Dead Run_A Zombie Apocalypse Novel

by R. J. Spears

  “Are you saying you need help?” the Night Visitor asked.

  Kilgore paused again, wondering if this was some sort of trick. That the Night Visitor might grab him and twist him into a question mark.

  “I don’t want to do it at all.”

  “That’s not the right answer.” The Night Visitor leaned in and loomed over Kilgore, who began to think his life might be measured in seconds.

  “Yes, yes, then. I need help.”

  The Night Visitor stood over him for several seconds, breathing out in a way that made Kilgore think of a bull. After a few moments, it said, “I have more latitude now that my opponent has changed the rules.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kilgore asked. “What rules? And who is your opponent?”

  “There are always rules,” the Night Visitor said. “And I think you know who my opponent is.”

  Deep down, Kilgore knew who the opponent was, and it made him contemplate whether he was on the wrong side of this war. But what choice did he have with this creature torturing him?

  “I need a vessel,” the Night Visitor said. “One of your men.”

  “I need my men,” Kilgore said, knowing that he would need all the men he had with him, but then a terrible idea came to him. “We do have someone.”

  “Take me to him.”

  The two of them left the room, with Kilgore in the lead and the Night Visitor following. They walked down the stairs, past the passed out soldiers strewn about the first floor. Their light snoring filtered out of the room to the hallway where Kilgore and the Night Visitor walked.

  Kilgore thought it was almost surreal. Here he was, walking through a darkened house with some sort of hellish creature following him. It would be beyond belief if it wasn’t really happening.

  His mind had stretched to encompass the idea of the dead walking the earth, but this seemed to be beyond the pale.

  They made their way to a set of stairs off the kitchen that led down into the basement. Kilgore worried that the creature following him would hit its head on the low ceiling but was too afraid to turn back around to see. There was no complaint or evasion on the creature’s part, so Kilgore just kept on walking.

  They moved through a room stocked with cans and boxes of food. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and it made Kilgore wonder if they would get tangled in the Night Visitor’s horns. This almost made him laugh, but he knew if he started laughing, he might not stop. He was that close to the edge.

  They made their way to a small door on the other side of the basement. Once again, Kilgore wondered how this giant-sized creature would make it through the door, but he gave up wondering. When you conceded to the idea that the devil might actually be walking the earth, anything was possible.

  Kilgore pushed the door open, and the light from outside the small room spilled in and over Harley, who was chained to a heavy metal support beam. Harley’s eyes blinked open and closed quickly, making Kilgore think of a child who had been roused too early in the morning.

  “You can’t keep me in here tied up like some kind of fucking dog,” Harley yelled at Kilgore, but it was all bluster. He knew Kilgore could do whatever he wanted with him. It was just a question of how far Kilgore would go that scared Harley the most.

  Kilgore stepped aside, giving Harley a full view of the Night Visitor.

  “What the hell is that?” Harley said, his voice rising several octaves through the question.

  What the hell, indeed? Kilgore thought.

  “Is this the vessel I can have?” the Night Visitor asked.

  Kilgore didn’t say anything but stepped out of the small room, allowing the Night Visitor unfettered access to the room.

  The Night Visitor leaned down as he walked through the doorway, nearly blotting out all the light leaking into the room. Smoke swirled around his body with sparks flitting off of him, falling to the floor like a child's sparkler.

  Kilgore elected to stay outside the room as the door slowly closed shut. He didn’t want to witness whatever the Night Visitor had in store for Harley. He also secretly hoped that maybe Harley would take his place in the line of torment.

  When the shrieks came out of the room a few moments later, he started to doubt that sentiment but only a little.

  Chapter 9

  The Stupid Plan

  “This is a really stupid plan,” Del said.

  “You got anything better?” Henry asked.

  “Henry, you’re sure about these caves?” Jo asked.

  The “Planning Group” gathered in front of one of the trucks, cramped in next to a repair bay. The group consisted of Jo, Del, Russell, Sergeant Jones, Ellen, and Henry, who had elbowed his way into the planning session against his mother’s better judgement. Their scheme came together in fits and starts. The initial plan was for a smaller group to create a distraction and for the other group to hightail it east, but that didn’t seem foolproof enough for Del. A single distraction wasn’t good enough. It had to be several, drawing the helicopter’s attention away from the barn. If not, those helicopters could circle around, find them, and tear up one of the troop trucks in a matter of seconds, people and all, then start on the next one.

  That’s where Henry came in. He had taken a pre-college course at the local college in spelunking. The course instructor led the students on several caving trips in the area, and it just so happened that there was a cave a few miles away. Henry even thought it was large enough to accommodate their group and would prevent the helicopter’s thermal imaging from discovering them.

  “So, we get our folks underground then what?” Del asked. He added, “Caves are cold and wet. Half our people are past their prime. They are not going to cotton to living like some kind of mole people.”

  “It’s only temporary,” Jo added, “until we can distract Kilgore’s troops and lead them away from this area.”

  Del turned to Jones and asked, “What are our chances of being discovered hiding here or making a run for it with no distraction?”

