Z Island Series (Book 2): War After Z Island

by Osborne, Terrence Jr.

  “Open the gate!” Sam yelled.

  Jess ran up to the gate and tried to help them, but she went through the gate and appeared on the other side of the wall. The other survivors on the side were trying to open it, but the lock that kept the gate intact had frozen. Jess looked at herself running to the gate and screaming for Sam and Austin. Zombies were approaching them, but Sam didn’t want Austin with him.

  “Get the car and climb the gate from the hood!” Sam told Jess.

  Jess ran to the car while Sam put Austin behind him. They began shooting the zombies while Jess drove the car up to the gate and climbed on the hood. She slipped a little bit, but she managed to jump on top of the gate and look over.

  “Austin!”

  Sam put his gun away and picked up Austin, “Be brave and reach for mommy!”

  Austin reached for Jess and she grabbed his hand and didn’t let go.

  “I got you!” she said.

  She brought Austin up and tried to climb down, but she slipped on the car and fell. She hit her head on the windshield and fell over to the ground. Screaming echoed around her and her vision was blurry. People surrounded her and reached for her while yelling about something else. She tried focusing on what they were looking at, but when she saw what was in front of her, she started yelling. Blood was coming from Austin’s head, so she put her hand over his head to stop it. The doctor came and picked him up to take him into the medical house. Sam and the others finally killed all the zombies and Sam nervously hit against the gate!

  “What happened?” Sam yelled.

  They finally managed to get the gate open, but Sam burst inside and looked for Jess and Austin. He noticed the blood on the ground and ran for the doctor’s house.

  “Jess! Austin!” Sam yelled as he walked inside of the house.

  Jess met him halfway and ran into his arms crying. Sam immediately knew Austin was the one in trouble.

  “What happened?”

  “Austin…I fell and…”

  “Where is he?”

  Jess led him to the room and they watched as the doctor and his team hurried to save Austin life.

  Jess woke up from the memory to Faith sitting with her on the couch.

  “Jess?”

  “What happened?” Jess cried.

  “You were out. I don’t know what happened. Steven and Lisa found Maria in her room the same way. Are you okay?”

  “No. I was remembering what happened with Austin. I saw everything as if I was there all over again.”

  “It’s odd to find the both of you doing the same thing around the same time. Maria said the same thing about Eric.”

  “You think someone did this?”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure it had to be someone. I’m sure Eddy’s fine. No one has reported back yet.”

  Jess looked over Faith’s shoulder and saw a bloody Austin staring at her. He walked up slowly, but Jess started to squirm.

  “Mommy, you killed me.”

  “No I didn’t!” Jess yelled.

  “What?” Faith asked.

  “You killed me!” Austin yelled.

  “No!”

  “Jess! Clam down!”

  Faith tried to calm Jess down, but she kept moving and suddenly passed out. Faith exhaled fearfully and ran to the table for her radio.

  “Drake. I need to get Jess help. Something’s wrong! We need to get Maria too!”

  Faith felt Jess’s forehead for a fever and she was burning.

  “Oh, Jess. What happened?”

  Drake came inside of his house with Maria in his arms while men carried Jess. He sat them on individual beds downstairs.

  “What happened?” Drake asked.

  “I don’t know. I just saw her like this. Steven and Lisa heard Maria screaming in her room.”

  “Well, they’re not in any trouble as far as I can tell. Just give me a couple of minutes, everything’s going to be alright.”

  “Okay.”

  Faith walked out of the room and brushed her back. She sat on the couch as Lisa and Steven approached her.

  “Faith, are they okay?” Lisa asked.

  “Yeah, Drake said they’ll be fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “How?”

  “Look…I don’t know. All I can tell you is to trust no one right now.”

  Lisa glanced at Steven and sighed, “Okay.”

  A zombie walked through the alley in between buildings, gnarling at the air while searching for food. A branch broke behind it and the zombie turned around and screeched. Eddy stabbed it in the head and kicked it to the ground.

  “Okay, there has to be more around. They always travel in packs.”

  “How many zombies are we going to need?” Marcus asked.

  “A lot. We need this to work. I’m ready for him to die already.”

  “Yeah. Downtown’s always been the place for many people to walk around. Or zombies now.”

  They were walking through the streets with hard wooden sticks. Bodies piled all around them and the smell traveled with the wind that proved to be unbearable.

