Necropolis: Zombie Outbreak Noir: Anthology Edition

By Max Kielsmeier

For months now Jadyn has been living in a city which has fallen to a terrible plague. A virus that harkens back to the Black Death; though, being mixed with something more like rabies, it has given rise the phenomenon of zombies. They say the quarantine has contained it, but that's little comfort to the day to day lives of people living there.

Jadyn's life is lived at the edge, and so too are the lives of the bizarre, the evil and the rare good people she encounters who scrape by in their own desperate ways.

The human remnants during this calamity are at each others throats as resources become precious and survival takes on increasingly mutated forms. One warlord who sees himself as the natural leader during this time uses his bandits to plunder the resources of all. However, a few people are still like Jadyn; the survivor and mother-protector of a small group who believe that that man's body ought to be dangling from a rope somewhere.

The stakes are high, the death toll is high, the burning through lead and octane is maximum. This is the so-called 'city of the dead', the Necropolis.

Book Categories:
Horror
Dystopian
Science Fiction
Paranormal
Noir
Contemporary Adult
Adventure
Dark fantasy

• Language: English
• Publisher: Max Kielsmeier
• Release date: Dec 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370974757

Max Kielsmeier

Max Kielsmeier attended film school in Denver, Colorado and then spent years brushing shoulders with both the famous and the hoi polloi in Los Angeles as a screenwriter. With dream film projects being difficult to realize in Hollywood, he returned home to Colorado and has been turning screenplays into novels for years. Spurred on by a lifelong fixation with mythology, folklore and the Hero's Journey, he's the most satisfied when he's completed a new story. These days, he's perfectly happy penning novels and has sent screenwriting back into the wild.

Book preview

One — Thy Neighbor's Wife

A zombie curled its fingers around the wires of a chain-link fence. Zombie was, at the end of it, the most decisive term they applied to those with its particular affliction. The thing was only there because it was hungry for the warm-bodied humans, still fully-animate, on the other side, but no quarter was offered to zombies at that place.

A man dressed in dark utility clothing stood on the other side of the fence and barely looked up before raising his pistol and shooting a three-inch-diameter window through its skull. That was Derrick—the man who controlled the other side of the fence. The long, black coat he wore swirled in a wandering breeze, bestowing on him a dramatic, desperado profile.

There were two cars parked next to Derrick, and a shorter man standing between them.

We have some new madams, said the shorter man, Tim, who was nevertheless dressed in mimicry of his leader. Derrick returned him an incredulous stare. It was a thing that could make him antsy, knowing Tim had returned from a raiding excursion. He watched his littler self open the rear hatch of this black hearse they had.

Out, he ordered, contemptuous sounding.

Two women crawled out of the back of the car—wide-eyed, and when Tim drew near, twitchy. He lifted up a lock of hair from the auburn-haired woman as though offering merchandise.

How about some fresh pussy? Tim said with a flash in his eyes.

Derrick chuckled.

Before the plague, the two would never have given each other a second glance on the street, but under Denver's new conditions, Derrick and Tim had borne an unexpected kinship based on a mutual joy of plundering.

Tim had developed a fondness for abusing power which extended to murdering and pillaging other survivors (beyond necessity), something that, with a chain-gun mounted on the top of the black hearse, which they dubbed The Black Plague in red paint, he was well-equipped to do. He was something of a spitting image of his leader, though more try-hard. There was also his secret nickname, given to him by other bandits in the group, (which he didn't know of)— Bishop. They gave him that one because, like the Chess piece for which he was so named, he came across slanted. This, out of a group of self-admitted bastards.

Derrick's outpost had been a condemned factory building. A small matter, but a factory-warehouse, properly. Running around the perimeter was a sturdy barbed wire fence that it had acquired—post-condemnation. The new residents, such as they were, had inherited a serviceable fortress from the undead.

Since the first days, when people had accepted, but not just accepted, when they'd finally comprehended the plague's destructive capacity, the building had been sought out by refugees. In the early days, it could have been considered a hub. Derrick changed that. When he came, he brought with him a ruthlessness that would normally be more reminiscent of conquerors of the ancient world.

The night he arrived, he slit the throats of the men in their sleep. When a gathering party of assorted refugees returned the next day, they were first denied entry, then cut down in a spray of gunfire. He left four of the resident women alive, but was not challenged for control again. In the days after he took over, he set about recruiting savage, but ambitious underlings.

All over the city, pockets of survivors came to hear about this group of marauders. They were more psychotic than the normal steal-in-order-to-eat-and-live fare going on in most other places. More comparable to a mobile execution squad of than a group of refugees; and Derrick, while not Alexander the Great, still had a dumb, devil-may-care luck that seemed to follow him through misadventure. He wanted, he pillaged, and the city continued to yield him the spoils of war.

