The Z-Strain Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Morris, SJ

  “We go in, but we go in ready to fight. Brigantine could have left some of her men behind to use the cabin as another one of her staging areas, so these guys may not be friendly. I’m going to get us some guns and a few other items should anyone pose a threat,” I said getting up to prepare for the worst. Immediately, I felt a pull on my pants.

  Grayson had a hold of my pant leg, and he was shaking his head, his bottom lip quivering, “You can’t leave me.”

  Reaching down, I grasped both of his shoulders tightly. “It’s going to be okay. Stay down here and keep your head down. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you again.”

  Grayson let go of my pants and rubbed the palms of his hands into his eyes, “Okay. I’ll stay here, but you have to hurry back.”

  “I’ll be right back, and Jimmy is here to keep you company. I’ll only be a few seconds, I promise.”

  Grayson looked at Jimmy with apprehension and seemed to disappear again into his blanket and the recesses of the truck. It was going to take some time for him to trust anyone again, especially another adult male.

  I ran to the back and lifted one of the bench seats. Peter was definitely gone for good. He had taken the pack he thought he’d hidden with food, guns, and ammunition. Not only was this psychopath out there somewhere, but he was now armed too.

  This day seemed to get better and better.

  Well, you can only handle one emergency at a time, right? At this moment, I needed to get Jimmy and myself armed for a possible fight with whoever had taken refuge in my home. I grabbed two of the AK-47s and as many ammo cartridges as I could fit in my arms. I looked at the box of smoke bombs, decided to grab a few, and stuffed them in my pockets. You never know when they could come in handy. I ran back up front, dumped the ammo on the front console, and handed Jimmy one of the rifles. He slung the belt around his neck and laid the gun on his lap, the barrel pointing out towards the door. If he needed to shoot quickly, he could, and the person on the other side of the door wouldn’t see it coming, smart.

  I did the same just in case someone came up next to me on my side also. I looked down at Grayson. His hiding spot was going to leave him vulnerable. If the people here were intent on killing us, they were going to shoot up the cab of the truck first to disable us from being able to drive away.

  “Grayson, can you do me a favor and go hide in the back, please? If things go bad, I want you to be able to get away out the back, okay? One of the seats all the way in the back on the left side, you can lift up the seat cushion and hide inside it. You’ll be safe there until I come get you. Don’t come out unless Jimmy or I say it’s safe, okay?”

  Grayson started crying again, but he nodded his head as he crumpled up his blanket and ran to the back.

  Checking my weapon to be sure the safety was off, I said, “All right, Jimmy, let’s go.”

  Chapter 27

  We drove through the gate and had to stop to wait for the next fence to open. It was good to see that both gates were functioning again, but I was still anxious to see how these next few moments were going to play out. If Brigantine’s men had taken over the cabin, chances of survival didn’t bode well for the rest of my family. I wanted so badly to see that they were okay, but this unknown man answering the gate who knew me, made me uneasy.

  The gate opened, and I saw the fields that were once planted with crops were now covered in snow. The trees in the distance were also heavy with the white stuff, which hid the cabin from my view.

  We drove slowly towards the trees, and I heard a faint noise outside. I rolled my window down just a little, and the cold air flooded the cab giving me an instant chill, but I heard the sound again.

  “Lilly!” I exclaimed, “Drive faster Jimmy, please.”

  “Who’s Lilly?” Jimmy asked.

  “She’s my dog. Oh, my God, I’m so glad she’s okay,” I replied as I began to cry again.

  My chest tightened hoping she was all right and wasn’t just left outside in the cold to fend for herself.

  We got to the trees, and I saw the lights from one side of the cabin, but I was put back in my seat by the rest of my view. I sucked in a deep breath at the sight before me. I expected to see the cabin standing tall, but the entire right side was left as crumbling blackened rubble.

  “Oh no,” I whispered.

  Jimmy slowed the truck and turned to me, “I’m so sorry, Abby. I really am.”

  The one side of the cabin was utterly destroyed. There were some beams standing, but they were broken and charred. The blackened wood was a harsh contrast to the bright white snow.

  I couldn’t help but notice it looked like organized chaos though. Someone had cleaned up as much as possible it seemed.

