Vaughn worked in the cargo hold, stripping panels that lead to power conduits and reconnecting old circuits. “How many can I run based on our current generation capabilities, without disabling any of the modifications?”
“I was originally designed to host a compliment of seventy five guns. Pushing the current generators to one hundred ten percent would allow for seventeen.”
A week after Matty was stung by the shrolg, the ship’s computer woke Vaughn from his nap in his seat in the galley. Her soft, silky voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “Sir, we are nearing Vaughnville.”
Vaughn sat up in his berth and scrubbed his fingers through his long, dirty hair before wiping the sleep from the inside corners of his eyes. The transport captain cleared his voice and spoke out loud, “Halle, drop us out of the fold. I’ll come up and pilot the approach. Vaughnville? Really?”
“You’ve lived there for fifteen years, Captain. It needs a name.”
“I know. But Vaughnland? You make me out to be quite the egotist.”
“Perhaps something historic then? The name of the earliest Earth settlement in my memory is Sharonton. There was also an earth city called Duluth, and one called Red River Falls. Queen Willa the Great was from Red River Falls.”
“I remember history classes, Halle. Sharonton? I like it. How about New Sharonton?”
Instinctively, Vaughn reached out and grabbed the railing high along the wall. The entire ship shuddered as Halle unfolded space around the bubble containing the ship.
“Argimonium levels at eighty percent. Approaching New Sharonton at one quarter light.”
“Slow us to approach speed. How is the field looking?” He asked, letting go of the railing and swinging his legs off his seat and into his boots on the steel flooring. Every floor of the ship was metal. If the gravity generators failed, he could slip magnetic soles into his boots and still be able to maneuver around the ship.
“Magnetic field strength around New Sharonton is forty one percent above operational parameters. Full systems shutdown will be required during ionosphere re-entry.” That magnetic field was the reason Vaughn Troupe had chosen this particular moon to call home. It kept the E’Clei sensors from detecting the argimonium fields on the moon, and that kept his family safe. The field was caused by the gravitational interplay between the iron core of the moon Vaughn called “home” and the massive gas giant it revolved around.
When the system’s sun and his moon’s gas giant were in alignment, the tidal swell was enough to bring the ocean to his doorstep. At low tide, the ocean was almost forty miles away across a massive salt flat.
Vaughn sat down in the captain’s chair and punched a series of buttons on the arm rest. Three virtual screens appeared in the air in front of him. The far left showed the optimal approach path and his ship’s trajectory. The far right was the tactical screen, weapons systems and sensors. The middle screen had his focus at the moment, it was the flight controls. He adjusted speed and attitude, pitched over and started the descent.
“Halle, full shutdown. All controls to manual.”
“Yes Sir. Have a safe landing, Vaughn.”
“Thanks, Halle. Have a nice nap.”
Seconds later, the projections disappeared and the cover of the dash rolled back to reveal a large ball and dozens of buttons and levers. He put one hand on top of the sphere, and rolled it back and forth. Thrusters fired from the left and right side. He pushed the levers back and felt the drive thruster spin up. A huge ball of blue flame shot out the back of the ship, which lurched forward and nosed over towards the surface of the moon.
Manual reentry was always a thrill for Vaughn. As the air thickened outside the ship, the hull heated, causing it to expand. Tings, pops, creaks and groans sounded off all throughout the aging ship. “Come on baby, hold together for me,” he whispered.
Halle was a great ship. Just after the Battle of Bruth, Vaughn had found her floating in space, lifeless, not a soul aboard. He ordered her dragged into his cargo bay of his independence class warship, and there she sat, waiting. He spent most of his off time working on her.
This ship had started its life as a short range intra-stellar fighter for the Fogerian Empire, but Vaughn had other plans for a second life. He installed her AI, renamed her Halle, and every hour he wasn’t on the bridge, he spent inside Halle dreaming of the life he’d have afterward. A second life for both Vaughn and Halle, exploring deep space with his wife and the son he hadn’t yet met in person.
Folding space required a massive amount of computing power. Without the exact calculation, a ship could end up millions of light years from its target destination. Even with the most up to date star charts in the Fogerian Empire, a captain who was a million light years off course could spend months or even years trying to figure out where they were and which way they should go.
Throughout the war Vaughn requisitioned computer parts as replacements or spares for his battle ship, The Reetus. High Command didn’t complain about the extra parts, they considered them an investment. All the improvements Vaughn made to his battleship’s navigational computers benefitted the entire fleet. He never told them that he used all of those improvements in Halle’s core, let alone that she was the reason he was ordering all those parts.
As far as his superiors knew, he blew out a processor testing improvements to his own ship. Halle could compute coordinates in a fraction of a second that took the E’Clei an hour to compile. She was designed to function in deep space; Vaughn wanted to expand The Empire’s star charts. He wanted to find a sector of space where there were no E’Clei. No threat of the microscopic parasites invading his brain, killing everything that made him unique and wearing his corpse like a suit.
Sitting in the completely redesigned cockpit of his ship, Vaughn pushed the throttle and rolled the thruster control sphere forward. He reached up and hit several buttons on the ceiling, causing the ship to roll again until Vaughn was facing straight up in the captain’s chair. Another button activated the Cockpit Angle Servos. A regular Interceptor class ship was a long, skinny tube, pointed at one end with four massive engines at the other. Interceptors were capable of landing on the surface, the housing around the four massive engines served as landing gear, but the vehicle was primarily designed to stay in space. Halle was built to dock with a larger ship or space station; the crew would then take a shuttle to the surface. In her previous life, she was a space faring war-bird, but now she’d been repurposed for long-range exploration. Vaughn wanted to be able to live in the ship while she was on the surface of a planet.
Vaughn fired the landing thrusters, slowing the ship through the upper atmosphere, before reaching up to the ceiling once again to restart Halle.
“Nicely done, Captain. Shall I take over?”
“Take me home, Halle,” Vaughn said, unbuckling his harness. He walked down the hall toward the cargo hold where he had a month’s worth of supplies strapped down and waited until the ship touched down to open the door. He bounded out of the ship and crossed the hundred meter landing pad in three steps. The half gravity of his home was familiar to him. These days he was much more graceful than when he’d first arrived, although back then, he’d only had one leg.
The surface of New Sharonton was something of a kaleidoscope. The land shifted with the tides twice a day. Often, entire hills would move several meters. There was almost no vegetation on this part of the planet but on the opposite side, there were massive rainforests with trees over a thousand meters tall. They were so tall that the tops peeked above the ever-present clouds. The purple leaves gathered sun while the lower leaves soaked up moisture and released oxygen.
