Pandora: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse (12 page)

This time he got her up and manhandled her to the door. “Don’t argue. There’s no time.”

As Malik pulled her down the hallway, he heard the front window shatter. When he got to the head of the stairs, he was hugging Helen closely to him and had one of the Sig Sauers in his right hand.

They had gotten halfway down the stairs when Malik saw a fat, shirtless zombie making his way toward them. Two more flopped through the broken picture window and onto the living-room rug. Malik remembered seeing this zombie on the street when he was giving firearm training on the roof. He was big and ugly, with an unshaven face and greasy hair pointing in all directions. A large wound in his abdomen was leaking a yellow-and-green fluid down his pants. With his mottled purplish skin, dark veins underneath, and a milky-eyed stare, it was all Malik could do just to look at him.

As the obese creature put his hand on the banister, the good doctor raised his own hand and put a bullet through the center of the thing’s
forehead. Helen suddenly came alive. Seeing the zombie fall onto his back and observing the other two, now risen and moving toward them, she started to scream. As if in concert, the din of the pounding and moaning rose with the volume of her screams. Malik had reached the bottom of the stairs when she struggled against him in earnest. Malik swiftly shot the two zombies that were about to grab them when another fell through the shattered window into the living room. Helen was hysterical, flailing her arms and screaming at the top of her lungs. As Malik grabbed her upper arm roughly and pulled her toward the kitchen, the other window shattered, and three more zombies came through.

Out in the driveway, Mike and Jack were firing continually. For every ghoul they took down, another took its place. Just then Carol appeared at their side. The tall woman stood and looked at them with a deadpan expression, then, with a small, brief smile, turned and raised her arm. She had the Glock Gen4 9mm in her hand. With three rapid shots, Carol dropped the closest three zombies with accurate head shots.

“Whoa, we have an Amazon badass here,” exclaimed Mike.

Sean was between the driveway and the back door, trying to divide his attention between them. He exhorted everyone not shooting to get in the SUVs. Turning around he spotted the first zombie turn the opposite corner, into the yard. Sean ran up to the back door, put the M15 to his shoulder, and shot the creature between the eyes.
Thank God for red-dot sights
, he thought.

He heard screaming coming from inside and yelled through the doorway, “Let’s go, Malik. We can’t hold them off for much longer.”

Struggling with the squirming, frantic woman and trying to drag her away, Malik turned. Momentarily distracted by Sean’s call, Helen broke free of him. She ran to the foot of the stairs and, seeing the three newly arrived zombies getting up and coming for her, raised her hands to her face and ramped up her screams another octave.

Malik shot a female zombie with wild white hair and took two steps back to retrieve Helen. One of the three undead in front of her had a large piece of broken glass sticking out of his eye. At the same time Malik went
to reach for Helen, the zombie did also. Seeing this monstrosity in front of her face, she suddenly turned and ran up the stairs.

“Helen, no!” Malik cried.

He watched, frozen, as her feet disappeared up the risers. Running footfalls sounded on the second-floor hallway, and he heard her bedroom door slam shut.

Hearing Sean again shout and two more shots come from the yard, Malik broke the spell. He fired at the closest zombie, a disheveled teenage girl. As the glass-impaled man started up the stairs, the front door splintered and burst open. Dozens of undead poured through the door, led by a dead utility worker with an orange vest and one arm just a bloody stump. Malik turned and raced through the kitchen and out the back door, taking a second to flip the lock before slamming it closed.

Sean was standing with the rifle up to his shoulder, carefully picking off the walking dead as they rounded the far corner of the house. Seeing Malik exit, he said, “Where’s Helen?”

Malik looked at Sean with a pained expression as he shook his head.

“Shit.” Sean hesitated then said to him, “Let’s go.”

They rounded the corner, and seeing the number of zombies coming up the drive, Sean yelled, “Get in the cars! Mike, Jack, you’re driving your own vehicles. Let’s move it.”

