Zombies Bite!

Prologue

Dude, I got a really funny joke for you. What do vegetarian zombies eat? Without waiting for a response the young man giggled and answered, Grains, man! Fresh grains! Slapping his free left hand on his dirt crusted, blood stained jeans, he gave a hearty laugh.

Seriously, shut up. With all your nonstop yapping how are we going to hear those things if they get too close? The older man gestured to the group of stumblers gathering at the chain link fence. He was so tired of working with this twenty-year-old college drop-out, he preferred working alone or with someone who took the job seriously.

Dude, I was just trying to lighten the mood. Why you gotta be so serious all the time?

Why? Why? Because they were people, gesturing towards the zombie horde, now they’re dead, upright, walking things, monsters, zombies, stumbling around out there. You know what you dumb, stupid kid? They only have one thing on their mind, eating me and eating you. And for the last time my name’s not dude, or man, or hey you, it’s Gene. So try getting something right for once in what will probably be a very short life. He looked back toward the stumbling masses. How he hated this job.

Being lookout for the compound was not the most exciting job, but it seemed to be the most stressful. Anyone with the stomach for it had to do it at least once. These days pretty much everyone wanted the chance, but not everyone was able to go through with what needed to be done. Of course the fact that pretty much everyone wanted to try it was what made him wonder why he had been assigned to this grotesque job for the fifth time. For him it wasn’t his stomach that bothered him, it was his own sense of mortality. Shooting the living had never been a bullet point on his personal agenda. Yet, here he was again, at the wall. The zombies continuing to give him the creeps.

Fine, fine dude, I mean Gene. Like I said, I was just trying to lighten the mood a little. You seem pretty tense and I really don’t want to risk getting shot because of your jumpy ass. The younger man pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep lung filling puff.

I’d rather be jumpy than dead kid.

Name’s not kid, man. You want me to respect you and call you by your name you should extend the favor and call me by mine. Flicking tiny orange embers and ash onto the dirt the young man grinned at Gene.

Sorry, I am not going to call you Grass. Give me your birth name and I will call you that, otherwise you stay kid. Gene looked down the scope of his rifle. Some of the zombies were getting too close and would have to be obliterated soon. If they pushed too hard up against the fence there was a chance, however slight, that they could knock it over and walk towards the inner walls.

Old fart, the younger man whispered, hoping that Gene heard but doubting the old man paid attention to anything he said.

The young man’s given name was Jonas Adam Applegate, but it was a little too ostentatious for his tastes. His parents had been religious zealots and he thought himself lucky he hadn’t been named Jesus. His parents had assumed the rise of the dead signaled the end of the world and the second coming of the savior. They waited in their home, waited to be lifted to the heavens; instead they were torn apart by zombies and Jonas escaped, barely. Though he tried to remain calm, being from an affluent family was just not in his favor. He had spent too much time riding in a golf cart and not enough on a hog.

So, as the zombies rose he became Grass, a player with a silly attitude and no cares in the world. In reality he was so scared he had actually shit his pants that first day he walked outside. Even the foul language wasn’t him, he just didn’t want to do anything associated with those freaky zombies. Even though Gene thought he was a college drop-out, he was actually a genius in his third year of law school, all at the young age of twenty.

The sewers became his path to freedom and he stayed underground for the first week. It hadn’t been his first choice, but with no clue where else might be safe it had worked. He never thought that after leaving the sewers his new free world would smell just as bad. The zombies didn’t stop rotting because they were up and walking around. The fresher ones smelled a whole hell of a lot better than the ones that had been dead a couple of weeks, but now the zombies had started hanging around in huddled massed and smelled bad either way. The decomposition mixing with the smell of unwashed bodies was hell. Personally he preferred the sweet smell of his gal Mary Jane, which he only took up for the first time here in this compound, to the smell of the decomposing walking dead.

I may be an old fart, I am not going to deny that, but I know what it takes to survive. I was in the war, actually I was in a couple of them, and in war you have to be both smart and a little jumpy, otherwise you die, Gene said. He was thankful he had never been forced to shoot anyone in any of the wars he participated in, which worked for him since he never really felt the desire to end a life. All he had wanted was to get back home to marry his high school sweetie, Shirley. Of course that was the same thing every other Dick and Bob dreamt about back then.

I don’t want to talk about this. This is a new era man, the beginning of a new way of life. You gotta find joy where you can. Jonas said looking at Gene. Even though he had worked the lookout shift with him three times now he never really talked to the guy.

Gene was a man of few words, one of those old school dudes who liked to keep to himself, didn’t share, and he wasn’t really one for small talk. Whereas Jonas needed to shoot the breeze sometimes, share, talk, or even joke when he worked this shift. Jonas acted like it didn’t bother him to shoot the zombies but to him they were still people, even though they would have killed him if they had the chance. His religious parents really screwed him up, which only prevented him from killing efficiently, which was a problem now since the dead ruled the earth. Plus law school hadn’t added to the oh let’s have fun killing zombies with no trial feelings, teaching about human rights.

