by Smith, S. L.
Copyright © 2019
Scott L. Smith.
All rights reserved.
Cajun Zombie Chronicles: Book One
The River Dead
ISBN-13: 978-0-9983603-0-0 (Holy Water Books)
HOLY WATER BOOKS
At the unexpected horizons of the New Evangelization
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the author(s) and/or editor(s).
Cover design by Holy Water Books
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT b:23:10:36
>> What were once thought to be riots … food shortages ... [GARBLED]
>> Beginning in urban areas [STATIC] reports of erratic behavior, cannibalism …
>> Monsanto spokesperson claims no connection … not liable for effects … [STATIC]
>> [STATIC] … Shelters compromised … [GARBLED]
>> Reports of the dead rising …
>> … Containment efforts failing …
END TRANSMISSION
Cajun Zombie Chronicles: Book One
THE RIVER DEAD
CHAPTER ONE: THE CUT MEN
CHAPTER TWO: SANCTUARY
CHAPTER THREE: THE FENCE
CHAPTER FOUR: THE RECTORY
CHAPTER FIVE: MORNING
CHAPTER SIX: THE SNAKE
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE APPROACH
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER NINE: STARTER RAIDS
CHAPTER TEN: NO FREE MEALS
CHAPTER ELEVEN: WAL-MARTIANS
CHAPTER TWELVE: NEW GREEN
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: INDEFECTABILITY
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: COUNTDOWN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: UNION
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: CARDINALS FANS
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: BIRNAM WOOD
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: BOXED-OFF
CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE ABBOT’S VISION
CHAPTER TWENTY: HERD
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: PADRE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: COWS AND CODDLING
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: COJONES
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: BOWLING ALLEY CHURCHES
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: RADIO
EPILOGUE: THE INTERSTATE
CHAPTER ONE: THE CUT MEN
“Sara,” He took his wife’s delicate face into his hands. “You’ve got to help me keep the kids quiet.”
“Ma-daddy, I wanna watch a show!” The little girl kept tugging at the man’s belt. Her little hands kept prying at the snap of his pistol holster. The man looked around nervously and left abruptly to make one last sweep of their house.
“Emma Claire,” Sara said, lowering herself to her knees and putting her face close to her daughter’s. She took the girl’s soft face into her hands, and spoke softly but firmly. “Emma Claire, look at me in my eyes. There are no more shows. The TV stopped working last week, remember?” The little girl nodded her head distractedly, trying to see where her daddy had gone. “You’re going to be quiet now. For your daddy, right? Say, yes, ma’am.”
“Yes, ma-mommy.” The girl said sweetly beneath a mop of sweaty curls. Even as she did, her baby brother cooed from inside the pack strapped to her mother’s chest.
“Dee-dee stay ky-it, too! Sshh!” The little girl instructed her little brother in imitation of her mother.
“You’re gonna stay quiet, Emma, because if you don’t, something bad could happen to us. Do you understand?”
“The cut men.” The little girl replied. “Elmole come, too?”
“No,” the father said with a wry smile, overhearing the conversation from another part of the house. “Elmole isn’t coming.”
Sara turned her daughter’s head back to her. “Yes, that’s right. The cut men. They’re out there and they can hear us. If you say anything, they can hear you. If they hear you, they may take you away from mommy and daddy. And – and you’ll never see us again. Do you understand?”
Giant tears formed at the girl’s eyes, and she nodded. “I stay ky-it,” she choked out.
“Okay, mi familia.” The man returned. Though his eyes glistened with fresh tears, a smile creased his face. “Everybody get it in the car. Sara, I’ll snap the kids in their child seats, like we planned.”
“And I’ll cover you all from the porch with my bow.” Sara answered. She had grown up with firearms, hunting with her family, while her husband was a relative novice. He was fine with the basics – pistols, rifles, and shotguns – but hadn’t yet mastered the quieter implements, like a compound bow, which was much more useful in their current situation.
“Be careful, Smithy.” She smiled at her husband and kissed him, but her hands were trembling.
“Okay. Come here, little guy.” The man unsnapped the baby boy from his mother’s pack. The baby gurgled quietly and tensed up briefly, stretching. Smithy, as his wife called him, tucked the boy’s head under his chin and braced himself. The man’s name was actually Isherwood Smith, which was why Sara chose to call her husband by variants of his last name.
They had no garage, so they would be basically sitting ducks if more than one or two of those “cut men” shambled by. The back trunk space of their Honda CR-V was meticulously packed. Isherwood had snuck out into the relative safety of the darkness the night before to prepare for their forced evacuation. He cursed himself for waiting so long to upgrade the family vehicle. They were forced to leave some of their canned goods and other supplies behind due to limited space. Isherwood had not yet fully accepted the change that had come over the world. He still refused to steal a vehicle, though he was quickly warming to the idea.
“It’s okay, Smith.” Sara had insisted. “The smaller vehicle will help on gas.” His wife had been mostly serene throughout the whole unfolding of chaos. He had been subconsciously leaning on her steadfastness. That’s where he’d found his courage these past several days.
