The Dead Years Series Box Set Read online

  “Uncle Gene, thanks for the provisions. I’m going to add a footnote to your life story. Goodbye…”

  Opening the garage door and heading for the car, Lance and Savannah only made it as far as the sidewalk as two gunshots thundered from inside the house. Savannah wanted to run and looked to Lance for approval.

  “Don’t do it… He’ll find you, just get in.”

  Lance jumped into the passenger’s seat as Savannah opened the rear door and slid into the back. Both watched as Jason exited the front door gripping the weapon he just used to execute two members of his family.

  6

  Stationed on the couch, William drifted from one internet news feed to another while his wife frantically phoned her parents. The early hours of the infection were nothing but unfounded rumors and mass confusion. Initially, the infected displayed no outward physical signs of being different, other than their intense aggressive nature and the insatiable thirst for flesh, which by the time it was noticed was already too late. Those caring enough to offer assistance to the ones exhibiting symptoms were often attacked without warning and became the second wave of infected.

  “William, my parents aren’t answering,” Karen said.

  Turning his attention from the gruesome images he discovered on the web, William tried to focus on what his wife was telling him and what this was going to mean to his family. “What… where would they be?”

  Making her way back to the bay window that overlooked their front yard and the street below, Karen hit redial and turned the speaker on. The fourth ring ended with the same pre-recorded answering machine message that she’d received the twelve times prior. “They never leave the house this early. They’re so routine; they wouldn’t have left for lunch for another hour.”

  “Maybe they’re taking a shower,” William said. “Give them a few minutes and then we’ll drive over.”

  “We can’t drive anywhere just yet, come look.” Karen said as she motioned for her husband to join her at the window. Their street looked as though the world had vanished and forgot to tell them they were leaving. The main road leading to their development had a completely different look.

  One car after another piled in from the highway and bumper to bumper, lined the streets for as far as they could see. Most people sat in the long line of vehicles, hands in the air flinging obscene gestures to those in the other cars. Others took a more direct route and simply locked their doors and proceeded on foot, adding another layer of congestion to the already out of control situation. There would be no way of leaving the area by car, at least for the foreseeable future, until all the frantic motorists somehow moved through the neighborhood. “Where’d they all come from, where do you suppose they’re going?” Karen asked.

  “It has to be the parents coming for their children. With the two schools up the road, there must be two thousand children trying to get home before…”

  “Before what?” Karen asked.

  William returned to the couch and went back through some of the websites that he deemed most reliable and shared what he’d already learned about the events taking place around the world over the last eight hours. He asked Karen if she really wanted to see what was happening. Thankful that she was more analytical than emotional, he proceeded to run the videos taken from earlier in the day.

  Images captured and uploaded within minutes of the outbreak became the main source of information circulated to the devastated populous. Grainy cell phone footage from a gymnasium rooftop showed two high school-aged girls disemboweling what appeared to be their teacher before turning their attention to classmates attempting to exit the area. The intensity with which they attacked their victims left little to the imagination.

  “William, what is this, what is wrong with these people… a virus?”

  Flipping through some of the sites he’d looked through earlier, William found most were offline. The few that weren’t continued to roll disturbing videos and photos, each more gruesome than the next. “Can’t find much I believe, although it looks like some form of infection that reacts quickly in the bloodstream. It appears that those affected rapidly turn into one of the attackers themselves.”

  “What… this cannot be real. It’s just not possible; laws of nature don’t work this way,” Karen said.

  “I don’t think what we believe matters anymore. These things… these Feeders seem to be everywhere, and no one is safe.”

  “Feeders? What is a Feeder? What are you talking about?”

  William pulled up one of the few remaining news forums he had bookmarked that was still online and scrolled through the pages of comments. He pointed out to his wife where the world had officially declared these things Feeders and how they’d signaled the beginning of the end. “It’s all over the place, someone coined the term and now that’s what everyone is calling them… Feeders.”

  “The name doesn’t quite relay the impact that these things are having. It’s almost silly,” Karen said as she returned to the window and redialed her parents once again. “Still no answer, we have to go get them.”

  “I’ll go… alone” William said. “I’ll get there much faster if I do not have to wait for you… no offense. It’s only a few blocks so I’ll get there and back before you have time to worry.”

  “You really want to go by yourself with those things out there?” Karen asked.

  “I haven’t seen any of them here or anywhere near here yet, have you?”

  “No, it looks pretty clear except for the road leading to the school, although you’re going the opposite way.”

  “That’s true. I’ll go now and we’ll drive their car back as far as we can, so they won’t have to walk as much.”

  Staring into the phone, as if willing it to ring, Karen began to cry. “Do you think they’re ok? They should have called back by now.”

  “I’m sure they are fine,” William said. “Do we have keys to their place, it may come in handy.”

