Gods of the Dead (Rising Book 1) (9 page)

That I’ll die before I get the chance to kill him.

When I find door 406 I pound on it hard with the butt of my gun. I swipe my hand over my mouth, clearing the sweat on my lip as I wait. It feels like forever but it’s probably no more than a minute. Maybe less. It’s still too long.

He throws open the door and I’m face to face with my dad for the first time in over five years. He’s shorter than I remember, but then again I’m taller now. Taller than he is. Broader too. His body is thin and weak. White like paper. I could tear him in half if I wanted to.

“Vinny!” he exclaims in relief.

He rushes forward, his arms outstretched to hug me.

I take a step back and level my gun on his face. “Don’t.”

He freezes. “What are you doing?”

“Killing you.”

“What?”

“I’m going to kill you.”

He shakes his head violently. “No, no, no, no. I’m not sick. Look, see? Not a bite on me. I’m not sick, Vinny!”

“Stop calling me that!” I shout.

“But I’m not. I’m not sick!”

“I don’t give a shit!”

His hands fall to his sides, his face clouding in confusion. “The—then why?”

“Because you’re worthless,” I tell him coldly. “You’re a fuckin’ addict and an asshole. You’re a coward and you’re weak and you don’t deserve to survive any of this, but mostly I’m going to kill you because I’ve always wanted to and I’ll sleep better knowing you’re dead.”

“You can’t. I’m your dad.”

“Not for much longer.”

I stare at him, my gun steady in my hand pointed at his quivering face. He’s shaking in fear, probably shitting himself because he believes I’ll do it. He knows I will. He knows I want to.

Then why can’t I? Why haven’t I pulled the trigger yet? I’ve thought about this moment so many times for so long. He ruined my life, probably ruined my mom’s life too, and I’d be so much happier knowing he didn’t exist anymore. I always told myself I let my dad live because I was worried about doing jail time and getting caught, but even now with a gun to his head when all bets off, I still can’t.

I don’t know who I hate more for that fact; me or him.

I lower the gun, my fingers flexing against the grip and itching like I’m tweaking. I want out of this moment. It feels weak, it feels like the kid and the coward who didn’t want to leave the apartment a week ago. Like the little bastard inside me who has always,
always
wanted his mommy. But I can never have her because I never knew her, and it’s all his damn fault.

“Thank you, son,” he says, stepping toward me slowly. His arms are out again. He’s going to touch me. “Thank you.”

I swing back and snap my fist toward his face. The gun in my hand connects with his cheek and he falls to the ground at my feet, blood dripping from his mouth and nose.

“Don’t thank me,” I tell him calmly. “I was going to kill you quickly. When the zombies get their hands on you it’s going to be a lot worse.”

I leave the apartment building in a rush. I’m practically running. I don’t look back and I try not to think about what I’ve done – or what I
haven’t
done – and I head straight for the house on the water. For the woman waiting for me. I’ll grab Sienna and we’ll head for the bar. I’ll join with Marlow, be one of his lieutenants, and she and I will live high on the top of the wreckage of the world. I’ll protect her, take care of her, and she’ll make me feel it again the way she did earlier tonight. Like I’m a man. Like I’m free.

I only come across a few infected in the streets and I kill them all quickly as I go. I use my gun because I’m still itching to fire it and I don’t care if it’s smart or not. It’s powerful and it’s satisfying and that’s worth everything to me.

When I get to the gate at the house I go to the call box and press the intercom.

“Sienna,” I call into it. “It’s me. Open the gate.”

She doesn’t keep me waiting. The gate swings open easily and I start to pass through it the second there’s room. I wish she’d start closing it again immediately and I turn to watch the opening to make sure it stays empty.

No such luck.

A figure darts inside quickly. His face is covered in blood and his eyes are wild, and the sight of him sets off so much rage in me that I worry I’ll choke on it.

“Did you follow me?” I ask in amazement.

