Zombie Fallout 2 (2 page)

There were times when Eliza thrilled in the hunt. The taste of the max-stressed blood. The scent of terror as it trailed behind her intended victim. The panic, the horror, she craved these feelings from her stock. Those emotions out of her chattel proved her superiority, her place of dominion in this world of man. The derisiveness of the word ‘man’ was used as both the hatred for mankind as a whole and especially for the lesser of the two sexes. She would feed on whatever was available if need be, but she took a cruel sort of satisfaction in feeding a little deeper in the arteries of a man. Possibly tearing the walls of the blood vessel more savagely than necessary. Of another important note, vampires do not leave puncture wounds (unless they want to). Unless a vampire is trying to make a point (usually ‘Don’t fuck with me!’), they will scarcely leave a mark. Most times a vampire bite will be attributed to bug bites, these also have the added benefits of healing fast and diminishing to a red spot no bigger than the tip of a pencil eraser. This aids in the hunters ability to stay hidden, to make her prey less wary. An unsuspecting victim is an easy fruit to pick.

Eliza Present Day– Prologue Two

It was 6:30 in the morning when Eric Hoto traveled down the length of his extensive driveway, wrapped only in an ill-fitting jacket, to grab the morning paper.

“How many times have I told that kid to bring the paper up to the house?” Mr. Hoto said aloud. Mainly to keep his teeth from chattering together in the frigid arctic blasted air. As he stood, a sense of immense apprehension tugged at his essence, the paper and the paperboy nearly forgotten, he redoubled his efforts to close the jacket against the preternaturally chilly air that surrounded him. The sense of something dancing in and out of his vision made him nearly run. Vertigo threatened to drop him where he stood. As suddenly as it started, it stopped. The air around him warmed considerably, even though it was only ten degrees out. His thrashing heart beat a little easier against his near battered rib cage. His breath came a little more evenly. His shaking legs almost once again stilled.

“I feel like a rabbit looking down the snout of a fox.” Eric could not even fathom how absolutely close to reality those feelings were. But like most humans he was quick to pass on his baser instincts and use higher reasoning to completely gloss over the unthinkable. “I think I need a vacation, if I wasn’t 34 I would think that I had just suffered a stroke. That’s it! That boy either brings the paper up to the door or I’m switching to USAToday.”

Eric’s steps faltered once again half way up the steep grade to his front door. His storm door opened without the benefit of any apparent human locomotion. That unpleasant sensation of being stalked greasily crept across his scalp and was whipped away with a stiff breeze. He was left feeling oddly unclean, unhealthy.

“Wind must be stronger than I thought.” Eric said. Now not so willing to get out of the elements and into the ‘safety’ of his home. His eyebrows drew closer as he questioned his new unwillingness to enter the ‘lion’s den’. “Now why did I think that? And why do I keep talking to my damn self.” As if in answer.

The sound of heartless laughter would be the last thing Eric heard. It would be two more days before his frozen body was found, but by then there were much bigger happenings going on.

Eliza’s Transformation – Prologue Three

Eliza hadn’t intended on killing the mother and her child, but the impudent animal had somehow sensed the invasion and gone to do what any good mother would, protect her offspring. Eliza was reveling in the freshness, the newness of the baby’s blood, its closeness to the source of life, when the woman had come in. Eliza stood there in all her startling cruelty, surprised when the woman instead of cowering and shrieking and running away stood her ground. Not only stood her ground, but against all of her instincts advanced on the predator. This was the same as the gazelle turning to the lion and charging. The lion might be momentarily stunned, more from the shock of something so unusual happening than of any perceived threat. But still the indignant bitch, who did she think she was? With one lightning fast movement, Eliza wrapped her ungodly strong hand around the slender woman’s throat. Instead of immediately crushing the worthless life out of her, Eliza held her at bay as she drank the baby’s essence into the netherworlds. The mother watched wide-eyed with dismay as her child was taken from her. By the time Eliza was finished with the baby, crushing the wind out of the mother was almost unnecessary. All signs of life had been extinguished with her baby. Eliza laughed as her fingers punched through the soft skin surrounding the woman’s throat. Unlike the previous encounter, there was no more fight in this creature. Blood shot out at all angles as if happy to be free of its veiny trappings. Giant swaths of the nectar bathed across Eliza’s face, she greedily licked up the offerings even as she watched the light of life dim and then fade away.

