World of Ashes II (3 page)

              “Why did you do that?” Lea asked in a whisper when she figured out he wanted her to be quiet. Could there be people in the house after all? She was suddenly concerned.

              “Because I don’t want anyone to know we’re here. Help me clear the house so we can make it safe to stay the night in.” Daniel found a dim flashlight and began scouring the second level of the two story farm house for anyone who might still be there. The shades were mostly all drawn, and those that weren’t they pulled down. The front door was locked, and so was the ramp to the basement. They found lots of food and a nearly limitless supply of boring architecture magazines stacked in every corner. Alas, no guns or ammo. Typical, this was the DC area after all. Lea brought a TV up to the main level’s bathroom, the only room that had a window with a solid roof outside if they had to jump down to for a quick escape. Daniel blacked out the window with three layers of tin foil and plugged in the TV. The Global News Network was being patched through on almost every channel, overriding most local stations and even some cable networks. The video feeds showed people on the front lines of the riots, which were anything but actual riots. Border Patrol and riot police were mowed down by the hundreds in one wave after another of bloodied people. They were devoured on live television, no time for the censors to stop it all or even bleep out the heart stopping screams. The tidal wave of human flesh crashed over the camera crew, the last seconds of footage saw the reporter being eaten alive from her bellybutton to her neck, blood spraying everywhere and flowing like a river to the camera lens as it lay sideways on the pavement.

              “What is this?” Lea asked rhetorically, sipping at peppermint schnapps she’d found in the freezer. She didn’t want to be sober right now. “Why are they eating each other?”

              “It’s got to be a drug or something, like that bath salt shit. We need to find someone around here who knows what’s going on. But if we run into a military unit, don’t tell them I’m National Guard. I want to get back to
my
unit. I have friends I can trust in the area and my NCO’s are Veterans of the War on Terror. I don’t trust anyone else.”

              “They walk like Voodoo Zombies.” Lea observed. “Watch that one. He was running and then just fell. No one shot him, he just
died
. Now he’s getting back up, but he’s much slower than before, like he’s disoriented maybe.”

              “And I thought I had an anal retentive attention to detail. Damn.” Daniel was impressed. He had been watching the breaking news stories scrawl across the bottom of the screen, not paying any attention to the carnage in front of them. “Maybe that’s what happened to Mark’s body. I mean, look at their wounds. These people should be dead, I mean
really
dead, but they get back up and keep hunting.”

              “The stereotype of Asian study habits is true for me.” Lea smiled, “My parents were demanding that way. Wish I had a violin to play with right now, it would be so relaxing. I was in London for a concert, but it was canceled because of security crackdowns. I think the Brits knew what was happening over here.”

              “I agree. They’re not calling them zombies, though. That old guy on the Alphebetsoup network, he keeps referring to them as Infected Citizens. So, what are they infected with?” Daniel popped open an expensive beer and chugged it. This was already his fifth one, but he wasn’t nearly drunk enough to accept that his home was under attack by pandemic.

              “Give me one.” Lea took a beer and started drinking it to wash out the flavor of the schnapps. “I like to sneak out and drink and smoke weed at the hillbilly’s house next door. My dad forgets to set the house alarm at night. Ya gotta let off some steam once in a while, ya know?” Daniel nodded in agreement. “Especially when your mom is listening to Justin Bieber. She thinks he sounds like that shitty folk music from the old country they play in every Chinese restaurant. I don’t even think she knows what he’s saying.”

              “So where are you from?”

              “I’m from Palm Beach, but my parents are from South Korea.”

              “So do you want to try to wait it out here, or are we going to move?”

              “We can make that decision in the morning. Is the barricade set?” Lea finished her beer and laid on the mattress she’d stuffed into the bathtub. Daniel slept in the recliner he’d parked in front of the toilet. Using the toilet was still possible, it wasn’t like one or the other couldn’t stand outside the bathroom for a few minutes. At least they were occupied, tedium and fear not yet entering into the equation and for now their morale stayed high.

Chapter 2

By the sixth day they both smelled terrible and were low on toilet paper as much as food. Pulling Lea’s mattress out of the tub gave them a chance to shower after neither could stand their own stink anymore, but it only pointed out how untenable this one room was. Lea showered first, Daniel patiently waiting his turn but not leaving the room. He was almost asleep though, rewatching the same horrific stories play out across the country when Lea reached out with her wet hands and tugged at Daniel’s shirt just slightly.

He turned his head and looked up. Lea was splendidly nude, her small breasts towered over him like the amber fields of Elysium, leading his eyes down to the diamond stud on a gold ring in her belly button, then onto a gently groomed tuft of short black hair that seemed a precursor to something amazing. Daniel’s on-again off-again girlfriend back home was forgotten in an instant as he drew his lips to hers for an “Australian Kiss.” It’s just like a regular kiss, but
Down Unda’
. Lea arched her back and pulled Daniel’s clothes off. The change of pace from idle conversation to romantic intercourse was welcome, it relieved the tension and fear of an early and traumatic death.

Late the next day as Daniel plotted their move to the house next door for more supplies. He was making a list of foods they didn’t have to cook or freeze wheb they heard a crash in an upstairs window on the other side of the house. It took a while to remove the complex series of deadbolts Daniel had installed with just his Leatherman Multitool, but it was at least plenty of time to get dressed. When the door opened Daniel came around the corner and found the barrel of an M4 already in his face. There was no time to raise his gun, the heavy footfalls of another rifleman behind him already in position to end his life in a heartbeat negated any chance to take control of the situation. The best he could hope to do was hit one in the face with the stock of the rifle before the other shot him.

“Calm down, we’re not here to rob you. We thought this place was empty. It was dark and the dead chick outside kinda spelled out a common story.”

