“And snack machines,” Julia said. She turned to Cassie. “See, it was a smart idea.”
Cassie gave one of her fake smiles that Julia bought into every time, but didn't say anything. Since they knew their roles, nothing needed to be said. Ram left the car first, hurrying to the door followed by Julia and Cassie.
The door was locked, which was both good and bad. It meant that the likelihood that looters had been inside was negligible, while at the same time it meant making noise. A heavy rock that had probably been used to prop the door open for the smokers sat near to them and Ram sent it crashing into the bottom half of the glass. He kicked in the remaining shards and then all three scurried through the low opening.
Just as in the other buildings Cassie was left at the door to keep watch on the street, as Ram and Julia crept along, glancing into each office, looking for zombies, but their luck was good and the place was locked up tight.
“This could be it,” Ram said, relaxing. “But I don't want night to catch us here so I think we should split up. Since this floor is empty, start here. Do a once over for anything obvious and if you don't see anything go through the drawers. You never know what people stash in their cubbies. I'm heading upstairs.”
He kissed her once, before she could pull away and then went into the stairwell where black night descended on him as soon as the door shut. The deep dark actually had him unnerved. And the first step tripping him up didn't help. Thankfully he only went to the second floor and there, one of the first things he saw was a water cooler—he drank greedily despite that it was warm and stale tasting. He then hoisted the big clear drum off its base, turning it before he could lose more than a cup.
“Look what I found!” he gushed to Julia as soon as he came to the first floor. She was just exiting one of the offices straining under a cardboard box that was filled with all sorts of yummy goodies, none of which was nutritional in the least.
“Thank goodness. I found a six pack of warm Pepsi that I wasn't looking forward to brushing my teeth with.” They went to the door and Cassie's eyes were big for everything they had found so far. Julia brushed her with the box in a friendly way and said, “This is all thanks to you.” She and Ram hurried to the Bronco and back to the office building in less than half a minute though they still managed to draw some attention to themselves from the local stiffs.
They were pretty far away so Ram did not worry over much. “Keep an eye on them,” he advised Cassie and then went after Julia. “Find me some deodorant,” he said to her.
“If you find me a bathtub filled with clean water.”
He goosed her before heading into the dark stairwell. The second floor had been used as a call center for an insurance company and as such the pickings were slim. Mostly more junk food, still he took as much of this as he could carry in a waste paper basket he had upended. One person was a little more healthy and had three cans of tuna—these went into his pockets.
The nicest offices were along the west side where the windows allowed the workers a better view than just more workers or the grey side of a cubicle. “Well, look at these.” The owner of that first office was a bit of drinker. He had five little bottles of vodka, the tiny shot sized variety found on airplanes or in the desks of alcoholics.
“Waste not want not,” Ram said with a smile, placing them carefully in his pocket. As he did he happened to glance at the view outside the window and felt his heart flutter in his chest. A stream of zombies were charging toward the building...to the very door that Ram had broken into.
The wastepaper basket of goodies was forgotten and falling to the floor unheeded as Ram sprinted through the maze of cubicles, heading for the stairs. He did not make it before he heard the first shots fired.
“Shiiit,” he moaned. He could tell by where the blasts were coming from that Julia was the one firing and she was alone. It was only the single gun.
Where was Cassie? Why wasn't she helping?
Ram hit the dark of the stairs and stumbled down the first flight before he righted himself and swung his M16 off his back and into the ready position—and then he was in the light again and stiffs were pushing through the same doorway he had goosed Julia in only ten minutes before.
Holding back the fearful bile in his throat, Ram resisted the overarching desire to charge the stiffs. There were too many crowding the hall, dozens and dozens, with more pushing in from outside. Instead he sighted the M16 and began firing with single well-aimed shots.
How many had flooded into the large office Julia was in he didn't know, but his shooting caught the attention of the ones still in the hall and all ninety of them came rushing at him. He kept firing and they fell over their dead brothers in their eagerness to get at the man and rend and eat him.
He fired until his bolt sucked on nothing but air and then he ran into the next office and threw himself against the door. Immediately the beasts were on it pounding and slamming their weight in an all out effort to bash it down. It wouldn't last above a minute, while in the room next to his he could hear the desperate clatter of the lone M16 rattling away.
Julia was burning through ammo too fast. Just as he did, she carried three- thirty round magazines and there had already been two significant pauses in her shooting, suggesting she was down to her last mag. He slapped a fresh one in place and sank the bolt home just as silence came from next door—silence and then screams.
Desperation swelled in his soul and his fear for her caused actual pain in his chest. He couldn't go back in the hall; there were simply more of the stiffs than he had rounds, which left only one way to get to Julia.
Now he set the rifle to three-round burst, and running at the glass of the far wall he fired, pulling the trigger three times, and before him the window seemed to turn into frozen water and this rained down upon him as he jumped through. Thankful that he was on the ground floor he turned the gun to the window of the next office and again fired three times.
