ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) Read online

  Drawl:

  Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

  Duncan’s Story

  By

  Shawn Chesser

  KINDLE EDITION

  ***

  Drawl:

  Surviving the Zombie

  Apocalypse

  Duncan’s Story

  Copyright 2016

  Shawn Chesser

  KINDLE Edition

  KINDLE Edition, License

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go and buy your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.

  Shawn Chesser Facebook Author Page

  Shawn Chesser on Twitter

  ShawnChesser.Com

  ***

  Acknowledgements

  For Maureen, Raven, and Caden ... I couldn’t have done this without all of your support. Thanks to all of our military, LE and first responders for your service. To the people in the U.K. and elsewhere around the world who have been in touch, thanks for reading! Lieutenant Colonel Michael Offe, thanks for your service as well as your friendship. Shannon Walters, my top Eagle Eye, thank you! Larry Eckels, thank you for helping me with some of the military technical stuff. Any missing facts or errors are solely my fault. Beta readers, you rock, and you know who you are. Thanks George Romero for introducing me to zombies. Steve H., thanks for listening. All of my friends and fellows at S@N and Monday Steps On Steele, thanks as well. Lastly, thanks to Bill W. and Dr. Bob … you helped make this possible. I am going to sign up for another 24.

  Special thanks to John O’Brien, Mark Tufo, Joe McKinney, Craig DiLouie, Armand Rosamilia, Heath Stallcup, James Cook, Saul Tanpepper, Eric A. Shelman, and David P. Forsyth. I truly appreciate your continued friendship and always invaluable advice. Thanks to Jason Swarr and Straight 8 Custom Photography for the awesome cover. Once again, extra special thanks to Monique Happy for her work editing “Drawl.” Mo, as always, you came through like a champ! Working with you has been a dream come true and nothing but a pleasure. If I have accidentally left anyone out ... I am truly sorry.

  ***

  Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services

  www.moniquehappy.com

  Prologue

  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 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Prologue

  The man was dead or dying. There was no denying that. Ollie pried open one of the man’s lids expecting to see a pupil contract, but saw no change in the black pinpoints. Next, he tried and failed to find a pulse on the man’s wrist or neck—the only two places he knew to check for the telltale fluttering just under the skin.

  Two long years spent living on the streets had exposed the teenager to quite a few dead bodies. He had witnessed a lady wearing earbuds and, oblivious to her surroundings, step out in front of a lumbering MAX train and die kicking and screaming as she was slowly ground to a pulp under its tonnage.

  Dead body number two was a grizzled old wino who was quick to buy for the minor street kids: cheap, fortified wine, forty-ounce bottles of beer, or, on special occasion, hard liquor from the local package store. That man, whose name Ollie couldn’t remember, had passed out drunk in the cold and never came to in the morning. When Ollie had stumbled upon his corpse in the bushes behind the 7-Eleven, the waxy slackened face poking out from the ratty sleeping bag looked nothing like that of the Asian tourist at his feet.

  Fresh was what first came to mind when he had opened the stall door and saw the syringe sticking out of the man’s arm. Face still draining of color and lips drawn back into a thin blue line, the man in the track suit hadn’t been killing himself slowly with a bottle for decades as the wino had been. No, this one looked fit, was cleanly shaven and, judging from the recent short buzz cut, had had no intention of dying today.

  A flood of adrenaline blasted Ollie’s body. His senses suddenly heightened, the underlying odor of bleach hit his nose. And though the subterranean restroom was under who knew how many tons of red brick and cement and separated by one ninety-degree bend and fifty feet of tiled walkway, the noises of the crowd assembling outside in the Pioneer Courthouse Square was suddenly clear to him. The steady beating of drums and low murmur of expectant voices echoed faintly off the subway tiles.

  Ollie knew he had to act quickly. He had no intention of having the high-school-aged volunteer at the information desk call an ambulance. Nor was he putting his face anywhere near this guy’s to provide CPR as he would if he were a member of the Family—the tight-knit band of street kids Ollie was allegiant to.

  Being an opportunist, a trait necessary for survival on the street, Ollie couldn’t let this one go to waste.

  While casting furtive glances at the open door, he rifled through the deep front pockets of the man’s navy blue sweat suit.

  Nothing.

  With the stall door trying to close on him, he shifted the body on the toilet and snaked a hand under the man’s loose-fitting tee shirt and into his back pocket, brushing his forearm against clammy cool skin in the process.

  Shit. The man had no money clip and no wallet. Thus there were no room service chits or restaurant receipts pointing to which hotel he was staying in, which was moot because without an electronic pass key there would be no hotel room ripe for the plucking.

  Shuddering from the brush with death and perhaps just a hint of his own dope sickness, Ollie rose and was again hit by the closing door. In a fit of rage he threw an elbow, causing it to bang against the stall wall and deposit a light windbreaker onto the tiled floor.

  A half-smile creased Ollie’s face as he snatched up the black item and tore through the pockets.

