Arcadia (Book 1): Damn The Dead

by Phillip Tomasso

  DAMN THE DEAD

  An Arcadia Novel

  Phillip Tomasso

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2014 by Phillip Tomasso

  This one is for my kids,

  Phillip, Grant and Raeleigh

  PART I

  The Mountains

  Chapter 1

  It started with the flu.

  That’s what Charlene’s dad explained, three years ago. He worked at 9-1-1, was taking emergency calls when the apocalypse began. Strong Memorial Hospital’s research team supplied the country with vaccinations. Contaminated serum was accidentally used and the mistake wasn’t caught until far too late. Those injected became messed up creatures. Chase McKinney called them zombies because they reminded him of monsters from old movies and crazy, popular television shows.

  Char had been fourteen then. As much as she wished, she could never forget any of it. She remembered it all. Worse, she couldn’t escape the horrors when she slept and her dreams were plagued with nightmares. The events that unfolded in her mind while asleep had really happened and were not obscured while in some hypnagogic state. She was forced to relive the haunting torments night after night. The only silver lining, she didn’t sleep much. If she was lucky enough to find somewhere safe to lay down for a bit, she rarely slipped into a deep enough rest to reach a state of R.E.M. While perpetually exhausted, she was just slightly more than thankful.

  Charlene McKinney —goes by Char— hunkered down behind grey rocks and thick brush, and eyed a tractor trailer packed full with supplies. This meant they had access to gasoline, too.

  Her father, Chase, had died trying to deliver a band of survivors across the Mexican border. His thoughts centered on economy. The third world country was too poor to inoculate their citizens, and the walls built by the US would prevent most infected from crossing south over the border. He was confident that Mexico would prove to be a sanctuary.

  Her father had been right. Mostly.

  She spent a year in Mexico. The constant dry weather and ninety degree heat felt crippling. Finding water —drinkable water— was nearly a daily struggle. She stayed on her own, not wanting or trusting others. Zombies were bad, but what she learned while her father was still alive was that the non-infected were oftentimes far more dangerous and deadly.

  She supposed she looked a lot like her mom, but the best she could remember, only thinner, more muscular and wiry, maybe. She kept her chocolate brown hair in a tight pony. Chopping it short made the most sense. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it. It was the small bit of vanity she held onto, and it hopefully drew attention from a knife scar that ran across her lower left jaw line.

  “Char? You in there?”

  She snapped her head to the right.

  “We going to do this or what?”

  It was early September, or mid-October. Monday or Thursday. Char had planned to keep months and days straight in her head. It seemed important, but it wasn’t long until she lost track. This bothered her. She’d close her eyes and try to count days off in her head, but to no avail. In Mexico, seasons didn’t change. One day had melted into the next.

  When she left Mexico, she encountered Tony Dibella. She’d spotted him, alone, walking down the center of a road in Texas. Armed with a bow and quiver full of arrows, he looked worn out, close to collapsing. She followed for several miles. The man pushed himself, stumbling now and again, but never stopping. At one point he paused for water from the canteen clipped to the side of his belt. He took a long swallow and then said, “Be better to have someone walk with me instead of just following me.”

  She stayed hidden, watching. Okay, he knew she was there, following him. It didn’t mean it was safe to reveal her location. After a while of patiently waiting, he threw his hands in the air and continued on his way.

  Just before nightfall he’d wound his way off the streets and into a thin forest that ran between the road and an interstate highway. Char watched, keeping her distance, as he climbed up a tree and sat on a branch. He armed his bow with an arrow and waited. She supposed he reminded her of her father. They were about the same age. This guy was bigger, though. She couldn’t tell if it was muscle or not with his clothing and gear. His hair was a bit long in back, and the rest tucked under a Texas baseball cap. Unshaven for perhaps a week or two, his beard was scraggly and grey around the chin.

  She knew he hunted dinner. She watched as a squirrel wisped by the tree. The man loosed the arrow and dropped the tree-scurrying rodent with silent skill. The small fire he built was used to cook the meat once he’d skinned the animal.

  “There is no way I am going to be able to eat this whole meal by myself,” the man said. He sat on a dead log beside his fire. The squirrel was on a stick, being roasted like a marshmallow at a campout. The bow and quiver full of arrows sat directly beside him.

  She hated to admit it, but she thought she might be starving. Her stomach gurgled like an office water jug. She clapped a hand over her belly, feeling certain the rumble would give her away.

  “I know you must be hungry.” He wasn’t going to give up.

  She knew she should just keep moving. If she had no plan to join this man, then stalking him made absolutely no sense.

  Then he took the squirrel off the spit. “I’m going to eat this and then hightail it out of here. The smell is going bring out the dead. If you want some, this is the last time I am offering and once I go on the move again, I am going to consider you hostile. Fair?”

  With the gig up, her hunger winning out, she stood up and slowly emerged from out of the shadows. She kept her longsword up in a double-fisted grip. He didn’t even reach for his bow, but instead, offered her peeled squirrel meat on a makeshift dinner plate. “I’m Tony. Headed north. What about you?”

