SHTF (NOLA Zombie Book 0) (10 page)

“Change the tire, Hank, we need to get out of here.” I got behind the wheel of the woman’s car and got it started with a few cranks of the key. The front-end was crumpled in, but it moved when I pressed on the gas. The engine was stuttering, but I managed to get it to the parking lot along the side of the road and park it there and out of the street. Didn't need any more accidents today.

Alicia paced along the side of the SUV, clearly disturbed by my actions. Hank was in constant motion. He unpacked the back of the SUV to get to the spare, and quickly had it out and ready. I looked around at our surroundings. The people in the area had fled to the stores that lined the street. Open signs had turned to closed and lights had been shut off. Even the homeless guy that had been sleeping on the bus stop bench had moved away to safety. I didn’t know if it was because of the infected or because of me and my .38. I didn’t really care; fewer people meant fewer of the infected.

I wanted to feel empathy for the poor souls that were turning into mindless cannibals – but I just couldn't. They were now the enemy. And in my book, there was only one way to deal with an enemy: eradication.

I
wanted
to help Hank change the tire but I got nervous about having my back turned. I didn’t want any more surprises. I had just shot two unarmed, infected civilians. There was no telling what would happen next. My palms were sweating and I felt queasy. I didn’t regret what I did, or so I kept telling myself.

There was no way they could come back from the state they were in. It wasn’t possible that these people could be healed. They were the walking dead.
Fucking zombies.
If I needed any more confirmation, Costco had cemented that theory. You can't survive your guts dragging on the ground. Last I checked, modern medicine couldn't re-stuff your intestines.

I kept my gun drawn.

“I need help here,” Hank said, wrestling the jack underneath the car.

I bent down next to him, my adrenaline pumping the entire time. I grabbed the spare while he slipped the jack under the frame.

I did not like this. No, I did not.

My back was turned for maybe two minutes when I heard the screams coming from the store to the left of us. I stood and turned to face the new threat.

“Get the tire changed quick,” I hissed at Hank, but he didn’t need any encouragement from me, he was loosening the lug nuts like a champ.

The door of the store swung open and a woman fell out of the building face first. Her body landed with a loud thump. She hit head first, propping the door open where she lay. She looked up at me, her arms reaching, pleading for help. Her face was a mess of blood, strangely muted from this distance. It looked like strawberry jelly, like she had been hit in the face with a cobbler or something. A figure, shadowed from the inside of the building, fell on her and began to feed. Flesh ripped and from this distance I was surprised I could hear the unmistakable sound of its grunts and teeth as he feasted on the woman.

She had gone quiet, but she still reached for help.

Alicia whimpered behind me and I turned to console her, to quiet her. I didn’t want to bring attention to our group. They seemed to be attracted to noise. We just needed a few more minutes. We just needed to get the tire changed and we were out of here.

Alicia's eyes were huge and her bottom lip quivered. I could hear the hitch of her breath as she panted with each inhalation. She was having a panic attack. There was no doubt in my mind. I could see it in the tremble of her hands. I could see her chest shudder in a staccato rhythm as she fought to control her reactions. I had witnessed many a person panic in the face of violence, trained soldiers and innocent civilians. Nothing good ever came from a panic attack.

“Alicia, I need you to take a deep breath, a really big breath. Can you do that for me?” I said in my most calming voice. She didn’t even look at me. Her mouth began to open and close like a fish, her gaze never wavering from the infected man chowing down on the woman in the door.

She sucked in a breath and it caught in her throat, a high pitch whine emanating from her throat.
We were screwed.

Her mouth opened and she began to scream. The infected man’s head shot up, he stared right at us. He pushed himself off of his meal, and got to his feet shakily. His gait was awkward, choppy and it looked pained. He was heading in our direction at a much quicker pace than I would have expected for someone that looked very injured.

Alicia’s scream never wavered. She kept up the ear-piercing barrage until the woman in the doorway pushed herself off the ground too, her insides hanging from her body, her chest a mangled, chewed mess…and she began to walk in our direction. She had the same choppy gait of her attacker. The woman was obviously dead, there was no questioning it, or thinking on the matter. I could see her ribs.

The silence descended over us as Alicia’s scream cut off abruptly. The moaning of the infected now surrounded us.

