Lord of the Dead Page 7

  “But it could be a treasure trove of supplies.”

  “Yes, but I don’t like the risk. We have no idea how intricate the security measures are, and we could get boxed in there easily.”

  I nodded my head in agreement. “Do we need to look north?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said, “we haven’t tried Piketon, yet.” Piketon was a small town about fifteen miles north of us.

  Kara and I nodded our heads.

  “We have no idea what’s there, but there could be things there we could use.” He looked across the dining room at Travis. “Travis and Hub said they hadn’t been that far north. This weather will make it tricky, but I’m thinking we should.”

  “When do you want to go?” I asked.

  “I’m thinking the sooner, the better.”

  “Well, count me in.” I looked down at my rice and beans for a moment and then peered around the dining room. There were over fifty of us now. “How long do you think we can get by just foraging the scraps of what’s left behind from the people who just up and made a run for it?”

  “You’re reading my mind,” Greg said.

  “What do you mean?” Kara asked.

  “At some point, we’re going to use up all the edible food left sitting around in houses and other places,” I said. “We’re going to have to become self-sufficient.”

  “I’ve been talking with Hub about that,” Greg said. “He thinks we can grow crops in the courtyard. If we can get back to his farm, we can get some of his tools and a tractor. Then we can try to plant some crops on the golf course. We’ll have to get by on what we can scavenge until then.”

  “What about fuel?” I asked. “All I know is that Dad said I should run the lawn mower dry at the end of each summer because the fuel would degrade over the winter.”

  Greg said, “Travis brought that up a couple of weeks ago. He thinks the diesel will last a couple years or more before it goes bad. He thinks you might be able to extend that with additives or by filtering it, but in the long run, he knows we’ll have to find a new energy source.”

  Kara’s face went blank; then, she said, “I’ve always thought that this would be a shor-term situation. I was sure that the government officials, the military or someone, would show up, and while it might take some time, they would help us get back on track. It’s just so hard to think that the world that we knew is…gone.”

  Greg reached across the table and patted her hand. “Sorry to get you down, but we have to assume we’re on our own. We need to start thinking about how we’ll make a life two years from now.”

  The weight of what Greg said fell on me, and I felt my soul groan from the enormity of what lay ahead. What kind of world would we be facing two years from now? Five years? Our world will be one that will be dramatically different, that was for sure. As if the zombies weren’t enough, we’d have to find a way just to survive.

  Chapter 9

  Lord of the Dead II

  “Those collars,” Russell shouted, “they have wires leading off of them into the zombies’ heads. Probably into their brains. He’s controlling them through a panel of buttons.”

  Steven broke in, “But they don’t feel pain or anything. I’ve shot them and they just keep coming.”

  “Maybe not on the outside. Maybe the wires are connected directly to their pain center?” Russell asked.

  There was really no time for this discussion. The situation was what it was. They had some sort of “Lord of the Dead” bringing a horde of zombies down on them, and the undead were as they always had been — ravenous.

  Russell stuck his head out the window and saw two zombies stumble their way over to the rubble and into the house.

  “They’re coming through the breach!” Russell shouted into his walkie-talkie.

  “Russell, head back to the west end of the house,” Cody said over the walkie-talkie. “We can’t get separated.

  “On my way,” Russell responded and left his position. He headed down the long hallway again, but this time a little more cautiously because the undead were in the house.

  The man outside must have thought the zombies needed an extra entrance because one moment Russell was moving along, and the next he was enveloped in the sound of thunder accompanied by lightning. He came off his feet as if gravity had ceased to exist. Then his body impacted with the back wall, and a tsunami of blackness swept over him, taking him down into the depths of unconsciousness.

  He came back to the land of the living coughing, lying in a cloud of dust from the explosion. His ears rang like Sunday morning church chimes, and he felt warm liquid flowing down his forehead, obscuring the sight in his left eye. Half out of it, he used his left hand to wipe away the blood. It took him another ten seconds to even remember where he was; then, adrenaline kicked in. His rifle sat just inches in front of his body, but when he reached for it, he was stopped by a searing pain in his right shoulder. Then, he discovered another harsher truth; his right arm wasn’t working. It refused to cooperate at all.

  Through the murkiness of his nearly non-existent hearing, he finally made out distant shouting. It took him a moment to realize it was coming from the walkie-talkie lying at his feet.

  “Russell! Where are you?” It was Cody. “Russell!”

  It took Russell a minute to grab the walkie-talkie and bring it to his ear.

  “Cody, I’m here, but I’m hurt bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “I can’t move my right arm,” Russell said, defeat obvious in his voice.

  Cody said something, but Russell was distracted as a zombie stumbled into the new breach in the wall. Tripping over uneven bricks caused by the explosion, it fell to its knees and unsteadily got to its feet and stood up. It was a big man, probably six four and well past two fifty.

  Some higher-level self-preservation instinct kicked in for Russell, and he turned the walkie-talkie off.

  The zombie stood swaying, its head tilted like a hunting dog trying to catch a scent. Russell lay still only twenty feet away. It looked his way, but the dust from the explosion masked the zombie’s view, so for that moment at least, he was safe. After those few seconds, though, all bets were off.

