Dry Rot: A Zombie Novel (16 page)

-57-

“South Dakota,” the last one gasped. Shock was setting in. He stared at his ruined knee, hands trembling, as if unsure of how to even begin to attempt to address the injury. “Look what you did.”

“Let’s not focus on the past,” I said. “Just keep talking and you might be walking…oh, sorry. I guess hopping out of here.”

“Just like the others?” he sneered.

“I told them I wasn’t asking again,” I answered. “I’m nothing, if not honest.”

“You’re a psychopath,” he added and spat a wad of bloody phlegm at my feet.

“Yeah, maybe.” I withdrew the sawed off shotgun from inside of my NBC. “So you should probably think very carefully and make sure that the next thing out of your mouth is what I want to hear.”

“Dar took the woman and her kid,” he said. “I’m not sure what she did with them or why she even wanted them, but that’s where they are. She’s taking them with her towards that politician’s settlement in Buffalo. Stick to the main roads and you’ll find them. Okay?”

“Fair enough,” I shrugged. I studied his face for a few moments. It looked like he was telling the truth, but something was off. The majority of his face was hidden behind a respirator mask, but what skin was visible had a sickly hue. The lines of his face appeared hardened, maybe even cracked. Eyes, deep-set and bloodied, glared at me.

“What’s wrong with you?” I toed him.

“You mean other than the fact that you blew my kneecap off?” he snapped.

“Yeah, asshole,” I nodded. “Kneecap aside, what the hell is wrong with you?”

He coughed and tugged at his mask. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”

I snatched the mask from his face. The surrounding skin flaked and peeled, some still attached to the purple plastic of the respirator. A ring of leathery red skin traced the outline of where the mask had sat.

“Like Hell nothing’s wrong with you.” I looked at the tattered skin that fluttered around the edges of the mask. “Disgusting.” I tossed it aside.

“Dar says we’re fine as long as we keep our masks on most of the time,” he said. His gums were black, lips cracked and bleeding.

“Dar’s full of shit,” I answered. “And whatever the hell is floating around out here has already done whatever it was going to do. Your piece of shit painter’s mask didn’t do jack, other than slow it down.”

“So what’s that mean?” he demanded. “Are you saying I’m going to become a rotter?”

“Rotter? Husk?” I shrugged and looked at a few of the monsters stumbling towards us. More would be here soon. “Maybe. I guess so? Or maybe you’ll just die a slow, painful death. It’s not like I really know what the hell is going on around here lately or really care what it does to you.”

“Shoot me,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to be one of those things.”

“One of those things?” I asked. “You’re already something worse. It’d be a waste of a bullet.”

Two vehicles waited, their engines idling. As much as I wanted to take the pick up and leave that ridiculous Hummer to rust on the side of the road, I didn’t have time to transfer the supplies from one to the other.

“Looks like you’re getting the pick-up truck,” I said and pulled the keys from the ignition.

A tangled knot of husks stumbled between the wreckage, drawn closer by the smell of blood and fresh meat. Some stopped to tear chunks away from the cooling bodies, but they didn’t appear to hold the same attraction that we did and more closed in.

“Give me the keys.” He grasped at them in my hand.

“Keys?” I asked.

“Yes, the fucking keys!” he shouted. “Give them to me before the rotters get here. You said I get the pick-up. Give me the keys!”

“You do get it,” I nodded. He appeared relieved, but before he could speak I added, “Yup, you get the truck. But I don’t recall saying anything about the keys.”

I tossed the ring of keys into the approaching mob of husks.

“You probably shouldn’t trust a psychopath. Enjoy the truck.”

-58-

The Hummer was boxy and made me feel like a soccer mom, but the oversized chrome bush guards helped push two cars far enough apart that I could turn around and back track to the ramp. Husks grabbed at the vehicle as I pushed my way back towards the ramp. I could have run them over, given that guy a chance at survival. Then again, he could have decided to leave Danni and Jared alone. He could have decided not to join Dar. I’m sure every person following her had some variation of the same hollow story, a slightly different flavor of bullshit to justify hurting someone else. I had seen it more times than I could remember in prison. And I could almost guarantee that the inmates’ stories were better. No, I wouldn’t be stopping the husks from getting to him.

