Dead Hearts (Book 3): Vengeful Hearts
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Vengeful Hearts
Dead Hearts Book Three
by
Susanne L. Lambdin
PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books
Copyright © 2017 Susanne L. Lambdin
All Rights Reserved
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by Susanne L. Lambdin at:
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License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and 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 recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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Dedicated to my sister Lisa, a true survivor.
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter One
Snow lay thick across the Cheyenne Mountain Range. As the early sun rose, a sliver of light pushed through an ominous sky. The report of gunfire filled the air as a small army of zombies stumbled from the north tunnel that led into North American Aerospace Defense Command. Cadence and her team, the Earth Corps, occupied two M-ATV MRAP vehicles firing on the living dead.
NORAD’s main gate hung at an odd angle, supported by a single hinge. Remnants of the high-security fence were forced to the ground. The guard-towers were reduced to rubble. A tank had toppled one tower, and several fire-damaged vehicles littered a nearby ditch. Three tanks blocking the road did not stop the rotting corpses from advancing, driven by an urge for flesh.
Frost-covered zombies staggered forward, black goo oozing from their mouths, while their gnarled hands clawed at the air. Less aggressive zombies stood motionless in the road, taken by the sky. Some creatures frozen knee-deep in snow were too weak to break free, flailing their arms like deteriorated windmills.
“They’re putting up a helluva fight,” Thor shouted, in a husky voice.
Blonde locks hanging past his broad shoulders, Thor stood behind a mounted M60. He gritted his teeth, standing firm as he strafed the front line of zombies. Freeborn, a full-blooded Cherokee who wore a worn Army jacket adorned with team patches stitched on the sleeves, knelt and launched a grenade from her M4 carbine. Whisper lay on top of the truck cab, picking off zombies with his sniper rifle. Blaze and Smack knelt beside Cadence, firing M16s as creatures made it through the gate, advancing on their position.
The Dark Angel vampires, Picasso and Lachlan, ran from a Jeep and crawled into the back of a second truck. Xena, Phoenix, and Lotus covered them, blasting the moving corpses. Two furry forms jumped out of the truck bed and raced toward the zombies. Moon Dog, a black werewolf with a white-tipped tail, and Sheena, a small, tawny puma, worked together. One by one, the two ripped zombies apart with their sharp teeth, splattering the snow with black ooze.
“The blast doors have to be open,” Cadence shouted. “If we’re going to claim the bunker, we’ll have to fight them hand-to-hand.”
Cadence, Freeborn and Thor jumped from the vehicle, boots crunching on the hardened snow as they ran toward a guard shack, attracting dozens of zombies. A loud moan heralded a zombie with a decomposed face coming around the guard shack. It slipped on the ice, breaking brittle bones, and crawled toward them, ivory fragments jutting from its flesh. Shambling bodies gathered at the door, mouths opened wide, revealing blackened teeth and withered tongues.
Freeborn held the door shut with her boot, shotgun raised, as a zombie slammed its head through the glass window pane. She fired point blank, blowing it away.
Thor pointed his revolver at a crawler hanging from the window ledge and shot it between the eyes. He batted his eyelashes to remove a fallen snowflake, pulling back from the window and reloading. “We’re outnumbered. Remind me again why zombies won’t eat us.”
He lifted his gun, and another round flew into a zombie outside the window, its eye socket serving as a bulls-eye. The creature spun around and collapsed in a snow drift.
“What are we going to do, Cadence? Expend bullets or just let them go?”
“I told you why they don’t want to eat us.” Cadence raised her Glock, crouched as putrefied hands reached through the shattered window. She blasted a frosty undead captain and the hands disappeared. “When you guys took chameleon blood, it altered your DNA. They don’t see us as human anymore because my blood acts as a natural camouflage. I figure there’s a chance if we’re bitten our blood can cure them, but I’d rather not find out that way.”
Freeborn glanced at Cadence. “Even if we get past the zombies, the blast doors may be closed. If there are survivors and they’re locked in tight, they might not let us in. I say we pull out and head to Cripple Creek and put distance between us and the Kaiser. We’re too close to the Academy.”
“The Kaiser is holding our friends held prisoner at the Citadel,” Cadence said. “This is precisely where we need to be.”
“Then draw your sword, Commander,” Thor shouted. “It’s time to go out there and knock a few dead heads together.”
Cadence slid a katana from the sheath on her back as Freeborn opened the door. Zombies stumbled forward, falling over each other to reach the three teenagers. Thor whistled, and the two young women followed him through a window, pushing zombies aside. Not one creature attempted to bite them, confused as the super humans ran toward the tunnel. Thor and Freeborn fired round after round, while heads flew from Cadence’s sword. She gave a shout for her team to follow. The zombies kept coming close enough to kill, but turned away uninterested the moment they took a sniff of the Chameleons. The phenomenon wasn’t the same for the therianthropes and vampires, who remained on the dinner menu.
