The Renegades (A Post Apocalyptic Zombie Novel) (2 page)

How the hell would we know that a real crawler had made his way inside?

“Guys, listen, I’m serious. I need to change into something else. This has started to dry and it’s chapping my ass cheeks,” Matt said.

“If you don’t give it a rest, I’ll shove this stick of dynamite right up your ass.”

“Yeah, really funny. This is the last year I’m doing this. I don’t know how you talked me into this.”

Matt was right. Every year we would have the same conversation with Matt about why we had to do this together. If we were one man down, it made it a lot harder. Plus, this was the last year we’d be together.

We had been walking down the track when we entered the mouth of the tunnel. The tunnel stretched beneath the valley. From the moment you entered, you couldn’t see a bloody thing inside there, except a speck of light in the distance indicating the end of the tunnel. The only reason we opted to go in there was because we had always traveled over the valley. It was my idea. Something I would later come to regret.

“I can’t see shit in here,” Baja said. “I’m gonna die from falling over and cracking my head.”

“That’s a highly unlikely scenario,” Specs added. “You see, unless you land awkwardly, medics would be here I estimate…” He tapped his wristwatch, making it glow a bright blue before it went out. “Within twelve minutes, maybe fifteen if they get stuck in traffic.”

We groaned as we moved deeper into the darkness. Several times I tripped on the thick planks of wood held down by steel. The only light beyond the speck in the distance came from a couple of small metal flashlights that Specs had grabbed from his old man’s store. Baja swept the ground ahead of us, while we kept the other two flashlights pointed at the sides. We were fully expecting one of the numb nuts to jump out and try to spook us. We didn’t imagine that the sound we heard next would be so realistic.

You see, usually the fake Z’s would let out this lame ass cry, as though they were mimicking the girl from
The Exorcist
. The reason they were told to do this was twofold; one to give runners a chance to take evasive action, and the other was because we’d had a fifty-year-old lady nearly suffer a heart attack from being scared.

A howling followed by a high-pitched scream of fury was enough to make all of us come to an abrupt halt. I wasn’t one for scaring easy, but it got the hairs up on my arms.

“What the fuck was that?” Matt said.

“The echoes of you mom, after I did her last night,” Baja said before he broke into laughter.

“Jerk.” Matt punched him on the arm.

Instinctively we all turned around to estimate if it was worth walking back. But the light behind us looked as small as the one ahead. I don’t think any of us would admit it. But it would have been safe to say we were scared shitless. Or at least I was. But I had good reason. Or at least a sound excuse. When I was twelve we had a police officer come into our school. He hoped that he might inspire some of us to follow a career in law enforcement. His method? To show us what it was really like, he played an audio of an officer approaching a car on a snowy night. You heard the slam of his door as he got out, the snow crunching beneath his feet, and then when you expected to hear his voice, all you heard was the crack of a gun going off.

I was so startled by the sound, I flipped my desk over and layered the noise with a loud “fuckkkkkk…” When our teacher hit the lights, everyone was in stitches. It was a long time before people stopped cracking jokes about that.

Yeah, you could say I have a vivid imagination.

“Come on, you pussies.” Baja pressed on, we glanced at each other and fell in step. For a brief moment we brushed it off as nothing more than organizers playing more tricks. They were known for trying to make the event as realistic as possible. They hired professional makeup artists to come in and work their magic on people’s faces and clothes. They bought lookalike blood that people would toss at you. It took weeks to clean up that shit after it splattered all over the ground. Work crews would be out there mopping it up from the very moment they called it a night until the following week. It was like New Year’s Eve in New York, except instead of confetti everywhere, there was blood splatter. Walls, ground, cars, windows, rocks. You name it. They even had an actual bloodbath which you had to wade through as an obstacle. Fact is, it was amazing the extent that people would go to, to make this thing look real. Sure there were people who looked like they had been shopping for Halloween items at their local dollar store, but there were a few who could have appeared in a Hollywood movie.