Dar was on the interstate, sticking to what should have been the fastest route to South Dakota. Her route relied on maps; maps that were drawn up before the world went to shit and undead monsters clogged the streets. Most people would have done the same, which meant more abandoned cars, more blocked routes and a hell of a lot more husks. Local roads would add mileage, but I’d make up for lost time by avoiding all the other issues.

Having spent so long thinking I knew how this was going to end, I suddenly found myself uncomfortable with extending my time a little further. I wanted to go back to Brookview Cemetery, go back to Lisa and Kara. My phone was silent.
I guess I had my answer.

-59-

“What’s your deal, huh?” Frank asked.

I didn’t want to answer or maybe it was that I didn’t really know how. What the hell kind of question was that anyway? Who the fuck knew what their deal was?

“Were you a therapist on the outside or something?” I responded. I stared at the mattress hung above my own. The springs were tinged with rust or missing – just waiting to fall apart. Everything in here was the same. Even the people.

“Jeez, Lucas,” Frank groaned. “You’re just a fucking barrel of laughs. A master of dinner table conversation.”

“Fuck you.” I kicked the mattress above me with as much force as I could muster.

“Hey, man,” Frank groaned. “I didn’t mean to say anything about your family. My bad.”

“Yeah. Whatever, don’t stress it.” I looked at the picture hanging on the wall. Lisa and Kara looked happy. I struggled to remember what that felt like.

“Still didn’t need to put a foot in my ass,” Frank continued. “I was just making small talk. That’s what people do in here, you know? They talk all kinds of bullshit about what they’ll do when they get out.”

“When I get out?” I repeated.

“That is kind of the point,” Frank said. “To get out. You need to have a plan, something to look forward to so you can muscle through the shit and survive.”

“Gotcha.” I didn’t want to have this conversation. I didn’t have a plan. My family was gone. What plan could I possibly make if they weren’t part of it?

“So, like I said, what’s your deal?” Frank leaned over the edge of his bunk and craned his head to see what I was doing. The motion caused a fart to escape. “What are you going to do when you get out?”

I stared at the wall, trying to ignore the stench. “When I get out? I’m going to see my family.”

“Was that so hard?” Frank asked. “You gotta keep that image in your head, stay focused on seeing them again.” 

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Frank didn’t know that Lisa and Kara were gone. He knew I was in here for trying to kill someone, but I never shared why. Kara and Lisa were dead and the thought of joining them was the only thing that was keeping me going.

-60-

Gray and orange. Everything was gray and orange. I spent years drowning in these colors, wanting nothing more than to never see them again, and now they appeared to be swallowing the world.

Cities burned in the distance as I traveled along abandoned stretches of highway. The gray skeletal remains of buildings scraped against black skies, ash and flame spilling from their shattered windows. The fires spread, illuminating the horrific scenes unfolding in the streets. Husks crawled from the buildings, writhing in the streets like desiccated maggots. Their grayed, weathered skin offered no contrast to the horrors that engulfed us. I couldn’t tell if it was the heat, if some primal part of their brains still sensed the danger of fire, or if there was a meal nearby and it was simply the need to eat that called out to them.

I climbed back into the stupid-looking Hummer and got back on the road. There was no reason to waste time watching civilization’s corpse burn.

This was Hell. For the first time since my release from prison, I found myself grateful that Kara and Lisa had been spared this nightmare. They were gone, but they would never have to know what a husk was or feel its yellowed, cracked teeth tear into their flesh. They had been spared. I was not so lucky. No matter. I knew where to find them when the time came.

For now, I had to find Danni and Jared. I didn’t know if Jared had been bit back in the bunker or just hurt – either way he and Danni didn’t have long. Time was short for everyone. The world had died and was slowly rotting. We were rotting. Only the dead would be spared from this fate.

Gray and orange. It seemed that I would never escape a world painted in these colors. Everything was gray and orange. As soon as I found Dar, I’d go about changing that, even if it was just a little, just a few feet of red concrete.

The End

Read on for a free sample of 900 Miles: A Zombie Novel

Chapter 1

Life used to be so hard. Thinking things were tough when we didn’t get the job we wanted, or pissed at the politicians for making rules that didn’t matter. We were upset when the Barista fucked up our Venti Coffee or our favorite TV show was canceled.  Going through the motions. Mundane tasks for a mundane world. What the hell did we know? We were just begging for it to end.

I was sitting in another meeting, surrounded by ten of the most overpaid, worthless people on the planet. Glancing down, after staring at a very slow second hand tick around the clock above the door, I watched in disgust as my boss scarfed down another glazed pastry. That’s when the first text hit.

