Among the Dead Book 2 (Among the Living)

by Long, Timothy W.

  The noise drew several more. She slung the gun over her shoulder and pulled the sword. It rang in the hot air and cast a brilliant flash across the face of a deader that barely wore a stitch of clothing on her shattered body. One arm swung, broken and dislocated, at her side, and she dragged one twisted foot. She wasn’t one of the fast ones, so Kate ran to meet her.

  Kate ripped her from hip to abdomen. The woman’s guts spilled out in a splash of brown blood that covered the ground at her feet. Her insides were a putrid green color that challenged the contents of Kate’s stomach to stay in place.

  She didn’t have time to be sick. With her sword in both hands, she made short work of another deader, this one a Seahawks fan, judging by the team colors he wore.

  Her sword was a whirlwind as she took down a pair of the deaders. She caught sight of Mark as he ducked around a corner. A shot echoed, and then he was back.

  There wasn’t much distance between them, but there were a number of deaders in the way. He lowered his gun and aimed, but he didn’t fire. The barrel wavered back and forth, and Kate felt a chill as the gun was pointed in her direction, then just as quickly pointed away. It still left a couple of the enemy to deal with.

  The other group took down deaders like they were dominoes. The man in the dark jacket was the quickest. He was tall and whip thin, and he moved like a viper. His bald and tattooed head glistened in the sunlight. Sweat poured down his face to mingle with pink spots of blood.

  A deader crashed into Kate from behind. She rolled forward, right into the clutches of another snarling man. She used her forward momentum to barrel past him. Then Anders’s gun boomed as he fired several shots. She shied away from him, guessing he wasn’t incapable of putting a bullet in her skull and blaming it on friendly fire. She was once again reminded of the lawlessness on the streets. No one would know—and almost no one would care—if she died here.

  Kate had no plans for joining the dead.

  She didn’t lose her grip on the sword. She swung it around in a vicious slash that nearly decapitated a deader making a grab for her. She kicked his flailing corpse to the ground and sidestepped a last useless swipe for her leg.

  The ground was covered in blood, viscera, shit and body parts. The thunk of wood and metal on heads and other appendages was sickening, but she soldiered on. The other group chanted and yelled as they took down deaders.

  Kate whirled to confront another figure, but it was the tall man. He slithered toward her, his tongue licking his lips like a lizard’s. She wanted to slice the fucker into chunks fit for fondue, but she resisted the urge to kill a potential ally. He had rescued them, after all, and it was probably bad form to slice and dice the people who pulled your ass out of the fire.

  She smirked at him just to let him know their alliance was temporary at best. She was already sliding past him to take on the last deader when something heavy smashed into her neck and shoulders. The world tilted and blurred. Her head rang, and her sword arm was suddenly numb.

  “What?” The word came out a whisper between numb lips.

  Mark made for her but was brought down by three of the ruffians. They beat him to the ground, then a bat rose and fell once, and he was still.

  “Tough fucking bitch, aren’t you?” a voice snarled behind her.

  You have no idea, she wanted to say, but the words just hung in her throat. She fell to her hands and knees, then her right arm gave, and she nearly went flat to the ground.

  Her last sight was another blow. It snatched away her consciousness but not before she saw a self-satisfied half-smirk from Anders, who was peeking around the corner. Then he was gone, and so was the light.

  Mike

  Panic. I could feel it bubbling around me.

  I glanced behind and saw the stairs that led to the station below the field. I would be close to the trains and able to board one of the first ones. Did that make me some kind of coward?

  I made it to the staging area, the place where the living were ushered into the exhibition center, examined and moved into the main area if they were free of bites. I had not been inside, but I didn’t think it was a pleasant place. It was bad enough being chased around the town by the deaders. Hiding, fighting, maybe watching loved ones dying. But to arrive in a safe zone only to be stripped and inspected like an animal was a real insult. But it was also the only sane thing to do. If just one of those things got in and infected someone, it would spread like wildfire.

