Wormwood Dawn (Episode XI) Read online

  Chapter One

  Two shamblers swayed mindlessly in the shadows of an abandoned trailer home, gurgling and slobbering as the occasional flash of lightning illuminated the walls. A storm raged outside, with heavy rains that rumbled on the tin roof, and strong winds that shook the flimsy structure with their ferocity.

  Nearby, a shuffler bumped into the walls of the hallway, trying desperately to navigate the darkness. It moaned and grunted, confused and seemingly trapped. But the shamblers mostly ignored it, not interested in its moldy flesh.

  Then, one of the shamblers began sniffing, capturing the attention of the other. A familiar scent was nearby, and the two creatures began excitedly seeking its source. They turned toward the aluminum door that flapped in the wind, neither of them aware of their doom.

  A crash sounded as the back door was bashed in. The shamble closest to it spun as quickly as it could, met by the hard wood of a baseball bat that crushed its face in one fell swing. The other shambler hissed, charging the dark figure that had burst in, but it was met by a metal spear that drove it back, followed by the bat that splatted its skull in a cloud of mold, blood, and brains.

  “Nasty mother fuckers,” Royce said as he flung the shit from his bat.

  “Take the hallway and I’ll check the kitchen,” Toby said.

  A bang sounded from the hallway, and Toby pulled out his Glock. A shuffler emerged, wide-eyed and indifferent. Toby put one silenced round in its head, dropping it like a sack of crap.

  “A’ight,” Royce said, holding his bat out and heading toward the hall.

  Toby holstered his Glock, dropping his spear on the moldy couch that was against the back wall. The kitchen was dark, dank, and smelly, and he squinted as he headed toward it. Most of the cabinet doors were hanging open, one of them by a single hinge. They were empty, except for a few mice, rotted fruit, and moldy bread.

  He opened one of the upper ones, struggling to reach it as he tried to avoid the sink full of shit water. He grinned when he saw its contents. There, on the upper shelf, was a row of boxes labeled “Shelf Stable Milk”, and two jars of peanut butter.

  “Sweet!” he said out loud.

  “What?” Royce called out as he pushed open the bathroom door.

  “Found some good shit,” Toby called back. “Meet me in the kitchen when you’re all done.”

  Royce grinned, peering inside the darkened bathroom. He pulled out his flashlight, shining it in the bathtub. There was a corpse there, rotted and stinking, not much but slimy flesh and bones. It looked like it had been there since the beginning.

  “Damn,” he said, pinching his nose shut.

  The medicine cabinet was full. He set down his bat and shined the light inside. There were meds of all types. Mostly OTC crap that might be useful, but also three prescription bottles.

  Oxycodone, Metformin, and Prozac.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Diabetic, chronic pain, and crazy to boot.”

  He looked over at the corpse, trying to get some sense of who this person was. Though the hair was long and ratty, it looked like it was a man. There were a few wisp of facial hair left on what little skin there was, and there was large ring on the right hand. A man’s wedding band.

  “Sorry dude,” he said. “Gotta take yo’ shit.”

  He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket, staring at the corpse as he swept the contents of the medicine cabinet into it. For a brief moment, he wondered how the man had died. Most of the original dead had woken up and were now walking around, but this guy was still dead in the bathtub. Why had he not woken up?

  He scrunched the bag closed and stepped toward the tub, looking down at the murky water. Through the rot, he saw the man’s hand and found his answer. The wrists were cut, and there were even notches in the exposed bone.

  “Suicide,” he whispered. “I guess the Prozac didn’t work. Rest in peace, bro.”

  Dan trudged through the trailer park, shielding his face from the rain. It was letting up a little, but visibility was still low. He could barely see the trailers around him through the mist, and the one where Toby and Royce had headed was even harder to see because of the trees around it.

  Jake emerged from another one nearby, cursing and nearly slipping off of the porch. Dan stopped, turning to him as he stepped down looking like the Undertaker in his hat and trench coat.

