Zombie: The Final Mission

ZOMBIE: THE FINAL MISSION

Copyright 2017 W. G. Sweet. All rights reserved foreign and domestic.

Portions copyright 2010, 2014, 2015 by W. G. Sweet.

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LEGAL

This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places or incidents depicted are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual living persons places, situations or events is purely coincidental.

Permission is granted to use short sections of text in reviews or critiques in standard or electronic print.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

EPILOGUE

ZOMBIE: THE FINAL MISSION

PROLOGUE

Awakening To Death

Amanda

The sun had bled its light from the sky. The pooled blood appeared black in the early moonlight. The ants were gone. Silence held the short section of roadway under the overpass where Amanda's body lay.

A shadow moved. Thin, but graceful. Others moved in the deeper shadows at the edges of the road and in the trees that sat back from the roadway.

Amanda came awake in the road. The heat was gone from the day, and the coldness from the roadway seemed to be seeping into her body. She was cold, so cold, but her head felt better. It was strangely light, and she wondered what had been wrong with it before. She tried to think it through, but the thought wouldn't hold, obviously it wasn't important. It didn't hurt any longer, and so it couldn't be all that important.

She lay quietly and listened to the absolute silence of the night. No sounds came to her ears at all. It was eerie, she decided, and unnerving. Too quiet, her mind added. She started to become concerned, but her mind shifted away from it quickly and began to wonder about what had happened.

It was a blank at first. An argument... She repeated it, as though repeating it would make the information come... An argument... Sometimes, when she got really stoned, it was the only way she could think. Slow it down and repeat it until it finally came. An argument... Was she still stoned now, she asked herself.

She didn't think so. She didn't feel she was, she just couldn't get the information to come. Maybe it didn't matter, she decided, and that was when it came. Zac... Zac had broken her jaw... No... It had felt like Zac had broken her jaw... It must not be because... Something touched her nose.

She started to hold her breath and that was when she realized her breath was not there to hold. She had no breath at all. And her eyes were closed. Did they need to be open? Hadn't they been open?

She didn't know. And, sonofabitch, they would not open, and that didn't matter because she wasn't breathing... Not Breathing, she screamed inside her head. Something touched her nose again, moved up and her eyelids were pulled apart by rough fingers. A red film seemed to make everything look weirdly distorted. A face, inches away... Eyes glowing red in the black night. The eyes studied her and as they did her vision cleared.

Donita

Donita was squatted before her, her feet flat on the roadway. Her body bare, breasts mere suggestions on her bony frame. Hands dangling between her thighs. Face angled down at her. Her lips pulled back from her yellowed teeth. The skin on her face was stretched tight, part of one cheekbone poked through the flesh, gleaming, yellow bone bathed in blue moonlight. Her thick black hair hung over her forehead, stirred on a breeze that worked its way across the roadway, her thin, skeletal hand came up and pushed the hair away.

She had come upon the others about to take her. They had already begun, one arm gnawed, the hand missing. Donita had needed to say nothing. The army of the dead behind her filled the roadway and back into the trees. They had let her go and run. They had run because Donita allowed them to run.

She had looked down at the woman, studied her, and wondered why she had not known about her, scented her and the other dead on the air. No answer, except, sometimes it was that way. Sometimes, most times, she knew all there was to know. Other times, like this time, she simply didn't know.

Donita continued to work at the mass of dried blood that covered the woman's eyes and sealed them shut. The woman moved slightly, a buzzing coming from her throat, and then her eyes opened.

Amanda

Amanda tried to scream, but she could pull no air. A sound came from her vocal chords instead. Angry bees disturbed in the hive.

The woman that was leaning over her, opened her own mouth. Come, the woman said in a rusty voice, not much more than a croak. Her fingers reached out, swiped away more of the dried blood from Amanda's eyes. They opened slightly wider. Come, the woman said again.

ONE

On The Road

The Mall

Bear

Cooler air had come with the sunset. The huge parking lot was quiet. The heat had already been leached from it, and the sea of cars and trucks had finished their creaking and popping as the heat left them.

A shroud of deep depression seemed to hang over everyone. They had all decided, without words, to do nothing more than make sure the man near the SUV was dead. They had left him for the night when Ronnie had picked up a shovel and found himself lifting it to plunge down into the mans face. Bear took his arm and lead him away. Mike gently took the shovel and tossed it aside. They had all three looked at the SUV and the man once more, and then they had turned and walked away.

Bear looked over now at Nellie and Molly's bodies. He turned to Mike and nodded. They're all right. They won't come back, he said quietly. He left and walked over to Ronnie, helping him to roll them into a tarp.

