Aftershock: A Collection of Survivors Tales
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Authors: Valerie Lioudis,Kristopher Lioudis
Aftershock:
A Collection of Survivors Tales
By
Kristopher and Valerie Lioudis
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2014 by Kristopher & Valerie Lioudis
All Rights Reserved.
This work is not transferable. No part of this work can be sold, shared, copied, scanned, or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the creation of the author or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
To the herd, the goal is not to just survive, but to thrive. You are my reason for everything.
I shit my pants. My last clean pair of pants and I shit right in them. Of course there was fucking crawler latched onto my leg when it happened so put yourself in my shoes and tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing. Me and the guys were out on a routine sweep of the south wall. There’s half a barn out there and every now and again one of those fucks comes draggin’ ass out the door. No big deal. We pop the fucker and move on with the day. Well today Captain Jackass says, “Go inside and check the loft.” Nobody understands why, but hey, orders is orders.
We row-sham-bo to see which one of us goes in. It’s dark as shit in there and nobody’s exactly jumping at the opportunity. Of course, I lose. Paper, fucking paper, when I know everybody else is going to throw scissors. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. I peek my head in real slow and toss a couple of light sticks in to cut the gloom. Looks clear so I step inside and make my way up this creaky-ass ladder. No shit, half the rungs are missing and every time I stretch up to step on the next one I can see some half-rotted bag of meat sinking its busted teeth into my balls. Overactive fucking imagination… So I make it up to the top and the fucking ladder gives way.
I call out to the guys that I’m okay and “Don’t anybody come in here and give me a fucking hand or anything!!” I clear the loft, nothing but some moldy hay and a pile of boards from when the roof came down in the corner. Just to be safe, I give the pile a good kick and watch the boards go over the edge between the wall. Now I got to figure out how to get the fuck down from here. The hay on the floor doesn’t look thick enough anywhere to break my fall. It’s a good twelve feet to the floor. I figure if I dangle over the edge and drop I can cut it down to four or five. That shouldn’t be too bad. I’ve hit the ground harder doing combat drops in the desert. Just keep your feet together and roll out of it.
I give another call to the guys. No answer. What the fuck? Did they fucking leave me here? That is some straight-up bullshit! You can bet your sack that Captain Jackass is getting his fucking lip split over this shit when I catch up. Not only does he give some bullshit order to go inside, but he doesn’t even have the fucking common sense to leave one fucking guy outside with me. What if this place had been full of those fucking meat bags?! Fuck him! Bars or no bars, I’m gonna kick his fucking a… It’s at this point that I hear the moan. Too late though, about as soon as my ears pick it up I can feel something tugging at my leg as I hang over the edge of the loft, then I can feel teeth sink in to the back of my ankle.
Right through my shitty, broke down boot. The next thing I feel is last night’s beans and rice doing the electric slide down my left leg. I drop down, too hard. I can feel my other ankle twist hard the wrong way as I hit the ground. That gray head is still locked onto my foot so I just start kicking and stomping. By the time I’m done there’s nothing left but a red, brown smear on the floor. I’m so amped I don’t notice the pain in my ankle, the non-bit one. I’ve seen guys get bit. It’s game fucking over. You can amputate if you want, but without fail within twenty four hours you’re burning like a fucking torch and one day, two tops, after that you’re dragging yourself through the street looking for a neck to chew on.
I have personally seen six guys get bit, and countless more on the briefing videos we watch, and every fucking one ends up the same. A drooler. A gray-skinned, shambling fucking zombie. Not one of them lasted longer than three days. Except me. See, I got bit four days ago now and I’m not even close to sick. I couldn’t go back to the group; they would have just put a bullet in my head and thrown me on the fire. I’ve been living in the woods waiting to turn, but nothing so far. I’m not getting my hopes up just yet, but I’ll tell you one fucking thing and you can take it all the fucking way to the bank… I ever see Captain Jackass again; I’m taking his fucking head off. With a dull, rusty, shit-covered axe.
It was finally warm enough to enjoy living on the beach. It was early enough that the Bennies hadn’t shown up yet, and I could enjoy a lazy morning with my feet in the sand. My family has owned a piece of heaven on Long Beach Island for over 50 years now. I moved in last winter to have a safe haven to work on my book. My apartment in the city was too noisy and I just needed a change of scenery to get those creative juices going.
