Life of the Dead (Book 2): Road of the Damned Read online

  Bolivar wondered if the girl was still alive or if she and her family were victims of the plague, or the zombies. If she was alive, how long would that last? How long was anything going to last now?

  The beach was empty that morning and he knew somewhere inside that the bombings hadn't limited the chaos to Philadelphia. It couldn’t be that easy. He was always skeptical about apocalyptic predictions, even the ones in the bible, but his thoughts on that were evolving. Bol thought the end was near, but he tried to push that aside as he closed the trunk and turned back to the ocean.

  He saw that Peduto had collapsed into the water. He dropped the bottle and ran into the waves, his long strides kicking up liquid, but by the time he got there she was dead.

  Bolivar stood in the gray, waist deep murkiness of the Atlantic and raised her face above the water. He reached into the holster of her waistband and took out her M1911 pistol. He wasn’t even sure if it would fire after taking a swim in the ocean. He shook it out as best he could and saw there was already a round chambered and the safety was, of course, off.

  Bol pressed the barrel tight to the skin between her eyebrows and pulled the trigger. The surrounding water turned crimson.

  He let the tide take her.

  3

  After almost 10 hours of driving, Wim spotted Ramey on the road. At first he wasn’t sure. A good quarter of a mile stood between them but the road was straight and his eyesight above average. Three vehicles had collided in the middle of the street and she stood there amidst them.

  He stopped the Bronco less than 10 feet from the scene. Her back was turned toward him and as her body flailed, her struggle became obvious. Someone, or something, in one of the crashed cars had hold of her arm.

  “Ramey!” he yelled.

  She half-turned and, when that happened, Wim realized the thing holding her arm was a zombie. As soon as her attention became diverted, it bit down on her forearm and took away a mouthful of flesh.

  Wim’s temporary joy disappeared in a flash. He grabbed a .38 from a holster on his belt and in one swift move raised and fired. The zombie that chewed on Ramey crumpled sideways, a black dot on its forehead and brains leaking from the back of its skull.

  With the zombie dispatched, he ran toward the cars. Toward Ramey. She’d fallen to her knees and clutched the wound on her arm. Blood seeped through her fingers.

  “Oh, hell. You got bit.” This is all my fault, he thought. I distracted her when I hollered and that thing bit her. It was just like he thought when this mess started, he was cursed. And now he was cursing everyone around him. Why did I ever leave the farm?

  She looked up at him. Her turquoise blue eyes pained and terrified.

  And that’s when he finally got a good look at her face. This wasn’t Ramey.

  The eyes were wrong, the lips, the skin, the age. He’d been so eager to find the girl that he assumed the first female he saw was her. But that didn’t change the fact that this woman was in trouble.

  “You’ve got to help me,” she said. Her words came out rapid fire, frantic. Her eyes spilled tears. “Please, man.”

  Wim collected himself. This was still his fault, and he wanted to do whatever he could. But what was there to be done? “What can I do?”

  “Cut it off!”

  “What?”

  “My arm! Cut it off!”

  He thought he’d heard wrong. “What did you say?”

  “Cut my fucking arm off, man! Before it’s too late!”

  No, he heard right the first time. “I have a machete in the truck.”

  “Get it!”

  Wim sprinted to the Bronco and dug through the guns and ammunition in the back seat until he came across the old machete. He’d included it on a whim. He assumed he might need it to chop at a fallen tree branch or some random menial task. Not amputate a stranger’s arm. But he grabbed it nonetheless.

  The woman had collapsed on the pavement by the time he got back to the wreckage. Pain riddled her face and she rocked back and forth.

  “Hurry you asshole!”

  The bite seeped blood about halfway between her wrist and elbow. He held her hand against the road and raised the machete overhead. She watched him.

  “You might ought to close your eyes.”

  Rage filled the look she shot his way, but she did as told.

