by SP Durnin
Praise for Keep Your Crowbar Handy
"...There's a reason the characters, and the reader, will want to keep that crowbar handy...!"
-Tony Monchinski, author of I KILL MONSTERS and the critically acclaimed EDEN novels.
"KYCH is a rollercoaster ride of action, adventure, suspense, horror, gore, and personal relationships at the end of the world as we know it. If this is only the first book in the series then hold on to your socks, the rest will blow them off!"
-James Jackson, survivalist/weapons advisor and author of UP FROM THE DEPTHS.
"...S.P. Durnin manages to bring a shining light into the quivering darkness of the apocalypse...!"
-Michael S. Gardner, author of DOWNFALL and BETRAYAL.
"...The humor is great, the survivors are fun to follow and each truly speaks with a voice of their own."
-Stuart Conover, via ScienceFiction.com.
"...I found myself hooked into the book early on and kept getting mad that I had to stop reading it to do things like work at my day job, sleep, and tend to other annoying but necessary interruptions."
-Richard Baker of Zedprep.com
"...a high-action story of survival, love, betrayal and sacrifice. If you enjoy the zombie genre then you’ll definitely enjoy this book!"
-Tiffany Clark, via Zombie and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction Fan Club.
"...keeps you intrigued from start to finish. SP Durnin’s writing style is compelling and he clearly enjoys creating vivid characters and story sequences..."
-Patrick S. Dorazio, author of THE DARK TRILOGY.
"...S.P. Durnin takes you on a wild ride through the Zombie Apocalypse, all the while showing us both the best of people, and the worst of people. If you like Zombies, you will love this book! "
-Cedric Nye, author of THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH ZOMBIES
A PERMUTED PRESS book
Published at Smashwords
ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-61868-314-4
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-117-315-1
Keep Your Crowbar Handy copyright © 2014
by SP Durnin
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Roy Migabon
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from The Chronicles of Jacob O’Connor
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
About the Author
Dedication
For Tonia… Love you, wife.
Acknowledgements
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank some people even though they already know who they are—those who through aid, advice, and support (which sometimes entailed putting a swift boot upside my butt-cheek) got the crowbar swinging: Tony (The Beast) Monchinski, Sara (Baconhugs!) Beverage, J.L.Bourne, Bowie V. Ibarra, Michael (Our Benevolent Overlord) Wilson, Bobbie Metevier (who didn't lynch me after editing this novel!) James R. Jackson, Michael S. Gardner, Roy Migabon (for an awesome cover!) Shawn (Walking Corpse) Riddle, and John (The Camel Spider) Brewer.
Also, special thanks to my Beta (reader) Corps: Tim (Good Stuff) Wendt, Keith (Jitterfreak!) Rogers, Anthony (X!) Masten, and Leslie B. Foster (See? Told ya you'd make it into the book, kid.)
You guys kick ass.
-S.P.
I'm sure—in the years to come—there will be people who claim they know what caused it all.
I can also tell you that each and every one of these big-brained, pencil-pushing assholes is full of it.
They'll say it was the government. Maybe a terrorist attack that went horribly wrong and started the whole mess. They might tell you it was "divine retribution" for our sins or "Mother Nature" striking back. They might even say, "Hell was full, so the dead started returning." I'm sure some will claim it was caused by a space-borne virus which survived for millions of years in an absolute vacuum, then fiery entry through the Earth's atmosphere, which brought humanity to the edge of extinction.
All bullshit.
Nobody knows why it started. To be frank—at this point— nobody gives a rat's ass. Why isn't really important when your every waking moment is spent trying to survive.
So, before you decide to ask, "Why?" (Which would cause me to slap you repeatedly about the head and shoulders), you need to realize that a better question would be, "Why not?"
So, I won't tell you what to believe about our actions.
I'll leave the moral arguments up to you.
Hopefully, because of our sacrifices, there will be a generation left alive to condone or condemn them...
–excerpt from, The Chronicles of Jacob O'Connor: Year Zero
Prologue
Tracy Dickson's shoes were crippling her.
Mostly because she'd broken the heel off one of her pricy Manolo pumps about two minutes and half a block prior. She silently cursed—for the forty-eighth time—Mike Barron's parents for ever doing the dance of the two-backed beast that caused a miserable jerk like him to be spawned in the first place and took off the now-ruined heels to mince her way down the street.
She'd believed everything people had told her about Mike. That he was charming, sexy, driven, great in the sack, and an all-around swell guy. She'd spent the entire day getting ready for their second date. Having her hair done at Penzone along with the truly agonizing bikini wax. Doing both her finger and toenails at home because she'd blown her extra cash on the bikini wax. Picking out the right little black dress and spending about an hour primping before Mike cabbed over to pick her up.
