The Zombie Virus (Book 1) (16 page)

“I woke up the next morning really hungry. I
woke the girls up and told them we gotta get moving. We slipped out
the back and made our way to the road. I looked at the other houses
that were nearby and picked one that didn’t have a garage or any
cars around it.

It was a small Cape Cod that looked pretty
well kept up. I told the girls to wait at the road and keep an eye
out up and down the highway and I went up to the front porch,
watching the windows the entire time. I scouted the place out,
looking in all the windows, and didn’t see any movement. The front
door was locked but I kicked it open. There was no sign anyone had
been in there in days and no smells either, so I told the girls to
come on up.

“Power was still on and the fridge was still
working so we had ourselves some breakfast then stuffed a
pillowcase full of some extra food for the road. Amanda thought we
should maybe just stay there for a while, and we talked about it.
There was really only enough food for a day or two, so we decided
to continue hoofing it.

“We were on the southern side of Port Royal
before noon. We didn’t see any of the crazy people the entire
morning. There’s a store and restaurant at the intersection of 301
and 17 and we figured we could get some more food there. There were
some abandoned cars around the intersection and parked at the
restaurant, so I was thinking we could get ourselves a car too. I
only had half a dozen or so rounds left for the shotgun so I was
hoping we wouldn’t run into too many of those critters. We hadn’t
seen any of those crazies yet, which was surprising since it was a
larger burb and all.

“But damn if we didn’t run smack into a pack
of those motherfuckers the second we turned the corner. I think
they must have been as much surprised as we were. We all just stood
looking at each other for a second. Then the girls screamed, I
yelled, they snarled, and the chase was on. They came pouring out
of the restaurant, from the gas station across the street and out
of buildings and yards all around. Chee-rist there was a shitload
of ‘em! We were running up 301 and they are just swarming around us
from everywhere, right on our tail and fucking fast ones at
that!

“I knocked a bunch down with a shot from the
gun which gave us some running room. Up ahead I saw the bridge and
the remains of the wreck, and the crazies were there too. I told
the girls to go to the right to the brick building and we got there
just as they closed around us.

“We wouldn’t make it to the door, but Kera
had the sense to pick up a chunk of concrete and bust out a small
front window. She and Amanda climbed through. I shot two more that
were almost on me and then climbed through the window. The crazies
were trying to get through behind me and I smashed them in the face
with the butt of the gun and knocked them back out. We could hear
them all around us. The glass front doors looked like a scene from
some horror movie with all the bodies of these crazy people pressed
up against it, clawing and biting at the glass. They were at all
the windows banging on them, trying to break in. I told the girls
to see if there was a back way out of there, otherwise we were
ghoul food.

“More tried to come through the window and I
started shooting them hoping to clog it up with bodies. Amanda said
there was a back way out, but it was a steel door and chained shut.
I knew then we were done for, but I was going to take as many of
those punk motherfuckers with us as I could!” Frank was back on his
feet in his excitement at the telling of their story, his hands
waving wildly, expressing the emotions of those moments.

“Another window broke when a crazy put his
head through it. A shard of glass still embedded in the frame
sliced into his neck and it looked like he was trying to take his
own head off. I obliged him and shot it off for him. They had
thinned out around the front door and that’s when I heard Kera
scream. One of those crazy fucks was charging the door full force.
I shot at about the same time he hit the door. Then they just
started pouring in. I took the head off one more and then I was
empty. I started swinging that thing like a club. We ran to the
back side of the room to where there was a door, but it led to a
storage room.

“I clubbed two or three more to the ground
before we got in the room and got the door closed. Last thing I saw
was dozens of them pushing into the room. We shoved an old soda
cooler in front of the door when they started beating on it from
the other side. I didn’t think it would hold long and there was no
place else to go. We were fucked.

“Then the shooting started outside. I thought
the military had arrived because it sounded like a bunch of people
were shooting. I was praying for that door to hold just for a bit
more. A few more shots came from outside the door and it got real
quiet and that’s when I called out to our saviors here, Steve and
Holly.” Frank bowed to us earnestly.

