Survivors Series (Book 2): Heroes Never Die

by Voeller, Cody

  Heroes Never Die

  Heroes Never Die

  Book Two of the Survivor Series

  Cody Voeller

  Copyright © 2019 by Cody Voeller

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover designed by Micah Gomes

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Dedication

  There have been many who have influenced me both in writing this novel and in life. There isn’t enough space on this page or enough words ever written to express my gratitude, but I will do my best. To my friends, Aleah, Kate, and Andrea thank you for supporting me, pushing me to write more and more to satisfy your craving for a story, for forcing me to write two and three chapters a day. To my family, especially my father, who taught me that I am capable of damn near anything. To my beautiful wife, Marta, who put up with the long hours of editing, incessant questions and hundreds of revisions, thank you for standing by me through it all. Finally, to the online communities who first read my words in their infancy, you acted as my compass, my north star, you set me on a path that I never expected to be on. Thank you, all.

  Chapter 1

  As I sat in the dark laundry room with Sarah for quarantine, I started to go over everything that had happened to me, to us, in such a short time. It all started when I woke up, hungover, and found that zombies were real. After gathering my friends, we decided to abandon campus and find safety at my Dad’s house in Astoria. On our way, we managed to rescue a little girl named Michelle who’d lost her family. Reaching Astoria I found that I’d lost my own family, my brother, sister, dad, even my dogs were gone, and I didn’t think they’d ever come back. Between fighting off an attack by a zombie horde and looting the town for supplies, a part of my past turned up. I ended up having to shoot my best friend from high school when he was bitten by a Walker. We quickly found that it wasn’t the dead that posed the greatest threat, but rather the living that were left behind. A mixed group of soldiers and MS 13 gang members lead by Sergeant Cole Shepard occupied the hospital and attempted to kidnap several of our friends. Cole and his men weren’t a problem anymore and I had my friends back. Luckily, there’s always another side to every coin. While Cole wanted to increase his power and control, we met a group of survivors who were trying to rebuild their lives under the leadership of a man named Luke. After all of that, all of those terrifying encounters, sitting in the dark, baring my failures, was the scariest thing I’d done yet.

  “James,” Sarah whispered, breaking me out of my own thoughts.

  Grasped in her hands was a photo album filled with newspaper clippings. On the first page were the clippings from my mother’s car accident, where a drunk driver ran headlong into her car, killing her. She didn’t die instantly, it would have been better if she had. Instead, she died slowly from internal bleeding. He, on the other hand, survived and fled the scene and called 911 after he had gotten away from the accident. Emergency vehicles arrived fifteen minutes after the accident. He was apprehended two days later when he went to the hospital for some minor injuries. There were pictures of the accident, the obit from the paper and clippings from the trial. He was sentenced to fifteen to twenty years for vehicular manslaughter and a slew of other charges, including several outstanding warrants.

  “James why is this in…”

  “Just turn the page.”

  The next page contained even more articles about a different accident. This time, it was a little girl who died in a car crash when her mother hit a guardrail while texting, she was twelve. Along with the articles was a school picture of the girl, smiling wide and happy as hell. Her name was Tiffany, and her mom walked away just fine. I turned the page again. Another set of clippings about a family and a fire where both parents died, leaving two small orphaned kids. Next page another accident. There were over a dozen different accidents with well over a dozen victims. When we got to the first blank page, she looked up at me with sad eyes. “James, why do you have all these clippings?”

  “The first page was about my mom,” I said refusing to look at her, “The rest of the pages were articles from the calls where I failed to save each of those people. After my mom’s accident, I had an urge to prevent the kind of death my mom suffered. She died slowly without anyone to help her. So I started with the Fire Department and started keeping this stupid shrine to my failures.”

  “James they’re not failures.”

  “Really?” I said testily, “Why don’t you ask Tiffany or maybe Nick and Jill’s parents if these are failures.”

  “You can’t blame yourself, James.”

  “Actually, I can, but I don’t.”

  “Then why do you have these?” she asked closing the book.

  “Because I want to make sure I remember them. It motivates me to do better each time.”

  “Why did you decide to show me these?”

  “Because I wanted you to know why I try so hard, why I’d rather put myself in danger to keep all of you safe. I don’t want to have to add another page. In truth, I really should add Sa…” I rambled, but I was cut off by her covering my mouth with her hand and staring into my eyes.

  “James Ryan,” she said seriously, “You’ve done more to keep us alive than anyone else. You’ve done more dumb things to keep us out of danger than necessary, and I have no idea why you would be compelled to keep this stupid book. I don’t want to hear any more talk about failure,” she finished, her face flushed. Then she kissed me. It felt like the first kiss we shared, urgent and filled with every emotion possible. I kissed her back, and every thought of the books left my mind.

