Dead Series (Book 3): A Little More Alive Read online

  A Little More Alive

  by

  Sean Thomas Fisher

  Copyright © 2016 by Sean Thomas Fisher

  Cover design by The Cover Collection

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For you.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thank you for reading A Little More Alive!

  Floodwater Extended Sample

  Chapter One

  DAY TWENTY-SIX

  The M4 cut through the decaying horde on the right side of the front porch, carving out a grisly path to the Suburban parked in the double drive. Paul let up on the trigger, staggering forward with the release in pressure and trying to control the panic in his voice as the dead staggered closer. “Clear the jam, Wendy.”

  “I’m trying!”

  “Just like we practiced.”

  Her blond ponytail fell over a shoulder, hiding the tendon bulging in her neck as she wrestled with the pink gun. “It’s really stuck!”

  “Keep working it!” Body jerking, Billy unloaded Chubby’s sidearm in a controlled manner, conserving ammo with last second headshots.

  “Let’s go back inside,” Rebecca shouted, pulling on the back of Paul’s leather jacket, floorboards creaking beneath her shifting weight.

  He turned just in time to see three stiffs ambling through the open front door behind her. Pushing Rebecca to the side, he kicked them back a step and snatched the doorknob, catching a fleeting glimpse of Sophia standing at the oven in a dingy nightgown just before the door slammed shut. His heart did a quick flip inside his chest, landing in the bottom of his stomach with a wet splat. She looked so real. So dead. Like her flesh was still decomposing even though she wasn’t even there. Glancing past Wendy, who was still struggling with her weapon, he scanned the front yard, searching the rotting faces for Stephanie and Curtis. “You stay right behind me.”

  Rebecca nodded rapidly, eyes wide and jumpy. The way she held onto the back of his coat reminded him of Cora and Brock. But they were nothing like Cora and Brock and never would be.

  “Got it!” Wendy brought the gun up in both hands, taking aim through the falling snow at a hipster shuffling closer in brown boots and jeans with the cuffs rolled up at the bottom. Blood and bits of flesh encrusted the beard around his sneering mouth, hands longingly reaching for her as he limped closer. Two uneven steps later, she put a bullet through his gentleman’s haircut, spinning him to the ground in a heap.

  “Curtis!” Paul called out, pointing the M4 at the corpses beginning to climb the porch steps. The dead answered with hollow death moans floating from their broken mouths in a rhythmic harmony, rising and falling on the rancid breeze stinging his eyes. Three months ago, if you would’ve told him this is how he and Sophia’s dream home would end up, he never would’ve believed it. Not in a million years. But here it was, tattered and torn with dead people trampling the lawn.

  Somebody put a round through the Suburban’s backdoor, tightening his back. “Don’t shoot the car!” He kicked a dead lady in the chest and sent her tumbling backwards down the steps. “Come on!” Gliding down the short flight of stairs, he looked to the left, praying Stephanie and Curtis would pop out around the corner of the house because he sure as shit wasn’t going to survive long without them. The gunfire drew shambling cadavers from the neighboring houses and yards in pungent rolling waves. They stumbled from cars, trees and bushes with no end in sight. Darting to the right, Paul led Rebecca and Billy down the paved walkway to the SUV while Wendy covered their backs. He rationed his shots with one and two round bursts, holding off as long as possible until he was sure each and every bullet would be a winner.

  “Get in,” he yelled, opening the rear door and putting his back to the truck. Rebecca slid across the backseat and Billy followed. Paul blew the face off a Jehovah’s Witness with a nametag indicating his name was Steve. Wendy dove in next and Paul slammed the door shut behind her. Turning for the front, somebody slammed him up against the vehicle, pinning the M4 between their bodies. Looking up, he fell into Brock’s sunken eyes. The cowboy’s breath smelled of raw sewage and there was something stuck in his teeth.

  “Curtis and Stephanie are four houses to the north,” he said in a gravelly voice, his cowboy hat askew and face peppered with heavy decay. “Go get em and then get yer asses to Camp Dodge in a mudslingin hurry.” His face came closer, the stench of death clinging to his grey tongue. “Now push me back, shoot me in the face and take cover.”

  Brock’s weight pushed the air from Paul’s lungs. Dried blood caked his bushy mustache and suddenly his cowboy hat was a yellow hardhat. Paul shoved the utility worker in the chest and shot him in the eye before turning to the Suburban. Rotten hands slapped down on his shoulders and arms, forcing the barrel of his weapon to the ground and raising his heartbeat. They pinned him against the passenger door and this was all she wrote. This time, there was no escaping the infection dripping from their fangs like venom. The kitchen exploded and the house windows blew out, throwing his head against the truck and knocking the dead off their feet. Regaining his balance, he dashed around the front of the vehicle, yanked the driver’s door open and jumped in. He pulled his leg inside and slammed the door shut just before an old woman sunk her yellowed nails into him. Looking down, his insides twisted when he saw her bony fingers wiggling in the door jam.

