Dead End

By Howard Odentz

Zombie apocalypse? Game over.

Sixteen-year-old twins, Tripp and Trina Light, are rare in the zombie apocalypse. Neither the airborne virus Necropoxy nor the bite from one of the dead will turn them.

No wonder crazy scientists, soldiers in helicopters, and scary doctors want to capture them to see what makes them so special.

But are they special anymore? After freeing their parents and others from experimentation, some of their liberated traveling companions are displaying super immunity, as well. Their former captors just don't know it.

With the key to super immunity in the twin's hands, they face a difficult choice. Should they keep running or confront their pursuers with the cure and hope for the best?

Either choice could get them killed. One wrong move in a world filled with Necropoxy, and they'll hit a DEAD END.

"A dynamic narrative voice."--Kirkus Reviews on What We Kill

"Fast-paced and action packed . . . infused with some great humor."-- Book and Coffee Addict on Dead (A Lot)

"Little Killers A-Z is a must read for fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, and more"--Pop Culture Beast

Author and playwright Howard Odentz is a lifelong resident of the gray area between Western Massachusetts and North Central Connecticut. His love of the region is evident in his writing as he often incorporates the foothills of the Berkshires and the small towns of the Bay and Nutmeg states into his work. In addition to The Dead (A Lot) Series, he has written the horror/suspense novels Bloody Bloody Apple and What We Kill, as well as the horror short story collection Little Killers A to Z, and a couple of horror-themed, musical comedies produced for the stage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BelleBooks
• Release date: Oct 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781611948974

Howard Odentz

Howard Odentz is a life-long resident of Western Massachusetts, where he divides his time between writing and tending a small farm. His love of animals, along with the lore of the region, often finds its way into his stories. The supernatural plays a major role in Mr. Odentz's writing. He is endlessly fascinated by the psychological aspects of those who are thrown into otherworldly circumstances. In addition to Dead (A Lot), his first novel, he has penned two full length musical comedies. "In Good Spirits" is inspired by the real-life ghostly experiences of a community theatre group and their haunted stage. "Piecemeal" tells the backstory of Victor Frankenstein's Hollywood-created protégé, Igor. Visit the author at HowardOdentz.com.

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Praise for Howard Odentz

A fun and witty zombie apocalypse narrative that will bring a smile to your face as you discover (or remember) how the teenage mind operates in times of difficulty. The dialog is clever and the characters are realistic.

—ScaredStiffReviews.com on Dead (A Lot)

Right out of the gate, the plot is fast-paced and action packed (like any good zombie book should be) and infused with some great humor. It’s a fun and entertaining ride and I was sad when it [came] to the end.

—BookandCoffeeAddict.com on Dead (A Lot)

Howard Odentz does an impeccable job writing about this world turned dead.

—BeautysLibrary.com

What a fun little find . . . The book is funny and irreverent with snappy dialogue.

—Goodreads, Chad Harmon on Dead (A Lot)

These 26 bite sized tales of wonderfully wicked children kept me glued to the pages . . .

—Netgalley Top Reviewer Irene Cole on Little Killers A to Z

Howard Odentz has the ability to bring humor to horror.

—Netgalley Top Reviewer Melissa Budgen,

Bodacious Books and Baubleson Wicked Dead

Dead End

by

Howard Odentz

Bell Bridge Books

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

Bell Bridge Books

PO BOX 300921

Memphis, TN 38130

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-897-4

Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-889-9

Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

Copyright © 2018 by Howard Odentz

Published in the United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Cover design: Debra Dixon

Interior design: Hank Smith

Photo/Art credits:

Art (manipulated) © Grandfailure | Dreamstime.com

:Eeds:01:

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to everyone out there, young or old, big or small, black, white, and all colors in between. Whether you are gay, straight, bi, trans, heavy, slight, dark-haired, fair-skinned, deaf, blind, differently-abled, or any other category that I’ve missed, please remem­ber this:

Never think because you are not the norm you are somehow less. You are far more than you could ever imagine.