A rival gang had tried to stand up to them (or dethrone them, no one knew which). The shootout had gone on for an entire morning at the fortress two months back. Now that battle was old news in a city that was forgetting the names of its dead by the thousands. The aggressors, whoever they'd been, were wiped-out to the last man. It happens to be difficult to win a battle with hand guns when your opponent has a mounted chain-gun with a superior position.

Derrick's goon-men also owned a surplus of 'reclaimed' rocket-launchers with which they'd been able to blow-up vehicles (or someone trying to hide behind them).

Much warfare of this nature had been prevalent throughout Denver a few months previously. Seeing disembodied limbs, or entire dead bodies, on the street was still commonplace. These were not the kind that reanimated, of course. The implosion of the city had been a grotesque business, but Derrick's group was well-established as the people to avoid.

Were they alone? inquired Derrick.

No, I took care of it, though, answered Tim.

Oh?

You know me, I won't make that mistake again, he said with a chuckle in reference to a time, a separate occasion, when they'd fought a bloody battle against a different group. They had faced retaliation before.

Derrick was appeased though, and eyed the women.

Good. Well, they aren't fighters, he said, but we can fuck 'em. He was titillated by his own words.

Mace, the gunner for The Black Plague, climbed out of the back of the hearse. He came around behind the women the way a shepherd dog might close-in around livestock. Everyone strode toward the entrance of the factory.

What were those planes dropping earlier today? said Derrick, stopping them.

"Yeah, we saw them, but the shit dropped some ways off. There was a lot of city between us and that—and the Speer Boulevard canal. Too clogged to get the Black Plague through."

Hm, Derrick grunted, unimpressed by the assessment. This isn't only about supplies, or whether we can get our heavy artillery there. We need to investigate anything weird. Those were relief planes.

Yeah?

Any new tidings have to be investigated.

I didn't see if they were dropping supplies—somebody said 'flyers.' They may have been on some other mission.

That's why you have me, said Derrick. I'll find out.

Two — 18th Street

A stack of newspapers lay aging on a deserted sidewalk, and though there was a urine-color to the pages, the headline was large and intact: Quarantine Mandated!

Next to this was the toppled SUV that had once been charged with delivering the news. One could almost sense that somebody had struggled desperately to escape the sudden glass-and-metal-prison.

Not far from there, a herd of reanimated dead people, one of many which now terrorized the city, flowed river-esque through an alley. They hungered for someone in there who was expected to be a quick bite to eat.

Between the buildings was a woman. She was not what they commonly called a dead like the others. She was what they called a survivor on her side of the tracks. There were other labels too—warrior was a major one.

Though weighed-down in gear, such as thick leathers and kevlar, she brandished a pistol in one hand, kept a melee weapon within reach, (today, a Japanese sword) for close, rabid encounters and with a seasoned grace, she bobbed and weaved among the dead. Jadyn's modus operandi was more avoiding and less fighting.

One got too close. Her sword fell, full of intent, on the neck of a ghostly white zombie who was, by then, a mere caricature of his Old Self. He fell to his knees while gushing black liquid from his mouth as well as the wound. His face contorted to display an unreadable reaction over what had been done to him.

Although when Jadyn and he got another look at each other, he grimaced back with more obvious malice. She swung a second time, beheading him—or it. His crew-cut-having-head rolled down the alley, as though trying to usher a path.

Indeed she drew toward that end of the alley to make her escape. Near the opening, she climbed atop a car to gain altitude over her assailants. Then, she leapt through a narrow opening in the herd and forced her way through groping hands—to the next street. It was all right after that, because she could outrun this type. These ones had been infected long days and were getting slow.

Lately, she'd noticed more of what they called 'hobblers' and less of the 'chargers' which were prominent when things first took a turn for the worse. That made it seem like the plague was dying.

Nonetheless, she was troubled. Her scavenging outings were becoming more perilous and less fruitful.

Feeling better because she could see for a ways, Jadyn made her way along a main street.

Downtown dominated the horizon, but now those abandoned buildings just looked like sullen icebergs reflecting a grim sky.

Passing another alley, she heard a morose, bawling voice. There was no need to guess, but her reflexes forced her to look anyway.

An emaciated humanoid was pinned between wall and car with outstretched arms. It reached toward a cat on the car's roof—a scruffy creature, which stared back at it with contempt that would have made any house cat proud.

The zombie's hunger went denied. The cat wasn't foolish, nor was it bewitched by the plague. It slinked haughtily away—a survivor in a land that had perished many.

