'Til Death (The Fearlanders) Read online

  ‘Til Death

  by

  Joseph Duncan

  Table of Contents

  1. In the Kitchen

  2. In the Basement

  3. On the Road

  4. In the Country

  5. In the Woods

  6. In the Yard

  7. The Frobishers

  8. In the Dark

  9. Head, Meet Axe

  10. Brother Robin, Brother Crow

  11. Labor of Love

  12. Consummation and Climax

  13. Love’s Life’s Ending

  This ebook is copyright 2011 by Joseph Duncan

  Originally published under the pen name Rod Redux.

  Cover art by Nagrobek http://nagrobek.deviantart.com/

  Published by Cobra E-books

  Metropolis, IL

  The characters and events depicted in this story are fictional. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any manner without the prior written consent of the author.

  To contact the author, please email:

  [email protected]

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  1. In the Kitchen

  Rachel Carlson inched her eyes above the windowsill and peered into the backyard. Her fear rose with her. Her hands were cold and sweaty, and the floor seemed to be rhythmically undulating, rising and falling slowly, like the house itself was respiring.

  It was adrenaline, she knew, flooding through her veins, playing havoc with her mind and body. She didn’t think she’d ever been so scared for so long. Not in her whole life. Not even close.

  “Come o-oooon… where are you?” she whispered, squeezing a set of car keys in her sweaty hand.

  She had almost been too frightened to venture out of the basement. It had taken her a long time to build up enough nerve to come out of hiding. To come upstairs, into the main part of the house.

  It was the windows, mainly.

  There were so many of them, and they were all so large. She was afraid one of those… things might have busted through the windows and gotten into the house during the night. They seemed dumb at first glance, wandering around with those vacant milky eyes, trudging around like sleepwalkers, but they could fool you. They didn’t think, and they didn’t seem to have any emotions, but they had a kind of sly instinct. Rachel had seen then work in groups to trap their victims, cut them off and zero in on the weak. They were like wolves in that way. Rotten, howling pack hunters. And they had no mercy. None. If she was by herself, she probably wouldn’t have been able to work up the courage to come out of her hiding place, but she wasn’t alone. She had Charlie, and he needed her to be brave.

  By the slant of the sunshine, she judged it was just a little after noon, the yard between the house and the barn brightly lit, all the shadows puddled flat, like they had melted. It was the Dog Days of summer, the sun a hot, hard-boiled egg in the heavens, the sky cloudless but for a few wispy smears of white near the horizon. She could see the porch running along the back of the house, and a big oak tree with a rope swing beyond that, and several feet past the oak tree, a picnic table and a tree stump with an axe in it. At the far end of the yard, before the property gave way to endless rolling hills of amber colored prairie grass, there was a big red barn, a vegetable garden and a couple smaller sheds.

  No zombies.

  Where are they?

  She had checked the house already, upstairs and down, making sure they were all outside, no nasty surprises ready to jump out of a closet or grab her ankle from beneath a bed. Every time she walked into a different room she had expected to see the window busted in and one of those snarling, vicious things staring at her from the middle of the floor—or perhaps it would be hiding behind the door, and reach out and snatch ahold of her as soon as she walked past.

  There were five of them: a mother, a father and three kids. She’d locked the outside doors as she crept carefully from room to room-- something they’d neglected to do when they first fled to the farmhouse on the hill, after escaping from the creeps in the pickup truck-- trying to ignore the blood stains in the middle of the foyer floor, which had dried the color of chocolate syrup, trying to ignore the smell.

  Just like she was trying to ignore the dead dog lying in the middle of the back yard now, flyblown and pulled apart, its ribs jutting out and its entrails spread in the dirt like someone had pulled the pin on a grenade and shoved it down the poor animal’s throat.

  For the first time since she’d gotten there, Rachel was hopeful. Maybe the monsters were gone. Maybe they’d forgotten about the fresh meat hiding in the house, had wandered off to look for food somewhere else.

