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

Her face flushed. She looked embarrassed to talk about it with me. "They and Ira and several others have been very helpful and attentive. I'm dealing with it better, but it's not totally under control." She smiled again. "Even at twelve, Paige has been my biggest supporter and salvation. Thank you for asking."

~*~*~*~

Three weeks after their arrival, we welcomed the seven new survivors to our group on December 22, 2021. While I had no direct objections to Nate and Vera, there was an undercurrent about them that bothered me. Before the welcoming meeting Shane Holescheck and I discussed the couple. "When you give this group your initiation spiel, don't mention the gold we have. There's something about Nate and Vera that doesn't set right. It's not that I don't like them, but he fires up feelings of doubt and concern in me."

"I agree about the gold," Shane said. I didn't plan to tell Kira about our bullion either. It just slipped out without my thinking since everyone here knows about it. I'll spread the word for everyone else to not mention it either. What are your concerns about the Robards?"

"I wish I knew. It's not that simple or concrete. It's more his attitude and occasional sly looks and comments that don't seem right or appropriate for the time or situation. Maybe he's just a smartass or a jerk and I'm making too much of it."

"I doubt that. You've proven to be a good judge of character, or lack thereof, so I'll respect your opinion and keep my eyes and ears open."

"Also Ira and Marcie both said Nate was experiencing symptoms of alcohol withdrawal during his stay in isolation. When I met him I suspected that red nose was from excessive drinking. As much as you and I used to enjoy a drink, if we can do without it so can he."

During the meeting we learned Nate had been a manager in a fast food restaurant and Vera was a housewife.

Jerome Watters spent twenty-two years in the army. For the next two years, he'd drifted from one job to another as he travelled the country looking for a place to settle down. And then the zombies happened. He was tall, stocky and friendly. Three failed marriages while he was in the army had convinced him to remain single.

Sam Williams came from Canada. He was in the States working when the zombies hit. He'd worked at several northern states oil refineries in several construction trades. He and Jerome met in a bar, formed a friendship and stayed together for survival as the zombies overran North Dakota. He was twenty-six, slender, medium height and liked to tell jokes. Funny clean jokes.

The last of the new arrivals, Vivian Alverez, said she was twenty-eight and originally immigrated to the US from Mexico. She was vague about her past but said she'd worked at a variety of service type jobs and could help in a lot of areas. I guessed she was five feet seven, with a slender build and movie star looks.

Overall I was pleased with our new members and felt they were good additions, in spite of my uneasy feeling about Nate Robard.

An hour after the meeting broke up, I heard my name called. Shane and Nate each yelled for me to stop. They'd entered through the north door with Vera doggedly trailing behind. Winter coats and hats over ruddy faces attested to the severe temperature drop that blew in from the north overnight. Nate wore a frown on his wind-burned red face, and his fists were clenched at his sides. He yelled at me from twenty feet and waddled closer. Several people in the area stopped their activities to watch the brewing confrontation.

"Who the hell said you could search my vehicle and destroy my possessions?"

"What possessions?" I knew what he'd referred to but chose to make him say it.

"I had cases of beer and Scotch in the Humvee, and Shane said it was destroyed while we were caged like animals. I want it replaced and replaced now."

"Alcohol, tobacco and street drugs aren't allowed here. It's a rule the original founding members set. The zombies cause enough problems without injecting others. We can't afford to have someone drunk on guard duty or cause one of our people to die because a drunk makes a mistake or doesn't react quickly."

Nate shook his finger in my face. "I don't give a damn about that. You didn't tell me that up front and I want all of it replaced."

"No. That won't happen, Nate. Alcoholic beverages are not allowed on our property. If you want it that bad, you can leave and find it yourself. But then you can't come back. You were given a copy of our rules last week and that's covered in detail. Is there anything else you object to?"

"Yes there's that exercise clause. I have health issues and can't do that calisthenics crap."

I shook my head and turned to leave and Nate grabbed my arm and jerked me to a sudden stop. It wasn't the time or place for a physical confrontation with him.

