by Josh Vasquez
A New Death
By
Josh Vasquez
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead (or undead), is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Joshua Vasquez
All rights reserved.
Kindle Version 1.2
Cover design by Xavier Martinez
To my Laura,
To whom this book would not be possible.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Before You Go
“There’s too many people in this world. We need a new plague.” Dwight Schrute
Prologue
The marsh had been extremely pungent this afternoon. All day it had stunk, but this afternoon it seemed to be so much stronger. Brad Wilcox noticed the smell continued to grow as time slowly ticked away. His partner, JW, didn't seem fazed by it one bit. The old man was much accustomed to the tidal scent of the low country. The man grew old on this smell.
Brad, on the other hand, was relatively new to it. And he hated it. Having moved from up north near Chicago, he had yet to be indoctrinated in the coastal South’s muggy summer evenings and marsh-stink. He was use to city smells like traffic exhaust and refineries. How he ended up down here in Savannah was a story in itself.
His ex-wife was born and raised here, so of course once they got married, they had to move back here. She just had to be near her family. Brad left his good-paying office job in the city to come down and work for his father-in-law’s landscaping company. Which was fine, he had no problem working for the man, or hard labor, except for the fact that once they got divorced, he lost his job too. She cheats on him, so he loses his job. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
And that’s pretty much how he ended up here on this god-forsaken boat in the middle of the stinking marsh. More or less. When the economy tanked, he didn’t have many choices on the job front. A friend found him this job and when you’re broke, you’ll take anything.
“Does it always smell this bad?” he asked.
“What smell?” huffed the old man.
Brad heard him swear under his breath. He decided to ignore it, as the two men had already had their post-civil war conversations. It’s amazing how after over a hundred and fifty years, the resentment for each other still lingered between the north and south. Brad didn’t even consider himself a Yankee. He was originally from Virginia, which if you knew your history, was a part of the Confederacy. But if you come up from up north, and you have an inkling of an opinion, you just became a “damn Yankee.” Brad could care less what the old redneck had to say.
Their small fishing boat puttered along the coastal waterway. He didn't have all the names down yet, but if he remembered right, this was Turner’s Creek. It had been a pretty unsuccessful day. All they were returning to dock with was empty nets and sour attitudes. Brad saw the dock off in the distance. Too far it seemed. This day seemed to have lasted forever. In the hot Georgia heat, five minutes seemed like forever, much less ten hours. The only thing that mattered to Brad right now was the frosty six pack of cold beer at the house.
Brad walked to the front of the boat to the anchor hoist. It was rusty and slow, but still better than dragging the chain up by hand. He had the anchor on the deck by the time they pulled up to the dock. The two dock hands, Julio and Alberto, were there waiting on them, ready to secure the boat and the equipment.
They were good guys, illegal, but good guys nonetheless. Brad didn’t know what loop holes they jumped through to get their jobs, but that’s the thing with illegal immigrants; they’re cheap labor. And the guys didn’t care. Most of what they made, they sent back to their families in Mexico and what they didn’t, they spent on tequila and beer. Brad spent many a night getting shit-faced with the two amigos.
As Brad began to put things away, the two dock hands and JW began to secure the boat to the floating dock. He put the few fishing poles they had back onto the racks, but as he did, he noticed something floating nearby the shore. At first, he didn’t recognize what the shape was, but very quickly his mind figured out the familiar object. It was a human body.
“There’s a body in the river!” he yelled, jumping into the shallow, brackish water.
The three others took notice of the alarm in Brad’s voice and ran along the shore to where Brad was standing. He reached the body, which he now knew to be a young, Asian woman’s. He grabbed her by the shoulders, yanking her down-turned face out of the water.
“Miss! You alright?!”
Her body was limp. Cold. Lifeless.
“Lady?” This time more concern filled his voice.
Nothing. JW kneeled down at the shore. His face had softened. It was no longer the stern, grumpy face that he sported at all times. This face was much gentler. More concerned.
“Brad…” he said.
“LADY!” Brad screamed, giving the woman’s body a firm shake.
“Brad,” JW tried again.
“We gotta do something. CPR or something!” Brad shouted.
JW just shook his head.
“Brad,” he started. “She’s gone…”
Brad couldn’t believe him. He kept looking at the girl’s pale white face, thinking to himself that she couldn’t be dead. This can’t be real. This isn’t the way his day was supposed to end. Hell, this wasn’t the way her life was supposed to end.
Not like this. Not like this, he thought to himself.
He closed his eyes tight, trying to see if he could wake up from this nightmare. He tried to put himself somewhere else, somewhere happier. At home, with his beer. But as he was trying to focus his mind elsewhere, he felt movement in his arms. His eyes shot back open to see the girl beginning to stir back to life.
