Biters - The Reborn: JournalStone's DoubleDown Series - Book IV

Biters

JournalStone’s DoubleDown Series, Book IV

By

Harry Shannon

JournalStone

San Francisco

Copyright © 2014 by Harry Shannon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-940161-54-9  (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-940161-55-6  (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-940161-56-3  (hc – limited edition)

JournalStone rev. date: April 11, 2014

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013958204

Printed in the United States of America

Cover Design: Denise Daniel

Cover Art: M. Wayne Miller

Edited by: Aaron J. French

For the readers. May it always be a Happy Halloween.

Biters

It Began

The mysterious plague appeared suddenly and spread rapidly. It ravaged the entire United States within a matter of months. Some said Ground Zero was actually the CDC in Atlanta, where a drug-addled scientist had walked out with one solitary microbe on his shoe and ended up murdering most of North America.

The bug was nasty. The infected died at once or were driven mad. These—soon termed Biters—were left ravenous for the flesh of fellow humans. The plague spread by those bites and any other exchange of body fluids. Some even said it mutated and passed through the air, though that was never proven. Whatever it was, it eventually died down and left only the Biters and a few desperate people behind.

It didn’t take long for them to essentially wipe us out.

This story is true. It all happened in Nevada, not long after the end of the Old World. By now the worst of it had come and gone, leaving some scattered survivors, many hiding high in the lonely mountains or way down in the scorching desert, all of them exhausted and frightened. These were panicked people struggling to defend what was left of their small towns. They fought together against the growing horde of ravenous Biters. Sometimes they won, often they lost. The Biters didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

The humans also fought each other. They bickered amongst themselves, while they foraged for ever more scarce supplies; seeking gasoline, weapons, food and medicine. They hunted constantly, tried to plant gardens, but it was never enough. So they stole from each other. They raided abandoned military bases and broke into outlet malls, anything to buy another day, week or month of life.

Folks got ambushed by the Biters on a daily basis. Civilization eroded rapidly. Men killed over some perceived slight, over women, food bars, even harsh words. The women killed just to keep breathing.

Eventually leaders emerged, as they always do, usually only the most ruthless of men. Law and order became a distant memory. Tiny compounds sprang up, surrounded by barbed wire and barricades and stacks of bricks. Towns defended by armed guards with hunting rifles. Life was, as people used to say long ago, particularly nasty, brutal and short.

Still, people adapted. They did what they had to do. And things settled down for a while.

Chapter 1

A beautiful night. Bright stars scattered motionless above the desert, winking like tiny diamonds on black velvet. One wisp of cloud hung from the pale half-moon like a torn silk scarf. Down below sat a lone compound, a safe zone created from an old casino and strip joint once called The Pussy Parlor.

Beyond the tall barbed wire that surrounded those buildings, only darkness and the herds of Biters. The spooked humans clung together, their isolation complete. Nothing was visible for miles but a long string of Christmas bulbs that ran off a sputtering generator. They’d been placed there for security purposes, the melancholy sight dangling from tall poles stuck haphazardly into rocks and dirt.

A cold night. The wind blew around a few clenched fists of dried sage. The air smelled of dust and decay and the growing pile of burned bodies buried just outside the barbed wire. A bored guard with an AK-47 steadily patrolled the inner edge of the security wire surrounding the compound. He wore a bandana over his nose and mouth to cover the stench. As he spotted something down the road, his eyes flinched against the floating dust.

The sentry paused and squinted. Biters ruled the night. There shouldn’t have been people out there, not this far after dark. Maybe he’d imagined it.

No… there, to the north...

White headlights appeared, edging closer. They crept wearily along a desert highway coming from somewhere, leading to nowhere. The tired guard made out just one car, an old Chevy truck. Curious now, he used a pair of NV goggles he’d stolen from a dead soldier years ago. The world went green, black and white. He studied the truck. As it drove closer he eventually made out a single large man hunched over the wheel, apparently alone.

