DEAD: Darkness Before Dawn

by Brown, TW

  With everybody under such constant pressure, folks had built up a lot of steam. Once the lid came off, there was no putting the heat back in the kettle. His grandma had said that phrase a time or two in his life growing up, he’d never really understood it until now.

  “That is why I am officially asking for nominations,” Juan continued. Mackenzie had already told him what she expected to hear, and he hated that she was almost always right. He hoped that this would be one of those rare instances. “We don’t have a title yet, but we obviously need somebody or a group of people to start a rules committee or something. We need to get ourselves in order. If not, we risk more like what we got the other day.”

  “Juan Hoya for president!” a female voice shouted.

  Juan’s eyes snapped over to the source and saw April Cable give him a wink. His scowl re-emerged. A roar of approval from the crowd only made it deepen. Did that woman have to be right about everything?

  “Hold on!” Juan threw his hands up in the air. He shot a look over his shoulder. Mackenzie was nodding. He glanced down at April who was doing likewise. He’d told April ahead of time that he was going to confess his complete past to Mackenzie when they had run into each other a few days after returning. Still, they had both agreed that some of what had happened at the house didn’t need to be shared.

  Juan did not exactly trust April. He was still having trouble understanding everything that had gone down between them. He actually thought she might be a bit damaged mentally from all she had been through. After hearing her story of what she had endured, he had trouble feeling anything more than pity for April.

  That night, he had come home to find April in his living room. Before he even had a chance to speak, April had blurted, “Mackenzie, Juan has some things he feels he needs to say. I think you should hear them.”

  The three of them had sat down around the table that night. The guilt that had been too much for Juan seemed to act as a verbal lubricant. He found himself talking more than he ever had in his life about his past. Along the way he came clean with almost everything that had happened during those past few times out. He’d also told her about the real fate of Frank and Donna.

  He had fully expected her to be done with him right then and there. As he’d confessed it all, he had not been able to look her in the eyes. He had instead just stared at his hands. When it was over, he braced for the worst. He even had a bag packed and waiting in the closet for when she told him to not just leave her house, but to leave the island.

  “Oh, Juan, I’m so sorry.”

  Here it comes, he thought.

  But when Mackenzie knelt in front of him and took his hands in hers, kissing them, he went from miserable to confused. This was not at all going the way he’d expected.

  She told him that he’d done what he thought was right. Even more strange was when she apologized for sending him out after Donna in the first place. She’d had no right. After all, hadn’t she been telling him to cut back on the risks the past several weeks? He had not told her everything about what transpired between him and April, but he did open up all the closets of the skeletons from his own past. He had laid out his entire criminal history to her. To that she had simply said that the Juan Hoya of before was not anybody that she knew personally. She only knew this current version, and that she was in love with him.

  April had gotten up and come to the couple, putting her arms around both of them. “I am so happy for you both.”

  Mackenzie had thanked her for being there and said something about how much she really must care to show him such support and that he was lucky to have her as a friend. None of that sat well with him.

  As she was leaving, several hours after he had given what he thought were obvious and polite hints, he had made eye contact with her. She had smiled, but there was just something off about her that made him edgy. He quickly scolded himself when the thought came that he might have been better off had he let her die out there.

  He snapped his attention back to the crowd that were now shouting all manner of crazy things such as “Juan for president!” and “We want Juan!”

  April was no longer there in the front row. His eyes scanned the crowd. He saw a flash of red hair just as it disappeared out into the night.

  ***

  Rain came in sheets, but Mel continued to sprint along what had once been US-191. She could hear wet, slapping sounds from behind her as Kyle and Glenn both struggled to keep the pace. Her eyes were scanning the ground and she kept them focused on a set of tracks in the mud.

  A zombie came stumbling out of the gloom, hands reaching, mouth open in a mewling cry. She never broke stride as she took the left third of its head off. In the distance, she was certain that she heard Xander’s plaintive wail. Her mind refused to believe that it could be anything else.

  When Mel had discovered both Ann, the woman that they had initially believed to have rescued, as well as her baby boy gone, she had suffered a moment of paralysis brought on by fear. Somebody had taken her child—every parent’s worst nightmare.

  She had shaken it off as quickly as she was able and roused everybody from their sleep. Kyle, her husband, had tried to insist that she stay behind, but it was a very brief ‘discussion’. Only Cynthia would have to stay behind, seeing as how she was still sporting a nasty injury from a gunshot wound to her left leg.

  The trio exited the treehouse that Mel was certain had to be bigger than one of her first apartments and went out in search of the mysterious Ann (which Mel was now positive had to be a fake name) and baby Xander.

  Glenn had been the one to stumble upon the footprints in the mud that they all agreed must belong to the mystery woman. At that point, the rain was steady, but nothing like now as it seemed to be coming from buckets with an impossibly endless supply of water.

  Once she had the trail, Mel threw caution to the wind. She cared nothing for any possible danger that she could be in as she ran through the pre-dawn gloom. Her one and only thought was to find her son…and kill the woman who had taken him.

