Battlefield Z Legends (Book 1): Gone Dark [Battlefield Z]

by Lowry, Chris

  A policeman grabbed the store owner by his shirt and took a bite out of his scalp.

  Mr. Patel shrieked as another zombie joined the Z in blue and rode the writhing man to the ground, ripping and tearing chunks out of him.

  “Poor zombie,” Bob whispered.

  “Poor zombie,” Steve hissed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Bob gave him a serious look.

  “They eat brains,” he tapped his head. “It’s going to starve with that guy.”

  Steve shook his head.

  “We need to move.”

  His head swiveled as he searched and paused as he spied a narrow doorway leading to a storeroom.

  “Back door,” he said and sneaked across the open space between the end of the row and the doorway.

  Emma went next, then Bob and the Scouts one by one.

  CHAPTER

  There was a definite line that delineated between the sad side of town and the good side.

  In the past they would refer to the sad side as the other side of the tracks. A place for poor people. The place for people down on their luck.

  Or for people who weren't born lucky.

  The high school was located on the other side of that sad line. It had the downtown too, despite the best efforts of a Town Council bent on rehabilitation and gentrification. They could tell when they reached the demarcation.

  The sidewalks looked new. The bricks looked fresh and clean on the buildings. The streets were wider the concrete and the gutters still white. That's where Emma lived. In a cul-de-sac at the end of a street.

  They walked the sad line for a few minutes as if they were afraid to cross over.

  Afraid of what they would find.

  The nice side of town was dark too.

  Just as dark as the sad side. There were sporadic street lights casting down yellow cones, small pockets of electric hope that made those spaces look normal. Sane.

  Behind them there was noise.

  Inarticulate screams, moans and yells. They sounded out of place and unreal.

  Bob stopped on the side of the street.

  “What?” Steve asked.

  Bob pointed as an answer.

  A pattern of dark on dark moved in front of them, like black storm clouds rolling across a night sky. Indistinct which made it worse because the mind abhors a vacuum.

  It fills in the missing details. The lizard brain takes over and assumes the worst.

  And on this night, the brain had no frame of reference. Sabre tooth tigers and grizzly bears were way easier to fathom. The walking dead were not.

  The shadows kept moving forward, dark patches on the dark night, growing and twisting in menace.

  Steve pulled Emma behind him and prepared to fight.

  “Who the hell let you losers out?”

  The voice was high pitched, on the verge of cracking. Flashlights popped on scattering the darkness, pushing it back to reveal a group of boys.

  “Byron?”

  “Bob?” The thin scrawny boy with the high pitched voice squeaked.

  Bob pushed past Steve and exchanged awkward clumsy high fives with Byron and the others.

  “Welcome to the end of the world,” Byron crowed.

  He hefted a wooden sword

  Running fight through the streets.

  They run into Byron leading a group of LARP kids.

  “You can come,” said the mad little boy, a grin painted on his innocent looking face. “But not him.”

  He hefted a wooden sword, as if considering taking a swing with it.

  “I didn’t want to come with you, you little shit.”

  “There,” said Byron. “That’s why he can’t come.”

  Bob tells Byron to take the rest of the Scouts and keep them save.

  “You can go with them, Knob,” said Steve. “I can handle this.”

  “We,” Emma corrected. “We can handle this.”

  Bob’s eyes travelled from her face to his and back again.

  “I don’t trust you with her.”

  Steve watched the portly face for a moment, framed by a wild mane of thick curls. He looked earnest. Concerned.

  “She’s safe with me, Knob.”

  Bob licked his lips.

  “Yeah, well, I’m still going to take her home.”

  Steve groaned and shot a look at Emma. She shrugged.

  “Then let’s get moving,” said Steve. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

  CHAPTER

  “Don’t move,” a voice growled in the darkness.

  Emma, Steve and Bob froze as a small flame flickered in the darkness. It threw harsh shadows on a familiar bearded face cracked in a mad grin.

  “This night just keeps getting better,” the camo wearing man stepped out from the sidewalk and faced the trio in the middle of the street.

  Steve hefted his Lacrosse stick.

  “For us, maybe. But your luck just ran out.”

  “Did it?” the man grinned even wider, if that was possible.

  They heard the footsteps before they saw them. Then flashlights flicked on, one by one in the hands of nine men.

