Dead South Rising: Book 1 (10 page)

The crack of a branch behind him pricked the hairs on David’s neck and arms, and he spun on his heel. He stared into the dense underbrush and trees, trying to hear with his eyes.

Mitch?

He let his mouth fall open, preparing to call out. But his voice clogged, never making it past his lips. His heart spewed child-like terror, throwing him back in time. He was five years old again, trembling beneath his blankets, too scared to look under his bed, praying for a morning that never came fast enough.

David reached across his body, drawing his pistol. He realized, too late, that in his initial ardent worship of the piece, he had failed to verify that it was actually loaded. A simple oversight with a scary consequence.

He turned it over, found the handle hollow, the magazine missing. Tenderly, he pulled the slide. No bullet in the chamber. The weapon silently screamed: brand new, never fired.

Another
snap
from the dense woods.

His heart stomped his sternum, and his hearing turned into the deep thumps of a bass drum. He had to consciously breathe, his lungs checking out on him, jumping ship. He’d cursed God plenty the last twenty-one days, but now he hoped the man in the sky would forget his rants of rage, and do him a solid.

You hear a noise in the woods. Is it: A.) A critter; B.) A shuffler; C.) Mitch; D.) Other.

He forced his lungs to grab deep calming breaths as he fought to wrangle his fear. Without tearing his gaze from the trees, he reached behind him, unsnapped a pouch on his gun belt, and retrieved a magazine. He held it up to his face so he could keep his eyes trained in the direction of the noise; shiny bullets lined up at attention, awaiting orders. He mouthed a silent
thank you
to the invisible man in the sky, then eased the mag into the pistol. He racked the slide as quietly as he could, though it still sounded like a slamming door to his ears. He clenched his teeth, as if doing so would somehow erase the noise he had just made.

David gripped the gun tightly, barrel pointed at the ground in front of him. He stood motionless, listening. He began to think that he was hearing things, that he hadn’t heard anything at all. Deceitful mind and lying ears. He waited. Wondered. Second-guessed himself. No more noise.

You fucking pussy.

He couldn’t leave it at that. Couldn’t just turn and walk away. Mitch obviously had not made it back, and he needed to find out why. But he had Bryan to think about now. What if David ended up getting hurt or killed? Then what would the kid do? Bryan couldn’t drive the dually, hop on the Harley. The rental was toast. The boy would be shuffler bait. Dead for sure. And if the dead didn’t get him, the living would.

And then David heard movement, rustling. And he couldn’t let it be.
 

Jessica practically punched through the screen door, ripping metal mesh from the frame. On all fours, she scrambled through the doorway to get to the porch. She sat, legs sprawled, and reached behind her, tugged the tiny pistol free. But there was no one to aim at. Sammy and Guillermo were gone, and Randy was gone, too.

More gunshots rang, the cracks and pops ricocheting over the property.
 

“
Randy
!” She could barely choke out the scream as more shots exploded. Her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a struggling scream when she noticed a body face down in the yard. And then another.

Bile rose in her throat.

Then she glimpsed shadows to her right.

She pushed up on shaky legs like a newborn calf, barely made it down the steps without falling. Around the corner and behind the trailer, she found the missing men. Sammy and Guillermo, along with Randy—all shooting at a group of shufflers.

The banditos yelled in glee, enjoying the mini-massacre, while Randy’s face was taut with terror.
 

She couldn’t believe it, how many there were. There had to be … fourteen, fifteen at least.
 

A pack.

The guys made quick work of the decaying intruders, and the dead quickly dropped, falling on top of one another. It was over before Jessica could react with her own weapon.

Sammy laughed a hearty laugh. “Whoo! Now
that’s
how you take care of business!” He blew a wispy breath over the barrel of his revolver and laughed again.

Guillermo smiled wide, equally pleased with himself, and nodded while holstering his own pistols.

Randy looked as though he wanted to pass out, his face red and dripping with sweat.

Sammy slapped the big man on the arm. “Nice shooting, Tex. I think you actually hit one of ‘em.”

Gills muttered sarcastically, “In the foot.”

Mitch’s brother laughed again, shaking his head. The two men started back around the house.

