Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse

by Nicholas Ryan

  Or maybe it was simply that there was no point in thinking, or planning for anything beyond the first few moments after they pulled open the steel door…

  But Cutter was used to that. He was used to living one moment at a time, and staring into an uncertain future that seemed to have no consequence and no reason.

  Ever since his wife and son had died…

  * * *

  He heard the soft shuffle of cautious steps, and for a split second he wondered whether the sound was vibrating through the thick steel door. Then he saw Hos at the bottom of the stairs. The big man had the semi-automatic cradled in his arms, and the black nylon bag strapped to his back. His eyes were bright and alert.

  He looked up at Cutter and touched at his wrist; signaling that it was time. Cutter came down the steps. Hos put his hand out for the Glock.

  Cutter felt strangely disquieted relinquishing the gun. There was some tangible sense of safety in its weight and when he gave the weapon back to Hos it was with a pang of reluctance.

  “It’s 4am,” Hos said. “Go and get some sleep. You’ll need it in the morning.”

  Cutter nodded. He stood at the bottom of the steps for another moment, watching the big survivalist take the stairs up to the narrow landing, and then finally trudged back into the gloom of the warehouse where the rest of the group slept fitfully on the edge of nightmare.

  * * *

  “Jack! Jesus, Jack! Get up. Please get up!”

  Cutter came awake resentfully, aware of someone tugging and shaking him – aware also of some dull sense of brooding remorse. He felt agitated hands plucking at his arm until he came alert blinking and ill-tempered.

  He dragged his hand across the unshaven stubble of his jaw. “What time is it?”

  “Almost seven am,” Glenda’s face hovered above him. Her eyes were huge and haunted.

  Cutter blinked again. Other women were crowded around where he lay, peering over Glenda’s shoulder. Cutter sat up.

  “It’s Hos,” Glenda said, her voice trembling with outrage. “He’s gone. He must have left in the night,” she said in a rush of words. “The bastard has abandoned us.”

  * * *

  They were assembled in the lunchroom. No one sat. They were too fraught and too distressed by Hos’s betrayal. Instead, they lined the wall like timid victims awaiting the blade of the executioner.

  Cutter strode into the room. He had left Jimmy on sentry duty at the top of the landing, armed with the fire axe.

  John Grainger was slumped nearest the door. His features seemed to have sagged with the strain, so that the flesh around his beefy cheeks and eyes hung in soft grey pouches. He glanced up as Cutter entered, and the two men exchanged brief glances.

  “We have no food left,” Cutter said simply. “What little there was is now gone. We have fresh water, a few wooden spears and an axe. That’s it – and it’s not going to get any better,” he said. He glanced at John Grainger again and it seemed clear to the women in the room that the two men had talked before this meeting, and that they were of differing opinions.

  “I think we should leave now,” Cutter said. “Mr. Grainger thinks we should wait another day or two.” He shrugged. “The choice is your own to make.”

  Cutter went to the small refrigerator and snatched up a plastic bottle of water. “I’m taking this,” he said. “I suggest anyone else who decides to leave takes all the water they can carry. You’ll need it.”

  Around him the women erupted into sudden heated panic. “Grainger is right!” he heard someone cry out, loud and plaintive. He recognized the voice. It was the woman who had fainted yesterday. She was one of the older women in the group, a small, frail shape with lank grey hair. “We should wait it out. We’ve contacted the police. They’ll come for us! I know they will.”

  Other voices joined the call, but Glenda shouted them down. She stood defiant, her hands on her hips, turning on them, her eyes cold as ice. “No one is coming for us, Jennifer. No one. You know it. I know it. We all know it. We can’t wait here and pray for rescue. If we do, we’re as good as dead already.”

