The Undead World (Book 1): The Apocalypse (20 page)

“
Did you have many fatalities?” Neil asked, and then politely took a bite.

Chuck seemed to have forgotten his manners about the same time he stopped brushing his teeth, i.e. long ago. Around a bite that could
've been better suited to a gorilla's mouth he commented, “Yeah, there all sorts of bodies out there. It was hard to tell which was a zombie and which was a person.”

The c
olonel took a drink of water before saying, “At one time they were all people. Though I understand your question and your concerns. Our losses were negligible. Zero here on the main island, which speaks well for our defensive measures.”

“
And what of the second island?” Sadie asked. “I ask because it was clearly not as prepared. Here you have foxholes every twenty feet and big machine guns and three layers of that wire stuff. Over there you just had the wire.”

“
I don't discuss casualties, ever,” the colonel replied lightly. “It's bad for morale.”

“
I think it's better for morale to know the truth,” Sadie replied, showing her courage by not backing down under the colonel's sudden glare.

“
Sadie!” Chuck growled in warning. “We ain't gonna ingratiate ourselves none if you act like this.”

“
Maybe Sadie has a point,” Neil said. “If she's going to be staying here then I want to know she's going to be safe. What I see is that this island is as well protected as it can be and that the people who live here all just happen to be soldiers. Where are the women and children? Where are all the older people? Did you keep them on that second island, Colonel? Were their deaths negligible because they weren't your soldiers?”

The c
olonel ate slowly, saying nothing. As he did he eyed Neil like wolf might. Neil did his best not to quail under the stare, and in fact he rallied with the realization that he wasn't going to be chosen to stay anyways.

Remaining polite, Neil ate his meal with an air of expectation until finally Williams snarled,
“There's no saying we're taking any of you, first off. Second, when I say negligible I mean negligible. We don't take many women for the same reason we don't take any children. This is a military base and right now our main concern is surviving. And in case you haven't goddamned noticed we haven't been doing that good a job of it. For weeks, while you've been probably hiding beneath your damned bed, we've been fighting and dying and this Island is the first bit of luck we've had.”

Neil dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin and said,
“I didn't mean to be offensive, Colonel. It's just your initial answer didn't do anything but worry us more that we already were.”

“
I wasn't worried in the least,” Chuck remarked, sucking his teeth. “I'm sure the colonel runs his base as he sees fit. Like how a man should run his own home, with a firm hand.”

This had the
colonel agreeing. “You must be the mechanic I was told about. A good mechanic is worth his weight in gold these days.”

Unexpectedly Chuck shook his head.
“That's where you're wrong. Gold ain't worth dick just now.”

This had Williams laughing.
“You just may be right about that. And this is your son? A good strong lad...and you two,” he said taking in Neil and Sadie. “A Wall Street guy and chick zombie hunter.” He blew out a long time as he stared at them, drumming his fingers as he did. “Yeah, I can't say I need any investment advice just at the moment and as for a girl who hunts zombies...I don't think so. I have a thousand men who are infinitely more qualified.”

Neil and Sadie flicked their eyes to each other and both saw the disappointment in the other. Again Chuck surprised them by saying,
“If you want me, you have to take them as well, and of course Charlie. That goes without saying. We'll call it a package deal.”

The
colonel's smile widened a touch, however it didn't look completely genuine. He cleared his throat and said, “Ok, How about I give them a once over first. Can you two please stand up and take off your jackets...and your extra shirt, Miss.”

He didn
't need to look for very long. “Miss, stop hugging yourself. Put your hands down to your sides. Yes, just like that...Sorry, no deal. You can have your son, on the condition that he works.”

“
You'll just put us out there,” Neil said, glaring. “At least take Sadie. She is smart and quick. You won't be disappointed.”

Williams shook his head and then Chuck surprised them for the third and final time.
“Then I want the monster truck out there. I may have to scrounge for parts and it's an ideal vehicle to get around in. Great vision, perfect hydraulics, what do you say?”

“
Who are you talking to?” Sadie asked, yanking her jacket back on in such a fury that she got caught up in it. “That's my truck. You can't bargain with something you don't even own!”

“
Actually you can,” the colonel said. “As long as you can get away with it. And in this case he can.”

“
You can have the ranger,” Chuck insisted, trying to placate Sadie. “It's a great truck. Gets good gas mileage.”

The c
olonel grimaced as though he were about to impart bad news, which he was. “About the Ranger, that you can have, but you'll have to leave the gas. And your weapons.” Neil's mouth fell open and Sadie looked about to faint. Williams went on, “And any food or water. I have to think of the greater good in this and the welfare of two-thousand men comes before that of just two people.”

“
Wait...” Chuck started to say, but the colonel stared hard, shutting him up.

He then stood and stretched, though with a hand on the butt of his pistol at his hip.
“Before you start in, let me be clear I've heard it all. Yes, life is not fair—you're just going to have to deal with it. Turner, get in here!”

