Beyond Dead | Book 3 | On The Road

  BEYOND DEAD

  On The Road

  Copyright © 2017 Christopher Frost

  This is a book of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and even events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places of persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER FROST

  NOVELLAS

  SCORNED

  LAST EXIT

  NOVELS

  THE LOST ONES

  THE OATH

  BEYOND DEAD SERIES

  THE COUGH

  THE DAY THE WHOLE WORLD WENT AWAY

  COMING SOON

  BOOK FOUR OF THE BEYOND DEAD SERIES

  For Brett

  For believing in me and being the first to put my stories on a retail shelf

  Chapter 1

  Forrest was upstairs sleeping off a bottle of Jack Daniels in the bedroom of a dead kid with Ninja Turtle posters on the walls and toys strewn about. Rebel had given him the bottle and made him drink it till he was well and sloppy drunk, then she walked him up the stairs of the dead family’s house and put him to bed. The anxiety attack Forrest had suffered was over and just in time. Not more than half an hour after she got him asleep under the covers did the world go away.

  She sat on the porch of the confiscated house. A glimmer of the morning sun was just beginning to inhale the darkness of the night. A hapless zombie wandered the street with no set direction. It hadn’t noticed Rebel, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t, so Rebel kept an eye on it. Wearing her Billy Idol shirt, she sat Indian style, with nothing else on but her panties. Her headphones were in and Rebel Yell was blaring in her ears. She wanted to tune out the drumming noise of the country being obliterated by, well whoever it was. Probably the Russians. The barrage of missiles, and whatever else a military used to destroy a country, had started like the finale of a Fourth of July fireworks display. Not some hometown shitty show either. Like something over Boston Harbor or the Charles. Wherever it was. She’d never been.

  Rebel’s eyes were glazed over, as though she were in a trance, as the blade of the knife touched the bare skin just below her hip bone and bit down, splitting her skin like one would unfasten a zipper of a jacket. The deep red hue of blood emerged from that parting of the skin. An inch-long line. Nothing more. Not deep. Not like what people thought if she let her guard down and someone accidently saw the accumulative scars on her thighs, so close to her sex so they were so well concealed. Another line, that was all it was. A release. It wasn’t about suicide. She didn’t want to die – well not all the time – it was that sweet release.

  The pain exquisite and the sight of the blood arousing.

  Rebel was on her third cut. She would have to draw back soon and put it away. She had been so aroused before by the cutting, the pain, the blood, that she had slipped and cut too deep. That one – here, her fingertip touching the scar – had landed her in the emergency room, where the staff had seen through her lies. The lies were so terrible and cliché even she didn’t believe the shit that was pissing out of her mouth. A doctor dressed the cut, cleaned all of them, and put six stitches in the deepest. Rebel watched the whole time as the hook tugged on her open skin to thread the suture. She even joked with the doc about not needing the numbing shot – he didn’t laugh.

  Another zombie ventured out onto the street and turned toward the one that Rebel had been watching. Were they in some kind of social club? Could they recognize each other for what they were? She had only seen them in mass hordes. Only this morning had she just been able to watch their behavior when they were alone. Did they sleep during the day? And were they just waking now like any regular Joe with a nine-to-five?

  Another fighter jet flew past overhead. The zombies looked up at the roaring noise.

  So you are attracted to noise.

  Rebel clasped the Sam Adams bottle beside her. Not the few she had already drank—ok more than a few – and took a swig. She put it back where it was and lifted the gun she had found in the nightstand beside the bed in the master bedroom. Movies were great. There was so much you could learn from them. And Rebel, never having held a gun in her life, had drawn back the slide and loaded a bullet into the chamber of a weapon she didn’t even know the name of.

  She looked down the barrel and lined the sights so that she was staring directly into the head of one of the zombies.

  Can I make this shot?

  She’d never fired a weapon in her life, but something in that moment made her think that if she squeezed the trigger there would be a loud BOOM and the head of the zombie would explode in front of her like something out of a video game.

  “Bang,” she whispered.

  Chapter 2

  Everywhere Bob and Kiefer – the fucking cat was there too – looked or ran they were met with a wall of zombies. Bob had suggested staying away from the main roads and taking the back roads. Along the way they had started rummaging through houses, more well-to-do homes than anything else. There were plenty of supplies, things needed (batteries, bottled water, nutritional bars, soap, even some fresh fruit in addition to the canned organic shit in the pantries) and things not needed (wine, beef, the hard stuff – good stuff – a porno mag that Kiefer had found in a nightstand drawer and professed his everlasting love for the x-rated nude centerfold spreading her pink lips with a finger half up her ass while making that ‘Ooo’ face that every girl makes while taking a selfie). What they had not found, and expected to find, was a gun. Sure there had been safes, but nothing left out that they could get their paws on. Now more than ever, they could have used a damn gun, not that either had any experience with one.

