DEAD Series [Books 1-12]

by Brown, TW

  “Damn,” Trent whispered. “How many you think are in this zombie mob?”

  “A few hundred at least,” Heather said dismissively.

  “You make it sound like no big deal.”

  “It isn’t if they don’t know where you are. Zombies are stupid and easy to distract. The problem is that most people panic. That makes them do something rash like run into someplace where they get trapped,” Heather said matter-of-factly.

  “You ain’t even a little scared?” Rose asked. “I been jumped by gangs, attacked by angry girlfriends…and for the past several months, I’ve lived in a graveyard, but when those things had me cornered, I was so afraid…I am pretty sure I wet my pants.” Trent glanced over with a raised eyebrow. Rose met his look with one of her own. “Don’t you be acting all tough…you don’t think I smell your little accident?”

  “Enough!” Heather snapped. “We don’t have time for this. We have a clear path and need to go now.”

  Without waiting, Heather scurried to the corner of the building in a half crouch. She peeked around and waved for the other two to follow. Without looking she disappeared around the corner.

  Rose and Trent took off, the sounds of the head of the zombie parade coming up on their heels. By the time they reached the corner, Heather was halfway to the doors; she was using the trees and bushes for cover, and was now almost even with the last couple of stragglers at the tail end.

  Both of them jumped when they heard shouting. It took them a moment to figure out that it was Aleah. Obviously she was on top of the building and had moved back to the rear of the school. She was trying to pull the zombies’ attention away from pursuing her friends on the ground.

  The two finally made it inside, easing the door shut behind them. Heather was standing there waiting and had her finger to her lips. As quietly as possible, the barrier was put back into place against the door.

  The trio headed up the stairs, each of them feeling an overwhelming sense of exhaustion as the adrenaline ebbed and eventually dissipated.

  As soon as they were on the top floor, Heather spun with an angry expression. “What the hell were you thinking, Rose?”

  “I—” she started.

  “You better have a damn good reason for leaving the other group…like they had better all be dead!” Heather paused, a stricken look crossing her features. “They aren’t all dead are they?”

  “No, but—” Rose began, but was cut off once more.

  “You could have gotten yourself killed…and all of us in the process. How can you have lived so long into this and still be so stupid?”

  “I’m not st—”

  “Trent almost got torn apart trying to save you, and you better hope that mob wanders off. If they close in on this building, they will draw others in no time and Kevin is in no shape to move, which means we either abandon him and hope for the best, or we wade out into a few hundred zombies and hope we can take them all down…or we run.”

  “I know, bu—”

  “You struck me as somebody smarter than this,” Heather scolded.

  “I—” Rose took a deep breath when she got cut off again. She was not used to this sort of thing and she could feel some of her “old self” starting to creep to the forefront.

  “Why on earth would you come here and bring a gee dee herd of zombies on your heels, that—” Heather was angrier than she had been in a long time. And for some reason, this girl wasn’t saying a single thing to make her any less mad.

  “Heather!” Aleah called as the trap door that led to the roof was opened and a set of legs started down the ladder. “Gather everything we can carry. I will need Trent to help me, we have to leave!”

  Everybody turned to face the woman as she let go and dropped the rest of the way to the floor. Her face was flushed and her eyes were wide.

  “What is it?” Trent asked hesitantly; he was not sure he really wanted the answer by the expression on her face.

  “Millions!” Aleah breathed. “That little group was just the trickle of the leading edge.”

  “That was what I was trying to tell you!” Rose spat. “We were just north of some huge highway merge Interstates…Ninety and Ninety-four, I think. Catie had climbed up the ruins of some apartment building that looked like it had taken a direct hit with a missile or something. Half of it was gone, but there was this open stairwell, like an emergency fire exit or something that still stood and went up six or seven stories.

  “I was down on the road…fourteen damn lanes, and that wasn’t counting the emergency lanes, never in my life have I seen anything like it, but anyways, Catie went up. We knew right away that she saw something bad because she didn’t even stay up there very long and she was coming down fast.”

  “So where is everybody else?” Trent beat Heather and Aleah to the question.

  “That’s just it, we started to head…I think it was west, but then we got into this neighborhood with a bunch of tall buildings that were packed in close. We were arguing about finding a place to hide until the zombies passed, but Catie had said no to everyplace up to this point because she said there were more than she had ever seen before and we needed to be inside someplace big, and there was this hospital, Saint Bernard’s. When we saw it, Sean and Deanna took off with a bunch of the kids, and that was when it started to rain fire.”

  Everybody was looking at her with confusion. Rose sighed. “Not literally, but there was obviously a group or gang in the hospital that were using it as a camp or something. They started tossing flaming bottles at us. That was when the entire group started to panic. It didn’t help when the first couple of bottles hit some of the kids. They started to scream and it was like zombies had been just waiting for us…they came out from every direction.

  “Sean grabbed Deanna, I saw it because he was right ahead of me when it happened. He grabbed her hand as she was trying to help one of the little girls get loose from a zombie that had crawled out from under a three car wreck. He yanked her away and when she tried to resist…he punched her in the face and she just dropped. I was about to knock him down and try to wake up Deanna…and then it just seemed like zombies were everyplace. People were being pulled down all around me.

