“I’m having second thoughts about the paper towels,” she said.
“Gotta use what you got, Jess” Eric replied.
“Speaking of,” Jessa said, “we should probably search more than one room.” She sighed. “This one is a total loss.”
“Not necessarily.” Eric got up and quickly pulled on his jeans. “See this hand sanitizer? It’s about 90% alcohol. Now, I’m not sure if you can burn a zombie to death, but, if you can, we have a ton of fuel here. And these brooms and mops.” He picked up a mop and broke it in half over his knee. “Now I have a spear. Straight through the eye and you have yourself one dead zombie. There are probably a dozen...”
He broke off as he heard yelling from outside the room.
“Get dressed!” he said and he continued to quickly break the mops and brooms.
* * * * *
When they finally dressed and got to their group with the new weapons, it was in chaos. Noble had Anthony in a headlock and Anthony’s eyes were bulging as he struggled to catch a breath.
“You son of a bitch!” Noble shouted, his face turning red and muscles bulging from exertion. “Tell me what you were doing and why, or I swear to God I’m going to break your neck.”
The rest of the group circled the pair, eyes wide as they pleaded with Noble to release the smaller man.
“What the hell is going on here? Noble, can you let go of Anthony for a little bit. Just until we figure out what is going on. And then you can go back to killing him, if you want,” Eric told the larger man in an attempt to placate him.
Noble shoved Anthony away from him suddenly and the man fell in a heap, choking and gulping air like a fish out of water.
“I’ll tell you what is going on,” Noble answered. “I caught this asshole unlocking the doors. The big, metal doors that are keeping the monsters out! Looked like the Colonel over there was doing the same thing on that side. I don’t know exactly what is going on here, but something is seriously fucked up.”
Eric looked at Anthony suspiciously. It didn’t make any sense. The Colonel had killed his brother, so why would they be in cahoots with each other. Unless....
He marched over to the dead body, which they had left along the side of floor in the middle of the arena. Eric flipped the man over and removed his wallet from his back pocket. His driver’s license identified him as Walter Williams. Clarence, my ASS, Eric thought as he ran back to the group and grabbed Anthony by the collar.
“Who are you?” Eric was so angry, spit flew from his lips. “Because that man over there sure the hell isn’t your brother. I’m almost certain, if he was your brother, you would know his name. And it isn’t Clarence. You were very convincing though. Maybe you should have considered a career in acting.”
Anthony stared at him stoically and, in a fit of rage, Eric hauled back his right fist and slammed it into the man’s nose. It gave under his hand with a sickening crunch and blood spurted from Anthony’s nose, which was clearly broken. He fell to the floor with a loud thud.
“Who are you?” Eric shouted down at him. “What do you want? Why are you here?”
Anthony appeared dazed, but he still wasn’t talking. Noble walked over and grabbed the bleeding man and dragged him to his feet. Reaching into Anthony’s back pocket, Noble pulled out his wallet and tossed it to Eric. When he opened it, the blood drained from his face.
“What?” Jessa implored. “What is it? Eric?”
Eric looked up from the wallet and tossed it on the floor, face up. “He’s ex-military, too. Army. And his name isn’t Anthony. It’s Jackson.”
“He probably is working with the Colonel then. My guess is they planned the whole ‘killing his brother’ incident to split the group into two factions and ensure that they had a mole in our group. People are easier to deal with if they are fighting amongst themselves than if they are working as a whole. Divide and conquer and all that. What I don’t know is why. But I’ve got a way of making people tell me stuff they would rather not. I’m pretty sure it won’t take me long to find out.” Noble smiled eerily.
“Fuck! No. That’s not necessary. I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything you need to know,” Jackson was becoming very talkative, indeed. “But we have to secure the doors again. We have to hurry. Before...”
“Before what?” Eric demanded.
“Before he lets the zombies in again,” Jackson stated.
* * * * *
No sooner had Jackson uttered those words than all the doors rolled up one by one. Zombie after zombie shuffled in slowly, moving blindly through the arena searching for prey. Their groans echoed though the vast space, joining to form a cacophony of sound that was almost deafening.
Drawn by the noise, the people from the Colonel’s group came out of the various rooms they were searching only to be promptly taken down by the dead that now surrounded them. All the zombies turned toward the screams and starting walking toward them.
Eric’s group stood still as statues, trying not to draw attention to them. When they were clear of the slow moving zombies, Eric grabbed Jessa’s hand and whispered, “Run!”
