by SP Durnin
-For you. From the author-
Endings hurt.
It’s four in the morning, my cigarette is slowly burning down to the filter, I haven’t slept for (three?) days and I’m fairly sure my eyeballs resemble orbs of raw hamburger. As I’m typing this I realize my vision’s gone a bit blurry and, to be brutally honest, I can’t tell if it’s from simple fatigue or if I’m beginning to tear up. I know from actually speaking with many of you readers, that you’ve enjoyed spending time in the strange, somewhat sarcastic, little “zombieverse”™ I’ve created, and hoped the story would continue on indefinitely. I understand, believe me.
Like many, I’m emotionally invested in the characters originally introduced within the pages of “Keep Your Crowbar Handy.” I can’t say that’s surprising really, since I’ve literally spent years in their company. I’ve had the privilege of sharing their trials and adventures. Of waking up every day knowing they were going to be part of my life, and feeling all the better for it. Hopefully, I’ve been able to give you that same joy.
This is the reason I must admit something to you now. Bare my soul, I suppose.
I have put these characters through hell. I’ve abused their bodies, traumatized their spirits, and to my everlasting shame—caused them more pain than most people see in two goddamn lifetimes. What’s worse, and the reason I’ve surely dammed myself to sucking hot lava through a metal straw in the afterlife, is that I did so willingly. I sent them to face the terrors that reside in the deepest, darkest, most hellish parts of my back-brain, head on and woefully unprepared. Of this, I am guilty. Though I wish it were otherwise, responsibility for their suffering falls squarely—and oh, so heavily—upon my shoulders and mine alone. For all I have done to them, for all the fear and loss and heartache awaiting them still within the pages you now hold, I am so very, very sorry.
And I hope that someday they will be able to forgive me.
There’s no doubt about it. Jake, Kat, and the rest of their slightly dysfunctional little group have been screwed from the start. But they’ve held their own against murderous psychos, para-military Nazis, half-baked cultists, rogue military units, and (of course) the ever-increasing ranks of the zombie hordes. They’ve fought like lions.
Like fucking heroes.
Looking back at all they’ve faced, I don’t think they’ve done too badly. At all. None of them are perfect. Each is admittedly flawed—some more so than others—but they’ve shown me they possess a crap-load of heart. They’ve more than proven this by the way they care for each other, protect one another, even while slogging hip-deep through all the terror that goes hand-in-hand with battling the hungry dead. And they’re dear to me. That’s why it’s so painful to say goodbye to them, at last. They reside in my heart. Safe within that place you reserve for all you hold precious, for now and always.
So yeah. Endings hurt.
But it’s time.
Time for you to shoulder your bug-out-bag and follow me out into the zombie apocalypse once more, for a final adventure with our friends.
Time to screw up your courage and take a firm grip on your brain-basher of choice, because we’re motoring full throttle for the bitter-sweet end of a joyous and tragic road.
Time for one...last... swing of that crowbar.
-S. P. Durnin
DEATH AND TAXES
BY
S.P. DURNIN
A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-554-6
Death and Taxes
Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 4
© 2017 by S.P. Durnin All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.
Permuted Press, LLC
New York & Nashville
Published in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
I’ve been thinking about how it all went down lately, and I keep wondering if I could’ve done anything different. I’m probably just getting old.
Let me put this in perspective for you. Earlier this year, the human race damn near became extinct. No, Planet Nibiru didn’t show up. No, the North and South Poles didn’t trade places and cause thousand-meter tsunamis, so all those “global warming” jerkoffs can suck it. Earth wasn’t hit by an asteroid, there were no world-wide swarms of locusts, and aliens didn’t invade to steal our natural resources either.
Actually, now that I’ve had time think about it? I’d have almost preferred aliens. Giant, super-intelligent, space badgers don’t seem so bad after having to deal with zombies.
Yep, you read that right. Zombies. Walking corpses. Brain-eating cadavers or, as Kat dubbed them a while back, Maggot-heads.
A little over four months ago (…Damn. Has it really only been that long?) the recently deceased began reanimating in large numbers worldwide, seemingly overnight. What’s worse, they came back pissed off, dumb as a sack of hammers, and very, very hungry. Needless to say, no one wanted to believe what was happening at first. I mean, who would? Dead people getting back up to eat the living? That’s science fiction to most folks. Then again, I’ve been around. During my career working for the United States Navy I saw shit that would scare you so bad, you wouldn’t be able to fit a stray electron up your sphincter. Especially that mess up in the Ukraine. People think that was a disaster? Hah! Yeah. I’m here to tell you, if what’s sleeping beneath Chernobyl ever wakes up…
Uh, look, you’ll edit that part out later, right? Yeah? Okay… Where was I?
