ROT Series (Book 3): The Survival

by Hunter, Damon

  THE SURVIVAL

  Copyright © 2018 by Damon Hunter

  All right reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  STAY UP TO DATE

  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

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  CHAPTER 1

  Derek’s Van - Oceanside, CA

  “What should we do now?”

  “I don’t know,” Doug Rutherford said to his son Tanner as he looked out the darkened back window of the van.

  When the bus driver lost control and flipped the bus they managed to claw their way out and run. Tanner did not feel good about the way he climbed over people, using bodies like a ladder to get off an upside down bus rapidly filling up with the infected. At the time he reacted without thinking about anything but living to see another day. Wrong or not, he was still breathing and free of the rot, so he did not regret it too much, besides there was nothing he could do about it now anyway.

  Tanner and Doug had seen a couple of hippies opening their van door as they were running from the infected. The timing was right, they were able to jump inside before the man and woman in tie-dye shirts knew what was going on.

  Things got a tense when the girl held a revolver on the father and son while the guy checked them for bites. Once they decided they were not infected, they warmed up to the fact they were sharing their van with strangers.

  They introduced themselves as Derek and Star. To kill the time and just because it seemed a good idea, they even offered to share some weed. Tanner learned his dad was not as opposed to pot as he acted when he found Tanner’s stash last summer.

  Everyone stayed low, away from the windows, as rotters filled the street around them. No one could think of anything to do but stay in the van and be quiet. Throughout the rest of the day and deep into the night they were in the middle of the horde. Several times something bounced off the van; rotters of all kinds climbed over the top.

  At some point, aided by Derek’s strong marijuana, they all fell into an exhausted sleep. When they awoke in the morning and risked a look outside, it appeared the horde had moved on.

  “I think I’m staying here,” Derek said.

  “Really?” Doug asked.

  “We made it so far,” Star said. “Maybe this van just has, like, good karma and shit.”

  “More like we just got lucky,” Doug told her.

  “Where does luck come from if not karma?” Derek said. “I wouldn’t mind finding a bathroom though. I’m kind of tired of peeing in a bottle.”

  Doug looked at the two liter plastic bottle they had been using to pee in and saw it was nearly full. Unless they had another bottle, someone was going to have to at least risk rolling down a window to empty it.

  Derek looked out to the liquor store they were parked in front of. “You think they have a bathroom?”

  “No idea,” Doug said.

  “We should just drive away,” Tanner said.

  “I wish we could,” Derek told him. “The road is like a mess, wrecked and abandoned vehicles everywhere.”

  Tanner pointed out the front window. “Something cleared a path.”

  Derek, Doug and Star joined the teen in looking out the front window.

  “Holy shit,” Star said. “The kid is right.”

  “Remember the really loud noise we heard before the sun went down?” Tanner asked.

  “Yeah,” Derek said. “But I was so high at the time I thought it just may have been me.”

  “No way, dude,” Star told him. “I heard it too and thought the same thing.”

  “You thought I was high as shit and imagined the whole thing?”

  “No I thought I was high as shit and imagined the whole thing.”

  “I think that was, like, maybe a TMRT vehicle clearing the road,” Tanner interrupted before the ridiculous conversation about being high could continue. “I’ve seen a video of this. They have this thing which looks kind of like a locomotive designed to clear out anything blocking the road.”

  “Dude, I’ve seen that too,” Star said.

  Derek nodded. “I think the kid is right.”

  “We should get out of here,” Doug said.

  “Yeah, but where? I bet the whole county is messed up by now,” Derek said.

  “Our house,” Tanner replied.

  “Our house?” Doug said.

  “I bet the neighborhoods that were emptied out for evacuation aren’t as bad. Everybody came downtown to get away so I don’t think anybody will be there.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Star said.

  “You’ve got a smart kid,” Derek told Doug with a smile.

  Doug nodded, but said, “What if that is where they all went after destroying downtown?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Tanner said. “We can pick up Caroline this time and get out of the quarantine this way.”

  “She made her choice,” Doug said.

  “It was still wrong to leave her behind.”

  “If you’re right, it worked out pretty well for her,” Doug said.

  “Who’s Caroline?” Star asked.

  “His new wife,” Tanner said, pointing at Doug.

  “But not your mom?” Star asked.

  “If we must discuss this, can we do it on the way to the house?” Doug asked.

  “Dude is right. Where do you live?” Derek asked as he put the keys in the ignition.

  “The newer houses up by the back gate of Pendleton.”

  “Kind of far.”

