The Dead Won't Die Read online

  “Hang on,” Brooks told them. “It gets a little bumpy out here.”

  He closed the door and the vehicle took off.

  Jacob leaned his head against the window and watched the ruins of Little Rock slip into the distance. The armored vehicle trundled through the abandoned city, causing Jacob to sway in his seat. In places the streets were black rivers seething with bodies. In others, ivy climbed the sides of buildings, creating green canyons through the past glory of man.

  And what of glory?

  It made him think of Sheriff Taylor, the man who had meant so much to him, and so much to Arbella, gone now, dead and rotting in the sun on some nameless street in a small town a million miles away.

  He thought, too, of Bree. She’d been so young and so devastatingly gorgeous, yet the only image of her he could hold in his mind was of her slipping to the grass under a hail of bullets. She had, in his memory at least, seemed almost grateful to receive them.

  But mostly he thought of Nick.

  He watched a solitary zombie lumber down the road, reaching for their vehicle even though it was much too far away to put its hands on them, and he thought of the time he’d had with his dearest friend. He felt heartsick at all that had happened. He had loved Nick as a brother. For all the tension that had run under the surface of their friendship since that fight twenty years earlier, they had been the best of friends, and Jacob couldn’t shake the memory of the tears running down Nick’s face right before he pulled the trigger. What had he cried for? Was it out of remorse? Or for what had happened to their friendship? Or was it simply for his own life?

  Jacob looked across the darkened cabin of the armored transport. Chelsea had her eyes closed, a blanket pulled up under her chin. It didn’t look to Jacob like she was sleeping, more like she was trying to wipe the last seven years from her mind.

  Next to him, Kelly was looking out the window, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  Jacob looked away. Though this journey of theirs was really just beginning, in so many ways, it was the end of the man he’d thought himself to be.

  CHAPTER 1

  Jacob woke to a pretty girl dressed in white standing over him.

  “Bree?” he said, his voice sounding weak and raspy, like he hadn’t used it in a very long time.

  He coughed, and the pain that shot down his left side was so blindingly intense he cried out.

  “Easy,” the girl said. “Don’t try to move. You’re hurt pretty bad.”

  She held up some kind of device that clicked and beeped as she passed it over his body. She circled around him, moving the device over his chest and his arms and his legs. Sometimes, when she moved, the harsh glare of the overhead lights flooded into Jacob’s eyes and blinded him. Everything hurt. He turned his head and saw a bank of monitors and medical equipment, a lot of fluctuating numbers and rhythmic beeps.

  “Bree, my chest hurts.”

  “Who’s Bree?” the girl said, putting down the device she’d been checking him with.

  Jacob blinked at her.

  After a moment his vision cleared enough that he could see the girl standing over him wasn’t Bree Carlton.

  She wasn’t even blond.

  Jacob couldn’t quite marshal his thoughts. He felt utterly lost and confused, unable, even, to separate the physical pain in his chest from the ceaseless roar of white noise sounding in his ears. But he did remember Bree, so pretty and smart. So young. The girl every able-bodied man back in Arbella fantasized about having.

  And yet, now, as he struggled to bring his thoughts into focus, all he could think of was the cruelty that had marked her final minutes back in the Slaver caravan run by Casey and his mother, Jane. Bree had been beaten and raped. She’d been driven mad with pain and shame. And in the end, she’d chosen to die in a hail of bullets rather than suffer another night of depravation. Had he been in her shoes, he only hoped he would have had enough backbone to die as she died.

  “Who’s Bree?” the pretty girl said again. “You’ve said her name just about every time you’ve woken up.”

  “Just a friend,” he said, his voice a whisper.

  “My name is Megan,” the girl said. “I’m a nurse. I’ve been taking care of you these last few weeks.”

  “Weeks?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Almost a month now, actually. You were hurt pretty badly. Two broken ribs—that’s the pain in your chest, by the way—a broken left arm, two broken fingers, and a pretty serious staph infection. Also, does your left knee still hurt?”