“Get in the vehicle, Alicia,” I ordered. She was behind me, so I turned to face her, pointing to the SUV for emphasis. She didn't move. I grabbed her shoulder and she jolted out of her shocked state. Her eyes found mine, they were still full of panic, tears were streaming down her cheeks. She shook out of my grasp and cringed as if she didn’t recognize me.

“No, no, no.”Sshe focused back on the approaching infected man. I could imagine he filled her entire vision. His jaw that hung open in eagerness, the blood that dripped from his mouth, there was even a bit of viscera caught in his teeth, hanging in a bloody string down his chin. She didn't need to see this.

She began to scream again, but this time she screamed and ran. She ran away from the infected man, she ran away from us. She ran away from the SUV into the neighborhood behind us. She was fast, Barbara tried to run after her, but Alicia was running for her life and Barbara was ten years older and not a runner. I was suddenly torn. Go after Alicia or stay and protect Hank and our supplies?

They were adults, Alicia was my kid sister. I drew my second hand gun, placed it in Hank’s hands and ran after Alicia. I screamed and told Barbara to go back to the SUV. I was a runner. I ran every day of my life, just for shits and giggles. But there was a difference between a panicked girl being chased and a recreational jogger. It took me a long time to catch up to her, too long.

She raced into the neighborhood and I finally caught up to her when she began to go from house to house banging on doors, screaming for help.

“Alicia!” I yelled. If she was lucid enough to bang on the doors for help, she had to stop and realize it was me behind her, not some infected person.

She turned around and faced me, on the front step of a small brick house.

“Tim, leave me alone!”

“Alicia, what the hell?” I stopped in my tracks, keeping a good distance between us. She looked like she was scared of me.
Why would she be afraid of me?

“Stay away from me!” she yelled again and turned around and began to pound on the door.

“What is wrong with you, Alicia, we’ll make it out of this, why are you doing this?”

“You’re going to kill me!” she yelled, her back facing me, so I couldn't see her face.

She pounded on the door again, and this time the door swung open, causing her to stumble forward. She fell to her hands and knees in the doorway of the house and I ran to help her. I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with her, or why she was reacting like this, but I couldn’t just let her run away. I would drag her back to the SUV if I had to knock her out and throw her over my shoulder. I was tired of her acting like this. The petulant teen routine was getting really old. It was going to get us killed.

She screamed again, like a frightened child, when I reached for her to pull her to her feet.

“What is wrong with you, Alicia?" I asked again, not really expecting an answer but trying to get her to talk to me. "I left Hank and Barbara by themselves with more of those infected. God knows what is happening to them. Come back with me now and stop this bullshit.” I tried not to be so harsh, but it came out in a bark.

“You’ll kill me, I know you will,” she sobbed. And that’s when I saw it, the angry red wound on her shoulder. She had covered it up with her shirt, which was now drenched in blood as the wound leaked onto the black material. It was a bite, the woman at Costco hadn’t just scratched her, she had bitten her.

“I’m not going to kill you, Leesh,” I said, my voice catching when I realized the implication of that bite. If it was transmitted by bite,
Alicia was as good as dead
. She was going to become one of those things, with nothing behind her eyes, only one thing on her mind…to bite and infect others.

“You killed them, you just shot them, you didn’t even try to help them,” she sobbed.

"I’m not going to do that to you, Alicia, just come back with me. We’ll get in the SUV and we’ll get you to the hospital. We don’t have to go to the compound. We’ll go to the hospital. We’ll just keep on driving to Slidell. Those other people are dead, that's why they are the way they are. We don't know what happens when you just get a bite, they'll just give you some medicine and you'll get better.” I don't know who I was lying to, myself or her.

Three staccato gunshots ripped through the air and Alicia screamed again, falling back against the wall of the house. The shots came from the direction of the SUV, it had to be Hank. Our father had taken us hunting when we were kids and while Hank had never taken to the sport, he was always a good shot. Not as good as me, but still good. I prayed that his skill still held.

Something clattered from inside the house.

“Come on, let’s go back to the SUV.” More sounds came from inside the house and Alicia scrambled to her feet. I needed to get Alicia settled down. There was danger around every corner in this godforsaken neighborhood. We needed to move and I would deal with her bite later. I felt the sick pang of worry take root in my gut, but again, move first, deal with emotional shit later. I had always been able to compartmentalize. It kept me sane during the war and it would keep me sane now.