  Gunshots rang out from the west, and that got the zombie’s full attention. It shambled off towards the sound. Just as it vacated its position, two more zombies made their way in and followed after their undead colleague. More gunshots came from the west side of the house.

  Russell felt his head start to clear. Groggily, he stood and pulled the rifle over his shoulder by its strap and then picked up the walkie-talkie, but with his dead arm, he could only use one at a time.

  When he got out of view from the second breach, he flipped the walkie-talkie back on.

  “Russell. Russell, come in,” Steven’s voice came over the walkie-talkie.

  “I’m here,” Russell said as quietly as possible.

  “You need to get out the back,” Steven said. “You need to run.”

  “What?” Russell asked, his voice rising.

  “Cody’s dead. A group of zombies took him down.”

  In a world where unreality ruled, Russell slipped down into a deeper hole of craziness, his feet felt disconnected from his body, and a wave of prickly blue light filled his vision. He would later describe that feeling like the closest he had ever come to an out-of-body experience.

  “They’re swarming us, Russell. Run!” That was the last he heard from any of his friends. Well, almost the last.

  Robotically, he made his way through the house and out the back door and through the snow. The sounds of gunshots slowly decreased as he stumbled his way up a short hill. With his energy ebbing, he fell behind a large pine tree and nearly passed out. With a Herculean effort, he pushed himself back up to one knee and peeked around the tree. His view from the hill gave him a perfect vantage point for observing the horrible end to his life, as he knew it. It was a meager life really, but it was better than most of the other survivors.


  A few zombie stragglers shambled around in the driveway, but most were in the house. He felt for his rifle and tried to find the man, hoping maybe he could take him out, but the man was nowhere to be seen. He watched for ten minutes, still feeling numb all over, as zombies passed by windows inside the house. After another ten minutes, zombies began streaming out of the house, their hands and faces slick with the blood of his friends. Of his brother.

  It took a few minutes for all the zombies to get back outside. They shambled about aimlessly for a minute or two before the man came out the front door, pushing Sherry in front of him with his rifle. She looked shell-shocked, her blonde hair thick with blood. Russell thought he could see a wound on her forehead but wasn’t sure.

  When the zombies spotted the two captives, their interest and hunger piqued again as they turned back towards the new food source. He watched as the man’s fingers danced over the keyboard panel on his chest plate. The shock treatments ran like a wave through the zombies with each one of them stopping in place and then shaking them for a moment. It only took about thirty seconds for them to stop their aggressive movements. The man went through a series of button pressing, and eventually, like a herd, the zombies headed around the back of the bus and then up the ramp, obediently taking their seats like little kids ready for the quick ride to school. Undead school kids.

  Russell watched spellbound. Maybe it was the shock of losing all the people he cared for, or maybe the explosion addled his brain, but he couldn’t move. What brought him out of his trance was a woman’s shriek.

  He turned his attention to the front of the bus where he saw the man pulling Sherry along by her hair. She resisted, but he savagely kicked her in the side, and she went down to all fours. She tried to scramble away, but he pulled back the assault rifle and smacked her in the back of the head with its butt. She went down face first with a grunt. He walked over to her and rolled her over onto her back. He made an assessment and decided she was still alive and began dragging her along toward the bus.

  Russell snapped out of his daze and fumbled for the rifle. It took him a few seconds to bring it up with his left arm, his right one still inoperable. Being right-handed, his aim danced around as if he had palsy while he tried to manage to aim with his left arm. It was so bad that he couldn’t draw a bead on the man. Sherry was still out of it as the man dragged her along. The man stopped when he reached the bus and let her fall back down to the ground while he muscled the doors open.

  Russell’s body convulsed from the cold, but he worked to steady his aim by bracing himself against the tree. After several unsteady seconds, he finally had the man dead in his sights. He took a calming breath and let it loose and then pulled the trigger. The hammer slammed home, and the shot exploded into the still air.

  The man stumbled back into the confines of the bus, and Russell waited to see what would happen next, wondering if the zombies would start their way off the bus with their overlord dead.

  They remained quiet in their seats. Obedient. After ten seconds, he saw the barrel of a gun poke from the shadows of the front door of the bus.

  “I don’t want to disappoint you, but, obviously, you missed,” the man screamed.

  Stunned, Russell aimed into the shadows of the bus and pulled the trigger again, only to hear the empty metallic click of the hammer hitting nothing. He dropped the rifle into his lap, plunging his good hand into his pockets in a desperate search for extra ammo. His search was interrupted by a ripping of gunshots coming from the direction of the bus. He didn’t hear the bullets whizzing by, but he looked up in time to see several small limbs fall from the tree he was hiding under and the trees on either side. The man sprayed shots blindly, trying to spook Russell out, and it almost worked as every fiber of his being wanted to take flight.

  But he fought back the impulse to run and kept looking for ammo. He found one stray shell in his pocket and loaded it. He felt around some more but came up empty.

  The man ran off two more barrages of bullets, sending more limbs to the ground, but through force of will, Russell held still.

