Extinction Survival Series (Book 3): Cost of Survival
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© Walt Browning 2020
All Rights Reserved
Cover Design by Deranged Doctor Design
Edited by Sara Jones
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
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The Extinction Survival Series
Lost Valley
Satan’s Gate
Cost of Survival
Warrior’s Fate
Contents
Foreword by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
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Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Foreword
by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Dear Reader,
Thank you for picking up a copy of Cost of Survival by Walt Browning. This is the third book in the Extinction Survival series. The first book (Lost Valley) was originally published through Amazon’s Extinction Cycle Kindle World. The story transcended to far more than fan fiction, but unfortunately, Amazon ended the Kindle Worlds program in July of 2018. Authors were given a chance to republish or retire their stories, and I jumped at the chance to republish the series through my small press, Great Wave Ink. Today, we’re proud to offer the Extinction Survival series in paperback, audio, and to readers outside of the United States for the first time ever.
For those of you that are new to the Extinction Cycle storyline, the series is the award winning, Amazon top-rated, and half a million copy best-selling seven book saga. There are over six thousand five-star reviews on Amazon alone. Critics have called it, “World War Z and The Walking Dead meets the Hot Zone.” Publishers weekly added, “Smith has realized that the way to rekindle interest in zombie apocalypse fiction is to make it louder, longer, and bloodier … Smith intensifies the disaster efficiently as the pages flip by, and readers who enjoy juicy blood-and-guts action will find a lot of it here.”
In creating the Extinction Cycle, my goal was to use authentic military action and real science to take the zombie and post-apocalyptic genres in an exciting new direction. Forget everything you know about zombies. In the Extinction Cycle, they aren’t created by black magic or other supernatural means. The ones found in the Extinction Cycle are created by a military bio-weapon called VX-99, first used in Vietnam. The chemicals reactivate the proteins encoded by the genes that separate humans from wild animals—in other words, the experiment turned men into monsters. For the first time, zombies are explained using real science—science so real there is every possibility of something like the Extinction Cycle actually happening. But these creatures aren’t the unthinking, slow-minded, shuffling monsters we’ve all come to know in other shows, books, and movies. These “variants” are more monster than human. Through the series, the variants become the hunters as they evolve from the epigenetic changes. Scrambling to find a cure and defeat the monsters, humanity is brought to the brink of extinction.
We hope you enjoy the Extinction Survival series and continue to the main storyline in the Extinction Cycle.
Best wishes,
Nicholas Sansbury Smith, NYT Bestselling Author of the Extinction Cycle
— 1 —
Lost Valley
November
Seven Months After the Infection
“We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public.”
— Bryan White
Pablo Ignatius Gonzalez and Matthew Keele crept up to the line of bushes. They dropped to their bellies and crawled forward until the tendrils of the large California juniper became thin enough to make out their target. Both men were United States Marines. Since the world had been overrun by infection and no formal government remained, there was technically no United States left. But like every other Marine before them, once a Marine, always a Marine.
“I don’t see any movement.” Gonzalez’s words were barely audible.
Keele whispered his response. “Copy that.”
The two men lay frozen under the gently swaying branches as they stared out from under the bush’s canopy. The open ground ahead was going to be a problem. The desert grass was tall enough, but their progress through the straw-colored ground cover would be easy to detect. If they were discovered, all would be lost.
After almost five minutes of immobilized silence, the two continued forward, moving at a steady pace. The grass swaying in the cool, autumn wind brought much-needed cover for their mission. The two Marines made good time and, within a few minutes, lay silently in front of their objective. They had yet to be discovered.
Gonzalez craned his neck up out of the foot-high grass. Movement from in front froze him in position. A hand stirred on the elevated platform less than twenty feet away. One wrong turn of their target’s head, and all would be lost.
The men stayed in place until silence and stillness returned. Then Gonzalez turned and nodded at Keele. They both smiled. They relished this kind of assignment and could barely contain their excitement.
When Gonzalez first conceived of the mission, he approached Keele for help, and his friend quickly agreed. He would have asked Lazzaro as well, but the other surviving Marine from the raid on Los Angeles wasn’t up to it.
In early summer, their Quick Reaction Force (QRF) had been trapped in the tunnels under the Inglewood Forum. Lazzaro was injured by a grenade they’d used against a horde of infected people, now known as “Variants.” Over the ensuing months, the shrapnel wound Lazzaro received failed to heal.
Chris Reedy, their group medic and former San Diego paramedic, finally had to surgically debride the old injury. He found small metal fragments the Navy doctors had overlooked. The drainage their friend had been dealing with for many months had finally closed a week ago. Gonzalez didn’t want him opening the suture line again by taking part in the mission.
