Slow Burn: A Zombie Novel (50 page)

Finishing his cigarette, Matvei looked over at Tamera, whose supple breasts were now uncovered, as he heard the distant bark of a Barrett .50 cal. She moved slightly from the sound of the gunfire but did not awaken. He leaned over and covered her left breast before climbing out of bed and getting dressed. He let Tamera sleep and went to find Raul, who was in the large barracks next door playing cards and drinking. The barracks had been fashioned out of a large barn and one could often find several men relaxing in the air-conditioned structure.

“
I’m off duty, sir,” Raul remarked upon seeing Matvei walk up, “otherwise I wouldn’t be drinking.”

“
I’m not worried about that,” Matvei replied. “I need to speak to you in the morning about assembling a team to head east. We are going to check in on our outposts along the way and then link up with the command in Dallas.”

Raul grinned with pleasure and laid down his hand of cards.

“
Full house!” he exclaimed. “Hector, you owe me a bottle of Tequila.”

Hector just grunted.

“
I’m going to call it a night, boss,” Raul said. “I’ll come see you at first light. And I’m anxious to get back into the fight, maybe find me a little side piece in all this mess.”

Matvei smiled and walked back outside and over to a group of guards that had just finished a roving patrol of the property that covered over 1,500 acres.

“
Any action?” he inquired.

“
We killed five infected and burned them on location,” one of the guards responded. “That was down near the road. Everywhere else was clear.”

“
Good to hear,” Matvei concluded. “I want a patrol to venture farther out tomorrow, see what is going on in the nearby towns. I don’t want any surprises down the road.”

“
Sure thing, Captain,” one of his men replied. “We’ll take out a couple of trucks at dawn.”

Matvei walked back towards his ranch house. He stopped on the porch to survey his grounds. The house, large barracks and machine shop were all located inside a ten acre plot surrounded by a well-built chain-link fence. A smaller bunk house, three car garage and two smaller out buildings were also inside the perimeter, which was complete with guard towers on all four corners. One of the smaller out buildings contained a large diesel generator and the other the well house. Buried under the three car garage were two large fuel tanks, one of diesel and the other gas. Two large propane tanks also sat behind the garage. His fuel situation was stable for the foreseeable future. The entire perimeter was also outfitted with motion lights and a large ditch in front of the fence. Supplies stacked in several forty-foot shipping containers lined one fence line with several vehicles parked along another.

Very safe indeed
, Matvei thought with confidence.
I’m fortunate that I got all of this done in time
.

The ranch was very remote. In fact, an infected had never even reached the wood line that followed a small creek several hundred yards from the buildings. In the distance, Matvei could make out his small cattle herd grazing. Beyond that, several hundred acres were prepped for crops in the spring. All around him men could be seen at work. Several patrols walked the perimeter, augmented by the men in the towers. Other saw to the daily maintenance and upkeep of the facility which kept them as well as their commander safe.

He’d hurry back, he decided. This place was damn near the perfect spot to hole up until this virus burned itself out.

Casper Flanagan looked down from the rooftop of the building he had been holed up in for what seemed like forever.
He had not planned on being stuck in the post office building for nearly this long.

He had figured that the police would have stormed in long ago. He was ready and waiting for them, convinced they wanted to just wait him out. But he missed his window, and never thought it would go on and on like this.

Below him was the reason why. Several layers of ghastly human beings covered all of his exits. They somehow must have known he was inside and were patiently waiting him out. However, just the mere sight of him would send them into a frenzy, which would finally die out after he was long out of view. Casper was unsure of what was wrong with them, but saw a lot of strange things since he set his plan into action.

He looked through the scope of his ancient Mosin Nagant bolt-action sniper rifle, and it appeared that more of those nauseating ghouls were outside than even yesterday.

“
Stop me from my destiny, and it will cost you, whoever you are!”

The only problem was that Casper was now down to his last box of ammunition.

He’d read from articles of men in Vietnam who took ears from their kills, or to a lesser extent, the ones who scratched notches into the stock of their rifles. He smiled and wondered what people would think of the two dozen mismatched and withered ears hanging around his neck. Yet strangely, the longer this ordeal went on, the less sure he was becoming in his convictions. He now just longed for it to all be over, one way or the other.

While he methodically checked every exit, he thought back again on the events that had set in motion his destiny.

* * * * * * * *

Casper finally finished his postal route for the last time and parked his mail truck in the same spot he had used for the last fifteen years. Looking up at the dull limestone that the post office building was made of, h decided that it looked more like an old prison, rather than a place to ship out mail. Scanning the oddly deserted parking lot, empty of the usual returning mail trucks, Casper was somewhat disappointed that many of his workmates had not returned from their rounds. He so wanted them to be here to see what he had in store for his boss and the office pukes that rode his ass day in and day out.

Casper looked at the large stack of undelivered mail that sat next to him in large tubs.

Fuck ‘em.
It’s not like those lazy bastards have anything important that they were expecting to have delivered.

Working a delivery route that had a large population of degenerates and losers, which he was reminded of everyday, just added to the smoldering anger building inside him.

“
The illegals take away jobs that real citizens need,” Casper always heard people say.

Then he would get to the poor minority areas and see the dozens of young men standing around gangbanging and committing crimes in broad daylight or simply sitting on their asses refusing to work. The women were every bit as worthless, except for reproducing at an exponential rate with no one able to pay for their kids but the taxpayers. Here and there were a few households that were not the norm in that area, families that truly tried to work hard and better themselves and their families. Most of the time these families were able to eventually move on to a nicer area, and Casper made sure those households received their mail. As for the others, it would depend on his current mood. Usually as of late, it ended up in a dumpster somewhere.