At dinner everything was great. Tracy, Mike, Carly, Nathan, and Shannon ate sushi and sipped Dom at Arrow, one of the bistros in the Market district that all those city-beat, local-printed papers rave about constantly. Mike was attentive, listened to her when she spoke, and seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say.
She believed this, because his eyes didn't glaze over every time she began to talk.
They strolled, half buzzed already, about five blocks downtown to the Rim. It had become the place to go ever since the grand opening about three weeks prior. It boasted the best martinis anywhere in town and the sweatiest, heaviest bass-thumping, all-but-screwing-your-brains-out-on-the-floor, rave-style dance music this side of the Mississippi.
Shannon's father had developed half the neighborhood over the last three years, so she had carte blanche at most of the clubs within that six block radius. Owners and bartenders treated her like the heir apparent, and rightly so. No one wanted to piss off the landlord by treating his daughter like the rest of the sheeple. So their group breezed past the queue, through the velvet ropes under the envious eyes of those stuck outside for at least another hour, and into techno-neon heaven.
Tra
cy enjoyed the next couple of hours. The bass was heavy enough to pulverize your bones. The Jaeger flowed freely, and Mike confirmed that he could dance almost as well as anyone in the place. The fact that he did it with his shirt half off, showing his perfect Bowflex body was in no way unappealing either.
The night didn't turn sour until Tracy was coming back from the ladies room with Carly. As they made their way past the bar, they noticed Mike sprinkling powder into her martini and casually tossing the empty capsule down the back of the booth's curved seat. Tracy knew Carly had seen what he'd done from the look on her face. Tracy's jaw all but hit the floor and she made a beeline for Mike with murder in her heart, fully intending to stab him in the jugular with her eyeliner. After recalling the tales of prison hos she'd read about online, however, Tracy opted for a different course of action. Instead, she acted as if she was going to take a sip, paused and hurled the contents of her glass in his face.
Things turned ugly after that.
In no small way due to the fact that when Tracy asked Carly to confirm what they'd both witnessed, her friend told Tracy to stop causing a scene. Discounting the fact that Mike Barron had just tried to dose her with the current date-rapist's drug of choice.
Tracy screamed that Mike was a fucking rapist.
Mike yelled that Tracy was an uptight bitch.
The bouncers tossed them both out for throwing beer bottles at each other and a joyous time was had by all.
Mike turned and began to walk back uptown as he planned to visit another club. He was sure he could salvage the night due to its abundance of coeds usually drinking away their tuition...
Tracy began walking the other way in the vain attempt to catch a cab downtown at 1:22 a.m. on a Friday night. If she hadn't been so focused on being Barbie-doll perfect, she would have remembered to grab her cellphone when she left her two-bedroom apartment, run downstairs, and dived into the cab earlier.
It wouldn't have mattered really. It's not like she could've called a cab. She could only just afford her crappy little place and didn't have much to spare. She'd been forced to take a job pushing make-up to do so. She had to work before her parents would open up the near limitless coffers of the family accounts to her. You need to know the value of a dollar, they'd said.
What a crock, she'd thought.
Tracy was certain she could bat her eyes, jiggle a bit, and talk her way past the door guy. If all else failed she could always give him oral. But she shuddered at the thought of crawling back to the others to beg them to loan her cab fare. So fighting the sting of betrayal, she continued westward, feeling like the last person on earth in the empty streets, but with her dignity still partially intact. Two blocks later, while trying not to step on broken glass, she noticed the homeless guy staggering out of the alley just ahead. He moved stiffly, like he'd just guzzled a fifth of Thunderbird and wasn't prepared for the kick that comes with downing far too much cheap rotgut. Tracy swerved to one side to let him continue on towards wherever he was going to sleep it off, but the man stumbled towards her again. She angled left to get out of his path and again the drunk oriented on her, continuing to advance.
This was the last straw. After learning the guy she'd believed to be Prince Charming was really just a slimy toad in a silk shirt, getting the brush off from her supposed friends, and walking barefoot for the last three blocks, Tracy was in a truly bitchy state of mind.
"I don't have any change, so fuck off!" she said.
The homeless guy kept coming.
"Look, asshole," Tracy fumed, "I've had a really shitty night so…"
Then the smell hit her. It was like putting your nose about six inches over fresh road kill.
What the hell did this guy do? She thought. Shit himself and roll around in rotten hamburger?
He drew a few steps closer before Tracy noticed things about him that didn't add up.
She could smell the horrible funk preceding him. It was really bad. No matter how drunk he was, how could he stand it? His jaw was hanging slack, but his eyes were focused on her. His clothes were covered in filth and grime, but that looked a lot like a Ralph Lauren suit he was wearing. Tracy frowned at the thought of someone giving a three thousand dollar suit to the Salvation Army thrift store. She was all about helping her fellow man, but that was going just a bit too far.
