Pandora: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 7

  US servicemen and women were brought back from other parts of the world to initially protect our domestic bases and weapons and to form a force to take back and establish safe zones. Each zone was to serve as an area to house survivors and a staging ground for the next safe-zone acquisition. This turned out to work better on paper than in actuality. Whether hampered by desertions (though they weren’t as prolific as in other countries), strategic or logistic problems, or the occasional territorial firefight with local militias, the real reason the United States—and in fact the world—was in such dire straits was the simple mathematical formula that with 30 percent of the population turning into zombies, then attacking others to kill them and, in turn, create more zombies, the numbers grew to favor the dead.

  By the start of the third week of the Pandora 2 Mutation, the human race was no longer the dominant predator on the planet. Zombies now freely shambled their way across Earth’s landscape.

  11

  Things had started to organize themselves in the Sullivan–Quinn–Di Meola house. The eight new members of the household integrated themselves into the dynamic with a difficult albeit workable homogeny.

  Sean and Mike’s girlfriends, Linda and Susan, were already known and well liked, so they fitted seamlessly into the house. Jack hadn’t heard another word from Nicole after that last unreal call. The other six newbies consisted of four nurses and two doctors. The nurses included Helen Evans, a forty-six-year-old mother of two and head nurse of the oncology wing. She was stoic about not seeing her husband and children but seemed determined to find them. In the days that followed, she tried calling them and even had Sean take her to her house, but they were gone.

  Mariam Hernandez, originally from the Dominican Republic, was a twenty-one-year-old with shoulder-length black hair. Fiery yet sweet, she was liked by everyone she met.

  It seemed at first glance that Naomi Washington wasn’t a likable person. A short, heavyset black woman of thirty-eight years, Naomi always seemed to be mad. She was not, in fact; it was just that she seldom smiled. Her saving grace was her bitingly sarcastic sense of humor. To strangers it may have seemed meanspirited, but as people got to know her, they realized her comments were just devastatingly funny.

  The last nurse who had escaped was, on the other hand, not funny. Carol Pinchak was neither funny nor warm nor very pleasant. The tall, thin thirty-year-old was about as bland and drab as one could be. Mousy, with shoulder-length hair, she seldom spoke, never laughed, and rarely smiled. Although she was a smart and excellent nurse, if it weren’t for her ability to become a piece of furniture when in a room, she would have been uncomfortable to be around.

  The two doctors couldn’t have been more different. Dr. Malik Carter was a forty-year-old internist. Tall and good-looking, with milk-chocolate skin and an athlete’s build, he was a greatly skilled doctor, loved by the nurses and admired by his peers.

  Dr. Henry Bollings, however, was a short, balding fifty-five-year-old oncologist with a neat, manicured mustache and no chin. Full of himself and imperious, he was really hard to take. The first time Sean called him “Hank,” he bristled and icily told him, “Do not call me ‘Hank.’ I despise that name. My name is Henry…Dr. Henry Bollings.” The guys initially wanted to throw him out, but with everyone calling him Henry, he lost some of his self-importance.

  Jack was sitting on the edge of a chair he had pulled up to the big picture window in the living room. They kept all the shades down now, in all the windows, lest a passing zombie see people inside the house. There were always several shambling around outside. Keeping the lights on at night wasn’t a problem as long as all the shades were down and the curtains drawn. The housemates also had to make sure they turned them on when no zombies were looking directly at the window. There were a number of houses with their lights on all the time, and the zombies didn’t seem to pay them any attention. They just had to make sure the zombies didn’t see lights turning on and off, as the change would attract them. Jack was peeking through the corner of the shade, doing a morning zombie count. He did a count twice a day, as it was one of his chores. Everyone had some. The idea behind the count was to track the increase in the number of the dead.

  Naomi walked over to him. “Hey, Peeping Tom. You want some coffee?”

  He looked up and smiled. “Thanks,” he said, as she handed him the steaming cup. “Same count as yesterday.”

  “That’s one party you don’t want getting any bigger,” she said, walking away.

  Jack turned and resumed his vigil.

  Helen and Mariam were busy in the kitchen with breakfast. They were both good cooks and had become the de facto catering team. Mike and Carol were doing the dishes.

  Sean had dug out a pair of binoculars and was up on the roof. Being an old house, it had a small mansard roof, reachable by a pull-down ladder and trapdoor. It was a beautiful, clear day, and Sean could see well into the distance. Fortunately, with its Victorian roof, the house was the tallest on the block. Looking through the binoculars and slowly turning in a circle, Sean saw that several fires still burned. Smoke plumes rose from a couple of houses in town. Off toward the city of Passaic, a large orange fire raged in the downtown shopping area, with greasy black smoke billowing up.

  Before New Jersey’s Channel 12 stopped broadcasting, there was a piece about one of Passaic’s projects trying to get rid of its zombie problem by burning them out. They succeeded in burning down the entire project, leaving the residents homeless and in the streets, where they were at the mercy of the rapidly multiplying undead.

  Several more smoke plumes dotted the horizon. Sean put the glasses down and walked to the edge of the square roof. Looking down and away, he saw other streets through yards and trees. Sean thought there seemed to be more zombies wandering around than the last time he had looked.

