The Dead Series (Book 2): Dead Is All You Get Read online

  CONTENTS

  Dead Is All You Get

  Complete Table of Contents

  A Simple Ask

  Acknowledgments

  The Playlist

  About the Author

  To the men and women who serve our country.

  If the zombie apocalypse ever did come to pass, I know you’d have our backs.

  “People don’t burn themselves, or drown themselves, if they got sense, do they? All them in that town were good, normal folks until that night. Then they just seemed to go crazy.”

  “Just relax, Mr. Jackson. Everything will be all right, but you must relax. You’ve been a sick man.”

  —MICHAEL CRICHTON, THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN

  IT WAS THAT KID—the “explorer.” The guy dressed in an Oxford shirt, skinny jeans and Tiger shoes and wearing Google Glass. He was the one I was worried about. I could’ve gone to Pappy’s, but that place is way too crowded. So I ended up at this greasehole. He had come in a little while ago and sat at the counter. I was sitting way in the back, choking down a grilled cheese that tasted like burnt cardboard. I wanted to stay invisible—needed to make sure I did nothing to draw his attention. Or he’d turn around and start recording me.

  And I didn’t want to be captured.

  The other people in there—the locals—they were okay. Or maybe not. Some of them could have been undead. Only you wouldn’t know it right away because they weren’t like the ones we encountered in the beginning. Lumbering and flat-eyed, coming at you to get a piece of your face or your neck. These little beauties were smart. They only showed themselves when they wanted to. And at this particular moment, they didn’t look like they were in the mood.

  You think I’m crazy. I’m not. Just cautious. Want to know why? Sure, you do. Don’t make me tell you. Because to tell you is to remember. And I don’t want to remember any of it. The people I lost. The pain I suffered—both physical and spiritual. That I’m even alive is a miracle. Yeah, about that. You see, the thing is with miracles? You only get one. And miracles were in short supply during those last dark days when we thought we had a way out but didn’t. When a few of us—a brave few—banded together to take it all back. Not only for us but for all the survivors. Don’t make me tell you.

  But you’ll insist, won’t you? Like a kid begging for a toy. As if this is some kind of campfire for Webelos and you’re craving a good story. Tell us, you’ll say. And you’ll hassle me till I do because foolishly I already recounted the facts as I remembered them up to now. How I lost my best friend to a vicious, creeping plague, and how I was a miserable coward who not only cheated on his wife but left the other woman—the bad woman—to die out there when I could have saved her. And she needed saving, trust me, but I wasn’t up for it.

  I didn’t stop there, did I? I told you how our town of Tres Marias became infested by an evil no one could have imagined. Normal, everyday people turning into dead—not dead—undead grasping things that hungered for the living, who didn’t quit till everything was cored out and soulless, like them. And how some who remained human—if that’s what you want to call them—fought to make slaves of the rest of us in a desperate attempt to reinvent the world in the image of a cool, fork-tongued madman. I don’t know why I told you all those things, but I did. Maybe it was because I’m a drunk, and sometimes drunks like to confess. Especially when we’re loaded. But I’m not loaded now. The constant pain keeps me sharp. Somehow you knew, didn’t you, that I would still have a need to purge myself of the writhing pestilence eating out my insides like a gale of guinea worms.

  Okay, that damned kid was walking over here—coming straight towards me. Probably had to use the toilet. It was too late to get up and move past him. That might make him suspicious. Then he’d turn on the camera and go to town. I had to think of something fast—he was looking right at me.

  I tripped him.

  His skinny body went flying—arms all over the place—and as he tried to catch himself, his head hit the corner of my table, snapping his headgear in two. There you go. Fifteen hundred bucks gone to shit. Groaning, he got to his feet and glared at me. I had already left money on the table, and when I slid out of the booth I made sure to crush his camera with my boot.

  “Hey!” he said and took a swing.

