The Plague: Dead Solstice Read online

  Slowly, she crept up to the front door. When she reached it, she put her hand on the doorknob, but then stopped herself from turning it. She listened a moment more then took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

  “Hello?” she called out to anyone who might be inside. She knocked again. “I don’t mean any harm. I’m just… thirsty,” Blair shook her head out of embarrassment with herself.

  Blair took a step back and stared at the door. She waited a moment longer. Still, there was no noise. There was nothing. Again, Jadon’s request passed through her thoughts, and again her curiosity smothered its reasoning. Shaking her head at her own stupidity, Blair reached out and turned the doorknob. The door swayed open with no effort.

  Blair pushed the door fully open with her bowie knife ready. The interior was dark and empty. Slowly, she entered, shifting her head back and forth, scanning for any threat that might be hiding. But there was nothing in there. The furniture had been pushed against the windows, darkening the room. Sleeping bags were strewn across the hardwood floor. But when it came to people, the place was completely devoid of life.

  Blair walked into the kitchen; a few dirty plates were stacked in the sink. A few flies buzzed around the trashcan. She opened the pantry and found only boxes. The refrigerator was bone dry. Blair checked the faucet and was surprised when water came gushing out. At least that’s a good thing, she thought.

  Blair looked around a bit more, before tightening her grip on her Bowie knife and heading into one of the bedrooms. Everything but the bed was filled with piles of bags and luggage. Blair moved to check the other rooms but stopped when she came to a set of steps leading down into a basement. Her parent’s basement immediately came to Blair’s mind. She thought of her mom’s stash from her obsession with extreme couponing. Blair wondered if the stash had kept her parents alive. By God, she hoped it had.

  Blair crept down the stairs and put her ear against the basement door. Again, she was met with silence. Blair turned the doorknob and pushed the door forward. She was met with complete darkness. The only shimmer of light came through the cracks of a pair of cellar windows that had been blinded by shutters. It was still silent, so Blair raised the Bowie knife to guide her and she moved forward to open the shutters.

  She was halfway into the room when her foot collided with something soft that sent her falling to her knees. It was at that moment that Blair heard it – the moaning. It started from the object she tripped over and then slowly spread, like an invisible forest fire, until it surrounded her in a deafening roar. Around her, she could just make out silhouettes rising from the floor, blocking out what little light there was.

  “No, no, no, no,” Blair whispered to herself, knowing that she was about to be torn to pieces in a feeding frenzy.

  Suddenly, the object Blair tripped over reached out and grabbed a hold of her leg. Blair twisted and whirled back to get free. All around her, it grew darker and darker as the silhouettes began to block out all light and lumber toward her. There must have been a hundred things in there. The strange question of why there were so many in this basement ran uncontrollably through Blair’s thoughts: Was someone infected? Was this a suicide pact? Blair struggled desperately to push out the useless thoughts.

  The thing grabbing on to her leg pulled and another boney hand reached up for her torso. Blair kicked it away and slashed violently with her Bowie knife. Hands began reaching down for her. Blair rolled trying to avoid the hands. She kicked and kicked the thing on her leg but had no luck. She knew if the other hands grabbed a hold of her, there would be no escape. Fighting every urge to stay low and somehow crawl into a corner, Blair sat up and searched for the head of the thing on her leg. It came on her suddenly, its teeth hammered against themselves in a frenzy. Blair grabbed her Bowie knife with both hands then thrust it down on top of the source of chattering teeth. They clamped together one final time and the thing’s grip on her leg went limp.

  Blair lunged forward, crawling over the thing as she jerked the knife loose. She got to her feet and ran forward with all her strength, slashing widely with her Bowie knife and screaming as she pushed through the walking corpses. Somehow, she reached the doorway, and she pushed through, tripping onto the stairs.

