The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Buried Instincts

by Henson, Lynn

  "I'll be sure to do that, thanks," Bree replied.

  "And be sure to let me know if you require assistance with accommodations or anything else." Carrington stood up. "I must return to my duties." He walked back out into the courtyard.

  "Well, they seem to have this place under control. Maybe we should consider staying here?" Blake grinned.

  She looked at him flatly. "You want to stay here?"

  "The Commander looks like he's got everything under control," Blake insisted. "Why not stop running around and wait out this crisis in relative comfort?"

  She flipped her bangs up and she seemed to look more intently at him, "Ok, about that 'Commander', don't you think he's kind of young and pimply to have that kind of authority?"

  "Uh... well. I guess he's pretty young," he admitted.

  "And how secure is this place actually?" she persisted. "Three cars blocking off the entrances?"

  "Well... they’re probably spread out pretty thinly all over the city," he replied as he put his hand behind his head as he thought.

  "Yeah. Maybe. You think about that. I need to find my sister," she said as she walked past him looking for the stairs.

  He stood there for a second, then followed after her.

  The stairwell was fairly dark, but someone was thoughtful enough to space out enough candles to make it possible to climb the stairs without stumbling in the dark.

  Bree climbed up to the highest floor and pulled open the door into the hallway. Blake caught it before it closed and pushed into the hallway after her. She walked purposefully down the hall until she reached a door with three bright yellow pieces of paper taped to the front. Blake saw that each paper held one name each: Amanda, Taylor, and Kim. She stood in front of the door and rapped lightly on it. Seconds passed. Bree knocked a couple more times a little harder. More seconds passed then Bree tried the door, confirming it was locked. She seemed to deflate a little and stood back, contemplative with a touch of dismay. Blake shifted uncomfortably searching for the right words.

  "You know, just because no one's home doesn't mean that whoever you're looking for isn't around here somewhere," he offered.

  She nodded solemnly and started to turn when the door opened. Both of their heads snapped to the door as it opened and scrawny looking Asian guy stuck his head out.

  "What?" he said, annoyed.

  "I'm looking for Kim," Bree replied.

  "She is not here. I'm busy," he informed her and retreated inside, shutting the door.

  "What the fuck?" she asked, pissed, and then started slapping on the door.

  "Um, hi? Are you... Bree?" came a girl's voice from behind them.

  Bree stopped herself mid-slap and turned to look at the girl.

  Blake turned and was looking at a girl with dark complexion that he guessed made her of Indian descent. She was dressed plainly, wearing jean shorts and a white halter top which contrasted nicely with her dark skin. She had nice proportions, but she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her hair was tied back into a simple ponytail with parts of it having escaped the knot. She looked like she’d just woken up.

  “Yes, that’s me,” Bree answered her as he sized her up.

  “I’m Lisa. Kim’s a friend of mine. You’re her sister, right?”

  “Yes. Do you know where she is?” Bree answered.

  “She and her roommates went to the Strip. She was pretty excited about some buffet coupons she’d gotten online. That was about a week ago,” Lisa said sounding worried.

  “What?!” Bree exclaimed, her face turning white.

  “Do you remember where exactly she went?” Blake asked trying to keep the conversation productive.

  “Um... it might’ve been, um... the Roman-themed one? They’ve got this new, expensive buffet so when she found a way to eat there cheaper, she went as soon as she was free,” Lisa replied, thinking carefully.

  Bree turned and ran down the hallway and Blake gave Lisa a hurried thanks as he ran after her. Bree was taking the stairs two at a time while Blake could barely manage one by one. “Bree! Wait! Where are you going?!” he yelled down the stairs.

  There was the slam of a door opening followed by the quieter sound of it closing. As he struggled to the bottom of the stairs he realized that someone was above him running down as well. He paused to look up and Lisa rounded the corner. “What are you doing?” he asked as she continued down.

  “I’m going too,” Lisa declared looking defiantly at him.

  “Whatever,” he told her and continued down the rest of the stairs with Lisa hot on his heels. When he pushed the door open he held it for her and ran out of the lobby, towards where Bree had parked.

