Zed's World (Book 2): Roads Less Traveled

by Baker, Rich

  “Yeah, a real warm, inviting personality, that one,” D-Day says, then turns back to the business at hand. “So we have a monogrammed letter opener used to kill someone. Seems an odd choice of weapon. Whoever did this attacked and killed Cheryl in less than ten minutes with no one noticing what was happening until after the fact. And, they likely got blood all over them. Based on the monogram, our lead suspect is Mike Upham. So I guess our search starts there.”

  “Are you going there now?” Carmen asks.

  “I should, yes. Otherwise, we’ll have a lynching to deal with too,” D-Day replies, eyeing the group of people who still occupy the rec room.

  “Do you want some company?”

  “If you’re up for it. I don’t want to put you in harm’s way, though. If he did this, I can’t imagine it was planned. He has to be panicked right now, and panicky people are dangerous and unpredictable,” D-Day says.

  “All the more reason for you to take someone with you. But if I go, I want a gun,” Carmen says.

  “Do you want me to deputize you too?” D-Day asks.

  Carmen smiles. “Sure thing, Sheriff. Get me a Bible and swear me in.”

  D-Day smiles back. It’s a tired smile, but genuine. He likes her toughness in spite of what she’s been through. That kind of resilience is a good quality in his eyes. And speaking of eyes, she’s pretty easy on those too.

  “All right,” he says, kicking his mind into action. “We’ll stop by my place and get you set up with a gun. Let’s tell these people what’s going on before they have multiple aneurysms, then we’ll go catch a killer.”

  “That’s a phrase that a day ago would have seemed completely unreal,” Carmen says. “But now it’s like, I won’t be surprised if anything happens.”

  As if to punctuate her statement, Melissa begins screaming.

  Nineteen

  Kyle Puckett stands on Danny Harris’s porch, looking at the instructions Danny left for him. He lifts the cover on the keypad next to the door and punches in the eight-digit code. He’s rewarded with the sound of a motor humming and steel bolts retracting. He turns the knob, opens the door, and steps inside, followed by Robert and Stephenie.

  “Will one of you stay here and get the door if anyone comes with supplies?” he asks.

  “I’ll do it,” Stephenie says.

  “Be careful,” Robert signs to her.

  “Duh,” she says in response. Robert gives her a look she refers to as “the stink-eye,” but he doesn’t say anything. He takes Stephenie’s pack from her and follows Kyle.

  Kyle takes a quick look around the main floor. Even with all their packing and hurried exit this morning, the house is spotless, well organized and everything appears to be in its place. He turns his attention back to the folder.

  The next line of instructions reads, “Go to the basement. Open the closet door next to the guest bath.” He goes to the guest bath, finds the closet next to it and opens the door. “Inside you’ll find another keypad. Enter 96984585.”

  Kyle does as instructed. He hears another motor humming, followed by the sound of steel bars locking in place. The floor at the front edge of the closet lifts six inches into the air.

  “This will release a panel in the floor; lift it, and proceed down the stairs.

  He grabs the handle that is now exposed and lifts the panel. He’s aided by a pair of large hydraulic pistons, one on each side, similar to what you would see on an SUV’s lift gate, only much bigger. The panel extends nine feet to the back of the closet. Underneath the panel, a set of stairs descends into the basement. He looks at Robert, gives him a small shrug, and descends the stairs with Robert a couple of steps behind him. Kyle notices that the stairway is a couple of steps longer than his, meaning the basement is about eighteen inches deeper in the ground than his own basement two doors away. That’s how he got it covered by the landscaping. He went down deeper, he thinks to himself. Danny is much more clever than Kyle ever gave him credit for.

  The room at the foot of the stairs is impressive. It’s an open floorplan, with the main living area all technically one room. A large semi-circular sectional sofa surrounds a round coffee table. A massive flat-screen TV dominates the wall in front of the sofa. To the left is the doorway to the basement’s master bedroom, with its own bathroom and huge walk-in closet. To the right are the kitchen and dining area. Kyle turns and heads that direction. Just before the kitchen is a hallway to the left that leads to under-stairs storage, the home gym, the second bedroom, and the main bathroom.