  Jones took a moment to ponder the question then said, “50/50 if we stay here, but we can’t stay here much longer with limited food and water. I don’t like our chances on the road at all -- unless we split up and send the trucks in three different directions.”

  “No, no, no,” Jo said, her complexion suffusing with red. “We have to stick together.”

  “Then it’s back to my cave idea,” Henry said.

  “Sheeee-it,” Del said, running a hand over his short cut hair.

  Russell was quiet during the whole planning stage. His mind kept drifting back to the Manor and the shootout with Kilgore’s soldiers. In a big gambit, they had used Maggie’s ability to control the undead as a feint to distract the soldiers. It had worked, but when the soldiers had opened up on the zombie, Maggie had been hit by a stray bullet and subsequently bled out. She didn’t say a word or make a sound but went quietly.

  His mind replayed the scene over and over again, trying some other way but knowing that, once history was written, there was no changing it.

  “So, what do we do to create a distraction big enough to draw the helicopter’s attention?” Jo asked.

  Jones rubbed his chin then said, “I saw a farm with a large propane tank about ten miles back. If we blew that, it would certainly light up the sky for miles around.”

  “So, the four of us,” Jo said then turned toward Russell, “if you’re up to it.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Henry said. “I need to be in on this.”

  Jo looked back to Henry. “And you will be, but you’re the only one who knows where the cave is.”

  “I can give directions,” Henry said in exasperation.

  “We can’t take the risk that they would get lost,” Jo said. “From what you told us, it wasn’t the easiest thing to find. You said, and I quote, ‘You leave this county road. You go past an abandoned barn, then look for this giant boulder that looks like an egg.’ Need I say more?”

  “So, when do we do this?” Del asked
.

  “It would probably be good for the distraction group to leave after sundown,” Jones said. “We can take that old pickup outside the house. You took a look at that, right Del, and it’s operational?”

  He sighed before answering. “Yeah.”

  Oblivious to the group, a small figure sat just behind the front wheel of one of the trucks, listening intently to every word they said. When the group broke to inform the rest of the people, the figure slid from behind the tire and mingled in with the rest of the refugees, getting lost in the crowd but keeping a watchful eyes on Jo and the rest of the group.

  Chapter 10

  Not Enough

  “This is good. This is good,” Brent said, holding the pill bottle full of antibiotics. There was something in his voice that told me that, while this was a good start, it wasn’t enough.

  We were standing in a hallway just outside the room where Kara was resting. I wanted to be out of earshot of Kara and Naveen.

  I checked in on Kara as soon as we got back from our drug expedition. Her face was flushed and drawn. I noticed that she seemed to be shivering almost constantly. When I touched her forehead, heat radiated off it. It took an effort on her part even to talk with me, increasing my worry exponentially.

  “What are you not saying?”

  He looked down at the floor, which I took to be a bad sign, then glanced up to my face but didn’t make direct eye contact. “I don’t want to alarm you, but around the stab wound, I’m seeing something that makes me worry.”

  My head felt light, and a wave of dizziness swept over me, but I forced myself to calm down. “What are you talking about? Don’t sugarcoat it.”

  “Listen, I’m just a G.P. I am not a specialist or anything like that. There’s something happening around the wound.”

  Something happening didn’t sound good to me. I moved into Brent’s personal space. “Just say it.”

  “First, know, I’ve only seen this once or twice before, and it might not be what I’m thinking it is.” He paused, and I could see him working out what to say in his head. It made me think that he must have had a gentle bedside manner with his patients, but I wanted the unvarnished truth.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Okay, okay. It could be streptococcus.”

  “Strepto-what? Come on, Brent, use layman terms.”

  “Do you know what necrotizing fasciitis is?”

  If I was worried before, I was close to exploding then. “I get the necro-part, but break it down for me.”

  I could see it in his expression that there was something he didn’t want to say, but I know he had had to break bad news in his career as a doctor. His expression shifted from concern and was replaced by that dispassionate doctor face, the one that told the hard truths when no one wanted to hear them.

  “It’s what people call a flesh eating bacteria.”

  “Oh great,” I said. “We have a world filled with damned flesh eaters, and now, Kara has one inside her body.

  “Calm down, calm down,” he said. “You don’t want Naveen to hear.”

  “Well, won’t the antibiotics help?”

  “They will, but they are pretty low-level stuff. They may slow it down, but we need a broad spectrum antibiotic. The problem is that, once it’s started, it’s hard to stop without removing some of the dead tissue.”

  “What do you mean by removing?”

  “I mean surgically.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Joel, I have nothing here. It is close to skin level and looks like it’s only starting, but once it starts, it can progress very quickly. It comes to the fact that I have no medical tools, not even a scalpel.”

  My head began to swim. I can’t lose Kara.

  “Can we get her to a hospital?” I asked, reaching for straws.

  “From what you said, hospitals are not places any of us want to go.”

