Blood of the Dead: A Zombie Novel (Undead World Trilogy, Book One) (6 page)

The night air chilled her, the canopy of gray clouds that had covered the earth having completely thrown the planet’s climate into a state of perpetual fall. It should be winter right now, but instead the grass, though dead and withered from lack of sunlight and water, was still out. The trees were mere skeletons of their previous forms; bushes and shrubs cold and lifeless, just dry, crooked branches crisscrossing this way and that. The clouds above blocked everything. No rain. No snow. The air dry and always cool. Billie often wondered what might happen should the clouds either dissipate or give way. Had the rain or snow gathered on top of them and lay there dormant, waiting to fall and blanket the earth? And if it did fall, what kind of storm would it be? Surely nothing could be worse than what was happening right now. Then again, what moisture that could be up there could be enough to wipe the remnant of humanity off the planet.

There was no one alive to give answers. Not anymore. For a time each country’s military rose to fight off the dead, and for a time, each one fell at the hands of the creatures roaming the earth.

Billie stopped walking down the sidewalk as a thought hit her, one that she was surprised she hadn’t thought of till now.
They need to eat human flesh to survive. They outnumber us at least a hundred to one. There’s not enough of us to go around. You’d think most of them would have starved to death by now.
Then again, she couldn’t claim to know how the undead’s biology worked and how frequently they needed to feed despite the ravenous appetites they exhibited. They could very well be like bears going into hibernation or camels about to wander in the desert and store the sustenance they needed somewhere in their bodies, rationing it until their stores could be refilled.

The thought made her shudder.

She kept her eyes peeled in the dark. The dead suckers were silent. You had to be very quiet in order to hear them approach. The way they dragged their feet, the lack of
weight
on their footfalls, made them almost impossible to detect if you weren’t paying attention.

Nothing but the rush of the wind blowing past her ears made any sound. Like many other things, the days of hearing sirens whirr up in the distance were gone. Same with the screams that used to launch into the air by the minute.

She glanced behind her. The sidewalk was clear. All seemed to be well up front and on the sides, too.

Soon she was at ZW1’s apartment building. All the windows to the red-bricked building were boarded up, same with the glass of the front door and the window panes that ran up on either side of it.

Billie approached the front door. ZW1 should be just on the other side unless the idiot got sidetracked again. She hoped not. To wait out here in the dark . . .

She leaned over the railing next to the front door and pulled out the one-foot-square piece of pressboard hiding behind the branches of the skeletal bush alongside it. She dropped the board onto the stone step, knocked on the boarded-up door four times then pounded her heels twice on the pressboard.
Thwack thwack!

From inside:
Foombph foombph foombph
, then against the inside of the wooden door,
SLAK!

“Open the stupid door just a skosh then all the way. You think those brain-dead idiots know what we write to each other as our secret code? We change it every time, Des.”

He lowered the hatchet and rested it against his scrawny leg as, with his other hand, he locked and chained the front door once she was in. “Yeah, but . . .”

“Yeah, but nothing,” she said and moved past him to the stairs leading to the basement.

“Hey, you think you can just come here for some milk then treat me like puke?”

Billie kept walking and didn’t reply. She stopped in front of the door to his suite, crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently.

Des’s thin and pasty face was hard as he neared her, but the closer he got, the more his expression lightened and that dorky smile of his crept up onto his face.

Billie went immediately to the refrigerator, opened it, and scanned the shelves. They were bare save for an old container of mustard, a couple soft-looking carrots, a bag of crackers and a thin, one-litre carton of milk.

He raised his hands, palms out. “Hey, you look like you’ve lost at least ten pounds, probably fifteen, since I last seen you. You managing okay in that cyberworld planet thing you got going down over there?”

The truth was, she
wasn’t
managing, at least in terms of having enough supplies on hand. Baths had been reduced to just soaking in water, the soap and shampoo just finished the other week. Food supply was down except for a few nonperishables and a few packs of noodles; nothing to drink but water which, based on the way it’d been tasting lately, probably wouldn’t last that much longer either. The power was going out now and then. Eventually the water would, too.

Billie had friends she could go to, those she met online who offered time and again to help one another out if someone was short on this or that. But it was leaving the apartment that was getting to be a chore. The thought of going outside . . . . The zombies only played a part in her choice to remain secluded. It was just that she didn’t
feel
like going out anymore. Try as she might to fight it, her heart had already begun to give up hope of coming out of this alive. Reason had begun to override the notion of someone coming to the world’s rescue. She, along with everyone else, was fighting a losing battle.

“I’ll be fine,” she said softly.

“Doesn’t sound like it. Face it, Billie, you’re beginning to look like one of
them.
”

“And you’re not?”

Des’s face paled, his already pallid complexion getting whiter. He was getting thin, too, and probably weighed no more than a hundred thirty pounds sopping wet. His arms, exposed by the white tank top he was wearing, were rail-thin. The black jeans he wore hung off his waist like a pair of balloon pants. “Touché.”

