The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Buried Instincts

by Henson, Lynn

  Blake returned to his apartment and spent the next couple hours checking to see if the power came back on and looking out into the street. It was depressing discovering how dependent upon electricity he’d become in order to keep himself occupied. He finally decided on engrossing himself in a paperback novel he’d been reading off and on. Hours passed and when he finished another chapter he decided to put the book down and attend to his growling stomach. On the way to the kitchen, there was a knock at the door. He opened it to Bree who was carrying a couple of bags of stuff. She offered one to him that looked delightfully like take out. He accepted it gratefully and ushered her inside. He brought the food to the coffee table and removed the three styrofoam boxed that were bulging with noodles, saucy beef and broccoli, and mu shu pork. He waited for her to get seated and dove in.

  “Get what you needed to get done?” he asked around mouthfuls of deliciousness.

  She nodded. “Yes. I’m leaving tomorrow in the morning.”

  “Oh.”

  There was a pause as they chewed their food.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to drive to Las Vegas.”

  “Are things there better than here?”

  She shrugged, “I don’t know. But I’m going there to find someone.”

  “Who?”

  “My sister.”

  “Oh.”

  More quiet chewing.

  “Can I go with you?” he blurted out.

  She looked at him thoughtfully. “Why?”

  “Um. Well, I’m not doing a whole lot at the moment.”

  She looked at him for another moment. “I guess so.”

  “Ok.” He felt relieved somehow but wasn’t sure why. He continued to eat until he couldn’t and then got up. “I’m going to pack some stuff.”

  “Not too much, ok? My car isn’t too big,” she requested.

  He proceeded to stuff some of his clothes into a backpack along with some toiletries. He brought this back to the living room and threw his paperback on top of the bag. He looked over at her for her approval. She gave him a thumbs up. “I’ve got food coma,” he told her. “I’m going to sleep.” He went into his bedroom before she could object and got under the covers.

  eight

  Someone was knocking on the door.

  Groggy, he peeled away his blanket, got to his feet and stumbled to his front door.

  The knocking sounded again, a rapid three knocks that made his flimsy front door strain with every hit. He undid the locks and opened the door a crack.

  On the other side, a soldier in combat fatigues, helmet, and M-16 at the ready. He leveled the assault rifle at the door the second it opened, and once he saw Blake staring dumbly at the soldier he lowered his rifle.

  “Sir. This area is being evacuated. We have a bus to bring you to a safe location. You have fifteen minutes to get dressed and pack only your essential items. Please be prompt.” With that, the soldier did an about face and double-timed it to the next door. A second later there was another round of pounding on his neighbor’s door.

  Blake closed the door and locked it again. He yawned and stretched his arms as he moved back into his living room determined to get back under his warm blanket as quickly as possible. He let out a shriek when he saw the figure standing in front of his couch.

  Bree jumped at the sudden noise and then gave him a condescending look. “Who was at the door?”

  “Just some soldier talking about some evacuation.” He brushed past her and got back into his bed, pulling his blanket around him and spread out.

  “Uh... evacuation? Then shouldn’t we be leaving?”

  He opened one eye. She’d followed him into his bedroom. He closed the eye. “Five minutes,” he muttered.

  The next thing he knew his blankets were ripped from the bed. “Hey...” he protested.

  “Are you an idiot?!” she screeched.

  “No,” he replied lamely.

  “A soldier comes to the door and says we’re being evacuated and you want to go back to sleep? What’s wrong with you?”

  He thought about it. “Yeah, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I know.”

  “Then shouldn’t we be getting evacuated?!”

  He paused to collect his thoughts and sort out his feelings before replying, “My gut is telling me not to go.”

  “Your gut.”

  “I can’t explain it. I’ve got this strong hunch that we shouldn’t go.”

  “That’s it?”

  He shrugged.

  “Get up. We’re going.”

  “What about Vegas?”

  “Seems like they might get this thing under control. And if that’s true, I don’t have to worry about my sister.”

  “Ok. I guess you’re right. Sorry. Let’s go.”

  “What about your hunch?”

  “Well, now that you’ve made me think about it... You’re right. We should definitely get evacuated,” he admitted.

  “Do you have a parking space?”

  “Oh yeah, but I don’t use it because I don’t have a car. Uh... anymore.”

  “Well, show it to me, please. I’d like to move my car to somewhere more secure. Oh, and you’d better grab anything you don’t want left here.” She turned and walked out his front door.

