Flesh Eaters - 03

by Joe McKinney

  Raves for Joe McKinney’s Dead City

  “A rising star on the horror scene!”

  —FearNet.com

  “Dead City is much more than just another zombie novel. It’s got heart and humanity—a merciless, fast-paced, and genuinely scary read that will leave you absolutely breathless. Highly recommended!”

  —Brian Keene

  “Joe McKinney’s Dead City is one of those rare books that starts fast and never ever lets up. From page one to the stunning climax, this book is a roller-coaster ride of action, violence, and zombie horror. McKinney understands the genre and relies on its strongest conventions while at the same time adding new twists that make this book a thoroughly enjoyable read.”

  —Jonathan Maberry, multiple Bram Stoker

  Award–winning author of Patient Zero

  “The pace never lets up as McKinney takes us through the zombie apocalypse in real time—every second of terror is explored in depth as the world goes to hell.”

  —David Wellington, author of Monster Island

  “Dead City is an absolute must-read for zombie lovers, but McKinney’s excellent storytelling makes it a great read for anyone who loves the thrill of a gruesomely delicious page-turner.”

  —Fran Friel, Bram Stoker Award–nominated author

  of Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales

  “Dead City is a zombie tour de force—the story moves along at breakneck speed and never lets up. Joe McKinney knows how to toy with readers’ emotions, masterfully capturing the essence of humanity in the face of unspeakable horror.”

  —Amy Grech, author of Apple of

  My Eye and Blanket of White

  “Joe McKinney’s Dead City is a tense, thrill-a-page nightmare, written with great passion and authority. Surely one of the best zombie novels ever set down in blood.”

  —Lisa Morton, twotime Bram Stoker Award winner

  “Dead City wastes no time jumping straight into mile-a-minute thrills and gruesome action. This seminal zombie novel culminates in a heart-wrenching finale, and I found that as the undead hordes multiplied, so too did my respect and admiration for author Joe McKinney. If you like your thrillers served with an extra helping of intensity, you’re going to love Dead City!”

  —Joel A. Sutherland, Bram Stoker Award–

  nominated author of Frozen Blood

  “Dead City is an action-packed, pedal-to-the-metal zombie novel that never loses sight of its humanity. McKinney uses his background as a homicide detective to bring a level of realism to his vision of the apocalypse that is both urgent and frightening. A timely nightmare that you will not put down. I can’t wait to see where this series leads.”

  —Gregory Lamberson, author of Personal

  Demons and Johnny Gruesome

  “McKinney writes zombies like he’s been gunning them down all of his life.”

  —Weston Ochse, author of Empire of Salt

  “Dead City is a full-throttle page-burner that torques up the terror and does not let up. You’ll want the shotgun seat for this wild ride. Bring a crash helmet.”

  —J. L. Comeau, www.countgore.com

  “Welcome to Joe McKinney’s Dead City universe, a relentless thrill ride where real characters do bloody things on nightmare streets. Break out the popcorn, you’re in for a real treat.”

  —Harry Shannon, author of Dead and Gone

  “Dead City is a well-written and compelling first novel. A scary, fast-paced ride, full of hair-raising twists and turns that keep the reader spellbound. Do yourself a favor and snag a copy. . . . Thank me later.”

  —Gene O’Neill, author of Taste of

  Tenderloin and Deathflash

  “Fast-paced, entertaining . . . five headshots out of five.”

  —D. L. Snell, co-author of Demon Days

  “A fantastic tale of survival horror that starts with a bang and never lets up.”

  —Zombiehub.com

  FLESH EATERS

  JOE MCKINNEY

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Raves for Joe McKinney’s Dead City

  Title Page

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  Copyright Page

  This novel takes place in and around Houston, Texas, which is a real place. The Houston in this novel, however, is not. I have treated the city, its environs, and its institutions fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual incidents, or to any person living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  —The Author

  Life is the new wealth.

  —Max Brooks, “Closure, Limited”

  CHAPTER 1

  Eleanor Norton’s earliest memories were of hurricanes. As a little girl, she had seen Rita and Ike and Jacob rip Houston apart, their winds shearing off her neighbors’ rooftops and sending them sailing away like kites. She remembered her family huddling like frightened animals in the hall closet, her mother trying to be brave but still squeezing her so tightly she’d left bruises on Eleanor’s skin. Then, in high school, she’d lived through Brendan and Louis, storms that carried shrimp boats ten miles inland and blanketed the city with ocean water that dappled like molten copper in the morning sun. She still carried memories of water moccasins gliding past the top of the swing set in her backyard and pickup trucks floating like rafts down her street and grown men on their rooftops, crying without shame for all that they had lost.

