Dead South Rising (Book 2): Death Row

by Lang, Sean Robert

  Doc kicked him harder.

  “I said get up. Right fucking now.”

  A weak pushup, and David was on his hands and knees.

  Another kick from Doc sent him face-first into the dirt again.

  Doc didn’t realize it, but he’d just lit a new fire. An arsonist of the soul. Anger like David had never felt in all his forty-five years of living was sparking to life, every kick from Doc’s boot fanning the flame.

  David pressed to his hands and knees, then hovered there, daring Doc to kick him again. He spit grit back to the ground.

  Right at that moment, he made a decision. He was going to kill this impersonator. Hand him true death. This he vowed to every god in existence and yet to be created. Maybe it would be the last thing he ever did, but by the gods, he would do it, even if it cost him his own life, his own soul. Living was overrated. And he was questioning the existence of Heaven, anyway.

  He sat back on his heels, hands on his thighs as he caught his breath. Maybe Doc could smell the furious fire smoldering in David, because instead of delivering another vicious kick, he grabbed David by the collar, and hauled him to his feet.

  “Move.”

  A shove.

  David stumbled a couple of steps, then stopped.

  Doc launched a heavy sigh. “If you want to say goodbye to your wife before I kill you and her, you’ll commence to move your ass.”

  It took David’s mind a moment to process what Doc had just said. But he was sure he’d heard it. “What did you say?”

  “Ah. He comes alive.”

  David turned on his heel, faced the blinding light. “What… did you… just say?”

  “You… fucking… heard me.”

  “Natalee’s… alive?”

  “Or some reasonable facsimile thereof.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Though in his heart of hearts, he knew exactly what that meant. He had to get to her. Now.

  “As the mystical Magic 8-Ball says, ‘Better not tell you now.’”

  David lunged at the light, only to be met with the fist of a man intent on killing him. Knees buckling, his ass met the ground, his teeth clacking together hard. He spit out a piece of one, the coppery taste of blood tickling his tongue.

  Doc crouched beside him. “I’m going to grant you something you denied me. The chance to say, ‘goodbye.’”

  In some sick, twisted way, this appealed to David. Actually… excited him.

  A chance to say goodbye. Farewell. I love you… see you soon.

  “Take me to her.”

  “After you.”

  Chapter 33

  Barking? Is that a… dog?

  Despite the shattered storm window, smoke filled the room like an unemployed pothead’s lungs. Jessica coughed uncontrollably. She felt like a steak beneath a broiler, the heat from above bearing down on her. Or like some screwed up Bizzaro world, Hell roaring above instead of below. Any second, flames would engulf the ceiling. The room. Her. The bite of the dead would be preferable to burning to death. But she just couldn’t bring herself to leave Randy. She’d never live down his demise. She’d rather die right there with him. Besides, she realized in that very moment—that very instant—that she loved him. Wanted to be with him. And she would not leave him. Death be damned.

  Jess had just resigned herself to death when she heard the barking, the yipping.

  Charlie?

  Then, a woman’s voice.

  Luz?

  The door reverberated like a drum.

  “—in there?”

  More coughing. Jessica managed a single, raspy, “Yes!” Her eyes stung and the roaring above grew louder.

  The robust clack of a retracting deadbolt. The door swung open, whipping the wall behind it. Then shuddered to a stop.

  “Hello?”

  The room was a hazy, swirling soup of creamy smoke. Jessica couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

  “Hello? Are you in here?” The same woman’s voice.

  A male’s voice this time. Randy’s. “Yes! Help!”

  “Over here!” the woman’s voice called again. A palm slapping wood.

  Another bark. Coughs.

  “Randy!” Jessica said, her hand in his. “C’mon!”

  “Go! Go!” he encouraged.

  “Where are you?” Jessica called to the woman.

  “Over here!”

  “Keep yelling! I can’t see you!”

  More slapping on wood. More yipping, barking. “Over here! Here! I’m over here!”

  Jessica and Randy crawled blindly toward the noise, their lungs working desperately to expel the poison forcing its way inside them.

  “Where are you?” Randy yelled through coughs, hacks.

  “Here! We’re over here!”

