Dawnland (Book 2): Hella Kills Read online

  HELLA

  KILLS

  By Karen Carr

  Text Copyright © Karen Carr 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  I dedicate this book to

  my amazing husband and

  wonderful children.

  My life would be

  dull and boring

  without you.

  Table of Contents

  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 1

  April 10th

  US Route 15/501

  In North Carolina

  Travelling by Helicopter

  The helicopter’s blades swished overhead as we travelled farther and farther away from Haverlyn Village. We deserted the others, both friends and enemies, and the community that I had built. The survivors were surely going to die, or worse turn undead, after the hundreds of zombies making their way to the village descended upon them.

  It seemed like only minutes since we left, but suddenly the town of Pittsboro came into view. Pittsboro was where quaint antique shops and historic churches met with music festivals and art fairs. The only remnants of the creative forces driving the town were tents left up from a festival and hula-hoops littering the ground.

  Pittsboro flashed by like a dream as the Professor continued on his flight down the 15/501. Feral farm fields were laid to rest with nobody there to till them. Long grasses blew in the wind of the helicopter, revealing zeroes lurking about in their midst. Clusters of farm houses and dead subdivisions passed under the helicopter’s shadow.

  I waited and watched for someone to come running out, to signal us that they were alive. But they didn’t come. Sometimes a figure would stagger out of a home. My gut would wrench thinking they were human and only injured—a sprained ankle from tripping over the threshold. When they looked up their sunburnt faces and outstretched arms revealed their true identity, the one of the carnivorous monster. The beasts would salute the helicopter with hungry and grasping arms, not knowing we were too far away to reach.

  The Professor was barely visible in the glass-encased cockpit of the Hind. He flew the helicopter well enough, even though his shoulders were trembling like sound waves. The rest of us, Huck, Zeke, Zora and Stan, stood hanging onto one of the four windows in the body of the Hind watching death pass below in a sick and never ending stream.

  No one spoke, the noise of the engine and blades making it too hard to hear. The noise kept getting louder and louder. I didn’t know if the sound was for real or if it was in my head. The noise brought to life Trevan and Lily and those we had left behind to die. Their faces flashed through my vision as the vibrations from the helicopter sent pulses of blood rushing to my brain.

  We had to go back. I pushed out from under Huck’s arms and slipped in between Zeke and the back of the Professor’s chair in the cockpit.

  “Professor, we have to find the monster truck,” I said.

  The Professor noticed me and grinned, but didn’t register my words. How could he hear them over the rumble of the Hind?

  “Turn around,” I yelled. “Turn around.” I did a whirligig motion with my fingers in front of his face and then pointed back toward the village.

  We were heading straight down the 15/501 to Sanford, a town of over twenty five thousand.

  “Turn around,” I shouted again.

  The Professor’s hands were clenched around the control stick. In the distance, hundreds of zeroes were making their trek down the road. Seconds later we were flying over the massive pack. They collided and parted in a random rambling procession north. Their clothes were stained and torn from their new life outside, but the fabric had maintained its color with vivid red and bright blue shirts mixed in with earthy yellows and greens.

  Zeke grabbed my shoulders and pushed me aside.

  “Hover,” Zeke shouted in the Professor’s ear. “We have to kill all those flesh dolls down there.” He motioned down with his thumb.

  The Professor looked at Zeke like he was crazy and started to bring the Hind lower to the ground like he was going to land it.

  “No!” I tried to push past Zeke, but his bulking frame was blocking my way. “We have to get back to Haverlyn Village.” I tried a different angle and managed to fit under Zeke’s arm and slid into the cockpit to face the Professor. We were now dangerously close to the zombie horde below.

  “Up,” I shouted and gestured frantically to the sky.

  The Professor wasn’t getting it. He was in some kind of zone, on automatic pilot, and headed the Hind straight down. My breath burst in and out of my lungs in an adrenaline fueled oxygen run. We were only a few feet from the tips of the zeroes’ reaching fingers. He was going to land right on top of them.

  “Sanford,” Zora shouted.

  The town of Sanford was now visible on the skyline. Finally, the Professor made a slow arc and turned the Helicopter back toward Haverlyn Village, but he still had not lifted it higher.

  The zeroes gargle-moaned in chorus over the roar of the engine and the swish of the blades. They were hungry for a mid-afternoon snack and we were the snack. We must have attracted every zombie within a mile because the horde was as thick and as crazed as I had ever seen. The Professor lowered the Hind right into the middle of them.

  “Pull up,” I shouted again, grasping my chest to stabilize my heart.

  The Professor shrugged his shoulders and grasped the controls like he was unable to make the Hind rise. I twisted farther into the cockpit and pressed my back against the glass dome. I reached forward and grasped his hands to help him pull the Hind up. The Professor and I struggled with the gears, making the copter veer to the side.

  Zora screamed and braced herself as Huck pushed forward trying to get to the cockpit, but it was Zeke who grasped my hands on top of the Professor and helped us straighten it out.

