Zombie Anthology (4 page)

    
Amy wanted to leap to her feet as well and help her friend but she just couldn't bring herself to believe that all the hell they'd been through and endured was for nothing. Deep down, Amy wanted to live and she was forced to admit that Katherine's way of going out fighting in a pointless battle was not her own. It was just macho bullshit. Amy watched the creatures charging towards their position still hidden behind a stack of crates as Katherine pumped another round into her weapon's chamber and dropped another of them with a shot to its stomach that sent its intestines pouring onto the dock as it fell. Despite her bulging muscles, Katherine appeared helpless in the face of the horde closing around her. With tears in her eyes, Amy turned away from the scene as the things reached Katherine tearing at the woman with their nails and teeth. Katherine was screaming and begging for her help. Amy pretended not to her Katherine as she crept back towards the edge of the docks and eased herself into the water below. Amy let the water carry her into the dark beneath the wood above her hoping the things would be too occupied with Katherine to search for anyone else alive. As far as she knew, they had not seen her. She listened as Katherine's screams fell silent and began to weep.

    
Hours later, when the sun had set and the docks had grown still once more, Amy hauled her self up out of the water. There were none of the creatures left around to be seen. Even Katherine's body was gone from the blood-smeared place where she'd fallen. Amy stumbled dripping wet and wrinkled to the van her muscles aching from the hours spent staying afloat. She carefully checked the vehicle to make sure nothing was waiting for her inside of it then slid into the driver's seat. She clawed the extra set of keys out of its glove box and shoved them into the ignition. The moment the engine roared to life she knew the creatures would come pouring out from wherever they had disappeared to if they were still in the area. She turned the key and her heart froze in her chest as the engine sputtered loudly without catching. She frantically tried again as she noticed movement on the docks in the shadows of the buildings and the night came alive with the sound of hungry howls. This time the engine turned over and she peeled out as the van darted across the lot towards the main road. Laughing hysterically, Amy drove away into the night. The van lurched as she ran over a speed bump before the van hit the interstate. Despite the wreckage and abandoned cars littering the roadway, Amy found her foot getting heavier and heavier on the accelerator. Adrenaline rushed through her exhausted body as she swerved the van this way and that dodging the obstacles in its path. She felt free as if she was losing her mind and it was okay. How easy it would be to just keep going faster and faster until her reflexes couldn't keep up and she died in a fiery car crash. It would be a better death than being ripped apart like Katherine. She reached to click on the radio though she knew she would only find static across the dial as her eyes caught a flickering light in the rearview mirror. The van almost collided with what was left of an overturned eighteen-wheeler as she jerked upright in her seat. She slowed the van staring at the police car that had come up an exit ramp behind her and was giving chase.

    
"What the hell?” she muttered aloud. She knew it wasn't possible. Everyone in the world was either crazy from the effects of the wave, dead, or on the run like she was. Yet seeing the car's flashing sirens brought back feelings of hope inside her. Maybe her flight was over and the officers in the car would look out for her and take her somewhere safe. Maybe somehow in this city people had survived and gotten organized. She brought the van to a stop as the police car pulled up beside her. Amy was in the process of rolling down the van's window as she glanced across into the car. A man in a tattered uniform with yellow tinted eyes and snarling face stared back at her. “Oh God,” Amy screamed as the man stuck a.38 out his window aiming for her head. She snapped around to the steering wheel and rammed the gas petal to the floor. The van took off, the officer's shot slamming in its side just behind Amy's door as the van moved.

    
"Oh God, oh God,” Amy chanted as the car chased after her. “They're not supposed to be able to drive,” she swore to her self. In the rearview, she saw the thing in the passenger's side of the car trying to lean out its window with its gun aimed at her van. “He's going to shoot out my tires,” Amy thought in a panic. There was no way she could outrun them, not in this van, not with the roads the way they were. The creatures could die. They were just people driven crazy by the wave that had struck the Earth so she did the only thing she could think of. Making sure her seatbelt was on and fastened, she shoved the brakes to the floor. Tires squealed as the van came to a halt. With the sound of bending metal, the police car smashed into its rear. Despite her seatbelt, Amy was thrown forward by the teeth-rattling force of the impact. Her forehead struck the steering wheel and her world faded to black.

    
Amy came to with a start. Something wet was trickling down her face. She wiped at it. Her hand came away a warm, wet red. Her head was pounding but otherwise she seemed okay. She reached over, dug a
0
.45 from the glove box, and unsnapped her seatbelt. Opening her door, she fell out onto the road, sprawling, unable to keep her balance. The police car was still there, a mangled mass of broken metal wedged into the van's rear. The car's driver was clearly dead. Pieces of windshield glass jutted out from the flesh of his face and his head dangled at an unnatural angle. She pulled herself to her feet and stumbled closer with her pistol held ready trying to find out the fate of the other officer. When she got close enough to see inside the car, she saw the man's bottom half resting in the blood soaked passenger seat. The top half of his body was nowhere to be seen. Amy slumped to the ground beside the car. It was only a matter of time until more of the creatures came out of the night around her but both the van and the car were totaled. She needed a plan. She couldn't just sit here and wait to die regardless of how much she hurt or how tired she was. Her eyes were heavy with sleep and it fought to claim her in its embrace. She shook herself awake, her head throbbing from a fresh burst of pain from her movements. She looked around at her surroundings. Her only chance was to find a car that was both still functional and had its keys in it. She got to her feet once more and walked down the interstate to start her search.

