The Undead World (Book 1): The Apocalypse (28 page)

How many had flooded into the large office Julia was in he didn
't know, but his shooting caught the attention of the ones still in the hall and all ninety of them came rushing at him. He kept firing and they fell over their dead brothers in their eagerness to get at the man and rend and eat him.

He fired until his bolt sucked on nothing but air and then he ran into the next office and threw himself against the door. Immediately the beasts were on it pounding and slamming their weight in an all out effort to bash it down. It wouldn
't last above a minute, while in the room next to his he could hear the desperate clatter of the lone M16 rattling away.

Julia was burning through ammo too fast. Just as he did, she carried three
- thirty round magazines and there had already been two significant pauses in her shooting, suggesting she was down to her last mag. He slapped a fresh one in place and sank the bolt home just as silence came from next door—silence and then screams.

Desperation swelled in his soul and his fear for her caused actual pain in his chest. He couldn
't go back in the hall; there were simply more of the stiffs than he had rounds, which left only one way to get to Julia.

Now he set the rifle to three-round burst, and running at the glass of the far wall he fired, pulling the trigger three times, and before him the window seemed to turn into frozen water and this rained down upon him as he jumped through. Thankful that he was on the ground floor he turned the gun to the window of the next office and again fired three times.

This one he didn't jump through. There really wasn't a need to. A crowd of zombies were in a literal pile seven or eight feet high, tearing at something beneath them. Ram should've run away. He should've saved his ammo and not called any more attention to himself—however his anger and his grief was a force that overrode any common sense. Gritting his teeth, he fired into the pile, not worried that he would hit Julia because he knew that for her it would be a blessing to catch an errant bullet in the brain.

He fired, knocking the stiffs back from the pile; laying them out with gaping holes in their nauseating heads. In apparent confusion at the new attack, the stiffs turned slowly from their meal, giving Ram time to mow them down one by one, until his bolt went back a second time on an empty magazine. With calm deliberate motions he pulled his final mag as the stiffs came up to the low wall that marked the border between inside and out. They began to climb through in their clumsy way and he only stood there sneering in hatred as his hands worked, and then behind him, just as he sent the bolt flashing forward, chambering a round, he could hear the door to the office he had just left come crashing in.

Things are about to get interesting
, he thought. And yet they grew far more interesting than he could have ever dreamed as his eyes lit upon where the zombies had been feasting on Julia. She was still alive!

She had hidden under a desk and had pulled a swivel chair in front of her and had held on with all her strength while the beasts had crushed in around her. There were still two more of them right on top of her, both pulling at the chair in opposite directions. Ram fired at the one with his back to him and it was only then that he noticed the odd way his gun vibrated
—he was still on three round burst!

With his ammunition situation so desperate, he flicked the weapon to single shot, brought the gun back up to his cheek and paused. There was Julia running at an angle for the broken window. Beyond her the second zombie had fallen backward when the tug of war over the chair had ended so unexpectedly, while behind more zombies flooded the room.

Julia wasn't even thirty and was still spry. She leapt passed the zombies struggling among the jagged shards of the window and then the two of them were running for their lives.

“
Keep the gun!” Ram said. Julia had been trying to pull the strap over her head as they booked around the back of the office building. “We'll make it and I don't want to have to try to go back for it.” Now that they were in the open, he was confident in their chances. Though a zombie could practically run forever they were generally slow and all Ram had to do was get around one more wing of the building and then they'd be able to make it to the Bronco.

Except when they cleared the back of the building, the Bronco was gone. Only zombies, numbering in the hundreds remained. The sight was beyond terrifying but what was worse was Julia
's leg.

“
I'm bleeding,” she said breathlessly and shaking. “I'm going to become one of them.”

The zombie straddling Neil Martin once had a name: Miss Kennedy, and she once had an occupation: pre-school teacher. Now she opened her mouth wide and bit down into his neck.

That he would scream was no wonder; that he would live for a while longer was, however. The zombie pre-school teacher ripped her head back and forth while Neil yelled himself hoarse and then with a shearing noise, she pulled back, chewing on a mouthful of flesh.

Beneath her, Neil coughed and sputtered and spat out the maggots and all the while watched in fascination as Miss Kennedy chewed and chewed on the flesh—it was skin actually. And it was the skin of a long dead cow. She had torn off the collar of his leather coat.

For a long time she worked her jaws on that leather and all the while Neil only laid there hoping she would either go away or choke on it. She did neither. She only chewed and stared at nothing beyond the river. Finally, when Neil couldn
't stand it any longer, he threw the preschool teacher off of him with heroic strength, and grabbed up his axe. Now she came alive, in the sense that she wanted to kill, but Neil was ready for her this time and dashed in her skull, and she went back to being dead.

