Dead Life (4 page)

             
“Fine.  Just hurry.  Your five minutes was up forty-five minutes ago.”

             
I have to admit.  The government was doing a good job of keeping this situation quiet.  It took me half an hour to find anything at all and what I found wasn’t much.  There was a video of a man in his car covered in blood.  His eyes were glazed over and he looked like he was dead.  If it wasn’t for his thrashing around, strapped in his seat belt, trying to bite the person filming him, I would have thought he was dead.  Then the website shut down and her computer froze.

             
“Great!  You broke my computer.  Thanks.  Now get out.”

             
“No, it’s fine.  This happens every time I find one of these sites.  The government is shutting them down.” 

             
“Why would they be worried about fake crap like that anyway?”

             
“It’s not fake.  It’s real.”

             
“Great, whatever.  It’s time to go.  We’ll talk at work.”  She was getting upset and when Gina got upset, there was absolutely no talking to her.

             
“Well then I’m just going to tell you everything I know and let you decide.”

             
I told her everything.  I replayed the conversation I had with my son.  I told her how I came to decide to trade the Mustang for the Hummer.  And I told her all about my shopping sprees and the guns, the arsenal, everything.  When I was done, she gave me the strangest look.  It was almost sad.

             
“Steve, I don’t know what to say to you.  I think you and your son are wrong about this.  Dead people don’t rise up to kill the living.  You act like you’re living in one of those crazy zombie movies you love to watch all the time.  Steve, I do care about you and hope you can come to your senses.  Whatever is going on we’ll be fine.  The government isn’t going to let anything bad happen.”

             
“I understand how you feel.  It’s a lot to swallow.  Just remember, when the shit hit’s the fan, call me.  I believe this is real.  I hope I’m wrong but I know I’m not.  Do me a favor.  Don’t talk to anyone at work about this.  I won’t be there tonight.  I called in sick again and then I’m off the next two nights.  And promise me when this starts that you’ll call me.  If you can’t call, come to my house.”

             
“I won’t tell anyone what we talked about.  And I promise to call you if this really happens.”

             
“That’s all I can ask.  Okay then, I’ll let you go.”

             
As I walked out the door, she reached out and touched my arm.  When I turned around, she hugged me.  And as we parted I kissed her.  I knew she still liked me.

Chapter 8

              Driving home that night, I realized how tired I was.  All I wanted to do was sleep.  Tomorrow was delivery day.  Everything I’d ordered over the internet was due to arrive and it was going to be a busy afternoon.  I would set my alarm for eight and head straight for my favorite gun store.  I had lots of ammo to buy.

             
When my alarm went off at eight, I sat straight up in bed.  I’d slept ten hours.  I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days.  I felt great.  Then I remembered what was coming and all that I had to do today.  I didn’t feel so good anymore. 

             
The day turned to shit fast.  Larry’s Guns and Ammo, my favorite gun store, wasn’t my favorite shop anymore.  They didn’t have half of the stuff  I needed.  I spent all morning going from gun store to gun store.  After six stops I finally had everything I needed.

             
Luckily when I got home at a little after one, I hadn’t missed any deliveries.  Three different UPS trucks came to my house that day, two at the same time.  By the time they were done and gone, my two car garage was just about full. 

             
I’d helped unload all three trucks and was pretty much done for.  I was going to go inside and take a nap.  As soon as I got in the house my doorbell rang.  It was my neighbor from across the street, Al.  This was all I needed.  I was sure he’d seen all the deliveries and wanted to know what was going on.  We’d talked often and got along okay but I really didn’t know him that well.  Really all I knew about Al was that he was 62, retired, and ex-military. 

             
“Hey Steve, how’s it hangin’?”

             
“Most days to the right.”

             
This was our standard way of saying hello.

             
“Looks like your opening your own store.  Or maybe you’re getting ready for World War III.”

             
“No Al, no World War III.”

             
“Well I could see some of the labels on those boxes.  I didn’t know you were a survivalist too.”

             
“You’re a survivalist?  You never mentioned that before.”

             
“You bet I am.  It’s not something I tell everyone.  People get the wrong impression.  They tend to think you’re crazy.  This world is fucked up and when the shit goes down I’m going to be ready.”

             
“Well Al, I can appreciate that.  But I’m not a survivalist.  I’m getting ready to open an E-Bay store.  I’m thinking about quitting my job and going into business for myself.”

             
“Bullshit.  I was watching pretty close while you were loading up your garage.  You bought a new Hummer and you’ve got that U-Haul here.”

             
“Look Al, I’m telling you…”

             
“Hang on Steve.  Tell you what.  Come over to my place.  I’ll show you a few things.  Then we can talk.”

             
I really didn’t have time for this.  But I had a feeling I was going to want to hear what Al had to say.

             
“Okay.  Let’s go.”

             
When we got to Al’s, we went inside.  He went straight to his fridge and grabbed a six pack of beer.

