Among the Dead Book 2 (Among the Living)

by Long, Timothy W.

  “Just let the girl on. One more won’t matter.”

  The soldier’s last name was Conover. She pressed her fingers to her lips, pushed them against his cheek and slipped past him up and onto the train.

  She found a wall seat at the center of the train, sat down and sighed. She leaned her head against the window and, within seconds, drifted off.

  Lester

  There was nothing but darkness, and all Lester wanted was to lie there and let it finish wrapping his mind in blackness.

  Pieces of building fell around them. Chunks of concrete, insulation, glass. Lester floated in a place that didn’t normally exist. The drugs, vodka, exhaustion, and loss put him at ground zero in the game of dismay. He used to wonder how much worse life could get, and now he knew the answer.

  Everything hurt, even though he floated, his head worst of all.

  But he had company. An angel. She was blond and wore a little t-shirt and a pair of shorts that barely covered her ass. She walked toward him with a timid step on size-six feet. He knew her size well enough, because if there was one thing his girlfriend loved, it was shoes. That and a nice bag.

  The first day of the outbreak, when they sat on the porch and watched the first few timid deaders approach the house. Les had been so sure then, so positive that everything was going to be okay. He had a bottle of rum and enough weed to get the entirety of Seattle’s Hempfest high as a fucking kite.

  But Angela was dead, or one of them. Probably dead, considering he had blown their rented house to shit. Take that, insurance agency. Let’s see you cover that in the homeowner’s policy. Act of God? Nope. Act of Lester’s single fragmentation grenade and a gas leak, a real one this time. Not the bullshit they had been feeding the news.

  But somehow, Angela was here, and she was looking down at him.

  “Are you going to lie there all day? Big baby,” she cooed. He wanted to reach up and pull her to him, just engulf her in his arms and hold her until the pain was gone.

  He tried to mutter something, but it came out like his mouth was filled with marbles. It was muffled and didn’t make a bit of sense.

  Angela put her hand over his head, lowered it until he could make out her fingers as they hovered in front of his nose, then snapped.

  The world shuddered and moved beneath him. He moaned as hell opened up again and belched flame on the city.

  Angela smiled that little quirk of hers and snapped her fingers again. This time, the explosion was farther away, but it still shook his world. If he could just get up and ask her to take him away …

  Lester wasn’t exactly a religious man, but he would give it a fair shake if it meant he would be free of the pain for a while. Pain pills were a big no-no in his book, just like the hard stuff like heroin. That shit was just too damn addictive. He’d seen people become junkies willing to steal from their own families, hell, their own kids, just to make enough money for a fresh hit.

  But if he had a bottle of Percocets in front of him right now, he would pop a few. Maybe more than a few.

  Les coughed and rolled over. Why was it so hard to breathe?

  Grit filled his mouth. He tried to spit it out, but it felt like he’d taken a big bite of earth and chewed on it for a while. He gaged, rolled to the other side and tugged his legs up to his chest. A real coughing fit started, and he thought it would never end. His mouth filled with bile as he choked. He knew that feeling well enough, the race of fire as stomach acid rushes up the old esophagus, then fills the mouth. He hated it, except that this time, it was helping.

  He gagged, spit, gagged again, and then choked up a mouthful of afterbirth.

  Able to breathe once again, he managed to sit up and stare at the blackness.

  Lester’s ears rang like someone had put a bell over his head and clanged it a few times. He’d been to heavy metal concerts that weren’t that loud. Les had a contact that worked security at a local club. His name was Chuck, and he bought steroids from Les.

  Les was an equal-opportunity drug dealer, and when it came to ‘roids, he fulfilled his clients’ needs just like he’d order a baggie of X. Chuck liked to shoot up, told Les he jammed the needle in his own ass, that’s how hardcore he was.

  Les was less than impressed, but it was hard not to nod and smile at a paying customer.

  After a deal downtown, Chuck had confided in him that he sometimes couldn’t hear anything but a dull ringing for days. He said it sometimes sounded like someone poured water in his ear and shook his head. Lester finally understood what it must have felt like, because he was currently well and truly deaf.

  Too bad Chuck wasn’t here now. He could help dig Les out of this mess.

  “Hello?” he said, but it came out a croak as dust and debris filled his mouth. He coughed up another mouthful of gritty phlegm that came out as a paste and drooled over his lips and onto the floor. Christ, he was horizontal. How the hell had he ended up here? All Lester wanted today was to get out in the city, steal some weapons, and hunt deaders until nightfall. Then he planned to find a liquor store and drink the night away.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  Someone coughed near him.

  “Grind?” he asked the darkness.

  “Fuuuuuck,” Grinder croaked.

  A hand found Lester’s, and he almost pulled away, because he wasn’t into all that man-touching-man shit. But if these were going to be his last minutes on earth, he figured it was okay to touch someone else who was alive.

  Lester couldn’t see a damn thing, but he knew at once that this wasn’t Grinder’s greasy hand. This one was slim and held him tight.

  “LeBeau?” he wondered and then remembered the girl he’d pulled inside at the last second.

  She grasped his wrist with both her hands and pulled. He didn’t understand what was happening at first, but after she managed to move him a few inches, he got with the program and scooted along the dust-covered floor.

