DEAD: Snapshot (Book 2): Leeds, England

by TW Brown

  “Listen, Linus,” Simon whispered, taking the man by the wrist to gain his full attention. “I want you to go back with your friend.”

  “Rawlings ain’t my friend. Until all this sickness, he weren’t nobody’s friend. People used to ignore him more than they did an Old Mick. Begging the ladies’ pardon.” He knuckled his forehead and bowed quick to Dawn and Melena who smiled and nodded in return.

  “Can you do me a favor, Linus?” Simon asked. He decided that little chance was better than none. When the man nodded rapidly, he continued. “You tell anybody who will listen that they can come up the road and join us. We are doing everything we can to build defenses against the zombies and any who are willing to help will be welcomed with no problems.”

  “Even me and Charlie?” Linus asked, ignoring the bellowing summons that Rawlings was issuing over his shoulder as he disappeared over the small rise and bend in the road.

  “Even you and Charlie,” Simon nodded.

  “What about Charlie’s wife and little girl?”

  “Them too.”

  That seemed to satisfy the man and he gave everybody a nod and a furious handshake before turning around and running after the cantankerous Rawlings. Simon turned back to the others and saw curious expressions regarding him.

  “So that’s it?” Melena asked skeptically.

  “Would you have us march into town and announce it as an edict or perhaps nail it to a post?” Simon said with a shrug.

  They were just turning to head back home when a group of twenty or so zombies emerged from the trees and brush that lined the road. The undead were in the perfect location to keep them from simply being able to run away, leaving Simon and his people no choice other than to take them down in order to pass and return home. The sounds of weapons being drawn came in a rush and Simon chose his target as he approached with his mace at the ready.

  Just as he swung, he heard a voice holler, “Don’t you dare kill all those people!”

  ***

  The horse reared up at the sudden sound and the figure on its back went flying. Shadiyah watched the person land flat on their back as the large bay stallion galloped away. She quickly let the curtains drop and rushed through the house to the back door and out to a large rock deck. A huge pool was off to the left and a massive brick wall sat just across the deck with a huge built in barbecue grilling station.

  She had no time to admire all the luxuries though as she ran for the fence, scaled it, and leapt into the open field where the horse had finally stopped running and was now apparently content to stand in the shade offered in the far northwestern corner. The person that had been flung from its back was lying motionless exactly where Shadiyah had seen the individual fall. She approached with caution, and was actually relieved to hear the person moaning as she drew nearer.

  She was still several steps away, but already she was relaxing since she could tell by the form of the body that this individual was a female—the tight fitting riding apparel showed a proper abundance of curves. Her riding hat had come off and lay a few feet away allowing Shadiyah to see the long, dark hair that fanned out around the woman’s head.

  Reaching the white, split-rail fence, Shadiyah climbed up on top and then took one more look around. She saw nothing to cause her any concerns; the horse was staying put; it looked like a normal horse, and showed no signs of being a zombie. Still keeping one eye on the horse since it was a bit too far away to actually get a clear look at its eyes, Shadiyah tentatively made her way to the ground.

  As she approached to within just a few feet, a soft moan from the figure on the ground made Shadiyah freeze. She had been so concerned about the horse being a possible zombie that it had never occurred to her that the rider might be one. Drawing her scimitar, she took another step, paused…and then took one more. Leaning forward just enough to allow her to reach over and poke the woman who was currently lying face down on the ground.

  “Ouch!” a muffled voice complained.

  Shadiyah stepped back, startled at first, but then quickly sheathing her weapon and moving to help. After all, she thought, zombies don’t say “ouch!”

  “Are you okay?” Shadiyah whispered as she helped ease the stranger over and onto her back.

  “Other than being thrown off the horse?” the woman managed, her voice tight from the pain. “I’m just great. Was that you who screamed?”

  “Sorry about that. I just got so excited, I don’t think I knew how to react. That scream surprised me just as much as it did you,” Shadiyah admitted with a blush tingeing her cheeks and making her ears feel just a bit warm.

