Dead World (Book 1): Dead Come Home (7 page)

“That’s the weird part,” Bennett said with a tone of disbelief. “I interviewed one of the air traffic guys who received the chopper’s mayday. He said it sounded like the pilot was being attacked.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. But I should tell you that I got an all-points-intel bulletin that said to avoid contact with anyone who looks like they may have teeth marks or bites.”

“The guy who danced with me at the airstrip didn’t have his right hand. I thought it might have been an accident. But now that you mention it, the thing could have been gnawed off by something.”

“For fuck’s sake!! Would you, for once in your goddamn life, just shut the
fuck
up and do what I fuckin’ tell you?” Bennett yelled. “I just know. Get to your Ma and … ah, fuck … get your ass headed west. All the places east of you are gonna be death traps.”

“One got a chuck of me when I was out in Reno,” Bennett said. “Tried to head back to Langley, but I heard they’ve started shooting anyone who approaches on sight a few hours ago.”

“Where are you now?”

“Headin’ for a fixer I got out in Tahoe. Used to be a plastic surgeon. Now he just does patch jobs for bad men and guys like us.”

“So just bad men, then, is what you’re telling me?” Mike joked. Bennett laughed hard, which turned to a choked and hacking cough.

“FUCK! Did you listen to a
thing
I just told you? I’m bit, you dense prick. You stay the hell away from me and anyone else that’s been bitten. If you can’t get clear, use whatever you got and bash their heads in … even if it’s me.”

“But what if there’s a cu …”

Click …

Bennett was gone. Mike tried redial only to find his number was now blocked. Two minutes later, his phone announced that he had a text message. It was Bennett.

Last thing kimosabe … if ur Ma bit … don’t waste hope. just do right thing. U saw what happens to 1’s who R bit. Happy trails ya crazy fuckin cowboy.

That was it. Though Mike didn’t want to acknowledge it, this would be the last thing his old friend would ever say to him.

Goddamnit, Bennett you fuckin’ bayou-backwoods bastard. You didn’t even give me a chance to say goodbye.

Mike made a sharp right turn off of Highway 79 just in time to see a car from one of the side roads pass in front of him and T-bone an SUV that was speeding at him from the other direction. Mike braked, yanked the steering wheel and fishtailed into a right turn. He nailed the gas and burned rubber down Donna Road until he came to the left turn onto Victoria Street at the end. He slowed down, not wanting to worry Ma. For all he knew, she was fine, and he didn’t want to alarm her any more than necessary. He kept it at 30 mph down Victoria and coasted into the gravel drive before coming to a stop under the aluminum carport.

Dead Come Home

Chapter 4

The Lead Singer of REM Was Right

Lily rolled her emerald green eyes, annoyed at the noise that invaded her apartment … again. She wasn’t sure if the sound coming from the other side of the wall was a crap-tacular “shoot-’em-up” movie or if that was just what passed for rap music these days. Whatever it was, it was destroying her concentration. The muffled sound of rumbling bass assaulted her ears, even through the ear buds of her iPod. She rolled her eyes yet again and let out a sigh.

Oh, well. Lily had been looking for an excuse to leave the apartment all day, anyway. She collected her stack of marbled composition notebooks and left. The sun was actually out for once … for a while, at least. In the Pacific Northwest, Lily had quickly learned, the sun never stuck around for long.

Maybe I’ll try that new coffee place a few blocks down.

Lily stepped into the coffee shop and immediately knew it wasn’t going to be a good place for her to try to write. This afternoon, they appeared to be hosting some kind of open mic event. She entered just in time to witness a crowd of “arty-fartsy” types clapping dutifully for a young man as he finished playing some mediocre guitar piece. To avoid seeming overly rude by stepping in and leaving before the door had a chance to swing closed, she stopped at the coffee bar and ordered an overpriced Cappuccino … to go.

Hot cup in hand, Lily stormed back to her small Nissan truck. She opened the door and slung her notebooks through. She was going to need quiet and isolation if she was going to give birth to the brainchild that had been gestating in her imagination for weeks, and was
finally
ready to hit paper. So far, everywhere she went felt as though they were only slightly quieter than Las Vegas before 3 a.m.

The only other place she could think to go was out of the way, off the beaten trail, and lacked most of the amenities of home … like food and a toilet. There was an old logging mill about 30 minutes out of town. The view may have been lacking in aesthetic value, but at least it was quiet. In fact, even the wildlife in the surrounding woods remained relatively silent around the old mill.

On her way out of town, Lily stopped by her apartment and grabbed some extra clothes and a sleeping bag, along with some simple foodstuffs such as granola bars and fruit in zip-seal bags. She made one more stop at a gas station on her way out of town, where she picked up a six-pack of water bottles and an eight pack of D-cell batteries for her fading flashlight.

Lily looked at the clock on her cell phone — 3:43 p.m. Good … she still had about three hours of daylight left. The lack of daylight wouldn’t be a problem. After all, she still had her flashlight.