 
Jessica just stood there, unable to speak, surveying the carnage. She hadn’t seen many shufflers, being too sick to really go anywhere, but she knew they were normally slow and cumbersome. At least David and Mitch thought so. She surmised that the true danger lie in their sheer numbers. A one-off here and there could be dangerous, sure. Get taken by surprise, it could be all over. But get surrounded by a
pack
of them? Alone? They may be slow, but there was no way someone by himself could take them out quickly enough.

Jessica and Randy could only gawk, their gazes rolling over the rotting mess. The horizon seemed to bob and sway, like they were adrift at sea. And seasick. Their jaws unhinged, Jessica couldn’t push back against the lava flow of bile anymore and let nature take its course.
 

Drawing the back of her hand across her lips, Jessica said, “Randy?”

He stood there, staring at the mass of bodies. “… Yeah …”

“What have we done? What’s happening to us?”

“They … we … murdered …” The big man swayed.

Jessica shook her head with quick snaps, her throat and mouth a fiery wreck. The taste was making her sick all over again.

A fight raged in Jessica’s mind, one that she was willing to lose. These bodies, these …things … weren’t people. Not anymore. She was still having a hard time convincing herself of this. But she realized that she must come to understand this new fact of life. These things were dangerous. David had seen it, told her about what he saw in town. He’d been lucky to make it to Mitch’s.

When they finally made it back to the front, they found Sammy and Guillermo making themselves at home on the porch. Sammy was in the rocker, dropping fresh rounds into his Smith and Wesson 686. Perched on the railing, Gills was reloading his own pistols—two chrome Colt 1911s.

From Randy’s old spot, Sammy glanced at the approaching duo in the yard, and the balance of power seemingly shifted. “‘Bout damn time.” He nodded toward the door behind him. “How ‘bout that water, missy? Killing cannibals makes me thirsty.”
 

His shit-eating grin reignited Jessica’s stomach, and she could taste the bile again. She squeezed the Sig’s handle like a stress ball. For a fleeting instant, she thought of pressing the barrel to Sammy’s head, fingering the trigger, and sending him somewhere that would appreciate his black heart.

Instead, she whispered to Randy, “C’mon inside with me. I need to tell you something.”

He still seemed dazed, but managed a nod.

“We got this out here,” Sammy said. “You women folk go on inside. Take care of the cooking and cleaning and such.”

Jessica tossed him a glare that could topple towns.

“Whoa, easy, girl,” he said, then chuckled.

Gills snickered.

Randy and Jessica pressed past them. From outside, Sammy added, “Now you two behave in there.” They could hear Gills laugh.

“Assholes,” Jessica whispered. She tucked her pistol back into her waistband, then decided to give the two bullies their water so they’d leave her and Randy alone for a few minutes.

“Stay here,” she told Randy. “I’ll be right back.”

She took the glasses to the two men, endured another round of harassment, then came back inside.

Busying his hands, and thirsty himself, Randy had gotten two more glasses of water and had one outstretched as she crossed the living room. She took it from him and drank before setting it on the table.

“What is it?” he asked, questioning the tear rolling down her cheek. “What did they say to you?”

She huffed and cleared the tear. “It wasn’t them this time.” She sniffled. “It’s David and Mitch.”

Fresh off the slaughter, Randy tried to play the optimist, to comfort her. To be the strong one. “I’m sure they’ll be back—”

She waved him off. “The CB, Randy.” She was having trouble with her words, the room blurring. “The man … on the radio …”

He arched a brow. “The man on the radio?”

She nodded, her chin tugging at her quivering, downturned lips. “He said they were dead.” Tears crashed over her cheeks.
 

Barely able to understand her, he said, “Wait, what? What man?”

The sobs had started, robbing her of clarity. “The man on the two-way.” She tried drying her cheeks with already damp fingers. “He told me that”—she sucked shallow breaths—“David … and Mitch …” She couldn’t finish her sentence.

Randy scratched his beard, perplexed, then regarded her with a patronizing gaze.

“You don’t believe me.” An angry, hurt note rang in her tone.

