Dead Meat Box Set, Vol. 2 | Days 4-6

by Clausen, Nick

  The moment he drops, Chris fires three times in rapid succession, only pausing a few seconds in between to reload.

  The empty cartridges topple onto the floor, and the zombies collapse out on the terrace.

  “Shut the window!” Chris shouts. “There are too many of them!”

  Iver looks down at his hands, wondering for half a second where the rope went, then realizes it’s still in his mouth. He takes it out and yanks it hard, pulling away the lever and causing the window to drop shut. He jumps over, twists the handle and backs away just as the next dead person reaches the window and begins fondling the glass.

  Iver looks at the zombie—a middle-aged, balding guy with tattoos all over his arms—and then at the others.

  Agnete is at the far end of the room, both hands pressed over her mouth, as though to keep back screams.

  Charlotte is still standing in the same spot, staring wide-eyed at the window.

  Chris gets to his feet and places the rifle over his shoulder. “Goddamnit, you moron,” he growls at Charlotte. “You had one job!”

  Charlotte doesn’t seem to hear him. Her lips move, but no words come out.

  “Apparently, this won’t work,” Chris says. “There’s a blind angle I hadn’t considered.”

  “So, what do we do?” Iver asks, noticing his hearing returning slowly to normal. “About those outside, I mean?”

  Four zombies are already crowding the terrace, and more are crossing the lawn.

  “Nothing for now,” Chris says grimly. “Except maybe pray the glass will hold.”

  Charlotte makes a weird noise. Her shoulders begin bobbing and her mouth quivers.

  “She’s in shock,” Chris says, sounding more annoyed than anything. “I thought she would do better under pressure.”

  Iver instinctively goes to Charlotte and takes her by the shoulders. She collapses into him and begins sobbing and shaking. He helps her down onto the couch.

  Then another sound reaches him: the sound of the toddler crying from upstairs.

  Iver looks to Agnete. “Could you … help her? I’ll go see to the baby.”

  Agnete looks like she pulls herself together, then she nods and comes over to hold Charlotte, who’s bawling like a baby now.

  Iver rushes past Chris, and he hears him sigh and mutter under his breath: “Trapped with an old lady, a baby, a crying girl and a faggot. Just my fucking luck.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Is he coming or what?” Sebastian asks.

  William can see Dan sitting down cross-legged. Nasira and Ali are still hugging and saying goodbye.

  “Give him a minute,” Josefine says. “He just lost his father. He probably needs a minute.”

  “I know,” Sebastian says. “I just don’t want to hang around here. It’s not safe.”

  “I’ll go get him,” William says. He walks over to Dan with Ozzy at his heel and sits down beside him. Dan doesn’t seem to notice; he’s just staring out over the water.

  “That’s quite the view,” William says.

  Dan looks at him, blinking. “I think I get it now.”

  “Get what?”

  “What the universe is trying to tell me.”

  “Oh. And what is that?”

  “We need to go back there.”

  William frowns. “Back where? To Denmark?”

  “Back to the house where it began.”

  “And … why would we do that? That’s ground zero. That’s exactly the place we’re trying to get away from.”

  “I know. And I think that’s what we’re doing wrong.”

  William is about to answer when Sebastian cuts in: “What are we doing wrong again?”

  William turns to see Sebastian, Lærke and Josefine have joined them.

  Dan looks up at Sebastian, shrugging. “We’re running away.”

  “Of course we are,” William says, smiling and throwing out his arms. “That’s the only sane thing to do.”

  Dan shakes his head slowly. “We can’t run from this. It’ll go on to destroy the world if we do.”

  William and Sebastian exchange a look.

  “Maybe the authorities will get it under control,” Sebastian suggests.

  “Of course they won’t,” Josefine says in a tired voice. “They’ll try all the wrong things with all the right intentions, and they’ll only kill themselves trying. And when that fails, they’ll turn to bombing the living hell out of everything. Even if they should succeed in stopping this thing, they’ll destroy the planet in the process.”