Holly, Jeremy and I had been so enthralled
with their stories we hadn’t spoken a word during their long
narratives. The sun was sinking toward the western sky, but we
probably had about five hours of good daylight still. I told them
our stories on how we ended up here at the right moment to pull
their asses out of the fire. They liked the moniker “Loonies” for
the infected, and both girls actually giggled when I said the name
the first time.

I had studied the three newcomers closely for
the past few hours as we sat around relating the events leading up
to now, and was relieved that they were symptom free. We were now a
coalition of six.

CHAPTER 11

We stayed there by the old church for another hour.
I gave Frank our FN-FAL rifle to use for as long as he remained
with us, along with a .44 magnum revolver and about a dozen 20
round mags for the rifle loaded with .308 ball ammo and a couple of
boxes of Federal ammo for the revolver. Holly and I reloaded our
spent magazines and filled our pockets with extra rounds. The
firefight had taught us a few lessons about having enough ammo.

We spent some time going over gun safety and
use with the two teenagers, as neither had ever handled a firearm
before. When I felt a little more confident that they could hold
one without shooting their own leg off or killing one of us, I gave
Amanda a Saiga 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun and Kera the
sawed-off double barrel. That was the most that Holly and I thought
we could trust them with for now.

We filled up two of our water bottles from
the river and let them put a few rounds downrange. When they had
finally taken out the water bottles we decided it was time to get
on the road before the noise we had made brought any unwanted
company.

It was a tight fit, however, we all managed
to pile into the truck, with the girls in the back seat and the
guys up front. We eased back across the road and crawled up and
over the bridge. The way ahead was deserted. The bodies of the
Loonies we had killed still lay thick around the front of the
building. The vultures had already begun their feasting.

We carefully wove our way past the tangled
and burnt wreckage, drove up the street and turned the corner,
heading north on Route 17. We attracted the attention of a few of
the infected when we drove by some of the buildings near the
outskirts of town. They would chase after us even though we would
quickly outdistance them.

The countryside became sparsely populated
again, with the occasional farm set far back from the road between
long stretches of green forest. A house or two dotted the landscape
here and there. We were all lost in our own thoughts while we
watched a world go by that was no longer ours, no longer normal, no
longer safe.

“Have any of you been on this road before?”
Holly asked from the back seat.

“I’ve been as far as Lake Anna,” Frank said.
“It’s pretty rural except for where we enter the Fredericksburg
suburbs. Lots of shopping centers and housing developments there.
When you get on 208 it gets all rural again.”

“Let’s hope for the best and plan for the
worst,” I suggested, hoping that we had already seen our worst for
this trip. “Let’s keep our weapons ready and hope we don’t have any
more run-ins with the locals.” If I had only known how much of a
cakewalk it had been so far compared to what lay ahead, I would
have turned the truck around right there.

We were making good time with only the
occasional deserted vehicle to maneuver around. I didn’t dare drive
faster than about 40 mph on these winding curvy roads. A disabling
wreck would be disastrous for us. Most of the Loonies we saw were
well off the pavement, except for one small group that we were well
past before they could react. So far we hadn’t seen any other
survivors.

We decided to try and get past the next
chokepoint, Thornburg, a southern suburb of Fredericksburg, before
stopping for the evening. Large housing developments were beginning
to appear set back off the road and we felt that trying to find
refuge in this area would be exceedingly risky.

The sun was setting into a hazy orange sky
and we had maybe an hour of light left. We crossed over I-95.
Besides a scattering of stalled, empty vehicles in both directions,
it was eerily still. We raced ahead toward the next juncture.

Before we realized it, we were driving
through a large shopping district and I slowed down. The Loonies
were all around us, in ones, twos and groups bigger than I could
count. Many had been sitting or lying in the shade of trees
alongside the roadbed.