Just keep your mouth shut and watch out, Gene griped.

Oh hey man, Gene, did you see that group they brought in two weeks ago? The girl with the blue hair was kinda hot even though she was a mess. Must have been an accident. Not too many cute things in here. Maybe all the cute girls were too scared to leave and find safety, or were just too easy to get to. A guy really needs some options, especially when we might have to repopulate the world. Oh and that little girl! Man, I think she might have been a zombie. She didn’t look like your average zombie, and I doubt they would have brought her in if she was a zombie, but she looked so pale and sick, freaked me out a little bit. Jonas said. He really enjoyed talking as Grass, it gave him more freedom with the language. Besides, working as a look-out he hadn’t had to do much else that required being put in dangerous positions. Most people thought he was just too stupid or too stoned, which was a relief.

Gene remembered the group, they had arrived in two separate vans. In one had been two young woman, two guys and a kid. In the other he briefly saw a man and a little girl. The little girl had been cute, she reminded him of his daughter when she had been little. This little girl looked off though, and rumor was she was dead, a zombie. Since then though she hadn’t been seen in the camp and everyone assumed she had died. It had been reported that she was dead when she had been brought here and had only been brought in to give the other kid some peace of mind, since she was his sister or something like that. Gene thought someone might be keeping a secret, a horrible, and potentially deadly, secret.

Part One

His children are far from safety,

they are crushed in the gate,

and there is no one to deliver them.

Job 5:4

Chapter One

Tick, tick, tick. The ticking was all Valerie heard. Her head hurt, her legs hurt, her arms hurt, her whole freaking body hurt, but right now it was a sweet pain. The pain let her know that she had not died in the accident, that she was not a zombie. Well, she didn’t know if zombies felt pain, but she hoped they didn’t. Her feelings of pain were a sign that she was still alive. Plus, it had been two weeks, so she was feeling a lot better than before.

Raising her head she ran a hand through her blue hair, it needed a good wash. She looked at her surroundings the people around her had changed over the past few weeks. Three of them had become zombies, two had died from non-zombie related causes, and one burn victim. The burns hadn’t been too serious although the young man did have some third degree burns on his arm. They had to be extremely careful about infection since this wasn’t a medical facility nor was it necessarily sterile. Most people who came in here were just like her. Recovering from zombie related trauma, or accidents within the compound.

Valerie didn’t care or wonder about most of the people in this makeshift infirmary. Maybe she was still in shock, or maybe since the deaths of Charlie, Robert and Maxine, she just didn’t have the ability to care. Valerie wished she had been able to at least say goodbye to Maxine. When she thought about Maxine she always remembered Charlie and how he had looked after he had become a zombie, which helped her gratefully accept Dr. Blackwater and how he had been there to break the news about Maxine.

Maxine hadn’t had a decent burial, her body was burnt in the pit with the other permanently dead zombies, and Valerie regretted that, even though she understood. Darius would have had a better degree of closure if he had been allowed to bury at least one of his loved ones. Leaving Robert’s body had been hard, but now not being able to bury his sister he may never have a good amount of closure. Of course, what the heck was a good amount of closure?

Thankfully, Darius had found his little sister, Bethany. That was incredibly lucky. Now he could worry about Bethany and protecting her. There was hope Bethany would help Darius move on and not linger on Maxine’s death. When Valerie met Bethany she saw a lot of Maxine in her, although Bethany’s ruddiness was different than Maxine’s, whereas Maxine had black hair and green eyes Bethany was blond with brown eyes. Overall it was the strong survival instinct the little girl had that reminded Valerie of little Maxine.

At only six Bethany had been able to survive as zombies filled her house and roamed around searching for food. Both her mother and father were dead, her mother’s throat torn out, her head attached only by a thread of skin. Which, it was thought was why she hadn’t risen as a zombie. Bethany’s father, Jordan, had been shot by the people who had found her. Apparently he had been eating what was left of Ashley, the mother of all three kids. Because Bethany had been able to hide and survive, she was compared to a white unicorn since she was so young. Any other surviving children had only survived because they were with their parents, and none of those children were under the age of eight. It was weird to think the youngest child was six. Of course there were women who were pregnant, so Bethany wouldn’t be the youngest forever, and no one knew how many children were still outside. Now Valerie, Davis and Darius hoped they could help Bethany try to maintain some of the innocence she might still have left in her childhood. She did wonder how it looked for a big black man to be in charge of two young white kids, since Davis was like over six feet tall and dark skinned.

Miss, you have any water over there you can spare? asked the woman in the next bed.

