Life Among The Dead (Book 3): A Bittersweet Victory (19 page)

“Mike, you scared me,” Gabe says with relief.
“It’s good to see you.”

“You too,” he says with a friendly smile and
shakes hands with his longtime neighbor.

Keeping as true to his word as Gabe, Big Mike
continued to look after the property even after the world fell
apart. Fearing the chickens would be lost should a thief try to
steal them, and since lugging the heavy coops and bags of feed
would be a nightmare, he decided to stay at Gabe’s, bringing his
wife Jen and their son Jake. He loaded his heads of cattle onto his
trailer, and what possessions and provisions they needed. He didn’t
want to risk losing these by leaving them back on their land
unattended.

The three have been waiting here for word
that the emergency is over. They haven’t seen a soul since the
first reports disrupted the regularly scheduled programming, not
even the very monsters being reported about.

Mike and Jen had begun to suspect it was all
a hoax, until the weary travelers arrived with their tales of
adventure. Even the smelly but nice stranger tells wild stories
that dispel their theory about some studio orchestrating the
broadcasts to drum up ticket sales to an upcoming horror flick.

The next morning, Gar was gone. He told them
he wouldn’t be staying long since he still had so much work to do
and love to spread. He left behind only his lingering musk and a
small note on a rolling paper containing three words:
Thank
you
!
Goodbye
.

Inside the curved slip, Gabe found five
seeds, so he too could spread the love should the mood strike him.
The stoner took only a couple jars of preserved peaches as his
reward, and a new story to tell.

The survivors live day by day, reaching
milestones of weeks that add up to months. Vida has been enjoying
the simple life, helping with the animal tending and keeping watch.
She also tends to Gabe’s peach trees. He taught her to thin and
prune the branches during the winter months to optimize sunlight.
In February, they fertilized and thinned the blossoms until harvest
in August. She spends her nights strumming Gabe’s old guitar for
the enjoyment of the others, playing board games, and reading.

They’ve spotted only a few lone zombies from
the safety of their farmhouse, across the vast acreage of fruit
trees. The dead just shuffled along the dusty roads in search of
food.

The survivors cover their windows and dim
their lanterns at night, and they stay indoors as much as possible.
The group has become a family, considered themselves to be very
fortunate, until tonight.

###

In the early dusk, a red sunset lies to the
group. What sailors once considered to be a sign of smooth sailing
ahead foretells they are in trouble. An untold number of shapes
have been spotted, heading their way from the west. An army of
zombies that is spread wide and deep across the fields and
roads.

Over the past eight months, since she saw her
first zombie, Vida noted that the dead seem to be getting faster.
The individual corpses that had wandered too close and had to be
put down by Gabe and Mike have become more vicious, as if the
insatiable hunger is driving them mad.

The five frightened souls have plenty of time
to run, but they have no idea where they can run to. All they can
do is sit and wait, douse the lights and keep silent, listening to
the dead that will be upon them by nightfall.

“I told you to stay upstairs with the
others,” Gabe whispers to Vida, who startles him in the dark. He
felt compelled to double check all the locks and make sure all the
shutters were closed. It is actually the second double check he has
performed.

“I want to help,” she says softly, following
him through the almost complete darkness of the house. Their
intimate knowledge of the home negates the need for light as Vida
and Gabe take positions near the front of the home in a ray of
diminishing daylight.

Unsteady figures approach over the rutted
field, casting long shadows under the sanguine sky as they limp
past the peach trees. Vida holds Gabe’s pistol with its muzzle to
the floor as he taught her.

“What if they get in?” she says.

“We run upstairs, lock ourselves in the
attic, and hope for the best.”

The plan rings tragically familiar for the
girl, but she knows they have little recourse. The world outside is
becoming swallowed by the night, and they can no longer see the
dead, but they can hear them. Moans fill the air and filter into
the home. The sound tightens their chests. The two wait at the
ready, trying to breathe, for what may be their last stand.

