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

by Urban, Tony

  "What are you waiting for? Help him!"

  The boy gave Bundy a shove in the ribs. Bundy sat on his rump and stared the boy in the eyes.

  "Listen, buddy. Your dad's not hurt."

  "Yes, he is!"

  "No, he might have been hurt before. But he's more than hurt now. He's dead."

  "No, he ain't. He's moving. Dead people don't move."

  He had a point there and Bundy wasn't exactly sure how to respond. Instead, he stood up and grabbed the kid's tiny hand which was swallowed up in his catcher's mitt of a paw.

  "You have to listen to me. He's dead. There was a sickness. It made people die, but left 'em able to move around. All clumsy-like." God, that sounded ridiculous. No wonder the kid wasn't buying it.

  "You're crazy! You're a crazy man! Let me go!"

  Jesus, why did I pick this place to shit, Bundy thought. "Come with me. I'll show you there are others like him. There's no saving them."

  Bundy walked and pulled the kid along. He squirmed and struggled, but he was little more than a rag doll compared to the big man. They made it all the way to the van and Bundy slid open the rear door. He turned to the kid, ready to lift him into the ride when the boy uncorked a perfectly aimed punch to his nuts.

  The breath rushed out of him in a pained, "Oooooof," and he grabbed his balls with both hands. With that, the kid bolted toward the rest stop. Toward his dead father.

  "Wait, kid!" Bundy trudged after him, but between his mammoth size and the throbbing agony between his legs, he was very slow going. "Stay away from your dad! He's a zombie!" When Bundy rounded the corner, the boy was nowhere to be seen. "Kid? Hey? Where are you?"

  Bundy continued on, toward the pit at the side of the building. When he reached it, he paused.

  "Don't do this. Not this time." He took a deep breath and looked into the pit.

  The first thing he saw was the boy's bright blue medical boot. Then he saw the rest of the boy sprawled across his father's lap. It appeared as if he was cradling his son. Maybe rocking him to sleep or singing him a lullaby like he'd done before the world turned to shit. It could have been saccharine sweet.

  But it wasn't. Because the father wasn't holding his son. He was eating him.

  When the father looked up at Bundy, his cheeks bulged out like a chipmunk, which had been gathering acorns for winter. A stringy strip of flesh hung out from between his teeth and his jaws chomped up and down, up and down until it disappeared into his mouth.

  "You prick.”

  The zombie dad growled at him, then leaned in to the kid and bit off his bottom lip. Bundy had seen enough. He headed back to the van and tried to put what he saw out of his mind.

  Chapter 11

  The tide had swamped the Saab on the beach, but Bolivar didn't care. The three mile walk in the cool, damp ocean breeze gave him time to clear his head. When he arrived at the village of Lewes and found it overrun with zombies — just like Philadelphia, but on a smaller scale — any optimism he'd built up on his morning stroll vanished.

  It really is over, he thought. His medic training hadn't included courses on virology, but he knew anything which could spread that fast was beyond control. The world as he'd known it was gone. Accepting that proved freeing in some regards.

  He gave little thought to trekking to Illinois to track down his father and brother, or to California where his sister had moved the week after she graduated high school. He hoped they had survived, but trying to reconnect was pointless. That life was over.

  He suspected the government was over, too, but he decided that as soon as he secured a vehicle, he'd take Sawyer's advice and continue to Dover Air Force Base, mostly because he didn't know where else to go.

  He'd enlisted in the Army when he was still a junior in high school. His father had fought in the first Iraq war and Bolivar, who was a mediocre student with little athletic prowess, was expected to follow in his footsteps and become a soldier.

  The problem was that he couldn't fathom killing people. He appreciated the structure of the military, the camaraderie, and especially the unknown – in the U.S. one day and halfway around the globe the next – but he thought himself incapable of shooting another human being.

  One of his instructors in boot camp, a bespectacled Yankee with a thick Maine accent, picked up on Bolivar's hesitance during firearms training drills. He pulled him aside one day and confronted him.

  "You got good eyes on you, but every time you pull the trigga, you close 'em."

