by Jack Hunt
“I’m thinking this would make one hell of a postcard.”
We all turned to see what he had written. It said, In NORAD, surrounded by skin chewing, blood spewing Z’s. Having a fucking epic vacation. Wish you were here, love Baja.
Dax shook his head in disbelief.
“Well, the way I see it. We have one option. We let them in one door and bolt out the other.”
“Sounds good in theory, Einstein. Highly unlikely though it would work.”
“Why?”
“We have about sixty yards until the next security door. More than half a football field. Have you seen how many are out there? Not all of them are going to come in and those who do, we won’t be able to hold all of them back even with our weapons.”
“Any other ideas?”
We must have spent at least an hour inside that room, pacing the floor and trying to come up with ideas. It was useless. The most logical was to let them in and bolt out the next door and hope we survived.
Elijah blew out his cheeks and took a seat on a table. He picked up a vial of fluid and tossed it onto the floor. It started fizzing, smoke spiraled up. We looked at the huge gaping hole it had made within a matter of seconds.
“You thinking what I am?” Elijah said.
We scrambled around the room searching for more of it. Desperation took over. Opening up every drawer, cupboard, and cabinet we threw items to the floor. All the while I could hear Z’s banging against the door. The thought that it might not hold was at the forefront of my mind.
A few of them used the butt of their guns to break off the locks. Benjamin called out to us from inside a storage area. He rolled out a blue plastic barrel. On one side it had a red chemical-hazard warning sticker. On the other side were the words: Highly Flammable.
“And there are ten more where that came from.”
“So?” Baja asked.
“If it can melt a floor, just imagine the damage it can do to flesh and bone.”
Benjamin went back into the storage unit and came out with a yellow chemical suit. He began to immediately gear up without even asking if there was anyone else that wanted to do it.
“Here’s what we are going to do.”
Five minutes later we got into position. There were ten barrels of this chemical liquid. We rolled them into the middle of the room, essentially creating a barrier between us and the other side. Baja, Elijah, and I crouched down at the far end of the room by the door, ready to burst out of there. Dax would open the door on the other end of the room, then rush over to us. Benjamin would start pouring one behind the others, essentially dousing the floor in flammable liquid.
“We pour this out, unlock that door. When they come in we’ll set this bitch alight.”
I could see the fear in Dax’s eyes as he stood by the door waiting for the signal. Once Ben had emptied an entire barrel all over one area of the floor, he stripped off the chemical suit and joined us. Smoke filled the air. We held our tops over our faces.
“Ready?”
We nodded. What happened next occurred so fast, fear didn’t even enter the equation. Dax released the lock and pulled on the door. Z’s burst in. We fired round after round, taking out the ones closest to Dax. Giving him just enough time to dive over the top of the barrels and make a beeline towards us. Z’s stumbled into the room, filling it up fast. Those outside our door began moving down the corridor following the others. As soon as he was within a safe distance, we rushed out of the door. The last one out was Dax who fired at the barrels. The explosion shook the ground. We rushed out into a group of Z’s. Bullets flew as I used my assault rifle with one hand and a handgun with the other. Kick, fire, we did whatever we had to, to get through the remaining ones.
We raced and fought our way to the next security door. As we passed through it, Ben hit the button beside the door to close it. It took roughly twenty seconds for each one to close automatically. Now twenty seconds doesn’t sound like a lot of time but when you have Z’s on your ass it’s too long. Many of them got through, some had already wandered into the warren of corridors. How many were in that gymnasium was hard to tell. But it seemed like hundreds. Those who weren’t destroyed by the chemical explosion filled up the corridors. There were moments it felt like we were hacking our way through a dense forest.
As we managed to get to the next security door, Ben hit the close button like he had on the last three, however this time it didn’t close. Now we didn’t stick around to watch it fully close. We were running for our lives. But Dax had looked back.
“They’re not closing,” he yelled.
“Keep moving,” Benjamin yelled.