  She thought about giving her full name, but decided against it. “I’m Char. I’ve been on my own for the better part of three years. Last time I saw my fath—”

  He held up a hand. “I only have one rule. No history. We’ve all gone through shit. No sense dwelling on it. You’re Char, and like I said, I’m Tony. We good with that, with just moving forward?”

  It’s simple, but it’s how the friendship started.

  “My plan is pretty easy. Stay to the high ground, use back roads. Less chance of running into. . . populated areas. That work all right for you?”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” she said. They even shook on it.

  “Then here, help yourself to some dinner.”

  # # #

  While they had been on the road for months, at one point few days ago, Tony announced they were either in Virginia or West Virginia and amidst the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Shenandoah River flowed close by. He’d gone camping with his parents at the national park while growing up. Tony promised apple orchards, fishing, and plenty of wildlife to hunt.

  They wouldn’t starve.

  “We need to focus,” Tony said.

  The horses were tied to a tree trunk behind them. They were atop a narrow ridge looking down on a paved road. The scent of sap and weeds made her eyes itchy and watery. “I’m focused.”

  “You weren’t.” He ran a thumb over the fletching on an arrow and squinted as he stared toward the trailer. “We’ve followed them this far. Undetected, best I can tell. No one else is following them, or us. They look like they might be settling in for the evening.”

  “They have to be exhausted,” she said. She knew she was. Her butt was sore. They’d been riding hard all day in an attempt to
keep up with the tractor trailer. Thankfully the rig stayed in low gears to better climb and maneuver the narrow road. There might be medical supplies, bandages, ointments, and aspirin. Wishful thinking led her to hope for toothpaste, shampoo, and soaps. Luxury items on any survivors’ list, no doubt. Char knew what else was locked inside that trailer. She just refused to think about it.

  “That’s what I’m hoping. We’ll keep an eye on them. Wait until they fall asleep —until we’re sure they’re asleep— and then move in. We have to do this fast. Get in, grab the reins, and go.” Tony pursed his lips. She knew he was merely talking out loud to soundboard his idea. The plan didn’t need to be said, it was that obvious. He might have needed to convince himself that it was indeed the right plan. Char had no problems with that, waiting until everyone was asleep, since it made the most sense.

  “With the six of them, one or two will keep watch. A shipment like that, there is no way they can afford to sleep at the same time,” she said. Two men had ridden inside the cab. The four others followed near and far on horseback, armed with assault rifles.

  “You ever work a security job?” Tony slid off the bank and pressed his back against dirt and loose gravel.

  “I’m seventeen. I was just barely a freshman in high school when this started. My life experiences are a little limited.” She knew Tony knew that she’d never worked security —or any job for that matter. He liked to talk. Ask questions. It made him happy or something. Just staring at him with an, Are you kidding me face, just made him pouty. There was always a time for that. This wasn’t one of them.

  “I worked as a rent-a-cop for a few years. It was for a health insurance company. The guard station connected underground parking with the building. I worked midnights. When I got there, the only other people in the building was the guard I relieved and the I.T. guys. They made sure the computers and databases didn’t crash, lose power, or that kind of thing. Six floors, all mine. Know what I did from midnight until eight in the morning?”

  “Slept?”

  He nodded and laughed again. “Like a baby.”

  “We wouldn’t do that.”

  “We wouldn’t, but I can’t see us in possession of that kind of cargo.” He laughed.

  “Yet,” she said. The possibilities of what might be inside that trailer were endless. Since Tony had taken care of some basic needs, like food and shelter, she couldn’t help but hope to find staples like shampoo and soap, toothpaste and deodorant. Just the idea of a chance to find dental floss made her almost giddy.

  “While we wait for them to settle in and fall asleep, guess what you’re going to do?”

  She sighed. She didn’t need to be a mind reader. “First watch.”

  He clapped her on the back. “First watch. Use the binoculars, all right? I want to keep an eye on our friends. If anything looks funny or dangerous. . .”

  She hated when he treated her like a kid. It wasn’t on purpose. Her father did it to her all the time, too. At least then, she’d been a kid. That was no longer the case. “I know, Tony. I just let you sleep and handle the situation on my own. We’re good. Now, get some rest. You definitely need your beauty sleep.”

  He didn’t laugh, but knew he wasn’t mad either. “I’ll take first watch, but I expect you to get some sleep, and I mean it. You need some rest. We don’t want to stage an ambush and look more like the zombies around us, do we?”

  Tony knew she didn’t sleep well, either. “You know how I feel about that word.”

  Unlike her father, Tony didn’t like the word zombies. He preferred to call them the infected, because they were people once, and he believed there were still souls inside. Messed up and sick, but souls just the same. It didn’t stop him from killing the creatures. He was just sometimes more thoughtful about it.

  “Infected,” she said.

  He nodded with approval. “Two hours.”

  “Not a minute longer.”

  “I’ll use the stars as my clock.” Char pointed at the sky. “As soon as the Big Dipper arcs across the center of the sky.”

