Empty Bodies: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Dystopian Survival (Book 1)

by Zach Bohannon

  Will looked back at Holly, who was leaning over the back seat and running her hands across the top of Marcus’ head. Dylan had joined her back there and had instantly taken a liking to Holly, which was good, because she seemed to be good with kids and the boy needed a distraction to stay calm.

  “How is he?” Will asked, looking at Miranda.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s lucky. It looks like the bullet missed all his organs. For the moment, I’ve suppressed the bleeding, but he’s still in rough shape. But for now, I think he can just rest.”

  Will nodded. He reached into his bag, grabbed his cell phone, and then looked over to Gabriel and gave him a nod toward the door, asking him to join him outside of the SUV

  They got out and stepped a few feet in front of the truck. The garage smelt like old, settled motor oil. Like the place hadn’t been used in over a decade. On a table nearby, there was a dust-covered packet of chewing tobacco and a black-stained work shirt thrown over a chair. The name patch still showed and read “Ricky” in cursive red letters.

  Gabriel bobbed his head toward the pouch of chewing tobacco. “Wish that was a pack of cigarettes.”

  Will smiled. “I quit a year ago. Just not worth it, ya know?”

  “Would be right about now.”

  “Thanks a lot for what you did back there.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “So, what now?”

  Gabriel slipped his hands into the pockets of his athletic pants and hopped on his tip toes for a moment, trying to stay warm.

  “I’m headed to Washington D.C. My wife and daughter are there and so is the boy’s family.”

  “Have you spoken with them?”

  Gabriel sighed and just looked to the ground.

  “I’ll be glad to take you guys anywhere you need along the way. But I’ve got to get there.”

  Will nodded.

  Gabriel looked down at the phone. “That thing work? I wouldn’t mind making a call. I lost my phone in the plane crash.”

  Will cocked his head. “You were in that crash?”

  Gabriel nodded. “We were the only two survivors,” he said, looking at Dylan.

  “Shit,” Will said.

  “So, does it work?”

  Will shrugged. “I wasn’t getting a signal before. I just turned it off to save power.”

  He pressed his thumb against the power button at the top and watched the black light brighten as the phone began to boot.

  While he waited, Gabriel peeked around the garage. He put his hand on a stack of old used tires, the tread almost completely washed away from the one on top. On the wall was a calendar with a gorgeous blonde wearing a bikini that looked to be a size too small, minimum. Gabriel walked to it and checked the month: July 2011.

  As he turned around, he kicked something. He looked down and his eyes lit up. Two red, metal gas cans lay at his feet, and they didn’t budge when he kicked them. He leaned over, picking up the first one and finding it half full. The second was almost three-quarters of the way full. Down on one knee, he unscrewed the cap, releasing the smell of pure, unleaded fuel into the air. He walked both cans in a farmer’s carry back to the SUV.

  Will looked over. “Oh, shit. They full?”

  “Almost.”

  “Thank, God.”

  “Anything yet?”

  “It finished booting, but no service yet.”

  Will waited, licking his lips as he stared at the corner of the screen, hoping that the words No Service would be replaced with tiny, ascending columns.

  Then the phone beeped, which made Gabriel approach and look over Will’s shoulder.

  Multiple missed calls appeared, all from the same number Will didn’t recognize. It had an 865 area code.

  “Do you know anyone in Knoxville?” Gabriel asked. He knew the area code from having had to call on clients there in the past.

  Will shook his head. He pressed a few keys on the phone and re-dialed the number. It took almost no time for the phone to beep at him. He tried two more times with the same result. Disappointment: that’s what covered his face.

  “Sorry, man,” Gabriel said, sincerely. He felt the timing might be a little too quick, but he asked anyway, “Mind if I try to reach my wife and daughter?”

  Keeping his eyes to the floor, Will shook his head and handed the phone to Gabriel.

  “Thanks.”

  Gabriel couldn’t dial the number fast enough. Every moment since that crash he’d thought of his wife and daughter. Begged and pleaded to hear their voices, to see them again. He rounded his lips with his tongue, moistening them and tasting the salt from the sweat, then bit his bottom lip.

  The phone rang once and he gasped.

  Then a busy signal.

  Frantically, he tried again. And again. And once more. All with the same result.

  Will felt his disappointment. “Sorry, bro.”

  Gabriel handed him the phone and went to the other side of the room, and then sat on a small, black stool with wheels. He put his face in his hands and Will allowed him to be alone.

  As Will went to slip the phone into the back pocket of his jeans, it chirped. He looked at the lit screen and read: 1 New Text Message. After sliding his thumb across the screen, the message appeared:

  Will, it’s your mother. I can’t reach you. I want you to know that I am ok. Your father and I went to a hotel in the North Carolina mountains. Things got crazy. With a girl now and headed to Knoxville. I hope to see you soon. Love you.

