Fire Birds

By Shane Gregory

“Shane Gregory has an engaging writing style that draws you in, comfortably, until you can’t back out of the scary, driving climax.” —Briar Lee Mitchell, author of Apparitions

For weeks, the museum director in the town of Clayfield, Kentucky, has fought the undead, believing that he was Clayfield’s sole survivor. But when odd things begin to happen, it becomes clear that other healthy people are around. A friend shows up unexpectedly, full of trouble and secrets. And they are not alone—another group of survivors brings even more conflict.

Then there’s Bruce, the new guy in Clayfield. Bruce likes the zombie apocalypse just fine. He gets to be the person he could not be before the outbreak. He is in Clayfield looking for fun, but his brand of fun could destroy the town.

Enemies must tolerate each other out of necessity, and friendships are tested. Meanwhile, one person in the group of knows something that the others do not: The rumors are true; something bad is definitely coming to Clayfield, and there may be no way to stop it and nowhere to hide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781618681546

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

It was June 9, late afternoon, and it was hot. There were a dozen human heads at my feet. Flies swarmed them, entering nostrils and open mouths. It puzzled me why they would be there in the road. I didn’t see their bodies nearby. They were baking on the asphalt of James Street on the north side of Clayfield, a residential street with only a few large, older homes with big yards. I pulled my pistol and looked around at the houses, wondering if this odd scene might be bait for an ambush. If it were a trap, then I had fallen for it when I had gotten out of my truck to investigate. These were not the only heads I had come across. I had been finding severed heads for about a week in different parts of town, but this was the most I had seen at one place at one time.

For several weeks, I had accepted the idea that Clayfield belonged to me…and the zombies. I knew of no other healthy person in town. However, these heads were evidence that there was at least one more person around. I couldn’t understand why they cut off the heads or why they would leave them in the street. Even though no one came out of hiding to greet or assault me, I felt like I was being watched. I returned to my truck, backed down the street, turned around in a driveway, and connected with North 7th.

It wasn’t just the heads; there were other things I had found. Four days before, I found a dump truck rammed through the front of the Christian bookstore. It had not been there before. Two days later, I’d noticed that someone had parked five yellow cars and trucks down the center line on East Broadway a block down from the courthouse. Also, the front doors of random houses were open all over town, and I usually tried to close up houses after I’d been in them to keep the zombies and weather out. Someone was out there, and they were careless, maybe a little bored, and maybe crazy.

I was driving my new, gray, Ford F-150 4x4. I’d had my eye on a truck just like this before Canton B had destroyed the world. I couldn’t afford it back then, but now I could have any vehicle I wanted. When I drove it off the lot a couple of weeks before, it only had thirty miles on the odometer.

I was blasting the air conditioning and listening to an audiobook on the stereo–a collection of short stories by Flannery O’Connor. I had trouble concentrating on the book, because I kept thinking about the heads. I drove south over Broadway, and looked east as I crossed the intersection. Those yellow vehicles were still there and seemed to scream at me. When I got to South Street, I took a left, then a right onto South 6th so I could connect with Braggusberg Road and go back to the Lassiter farm where I had been living.

I opened the gate to the long driveway then pulled inside. When I got out to shut it, I wrapped a logging chain around it and the post to hold it in place. I wasn’t too concerned about zombies coming on the property anymore. They hadn’t come inside since I had reinforced the fences. I wasn’t really afraid of them the way I used to be. They were very dangerous, but I’d grown accustomed to dealing with them. I knew what to expect from them. There were fast ones and slow ones, and I could differentiate between the two easily at a glance. Mostly, they were slow. The number of the fast, freshly-turned victims was dwindling, and I hadn’t seen one in weeks.

I parked close to the house and unloaded the luxury items I had collected that day–a bag of really good coffee beans, two boxes of Valentine’s Day chocolates, a Stephen King novel I hadn’t read, and a cardboard box of Playboy Magazine issues spanning from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s. I set everything on the porch then picked up the novel and looked at the photograph of the author on the back cover. I wondered what the Master of Horror would think of this 24/7 horror story I lived. Then I looked down into the box of Playboys and saw Raquel Welch staring at me (disapprovingly, I thought) in her red bathing suit.

