The Living Dead Series (Book 2): World Without End

by L. I. Albemont

  The sound attracted attention. Slowly, the infected at the edge of the crowd began to turn their way. Suddenly Brian darted off the stoop, nimbly evading the dead hands and ran to the back of the house.

  Bea screamed, “No, Brian, don’t!” and tried to run after him but David grabbed her arm and pulled her back. She punched him hard in the side of the head and they struggled viciously for a few seconds before they heard glass shatter. They stood still, listening.

  The front door swung open to reveal Brian beckoning them inside. They slammed the door and locked it just as the mob reached the porch.

  “How did you get in?” Bea was so angry she wanted to shake him.

  Brian held up a good-sized rock and grinned. “I broke the glass in the back door.”

  David rubbed the side of his head. His ear still rang from the punch she had given him and he told himself he would never try to stop her from killing herself again. He secured the house, rifle held at ready and not stopping until he had checked every room and closet. Whoever owned this house was not at home.

  The church clock was still sounding, drawing more and more infected into the streets. He drew all the curtains even though he didn’t think the dead could see them. Bea and her brother had moved into the kitchen and from the sound of their voices they were arguing. Just off the foyer was a small, high-ceilinged room with a fireplace. Bookshelves covered the walls from floor to ceiling. He sank into a tufted leather chair and put his feet up, leaning the rifle within easy reach. Someone was opening and closing drawers in the kitchen, slamming them hard. What was she doing? Cooking a meal? The clock on the mantel said twelve-thirty nine.

  Forty-six hours. That was all the time he had left until the chopper took off. He knew they would delay it as long as possible if David didn’t make it in time but they had a narrow window and they could only hold it for so long. He knew his odds of getting there through the infested streets were slim but he had thought he would get a little farther than this. That stupid tower clock had delayed if not stopped him altogether. He looked out the window. This snow didn’t make things any easier. If the storm grew to blizzard status it might be difficult to get airborne.

  The contagion had spread fast. Amazingly fast. Taking off from Reagan or Dulles was completely out of the question. The infected roamed the buildings as well as the landing strips and hangars around them. Everyone had tried to get a flight out the day before yesterday and of course the result was pandemonium. There were infected among the crowds trying to get on those planes. In his opinion, everyone should have been told about the jump as soon as it had been confirmed but none of the higher ups were interested in his opinion. They just wanted time to get themselves and their families out of town. After that they were happy to let the wild rumpus start.

  David was prepared for a short-term emergency but there was no way he could stock enough supplies for a long-term siege in his miniscule D.C. apartment. When he got the call this morning he felt a sense of relief. He had always had a problem with down time and preferred action to inaction.

  Nothing in his training had prepared him for this though. After a stint in the Air Force he had gone back to school, majoring in financial administration and communications with an emphasis in computer accounting systems. Not wanting to lose his military edge he stayed in the reserves and enjoyed keeping up his weekend warrior status.

  School opened up a new world of contacts for him and he enjoyed getting to know his classmates, most of them a little younger than he was. His first girlfriend on campus was second generation Chinese-American and he had gotten to know her family and had even picked up on the language a little, taking a few Chinese language classes. He and Mei lasted a year before drifting in different directions but he had never gotten that serious with anyone since and he used the free time to study harder.

  Even before he graduated he had been recruited first by the CIA and finally Homeland Security. The two agencies were still stepping on each other’s toes, trying to grab the best and the brightest for their nascent anti-terrorist groups, those known publicly and others more clandestine. He had been surprised that accounting and computer skills were so highly sought after but quickly learned that the best way to track terrorist organizations was to follow the money.

  Determined not to just be a number cruncher he made sure he emphasized his previous military experience and was able to get occasional assignments in the field. In particular he visited the Chinese factories that manufactured government computer equipment systems, observing security and quality control. At the time he and others had serious reservations about turning the making of U.S. systems over to the Chinese but his reports were ignored as far as he could tell. Staying proficient with weapons was a little harder after he moved to D.C. but he made the effort.

  Footsteps stomped angrily up the stairs and he caught a glimpse of Brian’s furious face. A few minutes later Beatrice came into the study and began opening drawers and searching the bookshelves. She looked over at David.

  “Sorry about hitting you. I’m not a violent person but it was just… if you have a little brother or sister, you probably know how protective you can get.” She seemed embarrassed and walked back out to the foyer and began throwing items out of the coat closet into the floor.

  “If my sister could throw a punch like that, I’d have never had to fight the playground bully. You’re on your own next time. What are you looking for anyway?”

  “Ammunition.”

  They searched every nook and cranny but there was no ammo. The wind picked up again and whipped and howled around the house, coming down the chimney and blowing hard enough to disturb the ashes in the hearth. Beatrice shivered and glanced out the window.

  “There are even more of them. We’re trapped.”

  “It’s the clock. The noise draws them.”

  “So the government does know something about this disease.”

  “They, I know very little about the pathology of the disease. You can count on one hand the things we do know. It spreads through bites but there may be other ways to get it. It causes vomiting, then coma, then death. The corpses are then reanimated and you have what you see out the window there. Not pretty and very hard to control or get rid of. They probably vastly outnumber us already.”

