Year of the Dead (Book 2) Read online

  “Got a few,” Eric said evenly, trying to keep the anger out of his voice.

  Tory set the bottle of whiskey on the low wall at the building’s edge, placed a booted foot next to it.

  “My man, I gotta tell you…”

  Before he could utter another word, Eric used the wooden stock of the rifle in his hands to hit Tory across the side of the head, sending him toppling off the building. This was followed by the solid thump of an impact from below followed by a long, agonized scream.

  “My God!” Eric shouted. “He slipped and went right over!”

  When Buck questioned him a short while later, Eric indicated the whiskey bottle.

  “He was drunk… lost his balance…”

  Buck leaned over the edge, took in the sight of the still screaming man lying on the ground.

  “Shit. We can’t leave him like that.”

  “I know,” said Eric. “He was my friend. Let me take care of it.”

  After swapping his rifle for Buck’s pistol, Eric made his way downstairs, all the while thinking about what Amanda had told him:

  “He cornered me. Grabbed me. Tried to kiss me. When I told him no, he hit me. Somehow, I managed to get away…”

  One of the guards let him out through the heavily reinforced set of doors at the front of the building. Then he was standing next to Tory, taking in the full extent of the damage that had been inflicted upon his body.

  A broken arm and a broken leg for starters.

  “Please…” The word emerged between ragged gasps for air.

  Eric thought about what he should have done to Simon, that sick sonofabitch, the last time he saw him. Holding the image in his mind, Eric took aim with the pistol Buck had given him. Then, without any hesitation, he squeezed the trigger.

  Saturday, November 28th

  The gun was starting to feel more comfortable in Sheila’s hand. Over the past few days, whenever they would stop, she would practice her shooting. They had found the gun in the garage of a house where they had spent the night, the weapon locked in a cabinet along with several boxes of ammunition.

  “Twenty-two caliber. Light weight,” Joey had said, pointing the pistol toward the open garage door and pulling the trigger. Click. “Not a ton of stopping power. But it’ll do in a pinch.”

  He talks like he’s some sort of expert, Sheila had thought a bit derisively. Learned most of it from watching too many TV shows.

  “Let me see,” she had said, holding out her hand.

  Joey had looked at his brother who gave him a nod. Sure, go ahead.

  The two of them had been walking on eggshells around her ever since she had pulled her little disappearing act nearly three weeks back. Ever since, they had gone out of their way to make more intelligent choices, to limit potential risk when faced with even minimal danger. They had been nicer, too, more respectful of her moods and opinions. She appreciated the effort, she really did, but a part of her was still convinced that some half-baked, crazy ass plan of theirs would eventually get her killed. Thus, her interest in wanting to arm herself, in learning to defend herself.

  Charlie parked the SUV near the side of the road. The houses here, like the houses in so many other neighborhoods they had visited, appeared vacant and forlorn.

  No chance of accidentally putting a hole in someone, thought Sheila as she got out of the vehicle, imagining what it must have been like along this stretch of road before the plague had worked its dark magic: the people walking by, the cars driving past. Now… nothing.

  A stop sign stood on the corner about fifty feet away. She took a few steps toward it, making sure Charlie and Joey were safely behind her. Then she raised the twenty-two and pulled the trigger. The weapon jumped in her hand, the crack! of the shot like the curse of an avenging angel. Clang went the sign, the bullet’s impact causing it to wiggle back and forth.

  Joey whooped and Charlie said, “Nice shot.”

  A smile found its way onto Sheila’s face as she squeezed off several more rounds. When the clip was empty, she set about reloading it while they made their way to the stop sign to see just how true her aim had been. Halfway there, they were brought up short by the sight of a zombie stumbling into view from behind the house on the corner.

  “Well, look what we have here,” said Joey, pulling out the pistol he kept tucked down the front of his pants.

  “Hold on,” Charlie told him. “Sheila’s got this.”

  The zombie came at them, half dragging its right leg. Once again, Sheila raised the gun and took aim. This time, her hand started to tremble, causing the first shot to go wide. The second shot missed, too. The third hit the creature in the shoulder, halting its forward progress but only momentarily. Another squeeze of the trigger. Another miss. The zombie was now less than twenty feet away…

  Joey fired his gun from where he stood next to her.

  Blam!

  The undead thing dropped to the ground.

  “It’s okay,” said Charlie after Sheila lowered her weapon. “It’ll get easier. You’ll get better.”

  Turning away from the stop sign, Sheila headed back to the SUV.

  Sunday, November 29th

  Today we had another trial. Same defendant. Different outcome.

  They found him a couple of miles from the school, at first mistaking him for one of the undead. He had a noticeable limp, looked pretty messed up, like he’d been in some sort of accident. They didn’t realize it was Terrence until they got close to him. The hair on the side of his head was gone, the skin red and melted and raw. He had suffered damage to the side of his face and arm, too. Damage from a fire. It wasn’t all that difficult to figure out what fire that might have been.

  Luke had been part of the patrol that found him.

  “Roger had to stop some of the other guys from killing him on the spot,” he told me. “Said we had to bring him back, have a trial, do things the right way. The civilized way.”

