DEAD: Onset: Book One of the New DEAD series

by TW Brown

  My hand felt numb as I pulled out the hand axe that I’d retrieved on our way out of the school parking lot. I found myself squeezing the rubber-coated grip in anticipation of what I would find. When I got closer, I saw her massive head bob up and down and then swing over to the driver’s side of the truck where I was approaching. The window was covered in slimy film, keeping me from being able to see inside clearly.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped closer and gripped the door handle. The black head appeared to track my movement as it dipped up and down. I heard a deep rumble and huffing noise followed by what sounded a lot like Chewie’s bark of excitement.

  Did zombie dogs bark? I wondered.

  I opened the door and brought the hand axe up in preparation for what would have to be done. I was hit by the coppery smell of blood and the thick musk of dog, but none of the foulness I’d been experiencing. Were undead dogs different?

  I didn’t have time to find out as Chewie lunged, her huge mouth aimed at my face.

  The warm wetness of her tongue told me she was not undead, but that didn’t stop an unfortunate squirt of urine from dampening the crotch of my jeans. I threw my arms around her thick neck and hugged Chewie until she finally pulled away and began to sniff in the direction of my companions.

  “She seems fine,” I said, my gaze pausing on Carl for just a moment. Maybe he didn’t know everything. Maybe.

  “I don’t think all of us are going to fit in the cab,” Betty sniffed.

  She had a point. There were the two main bucket seats and then the space behind them with the pair fold down seats on each side that were a tight squeeze even for a child. Julian would fit, but it would be tight since he would be sharing space with Chewie. Good thing I didn’t have to worry about being pulled over for unbelted passengers.

  “I’ll ride in back,” Carl announced. Without waiting, he climbed into the cargo bed.

  Julian, Betty, and I all piled into the cab with Chewie. She made the rounds, sniffing each person. Julian was given a proper swabbing with her massive tongue, but it did not go unnoticed by me that she had very little interest in Betty. When it came to new people, I usually followed her lead. I found dogs to be much more intuitive when it came to people and whether or not I could trust them.

  Just before Stephanie and I got together, I had a mutt that I’d rescued from the local shelter. He was an older dog and was missing his right rear leg. When we went on walks, I always let him set the pace. Once he’d discovered the nearby park, he would make a beeline for it as soon as I clipped on his leash and opened the front door. People would often wander up to see the three-legged dog as he bunny hopped after the ball we would play fetch with during our little excursions. For the most part, Pedro—that was the name he had when I got him and I saw no reason to change it—would happily pause in his game of fetch to let a stranger scratch him behind the ear. Those he really took a liking to were greeted with a full body wiggle that ended with him rolling onto his back for a belly rub. But sometimes he would shy away from a person. I usually would use that reaction as my cue to steer clear of that individual; and it wasn’t confined to just men. Pedro shied away from his share of women…and even a few rowdy teens. Chewie’s snubbing of Betty gave me a bit of confirmation when it came to my belief that maybe she was not a pleasant individual. I wonder what that said about me…that I would judge people based on my dog’s reaction to them.

  “So…” Julian turned to me, “…where do we go from here?”

  I thought it over. In the movies, it seemed to be pretty common to run for a mall. That was a good reason not to do that. Besides, I wasn’t entirely sure that I was ready for looting. That seemed to be a bit premature.

  “I say we head to the house of whichever one of you is closest. We load up with everything we can fit into the truck. Pack like we are going camping,” I offered.

  “Do you really believe it is as bad as all that?” Julian said.

  There was a plaintive tone to his voice that I did not expect from somebody who I saw as an authority figure. I guess I had my hopes that he would be some sort of leader. I was beginning to think that perhaps that was not the case.

  I switched on the radio, hoping for something that would send us on the right path. All that I heard was a replay of that poor Doctor Sing. She had denied that the dead were returning and feasting on the living. By now, if somebody hadn’t put a bullet in her head, she was probably one of them…a mindless eating menace. I turned the radio back off and indicated to Julian with my chin.

