Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 2): A Rising Tide Read online

  When she got to the top, she stood next to Noah, and they both looked out at the landscape along with the guard stationed there with a pair of binoculars pressed up to his face.

  "What do you see?" of the map that they taken from the bandits Noah asked the guard.

  "Nothing, boss."

  The gunshots and screaming had gone quiet, and everyone waited on pins and needles.

  Wayne came out a few minutes later with thirty men, all geared up and ready to fight. They moved up to the gates and waited. He looked up at Noah and yelled, "What's up, boss?"

  Noah glanced down at him and said, "Nothing yet. Stand ready."

  The wait was agonizing, and what seemed like hours had only been about five more minutes before they saw Kenny come into view, running out from the woods across the open field.

  Noah grabbed the binoculars from the guard and peered through them. "What the hell?" he muttered.

  "Open the gates!" Kenny's distant voice shouted. "Open the gates!"

  Noah glanced down at Wayne and shouted, "The gates!"

  Wayne and another man from the squad pulled the two gates open and Kenny came into the compound and doubled over, wheezing. Wayne and the other man shut the gates as Noah climbed down the ladder.

  Kenny was covered in blood, but upon closer inspection, he didn't appear to be injured.

  "Zed!" he shouted. "It was Zed!"

  "Zed did this?" Noah asked.

  Kenny jerked his head up and down, trying to catch his breath. "He slaughtered all of us!" he sputtered.

  Sarah climbed down the ladder and stood at the edge of the men who started to circle around Kenny to hear his story.

  "He had a message for you," Kenny said.

  "What message?" Noah asked.

  "He said to tell you that you'll be seeing a lot more of him from now on, and that Delroy is in on it too. He said this is just the beginning!"

  Sarah's eyes widened as a pervasive fear she hadn't felt in months swam through her veins. "What's going on?" she asked. "Is it the bandits?"

  "No," Noah said, "it's much worse."

  He turned and looked at the men gathered around, at Kenny, at Wayne, and at the entire camp of Noah's Ark.

  "It looks like the faction war has started."

  3

  STORIES AND SECRETS

  "This is bullshit!" Kenny yelled. "We can't take this sitting down! We have to hit them back now, and we have to hit them hard!"

  "We can't go in there gung-ho," Wayne argued. "We can knock their whole camp over, but we'll take heavy casualties and we've lost enough already."

  "We can't do anything else!" Kenny retorted. "It's either that or sit with our tails between our legs and wait for them to kill us all. We don't have time."

  "We have some time," Wayne said. He looked at Noah, who was leaning back in his office chair with a leg bent over his knee. "We need to be diplomatic about this for now."

  "Diplomatic?!" Kenny bellowed.

  Noah held his hands behind his head as he swiveled his chair back and forth between the two men, considering their words. As Kenny and Wayne argued back and forth, Noah tuned out most of it, like static in the background. He had to think. This was a great and terrible threat that they faced, and whatever his decision would be, it had to be weighed and measured very carefully.

  Finally he held up a hand and the two men fell silent. "We're not going to do anything right now," Noah said. "You're both right: we have to hit them back hard, but now is not the time. They'll see us coming from a mile away. For now, we'll send out scouts and keep an eye on them while we formulate a full plan. I'll personally head out tomorrow and scout out Zed's camp. And Wayne?" he added, looking at him.

  "Yes, Noah?" Wayne asked.

  "Keep our men on full alert from now on until I say so. Be ready for anything, keep the squad armed at all times and ready to go, and no one leaves camp without direct approval from me."

  "Consider it done," Wayne said.

  Noah looked over at Kenny.

  "Yes, boss," Kenny said.

  "And what about Delroy?" Wayne asked. He looked at Kenny. "You said he was gunning for us too?"

  "That's what Zed told me," Kenny replied.

  "He could just be bluffing," Noah said.

  "We'll have to assume he's not," Wayne said.

