Zombie Fallout 8: An Old Beginning (21 page)

Wow, random thought as I moved closer to the door. Tommy had slid Deneaux past him and into the zombie-less room—much like one would a shuffleboard puck—before turning his attention on the zombie. He reached out with his left arm to keep it at bay, grabbing the tatters of its shirt while it growled and bit at him. Tommy simultaneously pulled him closer and spun him around. The back of the zombie’s head was to him as he wrapped a forearm around its neck and crushed. When the bones were sufficiently destroyed, he twisted the head off. It was vulgar in its savagery. His teeth were gritted as he looked up to me, the zombie falling to the floor, its head still in Tommy’s clutches. At some point, as I dropped down, he had gotten rid of it. We both ran into the room and began the task of barricading the door.

This time we were not encumbered with any limitations as we stacked stuff from one end of the room to the other. It would be difficult to get through, but not impossible. We were once again trapped as the din of a battle waged mere feet away assailed our ears. The ape had not yet succumbed. I couldn’t be sure, but from the heavy thud sounds, I was fairly confident he was swinging a bulker around like a bat.

“As soon as either of them is done, they’re going to come this way.”

“Yup,” Tommy answered abruptly.

“What’s the matter, Tommy?
This getting to you? We’ve been in worse situations.” That was partly a lie.

“Did you see the zombie?”

“Which one? There’s like a hundred of them in there.”

“The one I killed.”

“They’re not people anymore, Tommy. You of all people should know that. And why now? We’ve been doing this for months.”

“He was a person once.”

“Tommy?”

“Mr. T, it was Doc.”

I stumbled backwards like I’d been punched in the nose. My eyes watered, my chest pounded, my head swam, and my equilibrium took this moment to lose itself. I staggered to a chair.

“Are you sure?” It was the only thing I could think to ask.

Tommy didn’t need to answer. The expression on his face was the only indication I needed.

“Fuck, where’s Porkchop?”

“This has got to end, doesn’t it, Mr. T? At some point doesn’t it just have to end?”

“Of course it does. At some point everything comes to pass.” Note that I didn’t exactly say how
this was going to end, or that the outcome was going to be favorable. But yes, change was inevitable.

Tommy sat just as Deneaux began to moan and stir.

“Well, she ought to make everything better,” I said sourly. “And since when did we get back on the menu? I thought as non-humans we were immune to the zombies?”

“There’s not much they won’t eat and there is a scarcity of food plus...”

“Plus? There’s a plus?”

“They’re opportunistic, we’re here,
they’re hungry.”

“Can’t you push them away or something?”

“You already know the answer, with the loss of Eliza we both lost a significant portion of that ability. I’m not sure if I could tell one to close its mouth while it chewed.”

“I wish Deneaux would wake up, that’s how little I want to talk about this.”

Chapter
Thirteen – Tracy

“Should have just taken a fucking scooter!” BT said, moving his elbows around trying to find room that wasn’t there.

The four-cylinder gas and battery powered hybrid struggled with carrying nearly its own weight in passengers.

“For once, Trip is the smart one in this equation,” BT lamented.

Trip had grabbed the saddle off the horse he’d been riding and had, with some redneck ingenuity, fastened it to the roof of the car. With his feet in the stirrups and one hand on the pommel he was screaming at the top of his lungs, “Yeeeee-ahhh!” It was his jumping up and down on the saddle that was driving BT crazy. Every time he did it, the roof would collapse a little more, cramping those inside by incremental degrees.

“Leave him be, he’s the only one having any fun these days. And I, for one, find it endearing,” Tracy admonished BT.

“You would, you’ve had sufficient practice riding on the crazy train,” BT said sourly. “Why’d he come anyway?”

Tracy shot him a glance that simultaneously seared and froze his face. “You done bitching?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He put his hands in his lap.

“Shit, Mom, you rock!” Travis said, truly amazed at the power his mother could wield.

“How many times do I have to tell you? No swearing!” She was looking through the rearview mirror.

“Yes, ma’am,” Travis echoed, smiling at BT as the big man turned around to smile at him.

