Life of the Dead Box Set [Books 1-5]

by Urban, Tony

  Bundy looked outside again, scanning the area for zombies. Once convinced he was alone, he dressed. Then he loaded all the handguns to capacity and placed them in the van. He added two large and heavy boxes labeled “4th of July decorations.” He didn’t know if he’d need the contents, but it couldn’t hurt. Well, it could hurt. Quite a bit if he wasn’t careful.

  He longed for the rest of his collection which he kept locked away in heavy duty gun safes at his apartment, but the feds confiscated all of them after his conviction. No guns for felons, after all. They were dangerous. He found himself longing for the Hellpup that got him sent away. Whoever said the average American had no need for automatic weapons never had to deal with zombies.

  Chapter 35

  After her mother’s police blotter fame had turned them both into local pariahs, Ramey grew to hate the town in which she’d grown up. The town in which she'd elected to stay rather than run away to greener pastures with her father. Still, as she drove the pickup down the streets and saw the destruction taking place, she couldn’t help but feel nostalgic.

  The Glow n Bowl bowling alley where she’d had her thirteenth birthday party was on fire and sent dirty gray clouds into the sky like smoke signals calling for help that wouldn’t come. Several figures, which from their size Ramey judged to be preteens, stumbled about the parking lot. Despite their charred black skin, they seemed beyond pain.

  When a woman in a housecoat with cartoon kitten print came running down the sidewalk, the burned zombies caught on to her presence and moved in her direction. Ramey drove toward her and as she got closer, she saw the woman was Mrs. Kraft, her third grade teacher.

  “Get in!” Ramey yelled.

  The teacher glanced at Ramey with feverish, bloodshot eyes and showed no sign of recognizing her former student.

  “Mrs. Kraft, get in the truck!”

  The woman looked away from Ramey and toward the burned child zombies.

  “Zeke?” she called out. “Zeke? It’s Mommy.”

  Shit, her son must be one of those charbroiled ghouls, Ramey thought. The zombies were now only a few yards away. She shouted again at her teacher. “They’re dead! Can’t you see that? Come with me!”

  Mrs. Kraft didn’t move to the truck or flee from the zombies. Instead, she ran toward them. How she could tell which of the crispy critters was her Zeke was a mystery to Ramey, but the woman picked out one in red Pumas and embraced it.

  The boy took a heaping mouthful of tit, like a baby well past its feeding time, and bit right through the kitten housecoat. He pulled away a bloody chunk of flesh as Mrs. Kraft screamed and cried. Then the other deep fried zombies joined the party. Ramey didn’t wait, she’d seen enough, and the tires squealed as she sped away.

  She tried to focus only on the road as she drove off, but her peripheral vision revealed the descent into chaos. When the “Thanks for visiting. Come back real soon!” sign appeared at the border, she felt a mixture of relief and regret, and she knew without a doubt she’d never see her hometown again. No great loss.

  The dilapidated storefronts and warehouses disappeared from her rear-view mirror and the landscape switched to fields and forests. After a few miles of seeing no zombies (no humans either) she began to relax.

  For the past year, a part of Ramey thought her dreams of running away were only that, dreams. And the voice inside her head said she would end up pregnant to some dimwit like Bobby Mack, waiting tables at the truck stop and spending her tips on scratch off tickets because they’d be her only chance of escape.

  Even worse, the voice told her she would end up like her mother. Just another former pretty face wasting her life and a sore back away from a pill addiction. But now she was out, even if the circumstances were unexpected and undesirable.

  Ramey did know where to go and her mind flitted between thoughts of the past and thoughts of the future. If there would even be a future. The #zombiepresident trending topic she saw just before the internet evaporated kept coming to mind. If that was true, the entire country was in trouble. The whole world. And if the world was screwed, where did that leave that was safe?

  Safe… The word made her think of her father’s letter.

  It’s safe here.

