Chaos Theory: A Zombie Novel (14 page)

Oh shit.

I don’t know, dear reader, if you’ve picked up on this during your enthralling read of this riveting account of the apocalypse, but Ship can’t talk. He can’t say anything. At all. Bupkis, nada, niente. Silent as the grave as one might ironically mention.

The person on the other side of the door, the one with the weapon, was not privy to the aforementioned information, and as such was expecting a live person to say something such as
Don’t shoot
, or
I’m human
, but no such statements would, or could be issued.

Consequently, in the following nanosecond, even with all or our shouting, the person behind the door shot Ship in the chest. Now we all know that the big guy is just that; big. The shooter couldn’t have missed, it wasn’t possible. Ship took two rounds in the chest and staggered backwards. This alone would have surprised the average person about six months ago, but today it was commonplace to shoot someone center mass, and not have it affect them in the negative. It was quite obvious to the shooter that my buddy was, in fact, dead and looking for chow.

Ship fell to one knee, and for a second I thought he was done for, then I remembered his body armor.

“He’s human,” screamed Kat, which probably saved us a Sasquatch.

“Who is it? Who’s out there?”

“We’re looking for keys to the truck,” Alvarez shouted. “I’m coming to check on my friend.”

Ship was sitting up and that scared the shit out of Alvarez, who stopped mid stride and raised his rifle, business end toward my colossal comrade.

Jesus, this was fucked up.

Somebody else was
not
going to shoot the Shipster, so I screamed at Alvarez, “Body armor!”

Alvarez lowered his M4 slightly and turned around to face me. His eyes went wild, and suddenly I was looking down the barrel of his rifle. He fired twice, and I heard a thump behind me. An exceptionally torn former human had hit the ground. Sneaky fucker had almost gotten a taste.

“What’s that? Who’s shooting?” came the voice from the small room.

“We’re coming in to get the keys to this truck! There’s ten of us and we will kill you if you try to stop us!”

Ship stood and put his hands on his chest, shaking his head.

Alvarez and Ship moved into the room and came out with the keys and an old timer.

“I’m… I’m sorry, I thought you were one of—”

“Forget it,” I yelled, “we have bigger problems!” I pointed toward the door

A small crowd of infected had found the motor pool and consequently, dinner. Alvarez leapt forward and up into the truck, which thankfully started immediately. Ship helped the older gentleman into the back, and Kat got into the cab with Alvarez.

I had formed a firing line of one and was dispatching the dead as they stumbled toward me. You know I’ve got to tell you, a month ago I hadn’t really shot any guns. I mean here and there for fun, but never
at
anyone. Living or unliving. I just plinked with buddies or my dad when I was a kid. Two weeks ago, I was shooting at the dead for the first time, and a couple days after that I shot my first live human. Aiming the weapon isn’t difficult, but hitting what you’re aiming at can be frustrating. Two weeks ago I couldn’t hit shit. That night I couldn’t fucking miss. In addition, I wasn’t the least bit frightened. The infected kept coming and I kept shooting, single shots to the dome each time. Thirty shots, probably thirty kills. I went through the first magazine (they would never be clips again) and performed the tactical magazine (see?) switch that I had been taught in the last few weeks. I felt like a total badass and even began to smile.

Alvarez brought me back to reality when he pulled up next to me and screamed at me to get in. I looked at him, then glanced briefly at the oncoming horde materializing through the smoke outside. Not a small crowd anymore, and then I found out where the fear was stored. My terror storage facility sprung a leak that would make a superfund site jealous. I ran to the back of the truck and Ship helped me in. Alvarez didn’t wait and he floored it, crunching the already destroyed and thumping into a dozen or so walkers.

Ship, the old guy, and me slid to the back of the truck and for the briefest of moments I teetered on the edge. Ship grabbed me and I looked behind. There had to be a hundred of them right on top of us, all reaching and hungry. Had I fallen out I doubt I would have had time to scream.

We looked out into the base as we drove. I don’t know how the dead bring fire, but they always do. Buildings, vehicles, and even some people were ablaze. Black plumes (it was dark, but it was a greasy smoke) billowed from the control tower. The smoke was thick and choking, and the moans of the dead were grating on my nerves. The old fella had his arm wrapped around one of the canvas frame thingies, but also had his ears covered with his hands and his eyes clamped firmly shut. Everywhere we looked several dead were kneeling and devouring someone.

