The Chronos Plague (Book 1): No Time Left Read online

  I looked and headed that way. There was a dead man walking out of the alleyway, shuffling and stumbling toward us. His head was tilted to the side, like the rest of them, and his mouth hung open. His eyes fixed on me, while his hands grasped and opened at his side.

  I timed his walk and swung my crowbar as he stepped forward, smacking it into the side of his head. The bar made a clinking sound as it connected, and his skull made a cracking sound at the same time. The man fell to the ground, propelled by the momentum of the crowbar against his skull.

  I didn’t waste any thoughts on who the man might have been or where he was from. Truth be known, I didn’t care. They were just the enemy, but not the only one. There was another one out there, and they were my mission.

  Bert and Jason spread out and I took the back end of the triangle as we moved through the streets. We passed several homes and businesses, not bothering to check because we’d been through them already. We’d come up with the plan in the early days of the community. Clean out the buildings in systematic order, and mark them as clean so we didn’t waste our time. Only a damn fool stayed out for long in a town this size. Anyone with any brains left had scampered out of here a while ago. Which explained why I was here.

  On the plus side, the only people left were looters, marauders, and the various human flotsam the ocean of misery called the world we currently lived in hadn’t dragged down yet. I never had to think twice about shooting one of them. Inevitably, though, innocents always complicated things.

  We headed north, moving past various office buildings and Victorian houses. Zoning seemed to be a flexible thing for this town.

  On the next cross street we kept north and worked our way through what was probably a promenade. There were shops and restaurants, and we passed all of them. We’d been through them as well.

  “On the right!” Jason said. He stepped over and smacked a zombie back into the store it was crawling out of, while Bert stepped over and hammered one to the ground. I came up and they had taken the action, so I just looked around.

  The promenade was well-built for pedestrians, and discouraging of vehicles. There were a number of large planters, full of weeds and overgrown ferns. Several benches were placed around the planters, and the large palm trees offered little shade in the morning. The shops and restaurants were all broken into all the way to the end of the street, and we had taken what we had needed. Some of the shops looked a little worse for wear; apparently, there were others who were making their way down this walkway as well.

  Another zombie stepped out of a Chipotle, moving slowly with quiet purpose. She made her way over to us, and I brained her with the crowbar.

  Jason and Bert had moved on, and I stepped over her to catch up. As I did, I glanced into a shop as I passed. I kept walking, acting as if I hadn’t seen anything, but old skills that refused to die acknowledged what I had seen.

  I picked up a chunk of dirt as I walked past a planter and threw it in front of Jason. He and Bert stopped short and turned around. I made three hand signals toward them and they nodded. They stepped over to a wedding dress shop and went inside to wait.

  I stepped toward the wall and made my way back to the shop. I ducked down and slipped inside, making my way along the dark wall. I stayed low, keeping to the shadows and allowing the bright light of the morning to be nearly blinding in the interior. I moved behind the counter and stayed there, listening to the sounds in the store. I heard small, careful footsteps, then there was a crunching sound nearby.

  I slipped my knife out of its sheath and looked over the top of the counter. There were two people heading quietly toward the front of the store. One looked like a woman, the other was a man, although he was pretty slender. Both of them held long knives in their hands, and both had backpacks. I moved away from the counter and up behind them.

  I reached the wedding shop a few minutes later and met back with Bert and Jason. We headed out again, crossing what used to be a major street. There were a few cars here and there, but mostly the street was empty. The promenade continued on the other side, the only difference was there were only four stores with markings on the doors. We’d only just started hitting this section.

  “Everything okay, Mac?” Bert said.

  I nodded. “Just fine.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Couple of marauder scouts,” I said.

  Jason started and looked around, grabbing at his weapon. “What? Where? Do you think they saw us?”

  I nodded again. “I know they did. Played like they were mannequins as we walked by the store.”

  Bert looked back. “They still there?”

  “Technically, yes,” I replied.

  Bert and Jason looked at me and Bert cocked his head to the side a little. His sleepy brown eyes measured me again, and the calculations in his head were almost audible.

  “Okay, then. That’s all we need to say about that,” Bert said.

  “New section, let’s take the next one in,” Jason said. “Mac, you watch the outside this time?”

  I looked at the store. It was a woman’s shoe store. “All right,” I said. I didn’t think there would be anything I needed in there.

  The sun rose higher and I just listened to the sound of the morning as it enlightened our new world. There were shots fired to the south, just a few, and a metallic banging noise to the north. I watched a couple of zombies stroll past the far end of the street, but they didn’t see me and kept moving.

  I heard the sound of a car approaching and I slipped back to the entrance to carefully watch the road. A few minutes went by and a large Jeep slowly drifted to a stop at the end of the street. Two men got out and carefully walked up the section of the promenade we had left. They were dressed in what I liked to call internet tactical. Everything was black and bought cheap because it was necessary for the apocalypse. Funny thing was, they never expected for it to actually happen and they thought themselves so smart for being ahead of the curve. Most of it was crap but they wore it anyway. Cheap tactical vests and thigh holsters were the usual junk, but there were variations on the theme.

