Shamblers: the zombie apocalypse (11 page)

Chapter Fourteen

I awoke
wrapped in blankets. The Preacher was standing over me.

“What kind of dream is this?” I asked. My stomach was churning. I started to move and pain once again ran through me.

“Easy, my friend,” The Preacher said. “You’ve had a rough go of things. I found you here on the floor this morning and threw some blankets from the basement on you.”

“This morning?” I asked. “So I’ve been passed out for almost sixteen hours?”

“I guess so,” he said. “What happened to you?”

My head was throbbing and felt clouded. It took me a minute to collect my thoughts and answer,
“Marcus shot me. He trapped me in the basement and left me as a happy meal for a zombie. He made off with Becky. I don’t know where they went.”

“I do,” he told him.

“Where?” I asked.

“They went back to Payne’s Creek. Marcus has Becky as his prisoner and he’s taken control of the town.”

“We have to go after him,” I croaked. I suddenly realized how thirsty I was.

“We will, in time,” The Preacher promised. “But not until you’ve healed up. From what I can tell, you have a broken rib, though no internal damage. I put new bandages on you. It looks like you’
ll live.”

“Good,” I nodded, “b
ut Marcus has Becky. We have to save her.”

The Preacher shook his head. “You
’ll have to recover first. Marcus isn’t going anywhere. I doubt he’ll harm Becky beyond a few slaps or a black eye. He doesn’t know you’re alive. I doubt he’ll come after me. We have time to plan an attack. If you try to go now, you’ll just get yourself killed. I warned you to take heed of him. I wish you had paid more attention to my warning.”

I paused to absorb that information. I d
idn’t like it, but he was right: I was in no condition to go anywhere. If I had listened to him to begin with I could have avoided my current situation.

“Can I get some water?” I asked.

The Preacher reached into my backpack (he’d apparently adopted it for his own use, and it was now thoroughly stained with my blood) and pulled out a one-liter bottle of water. I lifted my head as I drank most of it down. He then opened a can of tuna with a bowie knife and handed it to me. I scooped it up with my fingers and shoveled it into my mouth as he talked, “you need to know that Marcus has Wendy, Sha’Quizz, Clod, and that town sniper working for him. He may even have other people helping him, but I don’t know for certain. I believe that most everyone else is dead.”

I was saddened by the news, but seeing as I didn’t really know any of the people who’d been killed, I honestly wasn’t very concerned about them.

“We also don’t have much for supplies,” The Preacher let me know. “I barely escaped with my life. They even have my Holy Cross.” It was what he called his zombie-killing contraption.

“So we need to find
a safe place to stay until you can get us some more supplies,” I suggested as I crammed some raw tuna into my mouth. “I’ll help once I’m able; the minute I feel capable of fighting is when we head back to Payne’s Creek, agreed?”

The Preacher nodded. “Yes, that sounds fair to me.”

“Good. Then scout out this section of town please. Find us a place to hold up. I’ll be lying low here, seeing as I can’t do much else. If you want a weapon to bring with you, you can use the long-handled crowbar I found.”

“
I will definitely take that along, and I’ll return within the hour to check on you.” The Preacher snagged the crowbar from a metal table that he must have put it on while I was passed out and headed out of the restaurant without another word.

I finished my can of tuna. As I waited for his return, I tried to sit up. It hurt too much. For the first time since the start of the apocalypse, I felt utterly helpless: a ten year old girl could’ve come by and bashed my head in, and I would’ve been powerless to stop her (and that was a very real if unli
kely possibility nowadays too). I filled with self pity and frustration. It was so bad that I was almost brought to tears. I could only tolerate a few minutes of that. Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I switched my thoughts to Becky. I worried about her. I hoped that she was being treated okay. That prompted thoughts of Marcus.

Fucking Marcus!
What a traitorous snake. I stewed with white-hot anger over his betrayal. The backstabbing hurt just as much emotionally as it did physically. I began to invent ways to torture and kill him.

I was probably up to my six hundredth macabre fantasy when I heard a noise at the front of the restaurant.

Shit.

I tried to maneuver myself to a safe position but it was futile. Footsteps were coming my way.

A second later, The Preacher returned.

Oh thank God.

