Dead Summit (Book 1): Dead Summit

by Loubier, Daniel

  “Does he look like one of them?” she asked.

  Charlie narrowed his eyes to try and focus. The man appeared to have a normal gait. He also seemed to be alert, nervously scanning his surroundings.

  “I think he might be okay,” Charlie said.

  “What do we do?” Grace asked.

  “I think we should call him over.” Charlie put his hand to his cheek, about to yell to the man. Grace quickly pulled his hand down.

  “What are you doing?!” she hissed.

  “I’m going to yell to the guy.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Well, if it isn’t, we have a gun,” he said. Grace frowned. She wasn’t impressed. Good thing for Charlie, he wasn’t trying to be funny.

  “Okay,” Charlie said. “How about I wave? If he waves back, we’re good to go. If he charges, I shoot him.”

  Grace stared off, considering the idea. They’d be stronger with three people. She just didn’t want this one to be another George. Worst case scenario, he was another George. But he was alone, and the odds would be in their favor. Worst, worst case scenario, he was one of the monsters himself, and Charlie would shoot him. Reluctantly, she nodded in agreement.

  Charlie got up on his knees, in position so that he could see over the tree trunk. This person would surely notice any movement he made. He waited until the man looked in their direction. Now! he thought.

  Charlie waved both hands several times. Then he waited. The man stopped moving. He stayed perfectly still, staring in their direction. Oh shit, Charlie thought. This may have been a very bad idea.

  “What’s he doing?” Grace asked, her voice barely a whisper now. Charlie shook his head slowly. He held out a hand, indicating to wait.

  The man was still staring in their direction. He made no movement. Then, slowly, he raised his hands, and waved exactly as Charlie had.

  “Thank God,” Charlie said. He let out a long breath. “He’s waving back.” Charlie waved again, then waited. The man responded in kind, quickly this time.

  “Anything?” Grace asked.

  “I think he’s one of us,” Charlie told her. “I’m getting up.”

  He stood up so that the man could see him. This time, he waved him over to their location. The man slowly began walking toward them. He was carrying something—something big and long, like a tree branch. But it was too straight to be a branch.

  “He’s holding something,” Charlie told Grace. “He might have a weapon.”

  “Shit,” she said. Her heartbeat quickened.

  “It’s okay,” Charlie said. “We still have the gun. I’ll be able to shoot him before he can try anything.” He reached behind his back slowly. He pulled the gun out of his belt and held it low and out of sight.

  The man was now twenty yards away. He was tall and thin, and Charlie thought he recognized him. Charlie could also clearly see now that the object the man was carrying was a very long machete. Charlie swallowed hard as the man closed the distance between them. He tightened his grip on the gun.

  The man was now ten yards away. Charlie held the gun out to his side so the man could see it.

  The man stopped moving. They stared at each other for a few seconds. Neither spoke. He looked so familiar, and yet, Charlie still couldn’t determine where he’d seen him before, if he had at all. Then, the man slowly raised the machete and placed it into a sheath on his side.

  Charlie breathed another deep sigh of relief. He returned the gun to his belt. The man continued walking toward him. Charlie saw that he had blood on his shirt and pants and wondered how many of the undead this man had run into. He wondered what the man thought of his own appearance; he was covered with blood spatter from both Terry and the little girl.

  The man reached out his hand. Charlie extended his own, and they shook. Grace stepped out from where she’d been hiding. Charlie introduced them, keeping his voice low. The man introduced himself as Joe. Grace immediately recognized him.

  “You were there last night,” she said. “During story time.” Joe nodded.

  Charlie remembered him now. Joe had gone before Terry during story hour. He had told some tale about an intruder and a mother being home alone with her baby. It was only hours ago, but it felt like weeks.

  “How long you been out here?” Charlie asked.

  Joe rubbed his forehead. The dark crescent moons under his eyes were a clear indication that he’d been awake most of the morning and likely much of the night. He looked down at his watch.

