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

by Brown, TW

  “It’s just…” he started, but then he remembered that he was talking to his mother. Mary Simpson could not be strung along or fed a line of bull. She could sniff out his lies before he usually got the first word out of his mouth back when he was a boy. What made him think that anything was different now?

  “I saw the news, I know what they are saying, and I can’t help it, but I feel fine. A bit hungry and thirsty, but not for anything more than maybe a ham sandwich and an ice cold beer.”

  Ken laughed. Leave it to his mom. He still remembered the first time he’d ever drank a beer with his mother. Sure, he’d drank plenty before that day, his eighteenth birthday, back in the days before the legal age was twenty-one. It had been strange at first, but over the years, he’d discovered that he enjoyed sipping a few brews with his mom and just hanging out.

  “Well, Jason and Juanita should be back soon. They went to get food.” He didn’t hold out much hope that they would return with any beer, but there was always the chance.

  “And why do you dislike that other young man so much?” Mary Simpson got up and made her slow, deliberate way across the barn to where Ken stood in the doorway.

  “Just…it’s…” Ken fumbled for something concrete. He knew that if he told his mother he simply hated the guy because he knew the man was a former convict, that his mother would scold him and tell him that he was being foolish. He knew that; he just did not feel like having his judgment called into question by his mother on this one issue.

  “We may be together for a while, Kenny,” his mother said with a smile, patting him on the arm. She leaned up to give him a kiss on the cheek and Ken staggered back like he’d been shot.

  “Oh, ma,” Kenny managed around a throat that was becoming tighter by the second. He felt that he would start choking any minute now.

  The black tracers had finally come.

  The tracers were starting to show in his mother’s eyes. From the corners they were creeping, and if he stared, he knew that he would see them make their way across until they had completely entrenched themselves.

  Mary Simpson looked up at her son. Ken saw her own realization dawn as his face was unable to hide anything. She reached up and touched his cheek. He made every effort not to flinch away from her touch. After all, that Rose girl had caught the zombie infection from some other way. She hadn’t been bitten; she’d still turned into one of them.

  “It finally happened,” she whispered.

  Ken could not lie to his mother. That had already been established. He simply nodded. Mary’s head dropped for a moment, but when it came back up, despite those sinister dark lines, she still had that look of calm.

  “You won’t let me become one of them will you?”

  Ken stared at his mother. His mind was having a difficult time processing what was being said. He was flashing back to those last days when his wife was confined to that hospital bed. She had looked up at him with much the same expression. She did not want to continue to endure the suffering. They had even touched on the subject of medically assisted suicide. Ken had refused to entertain that idea. In his mind, that would be akin to his signing the death warrant against the woman that he loved more than anything in the world.

  In the end, she had slipped into a coma. For another five days, she hung on to the fragile thread of life. The doctor had explained that often, it is sheer force of will that causes people to linger. She was basically already gone, the doctor went on to explain, and that perhaps she was simply holding on for his sake. Ken considered that absolutely preposterous. He refused to accept that until the day he finally allowed himself to leave her side. It was only for a short time. He had just wanted to stretch his legs for a minute and get some coffee that was not absolutely revolting. He’d driven the three blocks to the nearest corner coffee cart and grabbed his drink. It had been less than thirty minutes.

  When he had stepped out of the elevator, the first thing that he noticed was the empty nurses’ station. He rounded the corner, his legs trying to run, but the fear of what he would find, what he knew in his heart was waiting around that corner, prevented him from doing so.

  The doctor was coming out of Milly’s room, his hands in the act of hanging his stethoscope back around his neck. Ken was no stranger to hospitals, and he had become very well versed in the body language of medical personnel. He knew before the words were spoken.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Simpson. Your wife is dead.”

  “Kenny?” Mary Simpson put a hand on Ken’s arm.

  “Sorry, ma.” Ken shook his head to clear away the bad memories. “I promise that I will not let you become one of them. When the time comes, I will take care of you.”

  ***

  Jason stepped out of the store with his rifle slung across his body. He gave a nod to the man standing on the top of the bus with the microphone in his hand.

  “You say this is your turf?” Jason snorted. “And what makes you think you are running shit around here? The way I see it, it is every man for himself. I’ll be takin’ what I loaded into my shopping cart and heading on up the road.”

  “You don’t—” the young man began, but he barely got two words out of his mouth when Jason brought up the high-powered rifle and put a round into his throat.

  Jason winced; he’d been aiming for the center of the chest. He would need to sight in the rifle as soon as possible. That would be important when it came down to head shots on the undead.

  “Anybody else want to run their mouths?” Jason challenged.

  Sure enough, the bus slammed into reverse, the man still standing on top beside his fallen companion tumbling awkwardly and landing hard on the asphalt. Jason knew that things would change soon enough, but it had been his experience that most bullies were a lot of talk. He’d ended a lot of stuff back in the joint by simply punching in the face whoever it was that was running his mouth. Anybody that needed to do a lot of talking before a fight usually needed to work up the nerve or simply hoped that words would be enough to scare the person they were confronting. It was simply not normal human nature to be violent. It was even more uncommon for somebody to actually be able to commit the act of killing another. His advantage rested in the fact that he already saw this entire situation for what it was…

  The end of the world.

