Zombies Ch. 00

Authors Note: Alas this is a fairly long prologue which is depressingly remiss of any action of the carnal type, however, I think it's important to set the scene a bit. If you don't really care too much about plot and just want some action try moving onto to chapter 1:) Thanks for reading let me know what you think!

***

Prologue

I tracked left and right with my shotgun, the long barrel sweeping the deserted hallway as I crept silently, toe to heel, down the carpeted corridor. I forced myself to breath slowly and deeply, consciously filling my lungs as far as I could before exhaling. I'd learned before that if I didn't focus on my breathing I'd often hold my breath and inevitably panic.

"Three, four," I slowly counted as I passed each door, whispering under my breath. When I reached eight the red crosses spray painted on the doors up until now ceased, I dropped the sack slung over my shoulder on the floor and withdrew the set of lock picks I kept on my belt. I'd been lucky with that find, turns out my neighbor three doors down had had a bit of an illegal hobby.

I deftly inserted the bent pick with my right hand and apply tension with the torsion wrench. I slowly and delicately slid the pick further in slowly depressing the pins where I found them until they all clicked into place. I would never be able to break into Fort Nocks, but I could handle a simply front door lock easily enough.

I slowly twisted the handle until I felt the door start to open; I steeled myself with a deep breath and gently pushed, trying to make as little noise as possible. The hinges were blessedly silent and without much more than a slight squeak I was across the threshold and standing in a stranger's home not knowing what I'd find.

The layout was nearly identical to mine, not surprising since the apartment building I lived in only used three designs. I moved quickly through the apartment, completing a simple pass to ensure it was empty before starting a more thorough search. I opened all the wardrobes and cupboards that could hide an adult or child and when I had finally confirmed to my paranoid standards that the apartment was well and truly empty I let out a sigh and a silent prayer. I had no idea where the previous occupants were but wherever they were I hoped they were safe and alive.

I started my search of the place, opening all the cupboards I'd previously left closed. I made a stock pile of all the tinned, jarred and dried food on the table. I'd learnt weeks ago not to even try the fridges, although occasionally there would a jar of pickles or olives that were still good, the smell of rotting meat and vegetables far offset that small bounty. When I'd stockpiled the food, I moved on searching through the rest of the apartment looking for anything useful. I scored half a dozen batteries, a nice bottle of single malt, and a book that looked fairly interesting.

I retrieve the sack I'd left outside the door and placed all my sundry finds into it before slinging it back over my shoulder, tying it off so it became a pseudo backpack, and held my shotgun in front of me again.

"Four more apartments to go... but it i's only three o'clock. What to do, what to do," I'd developed the habit of speaking aloud over the past few months, with nobody else to talk to I just sort of slipped into, voicing aloud my internal monologue.

"Well may as well get it done. That'll be all eleven floors then," I sighed a discontented sigh and moved on to the next dwelling.

***

The next four apartments were fairly sparse, only filling up the rest of the half of the sack with food and not even having a battery to spare between them. I was in two minds about that, firstly I hadn't built up as much of a stockpile as I would like; but secondly it meant that the previous occupants might have had a fighting chance.

I did a final tally of all my supplies and by conservative estimates I reckoned I had enough food to last two to four months, enough water to last three weeks and enough candles, torches and camp lanterns to bathe my life in light for a year, a bit over kill probably.

I settled onto the large couch that adorned the living room of the one bedroom flat with a nice dram of the single malt I picked up earlier that afternoon and a supper of tinned anchovies on stale cream crackers, spruced up with a few dashes of Tabasco.

The collection of solar lamps that now decorated the balcony and all my window sills were emitting a nice glow, bolstered by the large travel lantern on the coffee table. I picked up the book I'd also found that afternoon and began to read.

This is what life had become, scavenging apartments by day and drinking scotch and reading books by night. I was lonely and scared, tired of being cooped up in this dreadful building, fed up of being too scared shitless to leave my apartment and venture into the wide world.

