Eric S. Brown
Authors: Last Stand in a Dead Land
Last Stand in a Dead Land
By
Eric S. Brown
Copyright 2011 by Grand Mal Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address www.grandmalpress.com
Published by: Grand Mal Press, Forestdale, MA
Last Stand in a Dead Land by Eric S. Brown, copyright 2011
ISBN 13 digit:
9781937727017
ISBN 10 digit:
1937727017
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grand Mal Press
p. cm
Cover art by Jade Moede. www.jadepaint.com
Table of Contents
PART I:
Survivors
The smell of rotting meat was the worst part of it. It made Jacob sick to his stomach and nothing he had tried so far helped to shut it out. Tying a cloth over his mouth and nose was pointless. It didn’t even begin to filter the odor out. That stuff about Vick’s Vapor Rub was a load of crap too. Oh, it worked but only for a few seconds. Unless you continued to slather it on every couple of minutes or held your nose directly into the jar, the help it gave faded away too quickly. Jacob had thought one’s sense of smell was supposed to adapt to odors and get used to them to the point where one didn’t even know they were there. Two days had passed and he was still waiting for that to happen too. Two days. The thought of that freaked him out. Two days and no help had come. Two days of living off potato chips, candy bars, and peanuts, drinking toilet water since the bottled water vending machine had been empty like it normally was at the end of a workday, and no internet. The world had really gone to Hell in the blink of an eye.
Jacob sat against the wall in the space between two of the vending machines. It was crazy hot. The power had gone out that first night when they came and never come back on. He remembered being stupid enough to offer to stay late and help Daniel with the last of the edits on the latest issue of
Croatoan
. That one act of kindness had either cost him his life or saved it. He wasn’t sure which. The television and the web, before the power went out, had been filled with reports of some kind of virus sweeping through the city. He and Daniel cracked Night of the Living Dead jokes about it while they worked. Everything was fine that morning as they’d come to work. Neither of them really believed the apocalypse could unfold in a matter of hours. It wasn’t until the elevator doors opened and nine, snarling things that once were human beings came pouring out of it that they had believed. Of course, by then, it was too late. Daniel tried to fight the things and paid the price for it. Jacob sealed himself up in the break room, locking and barricading the door. He’d been here ever since. He’d heard Daniel’s screams as the man had died and the far worse sounds of the meal the things partook of afterwards.
He didn’t doubt that at least a few of the things were still in the office, waiting on him to come out or die. Occasionally, at random intervals, one of them would attack the break room’s door, pounding its rotting fists against it with such fury Jacob could only pray the door would hold and try not to pee his pants every time it happened. Usually, after a few minutes, the thing would give up and go back to wandering aimlessly around or whatever it was they were doing out there.
Jacob hauled himself to his feet, making his way across the room to its sole window. He’d smashed it open with a chair in desperation earlier, before what little rationality he retained convinced him in desperation it would be suicide to make any kind of escape attempt through it. This was real life, not the movies, even if it felt as if he was stuck in a bad horror flick. Jacob leaned through it to look at the street. A few of the dead roamed about amid the wrecked and abandoned cars below. Their numbers grew smaller every time he did this. His best guess was that the things were moving on to other hunting grounds, which meant they had picked this area of the city clean of survivors, except for maybe other folks who were hopelessly trapped like he was. Jacob refused to believe he was the last person left alive in the entire city. That just couldn’t be possible.
Jacob knew he needed a plan but he was stuck on the seventh floor of an office building with no real weapons or even rope, surrounded by a city full of the living dead. He headed back over to the door and pressed his ear against it. Maybe, just maybe with a bit of luck, he could make it past the ones in the office. Then he’d do what he always did as a writer: Make stuff up as he went along.
There was some kind of commotion happening in the office, the worst he had heard since that first day. Something was definitely getting the dead riled up. He heard a moan followed by several snarls. There was a series of “ppfftt” sounds then only silence. He took a step away from the door not quite sure what to do.
“
Come on and open the door,” a man’s voice called to him. “We ain’t got all day.”
Jacob stared at the door in utter shock and disbelief. Finally, he managed to say, “Who. . . Who are you?”
“
I ain’t the Grim Reaper, kid, if that’s what you’re wondering. He seems to be taking a vacation these days.”
Jacob laughed in spite of himself. Something about the man’s gruff and self assured tone put him at ease. “Okay, hold on.”
Jacob shoved his makeshift barricade at the base of the door aside and unlocked it. The man outside stood in the middle of a sea of overturned desks, loose papers blowing in the breeze from one of the huge, shattered office windows, with a gun in his hand and two corpses at his feet. A long silencer was attached to the gun’s barrel explaining the odd noises he’d heard.
The man looked like some kind of hero from a post-apocalyptic movie. He wore a long, gray trench coat and Jacob could see several more weapons buried within its pockets. The hilt of a sword stuck out above the top of the backpack he wore, over his left shoulder. A touch of gray marked his otherwise jet black hair and a set of strange goggles covered his eyes.
