Swarm (Dead Ends)

ISBN: 9781483523361

Author’s Note

Sometimes you
can
judge a book by its cover. I think
Swarm
falls into this category. I’m an 80’s nerd at heart and Swarm is a lot like the beloved video games of my youth: short on plot, long on action. That’s not to say that there
isn’t
a plot but what I’ve tried to do with the first book in the series is introduce Sam Woods and let you, the reader, see what he’s made of. I want Sam to be defined by his thoughts and actions because those things will shape all of the books that follow. There’s no quicker way to get to know someone than to see how they respond when things get dicey. After all, in the beginning I didn’t need to know why a chubby plumber needed “magic” mushrooms to make him stronger. I just wanted to smash Goombas until my eyes bled and search for warp pipes until my thumbs went numb. Nor did I care why a blue hedgehog was in such a damn hurry. I just wanted to take the ride with him. Maybe see what he was capable of. I wasn’t interested in the motivation of Bill “Mad Dog” Rizer and Lance “Scorpion” Bean (although we all knew they were really Schwarzenegger and Stallone right?) as they blazed a trail through some random and completely awesome South American jungle filled with unstable Vietnam vets and grumpy aliens. I just wanted to “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A” their asses to certain victory.

My taste in zombie fiction is quite similar. With one exception: I don’t like heroes. Guys that know the load out for every major firearm and spend much too much time talking about said load out in near pornographic detail. Ninja assassins that katana every zombie in sight but brood about their killing prowess when the action slows down. It’s just not my thing. I like regular dudes with flaws who stumble and make horrid decisions at every turn, all the while learning that they’re a lot stronger than they thought they were. And don’t get me started on the “merry band of survivors” scenario where everyone forms a close-knit community in a matter of days. I like action, death, dark humor, and enough undead high jinks to keep me reading into the wee hours of the night. I’ll take
Shaun of the Dead
over
Dawn of the Dead
any day of the week. Same goes for Thomas S. Roche’s
Panama Laugh
over Max Brooks’
World War Z
. I was raised on
Die Hard
and
Lethal Weapon
after all so I suppose my mind learned to equate violence with humor at a frighteningly early age. Disturbing? Maybe. I don’t claim to be of sound mind but I truly believe that suffering in the absence of humor is simply insufferable.

Buckle up. Let’s go kill some zombies.

To Lindsey. Your love saved my life.

But don’t go getting a big head about it. Dinner isn’t going to cook itself.

“Human beings are the only creatures on Earth that claim a God, and the only living thing that behaves like it hasn’t got one.”

- Hunter S. Thompson

“Cocaine is a Hell of a drug.”

- Rick James

Chapter 1

The open road. It was the one thing I could always rely on to help me get my thoughts in order. Each rest stop I passed and every Indian Casino billboard I scoffed at was a sign that right now, if just for today, my problems were all behind me. And for as long as I could manage to keep driving they’d stay that way. An uninformed person would refer to this as running away from one’s problems but I prefer to see it as the only option available to me for preserving what little sanity I have left – the rest of which left in an instant when Melissa the Whore (not her Christian name) cheated on me and had the gall to blame me for her sudden – as far as I knew anyway – promiscuity.

Unsurprisingly my trust “issues” as she often referred to them, were a manifestation of
actual
distrust. At least I could say my first instinct about her (and all redheads for that matter) was right: With Heaven and Hell locked into a centuries-long Cold War, Gingers are clearly the devil’s secret agents, sent from the Underworld to balance the scales of love and hate. Their sole mission, aside from standing out in a crowd, is to knock others down a peg or two so they don’t start thinking that their life is blessed by some higher power. It’s partly my fault though. The license plate holder on her Jetta convertible that read “Blondes Tease, Redheads Please” was a warning sign I chose to ignore at my own peril.

The master manipulator that she is, I’m sure she’s telling our friends some sad story about how I forced her to bed some relatively handsome stranger while I watched from the shadows, cackling maniacally as my master plan had finally been realized. By the time I get back, it’ll be time for a good scrubbing of my phone’s contacts menu, making sure to delete all of the names that I’m certain Melissa has already brought over to the Dark Side. Fuckin’ bitch.

