Will To Live (Book 1): The Dead Next Door

by Smith, T. W.

  The water was brimming with the creatures now, the quiet cove like a popular resort filled with vacationers on holiday—though the exclamations mingled with the splashing were not happy ones; they were wild, desperate—seeking peace they would never find, longing for the inconceivable.

  For them, at least.

  The occupants on the shore were dwindling, and only a handful still trickled in from the woods. Those too were lured into the water, in pursuit of the man that floated on it like a carrot on a string, or a leprechaun at the rainbow’s end.

  That’s right. Sink motherfuckers—every last one of you.

  The heads and hands of those deepest were soon gone, snuffed in one final splash or gulp. The roar of the crowd was dissipating.

  Will paddled farther out, but kept the boat turned so he could continue watching. He wanted to witness it all, allow himself the pleasure of seeing them go under now by the dozens. He was relaxing for the first time in hours.

  Where will they go? Will they wander the bottom of the lake, moving steadily in the same direction until they come upon land again?

  Hadn’t he asked himself this question before?

  He didn’t care.

  When the last one vanished, Will had drifted far enough out that he could no longer decipher details. The submerging shape was soundless—there for a brief moment, and then gone. He paddled even farther out, and once he was where the water was very deep, he removed all of his clothing and rolled out of the boat. He knew how to swim but held onto the canoe for leverage and to keep it from drifting away. The water was cold, exhilarating, and he used his free had to scrub away any remnants of the grenade blast.

  Getting back into the boat was difficult, and he was relieved that he had left the duffel on shore. After capsizing twice—clothing, shoes, and both guns lost overboard—he managed to get in the canoe and keep it upright, retrieving both of the floating oars. His clothing was still floating as well, but everything else was gone.

  He didn’t care.

  He drifted a good half hour before beginning the trek back, allowing the sun and wind to dry his naked body. He’d cast his clothes away permanently, knowing he’d never wear them again. Nothing would ever remove those stains, and reminders of this day were unwanted.

  As he paddled to the shore he pondered how deep they were and if they could see his boat moving up above them. Somewhere down there marched an army of the dead. Were they looking up, reaching for him?

  On shore, the silence was welcome, yet surreal. Less than an hour ago this place had been filled with movement and sound and now it was hauntingly still. Will pulled the canoe back over to the tall grass, tiptoeing on the rocky beach. He opened the duffel and divided its contents until he was pleased with the weight distribution, leaving the remaining guns and ammo in the boat. He would return later that afternoon for them.

  Before opening the gate, he turned one last time and looked out at the lake. He saw the same picturesque landscape he’d been seeing for months on his daily routine—the cove, the beach, the dock, the water—nothing out of the ordinary.

  But they were somewhere out there—out there in that vast, cold and dark water. What if they had seen his boat return and were following him back in? If he stood there a while longer would he begin seeing their heads emerge as they crept back on shore?

  He did not wait around to find out.

  Spiderhouse

  He left at sunup because he anticipated a long day. Truth be told, he no longer took anything for granted, and it was always better for the sun to be up where you could at least see them. He’d had enough of running in the dark.

  If things went well, this would be his last trip through Lakeland on foot. He’d taken a day off before venturing out yet again, using the time to recuperate and finalize the details. The neighborhood was playing out like a large scale—his house on the backside, the Oberon’s on the front. The last big draw had been in his territory. Now it was time to reverse the weight and bring home the bacon.

  Only four targeted houses away from his final destination, Will stopped in the side yard of a house that had belonged to the Miller’s—according to the mailbox—setting the gas can down.

  He had raided the house weeks earlier—all evidence having suggested the owners had left early on, most food and other essentials gone. He had yielded very little.

  The established protocol now, when looting a home, was always making sure to secure the house upon completion—just in case he ever needed emergency lodging. This would ensure no surprise inhabitants upon entering should he need to get off the street fast.

  He removed a key from his pocket, the string tab attached read: Miller’s Side Kitchen Exterior.

  As he was slipping the key into the lock, a zombie waddled around the corner from the backyard. It was male—a sinister sneer spreading its lips at the sight of prey, moldering clothing swinging loosely from bony limbs as it stumbled faster toward him. Will left the key in the lock, stepped toward it, and plunged his screwdriver in its eye. It crumbled and he stepped back to avoid contact when it fell.

  He was surprised at how accustomed he had grown to this act, especially piercing the eye sockets—something he would have never imagined having seen in the old world, much less committing the act. But the goal was to drop them fast, and the eye was the simplest and most effective target—with just enough force to break the barrier between the socket and the brain, the result was immediate. He had begun to think of it as a shortcut—using a screwdriver lengthy enough to avoid snapping teeth—one quick jab and it was over. In most cases, the rear interior of the skull kept the screwdriver from exiting. But if he did manage to stab all the way through a zombie’s head—like this one—it was incapacitated and falling before your hand was near its mouth.

  Will glanced around the corner to make sure no more were coming and returned to the door, turning the key and entering the kitchen.