Isherwood knew that his wife was bottling up, if only for her husband’s sanity, her worries about her own family, with the exception of her aunt and uncle who lived across the street. She was still checking her phone for a message from her mom or dad or one of her brothers and sisters. The phone had likely stopped working days ago, but she still held out hope that a blip of electricity could restore the networks just long enough for a text message to be delivered to her. The last she heard, they were all heading to their camp at Whiskey Bay. Whiskey Bay was located in the Atchafalaya River Basin, which was mostly lakes and swamp. Though off the grid, it was right along Interstate 10. The camp was midway between Lafayette and Baton Rouge. The interstate through there, Isherwood believed, was likely packed with cars, as that section of the interstate was nearly all bridges for twenty or thirty miles. The Whiskey Bay exit ramp had likely become a primary artery of zombies leaving the raised roadway. Nevertheless, if the zombies weren’t spilling over the sides of the interstate into the swamp twenty-five feet below, Sara’s family might have found refuge on the island portion of Whiskey Bay. The “Island,” as they called it, was bound on either side by the Atchafalaya River and the man-made Pilot Channel until the point where they re-converged. There were no exit ramps leading from the interstate onto the Island.
But Isherwood stuffed all this to the back of his mind, as they were in no state whatsoever to make the long trip to Whiskey Bay. That would have to wait until they established some kind of long-term shelter right here in St. Maryville.
They had attempted to shelter in place on Delaware Avenue, as Isherwood’s grandmother and aunt, as well as Sara’s aunt and uncle, all lived right across the street. Instead of bugging out imm
ediately when the tide had turned irrevocably in favor of “the cut men,” they had bugged in.
Their collective supplies had been sufficient for this first week, but were quickly dwindling. They were not serious preppers, but they had enjoyed watching the reality shows. They had half-heartedly incorporated some strategies, but all those had been subsumed into their attempts at homesteading. And now, their backyard chickens and ducks were nothing but a zombie swarm magnet. Isherwood had been forced to release most of the animals. He had bitterly regretted getting rid of their food source, but Sara had had an alternate plan.
*****
Several days earlier …
“I can’t believe that crappy pallet fence I built is holding up.”
“Smith, look!” Sara was nudging her husband hard as they attempted to peak into their own backyard through the blinds.
Shhh, Isherwood grumbled. “They’re gonna hear us. And then that sick moaning will start again.”
“Sorry!” She whispered. “I just got a little excited.” They were kneeling down in the back room of their house, which had only days before served as the nursery. They were watching the ongoing struggle between the zombies and their chickens. Their chicken pen had been slowly attracting a lot of undesired notice. “Look down at the bottom, towards the ground. You see Henny’s little head?”
“Man, my eyes suck. I can’t hardly – wait. Is she? What’s she doing?”
“She’s nibbling on him!”
“She’s what?”
“That little boy zombie with the shorts – Henny’s pecking at his legs.”
“Good God, they’ll eat anything.” As Isherwood’s eyes focused, he could just make out twin patches of missing flesh on the boy’s uncovered legs. Being just a little taller than the pallets, there was no risk that the boy would tumble over head first into their small chicken yard. It was the taller zombies – there were just a couple, thankfully – that could be trouble.
“Do you get what this could mean?” Sara was nudging her husband’s arm again.
“Yeah, chicken zombies!” Isherwood whispered back in irritation.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” She smiled mischievously. “It might mean we get to kill two birds with one stone … and dine on fat birds.”
“Always with the extended idioms. What’re you talking about? All I see is yet another way we’re losing the chickens.”
“Just you wait. I’m gonna use Honey’s old cage. It’s not like we have any use for it anymore.” Honey had been their backyard guard dog. She had always been a little too friendly for her duties, but she had kept intruders out well enough. That was until zombies started showing up. Her incessant barking was drawing in a frightening amount of zombies. Even still, Isherwood had hesitated to kill her, and was preparing to bring her inside over Sara’s sharp admonitions. A sharp yelp from the old dog, and Isherwood knew the argument was over. The zombies had ploughed through their somewhat rickety garden gate to get to the dog. The dog had been swarmed, and the zombies had had free reign of the yard ever since.
“Use Honey’s cage? For what?” Isherwood asked, though his whispers were hardly carrying the distance to his wife anymore.
“You’ll see.” Sara smiled and winked after he had caught up with her. “We’re gonna draw those suckers away from our house and keep the chickens fed.”
“You’re gonna get my chickens killed, that’s what’s gonna happen.”
“Well,” Sara paused, thinking. “You’ll probably hafta be our guinea pig, taste-testing the eggs in case they turn us all into zombies.”
“What! What are you talking about?”
“Here, Ish, go kill those things out there, will ya?” Sara said, handing her husband a pillow. Their supplies of pillows were quickly dwindling. Isherwood had been stockpiling 9mm ammunition for a year or more, but he had never thought to buy a silencer for his pistol. “I’ll cover you with the bow from the window.”
Isherwood was just standing there stubbornly. “Look,” Sara said, “you need to go kill those things anyway, don’t you? I’ll explain everything when you get back. We’ll get Henny and Penny and the rest in the cage when you get back.
