Beyond Death (Book 2): Apocalypse Read online

  He watched to make sure that Jayda kept her distance. She did. She remained standing a few steps back from the body she had been assigned to pray over. The preacher took over immediately anyway.

  The sight became a spectacle that practically halted all the other work in the room. Richard cussed at the preacher, but the preacher prayed on to rid the evil inside his body. Richard seemed to only remember how to take the Lord’s name in vain with a few decorative curse words. The preacher had motioned for a few of the other members of the congregation to join him. Chase couldn’t believe the way they had moved willingly, and with smiles on their faces to help. You would have thought their name had just been called in the NBA draft or something.

  Before long, Richard’s words started to slur, and his words became unrecognizable. Chase had stopped all attempts at his own prayers, just as Jayda had. She now stood in the aisle, about half the church length away from the dramatic scene being acted out over her husband. It took a few moments, but Chase started to recognize a repetition to the sounds that Richard was speaking. It was as if he were speaking another language.

  “It’s working,” the preacher exclaimed to the rest of the people in the room. He’s begun speaking in tongues. The same thing happened the last time as the Holy Spirit spoke through the victim he cured.”

  Jayda gasped, drawing her hands to her mouth. Chase rolled his eyes. The sunlight streaming through an image of angels on the stained glass window above him caught his eye. If this worked, he didn’t know if he’d be a changed man or not. He couldn’t help feeling like he’d truly been caught in a horror film now. All Richard needed to do was vomit some pea soup, and the experience would be complete.

  “The virus is taking over,” Richard finally screamed.

  “Come, all of you,” the preacher motioned to everyone. “Come help us to pray for this man, to save his soul from this evil disease.”

  Chase moved forward if only to stand beside Jayda. She didn’t need this drama in her condition. He placed a gentle hand on her arm, more to keep her at a distance. He moved his mouth, went through the motions. No one could possibly tell the difference in the chaos that had erupted.

  “I can feel you,” Richard said in a calm voice. “I can feel myself getting better.”

  Chase moved a few steps with Jayda. Richard sat now. He seemed calm and lucid as if the whole blessed thing was actually working. The preacher led the congregation into a rousing climax of prayers.

  Finally, silence fell. Not that he didn’t want this to actually work at this point, but the noise pollution in the room had been off the charts there for a moment. A rumbling sound came through by way of the back door. Chase wondered if they’d left it open when they’d brought Richard in.

  Chase motioned for Jayda to stay put, and then made his way to the door. He heard a few following him, which blocked the sound that was coming from outside. When he got to the door, he noticed a zombie come through a line of trees on the back of the property. Then another. Then two more. In a minute, a whole hoard of dozens of them hit the parking lot.

  “Dax,” Chase yelled.

  Luckily he appeared quickly.

  “Help me get the guns!”

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time Chase and Dax got to the van, Sherri, Lucas, and Jayda had met him there. He passed out guns. Lucas went right to showing Sherri how to shoot the gun she’d been handed, but Chase heard her fire back at him that she was already quite proficient. It gave him a chuckle though to think of his lab assistant in such a role now.

  “Please, don’t do this,” the preacher said as he grabbed Chase’s arm.

  “We have no choice,” Chase spat back, then swallowed hard.

  “Please trust me,” the preacher continued on.

  “I’m starting to, but not with this massive a group. We can’t knife them down so you can pray over them,” Chase sighed. “Anyway, a miracle is a miracle, right? Gun or knife, what’s the difference. We’ll leave them all here for you. Now, please move. You are wasting time.”

  He stepped away from the man to load his weapon as the others were doing. They formed a line in front of the church. Taking aim, the zombies stopped moving. Chase looked over the sight of his gun.

  “What the hell?” Chase murmured.

  “I told you to trust me,” the preacher said behind Chase.

  “I don’t get it,” Chases said to Dax and the preacher who were closest to him.

