DEAD: Darkness Before Dawn (29 page)

“I was down on the road…fourteen damn lanes, and that wasn’t counting the emergency lanes, never in my life have I seen anything like it, but anyways, Catie went up. We knew right away that she saw something bad because she didn’t even stay up there very long and she was coming down fast.”

“So where is everybody else?” Trent beat Heather and Aleah to the question.

“That’s just it, we started to head…I think it was west, but then we got into this neighborhood with a bunch of tall buildings that were packed in close. We were arguing about finding a place to hide until the zombies passed, but Catie had said no to everyplace up to this point because she said there were more than she had ever seen before and we needed to be inside som
eplace big, and there was this hospital, Saint Bernard’s. When we saw it, Sean and Deanna took off with a bunch of the kids, and that was when it started to rain fire.”

Everybody was looking at her with confusion. Rose sighed. “Not literally, but there was obviously a group or
gang in the hospital that were using it as a camp or something. They started tossing flaming bottles at us. That was when the entire group started to panic. It didn’t help when the first couple of bottles hit some of the kids. They started to scream and it was like zombies had been just waiting for us…they came out from every direction.

“Sean grabbed Deanna, I saw it because he was right ahead of me when it happened. He grabbed her hand as she was trying to help one of the little girls get loose from a zombie that had crawled out from under a three car wreck. He yanked her away and when she tried to resist…he punched her in the face and she
just dropped. I was about to knock him down and try to wake up Deanna…and then it just seemed like zombies were everyplace. People were being pulled down all around me.

“I guess that was when whoever was i
nside the hospital grew a conscience…they must have realized that we were mostly just kids. A few of them came rushing out, but I could tell it was not a group decision because there were others inside that were yelling at the ones who came to help. People were dying everywhere, just like back in the beginning, like what we had seen on television.

“Catie just showed up. She was covered in blood and I have no idea how much if any was hers, but she grabbed me by the shoulders and told me to run. When I pointed to Sean carrying Deanna away, she just told me to forget it and to run for my life.”

“And just you? I mean nobody else made it?” Trent asked, the skepticism very clear in his voice.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how bad things went and just how fast. It was crazy. One minute we were moving along, then we were running, then we get attacked, and to finish it off, zo
mbies seemed to pop up out of the ground. I still can’t believe that I got away.”

“It doesn’t seem that you did,” Aleah said. “With what I saw headed this
direction, those zombies must have been on your tail the whole way.”

“That’s just it, they weren’t,” Rose insisted. “It was like there was somebody else out there helping them. Something was keeping them on my tail.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Heather said with a dismissive shake of her head.

“Well we don’t have time to talk about it.” Aleah stepped between the two girls. “We have to go. My best guess is that we have twenty minutes before t
he main body of that zombie flood comes rolling through this area.”

“Like I said before,”
Trent mumbled, “you guys have too much going on. In the short time I’ve been with you, I’ve seen warring factions fighting, bombs blowing up, and now this…a city’s worth of zombies being magically led to where we are hiding out in some sort of oasis that is stocked better than the compound I lived in but miraculously empty.”

“If you have a problem with things…go! Nobody is forcing you to stay here!” Heather spun on the man with anger brimming over with enough vehemence to cause the man to take a step back.

“I was just making an observation.” Trent raised his hands in surrender.

“Last time,” Aleah barked, “we don’t have time for this ga
rbage.”

She turned and headed down the hallway to where Kevin was tucked in to one of the cots. She stopped cold in the doo
rway so suddenly that Heather collided into her back.

“What the—” Heather began.

Aleah stepped forward and allowed Heather to see what had caused her to come to such an abrupt halt.

“Son of a bitch,” Heather gasped.

15

Welcome to Island City

I felt the world fade in around me. I shoved away the feelings of disappointment. Despite the emotions I had battling in my head, I knew for a fact that I did not truly wish to be dead.

I opened my eyes
, prepared to see the familiar sights of the small room I’d come to in the last time. Instead, this was a large open room with a series of bunk beds along the walls. I was in the bottom bunk in the bed that was in the corner farthest from the door.

Sunlight streamed in through the window and gave the e
ntire room a warm glow. I did not have the pounding headache of last time, nor was there an IV plugged in to my body.

Something felt strange and it took me a few moments to r
ealize that I felt clean. Sweeping aside the blankets, I was surprised to discover that I was in clean clothes; a simple set of red sweats, but they were clean.

My eyes scanned the room and I saw that a few
of the beds were showing signs that the occupants were stirring. Over by one of the windows, Melissa was sitting in a rocking chair feeding her baby. Things seemed almost…normal.

Swinging my legs over and coming up to a sitting position, I took a better look. I was relieved to see that everybody was here. The odd thing was that I was not surprised. For some inexplic
able reason, I felt that these people were not out to hurt us.

