Deadrise (Book 5): Blood Moon

by Siara Brandt

  The few barns and houses that she had passed had been dark and silent. No matter how much she wanted to find shelter, even temporary shelter, she knew that it was too dangerous to enter any kind of building at night. In the dark there was no way of knowing which buildings were abandoned or which ones were occupied. Worse, there was no way of telling what might be occupying them. Pitch blackness was always a potential enemy. You could be walking into a trap or you could be entering a nest of some very voracious flesh-eaters. Not that being out in the open at night wasn’t a risk, too. Groups of the undead prowled the woods like packs of ravenous wolves, sticking together, she suspected, because of some kind of innate pack instinct that lingered even after the state of living death took over. Sometimes you couldn’t see them until you were right on top of them. Or they were right on top of you. Sometimes you had some terrifying close encounters. Of the worst kind.

  Finally the time came when she had to stop and rest. For a few minutes at least. She couldn’t go another step. While she labored to catch her breath, she leaned forward from her waist, taking in great gulps of damp night air, trying her best to be as quiet as possible as she listened for any threats and attempted to gather what was left of her strength for the last part of her journey. At least on this side of the river.

  She had been startled by a series of massive explosions earlier. And then, immediately afterwards, over the trees in the distance, the sky was lit up from the glow of a fire. A big one. She smelled smoke and decided that it had been a wise decision to avoid the bridge crossing altogether. In any case, she had been told that you couldn’t cross there anymore. For any price.

  She had seen the bridge earlier. Looming high out of the shadows, with its underside lit by the wavering, yellow glow of the fire, it looked like the skeletal remains of some prehistoric monster that was coming back to life. The rising moon had been glowing red right through the metal trusses which made it look eerily like a still-beating heart. Arching up over the water and stretching from one side of the river to the other, the bridge had been one of her landmarks, a guide that she had kept track of in the darkness.

  A militia-type group had seized control of the bridge a long time ago. They had also taken over a portion of the town that sprawled south of the river. They had walled off part of the main street and built barricades on the roads leading to the bridge. In this way they were able to collect a heavy toll whenever someone wanted to cross the river. It was one way to survive. You couldn’t blame them. Everyone had to have some kind of edge. Safe passage wasn’t such a bad thing to offer.

  But for some reason, people weren’t being allowed to cross the bridge anymore. At least, that’s what she had been told. She didn’t know what was the truth and what was fabricated rumor, but she did know that Webb would have told her anything to keep her from leaving. In the end, she had decided to avoid the bridge altogether. From all she had heard, it wasn’t the only way to get across the river. Still, she was desperate enough. If she could not find another way, she would try the bridge. But only as a last resort.

  At last, to her relief, she could see the river. One more milestone achieved. The moon was reflected on the black surface of the water, the blood-red orb distorted by a deep swirl of current. As Sidra continued to breathe deeply, she was aware of the stench of death that pervaded the damp air down here in the bottoms, as it did almost everywhere else. But it seemed stronger here by the river. It filled her lungs with every breath. Maybe because it rose with the night mist from the flat plain that had once been rich farmland that was now behind her and mingled with the decaying foliage that covered the wooded stretch of ground that swept down to the river.

  Almost there, Sidra told herself as she started out again. She just had to reach the tree line and there she would find the path that led down to the river. It was supposed to be easy to find, but she would have to be more vigilant here. The trees were like a thick wall before her. They rose up just like prison bars.

  Carefully avoiding the fallen limbs of trees that were everywhere, she picked her way cautiously, rustling through the deep carpet of dead leaves as quietly as possible. There was no way to be completely silent. The maze of shadows dissecting the ground all around her was somewhat disorienting. As she looked closer, she stopped short again. Just beyond the enveloping wall of tree trunks, she suddenly became aware of movement. Everywhere.

  She blinked and stared harder. By the light of the moon, she realized that the undead surrounded her, a great number of them. They had obviously wandered too far into the flooded bottom lands and couldn’t get out again. They were trapped there, writhing like great worms that were emerging from the muddy soil, their flailing, loose-jointed arms waving helplessly.

  A low, moaning sound filled the timber. The wide slope of wooded riverbank looked, and sounded, like some kind of cursed landscape. The scene before her was like a vision straight from hell where the damned cried out their agonies while the river flowed dark and sluggish, almost serenely, beyond them.

  Some of the dead had sunken all the way to their waists. Some were like black, creeping things that struggled on all fours. Many were contorted into almost inhuman shapes as they tried to free themselves. Sidra wondered if they had been seeking the water. All living things needed to drink. Except that they weren’t living anymore, she reminded herself. They were the undead. Walking corpses. Blood-thirsty monsters that had only one purpose to their existence. To hunt and to devour the living. And she was only too well aware of the fact that she was among the living.

  As she walked slowly forward, the frenzied wail from ravaged throats grew louder. Snarls, wheezing moans, rattles, frightening screeches all blended into one terrible chorus of immured torment all around her.

