Only The Dead Don't Die (Book 3): Last State

by Popovich, A. D.

  Zac turned to her, their faces inches apart. “Scarlett, what happened back there?” His eyes searched hers for the answer. He cupped her cheeks in his gentle hands, compassion pouring from his heart into hers.

  “I was hoping to skip that part.” How could she explain it? Wouldn’t he think she was certifiably insane? If not for the Silver Lady, she would have assumed it had been a nightmare.

  Luther slowed down. A line of creepers blocked their path. He shifted the truck into park.

  Zac looked out the window and then back at her. “God—what you just went through.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “It must have been traumatizing. But we need to talk about it. So we can understand what’s going on.”

  Scarlett wanted to melt into him, disappear with him, and forget about this world. It felt as if lifetimes of their love had accumulated in her heart. There was no other explanation for the immense love she had for this man she hardly knew.

  “Wherever these sticking nimrods are going—I’m not,” Luther drawled, turning to her.

  Scarlett held onto Luther’s eyes, refusing to let go.

  “Hold on a minute.” Luther’s eyes lit up. “Don’t tell me these muthas are going to the . . .” He gulped. “The lodge?”

  Scarlett nodded, afraid to say it. “They think the new blood flowing in Ella’s womb will heal them,” Scarlett rasped in a papery-thin voice.

  The single-file regiment of creepers glared at them, snarling with spittle and drool dripping down their blood-thirsty jowls.

  “I don’t know about you all, but I prefer the spasmo Zs over these Silence of the Lambs followers,” Luther uttered under his breath.

  “Why in Hell are they ignoring us? Does this have anything to do with the Thinker zomb in the tunnel?” Zac asked.

  Scarlett gave Zac a long hard look. Here goes. “Apparently, there’s a power struggle between the regular creepers and the X-strain. Each, uh, tribe, has created their own collective consciousness.”

  “Say whut?” Luther’s voice oscillated.

  “Exactly, what does that mean?” Zac seemed taken aback.

  “I know. It sounds crazy. But things are, well, crazy.” She avoided eye contact with the creepers. She held onto her internal Merkaba shield, willing the creepers not to recognize her, for she was also part of their ungodly plan. “With so many creepers trapped in Zoat, they learned to communicate with each other on a primordial level.”

  “You lost me,” Luther said.

  She shifted uncomfortably with lowered eyes. “The ones infected with the Super Summer flu massed together. They have, for lack of a better word, evolved during their entrapment in Zoat. They want to be healed, to live again, and thrive as their own species. The X-strain, well they want to take over the world. And devour every living creature until there is nothing left.”

  “Those things learned to communicate?” Zac retorted with a harried look dancing in his eyes.

  Silence crippled the conversation. A creeper slapped Zac’s window. The three of them jumped. The next creeper in line slapped the window and glowered at them as if daring Zac and Scarlett to do something about it. Then the next one, and the next one down the line slapped the window as the army of the undead marched their way to the battlefield.

  “Now, what?” Luther asked.

  “Try backing the truck out of their path,” Zac said, checking his side-mirror.

  “Ol’ Luther doesn’t like this one little iota.”

  “You’re doing good, man,” Zac said. He gave Scarlett an uneasy glance.

  Luther backed up, keeping the truck in idle. They watched for a break in the line. “Here we go.” Beads of sweat dribbled down Luther’s face as he drove between a gap in the parade of creepers.

  Scarlett continued. “They want more than Ella. They want the LifeGivers and their babies. And Twila and—me.” She recoiled at the thought of the King of the Undead as her husband.” Her lips suddenly stung. The kiss of death . . .

  “If they want you, why aren’t they attacking us?” Luther questioned.

  “I’m using my Merkaba shield.”

  Zac turned to her. “Run that by me again.”

  “It’s a light-energy shield we all have access to once you learn to manifest it,” she explained.

  “Twila was talking about how Justin broke her Merkaba. By the way, my kundalini awakened,” Zac said as if it were a casual conversation starter.

  “Stop with the Voodoo,” Luther’s voice cracked.

  In a flash of lightning, the lodge came into view. The tension inside her mounted, roiling like the cauldron scene she still couldn’t shake.