My fear wasn't without foundation of course, since the event to step outside or to leave a known safe zone without a weapon and an attitude of utter vigilance could well be your death... or undeath as the case may be. Yes the inevitable had happened, the zombie apocalypse we had all been joking about for years but no-one took seriously swept through the globe.

It started two months ago, rumors at first, fluff pieces on the end of the evening news: 'In China there are rumors of mass disease and famine throughout the...' or 'India suffers a breakout of cholera of epic proportions...' even '... the civil war runs rift through the small nation, one of the worst in Africa's bloody history."

Then the first outbreak started in the States and Europe; International travel was shut down but that was too little too late, the infected were already over here. Entire cities were quarantined but that didn't help, the virus went airborne and dispersed through the water supply. Within a week of case zero a quarter of the population came down with the fever, within a fortnight sixty percent of the population was dead and most of the rest were ill. The rich were affected just a badly as the poor, doctors and fishmongers took ill alike, the plague took nearly all that stood in its path.

The world entered global financial meltdown, not that it mattered, nobody cared about money any more, nobody cared if they would make their mortgage, or even to whom they would pay it, all they hoped for was to live. The last service to shut down was the news; I had radio up until six weeks after the first outbreak in the western world. The last I'd heard was anywhere between 97 to 99.9% of the population had died, the urban areas being hit more than the rural. Nobody knew why, maybe the inbreeding in rural societies had spread the gene which prevented infection, then again the immunity seemed to be random. One brother would become ill whilst the other survived, children would remain immune whilst both parents suffered. Then again maybe we weren't immune, maybe we just had a longer incubation period.

Hell, what it came down to was there weren't enough left alive to figure it out. So many had died that even if there were enough scientists and doctors left alive to discover the origin of the disease and manufacture a plague there wouldn't be anybody to tell the rest of the world about it, let alone mass produce and distribute it.

Eight weeks after ground zero, two weeks after my last communication with the outside world, I'd met my first Zombie. They must have gotten ill and died in the apartment, nobody to bury them I suppose; I'd broken in feeling fairly confident only to be met by a decomposing mindless automaton, intent on nothing else than consuming my flesh.

I'd barely managed to escape its deathly cold grasp and accidentally toppled a bookshelf upon it, splitting its head clean open. I shook and shivered that night, haunted by dreams of reanimated bodies coming after me. It was that very day I had turned my apartment into a veritable fortress. I set up a mass of barricades in the corridor leading up to my apartment, pilfered a crowbar from one of my neighbors, loaded and practiced with the shotgun my grandfather had left me years ago.

It was strange, not all the deceased reanimated, there were several apartments I pilfered and found the still corpses of its former tenants, no sign of animation what-so-ever; I took no risk however and opened their skulls with the crowbar.

In the following two months I'd spent my time pouring over maps of Australia, salvaging as much food as I could, building up a small arsenal of supplies and reading up on everything I could, trying to be a master in everything from horticulture to first aid, from carpentry to mechanics.

***

I awoke the next morning with a mouth that felt like sandpaper. I'd fallen asleep on the couch, immersed in the novel I'd started, the bottle of whiskey half empty on the table before me. I moved to the bathroom and brushed my teeth with the aid of a bottle of water, and looked forlornly at my shower. The water had shut off months ago and whatever vestiges there were in the tanks had dried up not long after, either that or the water wasn't gravity fed from tanks on the roof.

I consulted myself with a scrub of a flannel a healthy dose of deodorant before pulling my hair into some semblance of order. I pulled on my most comfortable pair of jeans, a long sleeved turtle neck sweater (it was getting chilly) and pulled on my hiking boots. Today was a big day, I was heading to the basement for the first time in several months. I'd put it off because without any artificial light it would be near pitch black down there and there wasn't much point anyway... well up until recently.

When I was fully ready, a headlamp in place and shot gun in hand, I slipped out the front door, locking the door behind me, and padded down the corridor, jumping over four barricades before reaching the staircase which spanned the core of the building. I descended quickly until I reached the second floor. This was the closest to the ground I'd been in three months. I steeled myself, knowing it was stupid, and continued down the stair case. I didn't bother breaking down the door to the first floor, there wasn't anything of value out there and there might just be a few unfriendlies. I paused at the basement door and switched on my headlamp. I didn't have to breakdown this door since it was the evacuation point for the building and would have been a severe fire risk if it were ever locked. I pulled the door open slid in a wooden chock just in case I needed to make a quick escape, and stole out into the near pitch blackness of the basement.