  “Find anything?” he asked.

  Jake shook his head. “Nothing but dead cats,” he said. “Want some smelly pussy?”

  Dan chuckled, looking around for the others. “Where did everyone else go?”

  “Eric is heading toward the truck,” Jake said. “He found some shit Max might be able to fix.”

  “What about Cliff?”

  Jake shrugged. “I thought he was with you.”

  “He was,” Dan said. “He had to take a piss though.”

  Jake laughed. “With this rain, he should have just pissed himself.”

  Dan grinned. “I’m heading into this trailer,” he said. “If you find Cliff, let me know.”

  Jake made a clicking noise with his tongue, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and headed in the opposite direction. Dan headed toward Toby and Royce’s destination, seeing some movement inside the structure and hearing laughing. At least he knew the boys were okay.

  He chuckled when he realized he had called them “the boys”. Though they were well apart in age—Royce being in his early twenties—the two of them had become like brothers. Toby was more like the older brother, though, but Royce seemed to be okay with it. He knew Toby was probably smarter than he was, and sort of looked up to him in a sense—at least from an intellectual standpoint. In return, Dan knew, Royce provided the muscle.

  “I guess that makes me dad,” Dan thought with a smile.

  He stepped into the trailer, looking toward the sound of laughter. He couldn’t see anything in the kitchen area other than the counter, but an upended flashlight providing light that pointed up toward the ceiling. He walked up to the counter and looked over. Toby and Royce were sitting cross-legged on the floor, each of them with a spoonful of peanut butter, a glass of milk, and a milk mustache.

  “Sup bothhhh?” Royce said. Toby laughed with a mouthful of peanut butter.

  Dan shook his head, laughing. “Grab everything and come on,” he said. “Time to go.”

  “How about a little head?” Cliff asked Jake, holding the still-moving severed head of a young dead one.

  Jake cocked his head, reaching up to poke the thing’s face with his gloved finger. “Where’d you find that?”

  “Back in the woods,” Cliff said. “I went to take a piss and saw a bunch of them. They were all chopped up, like somebody messed them up real good, but they were still kickin’.”

  “Did you leave them kickin’?”

  Cliff tossed the head away. “Most of them,” he replied. “Not until after looking them over really good. Some of them were bikers, others were military. All of them were chopped up.”

  “Sounds like somebody didn’t realize they needed to destroy the brain and just left them there.”

  “Probably,” Cliff agreed. “What was this place anyway?”

  Jake looked around, seeing the diverse types of trailers. Some of them were fixed, others were mobile, but all of them were on cinder blocks.

  “Looks like some kind of temporary park, or something,” he said. “White trash campground, maybe.”

  “Hillbilly heaven.”

  “Something like that,” Jake said. “We should make sure Eric is alright. I think I hear Dan coming.”

  Eric set down the stack of boxes he had grabbed from the trailer park. He had filled them with items that Max might find useful for their camp. There were batteries, regu
lators, inverters, small communications devices, etc. Being the genius he was, Max could probably perform miracles with any one of them.

  The big man pulled out his walkie-talkie, keying it into life. After a few seconds, Max responded.

  “What’s up, Eric?”

  “Got some stuff here for you,” Eric said. “Electronics you might be able to fix.”

  “Cool. What kind?”

  “Some power stuff, old cell phones, something that looks like an Atari logo.”

  “Ah,” Max said. “A microcell. That’ll definitely be useful.”

  “What’s that for?”

  “4G and 3G signals. I might be able to make some long-range broadcasts.”

  “Cool. I think we’re ready. I hear them coming. We’ll be home in a bit.”

  “Alright. Max out.”

  Eric tossed the walkie on the RV’s couch, turning toward the approaching group. Off to the side, there was a shuffling sound. A stumbling shuffler appeared, looking in his direction, its face blank and hypnotic. He pulled his knife from his belt and began walking toward it. But, a muffled shot sounded and the shuffler collapsed.

