DEAD: Onset: Book One of the New DEAD series

by TW Brown

  The zombie child missing his lower jaw was peering out at me from the window that had been busted when I’d been stringing my lure. Despite the fact that I was crouched down and trying to stay hid, his eyes were locked on me. He stood there for several seconds, his gaze giving me chills. Suddenly, his head snapped around. The boy turned away and vanished from view.

  “If he circled around, he could already be inside,” Carl whispered.

  “He is,” I replied, rising to my feet. Something told me that zombie heard something, which is why he departed so abruptly. I knew it was little more than a wild hunch, but I was ready to go with it.

  “And you know this how?”

  “Trust me…you don’t want to know, but let’s go before he manages to escape.”

  16

  A Time to Kill

  Hurrying across the street, Carl and I started at a jog, but when we heard the sounds of a tremendous crash from inside the same building where I’d seen the child zombie, we shifted to a sprint. I glanced both directions and saw a few zombies on the street, but we were across before any seemed to really take notice.

  We arrived at the busted window and I knew we would be facing at least a couple of zombies just by the smell. Sure enough, there were three zombies wandering around in this large reception area. I could see the desk where people had checked in for whatever they came to this place for. The glass or Plexiglas partition was a busted mess and one zombie had gotten caught on a nasty shard.

  From the looks this thing had tried to climb over the counter and lost its balance. A dagger-like shard had gone in the belly and came out the back. Its feet were off the ground and both arms were out in front swiping at the empty air. I imagine it would rip free in time if left to its own devices as well as the continuous effects of gravity.

  Since it was closest, I stepped over and drove my knife into the side of its head. Carl was busy taking down a man wearing a shirt with a gas station logo over the left breast and so much of his throat missing that his head tilted forward to where his chin rested on his chest.

  That left the soldier with no left arm. I let it approach me, and as soon as it closed to within range, I swept its feet out from under it by kicking it in the ankles. It fell and I moved in to finish it off.

  “Next time just stay out of the way,” Carl snapped.

  “I had that one easy enough,” I protested.

  “I don’t need you to have them.”

  He shoved past me to the doorway and his headlamp illuminated the face of a woman in scrubs standing just outside the doorway and staring in at us. His body blocked my view, but I heard the corpse fall to the floor with a smack of flesh on tile.

  “I need you to be watching for the ones that are going to come up from behind and bite us in the ass.” Carl poked his head back out the door. Without another word, he exited the reception area.

  I followed and discovered that there was an even larger waiting area through the doorway. This one looked like maybe it was some sort of hub. There was a circular desk in the middle with multiple stations set up for people to come walk up to and maybe ask questions. There were also three doors leading away from this hub. We’d come through one. A second one exited into an actual hallway. I could see through the smeared and slimed glass to the dark hallway beyond by the glow of my own headlamp. A lone zombie was on the other side. It was staring in at us, but not reacting in any way. I kept expecting its hands to come up and start slapping at the glass, but it just continued to stand in place and stare at us with its blackshot eyes.

  Carl trotted to the other door and tried the knob. It was locked and he hurried back to me. The sounds of moans were muffled by the glass, but it was clear that there were a good number of zombies in this place.

  “As soon as we step out of this area, I need you to have your head on a swivel, you got me?” Carl asked as he cocked his head towards the door exiting to the hallway where the single zombie stood its lonely sentinel.

  “Yeah,” I said with a nod.

  He was obviously taking point on this little mission. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as I still had not been able to tap into that part of me that was ready to kill a living person. It was sort of like grabbing a wet melon seed. The tighter you squeezed, the easier it shot from your grasp.

  He stepped to the door and gave it a shove. It opened easily enough and the zombie reacted by turning its head. Strangely, it did not try to turn its body yet and stayed almost motionless until Carl started for it. As soon as he did, it appeared to reluctantly face the oncoming warm body.

  I followed and something struck me as soon as I managed to get a clearer glimpse of this zombie’s facial features. I had a friend with Down’s Syndrome and so I was very familiar with the facial features somebody with that birth defect would express. I was already coming to believe that children who turned acted different than the run-of-the-mill zombie—at least to a certain age. Could there also be something different in this particular zombie? Before I could ponder further, Carl stuck it in the eye socket and shoved it back and away.

  Now that we were out in the hallway, I suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable. I followed Carl, my entire body coming around in a full three-sixty every few steps as I watched for anything that might try for us.

  “Got one,” I whispered as a single zombie appeared in the beam of my headlamp about a dozen feet up a hallway on our right.

  It must’ve heard us approaching because it was emerging from a doorway and its head jerked first one direction and then the other. As soon as it spied us, it moaned and started our way. Carl had to backtrack to me, but as soon as he saw it, he hurried over and took it down. I glanced down at my arm, scowling at how it had betrayed me and reduced me to this ridiculous role.

  Carl returned and swept past me to continue his trek up the hallway. His own headlamp was scanning to the left and the right as we moved along. It didn’t take long for us to get the attention of the zombies that were like an infestation here inside the heart of the clinic.

