My Dead World 3
Jacqueline Druga
My Dead World 3 by Jacqueline Druga
Copyright © 2019 Jacqueline Druga
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by Vulpine Press in the United Kingdom in 2019
ISBN 978-1-83919-005-6
www.vulpine-press.com
Also by Jacqueline Druga:
No Man’s Land
When Leah and Calvin found out they were expecting, they were over the moon. That day would be one to remember forever… but for more reasons than one. That was the day the world changed. That was the day joy turned to fear. A deadly virus broke out, with many of those infected becoming violent and uncontrollable. And it was spreading fast.
The Last Woman
After emerging from a coma, Faye Wills opens her eyes to complete darkness and the feeling of being trapped. She awakens in the worst place imaginable, one of thousands of bodies in a makeshift mass grave that was once a football stadium.
Left for dead, there are no signs of life and the only sound she hears is the buzzing of flies that follow the stench of death.
Once out of the stadium she steps into a desolate, barren world, void of all life and people. Faye learns that while in a comatose state, the world was besieged by some sort of epidemic. Without a soul around, there are a lot of missing pieces. Where did everyone go?
In her weakened state, she must pull it together and move forward to find answers and survivors. However, she soon realizes that she may never find anyone and must face the possibility that she may be The Last Woman on earth.
ONE
REFLECTION
It never really goes away. That empty feeling, the twinge that hits your stomach the second you think of the person you lost. Even after months, it burns and stings.
I suppose a few months isn’t really a lot of time. Certainly not enough time to heal or forget.
It wasn’t long after it all started, when my brother gave us that heads-up about the virus.
We prepared. Hunker down, he said. Go to the cabin and wait it out.
Waiting it out was laughable.
There is no end to an extinction-level event. You don’t wait out anything. Extinction is infinite.
It wasn’t too long ago that a young man crashed his car half a block from my home, providing me with the reality check that things were real.
It had begun.
I lost everyone that I loved: my husband, daughter, stepmother, brother, and father.
I was blessed that Katie, my youngest daughter, had beaten the odds. At four years old she has witnessed too much heartache and pain.
It would either define her in life or break her. Though it was too early to tell.
I hated the virus, as everyone else that survived it did.
It infected, changed the person, made them suffer, killed them, and it didn’t stop.
On a daily basis we battled abominations of nature. Beings that wanted nothing more than to rip us to shreds.
We did our best to defend ourselves, but in the end we still lost.
Chasing hope was a pipe dream. If we wanted a better life, we needed to find it ourselves. While the world was different, we prayed for a change. That perhaps one day we’d wake up and the madness would be over, and things would go back to the way they were.
Who was I kidding?
I would never again see the day of stopping at a local coffee shop for a quick iced latte.
My days of working job after menial job were done. The job I held now was staying alive and protecting my daughter.
We weren’t alone Katie and me. There was a small group of us. Thrown together by circumstances and death. Our shared heartbreak bound us like glue.
We had no real direction, we just followed news we heard over the radio. One person saying they heard this or that.
I had no idea why we were chasing life. Looking for it.
We couldn’t be all that was left.
At least alive.
It was a dead world. We all knew it.
Despite how beautiful our surroundings could be—a forest, a lake, a beach—it was overshadowed by a dark cloud of death that would linger for a long time.
One thing was for sure, as time passed, we saw less and less of the dangerous infected.
Those who raged at us, wanting to tear us limb from limb. We went from running and fighting them, to dodging the ones that decayed and barely moved, to not seeing any at all.
But I wasn’t so naïve to believe it was over.
It wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
We were just at some momentary pause. A calm before the storm. A storm that would eventually slam us.
I wasn’t ready.
None of us were.
THE BACK THEN
TWO
CANADA DRY
August 21 – Three Months Post Outbreak
We tried.
More and more, over the radio, speaking to people—an infection-free zone was a reality, we just had to find it.
Like a hamster in a wheel we spun through different phases of emotions on our journey to see the wonderful, undead-free world of Canada. Repeating the emotions every step of the way. Hope, fear, happiness, despair, repeat. When we arrived Canada was, from what we saw, infection free.
The closer we got the less infected we saw.
It was evident they also couldn’t take chances and I believed they thought a lot through. Things that never crossed my mind, like children without families. They had an orphan program which was great, until it affected us and they took one of our own. Billy. Billy’s parents had been killed, so we took responsibility for him, but it didn’t matter. We were informed, like a lost and found object, that if no family crossed over from the United States and claimed him, we could have him back after thirty days.
That was warning one.
They were strict with rules that really made sense. Harsh rules that I agreed with until they applied to us.
No bites.
No exceptions.