Gabe’s hands sweat where he tightly grips his
old shotgun. He knows they should be heading upstairs, but it’s
like an impending storm. He wants to see it coming. Instead of
counting the seconds between flashes of lightning and claps of
thunder, he judges the space between them and the wails of the dead
in hopes of somehow gauging their distance or numbers.

A noise sounds farther down the dusty drive.
A rumble that draws Vida to the door to peer out through its small
window. She ignores Gabe’s warning to get back. The rumble builds,
accompanied by the slow crunch of wheels on gravel and a sudden
blinding light.

Bright headlights facing the house and
closing at a leisurely pace enable her to see the sheer magnitude
of the zombie horde in the fields and on the front lawn. The
unorganized formation of walking corpses turn toward the incoming
food. Impossibly loud music shatters the stillness of the
evening.

African war drums with a techno beat that
Vida recognizes as a little known overseas band she’s heard of. The
zombies eagerly move towards the noise and the light.

There are six vehicles, assorted in size.
They leave the road and circle the house along the farthest edges
of the lawn. The dead follow, guided by the rapid fire lyrics that
keep them enthralled.

The lead vehicle is twice as tall as the
others and has spotlights along its long roof. Between the slow
orbiting lights and the thick mob of dead, Gabe sees someone
walking confidently towards the porch. It’s a living, breathing
person by the steady strides it takes. Once at the house, the
mystery person fires two rounds, putting down a zombie that made it
onto the porch. Gabe hadn’t even noticed the corpse before, but he
doesn’t know whether to be thankful or frightened of the effective
militia.

The circling vehicles have managed to trap
the dead on the flat plane of frontage. These dimwitted corpses
stand, their heads darting back and forth, trying to focus on what
to attack, but they can’t. The spotlights of the tight caravan have
them confused as the music builds to an overwhelming crescendo that
shakes the farm house.

Like naval battleships preforming a
broadside, the vehicles come to a halt in a semi-circle. This
caravan opens fire with an incredible staccato that drowns out the
vocals and drums. Corpses fall to the superior force as Gabe and
Vida watch in awe.

The window to their right cracks. A bullet
has entered, leaving a perfect tiny hole and a fracture that runs
the length of the pane from one corner to another. This projectile
wasn’t stopped by the shutters.

“Vida, get upstairs,” Gabe orders. He is very
fond of her and the folks already hiding up there. His plan is to
convince these people that he is all alone, should they enter.

The gunfire ceases as the last zombie falls,
though there are still more coming in from the darkness. Gabe
gently pushes Vida towards the stairs, but his eyes never leave the
silhouette of the man on his porch, who now signals the vehicles to
widen their formation. The illuminated line spreads out, taking
positions at the corners. Some of the vehicles travel around to the
back of the house, closing the perimeter.

Silence overtakes the night once more, and
all Gabe can hear is the man on the porch. Old boards creak as this
visitor walks to the front door.

Paused halfway to the stairs, Vida halts and
returns to Gabe. The silence scares her even more than the gunfire
had. She wants to beg him to come with her. Too curious not to
look, Vida sees the man in relief against the floodlights, between
the slates in the shutters. He doesn’t look very tall, and for a
brief instant she thinks it’s a child.

The knob jiggles.

Vida joins her self-sacrificing friend.
Whatever is about to happen, she wishes to face it at his side.
Instead of the door being forced open with a violent kick, after a
second rattle of the knob, the man knocks. It seems out of place.
Too courteous a gesture for the world they live in.

A handful of reports ring out from the lawn.
The stranger moves away from the door and gestures his people to
cease fire.

Another gentle rap at the door, like a
neighbor stopping by for a visit, and then comes a louder more
insistent series. The caller knocks as if he wishes to be heard by
a resident anywhere in the dwelling, be they in the basement or the
bathroom.

The third set of raps goes understandably
denied by the timid survivors that cling to one another. Footsteps
signal the man moving to the recently cracked window. Gabe and Vida
scurry to the shadows when they hear him forcing open the
shutters.