  “Where to?” I asked.

  “My house is right off of Holgate and 97th Avenue,” Betty offered.

  “That seems as good of a place to start as any.” I pulled out onto the street. A few heads turned our direction and I saw a dozen or so more figures come stumbling out of the bushes of a house just a couple of doors down.

  We turned left on Holgate and had to stop immediately. A military truck was parked crosswise, preventing us from moving past it unless I drove up on the sidewalk. The problem with that came in the form of the several undead crouched in a cluster around something on the ground on one side, and a lone zombified soldier standing in the middle of the sidewalk on the other.

  I was about to shift into reverse when Carl banged on the rear window. Julian reached over and shoved it open.

  “We got about thirty coming from behind. Get us outta here, friend,” the man said in a voice that was much calmer than mine would have been given the situation.

  I looked in the rearview mirror and, now that the bright white of my reverse lights were on, I could see a group of dark shapes coming our way.

  “Everybody hang on, this is going to be unpleasant,” I said through gritted teeth.

  I cranked my steering wheel to the left and rolled up onto the sidewalk. I could already tell it would be a tight fit between the telephone pole on my right and the rock terrace that bordered the front of the house on my left. That did not include the soldier who continued to stand in the middle of the sidewalk and regard us with those vile, filmed eyes.

  As soon as I was pointed straight and relatively certain that I could make it through the narrow opening without getting stuck, I gave my gas pedal a tap. We lunged forward and the bumper of my truck hit the soldier. The zombie fell back and vanished from sight. I applied a bit more pressure to the accelerator and felt us lift up. There was a sound of crunching and squishing and then we had all four wheels on the ground for that brief span before the rear wheel rolled over the downed figure.

  I heard a retching sound and then the splatter as Betty vomited all over the floor of the passenger side. Chewie made a huffing sound and I quickly rolled down the windows to at least vent out some of the stink of her sick. Unfortunately, Julian was not made of stronger stuff because he quickly followed in the purge. Unfortunately, he had shoved his face to the small portal of the window at the rear of the cab.

  “Holy crap!” a voice hollered from the back of the truck.

  I glanced in my rearview mirror to see Carl slinging his left arm around in an effort to rid himself of whatever had apparently splashed him. I had very little opportunity to observe all this as a pair of undead stumbled out from behind a parked van and into the path of my rugged little truck. I jerked the wheel to try and avoid them, but still managed to clip one and send her spinning away until she fell awkwardly on the curb.

  By the time we were able to veer back onto the road, we had a dozen or so zombies still trailing after us. I couldn’t really gun it and take off because the streets were a mess. There were bodies sprawled on the road and cars abandoned all over. Twice we had to edge around a wreck…and then we reached the overpass that would take us over Interstate 205.

  A Tri-Met bus was sitting diagonally across the northbound lanes we were in which forced us over to the southbound lane. A motorcycle had obviously collided with the bus and was in pieces all over the southbound lane. The bike’s driver was on the street about ten yards away and currently the focu
s of three of the undead who were ripping out strands from his insides. The fact that I could see his legs still twitching told me that this had to be a recent accident. Something had shattered the entire front windshield, leaving a massive and gaping hole.

  A scream from inside the bus made me hit the brakes. I tried to get a look inside, but the windows were too high and we were already too close. I shifted into park.

  “What are you doing?” Betty managed around a mouth that was still leaking drool and bits of what I had to guess were the rescue station-issued peanut butter sandwich she’d consumed earlier.

  “Somebody in that bus needs help,” I answered, surprised at my own amount of calm.

  “They are probably already infected. We need to move.” Betty looked over her shoulder and out the rear window of my truck’s cab. “More of those things are coming.”

  “Maybe you’d like to get out and walk the rest of the way to your house,” I snapped.