Poopy Puppy says so.

1

NECROPOXY.

Necropoxy. Necropoxy. Necropoxy.

Here I was huddled in a sleeping bag during the middle of the night in the breakroom of a Walmart in Apple, Massachusetts, and I was seriously not having fun.

The whole messed up notion of Necropoxy kept rolling around in my head making it virtually impossible to sleep.

Necropoxy creates poxers. Poxers are the living dead.

They bite. They bite. They bite.

Of course they bite. Everything bit these days.

In another world where Necropoxy never happened, I wouldn’t be losing precious teen sleep worrying about monsters.

I would be dreaming about happy things, like, I don’t know . . .

Tacos?

If Necropoxy never happened, I would be waking up in another few hours and hitting the snooze button three or four times.

I would be showering and throwing on a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt while my twin sister, Trina, caked makeup all over her face to make herself pretty for her meathead of a boyfriend, Chuck Peterson.

After stopping at her bedroom door to say something snarky like, Why bother? Chuck’s just going to lick it all off, I would be flying down the stairs to grab a glass of orange juice and maybe a couple slices of toast.

Then, before heading off to another fun-filled day of eleventh grade, I would be reminding my parents for the hundredth time that they wouldn’t have to drive us to school if they would just suck it up and buy the two of us a car.

Sure, we’d share.

Not.

Necropoxy. Necropoxy. Necropoxy.

Necropoxy creates poxers. Poxers are the living dead.

They bite. They bite. They bite.

Who was I kidding? This wasn’t another world. We were in this world where Necropoxy did exist.

Chuck Peterson was dead, so he couldn’t lick Trina’s makeup off, and there was no more orange juice because all the orange juice makers were gone. The same goes for toast. There was no more toast because there were no more bakers. Cars, on the other hand, were a dime a dozen.

Hell, they were a penny a dozen or even less than that.

I sighed as my mind drifted to the sporty mid-life-crisis-mobile that Dorcas Duke and I had left by the covered bridge outside of Guilford. The convertible was a really sweet ride. Too bad my favorite octo­genarian with the perpetual cigarette in hand was never going to drive something like that again.

Soldiers killed her back in Hollowton while she was trying to buy time to save the rest of us by blocking the road with a bus in front of Swifty’s.

She wasn’t the first we lost.

Uncle Don turned into a poxer before we got to his farm up in Cummington, and then I had to go and torch him.

Tattoo Guy got chomped by a bus driver.

Eddie with the fake hair was taken out by a Walmart shopper.

I rolled over and looked at the clock radio we had taken from the electronics aisle. It said 3:15.

Seeing that gave me a wicked spooky feeling because anyone who watched as many horror films as I did knew that 3:15 was the exact time when all the bad things liked to come out to play.

It’s true.

If you ever run across a bookstore that’s not filled with poxers, go in search of a book about a place called Amityville. After reading it you’ll get a chill every time you see your clock radio light up with that time.

Creepy creepy, right?

I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but it didn’t work.

To top it all off, the skies opened up, and it started to pour. The rain drummed against the roof of Walmart. I lay quietly in my sleeping bag, totally awake, and thinking about how my friends, my parents, and the other survivors of Site 37 had inadvertently stumbled on Diana’s super immunity cure for Necropoxy.

She didn’t even know we had it or if it worked.

Just for the record, we did have it and it did work.

That’s why my friends and I decided we were going to go in search of the old bat and let her know that she didn’t need to keep coming after us.

We could give her what she wanted.

Then she could leave us alone.

Our plan made sense. Still, something about going on a manhunt for Diana Radcliffe didn’t seem quite right.

No wonder I was wide awake.

About ten minutes later, a figure slipped up to me in the gloom and gently shook my sleeping bag.

Tripp? whispered Trina. Are you up?

No, I grumbled.

Uh huh, she said. I think we’re ready.

I begrudgingly crawled out of my sleeping bag and followed my sister. A short while later, I was standing with Trina’s new boyfriend, Jimmy James, and my . . . um . . . whatever you want to call her . . . um . . . kissing partner, Prianka Patel.

