by Brown, TW
So, how do you get zombies to come wipe out your town (or maybe the town of an ex, or somebody that you just really don’t like), so to speak? Simple. All you have to do is send me an email at [email protected] with “I WANT TO SEE THE DEAD TAKE MY TOWN!” in the subject line. From there, in the actual email, tell me where you are from. Tell me a little bit about your town and what makes it special. Feel free to offer your own name up for use as a character. You are even free to give me a description or photo that I can use to design this character. I even let you specify if you wish to be hero or villain. Sorry, no promises that you will survive in any case, and your character’s depiction may be NOTHING like you in manner and action. It will simply carry your name into the annals of zombie apocalypse history.
So…are you interested?
Curious?
Or maybe you really dislike those snobs over in Shelbyville? (Simpson’s reference, sorry.) Well, you now have the power of life, death, and undeath in your hands. What will you do?
I have the usual suspects to thank. My beta readers (Jeff Shoemaker, Michelle Warren, Nelson Wilbanks, Ramona Martine, Tammy Gaylord Beard, and Tracey Lynn, Caroline Harmon). Seriously, you make this a better book with your keen eyes and helpful suggestions. I want to thank the people that keep us safe: the men and women of the armed forces, as well as the public servants in the medical, police, and fire departments. Without them, we would be in serious trouble. I would be remiss if I did not thank you, the person reading this book. Without you, I would not be doing what I love for a living. Thank you so much for being a part of making my dreams come true. Also, I have to thank Erin West and the staff and players of the 2015 Portland Thunder Arena Football League team.
Last, but certainly not least, I have to thank my wife. You have never wavered in your belief. You push me to do things that I would not do on my own. This book is being handed out at the Portland Thunder home games for the 2015 season because you believed and told me that this was a good idea. Talk about shoving a guy out of his comfort zone.
Keep Portland Weird!
TW Brown
February 2015
To Ruth Rolle
You are an inspiration
Contents
It Begins: Ken Simpson
It Begins: Rose Tinnes
It Begins: Jason Edwards
Discoveries
Beginning of the End
Bad People
“What about Hank?”
The First Night of the End of the World
Into the Breach
“Yes. This is really happening.”
A Terrible Thing
Discoveries
Tough Choices
Door-to-Door Shopping
Rag and Bone
Normal?
Winter
“And so it goes…”
1
It Begins: Ken Simpson
“…as reports continue to come in, we will do our best to keep you informed,” the pretty, blond talking head on the television said.
Ken Simpson was not fooled in the slightest. He opened his hall closet and pulled the long, black case out from behind his array of coats, jackets, hoodies, and windbreakers.
He glanced to the left at the mirror that was mounted on the back of his bedroom door. His wife had insisted on that damn thing. She would get ready for work in the bathroom and then come out and give herself a full once-over before kissing him and heading out the door every morning for twenty-odd years.
After her death following a lengthy and horrible battle with cancer, he had simply not possessed the heart to take the damn thing down. Looking at his reflection, he saw an old man that he barely recognized. His once clean-shaven head now showed a halo of short gray hair that looked more like a wreath than anything else. His week of stubble was adding to the disheveled look that he sported more often than not these days. After he had been forced to retire due to a leg injury suffered while he had been chasing a shoplifter of all things, Ken had simply let himself go.
Standing up straight, he initially sucked in his gut, but then remembered there was nobody around to impress. He let it go and winced as it extended well over his belt. The only feature he still had anything to be proud of was his chest. He had been a big man all his life, and his massive chest made him an imposing figure back in his prime. It was still broad, but he knew that it would not be long before gravity and laziness turned his pecs into man boobs.
For only being forty-nine years old, he looked every bit a man in his early sixties. The last year had been hell. With Milly passing, he had simply stopped caring about anything; and that included himself. With no children and, subsequently, no grandchildren, Ken really had nothing to motivate him to shower if not for the face the clerk would make as he stood at the register. He would climb into his car after buying groceries (more for the replenishing of his beer supply than for actual food) and give himself a sniff test. Usually that would remind him that it had been a while since his last encounter with soap and water.
The one thing that he did take care of was the house. That had been Milly’s pride and joy. For some reason, he could not allow the house to fall into the same degree of disrepair that he had plummeted. The television continued to drone, but he only heard snippets as he shut the closet door with his foot.
“…attacks in increasing numbers…reports of individuals biting their victims…hospitals overrun with people suffering from attacks…”
Walking into his living room, he set the case on the coffee table and opened it. As he did so, he glanced out the enormous picture frame window that provided a view of the street. It was maybe two hours before it would begin getting dark, and there were no signs of kids playing or joggers pounding the sidewalk. He was about to return his attention to the black case when something caught his eye. It was the Calloway dog.
