A Deadly Winter

  A DEADLY WINTER

  THE SOUTHERN DEAD - BOOK 1

  KODY BOYE

  A Deadly Winter

  The Southern Dead, #1

  By Kody Boye

  Copyright © 2021. All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by KDS Cover Concepts

  Edited by Connie Frater

  Interior formatting by Kody Boye

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied within critical articles and reviews or works within the public domain.

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  The last word she said to me after she was bitten was, “Go.”

  So I ran.

  And ran.

  And ran.

  Until I couldn’t run anymore.

  Come time I collapsed in the middle of a stranger’s backyard, there wasn’t much more I could do.

  Between the sounds of chaos, the bark of gunfire, and the screams of both the living and the dead, it seemed like the entire world was ending… which, I suppose, it was.

  But it didn’t start this way.

  No.

  Life used to be simple—ordinary, even, and completely and utterly mundane.

  Until it happened.

  I suppose, like all stories, that I should start at the beginning.

  My name is Crystal Wright, and this is the way the world ended.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It began on a winter day that was like any other. Cold in South Texas, with the chance of frigid rain, I sat at the kitchen counter in my typical family home and listened to my mother as she hummed along to the radio. Behind me, the television streamed nonsense—celebrity gossip, entertainment news, the latest breaking stories. For someone who didn’t typically watch TV, it didn’t really catch my attention. I was too concerned with getting out the door and ready for school.

  “Ma,” I said, lifting my eyes from my breakfast to look at her.

  My mother turned her head to regard me and asked, “Yes, Sugar?”

  “Why do you always have the TV on if you’re not even paying attention to it?”

  “Because we might miss something important,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  My mother pointed to the television. “Like that.”

  “Reports of civil unrest are still continuing to come out of Mexico,” the news anchor said, her voice cold, monotonous, and free of any disposition. “Though it has become increasingly clear that the South American refugee crisis is only continuing to worsen, Mexican officials are stating to remain calm, and do not appear to be worried about any of the violence seeping over the Mexican-American border.”

  “See?” my mother offered. “I told you you might miss something.”

  “What’s any of this have to do with us?” I asked. “We’ve got a border between us. It’s not like anything’s going to happen.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, Sugar. For all we know, we’re not getting every piece of information.”

  “Why keep us in the dark?” I frowned.

  “To avoid panic?” my mother said.

  I was unable to respond.

  With a sigh, she turned the television off and turned to face the doorway before saying, “Come on. Let’s get you to school.”

  We left the house in silence, and rode across town to Halbrook High without saying much. My mother continued to hum—a sound that was both melodic and peaceful. It was enough to lure me from my thoughts of what was happening little more than twenty miles away, and pulled me back to the present.

  Come time we arrived at Halbrook High, all my mother could say was, “Have a good day at school.”

  “I will,” I replied. “Love you.”

  “Love you too, baby.”

  I leaned into her embrace; and though our hugs were normally short, something compelled me to hold her for longer that morning. Maybe it was the fear that something might happen, or just me being paranoid. Either way, I hugged her for at least a minute before pulling away and looking at her.

  “Something wrong?” my mother asked.

  “No,” I replied. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you later, Sugar.”

  “Bye, Ma,” I said.

  I watched her car disappear down the road and into the further stretches of McAllen with the belief that things would be fine.

  In all my seventeen years of life, I’d never had to worry about a thing. Mom had always taken good care of me, and Dad, though distant after their divorce, always managed to keep in touch. I had good parents. A good life. A happy life.

  Little did I know that everything was about to change.

  But that morning, I couldn’t have known. All I was concerned about was the big algebra test that would start at exactly 8:15 AM.

  So, in typical fashion, I walked through the school’s front doors, stopped at my locker to drop my bag off, then made my way through the many halls until I came to Mister Kaufmann’s room. There, I settled into my seat, hauled my math book up onto the table, and waited for the bell to count down my impending academic doom.

  You’re not good at math, my conscience said. You know you’re going to fail this.

  I am not, I kept telling myself. I’m going to pass, even if it’s a low C.

  Mister Kaufmann watched his students from the edge of the room, ever-pleasant in his sadistic attempts to torture us with the most advanced of math problems. He was a nice guy, and a brilliant teacher, but he was a hard grader, and didn’t let anything slide.

  As the final student entered the room, he stood to close the door and said, “Good morning, class.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Kaufmann,” we all replied with varying degrees of enthusiasm, or lack thereof.

