DEAD: Snapshot (Book 2): Leeds, England

by TW Brown

  Maybe they have relatives here, she mused, and had to stifle a giggle.

  When the marker beside the road indicated that she was now on the outskirts of Garforth, she reached down and touched her scimitar. That momentary comfort was quickly displaced by a feeling of frustration and even a little worry.

  She had none of her supplies. She had left everything back at that house, and there was absolutely no way that she could return there. Caron would have returned and told everybody of Simon’s murder by now. It would not be a stretch to think that they would send people to watch the house and wait for her return so that they could kill her. And when that day came where she knew that she absolutely wished to be dead, she now felt assured that she had at least one place where she could go and be treated to her last wish. If she was really lucky, it would be a fast death. But now was not that time, and she brushed those thoughts away and swept them under the rug in one of her mind’s darker corners.

  At last, she reached the entrance to a posh looking little neighborhood. The plaque at the entrance read “Cedar Ridge” on either side of the brick wall that acted as a border that separated these people from everybody else and made them their own little community. Judging by the debris, torched automobiles, and dead bodies left to decay in the streets and yards, this place had fared no better than anyplace else in the world.

  The first few houses had burnt down to nothing but the skeletal remains and were ugly, black monuments to their finality. The next houses, the ones that had survived the little fire, showed promise. Doors were wide open and almost inviting her inside. The one house she did see that had the front door shut also had a zombie in the window staring out at her.

  Walking up to the first house, she had to wave away the swarms of flies that were drawn to the three corpses in the front yard. It was easy to guess what had happened here. The front room window to the right of the door was shattered and dark stains marred the brick façade. The three bodies were splayed out on the lawn with their heads sporting a variety of nasty divots, and completely busted open in one case. The zombie that had most of its head splattered all over the ground was partially on the landing of the entry.

  She paused as she went to step over the body and was fascinated how the left half of the face had managed to remain mostly intact. It was grossly misshapen, but still recognizable as a woman’s face. She felt her skin crawl as she watched a fly actually walk across the wide open eye that was staring up at her.

  In the entry hall was a family portrait, and Shadiyah was almost certain that what must have been the oldest daughter was the body she now thought of as ‘Flyball’. The two sons were also out front. That left the parents. She had to guess that one of them—most likely the father—had been the person to deal out the killing blows. Had either or both been bitten? She imagined that there were millions of stories that would never be told.

  Every single person in the world had just lived through a pop culture event of the worst kind. She wondered if any of them had been fans of that sort of thing. Had it helped them survive? While she had been aware of zombie movies and such, it was not something she got excited about or even gave it much more than a passing glance than she did vampires, werewolves, or mummies.

  Ghosts? That was an entirely different matter. She absolutely believed in ghosts. Of course, she now believed in zombies as well for obvious reasons.

  Moving along the wall of the entry hallway that was opposite the stairs, she paused in the arch that opened to the living room and discovered the father as well as confirmation of her guess as to who had killed the zombified members of the family. Sprawled on the floor was a man; or, more accurately, his corpse. The man had slit his wrists and one hand still held the straight razor used for the gruesome task. The wife and mother of the house was still nowhere to be seen, and if she had been a zombie, it is very possible that she could have simply wandered off since the front door was wide open.

  As soon as she arrived at the kitchen, she knew that it was unlikely that she would find anything worth taking in the realm of food. The cupboards were all thrown open or had the doors ripped off completely and tossed on the floor.

  Deciding that she was in no mood to waste time since she had nothing after having left that house so suddenly, she turned around and walked out. The next house was more of the same and then there was the house with the zombie staring out at her from the window.

  A thought occurred to Shadiyah, and she went to the house with the zombie. It did not move from the window, but merely increased the degree of intensity that it slapped and pawed at the window. Checking the door, she frowned when she discovered it to be locked. Stepping back, and giving a look up and down the street, she kicked the door as hard as she could…and ended up falling backwards and landing on her behind in the middle of the walkway. The door was still shut, but there was a near perfect print of the bottom of her boot on the white door.

  Getting up and dusting herself off, she headed down the side of the house and into the back yard. It was here that she found the enclosed back porch. Breaking one of the windows was a simple matter. She allowed herself to smile when the back door proved to be unlocked.

  Stepping inside, she discovered that the zombie from the front window had obviously come in response to the noise and was just staggering into the kitchen as she entered and closed the door behind her. A quick stab with her scimitar ended the zombie and she made the decision to drag it outside before commencing her search. Seeing an open pantry with cans lining the shelf gave her reason to be hopeful, so she could attend to the one simple matter of housecleaning before she began the search.

  She decided to leave the back door open in case there might be more zombies that needed to be taken out, as well as helping to air out the house a bit. Shadiyah pulled a bottle of water from a case that sat in the floor of the pantry closet and opened a tin of Spam; she reveled in the saltiness of the minced meat and wished that she had some bread and perhaps a pickle to help finish things off properly.

  The house proved to be empty of any other bodies, living, undead, or otherwise. Shadiyah took that as a good sign and laughed at whoever had come through and looted the other houses but chose to skip this one just because of one zombie.

