He was told in no uncertain terms he needed to make his shoes shine like glass, or else. He had been on guard duty, still a little pissed that it was even necessary. All they did was stand there at attention all day. When she walked into the conference room, ignoring their salutes as always, she had stopped halfway through the door and had taken half a step backward. All of her flunkies stumbled all over themselves, trying not to bump into her. Which was probably why she did it. He’d noticed she did things like that. Pure meanness, Grandpa Cobb would say. She pointedly looked down at his shoes, the ones he’d buffed the best he could with no supplies, using the same undershirt he was wearing to do it. She frowned her disappointment and walked on, not even looking at him. He’d bet his bottom dollar she wasn’t taking bird baths in the sink because the showers didn’t work. He’d bet they had fresh air circulating in her suite of rooms and they didn’t smell like feet and ass from thirty other half washed Marines.
None of them knew what was going on in the outside world. Not really. They knew what they were told, but they no longer believed it. This whole underground complex buried somewhere in the Catskill Mountains was a lie. A typical government project. It was supposed to house two hundred of the most privileged members of government and society, their families and a platoon of Marines to protect them. A Nuclear bomb or a deadly widespread viral release being the most likely scenarios for the base to be activated. Whoever was in charge, some overpaid public-sector employee probably, had taken the black budget money to maintain this facility and had squandered it. Probably on hookers and cocaine. There were food supplies, but not enough for the next six months, let alone the ten years it was supposed to be stocked for. Everything else showed the same level of ineptitude and shoddy quality that a lot of government projects with no oversight exhibited. It wasn’t quite a bridge to nowhere, but it wasn’t much more than a glorified cave. The Marines were housed in the old section, obviously built in the fifties during the cold war and never updated. The newer sections were survivalist chic apartments, but the concrete was already cracking in places. Moisture leaked through the walls and Marines were on mopping detail twenty-four hours a day. “At least I haven’t had to do that yet,” Daniel thought bitterly as he turned his t-shirt to a spot that had the faintest remnant of polish still on it. Maybe mopping would be better, though. At least they didn’t have to wear their Dress Blues.
Everyone was young, Daniel noticed. They were all handpicked, but he thought they were chosen because they were fresh out of training. None of them had any combat experience. He thought that was strange if they were supposed to be protecting the remnants of the government. He would have chosen the hardest men he could find. Guys with years of real-world experience, not just classroom and field training. Even the Officers in charge of them were a bunch of kiss ass’s that came from the right families, not grizzled combat vets. This whole setup stank, something was wrong. The so-called President, and all of the flunkies surrounding her, were people he wouldn’t trust as far as he could throw. They were behind the scenes administrators he’d never heard of. They weren’t Senators or Congressmen, they were some other political hacks. Those nameless, faceless, unelected bureaucrats that stay in their jobs one president after another. Administration after administration, Democrat or Republican, they were always there, following their own agenda. Shaping the world the way they wanted and ignoring what the people voted for. They knew best, after all. Not the unwashed and uneducated masses. The others he’d seen were kind of oily, too. Weaselly looking men you just had a strong urge to punch.
He wished they had some outside news. He worried about his sister and the rest of the family out at the Three Flags. Was the government helping the civilians fight the disease, whatever it was? They said it turned you into a mindless zombie. Their words. They wouldn’t elaborate, so the men with him guessed it was some kind of new virus that affected intelligence. Maybe made everyone retarded or something. The high up muckity-mucks wouldn’t tell them anything, just kept them busy mopping floors and polishing shoes.
They were isolated, not allowed to mingle with the civilians. They were just standing around looking pretty in their dress uniforms, or cleaning up messes, and were not authorized to leave the old area of the bunker for any reason, otherwise. They still managed to get tidbits of news, snatches of overheard conversations. Daniel considered everything he’d heard at the endless meetings. In a surprise attack, some kind of mutating virus had been released. The Muslims had done it and everyone down here had somehow gotten news of it just before it happened. They accepted that at first, but after a few weeks and a few snippets of overheard conversation, they started putting pieces of the puzzle together. If they were here and sealed in before the attack happened, then it wasn’t a surprise to them. It had been nearly a month and he was getting sick of it. He was an Officer in the Marine Corps. He was a fully trained Force Recon soldier, dammit. He, like everyone else, was starting to not believe anything they were being told. He needed to get access to the radio room. Things were going to change real soon. The soldiers were already making some plans of their own.
Authors Notes
I don’t like to leave you hanging, I’m not a fan of cliff-hangers. Ending the tale here is not a ploy to simply sell more books, but at nearly 400 pages, this seemed like a good place to wind up the story for now. Zombie Road III will continue where this volume left off.
