New DEAD series (Book 4): DEAD [Don Evans Must Die]

  Other Titles by TW Brown

  The DEAD Series

  DEAD: The Ugly Beginning

  DEAD: Revelations

  DEAD: Fortunes & Failures

  DEAD: Winter

  DEAD: Siege & Survival

  DEAD: Confrontation

  DEAD: Reborn

  DEAD: Darkness Before Dawn

  DEAD: Spring

  DEAD: Reclamation

  DEAD: Blood & Betrayal

  DEAD: End

  The New DEAD series

  DEAD: Onset (Book 1 of the New DEAD series)

  DEAD: Alone (Book 2 of the New DEAD series)

  DEAD: Suffer the Children (Book 3 of the New DEAD series)

  Zomblog

  Zomblog

  Zomblog II

  Zomblog: The Final Entry

  Zomblog: Snoe

  Zomblog: Snoe’s War

  Zomblog: Snoe’s Journey

  That Ghoul Ava

  That Ghoul Ava: Her First Adventures

  That Ghoul Ava & The Queen of the Zombies

  That Ghoul Ava Kick Some Faerie A**

  Next, on a very special That Ghoul Ava

  That Ghoul Ava on the Lam

  That Ghoul Ava On a Roll

  That Ghoul Ava Sacks a Quarterback

  That Ghoul Ava has an Appetite for Deception

  Dead:

  Don Evans Must Die

  (Book 4 of the New DEAD series)

  TW Brown

  Estacada, Oregon, USA

  DEAD: Don Evans Must Die (Book 4 of the New DEAD Series)

  ©2017 May December Publications LLC

  The split-tree logo is a registered trademark of May December Publications LLC.

  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, dead, or otherwise, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author or May December Publications LLC.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Did you miss me?

  You are holding a book that almost never happened. There were a lot of reasons. One of them was due to me simply growing tired of certain external forces that hate the idea of my success and go out of their way to try and smear it with hatred. Sorry, that is the cold truth.

  But the biggest was a series of heart attacks that did what they could to end me. The best thing about those heart attacks were the fact that they debunked the theory that I had no heart. I now have a doctor’s note saying that one does in fact exist in my chest.

  One of the factors that got me back on my keyboard to hammer this out came from some words of reflection given to me by Dave Dahl (of Dave’s Killer Bread) one night at dinner. When I explained my thoughts on stepping away from writing, and shared the reason, he had a very succinct reply. “Why would you let anybody that does not matter one bit in your life make you consider walking away from something you love…your passion?”

  So, yes…the wait was long. I do hope you find it worthy. And I will try not to make you wait this long ever again.

  Doctor, Doctor, give me the news…

  TW Brown

  July 2019

  For my granddaughter,

  Payton Elizabeth Fountain.

  It will be a while before you can read this.

  Contents

  Don Evans Must Die

  Marshawn

  Twists and Turns

  Strangers

  No Rest for the Weary

  All by Myself

  The Death of Remorse

  Pain and Suffering

  New Lows

  The Worst of the Worst

  Hate

  The Children

  Incoming

  Licking Wounds

  Lisa Speaks

  Fight

  Why?

  1

  Don Evans Must Die

  I felt terrible that I couldn’t recall the woman’s name. I knew she’d been one of the people from down in Estacada. I thought it began with the letter ‘B’ but even that was only a guess.

  Whatever her name was, she’d stumbled into our camp and almost gotten shot before she could share the unwelcome news that Don Evans and some others had killed her husband along with a few others. Also, she may’ve mentioned something about one of their own people being a part of it. Unfortunately, she’d obviously run into trouble on the way here.

  She had a nasty bite on one forearm, apparently where she’d thrown it up to defend herself. I saw a holster on her hip, but there was no sign of a weapon. Also, she had two sheaths that had probably held some nice blades, but those were also empty.

  She had some scratches, as well as a bunch of scrapes that looked like maybe she’d tumbled or even run into the thick blackberry bushes around these parts. Seriously, some of them have stalks as big around as my wrist and thorns that can shred a person.

  “She say anything else?” Marshawn entered the hut we’d moved the woman into when she’d passed out and fallen face down in the dirt.

  “Not a word,” I whispered. I paused. “Well…she has said the name ‘Ken’ a few times. I think that was the big fella we met when we rolled into town. If what she did manage to get out before slipping into unconsciousness is true, that guy is dead along with a few others. And…she very clearly said the name Don Evans in all her rambling.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Marshawn pulled the stopper from his canteen and took a long drink. When he was finished, he took a seat next to me at the big picnic table bench I’d been perched on for the past hour. “So, don’t imagine this helped sway your idea of going after Evans.”

  It wasn’t really a question, and he already knew my answer, so I didn’t bother responding. I just sat there staring at this woman.

