Dead South | Book 3 | Dead Hope

by Bohannon, Zach

  Then, as he turned to go down the hallway toward Garrett’s room, he saw the man lying there on the floor. Jon froze.

  The green hat Garrett always wore lay next to his head. He had his hand on his chest, stained crimson from the blood. Jon approached the body, kneeling next to him.

  Garrett rested on his back, staring at the ceiling. Rigor mortis had set in, leaving Garrett’s other arm slightly off the ground, his elbow bent at an unnatural angle.

  Jon ran his hand over Garrett’s face, shutting his eyes. Then, he sat on the ground next to his friend and covered his own face.

  The feelings overwhelmed him. Jon should have been there. He began blaming himself for getting bit. If only he’d been more careful. And then, to find out that he could possibly be immune, though it wouldn’t have changed the fact that he’d been trapped in the prison kitchen with Brooke and Terrence. Still, if he’d known it to be possible that he wouldn’t turn into a zombie, then perhaps they would have come up with a different plan. Then, he might have been able to be there.

  Out of frustration, Jon slammed his elbow into the wall behind him. He’d already started to curse himself before he heard something outside. Pushing himself up off the ground, Jon made his way back through the house and out the front door.

  Stepping onto the porch, Jon heard the sound again and followed it to the front gates. Three zombies were lumbering into the camp through the broken entrance. From what Jon could tell, they were alone—unless others trailed farther behind.

  As he stared at the creatures, a fire rose up inside him. It was a feeling he’d not felt since before coming to Hope’s Dawn. Jon had found a new purpose in his life since arriving at this camp. That feeling had forced him to rethink his idea of what life was in this new world. The days of going out into the woods and bashing in the heads of zombies for vengeance had ended. But that instinct was back now, floating up through his body to reveal its presence.

  Jon gritted his teeth. He wasn’t fighting the feeling.

  Taking the bat off his back, Jon hit it against a barbecue grill sitting beside him.

  The zombies glanced his way and let out their screams.

  Then, they ran at Jon South.

  “Come and get me.”

  13

  Malcolm put the marker back into his book and slammed it shut. He set it down on the side table next to his reading chair, putting it down hard enough to nearly knock the table over. He couldn’t focus on reading right now. In fact, he couldn’t concentrate on anything.

  The frustration grew within him. Malcolm Storm had always been a man of zen, able to stay calm in the most stressful of moments. He acted with little to no remorse, never regretting the decisions he made. The coldness that lived inside of him was one of his greatest strengths. It was what made those who followed him stay loyal, and what made those he encountered out in the world fear him. He took hold of the pendulum under his shirt and thought back to the moment he’d obtained the jewel. All that woman had had to do was agree to come and either join him at Black Hill or become a member of the Vultures. If she had, both she and her son would likely have remained alive today. Instead, Malcolm and Judah had left their corpses out to rot or be torn apart by zombies. Even killing a woman and a child had left Malcolm feeling nothing.

  But he was rattled now.

  Standing up out of his chair, he paced the room. This wasn’t something he did often. Malcolm usually sat at his desk when considering strategies or the camp’s next move. He only paced when he was angry or when he was nervous. And it pissed him off to feel either of those ways.

  He thought about kicking over the table sitting next to his reading chair or even punching a hole in the wall, but instead he took a moment and gathered himself. Malcolm closed his eyes and counted to ten deep breaths. Then, he went to his desk, put his hands on it, and bowed his head.

  He was determined to find the man who’d killed Judah. Despite what the captive woman said, he refused to believe that the Savage was dead. A man like that wouldn’t die so easily, especially not from a zombie attack. Malcolm knew the stories of the Savage and how he’d been seen out in the woods, slaying zombie after zombie with baseball bats and axes. It was too convenient for him to have died like that, and Malcolm knew the woman was lying.

  His patience was wearing thin.

  A knock came at the door then, and Malcolm pushed himself up. He straightened the collar of his shirt, and ran his hands down it and his pants to make sure they were straight.

