Cities of the Dead: Winters of Discontent

Cities of the Dead: Winters of
Discontent

By William Young

A sequel to Cities of the Dead: Stories from
the Zombie Apocalypse

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 by William Young

Table of Contents

Squatters Rights

Then Cain Turned on Abel

The Start of the Breakdown

A Slim Chance at a Narrow Escape

***

SQUATTERS
’
RIGHTS

Erie, Pennsylvania - Day 482

Dexter sat on his stool on the ice of frozen Lake
Erie and waited for a bite. Of all the injustices life could deal,
this topped them: civilization was gone, the undead walked the
earth (eating people, no less) and the current winter was the
coldest he could remember from his thirty-five years of life. He
was no stranger to ice fishing - he even liked it - but having to
keep an eye out for the undead stripped the activity of the
relaxation that normally accompanied it. That, and the fact that he
now had to catch fish to feed his family took the fun out of it. It
was no longer a hobby, but a requirement.

He turned his head across the ice
and saw nothing but the bleak landscape of frozen lake. Once upon a
time there would have been others out here with him, in canvas huts
with propane heaters in them, but now there was just him. Maybe the
rest were afraid to venture out into the open, where there was no
place to hide should an undead horde suddenly appear, but he had a
wife and kids to feed. The deer hunting wasn
’
t going so well, and the
small game were almost non-existent.

He was surprised his family had made
it this long. Most hadn
’
t. Whatever had happened had
infected nearly half the city and surrounding counties within a few
days, the zombies suddenly everywhere. Those that
hadn
’
t
been infected found a radical new world order imposed on them
overnight. Not that there hadn
’
t been any warning that something
was coming: California had gone under the plague first, going dark
to the world over the course of a few weeks in January a year
earlier. The big cities had started falling quickly afterward, and
by spring civilization was gone. The only good thing about it was
that he
’
d lost the twenty pounds he
’
d put on since getting
married.

He felt a tug on the line and pulled
a walleye up through the hole. He slipped it into the creel and
figured four fish would have to cut it: he
’
d been out exposed for too
long. He hurriedly broke down his equipment and slipped it into a
canvas bag and began to quickly walk off the lake toward shore, a
marina area near the mouth of Walnut Creek. He slowed down as he
stepped through the raggedy ice near the edge of the beach: a
broken leg would end him as surely as the undead.

He crept up from the shoreline and
huddled behind a boulder alongside the parking area, peeking up
over it and scanning the snow-covered area. There was three feet of
the stuff, but the chains on the Ford Bronco
’
s tires made quick work of
it, mostly. He
’
d been using his snowmobile since
the beginning of winter, but he
’
d busted a skid on it a few weeks
back escaping a horde of zombies that had, as usual, come out of
nowhere. He shouldn
’
t have panicked, they moved too
slowly in the snow to catch him, but the sheer number of them had
boggled his mind and he
’
d crashed into a Jersey barrier.
The sled had gotten him most of the way home, but it had taken him
until after sunset to slog the rest of the way. His wife, Carly,
has assumed the worst and had broken down into tears seeing him
enter the house through the back door, stamping his shoes in the
mud room.

She had a revolver in hand, of course, just to be
sure.

The parking lot was clear of the
undead, so he slid into the Bronco and started it up, creeping out
of the marina and along the narrow band of smooth snow he knew
covered what had been the road. He drove past a few groups of the
undead pushing their way aimlessly through the snow, registering
his presence in the vehicle with snarls. One of them paused and
watched him intently, its head unsteady on its neck, but its eyes
fixed on him in the vehicle. Dexter wondered why - how - they
didn
’
t
freeze solid, seeing as they were not dressed for winter, but
he
’
d
never bothered to consider thinking of examining one.

He picked up the walkie-talkie off
the seat as he sat idling at the end of the cul-de-sac in which
they now lived, a gated community with a low concrete fence all
around it that had been abandoned over the course of the previous
summer. He couldn
’
t figure out why: the four-foot
high fence was enough to keep the zombies out because they
couldn
’
t climb over it, and sturdy enough they
couldn
’
t push through it. The backyards that abutted it were large
enough to obscure most human activity and sound from within the
perimeter. The only weak spot was the front gate, which was a
makeshift collection of fence materials pilfered from an 84 Lumber
and was secured by a thick steel chain and a key operated padlock
that only people on the inside had access to.