“She’s alive!” he yelled.
The others lifted up their heads to see. Julio and Alberto began to smile and light up, but JW look worried. Something was not right in his mind. Something was not right.
She moaned.
“She’s alive! She’s alive!” Brad yelped.
She moaned again, this time louder and longer. She seemed in pain or agony. Her hands slowly but stiffly grabbed onto Brad’s arms. Her body seemed rigid and tense.
“Miss? You all right? What happened?” Brad asked rapid fire.
She froze. Her head slowly tilted to the left, looking Brad directly in the face. When she moved her head, she revealed a fatal looking wound in her neck. It was a dark purple and reeked of infection.
“
Ma’am? You okay?”
Brad began to grow uneasy. That wound looked like it should have killed her. Actually, there should be no reason to why she was moving right now. It was then that the look of concern on JW’s face made sense. This woman should have been dead.
Her eyes shot open. They were pitch black; her pupils non-existent. Brad tried to set her back down, but her grasp tightened around his arms as she began to pull him in closer. He struggled to push her off of him and began to panic.
“Lady, let go!” he yelled.
There’s no way she should be this strong, she’s so tiny, his mind raced.
But despite her small frame, the woman pulled him closer, her jaw moving up and down. JW jumped into the water and began to try and pry the young woman off of Brad. Both men struggled to fight off the tiny woman’s unwelcome advances. JW slipped on the river bottom, falling backwards, and giving the girl enough momentum to lunge forwards.
She sank her teeth into Brad’s neck.
He screamed as the others watched on in horror. She continued to bite down on his neck. Her teeth taking out huge chunks of meat. Brad no longer fought back. He felt his body slip into shock. The pain both excruciating and numbing at the same time. His eyes began to roll back into his head, his body convulsing. JW rushed back to his feet, while Julio and Alberto ran away screaming. He grabbed the girl, this time successfully pulling her away from Brad. But as he pulled her off, she turned, using the motion and sunk her teeth into JW’s face. Brad sunk into the water, breathing his last remaining breaths. Blood spurted from his exposed jugular, turning the surrounding water a brownish-red.
JW was now screaming as the girl began to eat his face. He could barely hold her at bay. The blood poured down his face, his eyes burning. He used what last bit of energy he had to give one final push, knocking the deranged woman off of him and over to the side. He could barely see, his own blood obscuring his vision. His face seemed numb around the bite marks.
He scrambled back a few feet on his backside. Wiping what blood he could away from his eyes, he noticed that there were now two shadows standing over him.
The girl.
And Brad.
Brad’s neck was no longer bleeding, but the same dark, purple as the girl’s open wound. His eyes were also now black, and he moaned in agony, just as the girl had earlier.
“Brad?” JW asked, wondering if his partner could still understand him.
Brad, or whatever you call the shell of him, looked at JW with a dead stare. His mouth began to move up and down, teeth clattering. The two shambled towards JW and began to finish what the girl had started.
JW screamed, but quickly went silent as Brad ripped into his abdomen, spilling the old man’s intestines into the mud. The two dead kneeled down and began to eat the man while he was still alive.
Chapter One
Jeremy Riggins sat in the break room, procrastinating about going back to work. Brian, his douche of a manager, told him before his ten minute break that when he was done, Jeremy was on shopping cart duty. Jeremy hated shopping cart duty. What made it worse was that Jeremy was a cashier, not one of the courtesy clerks. They were short a few people that day, so Brian told Jeremy to close his register, and take care of the carts.
Now, the carts weren't below Jeremy; he had no problem doing what needed to be done. He was a team player. He just didn’t like Brian. Brian was one of those guys who, once they got a little authority, liked to flaunt it and abuse it. Everybody was now his peon. He must have had a rough life in high school and now it was his turn to be on top of the food chain.
Jeremy downed the last sip of his energy drink and tossed the can into the recycling. He slowly made his way back downstairs. He was in no hurry. It was way too hot outside. Middle of November and still ninety degrees out. He was already wearing his work polo and khakis. Add the reflective vest he had to wear while in the parking lot and you had one extremely sweaty Jeremy.
As he passed by the registers towards the time clock, Ashley smiled at him, and mouthed the word, ‘sorry.’ He nodded. She felt bad for him.
Great, he thought. The pity card isn’t exactly the way I wanted to work things.
The two of them had just started “talking”. Jeremy had yet to work up the nerve to ask her to go see a movie or something. Timing just hadn’t been right. But now that he was going to be all hot and sweaty bagging her groceries, now seemed like the opportune time.
