She got a plastic garbage bag from under his sink and loaded up what little food he had on hand. He had lots of stupid bachelor stuff like smoked oysters, hot sauce, and Ritz crackers. The guy also had lots of chips and frozen chicken wings, but little real food. He was well prepared for watching “March Madness” NCAA basketball, but not the Zombie apocalypse.
I went to the bedroom. He had a small table with partially unpacked suitcases and a "work" laptop. I checked under the bed, in the closet, and in the nightstand. Bingo! He had a 9mm Glock in the nightstand with two loaded magazines. After more searching, I found a single 50-round box of fancy defensive hollowpoint bullets. There was nothing in the apartment to suggest that he was a gun nut with a more extensive arsenal. I had secretly hoped to find a tricked out AR-15 with tactical rails and optics.
We bagged up the stuff and grabbed his keys from a bowl on his bar. He drove an Acura, was a Boston Red Sox fan, and didn't even go to a Southeastern Conference school. Still, he was human once and deserved a nod and a quick moment of silence. We headed back to our place. We opened his door, peaked out, and then ran back to our unit with the garbage bag full of loot. The extra ammunition would be a godsend. We were up to 350 rounds of 9mm ammunition. That wasn't much in a city of six million desperate people or hungry zombies.
Chapter 13
After washing our hands and triple checking to make sure that our Zombie neighbor hadn't managed to bite me through my leather jacket. We set out again. We really wanted to make sure that there were no zombies on our floor.
As we proceeded down the breezeway, we could look down on the front courtyard. Several of our remaining neighbors had gathered around the remains of Johnny Businessman.
Karen and I looked at each other.
"We should really go talk to everyone and see how they are doing."
"Yeah, that and we should probably explain why we bashed his brains out."
I started towards the stairs and she stopped me.
"We should stash our hatchets."
"Good idea," I said. I was really glad my wife had a good head on her shoulders.
After a quick trip back to our apartment, we sauntered down more casually.
"Hey Jake," our older downstairs neighbor Ralph said. "Do you know who bashed in this guy's skull?"
"Yeah, that was me," I replied. "He was a Zombie."
"Oh, okay, you know, he really made a mess on the asphalt here. You guys should really clean that up."
"For real?" Karen exclaimed.
"Oh yeah," Ralph continued. "Victoria wouldn't want the dogs to get into it."
He did have a point. Walking the dogs was bad enough due to oil stains in the parking lot. Our dog, Dale, would probably sniff at a Zombie carcass for hours.
"I'll tell you what." I said. "Once we get 'em rooted out of the building, we can figure out how to dispose of all the remains."
We stood around a little longer and determined that they wouldn't be leaving the complex. Since they were Costco shoppers, they had food for a little while. We even found that he and his wife, Victoria, both had .38-caliber revolvers. He had a full-sized Smith & Wesson Model 10 with a 4-inch bull barrel and she had a little five-shot Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special. Her snub nose revolver had belonged to her father back when he was the chief of police in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It was a gun with an excruciatingly long back history. But, the key point was that they were all set and could partially anchor our defense of the building. Still, I worried about them living down on the first floor.
Chapter 14
We were just about to knock on the final two doors of our floor. When we heard Victoria clomping down the hall in some shoes that were tremendously impractical for a woman in her sixties.
"Hey, hey, hey, ya'll!" She said. "People might be more inclined to open a door for a little old lady than for two people in leather with tomahawks!"
"That's true," Karen said. "But, are you going to be able to get out of the way if a Zombie comes to the door?"
"I'm fast," Victoria replied. "And, I'm feisty!"
"O.K.," we said. "Have at 'em!"
Victoria knocked at the door while we stood well off to the sides. There was no answer. We waited. She knocked again. We waited. Then, the deadbolt quietly turned and the door knob slowly and quietly turned.
"Oh God, y'all this makes me nervous!" Victoria said as she backed away from the door.
The door slowly opened with an awful squeaking from the hinges. Too late to put in a maintenance request now, we gripped our hatchets tightly. We were ready for anything--anything except for the cherubic face of a little girl wearing a pink dress with big white polka-dots.
"Hello," she said tentatively.
"Hi, little girl!" Victoria exclaimed. "What’s your name?”
“Tanya.”
“Is your momma home?”
"No, she at work."
"Are you here by yourself?"
"No, my aunt is here."
"Can we talk to her, sweetie?"
"No, she is sick. She is sleeping."
Aaaaaarrrr! A female zombie in dark blue pajamas bowled over the child and came barreling out into the breezeway. Victoria was knocked flat and the snarling zombie grabbed Karen
"She's a monster!" The little girl shrieked. “She’s a monster!”
Karen stiff armed the zombie, hitting it solidly in the collar bone with her left to keep its gnashing teeth as far away as possible. She swept upward with her hatchet and smacked the zombie in the shoulder.
