THE SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER Book 1: Bleeding Kansas: A Novel Of The Zombie Apocalypse

by L. ROY AIKEN

  “Mr. Derek Samuel Grace, the Dead Silencer!”

  I can’t help but smile for the old man’s enthusiasm. “Dr. Hearn.”

  “Did you know you’re driving in the wrong lane?”

  “I didn’t think it mattered anymore. Are you giving me a ticket?”

  Dr. Hearn laughs. “Oh! We haven’t quite come back to that! Yet. But it still matters. The old ways haven’t entirely left us. We just buried them. Under so much…well, we’ve done away with all that now. Just a friendly tip.”

  “I’ll cross right on over, then.”

  “Good, good! Just so you know, that’s a strong cold front coming up on us. Severe thunderstorms, possible tornadoes. We’re just doing a quick mop-up before the rains come in and help us put out the fires. By the way, thank you so much for your efforts on behalf of Oak Blossom Lane! I’m sorry about Paulson. Just so you know, he was off the reservation. Got what was coming, though, don’t you agree?”

  “It was a shame to lose the fire truck,” I say.

  Dr. Hearn nods. “Yes! Yes! You understand! With every destroyed vehicle, every burned building, every wrecked house, that’s one less until we learn to make them again! Will we ever make them again? That’s probably the biggest problem ahead of us. We gave up a lot for this—but it will be better!” He looks out the door where a squad of three take positions to shoot something or someone outside our own line of sight. “But that’s neither here nor there,” the doctor says. Now he snaps forward, his hand out and a huge grin on his face. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. I had to shake the hand of the man who slept with the Mantis and lived!”

  I lean forward and shake his hand. “Uh—what?”

  “Ms. Rebecca! Special Agent Rebecca Anne Donaldson, to be precise. She’s got issues, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Uh, no. She seemed fine to me. Very dedicated to her work. I’d be honored to take firearms training under her.”

  Dr. Hearn looks at me incredulously. “They call her the Mantis because she eventually takes the head off of every man she sleeps with! I don’t know what’s going on between you two but apparently you work well together! According to her we would never have rid ourselves of the mestizo infestation if not for your help bringing them here. God forbid they had escaped into the countryside!”

  Infestation? Oh, no. “Look, I’m just a guy minding his own business. Trying to get home and all that.”

  “You’ve saved the oldest neighborhood in town from fire and ruin! You’ve neutralized almost exactly half of the walkers brought together from all over town to funnel into the Dougherty estate! Of course, it helped we had them in a tight corral, but still! Inspired! Then you bring them to a more or less dead-free area for cleanup!”

  “Well, shucks….”

  “And, dear God, I’m forgetting! You rescued that group from the Wal-Mart with that beautiful sword of yours! And you stood for that poor girl this morning when those jackanapes killed her! Your one and only failure in a long and busy day, and you still showed courage of character!”

  Well played, Rebecca. “I really regretted losing Kara. That was such a waste.”

  “Indeed! But you and Rebecca destroyed the malefactors! Such a team! My people won’t forget this, Mr. Grace!”

  “Well, here’s wishing all the best.”

  “We wish you the best! There’s a farmhouse just up the road we’ve secured! You’ll want to stop there before the storm hits. It has a shelter if it comes to that….”

  So he gives me full directions to this place on Exit Something-or-Other, drive north and it’s completely clean, etc. I thank him and we shake hands. “We’ll be in touch sooner than later!” Dr. Hearn says “We can use a man of your talent! To mate you with a Rebecca Anne Donaldson, imagine the warrior!”

  “Imagine trying to get the little son of a bitch to do his homework.”

  Dr. Hearn grabs his chest as he laughs and the black-suited bastards on either side glower at me like they’re really going to resent the paperwork on this one. After a scary couple of moments he coughs, cackles, and regains his composure: “Yes, I understand what she sees in you! Very good! We will be in touch, Mr. Grace!”

