The Living Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Coast (26 page)

Before she could stop herself, she exclaimed, “Cam!”

His arm clenched her neck in an iron grip as he turned slowly and faced her. Gnawing on the wooden bedpost, he had splintered the flimsy pine and now chewed hungrily on the slivers before spitting them out. One tooth fell to the floor. Baring a gap-toothed snarl beneath dead eyes with black goo oozing from his mouth, he snapped at her, missing her cheek but catching her hair and yanking hard with his teeth.

In agony, she screamed and fell prone on the wooden floor. Cam fell with her, still squeezing her neck in the crook of his arm. The position he held her in made it impossible for him to reach her with his mouth but in his current state he couldn’t understand that. He kept biting at the air all while tightening his grip on her throat. The light dimmed and she saw silver streaks shooting in front of her eyes. Sounds began to recede.

Something hot and wet splattered against the back of her neck just as a gun popped somewhere near the door. The arm holding her neck twitched and stopped squeezing but didn’t let go. Cam collapsed on top of her, knocking the breath from her body. Someone called her name and rolled the huge man off of her. She could breathe again. Strong hands lifted her up and David looked at her anxiously, wiping the blood and brain matter from her neck and shoulders. Fitz and the boys stood in the doorway, identical expressions of shock on their faces.

“Are you hurt? Did he-”

She couldn’t speak, just shook her head and began to cry, deep, shuddering sobs she couldn’t control. The horror of the day, of the last several days had caught up with her. David held her, rocking her in his arms until she finally stopped. He took her face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

“Can you walk?”

She nodded. Cam’s nearly headless body lay sprawled on the dirty floor. His shirt had hiked up and they saw a large, rotting bite mark just beneath his shoulder blade.

David pulled her to her feet. “Then let’s go.”

Night was falling again as they approached a low, stone house set in the curve of a valley and surrounded by a forest full of spruce and fir trees. David’s heart was in his throat as they walked the graveled driveway, weapons held high over their heads. No lights shone in the windows but smoke billowed from the chimney.

A shot rang out and a bullet sliced the air over their heads as a figure standing on the front steps racked a shotgun and shouted, “There’s nothing here for you. I’m armed and so is everyone else here. Keep moving.”

David kept his rifle high above his head, “Dad?”

The shotgun went down and was laid to one side as the tall man ran toward the drive. He clasped David so tightly he couldn’t breathe. Finally breaking free, laughing, David took Bea’s hand, introducing her and the rest of the group. A woman, gray hair caught back in a sleek pony tail, emerged from the house, eyes wide as if she couldn’t quite believe what she saw. Tears streamed down her face and she smiled.

“Welcome.”

~

World Health Organization

Geneva Bureau

Update- Z-Virus (revised)

The new Director General would like to thank all of the individuals who contributed to the recent laboratory sessions. Research into the nature of the virus has told us little so far, but it is hoped that serological testing will reveal courses of treatment that will allow us to issue protocols. Polymerase chain reaction testing has yielded no results. For now diagnosis remains clinical and treatment is still confined to isolation and restraint of infected individuals.

There is little new information to impart at this time. We are working on consolidating laboratory resources and reinforcing our present location against the continued assaults of the dead. Basic necessities such as water, food, and access to health care continue to dwindle. Electrical grids have broken down leaving the few communities that still exist here cold and in the dark.

Industrialized nations where superior infrastructure and transportation allowed the virus easy and rapid dissemination have been particularly hard hit. It is very difficult to predict when or if they will recover from the virus-triggered devastation.

The usefulness of refugee centers has been very limited as even the most rigorous admission and screening procedures have failed to keep the virus out. The few camps that did not fall to the virus have fallen instead to cholera, dysentery, and meningitis. Mortality rates rival those of the Z-virus infested areas. 

Please continue to check the website for updates.

