Gerald Dean Rice's Blog, page 105

Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 16

"Don't shoot!" I said.

"They're all over, man. All over!" More dead crawled from around a humvee with no wheels. He hopped on top of the hood, shot one in the face, ratcheted the shotgun and dry fired at another. He began swinging the shotgun by the barrel and seemed to be holding off all eight of them. I slipped by, catching a fly in my mouth as I ran.

The farther I ran the louder the moans of the dead seemed. Some instinct told me to go back, to fight until the end with my fellow man, but I was just too afraid.

I was in Utica a few hours later. The streets seemed empty, but I saw how wrong I was.

They were coming.

It was explained to me later that it was never the hoi's intention to kill all the soldiers. There was too much knowledge there to let go to waste. They'd wanted to turn most of them and utilize that expertise to conquer other areas. But they couldn't have predicted that Sergeant Rye would have kept all those dead bodies right under his feet. When the signal was boosted the dead they had estimated would be in the area was supposed to rise and serve as a distraction before the primary invading force that would have hit at nightfall.

A wall of prols would have enclosed on them in a crescent formation. With an unknown and amount and type of artillery, heavy casualties were expected. The only thing the hoi were certain of was there was no nuclear capability. But they walked into Selfridge and cleaned up the relatively few remaining soldiers with no troubles.

I wound up walking into the only group of soldiers left. They had a tank and were doing border patrols and recovering any survivors. They were headed north on Van Dyke and I tried to dart across the street before they saw me. Running must have been an even bigger mistake because there were pops hitting the ground around me from the soldiers firing at me. There was a building that had once been the home of an advertising agency or something with the door open. I ran and up the stairs hoping they would forget about me. The prols weren't far away, either.

There were footsteps too slow to be a soldier's not long behind me. I hid behind a desk, listening for screams or gunfire outside. I heard the flies buzzing before a prol came in a minute later. I watched the feet shuffling back and forth and realized if it came over my way I was trapped. If I popped out now I could push past it and make it out if there weren't a dozen more waiting outside.

I stood, ready to ambush, but the prol looked familiar. It was Orlean, the security guard who'd taunted me back at the company. She must have degraded because she was definitely a prol now. Her eyes went wide when she saw me, shuffling my way just when the tank on the street fired at the window. It felt like a giant had picked up the building and dropped it upside down. We both lost our balance; Orlean falling into wall but keeping her feet. I fell on my butt, scuttling back into the metal desk. Orlean staggered after, her eyes spinning around and locking onto me again. I raised my hands to fend her off, but she grabbed my head, leaned down and sunk her teeth into my scalp and forehead. Blood poured down my face and I closed my eyes as she was no doubt about to begin tearing the skin off my forehead, but she pulled back.

I put my hands in front of my face, looking through my fingers as she stood to the side, still leaned over. It looked like she was spitting. After wiping her mouth several times Orlean's body heaved. She wretched again, but nothing came out. Finally, she looked at me again, growled and walked back to the stairs.

101 Download Celebration!

In celebration of the 101st download of my free story, 30 Minute Plan, I'm doing something crazy!  I'm giving away copies of all my books on Smashwords.  That's right- if you go my Smashwords page you can download any of the 4 books there for free!  Just type in coupon code VW72M for Goners, ZH32G for Goners, volume 2, and JT58B for The Beggar's Bowl!  This offer is only good until tomorrow, so get yours today!

 

Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 15

The third type of undead is some kind of watcher. I don't and none of the hoi I've spoken to know much of anything about them. They're certainly dead—you can tell from the decomposing skin, but how they died is anyone's guess. They don't bite, they don't talk, they just watch.

Rye and Carp blasted the prols as we retreated up the stairs. We weaved around hallways until we were outside in the daylight, all the while Sarge mouthing the words, "That's impossible! Impossible!" when he turned his head back to me. A watcher in blue jeans and a blue striped shirt was watching from about thirty feet away. Soldiers were firing all over the place, but I didn't see anything to shoot at outside.

Screams were coming from back inside and that pretty dark-haired soldier was running out when she tripped and a sea of black hands pulled her back in. It was dark where we'd just come from and I realized it was from the sea of flies flooding the hallway. Their buzzing drowned out the shots of one foolish soldier who stepped in the doorway and opened up with his M-16. A second later he was yanked in by the barrel of his weapon.

