by David Achord
It was a long day, but everyone pitched in, even President Stark. Unfortunately, as I’m writing, I am looking at a dump truck full of dead corpses. The truck ran fine for about a minute before dying. Now, it’s sitting on the roadway, and when the breeze hits, I get a good whiff. Maybe we can get it running tomorrow.
Where do I begin? There has been so much that has happened since our arrival here. First, a man who I thought was dead turned out to be alive. Fred was shot during the Nolensville massacre, but he’s too tough to kill. When he found out we were up here, he didn’t think twice. He hopped on a horse and rode six hundred miles to join us. Six hundred miles on horseback. That tells you everything you need to know about the kind of man Fred McCoy is.
He’s changed though. I’ll try to explain in more detail at a later time.
Once I was here, there was an attempt to cultivate a vaccine. Sarah and Justin led a contingent to Fort Detrick with two scientists and an Igloo cooler with several vials of my blood. I was told the place was full of zombies, but they managed to eradicate most of them and get a lab running. They were up there for almost six weeks before coming back home. The scientists believe they’ve successfully created a vaccine, but only time will tell. The important thing is, all of them made it back alive. They also experimented with an antidote. We captured a few zombies using control poles the dogcatchers used to use and tried it out them. There were mixed results. Two of them displayed no changes whatsoever, but one of them actually started trying to talk. They are uncertain how best to proceed, but I bet we’ll be tasked with catching more zombies for testing.
The scientists, and a couple of others, suggested releasing the zombies we’d caught rather than killing them. I told them I’d take care of it. Fred, Jorge, Josue, and a couple of Marines helped me walked them out about a mile down the road and then we killed them. History may paint me as a bad person, but as far as I’m concerned, the only good zombie is a dead zombie.
Another notable incident, not too long after our arrival, the president was murdered by a jealous husband. President Richmond had apparently been having an affair with Sheila Hunter. Her husband, Earl, took offense and killed him. Then he hung himself.
Since then, Abraham Stark, the former Secretary of Defense, has assumed command. He usurped two other individuals who were ahead of him in the line of succession. Those two being the speaker of the house, Jim Hassburg, and the president pro tempore of the senate, Senator Esther Polacek.
I will say this, since Stark took over, there has been a noticeable improvement in the efficiency of operations around this place. There has also been talk of starting outposts around the area of Mount Weather. Jim Hassburg volunteered to be the first and moved into Parvis Anderson’s house in nearby Bluemont. Senator Esther Polacek’s acerbic personality soon made her persona non grata, so she was voluntold to move in with the Hassburgs.
They’d not been living there long when they were attacked by a gang of marauders known as the Blackjacks. Sadly, Major Sarah Fowkes and Senator Esther Polacek were both murdered.
This was a terrible mistake on behalf of the Blackjacks. Fred McCoy took grievous offense to this action, hunted them down, and killed them all. Burt later confided in me that Fred scalped a couple of those boys.
The day-to-day activities of Mount Weather have undergone several subtle changes. There have been more improvement projects, and people who once considered themselves too good for manual labor have found themselves being voluntold to participate in work crews. Like I said, so far, it’s going pretty good.
Among the major projects, there has been a concerted effort to restore the power grid into Bluemont. Parvis is adamant the hydroelectric dam that powers Mount Weather cranks out more than enough wattage for Bluemont and beyond.
There are several things I don’t agree with, no surprise there, but I have to look at the positive side. We have health care for my family, they’re safe, and they’re happy. That made my decision rather easy.
*****
I heard a door shut, looked toward the main building, and saw Parvis. He was wearing a backpack, which I knew held his laptop, and he also had his ever-present Yeti mug. I closed my journal, put it away in my own backpack, and checked my watch. It was three in the morning. I stood, stretched, and made the mandatory call.
“Post one, negative SITREP,” I said into the field phone.
