In the Dead: Volume 1 (5 page)

He reached out and caught her hand. “What if I call the lawyer and just get his advice? See if he can work out a deal.”

She shook off his touch. “Why are you bringing this up now?”

“
Because horoscopes about ‘company’ are making you tense. And we’re running out of money. It isn’t fair to make you live in a crappy one bedroom house in a shitty little town because I fucked up.”

He expelled his breath in a long burst and walked further into the ocean. The water lapped around his calves. Nadia stared at him.

“
Language,” she said softly and he shot her a smile over his shoulder.

Duncan barked in the distance and Nadia glanced down the beach with a frown. “That doesn’t sound like his normal bark,” she said, more to herself than Randy.

Normally Duncan’s bark was welcoming and bouncy, but now a snarl echoed from the beach and they both watched as the dog circled the person who was now within two hundred yards of them. He barked again and then ran full on toward Nadia and Randy.

“
What is his deal?” Randy asked. “I’ve never seen him do that before.”

“
Maybe that guy,” Nadia said, because she could see now it was a man coming toward him. “Yelled at him.”

“
We would have heard that,” Randy reasoned. “Think he used one of those pitch whistles?”

“
You mean the ones only dogs can hear?” She shook her head. “I guess that could be it.”

Duncan raced closer and Nadia crouched down to look at him as he moved toward them. “You okay-”

The dog didn’t stop but bolted past her and down the beach in the opposite direction. He had wild eyes like he was scared.

“
Duncan!” Randy snapped, using his best ‘listen to me, dog’ voice. The one they’d learned in the dog training course last year when they income for such silliness. Duncan usually listened to that top dog voice, but this time he kept going, running around a bend in the distance where he disappeared from view.

The guy Duncan had been barking at was closer now and Nadia tilted her head as she looked at him.

“
What’s up with that guy?”

Randy wasn’t looking at the guy, though, he was still peering down the beach where Duncan had gone. “What guy?”

She motioned toward the visitor to their beach. “The guy, Randy! There’s something wrong with him.”

Randy looked down the beach where she was motioning. The stranger was moving at a steady clip toward them and was now about a hundred yards away… but he wasn’t really walking. He was…
dragging
toward them, one shoulder hunched downward and his left leg didn’t lift, but pulled a trench in the sand behind him.

“
Oh my God,” Nadia cried as she moved toward the man. She could now see his face was bloody. “Are you okay?”

The man didn’t answer, but continued up the beach with a faint moan that dissipated on the air like smoke. She moved to get closer, but Randy caught her arm.

“
Nadia, go in and call 911, okay,” Randy said.

She blinked as she looked at him then stared at the man who was coming closer with every step. His eyes were so blank. And red.

“
Be careful,” she said, squeezed Randy’s arm, then ran for the house.

#

Every hair on Randy’s arms and the back of his neck stood up, kind of like they had the last day he’d been at work and everyone was whispering about investigations and jail terms and staring at him like he had sprouted a second head that was humming the National Anthem.

He’d always had the knack to know when bad shit was about to go down and looking at the stranger who continued to stagger toward him, he figured the guy couldn’t be bringing good news.

“
Hey, mister,” he said, taking one step closer. “Are you okay? You get hurt in a car wreck or something?”

He didn’t believe that was the case when he said it. After all, the road was almost a mile away. It wouldn’t really make sense for someone to come all this way. Though judging from the way the man moaned in response, maybe he was just so fucked up he didn’t even know where he was.

“
Sir?” Randy repeated as the man reached him.

Instead of answering, the man vomited up black sludge all over the front of his white t-shirt. Randy gagged, but managed to keep his own puke reflex at bay and grabbed for the man’s shoulder.

“
Shit, you might have a concussion or something. Sit down and-”

He didn’t get to finish. Before he could, the stranger grabbed for his hand and sunk his teeth into Randy’s palm.

“
Mother fucker!” Randy screamed as he punched his attacker square in the face.

The man grunted as he staggered back and his jaw loosened enough that Randy was able to pull his hand free. He stared at his palm. The skin was broken and the outline of ragged tooth marks was already starting to be blocked out by blood and some kind of weird black material.

“
What the fuck, man?” he asked the intruder. “Who the fuck bites someone?”

The man moved forward again with another moan and this time there was no doubt he had bad intentions. He reached for Randy and caught his shoulders, pulling at him with surprising strength for a person Randy was pretty sure he outweighed by a good twenty pounds (he’d stress-eaten a few donuts since he ran from the law).

He shoved back, but the stranger clung tightly. His jaws snapped toward Randy’s face and he drooled that disgusting black material down his chin as he snarled and muttered.

As they grappled, the door to the cottage opened and Nadia came down the steps carrying the cordless phone in one hand and her disposable cell in another. “Hey, all the lines are dead-” she started and then she caught sight of Randy’s predicament.

She tossed both phones on the sand at the bottom of the steps and ran toward them at a full spring.

“
Get off him!” she screamed as she pushed the stranger.

Even with their combined weight, though, the intruder clung to Randy and wouldn’t let go. Nadia hit him this time with a right cross that Randy swore she’d learned from UFC, but all the man did was snarl in her direction and keep snapping his teeth at Randy.

“
What the fuck is wrong with you?” Randy asked as he pushed back with as much force as he could muster. The guy still didn’t let go, but he did stagger backward. Randy saw the big driftwood log a few feet away and pushed harder, guiding his attacker toward the debris.