The truck slid to a stop and began backing up. It whipped to the right, and I saw what Alvarez had seen. A massive swarm of zombies was coming from what had been in front of us. The truck did a three point turn (actually it was like a point and a half) and we booked it out of there to the south. We could hear the thumps as the truck took out stray infected and they seemed to close in behind us as we passed.

A series of huge explosions lit up the night sky behind us and I could see that one of the Bradleys was engaging infected, running them over and firing into the crowds. A camo Chevy pickup truck pulled up alongside us, a man in the back battling two infected that had gotten in with him. The truck veered into us with a screech, then pulled away, its driver side door crumpled a little. The man and one of the infected went over the side, bouncing down the road like ragdolls, but the truck didn’t even slow.

Three minutes later, we reached the housing section of the base, and it was chaos as well. The dead hadn’t reached here yet, but dozens of folks were throwing supplies into vehicles and bugging out. Most headed south and we tagged along. We heard shots as we drove through. Hopefully people were shooting zombies and not each other.

A few streets down and Alvarez slammed on the brakes and got out, running toward one of the on-base housing units. I screamed at him, but he kept running and didn’t look back. I jumped off the side of the truck and stepped up on the passenger’s runner. Kat gave a little scream before she realized it was me.

“What the fuck is he doing?” I demanded.

“He’s getting Reynolds! He said he wouldn’t be more than a couple minutes!”

Reynolds got his own damn house and I had to hot bunk with a gaggle of pigs. Yes, I know a gaggle refers to geese, and a group of pigs is a drove or a herd, but fuck you this is my story. Regardless, it’s amazing what you think of in intense pressure situations, and I remember being the slightest bit jealous of the sarge’s accommodations.

Shots were ringing out steadily around us now. Screams too.

“We’ll be dead in a couple minutes!” I ran back and told Ship what was happening, then moved back to the driver’s side and jumped up into the cab shutting the door.

Kat was instantly on the defensive. “What are you doing?”

Huh. Guess my new kid sister had a thing for the army guy.

“I’m not leaving without him if that’s what you’re asking, but I don’t want to be sitting in the back of the truck with no driver if things go bad.”

Three figures ran across the street between houses about fifty yards away. I realized that I could see them and that the sun would be up shortly. The darkness was being chased away by dawn, and if I could see them, then zombies could see us.

Fuck.

A group of survivors was heading toward us down one of the side streets. They were moving slow but steady. A few of them broke off and moved to one of the houses, but the majority of them came at us. If they tried to take our truck, there would be a gun battle. As it was there were too many for us to give them all a ride.

I beeped the horn, long and loud. Alvarez was nowhere to be seen.

Double fuck.

A woman came running from one of the houses. She ran up to the group of people that were advancing on us and stopped dead. She screamed and ran back toward our truck. She ran right past us and kept on going, my head following her as she ran past Reynolds exceptionally nice residence. That’s when Kat screamed.

A dead thing had climbed up on the runner and smacked its hand against the window. Not only that, but the crowd of survivors had not, in fact, survived. They were dead and they were pissed and they were a hundred yards away.

Suddenly, the zombie trying to eat Kat through the glass was gone. In two seconds, Ship’s gigantic mug was staring through the glass, his eyebrows raised expectantly. I raised my palms up in a helpless gesture.

Several other staggering forms were making their way toward us. It was time to go.

“Alvarez! We are leaving right fucking now!”

He came out of the house carrying a rucksack, with two other people, neither of which was the Sarge. He threw the sack in the back, and his buddies climbed in, as did Ship. Alvarez got in on the driver’s side and I pushed over.

“Reynolds is dead,” was all he said before he threw the big stick shift into first. He let his feet off the clutch and brake, and six of the ten wheels on that truck screeched as we rocketed forward. This truck was in good shape. Gunfire erupted from the rear of the truck and we achieved forty miles per hour in a fifteen mph zone.

“One more stop,” the army kid said.

I looked at him like he was crazy, which seemed to me to be the case, and we moved on. He pulled up in front of an identical housing unit as the last one and he jumped out again. One of his buddies followed him, and this time so did I. To the curb, and that was far enough. I stood there, pants-shitting fear clenching my scrotum with gnarled hands, my weapon to my shoulder and tracking.