There is no place in the world like Long Beach Island. In the winter all the traffic lights flash yellow due to the small population of year round residents. The beaches are perfect, from one end to the other. In the summer the island is overrun with tourists. Then there are those magical few weeks, when the weather turns warm but the kids are all in school still so the tourists stay away. Those are the days I thank God for, and spend meditating on the beach.
My normally quiet beach morning was interrupted by two women noisily chatting about the strange illness that people were getting. They went on and on about the death rate and the short time span. I believed they were exaggerating as most New Jersey women do, but I was wrong. When I got back to the house I turned the TV on for the first time in weeks. The news was grim on every station.
I wondered why no one had called me. My parents are both deceased, but I have 2 siblings. I worried for their safety, then I worried that I didn’t matter enough to merit a phone call. My sister lives in California with her husband. She is an ER doctor. I tried calling her first figuring she might have an answer about what is going on. I couldn’t get ahold of her, so I tried my brother. He lives out in Montana and works from home as a consultant. He answered on the first ring.
“Jessie?”
“Yea Jack, it’s me. How are you doing? The news said there is a weird illness going around, anything near you?”
“Boy Jessie, when you are writing you are out of the loop. It’s been bad for a few weeks now. They are calling it the flu, but everyone knows it’s not. People get bitten by other people, then they die. Weirder still, they wake back up and bite more people.”
“What? That’s impossible Jack. There is no way. All the news here said was that the flu is going around, and to take precautions. That’s it. Nothing about cannibal dead people rising from the grave.”
“Jessie, I am telling you what I have seen myself. We are locked down in the house here, and I have boarded up everything I can. We aren’t leaving to go outside with those things wandering the streets. I love you Jessie, but I have to go. Stay safe.”
And then there was silence. Jack hung up and I haven’t heard from him since. I never got my sister on the phone. Now nothing works. No phones, no TV, no internet, nothing. Power has been out for a while too. Things were quiet here for a while. We got peace longer than most, but one day we had our first illness. Then it was ten people. Soon it was 50, and the island’s leaders took notice. An island with one bridge is easy to cut off from the rest of the world.
They blew the bridge. I couldn’t believe it when I heard the explosion. We were trapped, or saved. Anyone who was suspected of being sick was shot. Then we waited. 2 days later we figured we were safe. It only took 24 hours to go from bitten to dead, so the danger was over for us, or so we thought. No one took into account all the refugees that would come. We knew that some would try to get to the island by boat, but we underestimated the amount. We thought we could control the flow of people by setting up patrols.
This was like trying to stop a flood with a Dixie cup. They came in all kinds of boats. There were giant fishing vessels down to row boats. Some carried one or two people, others had so many aboard you couldn’t get a good count. So many people had a plan to escape by water. Our supplies were already limited on the island. Winter had just ended, and the stores were not yet stocked up for the summer rush. There was no way to check if all of the people arriving were well.
They showed up so quickly, and in such great numbers that we were unable to take the steps needed to ensure the island didn’t end up with the illness. Many were shot. Many of our patrol guards were shot too. There were desperate people on both sides. We wanted to keep our island safe, and they wanted to survive. The problem was they brought the outbreak with them. People were dying again. Now there were so many people on the island, and nowhere else to go.
The ill roamed the streets attacking anyone that crossed their paths. The beach house I am in is on stilts. I took an axe and chopped up the steps leading up to the house. Now I am floating one story off the ground. As long as the sick ones don’t figure out how to climb walls I should be able to stay up here for a while. I have solar panels on the roof, and I have been using them to power the fridge.
Lucky for me, it has been a wet spring. I collected a large amount of rainwater to keep myself hydrated. I haven’t put a dent in the groceries that I stocked up on the last time I ventured out to the store. It was a while ago, before all of this started. I tend to stock up when I am writing. I don’t like to stop to go to the store in the middle of a creative spurt. It’s a really good thing that I have that habit.
What’s killing me through all of this is that now I can write. For the first time in my life I have no trouble getting the words on the page. I don’t struggle with storylines, characters are flowing freely. I can write and it is the apocalypse. There will be no one to read what I put down. No machines left to mass produce the stories that I have to tell. Maybe that is why the writing is coming so easily now. The pressure for perfection is gone. Is it worth it to construct the stories if there will never be an audience to enjoy them?
