DEAD Series [Books 1-12]

by Brown, TW

  “How you holding up?” Scott said. It was accompanied by a groan as he reached over his shoulders to pull his pack off.

  “About the same as you by the sounds of it,” Chad said with a sarcastic chuckle.

  A nerve-jangling titter came from where Trina sat beside Michael sharing a canteen. Chad glanced over and did his best not to extend a particular finger in response to her way-too-enthusiastic wave.

  “I should have let Brett make this trip,” Scott said after a long pull from his own canteen. “Old age, a bum knee from my high school football days, and the fact that I really hate snow all add up to me wondering what the hell I was thinking.”

  “So, have you been noticing all the zombies trapped in the snow like it is quicksand?” Chad asked after they had both popped open one of the precious cans of chili that had been spared for them to take on the trip and scooped out a few spoonfuls.

  “Makes you wonder how they keep showing up at our camp,” Scott said with a nod.

  “They never need to rest,” Chad said with a shrug. “Eventually, the right combination of jerking around probably frees them up. As for the herds, I think they are almost like a snow plow.”

  Scott considered the information and finally nodded. “Well, according to the Michael De Sade and Suzi Chapstick, we should reach the snow line before dark.”

  “That’s good, because I don’t think I could deal with another day on skis,” Chad said. “When I used to go cross country skiing, it was for a few hours tops…we’ve been going for at least ten hours with minimal breaks, and honestly, these little breaks for some cold, canned chili ain’t putting all that much energy back in the tank, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Yes, Scott nodded, he did know what Chad was saying. He had been fighting cramps for the past couple of hours. Not for the first time, he envied Brett for being left behind. Of course, Chad had asked the man to keep an eye on his daughter. And while Ronni could be a handful, keeping tabs on her seemed infinitely preferable to this trip.

  As if on cue, Trina and Mike stood and gave the signal to get moving. Chad and Scott shared a miserable look and pushed themselves up to their feet. A few minutes later, the foursome were back on the trail, gliding along at a brisk pace. Occasionally, they would cruise past a zombie buried to its waist, chest, or even to its neck.

  A few hours into the next leg, it was Chad who signaled for a stop. Michael and Trina both looked at him like he’d just let one go in church.

  “Is anybody else noticing the fact that we are seeing more and more zombies as we go along?” he asked. This received blank stares form the ‘dynamic duo’ as he’d begun to refer to them in his mind. Thankfully, Scott came to his aid.

  “I’d guess that we have passed a couple hundred in the past hour…more than we saw the whole rest of the day combined.”

  “Maybe there were just as many, but maybe they were all completely buried under the snow,” Trina said with a shrug, clearly not grasping the seriousness of her own statement.

  “You better pray that isn’t the case,” Scott shot back.

  “In any case,” Chad piped in, “we need to be vigilant from here forward. I say we pair up. One person keep eyes up, the other scanning the ground ahead.”

  “I will pair with Scott,” Michael said. He shot a look at Chad that, if he didn’t know better, he would swear conveyed the message, ‘she’s your problem now.’

  It took a few minutes to get moving, but eventually the foursome were gliding along the snow. Some time that afternoon, they came to the top of a small rise. From this point on, it would be a long and winding run downhill. Chad had learned how to smile and nod a lot as Trina droned on about a particular tree or a rock formation. He began to realize that Michael and she had not been engaging in some sort of friendly banter; no, Trina was still in guide mode.

  Oddly enough, it was Trina that shot out ahead of the group and then came to a skidding halt across what was probably the road underneath all the snow. She flipped up her goggles and the three men saw the fear in her eyes.

  Trina pointed down and to their left. Chad, Scott, and Michael looked down the embankment to the switchback. Packed shoulder to shoulder and stretching down and all the way around the next curve was a herd of undead.

  “There has to be hundreds…thousands of them,” Scott breathed.

  “What do we do now?” Chad asked, glancing at Michael. “I’m not too familiar with the area, but I’d wager that they are using the same road that we drove up when we came here. As far as I know, that is the only way up or down the mountain.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Michael said in a voice barley above a whisper. “We have to go down. If not…everybody is going to starve to death.”

  “They might not be there when we get back,” Scott spat. “There is no way in hell that we could fight off that group.”

  “What makes you so sure they will end up in Yosemite Village?” Trina asked.

  “Where else would they end up?” Chad retorted. “Like I said, I don’t know the area, but I don’t recall any turnoffs or forks on the trip up here.”

  Trina’s face scrunched in deep thought. She didn’t need to speak to relate her deductions; it was all over her face. The steep incline leading down to the next relatively flat area would shame any ski resort’s “Double Black Diamond” run. Looking down, Chad could almost swear that the face of the mountainside curved inward at one point.

  “But we can’t go back…not empty handed,” she insisted as the men began to turn their skis back the way they’d come.

  “And how would you suggest we get around that!” Scott snapped, his arm flailing wildly in the general direction of the oncoming mob. From below, the volume rose on the moans of the undead as they locked in on a new stimulus.

