Dead World (Book 2): Headed North (5 page)

Realization dawns on Daniel and he screams just as Jason’s eyes snap open. They are dead and lifeless, staring right at Chloe. Daniel’s scream causes everyone to bolt up but the sleep is still distorting their thinking. Daniel rolls over and scrambles to his feet knocking Jason backwards into a wall. His head smashes into the wall. Daniel is trying to roll free as the dead boy snaps his jaws perilously close to his arm.

Daniel rolls free just in time. He scrabbles for anything nearby. His hands come to rest on the fire poker which had been left in the coals. He swings it around, the dully gleaming tip red from the flame. Daniel stabs with all the force he can muster and the hot poker burns through the dead eye of Jason, the boy topples back lifeless and Daniel falls to his knees out of breath.

“What the hell happened?” Isaiah says on his feet now. Chloe is crying and Sahsa is holding her. Valentine is looking around, her eyes wide with terror.

“I don’t know man,” Daniel says, catching his breath. “I was sleeping, I was having a bad dream and when I woke up I saw him. He was about to attack Chloe.”

Isaiah flips on the flashlight and the beam falls on Jason’s prone form. His sweater which had gotten tangled up in his fall is pulled up revealing a nasty bite just above his hip. It is black and infected with angry red lines arcing out away from it in a crazed pattern. Valentine gasps.

“I’ll be damned,” Isaiah says, “The boy was bit when we picked him up,” He shakes his head angrily. “He could have killed us all and he just played like nothing was wrong.”

“It’s done now,” Sasha says, putting her arm on her husband’s, “It’s done.”

“No it’s not ok…” he says, his face twisted with anger when a moan snatches his attention. They all turn towards the door. Daniel hears a rough scratching and his heart thuds. He rushes over to the window pulling back the drapes enough so he can peer out. In the front yard there are at least a dozen of the walkers. They are all shambling towards the door.

Daniel spins around and whips the drapes closed again. “There are at least a dozen between us and the car,” he says frantically.

“We need to get moving right now,” Isaiah says, “Grab the bags,” They rush around the dark house grabbing everything they can. The sound of bodies slamming into the front door adds haste to their movement.

“Check the back door,” Daniel says to Valentine. She runs towards the back door and then comes back in a moment.

“Not good,” she shakes her head.

“Ok well then we need to fight our way out,” Daniel says, “How many shots do you have in the rifle?”

“I only brought in what it was loaded with.” Isiah responds. “Ten shots in here I think.”

“Shit,” Daniel says, “I have six bullets left. That will give us just enough to clear out space and make it to the car. When we run we need to run fast and don’t stop moving no matter what. Don’t let those things get close to you.”

They all nod back at him. He takes a deep breath. “Ok on my count. One, two, three…..”

10

Hardin, Montana

Peter wakes with a rattling cough.  The dream still lingers in the back of his mind. It was all happening too fast. He swings his head around taking in his small room. Sweat makes his shirt stick to his back despite the cool temperature of the room.

He dreamt Terry was attacked by them, cold dead fingers gripping around his neck and pulling him under ground.

He falls back to his pillow letting out a sigh. It is all just too much sometimes. He rolls over and looks at his alarm. 4 A.M. it’s the longest he has slept since his wife died and even that troubled sleep is welcome. It’s the first time he hasn’t seen her eyes, lifeless and cold, when he closed his own.

A few long moments pass as he lies on his back, just breathing in the early morning air. He isn’t ready to move yet when there comes a rap from the door. He rolls out of bed and pulls his pants on walking towards the door.

It swings open and Terry is standing impatiently.

“Sir they are back,” he says.

“Already?” Peter replies, “Why don’t you head down there. I’m going to get ready and be down there in a moment.”

Terry nods to him and walks away letting the door fall shut. Peter has always been a pragmatist. Everything that has happened only made it much more obvious. Now is not the time to be thinking about bigger moral issues. What is right and wrong don’t matter when you are dead, and that is the only defining line for him. What does it take to stay alive? That’s all that matters.

Peter throws on the nearest clothes he can find and hustles outside into the brisk air. He takes the stairs two at a time heading back to his car. He doesn’t have time to stop and think right now. Terry and he have seen some shit, this tops it all.

There was the time they were over in the Middle East, they were on patrol when the Humvee they were in hit a roadside bomb. It killed the driver in an explosion of blood and bone. Terry had been in the back and Peter was up front navigating. The car flipped over and came to a crashing halt.