“Bah,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Them guys out there don’t bother me.” Then with a grin, “They’re as good as dead anyway, right?”

She couldn’t help but smile. With a subtle nod, she quietly said, “Yeah.”

He came over to her and wrapped her in his arms. His skin was cool, his hands even cooler. “Come on, here. I got a pack of mac-and-cheese we can make.”

“That all?”

“Pretty much. And we might as well use that milk up, too. It’ll go bad if we don’t.” He sighed. “Also heard from Mr. Shank that he hadn’t seen Milk Guy for a couple of weeks now. M.G. came out here in that red truck of his every week. Shank says he thinks the creatures got him.”

“We’re running out of time, aren’t we?” she said.

Des squeezed her even tighter. “Yeah. I think we are.”

3

Off to the Promised Land

August stood over the oven, eyeing the dial; it was set at four hundred degrees.

Tears ran from his eyes and in his sweaty palms he held an old, worn black Bible, with some of the pages loose from its binding. It was the one his father gave him back when he was a kid. It had been years before August read it, but once he did, he had made a point of taking his dad aside and thanking him for it.

The pages of the old book crinkled each time he wrung it like a towel. Subconsciously he hoped by his twisting and turning the pages, God would get a sense of his own internal twisting and turning.

“You swore You wouldn’t leave me,” he said. A couple of tears fell to the Bible’s cover. “I am with you always, even until the very end of the age, You said.” He sniffled. “Where are You? Was it all a lie? Are You a lie?”

For the millionth time since he’d been out here, he thought about how the world
should
have ended, how a ruler would rise in Europe, would befriend then betray Israel, would persecute Christians worldwide, would kill those who didn’t fall in line with the new monetary system, would slaughter those who didn’t revere him as a god, would lead a revolt against God’s people at Armageddon and would fall at the hands of Christ when the Lord returned in glory on the clouds of heaven.

Instead, August was stuck in a world where the dead walked the earth, where countless lives had already been lost.

Where his own family had been murdered.

Even though the undead had killed his family first, he still took the blame upon himself. It was him, after all, who had pulled the trigger and ended their existence on this planet.

Salty tears dribbled onto his lips. He licked them away. “I can’t believe You’d abandon me. I can’t believe You’d steal my family. Can’t believe You’d let hell prevail like it has.”

He picked up the Bible in his right hand then set it down again. He repeated the motion several times, something to keep his mind distracted even if it was just a simple up-and-down motion like this one.

“Dead. They’re all dead. And You don’t care. I’ve asked, I’ve prayed and You’ve just sat there doing nothing.” Fresh tears welled in his eyes. He hadn’t slept at all last night and had trouble napping earlier in the day. He hadn’t felt like eating even though hunger floated somewhere in the back of his gut the whole day through. Fatigue beat against his eye sockets, its pulse adding to the confusion and weight that was already crushing his tired brain and resolve.

He’d never talked like this to God before. The image of the man he was a year ago flashed before his eyes, the man of yesteryear glowing with the love of the Lord, a twinkle in his eye, an enthusiasm for service. Now he was just the shell of the man he once was, broken and beaten, with a heart turning to stone.

I can’t do this anymore
, he thought.
No one can.

August set the Bible down and got on his knees.

“Last chance,” he whispered. “Either tell me where You want me or what You want me to do right now or we’re done, You and me.” A sharp pang struck his heart. To walk away from God after all these years . . . . He couldn’t believe he even considered doing it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Forgive me. Just angry, hurt and . . . I don’t even know what the word is. I’d kill myself right now if I didn’t know what the consequence might be. Your Word doesn’t say specifically, just hints at it.”

August wiped his eyes then squeezed his nostrils. He wiped his fingers on his pants.

Gazing upward, he said, “I’m listening.”

The sallow ceiling stared back at him, blank and silent. He closed his eyes and waited for some kind of pressing on his heart or some strong thought that couldn’t possibly be his own. Even a booming voice from heaven would be fine. It’d be ideal, actually.

But there was nothing.

God was silent.

His head fell into his hands and he sat kneeling in front of his oven for a long time, crying, too hurt and too much at a loss for words to even shout out a plea for help. When the tears finally ceased, he reached for the Bible on top of the oven, took it down and opened the oven door.

Opening it to the front page, his eyes settled on the message his father had written him sixty years ago. Even to this day he remembered the way his father had gotten down on one knee and handed him the Bible he himself had used for countless years. Seeing the old handwriting made his heart long for his father.

June 26, 1948.

August,

This is for you.

May Jesus be real to you as you read through these pages.

Love,

Dad

He stared at the text for a long time before closing the book.

Taking one last look at the cover and the words holy bible written in faded gold lettering on its front, he said, “Good-bye,” and tossed it on the oven rack.