Surviving The Dead | Book 9 | War Without End

by Cook, James N.

  WAR WITHOUT END

  Surviving the Dead Volume 9:

  By:

  James N. Cook

  COPYRIGHT

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  WAR WITHOUT END: SURVIVING THE DEAD VOLUME 9 Copyright © 2021 By James N. Cook. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the author and Amazon.com.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  Epub Edition © JANUARY 2021

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  PROLOGUE

  Heinrich stood atop a stack of shipping containers and gazed southward toward the lights of Colorado Springs.

  Night was descending over the city, turning the sky from violet and orange in the west to a dark, muted blue farther east. A cold wind blew over the snowy avenues of the Refugee District, white streamers swirling between huddled, smoking hovels. The poor and the forgotten rested here between sunrises, dim lights from candles and lanterns shining through narrow windows. A thick pall of wood smoke obscured the sky above, its smell competing with the stench of raw sewage in the streets.

  Panhandlers, drunks, and opium addicts shuffled listlessly between rows of shuttered metal boxes, casting envious glances at doorways where people crowded together for warmth. Before the night was over, many of these destitute souls would do violence, some directed toward unfortunates caught alone in the darkness, and some at the homes of unwary people hiding from the cold and dark. But mostly the haggard dwellers of this blighted place would turn on each other, fighting and killing and scouring prone corpses for whatever scraps of money, trade, drugs, or booze they could find.

  The bodies would be discovered in the morning, hauled away, and ultimately discarded at the borderland between the Refugee District and Southtown. Police and Army patrols would then recover them, store them somewhere cold, and if no one claimed them within thirty days, incinerate them and dump them beyond the city wall.

  Unless, of course, Heinrich’s men found them first. The bodies of the recently deceased were highly useful to him. Critical, in fact, to his plans for the district. And those plans entirely hinged on one indispensable factor—fear.

  It was fear that ruled this place, not Heinrich. He was only a man, after all, and a man can only do so much. If a man wants to rule, a man must become more than the sum of his parts. Heinrich knew this instinctively. Knew it the same way he knew how to breathe and walk. He understood the nature of fear, the internal architecture of it, the way it moved within people and shaped the world around them. He understood that in order to engender fear in the hearts of others, one has to build a myth around himself. Not a myth of humanity and triumph, as many foolish would-be leaders assumed, but a myth of omnipotence, invincibility, and most important of all, unlimited cruelty. That was the chemical composition of fear. The all-encompassing, cancerous fear that bent the strongest of wills and turned decent, thinking men into whimpering puppets.

  The district was a garden of fear. Heinrich’s garden. He had worked diligently to feed it and nurture it and cultivate it to perfection because fear, he understood, is a kind of fuel. And like any fuel, it has many different grades. Some burn slowly, others explode.

  The path he had taken in his life had made him a connoisseur of fear. He could sample it with his senses and discern the subtlest elements of its composition. And when he looked around the Refugee District, when he tasted the air on his tongue, he knew he had created something magnificent. The flavor of this place was as harsh and bitter as the skin of an unripe apple. Its bouquet was sulfurous, imbued with subtle hints of rotten meat. Its substance was sluggish and oily, like nitroglycerin dripping from old dynamite. A distinctive, unstable vintage, and Heinrich’s personal favorite.

  “Sleep tight, kids,” he muttered as he looked out over the district and marveled at his own genius. “Enjoy it while you can.”

  A scrape of metal and the rattle of a ladder being climbed alerted Heinrich to the approach of one of his men. He could tell without looking who it was.

  “Tell me something good, Maru.”

  The footsteps stopped. “We got him, Chief.”

  Heinrich turned around. The hulking silhouette of his second-in-command stood framed against a towering backdrop of distant, white-capped mountains.

  “Any trouble?”

  “No. Took him down quiet.”

  “Good. He inside?”

  A nod.

  “Then let’s not keep him waiting.”

  Heinrich descended the ladder ahead of Maru and walked two blocks to a squat, rectangular structure pieced together from half a dozen shipping containers. The first room inside was empty save for a few stained mattresses lining the walls and a ladder leading to the units stacked above. Heinrich picked up one of the mattresses to reveal a concealed hatch cut flush with the metal floor. He climbed down a narrow ladder to a dimly lit room below. Maru closed the hatch and stayed topside. When the hollow, metallic boom of the hatch subsided, Heinrich walked forward and nodded to two of his men leaning against the wall. They stood up straight as their chief entered, eased their hands away from their rifles, and remained silent.

