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

by TW Brown

  “I got news for ya,” Neil said with a bitter laugh, “ain’t nobody safe from this crap. Neighbor or not, she was one of them.”

  “But that can’t be,” the woman insisted more forcefully.

  “Why? What made her so damn special?” Neil shot back. Did I mention that I did not like this guy?

  “Because she was immune,” the woman replied, looking up at Neil, hands planted defiantly on her hips.

  The two had a bit of a stare down until the woman knelt beside the body and grabbed her right arm. She hiked the shirt sleeve up and whatever was revealed was enough to make Neil’s jaw drop.

  I stepped away from Amy’s corpse to see what I was almost certain I already knew I would find. I felt more than saw Marshawn’s reaction when his eyes rested on the scabbed over arm that had obviously been savaged by a zombie.

  “She was attacked over three weeks ago. Her eyes never changed and she has been fine. She wasn’t a zombie, so I don’t know how this could happen.” Her eyes scanned each of us. “One of you had to have done something to her to cause this.”

  I heard the self-doubt in her voice and made no effort to address her desperate accusation. I turned back to Marshawn who was looking at me now with the most open and raw pain I’d seen him exhibit.

  “So then…Katy did turn and attack Abby.” The words were a statement of acceptance. He wasn’t looking for me to confirm or comment.

  “There has to be a mistake.” I wasn’t surprised when Neil opened his mouth.

  “We can discuss and debate this later,” I said, my eyes locking on Neil’s for just a moment. I hoped he saw in my eyes the fact that I would not have any problem “meeting” with him later one-on-one to discuss this issue if he really felt the need. When he looked away first, I counted that as a mental victory, but I had a feeling that Neil and I would have a meeting of the minds in the not-so-distant future.

  Unfortunately, the woman was not interested in any of the conversation. Her mind was refusing to accept any alternative other than the one that made us into bad guys. To add more fuel and chaos to this scene, the little boy was now crying uncontrollably. His eyes were even wider with fear than his mother’s as he looked from one adult to the next. I couldn’t even begin to understand the degree of terror and confusion he must be feeling.

  I stepped up to the woman and reached out a hand. “Look, I don’t know what I can do to convince you, but I’ve already seen one person who was immune turn into a zombie after she died from a gunshot wound. I’m no doctor, but my best guess is that this…whatever it is that turns people into zombies…well, I guess it stays in your system. So, if you get bit or scratched and then die later, you come back just like a normal person would.”

  The woman opened her mouth to say something, but now it was Marshawn who cut her off. “Listen, lady, I don’t know you enough to care about you, but if we keep standing around here, the zombies are gonna trap us in this house. I’ve seen it happen, and it ain’t pretty. Once they come in big enough numbers, it don’t mean a damn thing about how slow or uncoordinated they are. You got two choices, you can stand here and die, or you can come along with us and we can sort this out later.” He glanced down at the boy and frowned. “And make it quick, I don’t want to be around if you decide to sentence you and the boy there to death by zombie.”

  The woman snapped her mouth shut and gave a curt nod. I took that as her acquiescence to come along and started for the front door. The woman who’d gotten into it with Amy put a hand up to stop me.

  “We gotta slip out the back,” Tracy Gibbons whispered. Although I wasn’t sure what good that would do us at this point. I could hear the moans and cries of the undead as what sounded like a good number of them were homing in on the scene of our little fight.

  As we slipped out the back and cut across the backyard for a gate, I heard the rattle of gunfire coming from the direction of the approaching mob. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten about the group of raiders that had flushed us out of the church.

  I looked around and was stunned to discover that we’d only lost two members of our group. At the moment, not counting the woman and her son, we consisted of me, Marshawn, Neil Pearson, Tracy Gibbons, and seven others that I didn’t really know. I’d been sort of pushed aside in the corner and treated like an outsider, which I guess I was when you got down to it. Only, for some reason, Marshawn had made it a point to involve me in a great deal of the decision making when it came to the group. Also, they had all agreed to follow me to confront Don Evans. I wasn’t ready to call myself a leader by any stretch of the imagination, but I was definitely on one of the upper rungs of the ladder, that was for sure.

