Flirting With Death
Table of Contents
Prologue – 4
Chapter 1 – 15
Chapter 2 – Funeral 23
Chapter 3 – Go North 31
Chapter 4 – The Cabin 41
Chapter 5 – First Morning 52
Chapter 6 – Town and Dire Warnings 59
Chapter 7 – Friday 67
Chapter 8 – A Disturbing Phone Call 74
Chapter 9 – East Jordan 82
Chapter 10 – Reunion and Preps 94
Chapter 11 – Frank's Message 104
Chapter 12 – Waiting 114
Chapter 13 – Running Gun Fight 130
Chapter 14 – Boat 144
Chapter 15 – Healing & Laying in Supplies 162
Chapter 16 – Who's going zombie hunting? 176
Chapter 17 – Confrontation 189
Chapter 19 – Cipro 205
Chapter 20 – Present Day, Now Happening In Real Time. 218
Epilogue – 230
Copyright © 2014 Boyd Craven III
Flirting with Death
By Boyd Craven
Edited by Katy Light and Cover Design by Adrijus at Rocking Book Covers
All rights reserved.
Prologue –
December 24th, 2015 – Christmas Eve – Remember This Date!
“Jim! Get Sarah and Katherine out of here! We’re going to be overrun any moment now!” Frank screamed at me from the northern window, his rifle booming loud in the confines of the small cabin.
“Where the hell would we go?” I yelled back.
An infected stepped from behind a tree, the mist almost obscuring him. It wouldn’t pay to let them get close, so I sent a lead greeting its way with the AK, blowing holes through it.
“The root cellar!” he hollered back.
I looked to the girls, not knowing what to think of that; I’d been up here for almost twelve weeks, almost a month longer than the Andersens and, although I’d heard about the root cellar, I’d never seen it or found it in my travels and explorations. Katherine nodded to me, and Sarah ran over, pulling me by my arm away from the window. Before she led me off, I closed and latched it, and the three of us met up by the dining table near the center of the cabin’s main room.
“And what will you do?” I asked Frank as he started reloading a banana clip, his eyes still focused outside.
“I’m going to slow them down. Hopefully, I can draw them away from the cabin and circle back around. Make sure you let me in when I pound on the door.”
“I will…”
“Oh, shit,” Katherine muttered. Sarah let out a surprised scream as the front door shook as dead flesh and bone started pounding on it.
“How do we get out of here?” Sarah wailed.
“Shoot our way out?” Katherine asked her daughter Sarah.
“Here, trade guns a minute, Mom.” I took the shotgun and handed her the AK for a moment. “I’m going to the side window in the bedroom, and hope I can get an angle on them. If I can thin them out…”
“You’ll have a clear shot to the root cellar,” Frank finished. “Do it, and keep my girls safe.”
Three fast shots from Frank’s window were all I needed to hurry to the other room. I peeked out of the shade and saw three of the infected beating on the door, their mouths moving and making some kind of sound I couldn’t hear. I tried to raise the sash on the window quietly, but something about the movement attracted their attention, and an infected woman turned to investigate. Blood and saliva ran down her chin in rivulets, her skin going saggy, and her oozing eyes yellow.
Not having a ton of time to do anything else, I shoved the shotgun barrel out the window and prayed it had been loaded with buckshot. I pulled the trigger twice, and the empty shells bounced off the wall and fell onto the bed. For a moment, the glass had gone all red, and I couldn’t see the effect of the shots until I realized it was blood. I was ready to throw the sash open more when the gun was almost ripped out of my hands as one of the other infected came to investigate. The glass was too obscured to see much through the glass, but at least the gun was pointed in the right direction…
The boom of the shotgun surprised me after I pulled the trigger, and I could hear Frank yelling that he was ready. I pulled the gun back in and hurriedly traded back with Katherine, who stuffed shells into the bottom. She must have had a couple boxes worth of shells in her hunting vest, and I was thankful we weren’t going to die due to lack of ammunition. The three of us ran to the doorway just as Frank opened the door, snowflakes swirling though the open air. He stood stock-still and raised his rifle to shoot something just outside our sight range.
