Dead Outside (Book 1) (10 page)

Shit,
I considered myself a good guy, and it didn’t take much for me to kill those
people back in that warehouse. If the tables were turned, what’s to say someone
wouldn’t kill me thinking I was a bad guy? I saw his face, the fear, the
desperation, the green eyes, judging me.

I’d
been walking for about six hours by the time I finally saw a sign that raised
my spirits a little bit.

Florida State Line: Five Miles Ahead.

A
smirk crept up the side of my face, and my pace sped up slightly. Being so
close was glorious. I felt like I could see her from here, sitting on her dad’s
porch on the swinging bench we used to sit on when we were kids. Granted, she
probably had her dad’s shotgun, shooting at the occasional zombie walking down
the rural road her house was on. Then again, she was with Nick and Roxie, and
they were heading to the high school last I heard, so maybe she was sitting on
the second story, looking out over the railing, sitting in a desk, and waiting.

 The
sun was beginning to dip. I only had about an hour of sunlight left. Luckily
there was a truck stop a mile ahead. I picked up my pace again. Hopefully it
would have some supplies and a decent place to sleep for the night.

6:30
AM, July 4

The
truck stop was pretty spacious. I’d looked for supplies the night before, but
it had already been cleaned out. Even the vending machines were already smashed
open and emptied out. The Zombies were outside the front entrance, banging on
the steel door. I had knocked a vending machine over in front of it just to be
safe. I wasn’t taking any chances after the other day.

The
sun was just about to come up, so I started heading toward the back. I’d
dropped a vending machine in front of the back door too, but I didn’t hear any
pounding from outside, and it wasn’t like they were setting an ambush. I pushed
the heavy machine out of the way, and opened the door. The sun was peeking up
over the horizon, illuminating the parking lot. All the Zombies must have been
out front.

There
were a few cars in the lot, so I jogged over to the closest one. It was an old
station wagon with the wood paneling in the side. The door was locked, so I had
to smash the window in. I checked the dashboard and console for the keys, but
no luck. Then I looked under the side and saw one of those magnetic key
holders. It had a key in it, and when I put it in the ignition, the car fired
up pretty good and had about three-quarters of a tank of gas left.

I
shifted into drive and drove around the building toward the highway headed
south. The Zombies out front turned at the new noise and started shuffling
after me, but there was no chance in hell they’d catch up with me now.

The
roads were pretty congested. I still hadn’t seen another person since I left
the warehouse, and this road was no different. My spirits were raised a bit
though. I was beginning to notice familiar territory after a while. I was still
a good five or six hours away from home in good driving conditions, but only
driving twenty or thirty miles an hour to avoid all the abandoned vehicles and
corpses took a lot of time.

I
tried to figure out how long it would take, but every time the numbers would
get close I’d think of her face, her little half smirk that she made when she
was happy, or the full blown smile right after she finished laughing. I just
kept driving down the congested roads, focused on my goal.

I
reached an exit that I needed to take to get on another road which was the
quickest route to Grovemont. But when I drove down it, the entrance to the
other road had a huge bus blocking the entire thing. I put the station wagon in
park and thought about what to do. I’d never driven a bus before, and who knew
if there was anyone, or for that matter anything, on board that could be a
threat. I didn’t know where the next exit went, or how to get home from there,
let alone how long it could take for me to figure it out and get back on track.

“Fuck
it,” I thought out loud. At this point, taking risks was a part of life now,
and I needed to accept that. I shut off the station wagon to save gas, and left
most of my supplies in the car, taking only my pistol and bat. The pistol I
tucked in the waistband of my jeans behind my back, and the bat I kept in my
hands.

There
wasn’t any movement inside the bus as far as I could see, which was a good
sign. Those things never stopped moving, especially when there was something
else moving near them. The front tire on the bus was blown, with the bare rim
on the road. The door on the side of the bus was slightly ajar, and it didn’t
take much strength to push it all the way open.

