Life of the Dead (Book 1): Hell on Earth

by Tony Urban

  “Do you know where our parents are?

  “Supposed to be in E wing. But who knows now?”

  After being shown to his bunk, Mitch was left with nothing to do but study an informational booklet on the bunker in which they were now housed. Built in the 1950s at the height of the cold war, the bunker sat a few hundred yards under the Greenbriar Hotel. It could hold over 2,000 people and survive a nuclear holocaust.

  But what about zombies? That’s the real test, Mitch thought. The book had included a map which he’d reviewed over and over again in the intervening hours and had almost memorized. E Wing, if Mitch’s memory was correct, was two lefts and four hallways from their current location.

  “I think we should go there.”

  Winebruner looked skeptical. “What if there’s more of them?”

  The zombie at the door had now obliterated its entire face and nothing remained but bits of bone and sinew and two droopy eyes that dangled loose from what had been their sockets.

  “Well, we can’t go back in there. What else should we do?”

  “Wait. Or look for booze”

  “Yeah, let’s not do that.”

  Mitch started up the hallway. When he got 10 steps ahead, Winebruner followed.

  They navigated the labyrinth of halls without making a single wrong turn. When they reached the steel door labeled simply “E” Mitch tried the door and found it locked.

  “You need these to get anywhere.”

  Winebruner held up his key card.

  “Where’d you get that, anyway?”

  Winebruner flashed a shit-eating grin. “Lifted it from one of the guards. Being a delinquent brings with it a certain skill set.”

  Mitch nodded. He knew that all too well. “Well, do your thing, man.”

  Winebruner swiped the card and for a moment the pinpoint LED light above the pad remained red. Then it flipped green and Mitch pushed the door. It opened. He turned back and held the door for Winebruner but, when he did, he saw the zombie racing toward them.

  Winebruner’s back was to the creature and he didn’t see the soldier, all 6 and a half feet and two hundred and fifty pounds of it, approaching. He didn’t see that the soldier’s nose was gone creating a black abyss in the middle of his bloody face. And he didn’t see the soldier’s throat was ripped out and blood from the gaping wound had turned his green uniform a dark, muddy brown.

  But Mitch saw all of it. When Winebruner realized the boy was looking past him and not at him, he started to turn, to see what Mitch was staring at. When he did, Mitch’s hand darted out, and he snatched the key card away. Winebruner looked down at his empty hand, like the straight half of a magic act trying to figure out what was going on but he was too slow. Mitch gave him a hard shove in the center of his chest and Winebruner stumbled backward.

  He tried to regain his balance but before he could the soldier zombie was on him and snatched a handful of the delinquent’s perfectly messy blond hair. Mitch hopped through the open door and swung it shut. As it closed, he saw Winebruner’s eyes grow as big as ping-pong balls, staring at him as the zombie clawed at his cheeks.

  Its fingers caught inside Winebruner’s mouth and in one swift jerk it ripped away half of the man’s face. The zombie shoved the handful of shredded flesh into its greedy mouth and chewed it like it was prime rib. Even through the heavy metal door, Mitch could hear Winebruner’s shrieking. He watched until the screams, and his pointless struggles, ceased.

  “Nice knowing you, friend-o,” Mitch said as he slid the key card into his pocket.

  38

  Juli woke disoriented and groggy. She looked to the nightstand but the alarm clock was blank. The power had gone out around nine, she remembered. The night was black as molasses outside her bedroom window.

  She was a sound sleeper and wasn’t sure why she’d woken. She reached out and felt the other side of the bed with her fingertips. It was empty. Not just empty, but cool. Mark had gone to bed with her, but apparently been away long enough for his side of the bed to return to room temperature.

  Her eyelids were getting heavy again and Juli let them fall shut, but a crashing noise erased her sleep. She knew the sound the way a mother can recognize the crying of her own child in a sea of toddlers. It was the sound made by a dropped pan. Not just any pan, Venice Cookware. Juli squirmed out from under the sheets and fled the room.