  Hearing shots fired, he raised the glasses back to his eyes and scanned the neighborhood. There, he thought.

  Two blocks down, at the corner house, Sean saw a growing crowd of the dead surrounding the white home. A man with a rifle stood at the second-floor bedroom window. He was leaning out and shooting the zombies beneath him. He was good with his weapon; Sean saw that he was making a high number of head shots. Destroying the brain seemed to be the only way to stop them. Nothing else made any difference to them, no matter how horrific the damage.

  Continuing to watch the siege, Sean knew it was only a matter of time before the shooter ran out of ammunition. More and more of the undead were showing up and had mounted his porch. He heard the pounding of their fists on the doors and windows. Sean didn’t know what it was, but something must have attracted the zombies’ attention to the house. Even the walkers on his street were making their way there. The pounding and unearthly moaning and growling from the undead increased in volume.

  Sean, watching the creatures react to the noise, began to take notice of their movements. When the infected first turned, their movements and speed were fast—not as fast as a regular human being but pretty darn quick. They were awkward, though, their primitive reasoning abilities probably telling them a straight line was the quickest route to their prey. This led them to sometimes knock over everything in front of them as they single-mindedly went after their next meal.

  As time passed, however, they slowed down. Sean imagined that dead flesh could only do so much, the mutant virus driving their meat vehicles being at the mercy of decomposing cells.

  Unable to take his eyes away, Sean continued to watch the ongoing assault on the corner house.

  Downstairs Naomi brought two more steaming mugs of coffee to the doctors working at the dining-room table. After setting the two mugs next to Henry and Malik, she lingered next to the good-looking doctor for a moment. When he looked up at her, she winked and said, “There’s nothing so satisfying as getting into something black and hot.”

  He threw his head back and laughed heartily as she walked away, smirking. Henry just made a sour face and kept working. Both doctors were stripping
and cleaning four M15 rifles and three semiautomatic handguns. The group had obtained the small arsenal four days ago from a friend of Brian’s.

  Last Friday morning a bright-red Hummer had pulled up to the front of their house. The door opened, and a heavyset man jumped out. He stuck his head back in and said to the buxom girl in the passenger seat, “I’ll be back,” in an obvious imitation of Arnold. Chuckling softly he stepped onto the sidewalk. Fortunately there were only three zombies around at the time. The man raised the M15 he was carrying to his shoulder, sighted through the scope, and rapidly dispatched all three ghouls with expert head shots.

  Strolling up the walkway to the house in camo pants, boots, and a black T-shirt, the armed man came to the front door. He called out, “Hey, Brian. You home?”

  The man at the door, Nick Korchenko, was the fifty-year-old owner of a very successful construction business. Nick and Brian had met at La Ventura while Brian was bartending. Although nothing alike, they seemed to hit it off quite well. Nick was definitely an acquired taste. Loud and a bit full of himself, he was always the star of the show. He made a lot of money from his business and spent it on any lavish toy he wanted—the bigger the better; the more the merrier. Brian, though, got a kick out of Nick. He learned that when Nick was your friend, he couldn’t do enough for you. Generous to a fault, he got as much of a thrill buying some outrageous thing for someone else as he did for himself. Sean and Michael found him to be all right in small doses, but Jack couldn’t stand him.

  When Michael opened the front door, Nick smiled and said, “Hey, Mikey. How are you guys holding up? Is Brian home?”

  Sean had walked up to them and invited Nick in. Jack went upstairs. They sat down, and Sean and Michael told Nick the story of the first day of their ordeal. Nick listened, his head hung down and arms draped over his knees. When the two finished their story, Nick looked up with moist eyes.

  “Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry,” he said emotionally. “Brian was a really great guy, and I considered him a good friend. I’m so sorry he’s gone.”

  “Thanks, Nick,” Mike said. “You know, he really liked you too.”

  “Yeah,” Nick replied, lifting his head. “I’d really hoped to see him. I had some…” He stopped speaking, suddenly taking in the number of people walking around the house.

  “What’s this?” he asked wonderingly. “There are a lot of new faces here.”

  Mike told him about Sue’s dilemma and his rescue at the hospital. He purposely left out his last meeting with Brian Dunn. While Mike was talking, and Sean was adding additional commentary, Nick sat there, nodding his head admiringly.

  “Hey,” he interjected, “you guys did some really brave stuff here.”

  Nick paused and looked between the two of them then at the people in the house. He leaned over and said softly, “Look, I came here today to give Brian something. He’s gone, but I see that all of you can use them, too. I can’t help Brian, but you two were his best friends, so the least I can do is help you. Come with me out to my truck.”

  The three men walked out to the Hummer, and Nick opened up the back. The girl inside turned in her seat, put on a big smile, and said, “Hi, guys.”

  “That’s Ronnie Stabile, my lady,” Nick said, as he threw back a tarp covering the contents in the rear. Now visible to everyone was a breathtaking collection of weaponry—everything from handguns to a couple of Heckler & Koch G36Cs and an IMI Uzi 9mm.

  “Holy shit!” exclaimed Sean. Mike whistled admiringly.

