DEAD: Reborn (5 page)

This first run was just sort of supposed to help break the rust off of them in preparation for the future ventures into the actual city of Jonesboro, Arkansas. Selina was technically the leader since she had been the one to do all of the organizing, but as soon as they got out of the tiny pencil dot town of Cash, she had turned things over to Jody.

Remar Jenks and his group were supposed to be hitting a
nother housing development called Beaver Run. This was one of those sorts of places with postage stamp sized yards and every house looked like it was a clone of the ones on either side.

Truth be told, Jody felt that Remar’s group had a much tougher mission. For one, there were many more homes than the area he and his group were now scouring. That meant more po
ssible bad things could happen. Entering a home was always risky since it was gloomy despite the sun and you were not familiar with the layout. That allowed for surprises, and surprises were not a good thing…at least in this case.

He glanced over at Selina and smiled. Her back was to him and she couldn’t see it, but he’d had one plastered on his face for the past week since she had shared the news of her pregnancy with him
; it wasn’t like she was missing anything.

Jody Rafe was proud of how he’d handled that news. His i
nstant gut reaction was to cut her out of the expedition, but he knew her well enough to know that such a move was a good way to ensure that the actions involved leading to her current condition would come to an immediate halt if he tried something like that. Besides, he knew enough about pregnancy to know that there was really no extreme danger to her condition in that first trimester.

His mind drifted back to the way she’d sprung the news. They were in bed and she was snuggled up against his side tra
cing designs on his chest.

“I know what you’re getting for Christmas,” she sing-songed.

“Huh?” he mumbled, doing his best not to just fall asleep.

“Well, I don’t know
exactly
…it might be a few days early or late, but it will be pretty close. Also…I am not sure what model you will be getting.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Jody rolled onto his side to face her and kissed her on the nose. As an added bonus, he nipped the tip of
it playfully.

“I’m pregnant,” she said with a smile that lit the dark room with its brilliance.

“Hey…Sergeant Rafe!” a voice hissed in his ear, snapping him out of his pleasant memories with a mental slap to the face.

Danny Sullivan had been part of Jody’
s original military unit. Together, they had been through a lot. Now that they were settled in the small town of Cash, Arkansas, the two had seemed to drift apart. Sometimes Jody felt really bad. It wasn’t like there was an abundance of women. In fact, the ratio was about eight or ten to one against at the moment.

“Sorry,” Jody whispered.

He didn’t need Danny to tell him what the problem was as a dozen zombies all staggered around the corner a short distance away. So far, that had been the largest number that they had encountered. It wasn’t anything to be concerned about…unless it was the leading edge of a much larger group.

“When you gonna tell me why you keep grinning like a friggin
’ idiot,” Danny shot back in his thick New Englander accent. “I know it can’t be strictly because you’re getting laid on the regular. So what’s the haps, man?”

Jody groaned inwardly. One of the things that Selina had i
nsisted on after telling him was that he keep it a secret for a while. “It’s bad luck to tell before the second trimester,” she insisted.

Jody could hardly be the one to tell her that
superstitions were stupid. Every time they went out into the field, he’d had a ritual about biting down on his dog tags before tucking them into his shirt. The thing is, he couldn’t actually remember why any more. It could have been something as silly as being a scene that he’d seen in a movie once and thought it was cool.

“Just feeling good about where we are compared to where we were a few short months ago,” Jody lied.

“When you two are finished yapping,” George interrupted, “you mind figuring out how you want to take down those damn zombies?”

“I still want you to move down that side of the street,” Jody said, thankful for the distraction from Danny’s line of questio
ning. “Selina and I will head down this side. That will put us in their field of vision. When they move for us, you come in from behind. We should be able to put them down in no time.”

“That’s not possible,” George said with a snort.

“Why not?” Jody asked with genuine concern. Had the big man seen something else that he’d missed?

“Because, you idiot, everything takes time. You can’t do an action that takes no time.”

“Nice one,” Danny quipped.

