Hunter Wars Omnibus Edition (Books 1 - 3)

by SD Tanner

  ‘Hey, Philip,’ he said. ‘Nice to meetcha. What’s ya status?’

  Philip replied, ‘Hello, Gears. We have about two thousand survivors on board a catamaran ferry, but we’re struggling to maintain supplies. Hunters on land are driving everyone to sea. It’s not the best.’

  That sounds like a typical British understatement, he thought and asked, ‘How many people ya got out at sea in total?’

  ‘About a hundred boats. Probably adds up to a total of another five thousand people out there, but we lose and gain people every day,’ Philip replied steadily.

  ‘We got about three thousand on the water that we can see and we got the same problems as you,’ he replied. ‘Ya got any structure left? Ya know military? Government?’

  ‘No, but I’m not sure I miss the government,’ Philip replied candidly. ‘I doubt they would’ve been much use.’

  Laughing, he replied, ‘True story.’

  Philip asked, ‘Gerry said you’re setting up an island?’

  He explained, ‘Yeah, we’ve been trainin’ our people to scavenge the mainland and fight the hunters. Plus we got a CDC workin’ on a counter virus. Before everythin’ shut down, they developed a designer virus that creates a form of immunity. We got some people here who are immune to the hunter virus, which means they can kill hunters by touchin’ ‘em.’

  ‘Oh, that would change the nature of the problem,’ Philip replied sounding surprised.

  Agreeing, he replied, ‘Yeah, it does. Means we can clear buildin’s and get supplies. So far, we’ve only found four people who can kill the hunters that way, but we know how to find more. We also got the scientist who was workin’ on the designer virus that creates the counter virus.’

  ‘How much capacity do you have?’ Philip asked.

  Not understanding what Philip was driving at, he asked, ‘Whatdaya mean?’

  ‘You seem to be more ahead than we are,’ Philip explained. ‘Right now we have a lot of boats at sea and are struggling to get supplies. We have considered establishing islands, but I’m wondering if we should join forces?’

  ‘If ya can survive the trip, you’re welcome to come down,’ he said honestly. ‘We’re runnin’ out of survivors on land and we need more people and skills. I’ll get Gerry to give ya the coordinates of the island we’re settin’ up.’

  Gerry cut in and said, ‘Let me do that now before we lose the connection.’

  While Gerry gave Philip the coordinates, he wondered how many other countries might be in the same position as the UK. Once Gerry finished, he asked Philip, ‘Have ya had any contact with other countries?’

  ‘Some,’ Philip replied. ‘Obviously Europe, but it’s just a large continent and the undead don’t acknowledge borders. The UK itself is a small island and it was rapidly overrun. I’ve spoken to a few survivors in bunkers, but they’re stuck. They can’t get out and they’re waiting until the undead starve due to lack of food.’

  ‘We call ‘em hunters. Have your hunters been changin’ the way they act?’ He asked. ‘Huntin’ durin’ the day in hordes?’

  ‘Err, yes,’ Philip replied sounding puzzled. ‘Is that happening in North America as well?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied grimly. ‘There’s a new type of hunter. We call it the super hunter. It can control the hunters. If ya see a horde out in daylight, look for the one controllin’ it and kill ‘em. The super hunter wears body armor and it can be killed like a human.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip,’ Philip replied cheerfully.

  Frowning at the radio mike, he wondered why the man sounded so happy. He was about to ask if Philip knew anything about other countries outside of Europe, when the radio channel went dead.

  Gerry looked at him apologetically and said, ‘It was umm just one of those umm fluke weather umm moments. I umm can’t umm get him umm back.’

  ‘That’s alright, Gerry,’ he replied. ‘It’s good enough to know we’re not completely alone.’

  It was impossible to guess how many people were left out of a global population of seven billion. The US alone had three hundred million people and he couldn’t even begin to guess how few people were left now. The loss was catastrophic, but he figured for as long there were any humans left there would be an opportunity to rebuild. He didn’t waste any time wondering how that could happen. Personally, he assumed the natural human desire to survive and thrive would take care of that problem, if and when the time came.

