Zombie Crusade II: David's Journey Read online

  “Right front pocket. Christy, don’t hesitate to use that pistol on anything or anyone who tries to stop us from reaching the vehicle. Once we’re on the road the same rules apply. Can you do it?”

  She hesitated for a brief moment before answering, “I will, David, even on any people who try to stop us. How about you? Can you shoot people who get in our way, even if you don’t know if they’re infected?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then I think we’re ready to go.” She hesitated, “Well, at least as ready as we’ll ever be.”

  “I’ve got your back, baby, don’t worry about it.”

  Christy shrugged as if she wasn’t sure that David knew what he was talking about, but realized that they were out of time and had to make their move. She had never been in a fight in her life, but high school and college basketball had taught her how to physically compete with others. Her dad had spent countless hours teaching her to shoot and taking her along to his deer hunting blind, so she understood the mechanics of shooting and killing. She knew that David had played high school football, but had grown up in different circumstances than his older brothers and had certainly never had to use deadly force on anyone. Still, they had no other options so she finally reached out to unlock the door and push it open, stepping into the hallway with her drawn pistol as she turned to her right.

  David followed with his gun pointing down the left side of the hallway where he saw a man trying to scratch his way through a door at the end of the corridor. When the man looked up at him with coal-black eyes and his gut cavity simply gone, David knew what he was looking at and frantically whispered, “Christy, anything on your side?”

  “No, you see anything?”

  He didn’t need to respond as the creature at the end of the hallway let out a tortured moan and began shuffling in their direction. Christy turned around and gave a little yelp as she saw her first zombie, but David elbowed her back to attention and ordered, “Keep an eye out behind us, and I’ll deal with this thing!”

  David quickly fired three shots at the zombie’s head and completely missed each one, so he took a few hesitant steps in the monster’s direction and managed to put a bullet through its left eye at a range of six feet. The zombie reached out one arm in David’s direction before slowly falling forward and hitting the ground with a loud thump. The flesh-eater didn’t even quiver after it fell so David whispered, “I got it. Move to the stairs and stay back to back.”

  They reached the emergency exit without encountering any more zombies, and once out in the stairwell they took a moment to lift their visors and quietly discuss what had just happened.

  “Damn,” Christy softly declared, “you weren’t even afraid!”

  David stared into her eyes for a long moment before explaining, “I’ve never been more terrified in my life! But I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, baby.”

  Christy’s dark brown eyes misted over for a moment, and even though the helmet blocked his view David knew she was smiling that small, slightly crooked grin she always wore when she found him amusing or lovable. “David, before we head down there I want to know something; when were you gonna get around to asking me to marry you?”

  Without missing a beat, David blurted out, “Christy, will you marry me? I mean, right now, before we head down these stairs to face whatever’s out there.”

  She nodded, “We need to work on your romantic timing though.” Her voice was slightly muffled by the helmet, but David could tell by the way her eyes were crinkled up at the corners that she was smiling from ear to ear. “Ok, I, Christy Carboni, do solemnly swear to take David Smith as my lawfully wedded husband, for better or worse, from this minute forward. Your turn.”

  David grinned and returned the promise, “And I, David Smith, do solemnly swear to take Christy Carboni as my lawfully wedded wife, for better or worse, from this minute forward.”

  “So, as of right now, I’m Christy Smith?”

  David firmly stated, “Yeah, as of this moment.”

  “We can find a preacher and make it official after we find my parents.”

  David nodded and pointed upward with his free hand, “Sure we can, but God just formalized it right now!”

  Christy’s smile had faded and her eyes looked deadly serious. “No matter what happens in the next few minutes, I love you with all my heart. I’ll stay beside you till the end.”

  “I know you will, baby, and that end is gonna be a long way off if I have anything to do with it. Now let’s get the hell out of here!”

