RIZEN: Tales of the Zombie Apocalypse (3 page)

The poorly paved streets were dusty, the air thick
with grime and gun smoke. A man with a shaved head cradling a rifle rounded the
corner of the factory ahead, and she caught him with a shotgun blast to the
chest.  He hit the ground hard, his weapon tumbling free.  Jacqueline pumped
another round into the chamber and kept moving.  She leaned up against a
concealed corner in a protected position, listening to gunshots left, right and
center. 

The city was just as she remembered it. Large
hotel-like structures and factories surrounded each other in a circle.  In the
center was the pit, the size of at least three football fields: guarded by the
electrical fence that separated the blacks, Hispanics and other undesirables. 
It was the center of commerce, the pool of slave labor.  From five towers
guards had shot for kicks, killed people for entertainment based on the color
of their skin. 

Jacqueline’s blood boiled as she recalled why she
had started all the violence, the battle and the war in the first place.  And
she no longer regretted any of it. 

Confused by the swift assault’s breaching of the
gates, many of the militia defending the city assumed that they were now under
attack from hundreds of raiders, not dozens.  A well placed mortar shell landed
just inside the city, igniting a fire near the fuel depot.  It was the second
and final mortar shell that Antonio’s man had, but the noise and fire created
the perfect atmosphere.  The city, it seemed, was being bombarded from all sides.

The White Fist militia was an undisciplined and
cowardly bunch, not used to fighting on the defensive.

Jacqueline led several of her raiders on a strike
through the factory on the left, while the other group handled a factory to the
right.  They shot surprised foremen and slave drivers where they found them,
taking no prisoners.  The raiders let those who had been enslaved take up their
guards’ weapons when they could.  Most were too emaciated to do anything but
collapse in pure exhaustion and gratitude.  Some did possess strength enough to
take up arms, helping to secure hallways and workshops.  Once the two factories
were clear on either side of the gate, Jacqueline gave the order for her
sharpshooters to move up and take positions in the windows. 

Less than a half-hour had passed since the “assault”
had begun and she was shocked to still be alive.  Only a few of her fighters
had been wounded and only one, that she was aware of, had been killed.

It wasn’t until the snipers were in place that the
White Fist soldiers understood what was happening.  If they wore the polished
black boots and the shaved head of soldiers, they were gunned down, whether
they had surrendered or not.  The rest of the raiders were getting their first
look at the pit which smelled like shit and held hut after ramshackle hut of
starving and half-naked slaves.  The raiders’ stomachs churned, and their blood
boiled, as they continued to kill guards and militia in a hopeless attempt to
wash away what they had seen with more blood.  This was a modern day
concentration camp they were liberating.

Today was not a day for mercy.

Over the next hour, the gunfire became less and
less. 

That night the electric fence was disabled and cut
down, and people were carried out of the slums. 

The raiders’ numbers had been reduced as drastically
as Antonio anticipated.  They had lost seven of twenty-five total fighters. 
The White Fist had lost more than sixty, but there was room for triple that
number in the ground level barrack buildings. Many of the militia members and
civilians had decided to flee in the chaos, retreating through the desert night
to other White Fist towns and outposts.

Antonio ordered for food, clothing and weapons to be
cataloged and he was shocked to learn how much the hapless White Fist had left
behind.  He was also shocked to discover a cage of more than a dozen poor
beasts gnawing and moaning.  It appeared that the Fist had collected a few of
the infected they encountered, perhaps planning to use them as weapons in the
future.  Antonio put these monsters out of their misery in short order.

All together, the liberated slaves numbered two
hundred and eleven people living piled on top of each other like rats in a
tight cage.  The survivors, slaves and wide-eyed civilians both, were given the
choice to join the fight against the White Fist and their particular brand of
brutality.  The alternative for former slaves was that they go free.  The
alternative for White Fist civilians was trial and possible execution.   

The raiders spent the day outfitting and feeding the
people with what they had on hand, mindful that a counter-attack could be
coming at any moment.  The second night was long and uneasy, but eventually the
sun rose again on the ashes of what had once been Caucasia. 

The raiders adopted a new name for their captured
outpost, Fort Burnet, after the David G. Burnet who had served as the very
first President of the independent Republic of Texas in 1836.  