“Roger, out,” a woman’s voice replied. It was Sheila Hunter. Ever since the murder of the president, she kept a low profile and did not socialize with anyone.
“How’s it going?” Parvis asked as he walked into the shack.
“All is quiet,” I replied. “Why are you awake?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I went into the armory and chatted with Sheila a little bit and she told me you were out here, so I thought we’d do a lesson.” He looked at me with a grin as he booted up his laptop. “So, what do you say, my young Padawan? Shall we continue discussing Philpott damn and how we’re going to rebuild the power grid?”
I smiled at him. “Sure.”
Parvis took a sip of coffee and grinned again. “If I haven’t said it, I’m pleased you decided to become my apprentice. This is a win-win for everyone.”
I hoped he was right.
Chapter 47 – The Beach
“It’s more of a greenish blue,” Savannah said. “I don’t remember that. I always remembered it being a deep blue, you know?”
She looked at Melvin and grinned as the waves lapped against her bare feet. She wiggled her toes in the wet sand.
“Careful, you might sink all the way to China,” Melvin said. When Savannah giggled, he couldn’t help but smile.
They’d arrived at Virginia Beach less than ten minutes ago. Savannah was driving and she made a beeline to the seashore. Parking in the sand, she looked at Melvin expectantly. Melvin used binoculars to scan up and down the beach. There wasn’t a soul in sight. He smiled at Savannah and got out.
“It looks clean,” Melvin said. “I thought it’d be polluted.”
“It’s beautiful,” Savannah said. “I want to get in.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
Savannah grinned mischievously and pulled her shirt off. She tossed it to Melvin, who wasn’t surprised she wasn’t wearing a bra, and did the same with her jeans before trotting into the surf. A wave knocked her off of her feet. She stood back up, flipped her hair out of her face, and looked back to see if he was watching.
Melvin was indeed watching. The sunlight glistened off of her wet skin. When the two of them first met, she was skin and bones. She might have weighed eighty pounds, if that. She’d filled out nicely since then; he guessed she was around a buck twenty, and all of it in the right places. Melvin thought she was beautiful.
He looked around. There were numerous hotels, most of them still intact. He wondered if any of them were occupied; perhaps they were being spied upon at this very moment. He decided he didn’t care, stripped, and ran out to join her.
After a few minutes of frolicking in the surf, they walked out together. She had goosebumps.
“It’s cold,” she said, the grin still on her face.
“C’mon,” he said, grabbed their clothes, and the two of them walked back to the truck. He found a towel and began drying her off. At one point, there was a pause and they made eye contact. Melvin bent down and kissed her deeply. Savannah put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him down into the sand.
Please enjoy a sneak peek into book six of the Zombie Rules series: True.
Chapter 1 – True
Nimrod Abraxas True. That’s me. Named after my father, or so my mama claimed. Truth was, I had no idea who my father was. He was African American though, which wasn’t a good thing for my mother. Her family disowned her the moment I was born, or so she said.
I guess I was around fourteen or so when I told people to stop calling me by my given name. I hated it. Being named after a man who took no interest in me was hard, so I’d tell people just t
o call me True.
I was the oldest of seven. My momma was what you’d call a wanton woman. Each of my siblings had a different father, so there you have it. Life growing up for me was about what you’d expect under those circumstances. I was constantly doing stupid shit and getting in trouble.
When I was seventeen, I got caught breaking into a home, the home belonging to my history teacher. He was an old crusty-looking white man. Rumor had it he was a veteran of both Korea and Vietnam and had lots of medals. He visited me in juvie and told me if I enlisted, he wouldn’t press charges.
It wasn’t a hard decision. I’d been arrested so many times, the District Attorney said she was going to get me tried as an adult. Make an example of me, she said.
Besides, the only thing waiting for me was an apartment in government housing I shared with my siblings, my mother, and whoever she was sleeping with at the moment. The place had a permanent odor of badly cooked food and dirty clothes.
