ROTD (Book 3): Rage of the Dead

by Dyson, Jeremy

  Claire scans the map and looks up at the small town.

  “It doesn’t show all of these streets,” she says. “Just the highway.”

  “This might get messy,” I warn everyone.

  Stitch starts growling and barking in the back of the truck.

  To make matters worse, as we come down the hill, nearly every stiff in town can hear our vehicles. Before we even reach the first intersection, there are corpses all over the road. I couldn’t even avoid hitting them if I tried, so I just try to keep the pickup moving and hope we can make it through this hellhole before the thing is completely destroyed.

  Dead bodies smash into the hood, grab on to the mirrors and try to pull their decaying bodies up into the truck bed. Most of them are too weak and fall off, but some of them cling to the chassis until Fletcher puts a bullet in them.

  I decide to stay along the main street as long as I can, and only turn at the closest thing I see to a major intersection. The only problem is I can’t see a thing.

  A decayed corpse splits in half as I run into the thing and the upper body crashes against the windshield. The man with long, dark black hair snaps his jaws at the glass. I swerve to try and shake him free, but the stiff somehow ends up impaled on the driver side windshield wiper.

  More of the dead crash into the grill and crunch beneath the tires as the truck rumbles over their withering bodies. The thing on the windshield bangs on the glass. Teeth crack off its decomposing jaws as the corpse tries to bite through the barrier. It smears dark sludge and decayed bodily fluid on the window, which obscures my view of the street more each time the thing moves.

  I think I spot a road to the right. It might possibly be a bridge that crosses the river.

  I crank the wheel, but cut the turn too close to a garbage truck in the road. The rear fender of the trash hauler scrapes along the side of the pickup and damages the rear tire. It goes flat within seconds. The truck swerves down the pavement with the corpse still blocking my line of sight, but the powerful engine drives us forward.

  “Come on,” I say to the truck, as if I could will it to get us through this mess.

  I push the gas down more and run down anything in my way. We won’t make it very far in this truck, but maybe we can at least get out of town. I glance back in the mirror to make sure Fletcher is still hanging on and Hoff is still behind us. Sparks fly off the rear rims of the pickup as they grind on the asphalt.

  Then I plow into a wall of the dead. There are so many of them the truck skids off the road, smashes through a streetlight, and then it rumbles through some bushes down a hill. Water splashes the windshield and the corpse that is somehow still attached to the wiper.

  For a moment, I am terrified we’re being pulled down a river. I turn my head to look out the side window and see it’s only a small creek.

  “Everyone out,” Fletcher yells as he climbs out the back of the truck. “Hurry up.”

  I grab my rifle, pop open the door, and hop down into the creek. I wade around the truck and grab Claire by the arm. We stomp up the hill through the bramble of shrubs behind Scout and Steven as he clutches his son in his arms and struggles to climb to the top of the ditch.

  I look around as we get back to the road. The dead are coming at us from every direction except for the small wooded area around the creek where the pickup crashed.

  Hoff has the other vehicle idling in the middle of the street. He gets out and takes a couple shots at the approaching dead as he makes his way around the back of the SUV. Natalie and Danielle begin firing from the rear windows as Blake slides over to get behind the wheel.

  The mutt runs circles around Fletcher, barking and growling at the dead, the hair on his neck bristling. Fletcher opens the rear hatch of the SUV and the dog immediately shuts up and hops in the back. Steven puts his son inside and then climbs in as well.

  The vehicle is crammed full except for the passenger seat.

  “Get in, Scout,” Fletcher tells her.

  “We’re not leaving you,” she says.

  “Go on,” Hoff urges her. “Get them out of town.”

  “We’ll be right behind you,” Fletcher assures her. “Go!”

  I can tell Scout still doesn’t want to go, but Stevie is in the vehicle. She turns and opens the door and climbs into the passenger seat. A second later, Blake hits the gas, and the tires squeal as he speeds off, leaving us stranded in the middle of a town that is overrun by the dead.

