Read The Book of a Few Online

Authors: Austen Rodgers

Tags: #apocalyptic survival zombies, #logbook, #apocalypse, #ebookundead, #ebook, #Zombies, #zombie, #Apocalyptic

The Book of a Few (6 page)

BOOK: The Book of a Few
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Just as all three of them cleared the locker room door, the first man looked about the break room. He dropped his bag were he stood. Before both Branden and I knew what was happening, the man reached down to his waistband and drew a pistol. He whipped it in our direction and shot at us.

 

I dropped down and lay as flat as I could, hoping that the man wouldn’t shoot much lower. Bullet holes appeared in the table just a few inches above me. I cursed repeatedly, frightened beyond control and out of my mind; I thought about running. They had us pinned down, and this was also my first time getting shot at.

 


Stop! Fucking stop!” I yelled.

 

Silence, for just a moment.

 

“’
Dafuck you doin’ in here?” a plummy voice said from across the room.

 


By the look of those bags, we’re doing the same thing you are, asshole!” Branden said, poking his head out from behind the table. The short man fired again when Branden’s head protruded.

 


Oh yeah?” he said. “Whatcha got there, boy? I seen that camo gun. It’s nice. Best hand it over if you wanna walk again.”

 


I’m not giving you shit,” Branden yelled to the man, then in an undertone told me what to do.

 

Branden provided the strength I needed. In a quick flash, I swung my leg up and out from the cover of the table. Lying on his stomach, Branden peeked around the corner of the table, gun up. While the fat man was reacting to my foot, Branden was already firing. I couldn’t tell if he hit the man, but I noticed that there was a pause in gunfire. I peeked my head up and over to survey the room and lifted my heavy rifle to rest it on the table.

 

One of the taller men was leaving a trail of blood on the floor as he army-crawled in the direction of the door. The other two men were not there. My eyes darted back and forth between multiple other flipped tables and the corners closest to where I saw them last. Thinking that they were just waiting for a moment to get a shot at us, I stayed on guard for a moment while Branden came back under the thin cover of the table to replace the shells he had fired.

 

Seconds went by slowly. My heart pounded, hands drenched in sweat, and I could feel my body shaking involuntarily. I kept the end of my barrel bouncing and sweeping around the room. Just as I swept over to a table on the far right side of me, I saw a figure appear from a corner on my left. In the brief amount of time it took me to recognize it, a shot was already fired and I flinched. Luckily, the man missed me. I planned to return fire, but the bearded man was running toward the door. I lined my sights up as best as I could, but I’m not very good with moving targets. As you could guess, I missed, and the man escaped the room.

 

Branden gave chase first, and I followed behind him. We kept our guns pointed where the man went, and we swept the room for the missing third man. We couldn’t spot him quickly, so we assumed he must have run out before the bearded man did. Looking outside from the main desk, we saw the bearded man behind the wheel of the van. The missing man was between the driver and the passenger seat in clear sight.

 

Branden and I both had the same unanimous feeling: fuck these assholes. But Branden took it a step further than I did. He pointed his gun at the vehicle and began shooting. The gunshot vibrated my eardrums into a ringing sensation. Branden emptied his gun quickly and began running after the vehicle, leaving me behind in shock of his ferocity.

 

Branden reloaded the shotgun before firing at the van again while it drove out of the parking lot and down the hill. I stood outside the main doors, watching Branden. When he returned to the building, I asked him what drove him to attack the men to that extent.

 


Well, they were bent on either stealing from us or killing us. If we didn’t try to take them down a peg, what would stop them from trying it on someone else?” Branden said.

 


I don’t think that they were a threat to us by the time they got in their van. You don’t know if they would kill someone else if we didn’t kill them first. That’s like saying someone is guilty until they’re proven innocent. It’s backwards.”

 


Better to be safe than sorry.” Branden glared at me for criticizing his actions.

 

I disregarded his transgressions in conversation, but not in mind.

 

With the sun setting on the horizon, we decided it would be in our next best interest to find a secure place to sleep. We were practically stranded at the Warehouse considering that our vehicle, which was running on fumes, was trashed. So, we decided to roll with the circumstances and find an office or bathroom somewhere in the building to sleep for the night. But first, we felt it was a good idea to check and see what remained inside.

 

Walking past the dead body of the man that Branden had just killed reminded us of him. We took our chances with the roaming infected and dragged the body outside the building. In the parking lot, we set the body ablaze as best as we could. Without gasoline, the body would be left smoldering overnight, but it was the best that we could do.

 

Just through the locker room is the equipment room where various forklifts and other pieces of machinery are stored. To the left of this room is the refrigerated storage area, and to the right is where the mechanics store all their parts and the different pieces of gear needed for the Warehouse to remain operational. We ignored the equipment room and Mechanics’ room, and headed straight to where we knew the food would be.

 

Trust me, there is still a boatload of food in here. While we didn’t charge in there recklessly and jump into a mound of bananas while yelling in victory, it was very challenging to retain the joy. This was the kind of reprieve I needed.

 

With the knowledge that there was a reward for our efforts, we decided that it would be best to do a full sweep of the building. We backtracked from the refrigerated area filled with cheeses, meats, fruits, juices, and the like to the Human Resources offices. After finding nothing of value or danger in those offices, we went to search the Nurse’s office, but were held back by the locked door. We tried slamming our combined weight into the door, but we weren’t able to get inside.