  There was a plain wooden table in front of Heinrich with a single metal chair behind it. He sat down in the chair and interlaced his fingers on the rough, scarred tabletop. A few feet in front of him, in a cone of light cast by the room’s sole lantern, a man sat with his wrists and ankles chained to the floor.

  The man’s head snapped up
at the sound of the hatch closing and twitched sideways an inch when Heinrich scraped the floor with his chair. The man wore the kind of simple, patchwork clothing common in the Refugee District. The boots were fashioned from leather, wraps of linen passed for socks, and a coat pieced together from scraps of wool Army blankets hung down to the floor. A black canvas bag had been cinched over his head, hiding his features.

  “Finally,” the man said. “I suppose you’re gonna tell me what the fuck this is about?”

  Heinrich remained silent as he studied the prisoner. A few seconds passed. The silence grew thicker, weighed down by the presence of impending violence. The man in the hood tugged at his chains and held open palms in Heinrich’s direction.

  “Can you at least let me have one hand? My nose itches and this bag smells like shit.”

  “Actually,” Heinrich said, “it smells like rotten meat. There’s a lot of old blood on it.”

  The man went still. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the man who put you out of business.”

  There was a long silence before the prisoner spoke again.

  “So you’re him,” he said finally. “The one everybody’s afraid of.”

  “That’s right.”

  The man let out a bitter laugh. “Well, that’s just fucking great. What do you want from me now, huh? My men are all dead or run off, and you have got my whole network eating out of your hand. I got nothing left.”

  “That’s not exactly true.”

  Another silence. “What, destroying me wasn’t enough? You gonna kill me now too?”

  “Yes I am. You’ve been quite the thorn in my side. Even managed to kill a few of my men. I wouldn’t be much of a leader if I let that slide.”

  The man breathed out heavily. “Fine,” he said. “Fuck it. I played the game and I lost. Just don’t expect me to beg.”

  Heinrich grinned. His men saw it and took an involuntary step backward.

  “Fine by me. I hate it when people beg.”

  He nodded to Maru. The big enforcer motioned to a cluster of men standing nearby. “You two, give me a hand. Locke, open the hatch.”

  The man named Locke smiled broadly, revealing a crooked set of blackening teeth.

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  Maru restrained the prisoner by wrapping a massive arm around his neck. Two other men unlocked his hands, one at a time, and secured them behind his back. A few feet away, Locke moved aside two mattresses and a carpet to reveal a steel hatch bolted flush with the shipping container’s bottom. A thick padlock held the hatch shut. Locke put in a key and opened the hatch wide. In less than a second, a sickening odor filled the room. The prisoner smelled it and began struggling against his restraints, but he may as well have tried to push over a mountain. Maru simply tightened his grip until the man’s feet were barely touching the floor.

  “What the fuck is this?” the prisoner wheezed. “What are you doing?”

  No one answered. Maru walked the man over to the edge of the pit and held him there. Heinrich motioned to Locke, who reached over and yanked the hood from the prisoner’s head.

  “You’re gonna love this,” Locke said happily. He produced a flashlight and shined it into the pit. Maru bent at the waist so his captive could see what awaited him.

  The prisoner’s thrashing began anew. “No,” he screamed. “Please, God, no!”

  Maru tightened his grip until the man couldn’t speak. Locke patted him on top of the head.

  “Hey, I know it’s a shit way to go, man, but look on the bright side. You’re doing us a favor feeding these guys. And besides, didn’t you say you weren’t going to beg?”

  Locke looked around, grinning. No one spoke. The faces of the other men in the room were drawn and pale.

  Locke snorted. “Bunch’a pussies.”

  “Thank you, Locke,” Heinrich said. His henchman gave a mock bow but stayed at the edge of the pit. Heinrich held Locke’s eyes for several seconds, his face expressionless. The smile left Locke’s face and he stepped back against the wall.

  “Maru, if you please.”

  The big man shifted his grip to the prisoner’s shoulders and gave him a hard shove. There was a crack as the man’s head bounced off the far side of the opening. The blow was not enough to knock him out, which Heinrich thought was unfortunate. Being unconscious would have made what came next much less painful.

  A dull thud filled the room as the prisoner hit bottom. Heinrich heard his feet scrambling in the dirt and the rattling of hundreds of dry bones. A few seconds later came hisses, snarls, and the thump of charging feet. The prisoner managed a strangled cry before the breath was knocked out of him. Another second passed.

  And then the screaming started.

  Heinrich stood up. “Locke, put the lid down. Make sure it’s quiet down there before you leave. The rest of you, make sure Locke isn’t disturbed.”

  The men acknowledged and moved to obey. Heinrich walked toward the exit with Maru following close behind.