  The cry came again and Mel felt a surge of adrenaline renew that initial rush which had been ebbing. She pulled from reserves that she did not even realize she possessed as she raced for the corner just ahead. If her ears were not deceiving her, she would turn that corner and find—

  The leading edge of a group of zombies staggered her way. Swinging like she was possessed by some raging sort of demon, Mel had no problems putting them down. She dropped the last one just as a chorus of cries wrapped cold tendrils of dread around her spine. What had to be hundreds, perhaps even thousands of undead had rounded the corner a block away and were coming her direction!

  Mel actually slipped and fell flat on her back, all the wind leaving her lungs in a painful rush. Her head bounced off the concrete with a resounding thud and her vision threatened to go dark. She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, but with her empty lungs, the best she could manage was a weak and pitiful squeak.

  The horde of undead all continued to bear down on her. One of the closer ones opened its mouth to let loose with the sound that she had foolishly mistaken for Xander’s cry.

  The flow of time seemed to stop for Mel as each individual second became an eternity. She could pick out various details on the advancing pack of walking corpses that were about to take her in their cold, dead hands and rip her apart. The one thing that stuck out in her mind was that each of these zombies looked to be wearing a collar. Her mind filed that as important, she only wished that she would have the time to actually examine that little nugget of information.

  Hands reached under her armpits and yanked her backwards through the mud. Her head rolled back just a little to see the face of her husband Kyle looming above. He was shouting something, but she was not able to focus on it. Her body seemed to sense that the worst of the danger was gone now that her spouse had arrived.

  Mel’s eyes rolled back in their head and consciousness blinked out.

  That left Kyle and Glenn. Th
e two men worked as a team to drag Mel’s limp body away from the approaching mob. Kyle scooped his wife up and threw her over his shoulder. They could easily outdistance the zombies despite his having to carry Mel.

  “Back to the treehouse,” Glenn panted. The run had taken more than a little wind from all of their sails.

  “We can’t just give up,” Kyle insisted. His eyes were scanning the ground for any sign of the trail that they had been following. Unfortunately, it looked to have vanished right into that approaching wall of undead.

  “And we won’t,” Glenn assured. “But you know as well as I do that we can’t do anything with you carrying Mel. It’s not like that woman jumped in a car and took off. There is only so far that she could have gone. We will re-group and find her.”

  The one thing that Glenn did not say was that he hated the fact that they had simply run off and left his wife alone. There was something bad out there, and while he knew that Cynthia could certainly take care of herself, he did not like the idea of testing her abilities at the moment…or ever. He already felt terrible about her having been shot. He had not been able to protect her, and that was his most important responsibility in the world.

  Kyle still seemed rooted in place. Glenn reached over and grabbed his arm, but he might as well have been trying to relocate an oak tree for all that the larger man budged.

  “We aren’t giving up,” Kyle leaned closer to his wife’s brother and placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “But we need to get Mel out of here. She is a bad ass, but until she regains consciousness, she needs to be someplace safe.”

  That seemed to work as Glenn allowed Kyle to lead him away from the zombies and back towards the treehouse that they had holed up in. When they arrived, Mel was still out cold. Cynthia started checking on her while the two men moved away and discussed what to do next.

  ***

  Chad threw his weight into the door. He heard the crunch of bones being pulverized as the hands belonging to the undead were crushed in the doorjamb. Dustin moved in beside him and used his machete to hack at the wriggling nimbus of fingers that were keeping the door from being closed.

  At last they managed to get it shut. Looking around, Chad’s eyes took inventory of every possible escape. He was more than a little impressed with the job that had been done boarding up all of the ground floor windows. Still, those would not last forever as they shook and vibrated with the rhythm of countless sets of fists pounding away to be let in. Meanwhile, Dustin was kneeling beside the boy and two girls who were huddled in fear on the stairs leading up to the second floor.

  Chad felt as if he were being torn apart from the inside. His daughter, who he had been forced to set down when he got inside so that he could shut the door, was curled up in a fetal position on the floor. In the accumulated dirt and grime, a pool of darkness was growing around her. She was bleeding to death. The problem was that if he did not get them out of there, they would all die a horrible death at the hands and teeth of the zombies gathering outside that were now causing an amazing racket as they pounded on the exterior of the house. Their moans and cries were almost sounding more frantic, as if they sensed how close they were to their prey…or meal…or whatever they considered living humans to be. But if he did not stop Ronni’s bleeding, she would die and he would not care what happened to him from that moment on.

  As harsh as it would seem to an outsider, Chad would care nothing of the fate Dustin and those other children suffered if his daughter died here in this house. He glanced once more at the door. It was vibrating and shuddering, but it was solid oak, and this house looked to be made of pretty firm stuff. It would not hold much longer, but they had a few minutes.

  Kneeling beside his daughter, he turned her face up to his. Her eyes were squeezed shut as if that would keep out the pain. She was shivering and he quickly peeled out of his protective leather jacket and draped it over her.

  Climbing up, Dustin was there, the trio of other frightened children in his wake, none of them seeming to be able to let go of the other as they clutched at anything that might make them feel safer.

