Matt and Alex Davies had committed suicide, lying together in their most intimate and vulnerable place.
Jessica wept, crying on the floor and utterly confused. Why had her parents taken their own lives? There were no sick people in front of the house threatening them. The house itself was untouched. Had they just given up?
The thought angered Jessica. How could her parents just give up? She stood up and began to scream, pulling her hair and shaking her head. Jessica looked at the dresser to her left and ran her hands down it, throwing all the photographs, jewelry, and miscellaneous stuff onto the floor. She turned the dresser over, watching the mirror fall to the ground and shatter. A flat screen television was mounted to the wall behind her and Jessica tore it off its mount, watching it suffer the same fate as the mirror, as electronic pieces scattered everywhere.
Melissa looked away from the couple on the bed, her hands covering her mouth as she cried.
When Jessica stopped wrecking the room, she went back down to her knees and lay her head on the edge of the bed, gripping the sheets and pulling them to her, biting down on the edge of them.
Melissa heard a crash and ran to the top of the stairs. She looked down and saw a hand coming through the door. She ran back into the room and put her hands on Jessica’s shoulders.
“Sweetie, we gotta go.”
“No,” Jessica yelled.
Sweat began to trickle off Melissa’s brow.
“We can’t stay here. That thing is almost in the house.” More banging. “And it may not be alone.”
Jessica kept her face on the bed.
“Just leave me here. Let me just give up and die here like them.”
A stern look came across Melissa’s face. She put her hands on Jessica’s chin and forced her to look at her.
“You’re not gonna do that to me, you hear me? You didn’t give up on me when I lost the love of my life and I am damn sure not going to give up on you. There’s still a life for us out there. And my son is out there. I need you, Jessica.”
Jessica looked at her parents. The intrusion downstairs continued.
“Please,” Melissa said.
Two beasts fought their way into the house.
While they were lucky that Ross Street had been mostly void of the dead, Jessica and Melissa knew that attention would be drawn to the home now.
The creatures stared up the stairs at the two women and howled. Jessica waited for the first one to make it halfway up the stairs before drawing the pistol and taking two shots to hit it in the head. The beast, a man in its previous life, fell back and sent its formally woman companion tumbling down the stairs. Jessica and Melissa hurried down to the bottom level, Jessica stopping to put a bullet through the head of the female, pinned under the male creature and flailing her arms everywhere. The gun sang and the arms fell.
Before running to the door, Jessica ran into the living room and grabbed a family photo sitting on the coffee table, as well as the picture of her and her mom off the wall, the one that Melissa had seen earlier.
“They are coming,” Melissa called.
Jessica ran to the door and took one last look back into her childhood house. It wouldn’t sink in until later that she would never be back here. But she wiped her eyes and ran to the van.
Melissa sat in the driver’s seat, waving Jessica into the van. The sliding side door was open and Jessica jumped in. The van was moving before she was able to slide the door shut or put her seat belt on, and the sharp turn out of the yard that Melissa made almost slung Jessica out of the vehicle. She held on and managed to shut the door, securing herself with the seatbelt once the van straightened.
More beasts had gathered on Ross Street and the two women knew that they were lucky to get out of the house when they did. The undead were walking over from the main street of the neighborhood, and blocked the entire side of the street that they had arrived from.
Jessica pointed to her right. “Go that way. There’s a back entrance out of the neighborhood.”
Melissa nodded and followed Jessica’s direction, moving away from the horde of the undead. They reached the back of the neighborhood with little resistance, and Melissa headed left down a back road.
“About a quarter mile ahead, you can take a left and you’ll see signs for the interstate.”
Melissa tapped the brakes as they approached the turn and moved the wheel counterclockwise. She saw the sign for the interstate and veered to the right to take the ramp.
Jessica put her head back against the seat. Like Melissa with Walt, she was allowed no time to mourn. The two women had experienced loss in similar but different forms, both extreme.
Melissa turned around and looked at Jessica.
“Are you okay, honey?”
As she was turned around, a deer ran in front of the van.
“Look out!” Jessica screamed, pointing to the deer.
Eyes wide, Melissa swerved hard to the right. The van lost control and began to roll. Jessica tensed and tried to hold on to the seat in front of her, but it was useless. The van flipped three times before coming to a stop right side up.
Jessica shook her head as the van ceased to roll. Instantly, her head hurt and her neck felt like a piece of gum. She put her head into her palm and felt the warm blood before the scent of iron hit her nose.
Her vision came back and she saw Melissa slumped over, her face in the air bag; she wasn’t moving.
When Jessica tried to free herself to help her, the pain hit like a fire in her shoulder. Her collarbone was broken.
Behind her, she heard a rumbling coming toward them. She looked in the rearview mirror and saw through the cracked window a white vehicle approaching them.
“Oh shit,” she said. If her only experience with the living, since everything had changed, was any sign of things to come, they were in trouble.
“Melissa,” she yelled out to no response.
The engine stopped next to their van as Jessica stirred, trying to come up with an idea of how to get out.
