Cities of the Dead: Stories From The Zombie Apocalypse (31 page)

When word of the plague hitting Paris and Berlin had reached us, the government had immediately shut down the borders. That hadn’t saved Vienna or Innsbruck or most of the other cities of the country, but the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Brigade had deployed around Orth and managed to keep the zombies out.

Until today.

Which is why I’m running for my life down Rudolf Zoempfenning Way right now. A hundred meters behind me are a half-dozen of the super-ragers, the latest version of the running zombies. Versions: I still can’t believe they specialize.

Anyway, earlier today a super-horde from Vienna streamed across the Danube and down Highway 3. The super-horde was so big and destructive that a wave of human survivors came into Orth a half-hour ahead of the zombies, giving the army enough warning to man the positions and light the kerosene moat between Orth and our biomedical facility. I was on the roof with Gunter watching the snipers pick off the sonars - the zombies who step out of the mob and figure out where to go and who to attack - when a stream of super-ragers poured out of the woods near the north parking lot. The company of soldiers guarding that area was quickly overrun and someone set off the line of mines meant as a last-ditch defensive measure.

But there were still too many of the fast movers and the other army units began falling back.

“Shit, they’re going to get into the building,” Gunter shouted, turning and running for the door to the stairwell. “We need to get inside and get the anti-virus before the undead break in and cut us off.”

We ran through the facility to the lab. Outside, machine-gun fire filled the air. A siren pierced the night followed by an explosion: every man for himself.

“Come on, Heike, we’ve got to do this,” Gunter said as we bounded out of the stairwell into the basement labs. He tore down the hall ahead of me and burst through the doors to the main laboratory. It was a couple of seconds before I caught up, but inside the lab Gunter was frantically working the combination to the storage refrigerator. Automatic gunfire filled the night. So much for head shots.

Adolf ran into the lab and skidded to a stop just short of Gunter. “Give me some, I’m going to try spraying it from the roof.”

“It doesn’t work that quickly,” Gunter said, stuffing vials into a small canvas bag and handing it to me. “You need to run. We all do. We need to get somewhere else, where we can find someone who can deliver this appropriately.”

Adolf laughed. “Appropriately? What, like an airplane with a crop duster? We don’t have time for that.”

Adolf grabbed a few vials and looked at us. “Maybe they won’t make it onto the roof?”

He shrugged and took off, brushing past Sergeant Herman Werksman as he came into the room smelling of gun smoke. He looked around and immediately knew that we were ahead of the curve.

“Good,” Werksman said. “The colonel wants me to take a platoon and get the two of you to the river. There are a pair of police patrol boats tethered there for just this situation.”

“Just this situation? You guys have never said anything about this before,” Gunter said.

Werksman shrugged. “The colonel never thought you guys would come up with a cure.”

“It’s not a cure,” I said.

Werksman shrugged. “Well, a solution, then.”

He turned and poked his head through the door, said something to whoever was on the other side, then turned his attention back to us. “You’ve got sixty seconds to get your stuff and follow me.”

Gunter nodded at Werksman and handed me a nylon shoulder bag. “This should be enough.”

Four loud explosions sounded outside, the sound of the town being demolished by the buried charges the army had put in it last year as a means of both distracting and destroying any zombie horde that might come through the town. The town was lost, then. I didn’t think the zombies would be distracted by it, though: they were already everywhere.

“Let’s go!” Werksman shouted from the hallway.

I smiled at Gunter. “Well, it’s a little over a kilometer to the river. A couple of minutes of running and we’re there.”

He smiled weakly. “I was never much of a runner.”

“Now’s your chance to shine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We dashed out into the night and into a perimeter of two dozen soldiers, most armed with Remington 870 shotguns and Steyr AUG machine guns. A pair of spotlights played across the ground, illuminating pockets of zombies for the snipers on the roof. I looked up to see if Adolf was up there but couldn’t pick him out, just the full moon above the facility looking down on us without concern.

“You two, let’s move it,” Werksman said to us before turning his attention to his men “Platoon, begin falling back, five meters and pause!”

The perimeter of men all moved en masse, the three of us in the center, the soldiers around us all firing their weapons as the zombies pressed in on us.

“The undead can’t know what we’ve got with us, can they?” I asked.

“Impossible,” Gunter said and shook his head.

He paused. “But you have to admit, it is one of the most unfortunate coincidences imaginable.”

We had just made it to the park access trail through the Danube-Auen National Park when the firing from the soldiers ratcheted up in intensity. We had made it maybe a hundred meters south. Already, I could see soldiers using their weapons with bayonets. They were being overwhelmed.

Werksman turned to us, his voice calm, resigned to the situation. “You two should run, we’re going to stand here and hold them off. Run. Just run as fast as you can. The boats are at the ferry station. There’s a squad there waiting for you. Go. Run.”

With that he turned and began taking shots at zombies. Gunter looked at me, his eyes hollow, the emotion drained from his face. “I’m going to run down the trail into the forest and maybe try to make it to Eckartsau where I can try to find a way to get in contact with someone in charge of something. You run for the river. The soldiers there will be in contact with someone else in the Army, so you should be fine once you get there.”

“Gunter, we should stay together. It’s dark in the forest. The run isn’t that long. A kilometer or so, maybe.”

Gunter’s eyes widened for a moment as he looked over my shoulder. I turned and saw Werksman swing his rifle butt at a rage-runner and then draw his service pistol out and shoot it in the head. The sound of gunfire was becoming sporadic and the murmuring of the undead was getting louder.

I turned and saw that Gunter was already running into the forest, took one last look behind me at what must surely have been the last defense of civilization, and sprinted down the road toward the river. A kilometer or so. Easy. I used to run five or six of them at a time, several times a week before the undead laid claim to the world. I looked back over my shoulder and saw a half-dozen super-ragers twenty meters away and coming toward me, foam dribbling from their mouths, teeth bared.

And then I ran. Faster than I have ever run. All I ever wanted was a normal life, to fall in love and have a family. I never wanted to be one of  the last few hopes for mankind’s survival. Maybe Gunter will make it to the next town? Maybe Adolf will save the world from atop the biomedical facility?

But right now, the only thing I really want to see, the only thing that matters, is the moon’s reflection on the Danube.

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About the Author

William Young can fly helicopters and airplanes, drive automobiles, steer boats, rollerblade, water ski, snowboard, and ride a bicycle. He was a newspaper reporter for more than a decade at five different newspapers. He has also worked as a golf caddy, flipped burgers at a fast food chain, stocked grocery store shelves, sold ski equipment, worked at a funeral home, unloaded trucks for a department store and worked as a uniformed security guard. He lives in Pennsylvania in a small post-industrial town along the Schuylkill River with his wife, three children and their cat.

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