Vaughn looked out across the sandy planes. The sky was blue between the clouds, which created massive shadows rolling across the salt-flat to the south. His house was built just on the far side of the dunes at the edge of the massive salty desert. Twice a day, ocean water covered the desert in water, and for an hour or so at high tide, Vaughn had an oceanfront home.
At the edge of the landing pad, he expected his son Matt to be waiting for him. Matt always greeted Vaughn when he returned. Sarah sometimes came, but his son never missed a trip.
“Halle,” Vaughn said aloud, the chip in his ear connecting him with his ship. “Scan the area. Where’s Matt?”
“Sir, there are no life-signs in the immediate area. Perhaps he’s gone hunting again?”
“Where’s Sarah? Widen the search.”
“Ionospheric interference is keeping me from accessing my satellites, Vaughn. Would you like me to launch probes?”
Something wasn’t right. He was home right on time. They should be here. “Not just yet, Halle,” he said, leaping towards his home. He bounded up a large hill in one push off his artificial leg and tripped over a body in a white robe.
Now panicked, he rolled to his feet and jumped again and again towards his home, over hundreds of bodies. They all looked the same.
“Halle,” he started, out of breath in the thin atmosphere. “Dead, bald men in white robes. Gold “M” on their foreheads. Who are they?”
“Searching, Vaughn.” Seconds passed as he neared his home. “Their description matches those of Maxist priests. An ancient religion, The Maxists believe that a boy named Max was a god sent to Earth in the earth year 2010 to save Humanity from the E’Clei. The religion believes that Max will return and provide a safe place for all of Human kind. You know the name as the consortium that controls the vast majority of the argimonium in the galaxy.”
“How many years have they been waiting?”
“Unknown. It is rumored that Max was a mutated Human immune to the E’Clei parasites, who developed special abilities from their attempted infection.”
“Why would they be here?”
“Also unknown. I could create suppositions, but there are seven million three hundred thousand six hundred forty two possible reasons there could be dead Maxists on your moon. The probability of any of them being true is nearly six billion to one. The most likely is that they were monitoring your argimonium production, although they have no history of being involved in production.”
“Just tell me you have nothing,” he said, running.
“I have nothing, Vaughn. I suggest launching the probes.”
Desperation crept into Vaughn’s voice. These Maxists all had plasma burns. He’d seen these wounds before. They were from E’Clei weapons. “Launch them. Find Matty and Sarah.”
Vaughn reached his house, a solitary circle of green in a vast desert. The grass was perfectly manicured. Plants grew up under the windows, and a single tree, planted in the front yard had a swing hanging from one of the limbs, all surrounded by a white picket fence.
The house itself was a replica of an ancient earth home. When Vaughn was a child, his parents told him stories of Earth and how the E’Clei had come dozens of times over tens of thousands of years in an attempt to take over the planet before it was destroyed in The Colcoa War. Not much information survived the war, but Vaughn’s home planet was ravaged and then destroyed by the E’Clei. Less than a thousand Humans, led by Queen Willa the Great managed to survive the destruction of the planet.
Vaughn had built this house as a tribute to his ancestors, a small outpost of Humanity in a universe where his people had no real home. The front door was knocked off its hinges. Just inside the door, Sarah was laying on her back, clutching a communications link in one hand and an ionic pulse gun in the other. “Matty! Matt! Come out! I’m home!” he shouted. There wasn’t a sound in the house as he knelt to check Sarah for a pulse. She was cold.
“Vaughn,” Halle said in his ear. “The corpses are between twelve and fourteen hours old. Sensors are expanded out twice as far as Matthew could have travelled in that time. There are no Humanoid life-signs. I will continue the search.”
“Matty!” Vaughn called, grabbing the IP gun from Sarah’s hand and placing it gently on her chest. “Matty! Where are you!” He ran through the small house, searching every room. He checked every closet, under the beds, everywhere someone could hide. There was no sign of his son.
“Captain, Matthew is not on New Sharonton. I have scanned all of the bodies. His is not here. Heat trapped in the concrete of the launch pad indicates a ship left between eight and ten hours ago.”
Feeling utterly lost, Vaughn sat down on Matt’s bed, buried his face in his hands, and wept. Sarah was dead, his son was gone. And the E’Clei were to blame for it. All of years he spent being careful and trying to stay off of the radar had been for nothing. None of it made any sense.
After several hours, Vaughn headed towards the mine, fired up the excavator and dug two holes. He dug the first right beside the house, just big enough for Sarah. The other much more massive hole was over the hill behind the house. He was sewing Sarah into her favorite sheet when Halle spoke in his ear. “Captain, I have completed an exhaustive search of the entire moon, including sub-surface scans. There is no sign of Matthew on the planet. The plasma burns on the dead Maxists indicate E’Clei involvement, although there is a twenty seven percent chance that is a ruse. Footprint analysis indicates Romjini E’Clei.”
“How quickly can you get to Romjin?” Vaughn knew the planet, although he’d never been there. Part of his duty as captain of The Reetus was to know every E’Clei stronghold, even those on the farthest side of E’Clei space.
“Forty-Seven hours, sir. The Romjini ship would take nearly sixty to make the trip.”
“Halle, you’re not outfitted for war anymore. And what if they didn’t go to Romjin?”
“It is among the least likely places they would take him, Sir, but I calculated a ninety-seven percent chance that your follow up question would be to ask the time it would take them to travel there.”
Vaughn stitched Sarah the rest of the way up, and lifted her up on to his broad shoulders. Talking to Halle and creating a plan of what to do next helped him process his emotions. Being able to take the time to put Sarah to rest allowed him to deal with his grief. As he walked, he asked, “Where did they take him?”
“Statistically, based on seven hundred eighty thousand known E’Clei tactics, they would have taken him directly to E’Clei.” Vaughn’s heart sank. The most defended planet in the known universe. No Fogerian soldier had ever gotten within two light years of E’Clei. Not even spies implanted with genetically engineered parasites had ever returned.
The Fogerians were the most advanced race in the universe, other than the E’Clei, who only needed infect a handful of people of any race to have all the knowledge of that species. The E’Clei were technologically superior and when they killed an enemy, that enemy became one of them.
The Fogerian War ended in a drawdown of hostilities. The people of Foger said it was because they had done so much damage to the bugs, but Vaughn thought differently. Vaughn knew the E’Clei would never give up; instead they just altered their priorities. There were hundreds of trillions of habitable worlds in the universe, and billions of species. The E’Clei had conquered thousands of them, but as his mother used to say, “There were other fish in the sea.”
