Soul Survivor: A gripping tale of the living, the dead, and the struggle to survive in an apocalyptic world. (8 page)

  
Amy in some strange morbid way wished she could feel what her zombie felt. Was it tired? Did it have a head ache? Could it feel pain? Did it have any thought process at all or did it act purely on instinct like an insect?

  
She calmly excepted her fate and settled in for the rest of the journey.  

  
They continued on. Always stopping for about five hours during mid day and continuing on around four.

   They
saw no survivors the first three days. Then one day just after sunrise, as they were making their way through Tusayan Arizona, she noticed a lone zombie standing on the roof of the Holiday Inn. He stood silently on the edge, three stories up, following their progress as they made their way along the street. He was missing his right arm and was dressed in some type of work uniform.

  
A maintenance man possibly.
Amy thought.

  
Amy’s zombie stepped over to the side of the road near the hotel and stopped. After a few grunts of apparent greeting, they stood there staring at each other for several minutes.

  
Finally it looked down at the concrete then back at Amy’s zombie. Then it leaned over the edge and fell head first into the pavement below. The zombie disintegrated on impact. His torso split open and his limbs detached and flew out in all directions. Blood, pus, bones and internal organs spread out in a huge stain. It reminded Amy of a bug splattering a windshield.

   Her
zombie groaned. It gave her the feeling that it thought it was all alone now. The last one.

 
Amy’s zombie grunted once more then turned and took up the steady gate of a zombie on a mission. What that mission was she had no idea.

  
They were soon out of town. Still heading North. Judging by the mile markers, Amy thought they were making about one mile an hour.

  
Pretty much top speed for a zombie,
she thought.

  
One of the disadvantages of being one of the slow ones.

  
If only my zombie was like the mailman we could make three times that,
she thought.

  
By her best guess they were only about a days walk from the canyon.

  They
walked on for three more hours before stopping in the shade for the day and then continuing around five in the afternoon.

   The
next morning when the sun rose she noticed that her zombie’s left arm had fallen off during the night. Evidently more damaged in the encounter with the zombie at the deli than she had thought.

  
The legs however still seemed strong and their pace had not slowed.

   A little further
on they passed a sign that read “Grand Canyon National Park South Rim Visitors Center - 6 Miles.” A six hour walk. They were getting close.

  
What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

  
The quote flashed through her mind again and again. Giving her some strange sense of comfort.  

  
She knew that at some point it would be over. She just hoped the end wouldn’t be violent. She had had enough violence. And even though she was ready for this nightmare to end and to finally be released from the prison her physical body had become, she hoped that her zombie would continue on for at least another day or so.

  
   After all,
she thought.
I always did want to see the Grand Canyon.     

Arthur M Wyatt
is An ex U.S. Navy Seabee, Writer, Musician and Painter. He lives in upstate South Carolina with his daughter, black lab, one miniature schnauzer, six guitars featuring an American Fender Stratocaster, 1000 book personal library, vast collection of Heavy Metal, Progressive Metal, Jazz, Blues and Big Band music, two Fantasy Football Superbowl Trophies and a 1994 Ford F-150 with over 300,000 miles. He flies the American flag year round.

He Communicates D
irectly at:

[email protected]        [email protected]

An excerpt
from “The demon dead”

“The Demon Dead” is a 294 page full length novel. Th
ere is no connection to “Soul Survivor”. Both are independent stories that take place in The Demon Dead Universe. Soul Survivor is where the concept of the three types of zombies originated. “The Demon Dead” takes the concept and expands on it.

Chapter one from “The Demon Dead”

By: Arthur M Wyatt

Copyright© 2011 

                                                                                                                           
                             
ONE

Day
One: Crash Test Zombies

The tires squealed as the car spun out of control. Helplessly, John held onto the steering wheel with all his strength. The overturned bus had seemed to leap out of the darkness and fill the windshield just as he rounded the curve. The car barely missed it as he swerved to avoid a collision. The road was filled with those…things. Each one stopping to look up when the headlights fell upon them. Their eyes reflecting the light. Some had entrails and flesh hanging from their mouths. All were covered in blood. For some strange reason they reminded John of crash test dummies. The thought left his mind just as quickly as it had come.

The bus was overturned half in and half out of the road. The victims were strung out along side it. Each one besieged by these monsters... these walking corpses. Each body was in a different state of being consumed. Some now nothing more than bloody skeletons with meat clinging to bones here and there. Intestines and other body parts littered the road. There must have been a hundred of the creatures. Many were crushed by the car as it careened wildly. The stench that blew into the car was overwhelming. John felt his stomach begin to churn.

The bus driver, partially decapitated, hung out of the broken front window. His body being devoured as if by vultures on road kill. Except these weren’t vultures and they were no longer human. They were grotesque, bloody, evil caricatures.

As the car slid sideways it left the roadway and slid into the dirt on the shoulder. The tires dug into the soft ground as dirt flew in the window and into John’s mouth, nose and eyes. He felt the car leave the ground as it started to barrel roll, first once then two more times. The air bag smacked him in the face first, and then the overnight bag with his belongings hit him as it flew out the window.