“Hurry, after me!” he urged us.
The girls went first, and I patted my pocket, making sure the keys were still there. Following, I turned the lock on the handle and pulled the door closed behind us.
“This way, Jim,” Katherine panted, taking off in an opposite direction from her husband. I grabbed Sarah’s hand, and we ran to the back of the shed to the chorus of inhuman moans from the infected floating out of the mist from all around us.
I stumbled in the snow as I tried to corner too fast, and Katherine doubled back. Sarah grabbed the back of my belt and almost hauled me into the back wall of the shed where a stack of pallets leaned. The moans grew louder and, as I got my bearings, I heard the brush snap as something rushed through the brushwork towards us.
“Shit!” Sarah yelled as the infected showed its hideous upright corpse. It must have been a young track star, newly turned. Not only did he possess quick moving skills, he had a fiery determination to him that was only preceded by his murderous gaze and the smell of feces.
I tried to pull the AK up for a snap shot, but the track-star infected hit me in the chest. We both went down, his teeth snapping as I tried to use the rifle to leverage him up and away from me. A rock dug painfully into my back, and I prayed that would be all I had to worry about as the infected slowly pushed my rifle down towards my chest, my neck and face getting closer to his gnashing teeth. An inhuman wail escaped his throat in triumph as he lunged, ever closer.
Sarah stood frozen with indecision. Instead of shooting him, she reversed her rifle and used the butt as a club on the infected’s head, knocking him sideways off of me. I closed my eyes and mouth when I saw the blow coming, avoiding accidentally getting hit by blood anywhere. It would be the end of me, the infection spreading by body fluids once the virus mutated...
“Hurry, Mom! There’s more coming,” Sarah pleaded, pushing on the stack of pallets with all of her might.
“Jim, help!” Katherine pleaded urgently. I got to my feet, put my shoulder down low and shoved with all of my weight. The entire stack of pallets toppled with the combined strength of the three of us, and revealed a small square metal hatch set into a concrete frame straight down, with a large Krieg padlock holding the door shut. It looked reminiscent of a bomb shelter door, and I hesitated for a minute when I remembered there was one key left I never found the lock for. I was hurrying to try to pull them out of my pocket when I heard the boom of the shotgun and Sarah’s AK chatter, followed by footsteps running in our direction. The keys tinkled against each other in my shaking hands, and I missed putting the key in on the first try. After the second try, I got it in, but turned it the wrong way. I turned the key to the left and the padlock sprung open. I pulled it off and opened the hatch as quick as I could.
“Hurry,” I screamed at the Andersen ladies. The promise I gave Frank weighed heavy on my heart, and when I stood to scoop them into the safety of the shelter, my heart almost stopped. At least fifteen of the zombies moved in on us
, a dull gleam of intelligence in their eyes. Some of them shambled and stumbled like the slow zombies I’d seen in the movies, while others could almost outrun the track star who tackled me.
The girls blanched, and their rifles swung at me. I raised my hands in surrender, thinking that in the situation, they were going to put me down first and then eat a bullet themselves. If this was the end, then so be it…
My eyes started to close when I heard Sarah’s rifle go off. Nothing hurt, so I opened them and saw the track star lying out on his back, his brains making an obscene Rorschach pattern on the leaves of the forest floor.
“Come on!” Sarah screamed as she dropped down the hole feet first, not bothering to use the ladder that was built into the wall.
“Hold this,” Katherine told me, handing me the shotgun before climbing down into the darkness as well.
A moan emitted closer than others and caught my attention. Looking to my left, three of the infected shuffled nearer than I had anticipated. Swinging the shotgun up to my shoulder, I aimed for a head shot and pulled the trigger gently. The gun went off, and two of them fell, the buckshot spreading out far and wide. I aimed for the last of the closest deadheads when a pair of hands grabbed me by the ankles and pulled me off my feet.
