Resurrection: A Zombie Novel
Resurrection: A Zombie Novel
MICHAEL J. TOTTEN
PART ONE – ALL IN ASHES
CHAPTER ONE
Hughes shot at Annie Starling the moment he saw her. Just pointed his Mossberg pump-action shotgun at her and fired.
Frank drove and had to weave all over the place to get around wrecked and abandoned cars on the road. Hughes didn’t look ahead. He watched the tree line, guarding against a flank attack. The Chevy could be assaulted from the side with just a few seconds’ warning. The trees were less than thirty feet from the road. Hughes could not screw around, and he had to shoot fast.
So when he saw the woman charging out of the trees fifty yards ahead, he just reacted. She was shrieking and flailing her arms, and the whole front of her shirt was soaked in blood. Her face was smeared with it. Hughes didn’t blame himself, not even in hindsight. She looked like a threat, so he fired.
But he didn’t see the mangled Toyota in the Chevy’s path. Frank swerved around it at the precise moment Hughes saw her, and by the time he squeezed the trigger, Frank had already turned the Chevy a good thirty degrees. Hughes’ shot went wide. Real wide.
The woman screamed.
Frank slammed on the brakes as she dove behind an abandoned Mercedes.
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” she said.
“Shit,” Frank said.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Hughes said and stepped out of the vehicle. He heard no sound but the Chevy’s idling engine and his boots crunching on road grit.
Frank killed the engine—a wise decision, as they’d made far too much noise already—and absolute silence fell over the road. Hughes heard no people, no cars, no distant trains, no airplanes, no hum of electricity in the power lines. Nothing. The air was still. No wind, no radio waves pulsing through the atmosphere, no vibration from living things in any direction.
They were safe then, at least for the moment, but he took the shotgun with him. He wasn’t going to shoot at the woman again, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to go out there unarmed. She had come running out of the trees, and for all he knew she had been
chased
out of the trees. He wouldn’t have stepped out of the vehicle unarmed either way. It was a new rule that would last the rest of his life.
“It’s okay, lady,” Hughes said and raised both hands in the air. He removed his finger from the trigger guard and pointed the Mossberg at the sky. She stayed hidden behind the Mercedes. “I’m not going to shoot you. And I’m real sorry I tried. I made a mistake.”
The woman made no sound. If Hughes hadn’t seen her duck behind the car, he’d have no idea she was there.
“I promise you,” he said. “I’m really not going to hurt you. Come with us. We’ll take you to a safe place. You won’t last long out here by yourself.”
She peeked her head over the Mercedes’ roof and saw his hands in the air and the gun over his head. Then she stood all the way up. She looked terrible, worse than anyone Hughes had ever seen. Her shirt wasn’t just soaked in blood. It was also caked with gore. Her long hair was so filthy and matted with God-only-knew-what that he wasn’t even sure what color it was supposed to be.
She, too, raised her hands in the air as if she thought Hughes wanted to take her prisoner. They just stood there and looked at each other, both with their hands in the air proving to the other that they meant no harm.
Hughes lowered his first and pointed the Mossberg at the ground. She lowered her hands more slowly and carefully.
She hadn’t bathed or even washed her face. She did not have a supply bag or a backpack or even a weapon. She must have been dehydrated and was possibly starving. Obviously she was traumatized and probably couldn’t think clearly. Hughes had been lucky so far by comparison. Damn lucky.
Hughes could only imagine what kind of horror she’d experienced recently. Was somebody killed right in front of her? Maybe someone was killed right on top of her. Perhaps she killed one of those
things
right on top of her. She didn’t have a gun, but maybe she lost it. Maybe she used a knife or a crowbar or even an ax. Hughes shuddered. Whatever had happened, she had been in extremely close contact.
She tilted her head ever so slightly. The tilt was barely perceptible, but Hughes was a perceptive guy. She flicked her eyes around, studying Hughes’ face, his shotgun, the red Chevy, Frank leaning forward at the wheel, and the line of ruined cars on the road stretching on to infinity.
“I didn’t mean to shoot at you, lady,” Hughes said. “I thought you were one of those things.”
“One of what things?” she said.
* * *
Hughes would have let her sit by the window, but he was a big guy and he couldn’t sit in the middle without crowding into the gear shifter. She had to sit crammed between him and Frank, but they weren’t going far.
Besides, he was the truck’s security detail. He needed to be able to shoot out of the window. The U.S. military certified his Mossberg 500 Persuader pump-action shotgun as combat-reliable. With the pistol grip kit, it worked well for law enforcement, as well, but it’s designed for home defense mostly and for close-quarters fighting. It’s not always great in the field, but it was fine indeed for fighting on two-lane roads through the forest.
“What’s your name?” Hughes said.
“Annie,” she said. “Annie Starling.” She put her face in her hands and leaned forward so her shoulders wouldn’t touch his or Frank’s. Hughes was grateful for that. She was covered in blood and might be infected. Dried blood, but still. Hughes’ white T-shirt and faded khakis were covered in all manner of grime, but he looked and probably even smelled brand-new next to Annie.
“I’m Levan,” Hughes said. “Levan Hughes. Most people just call me Hughes. This here’s Frank.”
“Hi, Annie,” Frank said and tipped his baseball cap. “Sorry about the scare back there.”
“Where are you taking me?” Annie said.
