In the Dead: Volume 1

by Jesse Petersen

Instead of answering, the man vomited up black sludge all over the front of his white t-shirt. Randy gagged, but managed to keep his own puke reflex at bay and grabbed for the man’s shoulder.

  “Shit, you might have a concussion or something. Sit down and-”

  He didn’t get to finish. Before he could, the stranger grabbed for his hand and sunk his teeth into Randy’s palm.

  “Mother fucker!” Randy screamed as he punched his attacker square in the face.

  The man grunted as he staggered back and his jaw loosened enough that Randy was able to pull his hand free. He stared at his palm. The skin was broken and the outline of ragged tooth marks was already starting to be blocked out by blood and some kind of weird black material.

  “What the fuck, man?” he asked the intruder. “Who the fuck bites someone?”

  The man moved forward again with another moan and this time there was no doubt he had bad intentions. He reached for Randy and caught his shoulders, pulling at him with surprising strength for a person Randy was pretty sure he outweighed by a good twenty pounds (he’d stress-eaten a few donuts since he ran from the law).

  He shoved back, but the stranger clung tightly. His jaws snapped toward Randy’s face and he drooled that disgusting black material down his chin as he snarled and muttered.

  As they grappled, the door to the cottage opened and Nadia came down the steps carrying the cordless phone in one hand and her disposable cell in another. “Hey, all the lines are dead-” she started and then she caught sight of Randy’s predicament.

  She tossed both phones on the sand at the bottom of the steps and ran toward them at a full spring.

  “Get off him!” she screamed as she pushed the stranger.

  Even with their combined weight, though, the intruder clung to Randy and wouldn’t let go. Nadia hit him this time with a right cross that Randy swore she’d learned from UFC, but all the man did was snarl in her direction and keep snapping his teeth at Randy.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Randy asked as he pushed back with as much force as he could muster. The guy still didn’t let go, but he did stagger backward. Randy saw the big driftwood log a few feet away and pushed harder, guiding his attacker toward the debris.

  Just as he’d hoped, when the man’s ankles hit the log, he lost his balance and toppled backward, taking Randy with him. But his grip loosened as they hit the sand and Randy was able to roll free. He popped back up on his feet immediately and lifted his hands up in a defensive stance.

  “What the fuck, asshole?” he asked a second time as he looked down at the stranger who had attacked him.

  The man wasn’t moving, just lying there, staring straight upward with blank, open eyes.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Nadia asked as she looked down with Randy.

  “I don’t know. Stay back.” He pushed her behind him and leaned down to shake the man’s leg. He didn’t move and he didn’t blink. “I-I think he’s dead.”

  “How could he be dead?” Nadia asked, her tone growing high pitched. “He just tripped.”

  “Maybe he was sick or something.” He stared down at his hand. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch and the skin around where he’d been bitten was starting to turn gray. “He was definitely sick.”

  Nadia crouched down and poked the man with her finger. He didn’t move, of course, pretty much solidifying the fact that he was dead. And wasn’t that going to be fun to explain to the cops when they came.

  “What are you doing?” he snapped as he watched Nadia lift the guy’s head from the sand and look under it.

  “I just can’t believe that he would-” She started and then let out a gasp of breath and dropped the dead man’s skull against the sand. It made a hollow thud. “Oh Jesus,” she whispered as she dropped back on her ass and scooted away from the corpse. “Oh, Jesus, Randy. He hit his head. There’s a rock under there and his skull is half-crushed.”

  Randy blinked. They hadn’t fallen that hard. Had they?

  “His skull is crushed?” he repeated.

  She nodded. “It looks like somebody went all ‘Goodfellas’ on him.”

  Randy bit his lip and then grabbed the corpse’s shoulder and flipped him over. Sure enough the back of his head was a bloody mess of broken bone, hair and brain matter. His stomach turned as he let the body go and turned to pace off a few feet.

  “Oh shit,” he whispered. “I’m going to go to jail. Not white-collar jail, either.”