I screamed bloody murder before I realized it was Sarah, trying to get me into the hatch.
“Oh, my God, you scared the fuck out of me…” I screamed at her.
“Shut up and get your ass inside!” Sarah yelled back.
I tossed her the shotgun, and she disappeared. I crawled close to the opening, and three strong hands pulled me by the shirt and hauled me down. Katherine and Sarah unceremoniously dragged me down into the cellar where I hit hard, the breath knocked out of me. An electric lantern on the floor lit the room, and I could just make out Sarah’s form as she pulled the door shut and shot a deadbolt on the inside of the door.
“The lock, tell me you still have the lock?” she shouted.
My chest heaved while I panted for breath, but my hands patted my vest pocket. Despite the shakes in my fingers, I pulled the lock out and handed it to Sarah. She locked the deadbolt from the inside and shot me a triumphant look. Even if the zombies could figure out how to work the lever to open the door, we could keep them out. Personally, I just hoped none of the infected were smart enough to block the door from topside, trapping us inside. That thought panicked me, and I started looking for the keys.
“Oh, shit!” I cried.
“What?”
“I can’t find the keys.”
“What?”
“The keys to the lock,” I said, frantically checking my pockets.
My breath almost came back to me, my side hurting from my attempts, but I stood and started looking in frantic motions. A glint of shiny metal caught my eye. The keys had fallen out of my pocket when I hit the dirt floor. As I tried to reach them, a loud rattle of shots went off overhead, and Frank yelled at us to open the door. In the excitement, Katherine stepped on my hand. When I screamed, she stepped backwards, kicking they keys to the side wall of the cellar.
“The keys!” I shouted, pointing.
“Hurry, you guys. There’s too many of them.” Frank’s voice, though firm, sounded distressed. More shots rang out quickly above us.
Sarah saved the day. For the first time, she moved with a grace and fluidity that I’d never witnessed before. No more was she my late girlfriend’s awkward, bitchy, younger sister. She reached for the keys, dodging her mom’s stumbling form, and got the lock open on the first try. She undid it and raised the hatch. Frank tossed two guns down and followed, coming in headfirst. I stood to support him when he screamed.
In our infected world, we’d learned two kinds of screams: one is either from fear or anguish, and one is from mortal pain. Frank’s wail was the second kind, and he was almost pulled upwards out of my hands. I used my weight and tore him out of the grip of whatever had him, while thoughts of infected pieces falling in with him darkly flashed before my mind’s eye. As soon as his boots cleared the opening, Sarah closed the door. It pulled back up, but she hung from the handle. Still, the hatch lifted, and Sarah’s feet came off the ground. Katherine added her weight, and the hatch closed hard. I snapped the lock shut in place.
“Oh shit,” Frank said from the floor, slowly coming to his feet.
“Oh, Daddy, you’re safe,” Sarah gushed.
“No, none of us are,” Frank said, looking at his ankle. Teeth marks in the denim and bloody mouth prints marked the material.
“Oh no,” Katherine said, sinking to the ground, her face turning as white as a sheet…
Chapter 1 -
September 9th, 2015
Katherine had been the one to break the bad news to me. She was Janie’s mother.
Janie was crossing the street when she was struck and killed by a truck whose brakes had gone soft and the driver had lost control. The autopsy showed she’d been 3 months pregnant.
I can’t even describe what I felt when I got the first set of news, but when I found out that she’d been pregnant, and was planning to come back to me after we’d taken a month apart, it felt like a jackhammer started beating the side of my chest and it became hard to breathe. I remember falling down in a scream at the lunchroom at work, and had hit my head.
I spent that night in the hospital to make sure the concussion wasn’t serious and, not having any other family, my Team Leader was there to pick me up at discharge and brought me back to my car.
