Beyond Dead | Book 3 | On The Road

by Frost, Christopher

  “Kiefer!” Bob yelled.

  But Kiefer didn’t stop. He yelled at Forrest and slapped him again and then again before Bob grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him off the kid. Kiefer was struggling to get around Bob to get the kid to snap out of it when they heard him yell.

  “Rebel!”

  They both turned and saw Forrest running back down toward the convenience store.

  “Help me!” He yelled turning his head back to look at them.

  “What the hell?” Kiefer asked.

  Bob had already gotten in the truck and started it up. He was driving after Forrest when Kiefer grabbed hold of the door and jumped in pushing Clover out of his seat. The cat hissed at him.

  The truck bounced up and down as it went over the embankment and then the curb while following Forrest. Bob could see the slew of dead bodies lying around the pumps. The kid was almost to the door of the store – leaping over the bodies like they didn’t bother him – when the horde of zombies came around the corner.

  “Drop it!” Kiefer yelled as Bob lowered the plow and it began to spark as it hit the pavement and scooped through the horde. Bob ran them directly into the building pinning them in a bloody heap.

  “Kid, we need to go!” Kiefer yelled out his window.

  Forrest was standing in front of the eave to the entrance. Standing in the doorway was a large burly man that looked like a crazed redneck lumberjack. He had a rifle over his shoulder and his hands twitched at his side. Kiefer didn’t think that he even saw the kid even though Forrest was standing right in front of him. The redneck might have still had some motor function but his life-card had been punched. There was a hunting knife protruding from the top of his head and blood was flowing like a fountain out of his mouth and over his dirty beard.

  All three of them watched as the redneck took another stumbling step forward before he fell face first to the concrete and the front of his face exploded into a flat bloody mess.

  Behind him, standing in the entrance of the store, was a girl with platinum hair stained with blood across one side and half her face. She was wearing a Billy Idol shirt that was ruined by the blood. Her lips were a shade brighter than the blood. In her hand she held a bottle of Sam Adams and in the other hand was a wine opener with the twisting metal corkscrew clenched between the fingers of her fist. Her jeans were unbuttoned and unzipped in the front.

  Kiefer and Bob got out of the truck and ignored the struggling zombies that were caught between the building and the plow.

  “Miss, are you alright?” Bob asked.

  Rebel took a swig of the beer and wiped her mouth; she looked over at Bob and said, “Five by five. Why do you ask?”

  Chapter 11

  The Hobo King was walking through the street with his new mistress. Together they had slaughtered everyone at the middle school and now he had the beautiful dead girl with him – Christine he had named her, after his own middle school sweetheart – he wasn’t sure how he remembered that, or if he even remembered it accurately, but that was the story he was telling himself. With Christine at his side he felt even more like a king. She was his first. Like the other zombies he had created, the ones that were faster and more aware. Christine was like them in a way. Also, different. She was compliant but hungry like the others.

  “My sweet girl,” the Hobo King praised her as he stroked her hair and she pressed her head against his shoulder. He had decided he liked her better with no clothes on so he had taken them away and allowed her to be naked and free. Her breasts were large and she had a small triangle of neatly trimmed pubic hair. The Hobo King admired her body as they walked and he couldn’t wait to find a place to camp for the night so that he could have her for the first time and wondered what Christine would be like. How different she would be from the other zombies that he had fucked.

  In the middle of the street rolled a convoy of police cars. There were four in addition to a school bus in the center. They slowly came to a stop.

  The middle school. The police must have been out looking for survivors, using the bus to transport them back to the middle school. In the center of the street the Hobo King watched the lead police car as it sat idle. Behind the windshield he could see the cop on his radio trying to decide what to do.

  The Hobo King turned away from the police and hid Christine from view.

  “Adam,” he called to the crowd. Pushing its way through the crowd the First came to its master. The Hobo King was proud of the name that he had given the First and looked into its black eyes. Besides the black eyes and the bit of blood still around his face, Adam looked to be just as normal a human being as any of the living. Enough at least to fool these small time cops trying to play real American soldiers. “Take Christine and run to them. Leave the first alive. The one in the lead car. Do you understand?”

  Instead of nodding Adam said to the Hobo King, “First. Alive.”

  “Yes, Adam. The first lives. Even if you have to you protect him from your brothers and sisters. I want to know the living’s plans.”

  “First. Live. Like. Adam.”

  The Hobo King could not have felt more joy. There was so much more to understand about Adam and Christine, but right now they had a job to do.

  “Christine?” The Hobo King summoned her to him, “Can you understand me? Like Adam?”

  Her head was tilted to the side as if trying to comprehend his words.

  “Christine?”

  She looked at him with her black eyes.

  “Can you speak?” he asked.

  She only stared.

  “Can you scream?”

  Christine opened her mouth and the scream that came out was almost deafening. The Hobo King had to clasp his hand over her mouth and tell her to stop.

  “Good girl,” he told her and kissed her on the forehead, “Now run with your brother to the police car and scream just like that.” Her head shot in the direction of the police convoy ,her black hair falling like lines of ink across her face and there was a hiss coming from her lips.

  “Adam, take her. Christine, scream!”