Jadyn took this scene in at a glance, but simply hurried on.

Three — The Sinner's Church

It was a transformed city. Buildings didn't seem to be dwelling places anymore, having gone dark and silent. They lay strewn across the land providing an unnatural sort of canyon landscape. Most of them weren't good defense outposts, anyway.

About four months earlier, Jadyn had parachuted into the city with Marine Infantry to extract a V.I.P. from the maelstrom.

Unfortunately for all concerned, they had become fatally spread-out across the drop zone. Smoke billowed in giant clouds and concealed what a disaster Denver had become. At the beginning of the mission, it was already over. They never found their quarry and had never found each other. By the time Jadyn got assimilated into the city, pondering what happened to the others was an item for historians, if anyone.

She came to one of the bridges which ran over the canal at Speer Boulevard. It was jammed with cars portraying the scene of a chaotic (and failed) exodus. There was a disquieting, filmy-substance accumulating on the metal boulders. Ash rain from the skies? Yes that, but something else too—something sicklier. She reminded herself that she didn't want to know.

It wasn't the best of decisions—it was hasty, but she had a lot of confidence in dealing with the undead by then, so she crossed the bridge. For visibility reasons, she hated congested areas.

To be on guard against a sniper, for instance, one would avoid the open, but the plagued would grab one from around corners while hiding in tight spaces.

Dealing with snipers would be a pleasure over this— had become the refrain in the back of her mind in recent days.

She took her goggles off to wipe blood and dirt from the lenses. She had a rag for that which she kept wrapped around the handle of her sword. Seeing the world without orange-tinted lenses refreshed her some. A bluish-grey haze pervaded the sky. It was more cheerful than it sounded after exposure to the dim interior of most hiding spots.

Something intruded on her vision then. Without a developed attention to her peripheral, it would have been too late. She swung her sword and sliced open the throat— but created a fountain of the tainted blood at the same time. Remembering her face was exposed, she swerved away, but there was a cold sensation of splashing against her ear canal.

Adrenaline shot through her and the next moments were a blur. She dropped the sword on the hood of a car and ripped a canteen off her belt. Repeatedly, she flushed her ear with water. At the same time, there was still a need to be watchful for new threats. Several minutes of heart-pounding unease followed.

Finally, she sat down on the bumper of a car to catch her breath. Exhaustion sidled-up while she sat with her head tilted, draining the water out of her ear. She wiped her neck and took a deep breath. Immediate danger had passed, but she was at a more frightful precipice in any refugee's experience—wondering, waiting to see if she was infected.

Horrifying as a group of undead cannibals might be, the scariest part was that 'pacifying' them could suddenly backfire; how one could so randomly catch the plague.

Now she didn't know, but surely she wasn't going to sit there all day.

About an hour later, Jadyn was closing in on home base. Home was a cathedral on 14th Street and it was built the same way they had been back in the dark ages.

In those harrowing centuries, cathedrals were built with keeping the village safe during times of invasion in mind. Yet, in the twenty-first century, this one still did a fair enough job of that. With its narrow windows which were over seven feet above the ground on the exterior, it kept out the dull-witted undead— which soon abandoned it to search for easier prey.

A heavy, oaken and iron-reinforced door at the entrance was normally kept barricaded. There was then an augmented portico, serving as a second line of defense. With an armed host, it was excellent for keeping out the walking dead. Jadyn had slept well in its bosom, all things considered.

Zombies, among their many names, had stopped coming there.

Jadyn drifted up the front steps and gave the secret knock that affirmed her kinship with its other inhabitants. After a minute, she heard shuffling and then unlocking noises. Finally, the door creaked open.

A man at the door, stuffed inside a heavy jacket and ski mask, waved her in with a shotgun. He was the front door sentry, whom they called Shotgun Willy, due to his propensity for always having a shotgun on his person, his name being Will, and lastly, there had been a local strip club named Shotgun Willy's. Thus, to the amusement of his co-habitants, he'd been so-named.

Jadyn passed into the portico, where, just as ironically, they would strip off exterior layers, setting them aside to be wiped-down and sterilized.

So... Will asked, and he tried to restrain sarcasm, how was it?

Not even trying not to roll her eyes, she said:

Out there? Worse.

Same answer you had last time.

Still true. I can't salvage much with everything going on.

Don't hurt yourself, you're the best. The best we have.

Fuckin' A.

She walked further in and began peeling-off the heavy gear she wore—jacket, utility belt, knee pads, boots, shirt, and pants. One layer below the standard clothing, they wore a thin, plastic layer for added protection. It was pretty much a body-suit made of taped-together plastic bags. It could stop blood from lying on the skin too long.

