DEAD: Onset: Book One of the New DEAD series

by TW Brown

  Sitting up on the sidewalk, I was facing the side of the medical center that looked out onto 92nd Avenue. Three of the building’s four stories rose above me with huge picture windows lining the exterior. To my left was the one door that I’d used to exit the place that first time. To my right was the newly busted window. I had to work past the pain and get to my feet unless I wanted to be zombie chow. There was a nearby hydrant that I used to heave myself to my feet.

  Once I was standing, I paused to look back at the window and stopped in my tracks. It was just a foot or so off the ground out here on the street but was apparently set about waist high if you were standing inside this zombie-filled room. Several zombies were climbing through the shattered window. They were actually crawling over each other to get out. I had no doubt that every single one of those monsters were focused on me. Looking at the other windows that were closest, I did not see any signs of activity.

  I was moving away and had moved so that I was just a little bit above the busted window when something grabbed my attention. There was very little busted glass outside of that window’s frame. That would indicate that it broke inwards and had not been busted out by a bunch of zombies that saw a wandering snack tray move past them.

  As I started towards the drive that wound towards the military truck barricade and eventually the gate, I wondered where the hell my decoys were and why I hadn’t heard anything from them. Fortunately, I was able to get out of the zombies’ sight line as I climbed through the dense foliage and then rounded the easy bend that led up the driveway. I passed the second truck and heard something to my right. I knew I would not be able to use my axe with my off hand, so I drew my Glock and brought it up where the bushes were shaking.

  I started to apply pressure to the trigger when I heard a voice squeak, “Don’t shoot!”

  14

  “Hate to say I told you so.”

  “Jesus, Betty, I could’ve blown your head off,” I snarled as I lowered my weapon. “And why the hell aren’t you out there as my decoy. Didn’t you see what was happening.”

  “I saw you fall off the ladder and I hurried over this way to see if you needed help getting over the wall,” Betty replied. “It was clear that you weren’t in danger of being caught unless you got up to the gate and couldn’t get over safely.”

  “Okay.” I looked around and a new question came to mind. “Where is Brandon?”

  “He probably thought the same as I did. I am not as nimble on my feet, and my guess is that he is already up and over, waiting for us inside.”

  “Without even waiting to see if I made it here? Or you for that matter.”

  “You know the way things work. You take care of your own ass first and then worry about the others when and if there is time. Besides…” she pointed up, “…we have Carl as our guardian angel.”

  I opened my mouth to protest and saw perfect logic in her response. While the zombies had been numerous, they had not been that close. I hadn’t been in any real danger of them catching me. Also, we’d had a conversation one night around the dinner table after the kids were asleep. We’d all agreed that people in the movies were always acting like idiots. What was the point in getting yourself killed so that another person could make it out of a nasty situation? Basically, none of us were willing to die for the other—at least not at this point in our collective relationships.

  “Now, we need to get on the other side of the walls before that little pack gets here,” Betty urged. A low moan sounded from down the driveway as if to emphasize that point. “And I will look at your arm as soon as we get inside.” She guided me towards the rope ladder that was dangling from the wall.

  I reached it and paused. I was not sure if I could climb it. Now that the adrenaline was starting to ebb, the pain was ramping up. Betty was behind me when I paused and gave me a little shove.

  “I don’t know how this is gonna work,” I admitted. “You go first.”

  It wasn’t like I was breaking the rule of self-preservation. I just wasn’t going to be the reason Betty died as she waited for me to try and make it up and over. To her credit, I think I saw a flash of concern in her eyes before she went up and then vanished from sight.

  I glanced back and saw the first of the walkers come around the bend. Part of me wanted to wait and see if that kid was with them, but a bigger part of me didn’t want to be eaten. I had a good enough lead that I tried to make it over one-handed. The rope ladder was not secure on the bottom. We’d made that decision as a just in case sort of deal. We were pretty sure that the zombies couldn’t climb, but it only took one of them to get lucky.

  When the original argument against zombies being able to climb was raised by Carl, I reminded him of the scene at the very end of the original Dawn of the Dead. He’d thought it over for a moment and then agreed that it wasn’t going to hurt us to not have the bottom of the rope ladder anchored. We hadn’t considered a situation like this in our plans.

  I started up, but it proved much more difficult than I’d expected. The pain was bad, but I decided being eaten would be immeasurably worse. I reached the top and threw one leg over. Secure in the fact that I’d escaped, I looked back again. I was oddly disappointed when I still saw no sign of that boy.

  Lowering myself to the ground, I saw Brandon and Betty already talking to Carl. Brandon glanced back my way and I was almost certain I saw his lips curve in the slightest hint of a smile. That was enough for me, I would talk about this with Carl later. I wasn’t being paranoid.

  “…saw no reason to wait. He was already getting up before the first couple even fell through that window,” Brandon was insisting. “Like Betty said, if he can’t move faster than a walker, he doesn’t belong outside the walls.

  “I think we need to make it clear that, whether somebody can escape or not, the decoys have a job to do,” I blurted.