  Sarah stood out in the hallway just out of view of the door to Noah's office, listening to them. She had come down the hall from her dormitory and heard them yelling. Noah hadn't said much to her after Kenny came running back to camp, and she couldn't keep herself calm ever since. She had to know what was going on, but listening to them now didn't tell her much, and she felt antsy standing there for so long. She backed away from the door and walked outside onto the catwalk.

  It was a cold and miserable November day, and the weather hadn't improved much from the funeral earlier in the morning. A light drizzle of rain was starting to come down, but she needed some fresh air.

  She went down the metal steps onto the ground and wandered around for a while, finally deciding to head for the greenhouse sitting at the east side of camp.

  She opened the door and stepped into the humid air inside. She walked down one of the long aisles between rows of carrots, peppers, leeks, onions, and garlic. At first she thought the greenhouse was empty and she had it all to herself to pace around and try to ease her nerves, but when she reached the end of the aisle, she saw Barry around the corner, cultivating some lettuces.

  "Oh, Sarah! I didn't hear you come in," Barry said, wiping a bead of sweat from under the line of his white hair. "I hear there's been a little bit of trouble lately."

  Sarah sat on the edge of the planter box that he was working in. "It's pretty upsetting," she said.

  "Do you know what it's about?" he asked. "I've just been working here all morning after the service, then I heard yelling. I poked my head out for a minute and saw everyone standing around, then I just went back to the garden. Kathy was here too, chatting for a bit, but she ran off when the whole kerfuffle happened."

  "I don't know if Noah wants this spread around since he hasn't announced it yet," she said, "but a lot of people were around and saw what happened, so it doesn't really matter."

  Barry looked up from what he was doing and waited on her explanation with great concern.

  "I guess Kenny was out scavenging for some supplies with a small group and they got ambushed. All of them were killed except for Kenny."

  Barry put a hand up to his mouth. "My God. Was it zombies?"

  "No, they said it was someone named Zed, but they didn't really tell me who that was. Noah said he wasn't a bandit—that he was something worse. I didn't really hear much more about it than that."

  A look of familiarity came over Barry. "Zed," he said reflectively.

  "You know who that is?" she asked.

  "I've heard of him," he said. "Just some minor details from Noah and Wayne over the years."

  "What have you heard?"

  "Apparently Zed has a big camp like us. The difference is there's nothing but men over there, like the bandits. Pretty savage too, from what I've heard." Barry plucked a ripe head of lettuce out of the ground and placed it in a basket next to him then took an eaten and trimmed head of lettuce from another basket and buried it in the same hole with a little bit of water.

  "They also talked about someone named Delroy," Sarah said. "Do you know who he is?"

  "He's the same as Zed. He has his own camp and runs it in pretty much the same manner. Just another bunch of savage men, as I hear it. All three of our camps are sort of on the opposite side of Durham from each other, spaced out like a triangle. We keep the downtown core between us to separate us, and one side doesn't really talk to or bother the others. That's the way it's been for a while, but it sounds like not anymore."

  "Kenny said that Delroy was 'in on it too'."

  Barry's eyes widened. "What?" He sunk into a posture of deep thought. "That'll be the end of us all," he said.

 
"Do you think they'll really come here and try to attack us?" she asked.

  "They're dangerous, Sarah. Neither one of their camps are quite as big or well-equipped as us, but if both of them are working together, I don't see what we can do."

  "Why doesn't everyone leave?" she asked. "How can everyone stay when they want to wipe us out?"

  "It's not that simple," he said. "Everyone that's come here has built a life together, a new hope away from everything else on the outside. They can't just abandon it. Besides, it didn't used to be this way; Noah's kept the peace with Zed and Delroy for years now."

  "So why would they want to attack us now?"

  Barry shook his head. "All I know is that Noah used to know those two back before the end of the world came. When the zombies showed up, the three of them decided to work together and form a refuge, but they had a falling out. I don't really leave the camp too often, so my worldly knowledge is a little limited beyond that."