  “C’mon, let’s get out of here before they grow a spine or bring more of their friends,” he called out.

  Juanita hurried from the store, Gabriel seated atop the groceries in the big red cart. She scooped the boy into her arms and put him in the cab as Jason started simply scooping everything into the back of Ken’s truck as quickly as he could manage. Juanita was there to help a moment later, and they made short work of their relatively small haul. Jason was already planning the next move. He had an idea as to where he could find a better supply of food. It would be dangerous, but it was going to be worth it if he was correct.

  As they drove back to the farm, Jason spotted his target. He made a note as to where it was located and then kept an eye on the odometer. It would not be long before they would have to rely on their feet for transportation. Fuel was a very finite resource, and the power would be tripping offline sooner rather than later.

  As they pulled up to the gate, Jason noticed Ken sitting on the ground beside the VW. He was holding one of his Glocks and made no sign that he even saw or heard them arrive. He climbed out and opened the gate, and then shut it once Juanita drove the truck through. He stifled the feelings of annoyance at the fact that the man had not seemed to do anything during his absence. If they were going to secure this place and make a go of trying to survive this nightmare, they were a long way from a time when you could just sit around and do nothing.

  “Where is Mary?” Juanita asked as they pulled up and parked in front of the barn.

  Jason sighed and shook his head. He’d all but forgotten about the fact that the woman had been mauled just a little by one of the undead. In fact, he was starting to think that just maybe a bite
, or at least a scratch, by a zombie was not a death sentence. His eyes flicked to Gabriel and then back to the dark interior of the barn.

  When he finally saw what he was looking for, he stifled a groan. Right now, somebody needed to be the rock everybody could turn to when things went bad; he would be that rock. Another look over at Ken confirmed his decision. The man’s red-rimmed eyes told part of the story, but the body-shaped lump on the ground with a blue tarp over it told the rest.

  Jason climbed out of the truck and told Juanita to take Gabriel on a walk for a while. He gave a tilt of his head towards the tarp. Juanita actually staggered back, obviously not realizing what had happened until that moment. She grasped Gabriel’s hand and hurried away with the boy, saying something about showing him around the place.

  Once she and the boy were out of earshot, Jason approached Ken. The man had neither budged, nor made any sign that he was even aware that he was no longer alone. Jason took each step with caution; after all, the man was holding a pistol in his hand. It would be nothing more than a flick of the wrist for the man to bring it up and fire a round or two into his chest.

  “Hey, man,” Jason spoke in what he hoped was a non-threatening voice. “Umm…” And that is where his mind just sort of went blank.

  He glanced back to the barn and the blue tarp. What exactly could he say to a man that had obviously just had to kill his mother?

  “I thought that she was going to be okay,” Ken whispered, his voice barely audible, even in the relative silence. “Shit…how many days had it been? And didn’t they say that people were turning within seventy-two hours?”

  Jason thought that he’d heard something like that. Only, maybe it had something to do with the severity of the injury. But then he recalled Rose. That woman showed no sign of being bitten; she had ingested some kind of fluid from a zombie. This was not working out at all like any of the books or movies.

  He shot a look across the yard where Juanita was walking with that boy Gabriel, pointing out flowers or some such thing. He had obvious bite marks, yet his eyes were clear. He looked at Ken and felt the question come. He tried to bite it back, thinking that this was obviously too soon for such things.

  “Did you see it show up in her eyes?” Jason wanted to sink into the ground at that very instant.

  Ken’s head came up and his puffy eyes seemed to almost have to search for him for a moment before locking on. “Yeah.”

  After several heartbeats, Jason realized that he needed to breathe. He’d been holding it in, and his lungs felt like they were on fire.

  “You want help taking care of her.” Of course, Jason had no idea what that might entail. Would he want to bury his mom? Cremate her?

  “You’d help?” Ken lifted his chin and seemed to examine Jason closely. “Even with everything…” The man’s voice trailed off and he dropped his head.

  “Like it or not, we are sort of in this together for the time being. We are going to have to rely on each other.”

  “And you are okay with the fact that, no matter what, you and I ain’t ever gonna be friends?”

  Jason smiled. The man was set in his ways. He saw Jason as a criminal…a convict. He might always see him through those jaded eyes. The man was speaking through grief and pain and a lifetime of dealing with the worst that society had to offer. Hell, until this last time down, Jason had been one of those bad people that had helped give Ken the views he held onto.

  “I’m cool with it. Just because we ain’t friends doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t treat you like a human being.”

  Ken rose to his feet and started for the barn. Jason fell in just behind the man. Within a short time, they had a pyre built and laid Mary Simpson’s body on it. Jason had agreed that Mary would be dealt with separately, but once she was, for all intents and purposes, gone, then they would start tossing the rest of the corpses on the fire.

  14

  Door-to-Door Shopping

  “And what would make you think that the boy would be any different than my mother?” Ken hissed.

