World of Ashes Read online

  "It's that quick!?" Ethan knelt down to Keller’s body, trying desperately to block the images of the friend he’d lost in Iraq. The circumstances were different, sure, but the mechanism of death was a carbon copy. He took the kid’s patrol cap off and let the pile of mush that had been his head and face, now unrecognizable, settle to the pavement with a slop sound. Ethan barfed in his mouth, a flood of unwanted memories searing the back of his mind like starring into an LED projector.

  "Yes, it is. Are you infected?" Keith leveled the pistol at Ethan's face. This was honestly the first time anyone had ever pointed a real gun at Ethan. It wasn’t as earth shattering as everyone said it was, not to him. In a way, Ethan hoped the sergeant would put him out of his misery.

  "No. I was behind the, the..." Ethan snapped his fingers as his mouth went dry with panic. He knew Brewer was close to going into shock again, who knew how stable his thought process was.

  Even in a moment that didn't call for laughter the man with the gun managed a smirk, "I wasn't gonna shoot you unless you started getting hostile. That’s how it starts, man. That’s how you know.”

  Letting his breath go Ethan rocked back on his heels as he knelt next to Keller. "I put this kid through hell. Made him think I could help him get through this. Maybe he should have chased our unit down." Ethan looked down at his previous companion. "And he killed himself so he wouldn't hurt us…"

  "If you think he was really being that noble.” Keith shrugged, looking like a shaggy haired madman in children’s clothing. “I’m sorry about your friend, but he’s dead, just like all of mine.” Keith started walking away. He picked up the medical bag and despite the pain in his sprained ankle he started back toward the office. "Where are you from?" He asked without looking back.

  "Right here actually... Well, about thirty miles and a couple towns South. I used to work here when I was in high school, and even for a bit after the Army; Security wasn’t any more fun than pushing buttons or picking up trash. Just paid better.”

  "Really? That's amazing man. Most of us are from all over..." Ethan had caught up to Keith. Neither looked back. "I can't imagine how bad Pensacola is now." They climbed the stairs back into the secutiry office. "So if you're from around here, is your family still around?" Keith changed the subject.

  "I don't know. I've been through Sullivan four times going to and from Fort 'Wood since the Army kidnapped me like a British press gang, but they never let me stop. Stop-Loss, or conscripted veterans, get red dogtags. Lets our command know we’re a desertion risk. I haven't had access to a phone in two months."

  Keith pointed his finger like a gun to a desk behind Ethan. "There's a phone right there."

  Without hesitation Ethan picked up the phone and dialed his home. Cell towers had gone dark months ago, but rumors that some land lines still worked persisted. There was a ringtone and within three rings Ethan heard the voice of an angel on the other end. "Baby!? Omagod! It's me. I'm in Eureka. I'm coming home as soon as I can, stay where you are!" His face suddenly grew concerned by what he was hearing on the other end of the line.

  Keith’s brow furrowed. He could hear the receiver picking up the sound of shouts and gunfire that echoed like they were from inside a building. "Baby, don't go with them! Tell Dad to block the door, stay in the house and lock everything. Go upstairs and don't let anyone in the house. I'll be there as soon as I can!" Ethan's eyes widened in horror, "Nicole? Nicole! Hello? FUCK!" He threw the phone against the wall, shattering it. "We have to go. There has to be a car around here we can use."

  “Ooh, can we take a Moon Car?” Keith was referring to one of the oldest rides at Six Flags. Small buggies with single stroke lawn mower motors that resembled an early Ford Model-A. It was basically a super slow lawn mower with no blades and a padded steering wheel.

  An explosion in the distance rattled the rickety buildings. They both looked through the window to see a squadron of Apache gunships blowing up anything that moved near the highway. Their guns chattered and wire guided missiles destroyed things the ash had previously hidden.

  "I don't think we should be on the roads right now."

  "FUCK!" Ethan shouted again and threw a dark computer monitor across the room. "If I don't get there now they'll send ‘em to some camp with Private Pyle as a guard and then they're all gonna die!"

