[HGB] Humanity Gone Bad: The Dead Chronicles

by Watkins, Charles

  The city was crawling with zombies, the air was full of smoke as fires burnt out of control in some areas of the streets as large semis and other vehicles literally were piled up against each other and sides of buildings; wrecked vehicles blocked a lot of the streets and we had to constantly turn back, finally we made it to the hospital where it had all started. Everyone got out and got their weapons ready, Christina was reluctant to go inside but with Noah by her side she managed to fight off the old memories; we went inside and into the lobby noticing that the floor was covered with decaying bodies of doctors, nurses, and patients. The walls were in places smeared with blood and the air stunk, I glanced at a plastic tent like thing that was set up in the corner of the lobby—it had the CDC logo on the side and I went and investigated finding several dead government workers in bio-containment suits; I looked around inside the tent and found four gas masks that I grabbed up and returned to where the others were waiting.

  “We’ll have to take turns with these; there might be harmful chemicals in this air.” I stated handing Angie, Noah and Christina one each while I put one on myself—the rest of the group covered their faces with anything from hankies to bandannas.

  We went into the elevator and pressed the button for the floor where Jacob and his two daughters had been when it had first started, we arrived on the floor and the doors opened—we had no more started to get out of the elevator when suddenly a mass of zombies swarmed out of a side area ahead and came right at us; I bashed at them with my gun and kicked several back before opening fire as did Angie and Noah. We were able to keep them from entering the elevator luckily and we managed to kill them all off, to Christina’s horror she recognized what had been her mother but was now nothing more than another dead zombie; she had turned and probably taken many lives, Christina began to cry as Noah put his arm around her comfortingly.

  “What’s wrong baby?” He asked with concern in his tone.

  “I-It’s m-my mom…” Christina said choking on her tears.

  “I’m so sorry…” Noah said hugging her tight.

  I examined the rest of the zombies to make sure they were dead and we started going down the hall to check some of the other patient’s rooms. I kicked each of the doors in that we came to—the rooms were a mess, some of the patients had died in their own beds and others were sprawled out on the floor; I kicked in the door to the room number 337 and we encountered a long-haired male zombie that was dressed in blood-splattered, dirt coated clothes that was munching on what had been a little boy, it’s teeth tore the boy’s soft tender flesh off to the bone and blood oozed out and spurted. Christina aimed her .9mm handgun at the zombie’s head and fired—blood sprayed across the room and on several of our clothes before it fell back to the floor dead; I examined the male zombie and the room and I stepped further into the room and seen that a bloody curtain was pulled around hiding the right side of the room opposite from the disheveled bed—I readied my M16 and yanked the curtain aside only to find the corpse of a women with dark, blood-matted hair sprawled out on the floor; she had her mouth open and a large caliber revolver was clutched in her right hand. Further examination revealed a section of her upper left arm that was torn away—no doubt she had been bitten and used the revolver to blow her own brains out in an attempt to keep from turning.

  “What’s back there baby?” Angie asked as she came up behind me.

  “A dead woman…she matches the woman in that picture with the kid…I wonder who these people were—this looks like it happened not too long ago; the stages of decay are recent unlike the others we have come across.” I answered as I looked around the area closely.

  “Here’s what looks like a purse…it might have belonged to her.” Noah stated tossing me a fairly large bag from the floor on the other side of the room.

  I unzipped it and found several things that no doubt had belonged to the dead woman—several more then half-empty boxes of bullets that matched the revolver she held, tissue paper that was stained with dried blood and two wallets—one of them distinctively belonging to a man. I opened the man’s wallet and found a Kansas driver’s License with the name ‘Charles Raymond Wilson’ and a picture that matched the male zombie that had been eating the flesh of the boy when we had killed it; I tossed the wallet and license to the floor and opened the woman’s wallet taking out her license—which was also a Kansas driver’s license; the picture matched the dead woman nearby and I saw that her name had been Zoey Copeland.