Victoria regained her feet, dashed over to the little girl, and ushered her down the nearby staircase. Meanwhile Karen and the zombie spun around and around and I circled both of them. Karen landed several blows with the hatchet burying it deep in the zombie’s rib cage with no effect. I finally saw an opportunity and slammed the zombie into a solid brick breezeway column. It broke the pair out of their spin. I brought my hatchet down hard onto the zombie’s skull. That ended the fight and the lifeless creature slid down to the concrete floor. Ironically, her pajama shirt had a slogan that read, “I love sleep!”
Chapter 15
After we rested for nearly ten minutes, Victoria came back up the stairs with two glasses of lemonade for us. She had gotten Tanya to settle down and pet their bichon Fluffy.
"Just one more door and this floor is done!"
Victoria knocked. We waited. Then, the door opened. We were greeted by a young Indian man in black track pants, a golf shirt, and Adidas flip-flops. Over his shoulder, we could see a living room full of young Indian guest workers all deeply engrossed in their laptop computers.
"Hello," he said. "My name is Vijay. How may I help you?"
“Hi, you don’t know me,” Victoria started “But, we are hoping that we can all join forces to fight the zombies and survive."
"I'm afraid I can't help you right now. We are working with our offshore counterparts to make our implementation deadline."
"Are you kidding me?" I interrupted.
"No, we must complete our code, run unit tests, and submit it to our client's Quality Assurance team."
"Have you noticed the ongoing end of the world outside?” Karen jumped in incredulously. “Zombies are taking over!"
"What is a zombie?"
"A zombie is a human who rises from the dead with a mindless impulse to eat people or, perhaps, the brains of people.” I informed him. “They can only be killed by smashing their brain or decapitation."
"This is clearly not possible."
"Have you watched the news?"
"No, we do not watch much television."
"Alright," I said. "Watch the news. Listen to radio reports."
"O.K. we will do that."
"Don't leave the complex or go outside without a weapon."
"We have a cricket bat."
"That might do the trick. Come see us when you've absorbed the information."
"We're right down the hall." Karen chimed in. "Last door on the right."
"Sur
e, we will do that," Vijay said. "Thank you for letting us know about the zombies."
"You're welcome," I said. "We will all need to work together to survive."
I stepped out of the apartment and the door closed.
"Wow! Just wow," I thought.
“Bless their hearts,” Victoria observed. “They are all just in their own little worlds.”
Chapter 16
With the top floor complete, we turned our attentions to the second floor. A family of Indians lived below us. Victoria knocked on their door and someone came to look through the peep hole. But, they wouldn’t answer. Victoria knocked again, stepped back, pasted on a fake smile, and tried to look friendly and respectable. But, again, they wouldn’t answer.
“How rude!” Victoria exclaimed. “They see us out with our dog all the time.”
“I know they are home,” Karen added. “I saw their kid playing on the balcony an hour ago.”
“I guess we’ll just leave this one for other Indians to talk to.”
An Indian doctor lived next door to them. But, he wasn't home. I wondered how things were going at the hospital where he worked. I could only imagine that it was total bedlam and chaos. It might even be over-run by the dead. But, with there being a remote possibility that he was alive, we didn't feel right about entering his apartment. Across the hall, the other end unit was occupied by a retired military man named Preston, his wife Sabrina, and their college-aged son Reggie. We knew their story because Preston really loved our dog Dale. Preston was an athletic African-American man in his fifties who kept his hair closely cropped. Reggie was studying at Morehouse College--one of Atlanta’s most prestigious liberal arts colleges. Sabrina had been a school teacher. We knew that at least she was home and healthy. But, we saw their pride and joy, a well-preserved Mercedes ML320 SUV, but we didn't see their mini-van.
We knocked on the door and Sabrina answered. She wore a pair of modest designer jeans and a red golf shirt. Behind her, we saw an immaculate well kept home filled with antiques and souvenirs of their travels around the world during Preston’s career in the military. While most of us lived in apartments because of an unstable job market or a financial reversal, Preston and Sabrina had chosen to live in a modest apartment so that they could send their children to some of the finest colleges in the region.
“Hi you all,” she said with a look of relief. “How are you doing?”
“Oh,” Victoria said. “We are just about done cleaning Zombies out of the building.”
“Lord,” Sabrina said. “Preston and Reggie are out there somewhere. Preston went to pick Reggie up from school and get him back home. I am just so worried!”
“I’m sure they will both be just fine,” Victoria tried to reassure her. “As strong as they both are, I’m sure they can get through this mess.”
The conversation continued. Sabrina assured everyone that they would do everything they could to help. So, after a little while, Karen and I excused ourselves to continue our sweep through the building.
Chapter 17
There was one level left in our building. It was the terrace level. No one wanted to go down there--even when the place wasn't crawling with zombies. The terrace level apartments were essentially basement apartments. They only faced the rear of the building. They had ground-level sliding glass doors that faced out to the split rail fence that guarded the drop off down to the creek. Instead of a breezeway, the terrace level had a dark and creepy hallway that was always ten degrees cooler than the rest of the building.
Karen and I decided to make a quick sweep through to see if anyone was home. We started on the interior most door of the building. We knocked and there was no answer. We went around to the rear glass door and discovered that the unit was vacant. We went to the next apartment and got no answer. Looking through the rear door, we saw no movement. It had been an easy thing.