             
“Here, take one.”

             
“Al, you know I don’t drink.”  I don’t know why I even bothered to say that anymore.  I’d drunk more beers in the last couple of days than I had in years.

             
“Take one.”

             
So I took one. 

             
We went out back.  Al had a small in ground pool in his backyard and a huge shed.  We went inside the shed and I was surprised to see how empty it was.  There were a few things in it; his lawn mower and a work bench with some tools on it.  Mostly, it was just empty.

             
“When I had the pool put in, I had this done.”

             
He pulled on a ring in floor and opened the entrance to a stairway.  When he opened the hatch a light came on and he started down.  We went down some pretty steep steps.  It was cramped down there and it was empty except for a wall where it looked like there was a door to a huge safe.

             
“This is my bomb shelter.”  Let me show you inside.”

             
He opened the door and we went in.  I was impressed.  He had everything.  Along one wall was the living area.  It had two sets of bunk beds, a small table with chairs, a chemical toilet, a shower, and a small living area with a TV and a stereo.  On another wall was all his supplies.  He had canned goods, MREs (ready to eat meals) bottled water, soup, guns, ammunition, and lots and lots of boxes of stuff.  

             
“Through that other door at the far end is my generator and air filtration system.  Where we’re standing, it’s twenty feet underground.  The shower works off the pool.  There’s a pump on that wall to keep the pool chlorinated.  The pool fills automatically off county water, that is until it the water shuts down.  I’ve got a 500 gallon propane tank buried on the far side of the yard to run the generator.”

             
“I had no idea you had all this down here.”

             
“That’s the way I want it.  You finished with that beer?  Have another.”

             
I took another beer.
              “Does that crate really have grenades in it?”

             
“Yup.  I have enough munitions down here for a small army.”

             
“Are you expecting a nuclear war?”

             
“Nah, just a war.  There might be tactical nukes but nothing major.  An all out nuclear war wouldn’t make sense.  Who would win?”

             
“Yeah, nobody wins if everything’s gone.”

             
“I was planning on hiding out down here and waiting.”

             
“Waiting for what?”

             
“I don’t know.  Just see where things end up.  Take it from there.”

             
“So, why are you showing me this now?”

             
“Because I think we’re on the same page.  Let’s go back up.  There’s something else I want to show you.”

Chapter 9

              Al led me back to his house.  We went in and he sat down at his computer.  It was a nice one.  Everything in his house was nice.  About this time I was thinking how bad I’d screwed up as a kid.  Al was 62, had been retired for quite a while, and seemed to be living the good life.  If I’d have joined the service right out of high school I could have retired years ago.  Twenty and out was sounding pretty good about now.

             
“Hey Al, how long were you in the army?”

             
“I was a Marine.  To hell with the goddamn army.”

             
“My son’s in the army.”

             
“Oh, that’s right.  Sorry.  I just never liked the army.  Anyway, I was in for 32 years.”

             
“Seems like the service would have been a good way to go.”

             
“Yeah, I retired as a Master Sergeant.  The pension isn’t bad plus after I got out, I did some work for the government.  That’s why I don’t trust them.”

             
“What’d you do for them?”

             
“Nothin’ I want to talk about.  You done with that beer?  Here have another.  You sure pound them down for somebody that doesn’t drink.”

             
I took another.  There were still two left.

             
“Yeah, I quit a few years ago.  This’ll be my last.”

             
Al looked away from the computer.  He looked me straight in the eye.

             
“So why start back up now?”

             
I was trying to come up with the answer when he said “Never mind, I want to show you this.  I think it may be something you’ve already seen.”

             
With that he put a flash drive in and clicked the mouse.  There it was.  Nothing I’d seen already.  This was worse.  Zombies were everywhere.  Groups of them chasing after the living.  Whenever someone was caught they were ripped apart and devoured.  Ones that were able to get away without being tore up too badly soon joined the hordes.  Every once in a while I’d see one go down, shot in the head.  There were instances where groups of zombies were walking right into soldiers who were firing point blank into them.  They would just keep coming. The only time one would go down was if they were shot in the head.

             
Al stopped the playback.  “You’ve seen anything like this?”

             
“Yes.  But nothing quite as graphic.”

             
“I thought so.  I still got some buddies over there.  None in the service but some guys just can’t get the life of being a soldier out of them.  They’re mercs.  You know, mercenaries.  A bunch of these guys are in Africa but they find work wherever they can.  I tried it but didn’t like it.  Decided to give it all up.  Came back to the States.  I grew up in St. Charles.  It was different then.  This was all farmland.”

             
“How come I couldn’t find anything like this on the internet?”

             
“All this came straight from the guys I served with.  They wanted to let me know what’s coming.  Besides, the government’s got their hands in everything.  They control the news media and they got pretty good at shutting down anything on the internet.  They got guys just sitting at computers waiting for this shit to hit.  Then as soon as they find it, it’s gone.”