Brandy or Bailey or some other alcohol related name. He never cared enough to remember, and that was a good thing. If Ken Simpson knew the name of a dog in the neighborhood, chances are it usually ended up with a pellet in the ass. As far as he knew, this dog had never used his yard as its personal toilet. Of course, that spoke more of the owner, Ken knew that. But, since he would probably have ended up in jail a long time ago if he’d been shooting the dogs’ owners instead of the dogs—
The dog stopped suddenly and craned its head back over its shoulder. The animal bared its teeth, growling loud enough to be heard in the house. Its eyes were wide enough that he could see the whites. He was not much of a dog person, but he knew fear on an animal when he saw it.
Ken moved to the door and opened it. The Golden Retriever paused and turned his direction. Its collar and leash were still on, but the chunky, balding man who he always saw at the other end of that bright pink leash was nowhere to be found. He thought the man’s named might be Calloway. Maybe it was Carson. Hell, that was something Milly knew, he didn’t really have a clue.
A low moan made Ken look down the street in the same direction the dog was looking. What he saw actually made his knees buckle just a little. The owner of the Golden Retriever was headed this way.
As a retired police officer, Ken had seen some nasty things. Car accidents were always a good place to get a rookie’s feet wet. Literally. The human body was simply not designed to withstand the amount of force that a head-on collision dealt. It was even worse when the person or persons were not wearing seatbelts.
In his younger days, he had been one of those sorts who disdained the use of his seatbelt; at least he had been until he had arrived on the scene of his first accident where the driver and passenger of the compact car had made that same choice. The massive diesel pickup truck that had slammed into them probably would have killed them in any case. But both bodies had been launched through the windshield.
The woman’s head had been almost snapped off from the force of being bent backwards so hard. He had been okay until he reached where the driver had been thrown partway through the windshield. The steering w
heel had crushed his chest and the rib bones had punched through where they had been snapped and turned into jagged daggers. Something had been lacerated and fresh shit mixed with the blood leaked from his body in several places. Ken Simpson, rookie police officer, had fallen to his hands and knees and vomited like never before in his life.
That did not hold a candle to this.
The man walking down the street had been torn open. There were things hanging from his belly that definitely should not. Long, ropy strands of what Ken knew had to be intestines dangled and slapped against the man’s thighs.
It was obvious that the attack on this man had been sudden and violent. A dark stain ran down the inside of the legs of his khaki pants. Of course, Ken had been to enough scenes where somebody had died. He knew full well that it was common for the deceased to release bowel and bladder upon dying.
The portly man was walking with slow, unsteady steps; almost as if he might be drunk. This would match up with everything that had been on the news the past few days.
It was global and nobody seemed to know how it had started. If you watched one news channel, there was talk of some sort of chemical weapon. On another, it was a depleted ozone layer and some recent solar flare activity. The religious channels were predictable in their “End of Day” fervor. And then there were the tabloids. Everything from aliens to the Chinese government and some sort of secret weapons test that had gone wrong were getting top billing these past few days when it had finally gotten too big to contain or hide.
Last night, Ken had stopped in to see his old buddy Red. Red Gibson ran a gun shop and shooting range a few miles away. It was where all the local law enforcement types did their target practice. He had picked up another ten thousand rounds for his Glocks and another five thousand for his .30-06.
Already there were reports of sporadic looting and rioting. The government was being mum so far. The last thing that he had heard from the White House was the president telling people to remain calm. Did he actually think that was going to do any good?
Local media coverage was not much better, and he had word from a few of his friends still on the force that a military vehicle was spotted in the parking lots of all the major news studios. That most likely meant that the people of the Portland metro area were being fed a diet of government-approved false information.
The barking and growling of the dog at the end of his walkway snapped Ken back to the situation at hand. Oddly enough, the dog’s owner had not made all that much progress. His gait was not only awkward, but exceptionally slow. He did not see how these things could even be considered much of a threat like he was hearing.
If people were being attacked and bitten by these people who were supposedly infected with whatever the hell was causing this behavior, they had to be either very slow, or very stupid. He had just cracked a slight smile when his neighbor, Gina Glendon, exploded out onto her well-lit porch, the screen door slamming into the twisted black metal that acted as rail and bannister for her tiny stoop.
Gina Glendon was the typical looking soccer-mom. The slight bulge of her belly indicated that she would finally be embarking on that journey of actual motherhood in a few months. Her hair was a chestnut brown and cut stylishly to fall just past her collar. Her skin was unusually pale. Unusual for her since she was a regular at the local tanning salon during Oregon’s rainy winter season. With spring just around the corner, she usually had a bronze glow obtained at the fake-and-bake. Obviously she had forgone that luxury due to her pregnancy.
Gina was a pretty woman, but she had a voice that could peel paint and shatter glass. What was all the worse was the fact that she did not have to yell for her voice to be annoying. Even her conversational voice was nerve jangling. When she screamed, it often could be heard up and down the block during normal circumstances.
