by Byrd, Daniel
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Quote
Prologue - New Player
Chapter One - We Didn’t Listen
Chapter Two - Getting By
Chapter Three - Back to the Front
Chapter Four - Puzzles of the Past
Chapter Five - If it Didn't Work the First Time...
Chapter Six - Falling Down
Chapter Seven - Sanity Saving Throw
Chapter Eight - Vendetta
Chapter Nine - Grave Robbers
Chapter Ten - Where a Kingdom Fell
Chapter Eleven - From Embers
Chapter Twelve - No Idea
Chapter Thirteen - Avenge with Darkness
Chapter Fourteen - The Little Things
Chapter Fifteen - Turnover
Chapter Sixteen - The Wolf and the Fox
Chapter Seventeen - From the Depths of Hell
Chapter Eighteen - Utter Chaos
Chapter Nineteen - As the Dust Settles
Chapter Twenty - Welcome Home
Chapter Twenty-One - Regroup
Chapter Twenty-Two - Rethink
Chapter Twenty-Three - Biting the Hand
Chapter Twenty-Four - Einmarsch
Chapter Twenty-Five - The Devil in the Details
Epilogue - Resolutions
World to Come
Daniel Byrd
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 Daniel Byrd
All rights reserved.
To the people who let me bounce ideas off of them, I'd like to thank you all. The rants were long, and the patience you all showed longer. I’d also like to take a different path and thank those who made things hard. I hope this shows it was worth it.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank the people who have kept up with me, and the way they've made me feel. Writing is what I love, and it's what I want to continue to do. Without further ado, I present the fruits of my last few years of labor. Enjoy.
“Y’know, dying is just a way of rebelling against life anyway.” - Woolie Madden
Prologue - New Player
Fanipol is a city in the Minks Region of Belarus that is home to factories that produce gravel, poultry and eggs, medical devices, and industrious mechanical parts for the local economy. It has three schools and a library for aspiring students, and a railway station on the Brest-Moscow railroad that makes it an important economical city. It also has the undead, but that's a rather new addition, and not much of a benefit to the local economy.
Roman Serebrov stood atop the roof of a poultry factory as the sun crowned over the distant buildings, signaling the long-awaited morning after the past three hours of what could only be described by him as a nightmare come true. Cliché, but the only other fitting description Roman could think of involved the stories he had been told about the days of Stalin's reign, and none of those included the dead walking…at least not anything that had been told. Bodies were illuminated by dim lights in the streets below that the sunlight didn't quite touch upon yet, and not all were inanimate. Many of the corpses were in fact walking amongst the others, or feeding on the ones that had yet to reanimate. Roman clutched his empty Mosin Nagant firmly and took a step back when he realized his boots were beginning to get soaked in the blood flowing out of the body next to him beside the ledge. After having witnessed the mysterious man now dead at his feet release a dozen of those creatures out of the back of a delivery truck an hour before, Roman had taken it upon himself to apprehend, question, and kill the individual. Unfortunately, things don't always go as planned, and only step three was accomplished. Roman had gone back inside of his apartment and gathered his hidden cache of weapons to combat the infected population as well as take down the perpetrator, and that gave the mysterious person plenty of time to put some distance between them. He figured that the man would have gotten away, but luck was on Roman's side, and after giving chase through most of the city in the midst of the chaos he cornered the mysterious individual on this rooftop by following his trail of chaos, marked by screams of anguish and decayed corpses that must've come from somewhere else. The man was prepared to jump before Roman put him down with a few well-placed shots from his Makarov. Either way, the fiend took some secrets to his grave. It is a shame.
What really surprised him was the discovery of a notebook on the man's person. Luckily for Roman, the blood hadn't ruined most of the pages inside. He understood enough German to get by with most of the natives of that country, but the text appeared to be coded. He tucked the rifle under his shoulder as he turned the book over in his hands again and again while flipping through pages. Code wasn't his strong-suit, but Roman knew a man who could decrypt what had not been ruined by the man's staining life force. Any information pertaining to the undead and the people responsible for this incident would prove beneficial. The only words he understood as a comprehensive phrase were the words "Welt zu Kommen" on the first page. He'd never heard of it before, but a clue was a clue.
Roman had been paying close attention to the news ever since the downfall of America. Many wanted to shun the idea that something like that would ever happen in this hemisphere, but here it was. Then again, most would like to believe that this entire event never would have happened. Roman was just happy that he managed to down many of them from a distance with one body to one bullet spent. At least I was somewhat prepared.