  “What?”

  “Your left knee. You were shot in the leg.” Her brow furrowed a little, accentuating the little upturn at the tip of her nose. “You didn’t know that?”

  “No,” Jacob said. He groaned and tried to roll over.

  “Easy,” Megan said. “Don’t move too fast. I imagine you have a pretty bad headache.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the fever and the infected wounds. You’re lucky Dr. Brooks found you when he did. Too much longer and the infection would have killed you. As it is, we’ll have you up and running in no time.”

  Jacob collapsed back on the bed, realizing for the first time that his hair was wet with sweat.

  “Really,” said Megan. “You’re safe now. We can fix all this.”

  “Where am I?” he said.

  “You’re in Temple,” she said. “In a hospital. Do you know about Temple?”

  Jacob groaned again. “That’s where Chelsea’s from. It’s Galveston on my maps.”

  “That’s right,” Megan said. “Do you remember your friends you were with?”

  “Kelly Banis and Chelsea Walker. Where are they?”

  “Well, Chelsea, I don’t know about. But Kelly Banis has been in here to see you almost every day for the past few weeks.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. She’ll probably be back sometime this afternoon. She usually comes in after lunch.”

  Another wave of pain hit him, and Jacob closed his eyes and braced against it.

  “Still hurting?” Megan said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll up the painkillers. But you should expect more of that over the next week. After that, we should have you pretty much patched up.”

  Jacob nodded toward the device she’d been using on him. “Is that what that is?”

  “No,” she said. “I was measuring your CDHLs.”

  “Ah,” he said, and tried to smile. “I’m going to be a zombie, aren’t I?”

  “Afraid so, yeah.” She touched her hand to his forehead and smiled. “Your fever’s better. That’s good.”

  Back in school he’d learned about the origins of the First Days, the near Great Extinction of the Human Race. The zombies weren’t the product of terrorism or a rogue virus or junk DNA. They came, instead, from the entrepreneurial desire to make vegetables last longer on the shelves.

  In the late 2080s, China began experimenting with advanced pesticides and preservatives, looking for a way to make their domestically grown foodstuffs stay fresher longer. Their efforts culminated in a family of chemical compounds known as carbon dioxide–blocking hydrolyzed lignin, or CDHLs. The Chinese tested it, claimed it was safe, and spread it over everything that grew.

  The compounds were tested around the world, and eventually vetted, first in Europe, and then in the United States by the FDA. Once the Food and Drug Administration declared CDHLs safe for human consumption in August 2098, they spread across the globe. Suddenly plums could stay purple and juicy for months at a time. Roses never wilted. Celery, carrots, even lettuce could sit on a grocery store shelf for weeks and still look as fresh as the day they were harvested. Even bananas could stay traffic light yellow for three months.

  The blood banks were the first to report signs of trouble. CDHLs didn’t appear to break down in the human bloodstream the way they did in plants. There was no cause for immediate worry, except that blood supersaturated with CDHLs seemed to stay unnaturally healthy and
vital well beyond any sort of conventional measure.

  In hindsight, Jacob’s teachers had said, it should have been obvious.

  There were clues something was wrong. Lots of clues.

  CDHLs were linked through study after study to hyperactive behavior in children.

  Unfocused aggression was a common symptom of adults of middle age. Housewives killing their children and waiting at the kitchen table with a butcher’s knife for their husbands’ return from work shouldn’t have seemed like business as usual.

  And yet it was.

  Clues were missed.

  The First Days had crept up on them like a thief in the night, even though it should have been obvious what the CDHLs were doing to them.

  The trouble started in China. The central cities of Weishan and Qinghai were the first to erupt in anarchy. The Chinese, much to their credit, made no attempt to cover up what was going on. Video streamed out to every news service and website, and those first glimpses of the dead crowding the streets were terrifying beyond all reckoning.

