Prisoner of the Dead Read online

  Prisoner of the Dead

  by Brian Berg

  Copyright Brian Berg, 2014-2019

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is dedicated to:

  My parents Dennis and Mary Lou

  My grandmother Malene

  Jonathan Jarocki

  The Dragon Queen

  The Goblin King

  A Note from the Author

  Like my other stories “The Beast and the Monster” and the original “Prison of the Dead”, the story you’re about to read once had another life on Amazon Kindle. Due to multiple reasons - mostly personal ones - it was removed and I have decided to give it a second chance. For the most part, it’s the same story. Perhaps one thing or two, or maybe even three things, have been altered, but it’s still my vision of a zombie plague.

  Over the course of time that I wrote this, years ago, I delved into so many different things in the zombie genre. I watched the old Romero movies, I read and watched The Walking Dead series, and I got into this manga and later anime series called High School of the Dead. I even bought myself a copy of The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. I haven’t read it in awhile, but when I first bought it for research, it was pretty much like a bible for me. In fact, I’m sure I used some of the information I read about in that book I used for this at one point or another.

  I like to think that between the time I wrote the first story and the time I wrote this one - four to five years ago - I had grown as a writer. I know I have grown since then, and when I get to writing the final piece of series, I hope it shows as well.

  With that said, dear readers, I welcome you back to the apocalypse.

  Try not to get bit, yeah?

  Chapter One: The Camp

  I thought I had escaped Hell before.

  As I walked through the forest that sat beyond the walls of my former prison, I knew that I was wrong. Time was a blur for me. I don't know how long it took me to get out, or how long I was walking through the woods, but I do know that it wasn't safe. I didn't just know this because I knew some of the infected people from the prison had to have gotten out and scattered into the woods, I knew this because of the campsite I had stumbled across.

  I couldn't think of any reason why anyone would set up a campsite in a forest that was so close to a prison, but then again, there were a lot of things I couldn't up an explanation for. The camp was, or at least had been by the looks of it, set up for a small family of people. I suppose if anyone didn't know what I knew, they would take one look at the campsite and immediately think that a pack of wild animals, maybe one bigass wild animal, like a bear or something, came in and massacred the family.

  I wouldn't blame them for thinking that.

  The camp was completely torn apart. There was a large, bright blue tent sitting in the center of the camp and even from where I stood, I could smell death inside. I didn't even need to look at the blood that was smeared around on the ripped up tent walls to know what was waiting inside. Although I knew that it was completely empty, I held Barbie's shotgun close to me; it was another thing I couldn't explain, but I felt safer with it, loaded or not.

  A very strange thing happened at that moment. Despite the situation, despite the bloody environment that I stood in, I couldn't help but relive an old memory of mine. A short time before I was sent to jail, before all this happened, my family and I went on a camping trip together into the mountains. We went to the Rocky Mountain National Park for a few days during the summertime. My wife was uncertain of having the kids, being as young as they were, out in a big open space where wild animals like cougars and bears were known to roam, but I swore to God that the campsites in the park were safe if we took the right precautions, and we did.

  We had a such a great time then. I showed my son how to pitch a tent, how to make s'mores over a campfire and on one day, during a thunderstorm, we all stayed inside the tent waiting it out and went back and forth from singing songs to telling stories. It was one of the best memories I have being a father, and I prayed to God it wasn't one of the last.

  I didn't want to look inside the tent, but I knew that I had to. I needed to know if I was in danger just by being here. Taking what precautions I could, I used the barrel of the shotgun to push the tent flap open so I could see inside. When I saw what was inside, not only was I right, but I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to throw up, but I held it down.

  Inside the tent, I found four people: the mother, the father, and two boys, who were probably about ten years old or so. None of them had a full body anymore; they were just strewn all over the tent. The father had most of his intestines stretched out and draped over him like some kind of morbid streamers while his head, which was closest to the tent flap, just stared at me with milky eyes and an open mouth that was already home to some fat, wriggling insects. The mother had her head crushed like something big had just come in and fell over on top of it; her chest was split open and her ribcage had been ripped out and splintered, giving easier access to her heart and lungs (or what had been her heart and lungs) inside. The worst of it, in my opinion, were the children; what their mother and father had gone through, it was nothing compared to them. Their limbs had been ripped clear off their bodies, and their faces had been picked clean of their eyes, nose, lips and even their ears.

  I felt sick to my stomach looking at this. It wasn't so much the fact of them being eaten and left to rot inside a tent, it was that it made me think back to my own family. My wife, my eight year old son and my six year old daughter. We're a family, just like this one, four in all. Looking at this, it made me want to throw up, because it made me think of what might happen to my family...if it hadn't happened already. God Almighty, I hope it hadn't happened to them!

  A sound inside the tent drew me away from the two boys. I turned and saw the father's head was not only looking up at me, but it was opening and closing its mouth. I watched, both disgusted and horrified, as the head chomped on the bugs that nest inside, making a sick squishing noise. It didn't even seem to care that they were there. Hell, I don't think it knew that they were there! It wasn't the fact that it was making a meal out of the bugs that disturbed me, it was the fact that, even though the state that it was in, the body part was still living!

