Dead Legends (Book 1): R.I.P. Van Winkle (3 page)

CHAPTER 3

Rip ate like, well, like he hadn’t had a bite to eat in ten years. He shoveled in spoonsful of potatoes and venison nearly as fast as he could, and his stomach grumbled in approval. He couldn’t believe his appetite, but then again, he hadn’t eaten since leaving Fort Drum on that fated FTX that happened over a decade ago. He paused long enough to grab a glassful of water and chugged it down, then resumed his gluttony. After finishing the bowl of stew, he put down the spoon and tried to regain some of his senses. A little food did wonders for his demeanor. He felt a little more normal, although the term “normal” had undergone changes in the past few hours. He felt like he was dreaming, still not quite able to comprehend what was happening. Compartmentalization would be his friend for a little while; just try to understand one thing at a time.

After leaving the scene of his recent reawakening, Jake had been kind enough to take him back to the small cabin in the woods that he shared with the others. The others that occupied the small, primitive quarters were Jake’s family. Tina, Jake’s wife, and Casey, his daughter, made up the residents of the household. It wasn’t much, just a hunting cabin that Jake had used in the time before “The Rise,” Jake had taken his family to the cabin after everything had gone to shit. He tried to stay in his original home, and managed to do so even after the power had gone out. Jake wasn’t a prepper, just a man with the foresight to get a generator to handle the piss-poor conditions of an upstate New York winter. It was by no means lush, but it was home for them. Jake thought their original home was too far in the city and had decided to take the family to the cabin once lawlessness became widespread.

It was a true log cabin; Jake built it by hand two years before The Rise. The front of the cabin sported two windows, both of which were boarded up, leaving only a small slit to see through. A small covered porch that once had been an open area was also boarded up, leaving only small areas to see through. It was by no means bulletproof, but it kept the undead from getting in. Inside, the cabin consisted of one main bedroom and a loft that served as another. It was complemented with a kitchen, but no indoor bathroom. A few dozen yards away from the cabin was a wellspring and an outhouse. The time-honored tradition of women going to the bathroom together was alive and well, as Jake wouldn’t let any one person go the outhouse alone. They always stuck with the buddy system.

Rip sat back in his chair, momentarily satisfied. He rested his hands on his satisfied stomach and tried to relax. Tina stood at the sink while Jake took up a seat across from Rip at the table, which was also handmade. He hadn’t spoken to the couple since leaving the spot where he awoke, afraid of what he might find out. There were few things that he wanted right now, and information was one of them.

“Better?” Jake said, breaking the awkward silence.

Rip sat forward slowly. “Yeah, thank you. I suppose I’ll be heading off soon, but thank you for your hospitality.”

Jake held up his hand. “I don’t think you should be running off just yet, Sergeant Irving. You clearly don’t know anything about the world outside; you need a little education on how things are nowadays.”

“Rip.”

Jake frowned. “Excuse me?”

Rip rested his hands on the table. His enraged demeanor was temporarily gone in favor of appreciation for Jake and confusion about what he
really
needed to know. “My men nicknamed me Rip a long time ago. No one really calls me by my given name.”

“All right, Rip. There is plenty that you need to know before you go off on your own. For instance, you looked like you didn’t know that you can’t kill the zombies with anything short of a headshot. Injuries to the body will slow ’em down, sure, but if you wanna kill one, you gotta shoot it in the head.”

Its only weakness is right here.

Rip shook off the words of his deceased friend. Crayon had told him that he needed to be strong and not falter when the enemy approached, and he’d failed miserably at that so far. If he’d been able to clear his head long enough to remember, he would have recalled the importance of his dead friend’s words. Maybe taking that last drink Crayon gave him was a good enough reason to lay off the booze for a while. Not that it would matter; there was no alcohol to be found, and Jake made no indication that he had any.