Cadence was thankful for her thick leather coat as she fought her way through the zombies, reaching a tank. She sliced off hands reaching for her and climbed onto the tank, her Glock stopping a zombie intent on climbing up after her. The rest of her team kept close to the werewolf and werepuma, fighting the zombies roadside. Picasso and Lachlan flew around, appearing in different places as the vampires tore off heads, moving before they could be bitten. Whisper remained behind, firing his M24 from atop the vehicle, taking out the undead at will.
Ammo spent, Cadence returned to using her katana. Gripping the sword with both hands, she dove into the mass of undead flesh and hacked her way through. She glanced up to see the tunnel in sight and caught a fleeting glimpse of Thor and Freeborn following close. The stream of bodies coming out of the tunnel dwindled and remaining stragglers were handled by the Earth Corps.
It grew quiet. Cadence took time to catch her breath, glancing back.
Freeborn stood behind her, holding her shotgun. Over a mon
th ago, Freeborn had been a zombie for a day. After receiving Cadence’s blood, she became something else. Chameleons were infected with a strain of the virus that turned them into super humans. Side-by-side, they entered the tunnel, Freeborn taking out the stragglers.
“This is like shooting ducks in a barrel,” she said, firing at a zombie stuck in a drift. The blast splattered black, gooey brains across the snow. “I lost count of my kills and didn’t keep my eye on you, so I can’t say how many we’ve killed so far. I do know NORAD housed six-hundred people, and if they brought civilians there’s no telling what’s waiting inside if we get in. And that’s a big ‘if,’ Commander.”
The temperature was below freezing, their breath coming out in tiny white clouds. Neither felt a chill. Thor and the Earth Corps arrived at the tunnel’s entrance, holding back to give Cadence and Freeborn time to check ahead.
“Stay behind me,” Freeborn said, taking the lead.
Inside the tunnel, chunks of cement, granite, and rotting dead lay scattered on the ground. The darkness inside the tunnel would normally require flashlights, but Chameleons saw well in near pitch-black.
Freeborn growled. “This place is a tomb.”
“It could still be a gold mine. We made it this far. Let’s keep going.”
Zombies moved in and around parked cars, shuffling for the entrance, excited by the noise outside. They took no interest in Cadence or Freeborn, so it was with little effort that Cadence was able to lop heads off with her katana. Freeborn’s shotgun boomed with the thunderous echo of a cannon. Cadence froze in her tracks when she noticed a zombie appearing disturbed by the sound of the blasts. Freeborn fired again, and the zombie ducked. Cadence had never seen a zombie act this way before, but her morbid curiosity ended when Freeborn blasted a hole in its head.
“The team’s right behind me, Commander,” Thor said, appearing beside Cadence. He’d put away his revolver, brandishing a rifle and a lit cigar clenched between his teeth.
“Get to the blast door, Thor,” Cadence said. “See if it’s open or not.”
“You got it!” Thor hurried ahead, pushing zombies out of the way. He gave a loud shout when he reached the blast door. “The door is ajar!”
“Ajar?” Cadence mumbled, glancing at Freeborn. “This is the most impregnable fortress in the country, and the blast door was left open. Someone was careless.”
Raw granite transitioned into cement toward the back of the tunnel. Pipes, ventilation grills, and electrical boxes dotted the walls. Thor stood beside a blast door made of reinforced steel that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. Freeborn ran ahead of Cadence and joined Thor. Gunfire filled the tunnel as the Earth Corps brought up the rear, picking off stragglers and crawlers. Cadence spotted a second tunnel leading in from the south, which had collapsed from a previous battle. A tank’s turret jutted out of the debris.
“We’ve got a problem,” Thor said. “NORAD is like a small city, and it’s going to be crawling with more of dead. A lot more. All we did was clear the zombies left outside. At this rate, we’re going to run out of ammo, Commander, so it’ll be fighting hand-to-hand once inside.”
“Zombies we can handle,” Cadence said, examining the gap between the wall and door. A crusty hand reached from the darkness. She lifted her sword and whacked it off. From behind the door came a loud, angry snarl. “You said six-hundred people were here?”
Freeborn nodded. “Give or take. This isn’t the only way in.” She kicked away the severed hand. “There’s a trap door and a secret tunnel that leads into this place, but I don’t know where from. I read about it on the internet. A few survivors might have made it out of the bunker.”
Cadence glanced back at the Earth Corps. Smack, pigtailed and in a plaid skirt and buckled boots, trailed behind Phoenix. The Dark Angels, Lachlan, and Picasso, walked behind them. The werepuma and werewolf came next, followed by Blaze and Whisper.
“The tunnel is clear,” Phoenix said. “What’s up here?”
“We’re going in,” Cadence said. “Freeborn, get that door open.”