  I weaved and hit him in the gut hard, making him double over, and walked out of the coffee shop without looking back. No one tried to stop me. They were too busy looking at the explorer leaning against the table, holding what was left of his busted cool. All they would remember is some faceless guy wearing a Giants baseball cap. My truck was parked a few blocks away. No one followed me as I climbed in and headed back to the motel. Time to hit the road again.

  Dead. Not dead. Undead. Doesn’t begin to cover it. Because what I learned—what we learned, I think—is that everyone is dead in one way or another. Dead morals, dead conscience. Dead heart. We found a few you could trust—people like my wife Holly and my friends Warnick, Springer, Griffin and Fabian. But most of the other suckholes you couldn’t. Because for them it was about the lizard brain in all of us that will survive any way it can, even if it has to make you adapt and turn into something from a child’s night terror. But don’t kid yourself—it’s not nature and it’s not natural.

  That lizard brain—our old brain—has an agenda.

  I’m not crazy, I swear, but sometimes the dead speak to me. I hear them in my head. Asking questions. Offering advice. Sometimes I wish they’d shut the hell up. Mostly, they ask me how I’m doing. Great, I say. Couldn’t be better. Driving endlessly without sleep, surviving moment to moment, adrenaline rushing through my veins every time somebody blasts their car horn. Life is good. You believe me, right?

  And God.

  What do I even say to Him? That I am fallen but want to get better? That I hope I can be forgiven for all the wrongs—all the bad behavior? That despite all the mistakes I’ve made in my life, I think I deserve a chance? Would it matter? Will He throw me a bone?

  Khalil Gibran wrote, Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. At this moment I’m staring at my twin, but it’s through a wall of suffering that makes me doubt he’s really there. Yet I continue to look, hoping. I am not who I was. Too much has happened. Death has washed over me like a blood rinse, taking with it my eyes, my ears and my heart. It’s what happens when Hell sets up camp and starts barbecuing the locals like Ball Park Franks.

  It was getting dark. The 5 was a mess, so I decided to keep to the back roads, making sure to stay within the speed limit. There were a lot of cops around. Maybe they were looking for me. Who knows? I couldn’t afford to get pulled over—not in Bakersfield. Not with all these weapons. I had things to do.

  Still here?

  Don’t lie to me. Telling you this story won’t be cathartic—won’t be spiritually uplifting. Why? Because a good part of me has already died—in more ways than you could ever know. All I have left is sorrow. The kind that Time doesn’t heal because the wound is gangrenous and foul. The kind that is with you when you rise in an uncertain, fog-shrouded morning of another damn day you can’t face and when you close your eyes at night, with the blood-awful screaming of those soulless bastards still in your head. Whatever.

  But I really haven’t convinced you, have I? I didn’t think so. You don’t care that I have this long road ahead, with bad food and little sleep, the nightmares chasing me like rabid dogs. You want to know everything, even if it means I will die a little more. I can’t. Don’t make me. Please.

  All right, I’ll tell you.

  THE HORDE CAME from the west, driving us deeper into the forest. Warnick went ahead of us thro
ugh the fog, his face grim like the keynote speaker at a mortician’s convention. Springer remained at his side, his finger close to—but not on—the trigger of his battle-worn AR-15. Springer. That blonde kid from Santa Rosa, looking fresh out of high school, was born ready.

  Both stood silent and still, as if willing themselves to become part of the forest, unseen and unheard. We’d spent so much time together these past few months, I felt they were my brothers. I relied on them completely, and I hoped I was of some small benefit to them, even though they were experienced soldiers who’d served in Afghanistan and I was an amateur who’d learned to kill using an axe and a gun.

  I knew nothing about Warnick—not really—even though we had fought against draggers and the Red Militia. What I did know was that he was a man who put his trust in God. Around thirty, he was stocky and dad-like. He had saved me on many occasions, finally getting badly wounded himself. And with that worn, black, blood-soaked bible of his, he showed me the power of Faith, which—like miracles—was in short supply.

  I knew even less about Springer, who seemed too young to have seen combat. Maybe he was the miracle. Shot in the neck to almost dead in a blind alley, somehow he’d made it to our base and revealed to Warnick and the others the location where I was being held captive by the Red Militia, halfway to dead myself.

