Dead Surge Read online

  White Flag of the Dead

  Book 5 : Dead Surge

  Joseph Talluto

  Prologue

  As the sun finally dipped below the horizon, Dutch Smallwood stepped out of his farmhouse. The day had been warm, and the cool evening air felt good on his sweaty skin. The growing corn was coming in well, better than it had in years. The other crops he had going were doing pretty well, too. Over the last few winters, his wife had become fairly skilled at canning, so food for the family had never become a problem. Meat was still on the scarce side, but it showed up on the supper table more often than not. All in all, things were relatively normal, except for the dead getting up and walking around.

  Dutch and his family had survived the Upheaval in good shape, as did most of his neighbors. The isolation of the typical American farm didn’t give the virus which created the ravenous corpses much of a toehold. The farm folk figured out what was happening, and in their independent, self-reliant manner, did what they needed to do to survive.

  Dutch realized he’d never be able to use all of the acreage of his fifteen hundred acre farm, so he took his tractor and dug a six foot ditch around his farmhouse and fifty acres. He left the rest of the land to grow wild, giving cover to numerous small game animals and providing a source of meat for his family.

  His neighbors followed suit, and they helped each other out as much as possible. Dutch had been with his friend Carl when they checked on a nearby farm. That family had turned. Dutch figured the son, who had returned home from college, had brought the disease with him. Dutch was forced to kill his neighbors and burn down the house.

  After that, Smallwood and his family hunkered down and decided to wait it out. They had food, water from the well, and electricity from the windmill and generator. That was six years ago.

  Dutch thought about those things as he walked his ditch line. The path was worn smooth from countless hours of sentry duty, but Dutch did it every night anyway. He shouldered his pick and moved into the darkening shadows of the evening. Experience had taught him that the dead had a hard time seeing in the dusk, and since there was no breeze, his scent wouldn’t carry, either. Occasionally, he would find a ghoul in his ditch, clawing uselessly at the steep sides, unable to climb out. Dutch would snap a quick hit with his pick, and retrieve the corpse later for burning.

  He rounded the corner and heard a ruckus in the henhouse. He hadn’t seen a coyote for years, so Dutch made a mental note to check on the silly birds when he got back to the yard. In the gloom, he never saw the wide swath of flattened grass which came out of the ditch and stretched towards the farm.

  Dutch turned the last corner and started for home. By now, the darkness was deep and the only light was from a hurricane lamp they used in the kitchen. The soft yellow glow spilled out over the back porch and backyard, gently lighting the henhouse.

  Reminded of the cluckers, Dutch moved that way, past his garage and workshop. The livestock barn loomed large in the back of the farm, and the grain bins looked white in the rising moonlight. The cornstalks clicked softly in the wind.

  Dutch stopped by the henhouse. The once noisy birds were now silent, and when he looked down, he understood why. All of his chickens had been slaughtered, their carcasses torn apart and scattered in the feed yard. Fresh blood glistened in the moonlight, soaking into the dry earth, blackening the dirt.

  Smallwood looked around quickly, trying to see if the coyote was still near. The corn clicked again and Dutch looked up, seeing small movements in the stalks. With a sickening feeling, he suddenly realized there wasn’t any wind. Something was in the corn, making it move.

  Dutch threw away his pick and spun for the house. His rifle was there and he was suddenly very afraid.

  He took two steps and something slammed into his back, knocking him forward and off his feet. As he landed on the ground, a small part of his brain realized that whatever hit him had jumped from the roof of the henhouse. Whatever had killed his birds was now on top of him!

  Dutch struggled to turn over when he felt a searing pain in the back of his neck. Warm blood flowed down his back and neck when another pain ripped through him from a second bite.

  In desperation, Dutch swung his arm wildly behind him, knocking off his attacker and allowing him to get to his knees. He twisted around in time for something to slam into him again. This time it locked its teeth into his throat. Blood loss from his two other wounds caused him to be weak and unable to resist. He raised his arms feebly, but could not pull off his attacker. Blackness began covering his vision as he fell back, his attacker still on top of him. The last thing he saw were a pair of glowing eyes.

  Dutch never heard his family die screaming from the sudden attack.

  Chapter 1

  “Push. Push! Okay, now step back, don’t get your legs tangled up.”

  “Like this?”

  “Perfect. Bring your hands back to the ready position.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Not again. C’mon, Jake. Right hand by your side, left hand forward on your staff.”

  “Like this?”

  “Better. Now bring up the spike end, good. Strike!”

  Jake brought the staff up over his head and jammed the metal spike down towards his imaginary foe. I had decided when he was about five years old to start training him on how to defend himself against an attack by the undead. I knew he wasn’t strong enough to kill a zombie at the time, but he could generate enough leverage to trip one and get away.

  As he grew older and stronger, I had shifted his training to killing a downed Z. We trained a few times a week, working on making his motions more reflex than conscious thought, but being seven years old, it took a few times for the lessons to sink in.