  "Have you left at all since you came here?" Sarah asked.

  "Oh, I venture out every now and again to stretch my legs," he said with a smile.

  She was surprised. "I didn't think Noah let people wander out. Did you have to have an armed group with you?"

  Barry extended her a wry grin. "Well, what Noah doesn't know won't hurt him," he said with a wink.

  A big smile spread over her face. "Barry! Have you been sneaking out?"

  "You didn't hear that from me," he said, planting another trimmed head of lettuce. He looked around. "Hey, listen, would you be a doll and fetch this old man a trowel from the shed?"

  "Sure," she said. She got up and walked back down the aisle and left the greenhouse. The metal shed sat right in front of it, tucked against the twenty-five-foot-high wall surrounding Noah's Ark. She went inside and looked around the interior for a trowel. The whole camp was kept in pretty tidy order, but that didn't extend to the shed, which was always left in a mess. Various tools, lengths of rope, wheelbarrows, ladders, and other junk sat strewn around and left wherever the last person to use it had dropped it.

  There was a tall metal shelf standing against the back wall that had a collection of small tools on it. She found a filthy trowel on one of the upper shelves and snatched it up, going back to the greenhouse and giving it to Barry.

  "Thanks," he said, taking it and digging some fresh holes in the dirt.

  "So why on earth have you been sneaking out?" she asked, intrigued.

  "Well," he said, "once in a while I go out to look for my wife."

  Her face fell. "You never told me you had a wife, Barry."

  "I couldn't keep all this charm and good looks to myself," he said, laughing.

  "What happened to her?" Sarah asked.

  Barry put the trowel down and leaned back in the dirt, wiping more sweat from his brow. "Well, me and Selma lived in a house in the suburbs when the zombies came. We sheltered ourselves in nice and good and were okay for a while, but my wife had Alzheimer's, and as the years went on after that, everything just got worse and her mind really started to go. It got to the point where she started to forget everything that was going on. To her, the zombies didn't exist, and if we ever had a run-in with one of them, she would go hysterical and it would take days to calm her down. After a few hours she wouldn't even remember why she was upset, but it didn't help any.

  "So one day, I decided to keep up a fiction for her. We still lived in the same house that we had for forty-five years, and we both pretended that we were still just a happily married couple growing old in our home with nary a care in the world. But I pretended, and she just simply didn't remember. I tried to pull the blinds over all the windows, but she was claustrophobic and wanted to let the light in. Every time she would spot a zombie outside, she would ask about it, and I would just tell her it was one of our neighbors. Sometimes it was, but I never told her what was different about them. I would usually have to watch her and make sure she didn't go near the windows. Sometimes I had to go outside to get more food and water, and when I came back I would find her laying curled up on the floor screaming and crying like mad. I'd always tried to close the windows when I left, telling her that there was an eclipse and she wasn't supposed to look at the sun, but she would always forget and open the blinds. Sometimes she would see things she couldn't understand. It wasn't easy, but I dealt with it the best I could. It was all I could do."

  "That sounds horrible," Sarah said. She took him by the hand and patted it.

  "It was," he said. "One day she was at the window and she gasped, and I was afraid that she'd seen another zombie up close, but when I looked out I saw two kids wandering around outside. They weren't even ten years old yet. I brought them inside and saw that they were injured, but they weren't bitten. They were two little boys, and they said that their parents had been killed and they'd been all alone for about a month. They were sick and starving... God, they looked so thin. So I cleaned them up and gave them something to eat and drink, and they ended up living with us. At first I tried to keep them separated from Selma as much as possible, because I thought if she saw them she would get scared and confused. And she did, a little, but eventually she started to become attached to them... she started to remember them, and I was so excited because I thought she was starting to get better.

  "But then one day my wife had a panic attack and went hysterical for no reason. She kept screaming that she needed to get some air, that she needed to get out of the house. So I told the kids to stay put and I took her out and locked the door, then we took a walk down the block. She kept saying she wanted to see the water, but we didn't live anywhere near water... I never knew what she meant. I just kept leading her from one block to the next, trying to pacify her, and eventually she calmed down and wanted to go home.

