The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (2 page)

Jeremy’s groggy mind came instantly alert and
he rolled out of the bed on the opposite side from the intruding
creature. He frantically searched around for his weapons before
remembering that he had left them in the living room down the
hallway. Already sounds of more Loonies breaching the front door of
the trailer reached his ears. He knew that he was trapped and would
be dead if he couldn’t get to his guns before they got their hands
on him. Adrenaline coursed through his veins adding a burst of
speed to his legs and he dove out the bedroom door just as a large,
naked, filthy male Loony with a long, scraggly beard and gray hair
lunged at him across the bed. He felt its long, dirty nails snag on
his pant leg briefly before he twisted out of its reach and
sprinted down the dark hallway directly into the arms of two naked
women. When he ran into them, they tumbled over like bowling pins
and all three fell in a heap onto the carpeted floor. His face had
fallen between the two pendulous jugs of the heavier of the two and
she locked her baggy arms around him, smothering him in the folds
of her sweaty, abhorrent flesh.

He somehow struggled free from her frantic,
grasping hands and jumped over her while her companion pushed out
from underneath both of their bodies. He kicked the smaller woman
in the teeth as hard as he could with his small boots and was
rewarded with a bone-jarring crunch when the toe of his boot
punched through several of her teeth. He then stumbled across their
snarling writhing bodies and dove for the couch where his .223
pistol lay darkly on the paisley cushion. With barely a second to
spare he grabbed up the pistol and rolled onto his back, thumbing
the safety off and pulling the trigger when the sights had found
his first target, the shadowy figure of the gray-haired man who had
been striding over the two prone women as if they didn’t even
exist. The first three rounds slammed into the man’s chest,
punching through his rib cage and exploding out his back, sending
bits of spinal cord and bone back down the hallway and killing him
instantly. The man’s momentum carried him into the living room
where he fell in a heap at Jeremy’s feet.

The two women, one old and fat, the other the
polar opposite – young and skinny, climbed to their feet and faced
the young boy. The skinny one, with blood pouring down her chin
from her rendezvous with Jeremy’s boot was in front and snarling
like a cornered badger. Jeremy shot her through the left eye,
scattering her brains across the wall and the face of the fat
Loony. Before the skinny one could even collapse the fat one had
swatted her aside and charged forward on her elephantine legs.
Jeremy’s first shot hit her in one of her watermelon sized breasts.
The bullet had over-pressurized that ponderous gland as it tore
through into her chest, causing the monstrous tit to rupture in a
spray of red. He immediately fired another round that slammed into
her sternum, adding its shattered, bony splinters to the twenty-two
caliber projectile that shredded her heart and lungs. She toppled
like an old rotted tree onto the body of the gray haired man and
lay there with one leg spasming gruesomely while Jeremy had looked
on in horrific awe.

He had never again left his firearms out of
reach.

For the first week on the road by himself, he
had cried himself to sleep every night, pining for his mother Holly
and his father Steven, and the friends and family he had left
behind and would probably never see again. Yet over the ensuing
weeks, while he fought countless battles to survive, alone in a
post-apocalyptic world, something hardened in him. His childhood
innocence was replaced by a maturing outlook of what the world had
really become for him. He was only ten years old, nonetheless his
mind’s thought processes were forced to operate at a level of
someone much older. The tears stopped flowing one night and he
willed them never to come again.

The creatures that his father had named
‘Loonies’ had once been normal humans until a worldwide virus had
erupted, decoded from their own DNA. With a rapidly evolving
infection, the virus had devastated the functioning parts of the
brain that defined people as human beings, and left a feral animal
behind that was mad with a killer lust. One bite from an infected
individual almost assuredly would spread the infection to the new
victim who would in short time become one of the Loonies. After
trying to escape a horde of the infected, he had been separated
from his parents and Kera, another survivor. He had tried to go
back, however his big biker friend Frank had prevented him,
probably saving his life. The two had then escaped into the
countryside together. He later lost Frank to a pack of Loonies and
had been on his own ever since.

