by Brian Parker
THE ROAD TO HELL
Sidney’s Way volume 2
a Five Roads to Texas novel
Written by
BRIAN PARKER
Illustrated by
AJ POWERS
Edited by
AURORA DEWATER
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Notice: The views expressed herein are NOT endorsed by the United States Government, Department of Defense or Department of the Army.
THE ROAD TO HELL
Copyright © 2019 by Brian Parker
All rights reserved. Published by Phalanx Press.
www.PhalanxPress.com
Edited by Aurora Dewater
Cover art designed by AJ Powers
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.
Five Roads to Texas: a Phalanx Press Collaboration
The Five Roads to Texas world is ever expanding. Look for more adventures from the minds of other Phalanx Press authors on the Five Roads’ Amazon page HERE.
Works available by Brian Parker
Five Roads to Texas
Five Roads to Texas ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B07CV411SH
After the Roads ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B07FPWD1L7
Easytown Novels
The Immorality Clause ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01HWOH1VC
Tears of a Clone ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01NBDUZSH
West End Droids & East End Dames ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B07436C21L
High Tech/Low Life: An Easytown Anthology ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B0787D6ZY6
The Path of Ashes
A Path of Ashes ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00XATPU9E
Fireside ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B015ONZOU8
Dark Embers ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01CPSAI1A
Washington, Dead City
GNASH ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01ACTBBZQ
REND ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01AYEQRUI
SEVER ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01C7VEMG2
Stand Alone Works
Grudge ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y5QS6J6
Enduring Armageddon ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00XZA2UQY
Origins of the Outbreak ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00MN7UFBW
The Collective Protocol ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00KUZDY4O
Battle Damage Assessment ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00PCND2RI
Zombie in the Basement ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00H6DUXY2
Self-Publishing the Hard Way ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNQCZ9I
Plus, many more anthology contributions and short stories.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
~ attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
PROLOGUE
* * *
LIBERAL, KANSAS
MARCH 26TH, DAY 1
Calm down! the boy scolded himself. He was practically panting like a dog, loud enough that any of the damned loonies within five blocks would hear him and come running.
Mark was trying to get home, but he’d gotten stuck behind the grocery store, hiding from the hundreds of insane zombie-like people that chased after everything they saw. Beside him, Delanie interlocked her fingers with his. He wasn’t sure if the move was for her benefit, or for his. Either way, never in a million years would he have thought he’d end up holding hands with the senior prom queen.
He’d ignored three calls from his mother this morning on his way to school and another two as he settled into his seat for first period homeroom. Then things got crazy when Emily Garland—no relation to Judy Garland from Wizard of Oz fame that the town was “famous” for—went insane. First, she started clawing at her skin, causing some gnarly damage to her flawless complexion, and then she attacked Mark’s classmates. He was only two desks away from her and saw her tear a clump of flesh out of Mike Darnold’s palm when he threw his hands up to defend himself.
The teacher, Mr. Krause, tried to restrain her, but was bitten as well. He finally got her into a full nelson and yelled for someone to contact the office. As he held onto her, Emily vomited a nasty, dark pink substance onto Josh Turner, who’d remained in his seat nearby.
It only got weirder after that. Emily wasn’t the only student at Liberal High who was acting insane and biting people. Three or four more people, in his class alone, began acting the same way as the sophomore basketball star had, scratching and tearing at their skin. That was all it took for him to grab his bag and get out of there.
As he ran down the hall toward the front door the screams of other students who’d gone crazy reverberated off the lockers and the high ceilings. He sprinted toward the exit and the door from the Home Economics classroom burst open. Mark stopped just in time to avoid being barreled over by a boy he no longer recognized. He remembered thinking that it was odd that his mind chastised him for the sound of his sneakers squealing on the linoleum floor at a time of obvious crisis, but it’d been drilled into his brain for more than a decade to keep quiet in the hallway.
The boy who’d charged out of HomeEc fell to the floor, his body limp after he’d slammed his head into the cinder block wall when he missed the tackle. Mark leapt over the crumpled form and ran for all that he was worth. The rooms flew by as more of the crazies appeared, tearing into his former classmates. He felt a pang of remorse, his conscience urging him to stop, to try to help everyone, but he knew it was hopeless. If he stopped, he would be a victim as well.
He hit the horizontal bar that kept the school’s double glass doors secure from the unwanted visitors and surged through them into the light. As he emerged into the early spring morning he realized that the chaos he’d fled inside had descended upon the outside world as well.
The scene in the parking lot was pure pandemonium. Parents who were still in the midst of dropping off children fought with attackers, both inside and out of their vehicles. Several of the busses had crashed; the one that caught his eye was high-centered three-quarters of the way up the flagpole, which was bent almost completely horizontal.
