DEAD: Confrontation (38 page)

I resumed my journey, and two days later, I arrived at the road leading to the place I called home. I could not help but feel a sense of disappointment and sadness over the apparent loss of Jon and Jake. Every single day, I kept expecting them to appear. They would come up on either side of me as I walked and act like nothing had happened.

As I headed down the road that led down and would eventually deposit me at the entrance of Death Alley, I passed a few zombies scattered and sprawled in the snow. I paused and was only a little surprised to discover that these had to be fairly recent kills. They had no accumulation of snow on them and the bits of brain splattered around their heads still glistened with a trace of moisture.

As I continued down the road, I started to pass more and more of the downed creatures. I felt my heart speed up. Then I smelled smoke.

Breaking into a run, I flashed a quick glance at the stand right as the road empties into the grounds. It was empty. Looking up at the cabin, things looked peaceful. That was a problem. It was midday and nobody was out and about. Shielding my eyes, I looked up at the crow’s nest but it was too shadowy. I grabbed my binoculars and felt a lump in my throat when I confirmed that it was empty.

When I heard the shriek, I drew my weapon and took off at a run. I had no idea if what I was charging into was
living or undead, but there was no disputing the sound of Thalia screaming. I would do what I had to to save her…or die trying.

The snow was slush and like running in quicksand. It was worse than those dreams you have sometimes where the faster you run, the slower you seem to go. As I crossed the drawbridge, I saw at least a hundred zombies wandering around in the moat.

The last bit was all uphill and I slipped twice. The second time, I shrugged out of my pack and scrambled to my feet. As I reached the parking lot, I found at least fifty dead zombies scattered about. The door to the cabin was open and I felt dread start to squeeze my heart.

Why did I ever leave?
I wondered. What was supposed to be a supply run had turned into mass murder and the loss of the best fighters we had. I just could not believe that it was going to end like this. In my heart, I was certain that I would find the last of my friends and people I loved either dead or walking dead inside that cabin.

My feet skidded when I reached the porch and I didn’t need to look down to know I was standing in a puddle of blood.
As I looked inside, I saw what I was almost sure was one of the soldiers that Gabe had left behind. He was torn in half and the upper part of him was trying to crawl towards me. Since it was unlikely that he would be catching up to me, I ignored him as I headed down the length of the porch and peeked around the corner. That was the direction that I had heard Thalia.

I hopped the rail and moved down the side of the cabin. When I got to the back, I had a perfect view down to the picnic grounds and the creek…
and my friends gathered around an eighteen-wheeler.

It looked like e
verybody was down there…including Thalia who was standing on the bumper of the truck and pointing up at me. She screamed again, but this time I knew why. I broke into a run, and that is why I never saw the person that lunged out from between two big mounds of snow and knocked me to the ground. We rolled twice and I ended up on top. I already had my machete drawn and had somehow managed the miracle of not only keeping it in my grasp, but also not cutting me or my assailant. That last part was about to be remedied. I put the blade to the person’s throat and froze when I realized it was a girl.

That pause was only for a second though and I pressed the sharpened steel to the exposed, slender throat. The eyes that stared back at me went through a whole bunch of emotions until they finally
settled on recognition.

“Billy?”

“Shelly.” I hissed. “I see you have returned. And with zombies again?”

“It’s not what you think,” she tried to
explain. The problem was that I had heard it all before.

“Billy Haynes,” a familiar voice snapped from behind me.
“Get off that girl this instant.”

“But—” I started to protest.

“I said get off that girl,” Dr. Zahn repeated.

I looked down at her and felt my eyes narrow. This wasn’t over. She stuck her tongue out at me!

“Well, look who decided to show up.”

“Jake?” I spun around. “But…but…”

“Heard a commotion just before sunrise—” he started to explain.

“You never woke me for my watch!” I interrupted.

Jake had the decency to look embarrassed when he spoke. “I fell asleep, kid. I didn’t realize how damn tired I was and drifted off.”

“But I watched…I waited…what happened?”

Jake explained that the “commotion” ended up being Jon—sort of anyways. He had been on our trail when he ran into scouts from some group that had come down to see what all the commotion was about in La Grande. According to these people, that particular compound was suspected in the kidnappings of people from several of the smaller groups in the area. Jon had managed to free a handful of people before he left. One of them was the daughter of a member of the group he had encountered. They demanded that he stay so they could thank him proper with a little celebration. It seems they had an untapped keg of beer…their last one that they had liberated from some small pub and were saving for a special occasion.

