Zombie Attack! Box Set (Books 1-3)

by Devan Sagliani

  “This is how they are tracking us,” Sonya said, looking triumphant.

  “What the hell is that?” Felicity demanded.

  “It's a tracking chip,” I answered, my mouth going dry. “I've seen them in our supplies department back in Hueneme. This one looks way fancier than the ones we used.”

  “How did it get in your sword?”

  “I have no idea,” I said honestly, “but I'd love to know.”

  “You were separated from your weapon back at Hellfire,” Sonya said matter-of-factly. “The Mistress must have tagged you then. After all, you're worth a lot of ransom to her. I'm sure she was protecting her investment. Who knows what kind of arrangement she has with the Alphas, the Warriors, or even Unity Gang.”

  “Throw it over the side,” Felicity screamed.

  “No,” I said. Felicity whipped her head around to stare at me with disbelief. “Someone is watching it. The minute it stops moving they are going to know we found it.”

  “Xander,” Sonya said. “You can't hold on to it. It will draw them right to us. We don't stand a chance if they get within shooting range. You understand that, right?”

  “Tie it to Black Beauty,” I said. Both women stared at me in unison, finally united by their shock at the suggestion that I use the horse to lure our enemies away.

  “With what?”

  I ignored Felicity's question, and turned to Sonya.

  “Tear off part of your dress, wrap it up, then braid it into his mane.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we start the engine,” I directed.

  “And we pull away from all of this,” Felicity said, the look of surprise wearing off her face as she realized my plan.

  “Black Beauty is fast,” I said, “but he can't keep up with the handcart once the engine is running. At some point he'll veer off to stay ahead of the horde and when he does the Alphas will follow him, along with whoever else is following us. Worst case scenario it will buy us time, but we might even get lucky and ditch them altogether.”

  “It's not like we can take him with us,” Felicity added. “He's a wild horse. You said it yourself earlier. He was meant to run free. This way, this magnificent creature can do us all some good.”

  “What if they gun him down when they figure it out?”

  “They won't,” I assured her, but the truth was I had no way of knowing what they would do. What I did know is that if we didn't do something fast, we were all going to die. If Black Beauty were to be caught with us, the Alphas would turn him into stew for sure. “At least this way the horse has a fighting chance. That's all anyone can ask for anymore.”

  Sonya didn't take long to decide. She tore a fresh swatch of clothing from the bottom of her ridiculous canary yellow dress, and began wrapping the device in it. With deft precision, she jumped onto the back of the horse. Black Beauty let out a loud whiny, but kept running in pace next to us. Sonya took a moment to right herself on the muscular back of the huge animal, then leaned down and began to tie the garment into the horse’s mane. She bent close and whispered again in the animal’s ear, before climbing to her feet and leaping the short distance back onto the handcart’s platform. She landed with a loud thump, dropping to one knee to steady herself.

  “Well?” Sonya looked up with anger and hurt in her eyes. “What are you waiting for?”

  I grabbed the cord and gave it a yank, but nothing happened.

  “Xander,” Felicity said. “Stop screwing around.”

  “I'm not,” I assured her as I yanked the cord again. The cart didn't move. “A little help might be nice right about now.”

  “What do you need us to do?” Sonya asked. I glanced back to see that the horde was now less than a hundred feet from us. I recalled seeing them overrun Vandenberg, how they'd pushed the walls over using their collective weight. The walls had crumpled like they were made out of wet construction paper.

  We'll be tossed around like dry leaves propelled by a swarm of worker ants, I thought.

  “Start by getting us up to ramming speed again,” I suggested. “Maybe we need some momentum to activate it.”

  Both girls jumped into action and began pumping the metal bar up and down, while I continued manually pulling the cord.

  “Keep pulling, Xander,” Felicity encouraged me.

  “Be careful not to flood it though,” Sonya added.

  “Come on,” I protested, pulling the cord over and over until my arm hurt. With a loud sputter, the engine came to life. The handcart jerked forward and I fell onto my stomach, lying flat with my face toward the snarl of undead monsters practically running in our direction now. The girls let go of the metal bar as it began to pump up and down on its own, as if possessed by some strange magic. We took off at a fast clip, and soon the horde and the horse were yards behind us. I didn't get up. I just lay there panting, the cold air stinging my tired lungs. I saw Black Beauty shrinking in size as we picked up speed. Without warning, the horse ran across the tracks and off to the right, into the vast darkness of the night.

  “Let's just hope it works,” I said, flopping onto my back. An answer was no use. Between the roar of the wind and the loud rumbling of the modified engine, I couldn't hear a thing.

  Chapter Seventeen

  We rolled along for a while without speaking. All that had to be said had already been said. Felicity looked exhausted from everything we'd been through, and we were no closer to being safe. Sonya kept her eyes peeled behind us to see if the Alphas were making any progress catching up. Just as predicted, Black Beauty fell behind us as the automated handcart kept a steady clip somewhere above thirty miles an hour. Moonlight reflected off the glossy black coat of the stallion as he veered off to the right and tore away at last, heading off into the distance until all that remained was a thin wisp of dust that climbed the night sky like a rope ladder to Heaven.

