Year of the Dead (Book 2) Read online

  “Hurry up, slowpoke,” said Joey from several feet in front of her, looking back at her and grinning.

  At that moment, Sheila wanted nothing more than to slap that silly look off his face. To do that, she would have to catch him first. So she ran faster. Or tried to but her lungs were burning with exhaustion. Also, her choice of footwear left something to be desired. She told herself she would have to find a nice pair of running shoes once they got out of this.

  If we get out of this.

  A shot rang out from behind her. Putting a little more pickup in her step, she found another gear she did not know she had.

  They keep shooting at me, I’ll set a new world record.

  Charlie and Joey remained ahead of her, though—Charlie leading the way, Joey a few steps behind, laughing and egging her on.

  “Faster,” Joey said between breaths. “Don’t want you to catch a bullet in that sweet little ass of yours.”

  Sheila thought getting shot in the ass might be the best she could hope for. It was all too easy to imagine a bullet hitting her in the back of the head, splashing her brains across the pavement. And to think, only a few days ago she had been happy they had found this place: another small town, the three of them sticking to their philosophy that the cities were best avoided. They soon discovered that unlike most of the towns in which they had stayed, this one had more than just a few loners scurrying around.

  Shortly after their arrival, they had spotted a bar called Dan’s Place, not at all surprising as Charlie and Joey were always on the lookout for watering holes. And after half a day’s worth of driving, Sheila had found herself in the mood for a drink, too. Cars and pickup trucks crowded the small parking lot out front, giving the impression that happy hour was in full swing. When they parked and got out, they had heard the steady rumble of a gas generator nearby. They could also hear the low booming of a kick drum and a bass guitar emanating from inside the bar.

  “So what’s the plan?” Sheila had asked as they approached the entrance. “We just roll on in, ask how everybody’s doing?”

  Charlie: “Unless you got a better idea?”

  Without another word, he had pushed the door open and headed inside. Joey had followed. Then, with a sigh, Sheila had done the same.

  A jukebox playing Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” stood in a corner of the wide, dim room in which Sheila had found herself. A bar ran the length of the far wall where several people sat drinking. Others milled around the booths and the tables scattered about the place or hovered near the pinball machine—flashing and clanking away—or the coin-operated pool table.

  Conversation had died as everyone eyeballed the new arrivals. Sheila had half-expected someone to stop the music with a record scratch. But Mr. Plant went right on singing over Jimmy Page’s bluesy riffs.

  “And what do we have here?”

  The question came from a big bull of a man wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, the kind of guy Sheila imagined working in one of the local, now defunct mills or mines.

  “Just some weary travelers in need of refreshment,” Charlie had said, walking up to the man and offering his hand. After a few tense moments, the big guy had taken it and given it a shake. A minute later, Sheila had a cold beer in hand, Charlie and Joey the first of the many mixed drinks they would soon imbibe.

  Over the next few days, everything had gone well. The brothers and Sheila spent their days at a nearby motel, their evening’s over at Dan’s drinking with the locals who had welcomed them into the fold. Sheila was happier than she had been in ages. She had not realized how much she missed being around other people.

  “I like it here,” she had told Charlie after a bout of lovemaking. “Let’s stay a while.”

  “Don’t mind if we do.”

  But, of course, things had not worked out that way.

  Earlier in the evening, a guy at the bar had made a pass at Sheila. And just like that, Joey’s handgun had come out. With no hesitation, he shot the man in the chest, killing him on the spot. Then it seemed like everyone had a gun. Sheila, Charlie, and Joey had found themselves backing away toward the front door of the place. As soon as they were outside, Charlie had uttered a single word:

  “Run.”

  And now, as Sheila ran, gunshots ringing out behind her, she promised herself that if she lived through this, she was done with the Gatner boys, once and for all.

  Monday, November 2nd

  With each passing day, Rachel found it easier to communicate with the Other.

  She stood outside, next to the building where they had been keeping her, the afternoon cool and breezy, dark clouds in the distance threatening rain. During the past week, Major Daniels had been allowing her some “outdoor time” as a reward for her “continued cooperation.” Not that Rachel had been given any choice regarding this cooperative spirit of hers. The armed guard standing nearby served as a constant reminder that what Major Daniels giveth, Major Daniels could also taketh away.

  Bitch.

  Rachel tried to recall if she had ever hated anyone as much as she hated the major, found that she could not. Like most people, Rachel had encountered her share of people throughout her lifetime who had rubbed her the wrong way, whom she could admit to actively disliking. But when she analyzed her feelings regarding the major, they seemed to be in a class all by themselves.

  Rachel leaned against the wall of the building, regarded the wide lot stretched out before her, various vehicles—military and civilian alike—parked randomly across its surface. Glancing to her right, she took in the sight of the soldier standing there, his black boots, camouflage cap and uniform, holstered weapon at his side. From behind his mirrored sunglasses, he stared directly at her, arms folded across his chest as though daring her to try something. What did he expect her to do? Rush him and make a grab for his gun? Take off running across the lot, try to make it to the fence standing at the edge of the grounds a good quarter of a mile away? If she did try something, what would he do, exactly? Wrestle her to the ground and subdue her? Shoot her? Risk spoiling the major’s experiment, ruining all the work that had been put into it so far?

