State of Decay: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller - Book 3

by Jack Hunt

  22

  Murphy caught sight of the armored vehicle beginning to turn right on Pine Street. Over the past five minutes they had watched bodies being dismembered by shrapnel. He’d seen many a person die from a grenade while in combat but that was taking things to an extreme level.

  They knew if the military were here, there was a good chance they might know where Ally and the others were. The street was still filled with the insane, though they were fewer in number.

  Murphy lowered Shaw over the edge as far as he could, then dropped her to the ground. He followed after but twisted his ankle in the process. Pain shot up his leg as they raced after the vehicle. Against his better judgment he fired rounds at the vehicle in the hopes it would get their attention. Admittedly, it was a dumb move, as the moment the crack of the gun erupted, the insane looked their way and began to give chase. But they had few other options. The truck was moving at a fair clip to avoid an encounter like the one it had just come out of, and there was no chance in hell they were going to be able to catch it. The only thing they could do was hope they would stop.

  His thoughts went back to some of the missions he’d been on in the teams. Most of the public lived under an illusion that when special ops teams went in, it always went smoothly. That they were untouchable. That they never made a bad decision. It was quite the contrary. Often they found themselves separated and scrambling for a rendezvous point only to find a chopper was not there to pick them up, or a boat was late.

  But that’s what they were trained for. The unexpected. That’s why he had spent most of his time in BUDS training wet and sandy. They pushed them to the edge, made them know what it was like to be wet, cold and drained of energy. It was in those moments SEALs were born. It was what defined those who had aspirations and those who had determination.

  Murphy fired another round. When the vehicle stopped, he could have kissed the ground. Had it not been for the fact that clusters of the insane were chasing them, he might have. Shaw and Murphy vaulted up onto the armored truck and banged the top.

  “Go!”

  It tore away and they continued to fire at the infected behind them.

  When Sam arrived at the trading store, he stumbled through the door feeling as though he was about to faint from exhaustion and blood loss. He caught sight of Ally and Luke but Billy wasn’t there. He dropped to his knees and Kiera rushed over to help.

  “Get him a drink.”

  “Sam.”

  All around him the world was spinning in circles. Their faces blurred in his peripheral vision and voices echoed. He didn’t say anything to them, not because he couldn’t speak but his mind was muddled with the events that had just transpired.

  He’d only ever once gone into shock. When he was a kid, he had fallen and cut his hand open. Initially it wasn’t too bad. But by the time he reached the hospital and they began treating it with butterfly stitches, shock kicked in and he felt like he was going to throw up. The nurse said it was blood loss. He hadn’t lost a lot but it didn’t take much to cause the body to go into shock.

  “You hear that?” Luke asked.

  “No.”

  “Listen!”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Kiera replied soaking a small towel in water and placing it on Sam’s forehead. Out the corner of his eye, Sam saw Luke get up and walk over to the window.

  Ally was checking Sam’s leg when Luke blurted out, “It’s Murphy. It’s Murphy.”

  He didn’t wait for the others, he shot out of the upstairs door to the balcony and began yelling.

  “Hey! Over here.”

  He fired his weapon a few times. “Murphy!”

  Sam wanted to tell him to shut the hell up. He knew the noise would bring the insane down on them, and yet he understood that seeing Murphy after all they had been through was like finding an oasis in a desert.

  With the door wide open, Sam could hear the rumble of a vehicle getting closer. It was a sweet sound, but the additional screams of the insane meant they weren’t out of the woods yet.

  What Sam could recall of those next twenty minutes was vague. They came to him in fragments as he tried to remain conscious. Luke helped Sam out of the door onto the balcony. He saw Murphy’s face briefly over the side of the building. They had brought up the armored vehicle, and Shaw was firing a weapon at the insane approaching from the rear, while Stigers was firing from the front. Luke would say that he lowered Sam over the edge but he pretty much swung him over the side and dropped him to the ground. Fortunately, it wasn’t high and the bush below cushioned the fall. Murphy hauled him up and with the help of Luke got him into the vehicle.

