Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 13): Gone
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Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse
GONE
By
Shawn Chesser
KINDLE EDITION
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Surviving the Zombie
Apocalypse
GONE
Copyright 2018
Shawn Chesser
Kindle Edition
Kindle Edition, License
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go and buy your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.
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***
Acknowledgements
For Maureen, Raven, and Caden ... I couldn’t have done this without your support. Thanks to our military, LE and first responders for your service. To the people in the U.K. and elsewhere around the world who have been in touch, thanks for reading! Lieutenant Colonel Michael Offe, thanks for your service as well as your friendship. Larry Eckels, thank you for helping me with some of the military technical stuff. Any missing facts or errors are solely my fault. Bud Ableman: Your help with four legged critters is appreciated. Beta readers, you rock, and you know who you are. Thanks George Romero for introducing me to zombies. To my friends and fellows at S@N and Monday Steps On Steele, thanks as well. Lastly, thanks to Bill W. and Dr. Bob … you helped make this possible. I am going to sign up for another 24.
Special thanks to John O’Brien, Mark Tufo, Joe McKinney, Craig DiLouie, Armand Rosamilia, Heath Stallcup, Saul Tanpepper, Eric A. Shelman, and David P. Forsyth. I truly appreciate your continued friendship and always invaluable advice. Thanks to Jason Swarr and Straight 8 Custom Photography for another awesome cover. Once again, extra special thanks to Monique Happy for her work editing “GONE.” Mo, as always, you came through like a champ! Working with you over the years has been nothing but a pleasure. I truly appreciate having a confidante I can trust. If I have accidentally left anyone out ... I am truly sorry.
***
Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services
www.moniquehappy.com
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Epilogue
Prologue
Cade Grayson was staring straight out over the wide, gore-streaked hood at the remnants of the lopsided ambush he, Duncan, Jamie, and Lev had sprung on an unsuspecting band of cannibals. Caught sticking their noses where they didn’t belong, the marauders, based north near Bear Lake, had been dealt a massive blow from the encounter and subsequent military action levied against them. The two-lane stretch of State Route 39 Cade was inspecting through his Steiner binoculars fell away from the Ford F-650’s rounded front end at a shallow angle and continued for roughly a hundred yards before transitioning into a long, flat straightaway before finally ending at a sharp left-hand turn nearly two-thirds of a mile away. In the gutter on the left where the shoulder was wide and guardrail nonexistent, a full-size SUV rested on its roof. Having burned until all that remained was bare, soot-blackened metal and rims minus their tires, the bullet-riddled shell looked more like an insect in repose than the massive Ford Excursion it once was. Behind the destroyed Ford and trapped in the ditch was a pair of SUVs. Once shiny black Chevy Suburbans, both were now soot-coated, their sheet metal skin cratered from absorbing massive amounts of gunfire. Both sat on flattened tires and were listing hard to their passenger sides. With all of their windows blown out and just the skeletal tube and wire remains of what once were leather-clad seats showing in the openings, the vehicles conjured in Cade’s head images of the Arizona and Nevada foundering on Pearl Harbor’s Battleship Row.
After spending a few seconds glassing the kill zone, he paused and framed the vehicles furthest from him with the Steiners. One was Charlie Jenkins’ Jackson Police Department Tahoe. Its front end was mangled considerably and most of the windows were cratered by bullet strikes. The second vehicle was a black van with a body-length red stripe and roof-mounted spoiler. Though it had also suffered considerable damage from the guns of Cade and the Eden crew, it was still clear it was tricked out to resemble the ride from the A-Team television show. Out back, the shot-up double doors were open wide, exposing the bodies stacked inside like cordwood.
Satisfied nothing living was present, Cade grunted, then turned his attention to the bottom of the hill where five zombies ambled down the center of the two-lane. They were arranged nearly shoulder to shoulder with a pair of adult Zs on the left and three preschool-aged boys of equal stature taking up the eastbound lane. Ground-hugging mist swirled as an assortment of ratty shoes and road-worn bare feet struck the rain-slickened blacktop. The wet slaps of the latter meeting the road could be heard clearly over the ticking of the Ford F-650’s rapidly cooling engine.
“Looks like they turned rather recently,” Raven said. She had hitched herself up to the front edge of the seat and was balanced there. One small hand was wrapped around the A-pillar grab-bar. The other hand had ahold of the collapsed stock on her M4, her nimble fingers slowly opening and closing on it. Nestled between her knees, its short barrel planted on the floor by her boots, the stubby carbine was a hand-me-down from her late mother. An item that represented more than just protection from the new monster-filled world. A world slowly collapsing in on her. Tightening like a metaphorical noose that with each passing day was gradually purging from her memory the last vestiges of a happy childhood. She had adopted the inanimate object as a sort of talisman. A physical thing linking her to her mom. And though she wouldn’t tell her dad even if asked, it represented an unspoken promise from the grave. The promise of her survival, if only she took proper care of it, kept it cleaned and oiled, and most importantly, at all times, locked and loaded.