With Sarah buried in her garden beside the house, Vaughn started loading the Maxists into the bucket of the loader and dumping them into the massive grave. He thought best when he was busy, somehow physical labor always made his brain function better.
As he filled in the dirt, the thought struck him. He ran towards the house and grabbed the communicator Sarah had been holding.
“Halle, find the frequency of this comm. Adjust for the Doppler effect of the signal bouncing off the magnetic field. Find the last signal and amplify it.”
“Calculating… I’ve found it sir. Would you like to hear it?”
“Yes!” he shouted, and then static filled his ear. Just under it he could hear the occasional note of Sarah’s voice.
“Filter out the static. Rebuild the signal based on Sarah’s speech patterns,” he commanded.
Slowly, the static disappeared out of the sound in his ear, until all that was left were a few sounds of Sarah’s voice. Just syllables and single letter sounds.
“I’ve analyzed all recordings of Sarah’s voice in my database. Applying suspected patches now. I’m afraid it doesn’t make much sense, sir.”
“Vaughn. T.. Avenue. Flat. Romain.”
“Factor in that she was under attack, and The Maxists being here. She had to have been under extreme stress,” the Captain said.
Sarah’s voice changed again in his ear. “Vaughn. They have Matt. Low eighty…” Sarah’s voice was cut off by Halle. “Sir, I cannot guess the number. From her inflection, there was more than eighty. Probability indicates she was telling you how many Humanoids had Matt.”
“Her mind didn’t work that way, Halle. Sarah isn’t a soldier. Enemy combatants wouldn’t matter to her.”
“Recalculating with additional parameters.”
Sarah’s voice again appeared in Vaughn’s ear and he had to choke back tears as she spoke. “They have Matt. Low eighty. Ours.”
“You’re a god damned genius, Halle! They’ve taken Matty to Loe. We have eighty-something hours to meet them there. Calculate the fold. Warm up the engines, we’re taking off.”
“Sir. I’m a computer, I do not have intelligence as you would categorize it.”
“Shut up and do the math,” Vaughn yelled over the noise of the loader he was riding towards his space dock. He climbed up the ramp into his ship and hit the button to close the cargo hatch. “How long?”
“Five hours, thirty four minutes.”
“Recall the probes.”
“They’re on their way back. Six minutes to planetary probe docking.”
“Organize the satellites, Halle. We’re going to pick them up too. We have less than four days and we need to make a stop on the way.” Vaughn’s boots clanked on the metal catwalk that led up to the galley.
“She won’t be happy to see you, Sir,” Halle said.
“I can’t get my son back without her,” Vaughn replied, buckling himself into the captain’s chair.
“I’ve adjusted our course. Four hours to the Foger home-world. I suggest you get some sleep once we get past the field.”
“Too much to do.” Vaughn piloted the ship through the magnetic field for the second time that day before turning Halle back on and heading towards the back of the ship.
“All six satellites are recaptured and safely stowed. Brace yourself for the fold.” Vaughn grabbed on to the railing in the cargo hold. He heard the familiar sound of the Alcubierre field generators winding up, and then the ship rattled and shook as it rocketed off down the wormhole created between the two layers of folded space-time.
If you are enjoying The Evolution of Vaughn, and would rather read on your kindle or other device with the kindle app (Or just think it’s worth the price of a cup of coffee, you can purchase the book on Amazon.
I know sci-fi isn’t the typical genre of zombie lovers, but I really love this book. I thought if I posted a few chapters, you might give sci-fi a chance 🙂 -Kirk
The Fogerian War Book 1
Vaughn, a human born on a distant planet long after earth has been destroyed, is the first of his race to be invited to the prestigious Fogerian War Institute. After glory in the Fogerian War with the parasitic E’Clei, Vaughn is raised to the rank of Captain, and given command of The Reetus for the duration of the conflict.
Long after the war, Vaughn is married and lives a simple life, mining his remote moon for a precious mineral and raising his son. He arrives home from a routine business trip to find dead members of an ancient human cult called The Maxists littering his moon. Vaughn goes on a quest to find out what happened.
The action heats up when he discovers his son is still alive, and has being held heart of E’Clei territory.
Going to get his son could disrupt the shaky cease-fire between the Fogerians and the E’Clei, igniting an all new war. Leaving his son in the hands of the parasites he spent so much of his life fighting is not an option.
How far will he go to retrieve his son and exact justice from those responsible?
Before you read Chapter 4, I’d like to invite you to like my facebook page What Zombies Fear. The link opens in a new window, so you can click it without losing your place here.
It took Nyko almost an hour to retrieve the carburetors from the ceiling tiles where he’d hidden them when he locked Iron Jack’s for the last time. These two choppers were his babies. He’d crafted them, by hand, in the back of shop. Even though they sat in the show room, each with a price tag hanging from the handle bars, he’d never really had the heart to sell them. They were designed to pique the interest of potential buyers, who would want a bike built according to their own specifications.
Nyko started working at Iron Jacks since he was a kid, tinkering on bikes. At first he did grunt work, adding aftermarket parts and doing minor repair work after school. When Jack died Nyko was already running the place. Jack’s son Henry didn’t want any part of the business, so Nyko bought it from him, and grew the business into a successful custom bike shop.
He enjoyed the time getting the two bikes ready to run. He worked by the light of a small lantern, quickly and quietly, trying not to draw too much attention to himself. The infected were all around out here, and Nyko knew from experience that light and sound could draw them from miles away. The work reminded him of better times.
In just a few minutes, the stainless steel carburetors were installed, the batteries had water added, and he added a gallon of fresh ethanol to each. The fuel lines were all stainless, so there wasn’t any real need to worry about the ethanol rotting rubber tubing.
When they were ready to crank, he resisted the urge to kick the starter and roar off down the road. He was on a mission. The old shop truck was in the first garage bay right where it was supposed to be. He drained the oil out of it, and while that was draining, he topped off the battery with water, and checked his portable jump-starter. The battery in it was dead too.
His motorcycle was a six-volt, not enough power to turn the old truck’s motor over.
Nyko searched the shop, looking for an old twelve-volt alternator. While he was looking, he grabbed a pair of jumper cables, and the cordless drill out of his saddlebags. In his office, he searched through his desk until he found a nine-volt battery.