So maybe that’s why we laughed when we saw what was before us.

My light drifted over the back of someone in a hunched position. As they turned, blood gushed from their mouth. Chunks of what looked like intestines hung from a chewed-up lip. Below the Z was Kyle Mannering. I spotted him every year. His makeup was crap, but for some odd reason he was really getting into it this year. However, he wasn’t moving a muscle.

The Z fixed his milky gaze on us as he continued to chomp down on guts that looked pretty darn realistic. It wasn’t uncommon to see the odd person pretending to eat flesh. Those dressed as zombies turned up with raw meat they had bought from the local butchers. But usually it was a T-bone steak, or a marinated skewer of chicken pieces. But this was unreal.

“I have to hand it to them. That is some funky ass Hollywood shit going on there,” Specs said. We had to agree. Whoever came up with those effects should be hired.

The Z rose to his feet. I squinted in the dark trying to discern what I was seeing. I noticed a large chunk of him was missing. It was like someone had ripped out his right ribs. A chill came over me as he drew back lips over rotted teeth.

Before we could get a better look, Baja stepped forward and whipped his nunchucks around, and brought them down on his legs. The Z collapsed, and we rushed around him. We broke into laughter, unable to believe they would have gone that far this year. It was insane.

As we continued on down the tunnel, something struck me as odd. There was a lack of Z’s in the tunnel. You see what you have to remember is we normally went over the hill instead of passing through the tunnel. Most said the tunnel was filled with mature Z’s. They moved fast and usually snagged your blood tags before you were out. Which was part of the reason why we never entered in previous years. But besides the creeper we just spotted back there, all we had seen so far, was bodies laid out. Now if that was an attempt to scare us or get us to look over them, it wasn’t working.

“If I knew it was going to be this easy, I would have come through every year,” Baja said.

“It would have been quicker too. By my estimate, we could have knocked off an extra—”

“Shut up,” Baja cut Specs off.

“Matt…” I was about to ask him a question when I realized he wasn’t beside us. “Matt?” I called out into the darkness.

“All right, Matt, you can come out now. We’re really scared, NOT.”

Specs and Baja let out a laugh that echoed against the rock walls. Something however didn’t sit right with me. I moved back into the tunnel, passing more of the fake Z’s who were still laid out. I scanned ahead of me, sweeping my flashlight.

Then as if he’d been crouched down waiting for me to return, Matt leapt up, roaring like an insane mental patient. That was followed by a huge belly laugh, and a few jabs in my gut.

“Johnny, you should have seen your face.”

“I told you,” Baja said before joining in the heckling.

As we walked out into the afternoon sunshine and its warmth bathed our faces, it felt good.

“What the hell were you doing?”

“Other than waiting to freak you out? I was checking out Kyle. I was going to give him a kick for all the years he’d laid into me. But that fucker bit me.”

“Who, Kyle?”

“No the one Baja took out.”

He flashed his hand, and you could see teeth marks, and a small amount of blood trickling down.

“I’m pretty sure that no biting should be in the rules.”

“You should get that checked out. Looks nasty,” Specs said.

“Not as nasty as your mother’s vag,” Matt said. He clearly hadn’t lost his humor.

Once we got through the final obstacles, it was a long hike back to the town.

A deep orange sun was beginning to set and we could hear the sound of a live band rehearsing for this evening’s festival. They held it every year. It was a way to wrap up the night. I wouldn’t have minded but the bands were always crap. Though I couldn’t complain, it was free entry to those in the race. We, however, never showed up, as we always had our own party on the roof of my dad’s saloon. It was tradition. We camped out under the stars, drank brews, and talked shit until the early hours of the morning.

Once we made it over the finish line we received another medal. As usual we tossed them in the trash the moment we received then, making sure that the organizers saw it. It pissed them off to no end, but that was sort of the goal.

