Dying Days Ultimate Box Set 1

by Armand Rosamilia

  The candy was all spoiled or stale, and she had enough cigarettes and tobacco products to get lung cancer. Despite what she’d heard, the Twinkies were actually hard. With the air conditioning still working nothing smelled, but there were only a few items that were still edible. The beer had been either finished off or raided a long time ago.

  Darlene found some pink women’s razors and shaving cream and ventured into the bathroom to shave and wash up. There was plenty of soap and deodorant stacked neatly under the sink, as well as washcloths and ibuprofen bottles. Before attacking the jungle that was her legs and privates she popped three pills and swallowed them with tap water. They scratched down her dry throat.

  Her clothes were peeled off and dispatched to the far corner. She wouldn’t have been surprised if they had suddenly stood and made a run for it. Right now she’d give anything for a bra that fit and undies that didn’t have rips in them.

  As she applied shaving cream she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in air conditioning. “You never get used to the smell of the dead or the smell of your own filth,” she whispered. Soon the floor was stained with shaving cream, hair and dirt.

  On a whim she checked the store for makeup but found none. She went back into the bathroom and finished, scrubbing her face with most of a bar of soap. For the first time in too long she stared at herself in the dirty mirror and cringed. Her cheekbones were sunken, her eyes puffy and red. Her once-lustrous hair hung in knots, her lips chapped and her chin bruised.

  Darlene had never been a skinny woman – she preferred thinking of herself as curvy – but now she was downright anorexic. She guessed that she was hovering at around one hundred and five pounds, a far cry from the healthy one-fifty she normally carried. Her body was sore, black and blue covering her legs and arms, and she could spend a week counting all of the cuts across her body.

  She stopped looking at herself in the mirror while she gathered her clothes and began the task of washing them under the hot water from the tap. The dirt and grime filled the sink and she noticed for the first time all of the holes and rips in her jeans and T-shirt. She’d need to find new clothing before she had to make her way naked in this dead world.

  Sometimes you forget about the things you no longer have, she thought as she eyed a stack of toilet paper rolls. She was going to enjoy her time here, at least until the food ran out. Then it was back into the wild and fending for the next meal.

  Later, after a dinner of cold chicken noodle soup and three bottles of water, she took both bodies outside. She didn’t have the strength to bury them but figured that tomorrow she would have to. They yielded little in the way of supplies: the keys to the store, house keys she assumed were from the house up the road, a pack of gum, two pocketknives, and a dead cell phone. The small-caliber gun was empty; he’d used his last shot. She left the gun on the ground where he’d dropped it.

  Darlene tossed the cell phone around in her hand and laughed. It was funny what people still clung to, even when they were of no practical use. She reached into her pocket and fingered her keychain. Her house key, her car key and the key to her dad’s house were there, all useless. Yet she had them with her at all times.

  She peeked outside again but there was nothing hanging around the fence. She knew they were out there. They were always out there. The glow from the coolers was enough light to see by, so she didn’t have to stumble around in the dark.

  Behind the counter were two pillows and three blankets, which Darlene hadn’t used in months. Darlene curled up on the floor, wrapping herself in one of the blankets and stuffing both pillows under her head. It wasn’t the greatest of comforts but it beat sleeping in trees, under porches and in cold abandoned buildings. Her body, newly cleaned after weeks of dipping into dirty rain water or rivers and oceans, felt relaxed. Her mind was racing and she hoped that she could sleep. How ironic would that be, if I finally get a decent spot to sleep on, and I can’t?

  She woke with a start and fought back an imaginary attacker. It was just one of the blankets that had wrapped around her legs. Her Desert Eagle, never far from her grasp, was put down on the ground next to her. While the floor had been better than being outside, her back hurt and she had a pounding headache.

  By playing with the coffee machines she figured out a safe way to make two packs of the noodles and a pot of coffee for breakfast. After eating she cleaned up the store, getting everything of value together on the counter and separating the items into plastic shopping bags. In the cooler she found four cardboard boxes that could hold two dozen bottles of water each, but she had no idea how to then transport them.

  Three hours later she had run out of work to do and knew that she had been stalling. She didn’t want to go outside and dig two graves for the men. A part of her didn’t even care about doing it, but she felt compelled. They had been alive, after all, and it would be proper to bury them and say something.

  Back outside the sun was fierce, with no clouds in the Florida sky. The two bodies were right where she’d left them. She wasn’t surprised, but then again not much could surprise her at this point. If they had been dancing or missing when she’d come outside it wouldn’t have shocked her. In fact, it now disappointed her that she’d have to bury them. She needed a shovel, which she didn’t have.

  The house up the road was quiet. She wondered if they had a shed out back, and if she could keep enough distance from the house in the event that the undead inside could escape. There were no zombies outside the fence in the immediate area. Darlene decided to chance it. The sandy road leading to the house offered nothing save a few old footprints.