  There was another picture inside the wallet of the couple with the little boy—except in this picture the little boy looked to be an infant and the background of the picture looked like it had been taken long after the zombie outbreak had begun; sloppy writing on the back of the picture read one single phrase—“Charles and me with our two month old son Andy”.

  “It sucks when you have to run across something like this…my guess is that the man was bitten and the couple came in here with their child looking for medical supplies and shelter and he turned and bit her then went after the child—she obviously killed herself but the little boy no doubt died at the hands of what had been his father.” I stated with a dark look.

  “That’s sad…” Angie stated as she held Remy and Mace in her arms.

  That was when our thoughts were interrupted as we heard the ding of another elevator down the hall, we went to investigate it and found an old lady that was in a wheel chair—her chair was halfway out of the elevator—enough to keep the doors from closing; she was long dead and her corpse was drawing the flies, it appeared that her throat cavity as well as her arms and legs had been devoured. Noah and I pushed her wheelchair out and we pushed the button for the Morgue, which was on one of the basement levels.

  “This is just absolutely sickening…” My mom stated as she shivered a little.

  “Heads up guys, you never know what’s gonna be at the bottom.” I advised as I slapped a new ammo clip into my M16 and reloaded my side weapons.

  We arrived at basement level 1 and the door opened, there were bodies here and there of chemical workers who had died, and the room was filled with zombies that were standing around in various places. After gunning them all down, we made our way through the first two Cryogenic-Labs and then we went into the Bio-Chemical Room, it was filled with dozens of zombies that were eating a corpse in the far corner; they started to get up and come for us but we opened fire putting multiple rounds in their upper torsos and heads sending them to the floor, all of them were laying on the floor in pools of their own blood and Kaylee—who was feeling cocky—ran over and kicked one of them in the back but not before it grabbed her leg pulling itself up off the floor and biting into the right side of the calve of her left leg. She screamed in pain and Noah and I rushed over and smashed the zombies’ head and we examined Kaylee’ leg, the wound was really bad and Noah and I looked at each other remembering Jacob, Shiva, Marianna and Jennifer and what had happened to them. Kaylee tore off a long piece of cloth from her shirt and tied it really tight around her leg just above the wound.

  “That should slow it down, right?” She asked in a smartass tone.

  “I doubt it…what the hell were you thinking—are you some kind of fucking idiot or something?!” I scolded as I stood glaring at her.

  “I don’t know what I was doing…I mean, these fucking zombies have ruined all of our lives, I just wanted to get in on the action and kick one of their asses…” Kaylee answered as she stared at the floor.

  “Well, the way that I see it is that you’ve only got a limited amount of time left…so make it count.” I stated as I turned to face the others.

  “Dude…we should just shoot her in the head right now—it’s a threat to all of us keeping her with us like she is.” Noah stated in a low voice as he came over to stand near me.

  “Believe me, I know—but that’s up to her people to take that step; I’ve dealt with that damned Carroll family enough to last two li
fetimes.” I answered back as I turned away.

  Roxanna went and found a crutch and gave it to Kaylee to help her walk and then we checked the north room which was a toxic waste dumping area—to our horror several zombies climbed out of the dirty water and started coming for us; their skin and clothes had been melted off by the toxic sewage and we could just about see their bones. I took out my Magnum that I kept in a holster on my belt and I blew off several of their heads, Angie took care of the last ones.

  “Well, there’s no since in staying in this room, stinks like hell.” I stated leading the way out.

  We went back into the lab area and made our way into the elevator that would take us down to the next basement level; we arrived on the second basement level and went into the first empty room we came to—which turned out to be a lab. Inside there were flasks and beakers smashed and scattered around, I examined two large glass tubes that had seemed to hold some kind of life form—when suddenly Angie screamed; I turned around to see what looked like a huge mutated worm that was working its way out of the vent opening in the wall—it was a grotesque thing that was covered with spiny tentacles and what looked like a human arm was hanging out of its mouth. Noah opened fire shooting it several times causing a green putrid substance to splatter everywhere, the thing didn’t slow in it’s coming after us; I pulled Angie behind me and carefully aimed my M16 to what looked like its eye and opened fire—more of the green shit splattered out and the thing roared in anger and raised up like a viper about to strike. I opened fire, my bullets tearing through its body making more messes as the putrid green blood oozed out everywhere—Noah took out his shotgun that he kept on his back and fired twice blowing the monster’s head off; it’s body fell to the floor and oozed the foul green blood.

