Surge
by
Michael D. Britton
* * * *
Copyright 2012 by Michael D. Britton / Intelligent Life Books
The crack of a rifle split the cold stillness of a misty October dawn.
Hunters.
Or, perhaps not.
As more and more shots rang out across the valley, it became clear whoever it was out there was not shooting at a deer – unless it was a deer the size of an elephant.
Vern Charles opened the gray wooden door of his cabin and stepped out onto the porch, facing east toward the sunrise. He wore a pair of old blue jeans over his long johns, a thick gray wool jacket over his dirty t-shirt, and carried a steaming cup of cocoa. He peered across the dew-covered field that stretched out and down toward the dark forest about a half mile away.
The sun, a blurry bright spot desperately trying to cut through the thick haze, had just topped the tree line above Hollow Ridge.
Shots continued to crack and pop, coming from somewhere in the thick of the woods.
Then a man appeared, running out from between the trees, rifle in hand. He looked back over his shoulder as two more men piled out, followed closely by a fourth.
Vern placed his mug on the rotting rail of the porch and picked up a green pair of binoculars out of the lone chaise that sat facing the action. He raised them to his eyes, bringing the men into focus.
They wore faces of terror.
The group of men continued to sprint toward the cabin, stumbling as they crossed the field that was marshy in places, constantly looking back at the forest with dread.
As the men got about halfway to Vern, their pursuers slowly emerged from the forest.
Zombies.
“Dang!” Vern spat. “Not again.”
He quickly moved into high gear, knocking over his cocoa as he rushed into the cabin to gather his weapons.
It had been nearly six months since the last surge. Since then, he’d had several opportunities to make trades of supplies and stock up on what he hoped he would never need again: hollow-point shells.
Back in the Days Before, prior to the Great Collapse, Vern figured he’d be toast in the New Economy, as he didn’t have any marketable skills like “mechanic” or “plumber” or “farmer.” He didn’t know how to fix wagon wheels, design crude irrigation systems, or raise crops. And he wasn’t much of a horseman.
Sure, he could do manual labor, but his capacity was limited by his bad leg that caused him to noticeably limp on the right side.
Then he discovered, much to his delight, that the one skill he did have actually had a market in this new retro-world.
Stories.
This last case of hollow points had been a good trade for a four-thousand word short story he’d written in the margins of an old newspaper. Something about time-traveling aliens, or some such. Not one of his best, by any means. But a case of hard-to-come-by hollow-points for an afternoon’s work was a good deal.
He loaded his weapon, then limped to the window to see four men approaching the cabin, now only about a hundred yards out. He reached for his .22 handgun, sitting on the book shelf, and carried it outside with his rifle.
He fired the pistol into the air once.
“Stop where you are!” he called out. “You’re welcome to hole up here and fight the zombies, but before you get any closer, I need to know that none of you is infected with the Undeath!”
“We’re not!” yelled the nearest man, a heavy-set fellow in his late forties. “They never touched us! They got two of our guys, but never touched the four of us!”
A man’s word was worth more than it used to be.
You’d think that in a lawless world, people would be more apt to lie, steal and plunder. But as it turned out, with the law solely in the hands of edgy, gun-wielding citizens, people tended to choose honesty over a bullet to the head.
“Come on, then!” yelled Vern. “Hurry up – I need time to set up the perimeter.”
The cabin was built against a steep rocky outcropping at the foot of the mountains – a defensible position that had only one way in or out – east.
As the four men scrambled over the low wooden fence surrounding the cabin, Vern got to work on activating his security measures: a number of spring-loaded “booby trap” devices placed about twenty yards out.
It was a pretty ingenious system: each trap was designed to rapidly whip out a scythe at approximate head level, then would retract to its original pre-sprung position from the kinetic energy of the other traps – essentially resetting themselves automatically. The system had cost Vern twenty short stories and a young adult novel.
Once the four strangers were inside the perimeter, Vern clicked the first trap into place, which in turn set all the other traps. Decapitation, by blade or by bullet – or incineration - was the only “cure” for the Undeath.
Vern then looked toward the forest, peering through the binoculars, to see the zombies had only gained about three hundred yards of ground. Already slow-moving in their tattered rags with their damaged, rotting bodies, they were hindered even further by the rough, soggy land they were trying to traverse.
“Looks like we’ve got about a half hour before they’re upon us,” Vern said.
He’d dealt with these types before.
The first time, three years ago, they’d taken his wife and his little boy.
The loss had just about killed Vern.
While grieving, he had written some of his finest work. He hated the stories, though, for they’d come at too high a price.
He had to get rid of them, get them out of the house. But in this world of want, he could let nothing go to waste. So he sold them.
They were, ironically, his first story sales ever.
In the Days Before, Vern had been trying (diligently, but unsuccessfully) to sell his short stories and novels to New York publishers for several years. His wife, Elena, had been a wonderful supporter of his career goal to be a big-time fiction author. While he worked as a marketing writer for a technology company, he dreamed of the day that he could quit the day job and work from home, surrounded by his family, writing award-winning tales to ignite the imaginations of science fiction, fantasy, mystery and thriller readers the world over.
It never panned out.
But he never stopped writing. And when the solar plasma bomb hit, and the world’s electronics were shut down forever, he had thought, at first, that his dreams were over.
Then, when he sold those first stories after Elena and Liam were gone, he realized first-hand an economic reality: the law of supply and demand.
He’d lived his life in a world that valued things one day, but discovered them worthless the next. In a world with no electricity and no electronics, things like DVDs, CDs, iPods, computers, and TVs all became of no use in the post-electronic world of the New Economy.
What did have value? Food, clothing, practical skills.
And books. Thankfully, Vern had been hoarding books for years.
Books filled the void created by the lack of mass-communication information exchange and entertainment to some degree. Written stories replaced film (the way film had originally displaced the written word). Local live performances of music and plays became more popular once again, too.
Being a writer suddenly wasn't such a bad thing after all, since entertainment options were diminished.
With no more publishing houses, Vern no longer had a hope for the mass-production or distribution of his work, but at least he could produce it (and was no longer dependent on the acceptance of a publisher to produce or distribute his work).
Since there was a scarcity of new reading material due to the elimination of production and distribution, his work went up in value. So, Vern sold
handwritten copies of his stories. They retained their value pretty well and could be resold after reading.
He became known as “the local writer,” a small taste of fame that dimmed after a while as his wares became as mundane to him as trading eggs for water, or wrench-turning for chickens.
He was doing what he loved, “living the dream” of writing fiction from home for a living.
But the dream was bittersweet – mostly bitter – as his desire to work from home had been fueled by a love for his now-dead family.
The dream was subjugated to this nightmare the world now knew.
“I’m Jack,” said the heavy-set man, “this is Keith, Sean, and Larry,” he finished, pointing to each of the other men.
Vern shook each of their hands in turn. “Vern. Vern Charles.”
“The writer?” asked Keith.
“Yeah.”
Keith had a bookwormish look to him – mid-thirties, slender, black-haired, a pair of repaired eyeglasses perched on his narrow nose.
Sean and Larry must have been about nineteen – strong, tough boys