Zombie Exodus: Aftermath - Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Author's note: This story has been created as an interactive tale with options chosen by patrons. They guide the story by voting from a list of multiple choices at the end of each scene of roughly 500 words. In the first chapter, patrons selected a female protagonist named Violet.

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You roll out of your cot and listen to the sounds of the air horn blaring through Tempest Point. You have only been here for six weeks, longer than some havens, but this is the first time you’ve heard the siren. Shadows fly past the outside of your tent, and you hear shouting. As you slip on your boots, an explosion rips through the north side of camp. The ground shakes, and you tumble back to your cot. This is no drill. Camp is under attack.

You’ve seen this time and time again. After all, you’ve grown up in the Apocalypse. You can forever remember the date of Outbreak Day 0 because it was your ninth birthday. Ten years later, you’re still struggling to find somewhere safe to stay. 362 days. That’s the record. A tiny island off the shore of Florida. What was it called? Crab Island, that was it. The screening precautions failed to detect Z4 in a traveler. The fourth mutation of Zeta was one of the more lethal varieties, and it ripped through the colony. That was the day after your fifteenth birthday.

Throwing on some clothes and grabbing your to-go bag, you slip open the tent flap to see two dwellers running past you with automatic rifles. Flames shoot up from the north end of camp higher than the tents in front of you. That means you go south.

You rush between trailers and tiny houses in the middle of camp, maneuvering your way around people you know by face but not name. The inhabitants of Tempest Point keep to themselves. Even at mealtime, they take their food and drink back to their abodes and share little of the challenges or triumphs of their day. You’ve only gotten to know a few people. There’s Jesse, who's your age and even grew up one town over. The day you moved to the camp, she brought you your first meal, meat soup with cabbage. She even snuck out a bottle of milk from the mess trailer for you, the first you had in the longest time. She was always grabbing things: a pair of keys, someone’s pocketknife, a flask of whiskey. Her hands were quick like a magician. When the two of you were bored, you would tie her hands in rope and see how long it took her to get out.

Then there’s Carlo. He was the second friend you made. He took you to the gambling tent and gave you a few pills to wager on one of the insect fights. Your praying mantis won, and you collected an entire bottle of antibiotics and some uppers, which you traded for the boots you now wear. Carlo knows everyone. Anywhere he goes, he makes connections or has connections. He’s in his early thirties and has been in the area and moving from camp to camp since the start of the Outbreak.

You feel someone tap your shoulder and spin around to see Spark.

“Follow me. I think I can get us a car out of here,” he says.

You follow him through the crowd of running people as he leads you east. It’s easy to follow a tall red-haired boy around all the dwellers, though he’s thin and quick, making it easier for him to slip between people. He can hotwire any car and fix anything that’s broken. But he’s going the wrong way. With the wind blowing towards the east, the fire must be spreading that way. You don’t know what’s attacking camp, but you can only imagine they will take out the east gate, the easiest way inside Tempest Point.

You run into the courtyard, the center of camp, maybe the worst place to be in this attack. Jesse shares a trailer with a group she met before arriving at Tempest Point. You never got along with any of them. As you reach the door, it’s already open and flapping in the breeze. You slip inside. It’s a complete mess and one reason you never like coming here. A bag of trash blocks your path, so you step over it. You duck a clothesline that stretches across the interior. You circle a triangle tent someone set up in the space between two benches. Several bodies lie asleep on the benches, but you move past them all.

“Jesse! Jesse!” you whisper shout.

She stirs, rolls to her back, and pulls a sheet up to her neck. Even in bed, she wears that dopey tie-dyed painter’s hat. A mumble escapes her lips, but her eyes remain shut.

The trailer shakes, and you place your hands on the wall for balance. Tin cups and a box of crackers fall from a high shelf.

“How are you not awake? Get up,” you say and shake her by the shoulders.

Her eyes pop open. “What the hell?” She blinks a few times and looks around. “Is it even light out?”

“It’s noon, and Tempest Point is under attack. Don’t you hear that?”

As if on cue, automatic rifle fire spreads just outside the trailer. Another explosion sounds in the distance, and the shouts of the dwellers come from every direction. Jesse throws the sheet off. She wears a gray sports bra and oversized boxers hanging to her knees. She’s short and stout, and when she rolls out of bed, she meets the floor on her knees.

“Ouch! It’s too early for this mess. I barely got any sleep last night,” she says.

You help her up and grab clothes from the top of a dresser. “Put these on. You have a to-go bag?”

