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

by William Esmont

  “Makes sense,” Jack said as he began to break down the stove.

  “A handful of people made a dash for the old Titan base down the road. They said they were going to seal themselves up inside and wait it out.”

  “What’s the Titan base?” Megan asked, her curiosity piqued.

  Archie chuckled. “An old Cold War missile base turned tourist trap. Dumbasses. Every last one of them. There was no food there. No water. It was suicide.”

  Jack stuffed the stove into his pack and zipped the top flap closed. “How far away is it?”

  Archie shrugged and pointed west. “Shit. I don’t know. Ten miles?” He let out a morbid laugh. “You should have seen it—a convoy of electric golf carts heading into the sunset just like an old western. Everyone was armed to the teeth with their putters and nine-irons.”

  Megan didn’t allow herself to laugh at Archie’s gallows humor. It was his memory and his alone. Some of the people had likely been his friends. She wanted to move him past the missile base, to the canyon. “So you came here instead?”

  Archie laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. “Yeah. Well, I’ve been hiking up here for years. Hunting. Camping. I knew there was food. Water. Shade. It was the only place around that made sense, given what was happening.” He gave his coffee a noisy slurp.

  “What happened then?” Megan asked, pretty sure she already knew the answer.

  Archie shook his head. “Shit happened. You know how it is. Someone fell asleep. They got in…” He stared at his feet, and a sigh rattled through his body. In that instant, he looked positively ancient. He gestured at the ledge. “I made it up there as things were going to hell. Kept quiet. Drank my own piss for a week. I nearly starved to death waiting those bastards out. Finally, they left.”

  “Fuck,” Jack said with a shudder.

  “Fuck is right. Once they left, I crawled down. I found some food and water and then went right back up. Just in case. There was barely anything left. Bones. Blood. Lots of blood. Fortunately, the fuckers didn’t care about food and water, so I had plenty.”

  “How’d you end up in Scorpion Canyon then?” Megan asked. She had a vague third-hand recollection of Archie’s story, but she wanted to hear it from the source.

  Archie cleared his throat and spat. “Well, it took me a few days to get the nerve to come down again. I didn’t know where I was going or what I was going to do. All I knew was I couldn’t stay here any longer. I was on the road for two solid weeks before I saw another living person. For a while there, I thought I was the last one.” He chuckled.

  “You went to the Air Force base, right?” Megan asked.

  Archie gave a grim nod. “Yeah. I was looking for weapons. Food. Something to drive that wasn’t a burned out, broken-down piece of shit. I figured if anyone was still alive, that’s where they’d be.”

  “And?” Jack prompted.

  A sharp laugh burst from Archie’s mouth. “It was one of the worst ideas I’ve ever had. The base was dead. A fucking graveyard. The zombies were everywhere. I was about to give up…”

  “But you didn’t,” Megan said.

  “No. I was close, though.” Archie fixed her in his gaze. “And if you ever repeat that to anyone, I’ll deny it until the day I die.”

  “That you were about to give up?”

  His expression grew rock hard. “Yeah. You never heard that from me. Henderson men don’t give up, and I’m no exception.”

  Megan laughed. “Understood.”

  The more time she spent with Archie, the more she appreciated his wry sense of humor. He had an old-fashioned sensibility that intrigued her. Silently, she both cursed and thanked the irascible retiree’s daughter for leaving him to rot in the desert.

  Archie sat up straight and stretched. “But enough about me. I want to hear what you think.”

  “About?”

  Archie waved at their surroundings. “About this place. About making it our new home.”

  Megan’s gaze moved past Archie, traveling up the sheer walls lining the mouth of the canyon. “I like it. I didn’t believe you at first when you said there was running water here. It’s a completely different climate than Scorpion Canyon.”

  Archie nodded eagerly. “And that’s just the beginning. There are two more springs farther up the canyon. In all the years I’ve been coming up here, they’ve never been dry, not even in the worst of droughts.”