This one he didn't jump through. There really wasn't a need to. A crowd of zombies were in a literal pile seven or eight feet high, tearing at something beneath them. Ram should've run away. He should've saved his ammo and not called any more attention to himself—however his anger and his grief was a force that overrode any common sense. Gritting his teeth, he fired into the pile, not worried that he would hit Julia because he knew that for her it would be a blessing to catch an errant bullet in the brain.
He fired, knocking the stiffs back from the pile; laying them out with gaping holes in their nauseating heads. In apparent confusion at the new attack, the stiffs turned slowly from their meal, giving Ram time to mow them down one by one, until his bolt went back a second time on an empty magazine. With calm deliberate motions he pulled his final mag as the stiffs came up to the low wall that marked the border between inside and out. They began to climb through in their clumsy way and he only stood there sneering in hatred as his hands worked, and then behind him, just as he sent the bolt flashing forward, chambering a round, he could hear the door to the office he had just left come crashing in.
Things are about to get interesting, he thought. And yet they grew far more interesting than he could have ever dreamed as his eyes lit upon where the zombies had been feasting on Julia. She was still alive!
She had hidden under a desk and had pulled a swivel chair in front of her and had held on with all her strength while the beasts had crushed in around her. There were still two more of them right on top of her, both pulling at the chair in opposite directions. Ram fired at the one with his back to him and it was only then that he noticed the odd way his gun vibrated—he was still on three round burst!
With his ammunition situation so desperate, he flicked the weapon to single shot, brought the gun back up to his cheek and paused. There was Julia running at an angle for the broken window. Beyond her the second zombie had fallen backward when the tug of war over the chair had ended so unexpectedly, while behind more zombies flooded the room.
Julia wasn't even thirty and was still sp
ry. She leapt passed the zombies struggling among the jagged shards of the window and then the two of them were running for their lives.
“Keep the gun!” Ram said. Julia had been trying to pull the strap over her head as they booked around the back of the office building. “We'll make it and I don't want to have to try to go back for it.” Now that they were in the open, he was confident in their chances. Though a zombie could practically run forever they were generally slow and all Ram had to do was get around one more wing of the building and then they'd be able to make it to the Bronco.
Except when they cleared the back of the building, the Bronco was gone. Only zombies, numbering in the hundreds remained. The sight was beyond terrifying but what was worse was Julia's leg.
“I'm bleeding,” she said breathlessly and shaking. “I'm going to become one of them.”
Chapter 36
Neil
Illinois River
The zombie straddling Neil Martin once had a name: Miss Kennedy, and she once had an occupation: pre-school teacher. Now she opened her mouth wide and bit down into his neck.
That he would scream was no wonder; that he would live for a while longer was, however. The zombie pre-school teacher ripped her head back and forth while Neil yelled himself hoarse and then with a shearing noise, she pulled back, chewing on a mouthful of flesh.
Beneath her, Neil coughed and sputtered and spat out the maggots and all the while watched in fascination as Miss Kennedy chewed and chewed on the flesh—it was skin actually. And it was the skin of a long dead cow. She had torn off the collar of his leather coat.
For a long time she worked her jaws on that leather and all the while Neil only laid there hoping she would either go away or choke on it. She did neither. She only chewed and stared at nothing beyond the river. Finally, when Neil couldn't stand it any longer, he threw the preschool teacher off of him with heroic strength, and grabbed up his axe. Now she came alive, in the sense that she wanted to kill, but Neil was ready for her this time and dashed in her skull, and she went back to being dead.
After this battle, he went to the river and shook with adrenaline, while he vomited. Later he picked a maggot out of his teeth and vomited again, though in truth he mostly just dry heaved and belched loudly.
“Thank God no one saw that,” he whispered, picking up his bow and pulling the stray arrow from a hillock of river grass. He then looked down at the dead woman and said, “I think when I tell that story, you'll be an iron worker instead. With big muscles...and a black beard.”
When the woman just lay there with her face in the wet sand he left her and continued down river, wishing that he was done with zombies for the day. It was a silly thing to wish for—the next house had them like a dog has fleas. And then he came to a loop in the river and found at least a hundred lined up at the water's edge as if waiting for a bus. This forced him to skirt far around and yet the detour had its benefits.
First he found an entire field of broccoli sitting there ready to be harvested. He filled his backpack with the greenest of the lot and then walked away eating and burping—broccoli always made him gassy. He then came upon a row of trees next to a dirt road and laughed when he saw they were apple trees.
“It is apple picking weather,” he said as he dumped out half the broccoli from the backpack. “I bet Sadie would love this. And Sarah as well.” He thought of the two women until the pack became uncomfortable to carry.
A while later, as he angled west over open fields, he found the river again and after a few miles of solid walking, he found a boat. It was a dinky little tin thing, or so it appeared with its metal hull, rusting and grey. The nose of the boat had caught on a little sand bar seventy feet out into the wide river and Neil didn't hesitate. He stripped down to his shivering flesh, fearing that the water would grow deep at points, and waded in.
The water did indeed go deep and he swam nervously as the current swept him away from the boat, though he did manage to find the bottom with his feet at the far end of the sand bar. This allowed him to struggle up onto the little island and once upon it he rushed bent over and holding himself against the cold until the boat was laying there at his feet.
