by Russ Watts
HAMSIKKER 2
(A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE NOVEL)
by Russ Watts
Copyright 2015 by Russ Watts
This book is dedicated to our aging heroes, to those who have left us, and to those who still fight on.
“All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.”
Daniel Boone.
CHAPTER ONE
“Just breathe, honey, breathe.” Jonas wasn’t sure who was more nervous. He let Dakota take his hand, and her sweaty fingers gripped his tightly.
“It hurts,” Dakota said through gritted teeth. “It really hurts. I think…I think something’s wrong.”
Jonas knew she was trying not to cry. He was struggling himself. He had lifted her up onto the pool table with Erik’s help, and now Erik and Pippa were running around trying to find some fresh water and clean towels. A fluorescent strip light hung above the table, casting a bright yellow light over Dakota. Mrs. Danick was standing at Dakota’s feet, trying to help as best she could while Quinn held a sheet over Dakota’s legs. The baby had come so soon, almost a month early, and they weren’t fully prepared for the birth. Jonas wished they had more drugs, but their meager supplies had been used up over the last few weeks, and now there was nothing left. He had hoped there would be more time, but the baby wasn’t waiting, and Dakota was just going to have to fight through the pain. It was coming.
“I know, I know.” Jonas wiped his wife’s forehead. The sun was beaming in through the window, but it was cold. There was a dusting of snow outside on the ground, and she had been in labor for hours. He had been up with her for hours. The labor had taken them all through the night and into the morning. It seemed like the end was near, though, and he could see the fear in his wife’s eyes.
“Honey, look at me, nothing’s wrong. Okay? Nothing is wrong.” Jonas had no idea if he was telling the truth, but he was praying so. He was no longer certain anyone was listening, but old habits were hard to break. It seemed like only yesterday he had found out he was going to be a father. Now, in a matter of minutes, he would see his child for the first time. He was excited, nervous, and worried. This was no ordinary pregnancy, and certainly no ordinary birth. They had no medical supplies and were relying on Mrs. Danick and Pippa to handle the birth.
“It’s almost there,” said Mrs. Danick soothingly. “One more push, and…oh.”
“Oh? What does oh mean?” Dakota looked frantically at Mrs. Danick and squeezed Jonas’s hand even harder.
“I’m sure it’s fine, Dakota.” Jonas winced, convinced she was breaking his fingers. “Isn’t it, Mrs. Danick? Everything’s fine?”
He looked at her, but she was recoiling from the table, and Quinn looked horrified.
“You did this,” said Mrs. Danick, pointing a crooked finger at Jonas. “You did this. You did this!” She began shouting as she continued to back away from Dakota.
“Jonas? Tell me what’s going on,” pleaded Dakota. “What the…” Dakota screamed and screwed up her face in excruciating pain.
“Quinn?” Jonas could see her eyes wide open, staring between Dakota’s legs. Quinn still held the sheet up, but she was shaking her head from side to side. She dropped the sheet and began to walk away too. The bloody sheet slipped down Dakota’s legs, and Jonas saw for the first time what was happening. There was so much blood. It was all over the green felt of the table, the floor, and Dakota’s legs. It had drained into the corners of the pool table and slopped down between the netting onto the floor, forming small pools at each leg.
“Mrs. Danick, what…?” Jonas looked around the room, but she was nowhere to be seen. “Quinn, help me.” He reached out a hand, but Quinn had disappeared too. How could they leave him? How could they abandon Dakota when she needed them most?
Jonas looked around the room, realizing the sunlight had all but gone. A thick rain fell outside, obscuring the light and drenching the room in a foggy grey. He noticed for the first time that the walls were covered in a dark green substance that oozed from the cavities behind, running down them and mixing with the blood on the floor. The walls appeared to be almost black, and the floor was sticky, yet slippery at the same time. He heard footsteps behind him, and turned to face the doorway.
“Erik?”
Erik stepped out of the shadows and into the room, brandishing a baseball bat. His face was expressionless, and his eyes blank, devoid of life. “We have to end this.”
