Zed's World (Book 2): Roads Less Traveled Read online

“Get down there and get the door shut, NOW!” D-Day shouts. “I’ll get the tools!”

  He runs down the hallway, stepping around the fetid bodies lining the floor, does a quick check of the lobby, and retrieves the tool bag from the security office. A few tense moments later and he’s got three screws driven into the door to secure it. The pounding continues, but the door doesn’t budge one iota. Everyone looks relieved, for about a second.

  Then the man with the bat starts screaming.

  They all turn to look at him, and to D-Day’s horror, Cortez’s reanimated corpse, pinned under a pile of bodies, sinks his teeth into the man’s calf. The man tries to pull his leg away from Cortez, but his jaws have a firm grasp on his bare leg. Cargo shorts were clearly a bad idea for fighting zombies. He continues his struggle, and as he pulls his leg away from the gnashing teeth, a large piece of the calf muscle tears free from the Achilles’ tendon and stretches between the leg of the man and the mouth of the creature. D-Day sights his pistol and two pops sound in the hall. Cortez’s head jerks back, his jaws go limp, and his forehead sports two new holes. Black ooze from the wounds sprays the man’s legs and wounded calf. He screams even more when the oily substance makes contact with the exposed muscle.

  “Bill!” the woman yells and runs down the hallway to his side. She grabs one of his arms and pulls it over her shoulder to support his weight. “Help me, please!” she shouts at D-Day.

  He goes to Bill’s left side, and the two of them take the wounded man to Apartment 103. The other couple is inside the apartment, and D-Day gets a good, close look at them for the first time. They’re older, perhaps in their mid sixties, while the other two are late thirties or early forties. Based on the resemblance of the two women, D-Day guesses they’re mother and daughter. Bill must be the son or son-in-law; based on his lighter complexion, D-Day guesses son-in-law.

  “Oh my God, what happened?” the older man asks.

  “There was one still alive in the pile. It bit his leg,” the young woman says.

  “Oh, God, it hurts!” Bill’s face contorts with agony, and D-Day can see the veins in the leg turning black. The ruined muscle has contracted and leaks black fluid on the floor.

  The older woman has gone to the kitchen and now she returns with an old dish towel that she puts over the wound. She’s trying to stop the bleeding, which would be a good idea, but when she touches the wound, Bill thrashes and kicks, screaming louder than ever. He knocks the woman backward and flings blood all over her and the flat-screen TV behind her.

  The younger woman turns to D-Day. “Do something!” she yells. “This was your stupid plan! We risked our lives to get that stupid door shut! Help him!”

  “Yeah, the door your stupid ass blocked open with your bike? All of these monsters got in because of you,” D-Day points at Bill, writhing in agony and bleeding all over the couch, “and him. So don’t go laying this off on ME! And besides, there’s nothing we can do for him. You’d best make your peace with that and decide who’s going to take care of him when he turns.”

  The woman’s face contorts, and D-Day expects her to explode at him, but instead, he gets tears.

  “No, there has to be something we can do. There has to be,” she says through sobs.

  D-Day takes a more conciliatory tone. “Look at that leg. You see the black veins? That’s the way Cortez’s arm looked after he was bitten. My guess is that with the way its spread through his veins, by now it’s spread into his torso. If we could have amputated the leg immediately, maybe that would have stopped it, but he probably would have bled out. I just don’t think there’s anything that can be done.”

  “But you don’t know that, right? He could still be okay if we stop the bleeding?” the older woman asks.

  “All I can tell you is that I’ve been watching these things since this started,” D-Day says. “They attack someone, that person dies, they move on to the next poor bastard they can get their hands on. A few minutes later, the person they attacked gets up and joins them. Every time. Every one of them. Not one of them has recovered or stayed dead.”

  On the couch, Bill coughs and emits a hollow-sounding moan then sinks into the cushions, finally lying still. He’s still breathing, but death lurks nearby.