“Wait, I didn’t say that. I’m just trying to understand.”

“On the radio,” she said, starting to show impatience, as though Randy should read her mind, “the man said David and Mitch were dead.”

“I don’t … What man? What was his name?”

“He didn’t say.” She was catching her breath again, extinguishing her tears.

“He didn’t say?”

“No Randy, he didn’t say what his name was. I picked up the radio, tried raising David and Mitch, this other guy came on and told me they were dead.”

She stopped, letting this sink in, giving Randy a chance to digest what she’d just told him.

Randy asked, “How would he get David’s radio?”

Jessica cocked her head, compounded her stare.

He thought about it for another moment, then said, “Probably just some jerk messing with you, some ham radio operator guy with his own radio, or someone who just happened to be on the same channel you were on—”

“Randy, he called them by name. He knew David’s first and last names. He said, ‘Morris. David’s last name was Morris.’”

“
Was
Morris? Past tense?”

She nodded, fighting back a new round of tears. She brought her fist to her chin, bottom lip clamped between her teeth.

“And this man knew Mitch’s name, too?”

Another nod.

“And he kept calling me ‘darling,’ but he pronounced it really funny, really southern, like:
dahlin’
.” She raked her chin with her knuckles. “Sounded like he was trying to be some 1800s cowboy or something,” she added, almost as an afterthought, then shook her head, wiped away another tear.

They stood there, face to face, but not eye to eye.
 

The far-off sound of a growling diesel engine changed that.

David emerged from the tree line about a football field away from the Dodge. It was quiet now, save for the insects singing their summertime songs. He was sweating a bucket a minute, his only reward for negotiating the thick underbrush. Nausea knocked, signaling heat exhaustion, and he wondered just how much time he’d spent chasing a ghost through the woods.

He rubbed his neck, stepping carefully through the high grass in the ditch until the soles of his boots met the road. Out of habit, he looked both ways, expecting a car to come rushing by, but none did. The hottest part of the day quickly approached, and a glance down the highway revealed a beckoning oasis. Of course, he knew it was just the typical summer mirage, the heat rising off the road, masquerading as cool, crisp water. He would find no drink there. And should he be naïve enough to chase it, it would disappear, only to reappear farther down the road to tease and elude him again.

He started toward the truck, where he knew he’d find authentic reprieve from the unrelenting rays. The heat under his feet implored quick steps, threatened to melt the rubber from his boots. Still, despite physical discomfort, he could not stop wondering about what happened to Mitch, why he couldn’t find him.

When he reached the truck, he stole one last look around, noting nothing had changed, then climbed into the truck.

Bryan looked at him, his expression the same as when David had left him. Charlie rested in the boy’s lap, eyes closed, napping.

David stared at them a moment, taking in the peaceful picture. He almost hated to start the truck, to disturb them. Something so simple as a boy and his dog reminded David why life was still worth living, worth protecting, even in this new deranged and deadly world. He’d wondered if he was going insane, planning to kill Mitch. But he would, in an instant, if only to protect Bryan. He’d known the boy barely an hour, but he felt like his own.

“You thirsty, Bry? Hungry?”

Bryan’s eyes dropped before meeting David’s again. His hair stuck up in a cowlick on his crown, and it bobbed when he nodded.

“Well, I hope you like bacon, ‘cuz we’re gonna have plenty of it.” He smiled.

“I like bacon. Pancakes, too.”

“Well, good.”

The engine rumbled to life, and he fiddled with the air vents, anticipating the cold that would soon swirl around them. Finally, he raised the windows fully.
 

“Did you find that man?” Bryan asked, almost as an afterthought.

David shook his head. “No Bryan, I didn’t.”

The boy twisted his lip. “I told him to wait for you.”

The smile faded from David’s lips, his brow tightened. He swallowed hard. “What did you say?”

Bryan seemed confused by David’s reaction, as though he’d said the wrong thing and made David mad.

“I … I told that man to wait for you. That you’d be right back, ‘cuz you promised me you would.”

David’s heart started running away. He twisted in his seat so he could face Bryan. “What man, Bryan? What did the man say to you?” Mitch had been right under his nose.