Dead Sector (Book 2): Denver Read online

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/horrorharvestpub

  Twitter: @horrorharvestpub

  Email: [email protected]

  DEAD SECTOR: DENVER

  By JASON HARTWELL

  PART OF THE DEAD SECTOR SERIES

  Horror Harvest Publishing 2016

  (first edition)

  DEAD SECTOR : DENVER / DEAD SECTOR SERIES

  Copyright © 2016 by Horror Harvest Publishing.

  ISBN-13:

  978-1535589253

  ISBN-10:

  1535589256

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em bodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact :

  [email protected]

  www.facebook.com/horrorharvestpub

  Book and Cover design by Anthony Walsh

  Chapter 1

  Day 1: Chase and Jennifer

  It was a typical Sunday afternoon home run fest at Coors Field. It was hot and plenty of alcohol was being consumed. When Chase saw a little ruckus break out in the upper deck it was not a big surprise.

  He had been drinking some himself. Going to the ballpark was always a little bittersweet. Like a lot of kids he had big league dreams. Unlike most kids, who start to discard their big league ambitions around twelve when the little league strike outs start piling up, he was able to realistically hold on to his dreams into his early twenties. There was a time when he and many others around him thought he was a sure thing. As it turned out he never rose higher than single ‘A’. After spending his high school and college years being one of the best, if not the best player on the field, it was humbling as the power hitting first baseman became just another strikeout on the ledger of pitchers on the way to the next level.

  Because he had been a professional ballplayer (though only in the strictest sense, he made more selling cars last year than he did in three seasons playing baseball) his co-workers assumed he would love heading out to the ballpark. He didn’t, it all seemed a reminder of his failure. When a fight broke out in the upper deck he was glad for the distraction.

  ***

  Jennifer could not spend Sundays in her downtown apartment. It was too easy to picture her and Mike hanging out, side by side on the couch, watching over the top action movies they both loved. Their new baby would be on the floor, laying on a blanket, maybe starting to sit up and roll over. She would picture him, or her, getting hungry and starting to fuss, her going to pick him, or her, up. About this time she would realize it was never going to happen.

  Mike was gone, victim of her overconfidence and his failure to wear a seatbelt. She survived without much other than a scratch. The baby who had been growing inside her for nearly two months did not. She never learned if it was a boy or a girl. She always pictured boy, always pictured him named Mike.

  This realization had her picturing sticking a gun in her mouth. Which is why she gave her guns to her dad to keep at his place. Guns, however, were not the only way to commit suicide. She left the apartment to go for a run, hoping she could somehow sweat the dark thoughts out of her head.

  She had not gone far before a car jumped the curb and nearly clipped her. She was preparing a stream of curse words for the idiot driving, but held her tongue when he climbed out with a rifle.

  Jennifer knew guns, she had been a competitive shooter when she was younger. Much like Chase, she had dreams of the big time, for her the Olympics, but came up short. She recognized the AR-15 the man was carrying.

  "Listen honey," he said to her, "I don't have time to explain, but you need to get off the streets."

  Even though he said he did not have time to explain she was about to ask why when a man come over the top of the wrecked sedan and jumped on the drivers back. The impact knocked the rifle from his hands. It slid along the sidewalk until it came to a stop at Jennifer's feet.

  The man who jumped the car sank his teeth into the driver's shoulder. Jennifer picked up the gun, chambered a round and aimed.

  "Get off him now or I put a bullet between your eyes."

  The man continued biting as if Jennifer was not there, moving on to the driver's neck.

  "Kill us both," the driver said.

  "What?"

  "I'm not kidding, it may be your only chance," the driver said before succumbing to the bites.

  Jennifer aimed the gun.

  ***

  Chase figured security would have the whole thing quieted down pretty quickly, but it kept growing. Soon it had the attention of more people than just Chase. When two people went tumbling over the rail a good portion of the half full stadium was watching.

  When the first guy miraculously got up, for a brief moment people cheered. When he grabbed the person who had gone to help and sunk his teeth into the would be care giver's face the clapping stopped.

  Falling sixty feet or so and bouncing off a stadium seat has consequences even for the living dead. The falling man tore the throat out of the first man and lurched toward the next nearest person, but he could not really walk. The other man who had fallen never got up, but the first person who had gone to help him was pulled down out of Chase’s sight. He did not get up either.

  “What the hell just happened?” Dave asked as he finished his beer.

  Chase did not answer, he was to busy watching a man jump off the upper deck as the exits were clogged with people trying to get away. Chase watched the bitten man rise and attack the person nearest him. Chase realized what people were trying to escape on the upper deck was now a section over from where he and Dave were drinking beers.

  “Maybe we should be getting out of here,” Chase said.

  “I don’t know, Jessie and Bob were getting more brewskis.”

  Chase pointed at the chaos on the upper deck, where two more people had chosen jumping rather than face whatever was happening up there, and then motioned a section over. It had not reached the mad panic level of the upper deck, but was on its way.

  “Yeah, we can drink them on the way out. Where is Tim?”

  “Bathroom.”

  “We can meet him in the parking lot.”

