Death Sense: A Century Z Book Read online

  DEATH SENSE

  A Century Z Book

  Brett Fitzpatrick

  ¶

  PRONOUN

  Thank you for reading. If you enjoy this book, please leave a review or connect with the author.

  All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

  Copyright © 2017 by Brett Fitzpatrick

  Interior design by Pronoun

  Distribution by Pronoun

  ISBN: 9781537866161

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Appendix

  More by Brett Fitzpatrick

  George Andrew Romero (February 4, 1940 – July 16, 2017)

  “I’m walking through the streets like a ghost.

  Some things are still around.

  Feels like glancing through the looking glass.”

  – Barbara Stanzl, Like a Ghost, 2005 (with permission).

  PROLOGUE

  JOHN FRANKLIN WOKE WITH SWEAT on his brow, gasping for air. His head lifted from his desk and his eyes opened and focused on the room’s one small curtainless window, which looked out onto a scene of primal beauty. There was a grass expanse, dotted with low temporary-looking buildings surrounded by a chain-link fence, but beyond that was redwood forest. He could see an entire California hillside, thick with redwoods, scotch broom, and poison oak. A ragged blanket of coastal fog was trapped among the trunks of the giant old trees. He saw movement among the upper branches, perhaps a spotted owl returning to its nest to sleep, just as he was waking.

  It was a stark contrast to the images that had been filling his dreams. He was exhausted, had nodded off at his desk, and that was when the dreams were worst. Human figures, distorted and emaciated, with flames licking around them. He shook his head to try and shake the last of the demons of sleep away and focused on the secret report he had been reading. It was the last thing he had been able to print out before the Internet went down. He had read it before of course, many times, so it was dogeared and discolored, but he kept coming back to it, not quite able to believe what it contained.

  “The disease is brutal in its simplicity,” he read. “There is only one way it can be passed on, by contact with the infected. The incubation period has not yet been established, and seems to vary from seconds to days. Needless to say, individuals who have been affected but have not yet been taken by the disease are, like everyone else, trying to get as far away from areas of heavy infection as possible. They can sometimes travel huge distances, including internationally, making outbreak sites of new contagion very unpredictable. The contamination can not be kept out of the cities. This report recommends relocating all government functions to secure facilities and concentrating efforts on research and development. The survival of humanity now depends on discovering a cure.”

  At the bottom was written, in his own hand, “They don’t burn.”

  CHAPTER 1

  CALEB FENTON WAS IN THE kitchen, his favorite room because it had a good view of the front gate. The gate was directly across the yard from the house, with no obstructions to the view. There was a barn to his left, as he looked out the window, which was a modern structure made out of sheet metal, and there were garages on the right, big enough to park a tractor. Caleb liked to be able to glance up from whatever he was doing and make sure that the gate was securely locked. Not that he was doing much of anything at that moment.

  It was midday and he was hungry, so he was eating peaches in syrup, straight out of the can. It was early spring and it was cold, even inside in the kitchen, so Caleb hadn’t bothered to take off his waterproof jacket. The arm of the jacket swished and squeaked every time he lifted a piece of fruit to his mouth. He smiled at the sweet taste and then dug his battered old fork back into the tin, where he chopped off another piece of fruit with it.

  He was onto the last piece of fruit, and had slowed his eating, trying to savor the experience, when his eyes wandered to the gate again. It was a tall structure and sturdy, with a looping run of razor wire along the top. Caleb knew the razor wire was there but it was hard to make out in the gray light and pouring rain. The sweet taste of syrup was on his tongue, as he froze. There had been movement at the gate. He squinted into the bad weather again and made out the shape of a large dog between the runnels of water left on the window by the rain. Caleb felt an upwelling of relief, but he didn’t move, he didn’t want to attract even a dumb animal’s attention. He just sat there and watched the dog. He couldn’t yet tell if it was alone. There could be a whole feral pack out there, or worse, it might have an owner.

  The dog moved on down the road, disappearing from sight, without being joined by other dogs, or a human owner. Caleb finally relaxed, extracting the fork from his mouth and putting it on the little Formica kitchen table. Then he lifted the can and drank down the rest of the contents, the raggedy remains of a peach half that he had been chopping at with his fork and a mouthful of syrup, in one long gulp. The gate was deserted again, no sign of the dog coming back.

  “It looks like you were on your own, right boy,” Caleb said.

  He had been talking to himself for some time now. But, like his dad used to say, talking to yourself is okay, it’s when you start answering yourself back that you’ve got problems. Caleb hadn’t taken his eyes off the gate, the unease at the dog’s visit still lingering. He knew he wouldn’t feel relaxed again until he had checked the perimeter. He always checked it when guests had been sniffing around, even if they were just a mangy cur, looking for the next meal.