  “What the fuck was that thing!?” James shouted in alarm as he shifted his weapon to point from right to left.

  “It seems that it was some kind of mutated animal…I know we’ve encountered wolves and dogs that were undead but nothing like this yet…” I answered in a voice that probably suggested to the others that I myself could still hardly believe what had just transpired.

  Suddenly the thing regenerated its decapitated head and rose back up.

  “Holy fucking shit!”

  “Look out!” Doug yelled as he dashed forward opening fire with his shotgun on it once again.

  The thing wasn’t backing down with all of the gunfire directed at it and tearing through its body, it snapped at Alex taking off a large amount of her hair, she just barely got away before its jaws ripped her head off. I noticed a container of highly flammable liquid with a rag sitting on the shelf next to it in a glass cabinet on the far side of the room behind the monster. An empty beer bottle was on the floor near the wall and I dashed around it and smashed the glass and grabbed the container and the rag, then I grabbed the beer bottle and filled it with the flammable liquid before stuffing the rag down into the neck of the bottle—by now the monster had whirled around and was coming for me, I ignited the rag with a cigarette lighter I had in my pocket and threw the Molotov against the concrete floor in front of the mutated worm as everyone else ran to get out of the way as the flames shot up and consumed the worm. It howled in agony as it fell to the floor and tore about the room before finally disappearing into another vent near the exit to the next room; by that time those of us who were still inside the room were getting drenched as the sprinkler system kicked in and dowsed the flames from the Molotov.

  “Fuck me…if that’s what we’re going to have to deal with from now on I think we should turn back.” Doug stated as he grabbed a fire extinguisher from the nearby wall and doused the furniture near the next door that had caught fire as everything else in the room got soaked by the sprinklers.

  “We can’t turn back, although maybe some of you guys should stay here and keep watch in case things do get worse.” I answered as I slung my M16 over my left shoulder.

  “But who will go on to the morgue?” Angie asked as she clung to my left hand.

  “I don’t know baby, I just know that it’s a whole different situation now—first it was just zombies…but now we have all kinds of horrors to fight off and we almost didn’t get past that thing just now.” I stated in a grim tone as a made a little pointing gesture toward where the thing had disappeared to.

  “The more reason we should stick together, we can fight off anything with combined gunfire and now we can rely on fire too.” Noah stated as he reloaded his shotgun and put spare shells in his shirt pocket.

  “That is if we can find enough containers to make more Molotov cocktails with…not even sure how much of that flammable liquid is left.” I answered as I dashed back into the room and grabbed the container of the liquid and shielded it from the water of the sprinklers as I worked my way back to the group.

  We stepped into a short hallway area that separated the room we had been in with the next one and I noticed that the floor was filled with all sorts of trash—even glass beer bottles like I had previously used.

  “Here—let’s use this opportunity to make more Molotov cocktails; we might not get another chance.” I stated as I sat the container of flammable liquid down in the center of the floor around everyone.

  A couple of the others grabbed glass bottles and filled them with what was left of the liquid and then used rags, bandannas and whatever they could to stuff down into the bottles—once they were done they put them to where they could use them if necessary.

  “We can do this everyone—if we stick together.” Angie stated with a determined look.

  “You’re right, everyone needs to be on their toes and be ready to defend themselves at all times—I just hope that we can get through the rooms to come with ease.” I answered as I led the way through the hallway toward the door to the next room.

