DEAD: Onset: Book One of the New DEAD series

by TW Brown

  My mind went back to that dog I’d seen in the backyard. There had to be something I was missing.

  “You wanna get your head back into the game?” Carl hissed, giving me an elbow in the ribs.

  “Sorry.” I gave my head a good shake and went back to inspecting what I would be carrying.

  In my pack were three bottles of water and some granola bars. While we only intended to be out for a short period of time, there was no need not to be prepared just in case. I had four spare thirteen-round magazines ready for the Glocks as well as having each one already locked and loaded. Hanging from my webbed belt was my hand axe. Also, Carl had given me an aluminum baseball bat.

  “If things get too hairy, you may want to use the bat instead of that axe. At the very least, it will provide you with a bit more breathing room,” Carl explained.

  It seemed as if we were all set. All that remained was climbing over the wall. It was like that moment before you jump into a lake or river. You think you know how cold it will be. You think you are ready for it, and somebody has managed to convince you that just going straight in is the best way.

  Carl actually seemed anxious to get moving. I’d just been out there; I was scared and not nearly as eager. I gave Chewie a scratch behind the ears, hugged her thick neck, and then went up and over.

  The initial part was relatively easy. We had trees first, then, once we cleared those, we had plenty of waist high brush to crouch and travel through until we reached the road. We’d agreed not to just exit through the gate and be obvious. There was the possibility, no matter how slim, that somebody could see us and follow our trail back. We also did not see the need to make a huge detour; we would just be cautious. The fact that it was still the murk of pre-dawn would aid us in staying out of sight for the most part.

  When we reached the road, I pointed out the side entrance to the medical center. “That place is still a gold mine. If we make another run on it, we could maybe load as much as we can find right at that door. We could grab a second truck and back it up the drive as well. Not like we could park it right against the gate, but it would be close enough to maybe be worth it.”

  Carl gave a nod and then pointed to the right. My blood chilled. It could not be possible. Standing in that intersection where I’d first spotted…no, it couldn’t be the same kid.

  I squinted to hopefully get a better look at the small figure. From this distance, almost two blocks away, in addition to the gloom, it was impossible to say that the exact same child I’d seen yesterday was the one standing there in almost the exact same spot. Still the coincidence was unnerving and had me doubting our chances on this mission.

  “That is precisely where I saw that kid that led the pack after us the other day,” I whispered. I knew it sounded lame, but I also knew that my hands were already starting to shake.

  “I seriously doubt that is the same one,” Carl replied with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “Seems like too much of a coincidence.” I kept trying to get a better look, but I realized that I hadn’t made it a point to really commit the child’s features to memory.

  “Let’s go.” Carl’s voice snapped my head around as I realized that he’d already started across the street.

  I ran after him, but I could not keep from shooting concerned looks back over at the child at the intersection. I was halfway across and nearing the parking lot of the medical center where the trucks would be when I shot one more look.

  I almost tripped over my own feet as I skidded to a stop.

  The child was gone.

  I searched frantically for him, but there was no sign. That had to be a mistake. From how slow I’d seen them move, I knew he wasn’t outdistancing us.

  There! I actually found myself walking toward that intersection. A small head bobbed and appeared from behind one of the stalled vehicles.

  “You’re trying to hide,” I breathed.

  That did not seem possible. Zombies don’t hide. Do they? I warred with that thought for however long it took for Carl to run back and yank me towards him.

  “Are you trying to get us killed?” he almost yelled.

  I noticed a few heads turn our direction from some of the dark figures that were now being cast in the first pale light of the morning. Before long, we would be able to make out details much clearer. Those figures wandering around would lose their humanity as light transformed them into horrific visages that meant death was no longer the final step.

  We hustled to the fence, climbed over, and then lowered ourselves down to the parking lot. Already I noticed that there was more activity than before I’d first visited this place. Whether it was from my having been here, or maybe it was all random, it didn’t really matter.

  I stepped to the left to meet the three staggering towards us. I’d decided to give the bat a try. Setting my feet, I brought it around hard and fast, taking the closest one in the side of the head. The bat recoiled and the middle-aged soccer mom sprawled onto the pavement. I planted a booted foot on the back of her neck and drove the barrel of the bat down hard into the rear of her skull. It took two attempts, but the results were impressive.

  I decided that the amount of time I took lining up the perfect shot with my axe and then wrenching it free if I didn’t manage to snap my wrist back fast enough to avoid keeping it from being stuck in the skull was actually a bit slower. Also, with the bat, I could take them down, getting the bitey part away from me quicker.

  Also, I noticed that the blade part of my little weapon was starting to get some nasty nicks and chips in it. Sure, it would be easy to replace, but a good part of me believed I’d built a sentimental attachment to the weapon. Perhaps it would be okay to allow a few of those strands to be snipped

  I could ponder this later. The next two zombies were almost shoulder to shoulder. I choose the smallest, a little old man who made me think of one of those grouchy old bastards from the balcony on the Muppet Show.

  “Eat this, Statler,” I whispered as I swung. The old man toppled. “Or were you Waldorf?” I grunted as I brought the bat around for a second swing to take down the unlikely companion.

