Zombies! (Book 3): Violence Solves Everything

by Merritt, R. S.

  She slid slowly into the shallow end of the pool until she was down on her knees sliding herself across the bottom of the pool while slowly shifting the floatie above her. She hoped none of the Zombies would get curious about why a floatie was propelling itself across the pool. She bumped up against the side of the sun shelf and worked her way down to where the stairs were. She was only in a few feet of water now. She’d shrugged off her backpack and let it sink to the bottom earlier. Saddened by the loss of the medicine Eric had died for them to get. She’d hated being struck by the realization he was dead all over again.

  She had her hammer in her right hand and a big hunting knife hanging off her belt. She raised her head up underneath the floatie to take one more deep breath before she slowly started working the floatie backwards out of her way. She managed to get it moved completely backwards without hearing it cause any sort of commotion. She finally got to the point where she only had to move it about another inch, and she’d be able to see around her again. She slid the raft off her face to run and looked up.

  There were three Zombies standing on the end of the pool staring back at her. They must’ve been staring at the moving floatie the entire time. The screeching was immediate as all three Zombies plunged into the pool. Myriah dropped her hammer and dove for the deep end. She swam underwater to the other side of the pool. With her lungs burning she surfaced and looked around. The pool was frothing with all the Zombies having jumped in to get at her. None of them could swim so they were all just floundering around. The ones who’d gone to the deep end were drowning so that was good at least.

  The ones still standing in the shallow end saw her head pop up and screamed their hunger at her. One of them went straight for her and became intertwined with the other Zombies slowly drowning in the deep end of the scum covered pool. The others jumped out and started running around the pool towards her. Myriah put both her hands on the ledge in the corner of the deep end and hoisted herself up and out of the pool. A tall thin gangly Zombie came running for her along the side of the pool. Myriah ran towards the Zombie to avoid the larger Zombies coming from the other side of the pool. She could also hear screeching from outside the fence again getting closer.

  The tall Zombie reached for her and Myriah grabbed the Zombies wrist and spun hard with it. Using the Zombies momentum against it she dropped to the ground and tugged hard enough to send the Zombie somersaulting into the pool. Unless it was tall enough to walk on the bottom of the pool it’d drown in there with the others. It did look like two Zombies had made it out of the deep end and were working on getting out of the pool on the shallow end to come after her. Myriah sprinted past both of them and raced through the hole in the screen the original Zombie she’d seen had made to get outside.

  She ran over the broken glass and through the sliding glass doorframe the Zombie had beaten out of the house to try and get at her earlier. Entering the house with her screeching pursuers right on her heels she sprinted for the front door praying her soaking wet feet wouldn’t slip out from under her. Running through the living room she skidded to a stop in front of the front door and tried the knob. It didn’t open, so she flung the deadbolt open. She got the door to start opening when something hit it from the outside hard. A Zombies hand shot into the crack between the door and wall. Myriah realized she’d missed the fact that the door had a chain lock on it.

  She stepped back with a scream and turned to run the other way. A Zombie blocked her way back to the kitchen where the broken slider was. Behind that Zombie she saw another one coming her way as well. With her choices starting to be very limited she ran down the hallway. She saw some stairs leading up, so she took them two at a time. A door at the top was open to a girl’s bedroom. This girl had gotten hooked up with her own little loft area and a bedroom off the loft area with its own bathroom. Myriah was assuming it’d been a girl’s room because of all the pink and shiny things she saw.

  She turned and slammed the flimsy door to the room just as the Zombie who’d been on her heels slammed into it. She was frantically looking around for a weapon when the Zombie beat its way through the door. Myriah ran into the connected bedroom but couldn’t get the door shut before the Zombie shoved it’s body into the room. Stumbling backwards she wound up in the bathroom. She looked around desperately for a weapon and her eyes fell on the toilet. She reached over with both hands and took the top off the toilet’s basin.

  She spun around right as the Zombie charged into the room. She swung the big heavy toilet lid as hard as she could at the Zombies face. She caught the Zombie with a very solid blow that rocked it backwards into the bathroom wall. Not giving the Zombie time to recover she brought the lid down hard enough to smash the dazed Zombies head in. With a caved in skull the Zombie slumped to the floor and didn’t move again. Myriah took the lid out into the main bedroom where a teen age looking Zombie was coming through the door screeching. She swung at it’s head in with the lid before it made it all the way in the room.

  When she hit this Zombie in the head her fingers slipped, and the lid bounced off and flew into the wall. A big chunk of the lid breaking off at some point during that whole routine. The stunned Zombie had been knocked to the ground when she smashed the lid into its head. Not giving it time to recover she fumbled her knife out and stabbed it into the Zombies chest until she felt it sink deep. Blood spurted for a few seconds before it died. Myriah slammed the bedroom door shut. It was a much more solid door than the one that had been at the top of the stairs. She thought it would hold up for a little bit longer against a Zombie beating on it.

