Life of the Dead Box Set [Books 1-5]

by Urban, Tony

  Beyond them, Bundy could see more of the undead drifting through the haze toward them. Errickson lunged at him again, and this time, Bundy struck back with his over-sized hand and punched him in his good eye.

  The force of the blow sent the guard to his knees and Bundy used that opportunity to extract the gun from his pocket. As Errickson struggled back to his feet, Bundy aimed the small barrel of the Magnum at his face.

  “Wish I could say I’m sorry about this, but.”

  He pulled the trigger and the .22 punched a hole in the space just below the dead guard’s nose. His teeth folded inward in a spray of blood and white shrapnel. The bullet didn’t have enough force to vacate his skull, but it got the job done just as well and Errickson tumbled to the pavement.

  By this time, the approaching zombies were close enough that Bundy could make out their physical features. That was too close, and he climbed over the hood of a Pontiac. As he did, he spotted two bloody toddlers clawing at the windows of the crashed Lincoln. They fought to get out, or get to him. Either way, he ignored them. He wasn’t fond of children, especially undead ones.

  Past that obstacle, he had a somewhat clear path. He ran or, more accurately, strolled briskly away from the crashed vehicles, keeping a good distance between himself and the occasional zombies he passed along the way. They ignored him, too, busy feasting on other casualties or the pileup.

  As he came toward the tail end of the pileup, he found a VW Beetle with the driver’s door ajar and the engine still running. A few yards away a zombie in a pinstripe suit was eating the shapely thigh of a girl who looked about college age. Bundy imagined that the Bug was hers and that she’d had the bad luck of being a Good Samaritan at the wrong time.

  Her loss was his gain, though, and he pushed the seat back as far as it would go and squeezed himself into the car. He turned it around in the tunnel and weaved his way through the remaining vehicles until he reached daylight.

  Dozens of cars inbound for the tunnel had stopped at the entrance. The smoke that drifted out of the tube must have given them second thoughts about entering. Bundy steered by them, aiming the Bug toward the outbound lanes. The metal underbelly of the car scraped as he crested the concrete median.

  A middle-aged man in a Honda yelled out to him. “Hey, buddy! What happened in there?”

  Bundy looked at the driver and his wife, then glanced back toward the tunnel. “Take my advice and head for the hills.”

  “Should we call the cops?”

  “The cops? You better call the damned Marines.”

  The man gawked at him, confused.

  “Is that man a convict?” the wife asked.

  Bundy floored it, continued over the median, and bounced down into the outbound lane. Why, yes, Ma’am, I’m Inmate 2089349. Pleased to meet you. Yinz have a good day. Oh, and watch out for the zombies.

  Chapter 25

  Everything was going as well as possible under the circumstances until the slob in the Dykstra jersey fell. While running north, the group had put fifty yards between themselves and the zombie horde, thanks to zigzagging through alleyways and between buildings. It was almost 11 a.m. and they had no real destination aside from getting as far as possible from the city before the bombs rained down.

  Peduto saw the Smart Car first. The tiny, black and white convertible looked like a toy, but it sat undamaged in the middle of the road and the driver was nowhere to be seen. She jumped inside and found they key in the ignition. One turn and it fired right up.

  “Get in!” she called. The ridiculousness of the order was obvious and she knew that. The car had no rear seat and room for only two up front.

  “Peduto, drive. Bolivar, you get in the passenger seat. Me and him will hold on,” Sawyer said, jerking a thumb at Dykstra Jersey.

  “No, I’ll ride on the outside,” Bolivar said, but Sawyer’s ‘Shut up and do what I tell you to do’ look settled that matter and he climbed in beside Gwen.

  The top was down and Sawyer grabbed hold of the roll bar in the back.

  “Giddy up,” he said to Dykstra Jersey, and the man wrapped his forearms around the bar. “Now roll!”

  Peduto did. The car was slow under normal circumstances and, with four people on board, it felt like the engine was powered by a hamster wheel. It was still quicker than zombies.

  They made it a few miles before Dykstra Jersey's grip became weak and he almost fell.

  Sawyer saw his distress. “Don’t you let go.”