  Do I really want to find out?

  A simple question with a simple answer:

  No.

  Not when a much better plan had already been set in motion.

  At the moment, while she retained the ability to sense the presence of the Other, Rachel felt none of the hallucinogenic effects brought on by the drug the major’s doctor had been giving her. Images flickered through her mind like memories she never knew she had collected, many of them gruesome—human torsos laid open, faces twisted with fear and agony, all of it veiled in red—while others were just plain monotonous—the slow unfolding of landscapes and roadways. All of them pulled from the minds—what was left of them, anyway—of the minions in their countless multitude under the control of the zombie hive mind.

  Howard? she inquired, sending the query along the psychic link she shared with the Other.

  The images settled on a view of the hotel where she had stayed with Howard before her capture, where she knew he still resided. The view was from ground level, looking upward to the balcony outside his room. The day was young, not yet nine o’clock in the morning, the afternoon’s drug trial still hours ahead for Rachel. She knew that Howard would be awake by now. He always woke early, a habit instilled in him during his military days. She imagined him seated at the coffee table in the living room, going over their plan even though it was fairly simple, and still weeks—at a minimum—from coming to fruition. But Howard liked to be prepared, another part of his military training that had stayed with him over the years.

  While conversing with the Other, Rachel had to remind herself to keep her queries and commands as simple as possible, use imagery instead of language when she could. In the beginning, after emerging from the hallucinations the drug had induced within her, it had been easy to believe she had imagined much of what the Other had said, that the hive mind had not really be
en listening to her, responding to her in the way she had envisioned. But as time had passed, she had discovered she could communicate with it even when the hallucinations had passed, forcing her to accept the reality of their conversations.

  The Other had been eager to talk with her. A vast but singular intelligence, its inability to communicate with any other thinking entity had caused it emotional hardship. In other words, it had been lonely. Then Rachel had come along. Much to her surprise—later on, in retrospect, it would make all the sense in the world—she had found that the Other wanted to be her friend. And in an effort to solidify their friendship, it had decided to do whatever it could to please her.

  After a minute or so, Howard appeared on the hotel balcony.

  She issued a command: Raise your hand and wave.

  Howard returned the gesture.

  When the guard told her it was time to go inside, the images in her mind began to flicker once again, often showing her familiar looking streets and buildings, captured through the clouded, crimson eyes of the zombies walking and limping and shambling toward a common destination. She had to keep from smiling, not wanting to give her captors any cause for suspicion, any inkling of what was headed their way.

  I wonder if Major Daniels likes surprises.

  As Rachel went through the doorway and back into the building, she told herself it made no difference what the major liked.

  Because she’s in for a surprise either way.

  Tuesday, November 3rd

  You have to kill her, thought Simon as Jocelyn lay sleeping on the bed next to him. She knows what you are. But like all the times before, the argument did little to sway him. In fact, it seemed to have the opposite of its intended effect, staying his hand, quelling the urge to kill her.

  She knows what I am.

  In the past—before the superflu’s arrival, when the laws of civilization still held their power—such forbidden knowledge would have carried a death sentence for any who possessed it. There would have been no way he would have let any such person live regardless of the thrill, the frisson of excitement he felt whenever the realization came back to him:

  She knows what I am.

  Of course, she was not the only one. Eric and Amanda were also aware of his… predilections. But they were elsewhere. For the time being, the knowledge they carried could not hurt him. But if their paths ever crossed…

  I’ll have to kill them.

  Eric, certainly. Amanda?

  Yes, Amanda, too.

  She had rejected him. He had no reason to spare her, no reason to let her go on living.

  Unlike Jocelyn.

  He slipped from beneath the covers, pulled on a shirt and a pair of sweatpants to protect him against the chill. Standing there, he thought about the woman who had recently taken to sharing his bed, a woman who had her own share of secrets.

  “We’re alike, you and I,” she had told him that night in the woods while holding him at gunpoint. “And I can prove it.”

  What she had shown him, he would later have to admit, had surprised him. The story regarding how she had attained her little “trophies” had forced him to consider the possibility there might be something to her claims after all.

  She kept a small metal box with a lock on it under her bed. When he saw what it contained for the first time, Simon had been impressed despite himself. Fingers. Four of them. Index fingers, if he had to guess. Right hand, judging by the slight but noticeable curve. Thick knuckled. Hairy. Withered by their time in the box.

  “After the superflu hit, I was on my own for a long time. Had to fend for myself.”

  Simon had nodded sympathetically. Show concern.

  Closing the box, Jocelyn had told him, “I guess I looked like easy prey to some of the men I encountered. Four men in particular.” She gave the box a shake, rattling its contents. “But they learned different.”

  She thinks this makes us the same, he remembered telling himself. It doesn’t, though. A killer. Yes. But that’s where the similarity ends. Plenty of killers out there. And most of them are nothing like me.

