distracted. They clawed and banged outside of the church for hours trying to find any way in, the stench of their decomposing bodies seeping through the walls.
Our release came about by random chance. On the second night of the zombie occupation when a car of outsiders took a wrong turn and ended up a block away. Seeing those headlights, piercing the darkness, the zombies re-directed their hunger onto the car’s occupants thinking of them as a moveable feast. We easily took care of the few that remained. It was the longest two days of our lives since the Outbreak.
Still, the current horde situation was intense. Zach, the next contact in the chain, had a good lookout position on the third floor on the front of the building. Prior to the Outbreak, it acted as a Sunday school classroom for the teenagers who attended the church. The walls were spray painted in a graffiti motif -- John 3:16, the 23rd Psalm.
“Zach, we have a shitload of zombies coming down Waller Hill,” I told him. His face twitched a bit, but he moved off into the church with his message. I grabbed a pair of binoculars and went to get a better vantage point. The church had a flat roof which was a bitch to maintain, but made it a great observation post -- giving anyone up there the chance to see in all directions for miles.
This was one of the largest groups in months, at least 200 strong. It grew bigger still as wandering zombies joined their ranks as the horde moved toward us. These additions came from the houses and yards and seemed to pop-up out of nowhere. The individuals melded into the group as they became one stinking, wretched mass of dead and decaying flesh. Over the months, we had noticed that they had a herd mentality and grouping was second nature.
I heard the sound of the door open, followed by footsteps coming up behind me. I turned to see Greg, the leader of the warriors, coming toward me. As one of the most level-headed members of our warrior group, he became the de facto leader of all security and foraging missions. If it had to do with protecting us and going outside the walls of the church, everyone deferred to him. He was an impressive physical specimen, too. He wasn’t a Greek god, but there was a physical and personal charisma about him that made people look and listen. He had served in Iraq and knew his way around a shit storm. Plus his quiet demeanor was also a calming influence when the warriors whipped themselves into a lather.
Standing beside me, he asked, “What do you see?”
“Maybe 200. A few of the town zombies are joining their parade.”
He exhaled. My morbid sense of humor stretched people’s patience at times, but I’m sure a psychologist would call it a coping mechanism.
“This is the largest mob we’ve had in a long time,” he said.
“Yep,” I said. “What’s the game plan? We going dark?”
“Unless they veer off down the railroad tracks or some side street, they’ll be on us in ten, maybe fifteen minutes.” He stopped and rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Yes, we’ll go dark. Can you stay up here and monitor them and let us know if they change course?”
“Yes, Herr Commandant,” I said with a half-baked salute. He gave me a sideways glance, then handed me a walkie-talkie.
This meant turning off any generators, avoiding any potentially loud noises, and shutting down all light sources before the twilight just in case the horde decided to camp out in the street next to the building. We also knew to get the small kids to the basement away from any windows. The biggest challenge was keeping them quiet; the youngest just didn’t understand that any noise could make the zombies focus in on us for a long, long time.
As I watched the horde shamble along, the group flowing in some macabre unison, making their way among the streets littered with abandoned cars, it made me wonder. “Do you think they’re hungrier now since we are now the minority humanoid population on the planet?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Those first days were like a feeding frenzy for them. I don’t spend a lot of time observing them in any scientific way, but it seems to me that they have slowed down some. That could be because there are less of us to eat.” Most of the warriors looked no further than tomorrow, but Greg had proven over time to take a longer view.
“There’s that,” I said. “Well, with a limited food source, do you think there’s any chance they’ll start to starve and maybe ultimately die out?”
He was quiet for a moment, looking off in the direction of the zombies. “While it is a possibility, we don’t have the luxury of treating them any other way than they’ll be here forever.”
“That’s a cheery thought,” I said.
“That’s our reality,” he said. “Keep on watch, I’ve got to head back down. Let us know the horde’s progress.”
I kept an eye on the zombie parade as it expanded and contracted in width and length as they were squeezed down by the cars on each side of the street. Some were spryer than others, but the group as a whole seemed to be moving forward with some sort of collective purpose.
We had our method now to handle hordes;
keep quiet and let them pass.
