APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (27 page)

             
Number 47 had been a prisoner for almost eight months and at the age of forty-five he was in the best shape of his life. His six foot-five frame carried a payload of sun-burned muscle. Back when he wasn’t a number he had been Bodie Barnes, divorced factory worker and tournament bowling champion of Zanesville, Ohio, but he had also been on blood pressure medicine and had been a diabetic because of his weight. His bunkmate and all-around best bro, known to his fellow inmates as 48, used to go by the moniker of Daniel Tyson, he was only thirty-eight years old and had been in the process of buying his first home when he had been shackled, beaten and forced into slave labor by a military that had lost its way. He was also of Zanesville and was also in the best shape of his life. They had stolen a car, well not really stole it as the owner was more than likely rotting on his or her feet, and had driven it to the town of Xenia, Ohio before running out of gas. They found an old farm house and had cleaned the zombies out of the place, before making themselves at home.

             
After rummaging through the old house they inventoried the goods they had scavenged. 47 and 48 were thankful it had been a farm house and not a townhouse in the ‘burbs. They had gathered blankets, canned goods, three shotguns, a .22 rifle, and a .30/.30 lever action Winchester, with a few boxes of ammunition. They had also found changes of clothes that weren’t a perfect fit, but with a few adjustments, would carry them over. They also found soap, shampoo, deodorant and best of all, a springhouse behind the home.

             
Even though they were exhausted they knew that night time was the best time to run from the living, although it was also the most dangerous time to encounter the zombie hordes. Right now, though, they had to worry about the living. They loaded up the car, a slightly rusted out Ford Taurus that seemed to run fairly smooth despite its appearance and the time spent sitting.  48 noticed a whip antenna sprouting from the back bumper of the old truck parked by the barn. They were happy to see that it was connected to a forty channel C.B. They disconnected it and wired it up to the Taurus. They set the tuner on scan; it was always good to know when and where their pursuers might be. 48 climbed behind the wheel and gave 47 a chance to rest while he drove east. “Why again are we going to West Virginia?” asked Bodie.

             
Daniel glanced at him with a pained expression. “How many times have I told you about the bunker that the government built underneath the Greenbrier Hotel? That is where we need to go."

             
“If it’s government, don’t you think that the military would have already taken control of it?” asked Bodie.

             
“It was decommissioned in ninety-five, but everything in it was kept up to date until then. It was opened to the public after that, so it was, at least maintained until the whole zombie thing." Daniel saw Bodie grinning at him and realized the big man was just messing with him.

             
                       
Chapter 28 - Where have all the Good Times Gone?

Cincinnati, Ohio 

              John Walker had parted ways with his fellow escapees from Wright Pat due to a conflict of direction. They had said something about going to West Virginia and that was no place for him. They looked like the prototypical hillbillies, so they should fit right in, but his home was Cincinnati. He had some unfinished business with that black bitch that had shot him and then promised him a huge load of bullshit. Walker believed that she must be the biggest lying whore he had ever met and the way he figured it, she had essentially sold out a brotha to the man. To Walker’s way of thinking she was the equivalent of those African’s that would raid small tribes, bushwhack innocent folks and then sell them as slaves to the white man. There wasn’t anything lower than that and John was going to show her the meaning of Good Times; his, not hers.

             
It hadn’t been all that hard to find a weapon and ammo. Actually, he was better equipped now than when that bitch had shot him. He couldn’t remember her name, but he would remember her face.

             
John didn’t have to go past I-275 to know that Cincinnati was finished. Plumes of smoke were very visible from where he stood on the outer belt; there were hundreds of those towers of smoke rising high in the sky where they met, converged and formed a black-gray mass that loomed over the destroyed city, like a message from an angry god. These towers were the only ones rising into the sky, though. Gone, was the skyline that he remembered so well, and it was eerily quiet. He listened and found the silence far more disturbing than the war zone of gun fire, which he had once grown so accustomed to. No gunshots meant no one was left to battle the dead.  Although the fires still burned, from the looks of the bowing skeletal frames of the skyline, they had been burning for some time. It looked to him as if the military had carpet bombed the whole town. There was nothing left for him there. The lack of HMMWV’s and tanks left little doubt that the military had moved on to greener pastures.

             
“Nothing left there but black lung.” He turned from his hometown and started walking east. He needed to find a car. There were plenty on the outer belt, but he knew from past experience that they would all be sitting on empty, some would be occupied by the dead that had never figured out the subtle nuances of unbuckling their seat belts, while others were charred husks. His best bet was to head toward more rural roads. He saw a wooded area and headed in that direction. If he walked continuously eastward he would find another road.

             
“Shit,” he said when he heard them. The moaning of the dead seemed to reverberate through the woods. Like animals fleeing the woods during a forest fire, the dead had exited the Queen City before they were barbequed. He wrested the M-16 from his shoulder and pulled back the charging handle. The first one he saw was completely naked and horribly burned. It threw its head back and screamed a loud high pitched howl that made his skin crawl. He had never heard them make that sound before. It was tortured and enraged and sounded dreadfully hungry. He slapped the butt stock into his shoulder, peered down the sights, lining it up to the zombie’s face, and pulled the trigger as he closed his eyes waiting for the recoil. There was no boom, no recoil, nothing but the imitations of the first scream coming from further in the woods.

