The Longest Midnight: A Zombie Novel

by J. J. Fowler

  “You won’t,” Drake assured him.

  Savini frowned, and before he could retort, nomad machine guns opened up with the familiar rat-a-tat-tat sounds, which overwhelmed all other noises in the camp.

  Moments later, bullets roared into the camp ripping into the crowd and sending the nomads in every direction. Things were quickly degenerating into utter pandemonium.

  “Get your weapons!” Savini hollered. “Defend the camp!”

  Either no one could hear him or no one cared to listen because the crowd simply ran in all directions screaming and yelling.

  “Who’s shooting at them?” yelled Murphy.

  “Trained zombies,” replied Mifune. “We have to get out of here fast.”

  “We can’t,” Drake hollered. “Not with being tied up like this.” Suddenly, Drake felt his hands come free, and a second later, his feet. Drake turned around, and to his surprise saw Vlad behind him. He saw Chosin freeing Murphy and Mifune.

  “How’d you get out?” Drake said to Vlad.

  “We killed our captor and got the key to the cage they put us in.”

  “Always good to have a vamp on our side.”

  A bullet whizzed just above Drake’s head and slammed into Vlad’s shoulder. Vlad barely noticed he’d been shot and the wound healed almost immediately.

  “Let’s find Casey and get out of here,” Drake said to everyone. “Find us some guns while I get Casey. Preferably our guns. Rally back here in ten minutes.”

  The group acknowledged and everyone dashed off except Drake. He leaned over and picked up Bob’s bloodied machete. He gazed a moment at Francis’s lifeless body, then wiped the blood off on his khakis, and scanned the camp. Nomads ran in every direction, desperately trying to keep their camp from falling to the deaders. He spotted a group of nomads praying before Savini. The group stood up and Savini ushered them forward to fight.

  Drake frowned as he felt rage swelling inside him. He had never liked Francis, but he was one of his men. His death was pointless, senseless, and so unnecessary that revenge became paramount to him.

  * * *

  At the edge of the camp, the nomad machine gunners tried desperately to keep the deaders at bay. A line of untrained zombies would have overwhelmed one of the machine gun nests if not for several brave nomads, who pushed them back with tenacious small arms fire.

  Moments later, a trained zombie dressed in deteriorating combat fatigues shoved its way through the unarmed deaders, but was torn to pieces by the machine guns. The zombie ignored the shots, aimed its archaic single shot rifle at the head of one of the machine gunners, and pulled the trigger. Instantly, the gunner’s left eye exploded from the impact of the bullet and the nomad slumped over his now silent gun.

  The trained zombie roared and the deaders renewed their push forward. A nomad frantically tried to get the machine gun firing again but it was too late. A small group of zombies swarmed the gun and began ripping the nomads guarding it to shreds.

  The nomads were left with one remaining machine gun to hold off a mass horde of deaders. The end was inevitable.

  * * *

  A severed nomad head rolled across the ground until it bumped into Savini’s feet. Savini gazed into the blank eyes of the head for a moment and saw his grim future. As he tilted his head back up, he saw the headless body of the dead man crash to the ground to reveal Drake standing several feet behind it.

  Drake saw the terror in Savini’s eyes when he realized Drake was holding Bob’s old machete. “Please! You mustn’t do this! We need your help!” Savini pleaded. A nomad charged Drake to protect his leader but was immediately cut down by Drake. Savini looked around, frantically seeking help, but his people were too immersed in the zombie assault to realize Drake was about to kill their leader. “We can work together. You and I. I mean all of us. You don’t want to do this!”

  Drake laughed and said, “I don’t know what’s worse sometimes, us or them. At least they don’t fuck each other over the way we do.”

  “Yes, I agree. We need to embrace each other!”

  Drake shook his head. “Nope. Not you.”

  “Wait!” Savini pleaded

  The machete whizzed through the air and slammed into Savini’s gut. The fallen leader collapsed to the ground breathing heavily and clutching his wound. A moment later, Drake hovered over him.

