Aftershock Zombie Series (Book 2): Breakdown (A Collection of Survivors Tales) Read online

  We headed inside where Mike showed us a map of the surrounding area. Almost the entire map was shaded green with wide swatches of blue, state forests, lakes, and rivers. That explained the low population density as compared to other parts of the northeast.

  Mike pointed to a few areas of interest. “This used to be an Air Force bombing range to the north of where we are now. Civilian population centers prior to the invasion, or whatever the fuck it was, were here, here, here, and here. There are also two nuclear power plants within 100 kilometers, one to the north and one to the west. We have a guy over at the compound that worked at Oyster Creek. He swears they shut the plant down before everyone bugged out, but we have no way of knowing about Hope Creek. We do know that another plant to the south caught fire, but since we’re not glowing in the dark, I’m guessing it was either coal or gas. Must have been a big one, we could see the plume of smoke from here. In between, miles and miles and miles of pine forest.”

  Mike said they would fill me in on the rest of what I needed to know tomorrow and went up to his room. William and I returned to our bunk house and gathered together our gear.

  “Will we be taking the truck?” William asked.

  “Don’t know William. I want to trust these people, but it may be better to keep a few secrets just now.”

  “Like how you were bitten?”

  I turned on my heel surprised. I glanced around to see if anyone was within ear shot. Had they been, there would have been a lot of explanation required. We were relatively alone. One of the guys from the fence wandered by across the dirt road and waved. Had he heard something, I’m pretty sure he would have reacted.

  I hustled William back to the bunkhouse and practically dragged him up the stairs.

  “How did you know about my bite?”

  He scratched his chin, mimicking Mike’s gesture from earlier, “I saw the scar a long time ago. It looks like teeth marks, but not like a dog’s or a cat’s teeth, like people teeth. It just makes sense. I think my mother was bitten by someone too. I don’t think she got a scar from it though. She is dead and dead people don’t get scars.”

  I was impressed, but not surprised, by his deductive skills. Anybody that looked at the world as logically as he did could have figured it out. I had done a decent job of hiding the scar from most people, when we were inspected during in-processing here, I explained it as a shrapnel wound from my time overseas. Nobody questioned it since I didn’t turn into a walking corpse a day later. I was going to have to talk to someone about this, but who? I was still on the fence about this place. Mike was alright, I was sure of that, but what about these others at the airport? I didn’t want William to be subjected the constant testing I had already gone through. He already got stared at enough for being a little strange. I kept explaining that he wasn’t retarded, just different.

  William snapped me from my musing, “We have to keep this a secret right?”

  “At least for now,” I replied.

  “I do not like keeping secrets. I do not like to lie. Father says that telling lies is not proper.”

  “I know William, but for right now it might be dangerous for other people to know about us.”

  He looked at me, trying to mimic a quizzical look but falling just short, “Us?”

  “I think you were bitten too. The scar on your head looks just like mine. Plus, I don’t many people that kiss with their teeth. I have seen a lot of people get bitten by those things, you know the things I am talking about, right? Most of the time they die and come back, but you and I didn’t. I don’t know what that means, but until I figure it out we cannot tell anyone. Okay?”

  He nodded thoughtfully, again falling just short of expressing the emotion he was trying to portray, “Okay. I will keep the secret.”

  And that was it. He was already on to the next topic of thought. “When will I resume training?”

  “Maybe this afternoon if we have time. You did good this morning.”

  He looked genuinely pleased at that, not happy, but it seemed to register that I was paying him a compliment. I still couldn’t get a grip on how his head worked. We spent the afternoon out in a field doing drill and ceremony. William enjoyed drill, I guess it appealed to his logic.

  That night we ate a dinner of more smoked deer meat and tough bread. I told William to head back to the bunkhouse after we ate and that I would be there in a while. I wanted to talk to Mike. I gave a little more backstory on our trip up from Virginia, filling in some of the details about our ambush and the handful of run-ins we had with the undead.