  “There.” Zac pointed. “If you head south, I think we can drive around the other army coming from Zoat.”

  “Can’t you go faster? We’ve got to get to Twila and Ella.” Scarlett fiddled with her hands. It was taking too long.

  “We can’t risk getting another flat. We wouldn’t be able to outrun them if they charged us,” Zac said. “We already lost close to three hours trying to change not one but two flat tires with a broken jack.”

  “You see that!” Luther bellowed. The headlights captured a troop of creepers with no legs. They crawled and rolled their way through the knee-high grasses.

  “I’ll never be able to un-remember that.” Luther’s hands trembled on the steering wheel.

  “By the way, we’ve got a new resident. A young woman, Mindy, and her newborn,” Zac informed.

  “I saw another presence. Mindy uses the shield well,” Scarlett said. “Ah, a newborn, that’s what they want,” Scarlett realized.

  “They should be safe in Dean’s hands,” Zac assured. “I told them to stay in the basement’s hidden room in case Enforcers dropped by for more tequila.”

  Scarlett snapped to. “That’s it! They’re digging their way to the basement!” She had thought the constant static penetrating her eardrums had been from the grenades.

  “I’m not letting those muthas get Ella and Twila!” Luther stomped on the gas.

  Scarlett let herself fall into a semi-meditative state for a clearer view. “They have Ella! I don’t see Justin.” Scarlett focused so intently her brain throbbed. Her forehead pulsed. “Dean, Ella needs help,” she screamed internally. She focused so intently she lost track of time.

  She gasped in relief. “Thank God! Dean and Justin saved her.”

  Luther and Zac side-glanced her with odd expressions. They bounced around the truck for countless minutes while she endured the lingering effects of the tea.

  The lodge’s lights glowed ahead. “Park in the back of the lodge,” Zac said briskly.

  Luther turned to her. “And then what?”

  “They’re upstairs,” Scarlett said, trying not to lose the connection.

  “Which room?” Zac whispered softly in her ear.

  She focused in. A pharmacopeia of amber bottles came into view. “Uh-uh, the room Shari uses for her tinctures.”

  A bolt of lightning splintered the sky into eerie fragments. She jolted out of her vision state.

  “Look at them. Are they digging a trench?” Luther’s voice fell flat.

  An army of creepers gathered several feet from the lodge’s wall. Instead of banging on the windows and trying to break down the door, it appeared as though they were going underground based on the mounds of dirt.

  “Aw, shit! That’s the side to the basement’s hidden room!” Zac exclaimed.

  Luther turned the corner of the building. “I see a light on the top floor!” Luther seemed relieved. He flashed the headlights.

  Scarlett peered up through the windshield. “That’s them.”

  “They’ll never see us.” Zac banged the dashboard with his fist.

  “Scarlett, can you do that . . .” Luther hesitated. “Mindreading thing?”

  It wasn’t exactly mindreading. It was more like she had intermittent access to their future-selves by accessing the Akashic Records. But she didn’t have time to explain. “Twila,” she yelled inter
nally. All Scarlett saw was blood. Blood everywhere. Ella was screaming. Justin was terrified, and Dean was having a difficult time keeping creepers out of the room.

  A face came into view. The leader of the X-strain. She stared right back, refusing to back down. It was far fiercer than the King of the Undead. It relished in the power of eternal death and agony. It shook its head as if scolding a two-year-old. “Over my undead body,” it cackled. She lost her connection.

  “It’s too late . . .” She crumpled next to Zac, overwhelmed with exhaustion. Her shield evaporated into nothingness.

  “The hell?” Zac bellowed.

  The horn faded into the background. Her muscles and brain had turned to putty. An invisible power had besieged her. She struggled to fling it back to the cosmos. He—it—was far stronger than her.

  Chapter 42

  Dean Wormer braced his back against the lodge’s bedroom door. There must have been two dozen dead-heads ramming the other side. They had holed up in a bedroom on the third level, thinking they’d be safe for the time being. Those bastards had found them quicker than he had anticipated.

  Between Ella’s labor bellows, the horde’s banging, Twila’s blubbering, and Justin’s babbling, Dean fought back a sudden case of the screaming meemies. All he wanted to do was run for the hills; meanwhile, a soothing voice seemed to calm him underneath the hysteria.