  She used the flashlight app on her cell phone to illuminate the way. The mahogany floor was cold under her bare feet and sent a little shiver up her back as she proceeded down the hall. She stepped in something moist and reached down to wipe the wetness from her foot. She held her fingers up and saw the tips were dark red.

  Now she ran down the hall and into the kitchen where she saw her husband leaning over the sink, cradling his head.

  “Mark? What’s going on?”

  He spun around and wiped something from his mouth. What was that smell? Vomit? Was Mark sick?

  “Juli. Don’t.”

  She didn’t listen and kept coming toward him.

  “Don’t! Don’t come over here!”

  Juli slowed her pace, but continued on. “What happened? Tell me right now, Mark!”

  She approached the granite topped island, above which her treasured cookware hung and noticed an empty spot where her eight inch omelet pan should have been.

  “Mark?” She was panicked now. Why wasn’t he answering her?

  “Oh, God, Juli. I… I can’t… Just don’t.”

  Juli rounded the island, still watching Mark. She noticed a racquetball sized wound on his naked shoulder. Before she could again ask what happened she followed his gaze which he directed at the floor. There was something there.

  No. There was someone there.

  Juli aimed her phone at the shape on the floor and saw their daughter. Marcy laid motionless. Her caramel colored hair was turning black and a growing puddle of blood spread out around her head. The omelet pan laid on the floor a few feet away.

  “Marcy!” Juli screamed.

  She rushed to the girl and in the process stepped in the blood. Her feet flew out from under her and she fell hard, catching her sternum on the island. There was a crackling sound like a wood knot popping in a campfire. Then she fell onto the slate floor.

  “Don’t,” Mark said yet again.

  “Stop saying that! Stop saying ‘don’t’ and tell me what happened to our daughter!”

  Juli crawled to Marcy on her knees, making trails through the blood. She rolled her daughter onto her back and saw the girl’s temple was dented in like a discounted can of corn. She shook the girl who remained motionless.

  “Marcy, it’s mom! Wake up, Marcy! Marcy, wake up!”

  She shook her harder and the girl’s head lolled back and forth. “Wake up! Just wake up!”

  “She’s dead,” Mark said, his voice flat.

  Juli’s head snapped back as she glared at him. “What did you do!” It was an accusation, not a question.

  Mark looked away at first, down at his feet. Then he glanced to his dead daughter. Then to his wife.

  “She attacked me.”

  He didn’t seem to realize, but his fingers went to the red gash on his shoulder. “I came out for a pop and I heard her in her bedroom coughing, but not really coughing. It sounded more like choking. So I went to her room, and she was in the bed having a seizure.”

  He looked again to the body on the floor. Juli held her daughter’s deformed head in her lap and stroked her wet, sticky hair.

  “I ran to the bed and tried to hold her down so she wouldn’t hurt herself but almost right away she stopped moving and stopped breathing. I tried to do CPR, but it didn’t work.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Why is she in the kitchen? What happened to her head?”

  Mark coughed and gagged. He turned back toward the sink but didn’t make it quite in time and puke splashed over the counters. He retched a second time, then tried to compose himself.

  “I left her room. I was g
oing to get you. To call nine one one and tell you what happened, but when I started down the hall I heard footsteps behind me. I thought it was Matt but when I turned around it was Marcy.

  He turned back to Juli, and she’d never seen a look like that on his face before. It was fear and confusion and emptiness all wrapped together and she shivered again.

  “I grabbed her and hugged her and told her I was so happy because I thought she was dead but then she bit me.”

  His hand again went to his shoulder and Juli saw the wound looked like it might have been caused by teeth. But that couldn’t be true. Marcy wouldn’t bite someone. Who does that?

  “I shoved her away, but she came right back, biting at me like an animal. So I pushed her away again and ran out here.”