The world is starting to recover from the deadly blow it suffered and plans to retaliate are being formulated.
The radicals have emptied all of the nuclear power plants of their radioactive rods and may have their own ideas on how to take care of the final Americans.
Gunny, Lacy and Jessie all have plans to get back out on the Zombie Road.
I’m sure it will all turn out just fine for them.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. As always, I appreciate comments and reviews. I read them all and strive to use feedback to become a better writer.
Also, to reiterate what is written in the beginning of the book, this is a work of fiction. Of course, it is, it’s about zombies.
David A. Simpson
5/28/2017
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Thanks again, enjoy life, don’t get hit by a bus.
Zombie Road III
Zombie Road III
Rage on the Rails
Book 3 in the Zombie Road Series
This is a work of fiction by
David A. Simpson
All characters contained herein are fictional and all similarities to actual persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental.
No portion of this text may be copied or duplicated without author or publisher written permission, with the exception of use in professional reviews.
ISBN-13: 978-1981613922
ISBN-10: 1981613927
Copyright © 2017 David A. Simpson
All rights reserved.
Prologue
He felt much older than his years, all this sitting and talking to the interviewers was harder than actually doing the work of homesteading. More exhausting than swinging an ax or tending his garden. He wanted to wrap up the story. He wanted to get away from all these people. He wanted to go hunting.
He hadn’t realized it would take him so long to tell it. Once he started to open up, the words that had been penned up inside of him just seemed to flow. He had probably forgotten a lot of the people, a lot of the names, but he had given it his best effor
t. He wasn’t trying to hide anything. He didn’t care what people thought of him, if they thought anything at all. Their opinions meant nothing to him. If the reformed world wanted the truth, he would give it to them, unvarnished, the best he could. He hadn’t been there for everything, some parts of the story he only knew from listening to the people that had lived it, tell it. Or people who knew those people.
Civilized society had come very close to becoming extinct. If Lakota had fallen, the other struggling empires that were just getting started would have been next on the list to be destroyed. Sure, some of them were a little harsh, but they were all much better than the Sharia system the radicals were trying to establish. To the Americans, anyway. They would never be subjugated, and the extremists didn’t even try, they had a scorched earth attitude.
He was getting ahead of himself, trying to organize the story in his head so he could tell them what they came all this way to hear. He still had quite a bit of the tale to tell, a few more heroes they may or may not know about. Some of them did mighty deeds, some of them simply made sure the right number of bullets were in the right place, at the right time. He hadn’t asked them who else they had interviewed, who else was still alive and doing well. He wondered if their stories contradicted his, if he remembered wrong. If the campfire tales and holiday retellings had subtly grown and changed, and original truths became embellished fictions. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe the world needed another Pecos Bill or John Henry or Paul Bunyan. Larger than life heroes. Maybe it needed the bad guys to be really, really bad and the good guys to be really, really good. It was a different world than it was the day before everything went to hell.
Life wasn’t easy in the new world, it was still dangerous in some ways, and there was always the chance of a new outbreak of zombies popping up somewhere. The population had gone from nearly eight billion people, to probably less than a million. There was plenty of everything for everyone for a while, but supplies did eventually run out. Civilization had to be restarted and it rebooted a lot simpler than it had been at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
He sighed heavily when he saw the first trailer door open and the crews come out in the brisk morning air. He nodded at them and raised his coffee cup in a half salute. He’d finish this up today. He’d finish his story and they could write their book about the “definitive” history of the new world. The tale of the founders that no one thought to interview before they were all spread out to far places, or dead and buried. Most of the names and faces he was remembering hadn’t been seen or heard from in years. The world was a big place now, with lots of vast open places and empty cities fallen into ruin. It was easy to get lost. They were probably still around, just living a new life with a new name so they wouldn’t be bothered by people like the crew camping out in his parking lot. Maybe they had all moved to a beach somewhere and were enjoying ‘retirement’. They had only found him because he was kind of distinctive. He had a face that was hard to hide. He went to a trading post a few times a year, the folks there had told them where he was.
He stood on the deck, sipped at his coffee and watched the ducks on the lake, the mist rising lazily off the water as the sun peeked through the trees. He thought back, remembering where he’d left off telling the story yesterday, his throat too raw to continue. He had never done so much talking before.
He’d told them about Lacy and Phil escaping from the high rise in Atlanta and making their way to Lakota. He told them about the idiot teenagers who had left the safety of their house, on their way to the shopping center to make a completely unnecessary raid. They had wound up getting trapped in a strip mall, surrounded, and half of them dead. He told them about Gunny and the truckers securing the town of Lakota. How Gunny was done with leading all those people, his obligations had been fulfilled, and how he went after his wife and son.
