Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse Page 4

  The guy on his shoulder was dead weight. His legs were barely moving. Cutter could feel the limp heaviness of him dragging him down like an anchor. The man groaned. His breathing was shallow, coming in fractured uncertain ragged gasps, and his skin was burning hot to the touch.

  Cutter heaved him bodily up onto the sidewalk. He could feel his knees going. He could feel the tremendous burden drain the last final reserves of his strength. He sensed the undead gathering close behind him. The sound of moaning was like the siren of his impending death. He took another step, then another…

  And then there was the crack of a single shot, so loud it was shattering – and so close that he sensed the track of the bullet and heard the loud meaty slap as it crashed into its target. The man he was carrying slipped slowly from his grasp and fell dead to the sidewalk.

  Cutter looked up in alarm. The big guy standing in the doorway was slowly lowering his weapon; smoke still curling in grey tendrils from the barrel. The two men locked eyes for a single second, and then the big man was heaving at the desk and clearing a breach in the barricade.

  Cutter felt suddenly weightless; like he was hovering an inch above the ground. He went through the door at a run, tripping over debris so that he fell in an awkward tumble onto soft thick carpeting.

  Jack Cutter was a big man himself; six-two, and still in good shape for a thirty-three year old guy who had played a little college ball before discovering he had a talent for art. But the gunman was a monster. He heaved Cutter to his feet effortlessly and dragged him towards the back of the book shop.

  There were two women standing, fearful and crying and waiting, by shelves of fantasy novels. They were clinging to each other, both trembling, their expressions dazed with shock. The big guy nodded at the women as he swept past.

  “There’s no more to save,” he said. “It’s time to get to the shelter.”

  The group ran past high timber stands of paperback novels and children’s books, then past an ancient elevator. Cutter followed the broad shape of the gunman’s back as he carved a path towards the darkened rear of the building.

  They heard a clamor of noise behind them: the sound of glass shattering and furniture being overturned. Something crashed to the ground with enough force to make the floor shudder. The woman next to Cutter screamed. Then the gunman was slamming his shoulder hard against the back wall of the building, beside a closed iron door.

  It was a huge grey-metal slab of steel – some kind of a fire door. There was a sign that read ‘Staff Only’ in big red lettering, and underneath it was the word ‘Escape’. The gunman hammered the butt of the machine gun against the steel three times and Cutter heard the sound echo.

  An instant later the door opened cautiously outwards, and Cutter saw the pale terrified face of a blonde woman in the darkened recess beyond. She might have been pretty – but her eyes were tragic and huge, her face streaked and smeared with tears.

  “There’s no one else,” the big guy said. “These three are the only ones I could save.”

  He put his hand in the middle of Cutter’s back and shoved him through the opening, followed by the two women. Then he heaved the door closed behind him until it slammed in place and locked tight, shutting them away from the chaos of a world in ruin.

  Two.

  Apocalypse.

  Cutter was standing on a narrow landing. He could see steps descending towards a corridor bright with fluorescent lighting. The walls were rough cold brick, covered with ancient concrete masonry. He followed the blonde woman down the stairs and realized the corridor opened into a vast basement area. But it wasn’t just one large room; it was an area with darkened corners that had once been smaller rooms, and black narrow passageways. He glanced around, frowning. Off to his right he could see a wide opening and another room, maybe twenty feet square that was also bright with lighting.

  The open area he stood in was cold and musty. The floor was concrete and the area was divided by high timber stands, each one filled with books of every description. To his left, set against the wall, was a long conveyor belt that led towards a solid timber door set into the far wall. Two men were standing by the doorway, holding hammers and breathing raggedly. They came towards Cutter and the others, their expressions bleak. This part of the basement was gloomy, the lighting not strong enough to penetrate every shadowed recess. The gunman brushed past Cutter and met the two men.

  “Done?”