  “So you’re telling me all those people out there are zombies?” Bea raised an eyebrow.

  “That word works as well as any.”

  “They’re hungry for brains and you have to shoot them in the head to stop them?” Her voice rose incredulously on the last word.

  “I don’t know if they crave brains specifically. The ones I’ve seen aren’t picky.”

  Bea reflected for a moment then said, “Nor the ones I’ve seen and they do like to eat.”

  The sound of breaking glass came from the back of the house. David picked up his gun and together they eased down the hallway, looking around the corner into the kitchen.

  A man stood on the back stoop, swaying almost drunkenly. Jagged shards of glass protruded from his chest and shoulder where he had lumbered into the door. Cold air poured into the room just as he fell into the door again, this time crashing completely through the glass, falling at their feet, arms clutching at their legs. David backed away and fired, exploding the creature’s head. He twitched once and then was still.

  A moan came from outside and another body shambled into view. Eviscerated, one arm dangling uselessly, the woman clutched a leather briefcase in the other. It kept catching on the door frame so she couldn’t get in but she didn’t have the intelligence to drop it. Frustrated, she moaned even louder and slammed repeatedly into the door. David shot her and she collapsed but a dead man, almost naked with gray-white skin and a decomposition bloated belly, followed within seconds and made it all the way into the kitchen. They retreated to the foyer and looked out the front window but the porch was full of jostling infected. They backed up the staircase, David firing into the seething mass, a nightmare circus of open, bloody mouths
and gaping wounds, now filling the bottom floor of the house and climbing the stairs.

  Brian emerged from a narrow door at the end of the hallway and called, “Bea, David! Up here!”

  The door led up a narrow staircase to an attic where the steeply pitched roof allowed them to stand up only in the center of the room. A dirty round window looked out high over the block. Wiping some of the grime away with his sleeve, David looked out at the cul-de-sac filled with infected.

  He evaluated their chances, counted his rounds again and sighed, knowing he didn’t have enough ammo to shoot his way out through the mass of infected. They were trapped up here with no way out. The boy, though, was excited and talking about something.

  “I found this and I think it goes out to the roof.” Brian knelt next to a wall, lifting up an old dartboard to reveal a rough, wooden door, nailed shut and covered by three planks nailed over it. David stood, banged his head and swore.

  Trying to remember what he had seen of the outside of the houses here David mentally placed the door. It couldn’t lead to the roof, the placement was wrong. What it should lead to, though, could be even better. It looked like it led to the house next door, specifically the attic.

  “Brian, you may have just saved us. I think it actually leads to the adjoining house. If we’re lucky, we might be able to move from house to house and get out of the cul-de-sac and over into the next street.”

  Bea looked down at the moldering throng of bodies in the street. The clock was drawing them in droves. Getting through them would be impossible and even if the ones in the house didn’t find their way up here they couldn’t stay in this attic with no water or food.

  “So what do you think? I just can’t see another way out. We have to be prepared to run into infected and/or angry homeowners along the way. I still have ammo but not enough to shoot our way out of here.” David joined her at the window, gazing down.

  “We both have guns, you know,” Bea said.

  “Yeah but do you have any ammunition at all?”

  “Not that much. I have two bullets left and Brian has four. We have a Glock but no ammo for it.”

  “I think trying to get through the houses is the safest.”

  “But how do we open the door?” Brian wanted to know.

  David tried to pull away the planks covering the door. They wouldn’t budge.

  “Good point. We need a crowbar or something.”

  No crowbars were found but they did locate a rusted hammer. The planks came off fairly easily but the door was nailed fast into the frame with u-shaped nails that took some time to pry out. Eventually they pulled the last nail and the old door creaked open on long-unused, rusty hinges.

  And revealed another door. David kicked it until it splintered and they picked out the fragments and crawled through into a small, dark room.

  “My kingdom for a flashlight,” David paraphrased.

  “That would definitely be more useful than a horse right now,” Bea agreed, feeling her way forward in the blackness.

  Chinks along the edges of the rafters admitted some light and their eyes adjusted to the dusty darkness. There was little up here other than the bulk of the HVAC unit. They debated going down into the house and trying to find a flashlight.

  “There’s always the chance a homeowner will be down there, infected or not. We’re likely to get shot if not eaten. Let’s keep going.”

  They found the next small door and went through into the next attic. This one had been converted into a loft master suite, complete with luxurious en-suite bath. Sky lights in the roof framed a gray sky and drifting snowflakes. They searched for ammunition, again fruitlessly. Brian began to jump on the bed. Bea grabbed his ankles and he collapsed, laughing. They froze when someone or something downstairs moaned. They heard a ringing crash like a vase or something else had been knocked over and then the sound of slow, dragging footsteps approaching the stairs.

  Brian looked fearfully at Bea. They had gotten careless. Searching frantically for the door to the next attic they found nothing but smooth wall and decided it had been dry-walled over. The staircase leading up to this floor did not have a door and they heard thumping sounds drawing closer. David used the claw end of the hammer to break through the wall but the attic door must have been completely removed. Tearing the insulation out of the wall they kicked through the lathe to break into the other side. The footsteps came closer and a choking, putrid smell wafted up the stairs.

