by Tony Baker
SURVIVORS OF THE DEAD:
FROM THE ASHES
By
Tony Baker
KINDLE EDITION
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Survivors of the Dead:
From the Ashes
Copyright© 2013, 2014
Tony Baker
Kindle Edition
SURVIVORS OF THE DEAD
FROM THE ASHES
COPYRIGHT© 2013, 2014 by Tony Baker, Author
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, except for historical and public figures, is purely coincidental. Although many of the places and items depicted in this novel do exist, i.e. geographical locations, vehicles, weapons, and other equipment, numerous liberties have been taken and intentional embellishments made. This book does not purport to provide accurate descriptions of any actual locations, things, or entities. This is an original work of fiction and all intellectual property rights are reserved by Tony Baker, Author.
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Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services
http://www.moniquehappy.com
ISBN-13: 978-1493561308
ISBN-10: 1493561308
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I began my writing journey in earnest in September 2012, and although I have faced some interesting hurdles along the way, I would not change a single thing that I have been privileged to experience. Meeting incredible people, both fans of the genre as well as other amazing authors, are just two of the highlights of this adventure. I have so many people to thank for their unwavering support throughout this process!
First to my family: nephews, Eric and Jimi, sister, Tommi, and brother-in-law, Jeff. You are the center of my universe and without your support over the past sixteen months I am not certain I could have made it! I love you all more than I could ever put into words.
To the incomparable Monique Happy Lewis! Not only is Monique one of the best industry editors, I am proud to call her my friend! A simple ‘thank you’ will never be enough to express the deep appreciation and gratitude I have for her taking my work on.
To David P. Forsyth for granting permission to include references to his Sovereign Spirit Saga universe. My sincere thanks to him for allowing me to mesh our universes together a bit. David is on a list of many other authors who have inspired and motivated me over the years.
To Wanda and her granddaughter Nevaeh. Not only did they grant permission for me to create characters based on them, but they are steadfast supports and true friends!
Finally, to all of the wonderful people I have met and who have supported me! As I mentioned, this includes many authors and fans of the genre. You all initially accepted me with little more than a book cover and a video trailer, as I talked about a concept while writing this book, but you stood with me along every step of this adventure. To list each of your names would take pages. You know who you are, so please also know that each of you have my most sincere heartfelt gratitude and admiration!
“From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
a light from the shadows shall spring.
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
the crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien
SURVIVORS OF THE DEAD
FROM THE ASHES
1
Harold Lancaster woke to screaming and that incessant moaning again from the street outside his bedroom window in the San Francisco apartment building he managed. Or, more specifically, had managed. He was not certain what rule of law applied in a zombie apocalypse, but it was still his building for now, and he wasn’t allowing an apocalypse to change that just yet. After all, he had been forced to kill several of the residents in the first few days of the madness, even wittily concluding that little endeavor might have given him some form of property ownership. “Yep, I’m taking adverse possession of the building,” he’d thought at the time.
Harry had been in the bathroom getting ready to shower on the morning the madness began, that date being set to memory quite clearly: April 1st. As he finished using the toilet, he heard an obvious squabble erupt in the unit above his. That was unusual, as the upstairs tenants were a very nice young couple that both travelled extensively in their professions. Harry had rarely heard them in the past, which raised an immediate red flag. There was yelling and thumping; it sounded like items were being thrown on the floor. Then came a heavy thud, like a body falling, and a long, drawn-out scream that raised goose bumps on Harry’s body.
Rushing out of the bathroom, he pulled on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and his slip-on shoes. Without thinking, he also grabbed the Glock handgun that he kept in a nightstand by the bed. Harry had never felt the need to arm himself in the building before, but something made him pick up the weapon this time. Tucking the gun in the rear of the jean’s waistband, grimacing slightly at its coldness against the bare skin at the small of his back, he pulled the sweatshirt down over it and rushed out of his apartment door into the hallway. His plan was to proceed down the hall and take the stairs located just before the lobby up one flight to the second floor. From there he could quickly reach the couple’s unit. Harry almost immediately forgot that plan after only taking a few steps outside of his apartment.
The first thing that hit Harry was an odor so rancid it nearly brought tears to his eyes and actually caused him to gag. It was as if rotten meat had been left in the sun for days while sitting in raw sewage. Breathing through his mouth, he walked toward the lobby area and the stairway. As he got closer, he began to hear what could only be described as a wet, ripping sound, and a low moaning that was coming from the lobby, just out of his line of sight. Curiosity getting the better of him, Harry continued on past the stairway.
