When Liam reached high school, sports were a distant memory. He became interested in video games and played World of Warcraft with friends on the Internet. He learned to play the guitar and joined a band with some kids at school and generally became an ‘indoor’ kid. After several rehearsals, he became close friends with the drummer, a boy named Ryan.
The pair eventually started getting together outside of band rehearsals. Neither of them played sports or were invested in school-related extracurricular activities; therefore, they bonded over their shared enjoyment of gaming and movies and became inseparable.
Chapter 15
Ryan and Liam followed Robert and Shelly from a great distance, per Robert’s instruction. Neither of them found Robert to be particularly agreeable, so they were happy to have some distance between themselves and their leader.
Both men were bound by the same obligation as the others—to protect the mountain’s secret. It hadn’t been their choice to come, but they continued on like two reluctant yet obedient soldiers.
Neither man understood why the girl was there. Shelly Smith never seemed the type to go along with such an enterprise, and yet there she was at Robert’s side, much as she had been the last ten-or-so years.
Ryan studied Liam, whose eyes appeared to be locked on the pair up ahead.
“Dude,” Ryan said. “Give it a rest. Can’t be thinking about that now.”
Liam let his gaze fall helplessly to the ground.
“I know. I just can’t believe she’s here. I mean, she’s not even a part of this.”
“Oh, she’s not? Look at who she’s with.”
“I know,” Liam said. “This just doesn’t seem like her… I don’t know… her style.”
Ryan laughed.
“You think this is anyone’s style, dude? Who goes out looking for someone to kill in the name of protecting some ridiculous secret?”
Both men had long been aware of the secret, about the generations of men before them who had passed down guardianship of the secret to their first-born sons with the expectation that the truth about the region, and specifically the mountain, would never be known to those outside the ones who protect it. Anyone who didn’t fit the criteria—daughters, second-born sons, and beyond—were kept ignorant for the purpose of keeping the secret to only a select few.
Outsiders who unknowingly found out would be terminated.
“People have been killed over far less and for even more ridiculous reasons,” Liam said.
“Fair enough,” Ryan offered. “But come on, I mean this is absurd.”
“Maybe,” Liam said, “but we’ve known about this forever. We knew this day would come.”
“Did we?” Ryan questioned.
Liam said nothing. He understood what Ryan was saying and his friend was right. Neither he nor Ryan truly expected this to happen. Ryan, Liam, Tom, Kyle, Robert, the others… they had all been told about the history of this place, but none of them ever believed in his heart that this day would come.
They didn’t expect to be here now, confused, scared and thinking about the potential (and likely) outcome.
Chapter 16
At school, Liam and Ryan would share secret gaming codes each had discovered online. Then, after school, they would meet up at Ryan’s house and play games online for hours.
Liam’s father was not pleased. His attempts to steer Liam back toward sports were futile, and he became more infuriated.
“Ryan’s dad and I think you boys should try joining a team, making some real friends,” Peter would say. “Who are these Internet friends you and Ryan play with, anyway? Have you guys ever met any of them? And what are you going to do after you graduate? You can’t make a living playing video games.”
Much to Peter’s surprise (and to his chagrin), Liam became interested in more than simply playing games; he eventually went on to become a talented video game developer. He had been part of a creative team that launched two wildly popular video games in the early 2000s.
In 2005, Liam moved to the west coast and started his own company. Teamed with a group of game developers hand-picked by himself, they published several titles that became major successes.
Although he missed Liam greatly, Ryan was highly supportive of his friend. Liam would send him games in beta form for Ryan to test for bugs, and Liam would reward him handsomely for his time. He would fly Ryan out west periodically and together they would attend celebrity parties, movie premieres, Comic-Con, and the Electronic Entertainment Expo. It was a life neither of them ever thought to be possible, but one that Liam was happy to share with his best friend.
Two years after he started his company, a well-known and respected gaming website called Liam’s company, ‘one of the top five new development studios to watch.’ A year after the article was published, Liam’s company was purchased by a large conglomerate. He made a fortune and remained with the company as a consultant.
Just when Liam thought he had finally made his father proud, Peter told him, “You really should find a real job. It’s just a matter of time before kids stop playing video games and start playing outside again.”
Liam knew better than to try to educate his father on how lucrative the gaming industry had become, or how major media outlets like Rolling Stone Magazine lavished the industry with having more creative originality than any move coming out of Hollywood.
He also never shared his finances with his father. When he made his first million dollars, Liam wanted nothing more than to show his father how well he had done for himself, to prove he was capable of great things. But Peter’s ignorance toward his son’s talents precluded any illusions of pride Liam might instill in his father. From that point on, Liam was happier to keep Peter in the dark.
He also knew it was better not to enlighten his father of the deeper reason he chose this path. When Liam was younger, gaming wasn’t merely an excuse to pass the time. It wasn’t mindless entertainment, but it wasn’t a future career yet. Gaming represented the only kind of escapism he ever had as a child, a departure from the horrific reality that was forced upon him at an early age.