  While they moved down the stairs as quietly as possible they occasionally heard shouts and screams from beyond the doors they were passing, but they didn’t stop moving until they reached the bottom. The elevator in their building went right to the parking garage, but whoever had designed the place had built the stairs only to the lobby. The stairwell door was solid steel with no window, so they had no idea what was waiting for them on the other side. They knew they had to cross the lobby to get to the exit that led to their vehicle, and there was simply no other option but to open the door and face whatever was out there.

  David grabbed the handle and whispered, “Maybe the lobby is empty?”

  Christy shook her head slightly and murmured, “Just open it, hon, and be ready for anything.”

  David slowly opened the door as quietly as possible, and as he and Christy stepped into the lobby they saw nothing between them and the parking garage. They had only taken a couple of steps in the direction of the exit however, when a head popped up from behind the desk where the attendant normally sat, and they both recoiled slightly when they saw that the face peering in their direction had been ripped wide open in what should have been a mortal wound. The creature let out a loud moan and three other hideous heads rose from behind the counter. The zombies pulled themselves to their feet and lumbered around the desk, moving toward the two humans gaping at them in fear and astonishment. Before these flesh-eaters had taken three steps David heard Christy scream, “On the right!”

  Taking his eyes briefly from the threat before them, he quickly glanced to the right to see five more zombies stepping out of the open elevator door where they had been picking the remains from a gory corpse. Then everything was a blur as he lifted his pistol and began firing at the advancing creatures in front of him while hearing Christy shooting at the monsters approaching from the flank. Somehow David managed to drop two flesh-eaters and Christy took out two others before the mob was on them. Panic washed over the young couple as they fell to the floor with five hungry zombies frantically tearing at the leather-clad humans with their hands and teeth.

  David had no idea where his pistol had gone as he was thrown down by the monsters, but with a burst of pure adrenaline he tossed one of the zombies off of him and rolled to his feet. He mindlessly began punching and kicking the creatures on top of Christy, having little effect as he could hear her screaming even as she fought like a wildcat to escape the monsters trying to tear through her protective gear. The zombie David had thrown aside a few seconds earlier was two steps away from grabbing his prey again when the human finally remembered the short sword at his side. David pulled the blade free and deliberately took aim at the creature’s face, punching through the nasal cavity and turning the flesh-eater into an unmoving corpse that crumpled at his feet.

  Now David was primally angry at what was happening to the woman he loved, and he roared in fury. His earlier panic fled before the battle-rage that consumed him as he turned his wrath upon the zombies still fighting to keep the wiry Christy on the floor. David grabbed the first creature, a female, by her long, blood-caked hair before thrusting the sword upward through her foul mouth and throwing her unmoving corpse aside with strength he never knew he possessed. He then grasped the shirt of a large male and flipped the rancid zombie onto its back before slamming the blade through an eye socket with such force that the tip of the sword briefly stuck in the floor below the beast.

  He turned back to the scrum
to see that Christy had regained her feet, but she was so winded that all she could do was back away from the creatures trying to pull her back down. David tackled one of the zombies and stabbed it through the neck after they rolled to a stop and he found himself straddling the flesh-eater. The blow didn’t kill the zombie but did ruin its ability to move anything but its head, so David jumped up from the monster just in time to see Christy shoot the final creature in the face with one of the guns she had managed to retrieve from the mess on the floor.

  David stumbled to her and grabbed her by both arms, shouting through the visor, “Are you all right?”

  Christy cried out, “They bit me, David! They bit me in a bunch of places!”

  He quickly removed her backpack and pulled a shirt free, then he began wiping the blood and gore from her armor searching for wounds. He found at least a dozen places where the zombies had left teeth marks in the leather, but he didn’t see any spot where they’d broken through to her skin. After a few more wipes from the sacrificial shirt he declared, “I can’t find any place they broke through, baby. Does any place feel worse than the others?”

  “The back of my thigh, hon, it really hurts back there.”

  David looked again and noticed a particularly deep indentation but the leather was intact. He tapped a finger on the spot and asked, “Right there?”

