The Missing Read online

  The Missing

  By

  Gary Chesla

  July 2019

  Tom Henderson had everything a man could ask for, a beautiful wife, a new home, a great job and maybe the best thing of all, a little daughter that would be starting the first grade in another month. The future held nothing but unlimited possibilities.

  However, that was one year ago. Today all Tom had was the clothes on his back and the knowledge he had gained over the last year. The knowledge that had kept him alive in a world now dominated by the dead.

  For the last year Tom had roamed the hills of Kentucky searching for other survivors. After a year of barely surviving in what felt like a barren world, Tom stumbled upon a small group of survivors that had also managed to survive over the last year.

  Tom was happy to finally find others like himself that were still alive and even happier when they asked him to join them. But after two weeks with the group, Tom realized that there was something different about these people. In fact, he couldn’t understand how these people were still alive. They didn’t appear to know the first thing about how to survive in a world controlled by the dead.

  As Tom debated whether he should stay with the group, or move on before they got him killed, something strange started to happen. The women in the group began to go missing and no one could figure out what had happened to them. Tom tried to help the group solve the mystery of what had happened to the women, as he continued to consider all the reasons why he shouldn’t stay with these people any longer.

  When the dead attacked the small settlement, in his struggle to survive, what Tom discovered was almost more than he could believe. Maybe after what he had seen, there really was no hope for mankind.

  Chapter 1

  I looked out over the wall, keeping my eyes focused on the tree line, watching for any signs of movement.

  Some days were boring as hell up here on the wall, but honestly, if I had my choice, I would always choose boring. I’ve seen my share of days when things weren’t boring. I prefer boring.

  I always volunteer for wall duty because I feel it is an important job, a job that I have become very good at over the last year. Besides, from the looks of most of the others here at this camp, I feel better knowing that my life is in my hands and not theirs. It’s not that I don’t trust the others here, it’s just that I don’t have a lot of confidence in their abilities. I honestly don’t know how they have managed to survive for as long as they have.

  Many theories have been developed to describe mankind’s survival and development throughout history. The one theory that I have always felt best described mankind’s progress was the survival of the fittest. The strong and the smart survived while the weak and less intelligent perished or at least were forced to live in the shadows of the more dominate members of society.

  Recorded history is full of dominate societies and their accomplishments, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt and The Roman Empire developed law, art and government. France, the British Empire, Germany and the American Industrial Revolution have all been the driving forces behind the direction of modern industry and civilization. They all became strong in one way or another and controlled the direction mankind took as a society. Even though not all have had a positive influence or even good intentions, they have all played a dominate role in shaping man kind’s future. They were all factors in what mankind had become because they were strong and the weak had to follow their lead and adapt or perish.

  The official name of that theory was Natural Selection, the strong survived and the weak were left behind.

  That was until the zombie apocalypse began a year or so back. The apocalypse turned that theory on its head.

  Maybe the theory did hold up, but I just have a hard time accepting the fact that the dead have all but eliminated the living because they were the stronger. I consider the dead to be a plague, a virus that inflicts death and unimaginable suffering on mankind.

  As far as I know, the dead have no self-awareness, no intelligence and they will never dominate society, they can only destroy it. The dead are just there with the single-minded goal of killing the living. They have no other purpose.

  No one knows where they came from or why they are here. I’m sure that someone probably knew at one time, but for most of us, we have been too busy just trying to stay alive to be concerned with something that would be meaningless at this point.

  The reason I said the theory of the survival of the fittest was turned upside down wasn’t because the smart and the strong failed to step up and tackle the problem of the rise of the dead, because they did step up. They were the first to fight back against the dead, to try and solve the mystery of what was happening to the world, to save mankind. In fact, they fought, giving it all they had up until the very end. It’s just that their efforts didn’t do any good. They perished in spite of their strength and intelligence.

  Unfortunately, at the beginning the formerly so-called smart and strong were quickly destroyed by the dead. Those that ran because they were afraid or didn’t know what else to do, those that had no intention of trying to save mankind, they were the ones that survived while the strong perished.

  Maybe in this new world the theory is still valid, only the definition of who are the strong and what is smart or dumb has changed. The theory I now feel that best describes mankind’s survival is what I call the Survival of the Lucky. However, I have spent a lot of time wondering who the lucky were, those who died or those of us that are still here. I don’t consider myself to be all that lucky. In many ways I feel cursed to still be alive, but I refuse to just lay down and die. Giving up is just not my style, I like to believe I’m a fighter. The truth is probably more that I just don’t want to die alone and that I hope eventually I will find others like myself, but so far finding others like myself appears like that isn’t going to be happening.

  If there is any written history for some distant future generations to read, I’m sure that the readers are going to be very disappointed to find what had become of mankind. That is if there are to be any future generations, and if they still have the ability to read.