  “Yes… here take my keys; theirs is the larger of the two house keys. Please call me when you get there so I’ll know you all are ok.”

  Surprised she didn’t have more to say about him heading out alone and that she didn’t try to fight him on it, he knew better than to linger and discuss anything else. If he’d shown her any of the other things he’d found online, there’d be no way she would have allowed him to leave the house, regardless of who he was going to save.

  “Sure thing,” William said. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “Thank you sweetheart, be safe, I love you.”

  7

  April tossed the phone on the bed, grabbed her shoes, and ran down the stairs before heading to the front door and making sure it was unlocked. She knew from looking out the window that the walkway on the left side of the house was clear and a direct line to the entrance of the school. She decided to go out the back door and walk over instead of taking the car as there was no chance of driving into the parking lot anytime in the next few hours.

  Walking through the yard and out the side gate, April looked back and saw the neighbors gathered in the street, obviously discussing the events of the day. They motioned for her to come over and she yelled back in their direction, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She didn’t want any company for her trip to the school and back since they’d slow her down.

  The area outside the school looked intimidating to April. She pushed ahead and ran across the two lanes of traffic that led to the school. She watched as angry parents screamed all sorts of obscenities at one another from their halted vehicles. Out of frustration, one man even got out and kicked the door of the car in front of him. These people were not going anywhere, and April was glad she had decided to walk.

  A large group formed outside the entrance to the school where teachers and staff members were trying to account for each student leaving. A few of the parents attempted to exit the area without checking their children out and were met with a stern faculty member guiding them back toward the office.
One overly aggressive mother refused to bend to their demands and hurried her twins into the car, only to be blocked by the biggest teacher April had ever seen. This is not helping to speed up the process, she thought.

  April realized that if she followed their rules, she wouldn’t get to see her son for at least an hour and that wasn’t going to work. She stopped for a moment, looked around, and noticed the left side of the school where students were exiting the rear of the gym to the field. Since the entire mob was focused on the entrance, she decided to head in the direction of the escaping students.

  As she walked briskly, trying to be inconspicuous, April pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and sent a text to Justin. Where are you? I’m coming around the back of the school through the gym. April continued to get closer to the rear entrance, and upon looking back found to her delight that she had gone unnoticed. Justin’s text came through just as quick. I’m at the door to the library. The office is a nightmare.

  April reached the entrance to the rear of the gym as the few inventive kids continued to pour out. One of them looked over at her as they passed in the doorway.

  “Hey lady, I wouldn’t go in there; it’s a ZOO!”

  “Yeah… You should see the front.”

  April fired off a reply to Justin as she made her way across the gym floor. Meet me in front of Mrs. Wood’s classroom and we will leave from there.

  She knew the classrooms and halls would be nearly empty, as all the students were pushing toward the front entrance and there would be no chance of getting through that crowd anytime soon.

  Justin hopped down from the table he was sitting on, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and started toward the hall that led to his math class.

  The office admin, without even looking up, yelled at him through the crowd. “Excuse me Justin, where do you think you’re going?” Thinking quickly, he answered, “I dropped my math book just around the corner. I’ll be right back.” She seemed to buy his excuse as she continued whatever it was she was doing on her computer and waved him on.

  Justin turned the corner and, once out of her view, ran down the hall toward his math class, noticing he was the only one in this wing of the school.

  Making her way out of the gym and into the long hallway that led past the locker rooms and into the rest of the school, April remembered Mrs. Wood’s class being down the third hall.

  She thought back to the last time she was this deep inside the school and figured it was last year’s open house where she learned Justin was in the top five percent of students in the district academically. Justin was the type of student that thrived on doing well, although he would never tell a soul as he hated the attention it brought. Justin would rather that no one knew just how brilliant he really was. He liked the friends he had and feared he would be labeled as a freak for being so smart.

  April was happy to discover that her memory served her right and she had chosen the right hallway. As soon as she rounded the corner, she could see Justin down at the end of the hall sitting on a folding chair, peering down at his phone. She waited until she was a little closer and didn’t have to yell, so they wouldn’t alert anyone that they were here before she said, “Hey, you ready to get out of here?”

  Justin looked up. “Mom!”

  April immediately ran over to Justin, threw her arms around him and said, “Let’s go.”

  “Uh Mom… Some of my friends are texting me that people are getting really hurt down at the front of the school.”

  “I don’t doubt it; there must be a few thousand people out there,” April replied.

  “No, they said people are REALLY hurting each other; they said some people may have even been killed.”

  “I’m sure nothing like that has happened, but I’ll bet most of the people stuck out in that mess wish they hadn’t all tried to come at the same time.”

  “Look at the photo Billy just sent me.”

  Justin turned his phone so April could see the image. She almost let out a shriek as the horror of what she saw startled her. It was a blurry image although she could tell it was one man ripping the flesh from another man’s neck with his bare hands.