“Maybe I shouldn’t keep putting you two together.” Jody feigned a sigh. “Pretty soon you’ll be telling really awful dirty jokes and laughing before you even get to the punch line.”

“C’mon, George,” Danny urged. “Let’s go someplace where we are appreciated.”

Jody watched as George Rosamilia and Danny Sullivan locked arms like
Laverne and Shirley
before scurrying away and behind a large SUV that had come to its final resting spot half on and half off the curb across the street. He glanced over at Selina who was smiling at him with a twinkle in her eye.

“What?” He was still a bit uncomfortable being in a serious relationship and never really knew how to read this woman who was now the most important thing in his life.

“I bet that was hard, the not telling Danny,” she said. “If you want, you can let him know. But just tell him he can’t tell anybody else.”

“Have you met Danny?” Jody said with a chuckle. “An
yways, we got more things to worry about than that right now. Let’s move.” Jody didn’t wait. He knew instinctively that Selina would be right behind him as he stood up and walked out in front of the approaching cluster of zombies.

“Damn!” was all he could manage when he reached the i
ntersection and could look back the way the zombies had come.

3

Geek Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts

Kevin
Dreon climbed up into the dangerously unstable looking cell tower. He brought the crossbow up and peered through the scope. Just as he suspected, there were at least fifty people inside the big circle of RVs. Another thirty or more were on the roofs doing the best they could to take down the hundreds of zombies that had them trapped and surrounded.

“We have to choose another way,” Kevin called down to Aleah
Brock, Heather Godwin and Catie Rose.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Heather asked as he made his way back down to them.

“Other than get eaten? Not really.” Kevin shook his head. He had to do his best not to sound relieved. Truthfully, the last thing he wanted was to hook up or try and introduce himself to new people.

Things had gone both ways since the four of them set out for South Dakota. They had met some very nice people in the
couple of weeks that they had been on the road. But they had also met and seen signs of some really bad ones. In fact, they had seen more living souls than undead ones until now. This was the first real concentrated group they had encountered.

Fortunately, up to this point they had not been required to really run for their lives. While the prosthetic foot was becoming something he was getting used to, he still did not possess the dexterity to manage anything more than a brisk walk. Also, there was the fac
t that, while it was a decent fit, there had been limitations to what could be done.

He wasn’t the only one to have felt the effects of an exten
ded period exposed to the elements. Heather and Aleah were both missing a finger or two. Also, Aleah, who was still a vision of beauty in Kevin’s eyes, had suffered some nasty facial frostbite that left considerable scarring as well as a lumpy reshaping of her nose.

“So we just let those people die?” Catie asked. She did not seem angry or even annoyed; it appeared as if she understood the gravity of their situation. He chalked that up to her military e
xperience.

“I wish there was another way,” Kevin lied.

It wasn’t that he wished ill on these strangers. It was the simple fact that his mind worked more pragmatically than emotionally—in most cases. He was still haunted by the thought that he had sent his mother and little sister to their deaths while he made his big escape when the zombie rising had first begun. There were other things that haunted his sleep, but that was the biggest and most frequent.

“So what is our next big landmark?” Catie asked as Kevin began to move down the mostly empty highway.

“Believe it or not, we should start seeing the outlying areas of Chicago in the next few days. Valparaiso is six miles ahead.” Kevin pointed at the road sign that looked as if it were ready to topple over the next time a good breeze came through.

“Never heard of it,” Heather mumbled as she skirted a car with three active occupants inside that pressed their faces against the glass in a vain attempt to get at her.

The foursome continued along US 30, the Lincoln Highway. Their standard mode was for Aleah and Kevin to walk in the westbound lanes while Heather and Catie walked in the eastbound lanes. Kevin insisted that staying spread out was the way to go in case of emergency. That way it was less likely that all four of them might be in danger in the event of an attack—living or undead.

Heather was still not on the best of terms with Catie after being taken prisoner at
finger point. She was not a fan of being the butt of the joke. That slight estrangement made the days seem endless since she was not much for making small talk with somebody that got under her skin.