  “There are too many,” Zeke said in my ear, his calm tone helping me stabilize my breath. “Let’s kill the suckers with your virus.”

  I pressed my face against the glass bowl of the Hind’s cockpit. We were still high enough for me to see far down the road. Mutant undead corpses dragged ever nearer the Hind. Below us, the pack of zeroes thickened into a pile.

  Unsteady on their feet, they knocked each other down and then climbed on top of the ones below. It wasn’t like they were going to suffocate in some kind of horrific mob accident like you would find in a concert. They wouldn’t suffocate because they didn’t need air to survive. They didn’t need anything except flesh, and they probably didn’t even need that. They seemed to be able to live forever.

  Suddenly the Hind slid sharply to the right and my body flew against the other side of the glass dome. The helicopter blades were low enough for the tips to slide through a couple of zeroes, spraying meat everywhere like some kind of giant outdoor blender.

  Zeke and the Professor worked the controls of the helicopter, but it was too late. We were going to crash right into the squirming, steaming, mash-up of undead bodies below us.

  “Get down,” Huck shouted. His eyes were over-bright, stunning me with their desperation and
beauty.

  I was plastered against the glass in the cockpit and the helicopter was doing a nose dive right into the mess. I was wedged into such a position that I couldn’t move to safety. The glass would surely shatter and I would be crushed by the force of the landing.

  I didn’t want to die. If I were going out in this world, I wanted to be doing something useful like killing millions of zeroes all at once, their brains exploding like every fireworks display on the fourth of July.

  My sister’s face flashed in my mind as Zeke crammed his large frame against the window and pulled me out of my position. Zeke’s back was now against the window, a barrier between me and the ground. He wouldn’t live if we kept going at our current speed and trajectory. Zeke was going to die for me.

  The helicopter lurched one more time and was again parallel to the ground, but it was too late. The bottom of the Hind skimmed the zeroes’ reaching arms and then crushed their waiting bodies as we crash-landed in the middle of the mayhem.

  The Hind screeched against the pavement as it slid along the road, slicing through countless numbers of zeroes. Their bodies slammed against the Hind with dull thuds and hollow echoes. The sight of the crushed bodies made my stomach clench, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from the moaning undead.

  The force of the zeds against the helicopter slowed it down and we finally came to a stop in a ditch on the side of the road.

  The engine went dead. The only sounds were the gurgling of the zombies, the ticking and crackling of metal adjusting and the drip, drip, drip, of something leaking. We were safe as long as the helicopter didn’t blow up.

  “Hella?” Huck asked.

  “I’m OK,” I said. I became aware that I was sitting in Zeke’s lap and he had his arms around me. Apparently he became very aware too, because he pushed me aside.

  “The glass is cracked,” Zeke said.

  Behind his back, I saw a crack fanning out in all directions. The multitude of zeroes we had crashed into were pinned against the glass encased cockpit and the wall of the ditch. Although they could barely move, they still banged on the glass with enough force to grow the crack swiftly.

  “It’s going to break,” Zeke said, reading my thoughts. “How much longer do we have until that virus kicks in?”

  “Minutes.” I focused on the crack like it was my own my rib cage and the zero wanted eat my heart.

  “They’ll breakthrough in seconds. Out of the cockpit. You’re first, you’ve got me pinned.” Zeke mounted his large hands on either side of my hips and pushed them forward.

  I moved to the Professor, who had passed out, and wrestled with his harness.

  “Go, I’ll get him.” Zeke’s hand touched my thigh.

  “Hella, come on,” Huck said.

  I stared at all of the faces pressed into the glass. They were all human, a mother, a child, a brother, a wife. They were all monsters. Their eyes were haunted with a lustful hunger, but I could see the lost and dying person behind the mask. The largest one, a man wearing a stained gray sweatshirt, punched through the glass just as Huck clasped my hand and pulled me to the body of the Hind.

  “Damn you and your slowness,” Zeke snarled.

  The zero grabbed Zeke’s shoulder and tried to pull him through the glass, not caring that the sharp edges were cutting open its arm. Zeke pulled out a knife and sliced through the Professor’s straps, ignoring the grasping fingers clutching his shirt and tearing the fabric. Finally bothering him too much, Zeke turned and stabbed the zero in the head before returning his attention to the Professor. His body fell on the glass, widening the hole enough for other zeroes to come in.

  “Help me get him out of here.” Zeke lifted the Professor out of the chair and pushed him toward us. The Professor’s eyes opened as Huck took his arm and heaved him to the body of the Hind.

  A woman in a paisley dress crawled over the top of the dead man, and a young boy wearing a bright yellow rain coat blundered over her. Zeke raised an eyebrow and punched his knife into their heads without a second thought. The lifeless body of the boy rested on the woman’s back and she rested on the man’s, making them look like a family.

  My gut wrenched as my mind turned these three zeroes into humans again. Their lives were ended with the same conviction of an executioner chopping off heads of the guilty. Except, these people were only guilty of being sick. I felt the burden of the loss of their life and was furious at Zeke for not feeling the same.