  “I agree,” Carl said with a nod. He shot a scowl at both Betty and Brandon before continuing. “But we have a bigger problem.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Somebody shot out that window,” Carl said coolly.

  “What do you mean?” Betty gasped. “I certainly didn’t hear a gunshot.”

  “There are other ways to shoot out a window.” Carl’s eyes flicked at me for just a second. “And whoever did it, waited until Evan was at his most vulnerable. They wanted him dead.”

  “I thought I heard something,” Brandon offered. “But I didn’t have time to do much because the window broke and all those zombies started pouring out.”

  “That is the other problem,” Carl continued. “Whoever did this knew exactly which window to take out. That means there is somebody skulking around the area. They might’ve seen us making our runs on the military gear down in the parking lot.”

  “Which window?” Betty sounded confused.

  “Even from up on my post, I could see a lot of activity behind that one window…like somebody lured the zombies to a single room and then shut them in,” Carl explained.

  “You know what I don’t understand,” I said as Betty guided me to a bench where she started on the straps of my pack so that she could get a look at my arm. “That was the one part of the stories that I always had trouble with.”

  “Stories?” Betty glanced up as she set my pack down and then went to work on my leathers.

  “The books, movies, and all that stuff with zombies in it,” I clarified. “In the stories, people were often worse than the undead. Why wouldn’t we all band together and try to survive?”

  “People are greedy,” Carl offered. “Once they don’t have the morals and deterrents of a normal society, they are free to be exactly the kind of person that has always lurked deep down.”

  “So you are saying that we are all mostly just dirtbags deep down?” I challenged.

  “Nope.” Carl shook his head. “But I’d be willing to bet that a lot of the good folks in the world died or are dying as they try to help or save others. What you have left are all the fo
lks…like us…living in that gray area where most of civilized society exists. The downside is that the worst of us that have been hiding under rocks are now free to crawl out and take full advantage of the chaos. Hell, just think back to the evening news. Every single day, there was a story about some creep or perv getting caught. Imagine a world where those types are free to do as they wish without consequence.”

  That made me shudder. Certainly the logic was all there. Heck, Carl and I had touched on that very idea just before he ran off that time. And then there were my own thoughts that continued to bubble to the surface. I saw the children as a hindrance and a drain on our supplies. They were too young to go out and scavenge and were next to useless when we worked on reinforcing our little home-turned-fortress. I’d also made the statement that, if faced with saving one of these people or my dog, I would choose my dog.

  “I’m heading inside to get out of this stuff,” Brandon said as he strolled off.

  “Subject hitting a little close to home?” I muttered at his back as he headed up the stairs to the front door.

  As soon as he opened it, Chewie bounded out past him, almost knocking him off his feet in her effort to get to me. I smiled until I noticed the man spin on my dog with his hand raised in a clenched fist. Chewie was already well past his reach, but I’d seen the gesture.

  “I get it,” Betty sighed. “You don’t like him. But you are going to have to get over it. We all need each other to survive. Wasn’t that the very thing you were just complaining about?”

  Hadn’t she just come to me the other day? She’d told me about how even Michael called Brandon a bad man. Was everybody losing their minds, or was I just too set in my head that Brandon was bad and so that is how I saw him?

  “I wasn’t complaining,” I grumbled. “Hey!” I tried to jerk away as Betty found the spot on my right arm that hurt.

  “Okay, we are going to need to set this. I just wish that we had something better than Ace wraps to secure it with once we get the set complete.”

  “Grit your teeth, friend,” Carl advised. “This is gonna hurt some.”

  I felt Betty and Carl get a grip on me. There was a sudden jerk and I yelped in pain. Chewie’s howl joined in on the chorus sending a bunch of birds in the nearby trees to the sky in a swirl of dark wings.

  ***

  “Ten weeks!” I exclaimed as Betty went about setting the evening meal on the table. Two propane camping stoves sat on top of what had probably once been a very expensive oven.

  “That just means we dial things back for a bit,” Carl said as he brought the water pitcher to the table and poured everybody a drink.

  “It’s not like we can’t operate without you,” Brandon sniffed as he took his seat, walking right past the platter with the ham on it and not bothering to help by grabbing it from the counter and setting it on the table.

  “You know, you didn’t need to come here. You are free to leave any time you like,” I shot back.

  “That so?” Brandon didn’t bother to even look my direction as he stabbed a potato from the bowl and set it on his plate. “Are we voting again?”

  “Why don’t you just—” I started to rise to my feet.

  “Enough!” Betty snapped. “There are children present. Perhaps we can act like adults and set an example.”

  I looked over at Selina who was watching all of this with wide eyes. Michael, on the other hand, was staring at his plate, steering a green pea around it with his spoon and making car noises.

  “Guess that means Evan won’t be joining us when we go up to that neighborhood and scout for any signs of living folks like the ones who apparently tried to kill him,” Brandon said around a mouthful of ham.

  “No, he can stay here and watch from the roof,” Carl agreed. “He won’t be much help as a sniper, but he can at least signal us if he sees anything coming our way.”

