Enduring Armageddon Read online

  We dismounted the truck in front of one of those big box stores that were everywhere. I could see why the town wanted to pick this place clean, these places had tons and tons of non-perishable food and all sorts of other useful things throughout the rest of the place. The first thing that Jesse did was set up security teams with walkie talkies around the warehouse and then had a few guys go in and unlock all the doors and search the inside to ensure nobody had moved in since they left yesterday.

  When the coast was clear, we went into the store and began hauling all sorts of shit to the trucks. I spent a good thirty minutes just moving peanut butter and another fifteen moving cooking lard. I met a few guys during the work and found out that the store’s forklift had been irreparably damaged in a fight with some scavengers when the Virden folks came over yesterday and that was why we were moving everything by wheelbarrows and hand trucks found in the warehouse. For the new guys like me who hadn’t earned anyone’s respect, we had to do everything by hand.

  Early in the afternoon, probably around one or so, we had completely cleared the place of food and everyone was given a fifteen minute break as a reward for our hard work before we started on the rest of the goods in the store. I really had to take a shit so I high-tailed it to the restroom, but the place was absolutely disgusting and I closed the door almost as soon as I opened it. The tiny glimpse that I’d seen of the bathroom illuminated in my headlamp told the story of a group of people using the restroom for the last month with no way of flushing the toilets or ventilating the room, added on top of that was the one hundred man work crew from Virden and the place was unsuitable for human beings and a hotbed of disease.

  Several of the other guys may have had actual gas masks that blocked out the smells, but my paper mask sure didn’t. I decided that I’d take my chances pooping in a ditch behind the store. I did the butt-cheek squeeze back to the aisle that held the baby wipes and grabbed a box of them.

  There was a little ditch less than two hundred yards from the back loading dock where I could do my business and have a little bit of privacy while still being within earshot of the store. I headed out the back door and told the security guy that I was going to use the bathroom in the ditch. He waved and said something to his partner that I couldn’t hear.

  I found a spot near the bottom of the ditch where a small tree was growing that I could use to hold onto for balance and I dropped trou. I had a satisfying first effort but a noise just on the far side of the ditch made my colon seize up and jerk the second turd back inside. I was sure I’d heard a wheezing, rasping breath not far from me. I grabbed the belt loops of my jeans and started to pull up my pants when one of those diseased creatures burst from the brush and tackled me.

  I didn’t have time to do anything but throw up my hands and grab the thing around the neck. It clawed at my arms and kicked out with its feet at my exposed legs, anything to try to get my death grip from around its throat. I was scared shitless and adrenaline must have surged through me because I was able to keep it at arm’s length. I shouted as loud as I could for help from the guards and I prayed that they’d be able to help me once they got there.

  The creature gnashed its teeth over and over as it tried to bend its head enough to get a chunk of my skin. The thing’s fingers were like iron as they gripped my forearms and repeatedly attempted to jerk my hands from where they were locked around its throat. I squeezed with every bit of keyboard-hypertrophied strength I could muster from my fingers. I felt the creature’s larynx collapse under my grip, but it still continued to attack me.

  I heard men shouting from the direction of the warehouse and I hoped they’d make it in time before I got bitten. I thought of Rebecca, going about her day at her new job and the life that we were trying to carve out in this world. It wasn’t fair to her that I get killed out here by some radiated freak that was too stupid to avoid contamination. I yelled in anger and I felt an even greater strength surge into my fingers and I squeezed harder. I squeezed so hard that the windpipe completely compressed and the thing couldn’t breathe. The tugs to dislodge my hands became frantic and then stopped all together and I fell forward on top of it. I continued to crush the thing’s throat. I kept going until my fingers embedded into its flesh and then the skin began to tear. The creature’s arms fell away as it suffocated and died.

  I held on for what seemed like forever, then a dark halo began to form on the outskirts of my vision and my head felt funny. The ring contracted and the dead face in front of me seemed to elongate and get farther away. The tunnel of my sight was closing rapidly and my head felt light. I couldn’t think of anything besides continuing to squeeze my fingers around the creature’s throat. Then I collapsed and fell on top of my enemy.

  * * *

  When I came to, it was to the sound of laughter. I opened my eyes and was staring straight into the dead face of my former attacker. “Oh, shit!” I yelled and pushed myself off of the creature but my pants were still wrapped around my calves so I stumbled backward and landed hard on my cold, naked ass. I scrambled backwards up the ditch in a crabwalk from the thing I’d just killed.

  The laughter only increased at that. I turned my head and saw at least twenty guys laughing so hard that they were bent double. I lay back and jerked my jeans up over my thighs and zipped them up. I spotted Jesse just as he yelled out, “Jesus Christ, Chuck! That’s probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, definitely the funniest since the start of the apocalypse. What the fuck were you doing? You know, you can still catch their disease by fucking them, right?”

  My face burned bright red around my mask as I realized what it must have looked like to the guys who’d ran over here to help me out when they heard my shouts. It was times like this that I wished I was witty, but I couldn’t really think of anything to say.

  “What, that pretty little thing you’re with not giving you enough pussy?” someone yelled.

