The Undead World (Book 1): The Apocalypse (21 page)

Standing in the doorway of the kitchen, Ram stared at the onrushing zombies and could not seem to connect them with reality. Where was Cassie? Had they eaten her in her sleep? Why hadn't he heard her scream or cry out?

Maybe it was because she didn
't scream. Maybe she let the zombies in. Maybe you far underestimated what a woman scorned would do
.

These thoughts smote his consciousness and just like that he felt the electric flash of adrenaline all along his skin; goose bumps materialized an instant later. Then he was running back down the hall, but zombies were there as well. He was trapped and empty handed, with just the dining room as any shelter and since the room was only fortified by a swinging door, it wouldn
't be much in the way of shelter.

“
There's stiffs in the house!” he yelled to Julia and then threw himself against the door, which swung in fast. It banged up against the wall behind and swung back nearly opening the wrong way into the hall. This was one problem with swinging doors. If Ram pushed too hard the zombies would be able to pull it out of his grasp—of course the larger problem with a door that swung both ways was that there wasn't any way to lock it, or even to barricade it.

Ram could only stand there waiting for the onslaught which wasn
't slow in coming. In seconds the zombies pushed against the door and at first Ram held it closed with a minimal of effort, but then the creatures began to pile up against it and their combined weight and strength pushed him back inch by inch. When it was clear to him that it would only be seconds before they were fully into the room, and when he saw the futility of resisting any longer, he jumped away suddenly and half a dozen bodies piled into heap at his feet.

With no other weapon at hand, Ram picked up an old Ethan Allen dining room chair. It was solid workmanship and it proved itself when he bashed it three straight times into the incoherent pile of undead, before it came apart in his hands. Left with just a sturdy leg
—a better weapon than the chair since it wasn't nearly as clumsy—he plied the hunk of wood with gusto, feeling it bite into his skin with each strike.

Beneath the wood he could feel skulls cave. Brains and black blood decorated the room and he could
've attacked all day like that, but one of the zombies was a big boy with a head like cement; the leg of the chair snapped square in two, though luckily the zombie dropped at Ram's feet as it did.

“
Shit!” Ram swore. Even as he said it he heard a scream from the second floor and then a door slammed above him.

Trapped as he was, Ram had been well past the point of fear; he was on to panic, but that scream erased all that. In the instant that followed he forgot himself and his fears and the stress of the last few weeks and days unnumbered. He only knew that Julia was in trouble.

In a quick move, he snatched up another of the chairs and this he used as a battering ram to clear the doorway of the creatures. The clumsy things fell back and then he was in the hall where more zombies stood confused, wondering which way to turn—toward the scream from above or to the man just a few yards away. Ram didn't give them a choice. He charged with his chair held out in front of him, bowling them over, before he paused at the front door.

“
Hey you sons of bitches!” he roared at the zombies. This got their attention and the ones on the hardwood floors scrambled to their feet, while the ones on the stairs turned to come down for him. “That's it. Come on. Come on.” He waited until the closest one was just out of reach before backing onto the porch.

“
This is what you want,” he crooned to them, checking his six to make sure he wasn't backing right into any others. Like the pied piper he jogged away from the house leading on thirteen of them and then when he felt he was at a safe enough distance he ran in an arc around them and sprinted back to the house.

“
Julia? Cassie?” he called out as soon as he had entered.

Wearing nothing but a grimace and carting a honking big .44
caliber pistol, Julia came down from the second floor, tiptoeing. “Are they all gone?”

Ram locked the door behind him before replying,
“I don't know. Here let me take that. I'll secure the house.” Even as he said the words the zombies that had taken part in his parade came banging at the front door. “Get dressed,” he whispered and then crept down the hall looking for strays.

There were three lifeless corpses in the doorway to the dining room and one that was nearly so. Ram had broken its collarbone in the melee a few minutes before and it was now trapped beneath the
“Bog Boy” that had broken the table leg. He left it for the moment and went to clear the kitchen and the downstairs study.

These were empty. On his way back to the hall, Ram grabbed a
claw hammer from the kitchen junk drawer and seconds later left it sitting in skull of the zombie. Killing the zombie had been easier than he expected...only the sound had been a wet, nauseating “chunch” which made the idea of pulling the embedded hammer too much for him.

“
There are other hammers,” he reasoned.

Julia met him at the bottom of the stairs and she had graduated from naked to wearing only a pair of panties. In her hand was his Beretta.
“It's empty!” she hissed. “Cassie took a pistol and your M16 and all the ammo!” He began to check the .44 in his hands, but she stopped him. “That was in my room, but the rest of the ammo was in Papa's dresser and it's gone too.”

She was getting loud and the zombies began to go at the door again harder than before. Ram took her by the hand and led her back upstairs and then sat on her bed thinking.
“That bitch tried to kill us.”

“
Maybe,” was all Julia said. She avoided Ram's eyes, only staring down at her pale knees.

Ram exhaled angrily.
“There's no maybe. She stole all our ammo and then let a bunch of zombies in the house. That's murder one in my book. It's premeditated all the way.”

The blonde went to her dresser and pulled on a pair of jeans; stepping into them easily.
“Leaving a door open doesn't mean murder. If there were any zombies around they would've went after her. Maybe that's what happened.”

“
And the stolen ammo?” he asked, though in a less heated of a voice. He couldn't stay angry and watch this fine woman get dressed. When he first met her he had thought her skinny but the night before he had felt the smooth play of her tone muscles. She was fit and trim, but not skinny.

She saw his eyes on her and she gritted her teeth.
“This is my fault. I shouldn't have let you last night. It was wrong.”