Planning to return to Fort Burnet in a few days,
Jacqueline and several others set off in a small convoy for Houston, planning
to recover personal possessions and additional supplies from their old home.

Jacqueline, more relaxed than she had been in
months, rode with her legs dangling out of the back of the pick-up truck that Antonio
drove.  He had taken care of the ill and the damned alike.  She had acted only
as executioner. 

It felt as if, for the first time since this entire
nightmare began, the survivors had a real purpose for living and knew exactly
where they were going and the fight that would lie ahead.

Beside Jacqueline, Sara sat staring into the
distance.  It hadn’t been the violence that had unhinged her, but the sight of
those destroyed holocaustic remnants of the enslaved. 

Jacqueline and Sara placed their arms around each
other, mother and daughter, Angel of Death and Angel of Innocence Fallen.

Andrea sighed as she cranked the handle on the can opener.  She and her husband
had been living on nothing but tuna, green beans, and fruit cocktail for the
last few weeks.  She figured that the moment they were rescued, she’d never eat
another bite of tuna for as long as she lived.

She reached into the cupboard to get a plate when
the high piercing note of a muted trumpet startled her, causing her to lose
grip of the plate, which went careening off the edge of the countertop and
exploded into dozens of shards on the linoleum floor.

“Jesus, Richard,” she mumbled to herself in a
whisper, as she leapt over the pieces of broken glass and went hurdling up the
stairs.

Suddenly the muted trumpet began blasting a familiar
tune,
When the Saints Go Marching In
.  Andrea sprinted down the hall, punched
open the door to Richard’s study, and immediately snatched the gleaming
instrument right out of his hands.

“For Pete’s sake, Richard,” she chastised him.  “Are
you crazy?  You KNOW you can’t make any noise like that.”

Richard rubbed his fingers over the dark bags under
his eyes and then replied, “I’m sorry.  I put the mute in.  I thought that it…”

He exhaled heavily.  “I wasn’t thinking.  I just
missed it all.  The class, the students, the music.  I just…  Jesus, Andrea. 
It’s been almost 3 months.  What’s the point of being alive if you can’t LIVE?”

Richard then shuffled over to his recliner, slumped
down into the seat, and laid his arm across his eyes.  He looked pale and
listless.  Andrea knew he hadn’t been sleeping.  She could barely remember the
last time she woke up in bed to find him next to her.  He was always down in
the basement, working on his HAM radio, trying to get a signal from other
survivors.  There were quite a few at the start of this mess, but with each
passing day, there was less and less traffic going over the airwaves. 

He’d been in contact with a gentleman from Norway
for the first few months of the disaster, but about 3 weeks ago, he too went
silent.  Some of the people he encountered were broadcasting extreme religious messages,
and he’d even encountered some racially-themed broadcasts that had scared the
daylights out of him. 

“I don’t want to run into these people,” he would
remark to himself upon discovering almost every new active channel.  The
craziest elements of society seemed to be taking over.

“Honey,” Andrea said with a soft smile, slipping her
arm around his shoulders as she sat on the arm of his chair. “I know things
seem bad, but rescue IS coming.  They found a cure.  Remember?  They said so on
CNN.”

Richard tried to smile, but the weariness
overwhelmed his face.  “That’s what they said, alright.  Right before they all
went off the air over 2 months ago.  Sweetie, I’ve not been sleeping lately. 
I’ve been trying to raise someone, ANY sane person on that radio, but Andrea… 
There’s no one out there.  No one.  I don’t think rescue is coming.  I think
we’re all that’s left of the world we once knew. The government is gone, the
police are gone.”

Andrea’s reassuring smile then crumbled apart, and
the tears began to stream down her face.  Her breath hitched in her chest as
she sobbed loudly.  Richard pulled her onto his lap and held her tight to his
chest.   He ran a hand through her hair, brushing it back, and then placed a
gentle kiss on her forehead.

“Andrea, I’m sorry.  I was wrong. There ARE
survivors.  There’s you and there’s me.  That’s all that matters.  I love you.”

Andrea lifted her tear-filled gaze to Richard’s, and
slowly, as if drawn by some unseen force, their lips met, and they embraced one
another passionately as the world seemed to fade around them.