Darkness had come down full. They could hear the zombies down in the pit, excited by the fire, the smell of blood, what ever else excited zombies, Bear thought. They moaned and scrabbled against the steep embankment trying to get out.

All of them settled in to watch through the night. Over on the side of the highway the SUV suddenly burst into flames.

September 21st

Morning

Bear sat alone and watched the sunrise. He smoked quietly and wondered about Beth. The SUV had burned itself out an hour or so before daylight. Bear had the last watch, and so it had still been burning when Josh had awakened him to take the watch.

A shadow moved closer to their own campfire as Bear watched, and a second later Ronnie materialized from the darkness. He handed Bear a cup of coffee, he took it gratefully.

Little strong, Ronnie told him.

Wouldn't be coffee if it wasn't, Bear agreed.

Ronnie nodded. The metal framework of the SUV glowed in the predawn darkness and they both watched it for a short while.

You think they've made it back to your Nation yet? Bear asked.

Your people? The ones we sent back? Maybe, Ronnie said. Today or tomorrow at the latest.

Doesn't seem that there could be a safe place in all of this, Bear said. He sipped at the coffee. That's good coffee.

Ronnie laughed. Patty drank my coffee once... Patty is my woman... You'll meet her. She told me, if she had, had my coffee before we were together she may have changed her mind.

Bear chuckled low. It is strong... But coffee is supposed to be. My mother always made it crazy strong. And black. I can remember being a kid and seeing my Auntie drink coffee at her house with cream. So I asked my mother why we never had cream. She said it spoiled the taste of the coffee, end of conversation.

"She said end of conversation?" Ronnie asked.

Yep.

Ronnie laughed. "Mom was a woman of few words, huh? Well, so was mine. We lived in a place outside Mobile Alabama called Pritchard. I remember I asked for sugar once, she said, 'Well I suppose next thing you'll want to live like the white folks over in Chickasaw do? Butter on the table, cable T.V., schools where you don't got to go through metal detectors?' Shut me right up fast and in a hurry."

Bear nodded. Moms got a way to put you in your place fast.

Or remind you where that place is.

I was an asshole the other day, Bear said.

Ronnie turned and looked at him. I thought so too. And then Mike reminded me that I have a pretty big chip on my shoulder too... I guess I was an asshole too...

Guess we get afraid of shit... You know, that old shit coming back.

You got that right, Ronnie agreed. You have my apology. He extended his closed fist.

Bear bumped it with his own. I'd say Brother, but...

Ronnie laughed low and Bear laughed along with him. They sat quietly and watched the sunrise. Mike and Tim joined them a short time later.

They buried Nellie and Molly right after sunrise in the field behind the store. Chloe spoke the words that no one else felt able to speak.

The SUV was a smoking husk on the side of the road, but the biker was gone. Bear, Mike and Ronnie, followed a drag trail away from the SUV and into the woods on the other side of the highway. Machine pistols off their straps and in their hands. The forest was quiet. No birds whistled and called to one another, nothing moved. They followed the drag marks nearly a quarter mile back into the woods before they came across the body.

They had expected to see other zombies. Believed that they had come in the night and dragged the biker off, but there were no other zombies. Just the biker, who had turned sometime after he died, come back, and tried to drag himself to safety.

They had heard the noises in the stillness of the woods, long before they had come upon him. The rough dragging sound popped out of the silence, and Bear had raised one hand for them to stop. They had come up on him slowly then, on either side, safeties off their weapons. Bear had circled around to the front.

One leg still worked, the other dragged uselessly behind him. But the working leg was out of sync with the rest of his body. It kicked and stuttered, scuffing against the pine needles that covered the floor of the forest.

One arm was gone, possibly back at the still smoking SUV, the other, not much more than bones and shredded flesh clutched at the ground to pull him forward. Bear lowered his pistol and blew his head off. The body jumped, then became still. The silence returned even thicker than it had been.

That's it then? Ronnie asked.

Bear nodded.

It doesn't seem enough, Mike said, as he studied the body of the biker.

Bear nodded. It isn't... But it's what we have... You can't fight the evil... It's gone now. He toed one shoulder of the biker's body with a heavy work boot, rocking the body as he did. He looked up at Mike.

Mike raised his eyes from the body and caught Bear's eyes. He nodded and they turned and walked back off through the forest.