I noticed that his white collar and crowbar were now stained with blood.

“I have good news,” he told me. “There’s a fire station further up the street that we can stay at. It looks like it will easy to defend. Someone’s been there recently, but it’s empty now. We can wait there and amb
ush them if they come back.”

“That does sound good,” I confirmed as I sighed with relief. I had been terrified that either a looter or zombie had been about to bear down on me. I pointed to his collar and asked, “what’s with the new blood?”

He laughed. “It’s not the blood of Christ, that’s for sure.”

It was now my turn to laugh. It hurt, so I stopped. It was good to hear a joke again
, though.

“I just had a minor run
- in with two shamblers,” he let me know, “they’re taken care of.”

It
was nice to have a capable ally, even one as wacked as The Preacher. I had a feeling that his zealous insanity could be a huge benefit, however. I certainly preferred to have him fighting with me instead of as an enemy.

A short while later we were both inside of the
fire station. I was laid out on the couch where I could rest and keep an eye on the door. The Preacher promised to get me a gun from somewhere so I could defend myself. It was a hefty promise. He said the Lord would provide for me. I rather doubted it. Guns didn’t just show up anymore: they were one of the most-prized commodities aside from bullets and water.

In any event, I spent the next month recovering. The Preacher spent the time scavenging.
To my absolute astonishment, he fulfilled his nigh impossible promise and located a .45 pistol for me! It was complete with a seven round clip that was actually full. I asked how he came across it. He said it was an act of Providence. I figured it was more likely an act of murder, but left well enough alone.

Our fire station turned out to be a great base. No one actually came by to bother us, but there were a few nights when zombies came knocking on the front door. It was heavy enough that they couldn’t get through, and The Preacher soon devised a clever method to kill them: he attached a medicine-ball to a rope. I never got sick of hearing the loud thud that always signaled
a well-aimed toss.

When I was well enough, I also took my turns dropping the medicine ball on
zombies. We switched off once one of us missed, and kept score to keep from getting bored. We even notched our points into the wall with a knife. It was really the first sport I’d played since the apocalypse. We decided to call it Bowling since it was the closest thing to old-world Bowling we had yet discovered.

Not long after that I was well enough to go on
a few, short scavenging hunts with The Preacher. I did perhaps a dozen of these to build up confidence and make sure I was physically fit. Once satisfied that I was, I went on a few raids of my own and let The Preacher stay home and watch the fort.

One morning, as a bit of cold set in,
which likely marked the start of fall, I knew that I was healthy enough to get my revenge: the time of reckoning had come.

“Hey Preacher,” I called out to my only friend in the world. He was presently in the other room and I could hear him working out.

“Yes, Nick, what’s up?”

“How about we kill Marcus today?”

“Sounds good to me: you sure that you’re ready?”

“I feel great. I’ve had no pain for a week. I feel healthy again and like my old self.”

“Then I agree. Let’s kill Marcus Gray. Oh, and get my Holy Cross back too.”

I smiled. “And let’s not forget
to save Becky,” I added.

“Indeed
, but I caution against any pre-marital sex.”

We both had a good chuckle and
gathered our gear. Over the last month, we had accumulated a useful stockpile. I had my original, forest-green, blood-stained backpack. The Preacher had a hot-pink one with a big-eyed, blonde, female anime character on the front of it. She held a huge sword and looked as if she was ready to leap into battle. At least in that sense the backpack was fitting. The Preacher wasn’t too happy about the girl’s backpack, but he hadn’t been able to scavenge another one.

I
nside of my backpack I stuck my .45, my tire-iron, a quart of acetone, a file, a half-used roll of duct-tape, my flashlight, a pack of matches, an extra day’s set of clothes, a box of various weird-shaped band-aids (which included the ones with the four prongs that I never knew where to apply), and some nylon rope. It didn’t zipper shut all the way due to the tire-iron, so I just stuck the end of it out the top.

The Preacher
stuffed his girly, froo-frooey backpack with two glass bottles that were full of ball-bearings he had found, a roll of toilet paper, extra clothes, a few kitchen knives, a two-foot section of hose, and a mangled holy-bible. He stuck his bowie knife in a sheath around his right calf and hefted the long crowbar in both hands.

