Claws slashed at him and its jaws snapped crazily. Before Ram knew what was going on, the zombie had bowled into him, knocking him off his feet and only years of training saved him. He pivoted as he fell—letting the left side of his body drop back while powering with his right, effectively turning the tables and landing atop the zombie.
This made only the barest of improvements.
Any time a man was within arm’s reach of a zombie, it meant he was within arm’s reach of death. Ram pulled back, gathering his feet beneath him and standing in a single quick move. As he did the zombie's claws made a scritching sound as they tore down his jacketed arm; the sound drew his attention away from what really mattered. The zombie’s other hand reached out and just managed to graze the bare skin of Ram’s throat.
The sudden burning sensation focused him quick. “Oh, no,” he whispered, touching himself gingerly and feeling suddenly vulnerable and soft…and jittery. His hands began to shake.
In front of him, the zombie clambered to its feet and despite still toting a loaded pistol, Ram panicked. He took one step back, and then another as the zombie lunged again, looking suddenly much larger and fiercer than it had only seconds before.
Unbelievably Ram fled from it. He raced down the stairs, his eyes blinking largely as if his ability to perceive reality had come unglued, while his mind could not get past the concept that he had been scratched. He was bleeding! It was just a trickle, but because of the virility of the zombie disease it meant so much more. It meant he was a dead man.
“This isn’t happening,” he moaned as he ran, heading out the door and into the yard with the zombie right behind. It stretched out a long arm and grabbed Ram, who could hear its eagerness, its insatiable hatred and hunger. The sound made him jerk and dodge away. Only then did he raise the pistol once more; though he was still sufficiently freaked out that his shot went awry.
The bullet missed low, striking the creature below the left eye; there was no exit wound. Staggered, the zombie took a step back giving Ram time to take better aim. This time he used two hands to steady the gun and it spat out the blazing lead, forming a neat hole in the zombie’s forehead.
Ram didn't see the thing fall over. Nor did he notice that all up and down the street a horde had begun to swell, attracted to the sound of the shooting. The beasts came charging at the lone human who all but ignored them. Instead Ram jumped up on the hood of the Humvee and began to dig in one of the pieces of luggage that he had tied to the roof rack. In it was a med box and in that box was a bottle of rubbing alcohol.
He had no idea if what he was planning would do a damned bit of good, but he felt that he had no choice. Ram poured the alcohol on his neck, and despite the swift sharp pain he worked the clear liquid into the wound and prayed silently as he did.
Other men had turned with lesser wounds. There had been a man in Glendale who’d had his hand nicked with the tiniest nick. It had been so small that a fear had sprung up among the men that he had contracted the virus through the air. People had shunned him, even more than they normally would have—no one wanted to be so close to an infected man, ever. But this was far worse.
“I was scratched,” the man had moaned. He had stood apart, trembling with the chills of his fever and with his overwhelming fear. “Look.” He held out his hand, showing a wound that looked smaller than a cat’s scratch.
No one had much sympathy. The fact was, that in many people's minds, a person ceased to exist once the fever kicked in. The man was urged to kill himself and be done.
Ram would cease to exist as well. It was this realization that had him staring with unseeing eyes as the zombies began to close in. He only had hours left as a person. The idea of becoming one of these horrible creatures he hated with such an intense loathing was a strange feeling indeed.
One of them grabbed his ankle and pulled. Ram shot it in the top of the head and again the unknowable variances in bullet trajectories caused the spinning lead to blast out the front of its face, sending grey teeth and brain splattering onto Ram’s shoe. Sickened by the sight, he groaned, sounding like the monster he would eventually turn into.
When he heard himself, he cried, “No, this can’t be happening.”
Yet it was. Another beast—a tall, skinny zombie with long arms, got a hold of his belt at the hip and pulled hard. Ram slid down from the Humvee, practically into the bosom of the monster. He shot it as it craned its open mouth toward him. Flinching from the rain of blood, Ram staggered away.
He became like a pin ball—bouncing from zombie to zombie, killing each but never with any purpose or plan of escape. He shot until the barrel of his pistol was scalding and the clip empty. With the same uncaring attitude he loaded the first of his three spares and began again the same slow killing. One after another they fell at his feet and he wondered why he bothered.
What was the use? He had maybe ten hours left…and that last hour didn’t even count. The last hour would be spent in a delirium and the one before that would zip by as he cried, clutching his pistol and hoping to find the courage to use it on himself. The hour before that one would be spent alternating between pleading to God for mercy and cursing his name as the heat of his fever began to bake his brain.
So how many hours did that really leave him? Six? Seven?
The bolt of the Beretta clunked back and Ram blinked stupidly while his index finger pulled uselessly on the trigger. Slowly he came to realize he had shot himself dry. Automatically he grabbed the second clip from his belt as he stared at the zombie horde that had coalesced all around him. It was small as far as hordes went; maybe a hundred tops. Still it was enough. In his fugue state he had managed to trap himself.
The front yard of the house was bordered by an impressive run of shrubbery standing at about six foot. There was no getting over it, or through it. Worse, some two dozen zombies had managed to get between him and the house, while the driveway, the only opening in the hedge, was practically clogged with the beasts. Cursing at his stupidity, Ram slowly fired each bullet with deadly accuracy as he backed to the green wall behind him.