The driver spotted the feeble Christmas lights around the town. He shifted gears and sped up. He peered into the night, relief sweeping over him. From far down the empty road, the darkened compound, with its one strip club sign flickering, waited like the neon maw of a hungry beast. It wasn’t safe, but it was there, and a town meant other human beings.

The guard took off the NV goggles. He whistled for company. Another man joined him. The two waited patiently for the stranger to arrive. They kept their shotguns handy. You could never be too careful.

The old Chevy crawled faster, tires crunching over gravel and dirt as the driver closed in on the corrupt oasis. Inside the vehicle, an ancient cassette deck played an old Randy Travis single. The weary driver wore cowboy boots, a work shirt, torn jeans and a thick belt with an unpolished silver buckle. He was large with bleak eyes and a weathered face. He drove slowly through the threatening dark, on the lookout for Biters. The compound loomed larger as the Chevy truck humped carefully across the railroad tracks. The driver stopped at the gate and kept his hands in sight on the steering wheel.

That’s far enough, called the first guard.

The man put the car in park. He exited the vehicle, still with his hands in sight. What, do I look like a Biter?

The second guard spoke in a reedy tenor. You might have got bit.

Not me, no way. Name is Ryan. I’m just looking for a cold drink and a few supplies.

What you got to trade?

The stranger kept his face blank. Enough.

See any Biters back that way? The first guard relaxed now, letting the shotgun slip a bit as if to signal welcome.

Some, Ryan said. Spotted a decent-sized herd headed west last night, but they were still a long ways off.

We heard about that one. We’re all hoping they don’t spot us.

You going to open up? It’s cold as a cast iron toilet seat out here.

The two sentries exchanged glances. Shrugged. The second opened the wire gate and pulled it aside. The splintering wood and rusty metal hinges screeched like witches burning at the stake. The split gate left two deep trenches in the rocky sand.

The driver got back in the Chevy. The country song played. He drove into the compound, a ragtag collection of thrown together shelters: camping tents, cardboard shipping crates and half-assed wooden shacks. He passed under the familiar red and white neon sign that shrieked NUDE NUDE NUDE NUDE in a gibbering visual loop. Buck Ryan wondered for a moment why they bothered to power it up. He guessed it added both a bit of cheer and some extra light to fight by, should the bad guys storm the fence. Still, it seemed melancholy, ablaze but all alone out here in the darkness.

Ryan parked outside the main building, The Pussy Parlor itself, just as the country song faded into silence. He turned the cassette deck off, left the engine running and sat for a spell. It felt good to be inside the compound, particularly after so much time alone. Outside, a few shapes moved in the shadows, mostly people watching his vehicle with curiosity. A car with gas in it was worth stealing, as Ryan knew all too well, but most folks would rather stay safe behind the wire than take their chances outside. He was a rare breed that way. Most would ponder over stealing the truck but back down. At least that’s what Ryan was counting on. He listened to the rhythm of human life. Garish light and the muffled thumping of dance music filled the air.

He rubbed his short hair for good luck.

It was about that time.

Tires crunching through dry leaves and pebbles, Ryan drove the rest of the way onto the dusty parking lot. He took up two spaces, stopping at a sharp angle so that he could see both entrance and exit clearly.

He turned the engine off and sat listening to it tick in the summer heat, that faint, steady rhythm immediately out of synch with the relentless pulse of that incongruous bass drum. Of all the things to have survived the Old World, a strip club seemed the least appropriate.

A rattling, snuffling sound got his attention. Ryan rolled down the window and caught a whiff of the stench. His hand grabbed for a weapon but relaxed. A few yards to the left of the entrance, someone had locked a Biter inside a large cage. Its hands and feet were free, and it now paced like a panther behind the bars. Ryan had never seen anything quite like this before.

