Gods of the Dead (Rising Book 1) (5 page)

Hopefully she doesn’t shoot me with it.

***

The helicopters have multiplied. There must be six of them circling the city because it seems like there’s almost always one overhead. Emergency sirens blaze by and car alarms are creating a crazy symphony outside. People are in the streets shouting at each other, running and fighting, and every now and then you hear a gun shot. Sometimes more.

By the time night falls Sienna and I have gotten more or less used to the noise. In the afternoon we rushed to the windows every time a firetruck went by or a gun went off, but now we try to ignore them. We lay low and keep our heads down. I convinced her to take a Valium when I saw her hands had started shaking so bad she couldn’t bring a cup of water to her lips without spilling it. It brought her down far enough that I sent her to bed, told her I’d take watch. I doubt she’s sleeping, though. She looks at her phone constantly, sends messages that don’t get replies. She’s worried about her dad and her friends and I try not to get involved in a conversation about them because I don’t have the problems she does. I don’t have anyone I’m hoping will survive this other than myself and her.

“Can I lay with you?”

I sit up halfway on the huge white couch in the living room to look back behind me. Sienna is there, her hair down and her body wrapped in a blue blanket that comes down nearly to her bare feet. She looks exhausted.

“Yeah, sure,” I grunt, falling back down and gesturing to the other half of the couch.

She surprises me when she comes to lay on her side next to me, resting her head on my shoulder and fanning the blanket out over the top of us.

“Oh, you meant
lay with me
,” I chuckle.

“Is that okay?”

I lift my arm and wrap it around her shoulders, letting her get more comfortable. “Doesn’t seem like I have much choice.”

“Are you not a cuddler, Vin?” she asks, her voice tired but laughing.

“No, and neither are you.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Since when?”

“Since I’m sober. So in a way, this is all your fault.”

“Hmm.”

I look over her head at the tablet propped up and facing me. It’s broadcasting the feed from the security cameras all over the property and as I watch it I catch myself lazily running my fingertips up and down her arm. Her skin is so soft it’s stupid. It’s unnatural and sweet smelling and I realize as I touch her that I’ve never done this. I’ve never just
been
with a girl. It’s not great, but it’s not the worst either.

“I can’t get ahold of any of my friends,” she says quietly. “Even the ones who answered me earlier have disappeared.”

“Maybe the lines are jammed. I’m sure a lot of people are calling and texting.”

“Maybe,” she agrees, obviously unconvinced. “What about you? Do you have any friends or family out there?”

“Yeah.”

She waits for me to elaborate, but I don’t. “Who?” she pushes.

“My dad.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Are you worried about him?”

“No,” I sigh, closing my eyes and getting ready for the fallout. “I hope he’s dead.”

She sits up slightly to look down at me. “Are you serious?”

“Dead serious.”

“Why?”

“Because I hate him,” I answer plainly.

“Why?”

“He’s a piece of shit and the world would be a better place without him.”

She looks down at me for a long time, letting that soak in. Eventually she lays back down. “Okay,” she says slowly, letting it go. “What about your mom? What happened to her?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“Jesus, Vin.”

I chuckle. “Hey, you asked.”

“Still, though.”

“She left when I was born. Dumped me with the deadbeat drug addict who she couldn’t stand to be around anymore. She wasn’t exactly Mother of the Year.” My smile fades as I clench my jaw until it hurts, trying to bite back the words. The memories. But I can’t. “She probably would have stayed if my dad wasn’t so worthless. He was hardly ever around. He left me with the neighbors half the time while he went off and got loaded or gambled his welfare away and if they weren’t willing to take me, he’d bring in the whores he was sleeping with. Crackheads who crashed with us and tossed me a handful of Cheerios when they remembered. I learned to take care of myself real quick because that fucker was never going to step up and do it, and when I was fourteen I left. I fit everything I owned in my old beat up backpack, lifted all of his cash from his wallet, and I left.”

Sienna doesn’t reply for a long time. The air around us is too thick to hear her even if she did, the venom in my voice dripping from the walls. Pooling in our ears. I’ve only ever told that story to Wright before because he grew up pretty much the same way and he could understand, and now as I lie here in a million dollar mansion with a girl who spends more money on going to the salon in one afternoon than I do on food for a week, I wonder why I bothered telling her.

