Beyond Dead | Book 2 | The Day The Whole World Went Away

by Frost, Christopher

  “Ma’am, are you okay?” He was bent down now so his eyes were locked on hers. His finger hovered over the trigger of his decked out assault rifle. “Ma’am?”

  “I’m fine,” Kat said and shrugged him off. She got to her feet, looking at the other three men. All of them dressed in their black uniforms with bold white letters on the back: SWAT.

  “And the baby?”

  “We’re fine.” Kat stood up and turned baby Bowen away from the SWAT officers. She was alone here with these four men in the dark. Their uniforms may have said, POLICE, on the front but she had learned quickly that all walks of people had changed when the dead came back to life. Kat had watched from abandoned buildings as survivors hunted others with food or water, killed each other over a can of Spaghetti-O’s. It would be simply too easy to give over to trust because of the symbols they wore on their clothes.

  Kat asked, “Where are we?”

  “The Parker House Hotel,” one of the officers answered.

  “Check the perimeter,” the officer who had been speaking to her earlier ordered the other men. They each took off with their weapons readied and soon were lost to the darkness of the hotel. “I’m Fletcher.” He told her.

  “Kat,” she said.

  “Okay, Kat, nice to meet you.” It was the first time he had taken his hand off his weapon and he held it out to her. Kat hesitated for more than a moment and Fletcher was drawing his hand away when Kat shot out and shook it.

  Baby Bowen had started crying again. Kat was bouncing him and shooshing him.

  “Do you have anything to eat?” Fletcher asked her.

  Kat hesitated. Did he want her food? Had that been the reason for the rescue?

  As if he had read her mind, Fletcher said, “For the baby? Is there any food for the baby in your sack?”

  Kat looked at it. She had dropped it at some point, couldn’t remember letting it go, and nodded her head ‘yes’.

  “May I?”

  She nodded again.

  Fletcher opened the backpack and dug around. He put the backpack down empty handed.

  “Green?” Fletcher called out in a loud whisper.

  “Ya?” came back a voice.

  “We have any milk in the box?”

  “Ya, and some yogurt I think.”

  “Come with me,” Fletcher told Kat.

  Fletcher escorted Kat through the hotel lobby and into the adjacent restaurant. All the tables in the dining room were neatly set, not a fork out of place. Large ornate chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, the walls decorated in deep colored wood. Old Boston the restaurant said.

  “I had my wedding rehearsal dinner right there,” Fletcher pointed to a cluster of tables on the far side of the room, “got married in the rooftop ballroom five years back. Jack Kennedy announced his candidacy for Congress upstairs.”

  “Why aren’t you with her?”

  “Who?”

  “Your wife?” Kat asked.

  Fletcher continued on to the kitchen, Kat’s last question hung in the air unanswered. He pushed opened a door and she followed him inside. It was even darker in here, if that were possible. A light came on and flashed a beam across the kitchen. Fletcher was moving deeper into the room with the light on his weapon leading the way. Kat thought that she might say something else about his wife, apologize, yet not sure what she was apologizing for. There was the obvious, and she could only hope that was not the case. That Fletcher hadn’t had to make that awful decision between duty and family.

  “This is the ice box. There are perishables in here. When I pop the lid grab as much as you need for the baby. We have canned food and water for us so don’t get greedy. Just get the baby his food.”

  Kat nodded.

  Fletcher popped the door on the icebox and put his light on it. Kat felt a whoosh of cold air strike her face. Her hand dashed into the ice and grabbed for a carton of milk and two packs of yogurt. Fletcher closed the lid behind her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He nodded, cut the light and motioned for her to follow him out. They regrouped with the others in front of the brass doors of the elevators. She sat down with baby Bowen on her lap and began to feed him as best she could. Kat opened the yogurt and stuck her finger into the cool vanilla and ran it into Bowen’s mouth. His tiny hands clasping on her index finger and holding it to his mouth like a nipple. She smiled down at him and without thinking placed a kiss on his forehead.