  I had learned that to kill these things, you must either sever the head from the body or destroy the brain, by either smashing it in or blasting it with a bullet. This head had been separated from its body, but it was still alive! I looked at the other bodies for a quick double-check and knew that they couldn't do anything to me; the wife's head was crushed and the two boys had no way of moving towards me, just like their father.

  “Hey, Chompy,” I whispered, prodding the head with the shotgun. “How come you're still living, huh?”

  Chompy just growled at me and kept snapping his mouth over and over again. I think I was pissing him off by poking him.

  Maybe things weren't so cut and clean when it came to these undead fucks like I had thought before. Sure, you can kill them by shooting them in the head or something like that, but...cutting their head off didn't guarantee a kill, apparently. I mean, yes, take the head from the body and the body will fall, but the head, it seemed, would continue to live on until you actually destroyed the brain. Looks like I still had a lot to learn about these zombies.

  I finally pulled myself away from the bloody tent that reeked of death and looked to the pickup truck nearby. Just by looking at it, I knew that it was an older model, but I didn't know of the specifics right away. It had some blood smears on the sides, but other than that, it seemed like it was in good shape.

  “Hey, Chompy.” I nudged the tent with my foot. I could hear Chompy snarl at me from inside. “I'm gonna borrow your wheels, is that okay wit
h you?”

  Chompy made some more noise at me.

  He seemed okay with it.

  As I made my way to the truck, I took a look inside the back. It held the basic camping supplies, none of which I found useful. I couldn't even find a hand axe to use as a weapon. Who goes camping and doesn't bring a hatchet to chop up wood? Seriously, who does that? What I did find, however, was one of those big fuel cans people lug around in the trunk just in case they run out of gas. I checked the gas tank; it was pretty full. At first, I was just going to get in the truck and leave, but then I looked back at the blue tent and an idea came to mind.

  I grabbed the gas can and headed back. As soon as the top came off, I drenched the entire campsite in gasoline. It smelled, but to be honest, I prefer the smell of flammable liquid over the smell of death any day. I poured most of the gasoline inside and onto the outside of the tent. When the can was emptied out, I went back to the truck, threw the can back inside and searched around again. Luckily for me, I found a box of matches among the supplies. I pulled a match out and ran it along the side of the box, igniting the match-head. I stared at the tiny flame for only a second, then I looked to the blue tent. I made sure I had poured the gas at a safe enough distance that neither I or the truck would be in any danger.

  I flicked the match to the ground and watched as the camp was engulfed by fire. It would burn everything: the ground, the equipment, the tent, but most importantly, it would burn the dead. Although I didn't know much about the types of funerals out there, I knew that this way was the best. Maybe, if everything was ash, the dead inside the tent would find some sort of peace in the afterlife.

  Thunder rolled overhead. I looked up to the cloudy sky above me. I could tell that it was about to rain. Not just from the clouds, but from the smell in the air. Weirdly enough, even with the burning, death and the gasoline in the air, I could still catch a whiff of rainwater hanging around. Another weird thing was that I was looking forward to it raining. I don't know why.

  I checked the cab of the truck and satisfied to know that it was safe, I climbed inside. At first, as I settled into the driver's seat, I was suddenly worried that the keys to Chompy's truck were inside the tent somewhere. When I started to think about hotwiring the damn thing, I saw the keys hanging in the ignition. I was about to call the dead idiots for leaving their keys in their car like that, but seeing as it gave me a way out and saved me the trouble, I decided not to.

  I turned the key and the engine roared. God, I was so happy to hear such a beautiful, familiar sound and to feel the familiar vibrations of the truck as the engine brought the beast to life. I checked the radio stations, but there was nothing. Just static. I guess, even though I knew what was probably going on out there in the world, I had still hoped on getting some sign that there were people out there.

  I took one last look at the burning camp in the rearview mirror before driving off. I found a dirt road not too far away. As soon as I hit that road, I hit the gas pedal and drove as fast as I could without trying to kill myself. After about ten minutes on dirt, I finally hit a real road. Even though I had a good idea of what awaited me down that road, I knew that I had to travel down it. No matter what, I had to get back to my family.

  Chapter Two: The Truck Stop

  I spent another twenty minutes driving before I found the truck stop. As a man who used to drive big rig trucks around before I ended up in prison, I came to appreciate these roadside havens. They had good food, good service, and always had things that my kids liked on sale. They made good souvenirs when I went out on a job. I pulled into the parking lot, but from the looks of it, I wasn't going to have much luck for help here, either.

  The truck stop had this big sign that said: SAVINI'S SUPER STOP in blinking red and yellow lights. This particular truck stop was one of those big ones, with a diner, a garage and fueling station and even a convenience store inside. Not every truck stop had this sort of thing, mind you, but I was glad this one did. I grabbed the shotgun and climbed out of the cab, closing the door quietly. I didn't know if I had company inside, or if they had heard me pull up in the truck, but I wanted to be careful nonetheless. There were at least a half dozen cars in the parking lot, including a police cruiser, but there was no one inside of it. I made a mental note to check inside for ammo before I left. I hoped there was something in there.