  “No!” Nadia insisted as she rushed to his side. She grabbed his arm and made him face her. “You were defending yourself.”

  “It’s not going to look that way when the back of this dude’s skull is crushed in on the beach behind the house where I’ve been hiding out from the feds!” Randy insisted. His chest was starting to feel tight now as he imagined the headlines.

  Fugitive Turns Murderous in Seaside Village

  He was going to end up getting featured on Dateline or 48 Hours.

  “Did you call the police?” he asked.

  His voice sounded flat and faraway. For a long moment, Nadia just stared at him and then she shook her head. “I-I couldn’t. Both the phones were dead.”

  He wrinkled his brow. “Both?”

  She nodded. “The cell couldn’t find a signal and the regular jack phone was just a weird busy signal thing.”

  “Look, let’s go in and turn on the radio and see if they’re talking about a car wreck up on the highway. And then… I-I just have to think and I’ll walk up to the next cottage and see if we can use their phone.”

  Randy ran a hand through his hair. Everything was over. He knew it now.

  Nadia glanced at the body again. “Should we… cover him up?”

  He shuddered. Since he’d flipped the corpse, he didn’t see the blank, cold eyes anymore, but there was still the matter of the gaping hole in his skull. “Yeah. I’ll grab the blanket from the porch. You go in and turn on the radio.”

  She squeezed his arm once and then moved into the cottage. Randy followed her and grabbed the blanket from the porch that they used to picnic and wrap up in on cool ocean nights. They wouldn’t be doing that again, at least not with this blanket. Probably not at all.

  He tossed the blanket over the body and then moved into the house. There was only a small combined living and dining room, a door that led to the small bathroom and another to the bedroom. It was a summer cottage really, not meant to live in. But the rent was right.

  Nadia stood behind the couch, staring at the TV. When he shut the door, she flinched and faced him briefly. “You should come look at this.”

  As she turned the volume up on the television, Randy stepped up beside her. The television was showing scenes of utter and complete carnage in Seattle. People roamed the streets, attacking each other. The reporters were pale and gaunt, like they were freaking out.

  “I-I turned on the radio, but there was only an emergency signal,” Nadia whispered. “So I went to the TV and found.. this. It started yesterday, I guess, in Seattle. The whole city is almost… gone.”

  “What is it?” Randy asked. “A riot?”

  A reporter in a studio flashed onto the screen and stared into the camera with a “Serious Newsanchor” face.

  “Good afternoon. The Outbreak happened less than twenty-four hours ago, but it’s already taken over a large portion of the Pacific Northwest even as we report. The cities of Spokane and Portland are already reporting an influx of attackers. Zombies, they are being called.”

  Nadia blinked and stared at him. “Zombies? That’s a joke, right?”

  Randy moved to the door and stared past the screen at the dead body under the blanket. Zombies. He looked at the screen again.

  “It doesn’t look like it’s very funny,” he whispered. “And then there’s him.”

  He motioned toward the yard and Nadia paled three shades. “Lock the door,” she whispered.

  He shut the main door and locked it, then moved back to the television.

  “Just a r
eminder,” the reporter droned on. “If you or someone you love has been bitten or scratched, isolation is the best response. At this point, there is no cure and eventually the victim will experience an intense hunger, heightened senses of smell and scent, followed by an uncontrollable bloodlust. Depending on the location of the bite, this transformation can take anywhere up to an hour. Once it is complete, severing the brain seems to be the only way to stop the onslaught of the zombie victim.”

  Nadia shook her head. “I can’t believe this.”

  Randy hardly heard her. All he could do was stare down at his hand. His gnarled, bloody, bitten hand. Bitten by that man out there. No, that thing.

  “Nadia,” he said softly.

  She didn’t look away from the screen. “Look, the symptoms are flashing across the bottom of the screen. Red eyes, graying skin, black drool or vomit…”

  “Nadia,” he said, this time louder.