Don’t judge me, lady, I said. I grinned and looked around me as if someone had actually heard me say it. I frowned and tossed Stephen in on top of her and carried it all inside.

I really had not needed to go out for supplies that day, but I needed to go out. Ordinarily, I did my supply runs in the morning, but that particular day I had gone out for a drive to enjoy some air conditioning and the stereo after having spent several hours in the garden. I stopped at a couple of houses for the hell of it. One of the houses had a secret room containing a huge pornography stash behind a home office. I found it only because the owner had left the secret door ajar. His (her?) skeletal remains were on the office floor. The bulk of the collection was movies–DVDs, VHS cassettes, and even a few 16 mm film reels. There were also several thumb drives and CDs in a small plastic tote. I had no way to see what was on them, but judging by how the movies, drives, and CDs were labeled, the Playboys I found in the corner were quite tame. I wasn’t sure what would possess a person to devote a special room just to porn, but I’m sure Raquel judged them for it every time they went in there.

Once I got my luxury items inside the house, I locked up, and then ate some beefaroni right out of the can. I had some chocolate, a little bourbon, and I let Raquel judge the hell out of me.

CHAPTER 2

A few days later, on the morning of June 13, I got up right after sunrise. I put on my boots and strapped on my 9mm and my wristwatch. I washed my face in the basin of dirty water on the dresser and looked at myself in the mirror. My hair and beard had grown. My face was scarred and creased and tanned. I was slimmer than I had been before Canton B. I finally had those six-pack abs everyone was raving about before, and I didn’t even have to mail order any special exercise equipment or routines on DVD to get them.

I frowned. I thought I looked old. I was dirty, too. I hadn’t bathed in several days, because I didn’t want to use up my limited clean water supply.

I went downstairs then outside to take a leak off the front porch. I didn’t use the indoor toilet anymore, because I got tired of hauling in buckets of water from the pond to flush it. I had made a composting toilet that I kept on the back porch. It wasn’t much more than a toilet seat and a five-gallon bucket, but it served its purpose.

I cooked myself an egg, some coffee, and a bowl of oatmeal and looked over my to-do list while I ate. The list didn’t change much from day to day, but I still reviewed it every morning. Most days I would spend the first couple of hours weeding the garden. After that I would pick the vegetables that needed picking. At that time it was mostly greens, cucumbers, and squash. Then I would go out and pick whatever wild stuff I could find–berries, greens, etc.

I had built myself a simple, solar food dehydrator using construction plans from one of my magazines. I would set it up each day drying some of the greens, berries, and squash. I found that I could dry the leaves, and then crush them into a powder to be used in soup later on; it was the only way I could preserve them. The sliced squash would dry up sort of like pliable potato chips. They tasted bland, but I didn’t mind. I still had plenty of real, brand name, salty potato chips I could eat.

The drying didn’t always work. A couple of times, the squash hadn’t dried properly and it molded later on. The cucumbers dried too well; they just shriveled up to nothing, and they didn’t taste very good. Of course, drying wasn’t the preferred way to preserve cucumbers. I would need to make pickles. On this particular day, I had added a new task to my list: locate all necessary items for home canning. I would need jars, lids, pots–all of it. I had never canned my own food before, but I’d watched my mom do it. I had a general understanding of the supplies I’d need to find, but I would need to find a book to teach me how and give me the recipes. I decided that day, after setting up the dehydrator, to go out and find the necessary supplies. Then, if I had time, I would drive into Clayfield for a while to look around.

It had been an unseasonably warm and dry June at that point. My rain barrels were empty, and my cistern was getting low. I tried to collect as much bottled water as I could from scavenging so I could use the cistern to water the garden. It had gotten over ninety degrees three times in the past week, and it was still almost two weeks away from the first day of summer. I knew I could expect temperatures that high or higher as I went into July and August.

The year before, I wouldn’t have minded, but the year before I had air conditioning and a refrigerator. The nights were still comfortably cool, but soon they would be warm too. It was going to be difficult to sleep inside, and I wasn’t wild about the idea of sleeping outside, not with zombies walking around. The upper floor of the house didn’t have good airflow, so opening the windows wouldn’t help much, and I didn’t dare leave the windows open on the ground floor. I thought about building a platform on the roof for summer sleeping, but it just seemed like too much work. There had to be a simpler solution, and I would work it out eventually.

