Rust, Gore, and The Junkyard Zombie Read online

  I told him about the pregnancy to strike back at him for the pain I was feeling. I blurted it out, and he looked like I struck him. He stared at me, dumbfounded, for so long that I began to wonder if I had been wrong to tell him. In truth, the gambit of emotions that ran across his face only took maybe a minute, but in the recall of dreams, it seemed far longer. My stoic older brother broke. He tearfully wrapped me in a hug, swearing that my child and I would always be safe. I would admit that being held while my world was falling apart made it feel less likely that I wouldn't be able to make it through. I needed to shake myself loose from that dream, and I needed to recover my senses quickly.

  Tara

  The base was everything I remembered. The survivors camped here were not all military, but I doubted it mattered. Chris had not lost his touch either. He went in with a take charge attitude, and they bowed quickly to his alpha male bullshit.

  Mind you, I was not complaining. We got into the base without having to fight. Chris took charge, telling them what they would do. As we were going in, I overheard Chris asking who was in charge of this group. Of course, the pimple-faced private who had been assigned to guide us gave Chis the name of the guy running this group. Chris was cool about the whole thing.

  He treated the private as though he was his best friend. It put the private and those in his group at ease. That would make getting information a whole lot easier. Information would help us to put an end to the craziness that was ruling this world currently.

  Lizzie was exhausted, and she started crying when we saw the wall. Shara also looked worn to a nub. I heard Chris asking for some bunks for us to sleep in. I doubted that he was in any hurry to crawl in, but I figured it was not a bad idea for the other two. I would likely stay awake to keep an eye on them. I slept some of the trip here.

  Things actually moved quicker than I expected inside of Fort Belvoir. We were escorted into a building that used to be used for small meetings. There was a couple of the leaders waiting there for us.

  “Welcome to Fort Belvoir. I understand that two of you are ex-Special Forces. We are happy to welcome you; however, in order to offer you even one night’s accommodation, I need the four of you to submit to a small examination.” The speaker was a two-star general, based upon the pins on his uniform.

  Chris looked at him, measuring his ability. When he responded, it was calm and authoritative. “We would be fine with a minor exam as long as it is not invasive. Then I expect my friends to be given a place to sleep while we talk.”

  The general smiled and responded in an equal tone to Chris. “Our exam is merely a bite check. As to the beds, it is already being prepped. I am looking forward to said conversation. Unfortunately, we have been sealed off here for about a week.

  “We were in custody of Patient Zero. Then everything went to hell. I believe you may be in possession of news of the world outside our walls.”

  Lizzie perked up when she heard that statement. She demanded more information immediately. “Do you still have any of the samples from Patient Zero? Or know where I can acquire it?”

  The general was obviously surprised by her outburst. Chris, startled but not nearly as badly, turned and stared for a moment at our exhausted genius of a sister. “Lizzie bear, you are nearly asleep on your feet. Don’t you think that the scientific stuff can wait until you have caught a few hours’ sleep?”

  Lizzie shot him a dirty look. “Scientific stuff? Really, Chris, how old are you? Four?”

  Chris laughed, enjoying the fact that she was no longer on the verge of tears. “Well, whatever term you want to use, would not it be better to get some sleep before worrying about it? After all, you are about to fall asleep standing up!”

  Lizzie sighed because she knew he was right. “Fine. First thing in the morning, I want access to the samples and the lab!” She looked at the general and then added, “Please.” I doubted the general knew how to handle us. Lizzie was not a military-disciplined person, and Shara was a child.

  I doubted the general knew how to handle us. Lizzie was not a military-disciplined person, and Shara was a child. Two Special Forces vets traveling with a child and a brain. Yeah, we were an oddball group. I found it incredibly entertaining.

  Apparently, so did the general. After watching the interactions between Lizzie and Chris, he chuckled and had the exams done quickly. I had to give him credit as he had a female do the exams on the three of us. He did Chris’s check personally.

  The barracks we were shown to were unoccupied. Six beds and four of us. It worked for me as it meant tighter security for us. I wouldn’t have to worry about the others in the room with us. That helped immensely.

  Shara, Lizzie, and I settled in the barracks. We could rest, but we would miss the conversation between Chris and the Fort Belvoir survivors.

  Chris filled me in when he came to sleep. “We will have access to Patient Zero, and they will be willing to give us what knowledge they have. Still, I don’t think that our answers are here. The general said that there was a couple of guards on the patient initially. They were the next to turn. They left some papers and stuff in the barracks.

  “Problem is, the barracks they were in is next to the hospital.

  Patient Zero is in the hospital. The base hospital is dead center of the part of the base that is most covered with the walkers. So, in order to get the information, we have to help them clear that area. You and I can easily do it. I would rather if Lizzie stayed here, and Shara can stay too. They can watch each other and keep an eye out for a double cross.”

  I was impressed. His reasoning would actually work. Lizzie was not likely to handle being told to stay behind. Still if he asked her to watch our back instead…it would absolutely be a reason she would go for. Shara would understand, like I did. I agreed and I smiled at him. “Okay. Catch four hours then I will wake you so I can sleep. We can take turns doing watch.”

