The Z-Day Trilogy (Book 4): Zombie World

by Mark Cusco Ailes

  They both stared at Mr. Franks. Kurt turned and left the room without saying a word. Ted looked at Mr. Franks. He knew Mr. Franks wanted him to say something. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m on your side, remember?”

  Mr. Franks took a sip of his coffee. “I’m counting on you, Ted. The success of the park depends on all of us doing our part to keep the park safe. I want you to make your rounds today looking for anything that could go wrong. Check with Owen at the command center and have him scan the park for anything out of the ordinary. If you see anything, contact me at once. In the meantime, I have to make sure Kurt is still on our side. I think the news report really affected him.”

  Ted waited until he left the kitchen before pouring his coffee into the sink. He didn’t feel like drinking it after seeing all the blood on TV. He stood wondering if he was doing the right thing being involved with the park. It was too late to worry about it now. He had too much time and money invested in it, and he had to see it to the end. He left the house and headed toward the command center to meet with Owen and do a visual sweep of the park using his computer. He found him discussing a new video game with Brant, his assistant, and reading a paperback book about monsters at the same time. He was wearing a black shirt with the image of a zombie chasing a group of people. Below the image it read, ‘Zombies Hate Fast food’. Seeing the shirt didn’t amuse him. Owen stopped talking when he saw him standing there.

  “Owen, why would you wear a shirt like that to the park? Don’t ever wear it to work again.” He looked at the computer screen on the wall. It was focused on the exhibits where the zombies were housed. Something had caught his attention. He looked at Owen. “Can you focus in on that area?”

  Owen looked to see where he was pointing. “Sure.” He enlarged the image on the screen and they could see Chris and Julie having a heated conversation. Owen glanced back at Ted. “Should we be spying on them?”

  Ted remained silent and kept watching. He knew the two had been fraternizing behind his back, but he wasn’t aware they were having any problems. He wondered if it was going to be a problem for the park.

  “Come on, Chris, I need your help. This week is crunch time. I need your help watching Kylie and Carl. You act as though they are a burden. I just need you to entertain them this week. Once the park is officially open, I can rearrange my schedule to spend time with them. Besides, you owe me a favor after how you treated me.”

  Chris raised his hands in the air. “Wait a minute…wait a minute. They aren’t my kids. You can’t just dump them on me because you don’t have time to watch them. Look what I do at the park. I babysit zombies. Do you really want them hanging around zombies?”

  She felt frustrated, but she knew he had a valid point. She knew it would be cruel to have the children hanging around the zombies. She also knew if they hung around her, they would become a distraction. She also couldn’t have them wondering around the park by themselves because they could get into trouble. She glared at Chris. “Thanks for nothing!” She stormed off to find Kylie and Carl. She wasn’t being left with much of a choice. She was going to have to keep them with her. First, she had to get them breakfast, and second, she had to try to find a way to entertain them while she worked.

  Ted watched as Julie moved away from Chris. He could tell she was angry. It was why he discouraged employees from dating each other, but under the current circumstances with people living on the island, he knew he couldn’t enforce it. He looked at Owen and told him to make a security sweep of the island and if he found anything to notify him immediately. He left and made his way out to the park. He wanted to meet Julie as she came to work and see if there was anything he could do for her. He needed her to be in the right frame of mind to carry out her duties. He saw her approaching from across the street. He was relieved to see she didn’t appear to be as angry as she did when he was spying on her. He waited until she got closer to him.

  “What a beautiful day,” he said, as she stopped in front of him.

  “For now it is. For me, it’s more of a typical busy day. Lucky for me I’m going to have a lot of help today.”

  “What kind of help?”

  She didn’t want to tell him she was keeping the children with her today, but she knew he would eventually find out. “Carl and Kylie are going to help me today.” She paused for a moment. “I know what you’re thinking, but trust me, if there was any other way, I wouldn’t bring them to work with me. I tried to get Chris to watch them, but he made a good point. I can’t have them around the zombies.”

  “I understand, Julie. It’s all right. I know what happened to their parents. It’s all right if they hang out with you. If you think they won’t interfere with your work, I’m all for it.”

  She looked at him happily. “Really? I really do appreciate this. I promise you they won’t interfere with my work. By the way, have you seen any of the reports on the park yet?”

  “Don’t worry about them. I’m sure all the reports are going to favor the park. I just need you to focus on next Thursday. I need everything to be ready and running without any problems. We just need to get through the opening weekend and then we can all relax a bit.”

  “I don’t anticipate anything going wrong. Nobody has reported any problems to me yet.”

  “Good, let’s keep it that way. You better get going now before breakfast is over. I don’t think you want any hungry children on your hands.”

  She made her way past him. She had so much to get accomplished during the day, and she didn’t have a clue where to start.

