Dead Meat Box Set [Days 1-3]

by Clausen, Nick

  The thought awakens a new feeling in Finn: fear. If he just leaves Lone own her own, who knows what might happen to her? She could be run over by a car or shot by the police. He can’t risk that. He can’t risk losing her for good.

  So, Finn begins picking out more tacks. The blanket falls to the floor, exposing the view completely and letting the evening light pour into the room. Finn doesn’t notice, though; he just stares at his wife, who has by now greased up most of the window with her hands.

  “Lone,” he whispers, placing a hand on the glass.

  She eagerly tries to kiss his palm, and it causes Finn to tear up.

  “I knew you were still in there somewhere,” he says, choking up. His hand goes for the hasp. A tiny voice at the back of his head shouts to him, telling him he’s making a big mistake, that Lone can’t be saved, that she’s dangerous and wants to hurt him.

  But Finn can’t believe that voice. He can only believe what he sees, and knows Lone’s eyes seem even more human than just a moment ago, as though simply seeing him has cured her a little. If he lets her inside the room, she’ll probably become completely herself once more.

  “I’ll help you, dear,” he whispers hoarsely, as the tears pour down his cheeks. “I can’t live without you, you know that.”

  His hand unlocks the hasp.

  No! the voice shouts.

  “Yes,” Finn croaks, smiling as he opens the window.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Mille pulls her legs up and wraps her arms around her knees. She’s sitting in the window looking out over Holger’s back garden, where the last of the sunlight is coloring the grass orange.

  It’s almost eleven o’clock, and even though this has by far been the longest day of her life, she barely feels tired. Her body is exhausted, of course, but her eyes don’t feel like closing.

  She can still taste curry from the stew Holger served. To her surprise she found herself ravenous and she cleaned off her plate in no time. After all, she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast that morning.

  Her brain is still fighting to keep up. It feels like it can’t really update its software, like it doesn’t want to compute how everything has changed. She should have been in Prague right now, she and Krista should have been lying in bed next to each other in a hotel room with two other girls from the class. They should have been complaining about the long, warm bus ride and talking about what sights they were going to see tomorrow morning.

  Instead, Krista is dead, just like Mads and the rest of the class. Same probably goes for most of everyone else she knows. And she herself is sitting here, in a guy’s house with two other strangers and a German shepherd, as they simply wait for the world to end.

  She looks around at the others. Dan is huddled in one corner of the couch, sleeping with a thin blanket wrapped around him. William is sitting on a chair, elbows resting on his knees, staring at the television, where the sound is turned down to a whisper. He looks like a soccer fan intensely watching a game which he bet a lot of money on—except it isn’t soccer on the screen, but a news report. They keep showing footage from the air and video recordings from cell phones. A lot of it is censored, and the reporters warn again and again about “strong imagery.”

  The dog is lying faithfully right next to William, halfway dozing, but raising its head now and then, as though constantly listening for something no one else can hear. Holger is the only one missing; he’s down in the bunker to prepare something or other—he has barely taken a rest since they came here.

  Mille didn’t understand half of what William told them during the tour of the bunker. All the technical stuff about how the generator produces power from the windmill and the solar panels, how the rainwater is cleaned and filtered, and how the security systems work went right past her. All she knows is that Holger obviously thought of every tiny detail when he built this place, and that you could probably live down there for years.

  But who would want that?

  She gets an image of herself four years from now, pale and long hair, not having stepped outside the bunker for even a second, the only company has been her three involuntary roommates, the rest of the earth’s population dead and the zombies are the only ones wandering around.

  What would she have to live for in a scenario like that? Survival, and nothing else. Mille gets the chills.

  It probably won’t come to that. They still have time to stop it.

  But the news reports don’t seem great. Mille has also checked social media on her phone now and then. At first, she mostly read grieving posts from the relatives of those who died on the bus, and other people offering their condolences. Then, other kinds of tweets began ticking in, like:

  WTF is going on in this town?? Anybody know anything?

  And more and more started replying and giving their two cents worth, even though none of them seemed to know what was really happening. Mille read creative guesses like terrorism or natural disasters. One guy even suggested the whole thing was a giant prank, put up by a television network.

  But as the evening progressed, the tweets became more and more grave.

  Why aren’t the police doing anything?

  and

  One of them just walked by my window!

  and

  Just drove by the library—serious, stay away from there, folks! Not a sight anybody needs to see!

  Slowly people began catching on to the seriousness of the situation, even though many were still utterly confused. But more and more often, Mille would see the magic word.

  Zombies.

  People began posting videos from their phones, either filmed from their windows or cars. Some more gory than others. Mille didn’t feel like watching any of them. A video from a press release also went viral, where a spokesman of the police told people to remain indoors and avoid physical contact with anybody until further notice.

  “They’re declaring a state of emergency,” William mutters.

  Mille looks at the television and sees the prime minister talking to the camera with a very grave expression, her lips quivering slightly.

  “The whole town is being shut off,” William says. “About damn time.”

