The Remnants (Book 1): Dead Loss Read online

  Seth thought about rebuking her for her joyful reaction to their father’s passing, but didn’t bother. She was too young to understand anyway, he supposed. She’d stopped seeing their dad as a living man and more as an obstacle who kept them from sleeping indoors. And hey, maybe she was right. He really died months ago, if you wanted to get technical.

  Kevin managed a raspy chuckle, and she turned her eyes, big and curious, on him. "What's your name?"

  He threw her a wide grin. "I'm Big Kev, kiddo. Who're you?"

  "I'm Melinda. I'm seven-and-a-half. You don't look big."

  "I guess it's sort of a joke. The Army barely let me in."

  “I bet I'll be taller than you, when I grow up.”

  “I bet you will too.”

  They started across the yard, and Melinda fell into step alongside them, noting the pistol in her brother's hand. "Are you our prisoner?"

  "Nope. I'm just helping out for a bit."

  Seth actually hadn't quite decided on that. He hadn't put the pistol away, but he supposed that if Kevin were to suddenly make a break for his motorcycle, or the road beyond it, he wouldn't shoot him. In the bedroom, when he'd gotten to his feet, Kevin had casually unhooked the rifle from his chest sling and let it drop to the floor without a second thought.

  He tottered across the yard now on unsteady legs, and paused once to rub his eyes. He moved gingerly, like a man suffering from a terrific hangover.

  "Do you have a headache?" Melinda asked.

  "Yes, and a body ache too. My head is pounding and all my muscles are sore. Feels like I just ran a marathon."

  Entering the barn, they paused in front of Rocker's body, and Kevin looked it over and let out a tired laugh. "I believe that's chocolate on his fingers."

  "It is," Seth said.

  "What a way to go," Kevin said, shaking his head, and he sounded wistful.

  5

  Kevin stripped out of the flak jacket and, shirtless, started digging two graves behind the house, one for Seth's father and a larger pit for the others. Seth and Melinda sat against the house and watched him work.

  “We had a deal, Riley and me,” Kevin said, pausing to swig water from a two-liter Mountain Dew bottle Melinda had dragged over. “Last man standing buries the other. He was always sorta religious, but he got more into it when the deaders came. Got a chaplain to baptize him and all at the age of 24. I never gave it much attention, but he said a man can't get to heaven if he isn't buried in the earth, and what do I care what he believes? At least I get to keep my promise. That's got to count for something.”

  Seth was deeply curious about events beyond the confines of the Walker farm. He had little idea of what was going on in the next town over, let alone other states and other countries. What little information he'd gleaned, mostly from months-old newspapers and snatches of overheard conversations, conflicted wildly.

  He asked, “You were both army guys?”

  “Yeah, until six weeks ago. We deserted, Riley and me,” he set the bottle down and picked up the shovel. “He was a PFC and I was a corporal.”

  “Were you fighting the dead?”

  “Not us; we were cooks, under what they were calling the Northwest Regional Command. I doubt it even exists anymore. Half of the infantry went AWOL at Everett. The ones with any sense.”

  “What did you cook?” Melinda asked.

  “Oh, all kinds of things. Corn and beef and potatoes. Riley mostly ladled out soup all day.”

  “Quit interrupting, Mel,” Seth said.

  “Everett was a real cluster,” Kevin said. “Here I am digging my own grave, and I'm still glad we left.”

  “What was going on?”

  “I don't even know why we went there in the first place. I heard that some general wanted a Pacific port retaken, so the Navy would have a place to dock and they could convert sailors into infantry, or something like that.” He shrugged. “I guess the big navy yards down south are just... gone. San Diego or someplace, completely overrun.

  “Well, we showed up with artillery and tanks and napalm, and you know what we did? Jumpin' jack squat. We made a lot of explosions, and explosions are loud, and pretty soon we were up against ten million of them things. All of Washington state and maybe half of Oregon, seemed like.”

