by Chris Lowry
I leaned against the wall and watched him back.
"You look tough," he danced in on his toes and popped an open fist against my chin.
"Brute force never wins against strategic elegance."
He tiptoed in and sent three more rapid punches into me.
I shoved off the wall and circled with him, trying to stay out of reach.
Held up my fists like a boxer. Shuffled to the right and let him get in close.
Kung Fu is deadly in the right hands.
In the left hands too.
If the person doing it has done more than spar. And doesn't get tired fast.
I'm not an elegant fighter, but there is nothing pretty or poetic about being in battle.
Phil came in fast, a flurry of punches to my head and torso.
He grabbed me by the wrist, twisted, turned and launched me face first into the wall. Plaster rained down on my head.
"I've got you," he snickered. "You're broken."
It took me two tries to get bac to my feet and another punch across the cheek bone that sent constellations of swirling star bursts swirling around my head.
Phil lined up for the coup de gras. He couldn't stop grinning.
He hopped in to deliver the final blow, a planned kick to the face and a couple of punches I couldn't predict.
So I didn't try.
I stepped aside, hooked an arm under his leg and lifted up, then rode him down.
There are two things nobody expects.
The Spanish Inquisition and Israeli street fighting. Krav Maga was developed by Mossad to stop and win a fight fast. It is brutal, and fast and if like the Crane technique.
If it’s done right, there is no defense.
I landed with a knee in Phil's gut. That took his breath and stunned his diaphragm so he couldn't breathe.
I crashed an elbow into his nose and shattered it in a fountain of crimson.
The second elbow crushed his throat.
He flopped like a fish out of water for three minutes until he choked or drowned.
I gathered the fallen weapons and what ammo I could find while it happened and shook a bloody wad of phlegm next to the body when it was done.
Then I held the pistols ready because I wasn't sure what waited for me on the other side of the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
It was Brian.
Brian was waiting on me, Peg by his side. Sparky was with them.
They were all armed, guns and pikes.
"No Z in there," I groaned.
He looked past me at the four dead bodies on the floor.
"Will they be soon?"
"Yep."
"You look like death warmed over," Peg traced a gentle finger over the goose egg over my eye.
"Z dead or just regular?"
"Regular," she said. "But that's not saying much."
Brian stepped in to make short work of preventive zombie maintenance. He wiped the gore off his blade on the mayor's shirt.
"Anna?"
Peg handed me a wet bandana to mop my face.
She shook her head.
"Couldn't get away. But she's safe."
Answering unasked questions.
I wiped my face with the cloth and bit back a scream. I had to dance off the pain. It took a moment.
"You didn't warn me it was ninety proof," I hissed.
"Cause that was the hundred," Sparky grinned.
"It's gonna kill everything. Good for what ails you."
That gave me an idea.
"Sparky," I still hissed. Still hurt. "I need to borrow your still."
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
We didn't tell anyone about Phil. Or the Mayor. I just shut the door, locked it and decided to let the rest figure it out on their own.
Then we borrowed a pickup truck I didn't plan on returning and loaded Sparky's giant still full of alcohol into the back.
Brian volunteered to go with me, and Sparky stepped up to stay behind to keep an eye on things.
The walk that took two days to reach Livingston took an hour and a half to drive back.
We stopped two miles away, hid the truck and hoofed it to spy and scope it out.
"You could just knock on the front door and tell her the dirty deed is done," Brian whispered.
"Dirt cheap," I added under my breath.
There was a reason these two got on so well.
"She would just kill me," I answered.
"Or try."
"Yeah, or the kids."
While I watched.
"She's as crazy as the Mayor," said Brian.
"A different kind of crazy. She was the brains behind the operation."
"Think she'll just let your kids go?"
I thought about it for a moment.
"No."
"Then we do this," he said. "How do you want to do this?"
I spied an old friend opening the gate to go on what must have been a patrol."
"I have an idea," I said and motioned them to follow me back into the woods, finger beside my nose to remind them to be quiet.
My buddy was one of the two guys who walked me into the woods to turn me loose on Livingston.
The idea was to capture and interrogate him.
It was easy.
I stepped out on the trail in front of him. When he stopped, Brian whacked him with a branch.
"Knock him out, don't kill him."
"Sorry," Brian shrugged.
He hefted the branch like it was the stick's fault.
"You don't know your own strength."
He helped me lift the body.
The guy came around tied to a tree. I sharpened the end of a small thick limb to a fine point using a smooth rock.
"I forgot my knife," I told him. "But I think this will work."
I showed him the roughhewn point of the branch.
"Do you remember what happened to your friends?"
His head bounced up and down like it was on a spring.
"We can avoid that unpleasantness," I stood up and took a step toward him.