  The problem at this exact moment rested in the fact that I wasn’t sure that Betty was not correct in her assessment of the situation. But the fact that she was against this idea suddenly made it seem like the right thing to do.

  I shut off my truck and made an exaggerated point of stuffing my keys into my pocket. I reached under the seat and had to fight back the urge to gag as the smell of Betty’s vomit hit me in the nostrils with all its acrid force. I pulled out the box with my Ruger, checked to ensure it was loaded, and then dumped a handful of bullets into my palm as I climbed out of the truck and was able to stuff them into my other pocket.

  “What are we doing?” Carl asked, sounding more curious than concerned.

  “You had to have heard that scream on the bus,” I said as I headed for the massive vehicle where the sounds of a struggle could easily be heard.

  I broke into a run deciding that it would suck—at least for that person inside—if I were to arrive right after he or she was bitten. The doors took a bit of effort to pry open. As soon as I had it open, Carl was right beside me with a knife that would impress Crocodile Dundee in his hand.

  I hurried up the few steps and looked down the length of the aisle. There was a body a few feet away that I recognized as being the driver based on the uniform. He was currently the source of attention for a pair of zombies that looked to be in their late teens. One of them had several piercings in her face that kept snagging on the tattered jacket worn by the driver. I watched as a ring above the right eyebrow snagged and tore free. A dribble of dark blood oozed like maple syrup in December from the fresh rip in the zombie’s face. She came up with a mouthful of flesh that dripped red and sent a rivulet down her chin.

  The pierced zombie seemed to regard us for a moment, but then returned to the feast at hand. The other apparently decided that it wanted the fresh stuff for himself and began to rise to his feet. It was this scene that sat squarely between me and the young boy at the rear of the bus that was using his backpack full of what looked to be schoolbooks to fend off the two zombies swiping at him. Both of these undead looked like they were refugees from some local senior center and their advanced age was probably why the boy was having any success at staying alive and unbitten.

  I raised my pistol, but Carl reached over and lowered my outstretched arm. He gave a shake of his head and flashed his massive blade before edging around me. He let the zombie get up and then reached out, grabbed a handful of hair, and drove his blade up under the jaw. He gave his wrist a violent turn and then jerked his hand free and shoved the inert corpse over and onto the pierced zombie that was still eating. Like a snake, he lunged in right behind it and drove his blade into the temple of the feasting female.

  “Please!” the boy grunted as he slammed the closest zombie in the side of the head with his pack.

  The only real effect this had was to wobble the creature. Whether it was because the boy lacked any real leverage to get off a good shot or the fact that the zombies were basically impervious to pain—or a combination of the two—the zombies were not disengaging from their attempts at the kid.

  I moved forward and pulled my axe from the loop on my belt where it was beginning to feel like an extension of my person, and I brought it down hard on the back of the head of the closest of the two senior citizen zombies.

  The kid cringed back and shrieked in horror as I jerked my axe free. At first I thought that it was due to his not understanding exactly what he was facing, then I saw the splatter of gore that had splashed his arm and exposed hand. He was frantically wiping the offensive fluid on the back of the seat he’d been cowering in as I grabbed the second zombie by the back of the head. I jerked it away and finished it as well.

  Just as I pushed the body down to the floor, I heard the sound of my truck horn blaring. Looking over my shoulder, I could see out the front window of the bus, but that only gave me a very small view of the road since the bus was stopped all catawampus across the street. Apparently, Carl’s view was better.

  “We need to move!” he barked.

  I reached back and grabbed the kid by the arm and slung him past me. He stumbled, but to his credit regained his footing and quickly scrambled after the man who was making a hasty exit. By the time I was within the first few seats and able to see outside, I understood the urgency.

  The street back towards the way we’d come was thick with the walking dead. It was a pack that had to number over a hundred. They were all sizes and ages, male and female. And they had one thing in mind: get us and eat us alive.

