Midnight Outbreak (5 page)

Chapter Nine

Two Months Later

Josh and Brendan’s houses became their sanctuary. In the past month they’d built a tunnel that connected both houses together at the back doors. Will had moved in. After the quarantine was instated, he’d gone to his apartment and picked up all the belongings he wanted to keep.

The world had gone to shit. News reported twenty-four hours a day, all the same thing: The dead was rising, and they were rising fast. After a while, the news never came back on. Things were falling apart. It was total chaos; rioting, looting, and in the midst of all that, there were zombie attacks in the streets. They were living in their own post-apocalyptic movie.

They didn’t venture out very often. All three men had boarded the house up—everything was blocked. Josh was thankful that all three of them were good with their hands, able to construct the two houses into their own fortress.

The summer days continued to get hotter, making the boarded-up house an oven. The zombies travelled in small groups, mostly. They would run into the doors, over and over again. Either because of boredom or because of something else, they would move on.

Mari was consumed with grief, spending all day in bed, not eating. Everything frightened her. The worst times were at night, when the light of the day wasn’t around to let them see what was going on outside.

Meanwhile, Josh and Will’s relationship had changed. Deep down, Josh knew what Will had done was logical. He would’ve died by the hands of his wife-turned-vampire. He knew that. But Will saved him, and Josh should’ve been more thankful than he expressed. But Will’s secret, keeping something so important from Josh, bugged him. They had been so close to each other growing up, the best of friends.

There was an obvious tension there. They tried to work around it. They turned their attention on other matters, never fully acknowledging what had happened. 

One afternoon, they were sitting on the roof of Brendan’s shed in the backyard. Will was sharpening a huge meat cleaver that Brendan had in his array of arsenal.

“I can train you, you know. If you want.”

“What? In vampire killing?” Josh asked incredulously.

“Well, yeah, but its more than that. I’d train you in jiu-jitsu, the martial arts I studied. How to use the katana, a knife. It’s gonna get worse. We’ve been lucky so far. The beginning is always easier.”

“You act like you’ve lived this situation before,” Josh scoffed. “Like we’ve been through a zombie plague before. This is wild, man; this is out-of-this-world bat-shit crazy. The shit we used to watch as kids. How do you know it’s gonna get worse? Maybe, just maybe, they’ll get it under control.”

But even as he spoke, Josh knew his words were false. Nobody was going to save them. Nothing was running anymore. The President of the United States had been taken abroad so he could direct the country from a steel-encased mansion that would protect him.

“I’ll teach you,” Will continued, ignoring Josh’s rant. “You’re a quick study; you always have been. You gotta know how to protect yourself.”

“I don’t give a damn about protecting myself. I lost my
wife
; I don’t have parents, children, or siblings to care about. I don’t care if I die.” Josh felt like a whiny girl, emotional and moody. He couldn’t just get rid of it, though. This feeling of hopelessness was so foreign to him, he couldn’t shake it. And rightly so, but depression turned men into wimps, or so he had been raised to believe.

They were silent. Will shook his head. “Oh, no you don’t, man. Don’t say stuff like that. ‘Cause when the world turns to shit, the cowards are the ones who die first.” He paused. “And while you’re a dumb, ugly S.O.B., you ain’t a coward.”

And so the next day Will started training Josh. It was an unspoken agreement. They waited until after breakfast and went in the backyard. Will laid out multiple weapons on the ground, partially hidden in the grass that had shot up in the last months. No mowing, or else the zombies would hear. The original fences that walled off both properties had been chain link. It was the worse type of fence to have in the situation, so they’d scavenged the Lowe’s store and found some lumbar. The improved fences would hold up. For how long, nobody knew, but they still kept quiet.

Brendan, Will, and Josh all stood around. Brendan had one of those dummies, the ones that martial arts and self-defense classes used. The huge rubber torso of a man looked at them blankly, the stand sunk into the ground.

Mari climbed into a small redbud tree, her body folding into the corner of the branches, and sat quietly, watching the men.

“From all the movies we’ve ever watched, head shots are what you want to do.”

“Wait, are we learning how to fight zombies or vamps?” Brendan interrupted.

“Both,” Will answered immediately.

“With vamps, silver is the only thing that will harm or kill them. Shoot their body with a silver bullet or cut their heads off. But with zombies, always go for the head.”