He keyed the talk button.
“
Hey, guys,
it
’
s
me at the front. Come let me in.
”

He turned and scanned through the
windows, making sure there weren
’
t any undead around. If they came
before he was through the gate, he
’
d have to leave and wait it out
somewhere else. Sometimes, the zombies would stay for hours in
place, swaying, turning circles and stumbling around. It was almost
as if they knew you were going to come back.

“
We see
you,
”
Carly said a
moment later, after searching through binoculars to make sure he
was alone.

Dexter watched through the front windshield as Carly
emerged from their house - third on the left. Smoke from wood fires
lifted into the air from four of the houses as the sun set behind
him over Lake Erie.

“
I
’
m watching you now, Dad,
”
said his son a moment later.
“
Everything looks to be
okay.
”

“
Just
keep watching, Ben. Mom
’
s outside and you can never know
what might happen.
”

“
I
know,
”
Ben said
with just a hitch of attitude. Dexter smiled and looked through the
windows, again.

“
Motherfucker.
”

Coming down the street in the tracks
his vehicle had laid through the snow were hundreds of undead. He
flashed the headlamps of the car and saw Carly start looking about
as she approached the gate. Inside, the road was shoveled, so she
was making better time of it than the zombies ever would. But,
still. Some of the undead could almost sort-of kind-of
“
run.
”
A moment later she saw the horde
approaching and ran to the gate, undoing the lock and opening the
fence. He drove in and stopped, watching over his shoulder as she
pushed the gate closed and locked the chain through the gates. She
ran up to the passenger side and slid into the seat.

“
Wow, two months in
a row you
’
ve had a narrow escape,
”
she said.

He smiled. If only she knew it were
more often than that. He looked over his shoulder out the
window.
“
These guys
are still ten or fifteen minutes of shuffling before they get here.
Let
’
s
go.
”

A half-hour later, Carl Bergen was
banging on the front door. Dexter stepped onto the front porch and
looked where Carl was pointing: the front gate. Carl and his wife
were both in their mid-fifties and had been living in a
“
fifty and
over
”
community
when the plague had struck. Carl had been the assistant manager of
a branch of the state-owned liquor stores and his wife Gail a
housewife who had worked part-time in retail after their children
had left the roost. Carl wasn
’
t in the best physical shape and
his wife was even worse off, although they were both leaner than
they had been before winter had set in and began thinning them out.
Carl had been very vocal about wanting to leave the neighborhood
because he felt it was too exposed, and the others seemed to be
moving toward his opinion.

“
There
’
s at least a hundred of them there pushing up against the
gate, Dex, we have to go down and start taking them
out.
”

Dexter nodded. It was almost dark. There were only a
few minutes of light left.

“
We have to go now,
Dex. There
’
s no way to know how strong that gate really is. It was only
ever meant as a visual deterrent.
”

“
I know, I know.
Get the other men out with the spears and stuff and
we
’
ll
go down and do what we can.
”

“
Everyone
’
s already
ready,
”
Carl
said.

“
You and the others
get down to the gate, I
’
ll be there in a
sec,
”
Dexter said,
turning back into the house and closing the door behind him.
“
Honey!
”

He rushed through the house into the
living room and picked up his rifle, quickly slinging it over his
back. He strapped his machete to his hip and picked up the spear he
had crafted in the fall.
“
Honey!
”

“
What is
it?
”

“
We have a hundred
or more dead ones at the gate, pushing on it, and the rest of the
guys and I are going to down there and try and hack them down as
best as we can. Get the kids ready for a run and have the backpacks
filled with some supplies in case we have to get out of
here.
”

Carly stared at him aghast.
“
Is it that
bad?
”

“
Not yet, but
it
’
s
better to be ready to split,
”
Dexter said, picking up his pistol and sliding the
holster onto his belt. He pulled a knit cap on, shrugged into his
winter coat and headed for the gate, the other men already there,
chopping and stabbing the undead.

Alongside Carl, Jeff hacked at the outstretched hands
of the zombies with a fire axe while Peter poked at them with a
re-purposed rake handle, the tip filed into a sharp point and
hardened by fire. Dexter strode up and shoved his spear tip through
the eye socket of a formerly middle-aged woman with a bob haircut,
the flesh on her right cheek peeling off and exposing her blackened
molars. After ten minutes, the pile of now-dead undead bodies at
the foot of the gate had made it impossible for the rest to get at
the gate, and the zombies growled and murmured from a few feet
away, occasionally falling onto the pile of their fallen friends
and struggling back up.

“
Well, I
hadn
’
t
expected that,
”
Peter said as he stepped back from the gate and looked around
at the horde on the other side.