  He did the calculation rather quickly as his senses fully returned. He had one good arm and one bullet left. It was a terrible cold equation.

  Russell weighed the option of trying for another wild shot into the shadows of the bus, hoping against hope that he could take the man out. He could hold his position, but the man would either wait Russell out or send the zombies in search of this lone adversary. In his current state, Russell knew he had less than a fifty percent chance of getting away.

  But he also felt that he couldn’t run with Sherry down there. He also knew he couldn’t save her either, at least not from being taken captive and suffering the terrible fate of the other woman. Cold hard reality stood in its enormity against him.

  Searching for any other path, he felt a dark inspiration hit home, and he considered that maybe he could save Sherry from the fate that had befallen the other woman. He didn’t like it, but it was the only way.

  He edged around the tree slowly, hoping the man didn’t catch his movement. It was an easy shot. Sherry lay completely still. He took aim, and after only a moment’s hesitation, pulled the trigger, knowing he wouldn’t miss this time. He closed his eyes in that moment not wanting to see the result.

  The man fired off a quick barrage in Russell’s direction. With not a lot of choices for cover, Russell rolled back behind the tree. Another hail of dried leaves and limbs rained down on him, but the man let up after about twenty seconds.

  “Wow, you are truly one gutsy guy,” the man shouted, a stunned sense of amazement in his voice. “And surprising. I never expected that. With friends like you, who needs enemies?” He started laughing, and Russell wanted nothing more than to kill the man but knew he had no chance of doing that. At least not that day.

  He also knew it would only be a matter of time before the man came up the hill. He belly-crawled through the snow and away from the house for about fifty yards then stumbled along onto his knees and one good arm for another hundred yards. It was then that he felt safe enough to run. He ran still hearing the echo of the Lord of the Dead’s laugh burning into his memory, resounding off the snow-covered hills. It was a sound that he continued to hear in his mind for days and weeks, sometimes almost driving him mad.

  Chapter 10

  Northward Bound

  He comes out of a small copse of leafless trees about fifty yards off to my left. He is alone and his gait unsteady, as he stumbles along on the uneven frozen ground. His clothes are tattered so badly that I can see bits of pale flesh exposed. On his feet are what looks like strips of cloth bound onto him with pieces of twine. Initially, he takes no notice of us but suddenly turns our way when Brandon steps on a twig, snapping it crisply, the sound carrying on the cold winter air.

  He is small and very thin. At this distance, I can’t tell whether he is a man or a boy. His mouth opens but no sound comes out, and he starts towards us, nearly falling but regaining his balance. He is gaining momentum, and there is an urgency in his walk. Brandon mistakes him for one of the undead and raises his rifle to take the stumbling creature out. Something inside me knows differently and reacts almost immediately, but almost too late. My hand shoots out and smacks the barrel of Brandon’s gun just as he pulls the trigger. The shot goes high and undaunted, the boy/man picks up his pace as he trudges our way.

  Brandon glares at me, giving me a hard WTF look, but I turn my attention to the boy/man. He has gained some confidence in his footing and is gliding towards me in that way people do in dreams. At first, something in me wanted to save this pitiful creature, but I’m now somewhat unsettled and wary.

  Regardless of however I feel, he continues my way. He is a teenager. Maybe eighteen, maybe fourteen. I can’t tell. His face is unshaven, and scruffs of unkempt beard stubble stick out in wild angles, but it his eyes that captivate me. I feel held in place almost as if I’m caught in some enchanter’s spell.

  Brandon is saying something,
but I can’t hear him, his voice far off and indistinct. I wave my arm at Brandon in a placating gesture and move a hesitant step towards the boy, but I feel a dizziness fall over me, nearly taking me to my knees. I rally and keep going.

  The distance between us is narrowing quickly, but my vision is starting to tunnel down, and I see only the boy’s face. His expression is a juxtaposition of concentration and relief. He wants, no, must, get to me, and no one else. At all costs. That thing inside me that isn’t a voice, but more of a compulsion drives me toward him. We are only a few feet apart.

  I can see his lips moving, soundlessly, and I know he is mouthing my name, over and over again. I know his name is Jason.

  That’s when I wake up.

  It’s the dream I had nearly every week during those past few months. I was neither frightened nor relieved when I woke from it. I’m not sure how I felt. A part of me knew beyond a certainty that it was real or, at least, a vision of something to be, but I didn’t want to be some Ebenezer Scrooge visited by ghosts of futures to come. Not wanting it to be real didn’t make it not true, but my inner being knew it was to be true. And I knew it was only a matter of time until I met this Jason. I only hoped it meant something good for us.

  “You’re saying you’ve been having this vision for a couple of months?” Kara asked.

  “I wouldn’t call it a vision. More like a dream,” I said. We were in her room supposedly meeting to discuss some issues with Naveen and Madison. I didn’t want the word on the street to be that ole’ Joel was cracking up and seeing things in his sleep.

  “But you’re saying that it is real,” Kara said.

  “Well, yes, it feels real.”

  She mulled this over for a few seconds. “Maybe it’s God sending you a prophecy?”