Jonas saw another figure emerge from the doorway behind Erik, and Pippa stepped out holding a meat cleaver. “You did this, Hamsikker.”
“Wait, what is this?” Jonas backed away from them, noticing more figures behind them. They seemed to be made of swirling mists of grey that formed into human shapes only as they entered the room. He saw Mrs. Danick, Terry, Peter, and even Freya, all holding a variety of sharp instruments designed to maim and kill. All wore the same blank expressions on their faces.
“You did this,” they chorused in unison. “You.”
As Jonas backed away he bumped into the pool table. He had to help Dakota. Surely they would see sense. Surely his friends were here to help; if not him, then Dakota at least. He turned to face his wife and found himself staring at the thing that had emerged from her belly. Whatever it was had crawled out of its own accord, using its own energy to escape her womb. There was a broken fingernail in one wooden side of the table, and a bloody trail of evidence of where it had clawed its way out of her, dragging itself across the green felt and up onto Dakota’s belly. It was gnawing on the umbilical cord, its dead eyes coolly observing Jonas and the growing group of people behind him.
“Dakota?”
Jonas knew he was not going to get an answer. Dakota was unconscious. Her eyes were closed and her lips shut. Her arms hung limply from each side of the table, and her skin was so pale that it looked almost translucent. Blue veins coursed her legs, looking like rivers plotted out on a map, and blood pumped through them lazily. She had lost too much blood, and he knew she was going to die without help.
“Dakota,” he whispered. He looked back to the dead baby sat on her belly. It had finished eating the umbilical cord, and was now digging into Dakota’s intestines, the baby’s tiny hands pulling out stringy lengths of its mother’s gut before greedily shoving them into its small, toothless mouth. Jonas’s child was a zombie, and now he was being forced to watch it kill Dakota.
“It’s time,” said a voice from the head of the table. Another figure emerged from the darkness holding a sword above its head. Jonas clenched his hands together, more terrified than he had ever been before. He needed to stop this, to save Dakota, but he was powerless. The green sludge from the walls had reached his feet and was sucking him down into the carpet. He tried to lift a foot up, just one foot, but he couldn’t. He was stuck fast.
“You did this,” said Cliff. The man’s greasy overalls were smeared with oil and dark, crimson blood. His face was battered and bruised, and he spoke through a mouthful of broken teeth; one eye was swollen shut. Cliff raised the sword above Dakota’s head. “I’m going to put Dakota out of her misery. Then I’m going to kill your son.”
“No, wait,” shouted Jonas. “Wait!” As the sword swung down Jonas tried to wrench himself free from the green sludge, but it had slowly crept up his legs to his waist. The whole room was full of it, and it lazily filled the room making the games room appear more like a swimming pool. Steam rose from the surface, and pieces of bodies bobbed on the top of the sludge where a film of grunge had settled like the skin on a bowl of custard. Dismembered arms and legs protruded through the dirty membrane only to sink again into the mire. Jonas tried to close his eyes, not wanting to watch Dakota die, but his eyelids refused to work. The sword came down slowly, its clean, shiny blade slicing through t
he air as it neared Dakota’s throat.
“Wait!” Jonas shouted again, but it was too late to stop it. Cliff had found him, and the others had helped. How could they do this? Jonas wished he had his axe. He wanted to kill them all, and then he would kill Cliff again. It always came back to him.
“Dakota!” Jonas screamed as the sword severed her head from her body, and it fell away, landing in the sludge with a barely audible plopping sound.
“What is it, honey? What is it?”
Jonas felt Dakota rubbing his arm, and he opened his eyes to find her looking at him with fear and concern on her face.
“I think you were dreaming. You’ve been tossing and turning for a while. I was going to let you be, but then you called out my name. Are you okay?” asked Dakota.