  John Grainger shook his head. “We’re safe while we stay here,” he challenged Glenda, his voice wilting a little under the force of her defiant glare. He plowed on, like a train running out of steam. “They… the infected can’t… and in a few days, who knows what might happen…”

  Glenda’s lips drew back into a thin, pale sneer. “We can’t wait,” she said again. “There’s no food, and there’s something else you’ve forgotten,” she said archly. Before anyone could take up her challenge, she strode to the wall and flicked off the lights. The entire basement was plunged into heavy, terrifying darkness. One of the women cried out, and after a few seconds Glenda turned the lights back on. She glared at them all. “Any moment, the power is going to fail,” she said. “Think about that, and decide whether you can spend two or three days hiding down here in the pitch black. Because I can’t. I’m going – not because I want to – because there is no other choice. And if we wait another minute, it won’t get any better. But it might get worse…”

  The uncertain amongst the group turned towards Grainger, looking for guidance and reassurance, but the store manager had been shaken by the few seconds of total darkness. He buried his hands in his face and sagged forward, and when he finally drew himself upright again, his eyes were red and watery. He nodded. “Okay,” he said and took a deep breath. “Okay. It’s time to make a break for safety.”

  Cutter nodded. He set the bottle of water down on the table and cast his eyes around the room once more. “When we get out onto the street, you should look for a way to reach the outer suburbs,” he said. “You’ve all heard the broadcast warnings. The infected will be worse in the city, so get away as far as you can. There will be hundreds of abandoned cars. That might be your best chance…” but then his voice faltered. He shook his head in bleak despair. “I honestly don’t know what’s best,” he admitted. “I just know what I’m going to try to do.”

  “You’re abandoning us too? Just like Hos?” one of the women accused, her voice made small by her fear.

  Cutter shook his head. “I said yesterday that I wasn’t the man to lead,” he replied. “I’ve never fired a gun, and I’ve never been in the military. I’m not the person you should put your faith in. I’m sorry,” he said.

  Glenda grabbed his arm. “You’re our best chance!”

  There was a long tense silence. Cutter frowned, feeling the crushing weight of people’s expectations that he knew were impossible to live up to. His eyes searched the faces of those around him and he could see their desperate need for hope. “I’ll take four of you,” he said at last. “As far as I can. If Mr. Grainger and Jimmy agree, they will each take four women in their group as well. That makes three teams – three chances of surviving.”

  All eyes turned to John Grainger, desperate hopes pinned on his answer. He nodded reluctantly.

  “But I’m going first,” Cutter said, “and I’m going now. At least in small groups we have a chance of finding a vehicle and getting away,” he was talking aloud, making desperate plans based on nothing more than instinct. “And I want the fastest runners – the fittest women,” he said. “With any luck, if there are zombies still out there, we can lead them away.” He turned to John Grainger again. “Give me thirty minutes, then take your group out,” he said. “Tell Jimmy to do the same. Tell him to wait thirty minutes after you leave here before he takes the last group out.”

  Cutter pulled Glenda aside, and thrust a small water bottle into her hand. Then he nodded at Jillian and two of the other younger bookstore employees. “You’re coming with me,” he said grimly. “Now.”

  Waiting even another minute would give him time to think, and time to re-consider. Cutter knew he couldn’t afford the luxury. He simply wasn’t brave enough. Now his mind was made up, he needed to move quickly, before second thoughts and fear debilitated them. He snatched up one of the broom-handle spears, and the four wom
en followed him from the lunchroom in single file.

  Three.

  Ground Zero.

  Cutter pushed at the big steel door with his foot and it swung back silently on massive steel hinges.

  He stood in the breech, every muscle in his body tensed, every nerve strained to breaking point. He had the spear held at waist height, clutched in both hands, and his knuckles were white.

  He blinked, eyes adjusting to the dull natural light, and all his senses were enhanced. He could smell a sweet putrid odor, and he could smell smoke, lingering in the air. He felt a breath of breeze on his face, and then a trickle of nervous sweat ran down his back. He forced himself to take a step into the bookstore, his stomach tripping with an instinctive animal sense of danger that warned him something lurked nearby.

  He took another step, and then another. Then he paused, frozen, as his eyes swept past the gloomy bookshelves around him.

