DISEASE: A Zombie Novel

by M. F. Wahl

  As the candlelight grows stronger Danny can finally see who Sal is. The man is probably in his mid-fifties, with a heavily lined face and shortly cropped salt and pepper hair. He’s slightly hunched but still tall, about Danny’s height, maybe taller if he were to stand straight.

  Danny looks around the room. The walls are made of just about everything, scrap metal, fencing, boards and even the dismembered seats of old wooden chairs, although two survive, sitting at a makeshift table. There’s a wood burning cook stove with a jerry-rigged vent in the corner and even a cage of game birds pecking seed from a tray. “Quite the setup you’ve got here.”

  Sal says nothing. He motions for his guests to sit at the table and pushes a homemade chess set to the side. Danny thumps into a chair, noticing the man’s left hand is lined with old surgical scars and doesn’t work well. Alex pokes his finger at the caged birds, oblivious to anything else.

  Sal takes the seat across the table. He is as gruff and guarded as Danny. “So, what should I call you two boys?”

  “Danny. That’s Alex.”

  “Father and son against the world?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Brothers?”

  “Just guy and kid.”

  “I see,” Sal studies Danny. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”

  “Just passing through.”

  “Oh, I see. Out for an evening stroll, see the sights, get eaten alive? That kind of thin, right?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Okay then,” Sal sits back in his chair, making hard eye contact. Danny coldly returns the stare, tired but still cocky enough not to back down.

  “So, Danny, you’ll be off in the morning, I assume.”

  “Yeah.” Danny feels a tug on his shirt and looks down at Alex. “What?”

  The boy stands there looking at him and tugs on his shirt again. An instant of overwhelming frustration bubbles up, choking Danny for a split second before he pushes it down.

  “What do you want, Alex?”

  More tugging.

  Sal raises an eyebrow. “Kid doesn’t talk?”

  “Can’t.”

  Alex’s tugs continue relentlessly until Danny awkwardly pats Alex on the head as if the child were a dog. Sal smiles, amused, briefly showing he was once a handsome man. “When’s the last time the two of you ate anything?”

  Alex’s eyes light up. Death and monsters mean nothing when a kid’s got to eat.

  ***

  Alex wolfs down a meal of eggs, dried meat, and fresh berries served on cracked plates. Danny’s food sits before him, untouched. He grinds his teeth and fidgets with the leather strap of his father’s watch, feeling like he might vomit. Just the sight of the food on the plate before him is almost enough to make him heave. He looks away from the food and puts a chipped mug to his lips, drawing in a mouthful of water and forcing himself to swallow. His stomach lurches, but he keeps it down. He needs to stay hydrated if he’s going to survive a run for Whitebridge.

  Sal eyes Danny’s plate. “Not used to survival food?”

  “Just not hungry.”

  Alex picks berries off Danny’s plate. Danny absently shoves it toward him and the gaunt child begins picking up food by the handful, stuffing his face with a second meal.

  “If you’re not related to the boy,” Sal says, “do you mind if I ask how exactly you came across him?”

  “What if I do mind you asking?”

  Sal crosses his arms over his chest and sits back in his chair, the younger man’s attitude a clear source of annoyance. They sit in silence, staring at each other, Sal boring a hole through Danny with his eyes.

  When Danny can’t stand it anymore he looks away. He just wants to sleep—needs to sleep. “Why do you live way out here, all alone?”

  “I’m not a people person.”

  “Then why help us, bring us here, feed us?”

  “Just because I’d rather be alone doesn’t mean I want to see other people dead.”

  “Fair enough.” It doesn’t really matter because Danny and Alex will be leaving come daybreak.

  ***

  The rescue party quietly trudges through the forest. Finally, thick brush gives way to a deer trail. There is no sign of Danny, or the kid, not a single footprint.

  Arnold fears they’ve missed something. The lower the moon falls the more difficult it’ll be to find any sign of direction and what if Danny isn’t going to Whitebridge? What if he backtracked to the road knowing anyone following him would be in the forest? Assuming he could avoid the search party, that would be a smart move.

