Apocalypse Aftermath (9 page)

“Why they ain’t just turn around?”

“Said they was fleeing a shitpot of zombies coming out of Athens, and said they’d already tried the other turn-offs they could get to.  Said they was all blocked, by wrecks or zombies.”

“Shit.”  Darryl said, unable to think of anything more clever to say.  US-78, also known as Athens Highway, was the main road between Atlanta and Athens.  By road it was about ten or fifteen minutes from the clubhouse, but if you went through the trees to the north or northwest it was only about a mile.

Bobo nodded.  “Right.”

“Bobo, if zombies wandering around on 78, that ain’t that far from us.  And—”

“Yeah.  I’m with you bro.  We gonna have us some problems unless they all pick some other direction to head.”

Blinking against the sun, Peter stepped out onto the motel walkway and peered around the parking lot.  He was unsurprised to see over a dozen zombie corpses laying on the pavement in the general vicinity of the exits and edges of sightlines created by the gas station and other buildings at the exit.  He’d noted the occasional gunshots while he was sleeping, and ignored them out of trained habit.  It wasn’t the first time he’d slept through gunfire, and he’d long since learned to ignore them and snuggle back down into slumber on the theory that a real problem would result in
lots
of shooting.  Or someone to have to come and got him.

It also wasn’t the first time he’d been short on sleep, not even in the past few days, but that was also old hat.  Price of being in charge.  He could have pulled rank and gotten a comfortable eight hours in, but it would’ve cut across the respect he needed from the rest of the erstwhile unit.  Sometimes the littlest thing could loom large when someone made their mental notes over whether or not to trust you, to take you seriously.

Skipping a full rest in lieu of taking his turn on watch was a small price to pay to keep the rest of the soldiers on point and on board.

The watch was changing over as he glanced to either side; Swanson and Oliver being replaced by Whitley and Roper, and Barker and Dorne replacing Crawford and Smith.  Peter knew there was no way he could man an effective and alert guard around the clock with only ten able bodied soldiers, twelve counting himself and the injured Jenkins, but for now he was hoping to give the civilians a chance to calm down from their ordeal.

Personally he found the ‘ordeal’ the civilians had endured to have been fairly mild, but civilians operated a different scale of trauma.  Being treed by zombies who couldn’t get at you wasn’t all that alarming for him, at least not if the problem didn’t go on for days, but the civilians had been shaken by the experience.  He was hoping by the time he needed to switch out the observers again some of the stronger rescuees would be a little steadier so he could mix them in with the National Guard personnel.

Still, the soldiers had been chased through half of downtown Atlanta all Friday night by
thousands
of zombies, being whittled down to the handful that were still with him now.  Compared to
that
, the civilians had no idea what trauma was.

He still couldn’t believe the soldiers were adapting so well to the
chaos.  It wasn’t that he was ungrateful, but it was still a surprise.  He would have expected more hysterics to have cropped up at some point, and so far they were all keeping their heads on straight.

Which was good, because he knew there was a lot left still coming at them all.

“We’re still seeing some leakers.” Mendez remarked, and Peter glanced at the tall soldier.  “But no sign of a heavy horde so far.”

“Here’s hoping.” Peter nodded.  It was a sentiment all the
surviving soldiers shared.  Being chased and hounded all over downtown Atlanta for a day and a half had given them more than their fill of that experience.  Though they were better armed and ammunitioned now, Peter knew no one wanted to see a couple hundred walking corpses show up for a repeat performance.

“We were able to get a good amount of stuff out of the gas stations and up here where we can get at it at need, but I’m not sure how long it’ll last with fifty mouths munching on it.”

“It’s just to tide us over a day or so.  We’ll see about making some more substantial arrangements tomorrow.”

“Good.  I’m going to sack out.”

“With any luck I’ll only need a couple of the first watch back for the dusk guard.”

“Civilians?”

“Gonna do my best.  With us to stiffen them up, we only need their eyes.”

Mendez shrugged tiredly.  “You’re the boss.”  He opened one of the room doors and disappeared inside, leaving Peter to ponder the likelihood of finding those eyeballs.  The Marine settled his AR a little more comfortably on his shoulder, then headed left along the walkway to check the barricades.  The second floor was preferred because of the separation it gave from any potential zombie problems, but the manpower shortage didn’t allow for the unit and rescuees to spread out very much.

There were stairwells at each corner, and all had been blocked with furniture; the west side of the motel much more significantly than the east.  Peter’s thinking was it kept his guards in position to survey the entire walkway with occupied rooms, but still prevented any zombies from sneaking up from the unobserved west stairwells.  He was also counting on any zombies that wandered by being drawn to the humans visible on those eastern corners.  So far as anyone had seen to this point, zombies didn’t seem clever enough to sneak up the back way for a surprise attack.

Some empty cans weighted with gravel, and a few glasses, had been positioned on the west barricades.  Hopefully they’d create some noticeable noise if anything hungry did come knocking against the piled up furniture, but the guards were supposed to check west every couple of minutes, and a roamer was detailed to walk the second floor on a slow circuit that would similarly offer some coverage.  Peter had designated himself as that roamer for the ‘second watch’, which ran from early afternoon until sundown.

“Gunny, you look like hell.” Roper remarked as Peter approached the northeast corner.

“Guess the sleep did me some good.”

“Yeah, you are a little improved from dawn.  You were really a wreck then.”

“Everyone’s a comedian.” Peter shook his head.  “Guess the shock is wearing off.”

“Calm before the storm.  Just wait until nightfall.”

“Knock it off.” Whitley told him.  “We’ve been through enough.  Don’t go begging for trouble.”