             
“What the hell?” he exclaimed and slapped the side of the rifle. He brought it back up and sighted it again, pulling the trigger like the novice that he was. Again, there was nothing. He yanked back the charging handle violently two or three more times. “Dammit!” He had assumed that firing one of these things would be self-explanatory, but now he knew that he had been mistaken. He flung it into the tall weeds and turned on his heel. John Walker knew when to call it a day. He cursed himself for not going with 47 and 48, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He headed back to the interstate. It would be hard to surround him in that maze and he would only need to run until he outdistanced them. Then he could find a place to hole up.

                                                  
Chapter 29 - The New General’s Groove

Wright Patterson Air Force Base

Dayton, Ohio 

             
Morning dawned at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Thomas Walters had been dreaming of his mother and it hadn’t been pretty. He never lost any sleep from murdering his brother, but he regretted leaving the old lady after she had helped him so much. He had returned to her home after what he liked to think of as ‘justifiable homicide’, but by the time he had gotten back to her he found that she had opened the door for one of her elderly neighbors and that had ultimately been a bad decision. She was dead on her feet when he found her, but he couldn’t bring himself to shoot her. Maybe he should have, but he just couldn’t. It was the only time he could remember crying. There was nothing to be done about that now, so he pushed the dream from his mind and crawled out of the bed he shared with his favorite whore Robin; she was a little on the dumpy side, but she knew how to treat a man.  General Thomas Walters threw open the heavy drapes and felt the sun on his face. Every day he felt renewed, invigorated. In just a scant seven months he had transformed a decimated military detachment into a powerhouse. He was in charge of all but a few militias and he was sure that those soldiers would eventually bow to his power as well.

It occurred to him that his brother, the late General Trevor Walters, had turned out to be a pretty good brother after all. Death had brought out the best in him. Walters had used his brother’s identity to take over Wright Pat and no one had thought to question his credentials amidst all the chaos. He had simply strolled on base, flashed his ID, and assumed command as the ranking officer. He had read all the letters Trevor had sent to his mother and had memorized the basics of his brother’s history, not by any desire to know, but by his mother’s repetitious praising of her other son. The General wished his mother could see him now. Not the part where he murdered his own brother, but this part; the part that saw Walters as a leader and an extremely proficient one.

Wright Patterson had been completely rebuilt and now it was a sprawling bunker of reinforced concrete that was mostly underground. Thomas knew that he had to keep his troops happy, that was the key to any endeavor, military or not. Give the low man their base needs and some extra perks and they would do just about anything. The slaves saw to that. The slaves had been divided into specialties. Plumbers, electricians, heavy equipment operators, carpenters and those not skilled were laborers. Walters even gave the skilled slaves authority over the laborers. They were the new middle management.

             
Walters had decided that the Base should not only be a fortress, but should look imposing as well, so he had designed it to resemble a castle. It had something of a medieval appearance to add to the psychological aspect of it. The slaves, who had formerly been farmers, were charged to tend the fields of crops for his garrison of six thousand troops and three thousand fellow slaves. He was abruptly shaken from his reverie by a sharp knock at his door. “Sir?” ventured a low respectful voice.

             
“What is it Phelps?” Walters answered cheerfully. Phelps had been his attending captain for the past seven months and was the closest thing Walters could consider a friend.

He turned as the door opened and Phelps came to attention, “Sir.”

              “At ease, Captain; what brings you here this early in the morning?”

             
The General noticed that Phelps did little to relax his posture and knew immediately that something was amiss. “Sir, I am afraid I have some bad news.”

             
Walters’ expression narrowed into a squinty eyed intensity. “Go on.”

             
“Three of our prisoners escaped last night.”

             
“What, how?”  The General knew that the correctional facility was nearly inescapable.

             
The Captain shook his head. “We aren’t sure, Sir. I have doubled the guards and they are going over every square inch with the dogs to find their escape route as we speak.”

             
“Which prisoners were they?”

             
“Numbers 16, 47 and 48.” answered the nervous captain.

             
“Ahh…” Walters ran a finger over the personnel list and found the prisoner’s numbers.  “Walker, Barnes and Tyson,” The General paused for a moment then added, “Have the other prisoners heard of this yet?”

             
“It’s not for certain, but I believe they didn’t trust the others enough to make it known.”

             
“Probably not,” answered the General. “Those three kept mainly to themselves, they would have known that if they had told another prisoner they would have been betrayed. Good then. Collect three of our laborers from the garrison, take them to Dayton Correctional facility, make sure they resemble the three of them and execute them from a distance so the other prisoners will see and believe them to be 16, 47 and 48, then they will know that this type of behavior is not acceptable.”

             
“Yes Sir!” the captain turned on his heel and strode for the door.