  I’m not quite escorted from the aircraft, but I know their eyes and gunsights are upon me as I smile and nod my way back to the Big Yellow Truck. I hear a woman’s scream from the auto mall, the cry of a child, followed by the gunfire, as I climb to the running board. I turn to look and see a familiar face commanding a squad of black-uniformed goons coming away from one of the dealerships off the highway. Yes, it’s Evans. Pointedly ignoring me. Which is fine. I imagine it’s galling to see me getting ready to drive away in the truck he’d picked up just days ago.

  For that matter, I can only imagine what his story was after this morning. At least he was on the correct side politically. And now he has a new job. Nice and secure. There’s always going to be someone at the bottom of the social totem pole in need of a bit of discipline.

  I drive at an angle across the median into the westbound lanes. Now I’m on the proper road, driving like a good citizen. The quicker those helicopters and columns of smoke disappear from my rear-view mirrors, the better.

  It was kind of Dr. Hearn to give me an exit number and an address to stay at. With that woman’s scream and child’s last cry in mind I’ll take any other exit but that one and go as far as I can in the opposite direction.

  Fields surround me. The wind turbines spin furiously in the face of the coming storm. There’s not much between here and Colorado once you’re out of Saline County. After several miles of clean sunlight the clouds overtake the sun. Soon I’m surrounded by that eerie, greenish glow in the air you see just before a tornado. Powerful downdrafts rock the truck on its frame; fat drops of rain smack the windshield.

  I look to either side of the Interstate. An old farmer here, a good old boy in a T-shirt there, stumbling along, their sightless heads turning uneasily about them. I wonder if they’re sensitive to barometric pressure. Me, I’m about to get blown away on the open Interstate so I slow down and pull off at the next exit.

  I have no idea where I am. All I know is that Hearn’s secured area was north, so I drive south. The sign promises a town in three more miles. The clouds thicken, as do the hungry dead along the sides of the road. Their heads follow the movement of my truck. Soon the rest of them are staggering after. I see them following in my rear-view, leaning awkwardly into the gusting winds.

  I keep driving, with an eye on the rear view. I’ll need to hole up somewhere and soon. So far it looks like I’m the only living soul out here.

  Good. I feel so much safer. God bless the Middle of Nowhere.

  THE END

  Read on for a free sample of Machines of the Dead

  Chapter 1

  “Damn it,” Dr. Reynolds said when he looked through the glass into the containment room. Homeless person number 14 was dead, the bots taking too much of the man’s energy, sucking him down to almost nothing more than a husk.

  “I don’t understand why the programming isn’t working,” he said, and hit the kill switch, filling the containment room with enough electromagnetic energy to wipe out a small town’s electrical equipment. “The bots worked perfectly in the rats.”

  “Sir,” said Dr. Chan, his assistant. “The human brain is just too complex. Maybe we—”

  “Maybe we what, tell the military that their project is too much for us? That they should find another company to work on this project? We’ll just give back the millions upon millions we’ve been funded, and say sorry.”

  Dr. Chan sighed and looked down. “I’ll have more test subjects rounded up. The city’s full of them.”

  “Get on that; tell Chambers I want at least twenty—no, thirty.”

  “Thirty? Sir that’s too many at one time. We’ve never—”

  “I need to be alone,” Dr. Reynolds said, cutting his assistant off.

  “I’ll take lunch then,” Chan said, and left the control room.


  When the military first approached him, Dr. Eugene Reynolds had thought it a good thing. Now he wasn’t so sure. What if he couldn’t deliver? What would they do to him? Would he ever be able to work again, or would his reputation be ruined? None of that mattered, because he was going to make the project work; give the government what they wanted. He had never failed before and he wasn’t about to now. With thirty more subjects coming in, plus the ten he had left, he would be able to get the bots to work. He had to.

  Sitting down at his computer, he began to re-work the nano’s interface module. He needed stronger bots, and ones that required less host-energy.

