Dead Run_A Zombie Apocalypse Novel

by R. J. Spears

  Ellen took a moment to answer. “I’m sure we will.”

  Neither one of them believed it.

  After a few minutes, Ellen said, “Well, let’s get back inside.”

  Even after the truck disappeared into the obsidian blackness of the night, Henry kept peering into the darkness.

  “Come on,” Ellen said. “I need you to help me find Madison. I haven’t seen her all day. You know what kind of mischief that girl can cause.”

  “Sure, mom,” Henry said, finally surrendering and starting the slow march back to the barn.

  Chapter 12

  Rounding Up a Dead One

  “What about that one?” Brother Ed asked, pointing out the window of the gas station where we were staked out. A male zombie wearing bib overalls and a flannel shirt shambled down the street. His skin was gray and withered looking, making me think he had some age on him.

  Upon reflection, it seemed utterly bizarre that I was age-typing zombies. The Outbreak wasn’t that long ago, and here I was making an assessment on a zombie based on its age. I’m sure, if he found out, he’d sue me for ageism. I could just see the court case: Joel Hendricks v. Zombie Joe. Charges: Age Discrimination.

  Jason was next to Brother Ed, looking surly. His mood had been sour for the past couple days because we weren’t heading north. Down deep, I didn’t blame him because he was the person our crazy Colonel Kilgore was after.

  The truth be told, if Kilgore found Jason, he’d find us all because none of us would be going anywhere until Kara was well enough to travel. I sort of doubted that Kilgore would single out Jason, so we were all in this together, but I figured we had time because Kilgore had no idea where we were.

  “Brent said it had to be older but not too old,” I said. “That one looks pretty old and dry.”

  “That’s a really loosey-goosey way to pick one,” Brother Ed said.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “He just said that it had to be a juicy one.”

  There was nothing appealing about the word juicy in this context.

  “This is a crazy idea,” Brother Ed replied.

  “Don’t blame me,” I said. “Brent is the one that came up with it. Besides, it might be our only chance to save Kara.”

  Jason pushed one of his handwritten notes my way. I took it. It said, “You know, we can leave Kara with Brent and Linda. Brent can take care of her while we head north. Maybe she can catch up.”

  I wadded up the note, clenching my fist tightly. This wasn’t his first run at me with this angle.

  “Listen, we’ve been down this road before. We all go together,” I said, maybe a bit too emphatically because I saw Brother Ed wince a little at my harshness. “And that means Kara is with us and healthy enough to travel. Besides, how would she ‘catch-up’ to us? We don’t really know how we will get to where we are going.”

  Jason scribbled away for a moment and handed me another note. It read, “You have to trust that she will be okay. We have our mission.”

  “I know about the mission, but for this one time and for this one thing, it takes a back seat. End of story.”

  Jason poised the pen over the pad again but withdrew it. I knew he wasn’t happy and would most likely take another run at me soon. My only fear with him was that he would take out on his own, but I think he realized his chances were next to nothing. Besides, he knew Naveen was a part of the final vision. Her role was not quite clear, but we just knew she had to be there.

  So, he leaned back against the checkout counter and stared into the street, a muscle twitching in his cheek, telling me he was pissed off. Too bad.

  The gas station looked like it had been ransacked several times, with papers, empty plastic bottles, and other debris littering the floor. Anything of value had been taken long before our appearance there. The station was positioned right on the main drag in South Bloomfield. That main drag just happened to be the highway that led north to Columbus.

  During our stake out, we had seen a dozen or so zombies heading up the highway, sometimes in groups or in pairs. This old guy was the first solo zombie, making me wonder if he was lonely.

  “They all seem to be heading north,” Brother Ed said.

  “Yeah, I noticed that,” I replied.

  “Any thoughts on that?”

  “They’re going to where the jobs are?”

  “It’s good to see you haven’t totally lost your sense of humor.”

  “They can’t take that away from me.” I hoped.