Peter had calmly ordered them to grab their weapons and take up positions. He applied pressure to the driver’s legs which were blown off at the knees. It didn’t even faze him as he looked into that troopers eyes and told him not to give up. He made a tourniquet with their belts and saved that mans’ life. They made it out of that hell alive. It wasn’t pretty but it was what needed to be done.

And after everything Peter had seen over there he thought he had served his time in hell. All of that changed when the dead started coming back. But it was useless trying to figure all that out now.

He turns the car travelling down the empty road. This early in the morning only the people who need to be are awake, which means that the normally empty roads are completely deserted. Peter swerves the car in front of the park and hops out. The sun hasn’t even started rising yet but he sees people wandering around the open square with flashlights.

They move with a hurried nervousness. The fear is surfacing in the group and Peter worries. Fear is the killer here. If they let themselves become overwhelmed by it then they will just collapse like a bridge without enough support. They need to stay in control.

Stepping out of the car he calls out, “let’s get this more organized here,” He walks over as the impromptu soldiers are reinforcing the walls. Anyone with military experience is leading groups of civilians as they pound nails into wood thickening the wall.

It is a broken amalgamation of whatever scrap they could find. Pieces of scrap wood and metal bolted together to form a barrier that the dead have, so far, not been able to penetrate. Over the sound of the work he can hear the moaning of the horde growing on the other side. The wall is 7 feet tall extending around the entire close off section of town. But he worries it won’t be enough. The press of bodies leaning in from the other side will break through eventually. He can’t let that happen though.

Their stunt yesterday, trying to pull the dead away, while theatrical and exciting, ultimately had very little impact. They distracted them for a while sure, but after the explosion the dead had simply come back. Whatever it is that draws them to living humans, there is no masking the several hundred living in there.

Once they froze over then they could go out and finish off the corpses. Of course that implies they last that long in the first place. It seems like a grim hope to Peter as he walks up to a group of men trying to reinforce a brace along the wall.

The young man in charge, his hair buzzed short and a heavy sling holding his arm, snaps the best salute he can.

“How’s it going here?” 

“It’s going well sir. We are reinforcing this section. The dead are still mostly to the south of the wall, coming from the hospital area. Although they are also moving in on the western side.”

A thud sounds as one of the dead slams his body into the wall. It shakes but holds. The soldiers release a baited breath.

“Do your best, son,” Peter says, walking away further down the wall. Too little too late, he fears.

10

North of Cheyenne, Wyoming

The dresser swings to the side with a scrape of metal feet against the expensive wooden floors tearing deep gouges. The door flies open and the first body through lunges into the room. It was an elderly man in slacks and a button down shirt. The shirt is untucked and black blood coats the lower half of his face.

Sasha is backed into a corner with Chloe who is wailing.

Daniel steps forward and fires point blank into the lifeless face. The top of its head is blown off spraying the crowd behind him with grey brain matter. Other zombies immediately take his place Daniel fires off shots as quickly as he can and in moments there are several more dead corpses.

He steps back reloading as quickly as he can while Isaiah steps forward. The rifle held squarely to his shoulder. He fires a shot straight into the cheekbone of a middle aged woman coming through the door. She was completely naked and her decaying body shows horrendous bite marks along her left thigh. The obese woman topples forward the back of her head blown out in a neat circle. Other zombies tumble over her as the press of bodies grows too much.

“Get up the stairs!” Daniel yells. And they begin backing up the stairs. Fear makes his hands slick with sweat, his heart thuds in his chest. There are more than he expected.

Isaiah backs up slowly firing off the rest of his rounds but killing only a couple. The frenzy of movement makes it so hard to land a clean headshot when the dead are swarming.

Daniel grabs Isaiah’s arm and shoves him back up the stairs. There are half a dozen in the room now. Daniel fires off his last shots felling 4 more before dropping the pistol and pulling out his hatchet. He steps back onto the first step as the nearest zombie lunges for him. A young Hispanic man wearing the remains of his gardening clothes, his nose is torn off revealing sickening cartilage and bone. Daniel aims squarely for his missing nose and swings the hatchet. It embeds in the things face with a squelch.

The dead body falls back into the arms of the others unceremoniously dumped to the floor. Daniel wrenches the axe free before it can pull him down with it, and steps back up a few more stairs. He swings again catching a woman in a tracksuit on the side of her temple. She falls but she is still moving.

Then there are too many. It’s all happening too fast. He rushes back up the stairs and he makes it just in time. Isaiah kicks out his foot catching the zombie, who was just grabbing for Daniel, squarely in the chest and sending him tumbling down into the others.