  His eyes seemed to glaze over and Juli thought he might cry. She’d only ever seen him cry once before and that was when she told him she was going to leave him after she found the BJ video on his phone. He cried like a baby then. But he didn’t cry now. He just stared off into space.

  “Mark? Tell me what happened.”

  “What?” He looked around the room, lost for a moment, then caught sight of his wife and dead daughter. “Oh. She got me again in the kitchen. She grabbed me and kept… biting…”

  He stopped again. Sweat covered his forehead. “Biting…” he repeated as he scratched at the wound. His fingers dug into the red matter up to his knuckles.

  “What are you doing? Stop it!”

  Mark pulled at his skin and the wound grew and ripped all the way to his nipple. “Bite.”

  His hand dropped away from the gash and blood dripped onto the floor. He took a step toward his wife.

  “Mark?”

  He stopped walking and started running at her.

  Juli screamed and when he was less than a yard away, she pushed Marcy’s corpse at him. His feet tripped over the body and he did something akin to a pirouette before crashing into the counters and falling to the floor.

  As he fell, Juli made it back to her feet, but they were still slick with Marcy’s blood and she slid on the slate floor like she was trying to walk on ice. She steadied herself against the island and as she did, her hand brushed the cool grip of the butcher’s knife. She’d asked Matt to put away the dishes, but he ignored her as usual. As her fingers closed around the handle, she was grateful for his carelessness.

  Mark was back on his feet, snarling like a wild animal. Their daughter’s blood was smeared across his face which made his angry eyes seem downright insane but Juli had no time to take it all in because he dove into her.

  The force of his 190 pounds pinned her against the island and her broken collarbone gave a sharp yelp for mercy. Spittle ran from his lips - he’s foaming at the mouth - and his head struck at her like a snake. She pulled back and avoided his bite.

  Juli held the knife in front of her like Mark was a vampire she was trying to ward off and the knife was a crucifix. Mark dove at her again and this time, when he did, Juli aimed the blade and plunged it straight into his hungry, gaping mouth. She felt teeth shatter and break and then the perfectly sharpened steel blade sliced through tissue and flesh. Mark’s weight pushed the knife further into his skull and when he landed atop of her, he was motionless. As his body slithered down her own and toward the floor, Juli gave the knife a hard twist, for Marcy.

  She ran from the bodies of her dead husband and daughter and her fleeting moment of composure vanished as she remembered her only remaining family member. How was she going to explain this to Matt?

  Juli sprinted up the steps toward the second floor but halfway up the staircase she heard footfall. She couldn’t let her son see his father and sister bloody and dead on the kitchen floor.

  “Matt! Wait there, I’m coming.”

  But Matt’s footsteps didn’t stop. All Juli could think to say was ‘Don’t’, that stupid, meaningless word her husband had repeated, and she didn’t want to say that so she kept running until she hit the top step.

  There, she saw Matt. He was halfway up the long hall which ended in his bedroom, but also contained doors to the game room, half bath and a linen closet. Matt fumbled with the knob to the closet like he’d never opened a door before.

  “Matt?” He kept rattling the chrome handle. “Matthew?”

  Juli had lost her phone somewhere in the kitchen and the only light in the hall was moonlight spilling through the overhead skylight. Matt was behind the light, immersed in the darkness.

  “Matthew!” she yelled more loud and shrill than she intended. That got Matt’s attention. He dropped his hand from the doorknob and came to her.

  It took three slow steps until he stepped into the light of the moon. As soon as that blue glow lit up his face, Juli saw the same blank nothingness that had overtaken her husband’s once friendly gaze just before he attacked her. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt so lightheaded she might faint.

  She wanted to faint. She wanted this to be a dream. And if it wasn’t, she wanted to die. She’d thought losing her family’s love was the worst thing to happen to her, but tonight was exponentially worse.

  Matt passed through the moonlight and faded back into the abyss as he came toward Juli. Part of her, a large part, thought she should just let whatever was going to happen, happen. The only thing that snapped her out of that mind-set was remembering Mark rip his own skin off his chest and lose his humanity right before her eyes.