  “Let’s go before they get back up!” Billy yelled from the passenger seat, jerking his terrified gaze in every direction.

  Paul pulled the M4’s strap over his head and passed the weapon to Wendy in back before turning the keys he’d thankfully left in the ignition. Decomposing corpses began beating against the doors and windows, leaving bloody smudges and blotting out the light.

  “They’re everywhere!” Rebecca cried from the tailgate with their gear.

  Mangled fingers and teeth clawed at the windows, smearing the glass and turning the day to night.

  Billy sank into the seat. “Try the wipers!”

  Paul cursed himself for not backing the Suburban into the driveway but he was so set on seeing a picture of Sophia it never crossed his mind. In this world, where things could turn on a dime, it was the little things that killed. Shifting into reverse, he looked over his shoulder at the snarling faces pressing against the tinted rear glass. Another explosion sent debris rocketing from the house in jagged shards and hurling some of the dead to the brown grass. Flames licked at the top of the bay window as the dead started getting back to their feet.

  “Hang on!” Easing into the gas, the truck slowly pushed the dead back. If it got hung up on a pile of bodies now, this SUV would become their tomb.

  “What about Stephanie and Curtis?” Wendy shouted, her pink gun pointed at the dome light.

  “We’ll get them!”
Pail gunned it when some of the stiffs tripped over their own feet and fell to the side. It was now or never. Muscles tensing, he bounced with the truck as it ran over the people he couldn’t see or avoid. Whipping out into the street, he cranked the wheel hard left and slammed on the brakes, swinging the front end out to the right and skidding to a screeching stop that would only draw more of the infected. The unruly mob gave chase, scraping their shredded shoes and bare feet against the cement, arms reaching out like they were walking in their sleep. Slamming the gear shifter into drive, Paul mashed the gas pedal to the floor and jerked back in the seat when the truck shot forward.

  He took one last look at the flames swallowing his house, realizing he never got the photo albums and now he never would. They would burn with everything else and he would never see her beautiful face again. Not in this world. “Shit!” He pounded the wheel and pushed the grim thought from his mind because right now he needed to count.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Dead Brock’s words floated through Paul’s mind like restless ghosts in a fog. Taking a hard left, they bounced violently as the Suburban jumped the curb and found the driveway of the fourth house from his.

  “What’re you doing?” Wendy screeched.

  The house and yard was as empty as the driveway and Paul suddenly realized he was risking their lives on a dead man’s claims but laid on the horn just the same. Looking to his left, he saw the throng from his place limping across the front yards.

  “Paul!”

  He glanced at Wendy in the rearview mirror and honked again. “Curtis and Stephanie are around here somewhere.”

  She searched the bloody windows. “Where?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered, looking back to the encroaching horde of flesh-eaters. The cracks in their faces were getting clearer, their chokes and angry grunts louder.

  Wendy popped her door open.

  “Wendy!” he shouted, reaching into the back and grabbing her blue jacket.

  Knocking his hand away, she got out. “I’m going to find them.”

  “No!”

  “There,” Billy yelled.

  Paul followed his finger to the two people darting from the unattached garage in the backyard. Wendy jumped back in, leaving the door open and sliding to the other side of the backseat. The shuffling corpses grew nearer, one with a spear-like piece of white trim sticking through his abdomen. Paul’s blood pounded thickly in his temples. If they hadn’t already dispatched the heavyset ones, he’d probably be dead by now.

  “Come on!” He jammed it into reverse.

  Stephanie dove into the backseat and Curtis squeezed in next, slamming the door shut behind him and breathing heavily.

  “Jesus Christ!” he panted, mopping sweat from his forehead with the same hand holding his Glock. “I thought you guys would be dead by now.”

  “Sorry to disappoint ya.” Paul floored it, backing down the driveway and skidding into the street. There was a loud thump as the bumper sent a gangly man airborne. Dropping it in gear, he stomped on the gas and sped off, chasing his illusive breath as the dead continued chasing them. “Are you okay?”

  “We’re fine,” Stephanie breathed, watching the corpses fade into the distance behind them.

  “How’d you know where we were?”

  He didn’t glance at Curtis in the mirror because taking his eyes off the road now could be his last mistake. Instead, he went faster, not bothering to look at the mangled cars and bodies littering the yards and street. Determined not to notice the smoke rising from his home in the side mirror. Hell-bent on not thinking about the photo albums in the guestroom beginning to curl with heat.

  “Paul!” Wendy shouted. “How’d you know they were at that house?”

  “Where else would they fucking be?” he shouted back, taking a hard left and leaving his new neighborhood to rot with everything else in this fucked up world.

  Other than their own ragged breaths and the tires humming against the pavement, everything got quiet and muffled like airplane ear. Vacated houses, vehicles and looted shops zipped past in a ghastly blur, scratched with crimson streaks and charcoal-colored burns. Soon, he was cutting through front yards and parking lots to get past roads clogged with abandoned emergency vehicles and walking corpses.