The group moved as one, running towards the nearest open door on the northeast side of the arena. As they cleared the door, they discovered the outer area was full of zombies as well. One grabbed Marissa, the little girl, and started to chew on her left arm. Mindy, threw herself onto the screaming girl in an attempt to protect her, while Eric and Jessa pounded and kicked at the dead woman feeding on Marissa. Noble grabbed the woman from behind, threw her on the ground and stomped on the zombie’s head until it stopped moving.
Jessa turned to Eric, “The spears. The ones you made from the handles. They’re still in the arena. Our only hope of getting out of here is to get them.”
“Leave them! Just run!” Eric commanded and grabbed her hand.
They turned to the others to tell them to run, but it was too late. Mindy, Noble and Mason had been outnumbered and overtaken. Jessa screamed, fear filling her eyes.
She ripped her hand from Eric’s and ran back into the arena. Eric followed her and they reached the small pile of broken broom and mop handles at the same time. They gathered them up as quickly as they could and took of running toward the exit. As they rounded the corner, every zombie in the outer corridor stopped and turned toward them, sniffing the air, catching the scent of living flesh.
Jessa and Eric started fighting. Eric took the first one down, using the jagged edge of a handle to stab the zombie through the eye. Jessa lacked his finesse, but managed to dispatch the second by piercing it’s skull with a mop handle. Their level of decay made the skulls much easier to penetrate than they had anticipated, making the job much easier.
The fighting continued for what felt like hours, but finally, Eric discovered there were no more zombies between them and the main entrance to the building. They bolted for the doors and pushed them open, squinting in the bright sunlight. Instead of the bustling capitol they expected to see, they found a desolate cityscape. And none other than the Colonel himself, gun drawn, smiling smugly.
* * * * *
Eric wanted to beat that grin off his face more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. But he couldn’t figure out how to get around the gun pointed squarely at his chest. The Colonel stood just out of his reach, mocking him, laughing at his impotence.
“Why?” Eric asked simply.
“Because we could, I suppose,” the Colonel answered. He chuckled, “No, not really. I mean we could, and we did. But we did have a specific purpose in mind. If we, and by we I mean Jackson and I, sacrificed the rest of you, perhaps it would ensure our own escape. You all were to be our diversion so we could slip out, unnoticed. And it worked. At least, for me. I guess things didn’t end up so well for Jackson.”
“As an added bonus, I figured it would give me a chance to study their behavior as well. How do they hunt? Choose their prey? Some of them are in such an advanced state of decomposition that they no longer even have eyes. So how do th
ey track the living? Sense of smell? Can they hear the heart beating? Feel it?”
“Frankly, I’m surprised that you two survived at all. I didn’t expect there to be any survivors. There can’t be any, in fact. I do have a reputation to protect, even during a zombie attack. I really am sorry.”
Before he could pull the trigger, Jessa who had been forgotten in the stand off between the two men, moved in, as quickly as a cat, from the side. She grabbed his gun arm and bit him. The Colonel was so surprised that he didn’t even bother to fight back.
When she released him, he jerked back, lost his balance and fell back on his ass, his face frozen in a mask of disgust. The gun clattered to the ground and Eric quickly bent to retrieve it. He pointed it at the older man’s head. He turned to Jessa and looked at her quizzically. She shook her head and pulled her leather jacket to the side, exposing a bite mark between her neck and right shoulder.
A sad smile played over her lips. “One of those bastards got me right before we made our final break. I can feel something...wrong...happening to me. Inside me. I’ve got it. Whatever it is. But now he’s got it, too.” She nodded her head in the direction of the Colonel, who was desperately trying to clean the wound she had inflicted on him with the sleeve of his shirt.
“Hey, Colonel!” Eric said to get the other man’s attention.
“What?” the Colonel demanded.
“There’s a shit ton of hand sanitizer and antibacterial soap in one of those storerooms in there. That might help. Of course, there’s a shit ton of zombies in there, too. Thanks to you.”
Eric put his arm around Jessa. They turned their back on the Colonel and walked away.
* * * * *
As they circled the building, they saw that the streets of the city lay empty except for an occasional zombie limping along the streets. Other than that, Des Moines was a ghost town either left to the dead by the living or taken from the living by the dead. They couldn’t tell which.
Jessa stopped Eric before they made their way all around the building. “I’m almost out of time,” she said to him, her hands clasping his.
“I...I can’t. I can’t do it, Jessa.”
