by Brown, TW
The snow was slush and like running in quicksand. It was worse than those dreams you have sometimes where the faster you run, the slower you seem to go. As I crossed the drawbridge, I saw at least a hundred zombies wandering around in the moat.
The last bit was all uphill and I slipped twice. The second time, I shrugged out of my pack and scrambled to my feet. As I reached the parking lot, I found at least fifty dead zombies scattered about. The door to the cabin was open and I felt dread start to squeeze my heart.
Why did I ever leave? I wondered. What was supposed to be a supply run had turned into mass murder and the loss of the best fighters we had. I just could not believe that it was going to end like this. In my heart, I was certain that I would find the last of my friends and people I loved either dead or walking dead inside that cabin.
My feet skidded when I reached the porch and I didn’t need to look down to know I was standing in a puddle of blood. As I looked inside, I saw what I was almost sure was one of the soldiers that Gabe had left behind. He was torn in half and the upper part of him was trying to crawl towards me. Since it was unlikely that he would be catching up to me, I ignored him as I headed down the length of the porch and peeked around the corner. That was the direction that I had heard Thalia.
I hopped the rail and moved down the side of the cabin. When I got to the back, I had a perfect view down to the picnic grounds and the creek…and my friends gathered around an eighteen-wheeler.
It looked like everybody was down there…including Thalia who was standing on the bumper of the truck and pointing up at me. She screamed again, but this time I knew why. I broke into a run, and that is why I never saw the person that lunged out from between two big mounds of snow and knocked me to the ground. We rolled twice and I ended up on top. I already had my machete drawn and had somehow managed the miracle of not only keeping it in my grasp, but also not cutting me or my assailant. That last part was about to be remedied. I put the blade to the person’s throat and froze when I realized it was a girl.
That pause was only for a second though and I pressed the sharpened steel to the exposed, slender throat. The eyes that stared back at me went through a whole bunch of emotions until they finally settled on recognition.
“Billy?”
“Shelly.” I hissed. “I see you have returned. And with zombies again?”
“It’s not what you think,” she tried to explain. The problem was that I had heard it all before.
“Billy Haynes,” a familiar voice snapped from behind me. “Get off that girl this instant.”
“But—” I started to protest.
“I said get off that girl,” Dr. Zahn repeated.
I looked down at her and felt my eyes narrow. This wasn’t over. She stuck her tongue out at me!
“Well, look who decided to show up.”
“Jake?” I spun around. “But…but…”
“Heard a commotion just before sunrise—” he started to explain.
“You never woke me for my watch!” I interrupted.
Jake had the decency to look embarrassed when he spoke. “I fell asleep, kid. I didn’t realize how damn tired I was and drifted off.”
“But I watched…I waited…what happened?”
Jake explained that the “commotion” ended up being Jon—sort of anyways. He had been on our trail when he ran into scouts from some group that had come down to see what all the commotion was about in La Grande. According to these people, that particular compound was suspected in the kidnappings of people from several of the smaller groups in the area. Jon had managed to free a handful of people before he left. One of them was the daughter of a member of the group he had encountered. They demanded that he stay so they could thank him proper with a little celebration. It seems they had an untapped keg of beer…their last one that they had liberated from some small pub and were saving for a special occasion.
Jake insists that they came back for me, but he doesn’t seem to be able to remember exactly when that took place and admits to have consumed a few mugs of the brew before it dawned on him that he had left me alone.
As for why we didn’t meet up or cross paths on my trip home, the forest is a big place. We could have been a hundred yards from each other and not known it. There was a compliment somewhere in the story about how they had been so impressed with not being able to find my trail.
But there were still lots of questions. Why was Shelly here? What had brought all the zombies? And then there was Thalia’s scream.
It turns out that Shelly brought a few friends with her and came asking permission to join the group. The two friends are men. Greg and Dave Carrigan. They are in their thirties, and they are identical twins. They also had a run in with Gabe Winters’ people a month or so ago. Apparently, Winters and his troop were only being partially truthful. Nobody could actually dispute that they were from a base in Utah, however, they were a foraging team for that compound in La Grande. The Carrigan’s had escaped when their small camp was hit just about twenty miles east of here.
Fortunately, the five who had been left behind had not gotten a good look at them and so did not recognize them when they arrived with Shelly. After letting everybody know what the deal was, Dr. Zahn had drugged the five and tied them up.
Which led to the story of the zombies. The Carrigans knew where there was a huge cache of supplies that Winters and his people had stashed. They had gone out for it and drove it back. And that explained the big rig parked down on the backside of the hill. There was no way to get it across the drawbridge, much less up the hill. A large herd had followed them and had to be handled.
The fight had been a rough one by the looks. And I had missed it. Shelly had been on watch at the stand and gone up when she heard the truck arriving. She had started to kill what she thought were just a few stragglers, then the herd came around the corner to the east and she had run to warn everybody.
