by Chris Lowry
ACCLAIM for the BATTLEFIELD Z SERIES
More Books from the BATTLEFIELD Z SERIES
Battlefield Z
Children's Brigade
Sweet Home Zombie
Zombie Blues Highway
Mardi Gras Zombie
Bluegrass Zombie
Outcast Zombie
Renegade Zombie
Everglade Zombie
Flyover Zombie - the Battlefield Z series
Headshots - the Battlefield Z series
Overland Zombie
Battlefield Z – Gone Dark
Battlefield Z – Silent Run
Battlefield Z – No Entry
TITLE PAGE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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OVERLAND
SHARP
“We’re low on ammo,” Javier pulled Sharp to one side and spoke low into his shoulder.
The Captain nodded and slapped his second in command on the shoulder.
“We’ll make do,” he said.
Seamus Sharp watched Javier move back to the small group gathered by the gates. Javi looked tired. They all did.
Less than twenty four hours on the ground and the parameters of the mission scope had changed.
A rescue mission launched for a single female had turned into a cross country run with a thousand survivors. Maybe more.
Captain Sharp took a deep breath through his nose and let it out again in a long deep sigh.
“That bad?” Pam Ballentine asked from beside him.
He turned to regard the top of her head. She was tall and thin, long hair pulled into a dirty ponytail and tucked under rumpled clothes that looked borrowed. Her own fashion designer threads had probably been damaged in the plane crash that left her stranded in the middle of Kansas, he thought.
She plucked at the collar of her shirt and sniffed.
“Do I offend?” she smirked.
Sharp returned a tight grin.
“It’s just my face,” he said. “I have a resting bitch face.”
Pam nodded.
“My dad calls that a stone face. Hard to negotiate or play poker with those kinds of guys.”
“I don’t play,” Sharp answered.
The mention of her father made him wonder about their timeline. Her Dad, Roger Ballentine was the Chairman of the Council. Capital C on both.
He was the powerful figure who was responsible for what was left of humanity after a zombie plague swept the nation. His fast action and stubborn tenacity built a wall along the mountain ranges on the east and west coast, blocking off the middle of America and containing most of the damage to the interior.
“We’re ready,” Javi called out.
“I’ve been in a foxhole made from the dead,” Sharp told Pam as he marched over to join his men. “It’s gonna take a little more than feminine sweat to make me think stink.”
Pam batted her eyes.
“Why Captain, I do believe you’ll make me blush.”
He realized she was kidding by the grin she wore, but it took him almost two seconds to do it. Then he smiled for real and she liked the way it made his eyes crinkle.
“Listen up,” Sharp addressed the group. “We’ve got a mission and a plan and we’re going to work together to execute.”
He found the man named Turner on the edge of the group and motioned to him.
“This man worked at a factory not far from here.”
He was pleased to see Turner didn’t blush and didn’t shy away from the public inspection his men gave him. The top of his bald head blushed crimson, but that was the only outward display he made besides a small wave of his hand.
“It was a bus factory,” said Sharp. “We have reason to believe there are buses there and we’re going to go get them.”
He pointed to the twelve civilians Jacob had corralled into the group, including Jess and Chip, who he had worked with before when they needed to establish a communication link with home base.
“You are driving those buses back here,” he moved his finger to the surviving members of his squad. “We’re going to keep you safe.”
Jess raised one of the arms crossed over her chest.
“This isn’t class, Miss,” said Sharp.
“I can’t help but notice there are more of us than there are of you,” she said.
“It’s not a one to one ratio,” Sharp nodded.
“So shouldn’t we get weapons?”
The other civilians nodded and muttered.
Sharp shook his head.
“You’re not trained,” he said.
“So,” Jess countered. “You weren’t trained to kill zombies, but here we are.”
She held up both hands as if to indicate the strange world they found themselves in. Sharp didn’t have a good counter argument in his head. He cut it off instead.
“Answer is no,” he turned away. “Move ‘em out.”
He made a small circling motion with his hand and indicated the gate.
SHARP
Outside was quiet. The way he liked it. Sharp eased through the gate last and made sure the guards locked it behind them. There were too many still inside that would want to open the gate and express their love to the zombie population currently occupying the territory around them.
Not on his watch. Not if he could help it.
He wasn’t glad to be out of the barricade though. He kept his head on a swivel as they moved up the street and in the direction Turner had indicated in stealth mode.
Rifle at the ready, stock snugged to shoulder, both eyes open, moving at a shuffle jog that maximized forward motion and still kept sound low.
The rest of his squad was moving the same way, a stark contrast to the civilians paired up with them.
He was glad he didn’t arm them. Even the way they moved bugged him on an instinctual level. Their arms too wide, their steps too noisy.
Sharp almost hissed out a warning and bit it back. At least they were trying. Trying to be quiet, trying to keep up.
Some of the people back at the compound weren’t even up to cooperating. That meant Pam Ballentine had the short end of the stick. She got to stay behind and debate.
“Talk’s cheap,” Sharp muttered as they rounded a cor
ner after Javi motioned the path was clear.
They still had a long way to go, and he wanted them on a tight timetable. A cross country drive was going to take at least five days, probably longer since they had zero intel on the terrain between here and the Wall on the West Coast.
The sooner they started, the sooner they could be done.
Not safe though. He didn’t think they would ever be safe again. The Z virus saw to that.
“Shit,” he saw Javi stiffened and cursed more under his breath. Thinking about the walking dead must have conjured them.
“Don’t move,” Sharp heard the harsh whisper and froze next to the edge of the building.
He could see chipped peeling paint from the whitewashed siding flutter in the breeze, and wondered for a moment if it was carrying their scent to the Z up the street.