Her mind drifted back over the past year. Part of her almost wished that it were just she and Kevin like in the beginning. It wasn’t as if she would revisit t
he crush she’d first had on him; it was just that she felt like she was unnecessary now. Kevin had Aleah and she had…nobody.

Immediately, her mind began throwing up walls. It wasn’t that she had not once started to have a relationshi
p since this nightmare began; it was just that he had not made it after that fateful night when so much had gone wrong. She glanced at her hand. Every time she looked at where the middle and index finger of her right hand
should
be, she thought of Matt. He had saved them that night as they ran for their lives…but at the cost of his own.

“Heather!” Catie hissed, snapping her back to the present.

The younger girl looked around at what could be the matter. She didn’t see anything moving. Turning a full circle, she began to get frustrated.

“What?” Heather snapped, facing her travel buddy (that was Kevin’s term…she could think of another ‘B’ word that fit much better than ‘buddy’).

“To the left,” Catie said with a nod of her head.

Heather turned and it took her a moment to realize what she was seeing. The fence initially made it difficult, but eventually her eyes made out what had to be a cemetery.
Only, everything was a charred black or dirty gray. Any foliage that once decorated the landscape was gone or reduced to an occasional black finger that pointed with a seemingly impotent accusation skyward.

“What the…” Heather’s words died on the gentle breeze.

Kevin and Aleah were crossing the median to get a better look. Aleah looked to be explaining something, but Heather couldn’t hear it. The foursome stood in the middle of the highway for several seconds. It wasn’t that they had not seen the signs of out of control fires and the damage that was brought in the wake of the apocalypse. Sometimes entire cities were burned to the ground. With nobody there to put out the blaze, fires could burn for days…weeks. But this, this was something on a different and odd level.

Together, they walked to the fence. As they got closer, they could see how some of the metal had twisted and turned in pr
otest to the incredible heat that must have been present. Once they reached it, they received a new surprise. The ground was strewn with the charred husks of hundreds of bodies.

“Wait here,” Kevin warned as he grabbed a section of the fence and gave it a good shake. The metal screamed its protest, but seemed to hold.

Climbing up in short order, he threw a leg over the top and paused. Reaching down, he grabbed his binoculars and scanned the area.

Aleah, Heather, and Catie all wanted to ask questions, but each kept looking at the other and shrugging. Later, all three would agree that they felt a presence that demanded their s
ilence. Kevin threw his other leg over and very carefully began to climb down.

Aleah noted that the fence, which had looked jet black when they first saw it, was indeed a metallic silver as Kevin was now covered in oily soot. He subconsciously wiped his hands on his pants as he stepped into the sprawling graveyard. Almost imm
ediately, a low wailing moan began to drift on the breeze that suddenly seemed several degrees cooler. Each of them, Kevin included, broke out in goose flesh that marbled the skin of their arms.

“What is that?” Heather broke the sacred silence with a harsh whisper.

“I have no idea,” Catie said as she took a few steps back.

All her life growing up, her grandmother had tucked her in at night with a story. By the time she was eight or nine, Grammy Rose told Catie her first ghost story. She had loved it and insis
ted that Grammy do away with fairy princesses and little pigs that had serious flaws in their construction ideologies. From then on, it was ghosts and witches and all sorts of denizens of the dark. When she turned thirteen, Grammy had taken her to a “real live” haunted house. They had seen nothing; they had heard nothing. Still Catie was convinced that she felt a presence. Catie believed in ghosts.

“I know what it sounds like,” Aleah
managed to say around what felt like a mouth full of sand wrapped in cotton.

On the other side of the fence, Kevin was struggling to make sense of what he was seeing. It looked as if ever single grave had been dug up and unceremoniously emptied of its co
ntents. The mounds of dirt were all washed out and reduced to miniscule hills of brown. Caskets were reduced to an assortment of tarnished fittings that could only be seen if you were up close. The bodies were just scattered about with no rhyme or reason.

