DEAD Snapshot Box Set, Vol. 1 [#1-#4]

by Brown, TW

  The two men made no indication that they even heard him. That was enough for Ken Simpson. He sighted on the center of the back of the dog owner and fired. He saw the bullet strike, and the body even rocked forward a bit. However, the man seemed absolutely unfazed by the newest wound. Despite it not really comparing to the injuries that the man had already sustained, there should have been something; at least that is what Ken was thinking in the part of his mind that still did not want to believe what was happening.

  Then, the two men both stopped what they were doing and stood up. Ken took a deep breath and took just a second to realize that nobody seemed to be responding to this situation from any of the houses up and down the street.

  He fired three shots that hit Gerald square in the chest. The only response was that the man staggered back just a little from the impact. He could see the three entry holes around the area of the heart. And whether his bullets struck the heart or not, the man should be down. With a roar of frustration, he fired once more. This time, his aim was the middle of Gerald’s forehead.

  The body dropped instantly and moved no more. Ken stepped back and winced as he fired one more experimental shot into the chest of the dog owner. He wasn’t the least bit surprised when the man kept coming for him, arms outstretched and mouth open wide to show blood-stained teeth. Ken adjusted his aim and put another round in the man’s face. The head snapped back and the body crumpled.

  He took a sigh of relief and then felt his body almost seize as Gina Glendon sat up. Her head craned his direction and Ken gasped. Her face had a nasty hole in the center where Gerald had torn off her nose and blood was everywhere. However, it was the obscene rip in her belly that he could not help but look at.

  The hole was wide and the skin had been peeled down. Her entrails were protruding from that horrific gash…along with the remnants of a sac with part of something fleshy that he knew he could not unsee if he focused on it for even a second. He looked up at Gina and was momentarily confused by how she appeared to blur and almost shimmer. Then he realized that his eyes were filling with tears.

  Taking one more deep breath, he brought his weapon up just as the woman rose awkwardly to her feet, her insides spilling out in a cascade of gore until just that single grotesque cord and remnants of a sac dangled. Ken Simpson fired, his bullet catching Gina Glendon just above the gaping hole where her slightly upturned nose had once been. The woman collapsed to the ground.

  Ken let out a heavy sigh and crumpled to his knees just a few feet away from the woman’s corpse. He heard a soft whine behind him and turned to see the Golden Retriever still on his porch. It had risen to its feet and taken one cautious step forward.

  “Lot of help you were,” Ken muttered.

  The dog bared its teeth and stepped back up to the top landing. Ken raised an eyebrow. The hand holding his pistol started to rise, but then he realized that the dog was not looking at him. Rather, its eyes were focused on something just behind him and to the side. His head whipped around, fully expecting to see Gina sitting back up. What he saw was far worse.

  The sac had come to rest just a foot away from the body. The small, fleshy shape that writhed and wriggled in the sac’s tattered remains would hold a special place in his nightmares. Standing quickly, Ken moved away. It was not that he feared this thing could come after him. It was simply the fact that he could not bear to be anywhere near it. Something in his brain yelled for him to dispatch it, but he could not bring himself to do so.

  He backed up and made his way up the stairs. He could not look away from the carnage splayed all over his front yard until he was actually inside his house. As soon as he crossed the threshold, he shut the door, grabbed his cell phone, and thumbed it for 9-1-1.

  It rang twice before there was an answer.

  “You have reached the City of Portland Emergency Dispatch Center…all lines are currently busy. We are sorry, but due to a high volume of calls, all operators are currently assisting other callers. Please do not hang up. You will be answered in the order that you were received.”

  There was a click, and then the strains of some pop tune set to an orchestra began to pipe in. Grabbing his Bluetooth and stuffing it into his right ear, Ken put his phone in his pocket.

  He turned to the kitchen when he realized that the dog had followed (or more likely, led the way) back inside the house. He considered the animal for a moment.

  “I don’t have any food for you,” Ken sighed.

  He reflected on the situation for a few seconds and then shrugged. “I think I remember which house was yours. I will stop there on our way out of here, but after that, I don’t know if I will be able to help you.”

  Ken went into the kitchen and opened the cupboards. Unfortunately, they were mostly bare. He had no shortage of beer, but that was not going to do him any good. He looked back at the dog that was sitting in the entrance to the kitchen.

  “I guess we are gonna have to go shopping.”

  ***

  The recording droned in his ear the entire way to the store. When he spied the large, red sign, he disconnected. The drive had taken almost thirty minutes and had been so surreal that he was becoming numb by the time he turned into the entrance.

  Ken pulled his pickup into the parking lot of the Fred Meyer’s grocery store. What he saw was absolute chaos. He’d seen riots in other cities. Hell, even Seattle had been shaken up a few times. However, the people of Portland were more into marches and the like. They loved to come out and take up the banner for whatever cause was in the news at the moment, but they were just too laid back for much more. Riots were very rare, and if they did happen, there was not much steam behind them.

  The scene at Fred Meyer’s was pandemonium. Cars were parked every which way. People were running from the store pushing carts laden with all sorts of goods. There were more than a few sporting large screen televisions.

