[HGB] Humanity Gone Bad: The Dead Chronicles

by Watkins, Charles

  “You okay up there?” Sheila asked as Billy climbed down meeting Kayla’s arms in a hug.

  “Yeah—I figured that flamethrower I rigged to the gun up top a few months ago might come in handy at some point and seems I was right.” Billy answered with a chuckle.

  “Is everyone okay—none of those fuckers got into the back, did they?” I asked as I briefly glanced back through the rear windshield into the back area.

  “No—they tried but we were able to keep them out.” Regan answered as she slapped a new clip into her assault rifle.

  “Good—that place was a deathtrap…we barely made it out of there alive.” I answered in deep thought as I flipped on the headlights as the sun had already set in the western sky leaving the landscape around us dark and foreboding.

  I continued driving into the night and around 1am it started raining heavily and I was having a hard time seeing the road ahead of me and the wipers on the front of the cab windows weren’t cutting it even on high.

  “By the sign we passed a little while ago it looks like we might be getting close to Knoxville…we might want to find somewhere to stop and hole up until we can better figure out our route as well as the vehicle situation.” Hugo stated as he opened the rear cab window.

  “Sounds like a plan…we might be able to find a scrapyard with a body shop like before to where we can customize some vehicles to better suit our needs.” I stated as I continued driving.

  Within the next half hour, we were coming into the outskirts of Knoxville, Tennessee and I noticed a large lot that looked like it had been a body shop—there were all sorts of vehicles piled against the sides of the buildings we were passing, many of them were wrecked and burned out; skeletons and other corpses that were in the last stages of decay were everywhere as I pulled into the rear of the lot up to the rear doors of the building.

  “There aren’t any of those fuckers around the area for the moment but you’d best bet that it won’t take much to draw them in so let’s be as quiet as we can.” I stated as my women gathered our kids as well as their weapons and gear.

  I parked the truck we had been using and I led the way into the rear lot with my M16 pointed ahead and the others clustered after me—I arrived at the rear door and checked the knob, it turned and the door opened with some trouble and I flicked on my flashlight leading the way inside; the corridor we were in was long and dark, it looked like there were several doors further down and the room around us was a quiet as the grave.

  “This shit gives me the willies…” Billy stated as Kayla clung to him while holding their daughter Madison close at the same time.

  “We better make sure that there aren’t any surprises waiting for us in here…” I stated as I glanced around at the others.

  “I’ll take point.” Hugo stated as he stepped ahead of me with his assault rifle pointed ahead of him.

  Amy and Beau followed as the rest of us investigated the door nearest to us that led into a large room where there were many vehicles and other things sitting around—many of them were covered in tarps and it looked like the building had been sealed up for a long time, at least this part of it. As I looked around I noticed another Ford Mustang that was similar to the one I had driven back during the days of our group surviving on the road—the time when we had been seeking Nicolas Bowman to settle the score as well as the brief time before it was lost in the barn incident not far from our homestead.

  “That looks almost identical to the one we used to have…except this one doesn’t have as much metal plating on the sides and the Browning machine gun is on the right instead of the left…” Jennifer stated as she stepped up beside of me as I was looking the car over.

  “Yeah…the driver’s side is where it’s supposed to be too.” Sheila added as she, Chloe and Olivia joined us.

  That was when I was brought out of my thoughts as Billy and Kayla called our attention to a massive semi rig that was sitting off to our right—I turned and shined my flashlight in that direction and I noticed the look on the faces of my women as well as the others who were nearby as we gazed upon the vehicle; it was a normal sized semi rig with a massive, long trailer attached to it. The trailer was painted black and it had a good number of windows on the sides—it looked like a limo almost and as we all walked over to look it over I could tell that that was probably what this thing had been back in the day; I grabbed the latch to the door and opened it stepping inside, the entirety of the trailer was empty although it looked like someone might have been using it as a shelter at some point in the past as there were traces of old sleeping bags and trash here and there.

  “I think that we might have found an ideal vehicle that we can use to travel in—this thing looks like it even has sleeping areas…not sure about an onboard bathroom though.” I stated as I stepped back out where everyone else aside from Hugo, Amy and Beau were standing.

  “What about the fuel situation that we were talking about with the other thing—if we take this, we’re still going to be saddled with having to scrounge for diesel…” Richard stated with a troubled look.

  “That’s true…I wonder if there would be any way to modify the fuel tanks to hold more at a time—that way we wouldn’t have to stop to scrounge for more as often…” I answered as I turned and started walking along the trailer toward the cab of the rig.

  That was when a series of noises made me stop dead in my tracks—the noises sounded like they were coming from inside of the cab and I knew all too well that this could be dead-heads just waiting for someone to open the door and I knew that we couldn’t afford to risk being attacked and bitten due to the Redeemer Strain no longer being in our systems to give us the immunity to the regular strain; I motioned to Richard and Billy and they quickly ran over with their weapons ready and I turned back to the passenger’s side door of the cab.

