Days With The Undead (Book 1) (13 page)

The constant dull thumping became an almost deafening racket in the matter of a few moments. At least the door was locked now.

It was purely psychological but the stress of fear can play strange games with you. The feeling of being trapped just washes over you and within an instant you think everything you’ve fought for all this time is over. Every sacrifice you’ve made, every loved one you’ve left behind is all for nothing because their memory will never live on in you.

Before any of us really knew what was happening, a young girl of about eleven years old had run to the door and unlocked it. Opening the door, she called out for her mother, apparently one of the survivors that had left and never returned, only to be pushed back and overcome by the throng of the Undead trying to get inside. She was trampled underneath their feet in their haste to get inside, her small frame crushed by the sheer force of them.

With no time to think and no time to do anything but react, we ran to the stairwell. Looking back, I saw no one from the town of Minden following us. They just sat down and awaited the fate that they had probably anticipated since gathering in the bank. The Undead swarmed them, none of them even fighting back. Just a passive acceptance of their deaths. We didn’t stay long to watch, just long enough to understand and appreciate what the bleakness of the circumstance had done to these people.

In the stairwell, we secured the door as best we could, hoping that the full room of compliant food would keep the Undead busy for the necessary moments we needed to escape. The choice between the basement and the second floor and roof was an easy one. While the roof didn’t have a fire escape (being a bank), the basement didn’t have any windows. At least the roof offered us a chance to make it outside again. And in the end, I’d rather jump off a roof to my death than to become one of them.

The room beyond the locked stairwell door was eerily silent. No screams, no sounds of fighting or even the sound of a struggle. Just the dull sounds of the Undead; shuffling, poppysmic, and muffled banging. The survivors of Minden were officially being assimilated.

Max started up the stairs as quickly and as quietly as possible - no need to let the Undead know where we were - stating that he had a plan. Once on the roof, he showed us that the ladder for the lookout tower was loose; something he had noticed while climbing it the other day. He figured that if we could get it off the tower that we could then use it to climb down to the ground. I could have kissed Max right then: he had just saved all of our lives.

Getting the ladder off of the tower was a little harder than Max had thought. One of the bolts was completely rusted and just wasn’t going to budge. It was going to require some special attention to loosen it.

Getting an idea, I asked Bob and Ben to hold the ladder as I climbed it. Getting up close to the offending bolt, I took out my husband’s service revolver and put the barrel up against it. I pulled the trigger. The kickback nearly pushed me off but the pain in my hand was worth the potential freedom. The ladder was free and once I had climbed down, the boys put it over the side at the back of the bank. Thankfully, all of the Undead seemed to have gotten the invitation to the party inside.

Just as we got the ladder over the side of the bank, the Undead started to appear at the hatch in the ceiling. In our flight upward, we had forgotten to close the door that provided access to the roof.

Now it had become a race to get ourselves over the side of the building and down to ground level before the Undead got to us.

We quickly braced the ladder on an angle away from the building and threw all of our gear to the concrete below. The only thing the most of us kept on us was a trusted weapon in case any of them got too close. We each hurried to the ladder, not caring at the fact that all four of us on it could potentially spell disaster – we didn’t have the luxury of waiting.

Ben and Bob had made it to the ground by the time the first of the Undead faces appeared over the edge. Max was the closest to the top but he was just barely out of the reach of their hands.

The first Undead body came over the side of the building just as I was reaching the ground. The sound was sickening, like the sound of ice crackling in a glass of water only louder and mixed with the subtle sounds of a belly flop. Its body lay broken and twisted on the cement pad which served as a parking lot.

Quickly a number of other bodies started to hit the ground, reminding me of popcorn popping and lemmings. Each of them lay there for a moment, their limbs twisted at awkward angles. Then they started to get up slowly, reminiscent of the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, their broken twisted limbs barely supporting the weight of their bodies.

By that time, Max had made it to the ground, just barely being missed by a falling corpse; its arms flailing toward him. We collected our gear and turned to leave, thinking it was time to finally get out of Minden.

Once down on the ground, we avoided Esmeralda Street and the front of the bank, opting instead to head up 5th Street. Hopefully we’d find a car before the Undead caught up with us.

Luck, it seemed, was finally on our side. Thank God! We found an abandoned Ford Escalade with the keys still in the ignition and a full tank of gas in a driveway. Piling in, we silently hoped that no one was actually coming back for this car but knowing that if they hadn’t left Minden yet, chances were it wasn’t going to happen.

I’ve never been so happy to see the city limits of a town. On the sign leaving town it says:
Nice to meet. Sorry to part. Nice to meet again!

Sorry, Minden but we will never be back.

Ever.

Day 20:

Being back on the road feels as wonderful as anything can feel in this messed up world we’re living in. We’ve left the chilling memories of Minden long behind us and have made good time travelling through California. We reached the coastal highway just south of Eureka in the middle of the morning and we were surprised by what we saw. The number of boats and ships and yachts dotting the sea was stunning. In the days after the outbreak, survivors must have gone out only so far and then anchored off shore in the rolling waves.

The scary thing was that hundreds upon thousands of the Undead had been drawn by their escapes, potentially by the noise of an engine and now they were lined up along the beaches waiting out their prey. Not good for us. Not good at all.

In the areas where they were not so deeply layered at the edge of the shore, we could see that some had ventured into the water. Perhaps they felt that they could walk on the water to the prey that they so viciously wanted. Instead, you could see them being tossed about in the crashing surf; the waves pelting them back toward the shore and the undertow of the current talking them back out again. It was a tumultuous jaunt from shore to cresting waves and potentially one that they would have to endure for some time.