“Oh, my God.” Tracy had been about to
reprimand BT for egging her son on. When she came in to view of the Demense facility, all of that changed.

It was one thing to see the zombies stream by, it was quite another to see that many all congealed in one spot.

“Must be a hell of a concert!” Trip yelled.

Tracy let out an involuntary laugh because from this distance that’s exactly what it looked like, a crowd of people trying to get into a particularly hot event. 

“Tracy.” BT was saying a lot with that one word. Short of a couple of tanks, there was no way they could get through that many zombies. The car came to an abrupt stop.

“Whoa, this horse is trying to throw me!” Trip shouted.

“Mom? Why are you stopping? We can get through that or find a way around them.” Justin had wriggled his way up so that his head was next to his mother’s.

They were on a small rise, but it was enough to see that Justin’s words were only wishful thinking. The building was blanketed with zombies.

“There’s...there’s thousands,” Tracy said, a distant look to her eyes.

Getting to Mike was of the utmost importance to her, yet she would not
needlessly endanger those with her in a quest that had a significant chance for failure. Her head dropped down nearly to her chest.

“Mom? Travis asked. “Are we going?”

BT said nothing as he watched tears fall soundlessly onto Tracy’s lap.

“Boys, let’s get out and take a look.” BT urged everyone out so that Tracy could have a moment to mourn her decision. They didn’t have anything near to what they needed, personnel
or weapon-wise, to get through that many zombies. To go in would mean their deaths. That wasn’t drama—it was fact. To stay out, meant Mike’s death. If this was a simple life exchange, BT would have charged in no questions asked. Mike, for all his shortcomings and foibles was his brother plain and simple. Obviously not biologically but certainly cosmically.

If Tracy hadn’t stopped when she did, BT would have spoken up had she gotten closer. Mike had asked him to look out for their family. To attempt a rescue under these circumstances would have spelled instant doom. He would be doing little to honor Mike if he had his whole family join him in death.

“I didn’t think we’d ever see more zombies than we did at Grandma’s house.” Travis was throwing rocks off the small hill.

“Is there anything we can do?” Justin asked.

BT shook his head tersely. 

“Who’s going to tell Mom?” Travis asked.

“She already knows,” BT replied.

“What now?” Justin asked, a shine to his eyes from tears that threatened to fall.

“Well, just because we can’t get in, doesn’t mean your dad can’t get out.”

“You believe that?” Justin wiped at his left eye.

“Most of me says no. No way anyone could get out of there. But your dad isn’t just anyone, we all know that. If there’s a way, I’m sure he will make it the most difficult, extreme escape possible.”

“That a joke?” Justin was rubbing his other eye now, doing his best to make it look exactly like he was not rubbing tears away.

“It’s okay to cry. You’re no less of a man for showing emotion.”

“Yeah you are,” Travis whispered in his brother’s ear.

Justin pushed Travis. “Ass.”

BT marveled at how resilient the boys were. They were able to process and assimilate new information at a much faster rate than any of the adults. He figured part of that was their youth, but a larger, more significant portion had to do with the age they grew up in. The rate they were bombarded with information
almost dwarfed anything from the previous generations combined since the dawn of mankind. It was no wonder they could react faster and think through problems with an alarming speed. For some, the mega-doses of information could cause people to withdraw, including his own nephews who wouldn’t so much as grunt at him when he would visit. Too engrossed in their video games. These two would mourn and they would cry and they would move on. It was inevitable.

It was Tracy he feared for. There was a good chance she wouldn’t recover from this, at least not fully. Shells didn’t survive well in this world. They were too brittle for the rough handling they were likely to get. There was no infrastructure around anymore that could spare the time to coddle those who were fragile. Shells were broken and discarded on a daily basis now.

BT walked back to the car while the boys horsed around a little longer. It was their way of dealing with the danger their father was in. Who was he to tell them it was wrong?

“We should get going soon, chief.” Trip had dropped down from the car roof. He smacked BT across the chest to punctuate his point.