The light on my forehead cut a swathe through the darkness, illuminating the area in front of me for about thirty feet in a ninety degree arc.

My blood froze as to my left I heard a growl escape the throat of... something. I twisted violently, leveling the shotgun at the noise. My light illuminated the horrifying form of a reanimated corpse shuffling towards me. I panicked; the sight of rotting corpses still scared the shit out of me. I let out a pitiful sound, halfway between a sob and a whine.

"Breath you asshole," I sobbed to myself and raised my shaking shotgun to aim at the unsteadily approaching figure. My finger squeezed impulsively against the trigger and the left barrel discharged, clean missing the approaching figure. That caught its attention; the corpse abandoned its shuffle and started towards me at a half walk half run.

The twenty meters became eighteen, then fifteen. I held my breath and forced myself to hold my gun more firmly; I aimed down the sights and pulled the trigger again, discharging the right barrel. To my delight I watch as the zombies body disintegrated in a gory explosion of blood, bone and rotting flesh. The stench was overwhelming and disgusting. I dry wretched several times before summoning the courage to approach the corpse on the floor, the mouth still mindlessly flapping.

I unbuckled the crowbar from my left hip and with a horrendous swing unleashed a devastation blow into the cranium of the zombie. Just before my blow collided I recognized the face staring at me, eyes rolling around in the head, half disintegrated and falling off. It was Andrew, my building manager slash super. The man who had helped me carry furniture to and from my apartment, the man who had spent countless hours with me pouring over the engine of the forty year old Volvo injecting life into the old heirloom I'd been delivered on the back of a flatbed truck one day. Andrew, the man who had shared many a drink with me in the local pub as we tried to win Trivia time and again.

I sobbed over my lost friend, the tears falling unbidden from my eyes. I permitted myself a minute, or as far as I could tell what a minute was, before dragging myself up off my knees and back to the dreary task of sweeping the garage of enemies.

The rest of the basement was devoid of any life, or unlife. I found Andrew's office on the lowest level, broken into, or more accurately out of, glass strewn on the floor and dark red stains all over the concrete floor.

I'd taken a collection of car keys with me, pilfered from the rest of the building, and managed to locate a dozen cars which I had keys to. Eight were small sedans, fuel efficient but incapable of carrying much more than two or three suitcases and absolutely useless off road; two were small SUV's, slightly better than the sedans but not by much; one was a fantastic metallic red Jaguar XK, sleek, sexy and supremely tempting but alas probably the least useful car yet. I hit the jackpot with the twelfth car: a small H2 hummer. It wasn't the most fuel efficient car in the world but it could drive probably drive over the XK without suffering as much as a scratch (although that would be a travesty).

I managed to find half a dozen fuel cans from various cars I broke into, cautious owners preparing for the worst, all of them bone dry.

"Fuck, shit, damn, Christ!" I yelled out, turning the air blue with my curses, as I lifted the last jerry can and found it completely devoid of anything but dust and broken dreams.

"What to do, what to do," I called up images and paragraphs located in the many books I'd read over the past months. There was something in one of them... a schematic of the undercarriage of a car resolved itself in my mind. Gas tank, sump, drive shaft, axle, differential....

"What is it?" I mused allowed, knowing full well I was missing something, many things probably.

"Fuel lines!" I yelled allowed, in a Eureka moment, jumping up in the air and giving a fist pump straight out of an eighties movie. I grabbed a fuel can and with a massive smile on my face slipped under the nearest car on a makeshift mechanics creeper, a skateboard with three wheels, and located the fuel line.

"Here goes nothing," I prayed as I unclipped the knife from my belt and severed the line, quickly placing one end of the hose into the fuel can. I smiled as I heard, and seconds later smelt, the precious liquid flow into the can.