The creature had once been a black man, tall and athletic, dressed in a suit, but the disease and constant fighting had rotted and torn its flesh and clothing and left it one-eyed, ragged and leering. Bloody drool ran from the side of its open mouth. The sight seemed as pathetic as this lonely, isolated bar.

Ryan supposed the angry and frightened townspeople kept the Biter around for revenge purposes. It gave them something to torture. Maybe imprisoning it also lent them some illusion of safety. Who knew? People were stranger than ever now. After all, this was the end of the world. No one had any expertise on how to behave.

Ryan surveyed the rest of the nooks and crannies, soaking up information, locating two forms frantically coupling in the alley and another two on their knees behind the overflowing metal trashcans. He spotted a junky shooting up and a drunk sprawled on the ground.

He carefully studied the entire parking lot in case he had to come out shooting. He counted six cars, five of them badly used and in various states of disrepair. At least someone had a running vehicle, and Ryan figured he knew who that was. It was rare to see a big old Lexus, much less one with barely a scratch on it. The car was still in remarkable shape. Likely the woman was, too.

She was here.

Ryan lit up his last cheap cigar. His own truck was a beat-up white Chevy with a black replacement hood. Money. That had always been the difference between them. She’d always found money.

He smoked, listened, watched and waited. The compound seemed quiet. Nothing felt off about it. The dark hissed no particular warning, though the sight of the caged Biter was rather jarring. Still, he began to relax. Nothing had changed for the human race inside, only on the outside. Smiling, he thought, The asses are on the seats, and the girls are up on the poles. All is right with the world…

BAM! Someone exiting the club slammed the metal door. Buck Ryan felt his pulse jump, and just like that he was back on point, scrambling through the dirt, getting shot at by friendly fire. He remembered a Biter emerging from low in the rocks to grab a guy called Zeke—who was still a boy really—but the Biter grabbed the kid by the leg and bit down hard. Ryan remembered the way Zeke had screamed like a little girl and clutched his wound. Jesus, the way he’d started begging to be shot and not left to turn. But Ryan couldn’t do it, couldn’t shoot the boy right away; he had to watch it happen, just to be sure. And of course it did happen. So fast.

Ryan tightened up sitting there in the truck, willing away the looped sight of that unforgettable moment, the way that young human face had just crumbled into something blank, unknown and evil. God, the boy had just changed. And a few seconds later Ryan’s wickedly clean shot had echoed through the crags of the Utah valley, Zeke’s head gone, the other men still shouting and scrambling through the rocks, Ryan laying down covering fire. It had to be done.

It still felt like murder.

His stomach rolled. Ryan closed his eyes. He saw the quick sparks of flickering muzzles. He heard ghostly rounds peppering the rocks around and behind his weary band of survivors. The Biters had been fucking everywhere around them that day. The experience was long gone but vivid memories ate at his heart, fed on him like the Biter had fed on his companions, one by one until it was all over.

Ryan was the only survivor.

He grunted. The past lived on. His ghosts whispered obscenities in his ear and caressed the nape of his neck. The pictures flickered behind his eyeballs.

Some kind of PTSD shit.

Any loud noise brought those fucking zombie images back, and they just ran through his head like an endless, lurid snippet from a nasty horror movie. The meth he’d done, a relief at first, had just made it worse in the long run. He never touched the stuff these days, but he knew it had left deep trails in his brain’s neural circuits, kind of like claw marks in the gray matter.

He experienced both visual and auditory hallucinations. Even in his waking dreams, Ryan had to take a few deep breaths to calm himself. He did so now and waited it out, like always. Eventually his pulse returned to normal. The flashes of color went away. The awful screams faded. The dark stopped whispering. The Biters all went back beyond the wire.

Except for the one in the cage.

It was eyeing him like he was a rare burger. It seemed wrong in there, obscene somehow. Why keep one captive this way just to torment it? It had already suffered enough.

Kill it or let it go free, Ryan thought. Make up your goddamn mind.