  Chase finished his beer, and they headed for the concourse. Just about everyone else in the bleachers had the same idea. It was slow going. Chase looked back to see the players had stopped playing and begun watching the madness going on in the stands. The chaos had spread to other parts of the stadium. Chase watched someone jump the wall by the third base line. Security moved to grab him and while they were dragging him away someone grabbed a guard going by and pulled him towards the stands. Before the guard could get loose the person bit him on the shoulder.

  Chase quit looking back and concentrated on getting out, whatever was going on he wanted no part of it. He and Dave reached the concourse, they looked toward where Jessie and Bob had gone to pick up more beers. There were people running the opposite direction.

  “Maybe we should meet them in the parking lot too,” Chase said.

  “Yeah.”

  They both decided if everyone else was running they should too.

  It was then Chase had his first up close encounter, he turned a corner and directly in his path was an overweight man in a Chicago cubs jersey holding on to a petite woman in her Colorado Rockies gear. He was behind her sinking his teeth into the top of her head. Chase sto
pped, otherwise he would have barrelled into them.

  He looked up and Chase saw his eyes, they were sunken deep in his sockets, the whites had turned completely yellow and the only color surrounding the pupil was black. It saw Chase too. Cubs fan dropped the woman and lurched his way.

  The Cubs fan did not look like he was very spry before becoming a yellowed eyed biting machine, and he was even slower now. Chase dodged the meaty paw trying to grab him. He stepped around it and kicked Cubs fan in his sizeable butt. The Cubs fan stumbled and planted his face on the cement.

  Chase moved to help the fallen woman. Just before he reached her she looked up and he saw the yellow eyes. She rose to her feet and he had the feeling he had made a huge mistake locking eyes with her. She came for him and he punched her in the face, connecting solidly to her temple.

  Chase was a ball player not a boxer, but he still had an above average right cross. He outweighed the woman by at least fifty pounds and he landed the shot clean, but she hardly slowed down. He had a lot longer arms than her so he was able to put his palm on her forehead and keep himself out of biting range. Her teeth made a loud clacking sound as she tried to sink her teeth into him. She was biting so hard her front teeth were chipping, every bite sent a little bit of enamel dust into the air.

  He looked back, to see the Cubs fan had gotten to his feet. Despite the mass of people running by he was locked onto Chase.

  Chase grabbed the woman's long black hair, spun and tossed her at the Cubs fan. The yellow eyed fat man made no effort to dodge or even block the woman. She bounced off his fat belly without slowing him down. He stepped on her head, twisted his ankle and fell to the ground as he got his legs tangled up with her. Cubs fan got another mouthful of cement as Chase turned and started running again.

  Dave had been too busy racing for the exit to see Chase get attacked. He had stopped when he reached the gate, since there were too many people trying to get out. Chase could see him looking around for another exit. He also saw another yellow eyed fiend tearing into someone on the ground. Chase saw the thing chewing on its victim and look up with a mouth full of blood.

  He could tell it was looking at Dave, and he called out to him, but there was too much noise, every half second if seemed someone somewhere nearby let out a scream. There were so many cries of terror echoing through the cavernous concourse it sounded like a continuous high pitched drone, like some sort of industrial death machine. Chase kept moving, confident he would reach Dave in time. So far whatever made the people act this way also made them slow footed.

  This one, however, went into a crouch before launching itself forward, moving with both its hands and feet on the ground like a wolf. It covered the distance in no time. While not a high level one, Chase had been a pro athlete, and he saw plenty of world class athletes who were on the way up while he was on the way out. The yellow eyed madman covered the distance between him and Dave in a time no one Chase had ever come across came close to matching. Dave never knew what hit him.

  Chase moved toward him, but stopped when it became obvious it was too late. He did not bother trying to fight his way through the human wall at the gate instead he kept moving along the edge of the concourse. He spotted a short section of the wall to the outside, still too tall for him to reach, but the table of an abandoned concession stand was nearby. He sprinted to it and shoved it against the wall. He climbed on the table and looked back to see the Cubs fan, his face and beard covered in thick sticky blood stumble his direction. Only he stopped stumbling and got into a crouch like the thing that killed Dave. He couldn’t imagine an overweight middle aged man with a twisted ankle darting at him at greyhound speeds, but he did not delay jumping up and getting a grip on the top of the wall. He had just started pulling himself up when the Cubs fan plowed into the table. He felt a meaty paw swipe at his foot as he scrambled over.

  The drop down was tricky, he hung on the wall getting as close to the ground as possible before letting go. He thanked a god he was not sure he believed in for successfully landing without spraining an ankle and kept moving.

  Things were not much better outside the downtown stadium. A gaunt shirtless man carrying a sign saying ‘Repent the end is Near!” was jumping up and down shouting “I was right,” when a yellow eye moving rapidly on all fours took him down. Chase and his fellow car sales men had paid twenty bucks to park in a private lot about a block away. Given the chaos in the area around the stadium Chase was glad, the road around was already a mess of stopped traffic and car wrecks. Plenty of people had gotten out, but so had plenty of the yellow eyed things. He moved towards the car, but realized they had taken Dave's car and Dave still had the keys. He kept moving that direction anyway, trying to get clear of the stadium and lower downtown, hoping whatever was causing this had not spread throughout the city.

