The Shores Of The Dead: Omnibus Edition

by Josh Hilden

  “Solid brother, James is inside. And he brought some entertainment and refreshments. It’s a regular fucking party. But I drew the short straw and got guard duty.” He sounded really bummed. Arn liked Bulldog and decided he did not want the man to be bummed out.

  “I’ll ask the boss man to have someone spell ya.” He said, slapping him on his thick meaty shoulder.

  “Thanks Books!” He exclaimed, lighting up like a five year old at Christmas time.

  Arn smiled as he entered the candle and oil lamp lit building. He may be able to reveal his true self to these men but he was still a politician at heart. There were seven other Razors, including James McCoy, present and they all greeted him with high fives and bear hugs. When a bottle of Jack Daniels had been passed around they led him to the back area of the restaurant that contained a caged off area used to store dried goods before it had been abandoned. In the back of the caged area was a stainless steel door leading to the walk-in refrigerator and freezer. In the cage were two bound and gagged girls of about 13 years. They were only wearing panties, and looking at them made Arn’s cock hard as a rock.

  From behind the steel door, Arn thought he heard a muffled banging.

  “What’s with the young gash?” He asked James in an offhanded way. His best friend had always been generous with the pussy but this had the air of a special event.

  “Just something me and the boys have been doing lately. We were feeling bad for you trapped inside that town so we thought we’d give you a treat.” He looked over at the girls who were crying through their gags. Apparently they knew something that Arn didn’t.

  James was an intimidating guy, at six foot five and 300 pounds he looked kind of fat. Anybody that fucked with him and lived learned that he was solid muscle. His long hair and beard at first gave him an unkempt appearance, but closer inspection revealed a man whose hair and nails were always clean and whose clothes were always freshly laundered. He’d confided to Arn one night when they had been completely stoned that he had a PHD in Philosophy from Yale and that his parents were multimillionaires from Connecticut. Arn was honored by that confidence, as far as he knew he was the only person that James entrusted with that secret.

  “But that can wait till a little later brother, first we have to talk business.” That was James, always right to the point Arn thought. They gathered around a table where one of the Razors laid out a map of the area. White Harbor was circled in red Sharpie.

  “Alright boys, let’s get started.” James said and for the next hour Arn updated the Razors on the situation in White Harbor and the safe. He gave them a run down on supplies, weapons, and the layout of defenses. He told them where the militia units were stationed and where the excess of refugees were being quartered. Then he told them about the arrival of the Wolverines and everyone got quiet.

  “Are they real soldiers or are they just survivors with fancy toys?” James asked as he made notes in a steno pad that he always carried with him.

  “They fought their way all the way up from Ann Arbor. They were mostly civilians when they started out.” Arn said. He wasn’t afraid though, he knew that James wanted the truth whether he liked the answers or not. “But yeah, they are real soldier now. They were joined by some guardsmen, and they had some real hard asses among them that taught the others. And that Dyke Colonel is one scary looking bitch James. She gets what she wants.” He shivered at the memory of his one meeting with Lt. Colonel Sutton, she seemed to be able to look right through him and see what was really going on in his head.

  James nodded as he spoke, “Bitches are bitches man but you shouldn’t underestimate them. That Chief of Police in Marquette was a bitch. It took a week to hunt her down and kill her even with the dead shambling around. Course we fucked her before we fed her to the Deadheads!” The Razors all joined in laughing at that.

  Arn was jealous that he had missed the hunt and fuck.

  “Alright here’s what we are going to do.” James said pulling out his own map. They went over the battle plan for the taking of White Harbor, and Arn was impressed with James’s ideas. He thought that even with the soldiers in town, they had a chance of pulling this off without destroying the town.

  “OK, enough business,” he said after they hammered out the details. “Sticks,” he called to one of the Razors “open the cage.” The door was opened and James walked in. The girls huddled together in the corner weeping. “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna hurt ya.” He said laughing and walked to the steel door. “Boys, untie them but don’t let them out.” He said. Two more Razors complied and then held the girls up while James opened the door.

  What happened next would play in Arn’s fantasies for the rest of his life. His only regret was that he wasn’t closer to the action. When James opened the door, the walking and half rotted corpse of a young man in a Northern Michigan University sweat shirt came stumbling out. James quickly retreated from the cage and padlocked the entrance.

  For the next 40 minutes the girls attempted to evade the corpse. Eventually they tired and one by one were caught and eaten. They had no weapons and were not strong enough to attack the Dead man with their hands and feet. They screamed and begged but the Razors, including Arn, just laughed and cheered.