The night before at the factory, I’d dropped my phone, and it wasn’t with me, so I slowly trudged into the front office and knocked on the HR manager’s door.
“Jim, I’m so sorry.” Katy said, rising from behind her desk to give me a quick hug. Hugging wasn’t a very HR thing to do, but my bleary eyes and tear streaked cheeks were enough to get her emotional reaction. My shoulders rose and fell as I tried to keep the tears back, but I lost and soon quiet sobs escaped my lips as the smaller woman corralled me towards a soft chair across from her desk.
It was a good thing she did, as I felt dizzy and nauseous all over again, and I knew it had nothing to do with the concussion, just a big jagged hole in my heart where Janie used to be. I still loved her, and it was something that I could freely admit to myself now. I sat and sobbed as she rubbed the tops of my shoulders as I tried to get control of myself and, when I raised my eyes up, she had a box of tissues in her hand. For a moment I thought she was extremely prophetic, but I noticed her own mascara was smeared.
“Thanks boss,” I said humbly. “I uh, I think I need some time…”
“That’s already taken care of, if you want it. You’ve got 4 weeks’ vacation paid, and Reggie said he can back fill for as long as you need. He did make me promise to talk you into coming back as early as you can though,” she said with a quick grin.
There’s one thing that’s a constant: the work must go on. I’d made a career at the electronics factory, and could have been in management by now, but I was happy working the lines, troubleshooting the little intricacies of the machinery until it was finally running perfectly. I’d get bored, and get re-assigned to a new line, new product, and new teams. It wasn’t that I was hiding, or running away from any particular group of people, but I found I got bored easily and loved a challenge. My quiet nature also had a little bit to do about it.
“I don’t know how long I’ll need, but four weeks is a long time, and the Honda contract…” I started to say, but trailed off as she put her hand out to stop my words, rolling her chair around the desk to sit in front of me. We were knee to knee and she grabbed the side of my face and pulled my gaze into hers.
“Jim, you take as long as you need. Four weeks is the start. If you need more, I can do some FMLA time as well. I always hate to see something like this, and I hate that I’ve seen as much of it as I have.”
“This kind of thing happens a lot?” I asked her, slightly confused.
“A couple times a year. You probably hear about it, some
body across the plant disappears for a while. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don’t. We definitely want you back, but only you will know when you’re ready.”
I swallowed hard, my breath hitching. Looking the HR boss in the eyes was probably the biggest fear I’d had in my life, usually in anxiety that I did something wrong, but this time all I saw was caring, compassion and understanding.
“I don’t even know what to do.” I said, silent tears running down my cheeks as I absently wiped them away.
“First things first,” she said, rolling back to her desk and pulling out a phone, my phone, to be exact, “you need to call your mother-in-law. She’s blown this phone up, and I’ve talked to her a couple of times. She’s worried about you, and wants you to call her as soon as you can.”
“You answered my phone?” I asked, not knowing what to say.
“The name on the phone was ‘Momma’, and your records didn’t have anybody on the emergency contact, so I plugged it in on my charger in here… when that came through…”
“Thank you, Katy.” I said standing and taking the phone. I studied it for a few seconds, noting that Janie’s mom had called a dozen or more times since last night, and several of Janie’s friends. I’d call her friends later. “Can I start with six weeks? I don’t know what I need to do from here, but Janie’s family is going to need me for this.” I hoped that didn’t sound arrogant.
“I actually already have the FMLA paperwork ready, you just need to sign this. Do you have direct deposit?”
“I do.”
“Good. Your four weeks’ vacation will be paid out just the same as a normal work week. Take care of things, and come back to us,” she said with a sad smile.
“You said you’ve dealt with this before, with others?” I asked her.
She chewed on her bottom lip, before nodding. She started to say something several times then stopped. She swallowed and took a deep breath before talking again.“I lost my husband four years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” I said lamely, not knowing what else to say.
Flirting With Death: Surviving The Infected Page 1