  They paused until one of the zombies started moving again. Soon, the rest followed suit.

  Chase had yelled to fire, and the guns around him started going off in unison to his own. Dax, to his right, got in some good head shots. Lucas, to his left, fumbled a few shots into shoulders and stomachs. However, he noticed that Sherri held her own along with Jayda. Smiling, he fired and fired, even as they moved back at the approach of those yet to be hit.

  “Shit, we’ve reached the church,” Dax yelled.

  “Hold fire and move in,” Chase said as he stayed front to keep shooting the ones closest to him.

  Pushed back in through the door by the mass that came at them. Many more that they’d initially thought, as if an entire town turned and headed this way. As they came into the church, there were moments were firing became too hard to avoid not hitting another live human. Some moments of yelling and stumbling later, they had moved the congregation members in enough to get all in themselves.

  As the zombies fumbled in through the door, all trying to fit at once, some of the congregation started to move forward to pray. Chase and his group tried to fire, to hit the zombies instead of the humans, but many church members got mutilated anyway. The screams, Chase thought, would live in his head forever as these people got eaten alive.

  He bumped into the preacher on his next retreat further into the sanctuary.

  “They won’t touch me,” he said. “God won’t let them.”

  Chase moved around the guy, aiming his gun at the next zombie. But, before he could get a shot off, the zombie pushed right into the man. The thing in a tattered, once expensive suit, fell to the ground over the preacher. Chase held his breath and fired, blowing the zombie’s head off at such point-blank range.

  He couldn’t stop to watch as the preacher stood up, shell-shocked, in a grizzly state and fled to the back of the church, or front depending upon the direction you’d come in. His trigger finger tingling to numb, his shoulder aching, he hit the final zombie. But, as he lowered his gun and took inventory of his group, he heard movement coming from the floor.

  A zombie struggled to get up despite the carnage. Taking aim to hit him before he got up to standing, he stopped when he heard Jayda let out a scream.

  “It’s Richard,” she cried.

  Chase focused in the movement better, and despite the blood from the other zombies killed, he could see that it was Richard. By this time he’d come to standing. He moved toward Jayda. Chase kept his gun aimed at his head, waiting to see if the man had turned or not. He stepped toward Jayda, and Chase followed at an easy angle to kill the man without harming her.

  Richard stopped a few feet from her. Odd gurgling noises came from his throat. He no longer spoke in tongues, but unlike the other zombies, his moans and groans took on the rhyme and reason of actual sentences.

  With his finger set on the trigger, he moved in to stand beside Jayda. Richard remained a good two feet from her, but he made his noises as if he spoke right to her. Chase shook as Jayda sobbed. He looked into Richard’s lost eyes, and got goose bumps all over.

  Richard looked his way. Chase took a breath. Richard leaped at him. He heard the bang of a gun, but knew his finger remained frozen on his own trigger. As Richard crumbled to the floor, Chase saw Dax just behind him, a sliver of smoke coming from the end of his gun.

  Beside him, Sherri moved in to comfort Jayda, even as Dax threw his hand on Chase’s shoulder.

  “I wanted to save you the trouble, man,” Dax said. “I wouldn’t want to have to live with the consequ
ences of having killed my ex-wife’s husband, even if he was a zombie.”

  “Thanks,” Chase got out.

  “Don’t mention it. You guys seem to have enough issues as it is. And with her pregnant and all, she’s going to need you,” Dax continued.

  Chase turned so he could put his free hand on one of Dax’s shoulders.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Chase said.

  “Don’t. I wanted to kill the bastard. Already had it in my head that I would save you the trouble. Now, just repay me the kindness by getting us to that checkpoint in time.”

  “I’ll do my best. We’ve got to get out of here, though.”

  Chase saw that the preacher, covered in blood, sat there speechless even as what was left of the congregation hovered around him. He picked up the gas can, and motioned to his group.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “We have thirty minutes.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Five minutes,” Chase shouted as he drove down the highway at one hundred and ten miles per hour. “Dax, help me find the paper I wrote the directions on. I can’t remember the name of the road we turn on last.”

