Zombies! (Book 5): Greater Love Hath No Man
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Zombies!
Book 5
“Greater Love Hath No Man”
R S Merritt
Text Copyright © 2020 Randall Scott Merritt
All Rights Reserved
This series is dedicated to my beautiful wife and family. My reasons for waking up in the morning and not wanting to go to bed at night.
Cover Design By:
Harry Lamb
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Shackled
Chapter 2: Hush
Chapter 3: What We Do for Our Children
Chapter 4: The Chattahoochee
Chapter 5: Improvise, Overcome, Adapt
Chapter 6: Cruise Control
Chapter 7: Hurry Up and Wait
Chapter 8: Delay of Game
Chapter 9: 99 Problems
Chapter 10: Sentinels
Chapter 11: Now Boarding
Chapter 12: The Welcome Wagon
Chapter 13: Any Landing You Can Walk Away From
Chapter 14: The Gauntlet
Chapter 15: The Last Mile
Chapter 16: Hot Pursuit
Chapter 17: Roughing It
Chapter 18: Ready or Not
Chapter 19: Fish out of Water
Chapter 20: Take the High Road
Chapter 21: The Clearers
Chapter 22: A Blue Label Day
Chapter 23: Hundred Yard Dash
Chapter 24: Tightening the Noose
Chapter 25: A Colorado Carwash
Chapter 26: Rain, Rain, Go Away
Chapter 27: Totally Screwed
Chapter 28: Redemption
Chapter 29: A Long Story
Chapter 30: The Ninth Circle of Hell
Chapter 31: Overdose
Chapter 32: The Boat House
Chapter 33: Lake Lanier
Chapter 34: The Lookout
Chapter 35: Called Back
Authors Note
Other Books by R S Merritt
Chapter 1: Shackled
“Where are we?” Randy asked.
It was a valid question since he’d been unconscious the last twelve hours. They’d been a very eventful twelve hours. They’d been captured by the Brotherhood and handcuffed in the back of a pickup truck. Kelly had managed to kick one of the guards out of the back of the pickup truck before they’d driven a couple of hours to wind up locked together in a closet.
“A Red Lobster I think.” Caitlyn answered.
“Cool. I love the bread. What are those little rolls called? Cheese rolls?” Randy asked. His head was pounding. Every part of his body hurt. His mouth tasted like he’d brushed his teeth with the water from a backed-up truck stop toilet. There was something very wrong with both his foot and his shoulder. He really needed to swing by an urgent care once they were done doing the closet prisoner thing.
“Cheddar Bay Biscuits.” Myriah chimed in. She hated sea food but loved the biscuits there. It was one of those conundrums in life that you just had to see through sometimes.
“That’s right. Those are delicious. So is the waitress on the way or are we just hanging out in this moldy little room because we’re getting some sort of VIP treatment. Somebody let me know what’s up. Is everybody ok?” It was pitch dark and hotter than hell. On top of hurting all over Randy was lying in a puddle of his own sweat. His numb hands were cuffed together behind his back. He was freaking out worrying about Kelly and the kids.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Caitlyn asked him. Randy felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach at Caitlyn’s words.
“We were being chased. We were blasting away out the back window. Then it all gets a little hazy. Is everybody ok? Why am I cuffed?”
“We’re all ok. Mom flipped the van. The Brotherhood guys grabbed us before the Zombies could get in. Everybody’s ok. I think mom may be knocked out, but I checked and she’s breathing. They knocked her around after she kicked one of them out of the back of the truck. They told us to rest up here then locked us in. The only ones awake right now are you, me and Myriah but everybody’s ok.”
Randy sat up to go around and make sure for himself that everyone was ok. Sitting up made him too woozy to actually be able to move around though so he quickly lay back down. He didn’t want to black out again. It sounded like they didn’t have a ton of time to figure out a plan to survive the mess they were in. Knowing how the Brotherhood worked he was surprised they were still together. He needed to be tough for the girls. He needed to be tough for his wife. He just couldn’t come up with anyway this ended well for them. He began inching his way along the dirty tiled floor to check on Kelly.
A bright light filled the space. Two men in camouflage were standing outside the doorway pointing rifles in the room. Bright sunlight filtered in from down the hallway. Randy knew he should keep his mouth shut and cooperate.
“Only two of you with assault rifles to guard us. Aren’t you worried one of the little girls may have an imaginary friend who’s going to attack you? End of the damned world and you pricks are locking up little kids. Why are you so scared of us? Why don’t you just let us go? You really get your jollies off killing little kids and their parents?” Randy finally shut up as he realized he wasn’t doing a great job of following his own advice for getting out of this mess.