  “I think we should stop,” he whispers over to Thick Marge.

  “Okay,” she respond. This is what she was afraid of, what they’re all afraid of. That they are out here, in the dark, infested forest, with no hope of locating their target.

  They’ve successfully avoided the few creatures they’ve came across so far, but they’re running around out here blind. If they stumble across a herd they don’t stand a very good chance, not like this. Marge wonders if Danny can even survive out here with a struggling child. There’s a very real possibility she and the group should be looking for remains, or that those remains are looking for them.

  As they stop, Thick Marge motions for a perimeter around her and Arnold. Dennis, Brody, Jamal, Habib, and Rob circle around, guns raised. Marge digs through her knapsack and pulls out a candle and lighter. She doesn’t use it often, but one day the lighter will run dry, for now it’s a blessing.

  She lights the candle and crouches, searching the ground with Arnold while the others stand watch. She hopes they find something, anything that tells them Danny passed through here with the boy.

  ***

  Lot watches the glow of dying embers as she sits before her fireplace, deep in thought. There’s nothing she would love better than to personally place them scorching onto Danny’s open eyes, and feed him the burning coals, shoveling spoonful after spoonful into his betraying mouth. She would watch until they burned so deeply that they fell from his throat through a melted hole of skin and tissue.

  Lot taps her fingers angrily on the arm of her chair. One of the burdens of leadership is sacrifice, and she’ll be unable to smite Danny with her own two hands. A situation like this must be handled with care, people will be watching. At least, she thinks, she can take solace in the fact that an outraged community will eagerly dish out any punishment she can devise, in the name of justice. In fact, they will demand it. They will require a public execution, and she will gratify them.

  ***

  Danny peeks out the window of Sal’s treehouse. The moon shines dimly through clouds that blot the sky. His eyes burn and he needs sleep, but his body refuses to cooperate. He lies back down on the floor and doses for a few minutes, then his troubled mind churns, and he wakes again.

  He peers through the dark at Alex. The boy is peaceful, lying on a cot Sal uses for a bed. At least he’s getting some sleep, Danny thinks. It was nice enough of their host to let Alex have the bed and he’s probably a nice guy, but who the hell really knows? People are never what they seem. Danny almost prefers the creatures outside to the living humans he’s met.

  He sits up and looks around the room. Nearby, Sal sleeps on the floor, his head resting on pile of animal skins. Danny can’t help but think that earlier today the man was right: he is woefully unprepared to protect a kid out here by himself. This guy is well set up and won’t miss a few things.

  In the corner, Danny remembers seeing some old bags hanging on a nail. He stands quietly and creeps across the room. The floorboards of the treehouse squeak under his shifting weight. He stops and listens. The deep breathing of uninterrupted sleep reassures him and he shuffles on, trying to avoid more noise.

  A plastic bag crinkles as he pulls it gently from the nail and Danny curses under his breath.

  In Sal’s pantry there are eggs sitting in a basket, dried meat slices piled in a jar, a small bowl of berries and root vegetables, cans of spaghett
i sauce, cocktail wieners, gas station fruit pies, even pudding cups. Danny grabs the dried meat and drops it into the bottom of his sack.

  The sound of a gun cocking behind his head jettisons the blood from his heart. He drops the sack on the floor and swallowing hard, raises his hands slowly into the air.

  Sal angrily shoves him toward a chair. “Sit!”

  In a split second a world of thought cascades over Danny. He can’t allow Sal to get the upper hand. If he does there’s no telling where this will go or what Sal will do to the guy robbing him.

  Adrenaline jumpstarts his movements. Danny whips around and grabs the gun. Sal is surprised, but not easily over-powered and he doesn’t release the weapon.

  The two men struggle, slamming into walls and furniture. Alex bolts upright in bed. A shadowy jumble of arms and legs rolls through the dark, the grunting of life and death exertion rumbling the walls of the treehouse.

  BAM!

