Fort Dead Read online

  5

  Beachview

  ERIC

  I wish Tom could see me.

  The thought flashes through my mind. My brother would never believe that, just a short while ago, his loser of a little bother had just completed his first ultramarathon. Hell, wherever he is, he’s probably already written me off as zombie food.

  That’s exactly what I would be if it weren’t for Kate.

  From my rumbling stomach to my aching legs and blistered toes, I feel like I’m living life to its fullest. It’s nothing like the first twenty-one years of my life, where I made it my mission to follow the path of least resistance. I realize now that I’d been living with only my toes in the water. I finally understand why Kate loves ultramarathons. Because when you run ultras, you know you can hack whatever shit life throws at you.

  Like right now. I know that if I can run an ultramarathon, I can follow Kate over a barbed-wire fence and across a rickety bridge without dying.

  Even if said bridge doesn’t look fit for humans.

  Even if looking at it makes me want to curl up in a tight ball and cry like a girl.

  I follow the others across the parking lot, turning my attention away from the scrotum-shriveling bridge and instead focus on the shitty hotel.

  The sign above the two-story hotel reads Beachview. It was probably fancy back in the day when it first opened. Years of exposure to the salt air have left the paint peeling and faded. But I shouldn’t blame the elements. The owners of this place had probably been tightwads who hadn’t bothered to take care of their building.

  There are no cars in the lot. Maybe everyone was at the Whale Festival when the outbreak hit. Or maybe they took off when shit got real. Maybe a bunch of those people we saw in Medieval John’s town were refugees from the Whale Festival. Maybe—

  Stop it, I tell myself. Focus. We need blankets. How else are we going to get over the barbed wire and cross a bridge that looks like it belongs in a pile at the bottom of the river?

  Dumb fucks. I hear Lila’s caustic skepticism in my head. I imagine her projecting it to me all the way from her grave back in Arcata. God, I miss her.

  As we move through the parking lot, I draw my knife. No one knows it, but I named the knife Mr. Pokey. I love this knife. Kate got it for me out of a sporting goods store in Arcata and almost burned down half the town in the process. It’s taken out plenty of zombies. Plus it was a gift from my surrogate mom. That means more than anything.

  “I think we should try the rooms on the bottom floor first,” Ben says. The tendons stand out on his neck, hinting at the enormous effort behind his civil tone. He tries so hard to be pleasant when his default is grumpy fucker. He loves Kate, so he tries. I like that about Ben.

  “Good idea.” Kate flashes him a quick smile. “Let’s start with the room on the far left. Caleb and Ben, you go in first. Reed and I will be right behind you. Eric and Ash, you keep watch at the door.”

  I don’t know how things are done in the military, but I like to think we’re an efficient unit. Ash and I take up our post without argument, flanking either side of the door.

  Ben kicks open the swinging door and Caleb dashes inside, weapons raised. Ben hurtles after him. Kate and Reed are hard on their heels, weapons also raised.

  I wait, tense, Mr. Pokey raised to strike.

  “Dude.” Reed’s voice drifts out of the hotel room. “You gotta see this.”

  Ash and I exchange glances before hurrying into the room.

  The smell is the first thing I register. The world, in general, is rank these days, what with dead people walking around while they rot and the rest of us not having regular access to showers.

  The room of the Beachview most definitely smells like zombie. The acrid stench of rot is unmistakable.

  “Dude,” Reed says again.

  My mouth goes dry. No matter how much death I see, it seems like there’s always more gore lurking around the corner to top my latest living nightmare.

  I mean, just two weeks ago I saw a zombie impaled on the broken glass of a window. He’d tripped and landed on two enormous shards. They pierced his body, spilling out intestines and other various organs. Can it really get worse than that?

  Yep. Yep, it can always get worse. What I see now tops even that gory mess.

  In the middle of the bed, on display like someone had left a birthday gift for a loved one, is a zombie head. Just the head.

  And the thing is still undead. White eyes roll as it tracks our sounds. The teeth gnash. Other than the grinding of teeth, it makes no sound. Probably because the vocal cords didn’t make the cut. Literally.