So, Mister Johnson drove me to the recruiting office. It was at one of those commercial strip malls. They had the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and National Guard all jammed together. Everyone had gone home for the day, except for a National Guard Sergeant who was playing solitaire on his computer. Mister Johnson had a long, private talk with him, and the next thing I knew, I was signing papers as a full time member of the National Guard. After basic training, they assigned me to Houston Barracks, Nashville, Tennessee.
It was fine with me. Once I got out of basic, I actually got a room with only one other roommate, a wormy little white boy who spent all of his free time in his own world, sitting on his bunk in nothing but his underwear, wearing a headset, and playing video games. I didn’t complain; it was a hell of a lot better than where I used to live.
And then, it all went to hell. That was nine hundred and eighty-one days ago. I kept track of the day the world ended by starting on the day I first saw a zombie. Actually, I saw about a thousand of them. That’s the day I started my life over, the day everything changed. Nine hundred and eighty-one days ago.
It don’t matter what all I got into during that time. Not much to tell. Chaos, people going crazy, the National Guard being called upon to restore order. Hah! What a fucking joke.
Anyway, here I was, standing outside in the middle of the night with three white men who’d become my friends.
“The truck is a good one,” Zach said as he handed the keys to me. It was a red dually four-by-four diesel. The man had modified it all kinds of ways. He had those big redneck tires on it, a huge bumper with a winch so you could either push things or drag them out of the way, a light bar on top, and he’d even put some fencing over the windows so the zombies couldn’t get to you. We found a camper top that fit on the back so we always had a place to sleep.
“There’s an M60 in the back with five hundred rounds,” he told us. “It’s all I could spare.”
“You are fucking awesome, Zach,” Blake said.
Zach was Zachariah Gunderson. That name alone screamed, “White Boy!” but, he was a good dude. Smart too.
“Are you guys sure I can’t talk you into coming with us?” he asked.
I shook my head. We’d talked about it many times, and a few days ago, we made the decision. Me and my two friends, Blake Mann and Brandon Caswell. We decided we were tired of being in the military and tired of taking orders. We were going to strike out on our own. I wanted us to keep it a secret, but Brandon decided to get advice from Zach.
I’m glad he did. Zach planned it all out, thinking of things I would’ve never thought about. He said if we decided to leave while everyone else was there, one or two of the military officers might raise a stink, so he suggested we leave in the middle of the night. We agreed. And, he gave us the truck and the M60.
Yeah, Zach was a good dude.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Stage 3: A Zombie Novel.
CHAPTER I
The droning was incessant. It came up from the floor, hummed through the seat and reverberated through his body like a shiver. Mason snapped awake, kept his eyes tightly closed, and muttered a silent curse.
Damn! Still in the air……
While he was asleep, someone had nestled a red-hot poker behind his eyes and wrapped a clamp around his head. It was that damned engine vibration! How the hell did people abide that ceaseless droning? No wonder his skull felt like it was coming apart.
Well, okay, maybe there was more to it than that, he admitted sheepishly, the taste of scotch still strong in his mouth.
He could hear music, too. How the hell was there music? Oh right. His iPod. He'd turned it on and slipped in the earbuds to circumvent any further tedious dialogue with Fatty McLardass next door. Then, in case the big guy didn't get the message, he'd reclined his seat and closed his eyes. Eventually, the charade became real, and he'd actually fallen asleep. That last part was sheer bonus. He hadn't been sure how he'd survive another sixteen hour flight across the Pacific in a plane stuffed with humans, but apparently he'd found the solution; copious amounts of alcohol, a couple of Dramamine, and a generous helping of Pink Floyd.
Should have gone business class, he pondered idly to himself. Becks would have liked that……
And with that single errant thought, a flood of emotions poured into his aching brain. Grief. Loss. Betrayal. An abiding anger bordering on outright hostility.