  On the other side of the patio wall, I could hear Charlie work with his daughter Julia. We had tried working the kids together, but they ended up trying to hit each other with the sticks, so we separated. Julia was a year younger than Jake was, but she took to the training as if she was born to it. Charlie began wondering aloud if she might be ready to take on a zombie, but his wife Rebecca heard him once and that was the end of that.

  Jake wiped the sweat off his head and looked sideways at me with his big brown eyes. He reminded me of his birth mother when he did that, and made it hard to refuse the question I knew was coming.

  “When can I kill a real zombie?”

  I looked around for Sarah, his stepmother. When I saw the coast was clear, I whispered “Soon. When you’re ready.”

  Jake’s shoulders slumped slightly, and he looked away towards the patio wall, where a clacking sound could be heard. Charlie sparred with Julia as part of her training, and I figured it was time for Jake to spar as well.

  “Put the staff away and then come on back,” I said, taking off my pistol and placing on the nearby table.

  “Are we fighting?” Jake asked, suddenly eager.

  “We’d better, or Julia will kick your butt again.”

  Jake scowled. “She cheated!” But he ran to put his staff on the rack by the door.

  When he returned, we began sparring, Jake throwing punches and kicks, and me blocking and instructing. I taught him holds and how to break holds, and we practiced those as well. One thing Jake was really good at was kicking. His balance was excellent, and he could kick several times without putting his foot down. That was a fooler sometimes, because after a kick, you expected a reprieve, not another kick.

  “John or Charlie?” The radio called from the table.

  I raised a hand to stop Jake’s next attack and picked up the radio. “Go ahead, Tommy.”

  “Duncan says he thinks he may have spotted a Z down by the river.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “West side of the driveway, about fifty yards
out.”

  I thought about that for a second, getting my mental bearings. “Okay, we’ll take a look. How are the repairs coming?” One of the cows got spooked and rammed into the fence on the island that served as our primary pasture and rendezvous point.

  “Almost there. Stupid cow busted three fence posts.” Tommy sounded properly disgusted.

  “Understood. John out.” I put the walkie away just in time to see Charlie walking around the corner with Julia. Even though she was his adopted daughter, she actually looked enough like him to be confused as his real daughter.

  “Everything alright? I heard the radio,” Charlie said, tousling Jake’s hair. Jake ducked under the hand, grabbed his staff, and squared off against Julia, who grinned in anticipation and brought up her own staff.

  “Tommy says Duncan may have spotted a Z down by the west side of the driveway,” I said, putting my holster back on. “I’ll take a look and see what’s up.”

  Charlie nodded. “I’ll come with you. Brush is kind of thick on that end.”

  I gladly accepted the help. Charlie was one of the best woodsman I had ever met, and if he wanted to take a walk in the woods with me, all to the good.

  “Are you going to fight a zombie?” Jake asked, as we turned and headed them to the lodge.

  “I’m just going to see if there is someone down there who shouldn’t be, that’s all,” I said, looking over at Charlie who didn’t help by grinning at me. Before the words left my mouth, I knew what was coming next.

  “Can I come with? Please?” Jake turned and walked backwards, turning on the full power of his brown eyes.

  Julia, while being a year younger, quickly understood what was going on and added her voice to the proceedings. “Can I go, too? Please, Dad? Please? I promise I’ll stay out of the way and I won’t tell Mom.”

  I looked over at Charlie who was trying to figure out what to say and stated, “Why not? Probably your Uncle Duncan chasing shadows again.” About a year ago, Duncan was convinced there was a zombie along the river. He spent three days in the mud before he finally admitted defeat.

  Before we reached the house, I gave some instructions to the youngsters. “We are going to get our gear. You two stay here and practice quietly until we come and get you. If you get out of hand, you can’t go. Understood?”

  The two little warriors stood at attention and tried to salute me. Charlie bit his hand trying not to laugh, and I had a hell of a time suppressing a giggle at the kids.

  “Good. Wait here.” Charlie and I went into the lodge and over to our supply room. I grabbed my ever-present pack and my melee weapon, a well-used garden pickax. I belted on my new knife, having broken my old one, stupidly trying to lever open a door. The new knife had a curving blade of thirteen inches, and was more of a short sword than a knife, but it killed just as well. I grabbed an extra box of ammo out of habit, and moved to the patio. I didn’t bother with a carbine, figuring it to be either a loner or nothing at all. Charlie left his long gun behind as well.

  The kids immediately stopped sparring on our appearance, and we headed as a group down the big stairway that led from the lodge to the floor of the river valley. Starved Rock was a beautiful collection of cliffs, caves, waterfalls and rock falls, and had been our home for six years. Originally a state park, it was now our permanent home. If a better place existed for remote living, I hadn’t seen it.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Charlie and I spread out a little, each of us trailing a youngster. Jake and Julia were literally bouncing with excitement. They had been born to the Upheaval, and they were growing up in the aftermath of the Zombie War. They had never known a world without the undead. Jake had been with me from the beginning, and he knew no fear of the zombies. To him, they were just part of his life and needed to be dealt with.