“Sit up and shut up. We’ve got water. We’ll take you one at a time to a bathroom down the hall. Anybody tries anything and we’ll just leave you tied up in the closet to marinate in your own piss until we’re ready to leave.” One of the guards stepped in the room. He helped Zoey sit up then tilted back the water bottle for her to drink out of. The other guard stayed back in the hallway pointing his rifle into the small room. They didn’t seem like they were planning on taking any chances. The guard with the water bottle circulated around the room giving each of them a drink.
Kelly had to be woken up before she was able to drink any water. They watched her with concern as the guard nudged her a few times then finally dumped some water on her head. The head dousing trick worked. Kelly woke up enough to suck down the offered water. Randy forgot to be pissed off at the guard he was so happy to see Kelly wake up.
True to their word the guards marched them each out of the bare room they were being held in over to a bathroom down the hallway. It was an actual bathroom with buckets of water for flushing and rolls of toilet paper. Used to having to go in houses with crazy spiders everywhere or outside in the woods Randy was pleasantly surprised by the accommodations. He finished his business in the bathroom and used the bucket of water to flush it all away. He remembered hearing his grandma talk about using the outhouse when she was younger and thinking she must be as old as the dinosaurs. Yet here it was barely two generations downstream that they were going to be back to outhouses before you knew it. Hell, an outhouse would be an upgrade over most of the places they got stuck using.
“How long do you think we’ll be here for?” Randy asked the guard as he was being marched back to the small room that they were being kept in.
“Until you’re moved.” The guard answered expressionlessly.
None of the other guards were very talkative either. Once they’d taken their wards to the bathroom and gotten them fed and watered, they inspected each of them for any medical issues. Randy didn’t like the way the men decided that all the prisoners seemed healthy enough to make the trip north to Georgia. They said it in such a way that it had a definitive tone of dark finality to it. He knew they were being dragged up there to face the powerful man whose sister they’d killed.
“Can we get some food for the kids?” Kelly asked when it looked like the guards were going to shut the door and walk away.
Chapter 2: Hush
“They don’t look like they’re planning on leaving anytime soon.” Kyler typed onto his phone and showed Krantz. Krantz stared down at the typed message on the phone shaking his head slowly side to side. Then he busied himself typing on the phone.
Krantz handed Kyler the phone back. Kyler glanced down then walked around showing everyone else the typed-out order. They were typing everything on the phone since the Zombies camped out by their trucks on the side of the interstate had learned a new trick. It seemed a few in the herd had developed enhanced auditory capabilities. At least that was what it’d looked like from the tree Kyler had been watching them from. The order Krantz had typed out made perfect sense for the situation they were in.
They couldn’t get back to their trucks. The Zombies didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Most importantly, they needed to follow the order they’d been given to get down to Florida and make sure the people the boss was looking for didn’t escape up the gulf coast side. Krantz was looking to have them move through the woods to try to locate one of the guard stations set up to watch people on the interstate. Once there they could notify the powers that be what’d happened and see how they were ordered to commence. Kyler was assuming they’d either be given new vehicles or new orders.
He doubted they’d go back to closing down the massive supply warehouses the Brotherhood was establishing. The Brotherhood attempted to compartmentalize who knew where the warehouses were located. He didn’t want to know the location of more than the one they’d just secured. Having that kind of information in your head could be hazardous to your health. Especially if one of the warehouses you’d worked to close up was raided and the Brotherhood came looking for the rat who’d given it up. At the end of the day they may just kill everyone who knew where they were. Kyler didn’t think they’d do that to the members of the Brotherhood but the common people who were unloading trucks and such were probably screwed.
The men moved with exaggerated care gathering their gear together and prepping to move out. They were all on edge after the rumor of the Zombies who could hear them from thousands of yards away had circulated. The idea had percolated in all their heads over night leading to most of them barely getting any sleep. Tired and fearful they began beating their way through the dense Georgia forest.
Having grown up locally and most of them having some sort of military background they were able to move relatively quietly. The ones who’d done a lot of hunting in their youths seeming to melt into the forest. Membership in the peoples guard didn’t have a lot of formal requirements. If you had some sort of military background, knew how to shoot, or just happened to like wearing camouflage and had killed a few Zombies you could get in at the lower levels. Once you’d proved yourself in Zombie clearing operations, you’d gradually get promoted up the chain. There were no written tests. Promotions were based on your commanding officers recommendation. If you were able to survive clearing Zombies out of towns for a year then you were considered qualified. Pretty much everyone was pretty motivated to get promoted out of that assignment because the longer you did it the more likely you’d end up dead or infected.
