Dawnland (Book 1): Pockets of the Dead

by Karen Carr

  “Take her,” Lily said. “I know you want to go. I’d feel better if you went with someone.”

  “I need someone who can fight,” I said. “Or at least shoot.”

  “I can shoot.” Zora produced a small hand gun and put it on the table. “Can’t everyone in North Carolina?”

  “Hella can’t,” Lily said. I rolled my eyes at Lily.

  “You can’t?” Zora asked.

  “Lily, please?” I begged.

  “No, Hella.” Lily let out a deep sigh. “I can’t stop thinking of Trevan. I’ll be no good to you.” Her eyes were watery.

  “Well.” Zora stuck out her hand. “Partners?”

  I took her hand and shook it reluctantly. I felt I owed it to Lily to try and get along with Zora. If Lily could move past Zora’s theft, then I would too.

  “Let’s get going,” I said, and stood up.

  Chapter 25: Zeke Bite

  April 10th

  Gun Shop

  Country Road, Gun Shop

  South of Haverlyn Village

  Zora and I left out a side door to the church that led to the green. We’d have to cross Oval Park Place to get to the Professor’s apartment. Once we were outside, Zora took a deep breath and twirled around. The sun glinted from her earrings and necklace and hair and skin. She looked like a butterfly taking off from a flower.

  The air was peaceful, and there was no sign of the Helicopter, so we jogged all the way to the Professor’s apartment door in silence. Once inside, I sprinted up the steps with Zora right behind me.

  The Professor opened the door as I was about to knock, which told me he must have been watching us race down the street. I introduced Zora to the Professor. They seemed to warm to each other right away. He invited us in and closed the door behind us, bolting it several times.

  “Is everyone alright?” The Professor asked. He was dressed in a tan overcoat, a brown felt hat and oxford-style shoes.

  “Are you going somewhere?” I asked.

  “Undoubtedly,” The Professor said. “When I saw the Hind return, I knew you were in danger. Did you see him?”

  “Who?” I asked. An uncomfortable feeling shot through me, making my chest hurt. Zora sat on the couch and caressed the fabric.

  “That man who jumped out,” the Professor said.

  Zora and I exchanged nervous glances.

  “No, I didn’t Professor. Do you have the video?” I asked, surveying the room for the laptop. It was in its place on the desk.

  “Certainly. Come see.” The Professor grabbed his laptop and sat on the couch next to Zora. I sat on the other side of the Professor. He flipped through some web cam views and then stopped on one pointing to the green. He pressed play. What we saw shocked and terrified me.

  The giant camouflaged helicopter, the same one we saw before, soared into the green. It flew low, perhaps only twenty feet from the ground. We must have just escaped to the church just in time. The helicopter flew the length of the green before circling back to hover over the middle.

  There were several men inside, maybe five or six, all were wearing army fatigues and all were armed with super large guns, except one who appeared to have his hands tied behind his back.

  A man threw a ladder over the side of the Hind and another descended down it. The man descending the ladder was huge, the size of a double-fit football player. He was armed with a shawl of bullets across his shoulder and two giant guns strapped to his back. Once he dropped, the others let fall a pack and then they exchanged hand signals.

  The helicopter flew, one more time, around the green, coming extremely close to the Professor’s camera. That’s when I saw the face of the man with his hands tied behind his back and the ropes that held them there.

  “Stan,” I whispered.

  “What?” the Professor asked.

  “Stan,” I repeated. “That’s Stan, Professor. The one in the helicopter with his hands tied behind his back. The one I told you about.”

  “Your Stan?” the Professor asked.

  I nodded. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I should be more worried about the man that they dropped in the village, or the fact that they held Stan hostage. I was so glad to see that he was alive, but terrified that they would kill him.

  Why would they have tied his arms behind his back if they were friendly? If they saw all the dead bodies circling the village, they would know something in the village was killing the zeroes. How long would it take them to figure out it wasn’t the village and that it was me? I was scared to death.

  “Your Stan?” Zora asked.

  “My Stan,” I said.

