Dead Moon: Song of Sorrow (The Dead Moon Thrillers Book 3)

  DEAD MOON: SONG OF SORROW (Book 3)

  By Matt James

  Description:

  Frank Moon has no idea what to expect next. The Unseen are everywhere, in all shapes and sizes. The remains of the dead are everywhere too... Millions are gone, and Frank is doing everything he can to keep his family from becoming a part of the death toll.

  His in-laws are missing and are believed to be hunkered down in their cabin in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. When Frank and the others arrive on the scene, they discover that a whole new horror awaits them there. Some of the Unseen aren’t just ravenous monsters roaming a dying world. A few of the creatures carry with them a lethal virus that has the ability to wipe out humanity forever.

  ALSO BY MATT JAMES

  Stand-Alone Titles

  The Dragon

  Broken Glass

  Dark Island

  Sub-Zero (2019)

  Dead Moon Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thrillers

  Dead Moon: Nightmares are Born

  Dead Moon: Home Sweet Hell

  Dead Moon: Song of Sorrow

  Dead Moon Short Stories

  Dead Moon: Nightmare at the Museum

  Dead Moon: Scared to Death (2019)

  Dane Maddock Adventures w/ David Wood

  Berserk

  Skin and Bones

  Venom

  Hank Boyd Adventures

  Blood and Sand

  Mayan Darkness

  Babel Found

  Elixir of Life

  Hank Boyd Origins

  The Cursed Pharaoh

  Logan Reed Thrillers

  Plague

  Evolve

  For Thomas R. Kelly

  A distinguished member of the

  Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Tactical Unit

  RIP, my friend

  1

  “Shoot!” I yell, keeping the creature at bay.

  The siren’s fanged jaws are impossibly close to snapping shut on my throat. The only things between her and my tasty jugular are my busted crossbow and my slick, bloodied hands, and if someone doesn’t get this bitch off me soon, I’m done for.

  Seriously, her hot, stinking breath is enough to put me down. It smells like a combo of dead fish and fresh, wet cat food.

  I’m flat on my back with the she-devil Unseen straddling my waist. Like me, she’s gripping my broken weapon hard. But unlike me, her grip is solid whereas mine is quickly failing. I have the crossbow pushed sideways across her chest, and when she leans in closer, I feel some resistance.

  Oh, right, there’s something else between us besides my bow.

  Just before she pounced on me, I loosed an arrow from across the wooded area’s small clearing. Now, the projectile is wedged into my Kevlar vest. The carbon fiber arrow is acting as a temporary brace against her gnashing teeth. For its part, the tip of my arrow is embedded deep into her chest.

  If only the damn thing had punctured something vital…

  If it—the brace—slips off in any direction, or breaks, she’ll have nothing but my waning strength in the middle of her and her next meal.

  My eyes widen when the arrow flexes and creaks.

  “Now, dammit!” I shout, feeling my face flush.

  I’m pushing as hard as I can, but I have none of the leverage that she does. Plus, sirens are incredibly strong and never give up until one of us is dead. They’re savage, unrelenting, but cunning—smart.

  “I can’t get a clean shot!” Jill yells from somewhere behind me.

  “There’s too many of them!” Dad sounds farther away.

  My left hand slips and the siren all but falls into me, mouth agape. But strangely, she doesn’t rip my Adam’s apple out. Instead, her disgusting maw is ripped away from my flesh just in the nick of time. Come to think of it, she may have actually nicked my neck. With her weight gone, I quickly sit up and identify my savior. She is barrel rolling across the clearing, entangled in a fight to the death with the siren.

  Jill…

  Now, it’s my turn to rescue her.

  Jill is bucked hard into the base of a tree, yelping in pain as soon as she hits. I watch as she lands with a rustle of leaves and disappears from sight down a hill. There’s a bunch of steep ones around here.

  I know that for a fact because we hiked up several of them.