When that moaning sound came, he froze and waited for any sign of movement. His first thought had not been ghosts. He was firmly fixated on the possibility of zombies. Even worse, he was initially worried that all these charred remains were the u
ndead. Would roasting the brain do the same as a shot to the head?

He recalled a park that he, Aleah
, and Heather had seen with hundreds if not thousands of decapitated bodies. The zombie could ‘survive’ decapitation in a matter of speaking. All those heads were animated. Mouths snapped and eyes followed. It was, at the time, the scariest thing he had ever seen.

With the prosthetic foot, he nudged the closest husk. It did not react. Kneeling, he was able to make out what looked like some staples in a cluster around the split breast plate.

Standing back up, he waded further into the cemetery. The moan rose and fell in pitch and volume. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. That only heightened his curiosity. He looked for any place where a person might be able to hide and settled on a small concrete structure that looked like it probably housed the grounds keeping tools.

“You three stay put,” Kevin called over his shoulder.

He smiled when he heard all three gals make assorted squeaks of surprise or fear. He was going to file this away for later and be sure to give Aleah a good ribbing.

“I ain’t afraid of no ghost…” Kevin began to sing softly as he crossed the expansive grounds to the lone structure sitting atop one of the very gentle rises.

By the time he was within a few yards of the structure, he was actually singing out loud, almost at the top of his lungs. “Who ya gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!”

Abruptly, the moaning stopped…as did Kevin. His hand went instinctually to the machete on his hip and he tensed for whatever might reveal itself as the source of that sound. He was ready for a lot of things…except for what actually appeared.

“Go away!” the girl said with surprising menace for somebody who Kevin guessed to be no older than eleven or twelve.

“Raisa!” another voice scolded. “You weren’t supposed to let him see you. He could be one of the bad people!”

To his left and right more small faces appeared; many from out of the graves. Although they were pretty dirty, it looked like they were all girls. Not only that, but the oldest one was probably thirteen. Kevin couldn’t tell. And it wasn’t just because of the dirt. He found that, the older he got, the younger everybody else looked.

Kevin was about to say something. It was probably going to be sarcastic, until he saw bow
s come up and arrows fitted into place. The moment changed from one of amused annoyance to that of actual concern for his wellbeing. He quickly raised his hands above his head and dropped to his knees.

“I am not here to hurt anybody!” he exclaimed. He noticed just a slight cracking in his voice, but was too scared to be bot
hered.

“We’ve heard that one before,” a voice called from som
ewhere behind him.

“Seriously, if you want, I will go back and climb the fence and leave. I promise to never come back.”

“Heard that one, too,” another voice from a different direction taunted.

An arrow plunged into the ground just a few inches from his right knee. A few of the closer faces were grinning like demons. Kevin could almost swear that these kids were enjoying this.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. He tried to let his gaze sweep over as many faces as possible in hopes that he might find just one that looked like it would listen.

“We wanted you to
not
come into our safe place,” a voice jeered. “But you did not take the warning.”

“What…those fake ghost sounds? Those were your war
ning? Why not just say I wasn’t welcome and ask me to leave?”

“This is our safe place. We don’t have to
ask
you to do anything.” This voice was almost directly behind him.

Kevin turned and discovered what he was pretty sure had to be a boy under all that dirt and wild hair. He looked this boy in the eyes and was a bit unsettled. He saw nothing but darkness in those coal black eyes that glared down on hi
m with no more compassion that one might show an insect.

“Too many of you grown-
ups have come…and you always hurt the children.” The boy’s façade cracked just enough for Kevin to catch a glimmer of pain, but it was quickly thrown back up.

“I am not here to hurt anybody,” Kevin said. “I will get up and leave…promise never to return if you let me go.”

“Kevin!” a voice screamed.

All heads turned at once. Aleah, who had been climbing the fence, froze for just a moment. She seemed to be confused by what she was seeing. She shook her head as if to snap herself back into action and dropped to the ground. A few of the chi
ldren nearby hissed at her and drew back their arrows in a menacing gesture. Aleah seemed to only consider them briefly before giving a dismissive wave of her hand and striding to where Kevin still knelt.