  Dan had shot it with his Blackout.

  “I had it,” Eric said, slightly miffed.

  “With a knife?” Dan said. “That wasn’t a dead one.”

  “I know,” Eric said. “But… aw fuck it.”

  “We’re ready. What did you find?”

  Eric motioned toward the boxes. “It’s all in there. Not sure what some of it is but Max knows.”

  “We found peanut butter and milk,” Toby said with a grin.

  Max sat on a wooden lounge chair in front of the hardware store. He had heard the drawn out and high-pitched screams of the creature he called the “screamer” and decided to wait and see if it approached. He was intrigued with the whole thing, having read Maynard’s notes about it. It was an anomaly, he realized; something not directly related to the infection, and weird to boot.

  According to Maynard, the creature appeared and disappeared in some kind of daisy pattern, materializing at the tips of the “petals” and in the center for a split second before disappearing again. It was completely mind-boggling, and Max had become obsessed with it. Maynard had killed on of them, chopping its head off with an axe right as it appeared. But, unfortunately, Maynard had abandoned the whole thing after that.

  Max was still interested though.

  He wanted to know what it was, why it appeared as a little girl, and why it was appearing and disappearing. He had his own theories as to why, but none of them made any sense. Maybe it was some kind of ghost or specter, or perhaps it was an alien related to the shadow people somehow. That was another thing. No one had figured out the shadow people.

  Most people didn’t even believe they existed.

  But the screamers… what an obsession. Both creatures appeared to exist in another dimension, only appearing in this one briefly for one reason or another. Dan had said the shadows helped him defeat the Robert creature the first time; they had attacked it, and the second similar creature they had met in the woods.

  What was her name?

  Whatever the case, they didn’t like the demon creatures for some reason, but seemed to ignore the others. Maybe the demon creatures were an anomaly too; something that didn’t belong. It was all confusing, but Max had the feeling everything would be revealed eventually.

  Of that much he was sure.

  “Max,” Toni said as she came to sit outside with him. “I brought you some coffee.”

  “Coffee?” Max said. “Coffee at… um… nighttime?”

  “Sure, why not?” she replied, sitting in the chair next to him. “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting,” he said. “I thought I heard that screaming thing.”

  “Oh shit,” Toni gasped. “That thing. That was scary shit me and Jake saw in that house.”

  Max sat forward. “That’s the strange part. It was inside a house, not out in the open.”

  “And?”

  Max shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it makes sense. Maybe it doesn’t. But Maynard had no theories about it other than its pattern. He didn’t know what it was either.”

  “It was scary as fuck,” Toni said. “That’s what it was.”

  “I suppose,” Max relied, sitting back. “Where’s Grace? Maybe she knows a little, or can hazard a guess.”

  “She’s asleep. She don’t know shit.”

  Max chuckled, taking a sip of the coffee. “Instant?” he asked.

  “No,” Toni replied, giving him a questioning look. “Why?”

  Max cleared his throat, shaking his head. “Nothing.”

  In the distance, Max heard the faint screeching he was looking for. He bolted upright, dropping his coffee cup. He paused mid-stand, listening for the sound again, craning his ear towards the direction he had heard it.

  “What?” Toni asked, sitting her cup down on the small wooden deck table between them.

  “I thought I heard the screamer,” he said.

  Toni stood, cocking her head to hear. They looked at each other, waiting for scream to sound again. When it did, Toni’s eyes lit up.

  “I’m getting the fuck inside,” she whispered. “You should too.”

  “No,” Max said. “I have to know.”

  He bolted toward the sound, which seemed to be coming from the back of the building, where customers would pick up their supplies while some pimply-faced dipshit loaded them up from storage. Toni was behind him, but he ignored her pleas to stop.

  As he turned the corner, he smelled something that was oddly ozone-like in nature. He knew it was her… or it, whatever the case may be.

  “What’s that smell?” Toni said, her face scrunched up.

