The Early Days Trilogy: The Necrose Series Books 1-3

by Tim Moon

  Keanu had even given a short lesson to Chadwick on how to fire the M4. He said he went shooting once in Africa. Although it was a hunting rifle, he felt like he had a good idea how things worked.

  “If we run into any trouble, we meet back here, right?” Ben asked Kaholo.

  “Yes. We don’t want anything following us, so take a scenic route to get here, but yeah.” Kaholo nodded.

  “Thanks for everything so far,” Ben said. He offered his hand to the big man again.

  Kaholo shook it. “No, thank you for helping out Keanu.”

  “Cut out that sappy shit, ladies. Let’s go,” Keanu said, looking down at them from the turret.

  “I guess we have our orders,” Ben said with a smile.

  Kaholo chuckled.

  Ben unslung his rifle and climbed into the passenger seat beside Anuhea. Once Kaholo gave the signal, the rolled down the driveway and pulled out into the street.

  The first half of the drive was largely uneventful. On one of the main streets, they saw clear signs of the infected. Bodies littered the ground. Black smoke curled into the air from fires that were dying. Small groups of infected were spotted, but they were too slow to cause any problems.

  Other than a few intersections with car wrecks, they passed through town without a hitch. Ben wasn’t sure what time it was. He felt certain that Kaholo’s twenty to thirty minute estimate was spot on.

  Ben saw a large green sign that pointed toward the airport. They were close.

  “Cross your fingers,” Ben said.

  Anuhea smiled and turned toward the airport.

  The road curved toward the parking lot, past a post office, and a UPS store. All of them looked empty. Ahead of them was a row of green-roofed buildings that were similar to Kona.

  Right away, it was clear that the airport was not operational. Like Kona’s airport, there was evidence of a battle against the infected. Car windows were shattered, bodies slumped against cars, and infected could be seen wandering among the buildings and parked cars.

  “Goddamn, it’s almost as bad as Kona,” Anuhea said. Disappointment was clear in her voice.

  Flies rose off bodies as they drove past. Infected heard or saw them and began to shuffle out to the road.

  Chadwick gasped as they drove past a dead old woman lying on the ground next to a pet carrier. Something furry lay inside. It didn’t move.

  A cold, sinking feeling drained any remaining hope that Ben had. Somewhere deep down inside him, he’d known the airport was a long shot at best, but he’d refused to listen to it. Instead, he’d opted for hope, a false hope that crumbled and blew away like dust on the wind.

  Behind them, Ben could see Charlotte staring out of the window at the scene. A scene that mirrored so many that they’d witnessed. There were no survivors, no transportation, and no hope. There was nothing for them at the airport except danger.

  “Get us out of here,” Ben said in a dull voice.

  49

  Anuhea turned off the narrow road, tearing a path through the grass. The road in front of the airport looped around in a giant oval, like a racetrack. Anuhea pulled a U-turn in the grass along the road rather than risk ending up trapped among the cars, emergency vehicles, and bodies in front of the airport. They raced back the way they came in.

  Kaholo followed suit although at a slightly slower speed to avoid rolling his big truck.

  An infected woman from the parking lot crossed the grassy area. They sped toward her and she trudged forward to greet them with arms outstretched. She stumbled at the edge of the road. Ben hoped she would fall, but she kept her balance and moved just fast enough to step out in front of them.

  The woman’s body thumped against the steel grill, tossed aside like trash. Black blood splashed up on the windshield in front of Ben. He grimaced as it trickled off to the side as the wind spread it around, blurring his view.

  “It was always a risk,” Anuhea said. She glanced at him briefly. More infected were in their way, drawn out behind them as they had sped toward the airport. Now they posed a potential barrier on their return trip.

  Ben didn’t want to hear it, but he knew. So, he turned and stared out of his window. Trees blurred past. They needed a way off the island. No place would remain safe for long. Eventually, the infected would find and destroy whatever life remained.

  Ben was lost in thought, his mind searching furiously for a solution to their problem, or more specifically, his problem. He wanted his friends to stay safe, but none of them needed off the island as much as he did. They just saw it as their best way to survive.