  One of the men nodded. He was an older guy, maybe in his fifties. He was wearing a white business shirt, silk tie and grey trousers. He had the ruddy complexion of a man who was not used to physical labor. He was sweating.

  “Boarded up,” the business man said. “We used what we could find in the storeroom. I think it will hold.”

  The gunman looked a question at the other man holding a hammer. He was younger; a fresh faced kid who couldn’t be more than twenty. He had an ugly red rash of acne scars on his cheeks and his eyes were red, as though he had been crying.

  He nodded. “It will hold,” he confirmed.

  The gunman looked satisfied. He turned to Cutter and the other two women.

  “This is your new home – at least temporarily,” he said. Then he led them through the opening into the smaller, well-lit room. He set the rifle down on a corner bench and let the black nylon bag slip from his arm to the ground, while around him all of the survivors silently gathered.

  The gunman turned and studied them carefully for long silent seconds. Cutter, and the two men holding hammers were the only other men in the room. Around them stood twelve women, including the two he had saved on the street. A couple of the women were in their fifties, the rest younger. He sighed.

  “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Hos,” he said. Then he stared at the guy in the business clothes. “Mr. Grainer, if it’s all right with you, I’ll be running things from now on.”

  The man nodded, and his expression was almost relieved. “Of course,” he said.

  Everyone apart from Cutter and the other rescued women knew each other. They were the book store’s staff. Hos turned from the store manager until his eyes settled on the terrified faces of the women.

  “There’s no point sugar-coating what is happening at ground zero,” Hos said, raising his voice so that his words carried clear and steady to everyone. “The fact is that our world has changed forever – and you better get used to it right now, because from what I’ve seen in the past twenty minutes, things are never going to be the same again.”

  There was an uneasy silence, and Hos let his words hang heavily in the air for a moment.

  “Right now, the streets of Newbridge are being over-run by plague infected carriers. They’re biting and killing everyone and everything they see. If you’ve been listening to the radio, this appears to be the same virus that has spread from Baltimore, and I don’t think Newbridge is the only city affected,” Hos swept his eyes across the shocked, pale faces. “In fact, I think the whole of Virginia – and maybe the whole of the eastern seaboard is being infected.”

  He paused again, giving time for the information to be absorbed. “These things don’t just die,” Hos said. “I shot a dozen of them – maybe more – and the only ones that didn’t get up again were the ones who took hits to the head. Every other infected body I fired at got up again.”

  One of the women in the back of the group began to sob softly. Hos ignored her and pushed on.

  “The army has helicopters overhead,” he said, and he saw a look of sudden hope spread across the faces of the women standing closest. He crushed down on it brutally. “They’re firing into the crowd,” he said. “The army is firing at everything and everyone that moves. That means the Government has given up any hopes of containing the spread of the virus. That means they’ve abandoned any hope of rescuing people like us who are trapped here, still alive. It means the Government has declared Martial Law, and the army has orders to shoot to kill anything moving on the streets.”

  There w
ere cries of anguish, and despairing moans. Several women were weeping, while others stared blankly as if seeing something beyond the walls of their refuge, their expressions grim.

  Cutter felt a woman’s shoulder slump against his. It was the blonde woman who had stood at the steel door and led them down into the basement. His arm went around her shoulder automatically, and he felt her shoulders heave as she began to sob.

  Hos raised his hands to quieten everyone. He wasn’t finished. “Crying isn’t going to help,” he said sternly. “It’s not going to keep you alive. I’ve told you what I know, and what I’ve seen. The city and beyond is being destroyed and over-run by undead. They’re relentlessly exterminating everyone still alive. And the Government has abandoned us. Accept it. Then we can start to deal with it.”

  “What are they?” Cutter asked Hos, and the big man turned to him.

  “They’re zombies. They’re the undead.”

  Cutter almost laughed. Almost. But he could see the look in the big man’s eyes. He wasn’t joking. Then another voice in the crowd said softly, “that’s what the media is calling them too,” she confirmed. “It’s some kind of a zombie virus that started in the Baltimore area. The CDC called them zombies.”

