Among the Dead Book 2 (Among the Living)

by Long, Timothy W.

  “We should go find help from some of the soldiers out on the street. Like if we signal them, they’ll come and get us.”

  “And maybe when we do get outside, we can invite the zombies to have dinner with us. I bet if we ask nicely, they’ll bring a bottle of wine,” Pete shot back.

  “Don’t say ‘zombies.’ It sounds so stupid. No such thing anyway.”

  “Oh right. Deaders. That sounds so much sexier. You really are a twit, you know that? A complete and utter twit.”

  “Why are you so mean to me? Is it because I told everyone about your tiny dick? You know, when my brother gets here, he’ll have a gun. A gun. Do you know what that means?”

  “You’ll finally shut the fuck up?”

  “No, you will. Jerk-face.” Kara spun on her heel and stomped back to her desk.

  This was not how he’d wanted to start the week.

  Shayne had arrived at the office two days ago and realized he’d left his building pass in his backpack. He slid the bag off his aching shoulders and slipped it to the ground. Then he was forced to lean over and rummage around until he found the plastic container. His hand brushed his pill bottle, and he almost cried for it.

  It was bright red and shaped like a triangle. His pharmacy had switched to the bigger containers a year ago. He never understood why they moved away from the light brown that was supposed to protect the pills from sunlight. Not that he even liked sunlight. On the weekends, he preferred to stay home and float in a haze.

  Every movement was pain as he leaned to the left and extracted his pass card from his canvas bag. Then he stood erect and felt like passing out. His eyes swam, tears leaking as the sun hit the dark-paned windows and broken into a million scintillating shards. It was like someone had poured shattered glass into his joints, coated his muscles with it. Jammed it under his skin and then sent him on his way. Have a nice day of suffering, asshole. Enjoy your life, Shayne. Shayne, Shayne, the man of pain.

  He tugged his aching arm up and keyed the door, his hand flashing in front of the dark pad that gave access to the old building. He wanted to scream as blinding pain ravaged his body. He squeezed his eyes shut and stood, for how long, he wasn’t sure. It might have been a few seconds. It might have been an hour.

  He had to key the door again because he had waited too long.

  Cars raced along the road behind him; people called out from the street. Pedestrians ducked into coffee shops along Jackson Avenue. The smell of car exhaust and the humidity that resulted as summer sank its jaws into the city should have been a reminder of what many considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. To him, it was just a place to go to work, a place to sit, a place to wait. A place to pass the day while the pain wracked his body. His job wasn’t difficult, and when it was crunch time, he had a convenient excuse to slack off, because he had a medical condition.

  Some days, the endless rows of data drove him into a fog in which he mindlessly keyed in numbers, calculated, sent revised spreadsheets back and forth with coworkers, exchanged emails with other accountants. The company’s number-one products, a popular soda and a line of energy drinks, were very popular, thanks to ads featuring bikini-clad women. He always went to the premieres in the little auditorium on the fifth floor. Sometimes the models would be there, sometimes the producer or director. No matter the turnout, the room was always packed.

  Shayne was fascinated with television. He had good ideas and occasionally wrote science-fiction scripts in his free time. Twice, he had even sent them to agents. Each time, after what seemed like an eternity, he received a form rejection letter with their thanks. “Keep us in mind for other submissions,” the letters read boldly. Assholes. They wouldn’t know a good screenplay if it hit them upside the head.

  Shayne, Shayne, the man of pain. Today is a vampire, and it means to drain—his life.

  Kate

  Dreams of blood and death ripped Kate from sleep.

  She sat upright like electricity had blasted through her core. She reached for her chest and found her heart beating out of control. Breath pounded in and out, and her eyes were wide open, like she was wired on a gallon of coffee.

