by Brown, TW
They rounded the corner and Danny was the first to throw up the ‘Halt’ sign. Jody froze. His eyes tracked to where the other man was pointing. Three bodies littered the road. Their target just happened to be three men at this location. Jody did not believe in coincidence.
He flashed a signal for Danny to go wide and come around from the other side. It would take him a few minutes to get into position. Jody waited until Danny vanished behind a building before he moved forward cautiously.
When he got close, he began to notice a few details that heightened his already alerted senses. The blood was relatively fresh. The pools around two of the bodies were still a deep red. However, it was the third body that had his attention.
Jody moved closer. His eyes darting around as he sought even the slightest movement. Finally he was kneeling beside the large man. He felt around the neck and confirmed his suspicion. This man had been killed by somebody up close and personal. His neck had been snapped. That was quite a feat considering the man’s size. This was one big boy, easily tipping the scales at over two hundred and fifty pounds.
He reached down to his belt and was just about to draw his Ka-Bar when a familiar voice whispered in his ear close enough that he felt the warmth of the owner’s breath.
“If you pull that out, son, I will have no choice but to kill you.”
***
“Just keep your hands out so I can see them,” Chuck Monterro warned. “I ain’t here to cause you any trouble.”
“That knife point in my back seems to say something else,” the young sergeant replied.
“Listen, Jody, if I would have wanted to kill you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Chuck moved back a step and then edged his way around in front of the young man. He glanced down at the dead body now in between them.
“This your work?” Jody asked.
“Yep.” He saw no reason to lie. Besides, if he gauged this kid right, he would imagine that he would probably have done the same thing given the opportunity. “They had some kids held prisoner. The kids escaped and they were just about to go hunt them down when I showed up.”
The young man just nodded. Perhaps he wasn’t buying the story. Well, Chuck thought, can’t do much about that right now.
“The thing is,” Chuck continued once it was obvious Jody wasn’t going to say anything, “them kids are still somewhere close by. Saw them myself as I was coming down the road.”
“And what exactly were you doing way out here?” Jody scoffed. “How come you aren’t back with the captain and the folks of Bald Knob?”
“Same reason you ain’t,” Chuck said with a smile. “We both know that place is gone. Too many of them things and no solid plan or defense against a group that big. Hell, we were barely equipped to deal with a few hundred. That mob had to be—”
“Thousands,” Jody breathed.
The two stood in silence for a few seconds. Chuck shrugged and sheathed his knife.
“Probably shouldn’t leave this just sitting around,” a voice called from the porch of the shack.
Both heads turned to see Danny standing there with a crossbow cocked and aimed at Chuck Monterro. Jody let a breath out that he hadn’t realized that he’d been holding.
“Nicely done, private,” Chuck made a few casual claps of his hands. He put his arms out to his sides. “Now, you gonna use that thing or keep running your mouth?”
“Danny,” Jody called, “he could have killed me. He didn’t.”
“This time,” Danny said through clenched teeth. “You know what kind of person he is. He hung two of our guys just the other day. Had us rounding up people like cattle. Who knows what else.”
“If you are gonna use that thing, son—”
Chuck “Slider” Monterro’s sentence was cut off abruptly when the shaft from the crossbow caught him in the center of the chest, piercing his heart. He was more than a little surprised, but mostly, Chuck Monterro was relieved. He would have had to kill both of those boys sooner or later. Now…now he could finally rest.
18
A Trip to the Woods
It had only been a few hours since Patton and his little flock had left. In the end it had been more Jesus and Jake standing there fingering the hilts of their swords than anything that I said or did. Dr. Zahn had pumped something into Misty that put the little girl down. We could deal with her later.
I was standing on the porch when Billy and Fiona came stomping out of the woods. I waited for them patiently, just hoping that they had news that would not involve us having to kill living, breathing people. I’d done it, but it still haunted me, and I doubted that it would ever go away.
“They headed east when they got to the road,” Billy reported. “I don’t give them a week.”
So maybe I wasn’t killing them directly, but it was sort of a moral gray area, wasn’t it? If you see somebody drowning and don’t bother to throw them a life preserver…
“They brought this on themselves,” Fiona said, obviously reading my expression. “You didn’t actually kick them out. They were leaving anyway. In fact, you did just the opposite in demanding they leave the girl.”
I tried to let that sink in, but I still felt responsible. My actions had led to their eventual decision to risk it out in the wild instead of stay here where there was food and shelter.
The two of them both went in and left me to my thoughts. There had been so much in the past several hours. I had to wonder if life would ever settle into anything like a routine. Maybe just a few days where absolutely nothing happened.
“Steve.”
I knew that tone. Hell, it didn’t seem like there was any other. I turned to find Sunshine standing in the door with Cheryl Coates. Both were in tears.
They didn’t need to tell me. I may not be the brightest bulb on the tree, but I’m no idiot. I just nodded and moved past them. I felt their hands brush me, like they could take away some of the pain or something. Or maybe they just wanted to let me know that I wasn’t alone. But that was a lie. When it came to what was about to happen, I could not be any more alone. None of them would have to do what was required of me. None of them could ‘share’ in the experience. This one would be all mine…and so would the everlasting pain that came with it.