I spent the next hour filling up the remaining six tanks from cars to which I didn't have the keys and topped up the tank of the H2. All in all I emptied the tanks of eleven cars and spent an effective morning ferrying down the food and supplies I'd stockpiled into the near mammoth H2 I had commandeered as my own.

***

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon, just as the sun would head towards the western horizon, not that you'd know it in the basement, when I at last began my final trip out of the basement for that evening. The first thing I did was get into the hummer and twist the keys in the ignition. The engine started first time, which was surprising as I had honestly assumed I would have to jump it using one of the other cars, probably the Jag as they had fairly decent batteries. I put the gear into reverse and slowly backed out of the parking lot, carefully navigating the confines of the parking lot. All I had to do was move it closer to the exit then I could spent one more night in my apartment before leaving for what could feasibly the rest of my life.

The smile which had spread across my face at this thought vanished in an instant as I parked at the large roll down gate that prevented any intruder enter the car park. All this planning, all this work over the past months, all my contingencies and contingencies of my contingencies and I'd never considered how the fuck I would get out of this shitting garage!

I screamed in frustration and disgust, pounding my hands against the steering wheel. Without power there was no way in hell I'd be able to raise the iron gate which rolled down from the ceiling, it must weigh a couple of tones at least!

"Oh you fucking idiot Charles! You fucking dumb piece of shit!" I swore again, slapping my both hand, scrunching closed my eyes. It was in a dejected mood I slowly made my way up twelve stories and entered my apartment, crashing on the couch in a fit of despair that lasted for long hours. The only time I moved was to refill the whisky glass or drag a blanket over my body. My mind raced, I couldn't use a jack to raise the gate, even if I got two or three powerful enough to do it they wouldn't ever be able to raise it high enough. I couldn't saw through the bars, it would take weeks, I might be able to reduce the time if I had a plasma cutter or blow torch but even if I was lucky enough to find one it would require electricity.

It wasn't until eleven or twelve that and idea finally came to me, I'm not sure if it was the drunken stupor I was in or just the hours spent pontificating but a viable idea had finally come to me. It was with a sense of anticipation I drifted off to sleep that night, in my own bed for perhaps the last time.

***

The sun broke through the grimy window with a false sense of cheeriness. I awoke, and took a long drink of a bottle of water that habitually lived on my dresser. I felt my head pounding and staggered to the bathroom where I used the loo, flushing the loo with a bucket of rain waiter that I'd collected from the roof, and popping a couple of pills from the medicine cabinet.

I changed into a fresh set of clothes and hefted a large backpack onto my shoulders. I glanced around the apartment one final time, despairing in the emptiness which I saw around me. I hadn't bothered to take most of it, but in places where I should have found prized possessions I found nothing.

I had took the luxury of storing my crystal ware into the car already, my liquor cabinet was stored there as well, my modest library similarly and the thick wardrobe practically empty. I patted the walls one final time and left the apartment, locking it behind me and slipping the keys into my pocket. I'm not sure why I did that, I probably shouldn't have bothered but there was something familiar about locking a door after you left.

I took the stairs two at a time, practically racing to the basement. I clicked on my forehead flashlight once again and entered the darkness. I loaded the supplies in the back of my H2 before driving it back down to the level below.

"Here goes nothing," I grabbed a fuel can off top of the car and a pair of wire cutters out of the cache of useful supplies I had stored in the boot. I deposited the jerry can at the large gate and then on one last shopping trip.

Each apartment had a storage cage located in the basement, spread all over the two floors. I moved from one to the other, cutting the wire to gain access when I felt it necessary, and hauling several bags, boxes and small containers of fertilizer up to the first level.

It was something I'd read in a farming and agriculture book last month: '... perhaps the most efficient way of removing tree stumps and other obstacles around the farm is to use an improvised explosive derived from Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil. AN/FO, is used extensively throughout the world as it is both cheap and effective. However, it is also very unstable and should only be .... The approximate ratio should be 94% Ammonium Nitrate to 6% Fuel Oil or 2 quarts of Fuel Oil per 50 pounds of Ammonium Nitrate..."