  This one was decked out like a skateboarder. He had a lip ring which caught the glint of that first ray of sun to peep over the horizon, and I used that little shiny spot to aim my swing. I heard a crunch and saw teeth fly as I destroyed his mouth.

  With each of them down, I moved in and finished them both off. The old man was the easiest, and I now had another bit of information. Maybe he hadn’t consumed enough calcium in his later years, but whatever the reason, his head burst open and vomited its chunky gray contents after just one pile-driver blow with the end of my bat.

  I turned just as Carl was finishing off a pair of zombies on the ground that were struggling like turtles that had been flipped onto their backs. I jogged over and pointed needlessly at the military vehicles.

  “Jack-freaking-pot,” he whistled appreciatively.

  We jogged over to the closest truck. As we did, I looked around. This was nothing like yesterday. Already I could see zombies staggering along and arriving at this parking lot in droves. They were using a driveway that came up from the road below. I rushed over to the fence that acted as a bit of a barricade and peered down onto 91st Avenue.

  “Seriously?” I said to the heavens.

  I’d had no idea that a massive townhouse complex sat right across the street. From the looks of things, the people living there had tried to barricade the entry driveways. They just hadn’t been very successful. Zombies had apparently swarmed the place. There was an impressive number of corpses scattered about, and in a few places, they were actually stacked like they’d fallen and begun to build a bit of a morbid barricade.

  “We don’t have long, I whisper-shouted over my shoulder. The road below was heavy with the walking dead.

  Maybe in a few weeks this area might thin out, but at the moment, it looked as if a good portion of the population of this area, and maybe even some of the surro
unding neighborhoods, were down there. Perhaps they wouldn’t all come up here to the parking lot. But that was not a risk that I was ready to take.

  Rushing along, I peered down the length of the large parking lot that served the two multi-story buildings of this medical complex. More were finding their way using the much flatter entrance nearest Johnson Creek Boulevard.

  I rushed over to Carl who was already picking through things and stacking what I assumed were his priority items in one area central to the cluster of military vehicles. I saw a few things that I could not even begin to identify.

  “You weren’t kidding when you said this place was a gold mine,” the man almost crowed.

  “Super.” I cast a look over my shoulder. I could see a row of bobbing heads starting to crest the lip of the parking lot as the zombies coming up that steep entry ramp made inexorably steady progress in our direction. They might be slow, but they didn’t take breaks. “We gotta go. Maybe we can come back later, but I don’t think now is the time for us to be doing this.”

  Carl stood up and eyed me like I’d just ripped one in the middle of church. “Are you out of your ever-loving mind, friend?”

  I was beginning to think his use of the word “friend” might not adhere to the definition. Sorta like that little guy’s use of “inconceivable” in Princess Bride. I may’ve even heard Mandy Patinkin voice saying as much in my head with his overblown Spanish accent.

  “Look, Carl, I want this stuff just as bad as you…okay, maybe not as bad…but pretty bad.” I hiked a thumb over my shoulder towards the approaching mob of undead. “But there are too many of them.”

  “We can outrun ‘em without even trying.”

  “And head right into them?” I grabbed the man by the arm and dragged him past the trucks so that he could see the ones coming in down at the parking lot entrance of the building adjacent to the one we were in front of.

  “If somebody finds this stuff, they ain’t just gonna leave it here, friend.”

  Yeah, I was now certain he did not mean that word the way it was defined in Webster’s. I craned my neck back and could now see heads and shoulders of the first couple of rows of zombies.

  “Is this shit worth dying for?” I implored. “Because if we stay here, we have a good chance of that happening. There’s just too damn many.”

  “You run if you want, but I’m gonna get what we came for.” Carl jerked his arm away from my grip and trotted back to military vehicles.

  I considered my options and then threw my hands in the air in frustration. Rushing over to his stack of boxes, I started heaving things into the back of the nearest truck. After I threw the third crate in, Carl called out, “You may wanna be a bit more careful with them boxes, friend. That last one had M67s in it.”

  “So?” I snapped back as I jerked the next crate from the stack.

  “Yeah…those are grenades. They go boom. So, as I said, you may want to show those boxes a bit of respect.”

  I can’t recall a point in my life where I wanted to punch a person in the face more than I did him at that exact moment. “You’d think maybe that is a warning you would’ve shared sooner,” I mumbled angrily as I pushed the next crate into the rear of the truck.

  I managed to load five more assorted crates into the back when Carl called me over. “Help me with this big mother.” He tapped one side of the long crate with his foot. “There are a dozen M4s and over five thousand rounds of ammo in here, but I can’t hoist it on my own.”

  I had to admit, that was an impressive find, but it wasn’t going to do us any good if the zombies chewed us up. I could now see that the first few rows had reached the lot and were heading our way. We didn’t have long.

  Carl glanced back in the direction I was looking. “Don’t worry…this is it. If we can come back for more later, we will, but this ought to do us for now.”

  I tried not to let my relief show as I helped him haul the heavy metal container over to the truck with all the other stuff that I’d loaded. We got it up and in and I was already making a run for the passenger side door of the truck’s cab when I heard Carl swear.