Things like that kept my mind occupied, but not enough.

Sara was always there in my head.

I set out around 10 a.m., and it was already getting hot. I kind of liked driving around, because, at least when I was in a vehicle, I could have air conditioning. The zombies seemed to love the heat. They were more active when it was warm. By active, I don’t mean to say that they moved faster, it was just that there seemed to be more of them out. The heat wasn’t kind to them, however. For those that were strong enough to find nourishment on living flesh, their bodies were bloated and soft, often swarming with flies. For those that had not been fortunate enough to feed regularly, their bodies were taut and mummy-like. Regardless of their condition, they just kept hanging on.

I passed a group of them that were in a dry, fenced-in pasture trying to corner a gray horse. The horse was malnourished, but it was still strong and fast enough to elude them, and it had enough space to stay out of their reach. I knew if I didn’t intervene, they would eventually run it to exhaustion. I would go back later to see what I could do when I was finished with my errands.

I had seen canning supplies at different houses, but I was having trouble remembering which. I had been into so many homes looking for supplies the past few months. Sara and I had collected some home canned goods from an old woman’s house on Gala Road. It was the same house where I had found the field guide for edible wild plants. The woman was probably still locked up in her freezer in the basement. I decided to check her house first.

I thought Founder’s Farm and Hardware might have some stuff too. I knew they sold that sort of thing, but when the virus hit Clayfield, it had been in February, and they might not have had that merchandise stocked that time of the year. It wouldn’t hurt to check. I had been over to Founder’s several times looking for other things. It was almost picked clean, but perhaps I just didn’t see something I hadn’t been looking for.

When I got to the old woman’s house, I noticed the front door was standing open. I tried to remember if Sara and I had left it open, but I couldn’t recall; that had been months before. I know we were in a hurry to get out of there, so we could have.

I climbed out, grabbed my 12 gauge, and stood by my pickup for a moment to listen. All I heard were the sounds of late spring–the sounds of late spring without people. I eased the truck door shut, pulled up my mask and went up to the house. Just inside, near the open basement door, was the nearly decomposed body of a woman. I couldn’t remember what the old woman had been wearing, but this woman was wearing a dress, and her hands were bound with an extension cord. The cord made me fairly certain that the body belonged to her. I don’t know who had let her out of the freezer, but whoever it was had removed her head. I didn’t see her head anywhere. I assumed it had rolled down the stairs into the basement, but I wasn’t going down there to look for it.

I did a quick check of the house (except the basement) and didn’t find anyone else there. I found some large stockpots, empty jars, rings, and lids in a walk-in storage closet. There was also a worn copy of Ball Blue Book of Canning and Preserving. I was pretty sure that was everything I would need to start, but if there was anything I lacked, I could just read the book to tell me what.

That was easy enough, I said.

I propped my shotgun up against the wall and started hauling the supplies out to the truck. On my second trip back into the house, I found the old woman’s head. It was down at the base of a shrub next to the front steps. I hadn’t noticed it coming in the first time, and I almost missed it that time because of the tall grass. It was on its left ear, looking out toward the truck. It was still very much alive...or, rather, not dead. It blinked at me. I kept walking and tried not to look at it.

On a whim, I went out to the old woman’s garden plot. Just like everything else, it was overgrown, but I went in anyway and looked around. It was not uncommon for plants to come back from the seeds of the previous year’s produce. I recognized five okra plants. They weren’t very tall, and they had not yet bloomed, but I would come back later in the year to harvest them. There was also a clump of tomato plants growing in one spot. They’d already set some fruit, which at that time were like green marbles. I didn’t see anything else. I suspected I could find something similar happening in other old gardens all over the county.

