DeadBorn (4 page)

I roll Dawson onto his back and he groans as I drag the T-shirt over his head.

“ …
the fuck … ”

I ignore him and try to put the jeans on his legs. He slaps my hand away and scoots back, right into the pool of blood that ran down the steps.

“
Hurry,” Holly says as she puts on a sweater she found on the floor and couples that with a pair of white running shoes. I don't fit into any of the sneakers I find, so I settle for a pair of rain boots. They're a little snug, but I can get my feet into them and it's better than being barefoot. I pull on a dirty red T-shirt stained with what I think is chocolate milkshake although I can't be sure. “We need to get out of here now.” Dawson touches the blood with his hand and raises it to his face where he stares, slack jawed. Seconds later, a hand smashes through the door just like it did before. The face that stares in at us this time is crackly, like the earth around a volcano. It's pitch dark with pulsing orange lines that glimmer like flames. When it opens its mouth, a burst of red spouts out and catches the doorway, the posters, and the carpet on fire. Dawson screams and rises to his feet, tripping over the jeans around his ankles and falling into Holly.

I turn my gun to the door and try to be brave, aiming at the creature's face and attempting to pull the trigger. Smoke and heat and rancid stench sear my eyes and make it hard to breathe. I fire the gun anyway and nothing happens.

“
Forget about it,” Holly shouts as she hands me the baseball bat and puts the gun in the pocket of my pants. “Let's go before we get trapped in here.” Dawson has finally gotten a hold of himself and pulls his pants up, reaching for one of the shotguns Holly dug out of his closet. He aims it at the door and fires off a shot that echoes around the room and makes my head spin. My ears ring like crazy and drown out Holly's words. I don't need to hear her though to know what I need to do. Holly opens the window and we both shimmy out and onto the grass. Dawson follows and although his eyes are haunted, I'm glad he's at my back. He seems to know how to handle a gun.

“
What the fuck is going on?” he asks and his eyes seem too dry, too wide. He's trying not to cry.

“
Zombie apocalypse.” Holly says this matter-of-factly as she runs down the side of Dawson's yard and pauses near the driveway. There's a white SUV and a black sedan, neither of which we have the keys for.

“
What?” Dawson asks finally, as if he's just heard Holly's response to his question. “What the hell are you talking about?” Holly climbs onto the bumper of the car and gets on the roof, using the vehicle to look over the fence.

“
Zombie apocalypse,” I say and the words seem staged, like part of a bad script, a B movie, a cheap book. Dawson stares at me, and I can tell he has no idea who I am. “Or something like it. Basically, there's a bunch of dead things trying to kill us.” Holly's ex stares at me with dark eyes. His hair is jet black and spiky, mussy from sleep and his lips are thin and pursed. He has a massive pimple on his chin, but otherwise, he's better looking than me. I wonder briefly why Holly broke up with him.

Dawson says nothing and turns back to Holly. She's staring into the distance with glassy eyes. Whatever it is that she's seeing, it's not good.

“
Where do you keep your keys?” Holly asks as she turns her attention to Dawson's face.

“
My car's in the garage and the keys are in my room. Even if you had 'em though, you wouldn't be able to get out.” Dawson is speaking normally with no hint of emotion in his voice, like he's discussing our upcoming senior year and the strength of the football team.

“
Whose are these?” Holly asks as she points at the SUV and the sedan.

“
Mom's and,” Dawson's voice gets caught in his mouth. “Dad's.”

Holly jumps down and lands on the driveway in a cool looking crouch, baseball bat held out at her side like a sword.

“
Where are the keys?” Dawson looks back at the house and we all jump as the sliding glass doors explode outward with the force of bodies. Loping corpses come towards us with droopy faces and tangled limbs. They smell like a septic tank and leak fluids that I didn't know even came from the human body: browns and swampy greens, mustard yellows and black ooze.

