The big man took in the news with a deep intake of breath, as if he could breathe it all in and let his entire body process the information. Letting out a sigh, he shook his head sadly. “I never should have told them to wait,” he said.“Yeah,” Gabriel said absently, staring off into the distance. Suddenly, the actual words clicked in his head and he turned back to Robert with a jolt. “Wait, what? You told them to wait?” Robert nodded his affirmation, and a growl issued forth unintentionally from the back of Gabriel ’s throat. “You told them to wait? Who gave you the right to make that call? That totally went against my plan.”Jake and Robert gave the young man surprised looks, and across the room various eyes were beginning to turn in the direction of the suddenly heated conversation.“There’s no need for pointing fingers,” Jake began, but Gabriel cut her off.“There’s every reason for pointing fingers!” As if to lend credence to his words, Gabriel jabbed a finger at the bigger man
Gabriel offered a meek smile and sighed. “Well, it’s hardly important,” he said dismissively. “What about the others?” he added, motioning back at the group with his head.“The first one’s Matthew,” Daniel answered. Matthew was a tall man, easily six feet, probably more. He hovered over the other three, taller even than the preacher who was himself a rather tall man. Matthew was bigger, though, built like a boxer, with a broad chest and broad arms and legs like tree trunks planted firmly into the ground. “Matthew’s married to Kelsey. That’s her over there.” As he said this he motioned to a woman across the room, back behind Gabriel . He turned and looked. She was sitting by herself, eating something directly from a can. She was a fairly attractive, young woman, with shoulder length blonde hair and thick, rectangular glasses. Gabriel figured she couldn’t be more than a decade older than him, which would probably put her just a few years younger than Matthew.“The other one’s Stephan,
Daina reached over and placed her hand on Daniel’s. He met her eyes, and something exchanged in the silence between them. After a moment, he turned and looked back at Gabriel . “Seriously, how did you miss all of this? Don’t you have… friends? Family? Anyone who would have contacted you when things went from bad to worse?”The younger man’s jaw hardened. Truth be told, he hadn’t even had time to think about it yet. Everything since he’d left his apartment that afternoon had simply been about survival and trying to understand what had even happened. There in fact were a number of people he cared about, and he had not heard from even one of them. Minus the apocalypse occurring outside his door, not having heard from his friends or family for over two weeks wouldn’t have really been that abnormal. But once the dead started rising from the grave? Surely, at least one of them would have thought of him.“They must…” he began, the words choking off in his throat, “they must have… died… too e
His eyes opened at last, but everything was blurry. He blinked, feeling the crustiness around his eyGabriel ds, and after a few moments could make out the general form of the woman standing at the end of his bed. “I knew you’d come,” he said, not really fully aware he was even talking.Jake's eyes went wide. She scoffed in annoyance and rolled her eyes. She kicked him in the feet again, still harder. “In your dreams, you perv. We’re being overrun. If we don’t leave, and I mean right now, we’re as good as dead. So get your ass out of this bed or I’m taking your keys and leaving you here as bait.”Realization slowly dawned on Gabriel and his face flushed red. He rolled out of the bed and grabbed his bag off the floor. He must have been much more tired the previous night than he’d realized, as he was still fully clothed. He hadn’t even taken off his shoes. I must reek, he thought distantly. Actually, considering that there probably wasn’t running water anymore, everyone in the group pro
It felt like an eternity, though in reality it was only a couple of minutes before the high concentration of abandoned cars finally came to an end and they were able to increase their speed. Gabriel ’s small car roared after the leading vehicles, ripping down the streets as quickly as he dared push it.“It’s all back roads from here,” the man in the passenger seat said after a time. Gabriel shot him a glance, but quickly turned his focus back to the road ahead. “I’m Rico, by the way,” the man added, motioning to himself with his hand that wasn’t holding a shotgun. Then, waving into the backseat, he said “this here is my brother Lucas and my cousin Chuy.”Gabriel blinked, turning his head just enough to glance sideways into the back seat. “Chewy?” he echoed in disbelief ef.“Chewy” was playing with a switchblade, and at Gabriel ’s tone he snapped the blade into place and leaned forward. “What, you got a problem, ?”“Oh settle down, niño,” the woman to Chuy’s left said. “You gonna st
Gabriel caught the knife with both hands and as little flailing as he could manage. He had never been too good at catching unexpected items midair, and usually just ended up batting them around a bit with each hand as he flailed desperately and unsuccessfully to grab the item before knocking it out of his own reach. Not wanting to look like an idiot in front of this big group of strangers, he was quite thankful and rGabriel even when he managed to actually catch the item this time.He turned the pocket knife over in his hands, looking at it. It was the multi-tool variety, complete with a number of items that would probably never be useful again, like a cork screw and wire cutters. “Thanks, uh, I guess,” he muttered. He turned his head and looked down the highway. Down the line, at another empty car, someone was busy draining the unneeded gas from the tank into a container. Someone else was similarly busy going through the vehicle for useful items. “What kind of stuff would be conside
