Uncivil War: Infected
Wright & Dudycha
Contents
Newsletter
Title
Also by Wright & Dudycha
Author’s Note
UNCIVIL WAR
1. South Park, Colorado
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
5. Cheyenne Mountain Complex
6. South Park, Colorado
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
13. Cheyenne Mountain Complex
14. South Park, Colorado
Chapter 15
16. From the skies above Colorado Springs
Chapter 17
18. In the skies above Fairplay, Colorado
Chapter 19
20. In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains
21. Cheyenne Mountain Complex
22. In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains
23. In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains
Chapter 24
25. Cheyenne Mountain Complex
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Sample
Sample: Uncivil War: Evolution
Sample
Acknowledgments
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Also by Wright & Dudycha
Newsletter
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Also by Wright & Dudycha
THE UNCIVIL WAR SERIES
UNCIVIL WAR
UNCIVIL WAR: INFECTED
UNCIVIL WAR: EVOLUTION
(available - 8/13/19)
UNCIVIL WAR: TAKEOVER
(available - 8/27/19)
UNCIVIL WAR: RECKONING
(September 2019)
UNCIVIL WAR: AFTERMATH
(October 2019)
Copyright © 2019 Holcomb & Shaw Publishing LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Holcomb & Shaw Publishing LLC
www.wrightanddudycha.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead,
or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover Design by DDD, Deranged Doctor Designs
UNCIVIL WAR INFECTED/Wright & Dudycha
1st ed. ISBN - 9781079704419
To Brad—thanks for coming on this adventure with me.
You’re a friend, mentor, and altogether wonderful human being.
No love is greater than that of a father for His son.
Dan Brown
Author’s Note
Uncivil War is an episodic six novel series where you’ll follow two brothers into the apocalypse. What makes our story unique is that I, B.T. Wright, will be writing Jake Maddox’s story, and Jonathan Dudycha will be writing Colt Maddox’s story.
The advantage this gives us as co-authors is that each brother will truly have his own unique voice, because the authors have theirs. We believe the stories of the different brothers are much more authentic because of the way we have split the storytelling duties.
As the reader, you get to see the apocalypse from two different perspectives along the same timeline. Jake lives in Kentucky and Colt lives in Colorado. They both confront their own obstacles along the way while trying to fight their way back to each other. Each novel in the series is from one brother's perspective, battling through a world that all of a sudden is nothing like it used to be.
We hope you enjoy the ride. It has certainly been fun for us to write.
Book 2
by
Jonathan Dudycha
1
South Park, Colorado
Colt Maddox grasped his axe, twisting his fingers around the hickory handle. He brought down the blade with force, cutting through the thick piece of wood like a fiend. The split wood lay in half. He picked up both chunks and tossed them into a disheveled pile.
Bringing his hands to his lower back, he arched into a stretch, and the sun gleamed on his rugged face in the afternoon glow. His shoulders were wide and his arms long, and his thick, dark graying beard just added to his manliness. But father time was catching up with him, as it does all.
Another log rested beneath him on a bed of pine needles. Just as he reached down to lift it, a noise—a reverberating snap—echoed near the edge of his property close to the country road. He shot a look to his right and scanned the area for any sign of intrusion.
He’d had trouble in the past with poachers coming onto his land illegally to hunt elk. All fifty acres of his property were surrounded by state land, and more than a few trespassers had tried to use the excuse that they didn’t know where they were. That was a line of bullshit. Any hunter in these parts knew exactly where they were.
He shook off the noise and reached down again, but again came a snap. This time Colt would not allow it to be a coincidence. He took one step to investigate but was distracted by the sound of rolling tires over crushed gravel. Colt spun to see his wife Anna driving up the driveway in her SUV. She noticed him and gave him a smile and a flicked wave before she proceeded up the drive.
He watched her exit the SUV with an overnight bag in hand. Even after a long day of travel, she was still stunning. Her blonde hair was tied up in a ponytail and she wore a zip-up sweatshirt with a pair of blue jeans that hugged her curves. She had just returned from a trip to visit her sister in New York City. Her plane had landed that morning; only now had she reached their home in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.
She walked up the decked staircase and toward the front door of their log home. Colt stepped forward and started up the slope. He wished to hear all about her trip, but his path was stopped by his son’s call.
“Dad, it’s Uncle Jake,” Dylan yelled to his father. “Says he needs to talk to you right away,” Then Anna came near to her son. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek before proceeding inside.
