Age of Blood

by Weston Ochse

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  For my father,

  Roger Ochse

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Weston Ochse

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  CABO SAN LUCAS, MEXICO. AFTER MIDNIGHT.

  Emily Withers had been partying a little too hard the last few days. In fact, she could honestly say she’d drunk more tequila than water, which was why she was determined to stay sober for at least the next few hours. Four days in Cabo San Lucas, living the vida loca like the end of the world was around the corner, wasn’t enough for her to forget that she was the daughter of a serving United States senator; there were people who were just dying to get a picture of her they could use to embarrass her father.

  It had happened only once before, during her freshman year in college. Her sorority sisters had dropped her and the other pledges on the other side of campus, with the command to run back to the sorority house. Running fast wasn’t a problem. That she and the other pledges had been naked was. As it turned out, there’d been only a blurred image of her naked backside as she rounded the corner of the math and science building. But the papers ran the picture alongside one of her father’s speeches on funding public education. The late-night talk show hosts had a field day. Her father was less than impressed and spoke to her at length about the need to pay attention and how she wasn’t like other girls. She could have ignored it, but she loved and respected her father. She was serious when she told him it would never happen again.

  Which was why for at least the next twelve hours she was going to behave like a nun assigned to the Vatican. No booze. No sex. No cavorting. Just clean living.

  She’d been sitting on the balcony all night, staring at the deep blue water of the Sea of Cortez. Everyone else was passed out. She’d stopped drinking around ten and instead had spent the evening listening to those around her, watching the lights of the passing ships, and feeling oddly self-aware.

  Now, with the vacation resort asleep behind her, she approached the water. She’d left her shoes and shorts in a pile, along with her cell phone and room key, and wore only the two-piece bikini she’d bought especially for this trip. She dipped a toe in the gently lapping water. It was warmer than she’d expected. She’d thought it might be bracing, but protected from the Pacific by the Baja Peninsula and fueled by the Mexican sun, the water was bathtub warm.

  She decided to go for a swim and clear her head. She backed up a few feet, then ran into the water, hopping over and through the waves until she was deep enough that she couldn’t feel the bottom. Then she began to swim, her lurching stroke anything but graceful. She carved through the water for a full minute, then stopped, out of breath. She turned as she bobbed up and down in the sea and stared at the many pinpoints of brightness that were Cabo San Lucas. The glittering lights of the Pueblo Bonita Resort and Club Cascadas de Baja across the water became storybook in her tired vision. They looked nothing like the bacchanal palaces they really were. From here they could have made up a princess’s castle. They could have been her castle.

  She bobbed gently for a moment.

  Who was she kidding? She was too old to be a princess. Hell, she was too old to be trying to relive spring break. She was twenty-seven, had an MBA from Vanderbilt, and was acting like a girl straight off the farm. Somewhere between her fifth shot of the night and the game of beer pong, she’d looked up and realized that she wasn’t having any fun.

  A wave beneath her made her rise gently, then fall back.

  She was suddenly aware how far out she was. Were there sharks in the Sea of Cortez? After seeing Jaws, she used to think there were sharks everywhere.

  Another wave. This time she rose higher.

  She began to paddle madly back to shore. She felt the adrenaline rush as fear shot through her muscles. She could see the white line of surf where it met the beach, and farther up, her pile of clothes.

  Something touched her foot.

  She shrieked and sucked water into her lungs. She couldn’t continue. She hacked and coughed.

  Something touched her other foot and caught it, jerking her down. She disappeared below the water for a second, then popped back up, gasping.

  She reared her head back to scream, but was suddenly jerked beneath the water again. She felt a tremendous pressure against her legs. She began moving forward at high speed, her mouth open as she swallowed the entire ocean. For one brief moment she was lifted out of the water, the lights of the resort like a beacon of hope. She glanced down to see the scales of a creature reflecting those lights. Then she was down, into the water, deeper, deeper, until she couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything at all.

  1

  NEW ORLEANS CEMETERY. NIGHT.

  That’ll Leave A Mark was spray-painted in garish Day-Glo pink across the front of a seventeenth-century headstone. The out-of-the-way and run-down cemetery was the perfect setting for a horror movie. The ambience was complete with Spanish-moss-hung ancient trees, low ground fog, aboveground crypts crouching like intruders, anomalous statues that could be shrines to the elder gods, and the total absence of sound, except for a tinkling of zydeco on the extreme edge of hearing. And the characters, the complement of characters, inclusive of the astonishingly believable voodoo queen, were as terrifying as they were fantastic. So Petty Officer First Class Jack Walker was pretty pleased with himself that he made this observation while perched high in a tree far away from the action and armed with a sniper rifle.