  “Like that is gonna help,” he muttered as he put the truck in park. He glanced over at the dog. “Now, you stay put. If you run off, then you’re on your own, and I wish you luck.”

  Ken climbed out of the truck. He shut the door and activated the locks and alarm with his key fob. He doubted that another blaring car alarm would be noticed any more than the five or six he currently heard, but it was an old habit.

  Reaching around and patting the small of his back, he ensured that his Glock was tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He had not walked ten feet when he almost tripped over the first dead body. This one did not display the ripped and torn appearance that he had seen on Gerald, the dog owner, Gina, and at least a dozen people that he had passed on his drive over to the store. This person, he could not tell if it was male or female, had been bludgeoned. A pool of blood, looking black as it spread across the asphalt under the lights of the parking lot that were just now coming on, was spreading. Ken looked around for any signs of whoever had done this, but he never slowed as he closed in on the entrance to the huge store.

  If the parking lot was bad, the inside was a nightmarish madhouse. He could not believe that people had spiraled out of control so quickly. He glanced left and noticed that only a few of the registers were still manned, although he did not see why considering how many people were just skirting past and out into the parking lot.

  Grabbing a cart, Ken took a deep breath and waded into the insanity. He’d never been a fan of shopping. Milly saw it almost as a sport. She called Black Friday her championship game. She usually hooked up with a few of her friends and they would leave the house around three in the morning. When she returned later that afternoon, she would make him wait in the garage until she had all her bags inside and stuffed into the closet. He’d gone with her one time. As a police officer, he’d wanted to arrest about a hundred people that day, but he doubted that rudeness would hold up in court as a legitimate charge.

  This made that day seem like a walk in the park.

  The first thing he did was head for the canned goods aisle. He’d been on enough hunting exped
itions in his life to understand the way food kept. After what he’d seen so far, Ken had decided that he was going to be ready if he needed to get out of town for a while. He knew some really great places away from the city. If it got much worse, he would head for the woods.

  A cart slammed into his own, snapping his attention back to the situation. A young man no older than his early twenties sneered and gave the cart he was pushing another little shove, scooting Ken’s cart just a bit sideways.

  “Get outta the way, old man!” the younger fella snarled.

  Ken couldn’t help it. He started to laugh. The kid was probably about a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. He had enough metal jutting from his face that one punch would shred that very same face into a bloody mess. And apparently he did not take kindly to be laughed at by a pot-bellied old man.

  “You need to mind your shit, gramps!”

  The young man whipped out a butterfly knife and whirled it in what he likely considered to be an impressive display of steel. In Ken’s experience, a person who made a big deal out of showing a weapon usually did not have the balls to use it, and if he did, it was likely with poor results.

  “Put the toy away, sonny.” Ken groaned inwardly at his retort. Had he just called this guy “sonny”?

  “You don’t know who you’re messin’ with, old man.”

  Just then, another two young men showed up. At least Ken thought that they were male at first. With all the dark eyeliner and crap, he could not be a hundred percent certain.

  “Jinks, what is keeping you?” one of the new arrivals asked.

  Ken winced. This one had a crew-cut and was decked out in clothing that hid any trace of this young lady’s femininity. Her face had a hardness that looked wrong on somebody so young. He now knew what he was dealing with. He’d had more than a few run-ins with street kids. They often built street “families” that were not much more than smaller, less organized gangs.

  “This old man disrespected me!” Jinks snarled, waving his knife in Ken’s direction.

  In a flash, Ken reached out and caught the wrist of the hand holding the blade. In another instant, he smacked the blade away and applied a very painful wristlock with just the slightest increase in pressure; and just that quick, the young man known as Jinks was on his knees.

  “Now, you kids go on about your business and leave me to mine.” Ken looked around at the others with his steel-blue eyes and made it a point of locking gazes briefly with each of them. “I am going to let your friend loose in a second. I suggest that you ditch all these video games and crap. Get some food, water, and perhaps some warm clothing.”

  With a gentle shove, he pushed Jinks back into his friends. They caught him and, almost predictably, went for their own weapons. Each had a small blade of some sort.

  “Yeah, and you might want to get something a little more sturdy. I think you will be having to actually use your weapons sooner than you think.” Pulling his Glock and leveling it at the center of the chest of Jinks, and then letting it drift across the rest of them for just a second, Ken shook his head. “But trust me when I tell you that you do not want to fool around with me any longer. There will be worse things ahead.”

  Ken tucked his Glock back into his waistband and pushed past the group, turning down the canned food aisle. He was actually relieved that they seemed content to leave things be. He was also more than a little surprised at the lack of reaction from any people who happened to be in the area as this mini-drama played out. Even with all of the crazy behavior happening in the store, his having drawn a pistol received no more reaction than for people to just widen their berth and continue on their way.

  He was not surprised to find most of the shelves nearing empty. On the plus side, a lot of the lower-shelf generic items were still mostly available. Even more important, there were a lot of cans of various beans: black, kidney, navy. He grabbed all that he saw and then hurried over to the head of the next aisle. He could not believe his luck. While most of the instant varieties of boxed rice were gone, the large ten pound bags were basically untouched.