In addition
to these various items, we each had three days worth of food and water. I looked at him and he looked at me once we had everything we figured we’d need.

“Are you
ready to roll out, princess?” I joked as I pointed to the pink backpack.

“I am ready to bring the wrath of God down upon our enemies,” he stated boldly. “Oh – and never call me princess again if you value all of your toes and fingers.”

I gulped. He grinned in a way that promised he wasn’t kidding and that he would indeed go biblical on me if he had to. “After you,” I motioned.

We formed a plan on the way back to Payne’s Creek. It was pretty simple, all things considered: we wanted to avoid the clock-tower and the sniper on our approach. From there, we would use any available cover to sneak into town and enter the nearest building. Once inside, we’d make sure that the coast was clear. When we were confident that we either haven’t been detected or had otherwise dealt with any threats, we would wait for nightfall. Then, once dark, we’d sneak into the police station. The Preacher assured me that Marcus was holding Becky there. Once we saw that Becky was safe, we could then burn down the old town hall with all of our enemies sleeping inside it.

It sounded li
ke a really good plan to me. I just hoped we could pull it off like we intended. We weren’t going to get a dry run.

Chapter Fifteen

  It was two hours before dusk when we started to loop around Payne’s Creek to avoid the clock-tower. If the sniper spotted us, we’d be dead. There was no debating that grim reality.

As we
approached the town, I heard his rifle go off. I ducked low and looked at The Preacher. Neither of us was hit.

“He’s shooting at zombies,” The Preacher assured me.
“I didn’t feel a bullet go by. I doubt that he’d be that poor of a marksman.”

We crept toward a low-lying area and knelt behind a tangled mass of vines. The rifle fired again. I cringed nervously. “He’s definitely
scanning the wilderness,” I remarked.

“Well, there’s been a lot of shambler activity tonight,” my companion stated. I couldn’t deny that: we’d had to dodge several groups of
zombies on our journey already.

“You think it has something to do with it almost being a full moon?” I asked.

The Preacher shook his head, “I can’t be sure; possibly that, or maybe something to do with the changing in the weather.”

I doubted that the zombies cared much about the weather. On the other hand, I was pretty happy that the night was a bit cool and the air was nice and dry: it meant I wouldn’t sweat my ass off if I had to run around and evade bullets and such
.

“Maybe
something in Payne’s Creek is attracting them, too,” I offered. “Whatever the case, I think we should only move when he shoots -unless we have to flee from zombies.”

“Why’s that?”

“After he fires, he’ll be looking through the scope to make sure that he hit his target and it stays dead. When he’s doing that, it should buy us at least five seconds.”

“It’ll take us forever to move that way.”

“Would you rather have him see your pink backpack and catch a .308 round to the face? You’d make an easy target.” I wasn’t sure if the sniper’s rifle was actually that caliber, but I was willing to take a wild guess.

“Okay,” he agreed, “
we’ll do this your way.”

The rifle went off again
. We sprinted to some nearby, yellow-flowered Allamanda shrubs (my wife had owned some so I knew what they were). I half expected one of the sniper’s bullets to find The Preacher or me at any moment. Therefore, we moved slowly and carefully.

After
a nerve-wracking hour of crouching and crawling between trees, rocks, and various shrubs, we were almost safely out of the sniper’s sight.

That’s when I heard movement
nearby followed by a low groan. From less than ten yards away, a shirtless, male zombie sat up from an unseen position within some tall grass. Apparently we had gotten close enough to interrupt its “nap” and trigger its instinct for flesh.

“Fuck, kill it!” I spoke softly.
I was much more concerned about the sniper noticing a struggle than this solitary zombie.

The creature rose to its feet. I noticed that its stomach was torn open and a bunch of maggots tumbled out. The Preacher quickly ran over to it
. With diligence and grace, he thrust the end of his crowbar right through its eye socket.

As it collapsed, we
ducked back down. The Preacher slid his crowbar horizontally in between the two straps of his pink, anime backpack and his back so it was nestled securely in place. I hardly dared to breathe. I prayed that we hadn’t been seen. We waited for a minute or so. The only sound was that of hundreds of flies as they buzzed around the crumpled zombie. It appeared that my prayer had been answered.

