DEAD CHAOS
Book 1 of the Dead Chaos series
Ryan & April Brookshire
Copyright © 2013 by Ryan & April Brookshire
ISBN-13: 978-1301238798
All right reserved
www.aprilbrookshire.net
CHAPTER ONE
“Do you think only the white trash zombies congregate at K-Mart?” Alexi asked quietly while peering through his binoculars at the scene across the street.
I held back a smile as not to encourage him, but couldn’t resist teasing him. “Oh yeah, the high class ones prefer Target.”
“Shut up you two,” Viktor ordered the both of us, clearly annoyed.
True to character, Alexi always bended the rules and simply lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m telling you guys, we should hit up Walmart. The pickings are better.”
“There are too many of them there. We’d be the pickings,” Viktor responded while pulling out his billhook machete.
“I can put out that many,” I informed my older brother. Although, this was something he well knew.
Viktor shook his head, frowning in thought. “Not worth the risk, Anya. Better to hit this place first.”
Our dad and Viktor had already decided on the K-Mart in this town, so that was the way it’d be. They lead and the rest of us minions followed. Five years older than me, Viktor’s opinion mattered more to our dad than mine and Alexi’s.
Even if I was considered the talent in the family.
I couldn’t blame my dad when it came to my brother Alexi, though. Alexi was seventeen going on seven. The only reason Alexi sat on this roof with us instead of a few blocks over where Kyle, Justin and my dad were about to start the fireworks was because Viktor was on a recent mission to toughen our younger brother up. Alexi had guts in spades. It was his lack of brains that was worrisome.
Viktor stared intently at his watch. “Three, two, one.” The explosion from the west lit the sky brighter than the rising sun in the opposite direction. My dad, Kyle and Justin would be circling around to meet us here, having now provided the distraction.
Our gazes drifted back to the K-Mart parking lot. It worked as expected. Like a flock of birds, the dead headed toward the smoky sky. From our rooftop perch my brothers and I patiently, and not so patiently in Alexi’s case, waited for the zombie herd to clear out. It was slow moving, comparable to watching a group of toddlers waddle in a race. Partially brain dead or not, zombies were competitive when it came to dinner time. The first-come, first-served saying came to mind. The early bird gets the intestine. I’d even seen one zombie unintentionally maim another to feast first. If only they’d start eating each other, life would be much easier.
The biters who’d been least damaged before death were at the front of the pack. Alpha zombies were what we’d nicknamed them, the ones you had to most watch out for. Then there were the stragglers, the ones who’d been gnawed on before they’d died and turned undead cannibal. Missing limbs or massive amounts of flesh and muscle resulted in the cripples. Looking through my binoculars, I saw an infected male down in the middle of the parking lot trying to stand up. Hard to do when you’re armless. Another zombie with the opposite problem was desperately trying to catch up to the herd, dragging her legless body along on two arms.
I could almost imagine her saying, Wait up, guys!
“Like the freaking Special Olympics down there,” Alexi commented with a chuckle.
I bit back my own laugh. “You’re just wrong, Alexi.” Then to Viktor, I said, “Told you dropping him on his head would have lifelong effects.”
Like usual, Viktor took the high road.
“And . . . we’re good to go,” Viktor announced confidently as legless rounded the corner of a building.
I followed Viktor and Alexi down the service ladder, leaping past the last few rungs onto the pavement. Before we set out to conquer K-Mart, we each readied with a weapon in hand. Along with handguns strapped at his ribs and thighs, Viktor carried a billhook machete in his right hand.
“Search and destroy, bitches,” Alexi boasted. His shotgun was strapped to his back along with a modified Louisville slugger. Modified, as in he’d driven large nails through it and sheathed it in an aluminum pipe when not in use. Gripped in both hands, he carried a katana sword. He always did love Leonardo from the Ninja Turtles as a kid. I wouldn’t be surprised if he started wearing a blue bandana.