  Everything was as he remembered. He crossed through the breakfast nook and down a hallway, finding a dining room with a ground level window facing the street. He unlocked and raised the window as high as he could. The container held a couple of gallons of gas and Will splashed some on the carpet, table, and curtains.

  A little insurance never hurts.

  He returned outside, not bothering to close the door. From the front corner of the house he observed the street: empty—not surprising, considering the high levels of activity on his side of the neighborhood following the grenade blast two days ago. For close to forty-eight hours, from his window vantage he’d seen new groupings of the creatures collecting at the adjacent intersection, and in the street near Hank and Betsy’s mostly obliterated driveway. Nervously, he’d been watching the crowd, just waiting for one to approach his fence and commence the decline of his tiny empire. But it was not in the cards.

  Not yet, anyway.

  He was thankful for the woods and water surrounding his home, offering a natural border of sorts, and there was the fence too, dissuading any occasional stragglers. But he was indebted to Brian most of all, for teaching him how to make the house look unoccupied—that, and his own measures to ensure silence with himself and the dogs.

  They’ll still discover where you live, Will. It’s inevitable. As their numbers grow, so does the inherent risk.

  No question—he was certain of it. And he was doing everything he could to be long gone when it happened.

  He jogged over to the house next door and placed the gas can behind a large Oak tree.

  He returned, slipping his backpack off and removing a small hard object from an interior pocket. Will held the grenade for a moment, letting his thumb trace the miniature waffle iron-like ridges on its surface.

  Hard to believe a device the size and shape of a lemon could do so much damage.

  He pulled the key, tossed it through the open window into the Miller’s dining room, and ran.

  He didn’t have to wait long for the explosion. He rounded the tree, crouched, and had just eno
ugh time to look up. The glass and framework of the window—along with much of the surrounding siding—blew outward with a roar. Will felt his hair lift from his brow and—even though his distance was far safer than it had been in Hank’s driveway days ago—he checked for singeing. Debris shot out as far and past the tree that shielded him, and smoke and flames were already billowing inside. What, moments ago, was a perfectly normal house, now had a giant flaming mouth.

  One down.

  He gathered his belongings and crossed the neighboring yard until he reached the following house—the last one before the isolated cul-de-sac of the Spiderhouse and its extension to the Oberon’s. There was a Toyota Tundra in this driveway and he sat on the far side of it, waiting to see what kind of activity he had stirred.

  He had skipped the house between because he had never been inside it. Whatever treasures it held would remain undiscovered by him. But the house whose truck tire he now leaned against had belonged to Roger Espinoza, and Will had been inside it.

  And he had a key.

  The day after his weapon’s run at Hank and Betsy’s Will was utterly exhausted. Whether from adrenal fatigue, running through the woods with a bag of heavy artillery, or rowing away from monsters, he wasn’t sure—likely a combination of all—but his body was so stiff and sore that he could hardly move, thus preventing him from doing pretty much of anything for the next two days.

  He did take inventory of his spoils though. He now had two pistols (including Hank’s Diamondback), three shotguns, one rifle, two Uzi-type guns, and what he believed to be an AK47 with a bayonet. There were three boxes of shotgun shells; some really long bullets for the rifle, clips for one pistol and individual bullets for the other. There were several clips for both machine guns and a few extra that would have probably fit the gun now resting at the bottom of Lake Lanier.

  He had obsessed a bit about losing those guns in the lake—especially his original pistol and beloved silencer—and whether or not he should have just left them on shore with the others. But there was nothing he could do now—best to move on and he knew it: Old dog, new tricks.

  While he recuperated, he busied himself with plans for loading the boat at the Oberon house and what to take. He had the skeleton of an inventory in his head but there had been so much—too much to believe really—and he had to pare it down to essentials that he could fit on the boat and transport safely back to the camper. Danger was increasingly prominent in these raids—his return to Hank and Betsy’s a perfect example—and factoring in the growing numbers of the dead with a pillage of this magnitude, so far away from sanctuary…

  There was a lot to consider.

  The generator and the boat motor would lure as well, generating loud, continuous sound, in addition to the decoys he was implementing—the combination hopefully drawing as many zombies possible to that side of the neighborhood while he finished up at home.

  Tip the scales, baby.

  He’d witnessed the effect of Ruth and Nate’s house burning and how many of those things it had attracted. But he’d also seen the remains of another house fire on the front half of the subdivision. He was uncertain whether that fire had affected his side at all, not even sure when it had occurred. He needed impact of a grander scale. So, he decided that he would burn not one, but several houses—and blow up a few with grenades for good measure.

  If that didn’t draw attention, he didn’t know what would.

  Behind the truck, he watched the dead begin to gather at the Miller house. The flames had spread wide and were crackling loud now, consuming. Zombies came from all directions, drawn in by the explosion, sustained by the fire and its hypnotizing effects. The sight, sound, and perhaps even the heat worked on them like a giant bug zapper. The process reminded Will of a tent revival—the dead approaching reverently, as if any minute they might hold hands and sing. All shapes, sizes, and degrees were coming to worship the holy fire. Those filled with the spirit would sometimes get too close.

