Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse (6 page)

“We’re safe for the moment,” Hos reassured the group. “And we have enough essentials to last a little while.” The room they were gathered in had been set up as a staff
lunch-room. There was a small microwave on a counter next to a sink, and a wooden table in the middle of the floor surrounded by four mis-matched worn chairs. Under a long timber bench top was a small refrigerator, and on top of the bench was an old television. “But we don’t have a lot of food – certainly not enough to last us more than a day or two.” he said. “But we are safe. This book shop used to be a bank,” Hos explained. “This whole area was once the bank’s vaults and storage areas. The shipping door at the back of the building has been secured – and there are no other ways in or out. But we need to prepare – quickly, so anyone who thinks they’ve got time for tears and misery can think again. Right now, we’re all going to pull our weight. You can cry later.”

“I can’t stay here,” a woman said from the back of the room, her voice outraged. She pushed herself forward, and her expression was filled with mindless terror. “I
have children. They need me!” Her voice rose in panic. “I can’t wait here for a day, or even an hour. I’ve got to get to my babies. I’ve got to get to my family!”

Hos cut the woman off, and his tone was harsh, almost brutal.

He took a long deep breath as though he were about to dive into deep water. “Stephanie, your family is most likely already dead,” Hos said. “All our families are probably dead by now. The city is being over-run. Maybe the whole state and the country.”

The woman sagged to her knees and began to tremble violently. Cutter heard her sobbing. One of the other women knelt beside her and wrapped a comforting arm around the woman’s heaving shoulders.

“If anyone leaves this shelter, you’ll be dead within minutes,” Hos said brutally. “We have to assume that everyone we know has been bitten and infected. That means the families we had no longer exist. They’re undead. You can’t help them. You can’t save them. It’s already too late. All you can do is save yourself.”

“Dammit, Hos! It’s all right for you. You don’t have a wife or kids. I have my husband and
a small child to think about,” another woman stood taller in the group and cried out in angry protest. Her voice was shrill. Other voices in the crowd began to swell in chorus, becoming heated and rising in panic. “What’s the point of living if we’ve lost our families and loved ones?”

Hos stared them all down, cowering them to muttered resentful silence with the sheer force of his will. “I’m
not talking about living, Suzie,” he said grimly to one of the younger women. She was newly married and had just returned from her honeymoon a week before. She was working part-time. “I’m talking about surviving. That’s all. Living comes later, and so do the regrets and the mourning. But right now we’re fighting to survive.”

Cutter stepped forward. “Hos is right,” he said. “I saw what was happening up on the street. These zombie killers are infected with some kind of fury – some kind of mad rage. They’re vicious and relentless. You can’t kill them, which means you can’t defend yourself. By now there are tens of thousand of them. I saw one girl bitten by a woman, and within minutes that young girl’s body was twitching again, like her corpse was coming back to life. That means it can’t be contained.
And I saw the helicopters,” he added grimly. “Hos is right. They’re mowing down everyone – man woman and child. They’re killing anything that moves. It’s a slaughter.”

Cutte
r saw heads begin to nod in meek, shocked understanding and some kind of remorseful guilt. One by one they turned slowly back towards the tall brooding shape of Hos.

The group had gravitated to this man, accepting him naturally as their leader, despite the store manager’s authority. Cutter too was drawn to the sense of calm confidence the huge man seemed to radiate.

“What happens after a day or two of waiting, Hos?” John Grainger, the book store manager asked. His voice was shaky and filled with anguish. “Where will you lead us to?” His soft pink hands fluttered like bird’s wings. “If the city and whole state has been over-run by zombies – where the hell can we go that will be safe, and what do we do?”

Hos shook his head slowly, and Cutter had the impression the big man was unwilling to answer the question directly. He felt a sudden sense of
unease.

“It’s too early to make that decision, Mr. Grainger,” Hos said
carefully. “It’s going to depend on too many things that right now we don’t have clear information about. But I expect the next day will be the worst. By then, anyone still alive in the city and surrounds will have fled to the countryside. There won’t be anyone left alive, unless they managed to find the kind of shelter we have. So hopefully the undead will have drifted away from here, in search of others to infect. That’s how the virus has spread so quickly. They seem to be driven to infect the living. They’re not feasting on the bodies. What I saw on the street was a frenzy of slow-moving mindless killers that seemed hell-bent on biting to spread the contamination. They don’t seem to be flesh-eaters, and that’s a good thing. It means that once the initial terror has passed, there will be a lot less of them because they will be hunting further away to find new victims.”

The young guy who Cutter had met in the warehouse was still holding a hammer, as though somehow it gave him a sense of security. “We need weapons, Hos,” the kid said. “We need to find something we can fight these things with when we make our break.”

Hos nodded. Apart from the AR-15 he was holding, he had two Glocks in the black nylon bug-out bag at his feet, as well as ammunition, a knife, flashlight, duct tape, rope, matches and other bare essentials.

“We’ll make some weapons,” Hos assured the kid. “But right now we have higher priorities.”

He turned to the pretty blonde woman who had stood waiting at the steel door. “Glenda, I want you and a couple of the other women to start filling every container you can with water,” Hos said, his voice was a gravel-like deep rumble. “We can’t survive without plenty to drink.”

The blonde nodded. Cutter noticed the woman’s lip was trembling, like she was on the verge of tears, but somehow managing to hold it all together.

“Jennifer, you will monitor the television,” Hos singled out an older woman who worked in the store. “I want to know what’s happening, and where it’s happening. I want to know what the army and police are doing. Understand?” The older woman nodded. She had a handkerchief in her hand, dabbing delicately at the corners of her eyes. “Sally, you and the rest of the women will be on your phones,” Hos said. “We need to get the word out to everyone and anyone that we are here,” he added, “and we need to do it quickly. There is no guarantee that the phone networks, or the power will last. I want you to call or message family and friends and every police station in Virginia. Tell them how many we are, and where we are located.”