The
driver’s seat was empty of course. I didn’t expect there to be a driver sitting
there waving me aboard. I heard an odd sound, like a wet smacking. I climbed
the six steps of the bus to reach the seating area. I’m not sure how disgusted
I was staring at what I saw. I’d seen a lot of death and horror over the last
few weeks, but this had to take the cake for gruesome.

There
were only five or six of them as far as I could tell, but they were all hunched
over what used to be a person. They’d bit and ripped through the skin and
muscle on the torso so much that I could see the ribcage and hip bones. I
couldn’t have been more than five feet away, but none of them even noticed me
standing there.

I
wasn’t going to take any chances. I took them all out one at a time, smashing
their heads in with my bat. I felt sorry for the poor bastard they’d ripped
apart. Maybe if I’d gotten here a little sooner I could have saved him, or her.
To be honest I couldn’t tell what it was at this point. I ignored that thought
real quick. I wasn’t Superman, and I couldn’t save everyone. For a second it
had green eyes. I blinked to find them an unnatural yellow.

I
took two steps away from the pile of corpses before I turned back. The one
they’d been feeding on didn’t have much of a face left. Most of the skull was
visible, but the brain was intact as far as I could tell. I was just about to
smash its head in, but stopped. I rationalized that it was pointless. There
wasn’t enough muscle mass left in that body to twitch a finger, let alone get
up and attack someone.

The
keys were still in the ignition of the bus. I turned it on, but before I even
tried to move the bus anywhere I noticed that a pickup truck was turned over on
its side right in front of the bus. I shifted the bus into the first gear and
hit the gas pedal. The bus lurched and squealed as the bare rim scraped along
on the concrete. The bus pushed the truck forward ever so slightly making an
awful grinding noise as metal scraped against metal and concrete. I gave it
more gas, shoving the truck out of the way. It seemed to take forever, but
finally I’d made enough room to get the station wagon past.

I
shut off the bus and got up just in time to see the partially devoured person
grab my ankle. He’d crawled through the bloody mess of his own fluids and
across the bus, dragging his useless lower half behind him. I pulled my pistol
and shot him in the head just as he was pulling his head toward my calf. What
sympathy I did have was gone in that instant. Granted it wasn’t its fault. It
was dead, but its body wasn’t.

I
hopped off the bus and got back in the station wagon. It just barely squeezed
passed the bus, scrapping one side on the wall and the other on the bus, but I
made it through. Compared to the road I was just on, this one was relatively
clear of other vehicles, so even though the speed limit was labeled as forty
miles an hour I was doing an easy seventy, only slowing to go around an
abandoned vehicle, fallen light pole, or some other obstacle. I didn’t have
much to do on the road but think. The radio was dead, and there were no CD’s
anywhere, and the station wagon didn’t have an auxiliary port for my mp3
player. Luckily, I’d never been one to get bored easily, as long as I had
something to ponder over.

It’s
funny how in only a few weeks what would have been considered mass destruction
before was now the norm. I didn’t look at a crashed car and wonder if it was
the driver’s fault, or someone else’s. I didn’t look at the charred remains of
a building and wonder how the fire started. All I did was look at what lie
beyond those things, or how I could get around them, like I was in some kind of
sadistic maze.

So
much had changed in relatively no time. Even I had changed. I’d killed so many
people since I’d left Ohio. I wasn’t even sure how many. I didn’t mean the
undead. I didn’t feel bad about those, but the living people, that felt
different. I kept telling myself it was self defense, me or them. The guy I
left on the ground after he tried to steal my dad’s truck from me. I didn’t
have to pound him so bad, there was no chance he could have gotten up in time
to get away from the zombies, and they were too close. The ones in the
warehouse, I wasn’t even sure how many I killed there, four, five? I put it to
the back of my mind. Those were necessary. They wouldn’t have hesitated to kill
me had I not got them first, and I knew that.

I
tried not to think about it. I passed a sign that said Orlando was five miles
away, and I needed to be ready for whatever the city was about to throw at me.

