by Urban, Tony
We waited ten seconds. Half a minute. Still nothing.
“You think maybe it’s empty after all?”
I supposed it was possible. Who knew what made zombies do the things they did. Maybe they smelled some gone over mayonnaise or something equally banal.
“I’ll go in,” he said.
“No!” The word came out more forceful, bossier then I’d intended. I half expected him to punch me, but all he did was stand there.
“All right then. What’s your plan here?”
I didn’t have one. I just didn’t want him going in there and possibly dying. I needed to do something though or else he might think me crazy.
“If anyone’s in there, come out now. We killed the zombies. It’s safe.”
Aben raised his eyebrows and I could read his mind. That’s the best you got?
“Put down your weapons, please.” The voice came from within the motorhome. It was feminine and calm. I couldn’t detect any fear.
Aben gazed into the RV. “If it’s all the same, I think I’ll pass on that.”
I thought there wasn’t too much risk in doing what she asked. If she had a gun, she’d have used it on the zombies, or us, by now. I set my spear on the ground. I moved a few yards back from the RV and motioned for Aben to join me. He did.
“You’ve got nothing to fear from us.”
We waited and soon enough a woman appeared at the doorway. I guessed her to be about fifty and she had long black hair with gray streaks running through it. Her face was tanned and hard and emotionless. “You boys put on quite a show.”
“We try,” I said.
She stepped out of the motorhome and came to us. “I’m Eloise.”
“And I’m Aurora.”
I looked past Eloise to see another female, that in her seventies, at the door of the RV. She exited and a third followed. She was younger, somewhere in her thirties with a plain, broad face and her name was Iris.
Just when I thought the show was over a man in on the downhill side of middle age emerged. He was Owen and he had a fresh scar than started at his hairline and trickled down his face before ending near his upper lip.
Aben and I both watched the RV, expectant, and Eloisa gave a soft chuckle. “That’s the entirety of us.”
“How long have you been stuck in there?”
“Oh, only since last night. We ran out of gas and decided to sleep until morning. Before dawn we heard them outside, trying to get in. I thought they might lose interest after a while.”
“They’re fairly single-minded,” Aben said and when I looked at him I knew he was remembered his days on the snowy road, pursued by the ceaseless horde.
“We’ve got plenty of gas,” I said. “You’re welcome to it.”
“That would be very much appreciated.”
Aben and I, along with Eloise, Iris, and Owen went to the Jeep to retrieve cans of gas. Only Aurora remained at the RV and, when I saw her walk, I realized why. Her back was stopped and twisted, and her head had a near constant wobble.
I was in the process of handing Owen a five gallon can of fuel when there came a sharp yelp from the direction of the motorhome.
We all turned and saw Aurora on the ground, a massive zombie towering over her frail frame. The woman crab crawled away from it, but her movements were slow and pained.
I don’t remember making a conscious decision, all I remember was running. I had no weapons in hand, I wasn’t even wearing my helmet, I didn’t care. I hit him from behind with all the momentum I’d build up in the sprint and he tumbled head first into the RV.
I stumbled, hit the ground, but jumped back to my feet. Due to my increased focus on building my strength and stamina, I wasn’t even winded. I grabbed a handful of the zombie’s greasy, blond hair and slammed his face into one of the RV’s wheels. There was a crunch as his nose gave way and the monster gave a wet growl. I pulled him back and did it again. And again. And again.
He’d stopped moving and I dropped him, his upper body hitting the ground with a thud. Then, I turned to Aurora and extended my hand. “Are you okay?”
“Not too bad for an old lady.” She took my hand and I lifted her gently. She gave my hand a hard squeeze. “You’re my hero and I don’t even know your name.”
I felt my face get hot and knew I was blushing. I couldn’t hold back an embarrassed smile. “I’m Mead.” And I kill the dead.
18
July, 3 Years Later
After that. I realized that life on the road was too dangerous, that we needed to make a home we could secure and defend. We eventually found a small town named Brimley in northern Arkansas which had two roads, one leading into it and one leading out of it.
The town contained only twenty or, so zombies and they were easy enough to kill. After that, we got to work on making Brimley secure. It turned out that Owen had been the one driving the motorhome and, in life before the zombies, he’d been a heavy equipment operator. When I brought up building a fence, he was the one who suggested lining the town with shipping containers.
Over the next eight months, we secured the necessary machinery and enough metal containers to barricade the town two rows high. For coming and going, we turned a container on each end of the town sideways and reinforced the steel doors with extra metal, spikes and barbed wire should the zombies, or maybe something worse, ever show up.
The town was far enough from any major, or even minor, cities that we didn’t have to worry much. Every few days a random zombie would stagger along, but it had no chance of getting into town and was easy to destroy with a well-placed shot from one of our lookout towers.
Every few weeks a few of us left the safety of the walls in search of other survivors. We found a few. Not many, but three years in and our town had grown from six to eighteen. And we managed to keep all of them alive. Even Aurora who is now 77 years old.
I’m not gonna lie. Spending most days inside a walled off compound gets boring. There are only so many fields a man can plow, crops he can pick, before the monotony sets in. Staying safe in the midst of the zombie apocalypse is easier than you think, but you sacrifice a piece of your soul in the process.
