Disclaimer: All characters in this are based on real people, the events are of course not based on fact. Most of the people in here are based on my friends. Props to Kyle J (Madcar), Jared, D, Harrison, Ben and anyone else who I forgot for helping me compile ideas. Props to Max Brooks as well for writing The Zombie Survival Guide which helped me figure out more realistically about how people would survive.

Zombie Nation

Chapter One: Newbs a Plenty

The bikes tires made almost no noise as the eighteen year old riding it pedaled down a litter filled street, dodging right and left paying very much attention to his surroundings and any unusual noise. His fully covered face spun in every direction searching behind obtrusive structures for any useful object or movement. A streetlight was bent down across a bus that had slammed into long ago. Blood covered the inside. A hospital of gargantuan size loomed high in the distance. He passed an armored car, tipped over, and thought back to when the attack first started.

No time to lose your head now, keep going, the hospital is right up ahead, he thought as he made a quick left turn, scanning the area first. There were no figures standing, no objects moving. Wreckage and debris covered the ground. Overturned cars were everywhere. Houses had their doors and windows broken, sometimes from outside, sometimes from inside. In a flash the boy was off again, pedaling swiftly and silently. He passed a sign that read “Hospital ahead, Slow”. The boy did indeed slow, but not for the sign instead to look both ways for any movement. Nothing stirred, not a bird nor squirrel or even a bug of some kind. The hospital stood at the top of a hill. Flags of the nearly demolished helicopter landing pad blew serenely in the wind. The boy’s goggles flashed with a glint from the mid afternoon sun. Quickly, he pedaled toward it.

A young woman, seventeen in appearance, woke up from a deep sleep. Sunlight peered in slowly through the faded pane windows. She shut her eyes to block it out. Where am I? Why am I so tired? she thought. The ceiling was the typical sound-proof insulation paneling that was in government offices, schools and other mass produced buildings. She breathed in as if for the first time and smelled the anti-septic alcohol stench of hospitals.

The girl looked down at herself and saw the green gowns that hospital patients typically wear. Three heavy blankets covered her feet and torso keeping her warm from the harsh cold of the rest of the room. An I.V. was stuck in her arm and was dripping clear liquid from a bag that appeared freshly changed. She took one last look around the room and fell back asleep.

She was awakened by the sound of the door to her room opening quietly and a man in doctors clothes stepping in. He appeared balding with a white lab coat that was in tatters and there was some blood on it. A large box was set on the ground to make it possible for the man to glance out the door and shut it silently before turning around and seeing she was awake. He seemed to shake with excitement or anxiety, the girl couldn’t tell. “Oh my god, you‘re finally awake,” he said before reaching down into a large box filled with food and water. A hypodermic needle was removed from the box. “How are you feeling, are you okay?” the man quickly walked over and injected something into the I.V. bag. “Do you remember anything? Do you know who I am?” he peered at the young woman. The girl stared blankly at him.

Honestly, she had no idea, it was as if she had seen him long ago but couldn’t place who he was. On top of that she felt horrible. She felt weak and helpless and as if she’d been sleeping for years. The doctor babbled on about a coma and various other things but she was just trying to stand up. She tried to speak but no words came out and if they did, they were far too meek. The doctor brushed her hair off her face, this caused her to pause and pay attention to him. “You should be having a mild case of amnesia, you’ve been in a coma for three years. I’ve been keeping you alive during all of the trouble recently,” he said kindly. “You and me are the only ones I know that survived.”

The girl frowned at him, confused about whatever he was talking about. Survived what? Was there an epidemic? A military uprising? Terrorists maybe? these thoughts and many others passed with intensifying speed. “I need to stock the rations I just got, I’ll explain everything that has happened in a few days when you’re feeling better, then maybe we can get out of here,” he smiled at this thought.

The doctor got up and went about unloading the box that he had brought in earlier and for the next few minutes there was silence. After awhile she began to feel a little more awake and active and she even stood up. “You’re feeling better?” the doctor said almost surprised. “It’s a little cold in here, the heating has been down for awhile.” The girl nodded consent. He slipped two sweatshirts and a coat from a closet. She pulled them on slowly and the doctor smiled. This happy atmosphere remained for a few minutes until a clang came from the hallway and the doctors upbeat mood quickly changed. His face changed from that of joy to that of vengeance, he unsheathed a pistol from underneath his coat and pulled back on the slide making sure there was a bullet in the chamber. Now all this seemed strange but the young woman didn’t become frightened until the doctor said “Stay here, if I don’t come back or you hear a scream get out of hear, just run as fast as you can.” He gave her a bottle of pills. “If that happens take two of these a day until they are all gone.” She nodded.

