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

by Brown, TW

  “But you know what kind of person I am.” Simon edged past Caron and now stood just a few feet away from Shadiyah. “You have known me for years. We have shared many memories together. I knew your parents, your sister…so, while certainly not as great for me as it is for you, I feel the pain of their loss.”

  Shadiyah was silent for several seconds. Her eyes kept flicking from Simon to Caron and then to the man in the chair as if she might be weighing each of them against each other. When the tears appeared at the corners of her eyes, Simon actually breathed a sigh of relief.

  He had begun to fear that she had lost every ounce of her humanity. If she was still able to cry, then he had to think that there was hope for her to recover and return to at least some semblance of herself.

  “If you come back with us, nobody will ever have to know about…” Simon looked around the room, his eyes lingering on the body of the dead man on the bed lying in a pool of blood that was already beginning to attract flies. They paused again on the man in the chair. His face had hideous blisters where his lips should be as well as another nasty knife blade-shaped welt on his right cheek that would soon be a massive blister.

  There was a small pool of blood at the man’s feet, and when Simon looked closer, he decided that the man was dead and just didn’t know it yet. His feet were secured so tight to the legs of the chair that the belts keeping him secure were acting like tourniquets. When those came off, it was likely that the man would finish bleeding out in a few short minutes.

  “You can trust me, Shaddi.”

  Simon reached out for her. There was a sudden and sharp pain in his gut. When he looked down, the knife that Shadiyah had been holding in her hands jutted from his abdomen.

  ***

  She ran. Twice she collided with one of the walking dead, but she just kicked and shoved until she was free, got back to her feet, and continued to run as fast as she could. In the darkness ahead, she saw the silhouette of the M1.

  She reached the embankment, scrambled up, and then turned to her right and kept running until she was physically unable to go on. When that moment came, she fell to the ground in a heap and rolled onto her back. She stared at the starry sky and waited for the tears to come in a flood.

  She waited.

  And waited.

  When they did not come, she just continued to lie flat on her back and stare straight up. She told herself that she would just stay that way until the walking dead found her. She would not run or fight. She would let them have her and put an end to the pain and anguish that controlled her now.

  Eventually, a low moan came from somewhere close. She had to roll her head back and strain her neck to look. She spied a pair of feet moving through a pool of moonlight. They were right on the other side of the car that she had fallen down beside.

  This is it, she thought.

  But it wasn’t it; the zombie reached the end of the car and simply continued to shamble on its way. She needed to make a noise if she was going to bring the undead to her. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came.

  She closed her mouth and rolled back to lying flat. When she felt her eyes begin to droop, she rolled under the car and fell asleep. By then, she had decided that she might not want to live, but she did not want to die either. She certainly did not want to be eaten alive by zombies.

  Her eyes flashed open, and she tried to sit up in a hurry. That resulted in her hitting her forehead on the underside of the car she had used as a blanket and shelter for the night. Once the stars receded from her vision, she rolled out from underneath the automobile and pulled herself to her feet.

  Looking around in every direction, she was initially disappointed when she did not see a mob of angry villagers coming after her for murdering their beloved Simon. There was also a surprising lack of the walking dead to give her any concerns. The ones on the M1 were spread out and just staggering and stumbling along, paying her little or no interest.

  She walked up the road until the sign above indicated that the turnoff would take her to Garforth. Just like Leeds, it looked as if the fires had mostly died down. She considered just continuing on, but by the time she had reached this point, her mind was back on track for the idea of seeking out those who hurt others and ending them.

  “You already let one get away,” she said out loud, jumping at the loudness of her own voice.

  Heading south, she walked along and allowed the sun to shine on her face. She knew she was filthy and needed to bathe, but at the moment, she would have to settle for bathing in the shafts of daylight. Up ahead about two or three hundred yards were a trio of the walking dead. It looked as if they were also heading into Garforth.

  Maybe they have relatives here, she mused, and had to stifle a giggle.

  When the marker beside the road indicated that she was now on the outskirts of Garforth, she reached down and touched her scimitar. That momentary comfort was quickly displaced by a feeling of frustration and even a little worry.

  She had none of her supplies. She had left everything back at that house, and there was absolutely no way that she could return there. Caron would have returned and told everybody of Simon’s murder by now. It would not be a stretch to think that they would send people to watch the house and wait for her return so that they could kill her. And when that day came where she knew that she absolutely wished to be dead, she now felt assured that she had at least one place where she could go and be treated to her last wish. If she was really lucky, it would be a fast death. But now was not that time, and she brushed those thoughts away and swept them under the rug in one of her mind’s darker corners.

  At last, she reached the entrance to a posh looking little neighborhood. The plaque at the entrance read “Cedar Ridge” on either side of the brick wall that acted as a border that separated these people from everybody else and made them their own little community. Judging by the debris, torched automobiles, and dead bodies left to decay in the streets and yards, this place had fared no better than anyplace else in the world.

  The first few houses had burnt down to nothing but the skeletal remains and were ugly, black monuments to their finality. The next houses, the ones that had survived the little fire, showed promise. Doors were wide open and almost inviting her inside. The one house she did see that had the front door shut also had a zombie in the window staring out at her.