Jeremy removed a can of ravioli that he had
liberated from a home yesterday and proceeded to force open the top
of it with a penknife. After he had cut free one half of the top he
bent it back and then wedged the can in between some white hot
coals of the now softly glowing fire. He sat next to his pack with
his back against the soft, rotten wood of the old log and looked
out across the small babbling brook as darkness gradually enveloped
the area. His ears were on alert for any sounds other then the
chorus of nocturnal insects chiming in the chilly night air.

When the can of food was steaming, he worked
it out of the fire with a stick and the balled up cloth from an
extra shirt. He sat eating and savoring the food in silence,
pleased with himself and his progress so far. Tomorrow he would
have to find a car that still had some juice in its battery so he
could run the GPS unit and pinpoint the direction he should be
headed next.

When he was finished with his meal he
carelessly tossed the can aside and proceeded to spread out his
thin sleeping bag on the ground between the cold water of the
stream and the warmth of the fire. After throwing a few more
branches on the dying fire, bringing it back to life in a brilliant
shower of embers and flame, he checked each of his firearms to make
sure they were ready and then crawled in between the cool fabric of
the bag. He closed his eyes and within minutes was deeply
asleep.

The symphony of insect noises emanating from
the thick forest around the boy ceased as the creature that had
once been a man crawled out from the underbrush on all fours. It
chomped its teeth together in anticipation of its upcoming kill,
saliva dripping in stringlets from its toothy mouth. Its blood red
eyes locked on the dark bundle which steadily rose and fell with
each breath its intended victim took. It skirted around the fire,
giving it a respectable birth while the contradictory urges played
tug-of-war in its diseased brain. It crawled stealthily forward,
its knee knocked into a rock sending it into another with a loud
‘clack’ and it froze in place, blending motionlessly with its
background.

Jeremy came fully awake, his finger going
instinctively to the handgrip of the 9mm pistol he had tucked in
the sleeping bag with him, his ears on high alert for whatever
noise had awoken him from his sleep. The fire had dwindled back to
a few glowing orange coals and barely cast any light beyond a few
feet from its lightly smoking pile.

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end
when he spotted a dark shape lying immobile on the other side of
the fire. As his eyes adjusted he traced the outlines of the form
of a large man. Dark, matted hair covered its angular face and
seemed to hang down like dog ears on each side of its head. Jeremy
could see that its muscular body was also covered in a thick growth
of coarse, dark hair. It crouched there stock-still, its amber eyes
locked steadily onto Jeremy’s, reflecting the dying light of the
fire.

Jeremy slowly withdrew his arm holding the
pistol until it was free of the confining bag and began to lift the
gun toward the dark shape.

The creature saw the movement and
instinctively knew it had been spotted. It howled a demented snarl
and propelled itself with powerful legs over the glow of the fire,
its mouth open and arms thrown wide as it pounced on its prey.

Jeremy drew in a loud breath as the thing
launched itself over the fire at him, growling with a mad rage.
Unconsciously he raised the handgun, his finger tightening on the
trigger. The small glowing dot of the front sight hastily covered
the dark, leaping shape of the naked man. The gun fired loudly in
the quiet clearing right when the creature slammed into the boy and
they both rolled the few feet into the fast running stream. The
handgun flew from Jeremy’s grasp when he hit the water with the
snarling creature on top of him. Water covered him and filled the
sleeping bag, trapping him in its chilly, wet cocoon. The
creature’s powerful weight pressed down tightly on him, forcing his
head under the breathtakingly cold water, the back of his head
grinding into the rocks and sand of the streambed. In a building
panic he pummeled the creature with his arms trying to get free of
the smothering weight of the man-creature and regain the surface
where he could breathe. Finally, his head broke free of the water
and he sucked in a loud lungful of sweet air while the creature
struggled with the wet bulk of the sleeping bag. Jeremy at last
pulled free of the clingy wet material and clamored backwards
through the water away from the rampaging killer.

The thing soon realized that the bundle
before it was empty and its prey was scurrying away. It viciously
tossed the bag aside and strode toward the small boy, throwing out
large plumes of water with each powerful step. Blood ran freely
from a wound in its shoulder, yet it ignored the pain and the
growing numbness in its right arm and lunged at the dark shape of
the boy who was outlined in white foam as the turbulent water broke
around him. Its good arm shot out and a clawed hand closed tightly
around the boy’s small throat. It drew the boy in close, its mouth
opened to deliver a fatal bite to his thin shoulder. Water dripped
from its beard in rivulets, and its fetid breath wafted over the
boy’s face. It let out an anticipatory growl, its teeth inching
closer.

