Empty Bodies Box Set | Books 1-6

by Bohannon, Zach

  Gabriel pondered this for a moment. He thought about his time at the school, and everything these people had done to him. Then he thought of Timothy. Some of his people had been killed, coming to rescue him and Jessica.

  “How many people did you lose in the fight?” Gabriel asked.

  Timothy bowed his head and shrugged. “We’re not quite sure yet. But I think it was at least a dozen. One of my guys is out there trying to find all the bodies right now and gather names.”

  “Well, you’re as much a part of this decision as I am,” Gabriel said. “Your people came here and sacrificed for us. So we have to make this decision together.”

  For several minutes, they thought about it before collectively arriving at a decision. Together, they left the office, heading outside the school.

  When they walked outside, Gabriel felt like he should pinch himself just to see if he was dreaming. Bodies lay sprawled everywhere. They spread out from the parking lot, up the stairs, and all the way up to the front door. Blood surrounded his feet. Sitting around the flagpole were the prisoners, each with their hands behind their head. Timothy’s men stood with assault rifles and shotguns fixed on them. A few of Ambrose’s men were awaiting medical attention, but Timothy had somebody tending to his own injured people first.

  Gabriel turned his attention back to the prisoners sitting around the flagpole. Their eyes shifted toward him as he approached.

  “Are you gonna kill us?” Gabriel hadn’t seen this man during his time at the school.

  “What do you think we should do with you?” Gabriel asked.

  “With all the shit that Ambrose put you through? Well, I suppose that if I was in your shoes, I’d probably kill me.”

  “Then I suppose you’re lucky that I’m not you.” He looked over to Timothy’s men. “Let them go.”

  One of Timothy’s men scratched his face. “Let them go? They killed a dozen of our people. And you expect us just to let them go?” He looked over to Timothy. “Timothy, we can’t do this.”

  “Brian, let them go,” Timothy said.

  One by one, Ambrose’s men stood up. Gabriel approached the man he’d been talking to.

  “Don’t think about coming back here and trying to build this place back into a prison. My people here will be watching this place closely, and there’s a lot more of them than what showed up here today. Got it?”

  Ambrose’s man smiled, and not a friendly smile. “Yeah, we got it.”

  Timothy said to a small group of his men, “Lead them a few miles down the road. Then come back here and guard this place until we can get back. If they try to return, shoot ‘em.”

  Timothy’s men nodded.

  Ambrose’s men who’d been injured were loaded into the back of the pickup truck. It followed the rest of the guards out of the school. When they were far enough away, Timothy’s group would let the men take the truck, but not give them any weapons.

  Gabriel turned to Timothy and extended his hand. The doctor accepted the handshake.

  “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Well, your friends here are good people. They helped us out, and we like to help look after good people.” He glanced at the bodies on the ground. “It doesn’t look like there’s many of those around anymore. We need to stick together.”

  They spent some time scouring the school for things they could use. They found food, medical supplies, generators, and more weapons than they could even take with them. Later, they could come back for what they couldn’t take on the first trip. They also went back to the room where the male prisoners were. The ones who hadn’t been able to help in the fight. One of the men was beyond saving. Timothy gave him enough morphine to make him comfortable. He died before they left. The other man was carried up front with the other injured people. He would be taken back to Timothy’s community.

  Jessica also showed them to another room where there were women prisoners. One of them had died, and the others looked terrified when they saw the group. Jessica assured the women that they meant them no harm, and it was proven so when they let them loose. It took some time for the women to warm up to the group. When they did, they agreed to head back to Timothy’s community.

  Within two hours, they were all heading out of the school’s parking lot.

  Gabriel rode with Will and the others. He took one last look at the school as they pulled out of the lot. He shook his head, thankful that he could look forward now. Forward to getting to Washington and finding his family. And, more immediately, forward to seeing Dylan once again.

  Chapter 38

  Will thought Gabriel might jump out of the moving vehicle when he saw Dylan waiting for him on the front porch. When the vehicle did finally come to a stop, the boy was already halfway across the yard. Gabriel was the first one to exit the vehicle, and Dylan ran to him. They had explained to Gabriel what had happened to Dylan’s arm, but Gabriel still cried when he saw it was missing as he held the boy close.

  Mary Beth appeared in the doorway. She ran across the yard to join them, sprinting into Jessica’s arms.

  As Will watched the reunion, he began to cry. Especially when he witnessed Gabriel examining Dylan’s missing limb for the first time. Though Charlie and Holly had told him different, Will still blamed himself for the accident.

  He wiped his cheek with his arm as Timothy arrived from another vehicle.

  “We’re going to move Holly inside to remove the bullet and stitch her up,” Timothy said. “She should be feeling better by this evening, or the morning at the latest.”

  “Do you need my help?” Will asked.

  Timothy shook his head. “We can handle it.”

  Together, they looked on as Gabriel and Dylan continued their embrace.

  “Gabriel really cares for that boy, doesn’t he?” Timothy asked.

  “He does,” Will replied. He turned and shook Timothy’s hand again. “Thank you for everything.”