  As he burst out of the lobby entrance, he could hear Bree revving her engine as her flip lights raised up, illuminating the front of the dorm. He ran to the blocker vehicles and startled Harper who raised his weapon at him. Blake raised his hands non-threateningly but still jogged towards the parking lot while twisting his hips to face the guard. Ugh, this feels like really crappy ballet. “If you shoot me, you’re going to regret it,” Lisa threatened Harper as she continued towards the vehicles and slid her butt with surprising grace over the hood. Blake pointed at her and shrugged then waved at Harper who lowered his weapon in resignation.

  As Blake cleared the hood he heard Bree’s car peel out, her engine sounding like an angry hornet and she sped out of the parking lot and veered crazily onto the road while still accelerating towards the Strip.

  “Oh, fuck. Now what?” he asked himself as he came to a halt.

  “We take my car!” Lisa said as she ran past him moving further into the parking lot. He followed after her and soon they came to a beat up looking silver colored hatchback. She ran over to the driver’s side as she fished some keys out of her pocket and he heard the door on the passenger side unlock. They got in the car and after a couple of tries, the engine started and she backed carefully up and slowly exited the parking lot, pausing to signal before she turned onto the street.

  “Can’t you drive any faster?” Blake asked, finally unable to contain himself.

  “What’s the point? We know where she’s going,” she replied, concentrating on driving.

  “Because if we get there after she does and she runs inside, we’ll have to find her too!” he pointed out, exasperated.

  “If we crash, then we’re going to waste even more time,” she said adamantly.

  “Fine,” he said in a tone that made it clear that it was not fine.

  They continued down the road at an agonizingly street legal pace and Blake stared out the window impatiently. Even without the lights, he thought he had a fair chance of identifying the skyline splayed out in front of him as Vegas. There was a lack of uniformity on the Vegas strip that only made sense in this adult playground. It certainly doesn’t look like very much fun with the power out. Without all the color it looks dead and ominous.

  Lisa pulled to a stop at the next intersection and waited patiently.

  Blake looked at her, confused. “Why’d you stop? We’re in a hurry.”

  She pointed over to her left at a woman wearing jeans and a billowy yellow blouse was limping towards their car. “She’s crossing the street.”

  “Um,” he said in alarm. “Let’s just go. I don’t think she’s crossing the street.”

  The woman limped towards the driver’s side, definitely heading directly towards them. “Lisa. Come on. Go,” he begged. Lisa was stubborn though and dutifully waited for the woman to cross the street. Instead, she came right up to the driver’s window and placed both of her hands on the glass and started rubbing at it ineffectively as the woman looked in with dead eyes and mouthed her primal gibberish at her. Lisa recoiled and fumbled around with the gas pedal, the car lurched forward twice and then proceeded through the intersection. Blake looked back and the woman was walking after them. “Please don’t do that again,” he suggested. She nodded in nervous agreement and they kept going.

  “We should keep off Las Vegas Blvd,
” he told her, and she turned right at the next intersection which ran them parallel to the Strip where some of the parking garages attached to the hotel casinos were. A group of Asian women dressed in dark brown game table uniforms ran across the street causing Lisa to brake unnecessarily hard. They didn’t even spare their car a glance as they got to the other side of the street and disappeared deeper into the night.

  “We’re going to have a bit of a problem,” she predicted. “To get to the particular place we need to be at we’re going to have to cross Las Vegas Blvd. Are we going to be able to do that?”

  “I’m not sure. I know it’s probably full of the infected, but I’m not sure to what extent or how far down the street it goes. We’ll just have to see,” he answered.

  She made a left at the next light, and ahead of them, the road was swarming with zombies. Lisa brought the car to a stop and several of the closer zombies ahead of them turned to look and moved towards them. There was sudden movement to Blake’s right and he saw a person emerge from a trash can and start running towards them. Unfortunately, there were too many of the infected in that person’s way. One of them snagged his clothing and he was pulled to the floor. He disappeared from sight as several dropped to their hands and knees and surrounded the hapless person. “Oh god. What are they doing to him?” Lisa said in horror, her hand covering her mouth.