  “Miss Jessica!” A boy’s voice.

  Bryan!

  Jessica’s maternal instinct kicked in. “Bryan! Get out—” A coughing fit claimed her lungs.

  “Go!” Randy said, dragging her with.

  Shins. A person’s shins.

  “Is that—?”

  “Yes!” A hand on her head, then her shoulder.

  Jessica reached up, another hand finding hers. She pressed to her feet.

  “This way!” the female voice ordered.

  “What about—” Jessica couldn’t finish her question, her lungs fighting for breath and air that wasn’t there.

  “Lenny?” Randy called into the thick haze.

  “He’s getting the Janitor,” the woman yelled through coughs. It was Luz. Jessica would recognize her voice anywhere.

  Tugging. Towing. Jessica had no idea which direction they were going. Didn’t care. They were going somewhere, anywhere but here. Away from smoke and flame and guaranteed death.

  “Wait!”

  Randy’s voice.

  “Randy!” Jessica managed.

  A hand grabbed her ankle. She reached down, found his wrist. Pulled. “C’mon.” More coughing. Barking. Roaring. Eyes burning.

  Screams.

  “The Janitor?”

  “Lenny’s getting him!” Luz screamed.

  A roar above them. Getting closer. Scary close. Down the hall, behind them, the ceiling caved. A bright flash.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Luz shouted.

  “What about—” Randy started.

  Glass. Jessica’s palms slapping glass. The vestibule. Her hands slid down, found the door’s crash bar. Pushed through.

  On her knees now. Pain. Fingers around her wrist. Pulling. More tugging.

  “C’mon!”

  Randy’s voice.

  More glass, her forehead hitting it.

  Blood? Tears? Don’t matter.

  She pressed to her feet. Someone pressing into her from behind. Trapped against glass. Stuck. “Back”—cough—“up!” Jess couldn’t breathe. She drove her elbow backward. “Back! Up!”

  A door opening. Smoke following. Billowing. She grabbed Randy’s belt, following. The clank of a door. They spilled out onto the concrete walkway. Violent coughs. Searing pain in her elbow. Knee.

  Doesn’t fucking matter. We’re out! We’re fucking out! Outside!

  “Keep moving!” yelled Luz.

  Another hand? A strange hand? A cold hand.

  Again, Jess jumped to her feet. Adrenaline high. A scream.

  “No! God no!”

  “Run!”

  Eyes watering. More coughing. Running. Smoke thinning. A crash.

  Explosion?

  Jessica crabbed on all fours, eyes shut tight. Her palms wet and sticky with the crushed dead.

  Go! Go! Go!

  “God no!” Luz’s voice from behind.

  Barking. Yipping.

  “Don’t stop!” Randy yelled.

  “I can’t”—coughing—“see!” Jess said. Sliding. On her stomach. The stench. Slickness beneath her. Bones. Flesh. Organs. The bodies of the minced dead.

  A Slip-N-Slide of corpses.

  Nausea. Coughing. She threw up, retched hard, like a fist in
her stomach, another reaching down her throat.

  “Luz is bit!” Randy’s voice. “Luz! She’s bit!”

  “Help me! God help me!”

  The sickening thud of fists on flesh.

  “No!” Randy yelled. More punches. Kicks.

  Jessica’s vision coming back, blinking away tears and smoke and blood and sweat. “Where are—?” She twisted, looking behind her. Bright orange and yellow. Billowing smoke. Shufflers. Six or seven of them. Two of them on Luz. “No!” she rasped.

  Randy punching the dead. Kicking.

  Barking. Beside Jessica.

  “Miss Jessica!”

  Bryan beside her.

  Thank God.

  Pressing to her feet, Jessica swiped at her eyes. The horror of the night stared right back at her. Massive flames grabbed at the sky, threatening to pull the heavens down on top of them. Or singe the stars and moon.

  “Luz!” Jessica yelled, though only a whisper escaped her lips.

  The doors pressed open, the Janitor, Lenny, and Taneesha spilling onto the sidewalk. The Janitor’s jumpsuit in flames.

  “No!” Jessica mouthed, her voice gone.