While not many had a clinical vindication of this, the precaution was taken out of the paranoia that the virus could be absorbed through skin.

Ah, she's back, said a voice from across the length of the building.

Jadyn, now dressed down to a tank top and underwear, came into the nave and wiped her body with rags and soap. It was their only bathing system. She was a mulatto and had arresting eyes; she was athletic. Also, it was hard to forget, the only female. After all, copulation had not been common since the outbreak. When she would take off a layer or two—a silent, electric charge lingered in the air.

Jadyn redressed in her interior clothing, diving into a sweater and loose pants. They kept indoor clothes in boxes toward the entrance, yet comfortably far away from their blood-spattered battle gear. It was like suiting up for space whenever they left, or returned, from gathering excursions.

Besides Shotgun Willy, there were more of her recent chums living inside the church. Scott was once a clean-cut beat cop who had become lovably scruffy and disillusioned. Carl had been a college football player who broadcasted a mightier-than-thou attitude, yet had stopped short of being a complete son-of-a-bitch. Tom was formerly a musician and barfly. Jadyn gathered that he had a martial arts background as well. Then there was Jake—a quiet, self-assured man who was a dogged watchman of their hideout, though he'd been disinclined to offer them much about himself.

That was it, not many faithful for a cathedral-sized home.

Where, and how—other survivors lived, they were scarcely concerned. Denver had fallen into tribal communes by then and were zealously guarded in all cases.

Four — Last Call

Well, Tom broke out, it's Christmas Eve and do we have a plan? I do. He walked over to a front pew and slid a cardboard case of assorted liquor bottles from underneath it.

Jake, Will, come over and have a drink!

C'mon Shotgun! Jadyn yelled back to the entrance.

They broke into banter, albeit more muted than what would be natural. Jadyn looked around, tumbler in hand, and realized once again that she was surrounded by good people.

They sat in a circle on the floor and put a flashlight in the center. With the light pointing upward they threw a shirt over it to dim its harshness. There was then an inescapable feeling that they'd returned to a lifestyle of far-flung ancestors.

During story-time, Jadyn contemplated the notion of fucking one of them. Probably Jake. Yes, the dark, stalwart and silent one. Tonight after story-telling, she'd take him to a dark corner and seal it.

While lost in thought, she became aware of Tom telling some old story about a friend on the brink of committing suicide. The story concluded and he did not commit suicide. What the fuck story is this? she wondered, but hadn't been listening.

To lighten the mood, Jadyn piped-up and began to relate the story of the close call she'd had on the bridge that day. It was intended to be a quick thriller of a story, but, not giving it too much thought, realized too late that she had incriminated herself. The look on Tom's face said what they all thought: Are you serious?

Oh... Jadyn let out. Well, I'm obviously fine. Scott's face glazed over. As the pseudo-leader of the bunch, due to seniority, it was his call as to how to handle such dilemmas, or lapses in judgment.

Well, there are considerations, Jadyn. Considerations for all of us. I think we'll have to have you sleep in quarantine.

Quarantine, repeated Jadyn, deflated Goddamn.

Everyone laughed anyway.

They had a cage they'd built for the matter of quarantine in the eastern transept—the brainchild of many-a-day spent preparing for anything.

When the evening was whittled down by dreary, drunken storytelling, Scott gave Jadyn the knowing look. She didn't resist or put up a fight, as she would not have her companions be ill-at-ease. She went along and stooped into the humiliating little cage, then rolled-up in sleeping bags and pillows.

I don't think you're infected, we just have to take precautions. I'm sure tomorrow morning you'll be all right, said Scott, and we can let you out.

Jadyn came to consciousness before she opened her stinging eyes. They were sealed shut with grime. She had a full recollection of where she was, being curled-up in a human cage. She needed only a small concession to feel lovely through the din of that hangover—she was still human.

There was something of a headache, grogginess too. Still, not an unmanageable hangover. She heard boots slide to a stop on the granite floor.

So, we seem to be OK, Jadyn?

Yes, is what she wanted to hear herself say, but it sounded more like "yeth."

Good. We had to take the precaution. I'm glad you could understand, Scott unlocked the gate to the cage. Oh, and Merry Christmas. I'm not sure you were awake to hear the airplanes fly over. A couple of them flew over the city today dropping relief. We're going out to get our hands on it. Hopefully it'll be a good score.

I don't suppose, Jadyn intervened you're taking my current state into account in all this.

Well, you don't have to go. You pull your weight more than anyone around here. Me and the other guys here, we think we're gonna go.

No, I'll go. Just give me a second to align with reality here.

Great.