  He nodded and crawled into an empty bunk. Though it was an uneventful four hours, we both felt better having a guard while we slept. As they were sneakier, survivors were often more problematic than the walking dead.

  Walkers were rather straightforward most of the time, though there were the ones who waited to show themselves so that they could bite you easier.

  The whole of their reason for existence was to feed. The living, however, would lie to your face and try to take everything you owned, often your life included. There was no way to be sure who you could trust outside of your own family.

  I think Chris, like me, considered our survivor group as family. The members of town were all people who we had known since birth. So perhaps they really were family. Depended on your definition of family, I guessed.

  When I awoke after my four hours of sleep, everyone else was up. Lizzie and Chris were having a surprisingly quiet conversation about her staying here.

  “It’s just that I don’t know if we can trust them, Lizzie, and I would rather not have to fucking worry about them coming in behind us. If you and Shara stay here with them and radios, you can guide us in and keep an eye on them so we are able to worry about the creatures in there. It makes the most sense to me.”

  Lizzie looked as though she wanted to argue, but instead she shrugged and said in a flat tone, “I still think you are just trying to protect Shara and I, but your logic makes sense. You and Tara are better with weapons. Shara and I can watch each other’s backs. You had better return to us though.”

  I had been staying quiet and trying not to interrupt, but I almost felt like I was a voyeur just for overhearing the conversation. When I was sure they were done talking, I coughed. When I was sure they were done talking, I coughed.

  All three turned toward me, looking guilty. “So, are we done playing around? Or are you guys going to keep arguing?”

  “So, are we done playing around? Or are you guys going to keep arguing?” I grinned and blew raspberries at them both. Shara looked amused by us and snickered under her breath. Oh, how strange we would have appeared to out
siders.

  Our family, for all our abilities and talents, was a bit crazy at times. I would do whatever it took to keep us together and well—even face the dead when they tried to take over the world.

  Someone knocked on the door, and after a few moments, the door opened and the general walked in “Hello. Have you all rested enough? If so, I was thinking we could discuss your venture farther into the base. Also perhaps equip you to assist you in remaining alive!” Chris looked surprised.

  Chris looked surprised. Like me, he had not expected them to assist us any further than with maps and direction. Chris nodded and replied, “Yeah, give us a minute as Tara just woke, but we are coming.”

  The general nodded and smiled at me. I actually felt lazy because I was the last to crawl out of bed. Once the general left, Chris looked at me and smiled. “We ready, Squid? We do have a job to do today.”

  I nodded with a snarky smile. “Sure, but you do know I need to kick your ass afterwards for using that nickname?”

  The belly laugh Chris let out was definitely a good thing. With all the darkness that the world was now, a good belly laugh was a relief. It felt like that laugh made the world right.

  The general gave us ammo and a machete for each of us. He gave detailed directions to the hospital that included a room number for Patient Zero and drone pictures. I was most surprised by the use of the drone. It seemed a weird thing to me.

  It had Shara excited and me feeling ancient. I found the amused look that both Lizzie and Shara shot me entertaining. Being the butt of their amusement didn’t bother me as much if it helped them to bond. Even I had to smile at my oldness. Chris, however, was oblivious to my reaction. I guessed it was a girl moment.

  After we planned the route and geared up, there was nothing to stop us. We were escorted to the fence on the other side of the complex. Shara and Lizzie stayed in the planning room with radios, much like what we had. Our maps were clearly marked, but we couldn't be guaranteed the chance to look at them.

  From the moment we got through the gates, we were fighting for our lives. The smell over the whole base was nauseating and hard to ignore. A rotting stale smell of overripe trash and decaying flesh filled my nose. We were, for the most part, able to avoid the creatures and take our time choosing our targets.

  They were slow and stiff, more of a shambling mass of flesh than a true monster. However, there was something to be said for huge numbers. We couldn't kill them all. It would be impossible. We killed as many as we could as we made our way to the hospital.

  Fort Belvoir was freaking huge, several miles across, with quite a bit of housing on base. That meant a metric shit ton of the walking corpses and great amounts of running by us to reach our destination. I was quickly covered in blood and brains.

  I was sorry for the clothing damage but glad I was able to survive even if it was covered in gore. Good thing I stayed in shape. Lizzie would have been out of breath within the first half hour.

  Chris was apparently motivated and quicker than I had expected, and I figured that I would tease him later if we made it out of this alive. Still, because I was fighting to keep up with him, we made it to the hospital faster than I expected.

  We had been nearly an hour on this run. We stopped at the hospital gate, taking a moment to scout it. The ground beyond the fence was covered over in what once was humanity. It was almost depressing how it was populated with the dead.

  I was sure this would be revisited in my nightmares later. Until we were done though, I had to stop myself from dwelling on it.

  We entered as stealthily as we could. We wanted as little attention as we could get from the dead creatures. After all, the hospital grounds had several hundred of them. We decided that it would be more beneficial to clean up some of the creatures on our way out so we would have the ammo we needed inside first.

