by Chris Lowry
BATTLEFIELD Z
EVERGLADES ZOMBIE
By
Chris Lowry
Copyright 2018
Grand Ozarks Media
All Rights Reserved
Get your Free Copy of FLYOVER ZOMBIE here
Lightning pace, sparse style, fans of Elmore Leonard love the first book in the new series based on the Battlefield Z world.
They built a wall to contain the zombies in the middle of America. But when a powerful man’s daughter gets lost in the beyond, he sends a crack unit of soldiers to rescue her and they find more than they bargained for.
Now the survivors form a ragtag fleet to fight their way across a vast wasteland where zombies aren’t the worst thing to survive.
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EVERGLADE ZOMBIE
"I need a hero," she sang under her breath as she wiped the gunk off his face.
"You should probably hold out for the morning light," he said to her.
She felt like laughing but held it in. He could tell. He could always tell with her.
He reached up with a grungy hand and held the side of her face. She leaned into it.
Her mother had held her cheek like that, just the presence of it made her feel calm.
"You need a bath," she said.
She took his hand away from her face and fought down the reluctance, missed the soothing feel of his warmth next to hers.
She bathed it in the bloody water in the pan, wiping the crimson rag up and down the wrinkles, scars and bruises.
There were more of them. Always more of them.
"Are you going out again?"
She couldn't look at him when she asked. She knew the answer. They hadn't found his daughter yet, his youngest. He would keep going.
She was afraid that one time, he wouldn't come back.
"In the morning," he groaned.
She pushed him back into the rough pillow made from a folded comforter in the back of the bus.
"Sleep," she told him. "I'm going to help Peg."
He closed his eyes and laid back on the simple white sheet folded over their bag. He would sleep, then later, after he woke, she would burn it.
It wouldn't be the first one. She suspected nor the last either.
She left him the bus and stepped into the afternoon. The heat and mugginess was growing thick, a sign they were getting further South.
They had found her in the panhandle of Florida, so she was familiar with the feeling, but she had never been much further South than Jacksonville.
"How is he?" Brian looked up from the fire.
"He'll live," she smirked.
It was a private joke among them. He, of all of them, probably would live.
They had called him Z-proof, behind his back, as well as other choice names. Asshole. Stubborn. Jackass. They were all favorites.
Sometimes they were said with an underlying current of love.
Peg looked over at the three people huddled on the far side of the fire.
"Think they were worth it?" she said in a low voice.
"Were we?" Brian asked.
She picked up a stick and poked the embers around a pot of boiling beans.
"We're running low on food," said Peg. "Water. He was supposed to bring those back."
Brian patted her knee.
"We'll stretch it," he said and patted his thin stomach. "I've been meaning to drop a few lbs anyway."
She didn't smile back at him. Being back in Florida made her nervous. Hell, it made them all nervous.
Orlando had almost five million people before the zombie apocalypse wiped out the population. But instead of leaving dead bodies to quickly decay in the fetid heat, they turned Z and roamed the countryside.
Anna imagined them bouncing back and forth between the Atlantic and the Gulf, a wide swath of herding Z forever walking between the two sides of the peninsula.
"What's so funny?" Peg snapped.
"Us," she said.
"Funny in the head," Brian said.
Anna nodded. She picked up two bowls of beans, meager portions carefully measured into fifteen almost equal servings and took them to the huddled trio.
"Hi," she said. "I'm Anna."
"Raymer," the oldest said.
He held out a callused black hand and took the food from her.
"Thank you," he passed one to the woman and the other to the teen.
Anna grabbed two more bowls and returned to join them.
"Julie," he introduced the woman as he accepted his food from her. "And Louise."
"Lou," said the girl with large black eyes that glimmered in the firelight. "I like to be called Lou."
"Lou," Raymer stuttered. "I forget."
Anna spooned up a couple of beans at a time, stretching it out to make it last.
The canned white beans were mostly flavorless, but the salt and pepper Peg added competed to dominate the soupy mess.
It didn't last long enough, and Anna wondered if it was just enough food to keep her hungry.
"What happened out there?" she asked, setting aside her empt bowl.