  Bolivar hemmed and hawed and tried to say he didn't have experience with firearms and that part was true, but the Yankee saw through it.

  "Not everyone's meant to be down in the dirt fightin and scrapin and killin. Some folk's got to hang back a bit and clean up the mess. I reckon that might suit you betta."

  He was the one who told Bolivar to consider becoming a combat medic, and as soon as the words were out of his pinched mouth, Bolivar knew it was his future. He finished basic, then was shipped off to Fort Sam Houston in Texas where he spent over a year learning the skills of the job.

  He'd found his calling, and in more than a decade of service, he'd managed not to kill anyone. The zombie he shot through the windshield of the smart car was the only thing he'd ever shot and he hardly thought that counted.

  Lewes was a small town with a canal running through the middle of it. As he approached the village, a squat lighthouse greeted him. Painted on the side was "Welcome to Historic Lewes, Delaware. The first town in the first state" and below the writing an old pickup had smashed through the fake, brown lighthouse. Bolivar checked the ignition and the keys were gone.

  The zombies grew thicker the further he got into town, and dozens of them filled the once quaint main streets. The buildings were vintage and brick and had carefully painted wood accents. It was the type of place you'd see on a postcard. 'Wish you were here.' Wish I wasn't.

  He came upon a Chevy Cruze and a Ford Escape that had tapped together in a minor fender bender and were now abandoned. The Escape was keyless, but he had better luck with the Cruze. Bolivar turned the key and the car started. He'd avoided the zombies until that point, but the sound of the engine drew their attention.

  As he backed away from the Ford and made a U-turn in the middle of the street, a few dozen of them came running after him. Another five approached from the front. Bolivar saw one of them was a young girl with yellow hair and it made him remember the drawings he'd found in the Saab's trunk.

  This girl was dead and, when he drove toward her, she jumped onto the hood and snarled at him through the windshield. Bolivar gunned the engine and the Chevy jumped forward, smashing into two grown up zombies, who happened to be in his path.

  They toppled in opposite directions and the girl lost her grip, rolling sideways off the hood. Bol glanced in the rearview mirror as he drove away, and saw all three of them back on their feet and stumbling after him, no worse for the wear.

  He took Highway 1 North toward Dover and made good time because there wasn't a single other moving vehicle on the entire forty-mile drive. He saw a few abandoned cars and several of the crashed variety, but he had the road to himself aside from a few zombies that wandered around appearing lost and alone.

  Dover Air Force Base was off Exit 35, and Bolivar steered the Cruze down the ramp. When he turned right at the light, the sign out front signaled he had arrived. No soldiers manned the gates, which stood wide open.

  A dirty, camo colored Humvee blocked the road, and on it someone had spray painted, "This is the END. Repent!" Inside the vehicle, a zombie soldier saw Bolivar and desperately clawed at the window. His fingers left red streaks against the glass. Behind the gates, a handful of dead soldiers were scattered about like roadkill.

  Bolivar didn't bother to check the base. It was obvious there was nothing left to find. He threw the car into reverse and spun the car a hundred eighty degrees. As he faced back at the highway, he looked down the barrel of an AK-47.

  Chapter 12

  Someon
e had been following Aben for the last couple of days. He'd never seen them, but heard enough branches breaking and leaves rustling to play Sherlock Holmes and deduce the obvious. It wasn't a zombie, that much was certain. Those clumsy oafs could barely walk a straight line down the highway, let alone partake in a rousing game of cat and mouse, so that meant it had to be someone else who had survived the plague.

  Aben hadn't seen a single living person since escaping jail. The idea that someone else was out there and close by gave him more anxiety than comfort, especially if it was the type of person who preferred to stay unseen.

  He'd walked about forty miles since leaving the town, sticking mostly to the highways, which were refreshingly free of zombies. He passed dozens of abandoned cars with keys still in the ignition, but hadn't bothered jacking a ride. He had nowhere to go and wasn't in a hurry to get there.

  Instead, he raided the vehicles for food and supplies. He lucked into four pistols. Gotta love rural America, he thought, and added them to his rucksack. He still kept Dolan's gun tucked into his belt and beside it was the hammer sledge.