Flies were all over. We spat them out our mouths, swatted them out of our ears, shook our heads to get them out of our eyes. Sarge must not have seen the watcher because he hadn't shot at him, but was coming closer and closer. I tripped and fell and he kicked me in the back. He turned away from the building and was nose to nose with the watcher before he emptied his gun into it. It watched him then looked at me before walking backwards from where it had come over a small hill.

"Shoot! Shoot!" Sarge seemed to be hoarse, pointing at the retreating watcher, shaking Carp by the sleeve. Carp was unloading on three dead soldiers, shambling in our direction. He cut them through the middle, stopped, then aimed and shot them all in the head.

They kept coming.

"I thought headshots were supposed to put 'em down!" he shouted. Sarge, not seeing the three he'd been shooting at, grabbed at his weapon and Carp swung his elbow into his commanding officer's jaw.

Sarge was stunned, looking up at him, touching his face. Carp had his M-16 trained on him when the first prol was reaching for his neck.

"Behind you!" I shouted to him and Carp spun around, holding the M-16 like a baseball bat and swung the butt into the side of its head. The prol fell over into the one next to it, but there was a wall of them bringing up the rear. Carp pointed his weapon at the third one, freezing as he saw the rest.

"Give me the gun, idiot!" Sarge rushed at Carp. I stuck out my foot, tripping him and he and Carp fell over. The soldier struggled beneath his commanding officer, trying to throw him off while simultaneously holding onto the M-16.

It was like they waited to attack, encircling the two as they fought. I saw the first attacker reach a stiff hand into Sarge's back, the officer throwing his head back and screaming, though I couldn't hear him over the moans of the dead. The last I saw of either man whole they were still fighting for that gun.

I know what I saw as I was running away, but my eyes must have been wrong. It looked like the dead soldiers had ripped pieces of flesh off their bodies and were passing them around. Prols on the outside of the circle were still standing around, eating as there were other soldiers still fighting.

I bumped into a soldier wielding a shotgun, falling as I tripped over him. He stayed on his feet, turned on me and blasted a spot right next to me.

Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 14

"No wait. I wouldn't have told you all that if I was with them. Seriously, if you shoot me I'll be dead. Dead-dead. If I were one of them I'd just get up again. If you really think I am one of them you could study me. Poke me, prod me—I don't care. Needles don't even bother me anymore. I'm alive, I'm telling you. I'm ali—"

"Sarge!" A tall woman with long black hair falling down to her waist came in. She had a fresh cut on her forehead that had been hastily stitched up. "Something's wrong."

"C'mere." Sarge yanked me to my feet by the neck of my jumper and hauled me behind him and the pretty soldier. He bounced me off walls as we turned corners, further disorienting me. I saw her swipe a card and open a door, holding it open for me and the sergeant. He bounced me off the door and she let the it shut.

She sat at a computer with three monitors with four different programs up on each.

"Right after the incident with Noland something started crashing the systems," she began. "I've been running diagnostics, shutting down and rebooting, running anti-virus software but it's more sophisticated than anything I have to counter it."

"What is it?" Sarge asked.

"I don't know, but it took out the surveillance cameras first. It took out communications, ramped up the temperature and took out the lights. I have no idea why whoever made this would attack the last two systems—it makes no sense."

"Yeah it does." Sarge's voice was barely a whisper. She leaned closer to him. "They're waiting for the night. Gonna smoke us out. Carp—grab somebody and go down to the basement. Kill the A/C."

If the prols hadn't already been in the building the soldiers might have been able to make a stand. It was a fortified military base with who knows how much firepower on hand. But it turned out Sarge was probably killing more of his own men than the undead were.

I didn't know where he was taking me this time, presumably where he'd been 'storing' the bodies of his men, but there was a scream from downstairs. He threw me down the unforgiving metal stairs and followed, kicking me down the rest of the way. A wide-eyed soldier ran up to him.

"Carp, what are you doing down here?" Sarge said. "I told you to cut the A/C."