He shook his head. The truth was, no one knew how the Z tracked. It could be movement. They certainly seemed attracted to it. Even a plastic bag caught in the wind, dancing across a city street would draw their attention and draw them away.
It could be sound. They always showed up when the shooting started. Herding together, shuffling. Moaning.
But he didn’t know about smell. Didn’t think anyone in his small group would know the answer either.
“Z,” he asked.
The man in front of him nodded. Sharp wished for one of those floating plastic bags.
He settled for a question.
“Backtrack?” he kept his voice low, just above a breath in case sound carried.
The man motioned his hand and held out a finger. One moment. Then he slipped around the corner of the building before Sharp could stop him.
“Damn it, Javi,” he muttered and readied his weapon.
He heard a something solid thump and rustle to the ground, and swung around the corner, weapon hot and ready to spray hell.
He didn’t need to. Javi kneeled next to a rotting corpse and wiped black blood of the sharp blade of his K-bar.
“Clear,” he said, voice still low, but loud enough to carry back to the Captain.
Sharp grunted and nodded his head to tell the others to keep up.
DAD
“I thought I said don’t stop til we hit water,” I opened my eyes from the second seat and glanced through the windshield.
“Tell that to them,” Brian answered.
His hands gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles were white. Peg sat on the seat next to him, her eyes locked on the road ahead.
We were on a two lane blacktop cutting through the Florida peninsula on our way to the Gulf Coast. The road slipped across the edge of what once was a national forest, scrub pine mixed with smaller oaks running all the way to a shallow ditch on the other side of the asphalt.
It had been my idea to take Hwy 44 because I knew it from days past, from pre-Z. Ocala was up ahead, but there were several points where we could turn north to stick to less populated areas as we chased a sunset.
I leaned up between them and glared.
“Damn it.”
We had encountered our first militia in Florida during what seemed like a lifetime ago. They had killed several members of our group and created an enemy I still had bad dreams about.
“They’re not pointing guns at us,” Peg breathed out of the side of her mouth.
“Not yet,” said Brian.
There were six of them spread across the road.
They looked homeless. Technically, I guess we all were. It was hard to maintain an abode with hearth and threshold when the Z were knocking harder and faster than a satellite salesman trying to make quota.
Lucky for us, there were no more door to door salesmen. No satellites, though I bet there were still up there waiting for a beep and an order to transmit.
Not too many doors left either.
But there were survivors. Like us. My group. My family. The three kids I crossed half the country to find and keep safe. The people I picked up along the way, hooked up with and turned into family.
And these six yahoos holding baseball bats and machetes in a very menacing manner they learned from watching too many movies.
“I can run them down,” Peg said out of the side of her mouth.
I leaned forward next to her, staring through the front windshield and aware as hell of the kind of target I was making.
“I think this won't end well for you," I said.
He laughed. I could blame him. I might laugh too. I'm not much to look at. Just a few hairs taller than average, too skinny thanks to the Z diet. No big hulking menace that towered like a Goliath standing before them.
The eyes may have given them pause. I can stare with the best of them, and since the world ended, I've gotten better at it. And the scars. I had a few.
Some on the outside where they could see. Scratches and lines, dings and dents, like some old alley cat blinking at them in the sun. Some scars on the inside that probably showed through the eyes when I stared.
He swallowed. The guy to his left shifted away. Not much more than a lean, but easy to see, easy to note. It put more distance between him and the target, gave him a head start for if things went sideways.
When things went sideways.
"We're starving," said the man in the middle. "You've got food. You can share."
“Can’t help you brother,” I answered.
He looked little more than a kid, no older than Bem or Tyler, though the smudge of dirt and gray skin from too much time spent over a wood fire did a good job of disguising his age. He was young. That much I could tell.
“Please,” said the bundle of clothing on the left.
Slender hands reached up and pushed back the hood of a sweatshirt. She must have been really hungry or really dumb because wearing a hood in a zombie filled environment was an invitation to get bit.
Hoodies were all the rage for a few years, but I never quite figured out why. From a predator’s perspective, it made the sheep stand out by cutting off most of their peripheral vision and limiting their vision to what was in front of them.
Now I could understand if it was a cold environment, but this was middle of the peninsula Florida. Hot. Muggy. Wet.
A hood meant she had something to hide.
“Keep your hands where I can see them, Robin Hood,” I said and shifted the rifle in my hand.
“Dad,” Bis called from the middle of the group.
I didn’t look as she moved through the pack toward where I was standing. I wanted to tell her to stay back, to stand still, in case she drew attention to herself from a hidden sniper in the trees.
But I was afraid if I spoke to her that would make her a target too. And I didn’t want to take my eyes off the sextet across the road.
Especially the curly haired kid with the anime eyes, watching us and licking his lips.
“Steve? Em?” Bis said as she stepped past me.
“Holy crap!” screamed the curly haired kid. He took a shuffle step forward and broke into a run, straight at my youngest daughter.
I jumped between them, raised the rifle to bounce the butt of his chin. Bis screamed, the now hoodless girl screamed, and the man boy who asked us for food tackled curls from behind.
“Hold on!” he shouted.
His eyes watched me, both of his hands held up in surrender.
“Please sir, hang on.”
Bis slipped around me again, and met the other girl half way. They wrapped their arms around each other. Robin Hood fell into sobs, and I heard more emotion from Bis than I had in weeks.
The two boys on the ground watched the reunion, afraid to join in because of me, I bet. Or my gun.
At least they both plopped their makeshift weapons on the ground while they waited.
“We know them?” the Boy called out to Bis.
She raised a fist and gave him a thumbs up.
“They’re okay, Dad,” he said.
And just like that, we had six more in our group.
CHEN
They heard h
im screaming and left him there. He didn’t blame them. Hell, he would have done the same thing.
The Z overran his position.
That was the only way to describe it.
