War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) (45 page)

Chuck and Stephanie climbed down and hurried to the Shelby. When they were squished into the back, Deckard shocked Chuck by handing him the warm pistol. “We might be infected,” he explained. "And I don't want to be one of them."

“We might all be infected,” Stephanie said, lightly. Despite the zombies and the corpses and the horror of the night, she felt almost giddy. She had lived. Not only that, she had Chuck holding her hand. “So where are we going?”

Thuy answered when no one else would. “As far as we can. To the edge of the quarantine zone. I don’t want to be anywhere near Walton.”

This was agreed upon by everyone and Deckard drove south, fully expecting to come across a police checkpoint at every turn. An hour passed and there was nothing but open road before them.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Thuy said. “They have to have a quarantine.”

“Not if they’re incompetent,” Deckard said.

Chuck gave a little laugh. “We got a saying back home: dumb-shits do dumb shit, ma’am. Maybe they’re thinking about reasoning with the zombies. I wouldn’t put it past the government.”

“Then I’m going home,” Thuy said, tiredly. She’d been renting a room ten miles outside Walton, but where she called home was a townhouse just north of New York City. “You two are welcome to stay, I have a guest bedroom,” she said to Chuck and Stephanie.

“You have a couch for me?” Deckard asked. “I don’t need much more than that.”

She cast her dark eyes toward him and then shrugged as if embarrassed. “No, you can’t stay on the couch. You, uh need to be observed for signs of the disease. You should stay with me to be on the safe side.”

It had been over an hour since their escape and he felt fine, while she looked stunning as always with the only difference being a touch of shyness in the way she was now having trouble looking him in the eye. “So what you’re saying is that I should stay with you for the sake of all mankind?”

Thuy grinned at this and touched his arm. “Sure, let’s say that’s the reason.

As it streaked east, the boxy ambulance swayed, causing Jaimee’s feet to kick off the underside of the metal bench, making a small thump-thump sound every other second.

“Could you stop that, dear?” Edmund asked.

She shot him a look. Through the filters of her black eyes he looked even older than usual and that was something. Behind his bio-suit mask, his bushy brows drooped and his wrinkled face sagged. He was grey with sorrow and looked close to death, as though he was right on the edge and that a little push would send him over….where he belonged.

He belonged with the dead.

What a strange thought
, she said to herself. Why would she think he belonged with the dead and why was she even thinking about the old coot’s death in the first place? It was a minute before she came up with the answer: “Because he deserves to die,” she whispered. The old man was supposed to have saved her father, but he killed him instead. He had been part of all of it: the strange looking people walking around in the night, the screams, the fire, the fact that Jaimee no longer felt like herself. The fact that now she had strange urges. That was all his fault. He had started this whole business.

A mind reader might have noticed that she had put the cart before the horse. A dark part of her wanted Edmund to die and so she looked for a reason. And she didn’t just want him to die, she wanted to kill him. It was such a natural feeling that she didn’t question it.

“Did you say something, dear?” Edmund asked, turning towards her. “I can’t hear well in this suit. It crinkles every time I move.”

Jaimee hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud and didn’t know which part of her sordid thinking had escaped her mouth. She only knew for certain it had to do with death. Her mind was crawling with thoughts of death. “I…I was just wonnerin’ iffin y’all be goin’ ta heaven when y’all die?”

Edmund’s wrinkled face went sour. “Before today I would have said yes. Now, I feel like I deserve hell.”

His words and her perception of them did not correspond. In the underworld of her mind where evil covered itself with rationality she heard a vindication of her thoughts. Her father was dead and here was the only authority figure in her life, practically giving her permission to kill him.

In her pocket was his cure. She had found it where they didn’t want her to look. She took it out into the light where it gleamed brightly. It was a scalpel and it was wickedly sharp. It was one of the few things that she could see clearly, that and the aura of death surrounding Edmund.

The blade sat in her hand but he didn’t see it. The plastic suit blocked his vision and his age clouded his judgment. For some reason he was completely at his ease around her, which made no sense. She may have been small, but she was still infected and that meant she was dangerous. And the fact that her mind still operated meant she was doubly dangerous.

The scalpel could attest to that. Without warning she stabbed Edmund. The blade slid through the plastic suit and into his chest, gliding easily between two of his brittle ribs and puncturing his right lung.

Shocked, he turned to see her grinning face leering into his mask. All up her arm flowed a malignant electricity. It was as if she was feeding on his soul as he slowly died. And his death was indeed slow. The punctured lung deflated like a balloon and he had to fight to suck in the smallest amount of air. Gradually, his arms and legs went numb, feeling as though they were no longer attached to his torso and then slowly, ever so slowly he slid to the floor of the rocking ambulance and died a temporary death.

He would later come back just as Bobby Dern would, though it would take Bobby a few more hours because his injuries were much more severe.

Jaimee opened the little door between the cab and the crew space. Before Bobby even knew who it was she had poked the scalpel in his side. She had no way of knowing that she had stuck him in the liver; she didn’t even know what a liver was.

The pain was immediate and galvanizing. He slammed on the brakes so that his scream mingled with the screech of the tires as they drew two long black lines down the roadway. Jaimee was thrown forward and if she was hurt she didn’t know. Nothing could really hurt her now.

She picked herself up and while Bobby was still trying to comprehend what was going on she laid into him with the blade. The first stab went into his neck and blood sprayed out. The second sunk into his cringing face just below the eye. The third went into his open mouth sliding through his tongue and coming out beneath his chin.

After that she didn’t know where she stabbed or how many times. Bobby's blood, pure clean blood shot into her mouth and from that moment on she didn’t know anything beyond a ravaging hunger. Only when his blood had pooled and wasn’t so wonderfully warm did she finally climb out of the ambulance. She stood in front of a sign that read
Hartford 14 Miles
.

She began walking and within minutes she was hungry again.

So it was that as General Collins was sitting with the Governor of New York explaining the need to shoot the zombies on sight and why he needed such a huge quarantine zone, Jaimee was already fifty miles east of its furthest edge and heading toward a brightly lit city where over a million people lived and worked and would eventually die over the next few weeks.

Jaimee smiled at all the lights and her tummy rumbled.

The End of the First Day

Author's note:

Thank you for reading The Apocalypse Crusade, War of the Undead Day One. I sincerely hope that you enjoyed it. If so, I’d like to ask a favor: the review is the most practical and inexpensive form of advertisement an independent author has available in order to get his work known. If you could put a kind review on Amazon and your Facebook page, I would greatly appreciate it.

Peter Meredith

If you are in the mood for more zombies, a ton more bullets and a whole lot more blood(and just a bit of sex thrown in), please check out my other ghoulish series:
The Undead World
.

Greed, terrorism, and simple bad luck conspire to bring mankind to its knees as a viral infection spreads out of control, reducing those infected to undead horrors that feed upon the rest.
It's a time of misery and death for most, however there are some who are lucky, some who are ruthless, and some who are just too damned tough to go down without a fight. This is their story.

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