Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse (5 page)

Suddenly a roar of semi-automatic gunfire tore through the screams and chaos
, and Cutter looked up in shock.

There was a man by the entrance of the store, barricaded in the open doorway behind an upturned desk. He was a big guy, with huge muscled shoulders
, wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves torn off. Cutter saw the man wave at him urgently. The man was shouting something but the roar of more gunfire drowned the sound out. Cutter saw a bright red muzzle flash of light, and then felt the hiss of air as bullets flew close past him. He crouched instinctively, dragged like an anchor by the weight of the man at his side, and then fell to his knees. The man slipped from his arm and rolled painfully to the ground.

“Leave him!” the guy in the
book shop entrance was shouting.

Cutter glanced over his shoulder. Undead figures were swarming towards him. They had been men and women, but now they were a walking nightmare of horribly disfigured, torn shapes, each moving stiffly and slowly, snapping their jaws and reaching out with clawed fingers towards him.

Cutter grabbed frantically at the guy’s arm and tried to heave himself upright. The guy was like a leaden weight.

The
book store was just fifteen feet away.

Cutter knew they weren’t going to make it.

The undead shambled closer. One lunged for him but Cutter kicked out and drove the figure staggering backwards. Then he grabbed the injured guy’s arm and tried to drag him to his feet.

More
gunfire ripped around his head. He saw one of the zombies flung to the ground in a spatter of thick brown congealed ooze, and he heaved desperately at the injured man until he was upright and they were ten feet away from the store’s open doorway.

The guy behind the barricade rose to his feet, standing like a colossus in the doorway. He was a man-mountain. He had a dark sunburned face, rugged features and a jaw like an anvil. He had long black hair down to his shoulders, but it was tied back by a scrap of material like a bandanna.
There was a black nylon bag slung over his arm and some kind of a machine gun, tucked tight in against his shoulder. The weapon was aimed directly at Jack Cutter.

“Down!”

Cutter reached the curb. He heard the man shout, and he crashed to the concrete instinctively. Gunfire roared in a long ragged pulse of deafening noise. Empty shell casings spewed from the breach of the weapon in a heated arc – and then Cutter was dragging himself wearily back to his feet. He didn’t look around. He didn’t dare. He grabbed the injured guy’s arm and clenched his teeth with the last of his strength and the final reserves of his will and determination.

Cutter heard a loud undulating
moan close behind him. It was a sound that seemed demented and inhuman. He wrenched the injured guy to his feet – and made one last futile lunge to reach the bookstore.

The guy on his shoulder was dead weight. His legs were barely moving. Cutter could feel the limp heaviness of him
dragging him down like an anchor. The man groaned. His breathing was shallow, coming in fractured uncertain ragged gasps, and his skin was burning hot to the touch.

Cutter
heaved him bodily up onto the sidewalk. He could feel his knees going. He could feel the tremendous burden drain the last final reserves of his strength. He sensed the undead gathering close behind him. The sound of moaning was like the siren of his impending death. He took another step, then another…

And then there was the
crack of a single shot, so loud it was shattering – and so close that he sensed the track of the bullet and heard the loud meaty slap as it crashed into its target. The man he was carrying slipped slowly from his grasp and fell dead to the sidewalk.

Cutter looked up
in alarm. The big guy standing in the doorway was slowly lowering his weapon; smoke still curling in grey tendrils from the barrel. The two men locked eyes for a single second, and then the big man was heaving at the desk and clearing a breach in the barricade.

Cutter felt suddenly weightless; like he was hovering an inch above the ground. He went through the door at a run, tripping over debris so that he fell in an awkward tumble onto soft thick carpeting.

Jack Cutter was a big man himself; six-two, and still in good shape for a thirty-three year old guy who had played a little college ball before discovering he had a talent for art. But the gunman was a monster. He heaved Cutter to his feet effortlessly and dragged him towards the back of the book shop.

There were two women standing, fearful and crying and waiting,
by shelves of fantasy novels. They were clinging to each other, both trembling, their expressions dazed with shock. The big guy nodded at the women as he swept past.

“There’s no more to save,” he said. “
It’s time to get to the shelter.”

The group
ran past high timber stands of paperback novels and children’s books, then past an ancient elevator. Cutter followed the broad shape of the gunman’s back as he carved a path towards the darkened rear of the building.

They heard a clamor of noise behind them
: the sound of glass shattering and furniture being overturned. Something crashed to the ground with enough force to make the floor shudder. The woman next to Cutter screamed. Then the gunman was slamming his shoulder hard against the back wall of the building, beside a closed iron door.

It was a huge grey-metal slab of steel – some kind of a fire door. There was a sign that read
‘Staff Only’
in big red lettering, and underneath it was the word
‘Escape’
. The gunman hammered the butt of the machine gun against the steel three times and Cutter heard the sound echo.

An instant later
the door opened cautiously outwards, and Cutter saw the pale terrified face of a blonde woman in the darkened recess beyond. She might have been pretty – but her eyes were tragic and huge, her face streaked and smeared with tears.

“There’s no one else,” the big guy said. “These three are the only ones I could save.”

He put his hand in the middle of Cutter’s back and shoved him through the opening, followed by the two women. Then he heaved the door closed behind him until it slammed in place and locked tight, shutting them away from the chaos of a world in ruin.

Two.

Apocalypse.