  “Come in,” he said.

  The door opened, and both Bryce and Bennett entered the room. Bryce shut the door behind them, and the men stopped a few feet into the room. Bryce narrowed his eyes.

  “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” Malcolm said, trying to keep his composure and refrain from raising his voice. “What is it?”

  “We talked to the girl again,” Bennett said. “Thought we’d give you an update.”

  Malcolm sighed. “From the tone of your voice, it doesn’t sound good.”

  Walking around the desk, Malcolm sat in his leather office chair while his two associates stood on the desk’s opposite side. Malcolm removed his glasses, breathing on the lenses and then using a cloth that had been sitting on top of the desk to wipe them down.

  “Tell me what you know,” he said.

  “We brought one of the woman’s friends to her,” Bryce said. “Bennett had already done a number on him and roughed him up pretty bad. I hoped that showing her what we were doing to the others to try to get them to talk would make her give us information, but she didn’t budge.”

  “Did you beat up the man in front of her?” Malcolm asked Bennett as he put his glasses back on.

  “Yes, sir. I made sure he was bleeding from the mouth before we even dragged his sorry ass in there. Then, I kicked him in the ribs several times in front of her and made him cough blood.” Bennett shook his head. “That bitch is strong. She doesn’t wanna give in.” He laughed. “I gotta admit, there’s something a little hot about it.”

  Malcolm rolled his eyes. He wasn’t amused, but knew the new leader of the Vultures had a small mind. Malcolm hadn’t put him in the position to think, though. He’d put them there only to perform dirty work, which was something Bennett had no problem doing.

  “I’m beginning to wonder if she’s telling the truth,” Bryce said, shrugging. “Maybe he really is dead, and it’s time for us to accept that.”

  Malcolm slammed his fist down on the table. “I will not accept that!”

  Both men’s eyes grew large. Bryce looked like he wanted to say something to try reasoning with Malcolm, but the Black Hill leader wouldn’t allow it.

  “You need to try harder,” Malcolm said. “Use violence on her if you have to; I don’t care. But I am not going to believe that man is dead until I see his body with my own two eyes.”

  “I’ve got no problem beating it out of her,” Bennett said, a grin growing on his face. “I’ll make her either tell the truth or let us know where the body is.”

  “I’m not going to stand there and watch you beat a woman,” Bryce said.

  “You don’t fucking have to, pussy. I’ll go in myself and do it.”

  Bryce rolled his eyes, turning his attention back to Malcolm. “There’s got to be another way to get her to tell us what we want to know. Have we really exhausted every avenue here?”

  Stretching out his fingers from a fist, Malcolm leaned back in his chair. It squeaked as the two men before him went quiet, staring at their leader and awaiting his response. Malcolm took a couple of breaths to calm himself and put his hands up to his mouth, clasping them as he thought.

  There must be a way.

  Thinking back to the conversation with the woman, he remembered something she’d said to him. His eyes got big, and a smile appeared under his hands, covering his mouth. He then set his hands down on the table and leaned forward, focused on Bryce.

  “Where are we holding the children f
rom Hope’s Dawn?”

  14

  Jon gripped his bat tightly with both hands. Sweat collected on his palms. That feeling inside of him continued to burn. It caused him to tremble, making the bat move back and forth like the needle on a scale as it tried to settle on an exact measurement.

  The zombies didn’t let their eyes off Jon as they ran at him. One of them, unaware of the debris lying on the ground before it, tripped over something as it came at him. It fell forward, landing flat on its face. But the other two zombies weren’t fazed and continued their trip toward Jon.

  He waited for them as they came within twenty yards. Jon had done this many times before, but something was different this time. Now, he’d been bitten by one of the bastards, and it had yet to take him. He didn’t feel as if he had to be as cautious as he had before. If the creatures crowded him, that could be a problem—they could tear him apart, and that would be a horrific way to die. But he didn’t have to worry about them biting him. So what if they did? At this point, he was either immune, or he was eventually going to turn into one of them because of his existing bite. That was almost like having an invincibility code in a video game.