  "Well, my schedule is conspicuously clear right now. Let’s do this." Keith said, flipping on a radio in the security office. It crackled with static as he scanned through the channels, looking for one he and Ethan could use exclusively if they got separated along the way. They landed on two police bands, each was a veritable cornucopia of screams and gunshots and some asshole redneck reading verses from the bible that seemed irrelevant to the situation, making an entire channel useless with his open mike. Other channels had calls for help from people who couldn’t be saved, and perhaps even something more sinister, something undead.

  Quietly, Ethan tried the phones again, but there was no dial tone this time. The lines were completely dead. More explosions shook the ground from much closer targets. They became anxious to gather what few supplies there were and leave. Contemplating the loss he'd just experienced, Ethan’s heart was weighed heavier than he expected. If Nicole had never answered to begin with he might have taken it better, but not now. Now he had practically no time to get to his family before they were evacuated to the care of incompetents. Another scan of the radios revealed no signals at all, not even the zealot. The Apache gunships had taken care of him too, triangulating his position.

  “Zombies don’t use radios. Why are they attacking signal origins?” Keith watched out the window as a rocket flew over the park and took down the repeater at the top of the hills that surrounded Six Flags.

  “Conspiracy theories are going to have to wait.” Ethan took the radios and turned them off. “We take no chances we don’t have to.”

  The zealot was just one of a growing number of people Ethan began to realize he wasn't going to miss, thinking about the world he’d lost while they searched for a car. He knew he could be callous to the world, but it didn’t even bother him than the zealot, or his radio, had been destroyed by their army. Ethan figured he’d miss close friends, his family and beloved for sure, but most everyone else was just as empty and hollow to him before as the random people on the games in the Grand Theft Auto saga. The fact that most people were zombies now didn't endear them to him anymore than when they were the fat, disconnected, pill popping, lazy fucking morons he’d taken for granted as a child. Around the front of the building he pulled out the pack of cigarettes. Half the pouches on his gear had been for candy and tobacco and whatever other contraband he could find even before he’d become “That Guy.” The way Ethan figured it, by the time he’d have to use a 9mm rather than his rifle he’d already be fucked. Lighting the cancer stick he inhaled the smoke, something that pained him, but nothing else was available. He could see through the ashen clouds just enough to make out the highway and a few still-smoldering cars. This was going to be a long walk if they couldn’t find a car.

  In silence they walked back to the first aid station. The bodies were exactly as they’d left them, much to their relief. They didn’t have time to bury the bodies, the sun was setting and both were already a measure beyond exhausted. Ethan whispered the words to The Lord’s Prayer over Keller before they left.

  Keith, who was a much better mechanic than Ethan, spent some time inspecting the vehicles the theme park had in its parking lot with the hopes someone had abandoned something that could be hotwired. The most promising was a newer model Chevy Impalla that still had the keys on the seat next to blood streaks where the occupant had been dragged out and eaten behind a pile of broken roller coaster cars. Ethan slid in and turned the key. The car started and they breathed a sigh of relief when cold, soot free air blew over them. They loaded all their stuff and slowly pulled out of the parking lot. Deciding to avoid the highway Ethan turned right to travel the back roads. That was perhaps not the br
ightest idea he ever had, as the ash was already so thick the car couldn’t maintain traction. It slid into a ditch and downed a fence at the top of the hill and sputtered until it died.

  There was a moment of silence in the car while both took a deep breath in frustration, astounded at their bad luck and the sheer idiocy of the situation. Ethan had learned long ago never to ask what else could go wrong. He might get an answer. The men were about to get out when they saw movement in the mists. Ethan raised his M4 and held very, very still, knowing that some of the Undead would completely bypass them if they were as indistinguishable as their surroundings. Zombies aren’t super human after all, they just don’t feel pain or fatigue. The shape grew larger and more defined. In a ghostly scene straight from the Iraqi oil fires of the movie Jarhead, a horse that someone tried to saddle stepped slowly up to what were probably the first living people he’d seen in a while.