  After what felt like half an hour, Sonya relaxed. There were no signs of the living or the dead, just the steady hum of the engine and the whine of the wind as it blew past us, nipping at the exposed parts of my skin and taking the putrid smell of decay from my jacket with it. I was glad that Felicity had insisted that I take the dead man's coat after all.

  I would have frozen to death for sure, I thought, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. Or at least lost some fingers.

  I found the best way to stay warm was to lie flat on my back, staring up into the night. The wind seemed to just glide over me that way, sparing my already ice-cold legs. An hour passed in the lush darkness of the railroad tracks with not a single cause for alarm. We passed a few wild cows grazing near the tracks, but there were no still no signs of anyone following us from behind – no lights, no roaring motorcycles, and most importantly, no gun shots. It was a relief to believe we'd gotten away from them again, that we'd escaped with our lives thanks to Sonya's quick thinking, but I also didn't trust the reprieve. I wasn't going to be lured into a false sense of security and be caught off guard again. Now I knew we could be followed, that they were hunting us, that we were valuable to them. It didn't matter if we didn't cross paths with another bike until we reached Hueneme. Every decision I made from now on would have to assume that they could be just a few steps behind us, waiting for me to trip up.

  Those poor people, I thought, picturing the shocked faces of the residents of Gold Strike as the outlaw biker gangs swarmed into town – killing, maiming, and trashing everything the residents had worked so hard to build and maintain.

  I let the anger boil inside of me for a moment, completely ignoring all the hours of training and tutoring I'd gotten from Moto about controlling my temper. My mind drifted to the tracker someone had planted on my katana, and my anger seemed to blossom like a painful flower made out of acid in my chest.

  I can't believe they used my own weapon against me, I thought. Who really put that chip in and how long had it been there? Was Sonya right? Did the owner of Hellfire really bug my sword to keep tabs on me just in case the Alphas screwed up? Or wa
s it Sonya herself that did it? After all, she was the one who made sure you got your weapon back, not once but twice! In fact, she risked her own life to make sure you had it!

  Doubt floated through my mind, and I found myself arguing both sides with equal conviction. Sonya showed up at exactly the worst time, but she had also saved my life multiple times, just as she had carefully reminded Felicity. Was she really doing all of this to collect a reward from John in New Lompoc? It seemed like an awful lot to risk for the sake of what couldn't be much of a reward. Then again, I had no idea what he might have offered her. Maybe he was giving her something that made all of this worthwhile. He could give her an entire town to command, set her up like a Queen. It might be worth the risk for a reward of that size. Or maybe he held something over her? What if he had taken someone she loved hostage, and was threatening to kill them if she didn't deliver me? To what lengths would I be willing to go if someone kidnapped Felicity? What would I be willing to justify?

  Still, there was something about the idea of Sonya being a stone cold assassin that just didn't fit, and I couldn't say why. She reminded me of someone, but I didn't know who it could be.

  My mind turned to John once more. I thought back to the night I'd last seen him. He'd left his own men behind to flee like a coward as a zombie horde descended on his men and tore them to shreds. His first in command, Tank, had been killed, but it was Tank's obsession with murdering Benji and me that had been his own undoing. Tank was a bad guy, plain and simple. He'd lied to John on countless occasions, and brought trouble down on the citizens of New Lompoc in the process. Surely John knew that. So why was he taking Tank's death so hard, especially when he was the one who had left him to die in the first place? Why was he blaming me? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't see an answer that made sense.

  Maybe that's just it, I thought. Not everything always makes sense. Sometimes people just do bad things and make up excuses to cover their tracks after the fact, when the real reason is simply because they wanted to do them.

  A calmness descended over me as I realized the truth. John was hell-bent on seeing me again. One way or another it was going to happen. If he was willing to go to all this trouble to say something to my face, then sooner or later it was bound to go his way. You'd think coming to grips with something so big and scary would leave me shaking in my frozen cowboy boots, but instead it brought me peace. It was just one of the many lessons that Moto had taught me so many years ago when we first started my training.

  “Always look your problems head-on if you can,” Moto had advised. “That way you can deal with them on your own terms instead of the terms your enemy wants to offer. If you run from your problems out of fear, those who seek to harm you will sneak up behind you and cut you down when you least expect it. If instead you face them head-on you gain many advantages, among them the choice of how you will meet your fate, as well as the thrill of seeing the fear in your enemy's eyes.”

  So far I'd just been running. I knew that. I hoped that soon I would be able to face my problems head-on, with Felicity safely tucked away at Hueneme and my brother at my back. Even if that didn't work out, I knew that I would no longer be playing the role of victim. John had the element of surprise, but now that was gone. When the time came to meet again, I would stare him unblinking in the eye and make him answer to me for what he'd done, not the other way around. With this new determination now settled I began to relax and drift off to sleep, the continuous vibration of the engine pulling my exhausted mind into a dark, dreamless slumber.

  I awoke to see Felicity and Sonya working either side of the handcart.

  “What happened?” I asked, sitting up.

  “We ran out of juice,” Sonya said without looking at me. “Gas is pretty hard to come by in these parts. It's not like there is a twenty-four-hour Chevron station.”