Everyone quickly ran for the SUVs and piled in. Sean’s was the first in line, and he raced toward it. Henry, in the passenger seat, leaned over the console and opened the driver’s-side door for him. As Sean reached the open door, a male zombie with a bald head and ripped polo shirt grabbed him. The two hit the side of the house, wrestling with each other. Sean had his forearm up under the creature’s chin, trying to keep the snapping teeth away from his face. His M15 was trapped between them, so he couldn’t bring it up to bear.

Linda was screaming from the backseat. Seeing all this happen, Henry opened his door and got out. Running around the hood of the car toward Sean, he collided with two of the undead. As he pushed them away, one grabbed his hand and bit it. Henry screamed but was able to pull his hand away.

Mike stepped out of his Yukon and tried to aim his weapon. With so much movement and everyone so close to one another, he couldn’t get a clear shot.

Henry had made his way to the two grappling forms. Grabbing the bald zombie by the shoulders, and with adrenaline-fueled strength, he yanked the creature off Sean. As he did, two things happened. First, the bald zombie turned and grabbed Henry’s shirt. Second, the two undead he originally encountered reached him, and one wrapped his arms around the oncologist and viciously sank his teeth into his shoulder.

Henry again screamed and staggered unsteadily, dragging the three snarling zombies along with him. As Sean started forward, the four struggling figures fell against the side of the house and slid down the siding. Henry shouted in agony, “No, no! Just go, Sean. Leave me. I’m dead already.”

Sean hesitated for a second, but as more zombies bent over Henry, hiding him from view, he jumped into his car and started it. He threw it in gear, and as he rolled down the drive, an undead woman began to climb into the wide-open passenger side of the vehicle. Trying not to run over any of the dead so they wouldn’t get caught under the wheels and stop the car, he pointed the M15 at the woman’s head. She reached in, grabbed the barrel, and pulled it aside.

Linda reached around and grabbed a can of peaches from behind her. Leaning forward between the two front seats, she pounded the zombie in the head with the can. This continued all the way down the long driveway, with the other two SUVs following close behind. As they reached the street, another zombie grabbed the now-half-closed door and started to open it. With one final swing, Linda succeeded in knocking the woman halfway out the door.

Just then, as the wheels came into contact with the street, Sean gunned it. The woman, sliding out of the car, hit the legs of the undead man trying to get in, and they both went tumbling into the road.

With a roar almost drowning out the moaning dead, the three cars sped away.

Linda crawled into the front seat and slammed the passenger door shut. As Sean dodged approaching zombies, he turned the corner, and the three cars drove away from their neighborhood. The amount of un-dead immediately decreased. They took two more turns and pulled onto the ramp of the highway entrance.

The number of crashed and abandoned vehicles increased greatly as they drove. Sean had to wind his way around several multicar accidents.

“I took this route because the Garden State Parkway entrance is the next exit,” Sean said. “I figure we’ll head south. North will only take us closer to New York, and the number of walking dead there will be really huge.”

“What then?” asked Linda.

His attention was drawn away by a pair of waving arms. Sean looked over and saw a woman sitting in the passenger seat of a stalled car. It apparently had rammed the van in front of it. The grille was pushed in, and steam seeped from under the hood. The woman hadn’t had her seat belt on. The windshield was smashed outward, and cracks spider-webbed out from there.

She was sitting there with the window open. Her face was a mask of blood and broken glass. As the sun hit the wet blood and shiny glass particles, her face sparkled in flashes of light. She was waving her arms out of the window at Sean.

He stopped. Mike and Jack stopped also. Sean started to open the door but hesitated. He stared more closely at the injured woman’s face. Above her forehead, where the impact wound was, he clearly saw the shattered bone and gray matter of her brains protruding out. She was dead. And…not dead.

Shuttering, Sean drove forward again. This was indeed a different world. Remembering Linda’s question, Sean looked at her, then back to the ravaged road strewn with crumpled cars and crumpled bodies.

“What then?” he said softly. “I don’t know. I…I really don’t know.”

