The Haunted Country Read online

  The Haunted Country

  Jason White

  Copyright © 2015 Jason White

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1522707561

  ISBN-10: 1522707565

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated to beautiful wife, Jennifer, and my awesome son, Keenan.

  .

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  i

  1

  Chapter One

  1

  2

  Chapter Two

  4

  3

  Chapter Three

  12

  4

  Chapter Four

  19

  5

  Chapter Five

  25

  6

  Chapter Six

  38

  7

  Chapter Seven

  79

  8

  Chapter Eight

  91

  9

  Chapter Nine

  105

  10

  Chapter Ten

  118

  11

  Chapter Eleven

  128

  12

  Chapter Twelve

  136

  13

  Chapter Thirteen

  145

  14

  Chapter Fourteen

  150

  15

  Chapter Fifteen

  158

  16

  Chapter Sixteen

  164

  17

  Chapter Seventeen

  177

  18

  Chapter Eighteen

  183

  19

  Chapter Nineteen

  191

  20

  Chapter Twenty

  198

  21

  Chapter Twenty-One

  217

  22

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  226

  23

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  236

  Epilogue

  240

  About the Author

  248

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My short story, Surviving the Fittest, came about after I had read the specifications of an anthology of which I had wanted to submit. The primary guideline was easy: Write a zombie, post apocalyptic story sometime after the breakout. I immediately wondered what type of person it takes to survive in such a hostile world. They say that it’s a dog eat dog world out there, so do only the dangerous, the kind of people the rest of us tried avoiding before the apocalypse came, survive?

  Then the all-important “what if” questions hit: What if two kids survived up to six months past the initial zombie outbreak? To take further, what if one of these two kids was severely handicapped?

  Charlie and Cindy were then borne in my mind.

  These questions expanded into what became the aforementioned short story. I was pleased and excited after it was accepted for the anthology I had written the story for in the first place. It was my first short story to be published in real ink and paper print! I still have the anthology on my bookshelf.

  So it’s no real surprise that my taking the ideas explored in Surviving the Fittest and expanding them into a short novel a few years later would ultimately become my first published novel, what you hold in your hand right now. It’s also no real surprise, then, that the story keeps expanding in my mind. I am more than thankful to whatever and wherever this story and its characters came from. I owe a lot to it, whatever it may be. Putting the Muse and all its mystical wonders aside, however, I also have a lot of people to thank who helped me along the way.

  Sephera Giron, who taught me a lot. She also introduced me to some wonderful people from within the horror writing community who would become instrumental to where I am today.

  My pre-readers, Charlene Cocrane, Christopher McCaffrey, Kimberly Yerina, and Keith Deininger. These guys’ feedback and commentary on The Haunted Country were beyond value and I hope that they’ll take the journey with me again.

  This novel would not look half as good if it were not for the editing talents of Michael Schutz-Ryan (my co-host from The Darkness Dwells Podcast. Also my good friend), and Debbie Lyon from Media Bitch.

  A very big thanks to Keith Chawgo, my agent, who has also been on a long journey with me on this one.

  There are also the friends and family who surround me beyond the Internet: Sharyn Eby, my mother; Chris White, my brother; Chris Scott, my other brother; Thomas White, my dad; Helen Plaxton (my grandmother—RIP!), Laura Barnes, Debbie Barnes, Russell Barnes, Chris Bennett, Matthew Bennett, and Kaylen Bennett. Thank you all for your support and for just being there.

  Last, but certainly not least, is the immediate pack: Jennifer Barnes, my lovely and slightly crazy (for putting up with me) wife. Thank you for being there and encouraging me everyday. To Keenan Alexander White, my son, who at the time of this writing cannot speak or stand just yet, but is nonetheless a shiny beacon of hope within my heart every time I see him smile.

  I love you all.

  Jason White

  Angus, Ontario

  .

  chapter one

  It’s not difficult picturing how my sister, Cindy, and I will die. It’s never difficult, really. Not in this new world. The world I used to know has changed so much in less than a year, and so has its people. For fifteen years I knew only of what we used to call civilization and modern culture: cars, televisions, cell phones and video games. All that has changed. Now the world’s a stumbling, stinking corpse ruled by assholes and murderers.

  I remember my parents fighting hard to keep us alive. Instead, they got torn to ribbons. Dale and Merrick, my mother and father’s best friends and neighbors, took Cindy and me in after they had died. They were always better at taking care of Cindy than Dad and Mom ever was. It was as though they had an inborn instinct for it. Their voices calmed her tempers. They always brought a smile to her lips.

  Then one day they disappeared, leaving Cindy and me to fend for ourselves. The smell of rotting meat has been strong in my nostrils since the loss of Dale and Merrick. It has never gone away. Every night before I attempt sleep, I wonder, an obsession really, of how Cindy and I will finally reach our end. As with the smell of death coating the insides of my nostrils, the many different realities, the possibilities, never go away.