Freeborn grabbed the door’s edge and pulled with all her might, grunting. Despite her strength, she had trouble opening the blast door alone. Thor shouldered his rifle and gripped the side of the door.
“This is the North Portal,” Thor said. “The door weighs twenty-five tons and was made to withstand a nuclear strike. There’s a second blast door on the other side, and then four-and-a-half acres to search before we can call this place home.”
Blaze stepped forward. Her brows, lobes, and tongue were pierced, and a flower tattoo showed above the neckline of her black, turtleneck sweater. The tips of her black hair were spiked. “Well, open it,” she said, annoyed.
“We’re trying!” Thor let out a growl. “It’s starting to move, get ready. We’re going to release an army from Hell in about five seconds.”
With the team standing too close to the door, Cadence knew they would be overwhelmed in no time. While the zombies were not aggressive toward her Chameleons, the vampires and therianthropes were still vulnerable. She had to proceed with caution.
“Set up a defense line fifty yards away from the door,” Cadence said. “Chameleons in front. Vampires and therianthropes in the rear.” She looked at Lachlan, the tall, red-haired Irish vampire, more worried about him than anyone else. Her attraction to him was growing, a feeling she had not known in some time. She cared more than she should for the vampire. “Don’t try to be a hero, Lachlan. Zombies might want an Irish breakfast for a change.”
“Not to worry,” Lachlan said. He brandished a 13th century Irish galloglass broadsword, handed down through the generations by his family. He grinned at Picasso, a bald, serious-looking vampire holding an automatic. Picasso was a former Army Ranger and the only true soldier in the group.
The Corps fanned out. Phoenix, Blaze, and Smack stood in front, armed with AK’s. Lotus, the former China Six ninja, wore black leather and a scarf over her mouth, and she held a razor-sharp katana. Sheena and Moon Dog trotted back and forth, growling and snarling. The Dark Angels stood further back, with Whisper ready to snipe from the hood of an old truck. Thor and Freeborn pulled the blast door with everything they had. The enormous door moved slow, releasing a foul stench. Cadence gritted her teeth and lifted her sword as the door opened wide. A single, fat zombie in a general’s uniform stumbled forward.
Thor wiped his brow, looking confused. “What the hell? There’s just one guy here.”
The zombie general was swollen and could barely walk. It staggered by Thor and Freeborn. Cadence cut it down without hesitation and entered a gloomy hallway between the blast doors. The general had eaten everyone trapped inside with him, leaving behind a mound of clothes, shoes, and bones.
“Check out the next door,” Cadence said, stepping aside.
Freeborn and Thor hurried to the second door, finding it open a few inches as well. At their approach, a cacophony of groans and moans came from the other side, as dozens of hands reached through the gap. The teenagers jerked the door hard, tripping the alarm. A siren blared through the speakers and red lights blinked on the walls. Thor stumbled into Freeborn as they opened the door, releasing an undead army that headed straight for Cadence. She ran out of the hallway and took up position in front of her team.
“They’re coming!” Cadence shouted.
The lead zombie wore a colonel’s uniform, his empty eyes fixed on Cadence as he stumbled toward her with outstretched arms. Cadence stepped back, pointing her sword at the zombie and waited. When the colonel was within her sword’s reach, she sliced off its head. Not having time to bring her sword around again, she was forced to fall backward as zombies surrounded her. The swarm headed for the Earth Corps, eager to taste the vampires and therianthropes. Gunfire and shouting filled the tunnel. Dark Angels darted under the swirling red lights, slaughtering countless zombies. The werepuma and werewolf dragged zombies to the ground, ripping them apart, while Whisper made every bullet count.
Thor and Freeborn left a few stragglers crawling in their wake. Cadence picked them off, aware of gunfire coming from behind and in front of her. When she had killed the remaining zombies, she reached a set of double doors shadowed by an overhead canopy. Above was a sign. Welcome to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex.
On the left was an opening in the wall revealing an observation deck on the second floor. Thor came into view firing his weapon. Cadence ran up the stairs, pushed open the doors, and peered into the main lobby of NORAD. The pale lights showed framed photographs of decorated officers and crooked-hanging maps, stained with bloody hand prints. Freeborn was dispatching a zombie with her hunting knife.
“I’m out of bullets,” Freeborn announced, looking up from her kill. “Stay here and wait for the team, Commander. I’m going after Thor. If you can, find the switch and turn off that siren!”
“Wait!” Cadence ransacked a body and found three magazines of ammunition. She handed them to Freeborn, along with a rifle. “Use them wisely.”
With a nod, the tall Cherokee headed through the main door to the bunker, leaving Cadence by herself. A small office was visible through a wall of glass, along with several doors in a lobby. Cadence opened the door to find a zombie clerk with half of his face hanging loose, exposing filthy teeth and a gnarled black tongue.