  “Please let them all be trapped,” she whispered a fervid prayer. “Don’t let any of them get loose.” There would be no way to fight off so many of them.

  “A- . . . a- . . . a- . . . ” she heard nearby. It was a cackling sound that sounded almost demonic. It was hard to believe that sound could come from a human throat.

  She took a deep breath as she prepared herself for the next part of her journey. Worried about sinking into the mud herself, she had gone only a short distance when she finally saw what she had been searching for. A tree with a white X spray painted on it. Beyond it, planks were set up in a crooked, uneven walkway that led through the trees straight down to the river bank.

  “You want to get to the other side?”

  The voice had come at her out of the darkness. Sidra whirled around and saw an old man that had appeared out of nowhere. His white beard and hair gleamed with a reddish cast in the moonlight. A large cloth bag was slung over one shoulder. He was carrying a long pole in one hand.

  He looked at the zigzagging walkway and offered as a way of explanation. “They can’t make it to the end of the boards. They can barely walk in a straight line so I figured they can’t follow an obstacle course like that without falling off.” He shrugged. “It works. You’re safer here than you might think.

  “My boat is down there,” he said as he lifted one finger and pointed in the direction of the river. “We’ll be all right as long as we stay on the boards.” And then, with nothing more to say, he began to lead her along the crooked boards.

  As Sidra followed carefully behind the man, the hellish sounds grew louder all around them. It was unnerving and, at times, alarming. The undead seemed frustrated, if they were even capable of feeling that emotion, because they couldn’t reach them. Not that they didn’t try. They lunged their upper bodies violently. They reached with blackened, mud-covered arms. They growled and snarled and snapped their teeth like rabid dogs. But none of them could come any closer because they were caught fast in the mud. Still, it was unsettling to walk among them like that and be so close.

  “You have family over there?” the man asked over his shoulder.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s usually the way it is when people come this way,” Sidra heard. “
Course people from the other side of the river want to cross, too. There are wasters trapped over there, just like there are here,” he warned her.

  Wasters.

  Everyone, it seemed, had their own name for the undead.

  “There’s a little gravel road leading from the river on the other side,” the man went on. “But you’ll be better off if you avoid it altogether and stay on the planks.”

  The obstacle course of the undead, or the wasters as the old man called them, continued all the way to the water’s edge. Some of them were close. Alarmingly close. There were even bodies floating by on the river current. Whether they were truly dead, or whether they were still a danger, it was hard to tell. Watching them, Sidra told herself resolutely that she wouldn’t let even that stop her. Her mother was on the other side of that river. And so was her sister. She would find them. Or she would die trying.

  Determinedly, she brushed her fears aside as the man led her to a small boat. She handed him her backpack, which he silently accepted without opening it.

  “You were smart to steer clear of the bridge,” the old man continued with his advice. “Something’s been happening over there tonight, and whatever it is, it’s probably not good. You’re armed, I hope?”

  “Yes,” Sidra answered him as she watched a dark body float gently by on the current not far from the boat. In fact, at first, she had been worried that it was headed right for the boat, but it went on by with only a feeble splash of one arm. Apparently, the dead were still somewhat active, even while in the water.

  She wasn’t specifically armed with a gun, but she did have other weapons. Even though the old man looked harmless, she suspected it was wise not to elaborate too much with strangers.

  “Good,” she heard the old man say. “You never know what you might run into out here at night.” And then he added, “I’ll say a prayer for you.”

  Lendel Garland had had one hell of a day. In fact, he considered himself fortunate to be alive at all. A run of plain bad luck had kept him out long after dark, something he wouldn’t normally do. And those explosions that had rocked the darkness earlier had made him decide to put an abrupt end to his foraging efforts. He was getting too old to be taking as many risks as he had been taking today, so he had thought that it might be wise to lay low for a while until things settled down, whatever was happening. But now he was confronted by this.

  He was debating whether he should cut the lights and the engine of the four wheeler but he needed to see who, or what, he had hit. He had done what he could to avoid a collision, nearly tipping the four wheeler over onto its side in doing so. The man had appeared out of nowhere. All Lendel had seen was the tall, dark-clothed figure at the very last second and then the body flying across the ditch immediately after the impact. He didn’t know if he had killed the man. He didn’t want to think that he had. Of course kill might not be the best choice of words here.

  The man was lying face down in the weeds and he wasn’t moving. Not at first. Then he made a feeble effort to push his chest off the ground with one arm. He wasn’t successful. He groaned, obviously in pain, and sank back down again.

  Lendel still didn’t know what he was looking at. He stared through squinted eyes for a long time before he realized that this definitely wasn’t one of the undead. In fact, he finally realized it was just a kid. There was some dark beard growth on the youngster’s face, but he couldn’t be much more than twenty, if that. There was a smear of dirt on his forehead. Another one on his cheek, which was half hidden by the long black hair. As Lendel peered more closely, he saw the kid open his eyes. The suddenly-compressed lips thinned even more tightly into a definite grimace. Another sign of pain.