Of course, there were those who had sense, and warned of the arrival of the virus in Europe, but no one had predicted it would be this soon. It was only a matter of time, and that time was up. He had to find a way out of town and away from civilization while he planned. Roman slung the rifle over his shoulder and left the rooftop, descending the stairs to the first floor of the building. His only chance to leave was now, while the undead were still low in numbers. In a city where the population was somewhere over 13,000, he didn't want to stick around and find out what kind of sight that would be if the majority became lifeless flesh-eaters. He reached the bottom floor with no problems, and there was no sign of the infected in the building. After making sure he had a full magazine loaded into the Makarov, he kept it ready in his right hand and crept past the first-floor windows of the factory, staying alert of his surroundings as he darted across the street for the safety of a small garage. If he was lucky enough, there'd be a vehicle inside he could procure to skip town before it became even more dangerous. As he reached the front door to the lobby of the garage he heard shouting from inside. Gun ready, he yanked the handle with his left hand and pushed the door open, keeping the gun extended in his right as he entered the small room. Only the faint rays of twilight lit the room, but it was enough for Roman to see the two figures crouched over a man gasping for air on the floor. One turned its attention to Roman after he had swung the door open. He didn't recognize the man, but he recognized the characteristics of the undead that plagued this individual. He didn't appear as if he'd been dead long, as there was still color to his skin, and the only abnormal thing about him minus the cannibalism was a tear in his long-sleeved shirt above the left shoulder with a bit of meat hanging out of it. The undead man snarled and rose to his feet while the other continued to feed on the floored victim's entrails. Roman aimed for the thing's head and waited. As it took its first step towards him, Roman squeezed the trigger and put a 9mm bullet between its eyes. The second one couldn't ignore the sound, and dropped the intestines in its hands to stand and face the intruder. Roman grunted in disgust
before walking up to the creature and shooting it in the head as well before it could bring itself upright. It fell against the counter and knocked off a few tools that went clanging to the floor. This one was gray in color, and had signs of deterioration. Roman assumed it was one of the original individuals released from the truck to initiate the conflict. He kept the gun trained on the man wheezing and dying on the floor as he knelt down beside him. He recognized the owner of the garage, old Nikolai, even if he was missing a part of his cheek. In agony, Nikolai reached a bloody hand out and grabbed Roman by the arm. He was fighting to breathe as his mouth filled with blood, but Roman already knew what he wanted.
"Please…it hurts…do it!"
Roman only nodded. There was no more hesitation as he pointed the gun at Nikolai's head and ended his life. It wasn't the first life he'd taken. With not a second to lose, he hurried away from the scene and entered the repair shop. Lady Fortune was on his side as he realized that the only vehicle that appeared to be in working condition in the shop was an old milk truck. It would have to do. The keys were still in the ignition, and the door was unlocked. Roman climbed into the cabin and set his rifle in the passenger seat before attempting to start the engine. The starter worked fine, but something wasn't quite right as the engine turned over a few times. He grunted as it appeared that his luck had run out, but eventually the engine sprang to life and roared as he pressed the accelerator repeatedly, testing the power of the truck. Since the electricity was out, the garage door wouldn't open without manual effort. Roman was willing to do that, and put the truck in gear before putting his foot down.
The three infected individuals standing on the other side never saw it coming. They had just gathered near the door to investigate the source of noise when it burst outward. The milk truck pushed the sheet of metal into the undead and flattened them beneath it as the truck rolled over the door and headed south. The virus probably hadn't spread as fast as the perpetrator had planned, but Roman knew he couldn't stop it. There were too many unknown variables for him to even try. His top priority was to reach his mentor and friend, Mikhail Guskov, just north of Warsaw. It was safe to assume that Mikhail had many sneaks all throughout the U.S. during the time of the initial outbreak there, so he probably had a better idea as to what Europe and the rest of the world would be up against. Mikhail could probably help him break the code in the notebook too; he was at one point a senior KGB Operative who was never daunted by anything.
As he continued south, a woman came running out from a nearby structure, waving her arms about and screaming for help, her white sweater damp with blood. Roman didn't even slow down as he blew right past her. His eyes anxiously glanced from the road ahead to the mirror on his right. His stare became fixated on the mirror as he witnessed the woman being tackled to the ground by a very large man. It was hard to tell from the distance he was putting between them, but Roman could only guess that the man was now feeding upon her body. Regretting having looked back, he shuddered as he shifted his attention back to the road, uttering a prayer for the souls still inside of the city. Just because he was fixated on surviving and getting the the notebook to his mentor didn't mean he didn't have some sense of remorse for those who couldn't escape the hands of death. Unfortunately, in his life he'd been taught that everything came down to survival of the fittest. Roman Serebrov would survive, because he was a fighter. For anyone else in his way, tough luck. He wasn't quite on the mindset of kill or be killed, but that would settle in with the general populace in due time. Until then he had to be ready for the dark days ahead.
Chapter One - We Didn’t Listen
The most powerful man in the country cleared his throat as he tugged on his collar, throat dry and stomach knotted in nervous anxiety. No one ever said this would be easy, but then again no one ever said this would be so hard. Before him, many great men had to address matters so sensitive that they could threaten to tear apart the populace in separate opinions. From September 11th to the idea of revolting against the tyranny of the British, every time of crisis needed proper words to coax the naysayers. Swallowing his feelings of paranoia, he began.
"My fellow Americans, our home is in an unprecedented time of crisis. We have overcome many challenges since the founding of this great nation, but nothing has tested us as much as this plague on our land. I'd like to tell you that…no, that's too morbid. Dammit!"