  Christy hissed, “Ouch! Dammit, why’d you do that? Did they get through there?”

  “No, the gear held up like Jack said it would! I don’t see anywhere they might have gotten past your armor. Any other place you want me to check?”

  He could hear the relief in her voice as she wearily said, “I’m good. Let’s just get the hell out of here!”

  David assisted Christy in pulling her pack on, and she helped him find his .22 pistol before they moved over to the door leading to the parking garage. This one had a window, and what they could see looked like a scene from an NC-17 horror film. Intestines covered with bright, red blood were strung across the cement walkway leading to the area where the vehicles were sitting, and David could see the backs of several zombies feeding on a still-moving body directly between the door and the space where Christy had parked her Range Rover. He gulped down the bile that threatened to rise to his throat and motioned for Christy to have a look. She peered out for about thirty seconds before calmly replacing the magazine in her gun with a fully loaded clip.

  “That’s Steve, the maintenance-man, who those bastards are eating out there. Make sure you put a bullet in his head after we kill the zombies.”

  David nodded once, and Christy flung open the door. She looked like a woman intent on killing as she strode confidently up to the zombies who were looking at her, but staying on their knees over the body they were devouring. Her dad would have been proud to see her double-tap the creatures through the foreheads from five feet away, ending their miserable existences before they hit the ground. As promised, David shot the maintenance-man in the skull once the flesh-eaters were out of the way. Thankfully the poor man was finally dead by the time they reached him.

  Before he could start toward the vehicle Christy shouted, “David, zombies on your left,” and he looked up just in time to see a huge male grab him before they both fell to the floor. Now David learned what it felt like to be bitten as the giant zombie chomped down so hard on his shoulder that he screamed in pain, finally remembering his weapon as he shoved the barrel in the monster’s ear and pulled the trigger four or five times. The dead weight rolled away and he saw Christy standing over him.

  “Are you all right? Did he bite you?”

  David didn’t move as he mumbled, “Right shoulder; it hurts like hell!”

  Christy knelt down beside him and carefully looked over the bite-mark. “He didn’t break through, honey. Is this the spot?” She asked as she poked the teeth-marks with her finger.

  “Ouch!” David exclaimed, “What the hell you do that for?”

  Christy stood back up and reached down to help him up. “Just following established protocol.”

  David chuckled in spite of the terrifying and surrealistic situation they were in, taking Christy’s proffered hand and shakily rising to his feet. “Here we are, smack-dab in the middle of a freakin’ zombie apocalypse, and you’re worried about payback?”

  “Yep, now let’s get to the Rover!”

  They stuck to the plan and Christy jumped into the passenger side before placing the pistol in her lap and turning on the dashboard GPS. David started the Rover and pulled around to the exit of the parking garage, thankful that the power was still flowing through Cleveland as he punched in their code and watched the huge door slowly rise to release them from the building. The road immediately in front of them was clear as David pulled out to the right, but they could see that they wouldn’t even clear their block due to a three vehicle crash only forty yards away. What they assumed were zombies were milling about the site and trying to claw their way through the windows of the wrecks, and Christy raised her pistol to the window as David hit the brakes and turned to look back down the street behind them. He could see a bus overturned in the intersection in that direction, with some sort of melee taking place near the rear exit where the unlucky passengers were trying to escape.

  Christy interrupted David’s uncertain hesitance by commanding, “Lock the four-wheel drive in low and go around to the right of the crash ahead of us. Pick up speed and bust through the parking sign and any zombies that get in the way.”

  He looked at her for a moment until she shouted, “Do it!”