PART TWO

17

I
n the United States, the East and West Coasts were hit the hardest. The East Coast from Boston to Virginia had the largest concentration of people in the country. This Mid-Atlantic area was awash with the undead. The large cities were connected by crowded suburbs. When the virus came, there was nowhere to go. Street gangs took over the inner cities. They all figured they were bad enough to kill the zombies and control the city. But they had too little ammunition, too few resources, and way too many zombies to kill. And, they found, the dead weren’t at all intimidated by posturing and bravado.

The Midwest fared better, as the population was more scattered and better armed. With a lot of farms already fenced in, they had their defenses in place. Ranchers and farmers went out each morning and dispatched all the zombies they found tangled in barbed wire or stopped by fencing. Other spreads with infected owners were raided, their undead owners eliminated, and their vast resources plundered.

The Northwest areas of eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon became a haven for separatists, survivalists, skinheads, various Aryan Brotherhood racist paramilitaries, and other right-wing extremists. Several took this opportunity to declare the collection of states a separate nation. Heavily armed bands roamed the countryside, shooting any zombies they found. This body count also tended to include any
nonwhite residents, unpopular people branded liberals or commies, and Jews.

When the so-called White Christian Army reasoned that, as a new nation, they needed their own nuclear weapons and tried to take over a couple of missile silos from the US Strategic Air Command, the military decided enough is enough. When the government sent in officials that were taken and executed, they diverted a US Air Force unit from zombie liquidation to bomb and strafe any paramilitary compounds their observation drones found.

The Western states, with the exception of California, which pretty much suffered the East Coast’s fate, were less populated. Their huge problem was heavy incursions over the Mexican border by both zombies and fleeing refugees. With much too many coming over to be separated and quarantined for bites, they just killed anything walking across. When the frightened refugees realized it was more dangerous to go than to stay, the only beings that came across were zombies.

The South, being more gun friendly, had a certain population base ready and willing to defend themselves. When the Pandora 2 Mutation first started overseas, gun stores quickly sold out their entire stocks of weapons. Online sales went through the roof until the websites and servers crashed from the sheer amount of hits. People were afraid, both of zombies and of criminally opportunistic individuals. As the crisis lengthened, people’s fears were realized. Stories of zombie hordes and criminal bands raping and killing increased. Soon just showing up at someone’s front door was tantamount to a death sentence.

18

A
s Michael Quinn stirred the fire, sparks flew up from the burning embers. Everyone was standing around, watching the dying fire.

“Feels good,” said Naomi, grinning. “It was a little chilly last night.”

They were somewhere outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia, camped in a storage unit for the night. They’d been telling war stories over their morning cowboy coffee. During a brief lull in conversation, Sue turned to Sean. “Hey, Sean. What was with that house you guys went into?” There was an uncomfortable silence. Sean, head down, looked out the corner of his eye at Mike.

“It’s nothing, Sue,” he mumbled.

“Nothing? I’m talking about the one in Jersey, right before we crossed into Delaware. You know, the one that had you guys all freaked out.”

By now Sean, Malik, and Mike were fidgeting uncomfortably. Sean raised his head and looked at them. They both looked down and gave him noncommittal shrugs. Sean looked at Sue then at the rest of the group, who now were very curious.

“Okay,” he started with a resigned sigh, “you know we stopped at that farmhouse because of all the dead zombies around it? At least two dozen of them were lying around. Especially at the front door. I figured somebody who had done such an exemplary job of killing off the dead may want some help. There were only three or four left wandering
around, so it wasn’t a problem to kill them. When no one answered our shouts, Mike, Malik, and I entered.” Sean paused, as if gathering his strength. “I figured if they’d left, maybe there was food. There was none, just empty cans that looked like they were licked clean. There were some empty water bottles on the floor too. I don’t know why, but I opened the refrigerator and looked in. The power was long out, but inside were four water bottles filled with urine. Upstairs in the bedroom were two young children lying peacefully on top of the bedspread. Both had been shot once in the temple. There was a hunting rifle on the floor. The bedroom closet door was open, and the mother was hanging from it. I guess they were surrounded by zombies and had no more food and water. They’d been reduced to drinking their own pee. Their mother probably miscounted her shots and only had two left instead of three. She must have felt it was either that or be eaten by zombies. I wish we’d never gone in.”