The stranger peers in, craning his unusually
large head to view everything the wide shaft of light he has let in
touches. He lifts himself to the fresh hole in the glass and says,
“Trick or treat.”

The huddled pair cringe as more footsteps
sound on the porch. The new arrival asks, “No one home?”

“I guess not,” the first man says, sounding
disappointed. “Get this door open, will you, please?” Apparently he
is the leader of this group.

“There’s another wave inbound,” the second
man says, but the distance he stands from the window muffles his
words.

Creaking boards cause Vida to panic, and she
holds Gabe even tighter.
They’re
coming
in
,
she thinks. Gabe pats her back to reassure everything is going to
be all right.

“Tell the group to go hand-to-hand until I’ve
checked this place out,” the leader says, while his partner fiddles
with the lock.

The door opens, and a widening ray of light
cuts through the shadows with ease. “Want me to go in with
you?”

“No thanks, Abby.” The leader steps into the
house. “Have everyone ready to move out. This won’t take long.”

Before the other man can run off, the leader
says, “Get me some more light, will you?”

The leader ventures deeper into the home
before spotlights are redirected at the house, robbing the
crouching duo of their hiding place. Vida and Gabe slide away from
him, like roaches, when the lights come on. With so much candle
power filtering through every crack, reflecting off of every
surface, there’s nowhere to hide.

They’ve been discovered. Gabe stands, leaving
a heavy hand on Vida’s shoulder to keep her down behind the dining
table. His shotgun is aimed at the intruder.

The three involved in this tense standoff
know he won’t fire. The army outside currently combating the dead
would surely pounce on the house in an instant.

“Happy Halloween!” the stranger says
cheerfully.

Gabe thought the man was crouching at first,
his vision thrown by the glare from outside, but the stranger is in
fact a little person, no more than four and a half feet tall. The
diminutive man wears crudely constructed leather armor with
padding. A mask obscures his helmeted head and his face. But the
mask doesn’t look like it would protect him much. A thin white
elastic holds the cheap yellow smiley-face on.

“What do you want?” Gabe asks.

“Well, first off, ‘Hi.’” The man’s voice is
deceptively deeper than his size would suggest. “We were in the
neighborhood, chasing a migrating horde. Since this is where we
finally took them, I figured I’d have a looksee.”

“A ‘looksee?’”

The leader holsters his pistol and slowly
raises his hands to the yellow paper-plate mask. He reveals his
face. “I figured there was a good chance people would be in here.”
His voice carries a slight southern accent, regionally different
than Gabe’s. “Between the cars out front and the peach trees.
Typically where there’s food there’s survivors, or a failed attempt
at survival… Plus we saw a curtain upstairs move.”

“So you found life. Now what?” Gabe doesn’t
lower his weapon yet.

“We make a deal.”

Heavy feet slowly descend from upstairs, and
Big Mike looms on the landing, looking unsure over what’s going
on.

The small stranger looks up and smiles.
“Hiya.”

Mike nods before casting Gabe a puzzled
glance. Gabe doesn’t catch the look from his friend because his
focus never wavers from the intruder. “What do you mean ‘a
deal?’”

“Do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Take what someone says and make a question
out of it?”

“When the mood strikes.”

“This is the farthest we’ve ventured south.
Our town is north of here and we have outposts all over,” the man
says, then quickly adds before Gabe can ask him, “by ‘outpost’ I
mean places where our people go to watch over things. By ‘things’ I
mean movements of the dead and other threats. By ‘other threats’ I
mean the brand of survivor that preys upon the weak.”

Another man enters the house. He’s taller
than the leader, but only by a foot. He cuts through the room,
straight to his leader’s location, despite the fact Mike raises a
lever action rifle at his appearance. The newcomer carries his
helmet under his arm as he brings his red, stubbled face close to
give the smaller man an update. “It’s getting pretty thick out
there, Brass.”

“Thank you, Abby.” The one called Brass
doesn’t sound the least bit concerned. “Hold positions.”