O
ne year later…

A truck, sides splashed with dried mud, labored up a winding mountain road. Cresting the hill, it rolled into the main square of a small town. Skeletal, decayed remains lay layers deep in the streets. Long abandoned vehicles surrounded them, dead drivers still inside. The truck wove through, rolling over the bodies and breaking the brittle bones, crushing them into even smaller mounds of blackened flesh and bone shards.

The truck paused briefly next to a defunct fountain in a central square. The surrounding mountains were breathtakingly lovely, some of them snow-capped. Faces pressed against the truck windows, looking out. Cottony, white clouds scudded along the horizon, blown by the sharp spring gusts.

The truck rolled on. Turning left it soon reached a residential section, passing under oaks, leafless now but ancient and towering. The street was blocked by a phalanx of vehicles. Dead leaves lay in piles around them, as if they had been abandoned there for some time.

Making a sharp left the truck backtracked, eventually reaching a golf course. Bouncing across the once manicured greens it made for a break in a split rail fence taking them through a suburban yard and into an older neighborhood. Houses, burned to empty shells, dotted the street here and there. Dead bodies, emaciated and leathery, lay on the ground. The dirty truck pulled into the driveway of a red-brick house and stopped.

A man, dark-haired and bearded climbed out, a shotgun over one shoulder, a knife in a sheath at his belt. He closed the truck door and walked the perimeter of the house, looking around him as he went. Three bodies, unrecognizable in decomposition, sprawled across the front walkway. He rolled the husks off the pavement with one foot, exposing feeding beetles that scurried away into the grass.

The front door was not locked and he went inside. After a few minutes he re-emerged and went back to the truck. The passenger side door opened and two children climbed out, also looking around warily. Two houses on the other side of the street had burned to the ground and the rusting, derelict hulk of a Lexus lay sideways in one of the yards.

Hands reached out from the truck and handed the man a blanketed bundle which he held close as a woman slid to the ground. The March winds whipped up and blew dark hair around her face and she smiled and tucked it behind her ears before taking the bundle back into her arms.  Along the walkway narcissus bulbs poked pink tips above the ground.

The children raced ahead, disappearing inside. Ian and Virginia heard footsteps stomping up the staircase and they followed, carrying their son. They were home.

~

World Health Organization

Geneva Bureau

Update- Z-virus (revised)

General Worldwide

The Z-virus is one of the most transformative events ever to impact our world. Every form of government, every institution of the planet has fallen to the pandemic. It is expected that in most parts of the earth, all sciences, all literature, all that humanity has created will soon be lost forever. Many cultures, perhaps even entire races of people have already or shall soon disappear.

Sporadic assaults and limited battles are occurring daily in most regions as survivors fight for valuable resources such as water, access to food distribution centers, medical supplies, as well as military weapons depots. The failure of the industrialized nations to secure their military stockpiles will unleash additional, lethal instability worldwide.

Radioactive fallout has swept across the Eurasian continent and it is strongly suspected that the sterilizing effects of the radiation are prolonging the “life” of the dead there and in other countries that chose the “nuclear option.”

Recently, incomplete reports filtering out of China indicate the virus may have jumped the species barrier. Smaller vermin, especially rats, have been observed swarming in unusually large numbers and attacking herds of pigs and cattle. Extermination efforts here in Geneva have met with limited success and we believe this will be the case worldwide. At this posting we see no evidence of infection in the local vermin.

Attempts to detect antigenic or genetic responses to the virus have yielded no positive results. If the human body is making an attempt to create an antibody we have found nothing to indicate success. The few labs still functional are rapidly losing supplies and use of equipment as electrical power becomes more and more intermittent.

History tells us that any virus this lethal will soon mutate to a more benign strain. We have yet to see any evidence of this with regard to the Z-virus and it may be that humanity is experiencing an extinction event.

Our fortifications at this location have failed and we fear we will soon succumb to the months long assault on our facilities here. Already the dead have breached the courtyard gates and reached the lower floor of the building, cutting off any escape route.

