Free Z-Risen (Book 1): Outbreak by Timothy W. Long

SPLAT!
    Joel went out and stared into the dark for so long I thought he’d fallen asleep standing up. I waited and went over my gun again and again.
    Joel had taught me to treat it like a girl with a rocking body. You want to know every inch of her because you can’t dream about her later unless you’ve been hands-on for hours.
    “There’s no one out here.”
    “Yeah. Now. There was a few minutes ago.”
    “You been hitting the gan ja?” Joel asked.
    “Not today. I swear , man, I heard something.”
    “They’re gone now. Get some sleep. We need to leave in a couple of hours.”
    “Yeah. I’ll do my best.”
    When Joel left I dragged my mattress next to the sliding glass door and left it cracked open so the breeze rolled over me , but also so I could hear anyone approaching. The thin bit of breeze helped, but I was a long way from anything resembling sleep. I tossed and turned as I strained to hear anything besides the occasional moan of one of the Z’s wandering around in the dark.
    Finally I closed my eyes and drifted off , dreaming that I was back on the McClusky and the crew had been replaced by a team of bikini models all named Helen. Every one of them.
    Joel’s hand on my shoulder tore me out of sleep.
    “Ugh,” I muttered.
    “Mission time ,” he said and moved away.
    I was tempted to just go back to sleep. Fuck exploration, it was the middle of the goddamn night.  I sat up and rubbed what felt like sand out of my eyes.
    While I suited up in my engineer overalls , Joel stood to the side of the deck entrance and scanned the area. He was already dressed in his combat gear. He checked his pockets one more time, pulling magazines out to do a visual inspection by the light of the moon. Satisfied, he stuffed them back into pouches at his chest and side, then secured them by pressing flaps in. Early on, we’d learned the hard way that the crackle of a Velcro pocket could bring a pack in seconds.
    Joel dragged the ladder out and lowered it to the ground , moving it around until he was satisfied it had a good hold on the ground. He slung his AR-15 over his shoulder and then went down the ladder while I trained the .45 around the area. When he was on the ground, he covered for me.
    We hid the ladder under a pile of brush and dragged a pair of rotting corpses on top to keep prying eyes on other things.
    Our destination was the naval base. Joel had wanted to return for the past week, but the Z’s in the area had been too heavy. After some scouting earlier today we determined that it might be safe to slip in, find some warehouse he knew about, commandeer a car, and get the fuck back to dodge, all before the night was over. We really needed to load up on ammo and maybe another weapon or two. If we got stuck with our current weapon pool, I doubted we’d be able to shoot our way out of a wet paper bag before we ran out of rounds.
    Fucking zombies. I hate them.
    Joel scouted ahead while I brought up the rear. I grumbled but a look from the Marine reminded me that it was time to get serious. One misstep out in this world and we’d be dead meat.
    I did find that with night came something amazing. Cold air. It rolled off the water and reminded me of what it was like before we ended up stuck in Fortress. Going out like this was familiar. We’d already done it half a dozen times and we were still alive. The other thing that I found was the smell of decay. It was everywhere. Trash and bodies rotting in the sun made for a disgusting reek that clung to everything.
    The idea was to remain quiet. As quiet as a sleeping baby. Any loud noises and you were likely to call in a pack of the dead. Not that they actually traveled together, because they had no thoughts in their heads. They reacted to some bizarre need to find live flesh. I liked my flesh right where it was – on my bones.
    Joel stopped alongside a house and then faded against the wall. He moved around the corner with me right behind. Joel held up a hand and I