  Dan stirs from the couch, and the dog lifts its head.

  “How many dead?” Mille asks.

  “They aren’t giving any numbers anymore,” William replies, not taking his eyes from the screen, which is now showing a live feed from a helicopter somewhere over town. Three figures are staggering down the street, empty cars are left everywhere, and even from this distance and in the dying daylight, Mille can make out several dark bulges on the asphalt. “It must be in the hundreds, maybe even thousands by now,” William goes on.

  “So, Holger’s calculations will prove true,” Dan says, rubbing his eyes, then gesturing to the whiteboard on the wall, where Holger drew a graph and wrote a lot of numbers. “Tomorrow evening, there will be no one alive in the town.”

  “Not if they get their act together and send in the military, like I’ve been trying to tell them,” William says, obviously frustrated. He’s been calling the police several times, trying to convey to them the scope of the situation. Mille can’t blame whoever was on the other end of the line—probably some young on-duty cop—for having a hard time believing it.

  “I promised to call my dad by now,” Dan murmurs and finds his phone. “Oh, shoot, it’s out of power. Does Holger have a charger, William?”

  “Check the bedroom.”

  Dan gets up and goes to the bedroom.

  William finds his own phone. “I’d probably better call my mom too. How about you, you’re not going to—” He stops as he apparently remembers something, then he just shakes his head. “Sorry, none of my business.” He gets up and goes to the kitchen. A moment later, Mille can hear him talking to his mom.

  Mille checks her phone and the seven unanswered calls. Most of them are from private numbers, and she’s pretty sure it’s the police who have been trying to get to her to make sure she is okay, l
ike they probably did with everyone aboard the bus whom they couldn’t find right away.

  But there’s also a single call from a number she knows. A single call she didn’t expect at all.

  Helle, the display says.

  Forty-five minutes ago. Mille saw the call coming, but she just stared at the silent phone. She didn’t try calling back, and Helle hasn’t tried calling again.

  Mille didn’t pick up, because she had no idea what to say. What do you say after three years?

  Suddenly, she wants to call back, but the thought immediately makes her uncomfortable. There are too many questions. How will the voice sound? Like she remembers or completely changed? Older? Weaker? More loving? Maybe even concerned?

  Mille is just not sure she would know how to handle it. Yet her finger moves closer to the Call button, hovering there for several seconds.

  Then she sees something out of the corner of her eye and turns her head. Far away over the field, she can make out a wobbling figure in the twilight. No, not one—two. No, three. More and more are appearing. There are over twenty in total, and still more are coming.

  Her throat constricts and it’s suddenly difficult to breathe.

  The living dead aren’t walking in any particular formation, they don’t even seem to be walking together. But they’re all nonetheless headed in the same direction. They’re all aiming directly for Holger’s house on top of the hill.

  At that moment, Dan comes back into the room. “I found a charger,” he says, but his expression changes once he sees Mille’s face. “What is it?” he asks in alarm.

  Before she can answer, there’s a loud bang from the bedroom, and Dan whirls around. William’s dog comes barging in from the kitchen, barking at the noise.

  But it’s only Holger, who slammed open the hatch in the floor, and now comes tumbling into the living room, his expression wild.

  “Shut up, Ozzy!” William commands, as he joins them from the kitchen, phone pressed to his chest. “What’s going on, Holger?”

  Holger looks like he wants to run someplace but can’t decide where that place is, so he ends up just standing there. “I saw them,” he pants. “I saw them on the screens. They’re coming.”

  The words leave a chill silence in the living room.

  “How … how many?” William croaks.

  “Many,” Mille says, surprised to hear her own voice. All three of them turn to look at her. She points out the window.

  William is instantly by her side. “Oh, fuck me,” he mutters and steps back. He looks from Mille to Dan and then to Holger. There’s a special glow in his eyes—it could be fear, yet to Mille it looks almost like wild excitement—as he says: “Here we go …”

  * * *

  The story continues …

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Hi there!

  I’m the guy who wrote the book. I was born in a small country far, far away, where people eat a lot of rye bread and are generally suspicious of success. I grew up reading Stephen King and still haven't fully recovered.

  I learned English thanks to Netflix and listening to audiobooks. Originally, I wrote in my native tongue, but I switched to English in 2018 to reach more readers. I also went from traditional publishing to self-publishing, and I haven't looked back.

  I'm married to my public-school sweetheart and we recently had a son who looks so much like me I fear he'll never get a date, the poor guy.

  My books have been published in four different languages, and I put out several a year. You can join my readers club to be kept in the loop when I have a new release. I also treat the members of my readers club to free and exclusive books, because I’m generally a nice guy.

  Learn more at nickclausenbooks.com.

  Talk to you soon!

  —Nick

  Dead Meat: Day 1-3

  © Nick Clausen, 2020

  NeverEnd Publishing

  Proofread by Diana Cox

  The author asserts his moral rights to this work.

  Please respect the hard work of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No zombies were harmed in the making of this book.