  Lenny grabbed Gabriel’s collar, dragged him through grass and smashed flesh, rolled him in decaying blood and bone and skin. Extinguishing him. Burned flesh and hair on the air.

  Jessica collapsed, crying, sobbing.

  Barking. Then licking. Charlie. A boy kneeling beside her. A small hand on her back.

  The sound of flesh punching flesh. Randy trying to save the doctor. Trying to save Luz. Trying.

  More crying. Taneesha.

  More crackling. Crashing. A ferocious thunder.

  Got to get away from the building. Get ahold of yourself. Be strong. Get up. Get your fucking ass in gear. Now! Goddamnit, now!

  The heat. The incredible heat. Jess pressed to her feet. “Bryan!” Her voice a whispery, raspy mess.

  The boy was crying. “Charlie!”

  She pulled him close, her lips to his ear. “It’s okay, Bryan! We’ll be okay! But”—coughs—“you’ve got to get Charlie away from here!”

  Fierce nods, his hair bobbing madly. “Okay, okay, okay. Where?”

  “Over there,” she ordered, pointing at the soil compactor beyond the fence, on the far side of the drive. “Climb it! You’ve climbed a jungle gym before?”

  “Yes, Miss Jessica! I have!”

  “Climb it!”—more coughs—“Stay there!”

  “Okay! Okay!”

  “Take Charlie!”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “Go”—cough—“now!”

  “C’mon, Charlie!”

  Barking. Yipping. The boy scooped the puppy, made for the machine.

  Jess started toward Luz. Too little, too late. Three shufflers fed on her broken, crumpled body. Lenny yanked his hatchet, headed for the beasts.

  Randy approached. “We’ve got to get out of here, Jess. Now.”

  The God awful heat. They were roasting.

  Taneesha tended to the Janitor, who was now sitting up in the muck, his jumpsuit smoldering.

  “Is Gabriel…?”

  Randy tossed a glance at the Janitor. “Yeah, I think so.”

  Jessica slapped her hand to her chest. “Thank God.”

  But several yards away, the inferno raged, growing hotter and more hellish by the second.

  “We’ve got to go, Jess. Now.”

  “David?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, Jess. I don’t know.”

  Randy pulled her to her feet, and they jogged over to the Janitor, the extreme heat clawing at their backs.

  “You okay?” asked Randy, dropping to his knee.

  Against unbridled coughs, the old man nodded frantically, silver tresses swinging wildly about his face.

  Randy said, “Can you walk?”

  More nodding.

  “Help me,” he said to Jessica. They hooked his arms, hauled him to his feet.

  The Janitor pointed a shaking bony finger, mouthing something though his hacking.

  “Shuffler!” Randy screamed.

  Against a swaying screen of flames, a massive silhouette rose behind the ambling dead creature, hand axe held high. The blade sliced through smoke and stink, lopping off the cadaver’s head. Its body collapsed, head thudding to the ground. Lenny hurdled both easily.

  “We gots to get, pronto!” he hollered.

  “Anyone else?” Randy said.

  Another crash. An explosion inside the building. Glass shattered.

  “Ain’t no time!” Lenny said, Taneesha now at his side. “Rattlers! Move it, move it, move it!”

  The group limped toward the compactor machine. Bryan awaited them atop the contraption. Lenny broke away from the group, dispatching two more shufflers. Two chops. Two decapitations. Too easy.

  The heat was near unbearable, even from a distance.

  “We gotta keep going. Can’t stop here,” Lenny said, reattaching himself to the band of survivors. He dropped his hatchet into the leather loop on his belt, reached for Bryan. “C’mon, kiddo!”

  Bryan and Charlie now rode the muscle man’s shoulders.

  “Where do we go?” Randy said, pressing his voice above the roar of the inferno.

  “The pond was the plan,” Taneesha said, shaking off shock. “If anything happened, we was supposed to meet there.”

  Lenny nodded, “Right. The rendezvous spot.”

  “Then let’s go,” Randy prodded.

  The crippled group circumvented the burning building, keeping to the extreme periphery until the south pasture came into view. But what they witnessed would change their minds, and course.

  “Holy shit,” Randy muttered.

