This Land of Monsters

by Tim Gabrielle

  THIS LAND OF MONSTERS

  By

  Tim Gabrielle

  Ink Smith Publishing

  www.ink-smith.com

  © 2018 by Tim Gabrielle. All rights reserved.

  Edited by Corinne Anderson

  Formatted by V.J.O. Gardner

  Cover design by Cover art © Lori Follett of www.HellYes.design

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the U.S.A

  The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-947578-20-3

  Ink Smith Publishing

  710 S. Myrtle Ave Suite 209

  Monrovia, CA, 91016

  This book is dedicated to my loving, patient, adorable wife, Heather...

  and also the New England Patriots.

  Chapter 1

  Nash couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in an actual bed. The rain pelted against the bedroom window, and all he thought about was how many times they’d slept in the trunks of abandoned cars and on top of cargo trucks in order to stay safe from the madness that surrounded them. Houses were a luxury of the past and offered little protection in this new world. Still, as he lay in the dusty bed, he couldn’t help but appreciate the small comfort of the past.

  Moonlight broke through the storm clouds and illuminated the decorations on the dimly lit walls. The name “Melissa” was scrawled in neat, colorful cursive above the door, with pastel butterflies that floated among the hand-painted letters. Posters of bands he hadn’t thought of in years hung on the wall and their forgotten songs crept through his head.

  He propped himself up on his elbows and surveyed the destruction around him. A bookcase lay smashed on the floor, magazines and CDs strewn about the room. A wooden chair, broken in two, covered a large dark blotch on the carpet in the middle of the room. With each flash of lightning, the large spot would come into focus, with smaller stains that led away toward the open hallway door. He hadn’t known Melissa, but he was overwhelmed with sadness. He knew what had happened to her in this room.

  Dried blood had ruined the thick blanket that was on her bed, which was fine, as the single sheet he’d found in a linen closet was more than enough for the hot July night. A small backpack sat beside his bed, filled with items he’d collected on their travels. He’d lost his favorite knife months ago and instead had found a sturdy axe, which leaned against the wall beside the bed. He felt odd sleeping in Melissa’s bed with his muddy shoes still on, but he knew this would probably be the last time that he or anyone else rested there. Muddy sheets were a small price to pay when a quick escape might be needed.

  As he watched the rain continue to crash against the window, a small circle of orange glowed brightly, and then softened in the reflection of the glass. The smell of cigar smoke wafted into the room, a smell he had grown accustomed to but still hated. His stepfather, Duncan, had a way of not making his presence known unless he wanted it to be. This was one of those times, as Nash had been awake for hours and hadn’t heard or seen him at all.

  He laid quietly and watched the dark silhouette as the glow of the cigar continued to brighten and fade. Not a single flash of lightning came as he watched Duncan's reflection in the window, which made his presence all the more unnerving. Nash heard the familiar sound of ash being tapped off and the thud of a half-smoked cigar as it tumbled onto the messy floor. Duncan had a habit of never finishing cigars, usually finishing them only halfway before he tossed them away. It never made sense to Nash, but he knew better than to ask; it was Duncan’s world and Nash was simply along for the ride.

  Duncan’s footsteps echoed through the hallway as he left to go back to his bedroom. Nash was alone again, something he was rarely granted and greatly appreciated. They’d spent the greater part of the last two years together as they ran, hid and survived. Survival meant close quarters, which made privacy a luxury rarely attained. As the storm crashed violently against the house, the two men silently enjoyed their time away from each other.

  Somewhere far away in the dark landscape, Nash heard an unnatural scream as it escaped from the belly of a monster. Lightning crashed across the dark sky as he tried to force himself to sleep.

  Chapter 2

  The storm clouds from the night before dissolved, allowing the morning sun to warm the room as Nash slung his backpack over his shoulders. It was light, as it only contained a couple paperback books and some survival items he’d collected from abandoned homes they’d searched. He hardly had time to read, but he liked having a couple books with him for the rare times they found themselves somewhere safe.

  The sounds of the morning echoed through the house and reminded Nash of the time before the monsters had come. Back then, his mother had still been with him, and Duncan had been nothing but a side note. He remembered pancakes and bacon, coupled with the slow melodic music she had listened to every weekend as she stood in front of the stove. The sounds and smells had crept slowly up the stairs to wake him every Sunday, his favorite day of the week. Duncan had always been gone on Sundays, which left Nash and his mother alone.

  It was a Sunday that she had died, trapped in an overturned car as they waited for an ambulance to arrive. Nash had been in the car with her and had been fortunate enough to be there as she died, holding her hand as she lay pinned in the crumpled sedan. The fact that Nash had shared her last moment was something Duncan resented, causing an even greater rift in their already tattered relationship.

  The memories of his mother dissolved as another scream echoed through the halls of the home. It wasn’t the sound of someone calling for help, but the sound of madness that echoed far off in the distance. It was a sound that Nash had learned to aggressively avoid, no matter the cost.