An hour later, he squeezed the trigger on the cordless drill, spinning the alternator. The nine-volt battery excited the actuator, and current began to flow through the jumper cables into the old truck’s battery. He wasn’t sure if it would be enough, but after he’d expended both of the batteries for his drill; the truck turned over slowly and finally fired.
“Fuck yeah!” Nyko shouted when the engine caught.
Without the shop’s air handling systems running, he knew he couldn’t leave the truck running for too long, but he also knew it would take some time to recharge the battery, and his drill was dead. He knew the noise he’d been making would have drawn several infected to the shop. His old bike trailer was still parked outside, he’d made sure when he pulled up.
Nyko scouted the shop. If there were only one or two out there, he wanted to dispatch them as quietly as possible. The first thing he found was an eighteen inch pipe wrench. He picked it up and hefted it over his head in a trial run. “Quit stalling, pussy,” he said under his breath.
He laid the pipe wrench down on the work bench and picked up a pry-bar. A couple of practice swings later, he laid the crowbar down. Blunt instruments always resulted in large amounts of bodily fluid. Even a single drop in the eyes or mouth could result in infection. The biker laid the crowbar down on the bench, and picked up a long, flat bladed screwdriver. The shaft was over a foot long, and forged steel. An idea formed.
A pair of safety goggles hanging on a hook on the back of the bench caught his eye. Nyko grabbed them and slipped them over his head, resting the goggles just above his forehead.
The cleaning cabinet delivered the second half of his weapon, as he unscrewed the fiberglass handle of the push broom and used two pipe clamps to fasten the screwdriver securely to the end. He now had an almost seven foot spear, tipped with a massive steel point. He tied a clean rag from the cabinet around his face, covering his nose and mouth, donned a pair of mechanic’s rubber gloves, and lowered the goggles onto his face.
Nyko checked his keys to make sure he had the right one for the lock on the trailer. He set the key ring on the bumper of the truck, laid the spear down quietly beside the door, and drew his pistol. The heavy steel door was good protection, but without any windows, Nyko had no idea how many might be in the general area.
With a deep breath, he lifted the door about waist high, crouched on one knee and peered out into the parking lot. By the light of the full moon he made out four shapes. All four immediately turned and started making their way towards him.
“Four. Fuck.” Nyko cursed. Four was the worst number. If there’d been five, it was clear he’d have to use his pistol. No one went hand-to-hand with five. Three, he could pretty easily take down without making any noise. But four was always a toss-up.
“What I wouldn’t give for a silencer,” he said, heaving the door the rest of the way up.
The four infected moved quickly. Nyko holstered his gun and picked up the screwdriver-spear, waiting to see which would make it to him first.
He jabbed outward, piercing the nose of a redhead. He felt the spear stop against the back of her skull, and quickly pulled it backward. Pus and gore dribbled down her face as she collapsed. “Sorry Darlin. Always did love a redhead,” he said, stabbing another.
The third and fourth infected stepped within spear range at the same time. Nyko backed up as he speared one straight through the eyeball. As he removed the spear, the eyeball came with it, stuck at the base of the screwdriver. He kicked the final one in the chest, pushing it onto the flat of its back.
“I wish you’d just fucking stay down,” he said, stepping towards it. The infected, of course, didn’t. The drive to infect others was all they felt. No humanity, no memories, nothing left of what they were. Just some genetically manipulated virus created in the basement of some research laboratory contracting muscles and firing enough synapses to keep blood circulating.
It tried to get up, reaching for Nyko’s leg. He drove the sharpened metal screwdriver through the back of its throat, interrupting the few synapses still firing.
Before you read Chapter 4, I’d like to invite you to like my facebook page What Zombies Fear. The link opens in a new window, so you can click it without losing your place here. Facebook is the easiest way to keep abreast of everything going on in the worlds I create, however with their new rules reducing the number of news items you see from a page (it’s now below 10%) it’s still easy to miss something. The most foolproof way to know when a new book comes out is to please sign up for my email list. I promise I won’t spam you. I publish 4 – 5 novels per year, so you’ll get 4 – 5 emails per year.
His hair streamed out behind him as he thundered across the desert, enjoying the cool, dry, night air. He knew the sound of the motorcycle would draw them in. The infected were attracted to loud noises.
Nyko rode for an hour, due north on interstate 15, dodging dunes and wrecked cars. At times, the reverberation of his bike bouncing off the walls that held the desert back was almost deafening. It was the sound of freedom. It was a sound that he craved.
Every time he passed a car he looked inside. One in three had some sort of movement inside, sun-cooked flesh barely holding on to the bones. In many cases, the inside of the windows were completely coated with dried gore. The sun cooked the infected meat-sacks until the gasses inside exploded. Everyone knew; never, ever open the door to those cars. The smell took days to wash off, and nothing in the vehicle was salvageable.
He steered off the highway at Moapa, a small town in the middle of nowhere. A left at the top of the off-ramp led him down the main street, and just past the long-dark traffic light, he stopped his bike in front of Iron Jack’s customs. He deftly killed the engine, swung his leg over and took a step towards the door. Keys still in his hand, Nyko unlocked the front door to Iron Jack’s and stepped inside.
There was a small front showroom with his two completely custom, hand-crafted choppers in it. He looked them over fondly, each now covered in fine dust. Nyko had pinned his hopes for Iron Jack’s on these two bikes. They represented the future and his dream of being a custom bike builder.
Two years ago, he’d been sitting in his office in the back of this building when he got the call. “It’s Molly,” the woman on the other end of the phone sobbed “She’s sick. She’s dying, Nyk. She’s got these sores all over her face. The doctor doesn’t know what it is. Her fever is over 107.”
That was how it had started for him; a desperate phone call from his ex-wife all the way across the country. Nyko hung up the phone, hopped on his bike and headed down to Las Vegas to catch a flight to Northern Virginia. He rode south on Interstate 15, at times pegging the speedometer at the 130 miles per hour mark.
Ten miles north of the city, Nyko topped a small rise and brought the bike to a screeching halt. Brake lights lit up in front of him and the sound of twisting metal eclipsed the sound of his bike. Cars and trucks went everywhere, filling up the median and the emergency lane.
He eased the bike over next to the wall on the west side of the highway, and idled through the cars, looking briefly for something he could do to help. He reached into his inside coat pocket, retrieved his phone, and dialed 911.
“All operators are currently busy. Please stay on the line and the next emergency responder will be with you as soon as possible. If you are in need of immediate medical care, do not hang up.”