  It was possible.

  She could see the grill of an old farm truck through the gap of the barn door, and the question that kept repeating in her head, like a song you can’t get out of your brain, was this: does it run?

  Because if it did, and she had the right keys for it, then maybe they could get to it and escape. Maybe she could drive Charlie to a hospital, get him some proper medical attention.

  She didn’t have any alternatives. The power had gone out yesterday morning, and the battery of her cell phone was nearly drained. She’d been trying to use her cell since the mob attacked them at the filling station in that grungy little town called Buncombe, but she only got a robot voice saying, “I’m sorry. Due to an unusually large volume of calls, your request cannot be completed at this time. Please try your call later.” Now it just showed NO SIGNAL. Soon it would be dead. The power indicator was on its last bar, with a little lightning bolt glyph in the center of the icon, which meant: feed me, Seymour!

  Her phone would be completely dead soon. The power was dead, the radio stations were dead… for all she knew, the whole world was dead.

  And it wouldn’t be long before Charlie was dead, too.

  No! she thought, shaking her head stubbornly. He’s not going to die! Don’t even think that! He’s going to get better, or you’re going to figure out a way to get out of this place, and you’re going get him to a hospital where he can get some proper medical attention.

  But she didn’t believe it. Not in her heart of hearts. Rachel Carlson was many things, but she was not a liar, not even to herself. There was no room for lies in the heart of hearts. No comforting untruths, no cowardly self-delusions.

  Rachel started to climb to her feet, thinking she would sneak out the kitchen door and make a run for the barn. If she could get to the truck she could try the keys in her hand. If the keys she had found started the engine, well, first she would find those fucking monsters and run them over, maybe back up and run over them twice, and then she’d pull up to the door and fetch Charles from the basement and get the two of them the hell out of this place. There had to be somewhere they could go, someplace that hadn’t been devastated by the Phage.

  She had just risen to full height, in full view of the back yard, when one of the monsters came stumbling out from behind the yellow bush, the one that was just on the other side of the oak tree.

  It was the fat one. The one in the bloody overalls. Mr. Frobisher, she thought, recalling the name that was hand-painted on the family’s mailbox. She’d seen it when they first arrived-- The Frobishers, writ cheerfully amid bright painted sunflowers.

  For some reason, she had remembered that name.

  The fat one stumbled to the center of the yard, walking stilt-legged, like its hinges had rusted stuck. His thin hair blew in the humid breeze, flapping upon the bald spot he’d probably tried to comb over when he was still alive. His skin was a mottled, cyanotic blue, with black mold winding up his bloated neck from his collar. The mold had begun to spread to his jowly cheeks
, she saw, and when he opened his mouth to groan, she noted that his lips and tongue were black with mold as well.

  Rachel dropped back out of view, trying to restrain a yip of surprise.

  She squatted below the windowsill, cursing her luck, but she was glad she hadn’t tried to make a run for the truck parked in the barn. Mr. Frobisher had been lurking behind that yellow bush the whole time, like some kind of pervy park flasher. He probably would have caught her halfway across the yard.

  Whatever it was that was spreading across the world—virus, bacteria, alien brain spores from the Andromeda Galaxy—it robbed its victims of their human intellect… but they could run. When they were chasing down their dinner, they put on their boogey shoes.

  Rachel eased back up to see what Frobisher was doing.

  “Ew!” she muttered, pulling a face.

  The redneck was kneeling in the yard beside his dead dog. He had scooped the dead animal into his arms and was busy chewing on one of its hind legs.

  He’s really going to town, too, she thought, nose curled. His cheeks bulged with the dead animal’s flesh.