Melissa heard me stirring and glanced over with a smile and a small wave. I returned it and then busied myself with making my bed. Why
, once they had children, did women suddenly forget that their boobs were a part of the female body that most men found arousing?

Once I finished making my bed, I walked over to the only door. I was a little surprised that it was unlocked. I had expected us to be under some sort of confined lockup until we were sworn in or whatever it was that these people did to make newcomers part of their community.

I stepped out into the hallway to discover that we were in an actual house; from the looks, a pretty nice one at that. I grew up in what I considered a “normal” neighborhood. However, there were some kids in our class that lived houses that made you feel uncomfortable the moment you walked inside. This was one of
those
types of houses.

I opened the door across the hall from our big bedroom and found another bedroom almost as big. It had an open closet door that revealed an empty walk-in that was about the size of my bedroom growing up; so yeah…this was a pretty nice place.

I walked in and looked out the window to see that I was in fact on the second floor. This particular room looked out over what I thought might have once been a golf course. I saw dozens of people outside. It looked like they were setting up long rows for planting stuff.

Heading down the hall
, I found one more bedroom, almost as big as the one our group had been set up in, and a bathroom. I was surprised to discover that there was a portable camping toilet set up inside and a bucket of water and bar of soap next to the sink. In a neat row, still in the packages were ten toothbrushes and a tube of honest-to-goodness toothpaste. There was also a stack of folded towels. I didn’t count them, but I was almost willing to bet there would be ten of those as well.

After availing myself of everything this room had to offer, I headed down the stairs. The living room was huge and had a couch that looked like it would hold our entire group plus a few extras. A fireplace on the wall to my left had a campfire sized blaze going in it. There was what I bet had once been a pretty amazing kitchen with all its shiny surfaces and even a flame grill built in to the stove. A long table filled the adjoining dining room
, and I was once again not surprised to discover that it would seat all of us.

There was a sliding glass door that opened out o
nto a porch. I stepped outside and was hit with a blast of cool, fresh air that made my skin get all goose pimply.

It was sunny out, but there was still just a little lingering bite to the air that said winter had not left all that long ago. Rubbing my arms, I was actually
enjoying the feeling of the coolness on my skin when I heard something off to my right. My hand instinctively went to my hip where I found…nothing. I wasn’t wearing a weapon! But then, why should I be? I had just climbed out of bed.

“Easy, Mister Haynes,” a male voice called out with a laugh. A tall man finished sh
utting the gate and then turned to me with a smile on his face. I did not recognize him at all. “My name is Graham Setzer. I am here to answer your questions and to help you get settled in to our little community.”

My eyes scanned for weapons and was
surprised to discover that he had nothing more than a belt knife. Despite my lapse in personal security, I could not ever imagine reaching a point where I would be comfortable if I did not have a machete or large-bladed weapon on my person.

I looked past him to see if he might have a few “helpers” in tow. I could not imagine that he would show up alone…and so scantily armed. It dawned on me that we were not really that much of a threat. In fact, besides Levent, I was the only male in the bunch! How in the hell had that happened?

“I see you are still just a bit cautious. That’s fine,” Graham said as he walked up the three stairs that led to the raised porch.

He grabbed a chair and pulled it away from the round deck table, taking a seat and folding his hands in his lap. Looking around once more and finding nobody, I took the chair opposite from him and sat down. I clasped my hands in front of me on the table and fixed him with what I figured was probably a look of confusion.

“I imagine that you most likely have quite a few questions, so let me give you the rundown first, and then I will answer anything that you have left.” Graham produced a canteen and twisted off the top, taking a big drink.

I could smell it. And seeing the steam waft from the little opening was almost hypnotic.
I had almost forgotten what coffee smelled like, much less how it tasted. When he handed his canteen across the table, I almost thought my hands would start shaking.

“We got lucky…found a Mill Stone delivery truck on the i
nterstate a few months back. Some of the stuff on the edges was ruined, but further in everything was fine. You should have seen us…I think a few people actually cried,” Graham said with a smile as I let the aroma waft up my nostrils.

“I didn’t think I would ever see coffee again,” I admitted. Then, unable to draw it out any longer, I took a sip.

It was black and bitter, just how I drank it. In fact, I used to tease Jamie for adding cream and sugar. I told him that was exactly how my mom drank it. I suddenly missed my friend almost as much as I had those first few days.

“So, the first thing that you should know is that this place is called Island City,” Graham began to speak while I closed my eyes and bit the inside of my mouth to keep from crying. “Not
hing clever or anything in regards to the name. It is actually what this area was called before the groaners—”

“Groaners?” I opened my eyes and raised my eyebrows in question.