  “I guess that was when whoever was inside the hospital grew a conscience…they must have realized that we were mostly just kids. A few of them came rushing out, but I could tell it was not a group decision because there were others inside that were yelling at the ones who came to help. People were dying everywhere, just like back in the beginning, like what we had seen on television.

  “Catie just showed up. She was covered in blood and I have no idea how much if any was hers, but she grabbed me by the shoulders and told me to run. When I pointed to Sean carrying Deanna away, she just told me to forget it and to run for my life.”

  “And just you? I mean nobody else made it?” Trent asked, the skepticism very clear in his voice.

  “I can’t even begin to tell you how bad things went and just how fast. It was crazy. One minute we were moving along, then we were running, then we get attacked, and to finish it off, zombies seemed to pop up out of the ground. I still can’t believe that I got away.”

  “It doesn’t seem that you did,” Aleah said. “With what I saw headed this direction, those zombies must have been on your tail the whole way.”

  “That’s just it, they weren’t,” Rose insisted. “It was like there was somebody else out there helping them. Something was keeping them on my tail.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Heather said with a dismissive shake of her head.

  “Well we don’t have time to talk about it.” Aleah stepped between the two girls. “We have to go. My best guess is that we have twenty minutes before the main body of that zombie flood comes rolling through this area.”

  “Like I said before,” Trent mumbled, “you guys have too much going on. In the short time I’ve been with you, I’ve seen warring factions fighting, bombs blowing up, and now this…a city’s worth of zo
mbies being magically led to where we are hiding out in some sort of oasis that is stocked better than the compound I lived in but miraculously empty.”

  “If you have a problem with things…go! Nobody is forcing you to stay here!” Heather spun on the man with anger brimming over with enough vehemence to cause the man to take a step back.

  “I was just making an observation.” Trent raised his hands in surrender.

  “Last time,” Aleah barked, “we don’t have time for this garbage.”

  She turned and headed down the hallway to where Kevin was tucked in to one of the cots. She stopped cold in the doorway so suddenly that Heather collided into her back.

  “What the—” Heather began.

  Aleah stepped forward and allowed Heather to see what had caused her to come to such an abrupt halt.

  “Son of a bitch,” Heather gasped.

  15

  Welcome to Island City

  I felt the world fade in around me. I shoved away the feelings of disappointment. Despite the emotions I had battling in my head, I knew for a fact that I did not truly wish to be dead.

  I opened my eyes, prepared to see the familiar sights of the small room I’d come to in the last time. Instead, this was a large open room with a series of bunk beds along the walls. I was in the bottom bunk in the bed that was in the corner farthest from the door.

  Sunlight streamed in through the window and gave the entire room a warm glow. I did not have the pounding headache of last time, nor was there an IV plugged in to my body.

  Something felt strange and it took me a few moments to realize that I felt clean. Sweeping aside the blankets, I was surprised to discover that I was in clean clothes; a simple set of red sweats, but they were clean.

  My eyes scanned the room and I saw that a few of the beds were showing signs that the occupants were stirring. Over by one of the windows, Melissa was sitting in a rocking chair feeding her baby. Things seemed almost…normal.

  Swinging my legs over and coming up to a sitting position, I took a better look. I was relieved to see that everybody was here. The odd thing was that I was not surprised. For some inexplicable reason, I felt that these people were not out to hurt us.

  Melissa heard me stirring and glanced over with a smile and a small wave. I returned it and then busied myself with making my bed. Why, once they had children, did women suddenly forget that their boobs were a part of the female body that most men found arousing?

  Once I finished making my bed, I walked over to the only door. I was a little surprised that it was unlocked. I had expected us to be under some sort of confined lockup until we were sworn in or whatever it was that these people did to make newcomers part of their community.

  I stepped out into the hallway to discover that we were in an actual house; from the looks, a pretty nice one at that. I grew up in what I considered a “normal” neighborhood. However, there were some kids in our class that lived houses that made you feel uncomfortable the moment you walked inside. This was one of those types of houses.

  I opened the door across the hall from our big bedroom and found another bedroom almost as big. It had an open closet door that revealed an empty walk-in that was about the size of my bedroom growing up; so yeah…this was a pretty nice place.

  I walked in and looked out the window to see that I was in fact on the second floor. This particular room looked out over what I thought might have once been a golf course. I saw dozens of people outside. It looked like they were setting up long rows for planting stuff.

  Heading down the hall, I found one more bedroom, almost as big as the one our group had been set up in, and a bathroom. I was surprised to discover that there was a portable camping toilet set up inside and a bucket of water and bar of soap next to the sink. In a neat row, still in the packages were ten toothbrushes and a tube of honest-to-goodness toothpaste. There was also a stack of folded towels. I didn’t count them, but I was almost willing to bet there would be ten of those as well.

