A few years back, I was commissioned to write a story for the 'We're Alive' podcast.
Long story short, it didn't pan out.
But I spent a very long time writing it for it to languish in my computer. I spent that time not only writing it for the 'We're Alive' folks, but mostly for my readers.
So what I've decided to do is publish my initial story here, via my blog, as a work of FAN FICTION, a completely unofficial piece about a character from the series. This is completely unofficial and unauthorized, but I think my work and time spent on this project deserve to see the light of day.
I would like to encourage everyone who might enjoy this fan fiction to check out the officials 'We're Alive' website HERE. It is a fantastic and well-developed world created by a group of professional writers and expert voice actors.
In the meantime, here's the completlely unofficial, unauthorized 'We're Alive' fan fiction, originally entitled (WORKING TITLE: BURT)
BY
BOWIE V. IBARRA
From an idea from the creators of the
Copyright 2011 PRODUCERS OF “WE’RE ALIVE” PODCAST, BOWIE V. IBARRA
9. BURT MAKES HIS
RUN
With his soul on fire, his M-16 slung over a
shoulder, pistols on his hip, and his KA-BAR concealed against his hand and
arm, Burt left his apartment.
Locking up his home, he could feel
the tension of the city wash over him.
He could hear television sets behind closed doors rattling off the news
he was just watching. Even muffled, he
could still hear the urgency in the voices.
Cracks of gunfire danced in the
air. Burt could identify pistols and
sub-machine guns. Shouts, cries, and
screams sang a song of terror accompanied by the music of the firearms.
There was no doubt about it. Los Angeles county had fallen into the depths
of chaos. Burt sighed. It was a sad and familiar sound that danced
over the cityscape, one he hadn’t heard in years.
It was the sound of a battlefield.
Before Burt could make his way down
the stairs to his vehicle, a hand grabbed his jacket sleeve. It took Burt by surprise. His training took over as he twisted his hand
away. He shoved the attacker away and
positioned his knife to jab once he identified his attacker.
“Please, don’t hurt me,” shouted
the lady with fear. She held up her
hands. Sweat laced her brow, making some
of her middle-aged blonde hair stick to her forehead. “I need your help.”
Good God almighty, thought
Burt to himself. Jerkoffs and idiots of
the riots he could deal with. These
so-called cannibals or risen dead? He’ll
have to wait and see for himself.
But desperate people, people
outside of the chaos looking for help?
This would be tough.
“Please. My boyfriend…one of those people bit
him. He’s sick. I need your help.”
She needs my gun, Burt
thought to himself, watching her eyes fall to his sidearms. Stay focused, Burt, he said to
himself.
“I can’t help you, lady. I’m sorry,” he said, moving down the stairs
to his car.
The lady made a desperate move,
grabbing his coat.
“Please! Help me!”
Burt snatched her hand away quickly
again and shoved her away. Burt couldn’t
believe how desperate she was, having already threatened her with the
knife. He had enough sense not to stab
her, even though his conditioned impulse was there. This didn’t need to escalate. The lady needed to get the message.
“I said no, lady!” shouted
Burt. “Now get the hell away from me!”
Suddenly, three flights above them,
something snarled with primal anger.
They both looked up to see what appeared to be a drunken man. Saliva dripped from his mouth, and he looked
at Burt with bizarre anger.
“Jimmy,” shouted the lady. “No!”
The woman immediately rose to her
feet, running up the stairs.
Burt wanted no part of the domestic
dispute and ran down the stairs to the parking lot.
Clearing the apartment building, he
was able to look out on the city. Plumes
of smoke drifted into the sky like toxic smoke from the mouth of a dying
dragon. The same symphony of mayhem Burt
heard as he left his apartment beat its steady rhythm. The gunshots and shouts of terror were the
classical music of human-made pandemonium.
A variation on a theme of conflict played throughout the course of human
existence, as conducted by Toscanini, Solti, Williams, or even James Levine or
Leonard Bernstein. The sound and the
fury.
Dashing to his car, he could feel
the adrenaline pushing him forward. It
was providing energy he was going to need.
As he got to his car, he looked out
toward the street. It was packed with
cars honking in a cacophony of fearful frustration.
“I’ll never get out of here,” Burt
groaned. Standing still in a line of
cars would also leave him vulnerable to attack or carjacking.
“Goddammit,” he groaned.
A set of hands grabbed him by the
shoulder.
Burt growled, knocking the hands
away and shouting, “Lady! I already told
you…”
But when he turned around, it
wasn’t the lady. It was a man. But it wasn’t any ordinary man. This man had thick red slime around his mouth
that Burt could only deduce was congealing blood.