  “Help me close the cockpit door,” Zeke said as he pushed through the cockpit and into the body of the Hind.

  Before Zeke sealed the dead behind the cockpit doors, I reached forward and grabbed a folded up piece of paper sticking out of the boy’s raincoat. More of the dying found their way into the cockpit as I pulled my body out.

  Zeke and Huck shut the cockpit door and slid the latch over it. “You get your souvenir?” Zeke said to me.

  I ignored him and went to the side of the Professor, pushing the paper from the boy deep in my pocket. I would examine it later and alone.

  “Professor?” I touched his cheek and he looked at me. “Where does it hurt?” I pressed my hands all over the Professor’s body. Every time I touched him, his skin twitched.

  “Nowhere,” he finally said, and then pushed my hands away. “Everywhere.”

  “What are we going to do?” Stan asked. His face looked pale in the sunlight streaming through the windows.

  “How long?” Zeke asked in a frustrated tone like I was mentally keeping my virus from working. He glared at me and threw a broken bolt on the ground.

  “Any minute.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Any minute for what?” Stan rubbed his chin and swallowed.

  I hadn’t had the chance to talk to him since we were reunited. I told him all about my virus, about how I had been bitten my neighbor Matt, whom he knew. I told him about the burning pain, about how I had suffered for days alone in Matt’s apartment, until I ran out of food and my walk to the green after that.

  I told him about how I had been confronted by dozens of zeroes, and why I called them zeroes—big fat nothings in my mind. I told them about how their heads exploded when they came near me and how my virus killed them if they came within a thousand feet of me.

  Stan didn’t seem surprised or unbelieving, which amazed me. The old Stan would have lectured me about making stuff up in a condescending tone and then he would have bought me a stuffed animal to make up for his behavior.

  Stan’s gaze moved to a zero peering in the window. Huck and I turned our gaze, and then Zeke, Zora, and the Professor all watched the beasts outside the window, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for it to be over. The seconds ticked by as the zeroes pushed on the glass. All around, in the four windows, zeroes scrutinized us like we were caged delicacies.

  I locked on to the grizzled face of a middle-aged man with pudgy cheeks, a full beard, and half his scalp missing.

  “Huck, his eyes.” I clasped Huck’s hand.

  The man’s eyes were red and puffy and began to swell out of his head. I turned away, not wanting to watch it happen. All around us, loud pops heralded the appearance of my virus. Turning back toward the window, I saw the headless zero wither and collapse. My virus had kicked in.

  CHAPTER 2

  There were no more dead eyes staring at us, only corpses piled against the window.

  “We have to get out of here.” Zora said.

  “We’re going to clean up everyone’s wounds first,” Zeke said. “Huck was shot, I’ve been bitten. The Professor, here, is in shock. Before we leave this helicopter, we all need to be put back together.”

  I found a first aid kit strapped to the wall, brought it down and proceeded to help Huck with his wound. With all the excitement in leaving the village, I had forgotten that Huck had been shot in the shoulder before we left.

  Sergeant Enroy was out there somewhere with his men. They had given up chasing the Hind, but they would still be in the village thinking it was protected by some m
ysterious force. We had been gone a few hours.

  Huck took off his shirt, which was ripped and covered with blood. The bullet had grazed his shoulder, but the damage was only on the surface. I cleaned it up and bandaged it, trying not to press too hard on the wound. He regarded me with a relaxed resolve as I did my best imitation of a nurse. I had saved and read many first aide documents on my computer back at the village, it was distressing to think I might never have access to them again.

  “Here you go, it’s clean enough.” Zora handed me an olive green tee-shirt and I helped Huck put it on.

  “Always finding the fashion,” I teased Zora making us both laugh.

  “The green brings out your eyes,” Zora said to Huck. He winked at her. It was a moment of peace in so many moments of pain. The simple, small moments made me want to continue. The more moments of happiness chained together, the more normal we would feel. We might bring this crazy mixed up world back to some kind of happy life if we cherished the small moments.

  “We have to find the others,” I said. “Boa, Zora’s sister.” I motioned to Zora, who became stoic. “Trevan and Lilly. The Reverend and Shelly Mac. The children, Mike and Harper. They were all heading toward the monster truck. We have to find it. We have to find them before it’s too late.”

  Huck regarded me with an empty stare. He wasn’t going to talk me out of finding and helping my friends. “I know,” Huck said in a flat tone. “I know,” he repeated before turning away from me. He put his hand on Zora’s shoulder. “We’ll find your sister.”

  Zeke took off his shirt and grabbed the first aid kit from me. He had a small tattoo on his chest with Eliza’s name in it. I had never noticed it before, but I had never stared at his chest up close. The bite on his collar bone, the one from Eliza, was scabbed over and healing.

  He had a new bite on his side and another one on his tibia from the earlier fight. I knew he would heal, since he was immune to their bite, but I remembered how much it hurt. When my neighbor, Mark, bit me I suffered for days. It felt like someone shot me full of burning hot lava. But Zeke showed no sign of suffering.