Okay, Jimmy wasn’t standing. He was sitting, because he’s in a wheelchair.

Prianka had just finished a big poster she was working on. This is what it said:

‘Dear Everybody. It’s obvious to us that Diana has perfected super immunity to Necropoxy but is unaware because we stopped her from completing her experiment. We are leaving to find her and tell her she doesn’t need Tripp and Trina anymore. Only then will she stop hunting all of us. We WILL be back.’

I grimaced.

I knew leaving the rest behind—my parents and my aunt, Trudy Aiken, Nedra Stein, Felice ‘Freaky Big Bird’ LeFleur, Randy Stephens and four-year-old Krystal—was the right thing to do. They had been through enough.

Still, it felt wrong.

They’ll be safe, right? I said to nobody in particular.

Yes, nodded Trina, even though she probably didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not.

What about the front doors? I asked.

Jimmy raised a finger. They’ll be locked down tight with bike chains. Then he held up a piece of paper. I have the combinations to the locks right here, he said. We’ll leave them with the poster.

I didn’t want to burst his bubble by telling him that any soldier with a bolt cutter could get through bike chains in no time. The simple truth was there was nothing we could use to barricade the door from people.

At least the adults would be safe from poxers. The last I checked the dead didn’t know how to use a combination lock.

I shook my head a little. Yup, we were really going to do this. After everything we had been through, we were really going to leave everyone chained inside a Walmart and go in search of the very monster we’d been running from.

I didn’t know if we were making the right chess move or not. After all, Diana was the poxer queen. We were only pawns. I hope we weren’t playing the wrong game.

After a moment I slowly turned and mumbled something about grab­bing a Ring Ding. A minute later I was in the front of the store, staring through the huge plate-glass windows at the blackness outside.

The rain came down in sheets.

God, I missed Littleham High School. Life there was easy. Adults told us what to do, what to think, what to learn, and we just did it.

Then we got to go home and eat junk food and play video games.

How did my life devolve into this? In what universe were my friends and I even equipped to make the big decisions?

Trina came up behind me. Hey, she said. "Are you okay?

I took a deep breath. I’m fine. I really wasn’t, but I didn’t want to revisit whatever scary choices we were about to make.

She shrugged then made a beeline for one of the candy racks in front of the registers. She reached down, grabbed a candy bar and peeled it open. I tried not to make a big show of noticing her stuffing chocolate in her mouth, but then again, what else are brothers for?

You think Jimmy’s going to be into you when you weigh six hundred pounds?

Trina finished chewing, swallowed, and ran her hand across her mouth. You think Prianka’s going to be into you after I break your face?

Oh, that’s mature.

Were you looking for mature? she said as she shoved more chocolate into her mouth. I can do mature. Do you want me to be mature?

Trina . . . I began.

What?

Do you think we’re doing the right thing? I mean trying to find Diana?

If that’s what it takes for her to stop coming after us, she said. Do you have a better idea?

Hiding. We could keep hiding.

Hiding won’t work, she said. It’s only been like a couple of days, and her soldier boys already found us at Swifty’s. One wrong move and they’ll find us again.

I knew she was right, but seeking out Diana seemed, I don’t know, like going after the big boss in a video game when you’ve only just passed level one.

I suppose, I murmured. I’m not so sure I was all that convincing.

After a moment, Trina stopped eating and stared at the portion of the candy bar that was left in her hand. I shouldn’t be eating this, she said. I just keep thinking that if I don’t eat all the candy bars now, they’ll go bad.

I chuckled a little. That’s the crappiest excuse for stress eating that I’ve ever heard.

She looked right at me as a little burp crept out of her insides and punctuated the air. Sorry, she said.

Don’t apologize to me. I’ve heard worse noises come out of your body.

I looked out of the windows again. Every once in a while lightning flashed followed by the rumbling of thunder.

The storm didn’t look like it was going to let up any time soon.