  They were out of time. Bea pulled the gun from her pocket and, standing at the top of the steps, fired, hitting the shuffling infected homeowner in the jaw, blowing off the lower part of his face. He kept climbing then tripped on his own intestines that dangled on the steps in front of him. A child, possibly eight or nine and missing an arm, tried to mount the steps but tripped on the slick entrails and went down. Bea shot again and this time hit the man in the head. She didn’t have a bullet left for the child who appeared unable to get back up anyway.

  David had torn out a hole in the wall big enough for them to squeeze through. Brian went through first, David tucked the hammer in his belt and followed quickly. Bea heard voices then a cry, quickly cut off.

  She called, “Brian? Are you okay?”

  There was no response. She looked through the hole and saw light but no Brian or David. The lathe scraped her shoulders and she lost her hat as she crawled onto a rough, plank floor and looked up into the twin barrels of a shotgun.

  Chapter Six

  “Put your gun down and step over here, slowly.”

  She knew she was out of ammunition and thought about throwing the gun at her but the middle-aged woman who had spoken kept the shotgun trained firmly at Bea’s head. A tall, beefy man in a Redskins jersey, presumably her husband, stood to one side with a bundle of bungee cords in one hand and in the other a knife held to Brian’s throat. David stood in the corner near a radiator with hands held high. His rifle was on the floor next to the man.

  Bea placed the gun on the floor, never taking her eyes off Brian, and stood still while the man tied her hands behind her back and wound the cords around the radiator. The cast iron coils were hot to touch and she had to take care not to rest her hands against it.

  “Why are you doing this? We’ll pay you for the damage to the wall. We’re just trying to find someplace safe. Please let us go,” Bea pleaded.

  They ignored her and the man picked up the rifle, walked over and slammed the butt into David’s head. David went down with a sickening thud. He then took her back pack and threw it on the floor with Brian’s, tying him up next to her. David was trussed with cords and left lying in the corner.

  “I wouldn’t bother screaming for help if I were you. You might attract attention you don’t want.”

  The man picked up the rifle and handgun and they both left the room, the woman glancing back almost apologetically before closing the door firmly behind her.

  “Did they talk to you? Why are they doing this?” Bea asked Brian.

  “They didn’t say anything. When I came through they grabbed my arms and held the knife against my neck.”

  David groaned and opened his eyes. Blood ran from his temple and his face was a sickly white. When he spoke his voice had a grating quality to it.

  “They’re not used to taking captives. They didn’t frisk us. Brian, do you still have your gun?”

  Before Brian could answer they heard voices raised in what sounded like an argument. A moan, anguished and chilling drifted down the hallway then a door slammed. Something began to pound against a wall or door in an incessant, unvarying rhythm.

  “It’s in my pocket but I can’t reach it.” Frustrated, Brian exclaimed as one of his bound hands brushed against the radiator. It was hot enough to raise a small blister on the knuckle. The bungee cords forced them to constantly pull away from the radiator or get burned.

  “What do you think they want?” Bea asked David.

  “I have no idea. Maybe they’re mad at us for breaking into their hous
e. I can’t blame them. Maybe they think we’re infected and don’t want us roaming around. Sounds like they have an infected trapped or tied-up down the hall. I assume it’s a family member.”

  The room they were in looked as if someone had started a remodel they never finished. The floor was raw pine; there were rolls of pink insulation stacked in a corner and a table saw was shunted to one side underneath a skylight in the roof. An empty ceramic flower pot lay cast aside on the floor near David and he wriggled over to it, managing to pick it up with two fingers and smash it to shards which he used to begin sawing through the ropes on his hands. When their captors came back thirty minutes later he had made progress but still couldn’t free himself.

  The man cut the cords holding Brian to the radiator while Bea shouted at him to take her instead. She kicked him in the shins at which he hit her hard across the face, dazing her momentarily. He re-bound Brian’s hands then frog-marched him out of the room, Bea screamed until her voice failed her. She slumped on the floor. Blood, warm and salty, trickled down from her split upper lip.

  Meanwhile David sawed steadily through the cords. He felt them loosen and managed to free his hands and soon stood free. He untied Bea and together they cautiously opened the door and crept down the stairs to the second floor hallway. The putrid smell they had learned to associate with the infected was strong down here. They didn’t see anyone.

  Bea heard Brian scream and they ran to the end of the hallway to the last room. The scene that greeted them was almost beyond belief. Bloody lumps of what had once been a dog lay scattered on the floor. A bookshelf held a mix of books from the Series of Unfortunate Events to Twilight and pictures of friends smiled from ribbon display boards on the wall. A girl, fifteen maybe sixteen, was bound to the radiator by a collar and long dog chain. Long, dark hair, matted and stiff with dried blood hung lank around her face. Her fingertips were shredded to bone where she clawed and pulled on the floor trying to get free. Brian crouched in a corner, hands still bound, while the girl’s mother pointed Bea’s revolver at him. When they stormed into the room the chained girl released a moan that was almost a howl and fought to get to them.