Beyond Dead | Book 3 | On The Road

by Frost, Christopher

  “No,” she whispered, but every word she took came out labored and sounded wet. Blood was dripping from the corner of her mouth. “I saved my boys.” She smiled at his brother.

  Tuck snuggled against his mother’s breast and held her as tight as he dared. He watched as his brother came forward and stood in front of the two of them. He had been holding something behind his back and now he let his hand fall free to his side. The octagon window above the staircase cast a ray of light on the steel of the revolver. The glint kept hitting Tuck in the eyes and he closed them. It was over. They were all safe.

  The boom shook Tuck so badly that he recoiled away from his mother and scrambled down the hall backward. He was on all fours like a wild animal and his eyes were locked on the smoking barrel of the revolver that was pointed at his mother’s head. In the center of her forehead was a tiny hole that blood was leaking out of. Behind her head on the wall was a bloody patch of brain tissue and hair, her red ribbon had been torn apart and hung in the air as it weaved on the current like a feather until it rested in her hand.

  “I had to. Mommy was bad.”

  Tuck hissed at his brother like a wild animal. He watched as his brother started to walk toward him with the gun still in his hand and –

  – A bump in the road jogged Tuck out of his dream.

  “Where are we?”

  “Near Tilton I think. There’s an exit coming up, lots of signs for food and hotels. I figured we could find a car there. How are you feeling?”

  Tuck looked immediately down at the bandage. It was exactly how he last remembered it. No swelling around the edges and no traces of the zombie lines infecting his system yet.

  “How long was I out?” he asked, “Jesus Christ.” He wiped the sweat from his face.

  “Tuck, you okay?” Garrett voice laced with concern as the infected man sat next to his mother.

  “No. Shit, yes I’m fine. Sorry, Garret, just a bad dream. I feel fine. Look.” He held up his arm so that Garrett could see the bandage and the lack of spreading infection. “It’s ok, Garrett. We’re getting off soon and I’ll teach you a couple tricks and we can all be on our separate ways. Cool?”

  “Yeah,” Garrett said but he didn’t sound excited at the prospect of losing Tuck in a couple miles.

  “Where do we go?” Brittney asked. She looked over at him and he could see the hint of tears threatening her eyes and her struggling to stay strong for her son. He looked at how beautiful she was and thought that in another time and place he could have bought her a drink at a pool hall and hustled her until she was good and drunk enough to go home with a guy like him.

  “North, to the mountains I guess. I don’t know. Try to find a radio that has something to say other than the emergency broadcast. There have to be other survivors. We can’t be the only people left in the world. If humans are good at anything its survival.”

  “Only things people have ever been good at is war and disease. We probably did this. In some off shore medical facility or military base. You just know some dumb fuck screwed up and released this out to the world.”

  “Maybe. But if that’s the case the same dumb fuck that weaponized this probably made damn sure there was a cure as well.”

  They were pulling off the exit and approaching the lights when Tuck spotted the pickup with its plow rammed up the ass of a horde of zombies. He began laughing.

  “Told you we couldn’t be all that was left.”

  Chapter 15

  Boston Harbor was terribly cold. Above the surface was a different situation all together. Fires burned all around Kat as she turned in the water, blocked everywhere by debris, to try and get her bearings. Baby Bowen was screaming but she didn’t have time to calm him down. She needed to get out of the freezing water, fast. With one hand around the baby, Kat began pushing the floating debris out of her way and tried to make it to the bank. She kept swallowing mouthfuls of salty, frigid water and dipping below the surface. As much as she tried to tell herself that she could make it to land, she was starting to doubt that idea. Until she saw Fletcher. He was floating just a dozen or so yards away from her. He had grabbed hold of a piece of wood and was barely clinging to it. His eyes were shut and if he hadn’t been coughing she would have assumed he was dead.

  “Fletcher!” Kat screamed from where she treaded water.

  He didn’t answer.

  Fletcher didn’t even acknowledge that she had called his name.