  In a way, I envied him. He never gave any thought to what a zombie might have been before they turned, never gave a whit about whom they might know or what they might have seen. He just saw them as something to be removed. To be sure, he knew how dangerous they were and he wasn’t about to try and pet one, but he didn’t get that deep feeling of dread and fear when the ghouls were lurking about.

  Chapter 2

  We crossed the parking lot and worked our way down the driveway. According to Tommy, Duncan thought he saw the intruder on the other side of the road that led to Utica.

  As we walked, Jake was peppering me with seven-year-old questions.

  “Do you think it will be a big zombie?”

  “Don’t know if it’s a zombie, Jake.”

  “What about a little zombie, those fast ones?”

  “Don’t know if it’s a zombie, Jake.”

  “If there’s more than one, can I kill it?”

  “Don’t know if it’s a zombie, Jake, and no, you can’t.”

  “What if there’s five or six?”

  “Then your Uncle Charlie and I will have a lot of work to do.” I turned around and faced Jake. “Listen buddy, I know you’re excited, but you have to control it, because a zombie can hear you a long way away.”

  “Like those?” Jake pointed over my shoulder.

  I stood up and spun around, bringing my pick to bear. Sure enough, three zombies came stumbling out of the woods, two of them crashing to earth when they tried to cross the ditch by the roadside. Charlie hustled Julia over to Jake, and then unsheathed his tomahawks. As he started for the Z’s, I faced the two kids. Their faces were calm, but I could see white knuckles as they gripped their staffs.

  “Stay here, and don’t yell or do anything. We’ll be back in a second. Keep your sticks at the ready.” I advised as I turned to the fight. Charlie was finishing off the second ditch jumper as I approached and aimed for the third. I was about to protest his greedy nature when two more zombies burst out of the trees on right, directly in front of me. I barely had time to land a backhanded swing on the head of the first one, when the second got close enough to grab the handle of my pick.

  I pushed on the handle, but not before the zombie, a grim grey specimen of indeterminate gender, managed to moan in my face. Habit forced me to exhale quickly and turn my head, trying to minimize the exposure to any virus-laden spittle or other fluids I didn’t want to think about.

  I let go of the handle as I pushed, and quickly drew my knife. As I stepped forward, I saw Charlie finish off the third on one his side. I waited a half second for the zombie to turn over to gain his feet, and when his neck was exposed, I stabbed downward, severing his spine. He collapsed onto the pavement with a smack, and I stabbed again into his skull, finishing him.

  I looked over at Charlie and he nodded at me. But his smile turned to a look of alarm. It must have been the look on my face, because behind him four more zombies were emerging from the woods.

  As I discovered, his look was due to the trio of additional zombies that came out of the woods on my side.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “Where the hell did these guys come from?” I asked rhetorically. For all we knew, they had been roaming the river for years, finally coming out and up to our area, attracted by the noise.

  “I have no…”

  “Dad! Help!”

  “Daddy!”

  Charlie and I both spun around and our worst nightmare was unfolding before our eyes. Three more zombies had come up from behind, and they were on the verge of surrounding our children. Jake was wide-eyed with fight, and Julia was stepping back from a teenage-looking zombie that snapped its teeth at her.

  Jake stuck the end of his staff in the throat of the nearest Z, and pushed with his whole body. The zombie, a taller man in a torn and filthy suit, grasped at empty air as he fell to the ground. The third ghoul was closing in on the side and Jake wasn’t going to be able to stop him.

  Julia cracked the zombie nearest her on the side of the head, but the Z barely slowed down.

  Charlie and I left our battles and ran as hard as we could, both of us drawing our guns at the same time.

  “Jake! Julia!
Down now!” I yelled. God bless those two, they dropped as if they had been hit with tranquilizers. The zombies took a second to recover from having their dinner drop out of sight, so I fired wildly as I closed the distance, bullets smacking hard into the zombies and knocking them away from the children. Charlie fired as well, and the bullets, while not immediately fatal to all the zombies, had been enough to put them out of the way while we reached the kids.

  I grabbed Jake and Charlie grabbed Julia, and we skirted around the writhing Z’s on the ground. I checked Jake for any damage while Charlie checked Julia. We ignored the crawling zombies while we tended to our children.

  “You okay? Any bites or zombie goo on you?” I asked turning the boy around.

  “I’m fine, didja see me push the zombie?” Jake asked.

  I let out a long breath of relief. “Okay, I need you to take Julia back to the house. Let me have your staff.”

  Jake looked at me with big brown eyes. “But it’s mine! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  I glanced at the advancing horde and switched magazines in my gun. I had about two minutes before things got interesting. I looked back at Jake. “No, buddy, I did. I need your staff because my stick is over there.” I pointed to a prone figure still clutching my pickaxe.

  “Oh! Okay! Will I get it back?” Jake still held onto the staff, but not as tightly. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Charlie giving instructions to Julia, who was nodding dutifully.

  “You bet. Now I want you and Julia to run to the guesthouse and stay there. Don’t stop and don’t look back, understand?”