 

We left the office as it was, and headed toward the Mechanics’ room. Inside this room, there is a parts storage area, which is literally a chain-link cage. The metal fence of roughly twenty square feet is tucked into a corner of the room. Inside there are various screws and nuts for generic fixes and complicated ones alike. There is also blue full-body gear for those who worked in the frozen section of the Warehouse.

 


This looks like a good place to sleep,” Branden said, rattling the fence a bit. I couldn’t help but agree.

 

Within the first ten steps through the shelving units that sit inside the cage, Branden held out a hand to stop me. When I went to ask what the problem was, he hushed me. We went further into the cage as slowly and as quietly as we could. Almost feeling a sense of danger, I stayed close to Branden. All along the furthest wall of the cage, the heavy gear is hung up neatly. When we were but five feet from it, Branden stopped for a moment and turned his head to the side.

 

I curiously watched Branden from behind. He appeared to be looking and listening about the room for something. Yelling came from behind the rows of freezer bibs and jackets, followed by a haunting face. An infected man emerged and reached out toward Branden, who was the closest to him. The savagery of the surprise caused me to startle.

 

Branden jumped as I did when the danger presented itself. An arm wrapped completely around Branden before I realized what was happening. With Branden barely able to keep the zombie’s mouth off his skin, I took action. With a burst of strength, I lifted up the butt of my gun to meet the ghoul’s head. It didn’t do much to him other than cause the zombie to lose his grip for a moment so Branden could take a step back.

 

Branden cursed and bashed the creature’s knee with the butt of his own gun. It fell to its stomach, and Branden repeatedly hit it with no sign of ever tiring. But with no need to further explain and the morbid creature taken care of, we dragged its body from the cage because no one would want to sleep next to it.

 

Branden, in his oddity, thought it would be best to go get a forklift to pin the body to the ground rather than taking the time to try to burn it. I was baffled by this, but didn’t waste my breath objecting. We made an agreement to be sure to burn it tomorrow. He said something about the possibility of the body re-animating, and how he wanted to see if it would come back to life. But wouldn’t that make it some sort of re-zombie or super-zombie?

 

Anyways, that brings us to now. There has been so much excitement today, and I don’t know whether I hate it or enjoy it. With all the years of secretly hoping for the world to end, and now that it’s here, I can’t decide if this is good or bad. What I really wanted was the simplicity of the life in a zombie apocalypse. I thought I could get used to the day-in, day-out cycle of kill, steal, eat, and sleep. Life without the family complications, bills, social status, and long-term goal setting would be easy. You take your life one day at a time, and the only goal you have is to survive.

 

While it is rough for me, I still think I might be able to work through it.

 
Day Three

Getting shot sucks. If anyone reading this has any idea what being shot is and has never experienced being shot, keep it that way. Why am I even bothering with this? I could be trying to talk with savage cavemen who don’t know English. They could use this notebook as kindling for a fire, or toilet paper, for all I know or care. Never mind, I take that back. I do care. If there is any hope that someone someday finds this, I want them to know this little tiny insignificant life is what I went through. I just don’t want my suffering to be for nothing.

 

Branden and I made our way through the rest of the Warehouse this morning and ended up finding something we weren’t expecting. Past the refrigerated area is the frozen section. Ice cream, skillet meals, pizza, and the like are stored behind insulated doors. Inside the freezer part of the building, while Branden and I were making a quick pass through, we heard some grunting noises from down below.

 

There are three levels to the warehousing part of the building. The second and third floors are where the product is stored, and then later it is sorted onto a pallet that fulfills each retail store’s order. Now, it’s all quite automated, but workers are needed to manually move different products to these order pallets. Both the refrigerated and frozen section of the Warehouse has seven aisles.

 

When standing between these aisles on either the second or third floor, one could look down to the main floor. Also in between the aisles are large mechanical cranes that zip up and down, moving pallets of product to their designated places in the aisles after they have been received into the Warehouse. Metal railing is the only thing that could stop someone from potentially falling a story or two onto the concrete main floor.

 

Anyways, we headed down a flight of stairs to the main level of the freezer to investigate the sound. Behind a metal fence that keeps unauthorized people from entering are the cranes that move along their single train-like track. Off to the side of one of the cranes that towered three stories above us, we saw a huddled blue mass. Once we got through the gate, which took us a few moments, we realized that this person must have worked here. How else would he have gotten a hold of the blue gear?

 

I’d recognize that brown curly hair anywhere. We kept our distance from the old coworker we knew as Joey Dellit for a few moments. A trail of blood led to Joey huddled in a small ball on the floor. Even though I was unable to tell if he was still bleeding, or infected, I took a chance and stepped closer. I couldn’t tell if he was bitten as the gear he was wearing only revealed his face. He looked up at me for a brief second.

 

I figured if he were infected, he would have at least tried to lurch toward me. Since he did not, I slung my rifle over my back and began pulling him by his arms. Branden asked me what I was doing.

 


Probably saving his life,” I answered shortly, grunting as I pulled.

 

Branden didn’t bother to help me slog him out of the bitter cold. Well, I suppose he did open a few doors. I tugged Joey all the way back to the cage and began removing the heavy gear he was in. His hands, face, and feet were pale and seemingly frozen. I felt sorry for the guy, all curled up in the freezer. His body wasn’t even shivering, and I had heard before that if you stop shaking when you’re cold, your body is about to give out. So yeah, I saved a life today.

BOOK: The Book of a Few
10.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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