  Mike sat there nodding, and as if he knew what I was asking said, “They won’t split the two of you up if you don’t want to be. Bad for morale to go breaking up battle buddies. As long as he shows enough aptitude at whatever job you get assigned to, they’ll let him tag along. Based on how he handled himself this morning, I don’t see any trouble.”

  I thanked Mike for the encouragement and headed off to the bunk, I wanted to catalog what gear we had with us before heading out in the morning.

  Driving in to the airport the next day, I half thought they were airlifting people out, but they had turned the place into one hell of a compound. The guy driving us in explained that the place had been a small airport with an airbase attached to it before the shit hit the fan. It already had a double row of 10-foot chain link topped with barbed wire and only two roads in. Over time, a large moat had been dug around the outer run of fence and K-rails had been stacked at the entrances. More than enough to stop vehicles and slow down anybody on foot. The airport itself was small, only four terminals. The tower provided a great view of the surrounding area. Our chauffer explained that in the first few months, while they were digging the moat and trenches, they’d seen a fair amount of action from both the living and the dead. They had successfully fended off all would-be invaders, but suffered more than their share of casualties.

  Back when the chaos originally set in, the airport employees joined forces with the Air Force guys to secure the facility. Mike had been among their number and he later told me it was only because there were so many military guys around that they were able to get it done so quickly. It wasn’t long before somebody had the idea to send out the two choppers, and even one of the 727’s, with a flyer they Xeroxed in one of the admin offices. The goal was to put together enough of a force to defend the place and to bring in anybody seeking shelter. They decided to use Batsto as an intermediary locale after an infected refugee almost brought the whole thing down when he attacked the group he was staying with. It was also thought it might not be a good idea to broadcast their exact location.

  At first, they would just swing by Batsto every couple days and see if anyone was there. Later on, it was set up as an actual command post and Mike was sent over to run the show.

  They hadn’t seen much activity in at least a few months before we showed up. For about the first six months, they saw a pretty steady inflow of people from the surrounding area, after that visitors tapered off but they still saw a trickle of newcomers. Once you made it through the quarantine period, you got carted over to the airport. There, you got a job and started pulling your weight, or you were asked politely to leave. There wasn’t a whole lot of in-fighting among residents. Everybody seemed to understand that life inside the fence was a whole lot easier than life outside it. Funny how the Apocalypse can make you reevaluate how annoying you do or don’t find other peoples’ idiosyncrasies, especially when a simple fist fight can get you banished to a wasteland crawling with the living dead. Not that there weren’t assholes, there were always assholes, it’s just that if a guy can fix wiring or keep a genny running or knows how to build a solar still you can kind of look past the fact that he’s a douche bag. And anybody that couldn’t keep their shit in line was dealt with pretty quickly.

  William and I were both assigned to guard duty. No surprise there, though they had originally intended to put William on trash removal and sanitation. I lobbied to keep him with me at Batsto
. I was one of three people he would even talk to, let alone take orders from. And besides, I felt responsible for the kid and I wanted to keep him close. We spent our days patrolling the woodline, manning the tower in the big main house, and making sure petty squabbles didn’t escalate into anything.

  2

  Jeremy

  Reluctantly, I was part of a group of three. I found the two of them hiding in the woods on my way to the sanctuary in New Jersey. She was a leggy blonde whose roots had long since taken over. He was an angry meathead with too much in the muscle department and not enough in the brains. I would have walked right past them, but hiding him was almost impossible. I could have kept walking, but the look on her face screamed that she needed help. As pathetic as it seems, I am a sucker for a damsel in distress. Even if the damsel looks less like a princess, and more like a character from some shitty reality show.

  There we were, a newly formed trio, wandering through unknown woods hoping to find shelter for the first time since meeting. He mostly grunted but she rattled on and on, her voice running over you like lotion on dry skin. All sex and no substance. He towered over us both, lumbering along with no purpose but tromping and stomping. About an hour into our trek, I discreetly popped in my earbuds and cranked the tunes for a while. I had the Walkman, yes, I said Walkman, shoved in my hidden jacket pocket.