We went to the last door and knocked.
"Git away from my door," a voice on the other side answered. "You ain't getting my stuff."
"Uh...dude, we don't want your stuff."
"Whatcha here for then?"
"We're here to get your help securing the building."
A figure dressed in black opened the door. He was short stocky guy with a thin beard and mustache. He wore black tactical pants with lots of pockets. He wore a black tactical vest. He wore black gloves. He wore black knee pads and black elbow pads. He even wore a black helmet inside his apartment. On his hip, he wore a huge .45 caliber handgun. It looked like an HK Mk 23 Special Operations Pistol that I had once read about in Guns & Ammo. A short M4-style AR carbine was strapped around his neck and hung in front of his chest. It had tactical rails mounting accessories like an optical sight, night vision sight, and laser sight.
"Wow!" I exclaimed. "That's quite a setup there."
"Well, I'm an ex-SWAT cop and I know how to use this baby!"
"Cool," I said. "But, we are trying not to do much shooting to avoid wasting ammo and to avoid attracting hordes of those vile creatures."
"Oh, I've got plenty of ammo."
"Do you have a sound suppressor?"
"No."
"Can you make one?"
“Well, maybe?"
"It can be big and bulky. You could fire through a box filled with pillows for all I care."
“Making silencers is illegal.”
“This is the end of the world as we know it. Civilization is over for the foreseeable future.”
"That's true. A silencer might be do-able."
"Alright, we'll have a building meeting soon. First, we need to figure out how to defend this building. Then, we defend this half of the complex and the garden. Finally, we claim the whole complex."
"Sounds like a plan, sign me up. My name is Larry."
“Can we call you SWAT Cop?”
“Sure! Everybody else does.”
Chapter 18
We slept fitfully that second night. We knew that the zombie infestation was spreading and that the authorities had lost control. We could hear sporadic gunfire coming from near and far in all directions. The highway noise that had once been present had stopped. We'd hear an occasional vehicle trying to make its way through the tangle of gridlocked and abandoned cars. The freight trains that had once rumbled through the nearby village had stopped.
As we lay in bed, we both listened for suspicious noises. The dog's ears would perk up and he would growl as he heard things through the night.
"How come the Air Force can buzz the complex 50 times a day when things are nice, but they are no where to be found when we are surrounded by Zombies?"
"I don't know," I replied marveling at the quiet.
"Do you think zombies can be cured?"
"I don't know."
"Do they remember back to when they were alive?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know much."
With the Charlie Bar in place, we eventually drifted off to sleep. But, we were up bright and early the next morning. It would be a big day.
During the overnight hours, the Indians figured out what zombies were and five of them knocked on our door at the ungodly hour of seven o’clock. Apparently, you can’t even sleep late during the end of the world. Vijay reintroduced himself and identified his friends as Rajesh, Anil, Charan, and Prakash. All five wore jeans, sneakers, and golf shirts. None of them looked like they weighed more than 150 pounds. Vijay carried a thick paddle-like cricket bat and Charan carried a big stainless steel knife from a typical MegaMart knife block. Prakash actually carried the knife block with the remaining knives. They said they were ready to help and that they could get all of the Indian workers in the complex to help. They would be invaluable. Karen and I were just glad to finally have some troops on our side. We agreed to concentrate first on protecting the building and expanding from there. They had no experience with guns or fighting. But, we felt like we had an army.
Our little army's first task was to go up towards the corporate headquarters, past
the building next door, and disassemble a fenced off and gated storage area and bring the fence components back to our building. The fence would be a valuable addition to our building defenses. Ralph and I went with them and took tools. It was a nice walk. The parking lot butted right up against the concrete and aluminum sound barrier. We felt secure. Except for the rampaging Zombie threat, it was a beautiful morning. Cardinals, Sparrows, and Robins were in abundance. The cherry trees down by the car wash had all bloomed with beautiful white flowers. Bright yellow jonquils and colorful tulips were blooming in the flower beds. But, behind the beauty, more and more Zombies were lining the chain link fences near the big corporate headquarters, in sections of right-of-way between the complex and highway, and in the woods near the north end of the complex.
Ralph and Victoria had been home owners before the great recession and Ralph knew just what to do. He showed the young Indian men how to disassemble the fence and they set aside their knife block and jumped to it with gusto. As they were working, another group of a dozen young guest workers arrived.
"Anil," one said. "What are you doing?"
"We are preparing defenses for our building,” Anil replied.
"That is a good idea,” another young man observed before adding the big question, "How do you kill Zombies?"
"Cut their heads off,” Vijay said. “Or bash their brains in!"
"Oh,” came the reply. “That sounds dangerous. The radio says we should stay inside."
"How much food and water do you have?" Charan asked.
"Perhaps a week?"
"We'll need to clear out the complex, forage for food,” I interrupted. “And work the community garden like crazy!"
Zombie Complex | Book 1 | The Battle For Chattahoochee Run Page 4