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

by Brown, TW

  “Come on,” Simon finally said, breaking into a jog.

  “What?” Caron grabbed his arm and spun him around. “Are you mad?”

  “I have been just letting things go since this started. Maybe if I would have actually acted like the police officer that I was going to become…or at least thought I was…maybe then, Shadiyah would still be with us. Maybe Miranda—”

  “You did nothing wrong with Miranda. From what you said, you tried to take care of her in every way possible. I think that we are just lucky. I don’t know if we will meet anybody else like us, but we are truly blessed.”

  “I can’t just ignore—” Simon began, but Caron cut him off, jerking him hard so that he almost fell.

  “That is coming from the Bitt house…the one we were headed for,” she hissed.

  “That makes no sense,” Simon said with a frown.

  “I think it makes perfect sense,” Caron breathed as she let go of Simon and started for the house.

  “What? Wait…now you are going to the house?” Simon was very confused. “You just tried to stop me and now you are just going to march right up?”

  “Shadiyah is still here,” Caron whispered over her shoulder. “I would be willing to wager on it.”

  Simon stood there for a few seconds until what the woman had just said finally sunk in. He hurried to catch up, his hands fumbling as he weighed the desire to protect himself against showing up and confronting Shadiyah with a weapon drawn that might send her over the edge.

  They reached the rock wall and the Mercedes that had crashed into the gate with its owner still inside and trying in futility to get at the living beings that climbed up onto the hood and vaulted over. There was a glow from within the house, but it was diffused enough that Simon guessed it to be well inside.

  Caron tried the front door and stepped inside the entry hall. Simon joined her, wincing when he stepped on some broken glass. The sounds of sobbing could be heard, and hopefully they were loud enough so that his little noise did not get caught.

  It was obvious that the person doing the crying and begging was male. There was a smell that Simon was trying to identify when he heard the distinctive sound of sizzling flesh. He gagged a little when he realized that his mouth had started to water at the smell of cooking meat when that sizzle was quickly drowned out by the accompanying scream.

  “Yes, keep it up,” a familiar voice cooed. “That should bring a few of those nasty zombies. Right? So scream some more. There will not be anybody coming to help you.”

  “I think you’ve made your point, lass,” another voice said. “The boy has probably learned his lesson. In any case…I don’t believe either of them will be hurting anybody ever again.”

  “You can go if you like. I’m not done,” Shadiyah’s voice hissed. “Consider that your final warning.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll be on my way then.”

  Simon and Caron looked around frantically for someplace to hide. They settled on ducking behind the island counter in the kitchen. They made it just as footsteps came at a steady pace into the living room and paused. Both of them held their breath in the hopes that they would not be discovered.

  As the crunch of glass came, announcing that whoever it was that had been with Shadiyah (supposedly of his own free will) was about to walk out the door, Simon risked a peek. He was more than a little surprised to see a man who could barely be much past three feet tall; and there was no doubt with the red stubble on his face that this was a man and not a child.

  “I wish you well, lass. But I fear those demons living behind your eyes will soon consume your soul.” With that, the Irishman left.

  Simon and Caron stared at each other with a mix of confusion and concern. At last, Simon whispered, “Let’s go get her.”

  ***

  Shadiyah stared at the door for a moment. A small part of her wanted to take the advice Paddy had tried to give her. She could walk away from this now and start over.

  “That is the beautiful thing about a zombie apocalypse, lass,” he had said with his big smile that almost looked like it would split his round face in two. “Every single day for the rest of your life is like a reset button has been pressed. Did you do something naughty? Well, unless you are in a group of people, there is nobody to hold it against you. Hell, if you do something really horrible and cause somebody to be eaten by those stench ridden sacks of pus, well, they’re gone and nobody will be the wiser. Reset.”

  Shadiyah was also just a bit confused. According to Paddy, these two men had treated him poorly. Supposedly, they had hung him from a lamp post at one point and used him as bait for the zombies so that they could slip in and out of a small market. How could he be okay with that? How could he allow these horrible individuals to exist in this world another day?

  She had walked in as calm as you please. Her first break came when the bigger of the two was actually right by the stairs with his back to her as she came up from behind. She had hacked into the back of his legs. While the man rolled around on the floor, bleeding and screaming his head off, she had jumped over and positioned herself beside the doorway of the room where the lantern cast its bright white glow.

  When the second man emerged, Shadiyah came in low on him as well. Her blade sliced across the Achilles tendon and put this man down beside his companion. By the time Paddy arrived, she was standing over the pair feeling very pleased with herself.

  “By the Virgin Mother,” Paddy had gasped.

  “Tie them up,” Shadiyah said calmly.

  Now that he was gone, she wondered if he had done so out of fear of her. Whatever the reason, he had properly secured both men who, upon seeing their former companion, began to hurl threats and insults through their clenched teeth. It no longer amazed her at how man could push through anything to express hate and evil intent. One of them had his hamstrings severed, the other those cord-like tendons on the back of his feet—that was evidenced by the peculiar little rope that poked from one of the wounds as the tendon had jutted through the opening.