Jonas sat upright. He looked around the room, looking for Cliff, a pool table, or a baby. He looked for his son, but of course, there was nothing there. Jonas still expected to see slime running down the walls, but there was none. The walls were painted a mint green color and adorned with certificates and photographs of Saint Paul’s construction. It was still the same room they had gone to bed in hours ago: a basic room full of old pictures of golfing champions and tarnished trophies locked in glass cabinets. A faintly sterile smell hung in the air, emanating from the cleaner’s trolley in the corner, still laden with bleach, dirty cloths, and polish. The thin blanket covering them had slipped off, and he drew it up to his chin, shivering as the cool air found his sweaty body. There was no baby. His mind awakened, and he knew there wouldn’t be for several months yet.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” Jonas said as he tried to push the nightmare from his mind. He didn’t need to remember it. There were enough horrors in the day to occupy his mind. The last thing he needed was to freak Dakota out with stupid dreams. Jesus, it had only been one night, and already he was having worries about the baby. He was going to have to get a grip on things.
“Okay. Well, we should try to sleep. It’ll be dawn soon,” said Dakota. She turned away from him and laid her head back on the floor. They had no pillows and had balled up some old drapes they had found earlier to sleep on. It was surprisingly comfortable. Jonas knew they were both shattered and would’ve slept on a bed of nails, so despite the tightness in his neck and the pain in his shoulder, he wasn’t about to start complaining.
There was no going back to sleep now. He was too awake, and Dakota was right. The dawn would be around soon. He didn’t feel like laying there when there was so much to do and so much to learn. If things were different he might’ve taken the opportunity to try it on with Dakota. There was once a time, years ago, when they made love at the drop of a hat. Over time, the lust had faded, but they still loved each other. In the last few months they had found it impossible to get any quality time together, and it was only yesterday Dakota revealed to him she was pregnant. She was still mad at him, too, and it took some convincing on his part to get her to sleep in the same room as him. In the end he won out, and she admitted she would rather be near him than be separated whilst they were sharing the place with strangers. There were still a lot of issues to work through, but at least she was talking to him again.
Jonas slipped out of their bed quietly. Dakota was already asleep, and he dressed as fast as he could. If he was the only one up he could use the time to do a little exploring. They had been so tired yesterday that there was little time for anything else. After some introductions, Gabe and Mara had shown them around the clubhouse. It was a quick tour, just enough so they knew where to find the bathrooms and where they could sleep for the night. They had eaten a light meal and then retired, agreeing to discuss their plans in the morning. Gabe had collected up all their guns and weapons, but he promised to return them when they left. They clearly didn’t need them in the golf course, so Gabe told Jonas he would put them somewhere safe. Jonas was concerned about being unarmed, but Gabe seemed trustworthy, and the reality was that they didn’t have much choice. If they wanted to stay, they had to accept Gabe was in charge. It irked Jonas that he didn’t know where their weapons were, especially his axe. He felt odd without it. It had become like a safety blanket, and his empty hands twitched for something to hold onto.
They hadn’t discussed what might happen beyond the night. Nobody was in the mood for making small talk, and thoughts of their recently deceased friends weighed heavily on their minds, Tyler and Randall in particular. Jonas was eager to know more about where they were, and who their hosts were, and now he was up it seemed like the perfect time to do a little private exploring. Aside from the nightmare, he felt better. He had slept, truly slept, and with a good feed, he felt better than he had in a long time. Life wasn’t perfect, but they had at least managed to spend the night in safety, away from the world of the zombies outside the fences.
As he closed the door he heard Dakota’s soft breathing, and he hoped she wouldn’t suffer from the same nightmares as him. He suspected she did, but if so she kept silent about them. They all suffered from painful dreams. Freya was particularly susceptible to them and frequently woke the others in the night with her cries. Jonas walked down the upper corridor; he couldn’t hear any sounds, and trusted everyone was asleep. The silence was reassuring. It meant the dead weren’t present.
