Year of the Dead (Book 2) Read online

  The unicorn poster…

  He pulled it down from the wall, turned it over.

  Nothing.

  Inspired by a comic book series he had read, one in which the supervillain threatened to take over the world with his mind control powers, Barry had silently commanded Allison to draw something on the back of the poster the last time they studied together. He had planned to check and see if she had done so the next time he came over. But there had never been a next time. And in all the chaos unleashed by the superflu, he had forgotten all about his weird little experiment.

  Not that it had worked anyway.

  He had not been able to control the living. As for the dead, though… They were another matter entirely.

  People had always thought him strange. Different.

  “I guess they were right,” he muttered, letting the poster fall to the floor as he left the room.

  Wednesday, October 28th

  Eric walked across the rooftop, looking toward the sky where low clouds threatened rain. He breathed deeply, enjoying the feel of the breeze swirling around him, trying to calm his nerves as the cool, clean air filled his lungs. All the while, he could hear Amanda’s voice inside his head:

  “You’ve been cooped up long enough. Too long. You need to get out, be a part of the world again. These walls…” She had opened her arms, taking in the living room where he had spent so much of his time since their arrival at this place, since his rescue from the cargo van where he had been convinced he was going to die. “They’ll close in on you a little more each day until you’re too afraid to ever leave.”

  A bit over-dramatic, sure, but not too far off the mark. Because the walls had started to feel as though they were closing in. Instead of promising safety, instead of offering some feeling of protection from the monsters that chased him in his dreams, they made him feel trapped, much as he had been in that cargo van.

  “You know what?” he had said to her not an hour ago. “You’re right.”

  Getting up from the couch, he had let his gaze settle on the front door of the apartment, imagined the hallway beyond, the stairway at the end of it that would take him up to the roof or down to the ground floor. The very thought of it had caused him to break out in a light sweat.

  Amanda had taken him by the hand, led him to the doorway.

  “Ready?” she had asked, staring into his eyes.

  When he had nodded his head “yes,” she opened the door.

  The two of them had made their way along the hallway which was lit by battery-powered lamps hanging from metal hooks attached to the walls. Reaching the stairs, they had descended three stories to the ground floor. At the exit leading to the courtyard, Eric had balked, nearly pulling his hand from Amanda’s grip, ready to turn and flee back upstairs.

  They’re out there. Somewhere. Hiding. Waiting…

  “Come on,” Amanda had told him, her fingers tightening around his. “‘The only thing we have to fear…’” She had smiled. It was a pretty poor JFK imitation, but Eric would have never said so. Because in that moment, he had been certain her smile was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  Outside, they had exchanged “hello”s with the dozen or so people gathered around the pool. Eric had limped a little, trying to convince anyone who saw him that his injury was the reason he had been hidden away for so long. Amanda had ushered him over to a couple of chairs where they sat down. Forcing himself to relax, Eric found to his surprise that he actually could after a little while.

  “The unholy trinity,” Amanda had whispered, indicating the trio of women across the pool from them, sitting close to one another, talking conspiratorially.

  Before long, Mitchell had appeared, climbed onto Eric’s lap, and proceeded to tell him about his day. All the while, there came the intermittent crack! of a rifle shot from above them, a reminder—in case anyone had forgotten—of what the world had become, of the danger lying beyond the walls of the building that surrounded them.

  After Mitchell had gone off to play with his friends again, Eric had decided to head up to the rooftop, see what was going on. With assurances to Amanda he would not retreat to their apartment, he had set off across the courtyard and entered the building. At the top of the stairwell, an access doorway led onto the roof. He found five people there, four men and two women, each wearing at least one piece of camouflage clothing: shirt, pants, hat. Some of them stood next to one another. All of them held rifles. A low wall ran along the perimeter of the rooftop, the shooters sitting or kneeling close to it, a couple of them with their elbows on top of it to steady their aim.

  For a while, nothing happened. Then:

  Crack!

  “Got one!” said a young woman when the sound faded away. She wore her hair in a long, braided ponytail hanging down her back. When Eric walked over to her, she turned and gave him a grin. “Like fish in a barrel.”

  He looked past her, down and along the street leading away from the apartment building and the rooftop where he stood. Bodies lay haphazardly across its surface. Eric stopped counting at twenty. As he watched, a zombie emerged from around the corner of a building a few blocks away.

  “Come to mama,” said the young woman, giving her full attention to the scene below.

  “Hold on,” said Eric, surprising both of them. When she looked at him, he reached out to her. “Do you mind?”

  After a moment, she shrugged, stood upright.

  “You ever fire one of these before?”

  “A handgun. Not a rifle.”

  She showed him the right way to hold it, how to aim. And just like that, as he gave the rifle and the zombie headed toward them his full attention, the fear he had known for too long went away, leaving something else in its place. Something he liked. Something he could use.

