The Next World Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Olah, Jeff

  Natalie squeezed his hand, but spoke to Gentry. “How about I go through it with him this time, let you and Emma get back to the kids?”

  “Kids,” Owen said, “What about the kids?”

  Gentry nodded. “Thanks, but I’d still like to observe for a few minutes. I think we’re out of the woods, but I just want to be sure.”

  Natalie pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat. “Okay, if you start to feel tired, like you’re going to fall asleep, just let me know. There’s quite a bit that’s happened since last week.”

  “Okay,” Owen said, “But start with the kids. I have to know that they—”

  “Ava and Noah are fine, in fact better than fine.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Downstairs eating with the others. They’ve been up here every single day with you. Noah’s even been reading to you.”

  “Downstairs?” He looked around the room. “What is this place?”

  Gentry turned to the woman with the steel blue eyes and then back to Owen. “This is Emma Runner, you’ve met her brother.” He waited for Owen to acknowledge her and then continued. “She’s a good friend of mine, from before the outbreak, and she’s also part of the reason you’re still here. I’ll let Natalie fill you in on the rest. And I apologize for the bad timing; there are just a few things that need our immediate attention. We’ll be back in a few hours. We can go over any of the details then.”

  Owen nodded, said thank you, and watched them hurry back through the doors. He didn’t care. His children were safe, he had his wife by his side, and for the moment he was still breathing. The details were just a luxury.

  “So,” Natalie said, “there’s quite a bit I need to tell you, how do you want to do this?”

  120

  Owen felt like he needed to get out of the bed. His body ached, but in a good way. He now sat upright, more pillows than he could count, stacked neatly behind his back and neck, and under his arms. It was comfortable, almost too comfortable. He wanted to get out of the bed, felt like he should, although the dizziness and the nausea told him that maybe he should wait.

  Natalie now stood near the door. “You good with everything?” She had finished running back the last several days for him. He had a few questions, needed to get some context for a couple of the darker moments, and at one point even made a joke about missing most of his left ear, and how he may not be a very good listener anymore.

  But now, he didn’t want to talk about any of that. Nothing from the past few weeks held any interest for him. All he needed to know was right here in this room, seated in a half circle and staring back at him.

  Ava and Noah sat between Lucas and Harper, and they looked good. Travis and the tall man from the street, Thomas, were off to their left. Kevin sat near the door, with Zeus at his feet. And there was one he didn’t recognize.

  Not completely.

  The young man looked to be a few years older than Lucas, maybe twenty or so. He was clean shaven, had dark hair, dark eyes, and tanned skin. He was probably just under six feet and looked like an athlete.

  Owen nodded. “Hello.”

  The young man stood opposite Natalie, just inside the doors. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Have we met? You look familiar, but I just can’t place it.”

  There were snickers from his family and friends. They watched as he tried to put the pieces together, as he studied the young man’s face.

  “I told you.” Kevin turned to Travis and then to the young man. “That facial hair, gets ‘em every time.”

  “We’ve never officially met,” the young man said. “My name is Devin—”

  “Fletcher.” Owen finished it. “And yes we have, I just wasn’t at a hundred percent when we did. And my friend is right, you look a whole lot different without the beard.”

  “Better?” Devin smirked, sounded like he had a slight accent.

  “Sure,” Owen said. “You look younger than I remember, but again, I wasn’t all there.”

  “You look better now too.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “No,” Owen said, “thank you, really. My family and my friends wouldn’t be here without you and yours. We owe you our lives and I’d personally like to make it up to you somehow. However, at the moment—”

  “Not necessary. We’re as happy to have you here as you all are to be here. You know, strength in numbers. This place is nothing without the people. And having Gentry working with Emma means everything.”

  Kevin could see the look on Owen’s face. He turned quickly to Natalie, and then to Devin. “I’m not sure how much detail he has just yet.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Kevin turned in his chair, ran his hand over Zeus’s back. “That’s why we’re here.”

  The room went quiet, as if the others knew what was coming.

  Owen pulled at the bandages on his left arm, winced as they caught on his injury. “Why we’re here?”

  Kevin motioned toward Devin. “Why he came looking for us, for him.”

  Owen thought back, remembered bits and pieces. “Gentry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “And,” Kevin said, “long story short is that he knew that Declan and his people were also searching for Gentry. He just followed them to us.”

  Owen looked to Devin. “That’s it?”

  “Not very elaborate, but it ended up working out. The risk was definitely worth the reward.”

  “So far,” Travis offered.

  “Reward?” Owen asked.

  “The details are something Dr. Gentry and Ms. Runner will have to explain, although there’s a good chance we can fix this, all of this, get the world back the way it was. It’s not going to happen overnight, but now we’re not running away from this thing—we’re going after it, head on.”

  “What about this place, are we safe here?”

  “As safe as anywhere we’ve found,” Devin said. “We’re hidden for the most part from the highway, tons of plant growth since the mall closed down a few years ago. Most people never even knew this place existed. Those that did probably forgot about it and wouldn’t remember how to get here anyway.”