  Lendel took a step closer. Hard telling what the boy might be doing out here at night in the middle of nowhere. Whatever the reason, it was a dangerous place to be. Especially afoot. But all too often, people didn’t get left with a lot of choices in this world.

  As Lendel watched, the young man tried to push himself up again.

  Lendel breathed a sigh of relief and said, “You’re not dead.” But it was a phrase that had all kinds of connotations these days, and not all of them good.

  Lendel suddenly lifted his head up sharply. Still squinting, he scanned the woods around them. “Good,” he said without taking his eyes off the tree line and what was moving in the shadows beyond. “Because if you don’t want what’s left of us to be buzzard bait, then you’re going to have to help me get this thing back on the road.”

  The dozen or so gaunts that had appeared out of the darkness, drawn no doubt by the noise and the lights of the four wheeler, were getting more agitated, like wolves closing in on a kill. They were coming on faster. They were getting louder, too, with their wheezing moans and their animal-like growls. White-fleshed and ghoulish in the headlights, most with the typical colorless eyes and horrific, gaping wounds, they were getting close. Real close. Luckily, so far they were stopped by the barbed wire fence on the other side of the ditch.

  “You all right, son?” Lendel asked with a new urgency in his voice.

  He reached down to help the young man to his feet. At the same time he was praying for a little luck. If the kid had any broken bones, this was not going to end well.

  But the fallen man suddenly seemed to become aware of the danger they were in. Now looking more stunned than injured, he got both his hands under him and pushed himself off the ground. Then he turned his head, and focused.

  In a split second, Lendel Garland wondered if he had made a grave mistake. The “kid” didn’t look so young any more. In the headlights his face looked as pale as a ghost, but he also looked dark. Dangerous. Lethal. Through the black, damp strands of his long hair, he suddenly fixed his gaze on Lendel’s face.

  At that moment he did look less than human. In fact, with the light of the headlights and the blood red moon rising up through the trees behind him, the whole scene looked surreal. Lindel was still forming his own opinion about what he was seeing, but he couldn’t know that there were some who would already have eagerly and readily described the crouching man as looking just like a cornered video game assassin.

  Chapter 3

  The crossing had not been nearly as treacherous as Sidra had anticipated. Still, although the obstacle of the river might be behind her, she was alone again and she didn’t know what she could expect on this side of the river. Not that turning back was an option. No matter what happened, she was not going to go back to Webb.

  The old man had been right about one thing. The undead were trapped in the mud here, too. But there weren’t nearly as many. The trees weren’t as thick, either. There was some heavy timber to her right, but there was no telling what might be in there. And now that she was closer to the bluffs that she had to somehow cross? Up close, they looked daunting, formidable, almost forbidding. She had driven by them many times in a car in her old life, but she had never stood before them and contemplated how to cross them on foot.

  Home was still more than twenty miles away. In fact, it was probably closer to thirty miles. On the other side of those bluffs. It might as well be a hundred miles, Sidra thought, almost yielding to her fears. The journey that loomed ahead of her was frightening. Especially in the dark. Especially without the roads to guide her. Too often, roads were turned into ambushes for the unwary. She had heard this so many times that she had no doubt that it was true. But even if it was a hundred miles, she told herself, she would reach home. Somehow. So she did her best to bury her fears deep inside and braced herself for what lay ahead no matter what it might be.

  Maybe she didn’t have a lot of experience surviving out in the open like some people did, as Webb had pointed out to her on more than one occasion, but she had struggled to survive as everyone had struggled. And like everyone else, she was haunted by memories of terrible things, some so vivid they were like living nightmares that stayed with you. The world had definitely changed. There was a time, not so long ago, when a divorce had been considered a
major tragedy in life, or a wrecked car or not having a job. Even a bad hair day would have been deemed a disaster by some. But that seemed like a long time ago. Today anyone would willingly choose those minor adversities over what they had to endure on a daily basis now. Now when you confronted tragedy, you were facing starvation, loss, death. Horrible loss and death. And being utterly alone.

  She’d had no choice in making this journey by herself. No one in the group had wanted to accompany her. She couldn’t blame them. But hadn’t she really been on her own all along? Without even knowing it?

  Certainly, Webb had had his own agenda when he’d told her that he would always be there for her and that she was his only reason to go on. Even though she had told herself she wouldn’t think about him anymore, she found herself reliving that awful moment when she had found him with Renata. Both of them had been stark naked, lost in the throes of unbridled sex. After the initial shock, then the slow, bitter realization had dawned on her that even a zombie apocalypse couldn’t stop some men from lying. Or cheating.

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen, Sidra. I swear to you. She doesn’t mean anything to me. It doesn’t change what we have.”