  The glass door made an electronic ding when I entered Savini's. I could tell from the sign outside that the place still had electricity. Maybe I could actually get a cold drink. God, I would love that. The inside of Savini's was empty, save all the materialistic goods that were waiting to be sold on the shelves and the racks.

  I looked down at myself. I was still wearing the standard issue clothing from the prison. It was torn and covered in dried blood. I had to change out of them, but not just because of the condition they were in. If anyone, anyone living that is, saw me, can you imagine what they would think? Forget being attacked by the flesh-eating corpses that walk around, they'd be terrified to see a man in prison clothes, covered in blood carrying a shotgun in his hands coming down the road. I'd be just asking to get shot!

  After grabbing some things that were in my size from the store, I headed to the bathroom to change. A quick look around made sure that I was safe inside, and locking the door behind me made sure I'd be safe while I changed. I took off my shoes and all my clothes, but before I changed into the fresh set I had practically shoplifted, I started to clean myself up. With some paper towels, some water from the tap and some hand soap, I managed to wipe the blood and filth off of my body. I couldn't remember the last time I had actually taken a shower, but I was grateful to be clean, even if it would be for a little while.

  With my prison uniform in the garbage can, I left the bathroom cleaned and dressed in a fresh set of clothes: a pair of black cargo pants, boots and a muscle shirt. Once I had that taken care of, I began to grab the food from the shelves and some drinks from the freezers in the back. God, I was so hungry! I guess it's either the fact that you're in a zombie apocalypse, or that you've basically killed a lot of people in order to live, but you'd be surprised at how easily it is to forget if you've eaten anything lately. I had settled myself down inside the diner, spreading my so-called feast on the table, and was about to either rip open a box of crackers when I heard the scream.

  I suppose you could call it a reflex, but as soon as I heard it, I shot up from the seat, and held the shotgun by the barrel like a club. The scream came again and from the sound of it, it was coming from the storage area in the far back. I ran to the door leading to the back room, but before I could even touch it, it suddenly flew open and hit me. I stumbled back behind the cashier's counter, knocking some things over and dropping the shotgun in the process.

  A kid, about thirteen I think, stood in the door, staring down at me. He wore shorts and a t-shirt and a Rockies baseball cap. Before I could ask him anything, he looked over his shoulder and ran out of the doorway. The door swung to close, but before it could, a zombie dressed in a police officer's uniform came shuffling out from the back.

  “Run, mister!” the kid screamed. I couldn't see where he was from where my spot on the ground. The zombie looked in the direction of the scream, then it looked at me. It was like it was trying to decide which one to go after.

  No way in Hell was I going to let this fuck go after a kid. Not after what I had seen back at the camp. My hand brushed against something cold and hard. I looked down to find a crowbar laying next to me. It was closer to me than my shotgun, and it felt heavier too. I climbed to my feet, keeping a safe distance from the zombie, with the crowbar in my right hand.

  “Come and get me, you sonofabitch!” I taunted. “Come on! Fresh meat, right here!”

  The creature lurched at me, arms outstretched. Its skin was green and it had some kind of oily black liquid trickling down its chin from its mouth. I backed up for a moment, then launched a hard kick into its chest. I heard a cracking when my new boot made contact with the zo
mbie, but I was so focused on my attack, I didn't think about it. The zombie went down hard and banged its head against the tile floor. I didn't hesitate, I didn't stop to look, I just planted myself onto the dead fuck and drove the crowbar right through its eye socket. The eye burst with a nasty squishing and after that, when I heard a loud crunch, the zombie beneath me stopped moving altogether.

  I didn't realize I was breathing a little heavy until I found myself leaning on the crowbar. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the kid in the Rockies cap looking at me. I turned my head and asked, “You alright?”

  The kid nodded. “Y-Yeah.”

  “Good.” I looked to the door leading to the back. “Are there any more in there?”

  The reply was instant: “No!”

  “Good.” I nodded and pulled the crowbar free of the skull. “Very good...” I looked at the crowbar, and seeing the gore and blood dripping from the end, I wiped it off on the zombie cop. It wasn't like he was going to worry about keeping his uniform neat and clean any time soon. I checked the body, but I didn't find anything useful. I had hoped for a new gun or maybe some ammunition, but nothing. Maybe there'd be some in the police cruiser outside.

  I turned my attention to the kid. “What's your name?” I asked.

  “Chris,” he answered.

  “Chris? Is that all?”

  “Chris Kirkman,” he added, “but people call me Kit.”

  “Well, Kit Kirkman,” I waved to my table. “You hungry? Thirsty?”

  We sat down and shared a meal, if that's what you could call it, after I double-checked the entire place to know that we were safe. I even dragged the zombie cop into the storage room. Kit was a good looking kid; his blonde hair and blue eyes reminded me of Barbie back when this first started.