  Will went to his knees, clutched the phone to his chest, and wept.

  EPILOGUE

  Two days later…

  Down Interstate 40, abandoned cars lined the road and bodies lay bathing in the sun, still warm, though winter was steadfastly approaching. Many of the bodies had begun to decay; their flesh had been picked from the bone by the Empty bodies, which still limped up and down the highway, aimlessly looking for more life to devour.

  Lawrence sped down the highway, swerving to miss dead bodies and looking into the faces of the creeping death that wandered on the open road. Every day he did this and every day he had hope that he would find more survivors.

  He worked his normal route, scared to veer off of it due to the fear of what he might see. In the new world, the familiar was your friend.

  The world had changed. And for Lawrence Holloway, the adaptation to his sudden new responsibility still overwhelmed him.

  It was the first day in three that it hadn’t rained. The reemergence of the sun brought at least a little bit of joy into his day.

  It had been a few days since Lawrence had found any survivors. Day after day of driving into the sleeping world without a hint of life had begun to wear thin on him.

  Then in the distance, he saw something. It was a different movement. Not so much unlike the dead lurkers who moved unbalanced down the road, but also not much like them. More like him.

  He pressed the gas, moving the ambulance down the road with haste.

  It came to a stop next to the ditch, and one look confirmed exactly what Lawrence had hoped. It was a man. A living, breathing man. He had fallen off the shoulder and was lying on his back, his nose to the sun and eyes closed.

  Lawrence rolled down the window.

  “Hello,” he yelled.

  The man didn’t move.

  Lawrence jumped out of the ambulance. Forty yards away, four beasts weaved in and out of abandoned cars toward them. He ran to the man’s side and began to shake him.

  “Wake up. I’m here to help you,” Lawrence said.

  The man opened his eyes and brought his hands around Lawrence’s neck.

  Lawrence gasped for air.

  “Here to help you,” Lawrence said through faint breath.

  The man loosened his grip, realizing that Lawrence wasn’t one of the undead.

  Lawrence held his throat and gasped for his breath.

  “I’m sorry,” the drifter said. “I thought you were one of them.”

  Lawre
nce continued to writhe, shaking his head and waving the man off as if to say it was okay. He caught his breath.

  “Are you wounded?” Lawrence said with a hoarse voice.

  “Sort of,” the man said. “I’m mainly just hungry. Tired.”

  The beasts moved to twenty yards away, the position of the cars buying the men a little time.

  Lawrence looked to them.

  “Yeah, well, so are they. So unless you wanna be their lunch, I suggest that we get the hell out of here.”

  Lawrence extended his hand and the drifter took it.

  Lawrence opened the back of the ambulance and helped the battered man inside. He shut the back doors, making sure the handles were locked in place, and hustled to the cockpit. The creatures were in front of him, but instead of running them over, he put the ambulance into reverse and gave himself enough space to turn around.

  “Why didn’t you just run them over?” the drifter asked.

  Lawrence smiled and shrugged, staring at the blue eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “Why would I do that? They were people. I wouldn’t run over a grave if I didn’t have to.”

  The drifter looked away, putting his hand to his lips.

  “They aren’t people anymore,” he said.

  Lawrence shook his head and kept his eyes on the road.

  The drifter reached to his side and wrapped his hand around the grip of the knife on his waist.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Lawrence smiled and looked into the mirror again. “East. I’m taking you east. There’s a hospital there. It’s sort of become a refugee camp of sorts for survivors. We can get you checked out there, along with some food and a place to rest your head.”

  The drifter let go of the knife and loosened the muscles in his face. The thoughts of slitting Lawrence’s throat and driving off with the ambulance went away. He wanted to see this hospital. This refugee camp.

  “My name’s Lawrence. What’s yours, stranger?”

  The drifter brought his hands together and rubbed them clean of the weapon. He looked into the mirror and smiled back at the young driver.

  “Ellis. David Ellis.”

  TO BE CONTINUED…

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  THE WITNESS

  A Slasher Novel

  For fans of Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of 1,000 Corpses, and Halloween

  COMING MARCH 2015

  HERITAGE

  A trio of notorious outlaws arrive in Blackwater: an abandoned Colorado mining town. But is it really abandoned?

  Click here to receive this story for FREE

  Heritage is featured in Dark Reveries: Volume One

  Available Now! Click here for info.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you, J. Thorn, for your fun, engaging storytelling, and for your guidance, feedback, and friendship along the way.

