OUTNUMBERED volume 3: A Zombie Apocalypse Series (2 page)

Kira and I ambled along past pallets of miscellaneous items stacked four high. Ed called on the radio. "You aren't going to believe the amount of ammunition we've found. We're in aisle 23 past cross-aisle P. There's enough guns and ammo here to have won a war in a remote banana republic."

I replied, "I hope it's the same with food supplies. With the temperature held above freezing the food should all be good, and nothing should have frozen and burst like a lot of what we've found so far this year. If we can find a trailer in the yard with electric heaters we can take a whole trailer load back with us. But first we need to find the food storage section in this monstrosity." Shane cut into the radio conversation, "Two forklifts should be charged and ready to operate in a few hours. I'll call when you can have them."

Kira and I continued to explore the vast building. As we walked, she said, "A while back you predicted religion will again be popular with the majority when all of our present technology fails or wears out. Why do you think that? I'm especially interested because I've gathered from what you've said before that you're not inclined to practice religion."

I stopped walking, and we leaned against a single pallet of goods left at the edge of the aisle. We turned the lights off to conserve the batteries and spoke into the total darkness. In the ebony space I lost all sense of direction and focused on Kira's fragrance so close by. "A majority of people need something bigger than themselves to believe in. It becomes more prevalent in hard times. It's a human condition. We, the survivors of today's zombie curse, have had religious leaders, politicians, movie stars and sports heroes to look up to all of our lives. I believe the reverence paid to most of them was misplaced. Now that they're all gone, I still strongly predict someone will slip under the holier than thou cloak of religion and preach about a benevolent but strict god that all must worship or be condemned to eternal damnation."

She hesitated and I waited... "And from your tone, I gather you think that's bad. Why?"

"I do. Throughout the entire recorded history of mankind the worst atrocities were committed in the name of religion or politics. I'm lumping dictators as well as democratically elected officials under the mantle of politics; they've waged war, destroyed economies as well as the people in villages, towns, cities and entire countries under the guise of national security, racism or to expand the reach of their power. Man has done it in the past, and he will do it again in the future. While the earth will have hundreds or thousands of years to regenerate itself, man will foolishly repeat the same mistakes. And we'll do it soon. It's in our nature to not be satisfied; we've always looked for a shortcut to wealth and happiness or to blame someone else for our failures and shortcomings." Silence enveloped us when I stopped talking, and only the slightest of sounds in the distance assured us we weren't alone in the world.

Kira stayed silent for several seconds. I heard her move before she slid her hand along the edge of the pallet to place her hand on mine. "I'm not sure I agree with all of that."

"You don't have to, and it doesn't matter because we'll never live it. Most of it will occur long after the two of us are dead."

"But don't you see any positive aspects of religion? They do a lot for the homeless and the needy and they encourage good behavior in their members."

"Of course, they do some good. Very few things are one hundred percent good or bad. They definitely enable a peer pressure that encourages their members to behave and believe in the teaching of their founders. Peer pressure is something that has been sorely missing from our general society for at least the past fifty years. Weak people fell into the if it feels good do it philosophy and flung common sense personal limits aside."

She laughed. "That indicates you think half the people are mindless idiots."

Seriously I said, "Yeah, I do. At least half have proven me right as long as I can remember. How did the incompetent and crooked politician's stay in office? Over half the voters kept them in power because they were so uniformed they didn't know what they were voting for."

I stood, clicked the switch on my light, and we continued our scouting mission.

She needed closure on my short, hasty, unprepared, verbal treatise on the subject of our future. "So you believe the worst of mankind will rise to the top again?"

"Absolutely! It's human nature for some people to want to assume leadership and control others. And if good leaders surface to stop the crooked ones they'll be condemned, ridiculed, and denigrated until the people turn on them, just like in our lifetime. You'll start seeing signs of it before we die, if we survive the zombies to live to old age. Even in our group, if things start to go bad and stay bad for an extended period of time who will be blamed; will the average person accept a measure of the blame, or will they point at me and the others on the leadership committee?"