None of them would make it. That much was clear. With their overpriced Hummers and their thousand dollar suits, they never had a chance. I wasn’t always so cynical. I had the job, the money. I didn’t drive the Hummer, but I had a damn nice suit and was busy working my way right up the corporate ladder.

“You have great times ahead of you,” they would tell me. A rising star... None of it would matter.

When the text hit, I thought it was a joke. We all just eyed each other for a moment before breaking into laughter as Josh, across from me, read it out loud. Unbelievable, wasn’t it? The text had come in as a news alert from CNN on Josh’s two hundred dollar Smartphone.

It read: DEAD RISING: STAY INDOORS. TURN ON TV.

My boss stood up, crumbs from his pastry falling from his tie. He started to stumble across the room with his arms held up high, moaning about wanting to eat Josh’s brains.

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara,” Josh quipped in a crude reference to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. The group was giggling, but it wasn’t that funny.

Following the herd would be the death of us.

Josh looked at me. “John, are you able to stream video from behind the corporate firewall?” I could, so I pulled up CNN.com, ignoring the fact that my boss was right there. Why were we even taking this seriously? I thought. The site took a while to come up. In fact, it took too long. Moving on, I entered yahoo.com into the web browser, which revealed the typical bloated mainstream media stories of celebrities, sports and finance. No mention of the dead rising.

CNN must have been hacked, we concluded. The group got a good laugh out of the whole thing.

I couldn’t enjoy it though. In the back of my mind, I was thinking about the fight I had that morning. “Just 900 miles away from your troubles,” she said. Truth be told, I hated these meetings, and I hated flying even more. I guess I wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. I hoped I’d have a chance to apologize.

We finally finished the meeting, the text long forgotten. As we walked out of the conference room, I felt an anxious energy in the air. I couldn’t place my finger on it. The normal white noise-induced coma, which was the norm for the office seemed, well …broken. There was movement all around, as people were packing up their laptops, jackets, and purses on their way to the elevators.

I leaned in to listen to a few of the mail clerks huddled around someone’s cubicle. They were watching a video stream that was uploaded to YouTube. Some jerkoff food critic was filming a streaming review at a diner in East Manhattan. It was one of those real ritzy places where the tables were made of mahogany and the waiters all wore tuxes with dazzling white shirts. The critic had uploaded a video where some lawyer-looking bastard, with a perfectly parted hundred dollar haircut, had swallowed too much of the cow he was eating and keeled over dead at his table.

The computer didn’t have speakers, but you could see it clearly enough. Technology really did reach a pinnacle of greatness before it all came crumbling down.

Just as a few of the wait staff circled around the guy, the glutton stood up. One of the waiters had just reached over to pat him on the back, when the lawyer whipped around and took a bite-sized chunk out of his neck.

Blood isn’t like it looks in the movies. It was a dark, almost black-red, and it rhythmically flowed in spurts across what was left of the steak sitting on the table.

The waiter instantly dropped to the floor, a red pool expanding all over the tile. His tux was splattered with the mess. His white shirt was white no more. In that instant, there was a tentative laugh amongst those standing around the cubicle, as if to question whether what we just watched was real.

The video ended, but not before we could see the lawyer running toward a group of women sitting in horror behind him.  At the same time, in the lower right hand corner of the video, which was mostly spanning the floor, the waiter, covered in his own blood, sat up and looked savagely toward the guy operating the camera.

Now the texts really started to flow in.

It wasn’t like the movies when it first started.  There weren't any of the usual stumbling, rotting, corpses crawling out of grave sites. It wasn’t a bunch of people walking around in their Sunday best. It was the everyday deaths that kick-started this shit storm. I read somewhere that over one hundred and fifty people die per day in New York. Bike accident, car crash, old age, it really doesn’t matter.

On that day, they got right back up, and they were quick, at first, anyway. Rigor mortis didn’t even have time to settle in. So when this thing first hit, those bastards were flying around, tearing apart anybody they could get their hands on. Then, they would get up and tear apart more people.  It was some sort of fast moving virus or something, infecting anything that the mouth touched.

It was the weak and the slow that got hit the hardest on that first day. Let’s just say that anybody rolling around on a scooter at the grocery store because they let themselves eat to the weight of two hundred pounds too much...well, they were screwed.

