Beyond Dead | Book 2 | The Day The Whole World Went Away Read online

  Forrest clutched the handbrake and pushed down the footbrake making the bike skid along the path to a halt. He didn’t bother with the kickstand. Nor did he think to tell Rebel what was happening as she careened into his back and barely got off the bitch-seat before the bike toppled over. Forrest skipped, unable to choose whether to run or walk, into the dark while one hand pressed against his heart – was it beating? – and the other grasping his throat as if he were choking himself. He didn’t feel like he was breathing, though his gasps for breath were coming in heavy draw, and his heartbeat, he couldn’t find his heartbeat.

  Somewhere in the distance someone was calling his name over and over. When his knees hit the ground one caught a jutting rock and split through his jeans and easily tore the flesh away from his kneecap. Warm blood spread around the gash and melded with the dirt and clotted in the fabric of his denim. Forrest felt nothing. He was heaving, trying to catch his breath as he felt the life being drawn out of him.

  “I…can’t…breathe…” he gasped.

  Arms embraced him, wrapping warmly around his chest. A body pressed against his, squeezing him as he fell back into Rebel’s embrace. She was stroking his hair, pulling it back out of his face. Forrest was looking up at the empty sky, seeing only darkness.

  “Forrest, breathe.”

  “I…I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. You have to calm down and take deep breaths. You’re hyperventilating. Shhh.” Rebel brushed his forehead, her lips against his ear as she whispered calming words, “Shhh, you’re okay. Just breathe.”

  He did.

  “Good,” she said, “In through your nose. Out through your mouth.”

  Chapter 13

  A panic attack.

  It was something that her mother had lived with most of her adult life. First, she had the postpartum depression – the first reason to begin abusing pills – and following that she was diagnosed with severe depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety. Once Rebel’s mother had a taste of the pills she had embraced her mental illness with full force. Not that she wanted to get better. In fact, Rebel was sure that her mother only wanted to get worse. The worse she was, the more pills they would dispense. Her mother loved the pills more than her family.

  “Shhh.” Her fingers stroking the sweat soaked hair of her boyfriend. Forrest had never acted like this. She had never seen so much as the slightest edge of depression. With all the shit she put him through - always with a wave of regret after - it was a miracle he was even sane. She doubted her own sanity sometimes.

  Rebel knew the symptoms. She had seen them her whole life.

  The tears that blurred her vision were not the only ones that had ever been brought to her eyes by Forrest. They argued, sure. What couple didn’t? That was expected. What was not expected – no one understood – was why Forrest put up with her mood swings, binge drinking, and careless sex with other guys (and a few girls). There was always regret, but she was Rebel and you got what you saw, that was what she told everyone and that was what she told Forrest. Only when she was alone, recovering from a hard night of partying, sitting on the shower floor with the hot water raining down on her, did she feel the tears mixed with the shower water, of shame she felt for the things she did to him.

  Why?

  Why do you stay?

  Her lips mouthed these words as they pressed against his ear and her tears stained his dirty face.

  Had it been her that had finally broken Forrest, the way she had broken her mother after she was born?

  Somewhere in the span of time between him dropping the dirt bike and her holding him to her breast, his breathing began to steady. The shakes that gripped his muscles ceased and he relaxed into her. Rebel continued to stroke his hair, kiss his face, and cry against his dirty skin. He may have been coming down from the anxiety attack but she wasn’t ready to let go of him. Not this time. Maybe never.

  Please, God, let us get through this and I’ll change. I promise I’ll change.

  Rebel imagined any person who had been pushed to the breaking point of their own vices probably made the same empty promise. Sure she meant it. Now. In the moment. But what about next week. The week after when this passed. At the end of the apocalypse? Would she really be any different? She hoped. But in the far corner of her mind, Rebel, knew she would always be the same fucked up girl.

  “Get up,” she told Forrest. “We have to go. Get up.” There was that cold edge to her voice again. The ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude she was so infamous for.

  Forrest had calmed down. Rebel stood, pushing him away from her, and went to the bike. She heaved it up, dropped the kickstand, “We have to go.”

  “I…I am sorry.”

  “Be sorry later. If we survive. Now we have to get going. Somewhere until daylight. We can’t be running this thing through the dark anymore. You almost killed us. ‘Specially with that little stunt.”

  That edge again.

  His eyes looked away from her.

  The eyes that said he was ashamed.

  Embarrassed.

  Rebel immediately felt that guilt rising again. She had just promised God that she would change and it hadn’t been more than a minute before her old self was slipping right back through. Her teeth sank into her bottom lip. It was something she had taken to after her parents sent her off to forty-five days of rehab for depression, drinking, and using her arms legs and stomach as her personal cutting board. The doctors in the Looney bin hadn’t cured her, only doped her up on enough Lithium, Clonidine, and Thorazine to tranq a racehorse. She had played their game. Answered Yes, I’m feeling better and No, I don’t have any more urges to cut and attended the daily AA meetings, forced to hold hands with strangers who did have substance abuse problems. She did it with a smile on her face and on the forty-seventh day –Thursday – she was at the Pendergast party in Olive’s bedroom in a sandwich between Trystan and his friend – from Manchester Central? – whatever the hell his name was, drunk off her ass with two lines of coke in her system and no protection in the bumping uglies sandwich.

