Dead Legends (Book 1): R.I.P. Van Winkle Read online

  “Trust me, Rip. You don’t want to be around for what’s going to happen next. It has already started, and it will be very messy soon, but you need not worry about that,” Crayon said. He lackadaisically stuffed his hands back into his pockets.

  Rip unconsciously had already unscrewed the top off the flask. He brought it to his nose and inhaled deeply. The elixir had a smell that he was unfamiliar with. It smelled something akin to gin but with a sweeter aroma. There was no hiding his anticipation; he wanted to take a drink, if for no other reason than to get the apparent ghost of Crayon to disappear. Of course, if he took a drink and it was real, that would mean Crayon was real. It was a Catch-22.

  Rip took a deep breath and gazed longingly at the flask. An unnatural thirst came over him as he continued to look at the clear liquid. With a quick motion, he brought the flask to his lips and took a long draught. Tempted by the taste, he visited the flask again. The sweet taste of the contents invited him to continue until the clear container was empty.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the flask still clutched in it. As he looked back to his hand, the container was back to the stainless steel one that he had dropped earlier. His heart quickly made an appearance in his throat.

  “What the hell?”

  Rip’s head swooned. He stumbled back; the kick of the alcohol, or whatever it was, hit him hard and fast. The liquor was hitting him harder than he expected, and he was no lightweight when it came to handling spirits. Moments later, his senses gave out, one by one. His vision became increasingly blurry. His hearing had deteriorated to the point where the only sound he could make out was the pounding in his ears, his heart tick-tocking away like a giant metronome in his head. He licked his lips, coming away with nothing except the numb feeling he was so familiar with from many nights of binge drinking.

  “Crayon… what… got to… make it back… Fort Drum…” His words became hollow, his throat tight, and his knees weak. Rip pitched forward, landing on his knees. Shuffling forward with all the energy he could muster, he soon found himself down on all fours, crawling ahead. Even the minuscule strength he had left soon gave out, and he collapsed face first into the cold, hard dirt.

  He fell into a deep sleep as the snow started to fall. The light, white confetti of Mother Nature soon covered his body, but “Rip” Irving was none the wiser. One fleeting image wafted away as he struggled to keep consciousness. It was Crayon’s face, once more warning him of what was to come. The ghostly image pointed to his head once more.

  Its only weakness is right here.

  CHAPTER 2

  As Rip woke, he immediately felt the warmth of the world around him. Having fallen asleep during the bitter cold of another New York winter, he was certain that this was the afterlife. Blinking away sleepiness, his heart immediately sank. He’d fallen asleep on FTX after drinking a little too much, and now his career would be over. He raised his head and immediately let it fall back down, smacking a large rock behind him.

  “Ah! Dammit!” he exclaimed, vigorously rubbing the newly formed knot on the back of his head. He winced from the quickly forming bruise. Well, he was certainly not dead. As he rubbed his head, his fingers ran through a large clump of unkempt hair. Rip always kept his hair neatly trimmed and maintained the Army “high and tight” haircut for most of his career. He shot up quickly and ruffled the mass of nearly foot-long hair that he now possessed.

  Those assholes have put a damn wig on me! When I find out which one of those damn privates did this, I’m gonna—OW!

  Rip tried yanking the hair off his head, unsuccessfully. The mane on his head was firmly attached. He hung his head, bewildered, and noticed another tangle of rumpled hair emanating from his face and chin. Running his hand along the ZZ Top-length beard he now wore, the confusion settled in with full force. The hair on both his head and face was more than a foot long.

  Rip looked around, gauging his surroundings. Gone were the bland, colorless rocks and dead look of a New York winter. Instead, the snow was replaced with a lush, green forest of towering trees and plush grass, complemented by colorful wildflowers. Rip could not adequately explain such a stark contrast. How had his soldiers pulled off such an elaborate prank? How did they glue a beard and wig on him without him knowing? And most disturbing of all, how did they find such a green, untouched area of the forest? He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, especially after a healthy dose of the drink, but something was amiss.