It was quicker this time, and they came back with another guy, but the dead had found us faster too. Alvarez’s other pal shot three of them, and Ship used his machete on the fingers of one who tried to climb up the side of the Deuce. This was getting bad fast. The dead had arrived in force, and they wanted us.

Two more bags got thrown in the back, and I climbed in the back too. Alvarez was about to follow his new buddy into the cab when a bloody hand snaked out from under the truck and grabbed his ankle. He let out a yell, but pulled away and climbed up. We drove off south, five in the back, three in the front, but we had two most unwelcome hitchhikers.

One of them was a putrid, green, very dead, bloated woman with half a face. She growled at me and I kicked the good side of her profile with my boot. The rest of her rotten face scraped away, and I almost went with her when she fell. She slid down the road behind us flopping, grinding her decayed flesh off, and she literally popped with a gooey splash.

The other thing managed to pull itself almost into the truck before one of Alvarez’s newbies gave it one, two, three rifle butts. It too fell and tumbled over and over until it came to a stop, motionless.

The five of us in the back of the truck looked at the base as we drove to the southern fence. The old guy was crying. We reached the southern fence and it was down, but there were no infected in sight. Alvarez took a right and we headed off west. We all reloaded our magazines.

I don’t know how many rounds were expended that night, maybe a few million, but ultimately it didn’t do shit and Keesler, just like every place else we’d been, fell to the dead.

Don of the Dead

They’re all dead. Ship, Kat, Alvarez, all the people we picked up at Keesler, all dead and they want me, I can hear them banging at the door in the darkness. The sarge, Ernie, tons of rednecks, Jessup, the old man, Cartier, everybody from my cell block. Even Lynch. I turn around and that damn dead spook is in the room with me. He reaches his rotting hands toward me, smiling, as the door gives way. “Come with us, it’s soooo easy…”

“Wake the fuck up,” the old timer said and gave me a shove.

Jesus, that damn dream still gives me nightmares. Yes, you can have nightmares of a nightmare, I’m living proof. I remember it like it was last night. Probably because I had it again last night. Fucking vivid, and not the porn.

The first time I had that dream was in the back of the Deuce. Ship, the old timer, and a couple of Alvarez’s new pals all staring at me as I woke up from my cat nap. I felt like I was fifteen and my mom had caught me rubbing one out.

“You was screamin’,” the white-haired guy said.

I muttered a
sorry
and hunkered down, trying to forget about it, but everybody was still staring at me. Like, really staring. Staring
hard
.

“What?”

“You were saying some weird shit,” one of the soldiers said.

“Big shocker there, Audie fucking Murphy, there are dead people trying to eat us. I’m sure
your
dreams are full of roses and unicorns.”

The guy was taken aback but his buddy moved up the bench toward me. He looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. “Who’s Lynch?”

Ship and I looked at each other, then I looked back at the guy. “Nobody.”

Guy didn’t miss a trick, “Didn’t sound like nobody.”

“Mind your own fucking busine—”

He interrupted me mid pissy-tirade, “I only ask because there was a guy named Lynch being escorted to the stockade when the base got overrun. I escorted him to Colonel Jessup the day before when he showed up at the front gate.” That’s where I remembered this guy from, he was one of the guards in Jessup’s office when we first showed up.

“Coincidence,” I said, my turn to not miss a beat, “what did he want at the jail?”

“Above my pay grade, and I wasn’t dumb enough to press, but it wasn’t a what, it was a who. Don’t know who, but I do know a Company man when I see one.” He cocked his head. “I just don’t know which company.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know who he is.”

Guy shifted his gaze and became thoughtful. I didn’t like thoughtful, but he didn’t say anything else.

We had picked up two other vehicles when we left Keesler and they were following us. We hadn’t seen anything other than single zombies, or twos and threes on the road since Keesler, and we traveled until about one in the afternoon.

Swamp. Swamp on both sides of the road, but I’ll tell you something for nothing: it was damn beautiful. Big white birds were trying to catch fish or frogs or something, and I distinctly remember they didn’t look like they had a care in the world.

Of course they didn’t. Damn infected comes to eat it and it can just fly away. I must admit a certain amount of jealousy. Wings might look stupid on me, but if they were functional, I could suffer. ‘Course then I got thinking about Victoria’s Secret models with angel wings and acquired a monumental stiffy. Those models are probably trying to eat each other right now and not in the good way.