  “Smart ass.” He sucked in a deep breath, held it a moment, and then exhaled as he spun around and took another look at the trailer a few hundred feet below them. When satisfied, he pushed away from the bank and removed a sleeping bag off his horse, which had been tethered to a nearby tree. Char watched him get settled in. He placed his bow and quiver beside the bag and took off his baseball hat. “Two hours,” he said. He set the hat over his face as if it were a Stetson.

  “Sweet dreams.” Char lifted the binoculars off her chest and got comfortable in the dirt and loose gravel on the ridge. Without night vision, the binocs would only benefit her so long, despite however many stars lit the night sky.

  The danger wasn’t just below them.

  It was all around.

  The infected had a habit of showing up when you least expected them. If they weren’t in moaning packs, they could go undetected until too late. Char hadn’t survived this long being careless. She split her time between watching the trailer below and the forest around them.

  She did not like the idea of waiting. They needed to overtake the men below and get the trailer from them. There was no telling what could happen if they missed this chance. It really came down to stealing it now, or possibly never.

  Possibly never was not acceptable. Tony wouldn’t allow it, and neither would she.

  If anything, they’d die trying. That’s just what it came down to at this point. Walking away was not an option.

  # # #

  Char and Tony stood across from each other, hidden behind trees. They were still several yards from what they had come to consider as the enemy’s camp. They’d made sure there was no movement for nearly an hour before moving this close.

  “Two on watch?” Tony said.

  The moonlight helped. The bright orb sat in a cloudless sky. With no street or city lights to interfere, the stars finally had a chance to illuminate the heavens. The billions of stars resembled a blanket of light, were milky, and still, and silent against a Catalina blue sky. “One ahead of the trailer. The other is just behind where the others are asleep.”

  “I was worried they’d unhitched the horses. Animals are not going to be well rested having been tethered together like that all night. Idiots,” he said, “that’s not going to help us much. We want to hightail it out of there, and the things are going to be panting and shit. Not good.”

  “You should have told them earlier, explained that in order for the horses to rest properly, they need to be unhitched.” Char rolled her eyes.

  “You go on ahead. Find the guy out front. I’m going to handle the one back there. We’ll take care of the other four together. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s our best plan right now.”

  “I’m good with it.” She had her machete out.

  “You be safe. I’m serious.”

  Char nodded. “You, too.”

  She moved slowly but with purpose. The only sound she heard was her own footfalls and tried to step as quietly as possible, breathing shallow breaths. Tiny plumes escaped her lips and nostrils and then were gone. She went cautiously from tree to tree for cover, knowing the man on horseback was not too far ahead. Forest animals were silent. Her presence a deterrent from their nighttime chatter. Their silence was also a revelation. It warned the enemy that something approached. At a minimum, the man would be on guard, hopefully straining to see into the thicket for the infected and not at all on the lookout for a machete wielding young lady.

  Hopefully.

  The man’s horse was tied to a tree. The man was not there. Char stood still, kept her back pressed against the bark. She looked left and right. The moon and stars helped pierce the darkness. The canopy above still prevented an excess of light from filtering through. Her eyes were well adjusted to the dimness encompassing the forest.

  The horse snorted and shook its head, rattling the reins. It sounded like thunder in the silence. She watched the animal, wondering where t
he rider might be. The terrain was far more rocky in this direction. She stepped up to a boulder, lowered her chest down onto it and tried to see what lay beyond. With still no sign of the man with the assault rifle, she crawled up and over. Her eyes never stopped roaming left and right. He had to be somewhere close by.

  Perhaps Tony had been right, and he was somewhere asleep.

  She gripped the machete with both hands, held the blade out in front of her and walked toward the horse. She didn’t want to risk getting too close and spooking the animal. While she walked, she hoped Tony was alright. His man was closer to the other four. If there was much of a scuffle, it would alert the sleeping men. The thing about Tony, he would use an arrow and could make the kill silently from fifty yards out. He’d been teaching her how to use the bow, but they just hadn’t yet come across another she could keep.

  Char did not think the man would wander far from his horse unless he found a safe place to catch some zzz’s. She stood still and just listened. Her heart pounded inside her chest.

  A tree branch snapped.

  Char spun around. She saw the butt of the rifle coming at her face and ducked. It caught the side of her head. She went down, not from the blow, but from losing her balance. Her left foot slid on loose stones. Her elbow took the brunt of the fall. Pain shot through her arm. A tingling sensation raced down to her wrist, and then up to her shoulder.

  There was no time to coddle the injury.

  She rolled to the right, off her arm. It was fast, but not quick enough. The man delivered a kick. His boot caught her on the side and she gasped as her lungs fought to inhale oxygen. She feared at least one rib might have broken. Her hands were empty.

  Where was the machete?

  The man made no noise. He survived the infected this long by learning to keep quiet, too. It didn’t stop the attack. He kept at her, kicking her in the back and sides over and over. She kept rolling, trying to get out of reach, looking for a chance to get back on her feet. It wasn’t working. The beating was relentless and she knew the pain would overtake her. The last thing she wanted was to lose consciousness. She’d be as good as dead.