Along with handguns strapped onto both thighs, I always had with me my trusty tactical tomahawk. Removing the nylon sheath, I admired the black axe head on one side and spike on the other. A lady never leaves home without it.
It took almost five minutes to get to the broken out K-Mart entrance. Viktor tended to be overly cautious when it came to raids, secret weapon or not. Now that the zombies were cleared out, what remained was a parking lot with faded yellow paint dividing the spaces, littered with stray debris. The lone tumbleweed near the store entrance added just the right touch of desolation.
As we passed by armless, he began making a guttural sound and attempted rolling our way. The going was slow, to say the least. Alexi couldn’t help himself. He stopped five feet away from the zombie, crouching down and enticing it with his living flesh. “Here, boy, come and get it.”
Viktor grabbed Alexi by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to his feet.
It made me sad that human beings were reduced to this state. If you died, you become mindless and obsessed with eating live flesh. If you didn’t die, you fought every day not to become one of the mindless. We were luckier than most, though, because we had me.
The moaning coming from inside the store warned us of the remaining stragglers. They’d be spread throughout the large store, but all within my radius. I’d also be taking out the undead in nearby buildings.
“Okay, secret weapon,” Alexi murmured. “Time to drop ‘em.”
I began to chant.
“Stop fooling around, Anya, and get on with it,” Viktor demanded in that superior tone big brothers tended to master.
“Fine,” I gritted out. If you asked me, the chanting added a certain mystique to my abilities, gibberish or not. Really, only a few moments of concentration and visualization did the trick. I didn’t know why I was able to do it or where it came from.
Connecting with the undead I felt around me, I let the feelings of despair and emptiness gather. The very essence of death. Using their aura, I turned it back on the infected, releasing a wave of energy which incapacitated them.
“Done.”
“You sure?” Viktor asked.
I gave him a condescending look. “Do you hear any moaning or crashing about?” Yeah, being a necromancer tended to come in handy during a zombie apocalypse. Viktor was already giving me his back and entering the store. “You’re welcome!” I called out to him.
“You know what the moaning reminds me of?” Alexi asked me with a twinkle in his green eyes.
“Um, ravenous zombies?”
“Nope.” From the way Alexi was having trouble holding back his laughter, I knew the immaturity level of his next words would rate highly. “The sounds Viktor makes from his and Melanie’s room at night when they think everyone is asleep.”
Busting up laughing, I held a hand over my mouth to muffle it. As Viktor glared at us over his shoulder, I told Alexi, “That’s so gross!”
Alexi’s smile was sly in response. “Not when it’s Melanie that’s-”
A kick to his shin ended that conversation. I didn’t know what was worse, my little brother talking about sex or my little sister mooning over cute boys. Maturity couldn’t come fast enough for those two. Unfortunately, in Alexi’s case it may never come.
We had only the sunlight filtering in through the front of the store to light our way. T
he three of us each grabbed a shopping cart. I grabbed a different one when my first choice was squeaky and went about the serious business of shoplifting.
I encountered an out of commission corpse on aisle three. Its small size made me avoid closer inspection. You never get used to seeing children like that. Pushing my cart around it, I cleared out all the honey, white rice, powdered milk and other items that thankfully lasted forever. Oh, how I wish cereal never expired, especially the sweet kind. A year after the world ended, I learned a hard lesson from eating expired food. Alexi was right there with me, sick all night. Thank god that when we got our hands on the right ingredients we could still make pizza.
After finishing up in grocery, I went to the health and beauty section for the item number one on my little sister’s list. Tampons. She’d just gotten her first period and was acting like the biggest diva over it. While there, I also loaded up on toothbrushes, toothpaste and an abundance of hygiene items I’d be tossing everyone’s way. The mostly empty condom section let me know Viktor had already been through here. Or maybe in wishful thinking, Alexi stocked up. Either way . . . disgusting.
Along with a couple more corpses, I ran into Kyle on aisle nineteen. My boyfriend had been with my dad and Justin when the explosion went off, but grabbed a cart and joined us in our shopping spree. His cart was loaded with flashlights, lanterns and apparently the store’s entire stock of batteries.