  Coming out with a short glass vial containing a viscous amber liquid, his smile went ear-to-ear as he turned it over in his hand.

  “Thanks, bro.” Whistling a happy tune, Ollie made his way to the open door where he peeked around the corner and, seeing the Information Desk vacant, hustled to the left-hand bend and then strolled nonchalantly down the fifty-foot-long walkway that took him outside.

  Standing next to the Information Desk girl and flanked by bubbling fountains, Ollie waved to get the attention of the five other Family members he had come to the Square with.

  No words
were exchanged as the leather-clad young men filed past the awestruck teenager who had temporarily abandoned her post. As the rally spooled up outside the open glass doors, the drumbeats grew louder and mixed with the heavy clomp of combat boots echoing in the enclosed space.

  Once his five brethren were inside the vacant men’s room, Ollie withdrew a handful of slender items wrapped in plastic and passed them around. Given out freely by Central Portland Concern to combat HIV, the sterile syringes were almost as important to surviving on the streets as what Ollie had done upon finding the corpse a handful of minutes ago.

  With the sound of crinkling wrappers filling the small space, he took the prize from his pocket and handed it to Mikey, the oldest and de facto leader of their little band.

  “What’s this?”

  “Morphine,” Ollie replied confidently. He opened the stall and showed the others where he had gotten it. “Must be potent. Chinaman couldn’t handle it.”

  “Must not be used to made in America dope where he comes from,” said a slender redheaded kid.

  Laughter echoed off the walls as Mikey tilted the bottle upside down and drew some of the liquid into the syringe.

  “Save some for me,” another kid joked.

  Mikey said nothing. He found a vein in the crook of his arm and, in a move practiced successfully many hundreds of times over, pushed the plunger in and felt the immediate burn. Eyes rolling into the back of his head, he passed the bottle to his second in command.

  ***

  Five minutes after Mikey fixed up it was Ollie’s turn. He examined the remaining quarter-inch of liquid he thought to be morphine. Stuck the needle through the rubber stopper and drew it down to the last cloudy drop.

  As he was self-medicating he cast his gaze around and saw his five partners in crime. All were sitting on the cold floor, backs against the wall and wearing blissful looks on their faces.

  Once the plunger hit the stop and the burn had commenced, the fourteen-year-old runaway from Atlanta, Georgia let the bottle and syringe slip from his grip. The last thing Ollie Dalton remembered before slipping into unconsciousness was turning his head listlessly and witnessing the Chinese tourist’s blue sneakers inexplicably begin to twitch.

  Chapter 1

  One Hour Later

  The squeal of tires against polished cement filtered up from below. Charlie Hammond lifted his gaze from the crossword puzzle he’d been working on and just like that the shiny white Mercedes was back and lurching to a halt, the driver’s side window motoring down with a mechanical whirr that echoed about the tomb-like garage.

  In the twenty minutes since the lady driving had wheeled off of Fifth Avenue and ground her car to a similar impatient pause on the opposite side of Charlie’s booth to get the ticket currently cutting the air inches from his face, she had seemingly aged a decade.

  Initially taut and bronzed from Portland’s summer sun, her face was now slack and waxy and threw off a gray tint that was in no way attributable to the softly flickering light cast off the pair of failing overhead fluorescents.

  Charlie knew the woman as a big-time reporter for a local left-leaning television news station. However, since he liked his news Fair and Balanced, he really didn’t give a rip about her lofty position. In fact, the only reason he was on a first name basis with the petite brunette were the vanity plates affixed to her luxury ride.

  In her early-forties, Gloria had obviously benefitted—both above the neck, and below—from her ongoing relationship with one of Portland’s top plastic surgeons, who also happened to be a regular fixture in the swanky Portland City Grill restaurant situated on the thirtieth floor of the Unico building towering five hundred and thirty-five feet above the subterranean parking garage.

  Clearly affected by some recent event, Gloria was shaking mightily, the tremors causing everything to jiggle from her waist on up—the parking chit included. Charlie couldn’t help but get an eyeful of cleavage as he gazed down on her from his elevated perch in the four-by-four cell he’d been shoehorned inside of for the better part of ten hours. With these kind of perks, he thought, suppressing a smile, who needs a 401(k)?

  “Morning, Gloria,” he said, hiding his crooked teeth behind pursed lips. “Just getting a quick bite today? A little in-and-out?”

  “Something like that,” she said gruffly, her voice wavering and a little hoarse.

  As Charlie shifted his eyes from her placid face to the parking slip vibrating wildly like an autumn leaf in her dainty left hand, he caught a whiff of her perfume and, riding her breath beneath its heady floral scent, the peaty odor of aged single malt Scotch. A little early to tie one on, crossed the parking attendant’s mind as he noticed her eyes sweep forward and lock onto the rectangle of daylight dead ahead. He followed her gaze up the shallow ramp to street level and saw clomping boots and flashes of black leather and spikes as a clutch of Portland street youth hustled by with a pair of squat and surly looking dogs in tow.