  As we kept up a brisk pace, I looked around for any signs indicating that maybe Don had come this way. It seemed as though we’d lost his trail of destruction. On the plus side, I also did not see very many zombies and had to figure that most in the general vicinity had likely started off in the direction of our recent battle.

  I made it a point to keep tabs on the woman. She was walking as if in a bit of a haze and I had to imagine it was due to just losing all the people she’d been with and was now basically forced to travel with their killers.

  As the day wore on, we saw signs of both the living and the undead. A few times, I spotted people either peering from roofs or even out windows of a few homes. None of them made an effort to try and get our attention which came as no surprise to me. Also, at one point, I glanced back to check on the woman and her son to discover that the boy was riding on the shoulders of one of the men in our group.

  By the time we reached Interstate 205, everybody was starting to look tired. It’s funny how minimal food intake, constant stress due to fearing for your life, and walking—except for the times we had to run due to large numbers of the undead spotting us and turning our direction—can sap every bit of energy you possess. Most everybody appeared to be running on fumes.

  “We got barely a mile or so to go,” I announced as we came to a stop for a moment.

  Water was passed around and it proved to be the last of what we were carrying. Nobody had bothered to pay attention as we walked along. Everyone simply took pulls from their bottles or canteens as the sun rose and began to heat us all up to the point where we were all sweating somewhat profusely. So, when we stopped as a group and packs were gone through to hand out water to everybody, we got hit with that little sliver of bad news.

  It wasn’t completely devastating. Certainly we could scrounge some up if it became a pressing issue, but from a few of the reactions, Neil among them which came as no surprise to me, you would’ve thought that we were halfway across Death Valley when that tidbit of information was discovered.

  “Neil?” Marshawn let the last drops from the bottle he held trickle into his mouth and then he cast the plastic container aside.

  The man, who had been in mid-rant about how irresponsible some people had been to consume such a precious resource despite my seeing him guzzle from his canteen on at least three occasions, shut his mouth and turned to face Marshawn.

  There was just a moment where I thought that the tone in Marshawn’s voice had conveyed its message. I figured that Neil would shut up and that would be the end of it. I guess I should’ve known better.

  “What?” the man finally said, his voice dripping with annoyance. He even went so far as to lean Marshawn’s direction and roll his hands as to indicate that the man come out with whatever he needed to say. Marshawn obliged him.

  “Shut up.”

  I had to stifle a laugh. It probably didn’t help that I put my hands to my mouth and allowed a teensy bit of a snort to escape. In my defense, I wasn’t the only one, but I was likely the catalyst for what came next.

  Neil’s face turned a beet red. He clenched his fists and I was wondering just how much of a beat down Marshawn would have to put on the guy.

  Then he spun in my direction.

  I had just enough time to dodge backwards as he threw a wild swing aimed
at my head. Neil had made two mistakes with that move. His first was missing. His second was having absolutely nothing in his hands. Apparently he had stashed whatever weapon he’d been carrying as we made our way towards our ultimate destination of the home where my original group were staying. I had a stout machete in mine.

  I stepped to the side and stuck my foot out as his swing carried him past me. He tripped and landed hard. A deep ‘oof’ came from him as all the air left his lungs in one sharp burst. I could’ve done a number of things at this point. He was flat on his belly and completely defenseless. That is probably why I simply stepped back.

  He rolled over and started to his feet. I could tell by the way he tightened into a crouch that he was actually considering launching himself at me.

  “Ah-ah-ah,” I said as I waved the machete like a giant extension of my finger.

  I didn’t think he could get any redder. I was wrong. Now he was verging on purple. I honestly had no idea why he hated me so much. I hadn’t wronged him directly in any way that I could recall. I saw him considering his attack despite his being unarmed. At last, his shoulders slumped and his body relaxed its posture a little.

