by R. J. Spears
Lord of the Dead
Books of the Dead 2
By R.J. Spears
Edited by: J. Ellington Ashton Press Staff
http://www.jellingtonashton.com/
Copyright.
R.J. Spears
©2014, R.J. Spears
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book, including the cover and photos, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. All rights reserved.
The characters, places, and events depicted are fictional and do not represent anyone living or dead. This is a work of fiction.
Prologue
Revelation 6:8
I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.
The sounds of battle caught his attention that night. Anthony had seen it coming when the soldiers hit town. These weren’t emissaries from any central authority. They were a rogue group, marauding from town-to-town, taking what they wanted.
The church people were dug in and fortified. He knew they would defend themselves to the last man, if it came to that. This was the setting for an epic showdown.
The soldiers had all the firepower, but the people in the church were a resourceful and tricky lot. He watched from afar as the two sides waged a brutal war, each side taking horrible losses. He didn’t take sides because their loss was his gain. As each side wore down the other, he knew his chances of taking the city grew.
The battle waged throughout the night, and he had to move in closer to get a better view. What he saw both terrified and excited him. The soldiers had the church people on the ropes. Their main weapon battered the church relentlessly. He couldn’t imagine how the people inside survived, but they did, hanging on by a sliver of a fingernail. He admired their courage. He really did even though he had never really liked their pious lot. But they had spunk.
The soldiers looked to be about to deliver the deathblow when the church people came back with a surprise of their own. They had teams in the field foraging for food and supplies and also killing the undead. He didn’t care all that much if they took supplies, but their purge of the zombies caused him great concern.
These two teams had been in the field when the soldiers attacked. The field teams came back to the battle and pulled off a desperate, but perfectly executed surprise attack on the soldiers’ flank that nearly crippled them.
Then the undead entered the fray. Attracted by the sounds of the fighting, they poured onto the battlefield. Devoid of allegiances, they took down anyone they could -- soldiers or church people. If he admired the church people for their courage, he admired the zombies even more because they didn’t have any personal or holy cause. They were chaos embodied.
When the final battle became too dangerous to observe, he had to retreat to safe ground where he watched from afar. Smoke from a nearby fire and weapons obscured much of what happened in the final minutes of this little war, but when the battlefield cleared, he saw that the church people had prevailed. The few surviving soldiers tried to flee the city but came by his position where he easily picked them off with his rifle. Not one of his shots had been a headshot, though. In time, these soldiers would be a part of the chaos. Of his chaos.
Anthony watched and waited for the next two days. The victory had been a pyrrhic one for the church people. Their sanctuary was nearly destroyed, but they held firm, taking out any of the undead left in the area.
He feared that they would settle in and rebuild their church, but when they finally assessed their damage, their mood must have shifted, providing him with what turned out to be the best outcome. The group split up, with a large contingent leaving town and heading north, leaving a smaller body behind.
He monitored the remaining group for a couple more days and made sure that the other group did not return, leaving those still there weak and on their own. He knew it was time to start building an army. A legion of his own that would allow him to take the city and make it his.
Chapter 1
The Winter of Our Discontent
The lone zombie shambled along the crest of the hill. It had trouble navigating in the foot deep snow, stumbling and falling, but getting back up and stumbling again. For a moment, I thought it might wander off away from us, but some innate sense of food (humans) must have pushed it in our direction. They say some people have “gay-dar” and can sense a gay guy at a distance of less than fifteen feet. Sometimes I think the zombies have “hu-dar” -- the ability to sense humans in close proximity. Or maybe I’m just losing it.
I brought up my rifle and was just about to lock the zombie in my sights when a gunshot rang out off to my right; the back of the zombie’s head blew out, splashing gore and brain matter onto the snow in a horrible abstract painting consisting of black, red, and gray on the pristine canvas of white. The zombie pitched backwards and gently slid down the hill like a child enjoying a day sledding, only missing most of the back of its head.
“Sort of slow on the draw, huh, Joel?” a voice asked from the direction of the shot.
I looked over to see Travis Underhill smiling at me, his rifle still aimed in the direction of the zombie. We had guard duty on the southern perimeter of the Manor. Like me, he was dressed in snow gear, but he seemed to pull it off much better. He reminded me of a Russian soldier, competent despite the elements, while I thought I looked like an Oompa Loompa from Willy Wonka, all bulging and wobbly.
I shrugged.
“Let’s check it out,” he said, starting toward the zombie in long effortless strides.
I followed, trudging through the snow but struggling to stay aloft. When I got to beside Travis, I saw that he was studying the zombie.
“It’s like the other ones,” he said. “It must have been half blind from the ice covering its eyes.”