  “A mangy cur like me,” he thought to himself.

  He got up from the kitchen table, the legs of his chair silent on the room’s linoleum floor, and picked up his shotgun and lamp from where he had left them on the sideboard when he checked the farm perimeter that morning. He went to the front door and opened it. He didn’t venture out though, just stood there watching the rain come down. It would stop eventually, and he had all day to wait.

  “No sense getting wet,” he muttered.

  He just stood there, with the shotgun resting over one arm, broken open for safety, but with a cartridge in both barrels. The pouring rain gradually relented, turning first i
nto drizzle, and then, when it was just spitting, Caleb went outside and locked the door behind him. It wasn’t a security door or anything, but if anyone wanted to bash it in they would have to make quite a noise.

  He always chose randomly whether to do the rounds clockwise or counterclockwise, which caused him to pause for a moment to make up his mind, and then he was off on the patrol of the perimeter. He paid special attention to the fence, making sure that every post looked secure and in place. He also looked at the razor wire spiraling along the top, looking for any indication that a carpet had been thrown over it to allow somebody to get in. It all looked okay but, even so, he walked slowly and quietly, ears straining to catch any noise that was out of place.

  When he arrived back at the house he checked how long the patrol had taken, a pretty good indication of how thorough he had been. Anything less than half an hour and he went round again, but he saw that he had taken a good forty-five minutes, so he let himself in. He locked the door behind himself again and went back into the kitchen. His empty can of peaches and fork were right where he had left them on the kitchen table. He put the can in the trash, rinsed the fork and placed it back in the cutlery drawer. Then he went into the pantry, grabbed half a packet of biscuits and went back to the kitchen. He gathered his book from the windowsill, opened it and took a bite of one of the biscuits.

  The book was First Love by James Patterson, a book he had found on a bookshelf. It wasn’t one he would have picked for himself, but there weren’t many others in the house. It wasn’t the usual action story he read, more a road trip mixed with a love story, but he was enjoying it. Like any good story, it took his mind off the world around him, and the state it was in. He read until there wasn’t enough light coming in the window to ready by, then gave up. On the way up to bed, he caught sight of himself in the mirror at the bottom of the stairs. He was scrawny, except from round his middle, where he was carrying a little weight. His hair was a very light shade of brown, almost blonde but not quite, and he had a lot of stubble on his face threatening to turn into a bushy beard any day now.

  Zoe wouldn’t have liked the way he looked. She was always complaining at the first sign of even a little stubble, but Zoe wasn’t here. He wasn’t a pretty sight, but Caleb didn’t care. Appearances had never meant much to him, and what he looked like counted for even less now.

  ~

  He was woken next day by a sound, a sound he hadn’t heard in a while. It was an engine, a big one, a van perhaps or maybe an SUV.

  “Shit,” he hissed.

  He threw the duvet aside to reveal that he had gone to bed in his clothes. His only concession to the bedding had been to take off his jacket and boots. He gathered up his shotgun from the bedside table and went to the bedroom window. There was movement at the gate. A delivery truck was standing there, its engine idling. The driver’s side door was closed and the passenger door was open. That meant there were at least two people, a driver and a passenger. A man was standing at the gate and he yanked on the chain holding it shut.

  “Guess what,” Caleb said, secure in the knowledge that the man couldn’t hear him, “That’s right. They’re locked. See that big chain and padlock? That means get lost.”

  The man at the gates was short and stocky, a balding white man with a mustache, wearing a maroon bodywarmer. Caleb didn’t recognize him, and he didn’t like the look of the man at all. He heard the man yelling at the driver, still out of sight in the truck, but he couldn’t make out the answers.

  “Probably nobody home,” the man at the gate yelled.

  Caleb congratulated himself on moving the lock so it looked like the gates had been padlocked from the outside, to make it look like they had been locked by somebody going out, to go hunting maybe. He strained to make out the answer from the driver of the truck, but he couldn’t. Just a few sounds here and there.

  “Or they never did come home,” the man at the gate yelled back.

  The driver said something unintelligible in reply, it was a male voice, Caleb decided, harsh.

  “Could be some nice stuff in here,” the man at the gate yelled. “A farm like this could have fuel, food, guns even... all kinds of goodies.”

  Another reply from the driver.

  “Okay,” the man yelled and climbed reluctantly back into the truck.

  They drove off and Caleb watched them go down the road until the truck was out of sight.

  “Shit!” he yelled.