  I have no idea what happened here or how it went down, but by the looks of things, people came here after being attacked despite this not being an actual hospital. The staff probably did their best to treat these folks, and then the turning began and nobody could believe what was happening until it was too late.

  That made me think about the military vehicles out front. I had to wonder what had brought them here. Again, this was not a proper hospital. Something was nagging at me about this place. All of a sudden, things didn’t feel right, and it had nothing to do with Brandon perhaps being here as he attempted to scoop up the gear he’d taken from us.

  We rounded a corner and discovered a set of double doors that were basically torn from their hinges. This was also when a few pieces fell into place. Carl had come to a sudden halt and I ended up directly beside him. Both of our headlamps shone into a massive ward. There were rooms along both sides, but this center location was probably a place where families sat together and visited a patient, or maybe waited while the person they’d brought here was being treated.

  This room had toys strung about it, most of them stained and darkened with dried blood. There were a handful of soldiers here, all of them torn apart to varying degrees. They were not the problem despite the fact that they all basically turned as one and started for us.

  At least twenty faces peered at us from around the room. Heads cocked and titled as we were regarded with what looked like a gross caricature of curiosity.

  “A pediatric hospital,” I breathed.

  “Yeah…it says so out front,” Carl replied absently as we both took a step backwards to maintain the distance between us and the approaching soldier zombies.

  There was no time to try and explain what I’d seen from the child versions of the walking dead. Hell, I wasn’t sure just exactly what I’d seen.

  “Just back up slowly,” I whispered. A memory flashed in my head and I added, “And don’t make any sudden moves with your weapon.”
>
  We backed up until we came to a corridor that led off from the one we’d been travelling and took it. The sounds of the soldiers could be heard as they shuffled along in pursuit, but we took a hard left the first chance we got and they faded.

  We finally found one of the emergency stairwells. Carl tried the door and it opened much to my surprise. He took care to open it as quietly as possible, perhaps recalling my recounting of how loud the door had been when I’d come here before. We stuck our heads in and heard moans from above and below.

  “Which way?” he mouthed.

  I shrugged. I honestly had no idea where Brandon might be skulking about. A loud bang from below made up our minds for us. We headed down the stairs as fast as we dared. Carl had to stop twice to grab a zombie, pin it to the wall with one hand and then stick it in the head with his blade.

  We reached the ground floor as we heard a yelp from through that doorway. It sounded close. I looked down and was surprised to see a Glock in my hand.

  I followed Carl through the door and checked for anything coming at us to the right as he had the left covered. Three zombies who looked to be in their teens were on the other side of a large window that looked into what might’ve been another waiting room. They were all pressed against the glass, clawing at it and trying futilely to bite the smooth surface.

  We were at the junction of a tee-intersection. The zombie kids behind the glass were on the right—my side—to the left was a long hallway lined with what appeared to be offices, and straight ahead were rooms. I was making a guess here based on being able to see through the nearest doorway where a bed sat beside a window. A chair was knocked over and the floor was a Jackson Pollack painting with the dried blood splattered everywhere.

  “This way.” Carl gestured and started off to the left.

  I turned so that I was basically walking backwards behind him. We had gotten about twenty feet when I heard a voice. The words were unintelligible due to the echo, but I was almost certain that it was Brandon. Carl must’ve felt the same because he picked up the pace. When he started to jog, I had no choice but to turn around and follow.

  We reached another corner and stopped. Now I could hear the person and was certain that it was Brandon.

  “If you would’ve just done what I told you and hidden in that damn gated community across the way, we could’ve pretended that you were a lone survivor. Once we got in, it would be easy to knock those idiots off. They don’t stand watch or anything,” he was explaining.

  “I still don’t know how you fucked up the other place. And you are sure that everybody got killed?” a stranger’s voice asked.

  “Things got a little out of hand. Dizzy got loaded and he and a few of the guys started doing stupid shit. Apparently Dizz got off on hearing people scream. It brought a freaking wave of those zombies. They just rolled up on us and started ripping people apart.”

  As I listened, I was finding that I was getting as many new questions as I was answers. No…actually, I was now coming up with a lot more questions.

  “I shoulda just stayed with Pierce,” the other voice moaned. “He found a great spot, and we even rescued a few honies that are so grateful they do whatever we ask.”

  “No, you guys shoulda been back when you said,” Brandon retorted.

  “I told you, we got trapped in that house.”

  “Yeah, and somehow you and Pierce were the only ones who made it out alive.” There was a skepticism in Brandon’s tone that fought with the sarcasm for control of each clipped word.

  “I could say the same to you,” the other man shot back.

  I heard what sounded like shuffled movement. “I told you, Dizzy caused this.”

  “And I told you we got trapped in a house and that Pierce and I barely managed to make it out alive.”

  Carl glanced back at me and held up a fist. Was he really signaling me to stay put? Did he think I was an idiot? If this little discussion continued, those two might take care of our job for us. I wasn’t an idiot.