  “Lord Jesus,” Taneesha said.

  Coughs.

  “Quiet,” Lenny said.

  In the south meadow, night had become day in the glow of the blaze, the field and tree line awash in lambency. And in the pasture, at least a hundred shufflers—and maybe even a hundred more—shambling, swaying. Searching.

  Jessica tossed glances all around, expecting to see just as many behind them, but there were only a few. In her broken voice, she said, “Why are they all coming from that direction?”

  Lenny shook his head. “Don’t know.”

  “Look at all of ‘em.” Taneesha stared in awe. “Just like that night me and Lenny broke down on 204. The tsunami. All coming from the east.”

  “Right,” Lenny said. “You right.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Randy said. “We can’t take on that many of them.”

  Lenny nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, you right. We gotta—”

  Jessica slapped his arm. “You hear that…?”

  “Gunshots?” Randy said.

  The group stood quiet for a brief moment, trying to discern the distant pops of gunfire from the pops within the blaze.

  “I heard another one!” Jessica croaked. She pointed toward the tree line. “We’ve got to go that way—”

  Lenny gazed at her, his eyes solemn. “Look, Jess. I know you think David’s—”

  “We’ve got to try. Please.”

  Another crack of gunfire from the woods. The group traded glances.

  Taneesha spoke up. “We gotta do something, and quick. Them things gonna start noticing us.”

  “Alright,” Lenny said. “Stay close together. Stay tight.” He flicked his eyes upward. “Hold on, ‘lil man.”

  “Yes, Mr. Lumberjack.”

  “Good job.” Lenny yanked his hatchet from his hip, made eye contact with everyone, then nodded.

  Moving as one, the group started toward the tree line.

  Chapter 34

  It was a beautiful sight, the pond in the moonlight. Stars sparkled on the water’s glassy surface, dancing around the moon. Celebrating. Or mourning. Or both. It was a sliver of sky, handed down from heaven, right there close enough to touch.

  But as tempting as it was to stop and gaze at the celestial splendor nestled away secretly in the woo
ds, David craved only one thing: to say goodbye to his equally heavenly wife. After that, he didn’t care what happened to him. He’d gladly hand his own existence over to the man now forcing him down a trail, destined for death.

  The two men had pressed far enough into the trees that the fire raging the Alamo no longer roared in their ears nor heated their backs. They’d wandered into a new peace, one certainly short lived if Doc had his way. But perhaps it was that very peace in death that David sought. The malicious, ill-intentioned outlaw doing him the most humane favor of his life. Everyone else was dead. David was sure of this. Surviving such a blaze—no, holocaust—was unfathomable. Just couldn’t be done. No way. No how.

  Impossible. Jess. Randy. Bryan. Gabriel. Lenny and Taneesha. Luz… All dead. They’ve gotta be. No way to survive that. I only wished I’d been there…

  He didn’t realize he’d halted, his pondering gaze glued on the water’s glorious luster.

  “Your blushing bride awaits,” Doc quipped.

  David blinked, snapped from his musing.

  Natalee.

  “How much farther?”

  “We’re close.”

  El Jefe’s barrel in his back, prodding. Encouraging. The bright light again playing over the path and encroaching foliage.

  They were moving again, the Milky Way water disappearing in his peripheral vision.

  Just let me say goodbye. Tell her I love her. Then you can kill me as dead as you want me.

  They rounded the pond, reaching the far south side. The path split suddenly, morphing into two distinct tire tracks of flattened Bahia grass and weeds. Grasshoppers sprung as their boots clomped.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “As long as she’s there… no.”

  Their heavy steps trumped the distant, constant thunder of a dying Alamo. There was no point in looking back, the thick vegetation above and behind obscuring even the tiniest of glimpses of a glowing night.

  David said nothing more, planned to save his last breaths—his last words—for his wife. He was done with Doc, nothing left to say to the bastard.

  After another few moments, David caught the glint of chrome ahead as Doc played the light over the path before them. This had to be it. The end of the line. The execution chamber, as it were. The last place on earth David would ever see. Hear. Smell. Touch. Taste. From here, he’d ascend… or descend. Or just… be.