  “Fuck you!” he screamed at the creatures running toward him.

  Then, he marched forward, tipping the bat up onto his shoulder.

  The first creature lunged, and Jon swung the bat. He swung so hard that, if he hadn’t connected, he might have thrown the bat over all of the houses and out of the camp. But he didn’t miss. The bat grazed the zombie’s fingertips and connected with its head. Jon had forgotten the satisfaction of feeling the barrel of the bat connect with a zombie’s skull. A reverberation shot up his arm, and the dead bastard howled then hit the ground.

  Jon gritted his teeth, waiting for the next one to approach. He didn’t have time to catch his breath as two came at him. One of them was a few feet in front of the other, and Jon dodged the thing as it lunged. It fell to the ground, allowing Jon to focus on the other. He hit this one in the stomach, causing it to double over. Then, he lifted the bat up over his head and brought it down on the back of the zombie’s skull as if he were a Viking executing a rival warrior. He dropped the bat in the process, and the creature fell to the ground. Picking his foot up, Jon then smashed in the back of the creature’s head. He felt the skull being crushed underneath his boot as blood squirted out from either side.

  Behind him, the last zombie snarled. It had made it back to its feet after falling and was running at him.

  He put his hand on his hatchet, but hesitated to draw it. Glancing at the bite wound on his arm, he decided to trust Enzo and test the biker’s theory. Jon let go of the hatchet and raised his bare hands as the creature came at him.

  The zombie reached him, and Jon got into a collar-and-elbow tie-up with it. The creature snapped its jaws, and Jon fought to gain leverage. After a struggle, he found the strength to muscle the infected bastard onto the ground.

  Jon landed on top of it and positioned his knee against its chest. The creature clawed, scratching Jon’s arms, and continued to snap its jaw, though that was of no use.

  As Jon stared down into the zombie’s eyes, something inside of him changed again. The feeling inside of him intensified further. He felt a sort of anger and rage that he’d never had in the past, not even after Carrie and Spencer had died. Their deaths and the emotions he’d felt afterward had built up as part of the feeling boiling inside of him now. But everything that had happened since then had stacked on, as well.

  Jon grabbed the zombie by either side of its head. Then, he took his thumbs and placed them on the creature’s eyes. Jon dug his thumbs into the sockets and screamed.

  The zombie writhed, and Jon begged that it felt the pain. He dug in and twisted, crushing the dead bastard’s eyeballs.

  When he’d finished, blood poured like a trail of tears from the empty sockets. The zombie continued to swing its arms, now unable to see.

  Jon stared at the creature for a moment, observing what he’d done to it. The black holes looked back at him, the blood continuing to come out. Never once did it cross this mind that this creature had once been a person. For all Jon knew, it might have been a good man, a loving father or husband. But all that was gone. All it was for Jon now was a target. An outlet for his rage.

  Then, Jon took the knife from his waist and gripped it with both his hands. He raised it up over his head and screamed as he drove it down into the zombie’s face. The first strike was enough to kill the creature for good, the blade entering its brain. But Jon didn’t stop there. He drove the knife down into the zombie’s face again and again. When there was almost nothing recognizable left of its face, Jon dropped the knife and punched the creature several times until his knuckles hurt. He didn’t know if the blood on his hand was his or the zombie’s.

  Finally, Jon rolled off of the creature. He landed on his back and stared at the sky, heaving in one shallow breath after another. His heart had to be going two hundred miles-per-hour.

  Jon lay there staring at the sky, trying to calm himself. He wanted nothing more than to take the energy he had and find the people who had done this to Hope’s Dawn and do the same thing to each of them that he’d done to the zombies. But he knew he couldn’t do that. If he wanted to see his friends again—if he wanted to see Brooke again—he had to be smart.

  He was going to need help.