  So many debts to repay.

  A crow cawed plaintively high in the trees above us, but it didn’t give away our position. My heart thudded like a punch press on Red Bull. I turned to my wife, Holly, who stood behind me with our “adopted daughter” Griffin. Our dog, Greta—her ears forward—watched intently the clump of undead as they paraded through the mist like bent robots. The dog’s black and tan face was alert, her body tensed and ready. If they attacked us, she would bite and tear at them and—though unable to kill them because they were already dead—she would at least hobble them long enough for us to get away.

  Holly. I had almost lost her, not because of the craven stupidity of infidelity—although that would have been enough for any woman—but because I had in my “old life” demonstrated a cowardice she couldn’t fathom when I could have saved Missy, the adulterous young thing, from my undead friend Jim as he savaged her. Instead I chose to hide. In the months following that shameful act—when all this started—I had fought my way back to my wife on my belly like a legless dog—eating my own shit every inch of the way. And somehow I’d made her mine again, promising never to betray her or myself. Thank God she believed me.

  Holly, with her fine blonde hair and huge green eyes. She didn’t just pick me up—she made me right. I’d fallen away from Life, from God, from everything that mattered, and she’d brought me back. I may have owed others my life but I owed Holly my soul. When I confessed this to her in a moment of extreme weakness, her response was so Holly.

  “No charge,” she said.

  And Griffin, the trembling teenager we’d rescued from her violent, pedophile stepfather—that piece of work Travis Golightly. She had lost her younger brother, Kyle, to the insanity of the Red Militia. Frightened and withdrawn when we’d met, she’d grown into a tough soldier who knew how to use a weapon. When it came to draggers, she was no nonsense. Griffin was badass, and we cherished her.

  These four—and the dog—were my family.

  The other soldiers in our unit remained scattered among the trees, watching and waiting. These were men and women who, like Warnick and Springer, were used to fighting human combatants bent on blowing themselves up at military checkpoints seven thousand miles away, taking with them as many innocents as they could. Now these American warriors fought demons made of rotting flesh, with grey, mealy skin and doll-like eyes that looked but didn’t see, who wanted only to devour the warm meat of living humans. Though survival among these hungry undead hardened us, we were nevertheless afraid.

  And it was always better to stay afraid.

  We’d come here to rendezvous with Evie Champagne, the intrepid news reporter, and Jeff, her longtime cameraman. Together, we hoped to find answers to the mystery of the contagion that ravaged Tres Marias, the town where I lived. Though other places had initially seen evidence of the plague, it originated here. Evie had hinted that Robbin-Sear—a secretive company hidden somewhere deep in the forest—might be the key.

  And so, several vehicles had set out in the cold early morning to find the truth. We’d already decided to park two miles out and hike in. We didn’t know whether the facility was heavily guarded, and we didn’t want to announce our arrival. If all went as planned, Evie and Jeff would be waiting for us. But somewhere along the way we’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in a desolate place, with a 360-degree view of dead and dying trees looming like grey ghosts in mourning.

  We were well over a mile from our vehicles when we heard the unmistakable sound. Not marching. Not walking. Not shuffling.

  Dragging.

  We couldn’t see them through the fog, but they were getting closer. We had to get to the safety of higher ground. So we ran.

  We saw them clearly now in the sketchy patches of sunlight that broke through the trees—hundreds of them. Lurching and ravenous, like blood-soaked marionettes on guy wires from Hell. Where had they come from? A few towards the front took charge, leading the others—a phenomenon I’d witnessed only once before when my dead extramarital girlfriend ordered my dead manager to kill me.

  Blood pounded in my ears and hot streaks of red lightning danced across my eyes. I took Holly’s trembling hand. As we retreated into the darkness of an October morning, I knew this might be it. Figures. We’d come all this way since July when the thing started—through what I had really believed was the worst of it. You always think that, right? The worst is over. But it never is. Always another corner to turn, another hell to survive. By rights we should have been dead a long time ago. Maybe now we would be. What if in trying to get to the truth of what happened in our town, we died out here alone?