  Aben had used the sledge seventeen times so far, and it had proved its value over and over again. It was heavy and awkward, but one good blow to the head dropped the zombies each and every time. It didn't matter if he hit them in the top, front, back, or sides of their skulls. The hammer produced a satisfying crunch and a dead, or deader, zombie. He hadn't needed the guns at all.

  The western sky was a watercolor painting of pink and purple clouds, and the light had faded to the point where he couldn't see fifty feet ahead. When he came to a rusty Jeep Cherokee, he decided to make it camp for the night.

  The truck, like most of the vehicles he came across, had its fair share of trash inside, and Aben constructed a rough circle of garbage around it. His sleep had been restless, and he was certain to hear anything that stepped on the litter during the night.

  Aben sat behind the wheel of the Jeep and ate half a can of beans (maple cured bacon flavor) and an entire bag of barbecue chips. He was uncomfortable being in the driver's seat, even in a vehicle that wasn't moving. He hadn't driven a vehicle in over twenty-five years, not since the war.

  The last time he'd driven, he steered a Humvee carrying himself and four of his fellow marines into an IED. Aben survived with a windshield worth of glass to the face, two ruptured ear drums, and a concussion that had him seeing stars and hearing bells for months. Three of the others didn't survive, so, all things considered, he was lucky.

  He was lucky now, too, and he was thinking about how many times he'd escaped death when he dozed off. It was full dark when the scratching of a soda can against the pavement roused him. He came awake quickly, but couldn't see anything in the black void of night. A flick of the headlight lever illuminated the road ahead, and that's when he saw it run.

  The dog was medium-sized and either muddy brown or dirty yellow in color. It was skinny and its ribs stood out against its short-haired coat. He only saw its ass end and couldn't guess at the breed as it dashed away from the light and into the trees that guarded the highway like rows of infantry.

  Something else survived, he thought. The dog was the first living creature he'd seen since this mess began. He eased open the Jeep door and dropped down from the vehicle.

  He gave a low whistle and waited. He heard nothing. Probably gone for good. Nonetheless, he took the remnants of the beans and knocked them onto the roadway a few yards ahead of the Jeep, then he crawled back inside and eventually drifted back to sleep.

  Just before dawn, he woke again. The beans were gone and so was the dog. Aben repacked his bag and hit the road. Around noon, he stopped to rest by a Tastycake Delivery truck that had rolled down the embankment and onto its side.

  He gorged on banana pudding cupcakes and powdered mini donuts until his stomach bulged and made him look a few months pregnant. He saw movement in his peripheral vision and reached for the hammer, but as his eyes focused, he saw the dog.

  It was twenty yards away, but he could see it better in the daylight. It looked like a yellow lab, but smaller in stature and with big, triangle ears that stood straight up. A mutt for sure. He saw the dog had a dark brown spot on its left hindquarter that looked like dried blood.

  Aben grabbed a vanilla cupcake, removed it from the wrapper and chucked it at the dog like he was lobbing a grenade.

  The dog hopped up and backed away. When it did, Aben could see it was limping. The cupcake bounced and rolled along the grass. The dog looked at it, then to Aben, then back to the food. It approached it, cautious, taking two steps back for every three forward, but it got there eventually.

  The dog sniffed the cupcake, then gave it an exploratory lick. It looked again to Aben before snatching the food up in its jaws and running for cover in the forest.

  That's okay, Aben thought. There's no hurry.

  He stayed on the highway and had reached a blink and you miss it town in Maryland when he came upon the most zombies he'd found clustered together since escaping the prison. He knew the hammer alone wouldn't be sufficient. He wasn't fond of guns. They were loud and made a spectacle, but sometimes they were necessary. Like now.

  Aiming the pistol was a challenge with one hand and his first shot went high. As the roar of the report echoed through the valley, the zombies turned in his direction and came for him.

  The next four rounds connected. Good, clean head shots. A few of the zombies further back in the pack stumbled over their fallen comrades and he quickly put three more down.