“Shit!” he shouted as it grabbed
him again, opening its mouth wide for a bite.
It’s one of them.
The monster shoved Burt into his
own car, pushing him down on the hood.
It snarled as it tried to bite him.
Burt was strong enough to hold the
monster off with one hand while stabbing it several times with its knife. Blood dripped from its wounds and it backed
off against an adjacent car.
Burt drew his M-16 when he heard a
blast. The monster’s head burst,
splashing all over Burt and the cars.
“Jesus Christ!” shouted Burt. He watched the executed attacker fall to the
ground.
“I tried to tell you,” said a
voice. Burt turned around to see Guerra,
brandishing the shotgun he had sold him.
“Jesus, Mike,” said Burt. “You just killed the guy.”
“He attacked you.”
“Was that one of those…”
“Cannibals? I’m pretty sure it was.”
Burt looked back at the body. It’s arm was quivering as blood poured out of
its wounded head.
Burt couldn’t take it. He ran to a bush by the apartment complex and
threw up. It was more of a dry heave as
he had hardly eaten.
“You’re going to have fun today,”
said Mike.
“Fuck you, Guerra,” said Burt,
pulling himself together. “What the hell
are you doing out here?”
“Corner store,” he said, holding up
bag filled with sodas. “We needed
something to drink.”
“No water?”
“There was water. But I figured I should grab the RC while it
was still on the shelves.”
Idiot, thought Burt. “Good one,” said Burt.
“Where are you going?” asked Guerra.
“Locked and Loaded.”
“Good luck with that. They’ve been looting that area for the past
hour.”
Burt
groaned. “Thanks for the intel.”
“I’m going
back up to the apartment. Come by if you
make it back,” said Guerra running off.
Burt turned
around and looked at the street again.
It was as if the street found a way to get more congested between the
time he was looking at it up to now.
“Here goes
nothing,” he said, trotting toward the street.
It was only several city blocks away, but considering the danger in the
streets, it might as well have been in Temecula or Fresno.
But his
drive was still unaffected. Nothing was
going to stop him from getting to ‘Locked and Loaded’.
From behind
a car, a teenager jumped out at Burt, pointing a gun at him.
“Drop the
knife, old man!” he shouted, “and give me your shit!”
Not
again, he thought to himself. “You
need to take a minute, kid,” he said, raising his hands. “Do you see what’s going on out there?” The boy was about to get a surprise. He was just a boy. Burt had put himself in a game of life and
death on the streets. But unlike Guerra,
he didn’t want blood on his hands.
Especially with an idiot kid he could handle.
“I’ll shot
you in the face, motherfu…”
All Burt
heard was Lombardo’s voice saying one of the most basic fundamentals of hand to
hand combat: Commit.
And he did.
Burt
grabbed the barrel of the pistol and moved it away from his face, out of the
line of fire with only a move of a few inches.
Simultaneously, he popped the boy in the face multiple times. Burt’s massive fists turned the boy’s nose
and mouth to mush.
The second
punch had already knocked him out. And
when the back of the boy’s head hit the pavement, his arms and legs froze in an
awkward and stiff position. He looked
like a red-headed Ken doll that had been discarded by a child.
Burt picked
himself off the ground, checking the requisitioned weapon for ammunition.
It was
empty.
“Stupid
child,” he muttered, discarding the weapon.
The boy was
puffing with an awkward breath, still stuck in the awkward pose as Burt dashed
off, leaving the kid behind.
As Burt
turned a corner, the boy was attacked by one of the ghastly cannibals as he lay
on the ground, helpless. Though he was
completely healthy and alive, he was still paralyzed by the concussion. The infected monster grabbed his still-stiff
arm and bit. The pain made the boy
respond, but only with a grunt. He began
to pant, perhaps in a seizure.
The ghoul
simply chewed on the chunk as the boy bled from the now-shaking arm.
The road to
‘Locked and Loaded’ was littered with catastrophe. Cars stood idle. Cars wrecked.
Cars burning. The drivers burned
beyond recognition, black silhouettes of humans who had been alive, perhaps
only minutes before.
People were
running and shouting at each other.
People were fighting each other.
It was every man for himself on the streets of Montebello. The same fearful desperation that hid behind
apartment doors was now unleashed on the city streets.
Burt made
it to a street corner when he heard a shout.
“Hey! Gimmie that gun, mother fucker!”
Burt turned
to see a gang of four street thugs race at him with knives drawn.
“Goddammit,”
thought Burt. His knife was drawn, but
he needed something more. His M-16 would
mow them down, but there were so many others who could be hit by his fire. He didn’t want to do it, but it was his only
choice.
Before he
could unsling his M-16, gunshots were fired.