  By the time she reached the bridge she was drenched in sweat. “I need another bath,” she whispered. From here the grounds were overgrown with weeds poking through the sand. The dirt road was dusty and rutted from long-ago traffic. The front yard had, at one time, been landscaped. A section of stone wall ran the length of the driveway to the left, now showing wear in a spot and leaning back. A line of short bushes had been planted on the right, now all stunted and dead.

  The house loomed before her in the midday heat like a creature ready to pounce. The windows had been boarded hastily from outside, the front door jammed with two rocking chairs and nailed shut.

  Darlene was holding her breath as she put a hesitant foot on the first step. “Go around to the back,” she whispered. She didn’t need to be going onto the porch; she already knew what awaited her inside. She felt like the stupid chick in every horror movie that ignores the scary noises downstairs and goes into the basement, clad in her underwear, and then is amazed when an axe is sticking out of her head.

  She put her full weight down on her foot. Not a sound. The wooden steps were solid. Gingerly she made it up the remaining four steps and stood at the front door with her Desert Eagle in hand. She didn’t have eight bullets left – three in the Desert Eagle, three in the Sig Sauer 226 - or even know if he had been telling the truth about the number inside. Maybe it was one and he wanted to scare her away. Maybe there weren’t any dead inside and the house was filled with food and drink, piles of clothing and form-fitting bras and panties with the tags still attached.

  The next step forward and the boards creaked.

  Darlene fell back when the banging inside started, right in front of her. It sounded like a hundred undead were inside, slamming against the wall. The windows and door shook with the impact.

  Scared and ashamed at how easily she’d been rattled, Darlene ran from the porch and around to the back, in search of a shed and a shovel.

  Five

  As she finished burying the two men night was falling. The sounds of the trapped had brought more undead to investigate. Darlene counted almost thirty of them on the other side of the fence groaning and reaching for her. She ignored them as best she could.

  At first she was going to simply walk up to them and begin smacking them with the shovel, but she knew it would be futile. The fence would keep her from doing permanent damage. In a s
trange way she was enjoying the company after being alone for so long. Even if her company wanted to rip off her head and fuck her headless corpse.

  Back inside she drank more water and made a can of sirloin burger soup. As a kid she’d hated eating soup, but her father insisted on making it a meal at least once per week. She remembered dreading it when her parents came home from food shopping and her father stacked another three cans on the topmost shelf for later in the week.

  Exhausted, Darlene checked the locks on the doors, stared into the darkness outside for lights, listened for noises, and then finally turned in for the night.

  The next morning she rose, cleaned up, ate more noodle soup, and was mildly disappointed to see that the undead had moved on during the night. She wished she had binoculars so that she could climb onto the roof and see for miles.

  With nothing else to do today, she ignored the still, hot air of the room and decided to clean. The undead already knew she was here so she decided to prop open the front door and the side garage door to get a nice cross-breeze flowing. Darlene supposed she could raise the large garage doors but then it might attract too much attention. The zombies weren’t the only thing she had to fear; out here there was probably more than one Lazy Eye and a noise that loud would give her away.

  Besides, the air felt nice when she opened the doors. She found some over-priced toothbrushes on a shelf peg and decided to give this place a thorough cleaning. A bottle of cheap bleach and some spray bottles of cleaning supplies were in the small stockroom. The mop and mop bucket were both broken and looked like they hadn’t been used a long time before the end of the world. It was just as well. For the first time in months Darlene had a task besides finding food, shelter, and trying not to get killed. She dropped to her hands and knees in front of the counter and began to wash the floor, one inch at a time.

  The blankets and pillows smelled funky, so they were hand-washed in the sink before she took them outside and draped them over the gas pumps to dry in the ocean breeze.

  A lone zombie crested the dunes over the broken bridge, moving away from her. She wondered if they ever stopped, ever grew tired or ever had a real destination in mind when noises didn’t compel them to move in a certain direction. Once again she longed for days that were long gone. In movies she used to watch with her father when she was a kid the zombies would come at night, dark and dreary, gray and overcast, with rain and lightning strikes silhouetting the background.

  Darlene’s reality was even more disturbing: blue, clear skies, the smell of the beach, the sound of the pounding surf, and the undead. She couldn’t remember the last time it had rained since she’d been this far south. She wasn’t complaining after the long, cold winter in Baltimore, but still… a little rainfall would be nice, something to break up the sun and the heat.

  Once again, before going back inside to continue her cleaning project, she stepped around the side of the station and looked at the house.

  It was quiet, as she knew it would be. She almost wished they’d found a way out, one at a time, so she could finish them off and grab the treasure inside. She felt like Laura Croft or Indiana Jones, only they weren’t too scared to kick down the door and start shooting and killing with a trusted machete. Instead, she decided to go inside and keep scrubbing with a damn toothbrush.

  At first the noise was so unexpected and so far away that she ignored it and went back inside. It seemed like a distant memory. Every now and then, especially after a fitful night of nightmares, she would sometimes wake and hear a voice or a radio playing or traffic in the distance. Fully awake she would cease to hear anything but the wind or the undead.

  As it got closer she stopped and stared at the ceiling. “What the Hell?” she whispered. Back outside she stared at the sky.

  She heard a plane.