***** 
*****  *****

“ANDREA!  WAKE UP!”

Andrea tumbled from the bed onto the floor and was
immediately feeling around in the dark for her baseball bat.

“ARE THEY IN THE HOUSE,” Andrea asked, wide-eyed and
shaking. 

“No,” Richard said exuberantly, “I heard a military
communication!  I was in the kitchen getting some food, when I heard a voice
coming from the basement.  I only caught the last bit, but they were military
and they were using some kind of code.  I tried to hail them, but they must
have hopped off the channel.”

“What does it mean, Richard?”

“We might not have rescuers coming to us, but that
doesn’t mean we can’t still get rescued.”

The bat slipped from Andrea’s hand and she threw her
arms around him, tears of hope spilling onto Richard’s shirt. 

“Listen,” Richard said seriously, pushing back from
her slightly.  “I’ve been thinking about it all night, and before I caught that
transmission, I’d already made up my mind.  I know it was hard to leave the
West Coast, but I needed that teaching job, so we gave up our little place on
the ocean.  Every summer, we return.  We boat together, we fish together, and
even though I’m getting a little grey up top, we even still surf together.”

A gorgeous smile spread across Andrea’s face. 
Richard found himself getting lost again in those sparkling eyes, but he
continued, “The world we knew is gone.  We only have a few more months of food
left, and after that, we starve.  We need a food source, and I still have that
spare key to my Brother’s boat and all the gear we’d ever need.  Why don’t we
load up the RV, and take it back out to Cali one last time?  If we’re lucky,
we’ll find our rescue, but even if we don’t, we’ll load up the boat, we’ll hit
the waves, we’ll watch the sunset every evening, and we’ll live on all the fish
we can eat!  What do you say, angel?”

“As long as that fish doesn’t come from a can, I’m
all for it!”

With a radiant smile, Andrea threw her arms around
Richard and hugged him with all she had.

***** 
*****  *****

“Okay,” Richard said quietly, his hands squeezing
Andrea’s reassuringly.  “There are only a few of them out there, and they’re
far enough away that I think we can pull this off without them even noticing
us.”

Andrea shook her head, and then reached down for the
box of canned food.  They’d made their plans the night before.  Each morning,
they’d slip out with all the supplies they could carry to the RV, deposit them,
and then retreat back to the house.  All the things they needed were compiled
into 6 loads.  If they only slipped out long enough to drop off one load each
per morning, they’d be much less likely to draw the attention of the infected
meandering down the street.  They’d be on the road in three days and on their
way to freedom.

The first day’s drop went perfectly. 

The second morning got a little hairy when one of
the infected noticed them and stumbled down the street towards their RV as they
loaded in the boxes. 

When he saw the rotted corpse of a woman moving in
their direction, Richard sat his box down and reached for the claw hammer in
the back of his jeans.  The woman was missing most of the left side of her
face.  Her stomach had been torn open, and ropes of intestine were dragging on
the pavement behind her.

Richard moved quickly towards the shambling monster,
brought the hammer high above his head, and brought the claw end down swiftly. 
The skull gave way with a sickening crack, and the woman collapsed to the
street below.

Andrea, having loaded the boxes, closed the hatch,
and they both retreated back to the house.

On the third day, Richard and Andrea loaded their
last two boxes of food into the RV, and as they closed the hatch on the back of
the vehicle, Andrea saw a mottled hand reaching for Richard’s shoulder from
behind him.

“RICHARD, LOOK OUT!!!”

Richard pivoted just in time to grab the ghoul by
its cold and damp wrist, and he flung it hard to the ground.  As Richard
reached behind him for his hammer, he heard a chorus of groans and snarls
coming from the others side of the RV.

Richard quickly glanced around the driver’s side of
the RV and saw there were half a dozen or more of the mutilated freaks hobbling
quickly towards them. 

“Hurry,” Andrea shouted, as she grabbed Richard by
the arm and quickly pulled him with her to the passenger side door.  She threw
open the door and Richard climbed inside and began to climb over to the
driver’s seat when he heard Andrea scream.