Multiple gunshots rang through the air. Jessica jumped, feeling the pain in her shoulder as her body jolted.
She looked out the window and saw the vehicle. It was an ambulance.
The passenger side door of the ambulance opened and she watched a well-built, dark man, pull a gun up to chin height and unload a clip into one of the beasts.
Their eyes met. He ran over to the van and looked through the window at her.
“We gotta get y’all out of there,” the EMT said. “Open up!”
Jessica sat up, disoriented, with little sense of where she was. Pain hit her shoulder immediately and she grimaced. A hand touched her good shoulder, giving it a slight push.
“Lie back, miss. You’re going to be alright.”
She blinked a few times and looked up to see the man who had pulled her out of the van.
“Where am I?”
The man checked her heartbeat with a stethoscope, found that her beats were getting back to normal, and wrapped it around his neck.
“You’re in an ambulance. The wreck was really bad. Your collarbone is broken and you likely suffered a concussion.”
Jessica looked around the ambulance and tried to sit up again.
“Whoa,” the EMT said. “Just relax.”
“Where is Melissa?”
He put his hand up, palm out, urging her to calm down.
“She’s fine. We called in a second ambulance to come get her. She was worse off than you. Knocked out. But she’s going to be fine.”
Jessica put her hand to her forehead, feeling her head wound for the first time. Raising her left arm wasn’t easy, but her right arm, which had slammed against the door and broken her collarbone, wouldn’t move up at all.
“My name is Lawrence. What’s yours?”
“Jessica.”
He smiled. “Nice to meet you, Jessica. Sorry it’s under this circumstance.”
Jessica couldn’t even crack a small smile, but she gave Lawrenc
e a nod. He was attractive, and she wanted to smile, but in this moment of pain, loss, and grief, she couldn’t muster it up. Not even for the man who’d saved her, the second stranger in two days to complete the task.
A small bag sat on a flat surface near her and she saw the photographs she’d taken from her parents’ house poking out of the top of it. She closed her eyes, letting out a sigh of relief that the memories weren’t lost.
“Do you know what happened?” Jessica asked.
Lawrence filled his cheeks and let out a large breath. “Melissa, right? She must have swerved…”
Jessica cut him off. “I mean with the people outside.”
Lawrence frowned and shook his head. “We have some theories, but we aren’t sure. Watching them all fall down, it’s something I just can’t even begin to try and understand.”
Jessica squinted. “Fall down?”
He glared at her. “Where were you when it happened?”
Jessica thought back to the moment when the elevator door opened and she’d seen the frightened people on the 8th floor of the hotel.
“I wasn’t around any people,” she said, remembering the time lapse between leaving the front desk, going down to housekeeping and dry storage where she was alone, and then up to the rooms where she first saw the people who were sick.
Lawrence took a deep breath and crossed his arms over his knees, using his tongue to wet his lips so that he could speak clearly.
“I was out on an emergency call. My partner and I were called over to a recreational park where a man had had a heart attack while playing softball. Guess the guy was past his prime.
“I was performing mouth-to-mouth on the man when I heard a collective gasp. My partner, Robin, was down. I shook her, checked her for a pulse, and found that she wasn’t breathing. Chest compressions did nothing for her.
“When I looked around, I saw that most of the people in the park had fallen. Everyone who didn’t fall just stood there, confused and frightened.
“Then, moments later, it happened.”
“The bodies rose?” Jessica said.
Lawrence nodded.
“I was lucky. I was distracted, in utter shock of everything, as I watched people begin to eat people. Then, Robin grabbed me. I honestly don’t remember how I got away, but I did.”
“Oh my God!” Jessica said.
Lawrence laughed. “Something tells me He was involved.”
Jessica cocked her head. “God?”
Lawrence shrugged. “That’s my theory at least. I believe in the book of Revelation. And I think we witnessed the Rapture. Only, while the Bible describes people disappearing, I think only their souls disappeared. And that thing we see left is nothing but a vacant shell.”
Jessica only listened, didn’t respond. Her faith had always been shaky at best, and the past 48 hours hadn’t done much to help it.
“Anyways, I was able to get a small group of survivors into the ambulance and head back to the hospital. That’s where we’re headed.”
“Is it safe?”
Lawrence nodded. “We were able to quarantine ourselves in the west wing of the building. We aren’t strong in numbers, but we have power, supplies, food. You’ll be taken care of there.”
Jessica lay her head down and let out a sigh.
Turning away from Jessica, Lawrence began to put together a syringe. He loaded it and flicked it twice, making sure the medicine was set.
“We will be there soon, but I want to give you an anesthetic. You need to sleep and you won’t be able to through the pain. This should put you out enough where we can work on you once we get there, in just a few minutes. This isn’t our normal procedure, but I don’t think that much matters anymore.”
Jessica smiled.
“Thank you,” she told him.
Lawrence smiled back. “Just relax.”
He found a vein in her arm and injected the anesthetic into it.
Within moments, the roof of the van became cloudy. Jessica’s head fell over and the last thing she saw before she fell asleep was the picture of her parents’ smiling faces, hanging out of the bag.