More crazies charged toward him. It wasn’t only the students, but parents and administrators as well. He swerved away from the parking lot and sprinted up the road leading between the high school football field and the middle school field. He knew that he couldn’t maintain the pace so he slowed slightly to avoid completely winding himself and collapsing.
A woman screamed at him as he passed her car. She’d run into the metal barriers around one of the light poles in the parking lot. The engine revved with each wave of her flailing arms as she impotently tried to reach him. The seatbelt restrained her and she didn’t seem to realize that she was trapped—information that Mark filed away for future use. The car’s passenger door was open. He assumed the child being dropped off had fled when the mother started acting crazy.
A quick glance behind him showed that a few people, most covered in blood and gore, were chasing after him. They were sprinting all out, going much faster than he was. He increased his pace again, intent on making it off the school grounds and then to his house that was only half a mile away, just beyond the new Walmart grocery store they’d built a few years ago.
“Hey!” a girl had yelled from near the concession stand to his left.
Mark glanced over at her. It was Delanie Swearengin, the prom queen. The sight of her disheveled hair made him slow, then run toward her. She was sitting along the fence that surrounded the football field, which was why he hadn’t seen her at first. An angry, bleeding gash across her forehead told him that she must h
ave been the passenger in the car.
“Delanie!” he huffed, out of breath.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Anywhere but here.”
She glanced at the car he’d just passed, and then at the school before coming back to him. “Can I go with you?”
“Yeah, come on.” He leaned over and extended a hand, helping her to her feet. She winced and lifted her foot off the gravel.
“I twisted my ankle.”
Mark barely knew her. She was a senior and he was a sophomore. She was the prom queen, a cheerleader, and the student body president. He was a solid C student who sat in the back of the class trying to avoid being noticed. He didn’t owe her anything. He could have left her.
But he didn’t.
“Here you go,” he said softly, ducking under her arm to help her ease the pressure on her ankle. He risked a quick glance at the parking lot. Three of the crazies were running toward them. They’d be there in seconds.
He tried to run, but her weight pulled him down, so he settled for a fast walk. “Delanie, you have to run. If not, we’re dead. Do you understand?”
“I—” She stopped and nodded curtly, putting her foot down and hobbling quickly.
Mark increased his speed to keep up with her. Then his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach. Two more people appeared at the end of the long driveway between the two fields. Each had red splashed across the front of their chests, reminding him of Emily’s projectile vomit a few minutes ago. The newcomers saw them and began screaming incoherently as they sprinted down the drive.
“Uh…” Mark cast around, weighing their options. They couldn’t go back to the school or up the street. “This way!”
He led Delanie toward the middle school field. The small chain link fence would do nothing except delay the inevitable, but they were out of options with nowhere else to go. The crazies from the parking lot were twenty feet from them. It wasn’t fair. He’d done everything right. He’d avoided conflict inside the school and ran, just like he’d rehearsed during all of the school shooter drills. He’d escaped into the open, out of the confined space and now…
Mark lifted the latch on the gate and pushed through it. Out of habit, he let the latch fall into place around the pole. That one simple move was what saved them.
He and Delanie stumbled and fell onto the grass inside the fence. Almost as one, the five infected lunatics hit the chain link from different directions. It rattled, but held. The top bar was neck high on all of them, so they reached over the top, trying to grasp the two teenagers. None of them attempted to use the gate or tried to climb over the fence.
“Are they—” Delanie stopped.
“Zombies?” Mark finished her question.
She tore her gaze away from the screaming lunatics. “What? No! I was gonna ask if they were sick or something.” She stared hard at him for a heartbeat, and then said, “That’s why I stopped. It was a stupid question. Do you think they’re zombies?”
He regarded them for a moment. They certainly did seem to be intent on biting and spreading whatever they were sick with, but none of them were eating brains or intestines like they did in all the movies.
“No, I don’t think they’re zombies.” More of them were coming from the parking lot, drawn by the hideous screeches of the five who were reaching over the fence for them. “We need to get going,” he said, addressing the matter at hand. “Can you get up?”
“Yeah. I think so. Help me up.”
Mark pushed himself to his feet and then leaned over, putting his hands under the girl’s arms. One of his hands accidently brushed against her breast. “Hey, watch it, uh… I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
He reddened and turned his face away as he completed helping her to her feet. “Mark Mullins. We had biology together last year.”
She gritted her teeth and accepted his arm around her waist. “Oh. I’m sorry, Mark. I’m just stressed out and didn’t recognize you.”