Jonas retraced his steps from last night and found his way back down to the entrance. The key was in the door, and he unlocked it so he could take a look at the golf course. The sun was barely over the horizon, and it was slowly illuminating the greens in a golden haze. Sunlight trickled through the oaks and elms that lined the fairway, and Jonas noticed it reflected off the fence that was still in place, strong and sturdy. He wondered how many of the dead were outside those walls. Were they pressed up against it, trying to get in, or had they found something else to grab their attention? Right in front of the clubhouse was the porch and a swing. Just as Gabe had said, there were two small mounds of dirt indicating where he had buried their two attackers. A man and a woman, Gabe had said, just a couple of drifters who should’ve known better. Jonas wasn’t about to risk crossing Gabe, and whilst they were staying under his roof, it was his rules. How long they stayed depended on a few things, all of which would be discussed later in the day.
Jonas returned inside and checked out the downstairs level. He passed through the bar, a lounge, a library, a couple of meeting rooms, and finally found himself in the kitchen. It was a little dirty which surprised him considering how well kept the place was otherwise. A few empty tins lay on the counter, and the dishes from last night still hadn’t been cleaned. Perhaps, with the arrival of new guests, Mara hadn’t found time to clean up. Jonas examined the cupboards and discovered a treasure trove of food. There were canned vegetables and fruit, boxes of pasta, jars of herbs, and a host of cooking materials that would satisfy even the most demanding cook. He ran the tap and poured himself a glass of cool water, finishing it instantly. He poured another, and walked over to a set of doors that he guessed might lead to a pantry. It was a huge double door, set into a recess, and when he opened it he was surprised to find that it was a walk-in freezer. The automatic light flicked on as he walked in. There were boxes and boxes stacked up on metal shelves, and he examined the labels: turkey, lamb, chicken pies, sausages, and beef patties. There was enough meat to last them for months as long as the freezer’s power held out. Gabe had mentioned something about the generator last night, and Jonas was keen to know more. If he was going to leave the others here whilst he went to get Janey, he wanted to know they were truly safe.
What with Dakota telling him she was pregnant, and with everything that had happened in the last 24 hours, he hadn’t thought about Janey much. He doubted that she and her three boys had as much food as this, and with fall rapidly approaching he couldn’t leave it any longer. Her supplies would surely be running low, and he had no idea how well off she really was. She had promised to stay at home in Thunder Bay, and he knew he could take her word on it when she said she would wait for him. But how b
ad was it up there? Was it any better or worse than Kentucky? He hadn’t even met his three nephews yet, and he wanted more of a relationship with them than a once-a-year conversation over Skype. That was all he’d ever had, and now he didn’t know if he would even see them again. The internet had gone belly-up the same time as everything else, so phone calls and emails were a distant dream. Mike and Chester understood their uncle lived far away, but Ritchie was too young. He was only four, and didn’t understand why Uncle Jonas didn’t visit. Well, he was going to visit them now, and nothing was going to stop him. Jonas decided that Dakota needn’t come with him anymore. It was safer here than out on the roads, and he had all but made up his mind that he was going alone. He could travel faster, and he wouldn’t have to worry about looking out for her or his unborn child. If anything, he was more determined than ever to get to Janey now they had found this place. He could bring her back to Saint Paul’s; perhaps offer her a fresh start.
A rattling sound interrupted his thoughts, and he carefully peered around the doorway of the freezer. He was still cautious about their new surroundings, and he kept silent as he looked at who was in the kitchen. Jonas watched Gabe open up a jar of coffee and begin spooning it into a white mug. There was an electric kettle boiling, and Gabe unplugged it before pouring the hot water into the mug. The aroma of the fresh coffee struck Jonas, and the smell was heavenly. It reminded Jonas of a life before the dead, when he could get up in the morning and get breakfast without having to worry if he was going to be eaten alive by a zombie.
“Think you could spare an extra mug of that, Gabriel?” he asked Gabe as he approached the counter.
“Shit, Hamsikker, is that you?” asked Javier, dropping the spoon on the counter. The clattering sound echoed throughout the kitchen. “You made me jump.”
“Sorry, I was just checking out the place. It’s pretty amazing. You’ve enough food in the freezer to last a good time.”