  “You three go back,” Michael said. “I will try to find a spot and wait them out. Once they have passed, I will head down the mountain and find supplies.”

  “You think that is a good idea?” Chad asked.

  “Nope,” Michael shook his head. “But I also don’t envy what lies in store for you guys either. You have to go back and tell everybody that a wave of zombies is coming…and then wait for them to arrive and hope you can fend them off.”

  “Well we can’t stand around any more and talk about it,” Scott said, pointing to the first of the zombies rounding the distant corner about a half mile down the way.

  As Chad, Scott, and Trina began the grueling trip back up the hill and towards Yosemite Village with the sounds of the dead growing louder, Chad began to wonder if there was any point in fighting to survive. The only thing he could come up with was enough to make him push on well into the night; he even urged the other two on well after dark.

  He had to get back to Ronni.

  ***

  Vix climbed up onto the car and spun around quickly but carefully. It wouldn’t do her any good to fall at the moment. The blue-gray face was at the perfect level and distance. As it opened its mouth to let loose with that horrible baby cry sound, she kicked it right in the teeth with her steel-toed boot. The head snapped back and the creature stumbled. Unslinging the spike-tipped pole from her shoulder, she brought it around and drove the point directly into the thing’s eye socket just as it brought its head back to try and snap at her.

  A few lanes over, Gemma was on top of a blue van. A group of five of those cursed things had her circled, but she was making steady work of them. They’d thought that the road had been clear when they set across it. And it had been for the most part. Then Gemma had spotted that Dasani truck and squealed with delight.

  This was the equivalent to discovering an oasis in the middle of the desert. The sliding door was open wide, revealing stacked cases of the bottled water. While it was obvious that others had taken the time to help themselves, there was still more than enough.

  Vix had climbed inside and was handing a case down to Gemma when she saw the first head come bobbing along behind another nearby vehicle. And it wasn�
��t like the cars were bumper-to-bumper here. Vix had seen more than one zombie movie where the freeways were stuffed with miles long traffic snarls. She hadn’t entirely understood that image. Sure, there might be a few tie-ups where people had tried to flee and ended up smashing into each other, but she didn’t think that many people would be out on the roads after the first few days.

  It was while Vix was busy pulling out a case and handing it to Gemma that they both heard the most chilling sound imaginable in the post-apocalyptic world: a baby’s cry. Gemma dropped the case she’d been handed and almost broke her leg scrambling back from the truck.

  As Vix hustled out, she saw five of the cursed things coming up out of the drainage ditch that ran alongside the M3. She wasn’t too worried; five of them were manageable even if she’d been alone. Then that sound came again…from the other side if the M3. At least three dozen more were coming up. She would have a talk later with Gemma about being a bit quieter when they were travelling.

  Snapping back to the here-and-now, Vix scanned the area to make sure that there were no other immediate threats. She did see a few shadows bobbing in the distance back the way they’d come, but nothing they couldn’t out run once they cleared up things here.

  Vix moved around the boot of one of those expensive sports cars that her husband always said that men bought when they “lacked the necessary equipment to satisfy their women.” She peeked inside and was able to glimpse a hand clutching a bottle of pills.

  “Took the easy way,” she muttered as she moved in behind the last few zombies that were trying their best to get at Gemma up on top of that van.

  She paused, unable to keep from wincing. Two of the undead were children. So far, she had managed to avoid killing any little ones. She’d gotten used to killing zombies. It was the first few that she’d struggled with simply because they were familiar faces. However—and she credited this to all those books and movies that she loved so much—she knew very well that a person could not hesitate when dealing with the undead or you would join their ranks.

  As a gift one year, her husband had managed to contact one of the cover artists who did the work for one of her favorite series of zombie books. For Valentine’s Day, he presented her with a framed picture of her as a zombie. He’d been a very lucky man that evening. That was as close as she cared to ever come to being a zombie.

  She moved quietly. If she could keep from being noticed, then perhaps she could take down at least one of the child-zombies without having to see its face. Taking a few steps forward and raising her blade, Vix paused. There was something about these two zombies that didn’t seem right.

  She watched them for a few seconds before she realized that they were hanging back from the others. They had moved just outside of Gemma’s range and seemed to be more intent on observing than getting in there and trying their hand at the futile exercise of reaching for Gemma. It was as if they knew that they could not reach her, and what’s more, if they tried, they would meet the same fate as their cohorts.

  But that’s silly, Vix thought. Zombies don’t reason or think or do anything else except try to eat people. At least that had been her view until now. Vix glanced up at Gemma, who seemed to be unconcerned with her situation at the moment. That was fine, that meant that there was no reason to rush in and attack at the moment. She could afford to watch for a few seconds longer.

  One of the children, a girl judging by the silky blouse that was almost ready to fall off the frame due to a combination of being snagged and dragged and who knows what else, kept shifting from one foot to the other. It reminded Vix of how children act when they had to pee. The other was almost a statue. It simply stood there making no move forward or back.

  “Oi!” Gemma called, snapping Vix out of her observation. “You gonna stand there, or are you going to help me with these two. They don’t seem to want to join their friends.”