  “Good,” Megan said, mentally comparing the abundance of Madera Canyon with the meager resources of their current home on the far side of the valley.

  “And there’s a ton of wildlife too. Plenty for hunting,” Archie added. “That is if the zombies haven’t eaten the animals already.”

  Megan turned to face Jack. “What do you think?”

  Jack grinned. “I don’t know about you, but I’m sold. The only question I have is whether we should move everyone over here at once or keep two camps for a little while. Diversify ourselves a bit.”

  “I hadn’t considered that,” Megan said, her brow furrowing. “It could be good to keep spread out, but that means more travel, more chance of pulling in a swarm as we go back and forth.”

  Jack nodded. “Good point.”

  Archie shuffled across the canyon to the remains of the former settlement. He picked up a weather-beaten woman’s suitcase, inspected it, then dropped it and returned. “With a little work, we can make this place stronger than Scorpion Canyon. We can build a bigger fence and make a real go at surviving long-term. I think we should get busy as soon as possible, then bring everyone over once we’re ready. One trip.”

  Megan considered his suggestion. While she was reluctant to keep all of her tenuous population concentrated in one location, she knew intuitively they were not yet strong enough to divide. Maybe in a year. Maybe two. But not at the moment. “I guess that settles it, then,” she said as she dumped the dregs of her coffee on the ground. “It looks like we’re moving.”

  Three

  Franklin Compound

  Arivaca, Arizona

  “Jim. Come in. This is Ryan.” Ryan held his breath and waited. On any other day, he would have simply gone upstairs, opened the door, and dashed across the hard-packed dirt courtyard to Jim’s bunker. But not with what was waiting outside.

  His radio crackled. “Hey, Ryan. What’s up?” By the cheerful tone, his neighbor clearly had no idea what was going on topside.

  “We’ve got company,” Ryan said. “And a lot more inbound.”

  Jim didn’t respond right away, but when he did, his voice had lost all of its cheer. “What do you mean?”

  Ryan envisioned Jim sitting in his bunker, the layout identical to his own, but with different furniture and decorations. His elderly father would be parked in his ratty leather chair, the twin of the chair he had left back in Marana during the evacuation. Ryan had never seen the original, but he had heard the story enough times to accept it as fact. Felecia, Jim’s third wife, would be somewhere nearby, her hair done up as usual, her makeup flawless.

  Paige entered the living room, carrying two plates full of powdered eggs and sizzling bacon. Ryan nudged the AR-15 parts aside and motioned for her to deposit the food on the coffee table.

  “Is everything okay?” she whispered as she slid the plates on the scuffed tabletop.

  Ryan held up the index finger of his free hand, motioning for her to wait. He pressed the transmit button. “Do me a favor. Take a look outside and call me back.” He put down the radio and plucked a skinny piece of bacon from the plate. “Sorry,” he told Paige before stuffing the bacon into his mouth.

  Paige’s face grew stern, and her hands went to her hips. “You didn’t answer my question. I asked if something’s wrong.”

  Ryan closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Maybe…” He clipped the radio to his belt and opened his arms, urging her to come to him.

  Paige shook her head and took a step back. “What is it? What’s going on?”

  “Tell her, Dad,” Luke
said from the doorway.

  Ryan had been hoping to downplay the situation until he had more information and was absolutely sure it was worth worrying her. In theory, they were perfectly safe holed up in the bunker as long as the undead didn’t detect their presence. But he couldn’t dispel the image of the approaching wave. There were so many. Over the years, he had grown accustomed to dealing with the occasional straggler; most of the time a quick shot to the head and a trip to a nearby wash was the extent of his involvement. The mob outside was unlike anything he had ever seen or even imagined. For the first time since arriving in Arivaca, Ryan questioned his ability to protect his family.

  He made a snap decision. “There’s a swarm heading in this direction,” he said, keeping a measured, confident voice. “A big one.”

  “They’re everywhere,” Luke chimed in, his voice cracking the way it had been recently.