  “Yeah? Well I am pretty sure only one of us fell off a horse,” the woman groaned as she sat up. “And what were you doing in the house?” Now the woman eyed her with suspicion and just a bit of apprehension.

  “Searching for water, food, that sort of thing,” Shadiyah admitted.

  “Then you are either very brave…or very stupid.”

  “Why is that?”

  “For one, that creepy boy is in there. For another, I heard the screams finally stop which means his stupid big sister finally joined him in becoming one of those beasts.”

  Shadiyah considered things for a moment before responding. “You didn’t live here either, did you?”

  “No, I worked across the street at the Peddipaws Pet Hotel,” the woman said as she began to pat herself down and check for injuries. “My name is Caron Hirst by the way. Yours?”

  “Shadiyah Kasim.”

  “Well, I would say I am pleased to meet you, but I am still deciding if I will hold a grudge for you getting me thrown off of Buttercup.”

  “You seem to know a great deal about things around here,” Shadiyah observed as the woman stood up.

  Caron Hirst was surprisingly tall and slender for being so voluptuous. Her long hair was a lovely brunette color that almost looked black in the sun with just enough curl to make it wavy. Her brown eyes were the color of dark chocolate and squinted so that it crinkled her slightly upturned nose in such a way that she looked to be considering some sort of private joke.

  “Like I said, I worked across the street. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the horses that the Bitt family owned for the past few years. Unfortunately, that meant having to deal with the Bitt brats as we called them.” Caron turned and spotted the horse still standing in the shade in the corner of the large field. “Hey, girl, did that scare you?”

  The woman started across the field. Shadiyah followed a few steps behind, her eyes still scanning everywhere at once as if she expected zombies to appear any moment.

  “So, can I ask why you were riding the horse?” Shadiyah spoke up as they neared the big, beautiful creature.

  “Actually, I was going to free her and the others, but I just always loved Buttercup so much and couldn’t resist.” The woman turned to face Shadiyah with a sheepish look on her face. “A bit daft, isn’t it? I mean, here we are…end of the world and all that going on, and I go horseback riding.”

  “Does seem like an odd time,” Shadiyah agreed.

  “Yeah, well…” the woman reached up and patted the big bay on the neck and sighed, “not much left to do with the time I have remaining.”

  “What?”

  Caron turned and knelt, giving her pants leg a tug. She revealed a bandage on her calf that was showing just a hint of blood starting to leak through.

  “The boy? He got me when I was inside checking to see if any of the Bitts were still alive.” A tear leaked from the corner of Caron’s eye and trickled down her left cheek, hanging at her jawline for a second before giving over to gravity and falling to the dusty ground with a silent plop, leaving a small, dark stain to mark its presence. “I came when I heard a scream. I guess little Gerald had his sister Nancy trapped in the bathroom. I came in through the back door and followed the screams. When I reached the hall, I could see the little boy standing outside the bathroom door, clawing and scratching at it. I yelled at Gerald, but it was so strange…he
looked at me, but he went right back to scratching at the bathroom door. I yelled for Nancy to try and push past him but she just kept carrying on.

  “I finally started down the hall. That boy did not seem to care or even notice. I guess I can only blame myself. When I reached the door, I gave the little bugger a shove and grabbed the door knob to open it.” Caron paused and looked at Shadiyah with a curious expression for a few moments before her shoulders slumped and she continued. “That girl came barging out and collided with me. We both went to the floor and that is when the boy turned into just another zombie. It actually made me wonder if I’d just been imagining that he was different up to that point.”

  Shadiyah only interrupted her long enough to tell her that she’d seen odd behavior from the child versions as well. Caron nodded, but it did not seem to ease her mind any.

  “I got untangled from Nancy just as Gerald fell on us. He grabbed my leg and latched on, but I kicked him away. Not soon enough, right? The next thing I know, he was on top of his sister. He had her hand in his mouth and just chomped off one of her fingers like it was nobody’s business. I had gotten to my feet by then and reached for her, but she kept ignoring me…trying to talk to that horrid little creature like it was still her brother.”

