Dead Hunger VI.5 Read online

  A CHRONICLE IN THE DEAD HUNGER SERIES

  DEAD HUNGER VI.5

  The Shelburne Chronicle

  By Eric A. Shelman

  Author Eric A. Shelman

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  DEAD HUNGER VI.5:

  THE SHELBURNE CHRONICLE

  is a work of fiction by

  Eric A. Shelman

  All characters contained herein are fictional and all similarities to actual persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental.

  No portion of this text may be copied or duplicated without author or publisher written permission, except for use in professional reviews.

  ©2016 Dolphin Moon Publishing

  Cover Art by Jeffrey Kosh

  DEAD HUNGER VI.5

  THE SHELBURNE CHRONICLE

  AUTHOR NOTE: It is recommended that you read this novella between Dead Hunger VI and Dead Hunger VII, or after you’ve completed the entire series.

  This novella was actually written as a short story for an anthology called Z Resurrected, which was released in October, 2015. Z Resurrected is an awesome, quality book, featuring stories by me, Mark Tufo, Joe McKinney, Dana Fredsti, T.M. Williams and Tom Leveen. The instructions were that all of the authors should write a tale about a character in their zombie series who was lost somewhere along the way. In other words, to “resurrect” them and tell one last tale on their behalf.

  Unfortunately, the acceptance of Z Resurrected was not what we had anticipated, and though I wanted to release this story as a standalone for quite a long time, I had agreed not to publish it in any other format until after a year had passed following the release of Z Resurrected.

  It’s time.

  For this book, I chose to write about Tony Mallette. He was a lovable, screwball character that adorned the pages of Dead Hunger from Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles, through Dead Hunger VI: The Gathering Storm.

  I think Tony holds up his end of the bargain pretty well in this story, which is ¼ the length of a typical Dead Hunger novel. I truly hope you enjoy learning about Tony’s backstory.

  Thanks for becoming a part of the Dead Hunger family, and for supporting me as an independent author. It’s what I love to do, and when you also enjoy it, the stars align and make life worth living.

  Thanks, friends. Now – really meet Anthony Mallette.

  *****

  PROLOGUE

  My name is Anthony Mallette. My friends call me Tony. If I stand up really straight, I’m probably 5’9” tall. I’d put on a lot of weight after my accident, but since what I’m about to tell you happened, I’ve lost a lot of it. I’m only around 175 pounds these days.

  I have a full, salt and pepper beard and kind of crazy, Elvis-like hair. Folks even used to call me Elvis when I was a kid. Huh. I just remembered that. It’s funny how a world gone crazy can block out everything that happened before, both good and bad.

  That just made me smile for the first time in a long while. Fuckin’ Elvis.

  If you’re reading this now – and I’m not sure why you would be – I’m probably dead. I can’t really see this little journal of mine being put to use by anyone else, so that would probably keep me from passing it along. If you are reading it, you probably got it from Serena Castaneda or another friend of mine, like Flex or Gem. Maybe Hemp. Sounds like something he’d do.

  Anyway, for the moment, I’m living in a pretty strange world. I almost wrote that it’s a world dominated by zombies, but that would seem to dismiss the fact that our group dominates them every time we run into them. So they don’t so much dominate as they do occupy space and threaten.

  They always threaten.

  You might be asking yourself if maybe I’m modest, and that’s why I think you wouldn’t have any interest in reading my history. I wish I could say that was it. It’s not.

  It’s that if I’m being honest – and I pretty much am, with everyone – I’m not that quick-thinking, at least not anymore. There was a time that I was, but that was before the accident. Now it takes me a few seconds to develop a plan on the fly. That can be rough in a world like this one, but I gotta give myself more credit than I give the rotters.

  When I was in my mid-twenties I was a tough and crazy longhair. I loved to ride my Harley everywhere, and I was married to my childhood sweetheart, Linda. I put a quick end to all that. Well, not all of it. Most of it.

  The accident I’m talking about happened in New York. I was a site foreman for a construction company in Brooklyn. One day, as I was leaving one job to get a work crew set up on another, I remembered we’d need a couple of pieces of plywood for some temporary barriers. I figured since we were heading over, we could just throw them on the truck. I walked through the site and saw the plywood leaning against a temporary fence.

  All but one piece. It was laying on the ground in front of the fence. I figured it had blown over, so I bent down and curled my fingers underneath it on the eight-foot side and lifted it, walking forward as I stood it back up.

  When I took my second step, there was nothing there. Open space. Next thing I knew, I was plummeting straight down in the dark. It felt like I’d never hit bottom.

  On the way down, my head slammed into something; I don’t know what it was to this day. I’m told I landed in a sitting position.

  I had fallen forty-three feet straight down an open manhole into a sewer. There was water at the bottom, but only a couple of inches. I shattered my body; broke both my legs and fractured my spine.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but an older worker saw me drop. He ran over and climbed down the ladder built into the wall of the sewer access tunnel. When he got about twenty-five feet down, the ladder pulled from the wall and he fell another fifteen feet, landing on top of me.

  Two men down.