  She turned, thinking to close the door, but already it was too late, one of the things was already on her. He was a fat, balding man with a lazy eye. A large chunk of meat had been gnawed away from his belly, giving him a lopsided look. The fat man grabbed on to her foot with both hands and came at her ankle with a wide maw. Blair jabbed her Bowie knife directly into the fat man’s lazy eye and then kicked herself free from his twitching body.

  Already, the mass of ghouls was at the door, trying to squeeze through and get passed the motionless fat man that blocked the way. Their hands reached out for her, coming within inches. Blair wished her knife farewell and abandoned it, scaling up the stairs using her arms as well as her legs.

  When she reached the top, she sprinted for the front door. She could only imagine that the things were right behind her, so she didn’t slow when she flew out of the house. Without stalling, Blair jumped onto her dirt bike and frantically kicked at the starter. It wasn’t until then that she looked back and realized she left the front door wide open. Blair, stopped, wondering if she had time to get back to the door and pull it shut. But her internal debate was soon over when she saw the first of the ghouls stumble into view from the darkness of the house.

  “Forget it!” She shouted at herself and gave the dirt bike a hard kick.

  The bike started, and Blair heeled the kickstand up, and then blazed back down the road to Tom’s Place. It took only mere minutes – although it felt like seconds to her.

  When she reached the general store, she choked the engine and jumped off the bike, letting it fall on its side. Blair collapsed to her knees. Her eyes exploded with tears as she suddenly became aware of what had almost just happened. Then a thought ran through her head – she was bitten.

  Blair frantically rubbed at her arms and legs searching for any bite or scratch that might have broken her skin, but to her bewilderment, there was nothing. There had to be, she thought. She could have sworn there was something.

  “Are you alright?” A nearby voice asked.

  Blair swung her head up to find Dante looking down on her. He was wearing a black hoodie over his black slacks. He looked stranger than usual. “Where’s Kai?!” She yelled at him.

  Dante shrugged indifferently. “A bunch of them are inside,” he suggested.

  Blair lifted herself to her feet and charged inside. But instead of finding Kai, the general store was completely empty. “Hello?” Blair yelled deeper into the store, but there was no response. It struck her instantly that Dante had deceived her. But why would he? What would he have to gain?

  But before Blair could turn to go confront Dante, she had her answer. She heard the dirt bike roar to life and an instant later she heard it speed away.

  12

  The last reaches of light slowly gave way to the long mountain shadows as the sun fell beneath an uneven horizon. Dante sat on the edge of a bed, looking out a bedroom window, his eyes studied the road that led him to this isolated house.

  Shortly after stealing the dirt bike, Dante pulled off the side of the old tired road to where a pair of old rustic cabins lay dormant. There wasn’t much gas in the bike’s tank, but he was fortunate enough to find a pair of snowmobiles in the garage with extra fuel tanks only a few feet beyond them. Dante wasted no time filling up the dirt bike and then hiding it near the door; prepped for a quick escape. He planned to continue on in the darkness of night, when he would have the advantage of hiding in the shadows. But until then, he had to wait to see if his fellow survivors had formed a posse to track him down.

  The moment twilight descended across the landscape before him, Dante pulled out his contact lenses. He hadn’t dared take them out since he met up with his new colleagues and the act of liberating his eyes flooded him with intense euphoria.
He paused to enjoy this moment and let a smile pass across his lips. The light that bounced off the moon now blanketed the terrain like a luminous painting full of deep colors.

  The contacts were only for color, and Dante had worn them so long that he had almost forgotten what it was like to see without them. An urge came over him to just toss them away and never imprison his eyes again. But, he knew this was impossible, these contacts were helping keep him alive. So, with a frustrated sigh, he slipped them into one of his pockets and hoped that he would remember to put them back on later.