  “Ozone,” Max said, looking at the gravel. “That tells me she has some kind of atmospheric effect when she appears.

  “Yeah,” Toni said, trembling but searching around. “We smelled the same thing at the house when saw it. It just didn’t occur to me then.”

  There was a flash, and the scream sounded again. This time the flash appeared near the tree line just as the scream sounded, and Max could make out the faint outline of the child-like figure. The hairs on the back of his neck stood out, as if there was electrical charge in the air.

  Or maybe he was just scared shitless.

  “Holy fuck,” Toni said, her eyes as big as baseballs.

  Max glanced over at her, amazed at how terrified she seemed. He had never seen her this way. She was tough as nails, and could handle a .44 Magnum in each hand. Now she was as scared as a little girl. It scared Max a little.

  “Maynard killed one of them,” Max said. “Chopped its head off when it appeared. I just need to figure out where it will appear next.”

  “Why?” Toni asked, turning her head his way. “What are you gonna do?”

  “I’m going to catch it.”

  “What?” Toni exclaimed. “Nigga you crazy.”

  “Look. If I can catch it, then Grace can study it. It might hold the key to the cure, or maybe just some answers we need to survive.”

  “Or maybe it will electrocute yo’ dumb ass,” Toni reminded him. “Or worse.”

  “Maybe,” Max said, just as the scream sounded again.

  This time, the gravel was left furrowed, as if a shovel had been dragged along it briefly. It smoked a bit, and the smell was stronger. Max looked there, and the place it had appeared last time. The smoking gravel seemed to be the center. He could catch it there, he realized. What he did after that was a mystery, but he wasn’t thinking that far ahead.

  He quickly moved to the location, stopping there and turning to look back at Toni. She was motionless, her head cocked in a “don’t you do it” way.

  “Don’t you do it mother fucker,” she said.

  “I have to,” Max said, waiting.

  The scream sounded again, and the flash appeared around six feet from the time before last. The petal, he knew. Next time, she would appear right
here where he was standing. He crouched, bouncing up and down in anticipation. He had no idea what he would actually do. He reasoned that maybe he would simply grab her and hold on.

  It seemed like a logical plan.

  “Here she comes,” Max said, feeling the electrical charge again.

  “Max!” Toni screamed. “Get the fuck outta there!”

  The flash appeared right in front of him. He clenched his eyes shut, reached out, and grabbed hold of the apparition. It felt hot and sparky, but he held on and clenched his jaw tightly.

  Then the world disappeared.

  Chapter Two

  Toni was frozen in horror, her jaw hanging open and her eyes unblinking. Max had disappeared, just vanished from sight, and now she was staring at a smoking dent in the gravel where Max used to be. Now, there was nothing.

  Max was gone.

  “Max,” Toni whispered. “God damn it, Max. Come back you mother fucker.”

  There was a slight flash of light on the trees around her. She flinched for a second, thinking the creature was returning, but she realized it was headlights. She turned and ran around the corner of the store, hoping that the guys had returned. Grace had come outside, and was tying her robe around her waist.

  The RV and pickup truck came into the parking lot, and Toni was relieved to see them. But what would she tell him. Grace looked at her curiously as she stopped and turned to look back.

  “What was that noise?” Grace asked.

  “Um,” Toni stammered. “Uh, Max…”

  Grace stormed toward her, realizing something was wrong. “What?”

  “Max, um…”

  Grace grabbed her by the shoulders. “What the fuck happened to Max?” Grace demanded. “Where is he?”

  Toni shook her head. She was still in shock. She barely heard Dan coming toward her.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, his Blackout in hand.

  Toni turned to look at him. The others were still at the vehicles, beginning their unpacking. She said nothing.

  “Toni,” Dan repeated. “What’s going on? Where’s Max?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Toni said.

  “What happened?”

  “He’s… gone,” Toni said. “He’s just gone.”

  “What the fuck?” Dan said, his brow furrowing. “Where did he go?”