Worse Than Dying Read online

  Worse Than Dying

  By Brett Van Valkenburg

  Copyright © 2020 by Brett Van Valkenburg

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

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  “A hungry man is not a free man.”

  -Adlai E. Stevenson

  I

  The violence began like a storm in springtime—a drip here, a drop there, and then suddenly a torrential downpour. Within a week, everyone in Barrel County was either holed-up or dead—to some degree. Most of the Barnes family belonged to the former category, barricaded inside their home on the outskirts of a small town in upstate New York.

  “I'm going to do a sweep. Will you come?” Noah Barnes asked his father.

  Charlie didn't answer. He sat in a beat-up leather recliner staring at their blank TV, his fingertips raking back and forth over the cracks in the armrests. His hair seemed twice as gray as it did only a month ago, and his beard had exploded.

  Noah sighed and walked into the kitchen.

  His father hadn’t ventured outside in over a week—not since one of those things had surprised Charlie from the shadows of their toolshed. His heart nearly stopped when she came staggering towards him, a stick jabbed in her left eye, blood-caked hands groping for food.

  Charlie had been handling the outbreak with relative poise until that moment, but the sight of her mutilated, yet familiar face pushed him over the edge. He shut down—stood there waiting for her necrotic fingers to pull the meat from his bones. It was as if he were willingly offering himself as a sacrifice. And maybe he was.

  As she grasped Charlie’s shirt collar and opened her mouth wide, Noah appeared from around the corner of the house. He rushed up behind the woman and brought his machete down on the back of her head, killing her a second time. She slumped against Charlie’s shoulder before falling face-first onto the grass.

  Charlie stood there, pale and near-catatonic, his breath entering his lungs in short, rapid gasps.

  They’d seen dozens of these things by now—of every demographic and degree of disfigurement. What about this woman had has father so shaken up? Noah wondered.

  He took Charlie by the shoulders and shook him. “Dad. Dad!”

  As he tried to rouse him from his trance, the woman’s dress caught Noah’s eye. The floral print looked familiar, like something he’d seen in a photograph a long time ago.

  Noah knelt next to the body. Twigs and leaves stuck in her brown hair. A medial laceration tunneled beneath the blood-soaked cuff of her white cardigan. And there was a similar cut on the other wrist. Noah slipped his hands beneath her torso. He was about to turn her over to see what had Charlie so spooked, but he pulled his hands away. He already knew.

  Neither Charlie nor Noah had spoken of it since. In fact, Charlie didn’t speak again for days, and even then, it was only to mutter a word or two. The sparse communications coming out of his mouth seemed to correlate with food going in, as his already-thin body diminished to a near wireframe.

  “Can I go with you?” asked Noah’s little sister, Abigail.

  “Sorry, darling, but it's too dangerous,” he said as he looped a machete sheath around his belt.

  “But how come you get to go and I don’t?”

  “Because I have to. Believe me, if I could stay in here with you, I would.” Noah looked at his father out of the corner of his eye and said, “but someone has to keep us safe.” The subtle dig elicited zero reaction from Charlie.

  Abigail’s face soured. “Hmph.”.

  “Don't pout, Abby,” he said patting her curly brown hair. “If everything’s quiet, I'll take you out for a walk after lunch.”

  “Fine,” she drawled and then clomped away.

  His brow furrowed. I’ll take you out for a walk, he thought. It was bad enough he hadn’t the patience to carry on with her bootleg homeschooling after their mother died, but now he was starting to regard her well-being as if she were an old dog he’d grown tired of. There was just too much to do around the house. It wasn’t fair—to anyone.

  A Regal 700 rifle leaned against the refrigerator. Noah picked it up and slung it over his shoulder. He rarely used the gun, but he always carried it with him just in case.

  Some people might have thought that Noah’s family was lucky. His father spent over twenty years working for the local firearm manufacturer, Regal Arms, which gave him access to steep discounts on all kinds of long guns. A pathological bargain-hunter, Charlie unconsciously became a gun collector simply because the deals were too good to pass up. His collection became so bloated that he had to hide some of his more extravagant purchases from Barbara. One such covert, prized purchase was Charlie’s bulky Regal Sedona rifle.

  “What’s this gun for?” Noah had asked Charlie, examining a four-inch tracer round that fit the gun’s caliber. It was the largest cartridge he’d ever seen.

  Charlie inserted a swab into the rifle’s bore. “Big game—elk or bear.”

  “Seen any elk around here lately?”

  His father smiled. “Not lately.”

  “Then why buy it?”

  Charlie paused. “Why not?”

  “And what did mom say about it?”

  Charlie leaned in close and, in a hushed tone, said, “What your mother doesn’t know won’t hurt me.”

  Noah chuckled. He had put a finger to his lips and winked.

  But anyone who assumed that a massive stockpile of munitions was vastly advantageous would have been wrong. At the beginning of the end, the Barneses had only fired a few rounds before figuring out that the undying were attracted to sound. Shoot one and an hour later three more showed up to investigate the noise. A single bullet wasn't worth the temporary safety or immediate convenience. Once Charlie and Noah discovered this pattern, they began dispatching each corpse with a blunt blow to the head. Afterward, they burned the bodies in a clearing on their property, far back from the road.