  She kept her composure so she wouldn’t frighten Justin. “Come on, you know he’s playing with you. I’m sure that is a photoshopped picture from the internet.”

  “Mom, I don’t think it is; we can’t get online here at school, it’s blocked.”

  “I’m sure there some sort of an explanation…”

  As April was trying to calm Justin, they heard a low rumble that built into what sounded like a stampede heading in their direction. Justin looked at April just as a massive crowd rounded the corner toward them.

  It appeared they were being chased, although it wasn’t quite apparent what they were running from until a few grimy, disheveled, homeless looking men took down the school’s security staff at the rear of the crowd, even after being shot more than once.

  These men were covered in blood and seemingly on a mission to destroy anything they came into contact with. They literally pulled the three security guards apart limb by limb until there was nothing left of them. They then turned their focus on the rest of the crowd.

  As they grew closer, Justin froze in place. April grabbed his hand and pulled him backward into the classroom, knocking them both to the floor.

  Justin scrambled to get to his feet and looked at his mother in horror.

  “Mom, what are those things?”

  8

  Thousands of glass fragments exploded inward and within seconds the café became a feeding frenzy as George was overrun by six of those monsters from the parking lot. The chaos sent Trina scurrying backward into Randy as he quickly surveyed their situation. The initial wave of infected hadn’t noticed the pair standing to the right of the bar, partially camouflaged in the fluorescent wave of cover provided by the kitchen. Watching the path these new sub-humans followed, Randy reached down and snatched the half full container of liquefied cooking oil and pushed Trina in the direction of the front door.

  Struggling against his advance toward the infected, Trina knew what she intended to say, although the words wouldn’t come, except in short blasts. “What… how… no… we can’t.”

  His hand on the small of her back, Randy continued forward with an ever so steady eye on the attack happening a few feet away. “Keep going; they haven’t turned to us yet and there’s no other way out,” he said as he dumped the warm oil behind them.

  Moving without thought and possessed by fear, Trina felt lightheaded and simply focused on his voice guiding her forward. Reaching the door, she looked through and pulled inward. The tiny brass bell attached to the front door, designed to alert staff when customers entered, began the next complication of their survival. The double ring couldn’t be muted as the horde turned their attention outward.

  Not missing a step, Randy reached around Trina, throwing the door open the rest of the way and dropping the bucket of cooking oil between himself and the oncoming crowd. He took the lead and pulled Trina toward her car as the monsters left behind lost footing on the slick tile floor and piled into one another. Weaving in and out of the infected and those being pursued near the street, they moved quickly to Trina’s car. “Get your keys out and be ready to drive. Do not stop for anything or anyone along the way. Get to your mother’s and stay put until this blows over.”

  “Randy, what are you going to do?” Trina asked.

  “I’ll be ok, just get out of the area and stay away from big cities, the less people the better.” He already knew there wasn’t much chance of him getting out of the area untouched, although checking his waistband he figured he’d at least make it to his building.

  Remotely unlocking her car and the audible signal it produced didn’t allow them a long goodbye. The attention it drew forced Randy to follow her to the driver’s side and toss her in. “Remember lock the doors and do not stop for anything. Go!”

  She grabbed his wrist and pulled him to her. Tri
na leaned out of the car and kissed him on the mouth. She lingered for a moment too long and finally sat back and opened her eyes. “Thank you for today and not just for today, but for every day.”

  He didn’t speak. He shut her door and watched as she pulled out of the lot and into the street. The growing horde, unaware of her presence and her exit, continued their march toward the rear of the lot and more specifically toward him. Letting out a deep breath, Randy stood motionless as the wave of chaos moved in his direction. He studied the area for a few seconds, trying to determine where the majority of those things were coming from, as well as gauging their weaknesses. “This is going to be a long day.”

  The street Trina had escaped on wouldn’t be as easy or even possible on foot and since he needed to travel less than a mile, he needed an alternate route. These things appeared to move in a straight line without any problem, although they were easily deterred and confused if given more than one target to focus on. The alley that ran the length of the strip mall was as a good a place as any to get lost in this deranged crowd.

  Heading for the rear wall, Randy avoided some of the slower moving monsters by simply shoving them headfirst to the ground. The others were dealt with much more aggressively by way of the three-foot piece of scrap metal propping open the pizza parlor’s rear door. His familiarity with these creatures assured him that a head shot with the right amount of force was usually enough to eliminate the threat.

  Removing the small caliber handgun from his waistband, Randy placed it atop the six-foot wall and in one quick movement he was standing just inches above the mounting horde. Even from his low-level perch, he could see what a complete cataclysm the city had become. Fires peppered the landscape, as well as cars left behind, and people torn apart by the hands and mouths of their aggressors. Shaking his head, he turned and leapt into the alley.