  Roughing it through the southern part of Tennessee is no joke when you're as tired and as sore as we are. And yes, we’re on foot now. We had to ditch our ride four days ago. The Jeep we snagged back in Florida blew a tire, and we didn’t have time to change it. We were attempting to push through an area that was swarming with Unseen when it happened. Meanwhile, we’ve stayed on the road less traveled as much as possible, finding shelter wherever we can.

  It’s been just over three weeks since we left Wellington behind. The awful thing about traveling through Florida is that it’s a long-ass state—especially when most of the roads are at an impasse. We zigged and zagged across the state for days before finally popping out northwest of Orlando.

  Then, we got stuck in the same bullshit again…and again…

  Did I mention that we began our journey in the southern part of the state? We weren’t the only ones getting the hell out of Dodge either. Every so often, we’d inadvertently join up with other vehicles in a “convoy of survivors.”

  Before that, I think Jill and I were the only people trying to get back into Florida. But we eventually found my parents alive and well—Hope too—love that little girl. Jill’s folks are still MIA, presumably hunkered down in their cabin in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

  Or, they’re dead. Their bodies may still be back in Florida, for all I know.

  Unfortunately, we have no way of confirming whether or not they made it out of Wellington alive. They hit the road the day before the east coast of the United States was turned into Hell on Earth. Could they have made it to their cabin unscathed? Sure. Are they still alive after almost a month of monsters roaming the streets of America?

  We’ll have to wait and see.

  I jump to my feet and tackle the siren from behind, driving my shoulder into the small of her back. I make sure to keep all of my weight on her when we hit the same tree that Jill just did. She hits hard and slumps to the ground, stunned from the blow. I don’t let her recover and immediately leap onto her back and lay into her with my bare hands.

  “Fuck you!” I scream, punching her in the back of the head multiple times. In between strikes, I hear a satisfying thud as her forehead connects with the tree over and over again.

  “We need to get out of here!” The loud voice is followed by an even more deafening shotgun blast.

  Before responding, I hit the siren again, wincing as I feel my knuckles split open. The sweat, blood, and dirt mixing together sting terribly, but I don’t let up. I keep up my barrage and grunt my reply. “I’m…thud…a little…thud…busy…thud!”

  The siren shrieks and knocks me away with a hard elbow to my face. My eyes water as blood explodes from my nose. I scamper away, backward crab walking, while forcibly expelling the plasma from my nostrils in classic snot-rocket style. Lord knows how much of it ended up in my thickening mustache and beard. Usually, I keep my facial hair short, a five o’clock shadow at most. Right now, I feel like I’m well on my way to looking like Grizzly Adams.

  After I put a good ten feet between us, I wipe away the tears and blood and get to one knee. She stands, facing away from me, panting like a dog. Her breaths are deep and raspy as if she recently smoked a carton of cigarettes.

  I get to my feet and unsheathe the only other weapon I have left. The machete’s audible shink
alerts the siren, and she comes to and launches herself into a frenzied attack. Typically, sirens are more calculating than this. This one is acting like a rabid animal—more specifically, a goblin.

  She’s starving, I realize. Now that she isn’t trying to maul me, I can clearly see that she’s emaciated.

  The lighting is dim, but there’s still just enough sunshine peeking its way through the canopy to see by. The clearing we’re in is surrounded by tall pine trees—a spot that was supposed to be our campground for the night.

  Until we ran into the siren.

  I expel another set of snot-rockets, grip the hilt of my machete with both hands, and charge the seething woman. I still can’t get myself to call them “its,” mostly because they were once human. But this…beast…isn’t human anymore.

  I slice the air in a looping arc and surprisingly catch the siren across the gut. I honestly didn’t expect to hit her at all, just keep her at bay until I came up with a better plan. Usually, they’re as agile as a cat. That's not at all what this one is displaying.

  She doesn’t stop her advance because of it either.

  The laceration isn’t deep, but it should’ve at least made her think twice. Nope. I await her next attempt on my life and I’m stunned when, instead of furthering her attack, she stops—but it’s only because she nonchalantly yanks the arrow from her chest like it was nothing more than a thorn.