He wondered if that was true or if it were an excuse to appease him. He decided that it didn’t really matter which, so he’d just as well believe what she said. “I get it,” he replied. Using his chin, Mark gestured toward the loonies behind them. “Can you check those guys out? I can’t really look, gotta watch where we’re going. Are they trying to follow us?”
Delanie turned and looked behind them as he guided them onto the track around the grass field. It angled away from the high school, ending directly across the street at the Walmart Neighborhood Market that they’d built over the park that was there when he was in elementary school.
“Um, no. They’re pretty much right where we left them,” Delanie reported. “There’s like ten of them now, all right there on the other side of the fence yelling and reaching over.”
“But they aren’t like, trying to follow around the outside of the fence and get us on the other side?” Mark asked incredulously.
“Nope. They look pretty focused on us and not trying to figure out another way around.”
“So whatever they’re sick with has either made them pretty dumb, or they’re sight hunters.” He grunted as Delanie’s weight began to wear on him. His mom was right; he should have been getting more protein in his diet. “Mom!”
“What?”
“My mom,” he replied, digging into his pocket with his free hand. “She tried calling me a bunch of times this morning, but I was already sitting in homeroom and Mr. Krause would have confiscated my phone if I’d answered her.”
He pulled out the battered flip phone his mom had provided for him, convinced that he’d get caught up in some type of sexting scandal if he had a smart phone like every other kid in America owned. Mark deftly flipped it open, using his thumb.
“Does that thing even work?” Delanie asked.
“Yeah,” he grunted in annoyance. “Of course it works. My mom just doesn’t trust me to have a phone with a camera on it. She ah…” He thought of an excuse quickly before continuing. “She doesn’t want me to stream a bunch of music and videos to use up all her minutes so she got me this piece of junk. It makes calls and texts, which is all I need, according to her.”
“Weird. My mom would—” She stopped suddenly, limping along in silence.
“Was that her in the car?” he asked. Delanie nodded, but chose to remain silent. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, James.”
“Mark,” he corrected her.
“Yeah, Mark. Sorry.”
He dialed his mom’s number from memory, which was much easier than navigating the multiple menus in the phone to reach the address book. Placing the phone to his ear, it rang several times before his mother finally picked up.
“Mark?” she croaked, sounding terrible, like she did the morning after going on a date where he knew she’d smoked and drank well into the night.
“Mom! Mom, it’s me. Something crazy is happening at school. People are biting each other!”
“Mark…” his mother’s hoarse voice drifted from the tiny speaker. “Mrs. Folgerrrrr…” She trailed off.
“Mom? What happened to Mrs. Folger?” The old woman lived next door and his mother often had coffee with her in the mornings after Mark left for school before getting ready for her shift at the Pancake House.
“Bit… Bit me,” she moaned. “Mark. Not safe.”
The phone clicked and went silent. He stopped, causing Delanie to look over at him. “What is it?”
“My mom says she got bit by our neighbor and that it’s not safe.”
He looked around. There didn’t seem to be any of the loonies nearby, all of them were still back at the other end of the field, held at bay by the chain link fence. He’d seen tons of zombie movies and post-apocalyptic films. The universal rule for all of them was that you needed supplies if you were going to survive. All he had with him was his school backpack and a bottle of water—not enough to do anything except delay the inevitable.
The actual Walmart, which he w
as sure held every kind of supply he could possibly need, was across town. That was too far to go on foot with Delanie’s injured ankle, but the grocery store was right there, literally two hundred feet away. The Neighborhood Market had a small section of sporting goods equipment in addition to the standard groceries that every store offered.
“We need to go to the Neighborhood Market and get some supplies.”
“Supplies? For what?” she asked.
“I don’t know how long this outbreak, or whatever, is going to last. We need food and water. My mom said that my house wasn’t safe and you live way out near Dorothy’s House, so that’s too far to go on foot.”
“Wait. How do you know where I live?”
“Uh… I was at the Land of Oz one day and saw you at the house across the street,” he lied, referencing the small Wizard of Oz attraction that the town was known for. Of course he knew where she lived. Everyone knew that her family owned the big house across from the attraction. Her brother had been famous for throwing the wildest parties in town before he graduated and joined the Army. “I just figured that’s where you live.”
She didn’t comment further on it. “Okay, so we get some food and stuff, then what?”
“I don’t know,” Mark replied. “I mean, we could try to hole up somewhere until the police get things sorted out.”
They reached the far side of the fence. There wasn’t a gate to cross through this time, so he helped her over. It was delicate work to assist her without accidentally touching her butt and making their unlikely partnership even more awkward than it already was after the boob incident, but he managed to do so.
“Okay, just keep going,” Mark urged as they went through the shallow ditch up to the road. They made it across the street to the entrance of the market’s parking lot without incident.