  She never outgrew that fear of storms. Even now at thirty-five, a mother of a beautiful twelve-year-old girl, a wife to a wonderful man, a looming hurricane could still reduce her to jelly. The wind and the slashing rain and the overwhelming floodwaters touched some deep atavistic impulse inside her to run for shelter. Cataclysmic storms were a fear many Houstonians lived with, though most never talked about it. But now, as she stood in line at the Wal-Mart, she could sense her own terror mirrored in the scurrying anxiousness of nearly everyone around her. Like her, they just wanted to buy their water and batteries and cans of Sterno and get home to their families before the storm made landfall. Waiting in line like this was maddening.

  Eleanor had been doing fine in the days leading up to Hurricane Hector. She was working in the Houston Police Department’s Emergency Operations Command, attending all the briefings, and bringing home what she learned to her family, making sure they were ready. The ritual of getting prepared had helped to keep the fear at bay. But that morning, when she left for work, the sky had been a bloody red, and all the terror she’d felt as a child came back in a flood. She’d gone to work—and tried to work, she really did—but she was distracted and irritable. Captain Mark Shaw, her boss, had noticed. He noticed everything; and, in truth, it hadn’t been hard to tell what was going on with her. She kept returning to the main window, the one that looked out over the green lawns of the University of Houston. Outside the sky was changing from a horror-movie red to a windy, sodden gray, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  Captain Shaw, who, despite his reputation, was not without mercy, sent her home.

  “You’ll do more good with yo
ur family anyway,” he told her. “We got this. Go on home.”

  “Really? You’re okay with me leaving?” she asked.

  “It’s no big deal. Everything that can be done has already been done. Nothing else to do here but ride it out. You can do that at home just as easily.”

  “I really appreciate this, Captain.”

  He dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “Worse comes to worst, and we get some bad flooding, I’ll send a boat by for you.”

  And so she’d gone to Wal-Mart for a few last-minute things, her fear mounting as the wind picked up and the sky grew darker. When she finally made it through the checkout line and walked outside to the parking lot, the gray sky above her was limned with an eerie chemical green. The air was dense as a wet towel against her skin. She swallowed nervously, ducked her head against a gusting breeze, and rushed to her car.

  She hardly remembered the drive home.

  But once she was home, she and Jim and their daughter Madison still had so much to do to get ready. She could hear Jim with his power drill out on the front porch putting up plywood over the glass, and, looking out the little window above the kitchen sink, she mouthed a silent plea for him to hurry.

  It was getting really scary out there.

  Part of Bays Bayou ran through the greenbelt behind their house, and Hector’s storm surge had caused its waters to rise significantly. Already there was an inch or so of brackish water covering their lawn, and a sharp, howling wind sent lines of lacy silver waves through it.

  They were surrounded by cottonwood and pines and giant oaks, and the same wind was tossing their branches back and forth, filling the air with leaves. Earlier that afternoon Hurricane Hector had been upgraded from a Category Three to a Category Five storm, meaning that it would blow inland with winds over one hundred fifty-five miles per hour; and though she tried to suppress the thought, she kept having visions of a sustained blast of wind breaking off tree limbs and shooting them like arrows through the sides of their home. It had happened before, during Rita and Ike, when she was a little girl.

  She shook the memories of those storms from her mind and focused her attention out the window. From where she stood she could just see a corner of Ms. Hester’s house across the street. The woman was eighty-four and struggling with what Eleanor suspected was incipient Alzheimer’s disease; but she was a sweet old lady and, with both Jim and Eleanor’s parents dead, had even filled in as the grandmother that Madison had never known. There had been several years, right around the time Madison was starting school and Eleanor was still slaving away as a detective in the Houston Police Department’s Sex Crimes Unit and Jim was working at Gulfport Petrochemical, when they hadn’t been able to afford child care. They were working all the time, but still miserably broke. Ms. Hester had come to their rescue. She took care of Madison during those years—cooked her dinners, taught her to paint, even picked her up from school on early-release days—and in so doing had earned a special place in Eleanor’s heart. In all their hearts, actually.

  And so it was with considerably more than neighborly concern that Eleanor watched the wind thrashing the pecan trees that surrounded Ms. Hester’s little one-story white house. Madison had spent the last six summers collecting pecans from those trees, she and Ms. Hester shelling them and turning them into pecan pies and candied pralines. The trees were beautiful, even useful in their way, but they were notoriously ill-suited for bad weather. The wood was soft enough that the weight of the nuts alone could cause limbs to snap off in late summer. A strong Category Five hurricane wind would blast the trees to bits. How long would it take, she wondered, before one of those bits lanced through the roof, or a side wall, sending shards of glass through the house like bird shot from a twelve gauge?