  Dolan's pistol was empty, so Aben dropped it and dug through the sack for another. The first he found was a cheap Hi-Point 9mm. Earlier, he'd chambered a round, a task which took several minutes and the use of his feet, but now he was glad he'd made the effort.

  He shot the closest zombie and went to fire again, but the gun jammed.

  "Son of a bitch!" he muttered and dropped the pistol. He reached for another, but the zombies were within ten feet of him and closing in quickly. He grabbed the hammer instead and marched toward them.

  A raven-haired boy in a Little League uniform was the first to fall under the maul. Then Aben dropped an elderly woman wearing nothing but a pale, blue housecoat. Next was a middle-aged man in coke-bottle glasses and Aben smashed the hammer into the bridge of his nose. His face crumpled inward, and it fell in a heap at Aben's feet.

  Three zombies remained, and they'd surrounded him. A zombie in bib overalls and a teen in a Maroon 5 tee shirt were at his right, and a woman in a UPS uniform was to his left. He hit the farmer first and raised the hammer again to take out the Adam Levin fan boy. As he reared back, the delivery girl grabbed his arm. He shook free and gave a glancing blow to the teen, but only caught it in the jaw.

  Bits of teeth fell from its mouth and clattered against the street like tic tacs. Its jaw hung open and crooked and it groaned but kept coming at him.

  The UPS driver grabbed him again and Aben could feel its moist breath against the back of his neck. Its wet growls were so close. Close enough to bite.

  He swung his left elbow back and connected with the woman's chest, which pushed her back a step, but she didn't let go. The toothless zombie in front pushed against him. It was a full foot shorter than Aben and its face was only inches from his chest. It pressed its broken mouth against Aben's beard, but its destroyed jaw kept it from biting.

  Thank God for small favors.

  The zombie at his back closed in again and the guttural sounds of her growls filled his ears. He dropped the hammer and reached back with his right hand, his remaining hand, and grabbed a fistful of her curly brunette hair. She growled again, louder, closer.

  He tried to hold her off while the teen in front of him crowded in and pushed against him and grabbed him by the shoulders. They both reeked of death. Not to the extent of Dolan's rotting body in that hot, small room, but like three-day-old road kill. The up close and personal assault on his nostrils made a bad situation even worse. Aben was the meat in a zombie bread sand
wich.

  If only I had two hands, he thought. I could get out of this if I still had two damned hands.

  But he didn't. His stump had stopped oozing and copious amounts of ibuprofen held the pain at bay, but his left arm was little more than a club, especially in situations like this, when it mattered. Nearly two decades in the Marines and another twenty plus years hitching around the country at the mercy of truckers and potential serial killers, and here he was, ready to get taken out by a Brown Santa and a pop music groupie. It was almost funny.

  The tension in his arm from holding her hair suddenly vanished and Aben's hand came free with a clump of her brunette curls and a hunk of skin from her scalp. She dove onto him and he fell back against the teen.

  The three of them went down in a pile of flailing limbs. The UPS driver's face was against his own cheek when a blur of yellow flew by Aben's eyes and the female zombie toppled off him.

  Aben heard the snarling and gasping and rolled free of the pile. He found the hammer sledge under the Maroon 5 fan and yanked it free. The boy tried to get up, but before he could, Aben brought the angled end of the hammer down on his head. It sunk into the skull and the resulting sound reminded Aben of cracking a hard-boiled egg. It felt good.

  He spun sideways and scrambled to his knees with the hammer ready to strike whatever was within reach. That was when he saw the dog. The mongrel tore at the throat of the UPS zombie, which swung its arms, trying to get free. Aben watched for a moment. Long tendrils of shredded flesh stretched from the zombie's mangled throat to the dogs snarling jaws.

  When the zombie grabbed on to the dog's floppy ear, it yelped in pain and Aben quickly raised the hammer and smashed it into the dead woman's forehead. Her previously pretty face collapsed inward in a black pit of coagulated blood, bone, and cartilage. The monster stopped moving, and the dog released the torn, rotting skin.

  Aben reached for the animal, moving too fast despite knowing better, and the dog bolted away from him. It ran ten yards before pausing and looking back.