  The man nodded but couldn’t mask the pain in his face.

  When they rounded a corner, a group of more than forty zombies blocked their path. Peduto hit the brakes, and that’s when the man lost his grip. Sawyer reached out with his right arm and caught him by the sleeve of his jersey, but the man was beyond his tipping point and there was no pulling him back.

  As he fell, Sawyer went down too and his M4 slammed to the pavement underneath him. Dykstra Jersey shrieked. It was the high-pitched sound of a wounded animal. Peduto had stopped the car and when Bolivar looked back he saw the Phillies fan’s leg was twisted outward at an angle human legs aren’t meant to bend.

  Sawyer hopped up and ran to him. He lifted the man, who screamed again, and his broken leg swayed back and forth like a metronome.

  The zombies marched toward them from the front and closed the gap to a few yards. Peduto threw open her door and got one step out before Sawyer screamed at her.

  “Get back in that car!”

  She paused and Sawyer’s face flamed red. “That’s an order, Corporal!”

  Peduto pulled her leg back into the car and closed the door.

  “God, Jesus! Put me down!” Dykstra Jersey wailed.

  “What do I do?” Peduto shouted to Sawyer, Bolivar, and herself.

  Through the windshield, Bolivar could see the closest zombie was less than twenty feet away. The others weren’t far behind.

  Sawyer saw them, too. “Oh, fuck it all to hell.”

  He dropped Dykstra Fan, who hit the ground with another anguished cry. Sawyer left him there and dashed to the Smart Car, only pausing a moment to look at Peduto.

  “I’ll clear the middle. You keep driving. Stay on Penrose until you find a ramp for 95 South.” Peduto reached for his hand and Sawyer jerked it away. “I don’t know if there’s going to be anyone left, but try for the Air Force base in Dover.”

  He looked to the zombies, which were now within what Bolivar’s grandfather would have called spitting distance. “Go there. Or don’t. I got a feeling it don’t matter anymore.”

  With that, he rushed ahead of the car and opened fire on the crowd of zombies. To Bolivar, they looked like the metal ducks at carnival shooting booths as they fell under the fire of Sawyer’s M4. All that was missing was the plinking sound.

  As promised, Sawyer created a lane through the center of the horde large enough for the Smart Car and Peduto floored it. As she steered the car through the mass of them, the zombies clawed and swiped at the vehicle. One caught Bolivar’s cap and whisked it clean off.

  The convertible clipped a few of them, pushing them aside like bumper cars. They snarled and growled and tried to regroup, but the car was almost through them. Just before they got to the end of the pack, a zombie in a suit jumped onto the hood.

  It peered in through the glass and Bolivar thought the man looked to have been in his thirties. Gel held his hair in a perfect pompadour. He looked almost normal, except for the dead, gray eyes and the bloody drool that seeped from his mouth.

  The zombie grabbed hold of the top of the windshield and dragged himself up onto it. His face pressed against the glass and flattened all his features. He kept pulling himself upward. Another two feet and he’d be able to reach inside the convertible.

  Before it could do that, Bolivar pulled out the pistol Peduto had given him a few hours earlier. He pressed it against the windshield. Only the quarter inch pane of glass separated the barrel from the zombie’s face.

  “Do it,” Peduto said.

>   Bolivar didn’t wait. He squeezed the trigger and spider webs burst across the windshield. A small hole appeared in the center of them as the bullet penetrated the glass, then slammed into the zombie’s face. It tumbled off the car and rolled a few times when it hit the ground.

  Chapter 26

  Wim stared at Old Man Bender’s undead family and pondered what to do. He felt like kicking himself for not bringing a second firearm and even more so for putting his life at risk over chocolate ice cream. He hoped there would be time for scolding himself later on. Right now, he needed to focus on surviving.

  The tot that clung to his leg was also biting him and the only thing saving his flesh from the boy’s sharp, little teeth was the denim of his blue jeans. Wim took the empty pistol and grabbed it by the barrel. He brought it down on the zombie’s head as hard as he could. The boy dropped to his knees but wasn’t dead.