“Zombies aren’t known for their thinking skills, just their appetites,” I said.
“You’re missing the point,” he said, “this is something that could be used to our advantage.”
“We don’t know that all of them get that dull, icy build up,” I said.
“But winter could work for us.”
“And against us. They don’t have to worry about hypothermia, but we do.”
“Still, they seem to be slowing down.”
“Like us.”
“Do you ever look on the bright side of anything?”
“They do stink a lot less in the cold.”
I was being petulant and knew it. Something about his rugged, good looks and quiet confidence always bugged me.
“Grab a leg,” he said, “we’ll drag it to the pile in the back field.
There was nothing I would enjoy more.
After ten minutes and five face-first falls into the snow for me, we had the zombie atop the increasing pile of ‘deaders’ we had taken out over the past month and a half. We kept the pile in a wide trench just off the golf course behind our compound. Most had come in as singles, but a few wandered in as small groups. There were no hordes such as we had seen in the city. Thank God for that.
Still, standing there surveying the swath of bodies, I found it difficult to take them all in. Once they had been walking and talking just like us. They had families and people that cared for them. And th
en they were dead. Not too soon after that, they were undead, intent on adding us as their next meal.
“Where do you think they’re coming from?” Travis asked me.
Since I had come from the city, he saw me as having more experience with the zombies, which I did, but that didn’t make me an expert with these undead bastards. Maybe at surviving them, though.
“They could have been trapped inside a house and gotten free after all these months,” I said, looking at the bodies, but not really seeing them as I thought about all the people we had lost in the months after the Outbreak. “They could have been bitten but gotten away and holed up somewhere, died, and then came back and started wandering. Some could be from the city. The pickings for food in town have to be getting in short supply.”
It had been weeks since any of us had been into the city to visit our friends at the church. As painful as it was, we had decided to strike out our own to find a better solution to our long-term survival. I was on that last run into town and there were only a damn few living people there, but plenty of zombies.
The recent two snowfalls had piled on the inches and made it too dangerous to travel since the town had no road crews anymore. And there was no AAA auto club to call to get towed out of a snow bank -- which was just another downside of the zombie apocalypse.
No one said it, but we collectively ached for our people still in town. Splitting up was the hardest thing we had done outside battling the undead and the marauding soldiers that had nearly destroyed the church. It was a heartbreaking decision, but the ones that had left felt there was no future at the church. The damage sustained in the battle was just too great, and there was no long-term solution for a sustainable food supply. The ones that stayed behind did so on the conviction that God would provide. I didn’t agree, but I admired their faith.
“It’s time for the changing of the guard,” Travis said. “We should head in.”
He started off for home, and I followed, trying to stay vertical the whole way.
Home was The Manor, a luxury retirement complex nestled in the hills of southern Ohio. Travis and his crew had been a part of the company that designed and built the large four- building complex. The place was designed for upper income patrons with just about any imaginable amenity, including an Olympic-sized pool, exercise rooms, and a geothermal heating and cooling system. The Outbreak hit while they were in the last stages of completion. Travis and a few of his men decided to take shelter there and ride out the situation, not knowing that there wouldn’t be an end to the damage that the Outbreak brought about.
Travis and his father welcomed us in with open arms when we arrived just over a month and half ago when our caravan was headed north in search of a new home base. Their family had been one of the charter members of our church, and they were more than happy to see some familiar faces.
The Manor became our new safe haven, and we were all relieved not to have to fight each day for survival. Still, despite the relative calm we were experiencing now, none of us had the illusion that this world was safe. With the living dead outnumbering the living in an exponential ratio, we knew that any moment could turn the tide back in the favor of the dead.
After removing the layers of winter clothing, we headed into the expansive dining room where dinner was being served. We had just over fifty people in our group. A large contingent came in from the city with us, but a few had wandered in after they had run low on supplies. Facing the zombie apocalypse on my own, I would have been lucky to last ten days, unless you counted my nearly endless Pop Tart supply.
“We heard a shot,” Greg asked, “did another wanderer come on the scene?” Greg, a born leader, headed up our warrior group at the church and smoothly transitioned into the role of security chief at The Manor. They were happy to have someone with his experience since none of Travis’ crew had any military background.
“Just one,” Travis said, “it’s on the pile around back now.”
“Did you bag it, Joel?” Kara asked, standing next to me at the back of the line waiting for dinner. She knew Travis probably had taken the zombie down since I was a terrible shot.
“Ahhhh,” was the best I could stammer out before she elbowed me in the ribs and laughed. Her smile always broke my bad moods.
