Year Of The Dead: A Zombie Novel

by Ray Wallace

  A few minutes earlier, they'd pulled away from the marina, made their way out into open water, the thirty-foot vessel cutting through the gently rolling waves as it picked up speed. To their left, a few hundred yards away, the shoreline rolled by. To their right lay nothing but an endless expanse of blue water. Near the horizon, the morning sun cast its radiant light out of a sky nearly devoid of clouds.

  They'd brought fishing rods and a tackle box with them.

  “If the weather stays nice, we'll toss some lines overboard and see what we can catch,” Eric had promised him.

  Mitchell had never been fishing before and was looking forward to it. He'd felt a mounting sense of excitement ever since Eric had mentioned the idea of “heading out to sea” for the first time. His mother hadn't liked the idea but eventually she'd come around.

  “We'll be mobile, able to find supplies easier,” Eric had argued. “And the water will protect us.”

  From whom or what, he didn't say, not in front of Mitchell. He didn't have to, though. Mitchell may have been a child but he'd been forced to do a lot of growing up in recent months.

  “And we'll be able to fish,” Eric had added.

  When Amanda had asked if he knew how to drive a boat, Eric had told her, “No. But I'll learn.”

  He'd taken Mitchell over to the marina, Mitchell's mother giving in and letting him go after some begging—"Please, please, please..."—and a promise from Eric to do everything in his power to ensure their safety. As it turned out, she needn't have worried. They reached the marina without incident.

  "What do you think about that one?" Eric had asked as they wandered among the boats that had been left docked there.

  "Too small," Mitchell had told him, shaking his head.

  "Or that one?"

  "Too big?" he'd responded a little less certainly.

  "You're probably right."

  "How about that one?"

  They'd walked over to it, a long, white craft with gleaming silver rails and round windows set into the side of it—later on, he learned they were called "portholes.” He hadn't been allowed to go below deck until Eric had checked it out first and made sure it was safe. Mitchell had been amazed when he got to see the tiny kitchen down there along with the bathroom and the sleeping quarters.

  "Yeah, I think this will do quite nicely," Eric had told him. "Once I figure out how to pilot the damn thing."

  Figure it out he did. Now he had the three of them zipping across the water, a whole world of possibilities laid out before them. Mitchell found himself enjoying every minute of it. Until...

  Thump.

  And again, a moment later:

  Thump.

  Eric slowed the boat, shouted for Amanda to take Mitchell below.

  She got to her feet, grabbed Mitchell by the hand and led him to the rear of the vessel where a narrow staircase led down to the galley. Along the way, Mitchell kept his eyes on the water. When he discovered what had caused the thumping sound, he felt a spike of fear burst the feeling of calm and genuine happiness that had enveloped him.

  A body floated face-up on the waves, bloated from its time in the water. Mitchell half expected it to turn and look at him but it paid him no mind, just went on staring at the brilliant blue expanse of the sky above, unblinking.

  He saw another body. And another. Two more.

  Then they were below deck and his mother was telling him to stay put, that she was going to check and make sure everything was all right.

  “I'll be back in a minute.”

  Mitchell did as he was told. As he waited, he thought about the bodies he'd seen—that first one, staring at the sky. And he told himself there was no reason to be afraid.

  There are two types of dead people in the world now.

  The ones out there, floating in the water, they weren't the kind he had to worry about.

  Monday, September 21st

  As the bombs fell over Tampa, Rachel and Howard had found it easy to make their escape.

  "Let's get out of here," Rachel had said as she wandered away from the road, heading for the middle school that stood at the far end of an overgrown soccer field. She kept waiting for someone to yell at them to stop or come after them. But no one did. She couldn't relax, however, not until she and Howard were behind the building and safely hidden from view.

  Throughout the remainder of that day, they'd walked and listened to the distant, concussive booms of the explosions as bomb after bomb continued to detonate.

  "Sounds like they're going scorched earth over there," Howard had remarked.

