Surviving the Day Read online

  Surviving the Day (Apocalypse Makers Book 2)

  by

  Matt Hart

  Copyright © 2015 by Matt Hart

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  Forward

  Thanks to my amazing cover illustrator Elizabeth Mackey (@emackeydesign). Once again she’s created an awesome cover! Thanks also to my editors, Jim Dodds (its-your-story.weebly.com) and Jennifer M. Digges. They have the tedious task of turning my chicken scratch into readable sentences and figuring out what’s happening when it isn’t clear.

  My wife, Kelly, is my best and first reader. I’m glad she likes the same kinds of books that I like. Thanks also for the feedback from book 1—it’s very encouraging for a writer to hear that a reader is anxious for the second book to find out what happens!

  Other Books by Matt Hart

  The Fractured Earth (Apocalypse Makers Book 1)

  Tie Your Shoes and Desert, short stories from The Perseid Collapse (available only on Kindle)

  ApocalypseMakers.com

  Table of Contents

  Forward

  Prologue

  Characters and Events in Book 1, “The Fractured Earth”

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  Apocalypse Makers: Book 3 Preview

  Prologue

  —————

  Interlude: Boreling Empire

  “We'll be right back with more Extreme Self-Surgery Mishaps, but first this word from our sponsors!”

  “Tired? Despondent? The grind of grinding up gridlenrocks for a living got you down? Try New and Improved Stim Sticks EXTREME! These super fabulous cherry and char-flavored stim sticks will perk you up! Up! UP! Just pop the top and you'll instantly feel a rush of energy! To buy a box, just say 'Buy It!' or press the Buy button on your remote… Thank You! Your New and Improved Stim Sticks EXTREME is printing and should be ready for you right about... now! Enjoy!”

  “Scary Mayhem Planet Reality Apocalypse Show! Show! SHOW! From the makers of Tortured Sentence and Living Aliens Biopsy! Join us for on-the-hour updates and footage from the most bizarre alien world yet! You get two disasters in one—planet-wide electronics and power failures coupled with strange alien bio-creature attacks, and all on a planet already prone to violence against each other!”

  A scene from World War II in vivid color shows ships exploding, bombs raining down on civilians, and ragged prisoners marching in rows through muddy fields. The scene changes to show beheadings of hostages by terrorists and shootouts by gangs.

  “Tune in to Scary Mayhem Planet Reality Apocalypse Show! Don't miss the action! Action! ACTION!”

  The commercial ends with the now famous scene at the stadium where the zombies unleashed by Team Zeke tear apart the crowd, turning them and becoming an unstoppable wave that pours into the city. A gathering of Borelings are watching it on a huge, four-screen television of some kind, laughing and clinking drink chews.

  “And now back to Extreme Self-Surgery Mishaps!” A laugh track plays in the background.

  Characters and Events in Book 1, “The Fractured Earth”

  The Earth is the focus of this season's popular apocalypse reality show in the Boreling Empire. The Borelings have caused an EMP event, an electromagnetic pulse, that has disabled all sophisticated microelectronics, including cars, aircraft, power and communication systems. In addition to the EMP, the Borelings engineered a bio-infester designed to transform a portion of the population into zombie-like bio-creatures.

  Humans

  - Erin and Joe

  - Mark and Jen

  - Richard

  - The Professor

  Borelings

  - Grodge the Merciful, Sr. Production Assistant

  Human Events

  - Erin escapes her zombie foster NotMom and Bubba Lecter, dispatches Mr. Chuckles and Mr. Creeps and meets up with Camo Joe. At the end of Book 1, they become trapped in Joe's garage as an unknown number of zombies attempt to break in.

  - Mark and his father assist accident victims and try to hitch a ride, but Mark's father is killed by Richard, while Mark kills Richard's son during the attack. Richard vows revenge as Mark escapes in a truck with Jen and other occupants, then leaves the truck to walk home as it continues to the hospital.

  - Richard manages to secure a working vehicle and intercepts Jen at the hospital, forcing her to reveal where Mark was dropped off and his plans to meet again at a town gazebo. When stopping the truck for gas, the group is attacked by zombies, and Richard's whereabouts are currently unknown.

  - Jen, a woman who briefly met Mark at the accident scene at the start of Book 1, drops off Mark before taking the injured old man, beaten by Richard’s son, to the hospital. When Richard kidnaps her and stops at the gas station, she escapes the attacking creatures and runs into Mark nearby. They assess the situation and decide to try to retrieve the working vehicle. As Mark makes his way toward the truck, he hears rifle shots indicating Jen is under attack and rushes back to help as Book 1 ends.

