Elements of the Undead - Omnibus Edition (Books One - Three)

by William Esmont

  Silence descends for a moment as I adjust to the lack of the helicopter sound. I watch as it heads west, racing away from the city center.

  An incessant pounding replaces the sound of the helicopter. Behind me. The door. The people.

  They're here. They’re coming.

  I go to the edge of the roof, to where the helicopter last rested, to where Dave departed, and I try not to think of what it will feel like when I hit the ground.

  Right Now. Again.

  A new sound fills the air, the unmistakable whump whump whump of a large helicopter approaching.

  I spin around, searching for the source. A wicked-looking dark green machine rises above the adjacent building. Military.

  The zombies are almost upon me. Any second now...

  I steal a glance over my shoulder at the street far below, searching for a landing spot. Taking a deep breath, I brace myself for impact.

  With no warning, a white-hot stream of fire erupts from the door of the helicopter, crawling laser-like across the roof and into the horde of advancing zombies, chewing their diseased corpses to pieces and flinging bits and pieces of mottled flesh across the roof in a blizzard of gore. The noise of the gun is beyond anything I have ever heard, an infinite, rhythmic scream of hot metal slicing through the dense afternoon air, dividing my world into two pieces—certain death and desperate hope.

  Mesmerized by the unmitigated carnage surrounding me, I almost don’t notice when the brutal chatter of the gun falls silent. With a slight wobble, the helicopter dips toward the roof. A soldier in blood-splattered desert camouflage waves from the door, motioning for me to climb aboard.

  Breathing again, I take a tentative step from the edge. Before I know it, I’m running, racing toward the waiting arms.

  I’m alive.

  Earth

  Relentless

  And they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field.

  Exodus 10:5

  One

  Arivaca, Arizona

  Twenty feet below the desert floor

  Early Morning

  The handheld radio on the couch screeched like a dying animal. “Dad! You’ve got to see this!”

  Letting out an exasperated sigh, Ryan Franklin placed the dirty bolt carrier of his AR-15 on the coffee table. He used a clean rag to scrub the residual gun oil from his fingers, then picked up the radio. “Can it wait?”

  “No. Hurry!”

  Ryan got to his feet and clipped the radio to his belt. He surveyed his work for a moment before calling out to his wife. “I’m going topside for a few minutes, hon. I’ll be right back.”

  Paige Franklin poked her head out of the kitchen quarters. “Bring Luke back with you. Breakfast is almost ready.”

  “Will do.” Ryan took the first left out of the family room and stopped in front of a heavy steel door. Mounted a few inches above the doorknob was a glowing numeric keypad. Ryan punched in his code, and the mechanism hummed and clicked as the triple-deadbolt disengaged. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges, and a series of lights recessed in the ceiling snapped to life, illuminating a narrow stairwell leading upward. Taking a step into the vestibule, Ryan drew the door shut and gave it an extra tug to ensure the lock engaged.

  At the top of the staircase, he entered the same code at another door and passed into a small room with narrow windows on three sides and a heavily fortified door on the fourth. Bulky, rolling steel security shutters covered each window, sealing out the early morning light. A motion-activated LED bulb mounted on the wall filled the room with a weak blue-white glow. Ryan crossed the room to a spiral staircase and started to climb, cursing under his breath with each step, regretting for the thousandth time not having his bum knee fixed before the world ended.

  He found Luke crouched in the observation tower at the top of the stairs. Luke had barely celebrated his eleventh birthday when Ryan had bundled him and Paige into his old, but well-maintained Chevy Suburban and made the mad dash for their bunker in Arivaca. In the three years since that day, Ryan’s former life as the senior manager of the Saguaro Villa Resort in northwest Tucson had come to seem like something out of a fever dream. As he lay in bed at night, he often wondered what had become of all the people who had not been as fortunate as he and his family. Were they still alive somewhere? Had they become zombies like so many others?