  The world had undergone a drastic, violent change since his mother died. The first reports had been of sickness that spread quickly across the world. Those infected became either incredibly violent or docile. It had advanced rapidly and changed those who were infected within minutes, and the world had settled into a madness it had been completely unprepared for. Watching the world decay around him, a large part of him was thankful his mother had passed before it had all started. She had been too kind for this new world.

  Nash adjusted the straps of his bag as he stepped forward and looked out the window, spotting a figure in the yard below. It was partially hidden from his view by an overgrown tree, and moved slowly from side to side in an almost hypnotized movement. He could tell it was what he’d come to call a slowpoke. Some people became violent, driven by rage and bloodlust after becoming infected, but others became lethargic, living the remainder of their days standing about and waiting to die as they faded into nothing. Slowpokes had no will to eat; other than their infected blood, they posed no true threat to the living. He couldn’t help but feel sad as he watched from his window, the figure moving listlessly in the overgrown grass.

  He left the slowpoke standing below and rummaged through the remains of Melissa’s room, searching for supplies they could use in their travels. Most of the room had been torn apart in the carnage that had occurred, but he wasn’t going to leave until he searched the remains of the room. He turned over a dresser drawer, which had toppled to the ground and found a pile of underwear and socks underneath. A wave of embarrassment washed over him as he looked at the girl’s undergarments displayed on the carpet in front of him. He started to lower the drawer back over her things when a y
ellow envelope fell from it and scattered pictures onto the bloodied carpet.

  He crouched and collected the pictures, remembering his own friends and family as he thumbed through the prints. The set was from a family vacation at a cottage and showed people in canoes, lakefront scenery, and family dinners at sunset. He thought about the time before Duncan, when he and his father’s family had vacationed together. He’d never met his real father, who had died of cancer before Nash could remember, but Nash and his mother had always been closer to his father’s side of the family than his mother’s.

  The last picture he picked up was of a girl he recognized from the framed pictures on the main floor. Her long, blonde hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail as she smiled at the camera. She stood on an old dock with a bottle of Dr. Pepper in her hand as the sun reflected off the still lake. A smile crept across his face as he looked at the picture while he tried to remember the taste of Dr. Pepper.

  With the exception of this last photo, he slid the prints back into the envelope and placed them on the foot of the bed. Something about having the dock picture with him made him feel at ease, as if she’d been a long-forgotten friend. He slid the photo into his back pocket and took another quick look out the window. The slowpoke still stood there, swaying softly in the morning sunlight.

  The hallway outside Melissa’s room was covered in debris. Pictures had fallen off of the wall and sprayed glass across the floor, which was cluttered with the belongings of the previous inhabitants. The dried mud on his boots left crusty footprints and the glass splintered into smaller fragments as he did his best to move quietly through the hallway. The room that Duncan had slept in the night before was now open and empty. Another half-finished cigar lay on the floor next to an overturned bottle of bourbon, something Duncan had likely found before turning in.

  Nash crept carefully down the cluttered staircase, filled with chairs and end-tables that he’d placed there the night before in order to give them warning if anyone, or anything, tried to reach them while they slept. He had put himself in charge of securing the areas where they took refuge, as Duncan was usually more concerned with finding booze and cigars. He ducked around a bookcase toward the bottom of the steps and stepped onto the main floor, which was in considerably worse shape than the upstairs.

  Almost every piece of furniture or décor had been torn apart and tossed to the floor, destroyed at some point before their arrival. As he stood among the wrecked furnishings of the previous residents, he heard the faint sound of liquor sloshing back to the bottom of a bottle as Duncan drank alone in the kitchen. A loud belch echoed through the home, followed by a soft chuckle and another slosh of liquid.

  Before he went into the kitchen, Nash crept to the back of the house and looked through a window at the slowpoke that stood in the backyard. It was a woman in her mid-thirties, with long, straggly brown hair that hung loosely around her slender shoulders. She wore no clothing, only a single thong sandal that barely clung to her left foot as she stood awkwardly in the wet grass.

  He backed away from the window, feeling ashamed that he had even looked at her naked chest. She was beautiful, there was no denying that, and he knew without looking that Duncan had watched her from the kitchen all morning. Nash looked at slowpokes with a sense of pity, while Duncan took his anger out on most of the ones they came across. His weapon of choice had always been a large Bowie knife that he kept with him at all times, using it to hack and slash at them through a storm of laughter and curses before he finally killed them with a blow to the head. The more alcohol in his system, the more sadistic he was with his attacks, which Nash routinely tried to avoid seeing.

  He found Duncan with his feet up on the kitchen table, leaning back in a chair that looked as if it would break apart at any moment. He held an almost empty bottle of wine loosely at his side while he fiddled with an unopened condom in his other hand. The large window across the table from him had been shattered long ago, its glass and wood sprayed out across the lawn. The naked slowpoke stood just outside, her feet bloodied from the broken shards of glass.

  “You see this shit?” said Duncan, pointing at the woman outside with the bottle in his hand. He looked at Nash with a delighted grin. “Now do you see why I keep a pack of rubbers on me at all times? We picked the right house, didn’t we, Buddy Boy!”