  Rip felt around for the familiarity of his rifle. The battle-tested M4 that he carried was his lifeline, and he needed that lifeline now. As he stretched his hands out to search, he realized that he might not be alone. A shuffling sound, one like dragging feet, came from somewhere off to his right. He couldn’t see anything or anyone, but it was obvious there was something there. He brought his knees into his chest slowly, his joints aching and popping as he did. The shuffling sound was getting closer; he needed his rifle.

  Rip spotted the M4 just as a bedraggled form appeared less than twenty feet away from him. Immediately, he knew something wasn’t right with the man. Aside from the shuffling gait, the man wore old, tattered pants and a dirty polo shirt. All of those Rip could overlook if the man didn’t have one glaring problem.

  He was missing his left arm.

  The man looked at Rip and growled. Not a sound that someone would expect coming from a stranger; nonetheless, it was what the man was doing. As he growled, Rip noticed the man was missing several teeth and his mouth was filled with a black, tar-like substance. It oozed from the man’s mouth, dripping down and slathering the front of his already dirty shirt.

  Rip cautiously and slowly moved towards his rifle, not taking his eyes off the unkempt man. He reached the M4, grabbed it, and pointed it at his would-be assaulter.

  “Look, buddy, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I can see there’s something wrong with you too. I just woke up here.” Rip raised the rifle and aimed it at the man.

  That didn’t stop him.

  “Look, asshole,” Rip said, getting up slowly, and assuming his shooting stance, “I don’t wanna have to shoot you, but I will if you don’t back the fuck off!”

  That didn’t stop him either.

  Rip quickly checked the M4. The rifle was covered in a layer of dirt and grime that he wasn’t accustomed to. He normally kept his rifle in perfect working order; it was his lifeline, after all. He dropped the magazine from the rifle and inspected it. The rounds inside were tarnished and somewhat dirty but looked to be in working order. He shoved the magazine back into the rifle and chambered the first round, taking only seconds to do so.

  The filthy man continued his slow approach as Rip was checking his rifle. He raised his good arm—such as it was—and let out another deep, guttural growl. He opened his mouth again to snarl at Rip, when he was met with the business end of Rip’s M4 in his chest.

  “Back up, asshole!”

  The man roared. A loud, throaty sound emanated from his disgustingly black mouth.

  Rip shoved him back with the barrel of the rifle; the man stumbled but quickly regained his form and stalked towards him. This time even faster.

  Rip brought the rifle to his shoulder and aimed. “Fuck it.”

  He fired several rounds into the man’s chest. The bullets tore through, blasting out the other side, taking bits of flesh and bone with them.

  Again, that didn’t stop him.

  Rip lowered his rifle. A normal human being wouldn’t have been able to survive those shots. A normal human wouldn’t have been walking around without his left arm, Rip absently thought. He took a few unsteady steps back, trying to figure out just what in the hell was standing in front of him. If it wasn’t a man and it didn’t go down with several 5.56mm rounds to the chest, then what the hell would take it down?

  Its only weakness is right here.

  Rip remembered the words of his dead friend as he had appeared to him… whenever that was. Had it been days, weeks, months… years? He didn’t kno
w how much time had passed since he last saw Crayon. It was difficult enough to gauge what was happening to him, let alone the world around him. He’d aged, grew a beard and a hippie-looking hairdo, so it must have been some time since he last saw his friend.

  How is that even possible?

  There’s a dead man walking around with five holes in his chest in front of you; that makes “impossible” go right out the fucking window, Rip.

  Shut up, asshole, I wasn’t talking to you!

  Talking to who, Rip?

  There’s a goddamned zombie in front of you, and you want to argue with me?

  “All of you shut up! Shut the fuck up! Just shut your goddamned pie holes!”

  We’re not here, Rip. Can’t you see that?

