DEAD: Darkness Before Dawn

by Brown, TW

  Jody’s recovery had forced him to miss the first couple of weeks, but things had really only just gotten started. He knew that he would have plenty of time to do his share.

  “Hey, look who decided to finally haul his ass out of bed,” a familiar voice called. Jody turned to see George Rosamilia heading his way.

  “Figured that if I didn’t, I had to listen to you whine about every splinter and blister for the rest of my life,” Jody replied with a smile.

  “Seriously,” George climbed the steps to the infirmary and clasped the other man’s forearm, “glad to see you up. You feeling okay?”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was feeling okay…but I am a bit better. Certainly well enough to get up and start doing something.”

  “Holy crap!” a familiar voice crowed. “The dead walk!”

  “Danny!” another voice snapped.

  Jody turned to see Danny, Selina, and Kat making their way to him as they dodged people carrying sacks of two-by-fours, pushing wheelbarrows, as well as other things associated with the massive construction undertaking that the community of survivors of Cash, Arkansas had commenced.

  The foursome embraced in one large group hug for a few moments. When they finally broke it up, George was still there and was now joined by a few other men. Jody sighed inwardly. And so it begins, he thought.

  “I know there is a lot to discuss,” Jody spoke. He could see it on all their faces and he knew that none of them were anxious to bring it up so soon considering how close to death he had come, as well as the fact that he was not exactly a hundred percent yet, nor would he be for a while.

  “So now that he is up, you think this one will finally spill the beans?” one of the older men, Joe Bennett, grumbled in a voice that would probably never recover from the decades of abuse his throat had endured from a lifetime of chain-smoking.

  Danny made eye contact with Jody. It was clear that he was in no way happy. The usual mischief was gone from his face in an instant.

  “Okay, here is what we know, and I think you will be disappointed.” Jody took a second to let his mind try to organize and make sense from all that he and Danny had discussed once he could remain conscious for longer than ten minutes.

  “Back when we were still running with our Army unit, there was a sergeant by the name of Bill Pitts. He got hooked up with a local gal when we made our camp in a small town. Back then, the order was to isolate any who were bitten. The moment their eyes shut, we put a bullet in their heads. However, one day we get word that some folks are not…turning.” He let that word hang for a second before resuming his narration.

  “A memo comes across that we were required to secure and deliver any individuals who show signs of being immune over to a medical team. Some were even supposed to be shipped to a few research facilities around the country. Of course, eventually the scales tipped too far and all of that went out the window, but before it did, this Sergeant Pitts comes home to find out his new girlfriend is bit. When she doesn’t turn, he scoops up some supplies, grabs his girl, and goes AWOL.”

  “This is all fine, but what does that have to do with us, or with that whole deal involving Remar?” Joe asked with a scowl.

  “It looks like Remar was in some sort of deal with this other group. We are not sure exactly what all was involved, but Remar made the mistake of trying to screw this group. Bill Pitts…Sergeant Bill Pitts looks to be the leader.”

  “I still don’t see what it has to do with us?” George spoke up.

  “Maybe nothing,” Jody replied. Danny gave him a look and nodded for him to keep talking. “Only…one of the things that we found was a detailed map of our camp, notes where we have our watches posted, and the names of every single person here. Mine and Danny’s names are circled. There are notes on our defenses including the weapons inventory sheet.”

  “Jody and I think it may be best if we take off. We will try and locate this other group and see if we can meet up with Pitts. If nothing else, we will try and convince him that he has no reason to attack us,” Danny finally spoke up, his voice uncommonly solemn. “Pitts is not some lunatic. I doubt he is out there trying to conquer survivor settlements. My guess is that this is all a misunderstanding. Probably…maybe…I hope.”

  “You two boys ain’t going no place by yourselves.” Joe stood up and turned his head as he coughed up a big ball of phlegm that he spat into the dirt. “Pardon me, ladies,” he said with a nod to Selina and Kat. “As I was saying, you boys ain’t going anyplace. If there is gonna be a meeting with this Pitts character, then I say we invite him in and see what he has on his mind.”

  2

  No Rest for the Geek…Again

  Kevin walked outside and let the warmth of the midday sun wash over him. He felt positively vile and could not wait for his shower.

  Back behind the small building they had used for their main base camp these past few weeks while he got better was a barrel with a makeshift shower set up that warm water was poured into. You had to use the foot pump while you were in the shower, but it was a small price to pay.

  “Glad to see you moving around,” a voice called from above.

  Kevin turned to see Heather standing up on top of a platform that had been built on to the building. From where he stood, Kevin thought it looked like the work of a drunken carpenter. A little girl with mocha skin sat beside her holding a set of binoculars. He had to search his brain for a name.

  “Hey…Rose, is it?” Kevin called up, shielding his eyes.

  The girl looked down at him and then shot a glance up at Heather. “I didn’t think you would remember my name,” the girl said. “You were pretty sick when I told you. Not zombie sick, but still pretty bad. You made number two in your pants.” She covered her mouth in a failed attempt to hide a giggle.

  Great, Kevin thought, and already my brush with death has been swept away and reduced to bodily functions that I had no control over.