Gonzalez nodded to his partner, and they slithered up to the platform’s first step. He held the material in his rigidly cupped right hand. If he gripped too tightly, the mission would be over.
His partner crept at his side, speaking so quietly, Gonzalez barely heard him. “Clear.”
The two men rose and stepped gently onto the stairs. The wood gave underneath their boots, but no creak or groan came forth. They weren’t surprised. They’d been on these steps many times, and their familiarity
with the area of operation gave them the advantage in planning their attack.
They squatted and bent their necks around the large, wooden pole that held up the structure’s roofline.
There! The target was motionless.
Gonzalez looked at his friend and saw the same stupid grin that was on his own face. They moved forward as quietly as a gentle fall breeze, their footfalls muffled by the rubber soles of their well-worn boots. They were within a meter of their target. The subject’s body lay still, his arm draped out with an open hand. It was going to be easy, and both Marines were eager to finish the job.
That’s when their mission went sideways.
They never saw the creature as it sprang at them from nowhere. Gonzalez was so intent on completing the mission that the surprise attack stood him upright, and he staggered back. A pair of large paws slammed into his chest, sending the diminutive Marine tumbling off the porch and into the surrounding grass.
Keele leapt back and barely survived the initial onslaught. He fell to a seated position on the porch’s wooden planks as the creature recovered from its attack on his friend. Now the beast turned to him and bared its large fangs.
He was caught.
“Bahahaha!”
Carver stepped in front of Keele, belly laughing at the two men. He could barely contain himself as Keele sat with eyes bulging, staring at the war dog. Shrek stood between him and the Marines, still baring his teeth, daring either of them to try to sneak up on them again.
Keele frowned. “It ain’t that funny.”
Carver recovered enough to point at Gonzalez. The young man was sprawled in the long grass at the foot of Carver’s porch, face covered with white cream.
“You two idiots thought you could put shaving cream in my hand and make me tickle my face?” Carver said between gasping laughter.
It was a prank played by any number of college kids and young soldiers. Marines seemed to be even more prone to this type of stupidity.
Shrek looked up at Carver then trotted off the porch.
Gonzalez was just beginning to recover and had his elbows under him, propping himself up from behind. Shrek jogged up to him, sniffed his cream-covered face, and began to lick it clean.
The Marine jerked his head back with a series of muffled chuckles. “Hey! Stop it.”
His best efforts to push the dog away were met by a tiny growl from the Mal, followed by a continued dog bath.
“That’s not shaving cream, is it?” Carver said.
Gonzalez laughed harder as Shrek continued to clean his face. “It’s whipped cream.”
“Hope and Randy are making dessert,” Keele said, smiling as the dog continued its assault on his friend. “They made whipped cream from condensed milk.”
Shrek finished licking Gonzalez’s face and stepped back with a contented grin.
Carver looked from one Marine to the other. “What were you two thinking?”
“Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Gonzalez said. “We thought Shrek was off with Kyle.”
“He was, but he’s always back here with me for my afternoon nap.”
“Well, it was a good plan,” Keele said.
“Shrek heard you two stumbling through the bushes ten minutes ago. It took everything I had not to send him out there and flush you two morons out of the brush.”
The Marines stood up and dusted themselves off.
“Freakin’ Shrek,” Gonzalez muttered. “We’d have gotten you if it hadn’t been for him.”
“Yeah. And if my sister had testicles, she’d be my brother.” Carver laughed. “You two dunces go back to your quarters and wash up.”
“Yeah. That stuff is sticky.” Gonzalez tried wiping his right hand clean of the remaining dessert topping.
Carver shook his head as he watched the two grunts walk back to the converted maintenance garage they called home. Keele must have said something Gonzalez didn’t like; the little Marine punched his friend hard in the arm and took off running, Keele close behind.
Carver looked down at Shrek and rubbed his head. Then he lay back down to finish the nap the two jarheads had so rudely interrupted.
— 2 —
“A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.”
― Confucius, Chinese philosopher
“Mr. Carver.”
John woke with a start. The gentle shaking on his shoulder roused him from a deep sleep. His first thought was that Gonzalez and Keele had returned.
Where is Shrek? The faithful dog was always nearby and should have warned him when someone approached.
Carver looked up and found Kyle standing over him. Shrek was at his side. He should have known it was Kyle. The young man, along with Kinney and Hope, was one of a few people that Shrek trusted.
“Hey, Kyle. What’s going on?”