  “Forrest?” Her voice trying to sound soft and concerned. “We need to find a place to stay for the night. We can leave the bike on the trail. Who’s going to take it?

  “The power lines run between roads and housing developments. We can find a house and crash for the night. We’ll find the bike in the morning. Let’s just get out of here. Please?”

  That last word had come with a price. She winced at the word. It was one she rarely had to use but was often used on her. Too often when it came to members of the opposite sex.

  “I’ll get the bag.” Was all he said.

  Only a matter of moments passed before Forrest had the backpack and they began to trek through the woods.

  Carefully.

  Quietly.

  Rebel hadn’t even noticed that she had reached out and taken his hand. Squeezing it for reassurance.

  Chapter 14

  The King stood before his people basking in their praise.

  He was no longer the hobo, the beggar, the get-a-fuckin-job, or the ignored. His name, the one printed somewhere on a piece of paper that also told who his mother and father were and the place and time he was born, was wiped from his memories too long ago to remember. It hard started with booze and weed, progressed to pills, coke, then heroin when money started to get tight, crack when it was nearly gone, and then meth when there was nothing left but peddling for his booze and drugs. Somewhere in those span of years he had forgotten who he once was and simply was the ‘hobo’.

  Be what you are.

  That idea made him smile.

  Be what you are.

  Because now he was none of the names that he had been called while on the street and never again the name that had been printed in a hospital’s records. He was the King. Their king.

  Ruler of the dead.

  All he had to do was watch them, surrounding the small quaint house – Cape Cod maybe? – on a street of similar houses on a road
just behind the Merrimack River. Zombies wandered along the streets, coughing and clattering their teeth, with no objective or purpose. Around the house, number two fifty three on Bow Street, the zombies were anything but without purpose. The small deep red Cape Cod was surrounded with the undead. Where the lawn was once well manicured, a vegetable garden in the backyard with a small fence around it and flower gardens in a whiskey barrel, were all but invisible by the horde of dead. The first floor windows were broken and zombies pushed inside, their bodies impaling on the broken glass, their arms reaching out into the house craving the fresh brains that made their mouths drip with liquefied mucous. Hands beat against the siding, the front door, the porch door, against the basement hatch so that it sounded like a hall of drums being banged on the small city street.

  In the middle of the horde, leaning against the trunk of the maple tree in the center of the front lawn, stood the Hobo King. Between his fingers he played with the spool of black fabric and waited for his prize. His scepter planted on the ground, leaning against his shoulder. He felt bored and tired.

  The cries for help had finally ceased. Thank God. But the young girl, the pretty thing with the dark hair and small perk breasts, still lingered by the window. She no longer looked to him as a savior, her eyes now filled with dread when they fell across him. That whimpering tremor of her bottom lip and swollen red eyes cried out of tears, searching the street for help.

  “Help, help,” The Hobo King snickered to himself. He mocked her as he caught her glimpse again. She recoiled from his sight like being struck by a snake.

  “What do you want from me?” she cried out, hiding just to the side of the smashed open window. “What do you want?”

  “O-M-G, the whining.” His shoulders slumped and he rolled his eyes.

  This was growing old.

  Boring.

  “Come out. I promise not to hurt you,” he called up to her with his fingers crossed behind his back like a child making a promise to their mother to not snatch another cookie from the jar.

  “Why…why aren’t they attacking you?”

  “Because.” He bowed, “They are my people and I am their king.” Still committed to his bow he looked up at her and smiled.

  “You’re going to kill me.”

  “Tsk, tsk. Now why would I go through all of this trouble to kill you? When I could simply open the door and let my people in to do the job for me. Au contraire, ma chére. I am here to save you. To protect you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “No?”

  The Hobo King stood and spread his hands. The zombies began to move, shuffling into each other and spreading away from the entrance to the front door. From the Hobo King to the green front door of the Cape Cod was a path of trampled lawn, perfectly three feet wide. The zombies on either side like planks of a fence.

  That was nifty, he thought. Never having used his mind to command the zombies before. They had begun to follow his command before he had even had time to voice it. No matter – his smile filled with glee – it had all come about as planned.

  “I await your decision.” The Hobo King took a knee and bent his head while extending an offering hand.

  The wait was not long.

  First there was a small crack of darkness as the door was inched open. Testing the water. Then further. Further more. Until she stood there trembling in the doorway with her hands clenched in prayer against her heart.

  “Come now, why the tears?” he asked.

  She came to him. Of course she had. What choice was there?

  “Puh – puh - please don’t hu – hu - hurt me.”

  The Hobo King gave a great wide grin and swung his scepter against the pretty girls head. The blow wasn’t hard - well, not really that hard - enough to kill. That would ruin all the fun he had planned for the two of them. She crumpled to the ground and there was a small laceration on the edge of her head just below the hairline but all in all not too traumatic.

  Leaning over her he began to thread the needle with the black string.