  Only this wasn’t a movie. Through his scope, Walker watched as Voodoo Queen Madame
Laboy stood imperiously on the raised sarcophagus behind a wall of bulletproof glass, her arms outstretched as if she were the puppeteer for the vast array of undead which were pulling themselves upright from where they lay on the ground. More than a dozen naked zombies clawed their way to their feet, their jerky movements as they tried to operate their dead limbs increasing the creep factor tenfold. Some of them still had Y-incisions from medical-school students’ inexpert autopsies. Others were fresher, their mortal wounds still weeping fluid, their expressions full of surprise as if they’d just figured out they were no longer alive.

  Walker swung the long barrel of the Stoner SR-25 sniper rifle back and forth as he continued observing the scene through the Leupold Mark 4 scope. The other four members of SEAL Team 666 huddled in the middle of the cemetery. Holmes, Laws, YaYa, and the new guy, Yank, stood roughly back-to-back. They wore body armor, including Kevlar forearm pads, Kevlar gloves, and Kevlar shin guards. They each held a slender two-foot metal baton in one hand and a Marine Ka-Bar in the other. Their heads were completely covered with metal helmets, depriving them of sight, sound, and smell. If they were to survive, it would be by touch alone.

  The zombies were pretty much as Walker expected—shamblers. Like sailors after a forty-eight-hour drinking jag in Balibago, Philippines. Several bumped into crypts and were redirected.

  Walker’s gaze was drawn back to Madame Laboy as she started to sing something in low, guttural French. A mishmash of red and purple satin covered her matronly figure. Her graying hair was piled high and infused with copper coils. Enough of her beauty remained that she could still command a room’s attention, not to mention a pantheon of the undead in a Southern gothic cemetery.

  At the sound of her song, the zombies snapped their bodies straight and cocked their heads as if they were listening—which after this reaction, Walker had no doubt they were. Within moments of hearing her, they were all staring with dead eyes at the four SEALs. Then, as one, the zombies moved toward them.

  Walker wished he could put a round through the Voodoo Queen’s head. It wouldn’t even be hard. Everything seemed a little easier after he took out the Somali pirates on heavy seas last year at over three thousand meters. Except that the rounds in his rifle stood no chance against the specially designed glass. Still, he could figure out a way to put his rifle to good use. He sighted in, took a moment, and fired. Dust exploded from the ground between Holmes’s feet. The SEAL straightened, tapped the man next to him, who did the same to the next, until they were all alerted to the approaching zombies.

  Dragging and tripping, the undead moved faster than expected. With their arms out, fingers curled, teeth gnashing, the first wave attacked.

  At first touch, each SEAL used his baton to isolate an arm and spin his attacker. Then the knife blade slid along the back until it found the neck. A hard saw with the serrated edge and the head fell free to hang by gristle and skin as the zombie dropped, lifeless once more.

  A male voice spoke through Walker’s Multiband Intra/Inter Team Radio (MBITR) headset. “Increasing volume to five decibels. SEALs, move apart.”

  The four SEALs did as commanded. Each one set one foot forward like a fencer, their helmeted faces pointing toward the ground, as they concentrated on what little hearing they were allowed as their only sense.

  Holmes encountered a raised crypt and quickly pulled himself atop it. Yank, YaYa, and Laws remained on the ground. They moved their batons and knives in a slow dance, waiting.

  They didn’t have long. Thirty more zombies rose from places along the ground where they’d been placed earlier. The problem with cemeteries in New Orleans is that the water table is too high to bury someone in the ground. Instead, people must be buried in aboveground crypts, which can run from the utilitarian to the elaborate. Since the SEALs didn’t want to raise the dead of unknown families, the crypts themselves were kept shut. Instead, Naval Special Warfare Command had requisitioned a number of cadavers, which had been strategically placed along the ground by a cohort of confused Navy seamen, who knew better than to question the details of their classified mission to relocate the recent dead.

  Holmes spun as he felt a zombie brush his lower leg. Walker watched through his scope when she turned to face Holmes. She’d been a beautiful girl before something had smashed in the side of her face. She grabbed the SEAL’s leg and tried to pull him to her, but she lacked the strength, instead creating a stationary target for Holmes’s weapons. He slammed the tip of the knife into the center of her skull. Her body ceased all function. He pulled the knife free as she fell.

  But Holmes had no time to waste. Two more zombies moved toward him. An African American zombie who was tall and muscled enough to have played professional basketball grabbed one of Holmes’s arms. An overweight, balding white guy grabbed one of Holmes’s legs. Holmes kicked out to rid himself of the zombie on his leg, but as he did, he was jerked off balance by the taller one.

