Zombie Evolution: Volume 1 No Man Left Behind

Zombie Evolution

Volume 1

No Man Left Behind

By Karla Dawn McFee
 

Copyright 2015

By Kay Hughes

Note From Author

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the ever so talked about, really happened.  Some say if there was a  world catastrophe, of any kind, Texas would be the survival state.  This is where we find Casey.  Casey was thirteen when the virus swept over the world or was it a virus.  There were some strange things about these zombies that just didn’t make sense. They weren’t your average textbook zombies that we have all come to love.  No, these walking monsters only came out at night, but there is something inconceivable about these creatures. They had a heartbeat!  The heart was no longer powered by blood, but a thick black substance. This was the only information that had been gained thus far.  The farther we get into this story, the more that Carla and her friends will learn about the walking undead. In this first Volume, we meet some residents from the Bark Ranch. We also meet some other dangers of this new world, such as ruthless thugs. These thugs torture, rape and kill, to get what they want. Carla and her army have to save Calvin and little Trent from these cold hearted ex-prisoners.  The army found out, the hard way, that the thugs were not their only daytime enemies.  

Other Books By This Author

Like this author on facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Books-by-Karla-Dawn-McFee/741754999278769?ref=bookmarks

“A Mountain Man’s Taking Of An Undead World”

“Surviving A World Of The Undead And Crazy”

“Unborn Abductions”

Zombie Inn Hotel And Suites’

“The Eclipse Of The Human Mind”

Chapter 1

The trees started to close in as the sun sank into the earth’s surface.  The darker it became, the faster Carla raced to get home. Her heart was rapidly beating against the walls of her chest.  She did not have much time left, before her village would shut the gates.  If the gates shut, they were not to be opened again until sunrise.  She would never survive an entire night outside the walls.

Carla had almost lost hope of reaching the ranch, when she looked up and saw the lights burning around the outside walls of her village.  Only fifty yards from safety, she heard a deep grinding noise.  The gates were closing!  Taking a deep breath and never missing a step, she started yelling out to her friend Brian.

“Stop……...Stop……….I’m almost there!”

Brian could hear his friends voice, he looked up to see Carla running for her life.  It was against every rule to delay the closing of the gates, but this was his best friend.  He had to give her an extra minute to get through the gate.  Brian pulled on the lever as hard as he could.  The gates screeched as they came to a stop. 

           Even though Brian was waiting on her to cross the finish line, she never slowed down.  With every extra second that the gates were held open, she was putting her entire village in danger.  The night men were fast and could outrun a normal human being, without even giving all of their effort. 

The night men were those humans that had changed into some kind of monster, after the big virus swept over the world. The human body was dead, but the virus would take over and pump a different form of blood in their veins. This was just enough to run the some functions of the body.   They were zombies, but not your traditional textbook zombies.  The old body and brain were dead, but the heart would still beat.  Instead of blood it was a thick black substance that coursed through the body.  They were nocturnal creatures and couldn’t even see in the daytime.  This meant that daytime would be the only time that it was safe to be outside of the gates. 

Carla was thirteen years old when the virus swept over the world.  As the virus slowly took over the cities and towns, many of the uninfected started moving into the rural areas.  Many retreaded into mountains, some to islands, and some just moved into the country sides.  Carla’s family made the decision to move out of their home when the ratio of one out of four people had been infected in the town that they lived outside of.  Most of her village’s occupants  came from her country neighborhood.  The poor people that lived in town, really didn’t have a chance. The highly populated areas of the world had an accelerated infected rate than lower populated areas. 

Mr. Bark had a huge ranch about five miles from where her family had lived. Carla’s father had known Mr. Bark and his family for twenty years.   When the chaos of the world was getting stronger, Mr. Bark told Carla’s dad to come to his ranch for safety.  Mr. Bark wanted to build a safe place for the uninfected to live.  He knew that he needed more people to create this safe community.  He wanted to build a village.  The more people that would come, the better.  Everyone would have different skills and knowledge to contribute.  Together, they would be able to survive this new world.  Carla’s family and five others families from her country block, had gotten together and retreated to the Bark Ranch. 

Before she could get all the way inside the gates, Brian started screaming at her to hurry.  She didn’t have to look back.  She knew why her friend was freaking out.  There were two of the super zombies closing in on Carla.  Looking back would only slow her down, this was the extra incentive to make that last mad dash over the finish line.   

As her feet beat the earth beneath her, she yelled out to Brian, “Close it!” 

Carla could hear the gears screeching as she slid inside the gate.  It looked as if she had been coming in for a home run and slid into the home plate.

“Safe,” Brian said crossing his arms with an umpire's hand motion. 

“Brian, please don’t tell my parents about this.  They would kill me!  They don’t like that I do it, in the first place.”

“Your mother did come to me about an hour ago, so she probably knows that you cut it close, already.  I won’t tell her just how close you did cut it, if you will promise me that you will never do that again.”, Brian said with his finger pointed in Carla’s face, as if he was scolding a child. 

“ I promise, I will never ever do it again!  I will treat the hour before the gates close as the hour of.  Then I can’t be late, no matter how close I get, right?”