  The open kitchen is L-shaped, with the refrigerator, cabinets, a microwave, and toaster sharing the wall with the bathroom. The sink, dishwasher, and a small cooktop/oven combo are on the outside wall. Just off of the kitchen is a round dining table with seats for six people, though you could probably crowd eight around it in a pinch.

  Beyond the dining area is a storage room. The basement would normally end there, but Danny’s modification has a door leading down three steps into his workshop.

  “This place is incredible,” Robert says. “What did you say this guy does?”

  “Gunsmith,” Kyle says.

  “Jesus. He must be phenomenal at it.”

  “He says he’s not the best, but he’s very good. He does a lot of custom stuff; people come to him with special orders, stuff like that,” Kyle says, hoping that is enough information because, other than that high-level pitch, he can’t begin to describe what Danny does.

  Voices catch their attention. Marc, Keith, and Danielle come down the stairs with backpacks, boxes and a laundry basket full of food, clothing and various sundries.

  “We’re just gonna set this stuff down and go back for more,” Marc says. “We can sort it later.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” Kyle says. “I’ll come help.” He turns to Robert. “You and Stephenie direct traffic over here, okay? I’ll be back soon.”

  “You got it, Mr. Puckett,” Robert says

  “Kyle, please. I can’t take that Mr. Puckett stuff.”

  “You got it, Kyle.”

  On their way out, Kyle, Marc, and the crew pass Natalie, Andy, and Annie with a similar load of goods.

  “Where’s Ben and Toni?” Kyle asks them.

  “He’s getting her up, but she’s really groggy,” Natalie says. “And we have more boxes ready to go if anyone has time to grab them. Otherwise, we can come back for them.”

  Kyle and Danielle divert to the Puckett house to get the last few boxes, and Kyle takes the opportunity to check on Ben. Marc and Keith continue to their house.

  “Ben?” Kyle says as he walks in. “You need help?”

  He goes down the short hallway to the guest room and finds Ben standing in front of Toni, who is sitting on the edge of the bed. After performing her impromptu surgery, Danny has torn a sheet into long strips of cloth and used them to wrap around her wrist and arm and secure it to her chest so she can’t move her right shoulder. She looks uncomfortable with her arm secured to her body this way, but it’s important to let her injuries heal.

  “Hey Dad,” Ben says. “I think we’re about to get moving. She’s having a hard time waking up, but she’s getting there.”

  “Okay. Clock’s ticking, though, son. If you aren’t headed over by the time we’re done taking all our stuff over, we’ll need to carry her.”

  “Got it, Dad. I’ll ask for help if we need it.”

  Kyle does a quick once-over of the kitchen and decides they have grabbed the most important stuff. He goes to the bedroom, grabs a backpack from his closet, and fills it with boxer shorts and socks. He heads back to the kitchen, where he and Danielle grab the boxes that the other kids left behind, and head back to Danny’s house. On the way out the door, he sees Ben and Toni moving down the hallway from the guest room.

  “We’re right behind you, Dad,” Ben says. The boy’s father nods and leaves the door open for them.

  “You’re sure you can do this?” Ben asks Toni. “We can get a chair or something for you to sit on and a
couple of us can carry you.”

  “I want to walk,” she says. He helps her step down from the doorway, pulling the door shut behind him and verifying he locked it. It’s only one hundred and fifty feet down the sidewalk to Danny’s walkway, but for the injured girl it’s a more complicated journey.

  She’s more unsteady than she thought she would be. They’re making slow progress and what should take no more than a minute at a normal walking pace has taken two, and they’re only half way there.

  A screech from the end of the block startles them. Ben looks to the right to see a bloodied woman running with a limp, headed straight for them.

  “Toni, pick up the pace. We have to move,” Ben says.

  The groggy girl steps faster for a couple of strides but stumbles and almost falls. Ben catches her by her left arm and keeps her upright, but it must have hurt her as she yelps, and she’s back to her slower pace. The undead woman is closing the distance faster than they’re making progress to the house. Ben looks back at his dad’s house and estimates that it’s just as far back there as it is to the Harris place.

