Operation Z | Book 1 | Uprising

by Szepanski, G. D.

  The water eased the burning rawness in his throat. These simple movements were enough to sap his energy reserves again. He laid back and sleep overtook him again.

  ###

  This time he dreamed. He found himself in a tropical paradise with Christina Hendricks. The water was a pure ultramarine blue, while the sky was a cloudless cerulean blue. Soft white sand cushioned his feet as he walked toward this beautiful woman. She smiled and removed her bikini top as Ron strolled across the sand. What a perfect day. Then there came moaning, and it wasn’t the pleasurable kind. He turned and saw zombies invading their perfect beach scene. As he spun back to the place where Christiana stood, a man with a rifle replaced her. The gun went off and a spike of pain radiated through his chest. It became difficult to even take a breath. Tim appeared on the beach, and Ron tried to yell a warning to his brother. Nothing came out of his mouth, and the zombies grabbed Tim from behind and ripped him limb from limb. Ron screamed.

  ###

  A scream startled Ron awake from his nightmare. His breathing had been ragged and heavy, as if he had run for miles, but then he remembered he had only been dreaming. The dream had been a little too real and too close to his actual life, minus Christina Hendricks.

  The only positive news some strength had built back into his body. His throat remained parched but didn’t burn, and his chest died down to a dull ache. As his condition improved, he could get some answers now. He called out, and the pretty nurse entered the room. She looked just like Christina Hendricks during her run in Mad Men.

  “What is it, honey? Are you feeling OK?”

  “I’m better thanks. Can someone tell me how my brother and sister are doing?”

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. They found a man with you, but the zombies had attacked him. There wasn’t anything we could do to save him. Beyond him, we didn’t find anyone else with you.”

  “No!” He cried, as he realized his brother had died, and his sister went missing. His nightmare had come true. Ron didn’t know if he wanted to go on living without his siblings. What was the point? He closed his eyes and let the darkness take him away, not caring if he returned.

  CHAPTER 26 - VINCENT

  THE CONSTANT BUZZ of the VW engine in this confined space gave Vincent a pounding headache. He daydreamed about wrapping his bare hands around the brunette’s neck and thrusting an ice pick through the teenage boy's left eye. An opportunity to kill would come, and Vincent needed to be ready to heed it and act. No more Mr. Nice Guy for him. Look where it left him.

  “Your ordeal must have left you parched. Why don’t you drink a bottle of water? We picked them up at a convenience store down the road.”

  Vincent took the water bottle offered by the woman. Some would have called the blonde woman (likely from a bottle) a looker in her day. Today, run down and worn out would be the verdict. She still possessed the most beautiful emerald green eyes he had ever seen. Once the party started, he would kill her last so he could look into those eyes unmolested.

  “Thank you. You are all so kind to me,” Vincent said.

  “So, you are all alone now?” asked the hippie driver.

  “Yes, I’m afraid the savages killed all my family and friends.”

  “Why do you call them savages? The zombies are our brothers.” the teenager said.

  Wow, you are a sicko, thought Vincent. Too bad the teenager won’t become a protege after all. He was too crazy to reason with, so he would be the first kill for Vincent. Vincent decided not to reply because he didn’t want to say anything that might lose his advantage when the time became act presented itself. Instead, he took a good long drink of the water. After he had run for his life, the icy drink of water felt good as it went down. With no thought, he took another long pull. His nerves calmed, and he relaxed as he drained the bottle of its last drop of liquid.

  The blonde woman laughed with a lovely lilt, and the hippie smiled a big toothy grin as he looked into the rearview mirror. These are pleasant people, Vincent thought as his mind drifted. The once irritating popping and chugging of the old VW engine now had a rhythm like his favorite song. What was that song again? Its name laid just out of reach, as it floated in the clouds of his mind. Vincent’s eyelids became heavy while the VW swayed back and forth, just like when Vincent had been a baby safe in his mother’s arms. All his energy drained away and sleep overtook him. His world became nothing but peaceful darkness.