To conceal them was a death sentence. Even if the bite mark had never caused an infection. Such was the case with Corbin. He and his son, Sawyer, were part of our group. They’d joined us not long after the outbreak, traveling with two others. They, too, came with Lev, Katie and me to check out Canada while the others stayed behind waiting for a newborn infant to get strong.
Corbin had been bitten months before. His wound had healed, and like Katie, he never turned. Unlike Katie, though, he still got sick. He just beat it.
Why wouldn’t the health officials in Canada want him? He, along with my daughter, could be the cure. Or a means to stop it.
Corbin, actually all of us, naїvely believed that his failure to turn into a raging beast was something authorities needed to know.
It was Lev who innocently told doctors about it when they took him to medical. Lev had been shot and had his leg broken. He talked to them about Corbin, something I don’t think he’ll ever forgive himself over.
When they asked him, Corbin confirmed it never giving it a second thought.
His honesty was met with a bullet.
No delay, no hesitation; the second he showed his scar, a gun was placed to his head. Shot dead in front of my daughter and, even worse, his son.
When they asked if anyone else had been bitten, my daughter said she had, but before they could shoot her Lev went into some sort of protection mode. My gentle giant of a friend went ballistic on the soldier, beating him within a fraction of his life only to be beaten in return within a fraction of his.
They released us because of the action of the callous soldier.
We found ourselves out of Canada, in the middle of the night, in the car we had strategically hidden just in case.
Me, Lev and Katie…not only did they shoot Corbin, they kept his son under their orphan law.
I begged and pleaded, saying he had a grandfather and uncle back in the States that were not far behind.
That didn’t matter. The relative would have to make their way to Canada to claim Sawyer.
Sawyer cried and cried, screaming for us. My heart was already broken for Corbin and frightened with how beaten Lev was. Sawyer’s cries were salt in an open wound.
Everything crumbled.
Once back in the car, I couldn’t go anywhere.
I radioed to tell everyone back at the cabin what had happened. Ben told me what to do for Lev. It was very little and seemed hopeless.
His head was bleeding and he coughed up blood. He could barely keep consciousness.
Ben offered to send Fleck to help but I declined. I would head out at first light.
That was if Lev made it.
My four-year-old daughter was a sobbing mess. Traumatized from watching a man get shot in front of her, then having a gun pointed to her own head.
Had it not been for Lev I would have lost my other daughter, then I would have just died. I would have lied and said I had been bitten so they would shoot me too.
That was hindsight, a horrible hindsight that kept replaying in my mind as I listened to the gurgled breathing of Lev and the constant sobs of my daughter.
There was no comfort to give anywhere.
I gripped the steering wheel with Katie’s head on my lap—all I wanted was for the sun to hurry up and rise.
My hands ached, as did my body, and I had to keep it together.
That was a lost cause.
Every time I blinked I heard the shot, saw Corbin fall and Sawyer scream.
Sawyer.
It was hard enough that they had taken Billy, but Sawyer, too? Why hadn’t I tried harder, fought more? Instead, I’d just worried about my own, and got out of there as fast as I could, grateful they were releasing us instead of executing us.
I inhaled sharply when I noticed I couldn’t hear Lev’s gurgled breathing.
“Lev,” I called his name, looking into the rearview mirror. “Please Lev, answer me.”
It took a few attempts but finally he groaned. I told him to open his eyes, which he did, and for a few moments I could relax, wait out another round of waking him to make sure he was okay.
The hours weren’t ticking by fast enough. I thought about leaving anyhow but it was too dangerous, too dark.
Katie was uncomfortable. I knew because she sat up and rolled the other way, leaning against the front passenger door. I double-checked the locks and thought about closing my eyes for a little. Just a little.
I fell asleep, not long or deep enough to dream, but enough for something to happen to my body. My eyes popped open when I felt an enormous wave of nausea hit me. Holding it in, I opened the car door, stepped out and barely made it a foot before the contents of my stomach emptied.
It had to be nerves. Every bit of me shook and I was sick to my stomach.
After shutting the car door, I walked to the back and to the hatch.
It was so quiet, not even the sound of crickets filled the air. Maybe that was the reason I heard it before I smelled it.
Hatch up, reaching in for the blanket, I heard a crunching. Like a foot stepping on something. I would have worried it was someone coming to attack, had I not smelled the scent of rotting flesh.
It wasn’t just an infected; it was a nekro, as Edi had named them, meaning they were dead and walking. I knew that because had it been an infected it would have been upon me already. Infected were still alive and moved fast.
Reaching into the hatch, I unzipped our weapon bag containing what we used other than guns to fight with. The first thing I grabbed was a huge wrench.
As soon as my hand touched upon it, I recognized it. It was the one Lev used to put down my husband.