  She knew that in his younger days he'd done a tour in Viet Nam, had taken some shrapnel in his leg.

  "Got a purple heart for my troubles," he'd told her during their travels, "and a knee that lets me know every time it's gonna rain."

  Rachel had been able tell that the bombing, even though it posed no threat to them, made him nervous. He'd kept staring in its direction, would even jump a little when several explosions went off in rapid succession.

  After an hour or so, the bombing had stopped as the jets flew away. Rachel had found herself wondering about the devastation left in their wake, the condition of Pastor Lewis's “holy city.” While they walked, they'd encountered their share of zombies. But, of course, the reanimated corpses had paid them no mind.

  Late that afternoon, they'd approached one of the area's better hotels, a five story building where Rachel had stayed a couple of times when she'd been the jet-setting golden girl of a computer hardware company. Inside, they'd wandered the silent and dreary hallways until they came upon a door that had been left propped open. After ascertaining that the rooms beyond it—kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bathroom—were devoid of occupants, living or undead, they'd kicked off their shoes and settled onto the couch.

  "Where do you think those jets came from?" Rachel had asked, a question that had been bothering her ever since she saw them.

  "If I had to guess... MacDill Air Force Base. It's close by. That's if it hasn't been overrun. If it has, then who knows? They could have flown in from any number of bases across the country."

  They decided to stay at the suite for a while. “It's as good a place as any, I suppose.” This according to Howard. They played Paper Rock Scissors for the bed that first night. Rachel won. Howard took the couch.

  They went on food and supply runs together, encountered a few of their fellow scavengers on occasion. One of these meetings proved dangerous when a woman threatened them with a shotgun. It ended peacefully enough, though, with apologies.

  Rachel found a map of the city, used it to pinpoint exactly where the air force base was located. When she mentioned the idea of checking the place out, Howard had shaken his head and said, "I'm not going anywhere near there."

  "Why not? If it's still operational, they might take us in."

  She'd pushed him a little more but he'd refused to explain his feelings on the subject. He never talked much about his time in the military. From the little he'd said about it, she knew it was one of the darker times in his life. So she had let the subject drop. But the idea remained...

  Sunday evening, she offered to take the couch. Sometime past midnight, after checking to make sure Howard had fallen asleep, she grabbed a flashlight, a pen, and a sheet of hotel stationary, wrote a note in case he woke up and found her gone. Then she left the room, went through the hotel lobby and out the building's main entrance. She approached a nearby streetlamp—solar powered, bathing the area in a pool of white light—where she unlocked and unchained the mountain bike standing next to it. Moments later, she climbed onto the bike then pedaled off into the darkness.

  The night air was cool with the approach of autumn. Still humid, though. By the time she reached the road leading to the main gate of the air force base, she'd worked up a pretty good sweat. Out over the bay, lightning flickered across the sky followed by a low roar of thunder.

  Just a quick look around.

  She had no intention of getting ca
ught in a storm.

  The road was remarkably free of debris. She didn't see a single body or abandoned vehicle, any of the usual signs of past mayhem she'd come to expect.

  Like someone's been actively clearing it.

  In the moonlight, she saw the gate appear out of the darkness, less than a hundred yards away.

  More lightning in the distance. More thunder.

  Then:

  Crack!

  Something brushed past her ear.

  She hit the brakes, put a foot down just in time to keep from losing her balance and falling to the pavement.

  "Consider that a warning," came an amplified voice out of the darkness. "Now stop where you are and put your hands in the air."

  "Okay!" she shouted, doing as she was told. “Don't shoot!”

  Near the gate, headlights appeared. They grew brighter as the vehicle approached, a military jeep that pulled up next to her. Two large figures with gas masks covering their faces climbed out. One of them bound her wrists behind her back with a zip tie. The other one pushed her bike over to the side of the road. Then, without a word from her captors, she was placed into the back of the jeep which turned around and took her into the base.

