Undead Dawn: A Zombie Apocalypse Thriller by Matthew Doggett

Author:Matthew Doggett [Doggett, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Five Brothers Publishing
Published: 2024-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Whispering Pines wasn’t technically a town. Before the world ended, it was a census designated place with a population of 148. After the world ended, it was just another place with a name that rang true only because names are convenient, and no one bothered to change it — at least not in the time between when the bombs started falling and when the Navigator arrived there.

It was the kind of place that, if one were to drive through it, one would wonder how anyone made a living there. Maybe they commute, one would think. Or maybe they work from home. There certainly wasn’t any farmland around, and little infrastructure for local commerce. Yet, it was undeniable that people were living there, and had been for some time, mysterious as their continued existence in the isolated place might have been.

Like any place, Whispering Pines had a long and mostly boring history before the apocalypse, and that history continued in some form after, until the end of time. But this story isn’t concerned with the before times or the after times. It’s only concerned with the crazy shit that happened not long after Cooper Kane and company arrived.

But before we dive into said crazy shit, you need a little lesson in Whispering Pines. The town (much easier and less wordy than “census designated place,” even if not technically accurate) was essentially a collection of a few dozen houses and less than a dozen other buildings. These latter buildings included the small fire/police station, the general store (no gas), and, perhaps most importantly for Cooper and company, the church.

These homes and buildings didn’t follow any sort of grid structure. Instead, they had all been built along the meandering path of the East Verde River that wound through the valley in which the town was nestled. The main road — Houston Mesa Road — ran parallel to the river (which was really more of a large creek) until diverging from the waterway north of town. Although there were some buildings built between the road and the river, most of the town’s structures were located on the other side of the river from Houston Mesa Road. And since there was only one bridge that accessed this other side, it made for an easily defensible piece of land. The surrounding trees and the contours of the land made it so the Whisperers (as the year-round residents called themselves) found it easy to hunker down on their land while they made all due preparations to ascend to Heaven when Jesus Christ returned, as He soon would, they all knew.

The land around Whispering Pines was dotted with cabins that stayed empty most of the year until their owners came up to spend a weekend relaxing or finally decided to hire someone to manage the headache of putting their cabin up for rent on Airbnb. These cabins, located as many of them were on hilltops surrounding the valley, made ideal places for lookouts. It was one of

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