"I did like you said, Sarge. I got Williams and we were about to shut it off when they just grabbed him. They just tore him apart right next to me!"

"How did they get in?" Sarge lifted me up by the neck. "What do you know about this?"

A while ago I told you there were three types of undead. I also mentioned a signal. Like Jack said—there is a signal, there is radiation or space dust, and there is a virus—I'm sure most of you are aware of this. All three reanimate the dead depending on where you are. As it was explained to me much later what happened at Selfridge was a booster signal had been snuck in that woke up all those soldiers Gunnery Sergeant Graham Rye had killed. All those men and women who'd had as little as a scratch to a life-threatening wound, he'd made sure each one had two shots in the head. He'd supplied the enemy with three hundred soldiers right behind his own lines.

Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 13

"Aw man. I gotta get back there. Noland bit a couple other people. Sarge'll shoot 'em all!" He turned and ran out of the room. I jumped up and caught the door before it closed, counting to twenty before following.

There were a bunch of doors down a long hallway. It turned ahead, towards where the commotion was coming from, but I didn't see any choice. I turned, crouching as low as possible through a cubicle-filled room. Something smashed into the wall just behind and above me but I kept moving.

Peaking down an aisle to my left I saw it was clear and continued. I pushed through a door that had a room full of servers and suddenly there was a loud rumbling in my head. Everything went red and I had to make fists to keep from fainting. After a minute or two everything was normal and I headed for the door with the red EXIT letters over it.

"No, Lionel! No, no, no!" someone shouted. The door I'd just come through was swung open and I ducked beneath a desk just before someone ran past me. Three more sets of legs ran past and through the exit door and there were three shots. The three returned, dragging the body of the first man by the legs. He stared at the ceiling as his bald head dragged and bumped across the floor. When they left I came out and looked around.

And Sarge smacked me with the butt of his .45 again.

When I woke up the twisty tie was gone. Someone was pouring cold water over my face and I tried to sit up—too fast—and my vision turned red again.

"I don't know what you told Stark but you got him shot." Sarge's voice was calmer than before. I looked at him when my vision finally cleared.

"I told him he wasn't infected."

"So you're a doctor then?"

"No, but I've seen—" I stopped talking when he flashed his gun. Another blow from that would split my head open.

"I'll tell you everything I know. Yes, there are corpses that think. They walk and talk just like the living. Not all of them, of course, but enough."

"Enough for what?" Sarge leaned over me, a tight smile on his face.

"Enough to come up with an invasion plan. I don't know what it is, except that there is one. They even have this drug they can use that will… that will zombify a living person, but keep him looking like he's alive. They want to infiltrate."

"Now you must think I'm stupid." He stooped next to me and began whispering. "Okay, I'll play along—you're the infiltrator, aren't you?"

"No, I—"

"Escaped? Is that why you were talking to a corpse on the other side?"

"But that was just part of the plan—I mean my plan. I was just playing along until I got over here and then I was gonna tell you guys everything."

"And you've told me everything? I'm supposed to believe you when my own men are hiding their bite wounds from me? I'd shoot you in the face if I didn't have to shoot you in the face again. I just got through killing six of my own men. Good men, but they got careless. They got too close. I'm not careless. And I'm not stupid, either. To hell with it."

Sarge pointed his gun at me.

Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 12

"Watch him," he said and left. The kid looked confused. He looked like he wanted to say more but didn't know how, looked like he was about to tell the sergeant about the bite mark on his hand.

I waited a minute before speaking.

"How bad off is Noland?" I asked. The soldier stood at attention and stared straight ahead. I took a deep breath and turned toward him.

"Really. You need to tell me how bad off he is. Look, you see the cuffs—

I'm a prisoner. I know about zombies (sorry, that was the word I used at the time). I was over there with them."

His eyes flashed to me a moment and he licked his lips but he stayed quiet.

"I don't know how long you can keep that wound under wraps but eventually someone is going to see it. Do you know which type of zombie Noland is? Was he bitten?"

Still no answer.

I decided to play it at the other end. I turned back in my seat and slid down so I was looking at the ceiling. The kid shifted a couple times, he had his knees locked and he would probably pass out in a few minutes anyway.