  5

  White Harbor

  November 10, 2012 AD (Day Twenty Four)

  6:15am EST

  It snowed during the night depositing another three inches of light white powder on the south shore of Lake Superior. The two plow trucks in White Harbor were hard at work keeping the roads inside the Safe Zone open for official traffic. The rationale was that it was more important to be able to move men and materials than it was to horde fuel. The Bitch from the Wolverine Caravan had also been pressed into service performing the same task.

  The knock on David Hall’s office door startled him out of a half-sleep. Either there was a serious emergency and he was going to haul ass, or Peter had just fucked up royally and David was about to chew the young man a new asshole. He stumbled toward the door in a once white undershirt and pair of boxer shorts that had seen better days. He stubbed his toe on a crate of reports in the middle of the room and yelled out.

  “SON OF A BITCH!” He screamed and hopped on one foot, lost his balance, and fell flat on his ass. This was already a bad day. “Open the damn door!” he yelled and prepared to assault Peter with every vulgarity that he had at his command.

  But the door opened and it wasn’t the tall skinny form of his aide that greeted him, but the slight and serious form of Amy Waters. His heart jumped into his throat at the sight of her. Except at council meetings, Amy hadn’t spoken to him since that afternoon when she told him that she would give him her support at the town meeting. He’d tried to talk to her on several occasions, but she had always found a way to extricate herself from the situation.

  “Um hi Amy,” he said lamely as he nursed his hurt foot and tried to remember if these were the boxer shorts with the hole in them or not. He couldn’t remember and prayed that these were one of the pairs that still had all intact seams.

  “David,” she said, and he could have sworn that she was fighting back a laugh. Now that he saw it was her, this morning visit made a little more sense. She had always been more of a morning person than him. When they had been together she’d almost always been the first one up in the morning, and brought him a hot cup of coffee and the paper.

  God he really missed that.

  “I assume that if you knew it was me you might have been a bit more polite. But really I don’t think it would have been good form to go at Peter that way either.” She said.

  “Probably not,” he mumbled and worked his way off the ground. He cleared the chair in front of his desk, it’d been holding his uniform, and offered the seat to her. When she sat down, he took his chair and turned on the desk light.

  “What can I do for you Amy?” He asked.

  Amy Waters was never a woman to beat around the bush, when she had something to say she just said it. It had b
een one aspect of her personality that was refreshing and attractive to David, even if it did lend her an air of cool calculation.

  “What is our fallback position David?” She asked with no preamble.

  “What do you mean?” He asked. The question surprised him. As far as he knew, the only real plan that they had was to hold White Harbor at all costs.

  “I mean what is our plan if the town gets overrun by those things or we are attacked by bandits. You’ve heard the reports from Marquette. I don’t think that those bikers are going to be content with what they have.” He’d heard her use the same voice when lecturing a child with an overdue library book about the responsibility that was inherent in having a library card. “The meeting with Lt. Colonel Sutton and her people has convinced me that eventually we may be presented with a problem we can’t beat back. I think we need a backup plan.” She looked him right in the eyes as she spoke.

  “I don’t know. I have been so wrapped up with securing what we have, that I haven’t given much thought to a contingency option.” He admitted.

  “Well I have,” she said and pulled a manila folder out of the messenger bag she wore over her shoulder. She opened it and spread out a series of maps and papers on his desk. “Isle Royale National Park would be the perfect place to head for.” She said.

  “We should send out some people to secure the island, and I think we should start transferring supplies and equipment there. We should also send all non-essential personnel there now. Frankly, David I am convinced that we should all just go there now, and abandon the mainland before those things become thick as flies around here.” She gave him that serious gaze that was known to wither people into submission without an ounce of protest.

  “I’m not saying that the place doesn’t have merit, but we are doing okay here. Those things are being dealt with. We have a real fighting force now, and plenty of food for the winter. I just don’t think diverting resources to this kind of project is a good idea.” He braced himself for the counter argument and he wasn’t disappointed.

  “When it thaws, those things are all going to get back up and start walking again. Let’s face it, David, it doesn’t look like those things can swim.” She said. They had all heard the broadcasts from what was left of the government about the effects of cold on the Dead. David wasn’t sure he believed them, but he hoped they were true because they could use the winter time to move around without real fear of the Dead if they were.

  “And while I don’t think the Dead from the south and the west will be able to find their way here in great numbers before the subzero weather sets in, I think that they will have plenty of time next year.” She looked at him daring him to disagree with her.

  He’d listened to the stories from all of the refuges who’d made it to White Harbor. He also paid special attention to what the Wolverines said because of the intensity of the trek they’d made. He couldn’t argue with her logic. “OK, let’s put it before the council and see how it pans out. It might be good to at least get the children over there where they will be safe. But we can’t abandon the town, Amy, all of the limited manufacturing capacity we have is here. And yeah, we can move it there but the hydro-electric plant is here so let’s not be too hasty.”