Colt shouldered his axe, avoided the scattered trees, and walked up the incline until he reached the patio that led directly to his house. He’d built their house with his own bare hands—sure it took almost five years to complete, but it was perfect, each log set with precision and accuracy, and it would withstand anything mother nature sent to test it.
When he reached the wrap-around deck, Dylan, his oldest son, held out his cell phone. He rested his axe against the wood support that ran to the second story. He smiled at Dylan but waited for him to re-enter their home before speaking to his brother.
“Jacob. Long time, no talk.”
“Where are you?” He cut to the chase.
“Hello, to you too, soldier.”
“Colt, are you with Anna and the boys?”
There was hysteria in Jake’s voice.
“Jacob, what the hell is going on? You sound like you’re hiding from a ghost.”
“Colt! Listen to me. Get Anna and the boys and lock up, don’t let anyone in or out until you hear from me again. There’s some sort of disease or something that has spread. Millions of p
eople are already infected—”
“What are you talking about?” Colt interrupted. “What disease? You mean like the flu?”
“I mean it’s airborne. And if you get it, you’re dead. But still alive. You—”
“Do you realize what you sound like?”
But Jake didn’t acknowledge his question. “Colt, would you just listen to me for once and do what I’m saying? Make sure you keep taking Beritrix. And make sure you give it to Anna and keep giving it to the boys too. You hear me? It will keep you alive for now.”
“Jacob, where are you? What’s going on? It sounds like you’re talking about some sort of apocalypse. Walking dead, stay inside, give everyone Beritrix—”
“I know what it sounds like, Colt. You don’t think it sounds crazy to me too? But I just watched a man chew the Adam’s apple out of a kid’s throat right in front of me. I had to literally smash his brains in to stop him from doing it to me. Get Anna and the boys to safety and lock everything up. Grab any weapon you can, give them the Beritrix, and when I get more information, I’ll call you. Got it?”
Colt lifted the phone from his ear and stared down in disbelief. How? How could there be people doing these things? Alive, but not?
“Colt! Colt!” he heard Jake yell into the phone.
But he didn’t answer his brother. He didn’t bring the phone back to his ear, because as Colt stood, his youngest son, Wesley ran out the front door to play with his dinosaurs on the cedar deck. Frozen in shock, Colt couldn’t shake his brother’s words or even Wesley’s play-talk ringing in his ears, until . . . another snap resounded again in the trees, this time closer to the home. And it wasn’t caused by the rolling tires of Anna’s SUV.
His thought went to his son and his well-being, just as he hung up on his brother. Colt turned the corner to see Wesley on his hands and knees. He sprinted toward him and scooped him up without explanation.
“Daddy, what are you doing?” Wesley looked up from his father’s arms.
An emotion lingered on his face—one he’d never shown Wesley before.
Fear.
Once inside, Colt tossed Wesley onto the couch, spun around and slammed the door shut, then locked the deadbolt.
The staircase was just to his right. He climbed to the top, bounding two steps at a time. At the top of the stairs were three doors: the boys’ bedrooms, and Colt’s office. Colt pushed into his office and went directly to the closet. Inside was a Browning gun safe. He typed in the combination and spun the handle.
Three handguns—a Glock 23, a Sig Sauer SP2022, and a .357 Magnum revolver lay across the top of the shelf. Next to the Glock was a belt holster. He lifted the holster and the Glock. Then shoved the magazine inside the Glock, racked the slide to load a round, and pushed the handgun into the holster that sat on his right-side.
Below the shelf were three rifles and a shotgun. He lifted his favorite hunting rifle—a Browning BLR Lightweight ’81—and slung the strap over his head and across his chest. As he was loading ammunition into his pockets, Dylan walked in.
Dylan held tight to his own phone but looked up and said, “Uh, Dad, what are you doing?”
Colt didn’t answer his question, but instead asked one of his own. “Where’s Mom?”
“She said she was going to take a shower.”
Next to the gun safe was a mini-refrigerator. It had multiple uses. Cold beer, soda. But the most important use was for Beritrix. (Medicine Colt and his boys had taken daily since birth due to a defect in their DNA.) Beritrix acted as an immune system booster, and it always needed to be kept cold. If the boys ever had an attack in the middle of the night, Colt’s office was the closest room to theirs. Colt threw open the door and grabbed the remaining three vials and syringes and stuffed them on top of the ammunition he loaded into his pocket.
Without further explanation, Colt breezed by his son. He needed to find Anna.