Then he started to moan. A dry, rasping, painful sound. It sent a chill up her spine. He reached for her, and Tracy decided it was time to take steps.
She swung back her purse like a major league hitter and slammed it across his face. Usually, when someone went into hysterics, a good, sharp slap in the pie-hole sobered them up quick. Reasoning the same would work against somebody smashed out of their mind on malt liquor, she put some authority into her swing.
The impact knocked the vagrant to the left, away from her and head first into the front of a brownstone. There was a definite crunch as his face met the bricks and Tracy winced.
Then he turned towards her again.
She gaped at the ruin of his face. The man's nose was obviously broken and all but smashed flat against his upper lip. She also saw the stumps of at least four incisors shattered so badly that they were little more than bumps in his gums. There was little blood, and what did seep came from where part of his cheek and lip had been scraped away. It looked like foul, half congealed, dark honey. Bone showed on his right cheekbone where a good amount of flesh had been sloughed off, but the vagrant showed no sign he even noticed. What she'd mistaken for oil or maybe sewage all over the left side of his suit was actually blood from a crater-sized hole in his neck just over his jugular. She saw all this as, with the same rasping moan, he pushed away from the wall to come at her again, arms outstretched.
Bare feet forgotten, Tracy backpedaled until her butt hit the door of a rust-toned Chrysler displaying a pair of expired meter tickets. The vagrant closed the distance between them, the remainder of his lips pulling back from broken teeth in a feral snarl. She jigged to the left and attempted to catch him off balance, but his reflexes didn't respond fast enough for the move to work, and she almost hit him square as she dodged right again. His hand caught her forearm, and Tracy felt the first icy fingers of panic clutch at her. He was trying to pull her arm towards his mouth. She grabbed her attacker by the throat, digging her fingernails into his skin and the tissue beneath in an attempt to cut off his air. This did no good. He began to snap at her like a mad dog.
Tracy realized this lunatic wasn't going to come out if it. Her fingers were so deep in his neck she couldn't see her nails anymore. His flesh felt cool and faintly slimy, not the way someone's skin should normally feel. She reached full-blown, freaking-out panic. The blood running down her wrist was like cool syrup and stank of rot.
She kneed him in the nuts.
This was bad for two reasons. The first was that the force of her patella slamming into his genitals didn't seem to cause any discomfort and served to bend him over, almost knocking her to the sidewalk.
The second was the vagrant bending over caused her to lose her grip on his neck and ram her right hand into his mouth, allowing him to sink what was left of his teeth into her palm.
Shock held off the pain for a few seconds as Tracy watched him try to bite deeper into her flesh, but the gap in his teeth prevented him from taking out the chunk. She was able to see the blood from her hand slide back over his bloated tongue, however.
Then the pain hit. It was so intense Tracy almost vomited up the overpriced sushi she'd consumed earlier in the night. It felt like...like someone had tried to take a big fucking bite out of her hand!
Raw survival instinct kicked in, and in a move born of desperation she brought her left leg up, silently thanking her mother for forcing her through years of ballet, and kicked him in the chest. The blow caused the vagrant to take three tottering steps backwards, before he tripped over the trash can that blocked the basement stairs to the brownstone's lower door and fell. He disappeared down the concrete steps, followed by the tras
h can, finally coming to rest with a wet twak sound, just past the floor drain at the bottom.
He didn't get up again.
His skull had lost its battle with the second to last step and grey matter was smeared across the landing. It coated the back of his already-destroyed Ralph Lauren suit, blended with the filth, and created a foul paste that would make it necessary for the police to use a shovel to pry him from the sidewalk and into the body bag the next morning.
Tracy never knew any of this. She had already bolted down the sidewalk, aware of nothing but her avenue of escape.
She never knew the vagrant's name was Carl Davis. She never knew he'd been on his way home from work two days earlier and decided to take a shortcut past the river walk where he and his wife first met. She never knew he'd jumped down the bank when he saw someone struggling out of the water to try to help them. She never learned the woman he'd been trying to help had torn out his jugular before he shoved her rotted form back into the river. She never guessed that as he had lain in the mud dying, Carl hoped he'd pushed the horror far enough back into the current so that it wouldn't be able to claw its way back. She'd never suspect his wife was waiting to tell him that, after almost two years of trying, they were finally going to decide what color to paint the nursery.
Tracy ran twenty-two blocks like a demon was howling at her heels. She never looked back.
The pain in her hand was blinding. All she could think of was to get home. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad. She could clean it out, apply some Bactine, and keep her hand covered for a couple of weeks.