  “I hope you all prepared for your test this morning. While I can’t promise it will be easy, I can promise that it will stretch you to the limits of your knowledge, which is exactly what we’ve been practicing. Right, class?”

  “Right,” several students said. I merely lowered my head in silent prayer.

  “Now then,” the man said, turning to take a stack of thirty pages of papers from his desk. “If you would be so kind as to pass these to the students behind you, we can get started.”

  “Mr. Kaufmann,” a young man to my right said.

  “Yes, Jordan?”

  “Who’s that outside?”

  Mr. Kaufmann, as well as everyone else in the class, turned toward the row of windows on the far side of the room.

  “I’m… not sure,” the teacher said, stepping toward the window closest to his desk to acknowledge the individual stumbling around the field just outside the math lab. “I don’t think anyone was scheduled to use the field this morning.”

  “Then who could it be?” the young man named Jordan asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Mr. Kauffman stepped toward the windows.

  The figure outside came to a halt.

  One moment, the person was as stiff as a board.

  The next, they were running straight toward the window.

  “What’s he doing?” one of the girls asked.

  “He’s going to stop,” another guy said, “right?”

  “I—” Mr. Kaufman started. “I don’t—”

  He didn’t get the chance to finish.

  The figure—a man, tall at about six feet and possibly in his late teens or early twenties—slammed full-force into the window.

  The teacher jumped.

  Several students cried out.

  “Woah!”

  “Is he okay?”

  “His nose,” a girl said.

  The man stumbled back; and though what was left of his shattered nose bled profusely down his front, staining his mouth and teeth in a grisly shade of red, he didn’t reach up to cup his face. Instead, he merely swayed, as if attempting to gain his bearings.

  His eyes opened.

  The cloudy pupils widened.

  Then he launched himself at the window again.

  Several students screamed.

  A girl cried out.

  One young man fell out of his desk.

  “What’s he doing?” a girl beside me asked, grimacing each time the man banged his head and hands against the window. “He’s just… just—"

  “I think it’s time to call security,” Mr. Kaufmann said, starting toward the doorway.

  The
man slammed his fist against the window and screamed—raw, bloody, and hard—before beginning to claw at the students inside.

  “Wait!” someone said. “A window’s open!”

  “Open?” Mr. Kaufmann asked. “Who opened the goddamn—”

  A girl lunged for the partially-cracked window at the far side of the room.

  The man outside jerked his head.

  He screeched.

  He launched himself forward.

  The girl had almost no time to slam the window into place before the bloodied man threw himself against the windowsill and into the room.

  Mr. Kaufmann was on him instantly—first grabbing at, then taking hold of the man’s shirt. The crazed stranger snapped his teeth at the teacher in a wild attempt to bite him, hands pinwheeling, fingers clawing. He screeched—long and hard—and pushed Mister Kaufmann to the floor.

  Two of the largest boys in class ran to Mr. Kaufmann’s aid.

  The first grabbed the man’s shirt, the second his waist.

  The resulting tug of war that occurred lasted only a moment.

  The crazed man spun, sunk his teeth into one of the boys’ cheeks, and ripped the flesh from his face.

  Pandemonium ensued shortly thereafter.

  I threw myself from my seat and retreated toward the doorway along with about a dozen other students. Each of us clawed for the door handle, attempting to push one another aside while the crazed man attacked Mr. Kaufmann and the two boys. The boy whose face had been ripped open was tackled to the floor, then had his neck torn out. The second boy who’d gone to Mr. Kaufmann’s aid pushed the stranger off his companion and was just about to spin to face the assailant when the boy on the floor jerked upright.

  “Joseph?” the boy asked. “Are you—”

  The boy with the torn face and throat launched himself atop his classmate.

  Mr. Kauffman, scrambling to get to his feet, reached down to press a hand against a bite on his arm and screamed, “GET OUT OF HERE!”

  Someone opened the door.

  A flood of students exited, me included.

  I spun in an effort to locate our teacher just in time to see him be jumped by not only the man, but the boy who’d been bitten.

  Mr. Kaufmann was ripped apart in minutes.

  “What’s happening?” a girl asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I—”

  The man and the boy on the floor stopped biting Mr. Kaufmann.

  They lifted their eyes, snarled, and stood.

  Mr. Kaufmann followed shortly thereafter.

  The girl screamed and took off down one end of the hall. I, meanwhile, was left to dart down the other.

  I ran in the one direction I knew might be safest—the front office.

