After Zombie Series (Book 2): Before

by Gregory, Samantha

  “Help me!” Dwight screeched, sounding more girly than even I could manage. He looked at me with pleading eyes. “Do something, Bryan.”

  I didn’t even know he knew my name. Breaking out of my stupor, I raised the gun and took a shot at the soldier. The bullet struck his arm and he released Dwight. He turned his body to look at me, since he couldn’t turn his neck. His eyes were white.

  Dwight leapt to his feet and ran headlong towards the house, screaming at the top of his lungs. I was close behind him.

  Before I could get inside his house though, Dwight pulled the screen door closed and locked it.

  “Dwight, let me in!” I screamed.

  He shook his head.

  “You asshole, let me in. I saved you!”

  He held up his hands and backed away from the glass. He did it again. I never got to say anything I wanted to say. I had the gun and he still hadn’t paid for all the crap he had pulled.

  The gun?

  I spun around and pointed the gun at the soldier who was staggering my way. I aimed for his chest and closed my eyes. I fired two shots, but when I opened my eyes he was still coming for me. I fired again; this one got him in the shoulder.

  “Stay away from me,” I cried. The next shot took out his lower jaw, it just blasted it apart and still he wouldn’t go down.

  He closed in on me, as I sank to the ground. There was one bullet left. I put it under his chin and pulled the trigger.

  Blood and other junk hit me in the face, spraying me in the eyes, blinding me. I couldn’t see.

  The soldier was down, but I needed to get this stuff off me. I crawled towards the garden hose and washed my face. It was disgusting, I could even taste it. I puked up my breakfast on the concrete. Bacon and eggs; it looked better on the way in.

  I lay trembling on the ground. I had killed someone. Well, he was already dead, but blowing a guy’s head apart like that was horrible. I retched again, but nothing more came up.

  A short while later, I heard the screen door open.

  “Wow,” I heard Dwight mutter, as he examined the corpse.

  I was still on the ground, my back to him.

  “You totally blew that guy away,” Dwight said, he actually sounded impressed.

  When he stepped close to me, I turned and bit down on his leg.

  *

  Frank

  “Good morning Frank,” Hattie Lester called. I gave her a wave as she walked by with her son Michael. I took a breath of fresh air before going back inside the garage.

  It was a beautiful day today and I hated to waste it working, but I was the only mechanic in town. I didn’t get much work which was why I worked as a handy man as well. The last couple of days though had been pretty busy.

  A man showed up looking for parts to repair a bus. I didn’t get many requests like that, but he said it was some kind of tour bus and he was travelling across country. He picked the wrong place to break down, but he knew a little about fixing vehicles himself so I gave him enough to patch it up until he could get to another town.

  After that I got a call from Ben Higgs, he had blown an axel on his truck. I had it up on the lift and was taking a look, when I heard someone come into the garage.

  “Be with you in a minute,” I called.

  I heard a clatter of tools hitting the floor and rolled myself out from under the truck.

  “What is going on?” I asked.

  A man had his back to me. He was hunched over the workbench and it looked like he was in pain.

  “Are you okay, buddy?”

  He had knocked my toolbox over. Sighing, I started picking the tools up.

  “Do you want me to call Doctor Griffin for you?” I asked. He finally turned around as I stood up. I didn’t recognize him. He might have been from the science place out the road. He wore a black sweater over black slacks. He was clutching his arm.

  “Did you hurt yourself?” I asked, pointing to his arm.

  He looked down at it, then back up at me as if he didn’t understand what I was asking.

  “Do you speak English?”

  He grunted at me. I was going to take that as a no. I picked up the phone and dialed the Sheriff’s office.

  “Hey Earl, I have a guy down here at my garage. I don’t think he’s from around here and he looks like he’s hurt. Can you send someone over?”

  “We’re dealing with a few problems of our own right now, Frank. I’ll send someone over as soon as I can,” he said.

  I hung up wondering what had happened. We only had the Sheriff and two deputies in town and that was usually more than enough.

  “Hey, buddy, I’m going to take you over to the doctors place, okay?” I said.

  He grunted again. This wasn’t going to be easy. I pulled out my keys and jangled them and pointed at my own truck to try and show him where I want him to go.

  He ran forward and sank his teeth into my wrist. I yelled in pain and pulled away from him. Before I could do anything else, he ran off.

  “Crazy son of a…” I muttered. Who the hell goes around biting people? What kind of backwards country did he come from? He had broken the skin, but the wound wasn’t that bad. I disinfected the wound and covered it with a couple of Band- Aids. I would get the doctor to take a look at it later.

  I needed some coffee. Ben’s truck would have to wait for a while. I made my way over to the diner, keeping an eye out for that lunatic as I went. I would have to warn the Sheriff about him before he attacked anyone else, but right now I was starving. Some pie would go nice with that coffee.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Danny

  I jerked awake. Sitting up, I looked around, trying to figure out what had woken me. Jack was still asleep, curled up on the cot across the room.

  Stiff from the way I had been laying, I stood up and stretched. I moved to the door, pressing my ear against it. There was someone out in the hall. I could hear them moving around.