Drained, Buck Ryan flipped his last small cigar out the window. It landed like fireworks, a lawn sprinkler of sparks erupting on the cracked pavement. The night was dry and cold but the days were scorching hot. They left the sage and dirt sucking for moisture that wouldn’t come. The music pounded under the drunken voices like a frantic heartbeat.

Ryan hunched down a bit, slid out the driver’s side quickly to avoid being a target under the overhead light. Never could tell these days, someone might want to take him out just for the Chevy, to steal his weapons and gasoline. People went crazy on a dime. He locked the truck and chained the door.

The guards were still watching him, wondering why he’d frozen in place. He stood up, closed the door and got to his feet, using the car for cover and the brush for concealment. He examined the building. It had been such a long, long time. Had he ever really thought of any of this was fun? He supposed so, back before the end of the Old World. Back when his dick had come to attention over any passing thought of female flesh. Now the sounds and sights of this funky strip joint made him feel hollow inside. Everything had gone to hell yet men were still jerking off over bare tits as if nothing had even changed.

Guess I’m older and wiser.

Funny what a few years and a lot of dying could do.

Ryan walked down the edge of the parking lot, staying well back from the light. The caution born of his PTSD annoyed him sometimes, but it always won out. In the end he’d just found it easier to give in to a habitual paranoia. The Biters were everywhere and so were armed meth heads, thieves and bands of religious fanatics. Anyway, recklessness didn’t pay. Ever. Caution always did.

The guards were still watching. He kept moving.

The rolling impact of his work boots on cement and gravel rasped loudly in his ears. The drums boomed. He could hear the shouts and whistles coming from inside. He sped up as he passed the caged Biter. It moaned with hunger and reached for him.

Impulsively, Ryan forced himself to stop. He turned and looked the tortured thing in the eye. The bloody socket drooled dark fluid. It reeked of decay. It flinched back as if expecting abuse. Poor bastard, someone should kill him or let him go, Ryan thought again. It looked at him and stopped growling. Ryan studied it for a long time, perhaps hoping to face down some of his own dark memories.

I’m in jail too, Ryan said, for no particular reason.

The Biter gazed back. It stood motionless, head cocked as if listening; then it snarled.

Ryan turned his back and walked on.

He came to the thick metal door. The music was louder now, obnoxious stuff, some kind of old techno fused with heavy metal. Someone had been screwing around with computer samples, someone with little or no talent. Ryan yanked the door open. It moved but no one had been using WD-40 on the ancient hinges. They screamed an electric guitar solo. The sound brought back another kind of memory. Buck Ryan’s mouth twitched and something like a dry grin stalked his face. His penis twitched.

Chapter 2

The Pussy Parlor was rank and unwelcoming, but considering the complete chaos just outside the wire, it felt like a friendly face. It stank worse than ever, with the reek of booze, unwashed bodies and unrequited lust. Hell, people had always smoked their asses off in this part of Nevada, and no one expected to live long enough to die of cancer anymore, so the air was as thick and cloudy as chicken broth.

Ryan watched, surveying the room, letting his vision adjust. He blinked his eyes rapidly to gain night vision, an old Army trick. Time had frozen here; you could almost forget the world had ended. Almost, but not quite.

One bored girl dangled from a giant barber-striped pole, shaking her ass for a few drunken males. One young kid seemed pretty embarrassed. His face was as red as a ripe tomato. The bleached-blonde dancer was working it hard, her eyes focused on looking for life in another galaxy. She wore a G-string thong and the carpet didn’t match the drapes. Ryan watched her gyrating thin buttocks, but even after so long without a female, the effect was more sad than stimulating.

He walked behind two drunken truckers and stood back to let a topless waitress pass. Her wide brown eyes appeared dulled by pills, alcohol abuse, fear of the unknown and a mindless rage. Her expression reminded Ryan of the Biter in the cage outside.

The girl ignored him, balancing a tray full of trembling drinks