Dead Series (Book 3): A Little More Alive (3 page)

“Which way?”
Curtis panted.

The door flew open
behind them and banged against the wall. A younger man wearing glasses followed
a pear-shaped woman with dark skin and a heavy scowl into the hallway, both
wearing street clothes and guns blazing. Paul ran to the right, thinking it
would lead them to the backdoor they came in through. Billy and Stephanie ran
backwards, wasting precious ammo that ricocheted off the walls and stung their
eardrums. Bursting through the door, Paul’s heart sank. He ran hard for the two
doors sitting at the end of another long hallway and everything slowed down in
his mind. He had time to realize they were quickly becoming corralled like cattle.
Had time to understand that if he picked the wrong door at the end of this hallway
they were as good as dead. Had time to see Dan poke his bloody head out the
door on the left and give Paul a quick nod before disappearing altogether.

Seizing the doorknob
on the left, Paul whipped it back and burst outside, leading them through the
falling snow and searching for Dan’s footprints in the frosted grass. They
weaved between rows of similar looking brick buildings with white-painted trim
and dead bushes, gasping for air to cool their burning lungs. Paul took a sharp
right, cutting through a tree line that scratched at his cheeks and grabbed at
his clothing. Then they were free, spilling into a small town that looked like
Main Street, USA back in the 1950s. The group raced down the deserted street,
passing different shops and restaurants, legs aching and guns clutched tightly
in their hands. Halfway down the block, Paul steered them into a coffee shop
and slammed the door shut behind them. His face fell, taking in the raw
two-by-fours holding the façade up and the gray sky hovering above. Confusion
swelled in their eyes. The dead guy in fatigues leaning against a diagonal
support beam only added to their dismay. The bullet hole in his forehead pulled
a stubborn sigh from Paul’s lips.

“What is this
place?” Billy whispered, snowflakes lighting on his face.

“It’s a fake
town.” Paul peeked through a pane glass window, canvassing the street for the
man and woman trying to kill them.

“Fake town?” Billy
scrunched his nose up. “For what?”

“Probably practicing
military drills.”

Curtis spun Paul
around by the arm. “Who the hell was that?”

White plumes of
smoke jutted from Paul’s gaping mouth. “Somebody just as afraid of us as we are
of them.”

Curtis shook his
head. “No, I mean the guy who stuck his head out that door back there.”

The floor dropped
out beneath Paul and suddenly he was freefalling through the Earth’s core at a
hundred and twenty miles an hour, passing layers upon layers of crust, mantel,
and liquid nickel. He slammed Curtis up against the front wall, rattling the
windows on either side of the door and curling his jacket into his fists. “You
saw him?” he yelled, tendons throbbing in his neck.

“Paul,” Stephanie
said, setting a hand on his shoulder.

Curtis stared up
into Paul’s heated glower, pinned against the wall with bewilderment creasing
his brow. “Blond guy missing half his face? Yeah, I saw him.”

He stared hard at
Curtis with his ears ringing and disbelief pressing against the back of his
eyes. Pushing off, he turned away and ran his hands through his messy brown
hair because this couldn’t be. Because this was just as impossible as the dead
walking the streets of America. “What the fuck,” he whispered, sheets of
plywood creaking beneath his footsteps.

“Who was he?”
Curtis asked again.

“That was Dan.”
Everyone looked at Wendy. She swallowed thickly, holding Paul’s harrowed gaze
with everything she had, breath rising from her lips in vaporous wisps. “Paul’s
best friend.”

P
oking his head up
over a big green dumpster, Paul watched Billy lay motionless on the sidewalk in
front of a flower shop with no flowers inside. He couldn’t see the blood on
Billy’s forehead but knew it was there because he put it there with the blood
from the deceased soldier in the fake coffee shop. For all intents and
purposes, Billy was dead and all they could do now was wait. Ducking down behind
the dumpster, Paul traded glances with Stephanie and Rebecca crouching beside
him.

“They’re coming,”
he whispered, peeking around the side and nodding to Curtis, who was positioned
behind a blue mailbox across the street. Curtis gave a single nod and turned
his attention to the man and woman sauntering closer with assault rifles wrapped
in their hands. Putting a finger to his lips, Paul’s eyes travelled from Stephanie
to Rebecca before rising over the dumpster’s edge. The man and woman looked to
be in their mid-twenties and didn’t see Paul because they were too busy
training their weapons on Billy’s lifeless body, murmuring things to each other
only they could hear. Carefully, Paul raised the M4 to eye level, resting it on
the lip of the dumpster and peering down the scope. When they got less than
fifteen feet from Billy, he called out to them.