  Dante gazed out at the terrain a little longer until a cloudbank rolled in to block out the light of the moon. It would be dark for his colleagues out there, but not for him. Dante slowly pulled apart the knot of his tie and then threw it to the floor. He thought about taking off the dress shirt beneath his black hoodie, but decided he had shed enough of his clothing already. Plus, he didn’t want to lose the warmth. Dante pulled the black hood over his head and played with it until it was comfortable. Once it finally was, he pulled Blair’s bow and quiver onto his shoulder and headed downstairs.

  A cold chill washed over Dante as he exited the house. He hated the cold, and the mountain breeze made him want to do nothing but retreat back inside and start a fire to curl up next to. Unfortunately, his determination had always been the enemy of his comfort. So instead, Dante gritted his teeth and pulled the dirt bike out from the garage. An instant later, he was riding it in a fury down the road.

  Rather than take the highway, Dante ventured back toward the slopes. He thought the back road would be more concealed and less noticed. The unpaved road curved and snaked along the mountainside until eventually it burrowed itself into a narrow valley between two hillsides. It was here that Dante was forced to stop. There was a blockade between the hills. It was hastily made, not much more than a mass of dirt and boulders that had been blasted off the hillside and onto the road by dynamite. It was enough to stop a car or truck, but Dante could probably drag the bike over it. Still, Dante would need to know if anyone was guarding this dirt blockade.

  He cut off the bike’s engine and slowly ascended the pile of rocks. It was only about a story tall, but the climb was made difficult by the lose dirt that shifted beneath Dante’s feet. He got high enough to peek his head over the top and slowly surveyed the area. It was quiet and still. A small rusted backhoe was a few meters from the pile and surrounded by trails of packed dirt. Whoever blew the hillside onto the road must have not been happy with the result and used the backhoe to build up the barricade a bit more. Dante waited there for a quarter-hour before being satisfied that there were no eyes on the barricade. The fools must have put all their attention on the highway, and they would pay for this strategic miscalculation.

  It took Dante another quarter-hour to pull the dirt bike over the barricade. It was more work than he anticipated, but the use of his muscles warmed him against the cold air. He took it as a welcome reward for his determination.

  When the bike was finally back on pavement, Dante started the engine back up and flew down the road until it opened back up into a field and then wedged itself deep into a small town. Dante cut the engine and coasted to a stop, then climbed off and walked the bike into the town. It was a long walk, and the further he went, the more he felt the cost of the cold air on his body. His joints were tightening up and his skin began to feel numb. His eyes grew heavy and he grimaced at a yawn that escaped his mouth.

  It was the voices that woke him back to full awareness. Dante could hear them just ahead – mumbles interlaced with hearty laughs. Dante changed course and headed toward the conversation. When he got close enough to see two silhouettes leaning against a beat-up, old truck, Dante laid the bike down on an overgrown yard and then prowled closer and closer.

  Dante was a stone’s throw from them when he stopped and crouched in the shadow of a large cabin. From their voices, he expected men, but now that he could see their features, they were more boys than men. Just a pair of teenagers talking about their new hostages.

  “Shit, Dylan, they ain’t back. Quit trying to stir shit up. You’re just gonna scare Hank and Dale,” said the fat one. He kept talking puffs from a cigar while balancing a can of Budweiser on the edge of the truck’s hood.

  “Those pussies should be scared,” Dylan shot back. “We need to be ready, man. Tom’s Place is only two miles away. And, my brother says he spotted one of them checking out the cabins up across the 395. Up on Owen’s Gorge Road.

  “That don’t mean shit. I already talked with Mr. Yates. The rumor is that we’ll just go down there tomorrow night and scare them back to the flatlands.”

  “Man, and how are we gonna pull that one off? You wanna dress up as fucking zombines or something?”

  “Nah, nothing like that, man. Mr. Yates mentioned maybe sending them a finger or a hand or something. Just enough to let ‘em know that we’re fucking serious about them getting the hell out of here.”

  “Really? And who’s gonna do the cutting? You?”

  The fat one erupted in laughter, causing his bloated jowls to vibrate like a plate of gelatin. “Why the fuck would I do that? Shit man, they’ve got those zombines caged up at a horse ranch back in town. Plenty of hands on those dead fools.”

