Dead World (Book 1): Dead Come Home

Dead Come Home

By Nathan Robert Brown and Robert Fox

Cover art

By James L. Grant

SHRIEKBACK

Oil and Gold

“
Nemesis”

…
Priests and cannibals, prehistoric animals
Everybody happy as the dead come home
Big black nemesis, parthenogenesis
No one move a muscle as the dead come home
…

Dead Come Home

PROLOGUE

Cold Blood

Nicodemus didn’t consider himself “homeless,” so to speak; he, unlike many forced to sleep on concrete pillows, considered the streets to be as close to home as one could get. His parents had raised him entirely on the road, from the day of his birth until he was thirteen. Even living out of a van, they managed to bathe in truck stops or public beach showers, when they were available, at least once a week. This was necessary to avoid being kicked out of stores and fast food places. These years of blissful poverty ended shortly after Nicodemus turned thirteen, when some “good Samaritan” threw a dollar at him and asked why he wasn’t in school. “The world is my school,” Nicodemus had told him, an answer that was usually charming enough to send people walking away chuckling. This time, however, the charm of it was lost on the Samaritan, and soon Child Protective Services showed up to “do what’s best” for Nicodemus—which, apparently, meant tearing him away from a loving family and the only life he’d ever known.

The four and a half years Nicodemus spent living under a roof with foster parents was awkward and forced. He slept on the floor because the cushy pillow top mattress was not only uncomfortable, but also a bit frightening. The young man escaped, running away at the first opportunity he saw. He’d searched for a several years, traveling the routes he remembered from his childhood in the hope that he’d run into them. However, he never again saw his true family. Eventually, his body grew old and could no longer sustain a life of wandering, so he settled into the back alleys in the downtown district of Dallas, Texas.

Nicodemus also didn’t beg or spend his nights at the shelters with the rest of the “bums.” In fact, he only went to soup kitchens and shelters on “special occasions,” like holidays or his birthday. His parents had shown him the ins-and-outs of making enough money to survive, without a mailing address or “real” job. He used the lessons his parents had taught him about making and spending money, as well as finding and using resources, to keep himself warm, fed, healthy, and reasonably clean.

Nicodemus did, however, lay claim to an old shopping cart, though he hated the cliché, in which he kept his meager yet life-sustaining possessions. His cart was loaded with plastic trash bags, a decent set of blankets, a change of clothes, three one-gallon water jugs, a week’s worth of canned goods, a functional hairbrush (when he’d found it, only a few of the bristles were missing), a half-empty bottle of shampoo, his day’s “collection,” and about one hundred dollars cash for emergencies (which he concealed in a mason jar that he’d spray-painted black to avoid being robbed).

Normally, Nicodemus spent his days collecting all kinds of cans and refundable bottles. If it could be recycled, he would snatch it up. First thing every morning, he took the previous day’s trash bags of aluminum and tin cans, plastic and glass bottles, and flattened out bottle caps to the downtown recycling center. He saved the money as best he could and used it to feed and clothe himself.

All in all, Nicodemus had nothing to complain about.

That is until noon rolled around. During the city’s lunch hour rush, a group of punk kids had stolen his cart. One of the punks hit the aging homeless man with what looked like the bottom half of a pool cue, nearly knocking Nicodemus’s head off in the process. They threw his morning’s work off the edge of a freeway overpass without so much as a second thought.

As Nicodemus caught up to them, the fashionably clothed pack of little bastards scurried off with howls of arrogant laughter, pushing the cart along with them. Breathing heavily, he looked over the side of the railing just in time to see an unsuspecting semi-truck collide with the can-filled bag as it fell. The black, well-sealed trash bags hit the grate of the truck’s front end, bursting open like a pile of large plastic-skinned watermelons. There was nothing he could do about that now, he knew. His only hope was to take off after them and try to retrieve his precious cart, which held within its aluminum cage everything that Nicodemus owned in the entire world. That cart was his survival. Without it, Nicodemus knew that he may be good as dead.

Out of breath, with steam rising off his beanie-covered head, Nicodemus caught up with what was left of his cart almost two hours later. He began routing through the mess, trying to find his black money jar.

If the jar’s still here, I’ll be all right,
Nicodemus thought
. I’ll just have to break down and get a cheap hotel room for the night. I’ve got more than enough for that. Just survive the night, Nic ol’ boy. You can figure things out in the morning. Just start again and keep on truckin’ like always.

When he realized that the black jar was, without a doubt, gone, he cursed out in such new and creative ways that his tirade would have made the most hardened of Marines sink quietly into a corner, thumb in mouth.

Taking a couple of deep breaths, Nicodemus steadied himself and began taking inventory of what remained of his stuff.

The water jugs weighed nothing when he picked them up. With a sort of odd reverence, Nicodemus ran his fingers over the skin of one of the jugs, hoping it would still be intact. He threw it to the ground when his fingers caught on the edge of a cut in the bottom, tearing painfully at the surface of his frost-stung skin. He grabbed the topmost blanket, held it up for inspection, and let fly with another river of raging curses. The blanket was shredded and already becoming heavy with ice.

When Nicodemus finally tried to pull his cart out of the ditch, he found the front wheels bent and contorted in torturously awkward angles. He kicked the disabled cart, then turned and gave what for to the worthless water jug as the curses continued.