  Dax, now in the front seat as Lucas had elected to sit with Sherri, rifled through the junk piled up between them. He sped by exit after exit, with none ringing any bells in his head that it was the exit they needed. Dax finally handed Chase a piece of paper. As he tried to drive and read it, he couldn’t decipher his own handwriting.

  “Shit, I can’t read it,” he grumbled.

  “Give it here,” he heard Jayda shout form the back. “I was always better at reading your handwriting than you were,”

  Chase handed the paper to Dax to hand back. He was just relieved to hear Jayda say anything. She’d been far too silent back there for a pregnant woman who’d just seen her zombie husband shot. An unnerving quiet, in fact.

  “The exit should be coming up soon if I’m reading the numbers right. Sure, once we start reading signs, one will make this chicken scratch make sense,” Jayda said.

  “Sorry, I was in a rush when I wrote it. Thought I would remember it. I’ve been here before,” Chase stated, trying hard to keep the tremor out of his voice.

  With squealing tires, they made the off-ramp and turned onto a main drag through the small town. At Jayda’s insistence, he turned a few roads later. Nothing on it looked familiar, and he grew more frustrated and impatient as they went.

  Finally, he turned in a driveway, and double-timed it back to the main drag. Jayda protested from the back, insisting she was right, he just didn’t give it enough time, but he just drove on.

  “Hold on,” he yelled as he turned the car down a dirt road. “I recognize this.”

  Dirt came up all around the van as Chase straightened the tires. For a second there he could make out nothing in the tan cloud he’d created. Soon, they flew past one old farm house, a bit of fields and then some trees. Finally, the tree line to the side of them gave way to an open expanse of land with a pond at the end.

  “We’re here,” Chase exclaimed as he pulled up by the pond and came to an abrupt stop.

  Everyone jumped out fast. The cold sweat on Chase’s neck caught the warm breeze.

  “It’s beautiful,” Sherri exclaimed.

  “There’s no one here,” Dax muttered.

  “This is the place,” Chase sighed.

  “You sure you got it right?” Dax asked.

  “Yes,” Chase said even as he went through the conversation in his head. “This was the time and the place. He’ll be here. There are a million reasons a guy like him could be running a little late.”

  “Let’ just take a breath and enjoy this view. It’s gorgeous, undisturbed, and silent. Not a sight of a zombie,” Sherri sighed.

  “Think it through,” Dax spat. “You sure you didn’t get something wrong? You owe me man.”

  “I got it right. I’ll deliver.”

  “Right, just like you delivered gas from that gas station. Just like you…”

  “Shut up,” Chase interrupted Dax. “I’ve done the best I could every step of the way.”

  “Sure,” Dax grunted.

  “You invited yourself,” Chase added. “You can uninvited yourself any time.”

  “You know what, without me inviting myself here, you wouldn’t have these guns, or your lives then for that matter,” Dax went on, his face turning redder than it need be in the late afternoon sun.

  “I appreciate it. But I don’t appreciate being hounded or questioned every time something doesn’t go right. I don’t control the zombies or the other humans we encounter for that matter. I’m doing the fucking best I can,” Chase yelled as he stepped up to Dax, got right in his face.

  “Hold on, you two,” Jayda said coming up to referee. “I don’t need to listen to this. Chase did the best he could. He’s tried. We have to appreciate that. We wait here as long as it takes.”

  They each found a place to sit down. Sherri and Lucas had moved close to the lake, in eyesight but out of earshot. Dax had plopped himself down in the shadow of the van and had said nothing more as time had passed. Jayda had walked off a bit toward the trees. He kept his eye on her. When he saw her shoulders finally slump and shake, he was thankful she’d been given a minute to mourn.

  After the longest hour of his life to date had passed, Dax asked him when he was going to call it.

