Last Stand of the Dead - 06 (27 page)

We met with the veterans who had answered the call, and I gave each of them a personal thanks.  If they hadn’t fought as well as they had, who knows where this fight would have ended.

As we walked up the street, I met with Dot and gave her the news.  She didn’t seem all that surprised that the little zombie leader was just trying to go back to home.  But then, nothing seemed to surprise Dot, so I just let it go. 

While leaving her house, a black cat came scampering around the corner of the porch.  It was an older cat, and looked like it had seen its share of hard times.  It looked at me with half closed eyes,
as if
it was trying to remember to tell me something.

The cat looked familiar, and I pointed it out to Dot.

“Where’d you get the cat?”

Dot smiled.  “He just showed up one day, rolling in like he owned the place.  He made himself at home, and we’ve gotten used to him.  He’s a bit funny.  He likes to sleep in cabinets, so you get surprised once in a while.”

That jogged a memory loose.  I called Tommy over. 

“Tommy, does that cat look familiar?”

Tommy looked,
and then
did a double take.  “Hang on.”  He walked over to the cat, and after letting it smell his hand and approve of him, Tommy picked up the cat and held it carefully in the crook of his arm.  He looked hard between the ears of the cat and set him down gently.  Tommy looked at me and nodded.

“I’ll be damned.  Well, good to see you, Zeus.”  I left the contented cat
to
stay with
Dot;
he didn’t belong to us any more than he belonged to anyone.  If a cat that had
managed to survive a fifteen hundred mile journey wanted to set up sho
p
in the president’s house, who was I to stop him?

Chapter 50

We rode home the next morning, and Sarah had made good on her promise the night before.  Duncan complained about the seat on his cycle, but nothing else went awry.

About
noon,
we pulled into our home, and I spent the next several hours just holding my children and listening to my father talk about his travels and what he was teaching the boys.  I gave my dad a look when I asked Jake to get something for me and he answered with a ‘
Hoo
-ah!’  We’d be talking about that later.

Later that evening, Sarah joined me on the porch as I watched the river roll past.  Charlie and Rebecca were sitting at the table nearby, and we all just took in the fall air.

I told them about the little girl and what I thought had happened to her, and why she seemed intent on heading east.  They were incredulous, but they didn’t doubt me. 
With everything we had seen, nothing was completely impossible.

As night fell, and we all worked our way to the bedrooms, I stopped to kiss my kids goodnight. Sarah was waiting for me in the hallway.

“Do you think this is it?”  She asked, slipping her arms around my waist.

“What is?”

“Have we seen the last of the hordes?”  She looked up into my eyes, and even though it was
dark,
I could still see her looking intently at me.

“I wish I could say.  Every time I think we can just live, something else comes along.  I pray to God we’re done.  All I want to do is get busy living, raising my sons, and growing old with you.” I kissed her gently.

“But who knows? Somewhere down the line
,
another crisis may rear
its
zombified
head,
” I said.  “I just hope
its
twenty years down the road.”

“Why?”  Sarah asked as she guided me to the bedroom.

“So the kids can deal with it.  We saved their butts, they can save ours.”

Sarah just laughed as she shut the door.

I lay down on my side of the bed and just stared at the ceiling for a while.  I ached in body and heart, and it would be a long time before both healed completely.  But I thought about my kids, and figured in the end
,
it would all work out. 

I looked at my .45 as it rested in its accustomed place on
t
op of my nightstand.  In a rare fit of optimism, I put it in the drawer and slowly closed it.

The End

Read on for a
n afterword and a
free sample
of
Generation Dead
from
Joseph
Talluto
.

Afterword

This is the last installment of the original White Flag of the Dead series.  I never thought when I began this project to ever have it take on such a life of its own.  The world of WFTD has at times been all-consuming, and it has been a fantastic journey throughout. 

This series has rekindled and fueled a long-dormant desire to write, and I am eternally grateful to all of the support I have received from family, fans and friends.  I truly would not have completed the series in any reasonable amount of time had I not been encouraged so much.  I thank each and every one of you.

White Flag of the Dead has grown so much, and these characters have become such a part of me that I will be expanding the WFTD universe in the near future.  Generation Dead will pick up the world of WFTD twenty years in the future, and this time the children of the heroes will need to find it in themselves to pick up where their parents left off.

For those of you who admonished me about the time lapse between Book 4 and Book 5, rest assured, there will be a small (WFTD : The Zombie Wars) installment that covers those years. All of you will finally learn what happened in Denver!

In addition, I am working on a completely new series called Jesters, which chronicles the attempt of one man to stop the spread of a disease before it consumes the planet. 

Lastly, and certainly not least, I want to thank Severed Press for believing in me and believing in my work, and taking a chance on an unproven author.  Thanks, Gary.

