Dead Legends (Book 1): R.I.P. Van Winkle
R.I.P. VAN WINKLE
AN UNDEAD JOURNEY THROUGH WASHINGTON IRVING’S CLASSIC
DEAD LEGENDS BOOK #1
BY JOSEPH A. COLEY
©2015 JOSEPH A. COLEY
©2015 Joseph A. Coley
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Editor – Sara Anne Jones @ Torchbearer Editing Services
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OTHER WORKS BY JOSEPH A. COLEY
SIX FEET FROM HELL: THE LOST CHRONICLES #1
SIGNAL 13 – A FIRE/RESCUE HORROR STORY
HAPPY LITTLE HORRORS: FREAK SHOW
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. FICTIONAL LIBERTIES HAVE BEEN TAKEN WITH NAMES AND LOCATIONS. SO IF YOU LIVE THERE, DON’T GO LOOKING FOR YOUR HOUSE OR FAVORITE BURGER STAND. YOU PROBABLY WON’T FIND IT, AND YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO RUN INTO WHAT LURKS THERE NOW…
When I was a kid, my grandparents gave me an illustrated version of Washington Irving’s
Rip Van Winkle
that quickly became one of my favorite stories. It was the
waking up in an unfamiliar setting
I think that drew me to like the story as much as I did. I read and re-read the story repeatedly, each time getting just as much pleasure out of the tale. As I got older, I never lost the love for
Rip Van Winkle
and other classic American folklore, and having written my
Six Feet From Hell
series, I thought that I’d give it the undead makeover… well here it is. Many people balk at the “adding zombies to everything makes it better” concept, but I disagree. You could add zombies to
The Golden Girls
and zombie Bea Arthur would claw the shit out of
Rue McClanahan.
But I digress…
I hope you enjoy reading the novel of
R.I.P. Van Winkle,
the first book in my new
Dead Legends
series, and please check out my
Six Feet From Hell
series books. If you love zombies, you will love my work. Thanks, and enjoy!
Joseph A. Coley
February 2015
CHAPTER 1
The Adirondacks are cold; the misfit section of the Appalachians stretches into Canada, funneling the arctic air into the United States across its dome-like peaks. They are not just cold; they are a cryogenically frozen kind of cold. In the middle of winter, it is no problem for Mother Nature to drop the idyllic scenery down into the negative teens and toss in a thirty-mile-per-hour wind chill for good measure. The freezing temperatures will make you understand how those steaks in your freezer feel. An unbearable, stinging, biting chill that almost leaves you breathless and wishing you had stuffed an entire bucket of hot coals into your boots. It’s icy enough to freeze time dead in its tracks.
Most who traversed this section of the Adirondacks did so carefully, or against their will. It was a cold, forbidding area, especially amid a terrible winter that had seen the mountains covered in snow since late November. None of that mattered to the men of the
Second Battalion, Eighty-seventh Infantry Regiment of the Tenth Mountain Division. They were the experts of the extreme weather in upstate New York. They were well versed in the ways of the northern stretch of the Appalachian Mountains that extended from Buffalo to Fort Drum. The fort was the home base for the U.S. Army’s Tenth Mountain Division, the roughest and most combat-seasoned unit in the Army’s arsenal. They had taken on the mountains of Afghanistan, the hilly, muck-infested terrain of Kosovo, the searing heat of Iraq, and the oppressing heat and humidity of Haiti. They were salty.
None of the soldiers of the
Third Brigade Combat Team, or “Spartans,” dedicated themselves to their job more than Master Sergeant Geoffrey Irving did. Irving had joined the Tenth Mountain Division in 1998, shortly before deploying in Operation Joint Forge in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He’d seen it all, done it all, and lived to tell it all. He was the wily veteran who knew his way around every situation as well as he did the nomenclature of his M4.
It was his last tour in Afghanistan that had shaken him and made him rethink his options in the military. He’d lost more men in the last tour than all the others combined. One especially sore spot was the loss of a lifelong friend nicknamed “Crayon.” Crayon had been an easygoing, strong-but-silent soldier. He’d earned his nickname from an absentminded conversation about filling out his enlistment papers in the waxy pastel colors of Crayola. Like most odd nicknames in the military, it stuck.
Crayon would give you the shirt off his back and never ask for a favor in return. He was an odd type for the military—quiet and reserved. He preferred sitting by himself, staying at home alone, or enjoying an occasional fishing day with Rip. Rip and Crayon had an understanding that many in the military had forgotten. Rip understood as much as Crayon did that it was about the man next to you and taking care of them, putting others before yourself. Crayon never drank or smoked, preferring that his body be as well maintained and as clear as his mind. Rip sorely missed him, adding to the pain of the traumatic stress that he endured.