  Training took over. She found her center in a few seconds and counted her breaths. Four beats, nice and slow. Then she held it for two. Exhaled for four heart beats. The threads of her nightmare faded away like smoke. A man lying next to her turned his head. He was flat on his back across a step. He was as bald as a bowling ball, and sweat glistened in the morning light. She thought of a room not so long ago and a man in a bed beneath her. He was tied to it, hands stretched over his head while he screamed and begged against a gag. She ignored it, as she always did, ignored his pleading as she sank her blade into his skin.

  He thrashed beneath her, but she let the blood flow across his chest and onto her legs. A river of red. No, an ocean.

  Then the dream changed.

  A creature rose up before her, his mouth covered in blood and gore. His lips were drawn back. Old leather left to rot. His teeth were the real nightmare. Broken and jagged, with many missing. Blood drooled from the open wound that was his mouth. He howled for her skin, his eyes red, filled with blood, and there was so much anger and pain etched there that, for once, she wondered if she had truly known how to hate.

  She didn’t drag the M16 up. She had the Colt .45 in her hand and used it to blow the deader’s brains all over the street. They splattered like she had shot him with some kind of explosive round. That was when she started to question her sanity, because that was no dream. It had been all too real and she all too good at slaughter.

  That was how she spent the first two days in the refugee camp that had once been a football stadium.

  Bzzzt. The phone buzzed against her leg. Mike had to call, had to check up on her. She was about sick and fucking tired of his interference. He was old enough to be her dad, and things did not end well for Daddy-o. Not well at all. Was that all in the past, just like her urge to kill men in seedy hotel rooms?

  Now she got to slaughter them in the open. But it wasn’t the same. Not the same at all. Her original victims knew fear; they knew complete and utter dread as she took her knife to their helpless bodies.

  But that was not the life she led now.

  If this were a polite war in a faraway country like Afghanistan, she might be near the front lines, but she wouldn’t see any action. She was female, and that would not do. They would make the men go fight, but that was not a concern in Seattle.

  Here, she was cut off from the world. She could get away with just about anything, and no one said a word. No one knew, for that matter.

  Not that she was about to join the military. Not that she was about to sign on to anything that counted. She was doing this for her own reasons. She was out here with a pair of hard-asses and another survivor because they volunteered to help, just like she did when they made the mad flight to the stadium in the first place.

  It was a simple mission, and she tagged along at the last minute. They said they would go to this building and get the nerds because someone needed to do it. It wasn’t even the fact that she wanted to go out and kill a few of the things. She was just tired of sitting around. There was still a shortage of able-bodied men, as Nelson had said, refusing to meet her eyes when he said it. But that wasn’t true. There were all too many waiting, just waiting. Asking for a chance to go and fight. But he asked her, and she had nothing better to do.

  * * *

  The first day at the giant stadium wasn’t so bad. It was the next that started to get on her last fucking nerve.

  She had already cleaned her blades and found something to eat—in that order. There were priorities, and then there were priorities. Keeping her weapons clean was of the utmost importance. She had seen fine blades take a rust spot after only a single touch and a month of rest. The swords were now her most important possessions—her only real possessions, for that matter.

  The couple who had taken up residence near her little sli
ce of heaven annoyed the shit out of her. Especially the husband, with his shiny bald head. There was no sunscreen to protect him from the merciless rays; he was as red as a ripe apple before the first day was up.

  And he stank! Sweat was one thing, and no one had taken a shower, but this guy seemed to relish going without deodorant. Every time he moved, the pungent stench of onions assaulted her. Made her eyes water. She wanted to kill his ass just on principle.

  But he seemed so concerned, like he wanted to be a father figure to her as well. Did she have a sign on her shirt that said “Helpless female. Please be my daddy”? First Mike, now this jerk-off. He probably wanted to fuck her, even though he pretended to pity her with his simpering speech and pandering smiles. What horror had the poor little girl seen? What happened on her trek to the football field?

  He leaned over to pat her shoulder, but she moved aside. She fought the urge to draw her short sword and chop off his hand. Then his cock, and then his head.