Jake insists that they came back for me, but he doesn’t seem to be able to remember exactly when that took place and admits to have consumed a few mugs of the brew before it dawned on him that he had left me alone.

As for why we didn’t meet up or cross paths on my trip home, the forest is a big place. We could have been a hundred yards from each other and not known it. There was a compliment somewhere in the story about how they had been so impressed with not being able to find my trail.

But there were still lots of questions. Why was Shelly here?
What had brought all the zombies? And then there was Thalia’s scream.

It turns out that Shelly brought a few friends with her and came asking permission to join the group. The two friends are men. Greg and Dave Carrigan. They are in their thirties, and they are identical twins. They also had a run in with Gabe Wi
nters’ people a month or so ago. Apparently, Winters and his troop were only being partially truthful. Nobody could actually dispute that they were from a base in Utah, however, they were a foraging team for that compound in La Grande. The Carrigan’s had escaped when their small camp was hit just about twenty miles east of here.

Fortunately, the five who had been left behind had not go
tten a good look at them and so did not recognize them when they arrived with Shelly. After letting everybody know what the deal was, Dr. Zahn had drugged the five and tied them up.

Which led to the story of the zombies.
The Carrigans knew where there was a huge cache of supplies that Winters and his people had stashed. They had gone out for it and drove it back. And that explained the big rig parked down on the backside of the hill. There was no way to get it across the drawbridge, much less up the hill. A large herd had followed them and had to be handled.

The fight had been a rough one by the looks. And I had missed it. Shelly had been on watch at the stand and gone up when she heard the truck arriving. She had started to kill what she thought were just a few stragglers, then the herd came around the corner to the east and she had run to warn everybody.

They had to fall back when over five hundred had made it across the drawbridge. They were actually preparing to try and escape into the woods and make for the fallback location when Jake and Jon arrived a few hours ago and waded into the fight with the people from the group that they had met outside of La Grande.

As we start the
clean-up, there are now fifty-seven men, women, and children living here. We don’t have enough room as it stands. The talk is to see about moving down into La Grande. Jon and Jake believe that they might be able to unify other groups and that, within the year, if everybody works together, we could take back the entire city.

It seems that spring might be a very busy season.

Keep going for the original short, “
That Ghoul Ava: Her First Adventures
*”

*Book one of a new Horror/Comedy by TW Brown

PLUS!!!

a sneak peek at “
That Ghoul Ava

& The Queen of the Zo
mbies
”

It’s Sunday. I hate Sundays. If cornered, I’d say I hate Tuesdays, too. They’re just such Nothing days. Oh…and it’s snowing; but I love the snow, so it makes today a bit of a wash.

Wait! I’m being so rude. My name is Ava Birch.  It’s pr
onounced Ay-va.  I’m not some shiny, white robot in a Disney flick in love with a trash compactor, so do not call me Eee-va.  Oh yeah, and I’m a ghoul.

Now before you get all weirded out, I’m not a zombie and I’m not a deranged vampire. I don’t lie in wait for innocent men, women, and children and feast on them. I eat the already dead. And no, I don’t hang out in graveyards and dine on those about to be buried. Do you know what sorts of things they pump into dead bodies? Then I suggest you read
Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain
by Jessica Mitford.

Ewwwwww!

Ghouls, for those of you in utter confusion or sucked into the strange alternate realities that besmirch a ghoul’s good name, eat the dead. We aren’t contagious. We can’t bite or scratch you and turn you—a good thing for those who have found themselves in my bed—into one of us.  (Poor, unwitting necros.)  From what I understand—I’ve only met one other ghoul and he wasn’t very helpful—our condition is genetic. Then, we have to die in such a way that enough remains to come back.

I’m sure there are a thousand things I could tell you, but I’m equally sure that, if it’s important, it will come up over the course of events. What you do need to know is that I’m no Betsy Sinclair or Amanda Feral!  I’m pretty sure my love of blue eye shadow, 80s fashion sense, and adoration of Poison—the group, not the substance—would prevent me from ever being confused with the likes of
them
.

Did I just mention Poison? I’ve got to admit, if Brett Michaels ever succumbs to his illness, I may have to rethink my dietary rules. If I could manage to sneak his cold, blue body from whatever morgue he ended up in? Mmmmmm…Brett Michaels.