  “Fletcher!” she screamed again and dipped below the water sucking in more of the salty sea.

  Kat spit out the ocean and screamed as loud as she could, “FLETCHER!”

  “Kat?”

  She heard her name coming from above and looked up to see a scraped up and dirty Justin and Robby.

  Robby leapt over the railing and plunged into the harbor. He began to swim to her when she began barking orders at him.

  “No! Not me. Fletcher. Get Fletcher.” Kat did her best to point out Fletcher to Robby as she bobbed against the current.

  Robby saw him – thank god – and began to swim in that direction. Kat began to push herself to get to shore. She could see Justin running around the edge of the concrete bank and coming down to meet her as she got to edge of the dock. Justin reached out and Kat pushed baby Bowen into his hand as she went under the water one last time. She surfaced and grabbed the dock pulling her shivering body out of the ocean and coughing up salt water until she began to heave. Kat threw up three times before she got herself under control and wiped her mouth extending her hands to Justin for the baby.

  Both Kat and baby Bowen were wet and shaking from the bitter cold of the ocean. Justin lifted off his tee-shirt and wrapped it around the baby. There were no more warm clothes for Kat. She figured if the zombies and bombs didn’t kill her hypothermia would.

  “Gotta move,” she said through chattering teeth and forced herself to get up and start bouncing in place.

  “Robby!” Justin yelled as Robby got Fletcher to the dock. Justin reached into the water and grabbed hold of the Boston police officer, dragging him out of the ocean, while Robby pulled himself up.

  “Fletcher! Fletcher? Can you hear me?” Kat asked.

  “Kat,” Robby said and his eyes looked down. Kat followed his eyes and saw the piece of shrapnel that had pierced through his vest and stuck out of him like a dagger.

  “Shit!” Kat screamed and ran through the two boys and up the stairs to the wharf. She looked around and saw nothing but smoke and fire coming from everything that was on the water. In the direction they had come the zombies were gone. Maybe they had been killed in the blast or the noise and chaos had frightened them off. She didn’t know. All she could think about was that she needed to get everyone warm and fast.

  “Can you drag him?” she asked the two. Justin was starting to shiver now but not as badly as she and baby Bowen were.

  “I can carry him,” Robby said.

  “No,” she told him. Robby could very well carry Fletcher. He was young and in great shape, but she knew if he tried to throw him over his shoulder in some macho fireman’s carry that the shrapnel piercing his body could move around causing more damage. Instead she wanted him dragged. That was what the drag handles were for on the tactical vest. “Drag him, here and here. Got it?” she asked while pointing to the handles. Robby and Justin both grabbed hold of Fletcher, Robby slinging Fletcher’s gun over his shoulder, and they followed.

  Kat kept her eyes sharp as they pressed forward through the street and over to the seafood restaurant. The door was unlocked and she quickly went inside with the others.

  “Justin, block that entrance and then get enough tables cleared and put together to fit Fletcher. Don’t move him alone. Robby, come with me.” She looked around and then went straight for the kitchen. Kat went over to the broilers, eight-burner stove top, and flipped them all on. They all ran on gas and soon the bright yellow flames were producing heat.

  “Stay here with, Bowen. Keep him warm until I get back.” On he
r way out of the kitchen she pulled off her soaked shirt and unsnapped her bra. As they fell away from her body, she grabbed one of the chef coats hanging up and pulled it on. Kat unzipped her jeans and got those off too. The chef coat was black and made for a large man and easily covered her lower body.

  “Here, let’s get him up.” Kat and Justin lifted Fletcher up and got him onto the two tables. “Hostess stand over there, grab me a pair of scissors and then I need you to find me all the clean rags you can. Go!”

  Kat rubbed her hand over Fletcher’s head and looked down at the devastating wound, “You’re going to be okay.”

