Un-Dead World Book One: Dead Men's Game

Destination Unknown

    The night had been uneventful, aside from Branson tossing and turning and Sheila's paint peeling snores. Branson woke just as the sun began to peek through the blinds of the bedroom, like an alarm had gone off. He awoke suddenly, sitting up immediately and scanning his surroundings. Wiping the sleep from his eyes he stood and stretched. It was a very welcome sight while he was shirtless. I actually frowned slightly as he leaned down and grabbed his shirt once again. 

    "I'm glad it was a quiet night." He said as he pulled the clothing over his head. 

    "Yeah. Me too. Everyone needed a little break from the constant terror." I joked. He smiled before heading to wake up the others. I walked over to wake Sheila. 

    "Sheila. Get up, it's time to go." I shook her. She woke up groggily and blinked at me. 

    "Hey, Lala. Gimme a minute." I was shocked. Lala was what she used to call me when we were younger. I could tell when her mind cleared and she remembered what was going on. She sat up and pushed herself against the headboard. "I'm awake. You don't need to keep standing there." She snapped. There she was! The wicked b***h herself. 

    "Yeah, yeah." I muttered before walking towards where Scott and Branson were trying to wake Josh. Scott was nudging him with his foot and I saw him pull his leg back like he was going to kick him. "Hey!" I shouted and rushed forward to push him out of the way. 

    "What the hell?" He said as he regained his footing. 

    "You can't kick the kid." I said. I knelt down next to him and put my hand on his shoulder to shake him awake. It too quite a bit of shaking but his eyes fluttered open finally. His pupils were slightly dilated and I could see a film of sweat covering his skin. I put my hand to his head and pulled it back quickly. I looked to Branson. "He's got a fever. Pretty high if his surface temp is any indication."

    Branson jerked his head towards the hall and Scott and I followed him out of the door. 

    "We can't be hauling around a sick kid sarge!" Scott started ranting before we could even open our mouths to speak.    

    "You think I don't know that?!" Branson whirled on him. "I am sick of your f*****g attitude. Not everything needs your oh so special commentary. You keep getting in my ear, telling me everyone else is a liability to us. Oh, except for Sheila. She's useful to you cause you wanna f**k her right? When she's probably more useless than the damn sick kid." He stopped to catch his breath, chest heaving. "Go in that room and check on the kid and we'll be in after a bit." Scott opened his mouth to reply but Branson's eyes flared. "That's a f*****g order!" Scott almost ran back inside.

Branson turned to me with an exasperated expression. 

    "Alright. So we can't travel very far, very fast, if we have a sick kid. On the other hand, I don't think any of us, except maybe Scott, have the heart to leave him. We need to figure something out and fast. We don't even know where we're supposed to go." Branson seemed to genuinely want my help in figuring this all out. 

    "We head west." My dream from yesterday was still stuck in my head, the feeling to follow the voice almost impossible to resist. 

    "Okay. We head west. Maybe we put Sheila in charge of the kid? It's not like she's gonna do too much more to help out." I nodded, surprised that he agreed without question. Sheila could watch Josh and we could use the truck to get as far as possible. 

"Sounds like a good plan. Let's go tell the others." We walked into the room and filled them in on the plan. They had minimal questions and I didn't hear one stupid remark from Scott. 

    Locking Sheila and Josh in the bedroom the rest of us, prepared to remove the barricade. Unsure of how many were on the other side, we staggered ourselves down the hallway and Scott had left a knife with Josh just in case. Branson walked over and cut the rope with his knife. As soon as the tension was released he jumped back as the creatures pushed the couch over. Metal clanked together as the couch slammed into the bed frame. We saw that there were only six of them so that made our job easier.     

    "Try not to shoot if you can avoid it. If we can take them down without drawing any more that's ideal." Branson said this as he lunged at the first one. A woman with a robe and shower cap on. His knife squished into her head and he quickly yanked it out before grabbing the next and slamming him into the wall. Branson was kind of a badass.

    Scott and I jumped into action. Once again it felt like everything slowed down as a rather dwarf like man grabbed at me. Blood gurgled from his mouth in black streams, spattering everything around us. I swept his leg from under him just as another man reached for where my arm had just been. This one was missing a lower jaw. I lunged upwards with my knife, plunging it through the hard palate of his mouth.. The one on the ground tried to stand and I had already slammed a foot into his chest, holding him in place as I brought the heel of my hand up and drove my knife into the brain of the jawless one. It fell to the ground almost painfully slow. I easily pulled my blade from his head. Something that probably shouldn't have been possible. I flipped it in the air, catching it again before stabbing it down into the forehead of the dwarf. He stopped moving and I turned to see Branson watching me with something similar to admiration in his face. Wiping my blade on my pants, I started down the hall to check the rest of the house.

    After a very brief battle with two more we found stumbling through the kitchen, we were able to load ourselves and our supplies in the truck. Making sure to grab any non-perishable food I had and all of my survival supplies we could carry. After loading a final box with extra ammo we were ready. We hit the road, listening to some CD's that we had found in the truck. It was mostly older country music, but being from New Mexico, I knew it all. Josh was having hot and cold flashes and had vomited a couple of times, but he was awake and aware. He seemed like he just had a slight stomach bug. He sang along to songs he knew and kept trying to get us all to play road trip games. I'm fairly certain he made a few of them up but for the most part we all played along. Even Scott seemed to be enjoying the energy Josh brought to our little group. 