  “Or an AM-PM,” Felicity added.

  “How long was I out?”

  “I don't know when you fell asleep,” Felicity quietly answered, “but we went about three hours or so and then the engine sputtered out.”

  “Why didn't someone wake me up?”

  “You needed the rest, baby. You've been through quite an ordeal in the last few days. You needed to recharge. I'm glad you're up though. I could use a break. My arms are killing me.”

  “Wait a minute,” I countered, shaking myself back to life and once again feeling the bite of the cold. “Shouldn't we be in Los Angeles by now? Or at least some part of the former Orange County?”

  “I don't think we're heading in that direction,” Felicity replied with a shrug, easing up on the manual labor.

  “We're not,” Sonya confirmed. “We passed the split-off for that in the first hour. This line is specifically designated for military use. It runs straight through to Oxnard, with a manual split-off beforehand toward the base in Hueneme. Ordinarily a train would make that stretch in three hours easy, with time to spare to grab yourself a hot dog and a soda. This here handcart might be able to make it in under five hours, if it was running top speed on a full tank of petrol.”

  “How long does it take by hand?”

  “I'd say just a hair short of forever,” Sonya huffed. “Especially with no one helping me out. Isn't that right, Princess?” She let go of the lever and we began to coast along on momentum alone.

  “Give me a break,” Felicity wheezed. “My arms seriously feel like lead noodles right now!”

  “Odds are we're closer than it seems,” Sonya gasped in between deep breaths. “Just kinda hard to tell in the dark. If you pitch in and give it some elbow grease, we might be there by the break of day.”

  “What's that coming up in the distance?”

  We'd turned a corner and could see the far-off stadium style lights ominously blasting through the darkness. Both girls stood frozen and silently stared as we began to slow to a full stop without them pumping the handcart to life.

  “What if it's them?” Felicity said, looking nervously between Sonya and me.

  “Who?”

  “Alphas.”

  “What if it's military?” I asked, trying to sound optimistic.

  “Fat chance of that,” Sonya laughed. “You've got a better chance of that being Santa's Workshop at the North Pole than being a military installation.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Instinct,” Sonya shrugged. “Ever since Z Day, the military has tended to concentrate their efforts into base camps and settlements. They've done almost no exploring at all. As far as I know, they haven't attempted to reclaim a single town. It's part of why we've started seeing the rise of small kingdoms run by tyrants, basically no different than warlords.”

  “You mean like John?” Felicity asked, unable to hide the now familiar accusation in her tone.

  “Exactly,” Sonya replied flatly, without hesitation.

  “So if it's not military, then what is it?” I questioned, trying to keep the peace by distracting them.

  “I'm not sure,” Sonya responded. “But one thing I do know is that I don't want to find out by just rolling along into those lights. By then it might be too late to turn back. For all we know, we could be surrounded by hundreds of armed fighters.”

  “Wait a minute,” Felicity interrupted, craning her head toward the lights, as the cart slowed further and the wind died down. “Can you hear that? What is it?”

  It was present all along, music, just under the howling of the cold night air.

  “It sounds like…,” Sonya's words trailed off.

  “…a circus?” I burst out, finishing her sentence for her.

  We were close enough now to see the lights. They stood perched high in the air like the kind you might see at a football stadium, beaming down onto a parking lot shimmering with abandoned cars. Behind that were the telltale pinstriped tents with their colorful flags waving in the high desert breeze.

  “Follow my lead,” Sonya instructed, slipping off the back of the handcart. Felicity and I exchanged a look.
r />   There's no way we can just keep going and stay ahead of her, I thought. Don't even think about it.

  I could see by the pleading look in Felicity's eyes that was exactly what she was thinking too. I shook my head just slightly to let her know it wasn't going to work, before grabbing my blade and hopping off the back. Felicity looked disappointed, but wasted no time in following me.

  “Nice of you to join us,” Sonya teased, and Felicity shot her a look that suggested she'd rather tear every hair out of her head than spend another second traveling together. “Help me give this thing a push.”

  Felicity just glared at her.

  “Suit yourself,” Sonya said with a laugh before getting behind the handcart with both hands. I joined her and Felicity reluctantly pitched in on my left side, away from Sonya. It was as if any suggestion made by her would be met with the maximum amount of resistance possible, while still complying.

  It's going to be a long trip back to the base at this rate, I thought. Or wherever it is that Sonya is actually leading us, a darker thought whispered. I put it out of my mind as I dug in with both feet and pushed.

  The handcart’s speed picked up only slightly, but it was enough for it to roll off down the tracks and come to a halt in the middle of a brightly lit patch. We moved to the brush by the side of the tracks and waited to see if anyone would come out and investigate the appearance of the machine. Soon I began to shiver from the cold again. Five minutes passed, then five more, and still we saw no signs of life. I could hear the sounds of carnival music playing clearly now, as well as what sounded like a gas generator humming off in the distance.

  “I don't think anyone is coming,” Felicity noted, standing up and shaking her hair.

  “We don't know that yet,” Sonya fiercely whispered. “Get back down until we know we are safe.”

  “No,” Felicity objected. “I'm done taking orders from you.”