  Charlie took the ticket and flipped it over with a twist of the wrist. Seeing the restaurant’s validation stamp, he fed the chit into a slot on the cash register and hit a sequence of keys. A second elapsed then the register sputtered and spit out a length of thermal paper. When he turned back to hand the still-warm slip over to the newslady, his eyes walked the black shoulder-belt splitting the obviously paid for pair of breasts like one-half of a Zapata-style bandolier. Her ample bosom was now heaving up and down like a blacksmith’s bellows. Unable to resist the impulse, he lifted off his seat an inch to get a better viewing angle.

  Craning up and snatching at the receipt, Gloria barked, “Finished?”

  Flashing his coffee-stained picket of teeth at the woman, Charlie released his grip. “Have a nice rest of your day,” he said, and then punched the button that started the waist-high barrier arm on its upward swing.

  The window motored up and, as the car pulled forward, Gloria’s head swiveled forward, affording Charlie a split-second glimpse at the nape of her neck where a pair of inch-long gashes climbed vertically from her collar to her hairline. Two rivulets of blood, already drying, had leeched from the wounds and into her shirt collar, which sported a brilliant crimson silver-dollar-sized stain she had to be aware of.

  “Have a nice day, Gloria. By the way … you’ve got red on ya,” he called after the retreating Mercedes, the last line having been gleaned from an absurd horror comedy a previous girlfriend had forced him to sit through. At least that had been in a theater that served strong drinks. God, how he wanted one now. Needed was more like it. With a palsy rivaling the reporter’s, he extracted a small silver flask. The smooth cool metal was reassuring in his hand. Like it belonged there. He unscrewed the cap and took a quick pull as he watched the white sedan crest the ramp.

  There was a sharp horn blast and the kids passing by on the sidewalk hurled obscenities at the eighty-thousand-dollar car as it sent them diving out of the way. In response to the voiced threats, the engine roared and tires chirped on the red bricks as the Benz turned right before swerving dangerously across all three lanes of the busy transit mall.

  “Four letter word for self-centered bitch. Starts with C and ends with T,” muttered Charlie as he reburied his face in the New York Times crossword puzzle.

  ***

  One completed word block later, Charlie checked his watch. Upon seeing that his sentence was about to be commuted by the big and little hand’s impending rendezvous at the twelve o’clock position, he stowed the square of newsprint in a pocket, stuck the No. 9 pencil behind his ear, and plucked Gloria’s validated ticket off the blotter. Hands a little steadier now that the belt of booze had worked its way into his empty stomach, he turned the ticket over and punched the register’s No Sale key. There was a ding and rattle of silver as the till sprang out and hit the stops just short of his ample gut. He flipped up the spring-loaded arm and turned the ticket over. About to place it under the neatly faced twenties, he noticed a dried smudge of blood on it.

  You’ve got red on
ya, indeed.

  Instantly edging the woman and her luxury problems from his mind, he shut the cash drawer, plucked the handset off the company phone and, starting with 9 to get an outside line, punched out an eleven-digit number.

  Chapter 2

  As if caught in some kind of tractor beam, Duncan Winters’s pick-up seemingly steered itself from Woodstock Boulevard and into Mickey Finn’s nearly deserted parking lot. Shaking his head at his lack of the power known as will, he angled the big Dodge dually between the yellow lines, mostly, and rattled the transmission into Park.

  Hovering behind the plate glass a yard from the rig’s oversize bumper and casting reflections on the flat of its hood were a half-dozen colorful neon signs advertising liquor and some of the microbeers Portland had become famous for. And as the V8 thrummed away and tepidly conditioned air blasted from the vents, he continued to stare at the beckoning signage. If he was a doctor, a cold beer would be just what he’d prescribe a fella such as him on a hot day in late July. But he wasn’t a doctor. That manicured class didn’t drive twenty-year-old American iron with balding tires and a wheezy A/C condenser. Nope, they drove bloated chrome- and leather-laden luxury SUVs—Denalis, Escalades, and Range Rovers—and not one of those makes would dare be seen venturing up from Eastmoreland or Reed College and ending up in the lot of a workingman’s bar like Mickey Finn’s.

  Duncan’s school was of the hard knocks variety … a pair of tours in Vietnam at the tail end of the war courtesy of the United States Army—no doubt hugely unpopular with the tenured professors teaching at the liberal arts college a stone’s throw west of his favorite watering hole.

  At the moment, however, none of that mattered because he was just one out-of-work fella among many and tired of listening to the hollow promises spewing out of the sides of the necks of the powers that be in D.C. The drivel regurgitated by those thousand-dollar-suit-wearing stuffed-shirt morons on both sides of the aisle had been going on a dozen years now, at least, and—short of something drastic happening in the swamp that was D.C.—showed no promise of ever improving.