  “They got any zombine kids in there?”

  “Shit, I don’t know, but I’m sure we could find something.” The fat one sucked a little more smoke out of his cigar than he could handle and erupted in a coughing fit. Dante watched his jowls jiggle in disgust as he tried to clear his throat. When the coughing died down, the fat one wiped his mouth and tried to regain his composure. He opened his mouth to let out a new slew of words, but before he could, Dante let an arrow loose, right into the fat one’s neck.

  13

  “Take deep breaths,” whispered Claudia.

  Cece gave a small nod and focused on breathing slower. It was difficult to stop breathing so fast, she tried to breath slower for Claudia, but somehow it never lasted. She pulled her knees in tighter to try and stop herself from shivering. She didn’t know why she was shivering. She wasn’t cold, she was just frightened. Frightened more than she could ever remember. She just wanted her mom. She just wanted to be safe with everybody else. She just wanted Clark and Clint to stop crying. She just wanted the new boy who was shot to stop moaning on the ground.

  “Will you stop that racket!” one of the men yelled from the other room. These strange men had tried to pull the bullet out from the new boy’s shoulder, but they said they couldn’t find it. After a while, they just gave up, poured alcohol on it and taped a bandage over it. It seemed like they had only made it worse for the new boy. He wasn’t responding to anyone, he just continued to roll around on the ground moaning in pain. The men told him help was coming, but that had been a long time ago.

  It was dark in the strange house. The only light came from a few lanterns burning in the other room. Clark was crying, and Clint was trying to hide his tears. Claudia kept trying to comfort them saying “We’ll be alright. These aren’t the monsters.” She tried to get them to drink some of the water they had been given, but they wouldn’t.

  No one seemed to really notice Cece other than when she was breathing fast. Cece tried to pretend that they weren’t here. She tried to pretend that she was back home. That Tiger Lily was with her. Cece tried to imagine what Tiger Lily was doing – chasing a mouse, purring on her mother’s lap maybe. Probably not. She was probably being poked and prodded by that mean old lady, Ms. Lerman. Tiger Lily was probably just as miserable as Cece right now.

  In the other room, Cece could hear the men talking. They were dirty, with greasy hair and dried blood on their shirts. They looked mean, like the bad guys in the movies her dad used to watch. And they talked in deep, raspy voices. One was smoking cigarette after cigarette like it was the only way he could breathe. Another was constantly spitting something into a cup. The men were talking about what they were going to do with Cece and her friends in the same tone that he
r mother would talk about deciding which restaurant to eat at.

  “We should take them up the mountain already. I don’t know what we’re waiting on,” said the man breathing through the cigarettes.

  “Why?” the spitting man said. “Why not just end it here?”

  “You’re kidding right?”

  “Of course, I wish I was. But we don’t live in the same world that we used to. If we keep on pretending we do, we’re just gonna end up dead in a few months.” The spitting man paused to spit into his cup. “So, check it out, okay. We take them in, that’s five more mouths we’re gonna have to feed. And it ain’t like they’re ever gonna trust us, we took ‘em from their families. And their families ain’t ever gonna leave us alone so long as they’re alive.” He stopped talking for a moment and then spit in the cup again before saying, “I think we ought’a send ‘em a message and get it done with.”

  “We ain’t killing nobody,” a third voice announced. Cece couldn’t see the man, but his voice sounded like the older man with the big nose and the lightning bolt on his hat. The man who took her away from her mom. But she wasn’t sure; she hadn’t seen that man since they arrived at the house the day before. And with everyone crying, everything had been all bunched together in a blur. She hadn’t been able to get any sleep with the cries from the strange boy, and the sound of tears from the other kids, and the man breathing through the cigarettes yelling at them to shut up the entire time. She was exhausted and, for the first time in her life, the thing she wanted most in the world was a nap.