After serving fifteen years, he’d begun to wonder if making it the last five or six to retirement would be worth it. PTSD plagued him as much as the physical aches and pains did. He’d earned two Purple Hearts in the defense of his country and had the scars to prove it. The wounds may have healed, but the pain was constantly present. Constant emotion welled up from his heart, blurring the lines between anger and sadness. He could not tell the difference anymore. The biting cold from the winters outside Fort Drum was emotionally oppressing and did no favors for his aching joints either. Just another reason to take the high road and call it a career before it reached its untimely end.
Out of all the things that MSG Irving hated, besides the constant deployments, was his lifestyle had endured changes. His wife, Katrina, despised who he had become. The once proud man that served his country and kept it safe for his child had slowly slipped into apathy. Day after day, Irving became more and more contempt with the incessant henpecking of his disappointed wife. Even his eleven-year-old son, his namesake, did not recognize the creature that he’d turned into.
He had become sedentary in his recent years, and it was far too early in life for that. He did little when he was home, other than tossing a few back. Well, maybe more than a few. He was only thirty-five years old with the liver of a sixty-year-old Irishman. When he wasn’t in training or doing the day-to-day tasks of working with new soldiers, he was at home drinking. Drinking heavily sometimes. The edge that alcohol took off was by far easier than trying to deal with the demons fighting inside. His commanding officer, Major Crane, had expressed concerns over his drinking, as well as the fact the men had come up with an upsetting nickname for the beleaguered sergeant.
They nicknamed him “Rip.”
The name doubled as a term of endearment and a testament to the soldier’s life expectancy. The men in his company had come up with the name due to Irving’s ability to “Rip” someone a new one when they stepped out of line, as well as if he didn’t ease up the drinking he would be R.I.P.—hence the name. It had come to the point the men now just referred to him as “Sergeant Rip,” or just “Rip” for short.
* * *
Irving trudged along the ridgeline of another unnamed mountain in upstate New York. The sun was nowhere to be seen, nor was its warmth. Nature surrounded them, and nature made sure that she was in charge, hammering them hard with unsympathetic power. The temperature had steadily declined to where it now hovered just above absolute zero—or so it felt. Every step, every movement, highlighted the pain in his feet and ache in his knees, but still he led on, his troops crunching rocks underfoot behind him. They ached as he did; the cold gave no special treatment for anyone.
The more he looked at the snow-covered terrain, the more he despised it. The scenery in front of him played tricks on his mind at times, the layout all too familiar with the ridges and features of Afghanistan. He slowed his pursuit down the trail and shook his head forcefully.
“Something wrong, Rip?”
The nickname was more prevalent now than his actual name, and Irving had become accustomed to hearing it more than his given name. It was by no means a disrespectful gesture by the men, but more of an unusual term of endearment. Rip stopped in his tracks and lowered his head, loosening thoughts of war-torn corners of the world.
“Whose jackass idea was is to plan an FTX before a damned snowstorm? It’s too goddamn cold to be alive right now. My health insurance doesn’t cover frostbite brought on by stupidity.”
The soldier who spoke, Staff Sergeant Reynolds, came up beside him and hitched his “battle rattle,” the nickname for the over-encumbrance of gear that they carried. “Hell if I know, Rip. I know the boys are looking forward to the weekend off when we get back, so let’s keep on keepin’ on.”
Rip shuddered as the icy wind blew against his face. The balaclava that he wore could not keep the biting cold of the winter away from his face, but at least it slowed the process of becoming a human Popsicle.
SSG Reynolds moved forward, his rifle at low ready, and Rip followed. Hitching up the sixty-pound pack on his back, Rip moved forward with him. The platoon of thirty men stretched out behind them like dirty, frozen ants. When Rip moved, they moved, when he stopped, they stopped. Rip kept his rifle at low ready as well, but couldn’t muster the energy to give a shit whether it went tumbling over the mountain. Instead of blanks, they carried a full supplement of eight magazines of live rounds to simulate the weight of an actual battle environment. It was an asinine idea, in his opinion. After trekking through the Adirondacks all day, he’d convinced himself that losing the extra eight or ten pounds would make the travel considerably easier.
Rip stopped once again, as did his troops. He waved them forward and inspected the men as they passed by. Most bore the same timeworn look of a weary man, simply trudging along and putting one foot in front of the other. Rip had to admit, the men should have been more diligent about their surroundings—the same situation in Afghanistan would get you killed if you weren’t paying attention—but his complacency had kicked in much earlier in the day, and he simply did not care. He wanted what his men longed for—a hot shower and a warm bed. They wanted to change out of the dirty MultiCam uniforms and into regular civilian clothes to gain some measure of normality. Several soldiers talking back and forth walked by him, conversing randomly among each other.