  Thursday, October 29th

  Susanna stood in the pre-dawn darkness, stifling a yawn, pondering what the day ahead would bring. Not that it was any great mystery. No, she had a pretty good idea as to what would be expected of her. Feed the cows, the pigs, the horses. Shovel manure. Do it all over again later in the afternoon. The same routine she had been ordered to follow ever since arriving at this place.

  The Farm.

  That was how everyone referred to it, those in charge of running its day-to-day operations along with those who had been forced into manual labor there. The Farm. Susanna wanted nothing more than to burn the entirety of it to the ground. Once she had found the children, of course, had discovered a way to rescue them from wherever they had been taken.

  In the light of a nearby floodlamp, she inspected the gray jumpsuit she wore, the steel manacles encircling her ankles, the length of chain linking them together—long enough to let her walk, short enough to make any attempt at running a serious problem. She looked left and right, took in the sight of the women standing in line next to her, similarly dressed and hobbled, fourteen of them altogether.

  Her thoughts took her back to the moment of her capture.

  If only I hadn’t pulled over at that spot. If only I hadn’t let Eddie wander off.

  If only… If only… If only…

  But she had pulled over. She had let Eddie wander off. And now, here she was in this God-forsaken place, forced to feed a bunch of stinking, grunting animals, to shovel their shit.

  Oh, how the mighty have fallen, she ruminated, recalling the life she once led. It’s a whole new world now, a new game with all new rules. Finding a way to stay alive is the only thing that matters.

  And that was exactly what she planned to do. Stay alive. Just as she had done in the cutthroat, take-no-prisoners world of high finance.

  I did more than that. I flourished.

  As far as flourishing in this new world, this new game… What did it even mean? Was such a thing even possible?

  Maybe not, she admitted. I’ll settle for getting through it all in one piece.

  “Okay, ladies,” said one of the two men standing in front of Susanna. He wore boots, jeans, and a flannel
shirt with the sleeves cut off despite the cold, breath misting in the air. In his right hand he held a shotgun, the barrel upright and leaning against his shoulder. “You all know the drill. We break for lunch at noon.” He gestured with the shotgun. “Let’s go.”

  Amid a clinking of chains, the women turned and wandered single file over to the wide pen where the cows were held. Susanna had never counted the animals but figured there had to be close to a hundred of them. Plenty to keep the women busy for a while. She had heard there were more elsewhere, possibly wherever the children were being held.

  Have to admit, they’ve put together quite the operation here.

  As she walked, Susanna’s mind drifted back to the moment of her abduction once again. Not for the first time, she wondered what the men with the guns and the golf cart had been doing there. Scouting the area for farming equipment? Not that it mattered. What did matter was that they had seen her before she saw them. She had made a mistake, one of the biggest mistakes of her life, one she would not be able to live with if she could not find a way to correct it.

  The man driving the golf cart had been the one to relieve her and Dominick of their weapons. A short while later, a van with blacked-out rear windows had arrived. Once Susanna and the children were inside, the vehicle accelerated and followed the main road for ten minutes or so before turning and taking a slower, bumpier route for a while. Eventually, the van stopped and Susanna was told at gunpoint to get out. Then the van drove away with the children still inside. Susanna had not seen any of them since.

  Her first day at the Farm, she was led to a long, low building with a metal roof. Mattresses covered the floor. At one end, a room contained showers and toilets for the women.

  “This is your home now,” she had been told by a man wearing denim overalls, a beard hanging halfway to his stomach.

  One of Susanna’s fellow workers had informed her of the barracks located at other areas of the Farm.

  “Where they house the other workers. The kids…”

  So I just have to find out exactly where they’re keeping Dominick, Lisa, and Eddie then break them out. Simple.

  “Yeah, simple,” she said under her breath, the chain between her ankles clink-clink-clinking as she made her way through the cold morning air at the start of what would undoubtedly be another long, grueling day.

  Friday, October 30th

  Trevor knew he had to stop feeling sorry for himself.

  This has gone on long enough.

  Since they had arrived at the cabin, Nadine had done more than her fair share of the heavy lifting. Cooking. Cleaning. Fishing. Collecting edible berries. Hell, she had even managed to kill a deer with her handgun.

  “About halfway to the river, I rounded a curve in the path and there it was, staring at me…”

  He could tell that killing the animal had bothered her. And what had Trevor done to ease her conscience? Tell her it was all right? That even though the cellar still contained a fairly healthy supply of provisions, stockpiling as much food as possible was definitely a good idea? No, he had said none of those things.

  Because I’m an a-hole. A pretty damn selfish one at that.

  He had no idea why she had stayed with him as long as she had. Not because of his winning personality, that was for sure. Out of habit? The simple fact that they were fairly well protected out here from the ills that had overrun the rest of the world? Whatever the reason, he was glad she had stuck around, that she had taken care of him even though he had done very little in the way of reciprocation.

  He thought about their dwindling supply of wine, fought off the urge to go down and grab one of the few remaining bottles.

  It’s not even noon yet.

  Not that the hour had served as much of a deterrent in the past.

  Time to make some long overdue changes.