He blared, "Now you just listen to me. I have rights and I want my property back."

I flung his grip off and leaned down close to his face. "No. Sue me if you don't like it. We gave you and your family refuge from the zombies when you were in danger. For that you'll abide by all of our rules or you can leave. Those are your only choices."

Past Nate and Vera, I saw one side of Shane's lips rise as he smirked. "Told you what the answer would be. Now do you believe me?"

Nate glared hatefully at Shane, then focused his anger back to me. "This isn't the end of it." Vera stood behind Nate like a drab little mouse as he ranted. He waddled off in a huff, and she meekly followed with her gaze toward the floor.

Shane stood next to me and shook his head. "Yep, he's going to be trouble alright."

"And that puts us in a bind. I don't want to expel Vera and their kids because Nate's an ass. I assume they'd all leave as a group. If they leave it's a death sentence because that moron doesn't have a clue of how to protect them."

~*~*~*~

Christmas and New Year's Days passed, and the group was ecstatic that no zombies attacked us during the festive season. I remember overhearing Ed Jarnigan, our Navy SEAL weapons expert, sum up our holiday attitude by mentioning the WWII song,
Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition
.

After the holidays, John Alton, Shane, Marcie Tanka, and Andrea Michaels drove to Cedar Rapids to pick up another load of 1/2" steel plate and angle iron. They returned two days later with a boom truck leading an over the road tractor pulling a high capacity lowboy trailer loaded with steel. The steel plate would be installed to provide protection behind 2nd floor gun ports and in both watch towers. Naively, we'd only planned on shooting from the building at zombies. We didn't anticipate humans shooting back. In retrospect, the leadership committee admitted to a person that we must have had our heads in a dark, smelly, place when we didn't consider the evil element that tramples others in the human race.

When John Alton, our resident mechanical engineer, redesigned the building plans to expand it from a one hundred foot by two hundred foot horse barn to a long term place of refuge, he over-designed the structure's steel beams and supports. As a group, we couldn't predict what the future held for us, so he increased the structural capacity for unknown future additions or modifications. At the time, Emma and I had plenty of money from lottery winnings, and we put it to good use to build and equip our secure safe haven.

The food and other goods we anticipated thirty people would need could be stored on the second floor safely. John had even suggested installing a freight elevator instead of using a portable conveyor belt to move supplies to the storage area. Now we would take advantage of that over designed capacity.

Having some of our people kidnapped, raped, and abused the previous year made us accept the truth that a percentage of the apocalypse survivors would not hesitate to steal from and murder other humans. It's a fact of life in these terrible times. But, as Shane and I had discussed many times, there has always been an element of low class scum suckers from all races who will take advantage of others. Some used a gun or a knife, some were slick conmen, while others ran for public office.

While welders fabricated steel panels for the gun ports on the perimeter of the second floor and inside the two watch towers, people with carpentry and building maintenance skills dressed out a safe room for the children and their teacher, Shana Thompson. That space, for emergency use only, was being constructed in one of the four concrete enclosed rooms beneath the ground level concrete floor slab. In the event we were overrun by zombies or attacked by a group of evil humans, we wanted the children to be safe during the battle.

Kira and Vivian became friends in record time and spent much of their free time together. After school classes I noticed Kira's daughter, Paige, often hanging out with Mitch and Susie Robard. All three were polite well behaved teen-agers.

Jerome Watters, the army retiree, fit in with the group immediately and proved to be reliable. Sam Williams was the youngest of the new adults. He was an all around good guy with experience in several construction skills we could use. Both men were strong and healthy and good shots with rifles or handguns.

Vivian was a mystery. She continued to be vague about her past and didn't reveal intimate details about herself. But then it could simply be her disposition not to open her intimate secrets up to others. She wasn't an outdoors person and had no skills in self defense. At least she was open to learn, and with Kira's guidance and support she quickly began to show progress. She, like Kira, caused men’s heads to turn every time she strode by them. In fact, I suspected the sore neck I'd been rubbing was caused by them.