  The two walking away from me were outfitted more than most, with tactical gear from neck to nuts. Their swagger indicated they had faced their zombie and won, while their choice of melee weapons showed me they preferred quick kills. Each of them carried a rifle: one an AR, the other a Mini-14.

  I stayed back, keeping an eye on them from the shadows. If they came this way, I was going to have to do something I would have preferred to avoid, but I knew the risks.

  Bert and Jason came up behind me but I raised a hand in warning and they stayed where they were. I knew they wouldn’t move without my say.

  The men down the street suddenly shouted, and I knew they had found their scouts. I turned back to Bert.

  “We need to get out of here. There’s two of them and they just found the scouts I left behind,” I said.

  “Weapons?” Jason asked.

  “Bigger than ours,” I said.

  Bert looked at his watch. “We have thirty minutes before the ladder goes up. What are we going to do?”

  I thought about the situation. There were two men in the way of where I needed to go. They had rifles versus my pistol. Tactically, we had one choice.

  “We need to go around, slip by, and hope they don’t see us,” I said.

  “If they do?”

  “They can’t follow us and be allowed to bring back the others to where we live,” I said.

  Bert exchanged a look with Jason. “All right then. You lead the way.”

  I nodded and moved quickly to the end of the block, trying to keep the large planters in the way of anyone looking down the street. I zigzagged from one side to the other, and kept moving.

  At the end of the block, I stopped and slid my knife out of its sheath. I used it as a crude mirror to check the corner and when it was clear, I slipped around and ran up the street. I could hear Jason and Bert behind me, so I didn’t bother to look back
. We passed a cooking store that had large sections of glass and I could see the two men in the reflection as we moved past.

  At the end of the block, I turned the corner and moved as quickly as I could. There was a zombie moving slowly away from us but he turned around as soon as he heard us. His walk was slow, but he moved with purpose, that purpose being to tear us apart and eat what he could. I brought my crowbar up and slammed it down on his head, cracking his skull and beating him to the ground. You couldn’t be squeamish about hitting them. Any hesitation brought you within biting distance and once they got hold of you, it was over. I’d seen what weak hits would cause.

  The zombie fell against the nearby car, and his head made a large thumping sound as it hit the fender. I winced but we kept moving. I wasn’t worried about zombies, I was worried that the marauders would investigate and start shooting from a distance.

  We moved up the street, keeping to the shadows. The hard part of this was trying to stay out of sight. Problem was, in this world, movement attracted attention, from both the living and the dead.

  I walked through a patch of sunlight on my way to another section of shade when there was a sound like a handclap. The window behind me exploded, sending glass all over the place. I dove forward, ducking behind a planter. Bert and Jason were slower, and a second handclap sound took Bert down. He landed heavily, and Jason tried to pull him to safety when a third handclap struck Bert in the head, killing him.

  “Bert!” Jason yelled. He pulled back as another shot clipped the planter he was hiding behind, pelting him with rock chunks.

  I lay by the planter, making sure I wasn’t accidentally sticking out anywhere, and faced the storefront. I kept an eye on the window and waited. I held a hand up to Jason, and he was smart enough to stay down. Bert lay bleeding between us, his worries over.

  Our patience paid off. The two shooting at us came walking forward, their suppressed weapons at the ready. They spread out and one came for me while the other came for Jason.

  I wasn’t going to make it that easy. I rolled my pack out from behind the planter and popped up at the same time behind the tree. The shooter followed the bag for the brief second I needed to get a bead on him.

  My gun sounded a lot louder than theirs, but at this point, I wasn’t worried about who might be hearing. The marauder nearest me went down with a bullet in his face. I swung my gun over to the second man as he was swinging toward me. I fired first, getting a bullet into his torso and another in his thigh. He went down, with his rifle firing into the air. It sounded like applause. He hit the ground but he was still struggling. He gripped his leg, which was bleeding profusely. I put another one in his head, returning the favor he gave to Bert.

  Jason came out of his hiding spot as I holstered my gun. His eyes swept over the two men on the ground, and then over to me. I shrugged, and then we both heard it. Dozens of feet stamping the ground. I looked north while Jason looked south.

  “Oh, shit.”

  We both said it at the same time, even though we were looking in opposite directions. In front of me were about fifteen zombies, all focused on getting me for lunch. They were in various states of ugly; bodies torn, blood-spattered clothes, one even had his right eye torn out. They slapped their feet on the ground as they walked, it was the only way you knew they were coming: They made no sound as they attacked.

  “Mac?” Jason asked carefully.

  “Grab the rifles and ammo and follow me,” I said. My reasoning was sound. Why waste my ammo when I had someone else’s to use? We stripped the ammo vests off the two dead men and grabbed the suppressed rifles. The zombies were getting closer, and I needed to buy just a bit more time.

  “Get in that store!” I whispered loudly to Jason. I pointed to a building that looked like it was full of clothes. I tossed him the second vest of ammo. I kept the rifle; I wasn’t that stupid.

