Dead Pursuit - Full book

Author: Ethan Cole

Chapter 1

Surprise Interrogation

The zombie stood not twenty meters away from Idaho.

Like gunslingers from the old Wild West they stared at each other, neither one daring to make a move in case it provoked lethal action from the other. They simply stood in the mild wind, watching and waiting, studying their opposition for several, long seconds. One was alert and posed for action. The other was driven by an ancient instinct that had overtaken all its sense of morality.

Except for their equally dishevelled figures the road was deserted.

Once upon a time it had been a bustling high street where every daywithout fail, come wind, rain or snow, shoppers had trampled the sidewalks to visit the wide array of shops selling everything from electrical goods to clothing. Now the town centre lay in ruin. Looted and vandalized several years ago. Not a single window remained intact. Broken glass littered the insides of the shops in chunky fragments or outside where a long time ago the hordes had trampled it into a fine powder.

Idaho stared at the figure standing opposite him – opposing him – with a mixture of wonderment and repulsion. He spat. Within seconds he had determined the man was definitely no longer human. His yellowed, leathery skin was the biggest give away. As the weeks went by it was getting increasingly easier to tell them apart. In the beginning they had looked similar to the uninfected, their hair and clothes neatly pressed and combed, teeth clean and white; the only difference appearance wise being the slack look of confusion they wore on their pallid faces and displayed in their milky eyes. A small majority had been ravished by injury, their wounds revealing their true nature obvious, and some even wore the tattered remains of examination gowns or once fashionable garments from the earlier days, during the beginning when the world was in its stage of disbelieve and denial – when the doctors had still been baffled by the strange phenomenon facing them. No one could believe that what they had seen portrayed in the movies and novels of the past – a fable mankind had thought up! – had become a reality. Literally hundreds of thousands of uninfected – from all corners of the world – chose to ignore the threat and in the first week of what was the last world war, their instincts served them wrong and they joined the swelling ranks of the undead. It acted as a major blow to the army of humanity as so many of what could have become soldiers or volunteers transformed against their will into the enemy. The fight back was ultimately lost because of this first week. It was know to the world no matter what the language as Z-Day.

As the weeks had trickled by the zombies had grown into dishevelment rapidly. Not caring or being able to maintain their appearance they had stumbled further and further down the evolutionary ladder, becoming easier to tell apart from the human survivors who amidst the fighting and the plunge into war – desperately trying to keep a foothold in their towns and cities – tried their best to keep up with their presentation despite the world spiralling towards Armageddon. This came from an instinct left over from the vanity driven modern world. Lipsticks and hair gel. Cosmetics and aftershaves. Now all rendered utterly useless yet there were many survivors who still searched for stockpiles of narcissistic propelling goods so they could make themselves up like in the old days. At least this was what most people believed it to be. In reality it was a cry for the world of yesterday, the ironic aspect being that both species had the same impulses and desires. Zombies too felt the craving to stand in front of a mirror for hours on end. The only difference was they never knew why.

Idaho took a step forward.

So did the creature. It performed more of a stagger than a walk but it knew where it was heading. Its shuffling feet were guided by desire. Warm meat. Warm liquid. It could sense it. It could smell the flesh and blood in Idaho’s body and the hungry impulse inside it came alive. It needed to eat. That’s what it used to do. That’s what it would do now. It didn’t know why it wanted to, but it did. It had to. Such a long time since it had last tasted meat and it had left it unsatisfied. It was always unsatisfied. Maybe this man could quench its appetite and thirst.

The sky above the two figures was dark despite it being midday. But not as dark as its teeth, Idaho thought advancing. The zombie had stumbled forward with all the grace of a child taking its first few steps. It had lust in its eyes. Idaho knew what it wanted. It wanted him, or more importantly, it wanted his flesh. His blood. The creature was controlled by its primary instincts now; instincts that had been handed down through centuries of evolution by its biological parents and their parents before them. Man’s first need above everything was to eat and drink. Back in the beginning, in the midst of the Great Confusion, it hadn’t taken the experts long to realise this was what drove them. Any comic book, video game or film from the twenty first century could have revealed the answer but it needed to be proven and after many tests, proven it was.

The zombie let out a low moan. Uneducated survivors would interpret this as a cry of battle but Idaho knew what the groan really meant. It was the creature’s way of saying, “At last! I will eat again!”

He had no intention of letting the zombie take him as food. The normal way of dealing with a creature such as the one that stood before him was to dispatch it quickly and quietly. If a loud enough noise was made, others in the area would investigate out of instinctual curiosity. Attacking one zombie was one thing; taking on a thousand meant joining their ranks.

Idaho had a few tried and tested methods of putting a zombie to rest, as to call it killing was moronic. You couldn’t kill what was already dead. He carried two weapons and enough ammunition to keep them fed.

The first method was the silenced 9mm pistol he carried in a hip holster. He had found the 9mm in a gun store during the Great Confusion that was being ransacked by gun-toting hillbillies and he had fought to escape the shop alive with it. The silencer he had found later. It made the perfect weapon for putting down the dead with minimum fuss and noise but maximum effectiveness. His first experiences with the gun had been disastrous to say the least but the sudden surge in the zombie population had forced him to learn fast. Now, many months after first Z-Day, the Great Confusion and finally the inevitable war, Idaho could dispatch an infected with two or three shots. He had never killed one with a single shot like he remembered seeing in the movies and video games but he lived in hope that one day he would make the shot, if nothing else but to provide some form of entertainment for himself.