  The hospital was dark and reminded me of some crack ass horror movie—the ones where you were sitting there screaming at the screen.

  Don’t freaking go in there! I thought. A groan resonated through the old building and added to the ambiance of the situation we were walking into. Again, I enjoyed a good horror flick, but I did not so much enjoy being stuck in one. Seemed to me like I was thinking that to myself a heck of a lot more lately than I was truly comfortable with.

  We chose the side entrance so we could avoid the large masses we expected at the front door. Chris opened the door, and I took out the creature behind it. We worked well as a team, always had. Our entrance took us through the barracks first, so we gathered the boxes of paperwork and placed them on a cart for later retrieval.

  The first time that I actually felt the fear of what this mission meant was as we exited the stairs on the hospital’s third floor. Patient Zero was on the right wing of the third floor, down the hall from the stairway.

  Chris, for whatever reason, didn’t dead check a body lying next to the nurses’ station. He must have been too busy thinking and didn’t notice the body on the floor ahead. He went to step by, and the creature lunged after him. Chris, agile as ever, dodged the bite.

  I realized that if he had not, if the bite had landed, that my world would have crashed. I had not really realized how much I had come to depend on my older brother. How I leaned on him. It was definitely a major eye opener.

  Patient Zero was strapped to a bed and was alone in the room that had been his. He was more decayed than most of the creatures running loose on base. He really was no longer much of a threat since his bottom jaw had long since rotted away. The smell of rot hung in midair so thick it was palatable. The door had apparently been closed since the hospital became overrun, as there was no sign of any other creature having been in here. I closed the door behind us with a mind-numbing feeling of relief.

  “What the unholy hell, Chris? I thought you said we always dead check? You need to keep your fucking head in the game, as we need you!” I snapped, feeling the fire of fear licking at my very soul.

  Chris just shrugged. “Calm down, Squid. I didn’t get bit. It didn’t even come close. You grab the chart, and I will get the samples for Lizzie. Before we head back, I want to contact them and make sure everything is still kosher.” I had to admit the matter-of-fact way he said it went a long way toward easing my still racing heart.

  There was quite a bit of paperwork in the chart, and it seemed like they had done most of the possible tests to the patient. I gathered what was in the room and looked over to see how Chris was doing. He was sealing the baggies and standing up straight.

  The grin he threw me was cocky, something that I would have expected from a much younger him. “There may be more out at the nurses’ station. We should check before we go back.” I hesitated to answer him. At that moment, I was more worried about how we would make it back than how we would clean up the dead. Our map had a weapons depot listed nearby, and Chris and I had agreed that after the hospital we needed to head there.

  I found myself more on guard because I felt like Chris was being blasé about the whole damn thing. I needed him to feel angry, to feel regret, for nearly getting bit. I had ignored him while he was on the radio with the girls. I missed what had been said because I had been so damn mad and scared. I hated that I felt like I was the elder one at that moment.

  Shara

  Dad and Tara left quickly, and I started imagining the worst. I knew that they were badass and could more than handle themselves. Still, I worried that something would happen and I would lose them. Lizzie and I hurried back to the meeting room where the general met with us originally. It was a safe place to keep the radio on and listen for Dad.

  The silence was thicker than Mom’s homemade stew. I didn’t know why, but Lizzie seemed more tense and strung out than usual. I overheard Dad say something about her being with child. That might be kinda neat, a little Jimbo running around.

  When Dad checked in, both of us jumped. The crackling of the radio in the quiet room was more than unnerving. “Hey, we made it to the room of Patient Zero. There
is more zombies than we expected. Tara and I are planning to hit the depot for weapons to be able to make it home with. How is everything there?”

  It took a moment for us to swallow the knots in our throats and respond. Lizzie recovered quicker than I. “We are doing okay, don’t be worried about us. Just get both of your butts back here safe. And don’t forget my samples!” I snickered at her bossiness. Dad chuckled into the radio and signed off.

  I wandered to the other side of the room to work off my nervous energy as Lizzie dealt with going through papers the base people had brought in for us to read. Seemed we both were trying to burn nervous energy.

  Tara

  Swallowing my temper, I started to systematically clear the dead that remained between Patient Zero and the nurses’ station. I was taking my anger out on the walking corpses that surrounded us. The overwhelming fear that I nearly lost one of the most important people in my life was not something that I could relieve myself of, no matter how much I tried.

  Chris was, as usual, calm and steady. Maybe he had always been like that, but I found it extremely annoying right at that moment. What we couldn't kill we made sure was locked in. These creatures had not shown the ability to open doors. That was one blessing and something we were using in our favor. By locking them in rooms, we were making it easier to control the demolition of the undead.

  We were not going to clear the whole base, but we were going to make it easier for the general and his men to clear.

  Chris wanted to hit the office of the base hospital to see if we could find more information about Patient Zero. We had all that the nurses had, but it didn’t tell us where he came from. We needed to know more to figure out the next steps we should take.