The Adventures of Steve and Terry: The Zombie Chronicles (5 page)

“What would be the point?” Angela
asked.

“I would rather starve to death
than be eaten alive by zombies. I mean, it’s not like an animal attack. Animals
have instincts to go for the throat, to go for the kill, not zombies, they just
bite. And with their tiny little mouths, it would be a horrible way to go.”
Both Terry and Angela just looked at him. “What? I’ve had a lot of time to
think about it, okay?”

“I’m with Steve on this,” Terry
said.

Angela looked from one to the
other. Finally she nodded. “Okay, I’m in.”

They made their way back through
the ducts, coming out in an area relatively free of zombies. They worked their
way from room to room until they finally came up with a plan. They were
standing behind a sealed door, a horde of zombies on the other side.

“Okay,” Angela said. “We’ll open
this door and I’ll herd the zombies into here. Then we run through and close
the door behind us. It’ll seal permanently once we close it, trapping them in
this small room and freeing up the area they’re in.”

“Got it,” Steve said.

Steve and Terry took up position
on either side of the door. Angela nodded to them and Steve pressed a button,
the door sliding open. Angela ran through, screaming and hollering, grabbing
the zombies’ attention. She came running back through the door, a huge pack of
zombies on her tail.

“Now,” Angela yelled.

Steve and Terry booked it through
the door, hitting the plunger and sealing it behind them. They both leaned back
against it, breathing heavily in relief. Suddenly, Terry looked around.

“Uh, Steve?”

“What?” Steve asked.

“Where’s Angela?”

“Wasn’t she right behind us?”

“I don’t see her,” Terry said.

“What?” Steve pushed off of the
door and turned around. “Oh, damn.”

Terry turned to see Angela looking
at them through a small square window in the door. She was yelling at them, but
they couldn’t hear her through the door.

“She looks pissed,” Terry said.

“Yeah.” Steve tried to reopen the
door, but it was sealed. “Just stay still,” he yelled through the door. “Their
vision is based on movement.”

“I think you’re thinking of a
t-rex,” Terry said.

“Oh, right.” They saw Angela get
dragged away from the door and eaten. Both winced. “Okay, that was my bad,”
Steve said.

Suddenly another side door smashed
open and zombies came pouring through. Terry opened fire with his pistol, Steve
hitting any that got close with his fire-axe. They were driven back, constantly
on the defensive. They finally backtracked into a bank of elevators. Steve looked
to the elevators, but remembered what had happened the last time they had
opened one.

“We have to risk it,” Terry said,
firing into the mass of zombies coming toward them.

Steve hit the button and they
waited. Finally the doors opened with a ding, and thankfully, the car was
empty. They rushed inside, the doors closing just as the zombies reached them.
Terry leaned back against the wall.

“Now what?” he asked.

Steve was looking at the buttons.
“There’s a button here that says Squirrel City.”

“Really?” Terry asked.

“Yeah.”

“Push it!”

Steve pushed the button and the
elevator started to rocket upward. It was several minutes, but it finally
opened with a ding. They stepped out into a white hallway. “It looks like we’re
in a hospital,” Steve said.

“That was surprising easily,”
Terry said.

“I know. You figure the mercs
woulda known about an elevator that leads directly to the city.”

“No accounting for brains,” Terry
said with a shrug.

They followed the hallway past a
nurse’s station and into a waiting room. They walked through the automatic
sliding doors into a wasteland. Whatever Squirrel City had once been, it was no
longer. Abandoned cars filled the street, many on fire. They could hear gunfire
and screams. The plague of the undead had come to the city.

“Well, here we go,” Steve said,
lifting his fire-axe.

“Right,” Terry said, leveling his
pistol.

IV.
Squirrel City

Officer Julia Randall listened to
the police scanner. The city was being overrun by the walking dead, actual
zombies for crying out loud. Whoever heard of such a thing? She listened as
police units called for backup, as positions were overrun. Finally she grabbed
her pistol, zipped up her knee-high boots, and made her way to the precinct.

Julia entered the precinct to find
people everywhere. Officers were rushing to and fro, some struggling with the
living dead they had picked up earlier before they realized they were in fact
zombies, and not just disorderlies. Julia quickly pulled her pistol and started
shooting the zombies in the head.

All around the station cops hit
the ground as the shots rang out. Julia unloaded her clip, hitting four
zombies. Five bullets found the mark. Eleven went wild, hitting the wall,
shattering a window, and even hitting one officer in the leg. Once the shots
went quiet the whole station stood in utter silence. Finally the watch chief
stood from behind his desk where he had taken cover when Julia started
shooting.

“Good god woman,” the commander
said. “Isn’t it bad enough we’re overrun by zombies? Now we gotta worry about
getting shot by one of our own?”

“Well, I was just . . . you know,
I was . . .”

“Look Randall, you’re a damn good
cop, but you are one hell of an awful shot. So do us a favor and keep the gun
holstered and let us handle this. Believe it or not we had things under control
before you showed up.”

Julia looked a little abashed.
“Yeah, okay.”

“Up to no good as usual, huh
Randall?” Julia turned to see Andrew Wilcox, a SWAT team member.

“Do you see what’s going on? We’re
overrun; the city’s gone. I’m headin out of town. You should do the same.” With
that Julia turned and left the station behind.

Julia got in her car and headed
out of town, but she hit traffic jam after traffic jam. There were five ways
out of Squirrel City, but all were blocked. Finally, after hitting yet another
traffic jam heading out of town, she got out of her car, along with many
others. They began walking, but to her shock they reached a massive wall.

“Where in the hell did this come
from?” Julia asked of no one in particular. “You think we woulda noticed them
building a huge freaking wall.”