  “Fair enough,” she said and gave him a small but genuine smile. “It’s really good to talk to you David.” She said and then she stood and left the office, leaving David Hall feeling like he had been punched in the stomach.

  He picked up his phone and punched in the O button. They’d gotten the local phone network up and running again a week ago. With the switching equipment in Marquette and useless to them, they’d taken the old operator’s console out of the heritage museum and pressed it back into service.

  “Operator, how can I direct your call?” It was the voice of one of the older ladies from the Green Village Retirement community out on the lake.

  “This is Chief Hall, can you put me through to the…” he stumbled for a minute, the name sounded lame but it was what they had agreed to call the repurposed hotel “…the Militia Headquarters?”

  She didn’t miss a beat, “Yes Chief one moment,” this was followed by the pops and clicks of the old analog connection. He hoped that the Lt. Colonel was awake because this was going to be a long conversation.

  6

  White Harbor Defensive Walls

  8:30am EST

  Lt. Colonel Lisa Sutton was late for her morning inspection of the defenses because of her bizarre conversation with Chief Hall. By the end he’d convinced her that it was a plan worth looking into. When she got to the town’s walls she was impressed by what the people of White Harbor had managed to accomplish.

  These people, unlike so many of the other people she’d observed on her trek north from Ann Arbor, had not melted away when confronted by the Risen Dead. Much like the people in Hession, they had assembled a defensive force and fortified their homes to withstand attacks.

  She was beginning the process of integrating the town militia and the Wolverines. There was some friction on both sides, but she figured that was to be expected. Both groups had been fighting since the rise of the Dead, and it would take a while for them to trust one another.

  “Doc you have got to see this,” Sam called from up on the earth and wood walls that were around the landward side of the city.

  She looked up and saw Sam waving her up one of the rope ladders strung up at intervals along the wall. “What is it Sam?” she yelled up to her right hand man.

  “They have built something that you are going to love, boss!” And now he was laughing and grinning like a kid.

  She shook her head. Lisa had never been a morning person, and the weird ass sleep schedule that she’d been “enjoying” since the dead decided that they didn’t want to stay dead wasn’t helping. Throw into that mix the dreams plaguing her, they had been becoming more and more vivid to the point where Nancy had woken her last night to make sure she was OK, and it made for one bitchy woman.

  She smiled at the thought of Nancy and her being together. She’d never been able to just have an open relationship before. It was all very scary and exciting at the same time.

  Lisa hauled her butt up the rope ladder. Below she heard a male wolf whistle at her which made her smile. When she got to the top, what she saw looked like an oversized paintball gun mounted on tripod. She noticed the thick hose snaked over to an air compressor that was slaved to a second unit 50 yards down the wall.

  “What the hell is that?” She asked the man standing next to Sam.

  The man extended a greasy hand toward her that she reflexively took. “Names Craig Maynard, Colonel, and that is what is going to protect us without wasting ammunition for the guns.” His grin was all teeth and gums.

  Now she was interested, they’d done an inventory of firearms and ammunition and realized that they were severely lacking in the later. They were considering attempting to raid some of the bigger towns as soon as the temperature rendered the Dead immobile. But they were worried that all readily available ammo would have been taken long ago.

  “What does it do Mr. Maynard?” she asked even though she had an idea already.

  “Well ma’am they use compressed air to fire these” he tossed her a plastic wrapped object the size of a chicken egg, “at whoever or whatever attempts to climb the wall.” She opened the package and saw a few screws, some nails, and two ball bearings. She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. “The force of the air rips the plastic off, and the shot spreads out at about 900 feet per second. The range and accuracy aren’t great but anything within 50 yards is gonna have a really bad day when these open up.” Now he did start to laugh.

  “How many can you make?” She asked walking over to the cannon and checking it out. There was a trigger assembly and a shield to protect the operator from enemy fire. It was pretty impressive.

  “I have 20 of them already built. Started on them when the wall started going up ma’am, and we can do three more a day. It’s not hard,
just have to scrounge the parts.”

  She patted him on the back, “If you need any help you let us know, these are of number one priority for defense.” She said and he smiled. Lisa thought that it was nice to know that the human mind could adapt to the situation and thrive.

  She looked at her watch and winced. There was less than 20 minutes till the morning council meeting. She didn’t like some of the people on the council, but she could deal with all of them. Except for Mayor Arn Jacobson, the man gave her the creeps. She thought that if you could see what he was thinking you might go mad. But she could think of no reason to complain, he’d been nothing but polite to her and her people since they had arrived. In fact he’d practically bent over backwards to make sure that they got everything that they needed. His willingness to help out actually fueled her discomfort, she’d told Nancy that he reminded her of the Old Man in a Lovecraft story she’d read as a child.