  As they shook hands, the doctor said, “I want you to stay. All of you.” He looked around. “We’ve got plenty of room. I could let you have three separate houses.”

  Will looked over to Dylan and Gabriel again. Dylan was now hugging Jessica, but Gabriel had left his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Dylan looked back to Will and smiled. Will returned the gesture and waved.

  “I appreciate your offer, but I can’t pull them apart again. We’ll stay here for at least the night, maybe a couple of days, but Gabriel is going to want to get to Washington. It’s all he’s wanted since all this happened.”

  “Are you sure?” Timothy asked.

  Will sighed and wiped the sweat from his brow. “We’ve separated from Gabriel twice, and this is the second time we’ve been reunited. I think the universe wants us to stay together.”

  Timothy put his hand on Will’s shoulder and he smiled. “Not the universe, but God.”

  Revelation

  Empty Bodies Series Book Six

  Zach Bohannon

  Zach Bohannon

  www.zachbohannon.com

  Copyright © 2016 by Zach Bohannon. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction of this publication in whole or in part without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  Edited and Proofread by:

  Jennifer Collins

  Cover design by Symmetric Design

  www.symmetricdesign.co

  Created with Vellum

  For YOU, the awesome loyal reader who has taken this journey with me.

  Thank you.

  Now let’s finish this…

  Chapter 1

  The kids played in the backyard of a survivor’s house like everything was completely normal. And, for once, it kind of was. Aside from their happy yelling, there was no shouting, no firing of guns, nor the sounds of any blade slicing flesh. No monsters, undead or human, threatened them. Things were simply… normal.

  But even with the smiles
across the children’s faces and the onlooking mothers laughing as they conversed, Jessica couldn’t feel any sense of the ordinary.

  Her time spent at the school had been anything but normal—even in a world filled with possessed, flesh-eating monsters. Her imprisonment had confirmed what she’d feared even before she’d been taken captive: that the real monsters were not those who had been directly affected by The Fall, but those who were still alive among them. Those were the real purveyors of evil in this dark new world. Men like Nathan Ambrose. Monsters like David Ellis. As had been the case through centuries of hate and war over religion, race, and political alignment, humanity’s biggest enemy had been itself. Not even a world filled with walking corpses had united them.

  But as if everything was normal, Jessica sat on a curb while Dylan and Mary Beth played with other kids from the neighborhood. One of the families had a swing set in their backyard, and this had become the children’s favorite place to hang out. It also gave the parents time to mingle and chat with one another. To, again, find some sense of normality.

  Occasionally, Jessica would poke her head up to smile at the children. Aside from that, she kept her head low, working to ignore the attention of the other women watching their kids. In turn, though, all she was really doing was drawing more attention to herself. Regardless, she continued with this routine, and it had so far worked well enough, as none of the other women had spoken to her.

  “Jessica!”

  She looked up when Dylan called her name, worried that something was wrong. She even shot to her feet. But when she saw the young boy hanging upside down on a pull-up bar, she sighed and shook her head.

  “Isn’t this cool what I can do?” the boy said.

  “Amazing,” Jessica said, smiling and sitting again. “Just be careful getting down.”

  Before, Dylan might have just reached back up to the bar and flipped himself over, landing gracefully on his feet. But now that he only had one arm, a boy who he was playing with helped him down off the bar. His face was red, so much blood having rushed to it from him being upside down. It took him a second to regain his bearings, and this in itself made Jessica laugh.

  Out of the corner of her eye then, she saw one of the women coming toward her. She glanced away, hoping to avoid the woman’s gaze, wanting only to sit on her own. If she had had it her way, she wouldn’t even have been down there watching the children. But Will was with Holly as she recovered, and Gabriel was in the bedroom he’d been given to stay in, still recovering from the events at the school and thinking about getting to his family. Charlie was helping reinforce the fence that protected the group from the outside world. The kids couldn’t be left alone, so Jessica had been forced to take them to the backyard to play with the other children. Ironically, had she taken even a few minutes to get to know any of the other women, she might have considered leaving the children under their watch.

  “Excuse me,” the woman said.

  Jessica raised her head. The woman wore blue jeans and a faded polo shirt—green with white stripes. She had dirty blonde hair which somehow managed to still have curls in it.

  “It’s Jessica, right?”

  “That’s right,” Jessica mumbled.

  “My name is Jodie.”

  The woman stuck out her hand and Jessica reluctantly shook it. It wasn’t that she was trying to be rude, as she just didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  Jodie nodded toward the playground. “Dylan and Mary, right?”

  “Mary Beth,” Jessica corrected.

  “Right,” Jodie said. “Yours?”

  Jessica shook her head.

  “Gotcha. Someone else in your group, then?”

  “Orphans.”

  “Oh, I see,” Jodie said. She apparently sensed Jessica’s lack of willingness to elaborate, so she didn’t pry any further. She just pointed to a red-headed boy who was standing at the top of the jungle gym with Dylan. “That’s my boy, Hayden. He seems to be getting along pretty well with Dylan.”