  “I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to let those things do it for me.” Drake reached down and ripped the machete out of Savini’s gut. Savini moaned and fell upon his back. The nomad leader tried to speak; yet words wouldn’t come out. He turned his head toward the front of the camp where the fighting was going on just as the second machine gun was overwhelmed by the horde. When he turned his head back, Drake was gone.

  * * *

  Drake raced through the chaos of the camp, looking in tent after tent trying to find Casey without luck. Then, as he approached a shit-covered tent with a large flag picturing two people copulating, he knew Casey was inside.

  A screaming, crying little girl ran toward Drake with her tiny arms spread wide. Shit, he thought. I don’t have time for this. The girl grabbed hold of his leg and wouldn’t let go.

  “Look, where’s your mother?” Drake said. The little girl responded by shaking her head vigorously. Her long, scraggly hair whipped her pale face. “Wait here,” Drake told the girl. He pulled her arms off him, which she obstinately resisted, and hurried toward the tent. Before he could pull the tent’s flap up, a bloated, hairy, naked man came tumbling out and collapsed to the ground. Then a buck-naked Casey burst out, screaming wildly and holding a whip over his head.

  “You like that! You like that bitch!” Casey roared as he whipped the fat man repeatedly. He didn’t even notice Drake standing next to him.

  “Casey!” Drake yelled at him.

  “You like that? You like a whip on you, fucker? Huh? You like it!”

  “Goddammit, Casey!”

  The fat man wept as Casey whipped him over and over again.

  Drake sighed and smashed his machete into the fat man’s face, killing him instantly.

  Casey kept whipping the corpse. “You like that? You like that, asshole? You like it?”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Drake grumbled. He grabbed the arm Casey used to hold the whip, and pulled the whip out of his hands. Casey eyed him like a rabid dog and then grinned once he saw it was Drake.

  “Oh, Captain. You’re alive.”

  “Neither of us will be soon if you don’t get your fucking clothes on. We have to move.”

  “Why?”

  Drake pointed behind Casey. Casey turned around and saw a massive mob of deaders ripping nomads to pieces.

  “Oh. I’ll be right back,” Casey said and ran into the tent.

  Drake noticed Casey’s flamethrower lying outside the tent and said, “Casey!”

  “Almost dressed, sir!” he screamed back.

  “Your pack is right outside the tent.”

  “Oh, great. That’s great, sir,” Casey hollered sarcastically.

  “Hurry the fuck up!” Drake said and then beheaded two deaders lunging at him. “You can do your hair later.”

  Drake suddenly remembered the little girl he left behind a minute ago. He looked around but saw she was gone, lost in the crowd of madness around him. Probably better that way, Drake thought. We couldn’t have taken the poor bastard anyway. Still, he felt a strange sense of sorrow about the little girl with the filthy hair and pale face. He knew she was as good as dead. It had been a long time since Drake felt anything resembling empathy for a fellow human being who wasn’t a trooper. A camp of nomads was the last place he expected to feel a sense of sorrow. He hoped it’d be the last. Getting soft kills you in war.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Drake watched through his binoculars as a nomad woman was disemboweled by a group of ravenous deaders. The team was now overlooking the chaos from a safe distance atop one of the Dead Mountains.

  He lowered the binoculars and frowned.
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  “It’s that bad, is it?” Mifune asked, not expecting an answer.

  Drake handed Mifune the binoculars, but Mifune refused to look through them. He’d seen enough bloodshed for one day.

  “I really don’t understand how these people survive out here,” said Mifune.

  “Clearly, they don’t,” mumbled Drake as he walked away.

  “But, sir, what do we do about the deaders down there?”

  Drake stopped and turned his head. “We do nothing.”

  * * *

  Murphy sat down beside Casey, leaned back against a charred automobile, and lit a cigarette.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” said Casey.

  “I do on occasion. This seems a good one.”

  “You got one for me?”

  Murphy gave Casey a smoke and lit it for him. The two sat quietly for several minutes taking drags and listening to the horrors they narrowly escaped. Then Murphy said, “It’s sad, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “You know, those people; they’re all screwed.”

