Shamblers: the zombie apocalypse (8 page)

I looked down into a dark basement. The only light came from a
grimy, cob-webbed, narrow, casement window with a crack in it. A set of old, wooden stairs led down into it. Fuck it was scary!

“Go on down,” Marcus urged
.

I hesitated and listened for
zombies.

“Come on, we ain’t got all day. Don’t be a chicken,” he taunted.

I took one step down, onto the first, wooden stair. It creaked loudly and a layer of dust puffed up around my legs. I started to take a second step when I smelled the pungent stench of death. A second later, I heard a feeble moan. There was a zombie down here somewhere. I leaned forward and looked around but it was dark and hard to see anything. The basement was used for a storage room from what I could tell. There were wooden crates stacked everywhere. The zombie moaned again.

“Why isn’t it coming to us?” Becky whispered.

“I don’t know,” I cautiously replied. “I can’t see anything; maybe it’s stuck under something.”

“Well…” Becky started to say. Her next words were cut off by her muffled cries.

I turned back around to see what was happening. Marcus had one hand over her mouth and had her secured against him. His other hand was pointing a .38 revolver at me. A few thoughts flashed through my head in an instant. The first was: what the hell is happening? The second was: why, Marcus? The last one was: where’d he get that revolver?

“End of the line for you, Nick,” he said. His voice was cold and full of malice. I knew then that he’d been plotting this
attack for the entire trip. I opened my mouth to plead with him. As I did, Becky jerked in his grasp, and he pulled the trigger. His shot went wide, but not wide enough.

I felt a sharp sting in my
left side and I was knocked off my feet. I flew down the steps and landed hard on my back. The floor was dirt, and my backpack absorbed most of my fall, but the landing still sent spasms of agony throughout my new wound. I grunted as the wind was knocked out of me. The whole world was spinning.

I heard Becky scream
. The basement door then slammed shut. The next noise I heard as I laid on the dirt floor, incapacitated and bleeding, was the moan of the zombie that was down here with me.

Part Two: Marcus Gray

Chapter Ten

Becky thrashed beside me and screamed as I shot that fucking prick
, Nick. I slammed my .38 over her head. It drew blood and knocked her senseless. The dumb cunt would have to learn her place. This was a good start. I’d teach her that lesson as many times as necessary going forward.

With her knocked to shit, I closed the basement door and took one last look at my dying so-called friend. Some friend he was. The dick had honed right in on my girl the moment I turned my back on him. He was getting what he deserved, and no less. The growl of the
shambler down there told me that it wouldn’t be long until his flesh was being consumed. Fuck him.

I grabbed a heavy, metal chest from under the kitchen counter and shifted it in place behind the door. That would make sure that the
shamblers and future shambler down there wouldn’t get out. I was free of one problem.

I spun my new girlfriend onto her stomach. Next, I secured her wrists behind her with a zip-tie that I’d brought along with me. Nick had thought himself to be so smart. He’d never viewed me as crafty: just a loud-mouthed nuisance. He was dead wrong. I don’t even think he expected me to have a gun.
I’d actually convinced Sha’Quizz to loan it to me the night before; I had promised that he could rummaged through our duffel bag first once we returned. The look on Nick’s face as I’d shot him….priceless. It had been pure shock. I’d make sure to thank Sha’Quizz when I returned to town.

I didn’t want to hold Becky captive, but I knew the bitch would put up a fight. She was feisty. That’s kind of why I liked her. Once I tamed her and she forgot all this nasty business, I knew she’d ride me like I
was part of an amusement park.

With her secured,
though only semi conscious, I thought about my next move. It was now late afternoon. It would be getting dark soon. I had a few problems to contend with, mostly thanks to Nick: Becky would be problematic when she awoke. That much was guaranteed. I couldn’t drag her far with the possibility of shamblers lurking around. This meant that I needed to find and secure a safe place to camp out for the night or we’d be fucked. Last but not least, I had to complete our scavenger mission before I could return to camp. It was important to loot enough gear to appease that pussy mayor guy who thought he was the boss of me.

“Prioritize, Marcus,” I told myself.

Find shelter.

It seemed the logical next step. The town had a few buildings we hadn’t yet searched. If none of them were suitable, perhaps I could find a ladder and sleep up on a roof.

I wasn’t about to wander off and leave Becky here unattended, though. I couldn’t risk that a shambler would sniff her out while she was laid out on the floor and helpless.

“Fuck,” I cursed my many problems. The answer to this one, at least, was right in front of me: the freezer. She couldn’t open it from
the inside and the shamblers wouldn’t be able to get in. I opened the door, turned to Becky, and grabbed her ankles. I then dragged her inside the freezer and shut her in.

“There,” I said while I mock-dusted my hands off, “you should keep for a while.” I was pretty pleased with myself.

With one problem solved, I stuck the .38 into my backpack and retrieved the claw hammer that Becky had been carrying. It was much more useful than my lead pipe. In case I encountered a shambler, or there were a few of them nearby, I didn’t want any more noise drawing them to me. Plus, I figured I’d need the bullets later. With hammer in hand, I made my way out of the restaurant.

The street was as empty as
the three of us had initially found it. That was encouraging. I walked to the next building. It was a few hundred yards away. I noticed a circular sign out front that said “Jake’s Auto Repair & Service.” I passed a dirty, silver mini-van in the parking lot with the side door opened. Someone had left it in a hurry once upon a time. A quick glance inside revealed a torn up bench-seat and a large spattering of old, dried blood, but nothing that looked useful.

I got to the front office of the auto repair place and lightly rapped on one of the large, glass windows.
I then counted to twenty. It was a habit I had developed: shortly after the initial outbreak I had entered a real-estate office that looked clear from the outside. It had turned out that the door there had little, fucking jingly bells on it. Before I had known it, four shamblers had poured out of a break room. I narrowly escaped with my life.