  “And go where?” Chase asked.

  “I have no idea. But we can’t stay here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “At least there aren’t any zombies to battle at the moment.”

  Chase saw something move down the road a few minutes later. He watched, hoping with all he had that it was a car and not a horde.

  “Is that a car?” Dax asked as he stood up.

  The sound of the engine came to them even as the large vehicle came into view down the road.

  “Yes!” Chase exclaimed and then he yelled for the rest of them to come on.

  They stood together and watched the vehicle come closer and into a clearer view from so far down the road. Then, just as suddenly, the car came to an abrupt stop. A cloud of dust practically covered it, made it disappear, before it made a large u-turn utilizing the grass, and left.

  “What the hell?” Dax huffed.

  Without saying a word, Chase just got back into the van. The others followed without saying a word. As the last door shut, they all sat in silence a few minutes. Chase simply turned on the van, turned around, and pulled out of the meadow back onto the road, leaving his own cloud of dust behind them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The world is falling apart. Gas and food shortages are dire issues for those of us still human. We hide out mostly. If we dare go out on the streets in a desperate attempt to find food, you have to either kill the zombies or fight the starving humans. Here in this university lab where we’ve made our refuge, days are often only as long as the sun stays out. Most of the time we lose power for hours. Why it comes back on at all, we’ll never know. Who is there to ask? Television stations when we can get them are on a permanent state of emergency broadcasts. It’s been a month now since Daniel failed to get us at the checkpoint. We’ve all lost weight. Our food supplies are scarce. Dax continues to be a good soldier and tries to go find us food, but what is left to find? Lucas and I go back and forth about replicating the rate of cell decomposition we got in our original special mouse. He continues to be optimistic, but I think I’ve lost my ability to stay positive. I’m driven now, by one thing—keeping them alive. Lucas keeps saying we are close, but I think we are going about it the wrong way. And we don’t have the means to change course now.

  * * * * *

  Dax marched, or stomped, up and down the halls. His boring ritual proved necessary for survival. That’s all they did now was survive. He continued to the window, scanning the street. Two zombies walked down the sidewalk. Except for their slowing gaits, as had been happening now, from a distance they seemed like two college kids after a rough night of partyin
g trying to find their way home.

  He made a few notes on the clipboard he had. He continued on down the hallway with an audible sigh. His stomach growled, and his legs ached. A sound down the hall caught his ear. He moved till his back glided down the wall. With his gun pointed in the direction of the sound, he moved slow and steady. Once he reached the door, he turned the knob slowly and then threw it open.

  He was greeted by the slight screams of both Jayda and Sherri.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled as he felt his face heat.

  “No, we’re sorry. We should have told you that we were going to be using this room,” Jayda answered. “As sad as it sounds, we needed a change of scenery, so we came in here.”

  * * * * *

  “So, where were we before my heart stopped beating?” Sherri asked Jayda.

  Jayda could see that Sherri’s eyes were as wide as hers felt.

  “Really. But this is as awake as I’ve felt in days,” Jayda responded. “Lack of food and too much sleep and inactivity isn’t good for a pregnant woman.”

  “I’m guessing not,” Sherri remarked.

  Jayda could see her friend grimace and then fall into some sort of private thoughts.

  “I’ve been trying to walk around the room, as you know, but it just isn’t the same. Feel like I’m just chasing my own tail,” Jayda sighed.

  “Basically you are, but what else can we do. Can’t go out for fresh air without fear of being attacked by the walking dead.” Sherri huffed. “Sorry, I’m really getting stir crazy.”

  “No, we all are,” Jayda commiserated. “So, back to talk of baby clothes?”

  “Right, baby clothes,” Sherri thought out loud. “I think maybe we could find a way to fashion some by the time he or she comes. We could get Dax to go out and maybe find some clothes. People seem more interested in food. Then, we could take a needle and some surgical thread or whatever it is from the lab.”