“As I said before,” Jake continued, “the government went to shit about six months after The Rise. The news reports were scarce at best, and the ones that we managed to see became less and less reliable. After a while, they just kept broadcasting the same messages over and over, and that’s when we knew it was pointless to wait for rescue. We packed up and came here, and we’ve pretty much been here ever since. After we got here and made a few acquaintances, there were rumors of the Tenth Mountain trying to take back some of the bigger cities, but they were overrun. They fell back towards Fort Drum and Syracuse, but most of ’em never made it out of Boston or Manhattan. They fought to the death… most of ’em, at least. The ones that did manage to survive are still around.”

“So the Tenth Mountain made it back to Drum?”

“Some of them, yes.”

Rip slowly nodded, attempting to absorb as much as he could without having a psychotic break. “I’m just having a hard time believing all this. It’s not an easy concept to grasp. There is so much more I need to know.”

“Well, honestly, it’s a little difficult to try and explain all of this to you, so I suppose if you have any questions, you can just ask. I’ll tell you what I can,” Jake said.

The only question he had was one that he knew Jake couldn’t answer. Rip wanted to know where his wife and son were. He hadn’t parted on the best terms with them before leaving on his FTX, and he needed to see them. His wife was a strong, independent woman; she could survive if she needed to.

He absently grabbed the nearly foot-long beard that he had acquired in his long sleep. He did have one question that Jake might be able to answer.

“I don’t suppose you have a pair of scissors and a razor, do you?”

Jake grinned slightly. “I wouldn’t be nearly as handsome as I am without a little grooming. I’ve got both and you’re more than welcome to use them. I can get Tina and Casey to take care of that uniform of yours, too. I’ve got some clothes that should fit you for the time being.”

Rip nodded. “Again, I thank you for your hospitality. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go outside and work on the hair. Might get a little messy in here.”

“I understand, but I want someone out there with you. I’ll get Casey to keep an eye out while you take care of it. We never go anywhere alone, even if it’s just outside.”

Rip nodded and pushed himself up from the table. His knees were still a little weak, but he felt infinitely better than he had just a few hours ago. There were a million other questions that he wanted to ask Jake, but getting a sense of normalcy was paramount. Looking the part of a normal soldier would hopefully restore more of his sanity.

After a quick, long-overdue handshake, Rip quietly excused himself. A few minutes later, Jake came into the kitchen with a pair of scissors and a straight razor. It had been several years, and now several more, since Rip had used a straight razor, but he was still well versed in its use. Casey followed him as he exited the cabin; she scanned back and forth, looking for targets like a pro. She nodded to a small washbasin, lowering her rifle as she did.

“There you go. It’s not much, but it should do the trick.” Casey slung her rifle and walked closer to Rip. “So my dad says you were in a coma or something. He said you don’t know about the zombies or what happened. We’ve been living like this for the last ten years; it’s about all I know. I don’t remember what the world was like before.”

Rip took off his MultiCam blouse and handed it to Casey. “Well, you’re not missing much, at least as far as what I knew, but I’m sure the world looked different to a six-year-old girl as opposed to a thirty-five-year-old man. I’ve got a son who’s eleven…” Rip trailed off, feeling an uncomfortable lump rise in his throat. “Well, I suppose he’s older now too. If it’s been ten years, then he’s twenty-one now. Of course, if he’s still alive.”

Rip took off his combat shirt and Under Armor undershirt, again handing them both to Casey.

“I suppose you’re gonna go running off to try and find him, huh? I wouldn’t if I was you, but then again, I’m not you,” Casey said.

Rip began to cut the large clumps of beard away from his face. He glanced over to Casey as he did. “The thought had crossed my mind. I need to at least see some of the outside world. I have to admit, I’m still not entirely convinced that I’m not just hallucinating all of this. If it
is
real, then I’ve got enough ammo to take care of damn near anything that gets in my way.”

Oh, it’s real, Rip.

“What did you say?” Rip asked, looking at Casey and shaking away his inner thoughts.