  It is an obsession. I know it. But it’s something more than that. It’s as though my brain is preparing for the inevitable. I’m just a few months shy of being sixteen, and I’ve watched and read enough to know how these things end. I love Romero’s zombie movies. Lucio Fulci had some good ones, too. Dale had a massive DVD and BluRay collection, most of which were horror movies. Whenever he and Merrick were drinking or smoking pot along with Mom and Dad, which was often, I absorbed them all repeatedly on his sixty-inch flat screen I always had to wait for Cindy to fall asleep, otherwise she’d freak out at the monsters on the screen and I’d get in shit for watching inappropriate movies.

  Back then it was always about Cindy. Her welfare, her happiness, her comfort. Usually, it was up to me to manage her. Especially on party nights and all those morning afters .

  Nothing has changed, other than the fact that I no longer hate her for it. She’s my responsibility now, and if I resent her for anything, it’s that I cannot just give up, fall down and die like the rest of the world. For some reason I cannot understand, I am stuck protecting her. I cannot bear the thought of her death, and will fight until the bitter end to find somewhere safe where we can continue to maintain something resembling normal, or failing that, a peaceful life.

  I am a young and cynical bastard. I have no reason to be otherwise. In the short time since modern living was
sent back a few centuries I’ve seen people at their worst. Overly hairy men rape and beat malnourished women. Cold and heartless murders done sometimes for fun.

  One day, death will come for Cindy and me. I just don’t know how or when.

  I never thought it would come to this, though. I know that there are crazy people out there. The insane living up all their darkest desires since the lights went out. Dale warned me plenty about them and I’ve seen examples of it myself.

  But this …

  This is just fucked up.

  chapter two

  Cindy is beside me, free from bonds. Old Dahmer figures that she won’t go far without me, and he’s right. For me, however, the sick fuck has used rough yellow rope to tie my hands around my back. The bonds are so tight that I can no longer feel my hands and I can only imagine how purple they are. My feet are also bound with the yellow rope. A third rope binds both feet and hands together. I’ve never been this uncomfortable in my life, but there’s no getting away. Although Dahmer hasn’t tied me to anything cemented into the bones of the house, I’d be no better than a fish flopping out of water if I tried to so much as travel ten feet.

  That doesn’t matter. What matters is what’s going on before us.

  “You guys gonna be real fresh,” Dahmer says to us, snorting out laughter. I don’t know his real name and wouldn’t dare call him Dahmer to his face, but it’s very suiting.

  “Yup,” he goes on. “Yer friend’s beginning to stink. Now, I can handle the stink, you know, but why do that when I got two fresh specimens right here on my couch?”

  He grabs at his grubby jeans, undoes the belt, the button. He lowers the zipper and the denim sinks to his ankles and he kicks them off.

  His smile is hungry, perhaps the most frightening smile I’ve ever seen.

  “But first, I get me one more go!”

  Cindy has grown a thicker skin since those horror movie watching days. What Dahmer is about to do is unsettling to say the least. She moans, her hand, crumbled into a sort of fist, dances by her temple and forehead and eyes as though she’s trying to block the sight but failing.

  Using a lubricant, Dahmer stroked the thick mound of flesh between his legs until it grows hard and approaches the large wooden table in the center of the room where there’s a large purple clamp. Its steel fingers grips the severed head of Sylvia, the woman we were with when we ran into Dahmer’s farm house and he invited us in for dinner with a smile on his face and a shot gun in his hands.

  Sylvia’s reddish hair clings to her cheeks, and her now toothless mouth gapes open and closed, growing faster and more excited the closer Dahmer gets.

  After inviting us in, he took care of Sylvia right away, blowing her lungs out her back and then hitting me in the head with the gun’s stock. When I came to, I was here, tied and plopped on this horrible couch with Cindy weeping loudly beside me. Dahmer was busy sawing off Sylvia’s head on the basement floor in front of us. He had her hands and feet tied up much like he had tied up mine. She had reanimated but he had already pulled out her teeth. This didn’t stop her from trying to bite him while he worked, though I think that it excited him more than anything else.

  Now, with her severed head in the large metal clamp, Dahmer slides his erect and lubricated member into her toothless mouth while gripping the hair at the top of her head for better leverage. She gums at his cock as though trying to tear it off, but there are no teeth. If anything, this provides even more pleasure for the sick fucker. This is present in the loud moans that erupt from deep in his throat as he slides himself in and out of this abominable pleasure machine.

  It’s been two days so Sylvia’s face is almost unrecognizable in color. Her eyes have sunken deeper into her skull and no longer roll around as they did in the beginning. The stink is something you’d think that you’d get used to, but the insides of my nostrils feel coated with death’s stench, and I’m always on the verge of vomiting. Especially during these overly common displays of Dahmer’s diseased lust.

  The end has come. I know it deep down in my bones. I look at my sister. She’s still hiding behind her hand, the fingers dancing and flapping by her eyes as she rocks her body and moans in extreme discomfort.