  There was a long silence. Shadiyah began to think the woman was done with her story.

  “Then I ran,” Caron whispered. “I turned around and took off through the house. Somehow, I found myself out in the stables. I climbed up into the loft and that is where I fell asleep. I woke up to the sounds of the horses and climbed down. The poor things were so hungry. I have no idea when they were last fed or even given fresh water, but I’d been hired in the past when the family went on holiday, so I knew where everything was and took care of them. I’d all but forgotten about that little nip on my leg until it began to burn.”

  “Pardon if I say, but I don’t see anything in your eyes yet. All the reports say that is one of the first signs of infection,” Shadiyah offered, trying to sound hopeful.

  “I heard something about how it can take up to seventy-two hours,” Caron said with a shrug.

  “So what made you decide to ride one of the horses?”

  “Buttercup has always been my favorite. Any time that the Bitts hired out to have their horses watched, they always made sure to specify that none of them were to be ridden under any circumstances. Nancy rode in competition and I guess they were afraid that nobody but that stupid girl knew how to ride. Since Mr. Bitts is out front in his shiny car and unlikely to ever escape it, and now that both the Bitt brats are no longer around, I did not think that it would hurt.”

  “That was probably a good bet until you fell off,” Shadiyah snickered.

  Caron looked at her for a moment, and then she joined in. The two women turned their attention to the large horse that seemed more than happy to accept all the praise and strokes of its long neck. For several minutes, the two stood in the shade with the animal and gave it the kindness it had been craving after being locked away in its stable for so long.

  At last, Caron turned to Shadiyah and asked, “Do you know how to ride?”

  “I’ve never been on a horse.”

  “Then let my last actions on this earth be teaching you the wonders and joys of riding.”

  ***

  Simon spun to face the owner of the voice and had to recover fast and swat away the undead hands that tried to grip him. Standing in a small opening between some trees was a tall woman. She was wreathed in shadows, and that made it impossible for him to see any sort of details.

  Once again, the zombie he’d been about to destroy reached out and grabbed for him. Its cold, dead fingers slid across his cheek and that was enough to snap him back to the situation at hand. He lashed out, the mace slamming into the skull of the zombie and caving in the side of the face of a man who might have been in his late fifties or early sixties. A spray of black blood and even a few teeth went flying and the body fell with a lifeless ‘thwap’ as it hit the asphalt.

  “STOP!” the woman implored.

  Melena stepped in beside Simon and drove the blade of her knife into the side of the head of another zombie that was moving in behind the distracted Simon.

  “Kill now, deal with that later,” Nelson huffed as he brought around a sturdy pole with a spike at either end up and under the chin of a zombified woman that had a nasty rip on her face and an arm that had been broken at some point and appeared to have a second joint a few inches below the elbow.

  A shriek caused Simon’s head to turn sharply. He spun just in time to see Dawn fall backwards with a zombie on top of her. She had tripped over a severed arm; by the looks of it, the arm belonged to a zombie that Kas was fending off. It was massive, dressed in biker’s leathers and, unfortunately for Kas, wearing a helmet. Kas was in no position to help as he was busy at the moment trying to free his own blade from where it had gotten buried in the neck of the biker zombie and apparently hung up on bone or something.

  Leaping over the body of the corpse he had just dispatched, Simon arrived just as Dawn thrust her small blade up and through the eye socket of her attacker. He had just enough time to grab the body by the shoulder and yank it off the downed woman when the next zombie was on him.

  He kicked it away and then brought the mace down in an overhead swing that crushed the top of the zombie’s head and sent a tingle up his arms. Something collided with his back and he spun to see that Melena was backing up as she jerked her odd farming tool free from where it had wedged deep in the shoulder of her most recent target.

  “You need to hit them in the head,” Simon grunted as he kicked out at another zombie before bringing his mace across and catching it on the temple.