  By that point, the screaming, and screeching, had begun to draw the attention of other students, teachers, and faculty. Though I did not turn to see what was happening behind me, shouts of question, followed by screams to run, run, echoed throughout the hall.

  Our security officer, Mr. Williams, appeared from his office, and centered his eyes directly on me. “What—” he started.

  I ran toward him.

  He pulled his baton from his belt.

  I screamed, “Stop!”

  And he lowered his baton a short moment later.

  “What’s going on?” Principal Matthews asked, coming into the hallway.

  “A man—” I started. “He—broke into the class—and—at-at-tacked Mr. Kaufmann!”

  “What are you going on about?” Mr. Williams replied. “Why are you—”

  Someone screeched.

  I turned.

  Mrs. Chambers, old and decrepit and usually with a cane—came stumbling down the hall, her eyes glazed, her mouth dripping with blood.

  “Mrs. Chambers?” Principal Matthews asked, stepping forward.

  “No!” I screamed. “Don’t!”

  But it was too late.

  One moment Mrs. Chambers was stumbling, the next she was rushing the principal in a clumsy gait.

  Principal Matthews had no chance to raise his hands to defend himself before Mrs. Chambers attacked him.

  “What the hell is going on?” Mr. Williams asked.

  “Don’t!” I cried as the man made a move to approach. “They bite! And they—they—”

  Principal Matthews turned to face us, blood gushing from his carotid artery.

  Though Mr. Williams was able to stun the crazed Mrs. Chambers by smacking her head with his baton, it took mere seconds for Principal Matthews to jerk his head and scream as if he’d just been pulled from the depths of Hell.

  I knew what was going to happen. I knew it. But unarmed as I was, I could do nothing to help.

  So I did the next best thing:

  I ran toward the front doors—

  And pulled the fire alarm.

  Its screech as I passed through the front doors drowned out any sound of violence behind me. Bloodied, panting, running as fast as I could, I tried to avoid the stares of people across the street as I, a young black woman of only seventeen, darted across the street and into incoming traffic.

  A car slammed on its breaks.

  Another rear-ended it.

  Someone screamed.

  Another person screeched.

  I didn’t stop running, though, no matter what people were yelling or screaming or screeching. My blonde-and-black braids came loose from their bun atop my head, and I struggled to tuck them over my shoulders so they would not smack me in the face. Along with this, I struggled to take breaths, only to realize that my head was swimming, and my eyes were beginning to cross.

  Calm down, my conscience offered.

  Calm down? I thought. Calm down? I laughed. How could I calm down when someone had just launched themselves through the math lab’s window and bit two students and a teacher?

  It hit me, all at once, at that moment, like a freight train slamming into an unfortunate stalled car on the tracks.

  The violence in Mexico—

  The refugees from South America—

  Could it all be connected?

  I didn’t know, and as such, did not bother to dwell on it.

  Instead, I took off down the street, clawing at my pocket for my cell phone.

  I only had one thing on my mind: my mother.

  I slashed her picture across the surface of my touchscreen and jammed the phone against my head as I continued to run down the street.

  “Crystal?” my mother asked. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know!” I screamed. “Something’s happening!”

  “What is?” she asked. “Crystal, honey, what—”

  A loud and monstrous bang sounded somewhere nearby.

  “Was that a gun?” my mother asked. “Is someone shooting your school?”

  “I’m not in school, Mama.”

  “Then where are you?”

  “I’m running down Bicentennial Boulevard,” I say. “Please, come get me. Something’s wrong. People were killing each other, and now—now—” Another gunshot went off nearby. “Now they’re shooting each other.”

  “I’m coming,” my mother said. “Don’t hang up on me.”

  “I won’t!” I cried. “I—”

  A figure lurched out in front of me

  I screamed, and spun about.

  The young woman—bloodied and beaten—screeched and threw herself in my direction.

  In my haste to get away, my phone slipped out of my hand and crashed to the ground below.

  “No!” I screamed. “Stop! Stop!”

  The young woman rushed me.

  A gunshot went off.

  The woman’s head snapped to the side as the bullet entered her shoulder.

  A man yelled, “Run!”

  So I did.

  I knew my mother would be coming straight down Bicentennial Boulevard, and that it would take her approximately five minutes to get to where I was, so I ran as fast as I could, pumping my legs and scanning the roads before me. Most of the vehicles driving opposite the direction I was running in were beginning to slow, though why I couldn’t be sure. Maybe they were listening to something on the radio, or maybe they were stopping for—