  He turned back to the open door. Nodded. Glenda and the other women came from the landing, huddled in a tight knot. One of the women was sobbing softly. She had her hand to her mouth to stifle the sound. Behind the group, John Grainger stood at the steel door. Cutter made eye contact with the man over the shoulders of the women. Cutter nodded. Grainger nodded back, and then without another word, he pulled the steel door slowly closed and locked it from the inside.

  The sound of the door shutting was nothing more than a faint ‘snick’, yet to Cutter it sounded like the tolling bell of doom. The finality of it shocked him as he realized that now there was no turning back – no possible means of escape. The only way left was forward into a world he was unprepared for.

  The bookstore was eerily quiet. Cutter led the women down the long passage towards the front door, his eyes never resting, never focusing on one point. His head swept across every shelf and every display stand, and the tension rose with each step that drew them closer to the street until he could smell their rising fear.

  They crept past the cashier’s counter, and paused. Ahead of them, Cutter could see piled tangles of furniture and overturned bookshelves that had formed part of the barricade the day earlier. The store’s display window had been shattered, and jagged shards of glass and crumpled paperbacks lay like litter on the floor. He stepped carefully, his eyes sweeping the street beyond.

  It was a clear sunny day. He could see burned and crumpled cars choking all three lanes of the road. Further away – on the opposite side of the street – he saw a tall black pyre of smoke billowing from the smashed windows of a women’s dress store. And dead on the ground were dozens of broken, lifeless bodies, and grotesque streaks of blood that were spattered across the pavement like outraged graffiti.

  Cutter turned back to the women and pointed to a breach in the barricade where a desk had been overturned and one of the destroyed bookcases had fallen across the walkway. “Through there,” he whispered. When the women nodded, he went forward slowly, measuring each and every step, his body crouched and alert.

  He reached the broken furniture and paused, his sense of alarm suddenly heightened. From somewhere close by he heard soft scrabbling sounds. He froze for long seconds. The sound stopped, and then came again. Cutter held his breath. The stench of death was stronger now that they were approaching the doors of the store, carried in the smoky haze that drifted across the street. But with it was another smell – an odor that was somehow familiar. Cutter stepped cautiously into the narrow gap and stared towards the entrance of the bookstore.

  And froze in cold stomach-churning shock.

  Hos was lying dead on the floor, his arms flung wide, his upper body twisted at an angle by the bug-out bag that was still strapped to his back.

  Crouched on the dead man’s chest were two large rats.

  Cutter felt an icy pall of dread wash over him as the blood drained away from his face. His head filled with a roar of noise, and for just a moment his vision blurred and he felt himself swaying. Behind him he heard Glenda gasp and whisper, “Oh, God!”

  Cutter went forward. The rats were huge black beasts, their fur stiff dark bristles. They were feasting on Hos’s guts, tearing and gnawing at the wet flesh of his entrails with razor sharp teeth as Cutter watched on in horror. One of the rats sensed Cutter and stared with evil yellow eyes. Its mouth was sticky with fresh blood, it’s body hunched as though it might leap at him.

  Cutter lunged forward with the spear and the rat snarled at him, baring wicked incisors. Cutter changed his grip on the spear and hefted it over his head, swinging down hard and smashing the huge growling rodent’s spine. The rat squealed, and the sound was a high-pitched piercing wail. Cutter swung the spear again, this time side-armed, but missed. He raised the spear over his head once more and lunged down. The point drove through the rat’s back and killed it in a gout of spraying warm blood as the rodent twisted and writhed like a fish on the end of a line.

  Cutter swung the spear and flung the rat’s body across the bookstore. The second rat defiantly burrowed it’s snout deep into Hos’s stomach cavity and ripped a long shred of flesh from the body’s intestines. Its head came up covered in thick slimy gore. Then it scampered away into the shadows.

  Cutter went down on one knee beside Hos’s body. He was trembling. He felt a surge of nausea scald the back of his throat and had to bite down on the urge to gag. He covered his mouth with one hand to mask the overpowering stench.

  Hos’s features had been eaten away. Both of his eyes were gone. So were his lips and nose, leaving his face a bloody ruin. Cutter could see deep claw and bite marks, still welling and oozing blood.