  “Get in the truck! Get in the truck!” he shouted.

  “What? I am. What’s the problem?”

  I climbed in and flopped down on the uncomfortably hard seat. Carl had some apparent knowledge, because he flipped a few toggle switches and then pushed a button. The truck grumbled and resisted, but eventually turned over with a belch and rattle.

  “Look.” Carl pointed as he brought us around and started towards the exit located in the parking lot of the building adjacent to the one we’d been in front of.

  The sputtering red light of a flare was drifting slowly to earth in the direction of our house.

  13

  Noise

  The truck barreled towards the cluster of undead that were all hobbling and moving directly at us. I had a tight grip on the dashboard as I braced for impact. I knew that the zombies wouldn’t stand a chance, but I also knew that hitting a body was going to jolt and jar us something fierce.

  To his credit, Carl tried to avoid as many of them as he could. That was about to become an impossibility as we neared the location where the parking lot dumped out onto Southeast 91st Avenue. From there, we would have to make a right on Johnson Creek Boulevard, then another on 92nd. If we could get up the drive without bringing a few hundred of these monsters with us, we might not be too bad off.

  Of course, as soon as we reached the gate, I was coming out with gun in hand. I was already berating myself for having left Betty and the kids with that stranger. I’d let Betty basically bully me into believing that she could handle herself.

  “Here we go,” Carl shouted as we clipped the last of the ones we could at least partially avoid.

  When we hit the cluster of bodies, the truck shuddered violently and I slammed against the restraints, sending a bloom of pain across my entire chest. The truck lifted in front as we rolled over the first bodies that fell underneath us. I saw a face belonging to a little girl no older than ten slide past my window as she was lifted into the air by the front bumper and sent flying. This ride was not going to leave my nightmares any time soon, of that I was certain.

  As we plowed through the wall of undead flesh, I was noticing without a doubt that the zombies were reacting to sound. I could see many to the right that were passing by on Johnson Creek Boulevard as they turned and oriented on us. Also, to the left in the direction of the townhouse duplexes, I could see more of them stopping as they’d started to head up that steep driveway to the medical center and turn towards us.

  “Sound lures them,” I said as we shoved violently through the worst of the mob and emerged into relatively open road.

  “You positive?” Carl asked through clenched teeth as we smashed into Granny Zombie, her head slamming down hard enough on the concrete that it burst, sending gore and bone out in a fan as if a shotgun had been put to her head.

  “Absolutely,” I replied, trying to look away from the carnage, but simply not being able to as we left a trail of broken bodies in our wake.

  “Okay, let’s test it.”

  Carl reached inside his heavy jacket and produced what I initially mistook for a green ball. Then I made out the dangling ring attached to the pin that was in place as the safety to keep a person from mistakenly pressing it and starting the fuse of what I had to assume was an M67 grenade.

  “Grab the wheel,” he said as he opened the door on his side.

  I didn’t have time to think of what an idiot he appeared to be. I reached over and gripped the wheel, trying my best not to jerk it and possibly send him flying from the cab. Carl pulled the pin and gave the grenade a toss; then he scooched back in and took the wheel.

  “These windows don’t just roll down like they do in normal cars and trucks,” he said.

  There was a muffled blast a second later, and I glanced in the rearview mirror. It looked like a few bodies were now smoldering on the road. I was about to tell h
im that his attack had been a bust when I saw a whole bunch of the zombies pause in their pursuit of us and turn in the direction of the blast.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Carl exclaimed as he peered into his rearview mirror. “We can definitely use that to our advantage in the future.”

  That was all well and good, but I just wanted to get to the house, kill Brandon, and hopefully do it in time to prevent anything from happening to Betty and the kids. That train of thought shocked me. I was preparing to kill a living, breathing human.

  “You watch my back when we pull in,” Carl said as he yanked the steering wheel and turned us right on 92nd Avenue. “I am gonna have to take us nose first up this driveway. We can turn the rig around after we take care of business.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, a bit confused by Carl’s statement.

  “I mean, you aren’t the type to just start killing folks. Make sure he doesn’t get behind us or ambush us as we enter the grounds. I will take care of putting him down.” I opened my mouth to protest, but Carl held up a hand to silence me. “Nothing personal, friend, but you are not a killer.”

  “And you are?” I shot back.

  “No, but I am a realist who has prepared his entire life for the fall of Rome.”

  I had no idea what Rome had to do with this, and I wouldn’t get an opportunity to ask. We turned hard to the left and roared up the driveway.

  I was determined to prove Carl wrong and my hand went to one of the Glocks I had holstered on my hips. If I got the shot, I was going to take it and show this guy that I could handle anything that came our way.

  We skidded to a noisy halt a few feet from the gate and I threw my door open, tossing off my seatbelt harness and jumping out with my gun coming up and ready for action. I sprinted to the fence, confident that I could easily out run some know-it-all woodshop teacher.

  I reached the gate and saw Betty running for us, her arms waving frantically above her head. Was she trying to warn us away? I wondered.