Apocalypse Alone Read online

  Apocalypse Alone

  By David Rogers

  Apocalypse Alone

  Copyright © 2016 by David Rogers

  All rights reserved

  Visit http://davesworld.info for more information about the author and his other titles

  [email protected]

  Cover art created and used under CC0 licensing.

  http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased or lent for your use, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of original fiction. Some real locations and businesses have been used to set scenes, but all such trademarks are the respective property of their owners. All depicted characters are fictional and not intended to represent specific living persons.

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter One — A day in the life of the apocalypse

  Chapter Two — Visitors

  Chapter Three — Promises

  Chapter Four — New town, same story

  Chapter Five — Nights are best without bumps

  Chapter Six — Lucky Day

  Chapter Seven — Guess who’s come to dinner

  Chapter Eight — The games we play

  Chapter Nine — Choices

  Chapter Ten — Working the problem

  Chapter Eleven — Falling off the wagon

  Chapter Twelve — Breaking the law

  Chapter Thirteen — Anger management

  Chapter Fourteen — Making friends and plans

  Chapter Fifteen — I hope this works

  Chapter Sixteen — Get high, stay low

  Chapter Seventeen — Breakage

  Chapter Eighteen — Home is wherever your family is

  Chapter Nineteen — A day at a time

  Afterword

  Foreword

  Zombies

  Chapter One — A day in the life of the apocalypse

  “Got another one.”

  Jessica looked up from her book to see Austin standing in the doorway separating the back deck from the house. Her gaze tracked down from the broad smile on his face to his hands. It took her a second, he was the tallest person she’d ever known so there was a lot of tracking her eyes had to do. When she registered what he held in his right hand she smiled ruefully.

  “That’s two.”

  “Yeah, but don’t worry, it took me three shots to get them, not one.”

  Closing the book, she set it on the end table next to her chair and beckoned to him. “Guess that means I’m plucking.”

  “Unless you decided you can stomach the butchering, that’s our deal.” Austin said, still grinning.

  “Feathers and cooking I can deal with, even if I have to handle them.” she replied as he held the pair of ducks out to her. “The … part in between still grosses me out.”

  “We all have our limits.” he said, surrendering the birds to her.

  “Good things ours interlace.”

  Austin gave her a look, and she giggled lightly before composing herself. “I meant life, not the other part.”

  “I figured.” he said, moving over to one of the other chairs and unslinging the shotgun from behind his right shoulder. “But the life stuff leads to the rest of it.”

  “You know,” Jessica said archly as she set one of the ducks on the deck before hitching her chair away from the table, “since you managed to bag these so early in the day, that leaves some time open for other chores.”

  “Chores is it?” he demanded good naturedly as he laid the shotgun down next to the chair.

  “Yes, chores.”

  “You and Candice are both here at the house, kicking back and reading, while I’ve been traipsing around in the swamp all morning.” he said with an air of making a point. “Hunting, successfully as you can see. And what you’ve got for me is oh good, you can do something else?”

  Jessica smiled. “Feeling unloved?” Her hands were already busy on the first bird, holding it by the neck and stripping down along the body. With each pass of her hand, feathers and down came off, most of them fluttering to the deck or through the railing to be picked up and carried away by the breeze.

  “I wouldn’t say unloved,” he laughed, “but maybe taken for granted.”

  “You know I’m still the one who came up with most of what’s in the pantry.”

  “Canned goods.” he said with a theatrically dismissive flick of one hand. “Nothing next to fresh meat.”

  “And the reading me and the rugrat are lazing around doing is relevant.”

  “Did they get married yet?”

  Jessica gave him a mock scowl. “That’s bedtime reading. This,” she said, nodding at the book she’d set aside, “is gardening.”

  “Hmm.” Austin said, stepping closer and picking up the book. The cover displayed a faded picture, the colors of the vegetables in it still bright despite the text’s age. “Sure there’s not a steamy romance hidden inside?”

  Jessica shifted her grip on the duck as he flipped the book open and paged through it quickly. “The only steam around here is after dinner, and after dark.”

  “Ah, now I remember why we fight.”

  “We?”

  “Against the hordes of the apocalypse. Not each other.”

  “Says the guy who loves having his chain yanked.”

  Austin raised both eyebrows in a suggestive manner, and closed the book with a snap of pages. “Guilty.”

  “I’ve got a duck and I’ll use it.” she said as he set the book back down and moved closer to her.

  “I can take it.” he said, leaning down.

  “Duck for lunch?” Candice asked from the doorway.

  “Two, so lunch and dinner, and probably breakfast besides.” Austin said, straightening. Jessica caught his gaze, both of them laughing silently with their eyes, as Candice clapped her hands twice.

  “Are you going to have some of these, or are you still eating the experiment jerky?” the ten-year-old asked.

  “I don’t know, do I look sick yet?” Austin asked, turning to face the girl. He held his arms out from his sides and stood still, as if for inspection.