  Slowly I eased the door open and peeked out. A woman stood in the hallway. One I recognized.

  “Mrs. Bowman?” I said. Why was she here? She was my science teacher from high school; I used to have a major crush on her.

  “What are you doing in there?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips. Her long blonde hair hung in waves over her shoulders.

  “Um, nothing. Why are you here?” I asked.

  “I work here. You should be in class, Daniel. Go there right now,” she ordered.

  I hesitated, still confused. Was this my school?

  “Now Daniel or you’ll get a detention.”

  Well I didn’t want a detention. Not another one. I headed down the hall to class. Everyone was already seated at their desks. There was an empty desk at the back so I slipped into it, trying to remember what we had been learning about.

  Mrs. Bowman headed to the front and began writing on the board.

  “Today we are going to be looking at deadly viruses and the people who deserve to get them,” she said.

  What did she just say? Who deserved to catch a deadly virus?

  Everyone was busy scribbling away in their notebooks. I realized I didn’t have mine with me. I was really unprepared today.

  “Now who here deserves to catch the virus?” Mrs. Bowman said.

  All the hands in the room went up except mine. Mrs. Bowman pointed to a girl near the front.

  “Daniel, Miss,” she said. I recognized her. Her name was Wendy- something. She was in history with me too. She looked over her shoulder and glared at me.

  “What?” I cried.

  “Very good,” Mrs. Bowman said, “You’re right, he does deserve it. Why should he be the only one to escape it?”

  Breathing hard, I got to my feet. When I looked up again, Mrs. Bowman was a zombie. Her flesh had rotted away to reveal bone underneath. Slowly, all the students turned to face me. They were all zombies too.

  “NO!” I cried.

  I jerked awake on the couch in the nurse’s room. It was just a dream.


  Getting up off the couch, I moved to the door and listened for any noises. I couldn’t hear anything on the other side although visions of zombies danced across my mind’s eye.

  Checking my watch, I found that we had been asleep for nearly five hours. I was late for my date with Lela. Not that I could have made it anyway. Getting arrested in the middle of it would have ruined the mood. She seemed like a nice girl, she didn’t deserve to get dragged into this.

  I shook Jack gently by the shoulder, “Jack, we should go.”

  She didn’t respond. I shook her a little harder.

  “Jack?”

  Nothing.

  I rolled her onto her back, “Jack, come on wake up.”

  What was wrong with her? Maybe she was injured worse than she had said. Or those psychos at Gene Pharm had injected her with something back in the lab.

  I shook her again and her hand shot up and hit me in the face, “What are you doing?” she groaned.

  Ignoring my throbbing eye, I said, “What the hell? I couldn’t wake you up.”

  “I’m a deep sleeper,” she said.

  “No shit.”

  Pissed at her now, I stomped out of the room. I thought something was really wrong with her.

  “What’s up with you?” she asked. She followed me out, rubbing at her eyes.

  “I want out of this town.”

  I wanted to be back in the city, I missed the sound of traffic and the smells. The city I could handle. I’d take cops and street gangs and the pollution over this any day.

  We went out the way we came in. As we walked across the playground, I felt a chill run up my back, despite the sun beating down on us.

  I glanced around and noticed a man on the other side of the chain link fence. He was wearing a shirt and slacks and was staggering slightly as he walked.

  Drunk? At this time of day? This town seemed too vanilla for that, but alcoholics were everywhere. I’d known a fair few in my time, which was why I didn’t partake myself.

  We were walking towards the gate, a couple of yards ahead of the guy. I kept an eye on him, but he didn’t seem to have noticed us yet.

  Something about him bothered me. The way he was moving was strange. I reached out and grasped Jack’s hand to get her attention. She looked alarmed.

  I nodded towards the man. She watched him for a few seconds, “Do you think that’s an act?” she asked.

  I had been thinking the same thing. There was no one else around that I could see. Would they try a stunt like that? Why not just surround us with guns? It didn’t make any sense.

  “I don’t think so, but let’s get out of here before he reaches us.”

  We jogged towards the gate. When the gate snapped shut behind us, the man froze. He was staring right at us, only twenty feet away now. His head slowly tipped to one side as though he was trying to figure out who we were. The gesture seemed familiar to me.

  “Jack,” I said. Before I could say any more he began to run towards us. Or attempt to run. He seemed unable to work his feet properly, as they twisted in the wrong direction, making him look like a strange puppet.

  “Go,” I said.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Jack asked.

  “Run!” I cried. We took off running, but not before I caught a glimpse of his face and those milky eyes. This guy wasn’t from the train. He was new. He was one of them. I thought of the vials the doc had left with. What if he had released the virus in town?

  What if that was his plan all along? And we had just handed it to him.

  *

  Jack

  I raced after Danny, away from the man or what used to be a man. He was one of them now. How could this be happening? Did they escape from the lab?

  We hit the center of town and managed to leave him behind. It became clear that something had gone terribly wrong the second we reached Main Street. The street was blocked now at both ends and men in hazmat suits were ushering people inside. Which meant it was more than just the one guy.

