Slow Burn: A Zombie Novel (51 page)

What the fuck’s happened here?
he thought, beginning to come out of his fog and realizing that something was a tad off.

His boss turned towards him with blood smeared all over his face and with a large piece of intestine dangling from his mouth. Casper, shocked at what he saw, reflexively raised the revolver and fired. Striking his boss right between his eyes, the large caliber soft lead bullet removed a large part of his boss’s skull on the way out the back of his head. With a thud, his antagonist hit the floor.

A sense of accomplishment and peace almost overwhelmed Casper. Swiftly he reached down and drew his knife. Using its extremely sharp serrated blade he removed his boss’s ears. Casper removed the plastic liner from a small nearby can and dropped the ears into it. He stood and looked at the once hot secretary with sadness. She was one of the few colleagues that he liked and was planning to spare. She had been kind to him and Casper often would give her candy to take home to her young son. A single mom, Casper knew she was being exploited by their boss as well. Since it appeared she was now an innocent victim, he decided he would leave her corpse alone.

As he stood there feeling sorry for her, her eyes snapped open and her fingers clawed at him, grabbing for his legs.

“
Holy shit!” Casper bellowed, jumping back, and watched the woman struggle to her feet, actually getting tripped up in her own ropes of intestines.

No longer feeling pity for her, Casper unloaded his revolver into the woman. Several strikes to her body threw the once shapely woman back against the wall. The last round from the revolver took her in the temple while she tripped again on her own guts.

Casper stared at the woman who should have been dead and was still somehow able to try and make a go for him.

Bitch had it coming after all, he supposed. That’s what he got for trying to be nice.

“
Well I wasn’t going to do this to you sweetie, but you did try to attack me,” he whispered to her corpse as he knelt down with his knife and began to saw at her ears, thinking all the while that he had many more downstairs to add to his new collection.

“
Have to hurry,” he told the corpse as he worked. “I’m sure the police will be arriving any minute, and I want to be ready.”

* * * * * * * *

That had been almost a month earlier, and the police had never shown up. Casper had laid out several traps for the S.W.A.T team that he was sure would hit the building at any time, but hadn’t. He’d expected to go down in a hail of gunfire, or dueling it out against a police sniper. Instead, Casper found himself surrounded the next morning by a mob of people, stacked several layers deep around the post office building. They looked revolting in nature and were trying in vain to get inside. They ignored Casper’s repeated threats to leave as he was armed. They ignored his warning shots, and after several days of waiting, they ignored him when he shot several amongst their midst. They merely stumbled from high-powered rifle rounds to the body. Only devastating headshots put them down. The whole experience became surreal, and Casper found himself living a nightmare.

They forever longed for his flesh. They knew he was inside, and he knew what they wanted. He eventually found a radio and listened in morbid fascination at what was happening around the country. Then the radio went silent. That was when Casper began to feel totally alone. He began to feel guilty over what he had done, what he had wanted to do. With everything that had happened, his prior problems now seemed so insignificant in comparison. Casper then went into severe depression over the following weeks. He slept for days, only awakening to use the bathroom and drink some water. He grew desperate, his mind racing with plans for escape. He didn’t have enough remaining ammunition to try and break out alone, and no one was coming to rescue him.

He had seen a few vehicles pass at first, but they soon stopped. There had been a lot of helicopters at first as well. Now even they were gone. The only redemption he found in his former pathetic existence was the knowledge that he had tried to kill his fellow coworkers on a day that they were already doomed to die. He had been somewhat spared that guilt. Gradually he had crawled back from near suicide, having almost taken his own life several times. Casper finally vowed that, if given a second chance, he would try and make a positive difference. That drive was all that kept him going at this point. He now watched that same group and sighed, for they never tired. He saw several of the same faces in the crowd; he had even given some of them names.

“
Not today,” he taunted. “You will not get me today.”

He dropped down to a large puddle next to him and slurped thirstily at the brackish water.

“
Yuck,” he muttered. “That shit’s terrible.”

However, that was about all he had left to drink. The power had been out for nearly two weeks, and the water stopped soon after. After going through all his provisions he had brought with him for the siege and raiding the employee break room fridge, he had to next resort to drinking from the toilets. He searched undelivered packages for food, and finally ran completely out of food yesterday. He was also forced to carry all of his coworkers’ bodies to the rooftop and toss them over the edge, just to stop the smell. Now Casper was running out of time.

This siege had gone on far too long. He sat down wearily and rested his eyes. Something would have to give, and soon.

The huge John Deere front end loader easily smashed aside yet another stalled and abandoned vehicle as I cleared a path for our small convoy. Chris was in his big GMC truck pulling a flatbed trailer, and Dan was bringing up the rear in the bus. Inside the bus riding with Dan was Mattie and Stephen, as well as several others from our now expanding population of survivors. We had picked up the huge tractor from the city’s street department facility, a place that they used to fill the salt trucks with in the winter. When heading to the safe zone, the surviving city workers had kindly left one behind, and it was now clearing the road for us. The large machine was actually quite easy to handle after a self-taught crash course in its operation.

We were currently on our way to commandeer a huge generator from the local train station to use at the prison as our compound’s power supply. It was Chris’s idea, and he planned out the operation. The last week had been spent gathering a mountain of supplies for our new home. If we could avoid the zombies, there was much for the taking. Canned food was high on our list, along with fuel, bottled water, ammunition and a mountain of batteries for starters. Clothing, shoes, medical supplies, tools and hygiene items were also high on the list. The raids had been quick excursions, in and out, with a focus on safety. Yesterday Stephen had picked up a high-end power washer for removing zombie grime from our vehicles after raids. That was when Chris had mentioned our next largest need, a stable power supply.