  “Been out here since about four-thirty,” Joe said. “Woke up around four, heard someone screaming—” He stopped and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He was clearly haunted by what had happened to him. “I always bring a machete with me when I go out into the woods.” Tears began forming in his eyes as he clenched his fists tightly. “I walked into the room where I’d heard the screaming. This poor woman,” he turned his head, appalled by the memory. “There was blood everywhere.” His breathing became quick between sobs. “She was being eaten by this man. He was sick. He was so sick.” His voice grew louder, and he looked down at the large weapon now sheathed at his side. “I always bring a machete with me when I go out into the woods. So I just brought it down on him.” He brought his hand across his body, swinging a blade that was no longer in his hand. He began to cry harder. Grace gently grabbed his arm and motioned for him to sit down. Joe buried his face in his hands as he cried.

  Charlie looked around, afraid that Joe’s cries may have been heard, but there was nobody in sight.

  “Uh, we should probably keep moving,” Charlie said. Grace looked up and shot him a blank stare. She didn’t need to say anything; Charlie knew they would be sitting for a few minutes.

  Grace waited patiently and with much sympathy while the big man sat and cried. After all they’d been through, she and Charlie still had their wits. But here, right in front of her, sat this broken shell of a man. He sobbed like a child. Grace watched as hours of grief rolled down his face and into his hands. She and Charlie had been through hell, for sure. This man must have seen hell, she thought.

  The sobs became slower and Joe’s breaths became longer and more controlled. Grace saw an opportunity and patted him on the shoulder, letting him know it was time to get moving.

  “Did you see any other...survivors?” she asked.

  Joe wiped his eyes and rubbed his hands on his pants, drying away the tears. “There was an old man,” he said. “He wanted to stay in the kitchen with his wife.” Charlie and Grace exchanged a nervous glance. “He wanted me to stay with them, but I wasn’t staying in that hole any longer than I had to.”

  Charlie and Grace remained silent.

  “I saw a couple more of those things though,” he added.

  The blood drained from Grace’s face. “Where?” she asked.

  “When I came out of the hut, there were a few down by the lake,” he said. “There were also a couple in the woods.”

  For Charlie, his plan to rush to the summit felt futile now. He had tried to make himself believe that he and Grace wouldn’t have to worry about the undead once they escaped the hut. He’d hoped they would make it to the top without running into any more of those...maniacs. Deep down, though, he knew the possibility was real. And now Joe’s account had all but confirmed it was a certainty.

  “What exactly are they?” Grace asked. “What happened to them? Are they infected or something?”

  Joe looked at her with mock disappointment. “You weren’t listening last night?”

  Grace stared back at him. She tried to hide the confusion on her face.

  Joe stood up and straightened. “It’s like Terry said last night: There’s an energy here. It cannot be explained. I’m sure you’ve heard hundreds of theories about why planes get lost in the Bermuda Triangle, or how those statues ended up on Easter Island, or how Stonehenge was built.” His eyes went to the sky for a moment; then he looked around the forest. Suddenly, his eyes filled with fear. “There’s
just something about this place.” The fear made his voice shake. He finally looked back down and met Grace’s eyes. “The dead come back.”

  She broke his gaze and looked elsewhere. She tried to concentrate on something else, but the words sent a chill up her spine.

  The dead come back.

  The realization that it was true was almost too much for her to bear. She tried to shut down inside, to turn herself off. She didn’t want to listen anymore, but Joe continued.

  “And when they kill you,” he said, “it’s like, you’re infected, and you become what they are.”

  “And what exactly is that?” Charlie asked.

  Joe turned slowly toward him. “You rise again.” He took a step closer to Charlie and stopped. His stare pierced into Charlie’s eyes as if he was looking into his soul. “You become the undead.”