One night, Peter sat down with Liam and they both watched Night of the Living Dead. It was strange because Liam normally waited until Peter had gone to bed to watch these kinds of movies, so to sit and watch one with his father was uncomfortable.
It was also the first time in his young life Liam had ever heard of a zombie.
With its black-and-white picture, eerie soundtrack, isolated environment, and strange-looking monsters, the movie scared him. And instead of downplaying it to his son as only a movie, Peter turned it into a teaching tool.
“Zombies are real, ya know,” he told Liam.
“Oh, I know,” Liam said nonchalantly, as if his father had passed it off as a joke.
Then Peter grabbed his son by his narrow shoulders.
“No,” he said, and his eyes didn’t blink as they bored into Liam. “I mean it, son. They’re real. They’re not always here, but they can come at any moment! We always have to be ready because they can hurt us. Understand?”
Liam was not sure what ‘ready’ meant at the time, and he wasn’t sure how the zombies could hurt him, but he assured his father he understood.
For years, he remained dubious of whether Peter had told him the truth, or if his father’s theatrics had been some kind of mechanism to prevent Liam from watching things he shouldn’t. When he asked his sisters about it, they had no idea what he was talking about. Their father had never spoken to them about this before. They agreed with Liam’s notion that it was only meant to scare him.
One thing Liam was sure of was his fear of the ‘dead people.’ The concept alone kept him awake many nights. When Liam was able to sleep, there was no escape from the dead then, either. The zombies would visit him in his dreams: at school, at home, on vacation… the only thing more terrifying than the dead people coming to him in his dreams was the idea that his father had not lied, and they might, in fact, be real.
Liam had been scarred the night Peter first told him about zombies. Those scars never quite healed but only hardened and sealed much of the pain that remained beneath the surface. So much of his innocence had been stolen that night and never returned, and Liam could not help but consider his father some kind of thief.
As the years went by, Peter would talk with Liam about the dead people now and again. He would ask Liam, “Are you ready?” And Liam would say, “Yes.” He still wasn’t sure what he needed to be ready for, but he knew the correct answer was always “Yes.”
When Liam was fourteen, Peter taught him a bit about self-defense and emphasized, again, how important it was to be ready to fight the zombies. Liam didn't want his dad to think he was ‘soft’ so he agreed to everything Peter asked of him, "if and when the time comes to act."
It was when Peter reminded Liam about the promise he made when he was eight years old that he decided to move back home. More specifically, it was when Peter said, “It’s what your mother would want” that Liam decided to leave the west coast.
Stricken by years of repressed and misplaced guilt over leaving behind both the memory of the mother he hardly knew and the sisters to whom he secretly sent gifts in the form of cash and other goods, Liam returned home. He didn’t tell his father of his success, and he never would; however, he was not about to pass up millions of potential gaming-industry dollars or risk letting his name disappear from the annals of gaming forever…
He left the company in the capable hands of trusted partners while he quietly collected his share without having to spend much time on the west coast. Liam hid away his millions in various accounts and Certificates of Deposit and led a modest life in New Hampshire; he owned a two-bedroom cape, drove a midsize utility vehicle, and cut his own grass. He convinced his father he had become a realtor, selling commercial properties in the surrounding cities and towns. He even had business cards created with his name and face to further conceal the truth. This appeased Peter, and he finally commended Liam on becoming a successful—and local—businessman.
Liam still offered interviews with gaming sites and publications, none of which would catch the attention of his father. He attended strategy sessions with his partners via phone in order to keep a consistent presence out west while he remained in New Hampshire. When he did have to travel, Liam would tell his father he was attending real estate conventions for networking and training purposes.
It was a great cover-up, and the only other people who knew about it were his sisters and his best friend. They promised to help him keep it a secret for as long as he wished.
It was a secret he was happy to keep, unlike the secret about the nightmare that became a reality a couple days ago.
Chapter 17
They came upon Roy, the zombie version of him, at a clearing near the lake. They stayed just inside the tree line and remained concealed by the foliage, lest they be seen by any other zombies who may have been wandering around at this time. The former camp store owner knelt down, his attention captured by whatever was on the ground. He appeared to be eating something, but Liam’s view was obstructed by Ryan standing between him and the dead man.
“This is unbelievable,” Ryan whispered.
Liam couldn’t respond. His jaw hung open and his mind couldn’t rationalize what his eyes saw. He knew this man that crouched before them. They were once friends of this man.
Liam’s and Ryan’s families spent many summer weekends at the campground. They knew Roy as well as they knew their own parents. And while Roy was often temperamental with the adults, he was a sweetheart with the kids. Often when nobody was looking, would slip free candy bars and graham crackers to Liam and Ryan when they were children.
To see him like this was devastating.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Liam said.
“What!” Ryan hissed. “No. Shh. Hold it down, he’ll hear you!”
Liam sat down and took several deep breaths. Ryan looked around nervously and rested the butt of his rifle on the ground.