"You don't have to do this. I'll tell you whatever you want. I'll tell you everything."
"You know who my kids are."
"Yeah."
"Where are they staying in your camp?"
I had a plan that involved avoiding their vicinity.
"They're gone," he licked his lips.
He started crying when I stepped in close and pressed the point of the stick into his forearm.
"What. Do. You. Mean. Gone?"
He hiccupped and sobbed, flinched away from my face.
"Hey," Brian put his hand on my arm.
He took a step back when I turned my face to him.
"Mags sent your son to Nashville with some others," the man on the tree slobbered. "The girl disappeared right after."
I let go of a breath I didn't know I was holding.
When he said gone, my mind flashed to the worst. She killed them out of spite.
But they were out there.
Somewhere.
Again.
"Why Nashville?"
"Another supply depot," he sobbed. "I can get you the street."
"The girl?"
"She left with the other kid. They snuck out."
They.
Tyler. They ran away. Maybe to follow the boy.
"The address."
"Let me go first man, you have to let me go."
I jammed the stick into his thigh and leaned against it. He screamed.
"There goes the element of surprise," said Brian.
"I want them to know I'm coming," I told her. "Where is it?"
He told us.
"Cut him loose," I instructed Brian. "Wait here."
"Where are you going?"
But I marched off instead.
Two miles in fifteen minutes. Too long. They would have heard the scream and doubled the guard.
Twice the number of guns, twice the number of eyeballs.
I started the
truck and lumbered to within half of a mile from the gate.
I could count twelve guards by the fence, four or six more moving in the yard behind them.
This was stupid.
It was a dumb move.
Brian stepped out of the woods, huffing and wheezing.
"Get back," I yelled out of the open window.
We heard the hornet buzz of a bullet and the sound of a shot a half second after.
He ducked behind a thick oak.
The AR-15 wasn't as accurate at this distance but that didn't mean they couldn't get lucky.
I unscrewed a quarter inch drain plug on the bottom of the still and stepped back as Sparky's hard work puddled in the dirt.
Then it was back into the front of the truck. I wedged the gas pedal down with the blood-soaked tip of the torture stick.
I popped the emergency brake and the truck spit up a rooster trail of dust as I aimed for the gate.
I ducked down in the seat as bullets started to fly, hoping their panic threw off their aim., and the engine block caught the rest.
At a ten count, I rolled out of the door and hit the ground in a hard tumble.
The guards kept shooting at the truck.
I flicked a lighter and dropped it in the thin line of hundred proof.
The fire swooshed after the truck as it crashed through the gate and plowed into the compound.
It crashed into a brick wall and came to a smoking screeching halt. I ran after the trail of flames, a pistol in each hand.
The shots were quick, double taps. Four guards went down before they thought to shoot back.
Six down when they stopped panicking and their aim got better.
The still exploded. I expected it.
They did not.
Panic, screams, smoke and bullets filled the air.
The gas tank in the trunk went up next which caught me by surprise and knocked me sideways as a wave of hot gas expanded over me.
It turned three of the guards into running, wailing matchsticks and I used the distraction to get up and finish the rest.
I traded my pistols for three of their rifles and kept going inside to the arena.
Mags stood on the platform, a hundred yards between us.
"I should have known it was you."
Her voice was difficult to make out at that distance.
I kept walking. Six guards around her. All armed. All watching me come closer.
They should have shot me.
No one expects a frontal assault to be so calm, quiet.
It was dumb not to do it.
Curiosity killed the cat. It's an old wives’ tale.
When I reached thirty yards, it killed them too.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The giant stepped out from behind the platform and raised his hands, as he regarded the various poses of his once living comrades.
"Headshots," he admired. "They won't be dead walkers."
I kept the pistol trained on him. I would be there were more than a few others still back there. Aimed at me.
The fact they weren't firing yet meant something.
He held his hands higher.
"No hard feelings."
I lifted the pistol and raised my voice to match.
"The Mayor is dead. Mags is dead. You can go about your business. I'm going to go get my kids."
He started to lower his hands and I let him.
"If you try to stop me, I'll kill every last one of you. If you hurt any of my friends, I'll come back here and kill every single one of you."
I know they heard me.
But not all of them believed me. Because I saw a pair of glasses and a ball cap behind a rifle barrel trying to aim at me from the side of the platform.
I dropped to a knee and sent a three round burst through the plywood. A guy I didn't know flopped on the ground squealing as his guts leaked out of his stomach.
I swung on the giant.
"Whoa. Whoa. I didn't know he was going to do that."
It could have been a lie.
But I was tired of killing.
And out of bullets.
Better to let him think I was convinced and kept the pistols up as I backed out of the arena. I scooped up more rifles and ammo that was left in the yard.