  Trevor walked outside and stood on the porch in front of the cabin, took in the sight of the trees, the sunlight streaming down between their branches out of the clear, blue sky.

  No sign of Nadine.

  He had gone down to the river once, shortly after they had found this place, had not stayed long due to an overwhelming desire to raid the cellar’s wine selection. But he remembered how to get there. As he followed the path through the woods, it dawned on him that he was unarmed, that the thought of grabbing a weapon before setting out on this little trek of his had not even crossed his mind. He had gotten used to the peace and quiet, the lack of any imminent threat, maybe dangerously so. It dawned on him just how exposed he was out here, how defenseless if faced with some unforeseen confrontation.

  What if the zombies are closing in at this very moment?

  “Hey there.”

  He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Nadine’s voice, at the sight of her materializing from behind a nearby tree, like a dryad or some other spirit of the woods.

  “Jesus,” he said, placing a hand over his heart.

  “Sorry about that.” The smile on her face belied her words.

  And what a lovely smile it was, Trevor noticed. Looking at her, he wished she would wear it more often.

  Not that I’ve given her much reason to.

  It dawned on him how much he liked the way her shorts showed off her lean, long legs.

  And there it was… The guilt as an image of Brenda, his dead wife, filled his mind. He noticed, however, that the feeling did not seem to wield as much power over him as it once had.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, trying to ignore the emotions at work within him.

  “Hunting zombies.”

  He cast his gaze deeper into the woods, looked in both directions along the path he had been following, saw no evidence of the undead anywhere nearby.

  “Hunting… but not finding any,” Nadine added for clarification. “It looks like we’re still all alone out here.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “Alone is good.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  They fell silent, the sounds of the forest pressing in around them until Nadine asked:

  “So what brings you out here today?”

  A shrug. “Needed some fresh air.”

  “Got more than our share of that,” Nadine confirmed, breathing in deeply through her nose. Trevor could not help but watch the way her chest rose as she did so.

  What the hell’s going on with me?

  Silence again. This time it was Trevor who broke it.

  “I’m sorry. About…”

  Nadine shook her head. “It’s all right. Really, it is.”

  “No, it’s not. But thanks for saying so.”

  “Since we’re almost there… Want to go down to the river?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Let’s go then.” Nadine stepped onto the path and led the way. “Don’t worry, if we run into any zombies, I’ll take care of them.” She gave the pistol in her hand a little shake.

  I bet you will, he said to himself, following her, watching the way she moved. I bet you will…

  Saturday, October 31st

  Dear Diary,

  I just realized that today is Halloween. And I can’t help but wonder what sort of costume I would have picked out this year. Not that I would have gone trick-or-treating. I’m too old for that. But my friends and I would have definitely dressed up for school. Trina would have had her annual party. Beth and Elaine would have been there. I wonder if I'll ever know what happened to any of them. Did they get sick? Did they turn into those… things? Were any of them immune? Even if they were, there’s a good chance they're dead by now anyway. I’m well aware of just how lucky I’ve been to make it this far. Same holds true for everyone else living here, up in this little tree community of ours. We’re all lucky to have survived this long. Lucky beyond imagining. Same with anyone else out there who’s managed to stay alive until now. However many of them there might be.

  I have to admit, when I think about Trina and the others, I feel a little guilty. Because I just don’t think about them
all that often anymore. I feel bad about the way they seem to be slipping away from me. All the good times… The trips to the mall. The pool parties. And, yes, the trick-or-treating. When I look back, when I close my eyes and try to remember those times, they all seem… I don’t know… kind of surreal. Like none of it actually happened. Like I made it all up. Like it was all just a dream. Especially in light of everything that's happened since.

  And there it is again. As much as I wish it wasn't true, there's no doubt that the more traumatic memories are the ones that stick with you. Memories of the outbreak, of the world after it became the sort of place where the dead walk around trying to eat you… They're so much sharper. Nothing dreamlike about them at all. And I know that as much as I would like to forget some of them (or quite a few of them) I won't ever be able to, not even a little. They'll remain just as clear, just as sharp years from now as they are today. They won’t fade in the same way as those earlier, happier ones.

  I have to admit, Diary, that the idea frightens me. Which is only appropriate, I suppose, since it's Halloween, what used to be considered the scariest day of the year.

  I wonder… If we make it through this, if the zombies are eventually wiped out, if we manage to build some sort of new society… Will people celebrate Halloween the way they once did? Will parents let their kids dress up like skeletons and ghosts and vampires, take them door to door looking for treats? Or will everyone have had enough of monsters? Will they do whatever they can to forget, try to avoid any reminders of a time when real monsters roamed the streets, looking for something other than candy to eat?

  I think they will. But no matter how hard people try to forget, they will always remember. Those memories will never go away.

  Sunday, November 1st

  These idiots are going to get me killed, thought Sheila as she ran for all she was worth, black boots clomping across the pavement. Her blue-jean-clad legs carried her down the street and into an alley between a pair of two-story buildings, windows broken along the lengths of them.