Everywhere, people were screaming and dying. Gunshots of various decibel levels rang out. I distinctly heard five, rapid shotgun blasts: the effort of someone frantically trying to stay alive and firing blindly. Smoke and the scent of blood filled the air. I watched a nearby zombie snap the leg off a dead person. It sucked on the bone that jutted out in an effort to get the marrow. It reminded me of someone trying to get the last bit of meat from a lobster leg.
My heart sank. Everything we had worked to rebuild over many weeks had been destroyed within minutes. Were it not for a sense of duty to my companions, I likely would have collapsed and given up.
For now, I had a faint spark of hope. It was better than none. If we could get through the main gate, trap the zombies inside our compound, and, most importantly, avoid any fucking zombies immediately beyond the gate that were waiting for us like wolves trying to pick off a stray lamb, we could possibly survive. Rebuilding could come later.
“Is this everyone?” Becky asked with concern as she looked around at our despondent, desperate party. She was always strong and confident. Now, I noticed an air of terror in her tone and a look of panic on her dirt-stained brow. Beads of sweat dripped from her neck and down into her cleavage. Even in the midst of all the mayhem, I still found a few seconds to checkout her cleavage. I had to enjoy what few moments I figured I still had left.
“It’s everyone who’s coming,” I answered. “We can’t wait any longer.”
The Preacher and Marcus grabbed the large, metal handle to the lumberyard gate. Working together, they slid the gate open. The wheels squealed on their metal tracks as they got the gate open wide enough for us to slip through.
One by one, we went through the opening. Luckily for us, there were no zombies waiting on the other side. I helped The Preacher shut the gate behind us. With Marcus taking point, we ran away from our camp, into the night. I hoped one of my companions had a plan for what to do next. I know I didn’t.
Chapter Five
As I left the ruins of our encampment behind, I fled into the northern California hills. I could hear the heavy footsteps of my companions around me as we tramped through the woods. The lights of the fires faded just beyond the camp. There was nothing but blackness ahead. I had trouble even seeing Marcus, and he was just yards ahead of me.
Something brushed my face. I shouted and swept at it. It was only a branch. “Fucking trees!” I swore. I felt one step closer to a heart attack. Then, as I remembered I wasn’t in the safety of camp anymore, I realized I’d better keep my voice down. I had almost forgotten what it was like to survive in the untamed wild.
There had been times, both before my arrival at Quarantine Camp #24B, and as I had traveled with Marcus afterwards, when it had been pertinent to always assume a zombie was around the next corner. In the few short weeks at our enclosed lumberyard, I had almost forgotten how terrible those times had been. Simple pleasures had soon been easy to take for granted. Now, I couldn’t even talk loudly without fear of attracting zombies. Even my own breathing and my pounding feet sounded way too loud in the eerie quiet of the forest.
I had no idea what was ahead of me. To make matters worse, the night was cloudy and there was barely any moon. Running around like this in the black of night was a sure way to break an ankle. Even under normal circumstances that would suck, but in post-apocalyptic zombie-filled America, even minor injuries could spell death. Medical care had reverted back to the stone-age. If things went well, I figured in twenty or thirty years we’d be back to bleeding people to get the bad blood out of them or taking mercury pills. People could then die of normal stuff like polio, leprosy, and the like, until we once again cured those things.
I’m not sure how long I ran for. I know I was out of breath about five minutes before I stopped. My heart was pounding out of my chest. I desperately craved water to quench my thirst.
I slowed my pace to a walk and then paused when my body could go no further. As I huffed and puffed with my hands on my knees it occurred to me that I had lost track of my companions. I had been able to see someone just up ahead, but I had dared not call out. They were no more than five yards away one second, and the next thing I knew they were gone.
I heard scuttling noises in the woods from somewhere ahead, but couldn’t ascertain the exact location of the sounds. I worried it could be a zombie or some other hungry animal. A terror like I have never felt before washed over me. I was utterly alone in a very hostile world.
