America The Dead Survivor Stories Two

By W. G. Sweet

John watched as Bear helped the girls move their sleeping bags and back packs over to a clear space on the factory floor. He didn’t see what Madison saw in Cammy, but it was her choice, and she wouldn’t get a second chance with him. He came close to slamming his fist into the cement floor.
Not frustrated at all, he told himself. Not even a little.
He was about to roll out his sleeping bag and go to sleep, maybe tomorrow would have a different spin, he thought briefly, when Bear walked over and dropped down in a squat next to him. He moved so fast and easy for a big man. “Hey,” John was startled into saying.
Bear smiled. “Didn't mean to startle you... Thought you saw me coming.”
“No... No, you didn't startle me at all,” John lied.
Bear nodded. He cleared his throat a little. “Maddy and I talked a little... This place is safe, but it isn't where we need to be, so we thought we'd light out... Tomorrow... Jersey, maybe further, either way, out of the city is the goal.”
“Maddy?” John asked. “So it's like that.”
Bear kept the smile on his face. “Listen,” he leaned close, too close, but it was a tactic he reserved for situations just like this back in the old world. “She wants to go... With Cammy,” he spread his hands, huge hands, “It is what it is, man.”
John shook his head. “I don't see it. It's a new world... Who knows how many of us may have died off... If you look at New York alone it's got to be millions.”
Bear nodded, not really sure where John was going.
John leaned close. “So how do you build a population back up if the women are only with the women?”
Bear shook his head. “You know what I said to Maddy a few moments ago?” He didn't wait for John to answer. “She said something about the way you have a tried to impose upon her that she needs a man, and I said, 'What a dick.' That's what I said, 'What a dick.”
John just glared from under his lowered brows.
“Grow up, John, or go your own way, but as for those two?” He looked over at Madison and Cammy. “Don't mess with them anymore... I understand your thoughts might have gotten messed up... It's tough times like this that can do that, but they are their own, not your own.” He patted one huge hand against John's shoulder, smiled and then stood and walked away...

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. L. Norton
• Release date: Sep 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370773947

W. G. Sweet

Born in Western New York. Author of several books. Honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1974. Passed August 8th 2023, all books are available through Writerz.net and A. L. Norton

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AMERICA THE DEAD: SUVIVORS STORIES TWO

America The Dead: Manhattan is copyright © 2014 W. G. Sweet. All rights foreign and domestic reserved in their entirety.

Cover Art © Copyright 2018 W. G. Sweet

Some text copyright 2010, 2014, 2015 W. G. Sweet

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your bookseller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

LEGAL

This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places or incidents depicted are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual living person’s places, situations or events is purely coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHARACTER BIBLIOGRAPHY

PROLOGUE

New York

12:30 am

Carl Evans watched from the mouth of a dark alley. It was one of the things he loved about this place. You could hang out in an alley, smoke cigarettes all day and night long if you wanted to, and nobody said a word to you. Where else, but New York could that be true, he asked himself.

He leaned back against the wall, one sneakered foot propped on the brick behind him to hold him, the other flat on the cobbled stones of the alley. Another thing about New York, he thought as he inhaled deeply of his cigarette, and then let the smoke roll slowly out of his mouth. Old things everywhere you looked. These cobblestones for instance. He wondered how old they truly were.

Young man. The deep voice startled him from his thoughts. He lifted his head to see an old, gray haired gentleman standing at the mouth of the alley a few feet away. His face was creased and seamed. His skin so dark it was nearly blue. A cane in one hand supported his weight.

What's up, Pops? Carl asked politely.

The man placed his second hand on his cane and leaned forward. That cigarette will kill you.

Pops...

He held up one hand as Carl began to speak. "Just telling you. Don't need an argument. It will kill you. The big tobaccos, they knew about it back in the day when I was a boy chasing that habit. And they knew about it when it was in commercials in magazines, and T.V. and what not. That cowboy died from it you know, they knew it and they still know it. It will kill you. In case you didn't know it I wanted you to know it." He straightened his back, lifted the second hand, nodded once, and moved across the mouth of the alley disappearing as though from some sort of magic.

Carl chuckled, lifted the cigarette to his mouth, took a deep drag and then found himself blowing the smoke out, dropping the cigarette, and crushing it. The old man had ruined it for him. He hadn't smoked in ten years, but it tasted as good now as it had then. And he had figured with the way things were nobody had much time. Certainly not enough time to die from cancer or some other nasty surprise from cigarettes, but just the same the old man had ruined it for him.

