Z-Risen: Outbreak

Night Terrors

19:40 hours approximate

Location: Undead Central, San Diego CA — Fortress

Why in the hell did we ever leave? There is a reason I named this place Fortress and leaving it was never a good idea. Unfortunately, Joel made a very convincing argument that we needed to return to the San Diego Naval base for supplies. He used small words like “we need food and ammo, you dumb squid.”

Joel never listened to my ideas. I’d made a few but I was sick and tired of the Marine giving me a ration of shit for every single one of them.

“Let’s go raid cars.”

“Bad idea,” he’d say. “Could be the wrong car is full of dead.”

Could be? Sure, but we’re good at killing them. Real good. If there was an Olympics held today for how to kill Z’s, we’d at least win the bronze.

“Let’s go find a house with an abandoned hot tub so we can take a bath.”

“Then we’d be caught with our pants down.” Jesus, he could be such a drag.

“Let’s go find other survivors.”

“They’ll just steal our stuff or maybe try to eat us.” On second thought, that one actually made sense.

“Christ, Joel. No one’s going to eat us.”

“Not yet. Wait until they haven’t eaten for a few days,” he said ominously. I dropped it.

Anyway, I would do my usual list of food supplies but I’m too pissed off right now so I’ll do it tomorrow. There’ll be less to write about by then if Roz has her say.

Yeah — Roz.

24 October, 20:08 hours approximate

Location: Undead Central, San Diego CA

Weapons:

The other night I finished up my entry regarding how Joel, Reynolds, and I escaped from the USS McClusky. As best as I could tell, of the 178 souls on board, only three of us managed to get off the ship before it smashed into the pier and exploded.

It was late and I was about to blow out my candle for the night when I heard something below. Night gets real quiet except for the occasional helicopter in the distance or an airplane too high to see. Every time I heard those I wondered if it was our time to die. I was surprised they hadn’t already nuked this dead fucking cesspool.

The noise was different than the Z’s that sometimes shamble by. This was more like someone on the move. Someone that has a purpose. But it was gone as soon as I’d convinced myself to get up and check it out.

Eventually I fell asleep but had my wrench within reach and the pistol tucked under my pillow. I may be one paranoid mother fucker but I’m also one very alive mother fucker.

Today we did the same thing as yesterday—broke down our weapons and cleaned them. I even took a cloth to my wrench head and got most of the blood, hair, and brain matter off of it.

After we’d bitched and bickered and then managed not to kill each other, I went to bed and considered rolling a joint. I didn’t, though, because as much as I love to give the Marine shit, I didn’t really want to let him down. And if I got high and some of those things got in here I might just giggle my ass off while I looked for something to kill them with.

I was dozing when I heard it again.

I was sure I’d heard voices and then something got knocked over. Shit! Now I knew I wasn’t crazy. I heard more voices and decided that if we had looters alerted to our location I should just go out there and scare them away. Now how fucking stupid is that? What was I going to do? Go out there dressed like a horrible monster? Those are a dime a dozen now. I’d be like “BOO!” And they’d be like “SHOOT IT!”

I felt around in the dark until I located my lighter, struck a flame, then fumbled around for my shirt. Joel had left his pair of NVG’s hanging on the wall so I grabbed those and slid them over my head. He’d be pissed if he found me wearing his toys. Joel always worried about how much juice the batteries had remaining. I worried about being killed by those fucking things out there, so I guess that made us kind of even.

Switching on the NVG’s brought the world into shades of green. I moved to a window and scanned the ground below. There were a few trees out there but most were so dry from the heat, they didn’t even have leaves. Bushes were easy to pick out. I could look out without the goggles and see a dozen things that scared the shit out of me.

I hovered for a few minutes just watching the ground a story below. When nothing materialized, I moved to the other side of the house. Joel was still snoring away behind his cracked door. I looked in and found him sprawled out on the mattress. The first thing Joel did when we took over the house was drag the mattress off the bed. I asked him why and he said he felt safer.

