by White, A. L.
Z Chronicles
Boxed Set 1-3
A.L. White
Z Chronicles Boxed Set Copyright © 2019 A.L. White
The Beginning Copyright © 2014
Surge of the Dead Copyright © 2015
Hybrid Z Copyright © 2016 A.L.White.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, without written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Character names, places, and events are the product of A.L. White’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people or events are coincidental
Table of Contents
The Beginning
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Surge of the Dead
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Hybrid Z
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
A.L. White Links
Also By A.L. White
Z Chronicles Series
Z Chronicles: The Beginning
Z Chronicles: Surge of the Dead
Hybrid Z
Z Chronicles: The Final Chapter
Z Chronicles Boxed Set
Nefertem Series
Nefertem: The Awakening
Nefertem: Ancient Alien
Novellas
Book of Death
Lost Colony
The Beginning
To my wife Nancy for all the love and support in everything I attempt to do.
For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.
~Matthew 24:21
Chapter 1
Jack Burrows looked at the label on the DVD: Case No. 125631. A week ago, he had picked out about a dozen of the case files to study. This one would be his one-hundredth case file that he reviewed. He wasn’t taking the time to read the notes from the doctors or nurses anymore. There wasn’t much of a point, was there? They all said the same thing. ‘The patient presented with flu-like symptoms, temps well over one hundred and three degrees, heartbeats unusually high. Within twenty-four to forty-eight hours temps had fallen to below seventy degrees, heartbeats slowed to nearly nothing, and the skin began turning grey and translucent. Veins became visible, black and prominent.’ To Jack, that was a very true assessment of what was happening—just not a very helpful one as he sought to figure out what was going on. To Jack, these cases presented themselves as one big riddle. This disease just hid its answers better than others.
He was sure that the video files held that answer, if he could only find it. He needed to find that moment where death had occurred and this other altered-state-of-being had begun. Most of Jack’s colleagues thought he had lost it; even Dr. Johnson, head of the lab. Dr. Johnson was a more open-minded sort of man, but he too was leaning toward the impression that circumstances had just pushed Jack too far and over the edge. But Jack knew the answer had to be there somewhere If not there, then it was out in the real world, among the dead.
He watched as subject 125631’s eyes flashed open. He studied the cold, black eyes that peered into the room at anything, perhaps at nothing at all. The eyes, Jack thought, they were like the shark eyes he’d seen on National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week.”
He rubbed his own eyes for what seemed like the thousandth time that evening and shoved his chair back from the viewer. He looked over at his white board and then went about erasing all his previous notes. On the board he wrote:
1) Subject enters hospital with unknown illness ALIVE.
2) Subject is clinically DEAD within 48 hrs.
3) Subject is REBORN…
That was the clue to the riddle, Jack knew it in his soul. There was something that the video files weren’t telling him; something that the notes didn’t have. Something was there in front of him, but it was driving him insane being unable to see it.
“Sam!” he called out to Doctor Sam Houston, his research partner. When there was no answer he yelled, “Sam are you here?”
There was a loud bang and the rustling of papers in the outer office. “Christ Jack, what is it?” Sam replied as he came into the lab.
“The answer isn’t here, not in this one, and not in any of these! We are wasting our time with case files that are over six months old.”
“They are the same age they were last night Jack, and the night before.” Sam said, disgruntled being woken from his sleep yet again for one of Jack’s late-night fits.
Jack smiled a devilish grin and motioned for Sam to sit. “Why not get some live subjects and study them here?”
“You’re mad you know that? Johnson will never let us bring a subject into the compound. The man won’t even let us go into the courtyard to get some fresh air and sun, let alone let us bring the disease into the lab. Really Jack, you need to step away from this for a day or two and get some much-needed sleep.”
Jack laughed like a mad man. In truth, he was starting to feel like a mad man.
“You laugh, it’s all funny until a dead thing eats your face or you become one of them, isn’t it?” Even Sam had to laugh at that when he thought about it. Then his mind went to work on the problem.
That’s why Jack always liked working with Sam. Jack solved puzzles, but Sam was like a computer. He could find an answer to an issue facing them in an instant.
“He will never let us bring them in, but he might let us go on a field trip if we were going to another facility. That way we are not risking the lab by coming back in, possibly infected.”
“You’re brilliant!” Jack felt more alive than he had in months, springing from his chair and heading toward the door. Sam caught him just before he passed through the doorway.