  Did I mention that they’re tough SOB’s?

  While she relieves herself of the inconvenience, her grotesque, empty eye sockets never leave me. The only emotions she exhibits are frustration and anger.

  Her eyebrows angle down, yet surprisingly, she takes a second step back. Is she finally going to admit defeat and flee—live to fight another day? Nope… Instead, she leaps into the air arms out wide, talon-tipped fingers curled, ready to tear me to pieces. At the top of her arc, her body passes in front of the sun, enveloping her in an aura of light.

  It’s both an angelic and demonic sight to behold.

  This feels like a last-ditch effort on her part—one of desperation. This is literally the one attack that I can easily defend myself against. All I have to do is time it right.

  As an alternative to parrying her aerial assault, or instead of just flat-out running away, I do the exact opposite and step closer and duck beneath her outstretched arms. I use her own momentum against her and bury the blade of my machete deep into her gut. Then, I swiftly sidestep her and release the weapon’s hilt.

  The siren continues past me and tumbles to a stop, coming to a rest on her side. She’s unmoving, but alive. Even in the low light, I can see that she’s still breathing.

  She’s lost a lot of blood, I think, seeing the slick of crimson she left behind.

  While supernatural in some respects, the Unseen still need the necessary amounts of food, water, and blood to survive. It’s the only natural thing they have left going for them.

  Cautiously, I creep forward, fists balled. With no working crossbow, and now no machete, the only things I have left are my battered hands. The other weapon I have is my Night Ridge recurve bow, but it's off with my discarded backpack. Besides, I’m still not a great shot with the traditional bow and don’t trust it, or my ability to use it, yet.

  I mean, I just got semi-comfortable with the crossbow, and now, it’s a goner.

  Five feet from her, she abandons her strategy of playing dead and springs at me, just as a gun’s report echoes throughout the forest. My adversary is struck in the chest and drops to the leafy floor where she slides to a halt at my feet, face buried in the dirt.

  This time, she’s dead.

  I turn and find Jill leaning against a tree with one hand, and her Smith & Wesson revolver in the other. Releasing herself from the same tree that had only recently banged her up, Jill clutches the ribs on her left side and saunters over to me.

  I turn as Dad lets loose a shouted curse. But the battle is over by the time I notice what’s going on. The stock of his shotgun meets the side of a goblin’s head. The hard shot knocks the creature to the ground. The goblin, like the siren, doesn’t get up… Dad is breathing hard, and the typically non-lethal end of his weapon is dripping in blood.

  Where’s Hope and Mom?

  I start to panic but relax when they step out of the brush to my left. While everyone else is armed with a means in which to protect themselves, the only object Hope has in her little hands is the stuffed animal she acquired while in JCPenney—though she does carry a small pocketknife in her back pocket now.

  That kid sure does love that thing—the toy, I mean—not the knife.

  “His name is Skylar, and he’s a Jaquin,” Hope had once explained.

  “Uh,” I replied, “sure…”

  “Everyone okay?” I ask, catching my breath.

  I get no verbal answers, instead, all I get I get is a couple of soft head bobs and a pair of shoulder shrugs. I search for my discarded gear while Jill and Dad dig into their coat pockets and reload their weapons.

  I’m thankful that Jill and Hope grabbed as much winter gear as they did before we left Arthur’s Outdoor Supply. While Florida’s winters are mostly mild, the southern Appalachians get rather chilly.

  I’m ‘this close’ to having to microwave my boxers.

  My wife limps over to me and carefully slides into my arms. At first, all I get is a face full of her beanie cap. I don’t care, though. I squeeze her nonetheless but hurriedly let go of her when she whimpers.

  “Sorry,” I say, releasing my grip. I reach up and pluck a leaf from her hat. “She tossed you pretty good, huh?”

  Jill softly laughs. “Like Satan’s mechanical bull.”