  Wim swung the machete down. It sliced into her flesh two inches below the elbow. The woman shrieked. But the limb was still attached. Blood shot out from the fresh cut and within seconds the pavement looked like someone had dropped a gallon of red paint on the road.

  He swung again and the bone broke. A third swing finally finished it off.

  Wim pulled off his flannel shirt and tore off the sleeve. He tied it off at her elbow and the gushing blood slowed to a weak trickle. That's when he realized she’d gone unconscious.

  He knelt at her side to wait and see what, if anything, would happen. As soon as he did he heard scraping sounds against the hot asphalt. He jumped up and found two zombies behind the wrecked cars. One, a woman in her 30’s, the other a little girl with a chestnut colored ponytail. They looked like mother and daughter. Cuts and scrapes covered their exposed skin. Wim noticed one of the vehicles, a Hyundai sedan, was missing its windshield and guessed they’d been thrown out in the wreck.

  With his .38, he first shot the mother in the head. She crumpled to the ground and the daughter looked down at the dead woman. She almost looked confused. Wim was thankful she wasn’t looking at him because he shot her too. She fell atop her mother and both stayed down.

  A few yards beyond them, a man with a crew cut crawled on his hands and knees. He came from the general direction of a black Wrangler, the third vehicle in the crash. When he caught site of Wim, he reached out with a bloodied arm and growled. Several of his teeth had been snapped off leaving jagged shards that looked like fangs inside his mouth. Wim shot that zombie too.

  His ears rang from all the gunshots and he couldn't hear something move behind him. Didn’t hear the dragging of feet across pavement. Didn’t hear the throaty gasps that came inches from his head.

  If the zombie had gone in head first and bit him, he’d have been a goner. But it grabbed him by the shoulder instead and tried to pull him close. In his shock, he stumbled a step backward and his back pressed against a woman’s soft chest. Only one hand held him and it didn't take much of a guess to deduce the identity of his attacker.

  The zombie lunged for the side of his face but Wim turned his head just in time. The zombie hit the back of his head, jaws snapping. He felt pain as something pulled his hair and Wim jerked himself forward. A clump of hair came out by the roots and as he turned, he found a shock of his black locks in the woman’s mouth.

  She opened her jaws and her tongue pushed out as if trying to expel the hair. Wim took a few steps back. Her arm had quit bleeding entirely now that she was dead and her eyes had taken on that too familiar dull gaze. They turned to him and, for a moment, he thought he saw anger flash.

  Wim imagined he deserved her rage. Maybe she’d have been able to get away from first zombie if he hadn’t opened his big trap. Maybe she could have saved herself, but instead he came along and sealed her fate. Wim had no idea how many zombies he’d killed so far, but this was the first person whose actual death he caused. He wanted to forget it. To push this incident somewhere deep inside where it could only leak out in nightmares. Perhaps the ability to do that would come in time, but for now, the only thing he could do was kill her again. So that’s what he did.

  4

  The light burned so bright Emory could see it with his eyes closed. So bright he wondered if it was THE light. Before his eyes could adjust, he heard coughing and he doubted there was coughing in Heaven. His eyelids fluttered, then opened, and he saw he was in the backseat of a car or perhaps a van. He tried to sit up but a deep ache in his chest put an end to that. He groaned from the pain.

  “Oh, shit! Oh, shit, bro! He’s a zombie!”

  “Shoot hi
m! Quick! Do it!”

  The vehicle in which he was riding swerved back and forth across the road. Emory heard rummaging from the front seat and fought to catch his breath long enough to speak. The distinctive sound of a round of ammunition being chambered in a pistol was the encouragement he needed.

  “I’d prefer you don't shoot me. I promise I’m harmless.” He rushed the word out via a mouthful of air. Emory tried to raise his hands in surrender, only to realize he couldn’t move his arms. He tried his legs with the same lack of results.

  “You think he’s okay, bro?”

  “I never heard one of them talk.”

  “Good point.”