  He stared blankly at the spot she was standing in, then looked about, wondering what was essential to him, but it seemed like he’d already packed what he’d needed last night. It felt like he should take something though, so he settled on a small stuffed pig that had somehow followed him around since he was a child. He brought it back to the living room and stuffed it in his backpack. He added the paperback in with it then closed it up. He shouldered it and went out his front door, locking it up behind him.

  Bree was sitting at the top of the stairs, idly watching his neighbors as they fretted about the injustice of being evacuated and having to leave behind their big screen TVs, leather loungers, and uncountable other creature comforts. He walked past her and started down the stairs shooting a “Let’s go,” her way. Bree started down after him and he opened a heavy metal door, jogged down the short set of stairs and pushed open the door at the bottom to reveal the buildings parking area.

  Fluorescents flickered and buzzed, illuminating the eight cars parked here. Old Mercedes and beat up Toyotas were the general rule. The giant of the group was a Ford F150, the back loaded with toolboxes and pieces of all sorts of construction materials. He gestured at his parking stall and then walked towards the gate covering the driveway and gave the old grey string dangling from the small motor a yank. There was a loud click and the wheels on the motor started turning and squeaking. The gate rose and Blake ducked under it with Bree following him out to the street. Her keys jingled as she pulled them from her pocket and she jogged over to where her car was parked and hopped in. The gate started to close and he gave the string another tug. Her red Toyota revved as it crested the parking entrance and rolled past him. She utilized the small space to deftly back into his space, revved the car one last time and turned off the engine. She popped out and locked her car, then they walked out onto the street.

  The soldiers by this time had managed to negotiate most of the people onto a waiting school bus. A small line of the remainder of his neighbors had queued up outside the bus door and waited as an elderly woman took each step slowly, dragging her giant floral bag after her. Soldiers were converging towards them, a few still trying the doors of houses on this street. They queued up behind an enormous black woman with blonde cornrows ending in red wooden beads. She shifted slowly forward and gave her most annoyed look at the old woman, exhaled haughtily and looked up at the sky. She turned to look back at Bree and shook her head. It was then Blake saw that she was cradling an infant in her substantial left arm. The baby had matching blonde cornrows with smaller light blue beads. Bree squealed in delight.

  “Awww... your baby is so cute! He looks just like you!” she gushed. She started wiggling her fingers at the b
aby who looked briefly at her, then looked up his mom’s nostril.

  A giant grin spread across the woman’s face at this. “Why, thank you!” She bounced the baby up and down for Bree which also sent massive ripples up and down the woman’s arm, Blake noticed, mesmerized.

  “Blub blub blub blub blub,” he muttered.

  Bree had managed to get the baby to grab her finger. She looked back at him, “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” He shoved his hands in his pocket and looked down the street. He caught sight of three soldiers with assault rifles at the ready and on the brink of storming into one of the houses down the street. He could hear one of them yelling. The door opened suddenly and everyone immediately raised their rifles to a firing position. The one who had been yelling reached in and pulled out a terrified Mexican woman wearing beige shorts and a hot pink blouse. She tumbled down her steps and onto her lawn, still holding her hands up somehow, mouth moving a mile a minute. One of the soldiers was pointing his rifle at her, while the other two disappeared into the house.

  All the people in front of him were now on the bus, Bree climbed the steps and being among the last to get on, had to walk all the way to the back. He climbed in as well and made his way over shoes and peoples belongings spilling out into the aisle. He finally got to the back and plunked himself down next to Bree.

  The bus roared to life, the driver wheeled the double doors closed and with a mechanical crunch and a gout of black smoke filling the back window, pulled away from the curb, heading down the street. He looked back at the house and one of the soldiers was taping off the now closed door. The other soldiers stood on the lawn defensively looking in either direction. Of the woman they had pulled out, there was no sign. He lost sight of what was happening as the bus turned the corner.

  The chaos of the previous day’s traffic snarls was nowhere to be seen today. Rather, the police and the military were working together and steadily funneling people to the east. Side streets had been barricaded off with construction barriers in order to keep the departing traffic flowing in one direction. Buses of all sorts and army trucks were most prominent on the streets, all of which were packed full of people. Occasionally as they drove east, military vehicles would pass them going in the opposite direction. There was a good mix of troop transports, humvees, and ambulances.

  People in the bus either chattered nervously or were staring intently at their cell phones. The fifty-something woman who lived downstairs in the first unit was speculating as to what was going on with the forty-something woman who lives next door to her. “It’s the swine flu,” she said wisely to her younger neighbor. “It came in through the airport. Whole planeload of Russians. By the time they figured out that the passengers were sick, about half of them had already hit the streets.” The other woman nodded knowingly.