“Why? What’s happening?” the girl said very quietly. He shook his head and put a finger to his lips to silence her. The doctor turned and ran out of the room. She sat in silence thinking. Three minutes later two shots were fired and a scream was heard by the frightened girl. She quickly stepped forward and opened the door. She glanced both ways and ran as fast as her tired body could take her. Following the signs, the outdoors were soon to follow.

She reached outside without seeing the doctor so she quickly assumed he was dead. Why would I do that? Why do I think he’s dead? she thought. This thought was quickly side tracked by the state of the world around her. The world she was staring at was completely different than she remembered. There were no cars driving, no engines humming, no planes flying, no children laughing. There were cars littering the streets and broken down houses everywhere. It reminded her of pictures of Soviet Russia. “What happened…” she said aloud. A moan wafted up from behind a car. Two men, gray skinned and tired looking stumbled out from behind a wrecked car. One had dried blood all over his shirt. They said nothing and paid no attention to each other as they stumbled toward her, moaning incoherently. “My God, are you okay?” the girl said weakly stepping toward them. She thought she heard the whirring of bike tires.

The boy rounded the corner pedaling up the hill towards the hospital, realizing what he was going to try was universally stupid. Stupid, but needed. The clicking of his gear was all the noise that was made from him. He shifted his backpack to be more comfortable. Get in, get medicine, get out, rescue uninfected, eliminate infected. He cleared his mind from any discouraging thoughts. The hospital was seventy-five yards away. He smiled.

Happily he came over the top of the hill and his smile faded quickly when, to his horror, he saw a bundled up young woman in the middle of the street trying to speak to two of ‘them’ that were converging on her location. Eliminate infected. Not knowing if she knew what they were and not wanting to risk shooting at them from this distance with a pistol he pedaled toward her gritting his teeth. Rescue uninfected.

He came at them quickly, screaming at the girl when he was close enough. “Move!” The girl quickly stepped back as fast as she could to avoid him as he braked, turned, and slid knocking both of ‘them’ down. His rear tire pinned one down by the head and the other had been knocked away three feet. Like lightning he reached for the pistol stashed under his shoulder but his hand quickly came up with nothing. The boy glanced back and saw his salvation laying twenty feet away where he began to brake and slide.

Yelling in anger he kicked the lever that switched his bike to it’s engine and revved the engine at the same time pulled a sawed off shotgun out of it’s holster. He pulled the throttle and the rear wheel spun with tremendous speed grinding the head of the prone body beneath it to mere meat bits. A blast from his shotgun quickly annihilated the moaning head of the second.

He looked fiercely over at the girl, pushing the shotgun into its sheath. “Situation compromised, get on!” The girl stared in horror at the now decapitated body that lay below his rear tire. “Stop stalling, you wanna die out here!?” The girl started forward, stepped warily, cautiously over the corpse. She acted as if she didn’t know what to do, climb on a bike with a seemingly psychotic person who had just brutally decapitated two people or run back inside a broken down, dirty, dangerous hospital that potentially had more killers. For some reason, the first sounded better to her. She climbed onto the pegs of the boys bike. He felt her feet get locked into the pegs as he revved the engine and took off. They drove for several minutes making quick swerves at sixty miles per hour. The girl was almost too weak to hold on but somehow she did. Her muscles throbbed with pain.

He took a sharp left that caused the girl to squeal. A radio crackled and a warm but worried sounded voice came over the speaker in the boys headset. “We heard a shot, you read?” it said.

“I’m fine, I found a live one and from what I can tell she hasn’t been bitten,” the boy replied.

“Bitten? Why would I get bitten?” she said.

“I read, get home quick, swift feet and all that nonsense, Out,” the voice replied.

“Who are you?” the girl said nervously.

“Shut up, those things have good hearing,” he replied

“Who are they? What are they?” she asked.

“Shut up.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Shut up.”

“Why’d you kill those people?”