Cutter was standing on a narrow landing. He could see steps descending towards a corridor bright with fluorescent lighting. The walls were rough cold brick, covered with ancient concrete masonry. He followed the blonde woman down the stairs and realized the corridor opened into a vast basement area. But it wasn’t just one large room; it was an area with darkened corners that had once been smaller rooms, and black narrow passageways. He glanced around, frowning. Off to his right he could see a wide opening and another room, maybe twenty feet square that was also bright with lighting.

The open area he stood in was cold
and musty. The floor was concrete and the area was divided by high timber stands, each one filled with books of every description. To his left, set against the wall, was a long conveyor belt that led towards a solid timber door set into the far wall. Two men were standing by the doorway, holding hammers and breathing raggedly. They came towards Cutter and the others, their expressions bleak. This part of the basement was gloomy, the lighting not strong enough to penetrate every shadowed recess. The gunman brushed past Cutter and met the two men.

“Done?”

One of the men nodded. He was an older guy, maybe in his fifties. He was wearing a white business shirt, silk tie and grey trousers. He had the ruddy complexion of a man who was not used to physical labor. He was sweating.

“Boarded up,” the
business man said. “We used what we could find in the storeroom. I think it will hold.”

The gunman looked a question at the other man holding a hammer. He was younger; a fresh faced kid who couldn’t be more than twenty. He had an ugly red rash of acne scars on his cheeks and his eyes were red, as though he had been crying.

He nodded. “It will hold,” he confirmed.

The gunman looked satisfied. He turned to Cutter and the other two women.

“This is your new home – at least temporarily,” he said. Then he led them through the opening into the smaller, well-lit room. He set the rifle down on a corner bench and let the black nylon bag slip from his arm to the ground, while around him all of the survivors silently gathered.

The gunman
turned and studied them carefully for long silent seconds. Cutter, and the two men holding hammers were the only other men in the room. Around them stood twelve women, including the two he had saved on the street. A couple of the women were in their fifties, the rest younger. He sighed.

“For those of you who don’t know me, my name
is Hos,” he said. Then he stared at the guy in the business clothes. “Mr. Grainer, if it’s all right with you, I’ll be running things from now on.”

The man
nodded, and his expression was almost relieved. “Of course,” he said.

Everyone apart from Cutter and the other rescued women knew each other. They were the
book store’s staff. Hos turned from the store manager until his eyes settled on the terrified faces of the women.

“There’s n
o point sugar-coating what is happening at ground zero,” Hos said, raising his voice so that his words carried clear and steady to everyone. “The fact is that our world has changed forever – and you better get used to it right now, because from what I’ve seen in the past twenty minutes, things are never going to be the same again.”

There was an uneasy silence, and Hos let his words hang heavily in the air for a moment.

“Right now, the streets of Newbridge are being over-run by plague infected carriers. They’re biting and killing everyone and everything they see. If you’ve been listening to the radio, this appears to be the same virus that has spread from Baltimore, and I don’t think Newbridge is the only city affected,” Hos swept his eyes across the shocked, pale faces. “In fact, I think the whole of Virginia – and maybe the whole of the eastern seaboard is being infected.”

He paused again, giving time for the information to be absorbed. “These things don’t
just die,” Hos said. “I shot a dozen of them – maybe more – and the only ones that didn’t get up again were the ones who took hits to the head. Every other infected body I fired at got up again.”

One of the women in the back of the group began to sob softly. Hos ignored her and pushed on.

“The army has helicopters overhead,” he said, and he saw a look of sudden hope spread across the faces of the women standing closest. He crushed down on it brutally. “They’re firing into the crowd,” he said. “The army is firing at everything and everyone that moves. That means the Government has given up any hopes of containing the spread of the virus. That means they’ve abandoned any hope of rescuing people like us who are trapped here, still alive. It means the Government has declared Martial Law, and the army has orders to shoot to kill anything moving on the streets.”

There were cries of anguish, and despairing moans. Several women were weeping, while others stared blankly as if seeing something beyond the walls of their refuge, their expressions grim.

Cutter felt a woman’s shoulder slump against his. It was the blonde woman who had stood at the steel door and led them down into the basement. His arm went around her shoulder automatically, and he felt her shoulders heave as she began to sob.

Hos raised his hands to
quieten everyone. He wasn’t finished. “Crying isn’t going to help,” he said sternly. “It’s not going to keep you alive. I’ve told you what I know, and what I’ve seen. The city and beyond is being destroyed and over-run by undead. They’re relentlessly exterminating everyone still alive. And the Government has abandoned us. Accept it. Then we can start to deal with it.”

“What are they?” Cutter asked Hos, and the big man turned to him.

“They’re zombies. They’re the undead.”

Cutter almost laughed. Almost. But he could see the look in the big man’s eyes. He wasn’t joking. The
n another voice in the crowd said softly, “that’s what the media is calling them too,” she confirmed. “It’s some kind of a zombie virus that started in the Baltimore area. The CDC called them zombies.”

“Then we’re fucked,” another woman said. She was a tall woman in a white blouse and grey skirt. She looked like she was in her early forties, but she had long grey hair
and a deeply concerned frown of concentration on her face, as though somehow this problem was her responsibility to solve. She threw her hands in the air and trapped her lip between her teeth. “We’re completely fucked!”

Other voices joined in the clamor, rising and becoming shrill and hysterical.

“We’re not,” Hos said, but his voice was drowned out by the soft panic wails of the group. He picked up the rifle and slammed the butt down on the bench top. “We’re not!”

They turned to him then, shocked out of their own misery and black despair by the confidence and strength of his voice. It took another moment, but slowly the group settled. The sobbing became sniffles and they looked to him with desperation, as though he alone held the
key to their survival.