It took a bunch of two-bit journalists and reporters getting their asses torn to bits—live on camera—as they provided coverage of the panic, to wake average people the hell up. Even then, most thought they could lock themselves in their homes (thanks to those government approved Talking Heads). Wait this mess out. That The Powers That Be would come save their asses. Problem was, most of those dipshit politicians were secretly shitting their shorts, hoping the DHS or one of the other Alphabet Soup agencies would come up with a “politically correct solution to the crisis.” What a fucking crock. They should’ve been telling folks to arm up, and then start making with the assholes an’ elbows for the nearest horizon.
That’s what we did. Eventually. Well, we holed up at my place for a bit first. Kept quiet and out of sight. We were lucky, truth be told. But in the end, we had to make tracks. Finite supply levels, you know? Steel reinforced concrete walls and an armory full of the best toys Uncle Sam can provide don’t matter much when you’re running out of grub.
What? No. Because you don’t need to know where my place was. Look kid, do you have Top Secret clearance…? No? Do you want me to have to snap your neck? Because if I tell you about my little hideaway, that’s exactly what I’ll have to do.
All right then. Moving on.
While I think we did pretty good overall, we still lost a shitload of people. Not as many as most folks did, but still. What? Why don’t y
ou kiss my ass, boy? No matter what anyone says, however jaded you may get in my business, you never get use to that. Losing friends, I mean…
-above excerpt taken from the combat logs of Master Chief George Montgomery Foster, currently in print as the standard United States Undead Combat Field Manual: Survival, Evasion, and Skull-busting for Dummies
-PROLOGUE-
The thirteen zombies staggered along the riverbank.
While hundreds upon hundreds were swept away by the torrent raging down the normally calm waterway of the Neosho River, not to make landfall again until they tumbled and floated well south into the Robert S. Kerr Reservoir, only a few of them had actually managed to claw their way from the floodwaters. They felt no relief over avoiding their brethren’s fate, they weren’t able to feel—in either body or mind—for their brains had been laid waste. Personalities burned away by the awful fever that followed being bitten by one of the dead, and falling prey to the horrid infection that followed. Now this baker’s dozen were nothing more than carnivorous automatons. Slowly decaying, biological murder-machines, who knew nothing of mercy or compassion. Possessing only the most basic of animal desires. The drive to feed on warm human flesh. Oh, they would attempt to consume any living creature that didn’t run away quickly enough. That was certain. Even now, a quintet of heir moldering brothers and sisters were feeding on the carcass of an unfortunate bull elk not half a mile away. They dipped their arms into its belly, pulling the poor animal’s innards free and stuffing its ropey guts into their gnashing maws without the slightest bit of hesitation. If there was a glimmer of remorse within their piss-yellow eyes as they chewed at the tough muscle on the elk’s flank, it was well obscured by their feral hunger.
The thirteen knew nothing of this, however. They didn’t notice the moon rising behind the boughs of a nearby aspen grove to the east. They paid no attention to the roar of the flood passing to their left. They didn’t feel the warm, wet summer grass beneath their ragged feet. They were dead. The only thing rattling around in their maggoty skulls, the only thing they would ever know, was the terrible hunger.
The hunger was all.
Moving awkwardly along the bank, the creatures tripped and stumbled on fallen trees, hidden roots, and half-concealed rocks as they roamed onward. They didn’t have any type of plan or destination, for their minds were less than those of mayflies. The zombies simply walked in the same direction they’d been facing when they’d crawled from the river. They paid no mind to their surroundings save for what was immediately in front of them, and then only so far as to determine whether or not it was prey. They knew boulders didn’t breathe, they knew trees didn’t bleed… But what they didn’t know, was that they were not alone.
Something watched them as they staggered about.
The hunter was indistinguishable from the shadows. It squatted unmoving twenty feet off the ground the crook of a mid-sized walnut tree, where a large limb met its trunk. While the rotting creatures wouldn’t have considered using a deadfall to climb into the canopy, the seething thing that glared down at them from among the leaves wasn’t burdened by that limitation.
It felt the cool night air and knew darkness meant advantage. Zombies couldn’t chase what they couldn’t see. It moved silently down the limb, feeling the rough bark under its hands as it reached the deadfall, and began creeping down the leaning tree on all fours. Walking corpses couldn’t find what they couldn’t hear. Stinking river mud liberally coated its skin and clothing, leaving only a pair of burning eyes to flick about as it marked the creature’s locations. Maggot-heads didn’t chase what they didn’t smell.
The hunter closed on the rear-most ghoul, a desiccated figure that was little more than a skeleton within its comically large and threadbare Carhartt overalls. Half its throat had been torn away long ago, and a foul scent—reminiscent of vinegar fermented within the anus of a dead sewer rat—trailed behind it in a sickening miasma. Anyone else would’ve vomited until they saw toenails floating in the puddle at their feet, but the muck-caked hunter was only focused on the slow anger burning in its guts and ignored the stench. It waited until the trailing zombie passed beneath it. Then it sprang.