Chapter 19
Will
When they reached the front of the aisle, Will realized the racking extended all the way to the wall, trapping them. He flashed the light at the racks and saw that each rack was filled with pallets of large, metal blocks.
He tried to move one of the pallets so that they could duck through the racks, but it didn’t budge.
The Empties, now in a group of nearly twenty, inched closer by the moment.
“What are we gonna do?” Holly cried.
Will looked up. He threw the gun around to his back and looked over to Holly.
“Shine the light up there.”
Holly pointed the light at the racks and Will climbed five feet to the second level, standing on the orange beam and using the objects on the pallet next to him for balance.
“Come on!” he yelled down, reaching his hand down to help her up.
She grabbed his hand and Will pulled her up to the second level of the racking. Holly flashed the light down to see the Empties only yards away.
“We have to get higher,” Will said.
He reached up and grabbed the beam above his head, pulling himself up, thankful for the pull-up bar under his bathroom door at home. One of the pallets at the top was empty, and Will spread across it on his belly, extending his arms down to Holly.
When she reached up, she slipped on one of the slick metal beams.
Will reached down and caught the arm of the screaming girl just as she was about to fall. He had a tight hold on her forearms and worked to pull her up, grimacing as his biceps bulged through his shirt.
Below her, one of the Empties screamed back at her, grabbing her legs.
She began to panic, kicking her legs as she felt the slimy dead hands wrap around her ankles.
“I’ve got you!” Will yelled. “Hang on!”
It began to dig its worn nails into her calf as it scratched and pulled. Holly let out a scream that echoed through the facility, tears rolling down her face.
Will grunted as he pulled, fighting the surprising strength of the creature below. Her frantic kicking wasn’t making things any easier, either.
Rapid shots rang through the air as Empties at the back of the pack began to fall. Will could only see black outlines disappear, and he heard each let out a grizzly yell as they hit the concrete.
The Empty let go of Holly’s leg and Will finally pulled her up to the top level.
The gunshots of a semi-automatic weapon continued to scream off the walls.
Will pointed the light down to the ground and saw the creature that had a grip on Holly fall to the ground, losing its head in the process.
Once he knew that Holly was secure, Will panned the light across the ground, seeing the collection of dead bodies stacked in rows on the ground.
Will shined the light a little further on and saw a black man carrying an assault rifle and looking up at them.
Holly squinted her eyes.
“Marcus?”
The man nodded and let out an echoing laugh.
The three of them moved back into the office part of the building where there was light.
With a smile across his face and the assault rifle over his shoulder, Marcus followed Will and Holly through the door into the office. He wore a neatly kempt mustache on his face and had matching hair on his chin, though they didn’t connect. His eyes were as bright as his smile, but his scent was dull and reeked of his reality—several hours trapped in a small room.
Marcus gave Holly a hug, letting his chin rest on her shoulder. “It’s good to see you, Ms. McNeil.”
“Likewise,” she said back.
They broke their embrace and Marcus looked over to Will, extending his hand to him.
“Thanks,” Marcus said.
Will chuckled as he accepted the hand. “I should be thanking you.”
Marcus shook
his head. “Nah, man. You all distracted them long enough for me to get out of there. Once I heard the gunshots, I put my ear to the door. The scratching and awful scream of those things stopped pretty quick after the shots. I counted to a hundred then got out of the room and came to find y’all.”
“Well, thanks, regardless,” Will said.
Marcus nodded. He looked over to Holly. “How is everyone else?”
She bowed her head and didn’t respond.
“They’d be doing a lot better if that asshole wasn’t over there holding a leash on everyone,” Will chimed in.
“What?” Marcus asked.
“That asshole, David Ellis,” Will said with a smile.
Marcus approached Will, glaring at him the entire time he moved closer. He stood about a foot away from Will now.
“You ever think that maybe you’re the asshole?” Marcus asked.
Will scoffed and said, “Yeah. The asshole who just saved your shit ‘cause that pussy didn’t wanna come do it.”
Marcus threw Will against the wall and pressed his forearm against Will’s throat, pinning him against the drywall.
“I don’t know who the fuck you are, man, but I’m not gonna let you talk about my friend like that, okay? David is a good man,” Marcus said.
Will was hardly able to get a small chuckle out through the arm on his throat. “Yeah? Well, if that prick is your idea of a friend, maybe I should have just let those things tear your ass apart.”
Anger spread across Marcus’ face and he sent a soaring left through the air and connected with the right side of Will’s face, just below his eye.
“Marcus! Marcus, stop!” Holly yelled.
He turned and looked at her.
“He’s right, Marcus,” she said. “It’s not the same. He isn’t the same.”
“What do you mean?” Marcus asked.
She began to sob, lightly. “He’s over there trying to control everyone. Tell everyone what to do.”
“He’s the boss,” Marcus said.
She shook her head. “No, Marcus. This is different. He’s acting like some kind of dictator or mayor or something. Like he’s trying to start a new community within that fucking building and make himself the king. Besides, you think he’s still our boss?”
Empty Bodies Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 13