  I was fucking lucky to be alive and I know it now, but I didn’t know anything then. I was in the hospital for three months. When I got out, I was still in a wheelchair. I went from there to a walker, then to a cane, and then finally… I walked on my own. It took me more than a year to do that.

  I might have once known what happened to the other guy, but I’ve forgotten now.

  Like I said, I’m not sure what my head slammed into on the way down. It might have been a rung of the ladder, maybe just the wall. I’m probably lucky it dazed me so I didn’t have to worry about my continued trip south at high speed.

  From that day on, I knew I wasn’t quite right in the head anymore. Just formulating thoughts took me longer, and figuring out how to do something wasn’t instinctive anymore. I had to really struggle to learn things, and still, when people talk to me, sometimes my mind wanders.

  I never went back to my job after that, and I wasn’t much fun to be around anymore. Linda left me and I felt like everything – everything I had and everything I loved – was done and over with.

  I left New York before another year passed. I couldn’t stop thinking about a little town in Vermont called Shelburne. We’d vacationed in the area when I was a kid, and I remembered it as a small community with good people. I figured I could maybe get some kind of job in a sporting goods store or a gas station, or somewhere else to pass the time, and I figured getting away from the city might help me put all the bad stuff in my past.

  I needed something.

  It wasn’t bad, either. I started calling Linda every couple of weeks, then every week. After that, she started to call me. Soon, we were talking a couple times a week, then every day.

  Eventually, I went to get her and brought her back to live with me in Shelburne. I ended up with a job at a place in town called Davillo’s Discount Guns
and Tackle, just up Shelburne Road in South Burlington. I was pretty much an aficionado of guns, so it was a perfect fit for me. I worked part time just to get through my days.

  Linda and I got married again. My life was different, but I sure as hell felt grateful for what I still had… and what I got back.

  Linda’s about 5’6” tall with dark brown hair and eyes. She’s soft and pretty, and I was lucky to get her back. She was all I’d ever wanted since I was too young to know the difference. Call it luck, but every other relationship I’d ever had was just filler; biding time.

  But I had my Linda back.

  Then June 19, 2011 hit and everything changed.

  *****

  CHAPTER ONE

  Linda got migraines once in a while – more in recent years. I was used to it. So I didn’t think a whole lot of the headache she got the evening of June 18th. It kept her up most of the night, and when she wasn’t awake, she was thrashing and screaming.

  I was awake most of that night, too. It was her growls that kept my eyes open and on her. They did not sound right or normal. They sounded savage and animalistic, and my girl had never made noises like that before.

  She’d settle down occasionally, and I’d slow my breathing and relax, only for it to begin again. Thrashing. Tossing and turning.

  Growling.

  I was about to get up and call 911. It was time. Then, she was calm again. I lay there and watched her in the soft glow of the nightlight she insisted on for her nightly trips to the bathroom. Finally, I nodded off again, satisfied she was at least asleep.

  It was around 3:45 in the morning when it all came to a head. It was pure luck that caused me to open my eyes as she stood over me, the table lamp in her hands, bloody mucus running down her chin and her eyes blank but mad.

  She lunged at me, swinging the lamp toward my head, but I reacted fast enough to roll off the opposite edge of our bed.

  “Linda! Babe, what the hell are you doing?”

  Snarls. Growls.

  I felt chills ripple down my spine as I made the decision to stay on the floor, out of her sight for the moment. I saw my jeans on the floor, so I reached for them. I was buck naked, for Christ’s sake. I rolled onto my back and pulled my jeans on, zipping and buttoning the Levis. No shirt, as I’d taken that off earlier and dumped it in the dirty clothes hamper.

  I rolled back onto my stomach and scooted underneath the bed, following my instincts. The king-sized frame sat on 10” risers, plus the added five inches or so of the bed frame’s legs, so there was plenty of room under there. I lay still watching her planted feet. They were somehow more gray than flesh-toned. Easing my breath in and out of my lungs as quietly as I could, I watched her in the gloom.

  She hadn’t moved since I had dropped off the bed. I could still see her feet, planted on the other side. She let out another frightening screech, and I decided then that I needed to subdue her long enough to call 911 and get her help. I just had to make sure she wouldn’t hurt herself or me in the process.

  I seriously thought she had gone insane. I knew nothing about mental illness or how fast it could set in, but right about then, the woman I loved was scaring the hell out of me. I felt the tears running down my cheeks before I realized I was crying.

  I hesitated as one foot moved toward the rear of the bed.

  She was coming around! I had to stop her. I didn’t know how aware she actually was, but I wasn’t willing to take the chance that she’d figure out where I was and resume her attack at floor level. I scooted forward and threw my hands out, grabbed her ankles and jerked them toward me as hard as I could. Her feet slid out from under her on the hardwood floor, and she flopped onto her back, her head slamming into the floor with a powerful thump!

  That impact would have knocked me out – there’s no doubt. It would have knocked anyone out. Not Linda. Her growls and guttural cries never stopped. I was freaking out. I scrambled out from under the bed before she got her feet back under her, and bolted for the kitchen where my cell phone was charging. Her arm reached for me as I passed, but her clutching fingers just missed taking me down.