Unbeknownst to Eliza she may have actually done the Hoto family a favor, although none of the Hoto’s were around to appreciate that fact. Mrs. Eileen Hoto RN, had secretly stolen three of the very difficult to find H1N1 vaccinations. As a caregiver she would be given preferential treatment as would her baby, but her husband who constantly got sick due to the stresses he placed on himself would most likely never be in a position to get the sought after shot. So in her head, she was only stealing one shot and she rationalized it by telling herself that her husband, a well respected engineer and an involved member of the community, was more deserving than some crack baby down at the clinic where she worked. An hour before her husband had made his death march to get the newspaper, she had administered the shot to all three of them. Doing it early in the morning, in the hopes that their baby might not even realize what was happening. True to her cherub nature, Gilly Hoto never protested once as her mother gave her the vaccination.

The tainted inoculation had already begun to overcome what little resistance the beleaguered white blood cells could muster when Eliza had drunk her fill.

Prologue Four – Mike’s Journal

Hello my name is Michael Talbot and this is my journal. If you have found this then most likely I am dead. I swore that after I left my first journal behind at my homestead in Little Turtle I would not let the same fate befall this one. I have no way of knowing what the world has turned out like. While I was alive we were at war, a war where 85% of the combatants didn’t know that fact. They simply felt a need to eat and we simply felt a need not to be eaten. The story of myself, my family and my friends are in these pages. It is as true an account of what happened to the Talbots as can be written from one that has lived through it. Is some of it biased? Probably. Is some of it subjective? Definitely. In a perfect world I’m hoping that I left this book behind in some haste to evacuate an area. But more than likely I have fallen. I have been so tired, now I finally can rest.

CHAPTER 1

Zombie bodies exploded under the crushing weight of the tractor trailer. Splintered bones rained down all around us. The occasional eyeball struck the side of the trailer with a hollow thudding. The noise was sickening from atop. I could only imagine what it sounded like inside. Noxious gases issued forth from burst beings, some unlucky few that got stuck in the plow works were slowly eroded away like the world’s largest eraser on the biggest mistake in mankind, which actually wasn’t so far from the truth. The truck was an island that floated along a sea of death and decay. I had never felt more afraid for my family since this whole thing started. The constant jostling as we hit and subsequently ran over zombies made holding on for dear life, take on a whole new meaning. For some friggen reason I had not had the foresight to rope my English Bulldog Henry to the truck. I now had one arm wrapped around Henry like he was an expensive Saks Fifth Avenue package and I was in Central Park at night. My other hand was gripped onto a handle secured to the top of the truck with two entirely way too small screws. Again if you read my first journal you’ll know I would no sooner let go of Henry than I would one of my natural born. For those of you that say he’s only a dog you must be cat lovers and just don’t know any better. I won’t hold it against you. Luckily Henry wasn’t squirming or this would be a short novella punctuated by my untimely demise. The screws were puckering up the top of the truck. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that they were going to give under the strain I was placing on them. My last few moments on earth were going to be the loud audible pop as the screws tore loose and then my ungraceful swan dive off the top of this trailer and into the waiting arms of an endearing crowd of brain and flesh eaters. Thankfully Alex was a much better craftsman than I gave him credit for, because I’m still writing. Alex is a man that I’ve only known a few weeks but I consider him a true friend. Especially since he saved my family’s collective ass today, Christmas day. Alex was one of the newest residents of Little Turtle after the deaders came, he set up or engineered most of the defenses we used in our now shattered community. If not for his stalwarts I would have never made it out of my cell and to my house in time. With that thought I had a pang of remorse as I remembered Jed. At one time we had been bitter enemies in a much simpler world. When what time you put your trash out actually carried meaning. I hadn’t seen Jed since the day the walls came down, literally. He had let me out of my cell, as I was awaiting my trial for murder. Sure I had killed a piece of shit and the world was a better place for it but it was still murder. Why I had killed him is not something I am going to revisit, especially on this the most sacred of days, if you really want to know you’re going to have to go back to Little Turtle on the Denver/Aurora line in Colorado, I left my journal in my old office before we had made our narrow escape to the attic. I’m sure the zombies will be gone in a few days, there’ll be nothing left there to eat.

The jostling of the truck slowly decreased as we moved further and further away from the kill zone. I could almost hear the collective sighs of relief but more likely it was the great intake of air as everyone felt it was finally safe to breathe deeply, not from fear but from smell. The dead have not a clue about personal hygiene. That and the fact that comparatively, lepers had a mild case of acne. Exactly one point one miles from my previous home the truck pulled to a halt, I let go of Henry with my left arm. I was going to need that hand to pry my fingers from the handle. It seems I had frozen it in place. Again I didn’t think to grab cold weather gear as zombies were pouring in to my bedroom. Yeah you sit there in your bomb shelter and judge me all you want for not being properly prepared but I’ve got a leg up on 80% of the rest of the world. I’m still alive or at least not one of the living dead.