  “So…” Kevin did a slow turn and saw nobody in sight, “where is everybody?”

  “Supplies.” Heather tapped Rose who handed over the binoculars. Bringing them up to her eyes, she looked off in the distance.

  Since Kevin had no idea where he was, he likewise had no idea where she was looking. He spied the ladder and started to climb.

  “You think you should do that?” Rose asked, peering down at him with a curious expression.

  Kevin gave her what he hoped was a smile, but considering how his head had suddenly started to spin, he wasn’t sure. After three rungs, he paused and had to swallow down the urge to be sick.

  “He’s looking funny again,” Rose called over her shoulder.

  “Kevin?” The concern in Heather’s voice was clear.

  “Just getting my sea legs under me.”

  He continued up and pulled himself onto the flat roof where he rolled onto his back and let his stomach equalize. He had to swallow a few times to clear the sudden rush of saliva, but eventually he was able to open his eyes and sit up.

  After he was totally certain that he could do it without another surge of nausea, Kevin made his way to his feet and took a look around. They were in some woods, but to the north he could see the distant but distinct outline of what he was sure had to be Chicago with the iconic black monolith that was the Sears Tower. To the east was an expanse of water.

  “Lake Michigan,” Kevin muttered. “Almost expected it to be on fire.”

  “I think he is still sick,” Kevin heard Rose whisper in a voice obviously meant to be loud enough for him to hear. “He thinks that lakes will catch on fire.”

  Kevin turned to the girl. “With the amount of pollution that we pumped into these waters…anything is possible.” Rose just continued to look at him like he was crazy.

  Looking just beyond their immediate vicinity, he spied the neighborhood they had been searching. At first it was just fragments, but then those bits and pieces began to assemble into a clear picture.

  “Cats,” Kevin snarled.

/>   “Yeah, about that.” Heather lowered the binoculars and fixed Kevin with a stern expression. “You might be one of the lucky people immune to the bite.”

  She went on to explain that one of the kids had been scratched as well and turned within three days. It was a slower and seemingly much more painful transition, but the tracers had shown up in the eyes about twenty minutes after the scratch. The young girl eventually turned and was put down.

  “So cats are carriers of whatever this is,” Kevin said to himself more than to the two girls.

  “Aleah said that you would probably have more insight to what this meant.” Heather handed the binoculars to Kevin. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to take a quick bathroom break. I need you to keep a look out for any large herds. If you see any, you are supposed to fire this.” She bent down and picked up a small case, opened it and revealed a flare gun. “Each of the teams out there has one person keeping an eye on the sky. If a flare is fired, the rule is to drop everything and come back here.”

  Kevin was impressed. Not only were they obviously making serious supply runs—the flare gun was a prime example since he knew they hadn’t had any such thing before—but they were being very proactive when it came to safety.

  He scanned the horizon and saw a few zombies here and there, but no large groups. He did have to take a break a couple of times because of the occasional rush of vertigo, but nothing too serious.

  Eventually, Rose and Heather returned. The girl was carrying a small backpack that was decorated with a collection of Disney princesses. She came up first and immediately reached in her pack. With a flourish she presented a bottle of strawberry flavored mineral water and a can of soup with a pull off top.

  “Thought you might like some lunch,” Rose said, thrusting the two items at him.

  Kevin suddenly realized that he was really hungry. He accepted them with thanks and sat down, dangling his legs over the roof’s edge while he ate and drank.

  Twice during his meal a single zombie emerged from the trees. Both times, Heather handed the binoculars to Rose and took the monsters down with a very nice camo painted crossbow with a scope.

  “Where’d you get the bow?” he asked after the first zombie showed up and was put down.

  “Aleah and Catie found some sort of outdoorsman type store. Most of the guns were gone and all of the ammo, but for some reason, they left a bunch of crossbows and bolts,” Heather answered.

  “Probably got looted early,” Kevin said. “Early on, nobody would think to grab a crossbow. It would have been all about the firepower.”

  “See what I mean?” Heather said, shooting a look down at Rose who was studying Kevin with a peculiar intensity. “We have been arguing for days about why nobody would have grabbed the crossbows, and you just shoot an answer from the hip that makes perfect sense.”

  “But it is just simple logic,” Kevin said with a bit of self-deprecation. “It is not some amazing power or anything. Seriously, take a step back and think to the days when this first started. Nobody wanted to believe it for what it was except for a few zombie geeks. When the so-called riots got ugly, people were looking for ways to protect themselves in their homes. Nobody considered the attrition rate of ammunition, because it has always been an endless supply.

  “Things like swords and crossbows are not items that most individuals feel comfortable using because they are foreign. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting somebody who owned, or at the very least, had fired a gun at some point in their lives. If not for the popularity of that Hunger Games series of books, bows would probably not be as easy to find as they actually are. Pop culture did an amazing job of making some normally hard to find items more available.

  “Consider the array of blades we have found. Before the dead rose, eBay was thick with all sorts of crazy weapons under the guise of “Zombie Preparation” when all it really ended up being was a bunch of regular industrial machetes with some bio-hazard logo or a zombie head stamped on it.”