  Captain Jonas was preparing for the change of shift. They had less than an hour before the boat arrived with the day’s supplies, and he wanted to make sure his men were at their posts. He went through the previous night’s logs looking for any problems that might have occurred while he was sleeping. He didn’t see anything that needed his immediate attention. He left the guard house and brought his men to attention. He looked them over to make sure everybody was in proper uniform and then assigned them their duty stations. He looked at his watch. The boat was going to arrive soon. It was supposed to be the last shipment containing homeless people. He didn’t like dealing with them. He thought they posed too much of a security risk. He didn’t know what was being done with them (even though he had a suspicion), and he didn’t care. After today, unless something changed, he didn’t have to worry about them anymore. He decided to walk up the beach to clear his head before the boat arrived. He thought about his last assignment before being brought to the island. He had been assigned to Special Ops in Valparaiso, Indiana, after the first outbreak in America. Their mission was to keep anybody or anything from escaping the area. Their orders were to shoot on sight and not ask any questions. His orders sounded easy enough to follow, but he wasn’t prepared for what was to happen once he arrived at his assignment. When he first arrived, all he was told was zombies had escaped the zombie park and were invading Valparaiso, devouring everybody they could sink their teeth into. His first assignment was to sweep the highway near a miniature golf course where zombies were forcing people from their cars and ripping them apart in the middle of the highway. Emergency vehicles were flying past him with their sirens blaring, and people were laying on their horns trying to scare away their attackers. Everywhere he looked was carnage. Body parts littered the highway in every direction he looked. It was like a scene from a horror movie. He remembered standing frozen in place as a small girl stood screaming as a horde of the undead brought her to the ground and ripped her little body apart right in front of him. He just stood there frozen in place. He was too scared to do anything to help her. He stared at her body as she was being viciously torn apart and devoured. In one of her hands he saw something that still haunted him. In her hand she was holding on to a chocolate chip cookie. He fought the urge to expel his stomach contents and felt somebody tap his shoulder. He swung around, and it was one of his men asking him what they should do. He remembered he was the captain and was leading this compan
y down the highway. He didn’t have time to answer him. He watched in horror as several of the undead grabbed his arms and disemboweled him right in front of his eyes. He was showered with his blood, and he felt the warm liquid flow freely down his face. He was too scared to scream. Instead, he turned and ran toward the miniature golf course, dead set on abandoning his mission and trying to find a safe place to hide from all the gore. He didn’t have time to feel guilty about his decision; it was as though nothing mattered anymore, and he didn’t care if he got court-martialed for his decision. He ran past a man and woman swinging golf clubs trying to keep the undead from reaching them, but they were quickly overtaken and suffered the same fate as the soldier he had left bleeding in the middle of the highway. He ran past a bus filled with children trapped by the undead, screaming in fear as they tried to escape through the back door. He ran inside the arcade and everywhere he looked was carnage. Intestines, brain matter, and amputated limbs littered the floor. Several people were huddled together in the rear pushing pinball machines in front of them trying to keep the undead from reaching them. He felt nauseous. He didn’t know what to do. It was as though everything he had learned in training had suddenly vanished from his mind. The air was filled with the sound of ripping flesh and crunching bone. He heard several shots being fired outside near the batting cages and left to investigate. He saw several soldiers in a jeep crashing through a large horde, firing their M16s in every direction, bringing the undead down in a pile of gore. The driver saw him standing there and waved for him to run to the jeep to get to safety. All of a sudden, the gunfire silenced, and he stood in horror as the soldiers were pulled from the jeep and devoured in front of him. Nobody was safe from the bloodshed. He looked around as the war raged on. It appeared he was the only one left standing. The ground was a river of blood flowing around his spit shined boots. He didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t anywhere he could run. He looked at the jeep. It was still running and the driver had been snatched from it. He did the only thing he could rationally think to do. He swiftly made his way over to the jeep, jumped over a couple of crouched zombies and slid onto the driver’s seat. Without looking back, he quickly maneuvered the jeep away from the bloody scene and found a safe way out of the area. He knew what he had done would be considered the coward’s way out, but he survived. Even though it came with a cost, he survived. He suddenly heard one of his men shouting the boat was coming. He knew he would have to live the rest of his life with the decision he had made on that day. Because of that day, he hadn’t eaten a chocolate chip cookie, or any cookie since.