No one had felt much like loading the other truck with what they had come for, but they had done it anyway. By Late afternoon they had been ready to leave. Chloe and Bear had wandered over to the steep sided ravine after the children had been loaded into the truck. Mike stood with Ronnie, looking down into the pit. The zombies wandered back and forth, nearly silent. Some making strange noises as they went. A few stood and stared back up at them. Tim wandered over.

Tim... Tell Josh to go ahead, we'll catch up with him in a few miles, Mike told him. Tim looked from Mike down into the pit and back.

Gonna waste them? Tim asked.

Mike met his eyes, but didn't speak. He simply nodded. Tim looked back at the pit and then turned away. A few seconds later three of the trucks started and left the parking lot. Bear left and came back a few minutes later with two five gallon cans of diesel fuel. He had one of the pumps they used to siphon fuel with him. He pinched off the end, folded the plastic loosely against itself and ran a small piece of duct tape around it to hold it. The result was a very narrow opening for the fuel to escape from. Ronnie slung his own pistol on his shoulder, walked over and began to pump the handle as Bear turned and began to spray the diesel fuel out over the ravine and the zombies. Several zombies fled to the other side of the pit, their eyes wide and frightened.

If they ran, Chloe and Mike cut them down. It was over in just a few minutes. One or two still moved and Bear, who was the better shot, took them out one by one as Chloe took over spraying the fuel and Mike pumped.

When Bear finished the last one, he left and came back with a glass jar of gasoline. He had fashioned a hole in the top of the metal lid with his knife. A rag hung from the hole, already wicking the gasoline out of the jar. Chloe pulled the pump from the nearly empty Diesel can and Mike tossed it into the pit. It tumbled end over end, spraying fuel as it went, crashing to the ground. Bear pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the rag. He cocked his arm and launched the jar into the sky.

The jar arced up into the overcast afternoon sky and then plunged down into the pit. A second later the entire pit bloomed into flame, and they found themselves rushing backwards quickly, away from the heat.

They stood as a group and watched the burning for a few seconds and then turned away in mass. They left a few minutes later with a slow, cold rain falling from the gray afternoon sky.

September 22nd

Into The Morning

They had driven through they night as if death had been chasing them too, and found the auto plant that they had wanted shortly after dawn.

Chloe had seemed to get a quicker handle on her grief and moved past it. Maybe dealing with the two youngest children and keeping them from dwelling on what had happened had pulled her back from it also, Bear had thought to himself. He has seen different people deal with it in different ways. Not always the way you thought they might.

Ronnie and Mike seemed to be taking it the hardest. Ronnie because Molly had bitten him, causing him to let her go when he had reacted in pain. Mike because he had understood in the last seconds what it was she intended to do and he had been unable to stop her. Her eyes had rested on his for that briefest of seconds and spoken to him. Transmitted her absolute despair. She had said goodbye with that look, and there had been no apology in it. Bear had sat and listened to both of them as they spoke quietly after they had stopped in the early morning light. Letting them speak it out, rid themselves of the guilt and poison. It had seemed to help a little. Time would tell though.

Tim, Richard and Josh, were also at a loss. With Tim it may have been harder because he had known her, but it seemed equally hard for Richard and Josh because they hadn't. It had happened so fast and it had been so brutal. Not knowing her well just drove home the fact that it could have been anyone, at anytime.

The miles rolling by during the night had taken the immediacy of the pain from them. Of all of them, only Mike, Ronnie and Bear had seen what Molly had done. The others had thought that another shot had taken her. But the truth was not something that could be hidden that easily, and it was not something they intended to hide in any case.

Early Morning

Chloe

Chloe had come to Mike and spoken of it, cried it out as they had waited through the night. She had told him that she had come close to doing it herself a few months before. She had put the barrel of her pistol in her mouth, tasted the metallic, oily, biting taste. Felt her tongue contract and pull away from it. She had been unable to do it. She had broken down instead. Cried it out, and the danger had passed. Mike had held her as she worked through her tears. After that she had gone back to the children and seemed to have been able to put it away from her. Mike wished he could do the same. Even talking to Ronnie and Bear had not helped.

Killing the zombies in the pit had seemed to help. It had quieted something inside of him, but he wondered what that said about him. Maybe Chloe was the only one who had handled it the right way. She had cried it out and then went on. The rest of them, he suspected, had stuffed it down inside where it would come back some day to haunt them. Mike was certain of that. It had happened that way with him too many times. It was just a matter of when and how it came back.

Bear was a different kind of man, Mike thought. He seemed to operate on some other level. Mike liked him, but he had the feeling that it was a rare event for Bear to let anyone in too close. He had hoped that Bear would share some of his past