I honed in, listening to the sound of walking and the smell, trying to gauge where he or she was. I knew it was behind me, I just didn’t know where. Maybe it had come from one of the cars.
Staying in the glow of the hatch light, I turned around. It took a few seconds to see him, but then I did. He staggered my way, a backpack strapped to him. He moved rigidly, head tilted to the left, his focus on me. He was three car lengths away.
I could have waited for him to come to me, then I worried. Both Lev and my daughter were vulnerable. If something happened to me, the thing would go for them.
I shut the hatch, stayed focused on him and made my way in his direction.
There was no reason for me to feel as brave as I did. None whatsoever, but I did. Not one ounce of fear was present. I didn’t know what it was. Was I numb or maybe it was my instinct to protect those I loved? I approached him like I was some sort of pro nekro killer, when I wasn’t. I was a great shot, but never one to go hand-to-hand zombie kill mode. Yet, there I was. My hand went flush against his chest to push him back. His shirt was stuck to his flesh and my hand nearly sunk. One push was all it took—he stumbled back some and I struck him in the head. The second I did I knew why I wasn’t afraid.
I was too angry.
Too hurt.
Too emotionally broken to even have room for fear.
I wasn’t strong enough to do enough damage with that blow. He kind of shucked it off like a cat that had run into a wall, bouncing back my way. I hit him again.
Again, he did the same thing.
Third time was the charm.
I gave it all I had and the wrench impaled the side of his head, sticking there. As he dropped I used the pull of his fall to remove the wrench and then just stared at the thing on the ground. I knew it was down and was no longer a threat, but blinded by such rage, I struck it repeatedly.
It was blind, emotional striking so much that everything was a blur and all I could think of with every hit was someone that I lost. Every hit felt good.
My father, brother, husband…daughter.
Corbin, Edi, Cade…Sawyer.
Slam. Slam. Slam.
No!
On the final blow I dropped the wrench into what remained of his head.
Nothing was left. Nothing.
It was smashed beyond what I believed I was capable of. A thick, slushy pool of nothing.
It wasn’t his fault, he just so happened to symbolize the thing that took everything from me.
It was the first time since it all went down that I was out of control.
It was a breakdown, and it was over. At least for then.
I lifted the wrench from the mess, wiped it off on the pant leg of the deader and headed back to the car.
After tossing it back into the weapons bag, I pulled out the pack of baby wipes, shut the hatch, and returned to the driver’s seat. I was out of breath and no longer chilled.
It was quiet, sans the sound of Lev’s gargled breathing and my daughter’s slight whimpering in her sleep. I wiped off my face and hands with the baby wipe, took a drink of water and peered into the rearview mirror.
“Lev, you okay? Lev, get up and answer me. Lev?”
“I’m okay,” he replied.
“Thank you.” I tossed the baby wipe down and sat back,
My hands were shaking and I watched the skyline for the rising sun.
I just couldn’t wait to get out of there.
THREE
STALLED
August 22
“He’s not going to die,” Ben told me. “But he isn’t going to be okay, at
least not for a long time. He’s got a rough road ahead.”
Ben was our godsend. A doctor—a brilliant surgeon—who happened upon our group because he was looking for his son, Brian Cade. Cade had been with us but had died. Ben hadn’t wanted to stay after he learned that, but he did. I always believed Lev guilt-tripped him into never leaving.
Good thing for Lev that Ben stayed.
I drove like a bat out of hell from Canada. Faster than I should have and Ben, without even examining Lev, had a clean environment ready in case he had to do surgery. Which ended up being the case. He had to operate to fix the ribs that had punctured Lev’s lungs and relieve pressure on his brain.
It was bad. It was really bad.
I don’t know how he focused enough to fix Lev, not with all the bad news we brought back with us.
“And Katie?” I asked.
“Katie will be fine. Physically, she is unharmed. Emotionally, she’ll heal.”
“But she saw things…”
“She has seen things for the last few months,” he said. “She is probably the most resilient child I have ever known. She’ll have some ups and downs, but she’ll get through.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry about Corbin and Sawyer and Billy.”
“Thank you. Fleck tells me that Canada has them in their orphan’s program. I would like to go up there and try to get them.”
“Absolutely. I’ll help in any way I can.”
“Good. Good. Because Lev needs more than we have here,” Ben said.
“What else can we do?”
“We have that small generator. I would like to go to a nearby hospital—I think Beaver Valley is the closest. I need plenty of IVs, even a pump. I need to give him what he would get if he was in intensive care because that is what he needs.”
“He’s that bad.”
Ben nodded. “He’ll make it. He’s a tough son of a bitch. He’s also the sole reason I have run down on my supplies.”
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