  “Nothing good. Look, Lisa,” he said looking her directly in her eyes, “You have to stay calm. We need to get across there so we can help Bree and Kim.” She was obviously scared but he could see her calming down as he talked to her. “Try to drive slowly through them,” he suggested. “Don’t worry if you hit some of them, they’re beyond caring. Are all the windows closed? Doors locked?” She pushed on the lock button to make sure and they looked around to confirm all their windows were closed. “Ok then, just do your best. Nice and easy.”

  She put the car into drive, started forward, and had to turn immediately to give the encroaching infected a berth. She skirted around the first cluster of zombies only to smack into a zombified old man who toppled to the street as he reached out at the car. Lisa let out a terrified squeak as she slammed on the brakes and brought their car to a halt. “Keep going, it’s ok,” he encouraged her. Lisa closed her eyes and took a couple of breaths. Then she opened her eyes and started forward again.

  She pushed ahead and though she clipped several zombies, she managed to avoid the larger groups. They were driving relatively slow and it wasn’t long before their car was surrounded by the undead that were all scratching and pawing at their windows. “Um... I think this will work. By trying to maintain a constant speed we can push away these people without causing critical damage to the car. As long as that speed isn’t too fast or slow that is,” she theorized.

  That strategy was enough to get them halfway across the intersection. Lisa grunted with effort as she scanned for the path of least resistance. The other side of the street seemed to be more crowded and Blake didn’t see an obvious way forward. Unwilling to decrease her speed, Lisa angled them towards a gap between a frail-looking octogenarian dressed in her floral regalia and a group of what could only be Japanese tourists. “Whoa, Lisa... I don’t think-,” he tried to say as she turned hard away from the Japanese tourists and ran over the old woman who, from his perspective, seemed to drop straight into the ground. They rolled past the tourists who all reached out and brushed Blake’s windows with their outstretched fingers.

  The undead density after getting past that area dropped and Blake relaxed a little as they finally cleared Las Vegas Blvd. There was a decent sized gap in the zombies just ahead of them that would easily allow their vehicle to pass without having to make any contact. Instead, Lisa angled to the left of that gap and drove straight into a familiar looking fat, bearded guy wearing sunglasses and a small baby in a front-facing baby carrier, as she shrieked and then covered her eyes with both hands. The man toppled forward onto the hood of their car, and his head smacked hard into their windshield, cracking it in a spider web fashion and splattering dark blood across the center of it. Lisa panicked and stepped on the gas, yelling and babbling the whole time. There were a series of impacts, then a bone-jarring crash after which the car lurched up and came to a halt on the sidewalk. Blake had the presence of mind to pull the emergency brake, so at least the car stopped moving. Lisa started crying and covered her face sobbing pitifully.

  The undead quickly surrounded the stopped vehicle and clawed at them, placing their hands all over the windows and mouthing grotesquely at them. “Lisa?” he said in a calm, quiet voice. She continued to sob, so he put a hand on her shoulder. She took several deep breaths and lowered her hands to look at him. “It’s ok,” he told her, “Look, why don’t you climb into the backseat and let me drive. Give you a chance to pull yourself together.” After a moment, she nodded and unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed into the back seat. Blake transferred himself to the driver’s seat and started the engine. It dutifully sputtered to life and Blake pushed slowly down on the gas. The car tried to move forward, but it was stuck on something. Realization hit and he released the emergency brake and the car inched forward.

  Enough zombies were crowded around it that the car wasn’t able to move forward in drive without him adding gas. When he added gas, the car felt sluggish, maybe because of all the resistance standing around the car so he added more gas. The car lurched forward moving towards a wall, so he cranked the wheel over to the left but the car seemed resistant to the idea. Shit, maybe the car’s been damaged. Despite the difficulty, Blake managed to get the car straightened out and drove on the sidewalk, knocking over the infected as he went. Fortunately, they weren’t too far from their destination and he maneuvered the car onto a driveway that led to some buildings that were themed in the style of ancient Rome.