  “Fuck ‘em,” Casey said with a chortle. “It was their choice to live outside the protected zone. They got what they deserved.”

  “I don’t see it that way at all.”

  “You would if you just got raped.”

  “I’m sorry, Casey.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “You know, what happened.”

  “Hey, I should be apologizing to you. At least I was getting raped and not about to get my head chopped off by those loony fucks.”

  The two men laughed, albeit uncomfortably.

  Drake appeared before them and said, “Where are Vlad and Chosin?”

  “Sir, I don’t know,” replied Casey.

  “Stop sitting on your asses. Keep watch,” Drake ordered. “We ain’t out of this shit yet.”

  Both men acknowledged the order and picked up their weapons. Drake set out to find the two vampires.

  “Are you glad you found your flamethrower?” Murphy said to Casey as he flicked his cigarette butt.

  “You kidding, kid?” Casey replied while heaving the flamethrower pack onto his back. “This thing weighs a fucking ton.”

  “Yeah, it probably does.”

  “I do miss the grenade launchers though. Those can come in handy.”

  “I bet.”

  “Hey, speaking of flames, you got another smoke?”

  “I don’t have many left.”

  “That’s okay. You only need to share them with me.”

  Murphy rolled his eyes.

  * * *

  A terrified, middle-aged, nomadic man was pinned by Chosin to the ground. His long brown-grey beard was covered in blood, which flowed from several lacerations along his cheek and lips. He tried to speak, to tell the two vampires he wanted to live. He wanted them to know he rejected his former leader’s hatred of them, but couldn’t form the words. His mind raced with images of chaos and fear, and all he could mutter were unintelligible sentences.

  “You want us all dead, don’t you?” said Vlad coldly. He stood directly over the man and gazed into his petrified eyes. “Your people have failed.”

  Vlad dove onto the man and sank his fangs into the man’s neck. Chosin immediately followed suit by biting into the nomad’s wrist as their victim hopelessly struggled to free himself.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” roared Drake.

  Vlad raised his head and growled at Drake. Drake aimed his weapon at him. Vlad chuckled. “You know that won’t do a thing, don’t you?” Vlad’s long and thin tongue raced around his lips, licking every last drop of the nomad’s blood from his mouth. Chosin ceased feeding and was watching the standoff between his master and the human.

  “Get away from that man,” Drake commanded.

  “Why can we not feed upon those who tried to kill us and you?” Vlad retorted.

  “I said, get the fuck away from him.”

  Chosin stood up and snarled slightly at Drake. Drake continued, “You both lied to me. You lied to my men. You knew where you were going. You knew about the nomad camp. You had been killing these people for years, if not decades.”

  Now Vlad was on his feet.

  “And your people abandoned these nomads,” Vlad countered. “Left them to die amongst the dead walkers. Don’t pretend you’re any better than us.”

  Drake recognized Vlad’s point.

  “Fine,” Drake replied in a calmer voice. “But it stops now.”

  “Chosin and I are weak. We must feed or we’ll be useless. The pig blood we carried with us was seized by our captors and we were unable to recover it.”

  The nomadic man’s breathing became rapid and his body was shaking. The man was clearly dying. Drake recognized this. He also knew he needed the vampires’ help. Two weak vampires were of no use to him and his men. Plus, there was the added danger they might feed on his troopers. Drake reluctantly did what he must and walked away.

  As he left, he heard the vampires pounce back on their prey to suck every last drop from the doomed man. He vowed this was the last time he’d let the two undead creatures feed on a living human being.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Mifune discovered an entrance to an ancient sewer. Drake ordered everyone inside it for shelter and to camp in order to rest for a while. It was far too dangerous to sleep out in the open, especially with the destroyed nomad camp overflowing with zombies only a few kilometers from where they were.

  The vampires, drowsy from feeding earlier on human blood, fell asleep almost as soon as they got settled down around the fire. The others sat quietly gazing into the flames.

  “Sir?” said Casey quietly.

  “What?” replied Drake.

  “We need food and water.”

  “I have some.”