We made our way to the edge of town a minute later. We were safely out of the sniper’s view. N
ow, we only had to worry about being spotted by more zombies or anyone else in Payne’s Creek.

As we both crouched behind some
underbrush in a ditch at the edge of town, The Preacher pointed and whispered to me, “two guards over there.”

I looked
in the direction he was pointing: two men came around the corner of the post-office, about sixty yards away. One had an unkempt, black beard. The other had brown hair with large mutton-chops and no facial hair. I didn’t recognize either one of them. I could only assume that Marcus had added more loyal followers to his ranks.

The one with the beard c
arried an aluminum bat. The mutton-chop guy looked unarmed. He was eating some sort of candy bar. I suspected it was a Kit-Kat. They were idly chatting as they patrolled. Every so often, they peered into the woods around us. We both ducked down when they stopped and stared right at us.

After a tense moment, they turned and kept moving.

“I don’t think they saw us,” I whispered.

The Preacher nodded
. “When they turn the next corner, we should move up against the wall of the post office,” he said.

I agreed with him and replied,
“I’ll follow you. I call dibs on that fucking Kit-Kat too if he doesn’t finish it before we kill him.”

“Okay.”

I waited for The Preacher to move, then took his cue when the time came. We ran fast but stepped light. When we reached the post office, we paused to listen for a moment to see if we’d been spotted. To my relief, all was quiet.

The Preacher poked his head around the corner and quickly darted back. “They’re maybe ten yards away,” he leaned over and whispered in my ear. “They’re facing each other and talking by the front door.
I don’t see anyone else.”

“Let’s do them quietly,” I whispered back. “You take out the guy with the bat. I’ll get the other one.
You think I can sneak through the post office without being noticed?” he nodded. “Okay, boost me through that open window,” I pointed above my head to a window that had long-since been shattered. “I’ll strike first,” I let him know, “just listen for any sort of commotion.”

He nodded again. Seconds later, I was rolling softly through the window and onto the tiled, post office floor. Unsent letters and envelopes were scattered all over the
place. They’d likely been blown by the wind or else knocked over by panicked people. I set down my backpack and retrieved the nylon rope inside of it.

Next, I
started to crawl to another blown-out window at the front of the post office. I could see the back of the mutton-chop guy as he half sat on the window sill and half leaned against the outside wall. I was terrified he’d turn around and spot me or hear me crawling.

“No fucking way!” I heard him exclaim to his companion. I froze. “I’m telling you, Gwen Stefani was the hottest singer of the 90’s.”

I breathed a silent sigh of relief and continued my crawl.

“You’re blind and dumb,” the bearded guy responded, “
and her music sucked. The hottest singer of the 90’s was definitely Jewel.”

I jumped up and wrapped my nylon rope around the mutton chop guy’s neck. He blurted out a shocked cry, but I soon choked it off.
As I tightened my rope around his neck, I saw The Preacher heave one of the glass bottles full of ball-bearings at the guy with the bat.

It slammed into his forehead with a
thunk and shattered. Ball-bearings rolled everywhere. He collapsed without a word before he could even react.

I strained backward and used the wall and window as leverage. The mutton chop guy flailed and kicked. I almost had his neck bent over the window sill
, and if I could get enough leverage, I’d try to break it.

While we struggled,
The Preacher drew his bowie knife and ran over to us. Without mercy, he then repeatedly thrust the vicious knife into the mutton chop guy’s torso. I felt the guy writhe and try to scream as he was stabbed, though I choked off any sound. Thanks to The Preacher’s aid, I choked him out within seconds.

As I brought the guy’s body into the post office and caved his head in with my tire-iron, The Preacher dragged the unconscious
, bearded guy into the post office as well.

With a few well-aimed whacks,
I finished that adversary next. Blood now covered the walls, floor, and ceiling of the post office. Many of the letters that were lying around began to soak much of it up.

“Hey, look what I found,” The Preacher said with a grin as he pointed to the far corner of the room.

I looked up
and was hoping to see an uneaten Kit-Kat. Instead, leaning against the wall, in the corner, I noticed his Holy Cross. It had apparently been left there and ignored. “The Lord has been gracious onto me,” he beamed. He looked quite happy.