  From central China the zombie hordes spread to the more densely populated coastal cities, and by that point there was no saving mainland Asia. Everyone who could evacuate did. They fled to Japan and Australia, some even to the United States, but many millions were left behind to be devoured. There were simply too many to save.

  The rest of the world watched it happen, believing that their quarantine efforts had worked. But of course the quarantine effort was merely shutting the barn door after the cow was already out. The culprit, the CDHLs, were already in the ground, already in the food, already in the bodies of everyone who had ever eaten something bought from the grocery store. All that was needed was for the body to reach a point of supersaturation. Once that happened, zombification spread.

  Eight months after the first incidents in China, more were reported in Japan, and Mexico, and the United States. Living through the First Days was like being caught up in a wildfire, Jacob’s teachers had told him. No sooner had you smelled smoke than the flames erupted all around you. Every night the televisions had shown maps, and on those maps, red circles spread like bloodstains.

  But the real terror, and it was a terror that every man, woman, and child still lived with, was the fact that the CDHLs were already in their bodies. You didn’t become a zombie by being bit, or scratched, or accidentally ingesting any of their bodily fluids. You didn’t have to, because you were already a zombie waiting to happen. They were all, to a body, carriers of the zombie plague.

  And once they died, they came back.

  He’d come back.

  They all did.

  Jacob sighed, then nodded at the device in the nurse’s hand. “So what’s my count?”

  “Your count? You mean your CDHLs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Environmentally consistent. You’re at nearly six hundred parts per million. About the same as you’d find in any wild animal or fruit tree out in the Zone. We can reduce that count a little, maybe eighteen to twenty percent, but anything greater than thirty parts per million pretty much guarantees you a zombie afterlife. Unfortunately, we can’t come anywhere close to that for you. I’m sorry.”

  “Grrr,” he said. He tried to raise his hands, zombie fashion, but a pain pierced his shoulders and made him forget any more joking. He collapsed with another groan.

  “Well, I’m glad your humor’s still intact.”

  He settled into the pillow, waiting for the pain to ebb away. When it became bearable again, he said, “What’s your count?”

  “Mine?”

  “Yeah. You look about, what, twenty-five?”

  He couldn’t be sure, but she might have blushed.

  “I’m thirty-two,” she said.

  “Ah, so you were born after the First Days. But you were raised here, weren’t you? They started trying to lower your CDHLs from the start, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s your count?”

  The smile drained from her face. She hesitated for a long time, but eventually said: “I’m at three-oh-six.”

  “Ah. So we’ll be doing the zombie walk together, eh?”

  “Apparently.”

  He picked up on the drop in her tone and automatically, clumsily, came back with a crack that she’d be one of the finest-looking zombies around.

  Almost, anyway. Thankfully, his inner filter turned on, and the comment died before he had a chance to put his foot in his mouth.

  Instead of embarrassing both of them, he went for empathy.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It sucks knowing we’re all going to end up that way. I just hope there’s somebody I love there to put me down when it’s my time.”

  “Me, too,” she said.

  The silence grew between them, until Megan looked up suddenly. “Oh, looks like you have a visitor.”

  Jacob tried to sit up, but couldn’t quite manage it.

  He collapsed back onto the bed. He turned just enough to look at the tall, slender black man standing in the doorway. He had closely cut gray hair; a wide, intelligent-looking forehead; a strong chin; and an unblinking gaze that was somehow possessed of both a grandfatherly kindness and the unwavering confidence of command. He remembered seeing a similar look, back in Arbella, from his old boss, Sheriff Taylor.

  But Taylor was gone now. He’d taken a bullet in the mouth from the Slaver caravan that had wrecked their expedition. Now Sheriff Taylor, the hero of Arbella, the George Washington of his community, was dead in some weed-choked side street in a forgotten town.

  “Jacob, how are you feeling?” the man said.