  He jumped on top of cars and leaped from one to the other to get across Blake Street. He expected honking and cursing as he put size eleven dents into the hoods of cars, but got nothing. He did not look inside any of vehicles, fearing what he might see.

  He reached the other side and found himself looking down the barrel of an AR-15 wielded by a statuesque blonde with her long hair pulled back tight in a ponytail. Except for the rifle, she appeared to be dressed to go to the gym.

  “Duck,” she said.

  Chase got low and the she pulled the trigger. He looked back and saw one of the things had been closing in on him, but it dropped when her bullet tore off the top of its head.

  “Thanks,” he said, but she had already turned and shot another one. She was swinging the gun back towards the street when Chase saw one of the fast ones charge her from behind. Chase dove and threw his shoulder into it, knocking it off its course. It rose quickly, but went down just as quick, when the girl put a bullet between its eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Likewise,” he said. He saw a crowbar a few feet from him. He reached over and picked it up.

  She reached out her hand to help Chase up saying, “Come with me if you want to live.”

  Chase took her hand and stood up, “Was that a ‘Terminator’ reference?”

  She smiled, “Hell yes. Let’s move.”

  She started moving and Chase followed, thinking he may have just fallen in love.

  Chapter 2

  Day 1: The EDZRT

  Derrick had formed the ‘East Denver Zombie Response Team’ with his best friend Thomas back in the eighth grade. They were neighbors and best friends in a suburb built on the old airport. It was the kind of place where every third house looked exactly the same. Even people who grew up here checked the address on the house before walking in.

  They added two members, the Rodrigez twins, Gilbert and Luis, soon after, and for a while were up to five with their first female member, Denise. Denise did not last long, and Derrick was sure that while she was a zombie movie enthusiast, she did not take the group seriously. She quit showing up for meetings and training sessions before summer vacation started.

  This was a sign of things to come. Thomas discovered how much he liked smoking pot his sophomore year and dedicated his life to that. Gilbert found himself a girlfriend, and even Derrick had to admit if he had a chance to have sex he would have left the EDZRT without a second thought. None of the local ladies seemed interested, so sex was not getting in his way of prepping for the upcoming zombie apocalypse.

  Even though Luis and Gilbert looked exactly the same, Luis’s luck with the ladies was the same as Thomas, and he did not really like smoking reefer, so he stuck it out. Junior year, The Fat Kid, whose name was actually Freddy joined up. Some uncreative bullies had dubbed him The Fat Kid back in elementary school and it stuck. Probably because Freddy owned it. He introduced himself saying, “I’m The Fat Kid, my friends call me Fat, but you can call me Mr. The Fat Kid,”

  Fat always laughed at his own joke, though no else ever did. Thomas and to a lesser extent Luis were always a little ashamed of their outcast status, but Fat either put on a
great front or he truly embraced being a dweeb.

  Thomas had told people about the EDZRT, making Derrick and Luis the butt of a lot of jokes. When Fat heard about it he approached Derrick and asked to join.

  A girl named Lita, all of four feet tall and maybe eighty pounds after a trip to an all you can eat buffet, also asked to join. Luis, jealous of his brother and hoping to land a woman, even an acne scarred boder-line dwarf with glasses thicker than her wrists, lobbied hard for her membership and it was granted.

  The four of them spent a lot of time training with airsoft guns or non lethal versions of there homemade weapons on the outskirts of town, and, when they could, up in the mountains. They discussed tactics and planned for contingencies. They studied martial arts, mostly from books and videos, and developed their own fighting techniques custom designed for the defense against the undead. Fat dubbed it Zombie-Fu, and no one else could think of anything better.

  Despite his size Fat was surprising athletic, and he could shoot too. Lita was tiny, but stronger than she looked and could shoot even better than Fat. They were able to convince Lita’s gun crazed dad, his pick-up was like an advertisement for an NRA bumper sticker shop, to take them to the range and let them shoot the real thing. They gathered weapons, and customized them for maximum zombie kill power. They had t-shirts printed and they cobbled together body armor, which they painted black and fluorescent green, while adding the EDZRT logo Derrick had drawn. While what they were doing was more like a LARP game, they took it seriously. They also did a lot of hanging out, eating pizza, watching movies, and drinking the occasional pilfered beer.

  Lita and Derrick went to prom together, Luis tried hard, but for reasons Derrick could not understand she had a thing for him. Gilbert fixed Luis up with a prom date, and Fat, as usual, did not seem to care.

  When high school ended, things went slightly downhill for the EDZRT. The girl Gilbert hooked Luis up with started putting out, and while he still swore he was a loyal member ready to ‘step up when shit went down’ (the EDZRT’s official slogan) he rarely was around. Fat also pledged his loyalty, but left to go to school at Stanford, where he told them he was sure to remain a proud dork just as shunned and hated by the elite cliques at college as he was in high school. Lita went to up the road to Boulder and attended Colorado University.