  Chapter 16

  Kat had scoured the restaurant for supplies and piled them up on a table next to Fletcher. She had found two first aid kits and tore into them discarding what was useless and what she could use. She had Justin boil some water and bring it out to her and the two guys had helped her to carefully move Fletcher so they could remove his vest and cut away his shirt. He was still unconscious. Kat told them to go through the small lockers outback and find as much clothing as they could and any shoes. Fletcher, baby Bowen, Robby and she would all need warm clothes before they moved out of here.

  “What if he can’t – ”

  “Don’t, Justin!” Kat turned on him, “I really need everyone to stay pretty fucking positive right now as this is way out of my scope of practice.” She slammed both fists down onto the table and her head hung down, her hair grazing Fletcher’s bare chest.

  “I need you to take the baby and do what I asked, Justin,” Kat said. “We need to be ready to move as soon as Fletcher wakes up. Can you do that for me?”

  Justin whispered, “Yes.”

  “Thank you.” She touched his arm to reassure him. She wasn’t mad at him – not exactly – but now wasn’t the time to question her skills as a surgeon. Kat had been in many emergency rooms with pregnant women but this was more like a battlefield medic’s job. Of course she had taken courses on emergency situations like terrorist attacks but no one ever thought they would actually have to use any of those weekend warrior skill sets.

  When she had the room to herself ,her fingers wrapped around the piece of shrapnel, her other hand pressing closely to the wound so she could extract it as easily as possible.

  Chapter 17

  Fletcher’s pain woke him from unconsciousness as Kat was on him with one knee pressed firmly to his chest so he couldn’t see what was happening.

  Kat ignored his cries and bent over the wound with a small flashlight. The hole was maybe an inch to an inch and a half in diameter and the blood was oozing out. That was good. Oozing and not squirting all over the place meant there were no arteries hit. At least near the surface. Kat grabbed the bottle of Grey Goose and poured it over the open wound, pressing all her weight into her back leg to hold Fletcher down as he howled like a siren.

  “Here, drink this,” Kat told him pushing the vodka into his hand. She took one of the clean dish rags and balled it up pressing it against the bleeding hole and felt Fletcher struggle against her. This wasn’t going to be easy but she didn’t need the novice boys in here getting in her way while she tried to pretend she was a field medic. Kat took one of the waitresses check presenters and pushed it against the cloth while she then wrapped it over with more clean towels. Kat was tearing lengths of duct tape she found under the kitchen sink and pulling them as tightly as she could over the wound to hold the makeshift bandage in place. By the time she was done with the duct tape Fletcher’s abdomen looked like the fender of her high school ’86 Thunderbird.

  “Can you sit up?” Kat asked him. He held out his arm and she took it, watching his face wince in pain as she got him to a sitting position.

  “Was I bit?”

  “No! God no. You got stuck with some shrapnel from the bombing. It wasn’t that deep and you’re lucky it didn’t hit any arteries. You might just survive this, officer.”

  “Thanks to you.” Fletcher took a heavy swig from the bottle and wiped his mouth on his forearm.

  “Are we it?” Fletcher asked. The silence in the restaurant was haunting.

  “No, but your men, Fletcher,” Kat started and saw the tear well in his eyes, “they didn’t make it.”

  He cleared his throat and nodded his head his eyes gazing around the seafood restaurant, “Who do we have? Your son?”

  Baby Bowen wasn’t her son. She had confessed this to Fletcher the night before the whole world went away. He had responded by explaining to her that she was his family now, that only she had gone through all these labors to keep him alive.

  “He’s out back in the kitchen with the boys, Justin and Robby. They made it too.”

  “Good.” Fletcher nodded, he still hadn’t made eye contact with her when his cracking voice asked “Can I have a minute, Kat?”

  “Of course.” Kat reached back for another bottle from the table behind her and unscrewed the top. She put the bottle of Grey Goose next to the almost empty one by Fletcher’s leg and walked out of the dining room heading for the kitchen.

  “They were good boys,” Fletcher called after her as he finished the bottle of vodka.

  “Yeah,” Kat agreed, “the best.”