  I know that I’d probably seen her and probably even spoken with her back in Estacada. Now, she was just some old lady who was about to die a terrible death. To make it worse, from the little I’d been able to gather from her ramblings, she’d suffered some horrible losses recently.

  “You know you can’t do this by yourself,” Marshawn said softly.

  I looked over at him, my eyebrow raised in question. “You think I would ask anybody to go on this fool’s mission with me?” It was difficult not to sound sarcastic.

  “Ask?” Marshawn actually laughed as he said that word. “Hell no. But I’ll be damned if I am gonna let you go out there alone.”

  “And who watches over things here?” I shot back.

  “We have a few bodies that can take that detail.”

  “And are those bodies able to take the reins if we don’t come back at all?”

  “Is anybody ready?” Marshawn scoffed. “Normal went out the window a long time ago, buddy. We’re all just flying by the seat of our pants.”

  He had a point there. I know I sure as hell hadn’t come up with any magic to ensure our absolute safety. Every single day, we dealt with things that no movie or game could’ve prepared us for. The worst was the tedious boredom.

  The problem with boredom is that it tricks you into relaxing. You start to feel like maybe the worst has passed. I think that is how we are wired. It had been centuries since we had to survive on our hunter-gatherer-forager traits. We’d forgotten what it was like to have to carve out our existence every single minute of the day.

  I was about to make some weak argument against Marshaw
n joining me when the woman lying before me started to shudder and twitch. She gasped, and her eyes flew open. I could see the tracers, but they hadn’t yet filmed over which indicated to me that she was still alive.

  Her back arched and her arms shot up like she was reaching for the canopy of branches above us. Her fingers were straight, but slowly curled into what almost resembled claws.

  “It’s never the same with anybody,” Marshawn said from behind me.

  At some point, I’d gotten to my feet and drawn a long knife from my hip. I stood above the woman, a feeling like frozen fire was churning in my gut. I stood there as her body began to convulse. One of her hands began to clench and then open in spasms that were so fast they almost appeared blurry.

  When her back arched and I heard a low, guttural mewling sound, I knew she was no longer one of the living. I knelt beside her, knife drawn and, after I covered her head with a nearby towel, stabbed down hard where I figured her head to be. There was a hideous sound of shattering bone and something squishy, then…nothing.

  The body went still, and the stench began to noticeably dissipate in a matter or moments. I was frozen in place, part of me still coming to grips with the fact that, while I did not relish this sort of thing, it had become so commonplace that I felt almost no emotion.

  I stood and turned to look at Marshawn who was leaning against a tree, nibbling on a hunk of jerky and seeming just as unaffected by what had happened as I did.

  A moment later, the brush off to the left of him rustled and a large, furry, black face peeked out of the green. Not for the first time, I marveled at how much Chewie resembled a bear as she stared at me with her soft, brown eyes. Her tongue lolled, and a line of that notorious Newfoundland drool swung from one corner of her mouth.

  “Come here, girl,” I whispered.

  For a split second, her head tilted to the side and her mouth shut, showing off her slight underbite. Her eyes went wide, and her ears perked. Then…she burst from the bushes and bounded to me with a deep huffing sound that was not quite a bark and more like a snort.

  I caught her in my arms and wrapped them around her big neck in a hug. Before the whole zombie thing, I’d never been away from my girl for even a whole day. Now, it seemed as if I was away from her more than with her. And I was about to leave again with the very distinct chance that I would never return.

  A moment later, the brush parted a second time and a young boy peered out from where Chewie had appeared. As soon as his eyes found my dog, they drifted to the ground and Michael Killian emerged. Lately, I’d begun to wonder if Chewie was more his dog than mine. The young autistic boy had bonded with her in a way that went beyond even what I had with her.

  “You had to kill the lady,” Michael whispered. “She was going to be one of the monster people, so you helped her. Don’t be sad, Evan.”

  I opened my mouth to respond and found that I was tongue tied. I could not recall a time when the boy had ever actually used my name. In fact, I had not been sure if he even knew any of the names of the adults in the group.

  “C’mon, Chewie,” Michael turned to my dog and patted his hip as he called her.

  At least the big girl had the decency to glance up at me before she headed over to the boy in her easy swagger. I watched them head back through the brush. Not for the first time, I wondered if I would see my beloved Newf again. Only, this time, I wasn’t afraid for her. She would be fine. She and Michael would take care of each other. I had no doubts in that regard.

  We hauled the corpse to the burn pile and tossed it in without ceremony. Death was too common. If we stopped to make a big deal of it then we would be in a constant state of post-wake emotional hangover.

  Marshawn and I decided we would leave just before first light. It was actually a bit strange when I thought about it. In reality we could head out within the next couple of hours, but there was simply something about setting up a schedule and sticking to the old ways that we imagined we should act in instances such as these.