  What was advantageous was the house’s semi-rural location, nestled on a hilltop that offered a vantage overlooking the highway. Shortly after graduating high school in 1975, Charles Barnes and his wife, Barbara, reluctantly purchased a seventy-five-year-old fixer-upper just a few miles outside the town of Lyons. While starting a family in such an ancient house wasn’t their first choice—wasn’t even in their top five—it was all they could afford on Charlie’s assembly lineman salary.

  But four decades later, the property’s inconvenient location turned out to be an asset when people began dying—and then undying. The Barnes family still encountered their share of living dead, but in numbers far fewer than the people holed-up in Lyons proper.

  Noah squinted through a crack in the wood slats covering the window on their front door. No movement. He stepped outside and quietly closed the door behind him.

  Noah never knew what to expect when he left the house. Most of the time it was safe, but sometimes they would be lurking—usually near the old doghouse. A chained dog was an easy meal. Whether that was something they learned or knowledge retained from life, Noah could only speculate.

  Sometimes there would be two or three. Whenever that happened, Noah darted up the hill adjacent to the house. The trespassers invariably gave chase, but the hill was steep enough to trip them up, making them easier to deal with from the high ground. Any more than three and the Ba
rneses would sit quietly until they moved on, which sometimes took all day, and that wasn’t easy for a seven-year-old.

  Noah circled around the house before moving into the front yard. With no sign of immediate danger, he headed down the driveway. Noah turned up a wooded path running alongside a creek that flowed from the direction of the burning grove, where the dead would occasionally enter the Barnes’ property through the woods and then linger near any smoldering remains.

  Through the forest canopy, Noah spotted a few turkey vultures circling beneath the cloudy sky. Up ahead, a coyote darted across the path followed by a pair of rabbits. A moment later, three doe jumped over the brush on the other side of the creek. They hopped through the water and bolted right past Noah, ignoring him completely.

  He rubbed the umber stubble on his chin. It’s like they’re running from a forest fire, he thought, and then he stopped hard in his tracks.

  Noah looked in the direction the deer had come from. Flashes of red fabric appeared through the undergrowth. He hid behind an oak tree and waited for it to come nearer. It moved too fast to be deceased, even if only recently, but that didn't make it any less threatening.

  Suddenly, a balding man with a sandy beard came flailing through the brambles. His buffalo plaid shirt was tattered and covered with burdocks. He stumbled into the creek-bed, cutting his knee on a rock.

  “Motherf—!” He yelled in anguish.

  The heavyset man labored to his feet, took another step, and fell again. He cried out in pain once more before finally getting up, plodding through the water, and collapsing on the opposite embankment.

  As he watched the man splayed out on the dirt gasping for breath, Noah knew what was coming next. The dead were on baldy’s trail, but how many? In the near distance, leaves rustled and branches snapped.

  If there are more than two, he thought, I’ll have to let them have him.

  One after another, three corpses came staggering out of the brush. Noah pursed his lips and issued an inaudible damn it. They were his neighbors, the Fitzpatricks, from down the road. They stumbled down the bank and into the creek.

  Mr. Fitzpatrick was missing a large chunk of flesh from his neck. His head lolled toward the opposite side of the marbled bite-wound. Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s nose had been bitten off, leaving a hood of reddish bone over two narrow, black slits. Bloody holes in her blouse led to mouth-sized pockets in the flesh beneath. Their teenage son Hunter, in addition to various bite wounds, had his forearm torn off. Tattered skin and tendons hung from the boy’s humerus like party streamers. As bad as they looked, he’d seen worse.

  Predators and prey were completely engrossed in one another, and Noah knew he could easily slip away unnoticed. He hadn’t crept more than a few paces downstream when the chubby man began blubbering. Noah stopped. He closed his eyes and exhaled deeply before turning back to the hunt.

  As the trio slogged through the creek, Noah switched off the rifle’s safety, took aim at Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and fired. The bullet went clean through her skull. Her body splashed into the shallow water, falling against a bed of rocks. Unfazed by the demise of their matriarch, father and son Fitzpatrick remained wholly focused on their impending meal. The camaraderie of the dead, it seemed, was exclusive to the animate.

  He fired again and missed. The receiver spit out a used shell as he slid the bolt back and forth. The last bullet pierced the father’s side, but Noah knew that wouldn’t be enough. He dropped his rifle and sprinted toward the creek.

  Mr. Fitzpatrick fell onto the edge of the shore, and the chubby man let out a yelp. Before he could recover, Noah jumped down the embankment and brought the machete’s full force onto his neighbor’s neck.

  The chubby man’s eyes bulged as old man Fitzpatrick’s head fell into the water. The current rolled the decapitated head downstream before getting it hung-up on a rock.

  Noah stood up straight and tucked a lock of brown hair behind his ear. He backed out of the water and waited for young Hunter (he’d always hated that name) to close in. Once the boy stepped onto dry land, Noah buried the machete in the side of his temple. Hunter dropped to the ground.