  I got the phone in my hand and just ran. The cord pulled from it as I entered the hallway and ran into the bathroom. I called 911.

  The operator answered. “911, what is your emergency?”

  “My wife!” I said, my heart pounding so loud in my ears I felt as though I were yelling over the sound of a freight train. “She’s… she’s… having an episode or something. She’s like… gone crazy.”

  “Is she trying to harm you sir?”

  A pounding came at the bathroom door. I lowered my voice. “Yes,” I whispered. “She tried to hit me with a lamp, and now she’s pounding on the door. Hold on.”

  “Linda, are you okay, baby? Lin? I want you to go to bed, okay? Just get back in bed.”

  The scratching grew more frantic, and her growls increased in pitch until she was shrieking like a wild animal.”

  “Is that her?” the incredulous voice came into my ear.

  “Yes.”

  “Wow. The boards are lighting up here.”

  “What?”

  “We’re getting inundated with calls.”

  “Hurry, okay? She’s really sick, like she’s gone insane!”

  “Are you on a mobile phone?” said the operator, sounding distracted now.

  The pounding now turned to a scratching-clawing. It sounded as though she were trying to shred the wood with her fingernails.

  “Y-yeah,” I stammered, my eyes on the door.

  “What is your address so we can dispatch police officers and an ambulance to your location?”

  The operator sure sounded a hell of a lot calmer than I felt.

  “3025 Hinesburg Road, in Charlotte,” I said. “Hurry, please. Tell the guys to put their sirens on and hurry!”

  “I’ve dispatched them,” she said. “Look, I’d ordinarily stay on the line, but I have to take these other calls. We’re lit up like a Christmas tree here.”

  I hit the END button and put the phone back in my pocket.

  The clawing was relentless. “Linda!” I shouted. “Linda, baby, it’s me in here, okay? You’re gonna be fine in a bit, Lin. They’re sending police and paramedics, and they’ll find out what’s wrong with you. Please, just get back in bed.”

  The clawing didn’t stop. It grew more frantic with each passing second. It began to sound like she was actually making headway. My eyes fell to the floor.

  The gap beneath the door was about three quarters of an inch. I struggled to kneel on my once-shattered legs, my joints arguing with pops and cracks. When I got down, I ran my finger over the wood floor. It was covered with slivers of wood. I felt something on my fingers, and rubbed them together. It was slick. I squinted at it, and smelled it.

  Blood. She was really ripping her fingernails off.

  “Lin, stop it! Please, baby! You’re gonna hurt yourself, honey!”

  I heard the sirens in the distance, and started to cry. One way or another, it was going to come to an end. I wanted her sedated and in an ambulance. I had no doubt that when she awoke, she would be back to the woman I’d loved since I was a kid.

  The siren’s wail grew louder and louder, finally cutting out. Next thing I heard was a pounding on the front door. “Help! In here! Come in, please!” I screamed the words at the top of my lungs. I looked at my watch. I’d been in there for twenty minutes.

  I’m not in Shelburne proper; Lin and I couldn’t afford to rent there. Neighboring Charlotte was more spread out and cheaper, especially for homes like ours that were way out on Hinesburg Road. If we’d lived in Shelburne, the ambulance would’ve been there in three minutes max.

  The scratching stopped. I eased toward the bathroom door and put my ear to it. Suddenly the sound of glass shattering rang out, and I heard men screaming. Their cries were followed by three gunshots, and then by even more men screaming.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, help!”

  The next sound
I heard was an entire magazine emptying, shot after shot. There were at least fourteen rounds expended. I pulled out my phone and hit 911 again.

  We’re sorry. All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911.

  “Shit!” I screamed. I ran toward the bathroom door and started pounding on it from my side. “Help! Help me! Is anyone there?”

  Silence filled the space behind the door now, and somehow, it felt louder than the scratching.

  I don’t know how long I waited. I was shaking worse than when I was a little kid and I disobeyed my parents by watching a horror movie before going to bed.

  This time I looked at my watch and set my mind to remembering what time it said. 5:19 AM. I’d been dealing with this craziness for one hour and thirty-four minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. I remembered what time I woke up. I sure remembered that. It was 3:45.

  I decided I’d stay there until six o’clock. If I didn’t hear anything by then, I’d bolt out of there, get to my bedroom to get my gun from my nightstand, and handle shit myself.

  What are you gonna do, tough guy? Shoot Linda? The girl you first kissed when you were eight years old and she was six? Not gonna happen.

  No. I knew it wasn’t. I turned behind me. The window.

  It was small, but I figured if I could get my ass up to it, I could crawl through it. The toilet would help me, and the rest would be up to my agility, which wasn’t quite up to par.

  What happened next made my decision for me.

  Out of the blue, the door rocked in its frame. Then again.

  “Hello? Who’s there?” I called out.

  A savage growl came from the other side of the door. As I stared, a reddish-pink mist began pouring in through the edges of the door. Curious, I moved toward it, and took a deep breath.