A
ll the guys were there
, including Dax who later graced us with his presence. Despite him being older, he couldn’t resist spending the evening on the roof. I think it reminded him of a time when responsibility was just a joke.

As usual I sneaked up beers that I’d swiped from the bar, Baja brought marijuana, Matt brought the snacks, and Specs well… he just showed up in his hazmat suit bringing all manner of weird contraptions.

Even though it was the end of October, in Nevada the temperatures had been hovering in the high sixties. We were deciding where to lay out our sleeping bags when Dax kicked open the metal door that led out onto the roof.

“Hey wimps.”

“Dax,” Matt yelled, pleased to see him.

Matt looked up to him. Why? I had no idea.

The festival kicked off at eight and usually ran until eleven. They would then spend the next hour firing off fireworks.

As usual, we would drink, and then line up the beer cans on the edge of the roof and use Dax’s Glock 17. As the night wore on, it would get harder to hit them. Whoever managed to get the least amount down, had to streak naked through the festival.

Most of the time it was Specs who lost, as the kid just couldn’t hold his drink, and in turn couldn’t shoot straight for shit.

“I can’t believe this is going to be the last year we do this together,” Specs said.

“You think you’ll stick around after graduation?” I asked.

“Nah. I think it’s time to put this town in my rearview mirror,” he replied.

“I wish I could. My own old man keeps going on at me about helping out with the family business,” Baja added.

I got up and walked over to where Matt was seated looking out over the valley. Castle Rock was nestled on a slope.

Matt was smoking a joint.

“You’re not looking too good, dude. You sure you don’t want to get that hand looked at?”

I gestured to his hand.

“And miss this?”

From where he sat you could enjoy a 100-mile view of the mountains and desert. On a starry night it was beautiful up there. For the past ten years we had been doing this. It had become our tradition. The one thing we looked forward to in the year.

I slumped down next to him, dangling my legs over the edge of the roof, and offered him a can of Budweiser.

“Thanks.”

He cracked it open and gulped it down. The sound of music and a crowd could be heard in the distance. For a small town, it managed to draw in quite a crowd around Halloween. We felt like kings on top of that saloon, watching the parade of people heading out to the festival.

I turned to see Baja doing his usual balancing act across a plank of wood between our store and the next. For the most part, our tiny section of the town was all joined together. Stores squished side by side, giving visitors an almost open mall concept. To the right of us, you could step on to the next roof, to the left there was a gap. A few were separated by several feet to allow for alleyways, but nothing that a rope or plank couldn’t reach.

“What do you think you’re going to do after graduation?”

Matt rubbed his bandaged-up hand. “I’m going to backpack across the country.”

I laughed. “Really, and what’s your old man think of that?”

“Screw him.”

Matt had never got on with his father. He too had an absent mother, but in his case it was because she had run off with a guy and left him to fend for himself with a father that was consumed by his work. He was known for hitting Matt. There were many days he missed school, or turned up wearing dark sunglasses. No one really ever said anything. It wasn’t that we wouldn’t have gone to the police about it. But Matt told us to swear we wouldn’t say anything.

As much a shithead as his father was, he was all Matt had. He had no brothers or sisters, or relatives in the town. We were in many ways his family. The number of nights he had camped out on my roof, because his father was on a bender, were countless. I had tried to convince him to sleep in my room, but he wouldn’t have it. He came and went as he pleased. My father knew it, and in some ways I think he respected Matt for it. He didn’t ask for handouts. I’d made up a makeshift shelter on the roof, not that it rained much as we lived in one of the driest states, but it was just in case.

“Where are you planning to go?”

“New York.” He took a swig from his can, and got all wide-eyed. “Yeah, New York. I’ve always wanted to visit a big city. Maybe I’ll get myself an apartment, a few chicks and spend a year partying.”

I shook my head. I actually believed if he made it there, he probably would too. I never saw him as someone who would stick around long. He often spoke of his mother over the course of the years. Where had she gone? How could she leave him there? It had really fucked him up. I’d lost my mother to cancer, but it didn’t affect me as half as bad as it did him. I think because he knew she was out there. Still alive.