  Ryan shot him an angry glare, and Luke looked away.

  “So?” Paige said. “We’ve dealt with swarms before.”

  “Not on—”

  The radio crackled. “Holy shit!” Jim said. “Did you see all of them fuckers out there?”

  Paige frowned. Although Jim had been a banker in his previous life, he tended to curse like a sailor when out of earshot of his own wife. Sometimes he forgot Paige had the same sensitivities as Felecia.

  “Yeah,” Ryan said, keying the transmitter. “We saw ’em.”

  The radio squawked again. “There’s gotta be thousands of them. Hey—”

  “Jim?” Ryan asked, alarmed at the break in the transmission.

  Jim’s voice came back in a whisper. “I think they know we’re here.”

  Ryan’s heart skipped a beat. He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath before responding. “What do you mean?”

  “I… I’m not sure. I was watching them. Talking to you. One of them turned, and I swear, it locked eyes with me. The next thing I know, it started to moan. Now they’re all doing it! God damn it!”

  Ryan’s skin crawled as he caught the unmistakable din of the creatures in the background of Jim’s transmission. His head swam. His vision blurred as a headache blossomed between his temples. If the undead had already detected their presence, it was inevitable they would congregate above, searching for food they knew was somewhere near. Searching for them. If that happened, all bets were off. The undead had no sense of time, no way to know when to give up. A few feet of dirt was nothing to them. They would wait, forever if necessary, while Ryan and his family starved to death like rats.

  “Can you take them out?” Ryan asked, scrambling for ideas.

  “Negative,” Jim said. “Too much noise.”

  Ryan chewed his lip. “Yeah. I get you. Fuck!”

  Paige scowled, and he reached out to touch her arm, to reassure her. She brushed him off, turning away and sinking onto the couch. She set to work on the already ragged quicks of her fingernails.

  “We need to figure this out,” Jim said. “Before they get here. Find some way to detour them around us.”

  Ryan stared at his family, barely seeing them. Jim was right. But the opportunity to create a diversion had vanished as soon as the creatures detected Jim. The only real option left, the one Ryan had hoped to avoid at all costs, was to go outside and dispose of the zombies already in the area. Once that was done, they could hunker down inside and wait for the creatures to pass by overhead.

  “Damn it!” he growled, barely able to constrain his frustration. After all of their years of preparation and planning, everything came down to one terrible instant, and in the end, he found himself no better off than that first day back in Tucson.

  Steeling himself, he put the radio to his mouth and mashed the transmit button. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You and I are going outside and we’re going to take care of those motherfuckers before they can draw any more attention. Once we’re clear, we’ll figure out how to prevent this from happening again.”

  Luke perked up. “We’re going outside?”

  Ryan tensed. “We’re not going anywhere!” He glared at Paige, but spoke to Luke. “Jim and I are going out. You’re staying right here with your mother.”

  “But Dad…” Luke whined.

  “No buts,” Ryan said. “Jim?” he asked into the radio. “You still there?”

  Jim answered, his voice full of resignation. “Yeah. I’m here. Let’s get this over with.”

  Ryan was already heading for his gun locker as he keyed the radio. “I’ll see you up top in five.”

  Four

  Madera Canyon

  South of Tucson, Arizona

  While Jack and Archie piled gear into their old forest service pickup truck, Megan set off to take a closer look at the remains of the previous settlement. Based on the mix of tattered fabric and tortured metal poles, she guessed there had been at least eight tents, ranging in size from a small two-person model all the way up to cavernous family-sized versions that had probably held six or eight people each. Among the wreckage, she found several plastic coolers, their contents long ago scoured away by the native denizens of the canyon. Part of her cringed at the idea of constructing a new settlement atop a graveyard, yet at the same time, she knew it was unavoidable. Searching for a spot of unhallowed ground in these times was a fool’s errand at best.