  Ben’s window exploded with a loud crack, sending cracks racing across the glass. He shouted in surprise and nearly pissed his pants as several other shots struck the Humvee. Keanu spun the machine gun toward the direction of the shots and let loose with a long burst.

  “It’s them! They’re back,” Keanu shouted down at them. He fired another burst and their attackers.

  “Who is it?” Chadwick asked, shouting to be heard above the noise.

  “The road-blockers,” Ben shouted back.

  “Bloody hell! What do I do?”

  “Nothing right now,” Ben shouted. “Sit tight.”

  Chadwick cursed again and gripped his rifle nervously.

  Ben shot him a wry smile before he turned back around. The windshield was a mess of wind-dried blood and he couldn’t see shit out of the side window. With about a million cracks, it was worthless.

  “I can’t see shit,” he said in frustration.

  Anuhea swerved in the road. The tires growled in protest as the whole vehicle swayed sharply. The she turned hard to the right. Ben heard tires squeal behind him and hoped it was Kaholo following along.

  “What’s happening?” Ben shouted.

  “We’re being chased,” Anuhea shouted back.

  “No shit.”

  “Don’t ask stupid questions.” Anuhea gritted her teeth as she turned hard again.

  Bullets pinged against the Humvee’s metal armor. The sound was loud inside and they all flinched a little.

  Anuhea gunned the engine and they sped forward. She took another hard right and this time their tires squealed. Ben nearly fell into Anuhea’s lap. He had to put both of his hands out to keep from being choked to death by his seatbelt.

  “Jesus, what are you doing?” Ben glared at her.

  She took another hard right and it became clear. Leaning over in his seat for a small patch of clean glass, Ben could see that Anuhea had circled around, putting them behind their pursuers and their friends. Kaholo must have figured out what she was doing because he’d stopped trying to follow her and was now booking it down the road, swerving to avoid getting shot.

  One of the cop cars from the roadblock, with its front bumper scraping against the ground and its hood smashed chased Kaholo. A pickup truck drove beside it. Standing in the back of the truck was a man with a pistol, firing at Kaholo. He turned when he realized the Humvee was behind them.

  His eyes widened as he stared up at Keanu. Ben grinned as he realized what was about to happen. The man in the truck barely had time to duck before a burst of rounds cracked the air and his body stiffened, slid sideways as the pickup swerved, and toppled out of the bed. A second later, their Humvee thumped over the man’s lifeless corpse.

  “Road kill,” Keanu shouted. “Two hundred points!”

  Anuhea sped up and slammed into the back corner of the police car. It swerved, bumping into the pickup, but kept driving. Up ahead, Kaholo turned left and then right.

  A woman leaned out of the back seat of the police car with a shotgun and blasted them. Pellets cracked the windshield, but not nearly as bad as the shot that almost made Ben lose his bladder earlier. Anuhea cut the corner, hopping the curb, and slammed into the passenger door where the woman was leaning out, pumping the shotgun for another shot.

  The cop car swerved again, hit a parked car and spun sideways. Metal ground against metal as they raced past. Ben heard Keanu spin in the
turret and fire another long burst into the cop car.

  The pickup truck continued chasing Kaholo. A man in the passenger seat fired rapidly at their friends. Kaholo swerved, and then braked quickly, nearly causing the pickup to rear-end them. Then he sped off just before they hit. Anuhea crashed into the pickup from behind.

  “Fuck you assholes!” she shouted at the pickup.

  Ben smiled.

  “You guys are mental,” Chadwick said behind them.

  Ben couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

  More shots went off. Ben leaned over to get a look. One of the tires on Kaholo’s truck went flat causing the whole vehicle to list dangerously to the side.

  “My rifle,” Keanu shouted as his hand reached down.

  “Give him the gun,” Ben said to Chadwick, pointing at the M203.

  Chadwick lifted it up to Keanu who pulled it up. They could hear him talking to himself, cursing the guys in the truck as he loaded the rifle.

  “Hold on.” Anuhea gunned the Humvee again.