  The irony of their predicament didn’t escape him. His brother-in-law Mitch had been the one to convince him to purchase the bunker in Arivaca. For all of Mitch’s lunatic survivalist ravings, he had been right in the end. Not about the Swine Flu or SARS. Not about a catastrophic economic meltdown. No. None of that. In the end, it turned out to be goddamned zombies. A day never passed when Ryan didn’t thank God for his good fortune. If Luke had been at school, or he at work, or Paige off with one of her friends… well, he preferred not to dwell on what might have been. As it was, two of the other three bunkers in the survival community stood vacant, their owners, including Mitch, never having made it out of the city before things went to shit.

  Ryan kneeled beside his son. “Your mom—”

  Luke pointed toward the west. “Look. Out there.”

  “What is it? Another mountain lion?” Over the past several months, Luke had taken to waking early and climbing the tower to search for wildlife in the nearby desert. His reports of animal sightings had become an eagerly anticipated topic of discussion over breakfast each morning, a welcome distraction for the entire family.

  Luke gave an exasperated shake of his head. “No. It’s not a mountain lion.” For the first time, Ryan noticed his son’s shaking hands and the frightened pallor of his face. “Look,” Luke insisted, motioning again at the window.

  “Okay.” Ryan sidled up to the eight-by-thirty-six-inch horizontal slit that served double-duty as a window. “But your mom says breakfast is ready. We need to go back downstairs after—”

  Ryan’s eyes took a second to adjust to the harsh morning light, but when his brain caught up to the images bouncing off the back of his retinas, Paige’s meal admonitions became the least of his worries.

  Less than a hundred yards away, midway between the utility shed where he kept his orange Kubota tractor and the solar panel array, was a small cluster of undead. He did a quick count and came up with twelve, not including those he couldn’t yet see on the far side of the shed.

  He rocked back on his heels, using the wall to steady himself. “How long have they been out there?”

  Luke swallowed. “I don’t know. I was trying to find that coyote pup I saw the other day. I didn’t notice them until one bumped into the shed. Then I called you.”

  Ryan opened his mouth to remind Luke he was supposed to scan the surrounding desert first thing every time he came up, but he bit the words back. What was done was done. The important thing was Luke had called him when he had noticed the intruders.

  “I’ve never seen this many before,” Luke whispered, his voice full of undisguised awe. “Not this close…”

  Ryan moved to the other windows and peered out, one by one. The rising sun in the east made it difficult to see. He squinted. There. In the distance. Five more. The pack appeared to be heading away from the compound, in the direction of the main road. He returned to Luke’s side and checked the shed again.

  “What the hell are they doing?” he said under his breath. He put out his hand. “Let me see your binoculars.”

  Luke pulled the glasses from his neck and handed them over.

  The first zombie that filled Ryan’s view had been a man in its former life. Tall and skinny, like a basketball player, the creature moved with the grace of a newborn giraffe, staggering and lurching in powerful, almost comical strides, as if one leg was a hair shorter than the other. Its skin was stretched tight across the skull and face, the texture of sun-dried leather. The few
remaining wisps of hair on the monster’s head shone translucent, bleached a pale white by the unforgiving desert sun.

  Ryan panned across the crowd and examined each zombie in turn, trying to get a feel for their average age. He wanted to know if they were newly turned or if they had been in the desert for a while. Hard experience had taught him the old ones were far easier to dispatch than the freshly turned.

  Ryan shifted his gaze to the west. His breath caught in his throat. For a second, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, that maybe he was imagining the sight before him. He put down the binoculars and scrubbed at his eyes with his fists, then lifted them and refocused.

  It was real. Ragged clusters of corpses stretched far into the desert, the leading edge of a roiling tsunami of undead flesh all headed in the same direction—toward the compound. Despite the relative coolness of the tower, Ryan felt a bead of sweat break loose from his hairline and race down his neck and into his shirt. His hands shook as he adjusted the focus on the binoculars, trying to peer deeper into the desert. The wave of undead had no end. The desert floor was a carpet of peristaltic, rotted flesh.