  “Come on, Toni, this is serious. We have to move faster,” he says.

  She again quickens her pace, but Ben can tell it’s not going to be fast enough.

  They’re almost to the walkway that leads to Danny’s front door. Ben turns Toni toward the house.

  “Get inside!” he shouts. Behind him, the undead woman screams again. Ben bends down and grabs a softball-sized rock from the bed that borders the grass of the front lawn. He turns and throws it as hard as he can. He misses his mark, but not by much; he had aimed for her head, but the missile strikes the woman in the throat. It’s enough to knock her off balance, and she tumbles to the street a few feet from the sidewalk. Ben starts to sprint for the house, but the zombie is on her feet before he can make his move. She screams again, but this time, the sound is more of a gurgle muffled by a mouthful of the oily black fluid they’d seen at the scene of the accident earlier.

  Ben grabs another rock and hurls it. On this throw his aim is better; he hits her in the head, and she falls to the street. She gets up again, but she’s not moving as quickly as before. Ben makes his move for the door with the battered undead woman a few paces behind. Ahead of him, Toni has reached the entrance to the house.

  Stephenie Sims opens the door and sees the zombie trailing behind the pair.

  “Holy shit!” she exclaims. She steps around Toni, onto the porch, and raises her rifle. “Down!!” she yells at Ben.

  The younger Puckett drops to the concrete, and Stephenie fires the gun twice, the reports echoing around the neighborhood. The zombie goes down, this time for good. In the seconds that follow, more undead screams can be heard from farther away.

  Ben gets to his feet and hustles through the door, and Stephenie slams it behind him. Robert comes up the stairs with the page from the folder with the instructions on it and enters the code that locks the door and sets the alarm. Ben is helping Toni down the stairs, where everyone else is already gathered. Kyle consults a notepad he took from his go-bag. He writes on it for a minute, then does a roll call.

  “Everyone, please answer when I call your name,” he says. “Ben.”

  “I’m right here, Dad. So is Toni.”

  Kyle puts a check mark by each of the names.

  “Keith?” Kyle says.

  “Present and accounted for,” the younger Wallace says.

  Kyle goes through the rest of the names, each person acknowledging their presence. Counting himself, there are eleven people in the basement.

  “Does anyone have anything else they need to get?” he asks.

  “Well, you know how it is. We’ll say no but in five minutes someone will realize they’ve forgotten something important,” Keith says.

  “Well, then, let’s double-check,” Kyle says.

  They do a quick accounting of their personal effects, and the consensus is that they have everything they believe to be critical. Kyle takes the page of instructions from Robert and enters the code in the touchpad at the bottom of the stairs. A motor whirs, and the access panel that camouflaged the stairway pulls itself shut. Another motor whirs and steel bolts, two inches in diameter and a foot long, are guided in place. There are two on each side of the panel and two at the end at the top of the stairs. The strongest pry bar will never break that panel loose.

  Kyle turns to face the group.

  “Well, we’re locked in,” he says. “More importantly, those things are locked out. Let’s take stock of our supplies and see what information we can get from the news.”

  “Mr. Puck, er, Kyle?” Robert says.

  “Yes, Robert?”

  “Your friend Danny has a DVD in here with a sticky note that says ‘play me’.”

  Kyle finds the remote that rests on the round coffee table, studies it for a second, and then presses the button labeled “all on.”

  The TV lights up, with the manufacturer’s logo spinning in the center of the screen. The logo disappears, and a message in the upper right of the screen says “Ch. 31 TBS” but the screen is just black. Kyle searches for the mode button that says “DVD” and presses it. The screen changes over to the DVD player’s menu. It’s a smart player, Internet connected, that streams different online services, but the highlighted option reads “Blu-Ray/DVD.” He takes the disc from Robert, finds the eject button, drops the disc on the tray, and presses play. The tray retracts and Kyle can hear the disc spinning inside the machine.

  The screen goes black, and then flashes white, and Danny’s face appears.

