The Shores Of The Dead: Omnibus Edition

by Josh Hilden

  They approached Benny’s house and Kyle slowed the car. There was no vehicle in the driveway and the door was closed. The Millett’s lived in the smallest house in the entire subdivision, a single story ranch with no garage and a scrap of yard. Mrs. Millett always kept it as neat as pin, bright and cheery. Mr. Millett lived in Columbus. Benny had seen him twice in the last four years. He once told Kyle that if he never saw the drunken asshole again it would be too soon.

  “Want to pop in and see if your Mom is there?” Kyle asked, he was pretty sure that she wasn’t but the offer had to be made. He really liked Danielle Millett, she always treated him like a member of the family even though his Mom considered the Millett’s “Poor White Trash”.

  “No man, she was in Lexington visiting my Aunt when this shit started. I hope they just hunkered down and waited.” He said the tag bit quietly, and Kyle pretended that he’d not heard it.

  They continued to creep down the street. After encountering the Dead everywhere, Kyle was a little surprised not to see any as they ghosted through what had once been a nice place to live. The Parker house was a brown and yellow tri-level that backed on the woods surrounding German Hills like a fist leaving only one road in or out. The house was dark, but that wasn’t what got Kyle’s hackles up. Mrs. Parker’s beat up blue pickup truck was parked across the front lawn with the door hanging open.

  “Didn’t you say that Little said her mom hadn’t come home. That she couldn’t even get a hold of her?” Benny asked. He still had a slurred quality to his speech that Kyle thought meant he had a concussion, but his words were quick and concise.

  “That’s what she said.” Kyle fought the urge to laugh thinking of the old word game, the one where you added “That’s what she said!” in a naughty voice to make anything instantly funny. There was no humor in him as he pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine.

  2

  The Parker Residence

  6:10am EST

  They approached the front door. Kyle had the pistol raised and Benny was hefting the crowbar. The last thing Kyle wanted to do was fire the gun. The noise would draw the attention of any of the dead lurking in the neighborhood or the adjacent park and woods. His heart was hammering and the blood in his veins was saturated with enough adrenaline to kill a good sized dog. He had no intention of letting any of those things get anywhere near him.

  “Oh shit Kye,” Benny said, pointing to the open door with the tip of the crowbar. There was blood dried on the handle, and a big bloody palm print on the door itself. Hanging from the knob was a set of bloody keys.

  “Damnit!” Kyle exclaimed and then pushed the door all of the ways open. That was when they both heard a noise. It was the low repetitive pounding of a fist against something hard. Not metal but probably wood.

  The sound was coming from the second floor.

  “Kye, let me go first. I’d rather have you covering me than the other way around.” Benny said. If Benny Millett had one quality that set him apart from other people, it was his calmness in stressful situations.

  Even if he doesn’t have a skateboard handy. Kyle thought.

  They walked to the stairs and Benny slowly began to climb them. The sound got louder as they climbed. The house was dark and Kyle saw the light switch for the upstairs landing and had to make a decision. Either go up there in the dark, and hope that the thing that had probably been Mrs. Parker less than a day ago wouldn’t see them, or turn on the light and use their clear vision to their advantage. He flipped the switch and the pounding stopped.

  Both of them halted, Kyle at the base of the steps and Benny two thirds of the way up, when the low guttural moan broke the silence of the house. Kyle knew that the sound shouldn’t have been scarier than some kid doing the same thing with a sheet over their head at Halloween, but the moaning dead seemed to touch a primal part of the human brain. If he had time to think about it, Kyle may have concluded that it was an area associated with but slaved to the “Fight or Flight” center.

  Kyle wanted to run.

  Benjamin Millett wanted to fight!

  “Ben no, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” Kyle screamed as he too began to take the stairs two at a time and in a dead run.

  Benny hit the top landing and turned right, he stopped for a second and then screamed an incoherent war cry, “Arrahhhgg!!!” before charging down the hall with the crowbar raised. There was a sickening crunching sound followed by a heavy thump just as Kyle hit the landing himself. His pistol was outthrust and sweat running down his face in sheets despite the cold air.

  On the floor in front of the shaking Ben Millett was a corpse with a smashed in skull. It was of a woman, that much was obvious from the breasts and the type of clothing it was wearing, but that was all that was certain. The woman that Kyle knew was Mrs. Parker had no face. It appeared to have been badly burnt along with the front of her blouse.

  Kyle walked up to Benny and put his hand lightly on his friend’s shoulder. Benny whirled around and for a fraction of a second Kyle looked into his eyes and thought “Oh God he’s gonna kill me!” but the cloudy not quite there look cleared and Benny’s body became less rigid. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded normal again. It was not the Nordic berserker voice that had issued from his throat 30 seconds before.