My dad nods his head and smiles. His teeth are full of dried blood. His face is caked in it. This idiot just went on parade behind me through the city full of bloodthirsty Fever victims with a face full A Positive and he’s smiling.

I should have killed him. Why the hell couldn’t I kill him?!

I point to the street. “Get out. Back the way you came. Now.”

“Just listen to me. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have followed you but I thought you’d be going to Marlow and you could get me in with him. Just take me to Marlow, okay? Help me out.”

“Get away from me.” I turn to head up toward the house.

I hear him when he follows me.

“Are you stupid?!” I shout, rounding on him. “I said get away from me!”

“Son, please. I’ll die.”

“I know!”

The door to the house flies open and Sienna comes running out, gun in hand. She’s pointing it at the ground the way I taught her.

“Vin!”

I look back at her, then at my dad, and I suddenly realize how it looks. His face is caked in blood, the front of his clothes and his hands too. He looks like an infected. Like the kind of person who should be shot on sight.

I step back from him slowly. Thankfully he doesn’t follow me. He’s watching Sienna in her short shorts and her tight shirt with her breasts bouncing free underneath. The old perv is ogling her, not even noticing the gun she has in her hand.

“Is he infec—fected?” She stops running and turns to cough hard. It’s wet and full of something, and when she spits it’s tinged with pink.

My stomach drops out at the sight. “Sin?” I ask cautiously.

She straightens and looks at me. Her eyes are mournful, her face pale and covered in sweat.

Behind her someone moves into the doorway. They’re slow and slouched and it takes me a second to recognize them. It’s her friend Jude, a girl I’ve seen her party with before. Sienna let her into the house with her.

She let the Fever in.

“Vin, I don’t feel good,” she slurs, swaying slightly on her feet.

I step away from her slowly. “You should go back inside.”

“Are you leaving again?”

“Yes.”

“No!” She closes in on me quickly and I feel my dad fall in behind me, cowering. “Don’t leave again!”

I pull my gun and point it at her. “Stay away from me, Sin. You’re sick.”

“It’s not the Fever. It’s just a cold.”

“I’m leaving, Sin. Just let me leave. Back away.”

“No!” She ignores my gun and lunges at me. “Vin!”

I turn, shoving my dad out of the way toward the road. I go to run but a hand grabs onto my arm. I know it’s Sin. Her grip is small and iron strong and if she so much as coughs near me I could turn. I could die, just like she’s about to. And I don’t want to die.

I raise my hand, my gun hand, and I point it at her face for the third time since this started.

This time I fire.

Three Years Later

4 AO

Chapter Ten

Trent – Eighteen Years Old

I wake to the sound of groaning. Moaning deep and low in protest of pain and suffering, fighting against nature and demanding its will be done. It’s so loud my ears hurt and the ground vibrates under the tree, up through its branches, and into my bones. It’s louder than any swarm I’ve ever seen or heard and I’m truly terrified of what’s coming.

I snap into a sitting position, scanning the ground and coming up empty. There’s nothing. No one. I rub my eyes and search the surrounding area again, but I come up with more of the same. Nothing.

Blind to the source, all I can do is listen as the moan slows and fades out, leaving perfect silence. The whole forest stops with it. Birds, animals, insects. Everyone is listening. Waiting.

I unhook myself from my hammock suspended high up in a thick tree and I carefully climb even higher. Up into the top branches where they become thin and elastic under my weight. When I’ve gone as far as they’ll allow I wrap my body around the now narrow trunk and bring up my binoculars. I can see the highway, the abandoned houses peppered along its western flank, and the great gray ocean beyond them. Normally the beach stretches for a good mile in each direction before being interrupted by jagged black rock, but today is different. There’s a new mountain in the sand, one that wasn’t there yesterday. One that wasn’t there even five minutes ago.

A massive gray war ship has run aground.