  Neither of my new buddies noticed the difference. He kept stomping, she kept chattering, and I kept smiling like a buffoon. Not much had changed for me since zombies took over the damn world. I still got told what to do, pushed around, and dismissed as the sidekick. Works for me. I’ve spent my whole life just floating along and letting others worry about the bullshit. Why should a few face eating monsters change that?

  Right around sundown we spotted a hunting shack. There have been a few of these on my trip so far. Some are empty, some are not. This one looked completely abandoned and, for good measure, the last set of inhabitants had knocked out one of the walls. If we were going to set up here for the evening, we would have to pull something together quickly. Good thing we basically had an ox with us. He may not be that bright, but he could definitely be useful dragging logs around.

  Her name was Crystal, and I knew without being told that in a prior life she had been a stripper. His name was Ben. I chuckled inwardly when he told me. His name could not be more fitting. So Big Ben, Lady Crystal, and I did our best to set up a secure camp for the night. I laid low, fixing the things I saw Ben leave undone, but never claiming credit for them. It was easier if no one looked to me for leadership. I was fully capable of taking care of myself but I had no interest in putting together some ragtag group to wander through the woods, fighting the undead as we go.

  Ben was out the moment the work was done. That man had a snore that could have raised the dead straight out of their graves even before the zombie apocalypse allowed that to happen. Crystal looked at me with hungry eyes. Unattached women were hard to come by in our present state, so I considered it for a second. But my past experiences had taught me that this would be a bad idea.

  Crystal may not have seen it, but Ben had claimed her as his own. Now, I may not agree with marking your territory like that and calling a woman yours, but I am also not dumb enough to think my sensibilities mattered squat against his brick sized fists. The first time I ever got laid was ruined by some brute chucking concrete garden decorations in a fit of jealous rage. Concrete garden goose littered the street and the commotion almost ruined what was a huge milestone in my life. Crystal was not the kind of woman who knew how to accept ‘no’ for an answer, however, so she persisted until I faked falling asleep.

  She huffed and puffed for a bit, but eventually succumbed to her own exhaustion. With her finally asleep, I slid a log over to the makeshift wall and stared out in the distance. Back to the only real escape I had, I clicked the play button. Simple Man. How appropriate. I hummed along quietly and flashed back to the days before our lives so drastically changed. I missed the convenience of it all. It wasn’t simpler, but it was easier. I missed that.

  I had finally found a way to make a living off of one of the only things that had brought me joy. People make fun of karaoke, but there were thousands of bars across the country packing people in to sing their hearts out to their favorite songs. Most of those people were terrible, but not me. I had finally found my niche, and then it all disappeared. Not just my life, but everyone’s lives.

  All I had left was that Walkman and my few precious songs. It was all I needed though. There were two extremes at night when you were trying to relax, the first being the extreme silence, which was extremely unsettling. Then there was the deafening sound of zombies, moaning and groaning as they shuffled closer and closer to your hiding spot. My music broke the silence and covered the noise. It was a comfort I thanked God for nightly.

  They were getting closer as the night dragged on. My two travelling companions were oblivious and didn’t even stir. Not so much as a flinch. Ben was part of the problem, with his obnoxious snoring. I tried everything to quiet his ass down but anything I did only delayed his log sawing for a minute at most. Crystal could sleep through both Ben’s noise and the zombies. It was amazing, yet amazingly stupid. The more I hung around these two, the more surprised I was that they were still alive.

  As time passes, the weak and stupid have been dropping like flies. The last group I stumbled upon had a couple of duds in it. Running low on ammo, they decided one day to raid a camp they had spotted. It may have worked if they had done even the smallest amount of recon, but instead the idiots went charging in and were shot down before they even hopped the fence. I knew it was a disaster waiting to happen, so I offered to stay back and guard the supplies with the only other sane group member, John.