  Charlie held Joe’s stare but said nothing. He tried to find something, a tell, anything that might give away that Joe was full of shit. But there was nothing. Joe was as real as they came. He wasn’t covered in blood, traveling the woods with a machete, looking for suckers. He was surviving. And, in Charlie’s estimation, he was doing a damn good job. It was only then that Charlie understood: They’d have to keep Joe with them as long as possible.

  Joe backed off and sat down again. “The only way to kill them for real,” he pointed toward his temple, “is to destroy the brain.” He pointed to Charlie. “You’ve got a gun, you shoot ’em in the head.”

  “Wait, wait,” Charlie began. “How do you know all this? How do you know for sure that they’re dead?”

  “You ever see a living person behave like this?” Joe asked.

  Charlie hesitated. “No, but—”

  “And have you killed one yet?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And did you get them in the head or the body?”

  Charlie thought about it. He’d shot the first attacker, the one in their room, in the head. Grace had shot him several times. She’d probably gotten him in the chest or the stomach, or maybe an arm. But he didn’t go down until after Charlie had put two bullets in his head. He’d also shot the little girl in the head, which was purely by luck, but she went down immediately. And he’d killed Terry by destroying her skull with a heavy frame. In other words, he’d killed all three by damaging the head and, in effect, destroying the brain.

  Joe started nodding. He could see the understanding register on Charlie’s face.

  “You got them all in the head, didn’t you?”

  Charlie nodded.

  “Well, good for you. Now you know how to kill them,” Joe said.

  Charlie remained silent. The understanding that he hadn’t killed a little girl but, in fact, something else, something evil, helped ease his mind a little. He wasn’t a killer, and the fact that these things were not living souls allayed the burden on his conscience. But there was still something missing.

  “You talk about this like you’ve done this before,” Charlie said. “How?”

  Joe drew a deep breath, composed himself.

  “Because it happened before.”

  Grace and Charlie stared at him, their eyes asking him to continue.

  “Most folks from New Hampshire don’t even know about it,” he said. “Only the locals do. You’ll never hear ’em talk about it ’cause it’s a part of the state’s history that people wish never happened. But, it did happen. And we choose not to forget because it’s made us what we are today.”

  “Made you what?” Grace asked.

  “Prepared,” Joe said. “It’s a secret, passed on from generation to generation. Usually the firstborn is the only one to know. Knowledge of the past prepares us for future incidents. Like last night. Like right now.”

  Grace let the gravity of Joe’s words sink in. This was not some isolated incident. This had happened before. She wondered how many times it had happened. She wondered how people managed to find a way to survive—if they survived. She also realized that this wouldn’t be the last time it would happen.

  She decided then that it was time to start moving out. “I think we should continue to the summit,” she said. She looked at Joe. “You’re welcome to come with us. We’re going to see if we can get some supplies at the store and then maybe catch a ride down the access road.”

  Joe’s face was grim. “That’s if you find anyone alive up there.”

  “Well, it’s either that, or we can hang out in the woods until those things find us. How long did you say you’ve been out here? They probably see a lot better in the daylight, huh?”

  Joe narrowed his eyes. Grace watched him as he tried to think of another reason not to go to the summit, but he knew it was the only idea that made sense.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Charlie caught Grace’s eyes while Joe wasn’t looking and arched his eyebrows.

  Are you sure about this?

  Grace nodded quickly and she took lead. Charlie fell in behind her; Joe grabbed the rear.

  They set off again and headed up the trail. As they hiked in silence, Grace couldn’t stop thinking about the history of this place, about everything Joe had told them. She wondered what kind of an effort it might require to completely eliminate these things, these—she could barely form the word in her mind—undead.

  She hoped they wouldn’t have to find out.

  Chapter 9

  The trail had emerged from the woods, and they’d been hiking along the ridge for an hour. Wind swirled around and crashed against them, gusting at speeds of over ninety miles per hour. Grace’s face was numb and cracked, the salt from her tears having dried out the reddened skin under her eyes.