  Walker quickly scanned the other three SEALs and saw that while each was engaged, they were holding their own, except for possibly Yank, who had lowered his head and was ramming himself into a clot of three zombies. Still, they were on their feet and fighting, not at all like the SEAL team leader, who was now on the ground and straddled by a freakishly tall zombie. Even while Holmes fought desperately to rid himself of the creature on his chest, the overweight zombie was trying to chew on his leg. Try as the zombie might, he couldn’t bite through the Kevlar, nor could he find a way around it with the booted foot of Holmes’s other leg continually slamming into his face.

  Walker prepared to fire. The objective of the training was to help better prepare the SEALs for situations where they had limited use of their senses. No one was supposed to die. In fact, it was Walker’s job to make sure that no one did. Still, he hesitated, watching through the scope as Holmes fought for his life. Walker could afford his boss a few more seconds. After all, nothing was faster than a sniper round.

  The zombie kept trying to grab the side of Holmes’s head as if it were a basketball. The fact that Holmes had a metal helmet on didn’t seem to deter the zombie, and Holmes himself kept acting as if the helmet weren’t there. Why not let the zombie try and bite through the composite metal?

  It was as if Holmes realized this at the same time Walker thought it. Holmes relaxed and the zombie immediately grabbed his head. He brought it to his face to get a better hold and snapped his jaw shut, breaking several teeth on the metal.

  Not being able to see, Holmes had no idea this had occurred, but in one smooth move he slammed the knife into the side of the zombie’s head. He continued pushing until the creature tumbled off him. Without hesitation, Holmes scissored his legs and wrapped them around the other zombie’s head. Holmes rolled, causing the overweight zombie to tumble headfirst after him until Holmes straddled the zombie. The SEAL team leader no longer had a knife but he still held the baton. He placed one end of it on the bottom of the zombie’s jaw and shoved until it disappeared into the creature’s brain.

  Walker couldn’t help but shake his head and smile. “Not bad, Chief. Not bad at all.”

  Holmes dispatched three more, using the baton in the same manner.

  Yank got to his feet from where he looked like he’d been rolling in a pile of dead zombies. Walker made a note to talk to the new SEAL. No matter how much Kevlar he wore, his zeal for battle wouldn’t stop a zombie from possibly finding a chink in his armor. Even after this, the metaphor should be lived.

  YaYa and Laws each stood in the center of a pile of his own dead zombies. Other than Madame Laboy, the SEALs were the only ones left in the cemetery.

  A series of beeps piped through his MBITR, followed by “Control to Triple Six. Training complete. You may remove your sensory-deprivation helmets.”

  The four SEALs below Walker did as they were told and their faces were revealed.

  Lieutenant Commander Sam Holmes, blond-haired, square-jawed paradigm of a SEAL, life dedicated to the cause of freedom.

  Senior C
hief Petty Officer Tim Laws, blond-haired, lanky, a smile already creasing a long, thoughtful face that hid an intelligence unmatched by the others.

  Chief Petty Officer Ali Jabouri, or YaYa, Arab American, dark-skinned, dark hair, built like a runner, trying to prove that he was as apple-pie American as everyone else.

  Petty Officer Second Class Shonn Yankowski, African American, shaved head, tattoos, burns along the left side of his face from a house fire back home in Compton.

  Just as the SEALs began to high-five and celebrate, each examining the zombies he’d killed without the ability to see, they were interrupted by a terrible scraping sound. All eyes went to one of the raised crypts, this one more elaborate and twice the size of most others.

  The four-inch-thick metal cover was moving aside. An immense hand reached from underneath and grabbed the lip of the crypt’s lid, a talon the size of a dinner knife jutting from each finger.

  The hairs on the back of Walker’s neck began to buzz. He’d felt something electric the entire time, but he’d written it off as the zombies or Madame Laboy. But now with the metal cover free, his skin began to tingle. Whatever this was, it was much more than they’d expected, setting off his supernatural warning system like no horde of zombies ever could.

  Madame Laboy’s voice rose. She screamed a series of words that weren’t part of any language Walker had ever heard. Her hands punched at the air in a complex pattern. What she was doing was many levels of mastery beyond the raising of the dead.

  Walker watched as the monstrous hand lost its grip on the crypt cover, and let it drop back in place, disappearing beneath it.

  Madame Laboy ran around the bulletproof shield and sped toward the crypt. With the help of Yank, she climbed on top of the lid, where she began to spit, and curse, and cast more spells.

  “What was that?” Holmes asked.

  She ignored him for a moment, then said, “Something I’d almost forgotten about. Something I’d misplaced.”

  “Pretty fucking big to misplace,” Laws said, casting a worried eye at the crypt.

  “You live as long as me and you’ll forget a lot of things, mon petit guerrier.” She stared at him, as if daring him to ask her age.