  I looked over our shoulder. With all the arguing going on in there, and the fact that the volume level was not being kept in check, I figured it was only a matter of time before the zombies showed up. So far, the coast was clear.

  “We need to get this stuff and get out of here the moment it gets dark. I figure we can grab one of the police cars. Those dumbasses didn’t even bother to strip the cops. I found a set of keys on one of the dead cops. Even know which car it starts. Most of the stuff I’ve been cherry-picking is already in that car’s trunk, but last night I swore somebody was following me so I ran in here and stashed the last bags.”

  “Why are we waiting until it gets dark?” the other person asked, sounding mildly amused.

  “Because that jerk with the busted arm went against everything he had been preaching about leaving people behind if something goes wrong. He went after the redneck and got him out. If that guy is on the roof with a rifle, he won’t miss,” Brandon explained.

  “That fat chick didn’t miss either,” the other guy said with a laugh which was followed by a muffled curse and yelp from Brandon. My ears perked up at that. Betty swore she hit Brandon, but he hadn’t gone down. That made her lucky shot that cut Amanda down from where she’d been hanging seem all that much more improbable.

  “Kevlar can stop a bullet, but it still doesn’t keep a person from getting bruised,” Brandon hissed. “You poke me there again and I will cut your throat.”

  “Ease up, hero,” the other person said flatly. “Let’s not forget that it was me who showed up with the location to a really good place to ride this out.”

  “I can just as easily hang out around here and pick those idiots off in their little compound,” Brandon replied. “I would have a safe place all to myself.”

  “And miss out on those bitches willing to do anything we say just because we keep them alive? Not how I would want to ride out the apocalypse, but if you wanna go solo, that is fine with me.”

  Carl turned back to me and then hiked a thumb over his shoulder. He had one of the Glocks in his hand and then nodded to me and shot a questioning glance at my own. I smiled and then switched the gun back and forth between each hand as I nodded. I hoped that he understood my meaning that I could shoot with almost equal competence from the right or the left.

  He moved to the very edge of the door frame and held up his free hand. Three fingers extended, he gave the countdown.

  …two…

  …one.

  He ducked low and came around quickly. I was on his heels with my own pistol in my left hand. Brandon was seated against the wall opposite the entry and the other man was to his left.

  This had been some kind of office, and a large desk dominated the floor. Whether it was due to his apparently bruised ribs or just slow reflexes, Brandon was still staring, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, when Carl shot him in the face. There was a neat dark hole just below the right eye, almost touching the nose where the bullet entered. The wall behind him instantly bloomed with crimson.

  The other man was equal parts quicker as I was slow. While it was certainly true that I was a good shot with both hands, that did nothing for my reaction time or hesitation. I knew what had to be done. I even understood why. Yet, there was still a part of me that fought with the idea of taking another person’s life. That is my only real excuse for why the man was able to dive behind the desk before I got a shot off. My bullet hit the wall and sent up a small cloud of dust…and that was all.

  I adjusted my aim and fired a round into the desk in the general direction that I thought his body might be lying. That was always something that amazed me when I watched a movie or television show and a shootout took place. People would shoot the hell out of a wall after somebody ducked, but it was like they felt some flimsy pressboard desk would be able to act as a shield against bullets. They might not pack as big of a punch, but I was willing to bet they would still draw blood.

  Carl moved around to circle the desk and dove forward just
as a barrage of return fire came his direction. I took my opportunity and rushed the desk. Reaching it, I decided to come over versus go around. From my belly as I slid just far enough to look over the edge, I found myself staring down at the stranger who’d been sitting with Brandon. He barely had enough time to look up before I fired three shots into his body from almost pointblank range.

  I stared down at the man. He could’ve been a guy standing behind me at the grocery store just a short time ago. I didn’t know anything about him or his story other than some out-of-context conversation that I’d managed to overhear.

  My brain wanted to take in every single detail, but for some reason, nothing would stick. It was as if my subconscious was refusing to allow this person to take up residence in my memory. Maybe it was trying to block out everything.

  All I could register was the fact that his eyes were staring up at me and his eyebrows were still raised in surprise. There might have been just a pinch at the corners of his eyes as he had just a moment to register the pain before he died.

  This was nothing like I could ever imagine. I knew right then that I’d been part of a lie my entire life. All the books, movies, and TV shows made it seem like you could take a life from another person and be okay with it in these situations. And who knows, maybe you can. Maybe Carl was standing just a few feet away from me and feeling none of what I felt. It was possible that he was feeling no sense of self-loathing like what was oozing into every pore of my soul and staining it black forever. There would be no absolution from this. I had taken the life of another person. It didn’t matter the circumstance.

  I was a murderer.

  Michael had been right.

  Then I vomited.

  “Okay, time to go,” Carl’s voice made it through the buzzing in my ears and the pounding in my head. “We have to get out of here now.”

  I could hear them. The gunfire had drawn them to us. Maybe every single one in this building was coming to punish me for my sins.