  “Where are you?” Darlene spun in a circle, looking and looking. There was no cloud cover. It grew louder, the sound of the engine. It might be a Cessna, something small. It wasn’t a commercial airliner. Did it matter at this point, anyway?

  Darlene couldn’t remember the last time a plane, helicopter or air balloon had been spotted in the sky. She shielded her eyes from the glare and wished there was a sunglass rack inside. It made her laugh to think of her standing out here with a pair of huge white tourist sunglasses on and one of those huge weaved hats on her head.

  She was positively giggling by the time the plane, indeed a Cessna, shot overhead from the west, glided straight out to sea and then shot up the coast to the north.

  Immediately a score of zombies appeared and began to follow the smoke trail in the sky.

  Darlene ran inside, locked up, grabbed two bags of groceries, and decided to follow.

  * * * * *

  Tim would like to thank Armand (again) for pitching the idea for this series and for allowing me to join the shenanigans. As with the last book, thanks to all the friends who volunteered to have their names used knowing they would probably end up dying! The guy who invented wine is high on the list too. Thanks to Peter Benchley for writing Jaws. Finally, thanks to the Boston Red Sox for winning ANOTHER World Series…

  Armand would like to thank everyone Tim didn't thank. Like David Royall for the excellent photographs (once again) and Jenny Adams for the fine editing job (she edited Tim's stuff, mine was already perfect). Thanks to Shelly for the cover design. Thanks to Bette Midler for starring in Beaches. Finally, thanks to me the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. Again.

  Dying Days

  Siege 2

  Armand Rosamilia and Tim Baker

  David and Jill

  David and Jill watched the woman dive from the dock and swim toward them. David started the engine and reversed the boat to get closer. Jill watched in horror as the woman was dragged under after getting halfway to the boat.

  “The zombies are under the water,” she said to David. “They’ll never make it.”

  David looked at the survivors on the dock. Would he have to leave them behind after all?

  No. The dinghy.

  He went aft and began to ready the inflatable boat.

  “What are you doing?” Jill asked.

  “It’s their only hope,” he said.

  The small outboard fired on the second pull and David twisted the throttle wide open. The dinghy took off for the shore. Halfway there, the survivors, led by a large man with a ponytail and a medium sized woman, gathered at the edge of the dock to await his arrival. He counted eight people and it appeared as though two of them were wounded. He hoped not bitten.

  Twenty feet in front of him, a zombie emerged from the water and was walking toward the shore until it sensed the boat’s presence behind it. It turned to face the boat and David did the only thing he could think of. He reached under the seat, grabbed the flair gun and fired. It was a direct hit; the zombie’s head lit up like a hurricane lamp. Flames shot from its ears like roman candles and it slid beneath the water with a hiss.

  David throttled back and tossed a line to the man on the dock.

  “Hurry,” he said. “There’s more under the water.”

  The survivors piled into the boat, except for the couple who appeared to be wounded.

  “Come on,” David said to them. “We don’t have much time.”

  The man reached out to the large man and took a machete from him.

  “We are staying,” he said. “Go, before it is too late.”

  “But…” David began.

  “Go!” Ky yelled.

  David twisted the throttle and the boat pulled away from the dock. They all looked back at Ky and Lisa. Lisa leaned against the rail and Ky turned to face the approaching zombies.

  The dinghy strained against the weight of the seven of them and their trip to the boat took longer than any of them would have liked.

  Jill was ready at the stern with a line and they climbed onto Shibumi as quickly as they could. The large man helped David stow the dinghy.

  Jill was already getting the vessel underway.

/>   “Name’s Ike,” the man said to David. “Thanks for not bugging out.”

  “I’m David. No need to thank me.”

  The two men stood at the stern in silence as Shibumi moved north under the bridge. On the dock, Ky’s valiant stand-off came to an end, as zombies became more than he could handle. His final act was to throw himself on top of his wife in a last-ditch effort to save her.

  “Like watching a train wreck,” Ike said. “You know you shouldn’t, but you just can’t turn away.”

  “Yes, I can,” David said. “I’ve seen enough of it to last five lifetimes.”

  He turned and went to the cockpit area where Jill stood at the wheel. The other survivors huddled together on the two benches. Ike followed him and they stood next to Jill, looking up at the underside of the Hammock Dunes Bridge as they passed underneath.

  Angel stood and hugged Ike tightly.

  “Thank you, again,” she said.

  His instinct was to tell her to stop thanking him, but as he looked into her deep, brown eyes he realized how much he enjoyed the feeling of her arms around him and how much he wanted to kiss her.

  The feelings were like a long, repressed memory coming back to remind him of better times. How could he be feeling this way about a woman he hadn’t known for 24 hours yet?

  Certainly the intense circumstances of their meeting were a factor, but there was more to it. There was something else…

  There was no more thought…he leaned in to kiss her.

  It wasn’t a long kiss, but there was a deep and meaningful connection felt by both of them.

  Angel looked up at him. “If things ever get to normal…”

  The boat lurched and suddenly leaned oddly to one side.