"H-he wasn't never bit," the kid finally said. "We don't know what's wrong with him, he just kinda went crazy. He acts like they do, but he's still alive. We keep him locked up so we can test on him. Try to figure out what's wrong with him."

"Oh. He's one of those." I slid up in my seat.

"You've seen people like him before?" He was about to take a step in my direction, but pulled his foot back at the last moment.

"Yup."

"Well what do you do for him? How do you help him?"

"A bullet in the brain." The kid slitted his eyes at me. "Trust me, it's the best thing for everyone. We call them the feral people. When the rads started waking the dead—"

"It wasn't rads, it was space dust," he interrupted.

"Right—the space dust didn't just wake up the dead. It had an effect on a small percentage of the living. They behave just like zombies, but they eat anything that moves, living or dead. Some are a little smarter than others, but their minds… are gone."

"Aw man." The kid ran his hands over his face, streaking blood down his cheek.

"But none of that solves your problem."

"What do you mean by that?"

I ran my hand down my face and pointed at him. He touched his cheek and saw the blood.

"I bet some of your friends think Noland is infected. I bet everyday someone else would like to bullet in him just to be on the safe side. They're right, but they're wrong. That's why I was asking what type of zombie he was."

"A zombie's a zombie. What are you talking about?"

I explained the difference between active and passive z-words and that unless Noland had been bitten by an active he wasn't going to turn into one. That if one of his friends did put a bullet in Noland he just might get up again and be a z-word for real.

"And if they don't have any idea about feral people, how likely are they to listen to you when you tell them you aren't infected?"

Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 11

But the idea of a hoi z-word was urban legend on the other side (when there was one). I was quickly taken into a shower and scrubbed clean with wire brushes and given a thin orange jumper to wear. They then took me into what looked like an interrogation room, complete with concrete bricks and metal chairs on either side of a metal table. There was no one-way but a closed-circuit camera hung from a wall, trained down at the table. I sat with another pair of those plastic cuffs in one of the chairs; this time with my hands in front of me.

As fast as they'd gotten me down there I would have thought they'd want to know what I knew ASAP. But I waited so long in that cold room that my body warmed up the cold chair they'd left me in.

Finally the door opened. I don't know anything about rank, but an officer with a couple bars on his uniform came in with two cups of coffee. The smell made my stomach groan and I watched him, dressed for the low temperature of the room in a cozy-looking turtleneck.

He set the two cups in front of me. The one closer to me didn't have any steam coming from it. He sat back in his chair and picked up his cup, taking a short sip, but tipping his head slightly back and closing his eyes. I picked up my cup and guzzled the bitter stuff down.

He wasn't wearing a nametag. I wondered if that were a bad thing. I saw a look of controlled violence when he opened his eyes, training them on me. He set the cup down, his movements calm and deliberate, but the cords in his neck strained beneath the turtleneck, his jaw clenched. I had the sensation he would have preferred to have thrown me to the ground and begun stomping on my head and the tight smile locked on his face gave me the idea he'd done something a lot like that on more than one occasion.

"They told me you were talking to a corpse." His voice was barely a whisper. I had to lean up to hear him. "That it looked like you knew it." I was tensed, waiting for the other shoe to drop—hell, any shoe, I didn't know how to take the officer.

"That's impossible," he said. "We've been saying that a lot around here—impossible. Corpses don't get up and kill. You know what else they don't do."

"What?"

The officer sprang up, his arm sweeping toward me, the butt of his gun smacking across the side of my head.

"It wasn't a question." His voice was still calm, controlled. "Assuming they do think, you're going to tell me numbers. How many of them there are, when they're planning to mobilize, where they—"

A young soldier burst into the room in fatigues. He looked to the officer across from me.

"Sergeant, it's Noland." The sergeant rose in an instant.

Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 10

I could have run but I'd only watched in shock. A fifth soldier hit me from behind, knocking me to the ground and put a knee across my neck.

"Clear!" someone shouted.

They gathered around my captor and me.

"That one was talking to it. Like they knew each other," a voice said.

"Peters?" a voice nearby said.

"Dead," one in the back said.

"Did you get the head?"

"Yup."

"How's Jones?"

No answer meant he must have been the crouching soldier.