  Across the aisle, a young guy who had dressed for work in his black suit and gold tie was chatting into his phone, presumably with some other asshole. Blake had already come to the conclusion that the guy is a dick based on about five seconds of observation. “It’s some terrorist thing,” he said with absolute certainty. “They just have to do this shit because if they didn’t and someone got fucked up, they’d get sued. I bet this whole thing blows over by tomorrow. I’m sure if I talk with whoever’s in charge, I’ll be able to get out of wherever they’re taking us. My time is too valuable to spend the day cooped up with old people and bums.”

  He turned to look at Bree. She was rubbing her hands anxiously. She noticed he was looking at her and stopped. “Well, what do you think is going on?”

  “I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Whatever is going on, I think it has to do with people getting sick.” She looked down, “And it’s probably really contagious. If everyone at the massage parlor got it within minutes...” She began rubbing her hands again.

  “I’m sure they’ll figure this out. Tomorrow we’ll probably be back to our normal lives, buying coffee in the morning, eating fast food at lunch, and bitching about our bosses.” He smiled, trying to be reassuring. Bree looked up at him then, unconvinced.

  “There have been scares before though. Something kills people overseas and the media goes ahead and scares the shit out of people. A month later, nothing happens. This time, there was no warning. Then there’s this evacuation. This feels like the real thing to me.”

  “It’ll be ok,” Blake replied quietly, more to himself. Bree looked back down, rhythmically rubbing her hands.

  Blake felt his body lurching forward as the bus came to a sudden halt, conversation mostly stopping. Bree grabbed the top of the seat in front of her and came halfway to her feet, looking intently ahead. Blake did the same thing to see what was going on as well.

  The bus and adjacent traffic traveling in the same direction had stopped at an intersection. He could see soldiers at the intersection had formed an evenly spaced out line to prevent traffic from crossing. Behind them, military vehicles filled with troops raced across the street. He strained to see where those vehicles were going, but he didn’t have good line of sight from where their bus was sitting and he could only watch the vehicle’s progress until they disappeared behind the Jons supermarket at the corner of the street. As nothing more interesting seemed to be happening, conversations inside the bus quickly resumed their former decibel levels, and not long after that, traffic flowing in their direction resumed. The engine revved loudly and the bus lurched forward and followed the other vehicles in front of it to cross the intersection. As they crossed, he looked down the street to see if he could see what was going on. He could only make out the backends of the army vehicles receding down the street, but he thought he could hear the popcorn popping sound of gunfire in the distance. He cast a glance back at Bree and realized she had fallen asleep, her head lolled on her chest.

  Blake saw the convention center up ahead and shifted in his seat in anticipation of getting off the bus. Several buses had already pulled up to the front of the center and people were coming out and filing into the entrance. Police officers and soldiers were spaced out all across the area, casually monitoring the situation. Several people who were in front of the convention center had engaged some of the police officers in conversations. He imagined that they were trying to get information out of them about what was happening. He wondered if they were getting meaningful answers.

  The bus rolled up and exhaled a lot of gas in a big huff as if it knew its job was done. The driver immediately wheeled the door open and people got up, collecting their stuff, anxious to get off. The military guys went out first and stood to either side of the bus door to assist with the orderly departure of the passengers. Naturally, the people who had trouble coming in had trouble getting out, but overall things seemed to go quicker because people just don’t like being cooped up in a bus. As the asshole ahead of him pushed his way past the elderly couple seated ahead of him, Blake shouldered his backpack and got up a little. Bree gave him a look and sat patiently with her legs crossed. Blake decided to wait with her and plopped down again. A few moments later, the people ahead of him were moving down the aisle so Bree hopped up, putting her pack on. Blake got up and exited the bus.

  As soon as they were off the bus, it was a matter of following the directions of the uniformed officers who were gesturing people to go this way or that way. As the line of people ahead of him came to another halt, he paused to look around at all the activity. Somehow having people everywhere was very comforting.

  Reassured, he patiently allowed the police to herd him inside the building. Bree looked around nervously as she hefted her backpack up her shoulder and plodded alongside Blake as they passed through the large doors to the convention center.

  “Wow! They have power!” Blake observed excitedly when they were allowed inside. “Emergency generators you think? I’m going to charge my phone!”

  Bree shrugged like she didn’t give a shit.