  He was under something, but it wasn’t crushing him. That was the good news. The bad was that he could feel the weight shifting, and if it was a large part of the building, he was about to experience what a waffle felt like when the griddle was closed.

  Lester was not in a hurry to experience that.

  Mike

  “Enough!” Nelson yelled and pushed a man out of the way, but there was nowhere for the guy to go, so he pushed back. Nelson looked like he was about to drag out his gun and shoot someone, but instead held his hands up. His eyes didn’t change. Nelson was a hard man, and I suspected the other man didn’t know how close he had come to meeting with a very violent reaction.

  The man managed to bully his way into the aisle and push a few others out of the way.

  The glass windows had red latches on them marked “Use in case of emergency.” I hoped we wouldn’t have to pull them. I didn’t want to see the outside world rushing by at fifty miles an hour with the windows rolled down.

  It only took a few minutes, but they had the train as packed as I thought it could get. I could barely breathe, and claustrophobia set in. But they weren’t done packing us in, and more and more refugees crowded into the car.

  I drank in the air, as foul as it smelled thanks to the folks pressed in around us, and felt the previous panic attack coming back with a vengeance. A man was shoved against my legs, and I tried to push him back. He had a toddler around his neck who screamed bloody murder. I wanted to offer him my chair, but there was no way to even stand up.

  Someone on an aisle beat me to it, and the guy took a grateful seat. Nelson studied me but didn’t say a word. I knew what he was thinking: Was I about to lose it again?

  “Where are they taking us?”

  “Will they have food?”

  “Someone is going to pay for this disaster!”

  “I can’t wait to sue the entire city of Seattle for this bullshit!”

  “I’m going to come back with an arsenal and blow the hell out of every one of those dead things.”

  “Will the train b
e able to move? It’s too full.”

  Voices swirled around me, rising and falling as folks fought down panicked tones. A voice came over the speaker, but I couldn’t hear a word. Others craned their heads around at the sound over the intercom, shrugged and stared at the ceiling. Then the train lurched into motion, and we were on the move.

  Below, the chaos reached a crescendo as the train started to pull away. The windows were thick and double paned, but I still heard the cries from those waiting in line. A woman dove at the moving vehicle but fell away. I gasped, hoping she hadn’t fallen under a wheel.

  At least we were headed in the right direction. I needed to get to Kent, to Auburn if possible. I wasn’t sure how I would get to Rita. I dug out my cell phone and turned it on. Without access to chargers, many were left with dead phones, but a few seemed to have working ones and even chatted with loved ones, updating them on the situation. A man yelled into his phone that he loved someone and that he would be home soon.

  I tried Rita, but she didn’t answer. I got the same fast busy I had gotten the last few times. Why wasn’t she picking up? Was the disease outside of the city now?

  “Where are they taking us?” I asked Nelson. It was hard to even see him through the mass of bodies. He held his hands up, clearly unable to hear me over the noise of at least a hundred people yelling at each other.

  I tried again, this time louder, but Nelson only shrugged and flicked his thumb in the direction the train was going. Great. He didn’t know anything either.

  I pressed my face to the window to get a look back at the platform. Another train was pulling up alongside the concrete entryway. Now that we were coming around a bend, I was able to make out the winding line of cars that stretched away into a tunnel. I was relieved to see that they had many more trains to carry people out. It helped push down some of the guilt I was feeling over those stuck at the stadium while I ran away.

  There was nothing to do about it now except to wait and see where we were going. Light blasted into the train as we cleared the first building and wound around the serpentine tracks. We came alongside the football stadium, by an area in which we hadn’t been allowed since the quarantine began. There were heaps of long bags, some of the piles higher than the doors beside which they were stacked. It didn’t take me long to realize what we were seeing.

  They had done a shitty job of covering them. The stacks were piles of bodies. Nelson stared, unblinking, as we rolled past.

  I pressed my head against the glass as we came around the first bend. A freeway overpass hung over the railway, and from it fell the dead. Not corpses, but deaders. So many of them pressed against the edge of the barricade that they pushed each other over. Some continued to move after making the thirty-foot drop, but the train’s snaking body cut off my view of the carnage.

  The train slowed, making us groan in frustration. Then it lurched a few times and came to a halt. I knew it was just the bodies blocking the tracks ahead. They should just drive over them, my selfish side said. I was sick to death of Seattle and its problem. I was sick of the people around me, and I was really sick of being crammed into this tiny car like cattle.

  Folks tried to shove in next to us to get a view outside. I pushed myself into the corner of my chair and tried to close my eyes. I concentrated on what life was like before all of the craziness. A vision of Erin rose in my mind. Body warm and alive. Her olive skin so lovely in the pale light of the moon on the one and only night we spent together. The next day, she was gone and the razor-sharp knife of loss jammed itself into my chest again. I had to squeeze my eyes shut and force the memory away.

  I turned my head to the window, wondering why the car was suddenly quieting down. My eyes slid open, and it became apparent very quickly.