  Emma would have called them of a type. The type that belonged in jail. And that’s where some of them came from, judging by the orange scrub tops four of them wore, the word COUNTY spray painted in small block letters across the back.

  “Just leave us alone,” Bob said.

  “Anyone want the fat kid?” the bearded man snorted.

  One of the inmates stepped forward.

  “The girl is mine though.”

  “Kid for what?” Bob said. “What does he want the kid for?”

  Steve hefted the stick and slapped it in the palm of his hand.

  “He wants you to be his girlfriend, Knob.”

  “But I’ve got a girlfriend,” Bob stammered.

  He cast a glance at Emma.

  “I mean had. We’re not together anymore, so I’m free, you know.”

  “Not now Bob,” Emma said.

  She kept one hand on Steve’s jacket, as the group tightened around them.

  “Things are about to get bad,” Steve said over his shoulder.

  “Brother,” said the man in camo. “You have no idea.”

  A giant jacked up pick up truck roared around the corner of the street, three rows of lights on the front blinding everyone.

  Steve grabbed Emma and Bob and yanked them out of the way as the truck laid on the horn and plowed through the group of men.

  Shattered bodies flipped and plopped on the asphalt as the truck roared into them.

  Bob sat up first from where Steve had knocked them.

  “Oh shit,” he said.

  Emma scrambled up.

  “We need to keep moving.”

  The bearded man loomed behind her and snatched her off her feet.

  Bob screamed as they crashed to the ground in a tumble of groans and scuffs.

  Emma tried to scream, but the weight on top of her was too much. It came out as a moaning groan.

  Steve jumped up, hands empty.

  “Get off her!” he yelled and started toward the two writhing bodies on the ground.

  The camo man sat on top of Emma’s hips, and pulled a gun from the back of his pants.

  He pointed it at Steve.

  “Not so much without your stick, huh?”

  He cocked the hammer back on the six shot snub nose and tilted his head to aim at Steve.

  Emma slammed two bunched fists into the man’s stomach.

  The blow sent his aim wide, the loud explosion cracking the night.

  Steve took two steps forward and punted the camo man’s chin with the tip of his foot.

  His head snapped back, his body stiff like all the circuits had been shut down. Like the lights were off and no one was home.

  He fell like a tree, rigid limbs locked tight.

  “I played soccer too,” Steve spit.

  Emma shoved his leg off of her and pulled herself next to Steve and Bob.
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  “Damn Newton,” Bob sighed.

  Emma dropped to her knees.

  “Are you okay?” Steve tried to help her up.

  She shrugged his hand away as her hands searched the ground.

  Emma came up with the small black revolver and aimed it at the man unconscious on the ground.

  “Emma,” Bob’s voice was low, questioning.

  She aimed the pistol at the man in front of her, his still form a dark splotch on the dark ground.

  She held it for a moment, then a moment longer. The tip of the barrel wavered as she wrestled with the decision.

  It was a night of firsts. First being saved, first needing to be saved, first zombie apocalypse, first mass disaster and now, this.

  A man attacked her. He overpowered her. Hurt her.

  And she could pay him back. She could get revenge.

  The gun shivered in her hands. Or maybe that was her.

  He didn’t deserve to live.

  Emma lowered the gun.

  But she wasn’t going to be the one to kill him. That was a first she was going to put off as long as she could. Until she found out more. Found out what was going on.

  “I want to go home,” she said.

  Steve took the pistol from her hands and slipped it into the back of his waistband.

  “Hang on.”

  Bob and Emma watched as he grabbed the unconscious man’s leg and dragged him across the grass.

  “What are you doing?” Bob whispered.

  Steve pulled the man’s right leg off the curb and rested his ankle on the black asphalt on the street.

  He adjusted it so the knee was still on the curb, and six inches of gutter underneath his lower leg.

  Then Steve stood up and stomped it.

  Bone cracked, the pain sharp enough that camo beard sat up screaming. His hands went to his shattered leg as he rocked back and forth on the grass.

  “What did you do that for?” Bob asked as Steve rejoined them.

  “Them,” Steve pointed.

  The street behind them was filled with lumbering bodies, shuffling in their direction.

  They couldn’t make out details at this distance. The island of light they were in shone like a beacon.

  Steve grabbed Emma by the hand and motioned Bob to follow him.

  Then the trio began moving in the opposite direction from the horde. They listened to the man’s screams grow fainter as they put a block between them.