They would clean it later. All of them, and pack them away for breakfast tomorrow. The last of the oatmeal.
Raymer stared into his empty dish as if wishing would make it full again. He had saggy skin and baggy eyes, the look of a man who lost weight too fast.
His gray pallor told her he was either sick or starving, and for a moment, she wondered if it was both.
"Are you bit?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"None of us," he said. "But we haven't eaten in days. I'm lightheaded."
He rocked next to the woman in front of the fire, Julie, who ate in silence and never looked up.
Lou, on the other hand, finished her food fast, and watched the others eat like a puppy ready to beg. Or ready to dart in to snatch any scraps that might fall.
"We had a house," Raymer said.
He stared into the fire as Brian fed branches into the flames, building it against the growing darkness.
"It wasn't our house, but we were making it home. At first, there were more of us. Eight," he said with pride.
"The house was empty of people when we found it, and the others joined us. That's how we met Louise."
"Lou," the girl corrected.
"Lou. We had some food, we had a garden in back, a couple of weapons. Most of all, we had a fence. The fence kept us safe."
Julie stared in the flames with him, as if the fire was a televisions screen casting back an image of their new found home.
"Routine," said Raymer. "We settled into one pretty quick. Two people hunting, three to scavenge, and the rest tended the house."
He motioned to the tiny campsite. There were two tents set up on the roof of the bus, a couple of folding chairs by the fire, but the majority of their sleeping and living space was inside the grimy yellow bus.
"We made it work," he said.
"Much like we do," Anna told him and he nodded.
"It's the way now."
"But you're not home now," said Peg.
Anna noticed she hand sharpened the end of the stick, scraping it on one of the rocks that ringed the fire. She lifted the point and examined it, set it back in the coals to harden the tip.
"One of our people got bit. He knew what was going to happen, but he hid it from us."
"You didn't notice him get sick?" Brian said.
Julie sniffled and hid her face. Raymer patted her on the shoulder and drew her close.
"We had a cold run through the house," he said. "Something so simple before all of this began
. A fever. The sniffles. We used to call it a twenty four hour bug, though every time I caught it, it lasted for about three days. This one was no exception."
"We thought he got it last," said Lou. "He went to his room and laid down with a fever. We thought he had a cold."
Raymer sighed.
"Like I said, there were eight of us in the house. The three bedrooms were like dorms. He bit the two in the room with him while they slept. When we opened the door to check on him the next morning, he bit another. We got out and ran."
"Into?"
"Him," Raymer nodded toward the bus. "Lou tripped and one was about to grab her. I ran back to help, but I was too slow."
"He saved me," said Lou. "Came sprinting in like a marathon runner."
She slapped her hands together.
"Whack. Whack. Splat," she demonstrated. "He got the four of them in like three seconds."
"He does that," said Brian. "Saved all of us."
"A lot of practice," Anna added.
"So he killed the four people from your house," she pointed as she counted. "But I'm only counting three."
"Our man who was bit."
"His name was Jonathan," said Lou.
"Jonathan," Raymer rubbed his face. "Jonathan must have forgotten to cover his tracks, or maybe he was in a haze when he was bitten. He led a big group of them right to us."
"They heard our screaming," said Lou. "They came out of the woods. We were surrounded."
Peg and Brian exchanged a look with Anna.
"How many?"
"Two or three dozen," said Raymer.
He looked at the windows on the bus.
"He killed them all," he whispered.
CHAPTER TWO
Something that used to bother me about zombie movies and tv shows. Not that they were unrealistic. I mean, come on, they were about the dead walking.
Until they weren't make believe anymore. Like Star Trek and all the incredible devices Science Fiction promised us for the future.
We were supposed to have flying cars, and robot dogs. Instead, we got Z.
But in movies, the people would have a flat tire or something like it. They would get out of the car and not check their surroundings.
Then the Z would sneak up on them.
Are you kidding me?
Then they would fight, but the simple effort of pushing the Z back, of keeping it from snapping them, would exhaust them. The fighter could barely lift their arms.
Their bare, uncovered arms.
It made no sense. Maybe it was done for dramatic effect, but for me, it just made the suspension of disbelief all the harder.
"We keep covered," I explained to the group.