“
Let me?” Ram asked, his eyes narrowing. “You didn't let me.
We
allowed ourselves to. And it wasn't wrong. How could you call it wrong?”

“
Don't be mad,” Julia said alarmed at his sudden anger. “I meant we should've been more discreet. We both knew how she felt about you. It was mean of us.” Glass broke somewhere below. Ram began to get up, but Julia held him back, saying, “That was the little window in the front door. They can't get in through it.”

He went to her doorway and then turned.
“You don't know how Cassie really feels and neither do I. And I don't know what you mean by being discreet, she wasn't going to let go of me until she had claimed me for herself. She's a scary one and worse, she's unpredictable.”

He began to walk away and she caught up quick.
“What are you going to do?”

“
Get our ammo back,” he said. There was a creak of wood splitting below which they both recognized as plywood being torn from one of the windows. Glass breaking came next. “I'll deal with them first, don't you worry.”

After facing the infinite hordes in L.A., dealing with thirteen zombies was not all that difficult, especially when he had a Ford Bronco parked out front and the keys in his hand. He charged out the back door where there was but a single zombie and then ran around to the front. Starting the Bronco was all it took for them to swarm the 4x4. He then backed down the road slowly, once again enticing them away from the house.

When he was a good two-hundred yards away he simply plowed into them and then backed over any that still moved, and then he drove back to the little house in the desert, though when he did it wasn't with the same casualness. Something was attracting the undead to them. Ram could see them all over the desert heading their way.

He jogged inside calling to Julia.
“I'm afraid this house has outlived its usefulness. There are all sorts of stiffs coming right at us. I need you to pack.”

When she saw the numbers, she didn
't argue. Together they loaded up what supplies they had: food, water, tools, medicine, clothing, even old camping gear. The zombies were coming on so quickly that he sent Julia out in the other truck, a beat up F-150, to distract them. She turned circles in the dun colored scrub and secretly Ram thought it a waste of diesel—she could've been running them over.

When he had the Bronco packed, he left the front door open with the keys on the porch rocking chair. It made no sense to lock the place. Zombies were far less destructive just shambling around, and if some stranger wanted in, they
'd find a way.

A minute later, Julia
joined him in the Bronco, watching the house grow little in the distance and crying as it did. He took her hand, worried that she would pull away after what she had said earlier, but she gripped him tightly.

“
She went on foot, which doesn't make any sense,” Ram said, squinting through the desert heat.

“
It does if she wanted us to find her,” Julia said. “Think about it. If she just left with a single gun and a few bullets you would probably say good riddance. She's basically made it so you have to come for her. It would not be out of the realm of possibility that she'll even set herself up in some way so that you'll have to rescue her. It's a cry for help.”

A snort of disbelief escaped Ram.
“I keep telling you, this girl isn't normal. The first night I met her, she let all six of those gang-bangers rape her. Didn't say a word, except to chastise one of them for being too slow.” Her grip loosened suddenly and she gave him a look, which he interpreted correctly. “I didn't join in. I could've if I wanted to, only that's not my thing, in fact I wanted to stop them but she practically invited them...”

Now her hand slipped from his completely.
“Are you seriously blaming the victim? She was raped! No one wants to be raped. That's the most insensitive fucking thing I've ever heard.”

“
Then I'm telling it wrong,” Ram replied, growing louder as well. “Ok, she wasn't raped. She traded sex for protection. I could see it when she came up; the cold calculation: let these guys do me or get eaten.”

Julia watched the desert go by and Cassie could
've been right there for all she saw of it. “You should've stopped it.”

“
No shit,” Ram said, bitterly.

The ride became awkwardly quiet and what was worse it was a slow ride. He drove at just over twenty miles per hour and they had a lot of time to sit in silence. Eventually Julia cleared her throat and said,
“I'm sorry for speaking to you that way. I was wrong. I wasn't there so I shouldn't have judged.”

Ram grunted.

“That's all you have to say?” Julia asked. “It was six against one. I'm trying to apologize: I was wrong to imply you were a coward in any way.”

He grunted again and then his anger spewed out,
“I don't know if I would've stopped it if it was just one guy. Cassie knew what was going to be demanded as payment for protection and even though she didn't like it, she paid the price. And it wasn't just one time, the next day she blew each of them, and at any time she could've walked away. That's the kind of girl she is. She doesn't like me, she might even hate me, but that won't stop her from sinking her hooks into me anyway she can.”

“
All of that was a cry for help too,” Julia replied. “That's not normal behavior, that's crisis behavior. It has affected all of us. I've done things I normally...” She stopped in mid-sentence and shot her eyes to him. He could only grit his teeth. After a deep breath she admitted, “Yes...ok, last night was something I wouldn't normally have done. I barely know you. But I'm glad I did it. I needed that. I needed to be near someone.”

“
I understand,” he said, giving her a smile to show that he wasn’t mad. “I needed it even more. I don't mean sexually, I mean I've felt dislocated. Is that the right word? I've felt apart from people, like they aren't real. Before...before Cassie and the gang-bangers there was this group of guys...and uh, never mind,” he said with a guilty laugh. “I shouldn't be going on.”

“
No, you have to,” she said urgently. “It'll eat you up if you don't. And you could relapse.” His chin turned down slightly and his lips pulled back at this. She touched his arm and went on, “It was pretty obvious that you were on the verge of something, a break down I mean. When that sort of thing happens, it can be a while before a person can deal with even the littlest stress. You need to talk, you have to. So…you were saying that you thought people weren't real. Who?”