Brian agreed to Carla’s deal and the two of them sat and talked for a bit. Carla told him what she had seen outside the gates. Carla would go outside of the gates everyday.  She could not stand being locked up inside the ranch.  She had to see what was going on outside in the real world.  Her parents would not allow her to go outside the gates when she was younger, but after she turned seventeen there was nothing that they could do about her leaving to explore. 

Her father, Zeke, knew that his daughter had a wild spirit inside of her.  the two of them would venture outside of the ranch at least three times a week.  He taught her how to survive, while she was outside of the gates.  Zeke taught his daughter to hunt, but hunting was not the most important thing that he taught his daughter.  The most important skills that Carla learned were, how to be unheard and unseen.  There were more dangers in the new world then just the night creatures. 

Chapter 2

She was dying to tell someone about what she had discovered.  Carla found an old canning company.   She was excited about what she had found.   There were trailers of food outside of the warehouse.  After finding all of the canned food on the outside of the building, she decided to check out the inside of the warehouse.  Her story did not end there.  It was really just getting started.

There was a razor wired fence that surrounded the entire place.  The gates were locked with paddle locks, but Carla was able to squeeze into the gap between the connected gates.  The front of the building had an office entrance in the very middle.  To the right of the office entrances, there were four closed bay doors.  This is  where the truck trailers had been backed up to the warehouse.  On the left side of the offices, there were three other bay doors.  These doors were locked as well, but there were no trailers in front of them. Carla came to the conclusion that the left side was receiving and the right side had been shipping.

She was cautious as she ran across the graveled parking lot.  Scurrying up onto the ledge of the first bay, she tried to open the first trailer’s metal door.

When the door went up and inch and stopped suddenly, she saw that there was a lock on it.  As she went to the next trailer, she noticed that the third one had an open lock.  Skipping the second one, she went straight to the third.  Chances are, if one of the trailers had something in it, then so would the others.  It had almost looked like someone had attempted to lock the door, but unknowingly failed the task at hand.  Carla jumped for joy when she slid the metal door up over her head.  The truck trailer was packed with canned meats and vegetables.  Her entire village could live at least six months on the food that was just in that one trailer alone.  If the others were filled with the same amounts, her village would not have to worry about food for three to four years.  The stability would last even longer, if the crops stay good and the animals keep reproducing at a good rate.  This would be a major relief to her friends and family.

It did not make sense to her that all this food had been there for years and nobody had claimed it.  With this thought churning inside of her head, she suddenly felt that she might be in danger.  What if someone was watching her? There was no way that this food would be untouched all this time.  Someone had to be guarding it, somehow.   She darted behind the trailers. 

With this new incredible sense of danger, she knew that she should leave now.  She could go back to her community, and get some help.  That would be the sensible thing to do.  The impulse of wanting to know more took completely over the sense of danger.   If the trailers had food in them, then she would bet that the warehouse would be somewhat stocked as well. 

There it was again, that voice saying, “Run, Karla, run.  You could be in danger.  Go back and get back up.  Something is not right here.”

The voice in her head sounded a lot like her dad’s voice.  For some reason, this brought out the little rebel voice in her head as well. 

“I can handle this,” she said to herself.  It’s not like I'm going to confront anyone.  As long as I stay in the shadows, I will not be seen or heard.  Heck, my dad would be proud!”

She knew the truth.  Her dad would kill her if he found out that she was even considering going into the building.  He would have demanded her to go for help. 

“Carla, you are eighteen years old, well almost eighteen.   You are tough and you can handle yourself.  If it was a lot of people, they would have captured you by now.  If there were people in that building, it had to be just a few.  You could sneak in and sneak out.  No one would ever see you.”

She had been successful at being unseen and unheard.  Her father was an excellent teacher, but it helped that she was basically a natural at it.  Almost right after she had entered inside the factory, she heard a man’s voice.  He sounded nice at first.  The closer that she got to the voice, she could tell that he was not really being nice.

There were stacks and stacks of boxes that were on pallets.  Each stack consisted of two to three pallets high.  Carla darted behind some boxes that were stack against a wall.  There was just enough room for her to fit between the wall and the pallets.  She was able to see a wide area through the gap of the stacked pallets. At first she did not pay much attention to what was stacked on the pallets, but then she removed a bit of the thick plastic wrap.  It was a pallet of creamed corn!  She then peaked into the pallet under it.  It was spinach! 

“Jackpot!”, she thought to herself. 

This was like hitting the lottery.  It would be wrong to take someone's food supply, but she was willing to make an attempt.  She was pretty sure that her village would feel the same way.  They would leave some for the residents of this warehouse.

The men were trying to get information out of a man and a young boy.  Carla’s heart stopped when she was able to make out the face of the captured man.  It was Calvin and his son Trent.  Carla had known Calvin since she was five years old.  They lived a mile away from her house, before evil took over the earth.  Trent was only six years old.  Besides his big sister, Calvin was all that Trent had left.  His mother had been killed by one of the monsters. 

Carla watched as the men kept hitting Calvin over and over again.  Eventually, the man could not stand, and fell to his knees.  Trent’s screams dominated the area.  This kept her from hearing what the men were asking Calvin. She had to help them, but there was no way that she could fight the five men that were terrorizing her friends, not by herself anyway.