They spent hours training, all the men taking turns to pair off with one another. Will didn’t know much about the zombies, how they moved, but he equated them to hungry, rabid, idiotic beasts. Vampires were another story. They were fast, smart and had many more dangers than just their fangs. The use of glamour was a dangerous one, Will had explained. It was their best weapon because it would immobilize you, make your brain disconnect from your body—you’d be under their complete control.

Will taught them different ways to attack the vampires, but not necessarily only face-to-face. He taught them how to attack from the top, the bottom, from the side.

They were all bushed after the first lesson. They collapsed on the grass while Mari disappeared inside to grab some water bottles.

“Brendan, I’m not that familiar with guns and the like. Maybe you could teach us about that stuff?” Will asked, using his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.

Brendan nodded, but didn’t say anything. They had learned a lot about each other in the last month. Brendan was a die-hard survivalist. He had been hunting since he was in grade school. His knowledge astounded Josh.

Sure, Josh had shown an interest in those kinds of things before. But never had his interest stayed more than a week or two. Myra had bought him books, and what he called a Rambo knife—a long, serrated blade that held a hidden compartment in the hilt of it. You could fit matches in there and a compass that went on the other side. He liked that present best of all.

Mari, at long last, had come out of her depression a tiny bit. She only smiled when Brendan praised her. Nothing else held much joy for her. But she impressed the men with her knowledge of hunting too. Brendan had started teaching her early.

“Well, boys, I think we’re gonna be just fine. Just fine here. At least for a little while.”

“Maybe we should try to go into a bigger city? Or head over to Atlanta, or wherever the CDC is,” Josh suggested.

“No. Big cities are too dangerous. If we ever had to move, we would have to go to the country.”

“We’re running out of supplies,” Brendan replied. They had pooled their resources and so far it had been enough.

“Yeah,” Will frowned.

“We’re gonna have to go on a raid soon.”

Everyone was silent. Will sighed and said, “Let’s do it then, numb nuts.”

Chapter Ten

“Get that dumb one right there!”

Josh swung the shovel with all his might, his biceps burning. He felt it connect with the flesh and hit the bone. The zombie dropped like the dead weight it was.

He didn’t have time to celebrate because another one loomed behind the fallen one. This one had a chunk missing from its cheek. In the early days, shortly after Myra and Claire died, Josh had seen one of his neighbors become infected.

***

He was running down the street, with a baseball bat in his hand.

Sometimes zombies could be fast, and it was terrifying to see them run. One came at him from the side and he was too busy looking behind him he didn’t notice before it was too late.

He fell to the ground, trying to get the bat between him and the zombie, but it wasn’t working. The first bite had been to his arm. The scream that followed was chilling.

Josh ducked from the peep hole, guilt flooding his veins. He looked again. Two more were on him, their faces buried in the bloody mess. Josh had run to the bathroom and retched until there was nothing left in his stomach. He returned to the door, his curiosity getting the best of him.

They fed off his neighbor for a few minutes before leaving. Josh watched the clock—it took 25 minutes before his former neighbor rose, his transformation complete. Others he’d watched afterwards took different times. Sometimes an hour, sometimes a few minutes. He couldn’t correlate any relationship between the type of people and the time it took to turn.

The neighbor rose, fully turned, and chills ran down Josh’s spine. He looked around and started shuffling down the street, leaving the bat laying abandoned in the street along with a puddle of blood and flesh.

The grisly bites and deep scratches were bordered with darkened, dried blood. They were disgusting and smelled to high heaven. Josh figured he’d never get used to the smell. A mixture of feces, old piss, and rot. And if he ever did get used to it, he’d want to die.

***

He took the knife out and stabbed the new one coming at him. Straight through the eye. It made a gurgling sound deep within its throat.

“Damn,” Josh muttered under his breath. It was nasty to be so close to them. He looked around him as the zombie fell to the ground. There weren’t any in his immediate area, but Will had two on his right while he was decapitating a third. Josh bounded over to him.

“Hey, fucker!” Josh teased one of them, a small statured woman, who could’ve been an older teen. He wasn’t sure. She turned around like an obedient dog and snarled. Her hair, once probably a pretty shade of blonde was now dirty and greasy, hanging in strands with a patch missing near her forehead.

“Yeah,” Josh whistled. “Come here, you little bitch.” He didn’t know why exactly he taunted them. It was fun in a way, making him feel in control of an otherwise very out of control environment.