  Myself, I’m just disappointed in what I see of what is left of mankind. The best of what had been of civilization is gone, little is left that resembles what mankind had been. I have struggled to find something to give me hope that all has not been lost, but to be honest, all I’ve found are the homeless, the dying, the hopeless, and the lucky. Even then, there are very few of them.

  This place, this camp or settlement, is the first place I’ve found in over a year that seems to have any sense of organization and purpose. Against my better judgement, I decided to stay for a few days to get some rest and maybe find a little old-time human companionship. A few days turned into two weeks and I am still here. The people here are strange to say the least and I don’t believe they know what they are doing, they are paranoid, superstitious and have little common sense. If I had to guess, I’d say none of them have any survival skills and are only alive because they have been lucky.

  My faithful companion and the last connection to my past life, Bear, wasn’t so sure about this place when we first arrived here, especially after he heard that they ate dogs, but he was willing to follow me anywhere. I keep an eye on him, so no one tries to eat him, and he watches my back, so no one tries anything funny when I’m not looking. Really, I don’t feel that anyone here poses much danger to either of us, they are all afraid of Bear, my large eighty-five-pound black Germen Shepperd, and these people couldn’t sneak up on a deaf and blind person in the middle of the night while he was sound asleep.

  I’m not sure how much longer we will stay here, in a way it is nice to have some human companionship. On the other hand, the people here are frustrating and if t
he dead start showing up around here in any significant numbers, this place wouldn’t last a day. If that were to happen, I would be much better off on my own out in the hills. For now, I’m just trying to enjoy being around others, it has been far too long since I’ve had that pleasure. At first, I thought that maybe I could help these people, teach them something to help them survive. But after my short time here I feel that possibility isn’t very likely, but that will be up to them. They don’t seem too concerned or motivated to learn anything new or to try and improve their situation. They seem happy to just continue on with their lives the way things are. Maybe fate will favor the stupid in this new world, who knows.

  “Hey Tom,” Ed called out, shaking me out of my thoughts. “Look over here, I think I see something.”

  I slowly walked over next to Ed and looked off into the distance to see what he had seen. Ed was always seeing things, swaying branches, shadows of birds flying overhead, moving shadows and other phantom movements. Ed appeared to be a nice guy, but I suspected that he wasn’t the smartest person I had ever met, even by today’s standards.

  “I don’t see anything,” I replied. “What do you think you saw?”

  “I’m not sure, I just thought I saw something moving by that big tree out there,” Ed replied.

  “Just keep watching, I don’t see anything but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there,” I smiled.

  “I will,” Ed grinned. “You told me to let you know if I thought I saw something. Better safe than sorry, right?”

  “That’s right,” I replied returning Ed’s smile. I considered trying to narrow down what kind of things qualified as suspicious movements he should be watching for, but decided that would only serve to confuse Ed. If any of the dead showed up, I’m sure I would see them long before they could get close enough to pose any danger to the camp. Ed was an extra set of eyes that could come in handy if I became so bored that I would doze off for a few minutes, besides, he could actually be amusing at times and he is a better conversationalist than Bear. Bear is definitely the smarter of the two, but Ed tells better jokes.

  I walked back to the corner of the wall where I had been standing before Ed’s false alarm. I kept glancing back towards where Ed thought he had seen something move, just in case he had really seen something. I then turned my attention to the path that came out of the trees and crossed the lower corner of the field that spread out between the camp and the woods on this side of the settlement. We would usually see one or two of the dead come staggering down the path each day. About a mile on the other side of the trees was Route 75 that came down this way from Lexington, Kentucky. I assumed the dead that showed up here were staggering along the interstate and for some reason, maybe something caught their attention, and they wandered off in this direction and ended up here.

  I remember before, after the dead had destroyed the cities, they began to follow the interstates in search of the living. I quickly learned that the cities and interstates were places to be avoided. I’ve spent most of the last year roaming the hills of central and eastern Kentucky, trying to avoid the dead and live a quiet simple life. After all this time, and before the weather began to turn colder again, I decided to come down out of the mountains to find out what life was now like in the lowlands outside the city. The first place I wanted to look was at the nearest interstate to find out if the dead were still moving in large masses like before, or if by any chance the dead had somehow disappeared. I was hoping that civilization hadn’t been totally destroyed and that it was somehow making a comeback. Let’s just say what I saw made me decide to head back up into the mountains.

  That was when I stumbled on this small group of people that had taken up residence here in the fort at Fort Boones Borough State Park.

  The idea of living in a fort at first sounded interesting, but the more I thought about it, this place could be a death trap. Unlike the Indians that attacked the early pioneers, once the dead found you, they didn’t go away. They didn’t need to sleep, or to eat and they didn’t get bored. The dead would stay until they killed you or you killed them. I didn’t see this group capable of fending off a large mob of the dead before they would all starve to death. If by any chance they didn’t starve to death, they would probably get themselves all killed trying to wave a white flag and invite the dead inside to talk things over. Fortunately, the only means of defense they had come up with before I showed up was dropping rocks, old cannon balls, logs, furniture and any other large objects they could find inside the fort down on top of the dead outside the walls. I say fortunately because if they would have had guns, the sounds of the guns being fired could have attracted enough of the dead to overwhelm the fort or to trap the people inside the fort, unable to get out. So far, their luck has held out and they have only had to deal with a few of the dead at one time.