  Tuesday, September 22nd

  He wandered, without direction or destination, concerned only that he keep moving, that he put as much distance as possible between himself and...

  What, exactly, he couldn't say.

  Those he'd let down so spectacularly? The city he'd brought them to? The site of his failure?

  All he knew for sure was that some indefinable urge kept pushing him onward, well past the point of exhaustion. When was the last time he'd slept? The last time he'd eaten? It had rained recently, allowing him to quench his thirst. But with the midday sun glaring down and the storm only a memory, his mouth had gone parchment dry once again, the thirst returning to torment him along with his empty stomach and aching legs.

  Have I become one of them? he wondered, not for the first time. Have I fallen prey to the sickness? Has the Devil found a way into my soul? Have I been forsaken?

  He thought about the red-eyed fiends he'd been forced to kill during his recent wanderings, the ones that had come for him, growling and groaning, hands held out, fingers grasping, their intentions made perfectly clear.

  If I was one of them, they would have taken no interest in me.

  He looked at the weapon in his hand, the sword that was shaped like a cross. Somewhere along the way, he'd lost the scabbard, leaving the blade naked, coated in blood and gore.

  It's been used recently.

  He tried to recall exactly when that may have been, found himself remembering the sight of those jets flying in low over Tampa instead, the sounds of the bombs unleashing their destructive power, the feeling of shock that had stolen over him. Brother Randall had tried to stop him from pressing onward, had tried to reason with him:

  “It's pointless to go there now.”

  But he hadn't listened.

  “I need to see it...”

  By the time he got there, the jets had flown away, leaving a broken and battered cityscape in their wake. Buildings lay toppled. Massive craters and mounds of smoldering debris rendered streets impassable. Fires raged and clouds of smoke rose into the air. Body parts littered the ground—some of them moving and twitching with whatever strange life force inhabited them.

  How long he made his way through that blasted, ruined place, through that sprawling necropolis, he had no idea. He knew that he was alone, though, that he'd been deserted by his followers. Not that he could blame them. No, not at all. In fact, he would have been surprised if anyone had remained with him.

  When he'd seen enough, he made his way out of the city, uncaring of which direction he went, of where he might eventually end up.

  Day turned to night. Night into day. Again and again...

  Where have I ended up?

  He walked through the deep grass behind a seafood restaurant—or what had once been a seafood restaurant—with a big, blue fish painted on the side, the main section of the building raised ten feet into the air on stilts. The grass gave way to sand where he stopped and stared out across the undulating, blue waters of the Gulf before him. Tired beyond words or reason, he fell to his knees, plunging the sword point-first into the sand, deep enough that it stood there unwavering. Then he closed his eyes and clasped his hands before him. And he prayed.

  Oh, Lord, I beg your forgiveness.

  He could hear the endless susurration of the waves, the screeching of seagulls hovering above the shoreline, the barking of dogs fighting over the corpses that lay scattered along the beach.

  I failed to understand the meaning behind the visions you sent me.

  He wept.

  I will do anything. Anything. Please, just send me a sign...

  That's when he heard the moaning from behind him.

  Opening his eyes, he whispered, “Thank you.”

  He stood and pulled the sword from the sand, turned around to face the dozen or so zombies limping and staggering onto the beach, closing in on him.

  With a smile on his face, Pastor Lewis raised the holy weapon in his hands and stepped forward, ready to unleash his wrath.

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ray Wallace lives in the Tampa Bay area and is the author of The Nameless, The Hell Season, and the short story collection Letting the Demons Out. His One Way Out novels include Escape from Zombie City, Escape from Zombie Island, and Escape from Zombie Planet. He also writes book reviews for SFReader.com. You can find more of his work online at amazon.com/author/raywallace.

  Read on for a free sample of Startup Z.

  06.2027

  CHAPTER 1

  “Albert Tinsdale, the last of the Chance Hearings scientists still incarcerated, is being released this morning from the Pennsylvania State Penitentiary amid renewed protests by a group claiming allegiance with the Clergy Party. We have Alicia Farrah live at the scene–Alicia, good morning. What’s the mood out there?”