  Rip dropped his rifle and grabbed the sides of his throbbing head. He stumbled backwards, trying desperately to get away from his problems, but there was no avoiding it. There was no liquor bottle he could run to, no bar he could hide in that would make this go away. The haze of alcoholism had made him numb to the outside world, and now the outside world was getting its revenge on him. It was all too much to take in at once. Dead people walking, waking up in a strange place, waking up with a beard and ten years’ worth of hair, his unkempt rifle; it was all too much for him to handle.

  The dead man in front of him didn’t care.

  It shuffled forth again, determined to take a hunk out of Rip’s flesh. It was indeed a zombie. A reanimated creature from legend, folklore, and cheesy B-movie plot lines stood before him. It hungered for warm flesh to feast on. It knew no other instinct than to simply kill, feed, and repeat ad nauseam. It stalked simply because it knew nothing else, and it wanted to eat Rip.

  Rip was otherwise concerned with his mental health, or lack thereof. He could neither rationalize anything around him, nor the voices in his head. Neither one seemed particularly comforting at the moment.

  He dropped to one knee and screamed at the top of his lungs, and he didn’t care who heard him.

  The zombie just kept moving forward. That is, until an arrow pierced the side of its skull. The arrow went in its right ear and protruded out of its left; a small trickle of blood and chunks of gray matter stuck to it. It stood motionless for a moment, and then fell like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  “Get over here! I think we got a live one!” a voice called out. Two more people came running up, trampling brush and snapping twigs and leaves, sounding their approach.

  A man with a longbow appeared in front of Rip. He had managed to stop screaming and now looked on the man with crazed, strained eyes. Tears had streamed down his face, but he was too big a man to wipe them away, or even notice their presence. The man with the bow motioned for his colleagues to slow down and stop.

  “It’s alright, buddy. We’re here to help. We don’t want any trouble out of you, okay?”

  Rip was raging mad; he stood, fists balled. He didn’t want to charge towards the man standing in front of him. After all, he’d just saved Rip’s life while he was having a nervous breakdown. That, in itself, should have earned the man a pass. Rip took in several deep breaths and calmed himself slightly.

  “What the fuck is going on here?”

  The man slowly approached, his right hand stuck out for a handshake that Rip wasn’t going to give him just yet. The man looked to be in his late thirties, maybe early forties. He had a five o’clock shadow that wasn’t comprised of just facial hair, but a mixture of hair and dirt. He wore a black long-sleeved shirt and dirty, but tear-free, blue jeans.

  “My name is Jacob Woods; most everybody calls me Jake. We have a cabin near here that we operate out of. You’re more than welcome to join us, but you’re going to have to tell me just what exactly you want to know first. If there’s something out of the ordinary, we need to know.”

  Rip furrowed his brow in anger and clenched his teeth. “Does the dead guy walking around not constitute ‘out of the ordinary’?”

  Jake stood no more than five feet away from Rip, but as far as Rip could tell, dead people wandering around in the woods did not represent anything amiss to Jake. The look on Jake’s face made it clear that killing zombies was something they were apt at doing.

  “The zombie, creature, dead-guy-thing lying over there.” Rip pointed to the corpse with the arrow still in his ear. “Whatever the fuck he is, it’s not normal. When the fuck did all this happen? Where the hell am I? What in the hell is going on?”

  Jake blinked several times. “You don’t know about the zombies?”

  “Does it fucking look like I’ve seen ’em before?”

  Jake pushed both hands down, taking on a calming gesture. It didn’t work. “Okay, calm down. Yes, there are zombies. They showed up about ten years ago after some kind of super-flu or something made its way over here from China. Nothing is left of the United States… nothing to speak of, at least. The government collapsed about six months after it hit the mainland United States. Over ninety percent of the population was wiped out, maybe more. To answer your third question, you’re in upstate New York, near Fort Drum. I only mention Fort Drum because you look like Tenth Mountain Division. My dad was in that, too; same rank as you—master sergeant.”

  “Wait, ten years ago?”

  “Yeah, something like that? Why?”

  “I left Fort Drum on FTX on December the twelfth, 2013. What fucking day is it now?”