“A Marine scared of things under the bed?” I’d asked.

“Hey man. There are a lot of things out there to be scared about. This is one less.”

With the Night Vision Goggle over my eye I was able to move around the dark house with ease. I checked the other side of the house but didn’t see anything. I hovered by a window and listened for a good fifteen minutes but there was nothing.

Maybe I was just going stir crazy.

It took a half-second to wake up Joel. He was on his feet and reaching for his assault rifle so fast it was like he had a giant spring built in his ass. His room smelled like sweat and oil. That would be Joel and his best friend, an assault rifle.

“Shh,” I whispered. “I think someone’s outside.”

“Just leave the dead fucks be. They’ll wander away. Now let a brother get some shut eye.”

“I don’t know. It’s so quiet, maybe I was just hearing things, but these things sounded like voices.”

“Shit,” Joel said. “Lemme grab the NVGs.”

I handed them over. Good thing it was dark so I didn’t have to put up with a dirty look.

Joel grumped around doing Marine shit while I waited. I did a check of my side arm and ran through ammo, slide, and safety positioning. I had a full mag of 7 rounds and one in the chamber. One more mag went into a pocket and I dropped a handful of shells into my other. My lucky .45 round was still in its place right next to my hip. All I needed was my wrench and I was ready to bash some heads.

Going outside meant navigating off the deck. There’s no other way in unless someone has a tool that can bust the front door off. We picked this place because it had one main entrance. We filled the entryway with crap like a sofa and then piled a few bodies on top. It made for a gruesome entry.

Next chapter I’ll write about Fortress, promise. That way, if my corpse is found, readers will understand what a pain in the ass this place was to secure and appreciate all the effort we went through.

You’re welcome.

The only dead that stopped by were ignored. If they got persistent Joel and I would drop cinder blocks on their heads. The blocks were attached to ropes so we could pull them back up. We had a pool going on weekly kills and I was up by three. The best part was trying to get their attention just before the block struck. They’d look up with that blank face, those white eyes, and then SPLAT!

Joel went out and stared into the dark for so long I thought he’d fallen asleep standing up. I waited and went over my gun again and again.

Joel had taught me to treat it like a girl with a rocking body. You want to know every inch of her because you can’t dream about her later unless you’ve been hands-on for hours.

“There’s no one out here.”

“Yeah. Now. There was a few minutes ago.”

“You been hitting the ganja?” Joel asked.

“Not today. I swear, man, I heard something.”

“They’re gone now. Get some sleep. We need to leave in a couple of hours.”

“Yeah. I’ll do my best.”

When Joel left I dragged my mattress next to the sliding glass door and left it cracked open so the breeze rolled over me, but also so I could hear anyone approaching. The thin bit of breeze helped, but I was a long way from anything resembling sleep. I tossed and turned as I strained to hear anything besides the occasional moan of one of the Z’s wandering around in the dark.

Finally I closed my eyes and drifted off, dreaming that I was back on the McClusky and the crew had been replaced by a team of bikini models all named Helen. Every one of them.

Joel’s hand on my shoulder tore me out of sleep.

“Ugh,” I muttered.

“Mission time,” he said and moved away.

I was tempted to just go back to sleep. Fuck exploration, it was the middle of the goddamn night. I sat up and rubbed what felt like sand out of my eyes.

While I suited up in my engineer overalls, Joel stood to the side of the deck entrance and scanned the area. He was already dressed in his combat gear. He checked his pockets one more time, pulling magazines out to do a visual inspection by the light of the moon. Satisfied, he stuffed them back into pouches at his chest and side, then secured them by pressing flaps in. Early on, we’d learned the hard way that the crackle of a Velcro pocket could bring a pack in seconds.

Joel dragged the ladder out and lowered it to the ground, moving it around until he was satisfied it had a good hold on the ground. He slung his AR-15 over his shoulder and then went down the ladder while I trained the .45 around the area. When he was on the ground, he covered for me.