  Alicia Farrah appeared on the television holding a microphone and nodding her perfectly coiffed blonde hair. The grim red line of her mouth served as both an acknowledgment of the anchor’s words and as forewarning of the utmost seriousness of the story that she was covering. “Yes, thank you, Bill, good morning. The scene here in Philadelphia is–in a word–chaotic.” Alicia half-turned and the shot widened out to include a small group of people milling on a curb across the street from a large stone building surrounded by double fences topped with razor wire. The group stood quietly, signs upside down and forgotten at their sides. One woman, dressed in the black robes of a nun, yawned.

  A young man in a jean jacket leaned on his sign and watched the reporter with half-lidded eyes. When he noticed the camera had turned to include them, he straightened and nudged two people standing next to him, who in turn elbowed others. At this haphazard signal, the protesters raised their signs and began to wave them in earnest, their faces pulled into tight lines of manufactured-looking fury. Their signs read, “MAN PROPOSES GOD DISPOSES” and “SCIENCE IS GODLESSNESS” and “GOD HATES SCIENCE.” Behind them, a large stack of unused signs hinted at an unexpectedly reduced number of protesters.

  A guard in a tan coverall uniform stood just outside a heavily reinforced gate across the street from the protesters. He eyed them with impassive boredom and cradled a machine gun across his chest. The machine gun was black and dull in the gray morning light. Another guard, the first guard’s dark twin, stood cradling his machine gun almost out of sight behind the first fence, his dark green coverall blending into the shadows. On the street along the building, three ambulances sat with their lights spinning.

  Alicia turned back to the camera, rearranging her features to remove the frustrated disgust.

  Sitting in her kitchen across the river in Marlton, New Jersey, Cassie Ramson caught the young reporter’s chagrin and snorted a laugh.

  “Protesters aren’t what they used to
be are they, Alicia?” Cassie said to the small television sitting on her kitchen counter. “Not since the Silence Rulings. What’s a reporter to do?”

  On the screen, Alicia squared her shoulders as though deliberately ignoring Cassie’s snide question. She went on, “A source from inside the prison has informed me that some sort of food poisoning epidemic coupled with an unscheduled ‘blue-flu’ is going to cause a delay of hours, if not days, before Tinsdale is released, and that–”

  The shot switched back to the anchor in the studio. His face had a flown-apart, confused look, as he listened to someone off-screen. He shook his head as if he didn’t understand, listened some more, and then turned his gaze to the camera. He cleared his throat.

  “This is just in, all flights into and out of the Philadelphia airport have been cancelled and we’re now getting word that–”

  The screen went to gray and a small wheel spun and spun. Cassie sighed with irritation. Internet down. Again. It was at least the third time this week. It failed regularly–but they couldn’t afford anything better.

  Well, she didn’t need the distraction right now, anyway.

  She switched the television off and pulled her hair into a low ponytail. She took the stack of towels she’d folded while watching the morning news, shoved them into the laundry basket, and checked the clock over the stove. Ten. Two more hours until she needed to pick Lucy up at the daycare center. What else could she get done in those two hours? A lot probably, if only the couch would stop calling to her. She yawned and tilted her coffee cup, stirring the dregs. Another coffee? She consulted her already slightly soured stomach and decided against it. As many times as she’d counseled people that coffee was no substitute for sleep, she found herself caught in the same bad habits, just like when doctors used to smoke. Which she had heard about, but never seen, of course. Cigarettes had been outlawed in 2020 when Cassie was just out of nursing school and the country–hell, the whole world–was stumbling faster and faster toward the financial abyss. Thank God, she’d gotten her loans paid off fast. When the Second Great Depression happened in 2024, she and Dan had been okay. Not great, no one was great anymore, but since she was a health professional, they’d at least been able to keep their small house, and they’d been able to have Lucy.