  Danny staggers back a few steps, the moonlight strobing his movements, then falls he to his knees, grabbing at his left side. Sal stands over him, gun in hand.

  ***

  Thick Marge and Arnold continue to scrutinize the ground around them. Nothing, not a single footprint, it doesn’t look like this path has been walked all summer. If Danny trekked through here there would be something, at the very least rummaged leaves, but the trail is pristine; abandoned. The team feels the frustration of a goose chase mounting as they begin to think Danny has outsmarted them.

  Pop!

  It’s faint, but distinctive. Arnold holds his hand up for silence before anyone has a chance to speak. He listens, straining his ears, but there is no other sound.

  “Gunshot?”

  “Yep.”

  “Could be Danny.”

  “Could be anyone.”

  “It’s all we have to go on,” Thick Marge interjects. “Javier, can you tell what direction it came from?”

  Arnold thinks. “Maybe it came from the Northeast, but I can’t be sure. Could be a quarter of a mile away, maybe closer, probably closer.”

  Brody peers into the dark. “If we heard it, so did every damn creature in this forest. If we go in that direction now, we’ll be massacred. We don’t even know if it was Danny.”

  The group nods.

  “Okay,” Thick Marge replies. “You all knew the risks when you volunteered. This doesn’t change anything. If that’s how you feel Brody, then turn back now. I’m pressing forward.” She shoulders her bag and leaves the group behind.

  Two seconds later they are following.

  ***

  Danny is slumped against a wall. The gunshot wound in his side doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would, unless he moves, and right now Alex has a death grip on his arm and is shaking him. With each jolt a searing pain wraps around Danny’s abdomen, but it’s hard for him to understand it. Shock muddies everything. He’s never been shot before.

  Danny looks down at his hands. They are covered in dark red blood. It’s thick, sticky, and hot as it oozes steadily from his left side. His shirt is soaked with it. He feels like he’s looking at Alex from the bottom of a mineshaft as the kid keeps pulling on his arm. The kid’s eyes are wide, petrified, and he tries to lift Danny to his feet. Danny groans in pain and rolls his eyes toward the man who shot him.

  Sal stands unapologetically over him, still pointing his handgun at Danny.

  Danny’s face shrivels in anger. “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck me? Fuck you, you little prick. I try to help you out and you try to rip me off?”

  “I just needed a few days’ worth of supplies. That’s all! You shot me!”

  “Which never would have happened if you didn’t grab the gun in the first place.”

  Danny can see Alex is starting to lose it. He still pulls on Danny’s arm, jerking his head with that weird tick and breathing so hard he might hyperventilate. Then Danny hears it, the first horrifying croaks and gurgles as they drift up from the forest floor—The Risen, attracted by the gunshot. It won’t be long before there are too many to fight off. There will be a seething ocean of spoiled flesh and menacing teeth right below them.

  This is it, Danny thinks. There’s no getting the kid to safety now. This has all been for nothing.

  He tries to hug Alex, to calm him, but the boy doesn’t want to be calmed. He shoves Danny off and tries desperately to drag the wounded man to his feet.

  Thick tears begin to blur Danny’s vision. They spill from his eyes and streak down his face. Every last element of his carefully crafted façade washes downstream with them and he breaks down, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Danny’s tears don’t last long, stopping from utter burnout. He just doesn’t have the energy to spare anymore. Alex kneels next to him as he leans his head back against the wall. “What’s wrong with me? I knew, of course I knew. I’m so sorry, Alex,” Danny mumbles. “I brought you to her like some sort of sacrificial lamb. I thought she’d be so happy she’d be falling over herself to thank me. I knew, deep down, what she would do and I led you straight to her, but I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t let it happen again.”

  Danny’s voice chokes in his throat and he tries unsuccessfully to swallow his emotions. The pain in his side is getting worse and he shifts his weight, groaning with the effort, and tries to see Alex better. “I’m so sorry. Jesus Christ, if it weren’t for me none of this would have happened. If it weren’t for me Casey’d still be alive and you’d still be with her.”