  Then they rose in a crescendo before disappearing altogether.

  CHAPTER

  “They won’t stop,” Steve gasped.

  He drew the other two up short at a street corner. Bob bent over, elbows on his knees as he tried to breathe.

  Steve reached over and pulled him upright by his collar.

  “Easier if you stand, Knob.”

  Bob huffed thanks and stared at Emma as she studied her dark cul de sac.

  “They’ll trap us inside,” Steve studied the relentless horde as the moaning grew louder.

  “Is that camo beard?” Bob pointed.

  A face flashed in and out of an errant band of light bouncing from a streetlight off the window of a car.

  Then it was gone, lost in the crowd and the darkness.

  “We need more than this,” Steve pulled out the pistol.

  “Whoa,” said Bob. “Watch where you point that thing.”

  Steve looked at it in his hand.

  “I’ve never shot a gun before,” he said, almost to himself.

  “I have,” Bob held out his palm.

  “How do you know how to shoot a gun?”

  “Scouts,” Bob grinned.

  “What the hell are they teaching you kids?” Steve placed the body of the gun in Bob’s hand.

  The curly haired kid flicked it open and stared at the cylinders.

  “Only two bullets,” he announced.

  He lined up the bullets and flicked it closed.

  “We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” he said.

  Steve glanced around. There were eight houses in the cul de sac and three yards were spotted with kid’s toys. A plastic fort. A disc swing from a low hanging branch.

  He scooted through the yard and picked up a baseball bat with a leather glove on the end of the handle.

  “Go,” he snapped at Emma. “We’ll hold them off.”

  “They’ll trap me in there,” she pointed.

  She was right. The horde would pour into the cul de sac, and block the road.

  “Go out the back,” said Bob.

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  “You can get away,” said Steve. “I’ll stop them.”

  “We’ll stop them,” said Bob.

  “Get her home.”

  “You can’t hold them by yourself,” Bob said with only a small quiver in his voice.

  “Both of you. This is stupid,” said Emma.

  “Go,” Steve told them.

  “Go!” Bob pushed her toward her home.

  She took a last look over her shoulder and ran down the street. Bob and Steve lined up and prepared to face the advancing horde.

  “I think that’s Mr. Phillips,” Bob said.

  “Who?”

  “My science teacher.”

  “Oh,” Steve answered. “I skipped science.”

  “All of it? That explains a lot.”

  “Is that all you got?”

  “Give me time to think of something better,” said Bob.

  “I meant the gun.”

  Bob looked at the pistol in his hand. The distance between the horde and the two boys standing against it shrank to ten meters.

  Bob ran to the tree, yanked on the disc swing.

  “Bob!” Steve yelled.

  The first few zombies reached him and he went to work with the bat.

  He swung left. He swing right. He cracked skulls with the forward motion, knocked heads with the backswing.

  But there were so many. Too many.

  They surrounded him, bloody hands reaching for him.

  A zombie grabbed his shoulders and he couldn’t swing the bat.

  Its head lopped sideways as the hard plastic disc bounced off it like a mace.

  Steve pulled free and backed up to stand near Bob.

  He couldn’t stand next to the boy with curly hair and cheeky grin as he spun the dis around on the end of the rope and cracked it into the horde.

  “This way,” Steve yelled and ran to draw the group after them.

  “Wait!” Bob yelled as he hurried after.

  CHAPTER

  Emma gets home, it’s empty, but ransacked. Blood smeared on the walls. She breaks down, crying.

  CHAPTER

  “This is it, Bob,” Steve hefted the bat over his shoulder.

  The mob of zombies drew closer, moans growing louder. His voice was almost lost in the noise of their voices and the shuffle of their feet.

  “It’s an honor to die with you,” Bob whispered.

  “Today is a good day to die, Knob.”

  “Now he breaks out the Klingon,” Bob didn’t think it was appropriate to smile, what with death approaching, but felt one creep across his cheeks anyway.

  “What the hell’s a Klingon?”

  Then the first of the Z was three feet away. Steve lifted the bat, Bob lifted a garden rake. They screamed in fury, in fear, and in grief for lives about to be cut short. They shouted in loss and anger, and to share courage, for surely that’s what this sacrifice must be.

  A shrill horn cut off their battle cry. An SUV plowed into the row of Z, sent bodies and pieces flying.