  “Is he like this all the time?” Rose asked after it was obvious that Kevin had talked himself out.

  “Yep,” Heather said with a smile as she went back to scanning the horizon.

  Kevin sat with them for a while. He was already feeling a bit of fatigue setting in, but it seemed like forever since he had been around people, and he wanted to stretch this out for as long as he could.

  ***

  “Wake up, sleepy head,” a voice whispered in his ear.

  Kevin opened his eyes, amazed at how dark it had gotten. The last thing that he remembered was sitting down and just wanting to be around Heather and Rose.

  Aleah was kneeling beside him, along with Catie and a few of the children whose faces he knew but names he could not place at the moment. Catie was suited up in what looked like riot gear and carrying an all black crossbow over her shoulder with a rather impressive curved blade that reminded him of a pirate’s cutlass on her hip. Aleah was dressed in almost identical fashion, but her crossbow looked practically puny when compared to Catie’s.

  “Nice to see you up and about,” Catie said by way of a greeting.

  “Good to be up,” Kevin said with a yawn.

  “I take it you have been brought up to speed.” Catie, in her typical manner, was straight to business.

  “Depends,” Kevin said with a shrug. “I know you guys have been doing some serious supply runs, and that you have drastically improved our weapons load out. I also know that it would seem that cats are carriers and should be avoided like zombies.”

  “And that you obviously are one of the immune,” Aleah added with excitement.

  “Well, that is only a hypothesis,” Kevin corrected. “We can’t say for certain that the contagion, or whatever this is, reacts the same through the transfer by a cat as it would if I had been bitten or infected by a human specimen.”

  Catie and Aleah looked at each other and then both started to laugh. Kevin sat grumpily for a few seconds until he could not stand it any longer.

  “You want to tell me just what you find so funny?”

  “Just nice to have our Mister Spock back,” Catie snorted and headed over to the ladder and vanished.

  Kevin’s scowl deepened. Aleah sat beside him and took his hand. She gave it a squeeze when he did not seem to respond.

  “Hey, she was just giving you grief,” Aleah soothed.

  “Is that really how people see me?” Kevin finally asked.

  “As an unemotional alien with pointy ears? No…it is more how you tend to have a very intelligent and logical response to just about anything. Heather already told us about your theory on why we found all the crossbows.”

  “It just seems to be the most logical—” His teeth clicked from how hard and sudden he shut his mouth.

  The couple sat in silence for a while. As the moon rose and started to cast a silvery light on the world, Aleah laid her head on Kevin’s shoulder and sighed. The only thing that broke up just how perfect the night was, were the occasional sounds of the undead.

  “So…how long before you think you are ready to travel?” Aleah finally asked.

  “Week or two,” Kevin said, although he was really only guessing. If he had to go by how he felt at this very moment, he would have said never.

  Something was lingering, and he felt an almost continuous sense of wanting to be sick. Also, his guts felt like water. He was afraid to move at the moment because he feared he would have a very unpleasant accident.

  “Some of the gang have been talking about trying to fortify this place,” Aleah said.

  “Not a good idea,” Kevin replied with a shake of his head. “We have too much of a concentrated population for one. Also, I don’t know if you all are just used to it, but the stench here is almost unbearable. I don’t trust this soil to be rich in much that would benefit crops. And have you encountered any living souls at all?”

  “Not a one,” she said, sitting up and turning to face Kevin.

  “Well…” he paused for
a moment and seemed to give some deep thought to the suggestion, but eventually continued, “I just do not think that this is the place we want to call home.”

  “Whatever you say, I’m sure everybody will be fine. It’s just that this place almost seems like a gold mine. We have not even made a dent in the houses. And Catie has an even bigger surprise.”

  “And just what might that be?” Kevin asked, his curiosity ratcheted up a notch.

  “When we have been making these supply runs, the rule is that the team leaders, me, Catie and Trent, we go into the house first. The kids wait outside and we tell them to keep watch. The first thing we do is search every likely hiding place for guns and ammo. Now, in a lot of cases, the people who lived there obviously took everything like that with them when they went wherever it is that they took off to, but not always.”

  “So how much firepower are we talking?” Kevin asked.

  “Actually a pretty massive haul,” Aleah confirmed. “Most of it is handguns, but we are in a position to sort of pick and choose because of the amount of ammo we have secured. Just for the nine mils, we are looking at over ten thousand rounds easy. And don’t get me started on the twenty-two ammo. I guess most folks just figured that a gun that small was a waste of time and ignored them. We stopped counting when we passed a hundred thousand rounds. Might not do much in a shootout with the living, but a zombie does not care what type of bullet you put in their head.”

  Kevin whistled appreciatively. For the first time in a long time, he actually felt like things were looking up. He told himself to keep it reigned in because he did not want to jinx it, but he could not ignore the tiny surge of optimism. After all, it was not like things had been easy for them up to this point.

  He had lost a foot and both Aleah and Heather had suffered lost fingers from the effects of frostbite. And don’t get him started on that insane Major Beers and the folks from The Basket. No, he had fought and scratched to reach this point. He was ready for things to start going his way for a change.