Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (3 page)

Weeks had gone by since Air Force Major Freda Nash had
indulged in a drink. In fact, since the hell of a bender she went on after
learning of the loss of her good friend, Delta Force Commander Mike Desantos,
she’d all but sworn off the stuff. But the satisfied feeling of victory was
diminishing. Softening around the edges. True, the nukes stolen from Minot Air
Force Base were now back in the custody of the United States Air Force. And as a
byproduct of that successful mission, thanks to a tip from Cade “Wyatt”
Grayson—one of her
boys
—the perpetrators threatening the survival of the
United States had been, to a man, eradicated. But that was then and this was
now. Due to circumstances beyond her control a monumental decision had to be
made. And the monkey wrench thrown into her machine was the temporary stand-down
orders President Valerie Clay had recently dropped onto her and newly promoted
General Cornelius Shrill’s collective laps.

She kicked off her shoes and pushed her chair away from her
desk. She had purposefully turned off all but the
red phone
—the direct land
line connecting Schriever with the new White House deep inside Cheyenne Mountain,
the old NORAD facility twenty miles to the southwest. Sequestered in her
cramped little office over the last six hours mulling over the pros and cons of
actually following through with her foolhardy plan had left her hungry, angry,
tired, and lonely. But not necessarily in that order. Mostly she was lonely and
had been since Z-Day plus one. The last three hundred and sixty some odd
minutes, every second of which saw her locked in a battle of self will, had done
nothing to ease the feeling of emptiness. Instead it had brought her to the
doorstep of a conclusion to the detriment of her mind, body, and spirit. She
was fighting a monumental headache that had her neck muscles corded and looking
like twisted cables beneath the skin.

“Hell, Freda,” she said to herself. “I think it’s five
o’clock somewhere. Prime time to self-medicate.” A little liquid pain killer,
she reasoned, wasn’t far from whatever tranquilizer her own doctor would have prescribed—had
he not perished along with the thousands upon thousands of other Colorado
Springs residents. She rose and retrieved the tequila bottle from its hiding
place. Closing the filing cabinet, she cast her gaze on the photo of her and
her daughter Nadia. It was the first day of college and the USC freshman was on
the receiving end of a kiss from her doting mom. Nash closed her eyes and
relived the moment. There had been a breeze from the east, possibly the stirrings
of a Santa Ana. It had been spring, but since it was dry and eighty degrees
Freda had been uncomfortable in her uniform. It didn’t show in the picture on
the wall. Both women wore smiles. Nash’s a little tight, like her smartly
ironed and rarely worn dress blues. And Nadia’s was toothy and wide, the
prospect of autonomy and boys no doubt the culprit.

Nash placed the bottle, a squat rocks glass and a pair of shot
glasses on her desk blotter.

She retrieved a tripod from next to the filing cabinet,
extended the legs, and powered on the attached video camera. Placed it a few
feet from her desk and checked that the autofocus was engaged.

“Fuck it.” She twisted the cap and crinkled her nose. If
this tequila was made from agave somebody had wiped their ass with it first. It
definitely was not Patron. And it certainly smelled like ass.

Three fingers went neat into the rocks glass. She didn’t
bother lining shots up for the fallen. Since Z-Day there were just too many for
her to acknowledge. So she poured another two count into her glass in honor of
Mike “Cowboy” Desantos.

She engaged in a staring contest with the golden-hued
liquid. Just as she was about to nod off the AC unit grumbled to life and the
unexpected blast of cooled air had her wide awake and the tasks awaiting
completion were once again front and center in her mind.

On her desk, sitting amid stacks of unfiled paperwork inches
high, was her Panasonic laptop. Frozen on the screen was the compilation of satellite
video footage she’d been watching on and off over the last six hours.

She looked at her watch. It was nearing noon and she realized
she hadn’t eaten since yesterday—whatever day that had been.

“Fuck it,” she said again. “Use ‘em or lose ‘em.” Simultaneously
she set the video to moving on the laptop and downed half of the triple shot.

Brook spread the white sheet out on the ground before her.
Conveniently, the grass had been crushed down days before by Daymon, Lev, and
Duncan. There were several spokes running off perpendicular from the landing-pad-sized
circle and capped off, like antenna on a cartoon alien, by smaller car-sized
circles of their own. Seven hours spent on a failed practical joke. She shook
her head remembering the look on Cade’s face when he first saw the manufactured
crop circles. The first words from his mouth would stick with her forever. He
gazed at the trio of survivors responsible, locked eyes with Duncan and said:
Why
in the hell didn’t they take you with them?
To which the funk they’d all
been in from having to exhume and move Jordan’s corpse to the makeshift cemetery
on the hill was immediately lifted as laughter filled the clearing and the tears
of joy flowed.