She was shaken up and afraid. Hughes could see that. He was used to making people a little bit nervous. He was a 240-pound black man—all muscle, no fat, and no bullshit. He didn’t smile much. Not everyone was cool with that when they first met him. Few people were, actually, especially small and vulnerable women like Annie Starling. He knew they weren’t afraid of his skin color, or at least not his skin color alone. Hardly anyone would even notice him if he weighed 160, wore a jacket and tie, and carried a folded-up
New York Times
under his arm. They were afraid of his size and his bearing. He knew how to kick the shit out of people, and that came across.
So he wasn’t the least bit surprised that Annie Starling cringed a bit in his presence, especially since he’d just shot at her.
“We have a safe place,” Hughes said. “We’ll take you there. But first we have to go shopping. We’ll get some things for you too. Some clean clothes and a weapon.”
Annie said nothing. She just leaned forward and twisted the ring on her right hand. It was on her fourth finger, but the wrong hand for a wedding band.
Hughes shifted his weight and leaned hard into the passenger door to give her a little more space. He felt bad for shooting at her. And she smelled bad. Everyone smelled bad now, but Annie Starling smelled worse than anybody.
“Do you know what happened to you?” Hughes asked her. He doubted she did.
I thought you were one of those things.
One of what things?
Annie said nothing.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Hughes said.
Annie said nothing.
“She must have amnesia,” Frank said. “Something real bad must have happened.”
“She’s sitting right here,” Hughes said. “She can hear you.”
He figured it was best to fill her in later. She seemed to be in no condition to take it all in at the moment. Kyle could explain everything when they returned to base. Hughes was not a great talker and never had been. Hughes was all about doing things and doing them quietly.
He’d been a bail bondsman up in Seattle. Before. He headed south toward Portland after he lost his family, but he doubted he’d ever get as far as Oregon now. Not in these conditions. Not without a helicopter. And he doubted anyone would be flying him anywhere in a helicopter anytime soon.
As they got farther from the I-5 interchange, the number of cars sitting on the road thinned out. I-5 was impassable in both directions. Because of the evacuations. People in Portland wanted to get to Seattle. People in Seattle tried to get down to Portland. Hughes shook his head when he thought of it. Just a panic response. When things got real bad,
anywhere but here
seemed like a plan. But small towns were better than big cities, the countryside better than small towns, and the wilderness better than anywhere.
Hughes had no particular reason to head south. Perhaps he should have bugged out for the mountains. He didn’t know how to survive in the mountains, but they were sure as hell less dangerous than what Seattle had turned into. Things were probably no better down in Portland or up in Canada. The entire world was infected. No place was more jacked up than India. Maybe a few island nations were doing okay, but that was it. Micronesia probably wasn’t affected, but how long could a string of minuscule islands in the South Pacific get by in a world by themselves? They could just go back to a fishing and coconut economy, he guessed. Micronesia actually wouldn’t be a bad place to be, now that he thought about it.
“When was the last time you had a meal?” Hughes said to Annie.
“I don’t know,” Annie said. “I don’t feel hungry. But I should probably eat. And I do feel pretty thirsty.”
Hughes reached under the seat and pulled out an unopened bottle of water.
“Here,” he said as he twisted off the cap and handed it to her.
She nodded and took it. And she relaxed a few increments. She seemed just slightly less afraid of him now.
Hughes wanted to ask whose blood was on her face, but he guessed she wouldn’t know. He thought about warning her that wetting her lips might remoisten the blood, that she might get some in her mouth, but it wouldn’t make any difference. She was either infected by now or she wasn’t, and Hughes was pretty sure at this point that she wasn’t. A person could only last a few hours at most after exposure to the virus, and if she’d been exposed in the past two or three hours, she wouldn’t have asked what
things
he was talking about.
“What on earth happened here?” Annie said. Frank swerved the Chevy around abandoned cars. Some had busted-out windshields. Some still had their doors open. The road was so jammed up that Frank had to spend most of his time driving clear off the shoulder and onto the grass.
Hughes sat silent for a moment. “Things have been like—this—for more than a month now,” he finally said. “You can’t remember anything?”
“I know who I am,” she said. “I remember my whole life. But I don’t remember any of this. Whatever this is. These cars have been here for a
month
?”
Hughes tried to see the world around him through Annie’s eyes. Tried and failed. There were too many incomprehensible things to take in. Wrecked cars. Abandoned cars. No moving traffic. No pedestrians. A boarded-up café on the side of the road. Downed power lines that normally would spark with electricity. The road covered in branches and leaves and everything else that had blown onto it since early September, none of which would ever be cleared. It would just keep piling up. He wondered how much longer any road in the world would still be passable. Roads in the Pacific Northwest would likely be finished in less than a year without cleanup and maintenance.
He saw a dead body in the grass on the right side of the road just up ahead. Actually,
body
didn’t quite say it. It was mostly just bones. Almost all the meat had been picked clean.
“Oh my God,” Annie said and covered her mouth with her hands. There could be no doubt in her mind that the skeleton once belonged to a human.
She didn’t say anything else. Just turned her head so she could keep staring at it in horror as they drove past.
“Brace yourself,” Hughes said. “There are probably more up ahead.”
They were coming up on the little town now, the kind of place people hardly notice and don’t even remember driving through after they’ve passed it. The town where Parker had told them he saw an outdoor-sporting-goods store that looked like it hadn’t been looted yet. Parker had no time to hit it before, so Hughes and Frank were going back to it now. As soon as they reached the outskirts of town, Annie would see a whole lot more bodies and probably worse.