CHAPTER 3

Early on, during the first few weeks while I was waiting for Sara and the Somervilles to return, I would go on extermination runs and spend a couple of hours driving around killing zombies, but by that day in June, I hadn’t killed one in more than a week. I was tired of killing, and, I feared, I soon might get tired of living. I had no intention of taking my own life…not yet. One argument I always gave myself when that thought came into my head was that I had worked too hard and fought too long to stay alive only to just give up. Still, I was lonely and fatigued. I yearned for rest and for the touch or voice of another human being. I would leave Clayfield and search for survivors elsewhere before I ever took my own life, and even then I doubted if I would have the courage to do it. I was fairly certain that there were survivors still in Riverton, but I hadn’t made the time to drive there.

From the old woman’s house, I drove into downtown Clayfield to have a look. There had been a time when the Somervilles, Sara, and others were around that securing Clayfield seemed like a possible goal. But driving through the town that day, I doubted it could ever have happened. We might have been able to retake a city block or two, but not the whole town, not and hold it, not with our limited numbers. Alone, I didn’t stand a chance. It wasn’t just the undead; nature had to be contended with too. Then there would have been the upkeep of the buildings.

One summer, a few years before, I had been fortunate enough to host a reception for an archeologist at the museum. He was a bit younger than I and not much more than a grad student, but it was kind of a big deal to have a real archeologist visit my small town museum. His focus had been on Pre-Columbian Mexico. He had brought along some artifacts, and he gave a little talk about a dig from which he had just returned. He told us how the Mayan civilization there had once been quite large, but that something had happened–he presented a few theories–and whatever it was that had happened had greatly diminished the population. He said that over time, the forest retook the cities. The people were forced ever inward, tending smaller and smaller areas, and taking parts from older buildings to maintain their shrinking communities. There just weren’t enough of them around for the upkeep.

That’s what I envisioned happening to Clayfield. Eventually, seeds would find their way into the cracks of the asphalt. Acorns would sprout into oaks. Eventually, roots and vines would force concrete and bricks apart. It wouldn’t happen this year, but it would happen, and there would be nothing I could do about it by myself. I would have to decide where my place would be, dig in there, and hold it. Everything else would disappear into forest. I wanted downtown Clayfield to be that place for sentimental reasons. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury of being sentimental. I had to be practical, and at that time the Lassiter’s farm would have to be my place.

The undead were everywhere. They walked and crawled and bumped into things. They reminded me of fish in an aquarium–wide-eyed, mouths open, going one way then the next, only getting lively and zoning in when there was food.

I didn’t have any particular place I wanted to go that day; I was just having a look around. I toured a few residential streets, careful to stay away from congested areas. I wound up on the south side of town near Founder’s Farm and Hardware. I didn’t need to go there since I’d found most everything I needed at the old woman’s house, but I didn’t think it would hurt to see if they had any canning supplies I might have missed.

Just before I got there, I passed by a few houses, then came upon a small park that had been built for the town by the local Kiwanis Club. I stopped in the street and got out. The large sign by the entrance said: SPONSORED BY KIWANIS OF CLAYFIELD. The grounds were overgrown, but the playground equipment, pavilion, and basketball goals were still easily visible. The reason why I stopped was that there was a row of six metal fence posts–known as T-posts–in the ground in front of the sign. Each post had two to four human heads driven down on them like grotesque shish kabobs. It was new–something done within the past two or three weeks. There was another fence post there that was empty.

I got a chill and looked around to see if anyone might be watching me. I didn’t know if the heads had been the heads of zombies or healthy people. I presumed they had been zombies, because of their state of decay, but I hadn’t been out that way in a while, so they could have decomposed in that time. Then I thought I saw one of the heads move. It was the top head on the second post. I took a step closer to investigate. It felt like the thing was looking at me with its bluish, milky eyes. Then it opened then closed its mouth. I stepped back to my vehicle, and looked around me again.

I could understand exterminating them, but I couldn’t understand beheading them and staking the heads. Beheading them didn’t kill them; it just disconnected them from their bodies. While that incapacitated them and took away their mobility, they could still be dangerous. It was reckless, pointless, and barbaric.

I was troubled by what I saw, but I was trying to be optimistic. The beheadings meant there was, at worst, a very sadistic healthy person left in Clayfield, and at best, a bored or fed-up healthy person. I tried to focus on the healthy part. Healthy meant conversation and possible companionship. Healthy meant I might have help. I returned to my truck and drove on over to the hardware store.