Casey unconsciously stared at Rip’s shirtless form. Several scars on his right arm and chest, some still red, painted the picture of a battle-tested soldier. “Nothing—just saw your scars. You look like you’ve been through hell.”

He resumed cutting away the excess hair. “Yeah, well, fifteen years in the Army will do that to you. Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan; I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with BGs.”

“BGs?”

Rip grinned slightly. “Bad guys. It’s easier in combat to say BGs.”

Casey smiled. “Duly noted. Although, I doubt you’ll see much in the way of combat around here. Zombies tend not to fight back… except for one.”

“Only one kind of zombie fights back?” Rip asked.

Tina came out of the cabin. Casey took Rip’s dirty clothing and Tina handed her a black and gray button-up shirt and a gray t-shirt. Tina smiled slightly and nodded at Rip, then returned inside.

Casey waited until her mother was back inside before continuing. She lowered her voice. “No, not one
kind
of zombie—just one zombie in particular. We can’t figure out how to kill him, and he seems to be the one controlling them, at least around here he is.”

Rip dipped his hands into the water, covering his face. He washed away some of the dirt and grime from his newly acquired beard, then began to shave it away with the straight razor. “Controlling them? How?”

“We’re not sure. He just points in the direction that he wants ’em to go, and they go. Nobody can get close enough to him to kill him. He rides this unholy-looking horse; I’m pretty sure it’s a zombie too.”

“A horse? Does this zombie virus shit affect animals?”

Casey laid the change of clothes down on a wooden chair beside the basin. “No, just his horse as far as I’ve seen. There are a lot of things that don’t make sense anymore. There’s a lot of shit out there straight from nightmares. The Horseman is just one of ’em.”

Rip dipped the razor into the bowl and shook it clean. “Like what?”

“A headless zombie that rides a horse isn’t good enough?”

Rip paused. “You didn’t say anything about him being headless. If you have to shoot them in the head, then how do you kill
him
?”

A headless horseman. What’s next—a green witch with a house on top of her?

“We don’t know,” Casey shrugged. “Not like it matters; we can’t get close enough to find out what the bastard’s weakness is. The zombies are supposedly caused by a virus, but it feels like they are straight from hell sometimes… like they’re possessed by demons or something.”

Rip wiped his face with a small, dingy-looking towel. He was clean-shaven and had a relatively normal-looking haircut now, but it didn’t make him feel any more ordinary than he had before. He had a sixteen-year-old girl telling him there’s a headless zombie riding a zombie horse—not exactly something that he was handling just yet. Maybe he could handle the concept of it in his mind; he could see what the undead horseman might look like, but as far as getting the dead coming back to life to make sense, well, he was still struggling with it. He still felt like he was in a dreamlike state, just waiting to wake up from whatever the hell was going on in the world. On top of that, he still couldn’t get rid of the voices in his head—literally. Crayon’s last words to him finally made sense, but Rip still couldn’t figure out what he meant by some of the other things he’d told him. Rip was certain Crayon didn’t mean he would have to kill all the zombies left in the world, but Crayon had said something about an enemy that he would have to take care of; he assumed a headless zombie horseman would be at the top of a short list.

“Honestly, I don’t know what to make of ’em. I’ve seen some weird shit in some weird places, but I’ve never seen a dead man come back to life.” Rip put on the t-shirt and flannel button-up, and straightened himself.

“Well, you better get used to it, because it is most definitely real.”

I told you it was real, Rip. You better get off your ass and do something about it, and you better do it soon.

Rip closed his eyes, trying to push out the wayward thoughts and the voices in his head. As usual, it didn’t work very well and the struggle to keep his mind clear turned into a full-on battle.

Get the fuck out of there and get your ass in gear, soldier!

Shut up! It’s not that easy; I have to figure out a plan of action, an escape route, and find out what exactly I’m looking for. The Horseman. Find that horse-riding fucker and cut him in half!