  “Hey Eddy,” Marcus stopped, “I’m really sorry for Dexter. He didn’t deserve it.”

  “No one innocent deserves what they get now. It’s a world of survival. We make a dumb decision like he did, it could cost you your life as you’ve seen.”

  “Yeah, but he did it for-”

  “I know why he did it and who he did it for. I’m saying, I blame him for his death. No one else.”

  “Jason killed him!”

  “Because he wanted to go alone!”

  “He tried to do what we didn’t!”

  “He shouldn’t have. He should have just-”

  A zombie ran up to Marcus, but he ducked and kicked it in the chest. The zombie fell back and Eddy saw others coming around the building ahead.

  “There they are!” Eddy pointed.

  “Oh shit!”

  Eddy hit the runner down with his stick and backed away.

  “Keep them alive. Hit the runners away from you, but keep them close.”

  “This is fucking crazy!”

  “Yeah, you get used to it.”

  Eddy grabbed his radio, “Hank, you ready?”

  Tell me when.

  The zombies got closer to them, so Eddy and Marcus ran down an alley and opened a back door to a building.

  “We’re lucky this was open.” Marcus laughed.

  “Yeah,” Eddy picked up his radio and gave Hank the signal.

  Hank grabbed his gun and ignited the truck. He drove around the corner and waited until he got closer to the zombies and blew his horn loudly at them. He got their attention as they started making their way to his truck.

  “Come on you ugly fucks!”

  He backed the truck up as runners approached his vehicle.

  “Oh, shit!”

  A runner jumped on side of the truck, but fell and rolled underneath the truck. The tires squashed its face to the ground and its brains splatted throughout the bottom of the truck.

  “Hey, Eddy! I got most of them!”

  Eddy peeked out of the window and noticed the zombies following Hank as he drove down the road towards him.

  “That’s good. Keep doing that!”

  Rumbling came from the side door next to Marcus. They pointed their guns at the door and waited for anything to appear. A crawler burst through the door and jumped past them.

  “Kill that son of a bitch!”

  Eddy shot at the crawler, but it leaped at Eddy and missed him. Eddy grabbed his machete and ran after it, but the crawler hit Eddy against the wall and looked at Marcus.

  “Oh, no.”

  Marcus grabbed his knife and prepared for the crawler to attack. The crawler screeched at Marcus, but Eddy jumped on top of it and screamed as he stabbed it in the back. The crawler screamed in pain as it jumped around the room and tried crawling up the wall. Marcus looked at it and ran for its legs. He swung his k
nife and cut off its back leg. The crawler lost grip and fell on top of Eddy. Marcus jumped on top of the zombie and stabbed it constantly in the chest. As blood spewed from its body, the zombie slowly died and Eddy tried to get from under it.

  “Marcus, it’s dead! Get me from under this fucking thing!”

  Marcus panted with relief and put his knife down, “Yeah, my bad.”

  Uh…hello? I’m by the building, where are you guys?

  “Shit!” Eddy said.

  Eddy grabbed his stick and ran for the door. Hank couldn’t stop driving and passed them up. The zombies were right behind him, so they had to run.

  “Come on!”

  “Oh shit, wait! My knife!” Marcus said.

  “What?”

  Marcus ran inside and grabbed his knife, but the zombies had already covered the door.

  “Marcus!” Eddy yelled.

  What’s happening?

  “Keep going! I have to get Marcus. We’ll meet you there!”

  Eddy ran behind the building to the back alley, but ran into a couple of zombies. Marcus killed one zombie and kicked it against the others. He opened the back door into the alley, but more zombies appeared in front of him. Eddy shot most of them dead while Marcus killed the rest.

  “Let’s go!”

  Marcus ran alongside Eddy as they kept running through the alleys. While running, a zombie ran towards them, but Eddy hit it with his stick and Marcus shot it. When they came out of the alley, they saw Hank driving away from them, but still had the zombies behind him.

  “We can make it!”

  They began running after Hank, but some of the herd tried to close them in. Eddy hit most of them out of the way and ran on the side of the pack.

  “Hank, we’re right behind you!”

  Hurry up!

  They kept running, but Hank started to slow down. Eddy finally reached the truck and jumped on. He reached his hand out and pulled Marcus on, but two runners managed to get on the back. Marcus grabbed is gun and shot the zombies off. Eddy opened the door and they both crawled in. Hank laughed as they were breathing heavily.

  “Man, that was close!”