  “No pain?” Candice asked, looking at him speculatively.

  “No pain.” he confirmed.

  “How many shots to get the ducks?”

  “Three.”

  “Head shots?” Candice pressed.

  “Birds are small you know.” Austin protested.

  “Neck and head.” Jessica said as she turned the duck again. She was almost done with this one, leaving the skin bare of the inedible fluff that formed the bird’s outer layer. The neck of the one in her hand had shredded flesh from the lower portion of the head and down to the neck. She could feel some of the pellets still embedded in it beneath her hand as she continued plucking feathers.

  “Hmm, you’re probably okay then.” Candice decided.

  “Three questions and you figure we’re good to go?” Austin asked.

  “Well yeah. You were only out a couple of hours, and if you were sick you’d take longer and miss more.”

  Both adults laughed, leaving Candice smiling awkwardly in the manner of kids since time immemorial trying to figure out what they’d said that had gotten such a response. As the chuckles died, she shrugged and plowed ahead in a matter-of-fact voice. “That means we can start hunting for more than just the day doesn’t it? If we know how to keep the meat?”

  “Well, that’s up to mom.” Austin said, dropping his arms and stepping over to the chair he’d set his shotgun ne
xt to. “The test was her idea.”

  “It’s been three weeks, right?”

  “Three weeks eating smoked and salted duck jerky, and I’m still here.”

  “We probably did do it right.” Jessica allowed as she finished with the first duck. Everything from the neck to the feet, except the wings, was bare. “Here, heap big hunter, please take over for a wimpy girl.” she said, making a tossing motion with the dead bird.

  “Gladly.” Austin said as he settled into the chair, which creaked in protest as his weight came down.

  Jessica tossed the defeathered duck across the deck to him, and leaned down to pick up the second.

  “Ewww.” Candice said, wrinkling her nose and quickly turning her back on Austin as he stretched out for a cutting board leaning against the railing near his chair.

  “Circle of life girlie-girl.”

  “I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s not icky.”

  “This part’s icky.” Austin agreed. “But after mom takes back over, it’s yummy.”

  “Spices are the secret to cooking.” Jessica said.

  “And butchers.”

  “Yes, and butchers.” she allowed as he rummaged around in the box of cookware for one of the kitchen knives. “But honestly, it really isn’t that much more complicated than a sprinkle of this and a dash of that. Flavor, you know, the yummy part?”

  “Anything that goes on out here over this fire beyond opening a box and adding water is a mystery to me.” Austin said.

  “Fire, that’s what you can work on this afternoon.” Jessica said, starting to pluck the second duck. “There’s room for some more wood in the rack.”

  “You hear that girlie-girl? I just landed some fresh meals, spent three weeks eating a bunch of other meals I also came home with that could’ve given me food poisoning, and mom’s like next chore, chop chop.” He traded another merry look with Jessica, then brought the knife down with a thunk on the plucked bird on the cutting board across his knees. The duck’s neck came off the body, and he grinned wider as Jessica hurriedly averted her eyes while he dumped the unwanted body part in the small bucket that was kept near his chair for just this purpose.

  Candice, also flinching at the sound of the butchering getting underway, didn’t turn. “Without fire we’ve got no food and no water.”

  “Oh wow. Maybe I should get shot again.”

  “Twice.” Jessica and Candice said in unison.

  “Don’t forget the ribs.” Austin laughed.

  “Cracked ribs.” mother and daughter echoed. Jessica smiled as she kept stripping feathers off the second duck.

  “Just so I’m appreciated.”

  “We love you Austin.” Candice said, flinching again as there was another thunk of one of the duck’s wings coming off. This thunk was accompanied with a crack of bone, and she added a shudder to the flinch.

  “Yes, but we’ll love you more if you can come up with some wood before sundown.” Jessica added in a calculated tone of mirth and meaning.

  “You know, our buddy Happy a few doors down is a lot easier to please.” Austin said as he brought the knife down on the duck’s other wing. “I run across a bottle of something, not even a good bottle, drop by and lay it on him, and I’m his best friend all over again.”

  “That’s because Happy doesn’t do anything except drink.” Candice pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, it’s the simple things in life.”

  “Right.” Jessica said. “Clean water, hot food, and—”

  “No zombies.” Candice said, echoing Jessica again.

  “Speaking of zombies, how are things looking out there?” Jessica asked. She glanced at him just in time to catch the mischievous expression flit across his face, but it cleared to something more natural and he settled for a casual shrug when he caught her eyes on him. She knew what he had been about to say; some sort of joke about how she only left the house to help him with scavenging runs once, sometimes twice, a week.

  “Not too bad.” he said, his voice giving no sign of the shared understanding as he gazed at her.

  “Not better?”

  “Well your idea of breaking contact by cutting south anytime we venture into a more infested area is helping some, I think. I mean, not that the und—uh, the things tend to follow very long before they lose interest, but it can’t be hurting to drag them out in the opposite direction before circling around to come back home.”