Chapter Nine: Last Leg

10:00
AM, July 4

I
was coming close to Orlando, which made me a bit nervous. I’d managed to avoid
major cities since I left Cleveland, but the fastest route around Orlando would
take me at least another hour and a half, and I didn’t want to get stuck in the
dark so close to home, I just wanted to get there. I was going directly through
the city on Interstate 4. I hoped that because it was raised above the ground
through the city that it wouldn’t be too congested.  The road began to rise
above the ground as I approached the city, avoiding a few parallel roads, with
exits every mile or so leading to the ground level.

I
could see that they had attempted to build a similar wall system to the one
they were building around Cleveland when I was leaving, but this wall had gaps,
making it obvious that the attempt to save the city had failed. There were
piles of bodies where it looked like they had hoards of those things swarming
them where it wasn’t finished. Though, I did notice that one building in
particular, the tallest building in Orlando, the SunTrust center, had a few
modifications to it. It looked like they had blocked off the streets around it,
with what had to be thousands of zombies surrounding the walls, making the
tower look like a castle with a moat. I was too far away to see if the people
inside the walls were alive or not, but who knows, maybe they had managed to
survive.

The
road ahead was packed full of too many cars to keep driving the station wagon,
so I gathered my stuff and abandoned it. I was a little disappointed. It did
have a good quarter tank worth of gas left in it. Rather than just leaving it
and forgetting it, I marked on my map where it was, and hid the key back in the
magnet holder I found it in. If for whatever reason I needed to go north again,
at least I knew where one reliable vehicle was.

The
zombies in most of the vehicles and lying in the street were already taken out,
with clean holes through their heads, either in the temple or between the eyes.
I should have been relieved that most of them were dead, but all it did was
make me nervous. I’d rather see them coming than have a false sense of
security. The cars were getting too close together for me to squeeze between
without snagging either my clothes or my backpack on something, and I didn’t
want a straggler to reach out and grab me or bite me, so I climbed onto the
hood of a convertible, and started walking along the tops of the cars.

I
was nearing an exit when I saw movement ahead. I ducked down in the bed of a
truck, after a few seconds I took a quick peek. It wasn’t zombies. There were
four of them, and they were decked out in full camouflage with backpacks and
satchels. Only one of them had a gun drawn that I could see, but if they were
soldiers then they’d most definitely be armed in some way. I squatted back down
into the bed of the truck and rolled off the back. They were coming right
toward me. Even though they were military as far as I could tell, I still
wasn’t in the mood to say hello, especially after the other day at that
warehouse. Who knew if they hadn’t killed for those outfits, or if they had
gone over the deep end?

I
kept a close eye on them, trying not to be noticed. They approached slowly, not
necessarily toward me, but down the road toward the direction I just came from.
They were getting closer. I tried to stay quiet, breathing slowly, waiting for
them to pass so I could slip by. They hadn’t noticed me as far as I could tell,
but I could hear their footsteps they were so close. I could feel the hairs on
my neck stand up. Its one thing to watch a suspenseful movie, not knowing
what’s going to happen next, but knowing something horrible might happen in
real life?

It
felt like I was lying there for hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a
few minutes. Although I was perfectly content with waiting for them to pass, a
hand grabbed my shoulder. I turned to see a zombie reaching out of the sliding
back window of the truck cab. I grabbed its wrist but it was making a lot of
noise, the soldiers were probably close enough to hear the ruckus we were
making.

I
fought it as best I could without using a gun, it had managed to squirm itself
halfway out of the cab and into the bed. I was holding it by the neck, keeping
its snapping jaws away from me. All my attention was on the Zombie for obvious
reasons when I heard a gunshot and blood sprayed from its head.

I
heard a gun cock, and I yelled out as loud as I could “Don’t fire! I’m not
infected!”

“Prove
it!” I heard one of them yell, “You have two seconds before I blow your brains
next to your pal’s there.”

I
stood up as fast as I could, leaving my pistol and backpack lying in the truck.
My arms were spread out, “Check me, no bites!”