  Ryan let the binoculars fall to his chest. He ran his fingers through his thinning hair and tried to think. Luke was saying something, but his words found no purchase. Ryan’s mind raced as he considered the implications of the approaching swarm. He raised the binoculars again and started counting to get a rough estimate of the numbers involved, but quickly gave up. There were thousands, tens of thousands, maybe more. His rational mind refused to accept what he was seeing. He felt ill.

  He stood. “Get your stuff.”

  “But—”

  “Now!” Ryan barked, sharper than he intended. “We’re going downstairs. I have to call Jim.”

  Jim Higgins, the other occupant of the small survivalist community, lived in the adjacent bunker. A former banker in Tucson, he shared his shelter with his wife and elderly father, who suffered from Alzheimer's. None of them were early risers, and they likely had no idea what was headed their way.

  With a long face, Luke collected his water bottle and sleeping bag and headed for the stairs.

  Ryan took a last look through the window before following his son. His thoughts were a confused jumble as he tried to come up with a plan to keep his family alive against the latest threat.

  Two

  Madera Canyon

  South of Tucson, Arizona

  The Same Time

  Megan Pritchard let out a frustrated groan and rolled from her back to her stomach. She pushed her face into the wadded-up jacket she was using as a pillow, tugging the coarse fabric up and over her ears in a half-hearted attempt to muffle the sounds of morning and claim a few more precious minutes of sleep. It didn’t work. With a defeated sigh, she cracked her eyes open and found herself staring down the barrel of her own Glock, resting in the same place she had left it only a few hours earlier.

  Damn it.

  Reluctantly, she allowed wakefulness to wash over her. As she lifted her head from her makeshift pillow, she picked up the muted sounds of men speaking in low tones nearby, the cadence of their conversation easy and relaxed.

  “… what was it like?”

  Megan smiled at the sound of Jack Wolfe’s voice, reminded once again of how fortunate she had been in meeting him when she had.

  Another man spoke, his voice deeper than Jack’s, older, filled with a lifetime of hard living. Archie Henderson.

  Megan unzipped her sleeping bag down to her waist and sat up. She blinked and ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing it into place. She collected her gun and slipped it into its holster.

  “Megan?” Jack called from outside.

  “Yeah,” she answered. “I’m awake. I’ll be down in a second.”

  She grasped the door zipper and tugged. The sheer mesh fabric of the tent door collapsed into her lap. With a kick, she sent the sleeping bag to her knees. She grabbed her cowboy hat and perched it on her head, then climbed to her knees and ducked out of the tent.

  Metallic rustling noises carried from below as the men gave up on trying to be quiet. Perched on a ledge fifteen feet above the rocky canyon floor, Megan had a commanding view of her surroundings. She waved at Jack, and he returned the gesture. She gave Archie a polite nod.

  Retracing her path of a few hours before, she spider-climbed down to the floor of the valley, taking care not to slice her hands on the razor-sharp handholds. Jack’s hands closed around her waist as she neared the bottom. She started at the unexpected touch.

  “Thanks,” she murmured as her feet touched dirt. “I’ll be right back.” She dashed a few dozen yards up the canyon and slipped behind a fat boulder they had christened the night before as the “Pissing Stone.” She squatted and pulled her pants down in one motion, barely getting them around her ankles before a hot stream of urine exploded from her body.

  She heard a sharp click then the low, throaty roar of their portable gas stove as Jack set about boiling water.

  After a quick wipe with a crumpled tissue from her pocket, she stood and pulled up her pants, then headed back to camp.

  “How’d you sleep?” Jack asked as she drew close.

  Megan gave him a noncommittal shrug. “Okay, I guess. How’re things going down here?”

  “Quiet,” Jack said.