  “That totally sounds like that guy outside,” she said, still staring at the screen in utter disbelief. “Shit… he was a zombie?”

  “Nadia,” he said, this time sharp. “He bit me.”

  She didn’t stop staring at the screen for almost a minute, but he knew she’d heard him. He could tell by the way her shoulders hunched and then stiffened, by the way her neck got red and her hands started to shake.

  Finally, she faced him. Her skin was pale and sticky, her eyes wide and filled with tears. “That isn’t funny.”

  He held up his hand so she could see. “Nadi, I’m not laughing.”

  #

  The blood was rushing to Nadia’s head and ears, roaring and making everything around her seem distant and echo-y. Maybe this was a dream. That was it. She was just having a really screwed up dream, maybe brought on by eating too close to bedtime.

  Except that when Randy reached out to touch her, he felt real. And the echoing distance faded and left reality behind.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She blinked. Was he really asking her that after telling her he’d been bitten by that… thing outside? After hearing what would happen if that thing was really a zombie?

  “Let me see it,” she said. Her voice sounded weird. Sort of broken and soft.

  He swallowed hard and then lifted the hand that wasn’t touching her arm. His hand was tanned. Somehow that was the first thing she noticed. In Seattle he’d been pale and his hands soft from working at the firm. Now they were rough and brown.

  Except for the gash across the top. There were definite teeth marks that broke the skin and dragged, almost like the man outside had twisted in an attempt to get more… food, she supposed was the driving force when he’d attacked Randy. Not that motives really mattered to her.

  No, what mattered to her most was that the skin around the bite wasn’t pink or red or even pale from loss of blood. It was grey, with black-tinged edges that seemed to be spreading from the source of the injury like a poison had been put there and killed the skin.

  “Randy,” she said as she looked up into his face. He was pale and his skin was sticky with a cold sweat.

  “I know,” he said, just as softly before he wrapped his arms around her and drew her against his chest. She could hear his heart through his shirt as they stood in horrified silence in the middle of the cottage. Only she could have sworn his heart sounded… slower.

  But that was just her wild imagination.

  Randy sighed. “Nadia.”

  She nodded against his chest.

  “Baby, you’ve got to go.”

  She jerked back and stared up into his face in surprise. “What?”

  He tilted his head. “You heard the news report as well as I did. You know what’s going to happen to me and you know there’s no stopping it.”

  “We could call the ambulance,” she insisted, trying to get out of his embrace, but he held fast.

  “Phones are dead,” he reminded her.

  “Then we’ll get in the car and drive to the hospital,” she insisted. “The news has to be wrong, they have to have a treatment for this.”

  He shut his eyes. “It takes thirty minutes to get to the closest hospital, Nadia. And I’m not going to last that long.”

  She flinched. “What do you mean?” Her voice barely croaked past her lips.

  “It’s like the reporter said.” He let her go now and backed away, but now Nadia found herself wanting to stay close, to hold him like it would stop him from saying what he was going to say next. “I feel super hungry and I can…”

  He stopped and turned his face.

  She stepped closer, but he moved backward so she stopped. “What? What else, Randy?”

  “I can, um, smell you. Smell your blood,” he admitted on hardly more than a whisper.

  Now Nadia stepped back as horror overtook her. “This can’t be happening.”

  “But it is. And in a short time, I’m not going to be able to control what I do and who I am,” Randy said. “I can feel that already. So I need you to go. I need you to run now. As far from the Pacific Northwest as you can get. I need to know that you got away from me… from this Outbreak, or whatever it is”

  Tears filled her eyes and Nadia made no attempt to quell them. They slid down her cheeks as she reached for Randy, but didn’t touch him. He didn’t let her. And that told her too much.

  “Please don’t make me go.”

  “Nadi, I’ve dragged you into my mess for far too long,” he said. “I ruined your life when I took you from Seattle and made you a fugitive like me. But I’m not going to kill you. And if you leave here and I know you have a chance, that will make this… well, I wouldn’t say easier. But better, somehow. Please, do this for me.”