  ###

  With a jolt, Vincent returned to consciousness. Where am I? Last he remembered; he had been riding in a noisy tin can with four new victims who waited to die at his hands. How had he let his guard down and fell asleep? Did they drug him? The water, you stupid old fool!

  The place where he laid was cold and hard with no overhead lighting. It was quiet, so they had left him alone. He tried to sit up, but he couldn’t move because they had tied him down to the table where he laid. As the fog cleared from his brain, he recognized the table was all metal and they have stripped him of all his clothing. The hunter somehow became the hunted. Think, Vincent. Get yourself out of this situation. He would be the victor, not the weak victim.

  From across the room, Vincent heard a door open and the unmistakable clunk of high-heeled shoes pranced across the room. A woman would fall to his charm. This is the break he needed to facilitate his escape from this mess.

  “Wonderful, you’re awake. I can give you the marvelous news of all the lives you’ll save. You are a lucky man.” a tall older blonde woman wearing a clean white lab coat said.

  “Based upon your accommodations, I can see we’re cut from the same cloth. We would make great allies and wreak havoc together. Release me and you’ll see how valuable I can be. We’ll rule the apocalypse together.”

  “You’re a funny old man. The only help we need from you right now is your blood. Your blood type is O negative, and that makes you a universal donor. No worries. I’m a doctor and know if I take 40% of your blood, you would die. I’ll only take a quart right now, so you’ll continue to live. This won’t hurt a bit.”

  Vincent would have fought and killed this woman before she laid a hand upon him, but the bonds held him fast to the table. A prick in his arm told him the needle had pierced his vein, and the life drained out of his arm. If he lost this much blood he would become lightheaded, but he fought to maintain consciousness.

  “You’re making a mistake here. We’d be great together. You and me.”

  “I have all I need here. Besides, I’ll see you at dinner tomorrow night. It will be a wonderful meal for all of us. Sweet dreams until then, old man.”

  “The name is Vincent. I look forward to the dinner. Maybe you could loosen my bonds here a little?”

  Without speaking another word, she took his blood and walked away. Before she slammed the door behind her, she turned the overhead lights off, which plunged Vincent back into the murky darkness. He thought about enjoying the dinner tomorrow tonight as he drifted off to sleep again.

  ###

  The door crashed against the wall and the rattle of metal clunking awoke Vincent from the loveliest of dreams. Kathryn, the boys, and he had rounded up a group of girl scouts they had discovered camping in the woods. Eight young innocent lives along with the three women who their parents trusted to watch over and keep their daughters safe. All eleven got to experience their own unique types of pain. The contest they created was to see which scout could survive the longest. One 10-year-old girl made it the entire week before she expired. The sounds of her screams were music to their ears. It had been both a sweet dream and a happy memory. A delightful and recent memory.

  “Hi buddy!”

  The man’s face appeared familiar, but the bald head with a nasty scar that ran down the side didn’t. Vincent didn’t like the smile on this guy's face because it read murder. He recognized the look from his own past, just before a kill.

  “Have you forgotten me already? I’m Mac, your savior from yesterday. You would have died a nasty death on the road if I hadn
’t picked you up. Yes, the long greasy hair is to soften my appearance and hide my scar. Who would accept a ride from a monster with a scar?” Mac roared with laughter at his own little joke.

  “Mac, I think we would do grand work together. Release me and you can see how useful I can be.”

  “If I let you go, you’d miss out on dinner.”

  “I don’t understand. How can I eat dinner when I’m tied down?”

  Mac laughed again as he reached back, outside of Vincent’s view, to pick something up off the ground.

  “Trust me, you’ll understand shortly.”

  Mac jerked his arm back, and the motor of the chainsaw roared to life.

  “I won’t lie. This will hurt… A lot!”

  Mac revved the engine and pressed the chainsaw down, but Vincent felt nothing at first. Then the blood shot up from the jagged cut and his leg throbbed with pain from his hip right down to his toes. He screamed and was thankful the darkness of unconscious took him away from the horror.