  We headed into the diner. About ten people were inside, including Lela. She wore an apron over her dress. She was passing out coffee to everyone.

  “Danny! Are you okay? I was worried when you didn’t show up for our date. What is going on?” Lela said.

  He hurried towards her, “There is some kind of outbreak. It’s not safe to stay in town.”

  “Well we can’t leave. The man from the CDC said so,” she replied.

  “The CDC? How did they get here so fast?” I asked.

  “Oh, we were lucky, there were some doctors working at the lab outside town. They said that they need to test everyone, but that we aren’t in any immediate danger.”

  I looked at Danny. There was no CDC; this was Breton covering his ass.

  “Oh my God,” Danny said.

  “What?” I cried, expecting to see Breton.

  “Is that Candi Sweet?” he said.

  I looked over at the booth in the corner. A young woman with dark hair was sitting with her head down, holding a cup of coffee.

  “It is her,” I said. I used to listen to her music all the time back in high school. Not that I would admit that out loud. Her pop tunes were embarrassing enough. In the past couple of years, she had branched out, tried to do darker stuff, but a lot of people had dissed her online.

  Why would she be in this crap hole?

  Danny headed over to her before I could stop him. He slipped into the booth opposite her, “You’re Candi Sweet. I am a huge fan. My name is Danny.”

  What was his deal? Was it some sort of compulsion that meant he had to throw himself at any girl he saw?

  “I’m not her,” she replied.

  “You’re not? You look…”

  “I get it all the time, but I’m not her,” she said.

  “Oh, okay. Sorry to bother you,” he said.

  He came back to me, “It isn’t her.”

  “You’re a moron,” I said, she just didn’t want the attention. Especially from fan boys.

  He looked hurt, “What? Why?”

  I didn’t bother to enlighten him. A man sitting a few stools down from me was lying with his head in his arms. A half-eaten piece of pie sat beside him. He wore a red plaid shirt and jeans.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked Lela.

  “Oh, poor Frank. He was working on a truck and some crazy person attacked him,” she said.

  “He was attacked?” I said.

  “Yeah and can you believe it, the guy bit him! Who does that?” she pulled a face.

  We both backed away from Frank.

  “What’s wrong?” Lela asked.

  “That’s how people get sick. They are bitten by another sick person,” Danny explained.

  “You’re pulling my leg,” Lela said. “He’s okay.”

  She shook his shoulder, “Frank? You’re okay aren’t you?”

  He moaned softly and raised his head.

  “See? He’s fine,” Lela said. Frank turned his head towards her, drool running down his chin.

  Danny pulled Lela away from him.

  Frank stood up, his milky eyes staring at us.

  Not another one, I thought.

  He took a step towards us. His lips curled back revealing his teeth. Candi was watching from her booth.

  She stood up, “What is going on?”

  Frank spun to face her. Her face changed in a second to one filled with fear. She scrambled back over the seat into the next booth, trying to put some distance between her and Frank.

  The cook, Jarry, came out of the kitchen to see what the commotion was. He was tall, in his late twenties with curly brown hair.

  “What’s wrong with Frank?” he asked Lela.

  “He’s sick,” she said.

  “He’s not sick, he’s infected and if he bites anyone else they will be too,” I said.

  “Keep him away from me,” Candi screeched.

  Jarry hurried towards him. “Frank, come on, man. Stop.”

  He took hold of Frank’s ar
m, but Frank batted him away like a fly. He seemed intent on getting to Candi.

  Jarry tried again. This time Frank tackled Jarry and sank his teeth into his neck. Jarry’s screams were cut short as blood pooled on the floor. My stomach churned at the sight of it.

  “Frank,” Lela gasped.

  He looked up, mouth smeared with blood and growled at her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Danny

  “Frank, what did you do?” Lela gasped. Most of the other customers had scattered, running outside. They would draw the men here.

  “It’s not Frank, not anymore,” I said. We needed to get out before Jarry got up too.

  I took Lela’s hand trying to get her to follow me, but she resisted.

  Jack lifted a mug from the counter and threw it at Frank. It struck him in the face. He grunted in surprise.

  She lifted a napkin dispenser and threw it too, “Move!” she yelled to the girl who looked like Candi.

  She scrambled towards us and hid behind me. The people running from the restaurant had drawn attention our way. The bad kind.

  “Out the back now,” Jack ordered.

  We ran through the kitchen and outside.

  “Lela, is there anywhere we can go where those CDC guys won’t look?”

  “Um, the town hall is closed for renovations, we could go in there. Why would you want to avoid them? They’re the good guys.”

  “Trust me they’re not. They will lock us up and experiment on us whether we’re infected or not. We need to avoid them,” I said.

  “I have to get my grandma,” Lela said.

  “No, we need to stick together,” I argued.

  She pulled her hand out of mine, “Go to the town hall. I’m going to get her, it’s not far. I’ll meet you there.”

  She ran away. I tried to stop her, but Jack dragged me back. “We can’t risk getting caught again. She’ll be fine.”

  “How can you say that? With those things out there?” I said.

  “We don’t know how many there are. We need to get to the town hall.”