  Keith got out of the car and went up to the horse. There were no reports of the virus jumping species, whatever it was seemed to attack only people. A reigning theory was the virus was only attracted to higher brain functions. Zombies would eat an animal, this was true, but only if there was nothing else. Keith petted the mustang and looked it in the eyes. Ethan kept his distance, he liked horses even less people, having been beaten rather severely by one as a child.

  "Looks thirsty. I'll bet his trough is completely saturated with ash." He reached into the car and pulled out a bottle of water and poured it into a dog bowl half buried nearby. The horse lapped the water up, and just as quickly as it had appeared, the animal disappeared into the ash storm across the hole they’d put in the fence. “Good luck, pal.” Keith whispered as the horse faded from view.

  "Let's check the house. The people might still be home." Ethan stalked up to the mansion sized ranch house and thoroughly checked the outside before knocking on the front door. Minutes later no one answered and they tried the knob, just in case it was unlocked. There was a notion to kick it in, but in the last moment before Ethan let his foot fly Keith jabbed him and pointed to a window that was unlocked.

  The soot covered men climbed into the house, a beautifully maintained upper income home. The inside was a refreshingly clean space, well taken care of and free of ash. As if they were covered in mud or snow the muddy looking men stood in the foyer for a long while, unwilling to pollute this pristine palace before they wordlessly stripped down to their underwear and cleared the house as silently as possible in socks and skivvies before going through the owner's closets. The man who lived there was at least a little overweight because nothing fit either of them without having to poke new holes in a belt.

  The kitchen was like something out of a magazine, and if the magazine covers framed on the walls were any indication, it was. The refrigerator still put out ice and cold water, and they took a moment to eat a magnificently prepared chicken salad that was in a container marked Monday, four days ago. Out in the garage, along with a brand new Dodge Ram 1500, was a corner devoted to farming, hunting and equestrian pursuits. Keith found the tiger striped fatigues the man had used for deer hunting to be a better fit for them both, even if forty year old tiger striped camouflage was just a bit goofy looking.

  "We look like South Vietnamese ARVN’s.” Keith joked, pulling out two boony hats. He tossed one to Ethan, the wide brimmed hats would be good for keeping ash and falling particles off their faces. The sun was already nearly gone, dropping the global temperatures drastically.

  "Give it ten minutes and these will look as bad as our Multicams." The inside of the truck still smelled of rich leather and pine. Ethan had to hand it to the previous owner. The man had had taste, assuming the past tense since no one was home.

  “I just thought of something funny.” Keith said before Ethan started the truck.

  “What?”

  “Before the Multicam uniform the Army issued ACU’s. They were grayish blue and white and blended into absolutely nothing…. And now the world ends, and everything is gray and white… and the uniform is long retired.”

  "I try not to remember those shit-fuck rags." Ethan sighed. "History will note the original Army Combat Uniform as an abysmal failure caused by the Army’s hard-on for copying every the Marines already did, only poorly. But you are right." He started the truck, grateful yet again that the man had been so well-to-do he could afford a $40,000 truck with an automatic transmission and a full tank of $8 a gallon gas. The garage door opened and in front of them stood the man who had owned the house, the horse, and the truck. His chest was ripped open, a pace maker dangling in a stream of blackened, gooey snot that swung from his exposed ribs. There was a child's arm in his hand, gnawed to the bone. The child he had mostly eaten stood behind him, a good portion of her face gnawed away. The poor thing was completely naked, a rubber ducky in her remaining hand and mud that had hardened all around her where the ash had collected on the blood.

  The child dropped the rubber ducky and Ethan slammed the accelerator down. They plowed the two of them under with an incredible whump sound. Despite the initial adrenaline dump, hitting the two zombies kept the truck under better control by giving them traction on the ash. The truck wound through the back roads at a snail’s pace until Ethan found Old Highway 100. By then the truck was filthy, but the roads weren’t as bad and they could actually do the posted speed limit if there was nothing blocking their path.