  The vehicle slowed, and the tires crunched against gravel before coming to a stop. The men who occupied the front seats turned and stared at him. They wore handkerchiefs over their mouths like wild west outlaws. The one in the passenger seat held a pistol. He looked to his friend. Both were no more than 20-years-old.

  “How do we know he’s still human?” the one with the gun asked.

  “I don’t know. We have to ask him something only a real person could know. Like what’s the square root of 400?”

  “Twenty,” Emory said.

  “Is that right, bro?”

  “I don’t know."

  “It’s correct. I assure you." Emory glanced downward and discovered jumper cabled binding his hands and feet together. “Would you gentlemen please untie me?”

  The duo exchanged glances, then nodded at each other.

  As they freed him, they explained to Emory how they had rescued him from the zombies near the electronics store. That had been three days ago and Emory'd been unconscious ever since. They told him he grabbed his chest before he passed out. After hearing that, Emory took a deep breath and felt like he’d been kicked in the sternum by a horse. He’d suffered a minor heart attack more than a decade earlier and normally carried nitroglycerin pills, but had neglected to bring them along when Christopher showed up, frantic over his aunt. Remembering Christopher caused a different ache in his chest.

  The bros' names were Andy and Vince and they weren’t brothers in the way Emory was familiar. They were Rho Iota Pi fraternity brothers who attended the Pitt main campus in Oakland. There was a third with them when they rescued Emory. They didn’t go into much detail aside from sharing that his name was Bill and that he didn’t make it.

  For them, the chaos started when another fraternity brother suddenly attacked people inside the frat house. “Everyone he bit turned into a fucking zombie bro!” was how it was described. Emory wasn’t sure if they were calling him bro if they were calling the zombies bros. The men escaped in the fraternity’s transport van. They were fleeing the city when they saw Emory collapse in the street.

  “Even though you’re old, we couldn’t just let you get eaten,” Vince said.

  “I very much appreciate that.”

  They'd been driving aimlessly for three days, hoping to find a place that wasn't filled with zombies but their efforts were fruitless. Along with Pittsburgh, the cities of Cleveland, Columbus, and Harrisburg were overrun. They were debating whether to check Philadelphia or Baltimore next.

  “Philly was busted even before zombies,” Andy said with a laugh and he looked to Emory. “Am I right?”

  Emory didn’t have a chance to answer, not that he knew the proper response, before Andy started coughing. He pulled off the handkerchief covering his mouth and spit a wad of red tinged mucous into the grass.

  “This cold sucks, bro,” Andy said as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  He died later that day.

  They were heading south and had just crossed the border between Maryland and West Virginia. Andy was riding shotgun and Vince was so busy focusing on the road ahead that he didn’t realize his fraternity brother was dead, until he came back.

  Emory saw Zombie Andy reach for Vince.

  “Vincent, watch out!” Emory yelled.

  Vince glanced over just in time to see Andy snarling and leaning in for a bite. He hit the brakes, and the van threatened to careen out of control as it swayed back and forth. Somehow, he kept it on the road.

  Emory leaned forward and reached between Andy and the passenger side door. He grabbed the handle and shoved it open.

  “Push him out!”

  Vince gave Andy a hard shove and the zombie toppled backward, tumbling head over feet out of the van. Emory watched him bounce and roll. When the momentum of the fall expended itself, Andy stood up. The fall had skinned his face to the bone, but he ambled along nevertheless.

  Vince stopped the van just a few miles up the road, at the outskirts of Berkeley Springs. No one living or dead was in sight. Vince shut off the engine and looked at Emory in the backseat. Emory noticed the boy’s eyes were blood red.

  “That will happen to me too, won't it?” Vince asked.

  Emory swallowed hard. He knew the answer. “I believe nothing is a certainty.”

  Vince pulled the handkerchief over his head, revealing thick, green snot that ran from his nostrils. His lips were chapped and raw. He used the rag to blow his nose.

  “That’s nice of you to say.” Vince handed Emory the keys. “You take these.”

  He opened the door and hopped out.