  Unexpectedly, we heard someone shouting outside. He was screaming for help. The Professor fumbled with his laptop, but I couldn’t wait until he found the right camera. I rushed toward the window. Staggering onto Oval Park Place, heading toward the church was Maxwell.

  “We have to go,” I said to the Professor.

  “I’m coming,” said the Professor. He was looking at Maxwell on the monitor.

  “Holy gun-smokes,” Zora said.

  The Professor grabbed his chainsaw. Zora checked her gun, and then showed me how to use mine, although briefly. I always carried my gun, even though I hadn’t fired it since the Walmart episode when I killed two zeroes who were already dead. We raced down the stairs, and across the lawn. I thought briefly of the single stranger who had been released from the Hind.

  Zora was the first to reach Maxwell. “Oh my god, he’s been bitten,” she said.

  When I reached him, I saw it. A giant bite mark in his lower leg. I could see the sweat pouring from his face. He was a goner.

  “Oh no, Hella.” The Professor paced frantically, disregarding the seedlings under his feet. “What do we do? The village, it will kill him if he changes into one of them.”

  “Jesus, professor,” Zora said as she raised her gun. “He’s going to kill us if it doesn’t.”

  “Where are the others?” I screamed at Maxwell. I grabbed his shoulders and tried to shake him into responding to me. He was hot, burning up. I hoped he was like me, that he wouldn’t change, but I knew he wasn’t. He was too hot and his eyes were already erratically focusing on nothing.

  “The others. They’re surrounded. There’s hundreds of them. Thousands. I don’t know how you can stop them.” Maxwell’s words were coming out in spurts, along with some blood.

  “They just left, they can’t be that far,” Zora said. She dug into her pocket and searched the green.

  “I can stop them,” I said. It was time to reveal my virus. But we needed to get there quick. I’d have to risk my virus not working for a few minutes in order to help them. “We need a ride.”

  Maxwell’s body was shaking. His eyelids were fluttering, his arms were trembling, and he was yelling and screaming in pain.

  “I got this,” Zora said, and pushed me to the side. She raised her gun to his head, but before she could fire his whole head and skull exploded all over the place. At close range, my virus was like a hand grenade.

  “Well, well, well,” a voice said behind us.

  I turned around. There was the man from the helicopter, just over twenty feet away.

  “Run,” Zora said. “To the monster truck. I have the keys.”

  Zora and I took off running. She was fast, but I had no trouble keeping up with her. I had lots of practice on my morning jogs. If the beefcake caught us, I wouldn’t be able to save Huck.

  The Professor yelled and the beefcake yelled louder as we bolted over to the monster truck. Zora jumped in and had it started in a few short seconds. I jumped in behind her, with a glance back to the Professor who was wrestling with the beefcake.

  “Get out of here,” I screeched into Zora’s ear. Like she was going to do anything else.

  “Hang on,” she said back to me.

  She sped out of the green and onto the main road, driving over the decomposed remains of the Halloween party and a few more random corpses. I shouted directions to her as sh
e swerved around obstacles too high for the monster truck. No one was chasing us, nothing appeared in the air.

  I directed her down the small road that led to the gun store. It was such an out-of-the-way road, that I hoped the beefcake would not be able to find us. I was scared for the Professor, leaving him with that guy, but that was soon replaced by sheer terror. Hundreds of zeroes were lurching around the Lexus.

  “Zeke, Eliza, they’re on the roof,” Zora said. “They are all there. Huck too.” She patted my leg.

  It was true. Zeke, Trevan, Huck and Eliza were all on top of the Lexus. And they were all alive, at least for now. I figured we had four more minutes before my aura kicked in. I didn’t know what to do in the meantime.

  “Make noise,” Zora said. “We need to distract them.”

  She fired her gun in the air. I rolled down the window and called for the zeroes, calling them every name I could think of and none of them nice. When Huck and Zeke saw us they made motions for us to leave and then began yelling themselves. They must have thought they were doomed, but I looked at my watch. We had three more minutes before my virus kicked in, and it was going to be the longest most excruciating three minutes of my life.