  “Found the other half.” Ben emerges from the bathroom. “It’s in the bathtub.”

  I stay where I am. I don’t need to see the other half of the body. I’m sure it’s like every other zombie body I’ve seen, except in a bathtub.

  Reed, of course, has to check it out. He pokes his head around Ben and wrinkles his nose. “Dude, that is fucked up. Who would do something like that?”

  Kate gives us all a tight look. “Get the blankets,” she orders. “Both of them.”

  “Even the bloody one?” Reed asks.

  “We’re not going to waste time going through hotel rooms to find clean blankets,” Kate replies.

  The last thing I want to do is touch a blanket covered in zombie sludge, but I make it a point not to argue with Kate. I credit her with the fact that I’m alive. I was a stoned fuck-up when she found me. I’m still a fuck-up, but at least I’m not stoned as much anymore.

  I grab one end of the bloody blanket and yank. The head tumbles to the floor, thudding softly. Ash whips out her zom bat. Blood droplets spatter in all directions as she caves in the front of the skull, spattering across her face like bits of spray paint.

  Armed with quilts, we hustle back to the bridge that is somehow still miraculously standing. I’d secretly been hoping the wind would push it over while we were goggling at zombie head in the hotel room.

  The bridge looks like the sort of thing suitable for a cat. Maybe. A really small, nimble cat. Or perhaps just seagulls.

  It doesn’t look like the sort of thing that can hold—in my case—two hundred pounds of human being.

  Before the apocalypse, I’d been thirty pounds heavier. A rationed diet, coupled with the insane amount of running and physical activity required just to survive, ate up all the excess fat I carried around. For the first time in my life, I don’t see a fat fuck every time I look at myself in the shower.

  Rub it in, loser. Lila’s voice plays in his head. You’re the only one who looks better in the apocalypse.

  We fold the blankets in half like a giant PB&J sandwiches, the bloody part on the inside. To the credit of Beachview, they apparently invested in new bedspreads at some point in time. These at least look like they were manufactured in the last decade. They had been fashionable back in the day. Like, when I’d been in junior high.

  When the blankets are thrown over the barbed wire, Reed says, “I’ll go first.”

  At Kate’s nod, he leaps onto the fence like a parkour aficionado. It takes him thirty seconds to scramble over the barbed wire and land on the other side. The guy pisses me off. He’s good at all this physical stuff.

  One by one, we scale the fence. When it’s my turn, I silently thank Kate for taking away my fat fuck status. As it stands, I feel like an elephant as I scramble up the chain-link. Getting over the barbed wire requires me to throw my legs in the air while my hands cling to the metal. I’m pretty sure circus acrobats are weathering the zombie apocalypse without any problem.

  My dismount sucks. My feet miss the chain-link on the other side and I end up sliding to the ground. I stagger, but at least I don’t fall on my ass. Or over the cliff. Both are good things.

  I take a moment to straighten my glasses. I wish I’d gotten Lasik surgery before the world ended. Now I’m going to be stuck with glasses for life. What really sucks is when the lenses get splattered with blood. It gets hard
to see through blood splatter.

  Once we’re all inside the fort, Kate rolls up the blankets. “We need to take these with us,” she says. “For when we get to the other side.”

  My eyes stray reluctantly to the bridge. If I didn’t have complete faith in Kate, there’s no fucking way I’d walk across that thing. Hell, I’m pretty sure a Shanghai acrobat would balk at crossing it. And Kate wants us to do it with those huge blankets?

  Now I find myself wishing the owners of Beachview had been as cheap with their furnishings as they were with their exterior paint. The blankets would be thinner and threadbare and much easier to carry.

  “I’ll take one.” I hold out my arms before I can talk myself out of it. I’ll pretty much do anything for Kate. And someone needs to carry them.

  Besides, maybe it will cushion me if I fall off the bridge.

  Yeah, right.

  Kate gives me a grateful smile and passes one of the blankets to me. Ash takes the other. We roll them up as tight as we can, which is to say we manage to make them look like super-sized marshmallows on steroids.