Jeremy’s eyes bulged as the creature squeezed
the breath from his throat. His hands pounded frantically at the
water and streambed as he tried to pull free from the powerful
grasp. His sight had begun to close in around him when his hand
touched a fist sized stone in the shallow water, and as the
creature drew him nearer he pulled the heavy stone free of its
sandy resting place and swung it up in an arc with all his
strength. The rock collided with the creature’s eye-socket,
crushing the thin bones that surrounded it. A guttural moan escaped
the creature’s lips and Jeremy felt its grip release. He fell
backwards into the cold water where he lay gasping for air and drew
great lungfuls through his tortured throat. He gradually got to his
feet while the creature flailed around in the stream, blood oozing
down its wounded face.

With the rock still in his hand he approached
the big creature and swung again with all his might. The thing
threw up an arm and the rock smashed into its forearm instead of
its head, and Jeremy heard a bone splinter. It let out another roar
of pain and lunged at the boy. Jeremy deftly dodged the weakening
creature and ran up onto the bank and over to where his camp had
been. He grabbed his .223 pistol and released the safety, spinning
back toward the water and the approaching Loony. As it climbed the
bank he put two well placed rounds in its hairy chest and watched
it tumble back into the dark water – dead.

The crack from the shots still rang in his
ears and the ghostly afterglow of the shot’s fireballs filled his
eyes when he fell exhausted, cold, and shivering onto the ground
next to the remains of his fire. He wanted to cry again as the
adrenaline left his body and the reality of his situation set
in.

“I’m not a baby!” he cried out to himself,
choking back a sob and stifling his tears. After a few moments he
got shakily to his feet and threw some branches on the fire,
blowing on it to get the flames growing again. He then stood at the
edge of the stream and looked at his handiwork.

The big hairy man lay face up in the water.
Blood, black in the darkness, still leaked from his chest,
shoulder, and head. Jeremy’s sleeping bag had floated a few yards
downstream and snagged against a jumble of branches that clotted
the small waterway. He walked down and retrieved the heavy wet bag
and hung it over a tree limb, trying to wring out as much of the
moisture as he could. He decided to try and retrieve the 9mm in the
morning when he had a better chance of seeing to the bottom of the
stream. Still shivering, he hurriedly undressed from his soaked
clothes and put on the spare set from his pack. Back by the fire he
felt the warmth begin to creep back into his body, and with it the
exhaustion, forcing him to lie down on the cool mossy ground and
slip fitfully into a restless sleep.

Chapter Two

Steven McQuinn woke to the light of the early autumn
sun streaming in through the picture window of the moderately large
great room of the house he was camped out in. Beside him lay the
small and shapely body of the girl who was his travelling
companion. Kera was a dark-haired beauty barely 18 years old with
large, soft crystal-blue eyes that conveyed a promise of youthful
innocence, and generously full-red lips that sometimes bore a
mischievous smile. The only blemish, if you could call it that, was
a sprinkling of light freckles across the bridge of her small nose.
She kind of looked like a slightly younger version of Katy
Perry.

She had grown up considerably since Steven
first met her, what seemed like ages ago in the little community of
Port Royal. After his wife’s death, Kera had helped fill the
painful void left by his beloved Holly and over time she also
helped patch some of the holes torn in his heart. He stood naked in
the warm sunlight looking down at her sleeping form. He cared for
her deeply, although he wasn’t sure if he loved her, or ever could.
It was still too soon after losing Holly for that emotion to raise
its complicated head. Unfortunately, that reverse wasn’t true. Kera
had fallen deeply in love with him and had let him know it verbally
and physically. The sex was fantastic, he admitted to himself.
Maybe that was due to the extreme circumstances in which they found
themselves, partnered with the very real possibility of death
lurking around each corner. They coupled every evening and morning
that chance allowed them. They both savored the warm contact and
passion of their lean bodies during their lovemaking sessions. It
was the only good they seemed to find in this new nightmarish
world.