  That nagging crow, joined by others, cawed loudly, confirming my assessment. Death ain’t pretty, it said. We’ll begin with the eyes.

  Griffin looked tense and scared, one hand on her weapon. Why not? She was still a kid—a tall, lanky fifteen-year-old who might lose her own life at the hands of the undead. What teenager thinks about that? But it was the world we were in now. An upside-down world where things that shouldn’t, walked.

  Holly brushed the light brown hair from Griffin’s dirt-smudged face and forced a smile. “We’ll be okay,” she said. Her voice was a whisper. Griffin nodded and gripped her weapon tighter.

  “Warnick,” I said. “Where to?”

  He turned towards Springer, his eyes like agate marbles, and signaled north. We moved silently over the pine needles and fallen branches. The others had already gone ahead and were no longer visible. We were twenty in all. Couldn’t spare any more. The rest were at the Arkon Building, protecting civilians. Dammit, but we could have used them now.

  When does it get better? I asked myself. When you’re dead, came the answer.

  We waited motionless as the horde moved closer, relentlessly traveling east, as if late for the train. None were freshly dead. Many looked to me like they were part of a Japanese tour group. Even in death they stuck together. They were all ages too—some missing limbs. Others with ears, noses and eyelids chewed off. The worst part was seeing the children, slack and grey-eyed, their small arms flopping uselessly, their tiny and undernourished grunts signaling a crippling desire to feed.

  They were almost past us when Griffin yelped.

  “Sorry, sorry.”

  “What was it?”

  “Something on the ground. I—it was crawling on my foot. I don’t know.”

  “Probably a gopher snake,” I said.

  The dog moved towards the spot to investigate, but I held her back. We didn’t need more surprises. Then we heard a sound echoing through the forest—a bone-chilling prelude to a mauling that told us we were finished. It was a death shriek.

  They had found us.<
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  We ran for it as the draggers descended on us like a swarm of locusts. Griffin, Holly and I sprinted ahead with Greta while Warnick and Springer laid suppressive fire and took out the front line as best they could. But more came. And more. A plague of fast-moving draggers with only hunger driving them. We could’ve stayed and fought, but there were too many. And the sound of gunfire would only attract more.

  Out of breath, my lungs searing, I saw a fire road up ahead. We ran towards it. But the draggers ran too, as if sprung from a racetrack starting gate. Those leading the horde darted to either side of the road, splitting the followers between them. I realized—almost too late—what they were up to. Warnick saw it too and called for Springer and the other soldiers to take cover up ahead in the trees. Relentlessly, the creatures followed, closing in from either side, and I knew I was right.

  They were herding us.

  “Dave,” Warnick said, “get Holly and Griffin out of here!”

  We ran for our lives. More came. The commanders barked unintelligible orders to the rest of the draggers. It wasn’t so much speech as animal noises. As we passed Warnick, Springer and the others, they fired at the oncoming horde on either side from behind the trees, going for the knees rather than the head. The draggers fell, creating a barrier for the others, and continued crawling, their faces twisted in hungry hatred. One of the soldiers took out two of the commanders with a grenade. As their rancid bodies blew apart like fireworks made from sausage, the followers scattered.

  I spotted a ridge directly ahead. A drone hovered over it. If we could get to the top, we might have a chance.

  “Up there!” I said, and we got off the road and headed up the embankment. Halfway up, I stopped and turned as another dragger commander went down in a stream of rapid fire that tore its face off. As it fell, its hands grasping at air, the rest of the leaderless horde fanned out but kept after us.

  The soldiers, led by Warnick and Springer, followed us up the steep trail. Angry draggers caught up with the stragglers in our unit and took them down, devouring them in seconds. The ones whose throats were torn out no longer screamed, their voices drowned in gurgling blood that only incited their attackers to field dress them even faster.