He looked down at the blackened mess he had made as he ground the cigarette into the cobbles. Just as well, he told himself, it was time. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small silver canister. He inhaled a sharp breath involuntarily. He knew what it was. Knew what he was doing, but he still couldn't believe he was actually going to do it.

He fingered the small red button on the top of the silver canister, hesitated, and then pushed it down. Something inside clicked. There was no other sound in the stillness. He tossed it down the alley, turned, and walked out to the sidewalk.

CHAPTER ONE

Bear

August 4th

We were down along the river checking over some old buildings that are perched on the cliffs there, high above the water. Fall was not far away, and we knew we had to get moving, get out of this dead city. We had half the country to cross and find a place before winter came back around again.

We had struck out looking for food earlier that morning. With the park and its crowds so near to us, the shops and small stores for blocks around us were stripped clean. Another reason to get out of the city. It was time. I remember thinking that as I walked along.

I was thinking back to March as I walked. Not really paying attention to the walk, where I was going... March... Just a few months ago, but the world was still the world then. And for the next little while there, we didn't even know about the dead. Dead was still dead. When you closed your eyes for the long eternal sleep you didn't wake up a short minute later as something else. No. We were ignorant up until they decided to come after us. Ignorant. Stupid. Didn't know a thing. Didn't have a clue.

I had been in Central Park a few days after the first earthquakes hit. I had left Donita alone and went down on my own to see what the deal was. I found out nothing. No one knew any more than anyone else. There was a lot of speculation, but that was it. There had been earthquakes. It had rained hard for nearly twenty-four hours straight. The really freaky stuff hadn't happened yet. We were just starting down our new path, but what was clear was that thousands of people had died in the city, maybe more than thousands, maybe a million or more. And certainly millions if the damage here was the same across the country... or worldwide.

And my initial estimate turned out to be a kind. In the city alone: collapsed buildings, fires, exposure to the elements because there was no shelter. There were millions of bodies. It was not so bad in those first few days, but a few days later, when the smell of the dead rotting under the rubble began, it was horrible. The diseases started then too. And the diseases took thousands more, and we thought that was the end of it, but it was not. The dead came next. The same dead, newly risen to some other sort of life. But that day in Central Park I did not know about the dead yet. I had no idea what was ahead; what was before me was bad enough.

At six foot three and nearly two hundred ninety pounds I don't usually fear much. But that day I did. I realized there are some things you had better fear if you have half a brain in your head. It didn't matter that I could walk through Central Park unmolested. Something was on the wind, something that didn't care who it touched, did not respect physical size.

I walked through the park. There were hundreds there already. In the coming days those same people began to make the park home. But that day they wandered aimlessly, in shock. The subway was shut down, the buses. You could not find a cab. The same with the cops. Everything that was the same about the city, the things you could depend on to be the same day after day, were gone. A few short days, and they were gone. No more. And it had a feeling of permanence to it, a feeling of doom.

I sat down on a bench and watched the people shuffle by. No noisy kids. No babies bawling. No Joggers. No dog walkers. Hopeless people shuffling by. The occasional panicked whack job running around crazily. I saw no one shot that day, but in the coming days, they, the hopeless ones, began to shoot the crazies, chase them down and kill them. But that was later. That day I sat on the bench and wondered what had happened, and that was when the planes had overflown.

We all heard them from a long way off, military cargo planes. Slow, sometimes seeming to hang in the sky. That droning sound as they overflew, blocking the sun from the sky. This was no fly over to see how New York was, that much was evident immediately.

I was torn between running and needing to know what this was. Once you start down that path of just reacting to fear, it gets bad fast, so I sat there, as calm as I could be. 'They will not drop bombs,' was my thought. I remember it. And they didn't. What they did was spray the entire city. Trails of blue-tinged vapor drifting down out of the sky. That was the first time.

I finally did give in to the fear and took off through the park, thinking, like nearly everyone else, that it must be some sort of poison. The government's solution to whatever it was that was going on in the city.

We didn't know what the blue shit the government planes sprayed us with right after everything went to hell was. And I am still not convinced I know all there is to know, but I suspect things. I have been told things. I met a guy a few weeks back that said he worked at the Army base over in Jersey. He said he knew what it was. He said the planes came from somewhere down south, but stopped there on the way back to re-fuel. What he told me was it was designed to strengthen us, keep us alive a little longer, make us stronger somehow. Some dip shit scientist's idea.

I suppose it was meant as a boost for us, a help. The world slowed down, fell apart; everything stopped working. They knew they couldn't get to us. We would die. So they sprayed the blue shit on us, and I could suppose further that some of us survived the first few months because of it. I can't prove it, but I suspect it did help us evolve into...