Since then, I made sure to do a “sound check” whenever I entered a new building. The shamblers usually responded to sound within five seconds. Twenty gave me an even safer cushion.
I fucking hated jingly bells now.

There was no reaction from inside after I hit twenty, so I pushed the door open and headed inside. A quick search of the premises revealed it was empty. I considered grabbing some tools from the mechanic’s bay, but they looked too heavy to transport and most of them were pneumatic.

I moved to the break room. There, I noticed a can of coffee sitting on the counter. It had about1/4
th
of the grinds still in it, so I stuffed it into my backpack. I searched the cabinets next.

As I opened the top one, something jumped out.

“What the fuck!” I shouted, leapt back, and swung my hammer out of instinct.

It was a rat.

A second later, it was scurrying out of the room, chittering frantically. “The little shit,” I muttered. I took a deep breath and looked in the cabinet: moldy muffins, an unsealed bag of chips, and a sleeve of crackers. None of it would still be edible.

I
checked the lower cabinets, found nothing of use, and turned to leave. Just then, the same rat that I had seen a moment ago scurried back across the doorway. It was going in the opposite direction.

That’s odd.

I poked my head out the door. A shambler in a brown and red checkered plaid shirt was just feet away. It was focused on the rat…until it noticed me.

I don’t know where it had come in from, but the fucker came lurching forward. It was now standing between me and the exit. I was trapped in the break room. It c
licked its jaw as it moved closer and then it took a swing at me.

I easily parried the blow with my hammer and I swung back. I hit
the shambler in the shoulder and knocked it sideways, into an empty water bubbler. The blue, plastic top of the bubbler came off and clattered to the floor, and the shambler nearly went with it.

I cocked back my arm to hit it again, but it also extended an arm at me, and its finger caught me in the eye.

I hollered and fell back, temporarily blinded. I swung a few times in its direction, hardly able to see. I felt the hammer connect with it, but I still heard its throaty growling, so I knew it wasn’t finished.

I recovered just in time to avoid a bite that would’ve taken my cheek off. The shambler bit into the head of the hammer instead
. I heard several teeth crack. A quick punch to the side of the fucker’s head sent it flying into one of the cabinets I had left open.

Before it could get up, I grabbed the cabinet door and repeatedly sla
mmed it on the creature’s head, cursing it as I did:

“You…”

CRACK

“Stupid…”

CRACK

“Fucker….”

CRACK.

Its head was a total mush
when I got done. I collapsed against the water bubbler and caught my breath. As I sat there, I laughed with hysteria. I hadn’t been so close to dying since…well a few days I guess.

I left the re
pair shop behind a minute later. I spent the rest of my afternoon searching the next few buildings: I yielded little of use in an old soup kitchen. Peering through an industrial warehouse window revealed that it was full of shamblers. A three-family home further down the street had already been cleaned out by other looters.

The one useful place I discovered was the old fire station. The bottom fl
oor was just a bay for a truck where typical firefighter gear was stored (though the really good stuff like the axes had since been stolen and the truck was nowhere to be seen). Because a pole led down to the truck bay, the only way into the living area was through the main door (to the left of the garage bay and outside the bay door), and up a flight of stairs.

The door
that led up to the living area was solid oak. Behind it was a second door that was made of reinforced, wrought-iron. The living area upstairs was vacant: no shamblers or other survivors. It had a couch that looked pretty comfortable, along with a few bedrooms and some worn beds. There were no low windows that shamblers could climb through. Becky and I could escape down the fire pole if we had to (even if I had to throw the bitch down to the floor below), and I could easily hear anyone who tried making their way up the stairs.

I had found our home for the night.

I exited the fire station and returned to the freezer where I had left Becky. As I opened it, she looked up at me from her position face-down on the floor. Her eyes were filled with terror.

“It’s just me,” I said.

“You’re just as bad as anyone else,” she said with scorn. “How long were you planning to leave me here, shit bag? I’m starving and I just spent the last hour listening to all kinds of moaning, groaning, and cries from downstairs as Nick got devoured.”

Once look at her face and I could tell she’d been crying. I smiled. Becky was
equally terrified, hungry, and infuriated; not to mention saddened over the loss of Nick. I wasn’t happy about any of them except the last part.

“I have a plan for us,” I told her
as I picked her up and flipped her over so she was in a sitting position. “I’m going to give you something to eat and some water. I want you to calm down and relax. After that, we’re heading to the fire station. It’s safe to sleep there for the night. It’ll feel like we’re the fucking Ghostbusters or something. I don’t want you to cause any problems on the way there. I almost got killed by a shambler a little while ago.”

“Too bad,” she commented and
she spat at me. Fortunately, her aim was bad and the spit hit her own knee instead. She groaned in annoyance. I slapped her in the face anyway.

“I’m going to make this clear to you once, baby,” I told her
as I grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me, “I expect your full cooperation on the way to the fire station. You have my assurance that you won’t be hurt. I really do care for you, though I know you must not think so now.”

Becky glared at me.

“Does a bitch understand me?” I asked after she didn’t answer within a few seconds.

She looked up at me with fear and malice, but nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I understand what’s expected of me. Let’s just get to the fire station. I don’t want to spend another second in this freezer.”

I picked her up, put an arm around her, and smiled. “Then I’m glad we’re on the same page.” I said.

I gave her
a quick drink of water. She swallowed it down and stomped twice on freezer floor as if her leg had fallen asleep.

“You all set?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she nodded, “I’ll be fine.”

I ushered her to the kitchen exit. Before I left, I turned around and took a final look at the basement door where I had locked Nick. The heavy, metal chest was still positioned where I had left it.
The shambler (or shamblers) down there were likely digesting him right now.