by J. W. Vohs
Zombie Crusade III:
Evolution
J.W. Vohs
Copyright © 2013 J.W. Vohs
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1489550798
ISBN-10: 1489550798
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to all the fans of the Zombie Crusade series.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my family and friends who added insight and inspiration over the course of multiple drafts. Special thanks to Blane Ryan for his train expertise, and to superlative science consultant Mark Matson. As always, I would like to express appreciation to my readers and fans—especially those who enthusiastically requested this third installment of the Zombie Crusade series.
Prologue
In the dim light, Doc Redders opened the trap door and descended into the fortified bunker beneath the back section of the barn. Few people knew that what could pass for a bomb shelter even existed here, though no one would be surprised given that the owner, Jack Smith, seemed to be well-prepared for just about any apocalyptic disaster. What would be surprising was confined in a reinforced cell, growling a low, guttural threat that still made the doctor’s hair stand up on the back of his neck every time he heard it.
“And how are we doing today?” Doc Redders didn’t expect an answer from the creature that now inhabited the body of his former friend. There was a faint resemblance left—the bulbous nose, wide mouth, thin lips—but the doctor knew it was just a superficial likeness, a cruel joke to remind the uninfected that the black-eyed, flesh-eating monsters overrunning the world were once neighbors, friends, and even family. The young doctor had known the sheriff for a few years, and he still saw members of the lawman’s family on a regular basis. Mrs. Gates, the sheriff’s no-nonsense wife, was the person mainly responsible for the current state of the doctor’s research.
The throaty rumbling continued as the creature’s black eyes fixed themselves on Doc. These “stare downs” always unnerved the doctor, and while he knew that many wild animals interpreted direct eye contact as threatening behavior, his own instincts told him that to look away would be some kind of submission to this beast. He searched for some sign of intelligence or emotion behind what seemed like a reptilian gaze, but he only saw cold, unblinking darkness. After a few minutes the monster looked away and retreated to the back corner of the cell, where it stared blankly at nothing in particular. Even though he knew it wasn’t rational, Doc felt like the alpha male who had firmly reestablished his dominance over an upstart challenger. The days were long past when this beast would howl and moan incessantly whenever the doctor was present, but it likely still associated him with food since it received a steady diet of protein in the form of livestock and rodents from his hand.
Doc pulled out his lab notebook and systematically recorded the creature’s heart rate over time from the monitor he’d implanted when the creature had been anesthetized for transport from the county lock-up. To be honest, the “rescue” team didn’t even think there would be a heart rate when they inserted the subcutaneous device, but Doc couldn’t conceive of anything that moved and consumed food not having some type of circulatory engine. Though the flesh-eaters were commonly called “zombies” from the beginning of the outbreak, a designation the doctor didn’t quibble with, technically they were still, barely, living beings.
“I believe you’re having pork for dinner tonight,” Doc said as he snapped the notebook shut. “I’ll be back—Holy Frickin’ Jesus!” He jumped back as the formerly lethargic zombie flew across the cell and slammed into the bars with a bone-chilling howl. Everything in the room seemed to rattle. The flesh-eater pressed its body against the cage, cocked his head to one side, and looked the doctor straight in the eye once again. It began making the familiar rumbling growls, but then its mouth began to contort into strange shapes as it reached its hand out through the bars of the cell.
Doc felt like the wind had just been knocked out of him, and with a shaky voice he whispered, “Bobby? Sheriff Gates? You in there?”
CHAPTER 1
After embracing his brother in a rib-crushing bear hug, Jack stepped back and took charge of the situation, “Maddy, Zach: I’m sending Bobby out here as back-up—all this commotion may draw some unwanted attention. Carter, Carey: stay here till Bobby relieves you.” He pulled his brother David close again and slapped him on the back before turning and jogging back over to his vehicle, calling over his shoulder as he moved “You and your people follow me to The Castle. We’ll get you something to eat, and you can all get cleaned up . . .”
The short trip to The Castle seemed surreal to all concerned. Jack could hardly believe that David had managed to lead a group of survivors all the way from Cleveland to Albion, Indiana, in the middle of a zombie pandemic. Now that they had arrived at their destination, David and his band of followers drank in the landscape and tried to process the shock of their success. Driving a Lincoln Navigator acquired from the abandoned home where his group had rested the previous night, David followed Jack down a country road flanked by farm fields that had been trampled flat for hundreds of yards in each direction. Everyone in David’s vehicle, even Luke, wore smiles of relief and genuine joy. David’s wife, Christy, followed behind them in the other “borrowed” SUV, with Lori riding shotgun and her family in the back. Chewy, a sad-eyed, fun-loving beagle who had earned himself a permanent place in the group by risking his own safety to defend the children, was scampering back and forth from window to window, panting and wagging his tail excitedly.