  That bought Wim a few seconds of time and he scanned the freezer, looking for anything he could use for a weapon. In the near dark, it was almost impossible to see. One of the fathers was only a few feet away and closing in fast. Wim grabbed the feet of the boy he’d knocked down and hoisted him into the air.

  The boy weighed no more than forty pounds, far less than a bag of feed, and Wim had no trouble swinging him by his feet and using him like a club. The tot’s head connected with the skull of the man which resulted in a sharp crack and hollow thud, like knocking together two pieces of dead wood. Wim supposed that, in a way, that’s all they were.

  The adult zombie wobbled on his feet, took half a step forward, then two back, then collapsed. The boy had also gone limp and Wim launched him at the others like he was throwing a shot put.

  The pint-sized zombie crashed into the others, knocking down two of the children and pushing back the remaining adults. Wim ran a detour around them, and as he did, he almost ran into one of the meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. That gave him an idea.

  Wim snatched a hook from the line and gripped it by the wooden handle. He turned back to the zombies and saw the younger brother was within arm’s reach. He swung the hook and the pointed end punched through the man’s temple. The brother fell so quick that it pulled the hook loose from Wim’s grip.

  Wim jerked it free and saw one of the children blocking his path to the freezer door. In two long strides he reached the girl and slammed the meat hook upward, catching her under the chin. It poked out through her eye socket and her cloudy, blue orb popped free and then dangled from the gaping hole like a spent parachute.

  She kept moving, so Wim gave the handle a hard yank and threw her across the room, where she crashed into a pile of boxes. Wim now had a clear path and he took it.

  He shoved his shopping cart through the opening, grabbed the door, and slammed it shut, knocking over one of the wife zombies in the process. He latched the door from the outside and leaned back against it as he caught his breath.

  Wim couldn’t believe how close he’d come to dying and was surprised at how much the prospect of death had frightened him. Maybe he had something to live for after all.

  It was almost pitch black outside now, and he checked each direction multiple times, like a little boy crossing the street, as he exited the store. Much to his relief, the streets were still empty. He transferred his groceries from the cart to the Bronco, then reloaded his pistol, just in case.

  Even though life was lonely on the farm with no one and nothing around, he couldn’t wait to go back. He’d deal with everything else tomorrow. If there was a tomorrow. Any more, he couldn’t be sure.

  Chapter 27

  Ramey laid on her back, her eyes closed and earbuds blocking out the sounds of the dying world. She knew when she left her bedroom she might find her mother dead on the couch. Or maybe she’d be unconscious with puke all over herself, the furniture, and floor. Or maybe she’d be high as hell, trying to make mac and cheese in the microwave, even though the electricity was out. She was in no rush to see which scenario was true.

  She didn’t hear the first soft thud at her bedroom door. Or the second. The third was louder. Loud enough to draw her attention through the white noise of her earbuds. She pulled out one of them and listened. Soon enough, a fourth came.

  The next thud was louder and harder and followed by what sounded like a pencil breaking.

  “Mom?”

  Ramey removed the other earbud and dropped them to the bed. She stood and crossed the small room, but when she reached the door, she held the knob in her hand, but didn’t open it.

  “Mom?” she asked again.

  There came another thud, and this time Ramey thought she heard a soft moan. She turned the doorknob, and as soon as the latch cleared the strike plate the door pushed inward. Ramey stumbled as the door knocked her backward and she landed on her butt.

  When she looked up, she saw Loretta shuffling into the room. Her nose was smashed to the side and laid flat against her cheek like a chunk of raw chicken. So that’s what I heard snap, Ramey thought. A syringe hung from Loretta’s arm, the needle still embedded in her skin and a small trail of dried, brown blood traversed the leathery skin of her forearm.

  She’s dead.

  No, that couldn’t be true. Dead people don’t walk around. This was just some terrible reaction to the drugs. That’s what it had to be.

  Loretta lunged, or more precisely, fell toward her with a gurgling growl. When Ramey rolled out of the way, Loretta face planted on the shag carpet without making the slightest attempt to catch herself.

  Nope. Definitely dead.

