Decay: A Zombie Story (14 page)

“I’ll get the other boards,” I said as I frantically turned around to see Jen, Sam and Tara staring at the horrific scene. “It’s all right,” I said as Jen pointed to the lot. I turned around and saw well over a dozen infected stumbling into the lot.

“We can’t hold it down,” Mike said angrily as he grabbed the other gun.

Jen approached me quickly and asked, “What should we do?” as Fido ran into the lot and started barking uncontrollably, somewhat arousing the undead as they began barking in their own way right back at us and him.

I then looked outside to see the infected ghoul stumbling around the stressed Fido and was excited by the sounds of his barking, but Mike seemed to be right—they had no interest in harming or eating him.

A little relieved at Fido’s situation, I then looked over to Joey and said, “Joey, go with Tara and clear a path to the back exit just in case.”

I looked straight ahead and saw a familiar red Fix-It Hardware shirt walking towards us. As the figure got closer, it became clear that it was the corpse of Robbie. His long hair looked dry and crunchy and his face was covered in reddish brown dry blood and possibly dirt. He reached for us like any other infected soul would have.

My breathing became heavy as I tried to hold back my frustration and anger. I tried to think of something—anything—to say in my defense, but all I got out was, “Jen, get her out of here, she’s losing it!”

Samantha then ran out into the small crowd of undead, exciting all of the infected to the point that they were almost roaring. She pushed several of them aside and ran to Robbie as if he were still alive and well.

“I’m sorry, Robbie,” she said.

Robbie greeted her by wrapping his thin bony fingers around her arms. He leaned his head in and tore into Sam’s neck with his gnashing teeth.

Jen lunged towards the window as Mike and I both grabbed her. “Samantha!” she screamed, violently crying at the brutal sight of our friend succumbing to this sickness.

As I wrapped my arms around Jen and pulled her to the back room, Mike fired his gun once more into the crowd of infected reaching through the window.

A few of them fell backward but were immediately replaced with others who stepped forward into the newly vacant spots lining the window.

“Fuck! We’ve got to move!” Mike yelled.

“Come on!” I said as I pulled Jen into the stock room.

Mike followed me as I glanced back at the window, only to see the dozens of undead piling on top of each other while trying to get to the window. The remaining pieces of glass along the trim broke off and stabbed the rabid infected as they reached through the window.

Soon, one began to hang through the window and it was only a matter of time before they started entering the store.

I turned away and ran into the back room. Jen viciously cried for the loss of Sam and ran into Tara’s arms.

I explained that Sam was gone and we had to get out of the shop as fast as possible. Joey had created enough of a clearing to get to the back exit and we were ready to go.

Tara comforted Jen as best she could while Joey, Mike and I moved a large shelving unit in front of the swinging doors. We all agreed that even if we were taking off, we wanted to have something to slow down the infected.

After moving the unit in front of the doors, I took a look through the small plastic windows on the swinging doors and saw three undead getting to their feet after coming through the window—they were inside. Fix-It was now officially lost to the infection and Robbie had returned to his workplace, possibly where he will stay forever.

With no other options, we quickly took off through the back exit. Joey took out his keys and ran to the corner of the building. In the dark, he was able to see his car lit up by the lights of the store and we could all hear the continuous barking and growling of Fido.

As Joey was about to run over there, he noticed that the mass of undead was much larger than we had originally perceived and there was no way we’d be able to get Fido or get in the car safely—not without losing another member of our group.

I called Joey back and we made the tough decision to literally go on the run for the time being. I looked to the woods behind the hardware store and knew that they were thick and eventually led to the highway.

More likely than not, we would remain free of any contact with the infected in there. So, I told everyone that we had to stay close as the most dangerous aspect of this was how dark it was. We had to keep moving until dawn.

We began the run, moving at a steady pace away from the hardware store and into the unknown. I looked back as we ran, seeing the light of Fix-It—the only light in sight. I watched it for a moment until the brush of the forest began to grow thicker and the light faded into the distance.

Later, after hours of repetitious running through the thick woods, and several emotional stops, the trees started to space out more and the woods were finally coming to an end. The quiet highway came into view as the sky grew lighter and the sun began to rise.

Each of us basically collapsed into the grass hill that led onto the highway. We looked at one another and couldn’t believe how far momentum had taken us.

The only problem now was that we were in the open, completely vulnerable and without any shelter or hardly any equipment.

DISPATCHED

DAVID

O
ur current base in Berlin, New Hampshire had just dispatched several crews of Military Police and Infantry Specialists on a mission for Operation Survival. My crew of eight had entered the field in two fully loaded Suburban Utility Vehicles and our current mission is to find any and all survivors in Massachusetts, focusing on our designated zones of one and three—Northern and Central.

Currently, we had been scouting a small town known as Hopkinton, where one of the first safe zones was established. The zone had officially succumbed to the Arthriphagy sickness, but the area was never combed for survivors.

