The Tale of Tom Zombie (Book 2): Zombie Lies

by Timmons, H. D.

  Zombie Lies

  #2 in the Tale of Tom Zombie Series

  By H. D. Timmons

  Copyright © 2012 H. D. Timmons

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Part 1

  Part 2

  Part 3

  Part 4

  Part 5

  Part 6

  Part 7

  Acknowledgments

  Part 1

  Tom Dexter felt a haze lift as if he were experiencing a sudden shift from night to day and recovering from a severe head rush all at once. He found himself lying on the floor and was so disoriented that remaining in his supine position for a few moments longer seemed in order.

  The room in which he found himself was unfamiliar. From his position on the floor he saw the bed in front of him and the meager, but modern furnishings in the rest of the room. He surmised that he was in a hotel room, but the observations provided nothing to jog his memory to explain how he had gotten there or why.

  Tom thought hard with every brain cell he could muster to try to remember something – anything. He grasped at fuzzy, distant memories but nothing seemed to manifest at the moment.

  Gripping the mattress in front of him, Tom pulled himself to a standing position, steadied himself, and was able to see the top of the bed clearly for the first time. The bed spread was splattered with blood and partially pulled off the opposite side of the mattress. Making his way around to the other side Tom saw a body positioned face up on the floor.

  It was a man, who looked to be in his mid-fifties, judging from the partially gray hair, roughly two hundred and twenty pounds, and a bullet hole through the breast pocket of his blood soaked navy blue suit with another through his eye. Tom observed a 9mm gun on the floor and his instincts told him to take the gun and just get the hell out of there.

  As he turned for the door his gaze crossed the wall mirror and he fired a shot dead center into the face of his own reflection. Realizing what he had done, Tom peered closely at himself in the mirror shards that remained. Shock and disbelief engulfed him as he saw the ghastly face staring back at him. Nose deteriorated, lips eroded to the point where the exposed teeth on one side of his face presented a perpetual hideous snarl.

  “Zombie virus,” Tom murmured to himself as if this recollection alone defined his existence. Flashes came forth from the recesses of his memory. There was a woman whose face was not clear, then came a flash of his own face from when the blemishes first appeared. He felt emotions of shame, despair and self-hatred attached to the memories of his virus, but there were still so many pieces of the puzzle of his life missing.

  As his thoughts fought to conjure more memories that would provide some answers, or at least clues, police sirens cut the pensive silence and Tom tucked the gun into the back of his pants’ waistband and fled.

  #

  As morning sunlight squeezed between the buildings of downtown Chicago, Tom’s steps carried him between shadows and patches of sunlight that made the sidewalk appear as if it were a giant piano keyboard that he was walking across. Half recognizing buildings and street names, Tom tried to piece together what had happened to him, but he was at a loss for any thought at all – except the thought of distancing himself from the Sheraton Hotel and the dead body in room 909.

  Crossing over the Chicago Riverwalk on North Columbus Drive should have been a familiar sight to Tom, but it was as if he was experiencing the Riverwalk for the first time. Everything before regaining consciousness in the hotel room was a blur, as if Tom were waking from some spell.

  After putting several more blocks between him and the hotel, the fog in his head lifted and the familiarity of his fair Chicago began to return. Although many personal memories were still elusive for the moment, he at least felt more in control. Just before turning right onto East Randolph Street, Tom observed that there had been a dark gray sedan following him. It made the turn, continuing to follow Tom at a safe distance.

  Tom quickly crossed the street and cut through Millennium Park with its tree lined paths in an effort to lose whoever was following him. The park provided adequate cover for a while, but Tom’s instincts told him to stay on the move or get penned in.

  He crossed South Michigan Avenue, which runs alongside the park, and proceeded to cut down East Madison, ducking into a small comic book store in order to get off the street.

  Tom positioned himself near a rack of latest releases at the edge of the store’s front window and peered into the street to check if he had truly lost the car that had been following him.

  “Can I help you find something?” asked the girl who had come from behind the counter.

  “Is there another way outta here?” Tom questioned without turning to face her.

  “You dodging someone?”

  This time Tom turned to answer the girl and the two stared into each other’s decrepit faces. Tom’s eyes widened in surprise at the twenty-something year old girl before him with eroding nose, lips and necrotic flesh curving from her temple to across her left cheek bone.

  “Well, you ain’t no bleedin’ prize to look at either, mister,” the girl said with her noticeably British accent. “Believe it or not, looking like a right proper zombie helps business.” She motioned with her hand to the shelves behind her.

  “My name’s Jemma; like on the sign out front: Jemma’s Comics. Most of what I specialize in here are general comics and the graphic novel variety. Ever since this virus surfaced there’s been a lot of interest in the horror comics and the zombie stories, so all the kids come to see the zombie lady and I happily take their money. So, what’s your story, then?”

  “I’m trying to figure that out,” Tom answered as he glanced back out the window. “Look, I just need a way out of here that’s not through the front door.”

  “I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, mister, but I reckon us zombie types need to stick together,” the girl said.