Jeremy clocked back in, grabbed the safety vest off the rack, and then began to make his way outside. He soaked in the store’s air conditioning, mentally preparing himself for the sauna outside. Savannah’s heat wasn’t just hot, it was humid too. Within a minute, he’d be drenched.
“Jeremy!”
He turned to see Brian behind him. His large, obtuse belly hung over his belt, and his hands were sitting on his hips. The man was tall, which probably led to more awkwardness and ridicule in his teen years.
“Hurry up with the carts. We need you back in here bagging too.”
“I can’t be in two places at once, Brian,” Jeremy said. “Maybe you should bag while I’m out there frying in the sun.”
Jeremy noticed Ashley giggle, but Brian turned bright red. This wasn’t the first time that Jeremy shot back at him, but it always produced the same results.
“Just hurry back in here!”
He pointed towards the doors. Jeremy started to say something else, but decided against it.
What was the point?
***
“I hate my job.”
Jeremy whined to himself as he pushed the train of shopping carts back towards the building. It was hot. Just like he knew it was going to be. His clothes were drenched in sweat. The sweat dripped off his forehead like a heavy summer rain. Except that, this summer, there was no rain. Just heat. And sun.
He pushed the carts back into their appropriate place within the building and turned back to the parking lot to continue his torture of collecting them all.
“Sweet Jesus, it’s way too hot for this,” he mumbled to himself.
Jeremy watched as a woman on the opposite side of the parking lot pushed her cart onto a curb, got in her car, and drove off. The very action annoyed him down to his core. Her car was two parking spots away from a cart corral. Two.
“Why can’t you people put the carts back into the corrals? It’s not that hard of a concept! You take a cart, you put it back! It’s not rocket science!” He asked out loud as an elderly woman passed by.
She didn’t seem to be too amused by Jeremy’s tone, because she huffed and scurried herself into the store. He let out a sigh and walked towards the rogue buggy. She was probably going to go complain to the manager. Who just so happened to be Brian. He thought about the lecture he was going to receive once he was done with the carts.
And that’s when he heard the screaming. Screams came from inside the building. Blood-curdling screams. The kind you don’t run to and investigate. Jeremy left the buggies in the middle of the road and sprinted for the store. He ran in past the door and stopped dead in front of the registers. It was there he saw something he thought he would never see.
A human eating another human.
There really is no way to prepare yourself for that kind of thing. A small, Asian woman was hunched over the register, clawing and biting the face of one of the cashiers. There was blood everywhere. So much bright-red, fresh blood. His hand went to his mouth, as if to hold back the impending vomit, but nothing came. The scene had shocked him so badly that it took him a moment to realize who was being attacked.
It was Ashley.
Jeremy’s mouthed opened to scream, “No!”, but no sound came out. He was frozen in place as the woman began to maul the girl he’d been dying to take out to a movie. The store was in full panic now. Customers were running, knocking things over and bumping into each other. Some even tried to make off with their groceries. Brian ran up to the woman attacking Ashley. On top of being a huge douche, Brian was also not very brigh
t. He was holding a mop.
Yeah, good choice Brian, Jeremy thought.
He swung. Missed. Swung again, missed, and lost his balance. He tumbled forwards, arms flailing, into the woman. She lurched forward and began ripping and tearing into her new snack. It all was happening so fast it almost looked choreographed. Things this bad couldn’t run so smoothly. Jeremy barely had any time to react. He quickly snapped out of it and grabbed the mop from the floor.
“Ma’am!” he yelled. “I’m going to need you to stop eating Brian!”
Perhaps yelling at the person who just started eating people’s faces off was not such a good idea. She lost interest in eating Brian and was now completely focused on Jeremy. She moaned and began to shamble over towards him. He swung the mop back and forth, trying to keep a good safe distance between the two of them.
“Lady! Back off!” he shouted.
She didn’t listen. She didn’t even seem to comprehend. She just continued to claw at him; her jaw clamping up and down. Jeremy realized there was no reasoning with her. She was insane. The car was running, but there was nobody behind the wheel-kinda thing. He swung the mop again but this time she caught the mop head, breaking it off from the handle.
“Great, now all I have is this pointy stick...” he muttered to himself.
Instinct kicked in and he jabbed her in the right arm. The splintered wood sank into her flesh like a hot knife into a tub of butter. He expected screaming and pain, but it didn’t faze her one bit. No grimace, no shrieks. She just continued to try and eat Jeremy. He was not going to let her do that.
A rage sunk over Jeremy, a kind of anger he never felt before. Something primal, something buried deep within him. He yanked back on his makeshift spear, pulling free from her arm. The jolt sent her back a few steps. She regained her footing and came at him again. He hit her again, this time square in the right lung. Nothing. Again no screaming or any signs of pain.