  Only five steps, that was all the Hobo King gave them before he ordered the horde to chase after them. Adam and Christine were of course much faster than the zombies and were almost at the police car when the officer in the lead car stepped away from the safety of his vehicle.

  With his weapon drawn he yelled to Adam and Christine, “Get behind me.”

  The two did as they were ordered and Adam grabbed the officer by the back of the head and swung him around slamming his head off the hard glass and knocking him out. Adam lifted the officer and threw him back in the squad car and closed the door.

  Christine whirled on the other police car as it started to back away. She screamed that banshee cry and ran at the car. Her bare feet banged over the hood as she punched her hands through the windshield and grabbed the fractured glass tearing it from the car and throwing it behind her. She reached in and grabbed the officer as another tried to shoot her. She used the first as a human shield and then dropped his dead body as she leapt into the squad car and buried her teeth into the female police officers neck and tore out her jugular. Christine’s naked body was mounted on the officer in an almost erotic scene until she started eating her and digging her way through the side of the officer’s temple and pulling out fragments of brain to feast on like hors d’oeuvres.

  Adam had run to the bus and tore the folding door off. Behind him a wave of zombies followed him through the row of seats to massacre the survivors.

  As the Hobo King arrived Christine crawled out of the squad car and was crawling on her hands and feet across the hood. Her mouth was covered in blood but the Hobo King was so proud of her. He kissed her and was surprised when she kissed him back. Maybe she held on to some primitive response to lust. She crawled at him and wrapped her legs around his waist. The Hobo King unzipped in his pants and pushed her down on the hood of the squad car and while the rest of the horde killed and fed on the remaining survivors
. He fucked Christine until he filled her dead body with his seed.

  Chapter 12

  Bob wouldn’t be able to fill the truck with gas while the zombies were pinned. He would have to wait until the next station, if they could find one that wasn’t overrun with the dead. Forrest was on the other side, away from Rebel, filling the tank of his dirt bike. The young man that he had seen, who was so afraid and worried for the girl with the Billy Idol shirt, did not seem like the same kid now. He was distant and had barely said more than two words to any of them and nothing to Rebel. Kiefer on the other hand, could barely contain his excitement when he started bombarding her with questions about what happened. He had gone into the convenience store to help himself to a beer when he found Rebel already with one and saw the other Paquette brother on his ass with his hands wrapped around his slit throat and his body covered in blood.

  “Ok, so let me get this straight,” Kiefer said as excited as a kid getting a new toy. He handed Rebel another Sam Adams – completely ignoring that she was a minor – and pressed on with the same details, like a detective trying to catch a convict in a lie. “So you pretending that you were going to tease them –”

  “Fuck them,” Rebel exhaustingly corrected him again.

  “Yeah, yeah. So neither of them noticed this hunting knife you had attached at the small of your back?”

  “Nope.” Rebel finished the beer and opened another, her legs swinging under the gate of the pickup like a child on a swing.

  “So you slit the first guy’s throat and then while he’s pissing blood everywhere you stabbed the other guy in the head?”

  “Something to that effect.”

  “Wow.” Kiefer tugged on his ball cap and readjusted it so it was back over his face covering his eyes again, “I mean just wow.”

  “Yep, I’m pretty impressive,” Rebel said with no enthusiasm. She turned to Bob who was loading a few more supplies of food and water into the back of the pickup. “So where you guys headed?”

  “North,” Bob told her, “Maybe Canada, I don’t know. Maybe they are faring better than us.”

  “You should come with us. I don’t know how much longer these bombings are going to take place or if we are going to be invaded by Russians and North Koreans as well as the zombies, but we’re going north too. To my parent’s house.”

  “That in Canada?” Kiefer asked.

  “No,” Rebel said and tossed the beer bottle as far as she could and watched it shatter on the pavement. She reached a hand out to Kiefer who instinctively handed her another.

  “Look I don’t mean to be that old guy – ” Bob was about to say when Rebel cut him off.

  “Then don’t, Bob. I already got one shitty father. Don’t need another.”

  “Fair enough. So where you headed?”

  “Gilford. It’s on Lake Winnipesaukee. My parents have a house there.”

  “Your shitty dad?” Kiefer asked.

  Rebel gave him the finger.

  Bob asked, “I don’t see how that helps us. They’re everywhere.”

  “Yep.” Rebel gave him her trademark cocky smile, “But it’s on Governor’s Island.”

  “So?” Kiefer asked, looking to Bob to see if any of this made any sense to him.

  “So, it’s an island, idiot.” Rebel pulled the gate closed to the pickup, “You coming or what?”

  Chapter 13

  Christine was leaning over the Hobo King’s shoulder while he tapped the cop repeatedly on the forehead. When that didn’t wake the cop he started flicking him in the nose until the cop batted at his hand and then jolted awake.

  He screamed.

  This was expected.

  The cop was surrounded by zombies, dozens of them. The Hobo King was leaning over him with his scepter in hand. The skull woven to the tip had flaking pieces of drying human flesh. Christine was looking down at the cop like food – he might be later – and even with her blacked out eyes and lines of oil tapped veins, the cop couldn’t help but look at her firm young tits and exposed pussy.