  Still, beneath my humor was no small amount of concern. We were eventually heading north. If all the zombies were heading north, then it wouldn’t make our lives any easier.

  Jason leaned forward and tapped Brother Ed on the shoulder.

  “Here come some more,” Brother Ed said, peeking out the window.

  It was a small group of four in various states of zombification. Two men and two women. Maybe it was a double date.

  The good thing was that they didn’t look too old or too new, so maybe this group was promising. One of the men had been rather fat prior to his conversion to the undead life. And he looked (not being able to think of a better word) juicy, so this one could be a promising target.

  “What’s the plan?” Brother Ed asked.

  Jason moved beside Brother Ed and watched the group intently.

  I watched the group as they slowly approached the gas station, walking in the center of the street. Flies buzzed around the fat guy, making me think he should be the one we should target, but we’d probably have to take out the whole group. I mean, if you’re going to spoil the party for one of them, you might as well do it for the lot of them.

  “Let them pass then we sneak up behind them,” I said.

  “Guns or hand weapons?”

  “Guns will just draw in more of them, so hand weapons.”

  Brother Ed sighed. Fortunately, he had found a wood axe in the garage behind the house where we were staying. While I wasn’t fond of edged weapons in zombie combat, it wasn’t a bad choice because it had a nice sharp edge on one side and a sledge hammer option on the other side, giving Brother Ed the best of both worlds - chop or bludgeon.

  Jason had a length of metal pipe about three and a half feet long. We had taken some duct tape we found and wrapped the end to make a grip. It wasn’t the best weapon, and he wasn’t in the best of shape, so he was to act as backup only.

  I said, “I know it’s not the popular choice, but it’s the best one.” I paused as the group became parallel with the gas station. “Don’t totally take out the fat one.”

  “Why not?”

  I looked Brother Ed straight in the eyes and asked, “Do you want to have to carry him back to the house?”

  “And how are we getting him back?”

  I reached down to the floor and picked up the heavy-duty orange extension cord that I had brought from the house. “I think ahead,” I said, holding the cord aloft.

  “And how are you planning to do that?”

  “Tie him up and drag him back, getty up, little doggie,” I said, confident that it was going to be that easy.

  Jason made an exaggerated grimace to let us know he didn’t like the idea.

  “I think you’re oversimplifying it,” Brother Ed replied.

  “Well maybe, but do you have a better plan?”

  He just shrugged his shoulders. It was my way or the highway by default.

  When I looked out the grimy window again, our little merry group of zombies was just about to pass out of view on their travels northward.

  “Let’s move,” I said, grabbing the extension cord and my trusty bat. When I stood up, my knees popping after being crouched for so long. Brother Ed looked at me sideways for a moment, but I ignored him. Both he and Jason stood and followed me to the door. It had been made of heavy tempered glass, but it was long gone, having been broken out when the store had been looted. Its loss gave me one of life’s little dilemmas - do I push open the empty frame or step through it? I opted to step thr
ough as it was the path of least resistance but made an effort not to step on any of the broken glass.

  As I stepped out, I did one last check to make sure there were no more deaders coming up the road and saw that the coast was clear for now. Then I fast-walked across the parking lot, past the empty gas pumps and an abandoned car. A wooden fence divided the gas stations lot from the next property on the north side and acted as a screen for us as we attempted a sneak attack on the zombie’s flank. I edged along the fence and poked my head around the corner, seeing the group shambling up the roadway not too far ahead. There were no cars or anything else in the street to help shield our approach, so I opted for a direct attack, swift and ruthless. I turned back to Brother Ed and Jason and conveyed this but emphasized again that we had to leave the “Big Guy” mobile if we could. (I had decided to call him that name, rather than the fat guy, because it could hurt his feelings.)

  Some inner sense of fairness picked at my conscious, knowing we were doing a sneak attack, but my rational mind smirked back at my inner fairness, telling it that these were zombies and didn’t deserve any fairness. After the mini-battle of my wills was over, I slid out from behind the fence and moved as stealthily as I could into the road, heading for the group’s flank. It didn’t take long to catch up even as we were doing our “run silent, run deep” approach.

