by Spell, David
CONTENTS
Title Page
Chapter One - Payback
Chapter Two - Mopping Up
Chapter Three - Close to Home
Chapter Four - Turkish Delight
Chapter Five - Decisions
Chapter Six - Fresh Blood
Chapter Seven - Unwelcome Visitors
Chapter Eight - A Needle in a Haystack
Chapter Nine - When the Nightmare Becomes Reality
Chapter Ten - To Live and Die in LA
Chapter Eleven - The Right Price
Chapter Twelve - When Evil Unites
Chapter Thirteen - South of the Border
Chapter Fourteen - Tourists in Tijuana
Chapter Fifteen - The End of an Era
Where the Vultures Gather
Volume Six of the Zombie Terror War Series
David Spell
This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to events or persons, living, dead, or fictitious are purely coincidental. Some actual locations are used in a fictitious way and the descriptions included here are not meant to be accurate. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
Copyright © 2019 David Spell
DavidSpell.com
All rights reserved
CHAPTER ONE
Payback
Interstate 85 Northbound, Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, 1015 hours
The black Ford van kept to the speed limit in the second lane from the right. Francisco Alvarez made sure that he obeyed every law in the heavy Atlanta traffic. Things must be getting back to normal, he thought, with this many cars on the road. He had heard about the city’s congestion, but was still surprised considering the recent bio-terror crisis that had filled the city with walking corpses. He and his passengers were already way behind schedule and could not afford to get stopped by the police.
The GPS gave an arrival time of 10:45. Only thirty more minutes. Francisco could see the five men dozing or talking quietly in the back. He would be glad to be done with this job and to get home. Each of his passengers was an assassin for the Tijuana Cartel with dozens of kills between them. They had murdered policeman, politicians, priests, bankers, and even unlucky family members who happened to get in their way.
This was their first hit in America, however. The very fact that cartel boss Jose “Pepe” Corona was sending them here meant that they were all expendable. That realization shook Francisco to the core. He wasn’t a killer. He was just a mule, smuggling people, and occasionally narcotics, into the United States on a regular basis.
The Mexican was not a legal resident of the US, but Alvarez had purchased a social security number which had allowed him to get a Texas driver’s license. Having a valid DL meant that he was as close to legal as he was ever going to be. While the assassins in the back might be expendable, Francisco did not put himself in that category. He just wanted to finish this assignment and get back to El Paso where he lived with his wife and two sons.
When the man from the cartel had approached him for this job a few days earlier, Francisco wasn’t given a choice. The mule had not transported anyone for the cartel in maybe a year and a half, not since he had brought in those six Middle-Eastern men. He wasn’t given a choice then either, but he had watched the news, learning that his human cargo had been terrorists responsible for attacks in several large American cities as the zombie virus had first been released.
Now, Alvarez had been told that he would be paid twenty thousand dollars for driving the hitmen to Georgia and then bringing them back. That was twice what he normally charged to smuggle five people into America. The representative from the cartel had also told him, though, that if he failed, he and his family would suffer.
“Treinta minutos, amigos,” Francisco called over his shoulder, glancing at the clock on the dashboard.
He heard his passengers shuffling around behind him and then metallic clicks as weapons were made ready. Moments later, the acrid smell of burning cocaine filled the van as the five killers passed around a pipe. The strong chemicals almost made Francisco gag, forcing him to open his window to let in some fresh air.
José, the team leader, had offered Francisco a hit from the pipe the previous night when they had stopped for a bathroom break. The mule had transported his share of drugs but had never used them, other than occasionally smoking a little weed. José, if that was really his name, told him that this was a potent mix developed by one of the cartel’s chemists. José was a slim man with a perpetual frown, wearing a pencil-thin mustache and keeping his dark hair slicked back.
“Cocaine and PCP?” Francisco had asked incredulously. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
The five hitmen had laughed hysterically at their driver’s question. One of the other Mexicans, Jaime, spoke up.
“The only person it’s dangerous for is the bastard that we’re going to kill. If you smoke this, you feel no pain and can’t be stopped.” The hitman had taken a deep puff of the pipe, his eyes immediately glazing over with pleasure. “Sí, it is going to be very dangerous for the gringo federale. We’re going to make an example of him. They’ll all find out how long our arms really are.”
Later in the evening, Francisco had gotten the courage to ask José about their mission as he sat in the passenger seat, helping the smuggler stay awake on the deserted interstate. “You’re just going after one gringo policía. Un hombre. Why so many men?”
The team leader had looked out the window, disgusted. After a moment, the assassin shrugged and replied. “I could handle this myself. I’ve killed over twenty people, probably half of them federales Mexicano. Most cops are just cowards who hide behind their badge.