Founder’s was gone–burned to the ground. I hadn’t been there in a while, but I was surprised I hadn’t noticed the smoke from the fire. The ground was scorched at least a hundred feet around the building. There were dozens of charred bodies and blackened skeletons scattered around.

I got out and walked up to the remains of the store. I could feel heat coming from it. There were probably still some glowing hot spots under all the ash and debris, but the fire had died days before. There were some warped metal racks and shelves still poking out, but the flames had done a thorough job on everything else. I couldn’t imagine what had caused it, but since it was in such close proximity to the Kiwanis Park and the staked heads, I presumed the fire had been intentionally set. Founder’s sold T-posts; I had taken some of their posts to shore up my perimeter fence at the stables. They didn’t keep them inside, but rather had them stacked outside. I hadn’t taken them all, but now there were none left.

Either someone torched the building, and the zombies had gathered in, attracted to the fire and burned, or someone had somehow lit the creatures, and the hardware store was an unintentional casualty. I wouldn’t know until I met this stranger.

On my way back to the Lassiter place, I slowed next to the pasture of the gray horse. It had moved to the other side of the field, a few hundred feet away. The zombies were on their way over to it again. As they got near, the horse bucked a little then ran closer to me. The undead immediately turned to follow. I rolled down my window and whistled. The horse snorted, threw its head back, and then ran off again. I didn’t see a gate for the field from my position in the road.

I got out, left the truck idling and the door open, and waded down into the waist-high weeds and thorny blackberry canes over to the barbed wire fence. If I leaned in a little, I could see a gate off to my right that had been obscured by a line of trees. I fought my way back through the weeds and returned to the truck. There was a dirt and gravel driveway not far down the road. It was only about the space of one car length–just enough room to park off the road so a person could open the gate and pull into the field. I had no intention of pulling into the pasture. I just wanted to open the gate to give the horse a way to escape so it could at least have a fighting chance. I swung the wide, metal gate into the pasture and propped it open with a stick. Then I went back to the stables.

When I pulled up out front, I found the driveway gate open and a little blue truck parked near the house. I was nervous but also excited about the prospects of another healthy person. Cautiously, I pulled my 9mm and placed it on the seat beside me. I drove up and parked close behind the blue truck. If this was a looter, I wanted to make their escape as difficult as possible. I shifted into park, grabbed my pistol, and sat there waiting.

After a few seconds, the front door opened, and a masked woman stepped out onto the porch. She was in a black leather jumpsuit like the kind motorcyclists wear, black leather boots, and a black cap. She was holding a sawed-off shotgun. She could have been a comic book villainess. We stared at each other, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Finally, she pulled down her mask and took off her cap.

It was Sara.

CHAPTER 4

Holy shit, I whispered.

I don’t know why I didn’t run to her. I was running on the inside, if that makes any sense. But I just sat there with my mouth open staring at her. I had not seen her for more than two months. She lifted her hand in greeting then walked down the length of the porch and stopped when she got in the driveway. Her eyes were glistening with tears.

I opened the door and slipped out of the truck.

I thought you were dead, she said. I didn’t expect to find you here.

I had spent all that time alone rehearsing conversations, and when the time finally came, I didn’t know what to say.

How have you been? she said.

Where did you come from? I said. It came out in a whisper. I hadn’t spoken to a real person in weeks. I drew near to her and touched her face. Her nose didn’t look right.

It’s broken, she said, noticing my concerned expression and reaching up to touch my hand. I hit that electrical line that day when I jumped off the building.

That day, I repeated.

Yeah, she said. You told me not to jump.

I nodded. I’m glad you did.

I don’t think it has completely healed, she said. It still hurts, but it looked a lot worse than this. It’s going to be crooked now. I hope I’m not too–

You’re beautiful, I interrupted. Then I blurted out, A zombie ate my earlobe.

She reached up and brushed my hair away from my ear. She made a pained expression but didn’t say anything.

It was my favorite one, I said.

She smiled broadly, I’ve missed you.

Yeah…me too.

I leaned in and kissed her. When I pulled back, she smiled again.

She was thinner. She looked older. I pulled her against me. She put her