We’re also paying special attention to any homes or other small establishments that appear to be boarded up and/or sealed with survivors inside. Originally we were broadcasting via AM radio to these areas, but we have since ceased such efforts, as several rebel groups had used those broadcasts to find and ambush our rescue teams.

A lot of these groups had it ingrained in their minds that the government was behind all of this—something that’s simply not true. This virus had spread globally in less than a week, wiping out entire countries and almost continents. So, we’ve done our best to stay off frequencies, only using a secure line for absolutely necessary intel between field crews and the safe zone bases.

I’m occupying the back of the SUV as the only Infantry specialist aboard. I’m with three M.P. officers, whom my Infantry buddies and I probably would’ve given a hard time in a different situation. But, these guys were all right. Officer Michael Sharpe is one of the Military Police I had been talking to a lot—he’s about my age and was in the same training camp as me six years ago.

Officers Rickley and Heminez were also with us—they seemed all right, but they already knew one another from having been stationed together over the past few years, so they sat up front and didn’t converse with us too much.

We sat in the back as we drove down a long highway—completely abandoned on our side and completely bumper-to-bumper on the other. With a few miles before we hit our next hot spot for suspected survivors, we were hitting higher speeds somewhere around fifty-five or sixty miles per hour.

Sharpe and I began discussing the events that we knew to be fact—the rapid outbreak of infection, the President and his cabinet retreating to an unknown and secure location, and the fact that the people infected with Arthriphagy were—for all intents and purposes—dead. Immediately, Heminez turned back to us. “What the fuck are you guys talking about?” he asked. “How can dead people get up and walk around? Hey, get a load of these guys Rickley!”

“Ha! Yeah! What’d you do? Ask one of ‘em to stay still while you checked the vitals or something?” Heminez said, cutting off Sharpe’s answer.

“Whatever, man. Why don’t you just keep your eyes on the road,” I said.

Heminez glanced at the road, then back at us. “Ain’t nothin’ out there, man! Quit your backseat driving!”

As Heminez continued with his royally douche-like attitude, he completely ignored the other SUV in our convoy and the fact that it had stopped up ahead for something. Heminez smirked at us as he laughed and kept pushing down the gas pedal.

“Watch out man!” I shouted.

Rickley looked forward and smacked Heminez’s arm. “Chet! Look out!” After hearing this from his partner in crime, he quickly looked forward and said, “Oh shit!” and slammed on the brakes and crashed into our partners’ vehicle real hard.

Their SUV flew forward and crashed through the guard rail, flying down a grassy hill and eventually came to a stop at a tree. Ours followed them and slid to the side, smashing into the broken guard rail and almost rolling over entirely.

From this point, everything went dark until I came to moments later. I noticed that both airbags in the front had gone off, Heminez’s door was pushed in, and the window had shattered because of the guard rail. I looked at him and Rickley—both did not move and if they were still breathing, it was so shallow that I could not detect it by watching any rising and falling action of their chests.

I looked over to Sharpe as he was slowly moving his head with his eyes still shut. Blood from his nose covered his face as he began to moan in a disoriented manner.

For a moment, I thought he was alive until I realized that he could be one of them. The stories we had been told were that you had to be bitten to become one, but I didn’t fully believe that at this point. So, I grabbed my handgun and clenched it tightly as I watched the MP sway his head back-and-forth.

As his moaning continued, I became relatively certain that his body had been reanimated and he was now an Arthriphagy carrier. I held up my gun with the safety off and one in the chamber, ready to fire at the sight of his dead pupils. But to my relief, he finally opened his eyes and asked, clear as day, “What happened?”

“Thank God,” I said. “I thought you were gone.”

He looked at me for a moment, trying to piece together the situation, and then looked up at Heminez and Rickley’s corpses. “Shit,” he said. “Where’s the other SUV?”

I pointed to the horrific sight out our side windows. “Right there.”

Sharpe looked and saw the SUV smashed directly into the tree. From our vantage point, we discovered that the airbags had gone off and broken glass littered the scene. I quickly looked around and made sure the sound of the crash had not drawn any infected people to the area. After making sure that everything seemed all right, Sharpe and I slowly exited the vehicle and had planned on checking on the rest of our crew.

However, as we stepped out of the vehicle, I immediately got a strong smell of gasoline fumes. “You smell that?” I asked Sharpe.

He nodded and looked around the area of our vehicle where the guard rail had caused the most damage. “I don’t see any signs of gas here,” he said. “It must not be coming from our tank.”

I nodded and cautiously proceeded to the other crash site. The gas could have been coming from the other SUV or from the highway, what with all the abandoned and crashed vehicles on the other side. However, as we got closer to their crash site, we found that the smell intensified quickly. I stopped for a moment and noticed smoke rising from the engine where the vehicle had crashed into the tree trunk.

“Move back!” I shouted as I ran back behind our vehicle. Sharpe quickly followed me as the SUV exploded with the rest of our crew inside. The explosion was massive and vibrated through my entire body as it pushed us onto the ground.