  Then I saw her. It was Lilly jumping up through the snow heading for the truck as she barked. Right behind her were Chris and Tyler doing their best to tread through the deep snow as quickly as they could.

  I let out a huge breath of relief, and tears flowed from my eyes happily. Chris and Tyler were alive, and they were here. The cabin was damaged, but my family was still okay. I was overwhelmed with exhilaration and joy.

  “Grayson! You can come out now, buddy. We’re safe; my family is safe!” I yelled as I opened my door and jumped out into the cold.

  Lilly got to me first. She jumped up into my arms and licked my face vigorously. I usually hated when she licked my face. Dogs lick their butts, why the hell would I want her licking my face with butt tongue? But this time I was so happy to have her wiggling in my arms and barking with glee that I didn’t care.

  Tyler made it to us next. He looked like he had grown a full foot since the last time I had seen him. He crashed into Lilly and me with a momentum that almost knocked us over. He squeezed me hard and I let out a little yelp, “I’m so happy to see you,” I said, “but can you not squeeze so hard, please? You’re going to make my water break, and I’m pretty sure the babies are not done growing yet,” I laughed.

  “Sorry, Mom. I’m just so happy to see you alive. Chris told us you were dead, but you’re not and look how big you are!” Tyler said hugging me again with less strength.

  Laughing, I said, “I love your honesty sweetie, but you never tell a pregnant woman how big she is.”

  Tyler blushed a little, “You know what I mean, Mom.”

  “Yes, I do sweetie. I’d like you to meet my new friend, Jimmy. I really would be dead if it not for him and all of his help getting away from that compound,” I waved my hand for Jimmy to come out of the truck.

  Tyler released his grip on me to size up the newcomer as he shook Jimmy’s hand with force. “Thank you, sir, for bringing my mother home safely.”

  Chris stopped a few feet away from me, and I put Lilly down. Grayson peeked his head out of the truck door, and Lilly rushed to greet him. He squealed with excitement as she jumped up into the truck with him and licked his face.

  I looked up at Chris, and I couldn’t help but weep. “I’m so sorry, Chris. I let Brigantine and her people take me. I couldn’t think of another way to end their attack other than to give myself up; I’m so sorry.”

  He looked me over and reached out his hand to rub my belly through my oversized coat, “He said you were dead, but here you are. I can’t believe it.” He pulled his hand from my stomach to hold my face softly.

  I looked up at him as I cried. “Who said I was dead?”

  “Jack did. He came back a few days after Brigantine’s men took you. He said he tried to save you, but there was an explosion and you were killed. I…I can’t believe it’s really you.” Chris finally seemed to realize he wasn’t dreaming as he scooped me up into his arms and hugged me tightly.

  I wanted to hug him forever, but we had Peter on the loose, and we had to find him quickly before it didn’t matter that any of us were alive. If Peter got to those bombs, we might not be for much longer.

  “I hate to be Debbie Downer, but we have a huge problem, and it can’t wait. We need to get Grayson inside, and we have to get a team together an
d find a man who took off from just outside the gates about twenty minutes ago. His name is Peter, and we need to follow his tracks to find him before he gets his hands on some bombs Brigantine had stashed somewhere. She was planning to use them to gas the infected and the remaining survivors, so who knows what will happen if he gets a hold of them.”

  “Wow, you’ve been back for less than five minutes, and there’s already a life or death situation. That might be a new record, Abby,” Chris said jokingly. “Let’s get you guys inside and warmed up. I’ll send a team out right away to find this Peter guy.”

  I looked at Chris seriously, “We need Peter brought back alive if possible. He might have information on where these bombs are. If he does, we need to know, so they don’t fall into the wrong hands. Plus, he has some explaining to do when it comes to what he was doing with Grayson. I think he was…hurting him and I want to make sure he pays for what he did.”

  Saying this information out loud to someone else filled me with so much rage that I wanted to be the one to go after Peter. I wanted to find him and inflict untold amounts of pain on him. I needed justice for what he did to all those innocent people at the FEMA camp and Grayson. This man was someone who had hurt people for fun, and I knew he’d continue unless he was stopped once and for all.