  Chapter 2

  Derek Mayfield had been living on the streets of New York City for ten years, having spent time in almost every borough. At the age of fifteen, he was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, and under his parents’ medical insurance, he received the proper care and medication for him to maintain a normal lifestyle.

  At the age of nineteen, he fell in love with Clare Schmidt, a waitress and recreational drug user. Together, they partied at night and on their days off from work; it was a twenty-four hour party. Marijuana and beer were the drugs of choice, until one day, they decided to try cocaine. From that day forward, it was the hard narcotics: cocaine, speed, meth, and heroin.

  Off his meds, Derek experienced major mood swings. They could occur at any moment and anywhere. After Clare died from an overdose, Derek spiraled further down the path of destruction. One day, while arguing with his parents over money, he snapped and killed them both.

  Since that night, he had been living on the streets, hiding from the cops and society. His weight had dropped to half of what it used to be; he was dirty and had a full, scruffy beard. He was always looking to score, and one day a large, well-built man came to him, offering him a job.

  “Work for you?” he asked the big guy. “I thought you brought me to this back alley because you wanted me to blow you.”

  The big man smiled, but something about his smile bothered Derek, making his blood feel as if it had turned into ice.

  “I work for a pharmaceutical company,” the big guy said.

  Derek’s eyes lit up at hearing the word pharmaceutical.

  He was in.

  “My boss,” the big fellow continued, “is looking for test subjects. Former drug users, current drug users, and whatnot.”

  “What do I gotta do, suck his dick?”

  The big man laughed. “No, no. Nothing like that. He needs people willing to go around the bureaucratic tape, the paperwork. Things get done much faster that way. Course it’s all off the record. We keep our mouths shut, and you do the same.”

  “How long is the job?”

  “Should be no more than a few days and while you’re staying with us, you’ll be fed, bathed, and given whatever you need.” The big man held up a small baggie filled with white nose candy. Derek reached out, grabbed the coke and held it close to his chest. “And you’ll earn a thousand bucks, cash.”

  What did he have to lose?

  Now, sitting in his room five stories below Manhattan, in an underground bunker, Derek started to feel as if he were in withdrawal. He was antsy and needed a fix. The small room was too claustrophobic. It made him angry. Made him wonder why he was there in the first place. Who were the rich assholes who needed him? How much were they going to make off him?

  He deserved more than a grand.

  Derek closed his eyes and began smacking himself upside the head until he felt right again. Truth was he needed the money. Didn’t everyone need money? He’d been allowed to take numerous showers. The hot water was something he had longed for, and he was fed and clothed, just as the big guy promised. He could do this, whatever it was. If all they wanted were samples of his blood, they could have them. Shit, they could keep on having them if he could stay here. His brain was so fucked up. He needed meds. Fuck that. Meds turned him into someone else. He needed drugs, the kind he could use to leave the world and enter the land of ecstasy. Once he got paid, he would go out and celebrate in style. Get the good stuff, not that shitty crank he had to settle for on the streets. Maybe, he would even find a woman.

  Okay, he could do this. Let them take whatever they wanted from him. A little blood, sure. Some skin, sure. He had done way worse, for far less. Nasty things with nasty people. He should count his blessings and enjoy himself. If only his head wasn’t so fucked up.

  Sitting on his bed, he waited for his turn in the lab.

  An hour later, a doctor entered his room.

  “Hello, Mr. Mayfield,” the man said. “My name’s Dr. Chan. How are we doing today?”

  Scratching his head and twitching, Derek said, “Good. I’m doing good.”

  Chan looked at him curiously. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah. What have you got for me, Doc?”

  “I’m going to give you a very mild sedative, so that when we bring you to the lab, you won’t be as jumpy.”

  “I like sedatives. It’s a good idea. I’m a little nervous.”

  “Oh, this is nothing really. I doubt you’ll notice a thing, and as far as being nervous, don’t be. All we’re going to do is x-ray your body, take some blood and skin samples and send you on your way.”

  “Sounds good, Doc.” Derek held out his arms. “Pick one.”