  Seth kept quiet, but he'd already concluded that the military wouldn't be much good against the dead. He'd seen footage of such engagements on television, when there had still been television, and they'd all ended badly, because the military had approached the dead the same way they'd approach a living enemy – with overwhelming firepower and skirmish lines and air superiority.

  None of which impressed an enemy that didn't feel fear, that didn't have a use for morale or courage or cowardice. The dead gave no fucks about shock and awe.

  Seth had learned a lot since the dead came, and didn't particularly fear them anymore. What he felt around them now was a mix of caution and tedium. The dead had become a tiresome chore, like homework, and there were dozens of ways to deal with them.

  You could outrun them, for one. They'd shuffle along at a fairly quick pace when they caught sight of you, but they lacked the motor skills for a flat-out sprint. The downside was that they never tired, and they never lost interest or gave up, so long as they could see you. Seth sometimes had nightmares about being chased across the open prairie with only hundreds of miles of cattle-country grassland around him, and no place to hide.

  They were easy to trick, too. Lead them on a zigzagging run into town and ditch them in any of the empty houses on the edge of Bozeman. You could lead them right into a bonfire and they'd shamble in without pause, emerging on the other side as walking torches.

  There were a lot of severely damaged ones around, in fact – most of the living were long gone, but they'd done some damage on the way out. Many of the dead Seth saw roaming the countryside were bullet-riddled piñatas, and a lot had blackened skin, burns so severe their dead flesh had puckered and split like overdone hot dogs.

  He thought about all of this as Kevin spoke, but kept his mouth shut.

  “I was never at the front line,” Kevin continued, “but I can tell you it didn't go well. Helicopters were buzzing back and forth all day with reinforcements. Of course, they weren't evacuating any wounded, because there's no such thing when you're fighting deaders. No Army doctors know how to fix you up from the bites. A couple of hospital tents learned that the hard way, early on.”

  Kevin paused, and Seth had a sudden vision of an operating room, the patient on the table barring his teeth and lunging at the surgeons huddled over him.

  “More and more reinforcements kept showing up from back east somewhere, but no matter how many passed through, we never got any orders to move up behind them. Just give them something to eat and send them up to the front. That means they weren't taking any ground. Just holding.

  “The last couple waves that passed through the mess tent weren't even regular infantry. Clerks and general staff and motor pool mechanics ordered to the front. That's when me and Riley started talking about leaving, 'cause we knew we wouldn't be far behind.”

  He leaned on his shovel, gave them both a hard look. “I'm not ashamed, either. Hundreds of guys were disappearing every night. They started shooting deserters, and that stopped it for a little bit. But then you'd hear those things moan in the distance, and hear our guys screaming somewhere, and men would start looking around and whispering to each other.

  “So finally I tricked a sentry into looking the other way, and me and Riley stole some colonel's staff car and took off. We ditched our uniforms at a Wal-Mart in Spokane and left the car at a Honda dealership. And that was the end of my military career.”

  He eyed them for a second longer, as though daring them to challenge his account, then turned back to digging.

  “So where were you going?” Seth asked. He was thinking that it must've been grim indeed to run away from a job where all you had to do was slop out food all day. Food was getting scarce. Maybe
Kevin hadn't realized that at the time.

  "We were gonna turn south at Billings, 'cause Riley said his family had a cattle ranch near Cheyenne. We thought that would be a good place to start over.”

  “Why?”

  “Not many people in Wyoming, you know. Least populous state in the union. We figured the less people, the less deaders to deal with. You ever think about that?"

  Seth and Melinda both shook their heads.

  "Seemed smart to me, then – going to a place with a low population. We were going to lay low down there in Cheyenne and gather up whatever cattle was still around, and watch for deaders and anyone who might come looking for us from the Army."

  Seth remembered eavesdropping on Kevin’s conversation with Tommy. He’d sneered when Kevin suggested they were being followed. He asked, "You think they'd chase you all this way?”

  “Yes I do, if only to hang us.”

  “Aren't they... you know, busy?”