  By now, the sun was almost halfway done with its march across the sky. There was nothing in the way of a proper bag or pack for her to use to load up on supplies, so she fashioned one from a pair of pillow covers and grabbed a few essentials in case she had to leave in a hurry.

  Once she felt like she had done enough preparation in case of emergency, she made her way to the bedroom. Shoving the large chest of drawers in front of the door, she flopped down on the bed and was asleep almost before her head touched the pillow.

  ***

  “How is he?” Nelson asked.

  “Good as we can hope,” Mrs. Raye answered. “The doc says that Caron probably gave him the small chance that he does have by leaving the knife in place until they got back. The fact that it missed everything vital is a small miracle or a big one depending on your point of view.”

  “And you knew this girl?” Nelson entered the house with Dawn and Melena in tow.

  The three of them took a seat at the kitchen table as Mrs. Raye put cups in front of them all and then went about pouring the tea. There was not much left, but Nelson was leaving with his new team of hunters after this check in to see how Simon was doing; he had promised Mrs. Raye a secret stash from any tea that they found while out.

  “This girl?” Mrs. Raye finally said as she blew a wisp of steam from her cup and then took a sip. “No, this girl is a stranger to me. I should have trusted my instinct and dealt with this back at Clyde Court.”

  “Dealt with it how?” Melena asked after a long silence where nobody else seemed inclined to ask what she considered an obvious question.

  “Shadiyah started to become unhinged when her sister was raped, but after the girl killed herself, that was just more than her mind could take. I’m afraid that no
t everybody who survives these first few months is going to be a viable person. That poor girl had to kill both her parents, and then she had no better choice other than to leave them outside her front door. Add in having to take care of her sister who broke almost immediately, and the girl just took in more than she could handle. Minds are a funny thing. That is why some soldiers come back from battle and are basically a shell of their former selves. Call it PTSD or whatever you like, but I think we will lose a good many survivors to their own minds in this first year as we are forced to do things we never imagined.”

  The room was silent for several minutes except for the sipping sounds as everybody considered Mrs. Raye’s statement. That silence did not end until the front door opened and Caron entered with another woman who was decked out in what was becoming the standard hunter’s gear: heavy denim pants, a leather jacket over her black shirt, hiking boots, heavy gloves, hair cut short and tucked into a bandana and a set of goggles hanging around her neck.

  “Is that really a crossbow?” Nelson gasped—admiration and maybe a hint of envy in his voice.

  The newest member of the team patted the stock of her crossbow and beamed. “I was so mad when my husband bought this for me last year. I bet he never imagined that the first living thing I would shoot with it might be him.”

  Niamh Longstreet had been Melena’s recommendation for the team when it was all but demanded that every team have at least one member on it from the New Micks. Nelson trusted her judgment and had agreed despite not really knowing the woman. He’d only been aware of Connor Longstreet, Niamh’s husband on a casual basis. The man was always travelling for his job. There were many in town who whispered that it was Connor who brought the infection to Micklefield.

  He was not sure what exactly he disliked most about the woman before actually ever even meeting her; the fact that she was the wife of the late Connor Longstreet, that she was a New Mick, or that she was bloody Irish. Still, she had Melena’s endorsement, so he was willing to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself for now.

  Just on appearances, Niamh most resembled something that you might see from an artist’s rendition of a faerie. She was pale to the point of almost being blue, her hair was a series of pencil-thin red braids that virtually seemed to float around her head, her eyes had a peculiar greenish-blue and he would swear that if you stared at her ears, you could detect where they almost ended in elfish points. Her nose was overly small, her lips thin, and she had a double dose of freckles.

  “That’s the weapon that killed Connor Longstreet?” Dawn said with awe as she pushed back from the table and came over to give the weapon a closer look.

  “Aye, it is. Care to give it a try?” Niamh presented the crossbow with a smile.

  “Me? Oh no…I would not know where to begin,” Dawn gasped, backing away like she’d just been offered a cobra.

  “Aim the pointy thing away from you and pull the trigger,” Niamh laughed.

  “So, Nelson, you are either very liberated, or you just like gawking at females,” Mrs. Raye said with a chortle as she took in his assembled team.

  “Probably more of the latter,” Melena quipped. “But this is more my team than his, we just list him as the leader to keep some of the other more obnoxious blokes at bay.”

  “She’s not lying.” Nelson gave a shrug of his shoulders. Then, with a wink, added, “It is more of the latter.” That earned him a punch in the shoulder once Melena realized exactly what the man had just said.

  “We should get moving,” Melena announced a few seconds later. “If Simon does wake while we are gone, please give him our best.”

  “I will, child,” Mrs. Raye said as she walked the team to the door. “Give me just a minute with Caron, please.”

  Annie bounded down the stairs at the sound of everybody leaving and demanded hugs from the group until she reached Niamh. She seemed to consider things for a moment and then extended a polite hand to be shaken.