  I picked up one of the bodies and propped it up against the tree in the planter. The zombies flopped closer and I moved the body slightly forward, getting it off balance. I jumped into the store as the zombies arrived, and the body fell forward at the same time. It was enough of a distraction that they focused on the fresh meat at their feet and not the meal that was running away.

  I stepped through the door and nodded at Jason. He handed me back the ammo and we both loaded the rifles to capacity. Jason looked at his watch.

  “We’ve got fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “We may miss our deadline,” I replied. “Come on, let’s get out the back door.”

  “All right, hang on.” Jason began shoving racks and racks of clothing into the aisle, creating a big, soft pile of clothing. The zombies would have a hard time walking through that. I joined him and we piled clothing all over the floor until we were halfway through the store. There were zombies that were finished with the body outside and were starting to look around. A couple of them found the other bodies, and I suddenly remembered Bert.

  Oh, well. He was dead, he wouldn’t feel a thing.

  In the back of the store, we found a small section of what someone thought were camping supplies. There were designer compasses, water bottles, and some freeze-dried food. Some of it was garbage, but I grabbed some useful supplies that might come in handy, as well as a handful of batteries, and then raced to the back of the store. It took a little looking, but we found the back door. It led to a large hallway that extended into the dark in both directions.

  “Which way?” Jason asked.

  There was a flopping sound to the south of us, which made up our minds.

  “North,” I said. I flipped on the flashlight on my newly acquired rifle and moved in that direction, with Jason behind me. We hurried down the hall, eager to get away from what was behind us. The zombies left in the store would eventually reach the back door, and since the back door was a push-bar lock, there was no way to keep them out of the hallway.

  Fifteen feet down the hall and there was movement in the far reaches of the barrel light. I slowed my forward movement and identified two zombies. They came forward and I fired twice, dropping them to the ground. The suppressor was loud enough in the hallway to cause my ears to ring a little, but I knew it was coming, so it wasn’t as bad.

  We left the hallway and found ourselves in an alleyway. Jason ran ahead and we bolted for the apartment complex. We had just a few minutes before the ladder would come down. If we weren’t there, it would go back up and not show up again for another twenty-four hours.

  There were a few more zombies around, and I wasn’t sure what was stirring them up, but I could guess. Marauders just rode around like they owned the place, and for the most part, they did. You had your choice in this world: Fight or flight. They chose fight and they didn’t let little things like morals and ethics get in their way.

  We made it up the street and only had to shoot one zombie. As we rounded the corner, I could just see the feet of the ladder as it was pulled up.

  Jason ran over. “We’re here!” he shouted. “Put it back out!”

  Nothing. Just like they were supposed to do. Jason cursed loudly and with deliberate enthusiasm.

  “Let me try,” I said. I went under the balcony and said loudly, “Put it back down or I will throw the next zombie I see over the balcony into your apartment.”

  They must have thought hard about it because it took ten seconds before the ladder came over again. I went up first and Jason followed.

  I went back to my apartment and placed the rifle and ammo on the kitchen table. I pulled out the camping gear and left it on the table as well. I stepped over to the window and looked at my apartment. It wasn’t easy to see, but there were enough shifts in the flow of things that I knew someone had been here before I got back.

  I shook my head and went over to the hall closet. Nothing was disturbed there, so I knew everything was still where it was supposed to be. I went back to the table and took the suppressor off the rifle. Never knew when that might come in handy. I wasn’t much of a rifle guy. I knew h
ow to use them and I could shoot them pretty well, but I had grown so used to my pistols over the years that I always fell back on them. I pulled them out now and grabbed my field cleaning kit. I stripped one down, leaving the other loaded on the table.

  There was a knocking on my door and I didn’t really feel like answering it. When I looked at the events of the day, it was pretty much a failure. We’d not picked up anything significant, we’d lost a man, and we’d likely incurred the wrath of the marauders if they managed to follow us here. I didn’t think so on that part, but they always seemed to know where people were.

  The knocking started again and I ignored it again. It started a third time and then it suddenly stopped, and I could hear the sounds of footsteps retreating.

  I had just finished the cleaning on my gun and reassembled it when the knocking started again. I decided to get it this time, and to no one’s surprise, it was Ramone.

  “Mr. MacCullen. May we come in?” Ramone said. Luis was standing behind his brother, and he was trying very hard to keep his hands out of sight. That raised a red flag.

  “No. What do you need?” I asked. “It’s getting dark and I’m tired.”

  “I understand you confiscated a rifle today. I would like to ask you to turn it over for common use,” Ramone said.

  “You mean your use,” I said.

  “Are you going to make this difficult, Mr. MacCullen?” Ramone asked with a smile.

  “If you mean am I going to force your brother to use that weapon he’s hiding, probably not. But you putting yourself in between me and a man who’s trying to kill me is probably not your healthiest move. In fact, I’d say it’s probably dumber than walking around outside with bells tied to your ankles,” I said, punctuating my words by showing Ramone that I was holding my gun down at my side. Luis couldn’t see it, which was the point.

  The rate at which Ramone started flapping his hands behind him were such that I was surprised he didn’t fly away. Luis must have gotten the hint because he turned suddenly and walked away, keeping his hands in front of himself.