“Oh, hey, Robert,” she said.
“Hey--” his throat was dry and his voice cut out. He coughed and tried again. “Hey, Shelly.”
“Forget something?”
“Yeah, I think I left my batting gloves in the dugout.”
“Oh, okay.”
She turned away and continued to stretch and Robert lingered, hoping she might say something else to extend the conversation. When she didn’t, he began to feel stupid, like this was a terrible idea and she wasn’t interested in him anyway. And as much as he wanted to turn and run, his legs were frozen in place.
He nearly left his feet when she finally did speak.
“So… you gonna get ‘em, or do you wanna stretch a bit?”
“Oh,” his voice trembled. “Ha ha, no thanks. You’re probably way too flexible for me.”
He realized the alternative context of his comment only too late. Shelly’s eyes widened and her lips tucked inward in an obvious attempt to hold back laughter. Robert’s face filled with intense heat as the nerves in his stomach grew into embarrassment.
“Anyway, um… yeah,” he stammered. “I’m going to go grab… uh, get, my gloves.”
He legs fully functional again, he hurried past her and toward the dugout. He didn’t turn around but he could feel her stare at him as he walked away.
As he entered the dugout and looked along the bench, he could see her from the corner of his eye. She was now stretching her back. Her arms reached over her head and her shirt now lifted to expose her stomach. It was strong and flat with sculpted muscles, and Robert paused in admiration. He imagined what she might look like without her shirt; perhaps in a bathing suit. She was unquestionably the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
“Find your gloves?” she called out.
He flinched and almost fell over as her voice tore him away from his fantasy. He pulled his head down again and pretended to scan the ground under the bench.
“Yep,” he shouted back. “I got ‘em.”
He zipped his bat bag vigorously and made it sound like he was putting away the gloves even though he already had them. Then he walked out of the dugout. By now, Shelly was done stretching. She was on her feet and getting ready to leave.
“Okay,” Robert said. “I guess I’ll see you at the next game?”
Shelly tucked her glove under her arm and stared at him questioningly.
“Robert?”
“Uh… yes?”
“Did you only come back for your batting gloves?”
His heart started to beat furiously.
“Yes,” he said. His voice shook and her eyes narrowed as if she were boring into his soul, trying to uncover his secret.
“Really?”
He looked away, unsure what else to tell her.
“There’s no other reason you came back here?” she pressed.
She was onto him. He knew it and let out a long sigh.
“Shelly…”
“Yes?” she replied quickly and with unexpected enthusiasm.
Robert stared at the ground and kicked his cleat through the dirt and weeds. He shoved his hands deep and stiffly into his pockets and tightened his shoulders. His face was hot and red, not from having played baseball for the past two hours, but from anxiety. Shelly was the most beautiful creature he had ever known and he was about to do what no boy had yet possessed the courage to do.
His eyes still toward the ground, he asked, “Would you like to go out sometime? Like… to a movie or something?”
Shelly opened her mouth to respond but he cut her off.
“And if not, that’s okay. I like movies and… I just kinda thought that uh… maybe you do too and that… maybe you might want to see one with me sometime. But if not, that’s cool. I can go by myself or ask one of the other guys.”
He wanted to run his head into a wall. Or punch himself in the face. Repeatedly. The words that came out of his mouth sounded anything but confident. If only Timmy or Glen were here and could have whispered some advice on how to talk to a girl.
He was immediately aware of the irony of summoning the assistance of her brothers and felt hopeless.
“Yes,” Shelly said.
Robert’s heart beat even faster. Wait… what?
“Yes?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He laughed nervously. Her response was unexpected.
“Okay, great! Ha! Okay… then, I’ll give you a call. Maybe we can see something this weekend?”
“That would be fun.”
“Great!” Robert said again. The fire inside that was once red-hot nerves was now exhilaration. He took a few deep, relief-filled breaths. He had just asked Shelly Smith out on a date. Successfully.
“Robert?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
His face twisted slightly in confusion. “For what?” he asked.
“For finally asking me.”
He smiled. It occurred to him only then that she had likely harbored similar feelings for him for some time now.
“Of course,” he said.
Together they walked off the field and headed home.
***
The front cover of the book featured many simple and colorful drawings of people, flowers and horses. Swirls and scribbles ran around the border and Shelly surmised it was a personal diary that had belonged to a young girl. She felt guilty about the idea of reading the intimate thoughts of another person and almost put down the book, but then wondered if it had been left behind for a reason. Did the previous owner intend for the book to be found? And read?
Shelly opened the book again and skimmed over the words. She didn’t read them but only gleaned enough to see there wasn’t anything intimately private. After letting the pages flip through her fingers over several final moments of hesitation, she decided if the information became too personal, she would abandon the idea altogether. Alternatively, if the information lent any insight into what happened at the hut, or on the mountain, it might provide her with a deeper understanding of what she was dealing with.