It had a motor and everything. Excitedly he pulled it further onto shore so that it wouldn't try to get away, and then he hunkered down, peering at the motor. Gleefully he saw that a key wouldn't be needed—there was a toggle that said: On and Off, and a handle like one would find on a lawnmower. Without hesitation he flicked the switch and pulled the cord.
It made a sad little noise, like a burp from a cow, and would not catch. Neil checked the gas and saw that it was mostly full. So what was the problem? The choke! There was a little knob on the engine low down. This he twisted full over and pulled again on the cord.
Now the engine caught and rumbled nicely. Neil turned the choke down and got in the metal boat after giving it a shove into the river. This was better! He chugged the boat back to shore where he quickly put on his clothes.
“Oh the girls will be so happy,” he said, shivering in the back of the boat as he continued on his way. A boat by itself didn't mean all that much. He still needed gas for it and supplies in general. These were quick in coming, now that he could travel faster.
The very next house was zombie free, though he didn't take chances and snuck up on it ninja-like going from bush to tree in short bursts. Again it had been gone over by someone very thoroughly, but even the best searchers could overlook many items. The car in the garage had been drained of gas, however the riding mower sitting right next to it was full.
Using a garden hose he siphoned out almost four gallons of gas that he put in an orange bucket. Next he dared the awful smell of the refrigerator and discovered a jar of jelly that hadn't been opened, and in the laundry room he found candles and flashlights. Though it was in a girl's bedroom that he found the best items: shoes, clothing, and pop tarts.
The girl who had once lived there wore a size six shoe, which seemed about right. Neil compared the shoes to his feet and thinking that Sarah's were a little smaller than his own he decided to keep the ones that seemed the most practical. He then made a quick run through of the closet and picked out the most conservative clothing, while he took almost all of the panties and socks.
He has no idea if the bras would work for either of the two women under his care—this is how he viewed them, despite that Sadie was very capable and Sarah had already saved him once—so he took the bras as well, and that was when he saw the silver glint of the pop tarts at the bottom of the drawer. Six packages all told.
“Oh, Sadie will love this,” he said, carefully wrapping the prize in a towel. “Though I don't know about Sarah. She seems a little too sophisticated for pop tarts. Still beggars can't be choosers.”
As almost every house did in that part of the country there was an out building nearby. This one was a storage unit for farm equipment with a chicken coop attached. Not knowing what chickens ate, and hoping it was sunflower seeds are something palatable like that, Neil went to the low storage bins next to the coop.
There were two and the first had its lock knocked off. Inside was chicken feed, the smell of which turned his stomach. Fully expecting the second to be more of the same, he took a stone that had been holding down a loose section of the chicken wiring and smashed at the lock. It held against his feeble strength however the hasp did not and with some twisting he was able to open the bin.
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” Neil breathed at the sight of eleven plastic five gallon water containers. One was already open and after giving it a sniff, he drank, feeling the water run down his insides. It was glorious.
With this find, he decided he had enough supplies to justify going back to what, in his mind, he called home. Lugging everything to the boat was a matter of some minutes, nearly an hour and this was less than the time it took to chug gently back up stream. He didn't hurry. The faster he made the boat go the more sound it made and he didn't want to alert the entire zombie popula
tion of southern Illinois and have them follow him back.
He figured he was in for a hero's welcome and he grinned confidently as he shouldered the first of his back packs—he had three of them--took a five gallon water container in one hand and the axe in the other. Then, remembering the fiasco in the barn, he put everything down again and strapped the rifle across his shoulder...Sarah didn't know him very well and probably worried more over the fate of her M16 than over Neil.
Hoisting his burdens once again he went up the incline to the house and stepping through the open front door said, “Ta-duh!”
There was no one there to see his big entrance and feeling let down and a little arm weary, he put the water by the door and called, “Sadie? Sarah?”
“I'm in here,” Sarah said from the back room. Neil happily turned in that direction and spoke just as someone came down the hall.
“You have to see...” Neil began.
It wasn't Sarah at all. It was a zombie with hair curlers and a muumuu that matched the one Sadie had been wearing. It was a big zombie as well and Neil squawked in fright and ran back the way he had come. He had left the axe and the M16 lying on the living room couch and it was a heated mental struggle for Neil to pick up the axe and not the gun...the zombie woman, though alone, was that big.
Still she was a waddler and a slow one at that, giving Neil ample time to swing his axe. Horribly it got stuck in the woman's immense pumpkin head and was wrenched out of his hands as she crashed to the floor.
“Oh, that's gross,” he moaned, feeling his stomach turn flops as he worked the axe head back and forth. Suddenly Sarah was there, looking dainty in her summer dress.
“Did you get both of them?”
Neil froze. “Both?”
The second one came out of the garage just then and Sarah pointed behind Neil. They ran—Sarah back to the bedroom and Neil, because the axe was still stuck in old pumpkin head, into the dining room where he and the zombie played a game of tag around the long polished table. Finally Neil knocked over a chair and when the zombie went down he grabbed another and bashed the thing repeatedly until it stopped moving.
The Undead World (Book 1): The Apocalypse Page 26