  Kevin heaved a pile of dirt out of the hole, and paused to suck air while he considered the question. “Well, I don't think there's much left of the US Army or the US of A either. And anyone who would stay on after all that has got to be a fanatic, and there are people like that in the Army.” He brushed sweat from his forehead and stomped the shovel blade into the earth again. “Riley and me, we stole those rifles from the Army, and we stole a car too. And we deserted. Certain people couldn't let that go no matter what was going on.”

  He grunted. “Hell, Riley even stole a bag full of candy bars from the mess. You know how hard it is now to find chocolate? Seems like that was the first thing that ran out. Not medicine, not cigarettes, not food. Fucking candy bars." Kevin shook his head, and when he did another sheet of perspiration whipped off his brow. He was sweating a lot for such a chilly day.

  “Someone's behind us, I'm sure of it. I don't know if it's the dead or someone from the Army. If it's the dead, I'd expect a shit ton of them, following the food trail east out of Washington.”

  “What trail?”

  “Well, like I told you, a lot of guys ran. And I'd guess most of them went east, like we did, what with all the horror stories about California. And you know how the dead are, don't you? They just keep following. If the lines broke and guys started scattering, I think they'd just keep walking along after you. That horde we drew from Seattle might be on its way right now. I think they'd walk all the way to the Atlantic, and then right into it, so long as there was a human being in front of them.

  “They hear pretty good, too. Not as good as us, but pretty good. A motor in the distance, or a gunshot, that'd get their attention. Get them walking in your direction. They're a lot like cattle in that way. One sees something funny in the distance, lets out a wail, and they all start moving.”

  He paused, examined his work, nodded approvingly, and stuck the shovel in the earth.

  "Anyway, your holes are ready."

  6

  The three of them dragged Tommy into the first hole, a wide trench big enough for multiple residents – Kevin called it a sport utility grave. Before they grabbed Riley's body, Seth yanked the head back and put a bullet through the skull.

  Kevin shook his head sadly. “Poor kid,” he said. “He was half a retard, you know. Only came along with me because I told him to. I thought I was looking out for him.”

  Seth felt a little embarrassed. He'd grown accustomed to treating cadavers like so much background scenery, and it hadn't occurred to him to shoot Kevin's friend through the eye in a more considerate manner.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, and shoved the pistol back under his belt.

  Kevin eyed the little gun skeptically. "What's that, a .22? Must be hard to get through the head with that."

  Seth shrugged. "It works."

  "So far. Here, let me show you this one." He knelt and picked up Riley's discarded rifle. "It's called an M4. It's a carbine – smaller than a regular rifle, but lighter. Take it.”

  He walked both of them through the gun's operation. The magazines were inserted here. The sights were adjusted like so. This switch here would let you change from single-shot to a three-round burst.

  "You probably don't want to shoot it like that though, unless you're fighting people," Kevin cautioned. "You'll get overconfident and go through all your rounds in seconds and most of those will be wasted. And when your bullets are gone the deaders will still be coming at you, because you panicked and most of your shots went wild or hit the body, and we both know there's only one kind of shot that matters anymore, don't we?"

  "Yup," Melinda said brightly. "In the head, right?"

  Kevin smiled. "That's right, princess."

  "How many bullets are left?" Seth asked.

  "Probably got a hundred between me and Riley. It takes five-five-six millimeter, which is sorta common. You'll be able to scrounge more if you need to." He put down the gun, leaned it up against the porch. "Come on now, help me with him."

  Seth and Kevin started to drag Riley back to the pit by his feet. His cowboy hat caught on the edge of the front steps and ripped free of his head. Melinda picked it up.

  "Can I have this?" she asked, holding it away from her body by two fingers, as though clutching a dead rat by its tail.

  "Gross, Mel. It's a dead guy's hat."

  "Well, you got a dead guy's gun."

  He wanted to argue more – it could actually be dangerous, now that he thought about it. Riley had been bit, and that meant he had the bug. Seth wasn't sure, but he thought you could catch it from the blood. He didn't see any blood on the hat, but he couldn't see it that closely either. What he could see was Melinda's eyes narrowing and her chin setting. It was her pouty look. I got all the tears in the world to bawl out right here over this stupid hat, that face said.

