“I know there’s a house ‘round here somewhere. I’ve seen it a million times,” Lonnie grumbled as he trudged, each step cracking and crunching over the brush and brambles.
“Maybe we got turned around somewhere,” Rowan offered from close behind him.
Lonnie turned his face up to the sky and took a deep breath, the silver moon painted across his tanned face like a spotlight waiting for a monologue. It would wait forever. Lonnie had nothing to say, at least not until they found the house he knew was there, somewhere.
“So, we’re looking for more people, right?” Rowan spoke up, his tone uncertain. When Lonnie didn’t say anything he pressed on with the questions, despite the gnawing feeling in his stomach. “What are we going to do once we find them? I mean, y’know, what’s the plan once we—” He ran into Lonnie’s sturdy frame and ricocheted backwards. “Whoa, man. What’s going on?”
Rowan’s mouth hung open as he gazed over Lonnie’s wide head.
They found the house. It was in a clearing up ahead, about a quarter mile back from the main road…and it was overrun with the dead.
“We should go,” he whispered into Lonnie’s burning ears.
Lonnie shushed him.
“But there’s no way we can—”
“Would you shut the fuck up and listen…”
Both men faced the house, a hill for the tiny ants to converge at like a homing beacon. Through the endless stream of throaty, hungry moans and growls something else carried on the breeze just barely—something human.
Lonnie’s ice blue eyes widened to the size of a full moon. Without a word, he took off into the clearing.
Somewhere behind him he heard Rowan pleading for him to come back, proclaiming that it was suicide, begging him not to do what he was already doing. In defiance, his legs pumped at an alarming rate, the muscles so tight he thought they would explode. The hard metal of the AR-15 slapped against his back. The distant voice grew in volume and urgency as he approached the outer ring of the nightmarish ghouls.
“Shit! Help! Help me!” a young man’s voice echoed out through a missing window. “I don’t wanna die!”
The horde of undead went back ten deep and spread out to encircle the house from all sides. There was a loud crash of glass breaking and an indistinct cry from somewhere inside. Lonnie’s stomach lurched with every inch he drew closer to the first mangled, lumbering body. He could die trying to save whoever was trapped inside, and he had to be OK with that. He was OK with that.
Though his body panged him from every end as it tried to kick into its survivalist instincts and flee, he fought it all the way up to when he collided with the back of just one of the few dozen spongey figures that would soon surround him.
XIX.
There was no plan as Lonnie Lands charged the multitude of hungry, drooling zombies. The rational part of his brain had shut down completely. All that was left were primordial instincts to preserve mankind. He propelled ahead, as if thrown from a slingshot, with his upper half leaning forward, ready for impact.
The first body flew off its feet and landed face down when Lonnie threw his shoulder into it. He pushed forward without a pause. All the neighboring dead turned their heads slowly on creaking necks to look for the cause of the commotion, but Lonnie was already ahead of them. They spun on wobbly legs, their searching eyes glazed over, their mouths stupidly pendulous as they drooled.
Arms reached out from every angle to grab onto the blurred form that moved like a stroke of paint through the nighttime scenery. The only thing solidifying the man’s existence was the trail of trodden corpses struggling to right themselves again. Their cold, hard fingers brushed against his warm flesh, but couldn’t grasp onto it. Strained hissing emitted from their cracked, white lips that sounded like a group of angry cats.
Lonnie was halfway through the pack when he noticed he was no longer approaching oblivious bodies with their backs turned, but bloodied, disfigured faces. They were ready for him, feet planted on the lawn, weight distributed unevenly, but firmly between bent legs, arms stretched outward as their fingers clenched and opened perilously, their mouths already working in a chewing motion in wait for the thick blood they craved.
He couldn’t slow down just because the tides had turned and he was no longer moving in stealth. Fear couldn’t cripple him, though it did stifle his breathing and stiffen his joints so that every movement he made was an agonizing, and possibly futile, effort.
As if in slow motion, he approached the grasping hands. Behind them were mouths full of blackened teeth that dripped tar-like blood. Another cry from inside the house urged him forward. He closed his eyes moments before he jumped with reckless abandonment into the undulating sea of groping dead bodies.
The hands of the dead were all over Lonnie Lands. They tugged at his wife beater, his jeans, his arms, his hair, anything they could get their relentless fingers clasped around. He felt warm liquid smear across his unprotected body, unsure if it was his blood or theirs, and unwilling to stop to find out.
The sound of jaws snapping within inches of his finely tuned ears was the only thing that kept him pushing forward. The weight of body parts wrapped around his legs slowed him down from a run to a strained wide walk. Pinching pain shot up his limbs and fueled the fire of panic in his brain.
That was that. It was over. He’d gotten himself stuck and there was no way he would get out of it. He would fight to the end, but deep down he knew it was the end as their mouths pulled closer to his tender flesh.
He couldn’t take them all on. There were three that clung to him as more figures slowly made their way over. He would be dogpiled to death and torn apart. How long did it take to die he wondered again—a minute, two, ten? He hadn’t stuck around to find out when Torres was ripped apart. Now that he was in the same situation, he wish he had.
A misplaced sound cracked through the thick summer air. The ravenous jaws of the zombies stopped clacking for a moment as their heads turned to the source from the woods. Even Lonnie, with his blood bursting through his veins and his ears ringing with the ghostly, disembodied moans, couldn’t help pausing for a second to look. Another crack echoed out.
Gunfire.
He squinted, but all he saw was the waving blades of grass and the rustling blackened branches of the silhouettes of trees.