“I don’t know!” She snapped, turning away from them. “Just, anything but that,” she added quietly.“Maybe she’s right,” a woman Gabriel hadn’t met chimed in. “It’s a nasty name.”“Um, there’s kind of a precedent for this,” Gabriel argued. “All the lore about creatures like this calls them zombies. They look like zombies, they walk like zombies, they talk like zombies. Therefore, they are zombies.”“These things don’t talk,” the woman countered. “They don’t even seem to moan.”“I’ve heard one moan.”“Have you?”Gabriel opened his mouth to reply and then stopped short. Actually, everything from the past two days now seemed like a blur, and it felt like almost none of it could even be real. “Okay, maybe not. I guess I’m not sure. But no sounds might be even more creepy than weird moaning for people’s brains, and it still fits with zombie lore.”“What lore?” The woman continued, shaking her head in disbelief. “And why should it matter? Can’t you at least just respect someone’s wishes a
“Yeah,” Jay agreed. “Look at all those windows. It looks more like an office building than a military complex.”The caravan pulled off onto a side street, and followed a path to an entrance gate. They came to a stop, and Robert and someone in an army uniform climbed out of the lead car. They stood conversing for some time and looking around as if searching for something. “We’re locked out,” Gabriel exclaimed in annoyance. “We came all this way, and they didn’t even have a plan for getting into the place.”“I’ve been on a few military bases,” Stephen said from the back seat. “There will be another entrance, one easier to access. I’m sure Devin knows that.”As if on cue, the two outside turned around and headed back to their car. Robert made a gesture to the remaining vehicles to follow after him, then climbed back up into the driver’s seat. They followed along the gate, rounding a corner and heading further along the base. One of the buildings loomed up before them: a large, three sto
At the end of the line Gabriel found another big building, which he knew the moment he stepped inside had to be a barracks. It was like a much larger version of the living quarters at the compound they had found in Texas. Just four long lines of beds stretching across the length of the room, with no care shown for privacy or individuality. All part of the process of breaking the spirit.“Newbie.”Gabriel turned toward the sound of the voice, to see someone, a prisoner, not a guard, judging from his clothes, staring at him. The stranger pointed toward the far wall and said, “You’ll want to see the manager. Hurry up.”Following with his eyes to where the man was pointing, Gabriel could see a window set into the wall, and realized there was probably some kind of office over there. He nodded a quick thanks to the man, only to discover he had already walked away, and then headed down the lines of beds toward the office.The door to the small room was open, and inside he found a woman se
“Uh… no,” replied Gabriel , noting strong hints of what seemed like a British accent in the creatures voice. “It’s an old term for a creature that slowly spreads through a village like a plague.”“Ah, such as the Vourdalak.”Gabriel blinked in surprise at this comment, stunned into silence.“Yes, well,” the creature continued, “it has long been the modus operandi of your kind to blame others for your own wrong doings. Judging from the state of things, I would say you plagued yourselves plenty well enough on your own without any help from me or mine. No doubt you still think yourself clever for the snide comment, however.”Gabriel had felt clever for the remark, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit that now.The vampire placed his cane on the ground and leaned on it with both hands, bending down to stare at Gabriel from a smaller distance.“Where are your others?” he asked.Gabriel ’s eyes widened, but he just shook his head. “What others?”“Don’t lie to me. We returned to the
“Turn out all your pockets, then,” said the big man. Gabriel did as he was told, or at least as well as he could seeing as most of the pockets in his cargo pants weren’t really designed for being turned out.When the others were satisfied he wasn’t carrying anything, the man tipped his head up to indicate Gabriel should move through the turnstile.Once through, the first figure motioned for him to stand on a line taped to the floor. She was holding one of the devices from the table in her right hand, a weird thing that looked a little like an electric razor only with a sharp point at the end instead of round blades. Once he was in place she said, “Roll up your sleeve and place your left arm on the table.”“What?” he asked stupidly. “Left sleeve. Arm. Table,” she answered, pointing at each thing in turn as she said it.Gabriel stared at the device in her hands but otherwise did not move. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked.Hands grabbed him from behind, pulling at his
