Deadrise (Book 6): Blood Curse

by Siara Brandt

  “Arlend,” she called again, bracing for the attack she knew was coming.

  She saw Arlend running away from her at the same time that something hit her hard. As Arlend disappeared into the wet darkness, she hit the ground hard. Something was on top of her pinning her to the muddy ground. She felt intense agony shoot up her leg and into her back. Instinctively twisting her body, she began to kick to get free, but she could barely move.

  There was the overwhelming, cloying smell of death . . . savage snarling . . . hands groping . . . reaching for her . . . the rain . . .

  The attack was vicious, unrelenting, furious. Vayna was reacting on instinct alone. Some deeply-rooted survival instinct was driving her. She could hear her own panting whimpers of desperation and terror . . .

  Part of her brain registered that there was something under her hand. Her bat. She groped frantically for it, swung wildly and connected with something solid, but it seemed to have no effect whatsoever.

  Hit them in the head. Hard.

  She swung again. This time she heard the bat connect. She saw one of her attackers slump down and crumple beside her. It didn’t get up again. There were more of them, however, and she swung again. Something dropped down heavily on her chest, crushing her lungs. She tried to breathe and to push the thing off of her. Her terror and pain suddenly morphed into rage. She cried out now. She became just as savage as they were.

  Another zombie was coming straight for her out of the gray curtain of rain. It was a hideous, terrifying vision, one that was shrieking demonically. She raised the wet, bloody bat in both hands. She didn’t dare hesitate because she knew the moment that she did, she would die.

  She brought another one of them down. She staggered to her feet, but there were still frenzied, flesh-eating monsters all around her. She backed away, stopped only when she felt herself teetering on the edge of a hill.

  She saw another shape rise up out the slashing rain. A much bigger shape.

  Even through the rain, the air reeked of death and blood. She raised the bat again in both hands, balancing there on the very edge of the hill, was aware of the dark greenhouse far below her. And still she had the presence of mind to wonder where Ryland was. Was he hurt? Was he dead?

  Please, God, let him be all right.

  A snarling, rain-soaked shape staggered toward her. She saw the blur of gray arms reaching for her. And then an inhuman scream. The crunch of bone. The screeching, animalistic cry as the zombie was being dragged off.

  A dark shape was crouching over the shrieking, writhing form. The shadow of a giant, all fur and fangs. And deep, rumbling growls.

  Raw panic raced through Vayna’s body as she stared in horror at the new threat. Glowing eyes turning her way . . .

  She stood motionless. She didn’t dare move. She was too terrified. She flailed her arms for balance as the mud beneath her feet began to give way. A breathless moment later her mind registered that she was falling. There was an enormous, echoing growl in the darkness as she went plunging downward in the wet darkness. There was pain, too, agonizing pain long seconds before her mind went mercifully blank.

  She wasn’t aware of the door that opened or the hand that grabbed hold of her shirt and dragged her roughly along the ground or the excruciating pain that it caused. She was already floating in a place where she could feel nothing. Nothing at all.

  Chapter 10

  Kate woke to a scorching hot, humid day. Last night’s drenching rain made it seem like a sauna right now. The morning sun was beating down out of a cloudless sky which meant that the day was going to get even hotter as the sun got higher.

  From the very beginning, she had assumed, like a lot of people, that if things got bad enough, martial law would be declared, that the national guard would show up and-

  She didn’t know what they would do, but they would surely do something. There were people in charge of things like this. There were government agencies equipped for all kinds of disasters. What about FEMA? Or the CDC. Wasn’t that part of what they paid taxes for?

  Since the night Ardella Dade had shown up at their back door, Kate had absolutely refused to let the boys go outside. But how long could they stay cooped up in the house, especially without air conditioning? With the temperature climbing, and the windows all closed, it was going to be almost unbearable in the house today. They hadn’t seen anything outside for a long time now, and while the doors were still locked, she had already chanced opening some of the windows.

  It would do everyone some good to get out in the fresh air and sunshine, she decided. Maybe

  She could even hand wash some laundry and let it hang out on a line to dry. The heat would dry

  it in no time. The boys were running out of clean clothes to wear.

  Since she hadn’t seen or heard of any military presence anywhere, she was beginning to think that the reports telling people to stay inside and keep their doors locked had been unnecessary. Yes, they had seen Ardella Dade wandering around and she had looked terrible, but no one was out there now. Whatever was wrong with Ardella Dade, they should have helped her. That would have been the right thing to do. Instead of hiding in the house and letting her wander around out there all alone for days and nights by herself. The notion of Ardella being a zombie seemed preposterous to her now. She didn’t know why she had let Athan convince her of that. The last they had seen of Ardella Dade, she was wandering along the far end of the field across the road like a lost soul. At first they had been relieved that she wasn’t at their back door any more, and that there was a fence between them and her. But Kate had begun to rethink that. She was a little ashamed now at her own behavior.