May God have mercy and be with us in our hour of need.

From the author

I hope you enjoyed
Dead Coast
and the entire
Living Dead
series
.
If you did, posting a review
here
or at Barnes and Noble.com is a great way to help other readers find it for themselves.

You can find more of my work at Barnes and Noble or on
Amazon's L.I. Albemont page

Want to reach me?

You can find me at my blog
https://w1927.wordpress.com/

If you want to contact me directly, email me at
[email protected]
.

Special thanks to my husband who put up with me throughout the writing of this book. More thanks to Excellent Editions as well as Project Gutenberg. Both are invaluable resources for writers.

Please enjoy this excerpt from
A Haunting
, now available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com.

“The prisoner will stand for sentencing.”

The judge looked down at her husband, who rose, standing awkwardly in handcuffs and shackles. Sarah leaned forward and clutched the back of the seat in front of her. Here each day the first week of the trial, she agonized over each charge, each witness that struck blows at his integrity and judgment. She believed in both until detailed testimony emerged of trips to Aruba with Kelly, a co-worker he had never mentioned. Kelly, tall, tanned, and what her mother would have called ‘floozy blonde’, cooperated with the Feds in exchange for immunity.

After that humiliating afternoon she stayed away, focusing on selling the few things she owned that the Feds had not seized. Despite that, her face appeared in newspapers and at times on local television; or so she had been told. She stopped watching television and reading the paper soon after the arrest.

She was here today to see how this ended, to see if the frozen feeling that encased her would go away. Reporters shouted at her to look their way but she hurried up the steps of the courthouse, avoiding the icy patches left by the weekend snowstorm. Wearing a black skirt and boots, black reefer coat buttoned up against the cold, she wanted the world to forget her. She looked waiflike in the slightly too large outfit and the dark sunglasses were glamorous on a small, heart-shaped face.

It felt strange to be out in public again. Her husband’s financial schemes had defrauded the pension fund for city teachers and firefighters leaving them with no retirement plan and outrage had been vehement. Her husband’s attorney had advised taking precautions against angry victims so she went into hiding, grocery shopping at night, never going to restaurants.

When her boss, Phil, recommended a leave of absence, she acquiesced, knowing the publicity was not good for the small, property development company she had loved working for during the past three years. Two weeks ago, after she made the decision to move away, her co-workers gave her a going-away lunch. Eve and Sharon cried and everyone promised to keep in touch but she was sure she saw secret relief on Phil’s face. It hurt to realize that he considered her a liability now but that was exactly what she was and would be until time erased the town’s memory.

Sean now wore the standard issue, orange, prison jumpsuit, a painful contrast to the tailored suits he had worn throughout the trial,  In spite of her determination to remain detached, her heart ached for him, imagining the humiliation he must be feeling right now. Some tiny, conjugal, sympathetic spark must still exist between them because he turned and their eyes met just as she slipped through the door and sat down in the back of the courtroom. The judge now finished reviewing the counts.

“Mr. Faust, in view of the particularly widespread and damaging nature of your crimes, this court imposes the maximum penalty of seven years for each count with each sentence to run consecutively for a total of twenty-eight years. Restitution paid from seized assets will continue. Court will be in recess until one p.m.” He banged the gavel.

“All rise.” The bailiff intoned.

Everyone stood. Sean and his attorney talked quietly for a few moments then the bailiff approached the table. Sean said something and the bailiff glanced at Sarah then shook his head in response. Sean looked back at her before he shuffled out, head down.

Sarah found with surprise that she was crying and sat back down, rummaging through her purse for a tissue. How could he have done this? Defrauded investors and stolen the life savings of hundreds of people, destroying their lives just as he had destroyed hers. She wiped her eyes then blew her nose and the tears stopped. Her purse sagged open and she smiled a little when a small, foldable road atlas with a highlighted route wandering down the east coast slid out. Time to go.