Dead: Siege & Survival (2 page)

He only had an instant to consider the solitary digit when the torso of a small child pulled itself around the corner at the end of the hallway. Close behind was what Kevin first mistook for a middle-aged man. However, as he took a step forward and raised his weapon, he realized that it was, in fact, a woman with a crew cut.

With a quick swing, he buried the blade deep into the head of the zombie his mind had named Annie Lennox. Allowing Annie’s weight to act in his favor, he stepped aside and yanked up to free his weapon. The creeping child was already at his boots by the time he recovered and was ready to swing again. It was probably the combination of Willa’s violent heaving just outside the door, the echoes of bodies crashing to the floor, and the mewling of the creeper at his feet. In any case, Kevin never heard the zombie that had staggered down the stairs behind him and to his right.

A cold hand brushed Kevin’s face, knocking his goggles cockeyed. Startled, Kevin threw his body down the hallway, landing on his shoulder and rolling up to his knees in what had to be one of the biggest kitchens he had ever seen. It also brought him face-to-face with a toddler-sized zombie.

Quickly shoving his goggles out of the way—he would not have the time needed to take off his gloves and make sure they didn’t have anything on them that might get into his eyes and possibly infect him—Kevin shoved the toddler away with a strong forearm. It slid across the grimy floor and slammed into a very solid cabinet door. Pulling his Ka-Bar from its sheath, he spun and found the approaching zombie that had snuck up on him standing in the hallway with its head cocked to one side as if considering him and the scene at its feet.

There it is again
, Kevin’s mind screamed. Once more he was faced with a child-zombie that seemed to be thinking. Its expression was still slack and void of emotion, but its body language was sending a very different story. It kept its distance just over an arm’s length away and tilted its head one way and then another in jerky fits.

The thumping of tiny feet made him glance back into the kitchen just in time to see the toddler take quick—for a zombie anyways—steps in his direction and reach for him with chubby, gray-green hands. With a backhand swing, Kevin brought the Ka-Bar around and plunged it into the left eye.

He turned back to the ten- or twelve-year-old girl in the hall. It hadn’t moved and continued to study
him
. Had he been a second quicker, he would have been able to possibly wave Willa off as she came from behind and drove a spike-fisted hand into the back of the zombie’s head.

“Crap,” Kevin sighed, his shoulders slumping.

“Umm…you’re welcome?” Willa planted a booted foot in the zombie’s back and yanked her gloved hand free.

Kevin explained how he’d noticed peculiar behavior from some of the child-aged zombies. He watched her face closely for any signs that she might think he was crazy. So far, his theories hadn’t been too warmly accepted by any of his group; that included his girlfriend Aleah who had been present for one such encounter. Willa’s face remained impassive the entire time. After he finished by telling her that the zombie in the hallway she’d just put down was exhibiting similar signs, and that he would have liked to find a way to observe it for a bit before putting something through its skull, she shrugged and nodded.

“You are probably one of the smartest people I have ever met. If you say zombies are acting weird then who am I to say otherwise.” Willa wiped off her gear with a dusty curtain.

Together, they searched the house for signs of any other nasty surprises. It was in an upstairs bedroom where they found a fresh horror. In a small bedroom, a little child looked to have wasted away to almost nothing.

“What the…” Willa’s voice faded, and for the first time, Kevin saw a hint of real vulnerability in the woman.

Entering the room, Kevin was curious how this person could possibly have existed in the same house as the horrors downstairs. Not to mention that one of them had actually been up here and caught him by surprise.

Checking the desiccated corpse, he noticed a few things; first, the child was a girl, and second, the child was practically hairless. He noticed a pink diary sitting on the nightstand and picked it up.

After thumbing through a few pages, he set the book back down. “Cancer.”

“Huh?”

“She had cancer.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I.” Kevin gave the room one more look.

“Yeah…” Willa let that word hang for a moment before continuing. “But I think we don’t get it on different levels.”