  The three adults stood around a large barrel that had become their version of a heater. It was in the center of the large open space on the floor of the barn. Gabriel, the boy in question, was up in the loft fast asleep. It had been four days since Jason and Juanita had returned with him; four days since Ken’s mother had shown the signs that she was infected.

  Ken still had nightmares about that day. He often thought it strange that, in a world where the undead were overwhelming society and an actual zombie apocalypse was happening, a world where he had already seen things happen that were the stuff of horror movies as people were torn apart and fed upon by the undead, Ken was haunted by how he had put his mother to rest.

  It had started off as something so simple. He had helped her get comfortable and drift off to sleep. As soon as he was certain that she was out, he’d drawn his Glock. That was when it became difficult…became real. It is one thing to say that you can end a person’s suffering by killing them; it is quite another to actually do it. Had she been a stranger, Ken doubted that he would have thought twice. The fact that he was becoming numb to the idea of death was something that he would try to examine later, if the time ever presented itself. However, when faced with killing his mother, Ken had faltered. At last, he had simply covered her with a blue plastic tarp and put the barrel of the gun to what he guessed to be her forehead.

  He could still not recall having pulled the trigger. Yet, it was obvious that he had done so. There was a hole where the bullet had gone through, and his mother had never sat up or cried out. Mary Simpson had simply ceased to be.

  As he sat there crying, he began to understand how this apocalypse had managed to spiral out of control. It was all well and good to see something on television or read it in a book, but when faced with the task of killing a loved one, he doubted that many people had what it took. That thing coming for you might not be living, it might want to rip you apart and devour you, but that did not make the face any different to the loved one staring at his or her approaching death. People saw what they wanted. Period.

  “We have no idea how long before we found him that the boy was bitten,” Jason’s voice snapped Ken back to the conversation. “Do we want to keep watching him around the clock?”

  “I’ll do it myself if it is such a bother,” Juanita retorted, arms folded across her chest and chin actually jutting forward just a bit to emphasize her defiance.

  Ken looked up as if he could see through the planks that made up the floor of the loft. He knew that the boy was up there, sleeping. Could he or Jason actually go through with the act of killing the boy in his sleep? Ken did not want to admit it out loud for fear that it might be seen as a weakness, but he was almost certain that his conscience did not have the room.

  “Fine,” Jason agreed. “He is your responsibility. That means that he stays with you every moment when he is awake. But I want him restrained when he is sleeping.”

  “You mean tie him up?” Juanita gasped. “You want to treat him like he is some sort of animal.”

  “That is not what he was saying.” Ken stepped in. He had to admit, the convict had a point. And it would be no big deal to just restrain the boy when he slept. An idea struck him. “We can make a game out of it.”

  “Excuse me?” Juanita turned her defiant gaze at Ken, but the he simply ignored her.

  “From what I’ve seen, the zombies aren’t all that clever or agile. They certainly could not untie a knot. Am I right?” Jason nodded, and after a moment, Juanita did so as well. Ken smiled and continued. “So we tell him that we want to play a game. Every night when he goes to sleep, we will tie up one ankle. When he wakes up, he will need to figure out how to untie it.”

  Both Jason and Juanita considered Ken’s plan. Jason shrugged and nodded a second or two later, but Juanita seemed to really examine the idea. At last, she agreed as well.

  “How long do we play this game?” Juanita asked.

  Ken opened hi
s mouth, but then snapped it shut. He had no idea. After all, his mother had gone past the seventy-two hour window before she started showing the signs; how long could they watch this boy before feeling confident that he was not going to turn?

  “Three weeks,” Jason said. When Ken and Juanita both looked at him, he expanded on his answer. “We can probably keep him interested in this so-called game for a while. But let’s face it, after a month, if he hasn’t turned, then I don’t believe that he ever will.”

  Ken agreed and the plan was put into motion immediately as Juanita went up to join Gabriel and get a night’s sleep. Ken wanted to join in on that activity. Unfortunately, he had the first watch. While they had been making good progress on the fence, it still was not a hundred percent complete along that front stretch. Also, they’d already had three spots breached where they had put up the reinforced section of fence.

  “We need to dig a trench,” Jason had said earlier this afternoon as they had repaired the damage after taking down the dozen undead that had all chosen that one spot to try and breakthrough for whatever reason drives a zombie.

  Ken agreed, and it was decided that they would go into Sandy and hit a tool rental place that Jason said he recalled seeing. The place had looked largely untouched; and why should it be hit…most looters were grabbing stupid things like big screen televisions and video game systems while those that were trying to survive were focused solely on food, guns, ammo, and the variety of blades and bludgeons.

  The problem was that it was obviously a two person job. Both men agreed that it was a poor idea to bring the child; Juanita needed to keep her vigil as they waited for the infection to show up and claim yet another victim. However, neither liked the idea of leaving her alone for however long the trip might take.

  In the end, Jason had said that he would go it alone. He said that he wanted to see about increasing their food stores. They had almost gone through what he and Juanita had managed to come back with last time.