CHAPTER TWO

O
n the last Monday in February, Ed, Jerome, and I left for a three day ammo run. We headed for Oklahoma City by way of Kansas City and hit any size store that could possibly have even a small supply of ammunition. Our first day proved unrewarding. We blasted away more ammo at zombies than we found to replenish what we shot. We were in one of the four Ford Expeditions we'd liberated from dealerships after the undead decimated the humans in those surrounding towns. I liked them because they're big and heavy and powerful enough to run over or through groups of zombies in an emergency. Late that afternoon Jerome saw an SUV moving across a highway overpass above us. It had become rare for us to have contact with other humans. However, seeing other people gave us a good feeling to know we weren't the only ones still alive. It's depressing to think we're the only human beings still struggling to live in a country as big as the USA.

South of Kansas City we fell into good luck at three gun shops. At two shops under the same ownership, most of the stock on the shelves of the customer sales room had been taken. But in storage areas in the back, we found stairs to second floor or basement storage spaces. Unopened cases of ammo were concealed under miscellaneous debris in large, obscure closet spaces. We made a good haul of most of the bullets types and shotgun shells we could use plus other sizes for possible trading. We also loaded up on 12 gauge double aught buckshot and shotgun slugs. At close range, we'd found the 12 gage slugs devastated zombie's skulls.

Ed thumped the steering wheel and grinned broadly as he drove slowly through a residential neighborhood. "See those stickers on the bumpers and in the rear windows of those pickups? Some are for the National Rifle Association, and others are from local gun shops or shooting ranges. Those people owned guns and had ammo for them. Let's see if anything is left inside their houses." Cautiously we opened an unlocked front door and slowly cleared the house. We didn't detect any odors indicating recent zombie activity.

Each of us had a rifle slung over our shoulder and a large bore, high capacity semiautomatic pistol in our outstretched arms. Ed's hunch was right. In a room at the back of the house, we found a man cave with two gun safes containing rifles and shotguns. Seven handguns were in drawers below the long guns. It was clear that several guns were missing by the wear and imprints left on the felt linings. Four of the guns met our criteria, but we took the others in the event we could someday trade them with other survivors. Jerome whistled at the sight of more than eight thousand rounds of ammo he found in a closet beside the gun racks. At the end of the room sat a refrigerator full of warm beer, soda and bottled water. We took the water and several full cases of water from a cabinet. We searched through other houses in the neighborhood with good results at about thirty percent of the homes. In homes that didn't have an actual gun room, we searched bedroom furniture and closets and found a few handguns and long guns.

It was nearly dark when Jerome raised the double door on a garage, and Ed backed the four foot by eight foot enclosed trailer inside. After I unhitched it from the truck, he backed the Expedition in beside it. With the door closed, we were out of sight of zombies or other humans. We rested sitting up, but none of us slept soundly in the cold space.

At dawn, we ate canned fruit and homemade pastries we'd brought along and washed it down with bottled water. After hitching the trailer, we continued ransacking houses. Some doors were unlocked, but most had to be pried open. We averaged one house every twenty minutes and were pleased with the results. During a leisurely lunch, we joked and spoke about our past, and touched on future plans for the compound.

We'd finished the south side of the street, so we moved across to work the north side and started again. We'd been lucky and had only run into zombies three times during all of our searches. They were noisy slow movers and were easily handled up close with our handguns.

Sunlight faded into dusk when we left the last house for the day. We'd found a huge amount of usable ammunition inside, and we were carrying it out and stacking it by the trailer. This gun collector hoarded ammunition like someone expecting a war. I looked around and realized Jerome wasn't with us. "Ed, where's Jerome?"

Ed shrugged and looked down the street. "He's at the next house. I'm ready to quit for the day. How about you?"

I yelled to Jerome. "Aren't you ready to stop and eat?"