  Door locked she ran over to the big window on the side of the room. It was covered in some kind of weird red velvet curtain that had little Christmas lights wrapped around it. She pulled a handful of all that to the side and looked out the window. She was on the opposite side of the house from where the gate was. She saw a handful of Zombies out on the main road, so she eliminated that as an option. She could see the house on the other side of the fence from her vantage point and it looked pretty safe. She just needed to be able to get over there.

  She worked the window open as quietly as she could. She could hear Zombies out in the loft already. They could start beating on the bedroom door any second now. She looked down below. There was a bunch of tall grass and weeds in a narrow little alley between the wall of the house and the fence. A couple of air conditioner condensers took up most of the space towards the end of the alley where the pool was. No Zombies were visible down there at all.

  Myriah tossed blankets and pillows out the window to try and make a softer landing for herself. She looked around for some sort of rope she could use to lower herself down. She couldn’t find any rope so decided to try to use those red velvet curtains. The bottom of the floor length curtains was bunched up on the ground. Myriah figured if they went that low and if the curtain rod held, they might work to get her lowered down to the ground below. She shoved the curtain out the window and looked to see how far down it hung. Before she had a chance to look, she heard beating start on the door to the bedroom.

  Trying not to think about the drop to the ground she worked her way out of the window and used the curtain to climb down the wall as far as she could get. She dangled at the bottom of the curtain gathering her courage to drop the rest of the way. In an effort to avoid being paralyzed by the fear of falling she forced herself to let go of the curtain. She landed painfully on the ground below, but all her limbs were still in working order, so she called it a successful drop.

  She couldn’t reach the top of the fence to pull herself over so walked down the alley to where the compressors were. She climbed up on one of those and jumped for the top of the fence. It hurt her already abused body, but she was able to scramble over the top of the fence and drop down to the neighbor’s yard below. From the neighbor’s yard she kept working her way through backyards until she got to the strip of woods by the last house on the street in the subdivision.

  Surprised and relieved to have esc
aped she slipped into the woods and set a course for the lake house. She was wet, miserable, and her body hurt all over. The physical pain and discomfort were nothing compared to how she felt about losing Eric. Her stomach was upset from thinking about the fact that she was going to have to tell her sisters that Eric wasn’t going to be coming back to them this time.

  Chapter 11: Spies Like Us

  Kyler pulled over by a green highway sign that proclaimed it was ten miles to the Georgia border. He was outfitted in the same basic clothing he’d been wearing for the last few months now. Camouflage pants, a black hoodie with a zipper running up the front and a plain black t-shirt had become his uniform of the day. The fancy TIMBUK2 labeled knapsack he had on was stuffed with spare clothes, food and weapons. He had an assortment of rifles, knives, hatchets and pistols strapped to his body in various places. The stains on his sleeves and the front of his hoodie showed he wasn’t afraid to get in close for the kill.

  He was riding a moped and soaked to the bone. A massive thunderstorm had come out of nowhere and soaked him as he was riding down I-95. The ride down had been uneventful. There’d been some tense moments driving past exits with signs that read ‘keep going or be shot’ and ‘do not exit’ with red marks all over them. At one of the exits he’d seen a group of men staring down at him. The men had all been armed and looked ready to shoot if he made the poor choice decide to ignore the warning signs. It’d made it hard to get gas for the moped but luckily the little machine seemed to chug along forever on just a few gallons of gas.

  It’d taken two weeks at the island for them to get him some basic training in spy craft and work up some objectives for him. Chief Presley had left a week before Kyler had. The chief had headed out with a new team of young men assembled to be the next roving patrol. It was a very high turnover job. Kyler had envied them the camaraderie. He also envied them in that they were headed out to visit with people who knew their role and respected them for it. Kyler was headed out to lie like crazy to try to work his way into a group of people who’d slice his throat in a heartbeat if they learned the truth about him. He wasn’t going to help people but to figure out the best way to destroy them. The chief would be helping shore up weak points in the settlement defenses. Kyler was responsible for finding weak points they could exploit in their enemies.

  Shivering in the rain on the moped looking at the sign Kyler reflected he still had time to turn around. There was no rule saying he had to go do this. Presley had told him several times he thought it was a dumb idea. It was strictly voluntary. Not that anybody worried about a paycheck these days. It was all about stockpiling the kind of stuff that could help you live another day or two. Kyler figured one of the things he needed to stockpile was goodwill from the people who were going to end up ruling the world. That very much included the commanding officer of the submarine that was powering the island.

  Commander Hartfield had come to the swearing in ceremony. Kyler had found out the man liked to officiate at as many of them as he could. The ceremony itself was the same swearing in ceremony members of the US military had been going through for years. In this case it’d just been made a little more generic since they weren’t joining a specific branch of the military. The commander had been very specific in letting them know this wasn’t an oath of fealty to him. This was an oath they were taking to serve the ideals of the USA. An oath to fight against the infection and the people taking advantage of the infection to fracture the country. He told them to take it seriously as he would hold them to it.