  The street was clear, thanks to enough fencing and razor wire to construct a World War II POW camp. One end of the street was completely blocked, while the other end had an entrance of sorts. At least a dozen men and women stood behind barriers and piles of sandbags, eyeing those who approached. Bodies lay in piles, in singles, pairs and, in one case, seven or eight all clumped together. The stench was unbearable. The heat was not kind. I gagged as the wind shifted and sent a wave of putrid air my way. Holding my nose was the only thing I could do. I swear the smell made my eyes run.

  As people approached, they were ordered via bullhorn to hold their hands up or at least shout back that they weren’t deaders. The second day of our self-incarceration had been horrendous. I had watched from afar as people were gunned down almost with glee. I knew not all of them had been deaders; there was simply no way to sort them out.

  But the things had caught on, somehow. Even a dog learns if you beat it enough. The deaders had learned to stay away, but I didn’t think that was going to last much longer.

  A helicopter buzzed overhead and then slowed and paused in the air. It hovered for a moment before speeding off. A few seconds later, I heard the sound of a massive machine gun opening up.

  I shuddered and made my way toward the kill zone.

  A pair of men ran toward the checkpoint with a group of deaders on their heels. I was drawing close to the fence when I paused to watch. They babbled as they jogged, and when challenged by the guards, both raised their hands and shouted that they weren’t deaders. One of the men was covered in sweat, so much so that his shirt was soaked through. He was a large man but carried his weight like a boxer, except for the gasping breaths.

  The other had dark hair and a thick gold hoop through one ear. He wore a black t-shirt that read “Survivors” and had a face on it that looked like it was screaming. I almost chuckled at the irony.

  “Jeremy, MOVE!” the larger man bellowed and pushed his friend out of the way.

  A deader came at the pair in a loping gait, like a dog chasing a blood trail. The big guy swung his arm like a wrestling move and stopped the deader in its tracks. He hit it just above the chest, and the creature was swept off its feet. Jeremy recovered and stumbled after his friend. Seeing the deader lying on the ground, he raised a black boot and stomped the thing’s head in. The creature’s arms flopped, but it still had life, so the bigger guy kicked it in the side. Then Jeremy finished it with another stomp that left a smear of broken forehead and brains. I shuddered.

  These guys were once probably happy enough to just be tossing back a couple of beers and maybe a sandwich or two in the event of a football game. Now they were killing, performing moves they might have seen at an ultimate fighter match.

  A shot boomed out as one of the Guardsmen broke from behind his barricade, took a few steps toward the melee and lowered a very respectable shotgun. In my close to forty years of life, I could easily count the number of times I had been around guns, but in the last few days, I had learned enough to recognize that the weapon in the warrior’s hand was a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun.

  The gun fired, and buckshot blew a deader back a few feet. For half a crazy second, I was worried that the Guardsmen were just going to shoot Jeremy and his friend. I wanted to scream at them to stop, but anything I cried would have been drowned out.

  Instead, I intended to take out the deaders around them. Maybe they would be spared if I could open up some breathing room for them.

  I ran to the checkpoint, shouting that I wanted to help. One of the
Guardsmen looked me up and down and scoffed but didn’t stop me from taking up a position near them.

  “Just aim for the red eyes; don’t mow down any living.”

  I nodded and gently pulled the charging unit back to inspect the chamber. I could see brass staring back at me from the magazine. I racked the slide back and let it snap forward, carrying a round with it. I did this with the gun pointed down and to the side, finger off the trigger. I must have passed some test, because one of the other guys nodded and tossed me a magazine. I dropped the heavy clip in my back pocket.

  I picked a spot at the chain-link fence and stuck the barrel though an opening. It was a tiny triangle, and I immediately regretted the plan. The rifle sights would prevent me from maneuvering it with any ease, and it was just a bit too high at the moment. Too late now. I aimed and shot for one, but missed. I almost jerked the trigger, but I was so grateful that the gun had even fired that I nearly did a little dance. I was tired of watching and waiting for help. I was sick of being stuck behind a giant fence, unable to help anyone.