“Anyway, enough about me. Tell me again about how you are going to be a NASCAR driver.”

I snorted. “That’s just a dream, man. I ain’t getting out of this town.”

He turned to me and grabbed me by the scruff of the collar. “Now you listen up, Johnny. Dreams are all we have. Don’t you dare let anyone piss on yours.”

He was referring to my father, Keith Goode.

He was known for killing dreams. At least mine. Unless it had something to do with the military he didn’t want to hear about it. It was like the guy couldn’t see beyond his own life. It had only got worse when Dax had made it into the Marines. Now when my mother was alive, it was a different story entirely. She would tell him not to be so hard on me. Especially being as I was only ten at the time. I mean who the hell crushes a ten-year-old’s dreams?

Keith Goode does.

I didn’t get the guy then, and eight years later, I still didn’t get it.

“Now go on. Tell me.”

He handed me his joint and I squeezed my eyes shut as I took a hard toke on it.

“Right, well.” I began to picture in my mind what I had envisioned since I was just knee-high. That’s when it had begun. I’d seen it on TV. Forty-three racers burning rubber around Daytona. The checkered flag, confetti falling all over you as you basked in the glory of endorsements coming out of your ying yang, and a nice million-dollar payday. Bumping and crashing, ah, it was the Super Bowl of stock car racing.

“And the women?” he asked, taking the joint from me.

Oh, and the female drivers. Now they were just breathtaking. They were like Victoria’s Secret models, except they could drive a car and clock over two hundred miles an hour. Could you get any better?

Yeah, you could say I was a little taken by it all. With my first paycheck I had bought a beaten-up stock car. I’d had goals of doing it up, and racing it. But the thing had been sitting at the back of our store for the past two years growing rust.

After I reeled off my typical five-minute spiel about one day making it to Daytona, Matt seemed satisfied. It was if he fed off the energy of dreams. As though it made him believe that anything was possible. And yet in many ways that’s what it felt like when we were kids. Like anything was possible. Now as we were getting closer to graduating, everything was going to change. We would go our separate ways and then all we would have would be the memories, of this time. These moments that seemed so infinite when we were young.

“Guys, did you hear that?” Specs said, jolting upright with a joint in one hand and a beer in the other.

“Did you fart?” Baja said.

“Shut up. Listen.”

“Oh God, Specs, I swear if you fart, I’m going to sit on your head in the night and lay a hot steamy one.”

Then I heard it.

“What was that?” Baja said.

“Ah nothing.”

There it was again. However, this time we all heard it. It was a scream. But not one, but several.

“It’s probably just fireworks going off, or Billy Marlen and his chumps,” Baja said.

Billy was that kid. You know the one. Who for whatever reason couldn’t get through a day in school without humiliating or beating the shit out of someone. He was one year above us, and had graduated last year. But the guy was still bumming around this town. Last I heard he had been fired from seven stores. One was for stealing and the others for just being a lazy asshole. Either way. He was known for causing a ruckus on Halloween. If he and his pals weren’t knocking down mailboxes with baseball bats, they were chasing down the female population of Castle Rock or spray-painting visitors’ cars.

People would wake up the next day and see all manner of obscenities sprayed on their windscreens. Like I honestly don’t think the guy had an IQ higher than a flea.

“No, listen,” Specs said again.

We had been up on that roof for the past few hours. Night had fallen, and the only light came from a few street lamps and the festival that was in the distance. As we listened there was nothing. And then we heard it again. It was the same sound that echoed inside the tunnel earlier that day. Except this time it was a hundred times louder.

I swung my legs back onto the roof, and rushed over to the front of the store where all the noise was coming from.

When I looked over the edge, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

It was if the zombie run was still on, except instead of people grabbing blood tags from people’s waists they were tackling them to the ground and tearing into their flesh. My eyes widened, my jaw dropped as my brain tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Was this another event that the organizers had put on? Another way they were upping the ante? Getting people to think a real zombie attack was happening?