  “Thanks for the tip,” Melena said as she yanked her weapon free and used the butt of the handle to sweep the feet out from under the recently cleaved teenaged girl and then finish it with an arcing chop that shattered its skull as much as chopped it.

  “You two wanna quit playing around?” Nelson heaved as he grabbed a pair of zombies by the shoulders and slammed them together, spiking each in the face before they could regain their feet.

  “Please!” the woman pleaded from the shadows.

  “If that’s a raktachuShak, I’m gonna be very upset,” Kas hissed as he shot a furtive glance over his shoulder at the woman. He had taken down the biker zombie and was moving to help Dawn with a trio of undead teens.

  “A what?” Simon stepped away from his latest kill to discover that they there were no more remaining zombies except those being finished off by his companions.

  “How would you think I am a vampire!” the woman in the shadows snapped. At last stepping out onto the road where she was giving the carnage a sorrowful look. “I should box your ears, you great idiot.”

  “Yeah,” Nelson chimed, “we already have zombies. Why would you want to make things worse by invoking vampires?”

  “I think the bigger question is why you would want us not to take these things down.” Simon reached out a hand to help Dawn over a cluster of corpses.

  “I just needed one,” the woman sighed.

  “What are you doing down here, sister?” Kas snapped.

  “Sister?” Simon scratched his head in confusion.

  “Mr. Wood, meet my sister, Wamil Asan,” Kas grumbled.

  “That is Doctor Wamil Asan,” the woman huffed.

  “You’re a doctor?” Simon said, instantly regretting how it had come out of his mouth.

  “Yes, do you not believe that to be possible?” Doctor Asan arched an eyebrow as she knelt beside one of the corpses and produced a pen so that she could poke and prod at some of the viscera that seeped from a small rip in the belly.

  “No, it wasn’t that at all,” Simon stammered. “You just look so young.”

  “Great,” Kas groaned. “Here we go.”

  “Actually,” the woman looked up at Simon with her large brown eyes and let her lashes bat slowly twice before she continued, “I was
the youngest of my class. In fact, I am the youngest to complete my degree since Iqbal Al Assaad. I finished school just a week shy of my twenty-first birthday.”

  “Now that is what I call girl power,” Melena said as she shook the bits of zombie free from her weapon.

  “You still haven’t told me why you were pitching such a fuss about…did you say you needed a zombie?” Simon was taken aback.

  “To study,” Doctor Asan said as she stood, giving a scornful look at the useless creature at her feet.

  As she wandered amongst the bodies scattered all over the ground, Simon continued to observe her. She was a beauty, of that there could be no denying. She had skin the color of cappuccino and hair that was so black as to almost be blue in the light of the sun. She was tall, slender, and with a sway to her walk even as she roamed a scene as horrific as the one they were currently standing in.

  “You keep staring like that, and your eyes are gonna pop out of your head,” Nelson whispered in Simon’s ear with his gruff voice, causing Simon to jump.

  “That wouldn’t be the only thing to pop out,” Dawn and Melena said almost in perfect unison. The two women had to work hard to stifle their giggles, but neither seemed to give it much effort and were soon making exaggerated wipes at their eyes as Simon turned a shade of red that verged on purple.

  Kas shot them all a dirty look as he tromped after his sister. He even shot what might have been a warning glare at Simon as he made his way past the group. “You are supposed to be back at the house. We can’t risk having our only doctor running around,” he insisted.

  “Yes, well I have been asking for you or one of the groups of hunters to bring me back a specimen for the past two weeks.”

  “Not as easy as you make it sound,” Nelson spoke up, stepping in between the brother and sister. “These things don’t just fall in and march merrily home when you ask them.”

  “Mr. Wilbanks,” Doctor Asan spun on the man and fixed him with a stern look, “I am fully aware, and that is why I came out here on my own. I was tracking this group,” she waved her arms to indicate all the dead zombies on the road, “and was moving in on a straggler when you butchered the whole lot of them.”