  I made my way to the small structure that was slowly being built into what I had thought to call my home. It was about the size of those tiny homes that were just starting to appear on some of the do-it-yourself channels. Personally, I hadn’t given them much of a chance. People like their stuff. These things weren’t much larger than a strange shed.

  I stepped inside and allowed the blanket that was holding down a space until I could find a door fall back into place. I’d only taken two steps when I froze.

  “She didn’t make it, did she?” Alex asked.

  “Nope.” Not much needed saying beyond that.

  The woman was a constant mystery to me. One minute, she was this badass action-hero type who kicked ass and took names; the next, she was the delicate and feminine figure stretched out on my bed.

  She was wearing nothing but a pair of very skimpy shorts and a wife-beater tee-shirt without a bra. Her hair, which she had recently chopped off with her hunting knife, framed her face that was squarely in the middle of the beam of sunlight that shone through where one of my windows would eventually be. Her long, bare legs were still incredibly sexy despite the dozen or so nicks from where she’d obviously shaved in the very recent past.

  I would’ve had to be one of the walking dead not to notice her shapely curves. To put it bluntly, she had an ass that would make J-Lo say “Damn!”

  The problem at the moment was that I’d just killed an old lady who had come here to warn us about Don Evans. I was going to be leaving in the morning with the intent of taking the life of at least one living being. Most likely more. Despite what most fiction spewed, the last thing I felt like doing was engage in any sort of intimate relationship. Not that is wasn’t tempting, but it just was not something on my list of priorities at the moment.

  If I were being perfectly and totally honest, there was also the issue of my beloved Stephanie. She’d only been dead (or dead-ish based on the last time I saw her) for a short time. A few months maybe? Hell, time was hard to keep track of these days. Sometimes, it felt as if she’d been gone forever. Other times, it was like it had been only yesterday that she was elbowing me out of the way as I brushed my teeth in the morning.

  I shook my head just enough for the movement to register. Alex let out a long sigh and flopped back on the pile of sleeping bags.

  “I have more to say.” The words came out almost as a whisper.

  “Okay.” Alex sat up and folded her hands in her lap. Her hazel eyes locked onto mine and I could tell she was searching my face for some kind of an indicator.

  “Marshawn and I are leaving tomorrow.”

  I allowed that statement to hang in the air for a moment. The words almost seemed too big and oppressive for our tiny living quarters. It was as if I could feel them pushing on my chest

  “Are you going into Estacada to tell those people that the lady died?” Alex’s gaze had not left mine. Her expression had not changed much, but I could see in her eyes that she knew that was not the case. I would not allow that minute trace of hope to linger uselessly.

  “No. We are going to find Don Evans. We will end this once and for all.”

  That sounded pretty bold. Part of me felt that it was certainly one possible outcome. Unfortunately, I didn’t yet feel like it was the most likely. The best-case scenario had either me or Marshawn coming back alive with the final elimination of Don Evans. The realistic part of my brain said that it was only very slightly possible that either of us returned, and quite likely that Mr. Evans survived.

  If that was the case, then why would I even consider such a fool’s errand? The short answer was that I had to do anything in my power to put a stop to this person…once and for all. It was sort of how I had once viewed the lottery: you can’t win if you don’t play…but you probably aren’t going to win anyway. If I didn’t make an attempt to end Don Evans and his barbaric and evil ways, then anything he did was at least partially my fault since I had stood by and done nothing.

  Our socie
ty had gone off in some odd directions the past several years. It had felt like all people wanted to do was complain. Nobody really wanted to do something constructive to enact change. We’d simply fallen into a place where we waited for somebody else to do it. Societal response had boiled down to protests which were often little more than vandalism-fueled havoc that did nothing to enact change or offer solutions.

  Unrestrained by any sort of social deterrent, I was free to act or, in this case, react in any way I deemed appropriate. As far as I was concerned, Don Evans could only be dealt with in one way: death.

  That was tougher for me to admit than I originally realized. The reason being that part of me was still clinging to the “old ways” of society and the ideas of right and wrong I’d grown up with. One of the oldest and most engrained ideas was that murder was wrong. And when it came down to it…that was exactly what this would be.

  I could put any less offensive synonym on it that I wanted, but I would be setting out to take the life of a living person. That was murder. Pure and simple.

  As I looked at Alex, I waited for some form of accusatory or recriminating expression to show in her eyes. When none came, I allowed myself a deep breath. I wouldn’t feel any better about what I was about to attempt, but I wouldn’t feel worse either.

  “Just the two of you?” she finally asked.

  “Yep.” I kept that single word answer as neutral as I could. I was now ready to start hoping that there wouldn’t be an argument over how she felt she should come with us.

  “So, I guess you’ll want me to keep an eye on things here?” Alex said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Does that mean you won’t be pissed if Griffin is gone when you get back?”

  Now this was a conversation I could have. “Actually, I am dealing with that next. You won’t have to worry about him.”

  “You gonna kill him?” a deep voice whispered.