  “What are you doing, Vince?”

  Vince flashed a goofy smile which made him look five years younger.

  “You try to find somewhere safe. I’m going back to find Andy. Bros for life, right?”

  He extended his fist. Emory was familiar with fist bumping thanks to Christopher, and he obliged. That made Vince’s smile even bigger.

  “I’m glad we saved you from the zombies.”

  Vince turned away and jogged along the highway.

  “I am too, Vince. I am too.”

  Emory exited the back seat and climbed behind the wheel. He restarted the engine, but took another look at Vince in the rear view before pulling back on the road and leaving him behind.

  5

  Almost immediately, Ramey regretted leaving the farm and Wim. Not because she was scared. She was, of course. It would be insane to not be scared in what the world had become. And not because she felt helpless. She was no fighter, but she’d handled herself pretty well all things considered. But she was lonely, and the quiet was wearing her down. The radio recited nothing but static and the old pick up didn’t even have a cassette player.

  The steady rumble of the mud tires against the asphalt was anything but soothing. Every time she rounded a curve she expected to drive into a crowd of zombies, or slam into an abandoned car, or maybe drive off a cliff. If someone else was along, she’d have a second set of eyes and someone to talk to, or to listen.

  The thought of turning around and driving back to the farm sounded better with each passing mile and it was only her pride that kept her from doing just that. Well, pride and the fact that she doubted she’d be able to return to the farm without getting lost along the way.

  She’d been using Stan the now dead trucker’s map to navigate, but she’d already made her share of wrong turns. She knew she needed to go south and kept finding roads that sent her in that direction. Without the route markers, she was liable to end up back in New York if she wasn’t careful. The further she drove, the more she realized finding that X on her father’s map was nothing but a fool’s errand.

  She was tired, hungry, and felt close to breaking. And while she couldn’t do anything about the latter, she hoped taking care of the first two issues might get her back on track. About twenty miles later, she spotted a roadside convenience store and pulled in.

  Millions of chunks of safety glass littered the macadam in front of the shattered double doors of the entryway. Ramey felt them dig into her shoes as she walked over them. Inside, someone had dislodged and upended many of the shelves. She noticed some merchandise was missing entirely - like cigarettes and snuff - but most of the items were still in stock if you didn’t mind picking it off the floor.

  Ramey grabbed an
assortment of candy bars from the piles and shoved a few into her pockets. She tore the wrapper off a Snickers and took a bite, then moved on for something more nutritious.

  “Jackpot,” she said as she spied a jumble of beef jerky under an overturned rack of magazines.

  Her hands were full though, and she moved toward the counter in search of some bags. Before she could get them, a voice from behind stopped her.

  “You planning to steal all that?”

  The voice was a man’s and carried no humor but she attempted a charming smile as she turned around. When she saw him she was relieved to see he looked about her age. Three or four years older at the most. He was scrawny, but tall and she imagined he could have been a basketball player on just about any high school team around so long as he could walk without tripping over his own feet. But he also had long, greasy hair, rings through both eyebrows and earlobes stretched to the size of fifty cent pieces.

  “Left my wallet in the truck.” She kept the smile, hoping to get one in return. She did not.

  “This is my store.”

  She thought the man looked nervous. Maybe even a little scared. Ramey was always confident in her ability to talk her way out of trouble and decided to give it a shot.

  “Then shouldn’t you be wearing one of those shirts that says, ‘My name’s Bill’?”

  “It’s in the laundry.”

  Was that a hint of a smile? She thought so. “Is it now?”

  He nodded. “And it’s Danny. My name, I mean.”

  “I’m Ramey.”

  Danny moved behind the counter. He pointed to a picture on the wall showing a middle-aged man holding up a plaque that read, “Region’s #1 Franchise.” “That was my dad. Owned this place for almost 20 years. I’ve been working here since I was this high.” He held his hand up to his narrow waist. “Even though he’s gone now, I hate to see people like you tearing it apart.”