  “Look, I don’t want to be insensitive, but the clock’s ticking here. We need to be ready for what comes next,” D-Day says. He looks at Bill writhing in pain on the couch. He knows that it’s a matter of time before he dies and comes back. He needs the three remaining people to understand that.

  “I need the three of you to understand this,” D-Day says, speaking in a deliberate tone. “He is going to die. He will come back as one of them, and he will try to attack you, kill you, and turn you, just like what’s happening to him. The only thing that will stop him is that” —he points at the bloody baseball bat— “or this,” and he pats the pistol on his hip.

  He seems to have had an effect because he can see the hope drain from their faces. He turns to the dark-haired woman. Now that he’s closer to her, he can tell she’s younger than he thought. She’s in her early thirties, maybe, and quite attractive.

  “What’s your name?” he asks.

  “Carmen,” she says, and nods at the other two. “My parents, Elizabeth and George.”

  “Carmen, I know this has to be tough to deal with. But this is reality.” He glances at his watch and does a mental calculation. “What I’ve seen over the last ten hours is like a nightmare. If I didn't see it happen before my eyes, I’d never believe it. But there it is; it’s happening, and we can’t stop it. And here’s how you deal with a situation you’re immersed in that’s going to unfold whether you want it to or not; you either accept it, fight and do whatever you have to, or you keep saying ‘there has to be something else we can do.’ Deny reality and you’ll die.”

  George clears his throat. “It’s easy to say that when it’s not your son-in-law on that couch.”

  “George, right?” D-Day asks. George nods. “Him being your son-in-law doesn’t change the situation. He’s going to die. He’s going to come back. He’ll have to be put back down. I’m trying to be gentle here, but you need to understand this much; either he gets put down, or all four of you do. I’ll do it for you if you can’t, but you guys need to make that decision. It’s going to be light in a couple of hours, and we have a lot of work to do. We need to get the mess in the hallway cleaned up, get supplies gathered, figure out how many people we have in the building and how long we can last. I can’t have four new zombies running around causing havoc.”

  “I’ll do it,” Carmen says. “If I can use your pistol.”

  “Carmen, you shouldn’t have to …” George starts to say, but Carmen cuts him off mid-sentence.

  “Dad, I’ll do it. If he doesn’t have much time left, I want to spend it with him. Right up to the end. I owe him that.”

  “Are you sure? Honey, this is too much for you to deal with …” George says.

  “George, it’s her decision,” Elizabeth says.

  “I just … she shouldn’t have to take this on, not when this guy’s volunteered to do it. She’s been through enough tonight already.” George is protesting, but the strength has left his voice.

  “I’d like to be alone with him please,” Carmen says. “Can you guys wait in the hall?”

  D-Day takes his pistol out of its holster and holds it out to Carmen.

  “Do you know how to use this?” he asks.

  “I’ve shot before. Bill has a .45 … at home,” she answers.

  “Okay, well, this is a .40. Still has some kick to it, but if you can handle a .45 you can handle this. It’s suppressed, so it won’t be real loud. Just don’t miss the headshot.”

  She nods and ushers the three of them out into the hallway. The zombies in the stairwell still pound on the door. Elizabeth flinches a tiny bit with each thump, but George and D-Day tune out the noise. D-Day scans the hallway, looking for any zombies that may not have been completely dispatched, but he sees
nothing amiss. George breaks the silence first.

  “It was an accident, you know,” he says. “The door, the motorcycle. She was meeting us here for dinner. Bill was here helping us set up a new computer, and we decided to order pizza. Of course, the food never got delivered, and Carmen barely made it here after she got off of work. She went through a lot to get here, and now she’s about to lose her husband. You should go easy on her.”

  “I didn’t mean to be hard on her, George,” D-Day says. “It was an accident, but it still put the entire building’s occupants in danger. We have to deal with the threat first and grieve later. Emotions have no place in this situation. Emotions will get you killed.”

  “Where did you serve?” George asks. “With an attitude like that, you must have been in combat. Iraq? Afghanistan?”