I had a thing for C.C. DeVille, but he got all clean and sober. That skinny little bastard will probably live to be ninety. That’s a bit too stringy for me.

Anyways, I’ve digressed enough. Back to me. How did it all start? And what were those first few weeks like? Chances are, if you’re reading this, you know tons about zombies, vampires, and maybe werewolves. Unless of course, your exposure to the undead consists of that silly
Twilight
crap…yuck! Well, I’m here to tell you that the undead aren’t all sexy twenty-somethings or pretty boys with six-pack abs.

I was thirty-two when I went through The Change. It was 1999, and I was not—in fact—partying like the song suggests.  That year was terrible. My husband left me for a girl he was ha
ving a not-so-subtle affair with from his office. I can’t be too mad; I’d had a fling of my own with a bartender at the restaurant where I was a waitress. Still…I wasn’t gonna run away with him or anything. It was casual flirting that lead to sitting in a car after work passing a bottle and a joint back and forth. One thing led to another, and pretty soon we were doing the ‘back seat mambo’ while
Every Rose Has Its Thorn
played on the car stereo.

The autopsy on my marriage went something like this: we were married for six years; stopped having regular sex after two; and were down to birthday and anniversary sex after four. Last I heard, Edgar was still married to that sl—.  Excuse me, to that sweet girl. They even had twin girls. Good for him…them.

The worst part about the divorce was that I was a waitress.
He
was/is a rising executive in an advertising firm. I ended up in a rundown apartment complex in Southeast Portland.
He
has a gorgeous colonial in Tualatin. I didn’t ask for alimony, and since we didn’t have any children…I was pretty much back to square one.

I never cared much for school. I met Edgar at a party thrown by twice-removed mutual friends. Honestly, I wasn’t gold-digger. We met. We hit it off. The freaky sex was fun. Marriage just sorta happened. I wish it was more exciting than that, but real life seldom is.

After we split, I tried to reinvent myself about a dozen times. Somehow, I always ended up waitressing in places with party atmosphere bars, going home—or at least to the parking lot—with too many co-workers or big tippers, and waking up with that gnawing sense of self-loathing.

When I looked in the mirror, I saw a used car. Sure, my El
vira-length, jet-black hair, gray eyes, and, oh yeah, thirty-eight DDs looked good. The time hadn’t run out yet on my hourglass figure, but I could see a few cracks here and there. Crows were definitely perching on the edges of my eyes, and my once-flat belly was developing a bit of a speed bump. Hey! I did say I was thirty-two.

One morning I just fell off my mental ledge. I’d woke to a phone call from my most recent boyfriend who decided that he needed to “at least try and give an honest go” at being a good husband to his wife. That meant those plans we’d made for my thirty-third birthday the next week were probably scratched.  Somehow, I ended up standing in front of my medicine cabinet.  A moment later, all my prescription bottles were empty…along with the half a bottle of white zin I had left over from the prev
ious day’s lunch.

Now, I don’t know all the mojo and hocus pocus that went on. What I do know is that I woke up two days later on my bat
hroom floor. I admit I sat there wanting to cry, but nothing happened. That should’ve been my first clue. I mean, it was like my brain was telling me I was sad, but the voice in my head trying to pass on that message was two doors down and had a rag stuffed in its mouth.

When I stood up and looked in the mirror, I did one of those “Eek! I saw a mouse!” squeals. My eyes were (are) black. I don’t just mean the pretty part. I had two shiny black orbs sta
ring back at me. Then I did something a bit silly…I blinked a few times like that might help.

After I got over trying to fake out my reflection by jumping out from, and back in front of the mirror a dozen or so times, I huffed a stand of hair out of my face and ventured into my apartment. That was when I got surprise number two: it was the middle of the night. My place was shrouded in darkness. Of course that had me dashing back into the bathroom. Nope, the light was definitely out. I could see in the dark! Weird. Right?

So many times, you hear about people turning Were or Vamp—or whatever else there is to turn into—and there is some sort of guide or helper that shows up to at least walk them through those first awkward steps.  Hell…even Buffy had Giles.  Guess who showed up to help poor little Ava? Nobody. Well, there was that one guy…but that was way late and I mostly had it down by then.

While I was wandering around my apartment amazing m
yself at things like how well I could see—even when I stepped inside my closet and shut the door—I smelled it. How do I describe it? Imagine your favorite food is cooking in the kitchen. Now, multiply it by about a hundred so that the smell seems to be seeping into your pores. It’s so thick that you taste it in the back of your throat. Got it? Well it’s like that coupled with a weird homing beacon thingy so you know exactly where to go to serve up a big plateful.