The second weapon was the pristine samurai katana he kept slung over his back in its tight scabbard. Its value was priceless or it had been back when the world was governed by money. It had been given to him as a reward by a grateful Japanese father whose daughter Idaho had saved from an attack by the hordes. He had guessed its worth and tried to decline its passing to him but then he had seen the offence of his refusal reflected in the old man’s eyes and reluctantly he accepted the great gift. Again it was a perfect tool for silent and effective kills. He kept the blade clean and always sharp and the old man was always in his thoughts.

Now as the zombie came towards him he fingered the handle of the blade. For the first time all day he had finally found one that was alone. And that was very important indeed. This one he wouldn’t dispatch or run away from. He needed it to be alive. He needed its help. Idaho drew the katana and aimed its blade at the ground. The dirt on his face looked like purposely applied war paint. Keeping on his collision course with the zombie, he stepped over the debris in the road without even looking, his eyes concentrating on the creature. It shambled forwards, jutting and quivering from what it thought was hunger. Its eagerness would be its downfall. It neither feared nor recognized the sword. Therefore it never reacted when Idaho swung it at its legs.

With a sickening sound as metal came into direct contact with rotting flesh and bone, the katana carved straight through one shin and stuck into the other leg. Idaho quickly retrieved the blade and hacked again with pure ferocity at the severed limb. The creature fell to the dusty ground in a hail of its own blackish blood and attempted to claw towards Idaho’s leg but he punched it in the head with a gloved fist and dragged it by its pale, scarred hands away from the street and into a long ago abandoned bakery that was both dark and deserted. He knew what he was about to attempt had practically no chance of working but he was desperate.

‘You realise you stink, don’t you?’ said Idaho throwing the zombie to the floor. Its milky eyes had transformed into blood red orbs and they stared up at him before it again clawed towards the source of flesh and blood.

‘Lost your legs and still want me, huh?’ Idaho quipped. There was an underline of revulsion in his voice. ‘Tough luck, pal. First we need to play a little game.’

The zombie continued to crawl.

In a flash, Idaho rammed his katana straight down through the zombie’s lower back and into the wooden floor, pinning the helpless creature to the ground where it writhed like a worm on a hook.

This is crazy! It won’t talk! But he had to try. ‘Where’s the girl!’ he shouted, spitting into the zombie’s yellow, decaying face. ‘Where’s your buddy taking her?’ The zombie’s blackened fingers touched the leg of his jeans. ‘Answer me you fucking scum!’ He pulled back his booted foot and viciously kicked the zombie in the head. Its face caved with the impact but it never noticed. ‘Where are they going? Why did he take her? What does he want with her?’ Again he lashed out at the zombie. ‘Answer me! Answer me!’ Idaho grabbed the flailing arms from the back and snapped them like twigs. They hung lifelessly and dropped to the floor, still twitching but ultimately useless as the creature tried to move them, not understanding the consequence of its attacker’s actions.

For the next few minutes, Idaho punched and kicked the zombie under a mist of temporary insanity. He had been driven to madness by recent events and wasn’t thinking clearly. It was now just a release for his anger. All his rage and frustration came out in a torrid of kicks and punches as he beat and whipped the living corpse for minutes on end; never flinching at the wounds he created or the blood he spilt as the red fog of fury consumed him. He shouted at it, demanded answers from it that never came until finally he was exhausted and broken. The zombie would not talk. It would not tell. It simply and physically couldn’t. It was just like the rest of them. He had hoped in his heart of hearts it would be different like the other one, the clever one, but he was wrong.

Idaho slumped to the floor, sweat dripping from his ragged hair and revealing clear patches in the dirt as it made the journey down his face. He caught his breath. Lack of food had worn him down quickly. He had no more energy to torture the zombie and besides, it was clear now it was a meaningless undertaking.

‘Your comrade – or whatever the hell you call each other,’ he said in between ragged breaths, ‘took my girl.’ He opened an old battered wallet and took out a grubby instant photograph. ‘Look!’ he said thrusting the picture into the zombie’s face. ‘My fiancée! One of your fucking kind fucking took her! That’s not how it works! You don’t take! You don’t abduct! You kill! You eat! You destroy!’

The zombie showed no sign of change in its behaviour. It still wanted his flesh. His warm, juicy flesh.

Idaho stood and placed the photo back in his wallet and into his pocket. He brushed back his now wet hair and pulled the katana from the zombie’s back.

‘One of you took my girl. It attacked me, left me for dead and rather than kill her took her against her will. Why? I can’t even begin to comprehend. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m less than a day behind them. Your friend is taking her somewhere and I’ll follow. I’ll never give up. I’ll hunt him to the ends of the earth and when I find him, I’ll dispose of him in the most imaginative and painful way I can and when I’m done, I’ll make it my mission in life to rid the world of every, single one of you.’

Idaho raised the sword, catching his reflection in the blade. He looked tired and gaunt. A haunted image of his former self. His eyes were like two great moon pools. As if to rid himself of the image, he brought down the blade fast and split the zombie’s head in two.