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

Three men and two women, all dead, emerged from behind the barn. One of the men had a glistening red, gaping hole where his abdomen should be and a twisted leg dragging along behind him. The others were in better shape and dismayingly fast. Time to go.

The car started then died. David tried again but it only chugged. The third try resulted in a grinding sound with a few clicks then nothing. The infected were only yards away now.

“I don’t get it! We still have an eighth of a tank.” David tried again.

Rotten hands hit against the car windows. One of the men, taller and massively built, hit the roof so hard it dented and the car rocked.

Bea flinched and ducked her head. “If he hits a window next, we’re-” The passenger side glass shattered and sprinkles and shards of glass rained down on her. A massive decaying hand groped as she scrambled out of the bucket seat over on top of David who was still trying to start the car.

The rest of the dead clustered around the destroyed window, reaching and clutching for them. The car rocked again.

“We’re going to have to sprint for the house. Ready?”

David opened the door and they practically spilled out into the cold mud. Scrambling to their feet they ran for the porch to find the front door solidly locked against them. They dashed back down the steps and Bea fell, a sharp pain in her knee making her gasp before they were up again, sprinting around the house in hopes of finding a door, an open window. There was nothing except-

A truck, blue paint faded with a rusted tail-gate, stood parked under the gnarled branches of a looming oak tree. A plank swing hung by fraying ropes banged gently against the open driver-side door. The cab light was on and the bald tires had a gray look but the key was in the ignition.

A strong smell of wet dog rose from the torn, vinyl, bench seat. Bea slid behind the wheel and the engine turned over on the first try. She backed up, driving slowly across the rutted yard around the house back to the graveled forecourt.

Three infected still thronged the car, too stupid to understand their prey had escaped. Bea drove straight toward them until she smashed them against the passenger side of the car, splattering gobbets of black matter on the truck hood. They were pinned but still gibbering and all the noise attracted the attention of the others who began to stagger back.

“What’re you doing? Let’s go now!” David shouted.

Bea shook her head and got out. More dead were now less than twelve feet away. She opened the trunk of the car and began throwing bags and boxes into the truck bed. There were more new clothes, shoes, boots, et cetera in here than she or Brian ever owned in their lives. She wasn’t going to leave all of it behind. Who knew when they would find more? She paused long enough to shoot the huge infected man in the face. Last of all she snagged their backpacks from the backseat then jumped into the truck. David glared at her as she put the truck in reverse and hit the gas.

The trapped dead hammered and scratched on the hood, still struggling to reach them. Worn tires spun briefly in the wet mud before making contact with the gravel and they backed away, unpinning the creatures. One of the women, split in half at the waist, fell to the ground with a sickening, soggy squelch. She immediately began to crawl toward the truck, dragging her torso along with clawing hands, guts fishtailing in the mud behind her.

They left the farm behind. The wind blew in cold through gaps at the top of the windows. They tried cranking them up but they wouldn’t close. Bea turned the heat on and it blew out an even stronger wet dog odor. She groaned and covered her nose, slumping back against the seat and driving with one hand.

“Not traveling in your accustomed style, Beatrice Actually?” David asked.

“My accustomed style is not traveling at all. I never had the time. I only learned to drive because I took driver’s ed in high school. Well, that plus
Simpson’s Road Rage
and a little
Grand Theft Auto
. I’ve never had a car but I’m a pretty good driver.”

She sailed serenely past the stop sign at a crossroads and David winced.

The landscape was changing. They left the cornfields behind and entered an area of tree-crowned hillocks with half-frozen streams winding their way across the countryside. The clouds had broken.  A weak sun shone at intervals and the cold wind grew stronger.

“How far are we from an airport?”

“I don’t know but that’s not what we’re looking for. An aerodrome is a better description of what we hope to find and we should be near the Holywell site in about an hour.  There could be one closer, you never know, so keep an eye out for towers and wind-socks.”

Occasionally fires and smoke appeared in the distance. Abandoned vehicles littered the landscape and they saw a few bodies, or body parts, scattered randomly. They glimpsed wandering dead who almost always turned their way and followed the truck until they disappeared from sight.

These grew more numerous as they reached the outskirts of Cincinnati and more abandoned vehicles littered the streets. The occasional stores they saw had shattered front windows and doors and looked looted.

“We’re not going into the city, are we?”

He laughed. “Not a chance. You know what D.C. was like. If I am remembering this correctly the turn-off is somewhere near here.”

After a few more minutes David told her to turn left onto a black macadam road that ran alongside a field. Savaged cattle lay scattered in irregular mounds, mostly stripped of flesh. The dead had been busy here but had moved on. She wondered why. Back in D.C. they concluded the creatures responded mostly to sound and she hadn’t seen anything to contradict that. Dr. Osawy said something about them being able to hear heartbeats, rhythmic sounds attracting them the most. What did they do when there were no sounds?

Something buzzed then vibrated against her chest. She fumbled through the pockets and finally pulled out her phone.

It was a text sent yesterday from Brian.

“He’s alive!” she laughed and held the little phone out exultantly in front of her.

“
On Wrigley Field to pick up another soldier. No fuel still going west not sure where. Battery low
.”

The phone chimed once and then died. “Oh well. At least that message got through. Wish I had a car charger.” She put the phone away.

The blaze of joy on her face made David smile. “A baseball stadium is a good rendezvous point for an air rescue. A wide open field and great visibility all around. No point in trying for this air field now. We can turn around and get back on a main road. We’ll make better time.”

