Dead Earth: The Green Dawn (11 page)

They
had
been happy.

Jubal took the picture down and removed the
photo from its frame.

Rubbing his neck, which had stopped bleeding,
he went to the kitchen and put the picture along with some
non-perishable food into a sturdy grocery bag. He would have used
his backpack, but that was in his bedroom and he wasn’t about to go
in there ever again.

The picture reminded him of something he
hadn’t thought about in a long time. He went to his mother’s
bedroom and opened her closet. Moving aside dresses and blouses,
Jubal reached to the back corner and felt the item he had been
searching for. The closet smelled of his mother’s perfume and it
made him dizzy with memory, so he quickly pulled the item out and
slammed the door closed.

In his hands he held his father’s Tango-51
sniper rifle. He wondered if there was extra ammunition for it in
the closet but he couldn’t bring himself to open that door again.
Once was enough. He’d keep the memories trapped there. They were of
no use to him now.

There was a thud. Something large was moving
down the hallway toward the bedroom.

He leaned the rifle against the bed near the
grocery sack and slid the Glock from its holster.

A lone zombie, its face ruined by disease,
saw him and lurched toward him. It moaned hungrily.

Jubal shot it in the head.

A gray-green goo streamed against the hallway
wall as the thing fell to the floor.

Jubal listened for more intruders but didn’t
hear anything except for the ones outside, voicing their strange
mewlings and groans.

He went to the bedroom’s front window.

Zombies wandered the property, blocking his
path to the cruiser. One was sitting in the dirt of the front yard,
staring into the face of a severed head, mumbling to it. The head
didn’t belong to the teenage girl that had been attacked in the
street. It was someone else’s.

“Fucking horror movie,” Jubal muttered as he
slid the window open.

He poked the Glock out, aiming at the seated
zombie. He pulled the trigger and made a hole in its forehead.
Toppling over, the zombie lay still as the severed head rolled back
and forth in the dirt.

The other zombies looked around, wondering
where the shot had come from.

Jubal pulled back into the room so they
wouldn’t see him.

After a moment, he glanced out and saw the
zombies standing around the one he’d just killed, staring. One of
them kicked the severed head into the street.

Jubal shot them in quick succession, with
ammunition to spare. Grabbing the sack, and quickly glancing around
the room to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, he exited the
house through the open window.

With three guns strapped to his back, the
Glock and grocery sack in his hands, Jubal squatted down and moved
quickly towards the cruiser. He unlocked the car using the keyless
entry. As he swung the door wide, several of the zombies moaned
loudly, having finally taken notice of him.

Jubal shot at the nearest one, but missed. He
shoved his equipment and supplies into the passenger seat and slid
behind the wheel, slamming the door closed behind him. He turned
the car on and it roared to life.

The gas gauge read half. That would get him
well out of town and hopefully to a station along the highway.

Something slammed against the driver’s side
window. Jubal turned to see Doc Mitchell with his dead face pressed
against the glass. Slime oozed from his lips.

Jubal showed the doctor his middle finger,
then stepped on the gas.

Doc Mitchell spun around and fell on his ass
in the street as Jubal sped away.

“That’s what you get for being such a lousy
fucking doctor.”

The zombies wandering the streets of Serenity
proved a worthy obstacle course. When Jubal couldn’t maneuver
around them or nudge them aside with the car, he drove straight
over them with a satisfying bump. He had to use that tactic
sparingly, as long as he needed the car.

As he rounded a corner, he slammed on the
brakes.

Previous to this moment, every zombie Jubal
had ever seen had either wandered aimlessly or attacked like a
rabid animal.

The cruiser faced east. Spanning the road
ahead of it was a line of zombies standing at attention. Behind
this row was another. And another.

Jubal put the car in reverse as other zombies
joined the formation, and as, all at once, they began to move.

Like a dead army.

Jubal turned the car around and sped back
down the road, knocking aside any stray zombies in his path.

They were bad enough as feral beasts of the
dead, but this new thing seemed even more unnerving. Organized
zombies.

