Dead South Rising: Book 1
Read Dead South Rising: Book 1 Online
Authors: Sean Robert Lang
Part Two - The Great Pretender
The South is rising. Again…
David didn’t know he killed another man’s wife. He was only trying to save his own family. His friends. Himself.
And now he’s being hunted. By the dead. And by the living.
He thinks he can handle the dead. But can he handle the living?
Welcome to the South. Where the dead are dangerous, and the living are deadly.
This is a work of fiction. That’s right, I made it all up. All of the characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed within are either products of my messed up imagination or are used fictitiously.
So relax. It ain’t real, folks.
Dead South Rising Book I
Copyright © 2014 by Shawn Langley
All rights reserved.
Sean Robert Lang
PO Box 312
Cushing, TX 75760
www.seanrobertlang.com
Book cover designed by Adrijus G. from Rocking Book Covers
For Cass. For always.
PART ONE
El Jefe
The ‘Z’ word. Some ratings-hungry jackass of a journalist just had to use the ‘Z’ word. Some sensationalist ploy to get viewers and listeners tuned in, no doubt. No one serious used the ‘Z’ word. No one credible, anyway. Hollywood used the ‘Z’ word. Enough said.
But David Morris dared not turn off the radio.
He pushed the rental car’s flimsy accelerator pedal as far into the floorboard as the laws of physics allowed. One darting glance at the speedometer confirmed what he suspected: he should have taken the upgrade. That ten dollars saved could now very well cost Jessica her life.
Ninety-one. Or so. That’s what the needle steadily reported. It hovered, unchanging, except on hills, where it arced backward like a cowboy pulling the reins on his trusty steed. Or in this case, stubborn mule.
David hissed an explicative-laden torrent at the uncooperative, oft-abused rental. He knew he was pushing the vehicle and his luck. He curled and re-curled his fingers around the dainty wheel, squeezing it, hoping to breathe just a bit more life into the wheezing engine. Ahead, another hill.
Shit, shit, shit.
He needed a running start, a good amount of momentum before gravity said,
nuh-uh
,
fuck you
.
His new mantra became
c’mon, c’mon, c’mon
as he unwittingly rocked in his seat, transforming himself into a virtual pendulum, urging the gasping auto onward and upward. As the ascent commenced, the air seemed to thin out, strangling him and the struggling auto for breath. He hooked his collar and tugged, fanning his core. His foot tingled in objection to the relentless pressure applied to the gas, no thanks to a long-ago broken cruise control. He wiggled his toes but did not lift his foot.
The car stereo hypnotically hissed an alternating pattern of static, dead-air, static, dead-air—a perennial cycle scanning for a signal. For life. For hope.
Against better judgement, David picked up and fumbled with the two-way radio for the umpteenth time in as many minutes. He vehemently detested driving while distracted. A neighborhood teen had lost her life several months ago because of such poor judgement. But current circumstances called for hypocrisy, and his eyes darted from walkie to road, walkie to road—a deadly game of Pong. Reluctantly, he lowered the car stereo volume. Then, turning his attention to the two-way radio, he twisted the volume knob that doubled as the power switch. It chirped on, then silence.
“Mitch,” he said in a strong whisper. With the racket from his ride, whispering seemed pointless. Still, whispering comforted him. “Mitch.” He let go of the call button.
He cursed, glaring at the backlit communicator screen before rubber on rumble strips forced him back onto the straight and narrow.
Back in his lane, he licked his lips and shifted in his seat as he pulled in a huge breath, holding it hostage while the car knocked and coughed its way up the lengthy incline.
Surely he was in range. The packaging had stated twenty-seven miles. Of course, an asterisk tacked inconspicuously to the end of the statement alluded to the obligatory caveat: optimum conditions required for full range. Well, conditions sure as hell weren’t optimal. Far fucking from it. The disclaimer may as well have been an admission: This product sucks. Don’t buy it. David suspected that if the designers’ own lives had depended on the finicky plastic communicators, they would have done a few things differently, like making a product that fucking worked. He tossed the walkie into the passenger seat, and it bounced into the floorboard.
He freed his recent breath in exasperation, the speedometer needle crawling in the wrong direction. It taunted him, a plastic middle-finger wagging from the dash.
A Dodge four-door dually pickup blocked his lane ahead. No surprise, there. He’d passed the abandoned vehicle going the other way, heading into town.
As the limping auto neared the truck, he could make out a message. Olde English lettering arced across the tinted back window proudly proclaimed that Jimmy loved Angela forever.
How fucking sweet. Too bad forever came and went,
David wanted to tell Jimmy.
Oh, and you didn’t happen to see my wife, did you?
Another string of obscenities poured over David’s lips as he cursed the cowboy cadillac and his own vehicle in one breath. He swerved around the monster of a truck. The car responded by wheezing and slowing, and he slapped the wheel with his sweaty palms. A glimpse in the rearview mirror revealed a sinking sun sliding below the tree tops.