  The one with the hamstring injuries was bleeding the worst and so Shadiyah went to work on him first. She did not want him to die before she managed to deal out her new brand of justice.

  “If I let you go…what will you do with me?” she purred, leaning down in the man’s face, tracing his nose with the knife that she had pulled from the sheath on his belt.

  “Before or after I cut your tits off?” the man managed through clenched teeth and a jaw so tight that she believed another ounce of pressure would cause both to shatter.

  “Good answer,” Shadiyah said calmly as she pulled away and stood.

  Reaching down, she undid the man’s trousers and pulled out his manhood. Before he had the chance to make a lewd or vile remark, she severed it with his own knife. When he screamed, she stuffed the meat into his mouth and slammed him in the temple with the hilt of the sharp little blade.

  “What the…” was all that Paddy managed to say before his eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

  Shadiyah stepped back as the man began to choke. She actually found it funny and began to laugh as the man’s face turned a horrific shade of red, then purple. He bucked and strained against the binding to no avail as blood gushed from between his legs. Eventually he twitched a few times and stopped moving.

  Shadiyah turned to the second man who was now blubbering through what sounded to her like the Lord’s Prayer. “…on Earth as it is in Heaven…”

  “Do you really think he is listening?” Shadiyah mocked as she approached the man who was now wide-eyed and pale. His lips continued to move fervently, but no sound came out any longer.

  Stopping beside Paddy, Shadiyah knelt and caressed the man’s brow. He moaned softly but remained unconscious. Standing, she eyed the man tied to the wooden chair.

  “Water.”

  He continued to stare at her, his mouth still moving soundlessly. Sweat had begun to trickle down his face and int
o his eyes. When she stomped over to him and hissed the word “water” again, he responded by wetting himself.

  “Not what I had in mind,” she said flatly. “Where is your water? I won’t ask again.”

  The man nodded to a green bag sitting beside the bed where his companion lay dead. Shadiyah actually flashed a smile and thanked the man before going over and rummaging around until she discovered a bottle. Returning to Paddy, she poured a little on his forehead. When he still did not respond, she poured more.

  The man snorted, drawing a good amount of liquid up his nostrils. This caused him to hack and cough.

  “You’re okay.” Shadiyah lifted the man’s head a bit and patted him on his stubbled cheeks.

  “Lass…what have you done?” the man coughed as he sat up slowly and accepted the bottle of water.

  “I have started making this world a better place.”

  Getting to her feet, she walked over to the man tied to the chair and knelt so that she was at eye level with him. She traced his face with the point of the knife that was still dripping with the blood of the body on the bed.

  “So, what were you in jail for?” she whispered.

  The man licked his lips and opened his mouth three or four times before he was actually able to speak. “Public intoxication and creating a nuisance,” he finally managed meekly. “I weren’t hurting nobody. Just blowing off some steam after a bad week. When the coppers came to the pub I might have called one of them a wanker. He told me that I would be arrested for verbally assaulting an officer if I called him a wanker again. So, I asked him if I would be in trouble for thinking he was a wanker. He told me that he couldn’t arrest me for my thoughts…so I said ‘Good, because I really think you’re a bloody wanker’ and that is when I got cuffed.”

  A chuckle from behind her made Shadiyah turn around. Paddy threw his hands over his mouth and then waved her off. “Sorry, lass, but that is a wee bit funny. I think you should spare this young man simply because of his wit.”

  “I let him go and then what?” Shadiyah challenged. “How can you even consider letting this animal continue to draw breath after what he did to you?”

  “It weren’t me doing those things. I was as much under Ivan’s thumb as the wee man there,” the man in the chair said. He craned his neck at Paddy to see if he might get some support, but Shadiyah grabbed him by the face and jerked him back to look at her.

  “Then you are weak and one of those types who commit terrible things while excusing yourself by saying you were just doing as you were told. So when Ivan maybe tells you to rape some girl…then you have a built in excuse, yeah?”

  “We weren’t doin’ nothing like that…I swear. In fact, we even helped one poor girl that was trapped in a shop by a few of the stenches. Escorted her to her flat and everything.”

  Shadiyah turned to Paddy with a raised eyebrow for confirmation. She saw him look past her to the man in the chair, and his expression drooped just a bit. He looked back up at her and shrugged his shoulders.

  “They told me about it. I was in the flat we was using and guarding the supplies we had managed to scrounge up while they went out looking for more.”

  “But if they were treating you so bad, why didn’t you take that chance to run?”

  “And go where, lass? The streets are full of the walking dead. Alone, you have nobody to watch your back. I am looking for my cousin Seamus, but he was in London when all of this happened. We left Leeds and were making our way south, but that is not an easy task these days.” Paddy walked up to Shadiyah and took her by the hand holding the knife. “Why don’t you let that poor bloke go? You can come with me to London. We will look for Seamus and make a go of surviving this madness. If anybody will be alive down in London, it will be Seamus O’ Hara. The man is a walking mountain of muscle and meat.”

  Shadiyah stared at the man for a moment and then pulled her hand away. She looked around the room, her eyes lingering on the body tied to the bed and all the blood. That small voice that begged her to accept the offer of the little man was growing louder. The image of Assi flashed in her mind and that voice went silent.

