Dead Series (Book 2): A Little More Dead: Gunfire & Sunshine (18 page)

Curtis nearly
laughed. “That’s not good enough, man. We need a long-term plan.”

“My long-term plan
is to stay alive and kill as many of those cockroaches as possible until we
find a foothold.”

Hanging his head,
he blew out a long breath. “So basically we’re The Orkin Man with M4s and
Glocks.”

“But like you
said, we’ll need more help to win.”

“We’ll need an
army.”

“And we’ll build
one. There are other people out there, good people, and we’ll take every one we
can get.” Paul looked up, blurring the candle into a jittery blob. “Stephanie
was right about this being a war. I’m just not sure staying in one place is the
best idea. For now, we need to keep looking.”

Curtis massaged
the stubble on his chin. “Do you believe in God?”

Paul swallowed
dryly. “I’m second-guessing everything I was raised to believe.”

“Me too.” He
looked at him. “What do you think really caused it? The rapture? Flu shots? I
mean, what was it?”

“Without TV or
internet, we’ll never know. So who cares? What matters is it happened and we
have to deal with it.” He shifted. “And I get that losing Troy is hard for you
and your sister, I really do. But it’s not like before. Now we have stragglers
and rapists roaming the streets and we barely have time to think, let alone grieve,
and maybe that’s for the best because we have to stay on point or we will die.”
Paul sharpened his gaze. “This group needs you, Curtis.” He paused to swallow
his pride. “I need you, and I’m not asking you to forget what happened because
that’s impossible. It’s okay to be sad or mad. I’m just asking you to push most
of it to the back of your mind until we find somewhere to breathe.”

Curtis looked at
him for a while without blinking.

Paul stood up and
slapped him on the shoulder. “Now what do you say we go back out there and sing
some Alan Jackson at the top of our lungs?”

“I hate Alan Jackson.”

“Okay in that case,
I’m going back to bed. Try to get some sleep because we are outta this shithole
at dawn, brother.” Out in the living room, Paul stopped in his tracks.
Adrenaline spiking, he watched for a moment before speaking. “You looking for this?”

Jumping, Billy
turned from the bags sitting by the front door to see Paul holding up the cell
phone he could barely see through the faint moonlight. “I thought you said you
didn’t find it,” he whispered, slowly rising to his feet and staring at him from
across the darkened room.

“What’s on here,
Billy?”

His lips pulled
down at the corners and Stephanie stirred on the floor. “Just some pictures. I
had a bad dream and wanted to see my family. I miss them.”

Paul studied him
through probing eyes, a quiet showdown stretching between them, and slipped the
phone back into his jeans. “I’ll hang onto it for ya. It’s dead anyway.”

Billy swallowed
thickly in the tension-filled silence bending the walls. Slowly, he nodded back.
“Okay.”

Chapter
Sixteen

DAY TWENTY-SIX

S
now fell in lazy straight
lines, melting into the hot tub after making contact with the sweltering water
inside. Paul pulled Sophia closer against him and sipped his beer, sharing a
comfortable silence with the woman he loved as steam rose from the water in
ghostly vapors. It was nice she didn’t feel the need to fill every break in the
conversation with talk about the weather or things they needed for the new
house or her latest pair of shoes. Oh those topics came up and that was fine,
but Sophia also knew when to seize the moment. After all, how many times do you
get to hot tub in the Colorado snow? They had the whole damn place to
themselves and plenty to quench their thirst. Later, they’d order room service
and spend the rest of the night making love and depleting the room’s
mini-fridge of the tiny bottles tucked inside. Just the thing they needed after
a long day on the slopes.

“This is so nice,”
Sophia said, bringing a wine glass to her lips.

Paul smiled at her
through the steam, her full lips and red bikini fanning the want in his gut.
“Thank God we have one of these back home now.”

“I can’t wait to
use it.”

He raised his
bottle. “Here’s to our new house.”

Clinking glasses,
they took a healthy drink.

Swallowing with a
sigh, he leaned his head back and rubbed her wet arm as snow landed on his face.
“This is the life.”

“Just what we
needed after all that house hunting.”

“Next week at this
time we’ll be knee-deep in boxes and packing tape.”

“Sounds kinky,”
she said, massaging his thigh under the water.

“I figured I’d
start by taping you to the dryer.”

Her abrupt
bubbliness brought laughter to his lips. “I can’t wait,” she said, her eyes
glimmering beneath the party lights strung above. “Thank you for buying it for
me.”

“The dryer?”

Sophia squeezed
his leg. “The house.”

“Oh.” He kissed
her softly on the lips. “You’re welcome.” Their mouths gently met again, the
whirl of the hot tub filling their ears. “I love you,” he whispered, brushing
wet hair from her face and noticing a sore on her cheek.