  She didn’t want to live. She wanted everything to be over so she never had to think about this unimaginably awful night again. But she didn’t want to be one of these monsters either.

  Matt was only a step away and she could hear a deep, rattling groan spill from his slack jawed mouth. He clumsily swung at her and Juli took a step back to avoid his hand. She turned and fled down the stairs and as she neared the front door, she heard Matt topple down them. She didn’t look back.

  Juli grabbed the keys to Marcy’s Audi SUV off the stand in the foyer. Her own minivan would be locked in the garage, but Marcy always parked in the drive. She ran into the night and it was only when she felt the dewy grass under her feet that she realized she was still barefoot. Barefoot and wearing only a cream, silk nightgown.

  Juli Villareal had a walk-in closet larger than most people’s bedrooms and bursting with designer clothes but she couldn’t bear thinking about going back inside to get them. That life was over and, as she remembered some old book title proclaiming, she could never go home again.

  39

  Wim sat atop the gentle hillside that overlooked the farm when he heard the gunshots. From that vantage point, it all looked small and unimportant. He ran his fingers through the lush, green clover that covered the ground and which grew right up against the granite gravestones. One was for his parents, the other for his maternal grandparents. Both were simple, containing only their names, dates of birth and death, and “Beloved Mother” and “Beloved Father”.

  Wim always thought he’d be buried on that hill too, presumably with a marker reading “Beloved Son”, but now he doubted that was true. He didn’t even know if there was anyone left to bury him when his end came.

  In the days after he cleaned out the town, he ventured into the surrounding farmland. He destroyed more than 300 additional zombies and hadn’t found a single living person. He remembered an old movie with Vincent Price where he played a scientist left alone in a world overrun with vampires and that’s how he was feeling. Only the vampires were zombies, and he wasn’t a doctor. And he knew he couldn’t do this for years on end.

  Wim pulled a handful of clover from the ground, spread them out in his palm and sorted through them.

  “I wish you were here to tell me what to do. I never did like making decisions on my own.”

  All the clovers were of the three leaf variety and he dropped them back onto the ground. As he squeezed together another fistful, gunshots echoed in the distance. There were four in all and they came from the north.

  Ramey and Stan barreled down
a two lane highway which was void of moving vehicles. Every few miles they came across an abandoned car or truck, but they were easy to avoid. Stan had proved to be an excellent navigator as he kept them away from the cities but still moving toward the West Virginia star on Ramey’s father’s map.

  They’d been on the road about five hours when Ramey noticed Stan squirming in his seat and chewing his bottom lip like it was beef jerky. When he started squeezing his thighs together, her suspicions were confirmed.

  “Need a bathroom break?”

  Stan flashed a shy grin. “I’ve gotta piss like a racehorse.”

  Ramey pulled onto the curb. Trees lined the road on both sides. “The world is your toilet, Stan.”

  Stan hopped out of the truck and made a beeline for the cover of the woods. Ramey decided it was a good time to exercise her cramping calves. The truck was a beast capable of going almost anywhere, but she had to stretch to reach the pedals and she was feeling it.

  She bounced up and down on the pavement, shaking out the stiffness from her muscles and joints. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten all day. She also felt a tingling pressure in her own bladder and thought she may as well make full use of the stop.

  “Hey, Stan, I’m gonna pop a squat too!”

  She headed to the trees on the opposite side of the road. There, she ducked behind a good-sized oak, dropped her pants, and did her business.

  As Ramey zipped up, she heard the first gunshot. She didn’t even button her jeans before running out of the woods. Two more shots thundered before she reached the road. When she broke clear of the trees, she saw two dead zombies lying across the dotted white line that divided the lanes. Then she saw Stan sprawled out on the pavement a few yards away.

  A bearded zombie in a blue plaid shirt knelt over him and dined on his neck. Arterial blood spurted from the wound and dyed the zombie’s gray beard scarlet.