  Jake felt a sinking feeling in his gut. This guy was either completely shithouse crazy, or he honestly didn’t know what had happened to the rest of the world. He didn’t want to tell Rip what day it was for fear of what the effects might be telling the man the truth. He took a deep breath and braced himself mentally. He winced as he spoke.

  “Sergeant, I don’t know how to tell you this, but it is May the fifth… 2023.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Rip ate like, well, like he hadn’t had a bite to eat in ten years. He shoveled in spoonsful of potatoes and venison nearly as fast as he could, and his stomach grumbled in approval. He couldn’t believe his appetite, but then again, he hadn’t eaten since leaving Fort Drum on that fated FTX that happened over a decade ago. He paused long enough to grab a glassful of water and chugged it down, then resumed his gluttony. After finishing the bowl of stew, he put down the spoon and tried to regain some of his senses. A little food did wonders for his demeanor. He felt a little more normal, although the term “normal” had undergone changes in the past few hours. He felt like he was dreaming, still not quite able to comprehend what was happening. Compartmentalization would be his friend for a little while; just try to understand one thing at a time.

  After leaving the scene of his recent reawakening, Jake had been kind enough to take him back to the small cabin in the woods that he shared with the others. The others that occupied the small, primitive quarters were Jake’s family. Tina, Jake’s wife, and Casey, his daughter, made up the residents of the household. It wasn’t much, just a hunting cabin that Jake had used in the time before “The Rise,” Jake had taken his family to the cabin after everything had gone to shit. He tried to stay in his original home, and managed to do so even after the power had gone out. Jake wasn’t a prepper, just a man with the foresight to get a generator to handle the piss-poor conditions of an upstate New York winter. It was by no means lush, but it was home for them. Jake thought their original home was too far in the city and had decided to take the family to the cabin once lawlessness became widespread.

  It was a true log cabin; Jake built it by hand two years before The Rise. The front of the cabin sported two windows, both of which were boarded up, leaving only a small slit to see through. A small covered porch that once had been an open area was also boarded up, leaving only small areas to see through. It was by no means bulletproof, but it kept the undead from getting in. Inside, the cabin consisted of one main bedroom and a loft that served as another. It was complemented with a kitchen, but no indoor bathroom. A few dozen yards away from the cabin was a wellspring and an outhouse. The time
-honored tradition of women going to the bathroom together was alive and well, as Jake wouldn’t let any one person go the outhouse alone. They always stuck with the buddy system.

  Rip sat back in his chair, momentarily satisfied. He rested his hands on his satisfied stomach and tried to relax. Tina stood at the sink while Jake took up a seat across from Rip at the table, which was also handmade. He hadn’t spoken to the couple since leaving the spot where he awoke, afraid of what he might find out. There were few things that he wanted right now, and information was one of them.

  “Better?” Jake said, breaking the awkward silence.

  Rip sat forward slowly. “Yeah, thank you. I suppose I’ll be heading off soon, but thank you for your hospitality.”

  Jake held up his hand. “I don’t think you should be running off just yet, Sergeant Irving. You clearly don’t know anything about the world outside; you need a little education on how things are nowadays.”

  “Rip.”

  Jake frowned. “Excuse me?”

  Rip rested his hands on the table. His enraged demeanor was temporarily gone in favor of appreciation for Jake and confusion about what he really needed to know. “My men nicknamed me Rip a long time ago. No one really calls me by my given name.”

  “All right, Rip. There is plenty that you need to know before you go off on your own. For instance, you looked like you didn’t know that you can’t kill the zombies with anything short of a headshot. Injuries to the body will slow ’em down, sure, but if you wanna kill one, you gotta shoot it in the head.”

  Its only weakness is right here.

  Rip shook off the words of his deceased friend. Crayon had told him that he needed to be strong and not falter when the enemy approached, and he’d failed miserably at that so far. If he’d been able to clear his head long enough to remember, he would have recalled the importance of his dead friend’s words. Maybe taking that last drink Crayon gave him was a good enough reason to lay off the booze for a while. Not that it would matter; there was no alcohol to be found, and Jake made no indication that he had any.