  Nash hated when Duncan called him Buddy Boy. It was never in an endearing manner, usually only used when he was drunk and feeling belligerent. Nash turned away from him and continued into the kitchen, opening up the cabinets and drawers as he rummaged for anything of value.

  “Take a good look, it’s probably the closest you’ll ever get,” he said as he leaned forward and slammed the bottle down on the table, snickering at his joke.

  The woman outside noticed the noise from the kitchen and leaned forward to see inside. Her long, dark hair fell forward and covered most of her exposed chest.

  “What are you doing out there all alone, sweetie-pie?” Duncan said as he motioned with both hands for the slowpoke woman to join him in the kitchen. “Come on in and we’ll have a good time! You, me, and my Buddy Boy over here!”

  “You’re disgusting,” said Nash, as Duncan broke into a fit of laughter.

  “Think what you want. I wasn’t planning on sharing her with you anyway.”

  Nash left out of the front door as Duncan erupted into another drunken giggle. The street was lined with cars and trucks as he came to a stop at the edge of the yard and listened to a crow caw from a dead power-line. Except for a few slowpokes in the middle of the road, staring lazily into the sky, the road was empty. The houses that lined the street were left in ruin, having been torn apart or completely burned to the ground.

  They needed to collect supplies and judging by Duncan’s mood, he knew he’d be doing it alone. But Duncan couldn’t be left alone with the defenseless creature in the state he was in, especially after the comments he’d made in the kitchen. Nash had seen that look in Duncan’s eye before and knew what he had planned for her as soon as Nash left. Nash’s body involuntarily convulsed in disgust. His decision made, Nash made his way to the back of the house, his boots squishing in the wet grass.

  He picked up an old musty blanket, soaked from the night’s rain and dragged it behind him with one hand, his axe rested securely in the other. The naked slowpoke noticed him immediately as he came around the house. He made his way toward her in the hot morning sun, the wet blanket still grasped in his hand as it dragged behind him.

  Nash had seen the fear in the faces of some of the slowpokes Duncan had cut into and watched as a few of them even tried to slowly escape from him in vain. He’d witnessed groups of them as they walked together, as if part of an old clique before their deaths, and even the occasional couple that held hands and made their way aimlessly through the world. Nash had witnessed Duncan kill dozens of slowpokes, in all manner of ways, in the time they had traveled together. Nash, however, took no joy in the few times he had killed one, but as Duncan sat and watched her, Nash swung his axe and planted it into the back of the slowpoke’s skull. The feeling of the axe as it came to a stop in her skull sickened him. It was still a life, and that belief was responsible for his hesitation when it came to killing any of the vacant, docile slowpokes. Blood sprayed up and sideways as she fell to the ground.

  “What the hell, Nash?” he yelled angrily from the kitchen.

  Nash draped the musty blanket over the now deceased woman and took one last look at her sad face before he fully covered her from head to toe. He walked away from her, knowing she wasn’t a slowpoke any longer, just a victim of the crumbled society in which they lived.

  Nash wiped the blade of his axe with the blanket and grabbed his bag before he walked back to the abandoned street. He heard the backdoor open and close as Duncan came outside to inspect his previously intended prey. She was at peace; whether or not Duncan moved forward with his plan, Nash didn’t want to know.

  Chapter 3

  Nash walked down th
e street and observed the devastation that had once been a nice neighborhood. White picket fences now lay on the ground, trampled and broken by passing monsters. A flagpole laid in the ruins of a crushed fence, the American flag flapping in tatters on the street, its white stars streaked with blood. Most of the houses were ransacked to the point where he deemed them pointless to search, with the exception of one. The windows remained unbroken and the exterior of the house was still intact as the door hung partially open. It looked mostly untouched, and if any house would have something of value, this would be the one.

  Nash was always weary about walking into houses alone but knew he was better off than if he had brought Duncan with him this morning. Given the way he’d left him, anything done with him would have ended up being more of a liability than an asset. His nerves slowly tightened as he approached the house. He looked from the walking path into the home through the open door as he clutched his axe tighter. For as long as he remembered, he’d always been a little on the nervous side, but nervousness was a sensation that could no longer be afforded.

  A wooden porch wrapped around both sides of the home, painted white, with dead potted flowers sitting at the opening of the stairs. The steps creaked softly under his feet as he made his way onto the porch and listened for any signs of movement through the partially front open door. The interior was in worse shape than the outside and Nash wasn’t sure if his initial observation about the house would pan out.

  He used his axe and slowly pushed the door open further. He was relieved to hear no squeaking as it swung open. He was always extra cautious not to make any noise that would attract unwanted attention. Within the first month of being on the road, Duncan had kicked open the door of a house he thought was good for looting. The door had exploded into shards of wood that sent shockwaves through the house as three howlers spilled into the foyer and chased them into the streets, separating them for hours. Nash still remembered Duncan’s laughter as two of the howlers wildly pursued him into the distance.