  Since my arrival, I’ve showed them how to make bows and arrows and have tried to teach them how to shoot. They are getting better, but so far, the only thing they have hit with an arrow was when Ed shot Charlie in the leg, by accident of course. If anyone here manages to shoot one of the dead with an arrow, that too will be by accident.

  The people inside the fort were visitors to the park when the apocalypse began. They were tourists on a bus trip from Cincinnati visiting the park when the world went to hell. Their only survival training had been that they all had taken a tour of the fort and had listened to the tour guide talk about how the pioneers had survived here at the fort. Even after listening to that talk I don’t think any of them learned a damn thing. They were in the fort when the dead swarmed through the park. The tour guide closed the gates to the fort, and they all hid inside the buildings until the dead wandered off. Hiding was their preferred means of defending themselves.

  After three days of calling for help and watching the news reports on their phones, they knew something was very wrong. When all their phone batteries went dead, they attempted to leave the park in their bus. When their bus wasn’t able to get through all the debris and dead bodies that were lying around everywhere, and two badly injured people that wandered in off the interstate told them what the highways were like, the group decided to hold up in the fort and wait for help to arrive.

  Of course, help never came, but they are still waiting. They are all very determined to wait.

  There had been about sixty people here at the fort when the dead began to attack the living. There are now twenty-seven people living here, the rest had starved to death or had become infected and their bodies are all buried out behind the fort next to the graves of Daniel Boone’s family and the original pioneers that built the fort many years ago. It is my guess that the remaining survivors here at the fort will be joining the others in the cemetery in the not too distant future.

  The group survived the first few months by sending search parties down to the campground to go through all the abandoned motorhomes, campsites, camp store and the lodge. I’m amazed that they thought to do that, the person who came up with that idea, their first and only good idea from what I’ve seen around here, is probably now one of the dead and is buried next to the original pioneers.

  The group survived the fall by eating fruit from the trees in the old orchard in the flats below the fort. During the winter they ate bark off the trees, dead animals they could find and what fish they could catch in the river on the other side of the orchard, that’s when the number of people in the group began to quickly dwindle. The stories they told me of that time was sad and shocking. They didn’t come right out and say it, but from the look in their eyes, I feel the people that are still here are here because they may have turned to eating the old, sick and weak amongst them. I hate to think what the next winter here will be like if something doesn’t change and I fear it will be their last winter at the fort.

  Since arriving, I have tried to show them how to set traps to catch the numerous small animals that live in the forest around the fort. I have also been trying to teach them to hunt with a bow, but the
se people are slow learners. They have been eating better since I have arrived, no thanks to their efforts, they seem content to let me provide for the group. I just don’t understand these people, if this is the best example of mankind to have survived, then I know that man’s existence on this planet is truly over.

  But I have to admit, no matter how amazing or unbelievable it is to have found this group of people still alive, I have to give them credit for having found a way to survive this long. It is an achievement, from what I’ve seen in my travels, that very few others have managed to accomplish.

  Bear stood up, he had been lying by my feet, and began to sniff the air. He looked out over the top of the wall, then looked at me and whined. I knew we were about to get company. Unlike Ed, Bear’s nose was never wrong. The fact that I have been able to survive this long is evidence of how good Bear’s nose is, he has warned me when the dead were near, and he also knows when there is a large buck nearby. I do my best to take care of Bear and I make sure he is warm and well fed. He is the last remaining member of my family. When I stumbled on the group hiding here in the fort and one of them asked me if I brought the dog for them to eat, I thought Bear was going to eat him. I almost let Bear attack the guy so they would all understand Bear’s place on the food chain. Since that time, everyone in the group keeps their distance from the big shepherd. No one has brought up the subject of eating Bear again.

  I looked out over the wall in the direction where Bear’s nose was pointing. I studied the tree line for a moment, then I saw three of the dead come staggering through the high weeds and into the clearing. After all this time, the bodies of the dead are in horrible condition. Their skin is black and leathery, their clothes, what clothes they still have left, are filthy and torn, barely hanging on their thin boney bodies. I don’t understand how they are able to keep moving, but they do. All I know is that if I want to live, it is best to keep my distance. I no longer find it useful to try and figure out why they are still here, I just accept the fact that they are here and that it is up to me to deal with them. One on one, the dead are not too dangerous, they are slow and clumsy. They are also not too difficult to trick, but the real danger is that there are so many of them. They can surround you and overwhelm you if you aren’t careful and it only takes one bite or scratch to cause a fatal injury. But after all this time, it’s a mystery what keeps them going.