  An Army roadblock sat atop a plateau where the road curved around a steeply sloped farm and an old barn with a massive flag pole in the middle of the yard. The garrison flag at the top was tattered and faded, barely visible through the warm, gray faux snow. No one was left to lower it, and no anarchist scumbags had yet to cut it down. There were no trucks at the roadblock, no soldiers or FEMA workers either, just a few infected people looking the other direction in a cattle coral off to one side. Disturbing reminders that the Government had once been jailing people for euthanizing zombies littered the countryside. For a brief time the government had then gone to trying to jail the zombies themselves. The result had been much the same as taking zombies to a hospital. “Smorgasbord” might be a good description.

  Ethan flew past the coral, wishing he hadn’t seen it. Keith opened the door once to hit a zombie and laughed hysterically. “I’ve always wanted to do that.” He said when he was done laughing long enough to catch his breath. If that was what tripped his trigger, Ethan figured, let him have it. There were worse ways to spend the apocalypse.

  Checkpoints were at every overpass over Interstate 44. The Gray Summit staging area was just as abandoned as any other, ash drifting in the wind, but thinner as they got farther from the city. Ethan stopped the truck and watched through a hunting scope for hidden elements, dead or alive. They saw nothing and after their approach collected several more boxes of ammunition left in a supply tent. Radios were left on in the command post, and computers displayed Blue Force Tracker information that basically outlined the fact that there were no more “Blue” forces in the area. Just Red.

  The speakers on the radios were either humming, hissing, or broadcasting the moans of the undead operators on the other end. One radio let them listen to an air traffic controller in charge of directing planes and choppers out of the Sullivan, St. Clair, and Cuba airports to… somewhere. The destination was in code, and neither knew how to decipher it. The evacuation was going, but to where? Only every other word was audible, but “Green Zone” was repeated several times, giving some false ray of hope.

  "We'll stick to the back roads until we get there. We stop for no one we don’t have to, especially not for other Soldiers, I don’t trust them not to turn us in or try to pull rank. We want to go back on our own terms if we have to, not because we're made too. Agreed?"

  "Absolutely." Keith nodded, his eyes as wide as Ethan’s while they listened to the dead consume their world. Ammunition loaded, Ethan continued driving through the remains of a town he’d once known well. They didn't see a single living soul until the Twin Bridges Underpass that split fro
m I-44 toward the college town of Union. Local's had already overrun and taken control of the Army’s TCP there, using what had once been a Harley Davidson store and it’s dilapidated storage facility as forward observation and gun positions.

  How in the hell had the Army lost accountability of so many weapons? Ethan mused. Things had to have gone from bad, to worse, to full a blown clusterfuck. The Army had been obsessed with keeping track of every weapon and every bullet for as long as Ethan could remember. He’d spent countless hours “policing” expended brass in grassy fields and foxholes that had been there since M1 Garands were in service. Punishments for misplacing a weapon could be severe, unless of course you were an officer, then everyone had to politely pretend they didn’t know you’d been whackin’ it in the porta-shitter, forgot your 9mm when it fell out of your holster because you couldn’t get comfortable for that final push, and the Indian KBR worker cleaning up after your gross ass found your weapon hours later. If the Army had lost this much equipment some officer somewhere was covering his ass like he was Fresh Fish at Ft. Leavenworth.

  Unable to avoid the checkpoint now that they’d been spotted, Ethan slowed to a stop so they could talk to a gangly looking kid in florescent yellow “Sk8er” shoes and a soot gray hoodie. His hair was dirty and dangling in his face, white iPod headphones were dangling from his neck and he didn’t seem very concerned with camouflage. The kid was armed with a .308 hunting rifle and an expensive scope he probably didn’t even know how to use. Ethan had, unfortunately, been a Military Policeman once upon a lifetime ago and was astonished at how brazenly the kid just walked up to the truck and stuck his face right up the driver side window. Even in the old world approaching someone’s car window was a good way to get shot in the face. He also didn’t seem to care Ethan had a pistol on his lap, as if that were normal now.