  Once outside, Heinrich stood in the cold, bracing air, drew a deep breath, and blew out a cloud of fog. The wind snatched it away and carried it southward while Heinrich stood with his hands in his pockets and admired the purple hue of the sky.

  “Ready to go home, Chief?” Maru asked.

  Two years, Heinrich thought. Over two years of work and planning, and now it’s all about to pay off.

  “No. I feel like celebrating tonight. Bring my carriage around.”

  “Right, Chief.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Gabriel,

  BSC Headquarters

  It is never good news when a federal agent knocks on your door.

  In fact, it has been my studied experience that feds do not make social calls. Not during business hours, anyway. And they certainly don’t do so at the Blackthorn Security Company’s headquarters in Colorado Springs on a cold winter’s morning when the forecast is calling for eight inches of snow by nightfall. So, when the receptionist buzzed the intercom and told me Agent Kaminsky was in the lobby asking if he could speak with me, I knew it was going to be bad.

  “Send him in,” I said, and released the button. Then I leaned back in my chair and waited for the knock at the door. When it came, I stood up and answered.

  “Morning, Stan,” I said, standing in the doorway.

  “Morning,” he said back.

  He was not an impressive looking man. Average height, average build, dark hair streaked with gray. He was clean shaven, hair clipped short, and he was wearing a heavy wool overcoat. His cheeks were dry and red, telling me he had taken a cheap open-air carriage to come see me.

  “Come on in. Warm yourself up.”

  I stepped back to allow him through. He left a trail of cold air in his wake as he took off his jacket and hung it on a hook beside the door. Without the coat, I could see his suit was wrinkled, his collar was unbuttoned, and the knot of his gray necktie had been pulled loose. He sat down in one of the plush leather chairs facing my desk. His head hung low and his shoulders were hunched a little. I walked over to a table against the wall and started making coffee.

  “Dear God,” Kaminsky said, sniffing the air. “Is that the real stuff?”

  “Yep. Just got a shipment in last week, straight from Colombia. Merchant vessel out of California brought it to the coast. Came in on a caravan headed for Tennessee.”

  The machine began gurgling as I resumed my seat behind my desk. Beneath me, the chair creaked in protest, the bearings in the swivel screeching a bit as I leaned backward. Stan stared at the coffee maker a bit longer, then looked around the room. It was well appointed, especially by post-Outbreak standards. The simple fact the place had electricity and central heating was enough to qualify it as luxurious, but the coffee brewing in the pot pushed things to pure extravagance.

  “I bet you even have sugar,” Stan said. “Probably fresh cream in that little refrigerator.”

  “BSC has a great benefits package.”

  Stan gr
unted. “Yeah. I know. You’ve told me before.”

  “Have I told you our investigative division is the fastest growing arm of our business? We’re always looking for qualified candidates.”

  I let the comment hang. It was not the first time I had offered to bring Stan on board. Every time I did, his answer took a little longer.

  “Afraid not, Gabe. I appreciate the offer, I really do. But the Bureau is short-handed as it is.”

  “Stan, the Bureau is always short-handed. And it always will be.”

  A sigh. “I know.”

  We sat in silence, listening to the coffee brew and breathing in the aroma. The scent of coffee always reminds me of my mother, who made coffee every morning when I was growing up. The smell would drift throughout the house, rousing me out of bed. I used to love it most during winter when the Kentucky mornings were cold enough to grow frost on a man’s soul.

  The pot stopped gurgling. I walked over to it and filled two cups. I took mine black, but knew Stan liked cream and sugar. He thanked me as he accepted his cup, blew on it, and took a long sip. As I sat down, he closed his eyes, held the cup close to his face, and breathed in.

  “My God that’s good. I should come down here more often.”

  “You’re always welcome, Stan.”

  He took another sip, then moved the cup low in his lap. There was a protracted silence.

  “I’m guessing you didn’t come here for the coffee.”

  Stan shook his head. “We got another one.”

  I placed my cup on the desk and leaned back in my chair. My breath came out slowly and I rubbed at my forehead.

  “How many?”

  “Four.”

  “Jesus. This is getting out of hand.”

  “It’s not getting anything. It already is.”

  The chair creaked again as I stood up and walked to my window and looked out at the broad expanse of buildings and open ground that comprised BSC’s training facilities. There was a class of a dozen recruits standing in a semi-circle on the snow-covered parade ground. Tyrel Jennings, former Navy SEAL and CEO of the Blackthorn Security Company, stood in the center. He had a rubber knife in his hand and was demonstrating silent kill techniques on a tall, skinny recruit. The others watched him intently.