Isherwood, despite having been a seat warmer at a desk job his entire adult life, had grown adept at killing zombies with surprising speed. A mixture of hunting with his in-laws and a consistent diet of zombie movies, comics, and books had probably helped. He was also smart. He had graduated as a chemical engineer, but had switched from one field of engineering to another a couple times. Generally, though, his employers had kept behind a desk optimizing their operations. “Optimizing, always optimizing,” as his wife was often heard grumbling to herself.
Isherwood moved quickly through his back yard, scanning along sight lines and keeping tight against cover. Though he would never admit it, he was just doing his best impression of television agents and operatives. But it worked.
Sara watched as her husband approached the first zombie. This weirdo’s just staring at my shed, she thought, as she watched the zombie just wobble back and forth nowhere near the chickens.
Isherwood quickly pushed the plaid pillow, which had so long adorned their couch, and his 9mm against the back of the creature’s head. He fired a single, muffled shot. After working so hard to stockpile the ammunition, he hated wasting shots. The zombies’ skulls had not yet softened with rot. An ill-aimed knife plunge would still glance right off the skull, slicing off an ear or scalping the already ugly things.
Nevertheless, Isherwood avoided the double-tap that had been advised in the movies. When he would finish clearing out the backyard, he would just do a once-over with a sledge hammer. One good thrust down, as with a post-hole digger or a broad sword, was usually enough to flatten the skull.
Soon enough, he had made his way past the compost bins and was taking care of business around the perimeter of the chicken coop. There were four all together, not counting Sara’s “weirdo” staring at the shed. But that was not at all. Isherwood heard the crunch of grass behind him. He knew with a sickening feeling in his gut that he was too late. He turned in time to see the zombie’s wide open and drooling mouth come lunging toward him. Their spines had a way of arching backward like a viper and snapping forward just before the first bite.
Before he could even raise his arm in an instinctual move of protection, Isherwood felt the spray of half-coagulated blood splatter across his face. The zombie’s head and torso seized up mid-lunge as his wife’s arrow sliced straight through its skull. The broadhead of the arrow lodged into a cypress tree across the chicken yard with a thunk!
Isherwood spat out the black sludge that had splashed into his open mouth. “Ugh! Feels like cheese curds.” Luckily, the yard was now free of zombies, as Isherwood was all consumed with disgust.
“What?” He whispered back in the direction of the house.
“No kissing me tonight, Smithy.” His wife called back a little louder.
“Nice shot, hun.” He called back. Moments later, his wife came trudging through the back yard struggling to carry their dead dog’s oversized and unwieldy kennel.
“Help me load ‘em up in here.” She instructed her husband. “Come on. Just trust me.”
When she noticed that her husband had finally relented in helping her with her half-explained plan for the chickens, she slipped over to the cypress tree to reclaim her arrow. She was equally miserly with her arrows as Isherwood was with his bullets. She wiggled it back and forth, careful not to apply too much pressure to where the shaft met the spine.
After returning the arrow to her quiver, she retrieved Penny from her perch atop the neighbor’s fence. There was a brief thrashing of wings and clucking as she spooked the chicken, but Sara tucked the bird under her arm and it quickly quieted.
“Okay, now what?” Isherwood asked after stuffing Penny into the cage.
“Now, I need you to carry that cage out across the street – I’ll cover you from the porch. Put it near a puddle or in a ditch, so they’ll ha
ve access to water. Food’s not gonna be an issue.”
“How ‘bout the front yard of the Braud sisters’ house?” Isherwood smiled vengefully. He had long hated the sight of the blighted property at the end of their street. He had admitted to Sara that demolishing that old rat trap was top on his post-apocalypse bucket list.
“That’s fine. Better there than in the road in case we want to use bungee sticks at some point.”
“Use what? You mean punji sticks?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. ‘Punji.’” She smiled sheepishly.
“Suuure, you did.”
They returned smiles at each other. Sara more so, because she knew she had Isherwood in the right frame of mind now to carry out her idea. She knew he could do pretty much whatever he wanted – or whatever she wanted – if she could just get him to stumble into the right mood.
“You know,” he nodded, approvingly. “This might just work. The cage is good because they can peck out of it, but the zombies won’t be able to get their whole hands in. Just so long as the weight of all those bodies doesn’t collapse the cage.”
They found a new source of entertainment that afternoon watching the scattered zombies on their street stagger over to the noisy cage of chickens. The zombies congregated there, cleaning up their end of Delaware Avenue. It also made it easy for Isherwood to move around the perimeter, picking off the zombies one by one, as they groped, utterly entranced, at the cage.
“It works so well – I don’t even think we need the bungee sticks,” Isherwood said, nudging his wife with a sly smile.
*****
But that had all happened in the first couple days of the crisis, while the zombies were all still, for the most part, locals. There hadn’t been many locals.
In the meantime, the dreams had started. Isherwood couldn’t tell by the light of day what were his ideas and what were flashes of his dreams. It didn’t matter, though. A plan had formed.