  “Be careful baby…” Jennifer advised as she along with Sheila, Chloe and Olivia held our kids close with looks of worry on their faces.

  I nodded and swiftly opened the cab door and that was when several dark figures immerged and I shined my light at them as the three of us backed away—our weapons still drawn; the figures numbered three and they were all women.

  “Don’t shoot us…we’re not a threat to you guys.” The first one insisted as she put her right hand up over her eyes to block my light.

  “Okay then…who are you and how long have you been in there?” I asked as I relaxed my weapon and lowered my flashlight to where it wasn’t beaming in their eyes.

  “My name is Rachel Stern—these are my sisters Kari and Ivana…we’ve been living in this building now for a few months…we were on the run from those things outside and we fled in here and haven’t been able to move on since; we make dangerous and risky runs to the outside looking for food every now and then but we don’t really have many bullets left for our guns and any kind of noise draws an army of them down on us so we’ve been trying to lay low…” The first woman identified as Rachel explained as she looked each one of our faces over closely.

  They were all dark-headed brunettes and I noticed that they had cuts and scrapes on their arms and a few on their faces and I stepped forward as they had no doubt recognized me as being the leader of my group.

  “You haven’t been scratched or bitten by those dead-heads or other mutations, have you?” I asked in a serious tone.

  “No—there were a few others with us not too long ago but we lost them when those things chased us in here…they were eaten alive and we could hear their screams after we sealed the door but there wasn’t anything we could do for them.” The woman identified as Ivana answered in deep thought.

  That was when Hugo and the other two arrived in the room behind us and they came up to me to report what they had found.

  “This building seems to be secure at the moment—we noticed that the main entrance was welded shut and the only other entry points were single,
solid doors that were locked from the inside.” Hugo stated as he glanced around at the others before noticing the three women before us.

  “You guys came in here looking for vehicles I take it…well…take whatever you want, this place was a body shop at one point so I imagine that you’ll find just about anything.” Rachel stated as she motioned to the area around us.

  “Let’s search this area and see what we can find—if all else fails we can always take separate vehicles and travel in a convoy like before.” I stated as everyone gathered around me.

  The others spread out and started searching through the many vehicles that were there and the three sisters came up to me and my women and they started asking about what our story was—I started telling them in moderate detail about all of the things that we had been through, I told them about the truths that we had learned and about the man who had been responsible for the original outbreak back in the Fall of 2000; they seemed surprised when I told them about the man who had started the whole mess and both Kari and Ivana inclined on what had happened to him.

  “We tracked him to his lair in Romania and killed him—but that wasn’t the end of him because not too long after that, we learned that he had created a clone of himself and that his marauder forces had recovered the clone and brought it back here to what had been the States and they did all sorts of experiments to it and thus it ceased to be a clone of Nicolas Bowman and became a creature that called itself Darkbourne.” I answered in a distant tone as the events I was speaking of seemed to have happened only yesterday.

  “To make the story short—we developed a cure to the Redeemer Strain and then destroyed Darkbourne in his lair and from that day till this one we have been fighting to survive…it seems like the undead are getting worse, more mutations are popping up—ones that we’ve never seen before and here just the other day we learned that there may be survivors up north in Canada…” Sheila explained as she took over for me.

  “I see…so you guys are headed that way I take it?” Rachel asked as her attention shifted to me.

  “Yes—our goal at this point is to make the trek to Great Bear Lake in Northwest Territories to Echo Bay and see how many other survivors we can locate…you girls are welcome to come with us, it’s better than hiding out in this place hoping that the dead-heads don’t sniff you out.” I answered as I looked from Rachel to Ivana and Kari.

  The three of them chattered amongst each other for a few minutes and then they turned back to me and announced that they would take us up on the offer—I had noticed that both Ivana and Rachel had been looking me over in a way that told me they were interested; my women seemed to notice this as well as they grinned at me which told me that they were up for whatever might happen.

  I turned and led the way toward the trailer of the semi opening the door as my women and the two sisters followed, Kari joined the others outside as it seemed she wasn’t interested as her sisters were—I found a comfortable spot in the sleeping area of the trailer and Jennifer and Chloe started by stripping my pants down to where my cock was sticking straight up, hard as a rock; Ivana knelt down and took it into her mouth sucking on it as Sheila and Olivia removed their clothes and started making out behind me. Ivana sucked me for several minutes before she removed her clothes and mounted me letting every inch of my dick disappear inside of her—she moaned loudly as she started moving up and down on me, several minutes later she rose up and stepped to the side as Rachel mounted me next; she leaned forward sticking her tongue into my mouth probing it as she kissed me, her movements were rough and I could feel myself building and I could see that she didn’t have any intension of climbing off as I cried out in orgasm filling her pussy with my semen. Over the next several hours I made love to Ivana, Jennifer, Sheila, Chloe and Olivia and by midnight I was exhausted and I lay there bathed in sweat as they lay on and around me still nude—I could still hear the others outside and I knew that it would only be a short time before we would have to head out again, even if we didn’t find a suitable vehicle.