We hid the ladder under a pile of brush and dragged a pair of rotting corpses on top to keep prying eyes on other things.

Our destination was the naval base. Joel had wanted to return for the past week, but the Z’s in the area had been too heavy. After some scouting earlier today we determined that it might be safe to slip in, find some warehouse he knew about, commandeer a car, and get the fuck back to dodge, all before the night was over. We really needed to load up on ammo and maybe another weapon or two. If we got stuck with our current weapon pool, I doubted we’d be able to shoot our way out of a wet paper bag before we ran out of rounds.

Fucking zombies. I hate them.

Joel scouted ahead while I brought up the rear. I grumbled but a look from the Marine reminded me that it was time to get serious. One misstep out in this world and we’d be dead meat.

I did find that with night came something amazing. Cold air. It rolled off the water and reminded me of what it was like before we ended up stuck in Fortress. Going out like this was familiar. We’d already done it half a dozen times and we were still alive. The other thing that I found was the smell of decay. It was everywhere. Trash and bodies rotting in the sun made for a disgusting reek that clung to everything.

The idea was to remain quiet. As quiet as a sleeping baby. Any loud noises and you were likely to call in a pack of the dead. Not that they actually traveled together, because they had no thoughts in their heads. They reacted to some bizarre need to find live flesh. I liked my flesh right where it was — on my bones.

Joel stopped alongside a house and then faded against the wall. He moved around the corner with me right behind. Joel held up a hand and I stopped in my tracks. He did something with his NVG’s and then motioned for me to advance.

I crept around the corner and stopped as well.

Joel signaled for me to creep forward, then stopped me when I was a few feet away. He turned and put his fingers to his lips. Joel slipped the NVG’s off his head and handed them to me. I slid my handgun into the holster, took the glasses and slipped them over my head. He had his eyes closed but pointed at the garage. Curious about what the hell he wanted to show me, I moved toward it in the half crouch I’d seen him pull off many times. He made it look easy but I was a lot bigger. Shit was not easy.

The world jumped to life in hues and shades of green. The house was a single story rambler with the remains of a broken fence scattered all over the lawn. The front door hung off its hinges and a corpse lay on the small concrete patio. Even in the pale light of the moon, I could tell that his form had been torn to shreds. A rifle lay next to him. Other bodies littered the patio. It appeared the guy had done his best to fend for his home, but in the end, the Z’s got him.

The garage door was stuck half-open but that wasn’t what made me freeze in my tracks. It was the sounds.

If I didn’t know any better I’d have guessed there was some kind of feast underway in the garage. Maybe a barbecue in San Diego. Just another night for some civilian (or more likely, military) family.

What I saw was anything but.

I lowered myself to a crouch and moved my head around the corner of the house. The walls were stacked with boxes and some old furniture had been pushed into corners. A bike hung from the ceiling. That’s where “normal” ended.

In the center of the room sat four figures. They were dressed in rags and slicked with something wet; even with the NVG’s, I knew it was blood. One gazed up at the wall from its meal. I stifled a gasp when I realized the Z had been chewing on his own fingers. One of the four was an overweight woman missing most of her clothes. She sat and gibbered to herself while also chewing on the ends of her fingers. I don’t mean nibbled, either. She had literally devoured them. A couple of teens rounded out the family from hell.

It was so absurd that all I wanted to do was go in and shoot each one in the damn head.

I ducked back around the corner and shrugged my shoulders at Joel. He leaned in close.

“That shit is fucked up,” he whispered.

I dragged my finger across my neck and shrugged again. Joel shook his head.

He motioned toward my head so I took the NVG’s off and handed them over. As Joel grasped them, I heard someone approach from the other side of the house. I dropped to a crouch while Joel fumbled with the glasses.

A figure entered the yard from the west side and was doing nothing to mask his sounds. With the glasses off it took a few seconds to adjust to the natural light of the moon. I drew the Colt M45A1 as quietly as possible, lifted it with two hands, and aimed.