  A moment later, his wife came lurching around the corner of the house, dressed in a satin nightgown. The gown was stiff with dried blood and ripped at the shoulder, one of her boobs hanging out. The boob just hung there from her narrow chest like an airport windsock on a windless day. Curlers the size of tin cans dangled from her gray hair. Mrs. Frobisher looked almost alive, except for her face. Her face had been partially devoured. From the nose down, she was just teeth and mangled red meat.

  As Rachel watched, Mr. and Mrs. Frobisher began to tussle over the dog. They played tug-o’-war with their pet’s carcass like Black Friday shoppers fighting over a sweater. Mrs. Frobisher croaked, teeth champing in the mangled mess that was her upper lip and jaw. Her husband growled like a bear and pushed her away. Mrs. Frobisher went sprawling. She crawled away, mewling dejectedly, and Mr. Frobisher returned to chewing on the family pet.

  Chivalry wasn’t just dead, Rachel thought. It was un-dead.

  Feeling nauseated, Rachel turned away.

  She sat for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. She needed to get to the barn, needed to get her husband out of this place. There were knives here in the kitchen, and there was a rifle cabinet in Mr. Frobisher’s den, but she had never fired a rifle in her life—didn’t even know how to load bullets in one-- and she wasn’t crazy enough to take on the Frobisher clan in hand-to-hand combat. The worst fight she’d ever gotten into was a cafeteria hair-pulling contest when she was in high school… and she had lost. She had no choice. She would just have to wait a little longer.

  And who knows? Maybe the Frobishers would wander away soon.

  She scooted on her butt to the basement door. Beside the door was a Tupperware bowl with some supplies she had gathered earlier: tissues, antibiotics she had found in the second floor bathroom, aspirin, and a few other odds and ends she needed. She scooped up the bowl and reached for the doorknob. She slid through the doorway and down a couple steps, then pulled the door shut and stood.

  Taking a calming breath, she headed down to check on her husband.

  2. In the Basement

  “Hey, beautiful,” Charlie croaked.

  It was hard to hide her despair when she looked at him, but Rachel forced herself to smile. “Hey, funny face,” she replied.

  Her husband was lying on a cot, his wrists bound to the metal frame of its headboard with clothesline rope. His face looked skeletal in the joyless white light of the Coleman lantern sitting on the table beside him. His eyes were hollow and his cheeks had caved in and his skin had taken on a decidedly unhealthy pallor, almost yellow, like he had hepatitis. He looked old. Much older than 23. He was sinking fast, she knew. He seemed to have wasted even further just in the short time she’d been upstairs, gathering supplies and checking to see if the Frobishers were still hanging out.

  As if he’d read her mind, he swallowed thickly and said, “Don’t look too good, huh?”

  “You look fine,” Rachel said, and he laughed softly.

  “We’ve been married less than a week and you’re already lying to me.”

  “I said you look fine,” Rachel insisted, and her lips pressed into a thin white line. It was her “I don’t want to talk about it anymore” look.

  “It’s funny,” he said, as she circled around the bed. “I’ve never considered myself a vain person, but it really bothers me the way I look. I look like death eating a cracker. Stupid, I know. I’ll be dead soon and it won’t matter.” He saw that he was hurting her and relented. “Ma and Pa Kettle still out there?” he asked.

  Rachel nodded as she crossed to the freezer. There was a plastic jug of purified water sitting atop it. “Yes, they’re still shambling around outside,” she said, and she filled a Styrofoam cup with water. As she carried the cup to him, she added, “I think there’s an truck in the barn out back. I was just getting ready to make a run for it when Old Man Frobisher came out from behind a bush. He probably would have gotten me if I’d tried for it. Here, take a couple of these. They’re antibiotics.”

  “Antibiotics?” Charlie asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Sure, why not?” he chuckled.

  She put the pills into his mouth, then brought the cup to his lips. He drank noisily, then smiled at her in gratitude.

  “Thanks, I was so thirsty,” he sighed.