  Taylor Krauss, thank you for your honest, detailed feedback, and for your friendship.

  To my beta readers, Meghan Cowhan and Joe Orozco. Thank you for agreeing to read the work of a new author that you never heard of and providing valuable feedback.

  Thank you, Johnny Digges, for the amazing cover designs. It’s crazy how we have been friends since we were ten years old, and it’s come from us playing hockey together to doing this!

  Thank you, Jennifer Collins, for not only your amazing edits and proofreads, but for coaching me along the way.

  And a shout to my fellow horror author friends, Dan Padavona and David J. Delaney, who I’ve had wonderful conversations with about writing, reading, marketing, Australia, and metal.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  If I were to be truly honest with you, I would tell you that I had no desire to write a zombie book.

  Really.

  I’d wanted to write a post-apocalyptic book for a long time. I started a couple of different ones, including one that was eerily like Hugh Howey’s best-selling opus, Wool. I’m not comparing the two, believe me. Hugh is a much better writer than I am, and Wool is an amazing story. But the premise was very similar (my characters lived in an underground city called The Gulch, much like the Silos in Wool).

  So how did Empty Bodies come about if I didn’t want to write a zombie novel?

  When I was writing the stories for Dark Reveries: Volume One, I decided that, while I didn’t want to write a whole novel about zombies, it would be fun to write a short story about them. So I took a simple scenario that was close to me.

  For my full-time job, I work as the warehouse manager for a popular cymbal and percussion manufacturer, and our 50,000 square foot facility is located in an industrial park that dead ends just past our building. Everyday I have a couple of employees who take naps on their lunch break in one of our extra offices. One day I thought to myself: What if some of the employees turned into zombies while one of those guys was fast asleep in that office? And with that, the short story Warehouse 3427 was born.

  The story was more fun to write than I thought it was going to be. The plot kept growing and I found myself sitting in the chair, not able to stop writing.

  Before I knew it, I had written over 10,000 words, and knew that I had a lot more story to tell. I thought of other characters and finally convinced myself that I had a novel.

  Then once I started planning the book, I quickly realized I didn’t have a novel. I had at least three, maybe more.

  Thus, now you hold the first book in the Empty Bodies series.

  I really hope that you enjoyed the story. Will, Jessica, and Gabriel were a lot of fun to write, and I can’t wait to tell you more about their journeys!

  I’m already working on the second book, and if you want to be the first to know when it will be coming out, please consider joining my mailing list. Also, please consider sending me an e-mail and letting me know what you thought of the story. I’d love to hear from you! My e-mail is info@zachbohannon.com.

  Thanks again for reading!

  -ZBB

  WHAT DID YOU THINK OF EMPTY BODIES?

  For independent authors like myself, reviews are very important. They help new readers discover our work so that they can enjoy our stories and we can write more books.

  If you enjoyed this book, I would be forever grateful if you would take the time to leave a review to help other readers discover it. At the end of the book, your device should ask you if you want to leave a review. Or, you can visit the product page on Amazon.

  And if you have any questions or comments regarding this title, or anything else for that matter, I’d love to hear from you. Please feel free to e-mail me at info@zachbohannon.com.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Something about the dark side of life has always appealed to me. Whether I experience it through reading and watching horror or listening to my favorite heavy metal bands, I have been forever fascinated with the shadow of human emotion.

  While in my 20's, I discovered my passion to create through playing drums in two heavy metal bands: Kerygma and Twelve Winters. While playing in Twelve Winters (a power metal band with a thrash edge fronted by my now wife Kathryn), I was able to indulge myself in my love of writing by penning the lyrics for all our music. My love of telling a story started here, as many of the songs became connected to the same concept and characters in one way or another.

  Now in my 30's, my creative passion is being passed to willing readers through the art of stories. While I have a particular fascination for real life scenarios, I also love dark fantasy. So, you'll find a little bit of everything in my stories, from zombies to serial killers, angels and demons to mindless psychopaths, and even ghosts and parallel dimensions.

  My influences as a writer come primarily from the works of Clive Barker, Stephen King, and Blake Crouch in the written form; the beautifully dark, rich lyrics of Mikael Akerfeldt from the band Opeth; and an array of movies, going back to the root of my fascination at a youn
g age with 70's and 80's slasher films such as Halloween, Friday the 13th, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

  I live in Nashville, Tennessee with my wife Kathryn, our daughter Haley, and our German Shepherd Guinness. When I'm not writing, I enjoy playing hockey, watching hockey and football, cycling, watching some of my favorite television shows and movies, and, of course, reading.

  Connect with me online:

  Website: www.zachbohannon.com

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  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/zbbwrites

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  Twitter: @zachbohannon32

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