  “Get him up, get him up, get him up,” the Hobo King commanded and Adam grabbed the cop by his bulletproof vest and heaved him off his back and into the air. Adam held him up high so that his feet dangled just above the ground and his throat pushed against the hard vest.

  “Let me go!” the cop coughed out the order.

  “I can let you go. You want to go?” the Hobo King asked, “Where would you like to go officer…Perry?” He read the tag on the cops vest tapping it with the head of the scepter.

  “Get away from me.”

  “No, no, no. You see, Officer Perry, you don’t give the orders anymore. If you weren’t such a narcissistic prick you would have realized that my people swept over your well armed police officers like a tidal wave and the only thing any of you could do was die – ” the Hobo King held his hands outstretched to mimic the weighing of options, “or join my people. Like Officer Kelley over there.”

  Officer Perry turned his head to see that Officer Kelly had in fact been turned into one of the living dead. He pressed his eyes closed and shook his head before he was struck in the face with the skull tip of the scepter and his nose broke, skin split as warm blood ran down his face.

  “Officer Perry, wave to your comrade in arms!” the Hobo King yelled. Perry looked through blurry eyes to see the dead arm of Officer Jamie Kelly – mother of three and second time around wife – waving to him through the crowd of the dead.

  “What do you want?” Perry asked.

  The Hobo King stepped right up to him so they were face to face. He no longer had to fear these men with badges. Their brutality and mistreatment of men like him that had no home because society had cast them out.

  “I want to know what the living have planned.” The Hobo King gave him a great wide grin while Christine slung an arm around him like they were high school sweethearts.

  “Refuge.”

  “Yes, I know that part. We ate them. Think larger Officer Perry.” The Hobo King tapped him on the head trying to get him to think.

  “You – you what? You ate them?”

  “Yes. A whole school of them. Now try and stay focused on the question at hand, Officer Perry.”

  “You’re a fucking animal!” Perry spit in the Hobo King’s face.

  “Animal? Animal, Officer Perry.” The Hobo King was tapping his own head with the scepter now. He wasn’t smiling anymore, the amusement wiped from his face at the derogatory name. “Yes, I am an animal aren’t I? That is how you’re kind has always treated people like me. Used up, addicts, drunks, rats, ANIMALS! You know what animals are good at? Survival. Animals adapt and survive and humans – well…you just die.” The Hobo King grabbed Officer Perry by the head and pushed his thumbs into the police officers eyeballs. He listened to him scream as his fingernails popped the soft tissue and pushed beyond the eye socket to the fleshy meat behind. The Hobo King tore the cop out of Adam’s hands and mounted him on the ground while he pushed his thumbs in as deep as he could until there was no more screaming and the twitches of Officer Perry’s body came to be still.

  The Hobo King stood up and sucked on both his thumbs.

  “Eat up,” he told his followers.

  Chapter 14

  Tuck had nodded off with his head against the passenger window.

  In his dreams he was brought back to a time long ago when he was just a small boy. A beautiful woman in a floral dress that fell around the top of her calves with a red ribbon to hold back her hair, stood in front of him. There was loud banging and with each bang something would squeeze his hand. He looked at his hand and saw there was another larger hand in his. He followed the hand to the forearm to the bicep and saw the boy with shaggy dark hair and tears rolling out of his eyes. Tuck started to cry. He wasn’t sure why, just that everyone else was. The woman turned to face the two boys.

  “Mommy?” his older brother said – was that right? Had he had a brother? Or was this all part of the dream?

  “You bo
ys hush now and stay in that closet until I come and get you.”

  “But daddy – ”

  “Is drunk and I’m not going to let him put a damn hand on you ever again.”

  “Daddy.” Tuck’s older brother was reaching out trying to push his mother out of the way while pulling him along.

  “That animal is not your father. You two stay here!” He saw the glint of the steel of the revolver in his mother’s hand as she closed the closet door behind her.

  There was a lot of screaming and more noises as things were broken and loud bangs and booms. Tuck wasn’t sure what could be happening outside the closet only that his brother was shaking uncontrollably. Then a loud boom. So loud both boys covered their ears and then three more. Tuck’s brother screamed and threw open the door. He ran out of the closet and down the stairs disappearing from sight.

  Tuck did as his mother told him. He stood in the closet with the door open but still directly inside the closet like she said. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there before he saw the hand that came up over the stairs and the fingers that strained to grab purchase on the carpet. Two of the fingernails snapped off and blood stained the carpet. Another hand came up until Tuck could see his mother dragging her prone body along the carpet toward him. Her dress had red splotches on it darker than the ribbon that still tied her hair.

  She called his name and he left the closet and slowly approached her. She wrapped him in her arms and got to her elbows leaning against the wall.

  “It’s over,” she whispered and stroked his hair.

  Far off Tuck could hear the sound of sirens. He knew that was good. The police and the fire trucks had sirens and they would make everything better. They would make mommy better.

  “You killed my daddy.”

  Tuck saw his brother standing at the top of the stairs. His face was covered in their father’s blood and mixed with his tears so it was a mess of red streaks, it looked like Indian war paint.