As Harry walked around the corner and into the lobby, the scene that met him was like something out of a nightmare; it shook him to the very core. He had been witness to some gruesome things in his career as a cop, but what he now observed was incomprehensible. Lying next to the mailboxes was a body so mangled that the person was unrecognizable, although the brown tattered shirt and pants probably meant it was a UPS driver that had been making an early morning delivery. The face had been completely torn away, and the only discernible feature was a bloody, whitish skull with a few tatters of flesh, muscle, and hair remaining.
The upper portion of the body had not fared much better. What little of the brown shirt remained had been shredded, exposing the abdominal area which had been eviscerated, its contents spilling out and across the floor. Hunched over the corpse, next to several packages lying in a spreading pool of blood, were two elderly women he immediately recognized as Katy and Edna, tenants of the building.
Harry said, “What the fuck?” which garnered the immediate attention of Edna. Katy ignored him, continuing to rip bloody strips of flesh from the body with gnarled, claw-like hands and then stuffing the grotesque tidbits she had liberated into her mouth. Bile quickly rose in Harry’s throat but he did not have time to actually vomit because Edna, who had been sharing this ghoulish meal, began to struggle to her feet, staring right at him.
Edna was a long-term tenant in her late 70’s, robust for her age although hard of he
aring and nearly blind. She was the epitome of that ‘nasty old lady’ everyone has met at one point in their lives, with never a pleasant word and always complaining about something. She was renowned for her loud, screeching ‘fingernails on a chalk board’ voice, and would corner any unsuspecting person with venomous avowals as to the current state of the nation or her categorical disapproval of San Francisco politics. It was the long-held conclusion by most of the building tenants that she should be avoided at all costs.
Tenants with the misfortune of running into Edna while trying use the elevator could always look forward to another of her pleasantries. In that loud, screeching voice, much like a herd of cats in heat, she would shriek, “Hold the elevator! Hold the elevator! I’ve gotta get my mail!” Edna had the ability to make strong men cringe, women weep, and small children run screaming in horror.
Harry immediately saw that Edna was definitely the worse for wear as she struggled to regain her feet, all the while emitting a low, menacing moan. The tattered housecoat she wore, which had been her ever-present trademark fashion statement, was hanging open, exposing torn flesh and a missing breast. The remaining one sagged almost to her stomach, which, in and of itself, was enough to give Harry nightmares for weeks. Her hair was disheveled, with clumps missing, and both bruised arms bore what appeared to be numerous and severe bite wounds. What chilled Harry the most were her bloodshot eyes and a foamy reddish-white substance which dripped very slowly from her slightly opened mouth.
Once on her feet, she raised bloody, arthritic hands, resembling the same claw-like appendages as her cohort Katy, and moved toward Harry with purpose in an impossibly fast manner for someone of her age and current physical condition. As she quickly closed the short distance between them, years of training took over and Harry delivered a front leg kick that sent her crashing back into Katy and the corpse. Katy, whose physical condition rivaled that of Edna’s, now turned her full attention also on Harry. To his horror, both of these monstrosities began to struggle to their feet, and he knew their intentions were not to discuss a plumbing issue or why the elevator was not working.
With more adrenaline flooding his system than he had experienced in years, he screamed at them, “What the fuck is the matter with you!” Harry then withdrew the .45 caliber Glock, quickly pulling the slide back to chamber a round, and shouted “STAY DOWN! For the love of God, stay the fuck down!” He took several steps backward, bringing up the Glock and depressing the first trigger safety, took a standard firing stance, and lined the sights up on the first target.
His words only seemed to agitate them more as they continued to stand, slipping a few times in the pool of blood that now covered a large portion of the lobby floor. Once again his reflexes and training took over, as he realized this was a failure-to-stop scenario and deadly force was required.
That thought passed through his mind within seconds as he rapidly fired the Glock four times in succession, delivering two of the heavy rounds center mass first into Edna and then Katy. Harry wondered how he was going to explain shooting two old ladies in the lobby of an apartment building. This will look good on KRON News tonight, he thought.
Over the years Harry had heard the various forms of public condemnation that were usually generated from police-involved shootings that resulted in a death. “They should have just shot him in the leg,” and even once during a very emotional witness deposition, someone had said, “The cops could’ve just shot the gun out of his hand!” Police officers are trained, and have drilled into their very souls, that the use of deadly force is an absolute last resort. But unfortunately there are situations in which a cop has no alternative.
Police officers do not start their shift with the wanton desire to take another human life, even those of the worst of violent criminals. But if innocent people are in a life-threatening situation—if indeed the officer is in fear for his own life—a cop is trained to shoot. They shoot to permanently eliminate the mortal danger that required that decision in the first place. Hollywood theatrics of shooting a person to wound them or shooting a weapon out of someone’s hand are simply not realistic in the adrenaline-filled moments leading up to the use of deadly force.