  Once the swearing in ceremony had concluded the commander had met briefly with Kyler and thanked him for taking on the mission to the south. It’d been the commander himself who told Kyler if it seemed to dangerous or he got a bad feeling about it to feel free to turn around and come back. He’d said they could use every good man they could get here. He’d been sure to specifically tell Kyler if the spying mission began to feel more like a suicide mission he should wave off and return to base. The commanders plain spoken mannerisms and common-sense way of looking at the world had helped convince Kyler he was backing the right horse. If anyone could guide them out of this current state of devastation it was going to be Hartfield, or someone very much like him.

  Teeth starting to chatter Kyler pulled back on the mopeds throttle to start riding south again. He dodged around cars. He rode past what looked like a recently killed man surrounded by the marks of a fire and what looked like a bomb blast. He drove past there quickly in case the people who’d blown up the highway happened to still be hanging around. Up ahead he saw the cars had all been cleared off the highway for the next half mile. At the end of that clean run he could see what looked like a wall of cars setup to block the highway.

  He briefly considered turning back. This was his absolute last chance. He knew someone may already be staring at him through a sniper scope or a pair of binoculars, but he still had a reasonable chance of getting the hell out of there.

  “Screw it.” He muttered and started riding slowly towards the massive car wall up ahead. The plan was for him to drive up and argue with the guards a little bit then let them disarm him and take him to the processing center. The recon patrol who’d come through had setup and watched these guys take people in from the highway. From the ones they’d seen processed they were roughed up a little bit but eventually sent back towards the main base on a truck that came out to the checkpoint every few days.

  Kyler had his cover story prepared of traveling to Florida to look for his parents. He’d never actually been to Florida before, so he’d had to sit in a room with another guy who was from Florida to learn about Florida. He’d basically borrowed that guys hometown and parents as his story. He could go deep on it if he needed to, but he hoped he wouldn’t need to. He rode towards the wall of cars until he was about fifty yards away. It was raining and overcast but he assumed they had to have seen him by now. He thought about beeping his moped horn but decided he’d already lost enough man points by rolling up on the beefed-up Schwinn as it was.

  Unchallenged, he rode through the cars until he could see the building the checkpoint was in. He could see people walking around the front of the building. He slowed down to a crawl as he started to get a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. The hum from the engine of his moped finally penetrated the steady drizzle of rain. As one, the people by the guard post snapped their heads around to stare at him. Screeching split the air as the Zombies rushed towards him. Kyler gunned the mopeds engine and drove straight forward. He didn’t think he’d have time to navigate the zig zag of cars to go out the way he’d just come in. He only needed to get around one more, and he’d be able to skirt by the guard post and keep on cruising south bound.

  His heart was pounding. He broke out in a cold sweat as he pushed the moped to go faster. The practical vehicle had basically been a compromise between walking and driving a gas guzzling car. He hadn’t wanted to try to peddle himself on a ten speed across multiple states either. He’d even pictured himself able to cruise quickly past the lumbering Zombies as they stretched out their arms for him.

  In practice he felt like a toddler on a three-wheeler trying to out run a pissed off pit bull. His visions of doing a wheelie and throwing out a jaunty wave were long gone. He turned the throttle all the way back and cut hard to the left once he got past the final car. The fastest Zombie had already gotten close enough with his outstretched hand that Kyler could have fist bumped him if he’d been so inclined. He zipped right past that Zombie then his front wheel connected with a pile of what used to be a human that was strewn out across the middle of the street.

  The front wheel of the moped spun helplessly for a heartbreaking second before Kyler got past the rib cage and hit the asphalt again. The back tires lost purchase a second after that. Kyler was slipping all over the place. He could feel himself losing control of the moped. He willed the tires to align as he tugged hard on the handlebars to try to get his ride back under control. A Zombie tackled him from the side, a
nd he went toppling over. He hit the ground hard with the Zombie on top of him.

  He’d been ready for the hard hit. He let his body absorb the pain and then rolled as far from the moped as he could. The Zombie who’d landed on him was crawling towards him gnashing its teeth. Kyler gave up on his rifle since it was wrapped around his back and pulled out his pistol instead. He shot the Zombie crawling towards him in the face. It crumpled to the ground with a big dark hole slowly filling with blood right in the middle of its forehead.

  Sitting up Kyler took six more shots at the closest Zombies then stood up before shooting at a couple more. Screeching was coming from all around him now. The gunshots had woken up the ones who hadn’t been into it quite yet. He looked around to see if he should shoot anything else once he’d changed the magazine in his pistol. Not seeing any more immediate threats, he went to pick up the moped.

  There were dead bodies everywhere. Shell casings littered the ground all around him. He took in all that data as he heaved the moped back up on its tires and slung his leg over the seat to sit down. He got it started back up and carefully navigated the field of corpses to get moving south again. He began picking up speed just as the next wave of Zombies began sprinting through the field of corpses to try and get at him. Without taking the time to count he estimated there to be around fifty or sixty living Zombies back there. Who knew how many there’d been to have taken out the guard post? The pile of fresh corpses must’ve been part of the mob that’d stormed the guard shack.