  The shock of the shot came next as my ears rang with the concussive blast.

  I took aim, and my next shot took one in the shoulder. It spun, so I breathed out and stroked the trigger. Bingo. The guy, who was no older than me and dressed in what used to be a suit, fell to the side and stopped moving.

  There was a flood of them. I fired, but they came on in a rush. Jeremy was overwhelmed, but he shook off a few and dashed toward the barricade. He would have made it, but he ran into the Guardsman with the shotgun. They went down in a panicked heap. The one with the gun rolled free, came up on one knee and blew the legs off a deader hot on his heels. Blood splattered, and the girl went down. She hit the pavement so hard it sounded like a basketball hitting the asphalt.

  I shuddered and fought to keep my stomach from tossing its contents all over the place. There were too many of them. I shot a few more, but they closed in on our location in droves. I heard men on the move and risked a glance at the entryway. Jeremy had thrown himself in front of his friend so he could take down one of the attackers. He threw a wild kick that pushed a deader back, but it collided with another one and was back at him.

  “Run, Chip!” he screamed.

  His friend became enraged. Like a bear, he rose and grabbed one of the deaders around the neck. I almost fired, but I would have risked shooting the big man. He flung the creature aside and helped his friend up. Then a pair of deaders leaped at them.

  Johnny Lee

  The parking lot was not the biggest shithole that Johnny Lee LeBeau had ever lived in. Far from it. During the economic downturn of the late ‘90s, just about the time his boy Slick Willy went out of office, there was barely any panhandling money to go around. During good times, guilty whites liked to hand out cash. When times were tough, he was a non-tax-paying member of society. Riff raff, someone to piss on to make themselves feel better.

  He could be the nicest panhandler in the world. “Good afternoon, young man. Afternoon, young lady, can you spare a few coins so I can get a bite to eat?” That one worked from time to time, but it was better to ask for bus money. Seemed like if you were making an attempt to at least move in the direction of a job, people were a little more helpful. Sometimes he didn’t feel like being nice and wanted to get in people’s faces.

  One thing every pedestrian in Seattle could agree on: There was nothing worse than a crazy, screaming homeless man confronting you. Johnny found humor in that. He wouldn’t hurt anyone, not really. Sometimes he got into scrapes, but that came with the territory. The ones you had to watch out for were the quiet white guys, particularly in this city. Those were the men who went home to happy families until the wife suddenly went missing. “No, Officer, I don’t know why she went out on Thanksgiving and left her wallet at home.” Meanwhile, her body was buried under the porch.

  The parking lot butted up against an old building that had been condemned. In true Seattle tradition, they didn’t blow it up. Instead, they brought in a giant crane and took it apart floor by floor. Massive chunks of concrete rained down while girders were lowered on pallets.

  They didn’t want anyone but construction workers parking here, so they put up a huge metal fence that rose a good ten feet into the air. LeBeau knew the type, because he stayed away from them. They were not worth the effort, with the height and razor wire on top. Fuck that, and fuck trying to sneak over one.

  Which was why he found it so fortuitous to be able to slide past a loose chain that held the door shut. A deader had been going crazy, bashing on it to get at the couple cowering by a car. They were older than LeBeau, who put his own age in the upper fifties. The man clutched at his chest while the woman, probably his wife from the way she hovered and held him, called for help.

  Johnny Lee LeBeau didn’t give two shits about helping them. What he wanted was to get inside. So he grabbed a metal pipe and beat the fucking deader to a pulp, and that felt mighty fine. Like he was swinging for the wall, even though he had never played a real game of baseball in his entire life. When he pushed his way in and then rigged the loose chain so the door was no longer standing half open, the others kept far away.

  There was one other inhabitant in the parking lot.

  Bait. That was what he called her. She probably had issues with him bashing in heads. She sniffed, tossed her hair and looked away whenever he glanced her way. Girl was a fine little thing with a pair of legs that glistened in the bright sunlight. Old Johnny wouldn’t mind splitting those either. Right in two.