  15

  Jon stopped the bike when he made it to the edge of the tree line. Most of the mud resulting from the recent rain had dried, making it easier for him to traverse the dirt trail on the motorcycle. With the trees around him shading him from the sun, Jon stared at the front gate of Freedom Ridge.

  He hoped that if anyone knew what had happened at Hope’s Dawn, it would be Lennox or Raylon. More than that, Jon held out hope that some of the survivors from Hope’s Dawn had somehow escaped during the ambush and come to the settlement. If neither of those things was true, then Jon trusted he at least might be able to get Freedom Ridge to help him find the people who’d burned Hope’s Dawn. Knowing how Lennox had been passive regarding conflict, Jon imagined it would be a tough ask, but hoped the man understood that such an injustice couldn’t stand.

  Jon revved the bike a few times, and then twisted the throttle and headed for the gate.

  A young man in his twenties stood guard at the entrance. The man hadn’t been with them for the raid at the prison, and Jon didn’t remember seeing him in his brief time at the camp. He apparently didn’t recognize Jon, either. The man’s face went pale, his lips parting slightly. His hands trembling, he grabbed a rifle leaning against the short brick wall next to him. Then, he stood in the middle of the entrance and aimed the gun toward Jon as he approached.

  When he came within ten yards of the gate, Jon stopped and shut off the bike.

  “Don’t come any closer,” the man said, the gun shaking in his hands.

  “I need to talk to Raylon or Lennox,” Jon said.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Look,” Jon said, stepping off the bike. “Please just—“

  A bang reverberated through Jon’s ears. It startled him, causing him to jump back. The guard had fired a warning shot.

  “I told you not to come any closer.”

  “Goddammit!” Jon said, raising his hands into the air. “Just go get Raylon! He knows who I am. I helped you all raid the prison!”

  The shot had obviously gained the attention of those within the camp, and a dozen people soon arrived at the gate. Many of them were armed. Jon searched the crowd for anyone he recognized, and especially for his friends from Hope’s Dawn.

  “What the hell is going on up here?” a familiar voice finally asked from the back of the growing crowd.

  Raylon pushed through to the front, approaching the guard at the gate. He then looked through the metal posts at Jon, his jaw slack.

  “Let me in, Raylon,” Jon said, his hands down now.

  Raylon continued to stare at Jon. He tilted his head slight
ly, squinting his eyes. “Jon?”

  Jon narrowed his eyes. Raylon either didn’t recognize him or was surprised he was alive. Looking at his arms and then down at his clothes, Jon realized it might be a little of both. He hadn’t looked in the mirror, but much of his body was covered in blood from his violent assault on the dead bastards at Hope’s Dawn. He could feel the blood and grime on his face. It was no surprise Raylon questioned whether it was him, especially with thinking that he had died inside the prison.

  “It’s me.” Jon took a couple of steps forward, hoping that getting closer would allow Raylon to see more easily that it was indeed him.

  “Jesus,” Raylon mumbled. The guard standing by him still had his gun aimed forward, and Raylon said to him, “Put that down.” Then, he refocused his attention on Jon. “We thought you were dead.”

  “I’m alive and well,” Jon said, shaking his head. “But I’m not sure about the rest of Hope’s Dawn. I need your help.”

  “You heard the man,” Raylon said to the guard. “Open the gate and let him in.”

  16

  Jon dipped his hands in the tub, cupping water into his palms. He lowered his face and splashed the water onto it, running his hands over his cheeks to remove the grime. Then, he looked at himself in the mirror.

  It was no wonder the people of Freedom Ridge hadn’t recognized him. The blood and guts of the infected he’d slain had covered his clothes and his body. It had looked like he’d painted his face to mimic an ancient warrior, the crimson blood like brush strokes on his cheeks and forehead. Raylon had had someone bring him some new clothes, and Jon had already thrown his old ones into a bin they’d left for him. There’d be no salvaging them.

  A sponge floated in the bucket, and Jon lowered it into the tub, allowing it to absorb water. He then pulled it out and squeezed it, draining some of the water before he began the process of cleaning the blood off of his body.