  “We need to get out of here,” Chad had to shout above the pounding that rumbled through the house. “But I have to get Ronni’s bleeding under control first.”

  “I hear what you are saying, brother,” Dustin hollered back, dreading the next words he would utter. “But we can’t wait…if we do, we all die.”

  The two men locked gazes. In that instant, everything was communicated between them. Chad clasped the man’s hand and nodded. He did not watch as Dustin and the others moved through an archway and vanished towards the back of the house.

  Picking up his daughter, Chad took her to the sofa and laid her down. He knew that time was not his ally as he dashed to the bathroom. That would be the most likely place where he would find something. Other than a few rags that were moldy and some medication that he had no idea of its purpose, it was a bust.

  “Think outside the box,” he told himself as he tore through every closed closet and cupboard he found.

  He dumped out drawers, creating almost as much noise as the creatures outside. He thought he heard a distant scream, but his mind was now on one track: save Ronni.

  He knelt beside her again as he prepared to run upstairs. “I am going upstairs, sweetie,” he whispered as he brushed her hair from her face. “Just wait here a moment and I will be right back…just gotta stop this bleeding.”

  As he spoke, his eyes traveled the length of his daughter’s body, making a catalog of the injuries. There was one particularly nasty bite on her left arm just above the elbow, but it was the two long slices down each forearm that had him perplexed; both were bleeding terribly. Had she been trying to commit suicide? Her skin was already turning a waxy pale and he forced thoughts out of his head that she had already lost too much blood.

  Sprinting up the stairs, Chad threw open the first closet he came to and was overwhelmed by a surge of hope. Stacks of linens and towels filled the shelves. He grabbed the ones on top, throwing them aside; they were covered in dark splotches of mold. At last he got to some of the ones at the bottom that looked salvageable.

  There was an upstairs bathroom as well, and he made short work of the medicine cabinet, coming away with a half empty bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a tube of expired anti-bacterial ointment.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” he muttered as he snatched up his prizes and turned for the stairs.

  He was halfway down when he heard the strangled cry. Breaking into a run, Chad missed a stair and plummeted forward, falling feet over head and landing with a harsh crack against the wall. His head swam and he struggled to roll over, his eyes searching for Ronni who was no longer on the couch, his leather jacket in a heap on the floor.

  A nearby window that had been boarded up with what looked like a coffee table was now breached. Arms and heads were struggling to get inside. Scooting on his belly and reaching out for a nearby chair to help pull himself to his feet, Chad’s search was now becoming frantic.

  He heard a strange, mechanical ‘ka-THUNK’ noise, followed by another whimper. His eyes tracked to the source and discovered Ronni standing with her back to him in the entry arch that led to the kitchen.

  Ka-THUNK.

  Ronni’s knees buckled and she cried out, but managed to keep from falling. Chad staggered towards her as the crash from another barricaded window sounded. The undead were now starting to pour into the house. Chad could hear the meaty sound of bodies hitting the floor accompanied by moans and groans.

  “Ronni, run!” Chad yelled.

  Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK.

  He was able to get to his feet, adrenaline aiding in his ability to shake off the stunning effects of the fall down the stairs. He ran, but it felt as if he were moving through wet concrete. His daughter seemed to get no closer.

  Chad’s eyes stopped when they spotted a huge window in the dining room. It was not boarded! It had not needed to be because its lower lip was about five feet
off the ground. Zombies were there, but not in great numbers…only about three or four deep at the most! If they were going to escape, that was their route.

  The door in the kitchen exploded inwards as the pressure of the growing number of undead eventually became too much. Ronni took a step backwards, then, turned to face her dad.

  Chad had no idea what to expect. Yes, he was pretty sure that there had been no sign of any tracers in her eyes when he’d first picked her up. However, maybe there just hadn’t been enough time for the infection to show.

  The bite on her arm was definitely puffy and swollen. Her clothes were ripped and torn which was why both of her arms were almost completely bare. A large object fell from one hand and hit the floor with a metallic crash. His eyes widened at what he saw. Blood continued to ooze, but the long gash down each arm had been stapled shut by the huge, industrial staple gun that lay at his daughter’s feet.

  Her face was obscenely peaceful in the midst of all the chaos. Zombies were pouring in behind her through the shattered kitchen door that led outside. She walked to him, a small smile creeping at the edges of her mouth.

  “I stopped the bleeding, Daddy.”

  The girl’s eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed into Chad’s arms. He knew it would be risky, but he also knew it was their only chance. He hoped to God that he flew far enough to get clear of the zombies gathered outside. He forced his mind to stop thinking about all the ways that this could go wrong. Taking a step back, Chad hunched over his daughter as he twisted at the last second to present his back to the only intact window on the lower floor.

  ***

  Jody stepped outside, his hand coming up reflexively to shade his eyes from the midday sun. It was promising to be almost warm today. All around, he saw signs of people working. The newest project was well underway: The Wall.

  A general consensus from everybody in their little community was almost unanimous that they abandon any ideas of relocating and instead shore up what they currently had and start on a sturdy wall that would encircle enough area for them to be able to live comfortably, have ample farmland, but still be able to patrol the perimeter.