  “I doubt we will be able to see him once we move up into that one neighborhood,” Brandon said as he shoved a forkful of potatoes into his mouth.

  “Can you not talk with your mouth stuffed with food?” I snapped. “The kids don’t need to pick up that habit.” I tacked that last bit on hastily when I noticed Carl and Betty both giving me funny looks.

  Maybe I was just never going to like this guy. Perhaps I should dial back my interactions with him as much as possible. I didn’t want to look like I was being a dick. Still, I could’ve sworn that Carl had shot him a few looks out of the corner of his eyes, as well as giving me what I’d assumed were meaningful looks of understanding during some of our disagreements.

  The next few days were a lot of me just trying to help around the place as we tried to make it as secure as possible. For whatever reason, it just felt like time started to drag on with terminal slowness. I did manage to stay away from Brandon pretty much the entire time, but that did not do anything to improve my opinion of the man.

  On the plus side, Chewie was responding wonderfully to Betty’s treatment. It still looked odd to me. I was so used to her big, bushy tail that she now almost seemed like an entirely different dog sometimes. Through it all, I continued to watch her closely for any sign that she might become one of those things.

  Eventually, the day came when Carl and Brandon left for their supply expedition. It annoyed me way more than it should, but I took my position up on the roof of the house. They would hike through the field on the other side of Johnson Creek Boulevard until they reached the first buildings of a gated community that sat across the way. We’d already scouted it enough to know that the people there had not even bothered to try and secure the place and hold it down. It appeared that a mass exodus occurred with only bare essentials being taken.

  Things had spiraled out of control so fast that, by the time the word was being put out as to the danger of what was taking place, it was too late. These people had likely fled to one of the FEMA centers and walked out of the frying pan and directly into the fire.

  As I watched Carl and Brandon moving up the slope across the way, my mind wandered to that day that was just a short time ago, but seemed like a lifetime. There was mention of the Moda Center and PGE Park. My mind reeled at those locations and what sort of nightmare they must’ve become. If Franklin High School was as chaotic as I’d witnessed, then those two locations—an indoor arena and outdoor stadium respectively—would have been living nightmares. Add in their proximity to downtown and the sheer number of people that would have been there when things went badly; I shuddered at the thought.

  But maybe they were better fortified, my mind chirped. Perhaps the soldiers there were more vigilant.

  I shook off my daydreams and brought up the field glasses that Carl had given me so that I could scan the area they were heading towards. I saw very little movement. We’d managed to heave the entry gate to that community shut a while back when we’d done some simple recon of the exterior of the area. While that might prevent any of the roaming zombies passing through from entering, we had no actual idea of how many of them might be trapped inside.

  I watched as Carl and Brandon slipped over the wall. From that point on, I was basically useless to them until they emerged. All I could do was watch and wait.

  Down below, in the massive backyard, Betty was having the kids help her carve out rows for what would hopefully become our garden. With spring just around the corner, the big box home repair stores were stocked with plenty of seed packages and gardening supplies.

  That had been another thing that Betty informed us of one evening when we were sitting around trying to come up with the best ideas that gave us a chance at survival. Apparently she’d been browsing the selection a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the area around the nearby Home Depot was still thick with undead traffic. It was simply not feasible to hit that location…yet.

  The morning dragged on forever as I stayed posted as the lookout. The one thing that I did discover as I kept watch was that there was actually something as boring as watching paint dry. The area around us was pretty cl
ear of the walking dead. From the roof, I could still see them wandering around the parking lot of the medical center. As far as the area uphill from us, there was next to nothing.

  I have no idea how long I’d been watching and drifting in and out of various daydreams—half of them pertaining to creative ways I could rid our group of Brandon—when I heard somebody calling out.

  Bringing up the field glasses, I turned towards the direction I thought the sound was coming from and started a very slow sweep. The first pass yielded nothing. The second time, I spotted him or her. The distance was not as much of a factor as the filth this person was seemingly covered in from head to toe.

  The individual was standing on the back porch of the house next to the one where I’d discovered the suicide. At first I assumed the person had noticed me and was trying to get my attention. I lowered my field glasses just to take in the entire scene and figure out the big picture, and that is when I spotted the other person.

  I had no doubt this second individual was a woman. I was seeing this person from a profile which made her curves very apparent. The two were gesticulating to each other in some form of sign language or signal that I was not able to get a grip on from this far away.

  I am not sure what these people thought they were doing, but I did not think they were aware that they’d attracted the zombies still circling the racetrack. Despite the fact that the numbers had dwindled since I’d been there up close, there were still a few dozen. I didn’t see any weapons on either of these individuals; that did not mean they might not have some stashed away, but something told me they didn’t.

  I was still puzzling why they would be in that location when movement to my left brought me back to where Carl and Brandon had disappeared. I recognized Brandon’s overblown HAZMAT suit as he dropped down on our side of the wall. What I did not see were any of our duffel bags loaded with supplies…or Carl.