  Owen looked from Kevin, to Travis, and back to Natalie and his children. “So, this is it, we’re staying?”

  Natalie bit at her upper lip. “Yes, I think so. But I still want you to talk to Dominic, Ethan, and his sister Emma. This is going to be your home as well … and this time, I want us to make the decision together.”

  121

  His legs were stronger than he would have thought. He felt like he could run, well maybe jog, but he wasn’t too far off. He was probably at about sixty-five percent, seventy-five to eighty if you got rid of the injury to his left arm and the fact that he was missing half an ear.

  Owen held the frame of the door as he stepped into the small dark room and looked for a place to sit. “Hey.”

  Travis moved aside and motioned for him to take a seat near a bank of computer monitors. “You look good, almost human.”

  “I appreciate that, but coming from you I’m not so sure I should.” Owen smiled. It was good to be out, even if he still felt a bit lightheaded and his left arm had gone numb.

  The room was small, looked like it was encased in concrete. Ten feet deep and maybe fifteen feet from end to end. There was a bank of one foot square lockers along the back wall, painted an awful green and bolted to the white linoleum floor.

  As Owen slumped into a brown, faux leather office chair, he scanned the oversized desk and the row of monitors. Devin sat with the man he’d briefly met earlier that morning and one other he didn’t recognize. They watched a video feed on the center monitor. It was black and white, grainy and running in slow motion.

  “Owen …” The man he remembered as Ethan Runner turned back toward him for a brief second. “Just give us a moment.”

  The man beside him pointed at the screen. “If they’re trying to stay hidde
n, they aren’t doing a very good job.”

  “He’s not hiding.” Devin sat forward, leaned on the desk. “He wants us to know he’s out there, that they’re out there. He thinks he can intimidate us, get us to run or to bring Gentry out and surrender.”

  The man between Devin and Ethan started to speak, but then looked back at Owen. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve been introduced, not properly anyway. My name is Bryce, Bryce Young.”

  Owen stared past him for a moment. He was watching a light colored vehicle move slowly across the screen. There was something that told him it was important, but he didn’t know why. When he finally looked up, Bryce was holding out his hand. “Oh, yeah. I apologize. I’m Owen Mercer, it’s good to meet you.”

  Devin now pointed to the monitor on the right. The video feed was also in black and white and filled the screen, top to bottom. “You can see that other car came to a stop here, like they’re waiting for something. They stay for a minute or two and then just drive away. They do that like five or six times. You think they’re trying to—”

  “Looks like they’re dropping people off.” Owen sat forward in the cheap office chair. “Can you zoom in on the rear windows at all?”

  Ethan began to nod. “Yeah, I think you might be right, wait a minute.” He stepped around Devin and reached for the mouse. He dragged it to the monitor in the center and then turned to Bryce. “What’s beyond those trees, can you get to the fences from there?”

  “That’s camera four …” Bryce looked to the side, at no one in particular, like he was trying to remember. “Uh, if you go back up the hill and then cross the …” His voice trailed off as he looked to Devin and then back to Ethan. “There’s no way, they couldn’t. It would take them like what, two, maybe three hours?”

  Ethan ran the video back thirty seconds and then paused the recording. He zoomed in on the rear of the light colored vehicle just before it pulled in behind a row of head-high Manzanita. Ethan then jumped back to the first monitor and zoomed in on the same vehicle, but this time as it pulled away on the opposite side of the road. “Owen’s right, look.”

  In the first video there were at least two men on the passenger side. It was grainy and the faces were blurred, but they were there. In the feed where the vehicle pulled away and left the area, the windows were dark, only the reflections of the side of the road.

  Owen let his mind complete the picture. He knew what this was, but didn’t want to admit what was coming, or what that meant for his family or his friends. “Declan?”

  Devin shook his head, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, I should have just killed him.”

  “You didn’t?”

  Bryce looked toward the door and then back to the center monitor. “It’s not your fault kid, we knew this was going to happen at some point.”

  Owen sat forward in his chair. He couldn’t think of a question that would cover what his mind was having a hard time comprehending, at least not in a way that he thought would be constructive. All he could think to do was stare back at the center monitor and not let the voices in his head take control.

  “Then what?” Travis was standing now. He had taken a step back toward the door, but eyed Ethan. “You don’t have the numbers for something like this.”

  Ethan looked up from the monitor. “We don’t have the numbers, that’s what you—”

  The two-way radio on the desk sparked to life. “Ethan, you seeing this?” It was a voice Owen didn’t recognize. “You got eyes on the back gates?”

  Owen turned back to the monitors as did the others.

  “With you guys out there, we’ve had camera six powered down to cut the drain on the solar.” Ethan quickly ran through a series of commands, the screens intermittently going black and then slowly coming back to life. “We know Declan’s back and it looks like he’s got something planned.”

  The unfamiliar voice came again. “Not planned, already in progress.”

  Ethan was already facing the monitor on the far left, and as the picture came into focus, he slowly began to shake his head. He let out a heavy sigh, cursed under his breath, and just stared at the black and white images that now filled the screen.