  Zora and I had no problem getting the zeroes attention. They came after us seconds after we started making noise. But there were so many of them, and there was still a sea of them between us and Huck on the Lexus.

  “We have to get closer,” Zora said. “Look in the glove, there should be a grenade in there.”

  Zora drove forward over the zeroes, crushing them below the monster truck’s big wheels, all the while honking the horn. I opened the glove box and out rolled two grenades. When the truck lurched over the dead below us, the grenades landed in my lap. I grabbed one in each hand, breathing a sigh of relief, hoping they wouldn’t explode in my hands. I had never held a grenade before and didn’t know what to do next.

  “No,” Zora screamed. At first I thought she was shouting at me, but when I looked up I saw her vision was focused out the windshield.

  Eliza had slipped from the hood of the Lexus. Her legs dangled into the zero horde. Two zeroes wrestled with Huck and Zeke for Eliza’s life. Trevan kept shooting and shooting like he was playing a video game. We were still more than twenty feet away.

  Zora pressed on the gas, but there were too many undeads in between us and the truck. We could no longer drive over them. The dead were now beating our windows, grasping at the truck, but we were too high for them to reach us. I looked at my watch. We still had to fend them off for two minutes.

  “Gimmie a grenade,” Zora said.

  I handed her a grenade. Zeke and Huck wrested with the zeroes trying to eat Eliza. She kicked furiously at their head. Zora honked the horn twice and then three times and signaled to Zeke with her hands. Huck grabbed Trevan and pulled him low on the roof, Zeke covered Eliza’s body with his.

  I begged for my virus to kick in before Zora threw the grenade. One minute left. Zora opened the sun roof and stood up on the seat. She pulled the pin and hurled the grenade into the dense zero crowd, but away from the Lexus.

  “Duck,” Zora yelled as she dropped from the sunroof. We ducked below the seats just as the grenade exploded. Bits and pieces of flesh rained onto the truck’s windshield. We sat up to see a big hole in the zero-horde. We had taken out dozens.

  Suddenly, Zeke screamed like the devil had plunged a dagger through his heart. Eliza had been taken. Where was my virus? I screamed in anger.

  Zora pressed the horn and tried to drive the truck forward. “Shoot,” she said. I stood on the seat, sticking my body out of the sunroof. We were no more than ten feet away, but it might as well have been miles. Zeroes were still crammed in between us and the Lexus.

  Trevan and Huck began shooting every one of them. Zeke was on the ground now, fighting the zeroes who had Eliza. I could see the blood on her neck and her crazed eyes. She had been bitten and was about to turn. I aimed my gun and was about to pull the trigger, when an explosion of heads went off around me.

  Hundreds of zeroes, all at once, lost their heads to the virus.

  Zora screamed, and Trevan and Huck ducked as the aftermath rained on them. The bodies of the zeroes fell around us like big empty sacks of nothing. Soon, we were surrounded by a sea of smelly, rotten, and completely dead bodies.

  “It’s over,” I said to Zora. I put down my gun, but she still had her finger on the trigger of hers. She looked at me in disbelief and then reviewed the vast sea of dead bodies. She tucked her gun in her belt buckle.

  “You were expecting this?” she asked. We watched Trevan climb over the bodies to get to us. “I mean, you don’t seem at all surprised.”

  Trevan reached us before I could explain. He tried to open my door, but it was jammed by the dead. He then jumped on the hood, and stuck his head through the sunroof. “I am sure glad to see you,” Trevan said. “That was an amazing feat. I guess your secret’s out now.” He winked at Zora and stuck his head further into the truck. “Where’s Lily?” he asked.

  “Help me out,” Zora said. “I want to check the others.”

  Trevan helped Zora out through the sunroof and then took my hand to do the same. Zora slid off the hood and crunched through the bodies to where Huck and Zeke were. Zeke was holding Eliza’s dead body. Blood and guts were running from her eyes. She had just turned into one of them when my virus hit.

  “Where is Lily?” Trevan asked. He gripped my arm, waiting for my response.