He whipped his head around just in time to see a
young infected teenage boy sinking his teeth into his wife’s exposed arm. 
Richard leapt forward, grabbing the rotted teen by the throat, trying to pull
it off of his wife, but the monster snapped its head back, taking a piece of
flesh with it as it tumbled back onto the concrete.

Richard threw his arms around his screaming wife and
scooped her up into the RV.   He slammed the door and peeled out of the
driveway, crushing a number of the shambling ghouls as the RV tore down the
road.

“Richard,” Andrea gasped as she stared blankly at
the bleeding hole in her arm, “I don’t want to die.”

“You won’t, baby.  It’s okay now.  We’re on the
road.  We’ll find the military.  They have the cure, right?  That’s what they
said.  They’re gonna make you better.  You’re going to be okay.  I promise,
Andrea.  I promise.”

***** 
*****  *****

Andrea seemed okay for the first half of the day,
but by the time the sun began to set, she began sweating and coughing
violently.  Richard laid her down on the mattress in the back, and continued to
drive onward to the coast, all the while, constantly cycling through every
station on the dial.

By the next morning, Andrea had taken a turn for the
worse.  She now ran an intense fever, and she began coughing up blood.

As Richard continued to pilot the RV down the lesser
used highways, he came across a massive traffic snarl that had surely been there
for months.  There were a few infected stumbling about in the distance, but for
the most part, all was clear.

To get around the more congested areas, Richard had
to pull off into the dirt numerous times, but even though it was slow going, he
knew that once they made it to the marina on the coast, that the military would
have to be there, that Andrea would be cured, and that they would finally be
rescued from this living nightmare.

As he came upon the worst pile up of vehicles he’d
seen yet, he aimed for the only gap he could find that was big enough to fit
through.  He started inching the RV slowly between an overturned semi-trailer
and a school bus.  He was merely inches away on either side from both of the
vehicles as the RV rolled through at a snail’s pace. 

He was about halfway through when he saw something
that started him shaking and hyperventilating.  In every window of the school
bus, there were tiny little mutilated and bloated faces pressing hungrily at
the bus windows.  Tiny little hands with even tinier fingers beat and clawed at
the glass as he slowly passed by.  Their eyes seemed so filled with violent
desire, it shook him to his core.

Once he emerged on the other side, he dropped the pedal,
and the RV was rocketing faster and faster down this open stretch of highway. 
Once the bus could no longer be seen in the distance, he pulled to the side of
the road.

“Richard,” Andrea said in a heavy and mucous filled
voice from the back of the RV, “is everything ok?”

Richard dug the nails of his hand hard and deep into
the flesh of his arm, drawing fresh rivulets of blood as he tried his best not
to start screaming.  He finally took in a long and shaking breath and replied,
“Yeah, hon.  I…  I just need to stretch my legs a bit.”

Richard climbed down from the RV and as soon as his
boots hit the pavement, he collapsed into the fetal position, his body silently
racked with violent sobs, and tears pouring with such ferocity that he was
blinded by the seemingly endless volume.

As he laid there shaking, every muscle clenching in
rage, he noticed the body of a female police officer just a few feet away.  He
saw the bullet wound to the side of her head and the gun still held tightly in
her hand, and Richard began to laugh. 
The easy way out.
  Why
didn’t he think of it sooner?  He crawled to the body, picked up the pistol,
and held it gingerly in his hands.

Again and again, he pictured it.  All he had to do
was point the barrel at his temple, slip his finger between the guard and the
trigger, and then all it would take was one tiny squeeze.  Richard pressed the
cold steel against his temple, and his sobs began anew.

Minutes later, Richard climbed back into the RV,
stony and numb.  He slipped the gun into the waistband of his pants, and he
stared into the rearview at his wife tossing and turning in some kind of
delirium.  His eyes had a glazed and faraway look as he started the engine back
up, and they continued to roll on towards the coast.

***** 
*****  *****

The windshield of the RV became like a television
screen as everything that he passed had been touched with that post-apocalyptic
decay that he’d only seen before in the big Hollywood blockbusters.  He watched
in disbelief as he passed the burned out skeletons of the cities he’d once
known, still smoldering in the distance.  Occasionally he could hear gunfire
and would encounter low-power AM radio broadcasts, but the content was
terrifying.