Zocopalypse (Death Fields 1)

“No it’s old. I swear I watched this same report months ago.”

We both move from the ground to try to catch sight of the television inside and I convince myself she’s crazy. That they are just being safe—keeping the quarantine up. Things obviously just got running again. They would take precautions.

I can’t see much through the slit, just the objects found in a living room. There is a TV, and yes, the top of Roger Upton’s head bobs up and down the screen—silver-gray hair included.

My mother, for once in her excessively easy-going life, refuses to budge. Her fingers clamped down on the edge of the windowsill. Her eyes shift back and forth, wild and searching.

“There,” she says in the lowest voice.

“What?”

“That box. The VCR.”

“VCR?” I ask like I don’t know what this is. I know, but really, no one uses a VCR anymore.

“The red light is on. And the green. It’s a tape. From before.”

I peer at the TV, looking for something, anything, to prove her wrong. I push up on my toes and crane my neck. I don’t see the VCR but I do see something that gives me pause. I blink, hoping I’m making it up, but when I open my eyes again there it is. From this angle I see the thin spray of red across the bottom of the screen. I see the foot. Pale and bare.

The sense of elation crashes down, replaced with familiar dread. The brief snapshot of the past crumbles. We’re still here. In this modern day hellhole called Earth.

“Alex,” my mom says tugging on my arm. I feel her—hear her, but she seems far away. She calls my name again and something metal and hard clinks behind me.

“We need to get out of here,” I say but my voice is drowned out by a low growl in the dark. “Get out your gun.”

I’ve removed my hatchet and hear her fumble with her own weapon. “Run that way, to the left, around the house. Find somewhere safe and wait for me,” I tell her, but beyond that I’ve got no other directions. I have no idea where we are. Other than the traitorous light from the house it’s incredibly dark outside.

The growling shifts, turning into the painful cry I’ve come to recognize so well. My mother runs left and I dash to the right, banging my hatchet against the house to get its attention. The method works and as I run through the overgrown yard, I hear the Eater follow me, hot in pursuit. It’s hungry, they’re always hungry, and I can only run so long across what seems to be an endless field.

Stupid rural North Carolina.

A breeze of air blows across my sticky with sweat face and the moon appears from behind a cloud. I stop, forced to catch my breath. The Eater wails sending a chill up my spine. Every step elicits the same rattling clank. I turn to face it, can’t tell in the shadowy night if it’s a male or female. For the first time I don’t think I care.

I only see the creature in front of me as nothing more than a dead man walking. His shrieking cry turns ragged as he approaches, feet tangled in the weeds, a long chain clamped to his wrist.

“Did you leave that video on for me?” I see him clearly now. Metallica t-shirt, face oozing with sores, eyes black and spidery. “Hoping to lure me in? God, trolls exist even after the internet is gone.”

He lunges forward, swiping an arm at me. I step back, dodging the chain. Had he been restrained?

“I guess it’s gonna be either you or me,” I tell him, clutching the handle of my weapon. This will not end like the night I met Paul, when he had to save me. “Unfortunately, I’ve got a job to do and I’m not letting a rotting, parasite filled bastard keep me from doing it.”

Eliciting my own feral cry, I lift my hatchet and swing.

Chapter Forty-One

~Now~

Cole’s hair is still wet when Walker returns to our cell. We’re both dres

sed in drab green military fatigues. Clean clothes are a luxury. They’ve hit us with our basic needs—wants. Food, shower, clothing. Add housing into it and I can see the allure. Except we’re not here by choice. We’re prisoners.

“Turn around,” she says and we both comply after a moment of notable hesitation. My wrists are then bound with thick plastic zip ties. A quick glance tells me the same is happening to Cole. Again, whatever is going on here, they don’t trust us.

But why?

Walker and another solider, this one a black male in his late twenties or thirties, walk us down a long corridor. His tag says Richardson. Doors line the hallway. There are no windows. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Walker stops abruptly, causing Cole and me to stumble in reaction. Richardson’s hand never leaves the butt of his gun.

“Where are we?” I ask again, not expecting an answer.