Rain had been falling for hours, soaking the surrounding countryside through and deadening ambient sounds. The hunter would’ve smiled if shoving a knife through the zombie’s skull as it dropped upon the thing hadn’t been so worthy of attention. The rotting ghoul never knew what had killed it (again) and, after pulling its knife free, the hunter faded into the underbrush. Remaining unseen by the ghouls was paramount. It couldn’t risk being discovered, at least not yet. Twelve more of the creatures was more than it could comfortably handle at that particular moment, and it had to be quick.
It took another twenty minutes for the hunter to whittle their numbers down. A trio fell under its knife before becoming lodged in one of their smut-smeared heads and it had to abandon the blade. Two more dropped, brains leaking from pulped skulls, as it used the back of a rusty hatchet it had found to smash them behind their ears. One it kicked back into the river as zombie tried to scale a sharp incline along the bank. The hapless horror was swept quickly away by the floodwaters without nary a groan. Four it shadowed through the soggy trees and took one-by-one with another blade it had stripped from…
No. No time to think of that now. Two remain.
The hunter moved like a ghost, dodging through the trees as it closed on the final pair while trying to avoid detection. Normally, only two of the creatures wouldn’t be difficult to deal with, but the last few hours had taken a toll. His limbs were starting to respond like they’d been filled with concrete, he couldn’t see out of his right eye because of the gash on his brow that leaked crimson down his face, a spot on the right side of his back felt as if it was being twisted with a pair of hot channel locks, and there was a pronounced ringing in the hunter’s ears. Shaking his head clear, he attempted to bring his awareness back into focus on the present. The hunter stopped to crouch among the scraggly branches of a stunted dogwood tree and took in his surroundings with growing trepidation. The creatures were still stumping on ahead, swaying noticeably while they crossed the uneven and waterlogged easement that tapered gently down to a small, serviceable boat dock. The ghouls passed a rack of canoes and a few rowboats stored next to the wooden launch without paying them attention, but they didn’t seem to be inclined to move their smelly asses along. They began roaming the clearing before the dock, seemingly content to stay in the opening near the river rather than slogging back into the trees.
That didn’t please the hunter at all. After a few tense minutes of watching them shuffle about, he couldn’t wait any longer. Those two needed to die, now. He had much more important business to be about.
Rising to his feet, the hunter stepped out into the clearing. Two grey faces swiveled towards the movement and the jaws of the creatures dropped, unleashing their trademark gurgling moans from ruined throats when they saw him. While their eyesight wasn’t good, thanks to thousands of minute scratches upon their corneas—and not actually blinking since their demise—the zombies could still determine a living, breathing human from unappetizing columns of bark, sap, and summer-green leaves. The sight of one set their primitive instincts humming. Blackish drool ran freely from their mouths to drip slowly off the flesh of their ragged chins, coating their already ruined clothing with even more unspeakable foulness as they approached.
After waiting for them to creep closer, the hunter reached over his shoulder with one hand. The dead didn’t even notice the strap running up over his right shoulder, nor did they pay any mind to the scabbard riding his back. They didn’t recognize the sound of metal on metal as he drew his weapon, and the creatures definitely didn’t feel threatened as he took a firm grip on its pommel. They couldn’t have cared less.
The first came within three yards of the hunter and he leapt forward, sending steel out in a blur to meet dead flesh. One of its outstretched hands and half of one arm went flying, right befo
re the six-hundred-year-old steel blade separated the thing’s head from its shoulders permanently. The razor edge cut through flesh and bone alike, shearing onward in a sweeping arc that sent half-congealed blood out like a fetid fan to coat the front of the ghoul in the first one’s wake. Its now-headless body dropped like a marionette whose strings had been cut, not even twitching as the creature’s knees buckled and it fell truly dead to the grass.
The remaining zombie was a bit more robust than its unlucky compatriots. It closed on the hunter almost at a trot and was on him before he could bring his blade to bear again. As the things grotesquely flayed hands closed on his shirt, the hunter dropped the weapon to hold it off.
This one was strong. Easily one of the heartiest he’d encountered, despite its condition. In life, the zombie had been a hard-working man. A carpenter by trade, dedicated to his family and to providing for them, whatever it took. If his brain had still been able to access the memories of his life, the creature could’ve taken comfort in the fact the man he’d been had managed to save his family before he was turned. He’d met his fate getting them to Langley, two days after the initial outbreak. One of the newly-risen dead had taken a mouthful from his left shoulder just as they’d fought their way to the refuge gates. The man he’d been made sure his wife and daughter made it inside, then he’d walked back towards the creature filled streets to the north armed with nothing but a shovel. He’d spent the next five hours killing every zombie he crossed paths with until, too weak and feverish to continue, he’d taken refuge in the loft over a small diner. He’d passed the following morning, then risen shortly thereafter to begin his carnivorous roaming.
Knowing nothing—and not caring—about the creature’s history, the hunter strove to knock the thing from its feet. The zombie wasn’t cooperating, though. It fought to move its broken teeth closer to his face, wanting nothing more but to sink chipped enamel into the first living human it had encountered in nearly two months. That was fine, because the hunter didn’t feel like going along with that program and was sick of pussy-footing around with the nasty thing.