“When my mom died my dad stopped spending time with me,” she says suddenly. “He started taking more trips across the country or out of it. He wouldn’t stay in the same room as me. I think it’s because I look like her. It was hard for him, but it was hard for me too. Finally I stopped caring. Of course that’s when he started trying again. He was getting over it, over her, but I was already over him.”

“You still feel like you’re over him?”

“No,” she answers grumpily. “Now I wish he was here. What about you? Are you over your dad?”

I want to tell her yeah, of course I am. I want to say it and have it be true, but I know that it’s not. I hate him too much. I hate that he breathes air, eats food, and gets laid – all the things I do. All of things that give us common ground and it scares the hell out of me that I’ll be him someday. That I can run from him all I want, but I can’t outrun fate.

I wish he wouldn’t look for me. I think that’s what I hate the most about him. That he’s searching for me. Some stupid sick part of me hopes it’s to say he’s sorry and he tell me he wants to try to be better because then maybe I can manage to be better too, but the reality is that he probably needs money or a fix and he’s burned through every other bridge he’s ever set foot on.

“Yeah,” I lie thickly, my body choking on the words, “I’m over…“

I hesitate. A movement on the screen behind her caught my eye and I pause as I watch the green and black monitor carefully.

“Vin?”

“I think I saw something.”

Sienna tenses in my arms. “What? Where?”

There it is again. Backyard. Cruising around the pool. A black figure hunched and hurrying toward the back of the house. And they’re not alone.

I hold Sienna against me and roll us both off the couch onto the floor. I land with my knees on either side of her and I reach for the gun sitting next to the laptop.

“Stay here, stay down,” I order briskly.

Her eyes are wide with fear as she looks up at me. “What’s happening?”

“Someone’s in the backyard.”

I jump up and hurry toward the back of the house. The kitchen and dining room are there, both with doors opening into the backyard. I go to the kitchen, snagging a knife out of the butcher block as I cruise by and tucking the blade in my back pocket.

This part of the house and yard are dark, the only light coming from the numbers on the clock on the microwave and the glow from the bottom of the pool. I can still see the shadows moving, though. They’re not stealthy. More like people trying to look stealthy. They hide in the wrong spots, putting their backs up against pillars around the gazebo and motioning each other forward like a SWAT team on TV.

The fact that I’ve got a sketch comedy Seal Team Six rolling up on the house relaxes me a notch. And I immediately know the easiest way to handle it.

I stand up, abandoning my hiding place and dangling my gun loosely from my left hand. Then I open the door.

The alarm system goes wild. Lights snap on all over the yard and over a hundred decibels of siren start screaming all around me. And all around the now clearly visible SWAT team.

They freak. They scatter and stumble, their vision thrown off by the sudden burst of light. Every one of them turns and runs back the way they came.

It’s a trick that won’t work forever. The power will go out, the alarms will be useless, and people will get desensitized because we’ll learn that the threat behind the alarms isn’t real anymore, that the cops aren’t coming. I should be happy that it worked and that they’re running, but what I’m thinking as I watch them clear the fence and disappear back out into the night is that this is the start. This is the moment when it stops being easy, stops being about sitting around inside with Sienna and waiting for it all to pass us by, and starts being about surviving. About fighting for what’s yours.

Now is when you find out what you have and what was never yours to begin with.

Chapter Six

Trent

It’s been a week and not a sound. The woods are silent and soaked in rain, but they’re empty. Just Dad and I and all of our worry rolling around inside the cabin, jumping every time one of the chickens clucks. The subtle sound is like a gunshot to our oversensitive ears.

The radio crackles to life once each night at nine o’clock with a message from Candace or Diane letting us know that they’re good and safe, asking if we’re okay, and giving us updates from the news.

The Fever has hit Seattle hard. The city was consumed quickly along with most of America and other countries across the globe. The longer incubation period made it impossible to track until it was too late. A plane on its way to Russia fell from the sky and sank in the ocean over halfway there. A cruise ship heading to Mexico was overrun, beached itself on the coast, and spilled out onto the golden shores of South America.

There is no quarantine zone anymore, meaning that thin barrier we counted on to keep us safe from the infection in the south is gone. It’s closing in on us from all sides, surrounding us and throttling us with an invisible hand that we can never outrun, so we don’t bother trying.

