Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter Read online

  *

  In between the heavy blows of the iron rail on the wooden floor, they could hear the sounds of many running feet below them, moving through the house. Tim winced at the sound.

  “Bjorn,” he called as he started towards the man.

  He was interrupted by the man’s next blow which sent the heavy rod straight through the floor, disappearing into the emptiness below. Gray vermiculite dust puffed into the air from the space between floors as the iron rod clattered to the stairs below. Bjorn dropped down to his hands and knees and started ripping at the shattered wood at the edges of the hole. Roars split the air and the sound of feet running up the stairs gave a clear indication of what was coming for them. Bjorn continued tearing the broken boards free and had widened the hole to roughly a foot in diameter. Satisfied that it was large enough, he started hurling chunks of wood down through the hole. A roar split the air, sending chills down their spines. Drawn to the scene by his curiosity, Tim edged over to the hole to see what was afoot. The hole looked directly down at the stairs leading up to the second floor, giving them a clear two-story view of the foyer below. Bjorn had managed to get the attention of a few of the things before they topped the stairs. Tim ran to the corner and fetched his rifle.

  A moment later, he lay prone on the floor with his the barrel of his M4 pushed through the hole. The vantage was dizzying and he had to take a few extra moments to get his bearings as he aimed. He took his time with the shots, only missing once. When he emptied the rifle, he rolled over and Bjorn passed him the other rifle, nodding at him. Three shots into his next volley and he couldn’t find any more targets. He watched and waited for a few minutes before he sat up. When the dizziness and disorientation cleared, he turned to Bjorn.

  “I can’t see any more. Where the fuck are all the things that have been pouring in from the hills?” Tim barked nervously.

  “I’m guessing they are piled up at the front of the house. Maybe they are too stupid to look for another way in,” Will answered, halfheartedly.

  “A little warning next time, please,” Tim whispered to his Bjorn.

  “Guys!” Jen called from the west window, her voice nervous.

  The group ran over to the window to see a massive horde of undead filtering across the fields from the direction of the highway. The group in the attic split up, moving apart to peer out all of the windows in the attic, seeing virtually the same thing out of every window. They had seen the dead moving towards the house in dribs and drabs over the course of the past twenty hours or so, but the numbers in which they now converged was staggering.

  “What the fuck are we going to do?” Laura said at last.

  “We need that ammo from the back!” Tim said, desperation putting a harsh edge on his voice. “Bjorn, come on. Laura, I need that pistol.”

  Tim handed her the M4 with six remaining bullets, taking the 9mm pistol he had given her earlier. Bjorn moved to try and retrieve the pistol he had given Will, but Jen beat him to the punch.

  “I’m going too,” she announced, pulling back the slide.

  Bjorn threw his hands up and started scavenging the piles of debris in the room for a workable weapon, finally coming up with a heavy vintage shower curtain rod that came apart in two lengths. The trio unloaded boxes from the doorway like a bucket brigade and were out of the attic in less than five minutes. They quickly swept through the second floor to check for any stragglers, moving quickly through the three bedrooms and bathroom while Jen guarded the top of the stairs.

  “Cover me,” Bjorn said, as he ran down the stairs.

  His blood ran cold, fully expecting to be blindsided by undead from the sitting room or dining room. Bjorn understood that time was of the essence to get to the ammo, but he was driven on by his desire to barricade the French doors. The three regrouped on the foyer where the smell of death, rot, and feces hung cloyingly in the air. Tim, ever having a weak stomach, pulled the collar of his shirt over his nose to help tolerate the horrid stench.

  “Jen, cover the hallway. I’ll go through the parlor. Bjorn, the dining room,” Tim quickly directed, turning to Jen he finished. “If you hear either of us having trouble, come help as quickly as you can.”

