Apex Predator (3 page)

“Here: Batteries, candles, lighters, got daddy’s .357 and some rounds.  Grabbed some food too, though not enough, I’m sure.  Theresa, show them what you got.”

She opened her pack, a Ruger Mini-14 strapped to it.  There was clothes, some more canned food, a big hunting knife, a black semi-automatic pistol, 8 boxes of bullets of various calibers, and a black cylinder of some kind.

“What is this?” Mike asked picking up the cylindrical object.

“That would be my daddy’s suppressor for the USP.  Don’t tell Uncle Sam about it ok,” he said with a wink.  More scratching at the door

Mike peeked out again.  Shit, three monsters on the porch now.  “We gotta secure this place better.  Sooner or later one of those things is gonna figure out that glass is breakable.”  But how he thought?  How do we secure this place?

“We need to board this window, and it won’t hurt to get some boards across this door either.”

“You got any wood in the garage Mike?” Dave asked.

“Nope, we got tools and nails, but no wood.”

“The stairs!” the younger man exclaimed.  “They’re made of wood.  We pull up some of them and we can board up this window.”

“Good thinking Davy.  Jen run into the garage and get the claw hammer and some nails.  Theresa, go with Jen and get my ladder.  Theresa!”

“Huh?”

“Time to get back in the game now, sweetheart.  I need you to go with Jen and bring back my ladder.  Can you do that for us?”

“Yes Mr. Mike.”

The girls went into the garage to get the tools.  Mike picked up the USP.

“Give me that suppressor.”  Dave handed it to him.  He screwed it into the barrel, and chambered a round.

“Ok Dave, open the door for me.  Take care of anything that comes past me.”

They moved to the door.  Dave opened it and backed up.  Mike took aim at the zombie in his doorway, and fired.  Phhhttt.  Its head snapped back as it crumpled to the ground.  He shifted his aim to the next one.  Phhhttt. Another zombie fell to the porch.  The third zombie was maybe four paces away.  It turned at the sound of its pack-mates falling.

Mike took aim.  Oh shit.  It was Big Dave.  Fuck!  I can’t shoot him in front of his kid.  The Dave-zombie took another step closer.  Mike took a deep breath, and reset his aim point.  His hand was shaking.

From behind him Dave came over the top with his bat.  Splat!  Big Dave’s head caved in and he crumpled to the ground.  Little Dave hit him again, and again, and again.  Mike stopped him before the fifth blow.

“We gotta get inside now,” he whispered.  They relocked the door.  Little Dave broke down in tears.

“I couldn’t let him walk around out there.  I couldn’t let her see him like that.  Oh fuck Mike, I just bashed my dad’s head in.  I just killed him with his own softball bat.”  Davy sat down on the floor, back against the door, crying.  Mike left him alone.

The girls returned.  “Where do you want the ladder Mr. Mike?”  She sounded a little better.  Mike wondered what Jen had said to the girl.

“Put it by the stairs for now.  Jen give me that claw hammer.”  She did.

He went to the stairs, climbed up about six.  He knelt down and started prying the seventh step up.  Damn that was loud. “Keep an eye outside.  Let me know if we’re getting too much attention.”  Jen moved to the window.  A few had turned their heads but nothing yet.

“We’re ok for now.”  She watched for a few more minutes as Mike continued to pull up the stairs.  None of the dead seemed to notice the noise.  The car alarm down the street continued to attract most of their attentions.

Mike and Dave moved the wood to the window.  Now for the real loud part Mike thought.  BAM!  BAM! BAM!  Every hammer blow louder than the last.  By the time he was finished with the window the walkers were beginning to congregate around the house.  Jen relayed this to Mike.

“Alright, a board or two on the door, then we should be ok.  We gotta hurry though.”

Three minutes later, the door was as secure as they could make it.

Ok, now what?  Need to take stock of our supplies.  Need to eat.  Mike hadn’t realized how hungry he was.   “Hey Jen, you and Theresa want to get some lunch going?  Get a quick inventory of the food while you’re at it if you don’t mind.  Dave, you keep watch.  I’m gonna see what we have in the garage that we can use.”