  Our target zombie was on the back left side of the group. To his right was a tall, lanky zombie with a broken gait as if there was something wrong with its right leg as its head bobbed up and down with each step. The two front zombies were women in running suits. Parts of their apparel showed bite marks, obviously from the wounds that had taken them from the ranks of the living to the undead.

  Since I had the lead, it was my job to somehow incapacitate our target zombie, but I figured I had the time to take out his walking companion. My hands clutched my baseball bat, feeling eager to do some damage.

  The gap between us and them was narrowing fast, when the tall one must have registered that something was quickly approaching from the rear. Not being the most nimble of creatures, it slowly turned to see what was coming but only made it halfway before my bat collapsed its skull, taking it out of action permanently.

  The Big Guy turned my way, and I pivoted quickly, bending down while still holding my bat back, cocked at the end of my backswing. I unleashed a vicious swing at the back of the Big Guy’s legs, chopping into the back of his knees. It was almost like chopping down a tree - an undead walking tree. My move proved effective as he went down, folding backwards onto his back, leaving his legs trapped under his body. That would hold him for a few seconds, while we took care of the lady runners.

  Brother Ed whooshed past me, his new wood axe raised above his head, and brought it down, cleaving the skull of one of the lady zombies as if he were chopping wood. The only issue was that his axe bit so deeply into the zombie’s skull that it got stuck.

  And that has always been my problem with edge weapons.

  The now dead zombie pitched so violently to the street that it literally ripped the axe right out of Brother Ed’s hands, leaving him defenseless. Unless he was going to use his gun, which wasn’t part of the plan since we didn’t want to bring any zombies in the area on the shamble, he was defenseless.

  The other female zombie, seeming angry that he had dispatched her running partner, snarled, and launched herself at Brother Ed, plowing into him and knocking him to the pavement where they rolled for a few feet. She wasn’t all that big, but what she lacked in size, she made up for in ferocity.

  I was a few feet away and not in a position to help, leaving Jason as the last line of defense, which wasn’t the option we wanted.

  It wasn’t that Jason was useless, but from the time he came into our midst, he was either sickly or weak. We had had no time to train him at all, and frankly, as frail as he was, we never expected much from him.

  He was now Brother Ed’s best hope of not being munched down on.

  Brother Ed was on his back, and the zombie was on top of him, her teeth snapping together as she tried to get a bite of him. He had his hands around her neck, pushing her up and away from him, but her animal ferocity was hard to hold back.

  “Hit her!” Brother Ed yelled at Jason, who was dancing around with his pipe raised in the air but caught in indecision on the best way to use it.

  The Big Guy was starting to unfold himself in front of me, so my hands were going to be tied up in just a few seconds.

  “You need help, Jason?” I asked.

  He shook his head, but he still hadn’t bought his pipe into action. I looked down at the Big Guy and back at Brother Ed. Having the Big Guy down on the ground made the next part of our plan easier, but keeping Brother Ed alive trumped that, so I left the flailing zombie and started toward Brother Ed’s zombie.

  That’s when Jason decided to act.

  It wasn’t his best moment. His swing was hard and vicious but missed the zombie entirely, striking Brother Ed’s fingers and breaking two of them. (I wouldn’t know this until later, but Brother Ed’s scream told me that something really hurt.)

  Brother Ed howled in pain, pulling his hand down toward his body. This gave his zombie nemesis the break it needed as it tried to push itself down onto him. Fortunately, she was a smaller one, and his other arm was just strong enough to keep the zombie on top of him aloft. That wouldn’t last very long as she bucked and squirmed to get free from his grasp.

  Jason stepped back in horror at what he had just done, which was probably the worst thing he could have done. Brother Ed was in serious trouble as the zombie snapped and snarled above him.