  “Mom, you okay?”

  Eleanor half turned from the sink but said nothing.

  “Uh, Mom, hello?”

  This time Eleanor turned around. The thick note of sarcasm in Madison’s voice was something new, something she’d picked up, Eleanor suspected, from Susie Tyler and Brandy Moore, two girls who had just recently become Madison’s closest friends. The three girls spent nearly every day that summer running around together, sleeping over at each other’s houses, learning how to be teenagers together. It was natural behavior, Eleanor knew, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Susie especially seemed like a bad influence, always so loud and disrespectful to the other girls’ parents. She had an annoying habit of making everything a competition between her and Madison, never missing a chance to gloat over some small victory or rub in some awkward moment on Madison’s part. And at twelve, Madison was having plenty of those.

  Still, Eleanor backed off from actually telling Madison she couldn’t hang out with Susie. Her own mother had been a shrew when it came to Eleanor’s friends and had taken an almost sadistic delight in pointing out how much she disliked the girls Eleanor ran around with. It had made her afraid to have friends over, and Eleanor promised herself she wouldn’t be the same way, even if it meant swallowing the urge to fire a broadside here and there.

  “I think it’s full, Mom,” Madison said, nodding at the sink.

  Eleanor glanced behind her and saw that the five-gallon plastic water jug she’d been filling at the sink was indeed running over. She turned off the tap, poured off a little, and then screwed down the cap.

  She lifted it from the sink with a grunt and put it on the floor next to the other four jugs she’d just filled.

  “That’s the last of them anyway,” she said.

  Madison was sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor, putting cans of soup into a cardboard box, but she paused long enough to study her mother.

  “Mom, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, honey.”

  “You sure? You kinda zoned out there for a second.”

  Eleanor smiled, but didn’t respond. There were times, certain moments when Madison had her head turned just the right way, when Eleanor could see how much her daughter really looked like Jim. It was in the profile, mainly. They had the same little upturn at the point of their nose, the same tapered chin, the same little tiny ears. Madison was the adolescent girl version of her father; but whereas those same features gave Jim an intelligent, studious aspect—especially when he wore his glasses—in Madison they became stunningly beautiful.

  That girl is going to break a million hearts one day, Eleanor thought, and it was an idea that both terrified and delighted her.

  “Why don’t you take those upstairs, okay?” Eleanor said, nodding at the box of soup.

  “I can’t lift it.”

  “What? Sure you can.”

  “No, Mom,” she said, the sarcasm oozing back into her voice, “I can’t. It weighs, like, a whole ton.”

  “No, it doesn’t. And don’t say ‘like.’ You know I hate the way that sounds.”

  Madison sighed and made a dramatic show of rolling her eyes.

  “Fine,” Eleanor said. “We’ll get your dad to do it. In the meantime, find something else you can carry. What’s next on the family list?”

  Madison huffed indignantly, then picked up a yellow, coil-bound notebook that Eleanor had prepared to guide the family during a hurricane. She called it their family disaster plan. It contained nearly everything they would need to know about the contents of their supply kits and evacuation routes, plus contingency plans for getting the family back together again after the storm, should they get separated. Each member of the family also had a backpack that contained an individual ninety-six-hour supply kit, a personal version of the yellow disaster plan notebook, family photos, important numbers, and a couple hundred dollars in cash. The backpacks were already upstairs. What Eleanor and Madison were doing now was checking off the family supply kit for sheltering in place and carting the contents upstairs, just in case the floodwaters swamped the first floor of their house.

  Madison read from the list, pointing to items as she said their
names. “Next up is sanitation. Toilet paper, soap, lady-time stuff”—Madison’s eyebrows raised slightly at her mother’s euphemism for feminine hygiene products—“disinfectant, bleach, garbage bags and ties. Why do you have those on here twice?”

  “What?”

  “Garbage bags and ties. You’ve got them here and in the Miscellaneous section.”

  “The sanitation section ones are for when you have to go to the bathroom. There should be a bucket with a tight-fitting lid there, too.”

  Madison’s lips parted slightly, her nose crinkling in disgust. “A bucket? Mom, that’s gross.”

  “No, that’s survival, kiddo. You’ve never been through one of these storms. You don’t know how bad it can get. I remember when I was a girl the water was off for two weeks after Hurricane Ike. What do you think happens when the toilets stop flushing?”

  “Well, yeah, but . . .” Madison trailed off, her gaze shifting to the box of plastic trash bags as if she was suddenly too grossed out to touch them.

  “You’ll live,” Eleanor said. “If it’s all there, just take it upstairs.”