I was going to need it.
There was a yellow school bus parked a quarter of a mile up the driveway.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
I checked the magazine in the rifle and started consolidating. Then Brian stepped off the bus.
He jogged to meet me halfway, which was good because I was tired and it meant he could watch anyone at my back.
“That was loud,” he huffed.
“It was supposed to be.”
“I’m not going to ask if you feel better,” he said as he swung in beside me and took a couple of the rifles from my shoulder. “But I’ve got some good news.”
“The good news is we have an address,” I said.
It came out harsher than I meant, but he forgave it because he was my friend and he knew what I was thinking about.
The Boy.
He stopped me in front of the bus.
“I don’t know if you think this will be better,” he said.
Then she stepped off.
Anna.
She moved next to me and grabbed me in a bear hug, planting her head against my chest.
Peg stepped off the bus and took a rifle from Brian.
Hannah stepped out next, followed by Byron.
He took the rifle from me and checked the action, then stood at attention as he stared at me.
King Byron the wicked.
“Nice necktie. If I’d been back in time,” he told me. “You wouldn’t have fought alone.”
I put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
"We're being chased,” Brain told me.
The dog pawed out of the bus and ran over to sit at my feet.
“Kinji,” I smiled past a lump in my throat.
Anna ran her finger along the thick purple welt that circled my throat.
"What do you mean?"
"Her husband, the preacher. He threatened to kill her and he's coming after us. He's got it bad for you."
I shook my head.
It was too damn easy to make enemies out here. Where was my cabin in the woods, just me and the kids and a couple of close friends fishing for food and making our own beer for nights on the deck.
"We've had one of those before."
"More than one. You do tend to piss people off."
He smiled. God I missed this guy.
"It's easy when you practice."
"I say you turn pro in the next season."
"When is it going to end Brian?" I sighed.
I felt my shoulders slump a little.
I still had my youngest to find, but people kept pulling my children away from me, kept trying to keep me from them.
I felt like one step forward, two steps back. Or a kick in the nuts every time I caught my breath.
Anna put her hand on my back.
Just holding it there, pressed against the good flesh between the scar tissue. I could feel the pressure of it.
Then Brian leaned against me, propping me up, hand on my other shoulder.
"It might not," he offered. "It might be hard."
"Cause it's been easy so far."
My voice cracked on the laugh. It was soft, easy to miss, but they noticed.
"You won't do it alone," Anna said.
Her voice firm in my ear.
"Not anymore," added Brian. "We're all in this with you. Get your son. Go find your daughter. All of us. Together."
Friends.
I hadn't had many before the fall.
And the bonds established after were like spider webs.
Easily built and just as fragile.
This felt different.
My stomach gurgled.
"Hungry?" Anna asked.
"When did you last eat?" Brian was just as con
cerned.
I shook my head.
It wasn't hunger making that noise. It was something new, something moving in next to the rage.
It wouldn't supplant it, or move it out, not until I found my kids.
But something made me warm inside, touched me. I felt renewed. Reinvigorated.
With friends like these by my side, nothing was impossible.
I let that feeling wash over me, pulling strength from Brian and Anna, and from Hannah and Byron who stood waiting, and Peg who held herself on the outside of our little group, watching.
"You going to stand here all day making goo goo eyes at us, or are we going to get moving?" Brian cracked a smile again.
It was good advice.
So we took it.
THE END
Author’s Note:
I love this series. I wanted to say thank you for reading it with me. There have been a bunch of new reviews, people reaching out via Facebook and letting me know what they think, and I'm just grateful you decided to keep up with the Dad and his journey to save his kids.
Outcast took a little longer to come out than I would like. I sent it to a reader for notes, and went to work on some sci fi projects (check out The Dipole Shield for a ragtag group of misfits with a mission to save Mars from a terrorist if you like the style of the Z series. No hard sci fi, just comedy and drinks in space.)
When Outcast came back, the suggestions were extensive, so I had to rework some of it.
Luckily, the next book Renegade Z is queued up and should be done quickly.
A lot of readers want the stories to be a little longer, and they want backstory on some of the other participants in the adventure. I've got a few ideas lined up, and a plan to make it happen so we can find out where Anna came from, what Byron and Hannah are up to, why does Brian want to be a leader so much and more.
If you haven't checked out FLYOVER ZOMBIE yet, you can get it free with a link in the front and back of this book.
I have to let you know though, it's written like an Elmore Leonard novel, so if you like a ton of details, this book ain't for you. But if you like a pace that moves like lightning and an expansion of the Battlefield Z series into a second group outside of Dad, then you might like it.
There are two books in that spin off, so check out HEADSHOTS once you get FLYOVER and get ready for OVERLAND ZOMBIE.