“This gringo is supposed to be pretty tough, though, so El Jefe made me bring a bigger team. These hombres,” José motioned towards the sleeping men in the back, “each have a minimum of ten hits of their own. The big boss in Tijuana wants to make sure that this pig dies. If his wife is there, we kill her, too. Normally, we might even take the time to have some fun with her, but we’re a long way from home. You keep the van running, we’ll pop the pig, set his house on fire, and be back on the road in less than five minutes.”
Dacula, Georgia, Friday, 1040 hours
The dark-haired, muscular man sat at the desk in his home office, a black canvas range bag laying open at his feet. Another, much longer desert brown canvas bag leaned against the wall, containing a suppressed Colt M4 rifle. An imposing green gun safe stood open in the corner, a variety of handguns, rifles, and shotguns on display. Boxes of ammunition and loaded magazines lined the shelves.
A small flat-screen television was mounted on the wall behind the desk, tuned to FOX News. The blonde anchorwoman talked as the big man prepped for his day’s activities.
“Government officials continue to work to eliminate the infected up and down the east coast. It’s a slow process as the local police and federal authorities work neighborhood by neighborhood, cleaning out those who were infected by the deadly bio-terror virus and are now commonly called ‘zombies.’ There is no cure for the virus which was first released by terrorists over eighteen months ago. The zombie virus brings death to the individual in a matter of minutes. The terror weapon then reanimates their body, turning them into violent attackers, determined to kill and spread the deadly sickness.”
The screen now showed aerial footage of a depressed neighborhood in New York City as a line of six NYPD SWAT Team members moved door-to-door engaging Zs.
“This video,
provided by the NYPD, will give you an idea of how the police are cleaning their cities up. A top NYPD official told us that they are making slow, steady progress to make the city safe again. Of course, it is very dangerous work for the officers on the street and cannot be rushed. We are hearing the same reports from Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and other east coast cities.
“As we have reported before, the President has authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to coordinate the federal response in cleaning up after the bio-terror attacks. They are mobilizing the Department of Homeland Security, CDC Enforcement Agents, the FBI, and local police departments to make affected areas of the east coast livable again. The National Guard is also assisting as needed.”
Chuck McCain was thankful that his east coast neighborhood was safe, and for the most part unaffected. He had already been awake for over four hours, having read several chapters from his well-used Bible while enjoying two cups of hot coffee. After finishing his morning devotions, McCain checked emails and then worked out in the gym he had set up in his basement. He lifted weights for an hour and then moved on to his heavy bag for ten rounds, pounding it with thudding punches, kicks, knees, and elbows.
After showering, he had dressed in what was often his normal uniform: gray cargo pants, a black polo-shirt, and combat boots. Chuck ate a plate of scrambled eggs and fried bacon that Beth had left on the table for him and began packing for his day of training. The federal police officer’s range time had been limited over the last year due to the terror attacks.
There had been plenty of shooting, but it wasn’t training. It had all been against zombies and real bad guys. McCain stood and snapped on his duty belt containing a 9mm Glock 17, extra magazines, handcuffs, a collapsible baton, and a screw-on suppressor for his pistol. The suppressor was not standard equipment for law enforcement officers but Chuck had noticed early on that the infected were attracted to noise. Reducing the report from their weapons was one way that McCain and his men could gain an advantage in this new war.
Chuck had let his wife, Elizabeth, drive the Silverado to work this morning. They would eventually purchase a second car but that had not been high on the priority list between living in both Washington, D.C., and in Georgia for the last several months. Elizabeth’s position at the Centers for Disease Control required her to be onsite once a week. Mrs. McCain was enjoying serving as the Administrative Aide to Dr. Charles Martin, the acting director of the CDC.
Chuck was an Assistant Director of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency, on loan to the Department of Homeland Security. This required him to spend most of his time in the nation’s capital or traveling up and down the east coast, coordinating with local law enforcement in eliminating those infected by the zombie virus, along with the clean up of the many corpses left behind by the bio-terror attack. Beth had been flying to Atlanta every Thursday night and flying back to DC a day or two later. When he could, McCain accompanied her, enjoying a three-day weekend at their home in rural Georgia.
The zombie virus had been released a year and a half earlier by Iranian operatives. While the bio-terror weapon had infected people throughout the nation, the epicenter of the attacks had been on the east coast. The largest attacks had been coordinated suicide and car bomb detonations in Atlanta, Washington, and New York City. The bombs had been packed with shrapnel, high explosives, radioactive waste, and the bio-terror virus.
Before assuming his current position with the CIA, McCain had headed up the Atlanta office of the CDC Enforcement Unit. They had been involved from the very beginning in tracking the terrorists behind the attacks. Chuck and his team had killed or arrested many of the key players, as well as eliminating thousands of zombies. McCain had been surprised when he was offered the prestigious position with the Central Intelligence Agency. They normally did not hire outsiders for sensitive positions.
In actuality, however, he had been working for the CIA the entire time but that had not been public knowledge. With the spy agency forbidden from operating on American soil, the President had signed an executive order creating an enforcement branch at the CDC. The CIA funded the operation, providing intelligence and other support. This move allowed the Agency to stay in the forefront of the bio-terror threat that was looming on the horizon.