What the fuck am I gonna do now? I wondered.
I stood there, immobilized with fear and struck by the realization that I had no supplies, water, food, and only a hatchet for a weapon. I was fucked. For several minutes, I could do nothing but stand in place, catch my breath, and listen.
The woods were eerily quiet. I heard what I believed were frogs croaking, and crickets chirping. A mild breeze blew through the woods. It rattled the tree limbs above. The black silhouettes of branches quivered like wooden tendrils against the barely-lit sky. I crouched low. I knew that the wind could carry my scent to unseen zombies. A series of anguished cries broke the silence. They sounded pretty far off from what I could tell. It was clear that a woman, possibly one from my group, was being eaten somewhere out in that darkness. I couldn’t hear or smell the zombies, so I concluded they had to be a reasonable distance away. Maybe that poor victim would lure any threats away from me. I could only hope so.
I remained frozen in place. The screams died down and vanished. It was silent once more. I waited hopefully for someone I knew to pass by. Each passing minute felt like an eternity. The woods really messed with my head. I kept thinking I was hearing or seeing things that weren’t there. Or maybe they were. Which was worse? I couldn’t decide. I debated climbing into a tree and sleeping there for the night. It sounded like a plan.
I walked to a nearby tree to see if I could get up into its branches. I believed it to be a Western Juniper (though it was hard to tell at night). I started to probe around the trunk.
Suddenly, a low whisper from nearby caught my ear: “is anyone out there?” a voice asked. It sounded like Becky. Whoever it was, she must have heard me moving.
“I’m over here,” I answered in a hushed voice of my own. “It’s Nick.”
Seconds later, Becky approached me from out of the darkness. She threw her arms around me as she got within hugging range.
“Oh thank God, Nick,” she whispered into my ear. She was practically sobbing. “I was so scared. I thought I’d lost everyone,” she confided.
“Me too,” I whispered in her ear.
As I held her there, I felt the warmth of her body and the beating of her heart through her tank-top. I found myself holding onto her incredibly tight, though I hadn’t intended to.
Becky, likewise, pressed herself against me. She rested her head against mine. Her tits squished against me. They were fairly big and they rose up and down as she breathed. They felt fucking amazing. I wondered if they were real or fake.
I continued to embrace Becky. She didn’t seem to be letting me go. I found myself inadvertently not wanting her to. I hadn’t exactly felt a plethora of positive emotions lately. I am ashamed to admit it, but I actually had trouble remembering what compassion was like.
While I held Becky, it occurred to me that I hadn’t held a woman since before my wife died in the initial outbreak. At least not that I could recall: I’d had a number of drunken, black-out nights that had helped to dull the pain of existence following society’s collapse. Perhaps I had fooled around with some random woman during that time. If so, I had no recollection of it.
In the short time I had known her, I hadn’t felt anything at all for Becky…until now. I hadn’t even known her name! She had just been another survivor: a person to compete with for food and water; a possible threat. Now, as I held her and felt her wonderful body, I moved my hands down to her nicely-curved hips. I wanted her.
I wanted to take her right where we stood, rip her clothes off, bend her over, and
fuck her until I was satisfied. These thoughts ran through my head in about a second and my dick got instantly hard.
Becky moaned softly into my ear. I knew she could feel my fairly large member against her (hey, I’m going by what I’ve been told, so fuck anyone who wants to argue that point). I could tell she liked it. It made me even harder.
I don’t know why I blurted this out, but against my will, I whispered into her ear, “I want you right now, Becky, and I won’t take no for an answer.”
The next thing I knew, we were kissing in a frenzy of ferocious, lustful passion. I think it was helped by the intense fear and hopelessness we had both felt. At that moment, we needed a distraction from our fears. We needed to get our minds off of our terrible, present circumstances. I also think we both realized it could be our last night on Earth. With that being the case, fuck the zombies, and let’s fuck! Our kissing led to other stuff, which led to still other stuff, which led to…well, you can imagine.