Rope, good.  Extension cord, maybe.  Hand axe, good.  Leatherman, good.  Nails, good.  Chainsaw, not so good.  He continued his inventory.  Ruling out those things he deemed too loud, heavy, or unnecessary.

“Mike,” Jen whispered.  “Let’s eat.”  He walked into the kitchen, hands full of things Mike thought they would need.

“Ok kids, here’s what I have:  two screwdrivers, another hammer, a hand axe, about 50 feet of rope, two rolls of duct tape, a Leatherman, a shovel, and a case of dehydrated meals.  I also got a couple of coolers out there.  This thing gets too bad and clean water might get to be an issue.”

Jen slid a plate with a pair of sandwiches and some pickle spears in front of him.  “Well, we have some lunch meat and burger in the fridge, a few more perishables: milk, cheese, leftovers and stuff, some frozen meals and frozen chicken.  We have a couple of cases of canned veggies, 10 cans of fruits, 6 cans of tuna, 2 loaves of bread, some pasta and rice, a couple of jars of peanut butter, a box of Graham crackers, a box of butter crackers, 16 granola bars, and 2 boxes of cereal.”

“Sounds like we have enough food to last us, what, maybe a week?” asked Davy from the living room.

“Sounds about right,” Mike said as he finished his first sandwich.  After he finished his lunch, he relieved Davy in the living room.  Davy sat down at the table.

“How you holding up sis?”  She looked tired.”I’m ok, just tired of all this.  Do you think Daddy is one of them now?”  She tried to choke back the tears.

“I don’t think so.  I think he’s gone and that’s it.”

“What about Mom?  I know she’s out there somewhere.  How horrible. Oh God!”  She couldn’t control it.  She cried again.  Davy ate his lunch in silence.  Jen cleaned up the dishes.

Davy finished his lunch and relived Mike on watch.  Mike began moving supplies up the ladder.

“What are you doing Mr. Mike?” asked Theresa.

“Moving everything we need upstairs.  Those things could eventually get in here.  We’ll leave some of the food down here, but those missing stairs make for a good obstacle.  So far I haven’t seen these things climb anything but a porch.  So, anything we don’t need to keep down here I’m moving.”

While Mike was upstairs, he snuck a peek out the window.  The street was still full of zombies.  They just shambled around.  None of them are looking up.  He could sit in this window all day and not a single one of those things would even know he was here.

He watched them for about 15 minutes.  He saw Sharon Wilson.  He saw Mrs. Drawbond shambling around, her entrails dangling to the ground.  Mike watched, enthralled, as she stepped on her own guts, pulling them out just a little more; another step, another inch or two of guts dragging around.  Mike shuddered.

He turned around and went into the spare bedroom.  He made up the spare bed for Theresa, and laid out a sleeping bag on the floor for Davy.  He split the rest of the hand tools between two backpacks he made up for himself and Jen.  He threw some clothes in each, as well as, socks, underwear, and a sweatshirt for each of them.

Mike went down stairs and relieved Davy on watch.  Nothing much changed for the next few hours.  Zombies go left.  Zombies go right.  Zombies go all-around, and they did just about nothing.  The other three curled up on couches and chairs.  Jen turned on the TV.

“…This is the Emergency Broadcast System.  You are urged to remain in your home until further notice.  I repeat.  Remain in your homes.  The Governor has declared a State of Martial Law…  This is the Emergency Broadcast System.  You are urged…”

“Can we put on a movie or something?” asked Theresa.

Day 0

I-20 East of Dallas

Manuel didn’t like this.  Not one bit.  This last bunch has been a pain in his ass since they picked them up in San Antonio.  He and Jésus had twenty illegal aliens in the back of an 18 wheeler. They were moving this bunch to Shreveport.  There were other shipments going to Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City and Texarkana.

Most were just like the hundreds he had brought into the U.S. before.  Then there were the sick ones.  Three Guatemalans in his group were sick.  The one woman kept babbling something about
ambulante
.  Crazy old woman.  Just because her son was sick, doesn’t mean he’s a damned monster of some kind.

“…Violence continues in Northern Mexico.  Federal authorities report they found 17 headless bodies…” the announcer on the radio said.