  On the outside of our running packs are things Kate calls shock cords. They’re basically skinny bungee cords made for securing supplies to the back of the pack. Normally they’re used for jackets or extra pieces of clothing.

  And now Ash and I are trying to jam enormous hotel blankets beneath the shock cords. It’s like trying to cram a size-twelve foot into a size-six shoe.

  “Dude, move over.” Reed elbows me. “You’re doing it wrong.”

  I grunt in annoyance and move over.

  Reed somehow manages shock cord ninja moves. The huge blanket gets bungeed into place. It sticks out at odd angles, but it’s secure.

  When I swing the pack into place, I suppress a grimace. I feel like an un-balanced teeter-totter. Like all the kids in the playground are piled on one end and the midget of the class sits alone on the other.

  “You’ll have to compensate for the weight,” Ben tells me. “Lean forward for counterbalance.”

  I silence the alarm bells ringing in my head. I can do this. If the whole bridge doesn’t collapse under our combined weight, I’ll be just fine.

  When Reed gets the second blanket strapped to Ash’s pack, Kate leads us onto the bridge. The wood creaks loudly as she takes the first few steps onto it.

  “If you go down, I’m coming after you,” Ben tells her. Despite the sentiment behind the words, he manages to make it sound like a threat.

  “Same goes if you fall,” Kate replies.

  Who’s dumb idea was it to name this huge river Pudding Creek? It’s like a distant third cousin to a creek that’s been fattened up on Twinkies. Or, in this case, zombies.

  “Fuck.” Ben glares down into Pudding Creek. “There are way too many undead fuckers down there. This is a bad idea.” He lets out a string of curse words to emphasize this statement while simultaneously taking his first step onto the bridge. He’s never more than two paces behind Kate.

  Now would be a good time to remember that I just finished my first ultramarathon. It would also be an ideal time to forget I’ve never liked heights.

  One by one, we file onto the bridge. I find myself between Ash and Caleb.

  The railroad ties are rotted. Loose railroad spikes lay everywhere. The beams supporting the ties are in as bad shape as the railroad itself.

  The land drops away as we edge forward, a sheer cliff of striated layers of gray, brown, and tan.

  There is now nothing but a rotten railroad bridge between me and certain death.

  My chest is tight with anxiety. My breaths are short and sharp. It’s impossible not to look at the water below. There are too many gaps in the bridge.

  The natural flow is east-to-west from the land, but the current from the ocean flows west-to-east. The waters churn in white froth where the two currents meet. Caught in the middle of the aquatic battleground are the bulk of the zombies.

  Hundreds? Maybe. At least dozens. Enough that if I fall, I’m destined to be zombie food. If the fall itself doesn’t kill me. It must be at least a hundred yards between the bridge and the water.

  Shit. What the fuck are we doing? This was a bad fucking idea. Where’s a jet pack when you need one?

  “It’s official,” Reed says. “I’m not calling this thing a bridge. Its new name is the Balance Beam of Death.”

  “Good name.” I shift my eyes, doing my best not to focus on the water zombies. The sensible thing to do is to focus on the crumpling wood that is currently keeping me alive.

  I take another few steps, steadily inching farther over the water. A piece of wood flakes off under my foot, throwing me off balance. I curse, grabbing one of the upper supports that arch overhead.

  “You okay?” Caleb asks.

  “Yeah. Fine.” I regain my balance and continue inching forward.

  I test each foothold as I go, pressing down before shifting all my weight. The third time I do this, an entire chunk of wood breaks free. It spins end over end into the water below.

  Moans and keens drift up. The zombies thrash in the current, all of them trying to converge on the spot where the wood landed.

  “The water must be shallow if they’re standing,” Caleb murmurs. “The zoms we encountered back in Humboldt Bay sank to the bottom.”

  “So if I fall,” I reply, “I don’t have to worry about getting eaten alive. I’ll die on impact.”

  “Most likely, yeah,” Caleb says.