  “Well, hello. I’m going to assume I’m talking to Kyle or Marc since you’re the only two people I’d give this to. Welcome to the headquarters of Harris Tactical, LLC. If you’ve followed my instructions, you’re sealed in the basement, but that also means that all hell has broken loose.”

  On-screen, Danny takes a sip of a drink—some whiskey by the looks of it—and continues.

  “There are two beds down here, one king and one queen, one in each of the bedrooms. If there are more than three or four of you, there are cots under the beds and in the storage room. There are enough for ten people, plus additional room on the couches.

  “In the folder you’ll find instructions on how to access my workshop. This will give you additional space and is also a fallback room, a panic room, if you will. The basement is secure, but in the event of a breach it would take artillery to get into the workshop once you’ve sealed yourself inside.”

  “You’ll be able to hide out down here for a long time, provided you have enough food. You DID bring enough food, didn’t you? I hope so.”

  He takes another drink, then continues. The DVD plays on for about twenty minutes, going over the details of the fortress that Danny has created; the solar power, the UPS, the air exchanger, the water storage, and filtration system. He’s even had the window wells sealed and covered so you cannot see them from the outside. He’s installed concrete bunkers outside each window, with sealed doors that open to tunnels that come up under the neighbors’ window wells. Using these tunnels, they can access the houses on either side without having to go outside to do so. Danny has set the place up to be completely self-sufficient for sixty days regarding food and water—for him and Elaine. For the eleven people holed up there now, Kyle does some fast math and figures they have fifteen or sixteen days’ worth, including the food they’ve brought with them; more if they ration it from the start. On-screen, Danny is wrapping up his video message.

  “So that’s it, friends. You know most of the secrets of my lair, both legally installed and extra-legal, if you will. I don’t know what’s brought us to this point, but it must be serious if I gave you ‘the package.’ Keep your heads down, don’t get stir crazy, and keep your wits about you. Unless we’ve been nuked by the Ruskies or zombies have taken over the world, whatever this is should be over soon. Sit tight and be ready for anything. Good luck!”

  Danny reaches for the camera, his hand disa
ppearing to the side of the lens, and a second later the screen goes black.

  Twenty

  Nelson Farm, North of Longview

  DJ turns the shovel of the backhoe toward the oncoming trio of bloodied men. The first one, the fastest, is only a dozen yards away. It slows down, and it seems like it’s not sure where to go next. It must not see DJ sitting in the external seat at the controls of the backhoe. It’s clear to DJ, though, that this rotting fellow should not be vertical. The ripped neck, the torn abdomen with the liver peeking out are telltale signs. This guy is obviously one of the undead the newscasts have been talking about. DJ raises the arm on the backhoe, folds the shovel underneath it, and as the creature watches the movement with great interest, DJ brings it down like a hammer, driving the zombie into the ground.

  The other two are approaching along the same route as the first one. DJ extends the arm and scoop, and like a grade school kid flicking a paper football, the backhoe flicks the closest creature backward into the lagging one, and they collapse, one on top of the other. He brings the arm straight down, the teeth on the shovel tearing both of the undead men in half. He lifts the shovel and pivots the arm away from them so he can get a good look at the terrible trio.

  The first one, the nail, is smashed flat. DJ’s stomach turns when he sees the mass of sludge, meat, and bone where he pancaked poor Thing 1. Things 2 and 3 are still “alive,” if you can call it that. The lower bodies lie where he separated them from their torsos, but the upper halves are pulling themselves toward the backhoe. He brings the arm around again, tucks the shovel, and splats the farthest one, but the other is too close to reach with the shovel. DJ peers over the edge of the control deck and doesn’t see Thing 3, so he jumps down from the backhoe control seat and runs to the cab of the tractor. He misses the arm that swipes at his foot as he steps up into the cab.

  He lifts the stabilizer arms and drives the tractor away from the creatures, turning in a wide circle and pointing the nose back at the gory scene. No Thing 3 in sight. He keeps advancing at a crawl, thinking he must not see it in the weeds, or it’s in a rut made by the massive wheels. But still, he sees nothing. He makes a wide arc again, searching the ground for signs of roadkill zombie, but after a second pass, he sees nothing.