  "When we got to the house, the front door was open and a zombie walked out. We hid behind a hedge and waited for it to go away, then we went inside and I locked the door. The whole house was a mess, and everything had been knocked over and broken. I shouted for the kids, but there was no answer. Selma kept asking why the house was such a mess, and I told her that it was because of the birthday party that we threw for the kids that day. She kept insisting that she wanted to clean up the mess, but I put her in the laundry room next to the front door and told her to stay until I gathered up the kids to make sure they didn't step on anything sharp. I shut the door and left her there while I searched the house. It didn't take me very long to find their legs sticking out of the kitchen. The zombie just tore right through them, and I opened the front door and dragged them outside as quickly as I could. After I locked the door again, I turned around to find the laundry door open. I looked inside but Selma was gone. I found her in the kitchen, on her hands and knees, cleaning up their blood that was all over the floor. I tried to take her away from it, but she kept cleaning and apologizing for spilling all the red food dye when she was making the birthday cake.

  "I finally got her out of there and settled, and I cleaned up the mess and straightened a few things out. When I came into the living room, she was at the window, and the two boys were standing on the other side banging on the glass. She was crying and kept asking why they looked so different. I took her away and closed all the blinds and led her up to the bedroom and just held her until she fell asleep.

  "After that, whatever was left of the boys had wandered off, and she was never the same again. Those two boys were the one thing that she remembered, and she became restless after that, always asking where they went. Sometimes she would search the house looking for them and I had to distract her until her mind settled on something else. One night I woke up to find that she wasn't in bed next to me. I came downstairs and found the front door open. After searching the whole house, I ran up and down the neighborhood looking for her, but she was gone. That was three years ago, and I haven't seen her since."

  Sarah sat listening to the whole story with tears streaming out of her eyes. She drew in a sharp breath and tried to calm herself. "That's the saddest thi
ng I've ever heard," she said.

  Barry stared off toward the side of the greenhouse as if he were staring at the horizon. "So every once in a while I sneak out of here and look for her. I haven't found her yet, but someday I will. I know it."

  Sarah didn't know if he honestly expected to find her alive, but whatever he meant, she knew he wanted closure. She thought about her son and wondered if he was shambling around the city like the rest of the zombies, but it was something she didn't want to think about.

  "How do you sneak out of here?" she asked.

  "I already showed you," he said.

  "You did?"

  "When I asked you to get me that trowel from the shed."

  She was confused. "Yeah... what about it?"

  "That's the answer," he said. "Behind the shelf where you found that trowel, there's a panel in the wall of the shed that you can unscrew and remove. Right behind that is the perimeter wall, and the sheet metal there is a little loose; you can push it out a foot or two and squeeze through."

  "Isn't that a problem?" she asked. "What if someone gets into the camp?"

  "You would never know that piece was loose looking at it from the outside," he said. "No one's ever seen me go in or out, no one's even noticed that I've been gone from camp. And I've been doing it for years. Might do you some good yourself to get out and stretch your legs a bit. I know you've still been going through some trouble lately. Just... be careful."

  "Thanks," she said blankly. "I'll do that." She thought about sneaking out of Noah's Ark—just taking a little look. What could it hurt?

  She left him to tend the garden and went into the shed. She pulled the shelf away from the wall and saw the panel that Barry was talking about. It was fastened into a metal bracket going from the floor to the ceiling with two screws. She looked over her shoulder and made sure she was alone, then she tried unscrewing them. They had only been screwed finger-tight and they came undone with relative ease. She pulled the screws out and set them on the shelf, then carefully removed the panel. Behind it was a rusted sheet of corrugated metal that made up the perimeter wall surrounding Noah's Ark. It looked sturdy from where she was, and if it was a structural weakness, it certainly didn't stick out like a sore thumb.