That’s the worst part for me. That’s why I go on every supply run, every scouting mission. I get my zombie killing fix out there, in the wild, but there’s part of me, a part that seems to get more anxious with each passing day. A part that longs for the excitement, and the danger, I’d experienced in the early months of the plague. Fear is a hell of a drug, and I haven’t been scared in a long, long time.
Epilogue
The preacher wore a hooded, white robe that was so long it sagged against the ground and the bottom few inches were stained brown. The sun baked down on him as he sat on a metal folding chair, an open bible in his hand. His lips moved but no words came out as he read from the good book.
He sat behind an old, tattered tent large enough to hold over one hundred people, if said one hundred people were standing uncomfortably close together. That was the theory anyway. In reality, he’d never witnessed more than two dozen people inside it.
Far from the tent, perhaps a mile or more away and out of sight, were his followers. He’d lost count on their number many months earlier, but it was in the thousands.
On the other side of the canvas barrier, voices leaked through the fabric. The sounds were a mixture of curious, excited, and skeptical. The Preacher heard a few derisive comments but paid them no heed. By the time his sermon was over, there would be no unbelievers.
He was deep into the book of Revelation when a tent flap pushed open and a woman’s head peeked through the opening.
“It’s time,” she said.
The preacher placed a bookmark to keep his place then closed the bible. He rose to his feet and set the book on the chair. He wouldn’t need it
As he moved toward the open flap, toward the woman, his robe threatened to gape open, but he cinched it tight before that could happen.
“Is everything okay?” The woman asked.
/> “Of course. Of course. God has given us another glorious day and so nothing can be wrong.” When he passed her by, he smelled stale cigarette smoke clinging to her, but chose not to address that.
The Preacher pushed through the flap and into the tent. He kept his face tilted down, hidden, but his eyes scanned the crowd. It was small, eight in all, but that was fine.
When he reached the pulpit, he paused then picked up a small megaphone. He didn’t need it for a group this small, but his voice had always been quiet, and it helped add power to his message.
“Thank you for your patience today, my friends. I’m pleased to see that you have found your way here through the grace of God.”
The preacher saw two men in the back row tilt their heads together and whisper, but the other six watched, attentive.
“My ministry began a few years ago with the murder of my son. I wasn’t aware at the time of his death why God had chosen to call my Josiah home, but after weeks of contemplation and prayer, it was all explained to me. Not only my son’s murder. God told me why he allowed the plague to envelop our Earthly home. Why he allowed it to kill nearly every one of his children.
“Our country had grown wicked. We had turned our backs on God. Ignored his word. Spurned his unconditional love.”
His voice grew louder, the timbre cascading and his words came faster. Now he looked up at the crowd and the hood slipped off his head. He heard them gasp, saw the horror in their faces and that was good. That meant they were waking up.
“Our Heavenly Father needed to send us a message that was impossible to ignore. To remind us that life was sacred again. For until we treat this life like the gift it is, we’re cursed to damnation!”
All eyes were now trained on him. Glued to him. Rapt.
“God told me the truth! The dead, the zombies as you probably call them, are not to be feared. They kill only the wicked! The evil! The sinners!”
The preacher set the megaphone on the pulpit. He extended his arms to side and if there had been a cross behind him, it might have looked like he was being crucified.
The woman stepped out of the shadows behind him, took the soft fabric in her hands and pulled it free from his body.
The crowd gasped. A few looked away. A woman in the front gagged.
In the back, Mead’s eyes grew wide. He’s heard about this traveling tent revival from Duane Winningham, one of Brimley’s latest arrivals, but he didn’t quite believe it. Even with everything he’d seen over the last few years, this seemed too farfetched. Too impossible to be real.
But it was real.
The Preacher stood at the head of the crowd, naked as the day he was born. A few deep scars had marred his face, but his body was far more deformed. His arms were covered solid with wounds and scars.
Some of the injuries were scabbed over, others fully healed. His torso was equally grotesque. A chunk of flesh the size of a tennis ball was missing from his abdomen, hollowed out and replaced by shiny, pink skin. A lesion on his hip was partially covered by a black scab that oozed pus and infection. The opposite thigh was half the size of the other with great gobs of flesh eaten away and missing. That trauma was, mercifully, healed.
“Bring it to me,” the Preacher said, and the woman left the tent.
Because of Duane’s story, Mead had an idea what was coming, but he squirmed, uncomfortable and nervous.
“This is fake, right?” Owen asked. He’d come along with Mead, who would have preferred to go it alone but couldn’t bring himself to say so.
“It sure as shit looks real to me.”
“But he’s not, you know, gonna let it happen?”
Mead didn’t know what he thought and decided to keep his mouth shut and watch.
The woman emerged through the tent flap with a rope in her hands. A taut rope. As she continued into the tent, she moved closer to the preacher. When at his side, she handed him the rope. He accepted it and pulled it in to himself, hand over hand.
A few seconds passed, the tension and anticipation building, and Mead thought the small, fragile-looking man was quite the showman. If this was indeed a show.