  Was it? She had her doubts. She loved her father, but he was a hopeless dreamer, always prattling about what a great world was out there if people could stop chasing money and focus on each other. Peace and love and all that hippy dippy bullshit. The kind of things that sounded great but ignored the fact that deep down most people suck. But still she wondered, could he be somewhere safe?

  Her hand went to her pocket, and she felt the folds of the letter through the denim of her jeans. She reached to grab the paper and looked away from the road. In doing so, she didn’t see the jack-knifed big rig ahead of her. And she didn’t see the three zombies milling around the cab.

  Ramey extracted the letter and map from her too-skinny skinny jeans then looked up and saw the tractor trailer blocking both lanes of the country road. She was only yards away, and it took a few seconds for the shock to pass before she hit her brakes.

  That wasn’t enough time to stop. In the blurry confusion of surprise Ramey couldn’t even tell that the two men and one woman in the roadway were already quite dead, so she jerked the wheel hard to the left.

  The lifted pick up swayed and felt almost like it was floating. The feeling you have on a roller coaster when you crest the peak and plunge down the opposite side.

  She realized the truck was on the verge of flipping over and she eased the wheel out of the too sharp turn. The pickup stabilized, but in the process, she slammed into one of the men standing in the road, hitting him in the back. He flipped in mid-air before flopping onto the pavement.

  The woman closest to him was next in Ramey’s path. That one turned toward the truck at the last second and Ramey saw the zombie was missing an eye and half its cheek, so she didn’t feel bad when she hit it straight on. That creature performed no gymnastics. It fell straight back and Ramey heard it crunch under the passenger side tires.

  The resistance coupled with Ramey braking brought the truck to a halt a few feet before it could smash into the eighteen wheeler.

  “Jesus christ!” Ramey said to herself.

  She backed up and felt more bones snap under the weight of the beefy mud tires, then surveyed the scene. One zombie remained standing. It had been an elderly, balding man with shocks of white hair popping out from the sides of its head like a geriatric circus clown.

  Ramey considered running it over, but she didn’t know how much more the old pickup could take. As she prepared to drive off and let it be, a noise caught her attention. Was that a voice?

  She rolled down her window, leaned out, and listened.

  “I’m stuck in here!”

  Yep, it was a voice and Ramey wasn’t the only one who heard it. Zombie Bozo had too, and the monster staggered toward the cab of the trailer, which laid toppled on its side.

  “Damn it.” Ramey exited the safety of her own ride, but not before grabbing the lug wrench which laid on the seat.

  The old zombie focused only on the voice in the big rig and missed Ramey coming up from behind. She swung the metal rod and the fat end connected with the creature’s skull. There was a light cracking sound like Ramey had stepped on a potato chip. The zombie stopped walking and did a slow motion fall to the roadway. It stayed down.

  “You’re a pistol!” the voice inside the big rig called out.

  Ramey stepped to the truck and looked through the windshield. Daylight reflected off the glass and made it hard to see inside, but when she leaned in close, she could make out the silhouette of a man behind the wheel.

  “How are you stuck?” Ramey asked.

  “Damn seatbelt’s all twisted around me and jammed. Been in here for over four hours!”

  Ramey returned to the pickup and grabbed a pocket knife that had been laying in a cubby on the dash. She went back to the tractor trailer.

  Th
e cab was driver’s side down and stood a few feet taller than Ramey. She didn’t relish the thought of trying to climb on top to reach the passenger side door.

  “I’ve got a knife. Now, how do I get it to you?”

  “Bust out the windshield,” the man said.

  Ramey paused. “Are you sure?”

  “Hell yes, I’m sure. This big ol’ bitch ain’t going anywhere anytime soon, anyway.”

  Ramey got close to the front windshield. She raised the lug wrench, reared back then hesitated.

  “Cover your eyes.” She watched the driver hold his hands over his face. Satisfied, she swung. A small divot appeared in the bug splattered glass, but that was all.

  “Again!” he said.

  She swung again, this time using even more force than she’d used on the zombie. She connected at about the same spot and a dozen thin lines spider-webbed out from the point of impact.