  We witnessed the massacre and then quickly packed up everything we could carry. John and I traveled together for two weeks until I woke up one morning and saw that he was gone. He took half of the supplies and headed out on his own. I wasn’t upset when he left, though. It made sense. John had spent those two weeks going on and on about his family in New York. He probably decided he would rather go find them than spend any more time wandering around with me.

  Problem is, without a destination, the whole thing seems kind of pointless. Ben and Crystal were looking for some place they found on the world’s least likely invite. While scavenging in some random town, they found a paper with directions to a safe zone. As much as I like being on my own, a real compound sounds like a 5-star resort right about now. Ben and Crystal were lucky I showed up, too. With his brilliant map reading skills, they had spent a good two days heading in the wrong direction.

  So now I’m sitting here, debating which of the two to wake up for watch. I guess I will go with Ben because I am too tired to play cat and mouse with Crystal. If I am going to stay with these two until we reach New Jersey, I am going to have to find a way to permanently discourage that woman from pursuing me. It would be a shame to avoid death by zombie only to end up worm food by ogre.

  3

  Ken

  People are stupid. People have always been stupid. Always waiting until a problem is staring them directly in the face before deciding to do anything about it. Back when this whole zombie apocalypse thing.. God that sounds so stupid saying it out loud. Anyway, when this all started, in those first few weeks when we could have done something about it, people were too busy arguing with each other to realize that maybe we should hold off on the finger pointing and deal with the fact that dead people were getting up from autopsy tables and morgues and funeral homes and accident scenes and pretty much anywhere you might find a dead body and killing thousands more.

  I remember it boggling my mind that people could have remained ignorant for so long. Within a month, there were cases throughout the US, all over Mexico and into southern Canada. The news would report an incident in a city and show footage of a convoy of military trucks rolling in. Three days later that city would be visible on the horizon as a plume of smoke i
f you were lucky enough to live within viewing distance. After a while, everybody lived close enough to watch a city burn, or to be in one that was already on fire.

  It only took a couple months for the chaos to really set in. Once the first major cities began to burn, it was like an avalanche. People all over the country banded together to fight the undead hordes, and ended up feeding them in an unending wave of stupidity. As soon as people realized that the Government wasn’t coming to their rescue, they chose one of two paths. They either tried to hide out in barricaded homes or took the opportunity to run wild in the streets.

  I was flying home after a conference in New York on, of all things, infectious disease in the 21st Century, when they finally decided to shut down air travel. Maybe, had the government thought of closing interstate borders sooner, it might have made a difference. By the time travel was restricted, it was already too late. Nevertheless, all flights already en route were to be immediately grounded. That’s how I ended up in Atlantic City. My flight from Newark tried sneak out under the wire, but apparently, the pilot received word that if he didn’t land immediately, we would be shot down. So, we touched down in this po-dunk airport. The place was packed with stranded travelers. Every one of them angry at having been inconvenienced by the undead.

  Of those of us stuck in the airport, some decided to go out on foot or in cars stolen from long-term parking. I can’t tell you how most of them faired, for all I know they’re safe and sound in some bunker somewhere. I do know that I saw more than a few of them come back days or weeks later, smashing themselves against the fence or stuck in the rows of barbed wire at the gate. Me? I’m glad I stayed. The decision was pretty much made for me. By the time I made it past the shock and the fear, there was no way I would have made it more than a day in what the outside world had become. I’m not saying I’m a coward, just not a hero. I was a research scientist in my other life. Epidemiological pharmacologists are not known for our combat prowess. Besides, I couldn’t get a hold of my wife, which meant that she was either dead or in one of the safe zones that had been hastily set up, which probably also meant she was dead. Considering that she had told me before I left for the conference that she was filing for divorce, I figured this was a less messy method for dissolving the marriage. So, I stayed at the airport, eventually moving over to Batsto because it was quieter and there were fewer people.