The noise of our engine attracted some of the closer ones. They turned as if in unison to stare milky eyed in our direction. I never thought I would see the day when the Undead had a look of genuine surprise about them, but in that moment they actually looked startled to see us.

On the other hand, we were utterly stricken with horror to see them. This was a moment of truth for us…

Continuing meant trying to outrun these Undead before they traversed the sandy expanse between them and the road. And the status quo could only get potentially worse for us; looking up the road, I could see that the news of our presence had travelled up the sandy beach. Turning around meant making our way back through all of the Undead that we had collected along the way, plus having to deal with this lot behind us.

Proceeding forward won out but only by a small margin. Each of us knew that this could very well be our last stand.

Ben accelerated and shot up the road, thankful that this portion was clear of the debris of other vehicles. We managed to get a fairly good head start on the Undead but when we started to see corpses enter the roadway ahead of us, we wondered if they had some sort of telepathic power. Could they communicate with each other? The thought was sobering and truly scary.

Forward we moved, alternating between hitting and missing bodies as we went. Our only thought at this point was survival and getting ourselves as far, far away as we could from all of these Undead. Eureka was going to be cutting it too close. We were going to have to aim for Crescent City now if we wanted a good chance of getting off of land.

The drive up the coast was harrowing. Numerous times I thought it was over and that we were done for. There were just too many of them and there didn’t seem to be any way to get around but to go through them. Sometimes they were so close that their bodies rocked the Escalade. Other times, we used them as speed bumps.

Keeping it together was paramount and extremely difficult. Poor Ben had gotten the short end of the stick driving that day; he can drive, but in our old lives he mostly commuted on his bicycle. This kind of driving, while new to all of us, was certainly the hardest on Ben. He handled it well though. We got through them and then slightly ahead of them just in time to make it into Eureka to catch the show.

The city was on fire. Completely engulfed. I’ve never seen anything like it in all of my years. The conclusion we came to was that someone had tried to set a few of the Undead on fire and it had gotten out of hand just like it had in Philadelphia.

We had to chance driving through the inferno. There was no way around it, no way to get us back to the road to Crescent City except to go back the way we came. Our only hope was that we didn’t end up roasting in the Escalade. Perhaps we’d be lucky enough to roast a few of our followers in the process.

Ben took the chance to relinquish the wheel to Bob, who happened to have a little practice in driving through burning landscapes while in Afghanistan, and off we went. Immediately the temperature in the SUV shot up a few degrees. Potentially this could end up badly but we had to try at least to get through it.

Better to die in a fire than to become one of the Undead.

With Ben back on his maps, he managed to find a way through town without having to go through the bulk of town. We headed up the California State Highway 101 to Harris Street, making a right. The town didn’t appear to be as fully engulfed in fire as we had originally thought once we got farther away from the 101, but we did encounter a slightly different problem…

Seven men with military issue flame throwers were standing in the street ahead of us. Could they be finally be the response that is so badly needed?

When one man opened his flame thrower and sprayed fire over the hood of the Escalade we had our answer. No fucking way!

Bob threw the SUV into reverse and gunned it. Once he had felt he’d put enough distance between us and what we shall call the pirates, he spun the car around, slammed it into drive and off we went.

The race was on. What were their intentions?

Why try to burn us in the Escalade?

Didn’t they understand that the Undead were so close?

Why weren’t they running for their lives?

So many unanswered questions…

We turned right onto Spring Street heading back into the burning city, hoping that the men wouldn’t be crazy enough to follow us. We took a chance and turned right onto Henderson. It was technically a one way street but given the fact that most of the people in the continental United States were now Undead, we didn’t think anyone would mind all too much.

We hoped that we would be able to get around the men and the only way to do that was to drive faster than they could run, or to drive through the burning city. We were going to try to outrun them first.

The pirates were smart, I’ll give them that. Instead of staying together, they split up and tried to box us in. It probably would have worked except for the fact that they had no idea who they were dealing with. As we came up on C Street, one of the men was waiting for us. Just standing in the middle of the road. He probably thought we’d stop like last time…

A word of advice. Don’t play chicken during an Apocalypse. Chances are, you’ll end up dead.

One down, six idiots still in play.

A second outlaw came running into the intersection at William Street. When he saw us he started throwing out fire, still running forward. Now I realize that there may not have been a course on how to use these weapons properly but at some point common sense had to prevail. The only thing this dimwit succeeding in doing was running into his own flame and setting himself on fire.

Two down, five left.

As we drove away, we could hear his pained screams as he continued to burn to death. The flame throwers fuel pack exploded behind us and the fire bomb that resulted heated the interior of the SUV a few more degrees. The heat was beginning to become unbearable and none of us dared to touch a surface for fear of leaving a layer of skin behind. The only contact we made with the Escalade was that which was necessary; Bob’s hands on the wheel, our asses in the seats and Bob’s foot on the accelerator. All we could do was to continue moving forward. At least the Escalade wasn’t on fire. Yet.

After that our exodus from town was uneventful. In fact it was almost too easy… We took Henderson to S Street and then back down to Harris Street. Once on Harris we took it to the end and turned right onto Myrtle Avenue. The gentlemen, and I use the term loosely, had not been this far over and nothing was burning.

The drive was actually quite pleasant through town (considering what we had just been through) but you never get rid of that feeling that something is following you…

Day 21:

After the craziness in Eureka and the fact that we would have reached Crescent City in the approaching twilight, we decided to keep driving up the coast into Oregon through the night. It was nice to put some kilometers between us and the Undead on the road behind us. It was also a huge relief to leave the crazy men of Eureka in Eureka.