I accelerated as we went by, trying to avoid
their clawing hands. The truck bucked violently when I drove over
one then another, eliciting screams from both Kera and Amanda. An
intersection lay before us, and it was choked with cars and
trucks.

I frantically looked for a way around and
Frank pointed to a spot on the right that we might fit through on
the sidewalk between a retaining wall and a metal utility pole.
Loonies were filling the area, running to meet our slowly moving
truck as we wove our way through the abandoned vehicles. They
sounded their siren call, and infected seemed to pour out of the
shadows in terrifying numbers.

I looked in the mirror, horrified to see
large masses of them racing down the road to catch us. In the
fading light it seemed like the population of Hell had been
unleashed upon us. I slid the truck to the right, toward the wall,
and the right side tires bounced up over the sidewalk. We raced
down the narrow expanse, scraping the passenger mirror off the
truck with a loud crunching noise while the truck screeched up
against the rough brick of the retaining wall, repeatedly striking
one after another of the infected. One flipped up onto the hood,
bloody but alive.

We weren’t going to fit. The space was just
too small. I slammed on the brakes, throwing the injured Loony into
three that were running toward us, bowling them over.

“Get us out of here fast!” Holly screamed,
her voice shrill with terror. My mind was racing, searching for a
way out. They were surrounding us from all directions, hundreds of
them. There were too many. There was no going through them. We
would be overwhelmed, even in the truck.

I slammed the transmission into reverse and
jammed my boot heel onto the gas pedal, causing the rear tires to
smoke as they fought for purchase. The truck sped backwards into
the nearest group of infected, plowing over and through them. The
rear end fishtailed sideways off the sidewalk and into an abandoned
delivery truck, crushing five or six of the Loonies with
bone-splintering force.

“The wall, bro,” Frank said with surprising
calm, nodding toward the eight foot high retaining wall with its
gently sloping grassy bank rising up behind it. I knew immediately
what he was thinking.

The Loonies were beating on the windows,
climbing into the truck bed, and swarming over us when I threw the
shifter into drive and jammed the pedal again. The truck lurched
forward, dragging half a dozen infected with it and crushing
several more beneath it. The rear tires bounced up over the
sidewalk and I swung the wheel turning the truck parallel with the
wall and jammed it up against the bricks, smearing a handful of
Loonies like a grotesque painting along its face. Frank was working
the switch to the window, trying to get it down. It wasn’t moving.
Something had failed when we crushed the truck up against the
wall.

“Shoot out the damn window!” I hollered at
Kera who was frozen in shock in the back seat. She just looked at
me vacantly. Holly ripped the double barrel from her grasp and
placed it against the side passenger window. She pulled the trigger
and the buckshot tore through the window. The sound was deafening.
Frank punched out the remaining safety glass when the truck ground
to a stop against the wall. He quickly pulled himself and his rifle
out onto the roof.

I yanked the .45 out of its holster just as
he disappeared out the window. The infected grew frenzied at the
sight of him and were streaming over each other and the truck in a
crushing mass to get at him and us. I heard the FAL open up over
the ringing in my ears and watched bodies drop away. Holly shoved
the shotgun back into Kera’s hands and grabbed her own rifle,
pushed the seat forward, and slithered out the window onto the
roof. Her rifle shot twice and then she was up over the wall.

“Go!” I pushed Jeremy toward the window. He
was halfway out when the shooting from the FAL paused and a big
hand grabbed him by the collar, yanking him the rest of the way out
the window and bodily tossing him up on the wall. Jeremy’s .223
caliber shots joined Holly’s rifle in an echoing chorus with the
FAL. I snugged my rifle to my chest in preparation for my turn to
exit.

I could no longer see out any of the windows
through the mass of Loonies pressed against the glass. Kera was
whimpering as she worked her way out of the window. Again, Frank
was there and helped her out and up the wall. Hands were reaching
for him when he turned back around and I heard him kicking at their
grasping claws before he changed magazines and resumed firing.