After th
is battle, he went to the river and shook with adrenaline, while he vomited. Later he picked a maggot out of his teeth and vomited again, though in truth he mostly just dry heaved and belched loudly.

“
Thank God no one saw that,” he whispered, picking up his bow and pulling the stray arrow from a hillock of river grass. He then looked down at the dead woman and said, “I think when I tell that story, you'll be an iron worker instead. With big muscles...and a black beard.”

When the woman just lay there with her face in the wet sand he left her and continued down river, wishing that he was done with zombies for the day. It was a silly thing to wish for
—the next house had them like a dog has fleas. And then he came to a loop in the river and found at least a hundred lined up at the water's edge as if waiting for a bus. This forced him to skirt far around and yet the detour had its benefits.

First he found an entire field of broccoli sitting there ready to be harvested. He filled his backpack with the greenest of the lot and then walked away eating and burping—broccoli always made him gassy. He then came upon a row of trees next to a dirt road and laughed when he saw they were apple trees.

“It is apple picking weather,” he said as he dumped out half the broccoli from the backpack. “I bet Sadie would love this. And Sarah as well.” He thought of the two women until the pack became uncomfortable to carry.

A while later, as he angled west over open fields, he found the river again and after a few miles of solid walking, he found a boat. It was a dinky little tin thing, or so it appeared with its metal hull, rusting and grey. The nose of the boat had caught on a little sand bar seventy feet out into the wide river and Neil didn
't hesitate. He stripped down to his shivering flesh, fearing that the water would grow deep at points, and waded in.

The water did indeed go deep and he swam nervously as the current swept him away from the boat, though he did manage to find the bottom with his feet at the far end of the sand bar. This allowed him to struggle up onto the little island
and once upon it he rushed bent over and holding himself against the cold until the boat was laying there at his feet.

It had a motor and everything. Excitedly he pulled it further onto shore so that it wouldn
't try to get away, and then he hunkered down, peering at the motor. Gleefully he saw that a key wouldn't be needed—there was a toggle that said:
On
and
Off
, and a handle like one would find on a lawnmower. Without hesitation he flicked the switch and pulled the cord.

It made a sad little noise, like a burp from a cow, and would not catch. Neil checked the gas and saw that it was mostly full. So what was the problem? The choke! There was a little knob on the engine low down. This he twisted full over and pulled again on the cord.

Now the engine caught and rumbled nicely. Neil turned the choke down and got in the metal boat after giving it a shove into the river. This was better! He chugged the boat back to shore where he quickly put on his clothes.

“
Oh the girls will be so happy,” he said, shivering in the back of the boat as he continued on his way. A boat by itself didn't mean all that much. He still needed gas for it and supplies in general. These were quick in coming, now that he could travel faster.

The very next house was zombie free, though he didn
't take chances and snuck up on it ninja-like going from bush to tree in short bursts. Again it had been gone over by someone very thoroughly, but even the best searchers could overlook many items. The car in the garage had been drained of gas, however the riding mower sitting right next to it was full.

Using a garden hose he siphoned out almost four gallons of gas that he put in an orange bucket. Next he dared the awful smell of the refrigerator and discovered a jar of jelly that hadn
't been opened, and in the laundry room he found candles and flashlights. Though it was in a girl's bedroom that he found the best items: shoes, clothing, and pop tarts.

The girl who had once lived there
wore a size six shoe, which seemed about right. Neil compared the shoes to his feet and thinking that Sarah's were a little smaller than his own he decided to keep the ones that seemed the most practical. He then made a quick run through of the closet and picked out the most conservative clothing, while he took almost all of the panties and socks.

He has no idea if the bras would work for either of the two women under his care
—this is how he viewed them, despite that Sadie was very capable and Sarah had already saved him once—so he took the bras as well, and that was when he saw the silver glint of the pop tarts at the bottom of the drawer. Six packages all told.

“
Oh, Sadie will love this,” he said, carefully wrapping the prize in a towel. “Though I don't know about Sarah. She seems a little too sophisticated for pop tarts. Still beggars can't be choosers.”

As almost every house did in that part of the country there was an out building nearby. This one was a storage unit for farm equipment with a chicken coop attached. Not knowing what chickens ate, and hoping it was
sunflower seeds are something palatable like that, Neil went to the low storage bins next to the coop.

There were two and the first had its lock knocked off. Inside was chicken feed, the smell of
which turned his stomach. Fully expecting the second to be more of the same, he took a stone that had been holding down a loose section of the chicken wiring and smashed at the lock. It held against his feeble strength however the hasp did not and with some twisting he was able to open the bin.

“
Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” Neil breathed at the sight of eleven plastic five gallon water containers. One was already open and after giving it a sniff, he drank, feeling the water run down his insides. It was glorious.