  Jen nodded to him, her blood pumping mightily through her veins and in her ears as the two men moved off. She immediately regretted her rash decision to come along and wanted nothing more than to run back up the stairs to the safety of the attic. She steadied herself, recognizing that she needed to be here, partially because the extra body had the potential to save their lives, but also because she never wanted to be helpless and if she didn’t face this now, she might never face it. Also, the thought of something happening to Tim and Bjorn sent a shiver up her spine. The last thing she wanted was to be left alone, responsible for Laura, Will, and the kids.

  Tim was the first one to break the silence as he turned the corner into the parlor and came face to face with a slow undead. Maggots clung to its cheek that looked like someone had taken a bite out of. The sounds of flies buzzing and the smell of rotting meat and feces overwhelmed his senses as the thing lurched forwards at him, its jaws snapping. He barely dodged out of the way, pushing it away from him as it lunged. He fought mightily to push the bile back down. Taking a step back, he aimed and fired a shot through its gray, ruined face, putting it down for good. The adrenaline coursed through him and his hands shook as he moved quickly through the parlor, passing through partially closed pocket doors into the living room beyond.

  Two more slow dead stood in the middle of the living room and shambled towards him as he came into sight. Tim could see through the far archway of the room, the gaping hole that was the ruined French doors. He had to throw himself sideways behind a chaise longue to avoid the reaching arms and hungry maw of one of them. Their moans increased in volume as he moved among them, almost in desperate longing. He heard a series of thuds from the other side of the house and assumed that Bjorn had encountered more undead. Jen moved through the pocket doors into the room behind him and lifted the barrel of her pistol. She fired a shot, dropping the one nearest to Tim, down to the plush area rug in front of the entertainment center. Tim finished the other, his gunshot sending the remains of its skull onto the rear bay window.

  “Go back and guard the hall and see if Bjorn is okay, please,” he called to Jen’s back unnecessarily, as she was already moving in that direction.

  Ahead of him lay the ruined French doors that led out to the back patio. He moved cautiously towards them, trying in vain to see through the heavy draperies that covered the rear windows, now soaked in brain matter and gore, as he hesitantly moved through the room. As the backyard started to come into view through the gaping portal, one of the fast ones burst into the yard from the bushes at the rear of the yard, hurtling towards the opened doors. Tim took to one knee and steadied his elbow on his kneecap. Before he could squeeze the trigger, a shot rang from down the hall behind him and the creature’s head came apart, sending the body sprawling as it fell to final rest next to the snow covered ammo tins. A flurry of movement from the gloomy kitchen next to him sent his heart immediately plummeting into his stomach. A moment later, he made out the form of Bjorn coming in from the dining room, holding a bent and bloody length of steel shower curtain rod.

  “Jen, come on,” he called, beckoning Bjorn with his head.

  A moment later, the three of them moved cautiously out onto the patio. Bjorn, ignoring any possible problems to their flanks, ran straight out to the sled. The wet cardboard sled disintegrated in his hands, so he scooped up the ammo boxes individually instead. Jen put one of the dead down as it turned the left corner of the house. Resupplied on ammo, the three quickly retreated back inside the house. Bjorn ran in first, unloading his burden at the base of the stairs before running back to the doors.

  “We need tools, fast,” he called out as he moved to a heavy wooden bookshelf in the living room.

  He tipped the shelf so that it fell on its face, sending the heavy thing crashing do
wn, dumping its burden of books onto the wide plank wooden floor. He lifted the solid wood shelf onto its side and slid it to partially barricade the splintered French doors.

  Tim ran to the closet under the stairs and pulled the door open as he watched Jen start rifling through kitchen drawers. The sound of a breathy moan and fingers closing on his neck was the first indication he had that he was in dire trouble.

  *

  When Tar awoke, it took him a long moment to recognize the triage area of the clinic. The pain in his shoulder brought back the memories of the night before to the forefront. Linda sat opposite him relaxing with her legs crossed, waiting on him to awake.

  “Couple questions for you Tar,” she offered, seeing his eyes flutter open. “First: No enemy survivors? Have we really come to that?”