  She slammed into the pickup again and this time they swerved off to the side, crossing the median, and driving on the wrong side of the road. The truck began to slow.

  “No you don’t,” Keanu shouted. He spun the turret so he’d have a clear view of the pickup and there was a loud thunk as he fired a grenade. A split second later, a booming flash tore open the cab of the truck. Ben watched it out of the side window on Chadwick’s side.

  Chadwick turned away from the window to look at Ben with wide eyes. The guy was in awe of what he’d just witnessed.

  “I don’t think he likes bullies,” Ben said with a grin.

  50

  Back in Kaholo’s house, the mood was sober. Sure, they’d kicked ass against the road-blockers, but the airport was a shit show and now they were out of options. The idea of having to survive on the island, trapped and isolated, began to sink in.

  Anuhea wrapped a bandage around Charlotte’s arm. During the fight, she’d been cut by shattering glass or a stray bullet. No one knew for sure. It wasn’t bad. Charlotte said it didn’t even need stitches, although they would have to watch it for infection.

  Ben had gone back to pacing the living room. Keanu sat on the floor with his legs up on the coffee table. Kaholo lounged in an EZ-chair, sipping a cold beer. Chadwick was in the bathroom and Ty was seeing if he could get Ben’s phone to work. Oliver played on the floor.

  Ben worried about the boy. He’d been withdrawn since they returned. Maybe the stress was getting to him too.

  “Oliver, do you want some juice?” Ben asked him. The boy shook his head, rolled over to face away from Ben and lazily played with his action figure. “Anyone else?”

  “Help yourselves, guys. Really.” Keanu gestured to the kitchen then took a slow drink of his beer.

  Ben looked around. No one seemed interested. Dejected faces were all around him, so Ben went to kitchen to escape for a moment. He hadn’t realized how much the airport meant to everyone. A palpable sense of discontent settled over their group. They needed a plan of some sort, anything tangible that they could focus on.

  On the way to the kitchen, Ben passed the pictures on the wall that he’d noticed the day before. One was of Keanu and Kaholo standing at attention, side-by-side, next to a large ship. A ship…

  As he filled a glass with juice, Ben mulled over the possibility in his mind. He slowly walked back to the living room. Taking a sailboat or some type of ship never seemed realistic. The most boating he’d ever done was in a canoe on a lake. Sure, he’d been in speedboats, small fishing yachts, ferries and the like, but never in the ocean. Never across the kind of distance that it would take to get home, and certainly not without someone experienced.

  Charlotte had turned on the TV, but nothing new was on. Almost every channel was news and those that weren’t news, showed an emergency warning image along the bottom of the screen.

  The brothers were just sitting there watching TV, looking passive yet annoyed. Ben gulped down his orange juice just as Chadwick walked back into the room. He was still looking shocked by all the violence.

  Ben went over and carefully pulled the picture frame off the wall. It was one of those large frames with a variety of shapes, like squares and ovals, which held family photos. He walked in front of the TV, earning him the annoyed stares of everyone in the room.

  “What’s this?” Ben asked. He pointed to the photo of the brothers in uniform.

  Keanu sighed. “It’s a picture of us in uniform. Get out of the way.”

  “Yeah, move,” Anuhea said, craning her neck to look around him.

  “No, what is this in the background?” Ben asked, holding up the picture for everyone to see.

  “It’s my ship. We took the photo when we were assigned to the same ship,” Kaholo said with furrowed eyebrows.

  “Right…a ship.” Ben looked knowingly from Kaholo to Keanu. “A ship that I would bet money could take us to the mainland.”

  Charlotte glanced at Anuhea. Chadwick looked up from staring at the floor. Kaholo made a skeptical face. Keanu sat up and reached out for the picture.

  Ben handed it over.

  Keanu stared at it for a few moments. Then he looked up at Kaholo. “Do you think…?” he asked, his voice trailing off.

  “I mean…we don’t have a crew. We don’t have permission,” Kaholo said dismissively. “That’s crazy. It’s for island patrol, not trans-Pacific cruises.”

  “It is possible though,” Keanu said enthusiastically. “The Kiska has the range, right?”