He hurtled down the staircase. Wesley lay precisely where he left him. He clung to the armrest of the couch, unwilling to move, scared by his own father’s demeanor, but Colt couldn’t stop to calm him or help. Anna needed to know.
From the hallway, Colt heard the shower running. When he reached for the bathroom door, steam poured from underneath.
“Anna?” Colt tapped on the door.
No answer.
He knocked again, this time harder and his voice went up. “Anna, honey, can you hear me?”
He reached for the handle and pulled down. It was unlocked, and the door clicked open.
“Are you in here?” His eyes remained on the floor but rose as he stepped inside in search of his wife. He looked to the glass first, maybe she was inside washing herself and didn’t hear his call.
But she wasn’t there, not in the shower. Instead, she was standing nude with her face against the wall. Her blonde hair was tossed and wiry, different than normal.
“Honey?” he questioned softly. Then Colt noticed more peculiarity.
The skin along her spine, vertebrae by vertebrae, went black as it cascaded from her hairline to the base of her lower back. She turned slow—only an inch at a time. When she faced him, the color left his face. What stared back was not Anna, not his beautiful wife of fifteen years, this was something different, some thing.
Instead of sea green eyes staring back, she peered through eyes void of color, black, with a deep sullen gaze.
Is this what Jacob meant? No. Can’t be. Not Anna.
“An-na?” He held onto hope that his wife was somewhere inside, maybe buried deep, but there all the same.
She made no response. She simply tilted her head, shrieked, and attacked.
2
Only two paces separated Colt and Anna in the bathroom, and even in his moment of shock, he reacted. He bowed up and blocked her exit. She could not pass, the boys couldn’t see her, not like this.
On any normal day, Colt would have been able to handle his wife. She stood five-foot-four and weighed 125 pounds, but when she contacted him it was like running into a brick wall. She sent him flying through the doorway and dropped him on his ass.
He skidded to a halt with his hands acting as brakes on the freshly mopped cedar planked-floor. His righthand brushed against his holster and nicked the Glock. His fingers hovered over the grip, but couldn’t lift it free.
“Anna. I know it’s you, I know you’re in there.” He held up his hand to deflect her approach.
She lacked response, only continued forward, almost stalking him as he sat helplessly. He gulped the lump of spit that formed, thinking there was no way he could stop her, no way he could kill this . . . this apparition that had taken over his wife. She took one more solitary step, but then a yelp echoed from the hallway.
It was Wesley.
Anna whipped her head to the right and saw him.
“Anna no, don’t,” Colt begged, and in that moment, he rose to his feet.
Anna didn’t heed his call, nor did she delay, she ran for Wesley.
Colt chased after her, leaping forward to catch her by the heel just before she reached their son. Colt held on for dear life as she kicked wildly when Dylan came into view.
“Dylan! Get Wesley out of here. Get to the truck, now!”
Though distracted by clutching at Anna’s thrashing leg, Colt saw his boys escape through the front door. Anna screeched again, turning her vacant eyes back on him. His stomach dropped. He couldn’t let go, but she was strong—much stronger than any man he’d encountered, including those he’d wrestled in college.
“Anna. Please, stop!” he pleaded with her.
But she didn’t. When she finally ripped her leg free, she kicked Colt in the solar plexus, sending him scooting across the floor until his back hit a thick round wooden beam that ran the height of the two-story living room.
Before he knew what was happening, she charged again. Out of instinct he ducked, and she flew over his shoulder, tumbling down the staircase to the basement below.
Colt stood and peered into the
darkness of the lower level. He was tempted to walk down to see if she was okay, but he remained. Then she rose from her prone state. Her arm was broken, with the bone pushing through the skin. The compound fracture didn’t even faze her.
Upon her first step on the staircase, Colt ran for the open front door. He slammed it shut and locked it with the keycode combination from the outside. Giant two-story windows looked in on the home, and as he moved by, he caught Anna’s eyes. Staring in disbelief, Colt could not comprehend the sight before him. As she walked toward him, her arm remained stuck at an angle not accustomed to human anatomy. She reached with the opposite arm and ripped her forearm to the left, jarring it from where it was stuck.
Watching, Colt waited for her to react. She did. She rushed directly at the window that Colt stood behind and threw her fists into the glass. Upon contact, the window cracked across the middle.
Colt stumbled two steps back, and gripped the handrail of the decking. Upon stepping backward, he kicked his axe over in the process. When he bent down to retrieve it, Anna rushed the window again, and again the window cracked, now along the bottom. It was only a matter of time before it gave way.
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