  Chapter 18

  Tuck crossed the intersection alone. He had left Brittney and Garrett back in the car and told them if anything happened then they should back up, get back on the highway and drive.

  So far so good.

  He could see the destruction that had taken place at the gas station and the zombies pinned to the wall by the plow truck. In the back of that pickup was a platinum blonde kid sitting by herself with a dirt bike tied standing up in the bed. Two men stood outside the truck and were loading supplies, one guy was old maybe sixties and the other – too hard to tell – had a ball cap pulled down over half his face. There was another kid sitting alone. Tuck had seen the two rifles leaning against the truck.

  “You guys got a bathroom?” Tuck yelled when his feet touched the grass embankment. He raised his hands and held them high. At first everyone down at the gas station just stared at him and he kept walking. It wasn’t until his feet touched pavement again, and he could smell the scent of gasoline, that the older man grabbed the rifle and brought it up.

  “We aren’t looking for trouble, son.”

  “Neither am I, sir. If you will allow me I can lift my shirt and turn around so you can see that I am unarmed. You can also frisk me when I get close as long as your hands aren’t cold.”

  The one in the hat snickered and the older one shot him a look. He grabbed the other rifle and brought it up but never racked a bullet; Tuck guessed he had no idea how to shoot that bolt action.

  “You do that,” the older one said.

  Tuck went slow and cautious. He had done this a few times with the CO’s at the prison whenever someone thought he was behind something unsettling. Usually he was. But he was smart enough to get rid of any incriminating evidence. For the most part, all Tuck needed were his hands and feet and you couldn’t see those as weapons when being frisked.

  “Up against the truck, son.” Tuck did what the older man said. Put his hands on the gate of the truck and left his legs spread wide. The platinum blonde in the back crawled on her hands and knees over to him like a hungry cat. Their noses almost touched.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  “Rebel, get back.”

  “Stop telling me what to do, Daddy.” She rolled her eyes and then after a moment of holding eye contact with Tuck, she plopped back on her ass and sipped the beer she was way too young to be drinking.

  “He’s fine. What’s your business here, son?”

  “Tuck,” he said and held out his hand, “I haven’t been anyone’s son for a long time.”

  “Bob,” he said and shook Tuck’s hand, “That is Kiefer, you met Rebel, and our moody teenager for the day will be played by Forrest.”

  “Nice to meet you all. I have a woman and her son back up on the hill waiting for the ‘okay�
�. We’re just passing through and looking for supplies and gas, maybe an extra car.”

  “Hey, Tuck?” Rebel said as she leaned over the gate so that her small breasts pushed together to form some amount of cleavage. “You get bit or something.” She pointed at his arm and the bandage.

  “Yeah, by some asshole’s pig-sticker. Everyone’s out for themselves. The woman I’m with, she’s an EMT and patched me up good. Her son’s a good kid as well. Like I said, I’m not looking for trouble just supplies. If you want I can wait till you are done, clearly you’ve earned that right,” he was motioning to the dead bodies everywhere, not the zombies.

  “You can bring them down, Tuck, but I want to search the car and make sure you aren’t all trying to hustle us,” Bob said.

  “Not a problem, sir.” Tuck headed back to the car to get Brittney and Garrett when he stopped and asked, “Where are you headed if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “My house. It’s on an island,” Rebel blurted out.

  “That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard yet.”

  Chapter 19

  Fletcher had gone back to one of the booths around the corner where no one could see him and continued to drink away his physical and emotional pain.

  Kat was holding baby Bowen in her arms. She had fed and changed him. They had gotten lucky with the restaurant. Robby and Justin had a bottle of whiskey in front of them and a couple shot glasses that had only been used once and filled twice. Justin was turning the shot glass around in circles as if it would do something miraculous.

  The first zombie that struck the windows of the seafood restaurant scared Justin out of his daze and spilled half his shot. The three of them were frozen just watching the zombie as it ran its mouth over the glass as if it could taste their scent through the window. It wasn’t long before there was another and another and soon the front window of the restaurant began to fill with the dead.