  Heading back to their shared suite, he saw Pax and TL were getting ready for the day.

  ‘What are ya doin’ today?’ He asked.

  Pax was tying his combat boots and wrapping the shoelace around his ankle once before tying off. Yawning, Pax replied, ‘Goin’ with Ted. Takin’ the bird lookin’ for sites, transport ships and FOB manifests.’

  He looked across to TL, who was pouring coffee into a thermos. TL turned to him as he screwed the lid down tightly and said, ‘Going with Pax.’

  ‘Jus’ doin’ as ordered, Gears,’ Pax replied still yawning. ‘What about you?’

  That’s a good question, he thought. The more skilled resources they added to the team, the less he understood about his role. In the army, he’d been like his brothers and was a doer following orders. Now, he found himself leading a growing team, and he spent more time meeting with people and less time doing anything tangible. Much like his being in command of a cruise ship, he wasn’t sure he liked this new management role either. In fact, there was a lot about his evolving role and new life he didn’t enjoy much.

  Sighing, he said unhappily, ‘I dunno.’

  Pax chuckled and said, ‘Aww it’s lonely at the top, Gears.’

  Dropping into one of the sofa chairs, he said, ‘It ain’t lonely, but it ain’t fun either.’

  ‘It’s not really working out how I thought it would,’ TL agreed.

  ‘Whatdaya mean?’ Pax asked them.

  ‘I dunno,’ he mused. ‘When we started this, I thought we were fightin’ a bunch dumb dogs, but now we got super hunters that like to hang about after they’re dead glarin’ at us. And then there’s Ip. I thought we jus’ saved a woman and she turns out to be some hunter killer with telepathy.’

  TL walked over, holding his thermos of coffee and, perching on the arm of another sofa, he said, ‘What’s your point, Gears?’

  ‘I dunno,’ he replied again. ‘I guess it ain’t what I signed up for. I was all up for a shit fight, but the world jus’ keeps gettin’ weirder and I know less and less about how to deal with it.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ TL replied candidly. ‘When we started this I thought we were dealing with a flat out war. You know. Good guys. Bad guys. Shitload of weapons. Some good engagements. But this is like a runaway train. The world keeps getting stranger and I’m not sure what we’re fighting now.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he agreed soundly. ‘And I didn’t expect to end up a manager. I don’t wanna manage. I wanna fight. This meetin’ shit is bullshit.’

  Pax had finished tying his laces and, looking annoyed with both of them, he said irritably, ‘Listen to ya whinin’. Gears, if ya don’t like your job, then do it different. Ya own the show. Ya can do what ya like.’ Looking at TL, he said, ‘And ya doan get to tell the world what to look like, TL. Ya know that. There’s some weird shit goin’ down, but it is what it is. Ya can’t jus’ say I doan like it and pretend it ain’t happenin’. It’s happenin’. Deal with it!’

  Both of them watched Pax waiting to see what he had to say next and he added, ‘And as ya always say, Gears, an enemy is an enemy, and that’s all we need to know.’

  Pax was right, which surprised him. Everything Pax said was what he would have said himself only a few months earlier and he wondered why he wasn’t thinking that way now.

  TL answered his question for him and said, ‘It’s all about adapting fast enough. I guess my brain wants the world to be one way and it’s proving to be another, but I’m not keeping up.’

  Nodding in agreement, he said bluntly, ‘If w
e don’t keep up, we’ll die.’

  ‘It’s not just us,’ Pax added. ‘Everyone with us dies, and that’s gettin’ to be a lotta people.’

  Standing up, he walked over to the whiteboard they kept in the lounge and wrote a list.

  Hunters blind in daylight. Cut brain stem. Hunters starve.

  Super hunters control the hunters. So hunters hunt day or night & form packs.

  Kill super hunters. Hunters dumb as dogs again.

  Ip sees dead super hunters.

  Ip telepathically linked to hunters, super hunters, people like her.

  Can find super hunters and people like Ip through Ip.

  Ip and her people have counter virus. Kills hunters.

  Need to use Ip to find and kill the super hunters.

  Need to use people like Ip to kill the hunters.

  Need to replicate the counter virus.