  “Maybe it won’t come to that,” Sebastian begins. “Maybe—"

  “She’s right,” Dan says softly. “They can’t stop it. Because they don’t know how. But we do. I do. I was there. I saw how it began. That’s also how it needs to end.”

  Sebastian squints his eyes. “I’m sorry, but I’m not following you, Dan.”

  “Are you … talking about voodoo?” William guesses.

  Dan nods, looking out over the ocean again. “This is not a virus. It’s not even a disease. It’s a curse. Black magic. Something affecting the soul. No vaccine will ever cure that. No weapon will stop it.”

  A moment of quiet.

  “So …” Sebastian goes on. “We need to find, what—a counter-curse?”

  Dan says, still not looking at them: “First we need to find the person who started it.”

  “But she’s dead,” William interjects. “You said so yourself. It was the woman in the house, right?”

  “Someone else was there, too,” Dan says. “Someone we’ve already met.”

  “Who?” William asks.

  “The boy.”

  “What boy?”

  “The one at Holger’s place.”

  They’re all eyeing him intently now, even Nasira has picked up on the conversation and is coming back to listen, Ali holding her hand, sniffing and wiping his eyes.

  “You mean the boy and his psycho-mom?” William asks. “The one who killed Holger?”

  “Yes. I saw his pouch—he had this little, weird leather bag thing around his neck—I saw that in the house. I only just remembered. He must have been there before whatever happened there went down, and also he must have been back later to get the pouch.”

  Sebastian and William and Josefine and Nasira look at each other in turn. Then all of them look back at Dan.

  “You sure it was the same pouch?” Josefine asks.

  “Positive,” Dan says. “It’s very unique.”

  “Sorry, buddy,” William says, “but don’t you think that’s a little … I don’t know, thin? I mean, so what if that guy was there? You think he can do anything to stop this?”

  “I think his mother can,” Dan says. “I bet you she’s into voodoo just like the woman who lived in the house. She may have even helped do the ritual on the little girl.”

  They all still look at him with skeptical faces, and then he finally turns his head, and William is surprised to see Dan’s eyes are blazing as he looks at them one at a time.

  “Look, I get this sounds like a stretch, I really do. But I feel it in my gut. I was there. So were my sister and her boyfriend. They both died at that place. So no one else can verify what I saw. But what if I’m right? What if this woman was in on it? What if she knows how it got started?”

  “All right, let’s say you’re right,” Sebastian says calmly. “I still don’t see why that’s any reason you want to go back?”

  “Because she might know how to stop it.”

  “If she knew that, don’t you think she would have done it?” William says. “I mean, she’s obviously a cold-blooded psycho, but why would she create a zombie and just unleash it on the world?”

  “She wouldn’t,” Dan says, breathing deeply. “It was an accident, obviously. That ritual was meant to heal the girl—she must have had some sort of accident, and she was probably already dead when they did it. But it went off the rails and she turned into a zombie and killed her grandmother—the old woman who lived there. Maybe
the other woman and her son were still there when it happened, maybe they’d already left and didn’t realize it until it was too late. Either way, they didn’t mean for this to happen.” Dan breathes through his nose. “I’m telling you, we need to go back there and talk with that woman.”

  No one says anything for a moment.

  “It makes sense how you put it,” William concedes. “But what do you hope will happen if we go back there? That she agrees to try and—what, uncurse all the zombies?”

  “I don’t know,” Dan admits. “I just know that’s what we need to do—go back there and talk with her.”

  “If voodoo really has some sort of power to stop the pandemic,” Josefine says, “then why don’t we find some priest who knows all about it?”

  Dan seems to consider for a moment, then he shakes his head. “He would have no way of knowing what exactly went down. It didn’t go according to plan, remember? If anybody without full knowledge begins messing around with it, they could make it worse.”