  The door thrust him forward several inches. Dean shoved back in retaliation. Justin heaved an extremely heavy apothecary cabinet full of brown bottles toward him. It was larger than the door. It should hold back the horde while Dean figured what to do next.

  The cabinet inched closer. “You almost got it, son!” Dean rooted on.

  Ella let out a wallop of a yell.

  Twila bawled, “Ella’s dying.”

  Justin ran to Ella. Dean was left with the cabinet. He manhandled it a few inches closer to the door before realizing the damn doorknob was in the way. He should have thought of it. That side of the door was the most crucial since the lock had busted five minutes ago.

  If he could nail the door shut—he patted down his pockets. What’d you know? Out of habit, he had slipped the hammer under his belt. He still had a handful of double-headed sixteen-penny nails in his front shirt pocket. He hammered the nails diagonally into the door frame, knowing it was merely a matter of time before the frame ripped all to hell.

  It dawned on him that he had been receiving snippets of warnings all blooming day. First, there had been the urge to secure the lodge’s first floor even though the lodge had never been breached based on the condition of the building. Then, there had been the uncanny feeling to check on Ella in the basement. Perhaps his dear ole Granddaddy really was keeping tabs on him.

  The blare of an impatient horn added to the bedlam. Dean ran to the window. Headlights flashed below. Zac and Luther made it back. With Scarlett. He could scratch that off his never-ending to-do list. Back to the situation at hand. There was only one possible escape route: the window. And Ella was still huffing away in full-fledged labor. How long will the blasted door hold?

  “I see its head! Holy shit! What do I do?” Justin blustered.

  “Let it come out on its own accord.” Dean didn’t know a thing about childbirth. In his time, it hadn’t been considered a normal practice for the father to coach the mother during labor. Mary had been on her own when she had delivered their son, Kyle. Poor Mary. Today, he had a front-row seat whether he wanted it or not.

  “It’s coming,” Justin shrieked, giving Dean a frenzied minute-by-minute report. “Yikes! Its head is—huge!”

  Dean rushed to Justin. “You might want to try comforting her instead of screaming like a bloomin’ banshee,” he whispered in Justin’s ear.

  “Ye-ah, right, okay,” Justin blathered.

  “Ella, I know this is an asinine question for this particular time. But tell me, does everything feel normal?” Dean asked, feeling like a complete imbecile.

  Drenched in sweat, Ella let out a long grunting push. “Uh, huh.” She panted. “This is normal.”

  Justin shot him a haggard crossed-brow frown. “This is normal? You mean, she’s not dying?”

  Dean was about ready to Gibbs-slap the kid, but he needed to prioritize things. Next on his agenda, check the window. He flung it open. The horn finally stopped blaring, another thing out of his head. Zac and Luther stood below waving him on.

  Dean waved back. Like it or not, he knew what needed to be done. He grabbed Twila. “Young lady, are you ready to see your mama!” He was relieved the child wasn’t in another one of those meditative states.

  “I lost her,” Twila said bleary-eyed.

  “Naw, she’s waiting for you. Take a look-see out the window.” Dean ransacked the closet for something to hoist her down with, preferably a heavy blanket. He threw down a hodge-podge of blankets, purses, and shoes from the closet’s top shelf. He chose a heavy-duty wool blanket.

  “Be a good girl and use your special powers to keep the dead-heads away,” Dean said.

  “I lost my abilities. Why doesn’t anyone remember what I say?” Twila scowled through squinted eyes at Ella. “I’m never having a baby!”

  Dean peeked out the window. Scarlett was next to the pickup’s tailgate. “Your mama’s right there. See?” He took a double take. Was Scarlett wearing an evening gown? He never knew what to expect these days.

  “I see a hand,” Justin yelled. “Ugh, so much blood!”

  Dean spread the blanket out. “Sit cross-legged in the middle—”

  “This is stupid,” Twila moaned.

  He flashed his best disgruntled-granddaddy look. Twila took a seat in the middle of the blanket. He lifted the blanket’s four corners, tying them into a mess of sturdy knots. Quickly, he unbuckled his belt. He looped the ends of the blanket in a shoddy improvised version of a slip noose knot. It would have to do.