  “No problem, babe,” she said. She put the cup aside and sat on the edge of the cot. She stroked his thigh, and again she had to hide her shock at the heat she could feel coming through the fabric of his pants. The Phage was cooking him alive, burning him up inside. Already there were faint blue splotches on his forehead and cheeks, and his eyes looked rheumy and cataract. He was in the final stages of the transformation, she thought, and with that realization came a desperate feeling of helplessness. She could hardly bear it.

  “I don’t think you should try for that truck,” Charles told her. “There are plenty of supplies down here. You could hold out for quite a while. Long enough for the government to get things back under control, or for the virus to burn itself out.” He spoke with his head leaning on his shoulder, as if it were too much of an effort to hold it up. He was hoarse, his voice croaky and frog-like, and when he talked she could see that his tongue and gums were streaked with black.

  He was right, of course. Finding this farmhouse had been a stroke of luck. The only real luck they’d had since they got married. The Frobishers had been a paranoid lot. Their basement was stocked with supplies. It had thick concrete walls and air vents near the ceiling. There were several cots to sleep on, and the walls were lined with canned food and medical supplies-- and plenty of drinking water, too, in row upon row of plastic one-gallon jugs. Old Man Frobisher had probably built it during the Y2K scare, when everyone was freaking out about the technomeltdown the doomsayers were predicting. She remembered her own parents stocking up on drinking water and canned foods at the time. Or maybe they were just plain old survivalists. Preppers, she believed they were called. Not that it had done them any good. She and Charlie could have stayed down there for months if Charlie hadn’t gotten infected.

  She didn’t argue with him about abandoning their refuge. They’d already fought about it bitterly-- and he was so sick now! There was very little fight left in him. Fight, like his life, had been consumed by the terrible contagion he’d contracted.

  But she couldn’t let him die! She couldn’t!

  She was just about to return upstairs—monsters or no monsters, she was going to try for that truck!-- when he spoke.

  “Not much of a honeymoon,” Charles said softly. He said it with a little snort of a laugh. “When Reverend Parker said for better or for worse, he sure wasn’t kidding.” His head was hanging down now, chin on his chest. He looked Christ-like with his arms tied out to his sides, but he had insisted she tie him up like that, immobilize him. “I keep having these terrible thoughts,” he had said, “these awful, v
iolent thoughts. I’ve never had thoughts like that before. It’s like I’m not completely myself anymore. You have to tie me up, Raye. If you don’t, I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you.”

  Suddenly there were two Charlies lying there with his wrists tied to the bedframe. Then three. Then a dozen. Rachel wiped her glittering eyes and sniffed. “I’m such a selfish bitch,” she said. “Oh, Charlie, I’m so sorry!”

  “Sorry? For what?” he asked, trying to raise his head.

  Tears tumbled down her cheeks. They fell into her lap like tiny diamonds. “For making you wait,” she answered. “For making us wait. It was so stupid. I just thought-- I thought it would make it more special.”

  “It would have been special.”

  Charlie had refused to make love to her here, though she had wanted to that first night, though she had tried while he was sleeping to arouse him. She wanted to make love to him at least once before… but he had said no. He was afraid she would get infected if they made love. And now he was too far gone to do anything of the sort, even if he had wanted to.

  “If only I wasn’t so stupid! We could have… And now we’ll never… Oh, Charlie, we’re going to die virgins!”

  But he was laughing, a series of weak exhalations. His shoulders shook.

  “What? Why are you laughing?” she demanded.

  “Speak for yourself, Raye. Charlie Carlson is not checking out of this world a virgin. I used to be… the original pimp daddy… so don’t feel guilty on my account.”

  “Oh, you--!” She slapped him on the leg. “Why do you always have to tease me?”

  She knew he wasn’t a virgin. He was five years older than she was, a man of the world at twenty-three. She was actually sort of glad he wasn’t, after they’d gotten engaged. One of them ought to know what they were doing! And later, when the bloom was off the rose, he wouldn’t wonder what it was like with another girl…