  Feeders, more than Owen had ever seen grouped together in one place, pushed into the rear gates. Probably a few hundred, maybe more, maybe a whole lot more. They stood one behind the other, tightly packed from one side of the monitor to the other.

  But there was something else, something Owen hadn’t noticed as his mind first attempted to make sense of what he was seeing. Beyond the crowds, and set back from the side of the road were six vehicles. They sat facing the horde, three on each side, the last, a silver electric sedan that sent a frozen barb up through his spine and into the base of his neck.

  “Declan.”

  Ethan had turned away from the screen and now held the walkie to the side of his mouth. “Okay,” he said. “Pull the trucks out and set up thirty feet from the gates. We’ll have Bill and Erik running cover from the towers.”

  Travis had moved away and was starting toward the hall. “What’s the plan?”

  “Get everyone down to the shop and have them stay put. I’ll meet you back in the garage.”

  The voice again came through the two-way radio, it was lower and quicker than before. “What if they, uh … what if they get through the gates?”

  Ethan quickly glanced back at the screen and then looked around the room. He began to nod. “That’s exactly what I’m hoping they’ll do.”

  122

  Owen followed Travis out of the office, down two flights of stairs, and back to the second floor of the abandoned shopping mall. The lights were now dimmed and those who roamed the area outside the former mattress store had moved on. “I’m going out there, to help.”

  “Yeah,” Travis grinned, but was shaking his head. “I don’t think so my friend.”

  “I need you to get me out there, past the gates.”

  Travis turned back to face him, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes. “You aren’t serious?”

  Owen could see where this was going. He wanted to convince his friend of all the things running through his head, but there wasn’t time. Not if he was going to do what he should have done weeks ago.

  “Is there another way to get out there?”

  “No Owen, this isn’t how—”

  “Where’s Kevin?”

  Travis turned away. “He’s with the others.”

  There was something in the way Travis now looked off in the opposite direction. He hadn’t started toward the motionless escalator, but it was apparent he was attempting to end the conversation; however, Owen sensed it wasn’t for the obvious reasons.

  “I’m going either way, you can help me or you can let me do this alone. I don’t care.”

  “You know I owe it to Natalie and the kids to at least give them a heads-up.” Travis paused and turned back to face him. “But I know what you need to do and why you need to do it. Trust me, I get it.”

  His legs were steady, but his left arm was numb and his head still throbbed. It wasn’t ideal, but this might be his only opportunity. “So,” Owen said, “give me a gun and tell me where to go. As soon as I’m out there, you can tell whoever you want. But this ends today.”

  123

  Owen pushed through the door and stepped out onto the dock. The ground was wet, shallow puddles dotting the massive asphalt lot as a pair of water tanker trucks drove away from the underground garage and sped toward the rear gates. He readied the SIG Sauer P226, clamped down with his left hand and winced as a stabbing pain shot from his forearm and slammed into the crease below his shoulder.

  Come on Owen, just five minutes.

  With his back to the wall, he moved quickly through the shadows afforded by the massive concrete structure. Thirty feet from the end of the dock, he paused to watch as the tankers pulled to a stop and four men climbed out. Two stayed near the doors and the others climbed the rear of the tanks and unwound the hoses.


  The horde now began to spread out at the edges and turned its focus toward the men near the twin tankers. They piled in behind one another, pushing at the fences, and clawing at the gates, the sound of their low guttural moans and snapping jaws nearly drowning out the pair of diesel engines.

  “Here we go.”

  From his vantage, it appeared he would be hidden, at least until he reached the fences. A short two hundred yard run and then a quick—or not so quick—climb over the eight-foot chain link. It probably wasn’t the only hitch in his plan, but with his left arm at maybe sixty percent, things were about to get interesting.

  To say the least.

  Thirty feet from the fence, he was spotted. First by the stocky man near the rear of the first tanker—Owen thought his name was Phil—and then by a small group of Feeders who had broken off from the growing horde.

  Owen slowly shook his head as the man he remembered as Phil turned to alert the driver. The man looked confused, holding his arms in the air and looking from the dock to the fence and then back to Owen. He finally lost interest and turned his attention back to the hose and the massive tanker.

  At the fence, Owen tucked the weapon into his pants, lifted his right arm above his head, and jumped. He was able to get his hand over the top, but now had to deal with the row of barbed wire.

  “This should be fun.”

  Taking in a deep breath and trying to think about something else, anything else, Owen gripped the bar that ran along the top of the fence with his left hand and forced his right arm over the razor-sharp wire. It dug into the fabric of his coat, but so far hadn’t torn through. He pulled back, testing his weight, but then thought he may just lose his nerve.

  “Three … two … one …”

  Owen shifted all of his weight to his bent right arm and pushed off with his left leg, tossing it over the wire. And in one motion he released his grip on the top of the fence and allowed his momentum to carry him over the top, his right cheek catching on one of the barbs as he dropped to the other side.