  “Both,” D-Day says.

  “Wow. You must have seen some bad stuff,” George says.

  “I did. And this stuff,” D-Day gestures to the mess of dead zombies in the hallway, “is worse than anything I saw over there. These things can’t be reasoned with. They aren’t afraid. You can’t intimidate them. Point a gun at them and they don’t even flinch. I don’t know what’s going on, how this started, or what happens next, but I do know that we still have a lot to do this morning before we can let down and grieve for what we’ve seen and done.”

  “Okay, you’ve made your point,” Elizabeth says. “We get it, and we’ll help you with whatever you need. We owe you that. We wouldn’t be here if you and your friend hadn’t taken these things on like you did.”

  Before D-Day can say anything, they hear a scream from the apartment, and then the muffled whump of the gunshot. George has the door open and is inside before D-Day can get his rifle into firing position. He follows George and finds Carmen standing over the transformed body of her husband, Bill. Black fluid leaks from a hole in his forehead just above the left eye.

  She turns around and holds out the pistol. The slide is locked back, the magazine empty.

  “One bullet?” she asks. “What the hell was that?”

  “I told you not to miss,” D-Day says.

  “What, were you afraid I was going to kill myself if you gave me two bullets?”

  “Frankly, yes,” D-Day replies.

  She presses the gun against his chest, lets it go without checking to see if he had a grip on it, and walks past him to her father, who gives her a long hug.

  D-Day takes out the empty magazine, puts in a fresh one, releases the slide, and holsters the gun.

  He looks down at the body and thinks of the forty-plus other bodies littering the first floor, and then the five bodies he left up on the third floor. They need to clean this mess up before it starts to smell worse than it does. It’s going to be a long morning.

  Ten

  South of Fort Collins, Colorado

  Robert runs toward the garage, toward the flashes of light that just lit up the closed space. Annie and Stephenie are crying because the intent of the note Henry left is clear; he intends to kill himself after shooting his zombified wife. While Stephenie couldn’t hear the gunshots, she saw the dual flashes from the garage and has assumed the worst.

  Robert enters the garage and turns on the light, making the house visible for miles. A few seconds later the light goes dark, and Robert emerges from the side access door.

  “Robert …” Annie says but trails off. Robert just shakes his head. He walks back to the others, who are standing by the Ram pickup truck.

  “He did it. The son of a bitch did it,” he says, and he grabs the driver’s door and slams it shut. He opens it and slams it again, and again and again. Finally, he leaves it shut and drops to his knees and begins sobbing.

  “Sorry, man …” Keith says.

  “Don’t! Don’t you dare say anything!” Robert screams through his sobs. “If you assholes hadn’t come along, we would have been fine! He was looking for the first excuse to punch his ticket and you motherfuckers gave it to him!” He gets up and takes a couple of angry steps toward Keith.

  “Robert!” Annie yells, stepping in front of him. “Stop this! We have to figure out what to do next. The world is still crashing down around us. If we’re going to go, we need to do it soon. We can’t do anything about Henry or Aunt Lynn if we get caught up in a horde of those things. Live today, grieve tomorrow, right? Isn’t that what Henry would say?”

  “Henry’s not going to say anything because he fucking bailed on us! I don’t care what he wanted; I’m not going anywhere with these assholes,” he says. He turns toward Ben and the rest of the group. “You all can get moving, find your own way out of here.”

  Everyone is unsure what to say or do next. It’s Stephenie who breaks the silence. Though she’s deaf and her speech isn’t clear, everyone understands when she says, “We need to bury them.”

  Annie and Robert look at her silhouette in the darkness. They have just realized that in the dark she can neither read their lips nor see sign language, yet somehow she’s chosen the right moment to speak. It’s almost as though she can hear the conversation.

  “I need help digging the hole. Who will help me?” she says. Keith immediately raises his hand, and the others follow suit.