“Go? Go where?” BT asked, looking at his chest to make sure there wasn’t residue from whatever Trip had been doing last. Knowing the man’s penchant for drug use, there was no telling.

“The concert, man, the concert. Look, they’re filing in. We’re going to miss the opening song, man, and that always sets the tone for the rest of the show.” Trip was excited.

“He’s right,” Gary said.

“Not you too.” BT shook his head.

“Well, not the concert part, but they are going in. I can’t tell for certain, but I’d say at least a quarter of the zombies have gone into that building. They keep going in at this pace, there will be no more of them outside in an hour.”

“So?” Stephanie asked. “Inside, outside, what’s the difference? Seems like it would be worse. There will be nowhere to run. You’d be trapped.” She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. She turned to see Tracy looking at her. “I’m so sorry,” she
said quickly. “I...I was just talking before I thought.”

“I’m glad I never do that,” Trip told his wife.

BT wanted to tell him that was because he
never
thought. But now was not the time.

“It’s alright; it’s not like I don’t know what’s going on.” Tracy was staring off into the distance with everyone else.

“You know this is Mike we’re talking about, right?” BT offered.

“We’ll wait until all or most are inside and then I’d like to get in a little closer. Just in case, I mean,” Tracy said.

“Of course,” BT answered.

Henry was looking where they all were. His stub of a tail wagged back and forth twice before he sat down.

“I think he agrees with you.” BT reached down to pet the dog’s head.

Chapter Fourteen – Maine

Ron paced along his deck. He hadn’t heard anything from either of his brothers in close to a week. Odds were good that Mike had just destroyed another truck and the radio along with; he’d just have to wait it out. There was a constant roiling within his gut, though. Part of it was the not knowing what was going on, and part was being one of the few adults left at his home to defend in case of attack. The amount of responsibility was beginning to take its toll. When he wasn’t on guard duty, he was repairing parts of their home or its defenses. And when he would finally go to sleep, his dreams were littered with the various nightmarish instances that could still befall them.

Unlike Mike, he’d had his shit together before all this apocalypse crap had happened. He had not needed a court order to join the Marine Corps to stay out of jail. He had, instead, stayed in corporate America. He’d risen through the ranks to become successful and then took the money to invest
where his expertise in business had really excelled—in real estate. He’d done so well that he’d found a way to build his dream home, with his wife, and retire early. He felt the sweet fruit was his just rewards for toiling the soil so diligently.

And now where had that gotten him? Money certainly meant nothing anymore. His once beautiful home would now be considered an extreme fixer-upper with additional projects. There were enough dead bodies in and around his yard to rival Gettysburg. His father had perished defending the inhabitants.

“It’s not a home anymore. It’s a fortress. A prison, really.” He had his hands on the deck railing and was looking out over the pond. “We were going to travel. See the world. I was going to make it up to Nancy for all those times I had to work late or fly off to who-knows-where to fix who-knows-what. Seemed so important back then. I knew this was the goal I was trying to achieve and for what?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Ron’s wife,
Nancy startled him as he spoke aloud. “No one could have known this was how it was going to turn out.”

He waited for her to join him at the railing before he spoke again. “I know, I know, it’s just that, for the first time in my life, I feel so wholly unprepared. I love my
brother, so don’t take this out of context. But growing up, he was a fuck-up. If there was a way to get into trouble, sure as shit, he would find it. Trust me, back then it was nice to have him around, because it always took the focus off the rest of us. Short of stealing a car, I could pretty much fly under the radar. He just did whatever he wanted, daring the consequences to catch up with him. It was sort of amazing to watch from the sidelines sometimes.”

“As his older brother you never thought to maybe help him out?”

“We tried, all of us. It was like trying to straighten a spring; you could push and pull as much as you liked, and eventually it would look like he was straight and narrow. But you turned your back for an instant, and he would spiral back to his true form. He just didn’t care. He isn’t a bad person—he’s not mean. I don’t think he intentionally goes around with the attitude of seeking out messes. He just doesn’t care about what could happen on the other end of his actions. It’s like there’s a big disconnect there for him. Most of us look at the world and think if I do ‘A’ to get to ‘B’ then ‘C’ is a potential for the outcome. Whereas Mike is like, ‘Fucking A!’”