  I jumped from the bus and sprinted to the truck. Carl had the boy by the hand and was swinging him up into the back of the truck by the time I reached the driver’s side door. I jerked the handle and almost broke my fingers.

  “Unlock the damn door, Betty!” I shouted.

  She started and then leaned over and hit the button. I opened the door, still nursing the bee sting sensation in the fingertips of the hand that had tried to open the door. Climbing in, I had to shift around to get at my keys and struggled because Chewie was now expressing just how much she missed me in the less than three minutes I’d been away.

  Jamming the key in the ignition, I turned the truck over. Just before the engine roared to life, my brain played out the scenario where, for some mysterious reason, the truck refused to start. I would turn the key in futility as the horde drew near and only get it started as the first dead hands slapped against the rear bumper. But no; the truck started like a champ and I floored it as I shifted into drive.

  “Turn right,” Betty called as I approached 97th.

  I floored it to the next intersection and then yanked the wheel left, skidding around the corner. My fishtail turn elicited cries of alarm as well as a few expletives from Carl in the back.

  “I said left back there,” Betty insisted.

  “Yeah, I heard you.” I slowed and glanced in my rearview. Sure enough, the leading edge of the zombie mob were rounding the corner in pursuit. “And I will circle around once I know that the pack is moving this way. Otherwise we would be leading them to your doorstep.”

  That comment earned an audible gulp from Betty and she sat back in the seat, her lips pressed tight. I could tell she wanted to say something, but she could not find a flaw in my logic and was reduced to annoyed silence.

  I let the truck roll another two blocks. As we crept along, I did not see any new walking dead; except, in one of the houses that we passed, I was certain that I saw somebody peering out the window and then jerking the curtain shut.

  I circled back just as I said I would, and by the time I’d gone through Holgate and then another block before turning up 97th, I was convinced that we’d lost the zombie tail. I rolled along until Betty pointed to a small tan home on the left side of the street next to a townhouse duplex. I debated leaving the engine running, but decided against it as everybody piled out.

  Chewie made to follow and I realized that it had been a while since she’d had a bathroom break. Besides, I doubt that she wanted to sit in the cab with all that vom
it on the floor.

  “Grab everything you can from the kitchen first, then work your way through things like hygiene, blankets, and anything you think is vital,” Carl was saying as everybody headed for the front door.

  I looked up to see the young boy still sitting in the back of the truck. His eyes were glazing over and I had to imagine he was in a state of shock. I considered checking on him, but decided that maybe his being somewhat catatonic was not necessarily a bad thing at the moment.

  Chewie and I trotted across the street and she went about doing her business. As soon as she finished, we headed back to the truck. She surprised me when she changed course and went to jump into the back with the boy. I started to call her to me, but before I could open my mouth, she was already snuffling the youngster. I saw his face change from absolute shock to one of relief.

  “You stay here and be a good dog,” I said, giving her a pat on the head as I opened the passenger side and began scooping out the slurry on the floor. Eventually I gave up and just pulled out the floor mat and tossed it aside. That took care of a majority of the problem. Open air would have to do the rest for now.

  That finished, I made my way to the house. I reached the door and paused, looking back at the scene playing out in the rear of my truck. My brain was wired to all those terrible movies. I would step inside the house, and as soon as I did, that is when the zombie that has been hiding unseen in some nearby bushes will come out and stagger over, attack the kid and my dog, and we will all rush out at the last second to see the carnage or make a rescue just in the nick of time—depending on how sadistic the movie’s director might be.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped inside and allowed the flimsy screen door to shut on my heels. Looking around, this was exactly how I would have pictured Betty’s house to look. There were shelves of those ridiculous figures of small children doing things like fishing with cane poles or swinging on a tire swing. I don’t think kids have done that for the past several years.

  One wall was lined with rows of commemorative (and I use the word very loosely) plates with images of cats on them. And the television was one of those ancient models. The kind that was built into a massive wood cabinet that had a turntable, radio, and cassette player built in.