  “Then we’re fucked,” another woman said. She was a tall woman in a white blouse and grey skirt. She looked like she was in her early forties, but she had long grey hair and a deeply concerned frown of concentration on her face, as though somehow this problem was her responsibility to solve. She threw her hands in the air and trapped her lip between her teeth. “We’re completely fucked!”

  Other voices joined in the clamor, rising and becoming shrill and hysterical.

  “We’re not,” Hos said, but his voice was drowned out by the soft panic wails of the group. He picked up the rifle and slammed the butt down on the bench top. “We’re not!”

  They turned to him then, shocked out of their own misery and black despair by the confidence and strength of his voice. It took another moment, but slowly the group settled. The sobbing became sniffles and they looked to him with desperation, as though he alone held the key to their survival.

  “We’re safe for the moment,” Hos reassured the group. “And we have enough essentials to last a little while.” The room they were gathered in had been set up as a staff lunch-room. There was a small microwave on a counter next to a sink, and a wooden table in the middle of the floor surrounded by four mis-matched worn chairs. Under a long timber bench top was a small refrigerator, and on top of the bench was an old television. “But we don’t have a lot of food – certainly not enough to last us more than a day or two.” he said. “But we are safe. This book shop used to be a bank,” Hos explained. “This whole area was once the bank’s vaults and storage areas. The shipping door at the back of the building has been secured – and there are no other ways in or out. But we need to prepare – quickly, so anyone who thinks they’ve got time for tears and misery can think again. Right now, we’re all going to pull our weight. You can cry later.”

  “I can’t stay here,” a woman said from the back of the room, her voice outraged. She pushed herself forward, and her expression was filled with mindless terror. “I have children. They need me!” Her voice rose in panic. “I can’t wait here for a day, or even an hour. I’ve got to get to my babies. I’ve got to get to my family!”

  Hos cut the woman off, and his tone was harsh, almost brutal.

  He took a long deep breath as though he were about to dive into deep water. “Stephanie, your family is most likely already dead,” Hos said. “All our families are probably dead by now. The city is being over-run. Maybe the whole state and the country.”

  The woman sagged to her knees and began to tremble violently. Cutter heard her sobbing. One of the other women knelt beside her and wrapped a comforting arm around the woman’s heaving shoulders.

  “If anyone leaves this shelter, you’ll be dead within minutes,” Hos said brutally. “We have to assume that everyone we know has been bitten and infected. That means the families we had no longer exist. They’re undead. You can’t help them. You can’t save them. It’s already too late. All you can do is save yourself.”

  “Dammit, Hos! It’s all right for you. You don’t have a wife or kids. I have my husband and a small child to think about,” another woman stood taller in the group and cried out in angry protest. Her voice was shrill. Other voices in the crowd began to swell in chorus, becoming heated and rising in panic. “What’s the point of living if we’ve lost our families and loved ones?”

  Hos stared them all down, cowering them to muttered resentful silence with the sheer force of his will. “I’m not talking about living, Suzie,” he said grimly to one of the younger women. She was newly married and had just returned from her honeymoon a week before. She was working part-time. “I’m talking about surviving. That’s all. Living comes later, and so do the regrets and the mourning. But right now we’re fighting to survive.”

  Cutter stepped forward. “Hos is right,” he said. “I saw what was happening up on the street. These zombie killers are infected with some kind of fury – some kind of mad rage. They’re vicious and relentless. You can’t kill them, which means you can’t defend yourself. By now there are tens of thousand of them. I saw one girl bitten by a woman, and within minutes that young girl’s body was twitching again, like her corpse was coming back to life. That means it can’t be contained. And I saw the helicopters,” he added grimly. “Hos is right. They’re mowing down everyone – man woman and child. They’re killing anything that moves. It’s a slaughter.”

