Stay Dead: The Stranger & Tunnel Rats Read online

  STAY DEAD:

  The Stranger & Tunnel Rats

  By Steve Wands

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  SMASHWORDS EDITION

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  Published by:

  Steve Wands on Smashwords

  Stay Dead: The Stranger & Tunnel Rats

  Copyright © 2010 by Steve Wands

  Cover Design and Layout by Apparatus Revolution

  http://www.staydeadrev.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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  Dedications

  Dedicated to those no longer walking among the living.

  Thanks

  To those living who are now reading these words.

  Special Thanks

  To my wife, Carmela, and Tony Murphy for proofreading. To Corey Graham of the Midnight Podcast, Bryan Wolford of the Drunken Zombie Podcast, Mike Benedict of The Cadaver Lab Podcast, Desmond Reddick of Dread Media, and Darryl Pierce of A Little Dead Podcast for taking the time to read, review, and discuss Stay Dead on their podcasts' and websites.

  Nice words from nice people

  "...focuses on atmosphere and desperation...gruesome and really intereseting, both stories oozing hopelessness...a really strong debut."

  Corey Graham formerly of the Midnight Podcast

  http://www.midnightpodcast.com

  "One of the most humanizing zombie stories since Romero's Night Of The Living Dead."

  Bryan Wolford of the Drunken Zombie Podcast

  http://www.drunkenzombie.com

  "This collection of short stories is brutal and heart breaking. Steve Wands describes the state of the world in the midst of a zombie outbreak as if he were there. These tales will make you feel like you know the characters and are sharing in their plight."

  Mike Benedict of The Cadaver Lab Podcast

  http://www.cadaverlab.com

  "...one of the more intense and downbeat endings you will ever read... endlessly fun...nothing wasted...no pulling of punches."

  Desmond Reddick of Dread Media

  http://www.dread-media.com

  "...very well done...makes you want more...a great read... I couldn't put this down."

  Darryl Pierce of A Little Dead Podcast

  http://www.alittledead.com

  Stay Dead: The Stranger & Tunnel Rats was also nominated for a 2009 Mail Order Zombie Dead Letter Award for Best Zombie Book/Fiction. http://www.mailorderzombie.com

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  STAY DEAD

  The Stranger

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  Jumping from roof to roof, searching for some small bit of safe passage from the burning streets below, Danielle thought for sure she would be dead in minutes. Some rooftops were full of staggering ghouls, some of them even falling off the side, smashing themselves into a more twisted mangled bag of skin. She had reached the last roof she could jump to without going back in the other direction. She ran to the edge, the rain pattering off her shoulders and cooling the sweat off of her face. She saw a street half-full of walking corpses, of bodies on fire and of people screaming. From behind her, a man grabbed her by the arm. Scared to death, she screamed, turning and beating wildly on what turned out to be an older gentleman wearing a raincoat. His beard was beading up with rain and she knocked him to the ground. He put his hands up, shaking, as if to say don't hit me. She backed up in confusion and started crying. Then she ran to the other corner of the roof.

  "Don't go over there. Follow me, it's safe!" the little man said. As he got off his now soaked rump, he pulled his hood back to reveal the humble-looking, older man he was. He looked like a squishy Gorton's Fisherman.

  She stopped in her tracks and turned toward the man. He waved her over and she followed hesitantly; looking around at the alternatives. He led her through a door that led to a stairwell. It was quiet with the exception of the rain. They went down two flights of stairs. The old man took off his raincoat and opened the door. They now stood in front of it. The door made a slow creak, and from inside seeped out an instantly comforting warmth. Danielle could hear the crackle of fire and it made her a bit more at ease. The door stopped midway. From behind it poked the small but unnerving 2 3/8" barrel of a stainless steel Smith & Wesson model 60 revolver. The old man chuckled.

  "Put that little thing away, Lorraine," he said with a smile. "You're scaring our guest."

  "Guest?" Opening the door was the grandmotherly face of Lorraine. Her hair was curly, dark gray, with stormy streaks of white. "Don't stand out there--come in," she said, moving from behind the door and opening it all the way.

  "Thank you," Danni barely squeaked out.

  They walked in and headed toward the fire. Lorraine put her peashooter into her apron, and picked up a mug, which she was sipping from before they had come back. Clem, the older man, picked up a mug as well, and tipped a teapot to it, filling it to the brim. He then looked at Danielle and offered her some. She obliged and they stood around the fire, which was burning in a steel garbage can in the middle of the kitchen. The fire was small. It had to be. The vent above the stove could only expel so much before the whole apartment was full of thick, black smoke. The three of them stood, sipping the watery room-temperature tea in silence. Clem's ears perked as he heard a faint noise in the other room. He looked at his wife, then Danielle. Danielle didn't hear anything and was safely behind a veil of shock and disbelief--that would soon turn to anxiety and exhaustion.