Nicodemus pulled the hairbrush out of the ruined mess of the cart and plopped down on top of the other two water jugs, crushing them. For an hour he just sat there staring at the brush, trying to figure out how he was going to make it through the night alive. His head hurt where one of the punks had clubbed him. Those ten one-dollar bills wadded up in his pocket weren’t going to carry him too far. His cart was a complete wreck, a lost cause if ever he saw one. His nose and ears were numb from the cold and, worst of all, every one of his precious blankets were all but useless now. To make matters worse, the sun had dropped toward the horizon and the temperature began dropping even further.

Experience told him that any available space at the shelters would be filling up soon and, by the time the sun completely disappeared, there certainly wouldn’t be any beds left. A piece of advice from someone his parents knew in New York came to him through the fog of desperation.

Who needs a shelter when ya got all these old buildings what have radiators that put out excess heat? You just gotta be smart like me, Nico-mi-boy…gotta know how to find ‘em.

Nicodemus walked along the older streets of Dallas, looking down the alleys for any sign of old, outdoor radiators. If he could find one that was still in use, he could sit against it and at least keep himself from freezing to death. He was still searching by the time the sun was nearly set. It wasn’t precipitating, he was happy to notice, so snow wasn’t a problem. However, the north wind had picked up, causing the already bone-chilling evening to turn unbearably cold.

At a small roadwork site, a dump truck roared mercilessly through a puddle, soaking poor Nicodemus through his jacket layers. The cold water said “HELLO!” to his skin. Ice-cold water pressed down into his overalls, into his long-john skivvies. The water soaked further, pushed on by gravity, matting the newspaper that was stuffed in his shoes, shirt, and pants, destroying the only remaining insulation that might have kept him alive. The discarded rags of parchment pressed between his underclothes and skin were Nicodemus’s last defense against the oppressive cold.

A ray of hope emerged when he finally found a building that had an old-style radiator, which lay huddled against the back of the building. He was relieved to find the coils still hot to the touch; they hissed upon contact with the man’s wet, cold skin. Nicodemus settled in, crouching into a ball and resting his soaked back against the very hot coils. He ignored his body’s urgings to back away from the heat, knowing it would be better to nurse some minor burns than risk going to sleep and never wake up again. To brace himself against the minor complaints of his body, he gripped his hairbrush tighter.

The narrow alley turned into a wind tunnel, forcing the temperature down even further. Dripping water quickly turned into growing icicles. Inside, a young pizza chef, spurred by his boss reading the riot act for forgetting the night before, turned off the old heater as he closed up for the evening. At the same time, Nicodemus’s eyelids closed. Three hours into the moonless night, exhausted and unaware that he was in danger, Nicodemus stopped shivering completely … and the cold, harsh world around him faded into nothingness.

Dead Come Home

Chapter 1

The Grind

Ryan Sheller was in one hell of a rush. The young, well-dressed, clean-cut yuppie-hopeful moved with the purpose of a young man fueled by ambitions that may have exceeded his abilities. He hurried down the crowded sidewalk of the morning-rush-hour-congested street.

Today is going to be a long day
, he decided, checking his watch for what seemed like the fifteen-billionth time since he’d left his studio apartment.

With his free hand he buttoned the second to top button on his black trench coat, as much to ward off the bitter cold as to protect the appearance of what was his very best professional suit.

Ryan turned sideways in order to squeeze his torso between two people coming from the opposite direction, nearly knocking an elderly woman down in the process. He may have been in a hurry, but Ryan was not the kind of jerk to rattle an old woman without so much as saying he was sorry. He slowed down and began to apologize when he suddenly backed squarely into someone else. The painstakingly polite young man turned yet again to apologize to the second person. However, before he could say anything, he found himself being grabbed him by the lapels of his coat.

Ryan put one gloved hand on the person’s chest and pushed. He looked down to see an old man in a drenched overcoat, his beanie covered head surrounded by a halo of quasi-frozen hair. He thought it was odd that the old fellow’s hair was such a mess … he was gripping a hairbrush in his hand as though it was all he had in the world. Ryan reached into his pants pocket and pulled out some money for the poor old guy.

“Jesus man, if I were half as cold as you have to be, I’d probably be mugging people unsuccessfully too,” he said, reaching out to hand over the money. “I know it’s not much, but it’s all yours. Sorry, I’m really running late.”

Ryan’s blue eyes went wide when the man, now on his knees, clumsily advanced once again, within an uncomfortable range of closeness. The bum’s mouth was wide open, letting out a monotone groan that made Ryan’s skin crawl. The up-and-coming MBA intern yelped loudly as the strange homeless man bit down his exposed wrist instead of taking the money Ryan was holding out for him.

“Yipe! Ow! What the fuck are you doing?! Get off me, you crazy old bastard!” Ryan yelled, swinging his briefcase at his attacker’s head. The excellent imitation leather (even Ryan didn’t know it was fake) connected to the side of the man’s beanie-clad head with a dull slap-thud.

The blow to the head didn’t knock the bum out, but it seemed to stun the maniacal fellow for a moment. Ryan seized the opportunity to yank free his wrist from the grip of the bite. Somewhat panicked, Ryan scrambled away from the scene with an even greater sense of urgency than he’d begun the day with.

A block later, he slowed down briefly to take a quick look at the bite on his wrist. The teeth-marked punctures were discolored and bleeding, but the injury didn’t look too serious. Certainly not serious enough to put his internship in jeopardy by making himself any later than he already was. Ordinarily, Ryan might have hurried to the emergency room for a tetanus shot or perhaps even stitches, but at the moment, he simply couldn’t afford to spend the hours that such a trip would inevitably take. He glanced at his watch once more and started running again … this time at a near sprint.