  Thirty-three

  Just when I started to convince myself that I might make it through this shit alive, reality comes back and bites me in the ass.

  “Let’s get moving,” Hoff says.

  We start running up the road in the direction the others left. My feet squish in the soggy soles of my waterlogged boots with every step.

  I can’t even see the edge of town from where we are, but I know it can’t be too far. As long as we keep moving, we stand a chance. There are a lot of these things but they are dispersed across the road so we maneuver through the slow-moving corpses without too much trouble.

  As much as I want to plant my feet and shoot every last one of them, I know that would only get us killed. Right now, our rifles only serve as melee weapons to keep them from getting too close. Trying to fire from the hip while on the move would just waste bullets, and draw even more attention to ourselves.

  So we keep running.

  “We need to find another ride,” says Fletcher.

  “No way,” Hoff pants. “We’re not fucking around out here. Too risky.”

  “We can’t fucking walk to Colorado,” I agree.

  Up ahead the street expands to four lanes. The stretch of road is lined with fast food chains and strip malls. It still must be at least a mile or two before the edge of town because all I see in the distance are more buildings and corpses.

  “Look,” Fletcher says. He nods his head toward a hotel on the left side of the road. Outside the entrance, a shuttle van is parked in the roundabout.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Hoff says.

  “I’ll just run in and grab the keys,” Fletcher says. “You won’t even know I’m gone.”

  “Fletcher,” Hoff gasps.

  Fletcher pretends not to hear him as he veers left and starts sprinting across the opposing lanes of traffic. He dodges around the outstretched arms of a pair of corpses that attempt to grab him before he reaches the sidewalk. The guy has got to be ten or fifteen years older than me, but I have to say, he still has a lot of juice in the tank.

  “He can really move,” I say.

  “Fucking hotshot,” Hoff gasps.

  The two of us pick up the pace and run after him. By the time we reach the entrance to the parking lot, Fletcher has already disappeared through the revolving door to the lobby. Hoff and I trot up the driveway and post up by the shuttle. I take up a firing position at the rear bumper and scan the parking lot for targets while Hoff opens the shuttle bus door.

  “What are you doing?” I ask him.

  “This thing is old as hell. I can probably hotwire it,” Hoff says. “Would have told his dumb ass that if he didn’t run off before I got the chance.”

  I fire off a round at a cleaning lady coming up the sidewalk, then I twist around and unleash another burst at a couple of teenage kids in bloody tank tops and swim trunks. Even though the hotel parking lot isn’t nearly as bad as it was in the center of town, it’s still a target-rich environment. I take aim at a man wearing a torn shirt that exposes the mangled ruins of his sternum. My finger squeezes the trigger and the Honey Badger sends a round through his skull.

  It seems like it’s taking Fletcher too long. Even though I’m not even sure how long it has been.

  Thirty seconds, maybe. Maybe it’s been more like two minutes. I really have no idea.

  Time becomes subjective when you’re fighting for your life.

  “How’s it coming, Hoff?” I ask.

  “Almost got it,” he says.

  “It’s getting a litt
le too crowded out here,” I warn him before I pull the trigger again.

  A couple seconds later, the engine turns over and the shuttle bus rattles to life.

  “Hurry up,” he says. “Go grab Fletcher.”

  I hop up to my feet and run around the back of the shuttle and push the tinted glass pane of the rotating door. The thing spins around, and as I come out the other side, I nearly walk right into the arms of the dead.

  Several of them come at me in the lobby and I stumble back toward the door. My eyes dart around the room, but I don’t see Fletcher. All I see are countless dead faces coming at me from behind the counter, in the lounge, and down the hallway. Their eyes are all fixed on me. As I back away from them, I spot Fletcher’s rifle on the floor near the front desk.

  The dead must have got him.