Daniel wouldn’t let them into the bathroom they’d been hiding in, but he was courteous enough to speak when they lowered their rifles. “What’s going on out there? The news says its Occupy Protesters on Meth or some shit, other people say it’s like Mad Cow disease and those bath salts. We’ve seen people eat each other on tv.”

“The truth, kid?” One shrugged. “The dead are walking. They bite you, you go berserk for a few minutes, bite and attack your loved ones, your comrades, then suddenly you die. Only problem is, you don’t stay dead. You get back up and like them Voodoo zombies you shamble around aimlessly until you find someone you want to eat.”

“What?” Lea was still pulling her shirt down over her chest when she stepped out. Not everyone was as shy as Daniel. “We saw it on the news, but we didn’t know exactly...”

“Yeah, you can’t believe the news. They say there are safe zones, but we just came from one of those fucking FEMA camps. They’re herding people onto trains, kid, like a slaughter house. Do you know who else in history did that?”

“North Korea. China during the reign of Pol Pot, the Japanese during World War Two, the U.S. in deporting Mexicans by train in 1954, Japanese Americans a decade before that, the Soviet Union, the Third Reich…” Lea put her hands on her hips, probably to list more of history’s notorious baddies, but Dabniel motioned with his hand to let it rest.

The two men looked at her, then at each other. They shared Daniel’s sense of feeling less than two feet tall in Lea’s towering intellectual presence. “We’re not going back there kid, and you shouldn’t either.” The second man said. “Greg, c’mon. We need to find another house. This one’s occupied.”

“You can stay here.” Lea offered quickly. “We would love to have some extra guns around in case those infected people show up again. Just please, don’t rape my friend Daniel. He’s a sensitive boy.” Daniel flipped her off.

“Lady, right now you should be more scared of the Government than the Plague Vics or us. Assuming you even make it into those so-called ‘safe’ concentration camps. Half the troops and police are shooting people on sight. The Army is really panicking. I’ve seen Marines and Army shooting at each other, we watched an Air Force jet and two Navy fighters going at each other over the bay yesterday. It’s fucking pandemonium out there.”

“How is the President not handling this?” Lea was in disbelief.

“Seriously?” All three men said at once. She was probably the only one in the group who’d voted for him.

Greg and Rick, two private drywall contractors from Maryland, opted to sleep in the living room downstairs. They didn’t trust Daniel and Lea any more than they did anyone else. People had turned savage, and not necessarily just the dead ones. Without the TV they could hear people screaming from one direction or another almost all night long. One after another the screams would fade out, and sometimes even be cut short. Gunshots echoed through the subdivisions, the distinctive slam of cars hitting other cars, the clanking of tanks and the shouts of troops were a constant over the next three very sleepless days and nights. After that, the calm could be more eerie than the distant fighting.

Their second week of hiding had forced them to the point where provisions were critically low. Rick even brought the sardines inside from the car shed, but he was the only one who would eat them. Early one morning while Daniel covered their progress down the street with a rifle from the second story bedroom, Rick and Greg slipped into a nearby quick-mart to take whatever other looters had left behind. Lots of canned or dry food, no alcohol or medicine, they made a second trip just before dawn and ran into another looter. Daniel had switched out with Greg for the second run, because Greg was out of shape and couldn’t move fast enough anymore. Daniel tried to reason with the desperate man, even offered him everything they’d gathered thus far, but he wasn’t listening. He wanted their guns, and to be taken back to their hideout. His rusty looking .32 hammerless revolver didn’t seem very intimidating to Daniel, and he raised his rifle. Their wouldbe assailant pulled the trigger and the revolver’s cylinder exploded in his hand. Screaming bloody murder, he didn’t notice Daniel and Greg snatch the supplies and make a run for it. The last thing heard from the parking lot was another human shitbag joining the ranks of the enemy’s army in a final blood curdling howl as they dragged him down in a grizzly swarm.

Perhaps that very public incident was why FEMA was sending a patrol through their neighborhood today. The men escorting them weren’t Soldiers, they wore black riot gear with DHS, NSA and ATF logos. They were going door to door to search for survivors, but as the holdouts watched from the darkened windows Daniel didn’t see any refugees coming back to the trucks with the uniformed men. Lea wanted to go greet them, but the three men with her refused. They didn’t want to be loaded onto any fucking trains, or anything else the government was touching for that matter. Lea didn’t listen until they heard gunshots from a house just over the hill. Men came pouring out of a riot truck, shooting at the house in question as they went. Someone was shooting back, but they only had a double barrel shotgun. In the time it took to reload their weapon the men in black took the house in a hail of gunfire. No civilians walked out with them. Again.

They had time before the men arrived at their house, and took that time to clean everything as best they could. They opened the doors slightly and removed as much trash as was possible. It looked like people had been there, but there was no evidence of recent habitation. Lea was the last one up as the Department of Homeland Security crept inside, guns raised. Lea got separated from the three men protecting her and was putting the TV back in the bedroom she’d found it in when two agents swept the upstairs. She slipped inside a large trunk at the end of a bed filled with itchy wool blankets and held her breath. They only did a cursory search of the house, leaving after they found no one in an obvious place. The survivors spent the rest of the night in the attic, sweltering in the heat, but safe.

By morning they were able to come back downstairs. The subdivision was much quieter now, but in the distance the popping sound of helicopters and unending gunshots weren’t totally deadened by the trees. “We should move.” Greg said, packing his gear.

“I disagree. They’ve already swept this area, they won’t do it again.” Rick countered, not making any effort to gather his belongings.

“That does make a certain amount of sense.” Daniel agreed. “Let’s bring some food back here for a few more nights and hold out just a bit longer. When things calm down we can move. It won’t be forever before they mobilize the Army and retake this area.”