Of course, this should have been the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s role, but the Bureau has long had a culture of responding slowly to reported threats. This one was no different. The CIA had provided the FBI with verified, actionable intelligence about the zombie virus that was never acted upon.
Months later, after receiving bad advice from one of the FBI’s Deputy Directors in the midst of the crisis, the President was furious. It got worse when it was discovered that an Iranian intelligence agent had managed to infiltrate the Bureau and was blackmailing his boss, the Deputy Director of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. That particular deputy director had committed suicide rather than face the charges that would have been brought against him. His assistant, Special Agent Mir Turani, was exposed and covertly taken into custody by Chuck and Andy Fleming and turned over to the CIA for interrogation. When Turani eventually broke, a number of other corrupt agents were also identified. Many of these were arrested, but a few were still on the run.
The President had cleaned house, firing the Attorney General, the Director of the FBI, and most of the Deputy Directors. He had taken the unprecedented step of authorizing the CIA to take the lead in restoring order after the bio-terror attacks. Many cities still needed to be cleared of the roaming bands of decaying zombies. At the same time, many infected corpses and body parts littered each of the affected areas and needed to be disposed of properly to prevent another possible outbreak.
The reason that McCain was on loan to the Department of Homeland Security was that, for the time being, he and his teams were working closely with local law enforcement agencies. Chuck had been a police officer in the Atlanta area for twenty years and knew that local cops had an innate distrust of the FBI. The DHS was probably the most innocuous of all the federal agencies. Representing the DHS ensured that McCain and his experts would get the cooperation that they needed.
Chuck took a final look into the range bag, making sure it had everything he needed. His ammo was there: 9mm, 5.56mm, and .12 gauge shotgun shells. The .12 gauge rounds reminded him that he still needed to pack his shotgun. Movement out the window caught his eye and McCain observed a lawn crew, one on a mower and another weed-eating his neighbor’s yard.
A third Hispanic looking member of the crew had laid down the blower and was speaking on his phone, glancing occasionally towards Chuck’s house. The big man glanced down at his yard, noticing that the grass did need to be cut. Maybe I’ll check with Mitch and get the contact information for his lawn guys, McCain thought. Keeping the grass cut wasn’t something I needed to be concerned about during the zombie apocalypse.
Chuck glanced at his phone and saw the time: 1040 hours. His friend Josh Matthews was on the way to pick him up for a few hours at the local police department’s shoot house. Matthews was a sergeant on the SWAT Team with the Gwinnett County Police Department, where McCain had worked before taking early retirement. Corporal McCain had been Recruit Matthew’s field training officer when he had graduated from the police academy fifteen years earlier.
Sergeant Chuck McCain had also been Corporal Josh Matthews’ squad leader when they had served on the SWAT Team together several years later. When McCain had been promoted to lieutenant, Matthews had been bumped up to sergeant, taking over as squad leader on the tactical team. Lieutenants were not allowed to serve on an assault team and after a few years, McCain had grown restless and retired.
Ready for something new and challenging, Chuck accepted a one-year contract with the Department of Defense, serving as a police liaison with an Army Special Forces A Team in Afghanistan. When that contract was up, the Green Berets requested that McCain stay with them and were able to get him a second one-year tour. While being an asset to
the SF team, Chuck had soaked up everything the spec ops soldiers had to teach him, taking his own well-developed skills to another level.
After his second twelve month contract with the military, McCain had been approached and offered a job by Rebecca Johnson, who was setting up the new CDC law enforcement agency. She had been Chuck’s boss until she was murdered by one of the key Iranian terrorists on the University of Georgia campus. Rebecca and Chuck had recently started dating at the time of her death. The big man was devastated, holding the beautiful woman in his arms as she died.
Chuck’s smart phone vibrated with an incoming text from Beth.
“How you feeling this morning, Sexy? You were awesome last night! I just want to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself with all that exertion!”
McCain laughed out loud. After Johnson’s death, he had struggled with guilt from not being able to protect her. Depression had been a constant companion and he thought that he would never love again. And then he had met Elizabeth Benton.
They definitely had not met in a conventional way. Fate, coincidence, or the hand of God, as Chuck believed, had caused him to be in the right place at the right time after Beth had been kidnapped. He was traveling to Hartwell, Georgia, attempting to locate his daughter. The power and communication grids had gone down and he hadn’t spoken to Melanie in almost three months. He only knew that she had been staying with her boyfriend’s family in the small town of Hartwell.
As McCain had huddled in an abandoned home, shivering and waiting out a winter storm, an SUV pulled onto the same street, stopping at a nearby house. Chuck watched four armed men drag a small, screaming, struggling girl out of the vehicle. One of the kidnappers viciously punched her in the face to shut her up, knocking her unconscious.