  “One more oughta do it!” he said.

  Ramey sighed. Each blow sent painful shocks up her arms and her hands felt numb and shaky. She swung again, and this time the spider-webs turned into mosaic with a fat hole in the middle. It was big enough to fit her arm through and the safety glass posed little harm as she passed the knife through to the driver.

  He cut the seatbelt and Ramey heard a thud as he fell a few inches into the door below him. He grunted and swore, then asked for the lug wrench, which she was glad to hand over. From the inside, he broke apart the windshield until there was a man-sized opening. He slithered through it head first and Ramey had to fight away a smile when she thought it looked like the cab was giving birth to him.

  The man was around forty-five or fifty, Ramey guessed, and skinny. He wasn’t much taller than she was, and she didn't break five feet three inches unless she wore boots. He had a Patriots cap parked atop his head and a tag on his shirt declared his name to be Stan.

  “I’m Stan,” he confirmed.

  “I gathered as much,” Ramey said, pointing to his shirt.

  “Oh. Yeah.” He handed her the knife and the lug wrench. “Thanks for the help, Miss. I was up shit creek, that’s for sure.”

  “I think we all are.”

  He thought about that for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Before the C.B. went off, it sure sounded that way.” Stan looked to the dead things on the ground. “They’re zombies, aren’t they?”

  Ramey shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what else you’d call them.”

  Stan looked up the road toward town then down the road in the direction Ramey had been going before they met.

  “Where are you headed?”

  She thought about that, about her father and his letter and map. She knew the odds were slim, but what else was out there?

  “I was thinking about here.” She handed Stan the map.

  He examined it for a moment, then nodded. “What’s there?”

  “My dad. Maybe.”

  “I’ve been in that general vicinity a few times. It’s a few hundred miles from here. Not the best roads, though. Want me to come along with?”

  Ramey looked at the wiry little man with his craggy face and wide eyes. He looked harmless, but then again, most people do during the day when the light casts shadows that hide all of their secrets.

  “Don’t you have anyone you want to check on?” she asked.

  Stan shook his head. “Been divorced going on ten years. No kiddos. My parents are long gone.” He gave a bashful grin. “There’s a girl I see when I’m in Memphis, but that’s only a couple times a year. Besides, I suspect she’s got some other fella friends, if you catch my drift.”

  His cheeks turned bright pink and his eyes darted to the ground and she knew then she could trust him. Besides, Stan traveled for a living and she’d never been more than fifty miles away from home and it seemed they’d make a good team.

  “Well then, let’s do it.”

  He looked up and his grin turned into a full smile which, although it revealed a few holes where teeth should have been, was downright charming.

  “Great! Let me just get something from my rig.”

  He climbed back into the cab and emerged a few moments later with the prize. A silver Ruger revolver which possessed, what looked to Ramey, an obnoxiously long barrel.

  “Figure this might come in handy,” he said as he looked down at the zombies.

  “Good call, Stan.”

  She started for her truck. Even if she had stolen it, it was hers now.

  “What’s your name?” Stan asked as he jogged to catch up.

  “Ramey,” she said as she climbed into the driver’s seat. “Now, I’ll drive and you navigate.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  She drove into the grass, which licked at the tires as she steered around Stan’s wrecked rig, then pulled back onto the rural road. Ahead, the coast was clear.

  Chapter 36

  A high-pitched whistling sound woke Grady from a deep sleep. The shrill noise filled his bedroom. Is that a fire whistle? It sounds so close.

  He fumbled for the lamp on the nightstand, and after a few moments of searching, found the switch. The 40-watt bulb cast dim light into the dreary room and Grady looked toward the window, expecting to see the flashing signs of fire trucks. He saw nothing, but the whistle continued. What is that?

  He sat up and the worn out quilt he’d received from his grandmother as a wedding present slid down his torso. He swung his legs off the bed and wiped the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes as he approached the window.