  Jemma guided Tom to a side exit that led to the alley. “There’s a fire escape out here that will take you to the roof. You can go across all of the buildings on this block. They’re connected. You’ll find another fire escape at the other end to get you back to the street level.”

  “Thanks,” Tom said almost under his breath as he rushed out the door.”

  “Cheers.”

  As Tom fled up the fire escape, a figure entered the alley and spoke but a single word to Tom.

  “Obedire.”

  Tom ceased climbing and stood motionless on the third story landing of the fire escape. The man who uttered the word that stopped Tom dead in his tracks quickly moved to beneath the fire escape and calmly instructed Tom to come down. Tom obeyed.

  As Tom descended, the man caught a glimpse of something in his peripheral vision and turned to see none other than Batman lunging toward him. Batman’s force knocked the man headlong into the side of a nearby dumpster. Jemma peered from behind the plywood cut-out of the Dark Night she’d borrowed from the front of a display rack, moved closer to the dazed man on the ground and kicked her hard soled black buckled boot into his face, rendering him unconscious.

  “You okay?” Jemma asked of Tom who was climbing down the fire escape with no sense of urgency. When he reached the bottom he stood on the ground and looked blankly at the side of the building without so much as acknowledging Jemma or the man on the ground.

  Jemma reached out and grabbed Tom by the shoulder, but although he turned to face her, his eyes stared passed her, focusing on nothing at all.

  “Bloody hell,” Jemma blurted, dumbfounded at the entire situation.

  #

  Jemma Straight called in her manag
er from his day off so that she could spend the rest of the day watching after Tom Dexter in her small apartment five floors above her comic book shop.

  Tom had remained reticent the entire time since Jemma had brought him from the alley. His expressionless stare, as he sat unflinchingly on her sofa, gave Jemma much cause for concern, but uncertainty of what to do. She found that her guest responded to simple commands like a despondent patient. When she placed a sandwich in front of him he ignored it until she told him to eat it.

  “How do I help you?” she asked him, not expecting a response. “I mean, we zombie types have to look out for each other, right?” She thought a moment then decided to position the television in the path of Tom’s gaze. “There. You can watch the telly. At least now you won’t look like you’ve gone barmy.”

  The late afternoon game shows soon gave way to local news. “Leading the news… Chicago’s McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America, will host the second NATO Summit to be held in our fair city, where world leaders will convene to discuss defense against the new global threat posed by the zombie epidemic,” Newscaster Jenni Carter read from her TelePrompter.

  “In other news, we are sad to report that Congressman Dennis Price was found murdered in his hotel room at the downtown Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers this morning. The cause of death was from gunshot wounds to the chest and head. Authorities have no suspects and no possible motives at this time.”

  The limited footage of the crime scene that was broadcast showed a cordoned off hallway and a brief shot of the congressman’s body on the hotel room floor. These images caused Tom to stand up.

  “Hey, you’re back,” Jemma said happily as Tom displayed his first sign of voluntary movement since she guided him to her apartment.

  Tom lifted the back of his shirt tail, removed the hidden gun that he had tucked in the waist of his pants that morning, and proceeded to raise the muzzle to under his chin.

  “NO!” Jemma screamed and threw herself at him, thrusting the gun away from his face. The two of them toppled to the floor, and as they hit the thin carpet the gun shook free of Tom’s hand.

  Tom slowly rose to his feet and his eyes darted around from his state of sudden confusion. A moment ago his mind told him he was in a hotel room at the Sheraton where he had just shot and killed a man. Once the task of killing the congressman was completed all that was left for Tom to do was to carry out one final task of turning the gun on himself. These thoughts were in his mind, but they felt more like instructions to be carried out.

  Jemma snatched up the gun from the floor and scrambled to her feet. “Look, what’s the point of me helping you if you’re just going to kill yourself?” She scolded Tom while waving the gun as if unsure of what to do with it.

  “I was there,” Tom said, pointing at the TV. “I did that. I killed that man.”

  “Whu... the congressman? So it’s the police you’re running from, then? Good Lord, I’ve taken in a fugitive.”

  Tom’s eyes looked everywhere except for directly at Jemma. “I must have tripped and blacked out, and when I came to in that room I didn’t know why I was there.” Tom tried to make sense of his thoughts. “I couldn’t remember why until just now. I had to kill that man. I had to. He killed my daughter.”

  Part 2

  Forty miles west of Baghdad, just outside of Fallujah, a desert patrol vehicle was parked hidden from view.

  “These are the coordinates, Captain. Just over the wall in the left quadrant of the village. You really think he’s there?”

  “According to our intel, Sergeant. Now, all we have to do is sit tight. I just hope the truck is on time.”

  “Seems like an awful lot of trouble for just one man. I mean, Bin Laden is dead. Is this guy even a threat anymore?”

  “All I’ve been told is that this Alik Kuman is still a top Al-Qaeda operative. Normally, we’d have Iraqi security forces handle this, but some major with connections wanted to use this as a proving ground for some tactical weapon. All we have to do is wait for a supply truck to enter the village and then record it all on video.”