  If only they could be awake. There was the fun. But he had tried that and it had been a miserable mess. They always tried to fight. And always screamed. That was the worst part. Hearing the screams was always fun to listen to, especially at mealtime, but when he was doing his work, really trying to make each stitch as perfect as he could, he just didn’t have time to deal with screaming and thrashing. It made for sloppy work.

  A doctor.

  This thought had come to him before and came again now as he pushed the needle through the girls eyebrow into the bottom of her eyelid pulled it through the meaty flesh of the top of her cheek. The Hobo King began to lace her eyes shut while dabbing at the small amounts of blood made by the tiny insertions with the needle. The work would take hours and that was fine, he had nowhere to be. Not yet anyway.

  There was still time.

  The doctor. Oh, yes, the thought almost drifting away like a dream upon waking. He wanted to find a doctor. A really smart one. One that knew all about different kinds of medications that would make a person more…cooperative. An awake prize that could watch him work and be more docile. How he loved to dream.

  Somewhere out there was the person he sought. The one with the medication that would help him fulfill his dream of his prizes. The highway was just beyond the streets. Vacant of fast driving cars. It would be the fastest route to where he was going. Where he was being drawn to.

  The harvest.

  Where they would all gather and revel in their false safety. All congregated together in one isolated place. Then they – the living – would obey him truly like a king just as the dead did. Only the living could provide one thing that the dead could not.

  A sacrifice.

  Chapter 15

  Bob named him Clover.

  He hadn’t been on the top of that damn train car for more than a couple hours trying to whistle that cat on over before it finally decided to show up. A few times he was sure that it had become zombie supper when it meandered into a thick horde of them and didn’t come back for a while. As far as Bob could tell the zombies didn’t even notice the cat was there. He had to wonder if they only feasted on humans?

  Now here he finally was. Sitting on Bob’s lap while he let Kiefer sleep a few train cars over. Or pretend to sleep. He could never truly be sure. Clover wouldn’t go near him though and that feeling of uncomfortableness had started to creep in on him. He had heard of cats being fussy around people, skittish and all that, but Clover was anything but skittish. He just seemed not to take to Kiefer at all.

  “You going to name it,” Kiefer had asked.

  “Hmm? Suppose I am.”

  Bob had thought about naming the cat and all he could come up with was Lucky. It had to be lucky because that was exactly what the damn cat was – lucky. In a world growing with zombies the cat – first known as Lucky – was the only thing Bob had seen be immune to their hunger. Each time he thought that damn cat was a goner it would get lucky and keep on living well past the nine lives any cat was given.

  “Just don’t name it Lucky.”

  That made Bob frown. It was cliché of course. He knew that, but the fuck do you name a cat that can escape a horde of zombies?

  “I wasn’t – ”

  Kiefer didn’t reply.

  “Clover,” Bob said triumphantly.

  Kiefer groaned and pulled his ball cap a little lower over his face and fell - or faked - sleep.

  Bob and Clover had been exploring along the train. Bob looking for a way off that wouldn’t turn him into a coughing dead corpse, and Clover just keeping him company. Occasionally he would press his body to Bob’s leg, his tail curling around him like a snake, and purring. At the moment they were both standing by the edge of the river bank, some nine or ten train cars away from Kiefer – who appeared like he had no care in the world about what was happening around him – zombies were scratching at the train car, coughing and hacking like an ER waiting room in January. They
were at least six deep, all packed up against one another. No matter how far or in what direction that Bob and Clover went, they were pursued. Bob had even gotten a little daring and ran for it, hopping between the cars like an action star. No matter where he went, even if he outran the ones behind him, more emerged from the darkness and clanked against the hull of the train.

  I could jump, he thought. Leap right over those son-of-a-bitches and head for the river. If they could swim than he deserved to die because there truly was no escaping them. Bob didn’t believe they could. Looking from the zombies to the Merrimack, Clover made a small noise as if in agreement with him.

  Why not? Clover’s eyes said to him. You’re dead if you stay here.

  Wasn’t that the truth? He couldn’t stay on the train forever. Probably not even for another day. He had no food or water and the zombies didn’t appear as if they were going to be giving up on their source of food anytime soon.

  “That has got to be a twenty foot drop if not more.”

  “JEZZUS!” Bob screamed.

  Kiefer had appeared out of nowhere. Even Clover had leapt at the sound of his voice and now stood with the hair raised along his spine. If the cat hadn’t liked Kiefer before the kid had no chance in hell now.

  “That’s if you go straight down. What you’re planning is to get a good running start and leap over those zombies and make a beeline for the Merrimac.” Kiefer knelt down so his elbows rested on his thighs, leaning over the edge of the train a bit so he could look down into the rattle of the hungry dead below. “That’s one hell of a gamble.”

  “Beats starving to death,” Bob shot back with a little more anger than he meant.

  “Sure does.”

  “So why are you trying to talk me out of it?”

  “Not. Just saying it’s a hell of a leap,” Kiefer said. Then he pointed, “See over there? Right along that line of trees and that grouping of rocks? There’s a dock there.”