  “These fingers…” she had continued. “They were attached to hands that grabbed me. Held me down. Hands that belonged to men who thought I could be taken. Controlled. Turned into some sort of…” She shook her head. “Plaything, I suppose. They were wrong about that. Something they had to find out the hard way.”

  Replaying this conversation in his head, Simon ran a hand over his scalp, felt the stubble growing there.

  Need to shave again.

  A stirring from the bed. Jocelyn opened her eyes, watched him watching her.

  “Has it started yet?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep.

  The question had become a bit of a joke between them, referring to the inevitable zombie invasion of the town. A scenario Jocelyn clearly relished. She seemed to obsess over New Hope’s good luck, the fact that so many of its residents had been spared the hardships that had been forced upon her. With each day the town’s good fortune remained intact, she expressed a greater desire to see it all come to an end.

  “No,” Simon told her. “It hasn’t started. Not yet.”

  Jocelyn sat up, swung her bare legs over the side of the bed.

  “I have an idea,” she told him. “The zombies… Somehow, they don’t know about this place.”

  “So it would seem,” Simon agreed.

  “Well… What if we let them know about it?”

  Simon stared at her, imagining it, the way it would play out.

  He and Jocelyn were not the same, it was true, no matter how many times she insisted they were.

  But we have our similarities, he had to admit.

  “Yeah, what if we did…”

  Wednesday, November 4th

  Dear Diary,

  Something has happened. Something big. I haven’t told Luke yet. That’s because I’m still having a hard time with it, trying to get my head around it, what it means for the days and months and years to come. It changes everything. For me, at least. For Luke, too, when he finds out. I might tell him when I’m done here. I’m just trying to get it all straight. Accept it. Find the words that will make it seem real, not like some sort of joke being played on me by God or the universe or whatever it was that decided to change the world into the sort of place it’s become.

  I’m rambling, Diary, avoiding the issue, not wanting to admit why I have you here on my lap, this pen in my hand, putting words to paper right now. So I’ll get to the point. I’ll just come out and say it. Or write it. Or… you know what I mean.

  Okay, so here it is…

  I’m pregnant.

  Wow. Seeing the words in print, words that just a few days earlier I would have never imagined I’d be thinking let alone writing, made them seem… I don’t know… more real than they were before, if that’s possible.

  It was Mandy who gave me the pregnancy test, the plastic stick that you pee on, that shows you one line or two, letting you know if your life has changed in one of the most important ways imaginable. I’ve been feeling nauseous the past few mornings, like I was coming down with the flu or something. When I joked with Mandy that I could really go for a peanut butter and pickle sandwich (I’ve never had one before so not sure where that idea came from) she gave me a weird look. Then, a few hours ago, she handed me the test. I told her about Luke and me being together that one time, how I felt guilty about it afterward, knowing my parents would have never approved. She hugged me, told me I had no reason to feel guilty.

  “We do what we have to in order to get by. Especially now. We find joy wherever we can.”

  When I showed her the pregnancy test, she hugged me again, held me when I started to cry. And why was I crying, Diary? For a lot of reasons, I suppose. I was afraid, of course. Afraid of what it meant, how it would change things. How it would change everything. Afraid of bringing a child into a world overrun by the living dead. There was the sadness, too, realizing my parents would have a grandchild they would never
get to meet. And there were the darker thoughts, the ones telling me I couldn’t bring a child into this world, that I would have to get rid of it. But even if I wanted to, how would I go about doing that? Do those sorts of places even exist anymore? And all along I kept thinking, “I’m too young for this. I shouldn’t be having children for years. If ever.”

  Then, after I had cried myself out, a totally different feeling overcame me.

  Joy.

  A baby! Even in a world like this, so full of despair, I believe there’s a place for something so innocent and pure in it. Luke and I will make sure of it.

  Yes, I am going to tell him when I’m done here. He needs to know. I hope he won’t find it as difficult to process as I did. I don’t think he will. Luke is strong. It’s one of the things I love about him.

  Whatever decisions need to be made, we’ll make them together. And whatever comes next…

  We’ll face it together.

  Thursday, November 5th

  Though exhausted, Susanna found it difficult to sleep. Not so long ago, prescription medication would have solved this problem easily enough. But present circumstances did not allow her to indulge in such luxuries. Her body ached all over. She kept waiting for her joints and muscles to adjust to the hours of physical labor she was putting in each day. So far, they had refused to do so.

  The curse of old age, she thought somewhat bitterly.

  She, in no way, looked forward to what the morning would bring: having to force her overworked body and under-rested mind into action once again.

  I have to find a way out of here, a way to get the children out, too.

  So far, a feasible escape plan had eluded her. There always seemed to be someone with a gun around, watching her and the other prisoners. And the chain she was forced to wear whenever she left the barracks, the one that jingled and jangled with every step she took, rendered most of her plans useless the moment they occurred to her. Yes, the chains came off at night, allowing the women to undress and wash themselves, to massage the areas of their legs where the manacles had encircled them for so many long hours. The only problem was that Susanna and her fellow inmates were locked inside the barracks from the moment the chains were removed until they went back on in the morning.