After a quick peck on my cheek, Kyle pointed to the corpses on the linoleum floor. “Good job, babe.”
I shrugged as if it were no big deal, which was kind of true at this point. “The guys should be finishing up. Ready to meet them up front?”
“Sure, but can we stop and grab me a new pair of shoes?” Kyle’s current pair of hiking boots was looking a little worn out.
“Okay, but don’t you want to wait until we go to a good store? K-Mart shoes will probably give you blisters.”
“It’ll be good to have a backup pair, just in case we don’t make it to any better stores for awhile.”
Thinking this was maybe a good idea, I grabbed an assortment of shoes for the rest of our small group. My little sister’s feet were still growing, so I grabbed a half-size up from last time.
By now, our dad and Justin should be on the same rooftop perch we’d occupied before, waiting for us to signal them to come pick us up. When we got to the front of the store, Viktor and Alexi were already bagging their loot. Kyle helped me bag mine first, then we did his, double bagging the heavier items. I got two more kisses in the process and annoyed looks from my two brothers.
Viktor was the one to step out into the parking lot and wave for pickup. My dad and Justin would drive the truck and Suburban over for us to load up. After six years and lots of experience, both good and bad, we had the routine down to perfection.
At the sound of approaching vehicles, Viktor’s head whipped to the side and he backed into the store. His vehement, “Shit,” alarmed the rest of us.
“What is it?” Kyle grabbed Viktor’s arm to get his attention.
“Strangers,” he told us with a grim look. “Two fast approaching trucks entering the east entrance to the parking lot.”
We saw what he was talking about when a newer and an older truck with rusted Texas plates screeched to a halt in the handicapped parking area. I only got a good view of one of the drivers, a scuzzy-looking, bearded white guy. However, I could just make out a passenger sitting next to him. It looked like the other truck also held two men. Hopefully, they wouldn’t cause us any trouble, but history told a different story.
“Maybe they don’t know we’re here,” Alexi whispered.
“Doubtful,” Viktor answered. “They were probably scoping us out while we were scoping out the store. Or they heard the explosion and that’s how they found us.”
From our position, one truck was parked diagonally alongside the other. The men filed out of the pickups so they were between the two vehicles, using them as shields. Which put us at a disadvantage. My dad and Justin wouldn’t have a clear shot of them with their sniper rifles and we were in the same predicament.
“Throw down your weapons and come out with your hands up!” a gruff, accented voice yelled out to us. Of course they knew we had weapons. Who didn’t nowadays?
Kyle made a scoffing sound. “How original, he even sounds like a cowboy.”
We’d all pulled out guns by this point, hoping not to have to use them since the gunfire would attract the dead. Hell, we should’ve finished off the corpses playing dead in the store. Usually we didn’t bother wasting time if we were merely planning on getting in and out of some place quickly. Plus, we didn’t like to unnecessarily get our weapons dirty. It wasn’t the most fun of chores to wipe the gore from a blade. Pretty soon they’d start reanimating and it’d take awhile for my powers to juice up again. I was like a battery without a charge right now.
Kyle fingered the one of the grenades on his belt.
“Not yet,” Viktor told him. “We’d have to leave behind the supplies. Let me call Levi first.”
Levi was my dad. Viktor’s too, since my dad adopted him as a little boy when he’d married our mother. Viktor just never got the hang of calling him anything other than Levi.
Viktor pulled out his walkie-talkie and set the volume low. “Levi, what do you think?” he curtly whispered.
“I think we shoot only if they’re aggressive first, son,” my dad replied, ever the pacifist.
“At least try to move into a better position,” Viktor suggested.
Justin and my dad’s figures could be seen scrambling atop the bank building a few hundred yards away in an effort to find a better vantage point. Without their help this might end up a real shootout. Just our luck, to get into a gunfight with what are probably former NRA members.