They were flying from behind him.
Burt fell to the ground, unhurt, and scrambled for cover behind a city
trash can.
Burt
watched as two of the gang thugs were hit, falling to the ground, wounded. The other gang members ran, or just dove for
cover as Burt heard another voice.
“Hey, old
man! Let’s get out of here!”
Burt looked
up to see a man in a Navy blue F-350 waving him in.
“C’mon,
guy,” said the man, firing more rounds at the gang.
Burt knew
he could not trust the man at this point, but the guy had wheels. He could still get him out of the tight spot,
and maybe drive him to the shop.
Slowly
getting up, Burt ran to the truck after unholstering one of his pistols. If this guy was going to blast him, he would
be ready with an answer of his own.
Burt
noticed his equilibrium was off as he stood up.
He was light-headed.
The
crackers, he thought, keeping his pistol at ready as he kept an eye on the
guy that was still firing out his driver-side window.
As Burt
passed by the front of the vehicle, he couldn’t help but notice blood lining
the hood. There were several dents in
the hood, too. A patch of hair was
visible on the grill guard.
Goddammit,
thought Burt, hoping he made a good call.
Burt jumped
in the vehicle.
“How the
hell did you get this far?” asked Burt.
“The street is bottlenecked with traffic.”
“Sidewalks
make great roads,” said the guy.
Jesus
Christ, thought Burt. This guy is
a certified maniac.
Burt
reached into his jacket. While he had
the moment, he might as well pop some crackers into his mouth. Most of the crackers had crumbled into small
pieces, so he scooped what he could into his mouth.
“It’s a
field day for dumbasses,” shouted the man.
His eyes were wide and bloodshot.
He was wearing a stylish button-down shirt that was opened wide. A medallion hung around his sweaty
chest. His scruffy blonde hair had not
been washed in days. Burt observed
several tiny plastic ziplock bags scattered on the seats and floorboards. He imagined the remnants of white powder in
the bags were not flour.
Bastard’s
coked up, he thought to himself.
“It’s like
Baby Jesus come out of the sky and unleashed the dumb fucks,” shouted the
man. “You can shoot ‘em now. You know that, right?”
“No,” said
Burt. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“Destroy
the brain, they said,” shouted the man, indicating his gold-plated custom .44,
waggling it in his hand. “Destroy the
brain!” he shouted, firing at people out his window.
Christ,
thought Burt. Who the fuck is more
dangerous? The people or those
cannibals?
Burt
tumbled against the door as the man swerved to hit two people with his vehicle.
“Fuck
yeah!” shouted the man as Burt was bumped up in his seat as the truck rolled
over the two pedestrians.
“Christ,
man,” shouted Burt. “Were they even
those cannibals?”
“Probably,”
said the man. “Better safe than sorry,
right?”
“Right,”
said Burt with a grim nod.
The guy
started to reload, using his knees to steer the truck. It rocked violently, hitting the side of
vehicles on the street as it moved forward relentlessly. He put his hands back on the wheel just
enough to regain control of the vehicle.
“I brought
you on so you could use those guns of yours.
Why don’t you have at it?” he said, looking menacingly at Burt.
Bastard’s
going to shoot me, thought Burt.
“Good idea,” he said.
The man
flicked back the .44, loading the first round as they neared an
intersection. “Let ‘em have it!” shouted
the man, pointing his gun out the window.
Burt’s eyes
widened as he saw an out of control big rig speed into the intersection as the
Ford did, too. The big diesel beast was
knocking cars out of the way like a shark fin through water. It clobbered the F-150 right at the driver
side door he had just pointed his gun out of.
The truck
forced the guy’s wrist to turn inward.
It was moving so fast that his arm could not stand the force. Though his body shifted to absorb the
collision, his arm snapped just below the elbow, splintering bone and jamming
it up and out of his flesh. Bone tore
through his skin like two hands tearing fabric.
The rig
smashed into the truck, sending the guy face-first into the rig. His nose and cheek were smacked by the steel
workhorse, sending blood splashing out of deep wounds in his face. He was flung towards Burt as his driver side
airbag blew open, smacking him on his rebounding face as the truck spun near
180 degrees, shucked aside by the rig as it proceeded on its out-of-control
demolition derby.
Rattled and
surprisingly not injured, Burt knew this was his chance to make a break for
it.
As Burt
opened the door, the man groaned, reaching out to Burt with his good hand,
coated red with his own blood.
“Hey,
dude,” the guy groaned. “Help me.”
Without a
word, Burt just slammed the door and ran off.
Burt was
now only a few short blocks away. But
more chaos was just ahead as well, waiting for him.
===============
FOLLOW THE CHAPTERS HERE!
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