It struck him that he was leaving town for
good, a town he had loved and hated (but not really). Serenity was
his home and he was going to miss it. And he was going to miss all
the people who had made it a home. Who had made his life worth
living. Ma, Damon, Fiona, Pops Perez and the rest. All gone now.
All dead.

Was his life worth living anymore? Was he
alone in a world of zombies, or were things okay in Texas or up
north? Out east? He wouldn’t know unless he found out for himself.
Who was responsible for all this? There were so many questions. And
Jubal wanted concrete answers. Not rumors, theories and
half-remembered snatches of dreams.

He took a side road west, which led to
Highway 285. He knew he couldn’t go north. That way was blockaded,
unless the zombie army had gotten to the soldiers. Maybe he could
go south.

But Jubal didn’t reach the highway.

Ahead of him stretched regiments of zombies,
all facing west, all in file. They trudged along, keeping in perfect
step with each other. They must have come from other small towns in
the area.

There were thousands of them.

Something glinted in the bright blue sky.

Jubal stopped the car and looked up through
his windshield.

Some sort of silver vehicle, like an airborne
jet-ski, buzzed over the army of zombies. At one point it hovered
in place. Then it buzzed around again, herding the undead towards
the west—towards Nevada. It was too far away and Jubal wished he
had remembered binoculars so he could have a better look. But it
was close enough to see the color of the rider’s clothing.

Red.

For a brief moment he thought it might be
some new military craft. Then he recalled the dream, the
half-remembered details suddenly and sharply in focus.

The figure in crimson strode across a sea of
dead bodies, waving a silver staff, urging the corpses to rise and
obey him. As the cadavers struggled to obey, the man in the robes
turned to look at Jubal. It wasn’t human. The head was too tall and
very thin, as if a giant had squeezed it between its fingers. The
eyes were black, deep set between the angular cheekbones. There was
no nose to speak of and the mouth was nothing more than a cruel
gash. Behind the creature, yellow mist billowed and rose like stage
fog in a magician’s show. Jubal knew it to be poison, a foggy
messenger carrying the plague of the dead army.

He snapped to full alertness. He wasn’t sure
how much of the memory had actually been in his dreams, or if his
subconscious had embellished the scenario. He quickly decided it
didn’t matter. The dream—the
memory
—had the feeling, the
texture of truth.

And if it were true, the implication was
monstrous. It meant this wasn’t an accident. It meant there was a
design here, a hand responsible for the death of all he had ever
known and everyone he loved.

And if it wasn’t true, Jubal decided he
didn’t care. He had endured more than any person could rightfully
expect in a lifetime. It was time for a little payback.

He stepped out of the car, leaving the engine
running.

He estimated the dead army was less than two
hundred yards away. The odd flying machine that carried the
red-robed figure darted over the lurching creatures, looking as
harmless as a firefly from this distance. There seemed to be no
reaction to Jubal’s presence. They either didn’t know he was there
or they didn’t care.

That was about to change.

Jubal calmly removed the sniper rifle from the
cruiser. His father had purchased the Tango-51 though the sheriff’s
office, so he could get the professional discount. He had called it
the finest rifle ever made. Jubal ran a hand over the green and black
finish. His father had taught Jubal to always care for his weapons
so he would be able to rely on them. Jubal had followed that
advice. It was close to two years since the gun had been fired and
Jubal had cleaned it afterward, as he always did. He knew it would
fire accurately. He slid back the big bolt action and made sure it
was loaded. He didn’t think he would need more than one round.

Using the roof of the car for a rest—and
trying to ignore the pain in his right elbow—Jubal put his eye to
the scope and searched for the crimson figure.

It took a few seconds, but he found it. At
first, he could only see a field of red, but the scope’s resolution
was amazing. He shifted the rifle a fraction of an inch and he found
its hideous face.

It was exactly as it had been in his dream.
The black and bottomless eyes seemed to stare straight into his
mind. He could feel the power radiating from this strange being,
power that would eventually overwhelm everything on the planet.
Fighting back was a lost cause. It would be so simple to put the
gun down, to give up—

No.