Trina came and stood beside me. She stared out into the darkness, too. Then she rubbed her bandaged hands. She almost burned them off in yesterday’s forest fire near Black Point Fort in front of the Quabbin Reservoir. Thankfully, the skin just turned red. Being handless in the zombie apocalypse would be a bad, bad thing. Do you think the rain will put the fire out? she asked.

Maybe.

Trina didn’t say anything else. We both stood quietly watching water spill out of the sky, lost in our thoughts. Trina was probably thinking about Jimmy and what kind of house they were going to live in when this whole poxer-disaster was finally over. I’m assuming it would be one that was accessible for Jimmy’s chair, not that he needed it. He was a beast on wheels. I didn’t think there was anything that could slow him down. As for me, I was thinking that I was missing something crucial.

Suddenly we heard sneakers slapping against the floor. We both turned around to see Ryan ‘Bullseye’ McCormick streak out of the gloom.

Jeez, I said. Doesn’t anybody sleep around here?

Tears streamed down his face.

Bullseye? whispered Trina. Are you okay?

Bullseye ran right up to us. He was punching himself in the side of the head. I’m so stupid, he cried. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Hey, I said and grabbed him by the shoulder.

I’m so stupid, he wailed again. I can’t believe it.

What is it, Bullseye?

His eyes were puffy. All the guns that we took from those soldier dudes, Luke and Cal, back in Purgatory Chasm.

What about them? Trina asked with a shrug. Taking all of the soldiers’ bounty and leaving them stranded at Aunt Ella’s llama farm seemed like decades ago.

Don’t you get it? Bullseye cried. We left the guns in the bus back at Swifty’s. We left them with . . . with dead Dorcas.

2

BULLSEYE, I BEGAN in a measured way, but he cut me off.

Yeah, I know. I know. We don’t shoot people. That doesn’t mean that we can’t point a gun their way and scare the crap out of them.

He wasn’t wrong. We could do that. After all, we all had our fair share of guns pointed at us in the past couple of weeks, and whoever did the pointing did scare the crap out of us.

However, the thought of seeing Dorcas Duke’s bullet-ridden body back in the school bus was super depressing.

I so didn’t want any part of that.

We have to go back, he pleaded.

All I did was let my gaze fall to the floor.

Trina finally spoke. Fine, she said. We’ll get the guns before we go find Diana.

Bullseye let out a huge sigh of relief.

Fine, I repeated, and that was all.

By four in the morning we had all gathered supplies, taped Prianka’s poster across from the door to the Walmart breakroom, and hung Jimmy’s combination list for the bike locks next to the poster board.

You’d have to be blind to miss both. Part of me was hoping that all the adults would wake up in the morning bleary-eyed, and walk right by our messages, assuming that the rest of us were all hanging out in another part of the store.

Maybe they wouldn’t even notice we were gone for a little bit.

Wishful thinking, I guess.

How we ever managed to get Newfie, Sanjay, Andrew and Poopy Puppy from the breakroom without waking the adults was an absolute miracle. I guess they must have all been wiped. After all, everyone but my dad and Aunt Ella had fought off some sort of Necropoxy cure that made them sick before making them better.

They needed rest. We were kids. We didn’t.

As the rain assaulted the ceiling overhead and lightning lit up the sky, we all slipped out of the front of Walmart.

Then Jimmy reached through the little gap we left between the glass doors and spun the locks on the bicycle chains. He tugged on them a few times.

Good as gold, said Jimmy.

Sanjay, Prianka’s autistic brother, who was probably smarter than all of us put together, said, Gold is Au on the periodic table.

I know that one, I blurted out a little too quickly. The first thing we had to do in Chemistry this year was learn all the abbreviations for the elements.

Sanjay looked at me like I was a well-meaning chimp. If it weren’t for his ability to remember virtually everything he had ever seen on the Internet, or absorb books like a sponge, we would never have made it this far.

He opened his mouth and said, You’re my Boron-Uranium-Dys­prosium.

Say what?

Prianka burst out laughing.