Kira remained silent. I assumed she was analyzing our conversation as we continued our stroll with flashlights in one hand and the other hand near our pistol butts purely out of habit.

Out thoughts were quickly overridden and pushed aside. Our light beams highlighted stacks of food as far as we could see. There was enough food to feed our group for years on end. We'd have to decide which items were the most important to take before we looked for Shane and Vince and shared our plan of taking an entire truckload of food with us..

While the forklift's batteries charged, Shane and Vince worked on a huge maroon Peterbilt tractor to haul the food we'd chosen. Kira and I braved the closeness of the zombies still congregating at the fence to locate a sixty foot long insulated box trailer with heating units. Their wailing increased noticeably the closer we got to them: and their clawing caused us to shudder at the thought of being in their grasp. During our outing three zombies found a way inside the fence, and we blasted their brains out. We assumed there must be a hole under the fence or a tear giving them access inside.

After getting it started, Vince connected the tractor to the trailer we'd found and backed it up to the loading dock. Ed and the others fired up the forklifts to load both pickups and trailers with crates of ammunition and firearms on pallets.

Well after dark, the box trailer was finally loaded with pallets of food Kira and I had selected. If the building's heating system continued to operate, we planned to return in a year for another trailer load. The place was a virtual gold mine for us.

We stopped to eat at seven. Shane rigged a converter to both pickups' electrical systems to run microwave ovens and a few twelve volt lights. We enjoyed a hot meal of jambalaya and cornbread that Andrea Michaels had sent along. We were tired when we laid down for the night on pilfered blankets and pillows, falling sleep in the total darkness of the windowless tomblike warehouse.

~*~*~*~

Early the next morning, we ate a hot breakfast with fresh coffee, thanks again to the converters Shane provided.

We were making ready to leave when Vince opened the door to go outside and get in the Peterbilt truck he would drive back to the compound. The humming sounds of hundreds of moaning creatures filled the air and instantly put everyone on edge. A leprous hand flashed through the opening, missing Vince's face by under an inch as he dodged nimbly to the side. He slammed the door against the rotted forearm and yelled, "Zombies are inside the fence. A bunch of the damn things are standing outside this door. Help." Although its muscles had long ago rotted, the devilish monster somehow was able to push the door open slowly against the resistance of Vince's planted feet.

At six feet away, I drew my sidearm. I nodded and Vince let the door open slightly. The echo of two .45 caliber shots echoed through the airplane hangar-like space; the zombie's grip loosened as it fell backward out of the doorway. Vince slammed the metal fire door shut and turned the deadbolt.

Everyone gather around as Ed and I took firing positions in front of the door with our Glocks in hand. Vince flung the door open, and we concentrated on head shots at a dozen undead milling on the concrete slab outside the door. They were only six to twelve feet away and instantly clamored loudly as they rushed to reach us. Ed and I stepped through the doorway and across the dead hulks. We split; he turned left and I went right. Vince followed right behind me and the others split between me and Ed.

At least twenty zombies milled about in the yard and then turned toward the humans they hungered for. Rifle fire from beside me dropped them to the ground as I inserted a new magazine in the Glock and jacked in the first bullet. I took my rifle from Kira at the same time Ed grabbed his rifle from Marilyn. A huge mob of the undead monsters still lined the fence and surged against it to reach us. The fence played an eerie high pitched tune as the mesh was pushed and jostled back and forth by the mindless beast.

I barked instructions, "Marilyn and Elsie stay here. Cover our backs and guard the door. Ed, take Vince and Martin and go left around the building. I'll take Shane and Kira and go right and meet you at the other side. Let's find where the stinking things are getting through the fence.”