  I used that opportunity to take a few steps back and lower, but certainly not sheathe, my weapon. Marshawn stepped between us, his back to me since he obviously did not see me as a potential problem.

  “You need to tighten yourself up, fella,” he said calmly, but with a tone that made it clear he was not in the mood for any nonsense.

  “We’ve had nothing but trouble since that guy showed up,” Neil blurted.

  And there it was. I’d arrived just as the apocalypse chose that same moment to dish out some misery to Neil’s group. That made me an easy scapegoat.

  “In case you’re forgetting, that is also the guy that came and busted us free when we were pinned down and getting picked off,” Marshawn reminded. “He made a choice to come to our aid because, in case you forgot, we left him and the two people he was travelling with back at the community center. He heard us being ambushed and came to our defense.”

  “Why? So he could use us as human targets to throw at somebody he had a beef with?” Neil shot back angrily.

  “Those were more of the same folks that attacked us and killed so many of our group.” Marshawn took a step towards Neil so that they were almost nose-to-nose.

  “Says him.” Neil wasn’t backing down. “I never heard of Don Evans until this guy showed up. How can he prove those groups were all part of the same bunch of people?”

  “Wait!” the woman whose name I still didn’t know spoke up. She had her son’s hand, but actually let go of it when she took a few steps toward Neil and Marshawn. “Did you say Don Evans?” That made everybody turn her direction. “Head shaved on the sides and sporting a bit of a Mohawk?”

  “Umm…yeah,” I answered. “Do you know him?”

  “No, but my sister came to me a few days after all hell broke loose and told me she’d hooked up with this group led by a guy named Don Evans and that, if we wanted any chance at surviving, we should leave our little place behind and head over to Eastside Church. She said they were using that as a temporary base while they gathered supplies and the vehicles they would need. Ultimately, they were going to head for Sauvie Island and secure it.”

  “Your sister? So why didn’t you go?” I asked what I felt to be the logical question.

  “One of the guys went over to check things out and came back saying we absolutely wanted nothing to do with that guy.”

  “Why is that?” Marshawn pressed.

  The woman turned to him, and now she was the one blushing. “He was doing stuff…umm…he was…” she stammered, struggling to say the words.

  “A racist piece of crap?” Marshawn offered.

  “Yes, but it was worse. They were doing stuff to anybody that wasn’t…” Again her voice trailed away and now her eyes went to the ground.

  “White,” Marshawn finished for her.

  “We didn’t want any part of that,” the woman insisted.

  “So you just told your sister no?” I challenged.

  “Natasha and I weren’t that close,” the woman laughed derisively. “She and I held very different social views. I guess now she is free to pursue hers any way she likes.”

  “Wait.” I held up a hand. “What’s your name?”

  “Darya Kennedy.” She paused, her features clouding over. “That is my married name. Before that it was Darya Petrov.”

  “No freaking way,” I breathed.

  ***

  It took a moment or two to get Neil to wind down enough so that he would at least travel. Ultimately, I think it was the threat of leaving him behind and alone that got him moving. My head was still spinning from the revelation that Natasha’s sister just happened to be the lone survivor from a group that we’d basically gotten into a shootout with and killed everyone but her and her son as we ran from some other pack of raiders.

  It was a lot to wrap my mind around, so I guess that was why it took Marshawn elbowing me in the ribs to get my attention. I snapped out of my trance and shot him a dirty look. His “nudge” was a full-blown strike from a normal person and I swore I felt the bruise blooming over my ribs.

  “Is that where we are headed?” he asked, pointing.

  I looked up to see white smoke curling towards the sky in the general direction of where I knew our compound to be. I felt my heart constrict at what that smoke implied. Just as fast, my brain began spinning possible scenarios that did not end with Carl and the others being dead. There were other houses in the area. Hell, the neighborhood right across the field from us had practically burned to the ground while we’d basically watched.