  An army of shambling humans came at the train. They had to be deaders, but some looked almost alive. A large woman staggered in front, like a leader. She had one arm up, but the other hung uselessly at her side. Most of the area below her elbow dangled in bloody strips.

  Screaming started below, and when I craned my head around, I realized what the problem was. Someone hung out of the door. They must not have been able to get it closed, but had moved on regardless.

  The deaders were only a few feet away when they seemed to sense blood. They moved more quickly, and a small child outdistanced the pack. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, but now he was a loping animal.

  The train lurched ahead again. I almost cheered.

  My last glimpse of the child was of it leaping off the ground, but I couldn’t see where it landed.

  There was a moment of breathless silence as the train again picked up speed at a steady rate and moved beyond the baseball stadium next to the football field. There were also people contained there, but they didn’t look like us.

  Some pressed themselves against the fence while others lurched and walked in circles.

  They had turned the Seattle Mariner stadium into a massive holding pen for the zombified people that had been rounded up. For one crazy moment, a fantasy of a cure being found flooded my mind. I imagined Erin inside the stadium, held down while she was injected. Later, she would find me.

  But it was just a fantasy.

  We continued to pick up speed, moving into the “SODO”—or South of Downtown—industrial area. Huge warehouses blocked out the landscape. People were moving out there, but it was hard to make out their condition. Were they deaders? I got a glimpse of the Starbucks corporate office and almost cried. We really were on our way out of the city.

  Nelson didn’t catch my eye. He sat there looking off to the side as if someone had called his name. The only thing I picked up was the excited chatter of those crammed around us. Then his head swiveled to follow an entire fleet of helicopters as they passed overhead. Each had a load of supplies dangling from under the fuselage.

  “Too early.” Nelson mouthed the words.

  “What?” I had to yell to be heard over all the chatter.

  “We better get the fuck on is what.”

  “What?”

  That was when the screaming started.

  Lester

  Les pushed and wiggled; she pulled and grunted. He heard LeBeau somewhere in the distance. The man was yelling obscenities at the top of his lungs. Lester could hardly breathe, how in the hell was the crazy old man able to be so damn loud?

  He managed to pull himself out from under the obstruction, found the girl’s legs, and pulled himself into her lap. He rested his head on her thigh and thought about just dying here with a smile on his face.

  Les got onto all fours and felt around until he located her arms again. He took her wrists in his hands and thanked her for helping him. Really thanked her, because no one had helped ol’ Les in a good long while except for Grinder, and if he got much more help like that, he was going to go join the zombies on the street.

  “I’m hurt,” the girl said.

  “Where?” he asked. It was pitch black in the room.

  Debris shifted, and a shower of dust fell. Then the room shuddered as another thump struck. It was far from their location, but it still rattled their bones.

  A lighter flared in the space, and a group of sorry faces greeted Les.

  Grinder held the tiny torch up in the air, a Bic lighter, if Les wasn’t mistaken. He was surprised it still worked after being in the dumpster for half a day.

  “Misty’s hurt,” Les said.

  “So’s she.” Grinder pointed at a form a few feet away.

  “Ah hell,” Les sighed.

  Les took the lighter and moved closer, but there wasn’t much point. Grandma was beyond help now. A chunk of ceiling had caved in and smashed most of her upper body.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “Where’re you hurt?” Grinder moved close to Misty.

  Les moved back, crawling on his knees because he wasn’t sure how much of the building hung over them. Every time he moved, he expected to smack his head into a piece of concrete.

  �
�Went in here.” The girl tugged her skirt aside to show a gouge along the side of her leg. Blood leaked from the nasty cut. Les thought about taking his shirt off and wrapping it around the wound, but that would do more harm than good. There had to be enough germs on his clothes to start a few pandemics.

  “Hold on.” He crawled back to Grandma and tore up part of her dress. He got a long strip off and then took it back to Misty and started to wrap it. Grinder took over, however, tightening the dressing, which brought gasps from the girl.

  “Get yer asses up here!” LeBeau screamed.

  “Up where? Don’t you have a volume control?” Les shook his head.

  It was silent for a minute, then LeBeau burst into peals of laughter.

  “I can’t hear shit!” he yelled back. “Just follow my voice.”

  They used Grinder’s light to find a place where part of the ceiling had crashed into a wall but left a triangle for them to shimmy through. When they were in the next room, they found a set of stairs with an intact handrail. They staggered up to the landing, made a slow turn and then went up another flight. Locked doors greeted them, so they kept on going, urged on by LeBeau’s profanity.

  On the fourth floor, they found a doorframe that was missing its door and figured they had gone far enough. If Les had to climb much farther, he was going to take a nap first.

  “‘Bout time ya’ll made it,” LeBeau said. He sat in a metal chair and had a red cooler pulled up next to his perch. That was strange, but not as strange as the sight that threatened to blind them all.

  Bright daylight tore in through the hole where the side of the building had been sheared away. Les had to hold his hand over his eyes. He crept toward LeBeau, digits a visor, and took in the view.

  The city through which he had been running a few hours ago was gone. In its place was a graveyard.

  Buildings still stood, but they were scorched. Walls blackened, windows blown in. The magnificent high rise across from the parking lot was so damaged that Lester wondered how it was still standing.