I don't know. Whatever the hell we are now. I know we're alive. I know our hearts beat. I still feel human, and I truly think I am still human. If it made changes to the living, they are very small changes... at least so far.

But the dead - oh, the dead. That's a different story. It did something else to the dead.

I walked along now thinking my thoughts. I was lost in them - I'll admit it - right back in March for a few seconds. But I came back fast.

We were right in front of a line of cliffs that overhung the river, spread out a little. At least I was. It's funny how you can forget to be careful so goddamn fast. It was somewhere past midday when they came for us.

"Bear! Bear!"

Cammy from a hundred yards down. The panic and fear in her voice made my heart leap into my throat, and because of her fear, and probably some of my own, I did a really stupid thing right then that cost me time. I was so panicked, that I threw my rifle down and sprinted toward the sound of her voice. I got maybe twenty feet when the realization of what I had done hit me. It would have been comical to see the way I locked my legs up and tried to turn around before I had even come to a stop if it had not been so goddamned serious.

I had the rifle back in my hands, the safety off, just a fraction of a second later when Cammy and Madison opened up on the UN-dead closing in on them from the mouth of the narrow trail that lead up from the river. I added my fire to theirs before I had run another fifty feet, and their leader, a shambling wreck of a corpse, folded up, and then flopped over the side of the trail and down into the river. I continued to run as I fired, and I was shocked to realize that I was screaming at the top of my lungs as I closed in. I am big, but I can move when I have to.

"Goddamn-son-of-a-bitching-goddamn-bastards,dead-fuckers!" All strung together. Fear words. I did not hear them at first so I did not know when they started, and I could not shut them down once I did hear them. The panic and fear were just too hot.

I watched as, unseen by Cammy and Madison, a Zombie crouched on a narrow path above them swiveled his rotting head to me, seemed to take my measure with a wide, yellowed grin, and then dropped from the ledge on to Madison's back.

"No! Goddamn-son-of-a-bitches-dead-bastards-bastards!" I could not say, 'Madison Look Out!' Or speed up my feet or any other damn thing. Time had slowed, become elastic, strange, too clearly seen. The Zombie hit her hard, and she folded like an accordion, driven into the ground, a few hundred pounds of animated corpse riding her down into the dirt, clawed hands clutching, mouth already angling to bite... to taste her.

I was still thirty or more yards away. I could not see how that could even be possible. I should have been closer, but I was not. I saw Cammy turn, panicked, take her eyes off the other UN-dead and start towards Madison. Unchallenged, the other Zombies closed ground far faster than they should have been able to.

I saw the Zombie on Madison take a mouthful of her back, just below the curve of her neck, and rip the flesh away from her spine. Cammy's rifle came up and barked, and the zombie blew apart, raining down on Madison, a storm of black blood. Somehow, I managed to switch to full auto, get my rifle up, and spray an entire one hundred round clip into the other zombies where they rushed along the path towards Cammy and the fallen Madison.

Madison screamed. Time leapt back into its proper frame, and I found myself five feet away as Madison arched her back, screamed and tried to stand. Blood ran in a perfect river from her gaping wound, across the white of her T-Shirt and down to the waist of her jeans.

"I think... I think..." Madison tried.

Baby... Baby, Cammy sobbed. She dropped to her knees and pulled Madison to her. "Oh, Baby... Baby," Cammy sobbed.

I looked back up at the trail. Empty. At least of moving UN-dead. Three or four, it was hard to tell with the tangle of legs and arms, lay dead on the pathway. Silence descended. I heard a bird in the trees above calling as if nothing was wrong with the world, Cammy sobbing, Madison crying hysterically, the wind moaning through the empty buildings that were set just back from the cliffs and the river on this side of the city.

I was thinking, 'That wind is colder. Colder even than when we started out this morning. Maybe the weather will turn back to snow and cold. Maybe winter is not done after all... Or coming sooner... It could be. It's all so screwed up. Maybe, if it does get cold, it will slow those bastards down. Maybe we will be okay... My, God... They bit Madison... They BIT Madison!!!' I sagged to the ground, my mind full of confusion and numbness.

Cammy was sobbing uncontrollably. Madison had lapsed into shock. I was sitting crossed legged, wondering where in Hell this would all end up, my rifle fallen from my hands and laying on the ground next to me. Time spun out, dragged, seemed elastic once more, sticking in places and jumping ahead from those places to where it should have been had it continued to run properly.

Cammy sobbing, holding Madison up, kissing her forehead, telling her how much she loved her... how she was her world...

Madison, eyes rolled back in her head... face pale... fine beads of sweat standing out on her forehead... her back a bright slick of red