Carver stretched his legs on the plastic-covered cushions of the porch’s couch. The movement brought snaps and creaks as he separated himself from the vinyl.
“It’s Gavin. He’s contacted more survivors.”
Both Gavin and Gary Gringleman had gravitated to Carver’s ham radio. The two Boy Scouts had initially used the device to try to find their mother. She was last heard from in Sausalito before the infection destroyed the world. Their efforts proved fruitless.
Before Trey Darden had died, he and his twin brother, Brett, also unsuccessfully used the radio to search for their parents. Their mom and dad were vacationing in Europe when the infection killed the world.
Because of this, the three of them became the camp’s radio operators. The teenagers were constantly searching the frequencies for other groups. Early on, they had connected with dozens of people, all trying to survive the Variant onslaught. As the weeks went by, there were fewer and fewer contacts. The last time they’d spoken with anyone was almost two months ago. Since then, the ham frequencies had been silent.
“Really?” Carver said as he grabbed his battle rifle leaning against the porch railing. “Any idea who they are?”
“Yeah,” Kyle replied with gleaming eyes. “They’re at sea. It’s the Navy.”
Carver stopped and his eyes furrowed with anger. “I said no communication with the military,” he hissed.
“No. It’s not the military. It’s a single ship,” Kyle continued. “They survived the infection and are trying to find anyone that can help them. They’re the only ones left.”
“Left from what?”
“They said they’re the only ones left from the Pacific Fleet.”
By the time Carver got to the radio shack, it was thick with his fellow survivors. Both Donaldson and Everly, pilots who had rescued two dozen survivors from their dying aircraft carrier, were hovering near the ham unit. Fellow SEAL, Porky Shader, and the Marines stood back, listening to the conversation between Gavin and the naval craft. Even Jacobs, Gardner, and Polodare, the three Masters of Arms they’d rescued, were crammed in the room.
“We have twenty-three seamen on board,” the voice said. “We’ve been cruising up and down the coast for months, looking for any survivors. We’re bingo fuel.”
Everly took Gavin’s hand off the mic. “Have you told them where we are?”
“No, sir. They only know that we are a group of survivors.”
Everly grabbed the mic and pressed its push-to-talk bar. “This is Captain Howard Everly, United States Navy. Who am I speaking with?”
Everly released the bar to listen to the man’s response.
“Lieutenant Commander Donald Taylor, Cheng of the USS Freedom.”
“What’s a Cheng?” Gavin asked.
“An acronym for the chief engineer,” Everly said. “The Freedom is a littoral combat ship.”
Gavin gave him a curious look. Everly continued. “It’s designed for shallow-and deep-water missions.”
“How big is it?”
“Big enough that it has a landing platform for a Seahawk helicopter.”
“Could we send the Osprey to pick them up?”
“Good idea, Gavin,” Donaldson said. “But the deck isn’t reinforced enough for it. We’re better off using our own Seahawk.”
Captain Erin Donaldson flew the group’s V-22 Osprey. She and Howard Everly were a couple and had rescued two dozen people from the USS Theodore Roosevelt during the evacuation of San Diego NAS. Everly piloted a SuperCobra for the Marines but became his girlfriend’s copilot on the Osprey when they were forced to flee the dying carrier. Shader and the Marines owed them their lives.
A Seahawk helicopter also escaped the fleet to join the group at Lost Valley. It had arrived at the camp just in time to help battle the local infected population and seal them in a nearby cave. The lack of Variants in Lost Valley was directly attributed to the attack helicopter’s Hellfire missiles. Now that crew was standing just outside the room, listening to the conversation.
“Let’s find out some more. Call them back,” Carver said.
Everly keyed the mic then took notes as the survivors on the other end told their story. Five minutes later, he put the radio call on hold.
“I’ll be,” Carver said after listening to the conversation. “We have to get to these people. They have a second helicopter, and they’re carrying all the supplies we need to repair our Seahawk. Along with that, they have a couple aviation specialists to keep them both flying.”
“Until we run out of fuel,” Donaldson said.
“Regardless, it’d be nice to have that kind of firepower at our disposal,” Carver replied. “And at the very least, we need healthy bodies to build the community. All they’re asking is for us to find some fuel and haul it out to them.”
“I don’t know if refueling the ship is worth it,” Donaldson said. “We’d need to find a shitload of it to fill them up.”
Shader spoke up. “I agree with Donaldson. We could send the Seahawk to bring them back here without having to mess with delivering them fuel.”
“We were able to get gas for our stuff,” Gavin pointed out.