  “It’s nice to see. I just want them to be happy.”

  “Same here,” Jodie said. She sighed and added, “I feel fortunate that my little boy still has his daddy. His name’s Anthony. He’s out working on the fence right now. There’s other kids around here who’ve lost one of their parents. One little girl, bless her heart, she lost both her parents.”

  Jessica looked away from the woman. Though she wasn’t a little girl, Jessica had lost both her parents, and the conversation had pushed her to flash back to the image forever burned into her mind—that of her parents lying in their bed, dead. Of the blood and of the guns lying next to them. She put her fist to her mouth and choked back tears.

  “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?” Jodie asked.

  Jessica could feel her own eyes filling. She swiped her bangs in front of her face and then looked to the woman.

  “Do you mind keeping an eye on Dylan and Mary Beth for a minute?”

  “Sure,” Jodie said, a frown showing her concern.

  Jessica stood and walked through the sliding glass door into the house. Two more people she hadn’t talked to were mingling in the kitchen, each drinking a glass of water, and Jessica moved quickly past them, ignoring their quizzical gazes. She found a half-bathroom under the stairs and shut herself inside. As soon as she locked the door behind her, she let loose. Sitting down on the toilet, she allowed herself to cry. There had been so few opportunities for her to just let everything out. At the school, she’d had to stay strong for Claire. Other times, she was around the children, and didn’t want to make them more scared than they already were. This was one of the first times she had been alone since before the events at the school.

  After several minutes, she stood and looked at herself in the mirror. Tears had formed trails through the dirt on her face. She hardly recognized herself. She had lost several pounds off of her already gaunt frame over the past couple of weeks. Food had already been scarce, but then at the prison they had hardly fed her. Much of the weight had come out of her face and arms, the bone structure of her cheeks more defined now, and her wrists gaunt.

  “Who are you?” she said to her reflection.

  A soft knock came at the door, pulling Jessica’s attention away from the mirror.

  “Ms. Jessica, are you all right?” The voice was Mary Beth’s.

  Jessica wiped her eyes with the collar of her shirt, seeing just how dirty she was as grime rubbed away with the tears. She drew in a deep breath and opened the door.

  The young girl stood there, frowning as she stared up at Jessica. Jessica forced a smile, not wanting the child worrying about her.

  “I’m fine, sweetie. I just had something in my eye and had to run to the restroom.”

  If the girl knew she was lying, she didn’t say so or show it. And before she could, Jessica reached out and grabbed her by the hand.

  “Come on. Let’s go back outside so you can play.”

  Chapter 2

  He sat next to the bed holding her hand. Candles illuminated the room, and the blinds had remained drawn to keep out the sun’s light so she could sleep. Several times, Will had dozed off in the chair, but only for a few minutes at a time. He’d wake thinking her hand had moved, but each time it had only been an illusion.

  Holly had been conscious for about an hour in the time since Timothy had put her under a light anesthetic to remove the bullet from her shoulder, but now she’d lost her battle with exhaustion and had been sleeping all day. Timothy had encouraged Will to go into another room to get his own rest, but he’d vowed to be there for her when she woke. It might have just been a bullet wound to her right shoulder, but it hurt him to see her in pain. And as was his nature, he wished the bullet had hit him, not her.

  Every time he closed his eyes, he thought of Holly's face after she’d been shot, or Dylan’s after the Empty had attacked him. The scream Dylan had let out after the sudden field amputation of his arm echoed in Will’s head over and over. It had become impossible for
him to find peace and try to sleep, even though he knew rest would be crucial before the group headed out to find Gabriel’s family. Finding another safe place with a bed was no guarantee.

  A knock at the door pulled Will’s droopy eyes away from Holly, though his sweaty grip on her hand remained.

  Timothy entered the room, slowly opening the door so as not to startle Will or wake Holly. He closed the door behind him just as carefully, turning the handle so the lock didn’t click.

  “How’s she doing?” Timothy asked.

  “Still hasn’t woken up,” Will said. He forced a light chuckle and said, “Either you gave her more anesthetic than you thought, or she’s just that damn exhausted.”

  The doctor smiled. "I’d say she’s just really tired. And I don’t think she’s the only one. Your friend Gabriel hasn’t left his room since he got here.”

  Will shook his head. “He isn’t tired. He’s just anxious to find his family. Believe me when I say this: it’s better that he’s in his room. I don’t think any of us want him to be around right now. How are the survivors we brought back from the school?”

  “Doing well for the most part. The biggest issue we’re facing is most of them are dehydrated and malnourished. That’ll just take some time.”

  “Glad to hear they’re doing all right.”

  Timothy nodded, then looked down to the ground. After a moment, he looked up again. “And how are you doing?”

  “Just frustrated,” Will said, looking back at Holly and gripping her hand tighter. “It should be me laying on that bed, not her.”

  “I know it’s easy to tell yourself that, Will. You and your group—y’all have been through a lot. But you can’t blame yourself for the things that have happened.”