  We walked as quickly as possible through the high snow back to the house after I grabbed Grayson and Lilly from the truck. The front door was boarded up, and half of the porch was burned, so we had to use a side entrance through the kitchen to get inside. We entered the small mudroom and took off our snowy coats and boots. I took Grayson aside and told him there were going to be a lot of people inside, but that none of them would hurt him. I explained that the people inside were my family, and they, like me, would do anything to keep him safe. He seemed to understand, so I opened the door to the kitchen and was greeted with cheers, hugs, and kisses from dozens of people. Most I recognized, but I saw a few new faces too.

  I was overwhelmed to see my friends and family, but I was also sad to see we were missing a few more than I expected.

  I knew Justin and Tom were dead, but I didn’t see Dan, Dana, or Kristen. Linda, Steven, and their dogs were missing. Dan’s dad, Tony, and Allycia’s boyfriend, Jake, weren’t around either. I turned to ask Chris, but he was already huddled in the corner with Jimmy, Kamil, Chuck, Jasmine, and Barry discussing the mission to find Peter.

  I felt like there was a whirlwind of commotion around me. People were talking, asking me questions, and hugging me. I started to feel dizzy, and the room started spinning. I reached out grabbing Bernice, “I don’t feel…so…good,” I managed to get out before dropping to the floor and being swallowed by darkness.

  Chapter 28

  I woke up in a familiar room, but it was dark. It looked like Chris’ room, which made sense, so I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I felt a huge twinge of pain in my stomach. “Oh no, the babies!”

  My heart started to race, and I had a hard time breathing. I looked around for anyone to help, but I saw no one in the dim light coming from the hall. As I reached over to the nightstand to find the light, it became even harder to breath. I threw my arm around to find anything and knocked the light off the stand with a huge crash as the light bulb shattered and the lamp broke.

  Chris came running into the room, “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  “I… can’t… breathe… stomach… pain,” I barely got out in between forced breaths.

  Chris left the room as quickly as he entered and returned with Doc Baker. Seeing her face, I tried to smile, but I was in so much pain, I couldn’t manage it.

  Doc grabbed her stethoscope as she hastily sat next to me on the bed, “You have to slow your breathing, honey. You have to calm down,” she said as she put the cold scope on my chest, “Your heart is racing. You need to relax. Deep breaths, Abby.”

  I tried to comply, but I felt like my lungs were caving in on themselves, so I felt like I had to breathe as quickly as I could, or I wouldn’t get any air. I felt myself falling into that dark black hole again. Then, far away I heard Chris’ soothing voice. I clung to his words as he repeated them over and over, “Just breath.”

  I managed to pull myself back from the darkness threatening to overtake me, and I was able to slow my breathing. I could hear Chris clearer now, “That’s it, honey, breath. Slow it down. Take one breath after the other, slowly. You’ve got this.”

  Doc was on one side of me holding my wrist checking my pulse, and Chris was on the other, rubbing my back in slow, large circles. His touch felt so good I leaned into him wanting him to hold me tightly. I rested my head on his shoulder and instantly relaxed. “I’m sorry, guys. I don’t know what came over me. I was fine one minute, and then the next, the room was spinning.”

  Doc Baker looked up from her watch counting my heartbeats with a big smile. “Your heart rate is naturally elevated when you’re pregnant. Your heart is working to pump blood, not only for you but those two babies as well. But you need to relax and take slow breaths in and then out. I think your fainting spell was due to stress, a vitamin B deficiency, or my best guess is a mixture of the two. I don’t think it’s anything more serious than that though. Have you been eating enough lean meat like chicken or eggs, maybe fish? I know it was probably hard to come by wherever the hell you were, but I’ll bet your diet is a huge factor here.”

  “I was eating eggs a lot at the compound, but I don’t know if you would call the other stuff lean meat. I had a chicken and vegetable MRE earlier today, but I’ve been under a lot of stress though, so there’s that.”

  “I think you just need some rest, a good meal, and your family,” Doc said with a smile as she stood to leave, “I’ll see what Christine and Bernice have cooking up in the kitchen and make sure they bring you something. Get some rest sweetie. We’re all delighted to have you back.”

  I knew she was genuinely happy I had returned, but I was concerned that my being back was rehashing the memory of the day I was taken. The same day we lost so many good people. I remembered that I didn’t see Dan upstairs earlier, “Chris, when I was taken, Dan was in the infirmary with a wound in his hand. Did he recover? Where is he?”