What’s so funny?

She smiled at me. He just called you his B-U-DY using the abbreviations on the Periodic Table.

I guess I was. You’re my Batman Uranus Dipsy Doodle, too, I told Sanjay.

Prianka snorted. Yeah, she said. I’d like to see how you would have done on that Periodic Table quiz.

Meanwhile, Jimmy reached through the gap in the door one last time and fingered the locks on the bicycle chains. They’re good locks, he said. They’ll be fine. Poxers won’t get in.

Sanjay made a grim face and began an epic lecture courtesy of his mega-brain.

Good locks are case-hardened, which mean they have a hard but brittle outer layer that protects a tough, soft, inner core. Savvy thieves know that even good locks are flawed. Nearly any material, including steel, becomes less flexible when it’s very cold. Although it doesn’t lose any tensile strength—defined as how much force is needed to break it—the loss of flexibility makes it less tough.

Uh huh, said Bullseye flatly.

Sanjay continued. When cooled to negative thirteen degrees Fahr­enheit with canned air spray, which is usually the compressed chemical difluoroethane, even the toughest of locks will become brittle enough to be smashed open with a hammer.

We all just stared at Sanjay. Finally, he blew a gust of air out of his mouth, shook his head, and stepped in front of the doors. Then, facing them, he spread his arms out wide and chanted a spell right out of one of my aunt’s fake witchy books:

"By north and south, by east and west

By earth and fire, rain and wind

Protect this space from all ill will

And those who try to enter in."

Sanjay said the chant three times over, waving his arms in intricate patterns like a modern dancer. When he was through he said, So mote it be.

He turned and glanced at the rest of us, all blank-faced.

Oh, I said. So mote it be.

We all murmured the same thing which meant absolutely nothing to us.

So mote it be, he repeated and then sidled back up against Prianka.

Okay then. I guess if the locks failed because of savvy burglars carrying cans of difluoroethane, the magic hidden in my aunt’s collection would save the day.

Or not.

I feel like such a muggle, murmured Jimmy.

Muggle, squawked Jimmy’s pet crow Andrew as he sat on his shoulder.

Woof, added Newfie, and I guess that was the last word on the subject.

Meanwhile, outside the safety of the store, the rain came down in buckets. We all stood under the huge metal awning, grim-faced. I didn’t want to get soaked, especially because there was a little chill in the air, but we didn’t have a choice.

I was just about to take a deep breath and step out into the rain when my sister said, Wait.

What?

As much as I’d love to see you get drenched, she said, use this. Trina pulled open a bag she was carrying, rummaged around inside, and pulled out a pile of compact umbrellas—the kind where you press the button on the handle and they shoot to full size.

She handed one to each of us, saving a bright pink one for me.

Pretty, I said as I held it up with two fingers as though it smelled. Anyone want to change colors with me?

You’re kidding, right? said Jimmy.

I sort of didn’t want to say it because I was trying to be good, but the Tripp Light that lived inside my head opened his mouth before I had a chance to stop him.

Come on, I heard myself say. Pink is for girls. As soon as I heard the words aloud I knew I sounded like a major tool.

Despite the rain, I think you could have probably heard a pin drop.

Finally, my sexist blunder was punctuated by another lesson from Sanjay, the boy wonder. He held Poopy Puppy against his ear with one finger up in the air, urging me to shut up and wait because the stuffed dog had something important to say.

After a moment he pulled Poopy Puppy from his side of his head and said, No, it’s not.

I blinked a couple of times. Say what?

According to an article published in the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1918, pink is the generally accepted color for boys and blue for girls. Pink was considered to be a stronger color, while blue suggested a more delicate and dainty sensibility. In 1927, many of the major department stores like Filenes and Marshall Fields urged parents to dress their boys in pink. The styles did not change to a more unisex color code until much later in the century. Poopy Puppy says so.

I closed my eyes and turned to Prianka. Since when did he get to be such a chatterbox?

Prianka smiled. He’s comfortable with you, she said. Go with it. Then she