  I accelerated toward Brother Ed and the zombie, using my momentum and a golf-like swing to smack the zombie in the head. Unlike Jason, my aim was true as the head of my bat struck the undead thing in the side of the face. Her jaw broke immediately, and she rolled off Brother Ed and onto the pavement. She wasn’t out for the count, though. Her lower jaw hung sideways off the bottom of her face, flapping loosely as she tried to get back that snapping action. A gamer, she tried to raise herself off the ground for another go at Brother Ed.

  That wasn’t in the cards as far as I was concerned, as I stepped onto her chest with my right foot, slamming her back down onto the pavement. I went to work on her with my bat, and it only took two hits to reduce her head to a pulpy and broken mess.

  “Hey!” Brother Ed yelled in alarm while sitting up. He held his wounded hand with his good hand, and his face was pulled tight in a grimace of pain. He nodded his head in an effort to direct my attention behind me.

  I whirled around in time to see the Big Guy back on his feet and heading toward Jason.

  “Jason,” I said, “slowly back away but keep his attention on you.”

  Jason looked at me as if not comprehending what I had said.

  “Keep him distracted but keep a safe distance from him,” I said.

  Jason got it, but I’m not sure he liked it. (Who liked being bait?) He started backing away from the Big Guy, leading him away from the group.

  It was my time for a repeat performance. Fortunately, zombies are very, very dumb. I came at the Big Guy from behind, coiling up for another swing, and unleashed with a nasty chop at the back of his knees. He went down just like before and ended up on his back with his legs trapped under his body.

  “Step on his arms,” I said to Jason. He hesitated for a moment, but Brother Ed jumped to his feet and stepped onto the Big Guy’s left arm. Jason quickly understood his role and stepped onto the Big Guy’s right arm, trapping the undead creature against the pavement, where he bucked and groaned while snapping his teeth, but he came up empty.

  I straddled the Big Guy and used the handle end of my bat to pull open his shirt. In life, he had been a pretty corpulent man with many, many folds of flesh. I probed the folds and found a nasty looking wound on his right side. I leaned down and took a closer inspection then stood up and said, “Jackpot.”

  It took some doing, but we got his
arms tied up tight with the extension cord without being bitten. We employed a push and pull method to get him moving, keeping the zombie at a safe distance, while also pulling him towards our destination, which was our home base. He grunted and groaned his protest at our treatment of him, but as of then, there was no society for the prevention of cruelty to zombies. Give it time, I thought. Give it time.

  To make it worse for the Big Guy, I finally slapped a piece of duct tape over his mouth, wrapping it inexpertly around his head, so we didn’t have to listen to him bellyaching about his inability to eat us. He didn’t seem to like it, but it cut down on the noise he was making, which proved to be a good thing.

  We had barely gotten our undead bounty around the back of the gas station when we heard the rumble of an engine, and I felt something clutch within my chest.

  Kilgore was the first word that came to mind.

  Chapter 13

  Hellhound

  It seemed like an eternity to Kilgore, but it had really only been a few minutes. But a few minutes of listening to someone being tortured can seem like hours. He wondered how the men upstairs didn’t hear the screams, but they were drunk. He also suspected that the Night Visitor had a way of obscuring things he didn’t want people to know. Some sort of dark magic.

  He also wondered what he was still doing down in the basement. Why didn’t he run? Or, at least, get out of the basement or the house?

  Something in his gut told him that there was no running from the Night Visitor.

  The screams stopped, and the basement was filled with an ominous silence. The calm before the storm, Kilgore thought. He had no idea what the Night Visitor was doing inside the room. Would Harley come out in pieces? Would he come out at all?

  It seemed that the Night Visitor had some purpose for Harley, so he suspected that Harley would come out, but he knew deep down that it wouldn’t be the Harley they had come to know and love -- to use a phrase. Once again, Kilgore felt the need to stifle a laugh. He knew if he started, he might not be able to stop, and he wasn’t sure how the Night Visitor would react to that.