The person went to the corpse in the middle of the yard and picked up the rifle. They looked it over then felt around in the corpse’s pockets and came up with shells. The sound of them being loaded into the shotgun was like firecrackers popping in the still of night.

Joel crouched next to the side of the house and aimed the assault rifle. Shit! Shit! Shit! If we got into a firefight with someone, the Z’s would be here in a heartbeat.

I moved to his side and looked around the corner. The person lifted the gun and came toward us. Before we could react, the person walked into the garage and the shotgun sounded like a cannon blast. The gun was pumped and boomed again. Feet scrambled on concrete and the form backed out in a hurry. There were three of them on the person, who got off one more shot.

“Fuckers! You killed my family!” she screamed. Yeah — she.

She backed up a few more steps and racked another shell into the gun. She fired but ended up clipping one of the Z’s arms. Part of the arm disappeared, leaving shreds of clothing and flesh.

They advanced on her.

She backed up, pumping the shot gun over and over again, but she must have been empty. When she cleared the garage with the three Z’s nearly on her, I broke from cover. I slid my handgun back into its holster and hefted my wrench. The last Z stumbled out of the garage and I was horrified to see it was one of the kids. She staggered and moaned but didn’t have a lot of momentum. Then I saw why. She was dragging one of her feet at an angle that was impossible for a normal person. It was definitely broken, a gruesome fracture with the bone sticking out, but little Miss Sunshine didn’t care.

I moved behind her in a couple of steps and brought the wrench around in an arc that ended with her head. She dropped like a rock and I was rewarded with a pile of brain matter on the end of wrench head.

Then I hit something on the ground, a rock or broken piece of crap from the house, and stumbled. My ankle twisted under me and I almost went down.

One of the Z’s turned on me and it was all I could do to fend him off. The guy was almost as big as me and dressed in khaki shorts with the remains of a black t-shirt clinging to his body. I took his attack and tried to turn him away by using his own momentum to toss him aside, but my foot screamed in agony and I ended up in a heap.

Fucker was fresh dead. He wasn’t like the slower corpses that had been hanging out for a few days. This guy was quick and his teeth gnashed in toward my shoulder like a viper. I got the wrench in the way and smacked him aside. I managed to get an elbow in and hit him hard enough to roll the fucker off me. Jesus Christ! He smelled horrible — and I’ve worked around sailors for most of my life, so that should tell you something.

I swung the wrench again, but I panicked and it crashed into his chest. Any normal man would have been crushed. It barely fazed this dead fuck.

The girl must have figured out how to get her shot gun functioning because it boomed again. I swore, hoping she didn’t mistake me for one of the dead. I rolled to my side and almost got my hands on the ground to pick myself up. Then I felt a claw on my shirt as the guy pulled me back down. I rolled and got a boot up. I lifted it high in the air and hit the Z again, but just in the chest, and all that did was knock him flat.

Where the hell was Joel?

“Get out of the fucking way!” Joel kept his voice low.

“About time!” I tried to echo his tone but panic rode my voice and I may have sounded like a scared six-year-old girl.

The Z grabbed my leg but I kicked free and rolled again. Joel’s boots came into view and then the AR-15 fired. The Z was blown onto his back. One more shot to the head and the guy didn’t move again.

I got to my feet and limped after Joel, ankle aching with every step.

“Are they dead?” The girl with the shotgun approached. She didn’t even look us in the face; she just studied the corpses on the ground.

“Yeah, all dead — need to clear this area before more arrive.” Joel said.

“I’ll stay here and hold them back. Thanks for the assist.” She said. Her voice had a slight Latino accent.

“Come with us,” I said impulsively. Or was it impulsive? Were we just supposed to leave another survivor behind while we made an escape?

Joel grabbed my shirt sleeve and tugged.

“We can’t leave her.”

“If she wants to stay, let her,” he said near my ear, but she was probably able to hear him.

“We can’t leave someone behind like that.”

“Since when did you grow a fucking sense of morality? We ain’t got the supplies for another survivor.”