  “You and your boy should get some sleep. We’ll hole up in the elevators for the night. They’ll make for a good shelter. We dragged in some sheets and blankets we found earlier.”

  Kat thought about correcting Fletcher and letting her know that baby Bowen was not her son, instead she asked, “Why not the rooms?”

  They were in a hotel after all.

  Green shook his head, “Zee’s got all the floors above the fourth floor. We retreated back here after blocking the exits and riding the elevator. The other floors were already evacuated as best we can tell, but it was too dangerous to do a sweep. We’ve got no idea how to put the Zee’s down.”

  “Zee’s?”

  “Zombies,” Green said.

  For a moment no one spoke, as though the word itself were dangerous.

  Chapter 6

  “Hey?”

  “Hey.”

  “Didn’t want to startle you,” Kat said.

  “No worries there. Boys awake?”

  “Green is, yeah. He told Rivera and Jonesey to catch a few zees,” Kat giggled thinking that letter had just taken on a whole new meaning, “Sorry, it’s not funny. I didn’t mean to…you know.”

  Fletcher had a small smirk sketched into the gloom of his handsome face. “Yeah I know. Brand new world we got growing out there.” His eyes returned to the window.

  Kat had found him in the bar just above the hotel restaurant, Parker’s. The bar was between the first and second floor. Floor one-point-five, she guessed it would be called. From where Fletcher had positioned himself he could see out onto School Street and the intersection at State Street. He would also have a vantage point to the lobby and the entire restaurant.

  When Kat had wandered out of the elevator after, what felt like hours, trying to fall asleep, she came out to find Green patrolling the lobby. He told her Rivera and Jonesey were bunking in the other elevator and she should try to get some sleep. She asked where Fletcher was and he pointed up the stairs. Green hadn’t seemed keen on the idea of chatting and had nothing more to say as he turned away and into the lobby’s darkness, continuing his patrol. Kat thought for a moment, very brief one at that, about returning to the elevator and trying to catch a few hours sleep and instead found herself already climbing the stairs to Parker’s Bar.

  “How many?” she asked.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do though.”

  Fletcher looked down at her from his perch. Kat met his steely eyes with a stern look that said she was not afraid. When in truth, she was very afraid. Afraid every second of the day.

  “Come here.”

  Kat climbed up the pyramid of tables that Fletcher had arranged so that he could lay in his nest and watch the streets through his scope.

  “Can you see them?” he asked her.

  “How is it so dark?” Kat squinted trying to see beyond the window.

  “Boston’s gone black. No power. No light. No light means Bean town is no different than any other Podunk town in New England. There’s no moon tonight so that doesn’t help things.”

  Kat’s nose crinkled as she strained to see. “I don’t know. I see something I think. Movement.”

  “That’s them. Here.”

  Fletcher moved the rifle toward Kat. He held onto it, but offered her the scope. Kat peered into the scope and saw an abundance of green bodies stumbling along School Street that had been lit with a radiant green. Looking out into the world at night, through the night vision scope, was unlike anything she had ever seen. It would have been amazing if she
were not looking at the very definition of ‘up shits creek without a paddle’.

  “Fuck,” she said.

  “Yep. Fuck.”

  The rifle was pulled away and Fletcher returned to watching out the window. Occasionally he would look up the street and down, monitoring everything or simply watching how completely imprisoned they were. Kat didn’t know which and didn’t bother to ask.

  “You should go be with your boy.”

  Kat could have corrected him. Told him the truth about baby Bowen, about herself. That she wasn’t some mother on the run from the horde of the zombie invasion and searching for shelter. In truth, she was a scared nurse from New Hampshire that had just lost one of her best friends to those fucking monsters. She was never the one that was supposed to be in charge of baby Bowen. That was Sarah’s job. Sarah was dead. For all Kat knew she was out there right now, roaming the city where she had died, as one of the undead. That thought almost brought her to tears but she sucked her lip into her mouth and dug her teeth down into it until the pain rescinded her tears. This was no time to show weakness. For the second time she said nothing when the maternity of baby Bowen could have been corrected.