  The older couple found a Cadillac in which to sit and left the back doors open. It still must have been an oven in there. She had a small bottle of water that she kept pouring onto a handkerchief to dab at the man’s forehead. He didn’t look well at all. His face was pale, and when he moved, he puffed like a locomotive going straight uphill.

  She wore a white hat that had a row of flowers around the base. Glasses rounded out the grandmother look, as did a conservative dress that buttoned from neck to ground. All those buttons … How the hell long did it take to put that thing on?

  A group of slow deaders walked by like they were on a Sunday stroll. They looked aimless to LeBeau. Not like the fast ones that wanted blood. He felt cagey, so he slipped out from behind the SUV that was providing a little bit of shade. Why the hell did he pick this hellhole to hide out in? If he were on the other side of Third Avenue, he would be in constant shade.

  “Ya’ll got any smokes?” he asked as he crept up on the fence. They turned as one and stared at him, then reached out, hands groping for something that wasn’t there. She was tall and lean. Bite marks marred pale arms that were stick thin. Her boyfriend didn’t have any teeth and was barely out of his teens. Johnny Lee mimicked her actions and even asked if she had any wine. That was his thing, wine. The cheaper the better. He could drink three bottles a night and call it a warm-up.

  Johnny would just about kill for a few bottles right about now.

  MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE FOOTBALL STADIUM. DO NOT TALK TO ANY OF THE INFECTED. MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE FOOTBALL STADIUM. YOU WILL BE PROTECTED.

  The giant speakers announced it once again. About every fifteen minutes, it went off. Johnny Lee LeBeau was not about to go to the damn football stadium. The minute he left the safety of this location, he was dead meat.

  “Why don’t you leave them alone?” Bait said softly.

  He turned to stare into her giant blue eyes. They were as wide open as daylight and leaked tears. For a moment, he felt pity for the girl. Then she went back to stroking her hair, holding it up and staring at it from downcast eyes. Oh yeah, she was a looker, but right now, she wasn’t looking so great. Worry crinkled her eyes, and sweat made her makeup run.

  She was tiny. If she was five foot nothing, it would be a surprise. LeBeau wasn’t a big man, but he had a good eight or nine inches on her. He’d like to have that inside her too, not that a pretty Seattle girl would give him the time of day unless she was feeling particularly charitable. />
  Some of his friends worked for a company that let them peddle newspapers on the street. No one gave them shit. They gave them dollars, and sometimes the girls would get that look of pity, pay, then walk away like they had done their good deed for the day. That was about the same reaction he would get from honey-hair here.

  “What else I’m gonna do? Have tea with them? They don’t got no sense. NO GODAMN SENSE!” he roared.

  The girl shied away and moved to stand by Grandpa.

  “Just pipe down, for Christ’s sake! Are you trying to bring more of the fast ones to us?” the old man said. He leaned out the window of the Cadillac to hiss at Johnny.

  Johnny smiled at the old man, then picked up a piece of broken asphalt and tossed it as hard as he could at the car. It hit the windshield, splintering it into a spider web of cracks, then ricocheted off and hit the wall, striking near the girl. She stared at him like he was a dog.

  “Asshole,” she muttered, but low so she thought he didn’t hear her. But he did. One thing you learned on the streets was to have some pretty keen hearing.

  Johnny Lee hiked up his canvas pants, pulled down his oversized hoodie and stalked to the front of the parking lot. Then he let loose with a string of profanities that would make even Charlie, the dirty kid with anger issues who sometimes hung out with Johnny, step back and high five the black man.

  Kate

  Kate. Her name was Kate. She lay in a heap and cried.

  Kate? That might have been her name long ago.

  How long had it been? A day? A week? She tried to roll over, but got a boot to the side for her effort.

  They had taken her and Mark. She wanted to look for him, but she was sure he was being held somewhere else. If they had killed him—no, if they had even hurt him in the slightest—they were about to be in a world of pain.