  “Hey, I’ll show her how a real man fucks!” another yelled as several of the men made rude gestures and motions.

  I rushed up the hill, wiping the gore from the creature’s throat on my pant legs as I came. I was ready to beat the fuck out of somebody, all of them if I had to, but Jesse stepped in. “Shut the fuck up!” he roared. “If you fuckwits would have done your job, he wouldn’t be down there.” The catcalls and dry-humping of the air ceased almost instantly.

  “I was taking a shit when that thing came up on me. Fuck. I don’t know how the hell I held him off, but I choked it to death.”

  “Holy shit, you killed one of those things with your bare hands!” Robert exclaimed. “That’s fucking badass, man!”

  Jesse tapped one of the guys on the arm and gestured towards the creature. He ran down into the ditch, pulled out a huge knife and grabbed a gloved fistful of the creature’s hair. Then he systematically began sawing the thing’s head off. The men stared in awe as the blade bit deeper and deeper into the flesh. Diseased blood ran freely from the wound. Even from twenty feet away, it was so quiet that we could hear the disgustingly wet slurp of the blade as the guard seesawed the knife through the meat. He grunted and put a little more effort into it when he hit the vertebrae, but eventually the head separated entirely and he carried it up to me.

  “Do you want it for a souvenir?” Jesse asked.

  “Uh, no. I’m okay, thank you,” I said.

  “Okay, suit yourself, but you only get one first kill, and to do it by strangling one of those bastards is pretty good.”

  “I still think I’ll pass, thanks.”

  “Alright then. Now to the ugly part, Chuck. I need you to strip down so we can ensure you didn’t get bitten,” he said.

  I nodded numbly as I unbuttoned my borrowed shirt and wondered if I’d been bitten or if I had any open cuts that would look like bites. Olan, one of the men who’d helped me carry peanut butter came over with a baseball bat on his shoulder. I guessed that if they suspected me of being infected, it was his job to bash my brains out.

  As I
re-slid my pants down and held my arms open for all to see. Jesse slowly circled me looking closely for bite marks. “I think he’s okay. I don’t see anything on him besides his own shit,” he told the group as he shook his head no to the man with the bat, who slid silently back into the crowd of men.

  “Get yourself cleaned up and put your clothes back on. We’ve still got a lot of crap to do… No pun intended, buddy,” Jesse said as he slapped me on my back. All of the men, including me, chuckled at his little comment. “Don’t take it personal. Everyone who has a run-in with one of the zombie-things is checked over and, well, disposed of if they become infected.”

  “I know. It’s our new way of life,” I said. “You know, I was thinking. These things aren’t really zombies. I mean, I’ve seen them bleed to death and I just killed this one by suffocating it. Zombies in the movies have to be hit in head to kill them.”

  “Oh yeah, totally. They’re not like Hollywood zombies, that’s for sure. But they’re close enough and we don’t have anything better to call them, so the name’s just kind of stuck in Virden. A lot of the folks coming in call them that too, so that’s what we’re going with.”

  “Yeah, it makes sense. Plus, there’s already the built-in fear factor of the word ‘zombie’ that people understand that these things are dangerous.”

  “Yup. Hey, why don’t you stick close to me this afternoon? That was freaking awesome that you killed one with your bare hands,” Jesse said. “There’s a bunch of hand sanitizer that you can use in the store to help wash all that stuff off your hands.” I’d forgotten about the creature’s gore that was ground into the creases on my hands and had darkened my fingernails.

  “Okay, thanks man. I’m ready to get back in there and do some work,” I replied.

  “Alright, come find me inside once you get cleaned up,” he said.

  I have never been as grateful for baby wipes as I was after he left. They cleaned the shit off my ass and all the blood from my hands. I hadn’t stopped shaking yet and I still needed to take a shit, but I was just gonna hold that for the rest of the day.

  * * *

  When we got back that evening I told Rebecca what had happened. I felt humiliated as I sat there and told my beautiful wife that I’d been punked out by a bunch of guys and I didn’t do anything when they were saying all those awful things about her. I felt like I was the wimpy kid on the playground being picked on by bullies all over again.

  “Honey, it’s okay. What were you going to do against thirty guys?” she asked softly as she ran her fingers softly across my leg. “How many of those guys, hell, have any of those guys killed one of those things at all? I’m not even talking about the shear awesomeness of choking one of them to death, but like, with a gun or something? I doubt it.”

  “I know, it was pretty awesome the way they looked at me after they found out that I’d killed it with my bare hands,” I said with a slight smile.

  “See, I knew it. You’re probably some camp hero now or something.”

  “Look, I know you’re trying to cheer me up, but over-the-top cheesiness is not going to work. I don’t know how we’re going to fit in here, but I’m starting to realize that the world is a really different place now. I mean, we’ve called it the apocalypse and all that, but we haven’t really been affected too much you know?”

  She nodded and said, “Yeah, I know. I was talking to some of the other teachers. That girl, Sam, the town’s newcomer guide, was gang-raped by a group of men for three or four days straight. She escaped when everyone left to go scavenging and there was only one of them there. She bit his dick off while he was raping her and ran out the door. When she first showed up at the town’s gate, she was naked and her hands were chained together. There was so much blood on her face and chest that they almost shot her because they thought she was one of those things infected with radiation.”