They had to fall back when over five hundred had made it across the drawbridge. They were actually preparing to try and escape into the woods and make for the fallback location when Jake and Jon arrived a few hours ago and waded into the fight with the people from the group that they had met outside of La Grande.
As we start the clean-up, there are now fifty-seven men, women, and children living here. We don’t have enough room as it stands. The talk is to see about moving down into La Grande. Jon and Jake believe that they might be able to unify other groups and that, within the year, if everybody works together, we could take back the entire city.
It seems that spring might be a very busy season.
Reborn
(Book 7 of the DEAD series)
TW Brown
A moment with the author…
I admit it…I wait like a kid on Christmas morning for that first review to show up on Amazon. Believe it or not, I read every single one. I often try to pass on a word of thanks. You see, that is how I know if my stories are hitting the mark. This deep into the series, you are invested in these stories, and while I know there will always be highs and lows, favorite parts, and bits that fall flat for you…I also know that it is because of YOU that I am able to do what I love. So I encourage you to go in and post that comment that comes to mind when you read this newest DEAD book.
It is hard to believe, but when I first thought out the story for DEAD, I wondered if I could write four books in the series…but then it grew and that world became more real for me (and hopefully you) as I learned more about these people.
I love the zombie genre, but I think it has much smarter readers than those on the outside of our little circle may believe. Sure, we love the cheap thrill and the blood; but we also want to care about the characters. Think of some of the epic series out there…what sets them apart? The characters. They have to be people that you can connect with on some level…and they have to change with their environment. They can’t live in a vacuum. An event like this would have dramatic effects on all who manage to survive.
With the first
year about to come to an end, the zombies are still a problem, but now there is the whole pesky matter of survival. I often feel odd when several days’ worth of writing pass without a single zombie scene, however, I am finally over the compulsion to throw in an obligatory zombie…you are smarter than that, so why would I waste your time. If you are still with me after the first six books, you are here because you want to see what Kevin or Juan is up to…or how Billy is faring as his group seems to have lost its direction.
So, I guess now I can talk about the death of Steve without spoiling anything. First, I did not intend for him to die so soon. I always knew that he would eventually fall. The problem I ran into was that I let him get so beat up…and the reality is that, unless he was a superhero, he had taken too much damage to make it any farther. Some criticism came that it was without enough fanfare. I had to put that story in somebody else’s hands…and I chose Billy. Had I chosen Melissa, all you would have read was weeping and misery. But there would not be much story beyond that. So a teenage boy is your new first-person narrator. He felt Steve’s loss, but in a different way. He’d just lost his best friend when Jamie died…and…he is a teenage boy. His has his own problems. I hope that I can give him a voice of his own and that you will come to love him like you did Steve. But I did warn you a long time ago…there is only one character that I have deemed as “safe” for the duration. I won’t even tell my wife who that is in case you are wondering.
I hope to hear from more of you this time when it comes to the “bonus material” that I will include in the special editions of this series once these next three books are finished. I hear from a core group, and I love that…but don’t be a stranger. If you read something and wonder, “But what happened between point ‘A’ and point ‘C’ in a particular spot. I mean, haven’t you ever seen a movie or read a book and wondered how they got from one place to another? Or something is mentioned in the dialog and you just know there is a story there. Well, now is your chance. I take your input when deciding what scenes to include as I add another ten thousand words or so to the compilation when I separate the three stories into their own books for those who get frustrated with that chapter rotation format that I use. I just figure there should be more in those editions than just the same story that you read in the original.
So, as you settle in to this newest leg of the journey, I hope that you enjoy it. This is the first leg of the next three book arc. Yes, there will be cliff hangers to pull you into book eight (coming in January 2014!), but I will always try to give you closure on the major plot lines by that third book.
I have plenty to be thankful for, and I always try to name a few names. This time I want to give thanks to Mark Tufo and John O’Brien. You both have expressed your belief and support in me as your editor and looked past all those dark clouds. I want to thank Catie Rhodes and Gregory Carrico for carrying on about my stuff on your blogs and making me feel like a star. I want to thank Rhonda Hopkins for her unwavering support. I want to thank Wanda Beers for being so amazing…and yes, Denise and I will be taking you up on that offer in the not-too-distant future. I want to thank Donna Chaney for being my zombie killing buddy, and the only woman that my wife would let me run around with on an island paradise; you handle the roads and I will pilot the waterways. And as always, you for sticking it out and indulging my musings.
TW Brown
August 2013
To Selina Maeder
…thank you for sharing,
and even more for believing.