They all knew that surviving the journey to Indiana had been nothing less than remarkable, even by traveling the ancient Indian trading route from the Great Lakes up the Maumee River by canoe in order to avoid the infected as much as possible. Two of their group had fallen to the flesh-eating monsters during portages over dams they’d encountered along the way. From the back seat behind David, Gracie ran her fingers through her short dark hair and found herself remembering the first days of the viral outbreak that had spread with astonishing speed across the world. It had turned the infected into creatures that everyone had quickly taken to calling zombies, but time revealed the monsters to be something even more dangerous as their voracious consumption of protein steadily transformed the shuffling mobs of unthinking flesh-eaters into packs of fast, strong, instinctive hunters that were biologically alive. A pang of heartache fluttered in her chest as she remembered fighting side-by-side with her father, losing him in a desperate battle to save a church full of refugees from a horde of black-eyed zombies. She directed a question to David and Luke in the front seat, “Do you think they’ve faced the hunters out here?”
Luke nodded, “I think the hunters are everywhere. Besides, this is farm country, with plenty of available protein . . .”
“I agree,” David interrupted, “but if anyone has figured out how to eliminate the hunters, it would be my brother.” The man they had traveled over two hundred miles of infected territory to meet, David’s older brother Jack, had faced the monsters in Afghanistan a decade earlier and had spent most of his post-war time and money preparing for the day when the virus that caused the mutations broke free of the Hindu-Kush mountains and led to a global pandemic. By the time his worst fears came true, he had developed a plan for fighting the infected that maximized human strengths and minimized those of the zombies. No one could have predicted how the creatures would adapt and evolve over time, but Jack was likely the world’s foremost expert on anything having to do with the infected.
The creatures had excellent hearing, and that was often how they found their prey. Jack countered by teaching the fighters in his group to use medieval weapons to combat the infected. The virus was spread through bite wounds, so Jack out
fitted his people in Kevlar-laced, leather motorcycle gear, including gloves and helmets. They also wore leather collars and snake-proof boots.
Jack had been the curator of the Frazier Royal Armories museum in Louisville before the outbreak, and his hobbies had included making and using Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) weapons and armor. His halberds were considered among the best in the world, but he also made excellent battle-axes, short swords, spears, and maces. Pragmatic in his approach to fighting the infected, Jack also had acquired as many .22 pistols with silencers as he could before the pandemic. When David refused to leave Cleveland after news of the virus first hit the U.S., Jack had sent complete sets of weapons and armor for both David and his soon-to-be-wife, Christy. The gear had saved the couple’s lives on several occasions, and it allowed them to save others and teach them how to battle the infected as well. Eventually, they had outfitted the other members of their group in similar armor, and they all learned how to use the ancient weaponry together. When they were finally ready to attempt the trip, they’d set off to find David’s family in Indiana by boat and canoe. Discovering the SUVs in the garage of an abandoned farmhouse was a lucky break for the last leg of their journey.
As the vehicles approached a long, tall, earthen wall fronted by a muddy ditch and generously topped with the beginnings of a wooden palisade and prodigious amounts of razor-wire, Luke pointed out that the ground appeared to be stained by dried-up rivers of black zombie blood. Although only sixteen, Luke had proven to be the deadliest warrior in the group, and yet he was also the most thoughtful, serene, and mature teenager David had ever met. Still, he was a teenager, and he was all boy, and David reminded himself that he needed to have “the talk” with Luke before he and Gracie had the chance to spend much time alone now that they were safely off the road. Even if Luke hadn’t lost both his parents, David would have considered him family. In fact, he felt the same way about everyone who travelled with him, so, for David, arriving at Jack’s fortress was an especially significant reunion.
Large metal gates swung open for Jack as he led the three-car caravan into the fortified compound known as The Castle. One look at the house explained the name of the place; the twenty-foot high limestone walls and crenellated roof reminded every adult in the vehicles of the pictures of medieval strongholds they’d seen in their world history books as school-kids. Another building nearly as large as the house and constructed in the same manner had obviously been built to be a barn but now appeared to be a military barracks. The grounds within the walls were huge, easily three acres, and while David knew that most of the land had originally been intended for agricultural use, the area was now dotted with large tents arranged in orderly lines with walkways between them.
Luke could barely contain his enthusiasm, “David, your brother is a genius!” He reached back for Gracie’s hand, and for a moment the two teens only had eyes for each other across the divide between the seats. The moment was lost when nine-year-old Josh and his seven-year-old brother Manny started giggling and making kissy noises.
“Knock it off, boys,” their father said while stifling his own laughter, “we don’t want to give these two any ideas.”
Vickie elbowed her husband in the ribs, “Maybe you should be picking up on some of those ideas, Sal.” The young doctor leaned over and kissed her husband. “Congratulations, professor—we made it.”
Sal’s eyes teared up as he embraced his family, “David, I will never be able to thank you enough for all you have done for us.”
David’s mind flashed to the people he’d lost on the journey from Cleveland. His father-in-law, Jim. Luke’s dad, Jerry. The euphoria he’d felt ever since they’d arrived vanished into a pit in his stomach. He didn’t think he deserved Sal’s gratitude. As he parked the Lincoln next to Jack’s vehicle, he made eye contact with the gentle giant in the rear view mirror, “Don’t ever think you owe me anything, Sal. Those of us who made it here did so because we worked together, and because we were lucky.”