  The doctor approached him, held onto the left arm and injected him with the syringe he was holding. “Okay,” he said, “all done.”

  “I’ll just lay back and enjoy . . . I mean, wait for you to come back.”

  “Relax, Mr. Mayfield. You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Chan said, then walked out of the room and closed the door. Derek heard the lock click and jumped.

  “Fuck,” he said. Why were they locking him in? Precautionary, that’s all, he thought. He laid back and tried to relax, let the drug take effect. However, after a few minutes, he felt the same. He wondered what the hell was going on. He’d been on plenty of sedatives and whatever they had given him, sure wasn’t one.

  Shit. They were screwing with him.

  Sitting up, his heart racing, he looked around the almost barren room. Cameras! They must have cameras and were watching him to see how he would react. But why?

  He searched the room, looking in the corners, under the bed, and along the walls. Nothing; he found nothing. Shit. He was just being paranoid, allowing his condition to get the best of him. If only he had a hit of something, something to calm him down, because whatever they had given him was total bullshit. Maybe, he shouldn’t have lied on the form he filled out and informed them that he was bi-polar, and a heavy drug user, instead of just a recreational one. Maybe then, they would have given him a stronger dose of sedative.

  Relax, he told himself, as he paced frantically. All they wanted was some of his stuff, blood and skin, then he was free to leave. Wait, the doctor didn’t mention the money. What if that was a lie. What if there was no money. What if this place was one big sex house and they were slowly dosing him so that he wouldn’t remember getting raped? No, he was being ridiculous. Damn it.

  Derek hit himself in the head again, but this time it did nothing to calm him down. Shit, what had they given him? Maybe they knew he was “unsteady” and gave him something to keep him crazy. Watch him suffer.

  He needed to get out of there, but if he showed them how upset he was, they might tie him up, or chain him down. Then he would be at their mercy.

  Derek bit through his lower lip in grinding pain. “You got to act natural,” he told himself.

  A knock sounded on the door, then Dr. Chan entered. “Okay, Mr. Mayfield—”

  Derek lunged at the tiny man, toppling him to the ground.

  Looking up, he saw that Chan wasn’t alone. He had a guard with him, a rather large man, who was dressed in black fatigues.

  As the guard rushed at him, Derek pushed himself up. They collided, but Derek managed to toss the man aside. The guy lost his balance and fell to the floor. Standing over Dr. Chan, Derek stomped th
e little man’s face, breaking his glasses and his nose. The big guy was getting up. Derek jumped over to him and landed with his feet on the man’s back, knocking him down again. He then lifted his right leg and stomped on the back of the big guy’s neck, over and over, like someone at a slam-dance concert. He was in a rage, wanting to kill. Within moments, Derek had turned the man’s spine into mush. Blood pooled around the guard’s face, his jaw broken, and offset. Pieces of teeth lay in the red liquid like tiny lifeboats at sea.

  Turning around, Derek saw Dr. Chan holding his nose and leaning against the doorframe. “You’re a tough little fucker, aren’t you?”

  Holding both arms out, shaking his head, Chan said, “no, no, no.” Blood covered the man’s face, his broken, twisted nose, still gushing like a burst water main. The little man turned to run, but Derek was on him in a second. He was suddenly hungry, starving in fact. Grabbing Chan’s head, he yanked it back, exposing Chan’s neck. Derek brought his face down and sunk his teeth into the scientist’s Adam’s apple, tearing it free. He tossed Chan’s body to the ground like the dead weight it was and chewed.

  As soon as he swallowed the meat, he wanted to throw up. Leaning over, Derek gagged, but nothing came up. Anger then coursed through him. What had these people done to him?

  He needed to escape.

  Turning back to the dead guard, Derek searched the corpse, finding a Taser strapped to his hip, a wallet with no cash, and attached to an extend-a-cord was the keycard Derek had seen numerous employees use to access doors. He unclipped the card, stuffed the Taser into the back of his pants, and left the room.