I was just about to poke her back when someone grabbed her from behind and lifted her into the air. It was Travis. He had his arms wrapped around her waist and swung her around in a full arc. While she was petite, his ability to lift her spoke more to his strength rather than her size. As she flew through the air, her expression shifted from surprise to a broad smile and then tightened up some.
“I took out the dead thing,” Travis said while setting Kara back down, “with one shot.” He pantomimed aiming a rifle and pulling the trigger, complete with a “Kapow.”
“Way to go, Son,” Hub Underhill shouted from near the front of the line, pumping a fist in the air. Hub was Travis’ father and a proud one at that.
In the next instant, I felt a set of arms wrap around my waist and tug at me, as if trying to lift me. The arms were small, thin, and olive-colored. Naveen.
“I’m sure you would have shot it, too,” she said, grunting with exertion as she tried to imitate Travis’ lift.
“You’re going to give yourself a hernia,” Kara said, pulling Naveen back.
“I think I could do it,” Naveen said, crossing her arms in mock disgust, “when I’m older.” Maybe she could, but I doubted it. She was small for her age with a slight build, but she was looking so much better than the half-emaciated child we had rescued from a horde of zombies months ago.
“Can I get in line with Madison?” she asked Kara and me. Without any formal statement, we had become her de facto, adoptive parents after hers had been taken down by the undead. She and her friend, Madison Bloom (who was also an orphan) stayed with Kara in her room and generally looked to us for guidance and support. This was probably the closest I could ever consider getting to fatherhood, and I sort of liked it even though I had no idea what I was doing.
Kara nodded her head, and Naveen ran up to the front of the line with Madison.
“How’s she doing at night?” I asked Kara.
“She still has the nightmares,” Kara said, “but who could blame her after what she went through.”
“Poor kid,” Travis said, shaking his head. He started to say something else when the alarm sounded. The mood, which had just been light, quickly shifted into fear as parents drew their kids close and couples grouped up.
Kara said, “I’ll get the girls up to the room,” and headed across the dining hall to gather Naveen and Madison while I made my way to Greg. Travis and several other men were on their way, too.
Greg brought the same military discipline that had kept us alive at the church to The Manor. We drilled nearly every day for different scenarios. Most of the time was spent learning how to defend our compound verses a zombie horde, but we also trained to protect ourselves against marauders. Humans, as usual, turned out to be just as deadly as the undead, if not more so.
Someone turned off the alarm, but people were still scrambling either to safety or to their prescribed duties in case of an attack.
When I got beside Greg, he was talking into a walkie-talkie. “Are they zombies?”
He looked up and shook his head to communicate with the growing group around him. “So, alive. Do they look friendly?”
He took a breath and looked up to the group and shrugged. “Okay, don’t let anyone in until we confirm whether he is friend or foe.”
He stowed the walkie-talkie in his coat pocket and looked up to the rest of us and said, “We’ve got an unspecified number of live ones coming down the main road towards the gate. Travis, you come with me for recon. Joel, take Brandon and Aaron with you, and go to the guys at the gate. Hub, move to the forward observation room with your rifle, and make sure we have these new arrivals covered. Get prepped, and get to your positions, ASAP.”
There was no col
lective handclap or “Let’s go team.” From the constant drilling, we knew our jobs. It was time to go to work.
The packed down snow crunched loudly under our feet as we made our way to the gate. Brandon and Aaron were pumped up and ready for action as we strode forward. It was my job to assess the threat and also to keep these two from being overly aggressive. They had a bit of a reputation for going off halfcocked.
“Spread out,” I said. That would make us harder to take out from a sniper attack.
I took a quick peek over my shoulder and saw silhouettes moving in both of the front corner third-floor rooms of the building facing the gate. Our sniper teams were ready. I hoped Kara would make it there, too. She was the best shot in the compound.
Through the wide bars of the fence that surrounded much of the compound, I could see a double cab pickup stopped just outside the gate.
“I see two men outside the truck,” Brandon said, “both have rifles.”
“Stay cool,” I said as I looked up to the guard tower next to the gate. Steve Hampton had pulled guard duty that night. Despite all the drilling, I never had truly trusted him. He had come to The Manor from the church with us, but there were only few times in the past months that I had ever seen him doing anything that wasn’t motivated by base self-interest.
I brought up my walkie-talkie and said, “We have a truck at the gate. Two men are outside it. Both are armed. There are more people in the truck.”
Greg’s voice came back, “Approach with caution. Don’t let anyone in until we can thoroughly check them out.”
“Roger that,” I said, feeling strange talking in military lingo.
“Brandon, Aaron, take defensive positions on either side of the gate post,” I said putting the walkie-talkie back into my pocket. I could feel my pulse speed up.