  David shoved the selector into four-wheel low and pushed the accelerator. They hit the sign and two zombies as they barreled through the narrow opening between the pile-up and the building, but they made it past the crash with no apparent damage to the Rover. The next few miles of city streets were choked with abandoned cars, corpses, and shuffling zombies who usually reached out toward the auto as they drove past. Christy worked the GPS quickly and efficiently, and David continued to speed along, using the many features of the Range Rover to go off-road as necessary. He was certain that if they were in a car or a normal SUV their progress would have been halted within a few blocks of their apartment, and now he thanked God that he hadn’t put up too much of a fuss when Christy presented him with her arguments explaining why she needed the expensive vehicle for Cleveland’s snowy winters.

  When they finally reached I-90 it looked as if the rest of their journey out to Westlake would have to be on foot, which was not a good thing considering the weight of their gear and the miles left to travel. The entry and exit ramps were completely jammed with abandoned and crashed vehicles, and zombies were milling about all over the place. Half a block away David saw a grassy berm leading up to the highway so he headed in that direction. When they arrived at the base of the incline he looked over to Christy and asked what she thought.

  She simply shrugged and exclaimed, “Go for it!”

  David reversed the Range Rover until he backed up against a guardrail, then floored the accelerator and plowed up the steep slope. They crashed through a wire-fence and rumbled over the curb, crashing into a line of abandoned cars hard enough to deploy the airbags before coming to a complete stop. Seconds later the bags deflated and David shouted, “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” Christy yelled back, “but if you don’t get us out of here really fast I probably will be!”

  David looked up to see several zombies wandering among the line of stalled cars he’d smashed into, and the noise of the impact had focused their attention on the Rover. He realized that, in spite of the jarring crash it had just endured, Christy’s vehicle was still running. He threw the transmission into reverse and ran over an unlucky zombie as he gained the necessary clearance to turn the SUV in the direction they needed to go. Once they were moving again David discovered that there always seemed to be a path that the Range Rover could navigate in spite of the massive gridlock on the interstate. Many of the vehicles they passed were abandoned or filled with
corpses, but some of them still held live people trying to keep the zombies out of the windows. Several times David slowed and allowed Christy to thin out some of the flesh-eaters with her pistol so the occupants of a particular auto had a chance to get out and attempt an escape, but after the second time that a driver jumped out and pointed a gun in their direction they didn’t try to help anyone else.

  When they finally reached the Westlake exits they found one that was reasonably clear, and the streets of the upscale suburb were basically free of the traffic jams they had faced in Cleveland and on the main highway. Apparently most of the people out here were in their homes and content to stay there, although David counted at least a dozen zombies moving along the streets as he and Christy hurried to her parents’ home.

  The Carbonis lived on a dead-end boulevard in a well-to-do subdivision filled with expensive houses set on large, well-manicured lots. Christy’s dad, Jim, worked as an aerospace engineer at Goodrich, and his only child, Christy, was the apple of his eye. When they pulled in the driveway, Jim opened the garage door and motioned for them to park outside. Looking momentarily alarmed when two leather-clad, helmeted figures leapt from his daughter’s vehicle, he shut the overhead door and disconnected the pulley as soon as they crossed the threshold. Christy pulled her helmet free as she ran to her father, then stopped herself from hugging him as she explained, “I’ve got blood all over me, Daddy!”

  11

  David’s Journey

  CHAPTER 2

  Christy’s parents each looked a decade younger than their fifty-plus years, fit and tan with smile-lines and twinkling eyes, but worry over their only child had left them pale and tense. Jim and Trudy fussed over their daughter and new son-in-law as they helped them out of their gore-covered gear and directed them to separate showers so they could clean up before sharing the story of their escape from the city. Christy had handled herself like a Navy SEAL since they had left their apartment, but now that she was safely with her parents she started shaking and gagging as she removed the messy leathers from her bruised and weary body. David just slumped against a wall in the garage in his protective undergarments until Jim placed a tumbler of bourbon in his hands with soft-spoken instructions, “Drink this, then get cleaned up. I don’t know what all you’ve been through, but right now I’m just thankful you’re alive.” Christy finally wobbled over to David and held her hand out to him, and he allowed her to lead him into the house.