  “Man, I really don’t want to do this anymore.” Billy turned from a little boy dragging a dead cat by its tail down the side of the road, face drawn and sweaty. “I’d rather go back to Jiffy Lube.”

  Paul white-knuckled the wheel with one hand and wiped blood from his face with the other, the road buzzing in his ears as tiny snow pellets struck the windshield. “Reload everything we have.” He exhaled a longwinded breath, imagining National Guardsmen patrolling Camp Dodge with machine guns hanging from their decaying necks. “This could get weird.”

  Chapter Two

  The next several minutes went by in a dizzying blur. The ride north to Camp Dodge. Climbing the tall security fence. Scraping his knee. Ducking into a backdoor of the first building they came across and dragging a worn-out couch in front of it. Then just bending over and breathing. In and out. In and out. One deep pull after another. Following the raucous shootout at Paul’s house, it felt like they could take a surgeon’s needle and pop the amorphous quiet pressing in from all sides. They’d gone from sixty to zero in the blink of an eye, insanity to complete stillness. That’s the way it went now and, even after all this time, it still made his skin crawl.

  “What is this place?” Rebecca whispered, clinging to the back of Paul like a baby panda.

  He flipped another light switch that did absolutely nothing and kept walking. It smelled like an old high school stained with years of sweat and books and food but this was no school. Coming out from some kind of backstage, they followed their flashlight beams around a big white screen framed with long red curtains. They eased up a gradual ramp, taking in the ornate balcony looming above, feet scraping against the carpeted path leading to the double doors at the other end. Dust floated in their beams of light. Breath rushed from their mouths in white waves.

  “Movie theater.” Curtis swung his handgun and light over the empty rows of red seats facing them.

  “Movie theater?” Rebecca turned up her nose, glancing back at the movie screen. “On a military base?”

  “Hey, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

  “I wonder if it still works.” Billy tipped his head back and examined the cathedral-like ceiling yawning above them.

  “Why?” Curtis grunted. “So you can watch Barbershop for the tenth time?”

  “Man, dude, that is racist as fuck.”

  “How is that racist?”

  “Because your Cannonball Run II watching ass thinks all black people do is eat fried chicken and watch Barbershop, that’s how.”

  Curtis stopped and cocked his head to one side. “How many times have you seen Barbershop?”

  Billy stared dully back, pressing his lips together. “Four times.”

  “I rest my case.”

  Paul sighed, scanning the lonely theater. They would have to go building to building until discovering the communications room because there had to be one somewhere on the grounds. Then, they’d have to monkey with a generator because there had to one of those, too. He silently groaned just thinking about how long this could take. About how futile this could all be. Even if they managed to find a radio and juice it up, he could just imagine staring at the small speakers, waiting for a faint voice to cut through the static. A voice that would never come because no one was left to speak it. Everyone was dead. Everyone but them.

  He forced the thought from his head because that was the kind of thinking that leads to failure. No, they had to stay positive. Had to envision their success and see it happening before it would come to pass, like an amazing golf shot or three-pointer from way behind the line. Stopping in front of the padded double doors, they exchanged anxious glances. It was dead quiet and easy to imagine a r
agged horde hiding on the other side. Stragglers were one thing but hordes were another. Just ask Troy. A horrible screeching noise made Paul stiffen. Slowly, the group turned as one to face the front of the old fashioned theater.

  “Holy shit,” Curtis whispered, adjusting the two-handed grip on his Glock. “It’s Chris fucking Farley.”

  Paul stared down the gradual slope to the guardsman standing in front of the big white screen. He peered at them through messy locks, sallow belly hanging out his partially unbuttoned shirt, hands curled into sledgehammers. Inhaling sharply, the man made a garish sound like he was trying to suck them closer. Paul glanced at Rebecca, letting the M4 hang from his neck. “Now, watch and learn.”

  She moved back and stepped on Wendy’s toes, drawing an aggravated elbow to the ribs in return.

  Stephanie shifted in her combat boots, gun wrapped tightly in both hands. “Shoot him.”

  “No wait,” Paul replied, eyeing the sonofabitch over. “Look at him. He’s studying us right now. Learning. And we have to learn faster or we’re all dead.”

  “Oh, that’s comforting,” she murmured, taking dead aim at the thing.

  “If you’re coming with us, you have to know as much about them as possible.” He turned to Rebecca. “This guy is more dangerous than the rest.”

  Her eyes flickered between Paul and the dead man sneering at them from the front row. “What do you mean?”

  He nodded to Curtis and Billy. “Watch our flanks.” The men peeled their weapons and lights off to the sides while Paul glared at the dead man with his chest rising and falling beneath his black leather jacket. “Bring him.”

  Curtis put a hand to the side of his mouth. “Yo Chris! You still owe me five bucks for Beverly Hills Ninja!”

  The guardsman roared so loudly, Paul could feel the rumble through the bloodstained Adidas on his feet. Then he was off, charging up the gradual ramp they don’t have in movie theaters anymore, fists pumping, belly shaking, teeth clenching.