“I can’t do this,” Liam said.
Ryan shook his head. “I don’t want to do this either.”
Liam looked into his friend’s eyes and saw the same fear that he felt in his bones. They were about to kill someone.
Liam wondered how the others felt about it. He wasn’t as friendly with the other guys as he was with Ryan; He and Ryan were never part of their ‘crew.’ The others were part of the ‘in-crowd’ throughout high school and had gone on to become local contractors, landscapers, and other labor-intensive forms of employment. Liam was a geek-turned-millionaire who had an imagination and could write some computer code. He didn’t belong here. He wasn’t supposed to shoot a man, dead or alive. He should have been at home, brainstorming a storyline for a new game with his cohorts, cashing his most recent royalty check, or taking an attractive woman out to dinner.
Most of his days had been filled with all of it since his graduation--save for the attractive woman. There had been a few throughout the years, for certain, but none that ever seemed to like him for his charm or his personality, only his money.
In the beginning, he was flattered by all the attention. For all his intelligence, he was still a wide-eyed, impressionable young man when he moved out west. The women were stunning. Plastic, fake… but stunning. And they were everywhere.
He met them at red carpet events, in cafes and shops only the wealthy frequented, and even in his own office. He drove a car that cost well over six figures—his first and only gift to himself—and that drew them in like a magnet.
After a while he caught on to their motives and he realized none of them had anything he desired. He eventually sold the fancy car, resolved to commute by foot and via public transportation, and stopped dating.
There had been very few women who paid him any attention before he moved to California, and only one who occupied his thoughts with any frequency.
“What do you think Shelly’s doing?” he asked.
“Dude, really?” Ryan huffed.
“Listen, I need this right now. It’s helping me take my mind off things.”
Ryan rolled his eyes, but relented. “Fine. Uh… I don’t know. She’s obviously with Robert. And they’re at the hut. If it’s empty, she’s probably just cleaning up. If they ran into a… one of those things, then Robert probably did something. I doubt she’s getting her hands that dirty.”
Liam nodded.
“I mean, you heard her back at the van,” Ryan continued. “Dude, she does not want to be here.”
“True. She seems pretty repulsed by all this, just like us.”
“Yeah.” Ryan twisted the stem of a leaf between two fingers before saying, “Besides, I bet she breaks up with that dude at the end of all this.”
Liam jerked his head toward his friend. “Really? You think so?”
Ryan smirked. “And there it is.”
“There what is?” Liam asked. He knew exactly where Ryan was going, and while he didn’t need a lecture on people he should or shouldn’t be thinking about, the conversation was helping.
“Dude, you are still into her.”
Liam’s brow furrowed and he looked away from Ryan and straight ahead. “So what?”
“It’s fine. Nothing wrong with crushing on a girl. I just don’t know what you’ve been doing all these years.”
Liam regarded his friend quizzically, as if Ryan should already know why. “She’s been with Robert this whole time. Remember?”
“Right, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to her.”
Liam stayed quiet. His friend was right. All these years had gone by and he never once tried to talk to her. When he moved to California, she was one of the few people he missed greatly, which was strange because they weren’t close friends and spoke very infrequently, but Liam always had a great fondness and attraction toward her. He would ask about her when Ryan visited, and the answer was always the same: “She’s good. Still with Robert.”
<
br /> Years later, when Liam moved back home, he would see Shelly around town, in a store, and outside of her house as he drove by on his way to run errands. She was seemingly everywhere, and often. On a few occasions, their eyes met but he still kept away. He even recalled her waving to him once, but he ignored the gesture.
The time he spent in Silicon Valley helped him grow his confidence, but only so much. Out west, he had influence and prestige; at home, he was still the same confused kid from high school trying to figure out life.
Chapter 18
High School…
Liam looked down into a red cup and swirled the rest of his warm beer. It wasn’t what he wanted to drink, but Ryan had given it to him a half hour ago. It was some kind of light beer—something cheap, no doubt—that had come from the keg in the backyard. Ryan said if they didn’t drink, people would thing they were weird.
They were at Amanda Sutcliffe’s house. Her parents were away for work and she had invited nearly the entire school for a party. Liam knew who she was, but she didn’t know him. Certainly not well enough to consider her a ‘friend,’ but Ryan had helped her with a school project and as a thank-you, she invited him and a guest.
“We are not going to fit in,” Liam had said.
“What? Relax, dude! This is going to be awesome!”
Amanda was super popular, but not overly smart. She participated in all of the school’s drama performances and played on the girls’ volleyball team. She was very attractive and ran with the popular kids; Ryan had long had an eye for her, but like Liam was around Shelly, he never talked to her much. The fact that their Biology teacher paired them up on a project had been a stroke of fortune for Ryan. That she invited him to her house was a dream come true.
“Who are we going to know?” Liam insisted, and then answered his own question. “Nobody.”
“What about all those guys you used to play hockey with?” Ryan asked. “I’m sure some of them will be there.”
Dead Summit: Containment Page 7