  “Worse than the world ending by zombies?” William says, then regretting the comment right away as no one else smiles. He clears his throat. “Okay, look, if you really want to talk with that woman, I think there’s a way of reaching her without going back there.”

  Dan looks at him. “How?”

  William takes out his phone and shows it to him. “We call her up.”

  Josefine frowns. “You have her number?”

  “Nope,” William says, “but I have the number for the satellite phone in Holger’s bunker.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  William turns on his phone, finds the number and hands it over to Dan.

  Dan looks at the screen, biting his lip, feeling suddenly hesitant. “What do I … what do I say?”

  “I don’t know,” William tells him. “You’re the one who wants to speak with her.”

  Dan glances around at the others; all of them are watching him, none of them have any answers.

  Dan realizes it’s on him.

  This is his hunch.

  This is his job.

  He closes his eyes for a moment, steadying himself inside. For no discernable reason, Thomas appears in his inner vision. Thomas was determined. He was tough. He knew what to do. Even when he was facing death, it didn’t stop him from doing what needed to be done.

  Dan must cultivate some of that strength himself now—heaven knows he needs it.

  So he breathes deeply and makes the call, placing the phone to his ear.

  “It might take a while before it starts ringing,” William says.

  And it does—for almost twenty seconds, Dan doesn’t hear anything. Then there’s a faint static noise. And finally, the phone starts ringing.

  After the third ring, the static stops as the call is apparently answered.

  For a moment, there’s only silence.

  Dan imagines the woman standing there, holding the phone to her ear, waiting suspiciously without saying anything.

  Then, completely unexpectedly, a meek boy’s voice says: “Hello?”

  In a flash, Dan sees the boy in the window again. And he searches his memory.

  What was his name? I know I heard the woman call it out. What was it?

  Then it comes to him.

  “Is this Dennis?”

  A brief pause. Then, timidly: “Uhm, yes. Who’s this?”

  There’s something about the boy’s voice which triggers another tiny piece in Dan’s memory. Mille, telling him over the phone, “I think he’s intellectually disabled or something …”

  “Hi Dennis. My name is Dan. I need to talk with—”

  Dan cuts himself short. He was just about to ask to speak with the boy’s mom. But something made him stop.

  “It’s the kid?” William whispers, looking at Dan.

  Dan nods, just as Dennis says in his other ear: “Uhm, I didn’t catch that last part? Hello?”

  Dan doesn’t answer right away.

  “Ask him to put her on the line,” William suggests, growing impatient. He’s obviously interpreting Dan’s hesitation as a lack of courage.

  But Dan is actually hesitating because he’s internally changing his approach. He had prepared himself to speak with a very clever and calculated woman. He had been racking his brain for some way to persuade that woman to meet with him, even though she would have absolutely no reason to do so and would probably be very suspicious of him even asking. He was facing a near impossible task.

  Instead, he’s got a young boy with some sort of mental disability. He must be at least Dan’s age, but from how he talks, he sounds more like Ali’s age. And that might be exactly the advantage Dan needs. What was it Mille told him? Something about the boy being like a slave to his mother …

  “Hello?” the boy asks. “You still there?”

  “Yes,” Dan says. “Sorry about that, Dennis. What I was saying is, I need to talk with you.”

  William eyes him, mouthing: “What?”

  “Uhm, okay,” Dennis says. “About what?”

  “About something very important. You can’t hang up the phone until you’ve heard what I have to say. Will you promise me that?”

  This time, there’s a longer pause. Long enough that Dan begins to wonder if Dennis will answer him or simply end the call. He might have blown it. He might have asked for too much. Might have made Dennis suspicious.

  But then Dennis says: “Sure, I guess.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Dennis is sitting by the table in Holger’s bunker, doing a drawing with the marker he found.

  Dennis has always enjoyed drawing. He’s even pretty good at it; one of the only things he’s good at. And it calms him down whenever he’s worried or has too much stuff on his mind.