The margins were filled with more drawings and notations most commonly found in text message conversations: “OMG,” “BFF,” “ROFLOL…” The writer bemoaned the lack of the Internet and the inability to communicate with friends back home. But she also expressed how excited she was about the opportunity to climb the tallest mountain in the northeastern part of the country. The idea of it had seemed “so cool,” according to the writer.
Shelly thumbed through a bit further and saw the handwriting had changed. There had been two authors as the new scribe noted the diary had “barely been written in, so from this page on it’s my journal.” In the new script, there was also a note that indicated a man, Roy, had found the book somewhere in the hut and had given it to the new author.
Shelly knew Roy. He was the owner of the camp store at the base of the mountain. Roy had been part of the team in charge of cleaning up the mess left behind by the dead, but there had been concern among Shelly’s group over the extent of his loyalty. Roy’s role in the process was critical: alert the others at the earliest sign of an outbreak. For some reason, that alert never came and only after several unsuccessful attempts to contact Roy about unrelated matters did someone decide to check on the store owner.
When the gate to the campground was found closed with several of the campsites seemingly occupied, a call was placed to the man in charge: Robert’s father, James. Without knowing if in fact an outbreak had occurred, or how long ago, James organized a small team quickly and split up into smaller groups at each of the mountain’s trailheads. From there, each group ascended the mountain and reported on their findings. It wasn’t long until one of the groups discovered the dead roaming about.
James then called for more help. His son, Robert, was designated first in charge after himself. Shelly, Robert’s long-time girlfriend, had been made part of the team long ago and naturally was selected to participate in the task of ‘outbreak containment,�
� as James called it. Others joined as well, all of them fathers and their first-born sons.
Shelly read a few more pages of the journal. Her skin began to crawl as the new writer lamented about the number of zombies that surrounded the hut.
Hundreds. Maybe even thousands.
Shelly looked out and tried to imagine what that might have looked like, what the author witnessed. An image of Woodstock materialized in her head, except instead of thousands of happy, energetic music fans, she saw dead people wandering about without a purpose. She shuddered at the thought of staring into all those gray, soulless, hungry faces. Her stomach began to turn and she looked away from the scene in her head.
The writer also expressed feelings of despair and isolation. The words emphasized the notion of being detached from the rest of the world. The person had been alone for quite some time, it seemed, and Shelly empathized with the writer’s feelings of being trapped and disconnected, and of sadness. And although the words were almost too painful to read, Shelly continued.
The writer mentioned another man: Charlie. This man had accompanied the writer for much of their journey. He had been very important to this person, and it was then that Shelly assumed the writer was female. She mentioned having “loved” Charlie, and how it was important to him that she make it off the mountain alive. And while the author had not been specific, Shelly assumed Charlie had been attacked and killed by one of the dead. With any luck, Shelly thought, whoever was around when Charlie died was able to make sure he did not come back as one of the monsters.
After noting the dates on some of the journal entries, which were as recent as a couple days ago, Shelly determined the woman who had been at the hut when she and Robert arrived was the second author of the journal. She specifically recalled the woman mentioning something about keeping a promise she had made, and Shelly concluded that promise was made to this man, Charlie.
A tear escaped from one eye and she hastily wiped it away. The woman from the journal clearly loved Charlie. Shelly remembered sharing similar feelings with a man who was once charming, loving, and selfless. A few more tears fell and she longed to have that man in her life again.
Chapter 6
The savagery of the attack on Charlie still haunted Grace. The image of Rose’s teeth buried in Charlie’s flesh still felt surreal, as if it happened in some alternative existence, but Charlie was no longer here.
Rose was a friend who had succumbed in battle with a horde of the dead. Her resurrection led her on a quest, like every zombie, to find human flesh, and her final victim had been Charlie. But unlike Rose’s death, Grace knew Charlie’s had been certain. She made sure of it—Grace had been the one to put him down before he turned into one of them.
She remembered how it felt when the tip of the ice axe broke through his skull, and the sharp metal spike drove through bone and brain matter. There had been so much blood...
Tears boiled in her eyes as she recalled Charlie's final moments; his last words, the promise she made to him, holding him as his life slipped away, and then ensuring no possibility of his reanimation. The fact that it was Charlie’s strength that willed Grace to do what she did had been the cruelest trick love ever played.
Now was her opportunity to escape with her life: her chance to do exactly as Charlie had wished. And for as much as Grace wanted to leave this place and never return, every step she took meant one step farther away from him, from the last place she was with him when he was alive.
Sometimes the distance that separated her from what happened made it feel less real, and that was good. Other times she would realize how isolated and lost she was without him. Those were the times she would scream inside. The times she would give anything for a weapon that would end her life quickly.
Grace let her hand slide lazily off the birch tree and she moved over to the edge of the trail and peered over the cliff. Staring down at the moss-and-granite floor a few hundred feet below, she thought, I could do it right now. I could end it all. I wouldn't feel a thing.