  Kate was out of her element here. There were people everywhere, sprawled out on seats and stairs. Some sat, others stood and, in just about every single case, looked miserable. She felt miserable herself, like she had been in a fight and had every inch of her body worked over by a skilled boxer.

  The night they arrived, she had snuck into a bathroom stall and stripped off every scrap of clothing. She looked over her body for any sign of a bite. Any sign of a scratch that might look like it was infected. She shook in the tiny stall, which was illuminated by overhead fluorescent lights. She felt like she was in a hospital for the insane, only all the crazies were outside.

  She had hugged her arms around her breasts and shivered as she thought about the day before. About the deaders and their insatiable hunger for flesh. They were once people just like her. Well, not exactly like her, since they probably didn’t kill others before being changed.

  She was sore from the fighting. It had been an adrenaline rush that was hard to beat. She’d pushed her body harder than she ever had in her considerable career of learning the deadly art of taking people apart. Not one part of her body had been spared in the orgy of violence that had felt like some kind of divine cleansing.

  Now she paid the price, but oh how she reveled in the pain.

  Others wandered into the bathroom but kept to themselves. A few sat in stalls and wept. There were so many lost faces, eyes red from tears, but not the same red as those of the deaders.

  Her clothes were a mess. Caked with blood, splattered with gore and viscera. A red chunk clung to her sleeve. She thought she remembered the piece landing there after a particularly nasty sword stroke that took off the top of a deader’s head.

  She did her best to clean her shirt and pants, but it was a losing battle. Then she stood in her bra and underwear, cold water streaming into the sink, while she splashed it all over her goose-pimpled body. The floor grew red as the blood left her skin.

  Later, she wandered the stadium. She wondered if the crew with which she had arrived was still in the same spot. She stepped over sleeping forms and crying children as she picked her way through the misery.

  Christ! Did anyone have a plan? The Army guys and gals just walked around like peacocks. The National Guard had done well up until now. Well, they did their best. She didn’t blame them for any of the carnage on the street. She didn’t care to speculate on what their orders had been. In the blink of an eye, the city had erupted in chaos. Violence had become the new world order. How did one organize against an outbreak like this, anyway? How did a city known for its easygoing and peaceful ways become a massive graveyard in the space of a day?

  There were no easy answers.

  She returned to the little home she’d built. The couple had kept an eye on her belongings. They greeted her as she sat down. The man told her everything was still there and that everything was going to be okay, that the deaders wouldn’t be able to get in. He even put a hand on her shoulder as she shook. But she wasn’t crying; she was laughing at the new world into which she had been thrust. She had always possessed the urge to kill. She had always wanted to see people—men—in pain. The Other wanted that. Wanted it very badly. She had been given the opportunity to kill as many as she wanted, and it didn’t matter to anyone! The irony crashed down on her like a wave.

  She stifled her chuckles and tried to look at least somewhat remorseful.

  “Are you okay?” the woman asked as the man looked on, unsure what to say. He stood back, hand still outstretched as if unsure whether he should put it back down or offer it as a consolation prize if the woman’s words didn’t help.

  “Yeah. I’m good. Just had a pretty bad day is all.”

  “We all did,” the kindly woman said.

  “Bad because I didn’t get to kill anyone.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing,” she muttered and looked away.

  They sat side by side in the 100 section of Qwest Field. These seats probably ran into the thousands of dollars per year, but now they were just crappy seats. Just a place to rest and try to think of what normal used to mean.

  A family had picked a place a few rows up and rigged a tent over the seats. Some were bashing at the hard plastic chairs, trying to get them loose to make more room. They were made to last for years of rowdy sports fans, though, and didn’t give up that easily.

  “That’s a lot of blood on your clothes. Are you sure you aren’t hurt?” the man asked. “I’m Nathan, by the way. Nathan Barnes. This is my wife, Kitty. We used to live on Second, in a condo. Should have stayed, but they were going door to door, kicking people out.”

  “Kate,” she said and nodded at them both. “It’s not my blood.”