“What? Nah. Everything I own in the world is spread out in this trailer. Give me like five minutes —“

“We don’t have five minutes. Can’t you hear the people outside? It’s a war zone right outside this trailer.”

She reaches for a pack of gum and pops a stick in her mouth. “Who do you think it is? O-zoners? West Point? Wait, you don’t think it’s the Terries?”

“Not the Terries. They don’t come out during the day. You know that.” Terries, short for subterrestrials. They moved underground shortly after the Outbreak and have lived there ever since. They’ve adapted to life without light, which has changed them into something…animalistic.

You slide a curtain aside and peek through the window. You can see two men in red suits running past the trailer. They raise red painted rifles and fire at dweller soldiers, gunning them down.

“It’s the Reds. We have to go now.”

When you turn from the window, you see Jesse going through a chest and picking through items like she has no care in the world.

“What are you doing? We have to go! I just saw two Reds killing our defenders. We don’t have time.”

Jesse pulls a revolver from the chest and tosses it on her bed. She slips on a pair of jeans and grabs a hoodie from a clothesline. “I’m going to need five minutes. Everything I have in the world is in this trailer. If we leave now, it’s going to be ten times harder to survive out there,” she says and points north. “Besides, we have to wake everyone up. We were partying last night. Legend busted out one of his ciders, and a game of Aces – Deuces started up.”

Another series of shots ring out in the courtyard. A bullet cracks the side window of the trailer, and you and Jesse duck to the floor.

“Maybe we can go now,” she says with a weak smile. “But life out there will be ten times easier with all my stuff and the rest of the crew here. Your call.”

“Fine. I’ll wake everyone up, while you get dressed and ready. But dammit, hurry,” you say to Jesse.

She gives you that same cutesy smile she always does when she gets her way and then unzips her backpack. You don’t waste any time watching her but instead run over to the first snoring body you see. How are these people not awake? You yank back the covers and see Cameron. He’s tall and thin with a mop of brown hair down to his shoulders. He’s shirtless, which shows a patchwork of hard skin from scarring. He still wears his uniform trousers and only one sock.

“Cameron, get the hell up,” you say and smack him in the face. He waves his hand at you and rolls to his side. A mug of liquid sits on a shelf above him. You take a sip from it – Moonshine. You toss it on his face, and he gasps for a moment and sits up in bed.

“What the hell?” His head cocks to the side like a dog hearing a siren. “Are those gunshots?”

Jesse appears in the doorway of her bedroom. “Cameron, get your butt together. Three minutes and we’re out of here.”

You step to the next bed and see Portland’s head sticking out of a clothes pile. When you lean over to wake her, her eyes pop open, startling you.

“I’m up; I’m up. How am I supposed to sleep with all this racket?” she says with a smile. As she sits up, you can see she’s topless, but she pulls up a flannel shirt to cover herself. Her dirty blond hair hangs in long strings—a piece of pepperoni sticks to the side of her neck. Although she probably hasn’t bathed in days, she still looks hot. You’ve always thought she’s beautiful. Everyone does. Jesse always joked about how Portland would have been a model back in the time before the Outbreak. She’d be flying from New York to LA to Paris, modeling clothing for rich brands. She’d be famous like that one family that started with the K. It’s hard to remember names anymore.

The trailer shakes, and Portland falls onto the floor. You tumble sideways and slam into the side wall. A rack of VHS tapes clatters to the floor. More gunfire. Something crashes through a back window.

Jesse runs toward you, hopping over a table that flipped over. “We’re out of here. Cameron, move that ass. Portland, this ain’t no joke. The Reds are just outside.”

“I’m not even dressed—“

“Ain’t nobody wants to see them itty bitty titties, girl. They want to shoot you in the head.” Jesse presses a finger into Portland’s forehead. When the young woman stares back at her through huge, green eyes, Jesse grabs a hoodie and throws it over her head.

“I can dress myself.”

“Then do it,” Jesse shouts and runs to the door. She opens it a crack and peers through the opening. You pop next to her. Tempest Point defenders stand in a column firing at the Reds. There’s a narrow path leading to a side gate. This may be your only chance.

“Everyone, follow me,” you shout. They all fall in line behind you, and you hike up your to-go bag across your shoulders. Stepping from the trailer, you can see the devastation made by the Reds. Tents are on fire. A burning husk stands where the canteen used to be. Dead lie all around you. Plumes of smoke rise from the north end of camp. What took years to build is falling in minutes.

Continue to chapter 2 

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