“One more word out of you and I drop you, better you than me,” the boy was annoyed. He needed that medicine. He knew people that needed it. Now he’d have to get back to base, disinfect, clean his bike, wait five hours, then ride all the way back up there to try and get it again. Maybe one of the other Gatherers got enough medicine to make up for his loss. He decided that he might use help next time. What really ticked him off was that he had lost one of his favorite guns, his carbine pistol.

It was a five minute ride to get the rest of the way back into the base. They drove up two streets, took a hard right and then drove down a long street that had several piles of ashes that the wind hadn’t taken yet. A large wall stood in front of him with two huge solid steel gates pulling open. Two snipers followed him with their sights just watching in case something stepped out. He pulled into what looked like the road barons fortress from Mad Max. The girl stared in awe. Four more sentry guards had their sights all around him, protecting him and his rider. He pulled in at sixty miles per hour then quickly decreased his speed and pulled into a garage door. The inside was warm and reddish in color with lots of metal and the smell of oil and disinfectant.

He pulled up to a complete stop on a platform with hydraulics on it. A young man, German in appearance, stepped out of an adjoining room. “Heya Kyle!” the new boy said. “I see you brought my bike back. Ohhh, but you got blood all over the new fender.”

“My bike,” Kyle said defensively as he unlocked his feet from the bike. He turned to face the girl. “Get off.” The girl looked at him angrily. She bent down and with one hand unbuckled herself from the pegs of the bike. When she stood on solid ground she began the sway back and forth, seemingly unable to stand. “Daniel, catch her,” Kyle said as he undid the mask that covered the lower half of his face. Daniel rushed forward to grab the staggering girl.

“What’s with her?”

“I found her in front of the hospital, I had time to think on the way here and since there was such a long time between the initial outbreak and her leaving the hospital I think she was a coma patient. If that’s so there might be another un-infected out there. You figure it out.”

Daniel eyed Kyle frighteningly. “She may be infected.”

“Well that’s your problem now. Take her to quarantine if needed.” Kyle stepped through the sliding door that lead to the main hall of the building they were in. It was a three-hundred by two-hundred foot building that was thirty stories tall. Instead of keeping the elevators going or making it’s residents run up and down sixty flights of stairs one of the engineers had come up with the idea of cutting out a twenty by twenty foot square in the center of the building. Then, in the very center of that was a small, two person platform on a belt that carried you up and you could step off at whatever floor you wished.

Kyle climbed on when he heard the girls voice. “You!” Kyle turned around to face her. “You better answer some questions right now or I’m going to the police!” she yelled at him, frustrated. Kyle stepped off the platform and took off his goggles revealing his bright blue eyes.

“Where you are now, where we are now has no police. No government, no army, no political system. We are what’s left, the dregs, the remains. There’s no one to call, they’re all dead or here, with us, trying to survive.” He smiled again at her reaction. She looked around slowly. Kyle stepped back onto the platform and it began to rise.

“What is this place? Where are we?” she called to him

“You’re in Zombie Nation,” he replied and disappeared.

Kyle stepped off the elevator at the twenty-ninth floor and passed two children that were playing cowboys and from what he could assume, zombies. Kyle smiled slgihtly and deftly slid open a door on his left. He entered a room completely covered in TV’s and radios. The TV’s were for monitoring at night and the radios were tuned into every CB, FM and AM station in case of a broadcast or S.O.S. A very nervous man sat in a chair monitoring the radio wall. Kyle slipped in silently. When the man in the chair turned to watch a new monitor Kyle dashed forward silently and sat down on the chair next to him. The man spun around and jumped backwards into a wall with a giant map on it when he saw Kyle. “Dammit Kyle! You know I already have enough to be afraid of, what with undead prowling about, eating humans or the saturation bombing we can hear in the distance or the overrun sewer systems…”

“Yeah, I get it.” Kyle shrugged.

“Did you get the medicine? Please say yes, my throat is killing me and we’re almost out of Cepacol,” the man said.

“Sorry Vin,” Kyle got up to walk out. “I didn’t anything except another newbie. I’m going back out there when they say it’s safe, is there anything else I could get you?”

“A new TV would be nice and stop calling me Vin I have a name,” he said.

“Your real name is too hard to pronounce and a TV is to heavy to carry on my bike.”