“That’s far
enough!” Paul thrust his badge into the air. “We are the police and we’re not
here to hurt you!”

Their heads and
guns spun around in Paul’s direction at the same time, methodically scanning
the phony shops across the street. They couldn’t see him and it weighed upon
their faces.

The thin guy with
long bangs tickling his glasses laughed abruptly. “The police are dead, asshole!”

“Not all of them,”
Paul replied, lowering the badge and clipping it onto his belt.

“Then why don’t
you come a little closer so we can take a better look at your
badge
.” The hint of a smirk graced the
woman’s face and Paul knew she would shoot as soon as he came out.

“Drop the guns or
you’re dead,” Curtis yelled, yanking their gazes back to his side of the
street. “I’m not playing.”

Indecision mixed
with panic, cementing the duo in place. The deer-in-headlights look Paul was
hoping for glazed over in their eyes. Most everyone got it, not quite used to
having guns pointed at them yet. Whispering something to each other, only their
lips dared to move.

“Drop em!” Wendy
stepped out from the alcove of a grocery store two doors down, Sophia’s gun
wrapped in her hands. “You’re surrounded and have no chance.”

The short woman
jerked her weapon to Wendy and sharpened her gaze. “My money says that after
all this time out there with those
things
,
you’ve been out of ammunition for the past week and a half.” Her smile
tightened. “We, however, don’t have that problem.”

Paul fired a short
burst, making sparks dance on the concrete around their feet.

“Alright,” she
screamed, raising her hands and pulling the gun strap over her head. “Alright!”

“You too, Screech.”
Cautiously, Curtis came out from behind the mailbox with his Glock pointed at Glasses.

Glasses swept the
barrel of his weapon to Curtis. “Fucking raiders! I knew it!”

 
Billy rolled onto his back. “Go easy,” he
blurted, pointing Chubby’s sidearm at the man’s long-hooked nose.

“Hey, my bad, man.”
Glasses quickly relented, putting his hands into the air and pulling the weapon
strap over his head.

Billy pushed to
his feet without taking the gunsights off them. “Put them on the ground, real
slow like.”

They did as told,
moving too casually for Paul’s liking. When their assault rifles hit the pavement
and they straightened back up, he unlocked a pent-up breath and came out from
behind the dumpster. Stephanie and Rebecca followed him into the street, guns
locked on target while Curtis rounded up the surrendered weapons and got back
on point.

With his hands in
the air, Glasses nervously shifted in his skinny jeans and boots. “Are you guys
really cops?”

“We are now,”
Curtis grumbled, looking like he might still shoot them.

“Hey man, we’re
not looking for any trouble.”

“No, you’re just
looking to kill innocent people,” Curtis spit back, stopping next to Paul in
the middle of the street. “The fuck you shooting at us for?”

The man’s already
insipid skin continued to whiten, like the blood wasn’t just leaving his
elevated hands. Like it was leaving his entire body through the soles of his
shoes.

“You’re
trespassing!” the woman snapped, her scowl unflinchingly sharp. “I work here
and local law enforcement has no jurisdiction over Camp Dodge!”

“You know who has
jurisdiction now?” Paul gestured with the M4. “The people with the guns.”

The snow began to
lighten as they took stock of each other, a western showdown on a
Hollywoodesque set, the silence as cold and gray as the sky above. The man
couldn’t have weighed more than a buck twenty soaking wet and sported the same tight
jeans and sand-colored hoodie as his companion.

“You’re in the guard?”

She nodded, drilling
Paul with a malicious stare.

“What’s your
name?”

“Maria,” she said
curtly, nodding to the man next to her. “This is my husband, Calvin. Who are
you?”

“Survivors,” he
replied, glancing at Billy. “Pat them down.”

“Spread your feet,”
Billy ordered, tucking his nine into his police duty belt and starting down
around Maria’s ankles. His palms moved up her left leg and then her right,
fluttering against her tight-fitting jeans like butterfly wings.

“Hey, easy!”
Calvin said as Billy’s hands reached Maria’s breasts.

“Shut up,” Wendy
said, gesturing with her gun.

“Everyone relax, we’re
all on the same team now,” Stephanie said in a calm voice. “We only want to
help.”