Mead’s eyes drifted to the crowd which watched the Preacher. He was looking at the woman in the front who had gagged a few moments before. Suddenly, her face twisted into a mask of confusion and fear and she shrieked.
Mead returned his focus to the front of the tent where the Preacher had reeled in a zombie. It was a man so black that its skin looked almost charbroiled. It was missing its left arm from the elbow down and had an old, unhealed bite wound on its face. The other end of the rope was tied around its neck. It looked toward the crowd growling and snarling.
The woman who screamed jumped to her feet and ran for the back of the tent.
“Wait!” The Preacher ordered, and she stopped. “You have no cause for fear. You only think you do because you haven’t yet realized the truth. This man, he cannot hurt you if you believe.”
The Preacher pulled the rope in further, so the zombie was almost within arm’s reach.
“The undead, the ones who you call zombies, they are here to cleanse us! To consume our sins!”
The Preacher dropped the rope and took the zombie’s hand between his own. He pulled it toward him, stopping only when their bodies were touching. And then he did something that surprised Mead even more. He embraced it.
Everyone in the crowd had gone silent. Mesmerized.
The Preacher looked into the zombie’s face and gave a smile that Mead, even through his skepticism, thought looked sincere. “Show these people,” he said to it. “Do with me what you will.”
He released the zombie and the creature stared at him, almost curious. Then, the zombie reached out with its lone hand and grabbed the Preacher by the forearm. It pulled his appendage toward its mouth.
The Preacher didn’t react, didn’t resist. He watched, serene, as the zombie bit down on his arm. It chewed off an oversized mouthful, swallowed, then took second bite, like it was dining on a rack of ribs.
And then it stopped.
The zombie chewed on the excised flesh and looked up at the Preacher who laid his hand on top of the creature’s shoulder.
“Thank you for saving me,” the Preacher said, and then he leaned in and kissed the creature on the cheek.
The woman picked up the rope and led the zombie out of the tent and it went along without any protestations. The Preacher returned his focus to the crowd where everyone, even Mead, watched in amazement.
“Ladies. Gentlemen. As you can see I am unharmed.” Blood ran from his wounds, but he appeared at no risk of turning. “You’ve seen this miracle up close and in person. Few are so blessed to see God’s glory first hand. Can you say, ‘Amen?’”
Most in the crowd responded, “Amen!”
“And now, I don’t ask you for a donation, for your possessions. I don’t want anything from you.”
The woman redressed him in the robe, then stood at his side.
“I want you to believe because the ones who believe will be saved! The ones who believe will be impervious to danger! The ones who believe will find glory on this Earth as well as in Heaven!”
The Preacher, whose given name was Grady O’Baker, walked into the crowd. Mead realized they now watched him with something like adulation. “The ones who don’t believe will burn in the fires of Hell for all of eternity!”
The woman, Juli Villarreal, came to Grady’s side. Together, they dropped to their knees, clasped their hands together and raised them over their heads.
“It is up to the believers to save humanity! I cannot do it alone, I need your help. And God needs your faith! So, I ask you, are you ready to believe?”
The crowd, including Owen, but not Mead, shouted, “Yes!”
“Then pray with me now.”
Apart from Mead, every man and woman in the tent, joined the Preacher, going to their knees and bowing their heads.
As Grady O’Baker led the others in prayer, Mead realized someth
ing. He was scared. More scared than he’d ever been before.
Red Runs the River
Life of the Dead Book 5
Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Introduction
It’s nearly impossible to believe that, after 3 years, 300,000 words, and 5 books, my Life of the Dead series has reached its conclusion.
Thank you to all of the readers who kept clamoring for more and for sticking with me every step of the way.
And now, let’s get on with it.
Chapter 1
The ground was hard for digging. Between the rocky soil and the cold, half-frozen Earth, Wim had been working all morning and part of the afternoon and only made it down three and a half feet. He reckoned that might be deep enough, but knew tradition was six feet and he was determined to dig a proper grave if it took him the entire week.
Such slow progress gave him time to think. Too much time. He tried to push all thoughts out of his head, to think about nothing but shoveling out scoop after scoop of dirt, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't keep his mind from working. From reeling. From reminding himself over and over again that this hole - this burial plot - was for Ramey and that, soon enough, it wouldn't be him standing inside this half-dug grave, it would be his wife laying inside it.
Wim still struggled to accept the truth of it. He'd known the day might come - would come - since her father spilled the secret at the Ark over three years earlier. Ramey wasn't immune. She'd been vaccinated, but that vaccine was only temporary, and the reality was, sooner or later, she'd fall prey to the virus her demented, homicidal father had created. From the moment they'd heard that news, they both knew it was only a matter of time before Ramey became a zombie.
Each of them had tried to ignore the coming fate, but the truth hung over their heads like an anvil suspended by a frayed rope, waiting to fall on them when they least expected it. After fleeing the Ark, they made their way to North Carolina where they found a small, but perfect, log cabin all the way at the top of the mountain on which they still lived. It had already been stocked with more canned goods than they could eat in half a year and cautious trips into the nearby town of West Jefferson kept them more than well stocked.