Still smiling from the memory, Brook cast a cursory glance
over the two-foot wall of grass, located Raven on her bike in the distance, and
only then did she proceed to break down her stubby Colt carbine.

She arranged the parts carefully, trying her best not to
lose any of the small pieces as she’d done in the past.

But slow movements and due diligence weren’t enough, and
once again a small spring, integral to the operation of the bolt carrier group,
squirted from her grasp and skittered a couple of feet before normal friction
brought it to a complete halt, in plain sight—black on white—on the corner of
the sheet.

“Fuck you, Murphy,” she said quietly, policing up the part.
She placed it close to her and wet a scrap of tee shirt with Hoppes #9 and
proceeded to clean and oil all of the applicable components. There was no
instruction taking place. All of the younger survivors, Raven included, could
now just about breakdown and reassemble any of the firearms in the group’s
arsenal, in the dark. So she worked quickly and, using an old toothbrush on the
bigger items, scoured them free of cordite residue and small particles of dirt
and whatever else had found its way into the weapon’s internals.

Ten minutes later she had finished the necessary maintenance,
and while she put the M4 back together her attention was divided between Raven,
who was making lazy laps of the clearing, a shirtless Cade, who was stretching
pre-run, and Sasha, Taryn, and Wilson, who were in a far corner near the tree
line taking turns with Daymon’s crossbow, firing it time and again at the upper
half of a store mannequin they’d brought back from the quarry compound. Though
Cade’s newly honed upper body was easy on her eyes, the latter scene held the
most appeal. For every time the arrow hit its mark, the flesh-colored upper
torso, which was perched atop a long metal pole jammed into the ground, would
shake and shimmy like a drunk at a club doing the ‘white guy’ dance. And much
to Brook’s amusement, by the time the shooter crossed the open ground to
retrieve their arrows—hits and misses alike—the target, as if beckoning the
shooter onto the dance floor, would invariably still be moving at a metronomic
pace somewhere between a Sashay and a half-assed Charleston. That the creepy armless
department store fixture had been hidden in a footlocker along with its stand
and anatomically correct lower half complete with shapely legs and a taut
gravity defying rear end made Brook wonder not only who had stashed it away there
in the first place, but why. The most logical conclusion was someone planned on
making their own clothes sometime down the road. But the most unsettling, she
conceded after a little deeper introspection, was that whomever had taken pains
to squirrel it away in a box and then place that box in a footlocker and in
turn hide the footlocker in a dark corner of the buried Conex container had to
be a little embarrassed by its mere presence, and most likely had planned on
using it in place of human companionship down the road when the need arose.

She threw a shudder thinking about being all alone in the world
with only the dead and her thoughts keeping her company. Like Charlton Heston
in the ‘70s movie Omega Man, she knew she’d be talking to herself first. Then,
before long, maybe an imaginary friend or two would come into play. In the
blink of an eye the nightmarish scenario played out in her head. And unlike
Heston in the film and the person whose mannequin was taking a beating, shot
through with scores of pinpricks of light to the point of becoming nearly see
through, she had a feeling had she lost Cade and Raven she’d jump right past
the mannequin stand in for company and instead suck on the Glock and end it
all. That would shoot her chances of going to Heaven all to hell if her long-held
beliefs rang true. But anything—even Hell or purgatory for that matter—would be
preferable to living out her remaining days without her family.

Just as Brook was securing the carbine’s upper receiver to
its lower half, a shrill scream pierced the air. She lunged for a loaded
magazine, slapped it home and was on her feet just in time to see Cade running an
arm’s length behind Raven’s juddering mountain bike and playfully batting at
her windblown pigtails.

The scream dissipated to nothing. Then, carried on the light
breeze, Brook heard giggling and Raven hollering, “Stop it, Daddy. No fair.
You’re faster than me.”

For a moment, the walking dead be damned, time stood still for
Brook and most everything was alright in her world—or at least in this little
corner of Utah she and her family now considered home.

A contented smile on her face, Brook set the carbine aside
and went to work emptying the three polymer magazines, thumbing all of the
rounds into a jangling pile in front of her crossed legs. After wiping an
errant bead of sweat off on her white tank, she shook them one by one, rattling
any loose dirt free and then blew sharply into each one before finally finger
testing the spring’s movement. Finally satisfied her rifle was
squared away
,
as Cade would say, she began the time consuming process of loading the trio of
magazines with the ninety loose cartridges.