  Loretta clawed at Ramey’s bare leg and her fingernails scraped off the top layer of skin but didn’t draw blood. Ramey reared back and kicked her mother in the face, her Sketchers connecting with Loretta’s jaw and resulting in a crack that Ramey both heard and felt. Loretta’s head snapped backward, then flopped forward again into the carpet.

  Ramey ran past her mother, out of the bedroom and to the kitchen. She jerked open the junk drawer and dug through the tools and bottle openers and hot pads and toothpicks as she searched for the keys to Loretta’s car but came up empty.

  “Shit!” Ramey said as she slammed the drawer closed. She checked the countertops, but there were no keys to be found.

  Ramey looked up to see Loretta back on her feet and shambling into the living room. Her dislocated jaw jutted to the right, the opposite direction her nose faced and Ramey had a second to think that her dead mother looked like something out of a Picasso painting.

  Loretta was now between Ramey and the trailer door. Ramey returned to the junk drawer and looked for anything she could use. She shoved aside the pliers and cookie cutters and bolts and found something worthwhile: the meat tenderizer. She grabbed the rubber handle and turned back toward her mother.

  “Get out of my way, Mom!”

  Loretta kept shuffling at her, oblivious to her daughter’s demands.

  Ramey tried to go around her, but Loretta caught her shirt sleeve. She leaned into Ramey and tried to bite, but her jaw couldn’t close and she only drooled all over her.

  Ramey swung the silver tenderizer and it smashed into Loretta’s forehead, leaving a waffle pattern in her dead flesh. Ramey swung again, this time bringing the tool down on the top of her head.

  The skin split open to reveal gleaming, white bone underneath. Ramey hit her a third time and this time the tool caught her in the temple and Loretta crashed to the floor in an unmoving heap. Ramey jumped over her body and ran out of the trailer.

  Outside, the park was in chaos. It seemed as if all of her neighbors were either chasing someone or being chased.

  Ramey stood on the porch and watched the eight-year-old Sutton twins run down Mr. Reese, the retiree who lived three trailers down. They pounced on him as he fell and started eating him. He kept screaming until one of the twins chewed his throat out.

  Joan Saylor, who sometimes cut Ramey’s hair for free when she couldn’t afford to go to the Walmart salon, sat in her front yard and munched on the arm of a man
Ramey assumed to be Mr. Saylor. She couldn’t tell because his face was gone.

  Drea, a butch biker chick who was always tinkering with her vintage Harley Davidson trike used her wrench to knock out the teeth of Louie Fritz, a creeper who Loretta fancied and once invited in for lunch, only he spent most of the time trying to look down Ramey’s shirt or up her shorts instead of paying attention to Loretta.

  Ramey rather enjoyed watching his teeth go flying through the air like a handful of chiclets, but as soon as he was incapacitated, another zombie grabbed Drea from behind and chomped into her shoulder. The biker was big, over six feet — Ramey had always suspected she was a man in drag — and she hurled the zombie over her broad shoulders and onto the gravel driveway.

  Drea raised the wrench to hit Louie again, but before she could act her body spasmed and she collapsed to her knees. She dropped her weapon, and when the convulsions stopped, she stood back up and chased after a girl Ramey used to go to school with, but who had dropped out after getting pregnant at fourteen.

  Ramey stepped off the porch and rushed to Loretta’s old Dodge. She opened the door as quietly as possible and dropped into the driver’s seat, where she checked the ignition for keys that weren’t there.

  When Ramey looked back up, she saw Louie the Creeper looking through the windshield at her. His comb-over was pushed askew from his earlier tumble and it stuck almost straight up in a thinning, gray mohawk.

  Ramey scrambled out of the car and waited for him to make the first move. When he ran at her, she swung the meat tenderizer and it hit the bridge of his nose with a pleasant crunch that reminded her of cracking open a fortune cookie.

  Confucius say zombie no match for girl with hammer.

  She could hear the sound of an engine running and sprinted around the trailer to the opposite lane, where a jacked up pick up painted primer gray and with as much putty as metal idled in the middle of the road. The driver’s side door hung ajar, but the cab was empty.