He grabbed her throat; her skin slick with sweat and felt like rubber. He gripped it carefully in his gloved hand while the other one brought the knife around to her temple.

“Bye bitch,” Josh spat as she crumpled to the ground.

Will had gotten the other one, another woman.

“Damn it. Do you wanna keep going or head back to the house? I’m fucking tired already.”

Today’s trip was to the big bulk store in the next town. The truck still had gas in it and they needed supplies. They were in dire need of everything. Brendan and Mari stayed at the house.

The possibility of them moving was brought up. Brendan had mentioned a move to the country, convinced it would be their best bet. The city, in such a short amount of time, was completely ruined. His whole street was abandoned.

“No, let’s go man. No reason to go back. I don’t see any herds,” Josh answered. They loaded into the truck and headed out of the housing development.

“Anything on the radio?” Josh messed with the knobs, but it was just static. Like always.

“I wonder if there are any survivor camps out there. Like if FEMA or the National Guard had a setup or if they just said screw it and went on,” Josh thought aloud. 

“Who knows? It may be that everybody just fends for themselves, but the big cities are bad. Right before the TV went out, that’s all they showed; the cities in ruins. And a buddy of mine on the CB radio said that Austin, Texas was completely destroyed. Riots and looters and the dead,” Will answered.

“So what do you think of Brendan’s idea?”

“I don’t know if we should go yet. He said his uncle’s place is big though. Very self-sustaining ‘cause he was one of those off-gridders. And his uncle’s been preparing for the end of the world for decades,” Will laughed a hard, sarcastic laugh. “Who knew that those types of crazies were gonna be right one day, ya know? All those doomsday preppers. They had the right idea. They’ll be around for a while. Until this thing clears up.”

“If it ever does.”

“True.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence. Josh’s heart jackhammered in his chest as they passed the dead herds, slow shuffling until they drove by, and then they would pick up the pace.

“Beats all I’ve ever seen,” Josh muttered staring at the side mirror at the sorry mess trying to follow them.

“Shoot me dude. Shoot me, no hesitating if I ever get bit.”

Josh looked over at his friend. Would he if it came down to it? He couldn’t help but compare it to how he acted towards Myra. Will acted with no hesitation. And that’s how you had to do it. No matter who it was.

They hadn’t come across any vampires since that day. Will figured it was because of the quarantine. Too many dead walking around. Will said the zombies would affect them too. In what way, he didn’t know, but they couldn’t feed off the dead.

They reached the big bulk store in good time. The parking lot was clear. But that didn’t mean the inside was. They both suited up with their weapons and backpacks. Both carried duffel bags. Will had his katana and pistol. He only used the pistol whenever it was necessary. They noticed that the dead used sense of smell and hearing the most.

Walking in the deserted store was creepy. He imagined people there, remembered his trips with Myra. Josh laughed as Will steered a shopping cart around like it was just a regular shopping trip. He tossed out a few jokes and both of them were laughing.

They filled the cart with tons of supplies. So much that Josh had to get another shopping cart. The looters had taken a lot, but not everything. They even had a gun selection—it was Louisiana, after all—and they loaded their backpacks with bullets they found. Some things were stashed, hidden behind other items, the original person hoping to come back but never did.

“I think it’s time to get back. It’s going to get dark soon.”

“Yeah, well let’s do one more run-through, ‘cause I don’t want to forget anything.”

“Maybe we should get Mari something,” Will suggested.

“Yeah…she’d like that.”

“I think so.”

So the two grown men went to the toy section, which was largely untouched. They picked up a couple of Barbie dolls and a couple of stuffed animals. Josh felt good inside, knowing that she would be thrilled to receive the presents.

They walked out to the truck, checked under it, and loaded up. Josh’s heart picked up speed as he saw the sun going down. “Dammit man, we better move.”

“Shit,” Will cursed as they got into the cab and tried to start it.

For whatever reason, pure bad luck, it wouldn’t start. Will got out and looked under the hood, fiddled with something then came back and tried again. The engine wouldn’t turn over.

“Shit, shit, shit, I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Maybe the battery?”

“I don’t know. Dammit,” Will answered, disgusted.

Josh watched as the sun descended past the horizon.

They were in trouble.

They could hear the growling start to their left.