The man leapt in as if waiting for those exact words.
“Sir, we have two packs ready as ordered. Two sleeping bags, two sets of clothes and assorted toiletries. A lighter, a can opener, etcetera.”

“
Just like that?” Sadie asked, with her mouth hanging open. “We don't get a gun or anything? And no car?”

“
Should be no problem for a zombie hunter such as yourself,” the colonel said as a parting comment.

Within seconds
the two were escorted out of the tent and across the pontoon bridge. On the other side a number of tanks were parked and new rolls of concertina wiring were being strung. Turner handed them the packs and then gave them a light push toward the nearby forest and said in an undertone, “Don't hang around. Put as much distance between us as you can. Some of the soldiers can't be trusted around a young woman such as this. Do you understand me?”

Neil did and thanked him for the warning, but Sadie began to argue, and he was forced to drag her away.
“There's no use trying,” he told her as they began to quick march through the forest. “They won't listen to reason...oh this is my fault. Why did I say all that crap about you being a zombie hunter? They probably thought we were both idiots!”

“
I don't think that was it,” she replied. “They wanted Chuck and all our stuff. Unless you were a doctor I doubt we had any chance from the get go. I mean they had these packs ready so quickly.”

She was likely right, yet that did little to help Neil who was nearly overcome with guilt. All of his supposed help had only got them stranded in a
zombie-infested forest, with horny soldiers looking for an excuse to leave the island so that they could get at her.

Though just then it was the zombies that were more of a problem. They had been walking southeast, not by any design, it was only in an effort to evade the many undead that were wandering down from the north. Thankfully the forest was thicker close to the river and they used its foliage to hide in as a glomp of nearly a hundred of the beasts came slowly on, moaning like a dread wind.

Huddling down and practically wetting themselves they let the zombies drift right past them. And then the pair was up and running, looking to put some distance between them. Unfortunately the foliage worked both ways and they ran smack into a second wave of undead.

One grabbed Sadie
's pack.

Quick and agile she swung about, letting the back
pack slide off her shoulders, flinging the beast off of her in the process. She was so impressively calm that Neil would've cheered if this was little league football, instead he stooped and picked up a heavy rock and dashed in the brains of another that had come too close.

Then they were running for their lives, and the glomp that had passed them by came up to trap them. Neil grabbed a new rock and Sadie a stick. Like cavemen against a pack of wolves they prepared to defend themselves tooth and nail.

Her insides were cried out and empty, and the rain began to slacken, and her head hung. Below, the zombies ate their fill of what used to her father and most went back to the river to be washed on to their next slaughter, while seventy or eighty hung about, mindlessly milling. They were too many for Sarah with her limited ammunition.

“
I know what you did,” Denise said in a choked voice. For hours on end they had sat on dreadful thin perches, which threatened to give at any moment as the wind swung the tree back and forth with a fearful creaking. And only now her mother spoke.

“
I had to,” Sarah replied, unable to look at her. She hadn't once glanced Denise's way. Not once in all the long night. And now with the sun threatening to reveal the scene of Gary Rivers' murder, Sarah chose to shut her eyes instead.

Denise let out a hacking cough and said through rattled lungs,
“You were right to do what you did. You kept him from pain. You kept him from becoming one of them. And I know you'll do the same for me.”

Sarah
's eyes were red and they burned and she wished for tears to relieve them but they did not come. “I will if I have too,” she finally spat out.

“
It's time, now.”

“
No. We're not going to just give up,” Sarah said with anger and harshness in her words. “I didn't give up on you before, despite what they wanted me to do and I'm not...”

Her mother interrupted in a tired voice,
“I'm not giving up. It's time. The fever has run its course.” With a start, Sarah now looked up to see her mother's face alive with the heat that baked her from the inside out. “One of them got me,” she whispered. “Just a scratch, I barely even felt it with all the excitement.”

“
No,” Sarah said, breathlessly. “Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's tetanus, or a normal flu. We've been up here all night. It's a cold, only.”

“
It burns like fire. It's the virus, I know the symptoms. Harry Jenkins got bit, remember? It's the same, and now it's coming on worse. Please don't let me go through this just so you won't have to feel bad about killing me. It's what I want.”

“
Mom...”

“
I love you,” Denise Rivers said. “Now come up above me. And please don't make me beg. It hurts too much.”

Sarah climbed with numb hands and without care. If she fell she didn
't think she would mind a bit, in fact it would be an act of mercy. She climbed and couldn't look at her mother as she passed, and Denise wouldn't look at her. The older woman stared at the bark of the tree with a look of dread fear on her face.

“
I love you so much,” she said again with more life. Her wrinkled hands gripped the trunk with all her might so that little chips of it fell away. “Make it fast, please. It's in my head and it hurts so bad. Hurry.”