"I'm still here because of you," she said, quietly staring at the bottom. A tear bubbled over her eyelid and she watched it fall as far as she could. It glimmered a few seconds in the newborn sun and then vanished.
When the thoughts of suicide finally faded away, Grace limped back onto the trail. She had been on the path over an hour and her stomach began to bark hungry commands. Her head felt light and her midsection ached from a lack of nourishment. She hadn’t eaten much the last few days.
The mountain boasted a variety of plants and vegetation, much of which produced berries of all kinds, but Grace was not an expert on eating wild plants. Doing so posed a risk of poisoning, but it was a risk she might soon have to take. Grace’s second option was to starve herself and hope for the best.
The third alternative involved a fate much worse than death, but Grace tried not to think about that.
Chapter 7
Seven Years Ago…
“Is this your idea of a joke?” Shelly insisted. “Because it’s not funny.”
Robert stood across from her as Shelly sat on the edge of her bed, repeating his words in her head. Her parents were downstairs, unaware of the conversation happening a few feet above their heads.
“I know, it sounds crazy,” Robert said. “but I’m serious.” His face was pale and his hands shook. If it was an act, it was a good one.
“He just told you this now?” Shelly asked, referring to a story Robert’s father had related to him some time before he arrived at her house.
“Well, a few weeks ago,” he said.
She stood up and began to pace and click her fingernails anxiously. A few minutes before, Robert had shared the kind of thing she never expected to hear in her life. The kind of thing that gave kids nightmares.
It all sounded so absurd. She laughed shortly after he began to speak, but the more detail he provided, the more upset and uncomfortable she became. Even now as he stared at her with an unbreakable intensity and genuine fear in his face, Shelly had too much nervous energy and needed to move around.
“Okay, so wait…he actually said this to you?”
Robert sighed. “Yes, Shel. I wouldn’t lie to you, you know that.”
Shelly leaned against the armoire in her room. She unconsciously raised a hand to her mouth and bit at her fingernails, and her left foot bounced rapidly on the carpeted floor; it was all she could do not to blurt out every immediate thought that formed in her head and threatened to break through her lips.
“Please don’t do that,” he said. “I hate it when you bite your nails. It makes me nervous.”
She swung her arm in frustration. “Well, what the hell do you want me to do, Robert? How do you expect me to react?”
Robert moved toward her and held up his hands.
“Shhh: your parents are downstairs. My dad told me nobody else could know, not even you.”
“Then why would you tell me?”
He paused and looked into her eyes. “Because I love you. That’s why. And I don’t want to keep any secrets from you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Robert tried to keep his voice low. “Aw, come on, Shel. You know what this is doing to me right now? You know what it feels like to know something like this?”
She studied his face. Along with humility she also saw desperation. He had been very distant the past few weeks and this was likely the reason. He had kept this information to himself the whole time and probably didn’t know how or even if to tell her. She began to feel sorry for him when she realized he probably turned to the only person he felt he could trust. She considered this carefully before she spoke again.
“Okay, let’s think this through logically.”
Robert pressed his palm against his forehead. “Trust me, I’ve tried.”
“Well, we haven’t tried together yet so let’s do that now. Think.”
“Think of what?”
Shelly’s eyes went to the ceiling and her lips tightened with though.
“Your father can be funny, but he always lets you in on the joke at the end.”
“I know.”
“Did he say something at the end that… I don’t know… made it seem like a joke?”
“Believe me, I watched his face the whole time. He was dead serious.”
Shelly pressed her palms against the sides of her head. “Then why would he tell you something like that? It’s so out of character for your father.”
“You’re telling me.”
Shelly bit at her fingernails again. Her eyes looked past Robert’s face, at his body language, his posture…she was still trying to find the slightest hint that this was all a ruse. Robert could be funny at times, too. He could tell a good story, but this… this was unlike even him.
“Tell me again,” she said.
Robert turned away, evidently uncomfortable.
“Come on. Really?”
“I need to hear it again.”
Robert sat down on the bed and rested his head in both hands. “It’s not going to help,” he said through his fingers.
“Let me be the judge of that. I have a clearer head now.” It was a lie. Her head was no clearer than before, but she felt that by hearing Robert’s story again, some new information might be revealed the second time.
He steepled his fingers, rested his chin, and stared ahead at the wall. Then he told her again.
Robert told Shelly what his father James had told him, about the ancient Native American curse that allegedly brought dead people back to life in some kind of suspended animation, somewhere between alive and dead. He told her again that many years ago, his father’s father, Robert’s grandfather, had bestowed upon James the secret of the curse. Robert told her about how very few people were aware of this—only a few dozen—and how it was their responsibility to keep the secret hidden from the public at all costs.
“The ‘at all costs’ part is what really terrifies me,” Shelly said.
“I know.”
“Do you suppose it means…” She couldn’t bring herself to say any more, but she didn’t have to.
“Yes,” Robert said grimly. “I’m pretty sure that’s what it means.”
Dead Summit: Containment Page 3
