New DEAD series (Book 2): DEAD (Alone)

by TW Brown

  As soon as the echo of the report faded, the woman began to wail.

  “My leg…Donnie, why?” And then she began to scream.

  It started as a normal scream of fear with a hint of pain, but it didn’t take long for that shriek to climb in pitch as it found a whole new register that informed everybody in earshot as to this person’s fate—she was being eaten alive.

  “If there was any doubt as to how evil that bastard is, I think this erased it,” Marshawn muttered.

  Of course, I didn’t have any doubts what so ever. I knew the man for what he was in just the short period of time I’d been in his presence. He was the face of a new world where people could devolve into their baser selves with little fear of reprisal.

  The cluster of zombies around the now helpless victim all started flopping to the ground as they tore into her. Mercifully, one of them obviously found her throat. There was a wet sound, and then the scream was no more.

  “Let’s move while most of them are occupied,” Marshawn suggested, getting to his feet.

  I agreed. As heartless and cold as that might seem, she was one of them.

  We started across the grassy clearing, only catching the attention of the zombies not engaged in rending the downed victim. We were almost to the other side, and now passing even with the huddled group of zombies that were all on their hands and knees around the body. I couldn’t help it, and had to look. I could make out one leg that was still drumming the ground in erratic, violent thrums. I swear I saw one hand still trying feebly to push away her attackers, but that might’ve just been her arm being moved about by the zombies gathered around her. What I was certain of was that I heard a wet mewling sound. It was not coming from the undead, of that I was almost positive. That meant that the entire time we’d watched, and then however long it had taken us to cross this much of the field, that woman remained alive and conscious. She was probably watching parts of herself being torn free, chewed, and swallowed by the ghoulish faces clustered over her. The thought of that made me shudder. Part of me wanted to veer just far enough from my current course to end her suffering, but the handful of zombies that remained unoccupied and were still moving towards us, seemingly oblivious to the horrific scene playing out on the ground near them, was enough to entice me to continue moving.

  I fell in behind Marshawn as we reached the far side. The moans of undead not too far ahead caused us to slow. Since he was in the front of our group, Marshawn took it upon himself to climb up on the tall wooden fence and peek at what waited on the other side. He scanned the area for a moment before dropping back down.

  “Evan, you and Amy follow this fence down that way for two houses.” He pointed to our left. “The green house doesn’t have any sort of fenced in backyard. Chet, you come with me. It looks like there is a street just on the other side, and from what I am seeing in the zombie traffic, they went to our right.”

  “Then why are we going to the left?” I asked.

  “Because, you look like crap, and I don’t think your body, much less your arm, can take any more of the abuse you have dealt it.”

  Without waiting for anybody to ask any more questions, Marshawn threw a leg over, pulled himself up, and then vanished as he dropped to the other side. The man, I guess his name was Chet, followed suit.

  That left me with the woman…Amy. She was giving me an appraising look as if she’d just noticed that I was a walking mess.

  I began to grow uncomfortable under her scrutiny and started off for the green house. I heard Amy start to follow, but she made no attempt to pass or even walk alongside me.

  When we reached the green house, I saw that the back door had been smashed in. There were dark stains all around it from whatever had beaten its way inside.

  As we slipped up the side of the house, I realized that damn near every residence I passed had its own little horror story to be told. Just this street could probably fill up a few volumes.

  When we reached the corner of the house, I let Amy take a look. I figured two eyes were better than one. She spent long enough that I finally tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Well?” I asked when she turned back to me.

  “I don’t see Marshawn and Chet, and I don’t see Don. What I do see are a dozen or so zombies heading away from us. There is a little dogleg in the street, so we are going to need to move up a few houses to get a better idea.” She paused, considering me with a very critical expression. At last she spoke the thoughts that were flitting around her eyes. “You sure you’re up for this? I mean, you look like are about ready to fall over.”

  She wasn’t far off from describing exactly how I felt. In fact, if not for the adrenaline still managing to pump into my system, I did not doubt that I might possibly pass out. I could feel the nausea churning in my gut, and my vision was hazy around the edges like I was looking through a fur-lined tube. Add in that I only had the use of one eye and I was half blind.

  I stopped moving and just listened. The zombies were all shambling in the same direction. That seemed to narrow down our choices. Since they were all past us, we could fall in behind this small, spread out herd and follow them. I was certain that it would lead to where we needed to be.

  I started walking. At least that was the signal I tried to send to my legs. The problem was that nothing happened. I looked down at my legs to see if perhaps something had hold of me.

  “Nothing.” I heard that word, but it didn’t really feel like I’d said it. Something was wrong…very wrong.

  “Evan?” a voice whispered from behind me. The problem now was that I couldn’t remember the name of the person attached to that voice.

  The fuzzy tunnel began to constrict. Then…everything went black.

  ***

  I could hear voices. They were whispering, but they were close. It took my brain a moment to catch up and catalog them all as familiar and friendly. I opened my eyes slowly and could see the flicker of light on the wall beside me that told me there was a fire burning nearby. There was something wrong, and it took me a moment to realize that one of my eyes was covered.