  Mifune and Murphy raised their heads in interest. The men lost most of the food and water after the nomads captured them. Drake realized this during the frenzied escape and managed to grab a backpack containing canned food and several canteens full of water.

  “What were you waiting for?” Mifune said with clear annoyance. “We’re starving.”

  “Trying to conserve. Everyone can have one can.”

  Drake opened the pack adjacent to him and tossed each man a can.

  “What the fuck?” said Casey. “Mine is dog food.”

  “Mine isn’t,” replied Murphy. “Mine’s meat and potatoes.”

  “Trade you.”

  “No thanks, Casey.”

  Casey noticed Mifune quickly devouring his canned food.

  “What’d you get, Sergeant?”

  “Meatballs and pasta,” Mifune said, his mouth full.

  “Oh, what the fuck!”

  “Eat it and shut up, Casey,” ordered Drake.

  “I can’t eat fucking dog food!” protested Casey. “Let me see what else is in there.”

  “I said shut up.”

  Casey swore to himself, used his can opener to pop the lid, took a bite of the meaty dog food, chewed, and swallowed. “Huh, it’s not that bad.”

  Drake rolled his eyes and scooped up a chunk of his food with a mangled spoon. He chewed and swallowed as fast as he could. He was eating dog food, too, and it tasted rancid.

  * * *

  The fire dimmed hours later as the men slept on the hard and moist concrete floor of the old sewer, except for Mifune. He volunteered for the first watch and sat silhouetted against the dying fire. He stared at nothing as the ash on his cigarette grew longer and longer and finally broke off and fell in his lap. He didn’t bother to wipe it off of him. He was thinking about Francis. He never liked Francis, but he respected him as a soldier. He had recommended him for this mission. Now Francis was dead, yet another soldier in a long line to have died while serving under him.

  He flicked the cigarette into the fire and bit his fingernails as he thought. He didn’t trust the vampires. He knew some sort of altercation happened earlier between Drake and them after escaping the nomad
camp. Drake remained silent when pressed for an answer by Mifune. Mifune had an idea of what the vampires were doing when Drake found them. We are their food, he thought. They help keep us alive in order to save their stock. We are their cattle, fit only to be fed upon.

  “Sergeant?”

  It was Murphy. He was awake and watching Mifune.

  “Sleep, soldier. You have third watch.”

  “I know. I can’t sleep.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I slept,” Mifune said candidly. He normally wasn’t so open about his thoughts to his soldiers, but this mission was more arduous than any other recon adventure he’d been on.

  “Really?” Murphy said with considerable surprise.

  “Not literally, but real, restful sleep. I can’t remember the last time I woke up feeling fresh, alive.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep for a long time. I keep seeing Francis’s face as they killed him.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of faces, kid. It never gets easier.”

  Murphy swallowed uncomfortably and lit a cigarette.

  “Can I have one there, Murph? I’m all out.”

  Murphy handed him a smoke and the two men smoked for several minutes without talking. “May I ask you a question?” Murphy said as he neared the bottom of his cigarette.

  “Sure.”

  “Were things always this bad?”

  “More or less.” Mifune tried to lighten the mood, not necessarily for Murphy’s sake, but for his own. Consistent dark thoughts and sadness was eating him like a vicious cancer. He wanted to laugh, and wanted someone to laugh with him. “You know though, kid, at least we have a crazy man like Casey to keep us chuckling, eh?” Murphy smiled and Mifune continued, “It figures the nomads wanted him to be the one raped.”

  They both laughed quietly.

  “Should we really be laughing about what happened to him?” Murphy said with some seriousness.

  “At least he wasn’t getting knifed like Francis.”

  Mifune realized he’d spoiled their little light-hearted moment with that comment. Dammit, he thought. You can’t stop for even a few minutes, can you?

  “Yeah, I think that’s—”

  Mifune raised his finger to silence Murphy. He heard something. Even though he was depressed and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he was still a top-notch soldier and zombie killer. His sense of hearing had always been his greatest asset—one that’d saved his and other lives innumerable times.