DEAD: Snapshot (Book 3): Liberty, South Carolina

by TW Brown

  “He appears to be the only casualty so far.”

  “And what about you? You look a little beat up. You okay?”

  He had given the young lady a quick up and down inspection. Her face was smudged with dirt and blood. She had a pretty nasty lump on the side of her face and a cut over one eye.

  “Fine,” she brushed aside the concern. “So you found one of them alive?” She walked over to the girl on the ground and stared down at her. “Jesus…were they all women?”

  “I think so.”

  “So what do we do with her?” Jamie crossed her arms over her body and appeared to be studying the woman intently.

  “She has information.” Stephen looked Jamie in the eyes, hoping that he was conveying his meaning without having to say anything.

  There was a very long moment of silence. Jamie walked around the body, lips pursed and hands clasped behind her back. At last she stopped.

  “Do what needs to be done, Mr. Deese. But I think it best if you maybe take her to that house around the corner and outside of the safe zone. I have a feeling there might be those who would disapprove.”

  Stephen cocked his head. He had honestly expected her to be one of those who might not approve of coercive methods of interrogation.

  “I will see what I can find out. Where will you be?”

  Jamie thought it over for a moment. “I have to go see Hannah Potter. After that I will be at the high school.”

  Stephen watched her walk away. Reaching down, he scooped the woman up and threw her over his shoulder. As he walked, he found himself whistling the song Little Red Riding Hood.

  He reached the house just around the corner from the train tracks and set the body down to deal with a pair of elderly zombies coming his way from across the street before opening the door to the house. He walked through the place to make sure that it was empty and then went outside and grabbed the woman.

  He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and heaved the limp figure into it. Grabbing the nearby coffee pot, he yanked the electric cord from it and tied one ankle in place. Going over to a nearby lamp, he repeated the process.

  Comfortable that she would not be able to run off if she woke, he searched the closets and returned with a set of sheets. He cut them into a few strips and finished securing the woman. Walking over to the refrigerator, he held his breath and opened it. Despite his precautions, he could taste the foulness of the rotten contents in the back of his throat as he pulled out a pitcher that looked like it might have been iced tea once upon a time.

  He turned just in time to see a zombie wandering past outside. An idea came to mind and he quickly ripped a few more strips off the tattered sheet.

  It took much longer than when he’d secured the living woman, but eventually he had the zombie tied to a chair as well. This one looked like he had been the stereotypical college frat boy with his Emo haircut and Fallout Boy tee shirt.

  Grabbing the pitcher of rancid tea from the table, he walked over to the woman and threw it in her face. The woman jerked awake, her sputters and coughs muffled by the gag. Stephen had stepped back and now stood glaring down at the woman.

  “I want to lay down the rules here for you just so that there is no misunderstanding.” Stephen moved over beside the zombie. It rolled its head his direction and bit down impotently on the gag in its mouth. “I am going to ask you a series of questions. Any time I don’t get an answer or feel that you are being dishonest, I will undo one of the straps holding Mr. Bitey here in place. By my count, that gives you seven chances. That is counting the gag which I will now untie just to demonstrate my sincerity.”

  Moving behind the zombie, Stephen untied the piece of cloth and moved away. As he did so, he watched the woman’s expression. The reaction was exactly what he had hoped for. He saw the fear very clearly etched on her features. She was far more afraid of that zombie than he thought she might ever be of him.

  “First question is a simple one. Your leader claimed that you guys were from over towards Easley…is that true.” He received a very slight nod. The woman only shot him a quick glance, but then her eyes returned to the zombie.

  “Here is an odd question, and really more of a curiosity than anything important. Just remember, if I think you are lying, I undo one of the strips keeping this fella secure.” Stephen walked around to the woman, making sure to keep wide of the zombie that was now making strange gurgles and low growls as it gnashed its teeth in frustration at not being able to reach him. “Does your little band consist solely of women?”

  This made his captive’s head pop up suddenly. Her eyes went wide and he saw something else flash across her face.

  “Easy,” he said, throwing his hands up, “it’s nothing so sinister, I assure you.”

  She made a show of glancing down at her bonds. She looked back up at him with an arched eyebrow.

  “You’re still dressed,” he offered. “I’m just curious.”

  The woman said something that was garbled by the wash cloth stuffed into her mouth and kept secure by one of his linen strips. He reached over and tugged at the knot. He let her spit the rag out since he was in no mood to be bitten—zombie or not.

  “Yes,” the woman said and then paused as if considering what to say next. “We were all just returning from a women’s retreat. Our bus arrived at the church late at night. We’d heard the warning and the announcements about the possibility of martial law being declared. Our driver would not take us home and said that he just wanted to get us off his bus and go find his family. He left us in that parking lot.” Again the woman paused, but this time it was to swallow the lump in her throat.

  “A bunch of them just came out of the dark. Three of us were taken down before we could break into the church. Once we got the door secured, we discovered that our phones were basically useless. We also found out that we were trapped. By morning, there were at least a hundred of those awful things outside banging on the doors and walls trying to get in.”