It’s tipped on its side running parallel to the beach. The incoming tide rolls up and crashes against its hull, sending a white spray over its beached body. I try to read the writing on the side, but it’s not visible from here. All of its markings are either facing the sky, buried in the sand, or on the backside facing away from me.

I watch the ship closely for over twenty minutes but there’s no movement. Not on it, the beach, or in the forest. The animals are still spooked by the noise, still hiding in their nests or holes, so I do the same. I stay in my tree and I watch.

Another fifteen minutes later and the world starts to come alive again. A bird chirps in a nearby tree. A squirrel ventures out to the farthest point on a branch and looks at me with his round, black eyes. I wave to him. He’s not impressed. His tail twitches twice before he scurries off, looping wildly down the trunk of the tree. Still there’s nothing from the ship. Whoever is on it is either undead or dead, which explains how it lost its navigation and was pulled up on the beach by the tide. It’s probably been without a crew for days.

And it probably has some kind of supplies onboard.

Food and water, the things I can hunt or gather, those I have enough of. I always make sure of that. Other supplies, though, like bandages and Vaseline for the blisters on my feet, or better yet a pair of shoes that aren’t a size too small and won’t give me blisters to begin with – those would be amazing finds. It was hard to find clothes that fit me well when I was fourteen and wearing size nine shoes. Now that I’m eighteen, over six feet tall, and by my best guess a size twelve shoe, it’s almost impossible. Everything is too short from the sleeves on my shirts to the bottom of my pants. My sleeping bag forces me to curl my body into a ball to get entirely inside of it.

I scan the rest of the beach with my binoculars but it stays vacant and silent. No one comes rushing out to see what has happened. No one is coming to loot. If I want it, it’s mine.

I sit in the swaying upper branches of the tree watching the stagnant ship and I weigh my options. I could get on board. It’s tipped on its side, part of the deck sinking into the soft sand. There are plenty of places I could climb up but the interior will be full of tight corridors. Not a good place to be with infected. And even though it will have med supplies, odds are it’s a foreign ship.

When Oregon first went under quarantine, Russia and Japan sent coast guard and military ships to patrol the coastline. They wanted to make sure no one jumped off the coast and started sailing for their shores, but when the infection went worldwide and governments disappeared you could still spy the ships sailing up and down the coast aimlessly. There was nothing left to defend anymore because our poisoned shore was a mirror of their own, but that meant they didn’t have a home to go to. They were infection free islands floating in the ocean but if they wanted to stay that way they couldn’t come ashore. They must have done supply runs on land once in a while, risking it to stay alive at sea, and then heading back out again. Until the day when the infection caught up with them and took down everyone on board.

A day that apparently is today.

I don’t read Russian or Japanese. I won’t be able to decipher the labels of anything I find on board. More weapons would be good, though. Bullets for my gun. Maybe even clothes. Shoes.

But is it worth the risk? And if it’s a Japanese ship what are the odds anything would even fit me? Not a lot of six foot four Japanese guys running around in size twelve shoes.

Still, bandages and bullets don’t need a translator to operate and I might find other supplies that don’t care how tall I am. A hat. Socks. Clean underwear.

I scan the beach one last time and come up empty. If I’m going to do this, now is the time.

It takes me about an hour to get out of the forest, across the highway, and down onto the beach, and that’s the easy part. Climbing the ship is a pain. Worse than I anticipated. There’s plenty to grab onto in order to climb up the deck, but it’s all spaced so far apart it’s almost impossible. I have to make several leaps sideways to grab onto the next piece of the ship that will help hoist me up to a door and I worry I’ve broken my ring finger on my left hand by the time I’m finally there. I’ve sprained it at least and I’ll have to splint it to make sure it heals straight.

Even before I make it inside I’m wondering if it was worth it.

When I get to the door I know immediately from the writing on the signs around it – this is a Japanese ship. It’s not a battleship or an aircraft carrier. Probably more of a recon or interceptor meant to patrol the open waters with the speed to chase down any boat they found leaving the United States coastline.