The moans and screeches increased as we walked away from the hungry horde. We shot more zombies inside the fence as we walked to the end of the building. After we made our first right turn and walked hundreds of feet toward the next corner, we saw the problem. A forty-foot section of fence was down where a UPS delivery truck had crashed into it. The fence laid flat to within a foot of the asphalt with the truck atop it. Three ungainly zombies struggled as they crossed the fencing alongside the truck. I couldn't hide a grin as the clumsy monsters stumbled and fell and clawed their way over the bouncing wire mesh material as if they were playing on a trampoline. On firm asphalt again they stood upright and turned to us. More target practice and a further delay of least two hours. But the fence needed to be fixed before we left. If not, returning to the warehouse on our next trip might be impossible. There could be as man zombies inside the fence as out. We'd never have enough time to get the gate opened if that happened.

The six of us met and agreed to hook the Peterbilt to the delivery truck and pull it on across the fence material. Then as several of us held the zombies at bay the rest of us would push the downed fence section back up while Vince backed empty trailers against it to hold it up and in place.

All of us ran from one job to another as fast as we could. Help Vince unhook from the loaded trailer, shoot a zombie or three, help hook up to the delivery truck, shoot more zombies. The steady stream of shots from back at the downed fence attested to the steady influx of more undead.

When the jury-rigged patch job was completed, we gathered at the entrance door and looked at the mob along the fence and near the exit gate. Elsie estimated there must be three to four hundred zombies clawing the fence as they moaned their dreaded tunes. No one refuted the guesstimate. We reloaded our empty magazine and readied to shoot again.

A cold, light breeze blew against our backs as six of us walked to the gate. Once there, we split into two groups of three. We walked along the fence in opposite directions for fifty feet without shooting, and then stood there waiting. Finally, the undead pushed and clawed their way to us and massed in front of each of our small groups. Our plan to lure them away from the gate worked. We didn't want to be blocked in by a tall pile of rotting corpses.

We began systematically firing at the monsters wanting to kill us because of some evil, ungodly reason we didn't comprehend. Elsie and Marilyn faced away and covered our backs to ensure none of the dirty, rotted horrors sneaked up behind us.

It was after eleven when we finally opened the gate. Vince mashed his way across the few prone corpses with the Peterbilt and semitrailer, and the two pickups and trailers followed. Two shooters kept more zombies from reaching us as we worked to close the gate. Shane and I pushed the gates together and snapped the lock through the heavy chain before we and Kira and Elsie jumped in the trucks and followed Vince away from the life sustaining warehouse.

Slight snow flurries blew as we retraced our route through towns we'd entered the day before. We expected our trip to end on a high note after all the booty we'd found. About thirty minutes from the warehouse we encountered a frightening low note scene. A group of humans ran down a major intersection and crossed directly in front of our trucks. We were only driving thirty MPH, but still barely had time to stop without hitting anyone. Our truck led the convoy and halted in the middle of seven people. The small group was followed by another three figures two-hundred feet away. Behind them ran a group of at least twenty zombies that were maybe thirty feet behind them and closing fast.

We bailed out of the three vehicles and ran to the people in front of us. They appeared to be as afraid of us as they were of the zombies. I gave the area a cursory inspection and saw more zombies in the opposite direction a full block from us.

The other three people about to be caught appeared to be elderly. They struggled to hobble along and steadily lost ground to the zombies with every short step they managed. As we watched all three were brought down in quick succession. The pitiful screams rang clear above the ragged noises of the undead.

Our sharpshooters picked off the zombies on the edges of the horde, and then they began shooting anything that moved. The elderly people were done for anyway. When all three were prone and unmoving, I directed Elsie to watch the unfortunate geriatrics for movement. If any even twitched she would blast them again. The rest of us turned to the new threat of zombies approaching from the other side of the intersection. Fast runners streaked ahead of their slower counterparts and were the first to go down as we fired volley after volley. I noticed several of those at the front of the line were full bodied and ran with a curious gait. Through my rifle scope their eyes appeared bloodshot. Were these newly transitioned bodies that hadn't been dead long enough to rot? Or was a mutation taking place among the undead? It would be a subject for discussion with the leadership committee and a development to monitor closely.