  “You have somewhere closer?” Doug asked.

  “No. I just ought to make that bathroom visit before we go,” Derek said as he got out of the car and went through the busted down gate and into the liquor store.

  “Don’t worry,” Star tol
d them. “Derek is like the speed king when it comes to this kind of thing.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Doug replied.

  They did not wait long before they heard Derek scream. Star opened the big door on the side and stepped out with the old revolver in her hand.

  Derek was hopping towards her trying to pull up his pants as a pair of amblers followed close behind. He made it to the sidewalk before his pants tangled and he fell face first to the pavement.

  Star aimed at the nearest one and pulled the trigger. The gun exploded in her hand, leaving a bloody stump where her hand used to be. Blood spurted out the end of her severed arm like she was holding a hose.

  She looked at her missing hand and screamed. Her screams and the unfortunate gun shot drew the attention of the rotters Derek was kicking at as he lay on the sidewalk. While she was looking at the spot where her hand used to be, an ambler grabbed her still intact left arm and sank his yellow teeth into her forearm.

  Doug jumped into the driver’s seat and cranked the aging van’s engine to life.

  “What are you doing?” Tanner asked. “You can’t just leave them.”

  “The hell I can’t,” Doug told his son as he dropped the van into gear. “Close the door.”

  Tanner grabbed the door but stopped as a pantless Derek came running toward the van. Tanner left it open long enough for Derek to jump in.

  They both looked out to see bubble-like sores growing and popping all over Star’s face. Tanner closed the door.

  “I can’t believe you were just going to leave me after we saved your ass last night.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” Doug said.

  “Yeah, but still, that was not cool.”

  “Well,” Doug said, “no one ever accused me of being cool.”

  Chapter 2

  The SWARC Urban Assault Wagon

  “Sure, people scoffed when we here on the Cam Carson Show told them homosexuals were tainting the drinking water with a gay inducing toxin to spread their agenda, but we have seen the results. You, loyal listener, and I both know normal heterosexual Americans would not have let their agenda gain so much traction in mainstream America unless something sinister was afoot. People scoffed when we told them of the secret cabal between the forces of Hell and refugee Martians conspired to fix our elections, but look at the results. Would you vote for any of the idiots I identified as part of the conspiracy? No, of course not. No one with any common sense would. Yet they were still elected. If something sinister is not afoot this never happens.

  “These same people scoffed when I said months, hell, years ago that forces hostile to us overseas, most notably in Asia, were developing a biological weapon of the likes we had never seen before. Not only did I tell you they were developing this biological agent, I said they would unleash it on our shores. While one could argue, they would be wrong but they could present an argument, that there is no gay toxin or satanic Martians, no one can deny what has happened to our west coast.

  “This, loyal listeners, was not an outbreak, but an attack.”

  “Could you turn that shit off, please?” Eric Vance asked from the back of the Chevy Suburban turned Urban Assault Wagon. The Urban Assault Wagon was the property of a group of twenty-somethings calling themselves the South West Apocalypse Response Crew (SWARC). They came to the quarantine zone to make themselves famous by filming them killing infected and posting the clips online. Although now, of the six members of SWARC, only one was still alive.

  Along with Ana, the lone survivor from SWARC, seven others currently rode in the Suburban. All were survivors of the disease called the rot which was rapidly spreading along most of the west coast. Three had been bitten but were apparently immune to the effects, which either turned a person to a mindless zombie, called an ambler, or an animal-like predator, often called a vampire rotter.

  Eric Vance was a soldier in the Tactical Medical Response Team, a unit of elite soldiers, scientists and doctors formed to battle the rot. He survived a bite from a rotter and made his way south after a failed mission in San Francisco to save his estranged family. He succeeded; his ex-wife Donna and teenage daughter Katelin were with him in the Suburban. Katelin was bitten as well, but appeared to be immune. While Vance had an immunity which allowed him to avoid catching the rot, he had not been able to make it this far unschathed. During an encounter with a horde of infected, he took some metal shrapnel in the thigh and was not moving very well these days with only one good leg.

  Among the other four were Bo, a young man who had survived a bite without showing symptoms of the disease, a ten-year-old kid named Gavin, and another TMRT soldier by the name of Clay who had saved Bo and Gavin from the rogue leader of his mission in the quarantine zone. Rounding out the group was Barnacle Bill, Bar for short, an aging sailor who had fallen in with SWARC, when the evacuation of Oceanside went completely sideways.

  “Why do I have to turn it off?” Katelin said from the front seat. “It’s entertaining and it is the only thing I can find on the radio.”