Jubal gasped. That thing
had
noticed
him. Jubal didn’t understand how, but the creature on the flying
machine had connected with him like two satphones
communicating.

It had to be the plague. It not only changed
humans into those undead beasts, it also linked everyone together
in unexplainable ways.

I’ve tuned into the dead frequency.

Jubal ran a hand over the wound on the back
of his neck. Though the bleeding had stopped, the bite was sticky
and it ached.

That thing could talk to me. Maybe not with
words, but I understood the surrender message it was sending out.
Does that mean that I’m turning?

Other than the pain from the bite, and the
ache in his arm, Jubal didn’t feel different. But if the disease
was transmitted more quickly through direct contact, his
transformation could begin at any time. If it happened, he could
find himself unable—or unwilling—to fight.

He couldn’t take that chance.

The strange glider was still hovering over
the army of the dead. He felt an odd tickling deep within his
skull, a gentle hand sifting through his thoughts.

Fuck that.

He leaned forward with the barrel of the
sniper rifle again on the cruiser’s roof. Jubal closed his eyes. He
exhaled, as his father had taught him. His opened his right eye and
found the non-human pilot through the rifle’s scope. He squeezed the
trigger.

He thought he saw something resembling
surprise flash across that alien face before the bullet left the
barrel.

Maybe this communications network travels
both ways. Maybe I sent my own greeting across the dead
frequency.

The message may have been delivered, but not
as he intended. The 7.22 mm shell tore through the creature’s
shoulder, knocking it from its flying machine.

Jubal had aimed for the head.

The strange craft began to slowly spin,
floating away.

He lowered the rifle. The orderly lines of
walking dead broke formation, each cut free from the robed thing’s
control.

It was time to go.

Jubal climbed back into the car. He propped
the Tango against the passenger door and picked up one of the
shotguns.

The zombies were spread out, both in the road
and on the cactus-strewn desert that surrounded it. There were too
many of them to avoid, so Jubal decided to use the largest weapon
he had. He stomped the accelerator.

The first zombie he hit rolled under the car
and provided a satisfying crunch. The next one flew into the air and
landed against the windshield before spinning off to one side. The
safety glass cracked but did not break.

He managed to clip several others with the
edge of the front bumper as he tried to inflict the most damage
possible without destroying the cruiser. As he drew closer to the
spot where the undead had originally been lined up, Jubal saw a
flash of red.

He slowed the car and rolled down his
window.

The creature he had shot was lying in a
twisted mess next to the road. Seeing it through the rifle’s scope
had not prepared him for the size of the monster. If it had been
standing it would have been close to eight feet tall. The thing’s
arms were very long and were now bent into unnatural shapes. If it
had anything resembling a human skeleton, its back was broken. Its
left shoulder was leaking a black gelatinous fluid.

Jubal checked the perimeter around the car.
There were plenty of zombies, but none close enough to pose an
immediate threat. He stepped out of the cruiser.

The alien creature studied him with those
insect-like black eyes. They seemed to have sunken even further
into the elongated skull. Jubal could now see that the thing’s robe
was decorated with hundreds of odd symbols, all delineated in
golden embroidery. He could smell something like exotic spices, and
beneath that scent was the unmistakable pungency of rot.

The creature’s breath came in shallow,
whistling gasps.

A wave of terror passed through Jubal as he
stood so close to a being that came from somewhere other than
Earth.

“Can you understand me?”

The creature made no sound save for its
labored breathing. He thought he felt the tickling in the back of
his mind, but the sensation quickly passed.

“My name is Slate. I don’t know where you
came from or why you’re here, I just—” Jubal’s voice broke. He had
to clear his throat before he could continue. “I just know what
you’ve done. You’ve killed us all, haven’t you? You’ve taken away
everything decent and good in my life and you’ve probably taken me,
too. But before I go, I want you to deliver a message for me. If
you have any friends out there, send ’em one of your mind bulletins
or whatever they are. You tell ’em Slate did this. Jubal
Slate.”