Calvin cocked his
head to one side. “How? By feeling up my wife’s tits? Because that was kind of
rude.”

“I didn’t feel up
your wife’s tits.”

“I saw them
bounce!”

“Cal,” Maria groaned
in a low voice, eyes locked on Paul.

Billy stepped back
to the line. “They’re clean,” he said, looking around like he just heard
something in the empty tavern behind them.

Lowering his
weapon, Paul stepped a little closer. “My name’s Paul. How many people are in here?”

Maria snorted in
amusement. “Alive or dead?”

“Both.”

“Alive?” She
traded a look with Calvin. “Just us. Dead?” She pressed her lips together and shrugged
limply. “We’ve killed a lot of bees but not all of them. A few are stuck in the
barracks and other buildings; some are outside on the loose. Hiding.”

Curtis folded his
brow. “
Bees
?”

“Yeah,” Calvin
said. “Ya know, like
zom-bees
?”

He stared dully at
Calvin for a few seconds. “That is the gayest nickname I’ve ever heard.”

Maria’s eyes toured
the half circle of guns staring back at her. “Where’d you come from?”

Paul ignored her.
“Is there a radio on the base? Something that still works?”

“We already tried
it,” Calvin answered. “I’m not sure if it’s broken or no one is left to answer.”

Paul went close
enough to smell the sweat floating from Maria’s dark skin. “Take us to it.”

“Hey man, we will
totally take you. But can we at least have our guns back?” Calvin swallowed
dryly, taking an uneasy look around the ghost town with his hands up. “Those
fuckers are still out here.”

“Quit talking.”
Paul turned to Maria and swept a hand out. “After you.”

▼

The fluorescent
lights flickered to life, lighting up the wood paneled walls and dusty
equipment. The smell of mothballs and wet permeated the air and Paul guessed
that in a world of internet, cellphones and satellites, this room didn’t see
much action anymore. The equipment was black and dark brown and looked like
something out of a
Hogan’s Heroes
episode, deflating his chest. Walking to the back of the room, he passed some
old reel-to-reels and pushed a hand through a sheet of cobwebs, stopping at the
table Maria was staring down at.

“This is the
emergency radio,” she said, brushing something from her face. “We have tried
every channel almost every day.”

“Almost?” Paul
bent for a closer look, inspecting the black knobs and dials. He’d run a lot of
boards before but nothing like this. “When was the last time you tried it?”

“Day before
yesterday.” Maria flipped a switch, igniting some dim yellow lights. “A few
years ago, the military began bringing back high-frequency communications
rather than depending solely upon satellite.”

“Why’s that?”
Wendy asked, flicking a spider from her arm.

“Because during
emergencies, high cellphone use can overload the satellite system.”

“Is that why the
cellphones and internet are down?”

“Probably
initially, but no one is manning the satellites now and most have gone dormant.
Eventually, things crash and burn.”

Paul’s eyebrows
went up. “
Most
have gone dormant?
What about the others?”

She shrugged. “I’m
a new reserve. When the outbreak started, I was in my second week of training.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”
He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a longwinded breath, eager to take
this horse and buggy out for a spin. “If you’re a reserve, how do you know the
satellites have gone dormant?”

Maria arched an
eyebrow at him. “Didn’t you ever see
The Day
After Tomorrow
?”

“Jesus Christ, not
everything is a movie!” Spinning on the balls of his feet, he turned to Calvin.
“What about you?”

Calvin looked
behind him, unsure if Paul was talking to him or not. “Me? Yeah, I saw it. Not
a bad little movie.”

“Not the movie!
What did you do for work before this?”

“Oh, I work at
Google,” he said with a sheepish smile, pushing his glasses up the bridge of
his pointy nose. “Well,
used
to work
at Google.”

“Downtown?”

He nodded.

“Any medical
training?”

The husband and
wife turned blank expressions on each other before shaking their heads.

Paul looked back
to the radio. It was tall and chunky, the wires as dry as the skin on those
things outside. He sat down in a chair with cracked vinyl padding and wheeled it
closer to a microphone mounted to a short stand on the table. Wavy Gravy
floated through his tired mind and he could still hear the screams and grunts
that came from the boat’s radio that night. This had to be different. If it
wasn’t… Pushing the morbid thought from his mind, Paul sucked a deep breath through
his teeth and held onto it. “So where do we start?”