  Megan glanced at Archie, watching him joking with Jack as he hefted a backpack into the bed of the truck. The sight tugged at her heartstrings. Archie had known those people. He had lived with them, then had been witness to their slaughter. As much as he tried to hide his emotions, coming back had to have reopened old wounds. Megan wondered if there had been anyone special in the group, someone who had meant as much to Archie as Jack did to her. He didn’t wear a wedding band, and while he had mentioned having a daughter, he hadn’t said anything about other children or a wife. She resolved to find a discreet way to ask him later, once things calmed down.

  Her thoughts shifted to the move. The logistics were going to be a nightmare, not to mention the security challenges inherent in getting everyone twenty miles across the valley while remaining undetected by the roving bands of undead. The one hundred and thirty-seven people residing in Scorpion Canyon had settled into a routine, built homes for themselves, and even set up a school. After everything they had experienced, uprooting them was going to be traumatic. She didn’t expect anyone to refuse. Self-preservation was too strong of an instinct for that to happen. But there would be grumbling, and she would have to hold a few hands.

  If it weren’t for the damned water, she lamented, none of this would be necessary.

  She inhaled deeply, savoring the pristine scent of the uninhabited canyon. It was so different from home, which after years of constant habitation carried the permanent scent of man—food cooking, garbage, and occasionally raw sewage when the wind blew the wrong way. They would do better in the new place, she vowed, make something permanent, a place they could truly call home.

  She stole a glance at the clear blue sky. For the second year in a row, the summer monsoon rains had failed to materialize. When summer turned to fall with no hint of natural moisture, Megan had tried to convince herself that winter would provide a respite, that there was still hope to be had. But the rains never came. The streams leading to the mouth of Scorpion Canyon, once reliably fed by snowmelt and a series of shallow springs high in the Catalina Mountains, remained barren and dry. Where water had flowed clean and fresh, there was only dirt and dead vegetation to be found. The community had been subsisting on a combination of bottled water scavenged from Tucson and the amounts they had collected in their cistern. She figured they had at most six weeks of water left, and that was after she had already cut all nonessential uses of the precious liquid, including washing, laundry, and limiting food preparation to dried foods where possible.

  She surveyed the mouth of the canyon. It was far narrower than that of Scorpion Canyon, which would work in their favor. They would still have to build a fence to keep the random trickle of
undead at bay. Unlike at Scorpion Canyon, however, they had no existing fence infrastructure upon which to start. Living quarters would be another challenge, although not quite as difficult. Scorpion Canyon had blessed them with a fully stocked visitor center with barred windows and easily controlled entrances and exits. None of that existed in the new area. What they did have in their favor was an abundance of recreational vehicles stashed in the garages of neighboring Green Valley. It wouldn’t require too much effort to tow a few of the abandoned vehicles into the canyon for housing. The only challenge would be getting the RVs in without drawing unwanted attention. But that was nothing new. She couldn’t count the number of times they had ventured out on a supply raid, not seen a single zombie the entire time, and then discovered they had somehow picked up a trail of undead a mile long on their return. After the first several times that had happened, she made sure they took a circuitous route so as not to draw any unwanted visitors to home base. They would have to do the same while they were moving and once they had finished the transition.

  Megan thought of her old friend Cesar, who had helped her settle Scorpion Canyon shortly after the uprising. She wished he were there to help with the move, to tell her she was making the right decisions. She recalled the grim smile on his face the last time they had spoken. Shortly after he was infected, with a few simple words, he had transferred responsibility for the nascent community to her shoulders and then left her to end his life alone. At the time, she had been terrified at the idea of leading so many people. She had no idea what to do, what to say. Over time and with the help of the people around her, she had picked up the pieces and taken the community in a direction that would have made Cesar proud. She hoped.

  She let her eyes follow the line of the road up the canyon. According to Archie, there were ample escape routes through the Santa Rita mountains, although in his words they were a “little steeper” than those in Scorpion Canyon. That was the only downside as far as she could see, and it was something she could live with.