In the 1980’s when Harry first began his law enforcement career, there was not the concern over terrorist activity that had grown over the years since, nor were there as many heavier caliber assault-type weapons in the hands of those seeking to conduct nefarious activity. But the use of deadly force was very much a part of the instruction and training recruits had to master.
The Mozambique Drill, also known as the failure to stop drill, or just failure drill, is a close-quarter shooting technique in which the shooter fires twice into the center mass of a target, momentarily assesses the results of the hits, then immediately follows up with a carefully aimed shot to the head of the target. The third shot is aimed to destroy the brain or brain stem, killing the target and preventing the target from retaliating.
This technique was first developed in the mid-1960’s during the Mozambican War of Independence by Mike Rousseau, who had been a mercenary hired to fight in that war. At some point Rousseau had found himself engaged in a fire fight, armed only with a Browning single-shot bolt-action rifle and a pistol; as he rounded the corner of a building, he came face-to-face with an enemy combatant armed with an AK-47.
Rousseau had been too close to the target at that point to use his rifle, so he quickly drew his pistol and fired two rounds into the enemy’s chest. Unfortunately, the soldier not only stayed on his feet but also managed to hang onto his rifle. Rousseau realized he was in serious trouble as he quickly assessed that the first two shots had been ineffective, and decided to deliver a third shot to the man’s head, killing him instantly and removing Rousseau from mortal danger.
Over the years this technique was perfected and became part of military forces training, and in the late ‘70s was incorporated into law enforcement. With the advent of body armor becoming readily available to the general public, along with the higher accessibility of assault weapons and the ever-growing terrorist threat, this technique has become vital training for police officers. In the new zombie-permeated world this technique would prove how vitally important, and effective, it truly was—many times over.
Harry had not delivered the fatal kill shot to the little old ladies. Two to the chest should have snuffed out any chance at life for those two. Yeah, this is definitely going to look just great on the news tonight, he thought as he closed his eyes momentarily to clear his thoughts. However, it seemed as if all the rules had been tossed as he opened his eyes to see that both Katy and Edna were struggling to stand again, with wounds that would have instantly killed a normal human being!
2
Harry had not changed his stance since the first four rounds had been fired; his training and experience took over once again as he fired two more rounds into Edna and Katy, this time obliterating each of their heads in turn. Both bodies crumpled to the floor and lay motionless.
Thinking the worse, and in a moment of near panic, he aimed the Glock at the corpse that had been Katy and Edna’s breakfast and put a round into its head. “Probably better safe than sorry,” Harry said with an almost maniacal giggle. He then dropped to his knees, having been given a momentary reprieve from the waking nightmare he was in, and emptied the contents of his stomach.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been kneeling, but the dry heaves finally subsided enough for him to get slowly to his feet. Staring at the carnage in front of him, Harry knew he had to get back to his apartment and report this mess. What he couldn’t shake was the tremendous pounding and ringing in his ears from the six shots he had fired in the small lobby area. That was until he realized that some of the ringing was coming from the building fire alarm, which had extremely loud bells. Must have set off the system with the rounds, Harry thought, referring to the shots he had fired and the resulting cordite lingering in the air.
He walked over to the fire panel, needing to step over on
e of the headless bodies to do so, and silenced the alarm. That helped the ringing in his ears a bit, but the pounding persisted. Turning back toward his apartment, he walked the short distance in a complete fog. All he could think of was getting to the phone he had left on his desk and calling 911. As he passed one of the other apartment doors in the hallway, he abruptly realized that the pounding sound he thought had been in his ears was actually originating from that door. As his head cleared a bit more, and he was better able to focus, he realized with rising alarm that the pounding sounds were also coming from several other doors. What caused his blood to run cold was the underlying sound of moaning that also emanated behind those doors.
“What the hell is going on?” Harry said, rushing into the already open door to his apartment, slamming it shut and throwing the two deadbolts into place. “I’ve got to get some help here.” With shaking hands, he picked up his cell phone from the small table in the foyer and dialed 911. It rang at least a dozen times before the number finally connected and a recorded message began: “All circuits are busy now. Please hang up and try your call again later.” Frowning, Harry hit the ‘end’ button, then ‘redial’. As the phone began ringing again, Harry started pacing. “Come on, come on ....” After ringing once more at least a dozen times, it finally connected and he heard the same recorded message.
Harry hung up and immediately opened the directory on the phone. He located Central Station, deciding to call the report in directly, and pressed the speed dial number he had assigned to the station. Once again he started to pace as the line began to ring. He happened by the coffee table where a universal remote control lay, and absently picked it up and turned on the television. Harry normally started his day by watching the morning news on KRON, Channel 4, but as he stared at what was on the 52” LED flat screen TV, it looked as if the location being televised was somewhere in the Middle East. It did not register just yet that what he saw was actually taking place, live, on Market Street in the middle of downtown San Francisco.