Holly doesn't hesitate. She pulls the revolver out of her sweatshirt and starts firing. Dawson stands there for a moment and then he, too, takes aim and fires. Since I know nothing about guns, I move between them and raise my baseball bat, determined to pick off any that get through Holly's line of fire. Dawson drops the shotgun to the pavement and kneels down, grabbing the bag with the guns in it. He digs around for a moment and comes out with a black pistol. It doesn't comfort me as much as I thought it would however because it doesn't stop them. The zombies get shot and they get back up again, even the few that Holly's managed to shoot in the head. It barely slows them. When fire face shows up again, none of us need to be told: we all start to run.

Holly takes point, and she and Dawson struggle with the lock on the gate as I watch in horror from behind them. Fire Face is coughing smoke and what looks like hot lava all over the hood of the white SUV, melting it like white chocolate. An arm grabs my wrist and tugs me backward.

“
Wake up, Galen!” Holly screeches as I follow behind her. “Or you're going to get yourself killed!” I stumble after her as she practically drags me down the alley behind Dawson's house. There aren't any zombies here, but there are people. Dawson stops as we approach them, but Holly keeps going.

“
What's going on?” a woman in a blue robe asks as we sweep past the group. It doesn't take long for the words to turn into screams and when I glance over my shoulder, I see why. A bunch of the bloody, loping zombies have gotten into the alley and are now chasing down the people in the pajamas who have no idea what's going on. I want to tell Holly that we can't leave them there, but if I stop her, take us back, we could all die. I turn my attention back to running and try to forget that Holly and I are trailing death behind us like a cloud.

CHAPTER 4

Maladroit

Two Hours After …

Holly and I are running towards my house. Why, I don't know, but I'm following because I'm in no shape to lead. For whatever reason, Holly seems to know what to do or at least has good guesses. There are several people behind us, crying, whimpering, begging us to stop. Dawson is back there, too, but he's not saying a word. I think, like me and Holly, that Dawson has gone into survival mode. We aren't questioning what's going on, not asking why or how, and we're definitely not letting it get to us. I know that later, we're going to need time, lots and lots of time, to get over this, to discuss it, to get past it. But that's only if we survive. To have the luxury of tears, we have to live.

“
Hey,” says a boy who's both shorter and wider than I am. His face seems vaguely familiar, and I remember absently that he and I had P.E. together last year. We both chose yoga over flag football. I can't remember his name for the life of me, but I do notice that he's wearing a
Walking Dead
T-shirt that says
I Heart Daryl.
I can't tell if that's a good or a bad sign. “Where are we going?” I shrug and keep running, surprised that this guy has any breath to talk. I'm panting and choking on the rapidly warming air, praying that this nightmare will end soon. Already my calf muscles are seizing up and I have a stitch in my side. “We should be looking for a truck or something.” I ignore him and stop running only when Holly does, pausing at an intersection where cars are passing by as if nothing's happened.

My heart soars for a moment as I come to the false conclusion that this weird, zombie incident is contained in Holly's neighborhood.

“
Thank god,” says a woman as she stop beside us and puts her hands on her hips. She has two kids by her side, both with tears running down their faces. They stare up at me and Holly as if we have all the answers. I look away.

Dawson is staring the way we came, eyes peeled for signs of the zombies that have been chasing us for the past half an hour or so. But there's nothing there. It seems that, at least for the moment, we've outrun them.

“
I'm calling the police,” the woman says as she moves over to a bench and sits down. Her kids follow and soon her fingers are punching in some numbers. After a moment though, she hangs up the phone and tries again. Holly gestures for me to follow her and as soon as there's a break in the traffic, she starts to cross.

“
Where are you going?” I ask her as I follow along. Dawson and the
Daryl
kid come, too, but the woman stays. “Should we really leave her there?” I ask as I catch the gaze of the little girl. The woman, presumably their mother, has just stood up and taken their hands. There are still no signs of the undead and the morning seems peaceful enough. I notice a man jogging up the sidewalk with a golden retriever. When he gets closer to us, the woman flags him down and the two begin to talk.