  I retreat back to the rotating door and lean my back against it to get it to move. The doors turn around and then I’m back outside. For a second, I just stare at the door in shock, unsure what to do. Then the things start shoving their way outside so I turn and run for it. Hoff opens the door and I leap up the steps as the dead stagger out onto the sidewalk behind me.

  “Go!” I yell.

  “Where’s Fletcher?” Hoff says.

  “Fucking go!”

  Hoff hits the gas and the tires squeal as he cuts the vehicle sharply around in the driveway. We both look back at the entrance where the dead pour out of the building.

  “Is he still alive in there?” Hoff asks me.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “There were fucking zombies everywhere.”

  “You didn’t see him?” Hoff says.

  I shake my head.

  “We got to go back,” Hoff says.

  “We can’t,” I say. “You saw how many of those things there were.”

  Hoff brings a hand up to his brow and rubs it aggressively.

  “No way he could still be alive,” I tell Hoff. “Not in there. And even if he is, there’s nothing we can do for him now.”

  Hoff clutches the steering wheel with white knuckles. His eyes dart back to the side mirrors at the dead swarming around the hotel as we speed down the road.

  Once we get to the edge of town, the dead thin out, and the road opens up again. I collapse into the seat behind Hoff and take a deep breath. It is hard to grasp that Fletcher is gone, but part of me can’t help but feel like he did it to himself.

  It takes a real cocky asshole to run off like that. He could have just as easily gotten all of us killed. All it takes is one bad decision and then it’s game over. Fletcher should have known that by now.

  We travel for another mile on the highway until we spot the SUV in the parking lot of a shooting range.

  “There they are,” I tell Hoff.

  “I see them,” he says as he steers the shuttle bus on to the shoulder.

  Danielle waves to us from the open doorway, then turns and looks inside. We pull to a stop and the tires kick up a cloud of dirt. The rest of the group gathers out in front of the building. The sight of us returning in a shuttle bus brings smiles and excitement as they walk over to greet us.

  “You better let me tell them,” Hoff says. He pulls the lever to open the passenger door. “Just keep your mouth shut.”

  I can tell he doesn’t want to, but he feels like he needs to be the one to break the news. It wasn’t like I was exactly hoping to do it anyway.

  “All right,” I agree.

  Hoff grabs the railing and grunts as he hauls himself out of the seat. I wait while he climbs down the steps, and then I follow him out into the warm sun.

  “This is great,” Blake gestures at the truck. “How the hell did you pull this off?”

  Hoff walks around to meet them in front of the vehicle and raises his arms out in front of him to urge them to calm their excitement.

  They see me approach behind the big guy. Then everyone gets real quiet. Scout gets on her tiptoes and cranes her neck to look around us at the empty bus.

  “No,” Blake drops his shoulders and tilts his head back and looks up to the sky. He lets out a long sigh as he comprehends the situation. Danielle blinks away the tears in her eyes and pinches her lips together.

  “Where’s Fletcher?” Scout asks.

  Hoff just looks at her and shakes his head.

  “No,” Scout says. Her bottom lip quivers as she speaks.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “What happened?” Scout demands. I can see her hands trembling at her side.

  “We got separated,” Hoff says.

  “How?” Scout yells.

  “Fletcher went in to look for the keys to the bus,” Hoff says. “Never came back out.”

  “And you left him there?” Scout scolds him.

  “I tried to get to him,” I tell her. “But the dead were inside. There were just too many. They were all over the place.”

  “I’m going to get him,” she says.

  “There is no way he could still be alive in there,” I say.

  “You don’t know him,” Scout says to me.

  She walks over to the SUV and grabs a gun and her pack and starts walking back toward the road.

  “You can’t go back there, Scout,” Hoff says. She tries to walk by him, but he grabs her firmly by the arm. “You will just end up getting yourself killed. I’m not going to let you do it.”

  She tries to shrug her arm free, but Hoff grabs ahold of her and doesn’t let go, even as she tries to shove him away.

  “Damn it, Hoff,” she says. “Let go of me.”