And still they came on and on.
“I guess I won’t have to worry about a fever,” he whispered. With the heat of the battle, he felt, at least for the moment, somewhat like his old confident self again and he dropped the zombies one after another. This confidence lasted only the span of time it took him to go through the remaining bullets in the gun. When it was empty, his first thought was that he was going to have now keep track of how many times he pulled the trigger.
It would be his last clip and it was very important that the fifteenth bullet be saved for himself. The fever scared him to no end, however the very notion of being eaten alive made his skin crawl.
The only problem was that his last clip wasn’t where it was supposed to be! He yanked aside his coat and stared down at where the third magazine should’ve been sitting in its stiff leather holder. “It was there. I put it right there as always,” he said in a pleading voice, as his bulging eyes searched the grass beneath the feet of the surging zombies.
It wasn’t in sight, but so desperate was the man to find the lost magazine that he let the undead close the distance quickly as he wagged his head from side to side staring intently down. A grey hand took a hold of his jacket while another just missed his face with its sharp talons. They were all around him pressing in close with their long arms reaching and their opens mouths grinning in anticipation of their next meal. Despite his training and his deep experience Ram was on the verge of real panic. The kind that went hand in hand with madness.
On the edge of insanity, he stepped back uncertainly, and it seemed that the air grew hot and nasty around him so that he couldn’t pull in a real breath, and now as the beasts pressed close and there was no where left to run. He had a feeling akin to suffocation and the panic grew nearly beyond him. This was because he possessed the certain knowledge that they would drown him in their disease before the eating would commence, and in the e
nd he would be just as they were.
And that more than anything else was what released his mind from its delicate hold on reality.
Chapter 3
Jillybean
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
In a house on Juniper lane that smelled of fried meat and hot ash, a little girl lay curled up in an arm chair drooling onto the sleeve of her coat. In sleep her worries vanished and her face was angelic, seeming to have been created out of the whitest, smoothest porcelain.
When a tiny sound came to her she flicked her blue eyes open, yet beyond that remained so motionless that she might have been porcelain indeed. This was how she survived—with a mental toughness light years beyond her physical maturity.
She knew that movement drew the monster's attention. Once, she had sat, scarcely breathing and huddled like a rock, not three feet from one of them and had not been seen. It had taken all her will not to go running off with a panicked scream in her throat. That would have meant sure death.
There on the chair in the pleasant home, she ran her eyes all around while listening intently; the monsters wheezed or moaned when they breathed. She heard neither; slowly she sat up and it was then that she realized that Ipes was missing again.
"Ipes?" she whispered.
Down here. You dropped me, he scolded from the floor. I nearly fell into the fire and what would you have done then?
Jillybean fished the zebra from the floor and poked his big nose. "I would have all the cookies to myself for once. What do you think woke me?"
The wind I would say, Ipes ventured. He pointed with his flappy hoof at the window, beyond which trees could be seen swaying.
The little girl then yawned and stretched, asking, "How long did I sleep?" She was a child of the digital age and thus was baffled completely by clocks with pointing hands and very few of them moved anymore; she hadn't known the true time since her father had died.
Only a few minutes, Ipes replied. And it's just as well. What would have happened if you had slept the day away? We have exploring to do and you know you can't travel at night.
She knew all too well. Getting up she traipsed along to the kitchen, instinctually knowing in what direction it was. "You think that man left us anything?"
If you mean food, probably not.
Ipes was correct. The drawers had all been yanked and the cupboards were laid open and bare...all save a little white tin. "What's that say?" She held it up to Ipes who squinted his two black beads at it.
Or...orag...orange-ano, he said at last. It's a spice.
Opening the top of the tin she gave it a look. "Orange-ano? Why would they call it that if it's green?" After giving it a sniff her eyes went wide in recognition. "Momma used to put this in bascetti. We should keep it, right?"
Ipes agreed and she stored it away in her pink backpack. The pair then went through the rest of the house quickly, finding only one thing worth reclaiming: a four pack of D batteries that Jillybean didn't want to take because they were heavy.
They're for flashlights, don't you know, Ipes told her. And you can't see in the dark.
"Neither can you," Jilly shot back.
Yeah, but I'm not afraid of the dark, like some people I know, Ipes said pointedly, to which the girl only replied: Humph. Nonetheless she took the batteries. After that she decided to go home. Slipping out the back door she made her way around the side of the house just as she had come, only now there was a strong wind to contend with. It masked the fact that a monster had wandered close.
She neither saw the rotting skinned thing nor heard it until it was practically on top of her. Only her natural instinct of survival kept her whole. The little girl went from a tentative mousy walk to a flying gazelle sprint in a fraction of a second, eluding the zombie only to nearly run into the arms of another that had been sleeping on its feet in the shade of an elm across the street.