“I love you, too,
but you have to let me go.”

Paul pulled back
with a frown. “What?”

“Forget about the
photo albums and let me go. I’m already gone.”

He sat up
straighter, the water bubbling harder around him. “Photo albums? What’re you
talking about?”

Sophia dug her
nails into his thigh. “Hang onto the ones you have now or your grief will get
all of you killed.” She looked at him through pity-filled eyes. “All this time,
you thought you were meant to entertain the masses on the radio but that’s not
true at all. You were meant to lead them into this new world.” Stopping to
cough some blood into the water getting hotter by the second, she placed a
rotting hand over his heart. “I will always be with you but you have to do what
you were put on this planet to do…lead.”

Paul mopped sweat
from his brow, heart flipping when he saw Sophia standing outside the hot tub,
her face cracked and pale. Cocking her head to one side, limp hair fell over
the stained nightgown running to her feet. She floated backwards without moving
a muscle. “Don’t go back home, Paul. There is nothing but trouble waiting for
you there. Listen to Dan.”

Trouble
? A paralyzing mixture of confusion and
fright turned his vocal cords to ice. He sprang from the scalding water when he
could no longer see her through the veil of steam rising between them.
“Sophia!”

“You will get
better,” her hollow voice rang out from the swirling vapor. “Keep fighting.”

“Sophia!” Paul
startled awake and stared at the moonlit ceiling in the hoarder house. Chasing
his breath, it took him a moment to realize someone was scratching on glass.
His pulse raced as he turned to the front windows, hand sliding to a gun that
was no longer there. Then, in a horror-stricken panic, he realized the scratching
wasn’t coming from outside. It was coming from the mirror above the fireplace. Paul’s
eyes flipped open to find everyone staring at him in the living room, daylight
coming through the dirty windows and their faces bent with worry.

Wendy patted his
hand, her hair sticking out in all directions. “You’re okay. Just a dream.”

He threw the
blanket off and sat up, trying to slow his heart rate and catching a concerned
look from Stephanie. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Wendy
gave his hand a squeeze. “We’re here.”

Curtis returned to
his granola bar in a chair surrounded by boxes and magazines and unopened mail,
mercifully resisting the opportunity to throw in a quick jab.

Billy leaned back
into the couch and kicked his sneakers up onto a stack of Jackie Collins books,
chewing on some Hostess donuts that were probably past the end of their shelf
life. The house looked even worse in the daylight and Paul shut his eyes as
everything came back to him in a gruesome downpour. Despite how real it all
seemed, he wasn’t on vacation with Sophia in Colorado. He was here in this
house with blood stains on his clothing and strangers looking at him like he
was crazy. She was dead and he was trapped between living and dying.

Rubbing his face,
her words came back in fleeting bursts.

Let me go.

Impossible.

Don’t go back home
.

Ridiculous.

You were meant to lead them
.

He laughed and if
they didn’t think he was crazy before they would now. He wasn’t meant to lead
anyone. Hell, he couldn’t even lead the ones he loved to the ocean without
getting them killed. What would be different now?

You will get better
.

Exhaling a
defeated breath, he dared to open his eyes. Everyone was still looking at him
and Paul couldn’t stop a chuckle. They were so screwed it was funny. His amusement
snowballed as the others swapped concerned glances that only fueled his laughter.
The frightened look on Billy’s face was priceless, driving Paul into a full blown
meltdown. Tears fell into his lap and he couldn’t breathe but that was okay. Everything
was okay. If you called being hunted by reanimated corpses okay. Eventually,
his merriment tapered off into an awkward silence that smelled of cat urine and
death.

Wiping his eyes,
he straightened his shirt and cleared his throat. “So…you guys about ready to
go or what?”

☠

“Man, I was good
at it too.” Billy turned to face Curtis in the backseat. “Beer signs, liquor
signs, open and closed signs, sports teams, beer mugs, steaming coffee cups, you
name it and I could bend it into the perfect shape without collapsing the glass.”

Paul glanced at
Billy in the mirror, navigating the F-150 down a lonely two-lane highway out in
the boonies. He looked over at Wendy, who gave him an impish grin from the
passenger seat.

Curtis shook his
head. “Man, do you ever talk about anything else?”

Billy stared at
him. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,
anything but neon fucking signs. Jesus. Now I feel bad for those two stiffs
back at the cop shop that had to listen to this shit day in and day out.”

Paul laughed.

“Sorry man, not
everyone had a
prestigious
gig like
you.”

Curtis grunted.
“Yeah and you don’t hear me going on and on about it so how’s about cutting us
some slack for two minutes. Nobody cares.”

Arching an
insulted eyebrow, Billy flattened his lips. “Did you really race for NASCAR,
man, or are you puttin me on?”