  Tar shrugged helplessly. He knew that even if he explained the rationale to the woman she would still reprimand him. He respected her optimism, but it infuriated him to try to rationalize with her.

  “Who were they?”

  Again, Tar shrugged. He stood, favoring his bandaged and bound arm, and walked behind the counter of the nurse’s station, spotting the coffee pot at the end. When he came back a minute later, sipping on a piping hot cup he finally spoke.

  “Couldn’t tell you who they were, Linda. What I can tell you is that they were here to kill us and take our food, our weapons, our homes, and probably do even worse to the women.”

  “Well, did you have to kill all the wounded? Some of them might have information we need.”

  Tar nodded, seeing her logic, but not agreeing with her conclusion that they should be left to live. He started towards the reception area and Linda followed, walking him out the front doors into the first heavy snows of winter.

  “Desperate times show the truth of a man’s heart clearer than a lifetime of knowing them,” Tar said, turning to look fiercely at the woman. “We will try and protect as many of our people as we can, but know this and remember it well, Linda: in this world, at some point, we all need to make the choice to be a victim or a victor. I have a profound respect for human life and decency, but in these times, we need to save our pity for our own.”

  Linda stood silent, making an honest assessment of the man’s words as she watched Tar move across the lot. She knew better than anyone how dangerous this bacteria was, but hadn’t yet considered the social ramifications of it. Now, with twenty dead from the night before, she started to wonder what kind of world could come out the other end of this thing.

  Tar strolled away from her, lighting a cigarette and leaning heavily on his Silverado. His joints were aching worse than usual and his shoulder throbbed. He was in a grim mood and wished that Sheriff Daltry would wake up from his coma already. He didn’t mind telling people what to do in stressful situations; move here, shoot there. That all seemed like a simple game of checkers to him. What he hated was the downtime, the lull between crises, when the people of the town looked to him for answers and hope. The truth was, Tar had run out of hope when his wife died. He was having a real hard time trying to fake it.

  He knew that there would be a great deal of fallout from the people because of the events of the night prior. Morale was crushed and spirits would be low after the heavy losses. Everyone was going to be scared and he knew that what the people needed was some comfort, someone to rally around. He had organized the defenses and the townspeople because he had a sense of obligation to the community he lived in, but if anyone were to be giving an inspirational speech, it wasn’t him.

  *

  Tim instinctively pushed his hands out in front of him, trying to keep the undead’s mouth away as a second set of hands grasped his ankles. The forward momentum of the undead as it came out of the closet toppled him backward. His head struck the opposite wall hard as he came to rest on the floor. Only through sheer luck had he managed to keep his hands planted against its chest and its mouth at bay through the tumble. A rancid stench came from what had once been a middle-aged blonde woman’s mouth. Now, maggots could be seen wriggling around the surface of its tongue. A couple dropped onto his face, just inches below. He kicked wildly and feebly as a second set of hands grasped his ankles, trying to prevent any teeth from sinking home than a real concerted effort to break free. His primary focus was the mouth pressing downwards as it struggled to sink its teeth onto his face and neck.

  “Bjorn!” Jen yelled.

  Tim barely registered the yell; the cold, wet undead hands that were wrapped around his throat were strangling him. Black spots started appearing in his vision as its fingernails dug and gouged his neck and more maggots spilled out of its hungry mouth, assailing his senses. As the last of his consciousness slipped away, he could vaguely feel the undead being ripped from his grasp. He awoke a few moments later to the sound of gunfire as Bjorn was dragging him into the kitchen.

  A roar issued from nearby, and a fast undead slammed into the French doors a moment later, blasting them open. The force of the impact shoved the bookshelf back into the hallway, toppling it onto its face. As the undead spotted them, it came over the top of the shelf at Bjorn who defensively swung the damaged shower curtain rod into its face. The sound of splitting flesh and cracking bone resounded loudly in the house. Bjorn drew back his weapon quickly and smashed the creature again and again.