  She didn’t know what was wrong with Ardella, but she had decided that the woman was not a zombie. She just needed help. And she felt a tremendous amount of guilt because she had let a neighbor, a neighbor that had something wrong with her, wander around out there for so long. The most logical explanation was that Ardella had had a stroke and was disoriented and confused. Or it was possible she had been in a car accident. That would have explained the blood. Kate didn’t know why someone hadn’t come and done something about her. Surely someone was looking for her.

  Except that there was no phone service and the power had not come back on. So how could anyone know where she was? All their neighbors had left, abandoning their homes to try and reach family members. Two of those neighbors had stopped at Kate’s house before leaving. They didn’t have any more information than she did about what was going on, but one family asked her and the boys to go with them. There was no room in the other neighbor’s vehicle, but they wished her luck. Kate had expected them all to come back by now, but so far none of them had returned.

  She didn’t know what they were going to do when they ran out of food and water. Eventually, she knew, she might have to make some hard decisions. But her choices were limited because her car still would not start. She had been hoping all along that her mother would show up and take them back to her house. But as the days went on, Kate realized that no one was coming to rescue them, which worried her greatly, because her mother should have come by now.

  While they had plenty of food to last a few more weeks, they were running low on drinkable water. All the cold and frozen food was already spoiled. The fresh fruits and vegetables had gone bad within days. What was left were the cans and the dried foods in the pantry, but they were getting tired of cold canned foods because the stove was electric and without the microwave they couldn’t even heat water up. But far more serious than that, they had only one gallon of water left between them. Since it was so hot, they would be drinking more. One gallon of water per person per day. That was supposed to be the minimum. They hadn’t been drinking anywhere near that.

  But Kate remembered that there were some gallons of water in the back seat of her car that the boys had forgotten to bring inside. She looked out the window and couldn’t see anyone out there. There was no reason not to go out to the car. While she was out there, she c
ould try starting it again. If it did start, they would head immediately for her mother’s house.

  She opened the front door and stood on the front step listening. There were no sounds. In fact, it was almost eerily silent. Even the birds were quiet. As she looked around, her first thought was that the boys were going to have to do some heavy-duty weeding as soon as they could. The yard was in terrible shape. The weeds were coming faster than the grass. Someone had dropped some paper napkins in the driveway and hadn’t bothered to pick them up. There were half a dozen of them blown against the fence at the edge of the yard.

  As she walked down the sidewalk, she frowned at some young pokeberry plants that were getting an aggressive start around the dumpster. She knew they would grow to near-tree size in no time at all. There was always too much work to do, but letting everything go this long just meant it was going to take even longer to catch up.

  As she passed by the dumpster, she got a whiff of rot hovering on the hot, humid air. By making fast runs and keeping a lookout, they had managed to clean out the freezer and refrigerator of all the food that had spoiled, but without the phones working, she couldn’t get in touch with anyone to get the dumpster emptied. The heat was just making everything spoil faster.

  Oh, that was awful. She covered her mouth with her hand. The smell of rotten meat got worse the closer she got to her car. She gasped when she touched the hot door handle. It was already hot enough to burn her hand. She used the hem of her shirt to open the door. She was reaching into the backseat for the gallons of water when, from the corner of her eye, she saw a dark shape rising up from the other side of her car.

  She was startled to see a face looking at her from the other side of the glass. A grey face with parts that were hanging loose and parts were white as bone.

  Terror stabbed through her chest at the same time that the air rushed from her lungs. It wasn’t Ardella Dade, but it was someone, or something, even more terrifying.

  She was still holding the gallons of water while her brain was shouting panicked commands.

  Drop the water and run!

  Get back to the house!

  Now!

  But for a moment, fear held her paralyzed. She was too afraid to move. And although she didn’t want to look at the thing that was now making those terrible growling sounds, her eyes were helplessly drawn there. The man shifted a little, which brought his face fully into the bright sunlight. She could see his face more clearly then, the awful, ghoulish look of it, the colorless eye surrounded by a blackish ring and the flesh hanging in shredded tatters from the jaw. She heard a snarl, a sound unlike any she’d ever heard before, and the savageness of it terrified her.

  Fixing her with its single eye, the zombie - because by now she was certain that’s just what it was - lurched toward the front of the car.

  That got Kate moving. In fact, she reacted so quickly that she hit her head hard on the door frame. One of the gallons of water slipped from her hand and fell with a heavy thud to the gravel.

  She glanced down at the gallon of water which, miraculously, hadn’t busted open. They needed the water, but in a split second decision she decided it wasn’t worth her life. The zombie had already reached the front of her car. His mouth was wide open as he staggered drunkenly towards her

  Kate dove into the backseat, barely slamming the door in time. She locked herself in the car and while her heart was pounding like a freight train in her chest, she did the only thing she could do. She covered herself with the blanket she kept in the backseat for emergencies, and prayed that out of sight meant out of mind for a zombie.

  By peering carefully around the edge of the blanket, she was able to see her would-be attacker up close. He was pressed against the glass, snarling at her like a rabid animal. She had no doubt that he would have torn her to pieces if it could have gotten at her. Kate shrank back as his corpselike face convulsed demonically and his lips drew back from his blackened teeth like an enraged Cujo on steroids. One eye was gone and the open cavity was crawling with maggots. The remaining eye was the color of old dishwater.