“Oh boy,”
Stephanie murmured from Billy’s other side. “Here we go.”

“Hell yeah, I
raced for NASCAR.”

“I bet that was
amazing.”

“It was amazing; I
got to see the country, meet beautiful women, and make some decent coin ta
boot. Plus my brother was my crew chief so I could tell him to fuck off and
never get fired.”

Billy laughed a
little. “Guess you got my neon signs beat.” He got quiet and dropped his gaze
to his hands. “I’m sorry about your brother. Stephanie told me a little about
him back at the house and he sounds like a good guy.”

Curtis turned to
his window. “He was.”

Paul slowed the
truck down, a cold feeling seeping into his veins like Freon. Lush forest
imposed on both sides of the road and sunlight winked off the logjam up ahead.
“Damn,” he said under his breath, checking his mirrors before returning his attention
to the hog truck flipped on its side a hundred yards up, blocking a dozen or so
empty vehicles that couldn’t navigate the steep ditches on either side of the
road. Evidently, there wasn’t enough time to back up before the infection
spread through the cars like wildfire, turning ordinary citizens into hunter
killers.

“Where’d all these
people go?” Wendy sat up straighter in the front seat. “Why didn’t they just
turn around and go back?”

“I don’t know.” He
put it in park. The cars were only on this side of the overturned truck as if
everyone had been heading north for some reason.

“Can you go
around?”

“Without rolling
it?” Paul strained to see down the ditch on the right side and then popped his
door open. “Wait here.”

“Paul!” Wendy got
out and followed him to her side of the road where a Hyundai Elantra sat on its
top at the bottom of the ditch. Just beyond, a thick swath of dead trees stretched
into the distance that made Paul nervous.

“That didn’t end
well.” she muttered, resting a hand on her gun.

He looked back to
the hog truck, gears slipping in his mind. There was no way to move it and only
two ways around. Crossing the road, the others spilled from the F-150. The
other ditch was even steeper with more trees running to the horizon. “Shit,” he
whispered, locking his fingers behind his head and letting the breeze rush over
his face.

Curtis hung his
thumbs from his jeans. “That don’t look good.”

“The other side
isn’t much better.”

Curtis followed
him back over, snorting when he saw the Elantra. “Fool. Ain’t no way that
foreign piece of shit is making that grade.”

“Think the truck
can make it?” Billy asked from behind them.

“We should go back,
Paul.” Stephanie zipped her jacket up. “There was another road a few miles back.”

Paul flashed her a
tight-lipped smile. “I got this,” he said, climbing back inside the truck and
rolling down the passenger side window. “Billy!”

Billy trotted over
and Paul handed him the 9mm he took from the chubby cop back at the police
station. “Thank you for what you did last night. It means a lot.”

Billy stared at
the gun without taking it.

“Next time a Taser
might not work.” Paul gestured with the gun and Billy took it.

“Thank you.”

“I know you know
how to shoot but keep your finger off that trigger until you are ready to
fire.”

Billy ejected the
clip and pulled back the slide, eyeballing the chamber. “Gotcha,” he said,
releasing the slide and slapping the mag in.

“You better be
cool.”

He nodded,
replacing the Taser in his duty-belt with the sidearm that was a perfect fit.
“I am.”

“Now stand back
and tell me how I’m looking.”

“Hey, if you die
can I have the M4 instead?” Paul pursed his lips and Billy ripped a drawn-out laugh.
“Just kidding!” he said. “I want your coat!”

The others made
room and stood off to the side, watching Paul slowly maneuver the pickup straight
down the ditch. Keeping his foot on the brake, he cut a slight angle to the
left, narrowly clipping the Elantra.

“Looking good,
man,” Billy hollered.

“Put it in beast-mode,”
Curtis yelled through his hands.

Paul glanced in
the mirror, half expecting to see a herd of stragglers swarming the others as
they waited up top. This had to go quicker. Leaning against the wheel with the
seatbelt cutting into his shoulder, he cranked the wheel hard left and released
the brake. Gravity took over and a jarring bounce vibrated his bones. The front
end dug up some grass, and suddenly the truck was on flat ground at the bottom
of the ditch.

Curtis clapped slowly
and whistled but Paul still had to get up the other side. Fortunately, the F-150
was up for the challenge and, with some convincing, manhandled the steep bank,
spitting grass and dirt out the back end. On the other side of the overturned
hog truck, Paul reclaimed the empty road and climbed into the back bed, waving
the others over and taking point. Watching them file between the abandoned
vehicles with the Beretta wrapped in his hand, his mind conjured up graphic images
of dead drivers snatching at their arms as they sifted past like sand. Instead,
a distant noise drew his attention off to the east. He snapped his head around to
see a freight train slowly emerging from the tree line. “Oh great,” he mumbled,
turning back to the others. “Hurry!”