The entry area was a sea of faces. I noticed Dr. Zahn, Melissa, Jon, and Thalia missing. Everybody else was standing on one side of the room as far away from the door that opened to where Emily waited like that distance would somehow help.
I walked to the door and took a deep breath. I knew for a fact that once I walked through it, nothing would ever be the same again. This wasn’t like a hot bath or jumping into a pool where you just plunge in and get past the initial shock. This was a shock that would last until the day I died.
As my hand clutched the doorknob, I suddenly realized just how full of crap all manner of fiction used to be. Whether it was movies or television, there just seemed to be this magic surge of inner-strength that consumed the hero of a story when confronted with something terrible. Maybe that was what I was waiting for as I stood here. I think the real truth was that I was scared.
When I turned the doorknob and opened the door, my brain did its best to shield me. The room swam and I didn’t really see anybody or hear anything except Emily. Her tiny frame was on the bed, the white sheet that was pulled up to her chin had obviously just been changed and seemed to bathe her in an ethereal glow.
“She is sleeping now, Steve, but I don’t expect her to last the night,” Dr. Zahn whispered in my ear.
I glanced at her and wondered for whose benefit she chose to whisper. Everybody in this room—Thalia included—knew what was happening and had experienced it so many times. This was not some sort of secret.
“Are you sure about doing this yourself?” Jon asked.
I had a million things that I could say to what seemed like such a simple question. Instead, I just looked at him. His expression indicated that he got the gist of my thoughts.
“Steve,” Melissa was at my elbow, she had Thalia by the hand, “we’ll be right outside.”
I nodded. One by one, each of them said something to Emily, and then left. I only heard Thalia.
“Bye, sissy. I promise to teach Buster to shake like you wanted.”
How could something that simple be able to break me in half? I held it until I heard the door shut, and then the tears came in a torrent. I prayed to God or whatever is in charge that I would eventually be able to stop.
I have no idea how much time passed, but eventually I was able to breathe again. I wiped the sheen of sweat off of her face with a nearby towel. When I was done, I considered that towel briefly. I was supposed to just place it over her face when she stopped breathing and then there was a spike and a mallet sitting just to my right on the table.
Could it really be that easy? I wondered.
My eyes drifted to the window. I could see the coming clouds that signaled yet another storm. More snow would mean that it would be even harder for the zombies to reach us. It also meant that we would have a rougher go of it if we needed to leave for another food run. And with each passing day, we came closer and closer to being wrapped in a sort of arctic cocoon with no assurances of what we might become by the time we were able to escape it.
“I’m sorry, daddy,” Emily whispered in a voice so faint that I was almost certain that I had imagined it.
I looked down to see her tracer-laced eyes looking up at me. Tears were trickling from them, but instead of looking shiny and bright, they just looked rheumy and sick. I wanted to say something, but the words all died in my throat.
“I’m scared,” Emily whispered, and then her eyes closed again.
I was certain that this was it. I still held the towel in my hand that I was supposed to use to cover her face. I watched her chest, and it continued to rise and fall, but in shorter, more agonizingly small bursts.
I looked at the window once more. A few snowflakes were already starting to fall.
I unfastened the restraints and scooped Emily up in my arms after unlatching the window. A few short minutes later I was wading through the snow and out into the woods. I kept Emily pressed close to me and could still feel her breathing.
She weighed almost nothing in my arms as I pushed myself to move faster. I needed to be as far out into the woods as I could before she stopped breathing. It was like a deadly game of ‘Hot Potato’ at this point.
My only real fear as I pushed on was that I would not realize when she stopped breathing. She would die and come back and tear into me before I knew what had happened. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.
I felt her body shudder once and then go still. My brain was trying to tell me that she would turn instantly. It always took time; maybe a few minutes, maybe hours. But it was never instant. Still, I was embarrassed when I stumbled to a halt and dropped her unceremoniously to the ground.
I drew my blade, knelt down, and pulled the sheet back. I kept repeating to myself over and over that as soon as her eyes opened and I saw what she had become, that I would end it. I kept trying to tell myself that it was an end to her suffering, but how did I know? How do any of us know?
All we know for certain was that once you died, you came back as one of those things. But they did not seem happy or sad any more than the ants in an anthill. We saw them as evil or monstrous because they were a threat to our lives. Yet not one of those things had actively sought me in some way that would lead me to believe it was after me alone. We’d already seen them go after a noise and continue on when whatever had cause that sound had long since moved in another direction. They didn’t hunt us so much as stumble upon our location.
A low moan broke the stillness. I looked down just as Emily’s eyes opened. In them, I tried my hardest to see anything of the little girl that I had come to know and love.
I moved away and watched as she struggled free of the sheet that she had been wrapped in. The snow offered her little help as she broke through the crust and sank in it, momentarily disappearing from view.
Slowly, she rose to her feet. Her head moved in that jerky bird-like fashion and her limbs were like a wind-up toy that was in its last fits before becoming still until wound once more.
“Oh, Emily,” I breathed.