"All right. We got what we need, let's hustle."

I counted eight pairs of boots shuffling past from my view on the ground. My neck was numb where the soldier had pinned me down. He hauled me up and I was cuffed with a piece of plastic that looked like a twisty tie for a garbage bag.

"What were you doing with it?" A young-faced soldier stood in front of me, his eyes older than mine. I opened my mouth but an answer that didn't result in a bullet in my head didn't come. I closed it and he hammered me in the stomach with the butt of his M-16, doubling me over. The world went polka-dot colored and if I'd eaten anything I would have thrown it up all over his boots.

They shoved me toward the wall and I saw a rope draping over. Instead of hanging me they made a makeshift harness and hauled me up. A sniper crouched at the top, covered with what looked like kudzu and green face paint.

Down on the other side I was tossed face first in the back of a jeep. I could see the right profile of a big, bull-faced kid with a permanent scowl and beady black eyes staring straight ahead behind the wheel.

"They ain't even comin' to the wall no more," the sniper said, piling into the passenger seat. His kudzu made rustling sounds when he moved. "I wonder why."

I knew, but I was keeping my mouth shut until whatever I knew could be used to save my life.

"Pauly says this one was talkin' to one of 'em. That it wasn't tryin' to eat him or nothin'." Bull-face put it in drive and we peeled out and the sniper turned to face me. "Lucky we got orders to bring back any and all survivors. I wouldda just shot your face off and left you for the birds."

It was a long, bumpy road from Van Dyke. There was an occasional gunshot. I figured it was one of the young soldiers in one of the other vehicles popping off until I heard a bullet ricochet off the jeep. We swerved hard then there were several more shots that sounded like the M-16s.

We pulled into what I guessed was a hangar and stopped. Bull-face yanked me out of the back of the jeep and pulled out a knife with a short, thick blade. I thought he was about to stab me but instead he cut off my clothes. I stood there as he and two others joined him in examining every part of my body.

It took only a minute, but they were very thorough. No doubt they were checking me for bite marks. For those of you who don't know, there are three different types of undead. Whether you buy Jack's explanation that the virus was something we all had that had been activated by radiation or that there was some kind of signal (there is a signal, but I'll come back to that) that made the dead rise was what I call the 'passive' zombie. I'm sorry, I know that really isn't a P.C. word to say. But with a passive z-word is someone who has died and his corpse gets up and starts milling about. The 'active' z-word is the one most humans know of and they mistake all undead for this type. This is the z-word that spreads infection by its bite and is by far the less common z-word. The active z-word is livelier than the passive, probably because the nature of the death was from turning via the virus. But counter-intuitively most active z-words are prols, whereas most passive z-words are hoi, like Jack and Ollins.

Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 9

I couldn't make out what he was saying, but occasionally Ollins would push a button to respond. He stared at me throughout their 'conversation'. He dropped the phone back into the cradle, took two big strides over to me and put a big paw around my neck. He cocked my head to the side and as I struggled for breath he dug something out of his pocket.

It was difficult to see out of the corner of my eye, but it was something shiny, stringy and long. Ollins slipped it into the opening of my ear and I could feel it, cold and sharp, crawling into my head. I dropped to the floor, writhing in pain as the voices of the undead began speaking into my head. Some voices were almost discernible but the sheer number of them was overwhelming. Tied together in one moaning chorus, it took a while before I was able to adjust.

When the noise finally died down I got on unsteady feet. I must have blacked out at some point because there was vomit down my shirt. Ollins put his heavy hands on my shoulders to steady me. It had started to get dark, so Ollins hustled me out the door.

I wanted to ask what the bug was he'd put in my ear but I knew there wouldn't be an answer. The voices had died down or I'd adjusted to them. I didn't know what they were saying, but I felt like I was being urged West. We followed our shadows in the setting sun, walking for hours, avoiding everyone, human and prol until we reached Van Dyke.

The military had erected a makeshift wall out of those concrete dividers that separates northbound traffic from southbound. They were stacked six and seven high and with who knew what on the other side.