Glenda Gladson looked at herself in the mirror. Eyes the
color of jade peered back. Her face had gone gaunt since the event, a good
thing considering her plan. And though she didn’t have a scale in the house—like
every female Gladson who came before her she abhorred the things, especially
the new
unfudgeable
digital models—she knew by her reflection, and the way
her hips and ankles no longer hurt upon waking, that she’d probably dropped a
good forty or fifty pounds since daily forays to the marina for an ice cream
cone became a luxury of the past. Scattered atop the white oak vanity and
collecting in a small pile around her bare feet were wispy curls of her gray-streaked
auburn hair.

Fighting weight
, she thought to herself, wincing as
another lock lost out to her scissors and drifted feather-like to the hardwood
floor. She figured she was now under a buck fifty sopping wet and all it had
taken to get there was an extinction-level event followed by her town being besieged
by both the dead and a group of local have-nots turned lawless hedonists.

Thankfully almost a month back a squad of soldiers in black
helicopters had arrived unannounced and decimated the undesirables. The attack
lasted less than ten minutes, and by the time she’d fetched the binoculars to
watch the action up on the hill the helicopters were taking off again. But the
Gods still weren’t done challenging her and Louie. And apparently it wasn’t their
time either when the conflagration that first cleansed Eden jumped to
Huntsville, driven by a hot summer wind, and burned ninety percent of the town
but not nearly enough of the walking dead.

Eventually the fire burned out leaving the old Queen Anne and
a couple of other older homes standing on the hill looking west over a sea of
charred timbers and poured concrete foundations, last testaments to the town
founded in 1860.

With all of the homes she was planning on raiding for
supplies gone and her stores of food and water dwindling rapidly, she came to
the conclusion she better get now while she still possessed enough energy to
move and forage. “Yep, old girl,” she mused aloud, still looking at herself in
the mirror. “You’re down to the same svelte chassis you flaunted sophomore year
at Yale.” She cocked her head and smiled, flashing her straight white teeth.
“Look out Skull and Bones boys, here comes Glenda.”

More hair lost the battle to sharpened surgical-grade steel
as a dry rasp emanated from the room beyond.

“It’s going to be alright real soon, Louie. No more
hungering for my flesh every time I walk by.” She opened a clamshell-shaped
compact and dabbed the cotton ball in circular motions in the bluish-tinted
compound inside. “God knows if I put your current condition out of my mind I start
to tingle in all the right places. Hell, Bub, it’s been a decade or more since
you’ve shown me this much attention.
You
hit fifty and your old libido
switch got thrown into the
not now honey
position.”

The makeup went on smooth, casting her already pasty white
skin with a deathly pallor. Paying extra attention to the area around her eyes,
she created faux-shadows from her crow’s feet to the bridge of her nose. Wiped
a liberal amount on both cheeks, creating the perception that they were sunken
even more than they actually were.

“Perfect,” she exclaimed gleefully after a quick up close
look in the compact’s miniature mirror. Snapping it shut, she craned towards
the open French doors behind her, rose, and walked stiffly through them and
onto the second story veranda to survey the streets below. The odor of burnt
flesh so prevalent following the great fires was gone. However, the sickly
sweet pong of carrion had replaced it tenfold. But Glenda had grown accustomed
to it. And acclimatizing herself to the eye-watering stench was part of her
plan and one of the reasons she’d kept Louie around even after it was abundantly
clear that help—let alone a cure for the so-called
Omega
virus—was never
coming.

Thinking about how she came to this point in time, she
walked back inside and sat down at the vanity. Unbeknownst to her, the
normalcy
bias
that she and Louie had fallen victim to early on had saved their lives.
In fact, when all of their neighbors were descending on the sole IGA store in downtown
Huntsville to stock up, the false belief that everything was going to be back
to normal—“As soon as the authorities intervene,” insisted Louie—kept them at
home on the hill and had ultimately saved them from the roving groups of
infected that appeared seemingly out of nowhere the first day of the outbreak.

But it wasn’t until later that she’d figured out where all
of the walking corpses had come from. The close proximity to Ogden and the
natural conduit that was 39 was the main contributor to Huntsville’s downfall.
First the waves of cars and SUVs full of families, some bringing along their
infected, began showing up. Then the soldiers arrived on their heels and
inexplicably sealed off the main roads in and out. But by then the damage had
been done. The genie was out of the proverbial bottle and there was no putting
it back in. So with the numbers of dead quickly multiplying, Glenda had crushed
her rose-colored glasses and went with Louie on the foraging run that had
sustained her to this point. And when they returned she had convinced the usually
reserved Louie to forget about wood putty and repainting the damage and get off
his ass and help her board up the windows and doors on the lower floor.

That move had saved their lives for the second time in as
many days.

But two weeks ago Louie seemed to lose it. Started showing
signs of dementia. Muttering about going to church. Resenting Glenda because of
all of the Sunday drives he was missing out on.