  At the beginning of the outbreak, anyone who was sick went to a hospital. That meant they quickly became epicenters for the virus. Our encounter at the local hospital in Portsmouth was the stuff of nightmares. The undead swarmed the place, and our last foray there was when we lost our leader, Greg. He died as a result of a battle with the living, not the dead, but those undead bastards didn’t make anything easier.

  “Okay, okay, but can we go out and find something? Really sharp knives or something?”

  “That might help, but I have no anesthetic of any kind. There’s no way I can operate on her without that. The pain would be enormous.”

  My hand went to my forehead, wiping away the sweat that had just appeared there. My head was starting to swim, and my feet felt unsteady.

  “We have got to be able to do something!” I said, my voice rising.

  Brent looked at his feet again. I couldn’t tell if he was conceding or whether he was trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

  “Please, Brent,” I said, and I hated the pleading tone of my voice.

  He slowly raised his head and looked at me. Although it took a moment, he finally said, “I have an idea, and no one is really going to like it.”

  “I don’t care what it is. We need to do something.”

  “Well, here goes and don’t try to stop me until I finish it because your first reaction will be, hell no.”

  “Go for it,” I said, feeling like a man on a raft surrounded by sharks, reaching for anything to find safety.

  Well, he started and went on for nearly a minute, and with each second, my jaw opened wider. When he finally finished, he locked in on me with the most serious of expressions - as serious as a graveyard, as my friends used to say when I was a kid.

  When he finished, I’m sure my eyes were as wide as plates, then I said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Chapter 11

  Into the Night

  They gassed up the truck with fuel they found in the barn and hoped it would start again after the initial test earlier that day. They carried their weapons and a meager supply of ammunition, leaving behind what they could for the other refugees. The truck was a 1991 extended cab Ford F-150, painted black and red, but was really covered mostly in rust. The tires were almost bald, and the windshield was spider-webbed with cracks. When Jones stepped in, he felt the floorboards partially give under his bulk, but it held. Barely. He eyed the floor with great suspicion after that.

  If you happened to look in the visual dictionary for the definition of the term ‘bucket of bolts,’ this vehicle would have been what was displayed.

  “Last chance to back out,” Jo said as she got behind the wheel.

  Sergeant Jones was sitting shotgun, looking stoic. He didn’t say anything but looked her direction and then back out the window.

  Russell and Del were in the back, neither of them seeming very cheerful for their own reasons. Del gave Jo a thumbs up, while Russell just nodded.

  The last vestiges of sunlight were falling just below the horizon, a thin line of pinkish-orange about to wink out. It had been a long day of waiting. Twice during the day, they heard a helicopter in the distance, and once, they were sure they saw one on the far horizon. That sighting sent ripples of fear through the refugees for almost an hour, but no soldiers came. Still, there was no calming the rattled nerves. Most of them had witnessed the terrible firepower of the helicopters back at the Manor. It wasn’t something you easily forgot.

  Everyone there felt some sort of clock ticking as if they were running out of time, and it seemed to be speeding up.

  Henry stood by the driver’s door, looking forlorn. “I wish I were going with you,” he said.

  “You know better,” Jo responded. “They need you to guide them to the cave.”

  “But still…” he trailed off.

  Neither spoke for a few seconds, and the silence stretched out uncomfortably. It was broken when Ellen, Henry’s mom, stepped up beside him and looked into the cab of the truck.

  “You guys be careful out there,” she said. She knew it was not the smartest of comments, but sh
e felt she had to say something.

  Del craned his head out of the back window and said, “Well, you know we’re not going to do anything but that. We’re going to give’em hell. Yee-haw.” There was little zeal in his voice as he said it.

  Jo broke in and said, “You wait until you get some sign from us that it’s safe to move. We should have something done by the morning light. Move then no matter what. It’s only a matter of time before those choppers find the group.”

  “What should we look for?” Ellen asked.

  “Oh, you’ll know it when you see it,” Del said and patted on the back of Jo’s seat as a sign that he was ready to get on the move.

  Not one of them was eager to go, because there was a decent chance this was a suicide mission, but they knew they had to for the good of those they left behind. Russell didn’t say a word, but just looked forward out the front windshield. The losses had begun to mount up for him, and he barely cared about the risk.

  Ellen leaned toward the truck window and said, “We all appreciate what the four of you are doing. I know you’re going to make it back to us.” She added a weak smile that she barely pulled off.

  Jo turned the key in the ignition, and the starter churned for several seconds before the engine finally rattled under the hood, shaking like an ancient beast coming to life. The tail pipe belched out a dark cloud of smoke, and the engine settled into an erratic rhythm, forcing Jo to have to goose the gas pedal sporadically to keep the engine from dying.

  “Move in the morning, no matter what,” Jo said, slammed the gear shift into drive and then pulled away from the barn.

  Ellen felt herself tear up a little as she wrapped her arm around Henry, pulling him close. They stood together, watching the truck ramble down the gravel and dirt road until it turned onto the asphalt country road in front of the old house. Jo kept the lights off to make sure they didn’t draw any unwanted attention.

  “You think we’ll see them again?” Henry asked as he continued to follow the dark blocky shadow of the truck getting smaller and smaller in the distance.