  She was also starving and dehydrated. The only thing that filled the emptiness in her stomach was the pain like a dull knife stabbing at her insides. Every few minutes, she’d stopped to dry heave. The pounding in her head, accompanied by a ringing in her ears, was no doubt compounded by the wind’s relentless assault and almost debilitating. She’d had migraines in the past. Not many, but enough to be familiar with the pain. The pressure she felt now was like a vise, squeezing the sides of her head, tightening just a little more with every labored step. She wanted nothing more than to give up, to just leap over the edge and fall into an unending state of blissful unconsciousness. She wanted to sleep, or to eat, or both. But she knew these were not realistic options. She willed herself to continue. As much as she wanted to stop, she wanted more to escape from what hunted them. She wanted to escape the monsters— or the undead, as they were called. They’d almost gotten her and Charlie that morning at the hut, but they’d bested them then and they could do it again. Of course, they were much weaker now, but she had faith that, together, they would carry each other through. They had Joe with them now, too, and he knew a thing or two about fighting these things. But the pain, the pain was unbearable.

  Fortunately, Charlie was the one who gave in first. He put up a hand, signaling Joe and Grace to stop. He bent over and rested his hands on his knees, his back and shoulders heaving up and down as he gasped for air. Grace worried about his bad knee, but she wasn’t about to bring it up now. She didn’t fully trust Joe just yet and she didn’t want him to know about Charlie’s injury.

  Charlie turned to the both of them.

  “We’ve been on this trail for an hour and a half now,” he said. He nearly fell over as a hard gust blew from across the ridge and onto the trail. He steadied himself against a large boulder. “I think we should take a break.”

  Before Joe could protest, Grace spoke up. “I agree,” she said. “We should head off the trail. The trees will protect us from the wind. And I could use a rest, too.”

  “We might be able to find some berries or some leaves to eat,” Joe said. Grace was relieved Joe wasn’t about to argue about stopping. Selfishly, she was happy that he was just as worn out as she and Charlie were.

  “Good,” Charlie said. “Let’s go.”

  Charlie walked a bit up the trail until he found a
small opening in the thicket. He was about to step in when Joe waved him off. Joe pulled his machete out of the sheath.

  “Let me go first,” he said. Charlie gestured with his hand, letting him go.

  Joe started chopping through branches and twigs. In no time, he’d made an opening big enough to walk through. He stepped into the woods first, and Grace and Charlie followed close behind.

  The woods were incredibly thick. Grace had to squint as she walked so as not to catch a branch or thorn in the eye. She shielded her head with her arms, but it still wasn’t much of a defense; branches and sticks poked at exposed areas of skin and scratched at her face. And when her stomach muscles twisted and contracted, she gripped her midsection with both hands, grimacing as she pressed onward.

  They hadn’t walked far when Grace suddenly became very aware of how much noise they were making as they ventured into the woods. She stopped walking and listened to the sound of leaves rustling and sticks breaking as Charlie and Joe continued. The sharp thwack of the machete as it tore through the brush made her nervous. Surely, anyone on the trail wouldn’t be able to hear the noise above the howl of the wind, but they couldn’t be certain that the undead would stick to the trails.

  Not wanting to yell, Grace clapped her hands twice to get their attention. Joe and Charlie stopped and turned.

  “We’re being very loud,” she whispered. Joe and Charlie walked back to her, making every attempt to step around sticks and dry leaves.

  “What do you want to do?” Charlie asked.

  She looked back and assessed the distance they had put between themselves and the trail.

  “I think this is fine,” she said. “We’re far enough away from the trail that we can rest, but close enough if we need to get back on in a hurry.”

  “I’m going to look around for something to eat, then,” Joe said.

  Grace opened her mouth, ready to issue a warning, but Joe cut her off.

  “I’ll be quiet, don’t worry,” he said. Reluctantly, Grace acquiesced.