  After availing myself of everything this room had to offer, I headed down the stairs. The living room was huge and had a couch that looked like it would hold our entire group plus a few extras. A fireplace on the wall to my left had a campfire sized blaze going in it. There was what I bet had once been a pretty amazing kitchen with all its shiny surfaces and even a flame grill built in to the stove. A long table filled the adjoining dining room, and I was once again not surprised to discover that it would seat all of us.

  There was a sliding glass door that opened out onto a porch. I stepped outside and was hit with a blast of cool, fresh air that made my skin get all goose pimply.

  It was sunny out, but there was still just a little lingering bite to the air that said winter had not left all that long ago. Rubbing my arms, I was actually enjoying the feeling of the coolness on my skin when I heard something off to my right. My hand instinctively went to my hip where I found…nothing. I wasn’t wearing a weapon! But then, why should I be? I had just climbed out of bed.

  “Easy, Mister Haynes,” a male voice called out with a laugh. A tall man finished shutting the gate and then turned to me with a smile on his face. I did not recognize him at all. “My name is Graham Setzer. I am here to answer your questions and to help you get settled in to our little community.”

  My eyes scanned for weapons and was surprised to discover that he had nothing more than a belt knife. Despite my lapse in personal security, I could not ever imagine reaching a point where I would be comfortable if I did not have a machete or large-bladed weapon on my person.

  I looked past him to see if he might have a few “helpers” in tow. I could not imagine that he would show up alone…and so scantily armed. It dawned on me that we were not really that much of a threat. In fact, besides Levent, I was the only male in the bunch! How in the hell had that happened?

  “I see you are still just a bit cautious. That’s fine,” Graham said as he walked up the three stairs that led to the raised porch.

  He grabbed a chair and pulled it away from the round deck table, taking a seat and folding his hands in his lap. Looking around once more and finding nobody, I took the chair opposite from him and sat down. I clasped my hands in front of me on the table and fixed him with what I figured was probably a look of confusion.

  “I imagine that you most likely have quite a few questions, so let me give you the rundown first, and then I will answer anything that you have left.” Graham produced a canteen and twisted off the top, taking a big drink.

  I could smell it. And seeing the steam waft from the little opening was almost hypnotic. I had almost forgotten what coffee smelled like, much less how it tasted. When he handed his canteen across the table, I almost thought my hands would start shaking.

  “We got lucky…found a Mill Stone delivery truck on the interstate a few months back. Some of the stuff on the edges was ruined, but further in everything was fine. You should have seen us…I think a few people actually cried,” Graham said with a smile as I let the aroma waft up my nostrils.

  “I didn’t think I would ever see coffee again,” I admitted. Then, unable to draw it out any longer, I took a sip.

  It was black and bitter, just how I drank it. In fact, I used to tease Jamie for adding cream and sugar. I told him that was exactly how my mom drank it. I suddenly missed my friend almost as much as I had those first few days.

  “So, the first thing that you should know is that this place is called Island City,” Graham began to speak while I closed my eyes and bit the inside of my mouth to keep from crying. “Nothing clever or anything in regards to the name. It is actually what this area was called before the groaners—”

  “Groaners?” I opened my eyes and raised my eyebrows in question.

  “We know the popular thing is to call them zombies, but for some reason groaners simply stuck. Anyways…when all of this insanity started, several of the members of the La Grande Country Club got together. Among them were owners of a few of the bigger local construction companies an
d a handful of ranchers, They made decisions and brought in as many of their employees as possible.

  “Here is the part that is kind of funny. Linda Marshall, the owner of Marshall Builders was a closet horror fan. She even used to go to that big convention in San Diego every year. She was the one who made everybody watch this movie called Dawn of the Dead. Here we were, world crumbling, everything going to hell and she has three hundred or so people in the reception room of the country club watching a movie with that goofy dad from Modern Family and Ving Rhames.

  “When it was over, she gets up in front of the whole group and says that we needed to make a choice right then about if we wanted to live. That night, we were bringing in big rigs, earth movers, pile drivers, dozers and cement mixers. I think a few of the men might have cried when all those babies ended up being parked on the golf course.

  “Anyways, the first thing we did is empty all of our offices of things like maps and city plans. We wanted to have an idea of what it would entail to secure the entire area from Interstate 84 on the west, Buchannon Lane to the south, the Grande Ronde River to the north and then a continuous line south using East 5th Street.” Graham pulled out a piece of paper that was sealed in laminate from his vest and laid it on the table.

  I leaned in and was a bit surprised to see a Google Earth satellite image of the La Grande area including a lot of the valley. He traced a section with his finger and repeated the borders. It was overwhelming.

  “We took in folks from the city of La Grande those first days, but not as many as we would have thought.” Now Graham was sitting back in his chair. I could see his eye sort of glaze over as he sunk in the memory. “Saw a few convoys of military vehicles pass through heading north on I-84. I guess we didn’t rate them slowing down to see if they could help. Then there were the fires and the night the power failed for good. Each one was its own part of the whole thing, but I still see them as a single event.”

  “So you have been taking in people from the beginning?” I asked.