“Now hold on, Speedy! You get some sleep so that we get taken seriously and we will hit Johnson with this right after breakfast in the morning.�
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Jack wanted his answer right then! Deep down, he knew Sam was right though. Sam was always better at getting them what they needed or wanted than he was. Jack’s way of doing things was to hit them head on and charge through any obstacle. Sam, on the other hand, knew how to play the game with the higher-ups. He knew how to perform the delicate dance of making them think it was all their idea and what a great reward they would get if it all went as planned; and how easily they would take the fall if it did not. Jack had tried getting funding a few times, tried being the key word. Jack knew he was smarter than the rest and did nothing to hide it. In fact, he could be more than a little condescending to Dr. Johnson. Everyone knew that Johnson put up with Jack because he solved puzzles. That brought in more funding and that was what made Johnson happiest.
***
Lori felt the warmth of the morning sun move across her body. The fall was bringing cool nights, but keeping the house closed up kept the upstairs fairly hot. She listened for sounds that her younger brother and sister, Jay and Virginia, were up and moving around. The house seemed eerily silent for the morning. Usually she would awake to Jay driving the younger Virginia crazy about something or other. Lori forced herself up from the bed and pulled on her shorts and an old t-shirt, heading down to the family room. That was when she saw why it was so quiet. Jay and Virginia were studying the muddy handprints on the windows.
“Who did that?” she asked Jay. “This isn’t funny; you shouldn’t keep doing stuff like that to her!”
“I didn’t do it Lori, honestly. They were there when we opened the curtains this morning,” he replied.
Lori felt her mind race, subjects darting in and out of her head at a blinding speed. There had been no signs of life in the neighborhood for months—well, none aside from their own. They had been hunkered down in the house since the day their father had been taken away and the national quarantine was issued. The last signs of candlelight inside the houses around them disappeared not long after their Father left. She didn’t know for sure but that felt about right. The only thing she knew for certain was that the zombies outside couldn’t walk upstairs and they couldn’t climb fences. So the muddy hand prints on all of the first floor windows could not have been made by a zombie. It was one of Jay’s obnoxious jokes or someone out there was alive. Even if they had somehow knocked part of the fence down in the backyard, how did they climb the stairs to the front porch to get to the front windows? It had to have been a living person.
She raced to the patio door, finding muddy handprints and smudges there as well. From what she could see, the zombies were all gathered around the fence as usual, none in the backyard. Could someone be alive out there? She wondered. If they were out there, how were they staying alive? Whoever it was, could they help Lori and her siblings? Or could the three of them help the strangers? —That thought would have sent her father’s temper to a boil.
He was a sort of novice-prepper, which her mother said meant he planned for an imaginary doomsday and spent money that they did not have to spend. Sometimes Lori wished her mother could see how they had been living off that ‘tremendous waste of money’ for months. The basement had enough food and water to keep them going for quite some time. Probably longer—if she could get Jay to stop eating like he needed to finish as much of the food as he could before it all ran out.
The basement………… fear exploded from deep in Lori's soul.
“Jay, have you been downstairs today?”
She could see in Jay’s eyes how it hit him hearing her words. His face went pale and he uttered “No.”
They both stared at the door to the basement, as if it would burst open at any moment with zombies streaming into the room. Or worse, the marauders, looking to stock up on fire power and ammo. Her father said there were types too lazy to plan and prepare for the day when the shit hit the fan; those types would look to take advantage of others who had planned.
Jay grabbed one of the crossbows and placed an arrow into it, slowly raising it toward the door. Lori and he both knew that one of them would have to check it out and make sure that their lifeline was still there. Lori put her hand on Jay’s shoulder and lowered the crossbow.
“I will go,” she said though it was hardly audible.
He handed her the crossbow and stepped away. Deep down Jay acted like a man but he was only fourteen and still very much a boy. That part of him wanted nothing to do with the basement.
Lori slowly made her way to the basement door and eased it open so as not to make any sound. As she took her first step she could feel her heart nearly exploding in her chest; every following step caused an increase in tempo. The part of her that took after her mother wanted to drop the crossbow and run back up the stairs, blocking the door to never return. The part that took after her father said to keep calm and use the fear to her advantage. She wanted to tell him that she couldn’t. That the fear was coming from too deep within her soul and filling her with a deep dread.