  “My name is Annie, what’s yours?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

  “Niamh…Niamh Longstreet,” the woman replied as she shook the girl’s hand.

  “Neev? That’s a funny name…are you a fairy princess?” Annie scrunched up her nose and smiled, showing off an empty gap where she had lost one of her top front teeth.

  “Maybe,” the woman said with a sly smile as she walked out of the house.

  “I like her,” Annie announced, and then bounded back up the stairs.

  Once everybody was gone and it was just Mrs. Raye and Caron, the older woman pulled a bag out from the closet. She looked around once more to ensure that they were alone. Apparently satisfied that was the case, she pulled out a black triangular pouch and then another square one and handed them to Caron.

  “What’s this?” the woman asked tentatively as she accepted the smallish but oddly heavy parcels.

  “This was in the Foxhound under the commander’s chair. It is a SIG-Sauer P226. There is one fully loaded fifteen-round magazine already in the weapon.” She pulled it from the holster and turned it on its side, her finger pointing to a small lever on the side near the grip. “The weapon is cocked in a safe mode for you to carry it loaded with one in the chamber. You slide this down and it de-cocks the weapon and makes it ready to fire. Other than that, this is a semi-automatic. When you fire the last round, the slide will come back. This button here is the American thumb release,” she pointed to a round button just below the lever, “you push it and it releases the magazine. You just grab the next one and slide it into position, give it a firm smack to seat it and then release the slide.”

  “Umm…okay, but why would you give me this?” Caron accepted the handgun that Mrs. Raye presented to her and then held onto it like she feared it might suddenly attack her.

  “You are going out with this group, and it is still possible that Shadiyah is in the area. If she is, you have to understand that the girl is simply broken. The world we find ourselves in has no room for her. If she sees you, she might approach. If that happens, you need to be ready to put her down.”

  “She’s not an animal in need of a merciful death,” Caron protested, shoving the weapon back at the woman.

  “No, she is much worse.” Mrs. Raye did not accept the gun and made a show of putting her hands behind her back. “She is a human being that has become broken. She has no compass. If she can attack Simon, a man she has known for years and had no reason to hold ill will towards, then consider what she can do to others. Do I need to remind you of those men in the room? That one poor bloke that bled out in the chair? Both were murdered by Shadiyah, but she was not simply killing…she was engaging in torture.”

  “I can’t kill her.” Caron set the gun on the table along with the holster and the pouch with the two spare magazines. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I just can’t.”

  With that, Caron turned and walked out to join the team. Nobody asked any questions about what might have been said, and they travelled in silence towards their target destination of the outskirts of Garforth. This would be the first excursion using a flatbed truck and trailer with a winch and hitch on the front end. The entire thing had been put together by Nelson. The idea was that they could pull any of the cars blocking the path out of the way and then roll in. With the large truck, they would be able to load up supplies in much greater quantities.

  They took Church Lane to the A656 and then hooked around at the M1 roundabout to the A642 which would take them into East Garforth from the north side of town. The first obstacle was no surprise and they had already discussed how to tackle it while driving.

  The junction where the 642 began was the site of a seven car mess with a military truck in the middle of it all. From the looks, the military truck had tried to park crossways on the road to block off anybody getting onto the M1 from this area. At least two of the cars were riddled with bullet holes and one was mostly just a charred wreck. The others, and this was Nelson’s guess, had decided to try and ram the truck. It had ended poorly for all
involved when at least one or more of the cars caught fire.

  “How come there wasn’t some sort of explosion?” Dawn asked as they approached the scene of the wreck.

  “Because this isn’t the pictures,” Melena answered.

  After pulling one of the cars free and making enough of a space for them to get past, they were back on the road towards their target destination. Once they pulled into the residential area, the next part of their plan would be implemented. This was the trial run and would be the one that determined if other teams could use the same tactics.

  Dawn would stay in the truck, behind the wheel and with the engine running. Nelson would be paired with Niamh and Melena with Caron. In teams of two, they would each take a residence and take anything and everything they could carry. Food was the top priority, but they were also to give equal attention to anything to do with medicine, first aid, and hygiene.

  They reached the turn-in to the first neighborhood and the truck slowed. The signs at the entrance read: Cedar Ridge.

  ***

  Shadiyah woke and stared up at the ceiling. Despite her exhaustion, she had woken numerous times through the night as nightmares hit her with everything that her mind could think of.

  Despite her ability to quell her conscience while she was awake, apparently she had not yet reached the point where her unconscious mind could dismiss or ignore her actions. She was thankful for the inability to recall any of the specifics less than a few minutes after waking up.

  Rolling over, she made the mistake of drawing a deep breath and sat up immediately, rubbing her nose as if that might help force out the mustiness and stink that had flowed in and coated her nostrils. It was as she sat there trying to figure out what she would do now when she heard an odd noise.

  It took her a while to finally realize that it was an approaching vehicle. With the world being so quiet compared to how it had been before the zombie apocalypse, the noise had a quality to it that made it seem just a bit off. Also, she could not tell exactly what direction that it was coming from, only that it was growing louder which meant that it was approaching.