  It was as if that realization woke up all my pain receptors. My right arm pulsed with a dull pain that seemed to start at my fingertips and end at my neck. The area around my eye felt like I’d rubbed that part of my face with an industrial-sized cheese grater. There was a haze in my brain that refused to clear, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

  The rumble in my belly reminded me that I was hungry. I tried to sit up, but the world tilted and dumped me on my side. Unfortunately, it was my right side and a very undignified yelp of pain escaped my lips.

  “I think somebody is waking up,” one of the familiar voices said with a chuckle that sounded much too pleasant considering how I felt.

  I let gravity roll my head in the direction of the voice and saw Marshawn getting to his feet. He was across the fire from me and his was one of the few faces not cast in shadows to the point of not being identifiable.

  “Good, I want to have a few words with the idiot.”

  I recognized the voice and saw another form rise and start in my direction. It was the man who had initially questioned my decision to circle back for my car after the gunfight with Don’s raiders that killed Katy. Nobody else seemed inclined to leave the warmth of the fire, and now that my body was becoming aware of the surroundings, I couldn’t say that I blamed them. There was a chill in the air that seeped into my bones now that I’d knocked away a sleeping bag that had been laid on me.

  “Are you trying to get yourself killed, because if so, just say the word and I’ll finish the job,” a man railed as he stomped across the room.

  Now that I was able to get a look, I could see what appeared to be the interior of a church. Had we ended up in Don’s stronghold? As soon as the name surfaced, I wanted to look around and see where he might be watching all this. Had we all been captured?

  “I’m surprised you made it as far as you did in your condition,” Marshawn said, easing the se
ething man aside.

  “What happened? Did we get captured?” I babbled.

  “You passed out,” he answered simply. “Amy managed to drag you into the house that you two were hiding out beside. As for Don, we lost him. Not that we would’ve been able to do anything had we caught him. I guess he’d already sent part of his people out. Somehow, he was able to summon them back. Three big trucks and a small bus rolled back and picked him and that woman up. They had a damn machine gun turret mounted on the top of the bus. It ripped through zombies and practically disintegrated them. I’m no expert, but I am pretty sure it was a .50 cal. It brought down small trees and devastated the fronts of a few houses. If it would’ve been turned on us, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  I let that sink in. I’d been to a military demonstration before and seen just how powerful the .50 cal was when put to use. It could almost vaporize a person with just a few rounds.

  “Amy?” It dawned on me that I had neither seen nor heard her since coming to and that put a lump in my throat.

  “Right here, Evan,” a voice said from near the fire.

  She got up, and I noticed about half the people joined her to come over and perhaps get a look at the idiot that sent them on a foolish mission when he couldn’t even stay conscious long enough to see it through.

  “Did we lose anybody else?” I asked.

  “Nope. As soon as we saw the firepower they were packing, everybody backed off. We regrouped and took shelter in a church,” Marshawn explained.

  “Aren’t we worried he’ll come back here?” I asked.

  “Evan, there is more than one church in the area,” Marshawn laughed. “Granted, we are only a very short distance up the road from the one he was using, but the building is pretty safe. The windows are high up and there is only the front and rear doors to keep secure. We moved furniture in front of them both, but nothing has come around since we got here, so I think we are okay.”

  “The fire is probably the only thing that will give us away, and that will probably only attract the living. I didn’t see any zombies directly affected or drawn to fires that were not in their direct line of sight. I camped in one apartment building for three days, used the second-floor unit in the corner and kept a fire going in the tub of the master bedroom every night. I went outside once just to see and it was like a freaking lighthouse beacon in the dead of night, but no zombies came.” The man who I was really growing to dislike knelt beside Marshawn.

  “So he got away,” I sighed. The comment was meant more for myself, but apparently everybody heard.

  “Did you hear the part about the .50 cal, or how you basically passed out and had to be carried to safety?” Marshawn snapped.

  “I know.” I held up my hands and discovered that took way more effort than it should. “I just feel terrible that a monster like that is out in the world. He’s only going to grow stronger. I fear not only for our lives, but for any group of survivors he comes across.”

  As soon as those words left my mouth, I had another thought. A terrible thought that almost felt like a punch in the gut. If Natasha was alive, then she knew where Carl and the others were holed up. Her boyfriend—if I could believe Arlo’s words during their little confrontation—had died trying to raid them. I had no idea what sort of defenses they’d managed in my absence, but I had my doubts as to its ability to hold up to something as awesome as a .50 cal machine gun.

  I tried again to sit up straight but failed. Marshawn put his hand on my chest, but if his intent was to keep me from getting up, his efforts were not necessary. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “You need to rest, Evan,” the man said tenderly. “Your body just can’t take anymore.”

  “But Carl…Chewie, Betty and the kids,” I sputtered.

  “Have met whatever fate that has befallen them. You won’t make any difference at all even if you could manage to get to your feet and make it there right now.”

  Never in my life had I felt like such an utter failure. Everything I’d done up to this point had been for absolutely nothing. That thought lasted in my head for all of about ten seconds.