  “Why hasn’t he turned into one of them?” one of the women asked. She was a plain-looking girl in her early twenties. She had big dark eyes and stringy brown hair.

  Cutter looked up at her. “Because he wasn’t bitten,” he said heavily. “He was shot.”

  There was a single bullet hole in Hos’s forehead; a seeping hideous wound surrounded by tiny fragments of bone and grey ooze.

  The semi-automatic rifle was lying close beside the body. Hos’s fingers had been gnawed down to ragged stumps of flesh. Cutter picked up the weapon and handed it to Glenda. Then he felt for the nylon straps of the bug-out bag. He turned his head away. He could feel his fingers touch the wet oozing mush of the ravaged body, making his grip slick and slippery, but he persisted until the buckles were unfastened. He rolled the body onto its side and dragged the bag free. He handed the bag to Jillian, and then dug into the dead man’s jeans and found his wallet. There were some bank notes, a credit card and a driver’s license. Cutter stuffed the wallet into his pocket and then let the body roll onto its back again. He wiped his hands on the carpet, but the abattoir stench clung to him like a repulsive odor that seemed to permeate his clothes and the pores of his skin.

  He stood slowly. “Can you use that thing?” Cutter asked Glenda. She was holding the rifle comfortably on her hip. She nodded. “It’s an AR-15,” she said. “And I can use it.”

  As if to demonstrate the point, she checked to see if the gun was on safe then turned the weapon and glanced into the chamber. Cutter watched, fascinated. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m unlocking the bolt and pulling it out of battery so I can check the chamber for a round,” Glenda said, her hand working with small deft movements. She released the magazine to check it was full before seating it back into place. “Do I have time for a function check?”

  Cutter frowned. “I don’t know what that is – but you don’t have time. We don’t have time for anything.

  Cutter unzipped the nylon bag and rummaged through the contents. He saw a flashlight, matches, two bottles of water a knife and more. Then his fingers found the Glock that Hos had given him for sentry duty the evening before. He pulled back on the slide to chamber a round and then handed the bag back to Jillian. “The bag is your responsibility,” Cutter said. “Guard it with your life.”

  Cutter went forward to the entrance of the bookstore at a low crouch and knelt behind the cover of a steel tr
olley that had been upended. The women filed forward and dropped to the ground behind him. Cutter scanned the sidewalk and the street carefully. He felt Glenda’s shoulder press hard against his. She was on one knee close beside him, with the barrel of the AR-15 propped on the trolley’s thick steel frame. Cutter glanced down and saw the long length of her thigh where the skirt had rucked up high around her waist.

  She saw the fleeting direction of his eyes and she stared at him for a second in open invitation. “The offer still stands,” she said softly. “Just take me with you, Jack.”

  Cutter said nothing. He tore his eyes from Glenda’s and looked at the horror spread before him.

  It was like a nightmare made real: a terrible, terrifying illusion turned into grotesque reality.

  On the sidewalk, just beyond the shade of the bookstore’s doorway, was the body of a woman. She was lying on her back, her body bloated and swollen. Her legs were askew, her arms out flung, and her head turned to the side so that she stared at Cutter with open, vacant eyes. Flies buzzed around the body in a thick angry swarm, laying eggs in the open wounds and crawling across her stricken face before disappeared inside the cavity of her mouth.

  The woman’s chest had been ripped open, and the soft flesh of her breasts ravaged and ripped from the corpse.

  Beyond the woman’s body was another, and another, appearing ghost-like and ethereal in the drifting haze of thick smoke that swirled on the gentle morning breeze.

  Cutter tore his eyes away. The street appeared deserted. He searched the area again carefully, his eyes hunting through the scattered abandoned cars, looking for danger. But all he could see were more bodies. Some of them were slumped dead over the steering wheels of their vehicles. One man lay hanging out through the driver-side door of a grey hatchback, as though killed as he tried to flee the vehicle and make it to safety. The man’s skull has been ripped away so that his face and the grey oozing contents of his head lay spattered on the tarmac.