Yeah sure, I’ve got some right here, Valerie said, sitting and pouring the water into a small yellow plastic cup. She got out of bed, a task she wouldn’t have been able to do two weeks ago, and handed the cup to the older woman. It was amazing what two weeks of rest could do for a person. The woman took it with shaky, liver spotted hands while her deep brown eyes searched Valerie over, evaluating her. She must not have known that those suspected to be infected weren’t brought in here anymore. They started turning too fast and one had actually killed a volunteer before being put down.

Valerie smiled, trying to be reassuring.

Don’t worry, Dearie, the woman whispered, I’m not infected. I just got sick because of my heart. I keep forgetting to stop and rest, but as an old woman I worry that if I stop I just won’t start up again. By the way, name’s Rebecca. Setting the water down she held her right hand out to Valerie. Noticing the broken nails and splintered skin Valerie shook it very gently.

I’m Valerie. I’m not sick either. I was in a car accident, well actually it was a couple of car accidents. They’ve kept me here to give me time to heal enough to work or whatever. I won’t be a hundred percent better but I’ll probably be able to do some small, lightweight work or paper work of some sort. I don’t know exactly, and I’m not sure I totally care either, I haven’t been anywhere but in this infirmary so I’ve no idea what I will be doing when I get out of here. Sorry, I’m probably talking too much. It’s just been kind of lonely in here. Valerie giggled.

The idea that she wanted to work was funny since her and Charlie’s only plans were to wander, enjoy life, and live on whatever money they had. They were never going to get a real job unless they absolutely had to, and with Charlie’s access to money they weren’t going to have to for a long time. Now it wasn’t about money, you worked for rights, which was also funny. A society was being established here so fast, without any thought to what might be happening or how fast rescue might come, or even if there was rescue or government or anything outside of these walls. Although Valerie was sure that money was still the object of some people’s desires, she wasn’t sure it would be of much use if the government had fallen even further down the rabbit hole.

Don’t worry about talking too much, child, we all get lonely. Personally, I have been here in the safe zone since it started. Used to be a teacher here back when it was a school. Came by to reminisce before the city tore it down, then the monsters came. I got stuck here which was a good thing, a little comforting too since there was a time when this was my home away from home. I didn’t think I was going to be away from home for so long, and usually my heart doesn’t cause me a single problem but I’ve got a bad valve. It really doesn’t cause too much trouble but I am not supposed to let myself get too stressed and I’m not supposed to eat fried foods, but we all have out vices don’t we, Dear? Rebecca smiled at Valerie. Her face wrinkled and Valerie guessed this woman smiled a lot, just based on the formation of those wrinkles.

I’m not from around here, and to be honest I still don’t know where here is. Valerie stated, I was just passing through. I’m from California. My best friend Charlie thought we should explore the world and we were on our way to a concert when my car crashed. Charlie’s dead now though. I’m pretty sure my parents are too. I have a funny feeling that a lot of people I used to know are dead, Valerie looked away from Rebecca, wondering if she should at least try to get out to California to see if her parents were really dead. She wondered if the risk could possibly outweigh the reward, or if there was a possibility she would at least find her father alive. From the last phone call, she knew the likelihood of her father being alive was so slim it wasn’t even visible.

I’m sorry dear. So many people have lost loved ones in this. I lost my Clancy, but not to the monsters, he had a heart attack the day before I came here. I guess he died more peacefully than some of the others, but I would still rather have him here with me, his loving hand on mine. Now I will never get the chance to properly bury him, he will be in that dreary morgue forever. Never thought I would see the day an old lady like me would have to fight monsters to stay alive. Rebecca smiled again, a small smile with the memory of her husband behind it.

Rebecca, Valerie asked, what do you know about the camp? What is it like out there? Valerie only knew what Davis and the kids had told her about the camp, which wasn’t much since they had only been allowed to visit her twice so they wouldn’t get sick.

Valerie waited for answers from this kind elderly woman. Instead, the answer came from the zombies as they moaned in unison outside the fences.

Chapter Two

Interesting creatures, these humans. They banded together, worked to try and defeat the zombies growing in number outside, but in reality they didn’t know anything about combat, or zombies. They believed that the only enemy was the brain hungry zombie. Marcus was surprised that they let everyone keep their weapons. None of these people knew who they were trusting their food, children or safety with. Here he was, technically a murderer by society’s standards - and a gun sat next to him on the bed. It amused him.

The devout loyalty of Sasha amused him as well. Here was a girl who didn’t know him, didn’t know his history or his deviant desires, yet she stayed by him. There was something about her, some evil twinkle in her eye, which is all that saved her from being just another toy to him. She was eager, cute, loved to please him, and didn’t mind a little pain when they fucked.