  The next room was a Cryogenic-Lab and it wasn’t any easier or so it seemed, there were several zombies in there that we managed to kill off; we were just about to exit the room when suddenly the worm thing smashed out of the concrete wall sending shards of broken rock and dust everywhere—it seemed to have mutated again. With so sudden of a move that we could not have anticipated it—it struck grabbing Leanna in its jaws ripping her flesh to shreds and swallowing her whole; I couldn’t help smiling a little bit at her demise even though I knew it was bad—she had been more trouble than she had ever been worth and I had a lot of emotional scars from the past concerning the falling out that had happened between us. John Harrison ran forward with his handgun shooting at the monster’s head, he was upset and no more had the thing ate Leanna when it reared back and ripped Harrison to shreds with its fangs and ate him too; I opened fire with my M16 hitting it multiple times in the head and upper body—Angie was constantly shooting making big holes in the worm with her magnum and the others were shooting it too. I was aware that something else was going on toward the back of our group where what was left of the Carroll Family was and I briefly glanced back and seen Kaylee lying on the floor of the room—by her bodily motions it looked like her bodily functions were failing; Roxanna was probably having the worst time of it after having to witness the deaths of Leanna and John Harrison and now what was happening to Kaylee—that was when Kaylee suddenly raised up into a sitting position and screamed that same horrific scream that all of those things did when they were preparing to charge at a victim; she grabbed at Noah and Christina—Noah side kicked her off of them and pointed his shotgun at her head taking several steps toward her.

  Noah didn’t take any chances; he stuck the barrel of his shotgun into her mouth and fired blowing her head completely off splattering the wall behind her with blood and brains. I ran over to a counter top, Angie at my side still shooting and grabbed a flask of sulfuric acid and threw it at the worm; it bounced off the worm’s side and started to fall—I carefully aimed and fired with my M16 shattering the flask spilling the acid out all over the worm’s body. It howled in pain as the
acid ate its flesh away and it eventually disintegrated into a pool of slim on the floor; to our disgust—the mutilated bodies of Leanna and Harrison were there in the slime, lifeless and bloody. The whole room was covered with the blood and gore of the two victims of the worm and we moved on because it was tearing Doug and Roxanna apart to have to look at the gore knowing parts of it were the remains of both of their daughters; Noah and Subotai checked a room that was across from the one we were in and after just opening the door they opened fire on something and then quickly shut the door.

  “What’s in there?” I asked with curiosity.

  “There’s at least twenty zombies in there, the tough kind too, we shot several of them in the head but they didn’t fall.” Noah reported as he swatted at a latch on the door locking it from our side as the zombies behind it started to pound on the other side of the door.

  We worked together to gather up some heavy objects from nearby and pile them against the doors to make sure that the zombie horde on the other side didn’t break through, after we were finished we moved on through the next room which was a room where many cardboard boxes were stacked up. I led the way through the room cautiously aware that anything could be in there, sure enough, a lab worker or what had formally been a lab worker stumbled out from behind some boxes and started coming our way—I aimed at its head and fired three times then my gun clicked and I had to slap in another clip, Angie fired and blew the zombie’s head off and it’s body slumped to the floor. We stepped over the corpse and opened the door to the room ahead—which was marked with a big, red Biohazard symbol, upon inspection we saw that the room was littered with fire and water debris along with bullet holes in the walls and ceiling; the floor was covered with bodies some without skin like we had seen in the waste dumping area before. I recognized a bio-trooper lying on the floor that was wearing a gas mask; I carefully removed the mask and noticed that he had been dead a long time; careful examination of the troopers’ body revealed a faded insignia on his tactical vest that said “Covenant One”, I didn’t know what that meant so I ignored it. I also noticed that he had three weapons: An M16 like I already had a sub machine gun and an M79 grenade launcher; I picked up all of his weapons and slung them over my shoulders. We carefully made our way through the room and to the door on the other side of the room, that’s when just about every single body in the biohazard room stood up and started coming for us—I herded everyone into the next room and took out the new grenade launcher; I aimed at a tank of propane that was in a nook of the wall and fired, I quickly shut the door as an explosion knocked everyone to their knees. All of the zombies were dead and burning.