“I guess I am trying to figure out why the zombies didn’t touch her.” Kevin walked back out to the hallway and spent a few minutes wandering from room to room. He opened drawers and closets, but could not seem to find anything that satisfied him. He was several minutes in to his search when he realized that Willa was nowhere to be seen.

“Willa?”

“In here,” a voice drifted from the dead girl’s bedroom.

Kevin didn’t want to go back in the room. He’d become accustomed to the walking dead. He’d seen plenty of death in the past several months. What he didn’t like was the emaciated look of the girl in the bed; the fact that she had died a slow lingering death hurt him down to his soul.

“I’m going downstairs to make sure everything is as secure as we can make it for the night,” he called over his shoulder.

“Her name was Linda.” Willa stepped out of the room holding the diary. “Her family refused to go to the area FEMA shelter because they wouldn’t take her in due to her condition. It started with her dad.”

Kevin paused for a moment, and then continued on down the stairs. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to know any more about this girl’s suffering. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was get back on the road and return home to his group. He wanted to bring Valarie her medication so that she would stop seeing people who weren’t there. He wanted Aleah to hold him and tell him it would be okay…even though it would never really be okay.

As the shadows grew into an inky blackness the two sat in the bathroom where the rabbits roasted over an open flame in the tub. Willa let Kevin prepare the meal as she seemed unable to take her nose out of the diary. He only burned it a little.

They ate in silence and when he was finished, Kevin climbed inside his sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep. The dreams came in a torrent. Every face seemed to be screaming silently in pain.

Cary.

Mike.

Darrin.

His only friends in the world and the group he had left Virginia Beach with on a mission to survive the zombie apocalypse. Those faces gave way to Ruth and Angela Bergman. Shaw and his band of lunatics. The deranged teacher, Mr. Abernathy.

His sister.

Valarie.

His sister.

Valarie.

***

“Wake up,” a sweet voice whispered in his ear.

“Aleah?” Kevin rolled over and pulled the blurry figure close, his mouth seeking hers.

“Open your eyes, Romeo,” Willa snapped, shoving him back.

Kevin jolted awake. A wave of embarrassment made his face burn and his hands tingle. He tried to apologize, but not one word out of his mouth was understandable.

“Just relax,” Willa chuckled. “You didn’t do nothing wrong. But I need your ass awake right now.”

“What is it?” Kevin wanted to climb out of his sleeping bag, but certain…physiological responses made that an embarrassing proposition at the present time.

“Lots of noise outside.”

“Like zombie herd noise?”

“Like living people on the run and more living people chasing them.”

Kevin wiped the sleep from his eyes and the slight trace of drool from his chin as he struggled to fully awaken. His body ached all over, and it took him a while to realize why. He hadn’t just been out for a walk…he’d been slogging through almost knee-deep snow all day the previous day.

As he went through the ritual of packing up his gear, Willa kept pacing. As he picked up his pack, she almost seemed to be ready to run for the door. He hadn’t ever seen her this rattled. Of course, he had to admit that he didn’t know the woman all that well to begin with.

“Something bad was happening out there. I heard crying…definitely crying,” Willa insisted.

“Okay,” Kevin nodded, “but what is all this about?” He made a gesture with his hands that encompassed Willa.

“I don’t know what all you’ve seen out in the world since this happened…but there are some pretty bad people out there now that nobody is making folks behave.”

“I’ve seen my share of bad.”

“Yeah…but things have been happening to women that I don’t think you can really appreciate. You asked why that outfit I was with just had women? It’s because over half of us have been victimized in one way or another by men…often
groups
of men.”

Kevin felt a slight twist in his gut. He’d saved one young lady from an unimaginable situation and killed her captor in a rather violent fashion. He still had nightmares about it. However, it was in this moment that a wave of guilt washed over him. His guilt had not been for what Heather, the young woman he rescued, had endured. Rather, it was for his taking of a human life.