Stiffy eliminated.

We got out of the Deuce and stretched. I moved to the two vehicles behind us, another camo Chevy Blazer, and a Humvee. The fifty cal on top of the Hummer was manned and the guy was swiveling his head constantly, checking the swamp. So were two of his friends with their rifles.

I extended my hand to the driver, who had gotten out when he saw me, and he shook it. “Babe.”

“You’re not
that
cute,” I answered.

Guy actually guffawed. Laughed his ass off so hard he was crying. “My name is Brian Abrams, but everybody calls me Babe,” he said as he wiped his eyes.

I shook his hand again, I was smiling too. It was the first time I had smiled in a while. It didn’t last.

“Contact, hundred meters left!”

Three stumblers were wading through the knee deep water toward us. “Glad you’re with us, Babe.” I walked back to the Deuce, Ship, Kat, Alvarez, and his three soldiers were looking at a map. The old timer was picking his nails with a Swiss Army knife and staring at me.

Ship pointed to something on the map and the soldiers nodded in the negative. “No, we have to assume that airfield is overrun, it’s too close to this town.” He pointed at the map. “But I have another idea.”

Everybody looked at him, so did I, and suddenly I really wanted a beer. Not mass-produced fizzy beer, but something heavier, like a Sam Adams, or a Harpoon.

“We’ve got company,” I said and pointed to the waders.

“Yeah, we heard,” said Alvarez, “we’ll be out of here soon.” He looked at the other kid. “What idea?”

“My brother-in-law works on an oil rig in the gulf. I was thinking we go here,” he said, pointing to a spot on the coast, “appropriate a boat, and head for one of the rigs.”

Best fucking idea I’d heard since this shit started. Genius. Food for months, maybe years, we could fish, and most of those rigs have desalination plants for fresh water. Plus, the best part of them was that they were not in any way connected to the mainland.

Boom.

I clapped the kid on the shoulder. “That’s a great idea!”

Ship looked at me. Stink eye.

WTF? It
was
a great idea! I told the yeti as much.

He shook his head and stormed off, and let me tell you, when this motherfucker storms, the earth shakes. That was just about the time the first shot fired from the truck behind us.

Everybody raised their weapons, but Babe yelled over to us that he had taken care of the situation and all was well. Alvarez packed up the map and told us to saddle up. He was going to talk to the folks in the trucks behind us and see if they wanted to come.

We left a few minutes after that. Ship shuffled down the bench and passed me his book.

Oil rig could be a deathtrap. Trapped if something happens to the boat.

“Yeah, but it’s away from all this death, and from them.” I pointed to a few of the infected kneeling on the road and hoarking down something that had been wearing boots. “I really don’t want to be that guy.”

Ship harrumphed and wrote something
: Do you really think we will end up any differently? My estimates are that there are probably almost one hundred of them for each one of us.

I handed the book back to him. “All the more reason to bug the fuck out yeah?”

We were in New Hampshire. This is Mississippi. It took a month to get here. Do you really think nobody else thought of heading out to an oil rig? Are we going to have to fight off the living as well as the dead? And what if we do secure it? Then we will have to fight off whoever else wants to take it from us.

Damn smarty pants. “So what do we do?”

Stick to the plan. Get away from people. As far away as possible.

“Yeah, I get that, but where do we go? Where can we go that isn’t cold and has no people?”

The old guy shifted in his seat. He must have had the dirtiest fingernails on earth, because he was still cleaning them. “The desert,” he said without looking away from his hands.

“What’s your name, young fella?” I asked him.

“Don.” He extended his hand to me, then to Ship. “Sorry I shot you, I was scared.”

“Bullets bounce off this giant of a man. He’s second cousin is a Bigfoot.”

The old timer thought that was hilarious, as did the two soldiers that had been eavesdropping on our conversation. Even Ship smiled, as previously stated, a rare occurrence.

I was killing it today.

So it had to go to shit.

You know, sometimes I think that I’m the plague. I realize that there are dead cannibals trying to munch on humanity, but everywhere I go, there’s a nice little bastion or enclave of survivors, and then I show up. Within a few days: boom. Everybody is dead and shit is on fire. Am I a beacon for the undead? Do I light up like a Christmas tree for zombies? Is it fate, luck, or does God just fucking hate me?

Whatever.