Contents
Something Wicked…
Vignettes XXXVII
Geek Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts
Nasty Surprises
Vignettes XXXVIII
Geek in the Grave
Purging and Packing Baggage
Vignettes XXXIX
Geeks on the Warpath
Pain and Suffering
Vignettes XL
Rock, Geek, Hard Place
La Grande
Vignettes XLI
You Don’t Mess With The Geek
Life and Death
Vignettes XLII
Geeks on Two Wheels
1
Something Wicked…
The best thing about today is the fact that the damn rain finally seems to have stopped. Beyond that, everything is in the crapper. Thalia beat the snot out of Misty…again. Melissa is ready to pop she is so pregnant—I stay as far away from her as possible for lots of reasons. Jake and Jon left three days ago without a word to ANYBODY! And Dr. Zahn is busy patching up the three new people that arrived last night.
I get to pull double duty on the watch rotation because of the flu that has pretty much everybody else spewing liquid out of one end or the other. The only other person not down with whatever this nasty bug is would be Shelly.
“Didn’t I relieve you?” Shelly asked.
“Yep,” I answered, hoping that I didn’t sound like I was whining. “So, anything worth noting?”
This was the ritual. I had seen a few zombie movies back in the day; I don’t remember any long boring stretches of time where absolutely nothing happened. Reality is seldom as exciting as the movies.
“Actually, yes.” Shelly’s answer was such a departure from the norm that it took my brain a few seconds to register it. “I can’t be positive, but I am pretty sure that I have seen a single zombie walking our perimeter. It hasn’t tried to come in past the trees.”
Taking my binoculars, I scan the tree line slowly. A few times I pause, thinking that I saw something, but each time, it turned out to be nothing but a bush or shadow.
By the time I finished my scan, Shelly had already slipped through the trap door and was gone. Settling in on the uncomfortable bench seat, I started my watch. Looking out, I can actually see patches of ground starting to show. Honestly, I didn’t think that the snow would ever melt. This is the main focus of our watch lately—the grounds surrounding the area. It has been a while, but those initial days when it started to warm up, we began finding the creepers. Who knows how many we discovered the first few days when the rains were coming down hard and washing away a majority of the snow that had to be at least eight feet deep—and that did not include the places where we dug the tunnels.
I still shudder thinking how many times we walked right over those things. It is a wonder that the only casualty that we suffered was that poor girl, Emily. And even worse, I was on the detail that dug most of those passages we made to allow us at least some limited access outside of the cabin. I was probably passing by dozens of them every single day.
Today, a steady and strong wind is coming out of the west. I can’t be sure, but I almost swear that I can smell something rotten. It has to be just me; otherwise I am sure Shelly would have mentioned it during turnover. Still, I will keep a majority of my concentration looking that direction. I don’t want to be daydreaming when a herd comes tromping into our camp.
That is just another reason that I hope folks hurry up and get over this flu or whatever it is that they are all down with at the moment. It would really be a good idea to send a few people out that direction to at least take a look.
Just as I drop my binoculars and pop open my canteen, I catch a glimpse of something moving just inside the darkest shadows of the trees. I bring the glasses back up and try to zero in on where I saw it.
Nothing.
If I didn’t know better, I would swear that, if this was in fact a zombie, it was screwing with me. Us…if I included Shelly. I searched for what felt like forever, but was really probably nothing more than ten minutes.
“I’m seeing things,” I muttered.
Picking up my canteen that I had forgotten about in those few minutes of mental fatigue, or whatever it was, I took a long drink. When I lowered it, I momentarily became a cartoon character. I say that because I am almost positive that, if you had been observing me, you would have seen my eyes pop out of my head about three feet. Oh yeah, and I spit out a mouthful of water.
Standing at the edge of the clearing was a lone walker. I knew it had to be a zombie because, while it had warmed up in the past few days enough to start melting and washing away the snow, it was still pretty dang cold and this figure was stark naked.
I had no idea how well it could see—or if zombies actually ‘saw’ anything with those white-filmed, bloodshot-with-black eyes. Still, even from this far away, I could swear that it was looking right at me. I don’t mean that it was looking around at the huge cabin welcome center that we called home. I mean that this thing was looking at me up in the crow’s nest. I felt a chill ripple through me and I was overcome with the urge to pee.
Keeping my eyes on it, I felt around with the toe of my boot for the handle of the trapdoor. Flipping it open, I whispered as loud as possible, “Hey…anybody down there?”
“What’s going on, Billy?” a voice drifted up from below. It sounded like Jamal. He was one of the new arrivals and probably the closest to my age of the bunch. I hoped Dr. Zahn would clear these newest group members to stand watch soon.
“Can you come up here for just a moment?”
“Sure, let me grab my coat.”
I left the door open and moved back to the rail and brought up my glasses to take another look at this zombie. It looked like a girl with long hair that went a few inches past the shoulders. Most of her midsection had been torn apart. Now that I was looking at her with my binoculars, I could make out what I was pretty sure had to be the remnants of a bra, but there was so much gunk caked on her that it was more of an outline. Honestly, the closer I looked, she didn’t actually seem old enough to be wearing a bra. If I was forced to guess, I put her at eleven or twelve years old.
“What’s up?” Jamal said over my shoulder. I jumped a little and almost dropped my binoculars. “Something gotcha spooked?”