  Jacob sighed again. So many friends gone. “Like death warmed over,” he said.

  “I can only imagine. You’ve been through a lot. Do you remember me?”

  “Vaguely,” Jacob said, though in truth he didn’t.

  “I’m Dr. Lester Brooks. I was part of the expedition that brought you here. Do you remember being in a gunfight?”

  “That I remember,” Jacob said. “Sorry, my mind is still a little hazy.”

  “Probably the painkillers. I triaged you the day we found you. You were a mess.”

  “That’s what everybody keeps saying.”

  “Well, you’re on the mend now. That’s all that counts.” Brooks motioned to a chair and said, “Mind if I sit and chat with you for a moment?”

  “Sure.”

  Jacob wasn’t sure, but he thought a little of the grandfatherly kindness slid away from the man’s face.

  “I’m a member of the Executive Council of Temple,” Brooks said.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “No, of course you wouldn’t have. We are the leaders of Temple. We are the ones tasked with long-term urban planning, foreign policy, scientific development; basically, we make sure the trains run on time.”

  “Trains?” Jacob said.

  “A joke from before your time, son. Don’t worry about it. Basically, the Executive Council is responsible for safeguarding Temple’s best interests, and, within that scope, we’ll be the ones overseeing your hearing.”

  “My what?”

  “It’s just a formality,” Brooks said. “Temple has a very strict policy of leaving isolated communities alone until such time as they reach out to us. We are very careful, for example, to never fly our aerofluyts over your town. It’s a policy not everyone here in Temple agrees with, but one we’ve come to rely on.”

  “Why?” Jacob said. “You’re so much more advanced than us. Those aerofluyts alone . . . you’re decades ahead of any technology I’ve ever seen. And fixing me up like this. Where I come from, people die every day from simple infections and minor injuries. Our medical care . . . we don’t have antibiotics or vaccines. And yet, you people have got stuff I didn’t even know existed. If you were to contact us, lives would be saved.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “Then why stay hidden?”

  Brooks took a deep breath and tugged at his sleeves. He took on the
tired, patient expression of a man who has explained this many times before, but knows full well he’ll have to explain it countless more before he’s understood.

  “As I understand it from your friend Kelly Banis, your expedition was taken captive by a Slaver caravan.”

  “That’s right. They killed almost everybody.”

  “Tragic,” Brooks said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob said stiffly. “It sucks.”

  “But it is not a unique experience, I’m afraid. The world has changed. And I’m not just talking about zombies. North America used to be a land of riches, and a land of law. Now, well, it seems that not every community out there is interested in living according to laws. That’s why we wait. We wait for those communities who have not only survived, but thrived, to come to us. And when they do, if they are of a like mind with us, we share everything. No one need to die anymore from a minor injury or an infected wound.”

  Jacob, who, while growing up, had seen more than a few friends die long before their time, merely huffed at Brooks’s words.

  Finally, he said, “Arbella is a land of laws.”

  “Yes,” Brooks said, perking up. “I’ve talked to Ms. Banis about that. You have a code. The Arbella Code, she called it. I’m eager to hear more of that.”

  He patted Jacob on the arm and stood up.

  “You get to feeling better,” Brooks said. “And when you do, the Executive Council looks forward to hearing from you.”

  He didn’t wait for Jacob to respond. He spun on his heel and headed for the door.

  Jacob coughed again, and the pain that had plagued him earlier lanced once again through his rib cage. When he finally recovered, Brooks was at the door.

  “Wait,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Please.”

  Brooks stopped in the doorway and raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “Where’s Kelly? I want to see her.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Brooks said.

  Jacob fell back on the bed, winded from the pain. For a second, he thought he might pass out. But then he caught Brooks’s voice from the hallway.

  “Nurse,” Brooks said, “come here.”

  Jacob heard a voice that sounded like Megan’s answer, “Yes, sir, Dr. Brooks?”