She turned on the car radio out of habit, creating a blanket background to fill the road silence and help keep her mental gears turning. She was so absorbed keeping lyrics and music in her head flowing smoothly until she could get to the mill and write it all down that she failed to notice the radio hadn’t been playing music for nearly ten minutes.

The FAA and Department of Homeland Security have grounded all flight traffic in U.S. Airspace. All inbound flights are being diverted away. Immediately after this announcement, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under a presidential decree, ordered the military to shoot down all violating aircraft that are not already in an airport holding pattern. This news comes after a number of commercial flights began to report that individuals onboard were attacking passengers and crew after suffering what appear to have been psychotic episodes …

There wasn’t a soul on the road to see Lily turn down a gravel road, nearly invisible under a heavy layer of overgrowth. The path had never been paved and, even in its heyday, had never been much more than a truck path. It was rocky, rutted, and would have been nearly impassible for a smaller vehicle. The winding road snaked along, a strong stream on the left side and a steady upward slope to the right. She reached the abandoned logging mill about twenty minutes later.

The dirt path wound around a final curve to the right, where the old saw mill sat quietly in a man-made clearing. The roof had collapsed in more than a few places. The window frames sagged and bowed without glass panes to help them retain their rectangular shape. Inside, it was partly open space, half-cluttered with the fallen fragments of the building and the collapsed remains of the lost logging industry. The stumps of forgotten trees poked up from the earth to form a kind of sitting room around the perimeter of the grandfatherly mill with saplings scattered around like grandchildren.

Lily parked her truck near the center of the sitting room, like a lost granddaughter come home to visit. She broke open the shrink-wrap and got herself a water bottle. She then rummaged through her knapsack, removed her notebooks along with a fistful of pens, and got out. Arms occupied, she cleverly closed the door with a
Dock Martin
-boot-covered foot.

Her favorite place to work was a pair of stumps that stood close together, one slightly higher than the other, forming a sort of natural desk. She liked the idea that the earth had made this desk just for her. The desk stump was so level that it made Lily wonder how such a thing could have been done by chance. Both stumps had resisted the wear of time … still good, strong wood.

She set her books on the taller of the stumps, dropped the water bottle at her feet, and swung herself onto her seat. She thumbed through a mostly full notebook until she reached a clean page. A single, smooth, black river rock waited patiently for her to use it for a paperweight. She scooted the rock onto the paper with her left hand, already penning words with her right.

When it was too dark and her eyes could no longer see the lines on the page, Lily walked back to the truck and pulled out the flashlight, changing out the old batteries for new ones. She set down the chromed shaft of light in a narrow depression that she had carved into the stump face during a previous visit. The flashlight cast just enough light over the “desk” to allow her to see what she was writing.

She filled the last ten pages of the notebook with newborn lyrics before finally stopping.

Directly overhead was a gap in the tree limbs, which framed out the night sky. Lily put away her notebook and flashlight. She laid back on the shorter of the stumps and put her feet up on the other. She temporarily let her mind lose itself in the peace of the woods, nearly nodding off. Exhausted by the efforts of inspiration, she dragged the shiny thermal sleeping bag from the truck and nestled in with all the other grandchildren. The gentle starlight played out fantastic music for her eyes as she drifted to sleep amongst the quiet symphony of the woods.

* * *

Four hooded Ku Klux Klan members burst into Andrew Michael’s home, wielding shotguns like armed ghosts of ignorance. Two of the clansmen opened fire. One slug hit Andrew’s new plasma T.V. The other hit the ceiling fan in the living room.

“Where’s ever-body else?” one of the Klan members demanded. “Tell us, or you are gonna be all kindza unhappy.”

“Run!” Andrew yelled to his family, knowing he was about to die no matter what he did.

“Wrong an-sah,” the Klan member who’d shot the T.V. said. He dropped his shotgun to waist level, pointed it at Andrew’s torso, and pulled the trigger. The slug blew most of Andrew’s gut away and the force threw him over the back of the couch.

Andrew’s oldest son of about 17, Jeremiah, lunged silently from the kitchen with a butcher’s knife raised threateningly. He slashed the nearest Klansman across the face, and red blood stained his white hood. The man shrieked and dropped his shotgun to the carpet. As Jeremiah turned to attack another, the leader caught him across the jaw with the butt of his gun.

The knife flung from Jeremiah’s hand. He shook off the blow, pushed the shotgun away from his head and threw his fist into an uppercut, putting his whole body behind the punch. He felt a prick between his shoulder blades as the butcher’s knife he’d been carrying was buried into his back. Shock set in as blood flooded his lungs, pouring from his mouth and back.

“Cut me you fuckin’ nigger,” the one who stabbed Jeremiah said, watching the boy collapse in a pool of his own blood.

The four Klan members searched the house, eventually finding the remaining members of the terrified family. They dragged Andrew’s wife and other two children, all of them screaming, out of the house. They took their victims to the old oak tree in the front yard. A fifth member began throwing hangman’s nooses, tied to the truck’s tailgate, over a thick tree branch.