They probably felt like it was the thousandth time and I'd tell them a thousand more, just so it sunk in. Second nature.
I remember reading a book about a man who contracted leprosy in the modern world. He was taught to do a constant self assessment because of the way the disease worked. If he got a sore, or a cut, he couldn't feel it, and it would progress or advance until pieces started to fall off of him.
He even yelled at people for touching him. He wanted to be safe and be sure.
We were like that.
Or we were supposed to be.
"Two layers," I held up two fingers. "More if you can handle it."
"But it's hot," said Byron.
"You'll get used to it. And if you get bit, you'll get a fever even hotter. Then you're dead."
The kid mopped his brow with a rag damp from sweat.
We were all sweating. And it was not comfortable.
"Pants, tucked or taped to your boots. No exposed skin. Thick canvas fabric works good."
"Like work pants," said Brian.
"Or denim," Peg added.
"Yes," I said. "The movies, they would run around in shorts and tank tops. Or the zombies would bite through blue jeans. That's not the the case. They don't have supernatural strength. Their bite is going to hurt. It's going to bruise, but if they can't get through the cloth, you won't get sick. You won't turn."
"How do you know?" Raymer asked.
"Has it happened?" Julie added.
I looked around at Brian, Peg. Moved over to Anna, and Byron.
They shook their heads.
"I think we don't take the risks," I said.
"WE don't take the risks," said Brian. "You do stupid stuff all the time."
The light giggles sounded from around the circle.
"It's my modus operendi," I said. "I'm kind of an expert at making dumb moves."
"But you're here," said Anna.
"And I cover up. We cover up. We check our surroundings. It's a mantra."
They nodded. I don't know if they got it. But some of them did. Some of it got through.
When I was growing up, they sent a fire marshal to the elementary school to talk about what to do if you caught on fire.
Stop. Drop and roll.
So easy, so simple and it stuck. Like the lyrics to a song so hard to forget, it pops up at the weirdest time.
Stop. Drop and roll.
"One hundred. Three sixty," I tried it out.
"What's that?" Lou asked.
"One hundred percent coverage. Look around you three hundred and sixty degrees. One hundred. Three Sixty."
I grinned at Brian.
"Very clever," he deadpanned.
"You work on that all night?" Peg asked.
"Found it online," I said.
"I miss the internet," Lou sighed.
"We miss a lot," Brian stared at the group.
Being back in Florida was doing something to him, causing him to retreat into his shell. He had wanted to build a safe community, had wanted to fort up and be a leader.
It hadn't worked out the way he planned. There were stronger men out there, armed men, and he made a couple of decisions that put him under their thumb.
Crossing back into the sunshine state had left him depleted somehow. As if his energy came from moving North.
"That's what I'm trying to teach us," I said. "Reinforce the message. We don't want to miss anything. Being covered. Staying alert."
They nodded again.
"NSB is an island," I told them. "We don't know what we're going to find. It could be a haven. It could be a haven for the Z."
I glanced at the buildings across the water. A collection of older two story condominiums built in the seventies to capture snowbirds for their yearly migration to warmer climes.
Eight buildings. All empty by the look of them, but I knew that was deceiving. Each unit could have Z in it.
They could be herded over by the beach chasing seagulls. They could be on the far end of the island.
There was no way to tell from here, except it looked deserted.
The island was seven miles long from the tip at the inlet, all the way down to the long stretch of sandy beach and marsh on the border of the Space Coast.
A thousand houses. Two thousand plus condos. A lot of ground for a scared little girl to hide in.
But Bis was smart. Way smarter than me. She left a sign back at the refugee camp to tell me which direction to go.
She would leave another.
"Tomorrow morning," I said. "We dress. We look around to make sure it's safe. Then we go."
"Are we leaving someone here to guard the bus?" Byron asked.
I glanced at Brian.
"You said we don't split up."
"That settles it," Byron said and checked the chamber on his rifle.
I continued to stare at the conclave across the river, wondered what the morning might bring.
River dolphins breached off the water in front of us and I smiled.
Bem, Anna and Karen moved to the edge of the boardwalk that ran alongside the river, kept their awes in check but watched in fascination.
