Year of the Dead (Book 2)

by Ray Wallace

  Next, he let his gaze travel along Fort Pitt Blvd. which ran parallel to the Monongahela River, pausing each time he encountered movement among the broken-down and burned-out vehicles, ascertaining that each of the wandering figures he observed was, in fact, one of the living dead. Even at this distance, the way they moved, the limitations of their basic motor skills gave them away. It was highly unlikely they were actual, living humans imitating the walking corpses in order to move among them unmolested. Unlikely and ill-advised. Because it would not work. The zombies would know. They always knew. Smear zombie blood all over your body. Wear strips of zombie flesh. Hell, fashion yourself a suit out of zombie skin that covered you from head to toe. None of it would do any good. As soon as you encountered one of the undead things, it would see you for what you really were: a living, breathing sack of zombie food. And it would attack. Marco had been there when a friend of his had decided to try one of these little ruses during the early stages of the outbreak. To say it had not gone well would have been an understatement. He had heard similar stories from fellow survivors. They had all ended badly.

  While he watched, a good number of the lumbering creatures continued to wander back and forth along Fort Pitt Blvd. “No, not her,” he muttered, his attention focusing on one zombie after the next. “Or her. Or him…”

  Then, through the binoculars, he saw a man in what appeared to be a tattered Cleveland Browns jersey.

  Well, god damn.

  Reaching for the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, he raised it and pressed the button.

  “Guy in the brown shirt. Far side of the river near the Smithfield Bridge.

  A few seconds later, from the walkie-talkie:

  “I see him.”

  Marco pressed the button again. “You know what to do.”

  “Ten-four.”

  He returned the device to his belt, steadied the binoculars with both hands, not wanting to miss what was about to take place.

  Crack!

  A rifle shot pierced the surrounding quietude. The zombie in the brown shirt collapsed like it had been struck by an invisible sledgehammer. It lay motionless on the ground, head turned so that it seemed to be staring at Marco with its remaining eye. Where the other one had been was nothing but a ragged hole.

  “Nice shooting, as usual,” said Marco, using the walkie-talkie once again.

  “Thanks, boss,” came the voice of Johnny, his best sniper, positioned on another one of Mt. Washington’s observation decks.

  Marco spent another minute or so observing the city, studying the bridges, making sure nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. Then he lowered the binoculars and backed away from the railing. In a few hours, he would return to see if anything had noticeably changed down there, fairly confident he would find it all much the same.

  Just another day in the undead City of Champions.

  Waiting for him at the entrance to the deck were two men wearing sunglasses and black T-shirts, gold and black armbands wrapped around their right biceps. They had pistols at their hips, semi-automatic rifles in their hands. Falling into step along either side of him, they made their way toward the row of expensive houses lining the far side of the road. Unbidden, an image of the rundown old building where Marco and his mother used to live came to mind.

  If only she could see me now.

  But that was not possible. Marco had made sure of it, that she would never see anything again with those eyes that had turned the color of blood.

  Sunday, October 11th

  Dear Diary,

  There’s something I haven’t told you and I’m not exactly sure why. I guess I’m worried that someone might find you, Diary, when I’m not around and read what I’ve written here. Although, there are plenty of other entries included in these pages I wouldn’t want anyone to read either. So I guess there’s more to it than that. To be honest, this is one of those things that’s difficult to even talk about, let alone put into writing. But if I can’t tell you, Diary, then who can I tell? So here goes…

  Luke and I had sex. It happened shortly after we arrived here. Luke had gotten his hands on a bottle of liquor. It was the first time I had ever tried alcohol. I didn’t drink much, just enough to give me a little buzz. We were in his room and we started kissing and one thing led to another, as people like to say. As for the act itself…

  I liked it and kinda didn’t like it, if that makes any sense. I don’t know. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. Happy, I guess. Happy my first time was with Luke for sure. Maybe a little sad. Mom and Dad would have never approved. Not that I would have told them if they were still around. Not in a million years. Afterward, when we talked about it, Luke said it would be up to me if and when we ever did it again. I think he feels like he did something wrong, like he took advantage of me. He didn’t. If I had said no, he would have stopped. I know that. But I didn’t say no. And I don’t regret it. Really, I don’t. When you get to a certain age, you can’t help but wonder what all the fuss is about. I guess now I know…

  So why am I telling you all this now, Diary?

  In all honesty, I don’t have a good answer to that question. I guess it finally just comes down to feeling comfortable with putting it all in writing. And if somebody does read this? Oh, well. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. There were girls at school who did plenty of things they shouldn’t have done. And they bragged about it! Besides, I think everyone around here has more important things to worry about like… Oh, I don’t know… Not getting eaten by zombies. God, what a horrible way to go. The very thought of it… At least Mom and Dad didn’t die like that. As to exactly how they did die…

  I’ve never known all the details and I guess I never will. Did they turn into those things? Did they get shot by the soldiers who rescued me? Did everyone else from the neighborhood get shot, too? I know it sounds awful, but I hope they did. I hate imagining them out there somewhere, roaming around with those red eyes.