  She checks out my nose, carefully touching it. “How is it?”

  “I’ve had worse,” I reply. I show her as much and pinch it hard. She smiles when I wince. I frown but also give her a smirk. “Been better too.”

  “Son?” Dad asks, speaking up from across the clearing.

  “Yeah?”

  “How ’bout we find a new spot to camp?”

  I nod and reach down for my Predator crossbow and sigh. The bowstring has been cleaved in two, rendering the weapon useless. Having no way to fix it, I regrettably toss it aside, spotting my recurve bow, backpack, and bedroll nearby.

  Initially, we all had a lovely eight-person tent to sleep in, but it took way too much time to set up and tear down on a daily basis. The last time we saw it, it was half-collapsed somewhere near the South Georgia state line.

  We’re currently on the northern side of the state, where it meets Tennessee. Since then, we’ve either slept in the cramped, but safer, confines of the Jeep, an option we don’t have any longer as well, or more recently, we’ve been roughing it the old-fashioned way and sleeping underneath the stars with just our bedrolls and our nightmares.

  With someone always awake keeping watch.

  Everyone except Hope takes shifts—even my mother does it. She refuses to do anything different. My mom’s words echo in my head as I sling my pack over my shoulder and retrieve my bow.

  “Whether you like it or not, Frank,” Mom said, “I’m in this with you until the end—and like everyone else, I need to pull my weight.”

  While her nightly archery lessons have proved valuable—I’m an okay shot, I guess… I’m not sure how much longer my parents can keep this up. They’re in great shape for their age, but eventually, they’re bodies are going to quit on them.

  “Alright…” I kneel and remove my machete from the siren’s stomach with one quick, wet jerk. Then, I wipe it down as well as I can, using her shirt as a towel. I stand, sheathe it, and turn to my family, Hope included. “Let’s find that new spot and get some shut-eye.”

  2

  We hike a little further north, deeper into the trees bordering Lookout Mountain, before settling down for the night. Instead of finding another clearing, we stick to the heavily wooded area in the western foothills. And once again, we stay on the less-beaten path. Regrettably, the siren�
�s blood will no doubt attract a scavenger or three.

  As far as the woods are concerned… “Point Park” is back up the mountain and contains a historic Civil War site called Point Lookout. I thought about having us climb up to the old stone fort before dismissing the idea as foolish. We’d be out in the open, have no escape if cornered, and worse, most likely find other survivors.

  We don’t need that kind of attention. Getting around with five people is hard enough. What if there was fifteen or twenty of us? We’d become an Unseen buffet line.

  During the nights that we’ve spent outside, I’ve heard the cries of others—human and inhuman alike. It reminds me that the Unseen never stop hunting. Ever. Anyone that camps inside Point Lookout would surely be an easy meal. The sounds also continually remind me that there are, in fact, other people out there like us.

  The police officer in me wants to go looking for anyone who needs help. But I’m not a cop anymore. It’s just one of the many reasons that we’re camped here instead. The risk. Jill and I have both stated that we need to take fewer risks with our lives now. Hope needs us. My parents do too.

  A twig snaps to my right. Quickly nocking an arrow, I bolt upright and move to investigate the disturbance. Steadily, I draw the bowstring back and sneak around the brush between me and my target.

  The target? Jill.

  “Gah!” she yelps, leaping out of a low squat.

  Lowering the bow, I slowly release the string and let out my held breath. With nothing else around, I replace the arrow in my quiver and cross my arms.

  “What are you doing?” I hiss.

  Jill answers me without saying a word. She casually reaches down into the shadows…and pulls up her pants. I had almost scared the shit out of her while she was taking a leak.

  Well, at least she had her pants down.

  “Oh,” I say, feeling foolish, “my bad. Thought you were something else.”

  She rolls her eyes and joins me back at my post. The sun will be rising soon, which means everyone will be getting up anyway. But until then, we plop down and just enjoy each other’s company in the crisp morning air.