“Just go,” the girl said. “That’s my dad on the lawn. The eaters in the garage killed everyone. There’s nothing left.”

“Oh, for fucks sake.” Joel said and stared at both of us.

The sound of something shuffling down the street sent a chill down my neck. I looked for shapes.

I grabbed the girl’s hand and tugged her close. “Just until we get free; then you can do whatever you want.”

“I don’t care. I just don’t care anymore. I got nothing,” she repeated.

“I need help, okay? I can’t run because I sprained my ankle.”

“Fine. Fuck! You helped me, so I’ll help you.” She lifted my arm and put it around her shoulders.

Joel swore a few more times and then took point. I gimped along behind him, holding the girl close.

“I’m Jackson,” I told her as I trained the gun all over the place.

“I’m Roz. Jackson your first or last name?”

“First. Jackson Creed.”

“Okay, man. Now that we got introductions out of the way, why don’t you shut the fuck up so we don’t get swarmed?”

“Me? You’re the one that came in with guns blazing. If it weren’t for my wrench you’d be one of them by now.”

“Keep your wrench in your pants and keep that gun aimed. Where we going anyway?”

“Fortress, I guess.”

“Fortress?”

“It’s just what we call home. Do you have any food?”

“Lots in my house. Before we were overrun we had a big stash.”

“How’d you get overrun?”

“They were making a lot of noise. Dad snuck out to see what it was. One of them saw him and that was all it took. They killed my sister and a kid we’d taken in. Dad made me go. He made me leave them, but I couldn’t just go without knowing, so I came back a few hours later. Eyes front so we don’t get killed out here.”

“Eyes front? Play a lot of video games?”

“I’m in the Army, dumbass. I was home on leave when this shit went down.”

“Would you two kindly shut the fuck up?” Joel whispered.

We’d covered a few blocks when Joel stuck his hand up, fist closed. I stopped and fought my twisted foot. We were in the backyard of a house with a dead lawn and a small fence. I staggered to the fence and lowered myself to my knees, then covered Joel as he advanced on the house. He paused in the middle of the yard and didn’t move for a few seconds, then ran toward the side of the house and planted himself in a deep shadow.

The back of the home had a shattered sliding glass door; the accompanying screen door was in shreds on the ground. There was a body sticking its legs out of the doorway. They didn’t move.

Noises near the street in front of the home.

Roz turned her gun to the side and examined it, then slid a few shells into the breech. Then there was movement out front; Joel faded from sight, but he wasn’t gone long. Like someone had set his ass on fire, he came running back.

“Thirty or forty of them on my three o’clock.”

“We’re cut off?”

“Worse, there’s lights in Fortress. We’re blown.”

I swore like the sailor I am for a few seconds.

“Back to my house. We have supplies and it used to be boarded up before Dad got himself killed,” Roz said.

“The house we just left? Could have told us that before we walked half the fucking city,” Joel said we moved around a fence keeping low.

“You asked for my help, man. You didn’t ask me for a place to stay, so secure that fucking attitude.”

“Well, yes ma’am,” Joel said. I could almost hear his eye-roll.

“It’s safe for the night, then we can try your place again.”

“No reason to go back there. It’ll be picked clean.” Joel said.

I wanted to punch someone.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” I said between clenched teeth.

Something shambled near us in the dark. I glanced up, almost too late.

A figure stumbled upon us, moaning, white eyes searching. Its mouth was stretched into a jagged grin of glee. Joel didn’t hesitate. He shot the fucker, but missed a head-shot in his haste. The shot nicked its throat, though, and spun it to the side. I hopped up on my bad foot and almost screamed in pain. I covered by swinging the wrench into the Z’s jaw. The blow arced upward as I stood, so it had the force of a fucking car wreck and lifted the Z off the ground. It flopped backward and didn’t move.

Joel shot another shape and then Roz fired her shotgun, blowing a hole in the middle of a Z.

“Shit! Zulu’s everywhere! Go go go!” Joel said, and we did just that.