  “I knew that if I didn’t just fucking do it, I might freeze when I saw her.” He looked down at the sad lump of flesh, “She was always real good to me and my Mom.” He said and then started bawling.

  Kyle wanted to remember the Diana Parker who gave them all cookies and juice when they were kids and taken them to the pool every summer. He wanted to remember the attractive woman that’d been the source of many innocent but highly sexualized fantasies when he’d been younger. He wanted to remember her laugh and the “oh so hot” way she had smoked a cigarette.

  He did not want to remember this.

  Kyle put his free left arm around Benny and hugged him tight. They stayed that way for a full minute, Benny taking all of the comfort that Kyle was willing to give. Kyle would have given him everything he had, but the moment was broken when the sound of a lock bolt disengaging broke the surreal silence. Benny whirled around lifting his crowbar, and Kyle raised the revolver and aimed it at the door, at head height.

  The door slowly opened and the edge of a head poked around the corner. The normally bright red hair and pale freckled skin of Scarlet Parker looked tired and washed out. They were the features of a 50 year old woman and not those of a 17 year old girl.

  “Hello?” she asked hoarsely.

  Kyle lowered the pistol. Benny dropped the tip of the crowbar but he did not drop it all of the way.

  “Kye, is that you?” She asked. Kyle assumed that her eyes were having a hard time adjusting to the light in the hall.

  “Yeah it’s me,” he said.

  She threw the door open and ran down the hallway to him, she didn’t even pause to notice the corpse of her mother. Benny would later speculate that her mind refused to see it in light of everything that had happened. She threw her arms around Kyle’s neck and sobbed, “You came, you really came.” over and over again into his chest.

  Kyle put his arms around her slight body and kissed the top of her head, letting her get as much of it out as he could. He was a little uncomfortable holding her, not like the little girl he’d always known, but like a woman that needed comfort. He was also disturbed by the heat he felt in the pit of his stomach. He’d known Scarlet for almost her entire life. This was not an appropriate reaction to someone that had been like a little sister to him. Especially not now with her mother’s blood congealing on the carpet and the world turned upside down.

  He hugged her even harder.

  “I really hate to break up this touching little scene.” Benny said, and Kyle thought her heard irritation and maybe a touch of anger there, “But I think we need to get moving. It is going to take forever to get to the base the way the roads are.”

  “We can’t go to the base y
et, I need to go to my house and check things out.” Kyle said.

  “Why the fuck do you want to do that? Little told you what she saw and what she heard, do you really want to see that?” His eyes glanced involuntarily at the body of Mrs. Parker. Scarlet winced and confirmed for both of them that she wasn’t oblivious to it but instead willfully ignoring it.

  “I have to know for sure.” Kyle said.

  “WHY?” Benny yelled. He was getting mad now.

  Kyle was getting ready to bare down for a classic Kyle versus Benny confrontation, when Scarlet spoke up and defused the brewing conflagration with one question. “What about Jenny?”

  Benny’s face collapsed at those words. He turned and clomped down the stairs. “Fine we will check…” Kyle heard him step out the front door and onto the concrete stoop.

  “He’ll calm down in a minute.” Scarlet said, “He’s just worried about Jen and the baby.” She turned and headed for her room. Kyle followed and watched as she began throwing things into a backpack. Her spare glasses and case joined a toiletries bag and her iPad in the bag. They hustled downstairs were she added some food and soda into the bag. Then got her coat from the closet. She stopped and looked around the room before grabbing a picture off the wall, one of the ones from when she and her Mom had gone to Myrtle Beach last year.

  “I’m never going to be back am I?” She asked Kyle. He didn’t answer, realizing that it was more of a statement than a question.

  “We have to go Little.” He said.

  “I know,” She turned and looked at him, and the intensity of the look made him uncomfortable. She walked up to him and put her soft and slender hand on his hot and dirty cheek. “Thank you Kye.” She said and then leaned up and gave him a soft kiss on the lips.

  Blood rushed to his face and made his cheeks bright, he was glad that the room was shadowed with the sun barely rising behind the line of the trees behind the house.

  “But please Kyle, stop calling me Little.” She said looking him right in the eyes.

  Kyle had no chance to respond before Benny returned. “Guys, we need to go.” Benny said. And the moment was broken.

  They headed out to the front lawn. The bitter cold of the morning air sent breath from their mouths like the stack of an old time steam engine. Far down the road near the entrance to the park was a human figure stumbling around like a drunk after a 12 hour bender. An orange cat darted out from under a lone car. The figure moaned and attempted to give chase. The creature that had once been a man stumbled and landed flat on its face, while the cat darted into the safety of the woods.

  “I can hear more of them in the distance.” Kyle said.

  “A half dozen of them followed Mom into the neighborhood.” Scarlet said in a tone that reminded Kyle way to much of that day in the park. “I saw them through the window after I locked myself back in the attic.” Kyle didn’t ask why they hadn’t gone into the house with Mrs. Parker. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He suspected some of the kicked in doors and corpses they’d seen driving into the neighborhood would have been the answer.