  The area he pulled into was basically an alley leading to a loading dock. It was relatively clear of zombies for the moment, but he was sure that in a few minutes because he was driving down that alley, they would follow them in. Better hurry then. We have to get inside fast or our options will disappear. He stomped on the gas and the car lurched forward, but pulled to the left. He struggled with the wheel but couldn’t correct enough and with a loud crack, the driver’s side mirror broke off and flew away. That was followed immediately by the horrible squealing of the left side of the car grinding along the wall. Lisa joined in with her own terrified squealing as Blake continued forward stubbornly, noting that the end of the wall they were rubbing was quickly approaching. He cleared the wall and the horrible noise stopped leaving only Lisa’s frantic blubbering. Without the wall, the car wanted to continue to it’s left biased trajectory and Blake was having a rough time trying to keep the car from careening into a building. He stopped the car about halfway and put it into park and shut it off. “Come on Lisa! We have to go!” as he exited the car. He shut the door and glanced at the front tire and almost threw up when he saw a familiar blood-soaked floral pattern wrapped around the tire well. He gagged a few times while looking back at the infected that were pouring into the alley from the street and guessed they had maybe a minute at most before they caught up to them. Lisa hadn’t exited the car yet, so he opened her door and tried to grab her hand. She recoiled from his touch, moving to the opposite side of the car, shaking her head. “We don’t have time for this!” he insisted as he grabbed her hands and tried to pull her out of the car. She pulled away, terror having overwhelmed her senses. “Lisa!” he screamed into her face, “If we don’t get out of this car right NOW, we are going to DIE!” This got through to her because she stopped resisting and allowed herself to be pulled from the car. Blake took a quick look behind him to ensure they were still ahead of the infected and pulled Lisa with him as he ran deeper onto the property.

  As they moved towards the end of the alley, he could see on his right side that there was some kind of open-air theater. It looked like they’d have to scale the wall to get there, so Blake pressed onward with Lisa in tow, running to
wards what looked like a restaurant up ahead. He ran up to the glass door only to almost fall over as he tried to put distance between himself and a pair of young zombies that were out of sight thanks to one of the Roman-themed pillars. They caught sight of him immediately and walked in their direction. Blake pulled Lisa away from them and it took a full two seconds for her to realize that there were infected close by. She tried to sink to a crouch as she sobbed hysterically.

  Shit, at this rate she’s going to get us killed. I need to get her somewhere safe to calm her down. He moved along the glass exterior of the restaurant, pulling Lisa along as he went. The pair of zombies chased after him slowly, following his path along the restaurant exterior. When he passed another of the pillars he doubled back, much to Lisa’s horror. She actually wrenched free and started in the same direction, but he grabbed her wrist again and looked her in the eyes and hissed “Trust me,” in a low voice. She looked at the infected pair getting closer and after a moment, nodded quickly. She was cooperative this time as he doubled back around the pillar, timing it so that the pair of infected would lose sight of him.

  He looked to the right and a small mob of zombies had filled the driveway, blocking any hope of going back the way they’d come. He pulled Lisa towards the door he’d seen originally and slammed into it, frantically pushing at it. “Fuck! It’s locked!” he yelled, panic starting to fill his mind. “Pull!” Lisa yelled back. Panic was colored with the feeling of being dumb and he jerked hard at the door. It opened easily enough and he pushed Lisa through the doorway as he followed after her and pulled the door shut behind him. He looked quickly around the darkened room, but nothing seemed to be moving. Lisa let out another shriek and Blake looked in her direction, a sinking feeling growing in his stomach. There was a figure slumped over a row of tables that didn’t look like they were arranged in a manner beneficial for diners. He moved towards her and gently put his hand on her shoulder. “Come on,” he said as he led her away from the corpse. As they looked around, he realized that the chairs and tables had been rearranged to form a loose barricade that wouldn’t have been much of an obstacle for normal people, but might have stalled small numbers of the infected that came in through the door leading outside.