“Not like it can get any—hey!” Roper began, then stopped when Whitley shoved at him.

“I’m not kidding.  Not funny.”

“Tough crowd.”

“Tough is right.” Peter nodded.  “Roper, you might want to remember we’re the ones that survived.  Whitley might not be Crawford, but she’s as tough as any of us.  Do yourself a favor and don’t tempt her.”

Roper’s face fell a little, but he nodded with a somber look.  “Just trying to lighten the mood.”

“Try knock-knock jokes.  Those are innocent enough.”

“I don’t want to hear the zombie knock-knock.” Whitley said immediately.

“There’s only one?”

“Think about it Roper.” Whitley told him with a snort.

Peter left them to it and headed west toward the ‘back side’ of the motel.  The piles of
liberated furniture at the top and bottom of the stairs were intact, which Peter was glad to see.  It meant, so far, no zombies had wandered up to try banging and shoving on the makeshift barricades.  The motel was about forty miles north of I-285, and nearly fifty from the heart of downtown Atlanta, but the area was still populated enough with zombies to be dangerous.

A little south of them was Cartersville, which had been a FEMA evacuation point for people fleeing the undead hell Atlanta had become.  Their respite had been brief, because the outbreak had followed the living, and the thousands of displaced had either fallen or fled when zombies began eating their way through the camp early Sunday morning.  Now all those who had ‘survived’ long enough to rise and join the mobile dinner party were apparently spreading out.

Continuing along the walkway, Peter checked the southwest corner barricades as he let his thoughts pick away at what to do about the situation he and the other survivors and refugees were in.  Maybe his unfocused mind could come up with something.  He wasn’t sure what, but that’s what the thinking was supposed to fix.

Georgia’s population was decidedly lopsided in terms of distribution; Atlanta and its multitude of attached suburbs and counties had equaled the population of the rest of the state combined before Friday.  But, as far as he knew, the estimates of how many former metro area residents had fallen to the zombie horde were somewhere between half and three-quarters.

The problem hadn’t been limited to the metropolitan borders, even before people began fleeing.  At this point it was academic and futile to speculate whether or not the movements of survivors had quickened the spread of the outbreak, if they’d fueled it further in areas where it was already occurring, or if they’d simply changed the location of their deaths.  Now, as far as he knew, zombies were everywhere.  Last reports indicated the entire world was barely holding on, and both governments and society were crumbling.

Peter stopped on the south side of the motel and leaned against the walkway, staring at the trees on the other side of the road.  Bodies lay scattered around and across the asphalt in ones and twos and threes; not enough to block traffic, but definitely enough to alert anyone who’d somehow not been paying attention for the past few days
that strange things were afoot.  I-75 lay to his left, east.

They were out in rural Georgia, but the flood of evacuation and the surrounding population was apparently sustaining the zombie numbers.  Assuming the estimates floating around were accurate, even the low ones, that would make for at least five million zombies just in Georgia, minus however many had been killed or immobilized so far.  The population of America was in excess of three hundred million, which probably meant there could be as many as two hundred million plus hungry corpses wandering around.  And that didn’t even count Canada or Mexico.

He didn’t even try to do the math on that one.  Just collecting all the ammunition required to put a bullet in each zombie’s head would take months.  Possibly more than a year.  Then there’d be the matter of
finding
all of them to shoot.  He couldn’t begin to fathom how it would be possible, at least not without a major leadership effort of the surviving humans.

And ultimately, that was the problem.  The zombies were an
immediate
problem, true, but the utter collapse of all things related to the concept of ‘someone being in charge’ was his major concern.  He’d been to too many backwater hellholes in the world to hold any hope out for sweetness and light to prevail without the oversight of strong leadership that had societal stability at least in its top handful of overall goals.

The civilian refugees they’d rescued hours before were a perfect example.  They’d run to that FEMA camp because the government had said to.  Getting trapped there wasn’t their fault, but now that they were out he’d already seen the signs. 
A lot of them were desperate to cling to the little unit of National Guardsmen as their saviors.  Not because they were incapable of fending for themselves, but because they couldn’t fathom what to do without the structure and guidance provided by a leadership layer.

Part of him was disappointed and exasperated by their attitude; surely Americans, of all people, could hold up and make due.  But he knew he really wasn’t surprised, not if he allowed himself to be honest.  Modern civilization didn’t encourage independent thought, not on this sort of subject and on this scale.  There were strong people out there, but that was likely only going to make a screwed up situation worse.

People were selfish even in normal times.  Throw in this level of chaos and breakdown, and that self-centered motivation would combine in the strong willed to lead to factionalism and fighting.  Over food and water, over weapons, over safety, and just because some people liked to fight.  With no government, no law, left to exert control . . . he’d seen it before.  Just never here.  Never at home.

The zombies were the problem now, but before long whoever was left would be competing for all the things necessary for survival.  Compromise was difficult when both sides of an argument were hungry and scared, who couldn’t know if the things they gave up in the spirit of cooperation might be what did them in
later because they no longer had them.  When their friends and family needed those things.  When
they
needed those things.  That was the ongoing problem Peter feared.

He’d seen it before.  And it was almost fall.  It was about half a year before anyone who knew how, and who had the resources, could see about planting the next wave of crops.  He was no farmer, but he knew it took time even after seed was in the ground for edible food to sprout.  Plus there was the zombie problem; could a field of grain or corn or whatever be tended and harvested with walking corpses around?  Was there enough food already in cans and boxes to last any survival farmers until this time next year?

And even if there was, what was going to stop those selfish strong types from rolling in to take either the food or the crops?