A sigh, then a shiver.
He stopped cursing to himself, at himself, and focused on the job at hand.
The new smell prying at his nostrils prompted another under-the-breath tirade. His eyes danced over the dash and it delivered more bad news.
“Shit.”
The wrong needle quickly crept the wrong way. A tiny orange engine glowed steadily accompanied by an icon resembling a thermometer that blinked red, a chime for every flash.
“No, no, no, no, no, no …”
The knocking under the hood grew louder, more pissed.
David steered the dying car onto the sloping strip of shoulder. Half way up. He had made it half way up the hill. If only he had crested. If only, and he could have practically coasted the rest of the way. Time now became a significant factor. For him and for Jessica.
White smoke snaked out from under the hood as he stared straight ahead, hands draped uselessly through the bottom of the steering wheel. His stomach cinched on itself.
Out of habit, he resuscitated the radio. He strained, listening, twisting his head so that his ear lined up directly with a speaker. So many times he heard a voice that wasn’t there, telling him everything would be okay. That he would be okay. That Natalee was okay.
Just come on down to Jake’s Fine Furniture, folks, where we’re dropping prices so low, we’re insane! And don’t worry, folks, because your wife is safe with us! Come on down anytime …
He slammed his palms into the wheel again while the static messed with his mind.
Think, think, think …
He watched white smoke continue to curl its wispy fingers, grabbing at nothing and catching it. He wasn’t a mechanic. Far from it, actually. His father had chastised him constantly until the day he died about the importance of having a trade, a skill.
Managing a cubicle farm is not a skill, Dave,
his father had preached.
Welder, plumber, carpenter—all respectable trades, son. When this piss-poor economy of ours goes into the shitter again, you’ll wish you were twisting wrenches. Forty-five and unemployed, that’ll be you, son. Have fun at the unemployment office. Tell Susanne ‘hello’ for me.
Instead, he was forty-five and figuring out how to navigate a new, decimated world. There was no unemployment office, nowhere he could go and fill out tons of paperwork, then sit back and wait. And hope.
A newfound urgency surged within his core. He had to get moving. He had to get back. He had to get
inside
. Even if it meant that he wouldn’t like what he found …
Stop it.
He lopped the last thought from his mind like a rotten limb. He leaned forward, propping his forehead on the wheel.
Jessica is okay
. He repeated this over and over.
Jessica is okay.
Jessica is okay.
Jessica is
—
Jessica is counting on me. Someone is counting on me. Get your ass moving.
As many times as he had driven the shitty rental up and down this two-lane rural road, he still didn’t have the route completely committed to memory. Two miles to go? Three? And why was no one manning the two-way radio? That had been the agreement. When someone went out on a run, another manned the walkie.
So it is written, so it shall be done
.
He lifted his head to scan the area. The entire length of road resembled a big, natural hallway cut through the middle of a thick forest. Tall pine trees loomed on either side of the narrow blacktop, allowing only a strip of sky ceiling above. They stole the last few minutes of daylight, prematurely bringing darkness—and other scary things.
Think, David, think
.
He glimpsed the mirror again, eyeing the dually, his options disappearing as quickly as the light.
David bumped the shifter into neutral and let off the brake. Gravity, his enemy mere moments ago, now defected to his side, pulling the car back down the hill. Slowly at first, then momentum picked up. He twisted his torso, throwing an arm over the passenger seat so that he could steer the disabled vehicle backward down the hill, toward another vehicle he hoped still worked.
He strangled the wheel, muscling it with one hand, fighting to keep the car straight. The rental swerved from lane to lane as he overcorrected again and again. It became easier to turn the wheel as the car rolled faster, but became harder to stay true and straight. Almost upon the Dodge, he pumped the brake, but rigor mortis had claimed it. He jammed both feet on the stiff pedal while spinning the wheel to avoid colliding with the pickup.
His head smacked the driver side glass when the car sailed into the grassy ditch. The earth did not give. A wheezy gasp left his lungs, and he struggled to breathe. His chest felt deflated, stepped on. Fireworks exploded in his vision and a hot pain tingled in his neck.
David sat for a few moments, rubbing his neck, his chest, his head. He needed a Tylenol. No, something stronger. He pulled on the door handle, and pushed, but the door caught gnarled earth. Not enough space to squeeze through. The ground had a hold of his exit. A claustrophobic panic grabbed his already struggling lungs and neck. He opened his mouth wide, a fish out of water battling for oxygen.
Movement. Up the road. He blinked, squinted. Darkness was descending fast, stealing his sight. Could have been a shadow. Maybe a tree bobbing. With no wind, he didn’t think so.
David dragged himself over the middle console, yanking the handle on the passenger door. Thankfully, the door swung open, gravity his friend once more, and he spilled out of the car and into the ditch. His neck burned again, a fire in his veins. He sat up, thankful for the dry ditch. No rain for several weeks meant no mud, no mess. Another small win.