He turned to us, grinned and waved with his right hand. "One more. I think this will be a lucky one, too." The crowbar was jammed against the door, and with a mighty tug of his left arm the doorframe splintered.

I yelled, "Where's your Glock? Get it in your hand."

He pushed the door open with a hearty shove. Immediately, two rotting arms jutted out. Jerome leaned back from the impending danger and screamed as he was forcefully yanked inside the house. As we reacted, we heard the eager screeching of the undead before the chilling human cries reached us. Ed and I were half way across the seventy-five foot space to the house's front door wanting to blot out the horrible shrill cries brought on by Jerome's extreme pain and fright. We reached the doorway and were appalled by the gruesome sight before us.

Jerome lay prone on the living room floor in a spreading pool of blood. Three zombies jostled to stay on top of him as they fed while he thrashed and squirmed under them. A rotting female sat on his shins and bit hunks of flesh from a thigh. A desiccated male chomped the fingers off Jerome's right hand, and a young female sat on his stomach as she ripped hunks of skin and flesh from his face with her teeth. Jerome's legs kicked feebly and his left arm waved sporadically at nothing as we shot the three monsters in their heads. The undead collapsed onto our defiled friend.

Jerome's voice carried weakly, "Oh God, oh God, help me." I stood beside the mass of grotesque, bloody, remains that no one would recognize as Jerome Watters.

"Goodbye, my friend," I aimed and shot him twice in the head to end his suffering ahead of his transformation.

Ed and I were haggard the next morning. Neither of us slept more than a few minutes at a time. The sight and sounds of Jerome's death stayed in my mind and defied sleep. Every time a friend died it reminded us harshly of how close we were to the same fate on a daily basis. The old saying, “There but for the grace of God go I” so aptly applied to all of us each and every single day.

At dawn, we wrapped Jerome's body in plastic sheeting and secured him to the top of the SUV. We were no longer in the mood to scrounge for ammo and morosely headed home.

~*~*~*~

Friday afternoon, we buried Jerome Watters during a solemn ceremony attended by all the survivors except the two people on watchtower duty. The day was murky, and lightning flashed in the distance as Jerome was lowered into the grave. Marcie Tanka uttered a brief eulogy defining the man Jerome had been to us. I spoke for a minute or so and a simple burial prayer followed. Those who had bowed there heads in prayer raised them, and some threw a traditional handful of dirt into the grave. Then we mourners drifted away.

When the grievers neared the building, Albert fired up the backhoe and pushed the dirt back into the hole. I took a deep breath and again wondered what had caused Jerome to let his guard down at the wrong moment. I suppose he got complacent because our search had gone so well. He was a good man, a good friend and intelligent. His death was the ninth person we'd lost to the undead menace since their onslaught began going on two years ago. I cringed knowing he wouldn't be the last.

Sunday morning, after breakfast, I stopped to join a discussion between Ed, Shane, John, and Ira. We were in the communal section at the middle of the building near the end of the shops section. The topic was, of course, zombies. As I sat, Kira and Vivian approached, said hi and were invited to join the discussion.

My attention shifted to Shane as he spoke. "– suspect the number of fast zombies has been increasing, but I don't know at what rate. Somehow they've changed from the original slow movers to a new breed that is somewhat more agile and coordinated and much faster. I've also noticed they're quieter. Not nearly the amount or volume of moaning and shrieking they've made in the past. This makes them even more dangerous because you can walk up on them without warning." He glanced at the group. "That's likely what happened to Jerome Watters, from what Ed and Tom have said."

John sat his coffee cup on a chair beside him. "Something else we've noticed. Some of the more damaged and decayed things don't even have eyes in their sockets, but they can sense where a human is and follow them if they change directions sharply. And the same phenomenon occurs with sound. Ira has examined several zombies and found the auditory system to be rendered incapable of receiving sound vibrations. How the hell can they see and hear us if this infection, as it's called, was caused by a virus?"