  Okay, I need to stop thinking about that. Ever since Luke and I did what we did, I seem to get more emotional than I used to. It feels like I’ve changed, that I’m different in some way from the person I used to be. Silly, I know, but there it is. Not that it’s necessarily good or bad, that I’m better or worse than before, just…

  Different.

  Most likely, I’m exactly the same, just putting way too much thought into it. What I do know is that I’m not making a lot of sense here, Diary, which means I should probably go ahead and wrap things up. So, until next time…

  Monday, October 12th

  Joey was feeling antsy. Also, he was tired of hearing the noises coming through the wall next to him. The night before, after arriving in another little podunk town somewhere in Ohio, they had scouted the area for suitable lodgings before deciding on a two-story hotel with a sign out front reading “Vacancy” and “Free Wi-Fi.”

  Sheila had laughed. “I should have brought my laptop.”

  When they had finished checking the area for any potential threats, taking out a few zombies in the process, the three of them had settled into a pair of rooms connected by an adjoining doorway on the second floor. But even with the doorway closed, Joey could plainly hear what Charlie and Sheila were up to.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Joey muttered as he got up from the chair in which he had been lounging, working on a bottle of Jim Beam. Pulling on a pair of boots to go with his jeans and black shirt, he left the room through the main doorway, carrying a pistol in one hand, the bottle of Tennessee-style bourbon in the other.

  “I’m going out,” he said as he passed the room next to his, pretty sure the two people inside did not hear him, not much caring if they did one way or the other. He took the stairs down to the hotel’s ground floor then exited the building.

  Blinking against the brightness of the outside world, he raised the bottle and took a swig, sighing appreciatively as the whiskey burned a trail down his throat. A heavy silence pervaded Joey’s surroundings, nearly iden
tical to that which had greeted him and his traveling companions in any number of dead towns they had visited. He figured he would have gotten used to it by now but still found it rather unnerving. It was a very particular type of silence, one that spoke of emptiness and despair, of forgotten dreams and lives cut short.

  With nowhere to go, he wandered for several minutes, trying to think of a way to disrupt the loneliness he felt pushing in on him from all sides. He wished this was his day with Sheila, longing for the distraction her body would have offered, the very distraction his brother currently enjoyed. The system the three of them had worked out, in which Joey and Charlie alternated being Sheila’s boyfriend for a day, had worked out pretty well so far. It had been Sheila who had suggested the idea once their hometown was overrun by zombies and they had taken to the road.

  “You know, to keep the peace.”

  As the older brother, Charlie had more often than not prevailed when he and Joey had competed against one another over the years. And though he would have never admitted it, Joey considered himself fortunate to have ended up on equal footing regarding the situation with Sheila. There were days, however—and this was one of those days—when the knowledge did little to lighten his mood.

  Feeling an increasing restlessness, he took another pull from the bottle. When an auto repair shop came into view, an idea popped into his head. In the garage area, he found a gas can. Riffling through the desk drawers in the office revealed a pack of matches. Around the side of the building, he discovered a hose connected to a faucet.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  He used the hose to siphon a gallon of gasoline from a sporty little two-door parked in the garage. A short while later found him inside the local library, tipping shelves and pouring gasoline all over the place. When he had emptied the can, he tore a few pages out of a book—Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury—set them on fire, and tossed them onto the floor.

  Fifteen minutes later, he stood in the street listening to the roar of flames, watching as they danced across the roof of the library, as thick, gray smoke rose into the sky.

  “What you think you’re doing, boy?”

  Joey turned to find an old man pointing a shotgun at him from about twenty feet away.

  “You can’t show up and start setting fires like some damn—”

  There was the crack! of a gunshot. The old man staggered then fell hard to the pavement. He did not get back up, did not so much as move a muscle.

  And there was Charlie, approaching from further down the street, gun held nonchalantly at his side. When he got close enough, the older of the two brothers motioned for the bottle of Jim Beam. Joey gave it to him and Charlie took a swig. All the while, the library burned, the fire continuing to roar amid all that terrible silence.

  Tuesday, October 13th

  Rachel’s mind was not her own. Not completely. Not anymore.

  In recent days, the Other had made its presence more strongly felt, its voice becoming clearer with each dose of the experimental drug Rachel received. Vague imagery had been transformed into actual words like “surround” and “wait” and “attack” emerging from some hidden place in her consciousness, a place where the Other resided. Finally, she had been able to interpret fully formed, if simple sentences issued by the alien hive mind:

  Follow the road to the end…

  Wait for others to arrive…

  Attack the people inside…

  The commands made Rachel think of errant radio signals, emerging from the static between stations while someone played with the knob on the receiver. As time went on, as subsequent doses of the drug were administered, the static faded allowing her to understand the voice of the Other a little bit more.

  According to Major Daniels, the drug they had been giving her was the result of many years worth of research and hard work, had been developed and refined by the military in an attempt to induce—or enhance—psychic abilities in those who received it.

  “As you might imagine, its use has resulted in varying levels of success,” the major had informed Rachel during one of their conversations. “In more recent experiments, a number of subjects displayed fairly remarkable remote viewing capabilities. Some could pluck stray thoughts from the minds of those around them. Still others were able to read symbols on cards hidden from view.”