  “You and I will have words later,” he muttered.

  Minutes passed. Two, maybe ten minutes and his eyelids opened and he saw Murphy staring at him. The vehicle was rumbling along. Who knows how long they were moving before it came to a halt. Sam thought they had arrived at the lumberyard but it was only when he heard the sound of Billy’s voice that he realized they had slowed to pick him up.

  Billy was panting hard when he slipped down into the protection of military-grade steel.

  “Thanks, guys. I thought I was going to be left behind. What a shit storm it is out there.”

  “And there was me thinking you were dead,” Corey said with a smirk on his face.

  “What? And let you soak in all the glory? Not on your life.”

  Murphy chuckled and the vehicle peeled away.

  Upon arrival at the lumberyard, Sam was rehydrated and was beginning to feel better than he had. Murphy told him it wasn’t so much the loss of blood that had caused him to become lightheaded, as it was the body’s way of trying to get him to ease off the accelerator. All that running, fighting and stress had put him under a huge amount of tension, and the moment he stopped, the body crashed.

  Outside the warehouse, gunfire could be heard. It was loud and rapid.

  “I got to go help. Rest up.”

  “Murphy. There are others out there, people that helped us. I promised we wouldn’t leave them behind.”

  “You and your promises.”

  He shook his head and disappeared out the door. Sam was laid on a makeshift bed that was made up of boxes covered in blankets. He wanted to close his eyes and rest but he knew that it wasn’t over. The sound of gunfire continuing long into the night brought that fact home. It wouldn’t be over until they had put Mount Pleasant in their rearview mirror.

  Epilogue

  They all knew that this was one war they couldn’t win overnight, neither did they expect the military to push back the tide of the infected but at least there were boots on the ground and a real effort being made by government to help survivors.

  It had restored Sam’s shaky confidence in the military after witnessing the atrocities committed by the Commander and those who had followed him into Hayden.

  When dawn broke the next morning, and a deep orange sun began to rise in the east, the last remaining marines rolled out of Mount Pleasant taking with them a truck full of survivors. Aaron Rivers was one of them.

  In many ways, they had only seen the tip of the iceberg when it came to those who were infected. Mount Pleasant was still overrun and it would remain that way for some time. As Murphy said, their job was not to save everyone but to ensure the safety of those who asked for help. The journey back to Hayden was bittersweet. It was good to be returning to a town that they now called home.

  Among the survivors that entered the gates of Hayden was Thomas Darby. It was hard to determine who was going to be trouble, and who was simply reacting to a new world that had caused everyone to make tough decisions.

  Some of those decisions wouldn’t always be the right ones, but they would always define a person, and reveal their true colors.

  As the gates closed behind them and new people were added to the town, new challenges would present themselves, conflicts would arise and for better or worse, characters would be sharpened by each other.

  Murphy waited until Sam had b
een treated before he had the conversation that Sam knew was coming.

  “You should be good, Sam, just remember to keep that leg elevated and no crazy business,” Rachael Blake said. She was a redhead, and one of two nurses that the town had, and a good one at that.

  Murphy stood cross-armed in the doorway as Rachael passed him by.

  “Rachael.”

  “Go easy on him, Murphy.”

  “Always,” he smiled.

  Sam had a loose-fitting shirt on. He hopped off the table and slipped back into his jeans.

  “How’s it feeling?” Murphy asked.

  “Better, though I’m going to have one gnarly scar.”

  “We all have our scars.”

  Sam got a sense that he wasn’t just talking about those that were visible.

  Murphy entered the room that was solely for medical purposes and glanced around. He picked up a medical device on the counter and placed it down. Once Sam had his belt in place, he turned to Murphy as he wasn’t saying anything.

  “Come on, come out with it. I know you’ve been waiting to say it. Tell me I was wrong. Yell if you have to.”