  “Running out of time here, Jen!” Bjorn shouted, his voice showing stress and anxiety as he finally turned his attention from the liquefied remains of the undead on the floor in front of him. “Get up now, Tim!”

  Slowly, Tim struggled to his feet. Looking through the window above the kitchen sink, he could see dozens of undead moving through the yard towards the house. Bjorn slid the shelf back into the French doors just as Jen burst through the basement door that he had mistaken for a closet.

  “Got it!” Jen yelled triumphantly, sliding two mason jars filled with nails and screws to Bjorn and dumping a screw-gun and hammer at his feet.

  Tim’s head finally cleared enough to move around the counter to help his companions.

  “Tim, find another shelf or something heavy and wood that we can nail above this,” Bjorn yelled at him.

  He staggered off through the living room, remembering seeing a tall, ornate secretary cabinet standing between the front windows in there. He wrestled the heavy thing across the house, dragging it by its decorative legs after dumping it heavily onto its side. Bjorn helped hoist the thing into place before screwing it to the jamb on either side of the doors. The shelf and secretary, lying on their sides, managed to block the bottom six feet of the seven-foot gap. It was at that exact moment when the first of the undead slammed bodily into the new barricade.

  “Tim, stay here and use your weight to try and hold this in place,” Bjorn called to his still-dazed friend.

  Tim did as he was bidden and leaned his thinning, but still-considerable bulk against the makeshift barricade. Jen and Bjorn moved off into the house, returning a few moments later, dragging furniture to help brace the barrier. The minutes ticked by with the undead thrashing against the wooden barrier, mere inches behind Tim. Finally, once Bjorn was confident that it would hold for the time being, he moved down into the basement. He returned a few moments later, burdened with an armload of miscellaneous boards and planks from the depths of the house. They spent the next twenty minutes completing the fortifications of the French doors before moving onto the living room and kitchen windows.

  As they worked, they listened intently for the sounds of a fast one, knowing that their impromptu barricades would mean little to one of them. Jen began carrying the ammo cases upstairs, along with whatever boxes of food she was able to find in the kitchen cupboards and pantry. When they had barricaded everything as best as they could, they switched on all the lights and retreated back to the top of the stairs burdened with everything they thought they might be able to use.

  They brought blankets and pillows and two antique wash basins with pitchers of water up to the attic. Tim ran to the bottom of the stairs o
ne last time with the hammer and started prying up the treads. Bjorn, recognizing the sense in his plan, moved to help. In the next couple noisy minutes of hammering on the treads, they managed to attract numerous undead to the front door. The undead whipped into a frenzy, started slamming heavily on the door, just a few feet behind them urging them up the stairs to the safety of the attic. Despite the two of them working together and the racket they made, they only managed to rip free the bottom two treads, leaving a small pit to the basement below. As they retreated up the stairs, both men cringed as they heard the familiar sounds of nails ripping noisily free from wood.

  Once they were back into the relative safety of the barricaded attic, they feasted on the contents of the fridge that were still edible. Once the meal was winding down, Laura looked around at the group.

  “What now?” she asked.

  She could tell by the desperate and downtrodden looks on everyone’s faces that the thought was on everyone’s minds and that no one was very hopeful about their prospects. The weak fortifications they made to improve their position had only tired them out and delayed the inevitable. They couldn’t stay here much longer, trapped as they were. It was only a matter of time before one of the fast ones came by and they were overrun. With the way the undead were converging on the house from every direction, it seemed that with every hour they stayed, their prospects for escape grew bleaker. The group sat silent at her question.

  “We need to go!” she shouted, her voice filled with the stress and anxiety, desperate to address the obvious. “We have enough food for two days, maybe. We are in the middle of a snowstorm and we are getting surrounded, with more coming every minute. What is our escape plan? Ideas, now please! Will?”