So far, Marcus had already killed one woman while here. Strangled her after bringing her to his room for sex. Sasha had watched, pouting the whole time, until he wrapped his hands around the woman’s neck and finished both the sex and the asphyxiation. Then he took her gun and found a nice open place to toss her body to the anxiously awaiting zombies. People came and went because some still wanted to go out searching for other survivors so she was not going to be missed for a while, he hoped.

Organization was not the strongest suit of this survivor group, though they had assigned some jobs like guarding the gate, childcare at the makeshift orphanage, cooks, and help at the infirmary. That had been where Sasha went, the infirmary, which was the second reason she was valuable to him. Sasha liked that she could continue to be around the sick and the dying. Her enjoyment seemed to come from her continued ability to help people move on to a better place, as she put it, but in all honesty she just killed those she chose didn’t deserve to live. Sasha was a terrible person; she both complimented him and pissed him off.

After the accident Marcus had asked Sasha about the people who had been in the other car and Sasha had informed him most of them were harmless except the cop. It bothered Marcus that there was a cop, but he knew that right now there were more things for a cop to worry about than one silly little serial killer.

Actually, in all honesty he was more interested in the little girl, Maxine. He saw the doctor declare her dead at the scene of the car accident, yet Marcus was sure that he saw her moving. Why would anyone, besides him, want to keep a zombie alive? When Sasha told Marcus the doctor was a surgeon with some sort of disease research experience, he realized the doctor was most likely looking for a vaccine. The good doctor either wanted to cure the disease or wanted to create a vaccine to prevent the disease from spreading in the future. Marcus didn’t care about all that, in fact a cure or vaccine might hinder his plans of world and zombie domination. What he did care about was the little girl and what she might be able to offer for the future, well, the future he was planning.

Sasha crawled up behind Marcus and wrapped her arms around him. Seductively she reached down and fondled his gun and then she fondled him. He wondered why she was so obsessed with his gun when she had one of her own. Maybe she didn’t trust him, which would be smart on her part.

Baby, I totally wanna fuck you right now, she said, pressing her body against his back.

Don’t call me baby, he growled, moving the gun to the table next to the bed. The he turned swiftly and pushed her back on the bed.

I just . . . , Sasha started.

Bitch, I don’t give a fuck what you want right now. If I want to fuck you I’ll let you know. I just keep you around to have some nice toys to use, and because you can help me get to the girl. You know that. Right now, I just want to sit here, relax, and maybe plan a little. He slapped her, driving in the point he was trying to make. Yeah she was fun, and yeah she had her uses, but she had to remember that she was with him because he chose to let her stay. His life was transitory and he didn’t want a girlfriend. She would never be his equal.

I’m sorry. I just wanted to fuck. God, you can be such a total freak. If I offered myself to any of the other dudes around here they wouldn’t pass up the chance. She sat up, touching the handprint staining her cheek, she liked being knocked around a bit, she hated that Marcus could be such a jerk.

If you want to do someone else then you should go, but don’t come back and don’t threaten me, Marcus replied softly.

Dude, I’m not gonna do some other guy. I just want you to know that you got somethin’ good here and you should use it. Sasha kind of hoped he would hit her again. Okay, so he wasn’t the only freak in the room.

Marcus knew Sasha had her end date. He wouldn’t be able to keep her around forever, and honestly he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to tolerate her. So now he needed a plan. He needed to get access to the little girl, and Sasha was the ticket. If she could find a way, with her nursing skills, to get in then he would have an opening. Then Sasha would have proven her worth, and he could finally be rid of her.

He hoped he wasn’t wrong about this little zombie child, otherwise she wasn’t worth the trouble because zombie children were easy to get on the outside. There were so many that one could have their pick if they so chose. If Marcus could control Maxine, he could build his army.

Marcus would be king and his people would be royally fucked.

Chapter Three

I can’t believe it. I’m dead. Just like Daddy I’m dead. Maxine thought as she looked at her skin. It had been about two weeks since she had been secluded in this room, and she only knew about how long it had been was because that nice Dr. Blackwater had kept coming in and checking on her. Other people had visited too, but she didn’t always like them. The way they looked at her, and the way they acted around her it scared her.

It was really hard for Maxine to believe she was dead. Though she understood what it meant, kind of, she wasn’t sure why if she was dead how she was also still alive. Then she heard someone call her a zombie and realized she was like all those sick people outside. The thought made her shiver, but being cold also seemed to be a part of being dead. She seemed to be cold all the time so the people working with Dr. Blackwater gave her clothes hoping they would keep her warm. Right now she was wearing a sweater she didn’t really care for because it was meant for a baby. It was pink with Dora the Explorer on it, she was so too old for Dora. The jeans she wore were nice with pink sparkles down the legs, and she even got some of those fancy Ugg boots. The boots