  Vincent drifted back to consciousness as he smelled a pork roast cooking in the oven. It had been one of his favorite meals Kathryn would make for him. Dinner time must have arrived. He longed to eat Kathryn’s pork roast one last time, but Donald took her from him..

  “You’re back! That wasn’t so bad, was it? Just another minute and I’ll finish the cauterizing of the wounds. We don’t want you bleeding out. Refrigeration is hard to find, so we have to keep the meat alive as long as possible, so it doesn’t go bad. Nothing personal.”

  With the realization Vincent provided the meal and wasn’t the guest of honor, he passed out again.

  ###

  Vincent awoke from the oddest nightmare he could ever remember having. He dreamed that his past victims rose from the dead and came for him. The dead don’t rise and besides Vincent was the bad ass hunter, not the hunted. That would never happen.

  The air smelled of burned meat, and a strange ache came from his legs. He tried to rise from his bed, but found only his head moved. Some unseen force locked him in place. His skin had become icy and the bed he laid on was too hard. Where am I? He scanned the room until his eyes rested on the place where his legs had been. Everything rushed back to him in an instant.

  “We had a good run, Kathryn. I wouldn’t change a thing. It looks like I’ll be home with you soon.”

  CHAPTER 27 - DONALD BISHOP

  SWEAT DRIPPED OFF Donald’s face as he operated the backhoe. Vincent’s attack on the camp occurred only two weeks ago, and cleaning up the mess left behind still occupied all their time. Indian Summer set upon Maine, but this warm weather wouldn’t last much longer. They survived attacks from the zombies, a family of serial killers, and now they faced the task of surviving the coming long frigid weather. Winter would be the next enemy they needed to face to survive at this camp in Maine.

  Zombies, nature, and man all became their enemies, and they needed to work and plan together to defeat all three challenges. It took almost three days to hunt down all the straggling zombies who lurked inside the camp’s walls. Donald planned on taking only Tom on these hunting missions, but Natasha insisted on coming along too. Her skills with the APC and any weapon she touched proved her story went deeper than what she had told them. A Russian mail order trophy wife wouldn’t have the skills she possessed. She refused to answer any of Donald’s questions about her past.

  With these new realities of life, Donald and Tom gave lessons on how to fight and survive to the members of their crew. Natasha proved a crack shot with any weapon she touched, and Gwen adapted to a hunting rifle quickly. Betty shot a pistol like a pro and handled a rifle with skill. The rest of the group displayed adequate defensive skills. They're not a team Donald would have trusted in a battle yet, but they all had improved.

  Doc’s tale told a different story. He had become a useless drunk. Natasha continued to shun him, and he continued to drink himself into oblivion. Donald didn’t know where Doc got the alcohol from anymore because he locked it away to stop Doc’s constant drinking. With how far he had fallen, there had to be more to Doc’s story too. While intoxicated he would mumble to himself and occasionally he blurted out, “I’ve seen the end and the zombies win!” Donald didn’t care if Doc killed himself as long as he took nobody else with him.

  Helen had picked up the slack as the resident medical expert and took care of everyone’s health in the camp. She examined the two survivors from Vincent’s family cage and patched up their physical wounds. The man’s name was Bobby, and he had worked as a technical support person before the apocalypse. He became a quick expert with all the communication, surveillance, and technological systems in the camp. Bobby had taught both Matthew and Betty about how everything ran, creating his own little engineering department.

  The woman who had been caged with Bobby raced Doc to the pit of useless. She hadn’t spoken a word to anyone since they had freed her from the cell. She drifted about the camp like the zombies with a dead look in her eyes. One-night Donald found her standing naked, as she stared out a window at nothing he could see. He returned her to her bed and made sure she put some clothes on. Donald had heard of PTSD before, but he experienced no one as broken as this woman.