“
Seriously, man,” Jacob asked, “Who in the Hades are you?”
“
A survivor, just like you. Now we gotta move. Whether they heard me or not, those things can smell us. Move it!” The man turned and ran for the elevator.
“
Those don’t work!” Jacob told him, but even as he said the words, he saw that the elevator’s door was open. Metal cables glinted in the darkness inside the shaft. The man tossed him a pair of thick gloves.
“
Hope you can climb. The stairwells are a bit occupied.”
Jacob pulled the gloves on, said a prayer, and leaped for the closest cable as seven more snarling corpses burst into the office area.
Jacob tried not to look down as he worked his way towards the building’s lobby. His arms ached and sweat drenched his hair, dripping into and stinging his eyes. By the time the two of them reached the second floor, Jacob was beginning to wonder if starving to death, all alone in the break room, might have been the better option.
“
This is where we get off,” the man informed him. “Too many of them on the ground floor.”
Finding the courage to look down, Jacob saw dozens of hungry faces staring up at them from the bottom of the elevator shaft as the man pulled a small crossbow device from his trench coat and fired a bolt at the shaft’s wall. It struck the wall with a loud thud. There was some kind of thin climbing wire attached to it. The man let go of the cable and swung over to the elevator door of the second floor. Bracing himself against the wall, the man strained and shoved them open. A dead woman came tumbling towards him as Jacob watched. The man swung from her path as the rotter’s hands grabbed for him and missed. She landed somewhere below with a crashing thump. The man swung back to the open door and vanished through it. A full minute later, he reappeared, extending a hand. “It’s the only way, kid. I got you.”
Jacob threw himself at the man, who caught his hand and yanked him into the second floor corridor. Rubbing at his arm muscles, Jacob leaned against the wall, catching his breath. “That was some hardcore Batman stuff.”
“
Thanks,” the man said, “I wasn’t entirely sure it would work to be honest.”
Jacob suddenly felt very sick at his stomach. “You didn’t tell me your name.”
“
Elijah,” the man said, his gaze focused on the other end of the hallway where the stairwell was. “I have a van parked in the street on the north side. Hope you’re ready for a good run because the easy part’s over with.”
“
The easy part?” Jacob made a face at him wondering if Elijah was completely insane.
Elijah drew a pistol from a holster beneath his trench coat and handed it to him. “The safety’s off. You only got seventeen shots so make them count if you have to use it.”
“
My gun doesn’t have a silencer,” Jacob commented.
“
I said run, didn’t I?”
Elijah and Jacob ran through the hallway at a full out sprint with Elijah in the lead. As they neared the midway point of the hall, the doorway to an office burst open and tall man in a tattered and blood-stained business suit sprang into their path. Yellow teeth flashed as the thing took a bite at Elijah’s left shoulder. Elijah met its attempt with a gloved fist to its face that sent teeth flying and caved in the thing’s nose. The dead man staggered backwards a few steps, moaning, before Elijah leveled his pistol at its forehead and sent it back to Hell. The thing’s skull exploded like a blood-filled water balloon.
Elijah skidded to a halt in front of a door near the hallway’s end and kicked it open with one of his heavy boots. “This way!”
Jacob watched him barrel across the room and jump out the already smashed window inside. He ran to its edge and looked down to see Elijah standing on top of a black van, a pistol in each hand, blazing away at a pack of dead who were already closing in to surround it. Jacob raised his own pistol and started shooting from where he stood.
“
Forget it, you idiot!” Elijah yelled at him. “Just bloody freaking jump!”
Elijah slid himself into the van’s driver seat and its engine roared to life as Jacob leapt for his life. He landed painfully, his right cheek smacking against the van’s metal roof. With almost no time to recover, Jacob fought to hold on as Elijah kicked the van into gear and floored the gas. The van plowed through and over the closest of the dead. Blood and pus splattered into the air.
“
Yeah!” Jacob heard Elijah yell as they hit the freeway and the bulk of the dead shrank into the distance behind them.
An eternity-seeming rough ten minutes went by before Elijah ever stopped to let Jacob get off the roof and into the van. Jacob stared in awe at the stockpile of weapons and supplies covering the floor of its back. “Did you rob a bloody military base?”
Elijah ignored him as the moaning of the dead filled the street. The alley they had parked in quickly began to fill up with the dead. The things were drawn to the sound of the van’s engines like flies to a pile of poop. Jacob turned to Elijah, “So, uh, you do have a plan right?”
“
Sure. A pretty simple one too.”
“
Mind cluing me in?”
“
Save everyone I can and get the Hell out of this city before we become corpse food.”
“
Great plan. I’ve told you you’re crazy right?”
Elijah laughed.
“
How exactly did you find me anyhow?” Jacob asked.
Elijah produced a small, handheld device from one of his many pockets and showed it to him. “Life detector you could call it, I guess. It’s experimental military tech.”
Jacob shrugged. “Sure, why not? If the dead can walk, anything’s possible. So where are we headed now?”
Elijah’s only answer was a grin that sent a shiver through Jacob’s spine.