Luckily the door opens toward the ground and I’m able to pop it and let gravity bang it down against the wall. Inside is dark, lit only by low emergency lights meaning their generator is still going. I listen closely to the sounds coming from inside but the wind is whipping against me and the waves crashing against the hull are making it impossible. I’ll have to go in.

My finger aches as I brace myself on the cold steel doorframe. I drop down inside, doing my best not to make a sound, and I listen to the ship’s silence. Just the groan of the hull angry at the shore and howl of the wind outside.

I make my way carefully down the sideways hall, crouching in the short space and watching where I step to make sure I don’t put weight on a door that is ready to swing open and drop me sideways through a room like Alice tumbling into Wonderland.

I can’t read any of the writing on the signs but I know it when I find the med unit. The familiar blocky cross that looks like a plus sign is stuck to the outside of the door. It’s blue instead of red, but the shape is the same. I’m lucky that it’s not one of the rooms above my head and behind one of the doors I keep cracking the back of my skull on. It’s just a few feet ahead of me. I put down my pack and pause, listening again. Nothing, and that nothing is starting to bother me. I want to get off this ghost ship and back out into the light. Back to the roar of the ocean and the hum of the dead because it’s what I know. It’s all I’ve known for the last three years.

Shaking out my hands, I go to crouch by the door. I stand just to the side of it, grab the handle, and let it swing open with an angry creek. My heart hammers in my chest and vibrates in my ears as I wait and I listen, but again there’s nothing. No undead hands reach up to get me. There’s not even that strange, sweet scent they put out that makes you never want to eat again. It’s just a room. An empty room.

I slowly creep forward and look down inside. It’s dark. My eyes find nothing but black and I hate it, but I have to reach inside that darkness and feel along the wall for the light switch. My fingers fumble for it over cold steel and hard edges until finally they find a little round button. I breathe out slowly, then I press it.

The room explodes in sound and light.

I fall back away from the doorway and land all wrong on my back. My shoulder connects with the steel wall painfully sending a bolt of white fire through the right side of my body. My ears are ringing from the crack of sound and as I flex my jaw uselessly trying to pop ears that don’t need popping, my vision readjusts to the light pouring out of the doorway into the hall.

There’s a uniformed Japanese man peeking out of the hatch. Sweat is dripping down his face, terror is in his eyes, and a handgun is pointed right at me.

I put my hand out toward him in a pleading gesture for him to stop. “No, please! I’m alive! I don’t have the Fever!”

Either he doesn’t understand, he can’t hear me through the ringing in his own ears, or he simply doesn’t care. He fires on me again. He’s aiming for my head but he rushed it. It’s too low. But not too low to clip my already aching shoulder.

I cry out and crumple to the floor as he fires again and again. I’m down. He’s going to hit me eventually. He’s going to kill me if I don’t make him stop.

I fire back. Only one shot.

It’s all I need. It’s all I ever needed.

The bullet enters through his forehead and the back of his skull explodes down the gray hall behind him. His body drops out of view back down into the room.

The entire encounter took less than ten seconds. There was no time to think. Barely time to react. And now it’s over. He’s dead. I killed him. The first living human being I’ve spoken to in over three years and I killed him.

I turn and vomit on the floor.

Blood trickles down my arm, curves around my elbow, traces the lines of my veins on my forearm as though it’s trying to get back inside. Eventually it pools around my hand on the floor with my vomit and tears. I don’t know when I started crying but I can’t stop. I don’t make a sound, at least I think I don’t, but I don’t know anymore. My shoulder is in agony. My ears ache. My heart hurts.

I close my eyes, tears pouring down my cheeks, and I try not to remember. I try to bury it but I can’t. I can see it so clearly. The image. The moment. The flash of firelight in the forest with my dad’s face and a demon’s eyes.

I’m a killer

I’m a murderer.

I deserve to be alone.