Her head snapped my direction and she seemed to freeze in place. She tilted one way and then the other as if considering me. This was very similar to the behavior of that other child-zombie from outside that compound. Any other zombie would already be stumbling towards me, wanting nothing more than to take a bite out of me. Yet, this zombie that had once been my Emily simply stood and seemed to study me as much as I studied her.
I was careful to keep my hands away from any of the hilts sticking up from my belt. I don’t know what I hoped for. Did I think that she would mouth the words, “Good bye” or something? Yet there I stood, unwilling to draw a weapon and kill the child that I had taken as my own all those months ago.
I remembered all those times of reading to her and Thalia. I remembered that day beside the trench when we discovered the zombie of her dad, Randall Smith. I can still hear every single word she said to him that day as she said farewell to him before we torched the whole bunch.
Yes, I was very aware that this was still a zombie standing just a few feet away. But, so far, she had made no move to attack.
I don’t know how long we stood there, but eventually, she turned her back on me and walked away. I stood there until she had vanished through some trees. Then I stood there some more. I kept waiting for Emily to come back.
It was almost dark by the time I returned home. When I walked through the door, questions came from every side. I ignored them and went to bed. The dreams began almost as soon as my eyes closed.
I dreamt of Emily. Not the zombie, but the little girl. In the dream, she laughed.
Confrontation
(Book 6 of the DEAD series.)
TW Brown
A moment with the author…
As I send this book out to you, I always have those moments of worry and concern. “Will they like it?” I always get that same feeling with any book, but as the DEAD series continues, I find that my worries increase almost exponentially.
Before going much farther, I should say that I am one of those writers who understand that not everything I write will be met with praise. However, if you are reading this…you are heading in to the sixth book of a series. You are not stumbling in blind. (At least I hope not…if for some reason you simply saw this book and it looked interesting, but you have not read any of the others…STOP!) You have been on this ride for a while. You have expectations.
I make no secret that I do this…write these stories for you. I scour the reviews and see what your response is. I wait like a kid at Christmas for those first reviews to pop up on Amazon.com. I check my email more than usual those first few weeks.
Simply put, I love the attention; I eat up the kind words and praise. I wait for those emails that ask for “more” of a certain story so that I can compile my list of areas to attack for the special editions. (I was still surprised that one of the most requested from the first three books in the series was a back story on Garrett.)
When I started this series, I wanted something that was about the people. Sure…there would be plenty of zombie action, but I believe that readers of these stories wanted more than the same old “hole up, defend, be overwhelmed, repeat” formula that appears between far too many book covers with the word “zombie” in the title. I never envisioned Juan becoming a fan favorite, or
how people would absolutely hate Shari.
Along the way, I heard the complaints by some about “too many characters” or “too bleak of an outlook on human nature” by those who did not care for me or the series. They are entitled to their view. Did it change anything? Nope. I kept doing what I set out to do, and by now, many of those people have dried up and gone away. In the meantime, with your help, the last DEAD book, Dead: Siege & Survival hit the Amazon Top 100 in Horror for the first few weeks of its release. It also pushed me into their Top 100 Horror Writers list.
In my mind, it validated my belief that readers of the zombie genre were more than ready to handle huge casts of characters and an unflinching look at humanity. One look at history, or better yet, try the Evening News (pick your favorite network), and I think that you will discover that we can be far scarier than any Hollywood creation.
That having been said, I also believe that we have an enormous capacity for goodness, for selflessness, and for change. Yes, I unleashed Garrett McCormick on an unsuspecting audience. People like Travis Reynolds and Mister Abernathy would crawl out from under their rocks and take full advantage of the chaos. However, there were also the Ian Lothermans, Dillon Clays, and Juan Hoyas of the world who could reinvent themselves into the person that they always wanted to be, but never could stay within the lines.
For this book, Dead: Confrontation, I actually wanted to address a few things. Some of your favorite characters are going to face demons from their past…or even their present. Confrontation will hold a lot of meanings here…and it is intentional. Each of us has had to confront things in our lives, and I believe that this is a universal theme. I also felt it was a nice way to wrap up the first half of the series.
I can’t wait to see where we go next. Believe it or not…I only know the final “fate” of one character in this series. Beyond that, I am as much along for the ride as the rest of you.
Time to offer some thanks. First I must thank my two wonderful beta readers: Vix Kirkpatrick (who is also a very dear friend), and Michele L. Heeder. Beyond that, I think I want to keep it simple. All of the people in my life who I am close to are aware of my feelings for them because I make it a point to tell them often. So I just want to thank you. As you read this (although I really have no idea how many of you bother to suffer through my introductory ramblings since they are mostly just a self-serving monolog that is probably a bit dull to all but me) I want you to know that you continue to inspire me. Your emails and words of support drive me to do my best every minute of the day. Not just as a writer, but as a person. I do read your reviews and emails…and yes, that is actually me replying. Trust me…I am never going to be so big that I would dream of hiring somebody to go through your notes to me. If you took the time to write to me or post a review, then the least I can do is reply personally. So, my thanks to you from the bottom of my heart.