  They had tested Rachel for these powers without any verifiable results. This did not seem to bother Major Daniels. “We have other plans for you, after all.” The major had apologized once again, stressing the importance of what they were trying to accomplish.

  “You are a carrier of the plague. At this very moment, it flows through your bloodstream, a microscopic organism that has developed a way to reanimate, control, and organize vast numbers of dead human beings. If we can find out ahead of time what it intends to do…”

  In principle, she agreed with what the major and her cohorts were trying to accomplish. As for how they were going about it… Rachel would never be able to forgive them for capturing, imprisoning, and drugging her against her will. Unfortunately, for the time being, there was nothing she could do to change the situation in which she found herself. She would just have to wait and see how things played out.

  As she lay on the bunk in her room, eyes closed, riding out the recent round of the drug roiling through her system, the voice in her head that was not her own addressed her directly for the first time:

  Who are you?

  Thus far, the Other had given no indication it was aware of her existence. The possibility intrigued Rachel as much as it frightened her.

  Who are you? it asked again.

  When queried a third time, Rachel decided to respond.

  My name is Rachel.

  Major Daniels had only ever talked about eavesdropping on the hive mind, had never said anything about conversing with it.

  Not like she needs to know, Rachel told herself, liking the idea of keeping secrets from her captor.

  There was a long pause. Rachel imagined the Other trying to figure out what to say, how to say it.

  Then, finally:

  I’m glad to meet you… Rachel.

  Wednesday, October 14th

  Following the path through the woods, Nadine carried a bottle of water, a fishing rod, and a small plastic bag filled with dirt and worms she had pulled from the ground herself the night before. She had her red hair pulled back in a ponytail, the sleeves of her flannel shirt rolled up, the exposed skin of her neck, arms, and legs below the shorts she wore coated in a layer of bug repellent. The leaves of the trees around her had turned from their summer green to the red, yellow, and orange of autumn. Every time she inhaled, Nadine took in the semi-sweet odor of living things: a heady mix of pollen, sap, and a wide array of weeds and fungi left to grow unchecked. The calls of birds and insects filled the air, the less noticeable rustling and creaking of branches adding a swaying, comforting sort of rhythm to it all.

  After a couple minutes of walking, Nadine reached her destination.

  The river flowed by slowly and sedately, its surface glimmering in the light of the sun hovering directly overhead. At the edge of the waterline, a pair of folding chairs stood side by side, angled slightly toward one another. Nadine thought about the cabin she and Trevor had chanced upon, where they had been staying for more than a week now. She also thought about the graves they had found behind the cabin: three of them filled, a fourth excavated but empty. In a small storage room attached to the rear of the cabin, they had discovered a desiccated corpse lying atop a sheet of plastic spread across the floor. A handwritten note next to the body read:

  “To whoever finds this… I have decided to kill myself in this room so that the animals (and the zombies, too, of course) cannot have their way with my remains. My family and I always loved vacationing here. I thought it would be a good place to ride out the plague, to avoid the horrors of the outbreak reported every day on the news. But it didn’t work out that way. So please make yourself at home. The cell
ar has been well stocked with provisions. There’s even a pretty good selection of wine (my wife and I have always enjoyed a glass before bed). All I ask is that you bury me with my loved ones. I’ve already dug the hole, left the shovel lying next to it. I hope this isn’t too much to ask. And if it is, well, please do it anyway or I swear that as long as you stay here, I will try my best to haunt you.”

  Together, Nadine and Trevor had wrapped the body in the plastic sheet, carried it over to the empty grave, used the shovel and the pile of dirt next to the hole to fill it in. When they were done, they had gone back to the cabin, opened a couple cans of soup from the “provisions” in the cellar and heated them on the gas stove. The place even had electricity thanks to the solar panels covering the roof which meant hot, running water. The shower Nadine took that first day had been pure ecstasy after all the seemingly endless driving and hiking. Trevor had insisted they get as far away from any signs of civilization that they could, offering a sullen need to “disappear from the world for a while,” a world he felt he had let down several times over.

  Seeing the two chairs on the bank of the river, Nadine imagined the man they had buried and his son sitting there, fishing rods in hand—one of which Nadine had appropriated for her own purposes—enjoying one another’s company, certain in the belief they were protected out here, far from the plague ravaging the distant towns and cities.

  She spent the next couple hours doing some fishing of her own, remembering the times as a little girl when she had participated in this quiet, calming activity with her own father. It would have been nice to have Trevor join her, but he was undoubtedly deep into one of the bottles of wine from the cellar by now, doing what he could to mask the inner pain that seemed to be his constant companion. And failing as usual.

  Movement along the distant bank caught Nadine’s eye. As she watched, a large male zombie emerged from the trees. Without hesitation, it entered the water, causing Nadine to get to her feet and reel in her line. Once the zombie was fully submerged, she waited to see if it would reappear from the shallows along her side of the river. She carried a pistol in a holster on her hip, taken from a dead police officer during her travels. And so a confrontation with the undead creature did not overly concern her. Although, if one could be avoided altogether, so much the better. With any luck, the current would carry the zombie downstream and let her get back to her fishing.