  “We figured it wasn’t, or else you wouldn’t be in here.”

  “You don’t think any of the deaders made it in here?”

  “Good Lord. I hope not.” The woman looked to the sky as if in prayer.

  A train of refugees passed just below them. They looked hard, like they had been tossed into a grinder and shit out the other side.

  Kitty looked at Kate’s clothing and suppressed a shudder, but Kate read all she had to in the woman’s eyes. Pity. Probably thought Kate had run afoul of some family member or maybe a friend. Had to fight her way free. Truth was, Kate had had a field day, really got the old body count up there in just a few hours. What was it before, six or seven? Now she might add a zero to that number.

  “Nice to meet you, Kate,” Kitty said and stuck out her hand matter-of-factly.

  Kitty had strong features. She was attractive for her age, if a bit stern looking. Kate wondered if the woman wore the pants in the family. Nathan looked like a bear, except he didn’t have much hair. He was shaved bald and had a white goatee that hung down a few inches.

  They told her all about their amazing escape and asked about her arrival. She was nonchalant, made it sound like it was a cakewalk. She didn’t mention her friend Bob or the way the National Guard had mowed down deaders and civilians alike as they escaped the horror of Seattle Center.

  She didn’t mention that she used her precious swords to cut a path through the things like they were stalks of corn. She tried to smile, but it didn’t come naturally. Later that night, she quietly packed her belongings and moved next to a bunch of women who looked like they had run from a battered women’s shelter.

  She was able to keep to herself after that.

  Until Mike found her.

  Now she was on this “mission.” At least she was doing something and not cowering with those girls. It felt good to have guns again, and if things got rough, she had a pommel sticking over her shoulder. A blade so sharp and so honed, she could cut a deader in half like he was made of margarine.

  Mike

  If I thought the next few days would bring some peace, solace, a sense of purpose, I was wrong.

  They howled all night outside the fence, and inside, I howled for other reasons. Erin was gone—or one of them now. A deader just like the thousands that stalked the streets of
Seattle. I rose each day at dawn and walked around the impromptu refugee camp. I saw every emotion in the book written all over the survivors. People just like me who turned away instead of meeting my eyes. I saw tears, a flood of them. I saw pain etched on faces that looked upward and maybe prayed to whatever god they worshiped. I saw loss, and I knew how that felt.

  I missed the comfort of the M-16 against my back. They took it the moment they saw the barrel. Two men who looked like they actually knew how to handle a gun, whereas I had been trained on the job, running for my life with Kate at my side. She had a gun too, and gave it up willingly, but when they tried to take her swords, it was a different story.

  “Touch them and you’ll have stumps,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone that scared the shit out of even me. “I’ll wrap them in something and promise to keep them out of sight.”

  They went round a few times, but Kate got her way in the end, and the guys ended up keeping their hands. They played it off, but there was something about Kate, a darkness they must have sensed and decided not to test.

  The men glanced at each other, nodded and moved on with my rifle. Not really mine; I had no right to it, nor to the extra clips that were in my possession. They took those too. I handed over the pouch with shaking hands, because I was weak from exhaustion. In truth, it was a relief to give them up. Now I wouldn’t have to shoot anyone. I wouldn’t have to kill any more deaders, and oh what a fucking boatload of irony that was. How did one kill the dead, exactly?

  No one had explained the disease, though Nelson made an attempt at it. He told us a story I barely believed. It was so ludicrous, and yet he swore he had been a witness.

  A doctor, and didn’t that just sound like the biggest cliché of them all? A doctor was trying an experimental cancer treatment on his wife. It didn’t go over so well. She attacked him, and he became patient zero, although I would have pinned the title on her. The first night we spent together, Nelson told us what had happened. We sat around a tiny fire, because the stadium wasn’t that crowded yet. Nelson had procured some wood from somewhere and even brought something that looked like a quick-start fire log. He said they were military issue, but it looked just like something from Walmart.