An hour later, sitting around the various dining area tables, the new arrivals were clean, well-fed, and sharing stories about their journey with an ever increasing audience of The Castle’s inhabitants. The party atmosphere was infectious, and David was swept up in waves of pure delight as he was reunited with each of his siblings. With Christy at his side, David felt like he could truly relax for the first time since the outbreak began. Jack was anxious to catch up with David, but several small administrative tasks demanded his attention before he was able to join the celebration in the kitchen.
Jack sent out a message over his radio to all of the guard teams, “Unless we are facing a full-on zombie invasion, don’t call me for the next few hours. Carter can handle everything.” Jack wasn’t really surprised by the wall-to-wall crowd in the kitchen and dining area, but he couldn’t immediately locate David amidst the loud reverie. He finally spotted Andi not far from the door and headed her way, giving her a quick kiss and casually laying his arm around her shoulders as he resumed the visual search for his brother.
Christy watched the interaction between the two for a moment, then leaned over and whispered in David’s ear, “It looks like Jack has finally found himself a girlfriend. I guess it just took a zombie apocalypse to bring out his romantic side.”
David was about to ask Christy what she was talking about when he noticed his brother and a beautiful, tall, strawberry blond heading in their direction—the expression on Jack’s face, and his arm around the woman’s waist, confirmed Christy’s assessment. The last girlfriend of Jack’s whom David could remember was his high school sweetheart, but to be fair, big brother Jack was six years older, and they hadn’t spent a lot of time together since he’d joined the army at age eighteen. Thinking about Jack’s high school girlfriend brought a smile to David’s face as he remembered that, as an eleven-year-old, he used to fantasize about how Maggie would dump Jack when she realized that her heart belonged to his handsome sixth-grade brother.
The strawberry blond introduced herself, “You must be David and Christy, I’m Andi. I’m so happy to finally meet you.” She smiled at Gracie, then turned to Luke, took his hand and looked at him quizzically, “You must be another relative; Jack only told me about David and Christy.”
Luke smiled shyly and raised one eyebrow before responding, “No ma’am, I’m not related, but David’s basically my uncle and blood-brother now.”
Andi briefly looked at Jack, David, and then back to Luke, “Well, you certainly look like one of the Smith boys. Believe it or not, you should take that as a compliment.” She playfully elbowed Jack in his side, then blushed when she noticed she’d become the center of attention. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute, I’m going to go see if Deb needs help with anything.”
As she walked away, David chuckled, “You know, Jack, here I’ve been telling everybody about my macho, bad-ass, older brother, and it turns out this whole castle thing was just your way to play Prince Charming and find your true love . . .”
Christy interrupted as David dramatically clasped his hand over his heart, “Now don’t get ahead of yourself dear; you know no one has ever accused Jack of being charming.”
“Ah, that’s true,” David conceded. “Stubborn, eccentric, egotistical—sometimes, in my humility, I forget that I’m the charming one.”
Jack rolled his eyes, “You two deserve each other. Now let’s get this party officially started.” He raised his hand and called for quiet in the dining room; even though he was forced to wait a few moments while those peeking through the doors and windows stopped talking, the speed and ease with which he took total control of the situation wasn’t lost on David. When everyone was finally focused, Jack asked his little brother to tell the tale of the journey from Cleveland. For the next hour the inhabitants of The Castle listened with awe and increasing respect for the small group of survivors. As the evening wore on, they began to grasp the magnitude of what their leader’s little brother and his small band had accomplished.
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The Castle’s residents heard about Christy and David’s escape from downtown Cleveland after hacking and shooting their way out of an apartment building full of zombies. When Luke described the distance he and his father had traveled through the suburbs on foot in order to reach his grandparents, who were Christy’s parents’ neighbors, they shook their heads in wonder as they remembered how hard it was to survive even in a rural area in the early days of the outbreak.
Everyone looked at Gracie with amazement when they learned of the battle she and her father had fought against hundreds of infected in the church where they had sought refuge, and many were brought to tears when they heard of her father’s death as he stood bravely between the mob of flesh-eaters and his beloved daughter. After discovering that Gracie’s mother and brother had been visiting an Israeli kibbutzim when the virus hit the world, Carter’s mom moved closer to the teen and gently placed a comforting arm upon the girl’s shoulders.
Blake Alberts and his wife, Lori, explained that he had been a firefighter, and she was an EMT. They’d both been SCA enthusiasts before the outbreak, and they had hid in their home for weeks until David’s people found them and asked the pair to join the group. Lori had been a combat medic in Iraq, and it was clear that she had become one of David’s most trusted fighters as well as a close friend and advisor. They had a ten-year-old daughter named Jenny, and had basically adopted her friend, Addison, after the girl’s father had been infected by zombies. Both Jenny and Addison had been forced to fight for their lives when threatened during the journey, and they bore serious expressions that spoke of atrocities witnessed too closely and often.
Trudy was Christy’s mother. She was in her mid-fifties, lean and attractive, but a pall of sadness hung over her as she described the fight that had claimed her husband as he fought to protect the group when they were attacked by overwhelming numbers during a portage around a dam in Fort Wayne.