  Cleaning out Vincent’s cabin had been a nightmare. Donald found body parts and many instruments of torture scattered throughout the structure. He would have preferred to tear it down and burn it to cleanse the land, but Tom talked him out of it.

  “With winter coming during the apocalypse, we may need the building as a fall back location or to house other survivors. It’s better to keep it for now.” Tom said.

  Donald saw his logic since the main cabin was huge and would be hard to heat if any of their systems failed. If they found new survivors, how would they determine if they could trust them? Their track record hadn’t been stellar so far.

  The ongoing repairs had been more than Donald expected. They had over 150 zombie bodies to bury, so he had been busy digging holes with the backhoe. They had found no other heavy equipment on the grounds, so the backhoe ran constantly. Gardens not trampled by the invading zombies needed harvesting along with the fruit trees planted inside the walls of the camp. The harvest need to be canned to preserve the precious fruits and vegetables through the winter. No one wanted to run out of food during the darkest part of winter.

  Greenhouse glass had broken during the zombie invasion, and they needed to replace the window panes before the cold descended on the camp. Preserved fruit and vegetables would provide nourishment, but freshly harvested crops during the winter would be even more valuable. Those plants provided the start of their spring gardens, too. Donald wondered if they could get their hands on some farm animals also, but that task would have to wait. Too many other tasks needed completion first.

  Matthew ran toward the backhoe and waved his arms in the air. Donald saw his lips move, but the noise from the shovel’s engine overwrote his words. As he shut the backhoe down, he sensed the excitement in Matthew’s voice. “Donald, come quick. There is someone on the radio who wants to talk to you.”

  Who could have called him on the radio? Donald never owned a Ham Radio Set before he came to the cabin, nor had he spoken on one before. The number of potential survivors shrunk each passing day too.

  They spent time each evening listening to news from other parts of the country and the world. Based upon the radio transmissions, the world was screwed. Everywhere on Earth, people fought zombies. Some areas (like here in Maine) were safer than others, but zombies became the new majority. Locations with a lower population before the apocalypse remained more secure now, since there were fewer zombie candidates.

  The storm of the millennium caused a massive amount of destruction along the East Coast. No news reports came in from South Carolina, Georgia, or Florida. Initial messages claimed the entire state of Florida had been ravaged by the hurricane. Destruction was total and complete within 75 miles of the Atlantic Coast.

  Washington DC disappeared, and the US governm
ent disappeared along with it. No one knew fur sure what had happened there. FEMA wouldn’t provide any relief to those struck by the hurricane or the zombie plague. Some rumors speculated the CDC remained online and worked on a cure, but there were no hard facts. Atlanta had been far enough from the shore that it may have survived the hurricane’s devastation, but no one confirmed if they were still in business.

  There were tons of theories on what caused the zombies, but most were a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories. Some said it had been an accidental release of a viral weapon, which sounded a lot like The Stand. Others thought it was the next likely step in human evolution, and this is what the species had become. Climate change and overpopulation were often cited too, but Donald couldn’t see how either issue could raise the dead.

  The voice that came through the speakers had been one Donald thought he would never hear again.

  “Max, it is good to hear your voice.”

  “Yours too, Donald, and I’m glad you made it to the cabin in Maine. How are things up there?”

  “When we first arrived, we had an issue with the caretaker. We handled it and are now getting ready for the winter.”

  “What caretaker?”

  “Vincent and his family. Never got his last name.”

  “Donald, there wasn’t a caretaker at any of the cabins. I was your father’s lawyer and had been aware of all of his business dealings. Anyone staying there was a squatter. I’m not sure how they would have bypassed all the security?”

  “Oh… Where are you?”

  “We made it to your father’s place in Tennessee. When things started looking bad, we left Virginia and headed for the mountains. Things are running well here, and we’ll be safe through the winter.”

  “Who is there with you?”

  “Ah, my family and a few friends, plus a few other survivors. This camp isn’t as big as either of the other two, but is sufficient for our current needs.”