****

My phone buzzed in the suit pocket against my leg. Half battery, I thought, as I swiped the ‘unlock’ to answer.

“Are you still in New York?” My wife, Jenn, asked frantically.

“Yes. There seems to be something going on outside.” My voice sounded odd.

“Oh, God, no. It’s all over the news.”

“What?”

“The dead are alive, John. They don’t know how or why, but they are getting up and killing other people. It started in New York. You need to get to the airport right away. Get out of the city! John! John!”

Dazed by the news, I responded that I was by the window of the office overlooking the street. There was a car flipped over and people were running all over the place. I was trying like hell to wrap my head around what was happening.

“It doesn’t look good down there, Jenn. I don’t…I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to the airport.”

“Then you need to find a car or some way to get out of there!” she shrieked, making me wince. I felt a sudden sense of urgency, as I gripped the phone tighter.

“I’m sorry, Jenn,” I blurted, “about this morning, about our fight.”

“None of that matters to me.  Just get ho…”

The signal died. I tapped the phone until it was trying to dial her back. No luck. Not even a dial tone. Just dead air. Amazing. It was all already coming undone, and I didn’t even know it.

Refocusing on the office, I placed the phone back in my pocket. Looking around, I realized that there was no movement on the floor.  No one was leaving their desk to head for the bathroom, to flirt with their secretaries, or to sneak outside to grab a smoke. The place was literally deserted.

That is, with one exception. A single person was still typing away on a computer in the front of the office. Each keystroke echoed off the absurdly quiet office walls.

Running up to the receptionist, I barked, “What are you doing? You’ve got to get out of here!”

“Finishing this memo. I don’t leave until I finish the memos.” Her last words drifted off as she continued to stare at the screen. She didn’t even look at me as I walked backwards toward the elevator door.

Dedication? Most likely shock.

It was amazing how so many people just went into shock in the beginning.  Not reacting.  Not acknowledging what was going on.  It was as if a fuse burst in their feeble minds, rendering them even more useless. Mundane tasks for a mundane world.

A group of people was pressed against the lobby glass, looking out at the street when I stepped off the elevator. I could see Josh and my fat boss standing near the door. It looked like they were preparing to head outside. Even now, Josh was his lapdog, preparing to escort my obese boss out to his Hummer that was parked in the garage next door. Anything to climb that corporate ladder.

Remaining back, I was still able to get a vantage point to see outside. Right away, I could tell that all hell had broken loose. The car that was flipped over was now on fire. There were police horses, once noble and calm, running around without riders; the frothy sweat gathering along their necks, their gentle eyes now wild with fright.

I saw a firefighter who had tapped into a nearby fire hydrant. He was twisting the nozzle when two of the so-called dead, a girl with a blue summer dress, and a homeless guy with a shredded NY Mets tee shirt, jumped him. The bum was biting at his face, but the shield of his helmet was down. The girl got a chunk out of his upper arm where his open coat had slid down during the fight.

So much for doing the right thing.

At that moment, my overweight boss and his loyal lap dog decided to make a break for it while the dead were distracted.

The first person I watched being taken down was Josh. Just as they stepped outside, they ran into a giant of a man coming around the corner.  At six foot seven, he towered over Josh, and the look in his eyes screamed infected! I could feel my body involuntarily shudder.

Josh hesitated; that was his mistake. My fat boss didn’t even look back. He just kept running down the sidewalk, almost falling over a tipped over garbage can.

The giant didn’t just bite Josh and move on as I’d seen with the others. He advanced toward him. Josh stumbled backwards and tripped, as one of his shoes fell off. I watched his cellphone flip across the pavement. The giant dead guy picked him up over his head. Josh’s scream went shrill until he was bounced off the pavement a couple of times.

That thing then spun Josh in the air, and with the effort of throwing out the trash, tossed him towards the building we were in. He smashed against the glass, not breaking through it. We all watched in stupefied horror as his mangled face slid down the “no shoes, no shirt, no entry,” sign on the outside of the building.

Shouldn’t have lost your shoe, Josh.

The goliath stomped over and stood above Josh. He brought his giant arms down on top of him, over and over again, beating him to a pulp. He started pulling pieces and parts off him to stuff into that grotesque mouth.

A sob from a woman in the crowd broke the silence in the room.

Those corporate bigwigs got something right when they built this place. The glass on the building was one-way; we could see him, but he couldn’t see us...

It’s probably the only reason I’m able to tell this story today.