  “If we are going to do this we need to hurry.” Benny said and walked toward the Prius with Kyle and Scarlet close behind.

  3

  The Carson Residence: One

  6:55am EST

  The van with the graphics of a smiling man in coveralls and holding a mop accompanied by a sign reading “Carson Janitorial Supplies and Services” on the side was parked askew in the double wide driveway. Unlike Mrs. Parker’s car, the van door was closed. Kyle walked up to it with Scarlet by his side.

  “Guys, I’ll be right back.” Benny said. They both watched him trot down the road. He approached the person, or the thing that used to be a person, trying to right itself from the fall. Kyle thought it might have broken its arm but wasn’t sure. Benny didn’t say a thing. He simply approached and smashed the back of its head in with his crowbar. He then looked from side to side to see if there were any more of them. Then trotted back to Kyle and Scarlet.

  The smell of smoke in the air was getting stronger as the cold breeze out of the west picked up. Kyle thought for a minute that it should have been getting a lot brighter out, until he realized that a haze was filling the sky. It was the haze that was the death shroud of their civilization. He shivered a little bit then fished his house keys out of his pocket and walked up to the front door.

  He tried the handle and it was definitely locked, so he inserted the metal stick and disengaged the handle lock and the giant deadbolt. The “snick” of the bolt seemed to reverberate throughout the entire neighborhood, and Kyle winced at the noise.

  “Whenever we’d sneak out at night, Jenny would always bitch about how loud that lock was.” Scarlet said and there was some real humor in there, “She was always afraid that Carol would be waiting on the other side.”

  “Yeah Mom has ears like a cat.” Kyle said. Then, as if on cue, something or someone slammed against the inside of the door and Kyle jumped back. He failed to stifle the scream that then did truly echo across the neighborhood.

  “Aw shit!” Benny hissed as he whipped his head back and forth, “There is no way some of those things didn’t hear that.” He looked pleadingly at Kyle.

  “We’ll have to make this quick.” Kyle said, and then throwing caution to the wind he braced himself against the front door, turned the knob, and pushed with all of his might. There was a brief struggle, then whatever or whoever was on the other side fell to the ground with a thump.

  The door opened and on the floor was Carol Carson. Her shoulder was missing a large chunk of flesh and a bandage hung from it. It’d probably been expertly applied while she was alive, Carol did everything with an exacting precision that had driven her family nuts, but hours of banging around inside the house had caused it to slip. She looked up at the three silhouettes in the open door and there was no recognition in those eyes. Then she opened her mouth and moaned as she righted herself and stood.

  Kyle froze. In front of him was a woman who’d made his life equally happy and miserable. She’d nursed him when he was sick with tenderness, and she’d cut him deeply with her tongue. She began to lurch toward him. Her gate was short and jerky as if God had raised her center of gravity by a foot.

  “Mommy …” he whispered and she moaned again even louder.

  “For fucks sake Kye, put her down.” Benny whispered.

  Kyle couldn’t move. It was like liquid nitrogen had been applied to all of his joints simultaneously. All he could do was stand there and wait for his mother to give him one last kiss. The sickest thing was that part of him wanted to do just that, part of him wanted his Mommy to take him into her arms and hug him and make all of the scary badness of the last two days go away with one kiss. He actually took half a step forward to meet her. Then he was roughly pushed side and a long metal cylinder crashed down on his Mother’s head. She was driven to the ground, and she never got up again.

  Kyle whirled around to scream at Benny for killing his Mommy, for making her go away and leaving him. Then he saw that Benny had never moved. Scarlet had brought the baseball bat with her from the Prius. She’d acted quickly before Kyle could make an unimaginable mistake.

  “I wanted to do the same thing when my Mother came home. I watched her lurch from the truck to the front door, Kye, I saw that she was gone and I still ran downstairs to greet her. I almost let her eat me before I came to my senses and locked myself back in that fucking attic.” She was crying, the tears were running down her dirty face cutting rivers on that alien world’s surface. “I know how much you wanted to go to her Kye, but your Mom was dead long before you got here.” And then she turned and walked to the side of the driveway and threw up.

  They gave her a few seconds. They had both had to deal with their first kills not long before. When she’d collected herself, they entered the house. As they went inside and closed the door, Kyle heard the moans of the Risen Dead as they got closer. He locked the door behind them and once again the darkn
ess embraced them.

  They only had a short amount of time.

  4

  The Carson Residence: Two

  7:15am EST

  The smell of rot hung like a wet blanket in the air of Kyle’s house. Crisscrossing trails of blood tracked back and forth through the common areas giving testament to his Mother’s impatience even in death. The faint smell of burnt gunpowder underplayed the stench of death.