Yet another crumpled piece of paper was added to the heap in the bin next to the desk. Trying to develop an adequate means to address the past three months of hell in the United States was beyond the man who was used to having others write his speeches, but that wasn't an option right now since his usual writer was probably dead, and finding another to replace him wasn't top priority. Besides that, every resource was being poured into the important things, such as the defenses of the two Safe Havens that each housed what was left of the population of the country. A zombie invasion coupled with a dozen or so nukes tend to kill off a lot of people, after all.
Yet not one damn person could help the President of the United States come up with a way to give an emergency State of the Union address that wouldn't seem so bleak. Considering the apocalyptic wasteland around them, that was too much to ask for anyway, but nothing he had written in the past three hours even came close to comforting his own thoughts. Sure, it was all about lying to keep everyone calm, but what calm was to be had? With the nation in ruins, the dead walking, and the very virus that had caused it all potentially harbored in every other part of the globe, calm was the very last state of being that Reginald Loft could even dream of feeling. They always say that a president's hair goes gray during their time in the office, but when Loft had awoken that morning and looked at himself in the mirror, he didn't even see the man from four years ago underneath the stress wrinkles and white hair. That promising young Washington State Senator was the man who had pushed for the military to sponsor a project to create a psychological weapon against the enemies in the Middle East; the brainchild of a chemist known throughout the scientific community as "The Demon of Chemistry." Loft only ever referred to the man by his given name, Dr. Frank Tuefel, the man who had brought this nation to its knees. Though that was the accurate truth, Loft couldn't help but feel the weight of guilt on his shoulders as he reached for another sheet of paper to write on. Everyone makes mistakes, some more so than others, and some of those mistakes quite larger than others. For President Loft, his mistake resided in the past like most men. Try as he might, he couldn't erase the fact that during the time he was still that young senator of the state of Washington, he was the one who had secured the funding to start the illegal Project Second Fall among other works at the Emmerich Research Facility, commissioned to be built by him. His pen began to trace the same first few lines for his speech, but the thoughts gripped his mind and he was forced to relinquish the instrument.
"Six years later and that bastard took our dream and crushed our very vision with it," he muttered, tapping his fingers on the desk next to the paper. He then snatched the paper up and ripped it in half before tossing the pieces aside. “Damn you, Tuefel."
This wasn't how Loft wanted to spend his Christmas Day, but there was no vacationing when many of the places he'd like to visit were probably irradiated from the bombing campaign months ago if not swarming with the undead. For three months he'd woken up praying that this was all a nightmare, only to discover he wasn't at the White House, and that the country he was in charge of was indeed in peril. The fun part was that he was not allowed to surrender his position, as there was no election in the face of this disaster, and giving up now would only further destroy what morale might still exist in the country, so he was in it for the long run. There was no president before him ready to give up their four years like he was at this moment, but now his term was indefinite thanks to a decision by Congress, and there was no point in giving up his position anyway at the moment when so many looked to him for guidance. In truth, he had more faith in the Secretary of Defense and the man
he'd appointed General of the Army during the beginning of the crisis than his own abilities. At the moment, both of those men were preparing in their own quarters for a meeting at the University of Washington that was only a few miles away, and here he was feeling so useless he couldn't even write a damn statement. He hadn't even prepped himself for the meeting in just a few hours. This would be the first official meeting since the establishment of the Havens between the President and the top brass, and to say he wasn't looking forward to it was an understatement. Loft had known of the dangers this plague posed, but he was the one who had swept it all under the rug three years ago after Project Preservation had started. After all, it was his idea that kept the members of Project Second Fall out of prison, and it was Tuefel's word that kept Loft content that he wouldn't regret helping them. Of course now he saw that a promise from a demon meant nothing. His priority now was to ensure that no one knew of his connections with the project, but that was easier said than done when one of those connections still lived. Dr. Evan Hamilton was still alive and well, unfortunately for Loft's reputation. Loft knew that being resentful towards the doctor's current status was rather selfish considering the fact that the insane individual was the only weapon the remnants of the U.S. had against the undead menace.
"Yet I'd trade that man for one of the others who wasn't Tuefel," Loft muttered. The question now was how to utilize Hamilton in a manner that didn't allow him to discern Loft's role in the project five years ago. In truth, the doctor didn't know everything about Loft, but Loft didn't know what Tuefel had told him three months ago at the Emmerich Research Facility. The bastard could have divulged everything to Hamilton, and now the lunatic had a weapon he was sitting on, waiting to unleash it when he needed an advantage. They couldn't afford to have the doctor killed, despite the overall hatred directed at the man, let alone the countless who would want his head for being involved in the mess that created this hell. It was a conundrum, but Loft was confident in the idea he'd shared with some of the military brass the day before. It was a long shot, but it was the only way he could guarantee the safety of what was left of the country, as well as his own. Hamilton was a wild card. He laughed to himself at the thought. Frank Tuefel had always told him that he hated wild cards, ever since Loft revealed the source of the funding to him. Fortunately for them both, that card was part of a fold, but now it seemed as if a new player held the cards for the project to have been completed, and because of that, Loft was not safe. Not as long as Hamilton lived.