  We didn’t speak again that night, not about the books, not about anything, and when we woke in the morning, she picked up the pieces of personal history and put them away without a word. I knew that she would be curious about the second book, but she would wait until I approached the subject, at least for a while. Sarah had very little patience regarding the things she wanted.

  That day wasn’t spent digging, I had something else in mind. I called everyone to the living room after breakfast and made an announcement. “It has come to my attention that while we have secured food, water, guns, ammo, and transportation we have failed to secure something far more important.” I looked around at the group before settling on the girls and smiling, “We haven’t gotten any clothes for anyone. I think it’s about time that we went shopping.” The girls let out a delighted scream. When I had gone into the girl’s room, I had seen very little clothing and realized that they had been wearing the same thing over and over and they all would probably need more. “We will need to coordinate w
ith some of Luke’s people if we want to do this properly.”

  “Shit man. You sure you want to do that?” asked Matt.

  “We’re going to have to if we want to do this, plus we’re going to need them later so we might as well start building bridges now.”

  “Good point. Alright, so what the plan?”

  “We lay out a plan of attack for the Fred Meyer and take it to Luke. Try and convince him to help us.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” asked Christina.

  “He will,” said Sarah.

  “How do you know that?” asked Liz.

  “It’s just the way he is. He’s kind of like James, just a lot older,” she said winking at me, “Plus, he knows that he needs all the supplies he can get and won’t turn down the help.”

  Everyone looked at her and nodded in comprehension. “Alright then, let’s get to work,” I said heading to the dining room. The plan that we came up with was very similar to the one we used at the Costco. We would breach the doors, kill the Walkers that came at us and then clear the store, taking as much time as we needed. We would use Luke’s men when clearing the store and to pick off any Walkers that got too close before entering. “So it’s only ten right now,” I said standing up from the table, “Why don’t we go say hi to Luke?”

  “Who are you taking?” asked Jason.

  “Well, they’ve already seen Sarah and I so we’ll go, but I also want Thomas on the roof again just in case. Adam’s not going to be happy to see us, and I don’t know if he’ll cause trouble. I don’t want to give away our numbers just yet.”

  “Damn. I was really hoping to meet this Adam guy,” said Justin with a wicked smile.

  “None of that, if you catch him being an ass then, by all means, take care of it, but don’t look for trouble.”

  “Fine,” he said, his smile dimming.

  “Come on you two, let’s go see if we can get Luke’s attention.”

  The three of us snagged our packs and buckled on our weapons. We climbed into a truck and headed to the Costco. We used the same method as last time to call Luke, piling up a few tires, dousing them in gas and lighting them. The burning tires sent billowing black smoke into the sky and reminded me of a dream I had not long ago. Thomas was already positioned on the roof and was watching over us like a guardian angel, while we sat on the hood of a car.

  “So, do you think Luke will help us?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I think you had it exactly right back at the house. He won’t turn down the supplies or the extra help.”

  “Good because I wasn’t completely sure.”

  “Could have fooled me,” I said smiling, “Do you really think Luke and I are similar.”

  “Well, you’re both leaders, your people trust you with their lives, you both have a similar sense of justice, and you both do what you have to do to keep your people safe.”

  “Ok, so I can see your point, but there’s one big difference between us.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think his son has what it takes to be a man and he does.”

  “You’re both pretty good judges of character so I can’t say who’s right and who’s wrong, but if you ask me, Adam is an irredeemable ass.”

  “You and me both.”

  “What really concerns me is who Luke will send with us.”

  “Yeah me too. Will he send fighters with experience or will he give us whoever is standing around and will Adam be among them?”

  “You said you weren’t going to go looking for trouble.”

  “And I won’t but I’ve made an enemy of Adam, and I have a feeling that we’re going to butt heads sooner or later.”

  “I guess,” she said with a sigh.

  “I’d rather have it happen sooner, just to get it over with.”

  “Yeah but what if he just decides to kill you,” she said, the worry evident in her voice.

  “He won’t.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve already shown him that I’m not afraid of him or of dying and he knows that if I die nothing is stopping my people from coming after him. He’ll probably try to humiliate me in some way, or take his revenge out on someone else.”

  “Me?”

  “No, he won’t go after you, not again,” I said smiling at her, “Not after what you did to him.”

  “Good. Maybe that’ll be enough to make him hesitant.”

  “No, he’s too stupid for that,” she laughed and nodded her head in agreement.

  We talked until we heard a vehicle driving down the highway. I got off the hood and prepared to meet whoever showed up. I hoped for his sake that Adam decided to stay home.

  A small red Toyota pulled into the parking lot, and Z climbed out along with a small bald man who introduced himself as Carl.