Nyko hung up his phone. Half the people involved in this wreck were probably calling. He stood up on the pegs of his bike to get a better view. At least a hundred cars were totaled. Fifty more were stopped with minor damages. Everywhere he looked, doors were opening and people were walking up towards the front of the accident.
The biker wasn’t trained in any sort of first aid, but he looked in each car he passed to see if there was some way he could help. He pulled up beside a blue Nissan Sentra. The driver was slumped over the wheel, and there was blood on the inside of the windshield.
He knocked on the passenger side window. “Hey buddy, you okay?” he asked. The front of the Sentra was buried half-way up the hood under the rear of a black Suburban. There was no movement inside the car. Nyko pulled on the door handle, but it was either locked, or jammed. From the wrinkles in the quarter panels, he assumed it was jammed and leaned out, pulling hard.
The door handle broke in his hand at the same time he heard screams from the front of the accident. It wasn’t just one scream, it was hundreds of them. He looked up in time to see a flood of people running towards him.
“Hey dude!” Nyko yelled, banging harder on the window. “You alive in there?”
The crowd of screaming people was getting closer. Nyko looked up from the car. It looked like they were running for their lives. Those in the front were looking back over their shoulders, while in the back, a group was chasing them, head-down and running as fast as they could.
Nyko saw one of the people fall. Several of the group chasing dove on top of the fallen accident victim, like a pile of football players after a fumble.
“Dude! You gotta get up!” Nyko yelled, banging on the window again. The crowd was less than fifty feet away now. Hopefully, if the guy was alive, he’d be safe inside his car. He could see the group chasing them clearly now. All of them appeared sick with some kind of rash on their faces. Like his daughter had.
There wasn’t room between the Sentra and the wall to turn his bike around. With a grunt, he lifted the rear wheel up and spun the bike around in place, before hopping on it and racing off, away from the crowd of people.
This book takes place in the same universe as What Zombies Fear, except that it’s WAY in the future. This is much more sci-fi. While Vaughn is fighting the E’Clei (Yes, that battle is still going), there is no mention of zombies. Those of you who have read What Zombies Fear will recognize names, The Maxists (yes, they’re still around too!), The E’Clei, and several others.
From Amazon:
Vaughn, a human born on a distant planet long after earth has been destroyed, is the first of his race to be invited to the prestigious Fogerian War Institute. After glory in the Fogerian War with the parasitic E’Clei, Vaughn is raised to the rank of Captain, and given command of The Reetus for the duration of the conflict.
Long after the war, Vaughn is married and lives a simple life, mining his remote moon for a precious mineral and raising his son. He arrives home from a routine business trip to find dead members of an ancient human cult called The Maxists littering his moon. Vaughn goes on a quest to find out what happened.
The action heats up when he discovers his son is still alive, and has being held heart of E’Clei territory.
Going to get his son could disrupt the shaky cease-fire between the Fogerians and the E’Clei, igniting an all new war. Leaving his son in the hands of the parasites he spent so much of his life fighting is not an option.
How far will he go to retrieve his son and exact justice from those responsible?
I have 5 different writing projects on five different blogs, all with five different domain names. Today, I’ve consolidated everything into one, over at kirkallmond.com. Sometime in the next couple of days, the domain name whatzombiesfear.com will point to that site.
Overall, nothing much will change. You’ll still be able to go to whatzombiesfear.com to find info, updates, and read the story. It will look a little different, and you’ll have to click the “books” link at the top. But all the content will still be there.
As a thank you for putting up with the consolidation, I’m going to offer a couple of things. First, the entirety of the first book will be available for online reading, not just the first six chapters. Also, for the first time ever, I will make the .mobi (for kindle) and epub (for other readers) version of A Father’s Quest available for download, for free.
Secondly, sometime in the next few days, I will start posting all BRAND NEW chapters of the next book in the What Zombies Fear universe, LEGION for people who Subscribe to the new blog <— Click there to subscribe!
Laura and I have the greatest readers in the world. We are so grateful for every single one of you. Thank you so much for supporting us.
Along the length of the wall, a multi-colored shield rose up, slowly at first, then faster, until it met in the middle directly over the manor house, two miles inside the wall.
“What the hell is that, Max?” asked Marshall.
“I learned it from Miss Kris. I thought the people would feel better if they could see the shield. I’ve been keeping it over the town since I was a kid, I just figured out how to make it visible to everyone.”
Renee looked up over her head, then towards the middle of town, before asking, “Can the zombies see it?”
“They could always see it. Well, they could feel it. It sends them away, makes them not want to come here,” said Max. “The visible part is the only difference. I thought it might give the supers something to think about.”
“Does your Dad know about it?” Renee asked.
“No,” said Max. “You know Dad. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?”
Renee grinned. Her nephew sounded exactly like his father. “Let’s get back to the house.” She was down the ladder in a flash. Marshall and Max watched the grass sway as Renee ran through the waist-high field on the inside of the wall.
“Reggie? You coming?” Max asked, holding his hand out. Reggie took one hand, and Marshall the other. Milliseconds later they appeared on the lawn of the house.
“Something’s not right,” Steve said inside Max’s head.
“I know. I think it might be the dome,” thought Max. “It’s like the world outside doesn’t exist. I kind of like it.”
Renee was there seconds later, having run the two miles from the wall. “I didn’t see anything on my way here,” she said when she came to a stop. Whenever Renee stopped from top speed, there was always a backlash, as if she was outrunning the wind. When she finally stopped it caught up to her, blowing her hair forward. She calmly smoothed her short hair back down before continuing, “Let’s get inside and check on Mom.”
Inside the house was utter chaos. Men were running back and forth between rooms, guns held low, making sure that each room was safe. Shouts of “Clear!” came from everywhere. Max went straight for the library, where two men stood on either side of the door with assault rifles pointed down.
“What’s the code, Max?” The first one asked.
“Alpha six four two…” His voice dropped and then reluctantly added, “Maxmonster,” said Max, turning red. His father would embarrass him to death one day.
The two men stepped aside, “Glad to see you’re okay, Max. Did you make this dome? Everyone’s freaking out.”
“Yeah. I wanted people to see that they were safe. Is the house clear?” replied the boy.
The man who asked for the code nodded to Max as he spoke into the radio on his shoulder. “All clear. The dome is friendly, repeat dome created by Paladin.”