“Guys, you need to see this.”

Baja stood beside Specs who had these high-powered night vision binoculars. He put them up to his face and froze.

“What the fuck?”

I snatched them from him and took a look. He’d been facing in the direction of where the festival was going on. As I squinted trying to make out what I was seeing, I wasn’t horrified, I was confused. People were attacking each other. But this was no drunken brawl. It was an all-out war. I saw one guy smack another around the head with a plank of wood, another one looked to have snapped some lady’s head. If that wasn’t shocking enough, the look on their faces was.

I dropped the binoculars. My pulse started racing. My mouth became dry.

Then I heard the gunshots. One after the other. The screams grew louder and I knew right then that this was not part of the event. I raced over to the ledge at the front of the store and dropped down. I gestured to the others to keep low. Whatever the hell was going on down there? I sure didn’t want to alert them to the fact that fresh meat was up here. Peering over the edge I saw Mr. Thompson, the local butcher, swiping at a group of four Z’s. Except these were real. I couldn’t believe it. These were real, or seriously psychotic individuals. Either way they looked as if they were going to fuck up Mr. Thompson real bad.

“Get away. I warn you,” he called out.

Then even with all his attempts at warding them off, they charged him and he dropped to the ground. I couldn’t see exactly what was going on, but I could hear him screaming out in agony. The very sound turned my stomach. Then his screams stopped. The four creepers hunched over him, pulling at his flesh like buzzards dining on road kill. It was sick. I felt my mouth fill with vomit. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I twisted around and tossed up what I had eaten that afternoon.

Dax grabbed the gun that we’d been firing with earlier and raced toward the door to the stairwell that led down into our father’s saloon. I forced myself up.

“Dax. Where are you going?”

“Wait here.”

“But...”

He turned and gave me the look I’d seen countless times. The one where I knew he wouldn’t repeat himself.

“Barricade this door.” I watched him disappear into the stairwell. It felt like I was going into shock. This couldn’t be happening. This was the kind of thing we joked about.

I rushed over and pulled out the metal rod that my father had set up on the roof for clothes to dry on. I jammed it against the door and surface of the roof.

“I knew it. I knew this day would come. I told you guys,” Specs said, pacing back and forth. No one was paying attention to him. We were too fixated on what was happening. People we knew were running for their lives, others jumped in vehicles and tried to plow their way out of the town. Some made it through while others crashed. We watched the spectacle unfold before us. The carnage was incomprehensible. Vehicles swerved into buildings, trying to maneuver around large groups of undead. Harry’s Hardware exploded as a car drove straight through its window. People were still inside. I could have sworn I saw kids in the back.

I’d seen movies about outbreaks, horror flicks at the local drive-in, but nothing came close to this. It was pure chaos and terror. I knew these people. They were my neighbors, schoolmates, and families I’d grown up around.

Instincts told me to phone the police, but I’d already seen a cop car crash into a post, after three fast-moving suckers leapt onto the hood of his car. It was one thing after the next, as adults turned on kids and snarling kids attacked adults.

There was no time to think about what we needed to do. As the sound of guns went off below us, we hurried over to the door waiting for Dax to get back. Then again how we would know if it was him?

“We need to protect ourselves,” Specs said.

Weapons. Besides a pair of nunchucks we had nothing. Dax had taken the only gun we had. My baseball bat was in my room, and that dynamite piece that Specs carried was fake. He’d concocted it out of putty, but used a real safety fuse. We scanned the roof for anything that could act as a makeshift weapon. A piece of steel, wood, anything that we could wield.

A sudden explosion in the distance, and we watched as the old water tower tank at the town’s only historic farm collapsed. Flames licked high into the air, as all over the town fires started and burned out of control.

Banging on the door.

“Johnny, open the fucking door.”

“It’s Dax,” Matt yelled.