  Murphy shook his head. “No, I’m not angry, Sam. Though I still don’t think what you did was the right move, I understand why you did it.”

  “You do?” Sam hobbled over to his jacket and pulled out a cigarette.

  He motioned with his head. “Probably best you don’t light up in here.”

  “Another rule?”

  “Got to have some.”

  He dropped it back into his jacket and watched Murphy pace around the room.

  “You know, not everyone who walked through the doors of Camp Zero could be helped.”

  Sam’s brow furrowed. “I thought you had a spotless track record.”

  Murphy leaned back against a table. “Of helping people, yes. Of them helping themselves, that’s another thing entirely.”

  “I don’t follow?”

  “Bryan Catz was a graduate of Camp Zero. A year before you arrived in Mount Pleasant he went through the program.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “Some people can’t be helped.”

  “But you said…”

  “We help people that are ready to help themselves, Sam. Bryan wasn’t ready. No matter how much time we spent with him, and believe me we tried, he chose a different path.”

  “Then you must have had doubts about me.”

  He smirked. “Trust me, I did. I fought Dan on taking you in. When Brett came to us and asked for our help, I’ll be honest, I was against it.”

  “So who convinced you?”

  “You did.”

  “Me?”

  “Sam, I will always give people the benefit of the doubt. We never turned away a kid, no matter how much trouble they caused, or seeds of doubt they planted in our minds. But ultimately it’s never really been us that caused change to occur. We merely facilitated it. We provided an environment in which a person could see themselves through the eyes of others.” Murphy paused and looked out the door and pointed. Sam followed his gaze and saw Luke outside working away on the fence they were building around a portion of the town.

  “Do you remember the day Dan told him to carry you?”

  Sam snorted. “How could I forget?”

  “Initially, when he couldn’t come up with something good to say about you, do you remember what you said?”

  Sam rubbed the side of his face. “Yeah, I told Dan to forget about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was just delaying things. People were hungry, we were tired and we just wanted to get back.”

  “That’s one.”

  Sam frowned. “One what?”

  “You thought of others, Sam. It’s a trait that few have. We live in a world that is focused on self.” Murphy snorted. “You were already beginning to look beyond yourself.”

  “How can you be sure I wasn’t doing it because I was hungry, tired and wanting to get back?”

  “Perhaps you were, but still, you were willing to let it slide for someone who had pushed your buttons and got up in your face the whole time you were in that program. No, that revealed something about you.”

  Sam chuckled. “I tell you, Murphy, you really know how to addle the brain.”

  Sam put his jacket on.

  “And the other?”

  “You treated my daughter with respect.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly.” Murphy wagged his finger at him as they walked out of the building. “Don’t ever take lightly the love a father has for his daughter. If you had disrespected my daughter, I would have written you off.”

  “Like that?”

  “Like that.”

  “Well, I guess I shouldn’t tell you about—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  Both of them started to laugh as they walked out into the crisp morning air.

  As Sam surveyed the community that was working together to erect the fence around a smaller portion of Hayden, he felt hope rise in his heart for the first time since leaving Mount Pleasant. It wasn’t because they were free of danger, or even because they had seen the last of the infected. It was because he knew that it was the beginning of the United States fighting back.

  One community at a time.

  One person at a time.

  One day at a time.

  A Plea

  Thank you for reading State of Decay. If you enjoyed the book, I would really appreciate it if you would consider leaving a review. Without reviews, an author’s books are virtually invisible on the retail sites. It also lets me know what you liked. You can leave a review by visiting the book’s page. I would greatly appreciate it. It only takes a couple of seconds.

  Thank you — Jack Hunt

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  About the Author

  Jack Hunt is the author of horror, sci-fi and post-apocalyptic novels. He currently has five books out in the Renegades series, a time travel book called Killing Time and another called Mavericks: Hunters Moon. Jack lives on the East coast of North America.

  www.jackhuntbooks.com

  jhuntauthor@gmail.com