I returned to my backpack and
slung it back on after I stuck the nylon rope inside. I barely finished that when the loud BAM-BAM-BAM of a semi-auto rifle made me nearly jump out of my skin.

“Get down!” I yelled.
It sounded like an AK-47, possibly the same one that I had seen Karin carrying. I had heard enough of them used sine the apocalypse that I could typically tell them by sound. Immediately following the outbreak, every gang-banger, gun-crazed second amendment whacko, and ex-military man had turned up with one. The zombie outbreak had certainly put a decisive end to the right-to-carry debate.

Th
is particular rifle fired several more times. I counted six shots. That’s when I realized that we weren’t the ones being shot at. I looked at The Preacher with confusion. A cry went up from somewhere down the street, “Shamblers!” The rifle fired some more. It was joined by a burst of machine gun fire.

“This may be our perfect chance,” I told The Preacher. “Maybe we shouldn’t wait until it’s fully dark out. If there are zombies attacking now, there could be more later on.”

“Agreed, so now what?”

“We stick with the
rest of the plan; it’s worked so far. Let’s get to the police station and see if Becky is there. As long as she’s safe, we can move fast to the old town hall and torch it while they’re distracted.”

“Let’s go then,” he nodded.

I drew my .45 just in case. He hefted his heavy cross over his shoulder and we took off running.

We ran
out of the post office, crossed the street, and went through an alley. At the exit of the alley, I glanced left and saw the source of the commotion: ten or twelve zombies were stumbling up the road to where two figures stood perhaps a hundred yards away from me.

One of the figures who was standing in the street opposing the zombies was
Sha’Quizz. This was apparent to me because he was the only enormous black man who toted a LMG around town. He had already cut down several zombies (this was evident from the bodies that were heaped around him). He fired his machine gun in another quick burst with lethal accuracy. Another zombie collapsed as several bullets went through its head.

The figure
who stood near Sha’quizz looked like Marcus, but from this distance I couldn’t be certain because he was facing away from me and wearing a tan cap with a neck-flap. Perhaps he was Larry. Whoever he was, he was roughly the same height as Marcus. He also stood ready with a shiny sword and waited for the zombies to get closer.

The sniper fired again
. A zombie near the sword-wielder dropped. As it went down, the sword-wielder then went to work. He slashed right and left as he moved in a mechanical fashion and decapitated the zombies around him. He hardly looked as if he was trying. I concluded that he definitely wasn’t Marcus: the way he moved seemed much to calm and calculated for Marcus. 

The zombie
distraction was certainly proving useful to me: it would have blown to accidentally run into that trio with only my .45. They would have made short work of me. For the moment, it was best that they fight it out with the zombies, who I was also glad I wasn’t engaged with. I thought of taking a few cheap shots at Sha’Quizz or the sword-guy while their backs were turned, but decided it was best to keep the element of surprise. Thus, I ignored their clash and continued toward the police station with The Preacher to keep me company.

When we arrived
there just a few minutes later, I noticed that a single guard stood outside. He wore a flak vest over a gray t-shirt. There was a revolver holstered at one of his hips. I didn’t recognize him, so he must have been another new guy.

As he saw me and The Preacher approaching, he shouted, “hey,” and held up a hand. His other hand went to his holster. “Ident
ify yourselves or I’ll shoot!” he warned.

I shot him in the neck.

He gurgled and squirmed on the front steps. Blood sprayed out of him like a fountain.

“You should have just shot us
,” I told him as I stepped over the dying man.

“May God have mercy on your soul!” The Preacher said
as he stopped to hover over the man I had shot: he then immediately brought the end of his cross down on the man’s head and ended his suffering.

A shotgun blast went off. I felt
buckshot whizz by as it pounded into the side of the door near me. The Preacher cried out and fell forward. He dropped his cross as he did. I quickly turned my head and my gun in the direction of the unseen shooter.

Wendy was kneeling across the street with her
sawed-off shotgun propped atop a trashcan and her hair in innocent-looking pigtails. I fired two, quick rounds at her as I ducked into the police station. Neither one hit, but the thumb-sized .45 bullets were scary enough to make her duck behind the trashcan (which prevented her from firing another shot).