  “Nice and quiet,” Archie confirmed.

  “What were you guys talking about?”

  Jack looked at Archie and grinned like a schoolboy. “It turns out Archie used to fly Blackbirds.”

  Megan cocked her head in confusion.

  “The spy plane,” Archie explained. “Like the one in the Air and Space Museum over on Valencia.”

  Megan gave him a vague smile. She had no idea what he was talking about, although she could see Jack was clearly excited about whatever it was.

  “I’ll bet you’ve got some good stories,” she said, trying to downplay her ignorance.

  “Some day,” Archie said with a proud grin, “I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Megan gave him a gracious smile. “I’d like that.”

  “Me too,” Jack added. “I love planes.”

  The pot on the stove rattled, and Jack killed the gas. He poured equal portions of water into three metal cups, then pulled plastic tubes of instant coffee from his backpack and opened each into a cup. He stirred vigorously, the metal spoon making soft tinking sounds with each turn. He added packets of sugar to two of the cups. “We were waiting until you got up,” he said, handing her one of the sugared coffees. “We didn’t want to make too much of a ruckus.”

  Megan wrapped her hands around the cup, savoring the heat radiating through the thin metal. “Thanks.” She blew across the top of the mug.

  Archie took a quick sip from the unsweetened cup, wincing at the scalding liquid. “Good stuff.”

  Megan was grateful she had drawn the first watch the night before and that she hadn’t had to wake up again in the middle of the night as Jack and Archie had. She still felt a twinge of guilt over Archie, though. At sixty-eight, he was probably suffering the effects of the interrupted night’s sleep a lot more than she would have, but he had insisted.

  She raised her cup and motioned at a jumble of discarded camping gear a few dozen yards away. Faded with age and weather, the stuff looked to have been abandoned for years. She had wanted to ask the night before when they had first arrived, but Archie’s reluctance to even acknowledge the remains had deterred her.

  Archie’s gaze followed her outstretched hand and sighed. He took a long sip of his coffee. “Yeah,” he said, his voice suddenly sounding tired. “About that…”

  Megan shared a surreptitious glance with Jack. She knew he was dying to hear the story as well.

  Archie got to his feet and turned away from them, toward the remnants of the former campsite. His voice was barely a whisper when he spoke. “We thought we could ride it out.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned back to them. “There were thirty of us. Neighbors m
ostly, a few couples. A few loners like myself.”

  “All from Green Valley?” Jack asked.

  Archie snorted. “Yeah. It was a typical retirement village. You know the type. Golf. Swimming. Square dances. The whole nine yards, all the social bullshit you can think of to keep you busy while you wait to die.” The words rolled off his tongue like something poisonous. “My daughter put me there. She said I couldn’t take care of myself anymore.”

  A surprised laugh escaped her. “Sorry. Really?” She couldn’t imagine anyone being so wrong.

  Archie nodded gravely. “Really. Her husband…” A scowl creased his mouth, and he shook his head, obviously remembering something, but not offering it up for discussion.

  “So?” Megan asked. “You came here?”

  Archie’s face became grim. “Yeah. Some of us.”

  “There were more?” Jack asked as he reached for his coffee.

  “Oh, yeah. There were a few hundred of us old farts in the community. Plus medical staff.”

  “Where did the rest go?”

  Archie looked up at the sky. “You’ve got to understand, I may not act old all the time…” His eyes dropped to meet Megan’s. “But I am. And a lot of the people there were far older. Really old. Waiting to die old.”

  Megan took a sip. “I guess—”

  Archie cut her off. “And die they did. Most of them in the first few hours. It was crazy, like nothing I’d ever seen before. People I had known for years were jumping out of their wheelchairs and running around like they were twenty again. They were attacking…” He trailed off. “Anyway,” Archie continued with a shake of his head. “There were a few other ex-military guys there, people who had been in the shit. We got together and decided to head up here, to a place we could defend.”