At last, he felt a cramping in his legs that brought his mind back to the present. One of his feet was twisted around the other and sending shooting pains into his calf. Not wanting to let his neighbor know that he was awake, he uttered a vague somniferous grunt and shifted casually in his seat. Better now. Blood flow restored and no one the wiser. And better yet, the searing pain in his head superseded the growing pins and needles accompanying the return of circulation.
Keeping his eyes tightly closed, he took mental stock of his positioning. His head was turned to the right, away from his neighbor and toward the window. Good. He could pop an eye open without being discovered and maybe see how far along they were. If they were over land, they were in the final stretch, and he might be able to abide a half-hour of idle tourist chit-chat if it meant he could properly stretch his legs. If they were still over water, he'd have to feign unconsciousness for a while longer. Hell, maybe he'd even drift back to sleep and give his body time to work through the last of the alcohol to keep his skull from splitting open.
He chanced a peek and saw that they were over land. Hallelujah. Most of the way home. SFO was a barf-bag's toss away, so figure a half hour to descend, another half hour to find his bag on the carousel, and a twenty minute cab ride home. Inside of two hours, he'd been on his own toilet, in his own shower, and drinking his own beer in front of his own TV with his ass comfortably ensconced in his own goddam recliner. Halle-fuckin'-llujah!
He cracked both eyes open and looked to the little video screen on the seatback in front of him. He'd left it tuned to the flight information channel, and sure enough, it showed the little airplane icon hovering directly over San Francisco. Thank Christ. But according to the numbers, they were still at 20,000 feet, circling the airport. What the…… Fog? What else could it be. Damn! Suddenly, thoughts of diverting to another airport came to Mason's mind, and he grimaced angrily. Two hours to divert, twenty minutes to deplane, another thirty for the baggage carousel, then an inglorious overnight bus ride with the same sweaty, irritating humans he'd been cooped up with all day.
Christ, no! Just get me home!
Suddenly, the issue of keeping his neighbor from knowing he was awake returned to top priority. Even if they had to divert, not having to speak to that incessant boor until they were on the tarmac would be half the battle. Still, as much as he liked his Floyd, he was growing tired of hearing the same album on the same endless loop, but he couldn't very well fiddle with the iPod without alerting his neighbor. He felt the cord lying across his lap, so he slowly and surreptitiously twisted the cord around his index finger, and once he'd taken
up all of the slack, the earphones popped out of his ears.
One second, Roger Waters was insisting 'there's someone in my head, but it's not me'. The next, his ears were assailed with the sounds of pandemonium.
What the hell……
It sounded to Mason as if a riot had broken out at a funeral. There were angry shouts and anguished pleas, indignant cursing, and impassioned wails of abject misery. It was almost exactly what Mason imagined one of those old lunatic asylums would sound like. Chunky Monkey next door was one of those crying. His pudgy face was down, his abundance of chins were piled up against his chest like a meaty washboard, and he was bawling his eyes out. No gentle sobs for the big man, either. His flabby chest would rise ponderously as he sucked in a lungful of air, then he'd release the breath in a flood of anguished tears and loud, mournful howls.
Sonuvabitch, the plane's crashing! They're waiting to die, and everyone knows it but me…..
Oddly enough, Mason wasn't frightened at the prospect, nor was he angry. If anything, he almost admired the way the universe had managed to stitch everything together. His world had crashed down around his ears, the future he'd been anticipating had gone up in a puff of smoke, and now he was to be splashed across a tarmac with only a few hundred members of the species he liked the least as company. After the past few weeks, a fiery death in an explosion of twisted metal and mangled flesh seemed to him to be just about perfect. He couldn't even be allowed the mercy of sleeping through his last moments on earth. Hell, no……that would be cheating.
Just then, the speaker overhead hissed. The pilot was going to make another announcement. No longer concerned with interference from his neighbor, Mason sat bolt upright. Go ahead, he thought morosely, there's nothing more that can happen to me, so give it to me straight…..