  - The Professor, a scientist with both biology and technology backgrounds, won the lottery and is holed up in one of his bunkers, built after studying the socio-economics of societal collapse, an interest that stemmed from his narrow escape from Egypt during the Arab Spring riots. As he examines the evidence, he begins to suspect that something or someone is manipulating events.

  Boreling Events

  - Grodge the Merciful, a Senior Production Assistant for Plannel 6, works on content for the Boreling Empire’s most popular program, Scary Mayhem Planet Reality Apocalypse Show, but he is scheming to move up in ranking. As he goes about his job of getting the best footage out to the viewers while inserting Bubbly-Chew Drinks commercials and the occasional Megammercial, he attempts a bit of subterfuge by isolating a human who has managed to keep his bunkers and laboratories hidden from the Borelings, and fabricates evidence that points to Pactain the Virulent, his supervisor.

  Chapter 1

  —————

  Erin

  I stood straight and turned my back on Camo Joe for a minute. Well, for a triple count, that is—twenty to zero, then two nineteens to zero. The counting calmed me, as it always did. I could hear the zombies pounding at the door and moaning; it reminded me of NotMom when she tried to break into my room and add me to the list of people she'd eaten.

  I needed another count to help get that out of my mind. It seemed like I’d been fighting for days to reach my sailboat since I walked away from school when the power went out and airplanes crashed around us. Hard to believe it had only been a few hours. Camo Joe here was helping me with some survival gear when the zombies burst into his living room and forced us to hole up in his garage.

  I turned back to Joe. He was just watching me in the gloom, holding a small flashlight. I look
ed around the garage, but I sure didn't see anything that might help get me out of this mess.

  Get us out.

  “Any bright ideas, Army?” I asked, my voice slightly raised over the sound of the pounding.

  He reached into the Jeep and tried the headlights. They turned on, showing a small garage with a workbench.

  “Nothing good,” he said. “We have a side door here that leads outside, the garage doors, and that zombie-infested hallway. The side door might be our best bet, but there's no telling how many might be outside the house.”

  I thought of the house... utterly surrounded. Zombies would be pressing in as soon as we opened the door. Camo Joe and I would try to wade through them?

  We'd never make it out.

  I held out my hand for the flashlight, but Joe started to take my hand as if to hold it. I jerked my hand back and shook my head. “Flashlight, genius,” I said. He looked a little hurt, but handed me the light.

  He had grabbed me when we were back inside the house, trying to escape the zombies, so I will look over his momentary forgetfulness. After all, we need to have each other’s back.

  But heat of the moment versus holding hands—very different for me.

  I don't like being touched.

  I took the flashlight and shined it around in some of the dark spots, trying to think of a plan. There was the car, but the EMP... “Car doesn't run?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he answered. Which I assumed meant “yes” in answer to my question. “I guess the headlights aren’t connected to any computer chips, but the rest of this thing is junk unless we find a working replacement.” He paused. “And someone who knows how to install it.”

  I shined the light inside the car but didn't see anything useful. A particularly loud CLANG hit the door and I shined the flashlight on it. Probably wouldn't hold forever.

  Just my luck—I get all decked out with weapons and gear, and most of it is in the house with the zombies.

  “We have to go back through the house,” I told Joe.

  “What? Through that madhouse? I think we should chance the side door—nothing's banging on it.”

  “And then what? If there's a horde out there, we're dead. Better to fight our way back to where we have weapons and gear. It’s a closed space and we’d at least have partial control.”

  Joe thought about it, then finally nodded his head. “I hate to say it, but you're right, Ninja Girl.”

  I smiled an evil grin. “Can we barricade that side door, prevent anything from breaking through when we start shooting?”

  “Yeah let's push the car over.” I just stared at the huge black Army guy.

  “Us?” I asked.

  He laughed. “I suppose I could probably manage it.” He started moving things around while I searched for more ideas. I looked back at the door, had an inkling and turned back to ask Joe a question. He appeared to be busy, so I just went ahead with my idea.

  First, I grabbed more wood from under the bench and put it near the door. Then I hunted around for a hammer and nails. I found nails, but no hammer, so I grabbed a big wrench. I carried up the nails and wrench and started trying to reinforce the door.

  “What are you doing?!?” yelled Joe.

  “You do your thing Camo, I'll do mine!” I yelled back.

  He opened his mouth to yell again, then stopped and shook his head. He carried over a set of tires and laid them down next to the wedge holding the door closed. Then he pushed the Jeep to against the door too. Finally, he laid three tires on their sides, and a fourth tire on top of the one closest to the door. He wedged the whole pile again so that it was all pressing the door closed.