-Joseph
Talluto
  November
, 2012

If you liked White Flag of the Dead then check out these other great zombie series

When
There’s
No More Room In Hell
by Luke Duffy

Machines of the Dead
by David Bernstein

Necrophobia
by Jack Hamlyn

Zombie Youth
by H.E Goodhue

The Coalition
by Robert Mathis Kurtz

Judgment Day
by JE Gurley

www.severedpress.com

Chapter 1

“They’re right outside the door.”

“What?”

“They’re right outside the door.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.  What?”

“Jesus Christ, you’re a pain in the ass. “

“That’s not nice.”

“Oh, so you can hear me, huh?”

“Shut up.”

I shook my head as I chuckled softly to myself.  It was the same old story with my older brother Jake.  He never took the dead seriously, never felt like they were any real danger, and as a result, managed to put us into some serious situations time and time again.

“Where’s Julia?”  Jake asked.

“She’s probably somewhere safe where she doesn’t have to worry about the zombies that you managed to alert.” We had been through this before, and I had never seen anyone with so little concern for their own safety when it came to becoming infected.

“Whatever,” Jake said. 
“May as well get this over with.”
  He walked over to the bedroom door and hefted his weapon.  It was, for all intents and purposes, a mace.  It had a twenty-inch handle, topped with a hunk of metal shaped into four pyramids.  The pyramids were barely two inches high, but they were devastating on zombie skulls.  The best part was they rarely broke open the skull.  They just crushed it inward. 

“Wait!” I whispered, but it was too late.  Jake had already opened the door.

Before the door was even open, Jake was swinging his weapon, crushing the skull of the nearest zombie and cracking the head of another before the zombies even knew what was happening.  Jake took a step back and let the two of them fall, making the rest of the zombies come to him through the narrow doorway.  As the next ones tripped and fell, Jake killed them with silent efficiency.  All I had to do was
watch.  My own weapon was out, but I had a feeling Jake wasn’t going to need my help. 

Suddenly, I heard a noise.  At first, I wasn’t sure what it was, but then I heard the distinct sound of someone yelling for help.  That can’t be Julia, I thought.  She was way too good at what we do to get
herself
into any trouble.  She certainly wouldn’t be yelling, especially considering where we were.

I heard it again, and this time it was louder and much clearer. “Aaron!
Help!”
  Yep, it was Julia, and yep, she was in trouble.  Problem was
,
Jake was blocking my exit, cheerfully killing zombies as they kept trying to get at the meal that just wouldn’t lie down quietly and be eaten.

I looked out the window, made some mental calculations, and cursed. “Fuck it.”  I opened the side bedroom window, and climbed out, bracing my feet on the windowsill of the building we were in and the one next door.  Barely three feet separated the buildings in this part of Chicago, so it wasn’t difficult to do.  I braced my foot on a spot two feet higher, and then pushed hard, bringing my other foot up and to a higher place on the other building.    I tried to ignore the zombies on the ground below me, which from my perspective, looked as if they were reaching up for my crotch.  That sight will motivate you more than anything you could imagine.

I reached the next floor up and thankfully got my feet on the sills.  I took a breath, and then looked in the window at the situation.  There were six zombies in the bedroom, and they were gathered around what looked to be a closet.  I had a feeling I knew where Julia was. 

That was the good news.  The bad news was that, since I was on the ledge right next to them, they couldn’t help but see me.  The ones closest to me almost seemed surprised that another idiot was so close, just for the taking.  They came over to the window and began scratching and beating at it with dead, skeletal hands.  Two of them pressed their dark grey faces to the window, smearing it with foul fluids and biting at it with rotten teeth. 

Since I had to break the window anyway, I figured I might as well make it productive.  I took out my hand axe, the one with a pointed spike opposite the axe head, and took careful aim.  It wasn’t easy to swing something with any degree of accuracy while being spread-eagled between two buildings, and forty feet in the air. 

The spike crashed through the window and punched through the forehead of the zombie nearest me.  Its eyes rolled up into its head and I jerked the spike free as it fell.  I killed the next one that stuck its head out the window, and barely managed to get my leg out of the way of a shorter one that came reaching for a snack.  I spiked his head, and then looked full in the face of a zombie that came charging through the window.  I could do nothing to stop him, but I did watch him fall down between the buildings and land on another zombie with a wet, splattering sound.

I had both feet on the ledge of the opposite building, and held myself away from the broken window with my axe.  Another zombie came charging out and fell the same way with a disappointed splat at the end.  The next two followed suit, and there was a pile of arms, legs and writhing zombies underneath me that looked really disgusting.  I couldn’t help myself.  “Get a room!” I called down to the zombies.  I think one answered me.

I looked through the window and saw the coast was clear. I carefully climbed through, trying not to cut myself on the smeared glass.  The room was identical to the one I had just left, except this one was decorated in a much more subdued style.  The dresser was open, and clothing lay on the floor, signs of a hurried exit.  The bed was unmade, and judging by the thin layer of dust, no one had been there in over twenty years.