Nancy laughed. “Yup, that sounds like your brother. Sorry,” she said when she realized her husband wasn’t sharing in her amusement.

“This is serious.” His eyebrows furrowed.

“I know.” She had to place her hand up by her mouth to hide her smile.

“I knew the day would come when Mike was faced with prison. It was an inevitability. Civilization is not a fan of wildcards. I’m happy the judge gave him the opportunity to join the Marines. I figured it would do him some good, you know? A good ass kicking or three might be exactly what he needed. Not Mike, though. The Marine Corps just gave him new venues to perform in. Then, somehow, he gets this beautiful, intelligent woman to marry him. If she wasn’t from the U.S., I would have said it was merely for a green card, but I don’t think there were even any immigrants that were quite that desperate. A wife, kids, a job, same Mike.”

“So what’s the problem, dear?” Nancy asked, wrapping her arm around her husband’s waist.

“The entire time Mike is fucking up, I keep my nose to the grindstone, working sixty, sometimes seventy hour weeks. I’m away from our children for work almost two weeks out of every month, and the goal was for this!” His hand goes out to the expanse of the water and trees before them. “I finally get us here, in this place, and this shit happens. And now that the entire world has been flipped upside down, it’s Mike that’s the better for it.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, Ron. Mike is better off because there’s a zombie apocalypse?”

“No, sorry. No one is better off. What I’m trying to say through my frustration is that someone who walked so precariously and carefree through the previous world is now the one most suited to lead us through this one. The majority of his life has been a fuck up and…and…”

“And it’s prepared him completely for all of this.”

“Yes.” Ron sighed. “Somehow he’s kept his entire family safe, and I failed our daughter.”

“You did no such thing! There’s nothing you could have done. I miss Melanie as much as you do, but I in no way hold you responsible for her demise. She was an adult, she was out on her own, and she got bit. I don’t think even your brother could have done anything to prevent that. It’s okay, hon. I know you’re also still in pain over the loss of your father, we all are, and seeing that you’re the oldest, you consider yourself the patriarch of this family now. It’s
alright to have help, though. You don’t need to do this alone. Just because he’s your baby brother doesn’t mean he’s a kid.”

“I know, I get it, maybe I’m just tired. This just isn’t the way I thought things would happen.”

Nancy let go a small laugh. “Sorry,” she told her husband. “I don’t think anyone had this in their future plans.”

“Probably right.”

“Get some sleep, I’ll stay out here.” Nancy watched as her husband headed inside. His shoulders, which had been slumped when she came out, were now at least a little more upright. She was just finishing her cup of coffee and was about to head in to refill it when she heard the cracking of a branch not more than twenty feet into the woods on her left.

They hadn’t seen a zombie in nearly a week, and she just couldn’t imagine there were any left in the entire state. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to keep looking for them. She knew it was those who lost vigilance who were often the ones that died before their time. As the cracking got louder, her eyes grew wider. The first signs of alarm began to track through her body—adrenaline, sweat, and quickening heart rate. She was even unconsciously holding her breath. She nearly screamed out loud when the fawn stepped from the trees. A heavy gust of pent-up air expelled from her lungs.

“Whoo, where’s your momma, little guy?” she asked. The fawn seemingly heard her as he looked up at the deck. His head swiveled to the rear and then he bounded off. “Like I need another cup of coffee,” she said, looking at her shaking cup-laden hand.

She went in anyway. As the French door slid shut a zombie, that had been following the fawn, came out of the woods. She’d finally caught up to the mother and son pair this morning after chasing them for two days. Last night, her big break had come when the mother stepped into a gopher hole and fractured one of her front legs. She’d kept on for a few miles more before finally collapsing from the pain and exhaustion. The baby had bleated at her to move. He had stayed long enough to watch his mother die. When the life within her left, so did he.

The zombie was halfway across the lawn when she heard a sound to her right. She looked up to the big house and was drawn to it. A baser instinct told her that this was a habitat that her preferred food lived in.