  “She’s still safe in the church,” I said. He didn’t look convinced. “She won’t come out of those apartments, Trevan, not until you return. She’s safe. Zora and I went looking for the Professor when we saw Maxwell run into the green.”

  “We have to get everyone out before those guys in the Hind come back,” Trevan said. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that they had already returned.

  “Did you make it to the gun shop?” I asked.

  “Did we ever,” Trevan said. “Let’s transfer the guns from the Lexus.”

  We slid off the hood of the monster truck and slogged through the bodies to where Zeke and Huck stood. I didn’t bother to look down to see what I was walking through, even when my foot became stuck, which was like every other step. I knew it was probably a rib or a skull, or layers of mangled arms and legs, that caged my feet, but I just used Trevan for leverage and kept walking.

  I was immune to the dead and immune to death. It had coiled its ugly form around my mind for too long. I wasn’t going to let the dead and the dying suffocate me anymore. I wasn’t going to look at them like they were human. They were just another form of dirt that would eventually become part of the earth again.

  When we reached the guys, Huck came over and pulled me into his arms. “I am so glad you are safe,” he whispered in my ear, before kissing me gently on the hair. He raked his cheek against mine and then his lips met mine. He devoured my mouth with his warm tongue, pressing into me like his life depended on it.

  “Guys,” Zora said. She touched me on the shoulder. “I think you need to see this.”

  Zora brought us over to where Zeke was sitting on the ground. He had not let go of Eliza’s body and had her cradled in his lap. Her shiny blond hair covered her face and trailed over Zeke’s chest in ringlets of gold.

  “His shoulder,” Zora whispered so that Zeke wouldn’t hear us.

  There was a small bite mark right where Zeke’s collarbone met his shoulder and it was human.

  “He’s been bitten,” I said a little too loudly because Zeke’s eyes immediately met mine. They were full of hatred and sorrow.

  “You think I can’t hear you?” Zeke asked. He pulled Eliza closer to his chest in a protective way, even though she didn’t need his protection any more. “She bit me before she died, and now you’re going to have to kill me.”

  I felt cold and heartless. I didn’t care that Eliza was dead, or that we now had to kill Zeke. I didn’t even want to collect any of their belongings to record their
history. I didn’t want to know what Zeke had in his pockets, or what the thousands of dead around us had in theirs. I was done. It was over.

  “Kill him,” I said to Trevan. I glared into Zeke’s eyes so that I would remember the hatred in them.

  Trevan raised his gun and aimed it at Zeke’s head.

  “Wait,” Huck said. Trevan paused. “Let me do it.”

  “Do it now, bro,” Zeke said. He clutched Eliza’s body like he wanted to ride her to Heaven. His eyes were watery, but they were watching us. His gaze moved from Trevan to Huck to me. If he were changing, his eyes would be blank and hollow, but they were full of life. Damn it. He was going to live. I climbed over the remaining dead bodies and kneeled next to Zeke.

  “Get away, Hella,” Huck said. He kneeled down next to Zeke.

  “We couldn’t have gotten here without you, bro,” Huck said. Huck and Zeke exchanged a solid handshake. “We couldn’t have survived without you.” While Huck and Zeke were saying goodbye, Trevan and Zora were loading the monster truck with the guns from the Lexus.

  “I know,” Zeke said. “But you’ve got to survive without me now.”

  “No we don’t,” I said.

  “Will you shut up?” Zeke said. His gaze flowed over the sea of dead bodies.

  “No, I won’t shut up.” Zeke’s gaze rested in my eyes. He wasn’t turning into one of them.

  “You won’t?” Zeke said. “What is your secret? What is the big deal you and my bro are hiding from me?” Huck cocked his gun.

  “Don’t,” I said to Huck.

  “He’s going to turn or die, like the others, Hella.”

  “Do it, bro,” Zeke said. He pressed Eliza’s body to his chest and put his face in her hair.

  “He’s not going to die,” I said slowly. “He’s not going to turn.”

  I raised my shirt so that they could see the zero bite on my hip. Huck instantly knew what I meant. He lowered his weapon.

  “He’s immune like you?” Huck asked.