  “It’s bullshit and I’m tired of hearing it,” Vance said.

  “I’m kind of with your dad on this one,” Ana said.

  “Yeah,” Bar added. “You don’t believe this asshole, do you?”

  Gavin, the youngest member of this little group of survivors looked back at the husky former sailor when he said the word ‘asshole’.

  “Sorry kid, I meant to say butthole,” Bar told him, shaking his head.

  “They’re the same, aren’t they?” Gavin asked.

  Bar shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “I don’t believe him,” Katelin said. “It’s just the only thing to listen to. Normally I would listen to music from my phone, but you guys said not to use it.”

  The TMRT soldier Clay looked up and said, “For good reason, it is how we found you.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t a good idea, just that I need something to listen to,” Katelin said.

  “Maybe instead of arguing over the radio we should form some sort of plan,” Donna, Vance’s ex-wife and Katelin’s mother, said.

  Katelin turned off the radio and Donna stopped the SUV and pulled to the side of the road. They had been driving for awhile, just looking to get clear of the horde of infected that had surrounded and invaded what they had thought was a safe place hours before.

  “She’s right. Just ‘going to Oregon’ is not really a plan. I’m guessing the roads through Los Angeles are just as bad as downtown Oceanside, if not worse,” Ana said.

  Clay, who had been there, said, “It’s bad, but we cleared out some space. We would make better time than going through pre-infection L.A. traffic.”

  “That still means going through a dense urban area crawling with infected,” Vance said. “Any stop at all, for gas or food or just to pee, would be risky as hell.”

  “Before I ended up with you guys we were going to take my Jeep south along the sand,” Bo said. He saved Gavin from the infected and ended up with Clay aboard a Tactical Medical Response Team vehicle before he ended up with Vance and his group.

  “No way we could take the beach all the way north,” Vance said. “Honestly I don’t think you would have gotten far going south, every jetty and inlet would have been a problem.”

  “Gee, Dad, instead of shooting down everyone else’s ideas why don’t you come up with a plan?” Katelin told him.

  “How about the water?” Bar said before Vance could answer his daughter. “It worked before. You and Holiday made it all the way here in record time from San Francisco.”

  “Drones patrol the coast,” Vance said. “We had a TMRT transponder before so they would not target us. We don’t have one anymore. Or a boat.”

  “Last time I was at the harbor there were plenty of boats,” Bar said.

  “And plenty of infected,” Ana added.

  “Never said it would be easy,” Bar told her.

  “Without the transponder we would just be target practice for hellfire missiles,” Vance sai
d.

  “But if we could get a transponder, does anyone know enough about boats to get us up the coast?” Clay asked.

  “They don’t call me Barnacle Bill just because of my breath,” Bar said, smiling.

  “What about your arm?” Donna asked, pointing to the sling holding the arm Bar had fractured during an encounter with a horde of infected. “Can you actually sail a boat one handed?”

  “Breaking the arm didn’t affect my mouth. I can give orders. What I can’t do I’ll tell one of you to do.”

  “Doesn’t matter with the drones patrolling the coast,” Vance said. “We need to work on ideas that have a chance of working.”

  “It can work,” Clay said. “I know where to get a TMRT transponder. You won’t like it, though.”

  “Where?” Vance asked.

  “You guys were too busy fighting for your lives to notice but one of our transports hit a land mine or something and tipped over. They had to leave it behind.”

  “Corrigan booby trapped the area around his bunker,” Vance said. “He was kind of paranoid.”

  “So are you saying go back to the spot we just fled?” Donna asked.

  “We barely survived last night,” Ana added. “Some of our friends didn’t make it. I don’t want to go back.”

  “Me neither,” Clay said, “but nothing against this armored Chevy, but going by land we are bound to run into another horde like last night, only probably bigger. I don’t know if this thing is up to the task. I don’t see another choice.”

  “I think he’s right,” Vance added. “Besides, does anyone else have a better idea?”

  No one did.

  “So we go back to Corrigan’s?” Donna asked.

  “Doesn’t have to be all of us,” Vance said.

  “He’s right,” Clay said. “I might be easier if Vance and I went, maybe one more, but that should be plenty. Any more and we might get in each other’s way.”

  “You saying we can’t handle ourselves when things get nasty?” Katelin asked.

  “No, you clearly can, but there are only two trained military men here. This is our thing.”

  “He’s right,” Bo said. “I’ll go if you decide you need me too, but I’m a surfer, not a soldier, and while he is tough as nails, Gavin is still in elementary school.”