  Annie latches on to the concept. “Robert and I will get some sheets and wrap them up. Get them ready,” she says. “Okay, Robert? Steph’s right, this needs to be done. Whether we stay or go, we can’t leave them as they are and it doesn’t seem like a funeral home is going to be able to get them any time soon.”

  Robert, still glaring at Keith in the dim light, pauses for a long moment and finally agrees with his sister. He and Annie head to the house to find something suitable to wrap the bodies of their aunt and uncle in, and Stephenie leads the group to a shed on the south side of the house. She opens it, walks in, and comes right back out with a trio of shovels. She extends one to Keith and another to Ben. Keeping the last one for herself, she walks over to a gate that opens with a loud squeak that she doesn’t hear, and walks past a massive garden to a bare patch of ground. At the end of the patch is a headstone, barely visible in the darkness.

  “Our dog is buried there,” she says, pointing at the headstone. “This is a good place for them. They’d like being close to Charlie.”

  She starts digging a hole, and Keith moves a few feet to her right and starts a second hole. Stephenie tugs at his sleeve. “No, they’d want to be buried together. One hole,” she says.

  They work for about thirty minutes, with Andy, Danielle, Toni and Natalie taking turns with the shovels when one of the others gets tired. They’ve got a hole about two and a half feet deep, four feet wide, and six feet long when Annie shows up.

  “We could use some help,” she says. “It’s harder than you would think, trying to move a … well, a body.” She chokes on the last word. Andy and Natalie offer to help them while the rest of the kids keep digging.

  A couple of minutes later, the four of them are walking into the garden area, carrying the first of the two bodies. The smell of the oily fluid leaking from the wound tells the kids that this is Aunt Lynn. They place her as gently as possible in the hole and head back for Uncle Henry. Soon he’s lying in the hole next to his beloved wife, without whom he was unwilling to face the changing world. Robert has put a diffuser on the end of a Fenix flashlight, so it acts as a lantern instead of a spotlight. Annie signs for Stephenie while Robert talks.

  “Um …” Robert says, clearing his throat. “I don’t know what to say, exactly. These two have been my parents as long as I can remember. Henry always said that while he never asked for kids, if he could have put in an order he never could have hoped for three kids as good as us. He was a plain-spoken, honest man who said pretty much what he was thinking. Some people thought that was rude, but I admired it. And Lynn was … was …”

  “Our mom.” Annie finishes his thought. “Even though Robert and Stephenie don’t remember our real mom, Aunt Lynn was every bit as good of a mother to us. She loved us unconditionally an
d never thought twice about taking us in and raising us as her own. I know this is going to hit me—hit us—real hard later, but whatever happens next I hope that we make her proud.”

  Stephenie starts signing and Annie translates for the others, almost out of habit. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us all in our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort from which we ourselves are comforted by God,” she says.

  Everyone looks at Stephenie with surprise that she had scripture already prepared for this event. The next part she says out loud and either she’s speaking more clearly, or they’re all getting accustomed to her mode of speech because they have no problems understanding her.

  “Henry taught me that after I went deaf. He said it meant that no matter how bad we have it, someone else has it worse. He said that no matter what happens, I should never feel sorry for myself and always think of the people who have it worse than me, and be glad that I got the hand I was dealt. He never let me have a pity party when I was growing up, and I’m not going to start now. Bad things happen to people, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I hope God is comforting him and Aunt Lynn tonight.”

  With that, she throws a shovel full of dirt onto the two bodies, wrapped with love in their best linens. Robert and Annie also begin shoveling dirt into the grave and in a few minutes, the hole has been filled. The group files silently back around the front of the house.

  “We appreciate your help with that, but you guys can get in your Landcruiser and get on your way now,” Robert says. “You’re welcome to go across Henry’s land to avoid the blockades, but you need to go.”

  “Robert, don’t be rude. We haven’t even discussed what we’re doing,” Annie says. “Henry wanted us to leave.”

  “Well, he’s not here now, and I never wanted to leave in the first place. We have plenty of food and ammo. We can hold out until this thing blows over,” he says.