  "I'll go see what that was," he muttered.

  As if a switch was flipped, Danielle became a nervous wreck. She was still somewhere outside of her body. Still in a place where nothing hurt, a place where bones were numb to breaking, but a place she could exit just as quickly as she entered.

  "It's Lorraine, right?"

  "Yes, dear, but you can call me Lorry if you like. What's your name?"

  "Danni... Danielle Oslin. Nice to meet you."

  "You too, so...if you don't mind me asking, what were you doing up on the roof?"

  "It...it's all so fuzzy now that I think about it. I was running from those monsters out there, jumping from another roof...I was with my f-friends...we were going to try to get to the safe zone, then we ended up running, the car couldn't get through the road, those things were behind us, then we had to get on the roof, we climbed a fire escape on the side, th-they...were everywhere, chasing us up... we had no choice. They were faster than they look, so many, th-they didn't make it, my friends... then I ran into your husband, and I thought he was one of them, and I
don't know where the hell I am right now... where are we?" She was damn near hysterical at this point.

  "Safe--we're safe is where we are. This has been our home for years. You're at the Hill View apartment complex, 242 Van Houten Street."

  "But how come those things aren't all inside this place? They're everywhere, but not here."

  Clem came back from the other room, wiping his hands on his pants. He walked back to where he was before and picked up his mug. "Damn ceiling's leaking again. But to answer your question, this part of the complex is cut off from everything else. We're kind of like the landlords, and the stairwell is a maintenance stairwell. All the doors are steel security doors. There are a few other apartments like this, but almost everybody split as soon as they heard what was going on."

  "So are we really safe or can they get up here?" Danielle continued.

  "Well, anything is possible. I'm sure they can get to the roof--you did--but other than that, we're relatively safe," Clem replied.

  "Do you plan on getting out of here?" She sounded more alert than ever.

  "Why, where would we go? This is our home and we're way too old to try and outrun those things out there. We'd be as good as dead," Lorraine finally chimed in.

  "She's right. The most we could do is hope for a helicopter to come and get us. I can't remember the last time either one of us ran."

  "But what if no one comes?"

  "Then we'd probably starve to death. But we got enough food for awhile, and the other apartments have some too, and I don't think anyone's coming back here anytime soon." Clem put down his mug and went over to the couch.

  "I'm so scared... I don't know what to do--" said Danni.

  "You can stay as long as you like, or you can use one of the other apartments," Lorraine interrupted her.

  "Thank you, thank you so much." She started crying, her back to the wall. She let gravity take her down.

  Lorraine sat by her. Clem kicked off his shoes. With nothing to offer, he rubbed his head. Again, a noise was heard in the other room, but no one besides Clem heard it. He ignored his shoes and went into the other room. Danielle kept crying on Lorraine's shoulder.

  Outside, on the nearby rooftops, corpses continued staggering and swaying. They appeared to be trying to balance the bulk of their dead flesh---just barely keeping upright. Some roofs were crowded and others empty. It was like the tide kept coming in and out--but this was a sea of the dead and the streets were shoreline. The rain appeared to keep them occupied, their pale yellowing eyes looking up at the sky. Groaning, some of them would swat at the air; others would run back and forth gasping and chomping at nothing. Some of them fell off the side to eat the pavement, and others were chewing on flesh of a fresher variety.

  Danielle cried herself to sleep. Lorraine left her to see what Clem was doing in the other room. She stood outside the door, putting her ear to the wood and listening softly. It was quiet. She slowly opened the door and Clem looked at her slightly surprised, then relieved once he saw his good old girl. Just past Clem, chained to a bed, was a young girl. At least she was a young girl once. She was clearly of the living dead now. She had various chains, ropes, and cords keeping her in place. With a sock stuffed between her teeth and duct tape keeping it in place, wrapped twice around her head, she was contained.

  "Does she seem any different?" Concern was carved in the grandmotherly features of her face.

  "Not a bit. She doesn't know who we are. We're just some goddamn...damn food to her now. I'm sorry." Clem started to sob as Lorraine came closer to comfort him.

  They held each other for a moment, tightly and tearful, with their granddaughter squirming in her bed of chains. They thought about what their new guest would think of them, or possibly do, if she became aware of their granddaughter. But they shrugged off the thought. It was none of her business. If she didn't like it, she could leave.

  "I'll fix up one of the other apartments for the girl; you just make sure she doesn't come in here," Clem ordered as he opened the door to leave.