“
Love you, Mom,” Sarah said and then took a deep breath and then another, and tears dropped where she was aiming, right at the top of her mother's head. Sarah's hands began to shake so badly that she had hug the tree with her arm and neck to hold herself steady and still she couldn't pull the trigger.

Below
, zombies began to gather, looking up, as if hungry for their prize, like dogs would after treeing a cat. Denise started to look up at her too and Sarah screamed with rage and pulled the trigger, and then she screamed and screamed to drown out the awful sound of her mother falling from the tree, smacking against branch after branch before thumping to ground.

And Sarah screamed hate and shook the tree because the zombies ate loudly. The wet sounds of her mother
's flesh being pulled apart and the snap of her bones and the sucking of her marrow had Sarah rocking against the tree as her vocal cords began to tear in her misery.

She went on so long that as the first light of day came, the tree itself took up the cadence of her misery and swayed back and forth. Soon the swaying became somewhat dangerous and Sarah didn
't care. What was left for her? Her parents were dead and her life was ruined...even her life as a whore was out the window. She had seen the sharp anger in the colonel's eyes when she had disobeyed his orders. No one disobeyed him.

Not that she would consider sleeping with him even for a second now.

It was he who had stolen their food and weapons. It was he who had turned her into a whore just so she could save her parents. And it was he who had allowed them to die by cutting the bridge. Her hatred for him twisted her face and she felt a need to kill that would have shamed the zombies below. It fueled the swinging and now the tree tipped so far over at the end of each of its inverted pendulum like swings that she unexpectedly saw how she could get off the island with her life.

At the end of each swing the tree hung out further and further over the river, which was thankfully empty of the living corpses that had choked it the night before. Sarah swung harder and then
as the tree reached out beyond the wires, she let go, dropping with a light splash.

The water was beyond cold, yet the air was worse and so she felt somewhat of a relief as she let the current drift her along. She went for a few miles in this way, lazing, barely doing enough to keep afloat, letting the cold match the numbness she felt inside. Unfortunately her reality came back to her as she saw zombies along the western shoreline ahead.

Keeping low, she paddled to the other edge of the river and was surprised to see more of the creatures. They stood beneath the trees as though they didn't care for the sun that was only then crawling into the sky and even as she watched they began to drift deeper into the forest. 

With the air heating up with the Indian Summer, Sarah left the water and crept along the bank of the river, leaving her small prints in the mud. And then she heard actual people: a cry and then running.

Using the brush for cover, Sarah came closer to the sound, following behind a group of zombies who were hurrying forward in anticipation of a meal. She hoped they would feast. That hope boiled up from a place of hate. It was rancid within her and the sick feeling had her wishing it was a group of soldiers who were being attacked.

However it wasn
't. It was a man and a woman...or rather what looked like a man and his daughter...or so Sarah hoped. The girl was Brit's age and the idea that this guy was trying to stick it to her was revolting. She almost turned away at the thought, leaving them to their fate, but then she saw the slight man brain a zombie with a rock with one hand as he pushed the girl behind him with the other.

He was protecting her, like Sarah should
've been doing for Brit all along.

“
But Brit is dead,” Sarah whispered aloud in an attempt to wrest her heart from the quick guilt that had infested her. Brit had to be dead. She was one of eight million zombies in New York City—that was a sad fact that Sarah had tried to pretend wasn't, only now, after the death of her parents she couldn't pretend any longer. The real truth was that Brittany was like all the rest. She had been eaten and turned into a soulless thing weeks ago. Just like all the rest.

Just like this girl would be if Sarah didn
't do anything.

The thought sent a spark through the
cringing woman and before she knew it, she charged the zombies from behind. At close range she plugged two of them with shots that were like explosions in the quiet morning forest. The sound had the creatures turning and Sarah shot another, making a hole for the trapped pair to dash through.

And then they were all running
, humans and zombies alike.

“
To the river,” Sarah said, pelting barefoot and free with only the rifle to slow her. “The stiffs can't swim.”

The slope of the river came up fast and the young girl flashed ahead and leapt far into the water with her momentum, coming down feet first. This was in direct contradiction to the man who stopped at the edge to take off his shoes. Sarah took him by the pack and pulled him backwards while he gasped at the cold and spluttered something about not being able to swim very well.

“You can swim better than them,” the girl said, making an easy time of the river. She turned on her back and did a gentle backstroke and introduced herself. “Hi, I'm Sadie.”

The man cleared his throat and said in little more than a whisper,
“And what do you say?”

Sadie smirked at him before adding,
“Thanks for saving us. This is Neil. He thinks he's going to turn me into a lady one of these days.”

“
Manners don't go out of style just because of a zombie apocalypse,” Neil replied. He then stuck out a small hand and said, “We really do appreciate the help...”

“
I'm Sarah.” For some reason the two words had been difficult for her to speak. Just then she didn't really know who she was. Everything that had made her Sarah Rivers before, was now gone.