“Well I won’t let anything happen to you as long as I am still breathing,” Kevin vowed. It was as much to himself as it was to the normally strong woman who now stood before him seeming more like a frightened child.

Willa appeared to consider Kevin for a moment with a different eye than he was accustomed. A sad look clouded her expression and she shook her head. “That’s sweet, Kevin, but you’re just one person. There is a whole world out there…and a lot of really bad people are out there in it.”

“But you can’t believe that,” Kevin insisted.

“I can…and I do.”

“Then what are we fighting to stay alive for?”

“It’s in our nature…most of us anyways. Lots of folks took the easy way out a long time ago.”

“So you’re telling me that all that’s left out there in the world are monsters…rapists…”

“Not
all
,” Willa said with a sad smile. “There are a few men like you out there. However…most of the good guys died early on trying to save everybody around them. The cowards hid and waited for a world that they could poke their heads out into and finally crawl out from under their rocks.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“You aren’t a woman…a girl…or a child.”

Kevin considered that statement and then held a hand out to Willa. She took it and they headed out the back door of the house and listened to the stillness that was only interrupted by the occasional sounds of branches bending under the weight of the snow.

“Well whoever came through seems to have taken no notice of our tracks or these houses,” Kevin whispered. “Let’s get moving.”

Together, they trudged out into the snow. By midday, they had discovered a series of tracks that wove in and out of the trees. They also discovered that their bodies could not endure much more. Between the exposure to the cold and the strain placed on the body involved in walking through the knee deep powder, the pair were exhausted beyond the ability to continue. For Kevin, this would simply not do; Valarie was waiting. She needed him to keep moving.

“We need to find a residential area,” Kevin announced as he handed his canteen to Willa.

“You want to make camp this early?”

“No. We need to find snowshoes, skis…anything. Otherwise we are not going to make it.”

Kevin sought out the highest ground he could find and searched. The biggest problem was one that he had noticed during the journey to Newark from the golf course compound where his friends waited. Before the world had been plunged into darkness, most buildings gave off heat. That caused the snow to melt. Now…buildings were harder to see in this glaring white landscape. They were buried under snow just like everything else.

It took him a while, but eventually he found what he was looking for and led the way. The monotone colors of the landscape played tricks with distance and it ended up being much farther than it initially looked. To add to the frustration, it was well to the south of them, taking him away from his ultimate destination.

On the positive side of things, the zombie presence was nil. There were no signs that anything—living or otherwise—had passed through the area. About an hour into the trek across the open countryside, the sun made an eventual appearance. That was a mixed blessing in that it actually felt warmer. The downside was the glare. Kevin’s eyes began to blur and water. Early on, Willa stopped him and wrapped his scarf around his face and pulled his cap down low.

“You will get the worst sunburn of your life on any exposed skin,” she answered his questioning look.

He didn’t see how he could possibly be much more uncomfortable. His skin was already raw and chapped in so many places. Small sections were beginning to bleed and scab over. His hands and feet felt like blocks of ice grafted on to the end of his limbs. In short, he was miserable.

They finally reached the entrance to a housing development. A decorative brick façade announced it as: Picnic Palisades.
Did everything in this area have ties to that damned basket-shaped building?
he wondered acerbically.

The development looked to be set up in a razor-straight grid. All of the houses had postage stamp-sized front yards. The place had not fared well and Kevin was immediately reminded of the neighborhood that the Sarah Polley character lived in at the start of that
Dawn of the Dead
remake.

Several of the houses had suffered from a fire that had been allowed to burn out of control. The wind must’ve been blowing to the east that day, he figured as he surveyed the scene. Between the chaos that had obviously reigned in those first days and the subsequent looting, this once upper-scale residential area now more closely resembled an inner-city slum or a war zone.

From some of the homes up the street, Kevin spotted dark figures moving. This was going to be tricky.

“Should we split up to speed up the search?” Willa whispered.