  Cautiously they crept out. When they got to the other room Danielle was still asleep. Clem grabbed a bat from the corner of the room and put his shoes back on. He also grabbed a sweatshirt that was lying over the arm of the couch and a flashlight on the floor. He had Lorraine walk him to the door. They kissed, and she locked it. Across the hall were two other apartments. On Clem's side was a storage room, about 8 feet from his apartment's door. To the left in the center of the hall was the door leading to the roof, and directly across that to Clem's right was the door leading to the stairwell that descended into the complex. Both doors had a small glass window reinforced with chicken wire about a foot from the doorknob. The hall was fairly quiet. The faint moans could be heard from the floors below, but they were becoming commonplace and seemed to become less, and less. Clem's guess is that they were heading out to the street, giving up on whatever they were after inside the building. He walked across the hall, following the path of the flashlight to the apartment on the right. It was unlocked, and Clem casually walked in, although both he and Lorraine had searched through the apartments before, Clem just wanted to be on the safe side and check it again--every closet, under every bed, under the sink, behind the shower curtain. The coast was clear. Before heading back, however, Clem opened up one of the kitchen cabinets and grabbed a pack of pop-tarts, stuck it in the pocket of his sweater and made his way back home. Lorraine had waited by the door with the latch on peeking through the narrow opening. She opened it as soon as she saw Clem open the other door.

  They stood by the fire for a bit, Danielle still sleeping. They held each other. Clem pulled out the pack of pop-tarts from his sweater and offered her the first bite; it was her favorite, maple brown sugar.

  About an hour had passed since Danielle had fallen asleep; Clem and Lorraine were standing by the fire again. It was dwindling down to a handful of flames, but even those small flickers of light made plenty of smoke. Most of the smoke went up into the vents just above the fire, but it surely wasn't a great idea having a fire going in the middle of the kitchen. The gears in Clem's head shifted from worrying about what was outside to worrying about how to build a better fire. A smaller problem to focus on, something he could control. It was something he could make sense of and Lorraine could see a spark in his eyes that she hadn't seen in days. She wanted to ask him what he was thinking of, but Danielle started to shift in her sleep, shifting all attention to her. She mumbled, gasped, and woke up wild-eyed and bewildered; staring at the older couple lit by the dim light of the dying flames. Clem took a few steps to be at her side. He greeted her with a smile and a hand to help her up. Although she didn't need it, she took his hand, and he helped pull her up. The three of them stood over the flickers. It was the start of winter and it was getting colder by the day. There was silence at first, then Clem opened his lips.

  "I fixed up the room across the way for you," Clem said.

  "Thanks, but do you mind if I stay here a bit longer? I'd feel much safer--"

  "Sure, no problem, I didn't mean to seem like I wanted you out or anything, I just, ah, you know what I mean--was just making conversation." Clem cut her off, almost embarrassed.

  "He can be real crass sometimes sweetheart, you can stay with us as long as you like."

  "Thank you, thank you both, it means a lot. I'm so lost... I just need to collect myself..."

  "Relax, you're in good hands."

  Danielle smiled at Lorraine, and Lorraine smiled back. Clem was smiling too, but he stared at the fire, and was blushing too badly to look up. Clem had been a jack of all trades: repair man, delivery boy, truck driver, store clerk, and most recently (and for nearly fifteen years) the Head of Maintenance at Hill View Apartments--although he's been calling himself the landlord the past few weeks. Lorraine had worked as a secretary since she was in high school, and gave up working to be a housewife, which is all she really wanted in life, to stay home and raise a family. You could say that they had both lived a long and happ
y life together and were content to die right here at Hill View and they would've agreed. Danielle on the other hand had not lived a long and happy life. She worked a few summers here and there between attending school and living off what money her parents had given her for food, books, and board. She never really earned anything. Most of the time things just sort of fell into place for her. But now as she warmed her hands from Clem and Lorraine's fire, she knew in her gut she'd have to earn her survival.

  Every minute.

  Every second.

  From here on out.

  Lorraine sat down on the couch in the living room adjacent to the kitchen. She coughed and pulled a small blanket over her shoulders. She invited Danielle over to join her. Danielle did. They sat next to each other, quietly. Behind them was a large window. The shades were drawn and the curtains closed. To the other side, the one closest to the kitchen, was another couch, a larger one, and across from that was a large coffee table. It had a few magazines on it, duct tape, a hammer and a mason jar full of nails. Across from the coffee table against the wall before the hallway was an old wooden entertainment center. The television sat in the center with a VCR above it and movies to the left and right. There was an empty fishbowl with rocks at the bottom and loose change more than halfway to the top, mostly pennies and nickels. Clem always stole the quarters for coffee. They talked for a stretch, mostly random things--what school she attended, where she was from, and Danielle asked as many questions as she answered. They all looked tired, and Lorraine was the first to say it. She wanted to go to bed. She wanted to wake up and have this nightmare be over with. Danielle said she was tired as well, and if Clem didn't mind, she would check out the apartment.