  Need to keep people alive.

  ‘Am I missin’ anythin’?’ He asked his brothers.

  TL and Pax both shook their heads and, looking at the list he’d written, he said, ‘It ain’t where we started, but I don’t think it’s anythin’ we can’t deal with.’

  Tossing the marker into the tray attached to the bottom of the whiteboard, he stepped back to survey the list with his brothers. Absentmindedly rubbing the scar on his face, he asked, ‘Do ya think we bottomed this shit out yet?’

  ‘Whatdaya mean?’ Pax asked.

  ‘Is this it?’ He asked grimly. ‘Do we know it all yet? Or is there some other bad shit comin’ our way?’

  ‘You mean other than me?’ Captain Ted asked happily.

  ‘Shit!’ Pax exclaimed sharply. ‘Doan sneak up like that. Way to get yerself fuckin’ dead.’

  Grinning, Captain Ted replied, ‘You’d have been fuckin’ dead before me.’ Looking at the whiteboard, he read the list and added, ‘List of shit.’

  Snorting, he commented dryly, ‘I can live with a list of shit. We were jus’ wonderin’ if it’s a complete list.’

  Pax grinned and said, ‘If I was you, I’d leave some room at the bottom.’

  Watching as his brothers and Captain Ted head out to their days work, he thought about what Pax said about it being his show. He’d set out their mission and their roles. TL was finding survivors and locations for their bases, camps and scavenger runs. Pax was training the survivors, scavengers and combat shooters and running the supply. He was leading the mission, planning, setting up bases, enlisting alliance partners and working with Pax to deal with any other enemies. He thought part of the problem was to date, they’d been reactive and they hadn’t been in a position to actively engage their enemies. The combat shooters were still being trained, they didn’t have anywhere near enough people or weapons and the situation kept evolving. Up until a few months ago, he’d thought the main enemy was the hunters, but now he realized the more dangerous enemy was the super hunters.

  They needed more trained combat shooters and, now with the hunters forming packs under the super hunters, they needed more heavy weapons. He made a note to ask TL to focus on building up their stock of heavy weapons, but as he sat looking at what he’d written on the whiteboard, he thought the real issue was they needed to get off the back foot. So far, all they’d done was try to keep up with the changing dynamic and what they needed to do was take control of the dynamic. He sighed because every time they tried to do that, something new emerged. Unhappily, he thought Pax was right to tell him to leave room at the bottom of his already long list.

  As he sat wondering what he should make a priority for the day, Ip wandered out of their bedroom. She sat in his lap and looked at the list on the whiteboard. ‘Whatdaya think, honey?’ He asked.

  No point in asking her, he thought. She probably wouldn’t know even if she could speak. They needed to get on the front foot. To do that they would need to get more aggressive about finding and killing the super hunters, finding Ip’s people and more alliances. Right now everyone was focused on getting Haven set up and moving people from the boats to the island. They didn’t need him for that, but he couldn’t start any proactive attacks on the super hunters without Pax and his combat shooters. For now their priority was to secure the people from the boats.

  In the absence of a clear path forward, he decided he wanted to see Nelson. Although they’d spoken by radio, they hadn’t seen one another since the hunter attack at the Walmart. He could get Hatch to drop him at Nelson’s bank base and pick him up the next day. He was about to tell Ip to pack for an overnight run, when she kissed him on the mouth and went to their bedroom. Shaking his head at how much she always understood, he knew she was already packing.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: First to fight (TL)

  The helicopter was flying low over Mayport Naval Base. The Naval site was over six square miles taking up four miles along the coastline of Florida near Jacksonville. As he, Pax and Captain Ted flew over the site, he could see there was a spit of land about one and a half miles long by half a mile wide, and at one end was a half mile opening between it and the rest of the coastline. The narrow opening led ships into a huge harbor where there were eight ships already moored. At the other end, the long spit of land was connected to the rest of the Naval base by a short strip about a quarter mile wide. That could work, he thought, if we blocked off the narrow strip joining the land to the rest of the base, it would be protected on three sides by the harbor.

  Pointing to the spit of land, he said to Captain Ted, ‘We could block that end off and the whole area could be used as a safe base.’