  He watched as the shipments came ashore. He felt sweat streaming down his face. The nightmare of what happened that day kept haunting him. No matter how he tried to silence the painful memories, he couldn’t bury them. He couldn’t forget the look on the little girl’s face that was holding the cookie when the zombies brought her down to the ground. As she was screaming, she kept her gaze on him, pleading with him to help her. Her screams were quickly silenced, and the gaze had turned to sheer terror. He watched as several homeless people were being brought ashore and loaded onto trucks. The homeless all stared at him with the same terror in their eyes as they passed him. There wasn’t anything he could do for them. His job was to maintain security at the beach, not rescue homeless people. He turned around and walked away. He didn’t want to think about any of it anymore. He continued down the beach, whistling one of his favorite songs to clear his head. He passed a couple of his men who reported that everything was secured at their post. He continued until he reached the other side of the beach and immediately noticed something unusual. There were footprints leading into the trees that didn’t match their military duty boots. He crouched down by the first set and stood back up alarmed. The footprints weren’t made by any boots or shoes. Whoever had left the footprints was barefoot. He looked around to see if any of his men were in the immediate area, but he didn’t see anybody. He realized that the beach had been breached. It was apparent somebody had gotten onto the beach and could pose a security risk to the island and the park. He thought about radioing it in, but hesitated. If he reported it prematurely, it would send an alarm through the community and make him look bad. If he could handle the problem himself, then nobody would be the wiser. He followed the footprints into the trees where they vanished. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to follow them, because he figured whoever left them most likely was walking in one direction. All he needed to do was keep walking and he would eventually find whoever had breached the island. He stopped to look for his men along the beach, but he still didn’t see any sign of them. He made a mental note to find out who was on duty and deal with the situation later. He continued through the trees looking for anything that looked suspicious. He didn’t know how much of a head start the person had, but he figured the breach happened the previous night under the cover of darkness, so he knew he had some ground to cover. He unholstered his sidearm and took another step. He suddenly remembered all the cameras were not operational on this part of the island yet. The job was supposed to be completed in the next two days. He did know there was a tunnel that led underground a mile or two ahead that led to the outskirts of the park. It was used by drug smugglers before Mr. Franks purchased the island. There wasn’t anything left inside it. Their security team had cleared it from drug paraphernalia and covered the entrance with branches. He figured it was where he would find the intruder. He tightened his grip on his sidearm realizing who the intruder could be. If it was a drug smuggler, he knew he could be heavily armed and was here to start trouble on the island. He was educated about the operation that was running on the island before Mr. Shelton had purchased the island. It was a large operation run by Julio Rojas. He knew of his reputation. He was ruthless and was responsible for seventy-five percent of the drugs being manufactured and sold in the surrounding areas. He heard several stories about what happened to people when they crossed him. He was in favor of beheading people, even people who were working for him. Mr. Rojas didn’t care who you were, if you crossed him, you met with the Grim Reaper.

  Captain Jonas stopped for a moment to look at something that had caught his eye. He bent over to investigate. It was a crushed cigar. He picked it up and examined it. Whoever was on the island had passed through there recently. He stood back up and scoured the area. At least he knew he was on the right track. Whoever it was, was heading toward the tunnel as he suspected. He was only a few hours ahead of him. He took one last look around and then made his way in the direction of the tunnel. If he was lucky, he would cross paths with the intruder once he arrived there.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Julio Rojas stood outside the entrance to the tunnel staring at the branches covering it. He now knew for sure the tunnel had been discovered and somebody tried to hide the entrance. He moved the branches to the side and retrieved his flashlight from his bag and entered. He was confident his secrets inside hadn’t been discovered. There were several rooms hidden underground where supplies had been stored in case the tunnel had been discovered. He continued inside for three hundred paces and stopped and bent over to run his hand deep underneath the sand until he located a heavy chain. He held the chain and took several steps backward and yanked as hard as he could. At first, nothing happened because the sand covering the hidden door was too heavy, but he kept yanking on the chain until he felt the door move. He repositioned his feet and pulled harder. The door gave way and he managed to get it open. He dusted the sand off of him and shone his light down into the revealed opening leading underground. He jumped down into the opening and landed onto a pile of sand below. He rolled to his side and stood up. He shone his light around until he found several lanterns on a large table. He went over to them and turned them on. He went directly to another room carrying one of them and put it on a table in the middle of the room. The room was filled with weapons of various kinds. He had everything he needed to begin an assault on the park. He went straight for several crates in the corner containing s
ticks of dynamite. It was what he came to get. He also snatched a military grenade bandolier containing several grenades. His plan was to blow up the park on opening day. He looked around. He knew he could hold up there for several days if nobody discovered him. He had enough food, water, weapons, and clothing to last for several months. He decided the first thing he wanted to do was take a quick nap. That night he would take a quick reconnaissance of the park under the cover of darkness. He went back into the other room and over to a cot in the corner. So far, everything was going according to his plan.

  A few hours later, Captain Jonas stood in front of the entrance to the tunnel. Several branches had been moved to the side. His suspicions had been correct. Whoever the intruder was had found his or her way to the tunnel. He knew the tunnel led close to the outskirts of the park and guessed it was where the intruder was headed. He stood trying to decide what he should do. He could radio in for backup, or he could go inside and try to find the intruder himself. He looked at his watch. It would take some time for reinforcements to arrive, giving the intruder more time to penetrate the park. He couldn’t risk it. He didn’t know what the intruder had in mind, and he didn’t want to give him the time to carry out his plan. He pushed through the branches and went inside. He pulled his flashlight from his military web gear and shone it around the large tunnel. At first he didn’t see anything, but then he took a step inside and then stopped. In front of him he saw something that looked out of place. Sand had been pushed aside and there was a door raised in the middle of the tunnel. He raised his sidearm and shone the flashlight on the door as he moved forward. As he got closer to it, he could see there was a hole in the ground. He made his way over to it and leaned over the side to see where it led. On the bottom of the hole, he could see a large mound of disturbed sand. He knew where the intruder had gone. He stared at the hole for several minutes before finally deciding to jump down into it and investigate further.