The troop Kyler was moving through the woods with now were the cream of the crop. That’s why they’d been chosen to close down the warehouses. Everyone was ex-military except for Kyler. Most of them were former marine infantry or the equivalent ground pounders from the other branches. They’d have a lot of advantages if they were sneaking through the woods to carry out some kind of guerilla warfare on a human population. Unfortunately, a lot of the lessons these men had learned in their training and in actual combat didn’t apply when Zombie fighting.
For instance, a lot of the fire laid down against a traditional enemy was intended to keep their heads down so they couldn’t get a clear shot at you. Another tactic used by small units was to walk towards the enemy firing away like crazy in the hopes of breaking them and sending them running. When a normal human being sees the head of the person next to him blown to pieces and realizes he could be next he loses the urge to run forward. These standard tactics of modern warfare didn’t apply when fighting infected humans who’d shrug off flesh wounds to themselves and keep on coming. Zombies didn’t care if you shot every Zombie around them, they’d still charge headlong into your fire.
This had led to a whole new doctrine of warfare needing to be created to accommodate for fighting an enemy that didn’t care about dying. An enemy that didn’t utilize any sort of supply lines. An enemy that didn’t use machines or gather intelligence or do any of the things the military men had trained all of their lives to combat. An enemy that kept developing new and creepy abilities like being able to run and jump faster than should be possible. Hearing the Zombies may have developed yet another new ability wasn’t something the soldiers wanted to hear.
Kyler slithered through the woods casting nervous glances in the direction of the road. He’d been the one tasked to go see if the Zombies had moved out enough for them to reclaim their vehicles again. He’d been chosen for his ability to move quietly in the woods and because he was light enough to easily climb trees. Kyler had verified the Zombies hadn’t left the area the vehicles were in but that they also seemed to be in their active listening state. They were wandering around the cars and moving into the woods doing that odd shuffling and sniffing thing they did when they suspected people were around.
The seventeen men moved as quietly as possible through the woods. They’d left plenty of distance between themselves and the road. Whether it was the new acute hearing or just bad luck one of the men in the rear of the pack managed to run into a Zombie that’d wandered deep into the woods. Kyler had seen plenty of times where a small group of five or six men could attract a group of Zombies, so he’d been waiting for this to happen. Between his past experiences and the weird behavior of the Zombies out by the road it’d only been a matter of time. Still, he’d hoped they might manage to get lucky.
The soldier who’d run into the wandering Zombie immediately sprinted for the infected with a blunt samurai sword he’d been hauling around. The hardened metal easily smashing into the cranium of the unwelcome visitor. The soldier had reacted so quickly and viciously that everyone watching thought he may have been able to avert the attack that would’ve otherwise been forthcoming. The Zombie had started screeching but the massive blunt trauma to its brain pan had worked as fast as any mute button ever would.
On pins and needles the soldiers froze in place waiting to see what would happen next. Seconds seemed like hours as Kyler froze along with the rest of them. He felt a small spark of hope igniting. That flame was immediately doused with a wave of cold sweat and fear at the sound of vicious screeching breaking out nearby. They’d all been thinking the Zombies were still up by the road but judging by the volume of the screeching a large number of them had ventured into the woods. Whether it was due to an enhanced sense of hearing or some other sense that’d led them to be so close to the retreating patrol didn’t much matter at that point. It was time to run and gun.
More accurately, it was time to scatter and try to hack their way out of this mess. Standard procedure for this kind of cluster used to consist of the unit focusing their fire on the enemies weak point and trying to break through. Now it was more of an everyman for themselves then meetup at a predetermined spot if you happened to survive kind of deal. Not bothering to look around Kyler broke into a sprint. All around him the sounds of Zombie screeches egged him on. He didn’t bother pulling out a weapon of any sort yet. If he had to stop and fight before he pu
t some distance between himself and the bulk of the screeching horde, he was more than likely going to die. It was pretty much the old adage about not needing to be faster than the bear but needing to be faster than the other people being chased by the bear.
Ignoring the branches and briars ripping at his skin Kyler ran for everything he was worth. He didn’t feel bad about it considering that’s what everybody else in the unit was doing right now as well. He did wish his body hadn’t taken so much abuse in the last couple of months. He had to run through the pain from his various injuries. He ran around a tree and straight into a Zombies back. It was a big one. It’d been standing on the other side of the tree sniffing and trying to figure out which way to run. Kyler had just answered that question for it.
Kyler found himself with both hands on the wide back of the flannel wearing Zombie. Without thinking about it he grabbed the flannel and drove his legs as hard as he could. Channeling memories of driving practice dummies across the field during pop warner he pumped his legs hard and drove. The Zombie went down. Unfortunately, so did Kyler. Lying on the struggling Zombies back avoiding the limbs flailing around trying to reach him Kyler tried to find his knife. He finally found it on his back below his pack where it’d worked itself to while he’d been running like a madman.