I leaned into the discussion. "The brain must be the only functioning organ in the body because we all know destroying it is the only way to kill them. Digestive tracks, other organs and appendages are missing, but the body still moves and kills. That's why I believe zombies are caused by a curse and not a virus. I don't pretend to understand the medical, religious or mystical implications of all this, but I can't grasp how a virus can make a dead body walk when the muscles, tendons and ligaments are rotted away." I looked to Ira and raised my palms questioningly. We all waited for his comment, hoping some new revelation might be added to the discussions we'd had in the past.

Ira took a deep breath, held it momentarily, then exhaled as he struggled with a reply. "Remember, I'm a vet. I deal in farm animals, dogs and cats. But I'll try. The brain is protected by the thick bone of the skull, suspended in cerebrospinal fluid, and isolated from the bloodstream by a blood-brain barrier; the delicate nature of the human brain makes it susceptible to many types of damage and disease. The most common form of physical damage is trauma, such as a blow to the head. Infection of the brain is rare because of the barriers that protect it, but it does occur.

"After a time, a zombie's cerebrospinal fluid should dry and the brain should deteriorate, but we haven't seen that happen. For some ungodly reason the brain still seems to function on some level while the flesh, tissue and other organs rot." He raised his palms upward. "I can't explain it and I doubt a medical researcher could either. But my gut feeling is akin to how Tom feels. Something immoral drives them to destroy humans. They're not actually feeding when they bite flesh and bone. The majority have decayed now to the point they don't have functioning digestive systems. The matter they tear off falls to the ground and they bite again and keep on biting until the victim dies and turns into one of them and fights them off." Ira squinted as he formed a thought and looked at John. "Their vocal cords have also deteriorated after the body has been dead for a time. It's another mystery to me how they make any sound at all or why they do."

Vivian shuddered then spoke in her Latino accent. "They scare the hell out of me. They're so creepy, and the odor is so nauseating it makes me want to vomit."

I watched Vivian as she spoke. Without the heavy hooded coat, her fetching looks were on display. The pronounced cheek bones, brown eyes, ebony hair, clear pecan skin, and sexy voice combined to make her a rare beauty. She managed to look provocative without looking cheap. She and Kira were easily the most gorgeous women in our small group. Hell, they'd each stand out in a crowded sports stadium.

I corralled my lust and refocused. "Pass the word to all our people to report even the slightest changes they see in the zombies. We've watched them become faster, stronger, and more agile, but what other changes could possibly be taking place? If there are several similar reports, a pattern may emerge as to what else may be happening."

Ed had been quiet, almost as if he were brooding before he spoke. "We need to rethink our training methods in response to this mutation or evolution or whatever you want to call it. There's no way to fight these fast movers with blunt force weapons. Ball bats and wrecking bars are out of the question against these things except as an absolute last resort. If a single fast mover walked by and I could hit it from behind maybe, just maybe I could crack its head and kill it. But if there are two or more, a physical attack won't work. The others would be on you in a split second. They have almost superhuman strength and even a strong human is no match for them. As you saw with Jerome. He and I arm wrestled and he was strong, but he was no match for the zombie that grabbed him."

"I suppose you have a proposal for the training changes?" I said. "I'd like to hear them." I waved my arm to encompass the group, especially the women. "If any of you have ideas on this, or any other issues you think we need to address, speak up. All input is welcome here. We're not racist or sexist."

Ed continued. "I laid awake last night thinking about it; much to the consternation of Marilyn I'll add. Instead of using stationary paper targets at various distances, I propose we hold that form of practice for the longer distances, in this case one hundred feet and more. For close in shooting, with both hand guns and long guns we should change to trapshooting and skeet methods. If a shooter can't lead a moving target, the fast zombies are going to get to that person or another victim."

"Wow!" Kira straightened on the chair she'd moved to the conversation circle. "So, the gist of what you've said is that permanently attached rifle scopes are useless on the fast zombies at close range. We'll need to train to hit fast moving, evasive targets at fifty feet or less with our Glocks."