  He’d heard enough of that story for now. Raising his hand, he stopped her from saying anything else. “How many?”

  The woman stared at him. She frowned and her head dropped. “I don’t know.”

  Stephen yanked one of the strips free that held the zombie’s torso secured to the chair. The zombie immediately renewed its efforts to get at him and the woman tied across from it.

  “I mean it!” the woman exclaimed. “I don’t know how many of us made it after Candice blew herself up like a moron.”

  Stephen suppressed a smile. At least he and this woman were on the same page about one thing.

  “How likely is it that your friends come back for more?” Stephen locked eyes with the woman. This was one of the important questions.

  “You haven’t been out there much, have you?” the woman replied. “We get hit almost daily. You are just the latest. The thing is, y’all seemed like a much more organized threat than the usual groups of raiders. We needed to know what we were up against.”

  “Why would you need to be up against us? Jesus, you say that you ladies were coming back from a retreat! I have to suppose that you are all regular church-goin’ ladies…unless your story was just a cover.” Stephen glanced over at the zombie that was still biting at the air in a futile attempt to latch onto him. The woman must’ve seen his look and began to almost babble.

  “No cover story. We just had no choice but to get tough in a hurry. After what that one man did to Penelope…” the woman gushed, but her voice cracked and faded at the end. “It’s like we landed in the middle of Sodom and Gomorrah. The worst sorts seem to be much more abundant than…well…than regular types.”

  “So you strap bombs to yourselves and kill on sight?” Stephen shot back.

  “We just got invaded earlier that morning. We honestly thought that it was more of those folks come back for more.”

  Stephen considered the woman for a moment. Looking into her eyes, he came to the conclusion that she was either being honest, or she was
pathological. Either way, he was losing steam when it came to doing anything to this woman in retaliation for what had happened by the train tracks.

  “If I let you go, what happens next?” Stephen knelt in front of the woman and put his hands on the arms of her chair. “Do we need to be watching for a bunch of your friends to show up with bombs strapped to your bodies? Is there going to be a war? If there is, I want to warn you…we aren’t just some ladies auxiliary group holed up in a church or whatever. We are a town of people determined to survive this zombie apocalypse by any means necessary.” He paused for a moment and considered his words. “Jamie was not kidding when she said that we have given our scavenging teams very strict and direct orders not to cross into territory if somebody is there laying claim to it. I think I can even follow up and make sure that our people hold to that boundary your leader—”

  “Candice wasn’t our leader. She was just the biggest one of us and so we had her doing all the talking,” the woman cut Stephen off.

  “Whatever.” Stephen gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “What I am saying is that we would have no trouble staying out of your area. There are plenty of places for us to search for supplies.”

  The woman regarded him silently for several seconds. “You really got your entire town secure against this?” She made a nod towards the zombie across from her in the chair.

  “The town? No. The people…pretty much. We pulled back into an area that we felt we could hold easier. At least for now. Once we get this first area fully secure and feel confident that we are through the worst of it, we will push back out and probably annex more and more of the town.”

  A voice in his head told him to ease up on giving away secrets. Whether this woman was being totally truthful or not did not mean that information did not have a way of being leaked or spread.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” the woman said.

  “You coulda fooled me with that business back by the tracks,” Stephen replied sardonically. “You show up, throw the only survivor of our scavenge team on the ground and then go all jihadist.”

  “To be fair,” the woman’s head snapped up and her expression changed to one of anger, “your people took a shot first. You had snipers in the damn trees or some such crap. So don’t stand here and act like you and your people are the victims in this.”

  Stephen shrugged. “Okay, but we can go back and forth over who is the most wrong all day. What it comes down to is that I want to know why I should let you go. You haven’t really revealed anything. Every word out of your mouth could be a cover story.”

  “We are holed up at New Image Church by the elementary school,” the woman blurted. “Before this disaster, there were thirty-seven of us. We range in age from nineteen to sixty-five. Anything else?”

  Stephen pulled his knife from his belt. As soon as he did, the woman began to scream. Out of reflex, he lashed out, his fist smashing into her jaw. Her head dropped and she went limp.

  “I was just going to cut you loose,” he hissed to the unconscious figure. A low moan from outside was his answer. He rushed to the front room window and looked outside. “Double dammit!” he swore.

  He glanced at the zombie tied to the chair and decided not to take any chances. He jammed his knife into its temple and then headed out to the front yard to greet the five more zombies that had arrived.

  The first one would remove the last doubt from anybody who might still be on the fence about the whole zombie thing. It had no left arm. There was a nasty stump where the arm had been ripped away at the shoulder socket. The throat was so badly ripped that the head sat on its side, almost resting on that mangled shoulder. The chest had been torn apart and there were rib bones jutting out like an inverse pin cushion.

  Once he put the last zombie down, he returned to the house. The woman was still out cold. Looking around, his eyes spotted a hatch in the ceiling down the hall that led to the bedrooms and bathroom. He went to it and was thankful when a ladder folded down after he opened it.