“She’s supposed to come up the next three-day pass that I get, but she’s not been feeling so great. Some kind of flu going around. I just hope it’s not that shit that they keep talking about on the news.”
“Yeah, I heard the Russians and most of Europe is having outbreaks too. It’s some kind of super-flu, but you know how that goes. Every time they have some new flu that comes out, people wig out. It’ll be just like H1N1 and avian flu; it’ll blow over soon enough. I hope your kids are doing all right, though.”
“Cut the chatter. We got a long way to go before either one of you gets any time off. Keep up with Sergeant Reynolds,” Rip ordered.
“Roger that, Sar’nt,” both men replied.
The rest of the troops moved forward silently. Rip watched as the last man trudged past him, another Staff Sergeant named Romero. He rested his hands on top of his M4 as he watched the squad leader pass.
“Everything all right, Rip?”
“Yeah, just getting a head count. Don’t want to leave a man behind.”
“Roger that, Sar’nt Irving. I’ve had a few slow up, but they’re still moving on.”
Rip nodded and waved the sergeant on, absently looking back down the trail as he did. Just a few more seconds of aimless wandering with his eyes and the last man was out of earshot. Rip reached up and pulled the balaclava off his face. Pins and needles greeted him as the biting cold air smacked against his exposed skin. He licked his dry, wind-burnt lips, reached into one of his ammo pouches, and found a small metal flask. The stainless steel container was filled with a nominal amount of Jack Daniels, but it was enough to warm him. Rip unscrewed the top of the flask and tossed back the whiskey. It was cold, not what he was used to, but it was better than nothing. He felt the warmth spread as the alcohol moved down his gullet. The whiskey greeted his stomach with all the pleasure of a fiery hangover, but it would take the edge off for a few minutes. Rip quickly screwed the cap back on, fumbling it because of his thick Oakley combat gloves. He unlatched the ammo pouch and tried to stuff the flask back into place, fumbling once again with the container. The flask slipped from his grip and clanged against the rocks under him.
“Dammit!” Rip hissed.
It was bad enough that he was drinking while on FTX. God help him if he was caught sipping Jack Daniels on duty. He quickly knelt and grabbed the flask, darting his head back and forth for signs of the other men. The rest of the company was well ahead of him, but still within sight. He blew out a long sigh, the warm moisture-filled air making a cloud in front of him. He quickly stuffed the contraband back into the ammo pouch, watching to make sure his hands did not betray him this time. As he walked forward, head down, he heard the distinct crunch of someone walking behind him. His heart leaped, fearing his drinking would be found out. The last thing he needed was another lecture from Major Crane. The old-school officer didn’t jive well with the war-torn sergeant. Rip quickly spun around, preparing to violently chastise the man who had fallen so far behind.
“Dammit, soldier! How many times do I have to…?” Rip made eye contact with the wayward soldier bringing up the rear, disbelieving what he saw.
The man walked along nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. The short-cropped high-and-tight haircut and the crisp MultiCam uniform gave him away as a soldier. He had no gear, wore no hat, and carried no weapon. He wore no protective clothing or anything to keep him warm except the uninsulated MultiCam blouse. The man had to be freezing but showed no signs that the extreme cold had any effect. Hands in his pockets, he strolled along until he was within five feet of Rip. Sergeant Irving could not believe who stood in front of him.
It was Crayon.
“No! NO! It can’t be! I saw you die!” Rip stuttered out. All at once, he became enraged and shook an angry finger. “I WENT TO YOUR FUNERAL!”
Crayon nonchalantly walked up to Rip, oblivious to the cold or the fiery rant of his friend. He coolly removed his hands from their pockets; still ever calm, Crayon placed a reassuring hand on Rip’s shoulder as he approached. He smiled, ever so slightly, and looked his overstressed friend in the eyes.
“Rip… buddy… what happened to you?” he said softly, a measure of caring and understanding in his voice. “You were the man that all the boys looked up to, the one they listened to when times were at their worst. You were the one with the ability to make the
im
possible possible. It will be your time to do that once again, but not here and not now.”
Rip stood, blankly staring at his deceased friend. There were no words to describe what he felt, nor were there any actions he could bring himself to do. He was as frozen as the world around him, motionless and vacant.
Crayon smiled again and removed his hand from Rip’s shoulder. “There is another enemy approaching, my friend, and it is up to you to defeat it. It has no name and is without feeling. It is as cold and uncaring as the mountains around you. You must be strong and not falter when you encounter it. Its only weakness is right here.” Crayon tapped the side of his head, directly in the temple.