I saw the final security door that would take us out of the main complex building and lead us back into the tunnel. Z’s were gaining on us. I don’t know if some of them had been wandering down corridors that we hadn’t checked. But it was like they suddenly started coming out of the woodwork. They were converging in on us, some at a rapid speed. The creepy shuffling ones moved like apes on all fours.
“We’re not going to make it. The system isn’t working.”
I had never felt so scared in my life. I didn’t like enclosed places at the best of times but add to that hundreds of Z’s in hot pursuit, and others appearing to our left and right as we crossed over intersecting corridors. As we raced through another security door, Ben was the first one through, he smacked the button hard but it didn’t start closing.
“These fucking things won’t close.”
Now I don’t know why he did it. To this day I still don’t know. Perhaps he’d reached his breaking point. Maybe he just didn’t want to see us all die. But as we burst through that security door and rushed towards the final twenty-five-ton blast doors, I cast a glance back to see Dax pushing the security door closed from the inside. That was the only way it could close. It opened in, and closed out.
“Dax? What are you doing!”
He waved for us to go on.
“No!”
I turned back, my heart pounding against my chest. By the time I made it to the door he’d sealed it shut.
“What the fuck? Open the door, Dax,” I said, banging against it.
He just stared out. That door wasn’t going to open. He knew it.
“No! No!” I screamed seeing Z’s over his shoulder rushing towards him.
Tears streamed down my face as I began frantically hitting the red open button, and kicking the door trying to get it open. He mouthed the word, GO!
I took the end of my assault rifle and began hitting the glass with everything I had but it wouldn’t break. It didn’t even crack. Dax placed a hand against the window then turned and fired round after round into the Z’s. All the while I was pushing on the door. I then started smashing the main button that opened the door with the butt of my gun out of pure desperation.
By now the others had turned back for me.
Now I don’t know how the system worked. Whether it was individually hooked up or interconnected with a safety mechanism. Maybe all the banging on every button fucked something up, who knows, perhaps it was a system malfunction, or a timer that had been set to automatically close the doors but the largest twenty-five-ton blast door started to move.
“Johnny, we’ve got to go.”
Dax turned back one final time and mouthed the word, Go!
Before the Z’s reached him, he placed the gun against the side of his head. He looked at me, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger. I watched in horror as my brother dropped and Z’s converged on his dead body.
In that moment my world ended.
The others had to drag me away kicking and screaming from that door, otherwise we wouldn’t have made it out of there. As we slipped past the large blast doors, we heard the thud of them sealing.
I collapsed, tears pouring off my face.
There were no words to express how I felt. Not enough tears to relieve the pain, to ease the shock or clear the confusion. My senses were bombarded. I vomited. My body reacting
to initial shock of losing my brother and the overwhelming buildup of fear and horrors that I had seen since Castle Rock.
Benjamin was saying something to me but I couldn’t hear him. All I saw was Dax’s death replaying in my mind over and over again. Shock is a strange thing. Our bodies’ natural response to a sudden, or upsetting experience. When I was kid I had torn my hand open on a roof. Blood gushed from it. Initially I felt no pain. I had no reaction to what I was seeing. Within a matter of twenty minutes I went pale from blood loss and felt sick, lightheaded and nearly passed out. And yet even then, it didn’t compare to how I felt in that moment. Physically and emotionally I was so distraught. My mind’s coping mechanism was to shut down. I blacked out.
* * *
When I came to, wind was rushing through my hair. I was leaning back against a brown leather seat. Baja was ahead of me driving. His eyes flicked up to the interior rearview mirror. Benjamin was in the passenger seat and Elijah to my right. Slowly I went from being disoriented to knowing that I was in a green military jeep.
“Where are we?” I muttered.
“A few miles east of Cheyenne Mountain.”
And like that the ache returned fast, piercing my heart and reminding me that Dax was gone. My chin dropped.
“Johnny,” Benjamin placed his hand on mine. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah man,” Elijah said the same. His condolences overlapped Baja’s.
I nodded slowly. Ever since leaving Castle Rock, we all knew that eventually we might lose each other to a bite, a bullet, or starvation. I just never imagined that I would lose him this way.