As the epicenter, America’s Northwest is suffering the worst of it right now. It’s a wasteland. Pictures and video are pouring out of it and the government isn’t even trying to hide them this time, a fact that speaks to the total lack of control they have over the situation. The world is allowed to see the Fever in full swing for the first time, and according to the people at the Farm, it’s a nightmare. It’s everything Oregon said it was and worse. Fever victims are attacking their neighbors, their families, their friends, their pets – anyone and everything that moves. People are being chased down and devoured in the streets, their screams filling the air as their bodies are torn to shreds in plain view of everyone hiding in the buildings around them, all of them too afraid to help. But they’re not too afraid to film it, and that’s the part that I don’t get. Humans are mindlessly eating each other alive and what blows my mind is the passive part survivors are playing in it.

“They’re scared,” Dad tries to explain. “The Fever is passed so easily no one wants to get close to it. It’s the danger of being in the cities surrounded by people.”

“Would you just stand there and watch someone be eaten?”

“No.”

“Me either.”

“I wish you would.”

I shake my head. “I couldn’t.”

“I know,” he says tiredly, “and that’s what scares me the most.”

I study him, noting the hunch to his shoulders and the dark circles under his eyes. He hasn’t been sleeping lately. Even with the fence fortified and the complete silence surrounding us, he’s worried.

“Do we kill them?” I ask him.

“Kill who?”

“The people with the Fever. If they come here and try to break in, do we kill them?”

“Do you think you could?”

“Yes.”

He blinks. “Just like that? You think you could end someone’s life?”

“They’re not alive,” I reason.

“What do you mean?”

“They’re zombies. They’re risen dead.”

He groans. “Trent, don’t start this again. They’re not dead. They’re living people. Sick, but alive.”

“That’s not what Candace said last time she radioed. She said their heart quits and their body stops functioning. They don’t feel pain. They can lose a limb or catch on fire and they keep coming.”

“Their brains are destroyed but they’re not dead.”

“That’s not what they’re saying on the news.”

“Well, they don’t know everything. In fact, in my experience they know less than anyone else. Doesn’t stop them from shouting the loudest, though.”

“You don’t know anything but what they tell us, so how can you say they’re wrong?”

He stares at me for a long time. I can feel him getting angry, trying to contain it and losing. I don’t flinch, though. I’m right and just because it upsets him doesn’t mean I should pretend it’s not true.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he finally says quietly. Too quietly.

“But what’s the answer?”

“Answer to what?”

Now
I’m
getting angry. “To whether we kill them or not?”

“If they’re already dead then it’s not killing them, is it?” he asks, exasperated. “If you look them in the eye and think they’re dead already, then putting them down shouldn’t be a problem.”

“That’s not an answer,” I push, looking for clarification. I like black and white, right and wrong, yes and no. I don’t do well with gray areas. Gray is hesitation and doubt.

Dad scratches with both hands at his beard, slowly running his hands up into his hair and lacing his fingers together on top of his head until his arms are hanging heavily. “It’s as much of one as I have.”

I want to shout at him, but I don’t. I want to demand a clear answer so when the moment comes I know what to do, but I stop myself. I leave him alone. I let him struggle with the idea of murder and good and evil, and I look to myself for answers. I ask myself what’s right, what I’ll do, and I know immediately. I don’t have to hunt and debate and pull at my hair. I know in my gut what I’ll do if the time comes.

And I know it’s more a matter of
when
than
if
.

***

The time comes three days later, and it comes in the form of silence. The radio doesn’t spark to life at nine that night and Dad and I both stare at it for a good twenty minutes before we finally acknowledge the problem.

“Something’s wrong,” I say softly.

Dad nods slowly, his face cut harshly by the low lamp light on the table between us. We’re both dressed for the outdoors, shoes on and coats hanging at the ready by the door. We’ve been prepped like this for days but tonight is the first time it feels like we know why. It’s not a good feeling. My breathing is shallow and labored, my stomach tightening around my dinner. The scent of the stew still hangs in the air around us and it’s making me sick. I want to go outside. I want to run to the Farm. I want to see its lights on, hear laughter through the windows, catch sight of a golden brown head bobbing by a window on the second floor, but if something has gone wrong then that means the threat is close by. We could rush to help them but we’d be running into the fray. In the dark. In the never ending rain.

Dad stands suddenly, his face tight and torn. “I’m going.”

I stand as well. “Should we take the truck?”