Just as he’d hoped, when the man’s ankles hit the log, he lost his balance and toppled backward, taking Randy with him. But his grip loosened as they hit the sand and Randy was able to roll free. He popped back up on his feet immediately and lifted his hands up in a defensive stance.

“
What the fuck, asshole?” he asked a second time as he looked down at the stranger who had attacked him.

The man wasn’t moving, just lying there, staring straight upward with blank, open eyes.

“
What’s wrong with him?” Nadia asked as she looked down with Randy.

“
I don’t know. Stay back.” He pushed her behind him and leaned down to shake the man’s leg. He didn’t move and he didn’t blink. “I-I think he’s dead.”

“
How could he be dead?” Nadia asked, her tone growing high pitched. “He just tripped.”

“
Maybe he was sick or something.” He stared down at his hand. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch and the skin around where he’d been bitten was starting to turn gray. “He was
definitely
sick.”

Nadia crouched down and poked the man with her finger. He didn’t move, of course, pretty much solidifying the fact that he was dead. And wasn’t
that
going to be fun to explain to the cops when they came.

“
What are you doing?” he snapped as he watched Nadia lift the guy’s head from the sand and look under it.

“
I just can’t believe that he would-” She started and then let out a gasp of breath and dropped the dead man’s skull against the sand. It made a hollow thud. “Oh Jesus,” she whispered as she dropped back on her ass and scooted away from the corpse. “Oh, Jesus, Randy. He hit his head. There’s a rock under there and his skull is half-crushed.”

Randy blinked. They hadn’t fallen that hard. Had they?

“
His skull is crushed?” he repeated.

She nodded. “It looks like somebody went all ‘Goodfellas’ on him.”

Randy bit his lip and then grabbed the corpse’s shoulder and flipped him over. Sure enough the back of his head was a bloody mess of broken bone, hair and brain matter. His stomach turned as he let the body go and turned to pace off a few feet.

“
Oh shit,” he whispered. “I’m going to go to jail. Not white-collar jail, either.”

“
No!” Nadia insisted as she rushed to his side. She grabbed his arm and made him face her. “You were defending yourself.”

“
It’s not going to look that way when the back of this dude’s skull is crushed in on the beach behind the house where I’ve been hiding out from the feds!” Randy insisted. His chest was starting to feel tight now as he imagined the headlines.

Fugitive Turns Murderous in Seaside Village

He was going to end up getting featured on
Dateline
or
48 Hours
.

“
Did you call the police?” he asked.

His voice sounded flat and faraway. For a long moment, Nadia just stared at him and then she shook her head. “I-I couldn’t. Both the phones were dead.”

He wrinkled his brow. “Both?”

She nodded. “The cell couldn’t find a signal and the regular jack phone was just a weird busy signal thing.”

“
Look, let’s go in and turn on the radio and see if they’re talking about a car wreck up on the highway. And then… I-I just have to think and I’ll walk up to the next cottage and see if we can use their phone.”

Randy ran a hand through his hair. Everything was over. He knew it now.

Nadia glanced at the body again. “Should we… cover him up?”

He shuddered. Since he’d flipped the corpse, he didn’t see the blank, cold eyes anymore, but there was still the matter of the gaping hole in his skull. “Yeah. I’ll grab the blanket from the porch. You go in and turn on the radio.”

She squeezed his arm once and then moved into the cottage. Randy followed her and grabbed the blanket from the porch that they used to picnic and wrap up in on cool ocean nights. They wouldn’t be doing that again, at least not with this blanket. Probably not at all.

He tossed the blanket over the body and then moved into the house. There was only a small combined living and dining room, a door that led to the small bathroom and another to the bedroom. It was a summer cottage really, not meant to live in. But the rent was right.

Nadia stood behind the couch, staring at the TV. When he shut the door, she flinched and faced him briefly. “You should come look at this.”

As she turned the volume up on the television, Randy stepped up beside her. The television was showing scenes of utter and complete carnage in Seattle. People roamed the streets, attacking each other. The reporters were pale and gaunt, like they were freaking out.

“
I-I turned on the radio, but there was only an emergency signal,” Nadia whispered. “So I went to the TV and found..
this
. It started yesterday, I guess, in Seattle. The whole city is almost…
gone
.”

“
What is it?” Randy asked. “A riot?”

A reporter in a studio flashed onto the screen and stared into the camera with a “Serious Newsanchor” face.

“
Good afternoon. The Outbreak happened less than twenty-four hours ago, but it’s already taken over a large portion of the Pacific Northwest even as we report. The cities of Spokane and Portland are already reporting an influx of attackers. Zombies, they are being called.”

Nadia blinked and stared at him. “Zombies? That’s a joke, right?”

Randy moved to the door and stared past the screen at the dead body under the blanket. Zombies. He looked at the screen again.

“
It doesn’t look like it’s very funny,” he whispered. “And then there’s him.”

He motioned toward the yard and Nadia paled three shades. “Lock the door,” she whispered.

He shut the main door and locked it, then moved back to the television.

“
Just a reminder,” the reporter droned on. “If you or someone you love has been bitten or scratched, isolation is the best response. At this point, there is no cure and eventually the victim will experience an intense hunger, heightened senses of smell and scent, followed by an uncontrollable bloodlust. Depending on the location of the bite, this transformation can take anywhere up to an hour. Once it is complete, severing the brain seems to be the only way to stop the onslaught of the zombie victim.”

Nadia shook her head. “I can’t believe this.”

Randy hardly heard her. All he could do was stare down at his hand. His gnarled, bloody,
bitten
hand. Bitten by that man out there. No, that
thing
.