We hauled ass, Joel weaving between fences and houses as we tried to keep up. My twisted foot was a constant shriek of pain, but it was better than the alternative.

We broke through a bunch of dried up shrubs and were on the other side of the house we’d just left. Roz tapped Joel and pointed at a single story home right next to it. The place was darker than fortress and as we drew closer I realized why. Boards had been nailed to the inside of the windows. The door was shut but writing was spray-painted onto it.

“Looters will be shot by well-armed occupants.”

Well, hell. That had been our trick at Fortress. I guess advertising wasn’t such a good idea. Someone must have waited for us to leave and then moved in on our territory. Voices. Now I knew I’d heard them. Now they were in our home. I had a brief fantasy of Joel using his assault rifle with some kind of scope that can see through walls to take out the sons of bitches.

We moved into the open, but a shaped drifted near the front of the house and then stopped to stare at the moon. The figure swayed back and forth. Joel lifted his AR but I waved him off.

Another shape came into view and stood next to the first. The man wore a ripped t-shirt and nothing else. His legs hung with grey slack skin. The girl wore what was once a white dress. She was tiny and one arm flopped against her side when she lurched.

I lifted my wrench and pointed. Roz got the idea and produced a huge knife with a serrated edge.

I leaned over and whispered to Joel, “Cover us.”

Joel nodded, pointed, and drew his finger across his neck. He then put his finger to his lip and blew gently.

Roz headed straight toward the man, leaving me the girl. I would have cut Roz off but I couldn’t walk fast enough. I ‘hmphed’ and advanced with her.

We were a few feet away when the guy turned. Roz had the knife raised and was about to drive it into his skull. The girl didn’t see me, so when the man surprised us I changed tactics and hit him across the head. Roz turned on me and I thought she was going to drive the knife into me.

The guy fell to the side but his foot spasmodically kicked out and tangled with Roz’s legs. They both went down, and the girl in the white dress, seeing her opportunity, leaped on top of Roz. Roz pushed her up by the neck, but when I swung, the girl rolled to the side and my blow sailed over both of them. The girl snarled as she tried to get back on top of Roz, but Roz was having none of that. She came up in a crouch and drove the blade into the girl’s chest.

Blood gushed from the Z’s mouth. The knife got stuck, so I leaned over, aiming carefully this time, and crushed the girl’s head with the wrench.

Together we staggered into the house and Roz quietly closed the door behind us. There was a thick metal bar in the hallway. She and Joel picked it up and dropped it into slots on either side of the entry way. Then she showed us a huge dresser that she and Joel pushed against the door.

Roz held up a hand, so we waited. She marched down the hallway and looked into rooms. She came back and moved into the kitchen and then the living room, training the shotgun on every corner. She finally came back and ushered us in.

We staggered into what had been the living room and Roz collapsed on a couch.

“Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again, asshole,” she said.

I looked around in confusion. Me?

“What?”

“I had that shit, man. You didn’t have to get in my way.”

“Yeah, Creed. Fucking jerk,” Joel added from a dark corner.

“I’m going to bed. You fuckers try anything and I got a shotgun shell with your name on it.”

The room was too dark to show Roz clearly, but I couldn’t help noticing that she had a knockout figure.

“We aren’t animals,” Joel said.

“Whatever, man. Just keep your dicks out here and no one gets killed.”

A door closed down the hallway.

We were left in a strange place and it was pitch black. Joel slipped on his NVG’s and moved around the house.

I laid back on a lazy-boy, propped my feet up, and tried not to think of how miserable I felt. Damn leg hurt. I was thirsty, fucking exhausted, and so hungry I could eat about six meals.

After some rustling around, Joel came back and put something in my lap. I almost broke into tears when I realized it was bottled water and a pair of food bars in plastic wrappers.

It’s late and I can’t write any more. It was hard enough getting used to sleeping in Fortress; now we have this temporary home around us and a new friend.

This is Machinist Mate First Class Jackson Creed and I am still alive.