“You’re staying here.”

“What? Why wouldn’t I go with you?”

“Because it’s dangerous.”

“That’s why I’m going with you. You shouldn’t go alone.”

“No,” he insists, shaking his head. “You’ll stay here behind the fence where it’s safe.”

“If the fence at the Farm couldn’t keep them safe I’m no better off here behind this one.”

“It might not have been the fence that failed. It could have been someone making a stupid mistake and you don’t make stupid mistakes.” He turns to head for his coat. “You’re staying here.”

“No.”

“Goddammit, Trent!” he shouts, rounding on me. “I’m your father and you will listen to me, do you understand me?!”

Up until now my dad has yelled at me twice in my life. When I was eight years old and I put goat shit in his hat on April Fool’s Day, and again when I was ten and he found me on the thin top branches of one of the highest trees on the property checking out the view. Tonight makes three and I feel just as amazed by his anger now as I did the other times. 

As quickly as the rage flared up inside him, it dies down. He comes to stand in front of me, taking my shoulders in both of his hands and shaking me slightly. “I’m scared, buddy,” he explains carefully. “For you and for the people at the Farm.”

“And for you,” I point out.

He sighs, his grip on my shoulders tightening slightly. “Yeah. That’s true. I’ll feel better if you stay here. You don’t have to agree with it, you don’t have to understand it, but I’m your dad and you do have to respect it. Alright?”

I nod my head. “Alright.”

“Thank you.” He pulls me in for a quick hug before heading for his coat again. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ll take the truck. I’ll just go to the property and check it out, see if there’s any problem at the fence. If I can’t see anyone or get in touch with them using the intercom at the gate I’ll come back and we’ll head back out there together at first light.”

“Shouldn’t we just wait until morning together then?”

He shrugs into his jacket, shaking his head. “We owe it to them to check it out. I’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll be careful.”

“Okay.”

He opens the door, the sound of rain pouring into the quiet cabin along with a gust of wet, cold wind that gathers at my feet. “Lock this door behind me.”

“I will.”

He grins, the expression forced. “And don’t look so worried.”

When he leaves, I listen to his footsteps on the porch heading out onto the pathway. I hear the gate open and close, latching solidly. The roar of the truck firing up, dying, sputtering reluctantly, and finally catching life. The rough gears grind together, the engine roars once more, then the beast fades away into the night taking my dad with it.

I sit down at the small table next to the radio, my mind on the road with him. It’s tracing his path, running a timer in my mind and plotting his progress. It should take him all of ten minutes to reach the Farm by the back roads. Ten minutes to get there, maybe ten to check the place out, and another ten to come back. Thirty minutes round trip. It’s not that long.

I sit waiting the entire time, and when thirty minutes turns into fifty, then ninety, and still there’s no growl of the angry engine on the road, the sickness in my stomach worsens.

Suddenly the radio cracks to life and I nearly jump out of my skin. I pick up the mouthpiece and wait anxiously for a familiar voice. It clicks like someone is trying to use it but nothing comes over. No words or sounds. Just static and a sporadic tick. There’s no pattern. It’s not Morse Code. It’s nothing I understand.

“Hello?” I call hesitantly into the mouthpiece.

A couple of clicks, then a sound that could be breathing, thick and almost gagging.

“Can you hear me? Over,” I try again.

I turn the volume up all the way and the static and breathing fills the cabin until I’m not alone anymore. But when they speak, I wish I was.

“It’s here,” a strangled voice hisses. “It’ssss heeeeere.”

“The Fever? The Fever is there at the Farm? Over.”

Wet coughing. A pained moan. “Nooo.”

“What then? What’s there?”

Click. Slam. Scraping and pounding from far off. A low growl like an animal followed by a faint whimper.

“Death,” they whisper brokenly, tears in their voice. Tears that drip from the air and fill the room until I’m soaked in them and sweat and a shaking fear that pulls at every muscle in my body. “Death is here. And He brought the Devil with him.”

I drop the receiver and run for the door, grabbing my coat and my knife. I throw open the door, but halt at the threshold. The radio crackles again, sounds pouring in and following me out of the room. It’s a crash and the growl, but then everything is drowned out by something so much worse. Something so much more terrifying.

It’s screaming. Blood curdling, pained screams that pierce my ears and send me careening from the cabin and out into the night.