Stifling a useless shriek, she darted around a minivan parked in the street and then slithered under it crawling like a gecko with Ipes still in the crook of her arm. This sometimes worked with the brainless monsters who were easily confused when their prey suddenly disappeared. This time it didn't. One of the monsters, a thing that seemed to have spider-like long arms came down to street level and was just thin enough to wriggle under the minivan, while the larger of the two came down on hands and knees to stare at Jillybean hungrily.
"What do I do?" she asked Ipes. "Do I try a magic marble?"
After turning his fuzzy head back and forth at the two monsters, Ipes said, Not yet. Get a marble ready just in case and squinch to the front.
She was only too glad to obey. It meant getting further from both the monsters. When she crawled away, the one on all fours got up and she could see its feet as it came around to cut off any escape attempt. Now! Ipes hissed in her ear. Throw the marble behind it.
With a backhand motion she whisked the marble out into the street. Immediately the bigger monster turned and stared at the marble as it skittered away. Unfortunately the one already under the van, the one with long squiggly arms, kept coming after her.
Over there, Ipes pointed. Don't worry, you'll fit.
What he had pointed at stopped Jillybean cold. It was a storm drain, a black hole in the earth that led down into the worst nightmares of her imagination. In her little kid mind, she envisioned grotesque horrors living there—after all, monsters walked the earth in broad daylight, what sorts of insidious things lurked in the dark and wet where light would not venture.
"Ipes, no," she said in an uncharacteristically whiney voice.
Now! he thundered in a manner that was so much like her father's.
Only this could have got the scared little girl moving. She crabbed her way as fast as she could to the gutter and slid into the storm drain with no room to spare. Her hands caught something on the wall that felt like a metal bar and held on as she pulled her legs in as well. This left her dangling above what looked like a drop into an endless abyss.
Let go! yelled Ipes. This time however the power in his fatherly voice wasn’t enough and the girl refused to release her grip. Then a clawed hand, grey and scabby reached down from above and began fishing about, searching for her. Only then did she drop—twelve feet straight down—and had there not been an autumn’s worth of moldering leaves at the bottom of the shaft she would’ve been injured.
Instead she sat in a thick gloom, looking up at the groping hand, wishing that it would go away. It didn’t. Instead the monster’s arm could be seen and then its shoulder, and finally it scraped its nasty head through the narrow opening and stared down at the girl.
Now Jillybean traded her fear of the dark for the more urgent fear of being stuck in a constricting tube with a monster. Before it could come further in, she was up and feeling about the walls of the catch basin. In seconds she found a gently sloping secondary tube. It was a feederline. She went down it on her hands and knees, crawling along as fast as she could. She hurried because the pipeline wasn’t small enough for her needs; the monster was a skinny one and would be able to fit as well.
The tube only went so far and then it branched into a much larger one. It was what was called a trunk line and was so absolutely black that Jillybean hesitated. It was the dark of hell and the sight of it going on for infinity turned her soul cold.
In the gloom behind her came an odd tha-dunk sound and then the rustle of leaves. It’s coming, Ipes warned.
This was all the incentive she needed to get moving again. Stepping into the trunk line—it was large enough for her to stand stooped over—she turned to her left, feeling the curved walls of the drain and regaining a bit of her composure, which was considerable for a six-year-old. Still her hands shook and her lower lip jabbered up and down as she walked along.
Behind her were odd sounds like the pattering of webbed feet. They echoed, loudly at first but eventually grew faint.
“I think he went the other way,” she whispered.
The zebra shrugged, a move lost by the dark.
Or he’s squatting back there waiting for you to come back. Either way we have to go on, and whatever you do, don’t drop me.
Jillybean understood, there was an awful rotting smell wafting through the darkness. “Is this sewer for poop?”
I don’t think so, Ipes replied. It smells more like a dead animal, or one of the monsters, so we should be very quiet.
That made sense, so Jillybean went into mouse mode, giving up speed in the name of silence. Time beneath the earth had little meaning and she could only mark progress by the number of large side openings she passed. Each gave her a queer turn and she was afraid to venture down any, thinking that they would only mean getting lost for good.
Of the smaller feeder tubes that went upwards there were surprisingly few. Nonetheless she explored each, finding three blocked with gratings, while one had a zombie practically standing in the gutter next to it.
Each time, Jillybean slunk back to the trunk line and the wretched dark, carrying on in the direction she had been. Doggedly she walked like a hunchback for what felt like hours, growing ever more tired, while simultaneously having her fear ebb away.
“If we keep going, how am I going to make it back home again?” she asked her friend. This particular anxiety grew with each step.
Maybe we shouldn’t try, Ipes suggested. We didn’t leave anything behind except for some pine needle soup.
Jillybean pictured the house: her own bedroom with the flowered wallpaper and the carefully arranged Barbie dolls; her parent’s room with the mummified body of her mother hidden under layers of blankets; the attic where she had made her nest and where the rest of the stuffed animals sat patiently waiting.
They aren’t real, Ipes said, reading her mind as he could whenever the whim struck him. They’re not like me as you know.
She walked on for a bit, her tiny feet making less sound than her fingers did as they caressed the walls. “What about daddy? What if he gets better and comes home?” Ipes sat tucked in her embrace and said nothing. He waited instead for Jillybean to answer her own question. “He’s not coming back is he?”
The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors Page 3