  “Hi Carl, I’m James, and this is Sarah.”

  “Yeah I’ve heard all about you,” he said grinning coolly.

  “We’ll follow you to your camp this time,” I said turning to Z.

  “Yeah, Luke said you would probably want to do that.”

  Sarah gave me a pointed look and a self-satisfied smile “Alright, let’s go,” I said climbing into our truck. We drove to the camp and pulled up to the gate where a pair of guards stood talking. Z waved at them, and we moved past the checkpoint to the main facility where Luke was waiting for us.

  “James, Sarah, it’s good to see you again,” Luke said smiling.

  “You too Luke,” I said shaking his hand.

  “Everything’s alright I hope,” he said shaking Sarah’s hand.

  “Yeah, everything’s fine,” she said warmly.

  “Then what brings you to our piece of paradise?”

  “We thought we could use your help with something.”

  “Well then, let’s go to my office,” he said walking briskly away.

  I looked at Sarah and raised an eyebrow. She just shrugged and followed Luke. I shook my head and hurried to catch up. Luke’s office was part of the main facility, the one which would normally facilitate the standard operations of the camp. It was small, but Luke had made it his own, each surface was covered with lists, guard movements, schedules, and supply inventories. The camp was being run like a business, and it looked like business was good.

  “So my boy, what can I help you with?”

  I smiled, “Well Luke, we were thinking about raiding the Fred Meyer just down the road from Costco, and we’re wondering if you could spare some manpower. You’d be free to take whatever supplies you wanted, our focus would be on some clothing and all the food we can load up in our trucks. I know you have quite a few people to feed so I figured you would want to help.”

  Luke steepled his fingers and leaned back in his chair. He thought for a moment before asking, “I suppose you have a plan ready?” I nodded and pulled out the plans we had drawn up from my pack. He took them without even glancing at them and looked between the two of us. He smiled and said, “I can give you a single five-man team.”

  “That’s all I’m looking for.”

  “Great. I’ll look over your plans,” he said patting the small stack of paper, “and I’ll work on getting a team together for you.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Alright, so feel free to wander while I work on this.”

  “I figure we’ll just head back.”

  “Oh, I thought you might have wanted to work with the team I put together. It seems like you have a specific method for entering the store. I thought you might want to teach it to them.”

  This caught me off guard. I glanced down at the stack of papers that I handed him and saw that my outlines for my breaching method were at the top. He hadn’t even spared them a glance, but he was able to take them in while I handed them to him. This guy is good, I thought. “That’s a good idea. I guess we’ll stay for a while.”

  “Great,” he said smiling.

  Sarah and I left Luke’s office and walked the grounds hand in hand. “Who do you think he’ll give us?”
she asked.

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind having Z by my side. I don’t really care as long as Adam stays away from me.”

  “Luke wouldn’t do that,” she said confidently.

  “I know, but I don’t think Luke is in complete control of him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well he wouldn’t do anything to directly disobey him since he’s got the backing of everyone, but I don’t think he’ll have a problem doing something that he hasn’t been specifically told not to do.”

  “If you say so,” she shrugged.

  We spent about twenty minutes hanging out with everyone at the camp before we wandered across the sound of gunfire. There was no indication other that there might be danger but Sarah and I drew our guns and followed the noise. We ran up a hill, and as we reached the top, we found ourselves looking at a firing range, equipped with targets, dummies, and range indicators. We walked down the hill and towards the front of the range. I watched as five men and women shot a combination of rifles and pistols at the different targets. At close range, they were all fairly good, but as they attempted to hit the targets further down range, they became less accurate. I walked over to the first guy in line who was shooting a Remington 770. I could see that while he was close to hitting the target, his aim was wavering before each shot. “Excuse me,” I said interrupting him before his next shot.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hi, I’m James.”

  “Paul,” he said as we shook hands.

  “Are you comfortable with that rifle, Paul?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Well, you seem to be drifting before each shot. Is it too heavy for you?”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “Ok, well, would you mind if I gave you a few tips?”

  “Uh, sure…”

  “Mind if I take a shot?”

  “Sure,” he said handing me the rifle hesitantly.

  I looked the rifle over and saw that it had been well maintained. I slid the bolt back and caught the bullet that flew out. He was firing .308 Winchester’s. I took out the magazine and reloaded it and slid it back into the rifle. I slid the bolt forward and raised the gun. I flicked off the safety and took aim. I took a deep breath and held it, squeezing the trigger slowly. I pulled the bolt back, ejecting the spent cartridge and sliding a new one in. I took aim and squeezed off another shot, and then a third. I stopped and handed Paul back the rifle. “There’s nothing wrong with your gun, just your grip.”