Needless to say, I found out that her breasts were real. It was a very enjoyable discovery. By the time I was done spending myself in her, we were both even more exhausted and thirsty than before. I lied down with my back against the Western Juniper as I pulled my pants back up and zipped them up. Becky put her bra back on and leaned over with her head in my lap.
We chatted quietly for a minute or two before a noise in the woods spooked us. As if we were squirrels, we both scurried up into the tree. It appeared as if we’d be spending the night there. I didn’t expect to get much sleep.
Chapter Six
When my eyes opened, my first thought was: where the fuck am I? It took a minute for me to remember the events of the night before. Thankfully, no zombies were anywhere to be seen. Neither was Becky. Or my hatchet, for that matter.
That fucking bitch, I thought. She had used me for sex and disappeared. I felt very much violated all of a sudden.
I climbed down from the Western Juniper and yawned loudly. In the daylight, I confirmed that the tree was indeed that species. I was rather surprised, although grateful, that I hadn’t fallen out of it in the night. I had been nestled against two sturdy boughs. My sleep had been fitful and only in short spurts. I yawned and rubbed my eyes. They burned from fatigue.
I was contemplating my next move when I saw a bush rustle nearby. I prepared for a zombie to burst out when Becky appeared a moment later with the hatchet in her hand. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she commented.
“I didn’t know where you went,” I replied coolly. I acted as if her disappearance hadn’t bothered me.
“A gal has to shit sometime,” she said.
“And you needed a hatchet to do so?” I asked with perplexity.
“It’s a dangerous world,” she replied with a smile, “I don’t want to be caught with my pants down, so to speak.” She spun the hatchet around and offered me the handle. I took it. “What are we going to do now for food and water? I’m famished.”
“Good question.” I scratched my chin. I was starting to get a lot of stubble and it was itching. “I’m famished myself. Man, we got lucky last night.”
“Yeah we did, huh stud?” Becky smiled as she came over and kissed me on the cheek.
“No, I mean about no zombies or anything.”
“Oh, so I wasn’t any good?” she said quizzically as she raised an eyebrow.
I looked into her eyes. The dark circles around them revealed that she was just as tired as me. “You were amazing.” I let her know: I had truly been legitimately impressed by her various talents and also her flexibility. “But we do really need to take more precautions now that we’re out here alone.”
She ran a hand down my arm and felt my muscles. “Definitely,” she agreed, “and you need to be careful not to get me pregnant.”
Pregnancy was almost a death sentence nowadays. For reasons why, see Appendix A, which states: medicine had reverted to the stone-age. Unless a pregnant woman stumbled upon a doctor or nurse with reasonable medical equipment, the odds of the mother surviving weren’t all too great.
“We need water and food first,” I switched topics to the most important matter at hand. The thought of becoming a dad and raising a child in this world was about as scary as the zombies. “Maybe if we continue in the direction we were all running, we’ll run into other people from camp.”
We set off on an easterly course and kept our tired eyes open for anything useful. We had survived the night through nothing short of a miracle. The zombies would be less active now that the sun was up.
We came across a stream less than an hour later and spent a few minutes washing ourselves off and drinking from it. I figured I’d likely be sick later, but when you’ve gone almost a day without water and you don’t know where your next drink is coming from, you drink what you can and worry about the consequences later.
After freshening up a little, we walked for most of the morning and maintained some small talk. Mostly, we conversed about what the world used to be like. We took turns exchanging pandering tales of events from our childhood, some tragic, some funny, and others sentimental. We also talked about the rest of our group: Olivia, The Preacher, Marcus, and some others that Becky mentioned who I couldn’t put faces to. Each of us wondered if we’d ever see our old associates again or if they were even still alive.
At one point, I told Becky about the collapse of the camp, and how Marcus had started brawling with the guy we’d been trying to exile. I reluctantly informed her that it had been his hot temper that had led to the zombies invading and overwhelming us. She was pissed, but I asked her not to hold it against him. After all, I told her, it had been an honest mistake.