  Walking up to the first house, she had to wave away the swarms of flies that were drawn to the three corpses in the front yard. It was easy to guess what had happened here. The front room window to the right of the door was shattered and dark stains marred the brick façade. The three bodies were splayed out on the lawn with their heads sporting a variety of nasty divots, and completely busted open in one case. The zombie that had most of its head splattered all over the ground was partially on the landing of the entry.

  She paused as she went to step over the body and was fascinated how the left half of the face had managed to remain mostly intact. It was grossly misshapen, but still recognizable as a woman’s face. She felt her skin crawl as she watched a fly actually walk across the wide open eye that was staring up at her.

  In the entry hall was a family portrait, and Shadiyah was almost certain that what must have been the oldest daughter was the body she now thought of as ‘Flyball’. The two sons were also out front. That left the parents. She had to guess that one of them—most likely the father—had been the person to deal out the killing blows. Had either or both been bitten? She imagined that there were millions of stories that would never be told.

  Every single person in the world had just lived through a pop culture event of the worst kind. She wondered if any of them had been fans of that sort of thing. Had it helped them survive? While she had been aware of zombie movies and such, it was not something she got excited about or even gave it much more than a passing glance than she did vampires, werewolves, or mummies.

  Ghosts? That was an entirely different matter. She absolutely believed in ghosts. Of course
, she now believed in zombies as well for obvious reasons.

  Moving along the wall of the entry hallway that was opposite the stairs, she paused in the arch that opened to the living room and discovered the father as well as confirmation of her guess as to who had killed the zombified members of the family. Sprawled on the floor was a man; or, more accurately, his corpse. The man had slit his wrists and one hand still held the straight razor used for the gruesome task. The wife and mother of the house was still nowhere to be seen, and if she had been a zombie, it is very possible that she could have simply wandered off since the front door was wide open.

  As soon as she arrived at the kitchen, she knew that it was unlikely that she would find anything worth taking in the realm of food. The cupboards were all thrown open or had the doors ripped off completely and tossed on the floor.

  Deciding that she was in no mood to waste time since she had nothing after having left that house so suddenly, she turned around and walked out. The next house was more of the same and then there was the house with the zombie staring out at her from the window.

  A thought occurred to Shadiyah, and she went to the house with the zombie. It did not move from the window, but merely increased the degree of intensity that it slapped and pawed at the window. Checking the door, she frowned when she discovered it to be locked. Stepping back, and giving a look up and down the street, she kicked the door as hard as she could…and ended up falling backwards and landing on her behind in the middle of the walkway. The door was still shut, but there was a near perfect print of the bottom of her boot on the white door.

  Getting up and dusting herself off, she headed down the side of the house and into the back yard. It was here that she found the enclosed back porch. Breaking one of the windows was a simple matter. She allowed herself to smile when the back door proved to be unlocked.

  Stepping inside, she discovered that the zombie from the front window had obviously come in response to the noise and was just staggering into the kitchen as she entered and closed the door behind her. A quick stab with her scimitar ended the zombie and she made the decision to drag it outside before commencing her search. Seeing an open pantry with cans lining the shelf gave her reason to be hopeful, so she could attend to the one simple matter of housecleaning before she began the search.

  She decided to leave the back door open in case there might be more zombies that needed to be taken out, as well as helping to air out the house a bit. Shadiyah pulled a bottle of water from a case that sat in the floor of the pantry closet and opened a tin of Spam; she reveled in the saltiness of the minced meat and wished that she had some bread and perhaps a pickle to help finish things off properly.

  The house proved to be empty of any other bodies, living, undead, or otherwise. Shadiyah took that as a good sign and laughed at whoever had come through and looted the other houses but chose to skip this one just because of one zombie.

  By now, the sun was almost halfway done with its march across the sky. There was nothing in the way of a proper bag or pack for her to use to load up on supplies, so she fashioned one from a pair of pillow covers and grabbed a few essentials in case she had to leave in a hurry.

  Once she felt like she had done enough preparation in case of emergency, she made her way to the bedroom. Shoving the large chest of drawers in front of the door, she flopped down on the bed and was asleep almost before her head touched the pillow.

  ***

  “How is he?” Nelson asked.

  “Good as we can hope,” Mrs. Raye answered. “The doc says that Caron probably gave him the small chance that he does have by leaving the knife in place until they got back. The fact that it missed everything vital is a small miracle or a big one depending on your point of view.”

  “And you knew this girl?” Nelson entered the house with Dawn and Melena in tow.

  The three of them took a seat at the kitchen table as Mrs. Raye put cups in front of them all and then went about pouring the tea. There was not much left, but Nelson was leaving with his new team of hunters after this check in to see how Simon was doing; he had promised Mrs. Raye a secret stash from any tea that they found while out.

  “This girl?” Mrs. Raye finally said as she blew a wisp of steam from her cup and then took a sip. “No, this girl is a stranger to me. I should have trusted my instinct and dealt with this back at Clyde Court.”