  Captain Ted looked at where he was pointing and replied, ‘Block it with stacked shipping containers. Put sentries up top with heavy weapons and it’s defendable.’

  ‘Might wanna keep a coupla ships docked,’ Pax added. ‘Jus’ in case hunters breach the containers. I’m pretty sure hunters can’t swim.’

  Captain Ted snorted and replied, ‘Don’t fuckin’ think so. We could use the barges down there to transport supplies to the islands. At a push, with no sleeping room, you could put ten thousand troops across those two transport ships.’

  ‘There’s no accommodation down there,’ he observed. ‘We’ll need to get housing and facilities up.’

  ‘I got a plan for that,’ Captain Ted said with a grin.

  ‘Care to share?’ He asked.

  ‘Sure, but we need to head inland about seven miles,’ Captain Ted replied happily. ‘There’s a Marine supply base near here.’

  He didn’t know that, but why would he? Army and Marines might fight the same wars, but they had completely different infrastructures. Most of the time they couldn’t even share comms and there wasn’t always a huge overlap in equipment. They were, in effect, two very different armies and it had been a bone of contention between the two fighting forces for decades. That said, the fact that Captain Ted was a Marine, was proving to be very useful. He knew about Marine sites, equipment and supplies and, with his willingness to put aside any old differences and his ego, was adding a lot to the mission. Plus he had the whole badass Marine thing going. Before the world ended, he’d found it annoying, but now he was finding it an entertaining remnant of a world long gone.

  Not that he’d been too amused when, over their first dinner, Captain Ted made a pass at Izzie. Izzie was a tall, well-built, striking brunette who held her small group of 50 people together by leading from the front. He worked closely with Izzie to relocate her group from Pensacola to the ship a few months earlier, and they sort of had a thing going. Prior to the world ending Izzie was an engineer turned senior executive for a leading global defense company. Being smart, mouthy and working in a male dominated world, she had no problem putting men in their place. He grinned as he recalled how quickly Captain Ted learned he was at the bottom of the totem pole when it came to her.

  Looking at him quizzically, Captain Ted asked, ‘What you fuckin’ grinning about?’

  ‘I was just recalling how Izzie slapped you down,’ he replied honestly.

  Captain Ted turned
away, stared at the ground below them and said sulkily, ‘Good guys come last.’

  Laughing, Pax said rudely, ‘So do losers, dude.’

  Frowning, Captain Ted complained, ‘Well, that’s not supportive.’

  ‘Ain’t gonna hug ya either,’ Pax quipped.

  By now they were flying over the Marine supply base. He could see stacks of shipping containers and three enormous warehouses. There were several helipads and he directed the pilot to land on the one nearest the shipping containers. From the air, the Marine supply base looked empty of any life, but that didn’t surprise him. The base was on an island with only a single bridge joining it to the mainland. As they flew over the bridge, he’d noticed the security gates were still intact. It was unlikely anyone had been into the site. If that was the case, then the only hunters in the area were likely to be the original people who were at the base when the virus hit. Without food, those hunters might have starved by now. Even if there were people living at the base, he figured they were survivors and it was his job to enlist them to their mission.

  The pilot landed near the containers as instructed. He, Pax and Captain Ted climbed out of the bird and looked around the concrete stillness of the Marine supply base. Pax headed off to check out the warehouse, vehicles and other buildings. He and Captain Ted walked towards the containers and he was surprised to see they looked new and in pristine condition. He didn’t think they looked like standard shipping containers at all.

  Curious, he asked, ‘What kind of shipping containers are these?’

  In response, Captain Ted whooped and gleefully shouted, ‘Fuckin’ pay dirt!!’

  Not understanding why Captain Ted was so excited over the corrugated metal boxes, he asked, ‘What?’

  As he literally bounced on the balls of his feet to the nearest container, Captain Ted replied enthusiastically, ‘I heard about these.’

  The shipping container was not a shipping container in the traditional sense. It was a corrugated metal box the same size and shape of a shipping container, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Painted white, there were two box shapes at window height and another rectangular metal shape that was clearly a door.