“Ride one of the three wheelers,” Vin said. Kyle merely stared at him for a moment and then left the room. As he walked around the hole he began to think: With the new girl, that family me and Jared rescued and all of the people here, there are seven hundred people to feed, clothe and entertain. Of those seven hundred there’s only one hundred combatants and only sixty of them are any good. He sighed. If we don’t find the real government soon our food stores won’t last us…We need a way of getting outside the perimeter without risking infection… Kyle sighed again and stepped through an open door into a room with a tall blond man and an older bald man that appeared to be sleeping/ listening to the blond man.

“If we simply set up several four man parties we could wipe the surrounding area clean in only a few days-” The blond man was saying.

“The sewers, Jared,” Kyle stated. “The sewers, they’re our only ticket out of here.” The bald man opened an eye and began listening more intently. Jared stared at Kyle for a moment.

“And how did you come up with that?” Jared asked, curious.

“Up above ground, there’s so many things to hide behind, in and around that ‘they’ will rule for quite some time but Tallahassee’s sewer system is not complex at all. Down there, there’s nowhere to hide. The entire thing is on North/South East/West pipes. If we cleared the initial entry area and then had our Watchers keep an eye on all exit points,” Kyle walked over to Jared’s map table and began pointing to all the manhole covers in the area, “We could easily get in, get out and have easy access to everything we need.”

“Interesting…” Jared began to think. The bald man finally spoke.

“Kyle, why do you want to leave this place so badly? We have shelter, protection, food to eat and people to be with. We’re safe where we are.”

“Dad, don’t you want to know if anyone has survived?” Kyle asked.

“You’re talking about Jezi,” Marty, his father, said unsympathetically.

“Would you stop that, jeez, I’m just talking about a way to get outside, to find other survivors,” Kyle said. “Plus, finding some hunting would be great as protein is a little hard to come by.” Kyle glanced out the window to where what little farm animals they had were feeding from a trough. His father nodded a little consent.

“Well we could start cleaning out the sewers but I don’t think that should be a first priority. We’ve been here for about three years now and we’ve got ourselves a pretty good situation here… Sorry Kyle, I gotta agree with your dad,” Jared said.

“So we’re just gonna wait here until we all eventually die? What if we could take back America? I mean, I know we couldn’t do it all at once, it would have to be slow, but if we had more people-” he was cut off by the sound of the gate’s alarm going off. The three stopped all movement. Marty looked at Kyle threateningly.

“Kyle, did you lead ‘them’ back here?” his dad hissed. Kyle shook his head, going back into his silent mode. “Then what could it be?”

“Survivors,” Jared muttered. He then stepped over to a phone that spoke throughout the whole base. “Civilians, code five, get inside your rooms and lock them. Prepare for close range combat. All fighters report to your stations, this is not a friggin’ drill so hop to it!” The three then quickly exited the room; Jared and Marty stepped onto the conveyor belt to be carried down but Kyle ran back around the hole to his room.

“Whoa, wait Kyle! We need you out front!” His dad yelled.

“Not without my guns!” Kyle shouted back.

He dashed inside his room and grabbed his M1 carbine rifle, a pistol and his machetes which was his typical combating gear. A deep sigh came from his bed. The girl he had saved earlier was sleeping on his bed. Kyle ignored this for now. He opened the door to his balcony and swung out onto his own private mode of escape: a bar that had a platform to stand on and a simple hand brake. Kyle pulled the hand brake off and held on while the platform fell twenty stories before he even started putting on the brake. He pressed it down slowly and came to a quick halt as he jumped off and swiftly ran the length of the wall.

A turret was stationed every hundred feet and then on either side of the gate for snipers (nicknamed Watchers) to sit in. Kyle quickly sprinted through one and startled the sleeping Watcher back to consciousness. “Stay awake!” Kyle said as he darted off. The Watcher that was left in his wake stared for a moment, then stood up and continued his post. Kyle reached the gate turret and stood still for a moment, catching his breath. The gate’s Watcher never took his sniper rifle off it’s target. Kyle merely had to glance at the Watcher, nicknamed Locke, in the turret to get an answer to his unsaid question.

“There are three men and two women outside the gates. They came up through the dead zone in front of the hospital where our Watchers couldn’t see. Unfortunately-” a gunshot cut the Watcher off for a moment. “-there are four zombies chasing them and we don‘t know if they‘re infected or not.” Kyle nodded.