One. Two. Three. Four. One after another the shots popped off, pulling the centralized focus of the zombies away from the bag of flesh in their hands.
A figure burst forth from the woods and waved its arms through the air. “Hey! Over here! Over here, dumb shits!”
The bodies on the outer edge of the horde broke off and followed the shadowed movement instinctively. Their chests deflated with heavy moans as they trudged forward, away from the house.
The next row turned, their alabaster eyes watching as if they had the capacity to process what they were seeing. In reality their limbs, already stiff with rigor mortis, were just gearing up for the movement it took to make the change in direction toward the new, more lively prey.
Lonnie remained frozen with mottled hands still clenched around his wrists and legs. He didn’t dare move as the focus switched from him to Rowan. He didn’t even breathe, though the stench of the bodies was so thick he could taste it.
Several ramshackle bodies pulled themselves out through the broken windows of the house and fell to the front porch. With greatly strained effort they pushed themselves up on their hands to stand again, their backs hunched and their spines disfigured. Gradually, Lonnie felt the release of pressure around his limbs as the rest of the herd mindlessly followed the others back into the woods.
For a fleeting moment, when there was no longer the heavy scent of rotting flesh engulfing him and he could catch a breath of fresh air, Lonnie felt a drop in his stomach and wondered if he’d ever see Rowan again. It was only for a second that he felt the queasiness of dread for his companion before he turned and ran up the porch steps and through the front door. With the hinges already twisted and brok
en, it crashed to the floor easily. He bounded inside as he scanned the darkened room for the young man in need.
His mind raced with horrifying images of being too late, of finding a torn, bloody body lying twisted on the floor, of holding the boy’s head in his lap as he exhaled his last dying breath.
He leaned around the side of the couch and looked behind it. No one there.
He crossed the room and went back into the kitchen. Frantically, he threw the cabinets open in a fruitless attempt to find the one who called out to him. He pulled one of the chairs from the round breakfast table to reach the pantry cabinet behind it.
The house was silent. There was no creaking of wood to give away the hiding man’s location, no whisper of hope from trembling lips, nothing as Lonnie stood in the middle of the room, arms hovering away from his sturdy frame as he heaved heavy breaths. Where was the little shit? He closed his eyes and took in a slow breath to keep himself from spinning out of control and tearing the whole place apart in a rage.
From under the table, something grabbed his leg with force and he jumped away, crashing against the frame of the doorway. His heart beat against his ribcage as he struggled to take air into his lungs. The white arm slithered back under the table and into the darkness.
Inching his way closer, Lonnie crouched down to get a look. He couldn’t see anything in the thick blackness. When he reached a full squat, something moved that shook the table on its feeble legs. Two hands slapped at the linoleum as a figure crawled out on all fours.
Lonnie straightened himself up to stare down at the head of curly brown hair beneath him. Slowly it turned and a pale face looked up at him. Tears poured from large, brown eyes. “Thank you,” the young man breathed out as he sat on his knees, crumbled over at the waist, and buried his face in his hands. “Thank you.”
There was that surge again. The intoxicating burst that coursed through Lonnie’s nagging limbs all the way to his racing heart. He’d done it. He’d saved another life. They were one step closer to reclaiming the world as their own. He reached a red stained hand down to the doubled over figure on the floor and touched his shoulder.
The boy, in his last year of being a teenager and on his way to becoming a man, flinched away and then gingerly reached out to join hands with the guy who saved his life. With a great upward thrust, he was pulled from the floor to stand on his feet.
The blonde savior clapped him on the back and broke out in a toothy grin. “You got a name, friend?”
The curly-haired young man allowed a smile to spread across his face despite the shaking that wouldn’t quit in his thin, lanky legs.
“Yeah. Mitchell. Mitchell Barnes.”
“Well, Mitchell Barnes. Whaddaya say we get the hell outta here?”
Mitchell nodded, sending his tendrils bouncing around his ears. Lonnie extended his arm to lend a shoulder to the weak and frightened boy. They walked out of the house together and stopped in the broken doorway to stare out into the dark and chaotic world.
There were only a few shadowed figures left in the yard, off in the distance by the trees, shambling away. They no longer chased after the sound of gunshots. The woods were eerily quiet and Lonnie couldn’t help thinking that Rowan was already dead. Not every life could be saved.
Neither of them noticed the silent body that moved through the shadows of the porch behind them.
“Where do we go now?” Mitchell asked as he stared off into the trees. “Is there anywhere safe left?”
The body approached the huddled duo and reached out an arm toward Lonnie Lands to grab him by the shoulder.
“I don’t know, kid. We just gotta—”
A solid hand gripped Lonnie where his thick neck met his collar bone.
“SHIT!” He jumped and turned to see Rowan smiling behind him. “What the hell, bro? Don’t fuckin’ sneak up on me like that!” He couldn’t help exhaling a few breathy chuckles of relief. “Glad you made it.”
“Me too.”
Rowan ducked down on the other side of the curly-haired teenager and offered his shoulder as well. The three of them walked down the steps of the porch together and headed out into the clearing. They disappeared into the tree line in silence, starting their search for another shelter—one that would hopefully last longer than any they’d found so far.
Thank you for reading Dead Beginnings Volume 1
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Here are some of my other books
Supernatural Thriller Fiction
Dead Soil : A Zombie Series book #1
Women’s Fiction (ChickLit)
Girls Like Us
Non-Fiction
Novel Notes : A Writing Journal for Authors
Dead Beginnings (Vol. 1) Page 7