  He elbowed out the torn window screen. “And now for the fun part.” He lifted the bundle to the windowsill. “Ready for Twila?” Dean shouted to Luther.

  “Send her down!” Luther yelled up.

  “And out you go. Weee,” Dean played along, hoping not to scare the child. He hoisted her down as long as the belt allowed. Luther was the tallest of the men, and his outstretched arms added a couple more feet. Still, they were short a good eight to ten feet.

  “I got her!” Luther yelled.

  Dean hesitated. He looked back at the shaking cabinet of bottles. He let go.

  The blanket landed safely in Luther’s arms.

  “Feet, I see feet!” Justin yelled.

  “Stop yelling,” Ella grunted.

  Ella seemed to be doing all right under the circumstances. The ripping of old wood told him they were living on borrowed time.

  “It’s a boy! It’s a boy!” Justin went on and on. “Dean, Ella, Twila, it’s a boy!”

  The door shoved Dean several inches forward. “Son, stop your caterwauling, and help me hold back this door!”

  The door frame had split where he had nailed it shut. Gnarled hands reached between the narrow gap. He braced his back against the cabinet and pushed back with his feet. The crunching of bones and shattering of glass as the cabinet’s glass doors swung open replaced Ella’s grunting. Ella collapsed down on the bed. Had she fainted from sheer exhaustion? At least she wasn’t screaming. I can’t handle any more dad-blast-it screaming.

  “Dude, why didn’t you tell me they busted through?” Justin looked about as befuddled as a cowhand attempting the ludicrous task of herding cats. “Now what?”

  Dean resisted the urge to roll his eyes, one of Justin’s exasperated theatrics. “I’ve got it for the time being.” He didn’t have the heart to tell the kid he didn’t have the faintest idea how to get Ella out the window without risking her and the baby. “Why don’t you place your son on Ella’s chest.” Let them enjoy a precious moment.

  “Ye-ah, okay.” Justin gingerly picked up the newborn. “Oops, uh, he’s slippery.”

  “For Christ
Sake, don’t drop him!” Dean scolded.

  “Do I cut off the slimy cord?” Justin baffled.

  Dean didn’t know what to say. Common sense told him to wait. Besides, they didn’t have a sterilized knife or anything to clamp it off with. “Think we need to get out of here first.”

  The cabinet pushed Dean a good six inches forward. Justin rushed to his aid. They shoved the bastards back.

  “Holy shit! What are we going to do? Hey, where’s Twila?” Justin’s eyes darted around the room.

  “While you were sidetracked with the baby and all. I hoisted her down in a blanket. Luther caught her. But that won’t work for us.”

  “Dean, this is my son. You gotta think of something!”

  As if Dean didn’t feel guilty enough as it was.

  “Anyone order Chinese food?” Zac’s head appeared at the window. He jumped into the room.

  “Chinese food.” Ella perked up.

  “Dude, where’d you come from?” Justin yelped.

  “What the hell happened in here?” Zac looked aghast. “B-baby?”

  “O-M-G, my son!” Ella suddenly remembered.

  “Where the heck did you find a ladder?” Justin raved.

  “The only upside to perpetual roof repairs,” Zac said, calm as could be. “It was on the east wing.” Gunfire interrupted their conversation. “They need our help out there, pronto. I’ll carry Ella down.”

  Zac was right. Zac was about twice the size of Justin. He would have no problem carrying mother and child. Besides, Justin wasn’t thinking straight.

  “Follow me down. We’re down to seconds,” Zac warned. “Get a load of this. There’s an army horde marching this way.”

  Hell’s bells, things are getting worse by the minute. He put on his best poker face for Ella’s sake.

  Zac glanced at Ella. “Do you have any energy left to hold onto your baby?”

  Ella nodded meekly. Zac helped her sit up while she cradled the baby to her chest. Meanwhile, Justin struggled to keep the door closed.

  Dean sifted through the items he had tossed to the floor. He held up a tote bag for size. “This might work.” He put the tote’s straps around the back of Ella’s neck. “Nice and easy does it.”