Max turned eighteen more shades of red hearing his radio nickname. That one had been created by Jimmy, the head of house security. Max’s father was Renegade, and his grandmother was Evergreen. He opened the door to the library and stepped inside. His grandmother was reading a book, when she looked up and saw her grandson a single tear fell from her eye. Sharon quickly hid it with a scratch of her face as Max stepped towards her and hugged her. “I’m glad you’re okay, Gramma. The house is clear and we’re mopping up the grounds. We held them off. Have you seen Dad?”
“Last report was that he was passed out in the barn. I’m sure people are starving,” she said. “Children, lets go finish making supper. By the time we’re finished they’ll have all this mess cleared up and we can eat supper! Who’s hungry?”
All the kids let out a unanimous “Me!” as they raised their hands.
“I’m going to the barn then. I need to find Dad.”
“Max, wait.” said Sharon, causing Max to turn back around. “Use the door.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” said Max sheepishly. He stepped through the door of the library, down the short hall and out into the back garden before he disappeared.
Sharon took the two youngest children by the hand, looked down at them and said “Let’s go make something yummy. We’ll show those meanies out there that we’re not afraid. We’re going right back to our life, because they can’t hurt us, can they?”
“Not wif Max watching us,” said the little girl plainly. It was clearly a line little Jane Thomas had heard her parents say a number of times.
“That’s right. We have so many people keeping us safe. And now we need to go show them that we love them, and we are grateful for their hard work keeping us safe.” She shepherded all the children into the kitchen, where they finished up the evening meal. Sharon put the older children in charge of the younger ones, and gave them all a dozen cupcakes to decorate.
Inside the barn, Max appeared in the loft. “Your Dad just left,” three people said from all around him in unison.
He grimaced. “Any idea where he went?”
“He took Kris. Said he had to get her away from the farm. He didn’t say where he was going, or how he was gong to get there. He looked pretty rough,” said Addy Madison, Max’s old teacher. Miss Madison taught fifth through twelfth grades at the school.
“Thanks, I’ll see if I can find him. It’s a little weird that I can’t.”
Thousands of miles away, Kris was vaguely aware that time had passed. There was soft, warm sand between her fingertips. Just outside her consciousness, she heard the familiar sound of crashing waves and the sharp cries of distant seagulls. Jeff would be walking down the dune at any moment with a cooler full of Sam Adam’s Summer Ale in his hand. Kris hit the beach early that day and had every intention of taking full advantage of her day off. She sighed lightly and moved her arm to rest under her neck. The sun felt good on her skin and she realized it had been a long time since she was at the beach. She had been working so hard lately she just hadn’t had the time…
In the back of her mind, there was a nagging feeling that something wasn’t right – something had changed. But she was absolutely on a beach. She was certain of that.
Keeping her eyes closed in the sunlight, she pursed her lips together and tried to recall the last time she had been on a beach. After all, Tennessee didn’t have beaches and Gander Acres was always so busy, she and Alicia never had the time to…
Alicia.
She remembered Alicia laying on the ground, her body limp, her face bruised and bloody with a bullet through her skull. Lifeless. Never to look at her and whisper “I love you.” Her eyes snapped open and she sat up with a start as the memory returned to her. Fresh tears were rolling down her cheeks and she wrapped her arms around herself and began to sob.
“Kris,” began Victor.
“Stop, Vic. Just…stop,” she whispered through tears. “Why did you stop me? I didn’t want this. I didn’t want–” Tears took her again and she buried her face back into her arms.
“I had no right. I just had need, Kris. These fucking zombies have to pay. Then you can die. But not until you’ve extracted every ounce of vengeance from them. Not until they pay, Kris.”
She was quiet for a long time, thinking carefully about his words. “Haven’t I already paid enough?”
“None of us has paid more than you, except maybe John. He lost his wife, brother, friends, and five of his seven kids. I lost a wife, but have been very very lucky. Max, Marshall, Renee, and my mom are still with me. How much more are any of us going to pay?”
She shook her head but avoided the question. “We planned the farm so perfectly. I mean…it wasn’t flawless but it was damn near.” Kris looked over to him finally. “I never thought that other humans would have been our downfall. What kind of sick fuck betrays humanity to the zeds?” Kris trailed off, like she wasn’t talking to anyone in particular. Or maybe she was just talking to herself. Victor sat quietly and let her get it out. “And then they just…killed them like they were nothing. Stole Alicia from under me and I missed it. Missed it all. I didn’t even get to tell her I loved her.” She choked back another sob and then glanced over to Victor with big, tearful eyes.
“Everyone who ever saw you two knew you loved her. Just as we all know how much she loved you. You know in your heart she loved you, right?”
Kris nodded but didn’t reply, as Victor continued, “She died knowing how much you loved her. I know we’d all like to tell our loved ones how much we love them one last time, but she knew, Kris.”
“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do. I’m so fucking angry. I don’t know if I’m safe to be around. I can barely handle my shit right now.”
“That’s why we’re on a deserted island somewhere in the Florida Keys. That’s why I’m here.”
“Was punching me out self serving? Because it hurt like some bitch. Hope it was worth it.”
“I couldn’t think of any other way to make you stop. You were beyond words. Kris, I’ve always been straight with you. I may not have always fully explained myself, but I never lied. I need you. I need what you can do, and I need your anger. I need your power. But I waded into that inferno you created, because I care about you.”
“My power?” She scoffed. “My…insanity?” Kris was standing now and her voice was hollow like before. “You mean this?” She shouted the last word and immediately threw a shield around herself and rapidly pushed it outward. It caught her voice and magnified it over and over again until the entire island was covered. The strength and force of the trapped vibrations was stirring up the island. The sand was pressing down against the ground and all of the palm trees seemed to shrink under the weight. As she pinched the sound, she felt the vibrations permeate the trees, the sand and the ocean and fill all of the open gaps in their structural makeup. All of the palm trees began to shiver and then abruptly explode and break apart, throwing ash into the swirling air. The ocean was boiling 100 feet away from the shore and Victor could see the bodies of a few fish floating belly-up in the water.
Kris only saw red no matter where she looked and screamed until her throat gave out. And she cried. “I amplify everything, Vic.” She wailed. “When things are good, it’s amazing but when things are bad, everything is so much worse. I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. I’m not safe. I just–”
Victor drew her in close, hugging her tightly. He pushed his aura around her, enveloping her in his calm. He sealed everything out, all the noise he could. It had a much more profound effect than he anticipated. She slumped against him, sobbing.
“Oh my god,” she said between sobs. “It’s all gone. It’s normal again. Quiet like before I got bit. I can…breathe.” Kris pulled back from Victor and locked eyes with him. “Why did you do that?”