  “Too close. Marcus, what the hell were you thinking?”

  “What? I love this knife.”

  “Well, your non-living thing almost got us killed.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “I can’t with you right now.” Eddy shrugged.

  “So, what now?” Hank asked.

  “Well, we have to meet Jason’s men halfway before they get to the community.”

  “But what if we’re too late?”

  “Then we might want to prepare for the worse.”

  Jason walked on the roof and looked down at his community. It had turned into a graveyard of zombies, his men, and Maria’s people.

  “They will pay for this!” Jason mumbled under his breath.

  “Sir, we should attack, right? While they’re still not expecting us?” Drew asked.

  “I have lost many of my men throughout the five years trying to kill Sam and his little bitch group. We are it. That means we must fight a war with what we have.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “I’ll gather all the men and we fight them.”

  Jason turned around to five of his men, including Drew, standing in front of him with knives. Jason looked at all of them and knew what they wanted to do.

  “So, this is the thanks I get?”

  “I’m so sick of you waiting around for everyone to die before we do something. We have to fight and you can’t lead us.”

  “Over my dead body!”

  “That’s the point.”

  Drew charged after Jason, but he kicked Drew back as the rest ran after him. Jason pulled out his knife and slit one man’s throat and threw another man against him as they both fell off the building. He then held one man’s hand back and kicked his leg, causing him to fall. Drew stood up and threw his knife at Jason, but Jason held his hand up and let the knife penetrate through his hand. He screamed in pain as he stabbed one of the men with the knife through his hand. The last man ran after him, but Jason pulled the knife out of his hand and knocked him down. He stood over him and shoved the knife through his ear. As the man died, Jason stood up panting, but he suddenly gasped and coughed up blood as he felt a knife pierce his back. Drew snatches the knife out and watched Jason fall. As Jason gurgled on his own blood, Drew leaned down by him and frowned.

  “We…we deserve it.” Jason murmured.

  “What?”

  “Everything we did…the zombies were never supposed to get this bad. We deserve this.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  Drew pushed Jason off the roof and watched him fall to his death. Jason’s men saw him fall, but when they looked up at Drew, no one did anything.

  “We will fight them! Tomorrow! We will win this war!” Drew shouted from the roof.

  In their eyes, one leader died for another to rise.

  Jess woke up with no headache, but her memory burned a mark in her brain that she couldn’t forget. Drake stood over her, but she could barely hear her name being called. Suddenly, her hearing cleared and she focused on Drake.

  “Jess, can you hear me?”

  “Yeah, what’s going on?”

  “You and Maria were affected by something. It caused the both of you to hallucinate. You were going on about Sam and Austin. Maria saw Eric.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “You’ve been out 12 hours.”

  “Did Eddy come back?”

  “No, unfortunately, but I know they’re okay.”

  “I hope he knows what he’s doing.”

  “Trust him.”

  “Always.”

  Jess begins to get up, “We have work to do.”

  “Yes, we do. You must stay here and rest.”

  “I’m alright.”

  “We need to be sure. You have to rest Jess.”

  “I’ll rest when Jason’s dead.”

  “And even then, you will not be better if you continue to just tuck the pain away. Literally.”

  “I can’t! Something has to be done!”

  “It will be, just…at least take it into consideration.”

  “I already have.”

  “Well, since I can’t convince you to rest, Maria still hasn’t woken up. She’s still sleeping.”

  “Let her sleep. We’ll wake her when it’s time to go.”

  Jess walked out of the house with Faith, but she was still feeling dizzy. The rest of the people were packing up their houses, getting ready to leave when Maria’s ready. Others were preparing their weapons and modifying new ones. The walls were being guarded by metal frames engineered by the workers.

  “We have to be ready when Eddy gets close enough to reach out to us. Until then, we need to find the mole.”

  “Agreed, but where do we look? Who could it be?” Faith asked.

  Lisa and Steven walked outside the walls, laughing and talking while Lisa thought in the back of her head about what Faith mentioned to them. She wondered if Steven could be the mole. He’s never been with them through it all and he just came through when Jason was around.

  “Are you the mole?”

  Steven stopped walking and looked at her confused, “No. Why would it be me? What makes you think that?”

  “Well, you came around the same time Jason did. It’s hard to trust people nowadays.”

  “Look…I…Jason killed my people Lisa!”

  “But how do I know you didn’t make it all up?”