  It took some work and he felt something tighten in his back as he hoisted her up and into the attic, but he felt better about it that just leaving the woman untied on the ground floor where something could stumble in and get her.

  As he walked back towards the train tracks, he seriously hoped that he had not made a terrible mistake.

  17

  The Vote and a Slice of Normal

  Jamie stood at the podium. She hated the fact that she needed to speak into a bullhorn, but this was something that the entire community needed to hear firsthand. There was no way she would trust this to people spreading it like a post-apocalyptic version of the grade school game, Postman.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of Liberty, I come before you today with a matter of a very serious nature.” She looked out at the faces and tried to judge the response she was about to receive. Beside her, Stephen Deese and Bo Summers stood at parade rest like a military honor guard. Taking a deep breath, she resumed her speech. “As many of you are now aware, we have come under attack by an outside group. They executed one of our teams of scavengers and then came here and detonated an explosive that took the life of Chief Ivan Potter.”

  Once again, Jamie paused. She wanted that to sink in. She had always enjoyed watching those trial shows and imagined what it must be like to stand in front of a jury and tell them the story that gets them to pass the desired verdict.

  Her concern rested in the people who still seemed to refuse to accept the reality of what was happening around them. She noticed that anytime teams were called to leave the safe zone, it usually consisted of the same people over and over. There was a large percentage of the population that had yet to really see what was out there. There were even those who had yet to see an actual zombie.

  “Recently, we even came under attack by some of our own people. This group believed that killing all of us would get them to Heaven. Jonah Simms sacrificed his own daughter as an offering before leading an attack on his fellow citizens of Liberty. Many of you were present for the carrying out of the execution of four men who not only murdered several of our people, but also attempted to steal our main source of food as well as much of our guns and ammo.”

  Again she paused. Scanning the faces, she was surprised to still see so much passive indifference. These people, her people, they truly seemed to be unaware of how dire the world situation had become in such a short time. Looking over at Stephen Deese and Bo Summers, she gave a slight nod.

  The two men went down the back steps that lead up to the combination platform and gallows. A moment later, they came back up the stairs. Each of them had a long pole like the sort that animal control officers used when wrangling a dangerous dog or cat.

  The zombie that was led up onto the stage had been a man in his middle age. His brown hair was matted and filthy; his face was smeared and crusted with dried blood. His right arm had been savaged and was missing below the elbow. His nose was also missing with only a dark and terrifying crater remaining.

  “This is what is out there. This is not just some flu or virus. This is a horror story come to life.” Jamie drew the knife at her hip and looked over to Bo who gave a slight nod.

  She moved in close and plunged the blade into the middle of the zombie’s chest. It lunged, the one good arm swiping at her and the stump acting as if it still had its hand attached as it waved impotently. Jamie left the knife in its chest and then walked back to the front of the stage.

  Again she scanned the crowd. The faces that she could see were a mixture of reactions. She saw knowing nods from those who had accepted this new world. She was surprised at how many people seemed to be absolutely stunned; many looked overwhelmed and could not look on the zombie for more than a few seconds without looking away.

  “This is not a game, people. This is really happening and we may be one of the last holdouts of humanity. Teams that have ventured as far east as Greenville report that the city is in flames. To the west, Clemson is a wasteland. I am sure that the sit
uation is the same no matter where you go. We are not the norm…we are an exception.”

  She hated this next part, but with all the activity of the past few days, this one incident would not add that many more zombies to the numbers starting to gather along their borders. Pulling out a small .22 caliber pistol she returned to the zombie and took a spot just a few feet away.

  “These are not people,” she held the bullhorn to her mouth and called. Then, taking careful aim and again making certain that Bo and Mr. Deese were ready, she fired a bullet into its chest. “See? Nothing.”

  She fired five more rounds into the thing. The zombie barely twitched, and it made no indication that it was even aware it had been shot. Again Jamie walked to the front of the stage and raised the bullhorn. “Call them zombies if it makes you feel better. I don’t care. But the reality is that these things are driven to attack the living. If you are bitten, you become one…just like the stories.”

  She chose not to add the part about there being a possibility that some people might be immune. Holstering the pistol, she walked over to Bo and put out her hand. The man checked with Stephen to ensure he had his pole gripped tightly as the zombie thrashed and struggled to get at the nearby living beings that remained just out of reach. Stephen nodded and Bo set his pole down. As fast as possible, he unslung the shotgun he had over his shoulder. He handed the shotgun to Jamie and then picked up his pole once more.

  “Now, some of you might still refuse to believe what you are seeing. You may believe that this person is simply sick and too delirious to register what has been done.” Jamie brought up the shotgun and again checked with both men. They nodded and leaned back just slightly as if those extra few inches might help.

  After moving to just a foot or so away, Jamie pumped the action of the shotgun and then aimed at the midsection. She briefly noted that either Stephen or Bo had removed her knife and then she pulled the trigger. The blast was massive and the butt of the weapon kicked hard into her shoulder. When the blue gray smoke cleared, there was an enormous, ugly fist-sized hole blown through the undead man.