  “I wish you luck, Paddy,” Shadiyah whispered. “But I can’t.”

  “Lass—” he began, but his mouth shut when her knife hand twitched.

  “I said no.” Her voice had no emotion, and was as cold as her eyes.

  “Maybe if—” Paddy tried again.

  “No!” Shadiyah silenced him with a very sharp tone that warned him that continuing in this manner might be to his detriment. “You may leave. His fate has already been decided. I have no desire to go to London today. Perhaps someday I will head your way. If I do, then know that I will bear you no grudge or ill will. Now, perhaps it is best if you be on your way and leave me to my business.”

  Moving to the lantern that was sitting on a desk, she removed the hood and held the knife to the flame. She occasionally glanced over at the bound man. She did nothing but smile as the man in the chair now hurled threats and curses at her.

  “Let’s see if this is ready yet.” Walking over to the man, she leaned over, but had to pull back suddenly when he lunged and his teeth snapped together with a loud clack.

  “You really are no better than the zombies,” she scoffed.

  “I am going to rip you apart, you lousy bitch!” the man snarled and then spat at her for emphasis. It was obvious that his earlier apparent fear had given way or transformed to rage.

  Like a snake, she struck. Grabbing the man by the hair she pressed the red hot flat of the blade to his lips. There was a hiss and a sizzle as the flesh seared. The man wailed in pain, his curses replaced by those shrieks.

  “Yes, keep it up,” Shadiyah cooed. “That should bring a few of those nasty zombies. Right? So scream some more. There will not be anybody coming to help you.”

  “I think you’ve made your point, lass,” Paddy tried once more

  “The boy has probably learned his lesson. In any case…I don’t believe either of them will be hurting anybody ever again.”

  “You can go if you like. I’m not done,” Shadiyah’s voice hissed. “Consider that your final warning.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll be on my way then.”

  15

  Face Off

  As the door shut and the little man exited, Simon gave the word and he rushed up the stairs with Caron coming right behind. There was another horrible scream on the heels of the sound of sizzling flesh.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, Simon stopped so suddenly that Caron slammed into his back and almost rebounded hard enough to topple backwards down the stairs. Shadiyah was standing behind a man bound to a chair. She had a handful of his hair and used it to jerk his head back in a terribly awkward manner that looked painful in and of itself.

  “Shaddi!” Simon barked.

  The woman who looked up at him barely resembled the girl he had known. Her eyes were wild and gleaming with evil malice. She was splattered in blood, both old and new. Some of it was black and indicated that it was likely from the undead, but the rest had obviously come from the living. Her hair was a frightful wig of snarls and tangles with bits of leaves and twigs caught in it. Her clothing was filthy and not fitting of the lowliest scratter you might find sleeping in an alley or under a rubbish bin.

  “Simon?”

  For a moment, the woman’s face changed and her features softened just enough that a hint of her old self could be seen. If he would have blinked at that moment, he would have missed it; it was gone that fast. The hardness came down and locked itself into place.

  “Come home with me,” Simon whispered. He took another step into the room, actually having to concentrate and force his foot to rise up and move forward.

  “I can’t,” Shadiyah said, her voice sounding strangled.

  “Yes. If you come with me now, everything will be okay. We will get through things together. Both of us have lost our sisters. Both of us hurt, but if we lean on each other, we will be stronger
and we will get through this.”

  Simon took another step closer but stopped when he saw the knife press against the exposed throat of the terrified man in the chair. A tiny line of ruby red life fluid welled and began to send a few small drips down the man’s exposed throat where the knife had slid an inch or two.

  “There is nothing for us to get through,” Shadiyah finally answered. “Our paths have gone in different directions.”

  “Shadiyah,” Caron stepped out from behind Simon, hands out to show she was not carrying a weapon, “it’s not too late. You are a warm, wonderful person. You witnessed something terrible, and your mind is just struggling with how to process it.”

  Shadiyah cocked her head to the side in a way that reminded Simon just a bit of the creepy zombie children. She seemed to be regarding Caron, but it was as if all the humanity had been stripped from the woman’s eyes. There was something dark, and he wondered if this is what the victims of serial killers saw in the end when the mask was ripped away and the charade that had been used to lure the unsuspecting victim was over.

  “Are you really going to use inane psycho-babble to tell me that I just need a hug and some time to grieve?” she snarled, which was even creepier since her face continued to hold almost no emotion. “Maybe a few Prozac or Diazepam will numb me while I learn how to manage my feelings? How about this…maybe I just reached my limit and am going to start giving out to the people who went through life preying on others and have now been given free reign in the absence of law and order.”

  “But not everybody is like that,” Caron insisted, Simon put a hand on her arm, but she shrugged it off and took another step closer. “Your friend Simon is not like that…Mrs. Raye—”

  “What do you know of that woman?” The blank expression finally shattered and all the hate, anger, and anguish exploded across Shadiyah’s face. “She worked for the bloody MI5. Who knows what kind of person she really is!”