  Like he does now.

  Mom is upstairs in the house somewhere. Dennis didn’t feel like being with her. Which is a strange, new feeling to Dennis.

  So he went down here to be by himself and draw. It helps him not to think about Silas. Or what Mom did to the doll.

  Suddenly, there’s a loud ringing, causing Dennis to jump and drop the marker. He looks around and expects to see some kind of alarm. Instead, his eyes fall on a big, weird telephone sitting in a station on the wall.

  Dennis gets up and goes over there as the phone chimes a second time.

  Very hesitantly, like he’s about to touch a sleeping snake, Dennis puts his hand on the handset.

  It rings a third time.

  Dennis picks it up out of the dock.

  It’s big and clumsy compared to a regular phone, and it even has a short antenna. A number is shown on the narrow display. Dennis doesn’t know it. He hesitates a moment longer.

  Then he holds the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  A moment of static silence. Then a voice comes through. “Is this Dennis?”

  Dennis—surprised to hear his own name—blinks. He must know the person on the other end, since the person knows him, but he can’t place the voice. Then he says: “Uhm, yes. Who’s this?”

  A brief pause.

  “Hi Dennis. My name is Dan. I need to talk with—”

  It sounds like the voice is cut short, and for a moment, Dennis thinks the connection might be lost. But he can still hear a faint static crackle.

  “Uhm, I didn’t catch that last part?” he says. “Hello?”

  No answer, only more static noise. Dennis looks at the phone. There’s still light in the display. He feels a little nervous at this strange call. He feels almost like he shouldn’t be taking it. That if Mom had been here, she would have ripped the phone from him and slammed it down. Whoever was calling probably wasn’t someone he ought to be speaking with.

  But he can tell the voice on the other end belongs to a boy his own age, and the boy sounds friendly. Besides, Dennis is very curious.

  He puts the phone back to his ear. “Hello? You still there?”

  “Yes,” the voice answers. “Sorry about that, Dennis. What I was saying is, I need to talk with you.”
r />   Dennis feels a jolt of excitement.

  “Uhm, okay,” Dennis says, placing his weight back and forth on his feet, trying hard not to sound too interested. “About what?”

  Another brief pause.

  “About something very important. You can’t hang up the phone until you’ve heard what I have to say. Will you promise me that?”

  Dennis bites his lip. Both the anxiety and the excitement rise in his chest. He feels even stronger now that this is not a conversation he should be having without Mom knowing. And he’s about to tell the boy on the other end just that, when for some strange reason, Dennis suddenly hears Silas’s voice: “Grow a pair, and do it soon. Just friendly advice.”

  Dennis straightens his back a little, then says, mustering as much confidence as he can: “Okay, I guess.”

  Pause.

  “Thank you, Dennis. Are you still in Holger’s house?”

  “Uhm, yes.”

  “And your mother? Is she there with you?”

  “She’s upstairs right now. I’m down in the bunker. Do you want me to go get her?” The thought of handing the weird call over to Mom is both a relief and a bit disappointing to Dennis, and he can’t really tell what answer he’s hoping for.

  “No, that’s all right. Actually, I need to talk with you about your mother.”

  Dennis blinks. “Oh. Okay.”

  “Your mother practices voodoo, right?”

  Suddenly, Dennis feels suspicious. How can the boy on the other end know where he is? How does he know about the bunker? How did he even know Dennis’s name?

  “Listen, I … do I know you?”

  “You don’t,” Dan says. “But we’ve seen each other, very briefly. I’ll explain it in a moment, okay?”

  “I think it’s very weird that you know my name and all … Are you … are you a friend of Silas and Jonas?”

  “No. I don’t know those people.”

  “Are you sure? Because if you’re trying to trick me …” Dennis can’t finish the sentence, his heart is throbbing so hard in his throat, he’s almost out of breath.