  “I was going to give some of this to Brian, but I think you guys need to be armed,” Nick said, sorting through his traveling gun store.

  He pulled out four black M15s and handed them to the men. He got the two Sig Sauer P320 9mms and one Glock Gen4 9mm and handed the three to the guys. “Here, they’re all nine millimeters, so they’ll take the same ammo. Oh, and watch the Glock,” Nick said, pointing to the last one he had handed out. “There’s no safety. So don’t shoot your dick off.”

  “We can’t take all of these,” exclaimed Sean.

  “No biggie,” replied their pro bono armorer, smiling broadly. “I’m a bit of a gun nut, so I have twice as much at home.”

  Once he closed the hatch and all three shook hands, Mike asked him, “What are your plans?”

  Nick leaned against the fender and, pulling out a Cohiba and lighting it, said thoughtfully, “Well, I’m going back home, stocking up the Hummer with everything I need, and heading for my boat. It’s docked up in Jersey City. Once I’m packed up there, I’m off. As you see,” he said, leaning his head, looking into the front seat then looking back at them, “I’m taking the real important necessities.”

  With that he opened the truck’s door, paused to look up, raised his weapon, and fired two shots. A pair of zombies that had just wandered out from the side of a house around the block fell back onto the grass. Nick jumped into the red Hummer, raised his hand, and drove off. Sean and Mike immediately ran inside before any other undead showed up.

  Malik, on seeing the weapons, whistled and proclaimed himself armory chief. Before he came to Saint Mary’s Hospital, he had been in the US Army Medical Corps and was stationed in Iraq. While there, he soon realized that with the insurgents’ insistent aims to overrun the camp, it would be prudent for him to acquaint himself with as many firearms as he could. Throwing himself into this task with the same zeal he put into medicine, Dr. Malik Carter quickly became proficient at not only firing but also being able to field-strip a number of weapons.

  Malik sat at the table, cleaning the trigger mechanism of one of the M15s. Across from him, Henry was busily polishing the Glock. Malik knew Henry wasn’t much good at anything, but because he was a doctor, Malik figured, his perfectionism would be an asset in helping keep the arsenal clean and in perfect working order. Henry sighed when Malik had told him about his new task, but he soon threw himself into it with unexpected gusto.

  Linda and Sue came in from the room everyone used as a storeroom. “Where’s Sean?” Linda asked Mike.

  “Up on the roof,” he replied, drying a frying pan. “Why?”

  She looked at Sue and said, “I think we all have to talk.”

  12

  The group of survivors gathered in the living room. Everyone took a seat except Sean, who for some reason had become their unspoken leader.

  Looking uncomfortable as he stood before them, he started. “Okay, I’ll cut right to the chase. Linda and Sue just did an inventory of our food and water. We’re low. Very low. When Mike, Jack, and I initially stocked up, we stocked up for three. We were able to get a lot of supplies, but now it’s almost gone. We have to do another food run. The tap water is still running, but I don’t know how long that and the electricity will last. The brownouts have been longer and more frequent.”

  Starting to pace and scratch the back of his head, Sean continued. “Look, we’ve been under the radar here. The zombies don’t know we’re home…yet. That’s because of luck and our vigilance in staying very low-key here.

  “I spent the morning watching a house down the street come under attack. I don’t know how the zombies knew people were there, but once they did, they came in droves and surrounded the house. The noise they were making drew more and more of them to the siege. The people inside tried shooting them, but there were just too many. Eventually they broke through the windows and the door and overran the house. I heard several shots then screams. Then…nothing but the dead.”

  “How about if we board up our windows?” Helen asked.

  Malik looked at her and said, “All we have to do is start that hammering, and we’ll be ten feet deep in zombies.”

  “That’s right,” Jack agreed. “We’ve been able to remain here because we don’t make any noise. We don’t go outside; we play the television very softly; and we don’t bang around in here.”

  “And this is our new dilemma,” Sean said. “Now we have to go out. We need food. But if they see us, we’ll end up like the people down the street
. Once the house is surrounded by that many, we’re as good as dead.”

  “The supermarket is a mile away,” Naomi said. “We’d have to take a car.”

  “I doubt there’s anything left there. I’m sure it’s been well looted by now,” Henry said, shaking his head.

  Mariam stood up. She looked around and asked, “How about the rest of the houses on the block? Most of them seem empty.”

  “Yeah,” Sean said, thinking furiously now, “we could sneak in there using backyards. Hop the fences. If we don’t make noise, we won’t attract attention from the dead on the street.”

  “What if there are any zombies in the yards or houses?” worried Linda.

  “We’ll take them out quickly, before they can react,” said Malik.

  “Shoot them fast,” Carol uncharacteristically piped up.

  “No,” Sean said determinedly, “no shooting. That would make too much noise. We’d have to use something else. Hammers or knives or something.”

  The discussion turned into a planning session, and the group decided that Sean, Malik, and Jack would go. Each of them would carry a weapon and two large garbage bags to put food and water in. They wouldn’t take much from refrigerators, as what wouldn’t fit into theirs would just go bad. Canned food, however, would last almost forever.