  Chris looked down at his lap. “After you were taken, Dan found me at the rendezvous point. He told me they had kidnapped you. We ran back to the cabin together, but when Brigantine’s men left, they didn’t close the gates. The infected were everywhere, and the main cabin was on fire. Kristen ran out of the burning house with a bunch of others and some of the kids. The infected were on them in seconds, but Kristen threw herself in front of the children screaming for them to run. Dan shot the dead that swarmed her, but it was already too late. Kristen was bitten a few times, and she was bleeding out quickly. I tried to get everyone else to the barn for safety, but Dan wouldn’t leave Kristen’s side. Linda and Steven were screaming about their dogs, and I told them to stay in the barn with the kids as I went back to help Dan. By the time I got back to him, Kristen had turned, and I watched her bite him as he held her. He didn’t scream out; he just kept holding her.”

  Chris rubbed his eyes with his shirt quickly and continued. “I had to shoot both of them. Dan had already told me about what happened to Tom and Justin in the lab earlier, so I had lost pretty much every one of my best friends. You were gone, and Lance had disappeared in all of the chaos. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran back inside the burning house to get everyone else out. I took whoever I could find that knew how to use a gun to get the gates closed and kill the infected that were trapped inside with us. I had everyone else who wasn’t dead or critically injured hook up a hose and put the fire out. I don’t know how we got it all done, but we did. When everything settled, and the fire was out, we had lost a lot of people. Dan, Kristen, Tom, Dana, Mr. Baker, Justin, Jake, Linda, Steven, Mark, Mary, and even little Michael.”

  I felt defeated as I watched Chris count away the people we lost on his fingers. I felt so sorry for everyone. We had lost so many, and I was seemingly
back from the dead. I couldn’t help but feel like my return re-opened the wounds from everything that happened the day Brigantine’s men stormed our home.

  Chris just put his head in my lap and rubbed my stomach softly. I knew he was remembering everything from that day, and I didn’t want to bring it all back up, but there was so much to talk about.

  “You said earlier that Jack told you I was dead? What exactly happened?” I questioned.

  “It was a few days after Brigantine’s men had ambushed us and we were all still trying to clean up and account for the missing or burn the dead when Jack showed up. Bernice was monitoring the security cameras, so she radioed me that there was a man at the front gate claiming to know me. I figured it might have been Jack, so I met him at the gate alone. I didn’t want to get Tyler all worked up seeing his father after what had just happened. That’s when he told me he tried to save you, but there was an explosion, and you were killed. He said he was going to do whatever he could to make sure Brigantine and her men never came back to the cabin and that we should stay inside our walls and stay alert. He would try and contact me if we were ever in danger, but we didn’t hear from him again.”

  I felt my heart pumping faster as my anger raged hearing about Jack’s lies. “He lied about everything. Brigantine put him in my life all those years ago on purpose. She said I have some rare genetic marker, and she needed me to make the antivirus, so she made sure I was at the CDC in Georgia. She made sure I met Jack and that we fell in love too. Apparently, every moment of my life was monitored, every conversation was bugged. Even the doctors I saw when I gave birth to my kids were hired by Brigantine to report everything back to her.”

  Chris looked at me like I had just punched him in the gut. “I don’t understand. Why would he go along with all of that?”

  I had to compose myself before I finished, so I took a few deep, cleansing breaths. “There’s more. Lance, he didn’t go missing. Brigantine’s men kidnapped him that night, and she used his safety to make me comply with the tests she ran daily on the babies and me. She told me Jack didn’t know she had Lance, but I was sure he did. When Jimmy helped me escape…” I almost couldn’t finish, but I had to get it out; I had to tell Chris everything. “Jack didn’t want us to leave. There was a fight, and Jack shot Lance. He killed our son for protecting me. Just before Lance died…he saved me. Jack was choking me to death telling me if he couldn’t have me, no one could. Lance shot his father and killed him. My little boy’s last act in life was to save me,” I had to stop and wipe away my tears before I could continue. “Jack completely lost it at the end, but even before that, everything he ever told us was lies. He told Brigantine where to find the cabin when they showed up and took me. It was all him. Jack was responsible for all of the deaths here.”