“Friends help each other, Kris. It’s the best part of humanity. It’s why we deserve to live, and they need to die.”
Her eyes narrowed and then she nodded slowly. “You’re right. Fuck them all.”
“When I let go it’s going to come roaring back, are you ready?”
“Can it last another minute,” she asked. “I forgot how silence feels.”
Victor pressed his palms to his temples and said, “I’ll hold it as long as I can, but I haven’t stopped in days. My head feels like it’s in a vice. It took me three stops to get here.”
“I hope I’ll be less weight this round.” She took a deep breath. “Okay – I’m ready.”
Victor held the shield for several minutes longer, giving her as much peace as he could. His vision started to blur. “I have to let go now.”
She nodded. “Okay. Do it,” She said, but it was already gone. The sound of the surf was roaring in her brain, she could hear crabs scraping along the rocks on the reef, and the ash from exploded palm trees hitting the sand. His heartbeat was slow, but the sound was intense and strong. It was the sound of humanity and of life. It gave her new focus, keeping the fiery rage at bay. “Let’s go fuck ‘em up.”
“I love the attitude, but I haven’t really slept in three days. Mentally, I’m toast. I don’t think I could teleport myself to the bathroom.”
Declaration of War by Kirk Allmond and Laura Bretz
It’s finally live! You can find Book 5 “Declaration of War” of the What Zombies Fear series on Amazon. Still waiting on Barnes and Noble and other retailers.
This is a really exciting time, a new novel published, and the start of the new series “Will of the Dead” launched a couple of days ago.
We’ve started work on the sixth and final book in What Zombies Fear, called The Incarnation, it’ll likely be published this summer. I have a little bit more to write in the 2nd episode of Will of the Dead, and then focus returns to WZF 6. Stay tuned!
I’m feeling pretty good about making it as a writer today. If I work hard enough, if I want it bad enough, it can happen, right?
The three figures stood in a triangle on the high stone wall, staring each other down. The zombies were strong. Max could sense an overwhelming number of E’Clei in each of them as they stood eyeing each other up. The two zombies stood upright, hands straight down. Their faces were expressionless as they studied their prey.
Steve spoke to Max, as he’d been doing for the last twelve years. “They’re primes, Max. Councilmen, most likely. They’re the queen’s top advisers, and among the most powerful on the planet.”
“How do I beat them, Steve?”
“We cannot. Not two of them at once. And now that they’ve seen you, the others will be here in seconds. You must run. They will follow but your family will be safe here.”
“How can you know that for sure? This is my home, Steve. This is where we make the last stand,” replied Max.
“The last stand isn’t today, Max. Wait for your father. Wait for Marshall and Renee and Kris and John. They’ll be here soon. Now, run, and don’t stop.”
His father had taught him how to track teleporters; the two of them had spent years perfecting the techniques to track others and to avoid being followed. The tracker had to stand in the exact spot where the prey disappeared, and empty their mind. An image would form; a residual of the previous jump. The hunter then fixed that image in their own mind, and then appeared right behind the prey. Max knew these two would be able to follow him.
The clever boy picked a destination, a place he and his father had spent several days with heavy equipment the summer before. “Hey, you fuckers wanna dance? Let’s go somewhere more private. Follow me, if you can,” said Max as he disappeared.
He reappeared in the woods high up in the mountains in North Carolina, and drew his hatchet as he backed up three steps. Hanging suspended from three trees above the circle where he appeared was an old school bus. Sharpened angle iron was welded the length of the bottom of the bus. A single line ran down the tree trunk and was tied off low to the ground.
“Three, two, one,” said Max, cutting the rope with his hatchet. Branches snapped. The rope zinged as it ripped through dozens of steel pulleys. To his left, a huge pile of logs that had been the counterweight to the bus hit the ground with a thunderous crash. Limbs snapped and wood creaked as massive trees straightened after months of being under load. Less than a second later, the two supers appeared just as the bright yellow school bus crashed down on them, followed by a sprinkling of green leaves ripped from the limbs high above. The weight of the bus broke the lumber the two zombies were standing on, carefully placed there by Victor and Max to conceal a large pit underneath. The two councilmen were pushed downward into a cavernous hole filled with sharpened wood and metal stakes.
‘Yeah!” yelled Max as he jumped in the air and fist pumped. “Take that, bitches!”
“Take what, Max?” The two intoned from directly behind him. One of the two councilmen lunged for him. Stunned Max barely had time to react, bringing the hatchet up to block the attack. The zombie grabbed his hand and twisted viciously. Max kicked the creature in the knee, but it felt like his foot hit a brick wall.
“Run, Max. Keep running.”
“I can’t run if they’re holding on to me, Steve. I’m open to constructive ideas. And don’t tell me how much my dad is going to yell at me for blowing the bus trap. It should have worked.”
“We need to lose them. You can’t go farther than them, but you are faster. Every time you stop, they have to take a second to see where you went. I would suggest hiding your trail of jumps.”
Max solidified his aura in a spot to the left of his face, allowing it to absorb a left hook from the zombie in front of him. Even shielded, the blow knocked Max back to the ground and jarred his neck. The boy disappeared before his persuers had a chance to follow up.
His first stop was a mile up in the air, directly above the bus trap. He let himself fall for almost half a minute before he teleported again, to the ocean off the North Carolina coast. The water was frigid, but Max swam down as hard as he could. Max thought quickly about his next destination, and remembered he and his father taking a trip to Chile a few years ago when his class was discussing volcanoes. He was nearly forty feet down when he teleported again. He saw the first councilman splash into the ocean above him just before he disappeared.
Smoke and ash surrounded Max as he fell, choking him and making it hard to judge distance. He hardened his aura and fell as long as he could stand the heat. The soles of his shoes started to melt as he rocketed downward into the crater of an active volcano. Glowing orange liquid magma bubbled and sputtered at the bottom. Max disappeared just inches away from the bubbling surface.
Pleased with himself, Max bounced around several more places from pictures he’d seen in books. After dozens of stops, he paused in the woods long enough to try and contact his father. “Dad, where are you? I’m being chased by a couple of betas. I could use a hand.”
He took off at a dead run through the woods, running down the side of a mountain somewhere in Washington. They couldn’t still be following. Somewhere along the way they had to have slipped up. The tar pits, the alligators in the swamp, the volcano, the sharks off the coast of South Africa, something had to have gotten them.
“Uncle Marshall, where are you?” Max ran along a small game path somewhere high in the smokey mountains. The path opened out along a ridge, his footfalls sent stones skittering down the side of a near vertical cliff. He cartwheeled his arms to keep his balance, his feet criss-crossing on the narrow path.