  “Dealt with it how?” Melena asked after a long silence where nobody else seemed inclined to ask what she considered an obvious question.

  “Shadiyah started to become unhinged when her sister was raped, but after the girl killed herself, that was just more than her mind could take. I’m afraid that not everybody who survives these first few months is going to be a viable person. That poor girl had to kill both her parents, and then she had no better choice other than to leave them outside her front door. Add in having to take care of her sister who broke almost immediately, and the girl just took in more than she could handle. Minds are a funny thing. That is why some soldiers come back from battle and are basically a shell of their former selves. Call it PTSD or whatever you like, but I think we will lose a good many survivors to their own minds in this first year as we are forced to do things we never imagined.”

  The room was silent for several minutes except for the sipping sounds as everybody considered Mrs. Raye’s statement. That silence did not end until the front door opened and Caron entered with another woman who was decked out in what was becoming the standard hunter’s gear: heavy denim pants, a leather jacket over her black shirt, hiking boots, heavy gloves, hair cut short and tucked into a bandana and a set of goggles hanging around her neck.

  “Is that really a crossbow?” Nelson gasped—admiration and maybe a hint of envy in his voice.

  The newest member of the team patted the stock of her crossbow and beamed. “I was so mad when my husband bought this for me last year. I bet he never imagined that the first living thing I would shoot with it might be him.”

  Niamh Longstreet had been Melena’s recommendation for the team when it was all but demanded that every team have at least one member on it from the New Micks. Nelson trusted her judgment and had agreed despite not really knowing the woman. He’d only been aware of Connor Longstreet, Niamh’s husband on a casual basis. The man was always travelling for his job. There were many in town who whispered that it was Connor who brought the infection to Micklefield.

  He was not sure what exactly he disliked most about the woman before actually ever even meeting her; the fact that she was the wife of the late Connor Longstreet, that she was a New Mick, or that she was bloody Irish. Still, she had Melena’s endorsement, so he was willing to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself for now.

  Just on appearances, Niamh most resembled something that you might see from an artist’s rendition of a faerie. She was pale to the point of almost being blue, her hair was a series of pencil-thin red braids that virtually seemed to float around her head, her eyes had a peculiar greenish-blue and he would swear that if you stared at her ears, you could detect where they almost ended in elfish points. Her nose was overly small, her lips thin, and she had a double dose of freckles.

  “That’s the weapon that killed Connor Longstreet?” Dawn said with awe as she pushed back from the table and came over to give the weapon a closer look.

  “Aye, it is. Care to give it a try?” Niamh presented the crossbow with a smile.

  “Me? Oh no…I would not know where to begin,” Dawn gasped, backing away like she’d just been offered a cobra.

  “Aim the pointy thing away from you and pull the trigger,” Niamh laughed.

  “So, Nelson, you are either very liberated, or you just like gawking at females,” Mrs. Raye said with a chortle as she took in his assembled team.

  “Probably more of the latter,” Melena quipped. “But this is more my team than his, we just list him as the leader to keep some of the other more obnoxious blokes at bay.”

  “She’s not lying.” Nelson gave a sh
rug of his shoulders. Then, with a wink, added, “It is more of the latter.” That earned him a punch in the shoulder once Melena realized exactly what the man had just said.

  “We should get moving,” Melena announced a few seconds later. “If Simon does wake while we are gone, please give him our best.”

  “I will, child,” Mrs. Raye said as she walked the team to the door. “Give me just a minute with Caron, please.”

  Annie bounded down the stairs at the sound of everybody leaving and demanded hugs from the group until she reached Niamh. She seemed to consider things for a moment and then extended a polite hand to be shaken.

  “My name is Annie, what’s yours?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

  “Niamh…Niamh Longstreet,” the woman replied as she shook the girl’s hand.

  “Neev? That’s a funny name…are you a fairy princess?” Annie scrunched up her nose and smiled, showing off an empty gap where she had lost one of her top front teeth.

  “Maybe,” the woman said with a sly smile as she walked out of the house.

  “I like her,” Annie announced, and then bounded back up the stairs.

  Once everybody was gone and it was just Mrs. Raye and Caron, the older woman pulled a bag out from the closet. She looked around once more to ensure that they were alone. Apparently satisfied that was the case, she pulled out a black triangular pouch and then another square one and handed them to Caron.

  “What’s this?” the woman asked tentatively as she accepted the smallish but oddly heavy parcels.

  “This was in the Foxhound under the commander’s chair. It is a SIG-Sauer P226. There is one fully loaded fifteen-round magazine already in the weapon.” She pulled it from the holster and turned it on its side, her finger pointing to a small lever on the side near the grip. “The weapon is cocked in a safe mode for you to carry it loaded with one in the chamber. You slide this down and it de-cocks the weapon and makes it ready to fire. Other than that, this is a semi-automatic. When you fire the last round, the slide will come back. This button here is the American thumb release,” she pointed to a round button just below the lever, “you push it and it releases the magazine. You just grab the next one and slide it into position, give it a firm smack to seat it and then release the slide.”