Here’s where it gets yucky. I could feel my mouth d
oing…something. I resisted the pull of the homing beacon (which is apparently quite a feat for a ghoul) and ran into the bathroom. Then I did another one of those “Eeks!” only this time it was like I’d seen a machete-wielding serial killer. My mouth had changed all right. A set of razor-sharp chompers had sprouted, complete with fierce-looking fangs—upper and lower—replacing my normally pretty white teeth that mommy and daddy spent a fortune on when I was younger. I don’t care who you are, headgear in sixth grade is far more embarrassing than your first bra or first period.

So I’ve got this wood chipper for a mouth now, and even worse, my toothy grin could be substituted for a close up from something out of
Shark Week
. You’ve heard the expression ‘ear-to-ear grin’? Well, I actually had one!

By now, there is this disgusting strand of drool dangling from my chin. I
want
to be totally mortified, but that smell seems to be physically pulling me towards it. The next thing I know, I’m in the parking lot of my apartment complex, and in what seems like two steps, I’m past the dozen or so parking spaces and standing beside the big, green Dumpster for use by the tenants. There is a vile, nasty, seeped-in-his-own-filth wino sprawled on the ground.  He may as well have been a plate of cheese-stuffed tortellini with pesto and caramelized garlic.

I stared down at him. He was so grimy and shaggy. He had that uni-bomber beard going on, and the hair on his head was matted, sticking out from under a beanie that looked to have been dipped in motor oil.

Oh well…presentation isn’t everything.

Before I knew what was happening, I was chowing on my wino-buffet. When I was done, I gurged up his clothes, shoes, ratty socks, and that beanie like a cat with a hairball.

I was still in a bit of a daze when I got back to my apartment. My brain was trying to process what I’d done, but I couldn’t muster up even a teensy weensy bit of revulsion. After brushing and flossing and brushing again, I flopped down on my couch. Then, that first beam of sunlight shot through my partially open curtains. It was like a laser trying to burn through my skull.

I was literally climbing my living room walls to get away from it. My fingernails had become vicious claws.
Huh. That’s interesting
. I’m fairly certain that was the extent of my thoughts at the moment. That, and
Sunlight bad! Ava no likey!

The lesson I took away from that was, if I’m spooked or threatened, I get all ‘scary monster’ with long claws. Did I fail to mention that my toenails had done pretty much the same thing, ruining a perfectly good pair of Nikes? I tried to imagine the look on the face of that little Korean lady who I went to on the rare occasions when I could afford to treat myself to a mani-pedi.

Anyways, I spent the rest of that first day in my bedroom closet. Funny thing was that I didn’t actually sleep. I
heard
everything going on around me. I heard the mailman slide my bills and all the advertisements addressed to ‘occupant’ through the slot on my door. I heard the children in the complex leave for school and eventually return. I heard that sleazebag neighbor, Elliot Richards, kiss his wife—who worked two jobs to his none—as she hurried off to catch the bus. Twenty minutes later I heard Belinda Beatty, the nineteen-year-old slut with two kids from two different fathers who lives off welfare and a little undeclared babysitting money—along with whatever she wrings out of the guys like Elliott who she visits at all hours of the day—knock on his door for a mid-morning bang. I do believe I told you I live in a slummy little apartment complex.

Funny thing, while I was sitting in my closet, avoiding su
nlight, listening to a forty-year-old perv play out some sort of sick fantasy with a nineteen-year-old hussy, my nails sprouted. It’s like my
Hulk
powers! I get scared
or
angry and my hands and feet go all switchblade.

I was going just a little crazy when I discovered that I can dial my attention around like a radio. I even have a bit of a SEEK function. My downstairs neighbor had a home visit by his parole officer. The Hispanics four doors down were watching one of those over-the-top telenovelas. The managers were ma
king a list of all the folks who were late with rent. I wasn’t on it…

Yay!

So I sat there all day doing the equivalent of channel surfing. At some point, it struck me: my phone hadn’t rung. I didn’t recall seeing the little flashing light indicating that I had voicemail. Nobody had knocked on my door to see if I was okay.

I didn’t matter.

At some point, I had fallen through the cracks. I was indistinguishable from all the other anonymous faces in the crowd. Not even my work had called. At some point, you’d think that at least my place of employment would be… aware?...concerned?...something.