  I didn’t answer and started across the grass, ignoring the wraparound off-ramp. It was mostly an uphill trip, and our group began to get spread out as some of them were unable (or unwilling) to match my pace that was now a jog. By the time I reached Johnson Creek Road, the only person actually beside me was Marshawn.

  I passed Biscuits Café and continued up the steepening incline. Next was the medical center. I shot a glance and noticed two of the military trucks were now missing.

  Maybe Carl used them to strengthen the barricade, I thought, knowing very well that I was lying to myself as the location of the smoke became clearer.

  I decided to jog past 92nd Avenue, opting to hike up the steep grassy hill that would take me to the eight-foot-high wall that surrounded the once opulent home. I rounded the gradual bend in the road and spotted a familiar looking bus that had been reduced to charred ruins. It was just like one of the ones I’d seen Don’s people loading in the parking lot.

  I started up the grassy hill and twice had to rely on Marshawn to help me keep my feet. The closer I got, the tighter it felt like my chest became. When I reached the summit and stood at the wall, I found my feet suddenly frozen to the ground. I could not bring myself to climb up and see what waited on the other side. If the house was any indication, it would not be good.

  I was so fixed on the smoldering skeletal ruins of the house that I didn’t even notice the section of the wall that had been busted in a mere ten feet to my left until Marshawn pulled me to it.

  I stepped around the rubble and entered the grounds. Right away I saw that the garden Betty and the kids had started had been reduced to a shambles. It looked like it had been deliberately ripped up. Not a single plant had survived. If that was the worst thing my eyes saw, it would’ve been a blessing.

  There were several bodies lying sprawled on the ground. It did not take a genius to figure they’d been ravaged by the .50 cal. Some were missing part of, if not all, of their heads which lent to the possibility that some of the corpses could’ve been zombies.

  Then my eyes landed on a charred pile in front of the multi-car garage. I approached it, pretty certain as to what I would discover. Sure enough, it was sacks of dog food that had been deliberately torched. That told me that Miranda had at least made it this far.

 
; I turned, and my eyes locked on some bushes that ran along that particular section of the wall. I started for it, my steps slow at first, then faster, until I was sprinting across the yard. I reached my destination, legs buckling as my body tried to stop me. Instead, I slid on my knees the last few feet.

  My hands reached out of their own volition and grabbed the black fur I’d spotted jutting from under the bushes. A soft whine drifted to my ears.

  “Chewie.”

  Turn the page for a little tale that reveals how the child zombie in the car and her family met their sad fate.

  Zombie

  The Little Girl in the Garage

  “Ashley!” Mike yelled as he ran out the front door.

  He skidded to a halt, not from fear, but more due to the shock of what he was seeing. The sweet old neighbor lady from next door, Missus Bentley was straddling Ashley and had his daughter pinned to the ground. His baby girl was screaming like he’d never heard anyone scream before in his life.

  There was a nasty rip on her right arm that was bleeding horribly. Just then Missus Bentley leaned down, her blood-smeared mouth open and obviously moving in for another bite. Ashley flailed to little effect and Missus Bentley’s teeth clamped down on her left arm this time. The bite was on the forearm, just above the elbow. Ashley screamed again and that was enough to break Mike from his trance.

  He thought he heard his wife gasp, but his own pulse was roaring in his ears, drowning out everything almost completely. His only thoughts were to save his daughter.

  Rushing in, he dove at the elderly woman, leading with his shoulder just as he had back in school when he played football. There was a heavy slap from the impact and the elderly lady that had been their neighbor since before Ashley was even born crumpled from the blow. Her body made several pops and snaps, and Mike was certain he’d busted some of her frail and brittle bones.

  They flew off his daughter and ended up in the strip of grass that ran between the front yard and the sidewalk. Mike landed on top and his eyes locked onto Missus Bentley’s.