  He grabbed a hundred pounds of rice, deciding that that should be more than enough. He was pushing down the next aisle where the soaps and other hygiene products were, once more, largely untouched. That is when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out but did not recognize the number. He was a little surprised that the phone had rung at all. He was noticing people repeatedly holding their phones with a look of confusion and betrayal. As was usually the case whenever there was some sort of disaster, the lines were overloaded.

  “Simpson here,” he said by way of a greeting.

  “Kenny?” a familiar voice said from the other end.

  “Ma?” He stuck a finger in his other ear to drown out the background noise as much as possible.

  “Kenny, there is something wrong.”

  Mary Simpson was eighty-seven and still as sharp as a whip. She had stunned Ken when she had refused his offer to have her move in after his dad had died. Instead, she had sold the house and shopped around until she found a retirement community that suited her tastes. After she’d moved in, Ken had visited the manager, conspicuous in his blue uniform. He’d made a few not-so-subtle hints about how things might not go well for the property manager if his mom was not treated right.

  “What is it, Ma?” he asked as he watched a pair of middle-aged men duke it out over a case of baby formula.

  “Some people came in during dinner and started attacking folks. They were acting like wild animals.”

  Ken felt his stomach tighten. He dreaded the answer to his next question. “Were you bit, Ma?”

  “Just a little scratch. That nice gentleman, Mr. Holden? You remember him, the one with the ponytail—”

  “How bad, Ma?” Ken hated cutting his mother off, but he was worried.

  “Like I said, just a scratch. Barely broke the skin. But that poor Mr. Holden…” Mary Simpson’s voice faded, and Ken heard the sounds of his mother starting to cry. The last time he’d heard such a thing from her was at his father’s funeral.

  “Ma, I want you to stay inside. I will get over there as soon as I can. Lock everything up, use the dead bolt and don’t open the door for anybody. I have a key and will let myself in when I arrive.” Who was he kidding? He knew with almost absolute certainty that his mother was already a goner.

  “Okay, Kenny.” That simple response made Ken nervous. His mother hated being fussed over, and it was not like her to be so agreeable; especially when it came to him telling her what to do.

  “I want you to take one of your blue pills, Ma. Then go to your room, shut the door, and lie down.”

  The assisted living center where his mom lived was a long two-story complex with a big rec room and cafeteria as the center hub for the five buildings that stretched away like giant spokes. His mother was on the second floor. That would make her as safe as she could be, or at least allow her some peace.

  He was about to say something else when the line went dead. He looked at his phone, fully expecting the battery to be dead. However, that was not the case. And when he looked up, he saw a few other people pulling phones from their pockets or purses and looking at them with the same expressions of betrayal. He tried to call the number back a few times, but it was useless.

  Almost to compound his frustration, the line actually rang once. There was a moment of silence, and then a click as the call was disconnected.

  “Crap,” he muttered. “This is happening faster than I thought.”

  He made his last stop on the beverage aisle. The small bottles of water were gone, but some of the one gallon containers were still there. He grabbed a few and then was hit with an idea. He hurried to the cleaning aisle and found what he was looking for. He snagged a pair of filtered water pitchers as well as several boxes of the replaceable filters.

  He was about to head over to the home and garden center when he skidded to a halt. Jerking the cart around, he headed up the mostly untouched pet
supply aisle. He grabbed three forty pound bags and wedged them in under his cart. As an afterthought, he tossed in a box of dog biscuits.

  He paused just for a second at the electronics department. Unlike the idiots, he found a battery operated radio that would charge using his truck’s adapter outlet. He had to duck once as a man yanked a display model large screen television from the shelf. Then he scooped regular batteries of all sizes into his cart.

  After a stop in the home and garden and then the camping section, he grabbed a comforter and draped it over his cart and then tied it down to keep all his items in place.

  He exited the store feeling just a shade of guilt. He was now officially a looter. Still, he knew what he had seen, and he had an idea of what might be going on. Of course the tabloid shows had been screaming this for almost a week as those first reports had started to trickle in. But then it had been like a cartoon snowball. It started small but grew exponentially in a short time. He had not been a fan of such things, but he had seen that old black and white movie, Night of the Living Dead back when he was in high school.

  He was putting everything in the back of his pickup when he heard the sound of footsteps coming up from behind him in a hurry. He had a good idea of what he would see even before he turned around.

  2

  It Begins: Rose Tinnes

  Rose Tinnes followed the winding road as it took her deep into Washington Park. She loved her afternoon runs even more now that she had shed almost two hundred pounds of useless fat: her husband…make that ex-husband, Frank. The last straw had been when she caught him following her in his car.

  Frank had been certain that her running was nothing more than a ruse to hide the fact that she was having an affair. He had said that it provided the perfect alibi when she came home drenched in sweat. Maybe if he’d gotten his fat ass off the couch on occasion, he would understand that a person can sweat if they actually performed some sort of physical activity that did not involve holding the controller to an Xbox.