He whips around the staircase and flees down the hallway into the first open door. Chloe is still screaming as they knock down a dresser to cover the entrance to the room.  Moments later there is a thud as the zombies slam into the door. It creaks inwardly and for a heart wrenching moment looks like it might give way. Isaiah throws himself against the door to hold them out.

They are all out of breath. Daniel looks around frantically for another option. He thought they would be able to shoot their way out but he sees now how impossible that is. Those things just moved too fast when they were so close.

Isiah is still clutching the rifle, bracing himself against the door with Valentine.

“We can’t stay here,” he says the obvious.

“What are we going to do?” Sasha cries, her voice breaking with fear.

Daniel whips his head around searching for anything that will be useful. It looks like a nursery, animal print wallpaper and a rocking chair, a changing table, fancy matching animal lamps, a diaper warmer, a riding toy horse that looks expensive. There is another thud as the zombies try to force their way in.

Then it dawns on him.

He reaches down and picks up the toy horse. It is solid wood. He rushes over to the window, throwing it with all the force he can manage. It sails cleanly through the window. Glass shatters outwards in a spray. He thrusts his head out into the cold night air. The roof is just a few feet below them.

“This is it,” he says, excitement and nervousness lacing his voice. “We are going to go out through here.”

“Go where?” Sasha asks.

“We are going to jump down to the car. It’s only one story and it’s the best option we got,” He climbs out onto the roof feeling the crunch of glass beneath his feet. The wind is blowing and it is getting bitter with cold. “Come on we don’t have time for anything else.”

They follow him out onto the roof as quickly as possible. Daniel rushes over to the edge of the roof. Thankfully he catches his first good luck all night. The dead piled into the house after them so there are only a few stragglers still wandering around in the yard.

There comes another slam from the bedroom as the creatures try to force their way into the room again.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” he yells with urgency.

They get to the edge of the roof and Daniel jumps down first. He clears a row of bushes and lands in the front lawn rolling as he hits the ground. The wind is knocked out of him. He rolls and springs to his feet as quickly as he can swinging the axe head into the face of a zombie who lingered in the yard.

The axe lands heavily in the older man’s cranial cavity and he falls with a thud. Daniel turns as he sees Isaiah and Valentine leap down too. They hit the ground rolling and are on their feet faster than he was.

Sasha is standing with Chloe on the edge of the roof. Chloe is so terrified of heights that she can’t force herself to jump.

“Come on honey we need to go now,” Isaiah yells up to her. Daniel looks through the open front door and sees a zombie stumbling back down the stairs headed towards the exit. He hears another slam and knows that they must be through the upstairs door by now.

Sasha looks at Isaiah pleadingly, making eye contact before she shoves Chloe. Chloe screams and loses her balance falling forward. Isaiah leaps under her, and catches her like a sack. They both fall into the bushes getting scrapes on the way down. But he is back on his feet, carrying Chloe away before she even has a chance to resume crying.

The zombies begin stumbling out of the window upstairs on the roof oblivious to the heights. Just searching for their next meal. The whole group sprints to the car. Luckily Valentine had the presence of mind to grab the rifle Isiah dropped to catch Chloe.

Daniel revs the engine as everyone hops in and they burn off down the road heading back for the highway.

“Hold on,” Valentine says.

Daniel slows a fraction. “What do you mean hold on?” he says rougher than he intended. “Is something wrong?”

“We need that food,” she says and kicks her foot against the box of rifle shells. Making her point “If I drive, I can bring us around past the place and we can let them trail us and you know… take them out one at a time with the rifle. Then we can go back to the house and get the supplies.”

Daniel thinks for a moment, the adrenaline coursing through his system makes the world seem slower than it should be. The dead are trailing them now that he has slowed down. A mob of bodies pressing out of the house, and out of the shadows of neighbor’s yards.

“She’s right,” Isiah agrees. “That was real bad back there, but we can’t just leave all that food behind. There couldn’t have been too many left.”

“Ok,” Daniel says with resignation. He hates having to go back but he knows they need the food. So he twists the steering wheel and swings around going straight through a mail box as he runs over the overgrown lawn of another house.

He lets the car slow down as they approach. The headlights pool out onto the group of zombies that are stumbling towards them. Isaiah was right. There are only a dozen or so left still shambling in their direction. Snow starts falling against the windshield casting crazy patterns. It is the first snow of the season and it mixes with the ash to make ugly mud.

“It’s time we stopped running and took control,” Daniel says, parking the car with plenty of room for him and Valentine to switch places so he can shoot them down before they become an issue. Daniel and Valentine hop out of the car and swap places. She hands him the rifle. There is still a couple hundred yards before the zombies will be close enough but they are already picking up speed.