She stopped and put the truck in reverse, backing down the narrow lane with her hand on the back of the seat. She surprised him by taking his hand and pressing it to her cheek. Her hand was warm and her cheek soft and he almost,
almost
cupped her chin to turn her toward him but she stiffened and turned her head, looking through the rear window. Following her gaze he saw why.

The little lane had filled in behind them. The infected had already reached the truck bed and were moving around the sides. Advancing clumsily but with savage, rapacious intent, a man, shreds of skin hanging from his arms, grabbed the side view mirror and hung on as Bea tried to speed up. Dull thuds shook the truck and their heads hit the ceiling of the cab as they bowled over the fallen bodies. The man grasping the mirror hissed, hands scrabbling to hang on to the window. His fingers locked in the narrow gap at the top and the window began to slowly slide down.

Bea scrambled through her backpack. Where was her fence post?

“Just shoot him! Here!” David handed over his gun and she fired, the report painfully loud in the confined space. The dead man’s face caved in and she saw daylight through the back of his head. He dropped off.

The window wouldn’t roll back up. She pressed on it and pushed but it stayed down. More dead reached them and thrust searching hands into the truck. One caught her hair in a vise-like grip and wouldn’t let go. Tears came to her eyes from the pain before she shot it in the head, closing her eyes and mouth tightly against spatter. Even then the grip didn’t relax and she pried the dead fingers apart. The body fell under the truck and they bounced as they rolled over it. Bea’s scalp burned.

The crowd became impenetrable and the truck almost bogged down. Seeing no other choice Bea put the truck in drive and they shot away from the moaning throng. Ahead was a fenced-in, paved area with razor wire and a locked gate. A sign read “Muncy Airfield”. There were a few dead wandering inside the fence. They kept going.

The street dead-ended just past the airfield. Tall privet shrubs surrounded this end of the street blocking any view of what might be behind them. Far in the distance now but not slowing down the dead were staggering closer. Bea looked at David, shrugged and gunned the engine, speeding up to break through the shrubs. Terrified, David gripped the door handle. A maelstrom of branches whipped around them, hitting the windows and doors and then they came to an abrupt stop, nose down in a ditch. Bea’s head hit the side window hard and she cried out then gunned the engine but the wheels spun uselessly.

David slammed his fist on the dash in frustration. They would have to go forward on foot. Bea was already climbing out, standing by the truck bed, swaying a little. Blood ran down her forehead and she wiped it away from her eyes with the palms of her hands then began taking boxes from the truck.

“Stop it! There’s no time and we can’t carry all of it.” David took just his backpack and guns and handed her the Glock and backpack she left in the cab.

She kept removing the boxes with her free hand. “Brian needs these. He lost his shoe, don’t you remember?” She set two boxes on the ground and went back for more.

“Bea, let’s go!” David grabbed her arm and then noticed the blood on her forehead. He took her head in his hands and turned her face toward him. Her left pupil might be slightly larger than her right and if so that was a classic sign of concussion. A gash near her hairline bled freely.

He pulled her away from the truck and she didn’t fight him, donning her backpack when he handed it to her. They climbed out of the ditch onto pavement.

“We have to find transportation. Come on.” David began to stride down the street then looked back to see Bea still standing by the ditch. She wiped her forehead again and stared perplexedly at the blood on her hand. David took her arm and pulled her along.

They were in a residential area, a little on the shabby side. Several houses sported boarded-up windows and doors. Cars were parked randomly here and there but none had keys in them. The moans and shuffles were getting louder even though they couldn’t see the dead through the privet yet.

Discarded items filled the streets, backpacks, fishing tackle, a pink, plastic Barbie dream house, all dropped by fleeing residents. A dead dog, white ribs facing upward and legs torn off, lay in a gutter. They passed a burned-out house containing an infected clawing at flame-scorched basement walls and trying to climb out. He or she had been so badly burned that it was impossible to make out any features; hair, nose and ears were all burned away.

Most of the houses were locked up tight with no evidence of living human habitation. David looked back down the street behind them. Four infected made it through the hedge and were coming their way. He could shoot them but the gunfire would inexorably draw the others. He gripped Bea’s arm tighter and pulled her along. She stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding her up.

He glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone raised an upstairs window in a red, clapboard, two-story house on the next block and was beckoning to them. He strained to see. The figure left the window.

Behind them more infected emerged from side streets and shambled along, getting closer.

Any port in a storm, David thought. The red house was just a little farther. Bea was starting to stagger. He put an arm around her waist and half dragged her across the street.

Here the houses were a little more spaced-out, some with detached garages left open when their owners fled. Smooth lawns sloped down to sidewalks littered with more detritus of the fleeing. Seemingly out of nowhere a man, wearing nothing but filthy, stained boxers, shreds of skin hanging from a ragged hole in his abdomen, slammed into David, taking him to the ground.

He felt the dead man’s mouth chomp down hard on his arm, tearing away the nylon shell and the down underneath. Little puffs of feathers floated to the ground. Chewing for a few seconds before spitting them out, the man came in for another bite.

Spinning around, David kicked him hard in the face before scrambling backward and almost colliding with Bea who was standing, holding a Glock in shaking hands. She looked down at her hands almost as if they belonged to someone else and had nothing to do with her. When the gun fired twice she looked surprised.

The first shot hit pavement. The second hit the dead man in the side of his face, blowing off his jaw and the side of his skull. Black chunks splattered across the street. He went down.

“I think he wanted to hurt you.” She struggled to get the words out and her speech was slurred.

David almost laughed. “I think you’re right. Let’s get inside.”

More dead staggered into the street behind them. They ran for the red house, David hoping she didn’t collapse before they got to the steps. Someone opened the door and they almost fell inside, finding themselves in near-total darkness. David froze when he heard a shotgun rack.