But all of that nonsense could wait for another day… or
year
for that matter. Right now I was attempting to enjoy a peaceful drive on a picturesque Pacific Northwest day: cool and sunny but not too sunny so as to give the residents a big head. There were always a few grey clouds around to inspire modesty and appreciation for what little sun Mother Nature blessed us with. Without that, we’d be no better than Florida or California and that’s just not something we could stomach. I’d keep going until I could smell the pungent pines of the Evergreen National Forest and the briny air of the Pacific Ocean. In Ocean Shores, problems always had a way of lessening their impact on one’s psyche. The rhythmic and never-ending hum of the ocean could always be relied upon to purge from your head any notions of self-doubt and negativity that may have laid down roots while you weren’t looking. But if by chance some of those cursed
feelings
still remained, the Irish Pub on the edge of town could remedy the situation quite nicely if just for a night. Sipping Tullamore Dew and slamming back pints of Guinness like you’re trying to prove a point will always do the job. The dimly lit dark walnut interior and intuitive bartenders who knew when to pour and when to get lost made it that much easier to drown your sorrows away for as long as your body, or your wallet, could stand.

I was certain my feet would be touching sand in two hours or less if I could just manage to keep my shit together on this lonely stretch of highway near the state capital. I hadn’t realized until now, almost an hour into the trip, that the radio dial was planted firmly in the off position and I had been babbling and sobbing like a school girl, trying my hardest to telepathically send messages of hatred and disgust into Melissa’s brain for some time. The weed had worn off and the muscle relaxers weren’t kicking in like I expected (generics are always a crap-shoot) which meant I was in serious danger of becoming totally lucid for the first time since I woke up. Panic started to set in as I began to think of how horrible it would be to actually
feel
anything at this particular moment. I had been comfortably numb for days and I wasn’t quite ready for reality to punch me in the gut while travelling 75 miles per hour in a 1993 Ford Taurus that sported a safety rating of “n/a”. It was time to pull over and give the doctor his medicine. I knew at some point that my strict regimen of uppers and downers would lose its effectiveness when it came to keeping reality at bay but right now I didn’t care. I just wanted to hear the waves crashing against the jetty while I still had half a mind. What happened after that I would deal with as best as could be expected given the circumstances.

The only exit that seemed to lead anywhere was a new one, carved into what used to be a pristine bit of forest that led to one of those gaudy sportsman’s warehouses where you could get 25 different kinds of camouflage and 50 varieties of questionably sourced meat jerky but if you asked for a tennis racket or golf clubs, they’d kindly tell you to go back from whence you came (though they clearly wouldn’t be caught dead using the word “whence”). It was essentially Costco for the Natural Ice swilling hick crowd that liked to shoot things and vote Republican without ever having heard the candidates’ names. They weren’t quite rednecks – this wasn’t the South after all – but as a result of country music and reality TV, they sure wanted to be; even going so far as to adopt some form of hybrid Southern accent that sounded like they were having a series of minor strokes – adding a little twang to the end of words that have no business ever being
twangified
. At least rednecks had an excuse – they were
born
that way. The country boys up here were just poseurs struggling to create an identity for themselves beyond “Lifelong Welfare Recipient.” Fun fact: I hear they have at least 38 different words for “beer” (one of which is
breakfast
) but not a single word for “gainful employment.”

The exit seemed to wind pointlessly back and forth like a river trying to find the path of least resistance. This drunkard’s nightmare of a road easily added a half mile to the trip which was all the more puzzling when you consider that the store and its comically large parking lot were literally a stone’s throw from the freeway. Apparently a straight shot was deemed too dangerous given the clientele that would be populating the place. I found a spot in the back, roughly 75 yards away from the nearest car. I was out of rolling papers which meant my trusty bong was going to have to come out of its custom designed hiding place in a secret compartment I had made underneath the front passenger seat. Being the tenured stoner that I am, my car was filled with little gadgets that did a damn fine job at making it look like a normal car but allowed me to continue with the lifestyle to which I was accustomed. Coca-Cola cans with false bottoms for an emergency stash, nose-spray bottles filled with a THC tincture, and a few windproof mini-torch lighters stuffed inside the headrest padding in case of emergencies were just a few of my dirty little tricks. And as far as appearances went, Mexican drug cartels would be proud of the work I’ve done:

• Non-descript and borderline shitty car that is kept clean but not too clean?
  
• Fake AAA sticker that made it look like I was a responsible motorist?
  
• Rear bumper devoid of shiny marijuana leaves or peace sign bumper stickers?
  
• Respectable haircut with sideburns and bangs nowhere to be found?
  
• All internal and external lights in proper working order?