  Vix shook her head to clear it and started forward. They must have heard her footsteps or something, because they both turned to face her. Vix froze in mid-stride; one foot still in the air as if she were afraid of what might happen should it touch the ground.

  She could see their faces now. Her heart wanted to break. The little boy had a jagged bite taken out of what had once been a pair of plump cheeks. The little girl had fared worse. Her belly had been ripped open. And now she knew why the shirt was still on. It had fused to the wound with filth and dried gore.

  The little boy’s head tilted to one side and its eyes locked on hers. She would swear for the rest of her life that it glanced down at the weapon in her hand and then back up to her eyes. The pair took a step back.

  Vix had no idea what to think now. She had never known a zombie to back away, and yet, here were two doing exactly that. They took another step…right into range of Gemma’s spear. Her first thrust drove into the back of the little boy’s head. The girl turned just in time to catch the next jab in her right eye.

  “Good work,” Gemma sighed, sliding off the van and landing on the ground between the two children. “Nice plan to get their attention and scare them back to me.”

  “I didn’t,” Vix whispered. For some reason, she couldn’t take her eyes of the two downed bodies.

  “What?” Gemma only asked with partial interest. She was already walking back to the water truck to reclaim their prize.

  “I didn’t try to scare them back towards you,” Vix explained. “In fact, I am wondering how you didn’t notice the way those two were acting.”

  “Acting?” Gemma had that confused expression that Vix was becoming accustomed to whenever the two of them were talking about zombies.

  “Never mind,” Vix said with a scowl. Maybe she had been imagining it. After all…everybody knows that zombies don’t think. “A couple more miles and we will be at the M25 interchange. We should be able to find a place to rest for the night.”

  ***

  “Down here, quick!” Danny hissed, waving Jody and Selina over from where they were crouched behind a Dumpster next to the alley.

  The sign coming into town read Newport, Arkansas. The population was, according to the sign, 7,342. Judging by what they’d seen so far, none of the town’s citizens had survived…and none had left. Zombies were everywhere.

  The two scurried across to join Danny in the dark stairwell. A half dozen steps led down to a metal door with a small window. The door was currently propped open by a chunk of concrete.

  “I used to get in a little trouble when I was growing up,” Danny said in response to Jody’s arched eyebrow. “The one that put the nail in the coffin was when I broke into my high school. I had this stupid idea that I could get into the school, hack the computer, and then tweak my grades.”

  “Got caught?” Selina chuckled.

  “As I was breaking into the main office. I guess the school had some sort of silent alarm as well as motion detectors. The cops said that the person on the radio basically told them my entire route.”

  “Talk later, let’s get inside,” Jody urged.

  The trio slipped into the long, dark hallway. Doors lined both sides, just offset from each other. The gloom outside didn’t do much to light the way. Plus, the cold had seeped inside to the point where icicles hung in places from the ceiling.

  “So tell me what good we are doing by coming in here?” Selina managed through teeth that were already chattering.

  “We can find a spot to build a fire that hopefully won’t attract attention,” Jody whispered. “Now please be quiet for a moment…I thought I heard something.”

  Selina bit back the response that initially came to her lips. However, she had learned her lesson after last night. They’d had the luxury of stumbling across, of all things, a car that had several bags of groceries in the back seat. It had run off the highway and was nose down in a deep ditch barely visible from the road.

  “Probably swerved to avoid hitting a zombie,” Danny had quipped.

  A lot of the food had spoiled, but there were a couple o
f bags of canned food that were in perfect condition. That night, they had beef stew cooked over a fire that Jody made in a hole that was almost waist deep.

  During the meal, Danny was spinning tales and cracking jokes—which was the same thing he did most of the day as they hiked along in the slush. It helped her keep her mind off of how miserable she was and how very cold her entire body felt…especially her hands, feet, and face.

  After one of his more humorous jokes involving two blondes, a step ladder, and a platypus, Selina had laughed so hard that stew actually came out of her nose. Of course that only made her laugh harder.

  Jody kept insisting that she quiet down. She had given him some flippant retort about being out in the middle of nowhere and that he should just chill out. Five minutes later, four walkers stumbled into their camp.

  “Sorry,” Selina whispered, nodding for Jody to lead the way. She thought she caught Danny mimicking her out of the corner of her eye.

  They reached the second door and Jody held up his hand to signal a halt. Danny moved up beside him and the two made a few hand gestures. Without any indication that she saw, they burst through the door and disappeared into the room. A rasping moan sounded for a split second, followed by the familiar crunching splat of a head being crushed or busted open with Danny’s or Jody’s hand ax.

  The two emerged and they all continued up the corridor. Jody checked each room very carefully. When they reached the end, they discovered a stairwell leading up. Jody signaled that they retreat back up the way they’d come. He led them into an empty classroom and shut the door.

  “If we rig a trip wire at the stairs, we should be able to camp here tonight. This room is perfect. It is big enough that the smoke won’t overwhelm us.” His voice was still above a whisper.

  “Won’t it all go out the window if we just open it a crack?” Selina asked.