"We have to find a way through," I said to Ollins. Without being conscious of it I was betraying him. Would betray him, at the first opportunity I got. On the other side of that wall was a welcome-wagon of humans who would shoot him into bits. Rescuers who would take me into their bosom and protect me. If I'd bothered to examine such a thought the realization of how ridiculous it was would have quickly followed.

With reasonable certainty I thought going over the wall was a bad idea. They probably had a trench on the other side. The fall would probably break my leg. They hadn't bothered stringing up chicken wire across the top because it wouldn't stop any prols that managed to get up there. There had to be a space I could dig through, maybe an unpaved spot in the street I could tunnel under.

Ollins tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a burned out vehicle. When I shrugged he knelt and pointed again, beneath the car. I knelt too and saw the hole. Closer up it looked pretty deep, maybe someone had already done the work for me.

The sun was still a ways from peaking over the horizon. I don't know about the undead, maybe they get tired, but that was the reason I didn't notice them. But Ollins whirled around a second too late and his upper body was burning all of a sudden. He batted me aside and ran straight for the soldier holding the flamethrower who was keeping a steady stream of fire trained on him.

Ollins swatted at the nozzle of the thrower and the figure crouched next to the soldier popped up, the back of him on fire as he began throwing himself up against another burned out car and onto the ground. Ollins put his thumbs into the eyes of the soldier holding the flamethrower and turned as two soldiers with M-16s began firing at him. He stopped himself as he was about to turn in my direction and they blasted charred bits off him until he was nothing but a stump atop two legs, their bullets ricocheting off the ground and abandoned vehicles.

Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 8

No one was there. I scanned left and right, not seeing anything, but I felt something whiz past my face and then there was a thunk in wall right by my head. I ducked and retreated back in the bedroom as a human stepped in the front door.

I'd heard of these guys. The Feral Tribes was one of the names for them. Either they had gone insane after the dead rose or whatever it was that brought them back to life had had an adverse effect on these few. The rumor was they'd eat anything, living or dead, that crossed their path.

I crawled on my hands and knees back into the bedroom. The window faced the street, where he'd come from, no doubt the ones with him were out there. I thought about dashing for the closet but the noise would give me away. Under the bed was an equally bad idea but there was nowhere else to go.

He was in the doorway, unwedging the metal blade thing he'd thrown at my head. It was in deep so he left it and came after me. I was half under the bed when he grabbed my leg. I spotted the remnants of the syringe and grabbed the needle. As soon as he had me all the way out he went for his waist where there was another equally big metal blade. He began pulling it out when I sat up and jabbed the needle into his eye.

The feral screamed and flung himself back to the door with his hands to his face, but not much else after that. He slid onto the floor, limp, while I scrabbled to my feet. I took the blade from his waist and went out into the living room. The bump I had heard was another one of them, his face smashed into the wall. I stepped around him and peeked outside.

They had Ollins strung up by his neck just off the porch steps, kicking his legs. They must have drawn him out somehow and thrown a noose around him after he came out. I heard them up there, trying to pull him up. I stepped around him, narrowly avoiding one of those great big booted feet as he thrashed about and slapped at his side.

"Ollins! Ollins! It's me!" I tapped his hand with the handle of the blade. Ollins grabbed it, swinging it over his head and through the rope. He landed on his feet, catching his balance. He looked at me, nodded and ran in the house. Before the one I had killed could get up he grabbed him by the hair and hacked his head off with three strikes and ran into the bedroom.

The attic access was there and by the time I came in he was already up and gone. I heard his thundering steps overhead and then the splash of breaking glass. One of the feral tumbled off the roof, belly flopping onto the lawn and the walkway, his face bouncing off the concrete. He lay very still after that. There was struggling and a scream of surprise and then another one came down, landing on his feet, but rolling with the fall. He got up, limping as he ran away.

There were three loud cracking sounds accompanied by a piercing scream. Ollins jumped off the roof and landed feet first on the one in front of the house. He brought one foot up and down hard onto his skull and turned to me. He had a wild look in his eyes and for a moment I thought he was going to attack me.

The head he'd been holding rolled off the roof and he caught it without looking. He held it up, looked back up at me, then at it again and tossed it aside. Ollins stalked back into the house, pushed past me and picked up the phone. He jabbed in a number and after a few rings I heard Jack's voice on the other end.