Marty and Jared ran up seeming breathless. Jared took a quick puff from a inhaler and Kyle cursed himself for not getting any refills for him. Marty looked at Kyle for a moment wondering how he got down here so fast but then turned his attention to the disturbance outside the gates. The five people on the ground ran towards the gate, the three men taking up the back. One of them had a shotgun but was clearly out of ammo as he wasn’t firing at his followers.

“Dispatch the threat,” Jared said simply. Locke nodded and fired one shot destroying the head of one of the stumbling menace. He reloaded and fired a second time. Headshot. The third shot hit also but the fourth sailed clean over the target as the undead stumbled forward over a jagged tree limb. “Shit!” Locked cried, trying to reload before the ghoul managed to snag it’s prey. A shot rang out from Kyle’s rifle, nailing the moaning head between it’s undead eyes. Locke glanced over and saw Kyle glaring at him. “Sorry… I should have known it was gonna trip… I saw the branch, I just didn’t acknowledge it,” Locke apologized.

“The unneeded troops have finally mobilized,” Marty said as forty men came to a halt on the base’s main ground. Each one carried some sort of melee weapon and some gauge of shotgun for close range combat. Kyle took a step back while Jared walked out onto the top of the gate to negotiate with the people on ‘the Slaughter field’. The people looked sleepless and exhausted as they no doubt were.

“Please! Let us in! We’ve been running for hours!” the apparently leading man shouted up to Jared.

“Where did you come from? The other side of the city?” Jared shouted back. “Are any of you infected?”

“No, none of us have been bitten! We came from Thomasville, we ran into a hoard of them about halfway, our truck got overturned and most everybody got eaten… Only we escaped. Please, we need shelter-” the man was cut off by Kyle screaming:

“NEWBIE!! WHERE THE FUCK IS NEWBIE!!”

“Sorry about my friend here. We will allow you passage in but when you get inside you will all be strip searched for any bites and removed of all items regardless of your consent. You will then be monitored for twenty four hours just for safety precautions, only then will you be accepted, is that clear?” Jared replied, still shouting.

The leader below glanced back at the women in his group, one probably his daughter and the other probably his wife. “Agreed!” the man shouted. Jared smiled and nodded. The gates opened as they did for Gatherers on a regular basis. Kyle stepped forward again and put a hand on Jared’s shoulder. Jared nodded back as Kyle jumped onto another one of the escape bars and slid down to the ground.

When he jumped off a younger man than he ran up, out of breath and apparently missing a belt he desperately needed. “Newbie, I swear to God if there was an attack you would be the first to go,” Kyle said through gritted teeth as the young man followed him outside the gates.

“Sorry, um sir… I was supposed to finish cleaning all of the guns but then Daniel made me disinfect your bike first so I was busy doing that before I even heard the call… sorry sir…” the kid, nicknamed Newbie, said apologetically while trying to keep his sagging pants up.

“Pick up the bodies and get rid of them,” Kyle said as the gates finished opening.

“Yes sir,” Newbie said and went about his new chore. The five people quickly ran inside. Kyle showed them the way up between all of the men on the foreground.

“Thank you so much for taking us in, we really need some care,” the younger woman said. Kyle nodded not really wanting to speak. These people were just more of a waste of food and shelter. The men might be able to fight but still.

One of the men on the foreground grinned and stepped forward. “Hey Kyle, when you’re done with them can we have a go with them!?” the loudmouth made a thrusting motion. Kyle’s eye twitched involuntarily. As they passed the loudmouth Kyle reached out and grabbed the man’s shotgun, pulled back on it and shoved it forward, jamming it into his nose, breaking it. The man fell to the ground weeping in pain.

“Continue through those doors and there will be someone waiting for you. You’ll be fed but not clothed and you will be chained in solitary confinement for a day, no exceptions. Go,” Kyle demanded. The entire group turned and continued. After they passed through the doors Kyle knelt down next to the broken man. “Che che che James, you should know better than to mouth off in front of me. Now leave your weapons here and you are confined to your room for the next three days.

“But that’s not fair!” James yelled.

“Do not piss me off right now Cobb. I’m warning you, just leave.” James did so, but not nicely. He stormed off like an eight year old on a temper tantrum. Half the ranks sniggered. Most of the men did not like Cobb very much.

Jared watched from the tower as Kyle forced another man off into base and then glanced out into the horizon. The sun was setting. Kyle wasn’t going to go back out before it got dark. Damn, Jared thought. Oh well, tomorrow’s another bright and sunny day.