“Hey, you finally called me Jessa,” she answered. “It must be serious.”
“Stop joking around,” Eric pleaded. The lump in his throat was so large he felt he would choke on it. But, he wouldn’t let his tears, his feelings, his sense of loss, make this harder on Jessa than it already was. He knew, of course, what he had to do, but still, he wanted to put off the inevitable.
Eric pulled her close. Her hair fell around her face to her shoulders and he buried his face there, desperately trying to memorize her scent, knowing this would have to last a lifetime. He kissed her neck, her chin, her ear, her lips, etching the feel of them under his lips into his mind forever. Finally, he pulled away and looked at her.
“I don’t want to be the one to do this,” he stated.
“I know. But I don’t think I can do it myself. I’m sorry.”
Jessa’s lips were blue against her too pale skin. Whatever it was that was raging inside of her, killing her, was spreading quicker than either of them could have imagined. “It’s time,” she said and she took off her leather jacket and handed it to him.
“Uh, we’re not exactly the same size, you know,” Eric quipped trying, and failing, to lighten the mood.
“Well, I’m not going to need it where I’m going,” she retorted. “Give it to somebody who can use it or just keep it to remember me by. It was too expensive for me to rot in. Find a car and head south were it’s warm. Go to the ocean. See if you can get ahead of them and stay ahead of them. See if you can survive. For both of us.”
Jessa turned and headed for a grassy area along the sidewalk. “I figure I’ll lie down on my back and close my eyes. Then you ca...” a shot rang out and Jessa fell to the ground, a hole now visible in the back of her head.
“I will survive,” Eric spoke softly. “For you.”
He turned, picked up her jacket from the cement where he had dropped it as he had fired the gun, and walked away without a backward glance, preferring the Jessa of his memory to the lifeless one now crumpled on the ground.
Author Notes
Obviously, this origins tale of Tosha Shorb (featured prominently in Dying Days 2) begins at about the same time as Darlene Bobich: Zombie Killer does, right before the zombie apocalypse begins.
A strange thing happened when I wrote Dying Days 2 and decided to shake it up and add half a dozen new characters to the mix. Out of all of them (and there were some characters, notably Steve 'The Breeze' Brack and David Monsour) Tosha stood out. Readers responded and wanted to know more about her. Thus, this book was created with her in mind.
Some readers have said she is like the antithesis of Darlene Bobich, darker and with more of an agenda. I tend to agree.
And yes… she will return in Dying Days 4, since readers are asking about her. I hope this story holds you over until 2014 when I get Dying Days 4 out.
Readers will also recognize Randy Jackson in the bonus story as the main character (I can't really say hero with a straight face) from Highway To Hell, which really kicked off the Dying Days series. Just a glimpse into what he's up to now. Poor Randy. But I think we'll see more from him in the near future, too.
The last story is another origin piece, this time about Eric White, who is featured in the Dying Days series. I always liked his character but there was never enough about his back-story. Lisa McKinney, author and huge fan of these stories, suggested I write his origins. I knew I wouldn't have time but did the next best thing: I asked her to do it.
At first she balked. She was a bit hesitant to play in my world, but once the ideas started flowing she was hooked. I'm hoping to team up with her again in the future since she is well-versed in the Dying Days settings. And I still won't tell her how the zombie apocalypse began, which is killing her.
Will there be a Dying Days: Origins 2? You bet your sweet fanny pack. Look for the back-story of David Monsour, which you can actually find the beginning of in Still Dying: Select Scenes From Dying Days. The full tale will take you on quite a journey. And a few more surprises, I'm sure.
Thanks again for taking the time to read my creation, and as long as you keep reading them I will keep writing them!
Armand Rosamilia
Armand Rosamilia is a New Jersey boy currently living in sunny Florida, where he writes when he's not watching the Boston Red Sox and listening to Heavy Metal music... and because of him they won the 2013 World Series, so he's pretty good at watching!
He's written over 100 stories that are currently available, including a few different series:
"Dying Days" extreme zombie series
"Keyport Cthulhu" horror series
"Flagler Beach Fiction Series" contemporary fiction
"Metal Queens" non-fiction music series
he also loves to talk in third person... because he's really that cool.
You can find him at http://armandrosamilia.com for not only his latest releases but interviews and guest posts with other authors he likes!
and e-mail him to talk about zombies, baseball and Metal:
[email protected]
Dying Days: Origins Page 11