Nothing she’d been through in her life up to that point
could have prepared her for the one-two punch coming next. In the dead of
night, with the flesh-eaters roaming freely outside, Louie had locked her in
their room and went on a stroll to the garage to start the car—“To keep the
battery charged,” he’d said later. But all he’d accomplished during the foray was
getting bit and somehow finding his way from the garage back to the house alone
and confused and bleeding. How Louie escaped the dead was still a mystery to
Glenda. And why none of them had followed him inside afterward she’d never
know. Because by that point Louie couldn’t name the sitting President, let
alone what can of food they’d last shared for dinner.

Glenda had patched him up and hoped for the best. But the
latter wasn’t in the cards. Such a small wound, she’d thought at the time. Louie
lasted six hours. Once he ceased fighting Omega and died for the first time it
took Glenda thirty seconds to tie him to the deathbed and begin planning her
escape.

Louie’s turn was horrific. He fought against his restraints
and snapped at her. In that moment when he crossed the plane from her slack-faced
peaceful Louie to hungering-for-human-flesh Louie she decided that he was going
to help her survive the dead one last time.

Glenda blinked away tears and stared at the photo of her sons.
Pete and Oliver. Both good boys. When the outbreak started Peter was at his
house in Salt Lake City with his small family. Last Glenda heard from him he
was venturing out to the Lowes for supplies so he and his wife and their two
young kids could ride the
event
out
until help arrived
. Oliver,
the youngest at thirty, the odd bird in the family, had been habitually out of
work and was allegedly hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and for all she knew,
was still alive—somewhere. Carefully, Glenda took the framed photo and laid it
face down. She did the same with the most recent school pictures of her grandkids.
The photo in which she and Louis were in their thirty-year-anniversary pose received
the same treatment, leaving them destined to stare at the vanity top together—forever.
Then she retrieved the letter she’d composed earlier and left it on the
overturned frames, in plain sight, where it would be easily found.

With hot tears still rolling down her cheeks, she rose and
walked slowly to the railing and gazed at the downtown core which amounted to
nothing more than a handful of sign poles and a picket of soot-covered light
standards rising above steadfast cement foundations also darkened by the
incredible heat of the passing flames. Save for a few pleasure boats anchored
in place and hiding who knew what behind darkened portholes, the reservoir,
pristine and glasslike under the noon sun, was a scene deserving of a full-page
spread in a travel magazine.

Admiring the tattered pink bathrobe concealing the layers of
magazines she’d diligently duct taped to her arms and legs, Glenda shuffled the
length of the porch, performed a wooden-looking pirouette at the far end and then
limped back, careful to keep her hikers from squeaking on the wood decking
underfoot. And as she transited the twenty feet in plain view of the dozen
corpses patrolling the street below, a cursory glance from them was all the
gimpy stroll garnered.
Perfect
, she thought.
Time to the ice the
cake.

***

This was the phase of the plan Glenda hadn’t given much
thought to. So she stood in the middle of her kitchen, eyes moving over the
counters until her gaze settled on the set of knives there.

Too messy.

She opened drawers and pawed through the specialty cooking
gadgets that rarely saw the light of day. Hefted the metal mallet she’d used
now and again to pound cheap cuts of meat palatable.

Too noisy.

She considered risking a trip to the garage but, fearing an
outcome like her husband’s, quickly dismissed that idea.

Rifling through a little-used drawer she spotted two
possibilities. But seeing as how she had no idea how deep inside the cranium
the area of Louie’s brain the CDC scientist on television said she needed to
destroy was located, she quickly ruled out the pewter-hued pick that worked so
well at rending walnut meat from the shell. Ditto on the sharpened spike that
hadn’t chipped ice since the Reagan era when she’d found a daily drink
necessary to quell the notion that the cowboy President was trying his hardest
to get every man, woman, and child in the United States incinerated in a
nuclear exchange with the old U.S.S.R.

She slammed the drawer, muttered an expletive that would have
made a merchant marine blush, and exited the kitchen. Passed through the little-used
formal dining room and, after throwing the lock, slid the pocket door open with
force sufficient to bang it into the back of its housing. A blast of stale air
hit her in the face as she crossed the threshold. Then, making a beeline for
the sewing table taking up space in the converted butler’s pantry, she looked
at the carpet and realized that she was walking with her normal gait and
another salty outburst left her lips. Followed instantly by: “
Get with the
program, Glenda
,” bellowed loud enough to cause Louie’s reanimated corpse
to answer back from upstairs with a goose-flesh-inducing moan. “Who asked ya?”
she countered as her gaze fell on precisely what she’d come looking for.