  When he finished, he walked over to me, puffing a little bit. “What's the plan?” he asked me as I banged away.

  “You finding a hammer,” I said. “Using a wrench to drive nails is for chumps!” I threw the wrench down on the floor. He smiled in the gloom and walked over to a pegboard and pulled down a hammer from the wall.

  “Here ya go!” he said cheerily.

  “Chump,” I said. I put several boards on the bottom, two on the top, then two in the middle, with about four inches between them. “We break out this part here in the middle. Should be about head height.” I pulled out the KA-BAR that he gave me and held it up. “I'm sure you have something in here we can use to poke their eyes out.”

  “Alright, I get it. Yeah, I'll find something,” said Joe. He grabbed a power screwdriver and tested it to see if it still worked. “No computer chips”, he muttered as he snapped off the drill part and put on some kind of saw and set it back on the bench. He opened up the back of the Jeep and rifled around, coming out with a jack handle. “Good enough,” he said. It was long and had a thin end.

  Joe picked up the saw thing and looked at me. “You ready for this?” he asked.

  I looked at him and removed my shotgun from my shoulder and made sure it was loaded. He did the same with his gun. “I'm ready,” I said.

  “Actually...” He put down his gun and pulled out a bunch of magazines and set them out. “I haven't reloaded yet.”

  “Yeesh,” I said with an exaggerated voice. “Get a move on, Camo Joe. I'm a busy girl.”

  He laughed and dumped a bunch of ammo on the workbench and looked at me expectantly. I smiled and got the hint and helped him reload. Each magazine held thirty rounds. I put in twenty-five, then gave the magazine to Joe. “Here, you do the last five. They're hard to get in there.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Joe. “Wouldn't want you to break a nail or nothin',” he joked.

  I punched him in the arm as hard as I could. He just looked at me and smiled.

  I loaded one more and then we were done.

  “Okay,” said Joe, “NOW I'm ready.”

  I was ready too. But I was also scared to death. This could be my last moment on Earth.

  I missed my ocean.

  Chapter 2

  —————

  Joe

  Ninja Girl and I were ready. She reinforced the door so that we could make a slit to fire through or poke at zombies with our weapons. She had her Super 90 in a sling around her shoulder, her baton in her right hand, and the KA-BAR in her left.

  My rifle was slung and I had the saws-all attachment on my drill in my right and a jack with the hubcap blade on my left.

  “Here we go,” I told her, then began sawing at the door between the two-by-fours in the middle. I started to see blood splatters and stopped. “I'm hitting zombie meat.”

  “Disgusting,” said Erin. “You have some goggles or something?” I had several safety glasses on the workbench, and a bandana in my pocket. I gave a pair to Erin and put one on myself, then put the bandana around my mouth. Geared up again, I went back to the door and continued sawing, with a few splatters hitting the glasses I wore. When I was almost finished cutting out the rectangle, zombie hands, some with chewed-up fingertips, began trying to reach through and grab me, so I pulled the saw back and stopped.

  It took a few pulls and bashes, but the zombies finally finished the job and opened up the slit. I waited to see a face that I could poke, but Erin was ahead of me. She'd replaced the KA-BAR with her machete and was slicing off anything that came through the slit.

  “Damn, Erin, wait till they poke their heads in!” I told her. Besides, she was making a slippery mess in front of the door.

  “If they ain't got fingers, they can't grab us or the slit in the door and pull it open.” She chopped again. “Besides, I don’t think their faces are that thin,” she added, gesturing at the slit.

  She was right, dammit. When it comes to zombies, she's the expert. I decided right then and there that I was going to follow her orders...as far as zombie massacres go at least. I looked around the workbench for something I could use to hack off arms, and there was a small hatchet I used for making kindling. I grabbed it and alternated swings with Erin, chopping at the arms that reached through.

  Some of those zombie things must have been chopped all the way up to t
he elbow. I stopped chopping and raised my hand. “I think...” I stopped, realizing that I was about to take charge. “Do you think we should start killing them now?” I asked the smart one. She took the question seriously. I know she did because she stopped chopping.

  “No, but let's stop chopping. I want to see if the ones with arms left make their way to the front.”

  So we stopped and stepped back from the slit and just watched as stubs of arms would appear and disappear, then a face would show momentarily, teeth gnashing. Some of the creatures had missing eyes—probably got bitten before they turned, if zombie movies were to be believed.

  “So are these, like, regular zombies in a movie or something?” I asked Erin.

  “I never watched zombie movies,” she answered, “but I know the general idea.” She looked away from the slit. “I don't know, Camo Joe, are they normal zombies?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye.