Battlefield Z Omnibus, Vol. 1 [Books 1-9]

by Lowry, Chris

  A man stepped out of the cab of one of the trucks and stared at us. He singled me out and took a few steps closer. He had iron gray hair, stood ramrod straight, his granite face wrinkled with a perpetual scowl.

  "That him?" he asked.

  "Yes General," answered the driver, one of the men from Brushy Beard's gang.

  The General marched toward me but stopped at a respectful distance.

  "You killed my best man, motherfucker," he snapped. "Get ready for a world of hurt."

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  "You boys come on in here and get a look," said the General.

  He never took his eyes off me.

  The soldiers from the trees moved in closer in a loose perimeter from the back of one truck to the other. Three soldiers from each truck lined the truck beds, weapons held at the ready.

  "He raises that pistol an inch, kill him."

  He took a step closer and examined us, stopping on me for a long up and down.

  "You're telling me this sorry looking pile of crap took out my second in command?"

  "Yes sir," drawled one of the soldiers.

  "He don't look like much does he?"

  "He's wily Sir."

  "Wiley?"

  "Like a fox."

  "I think you mean coyote son," the General moved within a pace of me and glared into my eyes. "Is that it? Are you the roadrunner to my coyote?"

  I could tell by the glare the man was bonkers. Totally checked out. It wasn't just the crazy eyes, one of which didn't bother to even look at me but darted off in a completely different direction, which made glaring back even harder because I wasn't sure which orb to stare into. Add to that that the roadrunner pretty much always beat the coyote in the cartoons, so the whole intimidation vibe was just a little bit off. Kind of like his eye.

  I wasn't about to correct the gentleman though. He was backed by twelve automatic rifles and the .45 he had belted to his BDU's looked well worn and used. I didn't gulp either which maybe he expected and I didn't flinch when he reached one hand over and yanked the bowie knife out of my belt.

  "Now that's a knife, he grumbled and drew back his hand.

  I knew what was going to happen next. He was going to stick me and let me bleed out.

  Then he'd take the girl I just rescued, her mother, Anna, and Peg and turn them into sex slaves or worse. Like Brian they'd be dinner or entertainment.

  His arm arced out behind him and he grinned.

  "Huh?"

  His cock eye went wider and he turned his head to focus. Julie stepped between two of the soldiers in the perimeter, lifted a grenade off one of their belts and dropped it on the ground.

  "Grenade!" one had time to scream before it exploded.

  The concussion knocked our group down and took out Julie, the two militiamen plus another in the back of the truck. The others were distracted.

  "Stay down!" I screamed and hoped their ears weren't ringing enough to miss it.

  I aimed my last bullet at the giant gas tank under one of the trucks, the one next to the still smoking crater where three people had once been and pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped through the metal with a ping and tore out the other side of the tank. Gasoline poured from the two holes, but the detonation I expected didn't happen.

  Damn movies and special effects.

  The General kicked me in the stomach to roll me over and plopped down on my chest. I clicked through the empty chambers and he laughed like a megalomaniac madman as he lifted the long blade over my face. I heard the racking of a slide on one of the weapon's as a soldier recovered and covered me.

  "It don't blow up til you get a spark," the General's rancid breath wafted over my nose. "Bullets are just projectiles. Blunt objects that punch through things. Like this."

  He lifted the knife higher.

  "Hey!" Anna screamed.

  We both turned to stare. She rolled over twice and kicked a smoking piece of charred clothing into the stream of gasoline spilling from the truck. It hissed and sputtered out.

  The General turned back to me.

  "Guess you're all a special kind of stupid, aren't you."

  He lifted the knife again. I bucked, but he squeezed tight with his knees and held me down.

  Flames licked up from the smoldering piece of cloth and flesh and raced up the puddle like a fuse. It hit the vapor in the tank and exploded, tossing the back end of the truck over upside down.

  The General was knocked off me ass over tea kettle and lay stunned on the ground. I crawled up, my ringing ears going off like the bells of Notre Dame, but so used to it I barely noticed. I grabbed as many arms as I could and shoved everyone toward the cab of the remaining truck.

  The General struggled to all fours and I took three steps and did my best impression of an opening kick off from a football game. It connected with his stomach and launched him three feet over his side. He lay gasping and clutching what I hoped were broken and shattered ribs.

  The militiaman next to him tried to get his gun up while on his knees.

  I punted between his legs and lifted him up to his feet. He made an animal like noise, a cross between a whine and groan and passed out. I yanked his rifle and aimed at one of the soldiers in the truck bed.

  It clicked dry.

  I re-racked the slide and aimed again just as he recovered and sent a three round burst my way. It spit up dirt in front of me, peppered my face with the crumbly grit from the asphalt. I shot at him. It went wide, but the buzz next to his ear made him duck, just as Brian fired up the truck and rocketed forward. It pitched him over the side and he landed on his neck with a loud crunch.

  I ran after the truck firing wild rounds toward the confused and disoriented soldiers. They scattered and tried to return fire, mostly hitting the giant moving truck and the metal bed in pings and ricochets.

  I grabbed the side of the truck and jumped on the running board as Brian took the turn. It popped up on two wheels but settled quickly and he fought through the gears to get it moving down the two lane as fast as the pedal would take him.

  Bullets buzzed through the air after us. I hoped they wouldn't hit a tire or the gas tank, but we were out of range a few moments later.

  "Anyone hit?" I yelled at Brian.

  He pointed at his ears.

  "I can't hear you."

  "Your eardrums are busted.

  "I think my eardrums are busted."

  I nodded.

  "Peg!" he shouted. "Is anyone hit?"

  "I can't hear you," she shook her head. "My eardrums are popped."

  She checked on Anna, Hannah and Harriet. No one was shot at least, though Julie's sacrifice had cost us the ability to communicate effectively for a little while.

  "We need to get rid of this truck," I screamed through the open window still clinging to the mirror, feet planted on the running board.

  "We should probably ditch this," Brian answered. "Find something faster. Less conspicuous."

  I nodded.

  Right now I didn't care about conspicuous. All I cared about was how the cultists found us and how the General found us. There were a lot of roads we could have taken on either side of 75 North. Something did not smell right in the state of Denmark. I chalked that up to the stench of Z and focused on what the hell was going on in Florida right now.

  There was a puzzle I needed to figure out because if I didn't, these enemies were going to keep me from helping my kids. And I wasn't going to let that happen.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  The truck ran out of gas twelve miles or so later. One or six of the errant shots had punctured the tank, projectiles moving at great speed so that we left a splattered trail of gas along the highway. We walked a mile further to find a simple farm house with a pickup truck in the carport and after a careful inspection, no one home.

  Brian found the keys hanging on a hook by the back door, and Peg raided the cabinets to uncover cans of soup and boxes of crackers. We spent twenty minutes eating, then Anna and Harriet gathered wh
at was left of the pantry into the tablecloth and folded up each corner so we could carry it. We scored with two cases of bottled water sitting on the floor under the shelves and eight two liter bottles of soda.

  Brian and I explored the rest of the house and hit upon another treasure.

  There was a gun cabinet in one of the bedrooms turned shrine to hunting. It didn't have .38 ammo, so I traded the silver pistol for a rifle and six boxes of ammunition, and Brian grabbed three shotguns with two rounds of shells each.

  "We still need pikes," he said.

  I agreed. Our little makeshift weapons were the perfect piece of equipment for fighting Z, but I was more worried about the human element we kept running into. I have heard you can judge a man by how he reacts in a crisis, that true human nature will win out. There were stories of heroism during natural disasters that once played on the news, as if the newscasters were saying "Hey, sure a thousand people died, but look, this lady rescued a puppy from the hurricane." I think those people died trying to help a Z and all we were left with were dregs.

  I'm not sure what that says about me.

  Or the group I was with.

  The contents of the gun cabinet would sure help with who was left though.

  Brian rooted through the closet and grabbed seat cushions like you use at a stadium, and I wandered through the other bedrooms and stripped the pillows off the beds. We put everything into the back of the truck while Hannah showed up with clothes from the master bedroom.

  "What's that?"

  "We stink," she crinkled her nose. "You stink."

  I gave my pits an overdramatic sniff and exhaled, something I used to do with my kids a lot and it brought the ghost of a smile to her face. She was right, I smelled ripe. Guess my twenty four hour deodorant had worn out three days ago.

  Peg brought out a bowl of water from the back of the toilet and we took turns with sponge baths, women first, then men. Hannah had a good eye. The clothes weren't our exact size, the Dickies pants hanging loose off the hips for both Brian and I because of the weight we were dropping, but she had brought belts and we cinched up the waists. The sleeves on the long sleeve shirt fit him, but were long on me. I didn't roll them up though. We were still following the rule of keeping skin covered.

  We wouldn't win any fashion shows but these would do for the next three days or until we could run across something better.

  "Better?" I asked.

  She took a dramatic sniff of her own in my general direction and gifted me with another ghost smile as she nodded. Something twitched in my heart. My little girl would be like that. All of these kids, an entire generation would be lost, forced to grow up fast in a world that they were not prepared to face. People bitched about helicopter parents raising entitled kids who thought the world revolved around them, but that was sort of the point right? If you taught kids there was magic in the world, and that they were special enough to find it, then the Universe conspired to make that happen.

  But it didn't happen. The Universe conspired to teach a harsh lesson that the world didn't owe you crap, that bad people got away with things and you had to fight for everything up to and including your life.

  Hannah learned that lesson. I wondered if my kids had learned it yet.

  Brian led us through the door and into the packed truck. He climbed behind the wheel with Peg in the front seat. Anna, Harriet and Hannah jumped over the tailgate and settled into a nest of pillows that made riding in the truck bed comfortable. I leaned my back against the cab and held a loaded rifle across my knee. Brian gave two taps on the window, fired the truck up and pulled out on the road. He kept it locked at twenty five miles per hour, the wheels making a whispering slick sound as they crunched across the leaves on the blacktop.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  We crossed over into Georgia. I could see the sign. On the Interstate it would be a huge blue monstrosity letting me know the visitor's center was just a mile ahead. We could stop and rest.

  On this road the sign was brown with white lettering and the only difference was the type of asphalt used as we stepped into the new state.

  Florida had not been kind to the little group. Only six of us lived. We were being hunted by a military madman. But we were one state closer to finding my kids, or at least finding out what happened to them.

  The rumble of the engine echoed through the trees as we cruised along at twenty miles an hour. If we could keep this speed up, it would only take two days to reach them.

  But the four days to get out of Florida made me think I was being optimistic and there was too much danger in that.

  Up ahead there were obstacles we hadn't countered yet. Behind us was tragedy. But right now the sun was shining through the trees, we had enough gas to make it a couple hundred miles and we were in Georgia.

  Not a bad way to be in the apocalypse.

  THE END

  BATTLEFIELD Z

  CHILDREN'S BRIGADE

  by

  Chris Lowry

  FOREWORD

  This is a story about a man trying to get to Arkansas to save his kids after the Zombie Apocalypse. He makes the Georgia border with a small group of survivors. Brian and Peg, Hannah and her daughter, Hannah, and a mysterious dark haired woman named Anna. The six are all that remain of a group of fifteen who banded together to escape Orlando.

  BATTLEFIELD Z – CHILDREN'S BRIGADE

  Georgia is a big state. When I drove this direction to go visit my children, it was a straight shot up 75 to Atlanta, just six hours or more depending on traffic. From Atlanta, I'd take the bypass around the south side of the city and hook up with Interstate 20 to roll into Alabama and points west. Atlanta was only forty something miles from the Alabama border, so when I travelled to Arkansas the trip seemed shorter when we flipped over into Central Standard Time. The clocks reset to an hour back and it felt like you gained something, even if the trip was nine hundred fifty-six miles no matter which way you drove it.

  We stayed west of I-75 as we crossed into Georgia. There was a brown sign on the side of the road in a pine forest that told us one minute we were in Florida and the next second it was Georgia. No change in the landscape, no change in the atmosphere, nothing to let you know it was anything different except for a sign.

  A half mile down the road we found another sign. This one made us stop. It said GO BACK. Written in red that ran down the whiteboard looking for all the world like bloodstains.

  Brian pulled the car over to the side of the road. We could have stopped in the middle of the two-lane highway without much worry because we hadn't seen anyone or anything since our last encounter at the Church. After rescuing Hannah from religious nuts determined to sacrifice her to God, we were attacked by a militia General bent on revenge. He wanted me dead for killing his best man. One of our group, Julie, blew herself and several of his soldiers up with a hand grenade to buy our freedom.

  We stopped just enough to clean up and get some supplies, and a second time to change cars when the first one started to run low on gas. But no one spoke.

  Brian kept the speedometer locked at twenty-five, just fast enough to keep us making good time and still be able to stop if something popped up.

  Like a sign on the side of the road telling us to turn back.

  "What do you think?" he glanced over his shoulder to where I sat in the rear passenger seat.

  Anna had been sleeping on my shoulder, with Hannah sprawled against hers, but both stirred when Brian shut off the engine.

  I shrugged, checked the rifle by my side one more time to make sure it was loaded and stepped out of the car.

  The air smelled like rotten meat.

  Not a good omen, I thought. But then most of the places smelled like that now. Towns were full of rotting corpses walking around. I called them Z. Some may refer to them as the walking dead, or zombies, but I was linguistically lazy and just trying to act cool when I came up with Z.

  Z's stink.

  So the odor I was smelling could be coming
from the woods, or carried up the road on what might otherwise be a pleasant breeze. It could be dead bodies of people, caught in an ambush, their blood used to make the sign. It could even be in my imagination, the stench of this new world just stuck in my nose and no way to get it out. Not enough water in the world to shower it off, like a skunk spray that clings to you until a long bath in tomato juice cleanses the pores.

  But I had smelled Anna in the car. Fresh soap and water made her smell clean, nice, and stolen deodorant from the medicine cabinet added a powder scent to her as she slept against me.

  I was sure the stench was coming from outside.

  "How's it look?" Brian called through the open window.

  "You can see what I see, right?"

  "Yeah, but you know, your eyes might be more practiced."

  "At what?"

  "Seeing Z."

  "If I see a Z I'm getting back in the car."

  "What about Marauders."

  "Do you see any?"

  He peered through the bug crusty windshield and then craned his neck out of the window to double check the road behind us.

  "I don't see any."

  "Then we're both looking at the same thing."

  "What about an ambush?" Peg called over him.

  Peg was Brian's partner, though I don't know what they were to each other before the Zombie apocalypse. I think they got together at a house where a group was hiding until a kid got sick and died in his sleep. He went Z and killed a couple more and their hiding spot was no more. I ran into them on Hwy 1792 when they were running from a herd of Z.

  I was hiding in between rows of stuck cars from my own herd, and when the two merged I thought we were in trouble.

  But we worked together and stopped them.

  Blew them up actually, though I can't recall exactly whose fault it was blowing up a couple hundred cars to kill a couple of hundred zombies. It really seemed like overkill, even if it was accidental.