“Renee and I are helping with the zombies at home. Where are you? We’ve been worried sick about you. Someone said they saw you fighting a couple of supers on the wall.” Marshall’s thoughts were slow, the mental equivalent of being out of breath.
“I’m running from them, but I’m not sure if I lost them. I can’t come home, in case they’re still following, but I can’t find Dad anywhere,” Max said, starting a series of giant leaps down a steep rocky slope. With each step he sent tons of rock sliding down the mountain. “Stupid, Max. They’ll hear this from miles away,” he chided himself as he tried to stay ahead of the landslide.
“He’s out cold, Max. John says your dad has been running non-stop, and he needs to rest. Vic took a couple steps after he dropped John, his family, and Kris off at the barn and then passed out. He’s sleeping now.” As Marshall spoke, Max got flashes of the scene at the farm. Marshall was indeed tiring, if his thoughts were getting that disorganized. And if Marshall was tired, things were bad.
“I don’t know what to do, Uncle Marshall,” thought Max, taking one step up onto a fallen log, leaping high into the air. The boy grabbed a branch and propelled himself over a small stream, landing high up on the opposite bank without missing a stride.
“Middle of the west wall in two minutes, Max. We’ll be ready.”
Max ran on, trying to make as little noise as possible, listening behind him, but there were no sounds of pursuit. He covered another ten miles on foot, in the two minutes before heading back to the wall. Max was almost as fast as his father on foot, but he was tired, and fear was starting to creep in to his consciousness.
“Coming now. I don’t know if they’re behind me or not.”
Max appeared on the wall, stepped a foot to the left and drew his gun. He pointed it at nothing, holding it head high where the zombies would appear, if they were still following him. Then he waited. From this height, the battlefield was a scene of complete carnage. Marshall’s arms were dripping blood, which pooled on the stones at his feet and streamed off towards the gutter system carved into the back side of the wall. This was exactly why water collected from the wall was used for irrigation, not drinking.
Seconds passed. A full minute, then two.
“Maybe you lost them,” said Renee, who was holding a long gore covered spear in the exact spot Max in which Max had appeared. If the zombies followed him, they would impale themselves on it.
“They are very powerful,” said Max, still breathing heavily. His wrist was on fire, he had a bruise on his cheek, and his feet were going to blister from the heat of the volcano and then all the running. Steve had been to busy shielding Max’s whereabouts and trying to throw off their attackers to heal him.
Max felt the pain in his wrist subside first. “Feet first, Steve, in case I have to run again,” thought Max.
“Wrist first, in case you have to fight,” replied Steve. “Then feet. The damage to your face is going to take a few minutes.”
Reggie peeked his head above the wall, then stepped up the last rung of the ladder and wiped his blood smeared palms on his handkerchief. “Master Tookes, I’m so glad you escaped your pursuers.” As he spoke, Reggie re-folded the bloody rag and stuffed it in his back pocket.
Marshall and Renee spun around to look at Reggie, then looked at each other and shrugged. Each was thinking the same thing; where does Reggie always come from?
“Hi Reggie. That’s still up for debate though.” Max’s eyes never moved from the spot. His gun was starting to waiver a bit as his arm tired.
Reggie thought for a moment as he tottered over to Max’s side. “My father always said the trouble with hunting the Bubal Hartebeest was not that they were faster than the Gahiji, but that they ran so far the hunter would collapse before they gave up.”
“What’s a Gahiji?” asked Max, watching the spot carefully.
“It means hunter in my father’s language,” said Reggie.
The four of them stood there for another five minutes, intently staring at an empty spot in space. It was becoming more an more apparent that the two chasing Max weren’t going to follow him here.
Marshall spoke first, turning his back and walking towards the ladder. “Lets get off this wall. If they show back up we’ll deal with them then. There is still a lot to do.”
Two thousand miles west in the penthouse suite on the top floor of the Bellagio Casino, Charlie was not happy. “What do you mean you lost him. He’s just a fucking boy. How could you lose him? There were eight of you!”
A man in a shredded suit stood in front of Charlie. He was missing an arm. A steady stream of blood ran out of his shoulder, dripping off a bit of flesh into a priceless oriental rug. “He teleported from the wall when he saw us. He had traps set, and he is crafty. The ones known as Roberts and Jamison were crushed by a bus and then impaled in a pit of spikes below. We joined in after the boy dropped three of us into a volcano. The child is completely fearless, he is beyond reckless. His trail ended just eight inches above the magma, There was no time to follow his vortex.” The councilman showed no emotion, but it was obvious that he was puzzled by this boy. “We were damaged on the next stop above a watery pit filled with beasts made entirely of teeth.” The councilman paused, accessing the memories of his host. “Alligators. One of the beasts removed my arm with one bite. The ones in Rohrer and McCaskil were ended by these alligators.”
Charlie flew into a rage, lashing out at the one armed councilman. He struck him in the forehead, knocking him prone, then knelt on his chest. “One boy,” said Charlie placing his thumb to the councilman’s temple. “One boy killed eight of you, who were stupid enough to chase him.” Charlie commanded all of the councilman’s E’Clei out of their host and into his own body. The former councilman’s head rolled to the side, dead again.
“Someone clean this fucking mess up,” Charlie commanded before he disappeared.
Bookbinder appeared in the same spot overlooking the farm he’d been several hours earlier. It was pitch black, low clouds hung over the farm. A few lights and a couple of fires made pinpricks of light around the settlement from this distance. The smell of wood smoke and burning flesh from one particularly large fire drifted to his nose. They were already cleaning up and burning the bodies of his wasted soldiers.
Had things gone so badly? It was true that his forces in Atlanta and Virginia were wiped out. The overseas offensives had gone well, and preliminary reports said John was dead out in the desert. The Gander Acres attack went perfectly, except somehow all of his soldiers were dead too. At least the last report he’d gotten was that Fuller had killed Kris and Alicia.
The day was a success, if not a complete one. Half of Tookes crew being dead would make him an emotional wreck. Victor never thought clearly when he was in that state, he would make mistakes now, and Charlie would be there to capitalize on them. He knew the boy was inside those walls. Charlie could feel him. Max was shrouding their property once again. Charlie knew the vague compulsion he felt to walk away was Max. In his soldiers, it was overwhelming. “What is it about that boy,” he said out loud.
One man's struggle to keep his son safe from zombies.
What Zombies Fear 