  “Geez, I knew something bad had happened by the way she avoided our questions about her life before coming to Virden, but I didn’t even begin to think about it on that level,” I muttered.

  “Yeah, it’s really fucked up,” she said with a slight shudder. “We were really lucky to find such a great place. I mean, we were living on the road for over two weeks, there’s no telling what could have happened.”

  “I know. Virden is great, but you know we can’t stay. We’re too far north. The weather is already colder and when it gets bad, it’s going to get bad in a hurry and not get any better for a long time.”

  “I believe you. I do, babe. But it’s so dangerous out there. Hell, you just fought against one of those creatures! You, of all people, should know how dangerous it is.”

  “It is dangerous, but I’m not going to let that stop us. We’ve got to get our supplies together, and maybe get some traveling companions, and then get moving south. Maybe Texas or even Arizona…”

  “What? Arizona! It took us two weeks to go about two hundred miles,” she exclaimed. “How far is Arizona from here?”

  “I was just throwing Arizona out there. That may be too far. Maybe we just go straight south to Texas, which is about eight or nine hundred miles and find someplace to set up.”

  “Oh my God. Nine hundred miles! Are you kidding me, Chuck?”

  “We can try for it, maybe we don’t make it before the weather hits, but we’ve got to go. It’s going to get a lot worse up here once the food runs out and all the crops die. People are going to lose every shred of humanity they have left. We’ve got to get out of here as soon as we can.”

  “I don’t know, Charles. I’m starting to have second thoughts about this. That’s a long ways to go and everyone here is so nice. You guys are going out and gathering enough food for everyone. Why can’t we just stay?”

  “Becca, have you been listening to me? Once the weather changes and people begin to starve, this town will be under assault. That’s why we’re going out and gathering food. Allan knows it’s coming, but regardless of how much food we have, it’s eventually going to run out. There’s not going to be any way to grow new stuff.”

  “Alright, but before we even walked into this place, we agreed that we’d stay for a couple weeks. Give me that at least. We’ll go south, but I need a little bit of time to recharge my batteries.”

  I held up two fingers and said, “I don’t like it, but if you promise me that we’re leaving at the end of the two weeks, then we can wait. We’ll use that time to stock up on supplies and get some traveling gear so we’re a little more prepared for the trip. Some heavy-duty backpacks, heavy coats and maybe a tent.”

  “I want to try to get a couple of the real gas masks like some of the people around here have too. These paper ones aren’t going to last nearly as long as we’ll need them to,” Rebecca said as she picked up her old surgical mask.

  “Okay, I’ll add that to the list,” I said as I lay back on the couch to stretch out. Suddenly I was more tired than I remembered being in a long time.

  “Hey, no sleeping,” my wife said as she slapped my knee. “Come on, let’s go get you cleaned up. I’m still crazy horny so I need some time for me.”

  I perked up and said, “I’m gonna go to the bathroom real quick and then get cleaned up.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you in the bedroom. I found some outfits of the former occupant’s that I’m sure you’ll enjoy so don’t take too long!”

  I sat for a moment and watched her ass sway as she strutted back to the bedroom. It was a crazy day in a crazy life. I’d killed a person with my bare hands today. Fine, a diseased, sick individual who would have killed me and probably eaten me. Do they do that? I thought. After killing the thing, I’d somehow become a minor hero to the gathering squad and Jesse freakin’ loved me. Now Rebecca wanted to fuck again. She’d never been as horny as she was right now, not even when we were first dating. Not that I was complaining, but I wondered what was going on. Maybe it had something to do with her feeling safe here in Virden.

  I pondered this as I walked to the bathroom, finally I
’d be able to relieve the pressure in my bowels.

  THREE

  Two days had passed since my run-in with the zombie in Taylorville. I was still a minor celebrity with the gathering crew, but most of the shine wore off when they realized I was just one lucky son of a bitch. I wasn’t some superhuman strongman or some martial arts expert, I’d just been scared out of my mind and the adrenaline took over. I’d read somewhere that sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good and I was alive to prove it.

  We spent the entire day after the run to Taylorville unloading the trucks into wherever we could put supplies. There were several medium-sized businesses near the center of town that were now overflowing with goods so we had to requisition a few of the empty houses from the registration office in order to store what we’d brought in. We all knew that wasn’t enough to last, so the mission was still scheduled to go to Jacksonville.

  Admittedly, I hadn’t been there on the prior day’s trip to Taylorville when they had to fight off scavengers or the preparation for the mission either, but the way Jesse and D’Andre went about getting the gear situated and ready for Jacksonville seemed a lot more like a military operation than a supply run to me.

  Aside from the standard overnight gear that we already knew we needed, we packed a lot of weapons and ammunition. I was given a handgun at first, but once they found out that I didn’t know how to use it, they took it back and gave me a big knife called a KA-BAR. I was told that’s what the Marines carried, back when there was a Marine Corps. It looked wicked-deadly and I hoped that I’d never have to use it. In addition to that, I had my trusty baseball bat that had been with me from the beginning.