  "Just wash it first," he said, finally.

  She smiled and scrambled off to the hand pump behind the house.

  Halfway across the yard, Kevin stopped moving, and dropped Riley's arm. He put his hands on his knees and stood still. “I'm not well,” he said, and staggered abruptly away from the body. He reached the side of the house, hitched a few times, and then vomited a stream of red-black fluid against the wall. When it was done, he straightened up, then pitched forward and released a second blast.

  Seth just watched, still holding on to Riley's slack arm.

  "Oh, Lord," Kevin said. His breath came in heavy hitches. "Oh, this is the worst." He turned around, wiped bile from his mouth with the back of his arm, and stumbled back to the body. His eyes flicked once across Seth, then towards the back yard, where they could hear the rusty clank of Melinda drawing water.

  "I think you're going to have to bury your pops without my help, kid," he said. "I can feel the thing inside me now.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Bad. Worse in the last ten minutes. I started to feel pretty good when I was digging the holes – better than good, actually. I felt like I could dig twenty more holes and put down twenty more deaders to fill em with."

  He moved past him, sat gingerly down at the edge of the grave. Tommy's body lay within, face down, and Kevin stared glumly down at it. “I hate to think of laying next to that guy,” he said. “Do me a favor, kid. Make sure I'm not touching him.”

  “I will,” Seth said, and meant it.

  “Now listen to me for a second,” he said, suddenly serious, “and you listen good.

  “I was serious about someone coming. It might be deaders, or it might be the Army looking for deserters like me, but either way it's not your friends. If it's some military people, and they track us here, it won't be good for you two. The Army's pretty well broken by now, and the only kinds of people still in it will be crazy, mean people. And if they don't find me or Riley they might decide you'll do as a replacement, if it's really desperate. Maybe even your sister. Or maybe worse things for her.”

  He stopped and gave Seth an emphatic look. Seth nodded slowly, thinking of the Gorton’s fisherman with the bank bag, and after a moment Kevin continue
d.

  “Anyone in the Army that hasn't deserted by now will be men of principle, and if there's one thing you should look out for, it's principled men. You know what a principle is, doncha? I don't mean the boss of your school.”

  Seth nodded solemnly. “Like always telling the truth, right?”

  Big Kev grinned at him. “That's pretty close.”

  “It's my fault you got bit,” Seth said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I was watching when you went inside. I knew my dad was in the house. I could've said something.”

  “Yeah, and Tommy could've cut you open with that knife of his. He probably would have, sooner or later.” He coughed. “Don't beat yourself up over it. We'd all be dead inside a month anyway.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure. You probably will be, too. You and her. You got to know that.”

  Seth didn't say anything.

  “You seem like a smart kid, and you look after your sister real good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Make sure you get rid of our bikes. Hide them at least.”

  “I will.”

  “I never had a sister or brother growing up. Just me and my mom, and she was a drunk.”

  Kevin shifted, and looked down inside the grave. His head began to twitch in short, erratic jolts. His flat hair stood firm. “It's hurting pretty bad. Do it now.”

  “Thanks for your help,” Seth said, because he couldn't think of what else to say.

  “Uh-huh. Sorry about puking on your house.”

  Seth jammed the rifle's barrel against the back of Kevin's head and squeezed the trigger, because he couldn't look at him anymore.

  7

  Once they had dragged the three men into their shared grave, they buried their father. It was a task Seth had been dreading, but one he'd had ample time to think about, ever since he'd been struck with the realization that once again, Ol' Man Winter would be sticking his head out of the clouds sometime around late September.

  Anticipating future problems and planning around them had seemed a prudent use of their time during those long and bitter days in the hayloft with no television, no books, no internet and no phone. Eating. Drinking. Dead. was all Seth had to think about during those dull days that just went on and fucking on, a pathological onslaught of sunrises and nightfalls, as vast and barren as the fields around them.