Stopping on its side, the car sat there for a second then slammed back down, upright on its tires. Steam escaped from under the hood as blood from a gash on his forehead began to fill his eyes. Frantically he clawed at the seat belt trying to free himself.

Once free, he searched the car for his bag. He had to have it. It contained everything he needed to survive.

Still dazed he looked up the road toward the bus lying no more than seventy yards away. Smelling fresh blood the creatures turned and started toward the mangled car. John crawled out the window and flopped to the ground. He checked himself for injuries. Other than the gash on his forehead, a massive headache and bruised ribs, he seemed to have suffered no other damage. His head throbbed with every heartbeat.

The bag was lying in the road half way between the car and the bus. Regaining his feet, John shook the cobwebs from his head, ran around the car and took off. Ahead he saw two of them heading for him at a much faster pace than the others and with more purpose.

“Ah hell,” he said out loud, “not them again.”

These two, or demons as John had come to refer to this different type of walking corpse, were faster and more intelligent than the others. He didn’t have time to ponder the reasons why they were different, but had made note of the different way they moved and carried themselves. They were pretty easy to spot if you knew what you were looking for. And here they were again.

Frantically he raced for the bag, reaching it mere seconds ahead of the fastest one. John unzipped it and grabbed the 9mm. Flipping the safety off he raised the weapon and fired three rounds into the first attacker as it closed in. The first and second round hit it in the chest but didn’t seem to slow him down. The third round entered his forehead spewing blood and gray matter out the back of its skull in a crimson spray. It dropped to the ground in a lifeless heap.

The second one was only three yards away and coming fast. John fired three more times in quick succession into its face. The demon’s head disappeared in an explosion of blood, brains and bone.

The rest of them were still twenty yards away at this point, lumbering towards him with a steady gait. Slower than the other two and seemingly acting purely on instinct.

Gathering up the bag, he ran back to the car, reached through the window, put the car in park and turned the key on the outside chance the car may start. Amazingly it did.

Praying it would still move he threw the bag on the passenger seat, crawled back in, put the car in drive and pushed the gas. The engine screamed but the car refused to move. By this time those things were at the passenger side window, filthy, bloody hands reaching in. John raised the gun once again and shot the two groping through the window once each in the face. Their heads snapped back with a sickening sound. The contents of their skulls splattering the ones behind them. He put the car into first gear and gunned the engine again. The car lurched forward. John pulled back onto the road and away from his attackers. Screaming in protest the car rolled down the road with three flat tires and a smoking engine.

“At least it’s running,” he said out loud.

The zombies stopped their pursuit after he had traveled only a couple hundred yards. Slowly they turned and went back to their previous activities of eating the unlucky bus riders.

He continued on for another twenty minutes. The car protested as the engine rpms revved too high for the gear he was in. Several times he put the car into second gear or drive but each time the car refused to go. Finally after five miles the car groaned, sputtered and coughed then died altogether. Overheated, smoking, and with rims glowing cherry red from the friction of rolling tireless on the pavement, the car sat motionless in the middle of the road. John sat listening to the hissing engine and tried to plot his next move.

With the smell of burning rubber, motor oil and antifreeze filling his nostrils, John crawled out of the car and sat down on the pavement. It was a full moon and he could see up and down the road in both directions. Retrieving his bag from the front seat he reloaded his weapon and placed it in the waistband of his pants. Sipping from a water bottle, he had to fight the urge to drain it of its entire contents. He had no idea when he would get fresh water again.

A cold beer sure would be good right about now, he thought.

Taking inventory of his bag, he had useful items such as a flashlight and batteries, a hunting knife, binoculars, and a military type rain poncho. He also had some bottled water, breakfast bars and cans of tuna. Also in the bag was his shaving kit.

The shave kit was all he had had time to grab when he made his escape and then only because the extra ammo for his handgun was inside. The items in the overnight bag had been there since a recent camping trip. The gun he had packed Monday morning for protection while on his business trip. A trip that was to take him to the capitol, then up Interstate 77 into North Carolina then back to the upstate before returning home to Charleston.

He wondered if he would ever be home again. If he would ever see his wife Susan again. He was at least two hundred miles away with no transportation, no way of communicating and no way of knowing if she was even still alive.

John decided to look through the car for anything else of use. In the trunk he found, a blanket, crowbar, first aid kit and a ball of twine. In the front of the car were a couple of maps, some pens, a box of tissue, his running shoes and a jacket. He added these items to his other meager possessions placing everything except the crow bar, the jacket and the blanket in the bag. He rolled the blanket up and tied it with string then tied it to his bag. Using more of the twine, doubling it up three times for strength, he fashioned a make shift sling for the crow bar which would allow him to carry it over his shoulder.

The running shoes he changed into and put his dress shoes in the bag. He knew that any moment he might have to run for his life again.

He needed to decide what to do next. Survival was his first priority. Getting home and finding Susan was second. He could do her no good if he was dead so he knew he had to be careful and not take any uncalculated risks in his anxiousness to get home.