    We learned that Josh had been attacked by his parents after trying to wake them up one morning. He had been bitten a few times, but none of it was anything major and he had been able to fight off his mom and locked his dad in his sisters bedroom. He said that he just tried to be sneaky, before he arrived at my house. He did say that he had a couple run ins with the creatures and they hadn't attacked him. So we spent a while wondering if all of them were aggressive or not. We hadn't encountered any that didn't seem to come at us, but perhaps we just had met the wrong ones? We decided to call them zombies, since they shared so much in common with the zombies from movies. I had started to notice that I would get the chills, just before we would roll past a group of them. I wasn't in the mind to share this odd fact with anybody else though. For some reason, I knew they weren't sensing the same thing.

 We traveled for about eight hours, until we finally were running out of gas. Pulling out a map, we found a small town that was only about ten miles from us where we could hopefully stop for the night. The road leading to the town called Bagden, Arizona was full of curves and cows, but there wasn't much else anywhere around. This place was seriously in the middle of nowhere. We found a school that was abandoned and Branson thought it would be a good place to shelter for a while. 

    "Schools have wings and they're made to be able to lockdown. If we can get a wing secured, we're golden." Since nobody else had any better suggestions, we all had made our way into the schools east wing. Branson, Scott, and I all took different halls and cleared them. I used a baseball bat I found in one of the classrooms to hold the main door shut, wedging it through the handles.. It had blood spatter on it, telling me we weren't the first people in this school in the last few days. We were successful though. The 'T' shaped wing was completely zombie free. We all began to explore.

    Sheila had found a room, which I assume had been for some kind of arts class, because it had a stage in it. It had a curtain and everything. She was ecstatic about finding a vanity backstage and some makeup products. So while she played with the makeup I went to go find somewhere with a shower. This wing had butted up against a big gymnasium so I was really hoping the locker rooms were close. Josh was taking a nap on the stage, on a couch we had found. Scott was watching Sheila as usual and I wasn't sure where Branson had gone off to. 

    I wandered the halls for a while until I found a locker room, the boys, but it's not like that mattered anymore. When I turned on the shower and could have cried when hot water hit my hand. I hadn't expected to be able to enjoy a hot shower. Stripping down I stepped underneath the stream of warmth letting it run over my sore and aching body. I carefully removed the gauze from my wounds and winced as the water mercilessly beat over my destroyed flesh.  I ran my hands over my scalp, scraping the dirt and blood from it. Scrubbing the ends of my hair, soaked with dried blood, I watched the water turn brown. I just rubbed my hair over and over until the water turned clear. I repeated this with every spot I could reach. Like I could scrub the last few days from existence.    

     I cried about Carson, finally getting my closure I needed. I cried about Josh's parents. I cried about every person we had killed, even though they didn't seem to be people anymore. I just cried and let everything out. When the sobs subsided, I felt like a giant weight had lifted off of me. I stepped from the shower, letting the air caress my skin as I tried to ring my hair out and let myself dry naturally. I didn't even hear the door open. 

    "Well, I wasn't expecting to find this in the boys locked room. Sorry I didn't knock." Branson's voice boomed behind me causing me to jump and cover myself with my hands.     

    "s**t!" I yelped out. Branson was turned to the side, staring surreptitiously at the ground instead of me. 

    "I'll just go wait in the hall. Let me know when the shower is free." He started to turn to walk out the door again when I suddenly felt confidence surge through me.

    "No...wait." It was so quiet, I wasn't sure he would hear me but he did. He stopped in his tracks and after a moment, that seemed like an eternity, he turned back to face me. I lowered my hands from where they were hiding me from his view. He came towards me, each step achingly slow. His eyes drank in my nude form as if it was the most splendid thing he had seen. His need was palpable in the air. 

    He stopped in front of me, just looking. I started to feel a bit self conscious until he raised a hand towards my stomach. 

    "Are you sure?" His voice was more growl than words and I nodded once in return. 

    He laid his hand along my quivering stomach, finger lightly dancing along my soft skin. I could feel the roughness of his hands scraping my delicate flesh, eliciting a soft moan from me. His eyes met mine as his hands found my breasts. He gently slid his thumbs up and down the sides, teasing the touch I so desperately wanted. He moved his hands up to encompass my breast before sliding them away, fingers flicking my n*****s as he did. I arched into his touch and he looped an arm behind my back and pulled us close. My hands dug into his shoulder as his lips came down on mine. 

Just as our hungry kiss began and I could feel his hard length pushing into my stomach, a scream filled the air. We yanked apart quickly. Breathing hard, for one horrible second. With an angry shout Branson ran towards the door. Throwing my clothes on I could hear his voice echoing from the hallway. 

    "Scott, I swear if you were fuckin with Sheila, I'm gonna kick your ass!"