A gust buffeted the slab-sided pickup. The stench of decaying flesh wormed its way in through the open windows, easily overpowering the sweet smell of Hoppes #9 gun oil emanating from the weapons scattered about the cab.
Cade watched the steam wafting from the mug perched on the dash and wished he
could instead smell the aroma of the weak coffee.
Leaning closer to the windshield and squinting, Raven said, “I think they’re a family.”
Cade looked sidelong at his twelve-year-old. Her jaw was set, the muscles there well-defined from months of apocalypse-induced stress. Add a high ponytail and a ball cap and fast forward two decades, she’d be Brook’s doppelganger.
Though Cade was in agreement with her hypothesis, he said, “What brought you to that conclusion?”
Chin now resting on the flat of the M4’s buttstock, Raven replied, “The boys are triplets. They’re all the same height. They have the same oval faces. Their hair is the same color and looks like they all had it cut in the same style.”
Pleased to see his girl relying on powers of observation, he nodded. Then, after reflecting on the way their brindle Australian Shepherd, Max, had come to be a member of the Grayson family—having adopted Brook and Raven after showing up outside the wire at Schriever with a similar-looking band of walking corpses—he said, “I think you’re on to something. But I’m pretty sure they don’t remember each other.”
She nodded this time. “And they don’t have feelings anymore. All they want to do is hunt and eat what they catch. I know all that, Dad.”
“What else do you make of them?”
“Well,” she said, squinting again, “I’d guess they died during the same attack and then reanimated together. Probably been hunting in a pack ever since.”
Smiling inwardly, Cade said, “The woman and man are about the same age. What do you think? Mid-thirties … like me?”
Raven regarded her dad. Let her eyes roam his newly clean-shaven face. “Naw,” she said. “Those two are in their forties. Even on the newly dead, wrinkles take a while to stretch tight.”
“Parenting triplets did that to them. Would have aged me prematurely if there were two more just like you.” He smiled and shook his head at the glare he received. “Kidding, sweetie. Those two are mid-thirties … tops,” he insisted. “Want to bet on it?” He held out his hand. “I’ll do your dish duty for a whole week if I’m wrong.”
Raven pursed her lips. After a moment of contemplation spent staring at her dad’s hand, she said, “What do I have to do if I lose the bet?”
“Twenty-five pushups and seventy-five sit-ups a day for a week.”
She looked at the dead things, now about fifty yards off the Ford’s bumper and just beginning the long uphill slog.
Shrugging, Cade gripped the steering wheel two-handed, regarded the dead and began humming the Jeopardy theme song.
After a long ten-count, Raven let go of the grab bar and offered her hand.
Making her wait, Cade made a show of looking at his nails. There was reddish-brown dirt caked under them. Along with sore arms, a tight back, and a number of blisters on his palms, the clay-rich grime was a byproduct of digging the newest graves in which three of their own now rested for all of eternity.
“Well?” she said. “They’ll be at our doors before long.”
Cade gave her hand a firm shake. “Deal,” he said. “Blades only.”
Bone-handled Arkansas Toothpick already clear of its sheath, she said, “Let’s do this. I’ll take the kids.”
Gerber dagger in hand and shouldering open his door, Cade said, “Don’t you forget they’re fresh turns—”
Interrupting, she called back, “And the smaller they are, the faster they move.”
That’s my girl, he thought, closing his door with a firm shove.
Chapter 1
Duncan came to crunched up in a fetal ball and facing a wall clad with faux-wood paneling. Above his head was a dinner-table-sized window. Slivers of light probed the bottom of the mauve curtain, painting the queen bed from head to foot with vertical stripes. If there was a prison for the man, this was it. A cold bed wedged into an even colder Winnebago. One that still smelled of bleach and death, the former waging a losing battle over the latter. He rolled over and felt his brain seemingly come into contact with every sharp-edged bone inside his cranium. It was as if the organ currently waging a war against him was untethered. Floating free in a sea of spinal fluid shored with razor blades.
Rimed by crystalline gunk, his eyes were slow to open fully. So he grabbed blindly at the water bottle perched on the narrow shelf behind his head. It was light in his hand. Not a sound when he shook it. The bottle next to it was empty, too. At least I hydrated before passing out, crossed his mind as he tossed the bottle to the floor. Either he’d finally learned his lesson after nearly sixty years on this unforgiving rock, or the empties were days old. Judging by the world class case of cottonmouth, he put his money on the latter.