  “It’s so quiet,” she whispered, “I’ll hear him if he starts to stir.”

  Fletcher said nothing.

  “How much further is the quarantine zone from here?” she asked.

  Fletcher looked at her. He flicked something on his weapon that made a click sound and laid it down beside him. He was studying her. It was the first time she felt uncomfortable with him. Cold and scared.

  “What?”

  Fletcher said, “There is no quarantine zone, Kat. It fell. Everything went to shit and the Zees overran us. They’ve spread.”

  “How far?” Her voice laced with panic.

  “Everywhere.”

  Chapter 7

  “Boston has fallen.”

  “Boston’s dead. Turn back,” Kat mumbled the phrase written on the green sign back on the highway that Sarah, baby Bowen, and she had passed when they had been trying to escape the quarantine zone. It had all felt too easy, but at the time Massachusetts was not part of the quarantine zone. Kat knew that it would spread, that was inevitable, and yet when they found the graveyard of cars on I-93 South her stomach dropped. It was her decision to try and get to safety in the bigger city forty minutes south of Nashua, New Hampshire. Massachusetts was also home to some of the best hospitals in the country, if not the world. If there was any safe zone she truly believed it would have been there. Safety in numbers.

  She could still remember the events of the Boston Bombing. How two terrorists had attacked the finish line of the Boston Marathon. As the day went on, she watched it all unfold on the hospital television. She saw the mass of agencies working together to find these terrorists. Every time a law enforcement officer ran past a camera, they were either part of the BPD, ATF, FBI, US Marshalls, and the National Guard. If the city could come together so fast to protect its citizens from that threat couldn’t they – Christ sakes wouldn’t they – do the same thing again?

  “Turn back?” Fletcher said, “Turn back to what? Kat, as far as we know this could be a global pandemic. The radios are mostly silent. There’s chatter every now and then from other survivors hiding out, small groups like us, but mostly civvies.

  “The ones you expect to save you, to pull you out of this nightmare, we’ve all fallen, Kat.”

  “You’re here!”

  “For how long, Kat? We aren’t doing anyone any good. Even if we could find survivors and the probability of that is minute. You see out that window. You know what we would have to go through. I’m sorry, Kat. We just wouldn’t make it. Not with all the ammunition in the world. Trust me, the Army already tried. Everyone has.”

  “NO! I won’t believe that. You, Green, Rivera, Jonesey, you came for us. You saved us.”

  “Only because you were already running toward us. If you had been going in any other direction we could not have saved you or ourselves. The Zees have overrun us. Here, New York, Philadelphia, and by now D.C and the rest of the East Coast. Nothing is stopping them. Nothing short of a nationwide nuclear attack on American soil.”

  “What if we –”

  “Kat?” Fletcher’s hand clasped over hers. That sorrow she had seen earlier in his eyes when she had mentioned his wife, had returned.

  Everywhere?

  That was what Fletcher had told her when she asked about the quarantine zones. They had fallen everywhere and no one had been able to stop them.

  The Zees have overrun us.

  Fletcher had also told her. That meant Boston was dead. And now she knew why he had not answered her question about his wife. He imagined her fate to be like the rest of those undead out there. There was no way to get to her, even if he believed she were still alive, still a survivor. His eyes, however, told a different story. A more realistic story of the way the world was now.

  “Go back to sleep. Hold your son and be thankful for today. That’s all we can do now. You’re lucky to have him. Not everyone can say that.”

  “Fletcher?”

  “Go to sleep.” He told her this again, while the rifle was pushed into his shoulder, and his eye gleaming through the night vision scope. Kat was about to protest his dismissal but saw that it would do no good.

  She climbed off the pyramid of tables and headed for the stairs. She paused, her back to him, and said, “Good night, Fletcher.”

  Chapter 8

  Rebel’s scream was quickly muffled by Forrest’s hand being clasped over her mouth. Her teeth came down hard into the flesh of his hand but he didn’t pull away. Her body began to shutter and her teeth clenched down a tad more. All ten of Rebel’s fingernails were dug into Forrest’s chest and dragging long red marks down his skin. Her muscles tensed, shuddered, and finally began to relax, a tremor running through her lower body here and there before she pushed his hand away and rolled off of him onto the makeshift bed they had made with extra clothes from the backpack.