The
guy with the rifle had it trained on me. His eyes filled with either hatred or
fear, I couldn’t tell. For half a second I thought they were green, but at this
distance, it was just that face. It wouldn’t go away, even now.

The
other soldiers stared at me, all of them were distrusting but one, he placed
his hand on the barrel of the gun aimed at me. “He’s not dead yet, infected or
not, let him talk.”

I
left my guns and backpack in the truck as I climbed out, “Check me for bites,
I’m clean.”

The
guy who had in all likelihood saved my life introduced himself, “I’m Sergeant
Tony, and if you don’t mind, we need to search you for bites, everywhere.”

I
took my jacket, shirt, and pants off, leaving only my underwear on. I spun
around showing them that I had no bites on me. “Satisfied? I mean I have a few
scratches, but none of those things bit me, I’ve been careful.”

The
Sergeant sighed, looked down for a second then back up at me, “Everywhere, if
you don’t mind.”

It
took me a second to realize what he meant. Of course I was embarrassed, but I
didn’t want to die, so I dropped my underwear. All the soldiers dropped their
eyes for a second then looked back up at me. A couple of them smirked. One of
them chuckled out loud.

“How
about any of you strip down in front of me and we’ll see what’s so damn funny?”
I challenged the soldiers in front of me. The one who laughed cleared his
throat and looked away. “That’s what I thought. Can I put my pants back on now
please?”

The
Sergeant nodded, I saw his lips curl a bit into a smirk, “You’re clean.” He
pointed to the other soldiers, “This is Corporal Glenn, Private Laud, and
Private Olson.”

“My
name is Sam. Nice to meet you guys,” I said, as I squatted down to grab my
underwear and pants.

I
was pulling my shirt over my head when Private Laud asked me, “Where’s the rest
of your group?”

“I
don’t have a group,” I responded. “I’m trying to get to my friends. I’ve been
travelling on my own for about a week now.”

“You’re
out here alone?” Corporal Glenn asked in disbelief.

“Yeah,”
I answered, “all by my lonesome.”

 He
looked like he was about to ask me another question when Private Olson called
out to us, “We got Ghouls coming from the south Sarg. I suggest we move along.”

“Ghouls?”
I asked, though I realized I knew what the answer was the second I asked, but
at that point I’d already asked.

“The
walking dead of course. What do you call them?” Corporal Glenn asked. “Its way
beyond sick people at this point. They’re dead, and there aren’t a whole lot of
words to describe that.”

“I
figured as much, I guess I’ve been calling them Zombies for a few days,” I said
as I put my jacket back on. “I shot one of them in the chest with buckshot at
point blank range. Sure he staggered, but the son of a bitch kept coming.”

“They
do have that habit don’t they?” Private Laud said, “I saw one the other day
that was missing everything from his chest down and still wouldn’t stop
crawling toward me.”

“Not
to break up this stimulating conversation, but we’ve got work to do.” Sergeant
Tony started walking up to me, “We have to be at the outpost in thirty
minutes.”

I
grabbed my backpack and shotgun out of the bed of the truck. When I turned
around the Sergeant was right in front of me. “Sergeant, listen. I’ve got to
get moving myself. I’ve got people west of here and I need to see if they are
okay.”

“We’re
heading that way anyhow. You can just follow us.” He looked down at my shotgun,
“Got any ammo for that thing?”

I
stared at him for a second. He looked trustworthy enough, but I was still a bit
hesitant to tell him everything. “I’ve got a few shells.”

He
just smirked, “Listen kid, I’m not gonna steal your ammo, I just don’t want to
have to cover your ass. I’m assuming you know how to handle yourself with that
thing.”

“I
didn’t get here on my good intensions. That’s for sure,” I answered truthfully,
gaining a bit of respect for the man. He was a straight shooter.

“Alright,
then,” he pulled a can of dip out and slid a chunk into his lip. “You’re with
us until we reach the outpost, then we can talk about what to do from there.”

I
nodded, realizing I didn’t have much of a choice, “Let’s do it.”