Speaking of zombies, we noticed a few stragglers on occasion. We paused to let them by, snuck around them, or sometimes coordinated an attack to put them down. As we moved, we also gathered and snacked on blueberries. Fortunately, they could be found in abundance this time of year.
When we encountered a recently deceased corpse, we paused to investigate it.
“Think he’s one of ours?” I asked. I didn’t recognize the person. Then again, half his face was gone.
“Yeah, he is. I remember that shirt from last night,” Becky confirmed. “I don’t remember his name, but he was definitely in our group as we went through the gate.”
I studied the corpse and remarked, “at least he won’t come back as a zombie. You can see where they ate his brains clean out from the top of his head.”
“That could have easily been us instead,” Becky reflected.
I nodded silent agreement. I don’t know if she felt guilty or just grateful, but I wasn’t about to feel any survivor guilt. I had long since gotten over that.
“If this dead guy is here,” Becky remarked a second later, “then it may mean that we’re on the right track. Maybe the rest of our group ran this way.”
The girl had good wits about her. I certainly had to credit her with that. We searched the fellow’s pockets and yielded a lighter (which was a huge score), three cigarettes (though one was broken), and a comb.
With his valuables confiscated, I looked at Becky and pointed further in the direction we were heading. “You ready?” I asked.
“Yep.”
We continued on our path and climbed a pretty large, steep hill until well after lunch. It was more like a miniature mountain, in truth. As we stopped at the crest, I reached into my pocket and took out a handful of blueberries. I offered some to Becky. She thankfully accepted them. I grabbed some more for myself. As I ate, I looked around. The forest was pretty dense beyond the hill, but I could see the scatterings of a town perhaps two miles away as the trees became sparser.
“How much do you want to bet that any survivors fled into that town?” I pointed in the direction of the blinding sun.
“I guess it’s as likely as any other scenario,” Becky answered as she chewed. “I would totally take you up on that bet.”
I threw a blueberry down her shirt.
“Hey!” She excl
aimed as she giggled. She certainly looked pretty, in a rugged sort of way. She shook her shirt to get the blueberry to fall out and then stood up. “I’m rested, are you?” she asked.
“I suppose so. You want to share a smoke with me before we go?”
“Sure.”
I offered her one of the butts that we’d taken from our deceased companion and stuck the other in my mouth. After lighting them both, I took a deep drag. I didn’t smoke often, and had never smoked before the apocalypse, but now I had more pressing health issues to worry about. As I enjoyed the only cigarette I was likely going to find for a very long time, I remarked, “I wish we’d had these after last night…after sharing our-” I thought for a moment for the right word “-passions.”
“You mean after you tore me up?” Becky responded. I think I turned red, despite the feelings of pride and accomplishment I felt with myself. She exhaled a plume of smoke and added, “don’t be embarrassed, baby. You did me good last night. I’m still sore.”
“We may have to do that again sometime,” I suggested. By that I meant I couldn’t wait to do it again (and soon).
“Fucking right,” she smiled.
At the bottom of the hill we came to another body. I flicked the filter of my butt off into the woods and bent down to examine the freshly-killed corpse. It was a female. She looked to be in her mid 30’s, but neither Becky nor I could identify her. As a precaution, I smashed her head open with my hatchet.
Dead people turned into zombies in very random intervals. I had seen it happen within a minute of death. Other times, I had seen it take three or four days. No one knew what caused the discrepancies, but no one bothered to figure that stuff out anymore. All the people who had been really smart and scientific were now dead. I guess they weren’t as smart as they’d thought. Or maybe they just lacked common sense but were good book readers. Either way, fuck ‘em.
A quick search of her pockets yielded nothing so we eagerly went on our way. When we got near the outskirts of the town we had seen, I began to spot structures through the trees: a trailer, a cabin, a few homes, and what looked like some small, municipal buildings beyond them. We headed for the cabin because it was the closest.
Shamblers: the zombie apocalypse Page 4