Daniel reaches into the front seat and sets down a box of bullets at his feet. He has never had rifle training outside of the practice he has gotten with it in the past few days but he takes to it like a natural.

He reloads quickly and takes a few deep breaths sighting down the barrel. His first shot clips the lead zombie in the collar bone. Blackish blood, thick as oil explodes out from the wound. The older woman, it seems like that is the only demographic that lives in this neighborhood, spins around from the impact and falls to the ground. She stirs again immediately though, her arm hanging roughly from the ruined shoulder.

Cursing under his breath Daniel takes aim again. He fires into the mass moving towards him catching a limping zombie in the forehead. His tuft of grey hair explodes backwards and the thing drops like a bag of wet meat.

Daniel hears the opposite door open as he fires another shot, downing one more zombie. He sees Isaiah in his peripheral. Isaiah is carrying the hatchet still black with gore. Isaiah takes up a position close to him.

Firing through ten rounds Daniel is able to down 7 more of the dead. They are hard to hit moving so erratic. He stops to reload again as fast as he can but his fingers are shaking. The dead have closed to under 50 yards. He considers getting in the car and backing up some more but he thinks he has time for a couple more shots.

Lining up the rifle he sights on another zombie. Her jaw and teeth are visible through a gaping hole in her cheek, he wonders how whatever caused this didn’t do enough damage to the cranium to disable it for good. Despite the horrific injury though she is almost at a run. Her arms stretched out in front of her and her mouth hanging wide. A sickening growl utters from her throat. Daniel fires directly into her open mouth. Now only 30 yards away he is close enough to see the bullet explode out the back of her skull with a mushroom of decaying brain matter.

The thing keeps on coming for a few terrifying, brief moments before her momentum runs out and she collapses in a heap.

“Come on man we need to back up,” Isaiah says nervously taking a few steps back.

“I have three more shots then we back up,” Daniel says, locking the gun to his shoulder. He fires three times in quick succession, downing another couple zombies. His heart drops as he looks and sees that instead of thinning their number it seems to have increased. Zombies are pouring out from the shadows of the houses. There are twenty or thirty of them now.

“Oh shit man,” Isaiah says, grabbing Daniel’s arm as he reaches for another box of bullets. “Let’s go man we can put some distance and do it again.”

Daniel nods and jumps in the open passenger seat door. Isaiah throws himself into the back seat. The zombies in the front are now less than 10 yards away. As soon as they are inside the car, before the doors are even shut, Valentine slams on the reverse and the car guns backwards. She isn’t used to driving under these conditions. The ground is now wet with slush from the snow and ash. The car veers wildly up onto a nearby yard, swerving around. She runs over a row of bushes that scrape against the undercarriage before she slams on the brakes.

The Humvee skids to a halt only a couple feet from going through the front wall of some urban mansion. Valentine curses, frozen with terror she sees the dead still pursuing them. It was enough to put a little distance but not as much as they need.

Daniel yells at her to put the car in gear and get it going. But she doesn’t respond. Her hands shake, and her eyes are wide with fear. Sasha and Isaiah are calling from the back of the car, telling them to get moving.

Daniel flings himself out of the car with the rifle and lines up his shot. He fires off the ammo leaving a trail of corpses that gets closer and closer to their position in the bushes. He thrusts his hand back into the car searching for another box of bullets blindly while he tries to keep tabs on the advancing horde. His hands find nothing so he swings his head back in the car.

Nothing.

He curses under his breath for the millionth time that night. They just can’t catch a break. But his adrenaline is fueling him. Anger at the helplessness he has felt all this time. Anger that he wasn’t able to protect Faraday. Anger that he might not be able to protect Valentine floods his system.

Isaiah and Daniel meet eyes and in that one instant Isaiah knows that Daniel is going to try. He tries to mouth the word “no” but it is too late. Daniel reaches over and snatches the axe from the back seat. “Keep her safe,” he says with too much calm before he spins around slamming the passenger door.

Just keep moving, he thinks to himself as he jogs toward the first of the dead. He sidesteps at the last moment and brings the axe down in a tight arc. It connects with the lead zombie just above its ear. And Daniel is moving again before the body hits the floor. He chooses to try and arc around them to the left using his own momentum to keep his swinging arm more ready.

His breath comes in heaves as he keeps sidestepping. Another swing and a zombie falls to the ground black ichor framing the things skull. Daniel loses track of how many there are. In this close of a melee they move so much quicker than he expected. He spins just as a zombie reaches out to grab him. The cold, dead fingers almost close on his arm before he is able to put some distance and swing the axe again smashing the ruined face in a mass of black blood and bone. The thing falls heavily.