  Zap!

  Will had to drop three that were approaching from his direction, but the noise from the burning house concealed this. He was in the nexus of activity and needed to keep moving. He grabbed his gear and ran around back of the Espinoza house.

  Two more were emerging from the woods there. He reached for his pistol but refrained, again grieving the loss of his silencer.

  Quick and quiet takes the prize.

  He dispatched both with the screwdriver.

  When certain he was alone, he stepped around a weedy planter and onto the hard surface at the rear of the home. He reached into his pocket and removed another key: Espinoza’s Patio French. He inserted it, turned, and entered the windowed, double doors.

  Unlike the Miller’s, the Espinoza’s had not escaped Lakeland. Will had seen evidence of a struggle his first visit here—darkened bloodstains streaked the walls of the entry hall and the carpeted stairs. Roger was there and he had eaten one of his two small children (Will didn’t know their names). He’d found the remains in a second level bathroom. Mrs. Espinoza was gone, and he had shot Roger and the remaining child. Their bodies were now in the basement.

  He had no intention of revisiting either of these places as his business was on the main floor. He crossed to the front of the house, finding a den—modern furniture, expensive lamps, and built-in bookcases. He stood in front of the window, seeing movement outside through the mostly closed blinds. The dead continued their trek toward the Miller’s, indistinguishable shapes and sizes moving from right to left across the panes.

  Too crowded.

  He crossed back to the rear of the house and quietly opened a window above the kitchen sink. After splashing gas on the counters and curtains, he returned to the patio door.

  There was a shape on the other side.

  Fuck this.

  He drew his pistol, opened the door, and aimed. It was the woman from his intersection, still clutching the Live Baby! doll. She was skeletal, her moldering skin shrink-wrapping her face, cheekbones near bursting through the paper-like texture, sunken eyes black and cloudy. She held the doll to her chest and groped for Will with her free hand, mouth stretching, lips receding, teeth appearing to grow.

  He shot her in the center of her head. Where there once was a nose, suddenly appeared a black crater, and through it Will saw dark greenish chunks blowing out the back. She collapsed on the patio and the baby rolled from her grip. Its batteries had long gone, and there was no more movement, but still it issued one last—

  “Mama!”

  There was nothing in the backyard large enough to shield him from the blast—only a small, birdbath fountain surrounded by Knockout Roses. He went left to the bordering woods where he set the gas container down and removed a second grenade from his backpack.

  This time, after he tossed the grenade through the window, he heard it hit the hard surface of the floor and roll as he launched himself back into the woods. There, he crouched and waited, watching the steady flow of zombies crossing the Espinoza’s front yard toward the enormous blaze two houses down.

  Nothing happened.

  When he was a kid, he and his friends had called firecrackers that didn’t work duds. Their reasoning for this phenomenon was always either age or moisture. He never touched one of these duds once the fuse had burned down, fearing he would lose a finger in a latent blow.

  How old were Hank’s grenades?

  What kind of person collects explosives anyway?

  Never mind.

  Two stragglers were creeping into the backyard—both women. Whether coincidental or they’d heard the pistol shot, he did not know, but he dispatched them quickly.

  He grabbed another grenade and waited a good three minutes before he approached the window again. He had a Bic lighter in his pocket—having accumulated several from his raids—and considered just igniting the curtain. But it was the sound of the explosion he wanted, the sound that would carry, reaching those far away. He was convinced that the one-two, bang and burn combination wou
ld be the most effective in gathering and keeping them, temporarily at least.

  He pulled the key and threw.

  This one blew before he made it six full steps away. He felt the wind and heat blast at his back as he ran—and then another explosion, immediate, propelling him forward and down, face-first into the Espinoza’s overgrown lawn.

  Guess it wasn’t a dud after all. Just needed some ignition.

  Maybe you have it backwards—maybe the first one was really late, and the second right on time.

  Doesn’t matter now.

  He stood and saw that the house was immolating—plumes of smoke and bright orange flame billowing from a jagged wedge in the back, removed like a slice of cake. From this vantage he had a narrow glimpse of the street to his right, and he could see the tide branching, several now drifting steadily toward the Espinoza’s. As the noise of the blast subsided, he could hear their moans.

  Will did not watch for long. He dropped low and scurried back into the woods. There he would venture under cover of the trees, all the way until he was across the street from his third target: The Spiderhouse.

  His second trip to the Oberon household was nowhere near as stressful as the gun run. He had gone back down to the lake and used the canoe. No signs of the beach party days before, though he stared at the water for quite some time.

  He slipped the canoe in and rowed all the way back to the Oberon’s dock, diverting only once to dispatch a pesky thing that was tailing him through the woods—rowing inland until it dropped off a small cliff and disappeared in the water.

  Preparing The Esmerelda would take more than one day, so he had left the dogs enough food for overnight. He would sleep in one of the unoccupied rooms.