  Darkness soon crept over the remote village and a large truck resembling a local Iraqi supply vehicle motored up to the building where the military had presumed their target had been holed up. Several locals came from the building to unload the truck. Upon opening the rear doors, rotted corpse-like hands reached out from the back of the darkened truck followed by the putrid odor of death that emanated from within.

  The Iraqis drew back in horror. The decaying humans, some dressed in U.S. Military clothing, others in both U.S. and Iraqi civilian garb, exited the vehicle and began shambling toward the building, taking hold of any living bystander and sinking their fetid teeth into fresh flesh.

  Screams and rifle fire rang out simultaneously amid shouts in Arabic asking, “What devils are these?” and “Who has summoned the dead to rise up against us?”

  Many nearby villagers witnessing the scene ran for their lives, while the ones assigned to protect Alik Kuman remained resolute.

  Bullets cut through the advancing mob, but what would kill a normal person did not seem to slow them. Even when stray or deliberate shots to the head killed an advancing creature once and for all it was not obvious that this was the most effective way to kill them. Kuman ordered more of his men into the street to defend the building. The fearless zombie horde was unrelenting. Flesh hung from their bones just as the flesh of their victims hung from their teeth as they feasted on every person who came within reach.

  Soon, the insidious moans of the shambling mob entered the confines of Alik Kuman’s residence. The remaining guards fired their weapons blindly, the spray of bullets cut down much of the approaching demons, but the zombies outnumbered the living. The blood curdling screams of Kuman’s last few men echoed in the village as they were overtaken and devoured.

  Soon, of the forty zombies unleashed on the building only five remained, gnawing on fresh corpses; two on the road and three on the inside of the building.

  Outside, the driver’s side door of the supply truck opened and a lone figure, dressed in U.S. Army fatigues, stepped from the vehicle and waded through the carnage to enter the building. Making his way into Kuman’s room, the driver now stood among the remaining zombies, none of which seemed to acknowledge his presence.

  Where was Kuman? Was he among the dead on the floor? The driver scanned the room for a moment, stepped toward a closet and pulled the door open. From his hiding place on the floor of the closet Kuman impulsively fired his revolver sending a bullet into the driver’s shoulder. The shot only caused the driver to lurch back slightly, but regained his stance above Kuman, who squeezed the trigger once more to discover that he had already used his last bullet. Studying the partially eroded face of his aggressor the Al-Qaeda operative observed that this man before him seemed more intelligent than the monsters ripping his men apart, despite looking similar.

  Before any more thought could enter Kuman’s brain a bullet entered it and exited abruptly. The driver then turned his gun from Kuman’s lifeless body and slowly, methodically put a bullet into the heads of the three zombies who were busy devouring their prey nearby.

  Emotionless, and with no great hurry, the driver returned to the truck parked outside, pausing only momentarily to dispatch the two living corpses disemboweling the fat Iraqi guard on the ground. After getting back into the cab of the truck, the driver proceeded to pull the pin from a grenade that had been purposefully resting on the passenger seat.

  The captain and his sergeant concluded their video surveillance from their safe vantage point and were each dumbfounded by what they saw.

  “Holy shit, Captain! What the fuck just happened? Why did that soldier blow himself up?!”

  “Sergeant... that was no soldier.”

  Part 3

  When Tom told Jemma that his daughter was dead he spoke with certainty, but without conviction.

  “Good Lord! I’m so sorry.” Jemma said.
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  Tom stood, pondering a moment to try to remember how his daughter Holly died, but he drew a blank. In his mind he just knew she was dead, but there was no more information. No recollection of how she died or how long ago. No memory of attending her funeral, no grieving. Nothing.

  Tom sat down. Disconnected, cloudy memories began to tie together now. He felt anger, more than grief, over his knowledge that his daughter was dead.

  “She’s dead. I know she is!” For Tom, it was as if it were just a fact. Something he knew without a distinct memory of it. Tom covered his face with his hands. “How can I not remember how my own daughter died, damn it?!”

  Jemma laid her hand on Tom’s head to comfort him.

  “I feel like my memories are mixed with someone else’s,” Tom said trying to define his state.

  “Wait. What did you say?” Jemma asked with sharp curiosity.

  “I said I feel like my memories are mixed with someone else’s,” Tom repeated. “Like my thoughts...”

  “Like your thoughts are not your own,” Jemma finished his sentence. “That explains the man in the alley.”

  “What man?” Tom asked in surprise.

  “Well, he wasn’t with the police, I’ll tell ya that. He said something but it didn’t make sense at the time.”

  “I don’t remember any man.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t remember how you got into my flat either. Do you know your name?”

  “Of course. It’s Tom.”

  “Nice to formally make your acquaintance, Tom,” Jemma said as she walked over to a shelf of comic books in her personal collection. She fingered across the spines of several issues until she found what she was looking for. “Here.” She plopped a graphic novel down on the table.

  “What’s this?”

  “That’s you,” Jemma said pointing at the cover.

  Other than the title, Zombie Tales, Tom didn’t see any connection.

  The illustration on the cover depicted a Haitian man with wide eyes in a trance-like state.