We
started back the way I came, “Not to question you guys, but if we’re going to
the west side of the city, then why are we heading south?” I’d been to Orlando dozens of times over the years and knew the streets well enough, but to be fair,
not with the dead roaming them.

“Good
luck with that,” Private Laud shot back. “The streets are covered with those
things directly west. We have to go around them.”

“Some
are more congested than others,” Private Olson added, “This is the safest route
to the outpost on the western side of the city. We can’t lead the hordes to any
of the outposts we have throughout the city, so we take long routes.”

“How
far is that?” I asked. “No offense, but I don’t really want to spend too much
time here paling around if I don’t have to.”

“Our
standing orders are to take any uninfected civilians back to the Tower,”
Sergeant Tony responded. “We need as many people as we can get.”

“Are
you saying I’m not allowed to leave?” I asked him frankly.

He
stopped for a second, and spit to his side. “I don’t make the orders I just
follow them, even if they are a week old.”

“A
week old?” I asked. “You haven’t gotten any orders for a week? What happened to
the chain of command?”

He
looked over to the other soldiers. “Corporal, move ahead and check the exit,
make sure it’s clear. We’ll be right behind you.”

Sergeant
Tony and I stopped walking, while the other soldiers went off ahead of us. When
Tony looked back at me his face was grimaced. “Look I’m not gonna lie, the East
Coast is messed up. We got hit a lot harder with this virus than the rest of
the country. Command sent us in as a last ditch effort to slow it down while
they got the important people out.”

I
almost said I didn’t believe it, but truthfully I did. “So they just left us
here to fend for ourselves?”

“Yep,”
he nodded. “We were told to save as many as we could, then to wait it out,
period. We have a Captain back at the Tower. He tries to rationalize it, that
we’ll see our troops marching down the streets any day now, but I’ve read the
reports. Everything east of the Rockies is a warzone.”

He
took out the chunk of chewing tobacco he had behind his lip and threw it on the
ground. “They say they have everything under control to the West of the Rockies, that they caught it soon enough, but its all bullshit to keep the masses calm, if
you ask me.”

I
had questions sure, but this wasn’t the time to ask them. Private Laud was
waving us over, so we started walking toward them. “I’ve traveled almost a
thousand miles in the last week and I’ve seen a lot of shit, both dead and
alive. I’d always considered myself an optimist, but after what I’ve seen,
we’re not bouncing back from this any time soon.”

“I
know,” he looked up at the sky, almost like he was looking for something. “But
that doesn’t mean we should give up.”

“I’ll
never give up, as long as I have people to fight for.” I looked at the
Sergeant. He didn’t say anything, and he just held his grimace.

We
were about twenty yards from the others when I saw movement. I wasn’t sure what
it was until I saw the car door open. The three soldiers didn’t seem to notice.
The Sergeant was reaching in his pocket for his can of chew. For a moment, it
felt like time slowed down.

I
already had my shotgun in my hands, and I knew my next round was a solid slug, so
I brought it up to my shoulder. I didn’t focus on the soldiers, though they
were far enough away to not know where I was aiming, so they were definitely
focusing on me. I trained the sites on my target. It was slow and purposeful.
The iron sites lined up and I let out a slow breath, long enough to see the
reactions of the soldiers in front of me. They were staring at me with
frightful eyes. The same look that had been haunting me, surprise, fear, if
they were green it would have been a perfect match.

When
I pulled the trigger, I knew I was saving a life. Nobody else may have noticed
yet, but the Zombie was only a few steps from biting Glenn. I couldn’t stand by
and watch.

By
the time I’d fired, Laud had raised his rifle. I tried to yell out, but before
I could open my mouth, Olson swatted Laud’s rifle barrel before he fired, so
the shot fired hit the ground only inches in front of me.

 “Cease
fire!” Sergeant Tony yelled.

I
took a deep breath, my hands were shaking. The green eyes were staring into me,
the fearful face begging me no. Laud noticed the fresh corpse behind him. His
face shifted from angry to relief, though I could tell he was more embarrassed
then anything.