“We know the popular thing is to call them zombies, but for some reason groaners simply stuck. Anyways…when all of this insanity started, several of the members of the La Grande Country Club got together. Among them were owners of a few of the bigger local construction companies and a handful of ranchers, They made decisions and brought in as many of their employees as possible.

“Here is the part that is kind of funny. Linda Marshall, the owner of Marshall Builders was a closet horror fan. She even used to go to that big convention in San Diego every year. She was the one who made everybody watch this movie called
Dawn of the Dead
. Here we were, world crumbling, everything going to hell and she has three hundred or so people in the reception room of the country club watching a movie with that goofy dad from
Modern Family
and Ving Rhames.

“When it was over, she gets up in front of the whole group and says that we needed to make a choice right then about if we wanted to live. That night, we were bringing in big rigs, earth movers, pile drivers, dozers and cement mixers. I think a few of the men might have cried when all those babies ended up being parked on the golf course.

“Anyways, the first thing we did is empty all of our offices of things like maps and city plans. We wanted to have an idea of what it would entail to secure the entire area from Interstate 84 on the west, Buchannon Lane to the south, the Grande Ronde River to the north and then a continuous line south using East 5th Street.” Graham pulled out a piece of paper that was sealed in laminate from his vest and laid it on the table.

I leaned in and was a bit surprised to see a Google Earth sa
tellite image of the La Grande area including a lot of the valley. He traced a section with his finger and repeated the borders. It was overwhelming.

“We took in folks from the city of La Grande those first days, but not as many as we would have thought.” Now Graham was sitting back in his chair. I could see his eye sort of glaze over as he sunk in the memory. “
Saw a few convoys of military vehicles pass through heading north on I-84. I guess we didn’t rate them slowing down to see if they could help. Then there were the fires and the night the power failed for good. Each one was its own part of the whole thing, but I still see them as a single event.”

“So you have been taking in people from the beginning?” I asked.

“It seemed like the right thing to do,” Graham said with a nod. “Had to change our policy eventually. Started having some murders, rapes, all sorts of nasty business. Some of the people we let in were worse than the monsters outside the fences. Still, we have managed to create quite a nice place here.”

I had to wonder what things might have been like if we had come in from the northeast instead of the southwest a year ago when we had pulled off one of our first group rescues at a war
ehouse complex in La Grande. I do remember seeing the damage from the fires and all the undead. I also seem to recall that it looked like there was a lot of fighting going on between the living factions. This was where we had picked up Sunshine and her people…and that little boy who’d been infected and almost killed Thalia.

That was the first time that I’d seen Steve really lose it. That was also when it began to sink in for me that this whole nigh
tmare was not going to end any time soon.

“About six months ago, a military convoy arrived. By then, we had our wall in place, the spill trench was dug, and we were getting ready to hunker down for winter. We’d hit several of the area farms, taking anything useful or edible and either drying it or putting it up in jars. Actually had to empty an old feed war
ehouse and build rows of shelves to hold it all.

“That convoy had rolled right past us and into the heart of La Grande. For weeks we could hear the shooting. It was like having the opening thirty minutes of
Saving Private Ryan
on a loop with all the gunfire and explosions…and the screaming. One thing about this new world, sound can sure travel farther than we ever realized.

“One day, I guess they decided to send a scouting party to check out what they obviously assumed was just a small outpost of survivors. What they failed to realize is that damn near ever
ybody in these parts is an outdoorsman. Maybe not all…but most. And by this time, we had ventured out to the outdoorsman shops, pawn shops, Walmart, and damn near every house within a three hour walk. We were heavily armed. And then we found the armory—”

“It was your group?” I interrupted. “We had assumed it was Winters and his crew.”
I was referring to the big mystery of where all the guns had vanished to from the National Guard armory depot.

“You know what they say about assuming things,” Graham said with an easy smile. “That was one of the first places we hit after things settled down…lost a few really good people that day.” He sighed deep and once again I knew that he was seeing things from the past on that unforgiving movie screen that sits in our brain.

“So you were fighting Winters and all those folks at the military compound since a few months into things.” I made it a statement rather than a question based on what I’d heard. I was quickly corrected.

“Nope, after that first encounter, they stayed away. That sure didn’t do much for some of the other smaller groups hol
ding up in these parts. Even heard from some of the folks who joined us over the winter that they had started to venture out to some of the surrounding areas. But the stories we first heard were simply too bizarre to initially believe.” Graham folded his hands on the table and leaned forward, his expression grim. “Seems that they were using mobs of groaners as shock troops…leading them to whatever their new target might be and letting them soften things up before swooping in. I imagine that they were honing their skills in preparation for an assault on our location. That last part is just speculation, but it would make sense.”

“So is there something special about this
place and we just happened to luck in on it?” I asked. “I mean, is this valley special. What the heck is so big about La Grande and the surrounding area.”