Uncharacteristically leaving his mail truck unlocked, Casper walked over to his personal vehicle, a dark blue Dodge Stratus, and opened the trunk. Removing two large, heavy duffel bags, Casper closed the trunk and walked to the rear employee entrance. Once inside, he turned and entered a one person employee bathroom. Turning on the single bulb overhead light, he locked the door and stood in front of the mirror, hands on the sink. He stood staring at his reflection for a few minutes. He knew that once this started there would be no turning back.

Thinking of his boss and the staff workers that continuously harassed him, he unzipped the first duffel bag and removed his newly purchased Chinese SKS rifle and loaded it with a full ten round clip of ammunition. Next he removed his handgun, a Colt Single Action Army revolver, and stuck it into his brown leather belt holster complete with cartridge loops, filled with the large .45 rounds. Casper then loaded his cargo pockets with extra stripper clips of rifle ammunition. Inside the second duffel bag was a hardcover case with his military surplus Russian sniper rifle and about six homemade pipe bombs he’d fabricated from instructions he found online at some radical’s website. That part had made him the most nervous, thinking that the FBI would red flag his IP address or something, but they never showed.

Slinging the duffel bag over his head, Casper stared at himself again. He really didn’t hate most of the people that worked here, but they sure didn’t help out whenever his boss or the boss’s underlings harassed him. They all just laughed along with them, just glad it wasn’t them getting abused. The final straw was when someone had dumped a large bag of shredded paper on him while he was taking a shit and then took a picture. Copies of it were still floating around three months later with one in his work mail box that very morning.

“
Are you ready?” Casper taunted the reflection in the mirror.

From outside the bathroom, he now faintly heard shouting in the main mail sorting room, but the machines were noisy, so it was common for people to yell. He stood there psyching himself up for the righteous acts he was about to commit, when he heard people running past his location screaming in fear. Casper had a short bust of panic set in, thinking that another coworker had the same goal as him and beat him to it! Not wanting to be outdone, Casper exited the restroom and saw the rear door to his right swinging shut. The last person had just left, and the automatic door was still closing. Turning back into the now silent mail sorting room, the first thing he noticed was the sorting machines were off, but he heard a snarling, almost munching sound.

He moved deeper into the building towards the odd noise. Rounding a corner, he saw a sight that made his blood run cold. Two postal employees knelt next to an elderly female secretary, and it looked like they were eating her internal organs. Or were they trying to put them back in? Casper couldn’t really tell from this angle.

When one of the men kneeling looked up with blood covering his mouth stood up and lunged at him, Casper reacted.

With a scream of rage, Casper opened up on the two offenders. After running the rifle empty, he stood there gasping for air.

“
Holy fuck!” he screamed. “I did it!”

The power that the adrenaline dump gave made his spirit sing with ecstasy!

He quickly reloaded the SKS with another stripper clip of ammunition. Ahead of him, coming his way, were many additional coworkers with a look of utter hatred in their eyes.

That’s weird
, he thought, shrugging his shoulders. Usually on TV you would hear that most people ran from the buildings or cowered in fear whenever a shooting in the workplace occurred. These guys were coming right at him. No matter, at least he wouldn’t have to hunt them down individually.

Casper began firing at will, losing track of how many rounds he fired. He released all of the rage that had built up inside him all of those many years. Despite the complete sensory overload, he couldn’t help but think that his human targets were sustaining an abnormal amount of damage before they died. It sure as hell looked different in the movies. Plus, he noticed that many of them already had previous injuries.

The random, almost comical thoughts in his head continued.

Maybe there is a loose dog in here? Maybe I’m losing my mind?

After clearing the bottom floor of all opposition, Casper hurriedly chained the outer doors shut and padlocked them. While he did so, he noticed people running in all directions out in the street. Casper watched as one woman stumbled into the middle of an intersection covered in blood. She just stood there as she was hit head on by a full sized SUV, and Casper flinched as her body was hurled high into the air before coming to rest out of sight.

“
Holy shit!” Casper yelled. It looked like full blown panic out there. he’d have to hurry before the cops showed up.

Moving to the stairwell, Casper climbed up towards his boss’s office area. Having not seen him or his cronies yet led him to believe they were still upstairs cowering in fear.

Ascending upwards, Casper heard a woman screaming. He could tell it belonged to his boss’s secretary. A cold smile stretched his lips thin, and he continued his advance through the empty secretary’s reception desk and on towards his boss’s office. Rounding a corner in the hallway, Casper could see several bloody figures struggling with the closed office door. Many of them were his primary targets. Casper’s blood was now raging with adrenaline. Quickly snapping into a shooting stance, Casper raised his rifle and began firing into the small crowd with sick pleasure. He had already become accustomed to killing, along with the noise and smell that accompanied it.

When the last one had fallen, Casper had coincidently burned through the last of his SKS rifle ammunition. He drew and emptied his revolver into the heads of his victims to make sure they were dead. Opening the cylinder latch and dumping the casings onto the floor one-by-one, he filled it with fresh rounds. Once reloaded, he stepped across the bullet-riddled bodies and pools of blood before kicking the office door open. Stepping inside, he was met with the sight of his boss hunched over his secretary, who was lying on the floor in her black dress. There had been rumors lately that they had been having an affair, but that was definitely not what Casper saw happening. His boss was eating what appeared to be his hot secretary’s intestines, which were pulled out of her abdominal cavity into a large bloody pile onto the carpet.