  “We’ll wait here,” Hoff says. “Let’s just wait. We can’t do anything else.”

  He wraps his arms around Scout, and she buries her face in his chest and starts to cry.

  “We’ll wait here as long as we can,” Blake says. “Hopefully he’ll show up.”

  Only I know he won’t show up.

  None of them saw what I saw inside the hotel. I am sure Fletcher is dead. There isn’t a doubt in my mind.

  Even if I told them that, it probably wouldn’t make a difference. They’re going to believe what they want either way. It’s better to let it sink in slowly and they’ll accept it when they are ready.

  As much as I know that it is a waste of time to wait around here, I just keep my mouth shut and follow the rest of them inside.

  Thirty-four

  Most of the guns and ammunition in the shop at the rifle range has been cleared out. There aren’t any 5.56 mm rounds, but I find several boxes of ammo for the Honey Badger.

  It figures.

  Most people figure having a weapon that fires the most common ammunition would be their best bet if the shit hits the fan, which is exactly why that ammo is gone. No one wants to haul around a different caliber ammo and different barrels.

  It’s too much of a pain in the ass.

  Plus, you run the risk of someone that doesn’t know shit having a gun blow up in their hands. So plenty of the most expensive ammunition on the market just sits around in shops like these collecting dust.

  It’s kind of a shame that people are that stupid.

  Works out okay for me, though.

  After a couple hours of being stuck here, I start to get restless. I fill my empty mags and break down the Honey Badger and clean it again. Maybe I’m just trying to keep busy so I can avoid dealing with anyone. Or it might be that hearing Blake, Danielle and Scout talk about Fletcher starts to get to me and I just have to find a distraction so I can block it out.

  “Fletcher was always so alive,” Blake says. “Just never a dull moment with him. I always thought that he would somehow make it through all this without so much as a scratch.”

  “I think he felt the same way,” Scout agrees.

  Hearing them talk about Fletcher makes me think of Mac. I didn’t know Fletcher all that well, but he seemed to have the same kind of affect on those that knew him. It isn’t easy to lose someone like that. The most valuable people are those that provide a spark when all anyone around them can see is darkne
ss.

  No matter how much it might seem like someone is above the fray, none of us are anymore. We’re all in the shit, and there is only one way out of it. The rest of these people are just coming to terms with that.

  I sit there listening as I load and count my rounds of ammo, but there is only so much sorrow I can handle. I need to extract myself from the group.

  I walk to the front of the store and lean against the doorway. Across the parking lot, I spot Hoff. The Navy SEAL stands next to the hood of the shuttle and spits sunflower seeds in the dirt while he eyes the road. He might be hoping to see Fletcher, but he is really just waiting to see the first of the dead that will inevitably follow us down the highway from Española. It’s not a question of if the dead will come. The only uncertainty is how long it will take them to drag their broke-ass bodies this far.

  We don’t have to wait long before the dead appear on the horizon. As soon as Hoff sees them, he lowers his eyes and rolls up the package of sunflower seeds and tucks them back into the pocket of his camo fatigues. He sees me in the doorway as he turns around and waves his arm to let me know we need to go. Then he climbs into the shuttle bus.

  “Start packing up,” I announce to everyone inside. “We’re out of time.”

  Everyone grabs their things and heads back outside into the afternoon heat. We load up the trucks as the horde shambles toward us. Hoff waits behind the wheel of the shuttle watching Scout, Steven and his son climb in with the doctor and Claire. Natalie opens the rear hatch on the SUV and lets the dog hop inside while Blake and Danielle climb in the front.

  I decide I’d rather not listen to Blake talk out of his ass anymore, so I head for the crowded shuttle. If the shit hits the fan again, at least I will have a chance to help the doctor and Claire. At least that’s how I reasonably justify the decision to myself.

  We are all set to go by the time the dead are within a hundred yards of the truck, but Hoff holds the wheel and stares at the road for a long minute. I give him time, but eventually the dead get close enough to make me anxious.