  If I'm being honest, I wish they had just ended it then and there. Because as stressful and unpleasant as the first trial had been, it was nothing compared to the second. This time around, it was held in the cafeteria. Terrence said nothing throughout, not a word, sat there in the chair he'd been given, shoulders slumped, staring at the floor.

  “The fire killed eight people,” said Vicky, obviously struggling to keep her emotions in check. She named each one of them, held up another finger each time she said a name. “After the fire burned itself out, we found their remains among the ashes. We buried them, carved their names into a rock. Their tombstone.”

  I stood next to Luke, holding his hand, maybe a little too tightly. When Vicky talked about the bodies, how they were burned beyond recognition, Terrence grunted like he’d been punched in the stomach, the only sound he made during the proceedings.

  “Do you have anything to say in your defense?” Vicky asked him. “Do you claim to have gotten those burns in some other way?”

  Terrence just shook his head “no.”

  After that, everything happened pretty quickly. Terrence was pulled to his feet and escorted out of the building. Then he was taken to the burnt, ruined section of the woods. The rest of it I had to hear about. How they pushed him down to his knees. How he stayed quiet when asked if he had any last words. How Vicky shot him, execution style in the back of the head. And how, when they buried him, nobody carved his name into anything.

  Despite what he did, I can’t help but feel bad for Terrence. He looked so pitiful sitting there. Of course, I feel bad for the people he killed, too. For all of us, who’ve had to live through so much awful stuff. Someday, the world has to become a better place. Doesn’t it, Diary? I hope so. For the sake of everyone left, everyone who's made it this far. And, most importantly, for the sake of my baby.

  Monday, November 30th

  Simon drove with the wipers set to intermittent, brushing aside the snowflakes collecting on the windshield. The storm had left a few inches of snow on the road. As a Florida boy, he had little to
no experience driving under such conditions, thought he had done pretty well so far having managed to keep the car from fishtailing and leaving the blacktop. More like whitetop, he mused, staring intently at the way ahead. Even though they had encountered no real traffic to speak of, he maintained a low rate of speed so that in the event he did lose control of the vehicle, neither he nor Jocelyn was likely to sustain any serious harm.

  “Come on, granny,” Jocelyn teased him from where she sat in the passenger seat. “At this rate, we’ll never get there.” Wherever “there” was, exactly. They had no real destination in mind, had only wanted to get away from New Hope—or what was left of New Hope—where they had been trapped there for more than a week.

  Good thing we stocked those supplies, Simon told himself. Or we would have been in real trouble.

  The undead had been slow to arrive at New Hope, but when they did, they had shown up with a sizable force. By the end of that first day, zombies had crowded the downtown area to the point where they could hardly walk—or limp or shamble—without bumping into one another. Within a couple of days, the town’s defenders had been overwhelmed by the size of the invading army. Simon and Jocelyn had watched from twenty feet above the fray as dozens of good citizens, more than a few of them former neighbors of theirs, were swarmed and ripped to pieces by the hungry dead. Jocelyn had clapped her hands and cheered the first few times this occurred. After a while, though, even she seemed to tire of the grisly spectacle as it played out over and over again.

  During their last four days in New Hope, aside from each other, neither Simon nor Jocelyn saw another living soul. At some point, the building across the street caught fire. Simon had worried the flames might spread, envisioning burning embers carried on the wind over to where they were holed up. In the end, a number of adjoining structures were gutted but, thankfully, the fire never crossed the road. That night, the flames had made quite a sight, dancing and leaping in the darkness, the zombies meandering to and fro in the inferno's light looking to Simon like denizens of Hell. By morning, the buildings had been reduced to blackened, smoking remains. To Simon’s disappointment, however, the fire had done nothing to scare the zombies away.

  During their final days in that place, Jocelyn had started to show signs of cabin fever.

  “Let’s make a break for it,” she had said repeatedly even though it was clearly a bad idea.

  “We have to be patient. We go out there now, they’ll be all over us.”

  For a change of environment, they went up to the roof.

  “I’m gonna lose it if we don’t get out of here soon,” Jocelyn declared.

  Kill her, Simon had told himself. Right here. Right now. Toss her off the roof and let the zombies have her.

  Destroying New Hope… Letting themselves get trapped… It had all been the result of poor planning.

  More like no planning at all, Simon knew. You let her cloud your judgment. You need to be rid of her.

  Much as he had on prior occasions, though, Simon had refrained from killing her.

  The next morning, it became apparent the zombies had started to disperse. By the following day, their numbers had dropped to the point where Simon thought escape would be possible.

  “Ready to do this?”

  He and Jocelyn had made their way down to the ground floor lobby.

  “Damn straight,” she replied.

  They had left New Hope without major incident, maneuvering through the sparsely packed and slow moving crowd of zombies. An assortment of vehicles had been theirs for the taking as the good people of New Hope, it could be said with assurance, would not be needing them any longer.

  And now, here they were, well north of that forsaken place, following this snow covered road, fields of white stretching away to either side of them. About ten miles back, Jocelyn had asked Simon to pull over. After doing so, he had watched with bemusement as she got out and began jumping around, trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue.