  Nadia stared at him for a long moment and seriously considered ignoring his order. At least they’d be zombies together.

  “Please,” he repeated.

  She nodded, though she didn’t remember wanting to agree to this madness. She grabbed for her keys, her wallet and her cell from the table, she had to believe there would be service at some point. She moved toward the door. She wanted to hug him, to kiss him, but his lips were graying and she didn’t think he’d let her. And maybe if she touched him, he would lose his mind and attack her.

  “Randy,” she said. “I’m going to Vegas. Karen lives there. I’m going to Karen’s. If you’re ok… well, try to meet me there.”

  He looked up at her. His eyes were wide and dilated. He was gasping for breath and it killed her.

  “Okay. Now go. Please!”

  She ran out the door, hardly able to see thanks to the tears in her eyes. At a full sprint, she rushed to the front of the house and the SUV that was parked there. The vehicle was the last remnant of the life she had shared with Randy in Seattle. She clicked the auto-unlock and grabbed for the door. Before she could get in, though, she heard barking.

  She turned and watched with a stupid smile as Duncan rushed around the house and bounded toward her.

  “Duncan!” she sobbed and let the animal hop into the car. He climbed over to the passenger seat and sat there, perched on the leather he was never allowed to sit on and drooled at her.

  “Good,” she muttered as she got into the car and shut the door. She locked it and started the engine. “I’ve never traveled well alone.”

  The dog barked his response and she backed up the sandy drive way and peeled out on the road that led to the highway a few miles away. In the rearview mirror, she looked at the cottage and her heart stuttered.

  Randy had dragged himself around the house. He was shambling toward the car, his body limp and lifeless even as he moved toward her. She reached up and flipped the mirror so that she could no longer see and then floored it away from the cottage, away from the life she’d once known, and away from the love of her life.

  The Treehouse

  “You can’t just shoot an eight-year-old boy,” Robin said as she watched Carl point his rifle at the kid in the tree a few hundred yards away. The oak rose from a field of wheat and the boy in questi
on clung to one of the bigger branches. “There may not be laws anymore, but there are morals.”

  Carl turned toward her and blinked a few times. “You want to talk to me about morals when there are zombies roaming the nation, killing everyone?”

  Robin sighed. This was a conversation they seemed to have at least once a day. Sometimes she thought she just didn’t have anything in common with Carl at all. Of course, they’d only met a month before. And they’d only teamed up because they were two of the few survivors left in the world. And he’d had canned beans. And she’d had energy bars.

  It was a match made in heaven.

  Except for this one little thing.

  “Have you ever seen a zombie climb a tree?” she asked, folding her arms in challenge.

  That made him stop. He lowered the rifle and lifted his eyes skyward as he pondered that question

  “If you have to think that long, then the answer is no,” Robin said as she drew her 9mm from its holster at her waist. “So why don’t we just roam on up there and see if the boy is a zombie before we just splatter his brains all over the branches, hmmm?”

  He sighed. “Fine.”

  Robin stared. The wheat field hadn’t been harvested or treated in any way since the Outbreak, so it was now overgrown and wild. The greenery was almost to Robin’s waist. It was the perfect place where zombies could be laying in wait, maybe even with their legs severed. She’d seen people grabbed by the ankles and get turned from one little scratch on a calf. She hated shrubs and brush. Where were all the landscapers in this apocalypse? Hadn’t any of them survived?

  “Sure you don’t want me to just shoot him after all?” Carl asked with a smirk.

  Robin glared at him, then took the machete from its sling across her back. With a sweep of the blade, she started clearing a path toward the tree and the boy in the branches. Carl had a blade, too, but he stayed behind her, meandering in the path she’d created.

  “So you’re not going to help?” she asked over her shoulder.

  He laughed and it was a pleasant enough sound. She actually liked his laugh.

  “You wanted to do this, I figured you’d take the lead.”