Weaving and smashing a path through the clogged streets released a lot of stress. Turning off Cass Street, I maneuvered the large tractor down a few side streets and proceeded south towards the train station. Slowing to a stop near the large generator we came to take, I decided it was a good thing we brought a lot of manpower. It would take several people to prep the generator to move and several more to secure the area that was teeming with zombies. I climbed down from the tractor, and several of the disgusting creatures approached as the others disembarked from their vehicles. We had been taught again and again that they were drawn to noise.

Chris began to shout orders at the men and women that were pulling security for the operation, while others scrambled with tools towards the generator. The security team engaged the approaching zombies, and I took a few minutes to look at our target. It was a huge Caterpillar 350 KW diesel generator that had a weight of 9,000 lbs. It would easily provide enough juice to power any electric needs at the prison stronghold of ours, flood lights and all.

If it could run a train station, it would keep Stephen’s HAM radio working.

We were not far from Kettle and his men, and I figured it was a testament to our growing strength that we got to it before he did.

Stephen was in charge of securing the northern perimeter of the train station operation along with five other volunteers. He handed out his extra assault rifles and Mossberg 590 shotgun to the guys with him, not wanting to be under gunned for this important undertaking. Initial contact with the zombies was very light and sporadic at his end and most of his kills so far were from a distance. Looking through the ACOG scope on his AR-15 rifle, Stephen spotted several zombies a block or two away. They appeared to be chasing somebody, but whoever it was wasn’t running towards his group, and they quickly disappeared out of sight.

“
Well if they’re too dumb to run towards us they’re out of luck,” Stephen told his nearest teammate. “I can’t afford to send out a rescue party for every idiot that runs off.”

“
Hope they make it,” the man replied with a shrug.

Stephen made a quick scan and located several more zombies approaching from the east and signaled to his men to engage. The female was forgotten as more tireless foes came into view. Stephen picked out the lead zombie, a white male with a bloated belly, and relieved him of his head with a single shot.

“
Just gets easier every day!” he smirked.

* * * * * * * *

Feminine screaming and gun shots in the distance ripped Casper out of a sound sleep.

Damn, when did I fall asleep?
he thought as he scrambled to the roof edge to see what the ruckus was.

Peering down at the street below, he was struck speechless at what appeared to be an angel with long red hair flowing behind her, running in a torn and dirty white nightgown. The woman was obviously getting tired as she was slowly being overtaken by a group of several infected pursuers that were chasing her past his building. He raised his rifle scope up to his eye and focused on the lead target. Casper almost recoiled at the sight of the man’s face. Most of the lower jaw was missing, along with a sizable chunk of its neck.

“
What the fuck?” he muttered. “These assholes can take a serious beating.”

He looked down at his WWII era military surplus rifle, and again worked the bolt to make sure it was loaded.

“
Only fifteen rounds left,” he reminded himself. “Gotta make em count.”

The woman’s cries for help struck a chord in him. Taking aim once again, Casper lined up a head shot on the closest target and squeezed the trigger. Red mist billowed from the man’s skull when it literally exploded from the bullet as it struck the lumbering man between the eyes.

“
Take that, fucker,” Casper said with satisfaction. “Headshots kill!”

Chambering another round, Casper began to reduce their numbers until there was only one pursuer left. That last pursuer was within feet of the woman, who had fallen after tripping on debris in the roadway. A quick cycle of the action and he was on target, not even feeling the recoil of the rifle as he exploded the final creature’s head.

Exhilarated that he had saved her, Casper snatched up his rifle, ran down to the main floor and un-chained the front door, opening it.

She had drawn the zombies away! They’d somehow saved each other.

Setting foot outside, Casper’s joy was immediately dashed as it looked like she had run off once again.

That’s gratitude for ya
, he thought while staring at the trail of corpses he had put down with precision from the rooftop. He added more rounds into the rifle’s magazine.

Hearing more gunfire to the south, Casper made a quick and easy decision and left the silent tomb of his old workplace behind him. There was nothing left there but bad memories, memories he wanted to put behind him. He increased his pace and began to make his way to the ever growing sounds of battle.

Taking up the slack in the chains, the large tractor lifted the generator with the bucket. Once I got it cleared of its foundation, I carefully backed up to where Chris had the flatbed trailer waiting. With a few of the mechanics we brought with us guiding me, we got it loaded onto the trailer. After securing it to the trailer with heavy chains, we took a break as the others on the perimeter returned to the vehicles. Chris was very excited about the raid going off without a hitch until we took stock of our current ammo supply. The attacking zombies had rapidly picked up the attack, and we had burned through a very large amount of what we’d brought. We were also dangerously close to running through our entire stockpile at the prison. Many rounds had been expended over the past week trying to keep the zombies as far from our prison stronghold as possible.

While we were taking inventory, Dan spotted someone approaching us from the north.

Several weapons were brought to bear on the man, who quickly surrendered with his arms up over his head.

“
Don’t shoot!” the man said. “I mean you no harm.”

Dan and Chris called him the rest of the way in and brought him up to me for introductions.

“
The name’s Casper, Casper Flanagan,” the man continued, slinging his rifle and extending a hand. “I was a postal carrier before the rabies epidemic or whatever this is, and have been stuck in the post office for the last month.”