Rubbing the crust from his eyes, he spotted the squared-off form of a vessel all too familiar to him. It was upside down due to the viewing angle, but still unmistakable. Jack Black. Old Number Seven out of Lynchburg, Tennessee. For a split second he wondered what had become of the distillery there. Was it still standing? Did the warehouses get looted as the country went through its initial death throes?
A knock on the door. No urgency. Just two soft raps.
“Keep your pants on,” Duncan called as he hinged up and swung his legs off the bed. A bad move on both accounts. The initial action resulted in a barrage of laser-like tracers clouding his vision. The weight of his dangling boot-clad feet continuing their pendulum swing to the left made his upper body yaw in the opposite direction. Grasping the shelf the Jack Daniels rested on steadied him in a sitting position that afforded him a clear view down the center of the recreation vehicle. He saw the far tree line where the concealed entrance to the subterranean Eden compound laid. His dead baby brother, Logan, had done a superior job of laying the place out and stocking it for the Y2K collapse that never came. The camouflaged blind shielding the dirt ramp leading down to the entry door was expertly positioned so that it remained in shadow even with the changing light of day. And judging by the pewter smudge above the towering firs, he pegged the hour somewhere between breakfast and lunch. Going with nine, he stood and discovered he’d passed out fully clothed in woodland-patterned camouflage pants, red flannel shirt, and wearing the stocking cap Daymon had lifted from the ski shop at Powder Mountain before he and Oliver tore up the slopes above Eden, Utah—twenty some-odd miles west of the compound. Having contributed to the aching in his lower back, the trusty Colt Model 1911 pistol was still in the leather holster riding high on his right hip.
The simple act of his left hand brushing against the liquor bottle’s smooth surface started within Duncan a craving he’d been battling off and on for more than three decades. As if on autopilot, his hand moved up the bottle and his fingers encircled the stubby neck. With a practiced motion, he brought the bottle to his lips, the plastic cap already spinning off thanks to a single flick of his thumb. He gulped the whiskey, thick bubbles forming in the neck.
Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he ambled toward the door, empty bottle still in hand. “Whatcha want?” he called.
Nothing.
“Glenda … that you?”
Only silence.
Forgoing lifting the curtain over the single window in the door, he threw the lock and took hold of the knob. “Daymon? You back to claim your casa? If you are, you better sit down. I have really bad news to relay to you.” With a vision of Heidi in his head—the medicated, smiling visage, not the sullen post-Jackson Hole version of the blonde—he opened the door slowly.
At once Sasha said, “You’re drunk.” Full head of red hair adopting the tilt of her head, she stood there by the short stack of stairs, hands on hips and directing an accusatory glare up at him.
Duncan leaned against the jamb and surreptitiously reached over and placed the bottle on the counter. Fingers drumming the door frame over his head, he said, “I’m not drunk yet, missy.”
“You’re still tanked from last night’s activities. You were so loud in here, I thought Zombie Brook had come back again and was tearing up the place.”
She�
�s only fourteen, Duncan reminded himself. “I was cleaning my guns,” he said through clenched teeth.
“With dynamite?”
He let it go. Changed the subject, saying, “Where are the others?”
“Captain America and Raven took off in Black Beauty. Said they were going to bury Heidi and the Thagons up on the hill. After that, they’re checking the tree roadblock before heading back toward Woodruff.”
“They have radios and a phone?”
She nodded, her posture a little more relaxed.
“Tran?”
“He’s probably watching us right now from the security pod. Seth is out tending to the solar panels. Said on the way back he was going to decant some water from our collection and check fuel levels on the generators.” Expecting more questions, Sasha made a beckoning motion with both hands.
Duncan said, “Jamie and Lev … they head north yet?”
Sasha looked at the big black diver watch on her wrist. “They set out in the Raptor at the butt crack of dawn.”
He shot her a watch your language look that seemed to go unnoticed.
“How about the other half of the infamous ‘Kids’ gang?”
Making air quotes, she said, “My brother and Taryn are out exploring. If you know what I mean.”
Ignoring the implication, Duncan coughed into his shoulder.
She said, “They took radios with fresh batteries.”
Smart kids, thought Duncan. Last thing he wanted to do was mount another rescue mission. Seemed to be happening all too often in this new environment. He didn’t bother to ask if they were armed. It was the new gold standard. Alone, or in numbers, nobody went outside the wire without a blade and a gun.
Sasha sensed Duncan was saving the obvious questions for last. So she took the initiative, saying, “Still no word from Daymon. And, yes, Glenda is still pissed about last night.”