Five steps to go and she stared into the blackness, trying to get her eyes to adjust. Lori had left the flashlight upstairs knowing it would make her an easy target. Great idea, she thought. They are down here accustomed to the dark and I can’t see a thing. Surprisingly, she could see when she reached the foot of the stairs. A quick look around and it was easy to see that no one had come in from the windows. There weren’t even any handprints on the windows. She remembered the heavy grates that her father had installed on the window wells. They were padlocked from the inside so there was really no way in down there.
She breathed a sigh of relief but was interrupted by the screams of her siblings upstairs. She spun around, raising the crossbow, and charged back up the stairs.
Chapter 2
Jack shifted in the van seat and wiped the sleep from his eyes. As the fog began to clear he was met by Sam’s ‘just a little too happy to be awake’ smile and the Sergeant’s ever present disapproving gaze. The Sergeant and another soldier had been sent along for their protection. The private, who Jack nicknamed “Willie,” was intently concentrating on navigating around the abandoned cars in the road. Jack liked him because he didn’t seem like he judged, and he rarely spoke. Willie had no opinion about the virus or the trip; he just seemed to be thankful for being out of the compound.
Behind Jack was a woman who they were forced to bring with them. She had been in quarantine, so he was sure that Johnson added that part to the trip to get rid of her. According to the Sergeant, she was a neurologist from another “secret lab” which he had failed to mention until around day two or three. Say what you will about Johnson, Jack though, but his lab had no casualties throughout the whole outbreak.
Jack thought about it for a minute longer; he didn’t care if she was here or not. She didn’t speak, barely ate and stayed out of his way. If he was going to have a travel companion forced on him, she was the type Jack would take every time.
“There was a time,” Jack said, sitting up straighter in his seat to make himself look larger to the Sergeant, “that I could have been in Florida having a beer on the beach in the amount of time it has taken us to get this far from the lab.”
He noticed that he had caused the stone-faced sergeant to smile.
“That is a fact Dr. Burrows, that is a fact,” he replied. “Of course, that was with great traffic and things not being the end of the world.”
Sam broke out laughing so hard that Jack and the Sergeant both followed suit. For a moment the world was normal again. They were just a bunch of buddies on a road trip, not caring where they ended up.
Sam wiped the tears from his eyes as his laughter died down and he motioned toward the woman. “What’s her story?”
The stone face returned to the Sergeant and both Sam and Jack expected to get another rebuke for asking about things that were “need to know” —with them not needing to know.
“We have a squad - least I think we still have a squad that checks in on all the sites, brings messages and news to each while doin
g a sort of…. ‘Wellbeing check.’” The Sergeant motioned toward her with his eyes and lowered his voice. “When they checked on her site, they reported that it was like someone painted the compound with blood and that they were going to salvage what data they could and then torch it. Well, that was when they found her hiding in a cabinet barely big enough for her to fit into.”
“Infected?” Jack asked.
“Negative, well not as far as we could tell or the med staff back at your lab could find either. She hasn’t said a word since she was rescued so no one really knows what the hell happened there.”
“Does she have a name?”
“There were over thirty research techs, around thirty or forty medical staff, of which nine doctors were female. So she could be any one of the nine. According to the squad, the data was so degraded that they couldn’t pull anything useful and everything else was painted in dried blood.” He shook his head slowly in disbelief. “My thoughts are that our boys freaked out after they found her, set the place ablaze and got the hell out of there. Can’t say that I blame them if they did.”
“Nothing found on her?” Sam asked.
“That’s just it Doc - they found her covered in blood and only blood, naked as the day she was born. Report said that she looked like she had been in a pretty hairy fight. Probably found that cabinet and sought refuge from whatever was attacking her.”
Silence fell over all three as they stared at her. She was staring right back with what Jack thought were the most beautiful blue eyes he had ever seen. Beautiful, but empty. If she was in there someplace, he thought she was so far inside that she would probably never come back out. After hearing that story, who could blame her checking out for good? Still, he wished she would speak now; she had seen this thing at its worst and could probably provide information on how to beat it. He started to say something to that effect but then thought better of it. Even Jack could have rare moments of humanity. Sam’s wife had always said that deep down inside of Jack there was a real person fighting to get out. He always replied, “Nonsense, what you see is what you get.” He wondered why Sam never spoke of her —there was a chance she made it to a FEMA camp and was doing fine. He had brought the subject up once. Sam was ever the optimist and vowed to start trying to contact the different camps. Jack had never brought it up again. Sam fell into a deep depression and it took a lot to bring him out of it. Jack sometimes wished he had loved someone the way Sam loved her. Just to feel that once in his life would have made everything worthwhile.