“I brought you a cup of real coffee,” one of the young crewmen said as he came up beside him to admire the view.
The old man smiled his thanks and pitched the roasted chickpea blend over the rail. Real coffee was something he missed, but it was hard to get this far out from any of the cities. If the trading post did happen to get any, it was pricey.
“You don’t get lonely up here? All by yourself?” he asked.
I don’t like people very much, was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t say it. When he thought back to some of the people he’d met along the way, there were a lot of them he wished he’d never known.
No. He didn’t miss people. Not at all.
“I’ve got my mule,” he said. “She don’t talk much, but she listens pretty good.”
The kid nodded, as if he understood, but he really didn’t. How could he? He’d never known real danger, never been betrayed and left for dead, never had to fear other people more than the zombies. He’d been born and raised in a walled city in the Lakota Territories. By the time he was old enough to spread his wings, the world was a gentle place to live, for the most part. He had grown up listening to the stories about this man, and the others like him, his whole life. They were hard, savage, and brutal in the tales, doing what had to be done and killing the undead by the thousands. Violent men doing violent things, carving a place of safety in the midst of impossible odds.
The sound man was still a little in awe that he’d actually met him, was actually drinking coffee with him, and was hearing the tales of the beginning first-hand from someone who had been there. This man had achieved near-mythical status and then just disappeared, with only occasional sightings, and most of those nobody really believed. Traders and caravaners telling campfire tales. Bounty hunters and retrievers, bragging in bars about the stranger who appeared out of nowhere to save them. Freed men repeating their story to anyone who would listen. They told of a shadow who came in like a wraith and butchered entire encampments of slavers, unshackled the prisoners, then disappeared back into the night. The kid would love to put together a factual account of those years, but the old man had flat out refused to talk about it. He said he’d tell them what he knew about the founding, about the beginning, but that was all. The kid knew the story was almost over and they’d be politely asked to leave the mountain after today.
The old man savored the real coffee and didn’t mind telling the story of the first few months. It kind of felt good to finally set the record straight, to the best of his recollection. After that, parts of it were pretty hazy, he’d kind of gone crazy for a while when he lost everything, but they didn’t need to hear about that part of his life. The first few months he could tell them all about because he remembered it well. The good and the bad. The proud moments, and the shame of the mistakes. To him, it was all true, although some of it may not have happened.
1
Lacy
They had gone over to Terry's place that evening when they finished searching in grids south of her house. Lacy had the keys, she was supposed to water the plants for the two weeks they were gone on their anniversary cruise. She had dropped them off at the airport the morning this whole zombie uprising began, nearly a month ago. Planes had been falling out of the sky that first day, infected passengers wreaking havoc onboard. Even if they made it to the port in Miami, she doubted if they survived the city.
Phil kept watch, loaded for bear with pistols and an M-4 from Johnny’s collection, as Lacy unlocked the door and started looking for the keys to the Earth Roamer. They had decided to take it on the trip to Lakota. It was the most ridiculously overbuilt and overpriced camper she’d ever seen, but Terry and his wife liked to travel and camp, and he’d done well for himself before he retired. It was based on a four-wheel drive Ford F-550 super duty chassis, and was built like a tank. It would get them across the country in style and comfort and they’d never have to get out, except to refuel. Phil said he was pretty good at siphoning gas, a holdover skill from his misspent youth.
She found a bunch of keys in a dish on the kitchen counter and pulled out the set she came for, They drove it back to the house to load
it up with all the guns, bullets, and canned goods they had. Phil slept soundly that night as Lacy tossed and turned, knowing they were abandoning the search. If they couldn’t find Johnny’s old Mercury parked in front of a store somewhere to the west of them, they would be leaving without Jessie and his friends. They were doing everything they could think of to find them, but how long did you look? How many more times did they risk their lives? Phil wanted to go, and she was grateful he had stayed this long. The kids could be anywhere, gone in any direction. They could have met other survivors. They could already be in Lakota. They could have left for the hills of north Georgia to look for a cabin.
They could be wandering around in a horde, searching for their next victim.
The next morning they ate one last meal at the house, killed a shambler that had stumbled into the neighborhood during the night and took off, Phil driving and familiarizing himself with the big RV. They started rerunning a grid pattern, looking for the car, or any heavy zombie activity surrounding a store. Morning turned to afternoon as they continued circling back and either losing, or running down, the undead that kept picking up their trail. They were nearing the edge of the grid they’d agreed upon, getting close to the mall. If the kids weren’t there, they’d head to Oklahoma. Lacy didn’t think she could talk Phil into staying any longer. She knew he thought they should have left days ago.
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 66