  No, there was no way in hell I would accept that as an answer. There had to be something that I could do. I’d thought enough of Carl and the others to want to spare them having to deal with me once I turned. Maybe friendship was stretching it, but there was a bond…some sort of relationship that had grown between us in that short time we’d spent together.

  “There must be something we can do,” I finally managed.

  “Evan, there really isn’t,” Marshawn said. He looked at me and I could see my sadness reflected in his eyes. I noticed that pretty much everybody had returned to the fire by now. “We have our limits, and so do you…right now, perhaps more so than usual.”

  I laid back and shut my eyes against the stinging sensation that had nothing to do with the injury my right eye had suffered. I tried to think of any possibility that would offer itself in the form of a solution. I was blank.

  Something was pressed into my hands and I felt a warm cup. I looked down to see what looked like chicken noddle soup.

  “This church had a room with shelves full of non-perishable items…probably for the needy. I think we meet those standards,” Amy said with a weak smile that barely turned her lips up enough to qualify.

  I sipped at the soup. It was just a shade past warm, but not quite hot. After another sip, Amy reached out, opening her fist to reveal a couple of pills. “It’s only some generic ibuprofen, but it will help keep a lid on the pain.”

  I accepted them with a nod of thanks and popped them into my mouth. Their bitterness was quickly washed away by the saltiness of the soup as I took another long drink from the cup.

  “I guess I owe you a thanks for basically saving my life…again,” I said to Amy. “You could’ve just left me.”

  “What kind of person would do something like that?” she said, sounding affronted by the idea.

  “Somebody who risked being killed by a bunch of zombies.”

  “There weren’t any close by.”

  “Yeah, but how did you drag me someplace without being noticed?” A person seemed to weigh a lot more when they were dead weight. I wasn’t a huge guy, but I wasn’t petite either. Amy was on the small side, and it couldn’t have been easy to move me all by herself.

  “There was a wheelbarrow in the backyard of the house we’d just moved past. Once I got you in it, it wasn’t that difficult.” She flashed me a smile. “Besides, I used to push wheelbarrows full of manure at my grandma’s farm in Sherwood when I was younger.”

  We both laughed and a few of the people gathered around the fire looked at us and gave us a shushing noise that was louder than our actual laughter. Still, I took the hint and pressed my lips together.

  “Well, I still want to thank you. I owe you one.”

  “I imagine there will be plenty of opportunities for me to collect if we get out of here.”

  “When we get out of here,” Marshawn said as he crouched down beside Amy. “I figure we need to give you a few days to get yourself together, and then we will roll out of here.

  I wanted to protest, but he’d been right earlier when he said that whatever had happened to my group was done and over with. There was absolutely nothing that I could do for them now. If Don and his followers had indeed returned to finish off or take revenge, or whatever reason/justification they used to motivate themselves, then it was basically history. As I lay in the gloom, my body feeling aches and pains that I’d ignored for too long, I made a silent vow that I would hunt that man down and finish what I’d started, albeit poorly.

  The possibility that everybody had been killed, that those innocent children and my beloved Chewie might be wiped out, sat on my chest like a massive weight. This was also my fault. I’d given up their location. I could’ve been the hero like the kind you see in movies or read about in books and accepted death in any form rather than give up that location. In the end, I’d bee
n weak…human.

  I closed my eyes and tried to allow sleep to take me away from the thoughts swirling in my head. All I got were nightmares.

  The next couple of days were about as uneventful as any I could ever recall in my life. It was on the second day that the first fight broke out. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the guy who still made it a point to blame me any chance he got for our current situation—whose name was Neil Pearson, not that I cared since I always referred to him by either ‘hey you’…or ‘asshole’ if he wasn’t around—it was between Amy and a woman named Tracy Gibbons.

  I’d never seen two women actually go to blows outside women’s boxing or cage fighting matches. Fortunately, neither of the women were so big that Marshawn wasn’t able to quickly step in and separate them. Their little scuffle did make enough noise to bring a few curious zombies to our location. Once they were put down, there were scowls, dirty looks, and even a few passive-aggressive bumps of shoulders in passing, but everybody kept their mouth shut.

  By the third day, I was able to get up and move around a bit more comfortably. I still hurt, but not enough to require any of the precious and very finite amount of ibuprofen that we had in our meager stores. Twice, a few of our number slipped out to some of the nearby homes to scavenge supplies. Water was the top of the list since the charity cupboard here was doing a good job of feeding us.

  At night, we all gathered close to the fire and huddled. It was during that time, when it was the coldest and darkness forced you to be alone with your thoughts, that I didn’t care how much I liked or disliked the person beside me, I simply sought warmth. It was also on that first night that I made another discovery.

  During the day, we were more mobile and nobody felt the need or desire to really congregate with more than one or two people at a time, but in a group…we stunk. There was no nice way to put it. As we clustered around and everybody shared blankets and packed in tight to share body heat, those first few minutes were almost humorous. Noses would wrinkle and some would even make the initial attempt to move away. The need for warmth would eventually win out and we would all pack in as tight as sardines…although I am pretty sure that the sardines smelled better.