Life on the island became less of a slice of heaven and more like a chunk of hell every day. The sick took over so much of the island, then the hunting parties began. Men and women driving the sick out in the open using dogs as bait. They would let the animal loose on a street and it would sense the danger. As soon as the dog heard the moans it would begin to bark, and the hunters would drive it back if it tried to flee. The sick would stumble out and be shot or skewered on sight.
The hunters gained ground every day. Some days it was a block, others it was more. My home is on the north end so it was one of the first areas that was reclaimed by them. Their group headquarters was at a dock on the north end. Before the illness came the dock was a commercial seafood producer. There were scallop boats and daytrip boats. Much of what I love about the island was there. These people weren’t the tourists, they were the true islanders. From that dock rose a man to power. The cause was pure in the beginning. They were going to make the island safe again. It’s turned into something so different now.
They say a man named Vincent is running the group now. As a first mate from one of the bigger boats, he made a good living off the sea. When the illness struck he was out on his boat with the crew and captain. One of them brought the sickness to sea. Fishing is a dangerous job, but this was a whole new hell. Eight men went out on that trip, and only two came back. Vincent and a deck hand named Earl were the only two to survive. No one knows how they lived and made their way back, but there has been a lot of speculation.
Some say there never was the sickness on the boat and Vincent just used it as an excuse to get rid of people he had never really liked. Others say that Vincent single handedly saved Earl’s life by fighting the zombies right off the boat. The most common myth is that Vincent was bitten and he didn’t get sick. That can’t be true, everyone who gets bitten dies. We have all seen it. I can’t believe there are people out there that would believe something like that after all we have seen.
The hunters started by flushing out the dead. Fighting for every inch of ground against a foe that knew no pain or fatigue. When they cleared my block and set up patrols to hold the line, I was relieved yet wary. The line was easy to hold with only a thousand feet from bay to surf. I’ve never been a people person and the prospect of forging an alliance with these rouge hunters petrified me. It was the past the point where I had a choice, they had my home in their territory now. All I could do was pray that they weren’t as bad as the dead that shuffled down below.
Patrol members not on the line went from home to home clearing out any dead that may be trapped inside. No one wanted to gain all that ground just to have it taken back by one missed zombie. All you need is one in the back of the line to infect everyone. When they came to my house I let them in. They went from room to room searching for the dead, but I could tell it was much more than that. They were assessing what supplies I had left. No one asked for anything that night, but I knew they would be back. I was left to wonder when they came, would they leave enough for me?
Vincent came the next day. He personally greeted each new living person to the group. This was done to get you to see him, and know he was in charge. We were gathered together for an orientation of sorts. Vincent’s presence overwhelmed the crowd. Awe and wonder filled their eyes.
“We are fighting to get our land back, our safety back, and with your help we can accomplish just that. I don’t care what is going on in the rest of the world, but this is my island and I sure as hell am not going to sit back and watch it be taken over by those deceased nut jobs that are stumbling about our streets. My island, my rules and I say they need to go!”
Vincent said his peace and excused himself to more important matters. He left us with the one person he trusted to get the job done. The laundry list of needs was read off to us by Earl. Where Vincent exuded confidence and power, Earl gave off a victim vibe. You wanted to help him, to save him. My ears perked up when solar panels was read off the list.
“Are these mandatory requests?” I dared to ask.
“No, no of course not. What is your name again?”
“Jessica.” I stated.
“No, Jessica,” he sputtered. “These are all things that we need to accomplish our goals, but we will not take things from you. Don’t you want to help us with our goal though? Don’t you want to make the island safe for everyone? Remember, just yesterday we couldn’t have this meeting because you weren’t safe down here on the street. Yet today, with our help, you can be down here in the sunshine talking together about a solution.”
“I want to help just as much as everyone else, I just want…” I paused realizing I was giving them anything they wanted no matter what I wanted. We could do this easy, or hard. I made the choice, they could have it. They could have everything I had and I wouldn’t fight. But I knew there was something wrong about all of this, I just couldn’t put my finger on it yet. “I don’t know what I want. I’m sorry, I really am grateful, I’m just still in shock.”
“As we all are Jessica, as we all are.”
Then the laundry list began again. They wanted most of my supplies. Almost everything useful that was out in the open was on their list. Later as others were bringing their things to the communal pile I saw I wasn’t alone. The others at the meeting were going to have to sacrifice as well if they wanted to stay on this side of the line.