  “I better see how the others are coming outside…” I stated softly as I got up and put my clothes and gear back on.

  Jennifer, Sheila, Chloe, Olivia and Ivana all nodded and lay back on the bedding and I glanced as Rachel got up and kissed me as her naked body pressed against me—her hand went to my crotch and she smiled as she passionately kissed me; I fought to urge to fuck her again right at that moment and I turned headed for the door, she grabbed her clothes putting them on hastily and then she followed me out into the open area of the building and I met up with Billy and Kayla as well as Richard and Morgana who were sitting before a small fire that they had built inside of a ring of cinderblocks.

  “Hey Chaz—we were wondering where you guys disappeared to.” Richard stated with a chuckle as he sipped on what was no doubt a cup of coffee.

  “Sorry to just disappear—we were resting, Jennifer, Sheila and the others are taking a nap inside of the trailer.” I answered as I glanced around at the area as I could see that they had prepared several vehicles that were around.

  “No worries—we figured that you would want to use that Mustang as it’s very similar to the one you drove back several years ago…so we loaded it up with food, ammo and extra gas.” Billy stated grinning.

  “What other vehicles have you guys found?” I asked in a curious tone as Rachel took my left hand and stood very close to me which didn’t seem to surprise any of the others.

  “We’ve gathered a few—there’s a military dune buggy that’s fast but won’t offer much in the way of protection; it’s got some firepower on it though.”

  “Then there’s that large Ford truck over there—the black and orange one with the jacked-up tires, there’s the modified RV over there that’ll give us a place to sleep if we can’t find anything else—there’s another car over there behind the truck that’s armored and has a machine gun on the top…but the gunner sits in the back in a seat that’s completely exposed.” Richard stated as he got up and walked around the fire pointing to the vehicles that the others of the group were still loading up with what we had brought from the beast of a dump truck that we had come in.

  “That sounds iffy…anyone in that gunner’s seat would need to be wearing riot gear or some other kind of body armor otherwise they wouldn’t last long against those things.” I stated in deep thought.

  “I agree…not sure who it was who was building these cars but they clearly had some connection with the military or at least an arms dealer back in the day because that Subaru over there is heavily armored and it has both a Browning and a Gatling Gun attached to the hood.” Richard answered pointing off to the side at another vehicle that was only slightly being prepared.

  “Last we found what I’m guessing is some kind of RV—by the markings on the front and side it’s called a Zetros.” Billy added as he joined us.

  “All of them run on regular gasoline?” I asked glancing at Rachel and then back at them.

  “Yep—regular gas is a hell of a lot easier to find and siphon then diesel is so that shouldn’t be an issue—there’s actually a gas pump off over there that we’ve been using to gas up these cars.” Richard answered folding his arms across his chest.

  “We shouldn’t waste much more time—we need to be getting back on the road, have everyone else meet us at the fire in five.” I stated as I turned and headed back to the trailer with Rachel at my side.

  Jennifer, Sheila, Chloe and Olivia were waking up and Ivana had met us at the door and they were all dressed and geared up as they had no doubt heard our conversation—I met them with kisses and then they followed me outside to the fire as the others were now gathered from where they had been before.

  “We have enough vehicles now to where everyone should be able to travel in relative comfort—we’ll be a convoy like we were before but everyone needs to be prepared for the shit storm that could come at us at any given time.” I sta
ted in a loud enough voice to where everyone could hear me.

  “I’ll drive the Zetros—we’ve stocked it with water, food and other supplies and there should be enough room for anyone else who wants to ride.” Hugo stated as he motioned to the Zetros.

  “I’m gonna drive the dune buggy—that thing looks like it’ll be a trip.” Billy stated with a wide grin.

  “I’ll ride with him as his passenger side gunner.” Kayla added as she took hold of his hand.

  “I’ll ride in the gunner seat in the back.” Garry stated as he loaded his gear into the back of the dune buggy.

  “You guys need to watch out in that thing—it doesn’t really have any armor plating to protect you…” I stated with a hint of worry in my tone.

  “We’re about to weld some plating to the sides, front and back of it so it should be okay.” Beau answered chuckling.

  “I’ll drive the big orange and black truck, Dad.” Mace stated as she and Remy along with Ember, Darc Aiden, Scarlet, Xavier, Lorraine Arianna, Courtney and Avalon stepped up before us.

  “You guys know how to defend yourselves—I’ve taught you everything I could over the past few years…just be careful and don’t try to play the hero.” I stated as I stepped up before my kids with a worried expression as my women joined me.