    
Geoff lay back against the tree trunk. The middle finger of his left hand massaged the corners of his tired eyes. His movement betrayed no sign of worry about the distance between himself and the ground far below. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips as he perched on the narrow limb. He watched the kid moving slowly up the mountain trail. Normally he would've radioed the base to let them know about the kid and get orders on what to do. Fuck that, normally he wouldn't even have been out here risking his life to do the job the base's external sensors once had. He hoisted his rifle to his shoulder and got a bead on the kid. Through the scope, he saw the young man clearly for the first time. The kid was in his later twenties and wore punk style clothes, a t-shirt of some stupid rock band and ratty jeans. Geoff could've dropped him then, problem solved, but something kept his finger away from the rifle's trigger. The last few days hadn't been a cake walk, even for him. He wondered how the punk kid had managed to survive much less find come so close to finding the base out here. Maybe he'd seen enough death over the last few days or maybe he was just getting old, either way, the kid got to keep breathing. He carefully took the cigarette from his lips and slipped it back inside the pack, stuffing the whole thing into his jacket pocket. “Ah… Shit,” he whispered to himself and started down from the tree.

    
The birds were singing in the forest and the sky above was a bright blue filled with sunlight. The world went on as normal oblivious to the Hell humanity was going through. Geoff found that funny. He reached the bottom of the tree and vanished into the woods without a trace.

    
Jeremy paused on his way up the trail. He shrugged off his backpack and opened it, hunting for the map he'd picked up on the way here from the remains of a local tourist trap. He knew that even if the base did exist, it wouldn't be on the map but he wanted to check the other landmarks to make sure he was still headed in the direction he thought the base must be in. He didn't hear the figure step onto the path behind him until an arm snaked about his neck. Jeremy choked and fought against his attacker's grip in a desperate panic until he heard the sound of a gun being cocked beside his ear.

    
"Stop it, kid, if you want to live to see the sun set,” a gruff voice ordered. Jeremy stopped squirming.

    
"Look, mister…"

    
"Shut up, kid.” The man released his hold and shoved Jeremy away from him. Jeremy whirled around to get a look at him and almost broke into a smile when the man's camouflage-green uniform.

    
"I'd tell you,” the man continued, “to go home, but I guess none of us really have one anymore…"

    
Jeremy stared, bewildered, at Geoff. Geoff was in later fifties with gray hair covering his head. His eyes were bloodshot and it looked as if he hadn't shaved in several days. Yet bulging muscles rippled beneath his uniform as he moved with cat like grace, scooping up Jeremy's backpack and slipping it onto his own shoulder.

    
"…So I suppose I am going to have to take you back with me."

    
"To the base?"

    
"To what's left of it anyway, kid."

    
As they made their way together through the woods, Jeremy listened to what Geoff knew about what was going on and about what had happened at the base Geoff referred to as Def-Con IV.

    
Days ago, the strange light Jeremy experienced had been a wave of energy striking the Earth. No one knew where it came from but its origins came from somewhere far beyond the solar system and the space known to humankind. The best guess was that the energy was some kind of shockwave from somewhere out there in the unknown. Perhaps it was from some distant battle in an interstellar war or an alien species messing around with dark matter that had gotten far more than they bargained for. It didn't really matter much where it came from. When it struck the Earth the light was merely a side-effect of it entering our atmosphere and reacting with the matter it found within it. A portion of the energy wave's main body had broken off becoming trapped by those same gasses. Like a super and perpetual EMP on a global scale, the wave and its lingering remnants caused technological failures throughout the world as most forms of known energy used by man had simply ceased to be, dampened or disrupted to the point of uselessness. Only basic things worked now, electricity, nuclear energy, etc. were out of the question until the field left behind dispersed. The alien energy field left in the Earth's atmosphere also produced a type of ambient radiation which scientists believe would still be here in a thousand years unless someway was found to deal with it. This radiation was what caused the “plague” of madness which ran rampant everywhere. It broke down the neural pathways of the human to their very most basic core and leaving empty human shells full of only instinct and violence in those who not immune and very few people in the world were.

    
At first, Def-Con IV retained contact with a handful of other base like itself both here in the United States and in the United Kingdom, for the first day they had even been in touch with the President and the White House. Though the energy hadn't grown in strength and was actually losing its ability to interfere with long distant communications, they'd lost contact with other bases one by one as the victims of the radiation plague and other problems took their toll until Def-Don IV became completely cut off. For all Geoff knew, Def-Con IV could very well be the last humanity left in the world.

    
During the first few hours of the chaos when the wave had first reached the Earth, the base had opened its doors to the local people who came seeking shelter in the wave's fallout until Def-Con IV was overflowing and filled beyond the capacity it was designed for. Very quickly, the staff of the base learned
‘
first hand
’
of the secondary, biological effects of the wave as those same locals succumbed to the radiation hit they'd taken turning into to
‘
human-monsters
’
like Luke had became.

    
A mini-war broke out inside the compound between those still sane and those who changed into something less than human. It was a hard fight but in the end, Def-Con IV's staff prevailed though not without heavy losses. Only Geoff and seven members of the base's staff survived the internal struggle for dominance and of them, two were badly injured, one in a coma, the other wheel chair bound but healing. Geoff informed Jeremy that if he came looking for salvation and hope; he'd came to the wrong place. **** Geoff led Jeremy through the high barbed wire fence that surrounded the Def-Con complex. Above ground, there wasn't really much to see. The base had used being an agriculture research facility as its cover before the wave. Inside the fence, there were only three buildings. Two of them were the size of tool sheds, but the third was large and civilian in its nature. Blooming gardens stretched as far as Jeremy could see beyond the buildings with flowers planted around their edges and the rear fence was far beyond eyeshot.

    
"Pretty amazing, isn't it?” Geoff asked as they paused while Jeremy stood taking in everything around him.