“What he did may have very well saved us.”
For a few minutes I think they tried to help me to see that his death was not in vain. In time I would come to realize that. But right then, in that moment, all I felt was the loss of my brother.
“Can we pull over?” I asked once again feeling choked up.
Ben tapped Baja and he swerved to the side of the road. Gravel kicked up. He had pulled off close to a pit stop area that overlooked the forest. It was later in the day, the sun was dropping behind the trees. I squatted down and rubbed my eyes. Ben wandered over.
“Where are we going, Ben?”
“Well, I didn’t want to bombard you with too much, too soon. We found several messages scrawled on signs around Fort Carson. You know, the army installation located a few minutes from Cheyenne Mountain. Anyway all of the messages said the same thing.”
I looked up and saw that he was holding what looked like a sheet of government paper. On the back were words written in blood. I took it from him. In large lettering it said the following:
JOHNNY, GO TO WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE — JESS
I stared at the words. Letting new hope sink in. Jess. She was alive.
“Seems she did make it out,” he said. I took a moment there at the side of the road while the others waited in the idling jeep. I looked back towards the large Cheyenne Mountain in the distance. A deep orange glow burned around it as the sun began to set. I climbed back into the jeep and Baja peeled away. So there we were on our way to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Heads full of trouble, and hearts weighed down by loss. Specs was alive but no longer with us, Dax was dead, and all we had now was a faint glimmer of hope scribbled in blood.
But it was something.
And in this new world, you clung to anything that gave you hope. Maybe we’ll find Jess and Izzy, maybe we won’t. We have no way of knowing what tomorrow will bring. But until then, we will choose to stand between what remains and all that might come to kill.
We may not be the fastest or strongest.
We might not have what it takes to survive.
But we’re full of heart, and that’s enough.
We are, the Renegades.
A PLEA
Thank you for reading The Renegades 3: Fortress. If you enjoyed the book, I would really appreciate it if you would consider leaving a review. I can’t stress how helpful this is in helping other readers decide if they should give it a shot. Reviews from readers like you are the best recommendation a book can have. Without reviews, an author’s books are virtually invisible on the retail sites. It also let’s me know what you liked. You can leave a review by visiting the book’s page. I would greatly appreciate it. It only takes a couple of seconds.
Thank you — Jack Hunt
NEWSLETTER
Thank you for buying The Renegades 3, published by Direct Response Publishing.
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AFTERWORD
In setting out to write this third book in the series I really wanted to explore what it felt like to be torn.
Renegades 3 really dives into the consequences of their actions and feeling torn while trying to hold on to what remains of their own humanity.
We see them torn physically as a group now that Jess, Izzy and Ralphie aren’t with them.
We see them torn emotionally as they encounter a new group that offers safety.
We see them torn mentally as they struggle with who lives or dies.
Ultimately, they realize that not everything is black and white in this new world.
I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.
Thank you — Jack Hunt
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jack Hunt is the author of horror, sci-fi and post-apocalyptic novels. Jack lives on the East coast of North America. When he’s not writing, he’s engaged in dubious activities and general shenanigans. He invites you to contact him, send him lots of money and turn all his books into movies.
If he doesn’t reply straight away, he’s probably running away from a Zombie, chatting with his drug dealer or having a dump. Either way, he will respond when he’s good and ready unless of course you are the FBI in which case you’ll never hear from him. ;)
www.jackhuntbooks.com
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Synopsis
FORTRESS
PREPVILLE
SWARM
WAITING GAME
GREAT ESCAPE
REDNECKS
OUTCASTS
ZOMBIE SQUAD
THE FALLEN
UNDERWORLD
BLOW SHIT UP
ODD COUPLE
GOOD GUYS
ONE GOOD DEED
JARHEADS
THE RAID
CIRCLE THE WAGONS
NIGHT OF THE LIVING AND DEAD
CONSEQUENCES
SPLIT DECISIONS
THE LONG GOODBYE
A Plea
Newsletter
Afterword
About the Author