  “This way.” Kiefer grabbed Bob by the shoulder and jerked him in a direction as Kiefer put his shoulder to a door and it gave way letting the two of them inside. “Help me.”

  Together they quickly tilted the refrigerator and it fell at an angle between the zombies. It wouldn’t last long. They were writhing and foaming for fresh flesh at the moment, but soon one of them would figure out a way to duck under the refrigerator and the others would follow. The zombies did that sometimes. Kiefer nor Bob had been able to figure out how or why, yet somehow there was some level of communication.

  Bob yelled, “Keep moving!”

  “Back door?”

  “Blocked.”

  “They’re everywhere!”

  Chapter 3

  The one that was once called the Hobo. Now the king, their king, was leading his people. There had been a great awakening in the night. A calling from the heavens that opened the gates of Hell. And the Hobo King had watched it all with little more than mild curiosity.

  He could think better now. Something that he noticed was coming to him a little better with each of these passing days. The cloud of his thoughts, jumbled words that bounced inside of his brain, unable to string together into any kind of coherent thought and made his thoughts stutter and his words hiccup, was lifting. Now the Hobo King could think. Not a hundred percent better. Not yet of course. These things took time. Any sickness cannot be cured overnight.

  No.

  Not overnight.

  “It is clearing.” A great grin spread across his face as he spoke to himself more than to his people.

  The large town had been completely untouched by the fallout of the overnight destr
uction. A mere town off the highway with no airport or even bus station, the Hobo King doubted that whatever powers-that-be that were in charge of the bombing, would waste any time or ammunition on a place such as this. That fact however had not dissuaded the town’s people to flee their homes for a local shelter.

  The Hobo King stood on a small hill overlooking a brick school –

  HOOD MIDDLE SCHOOL

  HOME OF THE COUGARS

  – read the lettered sign on a small grassy circle in front of the school. Instead of a bustling school filled with middle school students there were red crosses and people working to build a barricade around the enormity of the school with cars.

  Circle the wagons, the Hobo King thought. It wouldn’t be enough. Not for his horde.

  The Hobo King grasped his scepter and lowered himself to one knee. His fingers wrapped tightly around the scepter and he pressed his eyelids closed so tightly that his head began to hurt. He was concentrating and as he did so a small trickle of blood began to seep out of his left nostril and run down his upper lip to the crease between his mouth. His eyes darted open. They were black as oil. The veins around his face were also pulsing and visible under the surface of his skin.

  “Go,” the Hobo King commanded.

  The zombie horde began to move out, fanning out around the Hobo King as they approached the barricade around the school. One zombie brushed against his master and the Hobo King almost lost his balance and grabbed hold of the zombie. The two froze. The Hobo King looked up at the zombie, who turned its dead eyes to its master. and its eyes glossed over with the oil of its master. The zombie’s body seemed to become infused with a similar power and it began moving forward with more speed. It pushed its way through its brothers and sisters and suddenly was throwing them out of the way as its hungry mouth gnashed with wretched thirst. The Hobo King watched as his child screamed into the daylight and ran toward the survivors.

  Down at the bottom of the hill the men that were trying to position a car so that it reinforced the blockade, saw the running zombie and assumed it was another survivor, also seeing the horde following behind it. They screamed out and everyone around the school went on alert. The men held out their hands, trying to help the running zombie they thought human, and then it was too late.

  The Hobo King began to laugh. Exhausted and bleeding he sat on his ass with his scepter across his lap as he watched the zombie – no his child, his child – leap over the car and fall on top of the man that had held his hand out for salvation. The zombie sank its teeth into that helping hand and tore out most of the meaty flesh of the palm and four fingers, including the thumb, leaving only the pinky behind.

  Most of the other survivors were too stunned to do anything other than watch one of their own torn apart by this kind of zombie they had never seen before. Some were screaming out about the horde that was feet away from the feeble barricade. Two men tried to pull the running zombie off of the mutilated survivor only to get bitten themselves. They screamed and panicked looking for help from the other survivors and suddenly all of those that had come together to unify in number and outlast the zombie apocalypse were now turning their backs on the infected and running away.

  “I’m so sorry,” one woman whispered to the victims with her hands held together in prayer over her heart. She had only taken three steps in retreat when a zombie tackled her to the ground and bit his way through her lower jaw. With a heavy crack it snapped clear away from her face and its fingers dug into the roof of her mouth digging for her brain while the other fingers pushed through her eyes with a sloppy pop.

  The Hobo King made his way down the small hill toward the panicked encampment, scepter in hand. Behind him walked seven zombies in a V pattern. One of the seven walking directly in the Hobo King’s footsteps. He smiled at the panic. The sight of the blood and carnage was more than he ever could have hoped for. The survivors had essentially built themselves a cage, though they had thought it a castle. They had corralled themselves and were running through the chained off encampment to the rear of the school. In the back, where there were signs indicating student drop-off for buses, the school formed a horseshoe of brick and window. The drop-off sloped down into the shadow of the old school. There were two doors in the basement that led to the cafeteria and the gymnasium. The survivors were scrambling against each other trying to get through the doors, the only way into the basement as there were no windows on the sublevel. The first floor windows were too high to get to even on one another’s shoulders.

