Cities of the Dead: Winters of
Discontent
By William Young
A sequel to Cities of the Dead: Stories from
the Zombie Apocalypse
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2014 by William Young
Table of Contents
Squatters Rights
Then Cain Turned on Abel
The Start of the Breakdown
A Slim Chance at a Narrow Escape
***
SQUATTERS ’ RIGHTS
Erie, Pennsylvania - Day 482
Dexter sat on his stool on the ice of frozen Lake
Erie and waited for a bite. Of all the injustices life could deal,
this topped them: civilization was gone, the undead walked the
earth (eating people, no less) and the current winter was the
coldest he could remember from his thirty-five years of life. He
was no stranger to ice fishing - he even liked it - but having to
keep an eye out for the undead stripped the activity of the
relaxation that normally accompanied it. That, and the fact that he
now had to catch fish to feed his family took the fun out of it. It
was no longer a hobby, but a requirement.
He turned his head across the ice
and saw nothing but the bleak landscape of frozen lake. Once upon a
time there would have been others out here with him, in canvas huts
with propane heaters in them, but now there was just him. Maybe the
rest were afraid to venture out into the open, where there was no
place to hide should an undead horde suddenly appear, but he had a
wife and kids to feed. The deer hunting wasn ’ t going so well, and the
small game were almost non-existent.
He was surprised his family had made
it this long. Most hadn ’ t. Whatever had happened had
infected nearly half the city and surrounding counties within a few
days, the zombies suddenly everywhere. Those that
hadn ’ t
been infected found a radical new world order imposed on them
overnight. Not that there hadn ’ t been any warning that something
was coming: California had gone under the plague first, going dark
to the world over the course of a few weeks in January a year
earlier. The big cities had started falling quickly afterward, and
by spring civilization was gone. The only good thing about it was
that he ’ d lost the twenty pounds he ’ d put on since getting
married.
He felt a tug on the line and pulled
a walleye up through the hole. He slipped it into the creel and
figured four fish would have to cut it: he ’ d been out exposed for too
long. He hurriedly broke down his equipment and slipped it into a
canvas bag and began to quickly walk off the lake toward shore, a
marina area near the mouth of Walnut Creek. He slowed down as he
stepped through the raggedy ice near the edge of the beach: a
broken leg would end him as surely as the undead.
He crept up from the shoreline and
huddled behind a boulder alongside the parking area, peeking up
over it and scanning the snow-covered area. There was three feet of
the stuff, but the chains on the Ford Bronco ’ s tires made quick work of
it, mostly. He ’ d been using his snowmobile since
the beginning of winter, but he ’ d busted a skid on it a few weeks
back escaping a horde of zombies that had, as usual, come out of
nowhere. He shouldn ’ t have panicked, they moved too
slowly in the snow to catch him, but the sheer number of them had
boggled his mind and he ’ d crashed into a Jersey barrier.
The sled had gotten him most of the way home, but it had taken him
until after sunset to slog the rest of the way. His wife, Carly,
has assumed the worst and had broken down into tears seeing him
enter the house through the back door, stamping his shoes in the
mud room.
She had a revolver in hand, of course, just to be
sure.
The parking lot was clear of the
undead, so he slid into the Bronco and started it up, creeping out
of the marina and along the narrow band of smooth snow he knew
covered what had been the road. He drove past a few groups of the
undead pushing their way aimlessly through the snow, registering
his presence in the vehicle with snarls. One of them
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