“Hey, what’s the big idea?” Gabriel asked, annoyed. He blinked rapidly, clearing away more of the blurriness, until he could see that this wasn’t Joe and the others. He was surrounded by zombies. Gabriel let out a yelp and fell backwards, only to be shoved again from that side. This time the shove balanced him onto his feet, and he turned around to find that there were more zombies back in that direction, cutting off his path to the inside of the hospital. He turned toward the parking lot, only to see zombies had moved into position there, as well. He continued circling and found that he was surrounded on all sides by the undead. They had trapped him in, with nowhere to run. He felt like crying. He felt like panicking. But neither would help him then. So he closed his eyes, tucked his chin into his shoulder, and waited for the end. But nothing happened. Gabriel could hear some shuffling of feet, some of the eerie, inhuman moans that seemed to be an involuntary sound that the
Gabriel was fairly confident he couldn’t be seen from his position, since the doctor hadn’t noticed him yet. But undoubtedly the doctor was finally taking note of the rearranged equipment in the room. The beds moved out of place, the random cart just visible over the top of the halfway wall. At first glance it all might have looked normal enough, but the closer scrutiny he gave it as he stood there talking was enough to finally make him realize the difference. Bennet stopped talking and began walking, straight down the hallway toward the room. He moved cautiously, as though expecting at any moment to step on a landmine, but he continued on regardless. He reached the door, opening it with the same level of caution, peering around one last time before finally stepping into the room. After a moment he stumbled, one leg catching on a strip of cloth that tore away. A shelf of equipment came crashing down, slamming the door shut and barring across it as various items smashed against the
Horror movies told him that he should be looking at somebody horribly deformed, or wearing the skin of another person, or with a head full of small, scary spikes. Something. This guy could have been his doctor in the days before and Gabriel would’ve thought nothing of it. This man could’ve walked up to the gates of Joe’s little bunker community and they would’ve let him in and never thought twice about it. It was terrifying to contemplate. “Hello?” the man called, and just the sound of that simple word, muted and muffled as it was coming through the wall, turned Gabriel ’s blood to ice.The stranger started to turn away from the room, but then something made him stop and turn back.“Are you there?” the man continued calling out as he surveyed the room through the window with what looked like, at least in Gabriel ’s opinion, a sadistic grin. “That wasn’t what it looked like. I was trying to help that man.”Yeah, real convincing, thought Gabriel , but he remained silent as he crawled
He considered his options, favoring the one that said he could just wait there for the others to show up. But he didn’t know how long that would be and there was some good he could do inside the building while there.So taking a deep, steadying breath he pushed his way through the nearest doorway and headed deeper into the hospital.The hallways were dark, which was expected, but that expectation didn’t stop them from being especially eerie. Somehow, here and there, some emergency lights still clung desperately to life, flickering on and off at random times, throwing long, twisted shadows where they could span across the walls and floors, and leap out from around corners. The daylight provided sufficient illumination to counteract the lack of interior lighting, but as all the windows on the ground floor seemed to be either heavily tinted or located where the light bounced first off of walls before entering the rooms, the bluish glow it created only added to the ominous mood of the hos
“Gabriel !”Sturdy hands wrapped around his upper arms and shook him. He turned his head and his clearing vision made out the image of Joe standing in front of him. “Gabriel , get it together. We have to go. Now!”Gabriel nodded his head and tried to take a deep breath, and then found himself taking several quick gasping breaths. Was he panicking? He didn’t have time to panic.With as much certainty as he could manage he nodded his head. “Right,” he agreed, “let’s go.”They each turned and ran off in separate directions.This had all been worked out in advance, each person memorizing a map of the town, studying it, learning each street and alleyway. They’d all settled on a divided running path before they ever stepped foot outside of the base. So Gabriel knew where to go.Or he thought he did.Though he hadn’t been willing to admit it with the others, he had never been particularly good with maps, not great at visualizing the 2D images with 3D spaces. So it wasn’t that surprising w
“I’m telling you, you go to that place, the only thing you have to look forward to is death. You’re better off here. Just keep your heads down, hide out, and maybe they’ll never come for you. That’s the best thing to hope for.”There was a long silence marked only by the sound of some uncomfortable shuffling. Claire stepped forward so she could get a better look at him. “But… Gabriel … you went into the caves. You tried to make a difference.”“I was wrong, okay?”Gabriel shouted the words so loud that Claire took a step back.“I was wrong. I was an idiot and I was wrong and people suffered because I was wrong. I suffered because I was wrong. The world is worse off now than it was before, all because I had to go play hero. Well there are no heroes. There’s only the living and the dead and you’re either one or the other. You can stay here and stay alive or you can go out there and join the ranks of the dead. Those are your options. I don’t care which you choose, but if you choose deat