The Texans moved closer, and we could clearly see their weapons now. A tall one wearing a black cowboy hat was holding a sawn-off shotgun. The pocket-sized Mexican-looking one had a chrome-finished handgun with an ivory handle. Real fancy gun you got there, partner. I had a feeling the raised truck belonged to him. Overcompensating, much? The other two were short and stocky white boys and, despite different facial hair, my guess would be twins. Their hunting rifles were identical too. How precious.
“Leave! We want no trouble!” Viktor bellowed.
“This ain’t gonna be no trouble!” the little Mexican yelled back. His voice was the one from before, with its surprisingly strong Texan accent. He peeked at us over the truck, his tan cowboy hat almost appearing to float in midair. So he was their leader. Not what I would’ve guessed, considering the man wasn’t tall enough to ride most roller coasters.
“If you come any closer we’ll shoot you!” Viktor shouted, a bit of panic in his voice I hoped the cowboys couldn’t detect.
“Give us the supplies n’ the little gal and we’ll let you be on your way,” said their tiny brown leader. Irrationally, I wondered what was worth more to them, the little gal or the big pile of goodies. Tough decision, I hadn’t showered since yesterday and our loot was a modern-day goldmine.
I could feel Kyle tensing up and, out of the corner of my eye, saw him palming the grenade thoughtfully. Yeah, I was with him on that one. Aim for the huevos.
“Not happening! How about you leave and no one dies today?” Kyle bellowed this time.
“Yeah!” Alexi yelled in agreement. “Wouldn’t want to blow any holes in those pretty cowboy hats, you fucking hillbillies!” I punched him in the arm to emphasize our need not to antagonize said hillbillies. Alexi gave me an unrepentant scowl.
The cowboys could see they’d struck a nerve with us and started snickering and catcalling at me. Kyle had his thumb in the pin and was about to pull it when I saw something register in his eyes. He looked at me and nodded at the older truck behind the Texans.
I saw him now. The little eyes of a filthy, likely malnourished, boy were peering at the scene in trepidation from the beat up truck bed. A child of maybe eight years o
ld, I didn’t want to think of him in the hands of these animals. There would be no grenade after all.
At the same time, we could hear distant shuffling and stirring in the store behind us. The dead were awaking. There was no time for a pissing contest, with the degenerates to our front and the dead at our backs. Alexi, who’d been quiet since his earlier insult, stated the obvious, “We’ve got maybe a minute here.”
The Mexican raised his gun and joked, “Boys, don’t kill the señorita. I’m plannin’ on making real nice. Always did like me a blonde.” A moment later the ivory handled gun was lying on the pavement with Tex-Mex sprawled out beside it. My dad took his shot as soon as the little guy raised his gun. Paternal instincts outweighed pacifism every time. Good thing, because if someone hadn’t shut Tex-Mex up, I would’ve thrown up my breakfast.
Obviously, it was then that all hell broke loose. The remaining cowboys panicked and began shooting immediately, one of the bullets hitting Kyle in the thigh. He let out a pained curse as he fell back onto the linoleum floor. All four of us took cover behind the customer service desk. Alexi and I pulled Kyle behind it and grabbed a t-shirt to bind his wound.
Viktor was shooting blindly to keep their concentration on us instead of the amateur snipers behind them. Like the zombie herd earlier, misdirection worked well with the hillbillies. My dad and Justin had already taken out another cowboy from their perch. The two cowboy brothers frantically tried to take cover in their truck, but Viktor hit the one in the driver’s seat square between the shoulder blades.
Suddenly a hand was gripping my ankle. I turned and there was an amputee zombie staring up at me. Wearing a grungy white shirt and tacky tie, his name tag read Jeffery and declared him the store manager. The place had really gone to hell under his management and I was amazed he was still hanging out here all these years later. Talk about dedication. He looked Indian, the dot kind, not the feather kind.