  Cutter saw heads begin to nod in meek, shocked understanding and some kind of remorseful guilt. One by one they turned slowly back towards the tall brooding shape of Hos.

  The group had gravitated to this man, accepting him naturally as their leader, despite the store manager’s authority. Cutter too was drawn to the sense of calm confidence the huge man seemed to radiate.

  “What happens after a day or two of waiting, Hos?” John Grainger, the book store manager asked. His voice was shaky and filled with anguish. “Where will you lead us to?” His soft pink hands fluttered like bird’s wings. “If the city and whole state has been over-run by zombies – where the hell can we go that will be safe, and what do we do?”

  Hos shook his head slowly, and Cutter had the impression the big man was unwilling to answer the question directly. He felt a sudden sense of unease.

  “It’s too early to make that decision, Mr. Grainger,” Hos said carefully. “It’s going to depend on too many things that right now we don’t have clear information about. But I expect the next day will be the worst. By then, anyone still alive in the city and surrounds will have fled to the countryside. There won’t be anyone left alive, unless they managed to find the kind of shelter we have. So hopefully the undead will have drifted away from here, in search of others to infect. That’s how the virus has spread so quickly. They seem to be driven to infect the living. They’re not feasting on the bodies. What I saw on the street was a frenzy of slow-moving mindless killers that seemed hell-bent on biting to spread the contamination. They don’t seem to be flesh-eaters, and that’s a good thing. It means that once the initial terror has passed, there will be a lot less of them because they will be hunting further away to find new victims.”

  The young guy who Cutter had met in the warehouse was still holding a hammer, as though somehow it gave him a sense of security. “We need weapons, Hos,” the kid said. “We need to find something we can fight these things with when we make our break.”

  Hos nodded. Apart from the AR-15 he was holding, he had two Glocks in the black nylon bug-out bag at his feet, as well as ammunition, a knife, flashlight, duct tape, rope, matches and other bare essentials.

  “We’ll make some weapons,” Hos assured the kid. “But right now we have higher priorities.”

  He turned to the pretty blonde woman who had stood waiting at the steel door. “Glenda, I want you and a couple of the othe
r women to start filling every container you can with water,” Hos said, his voice was a gravel-like deep rumble. “We can’t survive without plenty to drink.”

  The blonde nodded. Cutter noticed the woman’s lip was trembling, like she was on the verge of tears, but somehow managing to hold it all together.

  “Jennifer, you will monitor the television,” Hos singled out an older woman who worked in the store. “I want to know what’s happening, and where it’s happening. I want to know what the army and police are doing. Understand?” The older woman nodded. She had a handkerchief in her hand, dabbing delicately at the corners of her eyes. “Sally, you and the rest of the women will be on your phones,” Hos said. “We need to get the word out to everyone and anyone that we are here,” he added, “and we need to do it quickly. There is no guarantee that the phone networks, or the power will last. I want you to call or message family and friends and every police station in Virginia. Tell them how many we are, and where we are located.”

  Sally was a tall, heavy-set brunette woman bulging out of a tight white blouse and a long blue skirt. She nodded, and snatched at her handbag. Then she turned to the rest of the women and gathered them around her like a mother hen counting her chicks.

  Hos waited until the women were organized and occupied with their tasks. Then he took Cutter’s arm and steered him away from the kitchen – back into the big gloomy storage room. John Grainer and the other young guy followed.

  “We’re going to wait it out down here for twenty-four hours,” Hos explained to the men. “It’s important we keep everyone busy – keep them distracted with tasks.”

  Cutter and the others around him nodded.

  “We don’t have enough food to last longer than that, and if we lose power in the meantime, these women are going to get hysterical in the dark,” he added. “So we need to prepare a fire for light and warmth if that happens.”

  The young guy frowned. “We’ll choke,” he said. “Hos there’s no ventilation down here. You said it yourself – this place is a vault. If we go lighting bonfires, the place will fill with smoke within an hour.”