  Soon, she’ll be dead. And so will I. The only question is: who will Dahmer take first?

  It’s dark and I can’t see anything. My mind is foggy not from sleep but from something that is a close and grossly inadequate relation. I hear the noises from up on the first floor and at first, I have no idea what it is. Dahmer’s on the move. Maybe he’s had another urge. Maybe he wants a freshly reanimated and toothless head to play with. There’s something different about these sounds. A desperation that hints of approaching violence, and I realize that the insane man is running around up there on the first floor.

  There’s a scream, a gunshot, and then frantic hands grab at my shirt. It’s only Cindy I know, but still I jump and almost cry out.

  The door to the basement slams open and closed. Heavy feet stomp down the wooden staircase, stumbling and drunk with fear.

  “It’s a motherfuckin’ invasion!” Dahmer says. His voice is panicked and angry. How he moves in the dark without falling is beyond me, but he makes it to one of the counters where he strikes a match and lights a lantern. Beside the lantern is Sylvia’s head, unclamped and lying sideways on the counter, her mouth opening and closing. She looks like some kind of demon fish out of water.

  Dahmer is covered in layers of sweat. He’s carrying a shotgun. I imagine that it’s the same one that blew Sylvia’s chest into raw human stew. He rummages through drawers along the counter until he finds a box of shells and quickly loads two into the gun.

  “Motherfucker!” Dahmer shouts. “You want my shit? Then come and get it!”

  I don’t say or ask any of the questions buzzing around inside my malnourished brain. For all I know this could be some sort of psychotic break on what’s already a broken mind. If he’s not hallucinating, not simply as crazy and sick as he’s all ready proven, then someone might be here. Someone packing a weapon.

  I know how farfetched it sounds, but I hope that it’s someone come to kill this sick piece of shit. Hope is a dangerous thing these days.

  Dahmer heads to the bottom of the staircase. He readies the shotgun and aims it at the entrance above.

  It doesn’t take long before the cellar door slams open and Dahmer’s weapon explodes, flashing violently in the dim sunlight that shines through. The blast makes Cindy scream. She weeps as she clings to me as though I’m the only thing in her world keeping her from falling into that big black abyss. I can feel her tears through my shirt, and I’ve no doubt that the sudden stench of urine is from her.

  “Come on you piece of shit!” Dahmer screams, running up the stairs and unloading the second shell into the yawning void above.

  Not a bright move, but then, I think I’ve never thought of Dahmer as smart. Perhaps there was a time when he had cognizant thoughts. Now he’s nothing but a mad, primal animal.

  When he reaches the top of the stars there’s further gunfire, though this time it sounds like firecrackers.

  BAM BAM BAM

  There’s the clatter of dead weight falling down the wooden steps. I look over, hoping, praying it’s Dahmer. In Dahmer’s lantern light, a body rolls backward down the steps. It looks like a ragdoll but I can’t tell if it’s our perverted captor or not.

  It has to be, though. I’m pretty sure that he only had the shotgun. Those final blasts were from something smaller, the sharp crack of a hand pistol, and I doubt that Dahmer had one of those on him. I’ve only ever seen him with the double barrel.

  More heavy feet clamber down the wooden steps.

  I see only shadows, but there’s relief in that the shadows do not look like they belong to Dahmer. A grunt confirms this, then the words, “Fucking dick.”

  He looks up from the body and now I see that the man’s face is covered in hair. A long beard and long hair coming from the ranger hat on his head
. In his hands is a pistol that somehow looks more real and more deadly than Dahmer’s shotgun.

  The man steps down onto the basement floor and uses his toes to move Dahmer’s body. He turns him over onto his back then bends over and checks for a pulse. Satisfied at his work, he moves farther into the basement. His feet are louder than they ought to be and I realize that he’s wearing biker boots, just like the men Sylvia had ridden with. Speaking of Sylvia, the man heads over to the table, to where the lantern is. Where Sylvia’s head sits, her lips gaping, eyes rolling. He pokes at it and her jaw slams violently against the upper mouth over and over again in frustration.

  I almost feel sorry for Sylvia even though I know it’s not her anymore. I feel sorry for myself, for Cindy and anyone else Dahmer might have hurt.

  The man raises his hand holding the gun and brings it down on the zombie’s head. He does it again. A third time and there’s the sound of a watermelon cracking open and Sylvia’s jaw relaxes.

  The new violence makes Cindy cry out, though, the man turns, his gun pointed our way, eyes wide with surprise.

  “Don’t hurt us,” I say. The man no longer looks like a savior. He could be another Dahmer for all I know. He looks a lot more like Chuck, Sylvia’s man whom I killed after he tried to rape Cindy. Now there was one crazy motherfucker who almost got us all killed just after Merrick and Dale had disappeared and I had taken Cindy out into the new version of the big bad world to look for food.

  Chuck and his band of merry assholes had come along and swept us up. In my naivety, I thought they had wanted to help. What they truly wanted was our help. Our quiet, slave-like obedience was more like it.