That system went out the window when a kid on a bike swerved into my view in front of the undead mob and started peddling frantically in our direction like there was no tomorrow. And for this kid, there might not be. At best, the kid had just a block or less lead on the horde. When the horde spotted him, the race was on as they actually seemed to speed up with the chance of a meal now in sight.
“We’ve got a kid on a bike heading our way in front of the horde,” I said into the walkie-talkie.
“What?” Greg asked.
“There’s a kid on bike coming down Waller Street just in front of the horde.”
“Is he a zombie?” another voice asked coming up from behind me. I turned and saw Logan striding towards me.
“Since when did zombies learn to ride bikes?” I asked.
“Joel, what’s going on?” Greg asked.
“A kid is racing ahead of the horde. I’m guessing he’s coming our way.”
Logan stepped in beside me and held out his hand for the binoculars. I handed them over not wanting to watch the kid get overrun by the horde. He spied the kid for a good thirty seconds.
“It’s not a him. It’s a girl,” Logan said.
“Logan says it’s a girl,” I told Greg. “So, what are we doing?”
“Leave the walkie with Logan and come down here.”
I passed the walkie-talkie to Logan, relieved to not have the duty of monitoring the horde tracking down and devouring a kid.
CHAPTER 2
In the Beginning
I was in my apartment when my world went to shit. I heard some screams and pulled myself away from the TV just in time to see my downstairs neighbors, the Raburns, sprint down the street, running from a small group of zombies and headlong into another larger group of undead.
My mind actually clutched at what was happening, trying to work its way around the word - zombie. Like they were real. They were outside my apartment, but my mind didn’t want to accept it. These were things of late night horror movies now shambling down the street in front of me. I actually closed my blinds, blinked a couple times, and then reopened them, and dammit, they were still there.
Things were not going well for the Raburns. Lyle tried to take them on with nothing but his bare hands. He didn’t stand a chance as the zombies quickly took him down. His wife went down a moment later. It only took a minute, but their screams echoed in my mind for months. I never knew her name and now I never would.
About eight months ago our world turned completely upside-down. When I say our world, you never expect something like this to mean the whole world, including where you live. While it wasn’t okay for some nation half a world away to suffer some major disaster or calamity, you never expected it to hit in your backyard. The people of Portsmouth never expected it. I sure as shit never expected it.
Portsmouth was a dying city before ‘The Outbreak.’ In its heyday, the city churned out steel like there was no tomorrow, its mills supplying enough metal to build everything from skyscrapers to battleships back in the day. That time had passed more than fifty years ago. When those mills closed, the whole area spiraled down. By the turn of the century, the county held the dubious distinction of having some of the highest unemployment in the state along with the biggest welfare rolls.
Before the Outbreak I used to joke with my friends that the city was the land of the zombies, but now my sad attempt at humor was just that -- sad.
The population at the time the dead came back to life was just under 20,000 and getting smaller with each year as more and more businesses closed their doors. With no jobs, the young people left the city in droves. Why I was still in town was beyond me. Maybe I was just unmotivated. Or maybe it was something about the place that kept me here -- a sense of community. Whatever it was, despite it being an armpit, it was still my armpit.
For reasons that we never learned, the dead came back to life and started killing and eating the living. It wasn’t that knowing would make any of our lives easier, but the mind searches for answers. We humans are funny that way.
The first days were truly Hell on earth. No one wanted to believe it. Reality skewed with the world tilting into some sort of George Romero zombie flick. A lot of people died because they refused to accept the truth. Their rational minds denied this new and ghastly reality until a zombie was in their face. By then it was way too late.
At first, there were only a few zombies and a lot of living, but those numbers seemed to invert almost overnight. When “The Outbreak” hit, I followed “late-breaking” news compulsively and was glued to my TV when I wasn’t working. Some reports had the origin in Russia, while others said that it came from North Korea; that report was easy to buy given the batshit crazy leaders they had there. No one was ever really able to pinpoint the origin. At least, not in the limited time the world as we knew it had left.