“
She won't believe it,” Holly says as we walk quickly down the sidewalk and cross the first bridge towards my house. It spans a man-made ravine that's mostly dry with more garbage than water. I don't look down as we pass, just keep my eyes on the gum splattered cement. “That something's really wrong. We don't have time for non-believers, Galen.”

“
I believe,” says the kid from my P.E. class. “I mean, this is zombie apocalypse 101, right? Freaking awesome.” Dawson grabs the guy suddenly by his shirt and slams him against the railing on the edge of the bridge.

“
This isn't awesome,” he screams and his voice echoes off the cement around us. I grab Dawson and pull him back and he lets me, but already, he's starting to cry. “This is Hell. I'm in Hell. We've been left behind.” I have no idea what he's talking about, so I ignore him and let go of his shirt. Holly is still walking and I have to jog to catch up.

“
I told you I had a dream, Galen,” Holly says as she shakes her head and hands me the bag of food and guns. I take it and realize that it's heavier than I thought. I feel like a dick for letting Holly carry it this whole time. I toss the bag over my shoulder and listen to my girlfriend's quiet words. That's not like Holly at all. She's normally loud and boisterous and inappropriate. It's one of the things that I like most about her. “So I know what's going on.” She sniffles and wipes an arm across her face. Snot smears her sweatshirt sleeve like the trail of a slug, but I don't care. I put a hand on her waist and pull her to me. “We're going to see if your mom's okay and then we'll take her with us.”

“
Where do you plan on going?” asks the
Daryl
kid. “Because I kind of have a plan for this.” Holly stops walking and turns to face him. She takes in his head of brown curls, his pudgy face and blotchy skin and then her gaze travels down to his T-shirt where it stops for a long, long moment.

“
A plan?” she asks as Dawson comes up and stands next to me. I hope he doesn't kill me for leading the zombies to his parents though I could understand it if he did.

“
Yeah,” he says and then pauses. “I'm Martin by the way.” He smiles at Holly, but she doesn't smile back. Maybe he didn't have to shoot his dad in the head today, but Holly did. I step up beside her and put a protective hand on her shoulder. “And you're Galen, right?” I nod. “And Holly and Dawson?”

“
Yeah, so?” Holly asks and then she spins around and keeps walking. We all join her.

“
So, I've actually been planning for this sort of thing for awhile now.” Dawson scowls at this and spits on the sidewalk.

“
Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks as we move into the trees and down the bike path that I use at least three times a week to get to Holly's house. The trees are bright and beautiful, a stark contrast to the horrible morning we've all had. The chirping birds actually piss me off and I have to resist an urge to pick up a rock and throw it at them. “You spend your whole life playing Dungeons and fucking Dragons and then you're suddenly an expert on surviving the End Times?” Martin scoffs and shakes his head.

“
These aren't End Times,” he says confidently and I almost believe for a second that he really does know what he's talking about. “It's just a disease, like cancer or – ”

“
Cancer?” Dawson asks and he sounds personally offended by the statement. “This isn't fucking cancer! Cancer patients don't walk around spewing magma from their freaking mouths. No disease could do that. Think before you speak, asshole.” Dawson runs a hand through his hair and I see tears brimming in his eyes again.

“
This isn't a religious thing or a biological one,” Holly says and we all walk more softly, so we can hear her speak. “It's magic.” Dawson doesn't say a word, but he does walk over to a tree, put his back against it, and slide to the ground. Holly stops and stares at him. “I had a dream, Dawson. I saw this happen in snatches, bits of memory that flickered through my mind. When I woke up, it all started to come true, just as I'd seen it.”

“
Yeah,” Dawson says and his eyes are blank and tired. “Right.” Martin snaps his fingers and licks his lips.

“
I get it,” he says and he chuckles like this is all fun and games. I wonder where his family is and if they're dead and maybe, perhaps, if this is some kind of fucked up coping mechanism. “So there's a necromancer then?” Holly startles and Dawson rises to his feet like some kind of martial arts expert. He's at Martin's throat before I can stop him.

“
Shut up!” he screams and his fist comes back. Martin cringes, but I grab Dawson's hand and knock him to his ass on the cobblestones.