Even as she approached the structure, her eyes looked around for a way into the dwelling. The sounds pulled her to the other side of the house. If she had been capable of a grin, one would have beamed across her face. She saw a gaping hole in the side of the house. The zombie had also found a small opening in the fence that Ron had on his list of repairs. It had been low on the list of priorities because the zombies before it had not made any sort of attempt to seek it out; if they happened to stumble upon it, the thought of making themselves diminutive enough to fit through it seemed beyond their grasp of comprehension. Not this one. She wouldn’t be winning any spelling bees soon, but this one had a predatory gaze to it
s eyes. There was higher brain function than merely to
eat—
she
had rudimentary strategies on
how
to get food, not just consume it.

She walked in and sampled the air with five quick sniffs.
Food
. It was here and in abundance.
Quiet,
she thought. She knew enough to be quiet. This food was dangerous. This food fought back, not like earlier today’s food. She walked through the entire basement, stopping to sniff every few steps. The food was tantalizingly close, but not here. She heard the thumping of footsteps above her head. She looked up to follow it.

Up
, she thought, looking at the stairs. At the top landing, she stared at the door. She had been tempted to hammer away at it. An angry, red color kept flashing in her head every time she thought this, and she knew that red meant danger. She stared at the door handle. Without even consciously thinking about it, her hand was moving toward the handle. She could not understand why. Even as her hand grasped the cool metal, she could only stare with a sort of fascination, as it seemed to perform this function of its own volition. Possibly muscle memory. A crack of light formed when the door opened slightly. The heavenly scent of food wafted out to her. She let go of the handle and blissfully walked in and past the door.

She heard sounds to her side; there was more than one food.
Too dangerous
. She had to find one alone, a small one, a hurt one. Her instincts were solely in charge as she moved.

So hungry.

The constant gnawing pain tore at her stomach, her relentless pursuit of food propelling her. Even as she ate, she was thinking about where and when she would do so again. She found herself in a darkened hallway. Most of the doors were closed, but not all of them, and there was food in there. She moved silently over the carpeted floor, her calloused dirt and blood caked feet made not a sound as she walked.

Quiet, eat soon.

She saw a bed that dominated the room, but it was what was atop that grabbed her attention and would not let go. A small thing stood up and looked at her. The word
cat
flashed in her mind, but it meant little to her. She’d eat it when she was done with the bigger one.

The small animal made a loud noise and jumped off the bed, its claws sinking deeply into the sallow flesh of her face. Pain erupted along every puncture wound and was quickly calmed by her internal machinations. A claw raked across her eyeball, tearing all the way through her cornea and into the iris and pupil. Her vision began to blacken on one side as the animal dragged deeper, shredding the lens. She wrapped her hands around the middle of the cat and wrenched it free from her face. If she were capable, she would have been surprised to note that her eye was now attached to the claw of the little beast. She thought about taking a few bites from the spitting, snarling beast, but the noise was causing the bigger prey to stir.

All that mattered was eating. She dropped the smaller food on the floor and quickly moved across the room. The small animal jumped on her leg. Bites and scratches, which should have caused some distress, did little as she descended on the food, the food that was now attempting to sit up even as the zombie tore into its neck, rending pieces of it into her mouth. A scream issued forth from the food even as it attempted to push her away. She just kept biting, the food’s struggles becoming weaker and weaker until finally they stopped. She tore large chunks of food free, barely taking the time to chew as she swallowed hunks whole down her gullet and into the bottomless pit of her stomach. She could never be full, but she would never stop trying. Another small animal came in making noise and was now savagely ripping into her leg that still rested on the floor.

She could hear the approaching sounds of more food. She knew they represented danger, yet she could not pull away from the food, not until it was gone. Her last thought as the bullet entered her brain was,
Hungry
.

“Oh God, no!” Ron said as he looked past the smoldering barrel of his rifle. The zombie was dead as was the girl it had attacked. Blood pooled on the neck of the victim. Ron let out an anguished cry as he raced forward in an attempt to save what
was already lost.