With this find, he decided he had enough supplies to justify going back to what, in his mind, he called home. Lugging everything to the boat was a matter of some minutes, nearly an hour and this was less than the time it took to chug gently back up stream. He didn
't hurry. The faster he made the boat go the more sound it made and he didn't want to alert the entire zombie population of southern Illinois and have them follow him back.

He figured he was in for a hero
's welcome and he grinned confidently as he shouldered the first of his back packs—he had three of them--took a five gallon water container in one hand and the axe in the other. Then, remembering the fiasco in the barn, he put everything down again and strapped the rifle across his shoulder...Sarah didn't know him very well and probably worried more over the fate of her M16 than over Neil.

Hoisting his burdens once again he went up the incline to the house and stepping through the open front door said,
“Ta-duh!”

There was no one there to see his big entrance and feeling let down and a little arm weary, he put the water
by the door and called, “Sadie? Sarah?”

“
I'm in here,” Sarah said from the back room. Neil happily turned in that direction and spoke just as someone came down the hall.

“
You have to see...” Neil began.

It wasn
't Sarah at all. It was a zombie with hair curlers and a muumuu that matched the one Sadie had been wearing. It was a big zombie as well and Neil squawked in fright and ran back the way he had come. He had left the axe and the M16 lying on the living room couch and it was a heated mental struggle for Neil to pick up the axe and not the gun...the zombie woman, though alone, was that big.

Still she was a waddler and a slow one at that, giving Neil ample time to swing his axe. Horribly it got stuck in the woman
's immense pumpkin head and was wrenched out of his hands as she crashed to the floor.

“
Oh, that's gross,” he moaned, feeling his stomach turn flops as he worked the axe head back and forth. Suddenly Sarah was there, looking dainty in her summer dress.

“
Did you get both of them?”

Neil froze.
“Both?”

The second one came out of the garage just then and Sarah pointed behind Neil. They ran
—Sarah back to the bedroom and Neil, because the axe was still stuck in old pumpkin head, into the dining room where he and the zombie played a game of tag around the long polished table. Finally Neil knocked over a chair and when the zombie went down he grabbed another and bashed the thing repeatedly until it stopped moving.

“
Oh my, that was close,” he said, shaking again for the second time that day. “It's dead, Sarah. I killed it.” Again he was hoping for a better reaction than the one he received. She scampered into the hall, looked around and then went to the living room where she took up the M16 and pointed it straight at his chest.

“
Huh?” Neil said.

“
Put the chair down and get your hands up,” Sarah ordered.

Neil did, more confused than afraid.
“I say again, huh? Why are you doing this?”

She stared at him for a few seconds and then let the gun sag.
“Sadie tried to kill me. She sicced those stiffs on me. I swear she did. A little while ago, she was out in the rain and then she comes in, says something about checking the garage and goes through there. The next thing I know these two stiffs come walking in. She led them in here!”

“
It had to be an accident,” Neil said. He went to the big, muumuu-wearing zombie, worked the axe out of its head and went to the garage, again more worried for Sadie than afraid of Sarah who had resumed pointing the gun at him. “Sadie?” he said in a low voice. The garage was dark and silent. “Hello? Sadie?”

When no one answered he went to the side door, a stiff aluminum piece and opened it, flooding the room with grey light. Sadie wasn
't in sight. “You see?” Sarah said. “She came in. Led the stiffs right to me and walked out that door.”

“
Then where is she? And why would she do this? Did you two have a fight?”

“
No. We were just talking and poking around. She went back out to the barn and the next thing I know she walks these two in here and leaves me stranded.”

It was impossible for Neil to believe that Sadie would do this. In a growing heat, he marched out to the barn and nearly walked right into two more stiffs. One was right there around the corner of the red building and Neil hewed it down with a single stroke and was quite proud of himself. The other was staring up at the loft with its mouth open, as if hoping that a human would just fall into it. Neil konked that one as well.

“Sadie! What are you doing?” he demanded, he knew she was up there because the ladder had been drawn up. “Sarah seems to think that you tried to kill her.”

“
I don't want to talk about it,” she said. “Not right now.”

“
No, that won't do at all,” Neil said. “Aren't you even worried about her? She could be dead for all you know and you're acting like this. Like a child!”

“
I'm not. I can see her right through the cracks. And I heard you two talking, before. So I knew she was alright and I knew she would be alright in the house. We talked about how heavy the master bedroom door was.”

“
So you did plan this!” Sarah yelled. “Come down here right now young lady.”

“
No,” Sadie whispered. “Maybe you two should go on without me.”

“
That's not going to happen either,” Neil said. Sarah made a noise that suggested she thought it was very likely going to happen. He ignored her. “Come on down or I'll build a pyramid of these bales to come up there.”

“
They're too heavy for you,” Sarah said. “I know from experience, hay bales weigh a ton.”

Suddenly Sadie appeared looking down with her bangs swaying from her forehead.
“If Neil says he can do it then he can. He's stronger than he looks.”