  Yeah, she’s a little crazy. And I’m crazy for keeping her around.

  Taking his eyes off the road, he looked over at her, saw her staring out the passenger side window. As he had on so many other occasions, he wondered what it would be like to kill her, how it would compare to other murders he had committed.

  Would I enjoy it more?

  As though hearing his thoughts, she returned his gaze, raising an eyebrow as she did so.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” he said, offering a smile. “Nothing at all.”

  Tuesday, December 1st

  “Rise and shine, ladies!”

  Lights came on and Susanna found herself climbing up and out of sleep—well deserved sleep, given the day’s labor—then up from the mattress on the barracks floor that had served as her bed for all these weeks now. She blinked against the sudden brightness of the room, waited for the fog clouding her thoughts to dissipate, wanting to have her wits about her, certain that whatever was about to happen would prove critical to her continued survival in this place. And, by extension, the survival of the children, too.

  “Surprise inspection!” one of the armed guards entering the room announced. “Everybody line up against the wall.”

  When the inmates—as Susanna had long since taken to thinking of them—had done as instructed, the guards started riffling through blankets and tossing mattresses, searching whatever meager belongings Susanna and the other women had been allowed to keep during their stay at the Farm.

  They know. Susanna had to fight a sudden burst of panic. Someone found the body.

  She looked at the doorway through which the guards had entered, the very same doorway through which she had followed Joanne and the monster who had taken her that fateful night. As she watched, an older man she had never seen before entered the barracks and stood near the open doorway. He wore boots and blue jeans, a beige cowboy hat and a heavy wool jacket. When his eyes found Susanna, she looked away, not wanting to draw attention to herself.

  One of the bigwigs around here, she figured. The guy who runs the place?

  The search—more of a ransacking, really—went on for fifteen minutes or so until, one by one, the guards would go to the man in the cowboy hat and report their findings. All the while, Susanna made a point of not looking at a certain section of floorboard near her mattress.

  If they decide to check…

  She told herself this was a ridiculous notion.

  They’re not going to tear the whole building apart.

  When it became apparent nothing of interest would be found, the man in the cowboy hat sighed audibly in the silence that had descended upon the room. He moved away from the doorway, found a spot in front of the line of women, and faced his audience.

  A captive one if ever the term applied, Susanna mused.

  The man cleared his throat and said:

  “I’m sorry to have to inconvenience you ladies at such an hour. But we have what could be described as a bit of a situation on our hands.”

  He spoke in a warm, deep tone that would ordinarily make his listeners feel instinctively at ease. Right about now, Susanna—along with the rest of her fellow inmates, she assumed—was feeling quite the opposite.

  “I’m gonna go ahead and cut to the chase,” said the man after a dramatic pause. “A few weeks back, one of my men just up and disappeared.” He made a vague gesture with one of his hands. “Poof! Into thin air. Or so it seemed.”

  Oh, they know, all right.

  “At the time, I didn’t think too much about it. Maybe he caught a case of wanderlust, decided to up and take off. These things happen. Like I said, I didn’t think a whole lot about it. But then…”

  I should have buried him deeper.

  “One of the dogs went out into the woods, got to barking and scratching and digging. And you know what it found?”

  Silence.

  “Well, I’ll tell ya. It found a body. And not just any old body. That’s right, the mystery of the missing guard had been solved!” T
he man smiled, shifting his gaze from one woman to the next. “But then I had to ask myself… Who would have done such a thing? Who could have done such a thing? It looked like I had another mystery on my hands. And I sure would like to solve that one, too.”

  If he expected a confession right then and there, he did not get one. So he had the women marched out of the barracks and into the cold December night. They were led past the barn where the pigs were kept, past the horse corral, over to a lighted structure Susanna had never seen before.

  Did they just build it?

  On occasion, Susanna had watched a UFC fight on television. The thing she and her fellow inmates were being led toward reminded her of “the octagon” in which those bouts had taken place. Constructed mainly out of chain-link fence, it was an enclosed structure seven or eight feet tall with barbed wire running along the top of it, a single doorway leading in or out. Inside, a number of figures could be seen milling about, illuminated by spotlights mounted to the structure. As she drew closer, Susanna could see that the figures were of the undead variety.

  Other prisoners had already been brought to the area. Several heavily armed guards stood nearby, guns held at the ready.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” said the man in the cowboy hat loud enough for everyone to hear. “Until somebody comes forward and confesses to the murder of one of my men, we’re going to gather here every night. And one of you will go into the cage.”

  Without further ado, a male inmate was forced through the doorway which was then closed behind him.

  “Five minutes,” said Mr. Cowboy Hat. “Survive that long and I’ll let you out.”

  Whether he spoke the truth or not, on that night no one got to find out.

  Wednesday, December 2nd

  Marco, five of his soldiers, and Jimmy the Quick walked the city streets through the freshly fallen snow. The zombies—whether they were standing, sitting, or lying on the ground—did not make a single move as the group of living, breathing humans went by. Were they well and truly dead? Or had they gone into some form of hibernation, triggered by the sub-freezing temperatures?