Anyway, we’re driving along and laughing. Heading, against Ship’s wishes, to a boat yard or something to steal somebody’s toy or a fishing boat or a God damned overturned cooler to get us to an oil rig.

So what happened?

Fucking rednecks.

One moment we’re laughing in this post-apocalyptic undead world and the next we’re ducking for cover as a hail of bullets comes our way. One of Alvarez’s buddies didn’t duck fast enough, and he went tumbling out of the truck. I had never learned his name. The rest of us got down behind the truck slats, under the benches, and shit our collective pants.

We couldn’t see our attackers, but apparently they were to our right and in front of us. The Deuce stopped, the riders in the cab exiting through the driver’s side. The shots coming at us were from hunting rifles I thought, because there was no automatic fire.

Until we shot back.

I crawled down to the back of the truck, and Alvarez’s other pal, Mr. Thoughtful, was calmly pulling something from his load bearing vest. It was a mirror. “Go when I tell you. Get to the other side of the truck, and stand behind the tires, not in the middle or they’ll shoot out your knees.” Guy had said it like he was ordering his morning coffee. Either this dude was crazy, stupid, or an utter badass.

Redneck dickweeds either hadn’t seen or didn’t care about the Hummer either, and our guys opened up with the .50 cal. It was loud, so I barely heard Thoughtful yell, “Go! Now!”

He leaned over and began firing at the swamp trees, and I went. When I got down behind the truck, I could see that Alvarez, his buddy, and Kat were already shooting as well, they were shooting forward. I moved to the left and splashed into the stinky water.

There were two police cars across the road in front of us. Cops or not, they were shooting at us, so they could suck it. I moved behind a huge mound of earth, I didn’t know what that was doing there, and honestly I didn’t care, it was keeping the holes out of me.

I propped up on the side of the dirt mount, and I had a perfect view of a guy with a sheriff’s hat and a pretty rifle aiming at my friends.

My M4 had this nifty scope thing on it. Ship called it an ACOG, which then I didn’t know meant Advanced Combat Optic Gunsight. It’s the best part of the weapon, seriously. There are these three upside down chevrons in there used for aiming, and four times magnification was plenty for me to see that the sheriff wannabe had a big zit on his neck. It was like a fucking target, so I solved his acne issue.

I would like to say that I blew his head off, but in reality, he clutched his throat as he was thrown back from the cop car. I moved on and shot the next guy in line. He had a hat on too, but it was some shitty ball cap. The top of that prick’s head did come off in a spray of goo, hat and all.

The other rednecks had no idea I was there, so I moved up a little. Picture me, (in all my awesomeness), standing twenty feet to the right of three assholes all of whom are shooting at my buddies. I could have told them to freeze. I could have told them to lower their weapons.

Nope.

What I did was use my left thumb to flip my selector switch to full auto. Then I fucking mowed them down. Honestly,
mowed them down
is the proper terminology, because they all did a little dance, and then fell to the ground. Mowed.

Sporadic shots were coming weakly from the swamp, but the .50 made them stop in seconds.

I moved to the guys I had shot. I kicked their rifles out of reach. Two were still alive, and I plugged the third in the noggin. “P...please,” one of them said clutching his middle. Had to have four holes in him and he was gonna die.

I was disgusted. “Please? Fuck you.” I raised my rifle and shot his buddy in the face, then turned the live guy over and pulled his pistol. It was chrome and nice looking. He had nice boots too, but they would be too small for my canoes.

I watched the man take his last breath and I was stunned at my own thoughts. I had thought about taking this dead guy’s boots. A dead guy that I had made dead. Granted he was trying to make me dead and I won that coin toss. Regardless, it was right then that I knew nothing would ever be the same. I had held out hope that somebody would rescue us and make all the infected and lawlessness go away, but when that guy’s breath let out, so did my hope.

Pretty rich for a guy recently out of prison.

I sighed and drew my knife. I figured I would conserve ammo now that the end of the world was here and hope had abandoned me. Or me it, whatevs.

I dropped to one knee, and drove my knife into that shithead’s…well, head, and it bounced right the F off. More like slid off so I sliced divot in his forehead. I went for a softer target and put it through his eye.

Shooting had stopped, so I took the sheriff’s hat and stuck it up waving it. Alvarez, Kat, and Ship were there in an instant. “Holy shit, you flanked them?”