Well, they wouldn’t be his problem for long.  They Louisiana boarder was only an hour away.  Soon they would drop this group for their next stop.

“…Seventeen bodies.  Officials reported that the bodies appear to have been eaten by animals.  Several large dogs were found in a kennel near-by…”

“Slow down,” he told Jésus.  “You know the
Policia
love this road.”  Jésus slowed to 60 mph.  He had driven this road about a hundred times.  He was the key to this leg of the operation, thought Manuel.  Jésus was born in America.  He had a commercial driver’s license.  Hell, he even sounded like one of those South Texas gringos.

The CB radio squawked. “To all you sinners out there:  The road to heaven lies ahead.   All you have to do is take it upon yourself to walk along The Lord’s path.  Look ye upon the sun in the east as it rises, and see God’s love manifest itself upon the Earth.”

That was it.  The weigh station on the Louisiana boarder was not opened according to their spotter.  The spotter would drive the same stretch of road for the next hour.  He would send a different sermon if the State Troopers opened the weigh station before they arrive.

Manuel rolled down his window.  He lit his last cigarette and let it hang out the window Ah the cool wind felt good.  It was late fall, and the leaves were changing.

Eighty minutes later Jésus pulled into the apartment complex.  It was 5:00 am.  The sun was still down.  The apartment that the cargo would be stored in was in the back of the complex.  It was actually 3 apartments, with all the internal walls secretly knocked down.

Manuel opened the back of the truck.  Something heavy fell into him as the door flew open.  What the fuck?  Whatever had hit him knocked him over.  Was it one of his charges?  He tried to push it off, but it was dead weight.  That’s when he felt the cold fingers on the back of his neck.

Shit, a snake!  He was deathly afraid of snakes.  He lifted his head, and tried to squirm out from under whatever it was on top of him. This brought his neck closer to the gaping maw of the monster.

Aaaagggghhhh!  He screamed as the teeth bit into his neck.  His brain was still stuck on the imagined snake.  It took it a second to realize that something had hold of his neck.  What the hell?  He pushed again, this time dislodging his assailant, and a chunk of his own neck.  His head turned, bringing him face to face with the monster.

It was as if his mind had taken a picture.  He could see the pale-grey-lifeless eyes.  The creature’s skin was grey, like the color of the dead.  And the smell, it smelled dead.  And its mouth, what was in its mouth?  Oh shit!  That was his blood dripping from its lips. His flesh caught in its teeth.

Ambulante
; he thought about the crazy old lady. No!  Where is Jésus?  Help!  Jésus, why can’t I scream?  Oh God, is someone gonna help me?  Oh God!  He could feel himself going numb.  His panic was subsiding.  His senses were dull.   A cloud seemed to fall over him.  Light, quiet.  He could hear his own heart race.  His eyes fell onto a disembodied head.  Was its mouth still moving?  The sound of his heart faded.  He could hear his breathing get shallow…shallow …nothing. Death.

Jésus couldn’t believe his eyes.  He didn’t know what to do.  He didn’t have a gun.  He had seen the old lady pull the Mexican down.  He’d heard the screams.  He backed away from the horror in disbelief.  His mind raced, not believing what he had seen.  It was as if an army of the dead had fallen at his feet.  They were spreading out, walking aimlessly.  He failed to notice the young child to his right.  She was not wandering aimlessly.  She had a purpose.  He felt her pull his shirt, throwing him off balance.  He stumbled on top of her, knocking both to the ground.  He turned to see who he had fallen on top of.

The last thing he saw was the little girl’s open mouth.  It bit into his face before he had a chance to move.  He shoved with all his might, but he could not dislodge the little girl.  He could feel the panic welling up inside.  He could also feel the other monsters biting into the flesh of his legs.  NO!  He kicked his legs and tried to push the monsters away, but the weight was too much.  Jesus did not go quickly.  He felt every bite and scratch as he was consumed, one mouthful at a time.

His screams eventually faded away, leaving only the moans of 20 zombies in its wake. Then the onlookers came.  Several residents of the apartment complex came out to investigate the sounds of screaming.  They also fell prey to the hoard of zombies, eventually adding to its numbers.