She let me lead her away and we had made it halfway down the front walk when a low whine stopped us in our tracks. We both turned around slowly. A small figure emerged from the dark house, shuffling out of the foyer and onto the front stoop. It was a child. It was an infected child.

Something, or really someone, had bit it on the neck and its wound had bled all down the pretty pink dress she wore. It was the only obvious sign of attack. Just one bite. She was barefoot and shuffled forward on tiny feet. A little Vietnamese doll, with big vacant eyes and tiny baby teeth, red with blood. She had bitten someone else.

“She’s a baby,” Alicia moaned and pressed back against me. I looked down, distracted by her wound and the smell of infection that wafted off of it. It had only been an hour and already Alicia smelled wrong and putrid. Soon she would be like this little child, vacant eyes and bloody teeth, just from one bite.

“Just turn around and run, run with me, Leesh.” I pulled her back and we turned and ran. The tiny feet of the child couldn’t keep up with our long-legged strides. But as we rushed through the neighborhood, intent on getting back to the SUV, I knew our time had run out. I saw them, a group of ten, all infected. It was a damn pack of the fuckers. They were adults and much faster than the child. They came at us from the right and I didn’t notice them until it was too late. They were only a few yards from us when they stumbled out from a fence that gaped open. They wore bathing suits, the women in tiny bikinis that had shifted from the violence, revealing their bloody breasts and other parts. The men wore board shorts and one even was sporting a speedo. All of them looked to be in their late teens and early twenties, all beautiful and tanned skin turned gray. A pool party gone horrific.

They ran at us on feet covered in flip-flops and wedge sandals and it gave me hope that we could still make it. One tripped and took a few down with it. If we could run fast enough, outpace their stumbling gait, we would make it through this. They weren’t at the peak of health, most were battered, injured and their gait reflected their injuries. They ran, but it was a hectic, almost violent romp. They stumbled easily, they fell into each other, driven mad by our proximity.

I yanked Alicia along with me. We would make it to the SUV.
We had to make it.
I didn’t want to stop and fight them because there were too many and if I used my gun, the sound would only draw more.

Alicia’s foot caught on the broken sidewalk and she went down. She pulled me with her, our legs tangled together like puppets. I managed to regain my footing without going all the way down and I pulled her up with me to keep our grueling pace, but she screamed in protest. She had skinned both knees and it caused her to limp. Now she was unsteady on her feet.
Had her skin been that gray earlier?

“Come on, Alicia, we have to move, we only have a little more to go,” I urged her. We were too slow. The infected had caught up to us and when she tripped again, she fell away from me and rolled in the grass. The infected surrounded us, some breaking off and going after her, the rest coming for me.

“Alicia!” I screamed trying to go for her, but there were too many. I would have to go through them to get to her.

I drew a knife that I had sheathed at my belt and as they came for me, I slashed. I kicked at them, fought them. I pushed their heads away from me as they tried to bite. Alicia’s screams began and I felt the tears stream down my face. I knew there was no hope for her against this mob of infected. They were determined to spread their infection. They were determined to eat us alive.

As her screams intensified, I slashed and slashed. Every time I sunk my blade into their flesh there was no reaction. They didn’t cry out, they didn’t stagger back. Nothing. Not until I completely incapacitated them did they let up. Finally I brained one, knife deep in the skull, right through the eye…pushed in with a scream of frustration and terror…only then did it finally fall at my feet. Dead. Forever dead. I had to take out the brain. Zombie 101. I should have known that. I had never been the sharpest tool in the shed.

I was never one for horror movies or books, but I didn’t live under a rock. These infected people, these things that got up after they were dead and tried to eat my flesh, needed a head shot to go down. Just like a horror movie. This whole situation was something out of a horror movie. This wasn’t a virus. This wasn’t an infection. This was the dead, the reanimated dead. My little sister was being torn apart by zombies.

They fell quickly after that. I knew how to take them down. My vision went red and I focused on my enemy. These were monsters, plain and simple. Alicia’s screams had stopped and I did not want to pause and think about what that meant. The dead still pushed at me, grabbed for me as I kicked and punched and stabbed.

When the last one fell at my feet I walked over to the three remaining zombies. They were bent over my sister. They were eating my little sister. They had ripped her apart. Her stomach and intestines were a red mess across her body and those things were busy pulling her flesh into their mouths, their gnashing teeth making weird squishing noises as they swallowed her flesh.