Sally was a tall, heavy-set brunette woman bulging out of a tight white blouse and a long blue skirt. She nodded, and snatched at her handbag. Then she turned to the rest of the women and gathered them around her like a
mother hen counting her chicks.

Hos waited until the women were organized and occupied with their tasks.
Then he took Cutter’s arm and steered him away from the kitchen – back into the big gloomy storage room. John Grainer and the other young guy followed.

“We’re going to wait it out down here for twenty-four hours,” Hos explained
to the men. “It’s important we keep everyone busy – keep them distracted with tasks.”

Cutter and the others
around him nodded.

“
We don’t have enough food to last longer than that, and if we lose power in the meantime, these women are going to get hysterical in the dark,” he added. “So we need to prepare a fire for light and warmth if that happens.”

The young guy frowned. “We’ll choke,” he said. “Hos there’s no ventilation down here. You said it yourself – this place is a vault. If we go lighting bonfires, the place will fill with smoke within an hour.”

Hos nodded patiently. “I know, Jimmy,” he said. “But we’re not going to prepare bonfires. We’re going to prepare old-fashioned torches. And they’re only a precaution. I don’t plan on lighting anything unless the power goes out.”

The young guy nodded. The store manager stepped forward
, tugging his tie loose and unfastening the top button of his shirt. “What do you want us to do?”

“Break apart a bookshelf, or find something we can wrap cloth around,” Hos explained. “There are plenty of old cleaning rags in the store room. We just need something to wrap around them if the time comes.”

John Grainger nodded. He grabbed the young man’s elbow and steered him away towards one of the dark corridors Cutter had noticed earlier. Cutter watched the two men go. When he turned back, Hos was staring at him, like he was measuring his worth. The big man’s eyes were narrowed and cunning. Cutter met and held his gaze defiantly.

Hos bristled.
“You got something to say?”

“Yeah,”
Cutter nodded slowly, then stared the big man in the eyes. “I saw the way you shot,” he said. “You’re pretty handy with a gun.”

The expression on
Hos’s face became a harsh mirthless smile. “It’s a good gun,” he said. “I call it Visa – because I never leave home without it.”

Cutter grunted.
“But you’re also a murderer,” he accused. “You killed that man I was helping in cold blood.”

Hos said nothing for a long moment, and when he spoke his
tone was dispassionate and remote, his voice lowered and masked by the rising sounds of bustling activity around them. “Yeah, I killed him,” he admitted. “And maybe that does make me a murderer. But I also saved your fuckin’ life – and what I did is no worse than what you did.”

Cutter glared. “Meaning?”

“Meaning you were trying to commit suicide by trying to save the man,” Hos stabbed his finger at Cutter. “So don’t judge me.”

The two men star
ed at each other for long moments, the tension between them rising.

“Why
else would you do it?” Hos challenged Cutter. “You knew when you reached the middle of the road that you weren’t going to make it dragging that guy with you. So why did you keep trying? Have you got some kind of a death wish?”

Cutter stared at Hos, his eyes black and cold. “I had my reasons.”

Hos grunted. “Well your reasons left me with no choice but to put the guy down to save your ass. I wouldn’t have had to shoot, if you hadn’t been trying to kill yourself saving him.”

There was another long moment of tension, and then Hos suddenly spread his arms wide
in exasperation. “Take a look at where we are! Think about what is happening. The old rules no longer apply,” Hos said. “Civilization went out the window when those undead mothers started infecting and killing people. I did what I had to do, and I’d do it again. I’m a survivalist,” Hos explained. “I’ve been prepping for this for years, because I knew it would come. I knew one day the world was going to go to hell – and now it has. Now only the strong and the prepared will survive. Now the weak and infirm will be the first to die. I didn’t cause the situation, but I ain’t going to be a victim, so don’t give me your bleeding heart shit. I ain’t got time. None of us have.”

Cutter said nothing for a long moment. He could hear women talking urgently on their phones, and the sound of running water coming from the
lunch room. “You think you’re prepared for this?”

“As well as can be,” Hos said
confidently. “I’ve got guns, ammunition and enough survival gear in my bug-out bag to make it out of the city and get clear to safety.”

“Enough gear f
or you. Right?”

Hos nodded. “For me.”

Cutter raised an eyebrow. “Then what happens to the rest of us?”

“
I don’t give a shit,” Hos flared. “You should have thought of that before doomsday. Right now you’re safe. But once we leave this place, you, and the rest of these people are on your own,” he said bluntly.

“
You’re just going to leave us? Abandon everyone in this room?”

“
Damned right I am,” Hos said, and his voice became an angry growl. “I came into town to fetch my mother from the nursing home because I thought there was still time. But when I got there she was crawling across the floor, vomiting blood and moaning like a mad fuckin’ dog,” he snarled. “So I put a bullet in her head. Then I came in to work to get my bug out bag, and got caught here. I should have been away by now.”

“Away?
Away where?” Cutter was confused. “Where is there to go?”

“I’ve got a place
. About forty miles out of town.”

“A place?”

“A compound. On some land. That’s where I’m going. That’s where I’ll wait this thing out,” Hos explained.

Cutter frowned.
“What makes your place any safer than any other?”

“Because I’ve prepared,” Hos said. “I’ve got enough weapons and ammunition to last six months, a motorbike, and months of food and bottled water.
And I’ve got a small generator. It’s the kind of place that doesn’t get noticed. And it’s isolated from other properties.”

“
But there’s no hope for the rest of these people?”