  Pressing the boy’s face into the mud with his boot, Noah wrenched the blade free. Finally, he turned to the man, his eyes wild and chest heaving.

  “Thank you. My—my god, thank you,” the man said between wheezes.

  Noah held up his hand signaling the stranger to be silent. He closed his eyes and listened, but all he could hear was running water and the stranger gasping for breath.

  “Just the three?” He asked in a hushed tone.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “You think so? This is important.”

  “They were the only ones I seen.”

  Noah nodded. Though plump, the man’s splotchy skin seemed loose, as if he'd recently lost a lot of weight in a short time.

  Noah stepped into the creek and walked towards Fitzpatrick’s head.

  “What are you doin’?” said the chubby man.

  “He’s still…,” Noah paused, searching for the appropriate word, “going.”

  “So?”

  Water sloshed over the head as its eyes rolled and its mouth opened and closed. “I can’t just leave him like this.” He gave the skull a quick chop, ending its motor functions, then returned to the embankment.

  “Come on,” said Noah, holding out his hand. “That shot will draw more.”

  The stranger took his hand.

  “Noah Barnes,” he grunted, helping the man to his feet.

  “Alvin Bartlett. Call me Al.”

  Noah's eyes widened. A Bartlett, he thought.

  “You related to Billy Bartlett?”

  “Why, what'd he do to you?” Alvin said with a crooked smile.

  “No, nothing. I knew him from school. He’s a few grades above me.”

  “Yeah—my younger brother. Haven't seen him in years though—not any of my family, really,” he said with a hint of salt.

  “Oh,” said Noah, feeling strangely relieved.

  In high school the name Bartlett was synonymous with trouble—fights, meth, drinking, bigotry—the real-life Yules of Lyons, New York. To Noah, Billy had seemed like the only civilized Bartlett. He’d broken the mold and lived by his own quirky code of honor. But based on Alvin’s bitter tone when he mentioned his family, it made Noah more optimistic that Billy wasn’t the only enlightened one.

  “We're about a quarter-mile from my house,” he said. “Try to keep up.”

  As they headed towards the Barnes’ home, Noah kept lifting his chin, straining to see as far up the path as possible. Alvin had twisted his ankle crossing the creek, causing them to travel at a perilously slow pace—almost as slow as the undead.

  When the house, with its empty yard, finally came into view, the knot in Noah’s stomach untied.

  Alvin noted the boarded-up windows on the first floor. Set back from the road, a few miles in between towns in either direction, this was an ideal location to weather the chaos. Alvin wondered if his family's home was equally intact, but then quickly thought better of it.

  Before unlocking the front door, Noah looked around to make sure no one would witness them entering. The hallway was dimly lit.

  Alvin’s eyes widened. “You got a generator?” It had been weeks since he'd seen a working lightbulb.

  Noah chuckled. “That’d be like a dinner bell that never stops ringing. No. This side of the county ran on hydroelectric power. The hydro plant must still be running on its own,” he said. “Enjoy it while it lasts, because I expect it to end any minute.”

  “You're lucky. I come from Big Weed. The whole town is dead.”

  “They must be on a different grid.”

  As they entered the kitchen, Charlie’s attention perked up. He charged in from the living room, shotgun in hand.

  “Who’s this?” he said, holding the gun fast across his chest.

  Noah hesitated, surprised by his father’s sudden reboot. “This is Al. I found him corner
ed in the woods.”

  “And you brought him back here?” He said with a mixture of disbelief and disgust.

  “He busted his ankle. I couldn’t just leave him there.”

  Charlie’s eyes fluttered with confusion. He looked the stranger up and down. “He can't stay here,” his father declared.

  “He needs help.”

  “We can't be looking after charity cases.”

  “Dad, he can barely walk. We can't just turn him away. It'd kill him.”

  His father shook his head.

  “You know what mom would say if she could hear you?”

  “Your mother isn’t here.”

  “And right now, I’d say that’s a good thing. She’d be ashamed of you.”

  The old man stood eerily still, staring at the intruder in his home. Finally, Charlie looked back at his son, “As soon as he’s fixed up, he has to leave,” he said and then stormed out of the room.

  Alvin and Noah looked to the ceiling as Charlie's footsteps pounded overhead.

  “Sorry if I put you out,” said Alvin, wrinkling his brow.

  “Don't mind him. This whole thing has got his head all twisted up.”

  “He ain’t the only one.”

  Noah poured a glass of water from the sink and handed it to his guest.

  “Running water too?”

  “Well water drawn by an electric pump.”

  Alvin downed the water as if he were in a drinking contest. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a meat locker in the basement.”

  Noah laughed. “Yeah, right.” He went to the pantry and searched the cupboards. “Limited selection, I’m afraid. I haven’t had time to go on a supply run in a while. Beans alright?”

  “Anything.”

  While Noah heated the beans on an electric hotplate, his little sister skipped into the room.

  “Daddy said we have a damned stranger in the house!” she exclaimed, excited to see someone new for the first time in weeks.

  Noah tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. “Abby, what did I say about lowering your voice?”

  “Sor-ry.”

  “This is Alvin.”