  Kaholo just chuckled and took another drink of beer. He shook his head and wiped a bit of foam from his lips.

  “Damn, you’re serious, aren’t you?” Kaholo asked. He straightened up in his EZ-chair and eyed his brother carefully.

  “Why not?” Keanu asked.

  Ben smiled. “Exactly. Why not?”

  Kaholo was slow coming around to Ben’s idea of commandeering a ship and piloting it across the Pacific Ocean to the mainland. Amazingly, Keanu seemed excited about it.

  Everyone else seemed skeptical. Nevertheless, everyone was willing to try it if Kaholo bought into the idea. Keanu seemed to think the cutter that he used to serve on, and that Kaholo currently served on, could easily make it to the West Coast. The ship, known as the Kiska, was an island-class cutter used to patrol the state of Hawaii.

  Kaholo was able to pilot the ship, since he worked on the bridge and that was actually part of his job, while Keanu had served in the engine room, so he could keep them moving. They wouldn’t need crew for most functions on the ship, like a cook, medic, etc. They would make do with the MREs and groceries they lifted along the way and Charlotte could deal with most medical problems assuming no one was accidentally shot, or bitten by the infected.

  “What else would we need to actually get from point A to point B?” Ben asked, sitting on the edge of the couch near Keanu.

  “Normally we’d need communications and navigation. But I can do navigation and comms isn’t critical at this point,” Kaholo said.

  “It’s possible then?” Chadwick asked. “Have you done this sort of thing before?”

  “I’ve never stolen a military vessel and crossed the ocean during a zombie apocalypse, no. But the basics wouldn’t be too hard to manage,” Kaholo said. “Still, I’m not sure this is the best idea.”

  “There’s no way we could find another ship that could go that far, right?” Ben asked.

  “Wait, how do we gas it up?” Anuhea asked.

  “And what if we get caught?” Charlotte added.

  “We were on alert, so everything should be prepped. Fuel, ammunition, rations, and whatnot should already be aboard the ship. If it’s not already fueled up, we could hypothetically do it before we leave. Keanu knows the process and can show you guys how to help him.” Kaholo sat back and rubbed his chin. His beer bottle sat empty on the small table beside his chair. He let out a low whistle and looked at Keanu. “This could get me court martialed. The Gu
ard doesn’t play around with shit like this.”

  “Whatever or whoever is left these days has bigger problems,” Keanu said.

  “You can always spin it as a humanitarian mission. You rescued us from the island and took us home. That’s a great story,” Ben said, a wide grin on his face.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Ben looked away from Kaholo to see Ty standing near the hallway to the kitchen. He held up Ben’s phone so they could see its glowing screen.

  “What?” Ben asked.

  Ty turned the phone so he could read it. “I’m sorry. Never meant for this to happen. It’s out of control. Get your mother and meet me in Colorado.” Ty glanced up at Ben. “What’s this all about?”

  Ben’s heart sank. It was the first text message from his dad, one of two he’d received when they were in the hotel room following the attack at the triathlon. His mouth dropped open, but no words came out.

  Everyone looked at Ben then back at Ty.

  “What does your dad know about the infection?” he asked.

  “I don’t…don’t know.” Ben licked his lips and he suddenly wished he had more juice.

  “Ben, what’s he talking about?” Charlotte asked. She looked at him with a worried expression and those big gorgeous eyes.

  “Aim for the head, don’t get bit…how did he know this stuff?” Ty asked, holding the phone out again. “Why didn’t you tell us that your dad messaged you?”

  Heat filled Ben’s chest. Ty was trying to undermine him. He didn’t appreciate being called out like this. His dad hadn’t revealed anything they didn’t already know. Ben had no idea why his father apologized or why he told Ben to meet him in Colorado. The two of them barely spoke. Ty knew that.

  “What’s your problem?” Ben asked, looking up at Ty.

  “You’re keeping secrets from us.” Ty tossed the phone at Ben. He caught it and set it on the coffee table.

  “I have nothing to hide. My dad sent me cryptic messages. I don’t know why or what he knows.” Ben glared at Ty. His heart was racing and he clenched his hands into fists.