  Before he reached it, he realized the sound was not coming from outside. It was coming from his living room/kitchen. That’s when he realized Josiah wasn’t in the single bed that set tight against his own double.

  Grady rushed out of the bedroom and found his son sprawled on his back on the living room floor. He dropped to his knees, skinning them on the carpet and ignored the burning pain from the exposed nerves. Josiah’s hands were at his throat and his tiny fingers had scratched long gashes down his neck. Air struggled its way in and out of his mouth.

  Oh, God, no. Please, God, I can’t lose him. Anything but that.

  Grady tilted the boy’s head back then pulled open his mouth and tried to look inside for something blocking his airway. He saw nothing. Josiah’s eyes had rolled so far back that almost nothing but white showed.

  “Josiah? Can you hear me? Can you hear Daddy?”

  The boy had never spoken a word in his short life. Grady knew that, but it was all he could think to say. Josiah only kept wheezing.

  Grady grabbed the telephone off the wall and punched nine and one before he realized there was no dial tone. He hung it up, took it again. The line was dead. He tapped the switch hook, not knowing why, but people always did it in the movies, so there must be a reason. It made no difference.

  Please, Jesus Christ in Heaven, protect my boy. Embrace him in your healing arms.

  Grady dropped the phone and rushed back to his son. He scooped the boy up in his arms and ran to the apartment door. After unlocking it, he raced out of the apartment and into the black, night air. He didn’t even realize he’d forgotten to put on shoes until he felt the wet grass under his feet, but that was okay, he didn’t need shoes. He needed to save his son.

  Grady sprinted down the sidewalk. The streets were empty of everything except litter. He had no idea what time it was. It could be 11pm or 5am and, as he headed for the bus stop, he realized the next bus could be hours away.

  Three blocks later, he discovered the bus stop vacant. The glass cubicle that had once provided shelter from bad weather was shattered. That wasn’t too unusual, but Grady could also see dark, wet blood smeared against the green bench that sat amongst the destruction. He couldn’t allow himself to think about what might have happened there. He needed help. His son needed help.

  Please, Jesus, protect him.

  Josiah’s whistling wheezes had decreased in frequency as Grady ran. They now came only once every five or six seconds. Sometimes half a minute
passed in between them. And as they waited for a bus that might never come, his breathing stopped altogether.

  It took Grady a moment to realize Josiah wasn’t going to breathe again on his own, and when he did, his mind exploded in confused, distraught thoughts. Why is this happening? What’s wrong with him? How can I get him help? What should I do? Why is this happening to us, God?

  That last thought snapped him out of his panic. God helps those who help themselves.

  He released Josiah from his tight embrace and laid the boy out on the safety glass covered sidewalk. He again used his fingers to open Josiah’s mouth, but this time he didn’t look inside. This time, he pressed his own mouth over his son’s and breathed. He sent five big breaths into the boy’s lungs, then waited.

  Nothing.

  He gave five more breaths. Then ten. Still, the boy refused to breathe on his own.

  “You can’t take my boy!” Grady screamed, and the sound of his own voice startled him. He hadn’t spoken above a whisper in years and he couldn’t remember shouting since he was a boy, and that was playing games and in fun. This was pain and anger and it felt like something had burst open inside him.

  “God, don’t do this! Don’t take him from me!”

  Tears streamed from Grady’s eyes and rained down onto Josiah’s small, vacant face.

  “What you going on about?” a man’s voice said.

  Grady spun around and saw a black man in a Ravens skullcap. He seemed vaguely familiar and Grady remembered seeing him in the shadows of the street and under stoops trading baggies for cash.

  Before, Grady had tried not to notice him, to ignore the gangster dealing drugs, but in the ghastly glow of the arc sodium streetlight he could see the man was younger than he’d earlier thought. He might not even be twenty. Heavy gold chains sagged down from his neck and more gold adorned his ears and lip. The grip of a pistol jutted out above the crotch of his jeans.

  “You speak English or what?” the man asked Grady.