The sun was just setting. Julia
realized there was no way out of the city and that she would now live or die by
how well she could survive the dead. And, unfortunately, that meant being a
good shot. “Damn!” she swore before heading back to her car.

Eli slowly opened his eyes. He
looked around to see he was in a sterile white room. Tubes and wires were
hooked up to him. Eli pulled the tubes and wires free, standing and going to
the door. It was locked from the inside. He unlocked it and stepped out into a
hospital wing, though there were no people. There was an eerie quiet hanging
over the place. Eli walked on shuffling feet. It felt as if he had been drugged
or something. He finally reached the entrance of the hospital and stepped out
into an abandoned city street. Overturned or burning cars filled his view. A
stiff breeze reminded Eli he was only wearing a hospital gown, which was open
and exposed in the back. He made his way through the streets, finally coming
across an abandoned sporting goods store. Unfortunately the only clothes they
had were hunting camo, making him look like a walking tree.

Fortunately though, in their haste
to flee, most people seemed to have left the weapons. Eli loaded up on all the
weapons and ammo he could carry. He stepped back out onto the street strapped
to the nines. He then noticed a chopper sitting next to the curb. He smirked,
it just so happened he knew how to hotwire a motorcycle.

Julia had been on the move for the
last hour. She had checked every way out of town, all were blocked by the
massive wall that apparently no one had seen being built. Her car was running
low on gas, but she didn’t dare stop. It wasn’t just zombies one had to worry
about now. Society had seemed to completely break down. It wasn’t bad enough
the zombies were killing people off left and right, but now they had to worry
about looters and armed gangs.

Julia was so busy looking around,
she almost ran over someone who ran in front of her car. As it was, she slammed
on the breaks and a man wearing tactical gear slammed his hands on the hood. He
then lifted his hand to shield his eyes and looked through the windshield.

“Randall?”

“Wilcox?” Julia opened the door
and stepped partially out. “What are you doing?”

“Running; trying to find a way out
of the city.”

“Get in the car.” Wilcox climbed
in and they peeled off.

They didn’t get very far when a
lifted truck t-boned them at an intersection. The truck managed to back out of
the wreck and take off with the screeching of tires. Julia and Wilcox climbed
out of the car, Wilcox rubbing his neck and stretching.

“Assholes!” he yelled in the
direction of the retreating vehicle.

“They were running from zombies!”
Julia said pointing. A horde of at least fifty of the walking dead was bearing
down on them. “What do we do?”

Wilcox looked around. “Quick, in the
church.”

They rushed to the church, a
massive gothic style building. They burst through the double doors, slamming
them behind them. The dead, sensing prey, continued to advance. They slammed
into the doors, nearly knocking them open. Wilcox just managed to hold the
doors closed while Julia wedged a bar through the handles.

“That should hold them,” Julia
said.

“We can hope,” Wilcox said looking
around.

Suddenly a man stepped from behind
a pillar holding a pistol. He pointed it at the two officers with shaking
hands. “You can’t stay here. This is my place.”

Wilcox and Julia looked at each
other, then both drew their pistols and pointed them at the man. “Two to one
says we can stay here, too,” Wilcox said in a steady voice.

The man looked from one pointed
gun to the other, then he turned and fled through the church. “Good riddance,”
Julia said.

Wilcox and Julia started to look
around the church when they heard the man scream. Both looked at each other and
then leveled their guns.

“I’ll check it out,” Julia said.

She made her way to another
section of the church. She found row upon row of pews, but no sign of the gun
wielding civilian. She then noticed the man’s pistol lying on the ground under
a pew. Julia knelt down, and stretching, just managed to grab the gun. She sat
up just in time to see a large four legged creature on the wall near the roof.
It had pink skin that looked more like sinew than actual skin. It had a short,
blunt snout and no eyes. It sniffed the air experimentally, its head swaying
from side to side.

Julia sat perfectly still,
terrified. She had never seen anything like it before. The creature continued
to sniff the air. Finally it turned toward Julia and let out a loud roar
revealing long pointed teeth. Julia leveled both pistols and unloaded.

The creature ran along the wall,
onto the roof, and then with an incredible leap it disappeared into the
darkness. Julia dropped the empty pistol of the civilian and ran back to
Wilcox, reloading her own gun as she did. She reached where Wilcox should have
been, but she didn’t see him. She put her back to the confessionals when a hand
suddenly clamped around her mouth and pulled her into one of the booths.

She relaxed when she realized it
was just Wilcox. The man silently pointed to three points, each one where
another of the creatures sat near the roof.

“What do we do?” Julia asked.

“We’ll step out, I’ll go right,
you left. We’ll try and drive them to one corner and then take them out.”

“Got it.”

Both of them stepped out and
opened fire on the three creatures. This was exactly the type of shooting Julia
excelled at because she didn’t actually have to hit anything. The shooting
startled the creatures and at first they did as Julia and Wilcox had planned,
but then they seemed to realize they were being driven. Two of the creatures
scattered, while the third leapt from where it hung on the ceiling to land in
the center aisle between the pews. Wilcox and Julia opened up on it, but the
bullets seemed ineffectual.

Suddenly the roar of a motorcycle
could be heard. A headlight flashed through the large stained-glass window
behind the pulpit a second before a bike shattered the glass. The creature
leapt at the motorcycle, but it struck the beast and smashed it flat against
the floor, crushing its skull. The bike then veered wildly and hit a pew, the
rider flying over the handlebars to land behind another pew. Both Julia and
Wilcox stood in mute shock as a man armed to the teeth stood with a groan and
stretched his back.