  It’s somewhat comforting to know exactly how I’ll die if I fall. Which shows just how fucked up things are right now.

  I gingerly continue to inch my way forward, testing each spot before applying my weight. I move my hand between the support beams, gripping them just in case. If the wood I’m standing on happens to give way, hopefully the beam I’m clinging to won’t be rotten, too.

  Sometimes I wish I’d worked a little harder at school. I could calculate the probability of both the support beam and the platform plank being rotten at the same time.

  Then again, maybe it’s a good thing I spent my college days perfecting pot brownies. I don’t really need to know ratios that relate to my survival. It’s hard enough to sleep as it is on some nights.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Ben barks.

  “Getting a railroad spike,” Kate replies. “They make good weapons.”

  “Weapons won’t help if you’re dead at the bottom of the river.”

  Kate actually sounds contrite when she replies. “Sorry. That was stupid.”

  Ash picks her way along in front of me. Her skin is still pale from her bout with hypothermia. As far as I’m concerned, she has the best bragging rights out of all of us. We all completed our first ultra on the Lost Coast, but Ash is the only one of us who almost died.

  Below, I see a zombie lurch forward, hands clawing in the water. It snatches up a large, wriggling fish. Its head comes down, teeth closing over fish scales.

  Several nearby zombies moan, reaching out for the fish as the first zombie gnaws on its prize. It jerks, curling its body around the food as three of its brethren close in.

  What ensues next loosely resembles a Kindergarten sandbox brawl. One zombie snatches the fish away, which is still wiggling. The original fish champion lets out a moan of frustration and flails its arms. It smacks the perpetrator on the face, who in turn hisses.

  During this brief moment of distraction, a third zombie gets its hands around the fish. Rather than attempting to wrestle it away, the third zombie shoves its head forward and clamps its teeth around the fish. It begins chewing while the other two zombies squabble.

  “Yo.” Caleb pokes me in the shoulder. “Keep moving.”

  I pull my gaze away from the water just as a forth zombie wades into the melee.

  Focus, I remind myself. Ignore them.

  Except that it’s really hard to ignore the moaning and keening that drifts up from the water. It makes me wish I had earplugs. I—

  A shout goes up in front of m
e. A human shout.

  I raise my eyes just in time to see a beam collapse beneath Ash’s feet. She goes down, sliding through the planks toward the water below.

  6

  Balance Beam of Death

  ERIC

  I dive forward, leaping for Ash. I grunt as I hit the platform. The metal of the rusted railroad grinds into my ribcage. My arm lands on a half-rotted tie, which crumples upon impact. Splinters stab through my long sleeve shirt.

  I barely feel the pain. I reach out with both hands, eyes fixating on Ash’s blue backpack and black hair. One hand tangles in the matted ponytail on top of her head. The other digs into the lightweight fabric of the pack.

  Ash screams in terror as she dangles above the zombie-infested waters.

  The zombies below us go nuts. The water churns and they push and shove at one another. A few of them even manage to climb on top of their brethren. Arms extend skyward, their keens slice the air.

  “Help me!” Ash cries.

  I form a fist with both hands, throwing every ounce of willpower into holding onto her. I should care that I’m pulling her hair, but I don’t give a shit. If I don’t hang on, Ash is zombie bait.

  “Hold on!” Caleb lunges forward to help me.

  Several planks give way, crumbling beneath our combined weight. Caleb goes down, one leg plunging through the opening. He scrabbles, grabbing onto the side of a metal rail to keep from sliding all the way into the hole.

  No such luck for me. As I cling to Ash, wood splinters and snaps beneath my ribcage.

  “Ash,” I shout, “grab the boards! Reach up and grab the boards!”

  She’s too panicked to make sense of my words. Her feet kick. Her hands flail.

  She doesn’t do the single thing that might save her life.

  “Ash!” My body is sliding.

  All I can see is Ash’s black hair and blue running pack. All I can hear is her screaming and the manic keening of the zombies below us. All I can feel is the inexorable pull of gravity and the groaning, splitting boards beneath me.