  “Splendid,” the Hobo King said as he followed the rest of the survivors into the corded off area. His followers were among the survivors but he called them to him, reaching out with the scepter as the instrument of his power. He focused his mind and told the dead to return.

  All the survivors were screaming and crying. People were still trying to break down the door that had been chained heavily and boarded up on the other side. All they had managed to do was break some glass.

  “I’ve never been to a cattle ranch,” the Hobo King said to one of his followers, “I wonder if it is much like this?”

  Beside him, on either side, the row of zombies grew and were as tight as a defensive line. Out of the Pit – a fitting name for the area given by the school children – a young woman stumbled out of the lot. Her body jerked and spasmed. There was a bite mark on her forearm and her skin was already quite pale with dark veins trailing around her mouth. Her eyes were wide and clear as a pearl.

  She was beautiful.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, “Come to me.”

  As commanded the turning zombie did as her master ordered and the Hobo King pulled her into his arms and kissed her deeply. As he did he felt himself grow hard against her. Her eyes were open while he kissed her and began to bleed the same blackness of the lines that etched around her mouth. She stopped twitching and stood very still and erect. Her nipples hard and pushing against the torn and dirty fabric of her once yellow blouse.

  There would be time to indulge these thoughts later, the Hobo King thought to himself and clasped the girl’s hand in his.

  “Some of you,” the Hobo King raised his voice and yelled into the Pit at the weeping survivors, “have the opportunity to step forward at this moment and join the ranks of my followers and worship me as your king. I offer you food and a purpose, devoid of the petty wants and privilege of your meager human lives. Those that wish to join me should make themselves known now and step forward to be among the first to join my army.”

  No one stepped forward.

  In fact all the survivors clutched each other closer and pressed harder against the cold brick surface of the middle school.

  “I tell you again,” the Hobo King yelled and stood forward pointing his scepter at the crowd, “this is your only chance to join me. If you deny my humble offer, I will show you no mercy.”

  He waited a moment. Allowed the last syllable of his words to echo away to silence.

  Damn you, he thought, how fucking dare you mock me when I give you the chance to live on. I am not to be ignored. No longer.

  The Hobo King was filled with rage and brought his scepter above his head and screamed, “Not a single survivor!” He smashed the scepter into the pavement and the zombies inched on toward the survivors who were screaming with renewed vigor. His earlier creation and the beautiful girl both ran and lunged through the air and fell into the center of the crowd. The Hobo King watched as best he could as the two of them tore their way through the humans, knocking them to the ground and quickly tearing away at their skulls so they could suck, pull, and pry the brains from the survivor’s bodies and devour their very essence.

  “You will not ignore me,” the Hobo King spoke with no one to hear. His eyes were on the carnage but he wasn’t paying attention. His thoughts were back a second ago when his gift had been denied. Like all of his life these final survivors, that were already dead when it came down to it, had still opted for the massacre that was ensuing rather than stand at his
side. “I am a king…I am a king…I am a king.”

  Chapter 4

  One of the CO’s had the compassion to let out all the prisoners when the shit hit the fan. There were zombies all over the prison and Colburn Tucker, just ‘Tuck’ to his friends and enemies, thought that opening the cells was just as much a death sentence as leaving them closed.

  Tuck was walking the cellblock pushing inmates out of his way. This wasn’t a high security prison, even though he had committed a double homicide. Still, a prison was a prison and like any prison it was fortified like a fucking castle. The cells being open didn’t guarantee escape. In order to escape, they needed the warden. That was where Tuck was headed along with a handful of other inmates with half a fucking brain cell.

  “Warden Clinton,” Tuck called as he knocked on the door to the warden’s office.

  “Tuck, what are you waiting for? Knock it down.”

  “It’s reinforced, moron. You think the warden isn’t going to be sitting behind a damn fortress wall?”

  “The glass?”

  Tuck shook his head. How could anyone be so fucking stupid as this group of degenerates? Tuck knocked on the glass and said, “Be my guest.”

  An inmate charged the glass and smashed his fist against it like he was Superman and could just smash it out of his way. His knuckles and two fingers broke when they made contact with the bulletproof glass that had Warden Warren Clinton etched in bold letters on it’s surface.

  “May I?” Tuck asked the group, as the inmate who shattered his fist sat on his ass gripping it while tears welled around his eyes.

  The group of inmates nodded and Tuck waved for them to give him some room. They all took a step back and waited. Tuck rapped his fingers against the glass.

  “Warden Clinton. It’s Tuck, sir,” he said and then waited patiently.