Ken’s head was not the only one to turn as the woman let go with a horrible shriek. The owner of the dog turned and reoriented on the woman who was on her butt and scooting backwards away from the open front door. A man stepped out onto the porch and let loose with a moan that was nearly identical to the one he had heard from the owner of the Golden Retriever just a moment ago.
Ken’s cop instincts kicked in, and he cataloged every detail. The man was Gerald Glendon, Gina’s husband. He was in his mid-thirties and worked as a car salesman on the Portland strip known as Auto Row (which is basically a three mile stretch on McLoughlin Boulevard in Southeast Portland). The man was an okay guy from what Ken recalled of their limited conversations usually around spring when they would both be out mowing their lawns on the weekends.
Gerald had a blood-soaked bandage around his left forearm. Ken cocked his head as he looked first at Gerald, and then at the portly dog owner that was closing in behind Gina Glendon with awkward and jerky steps.
“The eyes,” he breathed so softly that he barely heard his own revelation.
Both of these men had eyes that were filmed in a pus-white. But it was the black traces that stood out against the white that was really noticeable as something very wrong. Having seen his own bloodshot visage on many occasions, Ken knew that he was seeing something identifiable and potentially important.
He was still spellbound by the scene until Gerald fell on his wife who had tumbled awkwardly down the few steps that led to the porch and was now sprawled on the grass. It was like being splashed with cold water. If there was one thing that Ken had learned to despise from his days on the force, it was drunk drivers and woman beaters.
Ken took a step forward and stopped dead in his tracks. He actually wiped at his eyes to be sure that he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing. Gerald lunged forward with his head and latched on to his wife’s arm that had flown up in reflexive defense. His teeth snapped shut on the flesh of that forearm, and with a few yanks, meat was torn away.
Ken felt his gorge rise as he watched Gerald make a few grinding chews before swallowing the raw meat and leaning forward for another bite. By that time, the dog owner had reached the couple and fell in to assist in the attack on the flailing woman.
Later, Ken would feel a sense of shame and embarrassment as he stood rooted to one spot while the attack escalated and grew into something so surreal that he simply could not accept as actually happening. He would witness much worse in the days to come, but this first encounter would be the one that would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.
“Help!” Gina shrieked, her head twisting back and forth with such violent ferocity that it should have caused her neck to snap. “For the love of God, please!”
Gerald bit down on her face just as she finished that plea. His teeth clamped on her nose and Ken swore that he heard a crunch. When the man jerked back, blood shot from this new wound and sprayed the man who was busy chewing with no emotion whatsoever registering on his face as he brutalized the woman who would have been the mother of his child.
And then the dog owner got his first piece of Gina Glendon. The portly man dug his face into the crook of where her neck met shoulder as if nuzzling her.
The next scream from Gina was unlike anything that Ken had ever heard in all his years. It almost caused him physical pain in his gut to even hear. It was that scream that at last sent him rushing into action.
He reached the tangle of bodies and once again was halted in his tracks. What he was seeing could absolutely not be happening. The two men had torn away the woman’s blouse, and her bulging stomach was being ripped open!
Ken kicked the dog owner in the side of the head as hard as he could and then spun on Gerald. The man had pulled something jelly-like and purple from the gash in Gina’s abdomen. He was already shoving it into his mouth as it ripped away from whatever had once held it in place.
Ken made himself look away from the wound. His eyes had caught sight of something else, and if he focused on that single tiny thing, he might very well lose not only his nerve, but also his mind. Rearing back, he kicked Gerald square in the face. The man’s head snapped b
ack and the body went sprawling.
Ken was about to lean in and see if there was anything at all he could do for Gina who had thankfully lost consciousness at some point; probably due to the pain. Only, before he could do anything, both the dog owner and Gerald were struggling back to their feet—or, more accurately, their knees. They were focused on that terrible wound, and their hands were opening and closing almost in greedy anticipation.
“Screw this,” Ken muttered and ran back to his house where his gun case was still sitting open and waiting. He passed the Golden Retriever that was now crouched on his porch. He considered shooing it away, but decided the dog probably had been through enough already.
He reached down and grabbed one of his Glock 17s, along with a loaded magazine that he slid into place. Giving the slide a tug, he ratcheted the first round into the chamber and walked back outside.
His eyes did another scan of the street. He noticed a few curtains had been drawn shut since this ordeal had begun.
“Bunch of damned cowards,” he spat.
The two men were hunched over Gina’s body and the sounds coming from them were a mix of slurps, moans, and smacks. He brought up his weapon and advanced.
“I am only going to give you this one warning. Stop what you are doing and step away from the woman,” Ken said in a level voice brought on by years on the force. He already had a pretty firm idea of how this would play out, but in case there might be any witnesses, he felt the need to at least give some sort of verbal warning.