  He now had no idea if they were going to get a gang of friends, or if they were going to get some tool to bite through the chain, or numerous other scenarios that started playing out in his mind. None of them ended well for him. Or maybe they would just forget about him. No there was no way they were going to forget about a nice little farm like his, not a couple of assholes like that. And it’d be better for him if he wasn’t around when they came back.

  Caleb threw on his jacket, laced his boots and grabbed his lamp and his shotgun. He left as quickly as he could, locking the gate behind him and making sure the lock and chains were in the same place. He went across the road to a field bounded by a wooden fence. On the other side of the fence, the primeval Californian woods started, like a wall of vegetation. He entered, forded a stream and climbed the hillside, tiptoeing through thickets of fern and willow that made up the understory of the towering forest, trying not to snap twigs or shake saplings. He picked out a hidden spot where he could see what was going on at his farm without, hopefully, being spotted in return. His shotgun broken open on his lap, his pockets were full of cartridges, and he was feeling scared but confident. All he had to do now was wait.

  Two hours later, the truck came back, accompanied by a much bigger vehicle, like something people moving house might use. Caleb felt waves of cold adrenaline washing through his system at the sight. They were going to clean him out, to take everything.

  Caleb hissed a lot of insults at them, but there was no way he was going to try to stop them. There were five men, all knuckle-dragging bruisers. Caleb watched them snip the chain on his gate with a big bolt cutter. Then the two trucks drove into his yard and parked up. He heard the crash as the front door to the farmhouse was kicked in. Caleb cursed them all again, all five of them, straight to hell. He gradually gained control of himself and pulled out a pair of binoculars to get a closer look. One guy was left out in the cab of the bigger of the two trucks, on lookout Caleb guessed, while the rest trashed his home and took all his stuff. After about ten minutes, one of the gang came out and exchanged a few words with the guy on guard in the cab. Caleb was too far away to hear what they said, but he noticed the guy toss a book to the lookout in the cab of the truck, and he instantly knew it was the book he had been reading.

  “God damn,” Caleb muttered – but not too loud, in case he was heard – he’d forgotten the book. Now he would never know how it ended.

  The guy went back into the house and the guard in the truck opened the book and started to read. Caleb focused in on the cover, turning the adjuster on the binoculars this way and that, then let out a tut of recognition at the cover. It was definitely his book.

  “Son of a…” he said, a little too loud, but the man in the cab mustn’t have heard because he didn’t react.

  More than any other piece of gear he had left behind, gas bottles, cans of peaches, his knife, he would miss that book. His thoughts darkened, as he heard glass smash and saw a chair come sailing out from an upstairs window, out into the yard. The place was going to be uninhabitable by the time these bruisers were finished. Then he was distracted by something else. There was movement down the road, a small group of people.

  “Oh shit,” Caleb muttered as he realized it wasn’t people he was looking at. They were too thin for that, and moving too stiffly. He was looking at a group of the infected, a family of them, coming along the road. They were strung out a little, forming a line rather than a group, but still surprisingly close together. There was a father, a mother and two children, but they were warped, their
flesh stretched and leathery, teeth protruding, eyes blank.

  The man in the cab didn’t notice them until they were almost on him. He screamed, tossed his book and reached for his gun. He had left the passenger-side door open and the father was trying, so far unsuccessfully, to climb in. The lookout shot the infected man, point blank in the chest, then in the shoulder, then again in the chest. And then the infected man, ignoring the shots entirely, grabbed the lookout by the ankle.

  Caleb didn’t stop to see any more. He turned and made his way through the woods, directly away from the place he had called home for weeks now. Nothing on earth would ever persuade him to go back either. He didn’t know how the infection was spread, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. He would just have to find somewhere new to live and wait for the outbreak of the disease to be over.

  CHAPTER 2

  MEERA WAS STANDING BY THE window that looked out onto the street. She had a small chin, but a determined set to her jaw. It was her eyes however that she always thought were her best feature. One of the nice things about being Indian, in her opinion, was that it meant she had deep, expressive eyes. A big patch of light was coming in through the window, catching ornaments, the edges of bookshelves and polished furniture, and it picked out the contours of her face in gold. A few steps behind her stood the owner of the house, Karen.

  “We have to go today,” Karen said.

  Karen was a woman of color, older than Meera, with hair that was a cascade of corkscrew curls, a natural hairdo, slightly straightened with a mild relaxer. There were, however, a few touches of gray near the temples.

  “Today?” Meera said, “Why?”

  “I’ve been watching them,” she replied, “carefully. Hoping their numbers would go down, but it’s not happening, their numbers are only increasing. If we wait any longer we won’t be able to go.”

  “Okay,” Meera said, “I get that. But where are we going to go? There’s no TV, power or even water any more. This is happening all across the country. There is nowhere else to go.”