DEAD: Reclamation: Book 10 of the DEAD series (4 page)

“If this is your place, we didn’t mean anything.” Chad rose to his feet, careful to keep his hands out wide. He stepped over just enough to put his body between the stranger and his daughter.

“Actually, I have a camp on that island.” The stranger hiked a thumb over her shoulder.

Chad craned his neck and nodded. That island would be a good choice if a person was alone or only with a couple of others. If he had any plans of settling here, that would be an ideal location.

“Still, if we have imposed or trespassed, we will be on our way.” Chad brought his eyes back to the stranger.

“Actually, I’d really like to join you for dinner if I could.” Making a show of being very cautious, the woman brought a small bag off her shoulder and opened it. She produced a handful of blackberries. “I’ll supply dessert.”

Chad had glanced at Ronni. His daughter gave a non-committal shrug. That is how they met Caroline Hardin.

Caroline had been with a group of seven. Together, the group had fortified a small settlement just north of the lodge. They had considered staying in the lodge itself, but they preferred the idea of being away from anyplace that might attract attention—living or otherwise. What they had done instead was to strip the lodge of anything they could use as they built their own little settlement in the woods.

They had fared well until one of them contracted a virus of some sort. It had spread fast with fever and the inability to keep anything in or down. Two died quick, but the others lingered. At some point, Caroline had slipped out of consciousness. She awoke having no idea how much time had passed. She was also the only one to survive.

Not wanting to venture from a location that had seen so little traffic of the undead, much less the living, Caroline had decided that she would make camp on the island. She had been slowly bringing what she needed from her old camp when Chad and Ronni arrived.

They had stayed in the area for years. With it only being the three of them, Chad had agreed that the island would be the best place for them to settle. Then a drought hit, and with it, the land became a tinderbox waiting for that one spark. It came in the form of lighting. The wildfires raged in the hills and Chad made the decision for them to move. Taking what they could salvage, the trio moved on.

They had been on the go for the better part of five months when they found a place that a faded sign identified as Hyatt Reservoir. After two days where they made a complete circuit of the massive lake, they found a hilltop that had a creek at the base.

They had found their new home. They started with a perimeter fence and cleared enough land to have a decent farm. Today marked the day they would start on the construction of their log cabin.

With winter still months away, they would have plenty of time to get in that first crop. It would be sparse as far as vegetables were concerned, but they would have no shortage of meat and fish.

He felt a little like a character from a movie he had seen when he was young.
Jeremiah Johnson
had been the title. There had been a scene where Jeremiah and the Native American woman had built a cabin together.

He shook his head as his mind allowed that part of the movie to play out. It had ended poorly.

“Are you just gonna stand there?”

The voice of his daughter snapped him back to reality. He gave a sheepish smile and moved down the length of the log to make the next notch.

***

Jody crawled forward on his stomach. After scanning the area with his binoculars, he handed them to Bill Pitts. For the briefest of moments, he had the sensation of just how surreal the situation was that he currently found himself.

Bill Pitts had been a hard-nosed sergeant back in the days before the world went haywire with the rise of the dead. Then he had been a deserter. And to round it off, he had been the leader of a superior force that could have wiped his little community off the face of the earth. Instead, there was an accord reached. It had met with some resistance, but in the end, it had actually proved to be a huge benefit for both communities.

Over the past decade, the two communities had come together. They had brought in over five thousand other survivors. In addition, they now had electricity using a combination of wind and solar energy.

It was a bit like the Old West; and there was a wildness to it that some found to be too much. However, the truth was that they were prospering as a community. And that was the current problem. There were those who wanted what the people of Swift-Hope had built.

The fact that they had built a corridor that allowed travel between the two small hubs as well as the ability of folks to settle along the length of that corridor only made them a larger target. There had been resistance to the idea of that expansion as well. Jody and his closest friend Danny O’ Leary had almost come to blows over it.

The plan was to clear a straight line between Hope and Swifton. They would build a barricade, as well as place towers along the length. The idea was that, if these two communities were going to co-exist, then it would be a benefit to ensure that travel between the two was not risky. Both communities began to go to work on the project. And it was actually a surprise when people began to volunteer to take residence in the watch towers that were built along the length.

These towers were each a miniature fortress. Once completed, the person or persons who volunteered to live there became part of the community security. Flags were made to send messages much like coastal warning flags.

Over the years, there had been setbacks. Twice, massive swarms of the undead had come. Both times it had been like weathering the fury of a tsunami. You could do nothing but watch the wave of undead slam into the defenses and then do everything possible to minimize the destruction when they breached the perimeter wall.

That had also been the reason for another form of security. It was clear that the undead reacted to sound. It was for that reason that they had devised a second line of defense: turrets.

Based on the design of the rook in a chess set, they had built single stone structures in a ring around their communities and the travel corridor. These had been built about a mile out and were also manned by volunteers. The incentives for taking these isolated positions were regular supply deliveries of the finest produce and meat, along with a variety of goods created by citizens of the duo-city now known as Swift-Hope.

It was the job of these outposts to not only notify the community of impending danger, but also to commence the distraction protocol. That included the lighting of a series of huge bonfires that would hopefully alter the course of an incoming swarm. Additionally, there were a series of hand-cranked sirens that were placed in a line. Once again, these would ideally serve to lure the leading edge of a large concentration of the undead on a new course.