The Outbreak spread like an out of control wildfire even as government officials assured us that they had the situation “under control.” Television reports showed soldiers wearing masks and some wearing bio-suits, manning checkpoints, and keeping things neat and orderly, while internet videos showed a completely different picture. In vivid and living color, soldiers fired on masses of fleeing people, many of which were still alive and not undead. The government ripped these videos off-line as fast as they could and even shut down YouTube entirely. “Charlie Bit My Finger” was knocked off the charts as the most watched video when “Charlie Chewed My Face Off” videos got an exponential amount of views.
For the first few weeks, I believed the “We’ve got things under control” lie, as did ninety percent of the population. It’s easy and safer to capitulate to the idea that the government would step in and save the day -- only this time they didn’t and we were on our own.
After watching the Raburns eat it -- or better put, watch them get eaten, my mind raced for what to do next. Was my apartment safe? What weapons did I have? Besides a stale loaf of bread, the half-gallon of expired milk, and a jar of peanut butter, what did I have in the place to allow me to wait out a long term siege of the walking dead? Not much was the answer.
Escape to a better location was the best option. But where?
I paced for several minutes and finally picked up the phone and called the only people I knew I wanted to talk to -- my parents.
“Mom, are you alright?” I asked as soon she answered the phone.
“Joel, oh thank God,” she said. “We’re okay. How are you?”
“Okay, except for the fact that a mob of zombies just killed my neighbor.”
“Don’t get over excited,” she said.
“Did you hear me? They ate them. While they were still alive.”
“Okay, you made your point,” she said, and I could envision her running her hands through her hair the way she did when she wanted to calm down.
My dad picked up the second line and said, “Stay inside, Joel. It’s not safe.”
“I don’t think it’s a good long term solution. The front of my place is all windows.” My apartment had this great floor-to-ceiling window design across the front that was great for allowing in a lot of light, but not so good in keeping out a mob of zombies.
“Stay away from the windows,” he said, but I could hear the panic in his voice and it shook me some. He was usually a rock.
“What do you guys think I should do?”
When the chips fell, it was always my mom that really kept her shit together.
“Okay, Joel,” she said. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’re going to the nursing home to collect your grandmother and then we’ll meet at the church.
I didn’t mean to audibly groan, but there was no holding it back.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “We all know it’s not your favorite place, but it is solidly built and it has the civil defense shelter in the basement. Plus, they’ll have plenty of food because of the day care.”
“Isn’t there somewhere else?” I asked and I think I may
have whined a little.
“You have a better idea?” she asked.
“Okay, I’ll meet you guys there,” I said and started to hang up.
“Joel,” she said and I stayed on the line. “We love you. Be --,”
But that was it. The connection broke. I hit the button on the phone about ten times but nothing happened. I took a moment to collect myself and tried to call them back, but all I got was a pre-recorded message telling me that all circuits were busy and that I should try my call later. There wasn’t going to be a later.
The church was one of the last places I wanted to spend my time. Had I known that hours would become days, and days would become weeks, I might not have ever gone. Then again, had I struck out on my own, there was little doubt I’d be dead or worse.
Getting to the church turned out to be a real challenge. In the chaos, most drivers had decided that the old rules of the road didn’t apply anymore and were driving balls-to-walls as if there was only one speed -- fast. I saw a horrific collision of two cars at an intersection that had most likely killed everyone in both cars. I didn’t stop to check because zombies swarmed the cars, descending on the fresh kills.
I drove most of the way to the church like I was at the Indianapolis 500. My progress came to an abrupt halt when I nearly slammed into a jack-knifed semi-trailer that had been carrying office supplies. Paper was blowing down the street like exaggeratedly large snowflakes. Several cars must have been following the thing too closely because one small Chevy sat embedded underneath the trailer and a small pick-up lay capsized, with the driver’s door open. The driver of the Chevy screamed for help, but the cries were weak.
The wreck completely blocked the intersection and the smell of diesel fuel permeated the air; it made me worried that the whole mess would become a giant fireball at any second. I considered helping the person in the Chevy, but when I looked in my rearview mirror, I discovered I had my own troubles coming down fast. I was boxed in by a family in a monster pick-up. Another car pulled in behind the truck and the gridlock was set.