  Athan had been right. What she was seeing could only be some kind of being lost between life and death.

  And then, with a sudden, renewed stab of fear, she realized that the boys might have heard the car door slam. Or the awful sounds that thing was making.

  Oh, dear Lord, please don’t let them come outside!

  But even as she prayed, she saw the curtains flutter at the bathroom window and Athan’s face appeared. She could see the stark terror on her son’s face when he saw her trapped inside the car. And the thing that was trying to get at her.

  She motioned for them to stay inside. Eventually, the zombie wandered off and disappeared from sight. By now the air inside the car was so hot it was almost breathless. Sweat was pouring off of her. She threw off the blanket and cautiously continued to look outside.

  It took some time for her to gather up the courage, but she finally opened the car door, got out and closed the door as quietly as she could. She wasted no time sprinting for the front door. She had a gallon of water in each hand. If she had to, she would use them for weapons. It was all she had.

  She didn’t stop running.

  Halfway to the house, she stumbled and fell. Pain jarred through both knees as they came down hard on concrete.

  She made it to the house. But just barely. The man came charging at her from around the corner of the dumpster. Before she even reached the front door, it burst open. Both boys were waiting for her. Caleb was wielding the weed eater. Athan was holding a baseball bat.

  As Caleb slammed the door behind her, she stood for a while trying to catch her breath. Her heart felt like it was going to pound right out of her chest.

  She heard Athan say breathlessly, “We drew it off, distracted it.”

  Kate turned slowly, saw the look of stark terror in Caleb’s eyes as he sank down in a chair and just sat there with the weed eater still gripped in both trembling hands.

  She set the gallons of water down. Suddenly, her knees felt like they were on fire. She leaned over and touched them gingerly, felt the wet, sticky blood against her fingers.

  “Are you crazy?” she heard Caleb ask in a hoarse voice, one in which she recognized his terror.

  Caleb then got up from his chair and silently motioned for her to sit down. He left the room and returned with the first aid kit. Without saying a word, he began to treat her knees and the cut on her forehead.

  When Kate could speak, she said, “Athan, you need to tell me everything you know about killing zombies.”

  “WE’RE ABOUT TO RUN INTO SOME TROUBLE,” Jonah said as he lowered his binoculars.

  Bram knew that tone. It must be bad, whatever it was. Though it wasn’t like they hadn’t run into plenty of trouble already. From frightened, trapped people that were starving and focused on finding food to vicious, starving zombies focused on the same thing.

  What they had encountered so far was discouraging. A lot of houses were abandoned or broken into and ransacked. Either the people who had lived there were gone, or they had been violently killed and devoured by the undead. Or they were the undead themselves.

  The last they’d heard, a state of emergency has been declared across the entire USA. Quarantines had been attempted, though most of these had failed. The borders to Mexico and Canada had been sealed in an effort to contain the situation. But what had first been called a containable, temporary situation wasn’t so containable or temporary any more. The epidemic, if that’s what it was, had quickly reached global proportions.

  The cities had deteriorated rapidly and were like war zones. There had been attempts to exterminate the undead, but as things fell apart and anarchy reigned, that had stopped long ago. And in the midst of all the chaos, there were no signs of help anywhere. People had one option and that was to take care of themselves. It was something that, for the most of them, was going to get harder and harder as food became scarcer and cold weather came. The truth w
as that if you weren’t prepared, you stood a good chance of not making it.

  “They’re under the trees now,” Jonah said quietly. “But they’ll come when they see us.”

  The undead were especially thick in some places and sometimes you would come upon a group of them unexpectedly. Like cattle, they were bunched up in the shade of the trees in the field below them. During the heat of the day they tended to do that. Maybe they understood that the heat made them rot faster. Maybe they just wanted to get out of the sun.

  They were dangerous, but at least they weren’t armed. And at least you could outrun them. For the most part. When you weren’t taken by surprise. Which was something you didn’t want to do. For all they knew, the smallest scratch or bite could spread the disease. No one wanted to chance that, so they had to be careful and take precautions. Like improvised armor.

  They were getting proficient at killing the things. Bram didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. Some of them were their neighbors and friends. At least they used to be. They hadn’t asked for this. On the other hand, they seemed to be only shadows of who they used to be and there was no way of knowing how deep their thought processes went. Or if they retained anything at all of who they used to be. Of course, they killed the ones that were trying to kill them. They’d learned not to hesitate there. Those were the times when it was easy to kill them. When they were positively bloodthirsty and hell bent on devouring any living person they saw.

  They put some of them out of their misery. Like the one that had an arm missing and an axe stuck in the center of its chest. Or the one that was dragging itself through the gravel alongside the road. Both legs had been broken and mangled.

  They had stayed off the main roads, and as much as they regretted leaving their all-terrain vehicle behind, they had to go on foot for part of the way. The terrain was too rough and broken here and there were several creeks to cross.