  “Holy, fuck, I’m still shaking,” she giggled.

  Forrest reached over to touch her and she pushed him away.

  “Don’t,” she exclaimed, “everything’s still really sensitive.”

  “I don’t want to sound like a pussy or anything but seriously? You really hate being touched after?”

  “I’m not the cuddle type, so what?”

  “Just weird.”

  “Oh poor, Forrest,” she said batting her eyes and pitching her voice like a lady in distress, “Did I hurt your poor little feelings? My big strapping man.”

  “Knock it off.”

  “Relax. You’d think you’d be cool with just getting laid. Seriously. When did sophomore boys start wanting to cuddle after a good fuck?”

  “Jesus, Rebel.” Forrest grabbed his shirt and pulled it on while he hiked his jeans back up from his ankles and stuffed himself back inside them before tightening his belt. “I don’t even know why I bother.”

  Forrest walked away. Left her lying on the ground perched on her elbows with her eyes on his backside. He went to the dirt bike, rummaged through the pack until he found a plastic baggy, took out a joint and lit it. He took a deep inhale, held, and coughed it out.

  “Forrest?”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Come on.”

  “No, I’m done, Rebel. Fuck, really? I don’t even know why you are here.”

  “Uhm, it’s the end of the world and you have the best plan to get us the hell out of here.”

  “No, with me.”

  “Wow. You were right. You really are being a pussy.”

  “Yeah, I guess I am. But next time you need to work out your daddy-abandonment issues, find some other cock.” Forrest took another hit and wandered up the trail a bit.

  He needed a break from Rebel. Or to take a break from Rebel. It was something he had been considering for awhile. She was just…damn…she was just too much sometimes. And he got it, he did. Her father was never a
round, always working, and she blamed him for that, for never being home. At the same time she was the first to brag about the BMW he bought her on her sweet sixteen, weekend parties at her house around the in-ground pool in the summer, or the billiards room above the four car garage in the winter. Rebel was never bashful about letting everyone know that she came from money. Some of their class hated her for it and the others envied her. Every guy in school wanted a piece of her (many of them had been on their backs just like Forrest). He wasn’t stupid. That was Rebel, take her or leave her. And he took her. Why? Because in this fucked up world she was everything to him. So he held his tongue and turned a blind eye. All for the hope that one day, she would love him. And everything else, the rebellious nature that was Rebel, would eventually fade away.

  Forrest looked down at his phone. There was no service but he could still read his recent text messages.

  EM: Rebel smashed. U coming?

  FORREST: NO!

  EM: U should.

  DEKE: Bro U need 2 get here!

  EM: Dude Rebel going upstairs w JAKE PRESTON!

  FORREST: I don’t care! Fuck her!

  EM: I THNK THATS HIS PLAN!!!!!!!!

  DEKE: GET HERE 911!!!!!

  FORREST: IM DONE W HER I HOPE SHE GETS THE CLAP!!!!!!!

  The conversation continued on like that for a while. Forrest’s friends giving him the play-by-play of what his girlfriend was doing with the varsity wide receiver. He knew they were just trying to help, but getting that detailed information – Rebel on the couch with Jake Preston grinding him like a saddle – hurt more than it was helping. All his friends, even his folks, though his father knew better to say so, wanted him done with Rebel. She was trouble. A bomb with a lit fuse. It was only a matter of time before she self-destructed and would care less who she took with her.

  When the text messages stopped coming through around nine-ish, Forrest started to get worried. Deke and Emmett weren’t the only friends from school sending him texts and Snap chats. Those were the worst. The pics of her on top of Jake Preston with his hands cupped under her ass or kneading her breasts with her tongue down his throat. When everything went quiet, the text messages and Snap chat, and random pics being posted on Facebook with him tagged in them along with Rebel and Jake Preston, he started to worry. Then the television cut to the emergency broadcast.