  Alex strokes Danny’s arm as though he saw someone else do it once.

  Sal waves his gun at them.

  “Who was Casey, your wife?”

  Danny laughs bitterly. “I barely knew her. She was Alex’s surrogate mother—until Lot had her killed.”

  “Love triangle?”

  Again, the bitter, frayed laughter, this time with manic edges. “Lot, my mother, my lover, my idol, my entire world. She had Casey killed.”

  “I see.”

  “No, no you don’t see.”

  Alex wipes tears from Danny’s face and the tenderness is almost too much to bear. It’s such a kind, lucid gesture it nearly sends Danny plummeting over the edge of the bottomless pit he’s standing on. “I’m so fucked up in the head,” he confesses.

  “We all have our demons, kid.” Sal’s gaze drifts toward an old photocopy of an ultrasound picture tacked to the wall.

  Danny follows his eyes. “You take him.”

  Sal’s attention snaps to Alex. “No way.”

  “I’m in no condition to protect a child, I probably won’t even survive. You used to have a kid, right?” Danny points at the photocopy. “You want one? Take him. You can take care of him, I can’t.”

  He knows he’ll be lucky to survive a gunshot wound like this, even on a good day, let alone with no medical attention. The wounded man pleads with his eyes and watches as a downpour of darkness instantly distorts Sal’s face. There is no rescuing him. “No. No kids. No family. Nothing! If you mention it again I’ll throw you to the ground to be eaten alive. Do you understand me?”

  Danny nods silently at the half-crazed man.

  Sal steps across the room and, keeping his gun on Danny, rummages through supplies. He pulls out a white box with a red cross on the front—a first-aid kit, and tosses the box at Danny. It clatters at his feet.

  “Fix yourself up. You’re gone come first light.”

  They have no choice. Once again man and boy must take their chances in a forest besieged by demons and ghouls. He tried, Danny thinks, he really did, but this will be their last stand.

  14

  Danny’s side throbs and his entire body is in torment. It’s too bad Sal doesn’t have any painkillers in his rinky-dink first aid kit, and the bandage he found in it isn’t doing much for the bleeding. The only thing Danny has going for him is that the bullet passed through. He’s no physician, not by a long shot, but he thinks that’s probably a good thing. That, and the fact that he isn’t dead yet mean maybe he has a chance. Maybe.


  He winces, peering down the side of the tree. Many of the creatures that gathered after the gunshot have wandered away, but there’s still a good number left. He wonders how they’re going to get past them, but Sal seems prepared for everything. Attached to a long line that snakes far out into the forest is an actual tambourine, along with a few pots and pans. A few yanks and the corpses blunder toward the noise.

  Danny and Alex leave without sound or ceremony.

  Sal releases the rope ladder and points out the door. Danny climbs down, slowly, each step searing through him. Alex follows. Sal drops Casey’s bat to the ground, sweeps up the ladder, shuts the door, and that’s that.

  Alex lifts the bat from the dirt and brushes it off. Danny isn’t sure which way to go. For a good minute he stands there, paralyzed with indecision, his side slowly dripping blood onto the dirt. The forest is full of danger and he doesn’t even know where they are anymore.

  Alex reaches out his hand and tugs on Danny’s, ready to go. If they continue to stand here stupidly there will be no more decisions to make. It’s only a matter of moments before one of The Risen gathered under the tambourine sense living flesh.

  Danny looks up at the sky, it’s dark and cloudy and looks like it might rain. He can’t see the rising sun, his only compass, so he decides to go straight, just straight.

  There is no path to follow and the forest grasps and pulls with fingers nearly as dangerous as those of the wandering dead. Danny hunches, holding his bleeding side, the pain deepening with every step. He can’t believe he’s still alive, let alone walking.

  Alex tightly grips Casey’s bat, as though it’s a magical broadsword. He walks just behind his guardian as they navigate fallen branches and walls of vine. Danny stops and holds back a wicked looking pricker bush, motioning for Alex to go first. It begins to drizzle rain and Danny thinks things probably can’t get much worse.