“Sorry, Jeff,” I apologized, swinging my battle hatchet into his skull with a thunk and wiping it off on his shirt. It’d get a more thorough cleaning later. I scanned the store and could see dead eyes approaching in the gloom of the aisles. The zombies were completely coherent now, well as much as a zombie could be, and once again on the prowl for flesh. A lot like Alexi would be in a strip club on the rare occasions we visited the Colorado Springs settlement. Not that my father allowed him to go to that skin factory. Not until you’re eighteen, son.
The last cowboy started screaming at us from his truck, “Goddammit you killed Jimmy, you sons of bitches killed Jimmy!”
Not heartbroken in the least over Jimmy, Viktor yelled back, “Do you surrender?”
“The hell else am I gonna do?” the cowboy replied in a choked voice.
He cautiously climbed out of his Ford, hands raised and tears in his eyes. Alexi walked out, gun fixed on him, as Viktor and I helped Kyle out of the store. We’d have to go back in for the supplies after Kyle was situated.
“Viktor, there’s a kid hiding in that truck bed,” Kyle wheezily panted out.
Leaving Kyle to lean on me, Viktor walked over to the Ford and pulled out, by the back of his t-shirt, the most disgusting, ragged child I’d ever seen. And I’d seen Alexi in the first weeks after our mother died, when he was refusing to bathe. Cursing, kicking and screaming all the way to the ground, the little boy would give a trucker a run for his money. The threats didn’t stop once he reached the ground and he seemed to be bilingual in swear words. Much to his grandmother’s displeasure, Justin had taught Alexi and me all the good words to cuss in Spanish. Not that we dared when Paulina was around.
“I swear to God, I’ll beat seven shades of shit outta ya!” screeched the little vagrant. Whatever the hell that meant.
“What do we do with him?” I asked Viktor, perfectly okay with putting the responsibility on his shoulders. Daddy Victor, I thought humorously, but was wise enough not to say out loud.
“Beats me, we can’t leave him here with this sociopath,” he said, pointing to the cowboy still weeping on his knees about his dead brother as Alexi held a gun trained on him.
My dad and Justin pulled up in our vehicles and opened the tailgates to start loading supplies. Now that the drama was over, it was time to get back to our first order of business. My dad looked us over, starting with me as usual and giving Kyle a sympathetic look as he took in blood soaked cloth around his leg. “Not a bite?” he asked cautiously, taking Kyle’s weight from me and guiding him toward the Suburban.
“No,” I answered immediately. “Just the bite of a bullet.”
The first of our zombie friends started creeping out of the entrance. In the distance we could see the throng returning, greater in numbers, no longer preoccupied by the earlier fireworks display. The gunshots surely got their attention and the attention of every undead around.
Alexi and I went to the entrance to take up the chore of clearing a path back to our supplies. Louisville Slugger and tomahawk were put to good use as my brother thrashed an infected mechanic in the forehead and I spiked a muumuu wearing housewife. My dad and Justin wheeled the shopping carts and loaded the supplies. Viktor, still trying to wrestle the kid into submission without hurting him, finally resorted to binding and gagging him before stuffing him into the backseat of the Suburban.
This did not go unnoticed by his ever-helpful siblings.
“Damn, it looks like Viktor finally met his match. Better water-board him when we get home. The way that kid’s looking at you, he’ll probably slit your throat in your sleep,” Alexi smugly chimed.
Justin and my dad, snickering, closed up the back of the vehicles. As annoying as Alexi could be, it was hard not to encourage him when he was saying stuff to crack us up. Well, hard for everyone but Viktor. An angry and embarrassed Viktor looked even more austere than usual and Alexi was smart enough to stay out of his reach as he taunted him.
Kyle’s makeshift tourniquet was completely saturated now. We had to get him to Melanie, and fast. Melanie was my brother Viktor’s girlfriend and a former nursing student. She was a town over with my little sister, Riley, and Justin’s grandma, Paulina, foraging for the peaches it was famous for.
We sped off at the safest speed possible, Viktor driving the truck and my dad driving the Suburban, leaving the grisly encounter behind. The last we saw of that cowboy was him running into the Grand Junction, Colorado K-Mart to escape the horde. At least his grieving period would be short.