Three days ago, a runner from Turret Eleven arrived. Turret Ten had not raised its flag in response to the regular check in that the turrets did with each other as just another layer of security as well as to help ease some of the feelings of isolation that might set in over time.

They had sent a runner to Turret Ten. That runner had not returned. This was not the first time they had faced hostiles in the form of humans. Most of the time it was a hit-and-run style of attack. Due to the size of the Swift-Hope community, there had not really been any human threat that could truly be a danger to them. Obviously, this was different.

“I see at least a dozen,” Bill said as he handed the binoculars back to Jody.

“They are either very brave or very stupid,” Jody muttered as he took another look.

These invaders had obviously taken Turret Ten. People were coming and going in and out like they had no cares in the world. A huge fire had been built and what he had to assume were the bodies of the people who had once manned the post were being burned.

However, it also looked like they had taken a prisoner. A man was in a cage that had been hoisted a good twenty feet off the ground. The man looked pretty beat up and somebody had taken a blade to his chest, making an uncountable number of slices obviously meant to entice the man to give up information.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Rafe,” Bill warned.

Jody felt his gut twist. He focused in on the face of the man and had to force his hands to relax their grip on the glasses.

“What have you gotten yourself into, Danny?” Jody whispered.

***

The following is an excerpt from a journal found in an abandoned camp just outside of the ruins of Billings, Montana:

Entry One—

My name is Adam. I won’t bore you with my last name, since, if you are reading this, you would probably mispronounce it anyway. How about just Adam V.?

I am a hunter.

That opens up the question of what I hunt. Well, in the world of the dead, most of us are hunters of some sort. We hunt for food, or we hunt for a safe place to live. Some may even hunt for the lost world that lives in our memory.

I hunt the living. Don’t worry. I have a reason, and I don’t just hunt any living person. I only hunt the ones who have been brought to my attention.

As many of you know, when the dead came, it changed damn near everything. Some was actually for the better. No more Hollywood tabloids for one. Seriously, who cares about if some talentless pop star’s sister was banging the manager?

Although, now that I think about it…the manager might have made my list. I think the sister was only fourteen or fifteen and the manager was some skeezy old dude in his forties.

Some was for the worst. That first year, it seemed like every creep and playground lurker decided that it was open season on women and children. You could not run into a group of people that didn’t have at least one sad story to tell. And you always knew which one right away. They had that haunted look nine times out of ten. Most would jump out of their skin if you tapped them on the shoulder.

Zombies were not the worst problem like the old movies, books, and television shows always made you think. Nope, it was the living. As far as I am concerned, that is still the case.

Personally, I can’t be mad at zombies. That is like being mad at a great white shark or a grizzly bear. You show up in their home smelling like food and then get upset when they took a bite? Zombies are the same way. They are just doing what they do. They are the ultimate species when it comes to equal opportunity. Rich, poor, fat, skinny. You are all the same in the milky eyes of the undead.

But when it comes to people, that is different. You are making a choice to prey on those weaker than you for your own sick gratification. That is why I must wipe you off the face of the earth. With the population being reduced like it is, a single death is equal to thousands. So, the way I see it, every single time I kill one of those useless shit bags, I am actually killing thousands of the bastards.

My actual number of official kills is eighty-nine. Five escaped, and eleven I never found. I am currently hunting number ninety. He won’t escape. I know this because I am sitting on a log, writing this journal entry while he sits five feet away, staked to the ground. His name does not matter, and I will not let him become some sort of legend by writing it here.

Words are power. They last for all time. Whether you write them or say them, once they are out there, they live for eternity.

I actually found this journal in his backpack. It belonged to a girl named Suzi McFarlane. Most of her pages had been torn out. I don’t know why, I didn’t ask. I have no idea what became of the poor girl that used to write in this book, all I do know for certain is that this guy will never do anything to anybody again.

So…why have I appointed myself the judge, jury, and executioner of these scum bags? Simple. I was a dad before the zombies came. And it wasn’t zombies that took my precious little girl away from me. Death by zombie would have been a kind mercy compared to the fate my angel suffered at the hands of Ward Thomas Wilson.

Sorry…I had to stop writing for a minute. I spent a while kicking some garbage around. I am sure you get my meaning. Then I had a good cry. Not enough years will pass that I won’t randomly break out into tears over losing my baby girl.

You might be wondering why I would use Ward Thomas Wilson’s name, and not the name of that piece of crap that is sobbing just a few feet from me as I write this entry. Easy, Ward Thomas Wilson is a name that belongs in history. He put me into motion as the man I am today. He launched me on this quest that has no apparent ending. It is Ward Thomas Wilson that has helped bring the painful deaths I have handed out to the eighty-nine souls that now burn beside him in Hell.

Entry Two—

And now there are ninety.

He cried. Actually, he cried more than most. When I told him that he had to tell me every single thing that he did to that poor boy, he thought that I was joking. When I applied that cord to his scrotum and pulled it tight, he figured out that I was entirely serious.

I always make them spill the details, because I want to make them admit to the sick shit they have done. Most of them start crying when I ask them to tell me what they might think if I were to do those things to them. The main reason I want them to say all their crimes out loud is because I like to watch their eyes. Those are the window to the soul.