  “They still aren’t … gone?” Candice asked.

  Jessica sighed silently, agreeing with her daughter but unwilling to goose any, unfortunately, unrealistic hopes that sooner or later the zombies would just fade away. If there were people, survivors, out and about in the post-apocalypse who were studying and applying science to the zombies, none of whatever they might be coming up with was making it to this quiet little piece of Florida. Certainly she and Austin and Candice had no ideas, other than to do what they had been doing; making sure they stayed out of reach and didn’t get eaten.

  She’d never been a fan of the wealth of material devoted to zombies and undead stories and anything else of the like prior to the stories becoming news, then reality, but she knew a couple of broad strokes sort of things about how zombies had generally been envisioned. These zombies, however they’d come about and stayed a threat, didn’t seem to be fading. Labor Day weekend, variously referred to as the start of the apocalypse, outbreak weekend, the beginning of the end of the world, and other things, was now over four months in the past.

  Any hope that time would hit the zombies hard enough to dissipate the lethal threat they posed she’d more or less given up on by now. Any human, one that died normally and didn’t rise to start eating people, would be decomposed badly enough after four months of wind and weather and natural processes to be basically a skeleton. These zombies, well, they decomposed; but they weren’t getting overall less dangerous because of it. And they didn’t seem to keep decomposing.

  Lose an arm, lose a leg, sure the zombie had less limbs. Muscles and other necessary tissues wasted away, but only to a point; if it had kept going, the zombies would become immobile horrors rather than walking monsters. But their decay seemed to hover in a gruesome state between disgusting and horrific without dipping further into something that would neutralize them. How, why; that was a question for whatever science or investigation that someone with more resources and know-how, somewhere, might be applying.

  All that mattered was they were still around, they were still eating, and if they got their hands on you they’d eat until they either finished their meal or you rose to become an undead comrade-in-arms.

  “Afraid not girlie-girl.” Austin said calmly. “But we’re safe here.”

  “I know. We’ve got the house, and the truck and the car and the boat in case we have to leave. And the emergency stashes for when we get out.”

  “We’ve got options.” Jessica said firmly. “Safety, and plans if the safety isn’t enough. We’re fine.”

  “I know. I was just wondering.” Candice said.

  “There are worse places to be.” Austin said.

  “Like Atlanta, or Ocala.”

  “Which is why we left.” Jessica said. “And came here.”

  “Here is working out pretty good so far.” Austin said. “Byron has been right; the lake is working out to be a good firebreak against all the cra—the stuff happening on the east coast.”

  “And Fort Myers is far enough away that no big packs have made their way out here to bother us.” Jessica agreed.

  “You were right.” Austin said, looking up and catching Jessica’s eyes again. “Mild weather, things are still growing, and fewer zombies. We had a time getting here, but it was the right call.”

  She smiled and cocked her head invitingly at him. “So you’ll bring in some wood before dark?”

  He shook his head ruefully. “I definitely need to get shot again.”

  “Austin!” she said, unable to put any — even teasingly — real heat or indignation in her pr
otest. He’d taken those bullets for her; her and Candice. However lightly he seemed to take it, she could never forget why.

  “I’ll get some. But lunch first. Ready to trade back?”

  “Put it on the workbench.” Jessica said, gesturing with her chin at the waist high table that served as the food prep surface.

  Not all of their scavenging, especially before the gas in the area’s tanks had started breaking down enough to become unreliable, had been pure survival like food and other absolutely necessary items. About two weeks after Austin had rejoined them in the stilt house, they’d invested a few trips into getting some other things retrieved and installed in their new home.

  Quality of life had been the term she and Austin had settled on, though some of the items were hard to argue against not having some place — however far down — on a list that carried a ‘useful and needed’ designation. That ranged from furniture that kept them from having to do everything on hands and knees and butts on the floor to things like pillows and blankets that made mornings less painful with stiff muscles and cricked necks from sleeping uncomfortably.

  Jessica finished with the last of the feathers on the second duck and stood up. “Okay, go to it, oh un-squeamish one.”

  “Yes your Royal In-chargeness.” he said, slapping the trimmed and gutted duck carcass on the workbench and reaching for the other one in her hand. “Got any ideas for what you’re going to do with these two?”

  “Well, stew will be for tonight and tomorrow morning.” Jessica said. “Because reasons. If you can fit in a, ah, larger hunting catch sometime in the next little while we’ll smoke and salt that to keep longer, but these might as well go into the pot for later.”

  “I figured as much.” he said gravely, nodding as he settled the second duck on the board in his lap. Before they started experimenting with how to preserve the meat Austin’s hunting was bringing in, the trio had already figured out how a stew pot that was kept hot on the fire could keep the food edible and safe for days. That just made the meals they had with a fresh kill all the more welcome, since they broke the monotony of bowls and spoons.